Its time we Balance | Evolution of weapons

[PsychoNuke]

^ This, can be said a thousand times. In my viewpoint, I think you, the OP, is the one failing to see what several people are trying to tell you throughout this thread. As a mage myself who has been doing nothing but farming the new maps for approximately 60k xp a day this past week, I can unquestionable say that mages are in an exceptional state in the pve aspect of this game.

As you see many players on this forum and ingame disagree. Please look at the after expansion threads (around 4 months worth) to gain knowledge on the current state of the classes. Farming xp, or being able to solo a map has nothing to do with class balance. But you are entitled to your opinion.

The damage statistic you are referring to in your graphs is nothing but a number. Each skill's damage value scales with this given number. What I am trying to say is that this number is quite irrelevant alone when considering the damage output of a specific class. For example, a class can have 100 damage and have a skill that does 1000 damage because it scales by 10. On the other hand, another class can have exactly the same stat of 100 damage but have a skill that does only 200 damage because it scales by 2. There is no meaning to comparing the damage statistic of a class by itself.

Those numbers are damage and armor stats. Talking about damage: even in your example and in fact - skill damage is dependent on the damage stat, every time the damage from a weapon is reduced the skill damage reduces, every time the damage of a weapon is raised the skill damage raises.

The intent of the OP is very simple: it asks why isn't the proportion maintained every-time the damage for a class is buffed? And it shows that the damage and armor difference between classes is increasing to grow exponentially.

I am not sure why are people trying to read between the lines and if they are reading the OP at all.

Off Topic:

Another thing I would like to mention is the significance between aoe vs single target attacks which I do not think you are weighing accurately.
I believe this is an absolutely invalid statement. If you were asked which is faster, a plane or a car, what you declared above is pretty much the same as saying traveling by air "counters" traveling by land, so they are equal. Does this make sense? Sorry, but it's going to be a hard negative for me.

No It doesn't make sense, that has no significance to skill. It would have made sense if the discussion was about movement speed, but we are not discussion speed/haste of a class.

Let's take the new swamp map for example. If you sent in the three classes with the same gear and you were able to see how much damage each class did at the end of the run, I can guarantee you that mages will beat out the other two classes in this category. The reason why a mage's damage number is lower is because they can hit ten people with one skill thus multiplying their damage by the number of targets hit, while a rogue would generally only hit one target with one skill.

Let me get this right, you are determining the class balance on the bases of completion time of a map?
That is a wrong category to begin with, tanks will fail in every map, mage will excel in maps with lots of mobs and rogue will excel in boss only encounters.

Every class has AOE and Single target damage skills, the damage of every skill has a baseline and increase/reduction of skill damage is calculated on stat damage of the class, number of enemies affected by the skill and the skill cool down are factor that should be taken into consideration when talking about it.

You should compare the skill damage for all skills for all classes on almost same damage stat, and you will understand my point. Trust me I have done my homework, if you like to have a discussion on skill damage differences for each skill and class then we should open a new thread for open discussion - I actually recommend this to @Thread. It will make my life easy.

Last but not least, class balance in pvp and class balance in pve are in two completely different universes.

True, and OP does not suggest any where that the balance should be same/different for PvE and/or PvP. Its upto devs to decide how the changes (if any) to be implemented and if it should be implemented only for pvp/pve or different changes for PvP and PvE.

There are contrasting circumstances in play such as having other opponents with different statistical values. Please do not coin them together as I could literally write a book about pvp class balance even if I have not pvp'd in a year, whereas I have nothing else to say on this matter about class balance in pve because I see no real immediate issues regarding this matter.

Different statistical values over basic stats are variables (such as pets and awakes) and they are not included on this discussion.
You should write a thread on PvP class balance, if not a book. It would be nice to see facts on those sides. oh! and if you do please do not include the variables

[arcanefid]

The intent of the OP is very simple: it asks why isn't the proportion maintained every-time the damage for a class is buffed? And it shows that the damage and armor difference between classes is increasing to grow exponentially.

I am not sure why are people trying to read between the lines and if they are reading the OP at all.

The way I see it, it is wrong because you are comparing items that have procs. An item with a better proc is OK to have worse stats than one with a bad proc. That IS balance. It's the name of the thread. Edit: You can't really say Flame Hammer is better than Flame Staff, even if the hammer has 5X more damage.

Basically, to have more accurate results for those graphs and to make a better comparison between weapons, items, and classes in general, you have to include data for each tier of the items, or at least from Legendary to Arcane, but you must also consider the procs that each weapon has, because if you just ignore the most important part of the thing you're investigating, then everything you come up with is pointless.

[PsychoNuke]

The way I see it, it is wrong because you are comparing items that have procs. An item with a better proc is OK to have worse stats than one with a bad proc. That IS balance. It's the name of the thread. Edit: You can't really say Flame Hammer is better than Flame Staff, even if the hammer has 5X more damage.

Basically, to have more accurate results for those graphs and to make a better comparison between weapons, items, and classes in general, you have to include data for each tier of the items, or at least from Legendary to Arcane, but you must also consider the procs that each weapon has, because if you just ignore the most important part of the thing you're investigating, then everything you come up with is pointless.

You can get the same curve and trends for legendary weapons as well, they have no procs. I would really appreciate if players have that concern then they should have a look at the stats of legendary weapons, both dps and armor. I think Warfare type Legendary will give info on both DPS and Armor and they are available level 41+ on all level caps.
Trust me I wanted to do it for Legendary, Mythics and Arcanes and I did spend quite a long time looking for all the weapons for all caps but I failed. When I compared the available material for each rarity I realized that Mystics are like 5% above Legendary and Arcanes are around 10% above Mythics, so graphs almost showed same curves. So I decided to do it on Mythics because they were in middle and I had screenshots of most Mythics.

This is from the time I was looking into Legendary, unfortunately I only have it for armor at present, Legendary (Warfare type)

Level Mage Rogue Warrior

Level 41 42 42 224
Level 51 51 174 246
Level 61 61 354 434
Level 71 70 411 504

Attachment 173571

I will try to get one for damage as well, till I can, I would appreciate if players check it themselves. Ty.

[arcanefid]

You can get the same curve and trends for legendary weapons as well, they have no procs. I would really appreciate if players have that concern then they should have a look at the stats of legendary weapons, both dps and armor. I think Warfare type Legendary will give info on both DPS and Armor and they are available level 41+ on all level caps.
Trust me I wanted to do it for Legendary, Mythics and Arcanes and I did spend quite a long time looking for all the weapons for all caps but I failed. When I compared the available material for each rarity I realized that Mystics are like 5% above Legendary and Arcanes are around 10% above Mythics, so graphs almost showed same curves. So I decided to do it on Mythics because they were in middle and I had screenshots of most Mythics.

This is from the time I was looking into Legendary, unfortunately I only have it for armor at present, Legendary (Warfare type)

Level Mage Rogue Warrior

Level 41 42 42 224
Level 51 51 174 246
Level 61 61 354 434
Level 71 70 411 504

Attachment 173571

I will try to get one for damage as well, till I can, I would appreciate if players check it themselves. Ty.

That is better, but still, I know many Legendary weapons which have procs. I can start counting the warrior ones: Dark Watch Sword, Magmatic Claymore, Galen's Maul, Dusk Sword, Planar Club, etc. I think it's only the more recent legendary weapons which have no procs, but then again, now the new Mythics are just a kind of replacement for what would be Legendary in the older times.

Anyway, I think it would be impossible to really find out in detail what, how, when, why, etc. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money. And the amount of things you have to test to come up with accurate results is just too big. We know though that classes weren't balanced in previous caps, but now they are just fine, or at least much better than what it used to be. As a matter of fact, around the time when the OP shows that Mages were at their absolute worst state, I think it was when everyone was becoming a mage because of Flame Staff? Am I wrong?

[PsychoNuke]

That is better, but still, I know many Legendary weapons which have procs. I can start counting the warrior ones: Dark Watch Sword, Magmatic Claymore, Galen's Maul, Dusk Sword, Planar Club, etc. I think it's only the more recent legendary weapons which have no procs, but then again, now the new Mythics are just a kind of replacement for what would be Legendary in the older times.

Feel free to pick any legendary weapon with or without procs., you will get same results. None of the weapons have procs in the graph I shown in last post. Like level 61 dusk had procs but light didn't, so I used light.

Anyway, I think it would be impossible to really find out in detail what, how, when, why, etc. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money. And the amount of things you have to test to come up with accurate results is just too big. We know though that classes weren't balanced in previous caps, but now they are just fine, or at least much better than what it used to be. As a matter of fact, around the time when the OP shows that Mages were at their absolute worst state, I think it was when everyone was becoming a mage because of Flame Staff? Am I wrong?

Flame staff came before the Level 57 Cap but was used till level 66. I cannot blame players to keep using it because then we have warriors with glint that came before that. Sure those weapon should have been nerfed but with all sincerity I do not think these things were taken into consideration for the current baselines we have, because they are same with or without procs.

Anyway, we are not here to play blame games or discuss what happened in past, the idea is to have a discussion to build a more balanced future. Weapons are only the start, it goes to main gear, skills and etc.. but one thing at a time, people are just running all over the place off topic

[arcanefid]

Feel free to pick any legendary weapon with or without procs., you will get same results. None of the weapons have procs in the graph I shown in last post. Like level 61 dusk had procs but light didn't, so I used light.


True, and we are not here to play blame games or discuss what happened in past, the idea is to have a discussion to build a more balanced future. And weapons are only the start, it goes to main gear, skills and etc.. but one thing at a time, people are just running all over the place off topic

Well that explains a lot actually. It makes sense that the lower tier gears for Mages to have worse stats than those of Rogues and Warriors, simply because of the skills that the classes have.

If we just use gear without procs, Mages would be the best class hands down because of their skills. They have the ability to use Shield, recover Health and Mana, attack multiple enemies at once, attack a single enemy for heavy damage, slow enemies, and other stuff I am probably missing. So this explains that the gear without procs are fine to have worse stats to maintain class balance. I'm not sure if you play the Warrior class, but if you do, playing it feels extremely empty and hard until you get weapons with procs, even if the item stats are above average.

Good procs for Mages like Flame Staff, Immo Staff, or DS, made them the best class for PvE without any contest. This was easily noticeable during the Mausoleum and Underhul times, pretty much around the times when Mages had the worst stats. So in the end we can see that when Mages had the good procs, their garbage stats didn't matter at all.

[PsychoNuke]

Well that explains a lot actually. It makes sense that the lower tier gears for Mages to have worse stats than those of Rogues and Warriors, simply because of the skills that the classes have.

If we just use gear without procs, Mages would be the best class hands down because of their skills. They have the ability to use Shield, recover Health and Mana, attack multiple enemies at once, attack a single enemy for heavy damage, slow enemies, and other stuff I am probably missing. So this explains that the gear without procs are fine to have worse stats to maintain class balance. I'm not sure if you play the Warrior class, but if you do, playing it feels extremely empty and hard until you get weapons with procs, even if the item stats are above average.

I doubt that, each class have their unique skills that make their roles stand out, mages might do good at mobs but they lack at single target damage, rogues will do good at boss but they lack at CC, and warriors should not be running alone, I mean they are tanks. And its exactly how it should be. Balance doesnt mean they all be equal at output (I said this in OP too).
Balance only means that the growth of all classes is parallel, the OP only suggests that its is not and the baseline for that growth is probably incorrect (considering only weapons in this thread). Its as simple as that.

Good procs for Mages like Flame Staff, Immo Staff, or DS, made them the best class for PvE without any contest. This was easily noticeable during the Mausoleum and Underhul times, pretty much around the times when Mages had the worst stats. So in the end we can see that when Mages had the good procs, their garbage stats didn't matter at all.

True, and we (players and sts) learnt from the mistakes of past, we dont want more banish and over powered procs. While I do blame players for keeping it quite (they were no different from the players you see on this thread who are just adding speculations to show everything is fine), I do blame devs too for not doing a fact check. I made this thread because it matters to me that all classes should be balanced, more than mage I like to see the damage gap between warrior and rogue to get a bit less, and when it comes to mage armor I only suggested 90 extra armor over the current stats.

Off Topic
If you see the threads from last year you will see I was one of the players who always said nerf flame staff, nerf DS, nerf immo we dont want to use 3 generations old weapons. Those comments are there on vrooms dev blog as well, and I got plenty of hate at that time from not only mages but warriors and rogues saying it will increase the completion time for maus. Trust me I was the happiest guy when they nerfed all old weapons for mage at level 71, feel free to check my posts and threads on forum for the last 6 months.

Now that we are finally at a place where things are getting balanced, old bugs/issues getting fixed, STS is taking measures to balance things - so we are at a very good place. Its the perfect time when class balance for pve and pvp needs to be addressed. I am adding unbiased facts to the table for discussion, you wont see any of my opinions until the conclusion of the OP, and I made sure I highlight my opinion outside the facts at the end because people have the tendency to generalize the facts.

I am not sure what people are loosing their minds about? I already have plenty of hate pms, and most of them didn't even read the OP properly, But its alright, I will just ignore them