Toxic Grenade an inefficient remake of Venom Strike


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1/24/2016 23:15:41

Legendary Ash
Member

Taken from the EDwiki for Toxic Grenade

quote:

Deals 85% damage, then poisons the enemy for 3 turns. Cured by Field Medic.
Skill Details
Improves With:	
Skill Level
Level 1: 40 Poison Damage
Level 2: 50 Poison Damage
Level 3: 60 Poison Damage
Level 4: 70 Poison Damage
Level 5: 80 Poison Damage
Level 6: 90 Poison Damage
Level 7: 100 Poison Damage
Level 8: 110 Poison Damage
Level 9: 120 Poison Damage
Level 10: 130 Poison Damage
Duration: 3 Turns
Cool Down: 3 Turns
	
90 Energy (+20 per skill level increase)
Level 1: 90 Energy
Level 2: 110 Energy
Level 3: 130 Energy
Level 4: 150 Energy
Level 5: 170 Energy
Level 6: 190 Energy
Level 7: 210 Energy
Level 8: 230 Energy
Level 9: 250 Energy
Level 10: 270 Energy

Compared to Venom Strike

quote:

Deals 85% damage, then poisons the enemy for 3 turns. Cured by Field Medic.
Skill Details
Improves With:	
Skill Level
Level 1: 50 Poison Damage
Level 2: 60 Poison Damage
Level 3: 70 Poison Damage
Level 4: 80 Poison Damage
Level 5: 90 Poison Damage
Level 6: 100 Poison Damage
Level 7: 110 Poison Damage
Level 8: 120 Poison Damage
Level 9: 130 Poison Damage
Level 10: 140 Poison Damage
Duration: 3 Turns
Cool Down: 3 Turns

80 Energy (+20 per skill level increase)
Level 1: 80 Energy
Level 2: 100 Energy
Level 3: 120 Energy
Level 4: 140 Energy
Level 5: 160 Energy
Level 6: 180 Energy
Level 7: 200 Energy
Level 8: 220 Energy
Level 9: 240 Energy
Level 10: 260 Energy

To summarize Toxic Grenade has a lower base damage and higher energy cost than Venom Strike. To solve this imbalance I suggest that Toxic Grenade assume Venom Strike's dmg and the energy cost is up to the Staff to decide on which is more appropriate for the damage it deals 260 or 270 based on how other skills derive their cost from.

Post #: 1

1/24/2016 23:29:02

Silver Sky Magician
Member

In ED, comparing one skill against another without considering the broader context of the classes that use them will only result in balance on paper, but not in practice. Even on paper, though, since Toxic Grenade is unblockable while Venom Strike is not, and since Toxic Grenade can be used with a sword while Venom Strike can only be used with inferior claws, the two skills are theoretically essentially equal.

Post #: 2

1/25/2016 1:16:40

Legendary Ash
Member

I read the Battle mechanics and assuming the builds of the player facing off has equal Dex, they cancel out for a base of 8% block, so reducing Venom Strike's dmg by the multiplier 140(100-8)/100 = 128.8, bringing it down to about Toxic Grenade's power at Lv 10. As for energy cost we see a multiplier of 270*128.8/130 = 267.5 which is closer to Grenade's cost than Strike.

To see how it energy cost scales with other levels namely Lv 9 250*130*.92/120 = 249.16, which is very close to Grenade's value and Lv 1 50*.82 = 46 which shows us that Strike is stronger than Grenade at lower lvs, 90*46/40= 103.5 is much higher than 80 energy it currently lists.

So by balanced assumptions of equal stat builds, which is the ideal situation to deal with balance, energy cost wise there needs to be some adjustments that vary for each lv since it does not scale well additively.

< Message edited by Legendary Ash -- 1/25/2016 14:08:00 >

Post #: 3

1/25/2016 2:00:04

c1729
Member

Venom Strike requires Wrist Blades, Toxic Grenade does not require a club. I see no issue.

AQW

Epic

Post #: 4

1/25/2016 2:20:44

Silver Sky Magician
Member

@Ash

I find it difficult to understand your calculations - I don't see why, for instance, block chance should apparently affect unblockable poison damage in your calculations. In addition, you didn't consider the additional damage and stats the player gains from using a sword with Toxic Grenade as opposed to claws with Venom Strike, which he/she benefits from throughout the battle.

More importantly, as I have said, one cannot simply compare the two skills without considering the broader context of the classes that use them. TLMs gain more energy more easily than CHs or BHs, and Toxic Grenade synergises better with TLM builds than Venom Strike does with BH or CH builds. This 'synergy' is difficult (or more accurately, very tedious) to quantify, but can be easily observed in practice. A simple example is STR TLMs, which use energy swords because the initial physical damage of Toxic Grenade can overcome high-res builds/energy shields. In contrast, STR CHs and BHs are stymied by shields because Venom Strike, like all other str-based skills in their skill trees, follows the damage type of their weapons, limiting them to a single damage type.

'If it works, don't fix it' is a pretty good rule to follow when it comes to ED balance.

< Message edited by Silver Sky Magician -- 1/25/2016 2:40:55 >

Post #: 5

1/25/2016 11:39:40

Legendary Ash
Member

Block chance affects the application of Venom Strike, which you said is blockable, unless the effect applies regardless.
I don't see why using a sword would be stronger in stats than claws, a certain type of weapon requirement for a skill doesn't translate into bonus damage because thats aesthetics.
Since some skills already require it, they could simply make all skills require it for the reason that weapon type should in general be held anyway by that class.

I find that a skill having its own physical/energy damage type to have nothing to do with overcoming high defense/resist if the primary weapon happens to have an opposite type since both types of Merc, Hunter and Mage have physical and energy skills in their arsenal, they can use the stronger of the two depending on enemy def/resist values.

The synergy you mentioned doesn't exist and while TM gains more energy with battery than Hunters through static/emp grenades you have to recall that the latter is a drain from the enemy effectively damage to the enemy, while the former is pure healing. This design aspect can usually prevent one skill from being used, so don't say that one class synergizes better just because it does this in a greater value than another class. Distribution of power among several outlets is how classes have variety in skills in different battle situations.

I think you didn't consider the entirety of the class functions, allowing your bias of quantity over strategic value to take hold.

Post #: 6

1/25/2016 12:04:01

Mother1
Member

@ ASH

Swords are stronger because in exchange for that power you give up using certain moves on your skill tree for it. Where as with class weapons you have access to every move as long as you have a skill point added to said move.

If you play the game especially at higher levels unless you have a certain skill that needs a class weapon mostly everyone will be using swords because of the every stats and damage they give it is that simple.

Epic

Post #: 7

1/25/2016 14:19:15

Legendary Ash
Member

Checked swords compared to class weapons and the latter loses 2 levels worth of damage, which is 10.

Looking at the level scaling for Grenade and Strike's damage and energy cost, we see 20 energy for 10 damage.
Multiply the damage loss of 10 by the .85 damage by the hit the skills do we get 8.5 to 17 energy cost reduction for all values calculated in my second post.

To be brief Lv 1 becomes 86.5 which is slightly more than it currently list, lv 9 becomes 232 which is cheaper than currently, lv 10 becomes 250 which is cheaper than currently.

Post #: 8

1/25/2016 18:20:02

Silver Sky Magician
Member

Ash, it's quite clear that you don't play the game if you don't even know that Venom Strike's poison applies regardless of whether the initial strike is blocked. CH and BH do not have energy skills that are viable with a STR build as in my example. Perhaps you should try ED out first before making suggestions. Currently your false assumptions about the game lead to very odd calculations like weapon damage affecting poison damage, when poison damage is in reality independent of weapon damage or def/res, with primary damage (damage from STR + weapon damage) only affecting the initial strike damage of Toxic Grenade/Venom Strike.

In addition you are still not considering the added benefits of swords (+5 stats and +10 damage) across the whole battle, not simply that single turn.

< Message edited by Silver Sky Magician -- 1/25/2016 18:28:46 >

Post #: 9

1/25/2016 19:57:53

Legendary Ash
Member

Let me tell you that you are very wrong with consequences in assuming I don't play the game, I haven't used those classes firsthand nor encountered such classes in my level range.
Secondly what logic do you present that the skill should have additional compensation for the whole, battle whose duration is variable across different opposing classes.

What do you present that makes my assumptions false, when they are made to be ideal, it seems you are not trying to even read my calculations at all.

Since when did I tried to calculate Poison against def/resist? You are accusing me of something I didn't do that only exists in your posts.
You focus so much at shooting down my work without concrete evidence, I cannot accept your responses as valid.

AQ	Post #: 10

1/25/2016 23:17:26

Silver Sky Magician
Member

Toxic Grenade allows the user to enjoy +10 primary damage and +5 stats across the whole battle. Venom Strike does not. The +10 damage and +5 stats do not apply to the turn the skill is used alone. You can think of it as a passive buff if that helps. There is a reason why the majority of end-game players use swords instead of their class weapons - because this disparity is not negligible and was not intended to be.

You inevitably need experience playing with and against the skills being evaluated to make accurate assumptions for calculations. For instance, Toxic Grenade has a minimum initial damage of 50 and Venom Strike has a minimum initial damage of 30, and both skills usually hit minimum initial damage against 5 focus targets, which they are most effective against. The fixed physical initial damage of Toxic Grenade and Venom Strike's initial damage type following weapon type also mean that Toxic Grenade has greater strategic applications than Venom Strike for STR builds - which, in terms of numbers, could easily mean a difference of 200 initial damage in the right situation.

I informed you that Poison damage is not affected by def/res not because I saw it in your calculations but because I wasn't sure if you were aware of that, since you mistakenly thought Poison damage was affected by weapon damage and block rate. A more accurate calculation would be ((weapon damage*0.85)+damage from STR)*hit rate + poison damage*no of turns poison lasts. Your calculations are also quite unclear - I am sometimes unsure how the numbers have been derived, the logic behind the derivation, and the skill the numbers are referring to.

Most importantly, isolated skill vs skill comparisons without considering the broader context of the classes that use them has been thoroughly discredited through painful past experiences at balancing. I'm arguing that the skills are basically equal because each has different pros/cons that cancel each other out, but the broader question is this: why must the skills be equal? If it is for balance between classes, we should evaluate the classes holistically. If it is to encourage greater use of the underpowered skill (by your argument, Toxic Grenade), why does every TLM build actively use Toxic Grenade at higher levels, and why do the vast majority of CH and BH builds not use Venom Strike?

< Message edited by Silver Sky Magician -- 1/26/2016 4:23:02 >

Post #: 11

1/25/2016 23:39:40

Exploding Penguin
Moderator

If we compared every single similar skill side-by-side we would find that there are numerous wrong things with the game. Thankfully for us we don't because it's plain silly.

When evaluating skills in ED there are two main elements to consider. The first is to look at its numbers. The second, which is a lot more important, is practical application. Concerning a post I made a while back, I used numbers to prove that cheap shot is actually the most energy-efficient strike-based skill in the game bar poison skills. This does not mean that cheap shot is viable, as can be seen from practical application, due to a number of different factors. Using number calculations alone proves barely anything and must be handled a lot with actual, in-game experiments. I would also consider simply speculating on the numbers without actually doing extensive experimental testing really inaccurate because of how there are 6 different classes, several different builds, and the way they function against each other in battle is always changing. Hence, getting data from playing the game reveals more accurate knowledge than simply doing math.

Not to be rude but I have to admit that I don't really see the point of this thread concerning the current state of ED's balance. The game is at a point where, unless it posts an immediate problem, it shouldn't be fixed. The larger, more glaring issues should take priority first. That being said, this slight, arguably nonexistent disadvantage one poison skill has over the other is entirely insignificant in the current, short-term goal of bringing the game into a more stable balanced state. I would like to say the best course of action for ED to take is:

"If it doesn't need to be fixed, don't fix it. When something gets fixed, do it right in the first place."

Well, how can we decide if it does or doesn't need to be fixed? In this scenario I wouldn't say that the poison skills need adjusting because, while many people may consider some classes stronger than others, the very slight differences between the 2 skills which may not even be an imbalance at all definitely does not contribute to the current imbalance. An example of something that would need immediate attention would be, for example, the current state of static smash and atom smasher where the 2 skills are virtually useless in practical application. I would get into what "fixing a skill in the right way" is but I'm really busy as of now so I don't have time to go into it. Simply stated, however, it's basically a fix or change that has the least potential to invite future problems, such as the big change made to fireball's damage on BM. The damage got nerfed to a point of being unusable, and even when strength builds came back into the meta the skill was still near useless. The skill was stuck in a state where it could only be either completely useless or way too good because of how it scaled in relation to its corresponding build, not to mention the fact that it had no build diversity options and would only work with a very specific type of build. Only until fairly recently where it got a huge change to its function (the defense-ignoring part) does it now start to have a promising future where, if this effect is increased a bit more and other slight tweaks are made to the skill, can the skill be balanced in most states of the meta, representing a fairly good fix to a skill.

Coming back from my tangent, this thread shouldn't really be considered as a pressing matter at all. Maybe if there's a huge shift towards poison builds where hunter poison is straight up better than TLM poison for no good reason and it dominates the meta will this become an issue, but as of now it's entirely insignificant towards what the devs should be trying to aim for, which is to first bring the game back into a more generalized state of balance.

Epic	Post #: 12

1/26/2016 18:05:52

Legendary Ash
Member

If Grenade's min of 50 and Strike's 30 values is a normal strike and not a block/deflect this effectively means that with the subtraction of a sword's 10*.85 damage from the former equating to 41.5 - 30 = 11.5 more damage than the latter. Adding that to total damage of Poison over 3 turns the discrepancy between the two skills is 3(140-130) - 11.5 = 18.5

For my previous calculations it is Grenade's cost(Strike's dmg*.92/Grenade's dmg. With the additional provided info the calculations should be performed again Lv 1 90*3*50/(3*40+11.5) = 102.66. If we were to take off 22.66 cost as compensation for extra damage with a sword, the damage would be half of that amount 11.33 which is good for one turn. I think there is no need to compensate for more than 1 turn per use of the skill, it is a small penalty for visual animation role play reasons. I am convinced that the skill is fairly balanced since the small 1.33 extra can be said to come from 5 extra stat points.

To answer your questions:
Why Mercs use Toxic Grenade at higher levels, they feel Poison is a good skill to have despite being underpowered, Im sure that not many people feel motivated to analyze and correct skills for the sake of balance, I have observed much complaints over recent waves skill updates in comments. In my experience over in AQ only 3 to 5 forumers would actually go over to check effect penalties to see if it was right. Most of the community doesn't know how to grasp at numbers and make comparisons request that don't require calculation at all, those can be easily resolved by critical thinking of additive vs multiplicative and reading the values listed in the info submissions by the Staff.

Why Hunters don't use Venom strike, I could point to energy drain being a powerful enough strategy to offset enemy damage so even with tough def/resist there is Cheap shot, your output is higher than theirs and the other skills are far more appealing to invest in and use instead of Strike.

Im not sure how many balance issues there are with the class skills, but the recent 4 months of releases didn't contain any updates to skills, one might see it that there is a lack of identified problems. Popularity of skills have nothing to do with balance, a small imbalance will not deter usage of skills they consider valuable to critical to part of a strategy. Again I reiterate for your oversight on Hunter's poison skill being only a pressing matter if it becomes popular has no connection to balance. Corrections need to be made regardless, for those updated skills over 5 months old did we see balance threads being made to bring them up? Looking at the backlog we have for this balance forum, I estimate 1% of all the changes made to skills were brought up by players.

AQ	Post #: 13

1/26/2016 18:49:23

8x
Member

You say that Toxic Grenade is an inefficient remake of Venom Strike, but at the time of creation, these were both skills' stats:

I got this info by checking past revisions of Class pages on ED Wiki (October, 2011).

Grenade

quote:

Toxic Grenade: Poisons the enemy over time (3 turns) and inflicts initial 25% of the primary weapon damage as Physical damage.
Energy Required:
Level 1: 15
Level 2: 17
Level 3: 19
Level 4: 21
Level 5: 23
Level 6: 25
Level 7: 27
Level 8: 29
Level 9: 31
Level 10: 33
Poison Damage:
Level 1: 3
Level 2: 4
Level 3: 5
Level 4: 6
Level 5: 7
Level 6: 8
Level 7: 9
Level 8: 10
Level 9: 11
Level 10: 12
Weapon Required: None
Stat Required: None
Level Required: 10
Improves With: None
Warm Up: 0
Cool Down: 1

Venom

quote:

Venom Strike: Poisons enemy over time and inflicts 70% of the primary weapon has normal damage.
Energy Required:
Level 1: 14
Level 2: 16
Level 3: 18
Level 4: 20
Level 5: 22
Level 6: 24
Level 7: 26
Level 8: 28
Level 9: 30
Level 10: 32
Poison Damage Progressions:
Level 1: 2
Level 2: 3
Level 3: 4
Level 4: 5
Level 5: 6
Level 6: 7
Level 7: 8
Level 8: 9
Level 9: 10
Level 10: 11
Weapon Required: Wrist Blades
Stat Required: 24 Technology (+2 per level)
Level Required: 10
Improves With: None
Warm Up: 0
Cool Down: 3

Go into the numbers if you want to, but I think they look pretty well balanced (Poison Grenade actually seems better).

I don't even know what I'm trying to prove here... I guess I just want to point out that at the time of Poison Grenades creation, they were not that similar. But, due to years of balancing they became practically identical with the exception of grenade ending up as the weaker one.

Epic	Post #: 14

1/26/2016 23:22:30

Exploding Penguin
Moderator

Going to address some of your statements. It'll be a bit out of order but bear with me:

quote:

I estimate 1% of all the changes made to skills were brought up by players.

That estimation is very inaccurate. Almost all balance changes made are because at least 1 player (but very rarely that's the case. Quite often it's a lot of people) do some sort of complaining. Balance changes don't serve to balance the game. They serve to appease the population of whiners sadly enough.

quote:

one might see it that there is a lack of identified problems.

It's because of biobeasts.

quote:

Popularity of skills have nothing to do with balance, a small imbalance will not deter usage of skills they consider valuable to critical to part of a strategy.

You are correct. Popularity has very little to do with balance. However, they have a lot to do with what the devs are inclined to release in patches. If 80% of the population is convinced that, for example, support merc is OP when it factually isn't since there are numerous ways to deal with it easily, it is in the developers' best interest to do something about support merc in an attempt to keep as much of the playerbase as possible in fear of some people rage-quitting because a change they like is never released.

Overall, I think you have a fundamental misconception in the way game development itself works. Players will think their own thoughts that are sometimes wrong (like how some specific FotM builds are super broken when in truth they aren't). The somewhat sad fact that we must come to accept is:
"the customer is always right"
In this situation, the playerbase is the customer. A vast majority of the playerbase thinks something is grossly wrong, it doesn't matter if it's wrong. The devs listen to them or the game dies. Making the smartest decisions isn't always about what's objectively/morally true or correct, especially when running a business. Good example is the number of comic artists who want to finish a comic and/or kill a character off then they get death threats (yes this is a real thing that happens) by fans who don't want that character to die so the artist finds some way to bring the character back to life or doesn't kill him/her in the first place. I could come up with tons of other examples but I'm pretty sure I've made my point. "Balance" is dictated by an extremely subjective playerbase, most of, as you stated, can barely grasp how numbers work in relation to true balance.

Epic	Post #: 15

2/4/2016 17:09:53

shadow.bane
Member

basically venom strike requires blades and it's blockable , while toxic grenade unblockable can be used with any weapon ! so I don't see a reason why it's not equal and need a nerf ..

AQW

Epic

Post #: 16

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