Class Balancing Thread

[DW_WailofSuicide]

Starting a new thread because this is obviously a topic people want to discuss.

Adren masters can't take the the energy sliths on like other monsters.

Adapt or die.

The Energy Slith's 100% damage reduction energy weapons will probably be going away, but it will still be a greatly inferior weapon to use against them. If you run into Energy Sliths either switch targets or switch to a non-Energy weapon.

The Sliths in general are going to get a points increase, but it is not going to be set so that you can get a double kill from killing one Slith, like it has been set with some of the Titans. This should also increase some of the adrenaline reward for killing the Sliths.

In any case, I have no problem killing any variety of Sliths with my Medic character, and I'm sure I'd have even less of a problem killing them with a Weapons Master or an Adrenaline Master. Play smart and they're not a problem. Run out into a horde of them and you'll [probably] die. This is as it should be, in my opinion.

As far as I'm concerned, there should not be two classes of people: People who can become completely invincible to monsters after a certain level, and people who have to sit in the corner because the difficulty is too high for them without the invincibility item. If Adrenaline Masters want to be able to run around in the midst of monsters then the difficulty of the server should be lowered so that everyone can do this.

If Adrenaline Masters envy Medics so much they can reroll into Medics by using +1 Magic Modifier on a maxed Healing weapon. Literally the only difference between a +4 Healing Weapon and a Medic Weapon is a +2% damage bonus and infinite ammo. This is the Medic's primary class ability, and Adrenaline Masters can pretty much copy it -- Just like a +1 Magic Modifier on a Vanilla/Vorpal/Rage is equivalent to having a Weapon Master's Advanced DB, and like how Triple Damage allows an Adrenaline Master to easily pump out the most damage.

[DW_Hornet]

Triple infinite mp5 makes quick work of sliths and everything else.

As far as resistance goes I wouldn't mind the weapon loosing it's magic abilites, However there needs to be some sort of damage done to the monsters. Lets say make then 85% resistant. That resistance isn't based on chance but the total damage done. So one flak shot lets say does 100 damage, the damage done should be 15 damage, with out the monster being affected by the magic.

That should probably be done to all the new sliths.

How many waves are the sliths not on? 4 total?

As far as the vorpal/rage +1, You are correct mathematically. However with vorpal the 10% extra damage you do is usually on the slowest reloading weapons. Lets consider the negative sides of rage, It drops your health to 70! when used. If you want to argue the removal of the +1, you should be talking about using it on nrg weapons. Thats were it's super powerful. I can tank luci using the globe, triple, and boots of flight and still get the message telling me adren full. All this with a link or flak of energy +4.

As for medics, I was talking to rob and with his damage reduction and the advanced barely nothing hurts him (with a level 25 player alive). That's basically saying there pretty much a god up till titans or luci come out. When they come out he can stay from afar shooting his shiny infinite link with everyone linking to him. Lets not forget about the all the monster stuff you get.

WMs usually get the short end of the stick. Those are the ones that need help the most. How about the ability to call airstrikes like in Enemy territory, and give out ammo.

[d2frob]

Balancing the classes needs to have the monsters tweaked before any changes are made else it will get a little chaotic imo. Currently the difference in damage between monsters is a little crazy as hornet brought up. Testing with medic, it doesn't even need a lvl 25, just a fairly low (50ish) player and i'm invincible. However, titans one hit and the poison does serious damage (i presume it just ignores dr). It brings up the question whether it is actually worth maxing dr and adv dr if you're still screwed anyhow.

Second monster thing to tweak (to address classes to some steady level) is the number of ways the adren masters have been nerfed.
Poison goes through globe
Adren drains incredibly fast (energy slith things?)
No double magic

Im all for the double magic staying out if it balances things a bit more but either the adren shouldn't drain so fast or poision shouldn't go through globe imo.

After that i'd just suggest giving the wm's a bit more power - perhaps reducing the levels of loaded weps (therefore cost) or perhaps a rage type artifact, last ditch effort all guns blazing kinda thing!


ps. i'm currently idling on kotam wiht my medic and still on full health despite queens taking quite an interest in me ;)

[Ph0b0s]

true, the new monsters do make it a bit unbalanced, but most ppl take it on as more of a challenge than anything else. if nrg weapons dont work on an nrg slith, switch to a diff weapon :D. the ideas being thrown about though are interesting, such as the airstrike idea. that brings up another point: why isn't the target painter included with the loaded weapons? i know not a whole lot of maps utilize the phoenix bomber, but its still an idea. or heres another idea: instead of an airstrike, how bout a mortar strike, similar to the Battlefield 2 method? and whatever happened to the assault rifles? i know they were replaced by the mp5s, but dual wield inf assault rifles would add a rather interesting aspect to the server, especially if the only ones to get them are the WMs. just throwing out some random ideas :)

[Desko]

Balancing the classes needs to have the monsters tweaked before any changes are made else it will get a little chaotic imo. Currently the difference in damage between monsters is a little crazy as hornet brought up. Testing with medic, it doesn't even need a lvl 25, just a fairly low (50ish) player and i'm invincible. However, titans one hit and the poison does serious damage (i presume it just ignores dr). It brings up the question whether it is actually worth maxing dr and adv dr if you're still screwed anyhow.

Second monster thing to tweak (to address classes to some steady level) is the number of ways the adren masters have been nerfed.
Poison goes through globe
Adren drains incredibly fast (energy slith things?)
No double magic

Im all for the double magic staying out if it balances things a bit more but either the adren shouldn't drain so fast or poision shouldn't go through globe imo.

After that i'd just suggest giving the wm's a bit more power - perhaps reducing the levels of loaded weps (therefore cost) or perhaps a rage type artifact, last ditch effort all guns blazing kinda thing!


ps. i'm currently idling on kotam wiht my medic and still on full health despite queens taking quite an interest in me ;)

Every change you suggested for Adren Masters would bring them closer to utter invincibility, something we are trying to get away from. If Adren Masters can run invincible in the middle of monsters and no one else can, then they are overpowered.

Also, WMs Adv Damage bonus should give 4% Damage Bonus per level instead of 1%. I mean, their Weapon Masters. They've spent their entire lives working out ways to tweak their weapons and learning the weak points of their opponents, they need to deal some DAMAGE. Not something a +1 vanilla weapon can replicate either. 40% extra damage would even things out a bit. I think either giving them the Max Magic and +1 Magic, or just giving them the Triple would go a bit towards balance too.

As for Medics. If you leveled up your Medic before the server was hard it's all fine and good, but I am getting my ass handed to me on a Triple Hybrid Platinum-Titanium platter on Wave 8, and I'm level 94 with 220 DR and maxed ADV DR.

[DW_WailofSuicide]

Triple infinite mp5 makes quick work of sliths and everything else.

Yes, yes it does.

Just a small note: Medic Weapon is +1% damage per modifier, and it's figured as a +6 Healing weapon.
Infinite gives +5% damage per modifier. So a Medic weapon is effectively a +1 Infinite weapon. A +4 is a big step up (14% more damage). Add on Triple for craziness.

As far as resistance goes I wouldn't mind the weapon loosing it's magic abilites, However there needs to be some sort of damage done to the monsters. Lets say make then 85% resistant. That resistance isn't based on chance but the total damage done. So one flak shot lets say does 100 damage, the damage done should be 15 damage, with out the monster being affected by the magic.

That should probably be done to all the new sliths.

As I mentioned before, the way I did it initially was because of status effects like Freezing that I would have to resolve in some other way, and I mostly just wanted to get them out there period, as I was getting impatient after spending about 2 weeks on them.

Any status effects a weapon causes won't be applied, but they are all going to be changed so that you can damage them (somewhat) with weapons of the same element as the Slith.

As far as the vorpal/rage +1, You are correct mathematically. However with vorpal the 10% extra damage you do is usually on the slowest reloading weapons. Lets consider the negative sides of rage, It drops your health to 70! when used. If you want to argue the removal of the +1, you should be talking about using it on nrg weapons. Thats were it's super powerful. I can tank luci using the globe, triple, and boots of flight and still get the message telling me adren full. All this with a link or flak of energy +4.

I don't particularly care about the +1, I'm just using it as an example. Adren Masters are by far the most versatile class, and so something that negatively impacts one of their abilities only means they need to use any number of other tools in their arsenal. Even if every creature were 100% immune to Energy weapons (No, it's not going to happen, but hypothetically) an AM can still utilize Triple Damage, Maximum modifier, +1 Modifier, grab a Healing/Vampiric/Infinite/Piercing/Vorpal/etc weapon and go to town. With a Vampiric + Triple your self-healing is going to outstrip a Medic and your damage is going to outstrip any WM not using a Vorpal.

Their flexibility in weapon choice is much more than a Weapons Master, which gets all the weapons but can't choose them, and it's not even worth comparing to a Medic, which has pretty much no weapon choice.

As for medics, I was talking to rob and with his damage reduction and the advanced barely nothing hurts him (with a level 25 player alive). That's basically saying there pretty much a god up till titans or luci come out. When they come out he can stay from afar shooting his shiny infinite link with everyone linking to him. Lets not forget about the all the monster stuff you get.

This isn't the case for me. With DR 200 + ADR 10 my healing still can't keep up with the DPS that most creatures are doing on a consistent basis (not to mention that if I'm healing myself, I'm not gaining experience). We'll see how that changes when I max out DR.

[Ph0b0s]

for medics, it depends on what weapon your using. on the bloodgulch map, i can kill a very large amount of enemies in a very short amount of time using the firechucker, up until the titans, and take very little damage. currently i have 70 DR, 70 DB, 70 weapon speed (yes, 70), and maxed ADR, and i have very little probs. but like i said, it depends on what u use.

[DW_WailofSuicide]

Poison goes through globe
Adren drains incredibly fast (energy slith things?)
No double magic

If you are poisoned while you are globing it can damage you, but [unfortunately] it can't kill you. Trust me, I tried -- When you die while in God mode, things get weird.

Adrenaline should only drain quickly while Globing. I usually have no trouble maintaining adrenaline at a comfortable level unless I am (a.) the only target for monsters to shoot at or (b.) getting absolutely pummelled. In the case of (b.) I will be worrying more about my health than my Adren.

I am pretty much in favor of bringing back the double magic modifier, with some modifications. Not working with Vorpal, and possibly Energy, would be completely fine. I'd rather have an Adrenaline Master using DMM than Triple.

[DW_BrainPan]

I agree the AMs have been nerfed. They are certainly not as invincible as they once were. I say tweek the monsters and see where they stand afterwards. I also agree with Wail, the AMs need only change their tactics (create different weapons for themselves) and they can counter much of this.

Medics do become quite damage resistant when there are lower level players alive (and they have maxed out their DR), but other high level players of other classes do fairly well when the monster level is kept low. One of the reasons I do well with my medic character is that I have spent zero stat points on monsters. This allowed me to get my DR maxed that much sooner, and after getting Ghost, Quickness and Airmaster (all of which help keep you alive) I have boosted my Adren (which helps me kill or stay alive once I find the right artifacts).

WMs need the boost IMO. I agree with Desko , their ADB should be higher. WMs become strong, but not till they are pretty high level. The problem I see is they have so much to buy in order to strengthen their character and most of it is quite expensive. Maybe if the cost of some of their stuff was lowered a bit.

In terms of maps I agree with Desko to a point. I think there should be more maps like that, but there still needs to be a balance of hard to easy maps. A group of level 70 and under characters don't last too long on a Space Junk map.

In terms of Titans and their rocks. I think they are a must have. The instagib Titan rocks are the only thing that completely balances the classes (at least for an instant).

[Zax_Gentoo_Box]

From memory: 10 levels of Vamp, which is 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50 (I think...) which is 220 XP (or 22 levels). Resupply is 5 levels, which goes 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 (again, from memory I'm not sure) which is 150 points. Then you have loaded weapons, max ws/db (to start) regeneration, etc. etc. Then you max dr, ghost, and all those other li'l things like ammo bonus and health. Then you are a good WM.

To be a good AM doesn't take nearly as much.

And as for the ADB, I must agree it's a little low. I bought two levels of it and was like, "Screw this, wasting five levels on an extra 10 DB points?".

Just to validate all you guys talking about balancing to help WMs.

*Disclaimer: all info is off the top of my head, and I'm far from knowing everything off the top of my head. Correct me if I'm wrong.