Class Balancing

[Xicor]

This isn’t how the game should be and defeats the purpose of improving yourself to beat the hardest enemies.

The alternative way of thinking about this is you cant have difficult and rewarding content/hardest enemies if your dps is significantly higher than the rest of the population. (because they will balance the content around the designed dps rate)

in most MMOs, the top few guilds on each server all have comparable skill level and dps, because every class in those games has an absolute maximum dps. Your objective in those games as a dps is to get as close as possible to that absolute max dps (think TAS).

Now look at this game. Every class has an absolute maximum dps, but the absolute max dps for mages is so ridiculously high in comparison to the other classes that there is basically no cap for humans. Any little bit better you get as a runemage translates directly to an increase in dps, whereas on the other classes, you can only creep towards the maximum cap.

[NotScott]

I was okay with the mage max dps potential IF it didn’t have:

• best disable stun in the game (polymorph, single target self controlling hard to accidentally break)
• best slowing in the game (frost by default and super frost as option with minor dps loss)
• best damage boost as single mage (10% instead of everyone 5% even support classes…)
• Best utility (power to decurse, multi stun, mob pushing back, only light creator, only fireworks entertainer and meh shield but still an extra most classes don’t have)

So it sounds so unreasonable to be the best potential in everything except for tanking (duh dps) healing (duh not support) and PvP (still very strong insta killer with strong mages though)

Should we on other classes: up the dps boost, make an even better polymorph? Give everyone on demand decurse and up their dps? Or give the mage at-least 1 major weakness like any other class…

Edit: Also it has the best multiple target dps in the game too xD

[NotScott]

I actually want to see one of multiple of these best benefits of a mage be overruled by a better variant by other classes.

[Atropos]

Mage doesn’t scale linearly either; I

mages have linear growth while other classes have parabolic growth

You are both sort-of correct. Mages grow near linearly up until they start hitting the maximum, and then they level off, taking better frame rate/better internet connection to achieve a difference at the absolute limit.

At 0.5/s spell, you are nowhere near this limit, so it’s a true statement to say that you can double your output by casting 1/s. After 2/s, yeah, you’re probably reaching a limit and it’ll taper off. Improvements in skill are limited by framerate, hardware, and the sheer capacity for the server to register things (along with human limits on speed). It does not plateau, but ends logarithmically at some theoretical asymptote that nobody could ever hope to calculate.

Other classes, however, plateau. See precision ranger which gets a theoretical (and calculatable) maximum damage for hitting precisely 1/s at a certain distance. Does it scale linearly on the way to the plateau? Not so much, because of the complexity of the way the timing and aiming work. For lower capability, a smaller change in skill will increase your damage tremendously. As you increase in skill, the amount you can increase in damage is reduced. For higher skill, though, you hit that cap. Basically a logarithmic curve at first with a hard cap, rather than an asymptote.

The same is true for musketeers, scoundrels, shaman, etc. There is a huge curve that’s hacked off at the top for an enforced plateau.

What this means is that mages have a theoretical limit higher than everyone else, because it’s not truly capped but asymptotic. More importantly, it also means that unlike other classes where the initial stages of learning to play can raise your effectiveness substantially (logarithmic), you have a linear effect and so crappier mages are not as good as equivalently skilled rangers, scoundrels, etc.

The way to fix this is to make the curve logarithmic. If you give diminishing returns to faster casting, you have achieved this. What you also do, though, is lower the asymptote, which would not be good. So raise the asymptote by increasing base damage.

Then, to make every class balanced, move the other class plateaus to be in line with some % away from a theoretical limit of runemage (remember, can’t calculate the asymptote, but you could probably approximate it).

This methodology has the benefit of maintaining the importance of runemage skill (Cam and Sift and J get to be better than everyone else) whilst also making other people and class combinations viable at end game. Win win.

Edit: obviously do NOT enforce a hard cap on runemages. That would be a terrible way to fix this, and is not what I’m arguing for.

[Tman]

Mages use only 1 arm, rangers use 2, therefore rangers should do twice the damage.

[Cam]

The alternative way of thinking about this is you cant have difficult and rewarding content/hardest enemies if your dps is significantly higher than the rest of the population. (because they will balance the content around the designed dps rate)

The way to balance this is to require top level dps to clear top level content. Hopefully shard 15s will do so.

You are both sort-of correct. Mages grow near linearly up until they start hitting the maximum, and then they level off, taking better frame rate/better internet connection to achieve a difference at the absolute limit.

At 0.5/s spell, you are nowhere near this limit, so it’s a true statement to say that you can double your output by casting 1/s.

Any little bit better you get as a runemage translates directly to an increase in dps, whereas on the other classes, you can only creep towards the maximum cap.

Neither of you seems to have seen my explanation.

Mage doesn’t scale linearly either; I point this out every time people complain about mage. You can’t do more than 3 afflictions at once, which do 3-4 fireballs worth of damage from a single cast, apply weakness, and make up a significant portion of your damage. Afflictions are a bigger boost to slower mages, who have a higher max afflictons to fireballs cast ratio, so we get diminished returns to speed from that.

For example, a mage casting 1 spell per second might get 1 dps from fireball (not actually 1, just an index essentially). With 3 afflictions ticking, that dps should go up to about 1.7 (assuming 4 dmg per aff over 15 seconds, 3 affs, so .8 per second minus some dps from casting aff instead of 1 fire). If a mage casts 2 spells per second, their fireball component would be 2 but their affliction component would still just add .7 for a total of 2.7. A 100% increase in cast speed granted a 58% increase in dps here. This obviously is just a spitballed number but it demonstrates the concept.

There is also, of course, the max cast speed. This comes from the server buffer to process the spell, framerate limitations (when you draw fast, it looks like a couple points connected by dots instead of smooth lines, so if you draw too fast you skip points), and the limit of hand tracking framerate. I believe that the best mages in the game are very, very close to this limit.

if you made a robot that all it did was draw super quickly and you had 144 hz refresh rate, you could totally draw 10 times per second.

So no, this wouldn’t be possible at all.

However, I absolutely understand that other classes do have damage plateaus around their hard coded maximums. Don’t make mages just as bad; give other classes greater returns to skill. Log returns to skill only make the game boring and make everyone the same.

best disable stun in the game (polymorph, single target self controlling hard to accidentally break)

Polymorph is absolutely fantastic, though shaman has the frog totem and it doesn’t work on stunning bosses. I’d argue that scoundrels have the best stun (bosses and trash) because the charge shot is quick, on demand, travels much faster than polymorph to allow for quick reactions, and is already part of the normal rotation so gets applied automatically.

Also it has the best multiple target dps in the game too xD

I think shaman AOE is better; arcane blast is really weak per hit.

Aside from those, I agree that mage has it better than other classes in terms of utility and max damage potential. That’s why I’m saying to improve other classes, either by increasing their damage given from increases in skill and/or adding extra utility.

Though you also have to remember that mage is (aside from shaman, which has its own pros and cons) the least mobile dps class. Our spells travel slowly, we can’t slide, and moving requires us to send a line of spells into the ground/sky/wherever else.

[Sift]

Mage is way harder to master. Good joke though.

[Landru]

Id like to see you play ranger at my level then tell me how easy it is.

[Sift]

Give me 100 hours. Easy clap.

[Landru]

Ok let me know when you are ready to test.

[Xicor]

Given normal server response time of 100ms, you should be able to max out at roughly 10 spells per second ignoring speed of movement.

Assuming (probably correctly) that the issue you mentioned with it not drawing correctly is due to fps, a doubling of fps would lead do a doubling of spells per second up to the server limit.

A robot would be able to cast at exactly the correct speed to keep up with the fps. There are headsets that get 240 fps

A game should never use fps as a metric for anything. Look at Bethesda and their physics engine for reasons.

[Cam]

It takes more than the server response time to cast a spell; data is sent to and from the server to confirm the spell’s success. You’re also completely ignoring the framerate of controller tracking, which is nowhere near perfect. And you’re saying your robot will cast spells in 0.00 seconds.

I’m pretty sure you don’t get 1 “point” in your drawing every frame rendered either. I usually don’t get anywhere near 45-90 points when I cast quickly (90 fps). It’s more like 10 points. I think this form of drawing points is just part of how the game was developed, not tied to framerate.

[Xicor]

Index controllers with lighthouse 2.0 have a measured refresh rate well into the 200s

[Reyterra]

There is also, of course, the max cast speed. This comes from the server buffer to process the spell, framerate limitations (when you draw fast, it looks like a couple points connected by dots instead of smooth lines, so if you draw too fast you skip points), and the limit of hand tracking framerate. I believe that the best mages in the game are very, very close to this limit.

To back this as an actual hard cap to skill level (even though the idea the camera can’t keep up with you is very impressive, imo), this not only shows in MLG like Starcraft 2 - where the threshhold to even consider being a pro is 200 clicks per minute - I can give personal experience from an older game called Ragnarok Online. Despite that I was able to get up to roughly 20 clicks per second, and even able to heal 40 person parties as the only healer, it got to the point that the server latency became my limiting factor that would only register roughly one out of every three to four clicks, including the travel time for my mouse to click to apply the heal. There were also comparable versions of this for DPS, but there’s only a handful of players that I’d ever met that had ever attained that speed.

Was the game balanced to keep up with us? No. If we were nerfed to match the “intended scale”, would that be fair? No.
It’s exactly what happened when I got on WoW, all healing/dps has a hard cap because of intended cast times and cooldowns, so all my player skill was for naught. So I went and played something simple, because why bother if everything pans out the same and only requires minimal practice?

[Archive]

200 apm not clicks(VERY big difference)… and it’s not MLG, it’s primarily WCS. And another to note to this is that apm does not affect skill of starcraft 2, apm increases macro ability along side with micro because you can build and control units at the same time… However… you can only make so many buildings, so many upgrades, so many units in one go… Someone with 80 apm can do the same thing someone with 400 apm. (Pro scene achieves closer to 400, and thats mostly spamming the same button over and over for no actual purpose). Ex: macro 5 (building select) spam v x6 that’s 6 times but: pros: clicks macro 5 v 40 times. it’s just to spam most of the time. APM is an average and pro players tend to spam instead of being efficient, they like to spam to avoid needing to be efficent. Efficent players can do the same thing a spammer can. The only difference of really high apm would be if someone were to try to control more than 10 units individually almost all at the same time.

Edit: you can only build a certain amount of units from 1 building.

[Atropos]

Was the game balanced to keep up with us? No. If we were nerfed to match the “intended scale”, would that be fair? No.
It’s exactly what happened when I got on WoW, all healing/dps has a hard cap because of intended cast times and cooldowns, so all my player skill was for naught. So I went and played something simple, because why bother if everything pans out the same and only requires minimal practice?

Which is why I’m advocating NOT to hardcap mages, just to bring its scaling more in-line with other classes (or, rather, to balance the classes).

The alternative way of thinking about this is you cant have difficult and rewarding content/hardest enemies if your dps is significantly higher than the rest of the population. (because they will balance the content around the designed dps rate)

The way to balance this is to require top level dps to clear top level content.

No. Adding higher content to the game that requires you have “top level” of one specific class because that class is broken is insane. Having an edge over people because it’s a skill-focused class, I can get behind (and have been arguing for). But it’s not having an edge over classes if three or four people can each do 50-60% more dps than a different “top level” player on a different class (or close to 2x the dps compared to a “good” player on the same class).

A 100% increase in cast speed granted a 58% increase in dps here. This obviously is just a spitballed number but it demonstrates the concept.

Let’s take this to the logical extreme:
Fireball does 1 damage per hit
Affliction does 0.26 damage per hit/tick (“4 dmg per aff over 15 seconds”), and can stack 3

“low tier mage” (1 spell per 2 seconds) - 19.04 damage in 20 seconds, or 0.952 dps
“mid tier mage” (1 spell per 1 second) - 30.6 damage in 20 seconds, or 1.53 dps
“high tier mage” (2 spells per 1 second) - 52.12 damage in 20 seconds, or 2.606dps

You are correct that it is not a direct linear relationship, due to the ticking of affliction. “high tier” still does 2.73x “low tier” and 1.70x “mid tier” damage.

I would also like to point out that the relationship between mid-and-higher tiers of mage is almost entirely dependent upon the number of additional spells cast. In 20s, the “high tier” mage in this case was able to put out 21 more fireballs than the “mid tier” mage - the final 0.52 damage is from the additional tick of the second affliction in that second, twice (once on start and once when it renewed). If you progress further, that will still be the case - a 3/s mage will hit with 21 more fireballs in that time, and will get the same additional ticking - thus bringing it to a nearly linear growth pattern (if you removed the damage weight of affliction, the faster mage does equivalently faster damage).

[Cam]

No. Adding higher content to the game that requires you have “top level” of one specific class because that class is broken is insane.

I’m talking about after the other classes are updated to be more rewarding for skill; I’ve said several times this should be done. Mage isn’t broken, it’s designed better than the other classes.

if three or four people can each do 50-60% more dps than a different “top level” player on a different class

I’m assuming you’re going off of some of our raid combat logs. In straight damage fights (i.e. minotaur), top rangers come much closer. However, in raids there are enough other mechanics (i.e. shooting adds, interrupts, etc.) that mages, who focus less on dealing with fast moving targets that run faster than our spells (also another downside to mage) and more on shooting the boss. Rangers usually don’t get their super up for raid bosses, because of the wipes beforehand, whereas in a shard or speedrun encounter the ranger super adds a huge amount of dps while the mage ultimate is negligible.

If you progress further, that will still be the case - a 3/s mage will hit with 21 more fireballs in that time

3 spells per second is pretty far out of the realm of possibility. Afflictions don’t get outweighed because we can’t cast that fast; they still make up a significant portion of dps.

[J11]

Mages use only 1 arm, rangers use 2, therefore rangers should do twice the damage.

I enjoy your occasional forum replies .

On a serious note; Finding a way to increase the skill cap to damage ratio a bit for other classes would be great. What would be the best way for example to add damage bonuses to other classes for skilled end-game play?

[Reyterra]

200 apm not clicks(VERY big difference)… and it’s not MLG, it’s primarily WCS.

The video I watched called them “clicks per second” and then clarified “meaningful clicks per second, as in each one has to accomplish something.” I didn’t feel the need to clarify this, but you have.
And I’m not sure what WCS is, but I do know it was a video about korean starcraft players and how hard it actually is to go pro (get sponsorship) there, for starcraft and starcraft 2.

And another to note to this is that apm does not affect skill of starcraft 2, apm increases macro ability along side with micro because you can build and control units at the same time… However… you can only make so many buildings, so many upgrades, so many units in one go… Someone with 80 apm can do the same thing someone with 400 apm.

This also falls 100% in line with the game’s limitations, as Cam and I both mentioned.

Which is why I’m advocating NOT to hardcap mages, just to bring its scaling more in-line with other classes (or, rather, to balance the classes).

And I agree with you. If there’s no reward for the hard work, then there’s no point in putting it in. If every class curved the way runemage did in damage to make them all viable for all content, assuming the player is sufficiently skilled, then every class could be just as rewarding and lead to overall much deeper gameplay throughout.

Mage isn’t broken, it’s designed better than the other classes.

Exceptionally well said.

[Burnator]

I’m really not getting this cam.

Average bosses are designed around around average dps.

High end bosses are designed around what would be called high dps.

Extream high shards should be based around Max possible/ higest seen dps.

Now tell me, what classes dps do you want the devs to do the calculations with? Because if they don’t pick mage, it’s going to be a catwalk for groups with several mages. But if they do pick mage no other class is a valid option to play.

Would it not be better to add diminishing returns to mage, cutting off the extream difference, and making it a not so extream difference between a good and a great mage?