Announce post #3359: Hunting - Overdrive

Autoposter

5/11/2022 at 6:17
Ictinus, the Architect
Everyone
Hunting - Overdrive

Hi folks,

There is now a new ability in the Hunting skill: OVERDRIVE. This ability is intended to fill some of the gap left by the removal of caramels, and provides some bonuses while affected by shock. It should be particularly good for low armoured or less tanky classes.

We are interested in exploring more conditional/situational options like this that provide for additional dps and risk vs reward without the straight overpoweredness that was caramel chocolates.

On that same note, I want to let you all know that we are also reviewing the power of hazelnut and almond chococolates and may be making changes to these in the near future.

The power of chocolates is so high that their existence heavily limits design space for what we can do in PvE, especially when it comes to balancing bashing areas and bosses without wildly swinging between far too easy and frustratingly hard. Tackling this problem opens up far more flexibility, and will give us some room to consider additional QoL upgrades for these buffs in the future.

Enjoy!

Penned by my hand on Gosday, the 6th of Midsummer, in the year 502 MA.

Neoma

I will be honest and say that all the chocolates changes feels like a kick in the teeth. All those who powered to level 200 using these chocolates had it good, the rest of us presently bashing up will now have a disadvantage and need to work harder. I guess you just want to slow down the climb for whatever reason, not very fair to the rest.

Tetchta

I dunno, maybe it's because I was already coming to terms with not bashing for a while, but I'm glad chocolates are being phased out, as long as it means we get more overall buffs to bashing. I only ever liked them because they made bashing feel the way bashing seemed like it should be (a somewhat-fast power fantasy brrrrr blender that wasn't a guaranteed win, but was still kinda reminiscent of Dystanty Warriors or something). I haven't tested overdrive at all yet, but if we keep getting bumps up to our base experience that papers over it in some way, I'm super into it. I honestly can say that when I went bashing shortly after Caramels were baleeted, it was kind of a relief that I didn't really need to care about them. It was just this lowlevel stress over my shoulders going "hey you're leaving 50% damage boost on the table". As long as the buffs seem like a fair tradeoff, I'm supremely happy the chocolates are finally being murdered.

Also, hey, thank you guys, gals, and thems upstairs for delivering a buff relatively quickly after removing caramels. Really hyped. Do experience next!

Neoma

Tetchta said:

As long as the buffs seem like a fair tradeoff

Overdrive does not even come close to an equalizing tradeoff! Give us a two sip chalice and that would help.

Tetchta

I haven't tested Overdrive myself, but I agree that it's not enough to a fair tradeoff by itself (if I get down to 10% health, I'm basically dead already). I will say, though, given the monetary cost of caramels, I'd be perfectly fine with balance changes that give me the relief of not having to have caramels not quite reaching the efficiency of them. Chalice is its own issue, and imo it shouldn't be a high priority change. Here's some things I think should/could be changed to make bashing compensate for the elimination of Caramels:

• Remove xp loss at the very least from PVE. So much time is lost, especially once you get into the 180's and 190's from deaths.
  
• Wholesale delete grapples, if not all writhe-inducing moves, from high end bashing zones. It's actual Russian Roulette and is 90% of the reason I die anymore. Maybe exceptions for areas like Wel-to which seem to be intentionally balanced to be a group zone.
  
• Redistribute the crit table. A while ago, they redistributed the crit ratio for the various crits to reduce DPS across the board. I think tweaking this to put more weight into heavier crits could make a massive difference. Most of the major DPS increase on average comes from Annihilating crits, so I think those would have to be increased (maybe doubled--which sounds extreme, but they only really proc like 1% of the time (I think, maybe 1.5%, I haven't saved my numbers).
  
• Hey just maybe boost bashing DPS on classes.
  
• Maybe change overdrive so you can also proc it manually after taking some arbitrary amount of damage, or give us another limit break of some kind. Like "every 300% of your health pool of damage you take, you can use a skill that gives you a guaranteed Annihilating critical." or something idk. Lots of ways to do it.
  

In all honesty, I'm looking at this less as a boost to bashing to replace caramels (even though that's the explicit purpose), it seems like a way to make Shock Kinda Neat and make lowbie bashing hopefully less horrific. I agree that it's not enough, but it's encouraging to me to see something come this quickly. Just hope we see more.

Aeryx

I'd really like to see a new thread to talk about what people think would be good bashing changes. Kind of like what Tetchta just did but in its own thread. I have thoughts just like that as well and it really seems that overhauling bashing seems to be on the Pools mind. I'm at work now so I don't have much time to make a thread and put it all out there but the short of it is I think bashing damage and speed needs to be better normalized across all classes because the variance in dps across all the classes is too huge and leads to not much of the classes having as good of an experience while bashing as others, which is clearly evidenced by the most recent Great Hunt final standings.

Legyn

I'm generally happy to see chocolates on the way out. Planning bashing around time-limited buffs that cost credits or silver keystones absolutely sucks. It's great while you can use them, but eventually, there's going to be too many other people bashing and all the areas are going to be cleared out, or an event is going to come up, or someone is going to need you for something, and then you're losing time and a very limited resource. I'd rather see bashing get balanced around mechanics that are more predictable and reliable.

Bulrok

I've hated chocolates since that one time I went into debt over salvage and ended up with enough chocolates to give everyone in Aetolia diabetes.

Good riddance and hello to new bashing changes. Legyn also pointed out some solid points.

Chocolates are just bad.

Kurak

I have been pretty vocal since I joined Aetolia that chocolates are ridiculous. They add an enormous amount of headache into what should be a relatively chill activity. I had some pretty irritating moments surrounding them for my 200 run because it feels pretty bad bashing against people with caramels running without them yourself. And then to further irritate the issue it feels bad to stop and...well play the game in any other way because you are wasting cr.

Overall, I am excited for a world in which exciting toys and tools can be added to bashing without compounding the insane powercreep of chocolates.

Tetchta

Chocolates, aside from balance stresses upstairs, were kind of a low level-mid level anxiety for me with bashing. The way I'm no longer stressed using them now is just nuts. I didn't even realize how much they stressed me out until they were gone. Still think we're a long way from being where we ought to be, but seeing stuff implimented already is very encouraging. Our only relationship with bashing changes lately has been nerfs--would love to see this change.

Sibatti

This isn't the right place for it, but it is probably also time to start a discussion around the level 200 thing altogether....

Tetchta

Let me buy level 200 cowards.

Legyn

Tetchta said:

Let me buy level 200 cowards.

As the monkey's paw curls, Ictinus announces the next auction is going to have a level 200 token... for Iron Coins.

Neoma

@Tetchta I like some of the ideas in your second post: Remove xp loss at level 180 and up, Boosting DPS and the Crit table is weird, like sometimes you get no crits for 6 or 7 hits then 6 in a row. With artifact and augmentic my crits are 56.23%. And no I will not compete with Whirran for grimstims.

Tetchta

Just remove xp loss across the board tbh. It sucks.

Ictinus

Neoma said:

I will be honest and say that all the chocolates changes feels like a kick in the teeth. All those who powered to level 200 using these chocolates had it good, the rest of us presently bashing up will now have a disadvantage and need to work harder. I guess you just want to slow down the climb for whatever reason, not very fair to the rest.

I've seen this mentioned a lot but the 200 push almost never factors into our discussions about PvE changes and our concerns are always centred around balance, mostly to dungeon and event bosses but also to mobs in general.

We have no plans to adjust mints (or chalices, or other sources of xp), which would be a much simpler targetted nerf if our aim was slowing down the 200 push. With the streamlining / standardising of level 200 classes, it wouldn't make sense for us to want to do this. As things stand, removal of caramels is roughly ~12-14% less xp/hour (obviously highly variable depending on your bashing skill and how juiced up your character is) which, while obviously impactful, isn't as big a hit as it may initially seem.

Obviously I realise that PvE changes DO still affect the 200 push, which is a separate conversation we may have to have, but the truth is there's never going to be a vacuum to change chocolates where nobody is pushing towards 200. Because of that, we chose to make the changes now when nobody is more than 50% of the way there (50% = Level 186 approximately, 25% = Level 172, 10% = Level 154) after the latest batch of class releases (and a few more to come).

Benedicto

Ictinus said:

Because of that, we chose to make the changes now when nobody is more than 50% of the way there (50% = Level 186 approximately, 25% = Level 172, 10% = Level 154) after the latest batch of class releases (and a few more to come).

Wow I feel so bad knowing this maths. I'm not even 25% of the way there via PK. Good lord!

Czcienn

Mints make a much bigger difference to the 200 push than all of the chocolates combined anyway.