Balancing Tumble

[Gorth]

Currently, with no negatives for being in roundtime when you are attacked, people can more or less tumble endlessly, with a flat, bad chance to beat the tumble check. Duelists already have multiple defenses to rely on, plus cloak parry. I think it would be neat if we just made the cooldown larger, maybe ten seconds? This way it could be more like a desperation move, rather than a main line of defense. It would also allow the other abilities to get activated more often, too.

[Kismet]

I disagree with all of the above with every fiber of by being.

[Vazbol]

one disagrees until you end up in a situation where a tumbling mob is delaying a fight for actual minutes, while vastly lower skilled than you are. And not everyone would have the patience to skill up a ranged weapon/marksmanship or have access to a rooting method to deal with these annoying mobiles (and characters). The bulk of your defenses really should be coming up from the same skills everyone else is having to grind up, and tumbling/flip being extra bonus defenses that are nice to happen. Instead, people are getting tumbled multiple rounds in a row, only to get a chance to attack, and getting cloak parried right after.

[Gorth]

I disagree with all of the above with every fiber of by being.

Thanks for the helpful addition to my post. I'm sure you don't want to be nerfed, but Duelist has been one of the best classes by bounds, pretty much since it existed. From everything I hear, back in the day, tumble was still good, and a lot more people could take it.

[verel]

Certainly the wise thing to do to nerf tumble. I noticed the same especially on characters I have that can't tumble or flip. Like, you may have had the killing blow but nope, that mob can tumble basically delaying the inevitable for a few rounds or worse, killing you because they somehow have the advantage even though you already caused them multiple severe wounds to vital areas but not enough to kill them.

[Kismet]

Tumble is an offset for not having armor. Yes, Duelists and other One on One specialists get hit less, but the hits that make it past everything do massive amounts of damage.

[Gorth]

Combat Analysis. Cloak parry. They don't yet, but the types of weapons Duelists have will probably have parry bonuses. Defensive specializations.

Trust me, I know. Dodge users aren't in a great place, right now. I play one, who doesn't use /any/ armor. It's just dodge and parry, and I'm not using a weapon that will ever get parry bonuses. In fact, the opposite. However, Duelists are. This is part of balance. Generally, I think it's better to bring power levels down, rather than up.

I've been doing this for a long time. I don't just make these posts to complain.

[Vazbol]

I'd also like to argue the point about the hits that get through doing a lot of damage. With combat analysis and certain setups, it is possible to stack up so many positive rerolls for "all" defenses that if someone manages to surpass all of those rolls, they'd barely do any damage. And tumbling around and cloak parrying the odd failed hit does waste enough time for CA to build up.

Though outside of that situation, tumbling mobiles are just annoying. They can needlessly extend a fight for several rounds and are just frustrating to have them tumble back and land extra hits from it. Especially while we have no healing items. Glancing hits from armor deflection or blade catches can do the same thing, but those are so infrequent that it isn't as frustrating to deal with.

[Zeldryn]

1: not opposed to changes if changes feel like they need to be made, just wanted to note a few things.

2: you cannot tumble or cloak parry ranged attacks

3: we are also massively effected by weight. The second your weight goes up even a little bit over the maximum, you become about 200% more vulnerable, particularly as a duellist

4: though I can see the points made, given the facts above, I feel like combat analysis is probably the real problem here that needs a little tweaking, particularly because tumble has a cool down, and armor deflection does not. And one is affected by encumberance while the other is not. At least I think?

[Southpaw]

Tumble isn't what makes duelists so powerful. I'm not sure if this discussion is about tumble or duelists anymore. Feels like the latter.
The char I play now only has tumble and if I turn it off I get hit 90% of the time which means I'm heading back to town in less than a minute. I don't think tumble is the issue.
If dodge worked as well as block I would probably feel different but dodge right now can be rough. I'd vote for making that better before anything else.

[Gorth]

4: though I can see the points made, given the facts above, I feel like combat analysis is probably the real problem here that needs a little tweaking, particularly because tumble has a cool down, and armor deflection does not. And one is affected by encumberance while the other is not. At least I think?

Armor Deflection is not remotely comparable to tumble. It's not bad, for sure, but it's not an instant, flat roll that is difficult to beat that simply negates an attack entirely. If we make tumble happen less often, combat analysis will build faster, by the way, so it will end up pulling more weight.

I'm not necessarily set on this being some sort of hard stop solution, though I would really, really like to see the cooldown at least be something greater than the roundtime it takes to make an aimed attack. That way you could tumble every other attack.

Tumble isn't what makes duelists so powerful. I'm not sure if this discussion is about tumble or duelists anymore. Feels like the latter.

I wouldn't say it's the one thing that makes it so powerful, but it is one of the things. Being able to negate attacks is good. Dreadnought has one, Duelist has two. While they're negating attacks, they build huge amounts of rerolls, offensively and defensively. Those rerolls contribute to attack rolls with increased armor chink chance by default, plus the ability of active chinking that massively increases the chance for it. So no. It's not the only thing. But especially when you're just trying to grind, it's not like you get skill for getting tumbled. You just waste time, and take more hits.

The char I play now only has tumble and if I turn it off I get hit 90% of the time which means I'm heading back to town in less than a minute. I don't think tumble is the issue.
If dodge worked as well as block I would probably feel different but dodge right now can be rough. I'd vote for making that better before anything else.

This is an issue with the whole system of multidefenses. You're rolling less dice than someone with block and or deflection. That's how it works. I'm not saying it's good, and I'd love to see that addressed somehow. But like I said above. I firmly believe that the way to balance a game like this, statistically and for fun, is to lower the power level. If something is really, really good, make it match the other things.

PVE against a Duelist isn't fun, interactive or in any way based on out of game skill or timing. CVC against a Duelist is pretty similar.

I have a guardian who has all the defenses. It's still very common for him to get stomped around, because tackle or sweep defense is based on dodge, and he doesn't have a ton of dodge by virtue of how the grind worked out. I've still gotten fractures through heavy armor. This isn't to say that you guys should just lay down and let your abilities be nerfed, but I just want to illustrate why I want this, even having played a Duelist in the past, and also currently playing a character who struggles with the same things you all do without tumble.

[Dean]

The comparison of armor deflection to tumble is a stretch at best and willful ignorance at worst, it's not even close or worth trying to argue in detail.

Tumble is, according to its description

1. Based on 100% of your Dodge skill.

2. Opposed by 75% of the opponent's Melee Combat skill.

3. Already on a cooldown of 10 seconds. (this part doesn't appear to be accurate).

I've also noticed, it can defend you against melee combat maneuvers (bashes, tackles, etc.), so those options aren't very reliable as responses - especially given most knockdowns and staggers last a shorter time than the RT it costs to attempt them, and because a successful tumble will still put your ability on cooldown, so it's very difficult to create a window to punish a tumbler that fails to resist the maneuver (despite having a whole second chance to do so). And because of how practice gains are calculated, tumbling will give you Dodge practice well-after normal Dodge rolls ceased providing practice against a given mob, meaning it reduces the required risk-versus-reward quotient every other kind of character has to grind through. As it is a multiplicative benefit, the degree to which this gap applies grows as you train it. You can, additionally, tumble while at Avoid combat distance.

What isn't mentioned is how it goes ahead of your normal defenses, costs a negligible amount of energy, and the die sides and reroll quantities are opaque to the player - it's probably affected by the same things as Dodge defense rolls, but there's no way to be absolutely certain without developer insight on the topic or an enormous amount of data collection. I'm not sure it's affected by armor hindrance penalties - the option to show roll breakdowns doesn't provide anything for tumble rolls.

If it is affected by combat analysis, this vastly exacerbates this issue - though if I had to pick one thing out of the Duelist kit to call a blatantly out-of-whack feature, it'd be Combat Analysis, not Tumble. +4x rerolls after a dozen rounds of combat or so renders Duelist mobs invulnerable to melee builds, because the melee maneuvers that can provide opportunities to punish the Duelist mob are resisted by defenses that benefit from those +4x rerolls. Other classes with tactics-based rerolls (as benefits, or as penalties) cap out at +2x (nightblades, and it falls off quickly) or -2x (guardians). In a straight-up fight, without ambushing, even roots (like the Rook root) have trouble with this at times.

Tumble, by itself, is probably fine? It's very good, yes, but for light-armor classes it's their first line of defense, so if it avoids as much damage as a heavy armor wearer's armor is negating or reducing, it's probably fine.

Just counting-off the number of defense rolls a Duelist might have, we get, in order:
1. Tumble
2. Avoid Distance (for ranged duelists) OR reach-fending (these appear to be mutually exclusive?)
3. Dodge
4. Block (for buckler duelists, which directly resists the 'use ranged attacks' notion)
5. Parry
6. Cloak Parry

Of these, only #2 is something I'm reasonably certain is unaffected by Combat Analysis and Morale. That means we have six defenses that start with, typically, at or near eleven rolls against the attacker's one, ramping up to thirty-one rolls against the attacker's one. If your attacker has positive morale - great! They're rolling two against your thirty-one.

For reference, 00 on a roulette wheel is one to thirty-seven odds.

In both cases, I am deeply averse to mechanics that further incentivize the "ambush with a ranged weapon from stealth" CvC playstyle, and I seriously don't think an argument built around that as the only viable response is made in the best of faith. Similarly, "just use a root" isn't particularly helpful when all but a very small number of classes and guilds have access to a root of any kind. From what's currently in the game, I believe that's the Rook root spell and... nothing else, for player-facing options.

[Zeldryn]

So-- again. I'm going to restate the following point, because It apparently wasn't heard: I'm not opposed to changes that need to be made if folks feel they need to be made. I'll also add another point in saying that typically-- i'm not good at this kind of stuff. Which I've said in plenty of other places and mediums.

I have no problem with any of the arguments presented, for that matter. Except for a key facet:

"The comparison of armor deflection to tumble is a stretch at best and willful ignorance at worst, it's not even close or worth trying to argue in detail."

"I seriously don't think an argument built around that as the only viable response is made in the best of faith."

Thanks for making this unnecesarily personal, Bucco. This is a pretty transparent attempt to cut my argument out at the knees on the basis of me not wanting to get nerfed.

Anyway, again. Not opposed to any changes that need to happen Nor do I have any problems with any of the logic presented. Honestly, a good bit of it is far enough above my head that I don't care to do that much math on an off day. . Nerf me-- I really could give a damn less. But next time-- just tell me that you think I don't want to get nerfed and leave it at that. No need to insult my basis of argumentation. It makes me really want to just not post on topics like this again in the future.

PS: I almost just responded with, "Go [frak] yourself."

Have a nice day!

[Gorth]

I'll do it. We're all trying to help balance. If you can't help yourself from posting something unnecessarily rude, don't post, please. It's disruptive at best, and makes people not want to help, at worsst. Awful attitude.

[Velrath]

Please maintain at least a basic modicum of respect. At this point we're starting to come off of topic merely for the sake of taking jabs at one another, which is surely not the purpose of this topic much less these forums.

[Smoothcoffee]

I'm not opposed to seeing things tweaked with a bit because it really is frustrating trying to fight something for ten minutes, rolling above them, and still getting curb stomped because of it. My marauder is obviously not a tumbler, but also wears light armor for now, and dodge is something that is tricky at best, feels almost not worth it at worst? I can't decide what word works there, but the results definitely feels like 9 out of 10 I'm getting smooshed by tumblers because they're just... better? IDK. But it definitely feels like I made a mistake putting points in to dodge proficiency and should forgo my rp for not using a shield... by now using a shield. But yes, i look forward to balancing if it needs, tweaking if it needs. And please remember that we're meant to be testers, testing these systems! Thanks for the topic.

[Akila]

From my experience with tumble/flip earlier today, I do think the frequency it happens does need to be looked at. I couldn't even proc Tactical Dodge because it triggered so much in a skill-relevant area, which made my risk crazy high, which can be devastating for a Nightblade. Just reading over my logs, every 5 seconds I was getting a tumble and every 15-30 seconds a flip proc. I've not yet fought against something that can also use the abilities, but those timings I was getting seem a little skewed.

[Rias]

(Pre-Script: Acknowledgment that not only Duelists use Tumble. I think it's just noticed the most with them because it adds to their other significant defensive bonuses at the moment. You finally get past their tumble, and then it's just shoot - NOW the attack was avoided by something else instead, even after I got past the tumble. Tumble is the first line of defense so it's seen the most often.)

As always, please remember to treat each other with civility and tact. I think it's fair to say Duelist specialization is a bit overtuned at the moment, and you'll even hear that from players of Duelists themselves. On the other hand, keep in mind that even when someone admits that some aspect of their playstyle is overtuned, it still doesn't feel good to them when they're called out to be nerfed, or treated as someone who has been defending or somehow taking advantage of that overtuning. Trying to achieve fair balance is tricky business for everyone.

Both Tumble's current shorter cooldown and the Combat Analysis bonus rerolls were set in a time when only one defense method (of Dodge/Block/Parry) was used and so they felt a little more necessary to keep the lightly-armored Duelists alive in that situation. To be frank, even back then the Combat Analysis bonus ceiling felt like it was probably too high. I think that's the main issue that should be addressed first. I love Duelists and I think they *should* feel like those slippery foes that are more difficult than most to actually hit in combat, which is why weight encumbrance and heavy armor severely impact their effectiveness. The intent of the latter being that when they do get hit, they hurt more for it. I think we just need to tweak the balance a little. I haven't poked at Tumble in a long while, so I'll dig into that part of the code and see what we can come up with.

[Ninetales16]

I am not opposed to any changes to tumble, but this is my only means of defense, ability related, that I can take, for now.
I view it as a very reliable way to survive in combat, even in somewhat more skilled areas I visit, sometimes. and I love the flavour of it! but again
I have not played a duelist, and neither am very experienced in coming up with ideas, suggestions, or other mechanical stuff. it will be interesting to observe what changes will be made to tumble and how they will work in the future.

[Dean]

Both Tumble's current shorter cooldown and the Combat Analysis bonus rerolls were set in a time when only one defense method (of Dodge/Block/Parry) was used and so they felt a little more necessary to keep the lightly-armored Duelists alive in that situation.

As a suggestion that goes somewhere in the middle - it might be neat to apply Combat Analysis bonuses to whichever defense method already has the highest reroll count, such as Block against a ranged attack, for example, but not apply the bonus to more than one roll in a given attack. Or make it something you can configure, to let you optimize your defense against a known opponent and make critical opportunity-cost decisions when fighting a mix of enemies or groups thereof. +4x to a single defense is still really, really good, no matter which defense it is, I reckon; and I think that's a better compromise than trying to find a happy-medium for across-the-board rerolls, since people aren't likely to ever agree on what number is fair or balanced when it has that much breadth. If we want to merge the old- and new-designs together, CA could apply a pool of fractional rerolls spread evenly across your active defenses, meaning the fewer defenses you're using at once, the more benefit each one gets - that way, stacking up more kinds of defenses (as detailed above) doesn't have a multiplicative benefit.

I also think that, in general, CA should ramp up in smaller, faster increments of fractional rerolls anyway - with the same applying to Nightblade, Guardian, etc. tactics that have a ramp-up or wind-down mechanic during a fight, to provide a more even curve of benefit on-average over a given span of time-in-combat.

I don't see Tumble being problematic on its own, if it had a longer cooldown. It's trading an ability slot for a limited defense roll; I think that's good value, and makes for a good precedent for valuing other defense abilities for other classes as points of comparison (Rook Familiars work very similarly, for example). I think it's also necessary to acknowledge that abilities inevitably won't be created equal; a more reasonable expectation is for them to all fall within an acceptable range of effectiveness. Tumble by itself doesn't need much to dip down into that range, in my mind, while Armor Deflection sits a good bit below it and needs a little more to be in the good-enough range.

[Rias]

I admit that I figured the talk of taking ten minutes against a single duelist mob was a bit of indulgent hyperbole to make a point, but after some testing it's looking like that wasn't the case.

I do think some cooldown extending for Tumble is in order. Particularly with those who have Cloak Parry in addition to Tumble, it's feeling like I'm just being perpetually ping-ponged back and forth between those two defense abilities. I actually threw in some debug output just to make sure they were ever actually failing to proc once off cooldown. They did indeed have a chance to fail and sometimes did, but it didn't feel like it in the heat of what was a very one-sided battle against an equal-skill Liberi Bladedancer that I eventually just gave up on. There's feeling like one is at a disadvantage, and then there's feeling completely hopeless. This experience felt like the latter, particularly over such an extended amount of time.

Regarding the various scaling rerolls for Duelist/Nightblade/Guardian: yeah, they should be updated to increment (or decrement) more smoothly now that partial rerolls have been implemented. I also think they all are a bit too heavy, with Combat Analysis being particularly so: +4 rerolls to all defenses is immensely potent. I think this is again a case of being more appropriate in the time it was originally implemented. Back when people were regularly suffering negative rerolls due to roundtime-based defenses in combat, +4 to defense was more possible to overcome as long as you timed things right. When roundtime-based defense penalties changed (they went away), most of the other numbers built around them didn't change with them.

I also played AS a Duelist character against like-skill mobs to try and get the other perspective. Against melee I felt perfectly safe and just auto-battled, aiming for the chest. I defeated thirty or so equal-skill foes (gear/ability-templated on various Liberi, infested, and NPC guards), typically going the entire encounter without taking a single hit. Marauder types had some potential to be dangerous with the auto-dirtkicks, but I still felled several of them without any significant incidents. Knockdowns weren't a big deal thanks to Combat Mobility. Ranged attacks were the best way to get me. (Ow, throwing-axes.)

Overall, while I don't want Duelists to be constantly getting tagged with bad wounds and having to run to get healed, it was admittedly weird to feel safer in melee against like-skill mobs as a dagger-wielding light-armor Duelist than when playing my Marauder or Guardian characters who both use shields, decent-reach weapons, and better armor. (The Marauder is still the most fun to play though, Marauder 4 lyfe.)

[Kismet]

It's my impression that Duelists and therefore Duelist-like mobs are specialists in one on one fighting. In a fair, straight up fight it feels like they have an advantage because that's what their skills lean into. Things like 8 second stuns, stealth attacks, and more that one opponent that a marauder or guardian can mitigate sends a duelist to the infirmary pretty quickly. Added to the aforementioned range vulnerability and you get Duelists that are good while in their zone but are not very good outside of it.

An example: Kis wandered into a monster the other day. She tumbled the first few attacks fine but then it slammed her for 30 with an 8 second stun, which it followed up with 50 damage and a fracture from an attack none of her duelist abilities could do anything about. Nothing to do at that point but to limp back home and wait to heal. A pair of lucky shots? Perhaps, but it illustrates that when things go wrong for duelists they go very wrong.

[Smoothcoffee]

If I was tech savvy with this newfangled BBS thing, I'd quote your post, Rias. But thank you for giving that a test and seeing how it was going. Ten minutes for one tumbly, flippy, whippy mob is possibly about a few mobs' worth if you just avoid them entirely. Also agree, #MarauderForLife

[Dean]

Overall, while I don't want Duelists to be constantly getting tagged with bad wounds and having to run to get healed, it was admittedly weird to feel safer in melee against like-skill mobs as a dagger-wielding light-armor Duelist than when playing my Marauder or Guardian characters who both use shields, decent-reach weapons, and better armor. (The Marauder is still the most fun to play though, Marauder 4 lyfe.)

The thing I've noticed between my Guardian and Duelist experiences so far is that my Guardian goes to the healer at a very predictable rate, because he gets hit fairly often, but usually for fairly low damage. He takes little bits of chip-damage over time and accumulates wounds that are eventually threatening enough that he has to leave, because one very very unlucky roll to an already-wounded vital area could be lethal. My duelist, by contrast, would typically take no damage whatsoever for several mobs in a row, and then get absolutely whammied by a bad roll and need to bandage up immediately and leave.

This is a consequence of the total-avoidance versus high-mitigation mechanics involved, which makes my Duelist feel like I'm gambling when I put them against something dangerous - anything with a two-handed weapon, for example, feels like one bad roll will just dunk on him (or, at least, two in a row). CA makes this chance very, very small, but it's still there, so by law of averages they will, eventually, get dumpstered - while the Guardian really doesn't have that problem against anything other than anti-armor weaponry in specific (warhammers, maces, etc.), which feels completely appropriate to me.

My concern is that changes to Duelist will render them vulnerable to things that counter them, in a more severe way than anti-armor weapons counter heavy-armor classes; I don't want it to feel impossible for a duelist to fight certain categories of mobs regardless of skill level, since fighting a bad match-up is sometimes necessary when recovering someone that died. The feeling invoked by "sorry, I can't help this person, I'm useless in that zone" is pretty bad.

[Squeak]

I have nothing, really, to add to this conversation except: Shoot them in the knee and see how well they tumble and flip after.

It's good to have characters and mobs that are suited for a specific playstyle, it encourages players to group or plan accordingly to tackle those environments. Flippy tumblers getting a quick shot to the leg from stealth is an adequate response to such a mob. Not every playstyle should be able to handle every type of mob out there with ease.

But, I don't have any say in this beyond just a generic glance at it.