Chaos Castle / Damage Decrease / Soul Barrier

[Exilia]

I'm not saying that my opinions are the correct ones, they're just my opinions.

15 minutes ago, ADMIN said:

Whatever looks perfect for you and your class it doesn't for others.

This has some truth in it, but lets take a look at the mana shield as first example. As I wrote on the opening post;

Only problem with Soul Barrier is that you don't have to go for agi build, so called support sm, in order to gain efficient shield to play with. Basic value for barrier is 6%, with 20 ML points you gain additional 13% increase, with current agility formula(agility/62) you easily gain another 10%. That's already 29% absorb without even thinking about if you want to play as a supporter or heavy damage dealer. With 620 agility, you should be easily able to get ~1500 energy, which gives you 6% additional barrier. That is total of 35% absorb with a simple build that also gives you decent killing potential since the formula for max damage is ene/2. My point is that with the current ratios, there is literally no reason to aim for the supportive build since ++30% shield is so easily achievable without hurting your damaging abilities.

As the math says, you can reach 35% barrier with no effort. You don't have to make supportive agility based build, but you can focus on topping your damage with huge amounts of energy. If we try to reason how strong mana shield should be on pvp/support sm, rough example would be that pvp sm has 20% barrier while support sm has 40% barrier. Wouldn't it be more reasonable that this simple build that works for pvp and pvm meets you halfway there, and gives you 30% barrier instead of 35%? Why the formula favors pvp build so heavily that he doesn't have to think about if he wants to rely more on dealing or absorbing damage? I think that the agility formula for barrier growth should be (agility/100-124)(%) instead of the current one. Then your barrier strength would be more close to 30% instead of 35% with damage based builds, or you could choose to build for more supportive style in case you wish to reach the 40% barrier. I don't think this would significantly weaken any sm, but it would bring more diversity into building one.

Second thing was the dd option. I do understand that the global damage % ramps up with your resets, but was some class/builds really doing so much damage with 10 resets that the dd cap had to be buffed from 55% to 60%? I admit that I spoke behalf of nerfing dd a bit too harsh since I haven't tested it with maxed characters, but nevertheless 60% seems a lot to me.

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Then you say AE is a PvP beast which is totally erronate statement, AE is the worst char at PvP but not as bad as it used to be. And I tell you for sure as we played 2 days class vs class (me and gion) to balance the pvp rates, AE was set to lose 10-0 to any other char with the same skill, amount of points and gear. Any single char from game can beat AE in same conditions. Not even saying that AE PvP power is only in melee range (so being like a half SMG), as on normal range it is non existent.

You then say that going on the same build is benefiting both PvP and PvM, while it is true for AE it is true for most of other chars (SMG as well). If you say that vit is an imp role I agree, but both AE and SMG for example need VIT for PvP, while SMG have 600 extra points to spend.

 

My point was that agility based builds are strong in pvm, yes, but they're also best ones for pvp. There is no reason to waste 600 points for str, just to increase your max damage by 200, which then gets decreased by 60% because of dd. Much more beneficial way is to add the 600 points on agility and therefore gain the power ups in terms of speed and defense. And ae is the only class that doesn't have to make decision if he wish to build for speed and defense or damage, she has it all. Sure her formulas are pretty well tuned so I'm not saying it's op in any way.
This situation just correlates with the problem I see with damage decrease at the moment. Can't say that it's op cause I don't have the math to prove it, but it makes building damage just not worth it, no matter which class you're playing as.

 

47 minutes ago, ADMIN said:

You then say that AE is abusing CC with ice vs melee chars, while it is frustrating for sure, it's the only way of winning a CC for an AE, she will never beat a SMG RF or BK in a straight fight. 

While it's the only way for her to win cc, it's also only ability that makes it unplayable for us. This is why I'm saying that the duration should be nerfed, not that the ability should be removed. While reducing the duration she still has her advantage to play the event with her strengths, but it would also give us an opportunity to survive from that. I don't know what's the math behind that how resistance rings/pendant work, but solely relying on wasting 20 points on ML tree to reduce the effect by 9% feels little awkward.
 

[Solcy]

AE ice arrow isn't even working correctly... There is no counter play for any class VS AE, if you're ranged and she hits you with ice arrow it's gg, client has a bug where you get STUNNED and can't move OR ATTACK.

[ADMIN]

5 hours ago, Exilia said:

I'm not saying that my opinions are the correct ones, they're just my opinions.

This has some truth in it, but lets take a look at the mana shield as first example. As I wrote on the opening post;

Only problem with Soul Barrier is that you don't have to go for agi build, so called support sm, in order to gain efficient shield to play with. Basic value for barrier is 6%, with 20 ML points you gain additional 13% increase, with current agility formula(agility/62) you easily gain another 10%. That's already 29% absorb without even thinking about if you want to play as a supporter or heavy damage dealer. With 620 agility, you should be easily able to get ~1500 energy, which gives you 6% additional barrier. That is total of 35% absorb with a simple build that also gives you decent killing potential since the formula for max damage is ene/2. My point is that with the current ratios, there is literally no reason to aim for the supportive build since ++30% shield is so easily achievable without hurting your damaging abilities.

As the math says, you can reach 35% barrier with no effort. You don't have to make supportive agility based build, but you can focus on topping your damage with huge amounts of energy. If we try to reason how strong mana shield should be on pvp/support sm, rough example would be that pvp sm has 20% barrier while support sm has 40% barrier. Wouldn't it be more reasonable that this simple build that works for pvp and pvm meets you halfway there, and gives you 30% barrier instead of 35%? Why the formula favors pvp build so heavily that he doesn't have to think about if he wants to rely more on dealing or absorbing damage? I think that the agility formula for barrier growth should be (agility/100-124)(%) instead of the current one. Then your barrier strength would be more close to 30% instead of 35% with damage based builds, or you could choose to build for more supportive style in case you wish to reach the 40% barrier. I don't think this would significantly weaken any sm, but it would bring more diversity into building one.

Second thing was the dd option. I do understand that the global damage % ramps up with your resets, but was some class/builds really doing so much damage with 10 resets that the dd cap had to be buffed from 55% to 60%? I admit that I spoke behalf of nerfing dd a bit too harsh since I haven't tested it with maxed characters, but nevertheless 60% seems a lot to me.

My point was that agility based builds are strong in pvm, yes, but they're also best ones for pvp. There is no reason to waste 600 points for str, just to increase your max damage by 200, which then gets decreased by 60% because of dd. Much more beneficial way is to add the 600 points on agility and therefore gain the power ups in terms of speed and defense. And ae is the only class that doesn't have to make decision if he wish to build for speed and defense or damage, she has it all. Sure her formulas are pretty well tuned so I'm not saying it's op in any way.
This situation just correlates with the problem I see with damage decrease at the moment. Can't say that it's op cause I don't have the math to prove it, but it makes building damage just not worth it, no matter which class you're playing as.

 

While it's the only way for her to win cc, it's also only ability that makes it unplayable for us. This is why I'm saying that the duration should be nerfed, not that the ability should be removed. While reducing the duration she still has her advantage to play the event with her strengths, but it would also give us an opportunity to survive from that. I don't know what's the math behind that how resistance rings/pendant work, but solely relying on wasting 20 points on ML tree to reduce the effect by 9% feels little awkward.
 

I didn't made my self clear, which was my bad, but my overall post wasn't targeted to your points (though not specifying anything about ms or etc.) but as a general objective opinion outside of your discussions and from the point of view of us as staff, related to any character discussions/topics. I do stated however that we take things as feedback, and while I didn't said it is bad or good (speaking about MS), I also said that we're not touching chars during ongoing editions, but that doesn't mean it won't be noted for future.

Again, you're speaking strictly from your point of view as a SMG, while agi does of course benefit you, let's think about the VRF then, where agility barely helps him at all (speed is useless for VRF due to CD on chain drive) and the amount of def gained is just like the AE, very low. DDI is usually the main thing that can keep them alive in fights (yea, they have high hp pool, but on 1v1 as I stated previously, once the sd is gone health is barely helping you to survive few more attacks, taking into account that most classes have up to 180% damage vs RF).

You speak about damage as it's something overlooked, but you forget that your entire damage is also amplified with different things (main thing to look out is up to 18% from resets, just as pure damage, excepting extra points), then you have chars that does have % rise of damage from weapons, that again benefit much more from damage. Then you have full socketed weapons that brings in another extra % damages, not speaking about ancient sets with DD or % damage increase. The buff from 55% to 60% of DDI is a minor one compared to an 18% increase in damage just from resets. And even there, how many ppl does achieve that max dd%? It's not something easily achievable, at least not for everyone and not that fast (looking to newbies/late comers).

There are enough methods to counter AE's thing in CC, starting from chasing her since start (you know which one is elf, due to bow) and burst her down on start, being in her range when she starts ice-ing you, up to indirect methods like letting her die to mobs/other ranged players from CC. It's not something that grants her a 100% win, but the only thing that gives skilled elves a chance to win the CC on their own power (how many AE's does even know to play with ice, 4, 5?). 

I didn't wanted to give playing advice at all, everyone should play his own game and find the best solutions, but I can't keep my mouth, because you're assuming things without even testing before, JUST take 10 minutes from your time, go on test server, put 20 points in ice resistance on skill tree and then try to hit yourself with an AE ice arrow, then you'll maybe understand what Ice resistance truly means and will stop telling that there are no counters. Want to counter AE, sure, you'll lose 20 points for them, but you will be almost safe. Let's test before writing or complaining, you have all the tools you need to test anything in few minutes, only use few commands and you have everything you need, then we can speak on the same subject knowing most of things that game offers, not just by speculating.