Damage negation/reflection/thorns

[Boog]

This has been on my mind for a few years and I never really had the desire to post about it, largely due to the fact that I'm lazy.

Damage negation / thorns/ and reflection auras have been around since I started playing. When you are low level they are very useful due to the reflected/mirrored/negated damage being reasonably close to the damage you may receive in combat with mobs or players. That being said, with such massive recent patches that have buffed damage, these gems are nearly useless at high levels, and in fact ay hinder more than help most due to causing slower gem draw speeds for having them in play.

Let's play with some raw numbers. I'm in Ustenar so I will use the rank 8 gems in these lines as examples.

Level 87 white magic, Negation: Aura that grants your group a damage shield reducing all direct damage and attack damage taken by 16

Level 88 blue magic, Reflection: Aura that grants your group a direct damage and attack damage reflector, reducing and inflicting 8 damage to attackers

Level 89 green magic, Thorns: Aura that grants your group a damage mirror that inflicts 17 damage from atacks and direct damages back to attackers

It is my belief that as our damage and hp have increased, these gems are providing an extremely minimal effect and I don't see a place for them even at the levels they are and in the town they are in, to be used in N Lake.

People are doing thousands and thousands of damage in single attacks. Reducing this damage by 16 or 8 and inflicting 8 or 17 damage back to the attackers is laughable. The effects of these gems should scale at a much higher rate in order to be useful.

One idea would be to put a % of damage negated, reflected or mirrored, maxing at a rate deemed appropriate by the developers.

Another idea would be to just buff the numbers that already exist on these gems.

Both ideas have their strong points and downfalls, but in my humble opinion, something needs to be done to bring these gems back to the players' pouches. Any other input on how to make these potentially great gems useful past new player status is much appreciated.

TechnoBooger

[Huggles]

support increasing the numbers but not doing % based mitigation

[Darkdingus]

Let us compare how gems evolve over time.

White heals:
Level 1: 14 instant heal (level 10 white)
Level 91: 380 instant heal (level 91 white)
- Basically, 27 times the amount someone got from level 1.

Red DDs:
- DD 1-15 (level 11 red)
- DD 1-549 (level 85 red)
- A 36 fold increase in maximum damage in less levels. One might say that the heals look like they are on par, give or take, and they'd be right.

White aura:
- 2 damage block (level 8 white)
- 16 damage block (level 87)
- - 8 times increase in just about the same number of levels.

The discrepancy is obvious. Even if one were to say that auras are passive, and shouldn't be as powerful as other gems (I agree), I'm not comparing one to the other, but one TO ITSELF, but at higher levels.

[Smashbros]

i like these gems, and i agree, they dont do enough to warrent using them. is the do unto gems aswell, in theory, ****ing awesome. in practice, not useful enough to warrant.

[Excellence]

Yeaa, these gems can be worked on, I agree , would be nice

[Raith]

Well, I agree that when a 2H crusher hits me for 6k, thorning back 25 damage is a joke.

An immediate problem with buffing them too high is that these proc on pet hits, so if they became really strong it would produce the same PvP problem that hellram shields produce where people start removing their pets etc. to avoid procs... and I doubt Glitch would want this.

But I totally agree that it is an obsolete gem line. If there were weapons that did 10-20 dmg every 6 delay, OK it would be a specific wep counter or something, but currently they just plain aren't as valuable as other gem options.

And a design note: Underpowered doesn't mean 100% useless, it means that it is less effective than all other options. These are underpowered gems, redardless of whether they are 100% useless. Support buffs.

[Conqueror]

They should be percentage based (negate/thorn/reflect a decent percentage of the damage). The amount that they currently negate is too low.

Plus, in my opinion, deft recovery should ignore all auras. If only auras are in play, the draw haste should be maximal (as it is now when no gems are in play). Currently, deft recovery forces one to choose between auras (gem handling) and draw haste.

[Darkdingus]

Originally Posted by Conqueror

They should be percentage based (negate/thorn/reflect a decent percentage of the damage). The amount that they currently negate is too low.

I agree that the amount is too low, but if you grant percentage-based auras, you will also have to grant percentage-based heals (since those don't scale too much with the current level of damage and health available either, and according to your logic, they should)

Originally Posted by Conqueror

Plus, in my opinion, deft recovery should ignore all auras. If only auras are in play, the draw haste should be maximal (as it is now when no gems are in play). Currently, deft recovery forces one to choose between auras (gem handling) and draw haste.

The very fact people have to choose introduces new tactics and builds.
Glitch MIGHT (just MIGHT) want to introduce an epic skill that actually boosts deft recovery by adding a number of "virtual gem slots" that cannot be filled, yet still accelerate gem draws. People with auras would gain a greater benefit from it, but people without would still want this skill to be as high as possible.

Forcing choices is usually a good thing. Do you think the tradeoff is worth it? If you don't, don't use auras. If you do, use them!

[thatperson]

i saw a healer in arena doing 2k heals with a cantrip...can hardly say heals dont scale enough to match current damage

i do think these gems need a buff and a percentage would work excellent but the percentages would need to be like 1-6% max or they would be too OP

[Darkdingus]

There's a flaw with percentages: at lower levels, they do NOTHING.
At higher levels, they climb through the ranks.
This is the reason sloth auras are used so little at lower levels, and so much higher on.

At level 8, a character will have about 190 health. If one assumes fights are meant to last more than 10 hits (which is usually the case), then negating 2 per hit actually reduces incoming damage by 10%, which is quite a huge deal. Making it percentage-based would make this 10% basically 0, because a level 8 aura wouldn't grant any more than 1%, and 1% of 19 is nothing when the game rounds it down.

A worthy compromise would be "Either X%, or Y, whichever's higher", but that would be a boost those auras might not need.

[RogueTigeR]

Damage Negation auras as currently stand, atleast PvE, take off a fraction of a percentage of damage.

A new line of auras that take off a percentage of dmg, rather than a base number of dmg need to be introduced.

Thx
RogueTigeR

[Glitchless]

Not everything is meant to scale nicely to high levels. This is one of them.

[chloe]

can we get some epic damage negate and reflect auras that are worth the space in a gembag at higher lvls?

[RogueTigeR]

Originally Posted by Glitchless

Not everything is meant to scale nicely to high levels. This is one of them.

a couple months ago... u said a damage negation type aura where it mitigates a % of damage rather than a base amt. was a good idea and worth looking into....

I was just resurfacing the idea for you.

[Glitchless]

You'd be better served to bump the thread where that was said. I don't recall saying that.

[Sapreaver]

Originally Posted by Glitchless

They won't be changed, but adding some much lower value % based ones would be a good idea.

Copy of glitchless post and a link to the thread
http://forums.nodiatis.com/forums/sh...ad.php_t=14237

[tsurguyb]

Originally Posted by Sapreaver

Copy of glitchless post and a link to the thread
http://forums.nodiatis.com/forums/sh...ad.php_t=14237

Support!

[Raith]

Originally Posted by Glitchless

Not everything is meant to scale nicely to high levels. This is one of them.

I feel like what you are saying is that you know they suck badly at high levels, but too bad. Am I misunderstanding?

[Glitchless]

Originally Posted by Raith

I feel like what you are saying is that you know they suck badly at high levels, but too bad. Am I misunderstanding?

In essence, yes. But not just to be mean. There's already an issue especially in PvP where players who deal damage in small amounts can see their damage trivialized by defensive procs. Buffing damage negation auras would only make this problem more severe and everyone would be driven to high delay big damage attacks.

Adding a separate % based line wouldn't have this effect, but it really would not be any different from damage mitigation.

[tsurguyb]

Originally Posted by Glitchless

In essence, yes. But not just to be mean. There's already an issue especially in PvP where players who deal damage in small amounts can see their damage trivialized by defensive procs. Buffing damage negation auras would only make this problem more severe and everyone would be driven to high delay big damage attacks.

Adding a separate % based line wouldn't have this effect, but it really would not be any different from damage mitigation.

you mean like... everyone already is flocking towards big delay big damage weapons? Because lets face it that's where nod is heading, regardless if you intended for that to be the case. I feel like you made weapons hit to hard and had to compensate for it by adding more hp(on top of the already supposed epic player hp) Instead of just adding more hp I think negating said damage would work better, maybe not make it an aura but a gem only available to that person(like angelic aura but slightly weaker and able to taunt with it) Because when a tank can get 2 shot in arena even with 20k hp, that's a little ridiculous.