Nerfed! My char is nerfed! I know, i know! Drake nerfed me!

[=drake=]

After i readed a lot of complains about people saying "XXX killed me, i run slow, raids kills me, my best friends laught at me and my girlfriend dumped me! that *&#(£! of Drake! He nerfed me!"
Well, so, once for all, in this topic i will write what nerfes are active so, if you think your char is "unplayable" you can see if is caused by a nerf or simply because you aren't good to use it (or more easily that char isn't suitable for what you wanna do, please remember that L2 is NOT a PVP only by his origin so is NOT balanced for PVP only gaming!)

But, why on DNET we have nerfes?
On DNET we have various custom stuffs that makes overall all classes ingame more strong than what they should be. Potions, Tattoes, but... the most noticeable one are the Stacking Subclasses.
Indeed is cool to have a stacking subclass, is like have two gameplays in a single character and this makes him more versatile and not strictly oriented to a single role (best example are the support class... on retail they just "support" and do nothing else)
Having Potions and Tattoes means all classes are stronger (and some gets more boost than others because of the % based system), but the subclass system is basically make a char 2 times more powerful. Saying "but well, we use double skills, we drain mana" isn't right, there are still potions supporting you with mana consumption and also the tattoes helping you deal more damage (so all your skills are already more effective, still consuming their standard mana)...
But having all those nice things have also a downside of course.

What are the downsides of the various cool boost we have?
General potions: you are more powerful, means more damage and faster attacks, this means shorter combat time (both PVP and PVE)
Mana potions: you can cast more skills because you run out of mana more slowly. This means you are able to throw more skills than what should be planned... if on one side you could think that PVP would last longer, means you are wrong! Some skills that was based on % of success, will have more chances to land (because you will be able to use them more times). Best example for this is an Assassin class being able to use one single Backstab or, with mana potions, many of them.
Overall the mana potions just makes the character more powerful, giving great endurance during PVP and PVE without "dead times" without mana: PVPs lasts less.
Tattoes: you can combo up some tattoes to get quite nice % bonus on some of your stats. Some gives defense/protection and resulting in longer PVP/PVE, others gives power/speed resulting in shorter PVP/PVE. Those last ones, in particular, means that in combo with potions your class becomes even more powerful than his standard and your skills deals much more damage too.
Subclass Stacking: Here is complex, but for easyness i would divide it in 3 main branches:
- Stats: being subclassed means you can switch from a class statistics to another class statistics. All skills effect of the game are based on your statistics to deal more or less effect, this ends that doing switching of class some of your skills could be more powerful than when in the original class that was meant to be used.
- Passive Skills: Those are the skills that works without do nothing, they are always active and depending from wich class you are they can give more protection, speed, weapon proficiency, mana regeneration, and much more. Being subclassed usually means you have TWICE the ones you should have... this ends with the fact that your chars becomes, by default, nearly 2 times stronger. If some of those skills gives protection (longer PVPs), much more others gives power/recharge... this instead goes to affect your overall power and the ability to use more Active skills and with much more effectiveness (greatly shorted PVPs)
- Active Skills: The best thing, being able to use various skills in a row! Stats and Passives already does a great job boosting those, some active skills becomes quite a lot powerful when chained with other skills that "by default" you shouldn't have... add the fact that having various skills you have nearly 0 dead times between reuses (you have twice the skills so you should basically have always 1 skill ready to be used!) makes the PVPs greatly shorted! This affects of course PVE too but until now i didn't saw no one complains because "my char is strong against mobs"

Solution for the downsides that becomes excessives?
Simple: nerfs.
Of course is not needed to nerf all, but only the things that in the end gets their power too much widened than what should be. This isn't an easy task, that's why can always be that a nerf gets removed and eventually replaced with another approach to solve the solution.
Most important thing of nerfes is that they (normally) shouldn't affect the classes not using the custom things. The main idea behind nerfes is to keep the uncustom part still working as should and only limit the custom part to not become too much excessive to break the gameplay of other players.

Wich nerfes are currently active and why? (This list will be updated every time a nerf is added/removed/changed)
- 15% Damage Reduction during PVP:
Overall power of classes on DNET is nearly *2, this means that all classes, during PVP, deals a lot more damage than what they should making the PVPs so short to become totally unenjoyable. Solution is to reduce the global damage of the PVP.
Take the retail class classX, his averange PVP time/damage is tdY. Now take the same class, subclassed and with pots/tattoes (classZ), his averange PVP time/damage is tdK. ClassX:tdY=ClassZ:tdK
Now, doing this for each class ingame you will get +/- a nice graph with each class and subclass combo. The "max" value of the various tdY you will get can be called maxYPower. the same thing, for the tdK, can be called maxKPower.
The Damage Reduction basically makes the maxKPower goes nearly the maxYPower, shifting the graph down of the difference value between the two.
The final result is that
subbed vs subbed:  "oneshot" PVPs caused by excessive power (tdK) are a lot more rare. The power differences (tdK) between the two is still there, but at least the weaker one can counterattack...
subbed vs unsubbed: subbed char is still in advantage (tdK>tdZ), but because the reduction is by %, the wideness between the values gets shorted
unsubbed vs unsubbed: nothing changes, maybe PVPs will last a little longer because they deal less damage but the class that was strong before, will be still stronger
Affected by the reduction are: normal hits, physical/magical skills/spells that deal damage
- 20% Reduction Magical Criticals:
This was active still during C4 (but at that time was 50% reduction), but now it got lowered because of the presence of stacking (retail like) elemental protections.
This reduction is made to prevent the fact of have nearly magical criticals at every hit... if on retail this can work, here is an issue because with mana potions you can cast a lot more spells than what you should be able to do.
Is funny that many people say "We are LineMage"... well, this nerf instead just shows the inverse.
- Orcs' inability with Bows (less Patk/AtkSpeed bonus from the bow):
By default, orcs aren't great archers... no one of their normal class is well oriented for them so having or not this "inability" will not change much their gameplay (nearly zero).
The problem occurs when an orc subclasses to an archer and he gets all the skills/proficiencies to use bows at their best. The problem is that orcs combat skills are "general purpose" and many of them are usable with any weapon, having them stacking with skills and proficiencies of archers makes them quite a LOT more powerful than what they should be.
Solution: reduce the patk and atkspeed of the bow when used by an orc. This nerf can be compensated (and should!) by the orc skills and, when using them, if before they was making him excessively powerful, now they will simply make him a good archer at same rank of the other archers of the game.


No other nerfes are currently active.
If you think your character is crappy because of a nerf that isn't listed here, it simply means that you aren't using your character correctly. (or worst case is that there is a bug, but that could be solved by posting in the bugs section of the forum. PLEASE THINK TWENTY TIMES BEFORE POST AND BE SURE THAT IS REALLY A BUG)
All the classes/subclasses doesn't have same power and each one is oriented to a different gameplay. If your class/subclass isn't good in PVP, probably just means that isn't suited for that.
And remember:
L2 is NOT a PVP only game, is a team-based where each class have a different role, this means that each class doesn't have to be balanced (in power) with the other ones.









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In Warcraft2 the Peasant is for harvesting and the Knight is for combat. The Peasant have no chances to win vs a Knight but without the Peasants you will never win the map. (of course without cheating ^^')