Datamined PvP Damage modifier changes

[Clowd]

PvP Changes have been mentioned in the patch notes: http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...ml#post5374590 - "In this update damage is being greatly increased while healing/absorbs will be moderately increased with the intent of reducing time to kill"

Datamining has revealed the PvP Damage and healing modifiers that were modified with today's patch. Here are the new values:

PvP Damage Multiplier: 0.0426 -> 0.0852
PvP Heal Multiplier: 0.045 -> 0.07
PvP Absorb Multiplier: 0.045 -> 0.07

In short, damage is doubled, and heals are boosted by ~55%.

[Idsanimmo]

Imma get rekt.

[Escadora]

Clowd-
"In short, damage is doubled, and heals are boosted by ~55%."


Great direction.. Its a Test, and the mission to find balance, It'll change over the course of time.

I'm sure someone found the gear bug with the earrings and other OP PvE gear used in WF's, i.e. "Fixed a bug that caused earrings for(__________said classes) to have significantly higher stats in level 70 warfronts."<--- headed in a good direction.


Side Note: An avid sense for surprise flows through me in wonder to see what lies ahead...


~ Esca

[Rheven]

Sounds progressive.

[Slaybae]

PvP Changes have been mentioned in the patch notes: http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...ml#post5374590 - "In this update damage is being greatly increased while healing/absorbs will be moderately increased with the intent of reducing time to kill"

Datamining has revealed the PvP Damage and healing modifiers that were modified with today's patch. Here are the new values:

PvP Damage Multiplier: 0.0426 -> 0.0852
PvP Heal Multiplier: 0.045 -> 0.07
PvP Absorb Multiplier: 0.045 -> 0.07

In short, damage is doubled, and heals are boosted by ~55%.

Good to see these old Changes getting reverted, pvp has been getting boring.

Altho for comparison, could you provide the values of the global modifiers for both healing and damage from pre 2017 october nerf era Clowd?

[Maltie]

Good to see these old Changes getting reverted, pvp has been getting boring.

Altho for comparison, could you provide the values of the global modifiers for both healing and damage from pre 2017 october nerf era Clowd?

Damage: 0.15
Healing: 0.175

[Refuge]

My two cents on this issue after some analysis and discussion with other knowledgeable pvpers:


+ Firstly thanks for the ring fix, that's just put me in amazing mood just from that (you can thank me later everyone else XD).

+ It seems you have readjusted the previous modifiers placed in 2017, not layered on news ones, this is obviously a relief to hear.

+ You've increased the dmg more than the healing in order from what I can only perceive as a direct attack on the farseer healing and the stale mate bgs.

+ This change has no effect on the already broken percentage based heals that were never affected by the modifiers in the first place, but what it does do is close the gap, to make them less impactful. As a result we will see primalist/warrior tanks have reduced 'invincibility' due to increased dmg.

+ resorting slowly back to 2017 modifiers is potentially the first step in sorting out PvP and making it fun again.



The negatives:

- Any modifier increase to damage will widen the gap between imbalance in classes. For example if a Cleric did 20dps and a Rogue did 50dps, That's a difference of 30. If you double that damage you have the Cleric doing 40dps, and the rogue doing 100dps. That's now a gap of 60dps. This effect can be more damaging than ppl think and needs to be addressed asap. The reason the modifiers were introduced in the first place was an attempt at masking this difference. Some would argue post 4.3 rogues actually benefited, probably true (all to do with the way their specs work) but at least people weren't dieing in seconds.

- To increase the damage modifiers more than the healing modifiers just to tackle farseer healing is a slap in the face to every other class who relies on minor sustainability to win a duel. Once again, making mages and clerics less useful. Classes that excel and rely on survivability require a right balance between cd's and dmg. Too much dmg and their cd's become useless.

What should have happened:

Plan A:

For me the only reasonable solution would be to double damage, triple healing, and address
the only real concern that is 'Legendary Fortune Protection of Farseer' (thanks Dizzy for the proper name).

Result: Flat healing needs a buff, it's still utterly useless. Broken percentage based heals would not be affected by a tripling of the previous modifier, and as long as the farseer heal bouncing effect is amended then we should have no real issues. As long as dmg is high, then you'll see far more dynamics in dmg/healing balance.

Truely decent PvP involves well timed burst damage that tries to beat good healing cds. We won't get that until both have a noticeable effect, all we have right now is which one is stronger, and therefore which ones wins in the tug of war after 20 seconds. It's mindless to say the least.

Issues: Gamigo would have to actually change an ability, or directly nerf that particularly ability. Do they have the resources and time to do that and be willing to adjust after testing? Direct abilities have had their own direct modifiers in PvP, so this is clearly possible.


Plan B:

Give different modifiers to different classes and try to do a quick fix balance. It might just work, but could result in unattended side effects. I for one wouldn't object to an attempt at this just to see how things pan out, but then again I play cleric and could be biased towards this.


Plan C:

Actually try and balance the classes on an ability individual basis. This ain't happening, so just putting this here before anyone suggests it as an option.. (or Gamigo could just prove me wrong).

[Challengere]

the biggest issue is out of pvp class balances where some classes have souls that simply out perform the others, as to the heart of the issue Tanks became the PvP troll because no one could kill them, if you want a modifier that will really help make it nerf the tank buff that enables guard, and add modifiers to reduce tank armor, tank block and tank mitigation skills

[Flashmemory]

My two cents on this issue after some analysis and discussion with other knowledgeable pvpers:


+ Firstly thanks for the ring fix, that's just put me in amazing mood just from that (you can thank me later everyone else XD).

+ It seems you have readjusted the previous modifiers placed in 2017, not layered on news ones, this is obviously a relief to hear.

+ You've increased the dmg more than the healing in order from what I can only perceive as a direct attack on the farseer healing and the stale mate bgs.

+ This change has no effect on the already broken percentage based heals that were never affected by the modifiers in the first place, but what it does do is close the gap, to make them less impactful. As a result we will see primalist/warrior tanks have reduced 'invincibility' due to increased dmg.

+ resorting slowly back to 2017 modifiers is potentially the first step in sorting out PvP and making it fun again.



The negatives:

- Any modifier increase to damage will widen the gap between imbalance in classes. For example if a Cleric did 20dps and a Rogue did 50dps, That's a difference of 30. If you double that damage you have the Cleric doing 40dps, and the rogue doing 100dps. That's now a gap of 60dps. This effect can be more damaging than ppl think and needs to be addressed asap. The reason the modifiers were introduced in the first place was an attempt at masking this difference. Some would argue post 4.3 rogues actually benefited, probably true (all to do with the way their specs work) but at least people weren't dieing in seconds.

- To increase the damage modifiers more than the healing modifiers just to tackle farseer healing is a slap in the face to every other class who relies on minor sustainability to win a duel. Once again, making mages and clerics less useful. Classes that excel and rely on survivability require a right balance between cd's and dmg. Too much dmg and their cd's become useless.

What should have happened:

Plan A:

For me the only reasonable solution would be to double damage, triple healing, and address
the only real concern that is 'Legendary Fortune Protection of Farseer' (thanks Dizzy for the proper name).

Result: Flat healing needs a buff, it's still utterly useless. Broken percentage based heals would not be affected by a tripling of the previous modifier, and as long as the farseer heal bouncing effect is amended then we should have no real issues. As long as dmg is high, then you'll see far more dynamics in dmg/healing balance.

Truely decent PvP involves well timed burst damage that tries to beat good healing cds. We won't get that until both have a noticeable effect, all we have right now is which one is stronger, and therefore which ones wins in the tug of war after 20 seconds. It's mindless to say the least.

Issues: Gamigo would have to actually change an ability, or directly nerf that particularly ability. Do they have the resources and time to do that and be willing to adjust after testing? Direct abilities have had their own direct modifiers in PvP, so this is clearly possible.

Armor penetration is borked as well. And as for cleric, it really is a mechanic problem for them as well. The way they developed cleric with all the preloading on a single target and ramp to burst plus easily interruptable/cleansable burst on a long cd timer like RC sucks for them. There is a difference between taking 10- 15 sec. to load up stacks and buffs, debuffs on a single target then having it all cleansed off or having half your burst block interrupted vs. something like BD who can sit in a corner and preload on itself then burst anything at any moment with no chance to cleanse or interrupt it. Classes with souls that can do that are better in PvP. The cleric is all around hard countered in that sense.

There are other problems for clerics because they were heavily targeted for nerfs going back to Rift 1.0 especially as healers. They have the most direct ability nerfs/changes in PvP of any of the classes although time has shown the outliers of all the classes during every expansion has been rogues and warriors the most. The biggest outlier for cleric of all time was just pre changed defiler during SL and it is no longer in the game but Devs still continued to target that class for nerfs, unfortunately. They did do roundabout changes in the end but it did nothing to fix imbalances just like Gamigo is doing now.

When clerics had virtually useless DPS souls in the start of the expansion(very undertuned in DPS) they went tanking..then players complained about them. They were nerfed. Then those same players took the brunt of what it felt like to get burst down by OP classes and began to tank themselves. Then players complained about tanking in general and that is when the devs gave up. Cleric just recieved the short straw in the end unfortunately because they were forced into tanking first. In fact the tanks of other classes were far more overpowered because of how fast they can move across the field and take an enormous amount of damage primarily Sab/stalkers who can blink back to flag capture, Primalist OP top mitigation and very fast tanks like arbiter/MA etc. Nothing was changed to nerf the OP burst specs of these classes nor their tank or outlier specs. Cleric is just all around the worse in PvE and PvP unfortunately as a result. And everyone is now tanking trying to avoid being burst down by these mechanically overpowered classes.

Like the devs didn't understand the reason why clerics ultmately went to tank in pvp and why mages ended doing it after clerics were virtually kicked out of PvP scene and then primalist went OP healers.. they simply just nerfed them and continued to systematically nerf all their roles that "worked" for them while ignoring why they were forced into those roles. They went as far as to nerf Cabalist in PvP because of its control effect. Cleric tried to find a way to fit in PvP but Devs kept nerfing and nerfing them out while ignoring how overpowered other classes were. In fact because of them ignoring many of the other classes the player base has not went through how powerful those classes are truely. What I mean is if some of those classes get nerfed they are guaranteed to have other outlier soul combos they have not experimented with since they were able to rely on that one outlier for a long time. Cleric probably has no more significantly powerful specs in PvP. They went through pretty much everything and was nerfed. Even on prime they couldn't stop nerfing. AA, RS, Exu.. non stop.. when rogues were regarded as 0 day bug/exploit and it took virtually to the release of SL on prime to get the rogue fixed.

Not that cleric can't get massive KB's. I mean if you join a match now and the game is 5v2 for the first minute you can definitely farm the other side as a cleric and do well and try to make cleric look good. Or join a premade. I know some people who made youtube videos doing that and if you play 100s of games a week you are guaranteed to have a few good cherry picked games due to imbalances like this but ultimately relying on the game to give you that free win is not good balance to aim for which is what Trion Devs seem to offer those players as if they wouldn't finally find out what was going on. It always makes me face palm.

[Dizbo]

https://i.imgur.com/IgMyx.gif

[Slipmat]

Lesson learned earlier, don't play a Healer, waste of time.

[Lulutala]

Lowering the damage and healing didn’t fix broken specs, it just made tanks too strong and pvp overall incredibly boring. Hopefully with 16 months worth of data between the original changes and now they can see what specs are overperforming. Some that come to mind are BD,Warlord and I believe primalist heals need looking at aswell.

PvP nerfs on specific abilities/cooldowns have been used in the past to avoid messing with PvE balance, makes sense to apply some here aswell on the big offenders.

This is a step in the right direction, hopefully this tuning of damage/heal ratio isn't a one and done like Trion did, looking at the patch notes this seems to not be the case but we will see. Either way +1 to Gamigo for fixing the earring bug and putting some effort into pvp.

[Refuge]

It is more fun, and more people are playing. That's a start after all.

[JamesDSneed]

These changes are the right direction and I don't bevelie it will take a lot of effort to smooth out the outliers.

I would love to see Primalist healing nerfed enough they are inline with other healer classes and at the same time increase healing a bit more all around so the other classes can be effective healers.

My hope is that the next phases look at specific classes that are way over or under performing. Like the rogue's blade dancer doing much more dps than any other spec, warrior's warlord dps/passive heals and Primalists healing with farseer. Cleric and mage dps classes could use a little love.

[Kronos v]

this is less of a balance change and more of a reversion to NMT pvp, which was massively unpopular at the time. something to remember is that the longer TTK was asked for. however, when the TTK was lowered in NMT other adjustments were made to fit that lowered TTK, such as reducing match duration and increasing point gains per tick. there were not undone when the TTK was later lengthened. this is a big reason why tanks became so powerful (in addition to broken tanks like primalist, but then tanks arent the only thing broken with primalist). the previous meta was broken by design, with no intention of fixing the root problems.

the recent reversion to the lower TTK has resulted in pvp becoming a mindless zergfest. players are unwilling to move away from the herd, or even to be at the front of the herd. this is kinda ok for single objective maps like black garden or to a lesser extent, whitefall. but its terrible for any of the domination maps and maps with multiple objectives like Blighted. there is now less room for clever play, and the name of the game for the average player is to play ranged and try to be at the very back of the pack. of course, with every other ranged player also trying to be at the very back of the pack, this means we now have zergs that hang back from engaging the enemy at the start of a fight, and creep backwards during the fight.

characters dying in pvp is entirely what pvp is about, dont mistake my above comments as opposition to this. but we'd have been better served by actual balance changes addressing the actual issues such as fixing primalists (multiple souls/abilities, not just farseer), nerfing outlier souls, buffing underperforming souls (pretty much all cleric healing and many underused dps souls) and yes, tanks too, though if you are going to nerf a tanks survivability, you should buff their damage/utility. tanks entirely deserve a place in pvp, one of Rifts pvp problems is that they have never had a clearly defined role in pvp. this results in tank players finding their own role to play, which is what has been upsetting the apple cart.

Rift pvp is now a first person shooter team death match
its fun and exciting now, because it has been such a long time that pvp has had any kind of dev attention we'll take anything at this point. it still remains to be seen if we'll get any real fixes, or just bandaids on top of the existing bandaids.