The death: reducing DS to 6 mobs

lemonhead

Dalayan Adventurer
Its pretty simple and obvious. But we've hidden from it for too long: The exp game can't be balanced and it is just too powerful, in fact way more powerful than pbaoes. So, in the vision of the game, let's reduce damage shields to 6 mobs. Just do it. It'll make the game better.
 
Its pretty simple and obvious. But we've hidden from it for too long: The exp game can't be balanced and it is just too powerful, in fact way more powerful than pbaoes. So, in the vision of the game, let's reduce damage shields to 6 mobs. Just do it. It'll make the game better.
I don't think that nerfing xp is something that would be very well received...at all. Most of the changes in the past 5?? years have been at lowering proc rates/aoe weapons and characters that log in now, if they haven't played in a few years, are already considerable worse at experience than they were. At the current 65+ xp game, anything giving over 65k xp is just wasted, so high single target xp isn't a very viable option either unless they turn it scripted or make it quest xp.

I guess I should ask, how do you envision this making "the game better"? By encouraging more single target xp? I see this change as just slowing down the xp game even further which actually hinders the up and coming people who want to xp.

The biggest barrier to entry of this game is getting to 65 and then realizing you need 3,000aa+ in order to get the most out of your character. I don't feel that slowing down xp is the direction SoD should be taking.
 
No, this would be very not well received. The biggest nerf the game has seen. But it would allow exp to be removed from mass pulls, and expanded into 6pulls or less. This seems to be not really possible at the moment. Its either the nature of the universe or a result of DS being extremely over powered compared to every other mechanic in the game... Also, if you remove it, and bump up exp, you only benefit non-max tier characters that need those 3000AAs. Right?
 
Why do you want to limit pulls to 6 or less? How does that make the game better? There's also an xp bug in game that makes single target, high xp mobs, a waste of time. If you get 200k from a kill, nearly 140k xp of that is thrown in the trash. You dont get more than a certain % of an AA on a kill and that number is right around 60k xp. So before you go shifting the xp meta, that would have to be corrected. Otherwise it will almost always be more efficient to kill many mobs at a time, even if DS is completely removed from the game. AE spells are generally more mana efficient and getting 10 20k xp kills doesn't waste any xp where 1 200k kill wastes nearly 70% of the xp.
 
Ds should only work on one mob at a time and all ds spells should be shifted over to stack counter versions to move the game from having ds leech bots.
 
you can abuse DS'ing down mass amounts of mobs far before max-tier / fully endgame characters. you can start with around 1800ish AC and near capped DR on a tank or melee class (im pretty sure this is reachable in bounty gear and boes EDIT: turns out dragov is sitting at 1799 AC and maxed DR in nothing but BoE gear with the exception of an E map ring and his charm), maybe even earlier than that but my characters gear hasnt been that bad in ages. in fact, some people did it at level 55 to farm AA and platinum in lasanth.


yes, this publicly available guide thats been on the wiki since 2009 exposes many of the "secrets" high end shadowknights used to use in SoD, like unequipping your weapon to cancel /s 7 or DS contributing to /s 7 healing (and causing mobs to heal you when they attack in some cases). It also has some epic "secrets" like talking about how ridiculous damage shield is, how AC and DR are the best stats in the game for exp, and how bp procs are overpowered.

ignoring the bug where you can only earn 68k exp per kill towards an AA at 65, the real issue the game faces is that enemies which are challenging to fight in small quantities and provide adequate exp / platinum rewards don't really exist outside of maybe 1 area in the entire game. the other issue is that most enemies in this game are basic warrior mobs with virtually no mechanics and they're boring beyond belief to fight on their own. the only way it becomes even mildly engaging is by pulling large amounts of mobs with no mechanics together.

minor side note if any dev reads this: mobs that force you to only fight 1 at a time due to mechanics (rather than the inherent danger they present) also tend to be very uninteresting. being able to pull "hard" mobs together as you get better gear / more skill makes the game a lot more interesting. (e.g., you can outplay pulling multiple lava spirits because none of the mechanic overlaps can 1 shot a player or otherwise make the pull non-viable (by healing each other or CC'ing players.). another example of being able to outgear/outplay pulling "hard" mobs together is something like pulling a skycaller + infernal advisor together in EF instead of splitting because you have the damage to burn the advisor before it debuffs you. you cannot outplay pulling multiple infested caretakers together as double severed arteries can randomly gib an unlucky party member without counterplay)

Also the fact that mandatory questing in the game requires you to fight trivial enemies and nerfing AE damage methods makes this questing more painful than it already is, but thats a whole 'nother topic of discussion.

tldr; i got way off topic but its still a good read
 
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How about we uncap ae spells and shift some ae weapons to be usable and just lean into the AE thing, since there clearly isn't an alternative.
 
Although going back to old scripted mobs to redo them would seem to be a nightmare but pack tactics in new content or if possible old content could be a thing that the more mobs you have increase the strength of the mobs , increased htpts , specials w/e. as well as named that spawn in upon death of normal trash to cause even more havoc. The chain stun not being a real thing in sod like it was on live is not the real issue with mass pulling it would seem to be the overpowered gear and abilities that lend to sod mass pulling/killing.
 
This will not happen. Current stance; this nerf would make players mad. Making difficult dungeons equally desirable is the main direction. We have had many hours of discussion about the current experience code. Last few meetings we finally have a good groundwork laid. So I can start working on and implementing the ideas.
 
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