With the vote clearly in favor of making the weapon lines usable quite a few changes would be required, there were basically two choices
1) Go from the current 1.65 styles and add the required elements to each line as needed
2) Take a more recent set of styles as the starting point where those changes have already been done
We now went with the second option for a couple reasons
1) The common sense / required changes to make each weapon line at least somewhat viable (meaning a side or rear snare in 8v8 for example) are already in
2) Some new toys that make stuff a bit more interesting
3) Chains have already been reduced to usually 2 with a handful 3 part chains
4) Icons / requirements indicator will match the style again
Timeline
The update is planned for Monday.
/respec all will become free for a while
The char planner has already been updated to reflect the new styles, please note that this is still a work in progress and it may contain some weirdness or not reflect some changes.
There will be a couple issues regarding effects and especially tooltips, those should be resolved rather quickly for the most part though. Please note that due to a technical limitation styles that have more than one effect will only show one and it'll be random (determined at server start) which one will show, it will take a while to resolve the technical limitation here. In total this should affect only about 20ish styles (out of about 1300). The char planner will always show all effects.
As for the new toys, there were a total of 6 new concepts, one of them was discarded for a simpler implementation:
The discarded one first: your damage dealt against this target is increased by x will be a your damage is increased by x, this was at most 5% and for a simpler implementation this will become a simple self melee dps buff (like svg dps self buff)
Damage reflect: Will reduce the damage by the listed % and reflect that amount back at the attacker, your damage taken message will include the damage before the reduction by reflection. Example with 100 damage attack and 25% reflect: You are hit by xy for 100 damage! You reflect 25 damage back at xy!
The actual / only usage here is in a skald hammer style with a 5 second 25% damage reflect for the group.
Melee crit chance buff: Self explanatory, actual / only usage is a 25% crit group buff for 5 seconds in the same hammer style that also has the damage reflect.
Armor effectiveness debuff: Acts similar to an af debuff, actual usage is at most 5% which thanks to variance makes this not noticable.
Heal effectiveness buff / debuff: Should be rather self explanatory, actual usage is a warden style with a 50% heal effectiveness buff and a target 50% heal effectiveness debuff as follow up.
Effect Removal: Self explanatory, actual / only usage is for a specific warden style combo where one style does low damage but debuffs the target and another style does very high damage but removes this debuff from the target with the opener for both giving you a weapon skill buff which is also removed by this style.
Changes
Changes to the new styles
Aside from omitting the shield line there were only 2 changes done to the styles so far:
The ranger frontal root style in cd is only a 40% snare
Stealth opener had their scaling slightly reduced to account for con debuff hitting before it, the scaling is still higher than what it is currently
Changes to existing styles:
The Scout only shield style Stop! has been reduced from 14 seconds to 10
Changes to damage tables:
Thane sword and axe have been raised from 18 to 19 to match hammer, this is the only case where a class had different damage table values for their lines.
Future Changes
Just like with NF RAs, this now represents a starting point for further adjustments.
The biggest candidate here is the warden 50% abs debuff and the warden 50% heal effectiveness debuff, aside from those two all effects are rather minor and/or very short in duration. Also please welcome our new scythe wielding overlords https://www.ignboards.com/threads/grasping-roots.250248012/
The damage delves, especially for the vw side follow up, will also be monitored closely.
A couple important points:
With the new styles pretty much all melee snares are now only 40% instead of 60% and pretty much all anytime snares have been removed.
Asp no longer has an increased melee range, it's now a normal anytimer detaunt.
All styles now use the "correct" style damage formula as we have the required values for the new styles, that means you will no longer see the growth rate. In order to make comparing the different styles easier, the char builder will include spec 65 and spec 74 as reference points, e. g. if one styles shows a 222 at spec 74 and another shows 350 then the 350 one does more damage.
1) Go from the current 1.65 styles and add the required elements to each line as needed
2) Take a more recent set of styles as the starting point where those changes have already been done
We now went with the second option for a couple reasons
1) The common sense / required changes to make each weapon line at least somewhat viable (meaning a side or rear snare in 8v8 for example) are already in
2) Some new toys that make stuff a bit more interesting
3) Chains have already been reduced to usually 2 with a handful 3 part chains
4) Icons / requirements indicator will match the style again
Timeline
The update is planned for Monday.
/respec all will become free for a while
The char planner has already been updated to reflect the new styles, please note that this is still a work in progress and it may contain some weirdness or not reflect some changes.
There will be a couple issues regarding effects and especially tooltips, those should be resolved rather quickly for the most part though. Please note that due to a technical limitation styles that have more than one effect will only show one and it'll be random (determined at server start) which one will show, it will take a while to resolve the technical limitation here. In total this should affect only about 20ish styles (out of about 1300). The char planner will always show all effects.
As for the new toys, there were a total of 6 new concepts, one of them was discarded for a simpler implementation:
The discarded one first: your damage dealt against this target is increased by x will be a your damage is increased by x, this was at most 5% and for a simpler implementation this will become a simple self melee dps buff (like svg dps self buff)
Damage reflect: Will reduce the damage by the listed % and reflect that amount back at the attacker, your damage taken message will include the damage before the reduction by reflection. Example with 100 damage attack and 25% reflect: You are hit by xy for 100 damage! You reflect 25 damage back at xy!
The actual / only usage here is in a skald hammer style with a 5 second 25% damage reflect for the group.
Melee crit chance buff: Self explanatory, actual / only usage is a 25% crit group buff for 5 seconds in the same hammer style that also has the damage reflect.
Armor effectiveness debuff: Acts similar to an af debuff, actual usage is at most 5% which thanks to variance makes this not noticable.
Heal effectiveness buff / debuff: Should be rather self explanatory, actual usage is a warden style with a 50% heal effectiveness buff and a target 50% heal effectiveness debuff as follow up.
Effect Removal: Self explanatory, actual / only usage is for a specific warden style combo where one style does low damage but debuffs the target and another style does very high damage but removes this debuff from the target with the opener for both giving you a weapon skill buff which is also removed by this style.
Changes
Changes to the new styles
Aside from omitting the shield line there were only 2 changes done to the styles so far:
The ranger frontal root style in cd is only a 40% snare
Stealth opener had their scaling slightly reduced to account for con debuff hitting before it, the scaling is still higher than what it is currently
Changes to existing styles:
The Scout only shield style Stop! has been reduced from 14 seconds to 10
Changes to damage tables:
Thane sword and axe have been raised from 18 to 19 to match hammer, this is the only case where a class had different damage table values for their lines.
Future Changes
Just like with NF RAs, this now represents a starting point for further adjustments.
The biggest candidate here is the warden 50% abs debuff and the warden 50% heal effectiveness debuff, aside from those two all effects are rather minor and/or very short in duration. Also please welcome our new scythe wielding overlords https://www.ignboards.com/threads/grasping-roots.250248012/
The damage delves, especially for the vw side follow up, will also be monitored closely.
A couple important points:
With the new styles pretty much all melee snares are now only 40% instead of 60% and pretty much all anytime snares have been removed.
Asp no longer has an increased melee range, it's now a normal anytimer detaunt.
All styles now use the "correct" style damage formula as we have the required values for the new styles, that means you will no longer see the growth rate. In order to make comparing the different styles easier, the char builder will include spec 65 and spec 74 as reference points, e. g. if one styles shows a 222 at spec 74 and another shows 350 then the 350 one does more damage.
