Darvin wrote:Cursed was implemented to counter resist stacking wasn't it?
Early in the beta, the resist-down effect was a relative rare debuff that only existed in a select few dungeons (similar to retaliates fireball), but when Lujo demonstrated the outright brokenness of resist stacking it was made much more mainstream.
Except this proved really difficult to properly demonstrate because the commuinty was too hung up on CYDSTEPP Rogues. It was mostly because non-blackspace spiking stuff was an evolution of the "natural" learning curve, while blackspace spikes took a convoluted "ass to front" way of getting familiar and comfortable with (and %res stacking works on an imported bit of moba logic wich seemed to be a bit alien to quite a few of turn based fans).
Also because the old CYDTEPP let you ignore HP as a resource/fuel alltogather so the Rogue was a scummy strictly better Warlord - you got 50% damage, perma first strike and random dodges while what you used to pay for attacks was mana - where you had no penalties.
q 3 wrote:Lujo wrote:1) I have a feeling that getting rid of rougue's HP disadvantage is a lot easier for the rogue than matching his advantages would be for any other character.
Yeah, I've been thinking about comparisons and the one that comes to mind is giving +50% damage and permanent first strike to the (alpha) Fighter - that would be such an obviously broken ability that it's not even worth considering, but that's essentially what you get with a Rogue who can relatively easily acquire 40 to 80 extra max HP.
I like the "stick it on an alpha fighter" way of looking at stuff as a tool.
If we work from there, it leads me to the fact that finding the old, classic CYDSTEPP and sticking it on a Rogue, makes the Rogue a better Warlord. For "what's wrong with the rogue" the math or combinatorics go like this - Warlord takes 3 abilities to become a +60 att DP spiker, while the Rogue needed only one glyph, but had 2 abilities + a penalty on top of that. And the old CYDSTEPP mitigated that penalty leaving him with 2 abilities which synergize with any "free hit" spike.
Since CYDSTEPP has been taken out of the picture, we have to look at what's making the Rogue above the curve right now, and just how above the curve (a lot). HP stacking (and damage resistance & reduction) can mitigate his penalty, so he still has a free hit on anything from first strike, which now sinergizes with dodge prediction.
q 3 wrote:Lujo wrote:Someone ought to figure out a math formula for illustrating just how powerfull that is. For a usefull comparison standpoint, it translates to having a resource free DP per monster or a free dodge per monster. It only works as a last hit on a monster but with rogues huge damage, it's mostly a non-issue.
Or like having a 200% damage final attack (and not just +100% bonus damage, because it doubles your bonus damage, too). When you're hitting hard enough to kill a monster in, say, 5 blows, first strike means you only have to tank 4 - that's a 20% reduction in damage taken (or a 25% increase in net damage done).
Which leads to this math being wrong actually, in the strict "how much lvling damage/health cost this helps with. As can be seen from any of my Gaan'Telet vids, someone with GETTINDARE can get a bunch of free hits (curse free too) on a monster they aren't currently fighting whenever he gets dodge prediction up. Since the rogues can get it up faster, and since rogue has a built in first strike free hit, this equates to having to tank quite a few less hits.
Couple this with damage reduction (and I've had a non-taped Gaan'Telet Rogue run recently where I did just that) and you need a lot less resources to go through 10 floors worth of cheeze than most other classes do.
The problem seems to be that Rogue matches the two biggest physical damage dealers in the game by using just one ability where they use 2 (Warlord needs 2 abilities to get his damage, and so does the Berserker), leaving him with 2 abilities on top of that. Even more, his penalty leaves his mana free (not the case with either warlord or berserker), which adds up to more damage (which means less need to tank hits).
And the 2 abilities he gets equate to a free dodge per fight (first strike), and so much dodge that ther can be no +dodge item in the game as it would unbalance the rogue. And both of them give more free hits to one of the most damaging characters in the game. Since damage resist stacking is a way to mitigate his HP penalty, and it sinergizes with dodge very well, we can fully unterstand just how and why the rogue is busted.
Dude is litterally above the curve because he beats other guys in terms of abilities. If those things were worth points, as in a point buy system, he'd be up quite a bit. Just by the number of abilities it takes to reach a certain damage/hit number/tanking threshold, and not giving up magic for any of it. My current thoughts.
