Defender 2.0 beta nerf

[joshua43214]

 

The question every one seems to be missing is "What class is meant to be a tank?"

 

 

PoE is NOT DnD, it is not Icewind Dale, it is not BG, etc.

If we are all going to persist in thinking this game is the same as the old games, we are all going to sit around being unhappy about the game.

 

 

That said, if the fighter is meant to be a tank, then this nerf is stupid. As a fighter gets better he should be able to engage more enemies and take less damage from them at the same time. The best solution for balance would be to delay the talent two levels so he has to really become a better fighter instead of a slightly better fighter.

 

 

On the other hand, if fighters are meant to fight then there is nothing wrong with the nerf. It just means that PoE has broken the current paradigm of fighter tanks in favor of something else.

[...]Each class holds the line in its own way. As covered in Update 52, the monk absorbs damage to fuel special attacks through the use of accumulated Wounds. These attacks can stun, push, or weaken individuals or small groups around them. While monks have to be monitored to ensure their Wounds do not overwhelm them, they can absorb a large amount of punishment and hamper enemy movement on the battlefield. In contrast, the fighter holds the line the traditional way: by standing her ground, blocking opponents, and being infuriatingly difficult to knock out. Barbarians are designed to jump into the fray swinging wildly. Lacking the accuracy and strong Deflection of the fighter, the barbarian makes up for his lack of discipline through sheer speed, savagery, and abilities tailored for fighting groups of enemies.[...]

 

http://eternity.obsidian.net/news/update-81-the-front-line-fighters-and-barbarians-

 

Thanks for the link. This still does not mean that the devs are not trying to break the paradigm.

 

 

My own personal opinion is that fighters should be high dps melee chars. They should have above average defenses, high accuracy, hit hard, etc. I don't mind using them as tanks, but I prefer them in light/medium armor doing heavy and methodical damage. The fighter is the guy you send on a suicide mission to kill the enemy wizards while a big hulking tank in full plate defends the line against the enemy horde.

 

 

Once upon a time, I played a paladin in EQ. When I stopped playing he was lvl75 and in the top 50 paladins in the game.

Over the years, I watched him get "rebalanced" from being the top tank class to being next to worthless compared to a fighter, and useless for DPS.

Now I realize that is an entirely different game with an entirely different rule set, but there are good lessons to be learned.

A chain class (EQ version of medium armor - EQ fighters wore only chain) should never be able to have a higher armor class (DR in PoE), than a plate class.

On the other hand, a plate class should never be able to avoid damage or swing as quickly as a chain class.

 

 

I also tend to be a bit cynical about the future when I hear a dev use the word "balance." It is still my hope that this is an attempt to balance the game in another direction. Folks have complained for a while that paladins are meh. My hope is that they are waiting to see how this nerf works before they take a shot at improving the paladin.

 

 

Remember, they have to make the game work for all players. Casual players should be able to play with a balanced character on easy/normal. RP'ers should be able to play mostly balanced chars on hard. Min/max should really only be needed for PotD, or small groups. As it stands pre-2.0, you can make a fighter tank that is near immune to damage - this is not balanced game play.

[evilcat]

 

Thanks for the link. This still does not mean that the devs are not trying to break the paradigm.

 

 

My own personal opinion is that fighters should be high dps melee chars. They should have above average defenses, high accuracy, hit hard, etc. I don't mind using them as tanks, but I prefer them in light/medium armor doing heavy and methodical damage. The fighter is the guy you send on a suicide mission to kill the enemy wizards while a big hulking tank in full plate defends the line against the enemy horde.

 

It is tricky, since everyone has own paradigm, and expectacions what fighters should be. And we dont know how Devs view it.

To add another aproach:

Fighter is a master of weapon and armour, with knack for smart fighting over rage fighting. They prefer medium and heavy armors. The advantage is that could spec in all kind of weapons, sword and board, 2wf, 2h, and even range. However prefer bigger weapons than stilleto or hunting bow. Can autoattack or use tactical manuveres for battlefield control.

 

Light warrior is more like rogues or melee ciphers. Rage warrior are barbarians. And commander seems to be taken by Paladins.

 

But it is just expectacion so everyone has own. As long as devs have a couple of styles in mind for class and support it with stuff it is ok.

[joshua43214]

 

 

But it is just expectacion so everyone has own. As long as devs have a couple of styles in mind for class and support it with stuff it is ok.

 

And this of course is the clincher.

It is all good provided we can all (most of us at least) can create a character set that matches our play style.

 

 

We have to play the game by it's own rules, and set aside our expectations and pre-conceived notions. I see far too many people stuck in a DA:O or DnD mindset and can't seem to break out of the mold.

Personally, I love to play paladins and rangers in most cRPG's, but I fully understand why many people hate paladins. I love the fact that I am not stuck with having to play Lawful/Good in PoE, Lawful/Good can get really boring really fast.

I rolled a balanced fighter for my first partial play through to get a feel for the game. After meeting with Pelagina, I decided that paladins are worthless.

I just rolled a paladin tank where I min'd per and dex (full plate and helm = slow moving and limited vision). So far I have to say I am very impressed with him. He holds up far better than Egan, he does not hit enemies a lot, but really hammers them when he does.

So far I am really happy with the 2.0 changes, though I am ambivalent about the fighter nerf. Unless this gets balanced elsewhere it will be a problem because paladins will suffer trying to engage extra enemies.

[rkade8583]

I want to be a fighter tank because fighters seem to be cultured badasses and cultured badasses tend to go one of two roads, the unkillable tank (1h+shield) and the puckish rogue (1h only or 2 1h)

 

Nerfing defender in this way seems counter-intuitive.

[gkathellar]

Defender isn't an ability for pure tanks anymore, it's an ability for fighter who wants to dish out damage with disengagement attacks. invest in a trap build that is strictly inferior for both party and solo play.

FTFY.

 

Dual wield hatchet is better than using a shield. You can keep quite a bit of offensive power and still pump up deflection. And that rending hatchet guarded by the lions is fairly easy to get and quite powerful.

It's "better" except for how shields have a scaling enhancement bonus and a talent that buffs both Reflex and Defense.

 

Which is to say that it's not better at all.

[MunoValente]

 

Defender isn't an ability for pure tanks anymore, it's an ability for fighter who wants to dish out damage with disengagement attacks. invest in a trap build that is strictly inferior for both party and solo play.

FTFY.

 

Strictly inferior to what?  It gives you more engagements than Hold the Line and nothing else really gives engagements.  The key for whether it will be any good or not is whether engagements are meaningful.

 

For me the really weak fighter talent is Guardian, I can see a use for Defender in the new form assuming enemies are more active about disengaging; if enemies disengage more, then pure defensive power isn't as useful and being able to dish out disengagement damage is more important.  Guardian is just kind of lame, large penalty, small radius and doesn't directly benefit the fighter.  Wary Defender in it's new form is pretty weak as well, even if I wanted to use the new version of Defender, I'd skip Wary.

 

Obviously it's not a talent designed for solo play, that should easy to figure out.

Edited August 19, 2015 by MunoValente

[gkathellar]

Ah, let me clarify. Focusing your build on disengagement attacks is strictly inferior to just about every other fighter build.

 

It's true that additional sources of engagement are hard to come by; but then, engagement is sort of like your appendix. You barely need the one. Why are you investing resources in an extra?

 

Guardian Stance is pretty miserable, yeah, but that doesn't make Defender any less worthless.

 

Wary Defender, on the other hand, actually isn't too bad in its current iteration. +5 to all non-deflection defenses isn't exactly the best thing since sliced bread, but it's decent. The bad part is that taking it requires a fighter to take and use the revised Defender.

 

Obviously it's not a talent designed for solo play, that should easy to figure out.

Hey, it's about only slightly less worthwhile there than it is in party play.

Edited August 19, 2015 by gkathellar

[MunoValente]

It's true that additional sources of engagement are hard to come by; but then, engagement is sort of like your appendix. You barely need the one. Why are you investing resources in an extra?

 

 

Well that is the bigger problem, the enemy AI and path finding needs to get smart enough to not get bottled in when they aren't engaged and break engagements from the puny tanks that can't deal damage when they are.  This is basically the single biggest problem with the game right now, I'm sure they know this and trying to trying to improve the game in those areas, if they do, engagement will be better and Defender along with it, if they fail then both Defender and Hold the Line will be pretty pointless, and combat of the game with continue to suffer from the same tedious tactics it often has now.

[Gary1986]

Well 6 days to go. Lets hope this thread has been seen and they have made a change.

[Kilburn]

 

Defender isn't an ability for pure tanks anymore, it's an ability for fighter who wants to dish out damage with disengagement attacks. invest in a trap build that is strictly inferior for both party and solo play.

FTFY.

 

Dual wield hatchet is better than using a shield. You can keep quite a bit of offensive power and still pump up deflection. And that rending hatchet guarded by the lions is fairly easy to get and quite powerful.

It's "better" except for how shields have a scaling enhancement bonus and a talent that buffs both Reflex and Defense.

 

Which is to say that it's not better at all.

 

 

It depends. If you just want a meatshield that stands around in doorways not hitting anything while the rest of your party uses ranged weapons then ya, shield is better. That play style was so terribly boring though.

 

My hatchet paladin was pushing 90 deflection at around level 4 or 5 and could rip stuff up in melee. Flame of devotion is also a full attack style so both hatchets strike with the bonus.

[joshua43214]

 

It's true that additional sources of engagement are hard to come by; but then, engagement is sort of like your appendix. You barely need the one. Why are you investing resources in an extra?

 

 

I am not sure I buy this logic at all.

I am doing my current play through with a paladin MT and I am having tons of trouble with monsters leaking past the tank due to lack of engagements, and they almost always chew on the guy in robes first.

The pali is seriously hampered by lack of engagements and lack of knock down.

I really hope that if the fighter nerf stays, that pali get buffed with extra engagement and a bash stun or knock down. For now I am just using Eder as an OT to catch and trip the leakers because I find fighting in doorways boring.

[KDubya]

 

 

It's true that additional sources of engagement are hard to come by; but then, engagement is sort of like your appendix. You barely need the one. Why are you investing resources in an extra?

 

 

I am not sure I buy this logic at all.

I am doing my current play through with a paladin MT and I am having tons of trouble with monsters leaking past the tank due to lack of engagements, and they almost always chew on the guy in robes first.

The pali is seriously hampered by lack of engagements and lack of knock down.

I really hope that if the fighter nerf stays, that pali get buffed with extra engagement and a bash stun or knock down. For now I am just using Eder as an OT to catch and trip the leakers because I find fighting in doorways boring.

 

 

If the reason for changing Defender is because it was so good that every type of fighter took it, why would they then go and add extra powers to Paladins, who got many buffs in the last patch?

 

Are you having your Paladin and Eder stand in front while four ranged guys in robes nuke the monsters? And this is causing the monsters to slide past your two melee guys and engage the guys in robes? If so that sounds like a great thing.

 

Are monsters set to not eat a disengagement attack and thus stick with their melee engager? Does having three engagements mean that three monsters are effectively stuck?

[Doppelschwert]

 

It's true that additional sources of engagement are hard to come by; but then, engagement is sort of like your appendix. You barely need the one. Why are you investing resources in an extra?

 

 

Well that is the bigger problem, the enemy AI and path finding needs to get smart enough to not get bottled in when they aren't engaged and break engagements from the puny tanks that can't deal damage when they are.  This is basically the single biggest problem with the game right now, I'm sure they know this and trying to trying to improve the game in those areas, if they do, engagement will be better and Defender along with it, if they fail then both Defender and Hold the Line will be pretty pointless, and combat of the game with continue to suffer from the same tedious tactics it often has now.

 

 

This is exactly what I was trying to say all along. If you sacrifice all of your accuracy and dps for godly defenses, then the disengagement attack can safely be neglected from the point of view of the attacker, so it's just strictly better to go after another target. Continuing this thought, a rational enemy would ignore the engagement to your tanks completely, unless they can do some damage.

As this is not the case in the base game where enemies just stick to the first target they get, of course it is strictly better to just pump your defenses.

 

However, if you would change the enemy AI to be more clever about this, engagement shifts its role:

You give the enemy the choice between forgoing a weaker target or eating a disengagement hit, which is a more dynamic effect and probably how it was intented all along. In particular, it's more important to balance DPS against defenses and maybe change it with modals to adjust to the situation (rush into the enemies with defender modal, they jog past you and eat some disengagement hits, switch to another modal).

 

Of course, this is not the reality of the game at the moment (in particular, I don't have access to the patch beta, but I doubt the AI is that good at the moment - even then, I don't mind being positively surprised in a week), but if it arrived at this point sometime in the future, that would be great.

Even then there are some pitfalls regarding level design with too many chokepoints and other issues like exploits of AI with regards to engagement, but depending on tweaking the AI, engagement may become useful. I'm not even claiming it's the best thing ever, but at least I can see it becoming viable to use the 2.0 defender mode when the AI went up some levels. Not for the purpose of defense, but for the purpose of intimidating the AI to move past your front line.

[wanderon]

What criteria would the enemy be using to determine whether breaking engagement is going to be devastating to him or a cakewalk?

[View619]

What criteria would the enemy be using to determine whether breaking engagement is going to be devastating to him or a cakewalk?

 

Does this character currently engaging me have low accuracy or a low hit chance? Are there other targets that are more susceptible to my attacks (lower deflection, DR or Endurance)? Do I have a clear path to these additional targets? If yes, disengage.

 

They just have to perform that calculation for all units currently engaging it. And if it's a case where a tank + unit with higher accuracy is flanking then the enemy will just focus on the more dangerous target. Also, switching weapons should have a delay before the change is completed; instant switching can lead to situations where players are able to abuse enemy disengagement under these rules (quick switch from Sword and Shield to Single Weapon, for example).

 

For what it's worth, I think the Obsidian devs have gotten the decision to attack more susceptible targets when possible sorted out. Last time I played (beta 2.0), melee mobs would split from the front-line to the back when possible and ranged units would decide to switch targets if squishies entered their range.

Edited August 20, 2015 by View619

[joshua43214]

 

 

 

It's true that additional sources of engagement are hard to come by; but then, engagement is sort of like your appendix. You barely need the one. Why are you investing resources in an extra?

 

 

I am not sure I buy this logic at all.

I am doing my current play through with a paladin MT and I am having tons of trouble with monsters leaking past the tank due to lack of engagements, and they almost always chew on the guy in robes first.

The pali is seriously hampered by lack of engagements and lack of knock down.

I really hope that if the fighter nerf stays, that pali get buffed with extra engagement and a bash stun or knock down. For now I am just using Eder as an OT to catch and trip the leakers because I find fighting in doorways boring.

 

 

If the reason for changing Defender is because it was so good that every type of fighter took it, why would they then go and add extra powers to Paladins, who got many buffs in the last patch?

 

Are you having your Paladin and Eder stand in front while four ranged guys in robes nuke the monsters? And this is causing the monsters to slide past your two melee guys and engage the guys in robes? If so that sounds like a great thing.

 

Are monsters set to not eat a disengagement attack and thus stick with their melee engager? Does having three engagements mean that three monsters are effectively stuck?

 

 

No, not every fighter took it, only tank fighters would take it - though yes, all tanks would take it. Nothing wrong with that, most classes have "no-brainer" talents for specific builds.

 

Dis-engagement only occurs after engagement. So if 3 mobs run at the party, only 1 of them is engaged by the pali and the other 2 are free to run right past with no penalty. I take advantage of this frequently when trying to position a character for something like fan of flames.

I am not sure why you say this is a good thing. Engagement was created specifically to overcome a melee characters inability to control the space around him in the Infinity Engine. Defender was implemented specifically so that a fighter could control even more space around him.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63432-update-44-the-rules-of-melee-engagement/

As things stand now, only fighters can take one talent to get 3 engagements. Why is asking for something similar in a paladin too much? What is wrong with giving the pali something like slam or bash to stun an enemy so he can chase down a monster chewing on some poor wizard in a silk robe? Fighters, monks, wizards, and chanters can all break engagement, the pali meanwhile is forced to stand proud engaging one whole enemy while the group perishes around him.

 

 

I do sort of get the logic behind the nerf even if I don't agree with it - by trying to divide your focus between 5 monsters, you are less able to defend yourself. -5 deflection just scales up badly when fully surrounded. A better logic would be that a mature and experienced fighter would do better at defending himself, but is so focused on his immediate enemies that he is more vulnerable to attacks from elsewhere, so something like Will or Reflex should be reduced.

[evilcat]

Every class could pick Hold the Line or pick specific named weapon with +1 engagement. And 3 slots is quite a lot.
Fighters could get there 5 opponents, but i am not sure how often you really could grab 5 engagement.

Some reason "Why fighters has something more?" is "Because other classes have something else" For example Paladin could Lay of Hands, resurect, generate DT, defence, healing auras. Fighters on the other side are more solo players.

 

I am totally fine with the fighters having something more, or being better than Paladins in some circumstances.

 

I am more concern about how Paladin, Fighter, Chanter compares to Wizard, Cipher, Druid at level 12. And if we can say that martial classes contribute to party success in same quality as full caster, even iif in different way.

Edited August 20, 2015 by evilcat

[wanderon]

 

What criteria would the enemy be using to determine whether breaking engagement is going to be devastating to him or a cakewalk?

 

Does this character currently engaging me have low accuracy or a low hit chance? Are there other targets that are more susceptible to my attacks (lower deflection, DR or Endurance)? Do I have a clear path to these additional targets? If yes, disengage.

 

 

 

And is this the same information available to the player re: enemy tanks allowing them to make similar decisions? We know players get more information on specific enemy types by facing more of them - how would this be decided for enemy characters?

[View619]

 

 

What criteria would the enemy be using to determine whether breaking engagement is going to be devastating to him or a cakewalk?

 

Does this character currently engaging me have low accuracy or a low hit chance? Are there other targets that are more susceptible to my attacks (lower deflection, DR or Endurance)? Do I have a clear path to these additional targets? If yes, disengage.

 

 

 

And is this the same information available to the player re: enemy tanks allowing them to make similar decisions? We know players get more information on specific enemy types by facing more of them - how would this be decided for enemy characters?

 

 

Pretty much. The only other information that could be relevant is disengagement strike damage, but if accuracy is low enough to make misses/ grazes more likely then this may not be as important. I suppose defense vs disengagement attacks would need to be calculated as well, if certain enemies have access to it, within the "Accuracy - Deflection" calculation.

 

I don't think AI will be able to make intelligent decisions based on the "threat level" of specific player units, only how effective their attacks would be vs them.

Edited August 20, 2015 by View619

[Doppelschwert]

And is this the same information available to the player re: enemy tanks allowing them to make similar decisions? We know players get more information on specific enemy types by facing more of them - how would this be decided for enemy characters?

As soon as the information was in the combat log for the first time, it is open information to everyone - for example, the defenses are displayed immediately at the tooltip of an enemy after you targeted them. With the 2.0 patch, you even get a hit percentage as additional information.

 

The bestiary just gives you the information even before you strike a first blow against a specific defense, it is not necessary at all to fight against enemies multiple times to get that information. Incorporating this knowledge into the enemy AI would hardly be unfair in my opinion since the player can make informed choices based on these informations all the time (and is even encouraged to do so), and I doubt that the AI will ever be clever enough make the smartest decisions involving these information to own the player.

 

Don't get me wrong here, I'm sure it's hard as hell to code a proper AI which can't be easily abused and still makes somehow smart decisions revolving engagement and so on. My main point is that the old AI behaviour where the enemy never disengaged differs quite a lot from a potential AI where the enemy frequently disengages with regards to how an ideal defensive character should look like.

A highly specialized tank which won't be attacked is a useless waste of space.

 

Improving AI is the most efficient but probably the most difficult way to shake up the tank & spank strategy. Even then, afflictions are still way too powerful and the level design still encourages you to position high defensive characters as blockers for the most part. Still, PoE has quite some potential to improve on these things, so it'll be interesting for me to see what the actual 2.0 AI brings to the table.

Edited August 20, 2015 by Doppelschwert

[wanderon]

 

And is this the same information available to the player re: enemy tanks allowing them to make similar decisions? We know players get more information on specific enemy types by facing more of them - how would this be decided for enemy characters?

As soon as the information was in the combat log for the first time, it is open information to everyone - for example, the defenses are displayed immediately at the tooltip of an enemy after you targeted them. With the 2.0 patch, you even get a hit percentage as additional information.

 

The bestiary just gives you the information even before you strike a first blow against a specific defense, it is not necessary at all to fight against enemies multiple times to get that information. Incorporating this knowledge into the enemy AI would hardly be unfair in my opinion since the player can make informed choices based on these informations all the time (and is even encouraged to do so), and I doubt that the AI will ever be clever enough make the smartest decisions involving these information to own the player.

 

Don't get me wrong here, I'm sure it's hard as hell to code a proper AI which can't be easily abused and still makes somehow smart decisions revolving engagement and so on. My main point is that the old AI behaviour where the enemy never disengaged differs quite a lot from a potential AI where the enemy frequently disengages with regards to how an ideal defensive character should look like.

A highly specialized tank which won't be attacked is a useless waste of space.

 

Improving AI is the most efficient but probably the most difficult way to shake up the tank & spank strategy. Even then, afflictions are still way too powerful and the level design still encourages you to position high defensive characters as blockers for the most part. Still, PoE has quite some potential to improve on these things, so it'll be interesting for me to see what the actual 2.0 AI brings to the table.

 

 

Not sure what you are saying here - info in beastiary increases from 0 to 100% based on multiple encounters and until it's 100% the incomplete info is what I see in the tool tips (or would see if I used them which I don't).

 

My question is at what point the enemy would have 100% of this information to make these sorts of tactical decisions from and why?

[Doppelschwert]

 

 

And is this the same information available to the player re: enemy tanks allowing them to make similar decisions? We know players get more information on specific enemy types by facing more of them - how would this be decided for enemy characters?

As soon as the information was in the combat log for the first time, it is open information to everyone - for example, the defenses are displayed immediately at the tooltip of an enemy after you targeted them. With the 2.0 patch, you even get a hit percentage as additional information.

 

The bestiary just gives you the information even before you strike a first blow against a specific defense, it is not necessary at all to fight against enemies multiple times to get that information. Incorporating this knowledge into the enemy AI would hardly be unfair in my opinion since the player can make informed choices based on these informations all the time (and is even encouraged to do so), and I doubt that the AI will ever be clever enough make the smartest decisions involving these information to own the player.

Not sure what you are saying here - info in beastiary increases from 0 to 100% based on multiple encounters and until it's 100% the incomplete info is what I see in the tool tips (or would see if I used them which I don't).

 

My question is at what point the enemy would have 100% of this information to make these sorts of tactical decisions from and why?

 

 

It's exactly like I wrote it down:

When you hit any enemy at any point with any action that targets a defense X, you get the value of X displayed in the tool tip.

I just loaded a save, attacked a dargul for the first time, now its deflection value is displayed in its tooltip. Symmetrically, the AI could hit your tank, see that you have way too high deflection, and decide that it should go somewhere else based on that information, just like the player does. There would be no unfair advantage for the AI here.

 

EDIT: If I killed a bunch of darguls before, their deflection would already be shown before I make a deflection-targeting action against them. The bestiary could stay empty all the game and you still had a means to look into the enemies stats.

Edited August 20, 2015 by Doppelschwert

[MunoValente]

Potential disengagement damage works the same way, after your puny 3 might paladin with a hatchet hits the dargul and does basically no damage, the enemy should know the Paladin is not a real threat and move on to a target that is.

[Gary1986]

What would be a reasonable engagement limit to have on a tank? 

[Gary1986]

When the expansion comes out tomorrow somebody keep me updated on if they changed defender