Can someone explain why we need WA anymore? (in General)

I am a bit confused, a product of getting older.

However, I cannot understand with ENC in play, why we need WA anymore.

WA (weapon allowance) was designed, at least I thought, to stop smaller characters from equipping massive weapons and getting high rewards. Any NW over your weapon allowance would raise your PR, thereby lowering your potential rewards.

However, with ENC we now have a better way of stopping smaller characters, and smaller minions, from using massive weapons.

If they are over their ENC, their strength/dex/AC/evasion all drop down considerably. Making their weapon less useful.

So can someone please explain why WA is needed? And in fact, did not WA drop by 1/2 when ENC entered play?

I'd hazard a guess that the WA drop was to stop bigger characters dropping loads of items and just equipping a large weapon on that minion, using up the ENC allowance on nothing but. After all, a single minion archer with a ToA and a big ELB doesn't really need much else.

JW,

I don't completely understand.

An archer would certainly want a HoC (no NW though), but certainly would want BGs. Also perhaps EBs to boost dex/archery and EC for the same.

Still, why have weapon allowance when weapon size can be titrated via ENC?

Honest opinion Ranger? I agree. But given the amount of different things Jon was trying to find a level for, I suggest that's Jon's reasoning.

Losing levels from strength/dex/evasion seem like a far better way to make people stay below the level than the raising of PR that going above WA gives.

Seems like a much harder penalty. However you can raise your ENC level from items/tattoos etc can't you - that is immediately if you get the right items? Whereas your WA is dependent on your MPR. So there is something of a loophole where large weapons are concerned.

After all, if you've managed to up your strength, thus raising your ENC, without WA you'd then be free to equip a bigger weapon. Thereby raising your damage through the raise in ST and the bigger weapon.

Yes,

That is true, especially with the TOA.

I would hope others contribute to help me figure this out.

But then one could make the TOA's boost to strength not count towards ENC load and base it upon learned/non-tattoo item boosted strength.

Making it nice and easy for characters to see each minions WA instead of having to guess at it.

And if tanks want to be like mine and concentrate on strength, of course they will have less dex.

Encumbered at: 282,105,326


I think this is why there is still a Weapon Allowance. That is my encumbered number now, with about 4.8 mil str and 4.2 or so hp. This is with a ToA. Right now my weapon is over my weapon allowance by enough to raise my mpr by about 270k but I'm not even close to 1/2 of my encumbered number.

I agree with Ranger on this. JW, no way an ELB archer can use all his ENC any more than a single minion CoC mage could. Sorry, I mean a single minion RoBF (sorry dudemus).

ENC was put in play to level out NW usage in general. Why do we need WA any more?

Sox,
Then take out the TOA on the ENC values.

But I am glad I have a cross section of CB so far who sees my point.

Sox, sorry, I didn't read enough... If ENC is still that high, then why can I beat Double Trouble now? Where did those weapons go? Maybe he was just borrowing them, I am totally not trying to say I know all this...

In any case, if ENC still isn't taking care of WA, then increase ENC? Maybe I am finally seeing JW's point -- weapons are different than trying to dress out a team in armor, augmenting gear, etc.

But surely it should be toned down, no?

WA is just there to keep the PR's of tanks from shooting through the roof.

Cut the Weapon Allowance, you tanks don't get free NW anymore and your PR just rise a lot.

And why isn't WA in the dictionary? Could an admin include this? I'm simply refusing to put those html tags in.

I can't use my 30 mil NW melee weapon.

My PR would only bump by about 200k but my Encumbrance would kill me:

Encumbered at: 48,355,573
Equipped NW: 37,518,913

I have to wait another 20 mil to be able to use it, I'm very much sure that my weapon allowance then is far far too big for me to even want to upgrade it to that point.

For me encumbrance hits in much sooner than weapon allowance.

Sut, I was borrowing. I'm clanmates with Freed - need I say more...

"WA is just there to keep the PR's of tanks from shooting through the roof.

Cut the Weapon Allowance, you tanks don't get free NW anymore and your PR just rise a lot."

I think Henk hit it on the head there. Weapon allowance actually helps tanks so that their weapons NW doesn't add any or at least very little PR. Perhaps what you mean to say is why is there PR weighting of items still? Unless you want weapon NW to have no PR weighting then that is a different story. With the addition of ENC now PR weighting seem to have no place as far as I can see. Besides weapons the only other item that has huge NW is DB's and some have found ways around ENC to use them so what is the use of PR weighting?

So Ranger what is it that you really mean might I ask? No PR weighting of weapons, full PR weighting of weapons, or foregoing PR weighting altogether? Just asking for some clarity here is all.

Logan,

Thanks for the reply.

I will clarify.

Why are their PR weightings now? We have ENC to prevent the abuse of a low level character using high NW items to fight very high.

Tanks should, IMO, have unlimited "WA" as ENC should be the deciding factor on what they can or cannot use.

Same can be said for mages and enchanters.

goodie :) make all upgradeable items controlled only by ENC... and disable all PR boosts :)

somehow i doubt jon implemented ENC with that in mind... but i do agree... the amount of PR that a weapon boosts when over the weapon allowance is far too much

so you are suggesting remove PR altogether? DB junction. I rest my case.

I wasn't saying I disagreed, I was just stating what my encumberance was because of the ToA.

Well it seems DB/junction is a very special case. I hope Jon deals with it as such.

However for weapons, I think PR weighting is not needed with ENC. And do feel strongly about that.

For other items, I have less of an opinion and would feel fine either way.

DBs junction never added much PR in the 1st place...

Sorry for double post, but here is my numbers without the ToA.

Encumbered at: 224,121,388

Now I find this funny, because I currently only have 122.5 mil equipped that counts towards the encumbered number, but yet I'm over my weapon allowance enough to raise my pr by 270k. So in a way I agree that the double kill there is wrong in my opinion. I added a ton of HP and STR to make sure my encumberence number was high enough to let me get my weapon in without any problems even after someone hits me with a EC, but yet I technically shouldnt' be using my weapon because I passed the Weapon Allowance and my pr is taking a hit for it and so is my challenge bonus, which has and will stay negative 3 to negative 4 until I finally get to 6/20. Well enough from me. That is the best info I can give to help the discussion.

Kicking out the PR Ratings would help quite a bit on people's MPR, and I'm fine with that, if you use Junction to x-fer your DB's, isn't your skill level reduced because you are over encumbered? Therefor you should only be able to junction what you can afford ? Not so sure about removing the Enc added by the ToA, if you do that, I'll just switch up to a ToE and and Enjoy heavy AC on my tank for a change. ToA is already tough enough to play vs evasion and EC without adding even more negatives to it, and if that happened, I would be forced to switch my ToA to ToE/Familiar and so would most tanks. ToA Tanks have very little AC, what more do you want?

IE DB's 100, Over enc, reduces it to a 34, Junction skill is shot at well, there for you only junction at 40% there for db operate at only 21 ? isn't that how it should work? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that how is should work?

i think the best explanation for jon's direction here is in this thread:

http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002Oip


at some point i expect to see the "unified" theory for encumbrance implemented. probably just as soon as someone comes up with one that jon can live with.

Dude,

That thread never really answered my question.

Perhaps you can sum it up if I missed something.

Enc controls weapon size for some 2 minion and all 3+ minion teams, WA controls weapon size for other 2 minion teams and all 1 minion teams (those that want to keep PR under control anyway.

jon would like a way to tie encumbrance to challenge bonus and when that can be done there will be no need for wa or pr. at least that is what i got out of it. : )

So another Q:

Why does ENC need to be linked to CB?

i wasn't saying that i agree with any of those sentiments, but merely stating what i saw as jon's thoughts on the matter.

it is fairly clear from his post that he does want that link if he changes the current system at all.

the only input i really have on the matter is that if wa is just used for pr calculation which is solely used for challenge bonus, we could simplify the learning curve greatly by unifying the enc to challenge bonus link. it seems rather clunky and confusing for noobs at this point though.

if i was guessing though, i would say that jon wants enc linked to cb, because right now enc penalizes people for going over but doesn't reward them for staying under and that is something he would like to do.

I understand those concerns.

But it would be easier for the game as a whole at least to make WA disappear and use ENC for weapons at least.

Much easier for new players who have no idea about weapon allowance.

then what about giving PR ratings to weapons and getting rid of the WA? isnt that wad went down last time?

If you take away WA and thus strip pr that you gain by adding weapons to a character, then what is the point of PR in the first place?

PR for tattoos and other items.

However, ENC was to be designed to stop lower xp minions from using uber weapons. Was it not?

So why is WA needed anymore? I am still confused.

Right now tanks have 2 penalties for carrying a weapon too big for them.

1) Higher PR = lower rewards

2) Penalties to their dexterity, strength, armor class and evasion (if used).

I have no problems with an either or situation, however, to have both penalties seems too much. At least to me.

WA is designed in the first place to make sure newbs don't use uber weapons.

Be glad there is WA otherwise ranger your PR would sky rocket. That weapon of yours uses a crap load of WA.

And besides ENC is minion bound, WA is character bound. WA is what your
team as a whole can carry without the PR being raised.
But please don't say you want to remove the PR waiting from weapons, that
would be so unfair for the DD users, their "weapons" don't have free PR.

And really could an ADMIN please enter the word WA into the dictionary!!!!!!!! Lazy buggers, forced to use html tags in this little piece of text

Yes, that is exactly what I want.

PR removed from weapons as ENC takes that part of the game over now.

Why should tanks be penalized 2x for using a weapon higher then allowed?

Make ENC then a hard cap instead of a soft one.

But remember weapons cost tons of CB2, esp if you want to have enough + to try to hit.

Well Ranger I kinda guessed it from the start of this little thread you made that you want the PR weight removed from the weapons.

And I can tell you this, it will never happen.
WA is not designed to Penalize tanks. Its designed to help tanks.
WA is further more character based and not minion based.

ENC is designed to stop tanks from equipping stupid big weapons where no defense is against (im not going into the "what about evasion then" because we all know where that is going to lead).
ENC is further more minion based and not character based.

If you want to remove the pr weight from weapons you would, indirect, triple their power. It would 1 remove a crap load of PR from the tank team, it would 2 remove any restraints of you USD spenders of upping their weapon through the roof and it would give a huge advantage over any other team not holding a weapon.

And if you would remove PR from the game, this game would suck so hard, then it would become more an USD blender and that is exactly the opposite of jon's wishes.

So thread closed. This will never ever happen.

I fail to see the reason behind WA. Just like Ranger.

Well thanks Henk for closing my thread. But I prefer it stay open a bit while longer, thank you very much.

Very nice of you to take a very antagonistic attitude, as I thought you might.

Back to my thread:

With ENC, how many tanks can put their weapon over it? Perhaps a single minion TOA tank, but if you read above I suggested to remove the TOA's boost to str from ENC calculations.

ENC is the restraint from spending tons of USD. I have noticed it on my weapon, and in fact had to get rid of 1 of my weapons. Freed and other tanks I chat with notice it also. So that statement you make is completely without logic and reason.

Perhaps if you played a tank you may know this, instead of the overpowered strat de jour.

But again, back to the thread. With ENC, how does WA help tanks? By making it impossible to equip a weapon up to your ENC without a massive increase in PR?

OK, to sum up.

Why not have an unlimited weapon allowance for tanks and have ENC be the limiting factor on what they can wield?

I guess that is what I would like to see. After the posts above, I have a clearer understanding of what was "wrong" with WA and ENC.

And remove the TOA strength in the ENC calculations if needed to be fair.

would your idea only penalize for going over enc or would it also reward for staying under? in effect, if it goes over you get negative cb, whereas the positive range of cb's would be reserved for those staying under and the farther under, the better the bonus?

I would not reward for being under the ENC as mages do not have rewards for lower DD spells.

A bad analogy but..

However, I would not be adverse to rewarding being under. It is not what I thought of thougj/

Before the ENC addition weapon allowance could not stop anybody from having a very nasty weapon with a smaller character. Now you have to grow to make room if you want to add to your weapon.ENC is what holds tanks back.Not weapon allowance. I could easily add 10M to my weapon if I wanted to tote around a .50 ENC... There's the brakes ;)

the point of WA is to allow PR to somewhat-accurately reflect tank power, without unduly penalizing tanks with "normal" size weapons. so my perspective is closer to hank's, it's really a tank freebie rather than penalty.

I'm the first to admit that WA (well, the tank PR equation as a whole, of which WA is a part) does this poorly, but the more I have thought about it, the more I think that trying to jam enc into that equation somehow would be even worse.

Jon - I believe the suggestion in the thread is to make WA be infinite for tanks. ENC is already part of the equation, as a weapon makes up the most of a tank's encumbered NW, and is the reason why things like ST-boosting gear are so incredibly important. Ranger is suggesting -- I think -- to just make weapons always add zero PR.

well if we are choosing between a poor solution that is confusing as heck for new users and a questionable solution that might actually be easier to understand and thus explain...

I understand what Ranger is saying, I just don't think it would actually improve PR accuracy.

Basically nobody has to worry about WA until they buy USD. So I'm not really worried about explaining it to new users.

actually i think WA at the current moment... might be a tad too small... you probably could go over it even without USD

Let me pose a question.

Let us say tank X, using weapon Y that is Z over his ENC.

The weapon Y is also over his Weapon Allowance so his PR skyrockets. Based upon how much over it is.

However, due to the fact this weapon is also over his ENC, he gets a penalty to his strength, dexterity, armor class and evasion (if learned).

So he is fighting, as a tank, less effectively given the penalties from ENC.

So this tank is now getting a double whammy.

1) His PR is very high given his weapon is over his allowance.
2) He is fighting at less efficiency due to being over his ENC.

It just seems logical to me to have 1 of the 2 occur. Either he gets a PR addition with less rewards or he fights less effectively.

So even though we are trying to show his true power through PR, we are not really doing it given ENC is causing him to fight less effectively.

If Weapon Allowance was infinite, then one can use ENC to "cap" weapon effects. If a tank goes over their ENC load, then instead of gaining PR, they are fighting less effectively. Hopefully the better weapon is cancelled out by the minuses to Str/Dex/AC/evasion.

And as an aside, can we please get ENC added to the dictionary?

Well I could (with my wonderful spending habits) be over my Wa on my team... even with my 145 mil enc.... with proper buying and selling in the market one could have enough cash on hand to have a proper weapon.

Perhaps this may help.

I thought that ENC was designed to make high NW weapons less effective.

With a higher NW weapon (over your ENC) you do less damage (str), hit less (dex) and take more damage (AC). If you have evasion you even get hit more.

So the benefit of a boosted weapon is countered by the penalties one gets wielding it. This, in theory, should nullity the bonuses the weapon gets by being over your ENC. So, if the weapon is "neutered", why is there a PR boost? Given the fact it 'should" balance out. The benefit of more x and + vs the penalty to AC/stats/evasion.

BTW Jon,

Sorry about being a pain about this. Just trying to get a grasp of it.

I agree with Ranger, it may seems that the old formula concept is replaced by the new. If taking the WA out, would it makes sense that Enc once again needs to be modified, given that both are in now in the formula, to achieve the same 'balance' we have now?

I would like to point out that WA does nothing really once you hit 6 ba regen.

You're right, the ENC does screw things up even more, although they don't kick in at exactly the same point (depending on how much NW is in armor, mostly).

Assuming LA at 4M MPR, when you enter the 6/20 regen, you have 38.4M Weapon Allowance. Weapons over that are penalized. It looks kind of small, I dunno. But then, not too many weapons are over that cap anyway. Are they?

Yes,

Armor is a problem.

One solution could be an ENC for armor and another for weapons. I know it is more programming but possibly more accurate.

Now there's an interesting idea....

ENC for armor and for weapons... Isn't that exactly what the WA is doing?

All of this is about buckets... How the buckets are filled is pretty much immaterial.

Pushing WA into ENC would probably be bad (I sort of suggested that toward the front of he thread, bad Sutekh). WA already recognizes weapons need their own "bucket".

Isn't that already the same thing? I agree with the "double whammy" Ranger mentions. If a large weapon is already too big and inflating PR, can that be removed from ENC? (that sounds complicated too...)

I think we are on the same page Sut.

WA is a "separate" thing for weapons, however, cannot we substitute a weapon ENC for that.

Then instead of elevating PR, we make the weapons and the minion using it, less effective.

And with less labile PR, would not the score ladder stabilze a bit more?

IE, I hate to do this but I will use Freed as an example.

Right now: Score / PR / MPR: 3,726,351 / 4,378,586 / 2,385,157
But not in the 6 BA zone---yet.

Let us say his tank is at its ENC limit, almost exactly.

Then let us say he adds 25M NW to his SOD. This will elevate his PR a bit, making his rewards lower. While at the same time making his tank less effective in many ways.

So is his elevated PR a good representation of his tanks new "power"? No, his tank may even be less effective.

So get rid of WA and let ENC or a weapon only ENC do the work in neutering high NW weapons on low xp minions.

I see what you are saying. Make weapon and armor a symmetric ENC phenomenon. And do away with the WA.

I think that is a good idea. In fact, Jonathan could simply absorb the WA into the ENC -- but he seems to think that is a worse idea. *smile*

I see your point, though, it is weird they do two separate things when they are supposed to be heads of the same Hydra.

Very Interesting thread. I was always wondering why it seems Tanks get penalised twice - once with the reduced rewards (above WA) and again for less effectiveness (above the NW ENC level).

This is especially a problem with me as I doubt I will ever get to 6/20 even though I almost always burn all BA every day now.

I think some kind of unified solution that includes ALL gear and hits with ENC effectiveness drain would be fairer.

Perhaps weapons could simply have an absolutely miniscule PR weighting. Weapons would always add a little PR, but not enough to matter unless you're wielding an oversized one - and by then you'd have already wrecked your ENC anyways.


That way tanks aren't rewarded by equipping a potentially ridiculous weapon via simply boosting STR (I know you do this, Ranger, but of course you could have 30+% more STR with a BoM too.) They could, but there'd be a PR price to pay.

Anyways, I'm going to sleep for now, and my suggestion doesn't even quite sound reasonable in my own head, it was just the first thing that came to mind.

The idea that I had had was to make weapon 'x' NW count for zero PR all the time, and weapon '+' NW count for the same PR that DB do.

I think that's the best idea so far.

NS, that is a great idea.

However you penalize tanks for needing a high + on their weapons to counter evasion.

If only DB's gave minus to PTH then your idea would be outstanding. However, with evasion it lacks a bit, IMO.

One could say that evasions xp gives MPR which gives more PR. I agree, however, evasion double dips. That is gives both defensive dexterity AND minus to PTH. So 2 outstanding features instead of 1.

However,

As tanks can use evasion also as well as tank characters, NS's suggestion may be the best of all solutions.

But what about ENC in that scenario?
And can some admin please put WA and ENC in the dictionary.

Just catching up after a long weekend. Please forgive me if this has already been covered.

The problem is that Tank using a large weapon are penalised twice, the large weapon reduces thier effectiveness through ENC, but increases thier PR by being over thier WA.

That's the full problem isn't it?

If we're keeping both, and we probably need to, I originally thought about the idea to lower PR if a weapon goes over your ENC (for the rare case where ENC is higher than WA, so it could be possible to use a Weapon above your WA and incure a PR penalty, while still being under ENC), as you're effective power is being lowered by the ENC penalty.

But then this would penalise the valid tatic of using something like EC to lower an emeny Tanks STR to make them take ENC penalites. :/

Ranger - you could tweak the '+' PR to maybe not be exactly equal to DB. Is the actual NW curve really equal for DB and the big 4 weapons? Or is it off slightly but "close enough"?

You could also maybe give an amount of free PTH PR based on DX? I don't really know.. just brainstorming here.