04-30-2012, 01:43 PM
Well the testing was open to public for 2 weeks and very few people expressed issues with it, if people didn't give feedback it leaves me with little to go on. As for PvPing myself, I spend all of my time scripting these changes, literally 3-4 hours blocks of my free time evaporated in the face of C#. So I have no time to do any PvP myself, I still have a job, girl and my other hobbies. Even if I did PvP myself, which now the changes are in I do intend to, it will take quite a long time before I am practiced enough to personally identify deficiencies in the system rather than just deficiencies in my own fighting ability.
But now the changes are global and the forums are public, I imagine after some days or weeks we'll have plenty of feedback to go on. I think people who are already crying are only demonstrating their lack of objectivity though, since you cannot expect to master a system and be playing at the critical edge of balance within the first 24 hours it goes live. I watch people PvP so far and most do not even use any new spells other than GH/FS/Lightning as before, so needless to say the limits of the system and the balance of all the changes are not exactly getting probed at this stage.
Also you say mana regen leads directly to too much survivability, this is only demonstrating to me that you're unable to release the idea that only getting opponent out of mana is the way to win. I'm willing to accept the exact rate may not be perfect, because almost nobody commented on it in testing, but the overall amount of mana available is not much more than before (although pure mana pot spam will give more yes - but at the penalty of no other pot use) so it can certainly be tweaked, and if the balance of attacking spells is right it will be necessary to sometimes drink GH or cure pots in order to prevent death which will on average hopefully bring the overall mana available in line with pre-changes. I'm open to tweaking the numbers once the need for change and the degree of change required is more evident.
And poison spam is pointless since cure is faster and cheaper, the key is learning to time the poison at the right time, which is also the case for proper use of every other spell as well. If people are spamming poison it's because they don't understand that they're in a losing spiral of cure vs poison and that poison only mitigates 30% of the damage so if you poison someone who (at best) mistimes 1 GH and loses 6hp from his heal you've wasted 9 mana and 1s to take 6hp, you would have been better doing a fireball for the same mana and 1.25s cast and doing 14-22 damage or a lightning for 10 mana and 1s cast and doing a guaranteed 16 damage.
I'm not convinced anyone is using the poison mechanic correctly, I've not seen it used correctly and the arguments I've heard (e.g. right in this thread) indicate a lack of understanding of it as well, as I've just explained, so I think people still need to be sensible and objective and actually try things out for a while.
But now the changes are global and the forums are public, I imagine after some days or weeks we'll have plenty of feedback to go on. I think people who are already crying are only demonstrating their lack of objectivity though, since you cannot expect to master a system and be playing at the critical edge of balance within the first 24 hours it goes live. I watch people PvP so far and most do not even use any new spells other than GH/FS/Lightning as before, so needless to say the limits of the system and the balance of all the changes are not exactly getting probed at this stage.
Also you say mana regen leads directly to too much survivability, this is only demonstrating to me that you're unable to release the idea that only getting opponent out of mana is the way to win. I'm willing to accept the exact rate may not be perfect, because almost nobody commented on it in testing, but the overall amount of mana available is not much more than before (although pure mana pot spam will give more yes - but at the penalty of no other pot use) so it can certainly be tweaked, and if the balance of attacking spells is right it will be necessary to sometimes drink GH or cure pots in order to prevent death which will on average hopefully bring the overall mana available in line with pre-changes. I'm open to tweaking the numbers once the need for change and the degree of change required is more evident.
And poison spam is pointless since cure is faster and cheaper, the key is learning to time the poison at the right time, which is also the case for proper use of every other spell as well. If people are spamming poison it's because they don't understand that they're in a losing spiral of cure vs poison and that poison only mitigates 30% of the damage so if you poison someone who (at best) mistimes 1 GH and loses 6hp from his heal you've wasted 9 mana and 1s to take 6hp, you would have been better doing a fireball for the same mana and 1.25s cast and doing 14-22 damage or a lightning for 10 mana and 1s cast and doing a guaranteed 16 damage.
I'm not convinced anyone is using the poison mechanic correctly, I've not seen it used correctly and the arguments I've heard (e.g. right in this thread) indicate a lack of understanding of it as well, as I've just explained, so I think people still need to be sensible and objective and actually try things out for a while.
