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=DF= Friday, January 19th Design Notes: Book 3: Convergence - At Fissure's Edge

 
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1/20/2024 5:59:55   
Laeon val Observis
Member
 

quote:


Friday, January 19, 2024
Book 3: Convergence - At Fissure's Edge
Hey there, heroes!

This week, we return to the Fissure to continue Book 3's main story!


With The Rose encampment's defenses breached, the strike force of Amadeus, Alteon, and yourself must fight your way through in pursuit of Jaania and Akanthus.

But Jaania's most loyal followers bar your path...

Head over to Outpost Yeden to continue Book 3: Convergence with At Fissure's Edge!



Also this week, we have some Paladin adjustments!

Paladin is in a fairly strong place overall, and a bit overtuned compared to where we wanted it to be. As a result, Paladin's incredible sustainability is being reduced quite significantly. You may find yourself needing to use a potion or two if you make a few mistakes now! Seal effectiveness has been increased to reward good planning, however.
  • Prismatic Strike no longer reduces foe's Boost.
  • Radiant Armaments Bonus scaling reduced to 30/45/60, down from 60/90/120. (Other numbers unchanged)
  • Solemn Vow
    • Solemn Vow of Justice (>50%), no longer increases END.
    • Solemn Vow of Protection and the <25% heal have had their END scaling halved to (40 + 20R) END from +(80 + 40R) END.
  • Seal of Courage Boost scaling increased to -40 base, up from -30, with an additional +20R on the foe, up from +15R.
  • Seal of Celerity now additionally reduces Defenses (B/P/D) on self and foe.
  • Seal of Salvation Health resist scaling increased to +50 Health, up from +40, with an additional +25R on the foe, up from +20R.
  • Seal of Salvation MP cost increased to 200, up from 100.
  • Fixed a bug where Seal of Salvation would not properly update Inner Light's heal until the next turn.
As always, we'll see how things end up and make adjustments as needed!

Also, fixed a bug where Cysero's Hybrid Staff's on-demand special was not properly capped.



And that's all for this week!



Paw printed, and tagged! ~Gingkage

< Message edited by Gingkage -- 1/23/2024 20:32:45 >
DF AQW  Post #: 1
1/20/2024 8:17:53   
Korriban Gaming
Banned


Initial thoughts
- Removing the -Boost on Prismatic hurts, especially for NDAs who already don't have much in their toolkit to begin with. Not sure how much NDAs are taken into account during class balancing but hope this can be added back
- Salvation's change was a little odd to me since anything above 100 Health res would still heal minimally 1 HP, unless they change this such that anything above 100 Health res would cause healing to do damage, this doesn't do much except for letting the player use Salvation to its max effect with only 2 Radiance charges instead of 3. The doubled MP cost is huge
- Once again, am baffled with the obsession of not being able to have higher Bonus but not really bothered by it

All in all, still a strong class. If I had to pick from my own list to choose 1 thing to put back it would be the -Boost from Prismatic
AQ DF AQW  Post #: 2
1/20/2024 9:55:21   
Bluu
Member

quote:

- Removing the -Boost on Prismatic hurts, especially for NDAs who already don't have much in their toolkit to begin with. Not sure how much NDAs are taken into account during class balancing but hope this can be added back
NDAs are not taken into account for balancing purposes. NDA is essentially intended to be a very generous free trial of the game, and as such, I feel that NDA classes should only be a representation of the power of the class without some of the skills that really cement it as what it is - in the case of Paladin, Radiance is NDA locked as it allows NDA players to get a feel of how the class works, but all the Seal skills, Solemn Vow, and Greater Heal are locked behind a DA as this helps in incentivizing the purchase. Deathknight, too, for instance, still has the ability to switch between Consuming and Healing presence as well as Necrotic Shift, however it lacks most of its invaluable DPT skills. I think that removing Prismatic Strike's Boost was a good decision, as you could previously loop decent amounts of -Boost on the enemy while you already had a loopable Damage Reduction buff and strong passive healing. Imo it makes Paladin very nuanced, that you can only make the decision to limit the enemy's damage by limiting your own, which would cause you to really consider how worthwhile it is to press Seal of Courage - different damage race fights may have different needs from the same skill based on their unique mechanics.

quote:

- Salvation's change was a little odd to me since anything above 100 Health res would still heal minimally 1 HP, unless they change this such that anything above 100 Health res would cause healing to do damage, this doesn't do much except for letting the player use Salvation to its max effect with only 2 Radiance charges instead of 3. The doubled MP cost is huge
Seal of Salvation is a full heal and purge on a class that already has really good passive and active regeneration. It's essentially a reset of your state in the fight at any point in the battle - you could play aggressively to take out one enemy and then use Seal of Salvation to return to your default state when Radiance comes off and then tackle the remaining enemy as though it were a solo fight. Such a skill is immensely powerful and needs a heavy drawback - taking out about a fourth to a fifth of your mana is a reasonable downside (the reduced healing to self matters less because if you're going to be healing fully, it would be hard to squander that position in the next few turns. The increase in mana cost was not to balance the change to Salvation's +Health effect; it was done so that you wouldn't have to rush to Radiance III and consume one of your very limited Radiance III turns to block enemy healing - Radiance II does the job just as well with much less of a downside. This isn't even to mention that Radiance I Salvation + Amalgam Blaster can inflict upwards of +100 Health. For all intents and purposes this was a strict buff to how you play the class against healing enemies, your proposal would be an unnecessary nerf. That being said, your point about the mana cost is valid in the sense that low level players would want to use it in the story, but a mana cost of 200 is far too restrictive until you get to level 70+, so some form of mana cost scaling for that one skill might help a lot.

quote:

- Once again, am baffled with the obsession of not being able to have higher Bonus but not really bothered by it
The decision to not have high uptime Bonus is a decision that benefits the entire Dragonfable metagame. Sure, it affects Paladin negatively - but earlier, Paladin had a very, very high uptime on large amounts of +Bonus that allowed it to casually ignore boss shields and its damage was good enough that it turned many fights into a joke or a DoA. This meant that future bosses that are designed around MPM and BPD or -Bonus mechanics would have to have their numbers upped significantly to account for Paladin - having to account for Epoch and Archivist is what caused Amaris to drop with 300 decaying MPM on release, which I think we can all agree was a little silly.

If Bonus is such an issue for you, might I suggest using a high CHA gearset and investing enough points into CHA that you can comfortably hit 200 CHA whenever you need to use Dragon Scout (which gives it a downtime of only one turn). Sure, you have to take points out of your mainstat or END to compensate for the increased accuracy, but the ability to drop damage and bulk in favor of accuracy makes builds much more nuanced - especially since you can now build around a 200 CHA dragon, which has a spammable +50 Bonus Beam at 200 Magic and a 15 CD 2 turn shield. I'm not going to go as far as to say that 200 CHA builds are optimal for every fight, but the fact that they exist, and are balanced in that they have strong upsides and downsides, means that if accuracy is a problem for you in any given matchup, you always at least have a method of countering it with every class. As such, classes don't really need to have high +Bonus (unless they sacrifice something or meet the condition for it, such as DK sacrificing health every turn for +50 Bonus and more health on Rite for +40 Bonus, or Ninja, which has to inflict Venoms for a Bonus buff with a significant downtime) and bosses don't need to have proportionally high MPM - the meta can stay at a consistent and balanced state with little number bloat.

< Message edited by Bluu -- 1/20/2024 10:08:39 >
Post #: 3
1/20/2024 16:15:26   
Laeon val Observis
Member
 

Well, looks like Celerity is still a meme skill for neo Paladin for those who want a self-imposed challenge of daring to take in as many status ailments as possible to prove their superiority with a win. While @above had already described the rebalancing necessary for the aforementioned class, a more layman way to say it is Paladin was too much of a "solitaire" class under the context that you can harmlessly set up your gameplan with as much assurance as Technomancer if not more. Plus, to have a very cheap reset button in the form of Salvation might have been too much as Paladin's other skills were already reasonably costed to cast, not to mention being an already "third" Hero Diet. Since the latter is already DA to begin with, and there's already a comparison laid with it with consumables, you can just chug in an Instant Pierogi to stabilize your MP or take an MP pot. Otherwise, the class feels relatively the same as its initial reimagining. Used it on the latest story quest, and won despite the uncertainty brough by fighting a new set of enemies in the form of Jaania's "royal guards".

As for the story...
spoiler:

Finally someone gave the cut the crap with talk no jutsu considering what's at stake for Lore, if albeit quite aggressively. If anything's odd though, we've been offing some named NPCs with barely a characterization as of recent. Perhaps this could be addressed with any further reimagining to earlier questlines.
DF AQW  Post #: 4
1/21/2024 0:57:36   
DragonKeeper
Member

I feel that paladin is still good after the adjustments. Time to continue practicing these skills.
DF  Post #: 5
1/22/2024 6:26:30   
Flabagast
Member

welp
spoiler:

The last two survivors of Maar meet their end. I had a feeling this wouldn't end well for Ahimsa and Tipu, and I felt my stomach drop as soon as Zvezdana showed up. The Magisterium now has the last remnant of an entire culture's blood on their hands.


I wasn't aware Paladin was so tough prior to the new changes, but others have clearly experimented with it more than I did and it's cool to see their suggestions and feedback brought onboard. Generally I think the nerfs are sensible but I agree with Bluu about Korriban Gaming about Seal of Salvation - the mana cost seems pretty steep for lower-level players.
AQ DF MQ  Post #: 6
1/23/2024 3:10:16   
Vaalirus
Member

Not sure what else I could of expected tbh

spoiler:



I'll admit its somewhat disappointing that Ahisma's and Tipu's boss fight wasn't all that interesting mechanically or visually but then again as mentioned previously not much could be expected from them when they were just Jaania's bodyguards at the end of the day.

The real tragedy in all of this though, as pointed out by Flabagast, is that Ahisma and Tipu were the last two remnants of Pelekoan culture have been effectively snuffed out forevermore and despite our differences it is a shame we could not have simply taken them prisoner or convinced them to stand down and while I can't exactly get mad that Zvezdana killed them outright her actions only continue to further my wariness of her and some of the other magesters that likely do think like her. As pointed out at the start of our alliance they won't be beholden to us once Jaania and Akanthus have been neutralized.

Curiously, we learned in this quest that the Pelekoans seemed to have incurred Akriloth's wrath entirely on their own by trapping them beneath Maar. Which makes me wonder what caused their relationship with the great dragon to completely breakdown as we can infer from Akriloth's boss fight, in the Inn at the Edge of Time, that the two parties appeared to have strong amount of trust and respect with one another for at least one of Akriloth's prior incarnations, so what the heck happened?
DF  Post #: 7
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