Pistoleer Archive
Thread: The Devs Answered OUR Questions on Damage Mitigation
Chalk one up for the Devs.
The answers themselves don't make me feel especially good about my pistol vs Mobs - I'll still need my pets to tank for me against critters, but it should help me against NPCs so it's not all bad.
RobbPilot wrote:
Oh joy... my bleeds will be mitigated, butflamethrower DoTdamage won't be? Did I interpret that correctly?
Yes, although he's not 100% sure about that. He also said that since the first hit determines how strong the bleed is, Mitigation might end up helping for all of them.
Since Mitigation isn't actual damage reduction I would assume that if it mitigates the original hit then it is essentially working for DoT bleeds.
RobbPilot wrote:
Oh joy... my bleeds will be mitigated, butflamethrower DoTdamage won't be? Did I interpret that correctly?
Don't forget diseases and poisons. They'll still get full damage too.
While reading the questions and answers and Phil's other thread on damage mitigation, I definitely get a nerf type vibe. Nerf ranged and melee weapon users vs Commandos and Combat Medics. Nerf ranged and melee weapon dabblers vs ranged and melee weapons masters. Nerf skill points, making you take a melee and ranged profession to stay alive in PvP.
/sigh
Remember that bug where we did an addition 75% less damage in PvP (in addition to the other 75% less damage)? Boy, that was fun (not). I know its different, but it vaguely reminds me of that.
Kriel wrote:
i have a question, what if the minimum damage was the same as the maximum damage? would the max damage mitigate below the min? would both min and max be mitigated? would it have no effect? i hope you understand my question
If there is no range between minimum and maximum -- if the range is zero -- then there's nothing to mitigate and it would have no effect. For instance a 50-50 weapon would have no mitigation. But who has a weapon like that? I want one. 
In response to roboslug's post (quoted in yellow, will make this easier to read hehe):
1.> Once they add these to NPCs, it increases the difficulty of, say, a non-master range prof taking down NPCs with a higher range mitigation. This IS a nerf to dabblers in PvE/PvP (faction NPCs).
First, keep in mind that he said you'll only notice a change when fighting creatures higher than level 30, which means that you're only going to see the higher-end NPC's get effected by this in a major way. So think, Nightsisters or maybe even Dark Troopers. These are NPC's that you're not going to want to take on by yourself if you're only a dabbler and you don't have any pets. Giving them mitigation will force you to do one of two things: join a group, or gain more skills in the profession you're dabbling in. I'm not saying this as an arguement for or against what you said, just making an observation.
2.> Also, dabblers in a range prof, for example, now will do less damage to a master (or at least next mitigation level up) in a range skill prof.
Well, I don't know what the best skills in every profession is are, but I imagine that some professions have only one or two trees that seem desirable or even worth it at all. For example, all of the Commando's who only have Flame 4, but no other Commando skills. A Flame 4 Commando versus a Master Commando won't result in the Master winning every fight, especially if the Flame 4 Commando has a really good weapon. Well, frankly that's just wrong. It's flat out spitting in the face of that Master Commando. He should have an advantage over that Flame 4 Commando, that ensures the odds are in his favor. That's his bonus of being a Master of that profession.
Or think back when people were only getting BH for Eyeshot. They could spam Eyeshot all day long and beat Master BH's, Master Pistoleers, etc. But, if they've got no Mitigation, then they're "Uber-ness" gets nipped at the bud. I think Mitigation makes it so being a dabbler purely in an attempt to be "Uber" is less desirable.
Add to this that mitigation will often be some to be determined frequency of pointless against NPCs once they have implemented it on them. A master pistoleer against a master pistoleer NPC means longer battle, and not an improvement.
As mentioned before, an Master Pistoleer NPC would only appear as a high-end mob, which means you're probably going to need a group of people to take the NPC down anyway. Your Mitigation only re-affirms that you're on par with your enemy. Yes, it will lengthen the battle, but I doubt it will be by such a significant amount that you'll be falling asleep at your keyboard 
Does the term NPC include creatures?
Nope.
So what was the point of adding it all in the first place? Just a way to simply make many combats last longer with everybody doing less damage to each other per shot unless you have a melee prof vs. range prof, in which case nothing has changed...?
Part of the purpose is to provide even further incentive to master a profession. I think if there are any other purposes to it we won't see them until the Dev's 4-part-combat-restructuring is complete. But they said things might seem a little off-kilter during the implementation of the first two parts, so maybe this is part of that off-kilter feel?
At best, it helps masters trounce dabblers and until it is on NPCs, gives us a temporary boost. Eventually, the latter will be lost or lessened in some situations as well.
Why shouldn't a master trounce a dabbler? Are you honestly going to say that a Master Pistoleer shouldn't beat a Trickshot who got BH Pistols 4 for the Pistol Speed mod? The Master Pistoleer should most definitely defeat that player, and this is because the Master Pistoleer is the ultimate Pistol user, not some guy who can fire-off Stopping Shot super fast but otherwise hardly has any Pistol skills.
As for the NPC's, like I said only two paragraphs ago, maybe this is part of that off-kilter feel they said to expect during the restructuring.
A> HAM basic fucntionality changes. No healing of "special ham damage", which means when you are a medic or near one, your special spamming will actually be less (notice w/medic here!!!) and we all get to be that much closer to incap and death all the time, since this "special damage" can no longer be healed.
This was removed, and we don't know how it's going to be re-implemented, so you can't really make a case out of it yet. Even so, I don't see any problem with that. The HAM functionality changes made it so your HAM regenerated faster from using special moves, which is of course a good thing. The damage wasn't heal-able, but that again is a good thing. Why? Because it means you can survive out there on your own without being forced to pick-up Medic skills.
Pretty recently I went for Master Brawler, but I found that I wasn't going to be able to gain XP quickly if I didn't also pick up Medic skills. If the HAM damage from using specials isn't heal-able, then those Medic skills are a bit less useful now, but since your HAM is regenerating faster you won't be suddenly keeling over all the time. It will make things harder on you, but not nearly as harsh as you would think.
B> "HAM costs will go up" from the official combat thread. This means we get to do less special spamming (A+B), while being closer to death (A), and generally doing less damage to each other and NPCs who have mitigation.
I have no problem with that. This should have been done a while ago, maybe it would have stopped those people from spamming Eyeshot to win every PvP fight. Maybe it will stop people from getting Stopping Shot and BH Pistols so that they can just spam Stopping Shot. I see no problem with getting people to stop spamming special moves so much.
Now we see the flip side of the HAM functionality changes. I said that things would be harder on you, but not nearly as hard as you would think. Well, when we factor in the rising HAM costs..... things nearly go back to the way they were! You use more HAM on special moves, but that damage regenerates faster than normal HAM damage, so these two concepts cancel each other (somewhat, I'm sure they don't 100% cancel, but we can all just suck it up and deal). Now, you can't heal that damage to you HAM from special moves, but as you become better in your profession you get more Mitigation, so you start taking less damage that IS heal-able. So, those two factors seem to balance each other at least a little bit. So, when are you going to start feeling the hard-hitting pain of this huge system change? When NPC's get Mitigation.
But wait (there's more!), only High-End NPC's are going to have Mitigation 3, or perhaps only High-Ends will even get Mitigation 2. This means, that the High-End mobs just became more difficult, which is something a lot of people were asking for anyway!
So, it seems that, while all these changes are going to make the way to do combat totally get flipped over, this is going to accomplish several goals all at the same time. Personally, I just realized a lot of this as I was typing, and now I am very excited for the Dev's combat changes. Again, keep in mind two things they told us: 1. During the first two phases, especially, things are going to feel a bit off-kilter because not everything will be in line yet, and 2. these changes are going to make everything you know about combat obsolete. Yes, that 2nd point is crucial, Combat as you know it will cease to exist, but Combat as you will learn anew will be far superior.
"Big" weapons will typically be affected by the damage mitigation the most, like T21 rifle, and the rifleman, for example, will be less effective against other range classes w/mitigation.
This is going to require several things from players to start considering in combat: 1. What type of weapon am I up against? When a Rifleman sees a player with a Pistol he's going to have to prepare for a different fight than if he was facing somebody with a Carbine. I don't even mean in terms of range, but simply in terms of average damage the Rifleman is going to be receiving. 2. Know thy enemy. The Rifleman suddenly takes a hit for150 damage (which would be600 in PvE), and he realizes that he was hit with a special-move. He glances down at the Combat-Dialog and sees that his enemy used DisarmingShot2! He then relizes that he has a Laser Rifle equipped (for whatever reason) and he knows that he'll need his T21 since it's damage is reduced less by Mitigation. Alright, so this example isn't perfect, but you get the idea that you'll have to make more decisions about which weapon to use and when in order to be effective in combat. 3. Armor. Is his opponent wearing armor? If so, then this could once again effect his weapon choice (not so much with Rifleman as it would with us Pistoleers though).
Yes, weapons like the T21 and the Laser Carbine to lose some of their effectiveness due to Mitigation, but that just means you're going to have to learn to actually strategize your battles, instead of just spamming attacks.
With this change in place, it may be really difficult to get our speed boost request answered (so we are the kings of speed & low damage, rather than just the kings of low damage), since we could easily become Rifleman killers while we ignore 60% of their max damage potential. The lack of speed calc adjustments might be fine if all there was to balance was PvP and humanoid NPCs.
Well, by not giving Pistols a speed boost, that does prevent a huge overbalance against Rifleman (as you point out). By "if all there was to balance was PvP and humanoid NPC's" you must be referring to creatures, but creatures aren't NPC's so they won't get Mitigation. Any other changes occuring in PvE combat can't really be spoken for until the creature re-balance goes into full effect.
The point here is that the more they try to create equilibrium with cross-the-board changes like this, the less each skill prof will get considered and balanced on its own merit.
I think the major thing to realize is that this is only the beginning of a very large-scale restructuring. The Devssaid things would seem a bit out of line during the earlier phases, but as more parts were put in place we would begin to see how it was all supposed to work. They also said that these changes are going to require everyone to basically re-learn combat all over again. Sure you'll still know how to actually engage in combat, and how to use your special attacks, but you'll have to learn how to use strategy to gain the upper-hand. I think that we need to see how all of their changes are going to interact before we can say that things aren't right. Frankly, with these first changes things aren't supposed to seem right! With the current creature systems and with the way PvP currently is, these new changes seem totally innane, but the creature system is going to change and PvP is going to change. Our only concern should be whether or not all of the changes actually fit together in the wonderful harmony the Devs anticipate, or whether it's just going to totally fark things. I personally think they've got great ideas in mind, and, while a little tweaking might be required to get it perfect, I think it will all be fantastic when it is finished. Until it is finished, however, we have to expect their changes to seem a little strange andevensomewhatcounter-productive at time. This is only because we don't know or understand how the overall grand scheme is planned. We're only getting to see it piece by piece, and until all the pieces are given to us the puzzle just doesn't fit right.
I'm worried that things won't work right in the end, but I think the Devs are far better than any pre-disposition people have against SOE. Just stick with it.Yes,3-4 months isa long time to ask people to "hang in there," but that's the nature of the beast, and in the end we can only hope that it will pay off.
Those who are calling mitigation a nerf to dabblers are completely wrong. Mitigation strengthens combat classes and gives the largest bonus to those who have mastered a specific elite. This is making master stronger. It in no way weakens dabbling. Dabblers were often above the curve in strength, the additional 20% (if you choose to dabble up to mitigation 2) brings masters back up the curve. This is the type of balancing that is good. Dabblers want to scream nerf, but I'm sorry, that's just whining as you're not getting weaker, others are getting better.
For those who want to say that it's a nerf to dabblers when NPCs get mitigation...um...is it just dabblers who will be fighting these mobs? No. That's balancing the NPCs which effects everyone and is not a "dabbler nerf". If you want to call it a nerf, then call it one, but don't make it seem like it will only affect dabblers. That statement would be incorrect.
Leelak wrote:
Those who are calling mitigation a nerf to dabblers are completely wrong. Mitigation strengthens combat classes and gives the largest bonus to those who have mastered a specific elite. This is making master stronger. It in no way weakens dabbling. Dabblers were often above the curve in strength, the additional 20% (if you choose to dabble up to mitigation 2) brings masters back up the curve. This is the type of balancing that is good. Dabblers want to scream nerf, but I'm sorry, that's just whining as you're not getting weaker, others are getting better.
I agree completely. They're only calling it a nerf because their damage will be reduced when fighting against a master. Again, I agree that dabblers were quite often too strong (the Stopping Shot with BH Pistols example I gave in my other post in this thread is an example), and Mitigation just allows masters to be more where they should be. Dabblers shouldn't be more powerful than masters. Dabblers are meant to be well-rounded characters, not Uber Killing Machines.
These included adding new weapons... EI fwg levels 1-10 etc. It could be that when you qualify for the fwg_level10 the minimal and max could be the same or at lease alot closer. If that is the case, this whole Mitigation would only matter to people using sub max level guns, which I think will be based off your profession level. EI master vs master would both be shooting each other with pegged out guns with no damage mitigation.
*shrugs*
Of course a dabbler with level 1 pistol, might be suck with a fwg_level2, which by defualt would be less than a level 10 and also get hit with a high level mitigation penalty.
I have a question though, is the damage mitigation calculated off the guns base stats, or off the powerup stats. 33% min powerups looking better. (grins)
I strongly suspect that it's calculated based on the actual attack, which includes powerups. You're right that 33% min powerups are a lot better now.
OlekSkilgannon wrote:
I have a question though, is the damage mitigation calculated off the guns base stats, or off the powerup stats. 33% min powerups looking better. (grins)