CBDR, there's an iceberg ahead--we're about to hit it.

Started 20 Jan 2021
by omicidi
in Suggestions
First and foremost
Thank you to the developers--I greatly appreciate your time and dedication to the game. This server is the best ruleset I have played on since Mordred. I also greatly appreciate your dedication on improving the gameplay, breaking metas, and keeping a 2 decade year old game as fresh as can be.

Let's talk about Albion
A few thoughts that are swimming through my head. As the addition to new abilities, comes with a particular strength that alb has, that no other realm has. Which is the ability to consistently apply indirect pressure vicariously through a consistent stream of pet spam.

Pet Spam
Fighting albs historically isn't that enjoyable. The proverbial group of: Minstrel, Cabalist, Sorc has 2 incredibly powerful pets--the addition of the theurgist to any composition brings effortless pet spam from a distance John Elway can toss a Vortex Football. Every single fight, you deal with the players plus their companions. With the Theurg in the group, the overwhelming pet spam makes the game far less fun to play--you're pveing constantly in an rvr zone.

Theurgist
Theurgist is an all-around powerhouse that devastates both melee and casters alike--PBT, melee dehaste, 2k pet spam. With the introduction of the tri-debuff, the Spirit Theurg can pet spam and become another damage threat.

My suggestion: The theurgist should have to place itself in danger in order to cast a pet. 1500 range should be the max range of the pet. By reducing the casting range, the Theurg would have to make a risk/reward decision on cast pets on backlines. I would also increase the mana cost of the pet. With current mana mechanics, it's really easy to chug pots, chunk on cooldown. During a reset, it's not unheard of to get an MCL charge out.

Why this isn't a game breaker: Theurgs still have PBT which is a huge requirement in tank versus tank fights, which is where the server appears to be heading. In addition to PBT, the theurg still has dehaste, haste and dps buff.

Minstrel
Minstrel pets are the bane of the existence of any type of fight. It makes 1v1 intolerable to play; and, 8v8 it is virtually un-killable unless you have full control. It often becomes a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation as the minstrel can manipulate CC, and pretty much permanently stay in the backline. Again, should you wheel on the Minstrel, you risk losing major ground, being out-ranged and will get out petted by the alb group.

My suggestion: Lower the max level of the pet that a minstrel can charm tremendously.

Why this isn't a game breaker: Albs will continue to run minstrels for their ability to interrupt, and their realm abilities. Even if the minstrel pet dies, the minstrel has 4 instant cooldowns, and has the ability to twist in charges, flute mezz and can constantly keep a 70 point ablative up every 8 seconds that adds way more value than we give it recognition for--especially coupled with things like PBT, DD, BOF, etc.

Cabalist
So, you need to spec into the spirit line in order to get these insane pet buffs. The reality is this is the most common spec, whether it's tri or full spirit, cabalists will always have fairly overpowered buffs on the pet. Dealing with a cabalist pet can be astronomically annoying as you can't even sprint away from the damn thing.

My suggestion: Remove run speed. Lower the stats and effectiveness of the buffs tremendously. Lower damage and stun proc rate. Remove pet cycle (my favorite thing about the class. Pet cycle, get stupid amounts of power back for those silly long fights).

Why this isn't game breaking: Cabalist's kit already makes the class a powerhouse, even without the pet itself. With disease, nearsight, base debuffs, dehaste, lifetap, damage debuff. The pet's primary goal is to create disruption and cause a minor speedbump in the fight and will continue to do so, even nerfed. It will just be more manageable for the opposing team.

Sorc
I think the sorc pet is fine.


Moving onto melee

Paladin

First and foremost, this class was good before all the buffs. The reason people didn't run a paladin is the effectiveness of an alb caster group with one peel. The paladin does not need a group instant heal. The paladin does not need DD. The paladin has essentially free constant BOF two with the AF chant, provides pretty good peels, guards and slams.

Remove the Friar endurance chant reduction and you'll see an increase of Paladins, even if you striped all the recent additions. Tankers struggle with pot endurance.

Mercs
Back snare is a pretty bad addition to this class, and is the same train of thought as putting snare on a savage or VW. The game is built to play off the strengths of the team--not give everyone on the team everything needed to be individually strong. The merc wears chain armor and has dirty tricks, slam and stoicism. On top of giving it a back snare, the growth rate of the snare is not even on par with standard backstyle--it's higher and in a line you're going to spec to 50 no matter what.

Take merc's back snare away.

Necromancers
Necros are one of those weird classes. You rarely see them, but when you do and they're in the hands of a high skill-cap player and group, it becomes a tier of its own. Tanks can not kill it, can cast six spells interrupted every thirty seconds. These spells can have devastating impacts, to include being melee'd down by earth pets.

My suggestion: Remove conc from necro's RA kit. Lower the duration of the AF debuff on-par with casted debuffs. Lower the delve of the debuff. Potentially put the debuff in another line so that the necro can't be the ultimate power battery, nuker and debuffer. The necro should have to have choose on what to gimp, like many other casters. Lower the pet's armor so that it can get trained down like any other class.

Why this isn't game breaking: Taking a god-mode class, making the player make a decision on what to gimp, and making the player play smartly instead of casting six spells every 30 seconds in the middle of a tank line, un-killable by a melee train is a no-brainer to me.

Melee snares
27 seconds on a melee snare? I'd suggest knocking all snares down below twenty seconds. It's pretty disgusting when you have to win 3x times to equate to one melee win in the melee micro war and then you're snared.

Thanks.
Wed 20 Jan 2021 5:21 AM by ExcretusMaximus
True criticism from someone who plays a lot of Alb, nicely done.
Wed 20 Jan 2021 10:29 AM by inoeth
"Paladin

First and foremost, this class was good before all the buffs. The reason people didn't run a paladin is the effectiveness of an alb caster group with one peel. The paladin does not need a group instant heal. The paladin does not need DD. The paladin has essentially free constant BOF two with the AF chant, provides pretty good peels, guards and slams.

Remove the Friar endurance chant reduction and you'll see an increase of Paladins, even if you striped all the recent additions. Tankers struggle with pot endurance."

yes suddenly after these changes nobody grped pala anymore! no? ah nobody grped pala before too? ok nvm

some goes for all the other stuff, man do you actually play this game or just trolling?
Wed 20 Jan 2021 12:18 PM by ExcretusMaximus
inoeth wrote:
Wed 20 Jan 2021 10:29 AM
man do you actually play this game or just trolling?

He plays the game, and he does it on more than stealthers.
Wed 20 Jan 2021 4:18 PM by soremir
I agree that this is a pretty strong and pretty accurate criticism of Alb as a realm. From my brief time in Midgard, I think this is all fair, and for albs you often do not see how frustrating it can be to play against these classes. I don't 8v8, so if this is supposed to be 8v8 focused then discard this, but you did mention 1v1. But all the realms have cheesy classes that make you groan when you see them pop into view.

I'd say though that the petspam thing is not only an alb thing for sure. I've been in quite a few keep fights where my whole life is trying to smash down the endless horde of underhill companions.

I understand the frustration with minstrels, but let me say, for every time my little mids were getting cheesed by minstrels in Uppland, I've had one of my alb solos run down by the current bard-BM meta, which has only gotten worse with bard's getting root now.

The hard thing about 1v1 minstrels is that its partially a function of the declining ability to solo. That's why I rolled one as an alt, because at least you can avoid getting runover all the time. It's a standard argument, and I won't get into it, but at least my expectation is that by crushing the mini 1v1 capability, you'll see people substituting into infiltrators, not necessarily the classes we would "want".
Thu 21 Jan 2021 3:52 AM by Nephamael
Lets talk about Albion and the 8v8 balance on a more serious note than "nerf everything" ^^.

Minst is in a very tolerable state, still very strong but not completely uncontrollable. you can mezz minst and pet together, slam and snare them, at least the minst has to use a dd or a hit on the pet, costing the minst time and keeping her busy.
It is still a monster in the hands of a great player don't get me wrong, but every class has the right to be that.

The only thing i rly see as a problem is fullbuffed bargasts being unkillable with the current powerpool of casters at 29% resistrate (could be fixed by more powerpool for all casters instead of a minst nerf tho).


Theurg had seen almost 0 play before the caster nerf, simply because Sorc and Cabba are so insanely strong (the 2 casters with the highest utility of all casters in all realms).
I played theurg in Alb tanker before the recent buffs/nerfs with tons of success and agree, you can carry a fight extremely hard if you position well on inc.
If anything then range could be reduced to from 2k to 1850. I think it would still be playable but challenging especially in tanker vs tanker... even tho i personally prefer keeping theurg exactly as it is right now and see how the 8v8 of the next 4 or so weeks plays out before starting to adjust things.


Cabba now has weaker pet-HP, being a huge and long needed improvement for enemy grps. I agree Cabba amber pets are the most sticky pets of all. -Other pets like nature druid pet or sm pet could see buffs to get them in line with cabba pet. Especially movement speed of sm pet (you can outsprint that thing within a second).
- Or all the pets need to become as slow as sm pet making them equally weak.


Friar is actually in a pretty awful spot just like Warden and needed the recent buffs - imo higher staff styles could get higher growthrates to make a resist+staff friar a competitive component of a melee grp and allow friars more than 1 pretty boring spec.


Pally rly needed the buffs and i am super excited to suddenly see pallys in 8v8.

Merc needed a backsnare to be viable at all for 8v8 and the growthrate ofc needs to be the same as other backsnares.

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Actually i would also give clerics a melee specline so they can sidesnare and clerics will have something else to do in fights and be more exciting to play.
This would ofc be a slight buff for all alb 8men but if other realms get attended a bit more than now thats cool.
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Now here is what you can do instead of nerfing. You can buff classes that need buffs anyway:

1) Warden

Warden needs buffs like no other class ingame. Especially for 1 purpose: to make it exciting to play.

Warden could have high growthrate styles at high blunt/blade to make it a considerable dps on low defense targets.
= warden could spec resist+weapon and play as a dps with pbt instead of a healertype without any cc or other offensive capabilities (disease etc, amnesia, ns)

https://forum.playphoenix.online/get-involved/suggestions/28260-the-dps-warden (my approach at a warden melee rework)


2) Ench

Ench with the debuff rework is the most fked class of all - basically no hib caster grp needs an ench anymore for anything but BAOD.

Ench has to spec 49 mana to get the last debuff, all others need to spec 47 = adjust to 47.

If Ench nukes heat with 22 light he is oom faster than any other caster, being a major reason why hib heat train is so underpowered. If the last debuff is at 47 he can spec more light = less power consume, but i still strongly urge the DEVs to increase all power pools by 25% min to counter the HP rework and the debuff changes.

Ench has no rupt over 1500 range = give him amnesia in light spec single at low lvls and aoe later on.


3) RM

RMs RC like is the most gimp spec for any caster in daoc. I suggest giving the RC line aoeroot AND amnesia.
or give them only amnesia and give aoeroot to SMs in Suppression Line.

Eld could also get aoeroot in the equally useless Voidspec to keep things fair.


4SM) sm pets needs to be walking at same speed like cabba amber pet

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those are the most needed changes
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additional slight buffs could be:
5) BM

BM 3ple wield could have additional effects to put it more in line with dirty tricks or vendo. For example a slight defense boost, like 10-15% more parry evade and blockrate while its active, nothing 2 crazy, or 15% additional defense penetration vs enemy evade/parry/block.


6) Hero

Celtic spear needs higher growthrates


7) caster speed on Warden and Healer should be baseline and Warden speed should be not affected by the other chants, like pally endu!!!


8) melee snares more balanced

yes you got a point here

-all 1 style positional snares to 12s, if 2h they can be 15s

-all 1 style anytime snares to 8s, if 2h anytime 12s is ok

- all 2 style snares to 25s

-2 style snares with 2h can be at 32s

easy fix, everyone is happy, snares are still the best cc but everyone has them equally and can decide between the easy short snare and the hard to land long snare options


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That's rly all, if we do all this DaoC Phoenix will be at an amazing balance level for 8v8.
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