Armor Classes Need Balancing

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36

They should remove armor bonuses from the game and limit them to just increases in actual armor. Then you expand what the actual stat points do in new world to more than just basic weapon scaling.

Make 50 strength unlock medium armor and 150 unlock heavy. Make 50 dex give you the medium dodge and 150 give you the light dodge. Make constitution unlock small shields at 100 and tower shields at 200 and make tower shields better in all stats over small shields and make the stats apply when on your back. Remove armor weight from the game so you aren’t forced to mix and match ugly nonmatching armor sets together just to hit optimal weight.

I also think we should rework stats in general. This current weapon system of “your weapon scales with dexterity so put 300 points in dexterity” is garbage. I would probably make each stat give specific bonuses for every weapon type. So that every stat was always increasing some beneficial effect no matter the weapon you had. For an example, be a heavy armor 150 Strength healer with life staff and a hammer. You up the normal Focus stat to increase healing % for the staff but also some new effects like increase mana regen speed and reduce skill cooldown by a %. Maybe you get some benefit from strength like increased radius to AOE spells and reduced CC duration on yourself. Then you flip over to your Hammer and have less damage because of less strength but from focus you get reduced skill cooldowns and longer CC durations on enemies. Back to the way things were in the Alpha but expanded upon.

37

I think you guys are overthinking this too much, and AGS likes to go haywire with every rework so let’s keep it simple.
That 20% damage bonus is the worst offender.

Remove that, so everyone, be it STR, DEX or INT has to invest true damage points and not have enough damage to spare points and put them on CON, which ultimately increases the gap.
Always, damage, had a trade off, that was survivability. Right now, light offers superior movement and damage negation, buffs and damage output.

2 Likes
38

Heavy had a decent amount of armor mitigation already. If they increased it, it shouldn’t be by much I wouldn’t think. I like the idea of removing the damage bonuses from armor entirely, like I said in the post. Put them all on equal footing then the choice in armor is a tradeoff of either damage mitigation or mobility. If heavy can do the same damage as everyone else, I think players would have to be more careful when engaging. I also feel that the dodge roll has a little too much distance on it but balancing things like this is best done slowly and carefully.

39

I’m not certain but it sounds like you’re saying the exact same thing I said in my post. Remove damage bonus from armor class. Leave the damage scaling to the stat lines.

I don’t see why damage has to be affected by armor when you’re already trading mobility which already has the edge between the two.

40

all these percentages just convolute balance more and more and add more variables that make the game less accessible. @OmarTheDank , said it really well, keep it super simple - KISS.

Literally as OP you edited your post to show, make it about mobility and armor.

This does still leave in question what effect this has on healing hence all the % issues as we don’t want to go back to un-killable heavy armor healing builds. This is the issue in why damage is affected by armor because people were literally immortal paladins in heavy armor with S&S, and sustained healing was un beatable.

That overall imo is an issue with mana management and the potion CD which could be increased. If within a minute or minute and 30 second window the healer goes (OOM) - out of mana - then they can’t heal.

It takes the principles of raiding from games such as WoW. If you cannot kill this boss with DPS in under 2 minutes he enrages and wipes your whole raid.

Similar principle, if your team can’t kill the DPS in 1 minute and 30 seconds you lose mana and wipe.

This would create higher skill cap for healers - make mana regeneration something that requires thought , and probably total mana pool would need to be increased.

You would have more chances to heal/cast spells but when your mana ran out it would be more punishing.

A longer potion cooldown would also prevent these pesky light armor users from getting away in just the nick of time to use a potion.

As another point, many of the stat lines have very useless perks. For example for intelligence and most mages, the 300 stat perk is pretty useless except for musket builds.

That is not what most mages want to be and is very niche. Yet for strength the 300 perk feels like a massive milestone and game changing perk, as it does for dex with an ondemand critical hit.

the 250 con perk is pretty useless for the most part and desperately needs a re work.

41

Problem is heavy armor is not anywhere close as survivable as light… you might last 0.5 seconds longer in heavy than light ignoring dodge. Maybe if heavy ignored stuns and staggers??

1 Like
42

You last longer because nobody focuses you =P

43

They can’t focus me now… I just roll back out after my skill.

44

I think the bonus to healing for light and for blocking stability and CC for heavy is fine. These bonuses just say you tank in heavy and you heal in light. I think that’s fine. It’s just the damage that I take issue with.

By giving bonus damage to light and medium it discourage damage builds in heavy. Even with my original suggestion of giving different armor classes 10% bonuses to just specific damage types rather than 20% to all of them as light is now… people were complaining that it cornered those classes into specific play styles. The way it is now, heavy feels like it’s play style options are VERY limited compared to the other armor classes.

Mobility has the upper hand on armor already. Why also get bonus damage too?

Something does need to be done about healers though. I think it’s the light armor specifically that’s the issue more than healing though I think 30% bonus in light seems over the top.

2 Likes
45

I’ve been thinking about this subject a whole lot and there is many way to approach the problem, but i think we need to agree with the initial problem first so let me state it IMO: “Light armor is best for damage, mobility and survival due to a combination of armor weight bonuses, light dodge and perks”

I believe this can be tackled by multiples means. But if we assume that the mobility and damage are not the biggest problem here (Light>Medium>Heavy for both) then the problem is clearly in the last one, survivability.
I would suggest to address it to modify 2 things, first the armor values, second the absorption system.
Currently between gems, consumables and fortify you can get light armor taking absolutely no damage when getting hit and when combined with the healing that is in the game it makes them impossible to kill if you ever manage to catch them.
My proposal for the absorption system would be to modify it to be working as an increase to the armor value for that type of damage, so it would scale with current armor. Meaning fortify would not give you 10% damage absorption but increase your armor effectiveness by X% ( X to be defined for balance).

I would similarly make it so that more healing is tied a bit more to %health gain, less flat amounts to make it more efficient for high health pool characters so that when a light armor players glass canon DPS/Healer get’s caught out they feel it.

2 Likes
46

Role that don’t do dmg, but focus on other aspects, Like VG/S&S for the double dmg buff, or Full Con Tanks that just spam CC to create space for their healers and frontline, More weapons focused more on buffing/assisting team mates then just raw dmg.

47

Totally agree man! Makes no sense currently why Little Timmy in his full light with a rapier dies 1/5th the amount the Full heavy, Full Con Front Line Tank does. Heavy doesn’t even need anything but a massive resistance buff.

1 Like
48

I have made some class concepts a while back around these idea’s of a role. Mages that can do things like make walls that absorb projectiles (kinda like how GA use to eat them then they did twirls). Roles that counter CC with an ability that only activates after an ally is cc’d.

When i say no damage or healing, I literally mean 0. Nothing they have does damage or healing.

1 Like
49

See but then things like Full Con Point tanks wouldn’t get access to heavy, and off meta builds like Int Tanks, or Paladins wouldn’t exist.

50

Health Based % Healing is an Awesome IDEA! It works for PVE as well because most of the healing is pushed to the tank! 10/10 Idea!

51

Thats basically what I play, I’ve played Full Con Tank since the launch of the game.

52

It’s not though. The problem with the concepts of “support” roles is that they are always hybrid. Tank/Dmg/ Dmg/heals or some variation. This causes “queue” based issues, as well as downplays their potential in raids.

For example lts say we have a role that is dedicated to “applying buffs” in a raid setting. That isa very unique role. Imagine 6 abilities that each give some sort of unique benefit. + Crit chance for one ability, or + cooldown for another, or + mana regen for another. These abilities do not need to have damage linked to them, they can be there simply for providing buffs.

Since New world works on the concept of two weapons, its not required to have damage/healing on such weapons. Which means that new world is uniquely capable of creating a 4th and 5th role that is not based around damage or healingout at all.

In fact from what i know about upcoming weapons the celestial gauntlet is designed specifically around the concept that it has no light/heavy. The light drops a “pylon” type deployable, and the heavy allows the user to make it do things (support related).

So the idea is there, ags just needs to innovate on it.

53

Totally agree.

But this i don’t 100% agree on. I think that the survivability COMES from the mobility and the damage. If they melt you but you can’t hit them then they survive without damage absorption ever really coming into play. That said… I know that it usually does and that the amount of damage mitigation light can get is absurd. Then, like you said, a perk like shirking energy just makes the mobility issue worse. IMO it’s a little bit or all these things that make up the issue.

I don’t want to see light armor nerfed into the ground or anything like that either, but I do want the game to feel balanced.

Remove the damage bonus given by armor class and just use stat scaling. And you know what? I love you idea about changing the way fortify works to scale off armor!

Your thoughts on healing I’m not so sure about (but I might be coming around on it :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:)

The problem I realize with removing the damage from light… Is when it comes to PvE… why be squishy in light if you can be tanky and do the same damage and mobility isn’t as relevant? Maybe there’s another way to make it stand out in PvE.

54

I do agree with

To explain this in a way, all classes should have concept ranges. FOr example mages should range from glass cannon mage (light)to druid like mages (medium) to fight-mage (heavy).

I adds diversity and different playstyles. Its good to have diverse and hard to choose combinations there shouldnt be single build or perk combination to play best with that respective weapon or playstyle.

1 Like
55

the problem is we have the perk system and while it gives options, its just a bit much work to learn and balance.

This is why i have suggested my recent posts about “guilds” a sort of “declare loyalty to a guild and get a mastery tree that has various gameplay/combat aspects” For example, a thieves guild gives you the ability to stealth while crouched and while in this stealth move you gain some unique options, like pickpocketing and so on. Another option would be mage guild which gives you access to mage abilities that are not linked to weapons but are more a generic mage type concept, so things like teleport, absorb shields, and so on.

In a similar way we can create “armor masteries” and give people points as their level every so many levels. In these tree’s we can have the three types of armor and their respected talents to upgrade those concepts in. A light tree may have an area where you can s pecialize in more tank, over more damage.

@Developer @Community-Team if you would like a fidelity mockup of this let me know, i will do one.