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CHA's Style Bonus and Statuses

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12/19/2024 19:05:15   
CH4OT1C!
Member

Around 24 hours ago, @Ianthe very kindly updated the Angry Protester Fan Cameo Guest to modern standards for us (Thank you very much for that, by the way!). However, in doing so, they raised an issue that has now been simmering under the surface for some time now. I want to explicitly address and resolve that issue now before it becomes too late.

Cutting straight to the point: CHA's style bonus shouldn't apply to statuses. As part of Fan Cameo's update, the 'booster' mechanic of the Angry Protester Guest cannot Ferocious Strike, but the Backlash part can. In my opinion neither part of it should be able to Ferocious Strike. Before going further: Yes, I fully recognise that (i) The staff intended CHA's Style Bonus to affect statuses as part of the stat revamp, and (ii) @Ianthe invested significant effort in making this possible. I fully understand that I am deviating from the official staff position when I say that they shouldn't. However, there are a number of (what I consider to be) important factors underlying this perspective, which I hope you'll hear me out on.

1) No other similar stat effect offers this level of versatility: STR, DEX, and INT all have Style Bonuses that provide output bonuses for Melee, Ranged, and Magic attacks (Disclaimer: For those reading, Style Bonuses aren't tied to any one of these in particular, though core stat behaviour is), which are broadly analogous to the boost provided by CHA. STR provides a flat weapon damage bonus, DEX provides a boost based on proc-rate, and INT provides a Wallbreaker bonus for spells. None of these mechanisms boost the outputs of status effects; they only boost damage.
Some may argue that STR, DEX, and INT are considered mainstats, while CHA is a support stat, so they're not directly comparable. To that, I must ask: what makes this difference relevant in this particular context? Core stat behaviour is different, but even this is rarely as versatile. It's mostly linked to Major/Minor rolls rather than status potency, and even this isn't universal. For example, LUK's "Lucky Strike" mechanic doesn't affect statuses at all; it only boosts damage. The only output-boosting mechanic across all stats that offers this level of versatility is CHA's Ferocious Strikes, and I don't understand why this should be the case. (Disclaimer: Yes, I recognise that STR/DEX etc. have other effects as part of their Style Bonuses, but we're strictly discussing "output" bonuses as a point of comparison here).

2) Statuses: Some might argue that CHA's style bonus being applied to statuses is fair because Guests often include a variety of statuses, and the player would otherwise miss out. I don't find this argument particularly compelling. To be clear, I am not disputing that a lot of Guests have status effects; doing so would, in my opinion, be ridiculous. Rather, my point is that statuses aren't the exclusive domain of CHA, and many other builds utilise items that trade damage for statuses. There are numerous examples, ranging from older items like Warrior's Toxic Gladius to more recent ones like Ranger's Warwolf Prime AsTA/ROTH Type-RA40. This is not to mention the variety of status spells at the disposal of Mages, like 74th Law, Mandate LXXIV, and Zorbak's Ultimatum. All of these examples could theoretically benefit from the bonuses provided by STR, DEX, and INT if they were extended to statuses, yet none do because they're restricted to damage only. Plenty of non-Beastmasters use statuses extensively, so why should the versatility be restricted only to those benefitting from Ferocious Strikes?

3) CHA as a support stat: Up to this point, I've questioned why this discrepancy exists, but I haven't yet highlighted why it's a problem. The issue is that CHA is already by far the dominant support stat. It's objective overpowered-Guest costs are cheaper than they should be-and it has better item-based support than both END and LUK. At best, you could argue that END's identity is current obscured by healing items, and while LUK does have some distinct merits, it's difficult to create strong item support when its standout mechanic (Lucky Strikes) is in desperate need of review (see here for a more thorough discussion on that topic).
To clarify, I am not trying to rehash the same arguments concerning support stats here. Nor am I trying to push up the timetable for future fixes-END and LUK have complex issues that requre a large amount time and careful attention to properly resolve. My point is simply this: (i) CHA is clearly the dominant and strongest supporting stat, and therefore (ii) it would be best not to exacerbate the disparity between the support stats. Making Ferocious Strikes so versatile, boosting both damage and statuses, would (in my opinion) do precisely that.

4) Statuses #2: Not only are we making CHA stronger, but we are also exacerbating issues with some already problematic status effects. Returning briefly to Fan Cameo, the status now boosted by Ferocious Strikes on the Angry Protester Guest is Backlash, a notoriously problematic status effect that has itself been the subject of a GBI. Why are we strengthening already overpowered status effects when it doesn't seem necessary? Booster Guests were explicitly excluded from the Ferocious Strike boost because it would make them too powerful-why were other problematic mechanics, certain status effects included, not considered too?


To summarise, allowing statuses to Ferocious Strike creates a discrepancy with other stats, making an already dominant support stat even stronger. This is being done despite there being no strong case why it shouldn't also apply to other stats.

The eagle-eyed will have noticed that many of the observations above could lead to the conclusion that the real problem is that the bonuses provided by other stats are underpowered. And, of course, you're right. You should be getting value from stats like STR, DEX, and INT, regardless of whether you're directly attacking or inflicting a status. The fact they don't means you're losing out, and in an ideal world, I absolutely agree that the right thing to do would be to buff each of the other stats. However, sadly, this is not an ideal world. In order to make that happen, the staff would need to modify the status effects of every weapon, spell, and skill that inflicts them in the game. This is obviously completely unfeasible. @Ianthe did some incredible work with Guest files, and yet that still took months, with a significant number of Guests not being updated. It's completely impractical and unreasonable to ask the staff to attempt something similar, but on an even larger scale. For that reason, I suggest we go the other way; preventing CHA from affecting Guest statuses. The workload is much smaller, and raising this GBI now allows us to "nip it in the bud," preventing things from getting out of control.

I know this won't exactly be a popular idea, but preventing Ferocious Strikes from affecting statuses now will save a huge amount of trouble later.

< Message edited by CH4OT1C! -- 12/19/2024 20:57:54 >
AQ  Post #: 1
12/19/2024 19:24:35   
Telcontar Arvedui I
Member

Preliminary response after reading through:

"I agree that statuses in general are already in a more dominant position compared to purely attacking, given the current state of item support in terms of status potency."
"I agree that CHA is already in a more dominant position even compared to primary stats. See: Guest costs."
"I agree with the logical conclusion that the most feasible solution seems to be to stop CHA FS from affecting status inflictions. Assuming it won't require @Ianthe to go through every single Guest file again."
AQ  Post #: 2
12/19/2024 19:34:40   
Dardiel
Member

I don't have a lengthy opinion, mostly just a few points that guide my feelings here:
- I think either all style bonuses should be able to affect non-damage outputs or none should; the consistency is what I value most here.
- I can see the justification to reward damage since statuses are already so dominant, but I also admit that it's a justification based on a metagame rather than the overall game's design and that not affecting statuses does mean a large portion of gameplay is basically unrelated to the mechanic that's (partially) intended to help make the stats feel different.

I wouldn't be too emotional either way, I lean toward minimizing arbitrary restrictions (such as "increasing outputs but only damage outputs") but I also recognize that it would impact the metagame and that it would likely take more time to make every style bonus affect all related outputs than to remove status boosting from CHA.
Post #: 3
12/19/2024 20:53:34   
  Ward_Point
Armchair Archivist


 Firstly: FS on Angry Protester has been DISABLED. The Booster effect was never meant to be able to strike Ferociously, and Backlash is known to be problematic enough that Ianthe removed FS capability on the Backlash Effect.

As a Mod, I'm going to post a pre-emptive warning here.

While some of the points are somewhat bringing up old debates that happened after the Stat Revamp, I'm going to insist that no one rehash them in detail, even at the cost of possibly stifling debate here. We've had heated debates last year immediately after the Stat Revamp, I'm not going to allow another messy debate on the forum for what will be the 2nd time with Guests being a partial issue. Be civil. This is an extremely contentious issue which is complex and is also influenced partially by other problematic effects.

As a Player, just very briefly:
1) I agree that among the support Stats, CHA provides the most % Melee value.
2) CHA has the most versatility by virtue of having another attacker out. Status Eaters are now a thing, and unlike their 'Pure' counterparts, Beastmasters are able to take full advantage of Pets/Guests inflicting a Status, and the Player character Eating them.
3) Statuses are balanced with respect to % Melee. Potence items swing this wildly in the player's favour. This exacerbates (2), and in turn, (1) since a +20 Potence is actually 1.4x infliction rate over a 50% save.

That being said, I'm not necessarily convinced that FS shouldn't apply to Status. At basic Guest assumptions, Statuses are balanced. Ferocious Strikes doubling Status power isn't a flawed assumption at its base.
It the wild interactions between items that allow the Player to break assumptions.

Brief tangent: Perhaps Potency could be redesigned somewhat so that similarly to follow what Server Caps do, decrease Status Power for better infliction chance. I don't know how feasible this is. But please do not follow up on this brief tangent on the forums.
AQ  Post #: 4
12/19/2024 20:54:34   
Grace Xisthrith
Member
 

 I'm Ferocious strikes number one op. I hate ferocious strikes, and I think they're ready to be gamebreaking with any item support (pretending warwolf doesn't do that already for... many reasons :p ). I believe I was very public about that during the design process of the stat revamp. I believed at the time, and still believe, that a style bonus that grants bonus output to guest should be flat bonus output, and not be reliant on RNG with a higher ceiling than a flat boost.

With that said, I don't think guests that have statuses and guests that don't should have arbitrarily different outputs. There's a few reasons.

Currently, we've got booster pets and guests on one standard, dual stat scaling pets and guests (there's like a dozen of these now) on another standard, guests with and without CHA on another standard (IE, not divide by 2 anymore), all of these types of guests have different outputs that are annoying to calculate. Making status guests gain only half (assuming they pay exactly half their damage for a status, ignoring any guests which pay a different amount, which would add another layer of complication), would create another, more common standard that would further complicate the use of guests.

Also, statuses are worth the same %melee as damage. Some guests shouldn't be arbitrarily lower output than the rest because they inflict statuses, guests (barring boosters specifically because that was decided by staff with the revamp) should not have arbitrarily different average outputs. All weapons are 100% melee (magic's 100% melee indirectly), all pets have the same %melee value, guests shouldn't randomly be different. Any current meta issues with statuses being strong shouldn't, in my opinion shouldn't shape base guest performance, those should be addressed by addressing what makes them strong (I'm not saying just multiple potency by .5 universally as part of the status but... like what could go wrong)

Similarly, players shouldn't be punished for wanting to use statuses. Statuses are a part of the game, players with CHA who use statuses shouldn't be motivated towards doing more plain pure damage builds because they'll lose out on ~7.5% melee worth every turn (on average).

Next, I'd like to argue against a few points made and supported in earlier posts.
1: The idea that STR, DEX, and INT style bonuses don't impact status use: I reject this because statuses pay damage for their effects. STR gives damage, so it reduces the cost of statuses. It boosts your output when you use statuses, therefore, the style bonus benefits status users. They're not gaining status output, but they're gaining proportional output. DEX gives accuracy and conditional damage. Accuracy makes status items more likely to hit to inflict their statuses. (yes, not all status items need to hit, I don't think those change the logic). Damage, as I covered with strength, removes some of the cost of inflicting statuses. INT, does not (realistically) affect status use, because the INT style bonus does not (realistically) affect anything, and it's supposed to be bad. Moving past INT. Yes, there is a difference between reducing a penalty for using an effect (paying less damage to have the same status power) and increasing the power of the effect (increasing the status power). Given that they equate to the same %melee, I don't see a meaningful difference. To provide a more extreme example, if the STR style bonus instead of dealing 10% melee more damage, refunded 10% melee of SP when a status was used, players would obviously say it empowers status users. I argue they are, from the game balance perspective, identical. It reduces the cost paid for statuses, just in a less immediately visible way.

2: My opinion is that CHA, compared to END and LUK, is not by far the most dominant support stat. Or, necessarily dominant at all. END doubles your HP bar, which is obviously massive. LUK makes you (with any basic elemental setup) immune to status reliant monsters, barring horrific RNG. Not to mention LUK's item support, which is massively powerful. In short, my opinion is CHA has incredible strengths, and it's a strong (and fun, given it has the most item support because it has two features you can use every single turn) support stat, but it's not like it's leagues ahead of, doubling your HP bar, or neutralizing a whole class of monster, or enabling LUK scaling items. This argument could go on forever, I don't intend to debate it forever, I simply wanted to put on the discussion forum the opinion that CHA isn't, at minimum, significantly stronger than other secondary stats.


That being said, there are a few changes I'd love to see, if dev time is likely to be devoted to guests in the future.

Best case scenario: I would remove the RNG of ferocious strikes, and simply increase the base output of guests. I truly believe this was the best and simplest solution to the various problems during the stat revamp for game balance, once the idea of adding x% melee to every stat was finalized (which I still disagree with teehee one day I'd love to see the style bonuses removed because player power is really high at a base level, no synergies just clicking attack in a basic armor, in my opinion)
Second best case scenario: Make ferocious strikes push all guests damage the same, IE if a ferocious strike occurs, a status guest gets +50% melee in damage, and a damage guest gets +50% melee in damage. Status power is unchanged during a ferocious strike, but the damage boost on the status guest isn't just 2x its current damage, so half that of a full damage guest, its damage increases by the same %melee value as full damage guests.

I think the first solution is ideal because it solves the problem of RNG output (if people wanted RNG output, they'd use 20 procs and Grenwog slayer, few people use 20 procs and Grenwog slayer from my time spent stalking character pages). I recognize that a lot of staff work went into ferocious strikes, so I feel a bit disrespectful suggesting this and essentially devaluing staff time and labor, I'm not sure what to say except my bad on that, and that it's just my opinion and I don't intend it as an insult.
I think the second solution is alright if not ideal, and preferable not only to the suggestion in the first post, but to the current state of ferocious strikes, because the suggestion in the first post would have the result of further complicating guests and arbitrarily making some builds stronger than others (like my issue with DEX's 100 Proc bonus, arbitrarily making some builds more optimal than others), and it's preferable to the current state of affairs because guests weren't initially designed with 2x their output in mind, so some of their status effects get a little silly when they're 2x output (damage does too, but that's realistically only strong in the same way damage always has been, while statuses can be strong in other more mischievous ways).

In case my opinions were a little difficult to follow, I think both that ferocious striking status effects can be too powerful, and that guests should all* have the same average output, and I weigh the average output of guests staying the same across the board as more important than ferocious striking statuses being too powerful. Hopefully that helps explain my two suggestions.

I also have no idea how simple to implement either of those solutions would be. I wouldn't wish altering several hundred guest files a second time on my worst enemy, so should any of the ideas posted here require that, I'd be strongly against it.

< Message edited by Grace Xisthrith -- 12/19/2024 21:08:29 >
AQ  Post #: 5
12/20/2024 10:46:48   
Telcontar Arvedui I
Member

After going through what others have added to the discussion, I've decided on a 2nd post to expand and append upon my preliminary thoughts. For a tl;dr please skip to the Solution section at the bottom of this post.

I agree with the notion that we should minimize having GBIs being (solely) affected by meta-opinions. Therefore, saying "CHA's FS Style Bonus should NOT affect status" simply because "Statuses and CHA are more meta-dominant" should not be a stance I pursue. Whether the second quoted statement is true, or not, should (largely) be irrelevant to the topic at hand.

That said, I believe I can and should pursue the stance of "CHA's FS Style Bonus should NOT affect status" because of
  • "Mathematical balance",
  • "Consistency across Style Bonuses of all stats when it comes to directly affecting statuses, which can apply to playstyles involving any combination of stats", plus
  • "Consistency of application across all guests when it comes to Style Bonuses", and finally,
  • "Effects on dev workload" as an additional objective, if possible.

    I'm starting from point #2, in order to better flow my narrative.
    2) Consistency across Style Bonuses of all stats when it comes to directly affecting statuses, which can apply to playstyles involving any combination of stats: Referring to the v46 Balance Engine notes, CHA explicitly states:
    quote:

    Style Bonus: At the start of the guest's turn there's a 20% chance of the guest performing a Ferocious Strike this turn and having its output doubled. This affects everything the guest does.
    With "everything" including "statuses inflicted by guests". Aside from CHA, only INT's Style Bonus can, IMO, be read as alluding to directly affect "statuses inflicted (by spells)", but even that is not 100% clear, at least to me. Therefore, in order for point #2 to be valid, either:
    a) the Style Bonuses of other stats (whether only secondaries i.e. END and LUK, or inclusive of primaries, i.e. all 5 other stats) should be adjusted to directly affect (expected) status output, or
    b) Status effects inflicted by guests be excluded from being directly affected by CHA's FS.
    Which brings me to...

    4) Effects on dev workload: Referring to the 2 points directly above, a) definitely seems like a much bigger workload for the devs. It is also tangential to this GBI thread, so I will stop pursuing that further and simply go for b). (Thankfully I am still consistent with my own stance in post #2)
    However,

    3) Consistency of application across all guests when it comes to Style Bonuses: This is now a problem that my stance needs to address. I agree with Dardiel and @Grace Xistrith that we should minimize arbitrary restrictions towards guest output depending on their classification, and simply barring Guests' status infliction from having FS applied will result instead in additional arbitrary restrictions.

    1) Mathematical balance: I also agree with @Grace Xistrith that
    quote:

    ... statuses are (already, by intent and design) worth the same %Melee as (the) damage (sacrificed by guests to enable the infliction of said statuses) ...
    Therefore, a simple barring/restriction runs counter to math balance. This circles back to the theoretical/mathematical balance versus meta balance discussion, but I've already covered this above.

    * * * * * * *

    Solution!
    Here's the full package of what I propose, which can be viewed as a variant of @Grace Xistrith's "second best case scenario" solution:
  • CHA FS still should NOT affect statuses inflicted by guests.
  • Instead, CHA's FS Style Bonus is adjusted to retain its 20-percent proc rate, but when it procs, the Guest instead deals a "type other" attack worth up to 50 %Melee (follows Style Bonus scaling) at the end of guest, or playerside, or monster turn, whichever devs deem appropriate. In the battle logs, it can read as "A special effect deals X amount of damage".
  • Tangential to this thread, but the above can and should be applied to guests of all categories. Status guests, boosters, backlash, overcharged - all of them (!)

    The package above should be able to resolve the arbitrary restrictions between guests of different categories when it comes to FS application, maintain consistency among Style Bonuses of all stats by decoupling CHA's from directly affecting the output of statuses inflicted by guests, abide by the principle of mathematical balance, and avoid exacerbating some of the more prominent GBIs in the current SotG.

    (It is also my hope that the package is also relatively light on dev workload, and can alleviate (meta?) concerns expressed by @Chaotic's OP.)

    < Message edited by Telcontar Arvedui I -- 12/20/2024 10:52:17 >
    • AQ  Post #: 6
    12/20/2024 12:04:56   
    Dardiel
    Member

    		If making all output-boosting style bonuses work with statuses is too much work, then I support the idea for a phantom FS hit; however I would try to maintain consistency by saying the other output boosters should be switched to phantom hits as well (ie ranged weapons get an extra hit scaling with proc rate, melee weapons just always get a 10% melee phantom hit after attacking). INT likely doesn't need to be switched due to its bonus being for versatility and not regular output (END and LUK wouldn't need to get touched at all).
    Post #: 7
    12/20/2024 12:17:42   
    CH4OT1C!
    Member

    		@Grace Xisthrith: Before anything else: While I acknowledge your opinion re: Ferocious Strikes as a whole, I'm choosing to overlook it here because it would simply be rehashing old arguments associated with the staff revamp that don't have relevance for the central premise of this thread. I understand that you'd prefer a flat damage bonus, but I'll be avoiding that quagmire for the purposes of this discussion.

    I fully recognise your position; in fact, I completely agree. In an ideal world, I don't think items (not just Guests) should have arbitrarily different outputs regardless of whether they carry statuses. You're absolutely right that it would make them more annoying to calculate, and I agree that some Guests shouldn't be arbitrarily lower output simply because they inflict statuses. To reiterate, the problem here is we're not in that ideal scenario. All I would caution is phrasing around statuses being worth the same %Melee as damage, given that the value calculation of statuses is more complex and involved some pretty dubiously valued mechanics (potency; I omit any elaboration on that topic here given that's a topic for another thread).

    Notwithstanding our disagreement over whether CHA dominates (I disagree with your assessment, but I agree that debate is best left for elsewhere), I generally agree with the base premise of your two scenarios. The simple solution here is to simply increase base output (and by that I mean damage). Realistically, the damage bonuses provided by Ferocious Strikes should be additive in nature, and apply relative to base Guest output of 45% Melee. This gives them a damage bonus regardless of whether they sacrifice power for statuses (as should be the case for all stat-based output boosters of this type), and it prevents overcharged Guests from gaining extra power.

    As for how to go about doing this, I think the best solution is probably @Telcontar Arvedui I's proposal; giving Guests an extra type "other" attack with the additional damage not only solves the additive problem, but it also allows Guests that don't deal damage (for example Moocelium) to still gain the benefits of FS. However, I also recognise that this would be adding to the staff's workload. For that reason, I would also more than happily default to an additive damage bonus that follows the current RNG nature of Ferocious Strikes.

    Just a couple of caveats for my support of this idea:
  • It needs to be feasible to implement.
  • This also needs to apply to other output boosters-aditive damage needs to apply across the board.


    Regardless of this thread's outcome, it's great to hear that @Ianthe removed the style bonus from Angry Protester's Backlash until the status can be thoroughly reviewed.


    < Message edited by CH4OT1C! -- 12/21/2024 8:30:00 >
    • AQ  Post #: 8
    12/21/2024 9:48:55   
    Sapphire
    Member

    		To quote WARD

    quote:

    That being said, I'm not necessarily convinced that FS shouldn't apply to Status. At basic Guest assumptions, Statuses are balanced. Ferocious Strikes doubling Status power isn't a flawed assumption at its base.



    There's nothing overpowered about having something that is 45% melee whose damage is halved to 22.5% to have a 22.5% status power ...and having both of those be doubled 20% of the time such that on average, damage is exactly as staff has proposed during the stat revamp. Literally, FS affecting statuses was a selling point to soften the blow of the other changes to guests. That aspect to this discussion is relevant and important to the 40,000 foot view, if any of this is actually going to be considered. I would encourage any mods reading this to showcase some leniency and allow important and related angles to be expressed and considered in the grander picture.

    The solutions being proposed are solutions to a problem that doesn't exist, ultimately.

    < Message edited by Sapphire -- 12/21/2024 10:18:07 >
    Post #: 9
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