Warden/Carnifex PvE has been ruined

TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
edited January 2022 in Sparring Grounds
So let's cut to the jib. Warden/Carnifex got a colossally punitive nerf in Changelog 1972, somewhat misleadingly named "PVE Tweaks" instead of "massive changes." At a glance, this may seem like salt about Warden/Carnifex Damage, but I think we all know that that a nerf was coming, since buffing PVE in other classes has always been dismissed, for reasons I can only ascertain as "Sorry, that'd be too much fun." There's going to be a modest amount of snark in this post because, honestly, I'm pretty peeved about this change. Anyway, it's not about damage, it's about this:

- Batter endurance cost increased to 30, up from 25.
- Bite (camus or sumac) endurance cost lowered to 30, down from 40.
- Bonedagger endurance cost reduced to 30, down from 35.
- Chop endurance cost increased to 25, up from 20.
- Crux willpower cost increased to 30, up from 15.
- DoubleBash / Maul endurance cost increased to 25 per, up from 15.
- Lightning / Ashfall willpower cost increased to 30, up from 5.
- Pummel and Sunkick endurance cost increased to 20, up from 10.
- Spinning / Lacerate endurance cost increased to 25 per, up from 15.
Among these "tweaks" to damage, there was a pretty substantial penalty for moves added in to the bashing skills of a ton of classes, ranging anywhere from 20-500%. This post is going to be about Warden/Carnifex's 66% increase, though after scanning it over, I'm curious if anybody has tested Lighting bashing yet, given it's received the most punative increase. Pummel/Sunkick and Crux also seem like extremely bad penalties, a 100% increase in cost.

So, I'm a whale (toot-toot) and have pretty much every endurance/willpower bonus you can think of:
Endurance regen every 4 seconds
------------------------------
Base: 6
Stamina regen: 8
Endurance Artifact: 30
Statpack: 6
Undead: 2
Fitness Miniskill: 12
------------------------------
Total: 64
------------------------------
Net regen: 64


Last night I tested bashing, and after finding every furor call finally with just a stopwatch, I found myself losing roughtly 1% endurance every 1-2 minutes and estimated I'd run out of endurance in roughly 2-3.5 hours. But I decided to do some math on it.

As a fully-whaled whale, I have 16 endurance-per-second(eps) as a base bank to work with. I do have a mountain tattoo, but I've never been able to figure out (and don't know anybody who has) exactly how much regen it gets, so I added just another 2eps on top of that to give me 18 to account for it. With 25 endurance per 2.37s balance, just a basic bashing attack is now eating up 10.55eps, or 58.6% of the eps budget. I use nimbleness every 120 seconds, which is 200 endurance--that's another 1.667 on top, bringing the total eps use to 12.21. This is under 18eps, which is good. What's less good is that movement still takes 2 endurance per room, which is a pretty massive drain on this budget. At 12.22 eps drain just from attacking with barely any moves, you get 2.89 rooms you can move in a second before you go over budget. If I, as a whale, move on an average of 4 rooms per second, I run out of endurance in 4 hours (with 32400 endurance).

(ignore the "if no movement" bit--that was a holdover from an earlier pass at the math and I didn't delete it)

Let's say you're not a whale, but still a decently beefy character. You're omnitransed (including trans fitness), have your mountain tat, and are undead, but no endurance artie. Let's even give you the added "benefit" (lol) of having less celerity, so only averaging 3 rooms per second. I chose a baseline of 17 constitution, since that's what I have without my con artie--that gives you a pool of 27900 endurance. Your regen is 10.5eps (with a base of 34 regen ever 4s, plus the estimate of 2eps from mountain). Our 12.2eps from just attacking remains constant here, meaning by just attacking, you're already over your endurance budget, meaning you have to move -.86 rooms in order to remain in your budget. Sorry, standing still doesn't work anymore, you gotta develop the ability to go back in time. If you, for some reason, foolishly decide to move while bashing, you're in trouble. At an average of of 3 rooms per second, your eps tanks to -7.7eps, meaning you can bash for only an hour before you lose everything.



I think this pretty accurately reflects the experiences everyone has had bashing in Carnifex/Warden since this change. Raz fixed fortitude in compendium, which might be the tipping point for the top 1% of whales, but overall, this change has made it impossible to bash for any real length of time in Carnifex/Warden. It's essentially gutted the usefullness of an $85 artifact--all of this before a great hunt, which is defined by long sessions of bashing, leaving those of us taking it seriously scrambling to prepare last minute. What's more, this reflects a change that was made not that long ago, November 5th, which was a change to movement endurance. That change was way worse than this one, having some of us losing 3%+ endurance just moving between bashing zones. That said, why the hell was this change made? Why is an activity that only a handful of us actively enjoy, in spite of it being an arduous chore, being made even more tedius and punative? Why is it impossible for even the most whaled-out people to sustain bashing? Why is an activity that's already tenuously enjoyable being made less enjoyable? Why, after the humongous outcry last November over endurance/willpower changes that ruined bashing, is more or less the same mistake being made?

I'm trying to be charitable here, but, man, this just seems like a change that was either made with malicious intent to ruin a class in PVE because it was just Too Good/Popular, or was just extremely careless and untested.

edit: oh, and a note on this is that this math ignores all redeffing entirely. I'm not sure how much of a drain that is, but it is something else on top of the pile.

tl;dr: Whales can only bash for a few hours without running out of endurance, and non-whales can only manage an hour in Carnifex. This is bad. Why was it done?

AlmolXavinReaveIesid

Comments

  • edited January 2022
    I'm not a whale, but I'm specced for bashing right now. I'm trans fitness with mountain and endurance artifact and a net endurance regen of 59. I can bash for 2 hours before needing to stop to regen endurance (and only endurance).

    What's the point of this?

    Can we take like 10 credits off chalices now? Every 2 hours I need to sleep for 30 minutes. Math.

    Edit:
    Haven't done math on the dps hit but I'm down 1mil xp/hour not even factoring in the sleeping to regen endurance. ):

    TetchtaIesid
  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    Yeah, this doesn't even touch on how you have to be logged in to sleep, so you have to burn some time no matter what on consumable buffs.

    I must echo: why was this change made?

    Although, honestly, my real sentiment is "why hasn't this been unmade yet?"

    Xavin
  • This definitely feels like the wp/end changes that we argued hurt PvE repackaged and reskinned. After that backlash, I can't help but wonder why anyone would think trying them again would be a good idea. No one is stupid enough to miss what these are a second time. 
    TetchtaXavin
  • guess i'm on a test server. let you guys know how long it takes to regen endurance after 120 minutes of bashing

  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    - DoubleBash / Maul endurance cost reduced a bit to 20 per, down from 25.
    - Spinning / Lacerate endurance cost reduced a bit to 20 per, down from 25.
    This change was put in, which reduced the increase from 66% to 33%, and reduced the penalty by half. I just did basic testing (after also panicking and buying compendium pages for endurance regen, I had to test areas I hadn't unlocked foritude in haha), it does seem to run in the net positive, just slightly (which is enough imo) for whales.

    you still can't move a room without dipping negative, but I think, if they're absolutely committed to increasing endurance costs for bashing, this is a much more reasonable increase. It no longer deletes an artie or forces compendium page purchases.

    I still think heavy users of Archivist, Lumie, and Zealot should test their bashing. I'm curious if it made an impact at all.

    Thanks @Keroc for taking feedback and putting in a quick adjustment. ALSO thank you for telling us what mountain tat actually does, I've been wondering for ages:


  • BenedictoBenedicto Tentacles Errywhere!
    edited January 2022
    Has it been considered how much these changes will impact the faintness affliction as well? It seems like, particularly for Carnifex/Warden, that fighting any class capable of giving faintness and sticking it is going to be extremely difficult.
    image
  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    It's been talked about as a concern, but not tested yet afaik

  • Why is endurance and willpower even a mechanic for bashing?
    TetchtaXavin
  • Why is it even a mechanic?
    Tetchta
  • To sell artifacts, of course. 
    Tetchta
  • Because i get sleepy and need naps.

  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    Czcibor said:

    Why is endurance and willpower even a mechanic for bashing?

    Yeah, I'm really happy they scaled back the penalty on Warden/Carnifex, but I don't overall agree with really any of the end/wp changes, other than reducing the syssin one (because holy hell their cost was high). One of the arguments for raising some was to bring them in line with other class's end/wp drain, but I don't even see the point of that? I dunno. Willpower and Endurance aren't particularly intersting mechanics to me and really feel like a legacy feature that sticks around because nobody's thought about whether or not to get rid of it (or what that would entail. I def don't think it would be a minor project--would have to hit just about every skill in the game to delete it, as well as completely redo a couple miniskills, and refund/totally repurpose two artifacts).

  • Kinda makes those Phoenix hearts worth something now!
Sign In or Register to comment.