Feedback on new values/formulas for stat secondary effects

[Omegus]

In today's patch, these changes went live:

Base Stats Changes

The secondary effects of base stats, like disrupt from willpower or chance to be critically hit from initiative have been changed. They now scale linearly with the stat value, which means there's no longer any specific thresholds where a stat becomes almost useless, or a debuff becomes extremely strong.

For each 100 stat points they now give the following:

- Strength: 1% parry strikethrough & 0.5% block strikethrough
- Intelligence: 1% disrupt strikethrough & 0.5% block strikethrough
- Ballistic skill: 1% dodge strikethrough & 0.5% block strikethrough
- Willpower: 3% disrupt
- Weapon Skill: 3% parry
- Initiative: 3% dodge & 3% reduced chance to be critically hit
- Toughness: 0.5% block
- Block rating: 3% block

10 Willpower gives 0.3% disrupt etc, you don't have to hit even 100 point marks.

I have asked in Discord and have been told that these are fixed calculations regardless of the rank of the attacker nor the defender. My feedback is only relating to that and not the actual % numbers chosen per 100 stats.

The Problem

Having fixed values works for the rank that these stats have been designed around, e.g. rank 40, but it means they have very little impact for lower ranked characters. Previous combat formulas for these types of stats were typically based on a ratio between the attacker's stats and the defender's stats, which meant that the bonuses provided were impactful at all levels, e.g. rank 10 characters comparing the ratio between 200:200 stats gave the same result as rank 40 characters comparing the ratio of 1000:1000 stats.

The new system means that - for example - a rank 40 player who has soft-capped weapon skill (1050) gets 31.5% base parry chance, while a rank 10 player who has also invested in gear and reached the weapon skill soft-cap (300) only gets a 9% base parry chance which is far less rewarding for maxing out your stats, and is actually much harder to achieve on a lower level character.

The Proposed Solution

To keep the new system feeling impactful at all ranks, I am proposing that the percentage gained per stat scale depending on the stat soft-cap of either attacker or the defender based on their current rank (including bolster rank). Offensive-based stats (strike-through) are based on the rank and soft-cap of the defender as it gets easier/harder to hit depending on who you are attacking, while defensive-based stats (dodge/parry/etc) are based on the rank and soft-cap of the attacker as it gets easier/harder to defend based on who is attacking you. If you are attacking a rank 40 enemy then the scaling is based on a soft-cap of 1050 (which gives far less % per stat point), while if you are attacking a rank 10 enemy then the scaling is based on a soft-cap of 300 (which gives far more % per stat point).

The soft-cap formula for basic stats is: (Rank * 25) + 50. Some example soft-caps:

- Rank 1: (1 * 25) + 50 = 75
- Rank 10: (10 * 25) + 50 = 300
- Rank 20: (20 * 25) + 50 = 550
- Rank 30: (30 * 25) + 50 = 800
- Rank 40: (40 * 25) + 50 = 1050

The bonuses are now expressed in terms of "bonus at soft-cap". Assuming they were balanced around the R40 soft-cap of 1050:

- Strength: 10.50% parry strikethrough & 5.25% block strikethrough
- Intelligence: 10.50% disrupt strikethrough & 5.25% block strikethrough
- Ballistic skill: 10.50% dodge strikethrough & 5.25% block strikethrough
- Willpower: 31.50% disrupt
- Weapon Skill: 31.50% parry
- Initiative: 31.50% dodge & 31.50% reduced chance to be critically hit
- Toughness: 5.25% block
- Block rating: 31.50% block

The final piece of the puzzle is to come up with a formula that works out how much of a % bonus to give based on the soft-cap of the enemy being attacked. This turns out to be pretty simple: you divide the target maximum percentage by the soft-cap of the attacker or defender (depends on the stat), and the answer is how much % to add per stat point. Assuming a target of 10.5% parry strike-through - which in decimal notation is 0.105, the formula would be:

(0.105 / ((Defender’s Rank * 25) + 50)) * Attacker’s Strength = parry strike-through bonus

And for parry, which is 31.5% when soft-capped:

(0.315 / ((Attacker’s Rank * 25) + 50)) * Defender’s Weapon Skill = parry bonus

Note that in both cases, there is a check between one person’s rank and the other person’s stat.

Issues and Other Thoughts

I’m not going to propose it’s perfect, and there are some issues to think about at the extremes. A R40 character with 1050 Strength attacking a R1 enemy will have 147% parry strike-through which isn’t really an issue, however that same R40 character with high defensive stats becomes impossible to hit by low level NPCs. This might not be considered a problem, but something to consider is capping the difference between ranks for the block/disrupt/dodge/parry bonuses to prevent it scaling very high. For example, if there was a cap of 10 ranks difference then a R40 defender vs a R1 attacker would calculate their parry/etc chances based on the defender being R30 instead. Something like that.

Alternatively, the final outcome could be capped at double the max for the soft-cap. So if the chance to defend is 31.5% at soft-cap, then the most the bonus could ever be if being attacked by something low ranked is 63%. Numbers are just used an example and would be for you to determine.

Next, there is a soft-cap and a hard-cap for stats, so perhaps the bonus could be capped at the hard-cap value for the rank? I believe the hard-cap is: Stat * 40 + 25 (the formula on the wiki is nonsense).

Final thing I can think of is that if we are using the soft-cap value of one of the targets, then should stats over that soft-cap be halved? E.g. if you have 300 strength vs something with a soft-cap of 200, should the calculation use 300 strength or 250 strength, as the 100 strength over the cap would be halved.

All things to think about if you decide to implement this, I have no hard preferences though I think being consistent with soft and hard caps would be good.

TL;DR

Please scale the secondary bonuses based on attacker or defender rank to make them feel impactful at all levels rather than just at rank 40.

[Omegus]

Also, if you're looking at replying because you think 31.5% parry is too high, this is not the thread for that. This is about scaling the bonus based on ranks. Go make your own thread to discuss whether 31.5% is balanced.

[Rydiak]

The problem I see with your suggestion is it largely removes any perceived power increases that a player would obtain via leveling and equipping new gear. If anything, as they level up they would get weaker because their old stats would now be compared to their new level. And doesn't bolstering largely invalidate the comparisons between say a level 40 and a level 10 anyways?

[zumos2]

I don't think it is really a problem if the defense values from basic stats are a bit lower in tier 1. Especially if you consider everyone just picking up Reflexes and Deft Defender for their first renown ranks.

One of the reasons of the rework is to simplify the system and be able to display an accurate and understandable parry/dodge/disrupt/block number. Making your defense and strikethrough dependent on the enemy's rank defeats the purpose and is also unnecessary. If you wanted to make it rank dependent, you could just make your defense chance dependent on your own rank rather than the opponents, and same for strikethough chance. But all of that seems like unnecessary to me.

[Fenris78]

I'm okay with current system because you dont especially seek for high levels of avoidances at low level anyway, it was already very low to begin with.

I can tell a level 10 character wont have more than 10% of parry / disrupt, and gear is not even giving them any of these stats before level 30-35 or something.

All in all, pretty much everything is still decided by renown and your ability to spend it wisely in lower levels. Such as parry or dodge/disrupt wich are cheap and almost doubling your base score with 10 renown points, for example.

I'm also fine with having "low" percentages for those stats, because T1 wont atter much in any character's life, i.e. you probably wont spend more than couple of days into it before hitting level 16 anyway.

So QoL to this extend (i.e. getting some % of avoidances wich probably never will make any difference in perceived values) only to benefit low-level characters who will pretty soon be fighting with bolster may not be a priority.

The simplification to formulas is to my taste a very good thing, without complex formulas, ultra simple to simulate, and without hidden things to consider.
Your defense is now what you see on paperdoll and it's good. Simple. Clear and easy to understand.

Far better to newcomers as well because they now get a real value to compare and understand without hidden calculations inbetween that bring a false perception of mechanics.

[vanbuinen77]

The new formula seems fine as there needs to be a feeling of progression.

[Omegus]

The problem I see with your suggestion is it largely removes any perceived power increases that a player would obtain via leveling and equipping new gear. If anything, as they level up they would get weaker because their old stats would now be compared to their new level. And doesn't bolstering largely invalidate the comparisons between say a level 40 and a level 10 anyways?

That is not a new thing though. Under the old system, failing to increase your strength/etc would slowly lower your strike-through as you faced opponents with higher and higher weapon skill/etc stats. And on the character sheet - even though it was technically wrong - this was reflected with a formula that scaled on rank. Stats getting "worse" for your level (which is actually stats getting worse when fighting higher level enemies) is not a new concept to games in general or to Warhammer Online. I'm proposing that rather than newer characters always have the worst possible option (scaling based on R40), they have scaling relevant to the content they are currently doing.

In addition, other stats are already calculated like this. Armour, corporeal resistance, elemental resistance and spirit resistance all have formulas that take into account the rank of the attacker and the stats of the defender. Adding block/disrupt/dodge/parry to this is not something brand new to the game and is actually more of the same.

The 40 vs 10 comparison was more applicable for PvE. For PvP, bolster still doesn't make everyone equal in RvR - I can't remember what tier 1 bolster goes up to at its peak but I believe the tier 2+ bolster for open RvR can put lowbies at rank 48?

For PvE, there is also dungeons where NPCs will go above rank 40 which would interact with the new proposed formulas. Looking at the recent dev video, a mid-boss in BS was Rank 44. Rank difference can and does happen in most aspects of the game, with the exception of maybe scenarios as I can't remember how bolster works in those.

Finally, if you were on a rank 10 character would you rather see your 200 strength give you 6% parry at all times, or would you rather it gave you 21% parry vs rank 10 enemies and 19.38% parry against rank 11 enemies?

I don't think it is really a problem if the defense values from basic stats are a bit lower in tier 1. Especially if you consider everyone just picking up Reflexes and Deft Defender for their first renown ranks.

One of the reasons of the rework is to simplify the system and be able to display an accurate and understandable parry/dodge/disrupt/block number. Making your defense and strikethrough dependent on the enemy's rank defeats the purpose and is also unnecessary. If you wanted to make it rank dependent, you could just make your defense chance dependent on your own rank rather than the opponents, and same for strikethough chance. But all of that seems like unnecessary to me.

Assuming you were rank 10, adding "vs a rank 10 enemy" would explain it clearly. It's also something that should be added to the other stats which are also dependant on rank as mentioned above. The big reason the stats on the character sheet were so hard to understand before was not just because it depended on an enemy, but depended on a specific stat of an enemy which varied wildly depending on class, spec and NPC. I agree with the general intend behind simplifying it, but I do not believe that basing it on enemy rank makes it too complex.

Making defence checks based on your own rank rather than the attacker's rank is meaningless as it's meant to be a comparison between you (the defender in this case) vs the attacker, much like how armour/corp/etc function now.

I'm okay with current system because you dont especially seek for high levels of avoidances at low level anyway, it was already very low to begin with.

I can tell a level 10 character wont have more than 10% of parry / disrupt, and gear is not even giving them any of these stats before level 30-35 or something.

All in all, pretty much everything is still decided by renown and your ability to spend it wisely in lower levels. Such as parry or dodge/disrupt wich are cheap and almost doubling your base score with 10 renown points, for example.

I'm also fine with having "low" percentages for those stats, because T1 wont atter much in any character's life, i.e. you probably wont spend more than couple of days into it before hitting level 16 anyway.

So QoL to this extend (i.e. getting some % of avoidances wich probably never will make any difference in perceived values) only to benefit low-level characters who will pretty soon be fighting with bolster may not be a priority.

The simplification to formulas is to my taste a very good thing, without complex formulas, ultra simple to simulate, and without hidden things to consider.
Your defense is now what you see on paperdoll and it's good. Simple. Clear and easy to understand.

Far better to newcomers as well because they now get a real value to compare and understand without hidden calculations inbetween that bring a false perception of mechanics.

There is more to the game except T1 PVP and T2+ PVP. The devs are pushing PvE and even bolster changes things if someone gets put up to rank 48.

IMO lower tiers being historically **** for avoidance stats is not a reason to continue that trend, especially as PvE is a lot harder now that NPCs actually do stuff and avoidance becomes far more important to actually being able to achieve something. The block rating stat becomes absolutely terrible for tanks (more so than before?), so bad that if anything it's going to push more tanks into 2-hander builds on the basis that block stats are absolute trash and based around being R40.

A rank 5 shield has a block rating of 97 which current gives it a block chance of 2.91% vs level-appropriate content. With the scaled formulas vs a rank 5 enemy it would give 17.46% block chance.

Seeing as lower characters have almost no access to renown, tactics or +block gear, why would you ever equip a shield at lower levels (including mid-tier scenarios) under the old or new system?

By having the formulas scale you are teaching the importance of those stats and showing players the types of bonuses they can get and should be aiming to maintain, without changing anything about R40 vs R40 combat.

With regards to false perception of mechanics, as I said to a different post above: all you need to do is add a line to the tooltip that says the stats assume the enemy is rank X, where X is your current rank (inc bolster), and that should also be added to any other stat that already depends on the enemy's rank.

edit: to clarify, I'm not saying the R40 stat for block rating is bad, I'm saying there is likely no possible value that can be balanced for lower and higher ranks without some form of scaling applied.

[bw10]

even with these changes festenplatz remains the single most fun piece of content in this game where every single person regardless of spec and career can impact the lock (for the past few years)