This is useful simulation data to get an initial sense on the magnitude of the change, but it doesn’t answer the predominant question raised across this and the many feedback threads as of late. There’s a lot of frustration from myself and fellow players on the repeat cycle of nerfs: - significant game impacting changes made on a whim, not fully thought through - staff time spent on testing - implemented with backlash - left alone until the next patch, often not reverted even with overwhelming rationale from the experienced player base You mentioned that you were testing this change until 3am before the patch was rolled out- however it is hard for me to empathize with your effort when this was never a change asked for by the community. It’s similar to the specific exp and map changes across many low/ mid level mobs over the past year which likely took significant staff effort to test, but was never asked for by the community. What is the value add here? in many cases, it is clear the secondary impacts of these stat changes haven’t been considered, which make players question these changes more. These nerfs to reduce mules and Thief avoid just makes it more effective to mule blood washed shadower sed mules and run even less inclusive, ranged only attacker parties When will staff realize that NERFS DON’T BALANCE the game? Will nerf story end before all the real players quit this server?
What exactly was the harm in thieves having high avoid? Nerfing the defining feature of the thief class doesn't help other classes have more fun, it only ruins the nostalgic game experience for existing thieves. Big loss for all the players who put a lot of time and effort into their thief characters. Requiring the assistance of SE makes the decision to play NL it's con and that was enough to make a lot of players choose other classes, along with how expensive it is to wash thieves, and Shadowers requiring both a dagger and a shield. What was the sudden trigger or realization that thieves have it too good over other classes *now*? Id also like to add that while NLs can still strategically avoid attacks and knockbacks occasionally, being ranged and all, shadowers are melee af and falling off a platform constantly is not only frustrating but causes the shad to stop attacking, you may as well have nerfed the DPS. I wish that the time spent towards improvement actually went to existing problems brought to light by the community. Such as why do level 200 buccs still miss at certain bosses, even on maple pops? Autoban? Create more content, instead of taking it away. Please fix things that are actually broken and not attempt to alter too much of the original game.
Hi Evan, if you had read the entirety of my post, you would have seen me make the following point regarding HP washing. I have referenced the specific sentences and bolded key phrases for your convenience. Hope this is helpful. On to my thoughts on the core thread: Hi Kenny, much of the responses to your post so far have been largely negative, but I would like to voice my thanks for the work you're putting in for the server. Although we might disagree on the interpretation of testing results, I think it is important to acknowledge that staff members such as yourself have put in considerable time and energy into attempting to balance the game. Thank you for that! However, while I am appreciative of Staff sharing data (e.g. avoid/hit formulas and the data sets presented by Kenny), I feel like we're somewhat missing the point in discussion. Regarding class balancing, we have seen so much valuable input on the forums for archers and heroes - and till this day it feels like no meaningful changes have been successfully implemented. Regarding the economy, hacking and RWT is ridiculously out of hand and legitimate players are getting screwed over every damn day - and till this day all we get in return is the occasional "soontm" joke. There are a multitude of glaring problems with the server, and the "solution" we get is... nerfed avoidability? It just seems so bizarre and far out. To Kenny, again, I really appreciate you sharing data from your test findings, but I broadly disagree with the angle that Staff is taking on this. Since the update release, Staff has been attempting to justify the nerf by claiming that its effects aren't that drastic. In my opinion, this line of reasoning isn't particularly helpful because the main question being asked isn't "how badly will the avoidability nerf affect affect players?", but more of "why the hell was avoidability even nerfed at all?". The earlier posts in this thread have made crucial points and asked critical questions which I feel Staff have collectively avoided responding to, such as: Again - sorry if this comes across sounding confrontational, just trying to voice my opinion on the matter. Peace!
Isn't it aimed at making muling attackers, seeing as this followed the mule threads and this update included other anti mule changes like removing chairs in auf? I guess the logic is that it's easiest to mule on night lords, so they started there. Muling on any class is easy though, so I wonder if there are generic / map wide methods that could make it harder in bosses if that's the goal. The most obvious example is removing pet autopot. That is a big departure from all of royals gameplay thus far though.
This is so discouraging. Working on a washed NL since december 2019 and as I am a poor player, the pots and star NL nerf heavily influenced my activity on royals. I started lvling my NL again this week as it still needs 8 lvls to reach 135, but since this update I’m really wondering why I even should continue. The dream of having a high level character that can boss has never been closer, yet I feel pretty sad and are wondering what I’m doing it for..
i too have a lvl 12x NL that i washed enough.. but i dont think i will play it anymore if theyre going to make it this much harder.. i shouldve made a corsair
What is harder? If you can take one hit from washing and live, because of pets, you're fine, avoid doesn't affect your 1hko or not, your washing does, that, avoid just reduces the pots you use. I'm not seeing the major issue here except the comfort from avoid, which other classes did not have. Archers, also range chars, have to wash more and don't get more avoid. Warriors can tank and don't need avoid to survive. If you can tank, you don't need avoid to survive. The nerf directly addressed how easy NL who have washed, the dominant bossing percentage, exist. Take arms with the washing meta, not the decision to make an extremely comfortable and apex attacker class less comfy
I'd say 77.7% avoid for shad is quite reasonable honestly. Shads have no stance so the avoid and bit of iframes from boomerang is their way to stay on the platform and not fall, nerfing their avoid will make them much worse and just fall every time. The avoid is also their tool to be tanks and it compensates for their low HP (even with meso guard their hp is still low unless you wash them a lot, and they have no other defensive skills like warriors have)
Natsy made a very good point but noone seems to give a hoot on this. Testing hits in HT on your main without considering other environmental factor (etc diff funding & gears ) it is giving quality biased opinions instead of neutral responses from different data sets. All in all, was all this update really well thought out before implementation?
my perspective as someone who only cwkpq's: I feel i need to give a short backstory to fully understand where im coming from. When i first started playing royals my first attacker was a shadower, but soon after it began feeling lackluster because of the lower dps and meso boom mouse clicking may have damaged my hands, with pain that i still deal with to this day if i maple too much. I then switched to a bowmaster for better dps and to get more easily accepted into boss runs, it served its purpose and allowed me to further fund myself. A few months after this period, i started a hero and fell in love with the stance skill and realized how awful the knockback mechanic is and wanted to do what i could to avoid it. As i began progressing, i began doing things i couldnt before like selling vip mon and quad/trio runs, thats when i came to the realization that if i wanted more efficient cwk runs i would need to switch to NL because trying to solo the pirate boss on a bowmaster is tantamount to an episode in self torture. And thus we are in the present day where i happily main both my hero and NL to give added flexibility during my cwk runs, until this patch came a long and nerfed NL's avoid. Now im questioning if we may see a shortage of NL's willing to solo the pirate boss as there's a handful who are reluctant to do so, even before the nerf because of its awful constant knockback inducing attacks. i believe NL is the only job in the whole game who can fill this role the most efficiently and even then its still annoying. I picked NL over other classes because of the stance-like effect the high avoid gives to the class and now that its been reduced, the thought of selling off my perfect craven to fund my hero has crossed my mind. Some people might say my class choices are boring or braindead but i picked them to allow the least amount of knockback and repositioning to limit the amount of pain i feel in my hands while playing, i dont find clicking a few extra keys to be fun, i'd much rather prefer holding down a single key lol. I feel that this nerf has moved my NL away from what drew me in to begin with and as a result cant help but to feel overally negative about it. You can push your most loyal/regular players away, nerfing everything in sight, but there comes a breaking point where, its just not worth it and we may begin spending our time elsewhere.
Belated response to this in particular but the comparison of thieves having high avoid for warriors is stance rather than their HP advantage. Having high avoid does not automatically allow nightlords entry to the variety of bosses in Maple because the probability of getting hit will never be 0. No nightlord is going to walk into Auf Haven, for instance, with 8k hp and pray you won't get hit by it the whole run. In any case, I think a lot of responses in this thread have been very informative and it's unfortunate that there is a big focus on: - justifying NLs deserving a nerf because they're overpowered, because for some reason that's going to encourage people playing this game or playing other classes more? - exploring options to change the nerf to something less drastic rather than asking why it was called for to begin with (I know many have raised the same question) Imagine if staff randomly thought warriors were having too chill of a time in bosses and made a decision to nerf stance to say, 70%. Would this be called for? How would we as a community respond? That's kind of how I see the avoidability nerf. Stop protecting the nerf with statements like "No bossing NL needs evasion" "it's not the end of the world". ^this. Nerfing my nightlord does not make me want to play my marksman any more than I did before Update 71. How is this balancing?
Whether these numbers are accurate or not, any number below 90% would be perfectly reasonable to me for a shadower. It is a melee class that first of all doesn't reach as far with assassinate as any of the warriors' and bucc main attacks. For instance, to hit HT's right arm I'd have to spam bstep most of the time, as well as zak's top right arm which even jumping warriors can hit. Secondly, power stance's 90% is far superior to a 77% chance to avoid, meaning shad would get hit more than twice as often on average, not to mention the small chance for a warrior to avoid a hit too. And shads don't even have the utility to push mobs! As for NLs, I don't think the avoid is broken to a point where it should be changed. I have a lv 200 NL that used to have over 700 avoid iirc and it wouldn't be viable for me to hit HT's Head B from the top right platform because I'd get hit enough to consistently throw me off of the platform. Repositioning is still required often enough to keep looking at my screen. Surely it is a lot more comfortable than playing my BM, but hurricane being such an AFK-able skill and SE being such a strong party buff makes up for it in my opinion. Corsairs can hit specific targets more consistently with their egg, and outdps an NL in some cases anyway. Another thing to mention is that not everyone owns a lv 200 character with a ton of LUK. It was annoying enough for my 175 shad to hit any boss that isn't pushed against a wall before the update, so I don't understand why avoid needed a nerf at all.
Revert the avoid to how it is if anything, changing this stat really kinda took away both the essence of NLs and Shads. Spoiler: A poor joke NL and Shadower are like brothers, NL is the bad brother Shad is the good one who did nothing wrong. Their mom fucks both of them up at the end of the day. Looking at our avoid forumla posted by matt somewhere within this thread. Avoid formula old vs new. (LUK / 2 + DEX / 4) + Equip Avoid + Nimble Body Avoid (LUK / 4 + DEX / 4) + Equip Avoid + Nimble Body Avoid We can’t use /3 due to the server’s limitation. Therefore I’d recommend a adjustment to shadow shifter. As much as i’d heavily recommend to readjust it back, i don’t think the staff team will plainly accept it. - NL, Shadow shifter 15% just like guardian. - Shadower, Shadow shifter 20% and additional Block % when equipped with a shield. Just copy and paste the guardian skill over to Shads.
From someone that played all 3 warriors and both thieves to level 200, I would say stance is day and nights more reliable than shadow shifter and avoid. In practice, the right side of horntail is where shadower's would consistently have to reposition even pre patch #71, so I can imagine how many more times a shadower would fall post patch #71. I feel like these changes are unwarranted to so call attempt to "balance" because not everyone here is a super funded, high level nightlord. Just like the previous nerfs to alchemist and increased recharging costs, this didn't really hurt the players at the top, more so to the newer players just beginning, just washed out or on their way to level 200. I would even dare say these changes are off putting enough for players to completely quit the server or the class itself.
