Preview of Upcoming Changes to Combat Escape AA Abilities

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Dzarn, Sep 30, 2019.

  1. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    This.

    I still miss my potion belt everytime I raid!
  2. roth Augur

    The problem with this approach is, the cost is increasing both as you level (where it gains power in one aspect [level of mob affected], and remains constant in another [1 million hate reduced]) and when you gear up (where it retains its power level and only increases in cost).

    Everyone looking at it as ‘Level X it costs A mana, and at Level Y it costs B mana and it makes sense when the level goes up for the ability to cost more’ are only half right.

    What happens when we get a leveling up expansion? “Everyone” stops raiding for a week or two in order to hit the new max level and do whatever group progression there is to do. After that, raiding resumes and gearing up starts happening. Unlike traditional spells and abilities, which have fixed costs (and thus whose cost as a percentage of your mana/endurance goes down as you gear up) this change has it such that the cost no longer remains constant, and thus increases as you gear up in order to maintain the same percentage of your mana/endurance.

    This means the ability is objectively worse at the end of an expansion than it was near the beginning, after the moment you hit the new max level. And expansions that do not increase the max level find that the ability will be objectively worse at the end of the expansion than it was the day the expansion was released.

    X effect at Y cost. Increasing Y cost without changing X effect AT ALL (which is what happens after you’ve leveled up in a level expansion, and when there is no level increase in an expansion, but you continue to gain gear) makes the ability WORSE, not better.

    I do not care about the increase from 90% success to 100%. I do not like the increase in reuse timer for me, from 3 minutes to 10; I thought I’d crossed that reuse time years ago via AA, coming in from the initial 15 minute reuse. The 1 million hate point reduction, to me, is immaterial to the whole thing. And increasing the cost only makes sense when the effect goes up, and not just because the gear goes up.

    These AA abilities should be treated like every other AA : new ranks every expansion that increase the cost and the level of mob affected. Reuse should not be changed from what it was on 31 July 2019. These are not pulling tools, but there is no known gameplay reason for the dramatic increase in reuse timers (233% increase for Rangers alone, compared to what it is right now).
    Yinla likes this.
  3. Troutfest Augur

    If you think of this as a tax, then it would be like me buying a coke for a dollar and paying 10 cents as a tax. Then Bill Gates goes and buys a coke for a dollar and pays 100 million for a tax. Its the same coke, same number of cokes. As you get better pools of resources it costs more to use/consume once. This is what I don't like about using a percent of max resource pool as the cost of using the ability. Make it cost 10, 20 whatever of base mana and then at least as you geared up you would perform better then someone less geared.
    Gyurika Godofwar and Yinla like this.
  4. Balthen Lorekeeper

    I think a better way to look at it would be:

    Your doctor feels you should only drink 10 cokes a day, anything more is unhealthy for you. He strikes a deal with the clerk because he knows you have no self control. When you show up to purchase your first coke of the day he ask how much money you have on you and divides it by 10. Therefore you only have the ability to drink a maximum of 10 cokes a day.

    Someone else brought up the point, that they will hit max level early in an expansion and then as they gear up thru it the ability cost more and doesn't do anything better. Think about this for an example:

    Option 1
    You are 110 and your mana pool is 225k and your escape cost is 8%, your cost to fade is 18k. You level to 115 and you never upgraded your gear and there was no increase in mana from levels (just for the sake of argument). Your cost is still 18k mana. You have the escape more powerful (up to lvl 120) at no additional cost. I would argue you received the new version for free up to this point. Now it's time to pay the fiddler, you increase your gear to 287k mana and your cost is 23k per escape. You leveled 5 levels and your cost went up 5k mana per escape.,
    Option 2
    You are 110 and your mana pool is 225k and your escape cost 18k. It increases 1k mana every level you increase to 115 at which point your cost is 22k per use. The end result is the same but in option 1 you were able to use the new ability without paying for it in full to you hit max level AND max gear.
  5. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Now consider non level expansions. All that goes out the window.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  6. Aelen Augur


    This doesn’t really make sense to say. Mana pool has typically been less of a character’s limiter than Mana recovery. From classic to modern. What mana recovery looks like, where it comes from, and how much gameplay is involved in it has changed over the years, but at the beginning flow from Clarity and Medding was always more important for determining strength in a dungeon or something than how deep the pool was, with the exception of situational things where using a lot at once changed what you could solo or something. Even still med-kiting was a thing. Makes more sense than it doesn’t, if you can’t refill it, mana pool only ever does something once.

    Mana pool’s arguably increased in power over the past few years. Stuff that increases spending rate and recovery rate have increased slower, as we’ve had fewer level rises. Stuff that increases mana pool have gone faster, as we get that every expansion regardless. Events have had shorter timers pushing down on durations, while the increase in pool has pushed up on how long a pool lasts.

    But with a fixed %, this is pegged to mana pool, which means for any rational view of what this does to your ability’s power over time, it’s going to decrease—unless we see the direction they’ve taken on the rate of change of Mana Pool, Mana Spending and Mana Recovery from expansion to expansion invert, and pool slows down substantially while the other two increase. Then the relationship I’m describing would go in the opposite direction, and it’d get stronger over time.

    Now since they decreased most classes from 20% to 8%, and since this isn’t a frequent use ability for a lot of classes, that probably won’t quickly cause much of an issue. But the idea that %-based costs are a reasonable way to approach mana management is a problem, because anything with more frequent in-combat use will likely compound this issue a lot faster. It doesn’t stop impacting things until the entire system is %-based, at which point the size of the pool is now completely irrelevant--the stat can be safely removed and replaced with a dummy value.
  7. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    No. Your SAME ability costs the SAME 2% mana.

    No different than getting a "new" spell that cost about 4% mana last year and the new version costs about 4% this year to do the same % effect as before.

    Now you just don't ever have to buy ranks X+infinity as you level up to keep the same value.

    Get over it. The complaining about this is absurd.
  8. Balthen Lorekeeper

    Nope, sure doesn't.

    I don't know why I let my self get drawn into debates trying to rationalize things logically when most people just use emotion to make their decisions.
  9. smash Augur

    Maybe you should examine things a bit more carefully.

    You gain mana regen both in an expansion with and without level increase.
    You also get mana regen from items in an expansion with and without level increase
    Your mana increases on expansions with and without level increases.

    Difference: Nothing...

    This is in regard to fading and mana regen .
    You gain no advantage of getting more mana.

    Spells are different:
    You do gain advantage of getting more mana, as they cost less mana compared to your total mana, so can cast more spells.
    With spells you also get better spell focus from exansion to expansion, but mobs will also have more hps.
  10. roth Augur

    I’m in favor of getting an AA with a fixed cost (X mana, not X percent) each level, and buying new ranks as I level, even if the new ranks cost the same % of my total mana pool as the lower ranks did at their lower mana pools. There are two reasons for this.

    One, as I stated in my previous post, tying the cost to the mana pool by percentage causes gearing up to make the same ability cost more absolute mana - a condition that can only reasonably be called “making it worse”. One big reason for getting more mana is to allow you to cast the same spells a greater number of times before running dry. Instead, this change penalizes the player for improving the mana (or endurance) pool.

    Two, this sort of thing is the start of a slippery slope. They tie it to max mana/endurance pool as they said they want to (and put on Test) they don’t ever have to revisit the ability. How long before nukes and heals and other utility effects become tied to a percentage of max rather than having a fixed cost?

    As it is, with this change, getting new gear will make the ability cost more (2% of X is less than 2% of Y when you add mana to D to get to Y) ... by design. The fact that the percentage is the same is not relevant, what matters is the actual point cost of the ability. And that goes up as you level, which makes sense. It will also go up as you gear up, which does not make sense.
  11. Warpeace Augur

    Maybe its simply time to lock this.

    How about we all say thanks to the Dev team for being upfront about the Pulling "Escape" change coming and taking into consideration player feedback. Their original proposal to deal with the escape abilities being used in unintended ways was extremely harsh with a long reuse timer and 20% resource cost. Where we currently are is actually a good compromise and the players still retain the ability with a reasonable penalty for its use.

    So will agro management be up for some love next month? Make agro matter again!!
    kizant likes this.
  12. code-zero Augur

    I personally think the last changes are as good as it gets. As it currently stands the escape abilities were way too exploitable
  13. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    But the AA is still doing exactly the same as it was the expansion before at a higher cost.

    Killing mobs with more HP uses more mana but also gives more exp. What extra do I gain from fade? It is costing me extra but I gain nothing more.

    Many mana recovery AAs do not get upgraded every expansion, we tend to get a lot of level expansions but minimal on non level expansions, last expansion we barely got any AAs at all. Aristo I'm sure will be over the moon (not) to have us badgering every expansion for a better harvest rather than only when we get have level increases....that is unless every expansion from here on out is a level increase then none of this really matters.
  14. Greymantle Augur

    Hmm not seen this come up, but since we are on 23 pages may have missed it. The cost of fading will become a % of your mana . For rangers it is 8% , ouch but way better than 20%.

    Now the question, does the ability look at your total mana pool at the time of casting ? Or your base, unbuffed,un-geared limit. Will make a huge difference in the actual amount consumed.

    Reason i ask, is augs and such that INCREASE such work off the base numbers , not the buffed.
    Dsuna and Gyurika Godofwar like this.
  15. Dagum Elder

    I believe you came up with the solution in your post.

    If the 2%(or 8%) is based off of your base mana. Then the number will be more consistent and gear. The percentage can then be controlled by the devs and by a set number.

    Let's say you have 2k mana unbuffed. Then set the resource cost for that toon to be 500%. Thus making it 10k mana to use. Then the gear that you obtain makes you better again.

    The only time it will get worse is going from one level to the next, however then going through the expansion it will get better.

    This would allow a dev to program specific mana v cost amounts and not worry about changing it every expansion.
    Dsuna likes this.
  16. roth Augur

    Int/Wis and level determine the base mana. Augs and gear simply add onto that.

    Unfortunately, devs have already stated that it will be that percentage of your maximum mana. That means, as you gear up, the cost to perform the fade will increase. As you level up, it will increase. The latter is understandable. The former, is not, not to me at least. But, thats what they are doing, based on this thread and what they’ve put on Test.
  17. Maccuul Elder

    This is all pretty terrible imho.

    My biggest complaint though would be you didn't take into consideration other penalties when determining costs. Shaman for example must remain immobile. The is true of many classes as well.
    But there is no real balance to those with freedom of movement vs being immobilized etc.

    And percentages are just silly... what is next even spell, disc and aa will be a percentage?
    What the heck is the point of an upgrade if it does not actually UPGRADE you.
    Costs should get less as you increase not increase with you.
    I mean could you imagine an Orc Pawn scaling up to hit you harder if you had better gear just to get a crappy Deathfist Belt as a reward?
    Not to mention when you NEED these abilities your are usually at your worst and about to die... and are least likely to have what you need to use it.
  18. code-zero Augur

    Having played a bard for years I look at these complaints and shake my head. Dumping hate is incredibly powerful and as I suspected since '15 non-bards who just got that power have been exploiting the heck out of it.
  19. ShadowMan Augur

    No matter what we say now Dzarn made up his mind and its a done deal.

    But do tell me how everyone using the ability as it was designed based on the timer they had set was exploiting? No one else can run through crowds of mobs and just chain click their fade which is why yours had a cost and no one elses did.

    You also keep implying bards were slighted or that bards had this type of tool first. You are wrong in both cases.
  20. Tumbler Lorekeeper

    Stop trying to surpress ideas and speech. It doesn't hurt to let people discuss things.

    It is a true concern with a percent based ability over a cost.

    No one has stated once what was exploitable with escape the way it was. No Deb has ever explained how it was a problem.

    The way I see it is there is a fix for what the devs need fixed, but they are trying to do this fix without the community. We need to find out what they think is getting exploited and fix that.

    Sadly there are a lot of changes that are negative to the game lately. Like coth and succor not wiping agro. I can dot a mob and succor, this now pulls the mob right to the succor point.

    The problem isn't fade or escape. It is just sad that the devs won't describe the real problem and look for a solution.