KhalJJ
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—— Dodge - is it broken/initial general thoughts:
Forgive me if I’ve missed anything, there’s been quite a lot to read.
I think Grace has very effectively shown, with examples, why “Effective HP” (EHP) as a metric is not very useful.
I’d also disagree with Chaotic’s claim that Grace’s response is tangential at best, given you introduce the EHP first in your own post as a supporting argument, as far as I can see? (Although Ward also refers to this concept in his initial post, which would also imply that it is relevant?) If you saw fit to use this as a supporting argument, any effective argument against it seems fairly relevant.
Apologies if edits or deleted posts have changed this and I’ve missed them.
Further, and in support of Grace’s point, I’m not convinced that there is a GBI-worthy mathematical balance issue (with dodge/defboost) whatsoever.
Using an EHP, or turns survived, metric, as has been done here, will *always* show the relationship shown, for any effect which reduces monster damage output; as that reduction tends towards 100%, the EHP tends towards infinity. This is a bit of a mathematical rabbit hole, and again I think Grace has shown why it is not useful.
Using a %melee in = %melee out approach (which as far as I can tell is the standard for GBI) appears balanced, in the case of modern defboost items.
Further, as to the correct “number of turns” to be able to theoretically survive, this is completely subjective as far as I can see?
I personally have no issue with the player hypothetically being able to survive infinitely against an average mob, provided they input a reasonable amount of their %melee into this, *and hence they pay a suitable cost as a result to offensive capability*, provided this is the case, which I do recognise in some cases does not occur.
—— Elemental Coverage/Sustain example:
Re: limiting dodge such that elemental coverage matters - all of Chaotic’s calculations, and hence entire (dodge) premise is predicated on consistently sustaining that level of dodge, which even in current (broken resource generation) conditions, is not easy!
I would argue that most players would agree that Chaotic’s figure of 461 SP per turn is a huge cost to maintain. None of those calculations include how that cost would be covered, and whilst this is addressed it is simply dismissed as "easily covered", which I disagree with.
Chaotic’s example also takes up pet, guest, and misc actions, plus a spell slot, which is not insignificant with respect to player output.
There have been a lot of mentions of resource generation throughout and I figured I’d actually try to put real-game numbers to this scenario:
Essence orb, per click: 144.59 crit SP heal,(8% chance), 88.98 standard SP heal, 75 HP cost per click, average heal = 93.428 SP per click
Start 493 SP turn 1, gen 98 SP per turn
HDL ranged wep = 32 per hit, so 4 hits = 128 SP.
so at 461 SP cost per turn, you get the first turn “free” and then you’d need to generate an extra 363 SP per turn on top of your natural SP gen (with a spare 32 SP leftover from turn 1), which if it comes entirely from Essence orb works out at ~ 3.88 clicks per turn, which averages at 291 HP per turn. (and it is worse than this initially as the first few turns will necessitate 4 clicks, so 300 HP)
~300 HP per turn is not negligible, and certainly when applied to any of the many-turn scenarios outlined throughout this GBI, renders the point (of massively boosted survivability) moot. (as the player will run out of HP in ~11-12 turns doing this in this case, using all their HP pool to fuel dodge to ironically avoid HP damage… )
Note also, I’m using Essence orb as 1) chaotic's given example and 2) an example of something generally accepted as hugely broken, in the hopes of showing even the most extreme example of SP regen not working in reality for Chaotic’s premise.
However NB, these (appropriately) are lv150 EO figures, and the efficiency is much better for lower levels, which is a large resource gen issue in itself that is obviously an exploit that will be addressed)
Additionally, I’m aware of other sources of SP generation which are generally thought of as strong, which do not have associated HP costs, such as HDL weapons, and in the interest of fairness/completeness, will run through an example using this also:
Including HDL in the mix (with also a 4 hit armor) gives an extra 128 SP (ranged example bc it was first to come up in google) per turn, which leaves 235 SP per turn required. Turn 1, again, is “free”, but looking long term I’ll still need ~2.5… EO clicks on average per turn to make up the deficit, which comes to 150 or 225 each turn, averaging at 187.5 HP per turn.
This HP cost lets me sustain this setup for 16.78 turns (2958/187.5 =15.78, + turn 1 being free), whilst occupying my pet, guest, misc, + weapon slots, and restricting my armor slot to any 4-hitter, whilst also only either clicking attack or using a 4-hit+ weapon-based armor skill if it is present. This (subjectively) feels like a reasonable player investment, of cost+restriction, to achieve the dodge output in question.
This maintenance cost alone is not sustainable (+ interestingly roughly meets the turn model in scenario 1, assuming you kill the monster in time!), but further, given these maintenance HP costs/expected turns survived in both scenarios, *any* actual monster damage is going to be significant, *especially* if it catches you in inappropriate ele-res, even at the current accuracy floor. (and as many folks like to point out, 5% chance events can happen surprisingly often!)
Caveated again, all of the “appropriate turn count” stuff seems very subjective to me, but I would argue above scenarios feel appropriate and I think illustrate the point that these setups are not in reality as game-breaking as chaotic’s initial post tries to claim.
I think I’ve also made a case that there isn’t really a mathematical issue with dodge (or at least, defboost) as a mechanic, and I’d argue that specific items, their interactions, and resource generation are the cause of any actual issues.
—— 75% dodge ceiling
I think I’ve outlined why I don’t think there is a need for this, but in addition:
The proposed 75% dodge rate maximum (if I’ve understood correctly) would feel terrible, I imagine. It would mean no reliable 100% dodge items such as Wyrd Ward (I presume?). Subjectively, I likely would never use items like this in this circumstance, which is a shame because I feel they have a useful niche currently. (NB obviously Wyrd Ward is not 100% dodge for a whole turn, but against specific monsters (1hit) it effectively is, which I assume was part of the intended concept/trade-off). There would be a potential cost issue here in that presumably any such theoretical (current or future item) would want to pay for 100% dodge/a whole monster turn of %melee. Would such an item just pay for 75% in the case of the ceiling being implemented? I guess that could work. Forgive me, the only singular current item I currently think of for this is Wyrd ward, and even that is just 1 hit and costs nothing, just Once-per-battle limited, so I’m unsure if this actually pays currently appropriate costs for such.
I don’t think such a universal limit would be a good idea, as chaotic you yourself stated that “I understand that there's a variety of underlying mechanisms that exacerbate the issue of Dodging” in your response to dardiel, agreed yes there are lots of other possible balance issues in game, and because of this I strongly feel slapping a relatively large, imperfect mechanical restriction onto dodge would ultimately be much more of a hindrance, than helpful in the long run.
I do feel however that such a mechanic would make for some interesting individual fights (where a boss imposes a (reactive?) x% max dodge rate or similar)
—— Mob design
Small note, I would be inclined to agree with some previous notions, that simple variations on autohit mobs being made and dispersed throughout occasional mob pools largely solves this “problem” (elemental coverage would matter much more) and seems a very mechanically easy solution, plus also interesting for players (more mob diversity).
—— Dodgelash, brielfy
I think the dodgelash section of the initial post holds much more weight.
I think the above autohit mob example above would also naturally help to address this a decent amount.
I’m personally quite against complete normalisation approaches (/real dodge rate) similar to the previous LS discussions because I’m a huge fan of item synergies and this harshly limits that (eg. Grandads becoming a bloodblade at 100% LS rate feels completely awful) - but maybe this would work actually be ok for dodgelash? I’m unsure, as I haven’t played this build overly. I have trialled it, and even it its current alleged broken state I didn’t much enjoy it, but that’s just my preference. I find it very hard to make a confident judgement on things like this without actual play-testing. However, from previous discussions, there are lots of cases where x used with y means you get more %melee output than you put in, due to synergy, and I do think this can be ok, but I think I understand the desire+possible need to limit this at extremes, and I agree with dizzle that being able to simultaneously turtle + nuke feels OP (although again, I do think monster design could largely address this).
—— Other notes:
- Small side repsonse to Zerxes’ suggestion of universal mob damage and accuracy ramping post turn 10: this feels like a crazy large change (which I would oppose as too large a universal cost for what it is trying to address, a negligible problem imo), and is also a completely different topic no? Apologies if I misunderstood that. Also sounds like an interesting boss mechanic with some tweaks.
- As a related but very subjective aside, I do genuinely feel modern mobs hit reasonably appropriately currently. This has been mentioned before, but if you are lax at all, take risks, or even forget to turn on “ready inventory…” you can easily get nuked.
- NB - Small not too important aside, is hairmuffs a modern standard item? The lean does seem quite large.
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