This morning's red post collection features
ZenonTheStoicIt gets tougher to play into this with Grievous because so much more of your globals are spent on Shadowmend to pick people up above 90% HP again. It’s not as much of an issue during fights, outside of certain bosses with heavy, unavoidable AoE, but having to pick people up after is taxing on the mana more so than for a healer like resto druid. Jun 28, 2019 Revan and Bastila will fall to a 170k AoE attack without being able to do anything other than fuel Grievous’ damage output. My shardmate’s Malak would fall as well (161k total H&P). But his Malak is optimized for speed and not health. Apr 09, 2014 Red Post Collection: Let's Talk Grievous Wounds, Tentative WW Passive, Riot-Player Communications, and more! Posted on April 9, 2014 at 2:54 AM by Moobeat This morning's red post collection features ZenonTheStoic with discussions on both Grievous Wounds and the future Warwick rework, Heintzer chatting about Riot-Player communications, and more!
with discussions on both Grievous Wounds and the future Warwick rework, Heintzer chatting about Riot-Player communications, and more!Continue reading for more information.
Recent News:
Let's Talk Grievous Wounds
Building off a talks concerning healing reduction and drain tanks like Warwick, ZenonTheStoic has posted up a discussion thread for summoner's to share their thoughts on Grievous Wounds - the passive effects that reduce healing and regeneration.'There are two wonderful threads out there where the inimitable FeralPony talks itemization, and in the older one of the two he quickly touches on Grievous Wounds (GW) and calls me out by name. As well he should! I am working on Warwick's relaunch and part of that is 'how do we deal with GW on a tank that derives his tankiness from self-heal?' As you may expect, I have some thoughts.
I posted a long and ranty post on that old thread and then realized that no one was going to look at a week old thread, so instead I'm reposting my original answer as the first post in this thread.
My argument is this: I don't think our game needs GW. The things GW 'fixes' can be fixed on their own. I may be wrong--hell, I expect I'm wrong since that's where disagreeing with FeralPony usually gets me, but let's have a conversation! I'll repost my rant and then open the floor for all of you: how do you feel about GW? How do you feel about the ITEMS that currently provide GW? (And let's not forget the skills, such as there are--Tristana E, Varus W, Fizz W, Miss Fortune W and Katarina R) Is it okay that I can counterpick your Volibear/Swain with a Tristana?'As promised, he continued with his 'long and ranty' repost:
'Yup, that thought indeed came out of the Warwick discussion. Basically, IMO there's roughly three use cases in which people might theoretically be considering grievous wounds (and I'm not sold that 3) is actually a thing)
1) High burst sustain self-heal champions. This is the likes of Mundo, Swain, Warwick, Volibear etc. There is usually a single, expensive (i.e. non-spammable) event where you want to apply GW: Mundo/Swain using ult, Warwick jumping in with ult and trying to spam Qs after (something he can't do constantly as Q is STUPID expensive on live), Volibear's passive proccing etc. I believe the reason people want GW in these situations is because the effects themselves may either be overtuned or feel like there's no counterplay once the champion gets ahead. Introducing a special item to 'fix' this feels like a design crutch to me. It's taking away those champions' high moments.
2) Strong in-combat sustain healing. I don't know if this really is a thing anymore, but imagine having a support soraka, a top-lane nidalee and a mid kayle on the enemy team, and something like a jungle Xin who jumps into your team and starts being a man. In those cases it feels like you require GW to counter the enemy's setup, because the usual counterplay to Xin jumping into your team (burst him down) isn't available. Again, I don't think GW is the answer here. The problem is that there are strong offensive champions who get a big heal for free by itemizing in the most aggressive way possible (Nid, Kayle). As for support healing, whenever we push our supports away from in-combat healing, we make out-of-combat sustain ('top up' healing in between interactions) the stronger choice, and I think we generally find that to be the less healthy pattern (hence Soraka's armor buff on her heal, Taric's big CD chunk on basic attacks, Nami's bounce heal/hurt spell--all of these mechanics are meant to push the optimal use case of the spell to in combat rather than out of combat. I don't think they work, but the intention is there.)
IMO, if the enemy wants to build a team that enables a strong deep diver to live much longer than normally, they should be paying for it in some other way. If there is a legit setup with such tradeoffs that manages to get to the point where Xin can dive and wreak havoc, cool! Your entire enemy team coordinated to do a cool thing, they should get rewarded for it. I don't think it's fair to offset coordination through the pick phase, the laning phase and inside teamfights by simply buying one item and saying 'hah! You're screwed now!'
3) End game ADC lifesteal sustain. So a lot of designers throw this one around as the reason for GW, but call me doubtful. End game ADCs, no matter what reddit and the forums say, are still absolutely insane in our game. There is no role that scales anywhere near as massively as dudes who right click you. They have access to more multiplicative stats than any other role (AD, AS, crit chance, crit dmg, procs, armor penetration) combined with the single most powerful innate tool in our game (range) and some of the sweetest deals in terms of itemization. The theory here is that if they mix in lifesteal in their build (which they can do easily enough; both BT and BotRK are great items even WITHOUT the LS on them) they can feel unkillable and as such, GW should give you a window to try and solo kill an ADC in the late game. I cannot argue with this intellectually; it makes perfect sense.
The problem is: I've never in my 1000+ games of League actually seen anyone use GW in such a way. I've never seen it on a stream, never seen it in a competitive game, I've not seen it in Silver II ranked, I've not seen it in normals--I'd love to be proven wrong here, but I don't think it's a thing!
So to back off and reassess the problem space at hand: sustain is a thing in our game, and in many cases it's totally fine to have. However, there's a handful of cases where sustain can feel so overwhelming that players want a 'NOPE' button to turn off the enemy's sustain. That NOPE button should be GW.'
Xelnath also weighed in on the discussion, adding his thoughts to the pot:
'Since we're making this a public discussion, let's get to it.
- I agree that the super power abilities are reduced slightly by the existence of grievous wounds.
- I agree that it is pretty much only the existence of ignite's heal debuff that keeps Mundo in check
- I agree its possible to reduce the effectiveness of those abilites
Note I did NOT include endgame ADCs in this list
While those fatty, tanky champs are highly frustrating, ADCs remain fragile. Effectively bursting one down is extremely do-able when they are caught out of position, nuked by mages, etc.
Thus, the nature of ADCs - finish me off completely, or I top off - but remain incredibly fragile is an appropriate archetype to have such sustain/healing levels.
Aatrox - a recent drain tank-type is incredibly fragile to make up for this mistake, along with sacrificing his passive to have a '1-minutes every X minutes' to cope with that fragility.
Drain Tanks are frustrating and due to the lack of interplay - Healing CANNOT be prevented, it mandates the existence of the ignite healing reduction and the existence of an item that negates it pre-emptively, though the existing item sucks. [ Executioner's Calling ]
tl;dr - The game would be healthier without drain tanks. Heals should be powerful, gated and rare, extending a fight by a flat duration - not an infinite one.'
Kicking off a few comments on Tristana's E's healing reduction, ZenonTheStoic also dove into a discussion on how he plans to add gating to Warwick as a drain tank in his future rework:
'That's a very interesting point you raise about Tristana there. I think we're looking at the problem from the wrong side again. The problem here isn't so much that Tristana has no poke (and I'd argue that passive procs from E can somewhat fill that role, but that's a different conversation), but it's that everyone in bot lane goes hard into LS and as such no poke really sticks unless you can keep applying it over and over.
To say 'here is a skill that stops you from healing up after an engagement' is dangerous, because that skill necessarily needs to be long duration (and Tristana is already at the longer end of what I feel we can do). We do hate on sustain heal a lot, but I'm somewhat in Xypherous's camp of 'heal is a viable fantasy we should find a way to support'. If there was a healthy heal champ, it wouldn't be pickable against a Tristana with an E that effectively functions like that, and one of the design pillars of League of Legends is that no game is ever decided in champion select (what you do with your champ, even in a disadvantageous lane matchup, should always matter).
So here's how I'm going about adding gating to WW as a drain tank:
1) De-coupling of offensive and defensive branches. If you invest into more healing, you do less damage. If you buy offensive items, you heal less. Current WW can theoretically build a chunk of AP and get both offensive and defensive advantages. If my WW opts into lifesteal, that means he opts OUT OF damage. It's true tank itemization.
2) Add gameplay to the drain. Most drain tanks run into the problem that they're very 'stat checky' -- do I have more of the stat I need to succeed than you or not? This is where triple BT Master Yi or massive spell vamp Akali come in. Aside from locking away offensive itemization from drainy WW, I also moved more than half of his drain budget into the stack gameplay. TLDR is WW needs to build stacks by attacking things to access his full healing power. These stacks fall off quickly if you kite him / CC him at all.
3) I curb excessive in-lane sustain (immovable object type of problem) by halving healing against minions.
Do you think those approaches would go some way to alleviating your concerns?'
Tentative Warwick Rework Passive
Speaking of Warwick, ZenonTheStoic also gave a small preview of the tentative passive he's cooked up for his future Warwick rework.[ Please remember this is a discussion on content still in internal development ]
'Not like Fiora's at all. Here's the exact passive (and remember this can change still; especially the numbers)
Deals 2% of target maximum health as magic damage with each basic attack while healing for 5 (+XX) (half vs minions).
Each attack builds one stack of Eternal Thirst, which increases the healing from this effect by 11%.
Maximum stacks: 10 Damage capped against monsters to: YY
XX currently scales with level from 0.9% bonus health to 1.4% bonus health. Those numbers do look very low, but remember you have tools to multiproc the passive, you have the Eternal Thirst stacks that improve healing, and finally the Q itself has a multiplicative heal amp on it.'
URF and impermanent Game Modes
ZenonTheStoic also popped into a reddit thread to share a few thoughts on why featured gameplay modes like URF are much better in short bursts than as permanent queues.
'Quote:
Just finished playing my last U.R.F game and as much as it hurts to say, I'm glad it's going to be removed.
The first 1-2 days I played the mode were an absolute blast and the most fun I've had in Leagues in probably a couple years; people were trying stuff out and I sensed that other people were having as much fun as I was.
In my last game, All champions picked are champions that are already proven really strong in the mode and managed to pass the ban phase, there is no diversity. People were using strategies as if this was a normal/ranked game and they absolutely had to win. And here I am trying champions for the first time and making funny plays only to get punished for it by people who seem to take this mode too seriously.
How Much Dmg Is 5 Stacks Of Grievous 1
I realize this might be an unpopular opinion but I feel I had to make a post about it.
This is what we call degenerate gameplay. A mode we clearly cannot and will not balance for will degenerate into stale, 'clearly the best' strategies very quickly. One of the many reasons we don't want to keep our fun modes around permanently. I think it's much better to rotate them out and in with new modifiers. ARURF? Why not! ALL FOR URF? Sure, that might be fun!
The important thing is to keep it fresh and fun. Summoner's Rift is meant to be the balanced, super deep, super complex game mode--everything else should be quick and fun, and part of that is keeping it impermanent.'
Realities of Riot-Player Communication
In a thread suggesting a 'Read by Riot' feature for Rioters to mark threads they've read but not responded to, Heintzer commented on the realities of Riot-Player communications:'Some great ideas here - we've discussed a 'read by a Rioter' feature internally before.
There might be some drawbacks, though - simply acknowledging that we read something might not always a great experience for players. I worry it might feel almost dismissive, depending on the context. Acknowledging a bug report on the PBE forums? Definitely a good idea. But if a player has put a lot of effort into a really deep proposal or critique, I'm not sure simply knowing a Rioter acknowledged it is necessarily any better than receiving no response at all. It might feel like, 'okay, Riot, but what do you think? What are you gonna do about it?'
I've also thought about letting Rioters opt out from the red tracker, or finding some way to convey that their post is 'unofficial.' Unfortunately this is pretty hard to convey, and the reality is, if you've got a Riot logo next to your name, you're representing the company. Putting 'opinions here don't represent Riot Games' in your Twitter bio doesn't really mean shit, really. ;)
Once you're at the scale and complexity of a community like League (and a company like Riot), the forums (and any social media channel, really) can become a pretty scary place. The crowd is very smart, and they WILL tear you apart if your message isn't airtight. You can't possibly consider every player perspective out there, and you certainly can't respond to every single message. It's a tough proposition for a game developer - do I spend my time working on my craft, or do I take time out to give a lot of really careful thought to a player-facing message?There's no 'easy' fix or silver bullet here. The real solution involves a bunch of things, like..
- Training: if everyone's empowered to be a company spokesperson, well, they've gotta become trained spokespeople. That sounds scary and draconian, but we're not talking about polishing game designers to be White House press correspondents - just helping them learn some rules of the road.
- PR help: dev teams need to have folks at their disposal who are absolutely experts at communication - folks who sit with them and understand the nuance of what they're working on, and can help to make sure we don't stick our feet in our mouths, while still making sure we're out there talking to players a ton. That's guys like Pwyff, who sits with the game design team 90% of the time (BTW, while he does talk to the community a lot himself, you should see the amount of work he does behind the scenes to help those guys out!) BTW, we're hiring more Pwyffs: http://www.riotgames.com/careers/player-relations-specialist
- International communications: Here's a rub you might not be thinking about: lots of League players don't speak English, and don't play on NA. How do we make sure they feel they're heard? This is a super complex problem and requires a ton of other solutions I won't even get into. :)
[ Bonus ] Atlantean Syndra back on the PBE!
While there wasn't a red post to announce it, I'd like to point out that Atlantean Syndra is back on the PBE after being pulled late in the last PBE cycle!trying to choose between these 2 builds
but the big question i'm having is..does toughness work?
https://i.imgur.com/Tik2NSg.jpg
i got a ton of toughness here..and yet i take a 9.5k dmg hit with 3.5k toughness
which makes me question if toughness works..or is worth having at all. do crits ignore or reduce armor? does it only reduce dmg by so much?
and how did this do so much dmg..its an insane ammount..
Comments
- edited January 10, 2018
Toughness did work on the direct damage
(Direct damage = Damage inflicted by skills and/or traits directly, can crit, and is mitigated by the target's armor.)Basically this is the calculation:
Damage you received = Enemy's Weapon strength * Enemy's Power * Enemy's skill-specific coefficient / Your Armor- AFAIK, critical hit increase direct damage, but it is not ignoring armor
- Did you have vulnerability on you? Vulnerability increases condition damage and direct damage you received
More on here:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toughness
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage#Direct_damageWhat kind of class / what skill do you get attacked with by the way? (Skill have a unique coefficient used to calculate damage inflicted)
- edited January 10, 2018
@akenoyuki.8210 said:
Toughness did work on the direct damage
(Direct damage = Damage inflicted by skills and/or traits directly, can crit, and is mitigated by the target's armor.)Basically this is the calculation:
Damage you received = Enemy's Weapon strength * Enemy's Power * Enemy's skill-specific coefficient / Your ArmorDid you have vulnerability on you? Vulnerability increases condition damage and direct damage you received
More on here:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toughness
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage#Direct_damageWhat kind of class / what skill do you get attacked with by the way? (Skill have a unique coefficient used to calculate damage inflicted)
no vulnerability, had just used the Natural healing skill.
got hit by this
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wastrel's_Ruinwhich has a coefficient of 1.5
plus 100% more dmg.but no matter how much i use the armor formula. i can't understand just how he got enough attack power/strength to hit a 3.5k armor warrior for 9.5k dmg
assuming they have 2700 power. 1030 dagger. the 1.5x2 coeficient. that would only do 3k
and then a crit for say 225%..and its still only 6750 - edited January 10, 2018
Hmm.. Maybe there's more to it
I see you're on WvW mode, did you perhaps got attacked near enemy castle / keep?
I rarely go to WvW so I'm not really sure, but there are some boon you get if you're near the castle / keep such as the guild objective aura and presence of the keep right?Also since it is WvW, did your enemy have 25 might, bloodlust, or something like that too?
I'm afraid there's a lot of unknown variable on this. @arenta.2953 said:
trying to choose between these 2 buildsbut the big question i'm having is..does toughness work?
https://i.imgur.com/Tik2NSg.jpgi got a ton of toughness here..and yet i take a 9.5k dmg hit with 3.5k toughness
which makes me question if toughness works..or is worth having at all. do crits ignore or reduce armor? does it only reduce dmg by so much?and how did this do so much dmg..its an insane ammount..
Warriors have a few traits that conditionally buff toughness:
• Thick Skin - +180 toughness when above 75% hp
• Spiked Armor - +150 toughness when you have retaliation. Gain 5s of retaliation when you block or are hit by a crit. --> You likely didn't have retaliation as a buff as your combat log shows you getting hit by necros shades, well of corruption and loss aversion.
• Your screen shot is at a keep and you have the Presence of the Keep buff on you which is giving you +100 toughness (also +100 to power, precision, vitality stats).
--> Based on the above, subtract 280 toughness from the value shown in the display window in the screen shotYou don't know how buffed the warrior was (i.e. might stacks on him, bloodlust sigil stacks, stacks of Insight, vulnerability on you).
Investing in toughness suffers diminishing returns: for each additional point of toughness you add to your build you get incrementally less and less reduction in damage. Direct damage continues to scale in a linear manner. The system was setup like this likely as a way to prevent a situation where a player could create an unkillable tank in pvp. (Sidenote: HoT especially took a massive dump on this system by adding flat percentage damage reduction modifiers and food to the game). Wastrel's Ruin has a +100% damage modifier if it hit you and you aren't using a skill at the time. If you were using a skill at the time he hit you, he would have crit you for 4,737 damage instead of 9,475.
TLDR:
• Stacking toughness is not the best way to go
• The 9,475 damage hit you took is legitDmg mode gameboy what is it real. @akenoyuki.8210 said:
Hmm.. Maybe there's more to it
I see you're on WvW mode, did you perhaps got attacked near enemy castle / keep?
I rarely go to WvW so I'm not really sure, but there are some boon you get if you're near the castle / keep such as the guild objective aura and presence of the keep right?you are correct, the buff gives +100 to all stats. Final cut pro dmg cracked.
but even that isn't enough to explain it
plus, this was by a tier 1 supply camp.
@Naix.8156 said:
@arenta.2953 said:
trying to choose between these 2 buildsbut the big question i'm having is..does toughness work?
https://i.imgur.com/Tik2NSg.jpgi got a ton of toughness here..and yet i take a 9.5k dmg hit with 3.5k toughness
which makes me question if toughness works..or is worth having at all. do crits ignore or reduce armor? does it only reduce dmg by so much?and how did this do so much dmg..its an insane ammount..
Warriors have a few traits that conditionally buff toughness:
• Thick Skin - +180 toughness when above 75% hp
• Spiked Armor - +150 toughness when you have retaliation. Gain 5s of retaliation when you block or are hit by a crit. --> You likely didn't have retaliation as a buff as your combat log shows you getting hit by necros shades, well of corruption and loss aversion.
• Your screen shot is at a keep and you have the Presence of the Keep buff on you which is giving you +100 toughness (also +100 to power, precision, vitality stats).
--> Based on the above, subtract 280 toughness from the value shown in the display window in the screen shotYou don't know how buffed the warrior was (i.e. might stacks on him, bloodlust sigil stacks, stacks of Insight, vulnerability on you).
Investing in toughness suffers diminishing returns: for each additional point of toughness you add to your build you get incrementally less and less reduction in damage. Direct damage continues to scale in a linear manner. The system was setup like this likely as a way to prevent a situation where a player could create an unkillable tank in pvp. (Sidenote: HoT especially took a massive dump on this system by adding flat percentage damage reduction modifiers and food to the game). Wastrel's Ruin has a +100% damage modifier if it hit you and you aren't using a skill at the time. If you were using a skill at the time he hit you, he would have crit you for 4,737 damage instead of 9,475.
TLDR:
• Stacking toughness is not the best way to go
• The 9,475 damage hit you took is legitah.diminishing returns
is there a recommended armor level its suggested to stop at@arenta.2953 said:
but no matter how much i use the armor formula. i can't understand just how he got enough attack power/strength to hit a 3.5k armor warrior for 9.5k dmgassuming they have 2700 power. 1030 dagger. the 1.5x2 coeficient. that would only do 3k
and then a crit for say 225%..and its still only 6750You haven't taken into account damage bonus and reduction modifiers.
If the guy was in zerk gear, scholars runes, food, etc the power value would be around 4100 at the top end; so likely you've underestimated the power value.
https://resourcesnin.netlify.app/dd5e-does-spiritual-weapon-get-hunters-mark-dmg.html. Spiritual Weapon. You create a floating, spectral weapon within range that lasts for the Duration or until you cast this spell again. When you cast the spell, you can make a melee spell Attack against a creature within 5 feet of the weapon. On a hit, the target takes force damage equal to 1d8 +. Hunter's Mark. You choose a creature you can see within range and mystically mark it as your quarry. Until the spell ends, you deal an extra 1d6 damage to the target whenever you hit it with a weapon Attack, and you have advantage on any Wisdom (Perception) or Wisdom (Survival) check you make to find it.
@arenta.2953 said:
ah.diminishing returns
is there a recommended armor level its suggested to stop atThere isn't a set number to stop at, no. In general its best, in all areas of the game not just in wvw, to use other means to mitigate or avoid damage instead of just stats. Some examples: blocks, evades, invulnerability, immunities, protection boon (-33% inc dmg), using kiting/line-of-siting, etc. Guild Wars 2 has an active combat system so its (generally speaking - not to get into power creep and passives from the expansions) best to use active abilities to avoid the damage in the first place.
If you join a wvw guild focused guild they would be able to help you with your build and explain stuff in comms (discord, ts, etc) to help you out.
@arenta.2953 said:
@akenoyuki.8210 said:
Toughness did work on the direct damage
(Direct damage = Damage inflicted by skills and/or traits directly, can crit, and is mitigated by the target's armor.)Basically this is the calculation:
Damage you received = Enemy's Weapon strength * Enemy's Power * Enemy's skill-specific coefficient / Your ArmorDid you have vulnerability on you? Vulnerability increases condition damage and direct damage you received
More on here:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toughness
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage#Direct_damageWhat kind of class / what skill do you get attacked with by the way? (Skill have a unique coefficient used to calculate damage inflicted)
no vulnerability, had just used the Natural healing skill.
got hit by this
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wastrel's_Ruinwhich has a coefficient of 1.5
plus 100% more dmg.but no matter how much i use the armor formula. i can't understand just how he got enough attack power/strength to hit a 3.5k armor warrior for 9.5k dmg
assuming they have 2700 power. 1030 dagger. the 1.5x2 coeficient. that would only do 3k
and then a crit for say 225%..and its still only 6750That isn't even the top end damage
970(lowest roll for weapon strength) * 1.5(coeff) * 3500(roughly 2500 base from berserker stat + 1000 for 25 stacks of might) / 3500 * 2.32(critical damage base + berserker stat+ Pure Strike ) * 2(100% more damage) 1.05(sigil of force)1.33(peak performance) = 9428