What happened to epics: Good? Bad? or Ugly?

[bloodbaden]

Technically this is supposed to be a poll thread. but I have no idea how to make a poll thread so... here goes nothin :|.

What do y'all, the players of nod think? Was the epic modification update Good? Bad? or just plain UGLY?

For those of you who dont know, here is what happened: for every epic that had an accuracy higher than "good", the accuracy was reduced to "good" and the maximum and minimum (on some epics) damage were raised to "compensate".

Do you think this was a good update? Or do you think this is one nod could have really done without. Make your opinions known. :P

Personally I feel that for an item to be called "Epic", it should be epic in EVERY sense, damage and accuracy included. Otherwise, its just a bit "special" but nothing more.

Jeff basically castrated the one thing that most of us would spend money to equip. Rather silly business move imo.

[zenga]

It's a bad change for those who rely on the epic procs. It's a good thing for other builds

Archers got trained eye so they are affected less.

Caster's got a major buff from epic gems. We warriors got nerfed big time. WTH crushers are still jack * * * *.

Nothings special about epics anymore.... Uncommon 81 slash is arguably better than 81 epic.

Epic accuracy is ugly imo.

That is my rant.

klip...i luv ya, but i'm gonna have to disagree w/ u on the caster buff w/ epic gems. the gems arn't worth the money, casters have to upgrade their pouches every few lvls of their respective colors used (5-7 avg) and trying to keep epics in teh pouch would be very difficult, not to mention costly, and the gems dont even offer that much of a difference from their non-epic counterparts. heck the rank 6 black dd gem is worse than the rank 5 red dd imo. i mean epic weaponry/armors u upgrade every 11+ lvls or something, so u pay a big price once, and then wait a wile, where as gems, u'd pay a big price every few lvls

Originally Posted by severus

klip...i luv ya, but i'm gonna have to disagree w/ u on the caster buff w/ epic gems. the gems arn't worth the money, casters have to upgrade their pouches every few lvls of their respective colors used (5-7 avg) and trying to keep epics in teh pouch would be very difficult, not to mention costly, and the gems dont even offer that much of a difference from their non-epic counterparts. heck the rank 6 black dd gem is worse than the rank 5 red dd imo. i mean epic weaponry/armors u upgrade every 11+ lvls or something, so u pay a big price once, and then wait a wile, where as gems, u'd pay a big price every few lvls

This has been mentioned before that casters have it worse in the game for just this reason.

Not only do they upgrade armor like the rest of the classes, but the gem pouch if they want to be at the top of the game, or close to it. I think there was even a suggestion to lower the price of gems, or at least curb the rate at which prices rise.

Either way you obtain these epic gems, it is costly. Be it with gold or massive amounts of RT.

From what I understand though, it evens out in the end-game when all of the caster's skills start really affecting game play and they become one of the better classes.

A caster's life is tough in the beginning, and the ones who don't have tons of money to burn, will find themselves further down the line, as opposed to before the epic gems.

Agreed, as a caster I am singularly unimpressed with the obvious lack of creativity (artwork aside, it's really good in many cases) in epic gem effects. Just more DD or DoT gems with nothing more than a 10% variance in cost and damage is so far from what epic gems COULD have been with even a little time given to the imagination.

They are of no use to me as a caster and I suspect to very few others except those who might want them as collectible novelties.

Lets see epic gems with interesting effects like "stop time (or "stasis")", "arcane armour", "Blackout", "fear (for pet delay increase), elemental summoning (one for each colour with different elemental effect), etc...

Now THOSE would be intriguing and epic by definition, not what we did get.

Oh well...

For the epic weapon accuracy adjustment, as stated earlier, if you relied on procs, it sucks to be you. Taking the procs out, though - Jeff has stated that DPS was actually increased a little with the update.

Since Slashers and Piercers have procs that involve dealing damage to the enemy - whether it be with DoT effects (overwhelmingly the case) or with an aura (see BCA) - this gives Crush a significant upgrade in comparison. The DPS granted by procs was reduced by accuracy being reduced - since Crush had no DPS procs to begin with, they suffered no DPS loss. Pierce also has a couple weapons that have non-damage procs: lvl9 2H and 42 1H. Those procs are dazes - yes, potential DPS, but not guaranteed. Piercers were closer to Slash anyway, with Crush falling far behind. I feel that by reducing the DPS Slash is capable of, and reducing to a slightly smaller extent Pierce's DPS capabilities, Crush is now a more viable choice for DPS. Whips, another frequently used option for melee, also saw the DPS that procs add go down. This actually leveled the playing field a bit.

Epic gems... I think the prices people are charging for them on AH are absolutely ridiculous. Casters do spend quite a bit of gold on gem upgrades in addition to armor. I always hate having to upgrade my gem pouches for two melee and an archer, because it's so damn expensive. What we need is for more gems to be sold on AH - not just epics. This would require that regular gems be added as drops. By doing this we would reduce the expenses casters have to put up with and make them more viable from the very beginning.

Lastly: Minroth. GREAT ideas for gems. Seriously, dude. You're about to get +rep.

Well from what I understand, casters now have rescastable, end-game gems able to do 2k+ damage. Thats just Overpowered in my book.

They're weak at the beginning but the numbers endgame show how powerful this class is at its peak.


Edit: excellent ideas, minroth, but we'd have to make sure the Mana and Energy costs correspond with how powerful the gems will be.

Originally Posted by Ehlmaris

For the epic weapon accuracy adjustment, as stated earlier, if you relied on procs, it sucks to be you. Taking the procs out, though - Jeff has stated that DPS was actually increased a little with the update.

Since Slashers and Piercers have procs that involve dealing damage to the enemy - whether it be with DoT effects (overwhelmingly the case) or with an aura (see BCA) - this gives Crush a significant upgrade in comparison. The DPS granted by procs was reduced by accuracy being reduced - since Crush had no DPS procs to begin with, they suffered no DPS loss. Pierce also has a couple weapons that have non-damage procs: lvl9 2H and 42 1H. Those procs are dazes - yes, potential DPS, but not guaranteed. Piercers were closer to Slash anyway, with Crush falling far behind. I feel that by reducing the DPS Slash is capable of, and reducing to a slightly smaller extent Pierce's DPS capabilities, Crush is now a more viable choice for DPS. Whips, another frequently used option for melee, also saw the DPS that procs add go down. This actually leveled the playing field a bit.

Epic gems... I think the prices people are charging for them on AH are absolutely ridiculous. Casters do spend quite a bit of gold on gem upgrades in addition to armor. I always hate having to upgrade my gem pouches for two melee and an archer, because it's so damn expensive. What we need is for more gems to be sold on AH - not just epics. This would require that regular gems be added as drops. By doing this we would reduce the expenses casters have to put up with and make them more viable from the very beginning.

Lastly: Minroth. GREAT ideas for gems. Seriously, dude. You're about to get +rep.

Lol sorry Ehl. I disagree.

Which epic crush wep was buffed exactly?

the 22's are far too few in number to impact crush significantly. The damage is kinda sad even with this update.

The 59s are normal accuracy to begin with so there was absolutely no buff

The 71 2h CRUSH got a buff. O great... another 2h from crush got buffed. That's gotta be useful. Again, the 75's are a better choice... and The slash proc's didn't exactly get nerfed. I know accuracy is down a little. However, you must understand crush has the same fate and we have no benefit from this update. If anything, it conveys how far behind crush is. The 59 crushers are NORMAL accuracy..... *FAIL*


Theres no way crush is on par with slash. And to back that up, slash has dex for parries. Theres no reason to go for an all out str build now, is there?


Oh and I've noticed a VERY significant change to my damage switching from my 22's to the 35. The 22's had exceptional accuracy and the 35's had normal. 90% of the time it hits numbers in the upper 75%.

With the 35's The average is pulled down. The small DPS that good accuracy on epics give could not possibly offer us more DPS. Maybe with variation but this difference will become more evident with each monster you kill.

99.95% of the time, the 22's dont hit anything under 8. The 35's miss 30% of its hits and the numbers are all over the place.

Never said crush was on par with slash... just that the effective proc DPS is reduced.

Here's how!

Let's say you have a weapon that deals 10-100 damage with a 20% chance on hit of dealing 20 damage in a bleed. We'll go ahead and say that you hit about 50% of the time and do 50% of max damage. Over 100 attacks, you will land (statistically speaking) 50 hits for a (statistical) total of 2500 damage. Statistically, ten of those hits will do an additional 20 point bleed, for a total of 2700 damage every 100 swings. THIS IS BEFORE THE UPDATE.

The update happens. The weapon is now 10-110 damage. Accuracy is lowered - we'll say by one tier. You now only hit about 45.5% of the time (based off of previous Glitchless statement stating about 4.5% difference in hit chance per tier). You still do the same percentage and the proc is still exactly the same. 100 attacks, 45.5 land, 55 damage each, total 2502.5. 9.1 attacks result in a proc, so 182 damage additionally. Total damage: 2684.5. THIS IS A DECREASE.

Now, there was some confusion regarding accuracy tiers... Glitchless has also said 3%. So we'll calculate that as well! 100 attacks, 47 land, 55 damage each, total 2585 damage. Of those 47, 9.4 cause a proc - that's 188 damage. 2585+188=2773 total. That makes sense, as they did say that overall DPS actually went up for these weapons!

But how much did it go up by?! 73 additional damage per 2700... that's 2.7037% increase. SWEET RIGHT? YA TOTALLY

Anyway.......... let's take a crush weapon with 10-110 damage before the update. Same accuracy rate, same average damage. 100 swings, 50 hits, 55 damage each, total 2585 damage. No damage from procs, but the enemy DOES get stunned occasionally..... woo, amirite? NOTE: HIGHER MAX DAMAGE FOR THIS WEAPON IS DUE TO CRUSH BEING HIGHER MAX DAMAGE IN GENERAL.

Sorry, needed a disclaimer. Anyway! Update happens, max damage gets increased by the same percentage (10%) to 121. Accuracy drops by the same percentage as the other weapon - 3%. 100 attacks, 47 land, 60.5 damage each. That's a total of 2843.5 damage per 100 hits. WAIT A DAMN SECOND.. That cannot be right! THIS IS SUDDENLY BETTER THAN THE FIRST WEAPON WTF.

Sorry... even I am doubting the math here, need to have Glitchless weigh in here because that just doesn't seem right. I still say the playing field is not even... but the gap between crush and slash has narrowed a bit. As these examples are entirely theoretical, they may or may not carry over into Nod... but damn, if my math is right and this is exactly how the update worked, then I'd have to switch to Crush.

As for your 22 vs 35 argument.... the 22's had exceptional before the update, it went down to great after the update. The 35's I assume either A) were great or lower already, or B) had their accuracy lowered as well. I believe you're arguing that the randomness of the damage makes the 35 less effective than the 22. I encourage you to gather some data in game to show total damage over, say... 100-250 hits per setup on the same mob without any related skills going up. (Hint: fight grey mobs so stats don't go up. since they're grey, do it out of RT or with travel mode on to save that precious time!) If the total damage of using 35's over 100 hits is lower than the 22's then yes, you're right, that's ****ed up. If the damage increases, and is comparable to the increase from the Bloodclaw to Zombie Claws (same level differential) percentage-wise, then crush's DPS progression according to level is fine.

Unfortunately, I highly doubt anyone did such a study prior to the update, so we may never know what the relevant results of said study would be. Thus we can't empirically compare pre-update to post-update DPS. That is................ unless someone still has the stats on the old weapons and uses uncommons/rares of varying accuracy to track exactly how weapon accuracy affects things. I'd prefer if the person tracking this be the same one to do any relevant studies on epic damage DPS comparisons to reduce amount of variables as much as possible, though....

I think there is a way we can get a hard number here for damage both pre-update and post-update while taking into account the effects of accuracy, which we can also narrow down a bit to a more precise number. But it's gonna take a LOT of work... probably more than me and Jimcav ever did on our RWK drop rate studies combined.

Anyone up to the task?

lol
sorry I'm a little lost in your math.

I was one to doubt the adequacy of accuracy before i tried these 35 crushers. I thought the 32 2h crushers were better than the 34's. I thought The 59 crushers were stronger than the 71 rares. But I was wrong. if you've tried a weapon with low accuracy, you'd find that they miss substantially more than you would without. You'd find more variation. What accuracy does is it skews that variation to your advantage, thus granting you a larger average.

Epics with 'ugly' accuracy... I find that a bit discouraging.


Oh and You started the slash wep with 10-100 and crush with 10-110. That's what caused you're mistake?

Klip............ see the note in all capitals in the math post. It tells why the crusher has higher max damage. :P Perhaps the minimum damage should be lowered and I should adjust it to 50% between min and max... *shrug* don't feel like going through that math again atm

Nodiatis is imbalanced, Jeff knows why, debating will not help but maybe time will if he really wants this game to last.

[bloodbaden]

Me personally, I just posted this thread as a poll to the people, (as you see, I didnt give my opinion when I made the introduction)

Here's my opinion:

Being able to inflict more damage on my opponent greatly helps me, considering the fact I am a vampire, and thanks to the update, I can now score crits of up to 104 points of damage on green mobs, and 99 on orange mobs. However, my frustration lies with hitting less frequently I'm not sure whether it's a win or lose situation, however, thankfully I've noticed no significant change in the speed at which i kill mobs due to the update. :P Thus I am neutral here.

At a quandry, if one will.

Well....in my opinion, the epic nerfing is really silly. I mean, they are so rare that you call them epic, and you need to buy virtues to use them. Thus, I would have expected them to be something special.

Now, by nerfing epics it's no longer worthwhile to buy virtues since the rare weapons do the same job for free. It's good for free players, of course But i can't understand why Mike and team bothers creating epic weapons anymore.

I disapprove of the update - Epics should be epic. If he has a problem with them making kills so much faster, reduce the droprate of them. Make them epicly hard to find - not a dead cert after x drops. Make them better, not worse, but make them harder to get.

/endrant

[AOTL]

Originally Posted by Minroth

Personally I feel that for an item to be called "Epic", it should be epic in EVERY sense, damage and accuracy included. Otherwise, its just a bit "special" but nothing more.

Jeff basically castrated the one thing that most of us would spend money to equip. Rather silly business move imo.

i agree with minroth on this one. so to put my vote simply: UGLY

My vote = UGLY

[Sonera]

The epic gems i saw in game are not worth the titel 'epic' and not worth the gold people want for it. If I find one that fits in my pouch I will use it, if not, well, who needs ...