Sensuki's Suggestions #007: Might Percentile bonus in relation to Weapon Balance

[Sensuki]

Might is a good attribute in Pillars of Eternity, it affects Damage and Healing which is useful for all classes, some more than others.

 

Might currently grants percentile increases to damage and healing.

 

This works ... until you take the weapon system into account.

 

For characters that primarily make weapon attacks, the benefits of investing in Might are highly dependent on the types of weapons you are planning to use.

 

Pillars of Eternity has a few different "styles" of weapons

 

1H Fast

1H Normal

2H 

Ranged

Two Weapons

 

Ignoring that the Perception and Resolve attributes can pretty much completely be dumped to oblivion at the moment, allowing you to max the crap out of the other attributes, let's say you are torn between investing Might and Dexterity, or perhaps putting a few extra points into Constitution as a primarily weapon based character.

 

15 Might gives you a +30% damage increase

 

I've been talking about this on the RPGCodex, but let's say you're a Paladin and you're planning to play a ranged Paladin. What weapon do you choose if you have 15 Might? Should you use a Hunting Bow, or should you use an Arbalest?

 

Hunting Bows deal 11-19 damage (or close enough to that) and Arbalests deal 43-79 damage (or close enough to that)

 

Your 15 Might turns your Hunting Bow damage from 11-19 into 14.3 - 24.7 damage

 

However 15 Might makes the Arbalest damage a whopping 55.9 - 102.7 damage

 

Now I currently think that Arbalests and Arquebuses may not be properly balanced against the other ranged weapons, but that's a very early observation. So ignore this fact for the moment and focus on the numbers.

 

Why would you even bother using a low damage weapon if you invest in Might? To get the most out of your attribute investment you may as well go with the higher damage weapons, as you'll be getting a larger DPS increase from having a high Might than you would using a lower damage weapon.

 

I think that using a percentile modifier for Might based damage bonus will pidgeon hole weapon based characters who invest in Might into only using high damage weapons, because the extra damage granted from them is super awesome, even if they attack slower.

 

Percentile modifiers are generally used in ARPG games for damage increases in their skill/talent systems and on items, but they are never used for attributes themselves, likely because of the same issue.

 

RTS games also do not use percentile modifiers for damage increases. Games like Warcraft 3 give a flat bonus per point of the primary damage attribute of heroes.

 

In light of this issue I think that the Might bonus should be changed to a flat number like Accuracy is, that way the bonus damage you get is the same across all weapons. Lower damage weapons will get more of a percentage increase to total damage by investing in Might, but the bonus damage is useful across all weapons (and spells and abilities).

 

I am not insanely strong at mathematics though, so if someone can do some calculations against DT and debunk my argument, go right ahead.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Sensuki

[Headbomb]

Gotta disagree with you there. A % increase is fine on damage. Not to bring MMO speak here, but if you get +4 damage on a fast weapon with average 12 damage, vs +4 damage on a slow weapon that deals 24 average damage, you'd be an idiot to go for the slow but powerful build given you'll get much more DPS with the fast weapon. The flat bonus would pretty much mean two-handed builds will suffer relative to sword and board and dual wielders.

[Sensuki]

Currently though I believe we have the opposite situation, due to the huge scaling of damage bonuses with larger slower weapons, it appears that you are crazy if you pick the smaller, faster weapons over the slower ones.

 

You are however correct that the flat bonus is more beneficial for faster weapons than slower weapons using a flat bonus which is something I forgot to take into account. In that instance to reign that in, you'd need another rule such as a cap on the Might bonus such as faster weapons only getting 0.8x the Might bonus or something. Such edge case rules I *think* are against the design goals of the system.

 

Regardless I think the straight percentile bonuses could be troublesome, intuitive but I'm not sure if it's balanced for weapon use.

 

This is one of the reasons why in games like Starcraft, damage bonuses from weapon upgrades and stuff like that are set at tested, balanced discrete values, because I don't think there's a unified system for this that works.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Sensuki

[Forlorn Hope]

Without thinking too much, fast weapons dish out more hits=more chances for interruptions and if a heavy hitting slow weapon misses, no damage at all.

[Doppelschwert]

From a mathematical point of view, that makes no sense at all. Might gives a percentage because it scales DPS equally across the board. An absolute value gives an incentive to use faster weapons over slower ones, so pigeonholing again while making it harder to balance.

 

The problem you are refering to is a problem of weapon balance, not of might.

Weapons have to be balanced in a way that you have an incentive to use one over another every once in a while so that it is actually a tactical choice. If you don't have any incentive to use hunting bows over arbalests, then well, hunting bows suck and changing might is just a superficial patch of the real problem, not the solution itself.

 

Following joshs approach, weapons have to diversify by attack type and attack rate and attack power to be interesting choices. Because DT works as a substraction, two weapons can still be different although they have the same DPS, so DPS is not a qualifier.

 

In general, for this to work, weapons with little absolute damage should have such a higher rate of fire that their DPS is greatet than the DPS of weapons with high absolute damage so that increasing DT makes a shift of usefulness from light to heavy weapons. If this is not the case for hunting bows, then this is the starting point to adjust them.

 

EDIT:
When we are at it, I'm highly sceptical of the DT values and the damage values at the moment. What good is armor that gives 10-12 DT (the top range that I remember) when the enemy hits you for 40+ damage?

 

When the best armor reduces damage by only about 25%, it doesn't make much of a difference how good the armor you are wearing really is, while taking heavy slow down penalties wearing them. Then the main damage reduction comes from converting hits into graces, which is governed by deflection. And guess what, there is no attribute for deflection and it is only tied to class and level. Basically, I feel like there is not enough influence that you can actually have on your defense.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Doppelschwert

[Sensuki]

Without thinking too much, fast weapons dish out more hits=more chances for interruptions and if a heavy hitting slow weapon misses, no damage at all.

 

Grazes and Hits are the most common at the moment. Hunting Bows do absolutely nothing once the DTs start to even get into the medium numbers, whereas Arbalests do a hefty amount of damage even on a graze. For a Hunting Bow to catch up to an Arbalest graze against the same DT they need to hit twice or three times.

[Headbomb]

If you get a 30% increase in damage, you still get a 30% increase in damage. The main problem is that weapon balancing is just way off, and you every weapon is listed as as "average speed", although I'm pretty sure they don't all have the same speed. Using sword as an example.

 

Daggers should be weaker, but faster. Fine/Exceptional quality increases DPS more, but that is offset by damage being less effective as it as to overcome the DT of enemies.

Longsword should be average, average speed.  Fine/Exceptional quality increases DPS by a typical amount.

Greatswords should be strong, but slow. Fine/Exceptional quality increases DPS less, but that is offset by damage being more effective as it as to overcome the DT of enemies.

 

Might here shifts just shifts everyone up and down the scale by the same amount, which favours faster-but-weak weapons more when it comes to effective DPS. A 30% boost on Daggers is worth more because of enemy DT. A 30% boost on Greatsword doesn't need to be as effective, because at this point you'll land more one-hit kills / one-crit kills.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Headbomb

[Sensuki]

I am not sure about the ranged weapons but the speeds for the melee weapons are as follows:

 

The animation speed is 30 FPS.

 

1H Fast - 20 frames (0.6667 second animation)

1H Normal - 30 frames / second (1 second animation)

2H - 40 frames (1.3333 second animation)

 

Recovery time is, I *think* a flat one second across the board without armor/shield etc modifiers.

[hairyscotsman2]

They just need to increase rate of fire for low damage weapons. They need to balance the weapons, not change the Might stat.

[Sabotin]

Did you make any comparison between weapons and a dex/mgt build? Maybe the issue is you always have both of these stats maxed on the damage dealers, so the big weapons are better suited?

[Osvir]

Without thinking too much, fast weapons dish out more hits=more chances for interruptions and if a heavy hitting slow weapon misses, no damage at all.

Additionally, NERF ideas:

- Reloading a Gun should take some more time, maybe something as simple as 2-3 seconds more time universally on all Guns.

- Reloading is delayed if hit (Grandia style)

- Aiming should take some more time, 1 second.

- Getting hit whilst [Aiming]* stacks "Miss %". If hit 4-5 times whilst aiming causes risk of Friendly Fire. Draws aggro.

 

* If [Aiming] could be a variable, it could trigger AI to attack the Gun wielder to interrupt/delay as well.

[Sensuki]

After doing some proper DPS calculations, I've changed my mind. Percentile damage bonus is fine, it is in fact the weapon balance that is off.

 

the Might damage increase is not more effective for daggers than it is for larger weapons against DT though.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Sensuki

[GreyFox]

I don't really like the way defense sounds in this and am not a fan of always getting hit no matter what.

 

In IWD2 I just switched to 2h weapons because even with magical shields my Fighter(s) were always getting hit anyway.

 

Scares me to think this is going to devolve into the whole "tag, tag, tag, tag, tag, tag". Like...what's defense for anyway? Add in the whole Stamina/Health "issue" atm.....

[Doppelschwert]

the Might damage increase is not more effective for daggers than it is for larger weapons against DT though.

 

that's ok per se, as long as the game maintains some enemies that don't have any DT. it is a problem however, when DT is raised across the board for higher levels, as that will in fact mean that fast low damage weapons will become noninteresting choices.

[Sensuki]

1H fast weapons are already inferior to all other weapons in DPS, but the special properties can probably bring them back into par. Haven't checked the flat values of the special properties yet.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Sensuki

[PrimeJunta]

The DT's magnify the effect too.

 

I'm not entirely sure the combat math holds up to tell you the truth. Anything with a DT makes light, fast weapons as good as useless; they're reduced to decimal-point grazes basically, making slow, heavy weapons not just, say, 50% or even twice as effective, but, like, 10, 20 times as effective. Whereas slow, heavy weapons are still reasonably good against enemies with low DT, where those fast light ones would in fact be better.

 

That makes light, fast weapons highly unattractive. It's a choice between something that's really good against a small subset of critters and useless against the rest, and something that's really good against the hardest-to-damage critters and OK against the rest. Bit of a no-brainer there, especially if you only have two weapon slots so there's no room for, say, light-melee, light-ranged, heavy-melee, and heavy-ranged sets.

 

Come to think of it, four slots would mitigate the problem. I've nothing against playing RPS with weapons if that's how Josh rolls, but in that case I would like to have enough slots so that I wouldn't have to fiddle with the inventory all the time.

 

I do notice that I've already switched to the heaviest weapons I can find and everything is suddenly a lot easier. I'm sure there are some situations where it'd be better to switch to something else but nothing that's giving me real trouble.

 

So unless I'm missing something major, weapon balance is off. Maybe tune the DT's so that light weapons aren't so completely useless.

[Linkamus]

Hypothetical:

 

Dagger does 4 damage/hit, and hits twice per second, doing 8 dps

 

2handed axe does 8 damage/hit, and hits once per second, doing 8 dps.

 

Now let's add a might bonus of +50% damage

 

Now dagger does 6 damage/hit (4 * 1.5), and hits twice per second, does 12 dps

 

2handed axe does 12 damage/hit (8 * 1.5), and hits once per second, does 12 dps.

 

DPS values scale consistently.

 

Am I wrong?

Edited August 20, 2014 by Linkamus

[Doppelschwert]

The DT's magnify the effect too.

 

I'm not entirely sure the combat math holds up to tell you the truth. Anything with a DT makes light, fast weapons as good as useless; they're reduced to decimal-point grazes basically, making slow, heavy weapons not just, say, 50% or even twice as effective, but, like, 10, 20 times as effective. Whereas slow, heavy weapons are still reasonably good against enemies with low DT, where those fast light ones would in fact be better.

 

That makes light, fast weapons highly unattractive. It's a choice between something that's really good against a small subset of critters and useless against the rest, and something that's really good against the hardest-to-damage critters and OK against the rest. Bit of a no-brainer there, especially if you only have two weapon slots so there's no room for, say, light-melee, light-ranged, heavy-melee, and heavy-ranged sets.

 

Come to think of it, four slots would mitigate the problem. I've nothing against playing RPS with weapons if that's how Josh rolls, but in that case I would like to have enough slots so that I wouldn't have to fiddle with the inventory all the time.

 

I do notice that I've already switched to the heaviest weapons I can find and everything is suddenly a lot easier. I'm sure there are some situations where it'd be better to switch to something else but nothing that's giving me real trouble.

 

So unless I'm missing something major, weapon balance is off. Maybe tune the DT's so that light weapons aren't so completely useless.

 

Yeah, that's what I've been claiming in the other thread as well. Currently, the system works like 0/20/40 when it comes to ineffective / neutral / effective weapons, where it should be more like 15/20/25 to not feel like RPS. I remember that josh emphasized that there won't be RPS in earlier descriptions of the mechanics, so I think they need to put this in line.

 

Hypothetical:

 

Dagger does 4 damage/hit, and hits twice per second, doing 8 dps

 

2handed axe does 8 damage/hit, and hits once per second, doing 8 dps.

 

Now let's add a might bonus of +50% damage

 

Now dagger does 6 damage/hit (4 * 1.5), and hits twice per second, does 12 dps

 

2handed axe does 12 damage/hit (8 * 1.5), and hits once per second, does 12 dps.

 

DPS values scale consistently.

 

Am I wrong?

 

That's alright, but it's a problem as soon as DT = Damagethreshold (which basically means damage resistance in DnD terms) is applied.

 

When you have DT=2, so you soak up 2 damage every hit, you get

 

2*(4-2) = 4 for the dagger

1*(8-2) = 6 for the 2handed axe

 

with 50% might the discrepancy is even greater, although I can't remember whether is applied before or after DT.

[Karkarov]

This is like Headbomb said, an MMO thing.

 

It is fine as it is, the question comes down to this: Do you want to hit fast and often or slow and hard? 

 

As the system stands a character who plays with a two hander DOES benefit more from Might.  What if you wanted to play a duel wielder though?  Might is not as significant stat because like you said lower damage numbers means lower percentage, but if you buff Perception and Dex instead you will hit very very often and have the interrupt effect often as well slowing enemy counter attack.  Thus you hit for much less damage, but because you attack more often and rarely miss it evens out.  You could say "what about high dex with high might on a two hander", answer is: no change.  You still attack slower, you still land fewer hits, maybe you come out slightly ahead but it is very comparable and the other guy has more room for other stats since he doesn't have to pimp might.

 

As the system stands it isn't obvious what you should do when creating a character but that is sort of the point.  It leaves room for true customization and choosing your stats based on your character concept not choosing your concept based on stats.

 

In other words, while your observation is valid Sensuki, you only prove it is working as intended by making it.

 

2*(4-2) = 4 for the dagger

1*(8-2) = 6 for the 2handed axe

No denying this math is true Doppel.  You are forgetting one thing though.  You can hold two daggers, not one, and they do attack faster over the long term.  This isn't a turn based game.  While combat start GO!!!! Means I get my two hits and you get your 1 2 hander hit... I will get to attack again before you, and over the course of a long play session you may be shocked to find out the duel wielder will likely match or beat the two hander long term.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Karkarov

[Doppelschwert]

I only partially agree with you karkarov. you describe how it should play out, but even in your scenario the weapons have to be proper balanced against each other. I don't think this is the case at the moment, so sensuki has a point, in particular because ranged weapons require both hands in both cases.

[Karkarov]

I only partially agree with you karkarov. you describe how it should play out, but even in your scenario the weapons have to be proper balanced against each other. I don't think this is the case at the moment, so sensuki has a point, in particular because ranged weapons require both hands in both cases.

Bow still fires faster.... A LOT faster.  Though I do agree the range weapons need a look.  My freaking pistol should not be able to do 60+ damage and almost hit as hard as an arquebus.

[Linkamus]

 

 

That's alright, but it's a problem as soon as DT = Damagethreshold (which basically means damage resistance in DnD terms) is applied.

 

When you have DT=2, so you soak up 2 damage every hit, you get

 

2*(4-2) = 4 for the dagger

1*(8-2) = 6 for the 2handed axe

 

with 50% might the discrepancy is even greater, although I can't remember whether is applied before or after DT.

 

 

Excuse my ignorance, but do we know if that's how DT works in PoE? DT doesn't work on a percentage scale, but a raw number scale?

[Doppelschwert]

Yeah, it's basically resistance from DnD and supposed to have the effects I described, namely tying breaks for weapons with similiar dps.

You're not able to distinguish similiar dps by a multiplication.

 

Deflection, fortitude and the other defensive stuff however changes the percentage of missing, gracing, hitting and critical hitting your actions, similiar to armor class in DnD works.

[Kjaamor]

I'm in a bit of rush to leave so I apologise if this has already been said, but isn't the point of making might have a greater impact upon big slow weapons to represent the fact that you would need to be big and powerful to use them? And weaklings like myself would be better with smaller weapons used quicker and more thoughtfully?

 

Or am I missing the point?

 

(Obviously this has no bearing on whether overall balance is off)

[Caerdon]

A small weapon benefits *more* from strength than a large one, because it suffers more from DT.

 

Also, could we finally let go of the idea that large weapons are slow and require lots of strength to wield, because that's utter BS. It's a good gameplay mechanic that they have lower attack speed but deal more damage, but that should be all. In real life it's actually easier for an untrained person to use a two-handed sword, because it requires *less* strength.