We want Debuffs (Show us some love!)

[findorin-gilrain]

Lots of arguments here about the mathematics of the skills, and where the debuff gets put in the calculation - but I think we musn't lose the point. It's hard to put into plain English but...

what should happen is the debuff is always applied last in the calculation -- you first add up all the base damages + multipliers, and only then do you do the debuff calculation.

I agree for the most part and believe, in simple terms, that the player character buffs and debuffs applied by skills should be applied after the mobs inherent effects. Such makes sense, both in terms of gameplay and "common sense". I also like to differentiate between "internal" factors and "external" factors.

My basic point is that the way you're proposing that debuffs should work means that debuffs will inherently be more powerful that buffs. I've seen no justification as to why this should be the case.
...
lots of words
...
I'm kind of curious as to what the intent of the system is. Like I said, the current system is both odd and has a certain symmetry.

I think you missed the point. External factors, in my thinking, should always be "more powerful" than internal factors. Regardless of how strong or powerful the mob is, -30% external debuff is still -30%. However if the mob gets buffed by a nearby boss to be +50%, then +50% it should be. The "external buff" is equally as important as the "external debuff".

So any particular mob or boss mob will likely have a whole series of self-buffs (or self-debuffs) "internally" including the SoM introduced damage buff for elites, EMs, etc. These should all be applied in whatever fashion is appropriate as "internal" buffs. Then, any "external" buffs and debuffs should apply. These can be from character skills but also from other mobs or bosses auras, skills etc.

So, although I dislike psuedo-equations...

mob adjusted damage = (base damage +/- (all internal buffs and debuffs)

effective mob damage = mob adjusted damage * character skill debuffs * other nearby external debuffs and buffs.

Of course to be fair, the reverse should also apply when bosses debuff players...

[Melkite]

I just want to say, after playing the LM for almost three years...

Totally not surprised...

And good work!

[DopplersRadar]

No dev reply, no mod reply, no official turbine reply


no kidding

[JohnnyAwesome]

This game is dying. There aren't even enough devs to dedicate one to each class. It's pathetic. Burglars are in the same boat. HIPS has been broken for a long time, for example.

[Graythandor]

No dev reply, no mod reply, no official turbine reply


no kidding

Did you really think we would get one?

Longtime LMs came to accept long ago that we don't have a dev, and if we do we'll never hear from him/her/it.

[Rthen]

Agreed. The game is likely headed down the long gradual path of server consolidations and empty servers.

As far as the LM class is concerned I had the most amusing thought. Even speced for DPS we still aren't very useful in the moria or mirkwood instances. its clear that debuffs and cc are what the class was meant to be good at. Turbine needs to fix and un-nerf both.

We should not be forced to try to DPS, thats not what we do.

Likely there will be no Turbine replies because as other posters have pointed out: there is no developer assigned to LMs specificlly, and the game is in decline.

[mrghosty4]

Retested. Same results.

[Majesto]

Ummm, guys, we did have a dev reply 2 days ago. It was just in a different thread that referenced this thread:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...66#post4544666

Dev Tracker FTW

[Rthen]

Interesting.

So they are implying that the skills didn't change?

So maybe the mobs did, and obviously they might know this....

A nerf is a nerf.....

At this point I would be happy with the class in generla being thrown some sort of bone. maybe a tad more damage.. etc..

I can get buy with infrequent groups.. etc..

[Mael5trom]

Agreed. The game is likely headed down the long gradual path of server consolidations and empty servers.

As far as the LM class is concerned I had the most amusing thought. Even speced for DPS we still aren't very useful in the moria or mirkwood instances. its clear that debuffs and cc are what the class was meant to be good at. Turbine needs to fix and un-nerf both.

We should not be forced to try to DPS, thats not what we do.

Likely there will be no Turbine replies because as other posters have pointed out: there is no developer assigned to LMs specificlly, and the game is in decline.

Oh nos the sky is falling...I don't think it's that bad, there has been no rumor of consolidations or empty servers. Stop listening to the doom and gloomers.

We do quite well for DPS if you know your skill rotation and spec for it. Parses where putting us just below Champs for AOE damage and mid-range for single target sustained.

As for devs, it's been stated numerous times that no class has a specific dev, and hasn't for a long time. My understanding based on stuff I've pieced together from some of the betas I was in and watching dev posts was that there is a pool of devs, and a pool of issues, and the issues are assigned to devs according to availability. Sometimes a dev will focus on a class and work on a number of issues. And some devs have more familiarity with certain classes and their mechanics, having worked on them in the beginning or more than others. But it is kind of a pipe dream to think that there are 9 devs that are each assigned to a class.

[Stever1388]

I haven't read the whole thread, first few pages mostly, and the dev response in the other thread. At first I was a bit wary of rushing into the whole "death to the devs" mind-set, but I've done some testing using the Spar features between two of my characters (a captain and a LM; I have two accounts).

I didn't actually take any damage numbers, I simply checked how the debuffs affected my captains Melee/Ranged Offence. If anyone on Landroval wants to volunteer a Signature Creep to do some testing on, we could work something out, to further test this.

Basically, I had my LM battle my capt. My captains pre-Fire-lore Melee Offence was 28.5%, with 18.5% coming from the Rating (which comes from Might and some LI stuff), and 10% coming from my Hope Banner. After applying Fire-lore, my captains Melee Offence dropped to -4.5%, with the 18.5% unchanged, but the 10% dropped to -23%. The total change in the Melee Offence was actually 33 percentage points, which I mistakenly thought was the percentage drop; it is not, however. After doing the equation: (0.955-1.285)/1.285 = 0.2568, basically I reduced my captains melee offence by 25.68%.

If I remove the Hope Banner, my captains Melee Offence goes to 18.5% (straight rating), and the debuff from Fire-lore causes the second number to go from 0% to -30%, so that's a full -30 point drop, but once put into the equation, it becomes only a 25.31% decrease in Melee Offence.

If I use the War banner instead, the first number stays the same (18.5%), and the second one increases to 20%, for a total of 38.5%. When the Fire lore debuff is applied, the first number (from the rating) stays the same, the second number drops to -16%, and the total Melee Offence drops to 2.5%, or a 36 point drop, which comes out to -25.99% Melee Offence debuff.

Basically, from what I have found, if you have any Melee/Ranged Offence from a rating, then the % that Fire/Wind-lore do will be off and lower. It's not a lot for normal players, even on my champ with nearly 22% just from the rating (and another 20% from Fervour), the Fire-lore would still reduce his damage by 25.29% with Fervour or 24.5% without Fervour.

However, this actually does present a bigger problem, which is so many skills effect a straight percent of a mob: Oathbreakers, Reveal Weakness, Telling Mark, Disable. Even To Arms, the Captains Shield Brother Skill, increases the shields brother melee/range/tactical offence by 25%. Though, from testing To Arms, it adds 25% to your base damage, regardless of whether you have any other +damage modifications (such as Fervour Stance, Strength Stance, or Overpower stance), so it's not truly a +25% increase in damage; for example, it only really adds 17% to my champs damage.

At the same time, even skills that reduce the rating of a mob (such as LMs Sign of Power skills) may not be reducing the mobs rating enough. For example, if Sign of the Power: Command was suppose to reduce the mobs Parry by 0.8% (according the Wiki that is what it was before the change to ratings), but if the mob has some sort of +% (a straight percent) to the stat, the -rating will not actually reduce the stat by as much as originally.

This is what I love about ratings though, they hide the fact that you are barely getting anything from that +200 of whatever. I do thing 600 Parry reduction from SOP:C is more than 0.8% though. probably closer to at least 1.5% so that's not too bad.

What's happening is pretty much what others are saying: The debuffs are being calculated before the total percent is actually known. Basically:

A) Rating is converted to a percent (cap limits are enforced)
+
B) Straight Percents are add (from skills like Guardians Block Stance, Champions Fervour Stance, Adamant skill, etc), and then the total is calculated.
=
C

So A + B = C. I think for consistency sake (and to make sure skills like Fire-lore actually do what they are suppose to do), the buffs/debuffs should be applied to C; i.e.: C*.7=D, where D would be the Melee Damage after Fire-lore is applied.

Right now though it's calculated like this:
A) Rating is converted to a percent (cap limits are enforced)
+
B) Straight Percents are added * debuffs (or in To Arms case, a straight +25)
=
C) And C does not come out right. If A = 0, then it does come out right, but the larger A becomes, the lower the actual % is of the debuff.

I hope you guys are happy though, I spend the entire day logging in and out of my characters and into creep side and had to run around a war zone to test some of this stuff, and I didn't get any work done! I don't have a signature creep and to be honest I don't know how creeps get stronger, so a lot of that could determine how badly this affects PVMP.

And of course this is purely on playable characters; mobs could determine damages differently. I am hoping that even if it is this bad, it's not really as bad as the first post stated, especially on harder boss mobs, like Watcher and BG guys... that's just not right!

If there's any mistakes, let me know... I type this out over a few hour period so my mind was all over the place.

Edit: I'm still not into the whole "death to the devs." I can see how this was pretty easy to miss, with how complicated the new formulas are. It also depends on how mobs calculate their melee offence - if it's all a straight percentage, then this whole thing is pointless, as Fire-lore always takes 30% off whatever the damage is. Its if mobs have a rating like players do that it would become a problem, and only at extremely high ratings (higher than like 50k rating or like 100% increase in damage) would it really become bad. I also don't think the game is going to start closing servers anytime soon.

And like someone else said... it's not like anyone noticed this, and after talking to a few fellow raiders in game, they would still take a LM for the 5% melee damage debuff, not to mention I find that DN is a really cool place for LMs (not to mention the set bonus is pretty awesome), and I hear BG has a few good uses for CC.

I think I'll post this to that other thread, so that the dev can see it.

[Pyropax]

This game is dying. There aren't even enough devs to dedicate one to each class. It's pathetic. Burglars are in the same boat. HIPS has been broken for a long time, for example.

*facepalm*
Just because your class is bugged at the moment doesn't mean the game is dying at all. In fact, lotro was one of the few games not to consolidate any servers this year. Yes, I agree the devs need to focus more on class balance and less on their beloved skirmishes - but doom n' glooming in the forums probably won't change any of that.

[Raowyn]

lol at the usefulness of the DN set bonus. Frankly, Fire Lore is our best skill in a raid and if it is suffering diminishing returns on tougher bosses, our usefulness diminishes. If Oathbreakers gives 10% more damage every hit regardless of the eliteness of a mob, then fire lore should decrease their dmg 30% from every hit.

[Galahadur]

(...)

A) Rating is converted to a percent (cap limits are enforced)
+
B) Straight Percents are add (from skills like Guardians Block Stance, Champions Fervour Stance, Adamant skill, etc), and then the total is calculated.
=
C

So A + B = C. I think for consistency sake (and to make sure skills like Fire-lore actually do what they are suppose to do), the buffs/debuffs should be applied to C; i.e.: C*.7=D, where D would be the Melee Damage after Fire-lore is applied.

Right now though it's calculated like this:
A) Rating is converted to a percent (cap limits are enforced)
+
B) Straight Percents are added * debuffs (or in To Arms case, a straight +25)
=
C) And C does not come out right. If A = 0, then it does come out right, but the larger A becomes, the lower the actual % is of the debuff.

I hope you guys are happy though, I spend the entire day logging in and out of my characters and into creep side and had to run around a war zone to test some of this stuff, and I didn't get any work done! I don't have a signature creep and to be honest I don't know how creeps get stronger, so a lot of that could determine how badly this affects PVMP.

And of course this is purely on playable characters; mobs could determine damages differently. I am hoping that even if it is this bad, it's not really as bad as the first post stated, especially on harder boss mobs, like Watcher and BG guys... that's just not right!

If there's any mistakes, let me know... I type this out over a few hour period so my mind was all over the place.

(...)

That's very interesting. I think the devs, when they introduced melee offence ratings didnt think this all trough the end.

Before SoM, -30% melee damage, was really -30% melee damage. In a 100hp (with all the buffs and elite/nemesis status buffs) hit would still become a 70hp hit.

Now a 100hp hit depends on the mobs base melee offense plus buffs and hits for 75hp, 85hp or 95hp.

I doubt that this is working as intended.

[KainXI]

This game is dying. There aren't even enough devs to dedicate one to each class. It's pathetic. Burglars are in the same boat. HIPS has been broken for a long time, for example.

Or how about RKs, who are famed for their dev love, left with a completely non-functional 4 trait bonus for 1.5 years. It is kinda scary that they just don't seem to have the resources necessary to run things smoothly any more.

[HalenHelfury]

Ummm, guys, we did have a dev reply 2 days ago. It was just in a different thread that referenced this thread:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...66#post4544666

Dev Tracker FTW

sorry, but I don't qualify that as a response... he essentially said 'yup, something's going on there, don't know what. We haven't changed the skill though.'

Nobody is saying that the skill was changed, only how it is applied to bosses. And I'll point out again that this could be much bigger than just fire/wind lore.... How do you know the boss is getting the full armor debuff from ancient craft? How do you know the boss is getting the full crit debuff from SoP SEA? What about the combat slow from SoP Command?

At this point for all we know all we're doing is waving our staffs at bosses with not much of a real effect. Might as well stand in the back of the group and yell 'go guys, you go beat that boss!' for all the good we know we're doing.

I'm not trying to be one of the dev bashers, but I would like a little bit more of a response than the 'meh' we have gotten so far.

[JohnnyAwesome]

Advice to devs:

Less hedge mazes in the Shire and more work on the huge laundry list of problems with the game.

I mean, there was a creep in the Moors last night that was invulnerable to damage for over an hour due to a bug. Ridiculous.

[Graythandor]

Advice to devs:

I mean, there was a creep in the Moors last night that was invulnerable to damage for over an hour due to a bug. Ridiculous.

lol that's awesome. I hope he charged head-first into GV! lol

[Stever1388]

lol at the usefulness of the DN set bonus. Frankly, Fire Lore is our best skill in a raid and if it is suffering diminishing returns on tougher bosses, our usefulness diminishes. If Oathbreakers gives 10% more damage every hit regardless of the eliteness of a mob, then fire lore should decrease their dmg 30% from every hit.

I'm not sure why you would laugh at the DN set bonus. +5 seconds to BF duration is pretty awesome, IMO. I know a lot of LMs like the +10% fire damage from the Watcher set, but I don't really care for it. If I want to DPS I just switch to one of my DPS characters.


To expand upon what I wrote before (I noticed a lot of typos reading over it today...), this definitely affects PVMP, because if any creep has a skill that debuffs a freep using a percent (such as a fire-lore equivalent) , it's effectiveness is reduced because freeps have ratings to all of our stats (except for the debuffs that reduce Might/Agility/etc).

For example, if creeps had a Oathbreakers like skill, which should increase the incoming damage of the targeted mob by 35%, this would show up as a decrease in Defence on the freep (4th column in the Melee/Ranged/Tactical tab). If, for example, we had a champ with 15% melee defence from the rating, the max you can get from rating, and which would require having Innocence, the title on their rune, some pretty good runes, and possibly scrolls or have Discipline and Zeal; when you looked at melee defence it would say "15% Melee Defence (15.0%+0%)". Now, let's say the Oathbreakers-like skill was used on that champ. The Melee Defence would now say "-20% Melee Defence (15.0% + -35%)". This looks like it does what it says it does - reduce the defences by 35%. But once you take the actual change in the defence, you only reduced the champs melee defence by 30%. The formula would be: z = (x-y)/y, where x is the current number, y is the previous number, and z is the % change. 'y' would be equal to 115% and x would be equal to 80%, plug those in and you get -30%.

This works both ways, assuming that creeps get ratings to stats other than Crit chance (I don't know, I don't play creep side), so both sides of PVMP are affected by it, but one side could be more affected by it if they have more debuff skills (which, I know freep side stuff like Oathbreakers and Fire/Wind-lore, but I don't know if creeps have anything similiar to those).

And once again, if mobs don't have ratings to most of their stats, then this wouldn't really be a problem, but the first post shows that it does seem to be happening, and because mobs already have ratings for other stats (such as crit and BPE, and we know this because LMs and burgs have skills which reduce the rating of the mob), its very likely that they do have ratings for all stats.

Here's a list of every skill that I could see being less useful (or at least broken) because of this:
Champion: Fervour stance (-Incoming Healing), Adamant/Invincible
Captain: Telling Mark, Oatbreakers, To Arms, Strength of Will,
Burglar: Disable, Reveal Weakness, Counter Defence (possibly)
Lore-master: Fire-lore, Wind-lore, Warding Circles
Minstrel: Ballad of War

Anything that changes a stat based on a percentage would be here, but I'm not completely familiar with every single class so the list might not be complete. I don't think some of them are really broken, just worded wrong. For example, my champion's Fervour stance really only reduces my incoming healing by 25%, because I have +15% from ratings and +5% from the man passive. What it really should say is -30% base incoming healing, which is what it is currently doing. Adamant, To Arms, Strength of Will would all fall under this as well, since they would get a bit OP if they started increasing your total stat, and not just the base. For example, my champ would gain an extra 10% from To Arms if it included his fervour bonus damage and the 22% percent from the rating in its calculations. These skills will never really become underpowered though because our stats as players never really go too high, whereas Fire-lore could if the mobs stats get really high in the rating department.

Eh. I definitely spend too much time on this. Being a math nerd results in this kind of stuff being really interesting.

[Rthen]

the DN set bonus just adds to the "scratching your head and thinking why?" factor.

[Stever1388]

...

How do you know the boss is getting the full armor debuff from ancient craft? How do you know the boss is getting the full crit debuff from SoP SEA? What about the combat slow from SoP Command?

...

Those skills apply a rating debuff, so the mobs are getting the full effect of the skill. Or at least, when I would cast SOP:C/SAE and Ancient Craft on myself during spars it definitely lowered my armour rating and BPE rating, and the percentages go down with the rating. No way to check slows other than to attack, which I didn't do.

The real question is: Do the rating debuffs reduce the mobs % by the correct amount? This is hard to tell because a rating doesn't mean a whole lot. If I tell you I have 2500 evade rating, what's my percent at? Most people might have a good guess, but its hard to know. SOP:C only removes about 500-600 of the BPE, what is that in real percent terms? Probably a bit over a percent each. So the question is, do the mobs BPE get reduced by about 1%? Unless mobs for some reason have a straight percentage to their crit/BPE chances (which would be unlike freeps, which don't have any way to increase their crit/BPE chance, other than a few guardian skills), then the rating/percentage ratio will be maintained. It's kind of a reversal of what's happening with skills that reduce stats by a percent: those skills reduce the percentage part of the equation but miss the rating part, whereas the rating part would miss out on the percentage part.

The dev response definitely wasn't anything to get excited over, but its better than no dev response.

[HalenHelfury]

Those skills apply a rating debuff, so the mobs are getting the full effect of the skill. Or at least, when I would cast SOP:C/SAE and Ancient Craft on myself during spars it definitely lowered my armour rating and BPE rating, and the percentages go down with the rating. No way to check slows other than to attack, which I didn't do.

Yup, but will they go down the same amount on an elite/EM/boss though? If SoP: C gives you a 20% combat slow does it scale down to a 3% slow for a boss? Does ancient craft lower your armor rating by 1620 and a bosses by 320? Does SEA only decrease a boss' crit rating by 300 instead of ~2k? Those questions can be asked about all our debuff skills. It's not that they aren't working, it's just that it seems you get diminishing returns on debuffs as the mob toughness goes up which happens to be when you need them the most.

This may seem like nit-picking, but it all goes into how you will trait for raids..... If going full AM turns out to be useless for boss fights I can get a lot more use out of a MoNF build... Even KoA and dusting off my 'lurker would be preferable to reducing the overall effectiveness of the boss by ~3-5%.

[Lestache]

Advice to devs:

Less hedge mazes in the Shire and more work on the huge laundry list of problems with the game.

I mean, there was a creep in the Moors last night that was invulnerable to damage for over an hour due to a bug. Ridiculous.

Folks forget how to use the report feature? Or did it just take a little bit of time before the creep was given a vacation?

[Gillianrial]

Firstly that's not relevant to this thread.

But since you all brought it up...the only way a creep becomes invulnerable to damage is by something very specific that a freep player does while something very specific is happening on the field. And that's as specific as I wish to get. It goes without saying, though, that the creep should always log-out if this happens (although keep in mind they also can't use their skills while this is happening).

[Stever1388]

Yup, but will they go down the same amount on an elite/EM/boss though? If SoP: C gives you a 20% combat slow does it scale down to a 3% slow for a boss? Does ancient craft lower your armor rating by 1620 and a bosses by 320? Does SEA only decrease a boss' crit rating by 300 instead of ~2k? Those questions can be asked about all our debuff skills. It's not that they aren't working, it's just that it seems you get diminishing returns on debuffs as the mob toughness goes up which happens to be when you need them the most.

This may seem like nit-picking, but it all goes into how you will trait for raids..... If going full AM turns out to be useless for boss fights I can get a lot more use out of a MoNF build... Even KoA and dusting off my 'lurker would be preferable to reducing the overall effectiveness of the boss by ~3-5%.

I understand your concern, but I don't think you realize why the diminishing returns is happening. Of course, I don't claim to know what is happening either, but if the little experiments I did prove anything, the "diminishing returns" is not the result of actual diminishing returns, it's the result of a math equation gone wrong.

I would like to point out that SOP:C really only reduces the mobs effectiveness (it's BPE at least) by little more than a percent, even at full power, and apparently before Moria (and all this rating craziness), it reduced the mobs parry by only 0.8%, so... But it's the little things that count and it's the problems with Fire/Wind-lore that are the real concern.

The rating debuffs shouldn't be affected by this because if you have 4000 Parry rating and 600 is subtracted from it, you get 3400 Parry Rating. The way the Ratings work (when you are buffed and/or debuffed with Ratings, like Captains Tactics buffs) and assuming the problem with Fire-lore is the math equation, leads me to believe that the SOP skills work properly.

I think you can test the Ancient Craft one rather easily: Use Knowledge of the Lore-master, then wait for the cooldown to expire, then use Ancient Craft on the same mob, then check it again. All the items under Mitigation should go down. With Elite mobs it may not go down a lot, but that's because they have A LOT of armour, and the skill only removes 1755 at lvl 65. Basically the difference between using the skill on a light armoured person: remove 1755 of 2870 on my LM is a huge part of my armour, whereas on my champ, 1755 is small(er) part of his 4500 or so armour, and would be an even smaller part of a guardians armour.

As for the attack duration, that's tough to test. It is a percent, so it would go along with the assumption that % based debuffs are messed up, but since we don't have a rating for it, it could easily be everyone has a 100% attack duration normally, then stuff that uses that to adjust it, in which case it should be correct. This is how all stats worked normally back in SOA, then with Moria they added BPE and crit ratings, then with Mirkwood they added the Offence/Defence ratings (which is when this bug probably would have been introduced).

Course, if it really is some sort of diminishing returns, and SOP skills are only doing 10% of what they say they are doing, then... there's a big problem. But I don't really think that is the case, simply because of the way the equation seems to work. I stress seems because I really have no idea, just what I can see using Spar and Freep vs Creep setups.