(german)
What some might have noticed on the official boards, was the idea to adjust health point calculations.
At the moment, the following formular is used:
Health points = 10* Life
The idea was:
Health points = 15* Life
What changes might that bring to the game?
Time To Die in 1vs1 Fights
In duels and other 1vs1 fight, the time to die would obviously increase. Ususally by 50%, but healers and everyone who can manage to survive to second pots will gain more from it.
While 1vs1 is not this game’s focus, as has been stated numerous times, I only see a small increase in risk for ganking melee classes here. This should mostly be offset by the increased cc-length that was introduced with the last balance patch.
Time To Die in 6v6 Figths
6vs6 fights or group based fights in general take a way longer time already, because both sides need to wait for somebody to make a mistake, that they can use.
If those changes were actually applied, it would obviously have increased the time to die even further, since there is more time to react. With increased difficulty, kills should still be possible, if enough cc is applied to either shut down healing or guards for a while.
Burst vs Dot/HoT
Since pure burst won’t be able to score a kill before any reactions are possible, all damage (and healing) over time will get more effective.
This is provided by a higher time to life, making stacking of those effeckts possible. Additionally with the provided time, DoT effects and HoT effects finally have a chance again to do their work in preparing a target for burst.
Last, but certainly not least, the not exsting tick of HoTs on second 0 will get less important, since it will be way more likely, that a target will get more than just a single tick.
Balance
From my perspective, this change would have reduced the efficiency differences in between burst-heavy and dot-classes, since their relative effect on an enemies health pool would have been closer.
On the other hand, DoT itself would have grown more important, since it would have been way more important to keep enemy healers buisy. After all, group heal is usually not the most effective way of keeping a single target alive.
With the longer time to live, cloth healers will also be a bit more effective again, since they are more heavily based on heals castable on the move. Due to those being HoTs ususally, especially the shaman should gain effectiveness this way..
Conclusion
I realise, that it will make fights beween very, very similar groups even longer and less fun for the participants. On the other hand those fights shouldn’t turn up very often, so it would improve the usual gameplay, while reducing the fun of one sort by a bit.
While I do like to run around in small groups or even solo, I do not see that much sense in balancing for rare occurences, especially, while this should only be a band-aid.
Do you have any other reasons, why you’d like or hate to have higher life points? I’d like to hear your opinion.
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Keep in mind that the reason dots do not function well in the existing system is not due to the current HP levels. It has to do with the ease and speed of cleansing and the overall lack luster dots on the dot based careers.
There are single dots that will do the damage of 4-5 dots put together, ability by ability, career by career there is very little balance, when you take damage types, duration, cool downs, tick speed, and damage scaling modifers into effect.
The additionaly, important, consequence of the HP change would have been that any + wounds tactic, buff, or debuff would have greatly increased in power and desirability.
These buffs and debuffs are currently most prevelant on the well or over balanced careers. WP, DoK, Mara, Knight, Slayer and anyone who is RR100.
It would have been an ok change from 1v1 perspective and on paper I agree that it does look nice. I can see a definate benefit from it. But in then end it would mainly work as an indirect buff to the careers that are currently extremely strong, and widen the gap furtuer for the bulk of dot based careers.
If you cannot kill a dok / wp on a dot spec’d engi / magus or AM / Shaman right now when they have 7-8k HP, then you have no chance when they have 10-11k HP.
Hi Karast,
I know, that it wouldn’t have solved imbalances on a class by class basis, but it might have helped hiding them.
I’m glad you answered and I can follow your line of thought, even if I don’t agree with all your points.
Since I’m rarely playing DoT-based classes myself, I mostly speak from a Healers perspective here, so I’d be happy to be proven wrong
I see forcing a healer to cleanse as a very effektive way of keeping enemy healing low, assuming your DoTs are cleansed by a Runepriest, they are effectively reducing his heal output by ~1/3rd, and that is on top of all the other possibilities of making healing harder.
Yes, I agree, that cleansing is a bit to easy at the moment, but from my point of view, this is something that won’t change with the amount of avaible health.
I know, that career balance is not good at the moment, it got worse with the scaling problems of past-sovereign gear obviously.
This was meant to be a band-aid, not a fix and yes, I do agree, that we need some class by class fixes, even if this takes a lot of time.
One ability/mechanic per class per patch would be my dream…
At the moment wounds is the least effective thing to spec via RR, so this doesn’t need to be a bad thing, if they get a bit more desireable. Since all wounds scale the same, the relative benefit of those tactics,buffs and debuffs would remain the same, so I actually do not see any new balancing problems with them.
I actually see a benefit for all non-burst classes with that, since the so-called instant-kills won’t happen anymore.
With more time for your DoTs to tick, there is the option of being a major thorn in the enemy healers’ sides.
I can tell you, that cleansing is bloody dangerous, if there is anyone even remotely under pressure.
That is, what I expected to be the case against most healers to be honest. Obviously an Archmage will have a harder time, but this would(in my opionion) mostly mess with 1vs1, not groupplay.
And honestly, after the last CC-Changes, 1vs1 is even less balanced than it was before anyway.
The largest Benefit, that I see for everyone is longer fights, even if you are not as good as your enemies. That should make it more fun for most.
That actually balancing needs to happen afterwards, is something I fully agree to,
yours
Idrinth