Armor Classes Need Balancing

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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??

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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

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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.

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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.

56

And i thinksimple few tweaks to values wont fix the problem. Addings this and that; damage muultiplier, IFRAMES etc not gonna make a drastic improvements to how you experience the game i ngeneral. Maybe overhaul from top to bottom will doo. Which will never happen due to amount of work required. Lots of speculative approaches, i think its best to give ideas for AGS and then they test and see how different approaches will work for them.

57

Me neither, just want the balance to feel right.

Yes, but i think that is ok if there is counter play. What is frustrating is when you finally manage to catch someone in light armor, cannot kill them and they just dodge roll away take 1 pot back to full health and now have full fortify and can just out trade you.

As i said there are multiple approaches, i believe from what is coming in ptr AGS are looking more at diminishing mobility, but i am not sure it’s gonna solve the issue.

58

I’m glad they’re looking at it seriously though. I don’t think the sprint delays will be enough but AGS shouldn’t make huge sweeping changes all at once anyway. It’s probably a good idea that they make small adjustments and see where things land after that. I do think the PTR change is going in the right direction though. Probably will make the armor classes feel better too.

59

Part of the big issue is the combos of weapons with light armor that allows folks to run forever. Match that against hammer, easiest to dodge every ability because they take forever to go off, plus all the ranged abilities to stagger.

The other issue is dsync and latency. It compounds all of the above even more when going against a light armor with rapier or bow or bb. They get all the get out of jail free cards.

Another issue is ranged is a bit overtuned imo because they can fully utilize every damage add and escape, with more reliable abilities that are a bit harder to dodge.

One thing could be a longer stagger or stun if you are in light vs med vs heavy.