posted 10-05-2001 07:35 PM
Hello all,It's been a while since I stopped by the corner to chat with everyone. Today I'm pleased to announce the specifics of the combat system enhancements mentioned last week. The changes described in the document below represent weeks of work by the team to define and quantify the issues facing players, particularly those level 51 and above. Suffice it to say that through the use of our new, highly robust combat simulation engine we've found a number of problems present that we're happy to address.
It is very important to that everyone know that these changes came about through a complete team effort, though special thanks goes out to our newest game designer, Rich Waters, who helped to pull them together and authored much of the document below.
Enjoy the read!
Gordon Wrinn
Associate Producer
EverQuest Live and Expansions
Sony Online Entertainment
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---ABOUT THE CHANGES IN GENERAL---
It is very important to us that our players understand our goals when making these changes. First and foremost, our goal is NOT to make any particular high-level encounter easier, nor the game easier as a whole. Our goal is that the group makeup at those high-level encounters become more diverse, with more classes, ideally all of them, feeling that they can contribute meaningfully to most encounters. Obviously there will always be some encounters where a particular classes utility should be greatly negated, but those should be the exception and included as a matter of story, rather than the rule.
---MELEE SYSTEM CHANGES---
After extensive research, testing, and evaluation we have completed the melee portion of our class balancing. To be clear, these changes apply just to the combat aspect of melee classes.
Here are the results of our melee combat balancing, and the solutions we are including in this patch.
-Two-Handed Weapons-
We are making changes to two-handed weapons to increase their damage output and desirability. As many of you know, two-handed weapons are not doing comparable damage to dual wielded single-handed weapons. This problem really manifests itself in the high end game. Before level 50, two-handed weapons perform fairly well. The following two-handed weapon change applies to characters level 51 and higher-
Two-handed weapons currently receive a damage bonus based on the delay of the weapon. Slower weapons swing less often, but hit harder when they connect. We have increased this damage bonus significantly over what it used to be. This increase in the damage bonus improves the damage potential of all existing two-handed weapons. Up through epic level weapons, the damage bonus alone makes two-handers a very viable choice for melee classes.
Along with the damage bonus enhancement, certain post-epic quality two-handers are being upgraded. The quality of these weapons did not improve enough when compared to the difficulty of encounters, and the rate at which one-handed weapons improved. These retroactive two-handed weapon upgrades are included in this patch.
To help you in selecting which two-handed weapons you want to use, we are giving a new piece of information when you inspect a two-handed weapon - the Damage Bonus. This damage bonus is the number of extra damage points that are added to each hit, based on the weapon delay.
*Please note- when combined with the damage bonus change, only the very highest quality weapons needed a stat improvement as well.
SPECIFIC CLASS CHANGES-
-Warriors-
The warrior is the key figure in any discussion of melee class balance. As the obvious choice for the "standard" melee class, we evaluated the warrior first to see how he compared to where we wanted him to be. Overall, we are quite happy with how the warrior performs in battle. At the very high end of the game, a warrior's damage output exceeds what we wanted, but not by so much that it merits any change. The "Defensive" discipline is also somewhat overpowered, but many high-end encounters now factor in this discipline in their design so this also remains unchanged.
As a class, the warrior is useful in both group and raid situations, and in fact is often thought of as crucial to making an efficient group. With these factors in mind, our decision is to leave the warrior class as is, both offensively and defensively. Warriors are well balanced and fill their role admirably.
That being said, we did make one enhancement to the warrior class. With the increase in damage output of several other classes, we are raising the Taunt skill cap for warriors. This increase begins at level 51, and the warrior gains a few points each level until 60th, when it caps at 230 skill. Taunt still follows all the previous rules with regard to taunting things above your level.
Also included in this patch, the Blade of Strategy and the Blade of Tactics may be used in either hand.
-Rogues-
The rogue class is also key to melee balance, because they clearly define the maximum amount of melee damage we want done in EverQuest. The rogue currently is, and will remain the king of situational melee damage. If a rogue has the opportunity to backstab, no other melee class approaches his damage output. This remains unchanged.
When we looked at the damage potential for rogues, we took into account that even in the best groups, a rogue can't backstab 100% of the time. In a well played experience group, a rogue is able to attempt backstabs roughly 90% of the time. In a more chaotic raid situation, it is harder to get backstabs more than 75% of the time due to monsters changing agro targets, moving around, or having their backs against a wall. So, when evaluating the rogue, we assumed 90% backstabs in a single group situation, and 75% backstabs on a raid level encounter.
Taking this all into account, the rogue met or exceeded our expectations in damage potential and his skills and damage output will not be receiving any adjustments, positive or negative.
However, we did discover that rogues do not have a full selection of piercing weapons available at all levels between 51 and 60. Prior to attaining an epic weapon, rogues do less damage than we expected. Additionally, rogues do not receive equal weapon upgrades post-epic when compared to other melee classes. To remedy this situation, we are adding new piercing weapons to give rogues a reasonable progression from 51-60. A few existing high-end daggers are being upgraded to make them relatively equal in quality to the weapons other classes have available. These new and upgraded weapons will begin appearing in the game in the near future.
-Monks-
While monks are an excellent class with some very useful abilities, our evaluation of monks found that they were coming up short in regards to damage output. In the progression from level 50 to level 60, monks slowly slip from doing the most toe-to-toe melee damage by a wide margin, to being very slightly better than a warrior in the high-end game.
Our goal for monks is to have them do significantly more damage than a similarly equipped warrior, without encroaching on the territory of rogues. We selected improvements for the monk class that place their damage output just below the midpoint of a warrior and a rogue. This is a sufficient damage advantage over a warrior to make a monk desirable in groups and raids, while leaving a large margin between the monk and the backstabbing rogue.
To accomplish this damage improvement, the first thing we did was move monks to new damage tables at levels 55 and 60. This means a monk will do slightly more damage than other classes when using the same weapons. This change is moderate at level 55, and a bit more noticeable at 60th.
In addition to new damage tables, we also gave the ability to Triple Attack to monks at level 60. This ability allows the monk to possibly attack a third time with his main hand, after each successful double attack. The final change to monks is the institution of minimum damage on Flying Kick beginning at level 51 and scaling up through level 60.
Also, much like the rogue, we discovered that monks do not receive a reasonable weapon selection between levels 51 and 60. We plan to add new blunt weapons for monks in the future to round out the monk class.
-Rangers-
Rangers were the most complex class we looked at during this evaluation. Rangers were clearly lacking in their ability to tank, and also proved to be doing slightly less damage than was desirable. After evaluating several possible solutions, we made upgrades in both of these areas. Keep in mind, rangers are an offense-oriented hybrid, giving up the ability to tank well in exchange for doing similar damage to a warrior.
In order to put rangers in the right place offensively, we made two changes. First, we upgraded their Double Attack skill cap from 235 to 245. Additionally, we gave rangers an innate offensive bonus beginning at level 55, and increasing until level 60. This has the net effect of allowing them to double attack a bit more often, and hit harder on successful attacks. These two changes put the ranger exactly where we want him, doing approximately the same damage as a similarly equipped warrior.
Part of the balancing factor of the ranger is the inability to tank well. This penalty will remain, though we are making some changes to lessen it. Prior to this patch, rangers were taking more damage than we desired. After these changes take effect, rangers will tank better than they did, but not nearly as well as the knight, bard, and warrior classes.
We are raising the Defense skill cap for rangers. This increase begins at level 51, increasing a few points each level until it caps at 220. We are also raising the ranger’s Riposte skill cap to 185 starting at level 51 and scaling up to level 60.
-Paladins and Shadowknights-
The Knight classes receive some of the biggest benefits from this melee balancing. Our evaluation of knights showed that in many cases they were doing just over half the damage of a similarly equipped warrior. This is simply not enough damage to make them highly desirable in group and raid situations. The changes we are implementing put knights at a bit over three-quarters of the damage potential of a ranger or a warrior. This represents a significant upgrade from their current status, without threatening the desirability of the ranger or warrior classes.
The first thing we did was to move knights to the same damage tables as warriors. This damage table is now shared by all melee classes, except the monk who is on the higher tables described above. By placing knights on this table, they will now hit harder with the same weapons than they did previously.
The second change that greatly benefits knight classes is the upgrade to two-handed weapons. While this isn't a knight only upgrade, as the premier users of two-handed weapons it has a profound effect on their damage potential. The two-handed weapon upgrade is discussed in more detail in the previous section.
For knights that prefer to use a weapon and shield combo, we plan to go through existing weapons available in the game and upgrade them in cases where they are not doing enough damage. These upgrades, as well as any new weapons we may add, will begin to be seen in game in the near future. One thing to note- a knight using a two-handed weapon will do more damage than a knight with weapon and shield of similar quality.
The final change we are making to knights is the increase of their Taunt skill cap. This increase begins at level 51, increasing a few points each level until it caps at 220 skill. Taunt still follows all the previous rules with regard to taunting things above your level.
-Bards-
Like rangers, bards are receiving enhanced offensive and defensive abilities. Bards are intended to do the least melee damage of our melee classes, falling somewhat behind Paladins and Shadowknights, but doing more than half the damage of a similarly equipped warrior. We found in some situations, this was not the case and bards were doing too little damage.
We are raising bard weapon skills (1h blunt, 1h slash) to a new cap of 250 skill. Piercing skill is being raised to 240. We are also increasing their Offense skill cap to 252 between levels 51 and 60. Along with the skill cap increases, we are moving the bard to the same melee damage table as the warrior and other classes. While this is a meaningful increase in bard damage potential, without the Double Attack skill bards continue to do less damage than a knight, as intended.
Defensively, we have raised the bard Parry cap to 185 points between levels 51 and 60.
Also this patch, the Singing Shortsword is now able to be equipped in the off hand, and gives it's full song enhancing benefits when used in either hand. This allows bards a bit more choice in weapon selection.
---MAGIC SYSTEM CHANGES---
In addition to the melee changes mentioned above, we’ve also made some wide-ranging changes to the way the spell system works, or more accurately, the spell-resist system and how it works in regards to content, specifically content of a high level.
Through our testing we found that many higher level creatures, and especially those creatures that are above 60th level, were typically resisting magical damage to an extent far greater than they should have been. This lead to a couple of classes having their usefulness in these situations either negated or reduced to a pure utility role. As such we’ve made the following changes:
NPCs now have less of a chance to resist any direct damage spell caused by casters above level 50. Super-high level NPCs have received a large reduction in the level-difference bonus they receive to their resists based upon the level of the attacking player character. We’ve increased the effectiveness of resist debuffs against a large number of higher level NPCs in regard to damage spells being cast upon them. We’ve also reduced the resistances on a wide range of NPCs, especially for NPCs in Velious. Finally, we’ve given our designers more control over the ability to customize any particular encounter. For example previously, if a designer didn’t want a creature to be mesmerisable, he had to give it high magic resistance. Now they can set that feature individually while keeping magic resists reasonable so they don’t take a bunch of classes out of the picture through the need for one feature.
Players will now also receive messages when an NPC is immune to a particular type of spell, much like messages regarding mesmerization have always been sent. We can do this since the designers have direct control over the effectiveness of certain utility effects, while still allowing damage-causing spells to go through. As an example, NPCs that were always immune to melee-speed debuffs by virtue of the fact that they had a very high magic resistance will still be immune to those spells, but magic-based spells that cause damage or do some other effect that the designer didn’t necessarily want to rule out would now go through.
Finally, to compensate for increased magical damage, some NPCs have received additional abilities and/or stats. This serves to keep the encounters at a similar level of difficulty while balancing the contribution of melee and casters, rather than engaging exclusively in the melee-heavy strategy of before.
- The EverQuest Team