Breath of Flameburst nerf
Breath of Flame Burst now has a 90 second recycle and 2.5 second cooldown, but does less damage per hit (20% reduction).
Do not do that devs.
Its a dangerous path
(and I save myself to list the reasons why).
I have hardly any breath left after the last discussion about GoldRage,
but a further weakening of dragons is unacceptable.
Hoardcost, Snalr-nerf and GoldRage nerf is enough.
Making dragons all kinda equal and weaker, can`t be the answer to missing challenges.
If dragons are too strong- then the game is too weak.
Maybe it was my fault and I did not see the signs, and the direction this all might lead.
And yes Vahrokh, I remember the time well, when strong bipeds took us out for hunting, only because we might see new or high level monster at least- not that we`ve been of any help to fight them.
Devs, you might say its necessary for the future of the game, but this game is a dragon game in first place- and yes- outside there are other dragon games meanwhile, that try hard to get passionate players of dragons.
Loyalty and faith are precious commodities-but they are fragile.
Amon, you presented us a suggestion for new dragonschools last year- the community reacted not too enthusiastic about it- cause most of us saw it would have been a massive nerf of existing dragions- now the nerf comes through the backdoor.
Again-unacceptable-whatever the consequences might be..
I`ve always supported the policy of the game- or -furthermore- single out of favor decisions,
but this ends here-
and I regret the one or other honest word.
Look how I am standing here now- between the frontiers-saying yes-no-yes-no.
I feel not authentic-
I feel like an idiot
A famous vet player said to me not so long ago:
"We should have been gone long ago, we walk around like relics-or even worse-Zombies,
but we stay for what is was"
Maybe he was right.
I apologize for this very personal and sentimental post
Re: Breath of Flameburst nerf
I'm sorry, but how is this a nerf? you'll be able to use it -twice- as much (if I'm not mistaken, recycle is halved), with only a 20% damage reduction.
You'll do more damage overall, just not in a burst.
I for one love the idea of turning dragons into sustainable DPSers rather than glass cannon bursters.
Re: Breath of Flameburst nerf
My melee dragon's Flame Burst does ~1200 damage. 20% of that is 240. 1200-240=960. Previous cooldown - 3min. Future cooldown - 1.5min. Or, if you will, 180 seconds and 90 seconds. You can now use the ability twice as often. You can use it 3.333~ times per Primal Cast cooldown instead of twice per primal cast cooldown.
So, damage of the ability is reduced 20%, and then doubled. Using my wonderful and not at all made up on the spot numbers up above, 960x2 = 1920. So, I'm doing 1920 damage per 3min instead of 1200. And really, with the change that makes strength contribute more to Flame Breath, it's a pretty huge buff.
If I got something totally wrong there, forgive me it's 4am and I shouldn't math. But....yeah. It's really a pretty big buff :D
Re: Breath of Flameburst nerf
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Alisto
If I got something totally wrong there, forgive me it's 4am and I shouldn't math. But....yeah. It's really a pretty big buff :D
Game balance is a nasty, ugly beast. The best approach for a player is to translate his whole asenal into DPS or DPM (damage per minute), the latter helps better to evaluate modifiers and cooldown effects over time.
So, what could look like a nerf, could be a buff. In example if today a player had a "cleave" doing 300 damage every 30 seconds and the devs make it do 250 damage every 20 seconds, the numbers look like a nerf (250 < 300) but over a minute:
- old cleave = 300 dmg every 30 secs = 600 DPM.
- new cleave = 250 dmg every 20 secs = 750 DPM.
Net result: the "nerf" is actually a nice buff.
@LOVWYRM the way you wrote this most alarmed thread makes me want to come out of the screen and cuddle you :). Don't worry, dear, this time it's under control.
There's one thing that it's very dangerous though, because it's invisible.
Dragons are not especially rich in crowd control. We use spike damage to kill stuff before it can self heal or stun us, whereas other races can tactically dictate the fight and deny the opponent its abilities.
What we risk is to get buffed like feral druids did in early World of Warcraft: they become quite a DPS powerhouse but could not kill anything that could outheal their damage. They had *1* fairly long cooldown (a short stun) and that's it. If it missed or the opponent was a player (with ring that removes stun) then the druid was as good as a dead glass cannon.
Now, dragons used gold rage and silver strike and whatever together to spike down and kill challenging opponents (I am not talking about farming some level 80 golems here, but about a non "super epic gear" dragon tackling a pull of Blood Skulks, a pull of grouped undead....).
Before the incoming changes we CAN finish the healer or hexer down before we die.
After... it depends on Amon. I GREATLY doubt he's going to give us stuns and similar, it'd be unfair to bipeds.
But if we "migrate" from being a burst class into a sustained DPS class, we tangibly risk ending like feral druids: a lot of big, sustained numbers yet we die.
That is, there's one factor missing here: in Istaria a class either kills with control OR kills with huge burst. Healers / hexer / blood stuff is not going to die without one of those properties.
I hope Amon has an answer to this and I volounteer to test the changes before they go live.
Re: Breath of Flameburst nerf
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vahrokh
There's one thing that it's very dangerous though, because it's invisible.
...
But if we "migrate" from being a burst class into a sustained DPS class, we tangibly risk ending like feral druids: a lot of big, sustained numbers yet we die.
That is, there's one factor missing here: in Istaria a class either kills with control OR kills with huge burst. Healers / hexer / blood stuff is not going to die without one of those properties.
That!
100% flame burst together with primal cast-is a dragon way to crowd control- and the first hit in some fights is the most important one. I would have agreed if primal cast would have gotten the same treatment.^^
Anyway- its my personal opinion, as I said before.
and..thank you Vah-you made me smile:-)
Alisto- you are right with your maths- but that was not my prob-see above
Re: Breath of Flameburst nerf
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vahrokh
After... it depends on Amon. I GREATLY doubt he's going to give us stuns and similar, it'd be unfair to bipeds.
But if we "migrate" from being a burst class into a sustained DPS class, we tangibly risk ending like feral druids: a lot of big, sustained numbers yet we die.
About stuns, I've heard they're going to be changed around a bit which might open up a spot for more stuns for dragons, because indeed, we are -very- lacking in the CC department, we've got:
Tail whip->6 second stun.
Dragon's Fear->45 second mezmerise.
Eminence/(is there a new tech like eminence?)-> 4 second stun I believe? could be mistaken.
Snarl->% based lower hit chance
and a number of "slowing" ablities, gold rage, Breath of Ice, and Menacing Presence. (menacing presence being the only one that stacks with the other 2)
Now let's take away the high level (let's say everything above 30, taking a new player's first week or so perspective) and rare stuff. What is left is:
Tail whip.
Snarl.
Gold Rage.
Menacing Presence.
Point in case, we only get -kinda- crowd controlly at the higher levels.
Now Tail whip IS getting a buff to be a small range AoE, making it quite a bit more usefull, but still it feels like we have very little, some CC spells could possibly have a very nice outcome. (or heck, add primal CC techs for spells, or tech kits for claws)
Re: Breath of Flameburst nerf
Granted I'm apprehensive of the changes to BoFB, but I look at it this way. I'll live and I'll adapt and it might not be all that bad to the overall tactics we use in combat.
We're always saving BoFB for use as a 'panic button' when we get overwhelmed. Why? Because of the 3min recycle. It makes us apprehensive to use it in fear it will be wasted. When you are in a group and facing things like 10-20 mylocs that come at you suddenly, the only answer for that is you're BoFB. But because the combat feed is scrolling by like mad, you are probably going to miss that they all put on spirit shield. Way to go, they're immune to everything and you've just wasted your BoFB. If BoFB has a smaller recycle, we don't need to worry about saving that ability as a panic button. If we miss, its not a big deal the ability will probably be back up again within the same fight.
Why focus on one single change out of that list? I can see ways to combine these changes together in good ways. The rest of our breaths are getting a lower recycles, tail whip is getting an AoE (which makes sense if you're something large whipping a tail around like that), and the breaths are also being allowed to be based of str and power now. (yay for any melee and hybrids out there) There's more in that list but I don't feel like typing it all.
As for the damage, we really should be looking beyond the base damage. If your power (and soon to be str also) play a part in the damage of your breaths, its not logical to complain only about the base damage modifier. I know my BoFB does regularly upwards of 1300-1700. Not balanced for any ability to do that much damage in one hit. Lessen your total damage by that 20% and you'd be looking at 1050-1360 average. Its a damage reduction but its not an insane reduction in damage. (Alisto and Meeps has already posted about being able to use it twice as much and the math involved in that so I don't need to post it again.) Suffice to say you'd be doing that every 1:30.
So, I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet. I'll give the changes to BoFB a go and see if the problem is just me not wanting to change or re-adapt because I'm either too lazy or too comfortable with what I have and how I have it. I'll just have to step out of my comfort zone which is my own problem, not that of the changes being made to my abilities.
Re: Breath of Flameburst nerf
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Arzel Rashemi
So, I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet. I'll give the changes to BoFB a go and see if the problem is just me not wanting to change or re-adapt because I'm either too lazy or too comfortable with what I have and how I have it. I'll just have to step out of my comfort zone which is my own problem, not that of the changes being made to my abilities.
Amon asked for feedback, which is a good thing, so here we give it.
Please don't focus on a lone ability, because the whole picture is what counts.
Apparently there's an ongoing rebalance, a whole class combat encompassing rebalance, which is allright, we had crutch abilities like Gold Rage for too many years.
However, it's easy to start changing this and that and slowly - but surely - leave something that worked (thanks to a crutch none the less) and end up in something that does not work.
It's not increasing or reducing spell / skill A, B, C or D that is going to make or break a class but their overall effect.
In example: you say you are going to adapt etc. etc. for skill XYZ. That's fine. But what if 10 skills get updated?
So far, there are 4 main "combat models" but the only "models" that are fair and work in Istaria are two:
- Great control with lower damage. Enemies are killed with finesse.
- Big spike damage without control. Enemies are nuked.
Other two combat models are:
- Great control with high spike damage => unfair => this is why dragons don't come with great crowd control abilities.
- Sustained (low spike) damage with no control => does not work in any MMO but against the weakest mobs (in example: golems). Any mob or group of mob able to (self) heal / stun / hex is going to always kill the player in a slow war of attrition, where the player survives until all his cooldowns are spent and then he dies.
Now, what I'd like to make sure, is that we don't get inadvertently changed to the "Sustained (low spike) damage with no control" situation.
That is, if you start clipping Gold Rage burst, then clip this and clip that, you don't notice what is going on until enough abilities are clipped.
Even if you buff them to higher overall damage over time the class becomes weaker and will die to advanced mobs.
Then you won't be able to adapt any more, because however you adapt, you shall die, you'll just miss a way to kill those mobs.
Those who played 10+ years ago, in the pre-burst dragon era, almost could not kill healers (dwarf healers who were part of dragon skill main quests, it took 10 minutes+ per mob) and later could not kill a group of WA on Satyr Islands with some room for lag / error, expecially after the nerf making dragons unable to escape. It was really running on the razor's edge to confront with balanced WA groups with healers, hexers and heavy DPS.
Actually those WA employed the future dragons tecnique: they started debuffing and negating the effects of your self heals then a skeleton would burst you beyond what your self heals could take => respawn + DP.
Re: Breath changes dicussion
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Salwirk
After extensive killing of T6 mobs Ive noticed that,even though I use all of my abilities, and even though ravage recycle was lowered, I still have to wait for abilities to recycle. I find a gap there in recycles and have no choice but auto hit monster or sit and wait somewhere for abilities to come back. With these breathes lowered recycle it should fill that gap nicely. Change in Ravage already helped some and made fighting a little more fun (than just waiting for gold rage to come back).
Yes, as I have posted yesterday, I am also a fan of "interactive" fighting. Expecially these days, MMOs tend to give few skills but with no cooldown. So players feel "busy" and not just "press 3 buttons, wait and autoattack and yawn for 2 minutes".
I am fairly sure that making Istaria more interactive makes it more appealing to potential new players. I still recall playing my biped and having to wait for 5-10 minutes to see the "good stuff" become available again. So boring.
