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Announcement Class Update: Minor Tweaks

Discussion in 'Annihilation' started by Murgatron, Jun 25, 2017.

Announcement - Class Update: Minor Tweaks | Page 2
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  1. Corrade Regular Member

    XP:
    21,864xp

    I really like Clown's idea of providing XP for supportive actions, and would extend that to say XP mostly from kills being the primary source of XP (aside from nexus damage and major objectives) is fine, but it should be recognised that classes such as Healers, Bards and Tinkerers facilitate the kills, and therefore deserve XP. This is also suitable for anyone who helps a fight by simply doing damage.
    I feel like this could be implemented in a kill assist system that provides XP for any ally that either;

    - harmed the enemy in some way (damage, debuff)
    - helped the last-hitter in some way (heal, buff)

    Rewarding more indirectly combat-related actions such as teleports and all Tinkerer buffs is probably a more obfuscated task, as doing it by flat numbers would open up the system to exploitation, but still, XP could be more way encouraging of various impactful playstyles aside from just killing and nexus attacking, and in a perfect world that would even reward stuff like base building.

    I know these ideas are not new in any regard, but I don't see any downside to making some sort of change along these lines, so it's frustrating to have things not change for no apparent reason for so long.

  2. Clownpiece Regular Member

    XP:
    2,911xp
    Immo and Swappers are still popular support end classes still. However, the design of healers, bards and tinkerers is awkward as well as the xp rewarding system is not that satisfying. Healers somewhat lack the ability to recognize low health players, and lack the ability to aim (sometimes there are tons of friendly players nearby), and also lack the ability to run to the injured players. And of course, the weakness debuff makes healers even weaker in combat (they can't heal themselves still). I would recommend healers to add the ability to heal itself, without removing the weakness debuff to prevent healers rushing, and the system should reward a certain amount of shotbow xp for a successful heal beams on an injured player.

    The area effect of Bard's box is a bit too short tbh, especially for the debuff melodies. I can see it might be good to leave regeneration at the current range (and by the way an automatic healing station is FAR better than healers), but the debuff melodies need a strong buff. For the speed one, it is a lot worse than tinkerers' pads, thinking resistance 1 could be any better?

    Tinkerers have too much penalties upon death, and thus people hate mining all days without any combat (and no xp as well). There are certain 2 types of tinkerers now: the most common one only places the spawned pads beside a tp, and thus have nearly no penalties; the latter one, almost never seen nowadays, tries to place power pads EVERYWHERE on the map. The death penalty of this type is too high for them to actually "play" the game. They have to hide from threats, and they won't get anything in return.

    As for succubus, with so little feedback, there is a glitch where sometimes you will successfully drain a person, but the person not being killed. Compared to overused thors, the class certainly needs a minor buff. As well as changing the passive drain to 5%, I have several options to buff the ability:
    1. Hints will appear when a player can be drained to death
    2. No backfire penalty
    3. Backfire will not reset the skill cooldown.
    One of these above may work.

    And also I hope the admins are reading our posts and giving some thoughts/feedback to the discussion. Thanks.
    ChromosomeCramp and Corrade like this.
  3. LegendaryAlex Platinum

    XP:
    449,178xp
    Yoo,


    I really like what you said about the healer class, it would be nice to have the healer see how much health every teammate has, above their head. I do think that healer shouldn't be able to heal himself tho , support classes are there to help your teammates, not yourself :wink:. Giving xp for healing teammates can be abused, so I don't think that's the way to go.

    I also agree what you said about the bard class, the range of a bard is kind of small. You know, they can also just keep the same range but add negative effects like slowness, blindness or even mining fatigue. Then you can just place the box next to a swapper trap, activate mining fatigue and he can't get out (idea of me and Guiga btw).

    You were also on point with Tinkerer, I like the class a lot, it's a great class, but maybe make it so the effects are longer. The effect for a diamond block is 20 seconds of speed 2, which is always nice and good, but making it a bit stronger wouldn't mind me. I was thinking of 30 or 40 seconds, but not more than that. Yes, the current meta is annoying, everyone uses the same strat if they use this tinkerer. So I was just brainstorming about tinkerer and what do you guys think of an obsidian block as negative pressure plate against enemies, blindness or something. Sounds pretty cool to me. ;p

    I am 100% sure that succubus will get buffed in the next update and I like the options you gave. No comment on it further.

    You guys know the drill, opinions down below, please! ^_^
  4. Corrade Regular Member

    XP:
    21,864xp
    Pretty much nailed what's wrong with those classes imo. I'll add that Healer can be super impactful, but is effectively restricted entirely to the use of its ability - on cooldown, the player is left waiting, so the class' exciting moments are few and far between.
    I think it would be interesting to experiment with, instead of flat cooldowns, a medigun-like ability that depletes an 'energy' meter. Both heal modes could be altered to be held down rather than clicked, healing over time and draining the meter at different rates. The meter could be represented by the item's durability (always > 0) and would naturally recharge. The strength of this would depend on the numbers, but regardless introduces an element of skill in resource management and provides the Healer more control over its kit. Just throwing an idea out, this is very rough.

    Though I think Immo and Swapper ideally should also be looked at, as although they're great, skill isn't really involved in their usage (respectively consisting of spamming clicks and building traps most of the time) which makes the classes duller to play and frustrating/cheap to be beaten by. Maybe some sort of penalty could be given to missing with either abilities in exchange for a buffed effect when they do hit, but I feel there needs to be more emphasis on skill in those classes considering how powerful they are.

    Also, as Alex said, giving XP for healing with Healer might be abused, but I think it'll probably be ok due to lengthy cooldowns and would definitely make the class more satisfying, especially if the amount received correlated with the amount healed.
    Clownpiece and LegendaryAlex like this.
  5. UMadBroGames Regular Member

    XP:
    3,453xp
    cant wait to play this Monday.

    my 2 year ban is over!!!
    drewko09 likes this.
  6. Clownpiece Regular Member

    XP:
    2,911xp

    There are always ways to farm xp. skybridge rushing, strength potion farming, and just normal leather fights can be used to farm xp. I can see why admins had a concern to give alternative ways to gain xp 2 or 3 years ago: I am certain that people WILL abuse this. But I don't want to make this less potential and less productive than normal leather fights.. For instance, healers can get 3xp (3*3=9xp) on successfully healing 5 injured players. I would prefer to just kill one or two leathers in case of xp farming techniques.

    Well let's make the statement back to ground. For healers, it might work if they can see teammates' health below name. The vanilla health scoreboard should work. An alternative way is to give healers a compass, to show all the injured friendly players nearby, and their health displayed. This won't be too hard to code I guess.
    It could be better if healer's beam will remove all the negative effects. Especially poison.

    As for thors, if they really need a small nerf, I'd like to give it 'resistance 1' for 5s after the lightning strike ability, instead of making it permanently.

    Bard's regeneration melody is just fine, but the others do need a buff, either on the effects, or the range. The speed melody is a duplicate to tinkerers. To maximize its support potential, I'd like to give bard an option to choose at will. I'd suggest the melodies as follows:
    1. Regeneration 1, normal radius
    2. Resistance 1, normal radius
    3. Weakness 1, 2x radius
    4. Slowness 1, 2x radius
    5. Weakness, Slowness, and Mining Fatigue 1, normal radius.

    Tinkerer: Unless you switched to other classes, the power pads will not break on death but you won't spawn with the normal redstone/coal block if there is one placed already. However, when a power pad is destroyed by your enemy. You won't get it back. The player who destroys the pad will get the corresponding block (diamond block etc.)

    No more comments on succubus.
  7. Corrade Regular Member

    XP:
    21,864xp

    Yup sounds good across the board, particularly the Healer and Tinkerer changes which seem to be necessary quality of life changes.
    Though I think the Bard changes you've proposed don't address the major issues with the class atm. Although it's quite strong, personally when trying to use debuff melodies I usually find myself;

    - hoping for enemies to walk into the radius, which feels very passive and ineffective
    - trying to 'catch' them in the radius by rapidly deploying the Buffbox, which feels very slow, awkward and passive
    - or trying to place the Buffbox in an aggressive location such as an enemy mid base, hoping teammates push.

    There seems to be a lack of control and reliability with the class as it stands, and I think that's a likely reason why defaulting to Regeneration is common - the impact is clear. So I'm inclined to think the class ideally needs a sort of rework, maybe the songs could emanate from the player itself rather than a block? That's got to have been thought of when the class was created, but the current situation isn't fantastic.


    Also I feel like Thor strongly needs a nerf. Permanent Resistance I, assuming the status effect works as in vanilla, provides 20% damage reduction, which is already problematic as no effort or sacrifice is demanded from the player in order to have such a huge advantage.
    The class further dominates melee fights with its Knockback II axe that allows it to control engagements, particularly nearby cliffs or world edges. Once again, this advantage has no downside, but at least requires the player to execute it.
    But it's not even over, as Thor gets yet another ability in its lightning strike, which in combination with the other stuff allows it to start fights, assuming both sides meet at a full 10 hearts, with a 4 heart advantage (enemy takes -2 regardless of armour from the lightning, Thor resists 20% all damage and therefore has an effective 12 hearts). It's also undodgable, doesn't need to be aimed (so alike the Resistance requires little to no skill on behalf of the Thor to use), has a fairly long range and can hit multiple opponents.
    This gets even more ridiculous when you consider that the opponent has minimal opportunity to counter any of this, everything scales perfectly from early-game to late-game, nothing has any downsides and the Thor gets a complimentary stone sword that by itself would make it decent early-game. lol
  8. Clownpiece Regular Member

    XP:
    2,911xp
    I'd always think Bard's box is now used more in defense.

    It is awkward to use near nexus though, because Andorra is probably the only map where the melody effect can cover a small portion of nexus area. When used as a defense as a mid base, it is more than to heal players from being shot to death, because people typically will not raid mid base unless the difference of gears or numbers is great enough.

    But still there are some decent usage of bard, invented and probably only used by myself.
    1. Taking Cherokee's mid as an example, where you can't directly see bedrocks that often. Place your box somewhere beneath the diamond area, so that your enemies can not even see the particles from your box. They are then unable to destroy it and that wins your team an advantage (regeneration and slowness works best).
    2. Anti-leather rushes. Saying you are fully geared up but alone, and there are thousands of leathers coming at you. Hide the regeneration buff somewhere in prior to battle, and at least you won't easily die because the constant regeneration. This usage is limited though.
    3. Slowness + water defense. Taking coastal base as an example, and in late game people will flood their base to slow down attackers. The slowness melody, hidden beneath the water can slow them even further, allowing better aims for friendly archers. Wizard works better though.
    4. Offensive farm. Several times in coastal, we were able to take all the places outside the enemies wall. Usually they had fancy defense, and most of the diamonds would prefer to hide inside the nexus room. Placing a regeneration buff somewhere inside/outside the wall and just farm.

    My suggestions of bard enables the new usages below:
    1. Resistance 1 will make your people tougher, and the 10s duration allows them to run into mid from mid base, instead of just healing them. This may get even better when there are 2 bards on your team (regeneration + resistance)
    2. Encouraging bard to build mid bases near mid area, and cover the entire mid. Weakness 1 or slowness 1 itself won't make a huge difference; but it is annoying and your enemies have to destroy the box inside your mid base.
    3. Hide the heavy debuff melody (slowness weakness mining fatigue) besides mine or several blocks in front of your tp. The enemy will suffer.

    As for thors, it is now overused not only because of the resistance and knockback 2 buff (it was useless several years ago), but also because of the underrating of other melee-oriented class like succubus and vampire. I'd like it to have a small nerf, and buff succubus/vampire, rather than a heavy nerf on thor and make it useless again.
    But, to be honest, the permanent resistance 1 is too much, and even more with the active lightning ability. Knockback 2 can be annoying as well.

    I would suggest removing the permanent resistance, but only 5s of resistance after using the ability to balance. Knockback 2 can be nerfed to Knockback 1, although I was thinking to give thor an ability to 'overcharge' its axe (optional, it is fun but might be difficult in terms of coding):
    You need to sneak and hold on to your axe in order to charge. The longer you charge, the more knockback and damage it will cause. After charging for more than a certain time, the hit will trigger a lightning on your enemy and give you a small duration of resistance.
    This may completely change thor to a melee-sniping class though.

    I can also code if there is need btw.
    Corrade and NotPetitRabbit like this.
  9. NotInRange Regular Member

    XP:
    407,765xp
    i wanna point out that scouts grapple physics are kinda buggy. like if you grapple up, it'll push you foward horizontally.
  10. Hingey Platinum

    XP:
    863,715xp
    That is normal. The grapple pulls the player in the shortest path toward it.
  11. pokeminer9999 Platinum

    XP:
    203,980xp

    This is why shotbow is dead, the admins will sass back at any criticism rather than humbly accept it or note it. And the newest version of something is not always the best version, look at super smash bros melee versus the newer super smash bros games, the whole smash community agrees that melee is the best version for competitive play and so they mostly still play on a version that is many years old.

    And I did try to be helpful, I made a post giving suggestions to rework almost every single class in annihilation, but it went mostly ignored by admins despite almost completely positive feedback. https://shotbow.net/forum/threads/makeannihilationgreatagain-kit-rework-suggestions.362332
  12. Murgatron Retired Staff

    XP:
    970,785xp
    We do note that most players prefer the 1.7/1.8 combat system and as such we have tried to replicate that on our modes that were designed during that lifecycle of Minecraft.

    We have upcoming modes such as GoldRush and WIR that we are looking at to utlise 1.9 + features such as shields etc. We know what players prefer but we simply cannot go back.

    Just because you gave suggestions and they were ignored does not mean we failed in our duty. If we used every suggestion on the forums it'd be a nightmare! However you were not ignored completely:

  13. khalkists Platinum

    XP:
    266,378xp
    Been trying out Robin Hood, and the arrow recall (while nifty) still really leaves the class wanting.
    What if it passively regenerated 1 soulbound arrow per 5s, up to a max of 5-6? These soulbound arrows function like infinity arrows (so no picking them back up to restock)

    I still have to stock up on arrows if I want to actually get ranks on the bow (unless I farm AFK'ers, and thats boring)
    This would make it so you CAN get ranks without stocking up, but surplus arrows would streamline the process.
  14. jinl3e Platinum

    XP:
    49,036xp
    People say hunter is useless. That is true, but the current hunter is so much fun! You can troll people with traps
  15. Valadro Gold

    XP:
    489,265xp
    Suggestion:
    You know how with Pyro you get flame added to any arrow that you shoot without needing the flame effect on the bow?

    How about having the slowness effect added to Iceman's arrows whenever they shoot an arrow. That way the classes are similar in a sense. The perfect kind of opposite almost.
    Jetix, dewy6624, Kronoz and 3 others like this.
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