Critical Damage re-thought

[Arionthe]

Critical damage in its current format has gotten too important in the damage calculation. This has necessitated the wild mob hp scaling to compensate.

To illustrate: 8attacks/sec, 45% critical chance, 1300% critical damage, typical end game combat stats that players have.

Using 100 damage as the base, the DPS = 100*(8 * 45% * 1300% + 8 * 55% * 100%) = 5120. Critical damage was 4680 of that 5120 or 91.4%

So non critical damage is not even 8.5% of the damage dealt. In other words, more than half of the attacks did less than 10% of the damage. Those are wet noodle attacks because the mob hp has to scale to account for the massive critical damage.

There are two solutions to this madness.

1) Reduce crit chance. Critical attacks should be special, and when it happens it should make a big difference.
Well fat chance of this happening since I believe last time when this line of argument was made by the Devs, it caused an open rebellion by the player-base that the scheme was ultimately shelved.

2) Reduce crit damage multiplier.
I really do think this is the way to go. 13X damage? Are you for real? For that big of a multiplier, I'm expecting a decapitating shot. But apparently every mob out there has hundreds of heads so they can keep taking those 13X shots and still coming.


Critical damage has become the only damage that counts since they overwhelm noncrit damage 10 to 1.

Critical damage multiplier should just be a straight 2X or 3X. At 2X, the crit to non crit damage ratio becomes 7 to 4. At 3X, the crit non crit ratio is 10 to 4.

Concurrent with any adjustment to the Crit damage multiplier should be the base HP of mobs so they don't all need to be hundreds of heads monsters anymore. In other words, players will be able to kill them just as fast as before.

This also has the benefit of freeing up a precious stat slot for other considerations. Especially valuable if the past intentions of introducing more varied combat stats such as ability power, multi-strike chance actually come to pass.

[tshell]

Good ideas, some more tweaks could lead to more variability in build types.

[GrauGeist]

IMO, a max 45% CR rate is not out of line, although it should probably be under 40%. Agree that the 1300% CD rate is grossly excessive, and should probably be under 400%, preferably under 300%. Therefore, the CD effect should basically be about 1/4 of what it currently is. That's relatively easy to fix.

A quick fix would be to rescale CD *and CR bonuses:

Champion Points:

• 2 CR per CP (currently 5 CR per CP)
• 0.5% CD per CP (currently 2.0 CD per CP)

Items

• no change to CR calculation
• +15% CD max (currently 60% CD)

Net result, is that CD bonuses are cut by 75%, down to 1/4 of their current level, across the board. 1300% damage shrinks to 325% damage, which is much more reasonable.

Net result?

Total damage output is 190% of base damage (i.e. ZERO CR), compared with 640% base damage (45% x 1300%). Of this, roughly 1/3 is normal damage, and 2/3 is critical.

Rescale the mob difficulty (and especially the healers), and it's good!


BTW, if we're killing any stats, Armor is the one to change to something interesting. Replace Armor with Extra Gold (and Gems!). *THAT* would be useful!

[Arionthe]

Your solution for CD rescaling is actually a waste of stat space. All it really does is change the relative effective ratio between CD and Power. A new optimization calculation will be done and tell everyone to aim for X% CD. Rather getting rid of the stat entirely will help free up space for other more interesting stats.

[Arionthe]

Good ideas, some more tweaks could lead to more variability in build types.

Combine this CD elimination (flat 2 or 3X for a critical hit) with the Offensive Rating and Defensive Rating scheme from my other thread will introduce a significantly more varied damage model.

Honestly I think the critical damage factor should be mob specific instead of just a flat number. This will give more variety to mobs and the fight experience. The current combat system resolves everything into a single damage number; hence, there is no true multiple paths to the end result. That forces everyone to build similarly.

Example time.

100k HP, 50% armor reduction mob. This mob will be taken done in 20secs if the DPS is 10k. No matter how you arrive at that 10k DPS, the fight will only last 20secs, no more and no less.

Same monster but with added critical weakness modifier.

100k HP, 50% armor reduction, 3x critical weakness. This mob will be taken down faster by a 10k dps high critical hit build than a 10k dps high power build.
100k HP, 50% armor reduction, 0x critical weakness (critical immune). This situation flips the above scenario, the high power 10k dps build will win this fight hands down.

Besides critical weakness as a mob attribute makes a lot of sense. Mechanical monsters should be less critical prone than flesh and blood based monsters. Skeletons shouldn't have any critical weakness, but frogs should etc.

Taking this idea, one can add elemental weakness to it, then the whole lucky/unlucky shot (Defensive Rating), plus the damage range bias based on Offensive Rating. Now that's a proper combat system with enough depth for trade offs to be made when building that offensive dynamo. The idea is to make sure no one build can be the best at every situation.

[GrauGeist]

Unlike you, I don't want to eliminate CD as a stat, because I don't really want to completely destroy all of the CD equipment that we currently have invested in. If the intent is to effectively completely remove CD as a stat, that's more of an Eternium 2.0 concept, where the entire stat system gets overhauled and streamlined. Probably at least half the stats could be removed. AR and Haste could be folded together. CD folded into CR. All of the Parry/Dodge combined. And so on. But that's not what this game is. That's Eternium 2.

My solution is to keep CD as an important stat, but to not have CD/CR completely dominate the damage.

As far as "other more interesting stats", CD would be converted to something else relevant that simply creates a new optimization point around the replacement stat, whatever it may be.

That's why I suggest to rebalance.

[Arionthe]

Current combat experience feels like watching the paint dry. Even the critical hits are not meaningful when the mob hp goes into the billions. I have identified one of the instigators, 1300% CD. Mob HP scaling is the blunt tool used to compensate for the excessive % CD, as well as the 8-10 attacks per sec.

When the baddest sword in the land (DR) needs hundreds of swings to take down a mob, doesn't it make you question what you are wielding? A feather duster?

BH, warrior, and mage all spaz uncontrollably while mimicking the fastest air guitar moves. That's just funny, not fun.

BH should attack the fastest, at maybe 6 shots a sec. (or give BH a two handed bazooka option that shoots 1 massive shot per sec).

Warrior should be in the middle, dishing out 2 swings a second or 3 if dual wield.

Mage should be most deliberate, maybe 1 to 1.5 fireballs a second.

One can easily scale the per hit damage so that all three classes still dish out similar damage over a period of time.

Now each hit can actually take an appreciable amount of life away from the mob.

The ultimate aim of this thread and the other Offensive Rating and Defensive Rating thread isn't to just change the meta of the combat system. That accomplishes nothing as the names of the must have stats simply change. Also the new combat stats like multi strike and ability power if added to the current combat system will simply shift the meta but bring no fundamental change. The math heads of the community like Jose Sarmento and Coda will simply workout a few variables and arrive at the new cookie cutter/optimal build. This will change nothing.

The lack of build variety in this game has everything to do with how the combat system is setup. We want to play a game of rock, scissors, and paper, instead we are playing a game of red, white, and blue rocks where colors make no difference.

Build variety depends on a number of things. Reduce the must have stats' impact on the game. Alacrity is a great example of this. Next create situational dependencies (critical weakness) so that one way of doing damage isn't always the best no matter the situation. Finally introduce real trade offs (heavier hits vs higher number of weaker hits) so the combat experiences actually differ depending on how you build your character.

Give players multiple, viable ways to accomplish something. Not make one particular way heads and shoulders above the rest, that's how you have build variety and gameplay variety. Plus this has the not too insignificant advantage of enhanced replayability that delay the onset of Eternium fatigue many have fallen to. orion_134 , narf ,and many others.

[Cultusfit]

Critical damage in its current format has gotten too important in the damage calculation. This has necessitated the wild mob hp scaling to compensate.

To illustrate: 8attacks/sec, 45% critical chance, 1300% critical damage, typical end game combat stats that players have.

Using 100 damage as the base, the DPS = 100*(8 * 45% * 1300% + 8 * 55% * 100%) = 5120. Critical damage was 4680 of that 5120 or 91.4%

So non critical damage is not even 8.5% of the damage dealt. In other words, more than half of the attacks did less than 10% of the damage. Those are wet noodle attacks because the mob hp has to scale to account for the massive critical damage.

There are two solutions to this madness.

1) Reduce crit chance. Critical attacks should be special, and when it happens it should make a big difference.
Well fat chance of this happening since I believe last time when this line of argument was made by the Devs, it caused an open rebellion by the player-base that the scheme was ultimately shelved.

2) Reduce crit damage multiplier.
I really do think this is the way to go. 13X damage? Are you for real? For that big of a multiplier, I'm expecting a decapitating shot. But apparently every mob out there has hundreds of heads so they can keep taking those 13X shots and still coming.


Critical damage has become the only damage that counts since they overwhelm noncrit damage 10 to 1.

Critical damage multiplier should just be a straight 2X or 3X. At 2X, the crit to non crit damage ratio becomes 7 to 4. At 3X, the crit non crit ratio is 10 to 4.

Concurrent with any adjustment to the Crit damage multiplier should be the base HP of mobs so they don't all need to be hundreds of heads monsters anymore. In other words, players will be able to kill them just as fast as before.

This also has the benefit of freeing up a precious stat slot for other considerations. Especially valuable if the past intentions of introducing more varied combat stats such as ability power, multi-strike chance actually come to pass.

either of these would require a rescaling of the mobs.
people at trial 120 arent going to be happy not being able to complete trial 80 any more.

If that is dont I could accept a drop in CR or CD. I would be a bit upset about needing to retool the jewlery and such but, would survive.
I do like crits being more special and I really like doing big damage. Maybe if there ever get those ones they were thinking about adding like multiattack in and such we will end up with something that is like a critical of a critical....allowing it to be even BETTER. humm....

[GrauGeist]

Look, I get what you're saying, it's just that you won't succeed without a complete overhaul that breaks all of the equipment to date, along with all of the player builds. That's why I say you're describing Eternium 2, with a completely new combat engine.

Second, even if there are many viable ways, in all likelihood, one of those will be the best. It's not possible to give perfect options. There's going to be a little imbalance that players will find and exploit.

[Arionthe]

either of these would require a rescaling of the mobs.
people at trial 120 arent going to be happy not being able to complete trial 80 any more.

If that is dont I could accept a drop in CR or CD. I would be a bit upset about needing to retool the jewlery and such but, would survive.
I do like crits being more special and I really like doing big damage. Maybe if there ever get those ones they were thinking about adding like multiattack in and such we will end up with something that is like a critical of a critical....allowing it to be even BETTER. humm....

You like big numbers? Numbers only have relevance in the proper context. Is millions in damage a big number when compared to trillions in hp?

Anyway if the number of attacks are reduced as I proposed earlier and dropping cd in favor of critical weakness. Then combines with my Defensive and offensive rating ideas.

You can potentially do 1.5 (max dam bias from weapon range) * 2-3(critical weakness) *2 (lucky shot). So 6-9 times normal dmg on a lucky shot while crit. That is not so shobby now? Add elemental bonus to the equation could be another 50-100% multiplier.

[Arionthe]

Forgot to add, if you are a warrior in that scenario, your attacks per sec is only 2-3. So that means one big hit is equivalent to 2-3 seconds worth of dmg output. Now that is feeling your oats.

[Shade Glow]

WHAAAAAAAAAT!?

In order for critical damage to work, you need to boost multiple stats (Critical Rating, Critical Damage %, and Power). The more you limit critical damage, the more you will see people running only Power in place of those 3 stats. This will allow people to run defensive stats in addition to being able to deal sufficient damage at a competitive level, which will close the gap for competitive skill, allowing less skilled players to more easily compete with more skilled players. Aside from that, it would also mean that you're not getting much benefit from sacrificing survivability.

Obviously, if you remove the benefit from sacrificing survivability, the game becomes less intense and more boring. I speak for anyone who enjoys a challenge.

[Oldmobilenewbie]

Your solution for CD rescaling is actually a waste of stat space. All it really does is change the relative effective ratio between CD and Power. A new optimization calculation will be done and tell everyone to aim for X% CD. Rather getting rid of the stat entirely will help free up space for other more interesting stats.

This. Critical hits count as X% across the board and then CD % as separate stat goes away. Leaving room for other stats geared toward specific playing strategies.

[Arawn]

For all classes--is power a relevant stat if a player has >1,300 CD and 1,500 AR? Figured this would be a good thread to ask this question

[Arionthe]

Power is a multiplier on the base weapon dmg range. CD acts as a further multiplier on that resulting number. So power is important. Always.