[2021] Update from the Trenches: Combat Stats

Howdy y’all!

Blair here with a heads up about some combat stat changes coming to the Test server. Over the past few weeks we have heard y’all and can see in our internal metrics there are nefarious things going with a couple of our combat stats, that are causing abnormally high damage in the right circumstances. We really want to make sure everyone has a great PvP experience, so we don’t want to let these issues not get addressed.

• Armor Destruction (Penetration + Armor Break) stats and debuffs are completely eliminating mitigation values of any kind of armor (plate, mail, leather) on a target, reducing all armor to effectively 0%.
• Personal Damage Modifier (final damage reduction) stats can exceed values we thought only possible by characters using a block power. This stat ended up in multiple buffs which all stack, and the sum total can push an entire group's Personal Damage Modifier up by 40% in some cases.  
• All the resistance stats from the alpha-era passive skill trees didn’t all translate over into talent trees. These budgeted defensive increases left all the players a bit short.

This all adds up into an unpleasant experience where armor values on armor don’t matter, groups must have huge amounts of PDM buffs in order to compensate, and characters who don’t have access to these buffs have a really rough time. While there are a few other smaller contributors, these are the issues we want to tackle first.

So in order to put things in a better spot we are going to:

• Cap penetration values at 20%
• Reduce Armor Breaks to a 10% debuff, and prevent different kinds of Armor Breaks from stacking.

This should prevent the really high values of Armor Destruction.

Also:

• Reduce talent tree Personal Damage Modifier to 3% max available in the tree.
• Reduce power buffs which grant  Personal Damage Modifier to 5% max, and all are in the same stack group, so you can only have 1.

This should stop groups from obtaining really high levels of PDM.

And:

• Add 5%/10%/20% armor resistance in the talent promotion box based on the final armor type that promotion is granted.

This should make up for the missing  from the mitigations, and we will tune as needed.

Again, just giving everyone a heads up on what we are thinking with these, and hope to get feedback from you on the Test server!

When we launch this in Live, every character on your account affected will get a Mystical Tome of Unlearning so respecing is an option.
 

Thanks for the feedback, yes there some tweaks we still need to make, and are working on them. When you are giving feedback focus on the core of the issue;

In the combat formula:
Damage is reduced by ((Armor+ Resistances) - (Armor Breaks + Armor Penetration))
after Damage makes it through that formula it is reduced a final time by PDM.

The vast majority of people have a whooping 0% mitigation after the initial armor calculation.
Which means everyone is relying on PDM as a crutch to reduce damage at all.
PDM isn't easy to get for smaller groups, solo players, people who have no idea. These folks are running around with 0% defenses without knowing it and get melted. There are also some side effects that bleed over into gear, where in sturdier armors are deemed worthless, and any defense that isn't PDM is also worthless.

What is really helpful is feedback where a power or talent was missed. (Humans and their 3% for example, and yes we know about Holy damage, and we will look at it)

13 minutes ago, EvilGhandi said:

I don't understand. People are dying too quickly, so you're creating a way for that to happen even faster?

Am I misunderstanding something?

These changes should not make TTK faster, it should slow it down.

((Armor+ Resistances) - (Armor Breaks + Armor Penetration))
by altering the inputs into this formula, damage is mitigated before it even makes it to the PDM reduction that takes place after the above is applied to incoming damage.
(AB + AP) should be effectively capped at 30% thus the result of ((Armor+Resist) - (AB-AP)) won't be number 0 or lower (like it currently is).

More mitigation before PDM is less damage overall, which will lower those big hits considerably.
The risk of PDM being left at current values + making armor work, is that you now have unkillable groups when they stack PDM.

12 minutes ago, Infraction said:

How is this going to work if PDM debuffs still stack? You limit pen+armor breaks but instead of stacking large amounts of PDM now its capped at 5% but can still be pushed negative.

Those PDM debuffs have to change as well.

@BarriaKarl You are correct, the only real place PDM should have been used was "Block" powers, and that is it.
It permiated outwards from there as everyone really liked the stat, (because it really made it feel like damage was being reduced) with no one realizing that was because the Armor Break/Pen was leaving everyone with 0 armor, thus all these little gains to Resist were in fact doing nothing.

@Yoink Thanks for the proof of work! It very much helps when we can show work, then evaluate it.

I think the values we are assuming;
everyone has 5% PDM post changes from one of the sources. Talent , Group Buff, etc. (5% is no 30% but still a benefit!)
Resist all may be capped at 25%, but the specific resists are capped at 35%, so it is possible to hit 35% from resist all + physical + slashing, etc. (I don't remember why the values were set as this, but it was done back in April 2018 and have been rolling with it since.)

32% Physical Resists + (20% Resist All Plate + 15% Misc Resist (Physical/Slashing, etc))  = 67% Physical Resists.
67% physical Resists - 30% max armor break/debuff = 37% Physical Resists
1000 damage reduced by 37% resists = 630 damage, reduced by 5% PDM = 598.5 damage.

Which is down from 700 damage for plate users in your example.
None of this is means we don't need to slightly increase the resist caps, but you can see that already plate is taking less damage in this scenario than they do with Plate+PDM on Live.
Yes Leather/Mail will be squishier, but shouldn't there be some cost for those 5%, and 10% Damage /Healing bonuses?

3 minutes ago, Yoink said:

You double dipped here a little bit. That 32% physical resists was a combination of armor and resists. My actual armor value in this test was 2800. So you could have 28% (2800 armor) + 35% (2000 resist all from plate and +15% misc) = 63%

Gotcha I thought that 32% was epic plate but we can drop it down 4% to rare.
28% (rare plate) + 35% (resistances) = 63%

Which still puts us less damage taken than the current PDM only version of Live, AND at a benefit of you don't need to rely on group buffs exclusively to have protection, your worn equipment protects you!

I think we are pretty close to the correct values assuming a player can hit those resist caps, and get a single PDM buff/talent?

Just now, Balathan said:

Might be time to revisit that?

Well if we try @Arkade 's advice from above and swap the promotion node grants to straight up Armor Class instead of resist, then the existing disicplines/talents shouldn't need to get touched.

Since 7.100 is really close to launching on Live, and this set of changes needs more iteration time, we are going to move these changes into 7.200 and continue to iterate on them in that branch. This should give us more polish time for other changes in 7.100 and more time to dive into some of the edge cases you brought up with the Combat Stats (like Holy Damage).

Thanks for the pages of feedback, it has given us a few angles to look at!