Some other balance issues - Rod and Piercing

There are a couple of other things that might be worth talking about while we are looking at balance.

The Rod
I know everyone likes the Rod, but I feel there are some issues to consider

It is powerful. Get it on the right wave with a DD with a multi-kill in progress, and it just keeps going. The multikill bonus keeps feeding it and you get shedloads of XP. To me, getting up to 160 kills from something that isn't aimed is not really on. But I suppose it isn't any worse than using sentinels

The Rod is exactly the same to everyone. The AMs do exactly the same damage with it as the WMs or Engs. However, AMs will get extra adrenaline back due to surge but will lose drip and leech, and WMs due to their vampire can survive longer in the middle of all the monsters.

Personally, I think Extreme AMs ought to do more damage with the Rod than anyone else. I have felt reluctant to do this though because it is so powerful. Extreme AMs do get extra surge, but cannot get the weapon kills at the same time.

One problem with the Rod is that once you get to a mixed wave, if you meet a few large monsters they will not get killed by the rod, and so the multi-kills, and hence the adrenaline, will dry up. The rod is limited to 100 damage per hit, but in reality the max damage per hit (normal titan) is 90, taking 13.5 adrenaline. Two titans getting hit twice a second will drain 54 adrenaline per sec, so in 2 seconds your adrenaline is usually gone with no kills. A skaarj health 150 will only get hit for 15 damage, using 2.25 adrenaline. If we limit the rod to giving a max of 20 damage rather than 100, it may be better. Although it will not kill the titans, it will not use up the adrenaline either so you may get kills from other smaller monsters to keep the multikills running. So limiting the damage it does may make it more effective.

The slow drain cost of one adrenaline per second when nothing is happening is perhaps a bit low, but it is probably ok since drip and leech are inhibited.

The rod is flagged as a superweapon. This means it ignores any DB/DR calculations. It also ignores any abilities the victim might have like DamageReduction. It partly works with the DD/TD - it ups the damage but only gives xp on the initial damage. Is that what we want?

Any thoughts?

Piercing Weapons
are too good. High levels require the piercing effect, but the +30% damage they do means they are probably the best weapon in most circumstances. It also cannot work with the triple. I suggest

Changing it from +5% to +1% per plus, so when maxed does +6% damage

If the original damage is greater than the damage after DB/DR has been applied, the piercing weapon chooses the original damage. That is the piercing effect. Allow piercing weapons to run with the triple, but do the damage adjustment for the triple before deciding whether to take the original damage or not. So it is either "original damage" or "triple final damage" (actually double, but that is a separate thread). So the weapon either uses the piercing effect and ignores adjustments, or it takes on board all adjustments.

Other thoughts:

We could add an extra pickup spawned by monsters and luck weapons - a +1 pickup. When you run over it, whatever weapon you have in hand gets +1 added to it, if it can.

I knew this was going to come up sooner or later....

The Rod...

I think it should be left as is. It has been unchanged (as far as I know) for how many years? The server has only gotten harder. If it dells the same amount of damage no matter who wields it, I don't see that as a balance thing. It's inherently a AM weapon, even though anyone can pick one up. But it's limited to those who are not specifically supposed to have it, as is should be. No matter what level you are, it still doesn't kill that fast, just attacks many (within range) at once. It's such an adren. drain in large groups or a few large baddies that it's worthless if you are low on adren.

Piercing...

We already limited it to no triple a while ago (along with the Vorpal). It was already decided that was only fair and balanced then...what changed? The piercing weapon, we all know, is a high level's saving grace if he/she is the last one alive. We all hope to have one (other than an AR..a goo is better than an AR.) I think it's fine as is...as a Piercing weapon is no guarantee of a win or survival, we all die with one, just hoping it's in hand and we just didn't run out of ammo and it changed to another weapon before the rock hit.

+1 artifact... Interesting thought.. couldn't hurt. Good for lower levels who have vanilla weapons....how would it affect a cursed weapon? Would it lessen the curse by 1 or changed a -1 whatever to a plain vanilla weapon?

Like I said before, the server has only gotten harder, from red goo throwing baddies to multiplying red flies that get way out of had real quick, last thing we need is nerfing, IMO. I already lost my +5 a while ago, dont nerf my other toys too.

I really wouldnt mind too much if the damage cap was lowered somewhat to prevent the loss of a huge amount of adrenaline in a few seconds due to a couple of high hp mobs spawning next to you. Beam is usually used for those mobs anyway and the return on killing a titan with the rod even with DD really isnt there.

20 might be a little low but something like 30 is prob fine since a few of the small mobs like lava skarjj and behemoths have around 250hp, it shouldnt affect the kill rate of those. It would only affect the mobs that rod should really be used on anyway (Warlords, Queens, Giant Gasbags, and Titans)

Warlords would go from 10 to 17, giant gass bags would go to 20 hits, queens would go to 27, and titans to 30 and metal titans to 43 but now you wouldnt suffer a huge drain on the adrenaline when they pop up on you out of no where which really sucks at times. With it capped at 30, you would only lose 4.5 Adrenaline at most per mob in range.

It woudl be a slight nerf to the rod but I think it would be an overall gain to AM's (and to a lesser extent the other classes) since nothing's worse then going around using the rod for a few monsters only to have a queen and a giant gasbag spawn near you and suck 42 Adrenaline per sec. With a 30 cap, it would only force an 18 Adrenaline per sec drain which is manageable and actually useful that now you can use it while your killing the high hp monsters.

Since I cant test the subclasses, I cant give much on the Extreme AM (since thats what I would be if I could as it fits my playstyle). I dunno about giving a stronger rod for them. Between Surge 3 and Drip 5, Adrenaline shouldnt be much of an issue and you can run the rod consistantly. Instead of going down that route for a stronger Rod, why not give an additional ability or change drip 5 to where using draining Artifacts no longer stops Drip from working. Drip 5 is 3 Adrenaline per sec I assume. With the ability or such, with no monsters around and the rod running, you would gain 2 Adrenaline per sec (3 Drip - 1 Rod Drain). What this does is basically reduces all draining artifact costs by 3 per second.

Piercing I have no comments on as I dont use the weapon since as AM, id rather have Energy, Lucky, etc and I'm not at a level where Piercing does anything extra for me compared to the monsters. The 5% per plus is a big strong combined with its other ability but 1% might be a bit too much.

+1 magic pickups would be nice for people. Limit it to no higher then the normal max for the magic type though.

Just my two cents though.

It seems the problem with the rod is the killing spree bonuses. I think those should be looked at.
AMs should benefit more from rod though, but they already tend to have more dren to benefit from it.

I would be careful about nerfing piercing weps. They are still the only hope for a high level player on their own.

Right now the balance focus should be the subclasses. Low level players are going to have a more difficult time leveling up while the high level players are doing all of the killing.

greg11 wrote:

It seems the problem with the rod is the killing spree bonuses. I think those should be looked at.
AMs should benefit more from rod though, but they already tend to have more dren to benefit from it.

I would be careful about nerfing piercing weps. They are still the only hope for a high level player on their own.

Right now the balance focus should be the subclasses. Low level players are going to have a more difficult time leveling up while the high level players are doing all of the killing.

Perhaps lower the XP curve slightly, Mainly the 41-60 range, where the 10,000 xp cap happens later (like between 80-100, instead of the 60's.)

Subclasses arnt being designed to be any stronger then the main classes though (I believe thats what szlat said). A normal AM and an Extreme AM with the same skill level should do about the same.

Dracos wrote:

Subclasses arnt being designed to be any stronger then the main classes though (I believe thats what szlat said). A normal AM and an Extreme AM with the same skill level should do about the same.

Yes, but since the players that had nothing else to spend their points on suddenly have a bunch of stuff to buy...

Maybe the Rod pickups can break, like the MWM?

Ratar_Killer wrote:

Maybe the Rod pickups can break, like the MWM?

That would make me really unpopular

my torch and my peasant tools are right on my arms!!

Szlat wrote:

Ratar_Killer wrote:

Maybe the Rod pickups can break, like the MWM?
That would make me really unpopular

LOL

Szlat wrote:

Ratar_Killer wrote:

Maybe the Rod pickups can break, like the MWM?
That would make me really unpopular

LOL

I am just after a balanced game. If everyone tells me they want the rod and piercing to stay as it is, and the game will be worse if it changes, no problem. I won't argue with such a vast collection of experience.

I am just throwing up options. I thought lowering the max damage was a good idea. But with the amount of other change going on, perhaps we leave it for now.

Szlat wrote:

Ratar_Killer wrote:

Maybe the Rod pickups can break, like the MWM?
That would make me really unpopular

You're already unpopular from those red flies

(DC)DEMONSLAYER wrote:

Szlat wrote:

Ratar_Killer wrote:

Maybe the Rod pickups can break, like the MWM?
That would make me really unpopular

You're already unpopular from those red flies

So,...its ok to nerf the monsters...but not our toys?

From what I understand piercing weapons won't lose their piercing ability. So a high level by oneself will still ignore monster DR, which was the goal in the first place.

However I think what Szlat is trying to get at is the +30% is a big boost for a weapon that is already powerful by it's ability alone.

As for the rod, perhaps instead of nerfing the rod itself you make weapons deal less damage while the rod is running. This lowers your overall damage output and would decrease it's stability while blasting away with energy weapons. It would also make sprees harder, perhaps the biggest enabler for rod abuse. Perhaps weapon damage could be dropped to that of the EAM (EAM of course would not lose more weapon damage, which would fit the idea of it being more proficient with artifacts).

Or there could be new monsters that take no damage from the rod, but still use up the adren you would otherwise consume in hitting them.