Overlord skill balance proposal

Let's continue the trend of discussing class balances; we've seen some great and fast ingame responses from Popcorn and the team, and I hope it continues. The most recent patch was an awesome start.

 

Whirlwind:

This skill scales off of M.Speed and is mainly used as an escape tactic for this reason. The skill hits a total of 4 times and requires M.Speed below 100 (around 75-80, ideally) to achieve 3-4 hits on your opponent. At around 175 M.Speed, you max out at 2 hits; tested at 275 M.Speed (could possibly go lower), you hit once and rarely twice. The skill has no effective crowd control, damage, true superarmor, or catching/comboing potential. An improvement to this skill could be to root you in place so you could land all 4 hits and allow it to cancel/chain it into Wyvern similar to Windmill > Headspin but with less mobility and other goodies. Much more could be done with this skill, but it would require a lot more ambition and possibly tools that are currently unavailable. Stuns, knockdowns, free-roam (similar to Windmill/Headspin), various debuffs, and so on are all things that could be used to further revamp this skill and add some additional crowd control to Overlord.

 

Demolition Charge:

Incredibly underwhelming damage is the best way to describe this "heavy hitter" skill, since it offers nothing else. This skill is even outclassed by X attacks and 1st tree skills such as Blow or Sword Dance, since all have more to offer in one way or another along with nearly the same damage lol. Yes, it's working as intended, but it's more of a newbie trap to get people to waste their SP on. The problem that this skill faces isn't just its low damage output, but also the small window of time you get to chain your skills after it's complete. Currently speaking, the charge can only be used effectively (the most stable) after Hammer Crush, where Gust, Wyvern, and just a few other skills can be chained afterwards. To make things worse, a competent player can easily cast up their superarmor to avoid the chains, rendering the skill obsolete in situations such as this. My proposal to buff this skill then is very simple: buff the damage (obviously), and provide the skill either a stun or hard knockdown so that it doesn't only have to be used after hammer crush. It could still be countered by super armor, though the CC varies the way it can be used... which I believe the skill needs.

 

Death Snatch:

This has been brought up previously in another thread, but I feel that it still deserves an honorable mention in this thread. For proper use, this skill needs a better stun rate (ideally in the range of Rocket Punch, I'd venture to say). There have been complaints about the small delay between the skill animation and the actual stun itself, which can allow for superarmor casting, but I see this as a secondary issue. Getting the skill working the way it should is of a higher priority and would allow players to use it for something other than casting up superarmor in someone's combo lmao. Of course a quicker stun would be icing on the cake, but that seems like more of a dream than a near reality. I'd lastly like to reiterate the fact that this skill can not, in any way, be used as a primary catching skill. It can only be used on airborn enemies that have taken a hit from you already (in other words, you've caught them... maybe... how good are you? ), so this buff is limited on how much it can really affect things.

Edited by Bustincaps, 13 July 2017 - 08:10 PM.

My thought's on overlord as a whole, large hp pool, needlessly large attack value (despite all there skills scaling on base weapon attack) a decent amount of stopping power.
First the number of skills they have to keep a player immobile that aren't recoverable by pressing the jump key, SD, Hammer Crush, stumblebum and Gust Slash. These skills guarantee damage afterwards.
Overall the class is fairly decent it's just there damage is subpar considering there values, but with all their guaranteed hit's easily makes it a formidable class.
 
So how should you balance the class w/o having to revamp the class completely?
So I ask the question how do all skills that scale on total weapon attack behave? They all lack stopping power they are all recoverable by the jump button. Why ask this? This shows which skills should get the buff.
Rising Storm/Wrath of Earth/ Whirlwind/ Magnum Break/ Death Bound. These are all skill's that can be recovered w/ jump skill or they posses no stopping power. Changing these skills to total attack would yield to a fairly large buff for overlord, If comparing it to sniping, that hits roughly 8~9k crits on endgame at 500% with 600% at 37k attack, I can only imagine what Rising Storm 350% w/ 600% at 80k+ attack can do combined with all the stopping power of the skills mentioned before to guarantee the hit's. Ofc adding this much damage to a class w/ a large amount of stopping power can only be balanced with lowering there stopping power somehow either removal of a hard knockdowns or with the introduction of shared cooldowns.

Edited by Apocryphos, 13 July 2017 - 10:24 PM.

@all: setting the skill damage based on total weapon damage (which means including the enchant- and soulcraft-bonus damage) has already been discussed in the team. It's not meant offendindung but I have to disappoint you here. Setting this calculation to the total weapon damage would mean that we are going back one step into the pay-2-win direction. That is definitely not wanted.

 

He calculation example:

 

If you have an overlord with a +7 Heirloom Lightning Oak Two-Hand Sword you can deal a max. damage of 3688

and overlord with a +20 Heirloom Lightning Oak Two-Hand Sword (legendary) can deal a max. damage of 20487

 

Let's take the skill Whirlwind as an example. The skill states it uses 75.0% of the Weapon's physical attack power +500

 

Under best circumstances (merciful RNG) that would mean (if we would set the skills to total damage)

 

in the first example (+7 weapon) a hit would deal  3688 damage + (2766 + 500 skill damage) = 6954 damage

in the second example (+20 weapon, legendary) a hit would deal 20487 + (15365 + 500 skill damage) = 36352 damage

 

That is a difference of 26698 damage if someone is using a +20 weapon rather than a +7 weapon. That gives many players a real pay-2-win feeling which is not wanted. Actually it is the "feeling" of the players which makes the difference. They would feel forced to enchant to "be someone".

 

It is clear that physical classes (especially the overlord path) needs adjustments but setting skills on Total Damage is no option.

 

In my opinion the Demolition charge has quite its power, cuz it can crit over a million in PvE, but yeah the cast time for its full potential is too long, maybe making it an instant cast with full power could make it viable to use without adjusting numbers of Damage.

 

For the Damage calculation, how about setting it to the Final ATK amount BUT reducing the difference between a +20 and a +7 weapon.

Example: +7 PoS ~5k ATK, +20 PoS ~12k ATK for Overlord, this would have to be adjusted for each class individual to be somehow balanced, but this actually would make rather a difference that is not that broken to classes that have high ATK amount on weapons and may balance the game more.

Keep in mind that this is only something i had in my mind i cant test if its viable or not.

Anybody can get a +20 weapon. I simply don't see this pay to win argument in pve, nor pvp really to that matter, in the server now. The nature of the game is grinding, and the grind to a +20 zau for example is short. And that's almost all you need in pve. If a player isn't fine with that maybe they should find another game or deal with it.

Expert mode is already scuffed because of this mentality in my opinion. People should have to enchant to be powerful if that's what you mean with "someone".

Those are my opinions as is this: if you go down the route of " everybody is special and poweful", you'll go down the same route that's currently eating a way the mmo genre. It doesn't work.

I instantly see everyone jumping towards a damage increase and nothing else. Is this class lacking in damage? Yes, but the team has already stated in the past that they are not willing to make skills scale in the way that you're asking, so why beat a dead horse? I see your point of reasoning, since Overlord is essentially supposed to be the Melee equivalent of Destroyer in terms of it being a heavy hitter class, but bears don't affect players as much since superarmor and more M.Speed have been introduced and a good crowd control alternative could be another option to bring Overlord back up to par. For Overlord to compete in the multi PvP scenarios which the recent game population seems so fond of, such as BSQ and Empo, it needs more damage or more crowd control. The class can already combo just fine... it's a matter of it having no real AoE crowd control damaging skills that don't launch the enemy. This is where the proposal for making the near-useless Whirlwind skill more useful came into play. Depending on how ambitious the team gets on improving this skill, it could also solve your need for damage or at least make up for it with crowd control combined with some damage. So many games have what is essentially Whirlwind for a 2-handed class and have done great things with it; the possibilities are very widely spread. It's just a matter of being carefully creative in which changes are made. As mentioned before, the skill could be rooted in place, left to travel a straight path, or free-roam. Any of these combined with stuns, slows, knockdowns, etc. could be played around with or even attack speed scaling. Even making the skill stationary with a knockdown similar to Sniping's and allowing it to a.speed scale would open up doors for catching and even chaining it into combos.

 

Now, in response to the Demo Charge comment: removing the charge would leave it just being "Demolition" rather than "Demolition Charge" haha. I would favor a quicker charge rate before a complete removal of it. Also, go test the damage of it in PvP and compare it to some of the class' noob skills. With the amount of time the skill takes to charge and lack of CC, the damage is far below what it should be. Even in PvE, a fancy high crit means nothing. It's all about DPS, or mobility if we're talking mob-clearing. This skill lacks both. There are better options.

 

Let's not make this a thread about damage formulas, though. Any ideas on actual skill balancing that is within the realm of possibility? The staff team is clearly listening; go comment on other class balancing threads too if you have opinions.

Edited by Bustincaps, 14 July 2017 - 09:30 AM.

First, there NEED TO BE a huge different between +7 and +20, it's obvious, when you pay more time and effort to get a +20 weap and your damage output is not as high as you think? of course you get mad. So please don't use the reason "how people feel" as an excuse, imagine what happen when a player reach +20 for the first time only to realize he has one of the lowest damage in the game, how would they feel?
Second, Overlord is suppose to be a high damage class, a nuker, but now everyone has to build ATK speed because their damage in PVE is so low, and people keep saying "Overlord is really strong in PVP, we cannot buff the damage any higher". Ok, so make 2 seperate damage calculations, one for PVP, one for PVE. If you think Overlord PVP is strong, then keep it that way, but buff the PVE damage, make sense right?

people keep saying "Overlord is really strong in PVP..."

 

No idea who is saying this lol....  

Edited by Bustincaps, 02 August 2017 - 08:39 AM.

No idea who is saying this lol....  

Might be the first time I've read that sentence in my life in fact.