[Defense Discussion] They're testing the 'fenses for weaknesses...

[Voss]

 

 

Yeah, I don't think tanks are required at all, but in terms of elevating a team from mediocre/poor to capable of beating difficult fights, I think they do better at the moment than any other class.  Which is what I need since I'd like to play through the campaign with the story companions but I have no confidence that they are going to be fit for battle at all.

 

This fight is kind of the worst case for armor since all the enemies are bears and ogres, but being naked does seem pretty great if you're not a tank/paladin/chanter.

 

I'm not sure how many level 6 ogre boss fights folks think a five man level 4 team that includes the bb characters should be able to beat in a day, but I'm pretty happy with one.  I do think it's possible that if my single target damage dealers were not some guy with a crossbow and some orlan with a arquebus that she found somewhere but doesn't know how to use, things might have died a little quicker and allowed me to use less spells.  But you go to war with the party you've got, not the one you wish you had (unless you spend 1250 coppers at the inn to hire them).

 

Which is weird, because the tank doing better then the other characters isn't what I see in the video.  The CC and healing carry the fight, and it would go much smoother with proper damage dealing.  The tank isn't keeping the enemies locked with him through abilities, and given the number of enemies, the shoddy engagement rules aren't either.  It isn't tactics, strategy or cunning plans.  Just crap AI.  Almost anything that blocked pathing would serve the same function.

 

Bears are the worst case for armor?  

 

I wasn't thinking of level 6 ogre boss fights in particular, but significant fights.  And since health damage is cumulative and you can't do jack about it (outside of resting), even trash mobs can wear this type of tank down to the point the character can't survive.  The resource management aspect of the game starts turning around one meatshield's health bar.

Edited March 14, 2015 by Voss

[Sensuki]

But my BB Fighter in Defense mode was flanked against only two enemies, one standing behind him. I'm pretty sure flanking is related to the position of the enemy, and not related to any engagement numbers.

The game doesn't have facing mechanics, it's probably just flanked = engaged by 2 enemies.

[Tartantyco]

Hmm, that doesn't make sense either, as I can be engaged by more than two people without being flanked. Maybe I'm misremembering something. Time to test some stuff, I guess.

[roguelike]

You can definitely be engaged by two enemies and not flanked, I think it happens when engagement angles are greater than 90 degrees or something.  Flanking is kinda buggy anyway.

 

Bears are the worst case for armor?  

 

Yeah, the whole point is that fight is the 'shreds melee' fight because the enemies have high accuracy and damage.  Against enemies with either lower accuracy or lower damage the scaling on defense kicks in and you become really tough, not 'needs a healer and cc' tough.

[Voss]

I think you misunderstand my reaction.

Part of it is... They're just freaking bears.

 

But most of it is, this is just mid-tier stuff at best, there are 6 more levels and all sorts of enemies to go. If bears cause your high defense/armor build so much trouble, it is going to be -utterly- worthless against real enemies later on.

[roguelike]

That's not really how accuracy scaling works.  Bears are level 5 creatures listed with 73 accuracy in bestiary and elder bears have 12 more accuracy on top of that.  For comparison the level 8 adra beetle has 61 and the level 9 menpwrga (is that really a creature name?  really?) has 64.  It's far more likely that with levels and party abilities my tank's deflection is going to outscale enemy accuracy.

 

Armor of course is another issue.  There's a dragon in the files that hits for something like:

Adra Dragon

DR: 28

Claw Attack: 36-55 (dual wielded?)

Breath Attack 90-170

Head Swipe: 80-160

Tail Attack: 125-250

Wing Slam: 70-140

 

30 Might (so, +60% to all numbers above)

 

So obviously DR from armor is going need to get pretty crazy for it to be effective in the end game.

[Sensuki]

I think the high accuracy of bears might be a mistake, but I'm not sure.

[roguelike]

Yeah, accuracy seems to be mostly race + 3/level, just like for player characters.  So lions and wolves, both level 5 beasts, have the same accuracy, and a level 6 spider has 6 more accuracy than a level 4 spider.  Level 8 Adra beetles have 15 more accuracy than level 3 wood beetles.

 

Except bears seem to have a +15 bonus over other beasts.  Because bears.

Edited March 14, 2015 by roguelike

[Voss]

Yeah, accuracy seems to be mostly race + 3/level, just like for player characters.  So lions and wolves, both level 5 beasts, have the same accuracy, and a level 6 spider has 6 more accuracy than a level 4 spider.  Level 8 Adra beetles have 15 more accuracy than level 3 wood beetles.

 

Except bears seem to have a +15 bonus over other beasts.  Because bears.

 

Ah.  That makes more sense.  The 73 +12 for elder/61/64 numbers you tossed up before made monster level a completely meaningless concept.

So effectively bears are attacking (in terms of accuracy) as if they were level 10 creatures.  Sounds like a bug to me.

Edited March 14, 2015 by Voss

[Sensuki]

Yeah I was going to report the discrepancies with creature accuracy but you appear to have more comprehensive info than I do - so go ahead

hint: use the UnlockBestiary command to get some of those values too, some of the other companion types appear to be off in those entries at least

[Odd Hermit]

I've collected some evidence of combat being decided by the opener:

 

http://i.imgur.com/9rBP0Mm.jpg

 

That's a pretty short combat log for a boss fight.

 

Yes I have 2x might stacked secrets of rime druids, but imagine if I had 3.

 

Oh and apparently if you start combat and kill everyone in the opener the enemy is *NameError*

Edited March 18, 2015 by Odd Hermit

[wanderon]

Maybe they should have been wearing more armor 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

The X-Factor for this problem is DR. If there was no DR, Josh could have used D&D style lower numbers for things. Because DR exists, everything requires much higher numbers and it makes it very hard to balance. Another thing that throws it off is the Endurance and Health system and how Constitution works. 

 

The attack resolution system was designed so that unit actions had a positive outcome most of the time. The original design didn't even include a chance to miss. They have not really accounted for the fact that things pretty much always deal damage with their numbers properly IMO, or, if they are - they're looking at it from the wrong angle or something.

 

It's a fair experiment for a system, but it's got a long way to go before they get it right IMO.

 

Agreed. I noticed this from the get-go as well. It's a system of guaranteed damage. Defense is almost pointless. The only way to mitigate damage is to setup ambush style tactics for an overwhelming victory. That characters only get "knocked out" only fuels this style of play. I think DR is more of a symptom of the intended Miss/Hit/Crit philosophy than a beast of its own, but the two are so deeply entangled that they might as well be the same problem.

 

Well then, like I said, seems like a fairly trivial balance issue. Unless the beta area is actually designed for the player to have way better armor than what's available in the beta, or something.

 

Except that it's not trivial. By adding various forms of DR/DT with almost guaranteed hit/damage and a deliberate exclusion of hard-counters, PoE has an extraordinarily difficult system to balance. The addition of variable attack speeds, interrupts, and disengagement attacks/bonuses only exacerbates these issues. PoE is probably the single most difficult game to balance I have ever encountered.

 

I'd like to see an examination of non-Fighter characters that combine both high deflection (as high as they can get, that is) and decent armor, and see how they hold up going into a melee.

 

Not well. This is something I've tested extensively. I attribute this more to the poor quality of defensive spells more than the low base deflection of the classes. Defense spells do no confer enough of a bonus to be worthwhile and have prohibitively short durations. The absence of hardcounters, presence of (nearly) assured damage (received), with low health multiplier cause them to operate very poorly at the lead. Combat is brief and immobile, while the AI is simple. If they target your caster, your caster will not have the time to get all of their buffs going--be assured that they will need every single one. Even should they get them off, they will still take damage that the class will not withstand. Even still, their buffs last too briefly to be of real use. Ultimately, you expend the caster's entire daily complement in a single battle to achieve a far inferior result.

[Shdy314]

Self buffs should pretty much all be instant cast. At least wizard ones.

[DigitalCrack]

Its been mentioned before but changing con from a % bonus to health will help in making low endurance classes viable in melee.

[Luckmann]

I've collected some evidence of combat being decided by the opener:

 

http://i.imgur.com/9rBP0Mm.jpg

 

That's a pretty short combat log for a boss fight.

 

Yes I have 2x might stacked secrets of rime druids, but imagine if I had 3.

 

Oh and apparently if you start combat and kill everyone in the opener the enemy is *NameError*

 

Well that explains that bug, at least.

 

That's hilarious. And sad. But mostly hilarious.

[mutonizer]

I've collected some evidence of combat being decided by the opener: 

http://i.imgur.com/9rBP0Mm.jpg

Should make IE "fireball opener" lovers happy then? I mean, massive front-loading before combat even starts is one of the most used cheese tactic in most IE games, usually on par with spam resting. Of course some bosses have crazy magic resistance but still.

 

Cheesers gonna cheese no matter what and since this is a single player cRPG, doesn't affect me one bit (until some designer start putting in artificial limitations that is...I'm looking at you supplies!).

[Luckmann]

 

I've collected some evidence of combat being decided by the opener: 

http://i.imgur.com/9rBP0Mm.jpg

Should make IE "fireball opener" lovers happy then? I mean, massive front-loading before combat even starts is one of the most used cheese tactic in most IE games, usually on par with spam resting. Of course some bosses have crazy magic resistance but still.

 

Cheesers gonna cheese no matter what and since this is a single player cRPG, doesn't affect me one bit (until some designer start putting in artificial limitations that is...I'm looking at you supplies!).

 

Apart from trivial encounters which I can't interpret as anything other than intended to be trivial, I can't think of any encounters in the IE games that were (reliably) over before they began, especially not boss-fights, and especially not decided by a fireball.

[axedice]

Mass skull trap + rogue traps stacking with resting was widely used in BG2 / ToB. Cheesers gonna cheese 

[Voss]

Ah. We're back to 'don't use successful tactics because winning is for bad people' again.

[axedice]

Well if we're taking D&D as an example, no DM would allow you to cast 36 skull traps by resting 6 times, right outside the line of sight of baddies, just because they can't see the skulls magically appearing out of thin air right in front of them. 

 

If you enter a dragons lair and know what you're going to face since you scouted/clairvoyanced etc, go ahead and use successful tactics. Be a winner, nothing wrong with it. But IE games did have encounters that were over before they began and this involved cheesy tactics. Just saying IE is not better than PoE in this regard. 

[Odd Hermit]

Ah. We're back to 'don't use successful tactics because winning is for bad people' again.

I am fine with some tactics being more successful than others, it's not very interesting otherwise.

But some people want a fight to be a fight, not just blow everything up before it can react - at least for bigger/badder encounters. I'm fine if my AoEs decimate some weaker groups of enemies, after all that allows you some sense of progression and fun.

 

 

I am not using any exceptionally cheesy tactics in that screenshot. I am using two smartly/offensively built characters of a particularly strong class, nothing more.

 

Part of this is just that druids need some toning down, but it's possible with other classes as well it'll just be a little more involved than dropping two massive high damage AoEs.

 

 

A good opening tactic should not immediately decide a fight IMO. It should give you an upper hand, of course, but if enemies can't recover at all combat is at risk of become formulaic and tedious.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Odd Hermit

[Voss]

I agree, what you're doing isn't cheesy at all- its perfectly sensible to drop AoEs on unengaged (if that even matters in PoE) enemies.  But I think most of the problems with the bigger/badder encounters is encounter design and layout, and of course the AI.  If you can just walk up to the big bad and drop a couple nukes on their heads- the encounter has been designed poorly.  Put some guards and/or traps first so you can't just waltz in and bomb the majority of the encounter.  [Note here: just artificially inflating the boss as a bullet sponge for damage is also really bad design.

 

For example, taking that screenshot, if two of those guys were by the doorway (and inside or outside makes a huge difference), 1 by each pillar and the other two by the machine, the whole thing would flow very differently indeed.   As it is, dropping a couple AoE's on their head is the logical and obvious solution to the problem, which is crappy encounter design.

[Odd Hermit]

I agree, what you're doing isn't cheesy at all- its perfectly sensible to drop AoEs on unengaged (if that even matters in PoE) enemies.  But I think most of the problems with the bigger/badder encounters is encounter design and layout, and of course the AI.  If you can just walk up to the big bad and drop a couple nukes on their heads- the encounter has been designed poorly.  Put some guards and/or traps first so you can't just waltz in and bomb the majority of the encounter.  [Note here: just artificially inflating the boss as a bullet sponge for damage is also really bad design.

 

For example, taking that screenshot, if two of those guys were by the doorway (and inside or outside makes a huge difference), 1 by each pillar and the other two by the machine, the whole thing would flow very differently indeed.   As it is, dropping a couple AoE's on their head is the logical and obvious solution to the problem, which is crappy encounter design.

 

Wouldn't make much difference honestly. I have re-ran this encounter many, many ways. If I get a couple strong Druid AoEs off they are pretty much done for. There's a remote chance of them getting some AoE/CC off but my druids have high enough reflex that their cast speed gets hail storm off quickly enough that it's unlike they can stop me from gibbing multiple targets right off the bat + I have a leadsplitter cipher who can take out a priority target like their own cipher nigh instantly.

 

I think part of the problem is that CC spells are unreliable, but damage is not. I have opened with CC spells, and the graze/miss is much more punishing than using damage where a graze can still be devastating and with AoE you'll generally hit a few targets hard enough.

 

Pumping damage for casters makes sense as well, since you can't improve accuracy of spells you need grazes to hit hard.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Odd Hermit