Experiences of a Fighter in 2.0

[Thorgrim]

Please keep that in mind when you're talking about respective balance. In 2.0, a Fighter teamed up with a Scholar should, IMO, be generally more efficient than a two-Scholar team over the course of a day. Classes and characters are absolutely intended to work together, not in a vacuum. That's part of the stated 2.0 intent.

So when you're talking about a single Fighter facing off against a single Scholar, you're definitely talking about a situation that is *not* the focus of 2.0. It's worth talking about and considering, but it's also worth spending some time and brainpower on what that Fighter can do when he's properly supported by a Scholar (and vice versa).

I can understand the reasoning behind it but you have to consider what is FUN for both classes not just what they can do together. You're taking MMO concepts and trying to incorporate them into a boffer larp. Being a tank in a MMO can be fun because there are a bunch of skills that can't be reproduced in a boffer game (like holding aggro and activating cool downs to reduce incoming damage at critical times, etc). Just standing in the way of things while scholars take down all of your enemies sounds a lot less fun in a boffer setting.

I agree that thanks to expanded enchant and master construct, end game fighters are the end all be all in 1.3. However, as is so often the case when the nerf bat comes out, you swung the pendulum the other way. You didn't just take away their spells and their golems, you also took away their damage output via profs and damage aura. You took away their magic defenses by removing cloaks and banes. You took away anything that made them anything more than a glorified meat shield to stand between the scholars and the monsters. Every offensive fighter ability with the exception of disarm/shatter got worse. Honestly as a fighter now there's no real reason to swing a sword. Powerful blows are easily blocked, base damage is negligible and irrelevant when you are just going to rely on take outs from other classes to defeat your enemies. You're better off going full defensive and "fulfilling your role"of the guy who stands in the way while other people kill things. Maybe that sounds like an interesting play style for some people, but it certainly doesn't to me.

 

[Graham Wolsey]

Being a tank in a MMO can be fun because there are a bunch of skills that can't be reproduced in a boffer game (like holding aggro and activating cool downs to reduce incoming damage at critical times, etc).

I think this skills could be recreated in a Boffer setting, they just haven't been. All nerf and no new utility.

 

[Cedric]

CO scholars are by far the most played class. I would guess that it's split down the center between earth/celestial. One thing that does skew this a bit is people that want a mostly non-combat role, their options are artisan or scholars. I think that does skew the numbers slightly (but doesn't change the argument).

SF has almost no celestial scholars is what I remember.

 

[Avaran]

Best at sustained damage

If a Fighter can get on a target and stay there, we definitely have better sustain than C Scholars at high level. You know...IF....

 

[Saephis]

If a Fighter can get on a target and stay there, we definitely have better sustain than C Scholars at high level. You know...IF....

If the fighter is played like a Scout or Rogue, and your target is focusing on higher damage output from a scholar, I feel you've located the 'if' rather well.

 

[Tevas]

I'd love to see DATA on these questions. How many of different classes are played actively in different chapters and at what levels?

SF has almost no celestial scholars is what I remember.

San Francisco's population contains a very small number of Celestial Scholars and Rogues, when compared to sample sizes of other classes. Earth Scholars, Earth Templars and Fighters are the majority of our character base.

 

[Avaran]

If the fighter is played like a Scout or Rogue,

I have often been mistaken for a Rogue based on how I play my Fighter....

 

[Polare]

Kindly keep in mind a couple rather important parts of my post:

In 1.3, I'll start pretty categorically that Fighters are the end-all be-all class. Much of this is due to Magic Items in the current system. I can be a 40th level Fighter with a 40th level Scholar in my pocket. I *cannot* be a 40th level Scholar with a 40th level Fighter in my pocket - the Ritual system simply doesn't allow for that. Clearly, opinions differ on how much the skill system contributes to that difference, but suffice it to say that it also plays a part on how useful a character is throughout the entire day.

It is entirely possible that 2.0 has swung one way or the other too far;

(emphasis added)

Some of the replies seem to be overlooking those parts and focusing on "why not just remove Magic Items then?". As I noted, it's entirely possible that 2.0 has gone too far (or not far enough) in various ways.

Personally? If I had to pick one part of 2.0 that was the single most "beneficial" improvement from 1.3, without a doubt I'd say the Magic Item changes (in whatever form, whether the 0.8 packet or 0.9) are the most impactful and best for the game.

But that doesn't mean skills don't play a part. 10 years ago, a "big fighter" swung 15s all day. Now they swing 25s to 30s all day. In 10 years (if anything build growth has accelerated due to more chapters, Pay no Play, etc.) they will swing 50s all day. Let me ask you honestly: Is that really a game you want to play, when a starting character comes in swinging (at most) 3s or 4s and is confronted with other players running around swinging 50s - and monsters needing to scale to deal with that? That scale of the game really is coming down the line in the current system. That's not hyperbole (at least I don't believe it is), it's a simple fact of where 1.3 is going without changes to the skill system.

One of the most oft-cited reasons I hear from players who try once or twice and don't come back is that the gulf between 1st level and "high" level is so massively wide they feel useless. Overly high Monster Body totals is the biggest part of that; and the biggest contributor to *that* is high consistent damage output. Note that I also regularly PC a high level (30ish) Rogue who focuses on Backstabs, so it's not like I've not been on both sides of the fence for constant damage being significantly decreased. Proficiency and Backstab play a major part of that, not just Magic Items.

As noted above the balance probably isn't 100% there yet. But you can't just throw out Magic Items and pretend there's no more damage scaling problems. Without DA and Slayers we're still back in our current position in a few years. There are a wide variety of opinions on whether that's good or bad, but my personal opinion is that linearly increasing Prof/Backstab (and Wand) damage (i.e. the 1.3 version) is, simply put, a bad thing for the game at high levels. It's a very different thing at low to mid levels, note!

-Bryan

 

[Polare]

I think that unless NPC's are built to withstand many caster takeout effects, two Scholars will be more effective than a Scholar+Fighter, mostly because the Fighter is utterly dependent on the Caster for all packet-related defenses (purposefully not including Magic Items). This very much promotes a "Line" style of fighting, which I really hate, almost wholly because I feel like a resource sponge. And when fighting in a line, it is a lot harder to dodge packets, for me, than if I am skirmishing (which is partly why I do that so much).

(personal non-official opinion below - I clearly need to make sure to be up front about this!)

I don't disagree with this. My personal opinion is that the game is better when each class has its own appropriately scaled way to deal with takeout effects - see my "Shake Off" idea I threw out in another post. If that got adopted, you'd have:

Rogues have Dodge (most expensive but also "best" and stackable) and middling body
Scholars have spell defenses and High Magic (middling cost, spell defenses aren't stackable but HM is to a limited extent) and wimpy body
Fighters have Shake Off (weakest defense against takeouts but stackable and cheapest) and high body

In this paradigm everyone has their own version of a "takeout" defense weighed against their other abilities.

Speaking as someone who has played a high-level Scholar, a high-level Rogue, and a mid-level Fighter (but one who focused on Armor Points), Scholars *really do* get absolutely murdered by consistent damage. My high-level C Scholar's worst nightmare is getting rolled up on by 3 NPCs swinging 10+ - which is entirely reasonable at his level - without a Fighter or Templar nearby. Because I can throw takeouts quick enough to take one down for sure, maybe 2, but it doesn't take many swings at all to take me out. It's not takeouts that take that character down the most, it's just plain old damage swings.

That's a fear that my Rogue pretty much doesn't have and my prior high-armor Fighter never had, and a weakness I think some folks are discounting in the "fighter experiences" discussion.

-Bryan

 

[Muir]

I tend to think we can discount 'high-armor' when discussing the Fighter changes. Armor usage is really more a matter of OOG resources, not IG stats, be it building/buying an armor rep or donating to GS up Arcane.

 

[Tevas]

That's a fear that my Rogue pretty much doesn't have and my prior high-armor Fighter never had, and a weakness I think some folks are discounting in the "fighter experiences" discussion.

As a Fighter who right now is most likely switching to Scholar in v2 for the sole reason of supporting their team, for whom the game is otherwise unapproachable in its 0.9 form, I will still be maxing out at 62 points of armor. Armor being infinitely renewable and martial damage being so substantially reduced makes it a survivability tool that I find difficult to ignore. Sure, it's almost two full spell columns, but those spells do you no good if you're not alive to cast them. I see myself based on the playtest results having to run up to the front lines endlessly in order to pick up all the fighters who have been taken out due to their susceptibility to anything non-weapon. The heightened armor value provides the survivability to get that person back on their feet without becoming a liability myself. It won't be because I'm a Scholar, it's not a per day ability, it's simply purchasing armor. Similar effects can be achieved through Celestial Armor, and several Paragon abilities. I do not feel, as a result, that this is an experience that is unique to Fighters. It is simply "the armor experience".

 

[mikestrauss]

One of the points I keep seeing people make is that fighters fall to a double tap or triple tap of spells / gasses. This isn't universally true for a couple reasons (including racial abilities), but for now lets pretend we have a human fighter to take that out of the equation. Sure, even if the fighter has a pre-cast (or pre-drunk) defense, the fighter goes down pretty fast.

However, the same human scholar is in roughly the same boat. Casting a defensive spell in the heat of combat isn't always that easy. You need to call your defensive spell and then start your incant, while the caster (or gas thrower) can easily already be in the middle of the next verbal before you start that defensive spell. Similarly, you have very limited defenses. If you are high enough to have formal magic, you probably have a few banes and cloaks. But those are very limited in number: 1 bane per 3 9th level spells and 1 cloak per 2. Furthermore, they are incredibly specific. If you want to cover every single effect group (binding, alteration, command, eldritch force, necromancy, did I miss any??), you probably only have 1, MAYBE 2, of each per day.

In short, even as a scholar, you pretty much fall to sustained take-out spells / gasses at basically the same speed as a fighter (or just a tad slower). The oft repeated line that fighters are susceptible to these effects while scholars aren't really doesn't hold water. Rogues, with a more universal defense, are best protected, but even that eventually runs out.

-MS

 

[Avaran]

In short, even as a scholar, you pretty much fall to sustained take-out spells / gasses at basically the same speed as a fighter (or just a tad slower). The oft repeated line that fighters are susceptible to these effects while scholars aren't really doesn't hold water.

Scholars can get HM cloaks and banes to assist with this -- and I think you're dismissing their value and presence too easily because it is an added layer of protection that Fighters don't have, meaning the Scholar likely wins again -- in addition to having the luxury of being able to stay at range (making their movement less predictable). Fighters typically have to close out a certain distance to get in melee, making it very easy for an opposing caster to predict their path and peg them while they are moving forward.

 

[Tevas]

@mikestrauss was this the experience you encountered in your playtesting?

We've conducted four full logistics periods worth of playtesting out here, and found that martial characters drop way too fast across the board to these effects. I'd be curious to know if your playtesting resulted in something different, when the theories you have were put into practice? Denver and Seattle's playtesting reports seem to align with our experiences out here as well.

 

[mikestrauss]

Scholars can get HM cloaks and banes to assist with this -- and I think you're dismissing their value and presence too easily because it is an added layer of protection that Fighters don't have, meaning the Scholar likely wins again -- in addition to having the luxury of being able to stay at range (making their movement less predictable). Fighters typically have to close out a certain distance to get in melee, making it very easy for an opposing caster to predict their path and peg them while they are moving forward.

Honestly, I feel like you didn't read my post at all, except for the last few lines. I literally talk about HM cloaks and banes throughout the second paragraph. I specifically mention the rate at which you can get them and the limitations of them. I didn't dismiss their value. I weighed it and gave it a fair accounting.

-MS

 

[Alavatar]

But that doesn't mean skills don't play a part. 10 years ago, a "big fighter" swung 15s all day. Now they swing 25s to 30s all day. In 10 years (if anything build growth has accelerated due to more chapters, Pay no Play, etc.) they will swing 50s all day. Let me ask you honestly: Is that really a game you want to play, when a starting character comes in swinging (at most) 3s or 4s and is confronted with other players running around swinging 50s - and monsters needing to scale to deal with that? That scale of the game really is coming down the line in the current system. That's not hyperbole (at least I don't believe it is), it's a simple fact of where 1.3 is going without changes to the skill system.

One of the most oft-cited reasons I hear from players who try once or twice and don't come back is that the gulf between 1st level and "high" level is so massively wide they feel useless. Overly high Monster Body totals is the biggest part of that; and the biggest contributor to *that* is high consistent damage output. Note that I also regularly PC a high level (30ish) Rogue who focuses on Backstabs, so it's not like I've not been on both sides of the fence for constant damage being significantly decreased. Proficiency and Backstab play a major part of that, not just Magic Items.

As noted above the balance probably isn't 100% there yet. But you can't just throw out Magic Items and pretend there's no more damage scaling problems. Without DA and Slayers we're still back in our current position in a few years. There are a wide variety of opinions on whether that's good or bad, but my personal opinion is that linearly increasing Prof/Backstab (and Wand) damage (i.e. the 1.3 version) is, simply put, a bad thing for the game at high levels. It's a very different thing at low to mid levels, note!

-Bryan

If the goal is an effective cap (a limiting factor), then why not just create a cap? Cap on level, cap on profs/backstabs, cap on spells, cap on magic items, whatever.

 

[Graham Wolsey]

But that doesn't mean skills don't play a part. 10 years ago, a "big fighter" swung 15s all day. Now they swing 25s to 30s all day. In 10 years (if anything build growth has accelerated due to more chapters, Pay no Play, etc.) they will swing 50s all day. Let me ask you honestly: Is that really a game you want to play, when a starting character comes in swinging (at most) 3s or 4s and is confronted with other players running around swinging 50s - and monsters needing to scale to deal with that? That scale of the game really is coming down the line in the current system. That's not hyperbole (at least I don't believe it is), it's a simple fact of where 1.3 is going without changes to the skill system.

I don't understand this argument at all in the context of the rules as proposed.

A Fighter swinging 50s is certainly horrible for the gap between the new players and the old players. But assuming all that Fighter did was pick up Weapon Profs that costs 720 build.

A Scholar with 720 build spent on spells has:
29 Disarms
29 Pins
29 Binds
29 Shuns
29 Webs
29 Sleeps
29 Confines
29 Dragon's Breaths
28 Prisons

All that with 260 Wand Charges (per logistics period for a total of 520 for most events) at 29 damage per shot which bypasses shields from range.

Why is this ok for balance for Scholars but not Fighters and Rogues? To put things into perspective in the 2,0 rules under your example:

Fighter spending all build on Weapon Profs:
19 Weapon Proficiency: 690 Build (Swing for 21 Damage)
15 Disarms: 30 Build

Or since people will argue that no one would buy that many weapon profs:
13 Weapon Proficiency (Swing for 15 damage, same as wands)
10 Disarms
15 Parry
10 Shatter
0 Shuns
10 Ripostes
15 Slays + 15 Improved Slays
0 Confines
10 Stun Limb
10 Eviscerate

Scholar spending all build on spells:
29 Disarms
29 Magic Armor
29 Shatter
29 Shuns
29 Spellshields
29 Sleeps
29 Confines
29 Stun Limb
28 Prisons

All that with 240 Wand Charges (per logistics period for a total of 480 for most events) at 15 damage per shot which bypasses shields from range.


Why is this ok? What is the balance here? Don't say that Fighters can "swing 15 all day" 480 wand charges is more than most scholars can use in an entire event if they are TRYING to spend all their wand charges.

 

[Graham Wolsey]

I should *ALSO* note that Fighters are locked in on their per day choices. No variability, no changing based on circumstances, no tailoring their abilities to the fight at logistics.

Scholars can mix and match and have significantly more combat flexibility and utility.

You are assigning blame to scaling damage when that is absolutely the wrong place to assign blame.

The problem is with a lack of a build cap and it applies to ALL classes (ok maybe not Artisans).

 

[Graham Wolsey]

I should *ALSO* note that the way Fighter abilities are designed, they don't do anything to casters in many cases.

Disarm is good against Fighters and has no effect on casters.
Parry is good against Fighters and has no effect on casters.
Shatter is good against Fighters and has minimal effect on casters (only if they bought Wear Extra Armor).
Riposte is good against Fighters and has no effect on casters.
Slay is good against Fighters and good against casters.
Stun Limb is good against Fighters and acceptable against casters.
Eviscerate is good against Fighters and good against casters.
Resolute is acceptable against Fighters and has minimal effect against casters (only Evocation and Wands).
Intercept is good against Fighters and has no effect fighting a caster.
Wear Extra Armor is good against Fighters and has minimal effect against casters (only Evocation and Wands).

Meanwhile, with the exception of Spellshield, every spell above is great against Fighters for Scholars and its not like the other options are worse. Bind Legs is much much worse for Fighters than Casters, Slow is basically a complete takeout for a melee Fighter in a 1v1 situation while a caster can keep casting.

 

[mikestrauss]

Wands are items that can be both disarmed and shattered.

-MS