SubClass Balance Issues in release 226

Szlat wrote:

So, trying to summarise where we currently are. We want the Medic/Engineer hybrid to be a support player - a bit like an Extreme Medic, but not doing the health healing as well but doing shield healing and base set-up.

So the list of skills I currently favour are:

Loaded healing 3

Experienced healing 9

Medic Awareness 2

Advanced Damage Reduction 10

Loaded Engineer 15, but limited to no vehicles, just one minigun turret, 15 blocks, no barrels and 2 defense sents

Shield regen 15

Shield Healing 3

Construction Health Bonus 6

Engineer Awareness 1

Def Sent Upgrade Health 5

Def Sent Upgrade Shields 5

Def Sent Upgrade Armor 5

Regen 3

Drip 3

Vehicle Eject 1

Ghost, Ultima, CounterShove, Quickfoot etc as normal

No resupply, Awareness or Denial

No monster skills

No Armor Vampire, Armor Regen, Rapid Build

No rod pickup

Can pick up other weapons, but all damage (Artifact/Weapons/Vehicles) at 0.5

The first four are an exact copy of the Medic skills from the M/MM. Health healing will be to +150 and shield healing will be to +150. The def sents will only heal health and shields to +100, to always leave room for a medic to top up (as is the case now).

With lvl 10 damage reduction and shield regen 15, this should be a survivor. And it needs to be tough due to its severely nerfed attacking.

Wow yes!! I love the idea this will help this hybrid so much and I liked the part they cant deal damage but they will have strong defense to survive.

When im playing my am and we are surrounded by warlords on wave 12 there are some healers that start healing like crazy but the enemy fire is so intense that the medics die first, and with this they will support teammates until the end.

Szlat
Me and my bro had an idea. Why not get experience when people use your turrets. It is very frustrating when somebody else uses your turret but you get no experience unless you link it. My idea is perhaps give 10 experience per minute when somebody uses your turret. This might increase the Points/Exp per minute to be equal with other hybrids.
The value can be determined by you. Otherwise it means you must sit in the base.

Dead_Freddo wrote:

Szlat
Me and my bro had an idea. Why not get experience when people use your turrets. It is very frustrating when somebody else uses your turret but you get no experience unless you link it. My idea is perhaps give 10 experience per minute when somebody uses your turret. This might increase the Points/Exp per minute to be equal with other hybrids.
The value can be determined by you. Otherwise it means you must sit in the base.

I think we've actually tossed this idea around a few times. I know I've suggested it at least once or twice.

I love the idea myself. However, I would say it should be for anyone that creates turrets/vehicles and it should just be a small percentage of the xp gained in the built unit (say 1% or something). Just enough to help, but not enough to live off of.

As I said earlier in the Extreme Engineer post, I am not in favour of xp for other people using turrets.:

Firstly, I think we are encouraging in-game arguments to develop. Lots of engineers get very touchy about other people using their turrets/vehicles. If some players get the idea that they are supposed to get in engineers turrets and it is recommended behaviour, then I suspect we will generate some confusion and bad feeling.

Also, there will be the exploit that two engineers spawn turrets, and get in each other's turrets. So this cannot generate more xp than each engineer being in their own turret.
So when we are giving xp to the engineer who spawned the turret, it means some xp gets detracted from the person in the turret. This is possible, but will further complicate the "how much xp do the linkers get?".

So, I am not convinced. Certainly not until every engineer agrees that they do not mind other people using their turrets at any time. And that will not happen.

So on my test server I played the first two games as the new MM/Eng character.

Initial impressions are ok, but may score a bit too much xp. However, playing with 3 bots is always difficult to extrapolate from. First game we got wiped out at wave 6, second game at wave 12.

Due to the reduced weapon damage, it takes a lot of shots to kills things. However, you have lots of adrenaline so you can survive using blasts for quite a while, especially with the two defense sents. It's when the base gets swarmed that you have had it.

I still managed to get over 100 kills though, despite the damage reduction.
XP earnt for the second game was around 2000, which is a bit high considering I was playing without the sprees.
However, the bots tend to suffer more damage than players would have, and there was nobody else healing shields or health.

So I will probably submit it as is.

Ok Cool, Szlat did you nerf the monsters? I just played a map and my 3 fire skaarj constantly died. They couldn't stay alive even on wave 5 they would die. It was a pathetic display and even with me fighting, i couldn't rack up to an ultra kill...
Has something happened? Also I will test the MM/Eng for you and report back later today.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Freddo

Dead_Freddo wrote:

Ok Cool, Szlat did you nerf the monsters? I just played a map and my 3 fire skaarj constantly died. They couldn't stay alive even on wave 5 they would die. It was a pathetic display and even with me fighting, i couldn't rack up to an ultra kill...
Has something happened? Also I will test the MM/Eng for you and report back later today.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Freddo

No, no changes have occured. It is still build 226 - so extreme monsters and the MM/Eng are still as they have been.
Once I have submitted the changes, which I haven't yet, they do not become active until Druid does the next build - which could be months.

ok. the monsters were just unusually low.

Szlat is it possible to give a list of what changes are being made to what subclass/hybrid to get a general idea?

Also might I suggest some changes to a few hybrid classes:

WM/MM: Since this is a fighting character mixed with a heal a healing/monster character, add a combination to the type of weapon it can make. I suggest a new artifact. This artifact would be added as an effect to the medic weapon. And it would deal poison damage. So if the medic creates a medic flak, it will heal nearby players like normal but if it hits any enemy (in this case monsters) it will deal poison damage. I think this skill should have different levels. Starting from level 1 with perhaps 1% and working its way up to where the current percentage is for poison.

WM/ENG: I think the spider mines deployed should be able to grow naturally (if possible) without having to link them to make them grow. Currently they explode before they have a chance to grow fully, and when they do grow fully they have such a high chance of damaging the user. Also since this subclass only has limited vamparism, why not a new ability? Since this is a fighter give it an ability to absorb shield as it kills as the vamp works but instead with the shield.

PS -both these hybrids are underpowered

WM/AM: I think this subclass should be the one with the surges. So for example it should have vampiric and adrenal surge (if not already).

Elite wrote:

Szlat is it possible to give a list of what changes are being made to what subclass/hybrid to get a general idea?

Will do when I get chance.

Elite wrote:

WM/MM: Since this is a fighting character mixed with a heal a healing/monster character, add a combination to the type of weapon it can make. I suggest a new artifact. This artifact would be added as an effect to the medic weapon. And it would deal poison damage. So if the medic creates a medic flak, it will heal nearby players like normal but if it hits any enemy (in this case monsters) it will deal poison damage. I think this skill should have different levels. Starting from level 1 with perhaps 1% and working its way up to where the current percentage is for poison.

I am not sure about giving someone an infinite poison weapon. Although I agree poison fits in with a medic, and it is a WM.

Elite wrote:

WM/ENG: I think the spider mines deployed should be able to grow naturally (if possible) without having to link them to make them grow. Currently they explode before they have a chance to grow fully, and when they do grow fully they have such a high chance of damaging the user. Also since this subclass only has limited vamparism, why not a new ability? Since this is a fighter give it an ability to absorb shield as it kills as the vamp works but instead with the shield.

Yeh, the spider mines sounded good, but in practice don't help that much. Rather than adding yet another skill, one option for the shield vampire for this subclass would be like the booster does it - get vampire to first fill up health, and then start filling the shields.

Elite wrote:

WM/AM: I think this subclass should be the one with the surges. So for example it should have vampiric and adrenal surge (if not already).

It has VampireSurge 5 and AdrenalSurge 1. However, I think I will shuffle the artifacts around for the LA hybrids so this subclass can get the fireball. It needs some other offensive artifact to go with the rod it already has.

For the WM/ENG: I do like the idea of vamp healing health and then shield, however since it is only limited to a level 4, the percentage at which the health increases will not be too high. Remember this subclass is under powered, giving it the ability to heal health and shield simultaneously should bring it back into balance, after all it is half WM. If you were to compare this hybrid to the beserker you know which one is stronger.

WM/MM: yes poison is a powerful tool, but class is also quite needing some extra power that is why I suggest giving poison in small increments to see how it works out with small percentages.

Current list of changes I am proposing:

Advanced damage 2% -> 3%

Loaded Monsters - pets now start at 75% of monster health instead of 100%.

Monster Damage reduced from +5% per level to +2% per level

Autoguns much longer range, projectiles slightly faster and doing slightly more damage

Artifacts re-ordered slightly for LA Hybrids, so AM/WM can buy extra level giving fireball.

Slight increase in fireball speed

AM hybrids get AdrenalSurge 1

WM hybrids get one extra level of vampire

Changes for MM/Eng class so can spawn only 2 def sents, minigun turret and blocks.

MM/Eng gets level 3 loaded healing instead of level 2

MM hybrids now get level 4 exp healing. The MM/Eng gets up to level 9 exp healing.

MM/Eng no longer gets loaded monsters, monster points or monster skill

MM/Eng gets level 10 Advanced Reduction, and level 15 shield regen, and drip 3

MM/Eng no longer gets Armor regen or vampire

MM/Eng gets level 5 of def sent addons for healing, shields and armor.

Base health of some vehicles reduced.

Base health of offensive sentinels reduced to 250 to match def sent.

Other things:

MWM no longer works on an Engineer Link

Bug fix for Regen so based on health rather than player level

Another possible bug fix for the Eng/medic/general client crash.

Typo fix on description for VampireSurge

Elite wrote:

WM/MM: yes poison is a powerful tool, but class is also quite needing some extra power that is why I suggest giving poison in small increments to see how it works out with small percentages.

So the changes we already have in for this subclass are
+1 level vampire,
+1% on 5 levels of advanced damage,
+2 levels experienced healing
nerfs to base health of pets.

One thought about this subclass. Should it have a little bit of medic and a little bit of monster master? Or should this agressive class actually just take the monster master part of the M/MM?
So get the entire MM part of the M/MM and add it to the half WM? No medic weapon, but the pets should have vampire?

it looks to me like you made med engi a full medic - monsters + engi stuff. I personally dont use monsters that much and score fine on a full medic. with healing def sents I can see this getting more xp than it should. I think exp healing shouldnt be that high, nor adv reduction, those being the medic exclusive abilities at the same level as medic

Yes I see your point Szlat, so the choice is this, either add poison and take away the monsters or take away the healing inf medic weapon but add stronger monsters. I personally would go for the poison mainly because it's different.