Bare-handed vs weapon fighting balance

[Ker]

Seems the main topic got so way off!

Stop getting distracted people.

Here's a little insight also since Gorka asked -

Warrior weapon_bonus caps at 25.

1) You have +3 weapon_bonus non-drachma items below Avatar 1. (3/25)
2) You have +5 weapon_bonus from a 63 mil coins forge for Avatar 10. (8/25) <-- Good luck finding coins for the forge!
3) You have +10 weapon_bonus from 100B exp and 100 mil coins at 9x40. (18/25) <-- Good luck reaching 9x40!
And the best part :
4) You have +8 weapon_bonus from a total of 4 runes. (26/25) <-- Good luck finding these 20 gems!

Not sure which comes first - reaching 9x40 or finding 20 weapon_bonus gems. According to Gorka, reaching 5x40 got him a gem.

Let's say a warrior wants to make life 'easier' :

a) Spend 740 drachma on +2 weapon_bonus (Relic)
b) Spend 770 drachma on +2 weapon_bonus (Bracer)
c) Spend 770 drachma on +2 weapon_bonus for your 2nd (Bracer)
Obtain 1) and 2).
Result : 14/25

Damn, after all the writing, I almost feel sorry for the class. Difficulty 10/10.

Oh hello Monk class - 15 hand_dam all below 40 monk. Yolo boys, go monk. Difficulty 1/10.

Regards,

Dr

[Teron]

Thanks for the summary about weapon dam, Dr.

The thing is, we not only need +weap dam ingame and quest items, but also a fixed broadside/flail, and that's what these posts are about.

Personally, I think that the above and dual wield that grants 1 attack would prevent warriors from going bare-handed. It'd also give a choice to other groupies (bards/necros/etc): forego wearing a shield or stick to hand damage.

[Gorka]

I don't really like much the idea of dual wield, but admit without an extra attack from dual wield, it will probably be impossible for me to make up the damage I can do barehanded with flurry.

I think the reality is that monk damage is so far ahead, I don't think a warrior at my levels can catch it, even with broadside fixed. I'm not saying that warrior damage should equal monk damage... but players are going to still do monk probably because of flurry at my levels.

[Ker]

To conclude,


I do not think any sort of light change towards warrior skills would do any good in regards to topic. So hard to compare the two. One can actually just accept the fact you should do well monk style, embrace the ki, and move on?

I do however would like to think our Gods who govern us hear our plea and condone our ideas towards the weapon_bonus for a warrior's growth spurt in general. This would also have some impact towards our other classes who stray to such meditative and pious ways. We have highlighted the massive void in weapon_bonus, the severe difficulty and ease of other goodly Sloth monk ways.

Could I ask also Teker since you have been our listening ear and a dear shoulder - could we see light towards bonus_weapon_bonus like the many other skills that has enjoyed this attribute?

Muchas Gracias!

Dr

[Hung]

As we seem to have another round of sharing opinions I would like to propose yet another idea. Which is about introducing new weapon clasp that heals like peri.
Counterattack works at average every third round. Average mob attack is 100 hps. So counterattack helps to save about 33hps per round.
Therefore if the new clasp will heal like 30 hps per round(it's less than 33, but clasp doesnt need to be activated unlike the counterattack), then using a weapon will become much worthwhile again.
Alternative approach is a vampiric clasp that does say 1d5 damage per each blow and transfers that damage to the weapon wielder.
Warrior primes will attach those clasps on their swords. While non-primes will attach it on the Axes of Dwarvish Lords.
And Lord Moonglum will finally stop walking around with long face and cursing someone who sold him stack of those axes.

p.s. Of course, such clasp will make tassle of the guardian obsolete. However the tassle could become part of some greater forge. I.e. -.4ac +2wd boots.

[*teker*]

We're currently discussing what to try to do to make things more even. One of the things for sure would be to include some of the missing bonuses in warrior skills and to make them improve with warrior levels. I looked in the code and it appears that bonus weapon damage has been coded but not used. It would be trivial to change the weapon damage cap and that's something we should do as well, but we need to discuss numbers.

To finally improve things, it'll be up to the builders to add more items that add to weapon damage. It sounds like many of these need to be lower level.

Let me ask this also: Why do people play warriors if the weapon damage is so low? What compensates for that to make them fun to play? Or are all the warriors just running around bare-handed?

How big of a ***** storm would there be if we revised monk damage down if it falls later in the class order?

[*juggleblood*]

I'd say the monk style thing is popular and fun and not overpowered. Nerfing it according to class placement is going to make people angry.

I'm not convinced we need to balance weapdam as warriors already get crit and massive critical hit to boost their melee damage. Would having a wider variety of weapons that scale with avatar levels help the issue?

[Hung]

People play warriors because of parry & riposte which are probably best defense skills. People play warriors because of second wind which is considered by some as best prime skill ever. Finally people play warriors because of hp & hpregen bonus, ac bonus and ability to make ac lower than -11.

As JB previously said, weapon fighting is supposed to be more defensive style, while fists are more offensive. So far it is true only for prime warriors. Therefore my suggestions were aimed to make it true for non-primes as well. I dont think weapon fighting should compete with martial arts in damage. However there is an issue with weapon dam growth being very non-linear(as most of it comes from avatar shop and tier 3 gems). While the hand dam grows pretty linear(as most of it comes from ordinary eq).

About the last question. Isn't there a hand damage cap based on monk in class order already? Anyway, many of us will become very sad if one day they'll find out that their hits and strikes dont do as much damage as before.

[Ker]

Good Morning!

Game concept and approach has changed on various occassions over the so many years.

One of the more impactful and direct influence over the change we see today has been the Coliseum.

Your typical warrior looking for the best armor out there as he should, would find things like (-spellbonus/-damage/-hit/-stat/-hp/-mana) very anti-coliseum. The alternative route is to then embrace their weapon bonus bloodrage, which is not very lowbie friendly coupled with an astounding difficulty (at this current game phase). Solid +dam items are high thief restricted, which many players put way behind their class order if you're not a thief prime.

Monk class in general enjoys more damage compared to your conventional old school +dam slots in return for lower AC. Couple that up with a jive of warrior and monk utilities and you have a picture perfect Gladiator for the Coliseum.

On this basis, I do not think we should be looking at a monk revision. It is simply but a phase of what the game offers.

Moving on -

The current weapon damage cap is not at all low. I have seen the various output in a growing warrior trying to achieve the cap and I can almost say that the end result is truly impressive. However, fullfilling this cap is a daunting task. I firmly believe works are under way to ease the pain. One very simple way to "increase" the cap is to actually just allow bonus_weapon_bonus to have a play. Maybe that can be in works too *nudge*

What Hung has mentioned pretty much sums up why anyone would want to play the prime.

On the plus side, I do agree that the class deserves a bump in direct relation with skill to weapon bonus. This should aid a warrior's growth in its most cohesive nature, even out of the Coliseum.

Thanks for hearing us out!

Regards,

Dr

[cyprimus]

May i suggest... adding bonus weapon damage at the same levels you get heal bonus or bonus spell damage from avvie levels for warriors, and maybe bonus hand damage for monks at same levels? Both only for primes. Could also just extend the swordsmanship and/or barehanded still to classo..

Warriors damage sucks ..always had. i leveled before pit etc... so was spending all day killing 200 k ish mobs.. waiting for groups..

Now.. if i redid it.. would ignore ac, since potions can easily outdo anything. Same with damage... potions boost easily. And, you can kill in pit all day for them, with no risk of exp loss..

Most warriors.. hell even clerics.. now level usuing monk hand damage. Monk themselves are fairly weak as a concept... ie- several other classes can easily outdo monks in grip/damage.. so i agree, weakening monk lower in classo would help.. and piss ppl off.. however.. monks can never reach there cap for hand damage.. its just not possible with eq and avvie shop presently. so even nerfing it for other primes would not matter a lot. And redoing/improving eq for monk primes... already there is items better than the monk prime eq in game for same slot.. but ..made for warriors. Also. same deal with gems.. just never gonna happen.. so no point counting them..

overall, its same regardless of class... either level via shifting, level with a damage heavy friend, or camp pit for potions.. or wait for groups..

4 max avvies i have.. all essentially kill the same areas... ip did better shifting before he got avvie shop boosts. There is little to differentiate monk from any other class now.. but everyones all 8 classes.. so.. maybe thats the goal? Dunno.

[Gorka]

How big of a ***** storm would there be if we revised monk damage down if it falls later in the class order?

Don't do this teker. Some people spend hundreds of hours on there +1's. It's completely unfair (especially to primes). Getting the balance right is just something that needs to be done through good planning right from the start. It would appear to me that somehow the builders put too many hand dam items into the game at some point, causing this imbalance. When I came back I saw those hand dam monk rings and I just had to laugh. Warrior is a great class, it's just been left behind a little, it's not the only class either.

Eq, is pretty much the source of most of this mess... As ker point's out a capped warrior does NOT have damage problems.

There is an old idea teker, that's a real good one... it's been referred to as "the dressing room" where players online can select eq from the eqlist and calculate there statistics after selecting items for each slot. Obviously primes spend a lot of time doing this manually using the eqlist.

I wonder how much time sometimes Builders spend checking the balance of "class eq" holistically. I have no doubts they do well addressing eq deficiencies specifically of a single class, but class eq also needs to be compared side by side with other classes. What does a maxed cleric in best eq look like next to a maxed mage next to a maxed necro... Clearly we have some eq imbalances, this seems to be the root of a lot of problems.

Also if you started to nerf monks, you wouldn't take on the wrath of just the primes, but everyone, as I suspect any lowbie who knows the game will currently have a monk mode for melee, because it's simply better.

As you mention it's up to the builders to create eq, but perhaps if builders or players had a "dressing room tool," imbalances could be calculated more quickly and hopefully address class imbalances in eq. Eq imbalance at a classes level is probably the longest running/debated problem in sloth...

Has anyone ever made a list of the best eq a player can wear for ac and dam for each class at 20/30/40/3X40/6X40/9X40? I suspect not, I suspect the result of that would be VERY interesting... yet alone expanding the same idea into all the other sloth stats.

[Gorka]

If breeze could provide me with a SQL/XML eqlist, I could have a look at making the dressing room concept using SQL databases. I'm offering... or at least I could create some kind of report for each class, for each stat, about maximum potential at 20/30/40/3x40/6X40/9X40 etc... it at least would identify what builders need to address.

I've already played around with the LUA and JSON lists a little and found them unsupported and time consuming.

There are also some other problems that were kind of annoying... There appears to be 2 ways to define AC...

<AFF_ARMOR>-5</AFF_ARMOR>
<VALUE_AC>3</VALUE_AC>

There should probably only be 1 tag for AC... imho, and perhaps the few old items need changing.

[Teron]

1. Why people play warriors

Warrior, first of all, is an armored tank, behind which ppl get behind. Playing a tank is his current primary role and warriors do it better, than any other, thanks to hps, parry and second wind. Citing hp regen as an advantage is laughable, though, because a 14av skill beats anything (225hpr caster regen vs 325hpr warrior regen, and you won't get full mana before hps)

If ppl want to solo, warrior is a good base for the 2nd/3d class: you exchange 2/3d class prime benefits, such as high mana regen, for hps/ac/parry/second wind. Personally, I don't think it's worth the trade: if you want to play necro, go necro. If you want to play, like a monk, go monk.

Any solo warriors have to rely on their 2nd/3d classes to do damage, because their innate damage pretty much sucks, even with riposte. If you think warriors have high damage, try killing Lyme mobs only by using warrior skills. It's pretty pathetic even with charge, unless you are a 9x40, but even then good luck with using capped flail for 120 damage.

If Gorka soloed more, he'd know how lowly warrior damage is. (For the record, I've got 1 wa/th to 3x40 irrc, a wa/mo/th/ba to 18av and a wa/ne to 8 39.)

Of course, warrior and monk playstyles are a bit different (presage, focus vs second wind), so some people play warriors as monks, because it's the best concept of dealing burst damage for them. Warriors don't have much mana or mana regen, so blasting their way through several solo areas is out of the question.

I'd love to see people pick warriors to deal damage, if they like their damage and active skills. However, right now, this is out of the question. Any damage that warriors can get comes from hard forges, runes and avatar shop and there aren't active skills for damage dealing, except for tanks.

2. Monk damage

Personally, I don't see monk damage as being op right now, you still need to work for it. I'm pretty sure my hand dam, even in a full hd set, doesn't compare to Ip's or Josiah's.

Monks have just the right amount of hand dam eq to deal damage, it's the other classes that need more options to balance their eq, damage and playstyle.

I believe caps already limit whatever the damage people can do, and some monk high damage monk items require 35+ monk, which is limited by the classo. If a player reaches 40mo, he should be able to wear that eq, I don't see a problem with that.

[Gorka]

I just leveled to 3x40 and I wondered if any decisions have been made?

I know it might take a while for things to happen, but perhaps an indication about what has been decided would be helpful, as I have enough drachma to buy an item, and I need to pick my 3x40 eq - but without knowing whats happening I don't know if I am choosing the 3x40 axe, or buying monk bracers.

Will the warrior drachma bracers be adjusted?
Is broadside/flail being reworked?
Are warrior drachma items going to be created or changed with BONUS_WEAPONDAM?
Are builders working on Warrior weapon dam eq's?

Any info would be better than none, so I know if I should hold off important decisions.

[*teker*]

Is broadside/flail being reworked?

I'm hoping to have something in the next reboot for this. It may take a few tries to get the final changes in place.