U48.4 Preview 2: Balance Changes: Combat Styles

[kanordog]

yes, also things like eldrich tempest is now not giving the x3 crit multiplier but a little less. I know it was nerfed but it feels that is is nerfed a lot more than the description says.
I really think someone just doesn't want melee builds to be strong.
I am just surprised that when you play the game, you see very few melee players and tons of blasters casters or ranged...

That is so unfair.
Right now probably only tank builds work well.

Reaper teams usually look like that :
A bunch of casters and ranged or a tank + casters + ranged.

Really not many melee dps builds because they still cannot survive the hits.
And other builds simply run away while nuking...

Devs, please reconsider your balancing ....

devs while you're monkeying around with combat styles now would be a great time to introduce a new epic ranged feat "perfect combat archery". You could use this as a band-aid to shore up some of the weaker ranged weapon styles until a more comprehensive pass. It could be like perfect natural fighting where it changes what it does but based on the ranged weapon in your main hand. Just to toss out some ideas bows could get +50% stat mod to damage and some ranged power, repeaters could get +w and ranged power, dual xbows some law dice, shurikens some sa dice and ranged power, etc.

Even if it doesn't go live with 48.4 introducing something on lamannia and getting player feedback could be useful. I am sure there are some helpful players that could give you a mathematical breakdown of what each ranged weapon style is lacking.

horizon walker!!!!


1st they dont want to leave any chance for any other playstyle to outperforme the new enhancement tree
2nd you wont need any extra ranged dps feat to be OP

[Tilomere]

Heh. Paladin triple nerf mp, thf, spell power. If you are gona triple nerf them, can you fix it so ascendency (Blessed Purpose) stacks on reapers?

[SpookyNoodle]

Hello adventurers, tis I, the Spooky Noodle, here to lay bare some statistical analysis:

So, the upcoming proposed Lammania changes make some adjustments to the Single-Weapon and Two-Handed Fighting styles, and so I wanted to do some (relatively) imperical testing, to compare and contrast the three fighting styles (SWF, THF, and TWF) against in each.

A Scientific Environment

To conduct these tests, I made a single character, pure fighter, and built it the exact same way for each style, and ran a number of DPS tests on the Kobolds in the Test Dojo. The three builds were all Strength-based, all used the same enhancement in the same enhancement trees (Kensei, with Falconry secondary and a splash of Human Racial), and all wore identical gear, used identical Destiny layouts and twists, were played identically in terms of ability priority and sequencing, they even had identical past lives, as Lesser Hearts were used to TR into each build.

The only thing that was different between each of the builds was the feat-lines taken (for each of the three styles), as well as Knight's Training for TWF and SWF. SWF requires an extra feat compared to the other styles, for Offhand Versatility, and so TWF had 1 extra feat, and THF had 2 (one for KT and one for OV); whenever there were spare feats leftover, they were put into Weapon Focus: X for a bit of extra melee power. I doubt 4 MP makes a substantial difference in terms of overall DPS, so I haven't tried to account for it in these tests.

These three builds will be referred to as the "Standard" for the purposes of test results, because they're meant to represent each of the styles in and of themselves, without any additional benefits from Vistani Knight Fighter, Swashbuckling, the Assassin tree, and so on.

New Challengers

However, I did want to test the effectiveness of other builds, and to observe the ways that certain Enhancement trees or class abilities might interact with the performance for the three styles. Obviously, huge swings for these builds would mean that the power came from them, not the fighting style itself.

The non-Standard builds (as they shall be referred to here) were:

• Fighter Kensei, but moving all AP from Falconry into VKF (Str-Focused, Wis secondary)*
• Tempest Ranger, Tempest Primary with Deepwood Stalker secondary (Str-Focused, Wis secondary)*
• SWF Swashbuckler Bard/Barbarian/Favored Soul, Primary Frenzied Berserker/Swashbuckler, with points in Ravager and War Soul (Str-Focused, Cha secondary)
• VKF Assassin, Assassin Primary, VKF Secondary (Int-Focused)

* Because of the AP split, these builds did not have access to a Battle Trance

Across ALL builds, I used the same weapons: Legendary Syranian X (Longsword/s, Handaxe, Daggers, etc), and I was careful to make sure that I was applying no debuffs which might unduly influence the testing: no PRR reductions, no Vulnerability. Just the weapon dice and the builds themselves would be factors that changed things.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Kobold?

The first tests were done with the Boss Kobolds, which importantly cannot be stunned, tripped, or otherwise made helpless.

The Mean for the Standard builds was 9,029.7 damage per second (DPS), with the standard deviation being 756.8 DPS (8.38%).

The Mean overall, for all builds, was 9,225.1 DPS, the standard deviation being 785.4 DPS (8.51%).

For each of the builds, the first percentage given will be the difference compared to the standard Mean, and the second percentage will be the difference compared to the overall Mean.

• SWF Kensei: 9,903.2 (+9.67%) [+7.35%]
• TWF Kensei: 8,613.8 (-4.61%) [-6.63%]
• THF Kensei: 8,572.1 (-5.07%) [-7.08%]
• VKF Kensei: 8,691.7 (-3.74%) [-5.78%]
• Assassin: 10,302.9 (+14.10%) [+11.68%]
• Tempest: 8,540.7 (-5.42%) [-7.42%]
• Barb Swash: 9,951.0 (+10.20%) [+7.87%]

As the data shows, TWF only really does well in combination with Assassin. Even Tempest doesn't offer particularly exciting numbers. SWF does well on its own, with some improvements from Swashbuckler and Barbarian.

THF's single-target damage is lackluster, but it's important to keep in mind: THF isn't intended to have competitive single-target damage. These comparisons don't account for Strikethrough. While the nerfs certainly effected THF, they have by no means made it obsolete.

SWF certainly beats out both of these categories overall (in terms of single-target damage), with the exception of Assassin. I get the impression, based on my tests, that the strength of VKF lies in a tree that already has synergy with small blades (like Assassin), because switching the feats around and adding it to the standard build made it perform TERRIBLY in all contexts.

Now, maybe SSG wants SWF to be stronger than TWF in terms of single-target damage. I can't speak to intent, only the consequences and the data.

Pick on Someone Your Own Size!

The next tests were done with the minon Kobolds, which CAN be stunned/tripped, etc.

NOTE: THE BELOW CALCULATIONS ASSUME THAT ALL DPS TEST KOBOLDS HAVE 500,000 HIT POINTS.

I couldn't find concrete answers regarding how much HP they have, so if you know that their HP differs from the Boss kobolds, let me know ASAP.

The Mean DPS for the Standard builds was 15,952.9, with the standard deviation being 680.1 (4.26%).

The Mean overall, for all builds, was 15,041.2, standard deviation was 2097.4 (13.94%).

Just like the previous data, the first percent is the deviation from the Standard Mean, the second is the deviation from the Overall Mean. However, the THIRD percentage is the increase in damage compared to the Boss Kobold numbers.

• SWF Kensei: 16,539.6 (+3.68%) [+9.96%] {+67.01%}
• TWF Kensei: 16,111.7 (+1.00%) [+7.12%] {+87.05%}
• THF Kensei: 15,207.4 (-4.67%) [+1.11%] {+77.41%}
• VKF Kensei: 11,660.5 (-26.91%) [-22.48%] {+34.16%}
• Assassin: 17,873.8 (+12.04%) [+18.83%] {+73.48%}**
• Tempest: 13,195.9 (-17.28%) [-12.27%] {+54.51%}
• Barb Swash: 14,699.2 (-7.86%) [-2.27%] {+47.72%}

** It's important to note that the numbers for Assassin are likely inaccurate. I noticed that, despite not taking Stunning Blow or any other means of making a target Helpless, I had near 100% helpless damage during the tests. I didn't realize until after I TR'd to the next build, that I was doing tests with Shadow Form toggled on, meaning that I was dealing stat damage to the Kobolds, and thereby making them helpless when their Str is reduced to 0. If Lammania was still up, I'd love to try the tests again, but...it's not.

The builds with Falconry (the standard builds) performed very well compared to most of the other builds, which is only logical. Not only do they have an extra way to induce helplessness (the Falconry Trip Ability), they get extra Helpless damage as part of the tree.

VKF Kensei, in addition to have mediocre damage to begin with, only has 1 way to force helplessness (Stunning Blow), and gets no bonus helpless damage.

However, it is incredibly interesting that both Standard TWF and THF showed a larger increase in damage compared to SWF. I might theorize that TWF is getting in more blows more quickly, and is therefore taking advantage of the helplessness more effectively, but I have no explanation as to why THF would be performing so well. It may just be a funky quirk of the testing, a coincidence.

Conclusion

If you're interested in looking at the actual records I took during testing, you can check out the Spreadsheet here.

All in all, these numbers aren't meant to be representative of the entire playerbase when it comes to damage, it's not even meant to represent most of the playerbase, I was deliberately using subpar weaponry and not taking advantage of debuffs, because I wanted the tests to be as scientific as I could make them, with as few different variables as I could manage.

The takeaway, and what I want to highlight, is the ratios. How well each build does compared to each other, rather than "how well this build does compared to me."

If the Devs intend SWF to do better single-target damage than TWF, then I guess they're in a good spot, and more changes aren't really needed apart from bugfixes. If it's not what they want, well, they can do whatever they like with the data here.

tl;dr
For boss: VKF Assassin > SWF > TWF > THF
For trash: THF > TWF > VKF Assassin > SWF

[hit_fido]

If the Devs intend SWF to do better single-target damage than TWF, then I guess they're in a good spot, and more changes aren't really needed apart from bugfixes. If it's not what they want, well, they can do whatever they like with the data here.

tl;dr
For boss: VKF Assassin > SWF > TWF > THF
For trash: THF > TWF > VKF Assassin > SWF

As per your final ranking - if TWF is better for trash than SWF then it makes some balancing sense that SWF would be better than TWF for bosses.

[Monkey_Archer]

As per your final ranking - if TWF is better for trash than SWF then it makes some balancing sense that SWF would be better than TWF for bosses.

Something seems wrong there. TWF having slightly better trash dps than THF makes sense if the method for helplessness is self, rather than an ally (ie THF is more likely to fail a stun due to less attacks and would result in a slightly lower average) It makes no logical sense for SWF to be that much lower however, so I suspect either something went wrong in the test, or something is bugged.

[DrawingGuy]

tl;dr
For boss: VKF Assassin > SWF > TWF > THF
For trash: THF > TWF > VKF Assassin > SWF

Not exactly sure how you determined those rankings, especially with SWF doing more DPS than TWF in the helpless tests as well. TWF also only has an option for strikethrough via a single class with Tempest, and every other class or build option without Tempest lacks that. SWF not only has better cleave animations, but also can get strikethrough natively with b-sword or d-axe (there is a reason so many are calling for the b-sword to be added again as raid loot). I would either split off Tempest like you did for VKF assassins (Rogues), or not factor them in for Trash rankings.

My opinion and what I thought the original intent of rankings was:

For Boss: TWF > SWF > THF
For Trash: THF > SWF > TWF

The update cleanly put THF at the peak of trash killing with strike-through. The +3x stat damage compounded with the power creep of stats and melee power made them compete single target wise too. Quoting outlier cases of VKF rogues I don't find as the right bar, and the trim of 3x to 2.5x I find to be a very good position for THF. Not so far behind as to make them obsolete for raids (unless you're min-maxing for high reaper raids, but typically then you're cherry picking specific builds anyways and not making a character that is good at both questing and raids), and still amazing for questing. I consider the initial overtune of THF as why so few Tempest builds were left - Pally just was better in everything with THF. This puts them back in the running.

All that said, the buffs to SWF also might be a tad too much. The buff to PSWF was all it needed I think, and the new feat pushes it over the edge. Though

Unfortunately trying to balance all of these is tough because of two major issues: VKF - an entire tree dedicated to a weapon gives it a leg up, and that coupled with Rogue SA+assassin and amazing dagger options (ravenloft raid daggers in particular), they create an outlier TWF DPS tier. The other major issue is animation chopping/twitching. This provides a substantial DPS increase (% increase in the double digits), and while they fixed some sources, not all. The game should not be balanced around cheesing, but until those options are fixed, the meta will gravitate towards it, so it will be tough for the devs to land in a good spot. Overall I still feel they went in the right direction. I feel that a trim to VKF and a boost TWF (such as just adding the combat style bonus to the tiers) would be a good idea, but we'll see.

[Monkey_Archer]

tl;dr
For boss: VKF Assassin > SWF > TWF > THF
For trash: THF > TWF > VKF Assassin > SWF

So as a second data set, I ran the (unboosted) numbers for a basic kensai build using a generic L29 weapon (like your test) vs a keen raid weapon:

L29 weapon base (+ sneak attack)
TWF : 6561 (7481)
THF : 6684 (7298)
SWF : 7607 (8404)

Raid weapon base (+ sneak attack)
TWF: 7359 (8279)
THF: 7523 (8136)
SWF: 8299 (9096)


Overall similar numbers, but the raid weapon does helps close the gap for THF a bit. Whether THF or TWF are higher single target dps depends on how much sneak attack damage you have.

I'd also not that if you aren't using trance on the Vistani and Tempest builds then you are missing out on 500 dps minimum, if not closer to 1000 dps depending on offstat and melee power.

Given this, I'd rate the styles for single target dps:

Vistani Assassin > Swashbucker > SWF > Vistani Kensai > Tempest > TWF > THF

With the caveat that for reliable dps (aka not 100% sneak attack), swashbucker may be better than Vistani assassin and THF is better than TWF.

[Tilomere]

Single Weapon Fighting
New Feat: Offhand Versatility

• Req: BaB 8, Single Weapon Fighting
• Your offhand item modifies your main hand:
  
  • Runearms and Orbs now grant: when you vorpal strike, your next spell automatically crits. This has an internal cooldown of 20 seconds (lasts for 20 seconds).
  • Nothing in your offhand increases your ability score modifier to damage by 25%.
• Fighters may select this feat as one of their Fighter Bonus Feats.

Let's call this SWF#4. Feat cost to have AoE to clear dungeons is too high and arrives too late to develop this fighting style to be able to clear dungeons. A full BaB class like paladin won't get it until level 15, which is too late in leveling:
1 SWF 3 Precision 6 SWF#2 9 IC 12 SWF#3 15 SWF#4 (Offhand Versatility)

A .75 BaB class like cleric won't be able to develop this until level 18:
1 SWF 3 Precision 6 Quicken 9 SWF#2 12 IC 15 SWF#3 18 SWF#4 (Offhand Versatility)

A .5 BaB class like wizard won't be able to develop this until 24
1 SWF 3 Precision 6 Quicken 9 Completionist 12 SWF#2 15 Maximize 18 IC 21 SWF#3 24 SWF#4(Offhand Versatility)

Either make this free as part of SWF (25%, 50%, 75%, 100% crit bonus per tier of SWF and PSWF), or build it into monk, artificer, and alchemist, and wizard feat lists as well, because as-is it isn't accessible for leveling where the vast majority of players are. This means that SWF is a noob choice for the vast majority, since it lacks AoE.

Amusingly, it also means that fighter will be one of the better heroic casters, since their ability to crit fan of knives will be boosted by bonus feats to take this, and damage of fan of knives from ranged power will also be boosted by kensai. Heh.

[DRoark]

Yup, one dead Bladeforged, and Barbarian's on life-support.

Reminds me of the Monk, lost 2.5W damage removing a HEROIC canon-class ability (to fix an EPIC 29+ issue), replaced with... (+5) to hit.
Ranged bow users? Lowest DPS of all the "ranged builds"? Let's drop 20% of their LoS damage! It's not a "nerf", it's a "fix"! You'll see!
Barbarians almost useful after the THF pass? Oops! That's needs "improving", let's lower THF again! They probably won't notice. INT is a dump stat!

Grats. *Golfclap*