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Ranloth -> RE: =ED= Balance Discussion Thread (2/20/2012 12:42:11)
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Okay, re-posting my old suggestions but I do have major changes to it which I'd like some feedback on.
Firstly I wanna start off with passive Armors.
After a long time, perhaps it's time to believe (in my case) that they are making TLMs and CHs too strong and balancing them is either severly weakening skills or simply taking the skills out. Before CHs got Plasma, they could do somewhat okay but struggled without Plasma Armor but with current SC and Plasma - they simply get infinite loop of Massacre and Heal which is too strong and most of the builds struggles to beat them, and on top of it they get SA which is based on luck but just enhances their Tanking ability which is a no.. Same will apply to TLMs which have Reroute, Smoke, Mineral and HP regaining skill in very good synergy which is making them boring to fight (same builds/set-up) and easy way to actally make one without much effort.
I'd like to suggest taking out both Armors and leaving Hybrid Armor to be Merc's exclusive skill because they are still UP'ed even with it and don't have Energy-regen skill or Res/Def nerf skill unlike CHs or TLMs; which take advantage of it.
In replacement for CH's Plasma, I will suggest Technican again. Energy Shield seems good too but they already have Matrix which can give much more Def than Reflex Boost of BH's and relies on Support. If we give Energy Shield which is simply Energy version of Matrix, we're giving them best defence possible. TMs have Technican+Matrix and they can survive so why CHs shouldn't!
For TLMs, they have Blood Shield which is fitting the Mercs' theme and is Res skill but isn't as efficient as Matrix or Energy Shield so I'd suggest giving them Matrix as well. They already don't have stat-boosting skill while Matrix will give them defensive option back at much cheaper cost (Matrix with moderate Support/minimal, can give a lot Defence which is great to replace Mineral Armor!
Both Energy Shield and Matrix start at +9 Def at Lvl 1 for very cheap EP cost and only stat-abusers will have that low Support. If we take into consideration build with 30-40 Support, it's already 12-15 Defence/Res at just Lvl 1! EP cost won't kill you at all if you invest it to even just Lvl 3-4 where you get 18/21-21/24 Def/Res which is equivallent to over 80 Dex at least (discounting higher chance to block). Every few more points into Support will raise the numbers even higher and with SC/Reroute, they can try to tank in harder fights using Matrix/E Shield and Heal while being able to still deal good damage.
Another issue on top of my head is the blocking. Currently formula is "Block Chance Adjustment = (Defender's Dexterity - Attacker's Dexterity) / 2". We have 10% fixed to add for adjusted blocking chance and it cannot fall below 4% (overall blocking). Going by 3 examples here: 80 Dex build vs 50 Dex & 110 Dex build vs 50 Dex & 100 Dex build vs. 20 Dex (smoked, about -30 Dex) (both Tanks against normal'er build (Str/Support/etc)). First gives 25% chance to block, second gives 40% chance and last one is 50% chance to block. That is for Defender, now attacker on given examples has: 4% chance, 4% chance and again 4% chance. Isn't that quite unfair? Luck plays a role there that our unlucky person will block a lot but it isn't really fair how low it is even if luck didn't play a role in it.
I've thought of different suggestion on changing the fixed and minimum blocking rate which favours training Dex but not to the point where it's abused because it carries a penality - the higher difference, the higher penality will be. I allowed myself to use Excel here and posting a picture of few different scenarios with differences and last one being either abuse or using Reflex Boost of BH's/BM's skill tree at high Lvl + high Support: http://i41.tinypic.com/2vkzrlh.png
Yes I've made Dex decay as the difference is bigger to lower the defensive capabilities of it + make it less abusable for different skills or builds that do take advantage of having certain stats at (very) high level.
Now onto explaining it:
Fixed blocking rate is DEX/10. It's used to add onto total blocking AND is used as minimum. So rate isn't fixed like it is now but allows you to get better blocking (even when your Dex is a lot lower than enemy's, you get higher chance at least and it's fair) and slightly compensates for the decaying at bigger differences (you can see penality (penality = DEX*whatever the difference is on the table there*) getting almost to 1/2 of DEX so makes sense).
Blocking is simply DEX/2 (after accounting penality).
Penality is ONLY applied for person with higher Dex so if you use Dex-boosting skill and have more Dex than your enemy then you get the appropriate penality.
Total blocking is a bit different - you take a total and take it away from your enemy's (so 1st scenario is 51.17647% - 30%) and it gives the final value in "total blocking rate"). As you can see, as DEX gets closer to your enemy's, player with 100 DEX has even lower block rate as the enemy is catching up with the player (DEX wise) which clearly makes sense. Seeing as player with lower DEX has lower blocking, in effect it should go below 0% chance (cannot block), I've made fixed blocking in place depending on DEX now - not luck.
On 100 vs 90 scenario, you can see how both players are close and it's only 1% apart. Simply but, 100 has 91% chance to hit while 90 has 90% chance to hit.
Also about bots! They, are quite strong at the moment. Assault Bot and Heart Borg in particular. As we know, Yeti's special is only useable once per battle. Would changing these 2 bots to once per battle help in the end? In those really long fights, both bots can be used at least twice which gives advantage; even too big if non-Varium.. Giving it only once per battle would make the choices perhaps more wiser as you could not use it again. Perhaps slight change could be good as well. 80% is quite a lot, whether it's Assault or Heart Bot. About 60% would be better. Yes it isn't a lot less but they are Varium which is slight advantage. Lowering it by even that 20% is still improvement, with Borg in particular which can debuff Energy Shield/Matrix - there 10% with high Matrix is 6-8 Defence, more as we raise % taken away. Not much but it's 6-8 less damage taken per turn, and so on. And also, this will lower down effectiveness of Tank builds which are quite a common problem. It's more of rage's job to crush the Tanks, not Assault Bot's. Bots should be nothing more but aid in battle, not making 1 turn of yours useless (if Smoke/Malf misses, you just paid Energy to lower Def/Res by up to 2 and they took no damage).
This should be applied to all bots and Rusted Bot should have same %s as Assault Bot to keep it fair. No difference so don't start going on about it here as it's not my point.
Lastly I want to still suggest Guns improving a bit with Dex, mainly Str but about 20% would be Dex. If similar blocking was to be made to my suggestion, Dex couldn't be abused as you'd take the penality to blocking while only raising Gun's damage by a bit. It's good idea as Tanks wouldn't be as strong as they are now, especially without passive Armor, and other builds could get a chance, not just Str or current CHs. Or making Gun improve with 1/3 Support, 1/3 Str and 1/3 Dex. Str would go for primary, can be blocked but with it's power and some skills also use it, it'd be perfectly balanced. Support is used to enhance few skills but Aux itself is just a stand-alone weapon, unlike primary. And lastly Guns should favour all builds.
Going Str-abuse with small amount of Dex won't get you too far with the gun as it relies on Support and Dex too. Support-abuse couldn't do so either, opposite of Str simply. If we go for balanced build, or simply Focus 5/Tank, they wouldn't get a lot of damage either due to spread out stats which balances out with the other 2 cases.
Surely there's better solution but it's just a suggestion which Remorse also evaluated on before. :P (greenrain13/Depressed Void suggested it first IIRC)
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