Offense vs. Defense (Full Version)

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Ranloth -> Offense vs. Defense (8/28/2013 12:53:16)

The suggestion is a bit far-fetched but there's no harm in suggesting it since it may be done or at least considered at some point in the future. Also, please concentrate on the concept instead of numbers. They are only included to illustrate the idea.


As we know, being offencive is superior to being defensive. In almost all cases, you will find yourself being more offensive than defensive because defense will have its drawbacks after a while and you're dealing little damage to compensate for it. Not only that, Rage will go through your defenses and you will lose.

What I'm suggesting is a penalty for having any effect on your skill, weapon, core, whatever. Why should I apply a super strong effect and not have any penalty for it? Isn't that already showing it's all about damage, instead of defense?

Cores

First of all, we have cores. If we assume there will be three categories - basic, intermediate, advanced - of cores* then we can have equal penalties for having an ability or none if it's plain damage core such as Meteor Shower.

Basic: 95% damage
Intermediate: 85% damage
Advanced: 75% damage

So effect such as Azrael's Torment may go under Intermediate thus should deal 85% damage. If we look at Azrael's Will and its power - not necessarily number wise - then it could go under Advanced already, thus dealing 75% damage instead.
An exception here is Azrael's Borg. Just like Botanical Hazard deals 3 damage on its initial hit, (in my opinion) so should the Borg to make it closer to Assault Bot. They are the same type of Bots but one is applied on yourself and other on your enemy.

Skills (1)

Similarly to Cores, these should also be split into these categories. The difference here is balancing the effects and sorting into appropriate categories. Debuffs would likely be put in Intermediate, and likewise with Assimilation. On the other hand, Frenzy would fit into the Basic category but the skill already deals standard 100% damage, costs EP and returns % of it as HP, as opposed to debuffing the enemy or giving yourself major advance - like in the case of debuffs.
Skills such as buffers would not get the penalty. Not only they take a turn, you also apply them on yourself thus dealing no damage, thus no changes required.

Skills (2)

Again, just like Cores would be done, defensive skills would end up being changed in a similar way, but instead of nerfing, they'd be buffed!

Basic: 125% 110% boost***
Intermediate: 115% 105% boost***
Advanced: 105% N/A

Now, why is it reversed and higher for basic? This is because they are plain skills with no secondary effects. For example, skill such as Technician is a Basic skill thus would end up getting 125% boost. What does that mean? If it gives +40 Tech, now it'll be +50 Tech. On the other hand, if we take Reflex Boost as an example, it could fall under Intermediate due to having a secondary effect**, therefore, if it gives +40 Dex without it then it'd end up giving the player +46 Dex instead! Unfortunatelly - for the time being - there is no Advanced defensive skills, so I cannot have an example but this should explain it enough. But since they would usually have two or more effects - like Ultimate skills -, these would not get a buff at all.


* Power comes at a price. The more you pay, the more you get.
** I suggest the EP-return should be done in the same way as on Blood Commander, when it comes to % return.
*** To clarify, 105%/110% boost is in essence 5%/10% boost. 100% is the initial power and 5%/10% is the boost. Double the boost would be 200%.




Mother1 -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/28/2013 13:27:37)

@ trans

for you exceptions part the Azreal's borg isn't locked at 3 damage like the botanical hazard. It only does 3 damage most of the time without crits because it only does 60% damage, and most players have decent enough defenses to only get bare minion. If this effect was used on someone with low defenses who put up a shield it will do more then 3 damage.

As for this idea itself there are two side effects I can see from this.

1 Overpowering of defensive builds that use buffs-

Yeah I fought some tank builds that had very high defenses, and used buffs to keep it this way. This little bonus will make it that much harder to deal with these if you aren't a poison user.

2 Increased rage gain for offensive builds

As we both know rage gain increases when you go against tank builds as well as when you hit very little against these builds. By upping defensive bonus's while nerfing offenses this will only serve as I said to increase rage gain for these builds sense offensive builds won't be getting as much, and when rage comes those defensive builds will still be in trouble.




newtena -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/28/2013 13:32:31)

yes.

the Israeli cannon has a special ability and not everybody owns and stand a chance against it. it nullify your shield / makes the decision for your turn and also damages an opponent at the same time. that is too much kick for 1 turn. if it is done 1 at time per turn then it is fair. then again debuff is the next best thing.




Ranloth -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/28/2013 13:32:37)

Yeah, Rage. This is something that would have to be looked at as well. Rage needs a major overhaul in how it works, hence why I'm focusing more on the concept instead of numbers. I do agree %'s for buffs are a bit high and can be lowered, but this is the initial suggestion.

I'll alter the numbers where required once more people start posting so I get their opinion on it too. Also, you do have a point in regards to Azrael Borg - will edit it out later.




ED Divine Darkness -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/28/2013 13:47:15)

simple solution- no rage gained when using the azrael stuff, and it cant be raged, or used when you have rage.




Ranloth -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/28/2013 13:53:28)

The thread is not about one specific item. Furthermore, the Azrael items have nothing to do with the suggestion - at all. I've only mentioned them to illustrate the suggestion.




ED Divine Darkness -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/28/2013 14:04:25)

but the only true reason for offense> defence in your example is azrael




Ranloth -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/28/2013 14:10:45)

No. I'm using the cores to illustrate the power which is then translated into one of the three categories. Please read the post carefully before making false assumptions. Thanks.

Also linking to what M4B has said in my previous thread: http://forums2.battleon.com/f/fb.asp?m=21432231




kosmo -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/28/2013 15:50:31)

Trans, I don t understand your point, since I play, I think that long lasting matches always give you the time to build your counter strategy, and to do so you need high defences, so good tank builds will always win better than offensive builds.The point is: is it really worth it to be defensive?For 10% win ratio more you need to spend insane effort behind evry battle and all the luck factors makes you think its worthless.
Between the 2 playstyles the result in terms of wins/time will be similiar but the effort you need to use the defensive builds and all the luck involved make the offensive builds a better option for the majority of players.




lionblades -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/29/2013 19:20:17)

Right now it is easily Offense>Defense

A BM with JUST a lv5 bludgeon can easily do 45 damage on a 72 hp tlm tank with 25 minimum defense not including armor and passive armor. Thats 63% HP gone just on rage.

Offense get faster rage, more crits and have aim assist for preventing deflections and with so many unblockable damage cores, it is so easy to damage your opponent without worry of blocks since majority battles last 4-8 turns

Now even in 2vs2 the team that starts out with the debuff and heavy damage will usually win.







ED Divine Darkness -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/30/2013 10:32:04)

quote:

Right now it is easily Offense>Defense

A BM with JUST a lv5 bludgeon can easily do 45 damage on a 72 hp tlm tank with 25 minimum defense not including armor and passive armor. Thats 63% HP gone just on rage.

Offense get faster rage, more crits and have aim assist for preventing deflections and with so many unblockable damage cores, it is so easy to damage your opponent without worry of blocks since majority battles last 4-8 turns

Now even in 2vs2 the team that starts out with the debuff and heavy damage will usually win.


nope. depends an the matchup. if a str bm runs into a focus bm with a high level intimidate and 13-16 support damage. the focus bm starts, and has 95 hp. intimidate. now the str bm attacks, but cos of intimidate it doesnt hurt. does 15 damage. focus uses robot and does 20 damage. gets 5 hp back. if this continued, the focus bm would win. cause he doesnt need to play defensively if he starts, and he stops the str bm from hurting him. also, he can have a maxed deadly aim cos of his support. the problem is the passives. some of them are just too good when used offensively.




Ranloth -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/30/2013 15:12:46)

He isn't mentioning one specific build to justify his statement. This is one of the examples he gives.

When you shield, enemy will attack. When they drain your EP, you will perhaps use Generator. If you apply a buff on yourself, they'll attack. If you heal, they'll attack. So you're pretty much playing on the defensive, they are playing offensively and you get nothing out of it because turn is taken to apply the skill, it costs you Energy and you may be forced to use something else instead of your planned attack, and rage is just going against you.

The suggestion merely revolves around nerfing the damage of skills and cores that have effects on them. The stronger (or the more) the effect is, the bigger penalty in damage will be. Otherwise it all remains the same - in exception for defensive buffs which I did bring up but it does not mean they'd need a buff. It's something I came up with to buff defensive players, but nerfing offence would already be an indirect buff.




kosmo -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/30/2013 23:31:16)

Being a tank is just the best way to balance offence with defences, pople keeps using easy fast builds assuming they are made to win, when they re only made to be cheap.




goldslayer1 -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/31/2013 0:29:23)

I don't think punishing players for using offensive builds is a good idea.

to me this issue of builds being more offense than defense falls back on the stat balance. (this includes HP and EP, and weapon stats and spreads)

HP is too low, the current progression is low.
EP base is too high, the current progression is ok.

although a solution for HP/EP would be making them static (level based) where it cant be increased/decreased by any amount of stats.


quote:

but the only true reason for offense> defence in your example is azrael

thats not entirely true. even without azrael its still offense > Defense
Azrael gear really only makes this worse, and it partially has to do with how low HP is.
there simply aren't enough turns to go around, and people use azrael to essentially take away a turn.
with the low amount of turns in current battles, 1 turn taken away is a big portion of the pie.

and another reason why people use offense over defense is azrael gun (even for those who dont have it)
using an offensive build would increase your damage when being forced to strike.

i remember using Str/Supp mage with a full energy set up.
even though i didn't have azrael, i could still kill enemies on the forced turn because my offensive capabilities combined with malfunction.

while its still offense > defense, azrael only makes everything worse, cause its forced offense from both sides.




kosmo -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/31/2013 9:54:17)

im sorry but this is not true, its a fact that defence is better than offence, i alwaise keep an eye open on leaderbords and i know that u cant go over 80-82% whit a strenght build, whatever u are the best tm,bm,bh...... unluck will pown u for ur stat abuse at the end of the day.
but i know for experience that u can get a 90% win ratio whit a focus tlm/bm even whit a big ammount of wins at the end of the day it just gonna cost u much more effort and time.
as for azrael will, which is the only rlly op core in game, ed divine this time is right this core is the only reason why all strenght build are effective (exept for strenght bm, here the entaire class is op no matter what build u are using)




Ranloth -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/31/2013 10:23:41)

We are not comparing builds here. Of course ratio of a defensive build will be better than that of an offensive, but the latter will have faster wins which can be better than the ratio - in terms of LBs.

This is about the skills and how offensive they are. The suggestion is to penalise damage of skills/cores if they have an effect. In fact, this has already been done on Azrael's Will and Torment - they deal 85% damage, IIRC. This suggestion would do this to every single skill in-game to reduce the offensive impact of the skills. It'd be the damage being affected, nothing else. Furthermore, basic skills such as debuffs would probably fall under Basic category thus dealing merely 5% damage less. In the long run, that 5% can make quite a difference.

I'd appreciate if people do read the first post carefully. Goldslayer does have a valid point when it comes to HP and EP, and I would gladly alter the HP and EP progression (HP from +1 / 2 levels -> +1 / 1.5 levels* & EP from +1 / 5 levels -> +1 / 7 levels)

* I do believe +1 every level would be a bit too much since this would render investing in HP useless - just like EP is now. Putting it down by .5 levels is roughly 5-6 HP more at Lvl 35, or around that at least. It's 5-6 stat points you can put towards your offence, defence or EP.




kosmo -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/31/2013 10:35:15)

if i didnt missunderstood u are proposing a different nerf to all offencive skills, but wouldent this be a buff to those counter builds that already are the strongest in game?




Ranloth -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/31/2013 10:56:13)

Yes, you've misunderstood.

quote:

First of all, we have cores. If we assume there will be three categories - basic, intermediate, advanced - of cores* then we can have equal penalties for having an ability or none if it's plain damage core such as Meteor Shower.

quote:

Similarly to Cores, (skills) these should also be split into these categories. The difference here is balancing the effects and sorting into appropriate categories.


I have yet to see where I've mentioned nerfing offensive skills. What I am suggesting is a penalty for a skill that has an effect. So debuffs would fall most likely in Basic category and deal 95% damage (as opposed to 100%). On the other hand, Assimilation could fall into Intermediate thus deal 85% damage (already does). Skills/cores that are used for pure damage (Thorn Assault, Jack-o-Fire, Meteor Shower) would NOT end up having any penalty or whatsoever because they are pure damaging skills.




kosmo -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/31/2013 11:28:14)

ok now i understand; so basically u are talking about malf, smoke, intimidate, frenzy, static charge, stuns, poisons, assimilate, supercharge, surgical strike concussive shot, azraels, frost shards, omega and delta weps actives and a few bot specials (yeti, azrael borg, botanical, bio borg etc..).
only a little part of theese skills right now dont have a penality when used, but whatever i dont think they can all fit in the same category just because they have an added effect.




Ranloth -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (8/31/2013 11:34:59)

Not Frenzy, not Static Charge, and not Ultimates. They have to deal damage and have an effect that puts the enemy at an disadvantage - such as Smoke - whilst Frenzy is beneficial to you (and deals 100% damage), Static Charge could be wonky (haven't thought about it in detail), and Ultimates are in their own special category.

I thought about 1 effect = Basic, 2 effects = Intermediate and 3 effects = Advanced. Of course 2 weak effects could still be dumped into Basic category, but don't know. Hence why I'm more about the context than the numbers.




Goony -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (9/14/2013 20:56:24)

I haven't played much lately and there seems to be the same issues that relates to battle length.
I was battling to level up as a mercenary with a pretty solid tank build and was soundly beaten due to the support/strength/smoke/malfunction/bloodlust abuse builds.

The battle length shouldn't be kill or be killed in 3 turns! There appears to be no viable defensive build option, so the game becomes a battle between offensive builds and that then relegates the gameplay to who goes 1st. With this offensive power the improbability gate and azreal will become game changing cores.

A pretty simple option would be to restrict stats in retraining to a percentage, the same type of abuse restriction as weapon enhancing.

Additionally, 1st turn should be modified by focus, for example a merc with 150 support multiplied by 0 focus would have no chance to go 1st. Another example would be a merc with 140 support with 1 focus versus a 5 focus with 60 support would equate to 140*1=140 vs 60*5=300. I won't bother with a full equation, but you can see the difference!

Malfunction need to improve with another stat other than support, dexterity would be the priority here!

Just some ideas, but the gameplay is skewed towards offense and the battle duration suffers accordingly. This impacts very poorly when it comes to playing strategically and the overall game balance in general.





Exploding Penguin -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (9/14/2013 21:50:48)

In Omega, the logic "The best defense is a good offense" is WAY to prominent.
Logically speaking you have to have offense to win a fight, all defense does is increase the duration of the turns you can play offensively. However, ED's defense system is somewhat strange in a sense that it's a set amount rather than a %-based damage negation, which makes it simply much easier to abuse solid attacks which can easily go straight through the set defenses.

I'd say a good way to fix battle duration is to make the formula for damage negation from defense and resistance be a portion of set damage negation and a portion of %-based negation.




Mother1 -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (9/14/2013 22:09:27)

@ Goony

Making malf improve with dexertity not a good idea. Dex casters would have a field day with that one. Overload, Plasma rain, technician and Malfuction? Overpowered combo right there.




Exploding Penguin -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (9/15/2013 1:44:03)

quote:

@ Goony

Making malf improve with dexertity not a good idea. Dex casters would have a field day with that one. Overload, Plasma rain, technician and Malfuction? Overpowered combo right there.


It would seem overpowered but in truth I don't view it as so mainly because:
1) There's not enough energy to abuse it past a single wave of overload and/or plasma rain, which both don't have necessarily strong base values
2) Would actually be quite interesting on CHs, although I don't know how it will affect it




Goony -> RE: Offense vs. Defense (9/15/2013 3:53:37)

quote:

A pretty simple option would be to restrict stats in retraining to a percentage, the same type of abuse restriction as weapon enhancing.


You are neglecting to factor in the main change I suggested when suggesting "Dex casters would have a field day with that one". If a limitation was placed on stat training then the stat progressions could be eliminated and it would make every stat point viable as well as reducing the abuse of 1 or 2 statistics.

Now, with the elimination of weapon requirements and relatively low skill requirements, that can be easily bypassed, the most effective builds are to stack support and or strength. There are many classes using this mix and this is being combined with smokescreen/malfunction/bloodlust. There is no real strategy involved! The only mercenary I met was a support abuser and the rest of the battles I had were versus Tech Mages, Blood Mages and Bounty Hunters. Thus, I posted in this thread about defense and offense since the defensive classes are not being used due to the effectiveness of offense in battles!




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