Five Questions For Kelsan

[Sezneg]

After re-reading the creep proposed changes as well as the freep change blogs these questions for Kelsan came to mind:

1. How much input do you, as the monsterplay developer have, in changes made to freep classes? Orion directly mentioned having to clear the sprint magnitude with you for pvmp purposes. Are you given a chance to look at what their designs and give feedback for how such changes would effect pvp? Are there times when you say "no" to ideas being proposed for freep classes based on their potential impact in pvmp?

2. What is your vision for kiting in the exansion pvp? Right now the ability to avoid being kited is very modal; you burn a cooldown (sprint/brutal charge/etc) and for that duration you essentially cannot be kited. For legacied champ sprint, this is up to 45 seconds. Now champs are possibly moving to a more "tactical" approach to this; shorter bursts of sprinting with a higher magnitude and shorter cooldown. Is this something you see being done more generally across the board? There really needs to be a good balance between the ability to kite someone and that person's ability to close the distance. What we have right now is in many ways silly; depending on cooldowns you are either 100% kitable or 100% kite-proof, often for the effective duration of an encounter. Burrowing for 45 seconds waiting for champ sprint to wear off is not fun for me or the champ. Do you have any plans to bring us to a more measured and tactical approach to kiting?

3. You mentioned in the warg changes that you were "looking into the tactical damage issue". Was this a warg specific (shadow-howler stance) statement, or a creepside in general statement?

4. As a follow-up to question three; are you looking into spike-damage (the real offender as far as tactical damage is concerned) across the board? Being smacked for half your morale or more in a single hit is not fun or interesting gameplay, and we're reaching the point (for the n-th time since the moria expansion it seems) where even larger-scale fights can be decided literally in 35 seconds of combat. What do you feel is the right "pace" for combat. Are you willing/interested in exploring ways to slow down the pace a bit, and if so what avenues are you looking at to accomplish this?

5. Finally, given the upcoming F2P opening of the moors is there any possible way we can have the issue of multi-boxing looked into? Right now it's an annoying problem caused by a very small group of players game-wide. In a F2P moors environment, this problem could become much larger and go from an annoyance to a major problem. What are your views on multi-boxing and have you had any discussion with the other developers about its potential impact on the game?

These are the most pressing questions for me as we creep up on Isengard.

[Kelsen]

All good questions, I'll try to answer them as best I can.

1. I have input on Freep changes, but by no means control them. I provide feedback from a PvMP perspective and try to ensure that balance is kept in mind. In some situations this leads to a revision to the design. In others, balance is made by providing the Creeps a balance mechanic.

2. This is a tough one. I'm more focused on finding ways for melee to close distance. A melee class should be able to close distance on a kiter and keep them in melee range. A kiter, through careful skill play, should have the escape mechanics necessary to keep distance. That being said, this is an extremely difficult system to implement/balance post launch. As always, we will work towards balance, but these things take time.

3. General statement for Creepside. This issues does not impact the Freeps quite as much, since the Creeps don't have an RK counterpart.

4. You hit the nail on head here. The real issue comes from the spiky nature of the Rune-keeper. I'm taking steps to try to reduce this, but this also will be an ongoing project. The RK is a solid class and plays very well in both PvE and PvMP. The first step I've taken is to increase the Crit Defence granted to Creeps from the Armour passive and the Crit Defence Corruption. The second step was to provide additional Tactical Mitigation to Creeps through skills/traits.

5. I'll need to confer with other people on this one.

[Crell_1]

5. I'll need to confer with other people on this one.

Thank you for taking the time to answer #1-4. I look forward to hearing you and other developers respond and weigh in regarding #5 as soon as is possible, given the PR associated with this upcoming launch

[Thane9]

Although decent enough questions, I'd disagree that they're the most pressing ones. That's really pretty subjective, and in my opinion only one would make top 5. However most of them skirt around similar thoughts around the "feel" of PvMP that I believe to be a serious concern.

Regardless, I think it's tremendously heartening to see a dev responding to posts like this in an honest and thoughtful manner.

Thank you Kelsan. From this Champ's perspective I've seen the 'moors play get worse and worse and worse with nearly every update. I remain hopeful for the changes coming.

My question, if that's possible would be two parts:

Is there an overarching cost/benefit analysis for PvMP gameplay being done?
If so what efforts, if any, are being planned to allow for successful and rewarding play away from the current zerg up and grind into each other for points, play that currently rules the moors.

I personally think there's a HUGE opportunity to implement mechanics and incentives for solo, groups, large groups, raids to move around the map and engage in many locations rather than the current status quo. I'd love to hear the bigger picture thought process that is surrounding the development of PvMP and what it's future holds than any specific skill or even single mechanic.

---

And it goes without saying, I'd ask this, after this long it hardly counts as a question:

After 4+ years now is there any plan to fix the distance bug? A bug that if its equivalent were affecting PvE side the game would've been patched immediately.

[NeoPromethious]

I have a suggestion which could potentially help the melee players close the gap between.

In PvMP zone only, basically increase the base distance for melee attacks by 10 meters.

I'll tell you what works well. Sprints that override snares, that helps immensely on my guardian close the gap with kiting creeps. If you gave melee characters a permanent +10% incombat run speed that would work too but you'd need to give it to NPCs also so no one can exploit them.

In raid situations it's real bad with all the ranged damage, however increasing melee movement speed, or increasing attack distance should be plenty to thwart kiters who basically make melee characters useless out there with 2.5m attack range.

My guardian can get up to 5meters via legacies which works pretty well but not quite good enough unless I use my sprint to get close in the first place. My captain was retired a long time ago as it's virtually impossible to kill a creep with the snares given to that class. The captain sprint is nerfed in speed due to the usage in group situations, which is nice to have but as far as solo-ing in the moors, captains are out of luck unless the creep wants to stick around - if the design of the class was for group only that would make sense but I'm sure some captains would enjoy the option of being able to slow an opponent more than 10% solo without nerfing them too bad.

[D3str0yer]

Since you plan to fix "the spiky nature of the RK" will you increase our base damage and give us some more defense? Maybe i have to wait for RK revision blog to get this answer tho ^^

Also how do you plan to make melee fighting occur more often as you stated in the PVMP manifesto?

[eade]

tbh the melee prob cud be fixed very easily..all we have to do is play melee classes...no matter what kelsen does...its still ur choice at the end of the day how u choose to play in the moors

but good questions and equally good responses from kelsen

[D3str0yer]

tbh the melee prob cud be fixed very easily..all we have to do is play melee classes...no matter what kelsen does...its still ur choice at the end of the day how u choose to play in the moors

but good questions and equally good responses from kelsen

some ppl got thier mains as ranged classes and u cannot force anyone to play a certain type of class imo, I meant more make the map somehow more melee friendly with more tight corners and stuff. Possibly also buff melees somehow.

[Thane9]

Regarding the nature of being kited and how it at least partially boils down to two things...

DoT vs Direct damage, and Ranged vs Melee.

See, in PvE land where Freeps are designed, tested, revised, and balanced these things are equivalent. Because our opponents stand still and take it.

But add movement and distance to the equation and all of a sudden ranged and dots start to have a value of greater than 1:1 when compared to melee and direct.

It's a tough thing to address without having an impact on PvE.

My suggestion: Moors gear. Make it rank earned ONLY...no additional cost or time sink, and scale the gear in such a way as to make freeps increase in power along side their creep counterparts. Add in a small premium for the fact that creeps can be R0 much faster than a freep who has to grind 60 levels and gear up first and then tweak the gear sets as needed based on the changes to the freep classes in PvE.

PvE needs sprint to be XYZ, but it needs to be ABC in the moors? Make the gear change that skills functionality.

Melee dps doesn't ahve the same "applied" value as ranged in the moors? Make the melee gear a bit better in terms of dps than the ranged.

Etc, etc...

The perfect tool to reward AND balance freepside has always been there. But instead we've gotten sets of gear that were terrible downgrades after even months/years to get R9 AND had the highest PvE grind cost of any set in the game.

It's really why I'm a fan of a top down approach to the moors. Instead of looking at specific skills, look at the end resulting gameplay you want to encourage, THEN build a system that encourages and rewards that gameplay while stripping the incentives that run counter to that vision.

That's why I'd like to know what the devs overall vision is, more than any specific skill anaylsis.

[Sezneg]

All good questions, I'll try to answer them as best I can.

1. I have input on Freep changes, but by no means control them. I provide feedback from a PvMP perspective and try to ensure that balance is kept in mind. In some situations this leads to a revision to the design. In others, balance is made by providing the Creeps a balance mechanic.

2. This is a tough one. I'm more focused on finding ways for melee to close distance. A melee class should be able to close distance on a kiter and keep them in melee range. A kiter, through careful skill play, should have the escape mechanics necessary to keep distance. That being said, this is an extremely difficult system to implement/balance post launch. As always, we will work towards balance, but these things take time.

3. General statement for Creepside. This issues does not impact the Freeps quite as much, since the Creeps don't have an RK counterpart.

4. You hit the nail on head here. The real issue comes from the spiky nature of the Rune-keeper. I'm taking steps to try to reduce this, but this also will be an ongoing project. The RK is a solid class and plays very well in both PvE and PvMP. The first step I've taken is to increase the Crit Defence granted to Creeps from the Armour passive and the Crit Defence Corruption. The second step was to provide additional Tactical Mitigation to Creeps through skills/traits.

5. I'll need to confer with other people on this one.

Thanks a ton for the answers, it's very interesting to have a window into the development process. I've also been absolutely floored at the level of communication you guys have had for us for this expansion cycle. It's definitely a move in the right direction.

I have one more question that's popped up via the minstrel change blogs...

Orion mentioned that you guys are not afraid of the warspeech healing changes (full self heals without penalty) due to "other changes". Can we get a hint as to what changes these are? Pretty please? Been wracking my brain trying to figure how that's going to work out that doesn't involve about 15 solo minstrels gold tagging eachother on the south TA bridge...

You'll have to accept that a lot of us creep vets are very jaded about expansion releases, which is no fault of yours. The Moria launch update was a disaster of truly epic proportions for us. We're really counting on you to make sure our morale/mitigations are up to the task of standing up to some of these strong freep changes.

[MrWarg]

Thanks for those answers mate, really appreciate being given some insight into what's happening and the thought process behind it.

[eade]

no my point was...regardless of what kelsen does..if it slightly favours 1 class over other ppl will auto roll them...hmmm sigh..its open pvp..u make of it what u will...stop blaming CM/turbine whoever for 'forcing u to play a certain way'no1 is forcing ny1...never has been...the choice is urs...mayb im crazy for thinking we cud make our own pvp without the gods having to do anything at all..maybe not


but all i see is they are op its unfair...so what..how long are we going to continue this cycle...lotro pvp will never be balanced for 2 reasons

reason 1: the 2 sides arent the same
for completely balanced pvp both sides wud have to be exactly the same.....this is a fact

reason 2pl
almost 90% of all ( and yes i have checked and verified this with my door to door survey monkeys) ppl will play the class that has any slight deviational differnece from 'balance'

so we are left with...do u want every class to be the same but with different skins....or do u want variety..as ever the choice is urs...after 4 years pf constant nerf this nerf that..are we any closer to balance?...is balance what u really want?

i sumtimes think balance means...if its balanced in my favour then its balanced

[KindlyOne]

4. You hit the nail on head here. The real issue comes from the spiky nature of the Rune-keeper. I'm taking steps to try to reduce this, but this also will be an ongoing project. The RK is a solid class and plays very well in both PvE and PvMP. The first step I've taken is to increase the Crit Defence granted to Creeps from the Armour passive and the Crit Defence Corruption. The second step was to provide additional Tactical Mitigation to Creeps through skills/traits.

...that and the RK can cast on the run and are not nearly as squishy as they should be for the amount of damage they put out.

To counter this you could always make significant buffs to the primary Creep tactical class...i.e. the Defiler.

Remove the CD on the out-of-combat rez and maybe increase the percentage chance to Tenderize to stun, just to name a couple. You could also significantly boost the debuff capability of our gourds but I figure that would be asking too much.

[Thorandril]

Class based suggestions for creeps go in their own threads in the creep forums.

My only input on the matter is regarding the comment on spike damage/RK's. If you buff creep critical defences, it hurts melee the most and barely affects runekeepers thanks to their self-buffs and Perfect Imagery. I don't have an answer for fixing the damage RK's can deliver but I sincerely hope you keep that in mind.

[Zeutheir520]

These are the most pressing questions for me as we creep up on Isengard.

Heh. See what he did there?

[WiteWolfEye]

Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions Kelsen. Turbine made the right turn(finally.) I agree with Nostra, crit defense ups are going to hurt melees a LOT more than tacticals

[Equendil]

4. You hit the nail on head here. The real issue comes from the spiky nature of the Rune-keeper. I'm taking steps to try to reduce this, but this also will be an ongoing project. The RK is a solid class and plays very well in both PvE and PvMP. The first step I've taken is to increase the Crit Defence granted to Creeps from the Armour passive and the Crit Defence Corruption.

More crit defence won't make a difference as far as forums are concerned. The vast majority of people only see they've been hit for xxxx damage, hardly makes a difference to them if it's once a minute, once an hour, or once a month or only happened to someone else in a screenshot. Resists were vastly increased not so long ago, while tactical classes certainly noticed, all the complaining about Epic Conclusion or whatever didn't decrease one bit. Hell, forums would be a lot more quiet if tactical classes dealt *more* damage on average with less variance caused by critical hits and crit magnitude bonuses. Besides, this forum obsession over high critical hits is only going to lead to a situation where those classes with very high sustained damage output but who deliver their hits in smaller chunks very fast (reaver for instance) end up disproportionately better than slower hard hitting classes.

Speaking of reavers. My reaver's devastating strike will deal about 700 damage if it doesn't crit, and 1400-1500 damage when it does, about 60% of the time. My minstrel's call to fate might deal about 500 damage if it does not crit provided she's got ballad of resonance up and a light debuff on her target, about 1600 when it does crit, about once every 10 hits, and *might* reach upwards of 2k on a devastating crit (more likely 1850 or so), maybe 3% of the time although how often depends exactly how much crit defence her target might have (requalify to "once in a blue moon" if a defiler buff is involved). Now I'm going to ask, which of my reaver and my minstrel is doing the most damage with those skills on average, and which you intend to target for a double nerf because creeps are complaining about "tactical damage" being too high ?

If the damage potential of Epic Conclusion is considered too high, put a cap to it and be done with it.

[Parmur]

Kelsan,

thanks for taking the time to answer, but I somehow think one vital point is being missed:

To me, it is not so much the spike damage, that puts me off, it is the amount of cc on mostly freepside, but also on creepside! On my reaver, I can be chain stunned or perma slowed by loremasters and burgs and hunters and RKs and and and...

There is a simple solution:

After you get hit with a cc skill, you should get immunity to ANY and EVERY OTHER attempt to cc you for ten seconds. As it is now, I can be slowed with burning embers, stunned with Riddle by one burg and then tripped, hit by yet another loremaster with a stun and cannot do anything against that, as every skill from another person will stun me again. The result is instadeath and no chance to fight back.

You could also try and make pots work for once, since I am at the moment burning pots for nothing 60% of my time. They simply won´t release me from the stun I intended to use them against...

Thanks for listening

[ydoc]

If the damage potential of Epic Conclusion is considered too high, put a cap to it and be done with it.

I am gonna save you some trouble here equendil, and anyone else who has the idea that changing freeps X skill or modifying freeps X dmg is the answer to every question or problem. In a way I am helping Kelsen here too.

FREEPS are balanced for Player Versus Everyone, NOT PVMP.

This means very simply you can not take a freep player and nerf or buff them solely on pvmp concerns or problems. Rune Keepers are fine in pve, if you nerf there dps you kill there pve and everyone complains.

Kelsen has to come up with ideas, and solutions that will not affect the PVE world, but will solve the problem in PVMP.

The most obvious solution is to modify the creeps and give the creeps abilities/defenses/traits to counter freeps.

Why do you think every time the freeps get a lvl cap upgrade the creeps get buffs? It's because the freeps get balances and tweaks for the new pve content. Then the creeps have to be balanced and tweaked to match them.

[MechFierce]

I am gonna save you some trouble here equendil, and anyone else who has the idea that changing freeps X skill or modifying freeps X dmg is the answer to every question or problem. In a way I am helping Kelsen here too.

FREEPS are balanced for Player Versus Everyone, NOT PVMP.

This means very simply you can not take a freep player and nerf or buff them solely on pvmp concerns or problems. Rune Keepers are fine in pve, if you nerf there dps you kill there pve and everyone complains.

Kelsen has to come up with ideas, and solutions that will not affect the PVE world, but will solve the problem in PVMP.

The most obvious solution is to modify the creeps and give the creeps abilities/defenses/traits to counter freeps.

Why do you think every time the freeps get a lvl cap upgrade the creeps get buffs? It's because the freeps get balances and tweaks for the new pve content. Then the creeps have to be balanced and tweaked to match them.

Many things are wrong with your logic.

First of all, they can change skills. There is a buff when freeps enter monsterplay that can change skills/attributes when they enter the zone. This does not affect their PvE nature at all.

Second, it would be dumb to continuously be reactive rather than proactive when it comes to balancing. This is going to be a two way street, at the moment Turbine has been ignoring freeps while adjusting creeps to "fix" pvmp since the very beginning of the game... it hasn't worked out well at all! Being reactive like this only increases the chances of making one side overpowered while the other is screwed. The teeter totter of unbalance is getting old. We really need a holistic look at classes to finally balance pvmp.

[D.Laucsap]

4. You hit the nail on head here. The real issue comes from the spiky nature of the Rune-keeper. I'm taking steps to try to reduce this, but this also will be an ongoing project. The RK is a solid class and plays very well in both PvE and PvMP. The first step I've taken is to increase the Crit Defence granted to Creeps from the Armour passive and the Crit Defence Corruption. The second step was to provide additional Tactical Mitigation to Creeps through skills/traits.

This is truly amazing. Creeps are finally getting to see some validation for their concerns. Thank you for addressing the critical chance defense issue in the form of passives and the crit prot corruptions. Great solution, btw. Currently, the highest I can get my critical protection up to is 5.7% (w/ rank 4 armour + prot traits). Is there any likelihood of that surpassing 10% with the changes? I don't know off hand what the highest critical chance an RK skill can get is...

And what is this I read?!.... "additional Tactical Mitigation through skills/traits" (not corruptions)? Kelsan, I'm so glad to see you keeping up with the forums.

My only input on the matter is regarding the comment on spike damage/RK's. If you buff creep critical defences, it hurts melee the most and barely affects runekeepers thanks to their self-buffs and Perfect Imagery. I don't have an answer for fixing the damage RK's can deliver but I sincerely hope you keep that in mind.

I assume you mean freep melee classes with the creep crit defense increases. Crit prot may effect guardians and wardens (tanks) more than it does burgs and champs, since they can and usually do have crits over the 15% stat cap. With LI legacies on most classes, the gap between crit and no crit diminishes rapidly. The changes Kelsan is proposing are intended to address the RK tactical damage specifically. We all know RKs have an abnormally high critical chance that our max crit prot traits and armor cannot contend with. In fact, creep classes with rank 4 armour passives or higher will have the most to gain from the increase, as the passive contributes the most to the percentage crit protected. Crit prot currently scales only up to 15% crit cap attacks and for devastate chances no more than 2% is protected (might be higher for the WL). So a change was clearly needed. As for RK tactical devastate damage we don't know if the effect will really be minimal if he plans to give creeps tactical mitigation skills/traits.


------------

so RKs..
Too many people misunderstand this fact but "critical protection" does NOT mean damage reduction, or even damage avoidance. It means critical avoidance chance. If I get hit, then I get hit for damage. It does not mean your hopes were crushed because you did not hit me for twice as much, and it doesn't mean your skills don't work either. You scored the damaging blow, but my "critical protection" chance prevented you from scoring more damage than normal. That's all it is. It does not reduce the damage you see from devastates, that is dependent upon the class thats doing the damage AND my armor (tactical mitigations). It also means you got past my 2% dev crit prot. RKs can blast through any mitigation rating creeps have, even if thats all they trait for. Its because of their extremely high damage potential and their ability to penetrate our defenses so easily. So with my 30% lightning mitigation, if I receive a 3k Epic Conclusion, you were really doing almost 4k. And with my 10% resist and your abnormally high crit chance, you blew through my resist check and my critical avoidance (crit prot) check easily, that leaves me with tactical mitigation... and it didn't save me from that 3k EC.

[MechFierce]

I hope Kelsan combines some of these corruptions.

Four of seven slots dedicated to moral only.. it is a bit ridiculous.

The penalties should be removed as well in my opinion, they are doubly penalizing people with these corruptions.

[Victiswolf]

The problem with RK's is not just epic conclusion and the resulting 3.5k+ crits. Their normal attacks can also hit for 1.5k. With that kind of damage they shoulden't have any other advantages period. Especially when it only takes 10 seconds to burn a creep to cinders. They shoulden't have instant stuns or 70% slows on top of massive ranged DPS that has no inductions. If your putting out extreme amounts of ranged DPS without the weakness of inductions then as a trade off your other abilities should be very limited or on long inductions.

I do not see the logic in PVE or PVMP in having a Hybrid class that can heal effectivly to the point of being almost on par with a minstrel in raid healing and also having top tier DPS thats better then a hunters. They also get ranged CC/snares that have no inductions either. All of this with most of their attacks including some of their most powerful having no inductions whatsoever so they can run around kiting while pumping all of this out. It's like they are a melee class with a 20 meter range and the best single target dps but waring cloth as a way to try offset this. (not that it is enough)

PVMP is currently flooded with Rune Keepers on the 2 servers i play on because they are head and shoulders better then any other class apart from burgs and can solo any creep class without the need of tactics. stun+dps1+dps2+snare+dps3+dps4- boom+ Epic C.

I know some people will argue against direct nerfs to a class and normally i would agree. PVMP shoulden't effect PVE. I just don't see any other way that rune keepers can be balanced in ettens without making changes to the class. They either need to nerf their top heavy dps while giving them better power management to offset the nerf so it becomes sustained dps or give their best dps and cc skills skills 2 second inductions. (ranged skills that crit for 1.5k+ should have some sort of induction)

The only viable way to boost creeps enough to purely counter rune keeper damage would be to give creeps high rank curruption traits that boost our fire/frost/lightening defence by 20%. Make it a Rank 7+ curruption. They could even stagger it so lower rank creeps can slot a trait that give 10% fire/frost/lightening migration at Rank 6. You could also have higher rank individual traits such as lightening migration trait that boosts lightening defence by 30% (rank 9 curruptions) etc...

/edit

Creep curruptions are lacking. No one slots migration curruptions as they only offer a extra 1% - 3% increase in migration to one damage type. Creeps just slot 4 health curruptions and 2 damage ones. All of the rest are not worth slotting. Migration curruptions in general need to be at least 10% too 20% increase considering it only offers defence against 1 damage type. Even the ones offering a boost to 3 different damage types should be a 10% increase to be worth it because every slot a creep uses on migrations means he loses the option of more health or damage. (which is far more usefull and comes in higher percentages)

[MechFierce]

Agreed on everything Victus, great to see another like-minded player.

[Shreck_Eldar]

4. You hit the nail on head here. The real issue comes from the spiky nature of the Rune-keeper. I'm taking steps to try to reduce this, but this also will be an ongoing project. The RK is a solid class and plays very well in both PvE and PvMP. The first step I've taken is to increase the Crit Defence granted to Creeps from the Armour passive and the Crit Defence Corruption. The second step was to provide additional Tactical Mitigation to Creeps through skills/traits.

I cant believe im reading this, as stated before it doesnt matter how often a EC will crit can be once a day once a week or even once a month,it can take even a year but if a RK crits a EC on a creep the next day 50 ppl will be complaining on forums altough only one got the hit.

Creeps hate RKs its a known fact and even if devs give more crit defences to creeps 4K Ecs will still continue to happen. EC was made for high crits, even the name of the skill says all.

Epic Conclusion it is meant to be epic.

No matter what ppl say RK is a squishy class most have 4.5-5.5K morale range with 0 defences except for a bit of parry and evade. I know a bunch of reavers that can do 5K damage before a RK does 9K on them.

If devs nerf the crits on freep side by passivly increasing creeps defence RKs will be the class that will be less hurt for it, im already thinking who hard will be to land a critical hit with my LM but ofc 1st ill have to pass for the incredible high resistance creeps have on tactical skills to even have a attempt on a critical.

Assuming these changes come at increased cap to 75 we will have 12K morale WLs and 11K Morale Reavers walking around with crit immunity to most classes except Hunters Burgs and RKs, rly nice way to achieve balance in PvMP (sorry for the sarcasm).


My suggestion: Make all resistances, mitigations and crit defences traits that give those buffs in exchange for morale, that will be balance.