changemonth discussion (in General)

what do you think should be changed? What do you think should not be changed?

Try not to make this a debate thread. If something is brought up that brings up conflict, make a debate thread and we can debate it there. I want people to feel like they can post anything.

I'm just curious if there is a change the community universally wants.

I think UC needs to be make a linearly increasing damage or get some kind of buff. I also think that the ex/axbow needs to be fixed. Also the last couple problems with the AoJ need fixing still as well.

I like change, but I want them a tad faster. That is all the change I need.

Ow and no more dex requirement for evasion and SS being a skill again. Or at least non dispelable

In Addtion to Nem;

New Supporter Item
Rolling Bonus
Stream lining Weapons (like Armour was)
Removal of the 6/20 zone Exemption
More new stuff. ;)

You forgot the sprinkles on top, GL! ;)

stop dreaming. rolling bonus is never gonna happen.

More means to survive into melee. We've gone all ranged again.

"More means to survive into melee. We've gone all ranged again. "

I would like Jon to post the stats on how long battles are now. He did once, perhaps he can do it again.

Changes I think:

1) Exbow needs to be balanced. Duh.
2) HF PTH needs a 33% drop.
3) Stop the resurrection power of the TSA. Once a minion is dead, they stay dead.
4) Rolling Bonus.
5) Salvage Yard of missile weapons.

I agree with Ranger, and I'd add:

Fix FIREBALL! Make it less useless: maybe take away killing friendlies in melee?

"take away killing friendlies in melee"

That would be too much. It would be the only DD that fires in ranged and isn't "weak."

I think that the best fix for FB would be to take away the ranged penalty. So it hits hard in ranged but once melee comes you start frying your own.

As for the TSA raising them back from the dead, that only happens if the round they are taken to negatives the regen can get them back to positives otherwise it gives them the R.I.P and they stay dead. So it only works if they are dead for less than a round, kind of like restitution. A person may stop breathing but if you do CPR fast enough you can bring them back.

It's quite strong in this regard when coupled with PL though. Bringing the PL minion back to life each round, to continue to absorb damage on a minion that should have otherwise died.

I personally don't think the PL minion should be killing himself due to PL in the first place. It should only drain him down to 1 hp. Then there would be no controversy in the matter at all.

PL just shouldn't work if the amount drained would be enough to kill the minion.

"...kind of like restitution. A person may stop breathing but if you do CPR fast enough you can bring them back."

Nemerizt, I think the word you were looking for is resuscitation. I love creative typos. :)

Yes, that is the word. I didn't want to bother looking up exactly how you spell it and restitution goes through the spell checker so I figured it would be close enough.

I'm all for just new stuff :D

At very least i would like to see FB not have a backlash effect on your friendlies. I would understand seeing backlash on the minion casting the spell though.

"PL just shouldn't work if the amount drained would be enough to kill the minion."

PL already doesn't work if the minion will die post-drain already anyway. I think this is fair enough.

In other words, if I have 13k HP and 10k PL effect, if you hit me for more than 23k damage, it won't even bother linking over.

bump. I am not satisfied.

""take away killing friendlies in melee"

That would be too much. It would be the only DD that fires in ranged and isn't "weak.""

It is also much more vulnerable to GA due to its spreadfire damage. It is already the crappiest DD in the game. It really needs that fix.

also:

ROLLING BONUS ALREADY PL0X
fix the Exbow

I am FIRMLY against the so called fixing of the exbow. as the person with the 4th biggest one I ask you this. If you suggest a nerf of the exbow then what do you propose as a counter strategy for people using one dimensional massive USD funded ELB teams such as ranger and SHD?

without the exbow SHD and ranger wouldn't have to spend massive amounts on DB's and would have that much more for other items.

Please stop complaining about the exbow as in my opinion it is a MAJOR factor that keeps tanks in check as they are FAR more capable of massive damage with the influence of USD.

a counter that's not an exbow? ToE. Evasion (the kind you train). GA. These are all counters to tanks that actually require an investment and aren't 100% surefire like the exbow is.

An Exbow fix is definitely on my list. I've owned one of the largest ones in the past (I wouldn't be surprised if you actual own it) and sold simply because it was too powerful. A game that so easily shuts down a whole damage type with minimal strategic investment is not a game I want to play.

my only concern about the exbow is this:

I think as it stands now it is broken BUT I am afraid that a change to the exbow will nerf it to useless. As it stands now the exbow is quite inneffecient at any x less than 2000. Only at 3500-4000 do you get the great effects it is criticized for.

I hope that a change to the exbow does not make it useless and would still make it a worthwhile investment given that as it stands now you have to spend around 50M to make one even worthwhile.

that is something I can agree on :D

"PL already doesn't work if the minion will die post-drain already anyway. I think this is fair enough.

In other words, if I have 13k HP and 10k PL effect, if you hit me for more than 23k damage, it won't even bother linking over."

On the PL minion. ;) The one that's actually wearing the TSA... :P

Ranger said:
>I would like Jon to post the stats on how long battles are now. He did once, perhaps he can do it again.

Anyone can do this:
http://www.carnageblender.com/recent_battles.tcl?lost_p=0&all_p=1&opponent_id=91965&opponent_name=&global_p=1

Over the last 1000 fights, average fight length is 9.7 rounds (so let's call it 10!).

Percentage of fights ending in Ranged is hard to tell, so I'll list percentages of those that finish in 5 or less and 6 or less rounds;

5 or less: 23.3%
6 or less: 34.7%

Hope this helps!

So 1/3 of battles currently end in missle rounds.

That is not too much to call ranged damage to powerful.

And to Fatility:

Gee 50M investment in an exbow vs 200M in my elb.

If the 50M investment on a "tank" with 1M strength can completely shut down my 200M elb with 8M strength is that not too powerful?

In addition, that forces me to use DBs, which I need another 50-80M investment. Is that not too powerful?

Want to nerf my tank or SHD's tank with the exbow? Let us see you spend 200M to do it like we have put into our ELBs. And let us see you hit us more than once to drain our strength.

Not to mention Ranger, some of us are trying to run tanks without USD XD.

All GL's figures tell us is that at 4.30am this morning a third of battles fought ended in ranged. But that doesn't take into account who was fighting at that time. What if a lot of the archer/hal players were asleep? What would the percentage be right now, when more people have gotten up to do crazy XP time?

Again,

Give me the following item:

Throwing Knife of drain.

Base damage 4

BTH: 0 No dexterity BTH.

Special ability: Drains DD as per the exbow/axbow drain. At x4000 completely drains all DD from your target. Seeks highest DD spell level.

There you go, no dexterity involved, straight PTH vs evasion/DB.

Why not?

Think mages would cry OP OP OP OP?

Let us see how it is when mages are forced to use DBs.

Just like tanks have to now vs the exbow.

Especially archers since they have no free skill slot for any evasion.

Johnny,

It's now;

Average 9.2

5 or less: 26%
6 or less: 35.6%

A few things.

- About *xbows. They do need a nerf. They're just.... Boring. And powerful. They don't need a huge nerf, necessarily, but they need one. The argument that they keep USD tanks balanced is horribly flawed. Why?

Because USD itself is a massive advantage, but isn't a part of the game ITSELF. You CANNOT balance a game around a player's real life income. It's totally impossible. I've never understood why people don't get this.

At 300 million NW, any item in the game is very powerful. You aren't going to counter anything of that size (and SHOULDN'T be able to) without having similar NW. Right now, a 50 million Exbow could completely neutralize a team with 2 billion NW. There's nothing balanced there.

- This game needs pants. Seriously.

- Ponies would also be helpful.

- Ponies wearing pants would be OP, but I wouldn't say no. Especially if they had two pair to get both sets of legs.

- A change to the VB would be nice. Is ANYONE using them anymore? At all?

- New Supporter Item (preferably a supporter item pair of pants)

- Change the chat command "/kick X" to /carp X" with the same effect of removing the person from chat for 30 seconds. Think about it.
I laugh, but I'm serious.

- I tentatively put forward a motion to rename the "Help!" section to "Wiki" or "FAQ". Help to me means something technical. Wiki or FAQ means tell me about the game. This is a small change obviously, but I think this may help new players.

- Jon, please, take another look at the tutorial. I'm asking on behalf of all the new players who were confused or disliked it. Mostly, at least.

- Races? One day?

- Blood Vials? One day? Please?

- A startle Gun's goats button. Infinite fun.

- Mage skill. Pretty please? PLEASE!?

- A notepad thing would still be nice... (I put this idea forth years ago and got flamed into oblivion. But I still want it <.<)

- Something new for forgers.

.. Hmmm.... This counts as more than a few things, I think. oh well.

PS

/hug 3/4ths. You rock dude. Really.

As an aside I utterly disagree with;

"You aren't going to counter anything of that size (and SHOULDN'T be able to) without having similar NW."

If that's the case, we just might as well wrap up CB and hand the crown to the user with the largest bank account.

Or at least give all the USD spenders thier own 'Realm' to play in.

GL, that's always been the case.

It goes against the game to be able to counter massive NW with much less.

Because then the same item that was designed to counter USD completely annihilates non-USD items.

*shrugs* Just how it is.

As a further aside, wasn't encumbrance supposed to be the 'fix' for the uber equipment boosted by USD? Has it failed? Does the encumbrance limit need to be looked at again? For example, my 2 mill MPR char - admittedly a fairly well boosted single minion tank with 4 mill HP, 6 mill ST and a mill Archery, has about 330,000,000 encumbrance.

330 million. That's a huge amount of NW I can fit under the hood. And, thanks to my ToA PTH bonus I can apply all that to weapon X and not have it affect my PR. I can't actually afford to do that but you see my point.

i, too have never been cool with whoever is silly enough to spend the most usd wins. while i understand the counter to usd overpowering non-usd players, here is my major issue with the big-spender always winning:

why would everyone else stick around?

Fun.

heres one thing tho ranger. A single minion archer boosted by USD is a very simple strategy entirely dependent on huge investment. As such I think it should have an obvious weakness. I still think that the exbow needs a nerf but the nerf should be small not drastic considering the puny damage the exbow does and how useless it is against any non tank strategies. My recommendation is a non linear drain similar to all other weapons non linear damage.

I don't agree that it should be related to damage because equipping an exbow on a minion with 5M+ str is simply a waste of exp against every non tank team.

Sorry for the double post, but I feel I should clarify.

The reality is, the game is balanced around a certain amount of income of experience and CB. When a player finds a way to gain more than the people around him, he WILL have an advantage. Buying CB via USD is just an easier version of Merchanting.

I'm not being all gloomy here. The reality is, you cannot balance a game around factors like USD. Jon has done an absolutely fantastic job of limiting it (IMO), but the simple truth is that the fact Encumbrance was brought in at all shows how big of a deal USD is. The fact you cannot reach enc without USD also shows the difference.

I'm not saying you can't compete without USD. I believe you can. But USD -will- improve your character. And you can't try to balance a weapon/armor around what it could one day become. I mean, technically, one day someone will reach the armor cap. Likely? No. But it's possible. But that doesn't mean you can keep nerfing armor to stop that one guy with 200,000 USD to dump into a game from doing it, because doing so would wreck armor for everyone else.

Obviously, this is an extreme case, but it's happening. You shouldn't nerf ranged damage because 250 mil ELBs are killing teams in ranged and you shouldn't nerf NSC because someone dropped 60 mil on a pair.

This is just my take, but I think that's just how it is. USD has as small a part in the game now as it ever has, and I think we're all glad for that. But that doesn't mean we can pretend it's just a natural part of the game.

I'm not sure I'm being clear here. But I'm trying XD

ranger's big bow has allowed him to:

join the ranks of the top five scores
fight up with people about 1.5m mpr higher than him
reduce the list of characters able to farm him dramatically

he trades this for losing a bit of challenge bonus, but gets in return higher rewards for fighting up through the hidden bonus which is likely a very good trade off.

if encumbrance was meant to keep smaller characters from equipping huge gear and fighting upwards, it may be working. if it was meant to do so for the whole spectrum of cb, then i am not sure it is effective.

So did my armor ~six months ago, and it was nerfed =P

The join clan page is horribly, horribly broken. I can't find WoC to rejoin it right now. There are hundreds of entries. There needs to be a way to join from the clan page or something.

Also, I couldn't just swap out my characters. I had to leave and join again. Not cool.

Probably not really changemonth style changes as such, but I'd like to see them!

I agree the ELB and HF are a bit overpowered.

However it is 200M ELB and all that NW should account for something.

yes, it is somewhat USD based, not all, but unfortunately USD has gotten into the game.

Without it however, the top ranks would be extremely stagnant now.

As I stated, I would at least like to see the HFs PTH drop by 1/3. The damage is not overwhelming as it is 1/3 my archers damage.

However, if you nerf the elb itself, it will effect not only me, but all the other elb users who have spend no usd.

And I have to kill in ranged, as I have little melee attack to speak of.

If I put 100M into my bow and 100M into a melee weapon, that would be far worse as mages would just rip through my character. I did try this with rented weapons and I lost to 12 characters I currently do not.

For me, AMF is not a possibility due to the NSC, so I realistically have to take the full brunt of magic damage. Or I could lose 3M HP, 1M Str, 1M dex and have 5M amf that gets nerfed to holy hell with those stupid gloves.

If you want to lower ELB damage, then fix the way NSC work and make some lower AMFs still helpful.

You nerf anyone's EC against you to holy hell with your TSA and other STR boosting items. >.>

EC really isn't a possibility against a character with a TSA.

I don't see why AMF should get special treatment.

Certainly, however EC can help vs dexterity lowering my hits by 1-2 per round.

We have gotten so used to the +/- aspect evasion used to given.

There is nothing weak about a tank hitting you 2 times a round vs 3-4. In fact, that lowers damage by about 25-50%. Something that AMF would need to be massive against.

And while you do not lower someones strength to 0, you do lower it to take less damage.

I have noticed, before I hired a 2nd minion, my average damage at 5.4M strength was about 900k a hit. Vs 0 AC opponents.

Now I am doing up to 1.4M a hit. With 8M strength. That alone is a significant difference.

While characters will spend 6M levels in AMF, they do not want to spend that much in EC. Or do not have the free character to. But it is a defense against tanks.

If your an opposing tank, even 1M levels of EC can easily switch the dexterity advantage making 1-2 hits a round 3-4.

However 1M levels of AMF or even 2M levels does nothing vs mages.

Me, I would love to use EC, however, GA hurts far too much. In fact, the one character I will not come close to beating for months/years is a GA/ROS user.

And please do not bring up the exbow as a counter. I think most of us know that is a garbage way of countering. And comparitively priced, not even 1/2 the NW needed.

I really feel physical damage is in a good place. Just because a person like Ranger invest much more into his ranged weapon doesn't reflect ranged damage in the game as a whole. There are a whole bunch more tanks than just Ranger in this game and to nerf ranged because of him is hardly fair for the other players, especially the non-USD spenders.

I say ELB's damage output is fine, maybe the BTH might needs some adjusting, but even so I feel Jon has done a fantastic job in weakening ranged in the past year.

I think we're going to see some anti-tank teams to compete with ranger, whatever happened to those? Oh right, for a while beating tanks was TOO EASY.

Ranger and OB, that debate is already specifically on a debate thread.

OK then,

I propose that your combination of TSA and EBs is overpowered, as they provide a (huge) bonus to STR and a 30% bonus to DX; a +15 Corn would be needed to compensate. :P

I'm saying that if EC is so easily countered by such high boosting DX/STR items, why would AMF be so much more difficult to counter? You're reducing the effect an opponent's EC can have on you by at least as many levels as a pair of NSC would.

I know it 3/4, it was simply brought up and I figured I'd bring up the other side - EC - that is always ignored.

I've already posted what I think, we need an Ex fix, a FB fix, some rolling bonus, etc. earlier. Really, why no rolling bonus yet? /cry

I'd be happy to see a change to the NSC, my initial ideas concerning them never had them increasing damage done, just eliminating backlash.

So if instead of actually reducing the cast for level of AMF on a point per point basis (and subsequently making Ranger cry) how about they reduce a fixed amount of AMF backlash per point?

Change the RoE so it doesnt take up your tattoo slot.

Fixed or percentage?

Fixed would make them better for the smaller hitting DDs but worse for the big hitters.

A percentage reduction would offer equal Backlash reduction for all the DDs. Like the RoBF.

How would they stack with a RoBF?

"Change the RoE so it doesnt take up your tattoo slot."

Amulet of Enlightenment?

"As a further aside, wasn't encumbrance supposed to be the 'fix' for the uber equipment boosted by USD? Has it failed? Does the encumbrance limit need to be looked at again? For example, my 2 mill MPR char - admittedly a fairly well boosted single minion tank with 4 mill HP, 6 mill ST and a mill Archery, has about 330,000,000 encumbrance.

330 million. That's a huge amount of NW I can fit under the hood. And, thanks to my ToA PTH bonus I can apply all that to weapon X and not have it affect my PR. I can't actually afford to do that but you see my point."

This.

But, you're a single minion. A 4 Minion Tank team would have a smaller ENC. But hey, at least it's something Single Minions still have going for them!

I'd just like to clarify: my opinions about ranged are not that it's overpowered right now, although the HAL needs some tweaking in that area. It's that the options for melee aren't as useable by my little single minion as they would be on a larger team...lol..

Also I'd like to see more armours that do things, specifically in the body armour and cloak department. And I don't just mean a tiny boost to ST or something like that. I'd like to see armours become more equal when compared to tattoos, so that options broaden. I've never been fond of the extra power tattoos give in comparison. It would be nice to be able to run a team with a choice of armours and be competitive.

I'm always torn between Tattoo and the Uberness that is the TSa Johnny. ;)

JW - a STR devoted single tank always outruns a ToA tank. >:)

'course, he loses out on that extra PTH that the ToA gives...but gains some extra AC!

I do like the bonus PTH; saves a whole lot of money!

As I stated a few times before, the TSA is quite powerful, too much so.

Regeneration and high strength bonus is too much.

I hope we see the regeneration moved to the EH and leave the strength on the TSA.

As per novice's idea on the AMF, I am all for it. Let the AMF cast for what it does and have the NSC's reduce AMF backlash. By a %, not a fixed amount per + of course.

And to OB, while EC is more easily countered with TSA/EB/HoE etc... it is not made completely worthless due to these items like AMF is by the NSC.

Even a 1M EC can change a battle or lower a tanks damage somewhat. Unlike most 1M AMFs in the mid to top tier fights. The NSC's just make that xp all useless except for vs decay. But then a 100k AMF would work just as well.

Again, we are into this all or nothing sort of thinking. Especially after the evasion debacle. However, as I stated, even lowering a tanks strength by 1/3 can reduce damage by 1/6th or a bit more. Lowering the dexterity to 0 or less can make a tank have 0 bth. Just does take some xp into it.

Reducing only a percentage of AMF return would be a heavy nerf unless it was like 3% per plus.

Gosh, I'm getting sick of the argument "this is OP because it looks like it's too much". TSA really? In effect how many people are able to abuse both it's str boosting and hp regeneration to an unfair advantage?

Just looking strong doesn't mean strong. Remember SG? It looked like it would be a dominant DD but it isn't. Just because TSA looks "OP" doesn't mean it in effect is OP. Just because NSC looks "OP" doesn't mean it is OP. You can use manipulate statistics all you want, but unless you can prove WITH EXAMPLES that these things have a serious problem and clarify how it relates to your definition of overpowered, it has no meaning.

Novice,

I was thinking along the lines of 5% per plus.

I believe they should reduce AMF backlash quite a lot, especially given the choice of using AGs for more damage.

This I think we both agree.

With the TSA.

I currently get almost 300k hp regeneration and about 2M strength from it.

Compared to any other armor there is no choice.

Yeah, it's really not that bad. Considering top teams deal something like 2-5 million damage a round, 300k is just a scratch off the top. The Str boost is significant but it is a body armor competing with a ToA. Body armor effects should be very significant. Try making a wall without a AC, that doesn't show that the AC is OP.