Class Balancing

[Akh_Zino]

There are already

[Sift]

Mages don’t want to be just a little better in damage than someone they are far above in skill. It feels unrewarding.

[Xicor]

You say mages have the best skill, but i dont honestly think that’s true. Rangers now with the targets require quite a lot of skill to reach max dps. It really isn’t just point and shoot.

I could spend just as much time practicing as you, but i wont get anywhere near as much reward. As you guys were saying, because there is a much higher cap for mages, there is almost no reason to spend time getting better as a ranger.

I agree they should make all the classes have higher skill caps, but as a developer, it is impossible to make the choice to make content for only the top 0.1 percent. There absolutely must be a limit for balancing purposes. That limit should be in line (maybe higher but close) with all the other classes so that you can play the class you want to play instead of being forced to play the highest dps class.

Since they will never make content that can only be beaten with a group of runemages, any content they create will be easier than intended when you have those runemages. This is a massive problem for the developers, as eventually they will have to choose between boring and possibly losing their best players or waste their time creating content that noone will see.

[Sift]

Rangers can start mastering the class right when they pick it up. Mages have to spend near 100 hours to get every spell down (some still don’t) before they are able to get into rotations and faster speeds.

[Atropos]

other classes.

Atropos:

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.

Love the extreme disregard of taking your own theoretical example to its logical end. I’m not using any of your combat logs in this, as I only took your example to its logical end.

in a shard or speedrun encounter the ranger super adds a huge amount of dps while the mage ultimate is negligible

I’ve been talking mage vs mage here this whole time. Not quite sure why you’re muddying the waters here with the question of a Super. Obviously if devs are balancing other classes, they need to also consider the supers, since they’re part of the classes.

negligible.

Atropos:

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

Note that I said, just prior to this quote, that at 2/s vs 1/s we see the limited effect of affliction. 2/s mages do just slightly more than 21 extra damage units from the additional fireballs they can cast (with an added .52 for the afflictions). This is why I said:

that will still be the case

Edit: this is also seriously oversimplified, as it does not factor in things like Triplicity, which you can do more often if you’re in the higher end of the casting range, increasing the number of fireballs you can hit with.

[Archive]

Runemage has the most depth, I mean just earlier i found out that I was drawing about 20% less efficient meaning potentially I can cast a little faster. This kind of obsession/attention to detail is what’s required to improve as a runemage to the highest degree. While I always will side with the argument that other classes should be rewarded here is my take on what’d happen if runemage was “brought down”.

The “top dps” will no longer be top dps, but it won’t have a “replacement” 2nd place will become 1st place not because they were standing “in par” with 1st place but bc 1st isn’t 1st anymore.
That means:
There will be overall less dps.
That can also mean that the current content might need to be scaled down with that fact in mind.
But as it stands (And as a mage I might seem biased here) all classes should have this potential to obsess over. Limiting players ESPEICALLY in a vr game feels clunky. While I agree SOME caps are required to have some classes even viable for balancing (If warrior had no cap, would a really good warrior NEVER need heals?) but it’s agreed upon by most that any cap on anything you can do in vr is clunky.

Also just talking numbers the numbers you showed Atroops doesn’t looking like a 1 to 1 increase. 1 vs 2 lets just say thats just double the required effort. That’s not exactly double damage now is it? meaning that there is less return per effort and there is a soft cap on runemage… kinda like how there is a soft cap in how fast a person can run. Instead of tying runemage down with with shackles why not ask to remove the other classes heavy 50 kilogram weighted shackles

[Xicor]

Mastering the class is mastering the class. Figuring out how to best cast a spell is part of mastering runemage. Hitting targets properly with the proper timing is part of mastering ranger. There’s no difference here. According to you, as long as practice more than a runemage, i should deal more damage. That kind of thinking is totally absurd

[Xicor]

That’s not at all what he was saying. Just because it isn’t 1:1 doesn’t mean it isn’t linear. 1:2 is just as linear as 1:1

[Archive]

but it’s not. it’s about 62% from 1 every 2 seconds to 1 second, and from 58.7% from 1 to 2 spells per second. this points to diminisihing return.

Edit: so for people who want runemage tuned down, you’re saying you want runemage to have more diminishing return. On a class with the steepest learning curve. Just to give an example of the learning curve it took me about 180 hours to get to 13 casts in triplicity(from 12). it took me around maybe 120 hours getting from 0 to11-12. So total time of 300 hours before i got to 13 roughly. so from going from 12 to 13 took 180 hours while going from 0 to 12 took around 120 hours. if it took me 120 hours to go from 0-12 shouldn’t it have just taken me 130 hours to get to 13? no. There is a VERY big steep curve that most people (I’m assuming) forget about.

[Xicor]

There is a VERY big steep curve that most people (I’m assuming) forget about.

I’m not forgetting the steep learning curve. you are failing to understand the problem here. you can put in 100 hours and get an extra spell to do whatever extra dps it is. I as a ranger can put in 1000000000000000000000000000000 hours and never see a single damage higher than the HARD CAP THAT IS ON EVERY SINGLE OTHER CLASS.

This basically means that any time i spend practicing on a ranger (or any class other than runemage) is simply wasted time.

even the newly added ranger targets are still hard caps (they just increased the cap higher). As a precision ranger, you can attack once per second. any time faster than that or slower than that and you lose dps. You dont even get any benefit from aiming correctly on every shot because the targets are time based ( you can hit every target, but you have at least 5 shots to hit the target). You also dont get any benefit from hitting the target better than someone else ( aiming for bulls eye vs the edge)

[Atropos]

it’s about 62% from 1 every 2 seconds to 1 second, and from 58.7% from 1 to 2 spells per second

I should also point out that this is all assuming you’re the first mage of the group. Every other mage is either overwriting the afflictions (thus causing no increase on dps vs boss and only increasing their own dps at the expense of the first mage’s) or basically just casting fireball the whole time, as there will already be 3 aff stacks.

Even then, if you actually do the math you find the first mage at 0.5/s to 1/s does 61% more while the 1/s to 2/s does 70% more. So it’s not diminishing at all.

Maybe when I get back from work (or during lunch?) I’ll run the numbers some more to show. And include what the second mage and on get to see.

[Sift]

That’s how all classes should be.

[Archive]

yes so if there is a cap wouldnt it be better to remove it? let say rangers can avg out dedicated and focused practice of 300 hours. runemage can keep going, rangers can not. Just remove or allivate the cap. I already suggested a way for the devs to increase shaman skill requirement (basically made a theortical idea via pm where 2x the amount of things u did gave little shy of 15% dmg difference with the theortical idea.) There can be ways. But i guess for simplistic approach for the sake of the devs capping runemage (the 1 outlier) Could temp. fix things. Tho thatll cause some more balancing issues when one class will start to outshine others despite all the classes being CD locked. Ranger has the softest cap so I guess theyll be next if runemage wasnt at the cap. whats the next dps from a 40k dps ranger? Shaman? shaman is easy but its less viable. Scoundrel? thats like 30k dps at most. Plus I literaly almost only for runemage so if any cap was implimented, on the class i like to obess and have great attention to detail to, then id quit.

[Xicor]

Putting a soft cap on one class is significantly easier than reimplementing all the other classes to remove their caps. It is also better for balancing purposes because they will know exactly how much dps people can do at the highest skill levels

[Sift]

I think people seriously underestimate the statement that mages would quit if a cap or diminishing returns was implemented. I’ve been saying it since old Orbus but people still don’t take it seriously.

[Sift]

Just because its the easiest solution, doesn’t make it the right one.

[Atropos]

I think people seriously underestimate the statement that mages would quit if a cap or diminishing returns was implemented. I’ve been saying it since old Orbus but people still don’t take it seriously.

So… If you’re not 2x better than the next class or the next mage… You’ll quit the game?

[Xicor]

That’s ridiculous. You don’t see all the other clases quitting because they have caps.

[Sift]

Not every class is the same, so not every one likes the same things about their classes. (Archive, Cam, and I have all said we will quit, is it insane to think that other will too?)

[Sift]

If the only thing I like about the game is made to feel unrewarding, then yes I will drop the game in a heartbeat.