Tank "nerfs"

[Chicks]

Dagger/Tank are the strongest and hardest dagger to kill in the game. This is well known.
Once a Dagger equips correctly he becomes extremely deadly so you get the most dangerous DPS class combined with the most tanky class (THE tank).
With the Deflect Arrow nerf they have two choices: a go tank mode and lose dps or dont activate it and get full damage from archers but keep full dps. This simply allows the rock-paper-scissor to work so Archers/whatever, in the fighters, is the straight enemy of Dagger/Tank. VS other classes instead the Dagger/Tank have the upper hand many times.

Mage/Tank is the most unkillable mage of the game. Again same concept DPS+Tank. This way they COULD be killed by Archer/Whatever. As archer was ALWAYS the nemesis of every mage and this way, to some extent, it remains. (even if the damage mitigated by a mage/tank is way much more than a normal mage. You cant argue on that!). VS all other classes Mage/Tank have many times the upper hand.

Archer/Tank. Same concept of previous two. This way makes sense to have a Archer/somethingelse. In the past everyone was doing purely Archer/Tank (if they knew the old mechanics, of course) because it was simply THE best for both defence and dps. Now is not and when you are Archer you have many options and none is "the best".
examples:
Archer/Tank: higher tankiness than any other archer. Good DPS (as archer) against any other class. When fighting against other archers can trade dps range for extra defence.
Archer/whateverelse: probably much less tankiness than archer/tank. Good DPS but probably higher if well combined with passive or buffs (Archer/Dagger, Archer/WL, Archer/Buffer).
You see? By default the Archer/Tank is more tanky than other archers. Without this single nerf Archer/Tank would top out any damage output from other Archer/whatever thanks to deflect arrow without any penality and the mitigation is of 40% (stacked over other mitigations thanks to tank already). Hardly another Archer/Whatever can deal so easily (1 button press) 40% more damage to balance out the two classes! It would have been a no brainer to make always Archer/Tank when you do archer.

Tank/Tank vs Archer... is nerfed when the tank have a bow in hand or a dagger in hand. True. I dont love it that much either and thats why the effect became first a 2min buff (instead of 20min, that would have been impossible to manage) and now is even easier to manage: a toggle.
You wanna blow away an archer with HIS favorite weapon while your char have zero knowledge in it? You are welcome do to it but disable Deflect Arrow if you want your full range else stick to a melee weapon.

Others/Tank vs Whatever? Zero issues. They have no drawbacks at all if played in Heavy Armor. Warlord/Tank for example, that in past was totally underrated class, now is absolutely viable (but still underrated because of players' lack of knowledge) as there are no "OMFG" best whatever/tank combos.

The choices of the nerfs was based over 2008-2013 experience. I dont think i have to even post graphs about demography of -active- players at that time. Who played should remember that there was two ways only to top everyone: something/Tank (pvp) or Orc (oly and pve bosses). Anything else? walking meat.



So to summarize, I get that you want to nerf a class that is OP. If pure tank classes need to be nerfed for that? Well I guess so be it. It is unfair and you won't see pure tank sub as you claimed you wanted, but it's the price to pay right? But don't nerf every classes that sub to a tank just because 1 combo is op... As someone said : change bow range to almost nothing. It fixes everything for pure tank, mage/tank, dagger/tank and your dreaded archer/tank. At least try it.


Is already big the change from 2min to toggle for the skill. I really wanna avoid make server become TarantulaBetatestServer with skills changing every week. It makes instability for the players and is extremely dangerous for a low rate server so thats why i'm overly cautious about such changes as i had plently of experience about this in the past.
The changelog was well exposed at beginning, there was no "secret nerfs" or whatever.

When you talk about Archer/Tank and "lets remove the nerf", you should first of all think:
WHAT other Archer/whatever is viable right now? right now many choices from Archer/PP to Archer/Summoner or even Archer/WL or Archer/Dagger (best unbuffed critical rate/damage archer of the game)
Archer/Tank have still some good points over other Archer/whatever? Yes they do. Various defensive boons that Archer/Tank still fully have like UD/Majesty/Heavy Armor/maybeheals/etc...
DO right now Archer/Whatever win against Archer/tank and do the inverse can happen too? Yes. They null out more or less on defence vs dps.
WHAT would change for Archer/whatever by in fact boosting Archer/tank against all those combos? Sum of damage mitigated + damage dealt by the Archer/Tank would be by far superior than the sum of the damage dealt + damage mitigated by the archer/whatever.
Result? Making automatically Archer/Tank the best class of choice between Archer/something. You know the consequences here....

So, contrarily to what you told us previously, archer/tank is not the only issue. Good to know. You also don't seem to think that it's the best idea/most interesting nerf to have the nerf as it is now, which is nice to hear too.

Now from there, what will happen to tanks? Because no one will sub tank if everything that gives defense (which is the reason why people sub to tanks) is nerfed to the ground. Like you said, Tank/archer are relatively close to Archer/wtvr, so what's the point in going tank sub if the only thing that sub give you is no more? And anyway thats because people can't play vs X/tank, not because it's OP. Remove that from your head, it is not OP in any way shape or form. It's only stronger if you stand there and try to "nuke" it to oblivion, hoping to win the standoff, which is where the tank sub shine.... It's like showing your back to a dagger, or ignoring the summon of your target on TP... It's only harder because people actually have to think and pay attention, instead of pressing F1 all day.

Will there be adjustment to Deflect Arrow? Is it planed to have tests for range reduction or what ever? (like crits removal when on deflect arrow?) Because there are a lot of good ideas laying around, worth testing, that are less penalizing to the "innocent" classes, while still reducing the capabilities of the "OP" class.

And aggression (and vengeance)? Anything about that? Any forced targeting planned, to counter attack spamming, which entirely negate the effect of the spell, even for just a fraction of a second (based on chance/level, for exemple)? Right now, aggression is only OK (and even OK is a stretch) vs retards in pvp, and pretty bad overall vs mobs/RB.

Should we expect changes to tanks in the "near" future? Or is this thread just to vent off and be done with it?

[zocha]

fix shots first or ur imaginations of dagger actually killing someone will never happen.
http://boards.lineage2.com/archive/index.php/t-154445.html
here u go 2007y thread with saying "dagger got ONLY *2 shots bonus"
and then tell me about ur official files once again.
Becouse hitting full buffed mage on shock blast (-30% pdef) with focus power + focus attack + vicious stance in back for 1000, isnt rly strong (counting on mj robe set+3 mage with proper buff againts fighters)

+1

[Clonage]

+1

It might be because of the 25% damage reduction in PvP...

[Voodoo]

Deflect arrow toggle works fine now, but could you disable "buff animation" when you  turn it on/off?

[LadyZENITH]

- Deflect Arrow is a toggle and you use it against archers only. Against everyone else? nonsense.
- Mdef masteries (like Pdef masteries and Patk masteries) dont stack since 2005 in DNET... 9 years is plenty to get used to it.
- Sleep untouched, see changelog.

No, you misunderstood me in one part and remember stuff wrong in the other. Stuff like patack and pdef stacked on DN to extremes back in the yeah, like you mentioned 2005/6 in the days before the C4 server core. Some stuff did multiply itself so there were some insane numbers.

What I talk about is the 2007 era aka the kinda ballanced C4 one. There mdef stacked. And I know it cause i had the same char. Stacked by both masteries counting. not OP not some multiply BS but it could be felt. Now doesn't.

The same your sleep argument. We have IL sleep default, which is nerfed by ncsoft. But comparing to C4 kinda ballanced days, now we have very dominating chars, aka any chars with trance skill (aka the unnerfed sleep) subbed to maged are really strong, as strong as they were before, and others suffer from the NCsoft nerfs. The still strong chars are like SPS/EE SPS/ES EE/ES. You will see in pvp and oly how they do. Same goes for necro/bishop, they have no drawbacks, and maaaaany other chars were nerfed due to no masteries stack or this new useless deflect arrow.

I still call it useless, cause even against pure archers, no mage would ever sac casting spd for defence (cause you will die equally fast and deal even less damage) or any archer would sack his range (complete insanity). So its useless.

You say you base your balance on 2008 and onward, but what ballance was there? Most of us left in end of summer 2007, cause the mutants aka the exploit you promised to ban, were never banned and became a "must have". And then also the hlapex exploit that killed economy. At least that is how it was on infinity. So 2008 and onward the game was already mutnat-infested so much so I have no idea what kind of standard DNsub balance you want to seek there and learn from. Especially from star-wars lolipop servers like Dragon.

Still the server is doing fine, but some of your nerf decisions are.... very questionable. That is my point.  I mean we are again starting to see the 1/2 shot cristacked archers. And they don't have epic jewels, wait when they do. I thought the whole point was to prevent that. Mages will fallow after few valakases fall. Why not simply.... decrese the effect of any crit dmg active/passive buff to half the effect? And then fine tune the rest of the combos that would be sticking from the line too much up or down? Same with mcrits, decrease the multiplier from 4x to 2x. That would prolong the fights, make the game longer, harder even in PVE and we could even lift the global -25% pvp damage or so.  Sounds reasonable to me.

[Blizzer]

You do like long and quite nonsense posts, don't you?
For the first time they announced changes in skills BEFORE they started the server, you've known how chars will look 'on paper'. If they change it now people who already subbed will flood the forum with another QQ posts 'wtf I wasted my sub blabla'.

[=drake=]

You do like long and quite nonsense posts, don't you?
For the first time they announced changes in skills BEFORE they started the server, you've known how chars will look 'on paper'. If they change it now people who already subbed will flood the forum with another QQ posts 'wtf I wasted my sub blabla'.

Exactly.
Anyway the toggle seems extremely manageable right now. no? (Reuse is 1sec)

[Chicks]

Exactly.
Anyway the toggle seems extremely manageable right now. no? (Reuse is 1sec)

Why would they QQ really? We ask for a buff to aggression (they won't QQ for that) and a change to a nerf, for an other nerf that is less invasive on some combo.

Is it manageable? Yes (define manageable would be my real answer). Is it the best we can do to accommodate everyone? No, not at all.

Want to leave deflect arrow like that? Fine. But have the decency of boosting aggression to a point where it actually does something in pvp/vs rb, so we actually see some tanks in the field.

[LadyZENITH]

You do like long and quite nonsense posts, don't you?
For the first time they announced changes in skills BEFORE they started the server, you've known how chars will look 'on paper'. If they change it now people who already subbed will flood the forum with another QQ posts 'wtf I wasted my sub blabla'.

There is no QQ. I made my choice for the team and I do not regret it. Im just saying why the game is not balanced at all by far when Drake is pretending it is. And why deflect arrow is still useless for any offensive class, thus I have no understanding why the nerf of this skill in particular ever came to be. It was never OP or causing imbalance on the first place. When activating it, it kills your strong point, insert any class there, mage, archer, any, never ever is it worth to active that skill unless you are dedicated to do nothing (aka not attack nor heal anyone) in the duration of it being active.

Same as mages landing silence or anchor 80% of the times to target with all buffs and 2000Mdef while wearing homu +3 is also "fine tuned" I guess. Well its not. People will learn to live with it but that doesn't make it right setting.

[=drake=]

There is no QQ. I made my choice for the team and I do not regret it. Im just saying why the game is not balanced at all by far when Drake is pretending it is. And why deflect arrow is still useless for any offensive class, thus I have no understanding why the nerf of this skill in particular ever came to be. It was never OP or causing imbalance on the first place. When activating it, it kills your strong point, insert any class there, mage, archer, any, never ever is it worth to active that skill unless you are dedicated to do nothing (aka not attack nor heal anyone) in the duration of it being active.

I never said that Deflect ARrow was the strong point or the OP skill.
The nerf is simply there to leave a weak point in a class combination that else have near to none (as is a combo of the two opposite archetypes: tank and dps)

[LadyZENITH]

So you say they were OP in some way? I mean deflect arrow sometimes was the thing that made the classes not die on 1-2 hits but actually more from archer. DD/tank was never op. In the days before mutant infestation they were kinda equal to DD/summoner with TP. Now DD/summoner lost none of its potency, none of the nerfs touched it, thus they are really getting a bit OP. Yet the tank combos or tanks in general are "meh". You love your stats so later you can confirm it by observing the results and what people play or sub. Tanks are a total rarity.

[Garn.]

So you say they were OP in some way? I mean deflect arrow sometimes was the thing that made the classes not die on 1-2 hits but actually more from archer. DD/tank was never op. In the days before mutant infestation they were kinda equal to DD/summoner with TP. Now DD/summoner lost none of its potency, none of the nerfs touched it, thus they are really getting a bit OP. Yet the tank combos or tanks in general are "meh". You love your stats so later you can confirm it by observing the results and what people play or sub. Tanks are a total rarity.

yes i know i'm rare ;o
but i agree with you anyway