It's not as if it requires the same resources to create gathering spots as it does to evaluate player complaints, or balance gear and difficulty to make a new instance. They have an artist or two on staff, the artist made this, they might as well put it in while the designers work on whatever it is they're working on.

Making the actual art for new content is probably the easiest part of making new content; I'm sure that there are already several instances with completed art, waiting on boss and equipment balancing.

As a slayer, I believe that warriors are probably as good at what matters-- single target sustained dps. Add to that the fact that they're expecting buffs. Plus, they may or may not be able to tank (depending on how you play) and they give meaningful, party-wide debuffs that slayers don't.

Slayers and warriors are probably the two most popular classes, and I expect that warriors will only become more popular. That makes them expensive to equip, and affects how people see you.

Slayers are better than warriors for burst damage, but that's really only important for PVP, and if you want to be a PVP powerhouse right now, you will want to roll a priest. Slayers are also a total cinch to level (who needs health when you have knockdown strike).

Quote: Supjeremiah on 06/23/2012, 05:19 PM - view

If you get the right drops, you can get nearly any amount of gold in fifteen minutes :)

But Frost Giants are a good idea. I like that area, and giants aren't too much trouble. I'll have to try it out.

With as large of a benefit to be had from gear as exists in Tera, this kind of system carries the risk of setting up a feedback loop, where the stronger get stronger and the weaker get weaker. That's nice, in that it gives a good reason for the stronger to continue playing, but it generally causes the weaker to quit in droves.

I pretty much agree with you, SteamRolan. Some of the things you list are only minor issues though.

Unmentioned is the disconnect between +stundur and -stundur equipment, which I think could bear some looking at as well.

I think the biggest problem with PVP in Tera is that it just doesn't exist. Why not? Well, for one thing, because it's possible to get almost anyplace you want to get without placing yourself at risk for PVP:

Use scrolls to tp to dungeons.
Use flying mounts to travel between cities.
In the rare case that you can't tp or fly there, you ride your horse, from which you're pretty much invulnerable.

I think that the game would also benefit from reimagining how convenient it wants travel to be, and that a good start would be to give a significant cast time to your mount ability.

EDIT: Oh, one more thing, regarding damage reduction. Currently, these are multiplicative effects that stack additively-- so 10% reduction plus 10% reduction equals 80% reduction. For increased damage, this naturally causes diminishing returns, and is fine. For decreased damage, this actually causes accelerating returns-- somebody with 50% damage reduction is actually 200% as effective, not 150% as effective. I suggest changing it from an additive (subtractive) decrease to something like the reciprocal relationship they have with attack speed. That would fix a lot of problems with damage reduction.

Slayer, been farming a lot.

When doing mass-pull mob farming, the major time expense is the cost of rounding up the mobs and the cost of flipping channels for the next pull. In other words-- if another class can do it better, they probably can't do it much better.

Can farm lvl 58+ bams for cruxes, but drop rates are low enough, kills slow enough, that it's not an effective use of time. I believe warriors can actually take these down faster than slayers can. Zerkers are probably pretty good at it too. Easiest for me of these are argonomorph naga, and they take me at least 5 minutes each.

Farming naga battlemasters (lvl 49?) on serpentine for archrunes of titans (and valuable concachs) is about as effective as farming for pure gold, but any class could do that-- sorc could probably do it a little bit better, I would think, although I've never seen any sorcs out there trying.

Yeah, I don't think warriors or slayers need any love-- and even so, warriors are scheduled for some anyhow.

What you're talking about would be reasonable things to ask of the ability (as would actually being able to hit somebody standing on a peak), but wouldn't really be appropriate when backstab is already stupidly easy and good.

If you don't like the camera change mechanic, you might consider using /controller and making your abilities face the way your character is facing, rather than the way your camera is facing. This would make it easier to pull off a backstab->startling kick or similar combo. Unfortunately, it comes at the cost of making some other abilities much more difficult to use.

Slayer, too much time spent farming.

The 60s farms I know of are spawn-limited. I've tried rounding up mobs vs taking them solo-- between loading time spent changing channels, it amounts to about the same rate for me. So AOE isn't necessarily faster.

There is no such thing as down time. I don't lose hp (even without regen crystals), and I maintain mana. The only downtime is rounding up mobs, moving to new mobs, and flipping channels. Farmable mobs, I take down in three hits.

HP downtime shouldn't be a factor for any class. The cost of a bandage is tiny. The cost of hp regen crystals is small, and they don't compete with anything else that's useful for farming. If consumables improve your farm rate, use them. A single greater power charm costs 8 gp and should improve your kill rate by 20%-- that's much more than 8gp for the fifteen minutes the charm lasts. A single greater infuse means as much as 4 fine brilliants-- that's 4 hunters to improve kill rate.

What I've found is that the difference between me with no buffs (56+7 crit rate) and me with a greater keen charm and carving scroll (56+49.3 crit rate) amounts to about 6% of crit rate (different crit rates for different mobs, of course). That is to say, I get 8% on BT sloths without buffs, and 14% with buffs; I get 10% on an argonomorph naga without buffs, 16% with buffs.

There appears to be diminishing returns for this as well. I get more out of a single point of crit rate when my crit rate is lower.

When testing against lower level mobs, it looks to me like critting caps at 33%. Not enough trials to be sure of this though.

I'm still torn on backcrit+carving vs mutinous+swiftness. However, I do feel confident that a greater power charm is always better than a greater keen charm, even if you're running a backcrit setup.

Beyond the choice of charm (and accessory crystals, where I also strongly believe power beats crit rate), there aren't any spots I know of where crit rate competes with power.

It's definitely situational-- dps analysis is a tiny part of the decision of which move to make. The difference between dps for DB, WW, and BS is relatively small (the best, BS, is about 17% better sustained dps than the worst, WW sans combo).

In reality, if you're fighting a BAM and have the chance to use up your top tier cooldowns, you've probably got a good tank, in which case you're using backcrit and want to save BS for reposition (and probably want to save SB too). If you're fighting a group, WW shines over BS. If you're not in range for WW, you want some procs, or OH isn't off CD, then DB*3 is great. If DB doesnt give you the procs you want, HR->WW is a good backup (although so are four combo strikes and an overhead).

Overall, the difference in dps between a slayer's strongest moves and weakest moves is not enough to override decisions made based on terrain and the nature and position of targets.

The firm rules for slayer PVE are simple: use OH and MS anytime you can combo into them; don't use exhausting blow; don't use fury strike unless below 50% health; don't use leaping strike unless your target is knocked down. (And I would suggest don't use overpower or headlong rush as part of a _standard_ rotation, but it's clear that others in here disagree.)

Beyond these simple rules, you might as well play fluidly and intuitively, rather than based on calculations of ideal dps.