TL;DR? Read the bold
As I read this forum, I feel as if many cannot see the forest from the trees, and are so focused on individual things that they don’t realize what the true repercussions of their arguments are, or what the underlying issue is.
As a thought experiment, people should at least read this post by Veydar.
Jon Peters mentions that you should always expand and look at the pros and cons. Make sure you step back from your argument and look at the repercussions.
There are a lot of posts out there that say X on class A is not like Y on class B. When anyone argues for this, they are arguing for class equality, and in the end, they are arguing for class A to equal class B. This is not balance, this is equality, and does not bring diversity to the game.
So we’ve identified the issue in some of these posts, how do we go about making sure our suggestions can work. Lets start with some definitions:
- Equality = All classes are the same, all classes have identical skills, traits and abilities
- Balance = All classes have the ability to do a task in a different fashion while achieving a similar end result
- Viability = All classes have the ability to change their build to take on a different task without being considered grossly inferior to another class.
- Diversity = All classes do a particular tasks in a different fashion.
Alternatively, Diversity can be represented as a formula:
Diversity = Maximizing Balance and Viability while Minimizing Equality
When someone brings forward an argument, they need to make sure they are arguing for Balance, not Equality, and that as you extrapolate the argument to the rest of the game, it promotes Viability.
On profession A, Skill N plus Trait M plus Equipment O should create result Z
On profession B, Skill P plus Trait Q plus Equipment R should create result Z
But
Skill N should not equal Skill P
Trait M should not equal Trait Q
Equipment O may equal Equipment R
So what are the tasks that a character can do. Keep in mind we want to keep the holy trinity away.
- Damage
- Crits
- Multihits
- Dodging
- Armour
- Crowd Control
- Conditions
- Self Heal
- Ally Heal
- Zones and Finishers
- Offensive Boons
- Defensive Boons
Maybe this isn’t an extensive list, but it gives you the idea…
Now, the content should equally make these tasks all relevant at different points in time.
Examples below could be an idea (BH – Brain Hurricane) or already exist (E – Exists) in the game. A dungeon should require of each these concepts at some point during a run.
note – these (BH)’s are quick brainstorms and are meant for illustration more than actual suggestion. Please treat them as such
- Damage – (E) Any object that can’t be crit but needs to be destroyed
- Crits – (BH) A regenerating shield that requires crits to be dropped
- Multihits – (BH) Big bosses “cover” littler foes from AoE/Cleave, remove AoE target limit.
- Dodging – (E) negate an attack
- Armour – (BH) smaller more frequent attacks / damage packets
- Crowd Control – (BH) Speedy foes can’t be damaged while moving and attack one character to the next
- Conditions – (BH) Boss cannot get vulnerability, except gains stacks of vulnerability when bleeding is applied.
- Self Heal – (E) skill 6
- Ally Heal – (BH) Effect applied from foe that reduces Self Heal until an ally does something to you such as apply a boon to you.
- Zones and Finishers – (BH) Boss shield is buffed by blast finishers, but weakened by projectile finishers or vice versa
- Offensive Boons – (BH) Boss gets offensive boon for all characters less than or greater than X range
- Defensive Boons – (BH) Defensive boon is applied to a Boss every second unless he is hit with a melee or ranged attack.