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hobo2
Promising
Known Hero
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posted February 13, 2012 12:13 PM |
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C'mon now, you know that this is extraordinarily misleading. People don't avoid that spell because "Destiny is crap," they avoid it because it is far too situational and tactically disadvantageous.
It's actually extremely easy to set up, you're by definition a water magician so you have Summon Water Elementals and Ice Bolt if you want them. The issue is that having your Luck definitely trigger is still smaller than your opponent losing a turn of movement. And when you think about it for a second, that's obviously the case. If an enemy melee stack loses a turn of movement, that is one stack/turn advantage to you. If one of your stacks crits instead of not doing that, that is half of a stack/turn advantage to you. It's still good, it's just roughly half as good.
But consider how damning that is of Destiny as a whole. Adding infinity to Destiny only gives you 50% more oomph. A turn advantage of 1 every other turn. Attack power doubles your effectiveness at Attack at 32 and only gets better from there. An Attack of 17 is the same all-the-time 50% bonus that Destiny provides at 100. You could make Destiny trigger more often, but that obviously isn't enough. Because perfect luck attacks already exist in the system and they are not worth using.
Criticals have to do more than they do right now when they trigger. Right now they are just extra damage, and that extra damage isn't worth as much as tiny bonuses to Attack.
Quote:
Oh, and Hobo2: I noticed that you borrowed my damage*growth faction table for the Ubi forums. 
I appreciate that you got some use out of it, even if it did end up confusing a few of the posters there, who wondered where HP was, for example. 
Yeah, the Ubisoft official forums don't seem to be ready for math discussions.
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shufti
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 13, 2012 12:15 PM |
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Edited by shufti at 12:19, 13 Feb 2012.
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I don't want any major changes to the luck/morale systems.
One of the big improvements that H6 has is tuning down the effects of randomness influencing games too much, e.g. luck/morale and skills/primary stats.
As it is now, having luck/morale on an attack is still significant, but nowhere near as potentially game-changing as before. I like that.
There is nothing wrong with luck/morale being much weaker than the primary stats in itself.
Hero stat progression is normalized anyway, and you have a lot of options for all items slots. As others pointed out, active skills tend to give copious amounts of luck/morale too.
Black Hole has made it clear to us that it wants the effects of RNG reduced; so what is so wrong with that?
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 13, 2012 12:33 PM |
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Quote:
Criticals have to do more than they do right now when they trigger. Right now they are just extra damage, and that extra damage isn't worth as much as tiny bonuses to Attack.
Actually, removing retaliations from Lucky attacks would be a pretty nice icing on the cake for Luck. 
Quote:
I don't want any major changes to the luck/morale systems.
One of the big improvements that H6 has is tuning down the effects of randomness influencing games too much, e.g. luck/morale and skills/primary stats.
As it is now, having luck/morale on an attack is still significant, but nowhere near as potentially game-changing as before. I like that.
There is nothing wrong with luck/morale being much weaker than the primary stats in itself.
Hero stat progression is normalized anyway, and you have a lot of options for all items slots. As others pointed out, active skills tend to give copious amounts of luck/morale too.
Black Hole has made it clear to us that it wants the effects of RNG reduced; so what is so wrong with that?
Sorry for being brutal here, but you clearly have not understood at all what the discussion is about. The problem is that at level ups, some factions will receive Attack/Defence points, where-as other factions will receive Luck/Morale points. If Luck/Morale points are clearly inferior to Attack/Defence, that leaves in an inherent imbalance between the factions which cannot be retained.
The discussion is not whether Luck should be über powerful or not. Like said on previous page, you can make changes to at least make the current flaws less which will still leave Luck having exactly the same impact as it has now if that's what you want.
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What will happen now?
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DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
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posted February 13, 2012 12:56 PM |
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Quote:
The problem is that at level ups, some factions will receive Attack/Defence points, where-as other factions will receive Luck/Morale points. If Luck/Morale points are clearly inferior to Attack/Defence, that leaves in an inherent imbalance between the factions which cannot be retained.
The only faction that makes this imbalance is necro, as they don't get morale stat so they get focused advantage to the other stats.....otherwise all factions get the same proportion of attack/defence/magic stat to luck/morale stat allocations on level ups, not?
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hobo2
Promising
Known Hero
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posted February 13, 2012 01:03 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
The problem is that at level ups, some factions will receive Attack/Defence points, where-as other factions will receive Luck/Morale points. If Luck/Morale points are clearly inferior to Attack/Defence, that leaves in an inherent imbalance between the factions which cannot be retained.
The only faction that makes this imbalance is necro, as they don't get morale stat so they get focused advantage to the other stats.....otherwise all factions get the same proportion luck/morale stat allocations on level ups, not?
The other factions get different ratios of Leadership and Destiny. The fact that Morale is very much better than Luck is a considerable portion of why Haven is very good and Inferno is very bad.
Yes, Luck adds to damage on hero attacks and retaliation and Morale doesn't, but the damage bonus from both is totally crap and positive morale effects give you extra movement and let you double-dip into Pressed Attack or Regeneration. So Leadership has a use, and Destiny is just a poor source of raw damage.
This is a tangent, but I really want people to stop using "Moral" when they mean "Morale". Morals are the thing that keeps you from cheating on your wife, it's totally different. I keep seeing people talking about Good MORAL, and it just drives me up the wall.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 13, 2012 01:45 PM |
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Also, note how many ways there are to affect Morale as opposed to Luck. There is a ton of Leadership boosting artifacts,but not many for Destiny.
For skills, Luck is influenced only by (Mass) Heroism. Terror as a by-product), and indirectly (since you need the target to be Frozen first) by Ice Breaker. For Moral it's
(Mass) Heroism
Cleave
(Mass) Burning Determination
(Mass) Despair
Terror
There are also reputation abilities:
Anathema (Haven): Luck and Moral decrease for opponent
Demonic Luck (Inferno); adds to Luck bonus or Inferno Lucky Hits
Fervor (Haven); adds to Morale.
And that's it.
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DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
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posted February 13, 2012 01:53 PM |
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Quote:
The other factions get different ratios of Leadership and Destiny. The fact that Morale is very much better than Luck is a considerable portion of why Haven is very good and Inferno is very bad.
Are we sure about this different ratios on level ups? I am not talking might versus magic classes, but between factions...
Haven being good and Inferno sucky faction, is not wholly due to morale better than luck, I find the Gaurdian Angel racial much more potent than Gating anyway (in it's present state).
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seingeist
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 13, 2012 02:05 PM |
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Quote:
Ad 1) Answer here seems clearly NO. JJ established this early in thread, and further discussion has not changed major points. Morale gain (1 point) seems to be roughly half as good as Attack gain (1 point), Luck a little less than Morale. Solution to this would be:
1a) Either double the gain at level-up, so that if you up the Morale/Luck stat, it is increased be 2 points whereas Attack/Defence is only increased by 1 point [and give Luck a little extra bonus damage, ~15 %];
1b) or make it so that 1 point in Luck/Morale equals 2 % trigger chance [and give Luck a little extra bonus damage, ~15 %].
The effect of 1a and 1b obviously is exactly the same, it is only a question of what you prefer: Do you want to keep the 1 point = 1 % trigger chance (go for 1a), or do you want to keep the all level-ups gives 1 point (go for 1b).
But why so averse to 1c), Alci?! You can have your cake and eat it too (1 point at level-up, 1% trigger chance)!
1c) Increase damage boost (significantly) of critical hits (100%, possibly 150%). The beauty of this is that it would require less overall re-balancing of various other stats than both 1a) and 1b). Trigger frequency remains the same, ability score ratios remain the same, etc.
However, I agree that Destiny's Chosen is inexplicably low, and should probably be doubled (even with my recommended boost to damage).
Bad Luck is a whole different problem (I've been concerning myself exclusively with balancing Good Luck), and I wholeheartedly agree with JJ that it needs to be reworked, and that Inferno (and possibly every faction via a spell in some given school- Dark maybe?) really should have a Warcry or spell that allows them to influence Luck negatively. That's a no-brainer, and it's actually mind-boggling that nothing like that exists in the game.
As far as Morale goes, I've avoided the subject because it is far more difficult to compare or evaluate it next to the other base stats, because unlike Luck, it has tactical uses.
Luck is a damage bonus pure and simple, but Morale is another half-turn, so to speak, with which you can do a variety of different things.
E.g., that extra turn can give you the extra movement necessary to block an enemy archer that you otherwise wouldn't have been able to reach. Or you can use the extra turn to defend and reduce the damage that you anticipate receiving. If you're a tank stack, you can use the extra turn to attack another unit and soak its retaliation. Or you can attack an enemy and then use the extra turn to block the enemy from a nearby friendly unit.
The point is that it is extremely difficult to "quantify" the value of these tactical uses of triggered Morale. They certainly make it more valuable than the simple reduced damage of attacking a second time, but precisely how much more valuable in relation to the other primary stats is what is so difficult to determine in concrete numbers.
I do agree, though, that Morale in its current state is underpowered compared to Might/Magic Power, but it is not as immediately obvious how best to balance it. Perhaps the movement and damage penalty should be lessened, or even eliminated (makes me shudder to think, though; it's not as though Haven needs even more going for them).
Speaking of helping out Haven, that's related to the other reason that Luck is so much more urgent to me than Morale: Luck is directly tied to the most underpowered faction (Inferno) and it would help add a bit of balance there (though not enough by itself).
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 13, 2012 02:05 PM |
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Yes, we are sure. 
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shufti
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 13, 2012 02:30 PM |
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Quote:
Sorry for being brutal here, but you clearly have not understood at all what the discussion is about. The problem is that at level ups, some factions will receive Attack/Defence points, where-as other factions will receive Luck/Morale points. If Luck/Morale points are clearly inferior to Attack/Defence, that leaves in an inherent imbalance between the factions which cannot be retained.
Your premise is true, but the conclusion is not because it neglects to look at the bigger picture.
Stat points spent into luck/morale at lvl 30 on average per faction:
Haven: 16
Inferno: 14
Necropolis: 7
Sanctuary: 14
Stronghold: 14
Sum of morale and luck an upgraded creature has on average, per faction:
Haven: 16.86
Inferno: 14.86
Necropolis: 6.86
Sanctuary: 14.71
Stronghold: 13.43
This means that while Necropolis heroes spend half as many points into the weaker stats, their creatures have less than half the amount of those weaker stats combined, making them do less damage as a result.
An example:
Two heroes with 20 attack do damage against a hero with 15 defense. But because one of those two heroes is from the Necropolis (the other is from the Sanctuary), the seven points he doesn't spend into morale go into attack.
The damage coefficient for attack/defense is ((100+attack)/(100+defense))^2.5
For the Necropolis hero (27 attack), the result is 1.282; for the Sanctuary hero (20 attack), it is 1.243.
This has to be adjusted for the damage bonus from luck/morale. I think we agree that each point of morale or luck is equivalent to an 0.5% increase in damage:
Necropolis hero: 1.282 * (1 + (6.86 * 0.005)) = 1.326
Sanctuary hero: 1.243 * (1 + (14.71 * 0.005)) = 1.334
As you can see, with those values, the fact that Necropolis doesn't benefit from morale actually makes them deal less damage.
There are a couple of things I did not include in my assumptions:
- The attack and defense values are close to the default values of naked lvl 30 heroes without any bonuses. In a real game, attack and defense might be much higher which would skew the result slightly in favor of the Necropolis hero because of the exponential damage formula.
- While in my calculations the Necropolis hero spends all the points he doesn't have in morale into attack, the Sanctuary hero doesn't spend the points he doesn't have in attack into morale.
Furthermore, in a real game, the seven points of morale the Necropolis hero doesn't get wouldn't be all spent into attack, but also into defense. Adjusting for these would skew the result heavily in favor of the Sanctuary hero.
- I actually didn't include the base luck and morale lvl 30 heroes would have (which would be 7 for Necropolis and 14 for Sanctuary), which would further skew the result in favor of the Sanctuary hero.
To conclude, while Necropolis heroes do have superior attack values, the lack of morale is causing them to fall behind significantly in terms of raw damage. Not to mention that Necropolis heroes do not benefit nearly as much or not at all from items with morale or map objects that give morale (such as the flag).
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kusosaru
Hired Hero
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posted February 13, 2012 02:44 PM |
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Quote:
If we changed the frequency to 2% and left everything else alone, the Inferno hero could very easily raise Luck to insane levels. 20% from the 30 Hero levels + 20% from the creatures 10 Luck + 20% from Mass Heroism's 10 Luck + 14% from Destiny's Chosen III's 7 = 74% crit chance, or 5.18 crits per 7-unit round (= 7/8 racial gauge/round).
It would require less stat-balancing (and retain the "feel" of Luck more) to raise the damage instead of the frequency, as far as I see it anyway.
....Or they could just reduce the amount of racial points gained from luck by 50% to keep the racial gain on the same level.
Then they'd just need to give them some racial points from killing enemy creatures and poof that faction wouldn't be all that random and frustrating anymore.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 13, 2012 03:24 PM |
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Quote:
But why so averse to 1c), Alci?! You can have your cake and eat it too (1 point at level-up, 1% trigger chance)!
1c) Increase damage boost (significantly) of critical hits (100%, possibly 150%). The beauty of this is that it would require less overall re-balancing of various other stats than both 1a) and 1b). Trigger frequency remains the same, ability score ratios remain the same, etc.
Yes, but a major part of the new system is that we want things to be less erratic, and doubling or tripling Luck damage will just make it much more of a joker (and hence much more difficult to balance). Blackhole cut the Luck damage from 100 % for a purpose, and like someone said above, not a lot of us want it back to that level.
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What will happen now?
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hobo2
Promising
Known Hero
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posted February 13, 2012 06:08 PM |
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If you don't want luck and morale triggers to be big, and you don't want them to be constant, then you have defacto determined that you will only accept luck and morale events that are crap. Which of course is what we have now.
The only solution to that which does not also entail the Destiny and Leadership stats being crap, is for Luck and Morale to have some tangential persistent benefit. The obvious to me would be to have those stats adding to Magical and Physical damage resistances.
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SKPRIMUS
Promising
Supreme Hero
The One and the Prime
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posted February 13, 2012 06:43 PM |
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Edited by SKPRIMUS at 18:55, 13 Feb 2012.
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Gees, still discussing this thing
Quote:
...
Necropolis hero: 1.282 * (1 + (6.86 * 0.005)) = 1.326
Sanctuary hero: 1.243 * (1 + (14.71 * 0.005)) = 1.334...
@shufti: 20 atk vs 15 def result is 1.112, not 1.243 (excluding morale/luck)
PLUS all the calcs really have to take into account creature DEFENCE as well to have proper meaning!
@hobo2: regarding that exponential equation thingy, I stated some time ago HERE, 11th & 13th post down that it was very likely an approximation to the H5 formula except that it uses 2.5% rather than 5%.
if A>=D, then 1 + 0.025*(A-D)
if A<D, then 1 / [1+0.025*(D-A)]
AND it allowed the designers to display defence reduction in percentage on creatures' popups (maybe to make it easier for some to calculate during battles?)
ofc I still prefer H5 method rather than complicated exponential method.
also, is that you x-ecutioner?
____________
Hope defeats despair - "a blatant clue"
too many idiots in VW
"to lose is to win, and he who wins shall lose"
bashing orcus 
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seingeist
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 14, 2012 09:08 AM |
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Quote:
If you don't want luck and morale triggers to be big, and you don't want them to be constant, then you have defacto determined that you will only accept luck and morale events that are crap. Which of course is what we have now.
Exactly right (IMO, moreso for Luck than for Morale, given the reasons that I offered above).
Under the current system, having Luck at 100 (meaning a persistent +50% to all damage) is equivalent to the damage bonus of 18 Might points + 18 Magic Points (which also amounts to a persistent +50% to all damage).
As JJ already established in the OP, this makes Might/Magic points ~3x as good as Luck points.
Accordingly, if we take a damage increase to Luck off the table:
Whether you choose to balance this via points gained at level-up (3) or trigger chance (3%), the result will still be the same: heroes will easily be able to drive Luck triggers into insane levels (a level 30 Inferno hero has units at 90% trigger chance with one casting of 10 Luck Mass Heroism, and over 100% if he has Destiny's Chosen II), and this stat called "Luck" (well, "Destiny") will be activating in 9/10 attacks, which completely defeats the purpose.
And here's the problem: you cannot too drastically re-balance the creature base Luck and Warcries in order to lower this trigger chance, because it needs to trigger more often than not in order to be balanced with the damage from Might/Magic (unless all spell-, Warcry-, passive-, and artifact-based bonuses to Might and Magic were also similarly rebalanced).
To put that a different way, it is very possible to reach damage bonuses through various spells, passive abilities, and artifacts that cumulatively rival or even exceed the bonus given by 100 Destiny. This means that if Destiny is going to be on a balance with this potential for damage boosting via other stats, it would necessarily have to be able to reach levels of near-constant triggering via similar bonuses from spells, artifacts, passives, etc. To avoid this necessity would require entirely rebalancing (read: nerfing) all damage-buffers across-the-board, which would be a terrible hassle and extremely unlikely to happen.
In other words, balancing Luck comes down to a choice between 2 evils:
1. Rendering it possible to trigger Luck almost persistently by raising the trigger chance (which, IMO, is extremely damaging to the whole concept)
or
2. Rendering Luck damage "more erratic" and "more of a joker," as Alcibiades puts it, by raising the damage of critical hits.
Obviously, conceptually I prefer the second evil a great deal, and I disagree with Alci that it makes it "much more difficult to balance" - I think that the former would require a lot more collateral-damage-tweaking than the latter.
However, if it is indeed the case that "not a lot of us want it back to that level [+100%]," than the first evil may be the only choice.
Ugh. What a snowy mess Black Hole made of some of these game mechanics.
And now I find myself having to apologize to the fine community here for yet another tl;dr post.
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted February 14, 2012 09:38 AM |
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Edited by Miru at 09:44, 14 Feb 2012.
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Ok, so how about this: we don't like that attack grows at x^2.5 while luck grows at x, but we do like the current chance to strike for luck rate -- the solution is obvious; keep lucks chance at x, and also make the damage done grow at x^1.5, such that when you multiply it out the average bonus given by luck grows at x^2.5.
So where attack is
{1 + (.01*A)}^2.5
Luck would be
[normal damage] + [chance to crit]*([base crit bonus] + [growing crit bonus]
or (on average)
{1 + (.01*L)*(5+.5L^1.5)}
or
{1 + .05L + .005L^2.5}
With the coefficients adjusted for balance. I'm too lazy to adjust them myself, and maybe hobo, JJ, or Alci will.
Yes, I just used a sentence with a commma, a colon, another comma, a hypen, a semicolon, and two more commas.
Also: You know, I never thought I'd say this but I am getting sick of people using numbers to argue.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 14, 2012 09:48 AM |
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Quote:
Exactly right (IMO, moreso for Luck than for Morale, given the reasons that I offered above).
Under the current system, having Luck at 100 (meaning a persistent +50% to all damage) is equivalent to the damage bonus of 18 Might points + 18 Magic Points (which also amounts to a persistent +50% to all damage).
As JJ already established in the OP, this makes Might/Magic points ~3x as good as Luck points.
Accordingly, if we take a damage increase to Luck off the table:
Whether you choose to balance this via points gained at level-up (3) or trigger chance (3%), the result will still be the same: heroes will easily be able to drive Luck triggers into insane levels (a level 30 Inferno hero has units at 90% trigger chance with one casting of 10 Luck Mass Heroism, and over 100% if he has Destiny's Chosen II), and this stat called "Luck" (well, "Destiny") will be activating in 9/10 attacks, which completely defeats the purpose.
And here's the problem: you cannot too drastically re-balance the creature base Luck and Warcries in order to lower this trigger chance, because it needs to trigger more often than not in order to be balanced with the damage from Might/Magic (unless all spell-, Warcry-, passive-, and artifact-based bonuses to Might and Magic were also similarly rebalanced).
To put that a different way, it is very possible to reach damage bonuses through various spells, passive abilities, and artifacts that cumulatively rival or even exceed the bonus given by 100 Destiny. This means that if Destiny is going to be on a balance with this potential for damage boosting via other stats, it would necessarily have to be able to reach levels of near-constant triggering via similar bonuses from spells, artifacts, passives, etc. To avoid this necessity would require entirely rebalancing (read: nerfing) all damage-buffers across-the-board, which would be a terrible hassle and extremely unlikely to happen.
I completely disagree with your evaluation in above post.
First of all, if Inferno hero at level 30 has 10 Luck from his levels, we could easily increase this number without the scale being completely blown. There's a LONG way from 10 to 100, and if skills only add another 7 (!!! lol !!!) and artifacts at best another 24 (which is both minor, major and relic, given that they don't occupy same slot?), there is STILL a long way to 100!
Secondly, if we double the value of each point but halve the starting values of all creatures, essentially nothing is changed on this point. So I don't really see how that affects balance of creatures stats at all. Point is we can tweak some aspects of Luck (for instance: What you gain at level up) and still have the others unchanged.
Thirdly, please don't drag Mass Heroism in as an argument. If indeed this single Warcry adds more Luck than all other modifiers in the game combined, clearly something is spassed with the balance here. And even if we think it is balanced, if you double point value, you'd have to halve point gain on casting the War Cry, so again - nothing is changed with regard to this.
And personally, I don't believe the claim that it's impossible to find a balance between the two extremes - high trigger rate and high bonus damage - that works. It seems the problem with current system is not so much that Luck is bad (50 % damage is useful no matter how you look at it, and it seems that trigger chances are also fine) but that the Luck stats and Luck skills suck - i.e. are worse than other stats/skills of same nominal value.
So the point is not that we need to sky-rocket Luck damage or trigger chance, the point is we need to make Luck points equal to Attack points in effective value (or conversely, increase the gain on level-up to 2 or more, thus making up for the fact that a Luck point is effectively less good than an Attack point); and we need to make Luck skills attractive which they are not with an abysmal 2 point gain.
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What will happen now?
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hobo2
Promising
Known Hero
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posted February 14, 2012 01:52 PM |
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Quote:
First of all, if Inferno hero at level 30 has 10 Luck from his levels, we could easily increase this number without the scale being completely blown. There's a LONG way from 10 to 100, and if skills only add another 7 (!!! lol !!!) and artifacts at best another 24 (which is both minor, major and relic, given that they don't occupy same slot?), there is STILL a long way to 100!
You're wrong. Just, mathematically wrong.
Our Inferno player with Destiny's Chosen 3 has a Destiny of 17. That is costed the same as 17 points of attack. 17 points of attack gives an across the board increase of 48% to damage. If you insist on balancing lucky strikes at a 50% increase in damage, then 17 points of Destiny would have to increase your chance of landing one by about 96%. Not 96% proportional, 96 absolute percent. Since troops come into existence with a greater than 4% chance of scoring a critical, that is not even possible.
You can't balance Destiny at a mere 50% damage boost, because you can't divide a one hundred percent chance of getting such a small bonus finely enough for such a stat to exist. Stats go up to about forty in actual campaigns, and one fortieth of a 50% damage boost is never going to be big enough to make anyone give a crap.
If you insist on making luck events crap on a platter that is also made of crap, then you have to have the Destiny stat do something else in some persistent way. Like making your mana recover faster or increasing your overland movement or increasing your troops' elemental resistances or something. The only other choice is to make luck events very large.
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seingeist
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 14, 2012 02:10 PM |
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Quote:
I completely disagree with your evaluation in above post.
First of all, if Inferno hero at level 30 has 10 Luck from his levels, we could easily increase this number without the scale being completely blown. There's a LONG way from 10 to 100, and if skills only add another 7 (!!! lol !!!) and artifacts at best another 24 (which is both minor, major and relic, given that they don't occupy same slot?), there is STILL a long way to 100!
Secondly, if we double the value of each point but halve the starting values of all creatures, essentially nothing is changed on this point. So I don't really see how that affects balance of creatures stats at all. Point is we can tweak some aspects of Luck (for instance: What you gain at level up) and still have the others unchanged.
Thirdly, please don't drag Mass Heroism in as an argument. If indeed this single Warcry adds more Luck than all other modifiers in the game combined, clearly something is spassed with the balance here. And even if we think it is balanced, if you double point value, you'd have to halve point gain on casting the War Cry, so again - nothing is changed with regard to this.
And personally, I don't believe the claim that it's impossible to find a balance between the two extremes - high trigger rate and high bonus damage - that works. It seems the problem with current system is not so much that Luck is bad (50 % damage is useful no matter how you look at it, and it seems that trigger chances are also fine) but that the Luck stats and Luck skills suck - i.e. are worse than other stats/skills of same nominal value.
So the point is not that we need to sky-rocket Luck damage or trigger chance, the point is we need to make Luck points equal to Attack points in effective value (or conversely, increase the gain on level-up to 2 or more, thus making up for the fact that a Luck point is effectively less good than an Attack point); and we need to make Luck skills attractive which they are not with an abysmal 2 point gain.
I feel like we're talking a bit in circles at this point, especially given the bolded sentence.
Skyrocketing damage or trigger chance IS the only way to make Luck points equal to Attack in effective value (short of introducing entirely new bonuses to Luck that are unrelated to damage); that's precisely the point.
As JJ and I have shown above, Might/Magic points are worth approximately 3 times as much as Luck. Since Luck is simply about damage, this means that Luck somehow needs to amount to three times as much damage as it currently does in order to raise its "effective value" to that of Might/Magic points.
Now Luck-related damage is based on two factors: trigger chance and critical damage%. Accordingly, these factors are the only two that can be tweaked in order to make Luck as "effectively valuable" as Might/Magic.
Since the formula for determining the average damage is as simple as multiplying the two factors (e.g. .60 trigger chance x 50% damage = +30% average damage), making Luck 3 times as powerful is as simple as sticking a "x3" next to either of the two factors. Hence, making each Luck point worth 3x its current trigger chance (3%) or making the damage bonus 3x its current one (150%) would both result in the average damage bonus of Luck being roughly equivalent to the damage bonus of Might/Magic (which is half the damage bonus of each individually, since it counts towards both); they would effectively be "balanced." Additionally, of course, you could alter both Luck factors if you preferred, so long as they amounted to x3, e.g. each Luck point yields 2% trigger chance for +75% damage. This is certainly a middle ground that one could walk.
Short of altering (nerfing) the damage tables for Might/Magic, or introducing brand new side effects into the Luck stat (like damage resistance or something, as Hobo2 offered above), this is the only way to make Luck points equivalent in "effective value," as you put it, to Might/Magic points.
The reason that changing the damage boost instead of the trigger chance is simpler is because for the most part*, the game is already balanced on the (woefully false) assumption that 1 Luck point is equivalent to 1 Might point, and it is balanced with the devs desired potential "crit frequencies" in mind. Altering only the damage boost would render Luck and Might actually equivalent while at the same time maintaining the original desired crit frequencies.
Altering the trigger chance, on the other hand, would require rebalancing of numerous other abilities and statistics (quite a few, actually) in order keep crit frequencies in check.
Similarly, if we give up on the "effective value" of point-to-point but still wish to make it equal by throwing 3 Luck points at the Hero instead of 1 at level-up, then everything else that was set with the assumption of 1-to-1 correspondence would need to be drastically rebalanced as well (for example, instead of the passive bonus from Destiny's Chosen being similar to that of Assailant, it would need to be 3 times as much to make those skills equal, etc.). Extra points also ends up with the same effective pitfalls of increased trigger chance - crit frequencies go out of whack.
*The reason for the asterisk next to "for the most part" is because of something that Hobo2 already mentioned above. The bonus from Heroism/Mass Heroism seems to be a blatant recognition on the part of the devs that Luck/Morale and Might/Magic are nowhere close to 1-to-1 balance. However, pretty much everything else in the game seems to want to pretend that they're equal.
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forest001
Known Hero
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posted February 14, 2012 02:14 PM |
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bah, disregard that... had an error in my calcs
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