Weapon/Caster Adds Discussion

I think we need to take a step back and look at the DR curves for caster weapon skills.

Assumptions:

Casters gain a dex add every 4 levels vs Melee every 3
1 dex add is worth 50 DR
1 skill level is worth 12.5 DR for weapons, Not sure on hand?? (Any insight anyone?)
1 armor bonus on a weapon is worth 50 DR

At 17/7.56 Darkice's MA has 1582 DR, to my Thief who is 17/13 Dagger with the MainGauche at 1500. This is relatively balanced at this point considering the difference in class, and the MA's lack of magic abilities... but it required me to make a crazy powerful offhand blocking weapon to bring thieves to the appropriate defensive levels. I was around 1300 DR without the MainGauche/Fan.

Doing the math, I think MA DR must scale faster than 12.5 a level, and on top of that they get more adds faster. Since we tend to balance content for the high bar (MA and knight) casters will always be at a disadvantage.

We have been trying to band-aid low caster adds with improved Armor Bonus on weapons. This is an immediate fix at the level the items are obtained, but will continue to be a problem that basically requires even bigger and more powerful weapons to compete with rising content difficulty. A secondary problem with buffing via itemization, is unless you make all these weapons class-only you're opening up very OP weapons to classes that probably shouldn't be able to use them.

So to prevent a soviet-era base armor bonus arms race, I think we should adjust the DR curve/line for casters to account for these inflection points. Just punching some numbers in, it looks like 20DR per level would help a lot towards normalizing everything. We could also get crazy and make it way simpler, and just give casters the ability to acquire another dex add via quest. Looking back on the game in its variations; I don't think I really understand why we gimp casters with lower adds since they already get hit hard in the HP department. It also adds unnecessary complexity to itemization and progression.

I know we all have our rose colored nostalgia goggles on, but LoK was always kind of broken at a fundamental level. We need to do more than bandaid with gear if we want to make this game fun in the long haul.

Just my 2.5 cents.

Ya, agreed: The focus of the game has always been melee and HP. This is one of the things that the hit point doctor had to do to normalize the game just a bit. It brought the hp ratio of caster to melee up from 70ish% at lv 20 to 80ish%.

In my opinion: Instead of balancing the mechanics equally, we should be running 5 different metagames, the separation of effectiveness is what makes the game balance-able. Essentially knights and MAs should be easy-ier mode, but they can be balanced and separated by armor. This doesn't work for caster classes, they share the same armor - so they have to be balanced out with magic and playstyle. I think we can balance them differently, I've mentioned before about changing the wizard shield spell to make up part of that gap in DR. Between shield and illusion, that should help with mob management - we should expect to be around 100 pts behind a melee class for normal hunting. For Thaums, I think they need better pet management and maybe some compensation for weapon skills. Thaums would probably also be around 100 pts behind melee for normal hunting. For Thieves, I my current proposal is under the backstab thread. Thieves should be around 50-200 behind melee, depending on the style they're choosing - toe-to-toe should be 50ish behind, plinking should be 200 back.

Though, we will need more levels of equipment to close the gap as necessary. I think MA scales more with skill levels than other equipment, I don't see a problem with it coming out ahead of GS and GS coming out ahead of 1h skills; but then balancing an area for survivability needs to rely more on the mitigation side of the house.

My future plan is to have a fully progressive lineup of equipment. Weapons would start tying at +1. All weapons would require lairs and/or quests. +4 weapons wouldn't be achievable until 18, requiring the kill - then equipment upgrades for endgame on a progressively harder scale past the current +4. - I'll run it by the community before I just create something though. IE Getting a +1 weapon is essentially graduating from Kesmai, +2 is the early levels before TT quality, +3 is TT up to the current end game bosses, +4 is the current endgame bosses. Similar progression for other items.

As for how this ties in with closing the DR gap, I think we need to balance based on the area we expect a character of equipment set X to be able to handle. Like if we want cliffs to be 15/12 for melee and 16/12 for caster, then the target DR and mitigations should support those hunting goals.

This also facilitates twinking, to make alts and HC even more palatable.

I'm ok with casters having somewhat of a harder start, but I disagree with making them miserable at lairs having to push and entire set of adds higher to start having a chance at lairs like lands did. It was incredibly frustrating that my knight was doing uk drake pre 18 in relative safety and my lvl 22 thaum still dies to him often enough I typically just avoid him. That's not balance or even fun. You want to be able to do the same stuff you other chars do in different ways at similar levels. The 3/4 adds system means casters must have magic and or items to fill in the gap that aren't available to the other classes. Every 12 levels you have to invent another set of gear or the spells have to scale to make up for another set of missing adds. Thieves having thief only lairs currently and being the only neutral class makes it somewhat easier, but if it's too good, other classes will turn neutral for it as the only neutral punishment is gear availability. If you are turning neutral for a better set of gear is it actually disadvantage then? Casters already have a huge hp disadvantage that is incredibly hard to balance lairs for in the 18-22 adds range. Some current implementations of lairs have basically made them such that in order to challenge the easy mode classes, the casters get 1 shot so they basically can't risk getting hit. The only way to approach a lair like that is to kill it from off screen in some cheesy way. Unfortunately a lot of the higher end lairs end up being just that, find a way to cheese it or it doesn't get attempted. Then they get made immune to that and eventually they just sit there never attempted. What we end up with is caster wanting to be at block cap all the time before trying anything which leads to staffs being uber blockers and entirely defeats the point of nerfing their adds in the first place. It just makes them grind longer to do the same thing.

I think we also have an issue with just how much adds and dex rings provide, We have progression in a decent place it seems up until you start finding dex rings, you go for 0 to 2 dex rings and suddenly the entire rest of the game content is easy mode from a melee perspective. I really think we need to look at dex rings and adds and iron out that progression because it drastically changes level tunning.

Thaums & Wizards can both clear out large areas in 1-2 spells for extreme xp and gold gain from positions of safety. Thieves are a different discussion and I'll share some thoughts on them at the end.

LoK follows more old school D&D style power curving where casters are extremely weak early on, vulnerable in certain situations, and absolutely OP dominators of the universe later on. I think them not being able to solo certain lairs reliably is a fine trade off. They however do need some tools to add some safety so they aren't casually 1 shot by a lair while also not making the other classes obsolete.

If a MU can tank just as well as a melee, while killing at 5-10x the rate, why the heck would anyone bother with a melee?

One such way to accomplish this would be adding a stoneskin spell to Wizards which is capable of absorbing a set amount of damage and then needing to be reapplied at a high mana cost (30 maybe?). Afford them the safety needed so they don't die in 1-2 quick rounds, but then they're forced to retreat to safety and shield back up. This would make group hunts much less risky for them but by having a high enough mana cost that if they're using the spell constantly to tank mobs, they're not also using that magic as much to clear areas out for massive gains.

A suggestion for the thaum side would be some kind of lifeline spell, where they share a certain % of damage dealt to them with their djinns and the amount of damage shared goes down as the djinns die so the risk to thaum increases as their summons die. Maybe you take 50-80% of the damage you normally would but all your djinns lose hp equal to what you would have taken without the spell up. This is a little more complicated than a straight stoneshield for a wizard, but I think its important to build things in that fit into the classes theme and existing playstyles.

For example, you would normally take 100hp of damage from the attack. You have 3 djinns up so you get 50% damage reduction but each of your djinns loses 100hp. One of your Djinns dies and you get attacked again for a 100hp hit. You now have 2 djinns so you take 65 damage and your remaining two djinns take 100 hp. Another Djinn dies and you take another 100hp hit. You now take 80 damage and your last remaining djinn takes 100. There should probably be a minimum damage threshold for this effect to trigger so that it isn't as powerful for regular mobbing and sees its main value in lair hunts.

This provides safety from quick death without making other classes pointless but leaves them vulnerable in certain situations that they have to react to.

When it comes to DR differences, MUs are 1 set of adds behind the melee classes most of the time. Its not until level 20 where they fall behind by 2 and never catch back up. But as we all know, the amount of time it takes a MU to reach level 20+ vs a melee is drastically less. So I don't really see the problem.

I think we can pretty much all agree that the main reason this discussion is happening is because 1 second round timers make reacting appropriately more difficult and thus the lower HP a bigger hinderance for these classes. I doubt there are many good-faith arguments that could be made for these changes with 3 second rounds.

Thieves are a different story. They don't have spells of mass area destruction. They don't have tanky summons to distract mobs and currently, with fast round speed and better lair mob AI than in Lands, they suffer from being discovered and demolished. Plinking with a crossbow from the shadows / water can be safe, but very slow and frustrating. I believe they should have a quest available to them later on to get another set of adds and an increase in HP, since they're more of a fighter with supplemental magic, rather than a full mage.

^ **If wiz spells worked as per the manual. Buffs, and AOE's. Bonfire is the strongest spell until WW, at the moment. AOE's are so weak they're being used as a second-hand disintegrate. (fireball) ...so literally its only WW/PC Protections received duration buffs but shield did not.

fast timers make it hard to keep any mob in the AOE to start with, and their lack of damage requiring multiple casts, and 'aim' compound the issue. confused by the fire, slipped on the ice, caught in the WW secondary effects don't exist, and the mob AI is set-up to bounce out and avoid them.

Also if stun spells, and spells that stunned actually worked - stun, concussion, lightning bolt, for both players and mobs are essentially non-functional.

I have no idea how we're supposed to tune the lands while these issues remain un-addressed. its difficult to gauge what's really needed when the spells are in the state they're in.

Killing power is also defensive power, and wizard defensive power is almost purely from items at the moment. Magic missile, Bonfire, WW, and Ice spear is all there is that is useful offensively in the low-end right now.

its sad that people are assuming wizards are behaving just like they did in the OG.

They are not.

illusions sort-of work, web is iffy, which has elevated darkness to the primary defensive tool, just like thieves. (the ol' trusty-rusty) turn undead is also broken. (the current functionality requires thaums to sacrifice themselves, astronomically raising the risk-scenario for use. - the net result, esp in HC, is that it doesn't get used.)

jkachhad / Stormhalter

Weapon/Caster Adds Discussion #1548