SubClass Balance Issues

Szlat wrote:

Dracos wrote:

Oh and the Lava Titan. Make it happen, capt'n. Whats more scary then seeing a blood red Titan throwing huge red blobs of death at you.
How about the best of both worlds. Vampire Lava Skaarj. As they rack up the damage they grow in size until they are titan sized, then divide.

Don't even go there...................

haha actually yes, that would provide a really neat challenge.... you should make it happen

With all the subclasses going on... we have a character for every particular situation and map... there needs to be a monster that would counter that, wouldnt you guys think?

Well with the insane power that the berserker class has, I see no problem the Vampire Lava skaarjs will die before they even hit a player

ok guys back off the zoloft !! or is it that you need to start taking it???

(DC)DEMONSLAYER wrote:

Szlat wrote:

Dracos wrote:

Oh and the Lava Titan. Make it happen, capt'n. Whats more scary then seeing a blood red Titan throwing huge red blobs of death at you.
How about the best of both worlds. Vampire Lava Skaarj. As they rack up the damage they grow in size until they are titan sized, then divide.

Don't even go there...................

Or maybe we can have certain monsters only spawn if certain players are on. (or just high level players in general)

Dracos wrote:

I think the more reason why its allows such an advantage is that its AI vs AI instead of AI vs Player. That and often times I see the invasion monsters just ignore the Medic Pet thats beating up on it. Its not just the titans that contribute to the points but a lot from the later waves. We all know that AI cannot act exactly like a player can but they get the advantage of knowing where to shoot to lead a target to score a hit. You see it all the time with the Lightning Skarjii hunters that they can score hits on you pretty well at times. The lava Skarjii pets are no different as while they are limited in thier ability to dodge, they gain the advantage of getting hits more often. And with the Lava Goop, its very damaging. Also it doesnt seem the invasion monster's dont try to dodge the Lava Goops if thier not tracking that Lava Skarji in the first place so the monster just "runs" into the goop and dies.

Oh and the Lava Titan. Make it happen, capt'n. Whats more scary then seeing a blood red Titan throwing huge red blobs of death at you.

Well, I don't know about that.
The computer targeting can be very accurate, but a good player is going to be on target most of the time anyway.

I'd more point to "effort" and "risk" as reasons why monsters (in general) killing as well as players can is overpowered. Unless things have drastically changed regarding summoned monsters (I haven't tried out DC recently and am probably not high enough level there anyway to play with these things), summoning a monster is pretty fire-and-forget. The most you do is occasionally run by and heal them up, at all other times you can be off cowering in a corner as your monsters do all the work.

Compare that to an AM or WM which require a certain amount of personal skill and also put themselves directly at risk by engaging in combat. It's a bit silly to think that this should be comparable in XP reward to pressing U on the keyboard and waiting for the XP to roll in.

okay so what I have noticed regarding the beserker subclass and tank subclass are:
They both seem to be inversely proportional when it comes to how they work. For the tank as your damage increases your firing speed decreases and as your armor increases your mobility also decreases. And as for the Beserker as your damage increases your armor decreases as well. Notice that the tank has two and the beserker only one.

And here I see two problems, the first problem is the beserker's armor is deducted much differently than the tanks speed is. For example the beserker's armor is deducted from the already existing 50 points of damage reduction so in essence, the class has a little more armor than it should have. And as for the tank the speed is cut from the original speed not even putting into account the quickfoot. As a side note the tank subclass has no quickfoot ability to be bought.

So I think either just make sure that the quickfoot cannot be bought on the tank subclass and also do not decrease the speed of the subclass further OR make sure that the beserker subclass will take more damage according to how much damage reduction they currently have. As you can see its a mismatch.

The second problem I noticed is once you get a globe as the beserker the little armor they have is rendered useless... and since they have adrenaline surge, the class will be pouring in adrenaline consistently... hence the high scores for those who know the trick. You can have beserk on and the globe and still be pouring in adrenaline as long as you keep your killing streaks going.

A good AM can do the same...plus they have drip.
We have to be lucky in finding artifacts and the AM spawns with them. Many times a stupid bot scoops up what I'm after before I get there....
So, if I'm the only player, I switch to DM and beat up on them for a bit in frustration.

Flak Monkey wrote:

A good AM can do the same

not necessarily, the AM's do not have that extra beserker damage, for an AM with the globe on it would take around 5 shots with a flak to kill a titan, with the Beserker only 2, not taking into account if they have a double damage which would reduce the number of shots by half.

meaning a wink

The other day I was healing a level 6 player and realized that the numbers above his head were not increasing. Wayno also noticed this when he tried to heal the same little guy, and so we decided he must have accidently bought hardcore.

Could we make it so that hardcore is not a choice for someone until they are a higher level? I suggest 41 (when we lose ghost and adren drip). Maybe by then these lower levels have spoken to others on the site and understand the severity of that purchase.

Clueless wrote:

The other day I was healing a level 6 player and realized that the numbers above his head were not increasing. Wayno also noticed this when he tried to heal the same little guy, and so we decided he must have accidently bought hardcore.

Could we make it so that hardcore is not a choice for someone until they are a higher level? I suggest 41 (when we lose ghost and adren drip). Maybe by then these lower levels have spoken to others on the site and understand the severity of that purchase.

After the next release, players who have bought hardcore should have a black bar above them so you know not to try to heal them.

But putting a minimum level on is a good idea. Druid might overrule me, but I have put a minimum level of 100 on. By then, people long term will have access to the sell button, so they can sell it if they purchase it by accident.

....unless there is someone under level 100 who actually wants to buy it?

Szlat wrote:

Clueless wrote:

The other day I was healing a level 6 player and realized that the numbers above his head were not increasing. Wayno also noticed this when he tried to heal the same little guy, and so we decided he must have accidently bought hardcore.

Could we make it so that hardcore is not a choice for someone until they are a higher level? I suggest 41 (when we lose ghost and adren drip). Maybe by then these lower levels have spoken to others on the site and understand the severity of that purchase.

After the next release, players who have bought hardcore should have a black bar above them so you know not to try to heal them.

But putting a minimum level on is a good idea. Druid might overrule me, but I have put a minimum level of 100 on. By then, people long term will have access to the sell button, so they can sell it if they purchase it by accident.

....unless there is someone under level 100 who actually wants to buy it?

You gotta remember that some players think they're the greatest thing this side of pro, so they will take the hardcore just to prove it, regardless of level.

Elite wrote:

okay so what I have noticed regarding the beserker subclass and tank subclass are:
They both seem to be inversely proportional when it comes to how they work. For the tank as your damage increases your firing speed decreases and as your armor increases your mobility also decreases. And as for the Beserker as your damage increases your armor decreases as well. Notice that the tank has two and the beserker only one.

And here I see two problems, the first problem is the beserker's armor is deducted much differently than the tanks speed is. For example the beserker's armor is deducted from the already existing 50 points of damage reduction so in essence, the class has a little more armor than it should have. And as for the tank the speed is cut from the original speed not even putting into account the quickfoot. As a side note the tank subclass has no quickfoot ability to be bought.

So I think either just make sure that the quickfoot cannot be bought on the tank subclass and also do not decrease the speed of the subclass further OR make sure that the beserker subclass will take more damage according to how much damage reduction they currently have. As you can see its a mismatch.

The two SubClasses are very different styles, so will affect what you can buy differently. Each one should be taken on its own merits, and balanced accordingly. If either is too strong they need nerfing, if too weak then boosting. It doesn't matter what any other subclass does.

The Berserker SubClass concept is basically doing lots of damage but taking more as a consequence. The balance is to get it so the extra damage given is balanced by the extra damage taken. So if it is too powerful, either reduce the damage done or increase the damage taken. It is a relatively straight forward balance.

With the Tank, the concept is of a heavy slow-moving slow-firing tank, that does lots of damage with each shot. It also gets hit a lot, but is well protected. This as you say has two abilities that need to be balanced - the extra protection against how slowly it moves, and the extra damage against the fire rate. Each of these needs to be balanced separately.
I could let Tanks buy Quickfoot, in which case I would assume they have it, and so knock the tank speed down by an extra 50%. I didn't see the point. The main thing is that the Tank movement speed has to be balanced by the extra protection they get. And that is what I have tried to pitch it as. If it is wrong, then let's adjust it.

Elite wrote:

The second problem I noticed is once you get a globe as the beserker the little armor they have is rendered useless... and since they have adrenaline surge, the class will be pouring in adrenaline consistently... hence the high scores for those who know the trick. You can have beserk on and the globe and still be pouring in adrenaline as long as you keep your killing streaks going.

I hadn't thought about berserkers globing. I had allowed them Surge so they could run the berserk combo a lot - I thought it would fit more with the type of character. So, what do we think - remove surge or stop them picking up a globe, or leave it as it is?

Without the globe, we might as well find a good hiding spot from wave 12 on.
And there is no guarantee we will find one by then anyways.
The Berserker class I think is balanced. Ya we can deliver a mighty punch, but it doesn't take much to take us down either. So, like any other class, it's left up to the players skill to stay alive.