Zeperios

If you are getting 1 shot by elemental mage on a necro. Sorry you are never winning that fight. You have a 200% effective HP bar and are still getting 1 shot. Maybe put jewels on or sing warding. Is this not the state of Dion right now? I can tell you it’s worse on TI. If necro stacked is the best class. It’s also the best class non-stacked or near the top. And sorry to say that’s how it’s always been in L2. These changes have no real impact to power. Necro will still be used in mass pvp because of their reliable damage and survival. I can tell you a patch when necro wasn’t the top class or at least top caster class. When there was nobless. Why? Because survivability didn’t matter, you keep all buffs, stand back up on rez and keep fighting. So it was about who 1 shot more people and put rez on CD. Lastly if you are claiming this happened on TI. When and why was necro never not the top pvp class? Legit every CP that is caster has been necro unless they are just going against the consensus for a reason. If you want to complain about your class getting nerfed then you should at least come with some reasonable arguments on why this change is bad.

Check intended interaction for archer buster shot. It says it’s magic. Not worried about damage class, but I think it should be physical. Magic skill means cast speed is driver not atk speed

Can I ask you how much you recast your summon right now? I would argue probably never maybe 1 time per fight. You are either by yourself and kill someone before pet loses all health or maybe resummon once, or you are in a party and your healer is group healing your summon. If you have your summon up in town and with you on log in like all necros do your skill will never be on CD so you get 1 pet resummon with no CD. The 2nd might have a CD for a short time. Other summoners have CD of like 30 seconds. Do you truly recast your summon more than once per 30 seconds? If so maybe you should just spec pony and not necro. Summon is stronger, has transfer pain, and might be more aligned to how you play with spamming pet. This whole thing was meant to be discussion and suggestions. Crying about repayment based off server wide changes is crazy. That would be the death of this server, admins giving away free Ferraris.

Ok good to hear and thanks for response. I didn't want this to come across as a cry post or being negative on all your changes. I wanted to add a bunch of color and rationale behind where I thought there was imbalance and maybe how to fix it. Game balance and one with as many scaling factors as L2 is very challenging to balance, so dont fault you or your team let alone a game you didnt design from the beginning. I agree oly will always have a "meta" class/build/method. Some overpowered archetypes felt longer lasting and didnt know if it was focus of new patch, so felt like it was worth bringing up. However, you were ahead of this so never mind. I think almost all top L2 players know oly can't be balanced, but walking into a 99.9999999999% match is 0% fun. But a 90-10 match gives you something to hope for and roll the dice on. I think that 10% chance is often what people are trying to ask for. As you stated giving that 10% chance without breaking the rest of the game is hard, so looking forward to the changes coming on new patch.

I know @San0 you are working on new patch and other balance, but I want to highlight some balance issues and changes made in quick order that has drastically shifted balance without you intending to. 1) A while back you changed summoners to have longer CD on re-summoning pet. This was meant so that summoners had to work more on their intended class design to protect their pet or else be left vulnerable. This change was not implemented to DA, Paladin, Warsmith, and worst of all Necro. DA, Paladin, and Warsmith while having summons are not technically summoner classes. There is no transfer pain, little to no buffs for their pet, and probably most impactful long casting time for summoning. Necro on the other hand has 2 of the 3 just mentioned and the only 1 missing has little effect on them. Their pet casts extremely quick, they have transfer pain, and while they dont have pet buffs their pet isn't meant to be the sole source of dmg. Now don't be misunderstood that their pet doesn't do decent damage, it does good damage, and because of the class balance being they can re-summon almost instantly it means they can play as a better summoner and just continuously send their pet in like old summoners used to. This is also not the only purpose of this class they have the most CC's, hard hitting nukes, and as stated one of the tankier classes because of transfer pain. Having necro work like other summoners to keep their pet alive or become a squishy nuker should be the intended game design. Please look at adding CD to necro cursed man. 2) Cubic change. I don't play Dion and I think most of TI players were confused because cubic did not feel THAT strong on TI. So a change was made to TI as well where it essentially only hurt people and probably hurt more classes than it helped. The problem of Kitty and SM cubic being able to trigger from out of LoS and CC you was understandably bad because you can never reach a summoner, then you get CC'd and just die/lose. However, this has ALWAYS been the history of cubics and I think an intended design choice of cubics. They are supposed to be NPC like "pets" for classes, but now they are even more reliant on the "master". Kitty and SM still have controllable pets that the summoner can play around so the cubic just added to their strength, but they are still problems because they can nearly kite indefinitely. Classes that have major downfalls to this change are SK and TK which have more dps and support cubics, but now are neutered from being helpful NPCs because they need LoS and in many cases that will never happen. Example: TK smart / root cubic is supposed to be the helpful NPC/pet that lets a TK lock down a target and catch them, but now a TK can be perma-kited and just lose forever. This also extends outside of oly as well, in open world you would want your cubics to support you and your party regardless of LoS. If your low health ally was around the corner you cubic would heal, now your cubic will lose the cast and essentially sit idle for 1 whole cycle. IMO this change was very targeted at Dion not having as much mental resist from boss jewels and essentially changes the LONG history of cubics in L2. I would challenge the GM's to very much evaluate the changes made and ask yourself if this was a beneficial change on the whole or based off people's complaints and potentially roll this change back. 3) The long standing issue of CC in oly, balancing, and the obvious villians: Necro, DA. So I think this is currently a problem of TI more so than Dion, but I imagine will become a problem quickly on Dion with intended design changes coming (again don't play on Dion, but can see progress of server). Every class in L2 has a CC effect so that is 1 way to look at the balance, but sadly not all CC are created equal and this has always been the case. The reason I think this effects TI more than Dion is A grade armor and to a degree S grade armor. a) +6 and +8 set bonuses are almost as strong as set bonuses alone so you pretty much run whatever +6 or +8 set you have. b) resist effects are the only other reason you run a set. It has nothing to do raw stats. So with TI having lots of +8 A grade and A grade having the highest and most vast resist pool in the game it means that many CC's have been degraded further than old design standards. Sleep/Hold resist at 70% and stun resist at 50% is VERY high resist profile and for classes where they only have 1 CC in those profile it almost completely negates their CC style (SE, EE, PP, BD, SWS, BP). Stuns are still strong and many classes have high level stuns now, but not a truly reliable CC because of MJ and MA. I would say the stun resist chance is actually healthy, 50% resist profile means it can happen while not being guaranteed. Now to the villians. Necro, DA, and even WC all have MENTAL based CC. This CC type is not gear resisted (when all players have equal boss jewels) and for Necro and DA they also have multiple forms of CC. So while other classes got their CC nerfed because of armor, these classes stayed the same and recently got major buffs with high level versions of these skills. For a while necro fear was unreliable because it was low level, DA was always strong. But now that fear has a base land rate of 70% (horror 90%) and largely unaffected by anything because the mental based jewels are not terribly hard to get these skills are a major problem again. My suggestion, increase the mental DEFENSE of core/zaken/orfen/antharas to make it so that those jewels are net defensive based not equal attack/defense. Besides WC, necro and DA have other CC styles which means while this being a nerf to those classes, those classes are still strong and have other forms of CC to maintain viability. 4) This is an obscure and not very well talked about balance issue, but I think its time to talk about openly. The state of TI is there is almost no B grade full drops, top A drops from a variety of locations, and improved enchants have been piling up on this server for quite a while through daily enchant boxes and DKs. This is resulted in +16 top A. This is not a bad thing, and arguably a great thing to allow people to progress their characters. Seeing the first +17 Daimon crystal is amazing and terrifying at the same time, as it should be (RIP +21 Sirra). However, this becomes a MAJOR problem when it comes to oly where it is raw stats vs raw stats. Weapons on this server scale MUCH faster than armor and worse jewels. Jewels you are limited because you have to run 4 boss jewels that have set mdef and cannot be improved so you only have 1 piece (neck). Now, way back in the day I think GMs did a good thing and added 82 book to counter this a bit and balance mages a bit; however, this was ~4 years ago now and top A mage weps have well surpassed this balance again. Armor is also a problem because the enchant success of armor is lower than weps and the pdef/HP gain is minimal. So again weapons out scale all defensive capabilities. This is probably best show cased by current state of Titan in oly. This class can sit and DEVOUR a tank through UD in +8 top A armor while spamming heals, necros and most mages casting damage is insane, and gladiators have absolutely wild burst damage (as they should but overtuned a bit). I think this is the hardest tuning to achieve as it is very number specific and you dont have a large gaming studio to run numbers on large sample sizes, but this is obviously a problem. 1 shots should not be a thing on top defended characters as well as a gladi/tyrant should be able to burst a mage down in short order through healing. I'm not sure the best balancing recommendation for this, but it is a problem worth talking about. I know the design team is busy and I hope the community gives feedback as well, but having the design team acknowledge or lightly comment on the topics discussed here would be helpful to know what has/hasnt been talked about already. I don't think any of these topics or ideas are extremely unique, but I also dont think any of them are extremely complicated either so that they have never been implemented means it was either not talked about / or rejected. Either way I would like to discuss the pros/cons of that with GMs and community.

Drop rate of epics is not and was never the issue. It took 4 jewels to make lvl 3 at 33% drop rate. It now takes 8 jewels to make lvl 4 at 66% drop rate. The problem was lvl 4’s took all progress from CP’s and clans and cut by half. If you don’t have full stacked party you were miles behind at the top end. So you had to full stack casters with baium 4 which meant half the number of players had baium. At the time of implementation there was theoretically only enough baium drops throughout 4 years of farming for 30 baium 4s. That means only 30 people have fun while everyone else is getting shit on. Progress and character progression was the exact same speed (4 jewels at 33% or 8 at 66%). It was only slightly faster bc you get the baium 3 effect at 4 jewels even though you are still far behind.

Sano interested to see how the archer class balance works out. IMO archers will never catch up with skills as the base because they are competing against extremely fast casting and in necro's case extremely durable mages. I never offered this as a suggestion, but did you ever consider giving archers a "buff" where they lose -500 crit rating (they would still have remaining from being over 500 with othell), but it gives +100% crit damage. This would send archers back into the old days pre-othell where they are praying for crits, but as a CP it is also competitive because the more archers the higher the probability you have of rolling a crit and killing someone. I know its kind of late as you are about to roll out this new patch, but giving some -crit rate +crit dmg buff would be interesting to archers as they could be PvE viable again in physical CPs without having full archer CP. One of the biggest downsides, which you are trying to fix, is archers becomes utterly useless at the stage of the game Dion and TI are in. They cant farm fast on high health targets, they dont auto faster than mages cast for low health targets, and you are giving AoE but its hard to say that mages wont beat that with aura flash due to no cap and the number of AoE spells mages have.

I think going 1 day only will have a result opposite of the intention of oly. Participation in oly is supposed to be for nearly only 1 goal, to be hero. Hero characters are designated on whole server wide system and given extra glow to be identified. Heroes are supposed to be the STRONGEST characters in the game (clan strength fed them, enforcer took themself, or just best player). Going only 1 day per week means that any emergency could force someone to miss oly and not be hero. That could be regarded as good that there is diversity and someone else wins, but it’s not really the point that you have to play this game 100%. 2 day oly allows people to come either day or 1/2 of both. It allows better players and games the whole time.

Similar topic was brought up for TI long ago. They gave them 35% crit damage buff, but is still no where near enough. You are right something needs to change, but also if you do all 3 of these changes at 1 time archers will become Hi-Five levels of good. x2 crit dmg, added range, and atk speed. Every healer and caster will get focus killed in 0.5 seconds by an organized group because aggression from tank cant hit, 3-4 archers hit and 2 of them crit at x2 dmg, and then reload and atk again before 2nd heal goes off. Yea.......that's a bit overkill to ask for all 3 together. Think its viable to ask for 1-2 of of the 3.

This is not a good solution. Sadly the admins are doing a very challenging task of trying to balance 2 different servers with similar changes. I do not play on Dion, but heard the cubic LoS change was because of Dion problems with kitty cubic. This is an example of broad changes to 2 servers that have HUGE difference of impact. Kitty dominating Dion oly, kitty and SM were competitive on TI. I'm assuming kitty is beatable on Dion now, and SM and kitty are now mid-tier on TI but with 0% chance of beating necro. I would advice caution of having only 1 day of oly at least on TI server for 2 (maybe 3) reasons. 1) NECRO 2) DA 3) lack of class diversity. If there is only 1 day of oly there is ONLY time to play your main character's max games, maybe a few more games on another character. Many people have min/maxed their main character overtime and in pairing with admin's allowing class transfer there is huge numbers of 82+ necros on TI. This is a unique problem because Dion does not have 82 debuffs yet. 82 debuffs from necro are WAY too strong and make necro as busted in oly as 1.0, if not worse because the added debuffs. Necro on TI is 100% not fun to play against, and if changes are made to focus all of those characters onto 1 day and into a few waves, almost no one will have fun. The new system has pros and cons....With waves being size of 10, it is possible to queue your own wave, but if games are flowing there is also a chance that in the 3 seconds to queue all 10 boxes someone else had characters in and you dont have full feed wave. This means that sometimes you get boxes and sometimes you get someone's pretender that was trying to feed. This allows exciting games, but again is very random when it occurs. However, because you can make so many feed waves there are lots of people hiding very deep in waves and never playing competitive games which is not engaging either. I do not know how easy / viable it would be implement retail's old class specific oly that starts wave @ 4 people of same class, but if Friday was class based and Saturday was open that would allow for a bit of both worlds on game quality and quantity. Make it so missing Friday means enemy could feed class high and you have to catch back up in open, or you show up on Friday and have hero matches. There is a balancing act because you dont want people to decide oly only in feed waves of same class so maybe Friday matches are limited to 10 or something? Ultimately, I think more communication from @Koll is needed for a good community discussion. We want games to pop and not sit at oly manager for 2+ hrs with no games, but we also want to be able to fight each other, not just boxes, and hope that server RNG means you got the highest points in feeding contest. P.S. as another idea/solution is there a way to adjust oly points per game instead of maxed at 10? This could allow quicker point swings and encourage people to play hero contesting characters into risky scenarios in order to get more points? This gives high quality games and hopefully encourages more games in order to make-up points lost.

It may happen now, but it never has and was never supposed to. This problem is also worse in the AoE regions (lilith/anakim) while it is also happening everywhere. But with 100% certainty disco was never classed a buff to draw aggro. Buffs / heals could draw aggro while disco is supposed to be combat enhancements that come out every 2 mins and a tank is not supposed to aggression from their disco every 2 mins.

Thanks for all the info, will there also be a .db update for this patch?

Multiple primes were farmed that day, not just 1 person. Lilith used to spawn everyday on double exp weekends. They should have knowledge of how fast it can spawn now. So this wasn’t even fastest spawn.

Over all the years, people still argue with Modoy even though he has some of the most intelligent and thought-out game balance designs lol........ Not all of them are winners but there is at least real thought behind them. CH's: CH's being an auction system favors clans in prime of the auction as well, and the admins should be exactly who you want to regulate the price and market. We don't have complete capitalist society inside L2, so let the admins regulate like they are supposed to. This should be a set price on like your house and over time that price increases. Would you want to get evicted just because someone can outbid you in your existing house. Have CH's being biddable month to month has bigger effects on the whole market of the server by it being another commodity to be traded month in and month out. If there is higher and higher maintenance this a "simple" regulation done by the admins to control the total adena in the server. From a game design and market inference standpoint having higher maintenance fees is a much better use of power from the admins. No Box: As others have said, playing with no box is terrible in L2 in general and especially in classic. For anyone that actually wants no box, I challenge you in the next 1.5 months until new server starts, go play on TI with no box and tell me what it is like for you. I guarantee you after you hit lvl ~35 definitely 40+ you will want to blow your brains out from having to sit down after each mob and that is probably with all the free gear and stuff that TI has now. There is no doubt that playing and building a community is important, but 1 box per person does not change that. You are looking at minimum of 4-5 people for full party. More realistically with fresh server you are looking at 7-9 people constantly with boxes being played at nights to increase total exp of the CP. As far as community and playing with people, there isnt much interaction for like a warcryer in classic who just needs to buff every 20 mins and PPs. SE/EE's at least need to recharge, but people are going to be min maxing setups so running necros, bd, sws, full buffers, OL, DA, BP. For 1 cp you are looking at ~11-12 chars where 4-5 of them do next to nothing. Instead of having AFK friend come back to buff every 20 mins why not donate to the server, and just box it and if you have someone online have them come play and contribute like normal? Boxing changes nothing for active full CP and helps bring in and keep partial CP's that can box the rest and eventually merge/join clan.

Server is lvl 2 for anyone that doesnt look often. You can turn in your Darion badges now.

Yes but there are 2 natives per pack and when fighting a pack 1 is like sacrificed, suicided, or killed by the leader. So does that native death count as -10 or only if a character kills it. If you kill a junior pack "slowly" there will only be 1 native left at the end that thanks you and gets away.

@San0 @Koll@Kse When killing junior summoners and junior huntsman they often kill the Subjugated Native. Does the junior killing those natives cause a reduction in server reputation or only when an actual player does it? If so, killing juniors are a -9 activity? Because juniors are only worth 1 but they kill a slave. Side note, is there a way to have like a weekly report or have an NPC say what the server rep is? Or we just have to blindly grind there until it unlocks to lvl 2. Edit: I ask because we have people that are killing juniors thinking they are helping, but if we are going -9 per pack they are not helping at all.

Ok potentially last point just for admins to discuss and it looks like we should have a good bit of time to decide it. Phase 1 is going to take a month maybe more. Phase 2 can get pushed immediately if you have enough badges. But here is the next long gate. Phase 3, with average drop rate, will take 2 months to clear of perfect farm all from 1 person to collect 40 native treasures. This is also the same time needed to buy a ring yourself. This seems quite unrealistic and I would ask the admins to look into this over the next bit and determine if that is the speed at which native treasures should drop at a server level. Im not sure at what rate you are expecting each hellbound level to take, but if 60 days is what you want for lvl 3 maybe look at a different way to get the ring so in a whole year we only get 6 people with it. This ring doesn’t have that much value anyways because once we hit higher tiers we can just buy potions.

Get we get a little more detail on lvl 5 and lvl 6 of hellbound. We have to kill Derek in lvl 5, but is he just automatically spawned when lvl 5 starts and the server has to kill him? And, in lvl 6 we have to take over the enchanted megaliths, but do we just kill them over and over until lvl 7 unlocks???? Each of the other levels have very defined goals, and wondering if lvl 5 and 6 are meant to be not clear.

@San0 @Koll 1 detail missing from patch notes is database getting updated at same time as server or when is the scheduled update for the database? Thanks!

Info is in the text. There are RB's and mini-RBs.

Overall this is a beneficial change IMO. Farmers were still dominating RBs just to get free weps. Yes, it will hurt new players, but maybe a system can be re-implemented to limit the runes to lvl 6 or have special runes that can be bought and limit the level that way. I dont feel bad for farmers they have the gear and wont be bad. Some of them, good for them for finding it, but exploited a change that was never announced so they dominated RBs when no one thought runes could be inserted.

@Rizos Come back. Your name is being forsaken with these stabs to the face in slow motion. Bring back the good days of real Rizos' step throughs for back stabs.

Did any of these points even get read by admins? Like I think the population understands that there is tons to work on, but there has been no real change or acknowledgement of change for these systems since they really started. If this is even just a talking point, can an Admin say “we read it and will talk about it”

The troll part is you can get owl from 70 rb’s *sometimes*. I don’t know if it was a glitch or it has some random chance to spawn a “higher level” owl, but I have gotten Strix blessing from 70 daily RB before on level 80 char. The next day it didn’t work but luckily a DK dropped one. Still just weird how that whole system functions.