Getting Rocked

[istvana]

At the risk of unnecessary repetition - please keep an eye on levels 5-25 or so especially for the benefit of new players. U23 made mobs harder to kill - this is fine but don't make the mobs even harder at these levels if you find (as you should) that you need to do this for slightly higher levels.

As to blue loremaster - looking into general changes in how the pet buff works is good but taking away bonus levels right *now* starting at level 118 makes it very hard for us especially in the new dungeons against bosses. Please have the next fix give something to make up for that while you consider how you want to proceed on a longer term basis. I wouldn't care so much but the combination of this with the major reduction to pet morale really hurts.

[maartena]

I think we're going to have to redesign that trait to be a more general Uber Pet Buff rather than a level bonus. The way levels progress in the game at this point makes the current version problematic at cap, and weird at various level break points. I'll see what I can do about it.

-Vastin

That might be a good plan for the future. But.... don't leave it broken please while you redesign it

[idontcare789]

Going to fix that 2 million defile heal on a 15s CD? Or 50k steadfast barrage?

[scorrp10]

You know, considering how leveling UP seems to have hammered all my ratings into the ground, I am not really sure you want your bear 3 levels higher. Lvl 123 caps will probably calculate to somewhere around a mil, kicking ratings into single digits.

Or better hope you got an itemlevel 420 stickpin if regrowth stashed away...

[gildhur]

In a more general sense, my apologies again for the general balance instability of late. There's a big project going on in the background to dramatically reduce the amount of game data and tie everything into a much smaller data set that we can actually manage day to day - those of you who have been around for a long time have no doubt noticed that lots of the side systems in the game were falling further out of date because we couldn't keep up with them, and much of the game was becoming trivial because it couldn't be updated to reflect changes in skills and the like.

OOOH, now this sounds promising. Any chance someone could write up a dev diary? I would love to hear some of the sausage-making details on what this entails.

[greendarner]

Could someone give me an example of a "side system"? I don't understand that.

[Guhrasoh]

@Vastin
You might want to have a look at the Fire-drakelings in Talath Úrui and Nargroth, they spawn with a "burning" debuff that kills them very fast. That suicidal behavior makes finishing the "Cavern Drakes" quest rather annoying.

[auximenes]

In a more general sense, my apologies again for the general balance instability of late. There's a big project going on in the background to dramatically reduce the amount of game data and tie everything into a much smaller data set that we can actually manage day to day - those of you who have been around for a long time have no doubt noticed that lots of the side systems in the game were falling further out of date because we couldn't keep up with them, and much of the game was becoming trivial because it couldn't be updated to reflect changes in skills and the like.

Thanks for keeping us updated.

OOOH, now this sounds promising. Any chance someone could write up a dev diary? I would love to hear some of the sausage-making details on what this entails.

/signed

[JERH]

I was just running around landscape with reasonably equipped 118 warden doing grey mountain quests when I looked at 2 encounters. One with the wolverines near oinsbridge 19 of 22 attacks hit or critical. 2 partial evades, 1 miss. Wow. Second battle 16 of 18 hit, 2 partial parries. The elder tree guy critted for 47k. All normal landscape mobs. No elites, no bosses. That was some powerup table change!

Also, as I watched my champ level there was a huge drop (already reported elsewhere) in both offensive and massively so for defensive stat %s as I went from 117 to 120. For example physical mitigation went from 53% to 29% with the same 75k armor valuation. So, for other characters I am looking at using the stone of the tortoise to stop leveling at 118 and finish the quests, instances, and do resource instances and the weeklies at 118. I see zero advantage to go past 118 with the massive cliff in loss of effectiveness at 120.

Sort of sad imho.

[Raymore]

Fix to go in tomorrow.

[UsaByz]

Would it be reasonable to assume we will be getting things like virtues updated from irrelevance?
and is it a possibility to see the trait trees further extended so we can get a fresh feel for some class? or is it a done product?

[sapienze]

Could someone give me an example of a "side system"? I don't understand that.

Virtues, Corruptions, Race traits, Class traits, LIs, Relics, Consumables, anything that hasn't been brought up to the current level cap needing upgraded as the progression increases. Those are only small example. There are lots more.

Would it be reasonable to assume we will be getting things like virtues updated from irrelevance?
and is it a possibility to see the trait trees further extended so we can get a fresh feel for some class? or is it a done product?

This would not be reasonable considering the current state. I can see no new additions to the trait trees which would make sense. We already have too many trait tree points. Adding more traits and skills to allot our points only makes things more difficult to manage in balancing all the classes we already have. It would amount to fluff. Also considering there are many other features needing brought up to the current level cap this would take away from the already limited time.


Given a choice between more Trait Tree additions or PvMP gear, I'd rather see the latter. Making balancing easier to manage in the long term. Though I suspect both are very low on the essential side.

[Vastin]

Would it be reasonable to assume we will be getting things like virtues updated from irrelevance?
and is it a possibility to see the trait trees further extended so we can get a fresh feel for some class? or is it a done product?

Virtues are slated for an upcoming refresh, at the very least to keep their values relevant, and possibly a more significant redesign.

As for the Trait trees, I can't say for certain, but IMO I don't think you'll see much further extension of them - they are a bit too large and complex to maintain as is, so making them bigger is not high on our list of things to do.

On the other hand, you will likely see further tweaks and redesigns to the existing trees, such as the recently revamped classes saw. We'd like to at least change them up a bit now and again to keep things refreshing occasionally, but that will more likely involve replacing or redesigning existing traits rather than simply adding new ones.

-Vastin

[UsaByz]

Virtues are slated for an upcoming refresh, at the very least to keep their values relevant, and possibly a more significant redesign.

As for the Trait trees, I can't say for certain, but IMO I don't think you'll see much further extension of them - they are a bit too large and complex to maintain as is, so making them bigger is not high on our list of things to do.

On the other hand, you will likely see further tweaks and redesigns to the existing trees, such as the recently revamped classes saw. We'd like to at least change them up a bit now and again to keep things refreshing occasionally, but that will more likely involve replacing or redesigning existing traits rather than simply adding new ones.

-Vastin

Yeah i understand new skills and such arent reasonable probably. i mean more like, can the current trait trees be expended to where we are specialized again? for example, 91 trait points is easily viable to run 2 trees. can one single tree have buffs added to where we can comfortably spend 3/4 points on it with some assumed better bonuses?
Another thing, would it be maybe possible to remove/replace some irrelevant traits/skills on the trees and have something else in their place?

one more thing id like to ask, why is fire damage so prevalent the last 3 years, and why are most bosses so punishing for melee when the melee classes are already so behind so much of the time? maybe they should be reclassified as support?

[YamydeAragon]

Virtues are slated for an upcoming refresh, at the very least to keep their values relevant, and possibly a more significant redesign.

As for the Trait trees, I can't say for certain, but IMO I don't think you'll see much further extension of them - they are a bit too large and complex to maintain as is, so making them bigger is not high on our list of things to do.

On the other hand, you will likely see further tweaks and redesigns to the existing trees, such as the recently revamped classes saw. We'd like to at least change them up a bit now and again to keep things refreshing occasionally, but that will more likely involve replacing or redesigning existing traits rather than simply adding new ones.

-Vastin

Virtues upgrade &/or revamp are great news. Thanks ahead for doing this.

[Daniyel]

why is fire damage so prevalent the last 3 years, and why are most bosses so punishing for melee when the melee classes are already so behind so much of the time? maybe they should be reclassified as support?

If you try the caverns of thrumfall t2, fire damage is the absolute worse - my RK with capped crit and mastery was doing 4.5K DPS on the fire-resistant mobs in there, but melted the shadow-glass spiders easily.

I think it would be much less work to just give champions fire oil for their sword XD.