Report 1638

Special Report #1638
Skillset: Kata Skill: AngknekGut/Spronghai
 Org: Nekotai Status: Rejected Dec 2007
Furies' Decision:
No longer relevant.
Problem: When Angknek Gut and Spronghai were changed to lower their flat
bleeding for a bleed modifier, I suggested the following numbers: Angknek Gut =
100 + 15% of target's current bleed, and spronghai to be 15% or 20% of target's
current bleed. Currently, they are both at 5%. This prevents a Nekotai who
successfully builds haemophilia to keep the target bleeding from snowballing
successfully. These numbers need to be increased, to be at least 10% of target's
current bleed, if not 15% of target's current bleed. See logs at the forums for
details.
Solution #1: Removed this solution based on feedback from Voyoma's and Wobou's
 comments. Will leave this report in draft to record the
 conversation below.
Solution #2:
Player Comments:
---[Wobou on 3/19 @ 17:48 writes]:
I'm against increasing these sorts of multipliers. I think we should move away
from things that function as a percentage of the bleeding the target already
has.
---[Falaeron on 3/20 @ 00:30 writes]:
I'm also against mechanics like this that act as multipliers on themselves.
"Snowballing" offences are not very fun in 1v1s as the space between
"negligible" and "out of control" is very small. These mechanics further
compound themselves when multiple people are doing it to the same target.
---[Lerad on 3/20 @ 01:30 writes]:
I disagree with two things in the above comments: 1) The premise of multipliers
easily going "out of control" - bleed multipliers that depend on the target's
bleeding is highly dependent on the target's curing - it is highly controllable
by the target's curing. In order to get, say, 100 bleed from a 10% multiplier,
the target needs to be bleeding 1000 AT THE POINT of the attack. In other words,
it properly punishes a target that cures badly, and rewards the user who can
achieve their stated design goal (build bleed via haemophilia). This is FAR
better than flat bleeding, which the target can do nothing about, and
immediately imposes a mana cost via clotting, or rolling damage pressure via
bleeding ticks. There is no way to lower how much flat bleed you get by curing.
Flat bleed is far easier to go "out-of-control" - and with very little things
the target can do about it. It is simply a ticking timebomb. 2) Moving away from
this multiplier - The new monk stance mechanic, or at least the Nekotai
specifically, is built ENTIRELY around the concept of snowballing. For the
Nekotai, I have made it clear from the start that the entire point is for them
to be able to build bits and pieces of bleeding, but if the opponent does not
manage to completely clot it before the Nekotai regains balance (via
haemophilia), the Nekotai will then be able to snowball higher and higher.
Moving away from this mechanic is not an option for the Nekotai - they are
designed from the ground up for this. My concern is to balance this mechanic for
the Nekotai, not find alternatives for it. And at this point, the multipliers
are too low.
---[Wobou on 3/20 @ 13:48 writes]:
The issue I have with this is that it moves in the opposite direction of where I
think we should be going. Monks right now have a problem that on some targets we
are completely absorbed and others we kill them too quickly. A percentage
modifier of existing bleeding is entirely a win-more button when the target
already has bleeding and does not have much to do with the targets curing, it
also has little effect on someone who can currently absorb our offense. These
modifiers can also be used to increase "flat bleeding" as well because it's not
just how much bleeding the target had at the beginning of the form, it's how
much they had at the beginning of theaction. My understanding (which could be
flawed since I don't use it) is that mmf essentially clots everything off unless
it would take your mana below a certain threshold. This is reasonably close to
optimal with the existence of bleeding percentage modifiers like the ones in
this report. This means that if a target using mmf which is most of the
population of the game is bleeding then you are already dishing out more vital
pressure than they can take which to me is not the same as poor curing. As I've
said numerous times bleeding is already a snowball mechanic, you don't need to
snowball the snowball mechanic for nekotai to be able to snowball themselves.
---[Demartel on 3/20 @ 14:34 writes]:
The problem with snowballs is they turn into avalanches. Nekotai are not in need
of bleeding on top of bleeding. The mechanic of bleeding is already a nightmare
to balance and code around and adding in increased free bleeding is something we
don't need to be doing. For most people the idea of the overhaul was not only
just to bring Monks into the system, but to bring monks inline with other
classes. So far we are seeing Monks having gone from silly ridiculous pre-
overhaul to silly ridiculous post-overhaul and special reports being used, like
this one, to keep pushing that silly ridiculous momentum (pardon the pun). My
suggestion would be to put down the pen and paper, get into the mud, and find
out what monks can actually do instead of trying a couple thinks in a vacuum of
the test server and then saying "we need more"
---[Voyoma on 3/20 @ 22:54 writes]:
In the interest of preventing this from going back and forth, we made a
conscious decision to make all the bleed/bruising moves sit at 5% because when
testing in the test server at 15%, bleeding and bruising was building entirely
too fast on targets with 8k-9k mana. This wasn't something we did arbitrarily,
it was an active decision based on actual testing and we are unlikely to make
adjustments back to those numbers.
---[Lerad on 3/21 @ 00:11 writes]:
After discussion in the forums, and a better understanding of this multiplier is
coded, I agree that the current solutions are too much. I'll target one-off
bleed multipliers that happen only at the start of the form, specifically the
Nekotai stances instead of individual actions. Thanks for the feedback. Oh, and
Demartel. If you didn't notice, I only made all of these reports AFTER spars and
examining logs of combat spars, not testing logs. I have always, and repeatedly,
argued my reports based on actual combat scenarios, not based on hyperbole and
unfounded accusations of being "silly ridiculous". If you have nothing to back
up your claims beyond the ages old "monks are OP" line, then perhaps you might
want to actually take your own advice and go out there to get some combat logs
before commenting.
---[Shedrin on 3/21 @ 01:40 writes]:
I don't think 'snowballing' is bad, but I think doing it based on current
bleeding doesn't work because bleeding is cured instantly. Even using
haemophilia to block that can be cured instantly. So this snowballing won't
actually occur, excepting cases in group combat where stuns, aeon,
damagedthroat+anorexia, crux, etc etc can be used. Unless report 1637 or
something similar is accepted.
---[Shuyin on 4/18 @ 04:03 writes]:
I don't think this is relevant anymore, but I'm commenting as proof that I read
this.