blight delta 265-discussion

[AmonGwareth]

Hoard costs are going to be lowered (we're doing one more small patch before it all goes live) and we're going to be adjusting some other abilities to compensate (Breath of Fire, Bite, Ravage).

Please keep this discussion civil.

[Calyndrell]

Menacing Presence now has a 75% chance to intercept.

Yay for U turns!!! sorry i just found this funny

[Arzel Rashemi]

• Fixed spawn of Tiny Grass Beetles on New Trismus to use the proper beetles. (This time for real.)
• Gold Rage has undergone the following changes: hoard cost is now 100, 150, 250, 450, 850, 1650 and 3250. Gold Rage 7 is now on a 60 second recycle but is guaranteed to hit.
• Increased base damage values for Breath of Fire. BoF 1 now does 30-45 damage, BoF 2 does 45-62, and BoF 3 does 80-120.
• Menacing Presence now has a 75% chance to intercept.
• Frightened, the augmentation that Snarl gives, has a lower to-hit modification of 45/50/55/60/65% by tier.
• Damage for Bite ability has been raised slightly.
• Recycle timer on ability Ravage (all tiers) has been lowered to 60 seconds.
• Shimmer Field no longer occupies a gift slot, but has a reduced duration of 30 minutes (down from 2 hours).
• Guardian's Force no longer occupies a gift slot, but has a reduced duration of 30 minutes (down from 1 hour).

I can go with all this. Ty very much amon for listening to us and making the changes to GR to be survivable. I'm also thrilled to see the changes to BoF, Ravage, and Bite. I look forward to testing them.

[Guaran]

It's still a pretty big nerf to Gold Rage... 75% damage reduction, since it can only be used once in the space it used to be able to be used 4 times... Automatically hits is nice, but I didn't miss very often, so this is still a big decrease.
What about a 30 second recycle with automatically hits? Even this is still a 50% damage reduction, coupled with an over 5x cost increase (still a significant damage reduction/nerf).

Snarl, 20% nerf to the best defensive weapon we have.

Faster recycle on Ravage is nice (60 seconds vs 90 seconds, a 1/3 damage increase), but its not enough to come even close to making up for 75% damage reduction on Gold Rage. And it has a hoard cost now. (Believe the hoard cost was added when recycle went from 2:00 to 1:30).

+7 more bite (initial hit) damage, seems insignificant. The dot is unchanged.

+20 damage on Breath of Fire III, will likely only equate to about +40 damage in combat.

All abilities that occupy a gift slot should be 2 hour effects to match gifts imho.

[Calyndrell]

It's still a pretty big nerf to Gold Rage... 75% damage reduction, since it can only be used once in the space it used to be able to be used 4 times... Automatically hits is nice, but I didn't miss very often, so this is still a big decrease.
What about a 30 second recycle with automatically hits? Even this is still a 50% damage reduction, coupled with an over 5x cost increase (still a significant damage reduction/nerf).

Snarl, 20% nerf to the best defensive weapon we have.

Faster recycle on Ravage is nice (60 seconds vs 90 seconds, a 1/3 damage increase), but its not enough to come even close to making up for 75% damage reduction on Gold Rage. And it has a hoard cost now. (Believe the hoard cost was added when recycle went from 2:00 to 1:30).

+7 more bite (initial hit) damage, seems insignificant. The dot is unchanged.

+20 damage on Breath of Fire III, will likely only equate to about +40 damage in combat.

All abilities that occupy a gift slot should be 2 hour effects to match gifts imho.

although was it right that dragons could insta kill most mobs every 15 seconds?

it is a big power drop but GR is extremely powerful and still more powerful and faster recycling than both multistrike AND critical strike. which is the closest biped equivalent.

And no I am not doing biped vs dragon i am trying to put some reference to its powerlevel

[Guaran]

it is a big power drop but GR is extremely powerful and still more powerful and faster recycling than both multistrike AND critical strike. which is the closest biped equivalent.

And no I am not doing biped vs dragon i am trying to put some reference to its powerlevel

True, but a Dragon shouldn't = a gnome's Multistrike. It should exceed it. By a lot.

A gnome with warrior, and a several other classes multiclassed, can outdamage a dragon with the 15 second recycling gold rage. Over time it was probably about even, or the Dragon pulling ahead on long fights. No hoard costs.

That will no longer be the case.

[Calyndrell]

True, but a Dragon shouldn't = a gnome's Multistrike. It should exceed it. By a lot.

Should it? Why? mechanically yes dragons and bipeds are different but it is still the same game.. over a 15 min battle.. A dragon and a biped should be roughly equal as long as they are the same lvl I would even say a biped should possibly require its rating to be Plus 130 to match the dragon... but only possibly

What I am trying to elude to is that Dragons as my wife calls them are a "one trick pony" and that Should NOT be the case.. so GR is being changed and other abilities are being brought into line. the fact that dragons can't shred a brandnew foe every 15 seconds just means they have to think about the fights a little more.

[Calyndrell]

I know this is VERY late but i Only just noticed this...

Paladin's Blessing of Life is now an active ability with a 5 second recycle. Its buff, Life's Blessing, lasts for 2 hours, heals 5% each tick, cannot be dispelled, and occupies a gift slot. It no longer conflicts with any other HoTs. Amon if this is going to occupy a gift slot can it please have its tick increased a little (either that or don't make it a gift and reduce its duration to 30 mins)

Now I always new that this was a very slow HoT but considering it was passive I thought nothing of it afterall it was something for nothing. But I did some testing and I found out that blessing of life on my paladin heals for 164 per 30 seconds.. Regrowth V 474!

Now if it is going to take a gift slot it needs to either heal for significantly more per tick (perhaps 10% or 328 for me) or tick much faster perhaps as fast as every 10/15 seconds.

Personally i would say make it a 30 min buff... I'll gladly recast it. But if its remaining a gift at this power.. I'll not bother adding it to my hotbars... Paladins are already fairly lack lustre its why we are very rare.

[ArchDemon]

Hoard costs are going to be lowered (we're doing one more small patch before it all goes live) and we're going to be adjusting some other abilities to compensate (Breath of Fire, Bite, Ravage).

Please keep this discussion civil.

set gr to 30 second cooldown i have no problems missing >> But 60 seconds is just too long. Warrior types are going to suffer alot >> i dont mind hoard being consumed 4.500 every use. but nerfing gold rage reuse time down to 60 is too much >>

[AmonGwareth]

Regarding Gold Rage, I appreciate everyone's feedback. I suggest you try it out and then come back here and provide objective feedback about its usage and impact. Otherwise all you have is simply a knee-jerk reaction and hyperbole.

[Starstilanxs]

Regarding Gold Rage, I appreciate everyone's feedback. I suggest you try it out and then come back here and provide objective feedback about its usage and impact. Otherwise all you have is simply a knee-jerk reaction and hyperbole.

I'll transfer a character over to Blight and give you some feedback, Amon. I'll poke a few others about it as well and see if I can get them to post their opinions on this topic. I have a few friends that run melee dragons.

[Racktor]

It all goes live tomorrow, Stars, so you know. Copying probably won't achieve much atm but considering the test characters slot, would be good to have for future tests~

Amon, I'll test it out more thoroughly tomorrow on my level 80 doing some quests to give feedback. I'm pretty fine with the change, but if it feels like it hinders combat or something I'll let you know.

[AmonGwareth]

And, I'll add here, that we already have planned on another delta in the next few weeks more than likely as we get feedback on things such as the Epic Loot system and NT that wasn't caught on Blight.

[Starstilanxs]

It all goes live tomorrow, Stars, so you know. Copying probably won't achieve much atm but considering the test characters slot, would be good to have for future tests~

Amon, I'll test it out more thoroughly tomorrow on my level 80 doing some quests to give feedback. I'm pretty fine with the change, but if it feels like it hinders combat or something I'll let you know.

Yeah, I was planning on having a character over there anyways, so it'll be good regardless. I'll poke about once the patch hits Order tomorrow, then I'll provide any feedback that I can; have my little notebook ready! ;D

[Teto Frum]

Any chance we can get an update on the progress? Should I find something else to do this morning or is the end of maintenance close? Probably should have posted this else where. Feel free to move it.

[Kida]

Just wanted to pop in with some feedback on Gold Rage, since this was the thread I was reading that involved it. Combat is now completely miserable on my not-level-100 dragon. It would seem I had the one GR skill below VII that didn't have the ridiculous cooldown in testing patches, as I was using GR V. Combat was a dream, only took me ~30 seconds to down enemies around my level (hint: this is how combat in an MMO should function).

To give the specific example: I was hunting pygmies and ogres outside of Dralk. I could take on smaller groups (around four) with no issue, as I killed them quickly enough to heal up and allow my lesser skills to recharge between rounds. GR V was expensive, but worth it, since I usually recovered the costs with the hoard items from the stuff I was hunting.

I tried hunting the same monsters today, same skills, same buffs, same equipment. I died to a group of four after killing *one* ogre. 1:30 recharge, compared to the :25 I had before? What is that? Combat with a single enemy isn't supposed to drag on for minutes at a time unless it's a boss monster. Kills in MMOs should be quick, efficient, and fun. Making all my cooldowns over a minute long doesn't accomplish that at all.

If this nerf was done to bring dragons down to the same "level" as bipeds... why not boost the bipeds? Why not make combat just as exciting as it is for dragons, for bipeds? It's not that hard to give peds a damage boost to their abilities. Just saying, balance =/= make the combat dull for everyone. When I upgraded from the (already nerfed) GR 3-4 to 5, it felt like heaven, cuz I could actually kill things my level without troubles. Now I can only kill an ogre, when I was killing them just fine before the "update". But hey, just my two cents here.

[Nyya]

I don't know if this will really help any, but regarding the change to gr, my Rift group that killed Elial to finish my adult's ARoP the night before the change had 5 people in it. With the change not released yet, we had already used up 3 of our 5 Primal Rebirth's before Elial was at 60% hp. Had we attempted this after the change to gr, doing substantially less dps on a boss mob that already takes reduced damage from everything and also himself does ethereal damage...

Since the change to gr has already happened, I would say that named and boss mobs like Elial need to be toned down to accommodate players doing such drastically reduced dps...and don't even get me started on the Myloc Queen. When I did that on this Ancient here, we had a raid-sized group going. (I think it was about 7 dragons and 3 peds). Even with that many Dragons sporting ped buffs and spamming the old 15 second gr...it was still a LOOOONG fight.

[Sindala]

I have found that on the same mobs I was 'one shotting' before the patch I am now only 3/4 health shotting them now.
Did GR get a slight damage nerf also with the patch?

[Vahrokh]

Regarding Gold Rage, I appreciate everyone's feedback. I suggest you try it out and then come back here and provide objective feedback about its usage and impact. Otherwise all you have is simply a knee-jerk reaction and hyperbole.

One of the least fun things in Istaria have always been to just sit there auto-attacking waiting for the decent abilities to finish their cooldown. Pushing those buttons is fun, waiting for timers is not!

So, what's the deal with putting GR to 1 minute CD? If you feel the need to tone it down it could have been done by reducing the damage per hit enough to have it recycle every 15 seconds and still give an "interactive" gameplay feeling.

Actually, providing the "super-mega-bazooka" ability (a crutch since years and years without which, dragons would be back to garbage) is counter-productive.

If you keep a super bazooka on long CD, players shall always want to use it on CD.
If you improve the other abilities and nerf the bazooka, players will stop spamming it, the other abilities would be enough for most uses.

Anyway I am sort of happy you are nerfing GR to the ground. This SHALL make the 12 years old and never fully addressed dragons issues become hugely evident. And then you'll need to deal with them or face Istaria's quick extinction.

[Vahrokh]

Just wanted to pop in with some feedback on Gold Rage, since this was the thread I was reading that involved it. Combat is now completely miserable on my not-level-100 dragon. It would seem I had the one GR skill below VII that didn't have the ridiculous cooldown in testing patches, as I was using GR V. Combat was a dream, only took me ~30 seconds to down enemies around my level (hint: this is how combat in an MMO should function).

I was there when the game was new. Dragons were in a similar - actually worse - situation. These days you can at least have full hoard and use its benefits, we had to deal with little gear, low stats per level, greatly unfinished skill quest lines and most of all... puny damage.

This caused a massive discontent among the dragon players. The Tazoon forums were routinely set ablaze with the ancient: "dragon vs biped" quarrel. Reading the rants forum I have noticed the dragon vs biped thing is still alive and kicking! Shall they headbutt this endless fight till the game exists?

Anyway if you want to see something done about it, know that one post on this forum won't be enough. Read the wayback machine Tazoon forums to see how it's done.