Hello.
With the latest patch, the set glove started hitting more than katana or scout glove. is this intended or will be fixed in future?
I guess so. Since upcoming sets no longer have separate items and critical bonus have been reworked, theres no reason to use those gloves anymore. The patch notes say: New Execution Power/Arcane Amplifier will directly multiply your damage output, also they will now be multiplied instead of added. So set gloves are now stronger than non-set
I don't think they wanted to do this. If they did, they wouldn't have made these gloves usable with the new set. And scout and katana glove are still better in dot damage. There are also some mistake for example non-crit dmg and crit-dmg same.
I don't think they wanted to do this. If they did, they wouldn't have made these gloves usable with the new set. And scout and katana glove are still better in dot damage. There are also some mistake for example non-crit dmg and crit-dmg same.
Better in dot damage because its different formula, dot damage doesnt affected by critical chance they was always normal hits and i guess since isnt critical they are not affected by critical bonus thats why right now for bleed damage katana and scout gloves better.
I don't think they wanted to do this. If they did, they wouldn't have made these gloves usable with the new set. And scout and katana glove are still better in dot damage. There are also some mistake for example non-crit dmg and crit-dmg same.
- You will still have critical hits on chance as before, but damage output will always same on both crit and non-crit hits.
Better in dot damage because its different formula, dot damage doesnt affected by critical chance they was always normal hits and i guess since isnt critical they are not affected by critical bonus thats why right now for bleed damage katana and scout gloves
Yes. i looked one more time at patch notes.They writed that non-crit and crit hits be the same. Thank you for devs re-doing the dmg formula, which is one of the biggest problems we have in the game.
Hey,
Is there any class balance planned for Dexterity and Leather?
Do you have any idea how extensive the use is between magical and physical classes?
Is additional data from the latest ini required? Because if not, what is your plan for class balance? For almost a year now, there's been a transition between physical classes (except for the typical scouts—and even that's up to a point) and magical classes.
Bards are practically non-existent on the server.
Bard/Scout is lagging behind.
Bard/Rogue suffers from too few AOE skills, which means they don't deal almost all of their damage correctly in mob structures. DMG on a single target is fine as long as the fight doesn't last longer than 30-40 seconds.
Bard/Champion suffers from exactly the same problem: too small AOE dmg in mob groups.
Bard/Warden - no one plays this and it won't be played until it's launched, although it offers decent responsibilities. Maybe give it a katana to use similarly to an axe?
Rogues compared to classic magic are a joke.
The Rogue/Scout secondary appeared when combat was somewhat accessible on Ori (mainly thanks to DOTs), but on supplementary dungeons like Orkham, it lacks Burst. On Grove, DOTs are dramatically effective.
R/B and R/D R/CH are so unplayable that it's better to go in-game as S/P or S/B and at least support the team.
The Rogue/Priest still deals some AOE damage in groups of mobs, but they could just as easily stand alone and try to heal the group at single target fights. They simply don't deal nearly as much damage to bosses as other classes.
Scouts are obvious – you can still play S/R and S/D by swapping out secondary weapons, and only then do they chase magic classes. The rest of the physical scouts are nonexistent – it's better to use S/P or S/B for the group.
Why has this situation come to this? Do you see how many players are selling their leather gear or swapping it for magic?
Do something about this, because I've been pointing this out for a long time now, and no one on the team, the Devs, the GMs, or those mythical balancers of magic and physical classes is considering this.
thanks for the kind gesture towards leather classes. Let me give you some feedback on what I've noticed so far.
During AOE fights with mobs, it performs excellently with all buffs, musical instruments, and so on. The real drama occurs without these buffs during combat. The class simply doesn't deal AOE damage. It can be outdone by other classes by 5-6 times. I don't know why there's such a difference. Maybe consider adding Dota to one of his AOE skills to change things up. To sum up - there is a huge difference when fighting with all the buffs and without them.
Bard/Rogue suffers from a very similar issue to bard/champion. Consider adding some dota to his AOE skills.
"casting succesful" does not always work with instant cast skills, it sometimes still uses other skill before the other and when log in the ui settings for the addon always resets
Congratulations on another successful class balance 🙂 It’s clear that everything is thoroughly tested before being implemented 🙂.
Congratulations on another successful class balance 🙂 It’s clear that everything is thoroughly tested before being implemented 🙂.
Hello Ramer!
You'll be glad to know that some classes were hotfixed quickly after we've seen them overperform in runs. This was due to an unintentional interaction between the new Sepal Stab AoE and other Modifiers on Warden/Druid specifically, which caused massive damage spikes in custom instances.
Hooroo,
Brontes
Congratulations on another successful class balance 🙂 It’s clear that everything is thoroughly tested before being implemented 🙂.
Hello Ramer!
You'll be glad to know that some classes were hotfixed quickly after we've seen them overperform in runs. This was due to an unintentional interaction between the new Sepal Stab AoE and other Modifiers on Warden/Druid specifically, which caused massive damage spikes in custom instances.
Hooroo,Brontes
I tip my hat for the quick response — it positively surprised me. Now I’m just impatiently waiting for the balance of the “dead” classes — not only my Scout, but also the rest of the magical and melee combinations. 😀
Hey! Recently I tested S/Ch, S/K, and B/S a bit. My conclusion is that these combinations currently don’t provide any enjoyment in gameplay at all. S/Ch and B/S are slow, and their damage is quite laughable compared to other classes. S/K is a totally strange combination — the knockback mechanic is nice, the AoE damage is rather low but noticeable, and the best surprise is that whether you use a bow or a pistol, the damage is basically the same 😄
I’m pretty much convinced that the people testing the classes have already noticed this as well, so I’d kindly ask for these combinations to be looked into.
As for S/M, I have a small remark — magic classes can use two-handed weapons there and gain greater corruption from this combination, while physical classes have no alternative in the form of a physical two-handed weapon. This is something I would take a closer look at first 🙂
magic classes can use two-handed weapons there and gain greater corruption from this combination, while physical classes have no alternative in the form of a physical two-handed weapon
Well... uhm... I have a solution for this, but... well...
Is it just my impression, or does the person responsible for balancing magical classes actually know how to do their job — they make changes, inform players about upcoming adjustments, the changes are frequent, fairly extensive, and well explained? Meanwhile, the balance of leather classes feels like a complete joke, done carelessly by someone who is clearly incompetent.
Is a physical S/M really supposed to use a magical staff just to gain 20% damage on a single skill? Is it really impossible to create a physical staff, the same way a magical dagger or magical crossbow exists? Or something even simpler: S/M using a 2-handed sword (PHYSICAL — yes, I feel the need to emphasize this, because apparently it matters).
S/R — great change, it definitely needed a nerf.
S/Ch — no comment, honestly.
S/K — well… it basically doesn’t exist.
S/B — zero changes for a long time.
B/S — no changes.
B/Ch — also no changes.
This is my subjective opinion, but looking at the recent balance changes, I strongly feel that within your team there are people who are excellent at what they do — and there are also people who clearly should not be doing this job at all.
Yes I totaly agree with you on this statment. There are many magical class balance (with explanations), some buff, some nerf. When for leather , it's only nerf.
I also don't get this change on s/m , if it's not a translation mistake then idk xD.
I also hope you'll bring something fresh for s/b "soon", it was already a forgotten supp class , but now even more with today's changes on s/p.
b/ch is actually ok / fun to play in AOE imo , but single target is really boring (only usiing 2 skills), b/s is even more boring (3 skills only aoe + single combined).
Is it just my impression, or does the person responsible for balancing magical classes actually know how to do their job — they make changes, inform players about upcoming adjustments, the changes are frequent, fairly extensive, and well explained? Meanwhile, the balance of leather classes feels like a complete joke, done carelessly by someone who is clearly incompetent.
I definitely agree. I remember clearly that when I expressed very similar sentiments on Discord, the GMs jumped on me and asked me to give them ideas for classes. In-game chat directs you to post your ideas on the forum. And when you do, not much happens regarding leather.
Today's GM's response to the World Chat regarding the B/R changes to AOE skills blew me away. This class only has two AOE skills, both with cooldowns of 5 and 8 seconds. How is this supposed to compete with classes that spam AOE? The response I got was that the changes were clearly not in the best interest of balance. I was speechless.
Greetings Arcadians!
Just a "short" heads-up since I recently received some reports/feedback about the latest changes, especially the magical ones. Some players were complaining about the interval of complex changes that broke their kitty/lua macros. I am aware of that and want to share my thoughts, our vision and the goal of the current (general) class balance, so you can hopefully better understand the reasons behind certain changes.
General thoughts and visions
First of all, we have received the info that there is a decent amount of players who play their classes manually, without the use of addons / combat engines. Therefore one of our major goals has been to enable the game to be played more comfortable without the use of combat engines. There is no doubt, some specific classes will always be better by using macros or lua-based solutions, however we try to include all players for the majority of classes. We will not re-invent the wheel, but try to open up existing systems to that larger variety of players.
That's why we introduced more global cooldowns, especially on self buffs. Manual players have the advantage of applying buffs with a minimal cooldown, while macro players will have the normal GCD on using them. However, you may use some cooldown reduction attributes in order to compensate the nasty global cooldowns though. Classes with frequently used self-buffs that are part of their normal rotation are changed in order to get rid of those cooldowns, but to keep them playable for both, manual and macro players.
We also keep updating the general combat system by revising old game code or adding new mechanics inspired by other games or general concepts in the gaming culture. Our goal is to improve the gameplay, but not to "over-develop" classes to a point where too many different mechanics make a class way too complicated. We had such classes and want to simplify them now, so that everyone can enjoy playing them no matter of the technical (gameplay-wise) requirements.
CoA is still an MMO and this means we will keep introducing new mechanics (such as general cooldown reduction, cooldown penalty or execution time), improve ancient technology, improve the existing and extend the build variety, because there always has to be progression.
This being said, now some words about magical class balance particularly, that I am personally responsible for.
Future vision of magical class balance
I am aware that there have been some complains in the past about too frequent major class changes that required deep changes in your rotations.
The recent changes about warlocks' Willpower Blade and Construct were necessary, since the global buff change affected all self buffs to trigger global cooldowns. There were some options to choose from and the solution (to introduce the new Willpower Sharpening and Meditation perma-buffs that automatically trigger the proper Willpower states as soon as you reach 6 PSI) was the best possible we could choose.
Magical classes in my opinion are very flexible and you can play a large variety of classes with the same gear, weapons and often even same weapon rolls. I want to even extend this in the future, so you can play more classes with different equipment setups, such as more different weapons and/or weapon rolls. You shall choose your own playstyle instead of being forced into one that doesn't suit your personal preferences.
My goal is to no longer limit to only one specific playstyle for a class, but instead to enable many different playstyles as well. Since the introduction of cooldown reduction and negative cooldown penalty (that reduce skill cooldowns and even global cooldown triggers) as title attributes and corruption rolls, there are much more possibilities to actually play classes. In the past, mages and warlocks were supposed to cast and/or channel. Now they can even spam skills with low cooldown, enabling an entirely new rotation and much more build variety. I will push those playstyles further and try to make them as viable as the original playstyles, but still optional. It should be up to the player to decide what way suits them best. Of course, there are always advantages and disadvantages to different playstyles, but in general, they all should be kind of viable.
Frequence of current and future updates
I don't want to force you guys to constantly change your macros, but please understand that magical classes have to adapt to general class balance changes. Those general changes are made to improve the gaming experience of everyone, to include a larger variety of players, of different playstyles. I can't promise that there won't be further mechanical changes, but I try my best to keep it as minimal as possible. Being an MMO player myself for 20+ years, I know how frustrating it feels to get your rotation broken again and again. But sometimes good things have to break before getting repaired and improved.
I was also asked to introduce most changes in one single patch instead of a lot of small changes in several patches. The major reason why that's unfortunately not possible is that I am also working on different projects, such as Kawak Awakened and more. The same applies to other team members, so we have to develop classes slow and steady, over weeks and months, instead of a single big patch and smaller fine-tuning afterwards.
Another reason is the fast changing meta through our larger build variety. Having over 100 classes (and around 30 I am personally responsible for) that are directly affected by meta shifts and new upcoming makes it almost impossible to include every facette of each class in a few updates. So I don't think the update interval will change much in the future, but I try my best to limit the major mechanical changes that affect your rotations in negative ways.
Current state and future of magical classes
I believe that most magical classes are in a pretty good state right now. Of course there are a few classes that are lost behind, others await reworks for quite some time, such as Bard/Druid or Druid/Warlock. There are also plans to change Warlock/Warrior into a physical class for a while or to rework Priest/Rogue into something useful, but other projects have delayed those changes for now. However, they are not forgotten, but there is no estimated time when we will touch them yet.
Right now, there are a few changes in the pipeline, ready to be implemented. As I said, classes are pretty much balanced from my point of view, so there will only be buffs for classes that heavily underperform compared to other magical classes. Classes like Mage/Warrior or Warlock/Scout are not nerfed for now, but will be observed well.
At this point just a few words about Mage/Warrior, as this topic seems to always stir up emotions. I am aware that this class requires an entire additional buff gear, but this doesn’t mean a class can overperform as much as it did and we wouldn’t care. I received plenty of data that showed this class was able to deal twice the damage of other classes, even with lesser buff gear. I know it's frustrating if you've spent a lot of resources into this class and it's getting nerfed again and again. But as I said above, due to constant meta shifts through general class development and new playstyles that are found, it can always happen that a class becomes broken. And often not everyone has noticed these.
Conclusion
I always appreciate all your feedback, so if you find a nerf unfair or not necessary, please let me know. There are always reasons behind and our comments in patchnotes often can't explain the entire context behind a single change. Sometimes a change follows a larger (global) vision or is planned to be followed up by more changes within the next iteration.
For a deeper dive into our class balance workflows, I suggest you to apply as a class collaborator. This way, you will be able to discuss changes with our team members live and directly, even before the changes make their way to the live server. For the best possible experience, I'd suggest every guild to have a chosen member to become a "guild collaborator" so we can cover as many guilds as possible, since classes interact very differently within different guilds.
Link to the post for further information: Class Design: collaborators and future plans
I hope this was useful to understand our current vision and behavior within the current state of class balance. If you have further questions, feel free to contact me or any other team member.
Best regards
Wesker 
