019 - On NL TEST

Post Reply
Brad
Admin
Admin
Posts: 1572
Joined: Thu Jul 04, 2002 11:46 am

019 - On NL TEST

Post by Brad »

Please help test the following on NL TEST:

- The ubiquitous fire resistance has been removed or greatly lowered from most NL crits
- Castle creatures have been made "evil"
- The healer 89 disc drop is now correct
- Experimental change to thieves - At SL40 you can backstab with a BOW
- "Buff" based HP drains should not cause retargeting
- Ice flows ice damage has been reduced

* PLEASE REMEMBER TO NOT CAMP IN TEST.. Thanks! *

Ken
Posts: 37
Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2013 7:47 pm

Re: 019 - On NL TEST

Post by Ken »

While I am not thrilled about the new Ment tier (I wanted a powerful direct damage tier! Mentalists did not get any direct damage tiers since level 60 Brad!) I guess this'll have to do. However, I have a few problems with Rain of Stone in its current state and they are as follows.

A totem does not boost the damage that it deals. I dealt 12500 EC damage both with and without a totem in my left hand. (Please make Totem Taint and Cave Taint apply to Earthcrush damage.)

Even with a totem, a fully boosted Razorhail is going to out damage it easily and Razorhail costs only half as much to cast.

There are only enough Prots available in game to account for 2K Earthcrush damage, and if I remember properly, tiers ignore 50% of a prot so we only have enough prot to deal with 1k of its current 12.5k damage.

So I propose giving Rain of Stone a bit more of a kick since it costs twice as much to cast as Razorhail, does a lot less damage than Razorhail, as well as there being nothing you can do to resist it and finally there being no quirks or party abilities to boost it. If the tier is going to kill us, it might as well make a dent in the enemies' HP in the process :D

I would say that 20k per round after a totem boost would be a more appropriate amount of damage for a tier of this cost and lvl requirement

<Edit> I should add that Rain of Stone (unlike the other mentalist AoE tiers) does not benefit from haste whatsoever due to its duration and cooldown being the same. While this is not a problem on the surface, it makes it fall even further behind the other AoE's who's damage could be augmented by the use of haste. This makes me firmly believe that Rain of Stone's damage should be increased to help offset it's lackluster damage and prohibitive EP cost to sustain it. Please make a cost of 1800 EP's mean something Brad.
Last edited by Ken on Sun Mar 06, 2016 10:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

Lucky2
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2016 1:39 am

Re: 019 - On NL TEST

Post by Lucky2 »

A couple thoughts on the new ment tier from my end brad.

The tier does 12,500 per round for 4 rounds which equates to 50k damage.
That is good damage yes but razorhail does 25k damage over 3 rounds which equates to 75k damage.
Razorhail is 79/39 required your new tier is lvl 86 required so this seems a bit unbalanced.

With full allied avoidance quirk i noticed roughly 1/5 casts I would kill a pj member so as long as i did not kill a healer it was fine.
It could have just been my luck but with my testing the tier never killed my ment.

I could be off based with the other ments here in drak but as we have no way to prot this much ec damage on all crits in pj here is what i would do with the tier brad:
Change the aoe to single hex effect, the reason i say this rather than increasing allied avoidance quirk to 100% success rate is having the quirk have a 100% success rate would cause an ease of leveling and devalue the overall gameplay. I would hate to see an allied avoidance of 100%.
The damage is a bit lacking considering what has been done with sk3 and other classes (ments are falling behind fast brad), I would either increase the rounds of the casts to 6-8 6 rounds would be 75k damage and 8 rounds would be 100k damage making it as effective or more than razorhail. If you do not wish to raise the rounds it last I would suggest raising the damage to 25-30k per round.

Please take a look at this tier and allow us ments actively playing and testing to help get this tweaked properly brad!!!!

Menty___ASH
Darge: I mean, it's not really my style, but I'm sure I can find someone to bend you over real nice like if it's what youre looking for

Lucky______RIP, Randall___RIP, Anxiety___RIP, Spectre_____RIP

Brad
Admin
Admin
Posts: 1572
Joined: Thu Jul 04, 2002 11:46 am

Re: 019 - On NL TEST

Post by Brad »

Great feedback,

Couple things to note:
- Razor Hail does 4k of ice damage per round base. Ice and fire are "traditional resists"
- Rain of Stone is 10k of earthcrush damage per round BASE. Earthcrush is whats known as a "rare resist" ( very few creatures will resist )
- The two effects are completely stackable.

User avatar
Darge
Posts: 672
Joined: Mon May 03, 2004 2:54 pm
Title: The Raging Storm

Re: 019 - On NL TEST

Post by Darge »

Note that skill bonuses, quirks, party leadership, inflation rings, and totems all together boost razor hail ice damage way above the base amount, and above the amount of damage Rain of Stone does.

The number of things that boost EC damage is 0.

Also, 20/20 allied aversion just needs to work every time. If you don't want people aoe'ing zoos down, there are better ways to do it than crippling 4 out of the 6 tiers ments have gotten since level 65. It really just ends up looking like you want the level grind to take as long as possible, because that's the real extent of content.

If you won't take the plunge and make allied aversion a 100% dodge, consider making it up to a 90% damage reduction of aoe against party members. For rain of Stone, thats still 1.2k EC damage, enough that a party could actually swap gear to handle the aoe, at the cost of defense (like the old days).
SIN
My father was a wolf, I'm a kinsman of the slain, Sworn to rise again
I will bring salvation, punishment and pain, The hammer of hate is our faith
Power and dominion are taken by the will, By divine right hail and kill

trav: you bad bad girl

Ken
Posts: 37
Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2013 7:47 pm

Re: 019 - On NL TEST

Post by Ken »

I agree that Rain of stone has a fairly high base damage, however unlike a fire/ice/energy tier, we have no way of boosting the damage of an earthcrush ability further.

The boosts that Razorhail can benefit from are as follows:

The Ice damage boosts at various skill levels
The Quirk Ice Manipulation
The Party ability Ice Damage
A pair of Ice Inflation II Rings
A totem in the off-hand
The Hidden Skill 40 boost

Rain Of Stone only gets a 25% boost (From a source/s that I admittedly don't know where to pinpoint) while Razorhail (and TFS/TSS) can get over 500% in boosts to their damage.

Sure, we could stack it with Razorhail and the other AoE's but the question is, Is it really worth it? Why would we want to expend 1800 EP to cast Rain of stone when we could just use TSS whilst hasted doing similar damage to Rain of Stone for only 800 EP's every four rounds as opposed to 1800 EP for Rain of Stone in 4 rounds? A Level 65 Tier is actually more cost efficient and deals effectively the same amount of damage as a Level 86 tier. In fact, the combined cost of the other 3 mentalist AoE's TFS/TSS/RH amount to 1800 EP's which happens to be the same cost as Rain of Stone.

While EC resistance is rare, when it is present it effectively cripples the tier. When Ice resistance is present, Razorhail still usually does enough damage to make it somewhat worthwhile to cast at those enemies.

User avatar
Merlin
Posts: 584
Joined: Fri Aug 09, 2002 7:51 am
Location: UK
Contact:

Re: 019 - On NL TEST

Post by Merlin »

As a long time ment, i'm with Darge on this one, Ments get tiers that they are too risky to use for the most part.

MA's get 100% avoidance with Powersweep, but ments get overlooked.

Darge wrote:Also, 20/20 allied aversion just needs to work every time.
Elessar: karbeck is a sweety

Post Reply