Balance Changes

[Taem]

It seems there are several comments about balance from one topic to the next. In an attempt contain all thoughts and theories of balance woes in one location, I suggest using this topic as the de facto place to post ideas concerning balance issues for GR2. Please feel free to comment or post your own. I'll start:

These are the balance issues I see in GR2 that I'd like to be addressed by the dev team and the reasons I feel so;

• A complete reworking of the firearm system and ammo situation
  viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7214
  viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7674
  
  It's been mentioned multiple times here and on steam, but I'll quickly gloss over the problems here:
  • "Misfire" causing damage to the party - a huge penalty in and of itself!
  • Still suffers from "accuracy" woes, meaning the toon really can't cross-train well and must focus on dexterity or accuracy skill taking away from other options
  • Damage for the firearm skill is non-scaling, so when compared to comparable skills of the same caliber, this makes firearms one of the weaker skills unless...
  • Firearms themselves are also weaker in comparison to typical weapons of the same caliber except for one specific firearm...
    
    The fix for all of these issues is simple - each point in firearms increases chance of critical 3%. Then the firearm "specialist" can max the Firearm skill and the Critical skill and be viable without this "super" weapon. And I'd scale down the firearm damage on the few weapons with high damage to compensate for this.
  • Lack of ammo - you can't just attack with each toon in a circular pattern starting with the top left toon, then top right, then bottom left, then bottom right because you will run out of ammo every couple of enemies. Is this the way firearms are meant to be played or is this a broken mechanic? There is no possibility of having a 2-man or even 4-man firearm troupe with the current ammo situation. The obvious solution being presented in various threads is being able to pick up "spent" ammo and craft it back into regular ammo.
• Chargable items should have a 0-mana cost to use
  [I have to make dinner right now, else I'd provide some links, sorry...]
  
  For one, from an avid pen-and-paper d&d player myself, the magic is supposed to be contained within the item itself. From a logistic standpoint, the players will *never* use these chargeable items over their own current skills if necessary because, regardless of how you've "balanced" this game, a toons own attack almost always does more damage than a chargeable item. Second, the time and place to use a chargeable item is when you've run out of mana and are backed into a wall and need to quickly "cast" something with at least minimal damage to save your skin. Well guess what, now you can't. My other argument against this requirement is "bombs" can do just as much damage, but never miss, hit all four monsters on the square, can be thrown faster than a chargeable item can be attacked with a second time, and costs zero mana to use. Basically, you've reduced the need and use of these potential cool items to zero by charging mana to use them.
• Lower the cooldown on special attacks
  viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7682&hilit=special
  viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7603&p=77381&hilit=special#p77381
  viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5612&hilit=charge
  viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7434&hilit=charge
  
  From my observations and from what I've seen others comment on, the cool-down is higher than a standard attack which doesn't make much sense when you can easily make two attacks in the time it takes to make one special attack, and the special attack does possibly 1.5x damage, whereas two standard attacks do... 2x damage. Which would you use? As it stands now, its far better to "dance" around opponents instead of using and special attacks.
• A little better evasion for dex-based front-row melee builds
  viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7609
  viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7541
  
  Dex-based weapons for the suave swashbuckler-type fighter are few and far between, with the quicker attack speeds not holding up well to the large damage payloads of strength focused toons in regards to dps. On the outside, this seems like the problem in and of itself, but the real issue is not the toons inability to deal large amounts of damage, but in it's ability to defend itself appropriately from hordes of foes. Not killing a foe fast enough is just as deadly as not being able to dodge their attack with the result of both equaling potential damage. Currently, getting high amounts of evasion in GR2 is a fools errand, with min//maxers posting scores as high as 64. It's clear the designers realized the flaw in GR1 regarding evasion and made a change, but it's also clear they over-corrected which is why I believe another change is necessary. I'm recommending adding evasion to rogue clothing and, for each point in Light Weapons, a bonus of +3 to evasion *if* the toon is not wearing any armor. Doing this will improve the survivablity of front-line swashbuckler fighters.
• Spell damage scaling slightly with +Wisdom
  viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7549
  viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7311 <-sorry, I'm not sure how to select an individual post from this entire thread...
  
  This has not been that big of a deal to me as I'm not too far into the game yet, however from what others have lamented, the damage really drops off endgame for wizards and since melee weapons and throwing weapons get +damage from strength and skills, missile weapons from dexterity and skills, it would make sense that spells get +damage from wisdom to make their damage comparable to min//maxers damage at end-game levels.

[Rodin]

I agree with most of these, but I'd disagree with Evasion being a problem - people are expecting to go full Evasion tank with no armor, when that isn't intended. A moderately evasive character wearing armor does just fine. I just completed a Hard mode run with two tanks - a Barbarian wearing Light armor (specifically, Mirror set) with max Dodge and some Evasion equips. Middling Protection with Evade hovering in the high 30s. My other tank was a Battlemage with full Heavy Armor - maxed Armor stat and Crystal set, for a total of over 100 Protection. I also gave the HP books to her and a couple Vitality potions to keep her HP relatively on par with the Barbarian. The result was clear: Evasion + Protection wins over pure Protection. You can have your Rogue on the front row, but they need to have SOME form of armor on. My Rogue on my normal run dual-wielded and did just fine...but he was wearing Light Armor, too. I think my priorities went Light Weapons -> Dodge -> Armor, and only then did I go into Crit. The Dex-based weapons were terrible though.

In terms of Magic, my biggest complaint is that Fire dominates all. The problem is Meteor Swarm - it is the only effective end-game spell, and is actually appropriately powered for that. It doesn't have quite the raw power of a two-handed melee person, but then again it shouldn't since it's a ranged attack which cannot miss and bypasses armor. My Battlemage was my go-to person for a lot of fights, particularly in the midgame when I hadn't gotten the end-game weapons. However...the other magic schools cannot say the same. Lightning Bolt deals similar damage to Shock. Ice Bolt doesn't freeze often enough. Poison spells are underwhelming in general (why did Poison Bolt get nerfed in the patch? I didn't understand that change). It feels like they all need a Meteor-Swarm equivalent spell to keep them relevant.

[MasterworkStone]

The fix for all of these issues is simple - each point in firearms increases chance of critical 3%. Then the firearm "specialist" can max the Firearm skill and the Critical skill and be viable without this "super" weapon. And I'd scale down the firearm damage on the few weapons with high damage to compensate for this.

That's absolutely insane, criticals deal double damage, regular weapons would deal consistent damage up there with Bane. Firearms are fine in my opinion.

For one, from an avid pen-and-paper d&d player myself

Well keep in mind, this isn't D&D.

the magic is supposed to be contained within the item itself. From a logistic standpoint, the players will *never* use these chargeable items over their own current skills if necessary because, regardless of how you've "balanced" this game, a toons own attack almost always does more damage than a chargeable item. Second, the time and place to use a chargeable item is when you've run out of mana and are backed into a wall and need to quickly "cast" something with at least minimal damage to save your skin. Well guess what, now you can't. My other argument against this requirement is "bombs" can do just as much damage, but never miss, hit all four monsters on the square, can be thrown faster than a chargeable item can be attacked with a second time, and costs zero mana to use. Basically, you've reduced the need and use of these potential cool items to zero by charging mana to use them.

First off, it's energy, not mana.
You don't speak for everyone, I use charge effects a lot and find them very helpful. They cost energy because they're so powerful, imagine if every swing dealt 200% of your damage and ignored 10 points of armor, it would be insanely imbalanced. Second, normal attacks don't "almost always deal more damage", and charge time is further balanced by what the charge does. If you don't like it, pick fighter, they have charge time halved. They're not there to save you.
The only reason I can guess that you're crying is because you want use all these cool things with zero drawbacks.

Bombs are balanced by how few you get in comparison to how many monsters exist.

A little better evasion for dex-based front-row melee builds

This I agree with, I loved evasion builds in LoG1, but I haven't found a way to make them viable in LoG2 yet. I suspect that maybe evasion just isn't as plentiful anymore. We could use a little bit more of it.

Dex-based weapons for the suave swashbuckler-type fighter are few and far between, with the quicker attack speeds not holding up well to the large damage payloads of strength focused toons in regards to dps. On the outside, this seems like the problem in and of itself, but the real issue is not the toons inability to deal large amounts of damage, but in it's ability to defend itself appropriately from hordes of foes. Not killing a foe fast enough is just as deadly as not being able to dodge their attack with the result of both equaling potential damage. Currently, getting high amounts of evasion in GR2 is a fools errand, with min//maxers posting scores as high as 64. It's clear the designers realized the flaw in GR1 regarding evasion and made a change, but it's also clear they over-corrected which is why I believe another change is necessary. I'm recommending adding evasion to rogue clothing and, for each point in Light Weapons, a bonus of +3 to evasion *if* the toon is not wearing any armor. Doing this will improve the survivablity of front-line swashbuckler fighters.

You had me up until you started adding evasion to clothing. I get the picture now, you just stand still and take the hits, you never try to evade.
No, evading attacks is not limited to stats, you can move to avoid attacks. The game isn't turn based for a reason

This has not been that big of a deal to me as I'm not too far into the game yet, however from what others have lamented, the damage really drops off endgame for wizards and since melee weapons and throwing weapons get +damage from strength and skills, missile weapons from dexterity and skills, it would make sense that spells get +damage from wisdom to make their damage comparable to min//maxers damage at end-game levels.

As you just said, you haven't gotten far into the game yet, however I have. Magic is fine and balanced well, it doesn't need to scale.

[Taem]

The only reason I can guess that you're crying is because you want use all these cool things with zero drawbacks.

Any reason you are choosing to take an intellectual discussion and turn it into a pissing match? I must admit I was hoping to keep this as an unbiased, non-judgmental topic. I assume there will be differences of opinion and look forward to hearing all views such as yours, minus the unnecessary vitriol riddled throughout your post. Please take that into consideration because despite the experience you've had with this game and the intelligence of your post, it's difficult to take an opinion seriously when using unnecessary attacks like this to try and prove their point. Let your point be made with facts, not insults.

In regards to what you're inferring, I put two charged items on my back-row party having no need for them on my front-row warriors, and found when my mages ran out of mana, I could not use them. I had found their usefulness to be nil, and I read many other threads sharing this opinion which is why I posted it.

You had me up until you started adding evasion to clothing. I get the picture now, you just stand still and take the hits, you never try to evade.
No, evading attacks is not limited to stats, you can move to avoid attacks. The game isn't turn based for a reason

I'm not sure why you feel I'd want this. I provided an example of how I'd like to play a front-row swords-man, replete with links explaining in detail what I was looking for. I don't take kindly to people putting words in my mouth and saying I said something I didn't. Let me clarify this for you: I have no desire to play a toon that's impossible to be hit. The trade off is simple to understand; no protection for more evasion. If you played GR1, you'd know evasion is *not* percentage based, so you are really making a molehill out of nothing here by suggesting you'd be impossible to hit.

[Vardis]

The design intent of the charged items would seem to be to allow some of your characters the limited ability to cast a spell they normally wouldn't be able to, or in at least one case with one +poison staff, the charged attack looked like it took less energy than the normal one. Albeit you can't pre-cast when using it, like you can with runes. They pretty clearly aren't intended to be used frequently (which would make the underlying skill less useful). Not everyone is going to through the game with many different types of characters, or min/max and cast everything, so they at least allow some people the chance to use some spell effects that they might not otherwise be able to.

I don't know about easy/normal, but on hard, pure evasion tanking simply isn't going to cut it. Which I think is fine, because you aren't forced to evade in your underwear. Opening up the skills to all classes means my front line dual wielding dex based alchemist is wearing full heavy armor with around 90 protection and 50 evasion, and I put a couple points into concentration just for the crowd control. Next to my barbarian, he's doing fine.

[MasterworkStone]

Any reason you are choosing to take an intellectual discussion and turn it into a pissing match?

The fact that you ignored the rest of my post and focused on that small part throws your entire post out the window.

[Hucast]

Any reason you are choosing to take an intellectual discussion and turn it into a pissing match?

The fact that you ignored the rest of my post and focused on that small part throws your entire post out the window.

No, I agree with him. You're just being a sarcastic and vindictive asshat.

I also like the part where you proved you have the reading comprehension of an elementary school student when you started talking about weapon skills to combat his point about CHARGE ITEMS.

[notreally]

My suggestion for balanced guns.

- More power.
- Slower attack speed to compensate for said power.
- Armor penetration.
- Range penalty, far away targets are harder to hit.


It is also really silly that cannonballs dissapear, I can understand it for pellets/bullets since they deform on impact.
Perhaps give them a certain number of uses before they "break"? Or better yet, make them function like arrows and other projectiles so you can recover them, but make them really really rare.