For quite some time now there has been some speculation & discrepancies regarding the concussion blow special hit ability that exists for two-handed swordsmanship weapons. The argument has been made that by comparison with the other special hits (crushing blow, stun punch, paralyzing blow, disarm punch) the concussion blow ability is both unbalanced & flawed by design. The original & default formula for concussion blow is as follows Code: (defender.RawInt / 2), TimeSpan.FromSeconds( 30.0 ) A long time ago we added a cap to the intelligence reduction not to exceed -25 intelligence. That being said, I can agree to the arguments being made that the current formula for concussion blow are less than stellar in comparison to the other weapon skill abilities. I cannot however agree with the original values of -50 intelligence (what we had prior to this change) being balanced or the proper change in order to bring the ability up to par in effectiveness & in line with the other abilities. For some time now I have been digging through potential concepts for a change that would both rectify the concerns surrounding concussion blow while at the same time not take away from any of the other classes & bring all weapon abilities to a level playing field across the board. After weighing the pros & cons of such a change, the proposed changes that are being considered for concussion blow are as stated below. Any target which is struck by a concussion blow will have their mana-pool (not intelligence) directly reduced, following almost the same logic & formula that is already in place now. The amount of mana destroyed depends on the amount of mana the player had at the time the concussion blow occured. The formula that will determine that amount will be victim's current mana / 4 = mana destroyed up to a maximum amount of -25 mana. A few examples of how this will work are demonstrated below. It is my opinion that these modifications will bring the concussion blow ability back to the proper level of balance in line with other abilities. I've spent some time taking into account all possible scenarios & situations where such a change may be imbalanced given the concept of a direct mana reduction on an opponent. The main concern I had with this change was the potential for the ability to lock an opponent into an endless "dry out" & prevent them from ever being able to regenerate any mana at all, however with the cap in place & the division by 4 (instead of 2) I am comfortable that these changes will result in both a balanced & effective modification to the ability & swordsmanship class as well. Player feedback & constructive criticism is encouraged. If you feel such a change would be nothing short of ridiculous, tell us why. If you fully support this change, again, tell us why you support it.
Doesn't Intelligence affect meditation rate? This sounds almost as if it's a negative impact on the skill if so. However, if the consideration removes the 30s timer on effects, I suppose if you get a lucky set of concussion blows, you could effectively ruin the mana supply of the target?
I'd like it to stay exactly how it is. In it's current state you can get knocked down to 75 int and just have 75 int to work with. With what you're suggesting it kind of sounds like it's going to cause long drawn out fights where you never have the mana to attack but you're never going to die until you run out of regs. To me the strength of swords is in it's range of weapons...It's got slow swinging heavy hitters like macing, but also has fast poisonable one handers. It's provides the weapon types of both fencing and macing at the same time. Buffs or nerfs to conc blow aren't going to cause swordsmen to win more fights unless they are won by drawing them out to sudden death situations or drawing them out until supplies run out. This is an annoying scenario for all participants. I expect there will be people here that will gladly accept any buff that is offered to conc blow, but I don't think it makes pvp mechanics better. I don't think you can lay out the three special blows and argue over which is better just based on how they work. It's important to consider what options each weapon type provides too. Conc blow may be a little weak compared to crushing blow or para blow. I think any swordsman would agree they'd rather have one of the other two. But this is probably as it should be, because swords offers a better range / variety of weapons. [edit]: I'd also like to add that I believe there is a relationship between swords being the most popular weapon skill on the shard and the amount of people that would like to see concussion blow buffed. I don't disagree with them entirely but I just don't believe they're asking for the right thing. If I was asked what could lumberjacks use to be more effective in tournaments and field fights I would probably say a faster axe option. You can't kill someone with two slow ass axe hits. No changes to conc blow are going to fix that.
At first glance I thought this was going to be a bonus for my tank(sword) mage. After reading it seems that instead of -25 int, I have a chance to do -25 mana instead (at max). To me this seems like weakening the skill. When I fight dexers I've often used the fact that conc blow lowers your intel. This helps me set even a "stat balanced" dexer up for some nice mindblast combos. I guess I'm failing to see where this is a "buff" to the current sword wielder.
I'm like 10 beers into my evening so excuse my last posting. While it still holds sway with the point it makes, I see now that instead of only the first conc-blow being useful, every conc-blow is now useful! So if your opponent had 36 mana when you hit them w/ conc, you'd get 36 / 4 = -9 mana. This makes perfect sense. And also ensures that you cannot lock someone into a 0 mana type of situation. Passive meditation will regenerate more mana faster than you can swing even if every hit was a conc-blow. For example if you were bone-dry on mana & passive med up to 10, conc-blow wouldn't do much of anything. 10/4 = 2.5 (rounded down) = -2 mana. So each conc-blow is less and less effective. I would say that staff should consider a cooldown period for this, just in case it ends up being OP. Just like stun-punch, and how it can only be triggered every 10 seconds. Or how fencing cannot para you while your already under the paralysis effect from a previous hit.
First of all I would like to say that I by no means want to derail the thread from its aim of gauging the reaction to the proposed changes. What I do want is to highlight what I see as a serious imbalance with the weapon skills. The underlined parts of the quote highlights one serious aspect missing, archery. If the aim is "to bring all weapon abilities to a level playing field across the board" then something must be done to make archery a viable, standalone weapon skill. Currently the 0.25 second stop rule makes it almost shoot on the run but its not that easy to actually stop for 0.25 seconds or whatever it is, every time one stops for even a second the other player gets farther and farther away. At the recent halloween event one of the bosses was doing a bleed hit, that doesn't seem like that powerful of an addition to archery, 25% chance at gm, gheal or cure spell and bandies to fix. I know there were other threads but it seems only a handful of people even use archers so its not a popular topic and they didn't go anywhere. That should not stop us from trying to perfect and balance ALL weapon skills. With all that said, I really appreciate the hard work and time you take in thinking about, testing and implementing all of the awesome changes that keep improving the shard.
I think it's clever and I like it. I do think it is nice to give the concussion blow the ability to actually *do something* on each hit, rather than just the first such hit in every 30 second time period or whatever. That said, I can't argue with anything Mes said in his post (to be fair to me, I have precisely 1 archer, 1 fencer, 1 macer, and 1 swordsman). For me though, I just kind of feel like my first paragraph outweighs the counterpoints he brought up.
Would this same bonus apply to monsters? I think there are a lot of monsters that are a little out of the reach of melee classes because they can dump magic. If there were a way we could wear the mana down it would help put these more within reach of smaller groups. Also, what happens if a mage is surrounded by 2+ ax wielders? could they potentially drain the mana within 3-4 hits? I just want to say I support this. I just think these are my valid points i want to bring up
Remember, chance to get one of these special hits is Anatomy/4. So 25% per *hit*. Given that only 50% of hits will connect, that's 1/8 swings. The likelihood of 2 or even 3 people getting someone below, say, 10 mana, is essentially zero. Both because of how rare these effects are per hit... and the fact that if you take more than 5 or 6 hits from a halberd or axe, you're dead. The PvM implications of this are super interesting as well.
Getting anything to 0 mana would be impossible as it is always only 25% of the targets mana at the time of the hit so even in an ideal world where every hit took 25% 100 75 56 (rounding decimals from now on) 42 32 24 18 13 10 8 successful hits to bring the target's mana down to below the required amount to cast 5th level (paralyze,mind blast) spells and 9 below fourth level (gheal,recall). Even in 3 v 1 situation the number of successful hits would stay the same they would just be landed 3x times faster (in an ideal situation of every hit being successful). Even with the fastest swing speed 2H axe on all 3 it seems like it would be a while before the target was drained sufficiently to 'non functional' mana levels.
Does this take into account the mana the mage will already be dumping while frantically casting gheal and cursing himself for forgetting red pots while cornered by 3 foot soldiers?
This would apply to both players & monsters & would function the same way in a PvM setting. To some extent it would be more effective in PvM since the recent changes that were made to the hit % calculations giving any player at 100.0 skill in any weapon class a 75% chance to hit against anything which is not a playermobile (player). Archery by default doesn't have any special abilities even though all weapons in its class are two-handed. This has been another similar topic of debate in the past & while nothing to date has been published towards the addition of a special weapon ability for archery, it doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility of it happening in the future. This is a rather difficult concept to implement given that archery is both a ranged weapon & also has the highest damage output of all weapon classes. That being said, giving archery a special weapon ability while also keeping it balanced with the other classes & combat in general is a challenge to say the least. This would be devastating if given to archery as the bleed-attack you're referencing almost literally renders a mage unable to cast any spells as the damage ticks happen at intervals which are fast enough to interrupt any attempts at casting spells 3rd circle or above & potentially even 2nd circle as well. In addition to that, each damage tick would cause bandage slips which lower the healing power each time. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, the combination of a ranged attack, 25% execution rate, & a damage-over-time effect, you would be hard pressed to survive let alone have any chance of fighting back. This is something that was taken into consideration, though given the generally slower weapon speeds for axes this is to some degree already how it would work. Granted there will always be times when "luck" is a factor & consecutive hits occur, as stated by another player above the chances of this happening are uncommon at best. Another option I considered but forgot to add to the original post was restricting concussion blows from triggering if the victim has below a certain amount of mana which would prevent it from ever lowering the opponent under the specified value. Intelligence does influence meditation regeneration rates. The difference in this change is that with the new mechanics somebody under the effects of a concussion blow would be able to restore any lost mana since your intelligence is no longer affected & doesnt reduce your maximum mana. How it works now this isn't even an option & for at least 30 seconds you have no choice but to fight under those conditions or attempt to flee altogether, which is what happens in most scenarios like this already. This is already how it is now though, and in almost every instance where the opponent relies on magical damage as their main source of damage output, the moment they're hit with a concussion blow the fight is already over. They're either going to flee or evade long enough for it to expire & the mana to restore passively. This is not even taking into consideration any mana spent healing or elsewhere in that time which draws this process out further. Even for players at the top-tier of the pvp spectrum, the most common approach at this point (assuming they still want to fight & don't flee) is to evade the opponent passively restoring the lost mana. These changes aren't designed to enable the swords class to more effectively make kills nor are they geared towards making it harder to defeat an opponent. It is designed to address the aspect of concussion blow having a "once-every-30-seconds" benefit when all other abilities are equally as effective regardless of the intervals in which they occur. I think it's at the very least fair to compare them this way, since in more instances than not the templates being used with this ability are investing an additional 100.0 skill-points into lumberjacking to compliment the ability with the enhanced damage. Those which do not simply use a halberd, which already sits comfortably near the top of the high-end damage spectrum. I've excluded one-handed weapons from this comparison as they do not have any special hits & they have the ability to be poisoned which in my opinion is equally as useful if not more than any two-handed weapon ability. Lastly, I forgot to add this information to the main post but the concussion-blow ability is not linked together for both axes & polearms. What this means is that the ability can function differently for axes than it does polearms without creating an additional weapon ability to accomplish that if we decided to go that route.
How do you intend for/believe it will change pvp as a lumberjack, swords dexer, or swords tank? It's unclear to me if this will cause fights to be longer and more tedious or not. Currently it feels to me that conc blow is not very useful in field fights and can be used to draw out duels (which is just annoying.) An exception perhaps is HC saying he likes to use it to further debuff dexers for mindblast, but I think this is probably an uncommon use. While I understand that consecutive conc blows will have diminishing returns, I think that is not incredibly comforting. It takes a certain amount of mana to be worth spending on anything other than defense, and that is arguably not far from the 75 range that current or proposed conc blows put you at on the first hit. Some might say more, some might say less, I think. So what's not clear to me is if in practice this change will lessen that effect allowing a mage to regenerate some mana immediately after a conc blow and be capable of attacking, or if it will in practice lock a mage in an area of mana where the chance of concussive blows and your mana regen leave you at ~50 mana constantly.
