PvMP fast balance passes

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Hey folks, Vastin here.

As you can no doubt tell, we've been going through the motions but PvMP has been overlooked for a while due to our focus on the player side and Mordor.

While adjustments were made for the general bump in power level, the creeps have nevertheless been left behind. They got the same base level bump that the players did, but unsurprisingly, the players stat jumps were compounded by benefits from several sources (base, gear, IL's, essences, traits, audacity, etc), that outpaced the relatively few sources that creeps are designed with.

I want to take some time over the next month or two to make a series of fast passes over the creep dps and toughness sources to bring them back into line and get a better sense of what that compounded factor is so that we can work it into their advancement in future updates. It's much easier to approach PvMP balance from the creep side, because the statistics that make up a monster player are far fewer and I can rapidly iterate on their relative strength very rapidly in a way that I absolutely cannot do with the Freeps.

I will be using a bracketing method, so expect some slightly wild swings on Bullroarer as I work to re-discover some equilibrium. It'll be fun, and hopefully with your feedback we can get the ettenmoors back into a competitive shape. ;)

I will also be looking at trying to get the dps/vitality ratios of the two sides more similar looking, so that one side isn't a huge bag of HP with low DPS and vice versa - it's much easier to manage balance when the two sides are using sets of numbers that at least resemble each other.

First pass will be a pretty major bump to creep DPS, as that is clearly anemic at the moment compared to the NPC vitality in the area. This ought to show up as soon as we begin testing 21.3, but my goal is to make multiple iteration passes before 21.3 actually releases.

-Vastin

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Hopefully the changes will take into account the upcoming buffs (21.3+) freeps will have (and are having : 21.2). Otherwise, if the reference is 21.1 (or even 21.2), we'll see you here again in 6 months.

Legggooooooooo

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Originally Posted by HiFice

Just listen to siipperi, Giliodor, and Spilo because they are extremely competent and knowledgeable players who know what they are talking about. Everything else in this thread is redundant or irrelevant at this point.

VASTIN PLEASE DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT listen to the loud freepside casuals who do not understand creep classes at all and complain about stuff like "macroing".

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Good post lol.

@Ontopic:
Don't only look at dps and increasing that side. There are many other problems at the moment: creep corruptions for example. I would advice instead of dps, first look at the creep basics and sort that out (in effect increasing survivability). Then look at their dps. Finally then look at the freeps and how the creeps are holding up, also don't take a same baseline gearstats, but max freeps/creeps and see how they hold up vs eachother and minimal geared ones. Max gear > one shotting minimal geared ones is also a problem if that would occur. Then have average geared ones. Don't forget to take a look at the scaling either, which atm is one of the biggest issues.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Hey folks, Vastin here.

As you can no doubt tell, we've been going through the motions but PvMP has been overlooked for a while due to our focus on the player side and Mordor.

While adjustments were made for the general bump in power level, the creeps have nevertheless been left behind. They got the same base level bump that the players did, but unsurprisingly, the players stat jumps were compounded by benefits from several sources (base, gear, IL's, essences, traits, audacity, etc), that outpaced the relatively few sources that creeps are designed with.

I want to take some time over the next month or two to make a series of fast passes over the creep dps and toughness sources to bring them back into line and get a better sense of what that compounded factor is so that we can work it into their advancement in future updates. It's much easier to approach PvMP balance from the creep side, because the statistics that make up a monster player are far fewer and I can rapidly iterate on their relative strength very rapidly in a way that I absolutely cannot do with the Freeps.

I will be using a bracketing method, so expect some slightly wild swings on Bullroarer as I work to re-discover some equilibrium. It'll be fun, and hopefully with your feedback we can get the ettenmoors back into a competitive shape. ;)

I will also be looking at trying to get the dps/vitality ratios of the two sides more similar looking, so that one side isn't a huge bag of HP with low DPS and vice versa - it's much easier to manage balance when the two sides are using sets of numbers that at least resemble each other.

First pass will be a pretty major bump to creep DPS, as that is clearly anemic at the moment compared to the NPC vitality in the area. This ought to show up as soon as we begin testing 21.3, but my goal is to make multiple iteration passes before 21.3 actually releases.

-Vastin

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So I take it there is not going to be any class balance pass then? Some classes are way out performing others. You will need to do another PvP pass after you’ve done a class balance pass surely. So wouldn’t it make sense to do the class balance pass first or at least together?

Buff Lingering wound 10000000000000000000000% please.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Hey folks, Vastin here.

As you can no doubt tell, we've been going through the motions but PvMP has been overlooked for a while due to our focus on the player side and Mordor.

While adjustments were made for the general bump in power level, the creeps have nevertheless been left behind. They got the same base level bump that the players did, but unsurprisingly, the players stat jumps were compounded by benefits from several sources (base, gear, IL's, essences, traits, audacity, etc), that outpaced the relatively few sources that creeps are designed with.

I want to take some time over the next month or two to make a series of fast passes over the creep dps and toughness sources to bring them back into line and get a better sense of what that compounded factor is so that we can work it into their advancement in future updates. It's much easier to approach PvMP balance from the creep side, because the statistics that make up a monster player are far fewer and I can rapidly iterate on their relative strength very rapidly in a way that I absolutely cannot do with the Freeps.

I will be using a bracketing method, so expect some slightly wild swings on Bullroarer as I work to re-discover some equilibrium. It'll be fun, and hopefully with your feedback we can get the ettenmoors back into a competitive shape. ;)

I will also be looking at trying to get the dps/vitality ratios of the two sides more similar looking, so that one side isn't a huge bag of HP with low DPS and vice versa - it's much easier to manage balance when the two sides are using sets of numbers that at least resemble each other.

First pass will be a pretty major bump to creep DPS, as that is clearly anemic at the moment compared to the NPC vitality in the area. This ought to show up as soon as we begin testing 21.3, but my goal is to make multiple iteration passes before 21.3 actually releases.

-Vastin

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Awesome! best of luck!
Will be nice seeing peeps also going Osgiliath PVP!

I have said what I wanted to say, so I'll try to keep my posts short from here on, but there are some things I want to address.

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Originally Posted by maiki1978

i) how can people talk about bestial claws nerf when we have hnts doing this (note here: 3 defences , 3 mits of each traited,R15 full audacity) [10/10 01:04:56 AM] ***** scored a devastating hit with Improved Merciful Shot on ********* for 91,715 Beleriand damage to Morale.

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No one is arguing hunters are not equally ridiculously, but freep side having OP classes doesn't justify wargs being equally (or nearly as) OP and easy. It is well understood by the majority of the PvP'ers that wargs are ridiculous right now, so please just try to look at it objectively. If you cannot do that, please refrain from offering feedback, because it will get us nowhere.

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v) if weavers are a debuffing class or cc then the induction times for the skills need to be reduced by 50%. Also dps needs a 40% increase with the current situation in the moors.

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This is an absolutely joke of a statement, considering the state weavers are already in. Increasing their DPS by 40% would be ludicrous. They need less damage on their main abilities (Mephitic/Tainted Kiss) and more damage to their other abilities. They certainly do not need a flat damage buff to everything. Their induction times are already negligible, I don't think anyone has ever considered them to be an issue.

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vi) high rank creeps and freeps need better bonuses acc to their ranks. The differences on passives are simply ridiculous and need to be increased significantly. A R15 creep/freep must be expected to make some difference due to its passive rank stats during a fight.

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Disagreed. In a PvMP environment people's stats should be kept as close together as possible to ensure that the most "skillful" players perform the best. R15 creeps make a huge difference due to the inc healing, and the +health/damage are incredibly good for both sides. The R15 Brand is actually crazy good, and I think Brands are something that needs to be looked at in general.

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Originally Posted by WhiteGoliath

Because at lvl 75 great river expansion, the issue was that the impale hit was too hard, this resulted in dropping freeps so low, that the execution skill became instantly available, at the end, the freep was basically a 2shot (if the reaver got all his bleeds on the freep).

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Impale was introduced at lvl 85, not 75. That said, indeed do be mindful that you don't give Reavers their 2-shot potential back, because that was pretty out of hand.

Good luck and I hope you will do great work

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Hey folks, Vastin here.

First pass will be a pretty major bump to creep DPS, as that is clearly anemic at the moment compared to the NPC vitality in the area.

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How about nerfing NPCs back into the ground where they belong, rather than buffing Creep DPS across the board (even on classes that don't need it) based on PvE in the PvP zone?

I dont think weavers need any more damage. They are supposed to be somewhat LM counterpart and seeing this type of class doing that amount of damage relatively to other classes is bad for classic dps like BA and reaver. All of reaver, BA and warg should be doing higher dps than weaver.

Also reaver needs specifically boost to their aoe skills. Impale is ok in my opinion. It hurts hard enough as st skill but rotational skills on aoe and some weaker low rank single target skill could be buffed a bit. In my opinion reaver is only class dps class that needs a bit longer look to specific skills or it will continue to be useless in the group, just doing generic increase damage by x% on all classes means reaver stays as underdog. Not only it needs to chase opponents, unlike weaver and BA but does weaker damage that is fully revolved around impale. In my opinion creeps should be able to build reaver walls where 5-6 reavers could create unbearable aoe potential, forcing freeps spread out more, making fights in keeps more balanced for creeps, since at this moment keep fights are death traps for creeps. Classic staircase fight with few champions and creep raid is minced in a minute.

I have seen and suggested myself every once in while to turn reaver impale into target + 3 targets around aoe. That could work to increase aoe, yet keep class relatively high skill cap to play but of course aoe skills need damage increase and I still think wrath should be changed to work as around (taking number out of my hat) +50% AoE damage for duration of wrath and maybe +10% mitigations. No self healing. This would make reaver damage to be higher for short times in fight and allow them push into the groups with high mitigation values, making them less prone to damage.

Of course there are few other things like weaver dot damage being quite one sided and warg claws being crazy but reaver is in need of biggest look if you truly want to change anything in ettens and not just do random % buff that will outdate to next update and one of the most important and liked classes stay irrelevant in groups.

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Originally Posted by Maryam

How about nerfing NPCs back into the ground where they belong, rather than buffing Creep DPS across the board (even on classes that don't need it) based on PvE in the PvP zone?

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If anything buff creep npcs a bit (not damage but morale). Npcs should offer protection so there wouldnt be need to hug one shotters but fights would be fought on open and in keeps instead of backdoor-one shotter shuffles.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

I dont think weavers need any more damage. They are supposed to be somewhat LM counterpart and seeing this type of class doing that amount of damage relatively to other classes is bad for classic dps like BA and reaver. All of reaver, BA and warg should be doing higher dps than weaver.

Also reaver needs specifically boost to their aoe skills. Impale is ok in my opinion. It hurts hard enough as st skill but rotational skills on aoe and some weaker low rank single target skill could be buffed a bit. In my opinion reaver is only class dps class that needs a bit longer look to specific skills or it will continue to be useless in the group, just doing generic increase damage by x% on all classes means reaver stays as underdog. Not only it needs to chase opponents, unlike weaver and BA but does weaker damage that is fully revolved around impale. In my opinion creeps should be able to build reaver walls where 5-6 reavers could create unbearable aoe potential, forcing freeps spread out more, making fights in keeps more balanced for creeps, since at this moment keep fights are death traps for creeps. Classic staircase fight with few champions and creep raid is minced in a minute.

I have seen and suggested myself every once in while to turn reaver impale into target + 3 targets around aoe. That could work to increase aoe, yet keep class relatively high skill cap to play but of course aoe skills need damage increase and I still think wrath should be changed to work as around (taking number out of my hat) +50% AoE damage for duration of wrath and maybe +10% mitigations. No self healing. This eould make reaver damage to be higher for short times in fight and allow them push into the groups with high mitigation values, making them less prone to damage.

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I really fundamentally disagree with the concept of reavers being an AoE class. Yes, they should have some AoE at their disposal, and it should be relevant, but I really dislike the notion of them primarily revolving around AoE. Creeps don't have trait trees that allow them to switch between AoE and ST, and I believe that classes should only be given the choice to focus on AoE, they shouldn't be forced into it.

Buff Serration by a lot to make it a relevant skill, increase Bleed Damage so that the AoE bleeds actually apply pressure to the target instead of just tickling, but most of all, buff Ravage, Severing Strike and Lacerate's initial damage.

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Originally Posted by Giliodor

I really fundamentally disagree with the concept of reavers being an AoE class. Yes, they should have some AoE at their disposal, and it should be relevant, but I really dislike the notion of them primarily revolving around AoE. Creeps don't have trait trees that allow them to switch between AoE and ST, and I believe that classes should only be given the choice to focus on AoE, they shouldn't be forced into it.

Buff Serration by a lot to make it a relevant skill, increase Bleed Damage so that the AoE bleeds actually apply pressure to the target instead of just tickling, but most of all, buff Ravage, Severing Strike and Lacerate's initial damage.

Reavers need

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Then creeps dont have any aoe. Its simple as that. By buffing aoe skills you also increase st damage since reaver is heavily tied into mechanic of using aoe skills to create st damage. Ravage would be on my low rank skill list though.

Reavers used to be great aoe classes in past but that has taken away from then since post f2p expansions.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Then creeps dont have any aoe. Its simple as that. By buffing aoe skills you also increase st damage since reaver is heavily tied into mechanic of using aoe skills to create st damage. Ravage would be on my low rank skill list though.

Reavers used to be great aoe classes in past but that has taken away from then since post f2p expansions.

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I don't think buffing aoe on a class like Reaver will help them regain a better spot. Range/Radius needs to be largly increased to make it an effective aoe class, on top off that, there is still aoe bolster. Buffing aoe on reaver is not the way to go. Improve dot based and some flat damage to increase their dps rather then Aoe.

Good luck on restoring Pvmp on a more respectable state. Had a good few years of fun there, daily visiting it, but rarely visited it after gondor went out. Best of luck.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Ravage would be on my low rank skill list though.

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Meaning?

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Reavers used to be great aoe classes in past but that has taken away from then since post f2p expansions.

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I'll just repeat myself here: a class should be given the choice to AoE, it should never be mainly an AoE class. If they made a reaver trait that reduces ST DPS to increase AoE DPS, that'd be great. At least give them the option, though.

I, for one, wouldn't play my reaver it was primarily an AoE class.

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Originally Posted by Remcosajax

I don't think buffing aoe on a class like Reaver will help them regain a better spot. Range/Radius needs to be largly increased to make it an effective aoe class, on top off that, there is still aoe bolster. Buffing aoe on reaver is not the way to go. Improve dot based and some flat damage to increase their dps rather then Aoe.

Good luck on restoring Pvmp on a more respectable state. Had a good few years of fun there, daily visiting it, but rarely visited it after gondor went out. Best of luck.

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I very much agree with that.

I have said what I wanted to say, so I'll try to keep my posts short from here on, but there is something I want to address...

While Defiler healing has been greatly increased, it (~20%Morale/s) certainly does not need to be toned down, considering that freeps' DPS will keep increasing, Blessing of Darkness (bubble) is outdated and Fell Restoration has a 1.5sec induction and a 30sec CD.

Till next.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Hey folks, Vastin here.

As you can no doubt tell, we've been going through the motions but PvMP has been overlooked for a while due to our focus on the player side and Mordor.

While adjustments were made for the general bump in power level, the creeps have nevertheless been left behind. They got the same base level bump that the players did, but unsurprisingly, the players stat jumps were compounded by benefits from several sources (base, gear, IL's, essences, traits, audacity, etc), that outpaced the relatively few sources that creeps are designed with.

I want to take some time over the next month or two to make a series of fast passes over the creep dps and toughness sources to bring them back into line and get a better sense of what that compounded factor is so that we can work it into their advancement in future updates. It's much easier to approach PvMP balance from the creep side, because the statistics that make up a monster player are far fewer and I can rapidly iterate on their relative strength very rapidly in a way that I absolutely cannot do with the Freeps.

I will be using a bracketing method, so expect some slightly wild swings on Bullroarer as I work to re-discover some equilibrium. It'll be fun, and hopefully with your feedback we can get the ettenmoors back into a competitive shape. ;)

I will also be looking at trying to get the dps/vitality ratios of the two sides more similar looking, so that one side isn't a huge bag of HP with low DPS and vice versa - it's much easier to manage balance when the two sides are using sets of numbers that at least resemble each other.

First pass will be a pretty major bump to creep DPS, as that is clearly anemic at the moment compared to the NPC vitality in the area. This ought to show up as soon as we begin testing 21.3, but my goal is to make multiple iteration passes before 21.3 actually releases.

-Vastin

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First of all, thank you a lot for deciding to work on PvMP. Good luck and I hope you will do great work!

I wish you've done the class balance on Freepside first though, before working on PvMP. You won't be able to reach a true/long term balance by only touching creepside, since there will be huge imbalance among freepside classes still.

However, I'll provide my "fast balance" suggestions for Creepside here and try to make it as simple as possible. Pretty much agreeing with most of the people in here so far.

General Suggestions :

• Increase Base Stats of Creeps and Nerf Corruptions.
  
  
  Corruptions should have lesser effect on customisations of builds. It should be like Pre-Mordor levels so that the base stats (finesse,mitigation,crit defence,inc healing etc) are similar to freeps and corruption's effects on customization should be similar to essences on freep side to provide balance for both sides. Less customisation even better.
  
  
• Remove Critical Magnitude bonus from Crit corruptions.
  
  
  Crit magnitude is one of the main reason of discrepancy we have between creep classes atm such as Warg standing out due to high crit chance and the RNG between same fights. This change will solve a great deal to provide more consistent fights.
  
  
• Backdoors should not be usable in combat for both sides.
  
  
  This is one of the simplest yet very effecitve change that everyone is asking for. It will end the keep hugging/shuffles and spread out the action on the map a bit more.
  
  
• Decrease Base Morale and Increase Base Damage on Creeps respectively to make DPS numbers and morale levels similar to freep side.
  
  
  Increasing damage across the board can be achieved via buffing base mastery of creeps or buffing %Damage bonus of Audacity. Players can test the numbers and give you feedback on this.
  
  
• Buff -%Incoming Damage Reduction on Audacity and make it increase with the ranks. It should be an absolutely necessary stat for PvP (similar to LoE in PvE right now.)
  
  
  Buff -% Incoming Damage Reduction until both sides will have a reasonably long fight such as a 1v1 fight taking 1min long. Again, we, players can give you feedback on this. -% Incoming Damage Reduction on Audacity must be so strong such as anyone trying to go to Ettenmoors with their PvE set will take huge incoming damage, therefore has to wear audacity PvP gear. This way freeps can be balanced for PvMP with audacity sets considered in mind and fights will be longer, solving 2 problems at a time.
  
  
  Also on creepside reduce the audacity commendations cost (it goes up to crazy amounts after certain rank I can't remember atm, that needs to be cheap like earlier ranks) to make it easier for low rank creeps to get their audacity quickly since audacity will be an absolutely required stat now.

After these General Suggestions are implemented, you might need to fine tune certain classes or skills that most players agree it's OP or needs a nerf.

Class/Skill Specific Suggestions:

• Defiler
  
  
  Since overall Damage in Ettenmoors will be less with the above change, the Defiler heals should be nerfed across the board as well. We can give you feedback on this to fine tune.
  
  
• Reaver
  
  
  Reaver DPS and AOE DPS should be buffed, other people suggested certain ways to achieve that.
  
  
• Spider
  
  
  Spider power draining skills and initial hit of Tainted Kiss and Mephitic Kiss skills should be nerfed.
  
  

Some ratings on racial traits and skills like War Leader Banner numbers are still not updated to Mordor Levels. All of these skills might need a look at.

Good Luck!

good news indeed! there is always hope!

dev crits are over the top. its too much too often.

thats a good place to start IMO.

I think it is wonderful that so many have so many detailed ideas about how to fix PvMP, but I think you are setting yourself up for disappointment. I think by "fastpass" Vastin means just that- fast changes. Like, increasing all monster damage by X% and mitigations by Y%. And that's it. Period. End of tweak. I think it would be more helpful if folks could identify "up to three" stat changes that would help improve the balance. Something like "add more corruptions" might also qualify, especially if they could charge for the extra slots. I'm no PvMP expert, but I have seen the way changes are usually made and it is often just a big number-change hammer.

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Originally Posted by Giliodor

*Skills that return morale on being hit need to be looked at (Guardian: Bring on the Pain, Beorning: Thickened Hide)

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Fix the broken LUA command to allow identifying target's buffs & debuffs, and the user community will take care of this issue with plugins. Expecting a player to easily pick out a reflect-heal buff icon out of 20+ other icons simply doesn't make sense anymore.

nah dont think that % boosts to anything will help out, all those nabs who praise Giliodor, spilo and whoever the 3th was should think about the fact that when you base a creep on the strongest freep class, you will cause trouble for freep classes that arent as strong as a hunter, by this I point out towards LM for example, cappy, rk, guard and so on. Then again you got people QQ'in cuz their class is heavily underpowered against creeps due the scaling based on hunters/burg dps. You cannot pull this straight by % adjustments to only creeps, you have to equal out the hunter and burg on the other freep classes first, before you will scale creeps on freeps.

No need to nerf hunters itself, my idea on the etten armour is quite well working to equal freeps out.

If this doesn't rlly happen, I see no point in returning to the moors

and again, you CANNOT remove things like crit magnitude or something or lower it for one class, cuz that will affect PvE aswell.

I hope ppl give objective and unbiased feedback. The only hope to do this right is getting the right feedback from the ones who can honestly give correct info for the Devs to work on.
Nevertheless its always good to see a Dev to point out the true base problems of the lotro pvmp, best of lucks if you decide to work from the ground up.

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Originally Posted by Saurio

I think it is wonderful that so many have so many detailed ideas about how to fix PvMP, but I think you are setting yourself up for disappointment. I think by "fastpass" Vastin means just that- fast changes. Like, increasing all monster damage by X% and mitigations by Y%. And that's it. Period. End of tweak. I think it would be more helpful if folks could identify "up to three" stat changes that would help improve the balance. Something like "add more corruptions" might also qualify, especially if they could charge for the extra slots. I'm no PvMP expert, but I have seen the way changes are usually made and it is often just a big number-change hammer.

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It's a fair point, but I think there's a common theme among many of the posts here: corruptions, stats, crit magnitude, Audacity armor, etc. While I see some posts with some very good class balance suggestions, I'd have to be overly optimistic to expect those to happen. Doesn't hurt to post those, though. :)

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Originally Posted by Wulfdur

First of all, thank you a lot for deciding to work on PvMP. Good luck and I hope you will do great work!

I wish you've done the class balance on Freepside first though, before working on PvMP. You won't be able to reach a true/long term balance by only touching creepside, since there will be huge imbalance among freepside classes still.

However, I'll provide my "fast balance" suggestions for Creepside here and try to make it as simple as possible. Pretty much agreeing with most of the people in here so far.

General Suggestions :

• Increase Base Stats of Creeps and Nerf Corruptions.
  
  
  Corruptions should have lesser effect on customisations of builds. It should be like Pre-Mordor levels so that the base stats (finesse,mitigation,crit defence,inc healing etc) are similar to freeps and corruption's effects on customization should be similar to essences on freep side to provide balance for both sides. Less customisation even better.
  
  
• Remove Critical Magnitude bonus from Crit corruptions.
  
  
  Crit magnitude is one of the main reason of discrepancy we have between creep classes atm such as Warg standing out due to high crit chance and the RNG between same fights. This change will solve a great deal to provide more consistent fights.
  
  
• Backdoors should not be usable in combat for both sides.
  
  
  This is one of the simplest yet very effecitve change that everyone is asking for. It will end the keep hugging/shuffles and spread out the action on the map a bit more.
  
  
• Decrease Base Morale and Increase Base Damage on Creeps respectively to make DPS numbers and morale levels similar to freep side.
  
  
  Increasing damage across the board can be achieved via buffing base mastery of creeps or buffing %Damage bonus of Audacity. Players can test the numbers and give you feedback on this.
  
  
• Buff -%Incoming Damage Reduction on Audacity and make it increase with the ranks. It should be an absolutely necessary stat for PvP (similar to LoE in PvE right now.)
  
  
  Buff -% Incoming Damage Reduction until both sides will have a reasonably long fight such as a 1v1 fight taking 1min long. Again, we, players can give you feedback on this. -% Incoming Damage Reduction on Audacity must be so strong such as anyone trying to go to Ettenmoors with their PvE set will take huge incoming damage, therefore has to wear audacity PvP gear. This way freeps can be balanced for PvMP with audacity sets considered in mind and fights will be longer, solving 2 problems at a time.
  
  
  Also on creepside reduce the audacity commendations cost (it goes up to crazy amounts after certain rank I can't remember atm, that needs to be cheap like earlier ranks) to make it easier for low rank creeps to get their audacity quickly since audacity will be an absolutely required stat now.

After these General Suggestions are implemented, you might need to fine tune certain classes or skills that most players agree it's OP or needs a nerf.

Class/Skill Specific Suggestions:

• Defiler
  
  
  Since overall Damage in Ettenmoors will be less with the above change, the Defiler heals should be nerfed across the board as well. We can give you feedback on this to fine tune.
  
  
• Reaver
  
  
  Reaver DPS and AOE DPS should be buffed, other people suggested certain ways to achieve that.
  
  
• Spider
  
  
  Spider power draining skills and initial hit of Tainted Kiss and Mephitic Kiss skills should be nerfed.
  
  

Some ratings on racial traits and skills like War Leader Banner numbers are still not updated to Mordor Levels. All of these skills might need a look at.

Good Luck!

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These are very good suggestions.

Also worth noting/repeating VASTIN, that PvMP balance is going to be difficult with such huge discrepancies in Freep potency. You could balance things around Burgs/Hunters, and every other Freep class would be miserable, or you could balance around other Freeps, and Burgs/Hunters would still massacre people. Freep PvE balance is important to PvMP balance.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Hey folks, Vastin here.

As you can no doubt tell, we've been going through the motions but PvMP has been overlooked for a while due to our focus on the player side and Mordor.

While adjustments were made for the general bump in power level, the creeps have nevertheless been left behind. They got the same base level bump that the players did, but unsurprisingly, the players stat jumps were compounded by benefits from several sources (base, gear, IL's, essences, traits, audacity, etc), that outpaced the relatively few sources that creeps are designed with.

I want to take some time over the next month or two to make a series of fast passes over the creep dps and toughness sources to bring them back into line and get a better sense of what that compounded factor is so that we can work it into their advancement in future updates. It's much easier to approach PvMP balance from the creep side, because the statistics that make up a monster player are far fewer and I can rapidly iterate on their relative strength very rapidly in a way that I absolutely cannot do with the Freeps.

I will be using a bracketing method, so expect some slightly wild swings on Bullroarer as I work to re-discover some equilibrium. It'll be fun, and hopefully with your feedback we can get the ettenmoors back into a competitive shape. ;)

I will also be looking at trying to get the dps/vitality ratios of the two sides more similar looking, so that one side isn't a huge bag of HP with low DPS and vice versa - it's much easier to manage balance when the two sides are using sets of numbers that at least resemble each other.

First pass will be a pretty major bump to creep DPS, as that is clearly anemic at the moment compared to the NPC vitality in the area. This ought to show up as soon as we begin testing 21.3, but my goal is to make multiple iteration passes before 21.3 actually releases.

-Vastin

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Personally I don't care what you do to the individual creep. If people say they're in need of in need of an upgrade, that's fine. What I'd like to talk about is what you're going to do when that update brings a horde of creeps down on the freeps heads. In other words, when the creep players vastly outnumber the freeps, what kind of mechanics are there going to be in place to keep the freeps competitive? There's four big problems when creeps get put on par with freeps:

1) Lag. The more players the more lag. What will you do to prevent all of the players converging in one spot and having a terrible experience?
2) Keeps and Camps. Traditionally (as in over 5 years ago now) Keeps and Camps where places where the outnumbered could go for npc assistance. While NPC health is up, their damage is still largely forgettable so keeps and camps become zerg traps, not places to even out the numbers.
3) Outposts. Outposts give damage buffs. Due to their soloable nature (assuming creep buffs) and maps, they're generally in the hands of creeps when creeps are out in numbers and in effect do the opposite of their intended purpose, which is to be a balance effect. Freeps will spend their entire time riding around from outpost to outpost only to have it taken right back from them from a single map in. Or fight without the mastery buff at all outnumbered and out maneuvered.
4) Faction update. Creeps were designed to be a swarm faction. Its why they were given the ability to teleport across the map in numbers and given the WL AOE rez as well as have their healers be tanks. If you're going to update their dps and survivability, then they needn't be a swarm faction any longer. Will this be addressed?

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Originally Posted by Spilo

Also worth noting/repeating VASTIN, that PvMP balance is going to be difficult with such huge discrepancies in Freep potency. You could balance things around Burgs/Hunters, and every other Freep class would be miserable, or you could balance around other Freeps, and Burgs/Hunters would still massacre people. Freep PvE balance is important to PvMP balance.

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Part of the problem Vastin, with coming to the forums is going to be parsing out the hyperbole. This is hyperbole (you can probably guess from all the size and color - I've remvoed in my reply). Players will use every opportunity unfortunately to seek advantage from devs who may not know what they're looking at, or at least they think the dev doesn't know. You're going to see alot of the above from creep players who are unused to fighting competitive hunters as they've largely been farming them since 2008. It's become such the norm that hunters are creep food that they're having trouble adjusting. And they hate burgs because well because it's a stealth class. Though they all seem to play wargs and enjoy them. So beware, I hope you don't get caught up in this stuff.

Given the kack-handed way these things have been handled before I think I'll wait for initial reports before going VIP again.

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Originally Posted by Snowlock

Part of the problem Vastin, with coming to the forums is going to be parsing out the hyperbole. This is hyperbole (you can probably guess from all the size and color - I've remvoed in my reply). Players will use every opportunity unfortunately to seek advantage from devs who may not know what they're looking at, or at least they think the dev doesn't know. You're going to see alot of the above from creep players who are unused to fighting competitive hunters as they've largely been farming them since 2008. It's become such the norm that hunters are creep food that they're having trouble adjusting. And they hate burgs because well because it's a stealth class. Though they all seem to play wargs and enjoy them. So beware, I hope you don't get caught up in this stuff.

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I respect that you play hunter, and so you want to protect the class you enjoy. However, if you look we do call for Warg nerfs. In addition, if you PvPed any during Mordor, you'd know the ungodly DPS that Hunter can do, especially when supported in groups. You'd also know the position of Burglar. In this thread we're trying to bypass bias, and state obvious things that need fixing. Hunter, Burg, and Warg (through crit mag) are obvious things.