Rohan Balance Patch

[Albreiker]

THIS IS NOT THE REAL BALANCE PATCH, THIS PATCH IS COMPILED BY ME AS ADVICE FOR THE GMS

ROHAN Class balancing

For Albreiker:

You told me to deliver a high quality post/advice, after which you’d assess if it’s worthy to give out a reward for the effort. So this is my reply to you.
I do have 2 terms if you wish for me to continue this work:

1. I demand a feedback loop from your team, in which you tell me/everyone what’s discussed and what decisions were made and why. I want to see this posted on the forums so everyone can read what’s going on and can formulate an opinion about it.
2. I’ve put a lot of hours in gathering the information for this post, not to mention almost writing/copying 10k words for the complete balance of all classes. If you want reports like this more often, I want a monthly fee payed in RPs to compensate for the work done.

Prefase:
This balance post will be based on the balance patch from Korea. I have however made many small or big adjustments to make it a better fit for our server.
This balance patch focuses ONLY on balancing things and is thus only part of phase 1. For a complete make-over of skills/buffs see phase 1 & 2

Phase 1: Balance patch for all classes, adjusting current buffs and skills accordingly for PVP & PVE. Some major changes
Phase 2: Revamp skills (Think about premium shot and such) from classes that are currently not used/useless, fine-tune phase 1 results (minor changes).

Overall Balance
Balancing classes is one of the hardest things to do in any MMORPG. Especially if the game is older, 5+ years the balancing is usually done by people who didn’t develop the game but joined in later. They do not have the core knowledge to balance every class and take in all the parameters that are directly paired with the change in skills/buffs.

To balance ROHAN one has to take in account all the items that are in the game, all the different classes strong & weak points, the general ‘’vision’’ the game creators have/had and the difference between veteran and new players. Especially the ‘’items’’ section is complicated because future patches might add items which will unbalance a class that is currently balanced. Another major problem is the difference between PVP and PVE. A change can be really good for PVP but not work at all in PVE, or be quite balanced in PVE but totally overpowered in PVP.

To get a good ‘’balance’’ between all these things, it’s not just required to change skills and buffs. Changing skills & buffs is the most important step, but with it, some itemization will also have to be changed in order to make up for the differences in PVP & PVE as well as the difference in players (veterans vs. new players).

Balance Focus
The general focus of this suggested balance patch will be on PVP & PVE while keeping the strong & weak points of every class in account as well as to minimize the difference between new and veteran players (by some itemization changes).

*Remark*
I’m not responsible for misinterpretation of players/staff, I’m also not responsible for the release of others items or changes that might have a negative effect on my suggestions. Everything I say is based on the current status of the game with my main vison that every class should be able to participate and excel in either PVP or PVE (or both for some) at endgame lvl with endgame gear.

General Philosophy
As most veteran players know, there were some drastic changes in classes their skills/buffs for the past few years.

The most important change was that you couldn’t give buffs away anymore (except for the m.kill buff from dekans and the mana regen buff from white mage, which are probably bugged or forgotten). Either way, the general vision from the Korean devs is to make PVP and PVE more group oriented, meaning players have to work together in partys to defeat their opponents. The updates for the mirror dungeons are done for similar reasons (strong monsters and larger groups require you to party up). I support this philosophy and you will see some of that back in my post.

Another very important change is the cooldown reduction on lots of skills/buffs but with it also the duration of the buff is cut back. This makes a person able to cast it more often and thus use a certain combo more often but for a shorter time. This should improve PVP experience since fights often last no more than 20-30 seconds. Having shorter cooldowns makes people able to have more fights in a shorter timeframe, with longer cooldowns people have to wait for their cooldowns to be back up.

Hello Shannon11,

I will review your proposals and send it to dev-team for evaluation. In case they can not applied, I can make some changes but they can not be massive, I can only make changes progressively.
Maybe I'll contact you later to clarify some points before sending the file.

As for the reward, for now we do not give rewards. But I will try to see that possibility. I think they could be RPs.

Thanks for the effort.

Albreiker

[Albreiker]

That`s the issue no matter what character u play a player decide play on a party or play solo before i use too go demonic solo with my savage 115+23 and farm there now i cant go no where so i stop playing but if i like to play solo i dont need support go play korea like i did was hard but there scouts farming freaking keura solo try it here and there more players them here because of the rates more drops more success they need to fired all of this gm`s and put new ones the care about the players no the money

I think you confuse a GM's work a little, the GMs are here to convey what the players want to the company and the dev-team. The GMs can not decide to change the game, they can only request it. They are the game support.
And just to be clear GMs do not care about the money. They are workers who always strive to give a good service, they do not own the company or anything like that.

[shannon11]

Hello Shannon11,

I will review your proposals and send it to dev-team for evaluation. In case they can not applied, I can make some changes but they can not be massive, I can only make changes progressively.
Maybe I'll contact you later to clarify some points before sending the file.

As for the reward, for now we do not give rewards. But I will try to see that possibility. I think they could be RPs.

Thanks for the effort.

Albreiker

Thanks for checking up, you can contact me via my mail (ticket), I check it daily. You can also post adjustments or progress in this topic so other players are aware of what's going to as well.

As for the reward, this post was to show you I can deliver quality work that's thoroughly thought through. We can discuss further details about this after your team reviewed my proposal.

[walkingdeadnyc]

The last time rohan was balanced was when Dekans roamed the land. Bring back a real DFFS and I will show you balance

[PenguinJoe]

The last time rohan was balanced was when Dekans roamed the land. Bring back a real DFFS and I will show you balance

Those were the days when a brain dead moron could be a winner with his "one click-you're dead" button. Nothing balanced about that. Being able to tank and one-shot in a single class is not balanced. It is pointless and why the dekans were nerfed in the first place..

[sunnyangel]

Koreans designed it so that you can't grind solo anymore in those places, they want you to party with others, you're stronger together. Even with others I understand it can be hard to xp in mirror dungeons, specially damage wise you won't get very far if you don't have an upgraded weapon and other at least medium gear. This is one of the reasons I'm so keen on introducing easy to obtain PVE Attack & Defense. This would make a big difference for the average/new player.



your questions are true but even with a full party you won't survive properly unless the people in it have upgrades and medium gear.



The reason DD was capped is due to the fact that people were able to reach 100% damage drop with one single layer of a damage reducing effect (your weapons), only this layer got capped at 80% to prevent this. To compensate for this cap the koreans introduced shield mastery with 50% blockrate on guards/defenders (which were the ones reaching 100% DD) so they could use mace + shield or dagger + shield, not being bothered by the 80% cap.

You haven't read my prefase and such thoroughly, I'm mainly focussing on skill/buff balancing while taking the current status of the game in mind (for a good reason). Your suggestions are all over the place, if you adjust too many things at once you'll only create chaos and you won't be able to see anymore which parameters had the biggest influence on certain effects.

You need to keep a few important main rules in mind:
1. Only focus on skills/buffs and don't change any other game related parameters (except for maybe PVE Attack & Defense which is a parameter that is only positive and only works for PVE). This way you can see more clearly how certain adjustments improve or decrease the PVP and PVE gaming experience of players
2. Do not nerf any class too heavily or it will enrage people who are heavily invested in these classes and make them quit/charge-back (something the GM's will not alow so it's pointless to suggest this)
3. Adjust skills/buffs in at least 2 phases and preferably more, to observe the effect of certain changes and adjust accordingly in consecutive phases
4. Do not try to totally revert past implementations nor totally neglect comming future ones, the Korean devs will not approve of my suggestions if I tell their ideas are complete horsesh1t. A slightly more diplomatic approach might initially seem less effective but might bear more fruit in the end. (never thought I'd say that, on this forum but for everything's a first lol)

Once these 4 rules are obeyed and completed you can look at different aspects of the game for example:

1. How are we going to deal with indo gear which is totally out of proportion compared to the regular items and unbalances the game (compensation for the ones owning these items? Just delete the items?)
2. How do we decrease the gap between veteran and new players further (release PVE related items to make them able to farm)
3. How are we going to introduce new weapons and how can we make the gap between crafted, upgraded and forge-able weapons smaller (you have made some nice suggestions about this)
4. How can we increase the population of active players and how can we merge Jainus & Isen without people going apesh1t (make crafted weapons better, again just follow your suggestion)
5. How to change SA/CV/PA and other events in order for them to be usefull/fun to participate in and not prone to abuse anymore (certs rewarded for all of them, change PA badge stats etc.)
6. How to adjust the vengeance system accordingly (suggestions have been given for this)
etc. etc.

There is no person who is reaching 100% DD with a single source, offhand weapon is a secondary source, DD armors from irohan event or the PH bloodwar is another source etc. How is the scenario you described any different from crit rate right now? Katar is one source, rings are another source, trans stone is another source crit aura is another source etc. Cap it at whatever you think is acceptable 55%? 65%? there is no reason why you couldnt come up with a number.

I understand that my post was all over the place but I was addressing multiple posts at the same time. I agree with you when it comes to going one step at a time but at the same time I also wouldnt push changes to the live game one at a time. This is where you would push a test client (use that rohan origin infastructure instead of making it collect dust) and allow players to try out the changes one at a time.

I think in an effort to not confuse the GM you set priorities and you make changes based on the outcome not based on whats going on now. The way I see it the changes you made are justifying imbalanced aspects of the various classes because there is something that hasnt been fixed yet which is ass backwards and creates more work in the end.

Maye the first priority should be to fix PVE so those justifications can go right out the window and you can focus on balancing these classes on a pure PVP scale.

[MAYAPUTOMAYA]

The last time rohan was balanced was when Dekans roamed the land. Bring back a real DFFS and I will show you balance

This guy never stop of how his dekan is so op. It’s not gonna happen again. Just go back to bed and keep dreaming.

[sunnyangel]

Especially when some1 sold all his gear already :P

[shannon11]

There is no person who is reaching 100% DD with a single source, offhand weapon is a secondary source, DD armors from irohan event or the PH bloodwar is another source etc. How is the scenario you described any different from crit rate right now? Katar is one source, rings are another source, trans stone is another source crit aura is another source etc. Cap it at whatever you think is acceptable 55%? 65%? there is no reason why you couldnt come up with a number.

Main and off-hand weapons are in fact same source/same layer damage drop, thus why you could reach 100% damage drop (80% axe + 70% dd dagger (30% off-hand stats on dagger of 70% dd = 21% dd) so it's 80+21 = 101% damage drop. This is different from other damage reducing effects like the buff from scout & rumir, which scale in a second layer, becomming less and less effective as layers are added and make you unable to reduce damage by 100%. They capped the damage drop because it made PVP an PVE pointless. While capping it they heavily compensated the classes that lost this damage drop by giving them 50% blockrate.

The reason why I do not like your suggestion, nor come up with a number is because you can't just go around capping stats after releasing all kinds of items for different classes. Critrate is something that affects every class and quite a range of items. If you'd put a cap on it you'd 1. enrage a lot of players and 2. have to come up with compensation for those items/buffs and what not.

I fear that eventually you'd create more problems than that you'd solve.

I understand that my post was all over the place but I was addressing multiple posts at the same time. I agree with you when it comes to going one step at a time but at the same time I also wouldnt push changes to the live game one at a time. This is where you would push a test client (use that rohan origin infastructure instead of making it collect dust) and allow players to try out the changes one at a time.

Changes made will always progress slowely, the USA GM department can only make minor alterations, mostly item-wise. Everything big and everything skill related has to go to the Korean DEV department. 1. The koreans do not speak english (I kid you not) and 2. The koreans plan their patches nearly a year ahead and refuse to make big alterations. This leaves very little room to breath to make proper adjustments. If it were up to me I would change a lot of different things in a few weeks time but that's simply not possible.

I think in an effort to not confuse the GM you set priorities and you make changes based on the outcome not based on whats going on now. The way I see it the changes you made are justifying imbalanced aspects of the various classes because there is something that hasnt been fixed yet which is ass backwards and creates more work in the end.

One of the most important things for the GMs is to keep the amount of players they have and to get more new players. By capping things or ''fixing'' (nerfing items hard) you make people mad. Lots of people have RMT'ed for their items and payed top dollar for that 32% crit katar. You can't just go around and take that away from them, even though it would be better for the overal balance of the game. I have tried to apply a fix with the least amount of ''inconvenience'' and thus having the higest chance of succeeding. There is more to balancing this game than just bluntly changing everything that's unbalanced. If it were that easy it would have been done already.

Maye the first priority should be to fix PVE so those justifications can go right out the window and you can focus on balancing these classes on a pure PVP scale.

You can fix PVP and PVE at the same time with some simple items changes (Elemental Talisman & PA Badge) and with a balance patch that adjusts the skills/buffs.

[sunnyangel]

There you go again justifying overpowered nonsense because you are worried that some hopelessly addicted person is going to quit (newsflash: they wont). People who have extra equipment that adds to their crit rate will offload it and people who are not at the cap will still want to scoop it up I see 0 downside to capping crit rate at 65%. You could upgrade from katar to dagger (assuming katar mastery gets changed the way you want it to) and still hit the crit cap, you could switch to chakras that offer no crit rate increase and still hit the crit cap you could use different trans stones and still hit the crit cap everything is fine.


Either way I dont agree with your way of balancing this game, class balance is only for PVP and pve performance should have 0 impact on those balance changes. Make a priority list and work down it starting with PVE and then moving into the classes if necessary.

Like I said earlier none of these hopelessly addicted folks who were willing to RMT for a 32% crit katar are going to quit over it especially since a 32% crit katar with trans stone and boost lvl 6 hits the crit cap right there.