PvP balance - What do you think?

[Veerdin]

I've been playing Archeage ever since it launched here in the west, first on retail up until just before patch 3.0, and now I'm hooked again on this private server which is, for the most part, a lot better managed. But one thing has always been the same - The PvP balance in this game is, in my opinion, awful.

Now, I know that the retail version of the game had some major combat changes in the 4.0 patch and onwards, but there's no gaurentee that AR will ever get those patches, nor any gaurentee that they'll be the same as retail (most likely not, from what I've heard, people seemed to hate 3.5 and everything after it.) I've heard conflicting reports of how the combat is. But that's besides the point - Most of us probably have no desire to go back to retail, seeing as AR is, by most standards, a superior version of the game.

So... My question to everybody who has the time to read this is: Should AR get a balance pass? And if so, what should be balanced? I've discussed this on the official Discord, and I heard that the developers were hesitant to make any major changes to the combat balance in case it upset the community, but I figured there was no harm in asking them myself.

So here we have a simple poll, vote on it to say whether you believe the game is fine as is, whether it needs some minor changes, or if it needs a complete overhaul. Keep in mind I'm only talking about combat and skill balance, and am mostly talking about it in reference to PvP (seeing as PvP content is a huge and unavoidable part of the game).

Feel free to discuss which changes you believe should be made, and why - Or alternatively, why you think the current system is fine. Personally, I've already gone on record with some of my thoughts about skill balance (TL;DR: Crowd Control abilities are way too powerful and oversaturated) but I'm curious to hear what everybody else has to say.

Who knows? Maybe this thread will be the first step in getting the game's combat rebalance a bit, and we'll finally start to see people play something other than Darkrunner for a change.

 

[Velorra]

The problem with Darkrunner is that it synergizes too well between the 3 trees, arguably the best synergy as a whole. The problem is to fix that, they'd have to shift skills around to mimic what they did on retail to nerf Darkrunner, and I don't believe the admins here can do that.

 

[Veerdin]

The problem with Darkrunner is that it synergizes too well between the 3 trees, arguably the best synergy as a whole. The problem is to fix that, they'd have to shift skills around to mimic what they did on retail to nerf Darkrunner, and I don't believe the admins here can do that.

Balancing skills involves - mostly - changing numbers and values within those skills. Mechanically, I believe that's well within the developer's power. The only problem is in actually perfecting the balance itself. I do agree that Darkrunner is far too well synergised, though.

Although I think that the solution to that isn't necessarily to nerf Darkrunner synergies, but rather to buff some other classes. I mean, we have 150 of the damn things, but only about 10 or so have any real value in combat, the rest either don't mesh at all, or just aren't as good.

 

[Velorra]

Well when you have 10 skillsets that you can combine, there's literally no statistical way to make them all viable. There will always be a best class for melee/archery/tank/mage/healer/bard/initiator. Changing base values of stats will do nothing but hurt all classes that use the class that gets changed.

For example: With some classes that use Sorcery, cast speed is a problem. You buff cast speed and the mage classes that use Sorcery in that top 10 list get stronger. No one will still play any of the other classes because the top 10 are where the real value is. You nerf base damage in Battlerage and you turn every single Battlerage class into the new Archery. You buff every other skillset except Battlerage and you do exactly the same thing. People will always flock to the most powerful. Synergy is the problem and there's only one way to fix it, and no one wants them to do that lol

 

[Remloss]

I feel like sometimes everyone either needs more HP or to deal less damage. Batttles are over in a few seconds and most of the time the winner is the one that was able to strike first. CC seems strong because it's used to trap you in a chain of inability but if you upped everyone's HP then CC wouldn't disable you for the entire "fight".

You can kinda feel the difference in battle dynamics when playing in gladiator vs the balanced arena. Glad battles last two seconds even when gear score is similar.

 

[Velorra]

i forgot to mention that vitalism in a 1v1 is dumb af too unless you can CC chain your enemy. just played a gladiator arena against a 6k cloth paladin with 30k hp, (i'm 6.4k primeval). couldn't even get him below 5k hp as he'd just pop invinsibility or redoubt whenever his hp is low and skills are on cd.

it's worse in sparring. vitalism should use up muchhhh more mana, it's just dumb to be held hostage in an arena because you can't outdamage the heals and you're just trying over and over until you're out of mana whereas the healer has enough left to kill you.

edit: paladin* not abolisher

Paladin on retail was a meme for 1v1's because it's notoriously a self-heal class. That's just a part of the class itself, you can only counter it by having a Witchcraft class that can drain mana.

 

[Epic]

Honestly, Darkrunners do so much dmg, can pretty much one shot anyone if they're decently geared and taking turns one shotting each other is boring.

All you have to do is remove the Deflect and Retaliate passive from Battlerage that reset all cooldowns and remove some trips (not all)