State of TI Oly and Balance

[Zeperios 19]

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.

[San0 2427]

1) its already being addressed in next patch.

2) cubics finish the cast if they start it, if you never see your enemy you should not be able to attack your enemy.

3) its already being addressed in next patch.

4) it eventually always becomes a problem when a server lasts for as long as this one, weapon power with enchant always tend to outscale the defensive counterparts. Need to think what can be done around this.

 

In general you guys need to remember something, L2 was a game created and thought out around large scale pvp and boss fights, where balance if ever existent was tuned around this features and classes designed around this feature.

there will NEVER be a point where olympiad will be balanced just mostly due to the kits characters have and cuz you have 30+ classes that were designed with different roles in mind and different kits, only way oly would ever be balanced would be in a situation of class based matches only, a point that i think even NCSOFT understood and in the most recent patches that are coming out oly has almost no impact in game cuz all you get from it is some marks to buy some rewards and a glow if you get hero, almost everything else has no impact.

just look at the history of olympiad changes with time, and in almost every patch there was changes and in almost every patch after that they made more changes just cuz they never rly ended up having a way it would work good and not piss some people off. they changed arenas, they changed arena types, they changed to be only self buffs, then they changed for everyone to have buffs, then they change to self buff again, they made bonus from augmentations, they changed how this augmentations works, they added talismans, they limited talismans and then added more talismans... they made class based, then try with 3v3 then removed it all and made only normal, now again they remove importance from solo oly and made 3v3 again... now on most recent version you can even use potions. L2 isnt a game that was made for a 1v1 all class to be any how balanced or whatsoever and thats why in every expansion of the game there was always a group of 3 or 4 classes that were always above the others. 

Having this said, we keep trying to give some nudges and tweaks and see what works where and how (few nerfs at a time for summoners, some extras to weaker classes like bd and sws etc), but its always a blanket that never manages to cover the full bed, cuz you nerf a char on oly, they become weaker outside, people stop using it then you try to bring it back a bit on the outside and they become stronger in oly and so on.

 

 

[Lykra 7]

Appreciate the color here and I agree with what you’re saying.

Would you ever consider adding back raid drops to TI for the lower bosses? The market is pretty limited now to a) legacy +16 top B weapons or b) purely A grade from full drops.

I am sure this is pretty discouraging if you are trying to gear up a character and don’t have access to tons of adena.

[Zeperios 19]

1 hour ago, San0 said:

1) its already being addressed in next patch.

2) cubics finish the cast if they start it, if you never see your enemy you should not be able to attack your enemy.

3) its already being addressed in next patch.

4) it eventually always becomes a problem when a server lasts for as long as this one, weapon power with enchant always tend to outscale the defensive counterparts. Need to think what can be done around this.

 

In general you guys need to remember something, L2 was a game created and thought out around large scale pvp and boss fights, where balance if ever existent was tuned around this features and classes designed around this feature.

there will NEVER be a point where olympiad will be balanced just mostly due to the kits characters have and cuz you have 30+ classes that were designed with different roles in mind and different kits, only way oly would ever be balanced would be in a situation of class based matches only, a point that i think even NCSOFT understood and in the most recent patches that are coming out oly has almost no impact in game cuz all you get from it is some marks to buy some rewards and a glow if you get hero, almost everything else has no impact.

just look at the history of olympiad changes with time, and in almost every patch there was changes and in almost every patch after that they made more changes just cuz they never rly ended up having a way it would work good and not piss some people off. they changed arenas, they changed arena types, they changed to be only self buffs, then they changed for everyone to have buffs, then they change to self buff again, they made bonus from augmentations, they changed how this augmentations works, they added talismans, they limited talismans and then added more talismans... they made class based, then try with 3v3 then removed it all and made only normal, now again they remove importance from solo oly and made 3v3 again... now on most recent version you can even use potions. L2 isnt a game that was made for a 1v1 all class to be any how balanced or whatsoever and thats why in every expansion of the game there was always a group of 3 or 4 classes that were always above the others. 

Having this said, we keep trying to give some nudges and tweaks and see what works where and how (few nerfs at a time for summoners, some extras to weaker classes like bd and sws etc), but its always a blanket that never manages to cover the full bed, cuz you nerf a char on oly, they become weaker outside, people stop using it then you try to bring it back a bit on the outside and they become stronger in oly and so on.

 

 

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.

[Sensei 460]

Good post. Much emphasis on the low raids thingy, how to expect anyone new to join if they cant make their low gear?

[Lykra 7]

3 hours ago, Sensei said:

Good post. Much emphasis on the low raids thingy, how to expect anyone new to join if they cant make their low gear?

It’s kind of crazy how dead the market is, would at least give people something fun to do while saving up for A grade… +8 B sets, try for 16+++ weapon, etc.

It won’t displace top gear so I don’t really see a reason to keep it as is (shadow gear with no runes).

[archa 7]

its a good topic

we dont want to nerf necro/DA,just wanna find some methods to deal with these classes not just move your hands out of the keyboard,

fear is very important for these classes,if you dont want to change the rate ,increase the CD of these skills at least,

2*silent//1 fear/1 para,every debuff is painful,when necro flight with these classes who dont cace aoubt fear such like prp/ee/se.necro just play like 

summoners,easy to win dmg with pets,only titian could win necro in oly for now

increase the cd of silent/fear/para and the cd of resummon pets is very important

titan become strong not due to the class,its due to the 16+++TopA weapons,too many 16Top A weapons in TI now,that could make every new ppl feel

depressed to catch up.
 

Edited December 6 by archa

[archa 7]

about the RBs,yeah,I agree with to add back raid drops to TI,it could help the market a little funny,for now nobody farm these low lv rbs unless ppl 

want to exp their new box,it wont affact TI too much,when TI great again,more new ppl come back,we can think about to change it to help newbies 

to farm them not only belong over armed old players.

priests already lv up to lv82,but they still show lv75 on maps,with the process of this server,many epics/rbs increased to lv82 83,its good for players.

Sailren still 80lv like anthars ever,means you have to farm it with lv82 char max,its meaningless for now,you can farm to lv84 in FI,no reason to keep 

this rb in lv80,time to lv up it.

[utangka 0]

This is ridiculous.

What the...

I started playing Necromancer because I was attracted to the Necromancer's Transfer Pain skill.

However, if you suddenly change the summoning delay to a long one like this, enemies in war will kill the summons first and then the Necromancer quickly.

A Necromancer without summons and with weakened debuffs will be trash.

If you're going to patch like this, give Necromancer characters corresponding compensation.

1. Free class change (regardless of 1st or 2nd tier), 2. Learn skills without skill books when changing classes, 3. Maintain buff slot skills without buff slot books, 4. Return dyes to 100% of the adena purchase price. 5. Maintain level when changing classes for characters above level 79 on the Dion server.

Whether it's the Dion server or the Talking Island server, there should be rewards.

If this sudden patch without these compensations is going to make many users leave again.

Edited December 6 by utangka

[utangka 0]

And also

3) If you upgrade EPIC jewelry to solve the debuff problem, users without EPIC jewelry will be trash.

If the gap between light users and heavy users (who have EPIC jewelry) becomes too big, light users will leave. Also, newbies will not come in.

If light users leave, heavy users will also leave because they will have no one to brag about EPIC jewelry.

Just like the company that created Lineage 2 ruined Lineage 2, if the operators of Dion Server and Talking Island Server start to make a huge gap between light users and heavy users, I will leave this server without any regrets.

[Lykra 7]

I don't think anyone is saying kill Necromancer... but this class is in the top 2 strongest classes in Olympiad and is by far the strongest on mass PVP. How can that not warrant adjustment? Nobody wants their main to get nerfed but there are 30+ other classes who could benefit from bringing them better in line.

[Zeperios 19]

9 hours ago, utangka said:

This is ridiculous.

What the...

I started playing Necromancer because I was attracted to the Necromancer's Transfer Pain skill.

However, if you suddenly change the summoning delay to a long one like this, enemies in war will kill the summons first and then the Necromancer quickly.

A Necromancer without summons and with weakened debuffs will be trash.

If you're going to patch like this, give Necromancer characters corresponding compensation.

1. Free class change (regardless of 1st or 2nd tier), 2. Learn skills without skill books when changing classes, 3. Maintain buff slot skills without buff slot books, 4. Return dyes to 100% of the adena purchase price. 5. Maintain level when changing classes for characters above level 79 on the Dion server.

Whether it's the Dion server or the Talking Island server, there should be rewards.

If this sudden patch without these compensations is going to make many users leave again.

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.

[utangka 0]

Rather than nerfing the debuff, it would be better to slightly increase the debuff reuse delay.

And I can accept a summoner-level re-summoning delay.

In the Olympiad, it is very difficult to patch all classes to maintain a similar level. It is impossible.

[이진언 0]

Arbitrarily adjusting the balance can lead to serious consequences. Don't overlook that it can disappoint existing users and rather ruin the balance

[Lykra 7]

I would say everyone agrees you shouldn’t arbitrarily balance classes.

Does anyone disagree that necro is S tier in both Olympiad and mass PVP? Making a balance adjustment in that case would not seem arbitrary at all.