[Venge]

Originally Posted by Mortezzah

I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying you are thinking of removing Strike Now and Withdraw off the Warriors arsenal, because they are the best to use while in a group and overshadow the rest of the commands? Or, do you mean "no they won't be commands, they will be abilities" -- then what does that mean? Come off endurance instead of energy?

Re: - "Increased mitigation/block/parry so melee combat is limited." Don't see why this is needed. Melee is limited as is.

BTW -- you need to increase the interrupt rate on self-heals, or some healers will still be soloing beyond 3 dots.

Removing them off command refresh and becoming separate abilities.

Pretty much mob beefing.

I didn't list all the changes.

[Avariel]

Originally Posted by Venge

This means numerous changes will be occuring overtime:

- Smarter A.I., mobs noticing range differences will root/snare quicker.
- Higher resistances in general to mobs. Immunity on some.
- Much more dense areas so that grouping mobs are harder to split.
- Increased run speed on mobs.
- Increased mitigation/block/parry so melee combat is limited.
- Mobs are able to exploit as well.

This is not all pushed in favor of the warrior, but in general that the game's difficulty of solo/group content is not where it is supposed to be.

The only issue that I can see with buffing the mobs to bring down the current uber classes is that better balanced classes, such as warriors, will effectivly get nerfed into the ground by these changes.

ie.
Class A can beat 3 dots.
Class B can beat 4 dots.

Answer make mobs harder...

Class A can beat 2 dots.
Class B can beat 3 dots.

Do we have balance yet?
No...

[Mortezzah]

Originally Posted by Venge

Removing them off command refresh and becoming separate abilities.

Pretty much mob beefing.

I didn't list all the changes.

Would be nice if they worked in all stances...

[Mortezzah]

Originally Posted by Avariel

The only issue that I can see with buffing the mobs to bring down the current uber classes is that better balanced classes, such as warriors, will effectivly get nerfed into the ground by these changes.

ie.
Class A can beat 3 dots.
Class B can beat 4 dots.

Answer make mobs harder...

Class A can beat 2 dots.
Class B can beat 3 dots.

Do we have balance yet?
No...

Let's see what they talked about:

- Smarter A.I., mobs noticing range differences will root/snare quicker.

Everyone is affected -- so doesn't help Warrior relatively speaking, unless the AI counters their tricks to do 4/5/6 dots (which I bet it will -- which would result in it benefitting Warrior, relatively speaking. Like root/snare). Bottom line, I bet the Warrior is LEAST impacted by this, because we don't have lots of clever tricks

- Higher resistances in general to mobs. Immunity on some.

Same. Again, probably hurts the Warrior the least.

- Much more dense areas so that grouping mobs are harder to split.

Hurts Warrior more because we have no lull that Pals have, or Mez Blade that DK's have.

- Increased run speed on mobs.

Hurts most folks -- and considering this is one of the prime "oh crap" abilities the Warrior has, our solo game will be hurt...

- Increased mitigation/block/parry so melee combat is limited.

Definately hurts all melee.

- Mobs are able to exploit as well.

I'd rather they fix it so no one can exploit, not that everyone can exploit.

Overall, this is exactly what they need to do to bring the original "vision" back, which was what drew a lot of people to Vanguard (i.e. a harder MMORPG where grouping is actively encouraged). I'd WAY rather they make things harder and make it so NO ONE can solo 4/5/6 dots, then beef up EVERYONE so everyone can solo them all. You simply can't have what they have now -- where most folks can solo 4/5/6 dots, and a couple can't -- yet those couple aren't equivalently more powerful in groups to compensate.

[Player1]

Thanks for this update Venge. Love it or hate it, it's nice to know work is being done.

[Avariel]

Originally Posted by Mortezzah

Overall, this is exactly what they need to do to bring the original "vision" back, which was what drew a lot of people to Vanguard (i.e. a harder MMORPG where grouping is actively encouraged). I'd WAY rather they make things harder and make it so NO ONE can solo 4/5/6 dots, then beef up EVERYONE so everyone can solo them all. You simply can't have what they have now -- where most folks can solo 4/5/6 dots, and a couple can't -- yet those couple aren't equivalently more powerful in groups to compensate.

/agree

Although as warriors can't solo the 4/5/6's at the moment if things are made harder so those who can solo these group mobs are limited to 3 dots and below what will warriors be able to solo?

[Venge]

Originally Posted by Avariel

/agree

Although as warriors can't solo the 4/5/6's at the moment if things are made harder so those who can solo these group mobs are limited to 3 dots and below what will warriors be able to solo?

Same with what we are doing now. Like I stated, we were balanced around 1 - 2 dots being the solo intended mobs. With the ability to hit 3 dots but with difficulty.

[Cobalty2004]

Nice write up!

Any info on the upcoming defensive value changes?

[Avariel]

Originally Posted by Venge

Same with what we are doing now. Like I stated, we were balanced around 1 - 2 dots being the solo intended mobs. With the ability to hit 3 dots but with difficulty.

Let me try an analogy to get accross my point:

You have a class of kids who are really good at high jump competitions; most of them can all jump the bar so easily that the competition is not even challenging for them.

Now a couple of the kids in the class can't jump so well and get left behind in the competition because they can't jump as high as the more able kids, so to make things more fair and to make the difficulty of the competition as it was intended to be the high jump bar is raised so the really sporty kids are now challenged.

What happens in this example to the less able kids who were finding the competition challenging before it was made harder?

[Cobalty2004]

Originally Posted by Avariel

Let me try an analogy to get accross my point:

You have a class of kids who are really good at high jump competitions; most of them can all jump the bar so easily that the competition is not even challenging for them.

Now a couple of the kids in the class can't jump so well and get left behind in the competition because they can't jump as high as the more able kids, so to make things more fair and to make the difficulty of the competition as it was intended to be the high jump bar is raised so the really sporty kids are now challenged.

What happens in this example to the less able kids who were finding the competition challenging before it was made harder?

I think the changes are to prevent mass charm kiting, bow kiting, snare... w/e kiting.

And healers outhealing mobs damage, nothing really with the warrior way of solo'ing.... aka beating the **** out of the mob as fast as possible

[SageGaspar]

In my opinion these proposed changes to make it harder are moving in a bit of a bad direction.

Spiking resistances, increasing run speed, that kinda stuff is... eh. I really really don't feel like mob density has to be increased at all.

To stop kiting being a no risk activity give a lot more 4+ dot mobs significant ranged attacks. Charm kiting is inherently risky as-is, charm has the potential to fail fabulously and if you outaggro your charmed pet, boom you're getting hit by the ranged attacks. Other options are to give certain kinds of mobs leap attack. I've seen it in other games and it's a little interesting quirk.

Healers? Well if they can heal themselves through it, more power to 'em. I don't have a problem with healers soloing tough mobs as long as it's more efficient for me to be tanking while they heal and their DPS isn't ridiculous.

If we gotta do high resists, maybe something like high resists unless something is in melee combat with them (their concentration is borked), or for the first 5 or 10% of health and then decays as their health drops, or something like that. I'd really hate to see casters get the shaft just to stop kiting.

EDIT: Just wanted to add even if I got beef about the specifics of how they plan on nerfing the solo game, I'm pumped about the warrior changes and happy we got such an awesome lead :P

[framinal]

venge you never stop amazing me

thanks for all the work, im glad im still around

[Mortezzah]

Originally Posted by SageGaspar

In my opinion these proposed changes to make it harder are moving in a bit of a bad direction.

Spiking resistances, increasing run speed, that kinda stuff is... eh. I really really don't feel like mob density has to be increased at all.

To stop kiting being a no risk activity give a lot more 4+ dot mobs significant ranged attacks. Charm kiting is inherently risky as-is, charm has the potential to fail fabulously and if you outaggro your charmed pet, boom you're getting hit by the ranged attacks. Other options are to give certain kinds of mobs leap attack. I've seen it in other games and it's a little interesting quirk.

Healers? Well if they can heal themselves through it, more power to 'em. I don't have a problem with healers soloing tough mobs as long as it's more efficient for me to be tanking while they heal and their DPS isn't ridiculous.

If we gotta do high resists, maybe something like high resists unless something is in melee combat with them (their concentration is borked), or for the first 5 or 10% of health and then decays as their health drops, or something like that. I'd really hate to see casters get the shaft just to stop kiting.

EDIT: Just wanted to add even if I got beef about the specifics of how they plan on nerfing the solo game, I'm pumped about the warrior changes and happy we got such an awesome lead :P

Disagree.

You don't have a problem with healers soloing tough mobs? Then you don't get what the promised vision was. The promised vision was that 3, 4, 5, and 6 dot mobs were GROUP, not SOLO.

You want high resists -- not high resists in melee combat. That defeats the purpose. Then you will still have someone attack snare from a distance, and walk back plinking them with spells/bows/etc. No, the proper change, as has been suggested multiple times, is to dramatically increases resistances (to the point of being immune) on 4, 5, 6 dot mobs. Let's 3s remain "tough" solos, but doable. Let 4 solos be absolutely unheard of (I'm talking even-conned).

[Bhima_LS]

I know you didn't ask me, Mortezzah, but I'd like to respond.

I think it's okay for each template to have various strengths. I'll use Ultima Online as an example.

In UO, tamers and mages are most powerful against one single very tough monster at a time that would kill a warrior (because they hit so hard). But against multiple creatures the tamers and mages are dead meat, as they can't avoid getting hit.

The warrior, in UO, can literally clear screens full of monsters that tamers and mages could not dream of soloing.

So sometimes the warrior rescues (and rezzes) the tamers and mages, and sometimes the tamers and mages rescue the warriors, depending on the area.

Vanguard has psionisists whom I've seen fighting 12+ monsters at a time that warriors can handle one at a time.

It has clerics that can take an immense beating but that in general can't dish out much damage (except the war/death types which I don't frankly count as healers since they've converted to fighters). I don't have a problem with clerics being able to take a beating (my purity cleric, for instance, seems just fine).

It has disciples (and monks) that actually have self-sustaining power where so long as they don't stop fighting they can keep going and going.

It has bards that do okay damage and okay defense, but wow they're wonderful for exploration (fast speed, water breathing, floating, invis, etc.)

Anyway, the whole point is that so long as each character has something it's really good at, I think it's okay.

Being able to get monsters mad at you doesn't really count as something fun to play. It's just a utility for groups. If Vanguard gave warriors some kind of strength over other classes, like Ultima Online does, then having clerics fight 4-dot monsters or psionisists fight 15 2-dot monsters higher level than them would be just fine.

[Gecon]

Originally Posted by Bhima_LS

It has clerics that can take an immense beating but that in general can't dish out much damage (except the war/death types which I don't frankly count as healers since they've converted to fighters). I don't have a problem with clerics being able to take a beating (my purity cleric, for instance, seems just fine).

You call War and Death "fighter" - and have taken PURITY ??? ROTFL.

You deal more damage than any other Cleric subtype, albeit only against a certain kind of mob.

Besides, I'm Death and I'm certainly not a better FIGHTER now. My dps increase in group situations is simply ZERO because I have to use my Mana for other means there. If at all, I use snare and fear on mobs which are about to kill me - it sucks a big chunk of mana, but it still sucks a lot less mana than emergency healing myself.

But I'm ok with it. I knew Purification was better when I choose Death. I havent taken Death for anything but style, anyway. A darkelf with purification, thats like a darkelf riding an unicorn. No thank you ! This rat I'm riding ("Shadowhound") doesnt really fit either, but it at least fits better than a horse.

Originally Posted by Bhima_LS

It has disciples (and monks) that actually have self-sustaining power where so long as they don't stop fighting they can keep going and going.

ROTFL LOL ROTFL !

Start a Monk and try to do that. "keep going and going" lol ! A single 2dot of same level and you have to REST to get back your health man !

Insides groups they can - but so can anybody else as well.

[SageGaspar]

Originally Posted by Mortezzah

You want high resists -- not high resists in melee combat. That defeats the purpose. Then you will still have someone attack snare from a distance, and walk back plinking them with spells/bows/etc. No, the proper change, as has been suggested multiple times, is to dramatically increases resistances (to the point of being immune) on 4, 5, 6 dot mobs. Let's 3s remain "tough" solos, but doable. Let 4 solos be absolutely unheard of (I'm talking even-conned).

Don't think you read me properly, I said high resists unless someone is engaged in melee combat with them. The crucial point being that someone is taking damage from the mob. I don't want a situation where arcane gets gimped in groups because someone's pissing themselves that people can snare kite. Give mobs immunities across the board and there's no point to having the spells, half the fun and utility of magic based classes goes out the window. Snare kiting should not be as easy as it is, but I don't want to turn this into another EQ2 style tank-and-spank where there's one basic strategy and mages exist either for sheer DPS or to buff the melee. This is coming from someone who vastly prefers playing melee to arcane classes.

I can't say I really care too much about the vision for how many dots each class is supposed to be able to solo either. Someone can do a four dot, fine, as long as they're not doing it efficiently and I'm not a liability if I were to join them. The only way I would ever care given that is if there's some rare named or something that people can solo farm easily, but then the solution is not putting in these artificial four dot barriers across the board, it's tweaking the named mobs with good loot.

[Gecon]

I dont think its "silly".

Subclasses do not make much sense for most of the classes.

I can think of:

Rangers might possibly subclass into an archer, a melee, and a group support/tank subtype (more buffs, better defense, maybe also better animal companion).

Druid might possibly subclass into a raw dps, group support / dps, and healer subtype. Actually I would love giving Druids some kind of shapeshifter subclass, too.

But:

• Warrior, Paladin and Dread Knight all already look like subclasses from the generic tank. Subclassing them even further - I simply see no room. They would be too close, to equal. Rather create new tank classes.
  
• I dont see much room to subclass Rogue or Bard. Rogue is backstab. Bard is songs. There is only one feature defining the class, so how to subclass that ?
  
• Disciples are atm mainly melee and healing. They are effectively the healer subclass of the Monk. They need some additional roles to get a subclassing.
  
• Bloodmages are very complex, but in the end they are the Diablo class: damage, damage, damage. I dont see room for subclassing there.
  
• Sorcerers are rawest dps. No room for subclassing.
  
• Psionists might be possible to subclass... I dont know enough about the class to really decide about it.
  
• Necromancers are too clearly defined. DoTs, Summon, the usual Necromancer utility. They already subclass (Shadow or Lich), but I dont see room for larger changes.

Of course, you can think of new ways. For example, why dont make a Sorcerer subclass who gets a bit of group buffing instead of rawest dps ? Or that can summon some dps mobs for short periods of time ? But that would be definining new roles for existing classes, and obviously then roles of classes easily clash. For what exactly is the difference between a Necromancer and a Sorcerer with a summon ?

[mrbandersnatch]

Of the stuff that is actually planned it sounds good. However now we need to see it implimented and in a far more complete form than our first pass. ETA?

[yesod]

Much <3 Venge...

All sounds good and dandy... However, what scares me is the bit of upping the mob melee / block / parry chances. If the devs intend to do that on 4-6 dots mob then sure by all means, but please dont touch the 1-3 dots mobs, leave them be. Especially that mitigation / armor will be recieving a good nerf soon (which is very justifiable).

Also regarding Leap Attack, I hope the distance is drasticaly increased, It would be nice if we could actually leap 15-20m to the mob, something like Charge in WoW (omg, I cannot believe I actually said that!!!).

Thanks for the update Venge!

[Mortezzah]

Originally Posted by SageGaspar

Don't think you read me properly, I said high resists unless someone is engaged in melee combat with them. The crucial point being that someone is taking damage from the mob. I don't want a situation where arcane gets gimped in groups because someone's pissing themselves that people can snare kite. Give mobs immunities across the board and there's no point to having the spells, half the fun and utility of magic based classes goes out the window. Snare kiting should not be as easy as it is, but I don't want to turn this into another EQ2 style tank-and-spank where there's one basic strategy and mages exist either for sheer DPS or to buff the melee. This is coming from someone who vastly prefers playing melee to arcane classes.

I can't say I really care too much about the vision for how many dots each class is supposed to be able to solo either. Someone can do a four dot, fine, as long as they're not doing it efficiently and I'm not a liability if I were to join them. The only way I would ever care given that is if there's some rare named or something that people can solo farm easily, but then the solution is not putting in these artificial four dot barriers across the board, it's tweaking the named mobs with good loot.

He posted they are increasing melee/block/etc, i.e. they are increasing melee resists too. So, if you are increasing melee reists while melee, then you must also increase spell resists while melee or from afar (again, monster parry/etc %s are also getting adjusted which would affect afar). Quid pro quo.

Re: vision. The only reason I came to Vanguard is for the vision they layed out of making it group centric, difficult -- basically bringing back some of EQ1 feel and less of WOW feel. I am not a WOW hater, its just not my preference. So, if this isn't inline with what you want, you should try another game. I've been lobbying against things I've seen that go against the vision from day 1, because, without the vision, I'm gone. So, I keep pushing for those changes. I'm basically constantly pushing for the "vision" as I've understood it. I guess your best bet would be to lobby to change the vision I've just been lobbying to actually implement what was promised.