Completely remove and replace Conc (and charge/potion) stat buffing.

Right now, as devs are contemplating changes to charge juggling and buffing ... I propose removing all conc and charge stat buffs in the game and replacing them with inherent passive stat gain that scale up to a similar level, similar to Vampiirs on live. So if you're 50, you always have +140-155 Str/Con/Dex, +90 Qui, and if you're a caster +60-80 Acuity. This could be adjusted on a class by class basis to increase diversity.

This would completely remove the need to juggle charges for solos, and in groups the "lets swap bases for dex. Do you have Acuity? Oh you're using charges? Wait I self-buff Dex/Qui, cancel it. Okay I can downgrade my Red base con on two people and maybe squeeze out a yellow base dex. Nevermind I have to cancel something else. No it's okay I can use a charge. Wait, let me port to recharge. Okay the caster died, what are you missing? Oh I forgot to hand out base cons, I thought you were doing it. Okay I'm res sick I can't buff you, lets wait 2 minutes in the skybox ... etc." conversation is gone. Seriously slows down the flow of the game, is a tedious use of time and button presses. Conc stat buffing is basically an accounting mini-game that was justified by Mythic's need to pull in buffbot revenue. Stat buffs are such a huge advantage that they make buff charges and buffing mandatory, which restricts player choice. Likewise, unbuffed play just "feels" bad. Spell casts and swings unbuffed and at low level are just painfully slow in a way that only feels appropriate in EQ1.

Enh/Nurt/Aug would be replaced with active buffing lines. Self-buffers would be compensated. Pet classes would get buffs built-in to their pet spells.

Sample spell line (rough draft): Main Buffer

Baseline:
Base Str, Base Con, Base Dex Removed.

New Spells:
Instant Ablative, 20 second timer. 60s Duration. 1500 Range. Ranges from 50-300 value.
Single Target Might Buff. 20s Timer, 30s Duration. 1500 Range. Buffs target's Str/Dex/Acuity by 10-35.

Specline:
Str/Con, Dex/Qui, Acuity Removed. Endo, Haste, Spec AF, Regen retained.

New Spells (brainstorm):
Aura. 2-8% Hits/AF buffer.
Self cast speed and in-combat movement speed buff, 3-10%.
Focus Shell, 10-40%.
Channeled Shield, summons a large barrier that intercepts partial damage for all groupmates standing within 1000 radius. Barrier's HP replenishes with each tick.
Group Ascension Buff. 1m timer, 30s duration. 1500 Range, buffs Str/Dex/Con/Qui/Acuity by 15-40.

etc.

Sample spell line: Mins/Ment Charm

Tier 1 Charm - +15 to all stats while pulsing
Tier 6 Charm - +125 to all stats while pulsing

Sample BC/Pathfinding

Spec AF remains.
Self Dex/Qui replaced:
Ranger: self celerity shout, 30s, 60s CD. 7-25% value.
Hunter: FnF instant hawk pet, 20s, 60s CD. 1875 range. Small damage and interrupt. Very fragile.

Sample Summons:

Summonable pets have their core stats buffed increased. Supplementary stat buffs still found in Summoning lines, with some new spells to compensate.

Enchanting: Group short duration Melee DPS buff
Spirit: Pet Detonation. Pet blows up after 5s, dealing very large damage in a large radius based on pet health on explosion.
Summoning: AOE Rez (with target limit), and minor PBAE lifetap.

Sat 20 Apr 2019 8:06 PM by

gruenesschaf

While it would remove a somewhat tedious mechanic, it also would have huge implications (e. g. PR) and buffing is just a core part of the game. Too far.

Sat 20 Apr 2019 8:39 PM by teiloh

gruenesschaf wrote: ↑
Sat 20 Apr 2019 8:06 PM
While it would remove a somewhat tedious mechanic, it also would have huge implications (e. g. PR) and buffing is just a core part of the game. Too far.

True for PR, although I'd say there still is the penalty of losing power/positioning/immunities. Agree that it's a core part of the game, but retooling it (even in phases) would pay huge dividends. IMO.

I think the tedium is not the worst thing, though. Disadvantages of the conc buff system:

1. Unbalanced. Favors Hib, harms Alb.
2. Silos essential group functions. Buffs are simply too powerful, in their scarcity. Doubling down on Druids/Clerics and having 2 Heal/Sham is almost essential to RvR, unless you don't mind being at an enormous disadvantage in damage, survivability and cast speed. IMO, there should be classes/specs that are really nice to have, but "essential" limits player choice. Especially true for groups, solo and "small man." The prospect of say leaving the keep with a missing Cleric/Druid/Sham would be much less daunting if conc were reworked. We can see this especially on the 3 man event now - most non-stealth groups feel compelled to group a buffer.
3. Game-feel of unbuffed DaoC is simply terrible. This might just be my opinion, but everything is extremely slow - especially relative to most games online now.
4. Creates ongoing balance issues between self-buffers, charge buffers and main buffers. Rangers and Hunters are somewhat unhappy and it complicates balancing classes like Friars.
5. Enh/Nurt/Aug are simply unfun lines. This would give more space for more active spells. The worst kind of specs in RPGs are the ones that are both mandatory and not fun.
6. Limits player choice. Players must have potions, or must have a conc buffer. This leads to players not even bothering to go out unless they have all their charges up or have enough conc buffers.
7. Tedious. It takes not just time but what amounts to almost a separate mini-game for buffs.
8. Clutter. Too much space on hotbars, too much space in inventory, too much space on in-game UI, and it occupies its own class of timers which is possibly up for rework.

Could be worth considering implementing strictly on an event zone in the future just to see how it pans out

Regardless, thank you for reading.

Sun 21 Apr 2019 2:01 AM by Turtle006

I like this idea.

Sun 21 Apr 2019 2:15 AM by Citian

If you kill someone in a group that is also in a group they are not supposed to get up [e.g. rezzed/PR'd] and be at full buffed capacity (which is why the timer exists on the buff pots after RvR or seemingly any action atm to begin with).

While I disagree with the timer that is present on the buff pot timer that prevents people from being able to buff themselves; [they are near useless if the healers/buffers are busy in combat which is probable] I also disagree with this idea that if we normalize stats by increasing them that we can do away with the idea of punishment for death. Debuffs would need to be tweaked. It just seems easier to remove or reduce timers from charge items/buff pots as well as to increase the duration and decrease the cost of charging.

One requires a new system and maybe a re-balance of issues while the other is just tweaking timer groups/durations/ &/or costs.

Edit: I do agree that unbuffed play "feels bad" and generally you are required to find a method to buff yourself if you want to compete or not see a huge time loss at whatever you are trying to do. I also could see the possibility of the idea working if healers/buffers retained more than simply their "realm specific" buff/s and had at least the specs to differentiate them and their group members from other "base" players. However, for that to work or even to matter, the base values of their specs need to be increased (pre-25% x spec value) so that they are better than charges at a reasonable level [ 30ish spec in buff lines ].

Sun 21 Apr 2019 2:27 AM by Bradekes

I put some good thought into this... I really like the idea of no more stat buffs because they bring a lot of frustration to the server.. I do not like the idea of abilities that do not diminish from lack of skill points invested on base line specs so I am not too sure about the ideas you presented...

My idea is to keep all base buffs for pet use only, seeings vampiir-esque stats do not allow any stat buff and AF will still be useful. Then we add additional effects to the spec stat buffs that only effect players - that way they can still be cast on pet but only the stat part affects the pet and the additional part of the buff only effects players

Str/Con buff > Player effect = 1-10% increase to weaponskill/hitpoints
Dex/Qui buff > Player effect = 1-10% increase to cast speed/melee swing speed
Acuity > 1-10% Spell Effectiveness(like enchanter pet spell)

Seeings Druid's unique buff is already a haste buff we will instead give them a celerity conc buff of 1-10%. Clerics keep their AF spec buff and all other goodies from enhancement, Shaman keep their Endo, DA and all other goodies from Augmentation.

This way people still want to spec in their buff lines for more than just resist buffs and they can still use conc on players for similar effects from what stat buffs used to do.. Values aren't set in stone but I think those aren't too unbalanced, maybe conc would need adjusted seeings it isn't being used on baseline mostly!

Tue 23 Apr 2019 5:58 PM by Clydde

I understand the struggle of buffer playing a shaman myself sometimes.

However, i think that buffing everybody at full is not a good idea for, at least, those points:
- Some buffing class become totally useless, or not far from it. What's the use of a shaman if nobody needs any base or spec buffs? Resists maybe (that point was not talked about in this post by the way).
- Unbuffed play is slower than buffed in pve and rvr : yes and that's a good thing. It encourages you to get in a group. If everybody is already self buffed, what's the point of grouping? Some realms (wink wink Albion) are already solo-land, i don't think that giving even more solo capacity to everybody would be good in a MMO.
- Global gameplay around buffers in rvr : if you kill a druid / clreic / healer / shaman it has an impact on the group. Both the buffing class and group play in order to protect them at a minimum. Removing their importance on that point makes them less valuable (healing-wise excepted) and change too much the game mechanic in my opinion.

One thing i can see that could help simplifying that is removing the conc limit (and limiting buffs to your group). Pros are that There's no need to think about who gets what buff. Full potential of buffers is used. Cons are that you can't buff anybody outside your group (happens sometimes when farming to buff people around to help) and it brings the alchemy market back to soloing people for pots.

All in all, i don't think there's a miracle solution. The situation as it is is not that awful. I just don't understand why people complicate their life so much around buffs. There are buffing class, use them.

Tue 23 Apr 2019 6:16 PM by cere2

Clydde wrote: ↑
Tue 23 Apr 2019 5:58 PM
I understand the struggle of buffer playing a shaman myself sometimes.

However, i think that buffing everybody at full is not a good idea for, at least, those points:
- Some buffing class become totally useless, or not far from it. What's the use of a shaman if nobody needs any base or spec buffs? Resists maybe (that point was not talked about in this post by the way).
- Unbuffed play is slower than buffed in pve and rvr : yes and that's a good thing. It encourages you to get in a group. If everybody is already self buffed, what's the point of grouping? Some realms (wink wink Albion) are already solo-land, i don't think that giving even more solo capacity to everybody would be good in a MMO.
- Global gameplay around buffers in rvr : if you kill a druid / clreic / healer / shaman it has an impact on the group. Both the buffing class and group play in order to protect them at a minimum. Removing their importance on that point makes them less valuable (healing-wise excepted) and change too much the game mechanic in my opinion.

One thing i can see that could help simplifying that is removing the conc limit (and limiting buffs to your group). Pros are that There's no need to think about who gets what buff. Full potential of buffers is used. Cons are that you can't buff anybody outside your group (happens sometimes when farming to buff people around to help) and it brings the alchemy market back to soloing people for pots.

All in all, i don't think there's a miracle solution. The situation as it is is not that awful. I just don't understand why people complicate their life so much around buffs. There are buffing class, use them.

While I see your points with groups, this doesn't really help solo classes at all. Whether you like people to solo or not (wink wink Albion) it's part of the game. And this in general means stealth classes. Groups are not typically affected by this because they almost always have buffs and typically will run over lesser numbers with little to no issue.

People seem to forget just as the Dev's did that some classes were given self buffs to put them on par with other classes.
Like Hunters/Rangers were given self buffs to put them on par with assassin's etc. When you give buffs to all classes with potions, you just killed any sort of balance those self buffing classes had in a solo/smallman playstyle. Doing this is ok if you re-evaluate those classes that you just %$#@ed over, (Hello Thane's, Hello Friars) But if you just leave these classes as is, you just killed any sort of balance.

So unless the Dev's decided to look at all classes that have some self-buffing, and their roles in RvR and common playstyles with those classes, eliminating charge items/potions should be the go to, until classes can be re-balanced.

See what Live did, PF was removed, BC was totally revamped for this reason.

But this is all a waste of my thoughts because Schaf said "potions are fine"

Tue 23 Apr 2019 9:29 PM by Gormenghast

I support most of these ideas, yes conc buffs are a major waste of time, combined forces are terrible compared to real buffs, having to pay tons of gold to RvR using charges, pots is just retarded in my opinion.

like op said, conc buffs was mainly a reason for more income to mythic, which is irrelevant here since it's a free shard

Most ppl want to RvR not pend 1/2 their time waiting for group mates to finish buffing at the portal keep etc

Wed 24 Apr 2019 5:49 AM by teiloh

Citian wrote: ↑
Sun 21 Apr 2019 2:15 AM
If you kill someone in a group that is also in a group they are not supposed to get up [e.g. rezzed/PR'd] and be at full buffed capacity (which is why the timer exists on the buff pots after RvR or seemingly any action atm to begin with).

With a regular rez, they'll be rez sick, with all immunities down, and missing 50-90% of their end and power, as well as missing up to 90% of their hit points. They will also be out of position, and it costs a healer 50% of their pool to use a regular rez as well as 4 seconds. I think it's very punishing even if they're not unbuffed to boot.

For PR, it is an RA after all. Maybe the timer could be extended a bit.

While I disagree with the timer that is present on the buff pot timer that prevents people from being able to buff themselves; [they are near useless if the healers/buffers are busy in combat which is probable] I also disagree with this idea that if we normalize stats by increasing them that we can do away with the idea of punishment for death. Debuffs would need to be tweaked. It just seems easier to remove or reduce timers from charge items/buff pots as well as to increase the duration and decrease the cost of charging.

It'd be easier and there could be intermediate solutions. But imo, the best long-term solution is to get rid of conc stat buffs altogether.

Wed 1 May 2019 6:23 PM by teiloh

Bradekes wrote: ↑
Sun 21 Apr 2019 2:27 AM
I put some good thought into this... I really like the idea of no more stat buffs because they bring a lot of frustration to the server.. I do not like the idea of abilities that do not diminish from lack of skill points invested on base line specs so I am not too sure about the ideas you presented...

My idea is to keep all base buffs for pet use only, seeings vampiir-esque stats do not allow any stat buff and AF will still be useful. Then we add additional effects to the spec stat buffs that only effect players - that way they can still be cast on pet but only the stat part affects the pet and the additional part of the buff only effects players

Str/Con buff > Player effect = 1-10% increase to weaponskill/hitpoints
Dex/Qui buff > Player effect = 1-10% increase to cast speed/melee swing speed
Acuity > 1-10% Spell Effectiveness(like enchanter pet spell)

Seeings Druid's unique buff is already a haste buff we will instead give them a celerity conc buff of 1-10%. Clerics keep their AF spec buff and all other goodies from enhancement, Shaman keep their Endo, DA and all other goodies from Augmentation.

This way people still want to spec in their buff lines for more than just resist buffs and they can still use conc on players for similar effects from what stat buffs used to do.. Values aren't set in stone but I think those aren't too unbalanced, maybe conc would need adjusted seeings it isn't being used on baseline mostly!

imo the best solution for pet stats would be an overhaul of NPC/mob stats and resists. Sparing that, simple changes could be made to pet buff lines and summoning/charming spells themselves to close the gap. This might sound like a huge undertaking, but NPCs here have already been subject to massive changes in stat scaling, damage output, swing speed, absorb-per-point of stat, and charms have been tweaked at least a dozen times. We may as well go all the way.

One of the main problems with the buff lines as they are is that they're boring and unfun but also mandatory. Tacking on additional buffs to the existing ones wouldn't handle that problem.

Ideally, we'd shift some of the TK management power from main healing lines into buff lines to kill two birds with one stone.

Wed 1 May 2019 6:37 PM by Bradekes

teiloh wrote: ↑
Wed 1 May 2019 6:23 PM
imo the best solution for pet stats would be an overhaul of NPC/mob stats and resists. Sparing that, simple changes could be made to pet buff lines and summoning/charming spells themselves to close the gap. This might sound like a huge undertaking, but NPCs here have already been subject to massive changes in stat scaling, damage output, swing speed, absorb-per-point of stat, and charms have been tweaked at least a dozen times. We may as well go all the way.

One of the main problems with the buff lines as they are is that they're boring and unfun but also mandatory. Tacking on additional buffs to the existing ones wouldn't handle that problem.

Ideally, we'd shift some of the TK management power from main healing lines into buff lines to kill two birds with one stone.

That sounds like too much work, overhauling all npc and pet stats which changes so much... Keeping the buff/healer dynamic the same is better IMO..

The buff lines might be kinda boring but it's nice for when my gf plays and doesn't contribute much other than passive boosts to my character..

Atleast making them useful but not OP or gamebreaking is a good step in the right direction IMO...

I have always hated DAOC buff system as it is so broken and adds a layer that no other MMO has.. It needs removed for sure..

Wed 1 May 2019 6:47 PM by teiloh

Bradekes wrote: ↑
Wed 1 May 2019 6:37 PM
That sounds like too much work, overhauling all npc and pet stats which changes so much... Keeping the buff/healer dynamic the same is better IMO..

The buff lines might be kinda boring but it's nice for when my gf plays and doesn't contribute much other than passive boosts to my character..

Atleast making them useful but not OP or gamebreaking is a good step in the right direction IMO...

I have always hated DAOC buff system as it is so broken and adds a layer that no other MMO has.. It needs removed for sure..

They already changed tons of things about NPCs. I think a stat review is in the works, if not only for primarily used pets as a start. Without one pets are now utterly broken and gimped.

If the changes on paper go through your GF could play a chants class or maybe an active buffer.