Patch has come and gone and still a problem with elemental armor

[Naval_Deathblossom]

I agree and disagree here. I agree because I play a monk and would like more stats obviously, but disagree because it's like telling your parents when you were a kid you wanted more cereal, candy, soda, etc because your brother/sister has more than you.

And I agree with Destinae, I'd love to be in a cool-looking robe again.

Naval Deathblossom
Heaven and Earth
Saryrn
www.hneguild.com

[Drakonn]

In regard to the original post:

What? You want 20sv all, 200hp etc, to balance with a pal/sk/bst/rng item that has 125hp 125mana? *Laugh*

The stats on elemental armor are fine, nothing wrong with them. The effects needed work, and are better now since the patch... I'm still irritated by the Pally BP having Koadics Heightened Focus on it (meaning the SK one probably has the same) since I'd much rather have 2.0 cast time avatar, but thats another issue.

[Strikan]

Magix hybrids are balanced so that melee + spells make us what we are. Adding hps +mana keeps us EVEN with the pure melee.

Your post has to be the most fucking retarded thing I've ever seen before.

Be REALY fucking glad you gain AA's the same rate as hyrbids, Because we need 2x as many fucking aa points to get the same OVERALL improvement as pure melee's.

[Kreugen]

While you're at it, can I have 360 HP and two procs on my two handed weapon?

Duh?

[Frodlin7th]

Strikan,

How many more AA's does it cost a beastlord in casting skills to increase his DPS to the same degree as a melee only class?

How many AA's in casting skills does it cost a Paladin to take damage close enough to a warrior to make a minimal difference in tankablility on non-discipline required mobs?

The answer to each is "none"

You see, the reality is, each "side" of a hybrid's AA acquisition increases their relative power not half as much as the non-hybrid, but to the same degree roughly. Therefore I call bunk on the notion that you have to spend twice the AA's to get the same return. You don't get the same increase in relative power, you get double the increase at double the cost. Seems fair enough to me, except that the "purists" don't have the opportunity to get double the increase at all. Calling the opportunity to acquire more options a "penalty" is perhaps a tad extreme.

While I accept the notion that class "envy" or "balance" issues can wait until closer to the end of an expansion, I cannot accept cliches being bandied about as fact just because Thott wrote a thesis on it. He's wrong, and the reason he's wrong is because the benefits for the spent AA's, just like the "benefit" of 175/175 is greater than the "benefit" of 190/0, or 175/0, is not "half" of the benefit of the pure melee, but roughly equal.

I think the *real* point that Magix is trying to make is that the overall benefit for the pure melee classes on elemental armor is lower because the designers of the armor didn't understand the classes, or didn't think about them when designing the armor. It's not "idotic" to say so, as a matter of fact, I'd argue that it's stubborn and lazy to not see it as it is. 175/175 IS more benefit than 175/0. The answer is obviously not to go overboard for the pure melee, but to make some considerations upon the design so that there's enough difference that your armor seems like it's made for your class, and not stamped out of a production line mold as an "archetype" piece of armor.

[Maegril]

Originally posted by Frodlin7th
Kreugen,

What precisely is idiotic about being concerned that the same mold creates a more beneficial advantage for one group of people than it does for another?

I agree 100%.

While we're at it, can we petition to have fucking clicky effects removed from pure melee armor as well? I mean, I'm very concerned that the same drops are more beneficial for melee who have squat for spells without armor, than for hybrids who get spells they already own on their armor.

S'only fair, right?

[Patricio]

Frodlin,

Ok someone will probably beat me to this, but Strikan is right. Real numbers vary by class, AA, or whatever and I'm too lazy to look things up, but let's put it this way.

Rogues do all of their damage via melee, therefore if you spend AA on an ability that raises your melee damage output by 10%, you've made a 10% increase to your total damage output.

Let's assume some hypothetical hybrid does 50% of their damage via melee and 50% via spells. If they buy that same AA as the rogue did, for the same price, they only get a 5% increase to their damage output.

Real hybrids vary in their percentages, and you can feel free to replace rogues with warriors and damage output with tanking ability or whatever, but the fact is that hybrids need to spend twice as much to get the same percent benefit to their class.

[Strikan]

Unfortunantly I can't state it in any more basic manner than patricio did, so if you can't understand that I'd suggest signing up for a course in 5th grade math.

Also lets not even get into the effectiveness of the click effects. 99.999% of the hybrids click off MY 9hp/9mana regen buff spell as is because of buff slot restrictions. so WTF they think we'd waste a buff slot for 5mana regen is beyond me.

[Frodlin7th]

That would be fine and good Patricio, if your theoretical half-breed existed. Unfortunately, it doesn't, and the reality is different from the theoretical in this example.

There isn't a hybrid class in game that does only half their damage via melee and the other half via spells. The closest thing to that you have is bards, and they're not real "hybrids" in the classic sense since they work so drastically differently from all others.

Last time I checked, Knight classes did roughly 90ish percent of the Melee DPS as warriors with equal weapons (a situation which doesn't really occur very often due to itemization issues). Sk's rise above that with spells, but they don't do another 90% of warriors' dps with their spells, to say so would be sacrelige.

What I'm getting at is that hybrids aren't 50/50, they're already quite close to pure melees without casting too much, and the mana based AA's actually DO result in a higher level of effectiveness overall than melees with their melee only AA's.

Let's have a look at the differences:

A Beastlord, to effectively double/triple his DPS summons a pet and buffs it with a proc buff. This is not a huge cost in mana, and it brings his DPS quite close relatively to monks. If he focuses on melee AA's, the gap narrows, it continues to narrow without ever spending a single point into mana based AA's. Any mana based AA's that he has don't affect his melee damage output one whit, and therefore don't affect his balance to monks one iota.

A Paladin, to increase his or her tankability, spends points onto defensive based AA's. CA3, ND3, CS3, ID5, LR5, Planar Power, Planar Durability, Physical Enhancement.... are all available to Paladins and all affect tanking, to such a degree that there's very little to any substantive difference between them and warriors in terms of the ability to absorb damage on non-defensive mobs (defensive mobs have zero to do with AA anyhow, so they're irrelevant). The thing is, that through AA's they've also GAINED ground, and ONLY in melee based AA's on warriors, through the giving out of things that were more or less specific to either warriors or melee classes in general. For example, critical hits, triple attack, two hand bash (negates the kick advantage warriors have historically had). Remember, this is ONLY in melee AA's, not one AA point must be spent to see these improvements, which don't "keep knights up" with warriors but move them closer. Mana based AA's are an added bonus rather than a penalty, none of which affects their balance in terms of melee damage output or absorption. An argument could be made that in order to have the mana to keep mobs stunned, they have to spend certain points, but aggro generation can be kept with a level 9 spell called "cease" and a level 15 spell called "desist", and mana is not an issue on either of those spells that I'm aware of.

I just don't see the advantages as being equal, I'm willing to listen if someone presents evidence otherwise, but as it stands, the costs are quite equivalent with the benefits, and I still maintain that no "aa penalty" exists.

[DcDohl]

Jesus fucken christ, how could you say 175/175 is better than 175/0 when the fucken melee has NO mana. Be glad you're getting effects on armour that you never had the power to use in the first place.

Being a ranger, 25-30% of my dps comes from constantly nuking 2 spells which vary from 300dps-400dps per shot (with focus) with a 30 second delay on each and yes, that adds up to my overall dps as a hybrid class. I do fucken spend more AA than a melee to increase my overall hybrid dps. How can you say that we don't spend more AA? My non-mana AA ability adds ONLY to the 75-70% of my non-mana using dps. To keep the other 25-30% in-line I need to spend MORE AA to get SCF3, twice as more as a melee would need to spend for their ingenuity3 mind you, which is basically the same shit, but I don't mind.

[Patricio]

Ok first of all my main is a bard, so dismissing them isn't going to be valid. However I won't bother with that argument, because bard AA is the most fubar of all.

First I will say that it doesn't matter what the percentages are, even if it's 99-1 (melee-spells), the hybrid is still getting less of a percent increase than the non hybrid in their class for the same cost of AA points. We're talking percent effectiveness here so there's no point in saying that hybrids are penalized because of their ability to cast, it's an extra penalty on top of that.

Let's put it this way... A warrior gains 200 hps from an AA and a similarly equipped paladin gains 150 hps from the same AA, having spent the same points on it. Now you say "well that's fine because the paladin has spells to make up for the fewer hitpoints gained." But in this example the paladins spells haven't gained any increase in power, so he has to go out and spend more AA on increasing the power of his spells to get the same total increase in power as the warrior.

The problem is that AA tends to increase the effectiveness of either your spells or your melee abilities by a percent. Since hybrids are balanced on both spell use and melee abilities, in order to keep up they need to raise both sides of the AA coin by, say 10%, to see a total increase in their power by 10%, while a pure melee or pure caster only needs to raise one side to see that increase.

Thus the penalty, hybrid AA costs the same as non-hybrid AA for the same ability, but a lower percentage of value to the hybrid.

*edit* just fixed some grammar issues

[Tarana]

Wow your logic is flawed. If you pay for the AA that grants a 10% increase in damage, then no matter what class you are it is STILL a 10% increase in YOUR damage. You do 10% less damage than some other class doesn't come into play, YOU still get a 10% increase in your damage.

I think 220 hp on the Raex's BP woulda been a little more inline with the armor and not that much more over what other classes have.

And yes clicky items kinda suck for a warrior since we have 0 channeling skill. Would rather see something else in the BP like Vengeance X+, but I'll get over it.

[Patricio]

/sigh

No it's not 10% increase in your damage. It's 10% increase in your melee damage. For a rogue that's 10% increase in total damage. For a ranger that's (using the above ranger's numbers) 7% increase in total damage for the exact same AA cost. The ranger would then need to go buy some AA that gave a 10% increase to spell damage to make up the difference and get the same percent power increase as the rogue.

[Selfarine]

Good god, where do you people learn math. The only people who can increase their DPS 10% by getting an AA that boosts melee damage 10% is a pure melee class, same goes for spell damage and pure casters. ALL hybred's do a percentage of their damage with each. For instance I do about 80% melee DPS and 20% spell DPS, so if I get an AA that increases my melee DPS by 10% that increases my overall DPS by 8%. For those of you who's family has decided to stay "pure blooded" the math for this is:
80%(amount of damage from melee) x 10%(amount AA increases melee damage) = 8%(total increase to DPS due to the AA)

Trying to multi-task at work can suck when you're dealing with morons both here and there.

[Frodlin7th]

Selfarine,

The part that you're not factoring in, is that you're comparing yourself against only yourself.

So....

You gain 10% of your OWN overall power via AA's, I gain 10% of my OWN overall power via AA's, mine are melee only, yours are in both areas.... the problem is you stop there.

You have gained ON ME though, since my AA's are quite limited, as are pretty much all melee classes. Comparitive power increases MUST be factored in, and Comparitive power increases are what I'm talking about, not pre-AA/Post-AA.