Report 1449

Special Report #1449
Skillset: Knighthood Skill: Wounding
 Org: Serenguard Status: Completed Feb 2016
Furies' Decision:
Already reviewed and/or by Ieptix in announce #2589.
Problem: Currently, warriors appear to be struggling with building wounds. As
described in report 1425, calcise and dendroxin has been demonstrated to assist
with wound building, however it presents a very messy design with balance
issues. Currently, there is a notable discrepancy under the new system between
one-handers and two-handers, namely that one-handers can choose between
delivering two poisons and two wounds, two afflictions and two poisons or one
wound, affliction and a poison. Two handers can only do two wounds and a poison
or one affliction and a poison, leaving them behind on their one-hander
counterparts in flexibility and output. In the old system, this was compensated
for by allowing for two-handers to have an inherent wounding bonus, but under
the new system this is not present. This report attempts to offer solutions to
address the problems with the new wounding system.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #1: The current +1/+2 wounding system may be too
 restrictive. Consider broadening the range to e.g a
 maximum of 200 on a body part instead of 20. Have
 two-hander strikes do 2.2x wounding compared to a
 one-hander's single strike. Start ice curing at an
 equivalent of 90% of a one-hander's single,
 unmodified strike. These numbers are initial
 suggestions and can be more easily tweaked over time.
 This solution is meant to allow for more flexibility
 with balancing as it allows us to have minor
 gradations in wound accrual and curing and find a
 balanced sweet spot.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #2: Have the wounding on two-handers do 2.6x the amount
 of a single one-hander's strike. Have ice cure about
 9 wounds (90% of a one-hander's single unmodified
 strike).
Player Comments:
---[Wobou on 2/19 @ 01:20 writes]:
Supported. An alternative scale would be to multiply the wounding values of
everything by 5 (so a scale of 100) but really the numbers don't make that much
of a difference.
---[Xenthos on 2/19 @ 23:33 writes]:
Yes. I like the multiply by 100 scale, so that we can actually tweak things on
a more gradual scale vs. right now. Currently, an increase of 1 point would be
a 100% bonus, vs. after this it would be just a 10% bonus.
---[Synkarin on 2/22 @ 04:38 writes]:
I think it's best to stay away from as much RNG as possible. A significant
amount of RNG has been removed from warriors already, so while I'm not opposed
to a more broad system. I think we also really need to fix the discrepancy
between two handers and one handers here. 2.2x seems really small, considering
that one handers get the benefit of 2 poisons each time as well as the ability
to wound/afflict in a round. I think something more like 2.6x-2.8x would be
appropiate here. The versatility of one handers is much much greater and 2.2
just isn't enough to adjust for that difference now. Before hand, they two
handers gave out better afflictions faster (like PB being able to collapsenerve
where BM required hemi) and that bonus is gone, as well as the wounding bonus. I
can go for 2.6x and adjust from there. I also thing ice should cure a static
number of wounds each time. I'm leaning towards 9 wounds at this point unless we
adjust ice balance (but that has other issues, even if calcise/dendroxin is
removed, damagedlegs/arms will still be around)
---[Celina on 2/23 @ 19:56 writes]:
I'm okay with Sidd's suggestion so solution 2.
---[Rivius on 3/2 @ 15:28 writes]:
As final remarks, combined with REPORT 1425, this is, in my opinion, *the* most
important report I've put up for the continued health of the warrior archetype.
While I understand the +1/+2 wounding system is a design we wanted to keep and
work with for its simplicity, I think demonstrably and mathematically, it cannot
work. The +1/+2 wounding system is too restrictive to fine-tune wound curing and
accrual rates. At the moment, wound building is not viable without
dendroxin/calcise on an efficiently curing opponent (which brings very
undesirable balance problems on its own, as outlined in 1425). A near 1:1 ratio
on wounds delivered and cured per warrior balance as it is now is mathematically
unsustainable, especially considering that modifiers do not deliver wounds. The
other possible points of adjustment if we were to keep the +1/+2 wounding
system, would be ice balance or warrior balance times, which don't provide us
the flexibility we need, as they introduce untoward effects to game balance
elsewhere. There are also imbalances in the one-hander and two-hander specs,
which are difficult to balance under such a near-binary system. The proposed
solutions for fixing that while keeping the current system (e.g. making certain
modifiers continue to give wounds for 2-handers only) introduces inelegance and
inconsistency, and potentially won't even solve the underlying issues. The idea
of a broader wounding system is a time-tested one that worked. Expanding
wounding as proposed in solutions 1 or 2 will allow us to find the perfect sweet
spot for ice balance, and get us on the way to making warriors great again.
---[Tredian on 3/8 @ 21:20 writes]:
Supported, agree on the point of expansion.