Battlerage

Aerek

If we're going for efficiency, why are we using tempTimers instead of tempTriggers? TempTimers are just easy, and if you're going for easy, you don't need your network latency to the last milisecond.

I think the 1-second balance was unnecessary. I didn't see anything wrong with blowing multiple abilities at the same time if that's what you wanted to do, instead of using them every few attacks. If you didn't want us chaining them together, you should have made a new, formal Battlerage balance instead of just giving everything its own cooldown.

But it doesn't bother me either way. I just set up what I needed to fire them off together, there's just a 1 second wait between them now. Santar said it a few pages back; it didn't stop what was possible, it just made it annoying for the folks who can't script in that convenience.

Atalkez

Aerek said:

If we're going for efficiency, why are we using tempTimers instead of tempTriggers? TempTimers are just easy, and if you're going for easy, you don't need your network latency to the last milisecond.

I think the 1-second balance was unnecessary. I didn't see anything wrong with blowing multiple abilities at the same time if that's what you wanted to do, instead of using them every few attacks. If you didn't want us chaining them together, you should have made a new, formal Battlerage balance instead of just giving everything its own cooldown.

But it doesn't bother me either way. I just set up what I needed to fire them off together, there's just a 1 second wait between them now. Santar said it a few pages back; it didn't stop what was possible, it just made it annoying for the folks who can't script in that convenience.

I don't know, it was working fine for me the way I had it originally. If their way works better, I'll go with it. I changed it already so we will see.

I agree with you, as I said before, I thought it was an unnecessary change as nothing is really going to change with it except for the people who can't do what needs to be done to continue using it that way.

Arador

Or move to South Africa. The jitter and latency means even if you batch stuff they can arrive 2 seconds apart :chuffed: 

Antonius

Aerek said:

Santar said it a few pages back; it didn't stop what was possible, it just made it annoying for the folks who can't script in that convenience.

Attempting to use an ability that is on cooldown doesn't use up the 1 second Battlerage balance, so you could just mash an alias/macro that tries to use them all. Not really any scripting required there, though it would be pretty spammy. Or just manual them using individual aliases or macros, it's not really that hard most of the time.

On an unrelated point: Battlerage artefacts would be nice. I probably wouldn't pay just to extend the amount of time before rage faded (unless it was cheap), but I might consider something that increased (to a relatively substantial degree) rage generated by attacks. Absolute best would be reductions in costs and/or cooldowns, but that may be a bit too large a buff. The major concern, I guess, would be widening the already quite large gap between artied and unartied people.

Atalkez

Antonius said:

Aerek said:

Santar said it a few pages back; it didn't stop what was possible, it just made it annoying for the folks who can't script in that convenience.

Attempting to use an ability that is on cooldown doesn't use up the 1 second Battlerage balance, so you could just mash an alias/macro that tries to use them all. Not really any scripting required there, though it would be pretty spammy. Or just manual them using individual aliases or macros, it's not really that hard most of the time.

On an unrelated point: Battlerage artefacts would be nice. I probably wouldn't pay just to extend the amount of time before rage faded (unless it was cheap), but I might consider something that increased (to a relatively substantial degree) rage generated by attacks. Absolute best would be reductions in costs and/or cooldowns, but that may be a bit too large a buff. The major concern, I guess, would be widening the already quite large gap between artied and unartied people.

The trend lately has seemed to be that of reducing that gap as much as possible, though something like that wouldn't necessarily affect that status quo. So you can hunt marginally faster than someone without the cooldown artifact, but with the mob still having more health, you're not really going to reap a large benefit other than the higher gold/xp per hour you could probably achieve. Seems like something that they would have to look into down the line after all the hunting changes are finished up and everything is finalized.

Jukilian

I just tried out hunting in the Dun Fortress with battlerage and got maybe 6% after killing the majority of the fortress, and it cost me 50% of my total willpower (25k willpower total). Took me maybe 30min? Didn't have any trouble at all. I think the group of 5 orcs might present a challenge though (they weren't there when I got there).

  I had enough trouble with willpower before the changes.

Good thing megalith tattoos and meditating exist! I should invest in a willpower regen room.

Antonius

@Jukilian I've noticed problems with willpower (as a Paladin, willpower costs for the class are basically non-existent when hunting), something definitely seems off there. Has there been a change with the willpower cost on clot?

I keep up a fair few mana/willpower draining defences, admittedly, but between Trans philosophy, a permanent megalith tattoo and the amulet of the Will, the drains involved were covered; I could keep them up permanently and just hover at full willpower. That still seems to be the case when standing around, but after about an hour of not that intensive hunting I was noticing a pretty large drop. Paladin doesn't use willpower for any of its attacks, so the need to clot is the only thing I can think of to account for it.

@Atalkez: I suspect the recent changes have increased the gap between unartied and artied people quite a lot already. Less necessity to hit and run because of increased health and increased health regeneration, and more damage to decrease the amount of time that large groups even need to be tanked for.

They also have more options when it comes to racial spec; for example I could reincarnate to a con specced dwarf to gain a huge amount more health (further reducing the need to hit and run), and still have as much strength (and therefore do the same amount of damage) as an unartied, strength specced Paladin.

Tael

Jukilian said:

I just tried out hunting in the Dun Fortress with battlerage and got maybe 6% after killing the majority of the fortress, and it cost me 50% of my total willpower (25k willpower total). Took me maybe 30min? Didn't have any trouble at all. I think the group of 5 orcs might present a challenge though (they weren't there when I got there).

  I had enough trouble with willpower before the changes.

Good thing megalith tattoos and meditating exist! I should invest in a willpower regen room.

The crazy thing is that the willpower drain hasn't changed. What most people are discovering, I think, is that willpower drain has always been really high for a lot of classes, you just didn't feel it as much because it was harder to find things to bash so continuously.

Even with a megalith and trans philosophy, I pretty easily blew through my entire willpower against the Sea Lion cove undead half a dozen times on Sunday. Even in Moghedu, where there have always been plenty of targets to allow for pretty much continuous bashing for quite a while (assuming the whole thing isn't cleared out), I blew through a ton of willpower way faster than usual yesterday just because I had to spend less time spent moving between targets.

Aerek

I think that's the heart of it. People always talked about "X per hour" in bashing, without factoring in that most of them couldn't/weren't actually bashing for an hour straight. There was always down time as you relocated, hit-and-run, or just blew through low-health mobs with crits.

Now, we actually are bashing with less downtime, we're starting to see the differences. There *is* a lot of inequity between the willpower/endurance drains of different classes. (I literally regain endurance while hunting as 2H/DWB.) Clot *is* draining when you have to do it for a while. Places like Dun, Tir Murann, all those "90+" areas *do* hurt, we just never noticed because the orcs and ogres had low enough health that crits tore through them fast enough that we could stand our ground.

Maybe some changes are still warranted, but we also just have to adjust our expectations to fit the new reality. I did actually bash in Lesser today, and can understand some of the complaints in this thread. Dun Fortress is pretty rough, those orc guards or the stacks of 4 and 5 soldiers are not pushovers now that they don't die in 45 seconds or less. What was once an 85+ area is kinda a Dragon-only or group-hunt area. That's not a terrible thing, we just have to realize that and adapt.

Sarathai

Aerek said:

Now, we actually are bashing with less downtime, we're starting to see the differences. There *is* a lot of inequity between the willpower/endurance drains of different classes. (I literally regain endurance while hunting as 2H/DWB.) Clot *is* draining when you have to do it for a while.

I've noticed that Dragon seems to drain my willpower a bit more than it used to. But then, I've always just gagged all the clotting and otherwise ignored it, so it could be that as well.

Jukilian

I definitely noticed the willpower cost beforehand. It just took longer.

I keep up alertness, telesense, skywatch, and maybe one other thing though.

I don't mind taking breaks, at least. Meditating with the trait, megalith, amulet, and trans philo all help.

Antonius

That may be enough to explain it in my case. I think I'd rather just deal with the increased willpower drain than have to worry about the additional damage from bleeding; may as well make some use of the extra willpower from that level three sash I bought, and meditating it back doesn't take that long.

Sena

Changing your clotting strategy can make a huge difference for willpower as well. Normally, I basically clot away a percentage of my bleeding (I mostly keep it set at 1 clot for every 50 bleeding) unless it gets really high, and only clot on the bleed messages except against specific attacks that cause heavy bleeding. I basically never have to worry about willpower when clotting that way. When I tried clotting away all bleeding above a certain point (like clotting until I'm below 60 bleeding), it tore through my willpower extremely fast in a lot of bashing areas, if I was bashing efficiently (trying to have as little downtime between fights as possible).

I forgot about the huge moss nerf too, that makes a big difference for people who aren't very conservative with clotting.

Antonius

Has anybody confirmed that the nerf was intentional?

Klendathu

I've just posted the first version of my all class BattleRage tracker...

http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/3691/all-class-battlerage-tracker-mudlet

Dunn

Bashing in black dragon makes me feel like a serpent relapsing someone to death.

Tharvis

@Krypton : 

ANNOUNCE NEWS #4351                                     (05/26/2015 at 18:48)  

From   : Mortori

To     : Everyone

Subject: Battlerage Config Settings

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We've separated Battlerage notifications into three different categories to allow you more fine-

gained control over the messages you do and don't want to see.

The three categories are:

   GAIN

    - Notifications about generating and losing rage.

   ABCOOLDOWNS

    - Notifications about the cooldown of a specific ability.

   GLOBALCOOLDOWNS

    - Notifications about the global 1-second cooldown on all Battlerage

      abilities.

Use CONFIG RAGEMSG <options> to control these configuration settings.

Examples:

   CONFIG RAGEMSG

    - Turns off all three categories of notifications.

   CONFIG RAGEMSG GAIN

    - Turns gain notifications on, and all cooldown notifications off.

   CONFIG RAGEMSG GAIN ABCOOLDOWNS

    - Turns notifications about rage gain and specific ability cooldowns on,

      but global cooldown notifications are off.

Vakvyr

Your current settings:

You will see notifcations about gaining rage when you attack denizens.

You will not see notifications when you are able to use any Battlerage ability again.

You will see notifications when you are able to use a specific Battlerage ability again.

Tesha

Does using an ability that gets buffed by the presence of an affliction consume the affliction?

Tibitha

Tesha said:

Does using an ability that gets buffed by the presence of an affliction consume the affliction?

Yup! I've tested this.

Tesha

That kinda sucks. The afflictions are awesome.

Austere

Tesha said:

That kinda sucks. The afflictions are awesome.

Depending on the affliction and targets current health,  it almost seems better to always leave the affliction and never do burst attack. So much for coordinating your classes for the heavy damage attacks.  .

Tesha

@Mortori any chance of re-evaluating consuming the afflictions? The afflictions are pretty much necessary for honors mobs. I'd love to see more afflictions (and skills down the road) and more skills that have a heavy emphasis on skills (like lengthening the affs on the mob, maybe). The best part about this whole new system is the afflictions, and having them cleared when synergy is used seems kinda counterintuitive. 

Morthif

I think this is part of the situational awareness they were hoping for by introducing this system

Tesha

But if we're fighting something strong, there's not really any point in utilizing the synergy beyond getting all the afflictions because you want them to have all the afflictions possible without consuming them.

Tael

There's absolutely a point.

Consume the affliction just before it goes away. Consuming a stun as soon as it goes on is a waste. Consuming a stun after 3.9 seconds means you got almost all of the utility of the stun and the extra damage.

Using the consume abilities just requires slightly more coordination than people assumed when they first saw them. They're absolutely still useful.

Aerek

Yeah, I'm sure the intent was so you couldn't gather 1 Gold Dragon and 5 Runewardens and just Deaden/Etch x5 to nuke some honors mob, but most of the time, having the affliction on the denizen does seem more desirable than a one-time hit for high damage, especially in groups where you're already dealing high damage through multiple people. I can see the potential for abuse if the affliction isn't removed, but the way it is pretty much defeats the purpose of the system.

I also wonder, though, if there are too many afflictions? Some of them are obviously better than others, so the classes with the "bad" ones feel left out. Or if everyone should be able to give 3 instead of 2? Just so the several afflictions out there aren't spread so thin. The odds of having someone who matches up with your class can actually be pretty slim for some classes, especially as Knights are very popular right now and don't give any afflictions. I actually haven't even seen Etch's bonus damage yet, because Cyrene doesn't have many (any?) Blademasters, Jesters, Magi, or Occultists that hunt on my level. I do have some Blue/Gold Dragons I know, but as Dragons, we don't often need to hunt in groups. I'm not going to go out of my way to hunt with strangers just for an ounce of bonus damage, so all of the new "complexity" of hunting is mostly lost on me. It's just a few new keys to push.

Don't get me wrong, it seems like a good system, it's just feels unnecessarily restrictive so far, and isn't very practical yet.

Sarapis

Tael said:

There's absolutely a point.

Consume the affliction just before it goes away. Consuming a stun as soon as it goes on is a waste. Consuming a stun after 3.9 seconds means you got almost all of the utility of the stun and the extra damage.

Using the consume abilities just requires slightly more coordination than people assumed when they first saw them. They're absolutely still useful.

Yeah, that's the idea. It adds another layer of efficiency that's possible for groups.

@Aerek We expect that the advent of multi-class will substantially solve the availability issue.

Elazar

I still dont like the 12sec rage timer, my suggestion: lose a % every 12 sec. Like 50% decay or something

Edit- but i love everything else about it, awesome job!!

Jarrod

That's only applicable to a few things though. Amnesia if it's only affecting 2 attacks, your only options are 0%/50%/100% negation of it. Same is true of Aeon.