PvP in 3.3.0 and Beyond

"

relithh wrote:

"

Aodui wrote:

The Problems with EA as a Skill

1. Explosions cannot be blocked or dodged
2. Explosions can overlap
3. All 1v1 Maps, and most other maps including Sarn, are littered with places to set off explosions
4. You can set up an explosion barrier thanks to fast attack speed, using items like Quill Rain

Explosive Arrow has been of the best skills in PVP since its inception for those reasons.

It will always get out of control damage wise as long as explosions cannot be blocked or dodged, and explosions are allowed to overlap and hit the same player dozens of times in a second.

One way to fix it would be to apply some Pjur Eros Bodyglide to all of the PVP zones so that arrows can only explode off of other players.

I agree with EA overlaps and such. But it would be extremely difficult to pull off considering the high mana cost, probably 1-2secs. than again you can just wait out the few secs and he has no mana to pop you.

The only reason why it is so strong with overlaps its because of zerphis flask, it allows you to cast infinite amounts stacking insane aps. without bloodmagic and zerphis, he wouldnt be able to overlap like what it is currently now.

"

Aodui wrote:

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OriGinS wrote:

Ea is fine, it really is just the flask. KB/Magma/fireball is 10x worse than EA.

"

stupidcowsss wrote:

EA without zerphi's easily gets stomped on by any other ranged build.
even most players with ea and zerphi get rekt easy by fire ballers/kb/bt etc.

"

relithh wrote:

I agree with EA overlaps and such. But it would be extremely difficult to pull off considering the high mana cost, probably 1-2secs. than again you can just wait out the few secs and he has no mana to pop you.

I agree that EA, without a flask, is fine against KB/Magma/Fireball/

Spoiler

Lightning Arrow

My concern is that it can completely lock out melee or other near range builds with its explosion barrier (spamming explosions over a very large area).

With all of those other ranged skills, melee can get lucky with block or dodge RNG.

If EA players without flasks really do run out of mana, I have not seen it yet, but it would still be a hard gamble to make - do I just sit here and wait, hope that they stop shooting arrows, then make my move?

You have no idea how much mana the other player has, and they can just pretend to be out of mana for a half second any time they want and then start spamming the explosions the second you are in range.

"

PvP

Lol

Please don’t waste precious time on this GGG.

99% player base are here for PvE.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

ThisIsABuff wrote:

Poet's Pen's Trigger

As for current pvp penalty mechanic the most unfair thing is abuse of low cast speed items setup + high attack speed, so the triggered spells cast at 5.2 cast/sec (T= 0.19) rate while pvp penalty consider T > 1

Fixing triggerable spells pvp damage for using trigger delay instead of cast speed would be fine alone.

Volatile Dead

The skill in its current state deal too much pvp damage per single orb.
The skill mechanic is very frustration to fight vs if your build has no certain movement speed.
This skill should not exist at first place.

I don't know what would be a proper pvp penalty for the damage, it's the same as Scorching ray if you nerf it too much it would become absolutely useless in most matchups.

I can only suggest:
T divided by 3, 30% less pvp damage

Explosive Arrow

This skill rather suffer from previous ones-sided nerf, it's unpleasant and not effective to use unless you abuse multiple projectiles overlap

the skill mechanically meant to 'spend some time to create a 5-arrows-stack on the target' so T value should be attack time * 5 + delay.
But the fact arrows explode on any surface if shoot from highground makes T equal to attack time/ projectiles amount

suggestion:

the skill need same treatment as flameblast:

T = attack time / 4 for arrow exploded on obstacle
T = amount of stacked arrows in the target * attack time

Bear Trap

As for announced skill rework I don't see any improvement needed.
it now has limited amount of traps with (relatively) high cooldown.
the skill with extremely high investment would still deal over 15k pvp damage but it should not be as cancerous to deal with as before.

Kinetic Blast

Problems:
After multiple projectile getting destroyed at 150 units range explosions able to cover extremely high sector. if a target stands outside of certain radius from attacker these explosions become invisible.
Explosions able to hit target multiple times per single attack.

Suggestions:
Kinetic blast projectiles should have maximum range reduced so the secondary AoE would be visible each time it occurs in any circumstances.

T divided by 8 or 70% less damage in pvp

Blight

I don't actually think you could do anything here.
1) The skill is absolutely devastating vs non capped chaos res target.
2) The skill is easily manageable with life flasks or 700+ life regen if your build has 75% chaos res, +10% vs Void Gaze, +10% vs Fenumus' chest, +20% vs Void Beacon and have permanent curse immunity flask uptime vs Despair. if any of these conditions do not match - see (1)

Glacial Cascade

With all these shaper/elder items around the damage is simply way too high.
While combined with mines the damage is absurdly high. There is no defensive setup exist that able to successfully deal with GC mines.

Cremation

The skill hit rate vary in range [1, projectiles * geyser] per second
so T constant should consider additional projectiles. Or you may just divide it by 4 (default value)

Minions and Totems

There is something wrong with pvp damage reduction for minions and totems, they deal and take way too high damage, please add this to a drawing board :P

Minion Instability damage is way too high. since the last pvp balance iteration minions got their life and % damage at least doubled.

Flesh Binder 80% less damage in pvp
The caustic cloud is barely visible on sarn arena tileset (not the main problem)
The damage is so high, dead 4-l zombie kills 75% chaos res, 6.9k hp character faster than I can react, even if I directly prepared to hit life flask.
200 ms reaction time + 80 ms server delay + 40 ms latency is the minimum frame length at which things should occur.

Magma Orb, Fireball, Lightning Arrow

These things falls in the same category, and the reason of that is engine limitation.
Projectiles that have been created outside of certain range are invisible to a target. And that would be fine if the projectiles would just disappear at certain rage (150 units huh?) but Fireball and Lightning Arrow both have 'secondary' AoE explosion, so when the projectile getting destroyed it hits everything in that AoE radius, while combined with multiple projectiles and high AoE fireball and lightning arrow create '80 degree' invisible arc of death at 130-180 units range.
As for magma orb, at maximum extra chains stacked it simply bypass 150 units projectile range restriction. it flies away at 200-250 units range being absolutely invisible on at least one game screen.

You can't solve this problem by twitching damage slider, it's a special case.

Herald of

Thunder:

Damage can't be blocked or dodged, the maximum damage is high enough to 'oneshot' 7k HP.
Building character around HoT allows stacking negative cast speed while taking no actual downsides for the skill.
2.6 AoE nerf made this skill a bit less popular than before, but it's still abnormally strong.
At the same time damage range is high enough, sometimes HoT hits are not noticeable.
It would be nice to have some sort of pvp damage normalization for the skill


Ash
the skill tightly tied to unsufficient pvp penalty for minions, it's too effective atm. The burning damage caused by nearby dead minion is way too high.

Contagion, Essence Drain

The damage in short frame is fine but the duration makes these skills very annoying to fight vs.

I'd suggest to half dot duration on skills with 5 sec base

ascendancies

Properly made Wicked Ward build has very few counters in PvP.

Es recharge alone is a fine mechanic, Wicked Ward alone is a strong defense, that is very close to being overpowered in sarn arena,
Wicked Ward with Xirgil's Crank is brokenly effective defense.

Harmony of Purpose is unfair.
Alright, we don't have charges-based build available anymore, but still. A single node that 'turns off' a whole CoC discharge build?! You know, it's really hard to be impartial speaking of this.
The node effect radius should be reduced to 20 units.

Liege of the Primordial, Tukohama, War's Herald
Elemental immunity is just a bad design. Being impartial I have nothing to add.
This nodes' immunity effect should be disabled on pvp arenas.

Gloves enchants

of Fury and of Winter enchants hit multiple times per trigger, the damage is uncontrollable, these two need additional pvp damage reduction.

As far as I can tell gloves enchants have no PvP damage reduction applied. They need some.
'trigger when getting hit' is not a fair mechanic, I think the pvp damage should be as low as possible to the point of being 'unimportant'.

T=0.5
80% less damage for Winter and Fury in pvp

"

NickK_GGG wrote:

Hey guys,

"

ThisIsABuff wrote:

Poet's Pen's Trigger

As for current pvp penalty mechanic the most unfair thing is abuse of low cast speed items setup + high attack speed, so the triggered spells cast at 5.2 cast/sec (T= 0.19) rate while pvp penalty consider T > 1

Fixing triggerable spells pvp damage for using trigger delay instead of cast speed would be fine alone.

Volatile Dead

The skill in its current state deal too much pvp damage per single orb.
The skill mechanic is very frustration to fight vs if your build has no certain movement speed.
This skill should not exist at first place.

I don't know what would be a proper pvp penalty for the damage, it's the same as Scorching ray if you nerf it too much it would become absolutely useless in most matchups.

I can only suggest:
T divided by 3, 30% less pvp damage

Explosive Arrow

This skill rather suffer from previous ones-sided nerf, it's unpleasant and not effective to use unless you abuse multiple projectiles overlap

the skill mechanically meant to 'spent some time to create a 5-arrows-stack on the target' so T value should be attack time * 5 + delay.
But the fact arrows explode on any surface if shoot from highground makes T equal to attack time/ projectiles amount

suggestion:

the skill need same treatment as flameblast:

T = attack time / 4 for arrow exploded on obstacle
T = amount of stacked arrows in the target * attack time

Bear Trap

As for announced skill rework I don't see any improvement needed.
it now has limited amount of traps with (relatively) high cooldown.
the skill with extremely high investment would still deal over 15k pvp damage but it should not be as cancerous to deal with as before.

Kinetic Blast

Problems:
After multiple projectile getting destroyed at 150 units range explosions able to cover extremely high sector. if a target stands outside of certain radius from attacker these explosions become invisible.
Explosions able to hit target multiple times per single attack.

Suggestions:
Kinetic blast projectiles should have maximum range reduced so the secondary AoE would be visible each time it occurs in any circumstances.

T divided by 8 or 70% less damage in pvp

Blight

I don't actually think you could do anything here.
1) The skill is absolutely devastating vs non capped chaos res target.
2) The skill is easily manageable with life flasks or 700+ life regen if your build has 75% chaos res, +10% vs Void Gaze, +10% vs Fenumus' chest, +20% vs Void Beacon and have permanent curse immunity flask uptime vs Despair. if any of these conditions do not match - see (1)

Glacial Cascade

With all these shaper/elder items around the damage is simply way too high.
While combined with mines the damage is absurdly high. There is no defensive setup exist that able to successfully deal with GC mines.

Cremation

The skill hit rate vary in range [1, projectiles * geyser] per second
so T constant should consider additional projectiles. Or you may just divide it by 4 (default value)

Minions

There is something wrong with pvp damage reduction for minions, they deal and take way too high damage, please add this to a drawing board :P

Minion Instability damage is way too high. since the last pvp balance iteration minions got their life and % damage at least doubled.

Flesh Binder 80% less damage in pvp
The caustic cloud is barely visible on sarn arena tileset (not the main problem)
The damage is so high, dead 4-l zombie kills 75% chaos res, 6.9k hp character faster than I can react, even if I directly prepared to hit life flask.
200 ms reaction time + 80 ms server delay + 40 ms latency is the minimum frame length at which things should occur.

Magma Orb, Fireball, Lightning Arrow

These things falls in the same category, and the reason of that is engine limitation.
Projectiles that have been created outside of certain range are invisible to a target. And that would be fine if the projectiles would just disappear at certain rage (150 units huh?) but Fireball and Lightning Arrow both have 'secondary' AoE explosion, so when the projectile getting destroyed it hits everything in that AoE radius, while combined with multiple projectiles and high AoE fireball and lightning arrow create '80 degree' invisible arc of death at 130-180 units range.
As for magma orb, at maximum extra chains stacked it simply bypass 150 units projectile range restriction. it flies away at 200-250 units range being absolutely invisible on at least one game screen.

You can't solve this problem by twitching damage slider, it's a special case.

Herald of

Thunder:

Damage can't be blocked or dodged, the maximum damage is high enough to 'oneshot' 7k HP.
Building character around HoT allows stacking negative cast speed while taking no actual downsides for the skill.
2.6 AoE nerf made this skill a bit less popular than before, but it's still abnormally strong.
At the same time damage range is high enough, sometimes HoT hits are not noticeable.
It would be nice to have some sort of pvp damage normalization for the skill


Ash
the skill tightly tied to unsufficient pvp penalty for minions, it's too effective atm. The burning damage caused by nearby dead minion is way too high.

Contagion, Essence Drain

The damage in short frame is fine but the duration makes these skills very annoying to fight vs.

I'd suggest to half dot duration on skills with 5 sec base

ascendancies

Properly made Wicked Ward build has very few counters in PvP.

Es recharge alone is a fine mechanic, Wicked Ward alone is a strong defense, that is very close to being overpowered in sarn arena,
Wicked Ward with Xirgil's Crank is brokenly effective defense.

Harmony of Purpose is unfair.
Alright, we don't have charges-based build available anymore, but still. A single node that 'turns off' a whole CoC discharge build?! You know, it's really hard to be impartial speaking of this.
The node effect radius should be reduced to 20 units.

Liege of the Primordial, Tukohama, War's Herald
Elemental immunity is just a bad design. Being impartial I have nothing to add.
This nodes' immunity effect should be disabled on pvp arenas.

Gloves enchants

of Fury and of Winter enchants hit multiple times per trigger, the damage is uncontrollable, these two need additional pvp damage reduction.

As far as I can tell gloves enchants have no PvP damage reduction applied. They need some.
'trigger when getting hit' is not a fair mechanic, I think the pvp damage should be as low as possible to the point of being 'unimportant'.

T=0.5
80% less damage for Winter and Fury in pvp

"

lapiz wrote:

Hey

Firstly, thanks for fixing some of the issues with traps.

If given the chance, PvP will always revolve around abusing the damage calculation formula. Currently there are plenty of chances to do so. Most problems arise directly from skill and support gems. The common factor in everything brokenly good is that the skill has multiple hits per attack/cast. This multihitting is either achieved through additional projectiles or the skill’s innate ability to hit multiple times. Kinetic blast is an example that greatly benefits from both of these issues.

Unfortunately there is also a good number of items and passives that are very problematic. Items cause problems mostly on the side of recovery as they can cause the character to have impenetrable defenses. The main culprit in items being zerphi’s flask with the nearly unlimited recovery it provides. The main problem in passives is everything related to flasks as damage doesn’t stick to someone having infinite flasks.

As you also said, the damage calculation formula needs work on a more deeper level. With everything that has been added to the game in the past years, damage has gone up a lot. On top of all this, the formula favours elemental damage maybe a bit too much. It is way easier to deal high damage with elemental skills.

Secondary damage is a big deal in PvP as well (mostly because it ignores almost all defenses). There aren’t too many things dealing it, yet the ones that do are extremely powerful just because of this.

I’ll categorize and explain the main (and “easy to fix”) problems below.

Active Skill Gems

Your list which consisted mostly of skill gems is a good start:

• Volatile Dead – benefits from multiple hits per cast innately
• Explosive Arrow – benefits from multiple projectiles (has a substantially low locked t-value already, which I feel is not a very good solution) and also deals secondary damage with explosions
• Bear Trap – benefits from the locked T-value which is way too high and also deals secondary damage
• Kinetic Blast – gains more hits from additional projectiles and innately has a multiple hit mechanic
• Blight – benefits from having a too favourable locked T-value
• Glacial Cascade- benefits from multiple hits per cast innately
• Cremation – benefits from multiple hits per cast innately and also gains more hits through additional projectiles and also deals secondary damage with corpse explosion


Then the other just as bad problems:

• All mines supported by Remote Mine – the locked T-value this provides is too high, especially if the active skill is further enhanced with Minefield support
• Fire Nova Mine – benefits from multiple hits per cast
• Bladeflurry – benefits from multiple hits per attack innately
• Lacerate – benefits from multiple hits per attack innately
• Barrage – benefits from multiple hits per attack innately and also gains more hits through additional projectiles
• Blast Rain – benefits from multiple hits per attack
• The new 3.3 Rain of Arrows – will benefit from multiple hits per attack
• Spectral Throw – benefits from multiple hits per attack
• Tornado Shot – gains more hits from additional projectiles (although it has a very substantial damage reduction in place already)
• Lightning Arrow - gains more hits from additional projectiles
Molten Shell – has a super high locked T-value which is just brokenly too good
• Molten Strike – benefits from multiple hits and gains more hits through additional projectiles
• Ball Lightning – benefits from multiple hits
• Discharge – has a too high locked T-value
• Fireball – gains more hits through additional projectiles
• Firestorm – benefits from multiple hits (it also doesn’t get punished for faster cast speed like other skills do, because there is already a bad fix in place, locking the T-value to a very high 0,45)
• Flameblast – this one is difficult because it has a very special fix already in place, but the way T-value is currently calculated for it is too favourable
• Magma Orb – benefits from multiple hits and gains power through additional projectiles and has an effective range of 3 screens
• Scorching Ray – has a way too favourable locked T-value in place right now (yes, even after the nerfs it is too good)
• Spark – benefits from multiple hits and gains more hits through additional projectiles
• All skills that have a corpse explosion part – secondary damage is a real problem with these
• All the new 3.3 skills that innately have multiple hits or benefit from additional projectiles

Support Gems

These aren’t necessarily a problem if the downside was in proper relation the upside of the support gem (like it almost is in pve). This is not the case however and these particular support gems provide too large of a benefit to certain skills that have a locked T-value or innately have mechanics that allow multiple hits per cast/attack. This problem is mostly fixed if the issues with the active skill gems are fixed, however it is likely that it would be ideal to maybe add a multiplier somewhere between 0-1 to the T-value of the active skill, if it is supported by one of these gems. Or fix the interaction in some other clever manner. These are too game-breaking at the moment.

• Minefield
• Cluster Traps
• Multiple Traps
• Greater Multiple Projectiles
• Lesser Multiple projectiles
• Volley
• Remote Mine – different in nature to the ones above as it locks the T-value of the active skill absurdly high

Items and passives

Zerphi’s Last Breath: This flask is almost single-handedly destroying pvp currently with the almost free 15k-200k hp regen/s

Flesh Binder: Zombies literally kill people instantly with their farts currently

Passive flask regeneration: This has to go. There is no place for something like infinite potions in pvp. The Ryslatha pantheon as well as Scion and Pathfinder ascendancies and their flask regen nodes are the issues here.

All items, enchants, gems and things that trigger skills: These have to be taken into consideration in damage calculation. They can’t use the normal way of calculating the T-value. Winter enchant is a special case that just deals way too much damage and on top of that scales with additional projectiles.

Aegis and Xirgil’s: Both are very problematic as they provide a unique and easily scalable way to recover resources. These could use some pvp-only fixes.

End note:
Locking T-values is not a good way to fix things. It will eventually cause opportunities to take advantage of it. The simple increases and reductions that apply in pvp only are also a fairly bad way to do it because it doesn't tackle down the core mechanical issues.

I propose you add a relative variable that affects the T-values of the skills. Creating such a component for everything might be a lot of work and who knows might even not be possible, but I feel that would be the ideal way to do it if you want to look long term.