Dev Diary Feedback: Combat Changes

[Clover]

Looking at the combat system as it has grown over the last year, the Systems team has learned a lot from player behaviors, playstyles, and how they interact with all the different types of monsters in The Lord of the Rings Online™.

Read more about the upcoming combat changes and post your comments here!

[Grampsaz]

Good diary, better change.

The days of a lv 50 Tank with 70% avoidance is thankfully, over.


Little to no adjustment in game play is needed. Learning and understanding the new UI and point ratings is what took me the longest to understand.

[Benedor]

Nice diary, however you used "then" instead of "than" in several places. Not to be a stickler for grammar and spelling, but....

Feel free to delete this post after you have made your corrections to the article.

[ararax2]

Defence Ratings (Mitigations) are heavily influenced by your Armour values. In Moria, armour now contributes to non-common mitigations, like Shadow and Fire. This means that every character who absorbs damage will care about gaining the highest amount of armour they can find, since it will contribute to all of your Defence Ratings .

FINALLYYYYYYYY

Overall looks like a great job hakai

[Sildamor]

- tiny fractional percentages just aren’t fun (...) over 10+ years
That makes sense. Oh I just got a uber new shield, now my mitigation is 54%... wait... with my 10 levels old shield it was 53.7%.... hum... it does hurt... even as it will be the same, big numbers make people happy lol

- reduce the penalties for fighting up-level.
What I take from that is: go fight white mobs, lower mobs will be easier to kill and higher level than you will be harder. Go do white quests, stop doing purple/red quests! I hope they give us enough white quests... =)


- “overcharge” their points in order to gain all new partial avoidances
Oh well... at least the hard cap is not the end of the road... you gain extra mitigation (if I understood that right, if you have like 40% mitigation + 30% parry mitigation, you will avoid 70% of that attack damage)

-new Devastate chance
Cool... but where is the rating (%) for normal crits??? 3% tactical crit cant be right... and HOW BIG IS the devastate change?
Auto-attack crit: 125%
Skill crit: 150%
Devastate: ????

- (Mitigations) are heavily influenced by your Armour values
So finally people can say: hey ask that dude in heavy armor to tank, I am just a hunter in medium ^_^. It was really funny how little influence the kind of armor did on fights before.

[CU5]

Nice to get a dev diary on this. It's one of the things I've been most curious about. Of course, the real proof will be in how it actually plays, but extra info never hurts.

[farnorthYP]

Just want to state that if you cared about understanding how to play your best with the old combat system and wish to continue that trend into moria, then you are in for an inital shock. The new combat system is a major shock to the system and takes a bit to get used to. However, if you are willing to adapt and open to change then you will get a handle on things and be able to be as successful a player in Moria as you are in SoA currently at lvl 50 just give it time folks.

Learn to love your tooltips as you mouse over agi/vit/might etc in your character journal. They will give you the new percentages (just try not to be so alarmed by how low they seem.) From what i have seen explained in the forums and what I have experienced myself there seems to be a number of new checks built into the system in terms of hitting a mob and being hit as opposed to the old system of just a few checks. You'll especially not want to ignore things like partial B/P/E percentages and new devastate crit percentages as well.

[farnorthYP]

- reduce the penalties for fighting up-level.
What I take from that is: go fight white mobs, lower mobs will be easier to kill and higher level than you will be harder. Go do white quests, stop doing purple/red quests! I hope they give us enough white quests... =).

If you do all the quests in Eregion and then enter Moria you will consistently be doing dark blue and sometimes ligh blue quests from one end of the mine to the other. The quest rewards are still quite good even though they are blues. I was able to go from 50-60 in just under 9 days and still had a ton of quests left to do. If you insist on doing quests that are yellow or even orange you'll find that you level much slower since stuff is that much harder to fight.

-new Devastate chance
Cool... but where is the rating (%) for normal crits??? 3% tactical crit cant be right... and HOW BIG IS the devastate change?
Auto-attack crit: 125%
Skill crit: 150%
Devastate: ????.

If I remeber correctly the devastate perc. and the partial B/P/E perc. are roughly half of what regular crit and B/P/E perc. are. Someone please correct me if i'm wrong but pretty sure thats right. That may sound like a very small amount considering you have a 13% ranged Crit your Dev. Rng. Crit. will be 6.5% but it all really seems to proc quite often and dev. crits are waaaaay juicy

[Hammerfast]

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[Ayrolen]

Little to no adjustment in game play is needed. Learning and understanding the new UI and point ratings is what took me the longest to understand.

/nodnod I still get a bit confused sometimes, but I've definitely adjusted. It helps that when you hover over the numbers, it gives you percentages since that's what I'm so used to. I welcome the change, though, even if I was quite put off by all of it at first. I just have to try even harder to be uber now.

[Wisdomandlore]

You could at least be fully honest. For example, this quote stuck out to me:

We were literally giving out tiny bits of effectiveness for our characters, and generally, although some may disagree, tiny fractional percentages just aren’t fun.

That's even MORE true in the new combat system. Wait till you get items with +220 Evade rating an realize that is .1%. Or wait until you realize 400 Tactical Crit rating is .6%. And stats like Might, Agility, and Fate influence these numbers even less than in the old combat system.

Oh, and wait till you level up and your mitigations and BPE go down.


There are a few traits that give out huge bonuses, but not many.

At least be completely truthful and say "We needed room to grow. Players were already reaching the upper limits of avoidance and mitigation."

[Kentelyoo]

I'm sure this will be cool.. even if I don't understand half of it.

I've never understood those numbers in the current system. I admit I never took the time to try because I did not really care. The only thing that mattered to me was: I'm a Guardian, I'm expected to tank and keep aggro, its working fine, my new armour and mace are certainly better than my old ones because the numbers describing it are higher (whatever they mean) and because I just got them as a reward for those new quests, I can solo mobs at my level and have a hard time killing higher level mobs and I find it logical, and I'm happy with all that.

Will I ever need to understand it more than this ? I mean, how the new system will affect my way of playing ? I don't mean to be critical, I'm just curious.

[CU5]

After actually reading the diary, I think I like it. It seems like they're replacing the old "here's a percentage, and we tweak it up or down depending on what level monster you're fighting" with a simpler check that (all numbers invented) "OK, a level 50 monster will have 5000 points, a level 60 monster 6000 points, a level 70 monster 7000 points, and you roll your number against their number." (And if it's rolling one number against another, there's no way you can ever reach 100% success, just like they wanted.)

So let's say you have the average amount of points at a given level, then you can expect to take on on-level mobs. But if you have much more points than normal, then you can expect to take on higher-level mobs without an additional penalty to avoidances, for example. (Conversely, if you have less points than average, you're in for a world of hurt.) That'd be great if true; it really would mean cranking up your ratings higher and higher would have a measurable effect on gameplay, instead of being diminished into oblivion when you try to take on a mob 2-4 levels above you, and so make gear with lots of points more desirable.

The other thing I like about the new system is the partials and devastates. That should add some more flavor to combat, especially since I tend to gear for criticals. I am a little disappointed to see that partials seem to just be another fixed value event, rather than having a range of effectiveness (for example, if you get a partial parry event, your character might always mitigate 30% of incoming damage, rather than maybe 20% one time, and 40% another time). I guess it keeps things more understandable, though.

Armour changes are also nice, although it seems armour does much less mitigation against non-common types still, so it remains to be seen how useful having lots of armour will be. I'm used to pretty much ignoring my armour value right now, because it was "good enough" and so many other stats gave much better bang for the buck. (Also, there never seemed to be a significant difference between light and medium and heavy classes; my minstrel in light armor + shield has as much armour as my burglar. I hope the difference is more exaggerated in Moria...)

[darkchronus]

- reduce the penalties for fighting up-level.
What I take from that is: go fight white mobs, lower mobs will be easier to kill and higher level than you will be harder. Go do white quests, stop doing purple/red quests! I hope they give us enough white quests... =)

I took this to mean that your mitigations won't be penalized as harshly for fighting harder things (if you have appropriate gear). In context the line is "This enables truly daring players to reduce the penalties for fighting up-level". Truly daring players implies that you're fighting harder things, eh? ><

Poor wording. Any chance on clarification?

((EDIT)): I'd also like to add that I like this change Didn't mean to not comment on it at all lol ^^

[Eavis]

Good diary, very helpful, however... I play a Guardian this isnt to complain about no more 100% B/P/E I think that it is good there will be a bit less, however two questions on my mind are parry and Guardians Ward

As a Guardian I personally find parry a tough avoidance to grind, and at the same time I find I prefer its reactive skills the most.

I find block easy to get and not just that you get it with great stats (e.g Etched Beryl Bracelet) where as parry is tough requiring you to sacrifice stats. Will parry be brought somewhat to par, or balanced with block? or will it still take a backseat?

The second question is concerning Guardians Ward, currently with the advanced trait it gives 5% b/p, 5% common mit, and -10% armour wear, will Guardians Ward still give these nice values or will that also suffer a blow?

[Ragnvald]

So its still working on %, I dont see the change. Just seems its complicating it needlessly.

But I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.

[NotYetMeasured]

After a first read, the new combat system seems perhaps a little more complicated than it needs to be. Partial damage avoidance is a nice concept, but multiple levels of criticals has the potential to be confusing. Hopefully the casual player can remain oblivious, but those that want to understand the system will have to track more numbers. I do look forward to a complete analysis of the mechanics, whether provided by devs or the community.

Making combat more gear-dependent makes me unhappy. If twinked 55s (even if the gear was bought with their own hard-earned cash) are running around eating the lunch of normal 60s, I agree with the comment that we'll probably see more gold-selling and fewer casual players.

[Garudo]

I like the sounds of it. Even though i have not played Beta, i can already tell that this system will take a while to get used to. It will take a while for players to adapt and feel powerful again.

However i was just thinking. Not many people who play the game actually read the forums. So for those people who dont read the forums...when they first enter MoM they will think everything got "nerfed".

On launch day i expect to see A LOT of complaints about this new system, even though in the long run its a huge improvement.

[greenie30]

Defence Ratings (Mitigations) are heavily influenced by your Armour values. In Moria, armour now contributes to non-common mitigations, like Shadow and Fire. This means that every character who absorbs damage will care about gaining the highest amount of armour they can find, since it will contribute to all of your Defence Ratings .

Can you explain how you expect the lowest armored classes to fare in this?
Since there is only one currently and one future, Loremaster and Runekeeper respectively.

As it stands at Moria release you have:
2 light armor classes (lorem runek)
4 medium armor classes (burg, mins, hunt, ward)
3 heavy armor classes (guard, capt, champ)

That looks to me like 7/9 classes will be able to take advantage of their armor bonuses while 2 classes are left behind due to the restrictions.

Since burglars, minstrels, and hunters (perhaps warden?) all have cc skills - how is it justified any longer that they should be better armored and achieve magical resistance when that was previously available with stats when a class like a hunter pumps out that much dps?

Shouldn't the 2 magical classes have some sort of innate guard against that type of damage since they don't wear heavy armor? Why is the magical resistance being coupled with high armor classes instead of those without the armor...

Pre-moria a low armored class could try to improve their magical resistances since their armor was unable to improve via stat increases.

Namely:
Might - Common dmg mitigation
Vitality - Wound/disease/poison resistance shadow/fire mitigation
Will - Fear effects

In moria you are saying it's even worse for a light armored class to protect themselves now from even NON common damage types because the stats no longer contribute?

I'd like to know in what way they have been balanced to compensate for this change that seems to aid every class except 2 that will not be able to pass the light armor level. Are you offering up more items that increase armor that can ONLY be used by the 2 lowest armored classes? Something like a potion, a buff, anything?

[Wisdomandlore]

Can you explain how you expect the lowest armored classes to fare in this?
Since there is only one currently and one future Loremaster and Runekeeper respectively.

As it stands at Moria release you have:
2 light armor classes (lorem runek)
4 medium armor classes (burg, mins, hunt, ward)
3 heavy armor classes (guard, capt, champ)

That looks to me like 7/9 classes will be able to take advantage of their armor bonuses while 2 classes are left behind due to the restrictions.

Since burglars, minstrels, and hunters (perhaps warden?) all have cc skills - how is it justified any longer that they should be heavily armored and achieve magical resistance when that was previously available with stats?

Shouldn't the 2 magical classes have some sort of innate guard against that type of damage since they don't wear heavy armor? Why is the magical resistance being coupled with high armor classes instead of those without the armor...

Pre-moria a low armored class could try to improve their magical resistances since their armor was unable to improve via stat increases.

Namely:
Might - Common dmg mitigation
Vitality - Wound/disease/poison resistance shadow/fire mitigation
Will - Fear effects

In moria you are saying it's even worse for a light armored class to protect themselves now from even NON common damage types?

I'd like to know in what way they have been balanced to compensate for this change that seems to aid every class except 2 that will not be able to pass the light armor level. Are you offering up more items that increase armor that can ONLY be used by the 2 lowest armored classes? Something like a potion, a buff, anything?

A couple points:

-You can still boost Shadow, Fire, Ice, etc mitigations without using Armor Value. These can come from buffs, virtues, gear, etc.

-Minstrels are primarily a Light Armor class.

-Minstrels have minor, I repeat MINOR, CC.

-Loremasters have TONS of CC.

-Runekeepers and Minstrels can make up for the lack of armor through healing.

-Loremasters can make up for the lack of armor through pets and CC.

[treefallingquietly]

You misspelled 'defense' there is no c.

I noticed people in this forum also misspelled it

[Alakranus]

The armour ratings on most gear have also been buffed substantially. Not sure how it is for light armour wearers but my burglar in beta has over 3,000 armour thanks to buffs to armour and slotting traits that grant armour bonuses.

Some people may not like this new system but it was necessary or else people would soon be running around with ridiculous evade or block %.

[cicdle]

Just wanted to say that having played the new system in beta for a couple months I kinda like it. It was a shock at first that I couldn't do exactly the stuff I did before, but once I learned how combat 'felt' it was quite fun. Fighting mobs below your level has become easier, while fighting above yourself has become harder. From a burg perspective it became even more about picking my battles and learning the new trade off between avoidance and dps.

[LagunaD]

The dev diary is a nice first introduction to the new combat system, but I would have liked to see more details. If you are going to change everything we have come to understand about the mechanics over 18 months, I think you could provide a bit more information about what will actually be different - not just the presentation of the stats (ratings instead of percentages), but how actual in-game performance is affected. The article talks about ratings and things scaling, but doesn't ever mention the significant fact that everything has scaled dramatically *downward*...

The section on Devastates borders on deception, in my opinion, by suggesting that these are an additional chance to do more criticals than you are already doing, when in fact, it is an additional chance on top of a base chance that has been slashed. I think the new combat system works OK, but let's be honest - there is a huge nerf built into it. If there is a case to be made that the nerf was required, fine, make it. But don't tell people you are adding a few percent chance to "super-crit" while leaving out the fact that their chance for a *normal* crit will be about 1/3 what it is on Live.

There were a lot of other implications left unmentioned. Buffing your Might, Agility and Fate are now basically pointless, because changes like +15 in these stats will be even more invisible now than on Live. Buffing these stats by +15 now adds at most +30 to some rating that is measured in thousands.

It's going to take a while for people (including me) to adjust to the reality that you should pretty much ignore stats on items other than Armour, Vitality/Morale or rating bonuses.

The relative value of different Virtues is dramatically affected too. -vulnerability virtues are now *huge*. +Armour virtues are too. Determination, Discipline, Idealism...arguably not worth slotting any more, at least not for their primary stat bonuses.

[Gillianrial]

Admittedly, I do not understand the new system at all...but what I took away from that diary is that this just became a gear chase. No?