5 rounds of ranged combat (in Changelog)

The number of ranged rounds has been increased from 3 to 5.

Ranged damage (physical and magical) has been reduced 40%.

Evasion bonus increment is now 20% per round, so for the first round of ranged combat the bonus is still 100%, but the next round it is 80%, and so on until for the last round of ranged the bonus is 20%.

Oh come on, now I got the "multiple fight at a time" penalty... first it could not access the fight code and it counts me as being in a fight?

Is it still 25 rounds total, 26 with HoC? And do the magic penalties ramp down to 0 over the 5 rounds?

Incredible change!! Gonna let it sink in first...

OMG. My poor single melee tank.

... oh, and ammo cost was cut in half.

and there are 30 rounds total.

i think that covers it. :)

Interesting

Is it still 25 rounds total, 26 with HoC? And do the magic penalties ramp down to 0 over the 5 rounds?

It was never 26 with the HoC. It is always capped at 25.

So the HoC is useless now?

poor fb :(

oh goody...bring on the tank vs. mage debate some more...sigh.

what's going to happen to AMF vs. my fireball?

This change gives Freed an unfair advantage!

...;'D

Meant to be more specific, the HoC is not adding a ranged round at all right now

> do the magic penalties ramp down to 0 over the 5 rounds?

magic penalties ramp the way they always did, only over 5 rounds instead of 3 now.

> So the HoC is useless now?

you still get an extra round in ranged, so not exactly.

I'm still only getting five

> the HoC is not adding a ranged round at all right now

is this the case for anyone else after the last restart?

Are there still bonus multipliers in ranged rounds?

If so are they 2.33 for rounds 1 and 2 of missile.

my hoc is working. Using CoC.

So does evasion work at 100% in the first round then 80% and so on? As in I don't get the bonus to ranged of 2.33 2.00 1.66 1.33?

Using MM with, and without my HoC I get five rounds of ranged.

I get five rounds of ranged with an HoC on.

"So does evasion work at 100% in the first round then 80% and so on?"
I think it means that it goes:
2.00
1.80
1.60
1.40
1.20
1.00 in melee rounds.

> So does evasion work at 100% in the first round then 80% and so on? As in I don't get the bonus to ranged of 2.33 2.00 1.66 1.33?

The _bonus_ is 100%. So in the first round it's 2.0 if you prefer to think in those terms.

This is the same max as before; with clearsight, in the old system, it went 2.0 1.66 1.33 1.33.

So is evasion still the same as before this changelog in melee rounds?

Thanks for keeping it interesting Jon!

> So is evasion still the same as before this changelog in melee rounds?

yes

Sorry Jonathan, I know you like changes that indirectly fix imbalance in the system rather than direct fixes. But evasion is still too powerful, when I have a bow that is +135 and I do not hit in ranged AND do not hit in melee for 30 rounds, there is something wrong. The evasions I am going up against do not have that much exp trained into them to warrant total negation of all cth and pth completely.

"Your privilege to fight was suspended for 60 minutes starting at 10:29 PM EST. Current server time is Sun Mar 2 22:56:46 2008.

You may fight again when that time has elapsed, or you may continue immediately after paying a fine of $111,422. Click here to pay $111,422 and continue fighting. "

Oh cool, I got hit by not only the multifight penalty, but a CAPTCHA that I didn't see...

I am seeing an oddness in round 1 of ranged, seems like to hit is higher than it should be.

> evasion is still too powerful

that's possible, but let's see how this shakes out first.

Glory:

It's premature to say that this is not enough chance for ranged characters to win. If anything, it is a big nerf to RoBF and sadly melee tanks (who are going to be even less popular). Let me point out that you run a three minion decentralized tank without ToA and only 250k dex. It comes as no surprise that you can't hit evasion teams. A better assessment would be someone like soxjr.

Ok, I'm getting 6 rounds of ranged with an HoC on.

Now that ranged damage for archers has been reduced by the BG bug fix and reduced another 40%, it is almost adding insult to not hitting by there being no change in the evasion multipliers.

Not only can I not hit anyone around me with evasion, if I haphazardly do, I will only hit them for a mere "flesh wound" and not take them down.

I agree, let's watch and see how things go, but I truly feel a degradation of the evasion bonus in melee should also begin from 1.0 and work downward. There are far too many stalemates, they are becoming the norm for me when I try and add to my fightlist, almost all stalemate.

Was Exbow/Axbow changed or not?

yay and i was selling stuff to make a single tank too yay.....this just ruined my plans :(

You do realize there is a 60% dex penalty for bows. If you are not a dedicated tank and cannot hit in ranged, you are not going to hit in melee. You lose roughly 30% damage from the BG fix at +15. Hardly disastrous. Again, your team is not a concentrated tank team ( i assume you are using RoBF none the less) and cannot speak for balance.

"Ranged damage (physical and magical) has been reduced 40%. "

Doesn't this make magic damage against RoBF even more impossible?

is it like this?
mage>tank
robf>mage
tank>robf

So....all the xbow's damage is even laughable now? Does it affect the stat draining though, coz I always thought damage some how affects the draining amount?

xBow damage was always laughable, but as long as you do some damage, the drain is unaffected.

I can't believe it, an evasion nerf that hurts bloodlust tanks! THIS is what I've been waiting for for months - ugh! You're killing me, Jon.

Haven't really had a chance to go through my fight list or try anyone new (out of BA), but one immediate question:

Are damage reduction layers going to be reduced to go along with this? Hitting even softer now sure isn't going to help with that. Doesn't matter how many rounds one has if folks are using PL and TSA to leech/regenerate the whole thing every time.

While total ranged damage should be about the same in theory, since so many things in the game are based on thresholds or MPR investments up to expected damage level (like investing in PL enough to leech off expected blows), reducing damage sounds like it runs the risk of becoming pretty useless against PL/TSA/Mgs/etc... RoBF would be the biggest example there: surely you have to get rid of the RoBF flat damage reduction if DD coming in is now that much softer per blow?

Sorry, I see tasuki already covered my concerns about RoBF... I am expecting more imminent changes in that regard (I hope).

It isn't an Evasion nerf.

If anything, I think it's a sideways buff to large ranged weapons. Now, instead of doing 59234563485734 bazillion damage to one minion every round, not able to kill off a 5-minion team before melee, they can now do 545453 bazillion less damage (still enough to kill a minion per turn), they can kill one minion per turn and finish combat in ranged.

-1 to CoC and melee tanks, the way I see it.

Definitely -1 to melee tanks, you are correct there

> Are damage reduction layers going to be reduced to go along with this?

Honestly? Maybe. :)

Seriously though one of the points here is to increase the number of fights going to melee so I'm not sure if that is a good idea.

Doing this at the beginning of the month lets me watch for a couple weeks and see what the ramifications really are.

Tyriel:

With any evasion, they are not likely to score 5 rounds of hits. I am disturbed by the huge negative impact this has on CoC and melee tanks. We know CoC is rather powerful in the past but now it is will take even more rounds to match the damage done by fb. The nerf to lust tank is downright unnecessary...

heh lost 3/4s of my already small fightlist

i had been wondering if the beleg's fix had already had an impact on the percentage of fights ending in ranged rounds. it will be interesting to see the new percentages after this as well.

Reduce ranged again?? I got a 100M SoD that hits for next to ZIP! Thanks ;) Thats what 50% in the last two changes!

"is it like this?
mage>tank
robf>mage
tank>robf"

No, its mage > tank, robf > mage, robf > tank. Right now tanks suck. If I didn't have hundreds of millions invested in a bloodlust tank strat, you can bet I'd jump ship. I'm a bit stunned right now. I mean this did not even address how unfairly evasion works against melee weapons.

Yeah, miteke, this change is GREAT for mages.

ToE, RoBF, AC, and MgS all completely destroy our damage now. At least before we were hittinghigh enough (SOMETIMES) to win. Now we can't do that.

And to top it all off, AMF hits us for the same amount and we do 40% less damage. HOORAY FOR MAGES.

Again, sorry to hit the Evasion bell once more, but the defensive dex granted should be gone once melee hits. Tanks are becoming almost silly to run where first your bow is negated with evasion defensive dex AND evasion effect multipliers, then you still can't hit because their defensive dex is so high.

And yes, I know I have a RoE strat currently for my NCB, but I have a ToA I also equip and I STILL cannot hit a good majority of people around me in score with it equipped.

What good is a WA if it is all for naught because of evasion + AoF + Elven gear?

OK, if you increase the fights going to melee are you going to reduce the amount of FB friendly splash? If not, you are basically making FB useless in a lot of cases... Especially when it spreads and faces all those damage reduction layers (especially RoBF), then it makes it to mell and the team vaporizes in one round.

If that is what you are going for, then fine... But then change Fireball to just be a stright front-fire (like reverse MM and remove the friendly-fire penalty... Otherwise FB won't be feasible, will it?

I'll see how my fights look tomorrow, so far I am still able to kill everyone (I think it is the same anyway)... But then my targets are a lot of DE-dependent teams that I could already kill in one round. Anyone close to the fence of getting me into melee will likely mean I have to remove them from my list. Yeah, I could just move away from FB, but what team setup could make FB useful in that case?

Glory,
I'm not ToA anymore, but I still have to waddle thru 5 rounds of CoC damage in melee before I can even get a hit on with 2.6 Dex and +150 weapon.

The biggest problem now is actually RoBF. Ironically, the only thing clearly buffed at this moment is the traditional RoBF strategy with big AMF. Good thing most RoBF characters are too busy buffing up their evasion. The threshold reduction renders fb useless for much of the ranged round while taking amf backlashes. Otherwise, my fb is doing at least as well as before...

From what I can see, ToA tank is the ONLY viable strategy to compete with evasion minions running rampant, and then it is not enough so you must really pour tons of CB2/USD into your bow and/or melee weapon to even get hits. At least mages always hit, even if their damage has been weakened by this change, tanks still can't hit without massive pth on their weapons.

Round 1
Sox hit Pwn with Bow of the Occult Slayer [291645]
Sox hit Pwn with Bow of the Occult Slayer [297138]
Round 2
Sox missed Pwn
Round 3
Sox missed Pwn

"I don't know if this is a bug? but double hit on first round then miss the rest should not happen. It's actually never happen to me before."
P.S: I am wearing HOC

Do we get refunds for the value lost on ammo bundles?

So this is also (whether or not purposeful) a CoC nerf as well as a TSA boost?

CoC nerf because it comes in on the sixth round of the fight, allowing opposing characters 5 rounds to deal damage

TSA boost because a 40% decrease in ranged damage allows TSA users more time to boost hp

Interesting changes. I now have 3 archers on my list who usually hit my evasion minion in round 1. Dunno if this is just coincidence or if the evasion bonus is not the same as before for round 1.

Not really, with the 40% penalty, CoC damage will catch up incredibly quickly. But now what really is interesting, is the ranged damage Nerf will make it much much easier to live through ranged rounds with the proper defenses. Especially with the near constant damage reduction cause by ToE, and the constant reduction of RoBF.

ToE got the biggest buff here.

This can't be right;

My evasion - 1,735,145 (133) and I'm getting hit round 1 by Alisa with 525k DX. She has a ToA and I'm not sure of the bow pth but something seems wrong. Maybe she has some big ammo.

Also I am missing against alisa's minion ice in round 1 with +101 Ax and no evasion/DB in play. Is this just down to the early round penalty or not?

wow, I actually drawn against mittar when BOTH of us hits every round? (until his CoC mage die, but I still hit).

At my level, my fight list has not changed and I am basically a CoC mage w/ some weak tank support. I am actually hitting more with my tank in ranged which is rather nice. Not sure how things change at the higher levels, but I like the difference so far.

Thank you Jonathan! :D.

Well, I'm not sure if it's coincidence, and my char is at too low a level to know how significant it really is. But I've woken up to find I can beat characters I couldn't last night.

Single CoC mage with RBF and evasion.

I'll be keeping an eye on this change.

RoBF gets a constant reduction so mages will be doing much much less damage, since less hits with less damage = more reduction.

That way CoC has a much higher chance of surviving to do its job.

it seems the extra HOC round ignores evasion :D I tried fighting a few targets with HOC (I don't equip myself) and I can see they attack 1 more round before I do, and they can always hit me in round 1. Then all their hits missed me for the remaining 5 rounds as expected.

So... HOC is either broken or it just became a must have for all minions with ranged weap (although it already is)

I'll test it more tomorrow but I am seeing very similar results on my side as well. Way too many hits on my familiar...

Yup, I can confirm that HOC's extra ranged round ignores evasion.

I usually miss 100% against TestChar2 in ranged. But now that I have HOC on, I can kill him consistently in 1 round hehehe, nice bonus.

^It doesn't ignore it completely - My NCB has 200k dex and I miss in the HoC round

How about DBs? Does that apply in HoC round?

"How about DBs? Does that apply in HoC round?"

Yes, Lega hits me in round one, then misses the rest of Ranged.

I get nailed in Round 1 with Ax/Exbows as well.

Not sure if this is a bug or a "feature". But it's really going to mess up fights.

Perfect strategy with things as they are:

Archer with huge HP, ST, and Archery and no DX, using AoM, HoC, BG, and RoBF
AMF enchanter with all AMF, corn, and Exbow.

weak against: duel mages or tanks with evasion on the smaller of the two

beats: everything else

forgot, against a RoBF/Evasion type WITH a meat shield, it would come down to who has the larger RoBF as well ^_^

sorry for the triplepost >.< Enchanter would use HoC, not Corn

The free hits in round one of ranged even with Evasion being used needs to be fixed... my score and my opponents score are now toast due to this... I was getting a challenge bonus... but now I receive nothing all due to one opponent.

Sorry :/

Tanks are back on top, i lost two tanks from my fight-list, and another has turned iffy. FB mage's have gained from the 6 rounds of ranged; dude's char now draws with me when i used to farm him in the past. So, evasion is more or less fixed by this change, what does one do about the ueber FB mages now?!

hehe people should read this thread and place a bid on my HOC before it's magically "fixed" :P

Chuck... Keep in mind that Dude also retrained his Amf and switched to ToE

quite true, DrAco, so the ToE is back in favour, maybe this nerfs the RoBF on its own, or maybe there's another changelog due :)

Im getting hit in the first round as well, always in the first round, which shouldnt be possilbe, btw is the multiplier still in effect?

And great change, put the emphasis back on ranged again.....

Glory, I can beat Bleys easily cuz you can't hit me, but then again i tried fighting Dystopia and he manages to hit me in round 1. Both tanks with elbs, his elb has +131, and he has roughly 200k dex more then you, not sure if this what you mean with overpowered. Or if its a bug of some sorts.

Its a bug, a Sod hits me in the first round, then misses me in the next 4 rounds and then starts hitting me again in the 6th round.

Has to be a bug.

I hit conundrum 3x in the HOC round and then not again till round 4 of missile.

And nightstrike hits my tank in the first HOC round, when he should never hit it. My DBs overwhelm his exbows + and my dex is far higher then his which is nerfed by the EC I have.

fixed first round of (HoC) range

Er, suddenly ALL melee and ranged weapons don't even strike at all?????

Back to normal now I guess...

"Chuck... Keep in mind that Dude also retrained his Amf and switched to ToE"

i had been using toe, i did not change my tat. i untrained my amf and ga and put all of that back into evasion/fb and a base prot.

chuck, when someone 600k mpr below me can no longer farm me, that doesn't necessarily mean my strat is now uber, it may just mean things are more balanced. : )

> This is the same max as before; with clearsight, in the old system, it went 2.0 1.66 1.33 1.33.

I was wrong: it actually used to go 2.33 2.0 1.66 1.33 with a HoC. This was a bug, and has also been fixed now. (That is, now it really does go 2.0 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1.2.)

All I can say is "Ha Ha Mages!". ;)

My small RoBF team can now fight up a lot higher than before, as it's now much harder for Mage teams to do any damage to me in Ranged.

So no killing me outright before I can start to damage you back.

friends don't let friends run a Bloodlust/VA tank .. :(
7 rounds (HoC and 1 for switching weapons) are really hard to survive now -.-

but i think bloodlust and VA needed a nerf anyway.. *sigh*

BTW how does this change effect the elven hauberk?
Its effect halfs each round so? is it 100% effective in the HoC ranged round or 100% effective in the first true ranged round?
And in round 5 (not counting the hoc) its only effective for 6.25%?

Damage reduced by 40% with one extra ranged round? I'm with Sut on the mage damage reduction, it's retarded.

So this reduction, combined with the EH, Mgs, RoBF, then the TOE, Prot, and AC, it's getting a little thick don't ya think? Who cares if you get another ranged round if you're only hitting for 5% of what you cast? You need to get rid of some of the layers of reduction and just reduce the damage done from the get go.

BTW, I still think it would be nice if you were a mage wearing the EH, that it would absorb GA/AMF damage directed back at you.

Two extra rounds, Tezmac (from 3 to 5)... So, on paper it looks like a wash.

And my fight-list hasn't changed. MIND YOU -- my fight-list is a bunch of people I beat relatively easily...

For the folks I could not beat before, well, they are that much further out of reach:

The RoBF crowd: KoP, Koy, Edyit, Black Sophist: no damage, no damage, no damage. Even with my rather large MM (should be 7 million+ with the AoF on...) on a nicely dressed out Steel Familiar it barely can scratch most rounds.

Conundrum -- can't kill a single minion. Damage reduction and regen are too large. I actually cannot remember if I could kill a single minion before, though, had him off my fight list a long time back.

Oxcha -- tougher than ever. His PL could even be trained less and he would still own, because I cannot hit for over 100K with my FB (a lot of 50K to 70K). We're talking Fisher-Price damage. Can't kill a single minion there either, almost certain I used to be able to.

And all of this with Jonathan clearly stating he wants to have battles reach more into melee. Well, that's the death knell for my team, since FB fries everyone into crispy critters after ranged is over.

If this direction continues, I would at least like a free retrain for the FB, or change FB into something else. You can't push fights into melee and still have FB be considered more than a joke. I would at least need a suicide-pill amulet or something to force Joe to shut himself down once melee is reached...

I fully anticipate the RoBF issue will be resolved in a later changelog. If not, and if no indication about it, I am pretty sure I will just pack it up... My build doesn't lend itself well to an RoBF strategy without some retraining, and since an RoBF just gets beat by a better RoBF, I would definitely be relegated to just reaching as high as my tattoo level. Here's hoping for more changes!

Can we get the arrow spawn rate, or bundle size increased? With the change to having 6 rounds of ranged (with HoC), I am burning more ammo and little bundles of 700 (when I can only buy 8 of said bundles) is annoying. Or better yet, simply let me enter an amount I want to buy and let me buy them in bulk.

Weighing in on the Evasion side, I happen to think it is quite silly that I can beat Freed's character at the moment... Similar total PR's, except his weapon is huge (hidden power), and a vast amount of my MPR (more than a quarter) is useless against him because he is not susceptible to DM. Yet I beat him... Evasion still for the win!

Meanwhile I can't even scratch ToE and RoBF teams in any number of rounds/battles.

This game is getting more and more binary by the second...

AdminJonathan, Mar 2
> evasion is still too powerful

that's possible, but let's see how this shakes out first.

--

He's getting there Sut. Keep up the feedback, but continue to have faith ;)

Well on the archer side, is all the xp in archery or even using a bow worth it?

I have 1.4M levels in archery to do low damage now. In addition to losing a round switching weapons.

This was a huge CoC buff. And we still have evasion as a major problem.

And poor Halidon -- more nerfage... Jonathan has pretty much forsaken that poor familiar...

GB, I am patient, can't say I have faith -- the game is going in a direction I just don't care for overall: into Binary Blender and/or Wall Blender... I'm sure plenty of folks will love it and it will bring a whole new generation of players.

So, I apologize if my tone is showing too much of my personal distaste, I will try to keep the feedback more pure (don't have any more at the moment, but might after I burn my purchased BA as the day goes on...)

I'm still getting hit more in the HoC round than the others...

"Yeah, miteke, this change is GREAT for mages. "

I never said that. This change sucks wind for FB and MM mages too. I just said that it did nothing to help tanks against evasion unless you consider an archer a tank. In fact I think this was pretty much an archer/SoD and ToE/damage reducer buff. I may come out OK because I'm a big damage reducer, but right now I wish I were a CoC damage reducer. But who knows, there's still weeks to go and I'm waiting for my equipment to return from forging to see what the changes mean to my team.

Personally, I'd up the FB and MM damage a bit now, and tone down evasion affects during melee to complete the balancing act.

"And poor Halidon -- more nerfage... Jonathan has pretty much forsaken that poor familiar... "

Umm... careful dude... Remember what happened last time everyone complained about a tattoo being forsaken and unloved? :P

What makes you think that isn't what I am going for? I'd love to have a mage component with physical tattoo if it could be used effectively/balanced...

the HoC round isn't suffering any ranged weapon penalties
(or something else is going on as I'm always getting hit more in the first round)

Jon, edy is hitting my familiar in round 1 with no archery and no dex.

He doesn't have an HoC, and doesn't hit all the time. Ranger does have an HoC and hits me 4 times in round 1. Either dbs are broken in that round or something else is WAY off... maybe instead of a penalty Ranged is experiencing a bonus CTH?

To confirm

Ranged penalties for magic are now.
30%/24%/18%/12%/6% reduction

With a HoC
30%/24%/18%/12%/6%/6% reduction

Both with an additional 40% reduction
So these become-

.7*.6 = .42
.76*.6 = .456
.82 * .6 = .492
.88 * .6 = .528
.94 * .6 = .564

All in all the final penalties for ranged magic are-

Ranged penalties for magic
58%/54.4%/50.8%/48.2%/43.6% reductions

With a HoC
58%/54.4%/50.8%/48.2%/43.6%/43.6% reductions

Anyone care to correct this?

The Ranged Penalties to Magic used to be 30%/20%/10%. When did that change? :/

"The Ranged Penalties to Magic used to be 30%/20%/10%. When did that change? :/"

I think it changed at about the same time this thread was created. :P

Ah. ;)

my fightlist seems to have grown after this change.....for now at least. as president of CB2; i approve of this change.