U35 Return to Carn Dum - Power Update

[Vastin]

Hey Folks, Vastin here for the second systems overhaul of our upcoming release. It's been a busy winter.

This one is centered around Power and its role in the game, which had sort of faded out over the last several years at higher levels, in favor of limiting skill plays primarily through cooldowns.

This has had one pretty big drawback in that it has impacted healing in a negative way. Without a resource management element, the 'big' heals generally shifted towards having long cooldowns, or becoming not-very-big, and healers gradually lost much of their ability to do much burst healing. It also just lost a bunch of useful mechanics based around crafting and consumables for things like power potions, and high-end gearing options like power regeneration gear.

We want to bring that back, particularly in our next big level update, but one of the steps to addressing that is to bring power back to being a meaningful element in the game at higher levels so that healers are making more meaningful choices about when and how hard to heal.

So expect some big changes in the power numbers and the way your stats interact with them:

1) Power regeneration rates in the UI are now listed PER SECOND, rather than PER MINUTE. Given that the average skill takes ~1 second to execute, this makes it far easier to compare skill costs against your power regeneration rates without having to do math. However, they'll look 60 times smaller, so don't panic.

2) Power pools will be larger, scaling up through the entire endgame. A level 140 character should expect to have a power pool in the 50k+ range without itemizing for it.

3) Skill power costs will likewise scale up by level into the endgame.

4) Fate no longer increases in-combat power regeneration. It increases your power pool and out of combat power regen. Your in-combat power regen automatically increases with level, but you'll need specific itemization or buffs to increase it further.

5) Base In-combat power regen is pretty fast and can fill your entire power bar in less than a minute if you aren't running skills. Lower cost skills will generally break even or cost less than your regen rate returns. As a result its hard to get completely 'stuck' without power for more than a second, though if you empty out your pool you may find yourself only able to use your less expensive skills until you recover a bit.

Goals

The target time for a player to burn themselves out of power if they are running as hot as they can without any power restoration effects is around 60-90 seconds, longer for tanks, and at the shorter end for healers.

All characters do have access some longer CD 'emergency' buttons they can use to restore a good chunk of that power, and we're reviewing those to make sure they are up to the task. Furthermore, we're going through each of the classes and trying to make sure they have a low end skill or effect that you can use as part of a general rotation to generate additional power on the fly if you feel like you're running low.

For example, Burglar's 'Subtle Stab' skill can now restore a chunk of power on a critical hit, and Brawler's Low-Strike setup attack will now cause their finishers to return a substantial amount of power. Not all classes have these mechanics built into them yet, but we're in the process of going through them to make sure they have adequate tools to help manage power. Potions and food have also been re-scaled to work with the new power costs.

In general, we don't expect power to be a difficult factor for solo/landscape combat as the average pull lasts less than 30 seconds, which shouldn't be enough for any character to run low on power no matter how hard they burn. It can become a challenge if you end up in longer fights, such as when you try to tackle a particularly challenging enemy like an elite master or kite a large number of mobs for an extended period. It's also relatively easy to itemize your power pool to be a fair bit larger if you find that you're running out a little earlier than you'd prefer.

Where we expect power to become a real factor again is in instances and higher end group content. As instance battles and group sizes get longer, power management should become a more important factor - but players will also have access to more group support to help with power management.

Tank builds in general are intended to have lower power costs and should not have to concern themselves with power management to the degree that DPS or Healer builds will. Of course, they're more likely to have to contend with instance boss mechanics that attack power, so they may still require support or gearing to help compensate in those cases. Most of those monster effects have also been rebalanced, so you shouldn't run into cases where your entire power pool is suddenly wiped out by a boss effect.

While all the classes have had a full first pass done on all their skill costs, we're still looking for a lot of feedback on how they feel in play - in particular how long it takes a given build to drain out all power. Some classes still need a more comprehensive pass done on their power restoration mechanics and specific skill balance.

As a rule, skill costs are probably slightly higher across the board right now than where they'll end up when we are done. This was done so that we can get meaningful feedback on how quickly each class/build runs out of power currently. If the values are too low, the answer to that question can easily become 'never', which doesn't help us gauge anything.


Base Healing Increase
- To help counter power consumption challenges, healing HPS on LIs from levels 131-140 is increasing ~25%. This is in addition to any specific changes made to heals. With the introduction of the Brawler class we've run into some issues with how defensive buffs stack and we'll need to address this before we can bring healing values up much further, which is our longer term intent.

Potions & Food
- Most power restoration values on these have been rebalanced, but not extensively tested yet. Feedback certainly appreciated.

Loremaster
- The Loremaster is a core class when it comes to group power management, so we expect to be playing with the numbers on related skills like Share The Power significantly.
- Pretty much any loremaster power related skill has been rebalanced.
- A few healing tweaks to LM to improve its throughput - they're still not going to be main healers, but it'll help them serve that in that role for smaller groups or on landscape.
- Water-lore now has an initial healing component.
- Light of Hope base CD reduced [30->10s]

Champion
- Fervour no longer increases power regen in Red Line.
- Continuous Blood Rage now reduces power costs by [-75%->-20%], as the old reduction was too impactful.
- Blue Line Trait Second Wind moved to tier 1 for easy access to other lines, its upgrades were moved up to t4 to make those more expensive for non-tanks to access.
- Still considering an active skill power restoration mechanic for champs.

Burglar
- Burglars are an interesting challenge to balance power for, as in advanced play they can use frequent instant skill interrupts to cancel animations of longer skills. This tends to dramatically increase their power burn rate due to the increased rate at which they play skills. For the most part we're trying to balance their power consumption to allow for this style of play, albiet at a faster burn rate than some other DPS, while players who are not accustomed to using skill cutting will hopefully find burglar power to be pretty easy to manage.
- Subtle Stab now restores a substantial amount of power on a Crit result. This gives burglars a new way to actively regenerate power as a regular part of their rotation, given that they have relatively few abilities that do so.

Hunters
- Hunters got a fairly substantial rework including a number of trait changes, due to the fact that all their existing power mechanics were crowded into the blue tree, which was not useful.
- Endurance Stance now reduces power costs by [-10 -> -20%].
- Press Onward heal is no longer a % of max health, but scales with level instead. It should be signifciantly more powerful for hunters with a lower Max Health, not as powerful for those with very high max health.
- Press Onward no longer grants power, but instead grants a runspeed buff for 10s (similar to the hunter itemset bonus).
- Perserverence healing Trait increased: [ 2.5/5/7.5/10% ] -> [ 10/15/20/25% ]
- Burn Hot skill now increases power costs rather than reducing them. [-50% -> +15%]
- Bow of the Righteous trait has moved from the blue tree to the red tree (at a similar tier). This one point trait now grants an active skill rather than a passive ability. Bow of the Righteous is now a 15s buff with a 90s cd that causes all hits with ranged attacks to restore a substantial amount of power.
- Red Trait 'Draw Weight' max rank reduced by 1. Maxiumum benefits unchanged, just reached 1 rank earlier.
- Improved Intent Concentration in blue has been moved from Tier 3 to Tier 2 to improve its accessibility to Red/Yellow trees. Power restore value rebalanced to be significantly better.
- Still considering whether hunters need an active skill mechanic to restore power in addition to their existing buttons. Endurance stance may suffice.

Brawler
- Brawlers have a pretty steady skill cadence, so power management tends to be straightforward for this class.
- The Low-Strike setup skill now causes a following finisher to restore a substantial amount of power - this is separate from and in addition to the vulnerability effect if that has been traited.

Guardian
- Still early on for Guardians. They've had a skill cost pass, but we haven't fully addressed their power restore mechanics, nor have we gotten much feedback yet on how their power is playing out. In general our intention is that Guardians shouldn't have much difficulty with power as they are primarily a tanking class.

Minstrels & Runekeepers
- As the two 'main' healer classes that concern themselves with power, these are likely to be the two classes most substantially affected by the power changes. Our goal is to make sure their healing throughput - particularly from their bigger heals - is substantially improved at a premium power cost, while their smaller heals and HoT based skills are intended to be cheap and efficient.
- Both are still very actively in progress, so while feedback is definitely appreciated, please be gentle. They are due for some substantial further changes to their power consumption and healing CDs/magnitude.

Wardens
- Are getting a substantial class rework at this stage, so most of their changes are covered in a dedicated post.

Captains
- As with Wardens, captains have their own dedicated diary for this release.

Beornings
- Still don't have power.

Anyhow, that's the whole thing. Ultimately we don't want power to feel particularly restrictive. It *is* intended to be a mechanic that you need to think about particularly in group play or in high difficulty solo challenges - but it's also one that you should be able to find several answers to in your character build, skill rotations, group composition, and game items.

Sincerely,

Vastin

[Elmagor]

Poor Bornings... looks like Vastin don't like them

[Chris91]

Base Healing Increase
- To help counter power consumption challenges, healing HPS on LIs from levels 131-140 is increasing ~25%. This is in addition to any specific changes made to heals. With the introduction of the Brawler class we've run into some issues with how defensive buffs stack and we'll need to address this before we can bring healing values up much further, which is our longer term intent.

Minstrels & Runekeepers
- As the two 'main' healer classes that concern themselves with power, these are likely to be the two classes most substantially affected by the power changes. Our goal is to make sure their healing throughput - particularly from their bigger heals - is substantially improved at a premium power cost, while their smaller heals and HoT based skills are intended to be cheap and efficient.
- Both are still very actively in progress, so while feedback is definitely appreciated, please be gentle. They are due for some substantial further changes to their power consumption and healing CDs/magnitude.

Hi Vastin,

just wanted to comment on that quickly. Have you looked into the scaling of burst heals vs heal over time effects with Tactical healing rating on LIs? It seems to me, that burst heals scale much stronger than heal over time effects. If the goal is to have heal over time as you low cost base healing and burst heals as high power cost, I'd say normalizing scaling of burst heals vs heal over times is an important prerequisite

[Crell_1]

4) Fate no longer increases in-combat power regeneration. It increases your power pool and out of combat power regen. Your in-combat power regen automatically increases with level, but you'll need specific itemization or buffs to increase it further.

What specific itemization stat should we be looking for if not Fate? Are we going to start seeing gear with raw In-Combat-Power-Regen again? - Personally power regen was one of the reasons I had bothered with fate

[Neinda]

If power management is to be a thing again in group content, why not revitalize FMs?

Also, from what I have seen and read here on the forums, delvings are not average pulls of 30 seconds for many people. What is the expectation in solo delving content?

[Hrunfh]

Without a resource management element, the 'big' heals generally shifted towards having long cooldowns, or becoming not-very-big, and healers gradually lost much of their ability to do much burst healing.

You don't like clocks? Well here is a WATCH!
Sorry but power, seriously? There are quite a few reasons why this died a quiet death and nobody complained...

[Elmagor]

If power management is to be a thing again in group content, why not revitalize FMs?

If they buff FMs, when can one-shot poor Draigoch

[gildhur]

Love all this very much (especially the Beorning note).

HOWEVER

I hope content, especially high tier instances, will be rebalanced with the idea that classes can't go full-tilt for entire fights anymore.

[DoRonRon]

No apology on someone's behalf about a load of utterly useless traits left in the Huntsman tree for years. And to top it off stealing one for Red line now so it will cost us double.

We only had so many because of Barrage tiering and staying at max, when that went away along with focus burn was the time to address all this.

"were crowded into blue" - I never signed a donor card for Bow "Masters"! Just don't make it worse, please.

[Neinda]

If they buff FMs, when can one-shot poor Draigoch

That particular raid needs a bit of love and attention anyway. It is close to impossible to get the challenge deed with over level players nowadays. Even with no one hitting Draigoch, the FMs from a level 140 are overpowered. Add in a bit of lag when the FMs need to happen and the raid is funny and a different sort of challenging.

Hopefully, someday Draigoch challenge deed will make it to the SSG "to do" list.

But with power management making a return performance, it would be nice to see the burgs go back to making FM magic and groups trying to hit the correct 6 colors to make the FMs happen successfully. That was always a fun mechanic in my opinion. It made for dramatic and fun boss fights. I would prefer FMs over store bought power potions any day. Actual group mechanics are always more fun than waiting for an addon to inform you to use a potion. An FM requires the group to work together and perform a group action. No addons needed.

[Elmagor]

That particular raid needs a bit of love and attention anyway. It is close to impossible to get the challenge deed with over level players nowadays. Even with no one hitting Draigoch, the FMs from a level 140 are overpowered. Add in a bit of lag when the FMs need to happen and the raid is funny and a different sort of challenging.

Hopefully, someday Draigoch challenge deed will make it to the SSG "to do" list.

But with power management making a return performance, it would be nice to see the burgs go back to making FM magic and groups trying to hit the correct 6 colors to make the FMs happen successfully. That was always a fun mechanic in my opinion. It made for dramatic and fun boss fights. I would prefer FMs over store bought power potions any day. Actual group mechanics are always more fun than waiting for an addon to inform you to use a potion. An FM requires the group to work together and perform a group action. No addons needed.

Don't see that problem. We usually complete challenge every week between HoA raids. Right now he have enough morale to get 15 FM and don't die. But anything about 15 kill him for sure. Main problem wasn't over level players, main problem what this players don't listen to RL

[Neinda]

Don't see that problem. We usually complete challenge every week between HoA raids. Right now he have enough morale to get 15 FM and don't die. But anything about 15 kill him for sure. Main problem wasn't over level players, main problem what this players don't listen to RL

There is that too.

[DoRonRon]

Oddly the only two times I've had in the game and felt under stress was first time tanking in Draigoch and first time there on my noob burglar with a first go at a new build it required.

It was questioning if that claw I could see was really the claw to send my fellows to safety or to their deaths. We must have been doing it right because we had only one time it bugged out on us. All got a cloak in the end. Turned out okay for the burglar, got more FMs off than the main burglar.

Was soon running down to the group in phase one to give them a wave and sprinting back up into the tank spot. Great mechanics. And always good to watch the noobies FRY.

[Michaleo]

For blue hunters, how about going back to limiting Barrage throughput by power usage (as originally implemented) and get rid of the crazy variable cooldown.

[SSG_Orion]

What specific itemization stat should we be looking for if not Fate? Are we going to start seeing gear with raw In-Combat-Power-Regen again? - Personally power regen was one of the reasons I had bothered with fate

It is very likely that you will start to see gear with raw in-combat power regen again.

[SSG_Orion]

If power management is to be a thing again in group content, why not revitalize FMs?

Also, from what I have seen and read here on the forums, delvings are not average pulls of 30 seconds for many people. What is the expectation in solo delving content?

Stay tuned for some information on Delvings...soon.

[DoRonRon]

For blue hunters, how about going back to limiting Barrage throughput by power usage (as originally implemented) and get rid of the crazy variable cooldown.

As much as I miss those times I kind of got used to utilising all my skills over being a one trick pony. Just wish it didn't require us spending heavily into red to get them. Only doable because so much is not worth spending in blue. Can see all that utility go away if our tree fails to deliver on damage in it's own right. Removing the CD on Barrage for sure but not removing the tiering down maybe. Asking to have us using more power to sustain Barrage when we don't know what these changes are going to mean for us is, ah, brave at this point.

[Skoch]

Will %-based Power Drain skills from Creeps and NPCs be adjusted? I'm mostly thinking of Sambrog-type npc mechanics, etc, completely draining you with % base power drains over and over again.

[theultimatekyle]

Goals

The target time for a player to burn themselves out of power if they are running as hot as they can without any power restoration effects is around 60-90 seconds, longer for tanks, and at the shorter end for healers.

All characters do have access some longer CD 'emergency' buttons they can use to restore a good chunk of that power, and we're reviewing those to make sure they are up to the task. Furthermore, we're going through each of the classes and trying to make sure they have a low end skill or effect that you can use as part of a general rotation to generate additional power on the fly if you feel like you're running low.

For example, Burglar's 'Subtle Stab' skill can now restore a chunk of power on a critical hit, and Brawler's Low-Strike setup attack will now cause their finishers to return a substantial amount of power. Not all classes have these mechanics built into them yet, but we're in the process of going through them to make sure they have adequate tools to help manage power. Potions and food have also been re-scaled to work with the new power costs.

In general, we don't expect power to be a difficult factor for solo/landscape combat as the average pull lasts less than 30 seconds, which shouldn't be enough for any character to run low on power no matter how hard they burn. It can become a challenge if you end up in longer fights, such as when you try to tackle a particularly challenging enemy like an elite master or kite a large number of mobs for an extended period. It's also relatively easy to itemize your power pool to be a fair bit larger if you find that you're running out a little earlier than you'd prefer.

Where we expect power to become a real factor again is in instances and higher end group content. As instance battles and group sizes get longer, power management should become a more important factor - but players will also have access to more group support to help with power management.

Tank builds in general are intended to have lower power costs and should not have to concern themselves with power management to the degree that DPS or Healer builds will. Of course, they're more likely to have to contend with instance boss mechanics that attack power, so they may still require support or gearing to help compensate in those cases. Most of those monster effects have also been rebalanced, so you shouldn't run into cases where your entire power pool is suddenly wiped out by a boss effect.

While all the classes have had a full first pass done on all their skill costs, we're still looking for a lot of feedback on how they feel in play - in particular how long it takes a given build to drain out all power. Some classes still need a more comprehensive pass done on their power restoration mechanics and specific skill balance.

As a rule, skill costs are probably slightly higher across the board right now than where they'll end up when we are done. This was done so that we can get meaningful feedback on how quickly each class/build runs out of power currently. If the values are too low, the answer to that question can easily become 'never', which doesn't help us gauge anything.

This looks like you want to take the game state back to where it was ages ago at 60, 65, 75 cap and so on. But at the same time, the game changed and pulled away from these kind of power mechanics for a reason. Generally, power management as youre describing here isnt fun. All youll do here is kill interest in current content as people lose the ability to actually complete it, because you arbitrarily decided you needed more work to do? Implementing this will require changes to alllll the current cap content to compensate for the changes in healing and dps.

Otherwise, this will be in the same vein as deciding to take away vitality essences at the beginning of the current cap without actually making adjustments to the way instances were designed, then eventually having to walk it back. This seems like a lot of work to eventually waste, because again, this isnt fun. Games are supposed to be fun. Pretty sure thats one of the founding principles of gaming.

[Laerthan1997]

- Press Onward heal is no longer a % of max health, but scales with level instead. It should be signifciantly more powerful for hunters with a lower Max Health, not as powerful for those with very high max health.

This is an utterly ridiculous and stupid change. We all know what happened with champion's bracing attack heal for years, was utterly useless because it was never scaled properly. I have a total lack of fate in your ability to scale press-onward properly. Keep the heal % based and tune it down if you think it's too strong.

[shino047]

We already have cooldown management which means you are supposed to use the biggest skills right off cooldown and not let them sit around, if someone does this efficiently they should NOT be punished with running out of power.

For healing, this means saving the biggest heals for the right moment because of long cds (in worst situations this means right off cd) so I don't understand why power management is needed with this, It would make sense only if skills had no cooldowns where you can just spam yourself out of power with the biggest skill. This does not mean the currently spammable rotations should be made high power cost because those are the only skills you can use while waiting for cds. And what are players going to do if the healing requirements exceed the power capacity?

Having a fast and efficient rotation should not be punished with running out of power faster.

[Elmagor]

We already have cooldown management which means you are supposed to use the biggest skills right off cooldown and not let them sit around, if someone does this efficiently they should NOT be punished with running out of power.

For healing, this means saving the biggest heals for the right moment because of long cds (in worst situations this means right off cd) so I don't understand why power management is needed with this, It would make sense only if skills had no cooldowns where you can just spam yourself out of power with the biggest skill. This does not mean the currently spammable rotations should be made high power cost because those are the only skills you can use while waiting for cds. And what are players going to do if the healing requirements exceed the power capacity?

Having a fast and efficient rotation should not be punished with running out of power faster.

We have great example with HoA in T3 and above. With current lag situation, we have wave of mobs with puddles, where LM/Burg must CC them, and damage dealers must burn them out as fast as they can, or mobs zerg raid. And we have more mobs when tanks can agro in one time. Now just add to that mess what whole raid can have problems with energy, and LM need to debuff boss, mass debuff all mobs, CC 2 black arrows, interrupt Frost Caller, root worms and above all he must share energy to raid. It looks like none of developers have LM after all.

[Gnagerwine]

I think it's a great idea to bring back Power's relevance, but won't only doing so for more challenging fights make it more difficult for new and casual players to learn to manage it? I mean, if they aren't getting practice managing it on landscape.

[Salis09]

Is this an out of season April's Fool joke?


Do you really want to bring back one of the most annoying aspects of the game? The only thing you will achieve is the disappointment of most players.

I returned to the game a couple of months ago. I was pleasantly surprised by the absence of power management. And now you want it back.
Now I'm seriously considering whether to continue playing.

Do not do this. We have cooldown management. This is quite enough. Just remove power from the game.

[Vastin]

Currently power is already a real aspect of the game from early to mid levels that kind of oddly fades away at higher levels. We'd rather it remains as it gives us more ways to balance abilities and gives players more flexibility in how they pace themselves in fights - for example, a raid group that focuses on making sure their group is fully topped up before the next wave of adds hits, and then shifts to an all out burn phase, then back to conserve for a bit when the waves are dealt with.

Solo challenge play is a concern in cases where fights go unusually long, though in most instances players do have a fair bit of control over pacing in solo settings and the individual battles are usually much shorter.

However, we did expect a fair bit of initial concern with this project - and if in fact we find that we *can't* get it to a point where we are comfortable with it as a player mechanic in late game content, we can and will simply tune it back down to the point where it remains basically irrelevant at those levels. One of the elements of this re-work was to give us better control over how power scales throughout the game, so modifying the general balance on it is much easier now, whereas it was rather difficult previously.

- Vastin