Upcoming Changes to PvMP!

[I_fail_irl]

Perhaps they have been listening to the sarcastic suggestions of reducing creep movement?

[Ionie]

Crit reduction will be higher than it is currently, as the armor passive provides a boost. On top of that are the crit reduction corruptions, which are optional to slot and reduce it further. Not that I wouldn't prefer they come as ranked passives, just wanted to point out that you'll be getting a boost to crit reduction whether or not you are traiting for it--just less than the maximum.

I hear you. But when Turbine says there will be a "small" passive increase in crit reduction chance due to armour alone, I presume it probably means "miniscule."

[Tiffanies]

What happened to adjusting rank requirements? I hope that's still in the works.

Just did some rough calculations (as I'm sure many less noobish than myself have done in the past:

Been playing for just under 2 months or so and am 20k inf from rank 7. So that's approx. 100k inf in 2 months, playing approx. 6 hours per day.

Rank 15 requires around 2.6 million inf (unless the wiki page needs updating)...

So, rank 15 will take around 4.3 years to achieve.

(unfortunately 6 hours per day wont be possible once I'm sadly back at work... lets make it 2 hours per day, making it 12.9 years to reach rank 15.)

Now I'm all for having something to achieve (in fact I'd probably not play once the inf became worthless), but this is pretty excessive.

Unfortunatly the wiki page does need updateing, rank 15 is 4,954,500 infamy. Not going to enjoy the maths on that one i think.

[ZeroSpartan]

How about giving us more Corruption slots?

One at rank 3.

One at rank 6.

Or something like that, it would be nice.

[Nimithril]

yeah and freep virtues dont have negatives...corruptions have big negatives.

Yeah...I have to admit that surprised me when I went to equip my warg....if ranking for a creep is akin to levelling for a freep, why on earth should you have to trade one thing for another. I certainly don't remember giving up on power when my health went up at each level on my freeps.

[Wulfhen]

[/LIST]
I hope all these new potions will have separate cooldown timers.


This is a nice start. I hope there's a lot more changes coming for this book.

If that is the case, I hope freep ones get swapped over too. It's a choice of which potion to pop, when, and for what cause. Always has been freepside. It's a good thing they're bringing em in for creeps, but.. yeah.

[tetrasodium]

[FONT=Verdana]So in another thread I informed everyone that I have the magical list of PvMP changes coming in the as yet to be dated, Book 7. In the coming weeks we will be releasing some of these changes for everyone to see and consume. We understand that many players have been patiently waiting to find out what we have in store for monster play, so without further delay, here is the first listing of upcoming changes coming to a keep near you!


So here are just some of the changes we have in store for Book 7. We will release more information about upcoming changes in the weeks to come.

I'd really like to get excited about the changes, but that's about the biggest note I can find in there. Improvements to corruptions are nice yes, but I still don't have room to slot them over the +HP i'm practically forced into slotting as a creep now. My runekeeper isn't even traited for morale and has only a couple hunded HP less than my R7 spider with multiple corruption+class trait for +morale. The most telling divide between freep & creep effectiveness is the fact that the sub 60 solo instances have "boss" mobs that are tougher than many creeps.

The mitigation corruption changes are something that was needed a number of books back, the fact that almost nobody used them due to low effectiveness, high number of damage types coming at creeps, and the ease of using a different damage type as a freep was proof enough of that. My freep gets +mitigation free on traits that give other spiffy stuff and free on armor that gives other spiffy stuff, I'm pretty sure I get more +mitigation for more than one of the few non-common damage types freeps can be hit with than the corruptions give... and I haven't even tried for that specifically, it just came free with gear that adds to other stuff I wanted.

The pve time it takes to make money creepside to buy supplies is significant and consists of mindless grinding at best. The time it takes to make money freepside to make money is insignificant by comparison, some of the instances are likely to leave you walking away with 500s-1g after a single run before even factoring in the benefit of runes/settings/rare drops/etc.

The damage gap between freeps and creeps is just pathetic. My runekeeper has easily outdamaged my spider for 20-30 levels now.... and it's pretty much universally accepted without debate that level 60 RK DPS is too low. But you can take that a step further and say that my RK has better nuke on the run skillset than spiders thanks to all the new spider skills rooting the spider to cast them. My RK does a non-common damage type... my spider has a single skill that does a noncommon damage type at rank 13 in melee range, give them a trait to change everything to acid for god sake. The super high level of mitigation on my runekeeper's tactical skills is being addressed, is the super high level of mitigation on my spider's skills being addressed... or should a freaking slug be mitigating 20-30% common damage?

[*]Creep vendor and barter foods have been scrubbed. There will no longer be any issues where barter food is less desirable than vendor food or where higher ranked vendor/barter food is less desirable than lower ranked vendor/barter food.

Food freepside is practically free with the differences in rate of income that exist. Does this mean it's still on the 5m/5m duration/cooldown or is it going back to the 1h/1m(?) cooldown that was in place back in beta before it was changed to help cook crafters... which creeps lack.

[*]Monster Players will now have access to a set of new Critical Protection Boost corruptions. These corruptions will decrease the chance that an enemy will land a critical or devastating critical hit on the monster player. The basic Critical Protection Boost corruption is available at Rank 2 from the monster player trainer. The advanced Critical Protection Boost corruption is available at Rank 4 from the Core Corruptions trader.

So I have to slot corruptions for it? I get +crit rating on gear for free with other all sorts of other stats as a freep, when you add up all the trait+gear slots my freep even has roughly double the number of slots to improve itself. So are these corruptions high enough to make me immune to criticals without slotting every one of them... or just nullify the two new free +crit% slots freeps get with legendaries?

[*]Armour passives from Monster Players will now have a small bonus to critical protection for both normal and devastating critical attacks.

Small? Freeps get small bonus's to crit chance, crit damage, and even dev crit magnitude from gear for free... much of it comes with armor and other stats to boot. How small is small?

[*]Heal, heal over time, and damage over time skills will now properly critical.

My spider is still lacking in tactical crit chance last I checked... when exactly is it supposed to be getting crits on those DoT's?

Four new corruptions have been added for Monster Players. These corruptions are available at the following ranks and values:

1. Rank 2 (Trainable): Weapon Mitigation Boost (Rank 1) – adds +270 Ancient Dwarf, Beleriand, and Westernesse mitigation rating
2. Rank 3 (Barter): Weapon Mitigation Boost (Rank 2) – adds +360 Ancient Dwarf, Beleriand, and Westernesse mitigation rating
3. Rank 4 (Trainable): Skill Mitigation Boost (Rank 1) – adds +270 Fire, Frost, Light, and Lightning mitigation rating
4. Rank 5 (Barter): Skill Mitigation Boost (Rank 2) – adds +360 Fire, Frost, Light, and Lightning mitigation rating

Where exactly am I supposed to slot these? Is +270 ad/beleriand/westernesse really going to make up for the loss of a +morale corruption?... somehow I doubt it. Like I said before, I'm pretty sure I have gear giving me that much in mitigation for some of the few non-common damage that freeps face for free on top of other stuff I actually equipped the gear for.

As to the whole "leveling a freep and traiting it out is a lot of work" argument, I can assure you that I put in more time & effort ranking my creep than I did autopiloting my freep through PvE stuff considering much of that autopiloting was while I was at work and multitasking.

[Jalessa]

My spider is still lacking in tactical crit chance last I checked... when exactly is it supposed to be getting crits on those DoT's?

Your spider uses ranged attacks, not tactical. That's why you have ranged crit chance passives.

You will actually crit. I tested it out

As for the corruption slots, I'm looking into adding an additional slot for Creeps.

Edit: Monster Players will also have an innate protection against criticals - the passives and traits improve that.

[MistyMountains]

Your spider uses ranged attacks, not tactical. That's why you have ranged crit chance passives.

You will actually crit. I tested it out

As for the corruption slots, I'm looking into adding an additional slot for Creeps.

u rock Jalessa!

[Jalessa]

Food freepside is practically free with the differences in rate of income that exist. Does this mean it's still on the 5m/5m duration/cooldown or is it going back to the 1h/1m(?) cooldown that was in place back in beta before it was changed to help cook crafters... which creeps lack.

All creep food is on a 1m cooldown now. 30m-1h durations only apply to stat buff foods, which creeps do not have (yet). Generally, power/health restore foods last from 30s to 1m...which is how creep food durations are set up now.

[Chav]

Unfortunatly the wiki page does need updateing, rank 15 is 4,954,500 infamy. Not going to enjoy the maths on that one i think.

Something else to look forward to at retirement.

[sibara]

All creep food is on a 1m cooldown now. 30m-1h durations only apply to stat buff foods, which creeps do not have (yet). Generally, power/health restore foods last from 30s to 1m...which is how creep food durations are set up now.

Thank you Jalessa for the minor, and major tidbits

[tetrasodium]

All creep food is on a 1m cooldown now. 30m-1h durations only apply to stat buff foods, which creeps do not have (yet). Generally, power/health restore foods last from 30s to 1m...which is how creep food durations are set up now.

so they are more like potions that trigger a HoT type effect now? Or are they still out of combat to use things? I can't think of anything short of totally unbalanced "hey look a freep, let me eat this food and have so much ICMR that it can't hurt me once I start combat with it" style food that would make me really care about a 30s-1m duration out of combat long induction to use food item. It sounds like food has an entirely different purpose now with those durations, can you give more info?

[Jalessa]

so they are more like potions that trigger a HoT type effect now? Or are they still out of combat to use things? I can't think of anything short of totally unbalanced "hey look a freep, let me eat this food and have so much ICMR that it can't hurt me once I start combat with it" style food that would make me really care about a 30s-1m duration out of combat long induction to use food item. It sounds like food has an entirely different purpose now with those durations, can you give more info?

To re-iterate...your Creep food durations did not change, as they are not "stat foods". Their out-of-combat usage restriction did not change either. You cannot use them in combat.

They will still last from 30s to 1 min, depending on the food (their duration has not changed).

Edit: Also, none of the foods currently have ICMR (unless I missed looking at one on the vendors) - so not sure what you are claiming here.

[Chroner]

Edit: Also, none of the foods currently have ICMR (unless I missed looking at one on the vendors) - so not sure what you are claiming here.

i think the idea he was getting at was:

anything that gives you morale over time can be equated to ICMR. if food gives me 100 morale every 30 seconds, its similar to giving me +200 ICMR.

[NYSEguy1970]

Your spider uses ranged attacks, not tactical. That's why you have ranged crit chance passives.

You will actually crit. I tested it out

As for the corruption slots, I'm looking into adding an additional slot for Creeps.

Edit: Monster Players will also have an innate protection against criticals - the passives and traits improve that.

so, you are saying that our dot on TK and Toxin is capable of a crit? and not just the initial attack?

Also, the BOS shadow damage reflect is also capable of a crit now? and is it subject to shadow mitigation now as well or is it still a flat 20 pts? Also, any thoughts of scaling that damage shield up from 20 points since freeps got a boost to their overall morale. Seems like the damage from BOS should have scaled up as well.

[Jalessa]

i think the idea he was getting at was:

anything that gives you morale over time can be equated to ICMR. if food gives me 100 morale every 30 seconds, its similar to giving me +200 ICMR.

The amount of health/power your food provides is the same as a Freep food of the same type/strength. The only differences that the fixes provide were:

- Creep food didn't scale upwards correctly as you got higher ranked food.
- Creep food didn't have a 1m cooldown like the Freep counterparts.

You now have equivalent morale/power foods.

[Jalessa]

so, you are saying that our dot on TK and Toxin is capable of a crit? and not just the initial attack?

Also, the BOS shadow damage reflect is also capable of a crit now? and is it subject to shadow mitigation now as well or is it still a flat 20 pts? Also, any thoughts of scaling that damage shield up from 20 points since freeps got a boost to their overall morale. Seems like the damage from BOS should have scaled up as well.

Yes, all damage over time is now capable of a crit.

Damage reflects are still not crittable - I have a suspicion that none of them are capable of it, but I'm not sure why the damage numbers scale bigger. I'll keep looking into it though.

[Pusher]

Is there going to be any changes to the landscape and physical layout of things?

i.e., add new NPCs where none existed before, remove NPCs that have been in the same place since the game launched, add new quests on both sides so more of the map is traveled, etc.

[Jalessa]

Is there going to be any changes to the landscape and physical layout of things?

i.e., add new NPCs where none existed before, remove NPCs that have been in the same place since the game launched, add new quests on both sides so more of the map is traveled, etc.

Er, all of the terrain/layout changes were done with Moria. Other than tweaking and bug fixing, we do not plan to overhaul the landscape again for Book 7.

[NYSEguy1970]

Yes, all damage over time is now capable of a crit.

Damage reflects are still not crittable - I have a suspicion that none of them are capable of it, but I'm not sure why the damage numbers scale bigger. I'll keep looking into it though.

thanks for the info. Really like the open communcation w/you all of late. thanks again!

My point about the BOS 20pts of damage is that it didn't scale. We got a boost to the BOS damage number in book 14 IIRC. That was great. Based on pre MOM morale levels of Freeps and relative to the dps they could dish out, the 20pts seemed fair.

Say it took, pre mom, 12 attacks to kill me. The freep would inflict upon themselves 240 points of damage due to BOS.

Post MOM, the reality is that it takes at least half and perhaps only 1/4 of the number of reflectable attacks to kill me. (higher freep dps, coupled w/a lower morale for myself). This results in the freep inflicting 120 pts or less damage upon themelves by attacking me in a fight. So, not only are they incurring less damage overall from my BOS, the damage they do inflict on themselves means even less because of higher morale pools.

Frankly, I'd like to see BOS be a % reflect, but that may not be technologically feasable. My thoughts of the BOS is that the damage reflect should roughly negate the ICMR of the target I'm fighting. Pre MOM I'd say that 20pts per attack did a pretty good job at neutralizing most of the actual ICMR of a freep I was fighting (unless built for ICMR, Food, or other modifiers).

BOS damage reflect is only useful now as a 'tagging' facilitator. I can let myself get hit by a bunch of targets (like freeps or dwarf miners), get tags on them, kite them to other npcs to do the work of killing them for me (like 1shotters or trolls) and reap the benefits (INF or Loot).

the damage is so negligble as to be a nonfactor now with regards to combat relative to the higher morale pools and higher dps that ends fights after a smaller number of reflectable attacks.

[tetrasodium]

Your spider uses ranged attacks, not tactical. That's why you have ranged crit chance passives.

You will actually crit. I tested it out

That's good, I was always under the impression that it was tactical.

As for the corruption slots, I'm looking into adding an additional slot for Creeps.

Edit: Monster Players will also have an innate protection against criticals - the passives and traits improve that.

A single trait slot isn't the problem, freep virtues (stolen from a lorebook thread, I assume they are mostly accurate) affect a variety of things to a large amount. Creep corruptions don't even begin to measure up. Things get even worse when you add in all the various gear slots. My runekeeper has the following from it's two equipped legendaries alone amounts to:

• -3% threat
• -10% ceaseless argument power cost
• +4% writ of health healing
• +6% essence of flame damage
• +7% epic for the ages healing
• +11% scribe spark damage
• +10 vitality
• +2.5 partial evade mitigation
• +216 tactical crit rrating
• +72 ICPR
• +100 max morale
• -5% item wear chance on hit
• +50 max power
• +18 fate
• +18 vitality
• +107 max power
• +35% fury of storm crit damage
• +3% chill of winter damage
• -10% battle attuned skill power cost
• +5% wrath of flame damage over time
• +10 vitality
• +2.5% partial evade mitigation
• +216 tactical crit rating
• +72 ICPR
• +15 fate
• +100 max morale
• -5% item wear chance on hit
• +50 max power

I couldn't make that much of an impact on a creep with every class trait, racial trait, and corruption slot put together. It goes further though jewelery...

• +40 vitality
• +1% bonus to tactical crit effects
• +50 parry
• +151 poison resist rating
• +8 fate
• +agility
• +might
• +98 max power
• +3% bonus to tactical crit effects
• +126 parry
• +164 max power
• +183 max morale
• +65 max power
• +39 ICPR
• +109 max morale
• +101 block rating (I can't even block and don't care)
• 10% chance to reflect 22 damage on any common damage
• Set bonus +120 acid defence
• Set bonus +120 fire defense
• Set bonus +72 frost defense
• potential set bonus I don't have +19 vitality
• potential set bonus I don't have +19 will
• +30 fate
• +425 fear resist
• +283 wound resist
• +84 max power
• +19 vitality
• +24 agility
• +20 vitality
• +109 max morale
• +131 max power
• +20 will
• +378 fear resist
• +732 wound resist rating
• +19 vitality
• +8 might
• +49 evade
• +8% out of combat run speed!!!!!!
• +24 fate
• +24 will
• +20 vitality
• +20 agility
• +49.8 ICMR
• +98 max power
• +27 fate
• +113 max morale
• +318 disease resist
• +26.4 ICMR
• potential 3set bonus +330 poison resist
• potential 3set bonus +330 disease resist
• potential 3set bonus +330 fear resist

Again, that's such a huge amount of change in the character that it makes creep corruptions and their limited customization slots look pale at best when you look at the numbers creep corruptions/class traits/racial traits effect. It gets really bad when you factor in the bonus's that go with armor...

• +612 armor
• +10 radiance
• +40 will
• +40 vitality
• +20 fate
• +3% tactical crit effects
• +82 max power
• set bonus +31.2 icmr
• set bonus +720 acid defense
• set bonus +30 will
• set bonus +2% bonus to tactical crit effects
• potential set bonus vivid imagery power cost reduced 20%
• +311 armor
• +10 radiance
• +20 fate
• +20 will
• +20 vitality
• +190 max morale
• +6% bonus to tactical crit effects
• +518 armor
• +10 radiance
• +41 will
• +20 fate
• +20 vitality
• +170 max power
• +42.6 icmr
• +254 armor
• +10 radiance
• +40 vitality
• +20 fate
• +20 will
• +158 max power
• +185.4 oocmr
• +344 armor
• +19vitality
• +169 max morale
• +39 fate
• +15 agility
• +122 fire defense
• onuse +15 will
• +178 armor
• +10 radiance
• +39 fate
• +19 vitality
• +76 max power
• +169 armor
• +244 tactical crit rating
• +169 max morale
• +39 vitality
• +15 agility
• +122 fire defense
• potential set bonus +232 fire defense

I'm not even going to go into the huge bonus's that freeps get from set bonus's on class traits. Some of the set bonus's are so amazing that all of the creep trait slots combined couldn't compare to them... and they get them free while traiting for other stuff.

And every book where new gear is introduced it will continue to improve. The creep traits use practically the same buy in cost/pool (for lack of a better term) when being created as the freep stuff, but they fail to take into account that creeps have half as many slots before taking into account the huge amount of stuff legendaries can do & affect. The creep racial traits are the most glaring example, seriously... +1% damage? +120 to X mitigation all manner of bonus's so tiny that they are barely even noticable, things with values freeps get for free on gear.

[Pusher]

Er, all of the terrain/layout changes were done with Moria.

Oh yeah, forgot about the outposts, lol. I always thought more should have been changed then just adding little mini keeps on the map, but it makes sense that you're not going to overhaul the landscape again so quickly.

But, I do think outposts need a little tweaking. I think there needs to be more incentive in not only taking them, but holding them. Right now, the only reason to take an outpost is access to the Delving and to change the scenery instead of fighting at and around EC. I think the CG/Tyrants need to drop some kind of loot for both sides. Or have the outposts give the controlling faction some sort of buff.

Is there any reason why the Delving can't be open to both sides, all the time? That's the only way the Delving will have a chance to see its full potential of constant PvP battles.

[Wasren]

Your spider uses ranged attacks, not tactical. That's why you have ranged crit chance passives.

You will actually crit. I tested it out

As for the corruption slots, I'm looking into adding an additional slot for Creeps.

Edit: Monster Players will also have an innate protection against criticals - the passives and traits improve that.

Can you switch around some of our attacks to do different damage? Like Acid damage? Right now Freeps just have to protect themselves against Common, Fire, and Shadow damage. When you boost Weaver damage in Book 7, can you please switch us to Acid, Jalessa? Or Frost? Or Shadow? To add some variety at least. Just try to avoid giving us attacks that are purposely mitigated by the end-game armor sets, because that kind of stinks.

[Chucklebun]

Thanks for the update. It's exactly what I thought it would be, amusingly enough. Not larger health pools - just better mitigations, which I am glad to see.

Now just need a fix on those flags. Hopefully Orion gets it done in time for book 7!