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Interaction of Aim, Evade, and various skills


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#1 Yurai

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Posted 15 November 2011 - 04:33 PM

Although my previous topic was made in the light of balance between aim and evade, I feel like I want to go into a much more in-depth discussion this time, which is the reason for the new thread. In my other thread, I didn't go into much detail about other skills that affect aim and evade, which I will go into here.

Recently, we've had a change that made the aim% on accessories double in order to match the soulcrafted evade values. This was the first change in the right direction. It certainly made hitting evade stackers much easier than before, and there was not much complaints about evade.

However, as the level cap increased and people gained more agi, the problem increased. As some people may already know, without any % soulcraft modifiers, it takes approximately 8 agi to equal 1 aim, while it takes approximately 7 agi to equal 1 evade. The problem here is that as you continue leveling, the amount of evade you gain is higher than the amount of aim you gain, which translates to aim falling off as the level cap increases further.

In addition, to make things worse, armor pieces are able to obtain evade % as a soulcraft option while you are unable to soulcraft aim %. While there are several equipment that provide aim %, it is still not enough to remedy the problem. In simpler terms, this means that the amount of evade you gain per agi is amplified at a higher rate than that of the aim you gain per agi. This makes aim fall off even faster with consideration to the problem stated in the previous paragraph.

Now, let's get into several aim modifying skills. For the purpose of simplifying things, we will take a look into skills that are guaranteed to lower aim or raise evade. This means that we will not be looking at quagmire or fire ink, which both have a different hit calculation formula that makes them very susceptible to failure.

The first skill we will look at is the thief skill dexterity. This skill gives a buff to party members which increases their agi by 40% of their base at level 10. With the issues stated previously, it's easy to see why increasing amounts of agi is bad for maintaining balance between aim and evade. However, the problem does not stop there. Whether it's a bug or not, it's been known for a while that the dex buff can stack up to twice. This means an 80% boost to a character's base agi. This is achieved by using your own dex buff, and having someone else in your party or on your team using their own dex buff. A third person using their dex buff has no effect. It seems that the problem here is that the other person's dex buff does not cancel your own. The change should be that the other person's buff will override your own if it's at an equal or higher level.

The other problem prevalent with the ability to apply the dex buff twice is that only thieves with the dex buff are able to utilize this. Other classes are left further behind in the dust, unable to keep up with an additional 40% agi, making their aim rate pale in comparison to the evade obtained by thieves.

The next two skills we will look at are wood rush and stumblebum. These two skills are the only skills that reliably decrease a player's aim rate. Wood rush is balanced in that the debuff lasts for 35 seconds while the cooldown of the skill is 30 seconds, which allows players (aside from BSQ) to cure the debuff and not have to worry about it for a while. Stumblebum, however, is a much more broken skill. The wide radius of effect combined with its short casting time makes it impossible to escape. In addition, the aim debuff lasts for 30 seconds while the cooldown of the skill is only 10 seconds. This means that it has to be constantly cured or it will just get reapplied. It's not practical for a priest to run around and curing every single teammate from the aim debuff just so that they can hit the enemy evader. Both stumblebum and wood rush are able to decrease the opponent's accuracy enough that if you have the highest possible aim, you will have no hit rate on a person with the highest amount of evade.

The issue with stumblebum is that it is an insane aim rate debuff with a cooldown that is 1/3rd of the duration of the debuff. In addition, the skill is unaffected by the opponent's evade or block rate, meaning that it always hits as long as they are in the area of effect. It also hits opponent's who are in the air. Stumblebum needs to be changed. Either the duration of the debuff needs to be lowered to 10-12 seconds, the cooldown increased to 30 seconds to match the debuff duration, or the debuff past the initial stun needs to be removed entirely. It's quite frustrating to stack the maximum possible aim so you can hit your opponent, only to be rendered completely useless by a spammable skill that you cannot escape from.

To make matters even worse, the amount of consumable items that can be used in PvP, BSQ, and Emporia that give evade outnumber the only consumable that gives aim (froggy pill) by far. WIzardry scrolls do not work in PvP and give evade as well. Consumable items found in the PvE environment that buff stats should be disabled.

That aside, it's still quite impossible for classes outside of thieves and sentinels to obtain an aim rate that can hit an evade stacking opponent more than the default 30% chance (which seems much less than 30%). I have a feeling that the chance to hit is lower than 30% depending on how low your accuracy is compared to the enemy's evade.

My suggestion for the accuracy formula stands from the previous thread. As a reminder, I have pasted it below:

Currently, our accuracy formula is

aim - evade = accuracy %

The problem with this formula is that it's linear and with the scaling we have, partially due to the agi:aim ratio, it allows players to achieve ridiculous levels of evade that no one can hit, regardless which class each person is.

The proposed solution is to have an accuracy formula of
aim / evade * 100 = accuracy %

With this formula, it encourages obtaining accuracy to a reasonable amount while discouraging the stacking of insane amounts of evade by decreasing the amount of utility you gain per additional evade. This also allows for the hardcore aim stackers to hit the hardcore evade stackers at a high chance.

In addition, this formula discourages the stacking of evade at lower levels, where people are still not familiar with the mechanics of aim and evade. This effectively makes any evade under 100 completely useless. It also allows for less dominance with evade at early levels, which could discourage newbies from participating PvP (not to mention all the other bugs that still exist).


With the formula mentioned above, it would still allow aim debuffing skills to be effective, but not broken to the point where you will completely miss. It would also allow other classes a competitive chance at obtaining an aim rate that can hit evade stackers at a reasonable chance. With further expansions of the level cap, this issue will only get more severe.

Another solution could be to change all the aim debuffing skills to debuff evade instead. Stumblebum, quagmire, wood rush, etc. all slow or stun an opponent, so it would make sense that they shouldn't be able to evade that well. Having too much aim was never a problem; having too much evade has been a persistent problem. Doing this would make it possible to hit high evade stackers with some teamwork by debuffing the amount of evade they have. With this, we wouldn't need to change the formula for now.

Edited by Yurai, 17 November 2011 - 01:40 PM.

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#2 OFireO

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Posted 24 November 2011 - 12:39 PM

Just to add this in, not sure you know or not but the Aim and Attack debuff on Stumblebum decreases base stats not your final aim or attack so it is not as crazy as Ninja Log.

Edited by OFireO, 24 November 2011 - 12:41 PM.

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#3 Yurai

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Posted 24 November 2011 - 01:10 PM

Just to add this in, not sure you know or not but the Aim and Attack debuff on Stumblebum decreases base stats not your final aim or attack so it is not as crazy as Ninja Log.


Except when you get to aim rates above 500-600, your base aim rate is likely already 200+. At 40% reduction, you already lose 80 aim, which is more than enough to completely miss on a target that you used to be able to hit 100% due to the way our current formula works.
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