Posts by Wesker

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

Quote from Baboon

Electric Compression. You can make it passive and you can get this buff every time when goes to Charged state, similar as Alternating Current. I checked ItemPreview this skill has different variations, it gives same base effect, but it also has KeyItem, idk what the reference for, but if it can be implemented, it will be good change.

Mage/Warrior: Rage Mana. Its a kind of intresting thing from design view, when you converts some spells into a new one. But this spell has 30s cd/30s duration, so literally you press it every time on cd, it also converts rage into 100% MP, idk is it intended that it doesnt consume any rage point and gives you mana or not? By the other side we have Enraged that recovers 100 rage and 100% mana its looks strange when both spells recovers 100% mp. As suggestion: it can be as buff with no duration, but it will consume some rage points while buffed.

Greetings!

My latest idea is to make Rage Mana a passive skill that basically turns the default skills into the raging variants. That Rage Mana is no longer consuming rage is definitely a bug, but we won't change it anymore, as we remove that interaction entirely. Changing it to be a permanent buff as long as you have rage to maintain it, might be too similar to Ion Storm of Mage/Champion, but this class has to actively work for its rage (except for the instant resource generator spell both classes have). Mage/Warrior generates 10 rage a second more or less passively, so consuming rage on another buff appears not as a solution to me. Perhaps I will come up with something more elegant, but this is my decision for now.

Electric Compression is a good point, thanks for bringing this up! I have some possible options for this in mind, there will be a change definitely.

Quote from Baboon

In this design: you remove all frequantly used self buff spells, so you have only 5 offensive spells in you rotation: Electic Bolt(not frequantly spell, used for additional attack power boost), Thunderstrom, Earth Splitting Explosion(situativity spell), Fireball, Raging Flame/Field, then you goes to Thunderstrom/Fireball/Raging Flame or Field, 3 spells in your rotation in this case you dont need any "combat engine" at all.

Almost similar on other mage.

You're absolutely right. My/our goal is to adjust other classes in the same way, so that most of them can be played with lesser barrier of entry but still be fun and keep their core mechanics / class identity. I don't want to promise that all classes can be played manually at some point in the future, but we will work towards a more comfortable gameplay for everyone.

If we look at most Warlocks or special classes like Champ/Bard for example, there are some major obstacles in making proper adjustments, as their rotations might be too complex at some point (for now). Same for Mage/Champ for example, where you have to cast Voltage Seize every few seconds and take care of your packed rotation with a bunch of different conditions. I'm not quite sure yet how to improve them (especially in the current fast-paced meta), but will try my best to do so. I think at some point it's nearly unavoidable for at least a handful of classes to rely on macros or even combat engines, as Byte wrote already. But this is a topic we already discuss internally and will come up with useful solutions hopefully.

Best regards

Wesker

Quote from Baboon

Mage/Warrior - Rage Mana spell - 30s cooldown/30s duration. You need to press this spell everytime on cd to unlock mage/warrior "raging" spells. Ofc, the easiest way is to place spell in kitty/lua, set some condition to check buff and thats it, now it will always trigger GCD. To be honest, why those type of spells cant be passive, since you need to press everytime on cd?

And there are many similar spells.

Greetings!

I am already preparing major class changes to fix these issues, also addressing warlock's Willpower Blade/Construct and many more. This will take some time, as I have several other projects to take care of, but will hopefully get the most important ones done asap. I'm already thinking about fixing Mage/Druid's Infiltration Spirit, that might be a bit of a challenge tho.

Quote from Byte

If you think this affects a class particularly, you can share it and there might be changes about this particular class/skill to make it equal for both manual gameplay and combat engines. (such as making it passive if its already permanent/short duration buff)

Fully agree to Byte, if you find any annoying interaction, give me/us a heads-up and we see what can be done.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings!

Warrior/Mage already has passive movement speed through the Level 70 Elite "Possessed by Anger". While at maximum stacks of Electrical Rage buff, you get quite a lot of movement speed, iirc it was 35% or something like that. It is not planned to add another passive movement speed, as the class already has a charge attack and enough speed while at max stacks. The idea of the class is to always keep using normal attacks to always keep up the movement speed and damage you get from Electrical Rage buff.

Thematically the wind damage from Warrior/Mage is electric power that has to charge up in order to release the full potential of the class. The DoT it uses is Lightning Burn, which is basically the burn damage you get from lightning strikes or high voltage strikes. It actually synergizes well with other wind classes, such as Mage/Champ (which is another melee class).

Quote from SolusVagari

When it comes to elemental type damage, Mage/Champion is your only option.

How do you think so? Any magical class deals elemental type damage, mostly depending on the sub-class, but also depending on their original design idea.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings!

Quote from arhangel87

Why play mages when there's a Guardian/Scout who hits as hard as the entire raid combined, with all the combinations you've described here? Or a Guardian/Warlock who's only been playing for three days with tier 10 gear and level 10 runes, but hits harder than a tier 15 mage with level 13 runes?

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and concerns. We will look into these classes and if today's patch hasn't fixed them already, we will see what else can be done. However, I think it would've been more useful if you posted this in the Warden thread, as you feel that wardens do overperform compared to other classes, like mages, even with a significant gear difference. This might have avoided misunderstanding at this point.

____

Generally speaking, regarding magical class balance, I don't want to nerf more than 15% at a time. As correctly stated, some changes may seem extensive at first glance, but may turn out to have a minor impact on the overall class performance. If I nerf a class by more than 15% at a time, I will surely communicate this in the patch notes or here in the forum. Always feel free to ask me here or in the DMs if you don't understand any decisions made.

For Mage/Warrior specifically, I think the current balance is in a good state, however, I always appreciate all data you guys can provide me to prove me wrong. And even if you disagree, please keep the tone objective and friendly. Thank you.

Best regards

Wesker

Quote from Kagamiko

Greetings

What's your reasoning behind "Reduced Raging Field base damage to 3663 from 4324"? You release a balance patch, but apparently always forget about the two sets of gear required for a Mage Warrior. I'd like to see the math behind the 18% nerf to the skill. Maybe no classes who does more?

Greetings!

The class was overperforming in terms of dealing almost twice the damage of other magical classes of the same kind. I agree, there should be some kind of bonus, as the barrier of entry is pretty high, but requiring two sets of gear does not mean, the class is intended to deal twice the damage of other (magical) classes. If you compared the pre-patch M/W AoE burst and sustain to other mages that have high AoE burst/sustain, such as M/Ch for example, M/W was superior by far (and still is). I even think, the class needs another nerf for its general AoE side, since the single target is still very strong already.

To be clear: I'm just talking about balancing mages vs mages. If there are physical classes overperforming M/W, I don't think it's because M/W is too weak, but rather some physical classes are just too strong (in your current raid setup or raid pacing or even the global meta).

Also, 18% damage nerf to Raging Field was only to the flat initial damage, the CPS proc (that scales way higher in burst) wasn't touched at all. The idea was to nerf M/W in single burst and AoE sustain, so it can still shine at single target (which was now balanced) and AoE burst.

I'm not a fan of nerfing more than 15% at once normally, but in this specific case, the class deserved a bit more of a nerf. However, if it turns out to be too much, I am all in for a buff or even revert.

Quote from Kagamiko

Another class rework with weapons other than their primary weapons. The same stupid diamond-hoarding trend is still evident.

I'm sorry if the new rogue doesn't match your expectations. Maybe some of the planned class reworks will do better for you, but I'd rather add more variety for one-handed classes, as there are only 6 classes that are using a wand (7 if you count Wl/Ch), while 12 classes use a staff.

Don't get me wrong, but what kind of weapons should a magical rogue wear if not 2 magical daggers? I was even considering to increase Katana magical damage portion, but decided against it, to not mess with physical items.

Quote from Kagamiko

Not a single positive change for classes with 2h staff.

Let me ask carefully: Is there a reason why staff classes would need to be buffed at all? From my point of view, most of them are balanced pretty equally already. Maybe Priest/Scout is still a little over the edge, but changing this class isn't up to me anymore, as it was pushed to the hybrid healer classes.

For Mage/Warden I am preparing some major changes, as I wrote before, but this will take time. Warlock/Warrior is planned to become a physical class in the future, so I won't waste any time on this for now. Have you tried magical scout classes? They should perform pretty well.

Best regards

Wesker

*carefully sneaks in*

Greetings Arcadians!

Tomorrow we will (hopefully) release another patch, including some major magical class changes, I'd like to quickly address at this point.

Some time has passed since we changed our Mage/Bard to a heavy metal band theme, dealing poison damage. Now we have decided to improve some core mechanics as a full class revision. I hope, the class will perform better then and will be more fun to play.

Some time has also passed since we released our Scout/Mage as a hybrid class that scales off the highest player attributes. Now we want to release another class of the same kind. It might not be as surprising, but I still hope, you will appreciate the sneaky playstyle...

For the (near-ish) future we have plans for other reworks, such as Bard/Druid and Druid/Warlock, as these have been performing quite poorly lately. Also, there is something planned for Mage/Warden. Personally, I find it's play style quite boring, which is why I would like to upgrade it a little and move more into the direction of a proper Warden-theming summoner identity... But as always, we have to prioritize our tasks, so bigger changes might take some time - and there is still a shady nostalgia update in the making...

If you have further ideas for class revisions or full class reworks, please let me know!

For now, I am looking forward to your feedback about our upcoming changes and our new magical class release!

Best regards

Wesker

Quote from Felline

Hi

Its a shame that bards, bard/mage,bard/wl or mage/bard for example are so far behind with the new instrument rolls.

I think it´s a general problem for all classes that wear talismans for example.

The old talismans just aren´t good for this new content anymore.

Is a change planned?

Greetings Felline

Display More

Greetings!

Thanks for your feedback! We have already prepared updates for various (magical) bard classes that will be released with the coming friday patch. This will feature Warlock/Bard, Bard/Mage and Bard/Warlock. Other classes like Mage/Bard had lower priorities, so they were delayed for a later patch.

Best regards

Wesker

Quote from Kagamiko

How you get 80k? why 80k? why not 100k? i had 97k bonus and just I threw it in the trash my diamonds. Do you think mw is so strong? im sure no, even with new cps target skill. Who did you look up to when you were making the threshold 80-90k? to be fair, you should have made this threshold from a player with maximum buffs imho.

Greetings!

I understand, it might feel unfortunate to get one's buff reduced, but let me explain.

If you had 97k before, you should now end up pretty close to the 90k, since, as I said, it's a soft-cap: You still get higher than 90k, just slower than before, so we don't have to cut the class every while after releasing new content with higher stats/items/titles/cards that let the buff gear scale too high (broken beyond repair). You will still have a much higher buff than most other players, as their buffs will also scale lower due to the changed calculation. So compared to them, you will still have a higher buff, leading to way more damage output due to the CPS scaling, which makes you even feel a minimal passive damage increase.

It wasn't a decision of a certain player's buff, but a mathematical / balance ("looking into the future") one instead. This gives us much more space for future balancing and makes it much easier to balance in long terms. Compared to before, the class was massively buffed this way, but it deserved it.

If we let the class scale as before, you could easily go beyond 120k+ with new corruption and stats, which would - without a doubt - lead to a nerf. If there are new stats in the future, there would be another nerf, and so on. That's how we used to handle the class before, to not be entirely broken in an instant.

With ~85-90k buff the class now gets to its full potential and has decent sustain in AoE and very strong burst in single target. If played with some basic cast speed (either on a roll or in badge system), the new Raging Flame spell could even deal decent damage in sustain situations, making it a viable single target class for now.

However, this change wasn't the last one, there is more planned already, but it didn't make it into the last patches due to lower priority for implementation. But we still have this class in mind, will keep working on it and hope the future will be more straight-forward and more consistent for the class.

Best regards

Wesker

Quote from kunxu

about recent changes to the class M/W. I have invested a lot in equipment buff-gear.and now the maximum limit is only 80-90k mdmg.this is so sad. can do something with the equipment buff-gear? We can't lose so much money on it and just throw it away like that.

Greetings!

This limit of 80-90k is just a soft cap, so after certain thresholds you get less bonus out of your gear: Until ~60k everything is as before, 60-80k your progress is being slowed down a little, 80-90k is slowed down much more and everything beyond 90k it's like diminishing returns, so the more points you have, the less bonus you get. Long story short, it's a soft-cap around 80-90k. If you had something like 80k before, you should still have 80k.

The goal of this change was to limit the buff gear, while also make every bonus feel much better by adding CPS damage scaling to the class. This lowers the barrier of entry to this class for new players and allows them to decide how to reach that "soft-cap". For veteran players, nothing really changed, you still got your bonus damage of the new scaling and dealing equivalent damage due to CPS scaling and you no longer need to invest a lot into it on every new content release. in order to upgrade it accordingly. Balancing-wise we don't need to constantly nerf the class on new content releases anymore as we did in the past, so everyone wins.

Overall, the class was massively buffed this way, it still needs some fine tuning, so more lesser adjustments are yet to come in the near future.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings!

Just a few words about the magical class changes of today's patch.

Quote from Patchnotes 11.1.6.2002

Mage/Rogue

Note by GD: We want to change the class to control more than only two Dark Phantoms at a time, so it matches more the imagination of a necromancer / dark summoner. And this is not an aprils fool. The class may run into mana issues fast, as it will be the cost for using the dark arts too often. Probably playing this class will be pure chaos, but let’s give it a try!

Mage/Rogue has taken the first path into a new direction of a multi-pet class. This is a prototype in terms of performance and gameplay and might become more popular in the near future. The featured mana costs we mentioned within the note comes from a delayed change that added ramping up mana costs to pet summons, that haven't made it into the release yet. So if the class works as intended, there will be some further adjustments (especially featuring mana costs) coming soon. I'm looking forward to your feedback!

The other changes had the goal to improve dead/unplayed classes. Further adjustments will follow up soon, as some major key mechanics have been changed in order to achieve our goals. So if something derails in terms of global balance, we will correct the classes as soon as possible.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Quote from Persil

Also for the 2nd paragraph: yeah it's not a problem killing the mobs in general ofc. But being that much less impactful/useful because you have sometimes no buff at all like compared to before with 35% mdmg or 20% matk is huge imo.

And i meant the 12s downtime you have from not hitting and not receiving the buff at all and not the reactivation of it during the cd of electric bolt

Many mage combinations have similar mechanics of spells with longer cooldown (~10 seconds in average) that give them buffs or are important for their key mechanics. We do not plan to change any of these, as mages should remain casters primarily. If you have issues applying these kind of spells, just try using them manually or carefully in certain situations.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings!

Quote from Persil

If the target of your magic bolt dies before it hits (because of travel distance delay) you get no buff at all. And idk how it was changed for immune targets. Also magic bolt has 12 seconds cooldown. So in the worst case you have no buff at all for 12 seconds (...)

Fully agree on that one, but I rather have high cast speed and lower damage on Flame than long cast time on Flame with higher damage. And since Meditative Current can also trigger on Flame hits, you lose like 0.5s max if the timing is against you. Before, you encountered what I mentioned as "cast snapshot", casting one single ~1.5s Flame. Now you could even drop Electric Bolt from your rotation, as you usually should have enough cast speed to use Flame over it, even in sustain phases.

In AoE situations it shouldn't hurt too much, as you're either channeling Meteor Shower or casting Static Field on global cooldown, so the 12s CD on 15s duration shouldn't hurt too much. But I just added Fireball to my design doc, so you will have another option to trigger it. If this still doesn't work due to trash dying too fast, I doubt another 10% magical attack would even have any further impact to your groups pacing anyway.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings!

Quote from grknkrdn1299

About Mage/Rogue

Phantoms stay where they are if there is nothing to attack. If tank pulls all mobs together, there will be no problem but otherwise they just stay far behind us and do nothing. Can you change phantoms to follow player if they dont have a target to attack ?

We have plans to change the Phantoms in order to summon more of them at a time. We will try to add such behavior to them within that change, but I'm not sure yet what is possible and won't produce performance issues, so I can't promise anything in this regard. The idea is to have up to 8 of these phantoms around you, which will probably be fine. But this will require quite some follow-up patches, as it's a major change of the class. So please don't expect everything will be done within a single patch.

However, I'm also not quite sure when there will be time for the next class update, but I will try to get it done as soon as possible.

Quote from Persil

Hello there,

after a longer period of time i am looking back here into the game and hoped for something in the patchnotes and didn't find anything about a specific topic.

About the last m/w changes that were made:

1. Was it really necessary to nerf that class that hard? (...)

Display More

The nerf was necessary and was only a first step into a new direction I wanted to go with the class. There will come more changes soon, that will add more depth to the class (and cast speed) and address the "Wisdom and Bravery" scaling. The buff gear has been a major problem for years. Everytime we were releasing new content and gear was upgraded, the class needed plenty of balancing adjustments and nobody could predict if the class was about to become entirely broken or not. Our plans will try to fix this at some point. But just like other magical class changes, we can't estimate the time for their release yet.

Quote

2. Why in the world did it got changed that rage mana now provides the cast speed and meditative current the magical attack? Feels horrible to play compared to before.

The idea was to put the cast speed behind a condition of sustaining rage, which is only difficult if you don't have a proper rage recovery, but adds some consistency to the class if you do so. Before, you had an internal cooldown/downtime of ~10 seconds after getting the Meditative Current buff and when we removed that, it still felt clunky, as travel delay wasn't triggering the boost in time sometimes, that required wait timers, melee combat or manual interrupts.

Now you can get the cast time bonus instantly and keep it up by 100% of time, if you have minimal resource support or use other ways to recover rage, like white hitting. There is no more slow flame casting snapshot the moment your cast speed falls off while the proc is still on its way to be applied. Now the magical attack is procced on hit, which results into the same outcome but way more consistent than before.

The class actually lost like ~15% damage, which is totally fine for a nerf in one single step. For now I will wait for the implementation of the additional changes and see how the class works afterwards. Probably the upcoming changes will even buff the class a bit but will hopefully make it more consistent in the future.

Quote

3. Is the note from the GD only considering the change about the artifacts in this or something else coming up?

Tithing and artefact +12 was predicted to have a decent impact to the class and as it looks like, you can easily get your 2 artefacts of buff gear up to ~lv20-25 which already grants a decent boost. But as I mentioned above, it's always been hard to estimate the real impact of upcoming content properly, especially if the gear upgrade wasn't coded the moment you release a class change. And personally I prefer to prevent potential outliers before they even release, rather than just letting things escalate and adjust later (at least for a class that has proven my point several times in the past already).

I hope that the reasons for the changes are now a little clearer. If you have further questions, let me know or contact me directly whichever suits you best.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings!

As I wrote in the previous post:

Quote from Wesker

Due to our devs being quite busy with upcoming updates, the next major class balance update was delayed for unestimated time (...)

This includes the Warlock/Bard changes as well, as it didn't have urgent priority for last patch. Also, this class seems to be pretty okay-ish in Grafu and Origin from what I saw, so it's not unplayable at all. Yes, it can be better and will be when our changes are released.

Please understand that our resources are limited and we are therefore forced to set priorities. And content/systems always comes first before balancing. But be sure, nothing is lost and everything will come by time.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings!

Thank you for your patience, but unfortunately I don't have a lot of news about recently announced class balance content.

Due to our devs being quite busy with upcoming updates, the next major class balance update was delayed for unestimated time - my apologies. However, we prioritized our tasks and some of them already made it into the upcoming Prestige Update, such as a Warlock/Warden change and a Warlock/Druid nerf. Other than that, only a few other classes (with highest priorities) will be updated this time.

Unfortunately, our dear Warlock/Warrior will stay untouched for another while, until we have completed our upcoming major nostalgia update and get some resources for implementation.

We have plans for a major (magical) class update, including one or another class rework, but this has to wait until other projects with higher priority have been completed. I will let you know when there are updates to come in this matter.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings!

Thank you for your feedback and suggestions! I agree, some warlocks may require some buffs in order to perform better in the current meta.

About Puzzlement I partially agree, it has some use for some warlock classes, as it deals quite okayish damage in full burst. I could imagine buffing its damage a little, but not to change its entire mechanic.

For Warlock/Warrior there is something special planned already. I was thinking of a physical version of a warlock in this matter, but we are still in an early planning state for a rework into this direction, so please do not expect anything about this class, as plans may change entirely again. Even the entire idea could still be rejected or simply not work as intended. So for now, I will leave the class as it is, until decisions have been made.

About Warlock/Mage I won't change anything about Warp Charge. The class seems to be in a good spot and it has some decent elemental support as well. Having limited group utility is part of the design idea of this class, as most warlocks carry a ton of support / utility into the group, so this one should be the one that is more selfish, in hard contrast to its counter class Mage/Warlock that carries a lot of support to other classes.

Quote from robopoke

Regarding Warlock/Bard:

Current state: This class has several outdated and underused elite skills. While its AoE sustain is reasonable (though still below average), its single-target sustain and burst are significantly weak.

Suggestion: Reduce the cooldown of Ethereal Blade to 1 second.

I accept this suggestion, it may come within the next magical balance patch - "soon".

Quote from robopoke

Regarding Warlock/Rogue:

Current state: This class feels like a weaker version of Warlock/Mage with lower sustain damage, fewer burst buffs and a heavy reliance on stacking multiple debuffs on a single target.

Suggestion: Reduce the cooldown of End of Thought to 3 seconds and have it apply/refresh all weakening debuffs.

For this class I planned some other buffs already, such as general damage increase and to change "Ready and Waiting" (498675) into a short duration buff with higher bonuses that is automatically applied when entering Willpower Blade (as it works already). This may result into some better burst, as the class seems to have decent burst potential and to react well on changes like these already. There are no plans to change buffs/debuffs rotations for now, but there might come some QoL that makes the debuff application more comfortable.

However, the next magical balance patch might take some more time, as we are currently busy in other projects, such as Origin Awakened. And depending on the classes' performances inside Origin, there might be some extra adjustments as well. So better do not expect another magical balance patch before its release.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings!

Quote from grknkrdn1299

About Scout/Warlock

This class is not performing good without burst, it deals good amount of damage only when we use burst, that means once in every 3 minutes. It needs some boost for its sustain damage also.

Can you change Detection (ID:1490800) to increase Intelligence 24% instead 12% ?

We have accepted your suggestion, it will come on next balance patch alongside with a DoT buff. The target limit change seems to be reasonable in my opinion, will look into it and change if necessary. But perhaps the DoT buff in combination with the intelligence increase might be enough for the area damage of the class already.

Quote from Idhril

But then the enormous single target substain and burst should be weakened

Are you sure, the class has such enormous single target damage? From what I saw, it was decent but not as good as physical scout (burst) potential.

Best regards

Wesker

Quote from Flacko

why on earth would u do that, the class already overperforms over any class u can think of and when i say Any, i mean ANY not just warlock vs warlock or warlock vs mage, literally any class, either give staff a bonus or nerf the hammer + wand this is sad good class ruined with some 2 hammer bs, it can literally be abused, with a decent weapon swap function (which most lua players already have implemented).. please consider not putting any bonus on dual hammers and nerfing wand and hammer somehow, dont get me wrong its very unique and nice idea for warlock champ, but in a long run it will definetly end up being one of those classes that when people build mdps gear they will just play that 1 class, for example like warrior rogue before the nerfs.

My bad, I should have been more specific on this one. The class will be drastically nerfed in general within the next magical class patch, of course. I think I already got a pretty good overview of it's true potential. The mentioned hammer buff will not result into more damage for the class, but just to enable a viable gameplay option with two hammers that will be more or less equivalent to wand and hammer.

Best regards

Wesker

Quote from Ravinous

I understand that the original intent for Warlock/Champion was dual one-handed hammers, and while that concept is unique, I think it may present some practical issues in the long run. (...)

Greetings!

Thank you for your thoughts and I fully agree with you. The goal should be to make classes more accessible and not to push it into a niche. Ethereal Hammer will therefore require an offhand hammer, but in favor of my initial idea of a dual hammer wielder, I will probably add a small amount of magical hammer damage so that wielding two hammers might grant ~5% bonus or something. This way, players can keep using their wand and hammers, but if you really want to squeeze out the last drop of damage, you can use two hammers.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings!

First of all, please always be aware that different raid setups might give entirely different results of certain classes. I'm sure a Mage/Scout for example can deal a lot of damage under the correct circumstances, but please try not to exaggerate when you discuss with other players.

We all have the same goal: to improve the game in either way. The fact that you are posting your experiences shows me that you are all pursuing this goal as well. I appreciate the input from all of you, but please be fair and tolerant to each other, so we can create an objective / factual basis for discussions.

Quote from grknkrdn1299

I have a few things to say about todays changes on magical classes

• Mage/Scout was powerful in some situations. But i dont think it was powerful enough to deserve a nerf.

• Mage/Warrior will be really weak after these changes. Maybe you should just revert your changes in previous patches. It would be better if you reverted its Rage Mana back to 15% magical damage. And that would be enough.

• Warlock/Scout is not what we expected, you should have made its Sace's Impatience instant skill without global cooldown.

• Druid/Rogue's AoE nerf was not fair. It already had weak AoE due to changes on last patches. You should have nerfed its single target damage only. Its Necrotic Wound damage should be reverted back to 484%
• Warrior/Mage already suffered a lot because of latest nerf on Moon Cleave skill. This was really so much unnecessary.
• Warlock/Champion's latest change is not a good idea. If you want people play with a magical hammer, you should balance druid/rogue and mage/champion properly.

Rest of changes are understandable

Thank you for your feedback, we have looked into the classes in detail and prepared some adjustments for one or another of these.

From what I observed, most of the classes perform better than you expected, Mage/Scout didn't feel much of the nerf in most cases, same for Warrior/Mage. Perhaps some of them need more fine tuning in the near future, but we have to collect more viable data before. If you could share your results with Mage/Warrior, it will be much appreciated, as we lack some data there.

Quote from Zyrex

It's the same with Wl/Wd, if u have too much burst power in your raid, play it on %mele weapon mdmg and the dmg will be decent, however it's a dot class so don't expect it to compete with drift cars This is what I like most about magic classes, u can always pick the one class that fits perfectly to your raid and the ini, so you can always be one of the best dps in a raid

This is actually the way those classes are designed for. You can decide between DoT build (full magical attack and damage over time) or go for damage in order to boost your burst/initial damage potential. Both ways perform entirely different from what I've seen so far.

Quote from Ravinous

Please don't make me make a second hammer (either with a soft requirement of boosted dmg on 1h hammer, or explicitly not supporting wand), and let me keep using my wand and 1 1H hammer. Requiring 2 hammers on the class just makes it even harder for players to try all the amazing content CoA has to offer, and evaluate classes against each other fairly.

Warlock/Champion was indeed originally intended to wear two one-handed hammers at the same time. As you guys correctly noticed, the patchnotes already featured this detail in our GD notes. I wanted to slightly foreshadow our intentions but give you some time to prepare for this change. As magical hammers have slightly less magical damage, you can keep playing it with a wand, but Ethereal Hammerfall will get a requirement for a hammer in your main hand soon. This way you can decide between slightly more overall damage and using the Ethereal Hammerfall skill in order to boost your burst power.

However, we will observe how all of these changes will work out in the long run and nothing is set in stone forever. I would appreciate more of your feedback, as it shows a wide variety of viewpoints. This does not only apply to magical classes, I'm sure our physical designers appreciate further feedback as well.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings!

Quote from Ravinous

2. The Ethereal Hammerfall (ID: 498676) 10% channel buff is really cool, but only lasting for 3s means you can't really get it to affect all of your Severeds since it has a 6s cd. I'd recommend changing the 10% channel speed buff to last 6s, similar to the dark dmg buff on wl/r from Punishment (ID: 498700). Since rage is an issue, it would also be nice if this recovered 25-30 rage each cast to help with Rage Sublimation (ID: 499854) cooldown / uptime.

This behavior is indended. If you're using the dark damage/channel gloves, you won't feel the 10% as much, but it's designed to give a small boost for the next few channels. If you're using the gloves, you can easily run a full PSI rotation within this time. It's meant to be some kind of burst mechanic, if the 10% feel too less, we might increase it later.

Quote from Ravinous

3. Psychic Arrows is instant and hitting so hard, that without a CD I really don't have any other choices for a filler. I find that I get much better DPS if I remove Energy Influx Strike + Electrocution from rotation (minus getting the Electrocution buff on target). It would be nice if there was a reason to use Energy Influx Strike over Psychic Arrows.

We will change Electrocution and Energy Influx Strike within the next few patches, in order to make both more useful.

Quote from Zyrex

I played the class in Grafu today and it dealt the exact same damage like mage/champ 😱 So if one considers m/ch as balanced, this class is in grafu too. But then we went into abbey and wl/ch destroyed everything, so maybe just change some mdmg against matt (like they did with m/w) and it should be fine I guess...

Mage/Champion seems to be fine since last patch according to our recent data. If you have made a different experience, feel free to share your point of view in the mage subforum. But please be aware that some classes perform differently under certain circumstances. Warlock/Champion will be touched within the next magical balance patch and adjusted - probably slightly nerfed - accordingly, as it overperforms a little compared to other warlock classes.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings!

We do not plan to change additional skills into dark damage or poison skills for either class for now. I will make a note of your suggestion for another time in case we change our minds.

And please do not spam the same suggestions everywhere (especially not on my profile wall or as a support ticket), here in the forum is usually enough.

Thanks for understanding and best regards.

Wesker

Quote from Ravinous

Quote from Wesker

Greetings!

Thank you all for your feedback, it's much appreciated!

You got a point there, I noticed the clunky GCD myself as well, it will be fixed within the next magical balance patch. There are some other class changes planned before, so it might delay by a little (perhaps next week or so).

We do not plan to change Psychic Shot for now. I could imagine pushing the single target potential while reducing the AoE potential even further (that might already be achieved by removing the GCD from Sace's Impatience), but the idea was to have Warlock/Scout in a special place aside of most other warlocks, so there are no plans to increase its area damage potential. My data shows it has decent potential at bossing already, such as Zhargos worldboss and similar. If you are looking for other single target classes that might fit your requirements, I would suggest checking out Druid/Rogue, Bard/Warlock or Priest/Scout. Those got some decent single target buffs within the last few patches.

Good arguments, in my opinion the class is already very agile due to casts that work on moving, so a lot of movement speed isn't necessary, but bringing back the original 15% shouldn't hurt too much.

The damage reduction was an experiment that wasn't working as much as intended, so we will think about changing it into damage reduction at full HP, maybe something around 40% should be more useful to prevent oneshots.

About the bonus damage, I need to wait for more consistent data to classify the class properly, so I can't promise any buffs into this direction yet.

We do not plan to change the cooldown system on this class for now, as it's a unique core mechanic of this class. The idea is to bring Warlock/Champion in line with Warlock/Mage in terms of damage soon, so it might become a viable alternative.

To clarify: Your issue is that you cast Soul Brand Sting 2-3 times additionally, because the Flaming Heart Strike resets with some delay due to lag? I'm not sure if a simple cooldown reduction of ~5s would solve this issue properly, as the CDR will be delayed as well. But I will keep this in mind for future changes. Feedback like yours is much appreciated as it gives insights into other perspectives.

Best regards

Wesker

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Thank you immensely for the thorough read of my feedback, and your own thoughts as well!

Regarding Soul Brand Sting, yes. I can configure my lua to always weave soul brand sting -> flaming heart strike at a 1:1 ratio, but compared to my guildmates in EU they get around ~20% more of both skills off (in that configuration) due to the latency delay between soul brand sting and flaming heart strike CD reset. Without the special lua configuration, I get exactly what you describe: 2-3 hits of soul brand sting between flaming heart strikes. EU players also get that issue without a special lua configuration though, but more like 1-2 hits of soul brand sting rather than my 2-3.

You're totally correct that I'd still be impacted by ping even with my suggested changes, but if I had to get 4 soul brand sting off instead of 1, I'd only feel the impact on the 4th hit (minimizing overall impact of ping) rather than every 0.5s cast.

Good to know about Warlock / Champion too, excited to try out the changes!

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Greetings!

Just a short update at this point. With today's patch we will introduce a major Warlock/Champion buff by adding a CPS based single target cast for single burst and some surprise you might not expect.

If you enjoyed Warlock/Rogue or classes like Druid/Rogue, I'm pretty sure you will also enjoy "new" Warlock/Champion. You also might check out Mage/Rogue after the patch, it will get some major buffs as well.

Best regards

Wesker

Quote from Marcellos

Quote from Zyrex

I like the classes as they are now, but maybe check mage/champ, it feels a bit too strong in 6er inis like Grafu...

Screenshot from grafu:

A similar situation is on the mage/scout, his Flaming Spirit deals too much damage (in my opinion).

Greetings

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Quote from Zyrex

I like the classes as they are now, but maybe check mage/champ, it feels a bit too strong in 6er inis like Grafu...

Screenshot from grafu:

Greetings!

There will be nerfs coming for both Mage/Scout and Mage/Champion with today's patch (and some additional adjustments). We will add Notes by GD to patchnotes again, if you still need further explanation, feel free to ask. Your feedback is much appreciated!

Personally, I prefer smaller nerfs at a time, but several followed by another if necessary, so we don't cut a class too much at once, as we unfortunately did in the past. I'm sure there are some classes that still perform way too well, but instead of nerfing them too much, I'd like to go with smaller steps.

Best regards

Wesker

Greetings Arcadians!

Today we will (hopefully) drop another magical class balance patch. But before going into details, I'd like to share some of my/our general thoughts about class balance with you guys.

As you might have noticed already, we started another round of balancing alongside with the current Prestige season start. The idea was to not change a lot of stuff in shorter intervals of time again, but to bring major changes around major milestones, such as Prestige Season start/end and to adjust peaks accordingly afterwards. This way, we have more time to collect viable and consistent data and let the "meta" (if we can even call it like that) evolve. Hopefully our balancing iteration will come to an end soon, so we can give the meta another break to evolve again.

Right now, our balancing team is in different project stages, as magical classes got major updates already, it's all about fine tuning now. Other designers are at the end of concept phases, others collecting more viable data while the other project is being implemented and tested. All I can say is, when the current (magical) fine tuning is done, you might soon expect another major update to other classes/roles that haven't been touched in a while. But for that please stay patient, it might take a while as designers / devs also have other projects to take care of at the same time and I think you guys can't wait for Origin Awakened to be finally released.

For today's magical classes update, there are only a few things to say. First of all, there will be a major change to Mage/Druid that is intended to improve the accessibility of the class and generally simplify the more or less clunky gameplay. Green Guardian shall only become a resource like Nature's Power of Druids and skills require this resource to be used, so you no longer have to keep stacks up for max damage. The coming changes are very basic ones and you might have more stacks left than you actually need. This is because we had already planned some further changes but wanted to make sure, the mechanics were as fluent as intended for now.

There will also be a major change about Mage/Rogue and its cooldown reduction around Distract or Mage/Warrior about its cast speed and magical attack bonuses. Those classes will of course require some additional fine tuning soon, so don't be worried if those classes perform too well or too bad for now. As you know, it's impossible to predict how classes perform under certain conditions / circumstances, so please be lenient towards our changes.

Of course there will be one or another soft-rework (such as the Mage/Druid one that hopefully releases today) coming in the future as well, but we try not to mess the entire meta all over again in too short intervals of time, but to listen to your feedback more actively than we did in the past. Also, as I received some feedback about why we don't release everything at once, releasing everything after the other has some major advantages, as you can always focus on one project at a time and (usually) test stuff properly. One huge patch would require much more testing, more things may go wrong and since our team members are working on several projects at the same time, it's not possible anyway. If we had more game testers, we could be able to release faster.

I hope you now have a better idea of how our balancing workflows work and the thinking behind our releases.

Best regards

Wesker