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Bashing Changes - Classlead Request
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classlead 91 endorse <reason>
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Submitted by: You Status : Submitted
Skill : TwoArts Ability : Mir
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Problem:
I believe the root of the blademaster bashing problem is Mir. It doesn't have a
high enough defense against denizens to make bashing against more difficult
denizens viable.
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Solution #1:
Increase the amount of defense provided by Mir. Increasing the basic defense
capabilities of Mir against denizens would bring Blademaster more in line with
other classes. I do not know the numbers required to balance attack speed
versus defense, but a decrease in attack speed in favor of increased defense
would be welcome to the class. After extensive testing, and measuring xp/min in
the 90's, I have found that Blademaster performs at roughly half the
effectiveness of Runewarden in it's best case scenario - Fast clear times on
weaker denizens.
Solution #2:
Solution #3:
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0
Comments
To maximise XP/time, the most important factor is how fast you can kill things. Especially with artefacts, since it's easier and cheaper to increase your survivability with artefacts than your offence, so your base offence is much more important than your base defence.
Runewarden also isn't the best choice for comparison. Very few classes can compare with knights in either offence or defence; fully artied jester/priest/serpent have comparable or better offence but not defence, bard has comparable offence if you use canticle, and blademaster in Mir is the only class with comparable defence, unless you count monk/apostate bashing with numb/apathy (which is situational), or a priest/paladin pair with bloodsworn (but then that includes a knight anyways, and can't be done solo). In this comparison, it's runewarden that's excessively overpowered, not blademaster that's excessively underpowered.
Comparing to all other classes rather than just one of the best, blademaster isn't terrible, they're just mediocre with no real strong point outside of Mir's defence (which isn't actually useful because of how slow it is). They have what was originally intended to be the same baseline offence as every non-dragon class, but of course that balancing seems to have been abandoned (it didn't work out in the first place because of the huge variability in weapon stats, and seems to have been ignored entirely when balancing classes after weapon stats were standardised), so it's subpar now. Still, blademaster offence is roughly equal to almost half the classes in the game, so it's not horrible, and they do have some flexibility from stances. They're very lacking in defence and utility, near the bottom of the list in both aspects, but that would be fine if they excelled in anything else to compensate. And the high endurance drain doesn't help at all either. In my opinion, a significant improvement in any one area would be enough to make blademaster competitive, just some single advantage they could have over other classes, whether it's in offence, defence, utility, or something more unique. Because they're already mediocre at best in all aspects though, if that new advantage comes at the cost of something else, it won't really be worth it.
I agree that a tradeoff may not make it worth it, I would however be comfortable with that tradeoff in order to tackle the same content I do with my knight class as a concession. The hope would be a buff.
I disagree that it only comes down to how fast you can kill things, because you have to be able to survive them as well. Most areas that I'm able to bash in Runewarden, I am strictly unable to do as Blademaster (even without runes on both classes). I am artied with 6500 health and a level 3 band. XP/Min is still awful by comparison.
Thoughts?
I do not believe that the class needs increased bashing speed, but increased survivability. Thyr and Arash are quite fast, I run at about 50% crit and either stance mows down weaker denizens, yet still considerably slower overall than other aforementioned classes.
I suppose I've made my stance (see what I did there hur hur) clear on the topic at this point though.
I'm sure that having pendant, lucky, and lily as crit modifiers are the reason.
I haven't touched Doya or Sanya, I ought to run numbers for them as well.
EDIT: I just realized that the denizens I killed during this testing may have different experience rewards due to being around longer, I'd have to retest Arash vs Thyr again and look at denizen kills per minute instead. I do recognize that in the 80's when crit was still around 25-30% Arash had much higher DPS.
I just realized that the denizens I killed during this testing may have different experience rewards due to being around longer, I'd have to retest Arash vs Thyr again and look at denizen kills per minute instead. I do recognize that in the 80's when crit was still around 25-30% Arash had much higher DPS.
I don't think I'm active enough to submit it myself, but my suggestion would be to allow striking against denizens (possibly reducing drawslash damage so the total DPS is unchanged), and also have it give a tiny amount of shin. This would let blademasters use healthtrans, binding, and phoenix for some added healing while bashing. It would be more interesting and unique than simply raising the numbers for damage output or damage reduction, and it would be mostly active rather than passive. It wouldn't be as beneficial as boosting blademaster's DPS, but it would give them a unique advantage, letting them fill some niche so there's a reason to choose blademaster over another class for bashing. The reason I suggest a tiny amount of shin generation is because being able to use phoenix constantly while bashing, on top of healthtrans, would be pretty ridiculous. It should be maybe 10% of the shin you'd get in PvP, at most.
Another solution, which wouldn't require such a significant change (it would just be tweaking numbers), would be to expand on blademaster's only advantage at the moment by improving their flexibility through stances. Currently, there are three useful stances. Arash is good for more quickly killing easy denizens (or for recklessly hunting stronger things), Mir is good for casual bashing when you care more about easy, safe hunting than your xp or gold rate (also for very strong denizens that you can't normally handle, like if you're going for an honours line), and the more balanced Sanya for everything else. That flexibility is interesting, but most of the time it's not particularly useful, it isn't enough to make blademaster a better choice than another class. It could be turned into a unique advantage for blademaster by rebalancing the stances a bit (against denizens only, leaving them unchanged in PvP) and adding some new advantages, so the choice of stance is more interesting and Thyr/Doya could be viable. An ability to instantly (or near-instantly) switch between stances while bashing would also make it far more interesting and useful, letting you fluidly switch back and forth for different denizens or when encountering groups, but I don't have any good ideas for how to make that work for bashing but not PvP (and being able to instantly switch in and out of Mir in PvP would be a pretty significant and unneeded buff). I haven't put a lot of work into fine-tuning the exact numbers, but my initial suggestions are:
- Sanya: Currently base damage and balance (with unstanced having reduced
damage), the default stance. I can't really think of any special role
for this stance (unless PvE shin generation is added), so leaving it
here as the default option is probably fine.
- Doya: Currently +20% balance and +5% damage. Has basically no purpose at all for bashing at the moment, and I can't think of a particular good use for it. My best ideas would be to either increase the damage to +20% (cancelling out the increased balance, so the DPS is the same as Sanya) and adding 5% blunt/cutting resistance, or making the damage +25% (so it's a little better DPS than Sanya). This would make it the strong, slow stance, with either a bit higher DPS or a bit higher defence since there's not really an advantage to strong/slow attacks.
- Thyr: Currently -10% balance and -20% damage. I would add a small critical bonus, probably 1% (half as effective as a level 1 pendant). This stance would be for speed and criticals, obviously. You could make the difference more pronounced by making it -20% balance and -30% damage (a marginal DPS reduction from the current). Obviously, the new role of this stance would be high speed and crit rate, at the cost of the average DPS being low.
- Mir: Currently +20% balance, -10% damage, and 30%? (I think it might have been reduced at some point, so I'm not 100% sure now) damage reduction. I think it's pretty much fine as it is, being the pure tanking stance. The only change I would make is to reduce the damage penalty to -5%, so the offence isn't quite as terrible, but still much lower than any other stance. If the damage resistance has been nerfed, so it's only 15% or 20%, I might remove the damage penalty entirely and just leave the balance penalty (it will still be significantly weaker than any other stance).
- Arash: Currently -5% balance, +10% damage, and I think 10% higher damage taken. I think this is also fine where it is, as the glass cannon stance. I wouldn't make any changes.
Of course, it would be interesting if the differences were more extreme (-30% balance and -40% damage for Thyr, -10% balance and +20% damage for Arash in exchange for doubling or tripling the defence penalty, etc.), but then there are situations where the penalties can be greatly mitigated (like using Arash to quickly tear through things that can't really harm you, or using Arash in a group where you don't have to take the damage yourself, or using Mir with burst or normal weapon attacks), so that could be a bit too much of a buff.Adding utility by allowing us to generate shin is an interesting proposition. As infernal this was somewhat helpful, but because of the balance cost associated it was always more beneficial/quicker just to leave the room for a moment. I'm referring to Vigour. I don't know if Healthtrans requires balance/eq or not.
I like making an noticeable difference between the stances as the proposed change, and would endorse it as such assuming Mir was boosted also. I like the idea of turtling in Mir to heal up, and swapping out to dish out damage. Creates some interactivity with the stance while bashing, instead of just hanging out in Mir non-stop.
Let me know the classlead # after you get it submitted, Elowin.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Glad we could have such a great discussion about it.
Hopefully this is one of the "big changes" coming in 2016.