diminishing-returns
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Warlords of Draenor: A peek at Diminishing Returns changes
Senior PvP designer Brian Holinka has been on Twitter today clarifying the changes to diminishing returns in Warlords of Draenor. Along with the recently posted indications of changes to CC, Community Manager Lore tweeted and then posted about the changes to DR, or Diminishing Returns: Lore One other thing I just mentioned on Twitter that I'd like to bring up here as well -- we're also planning on having fewer DR categories (and thus, more shared DR's) in WoD. Again, still in development, anything can change, but that's what we're looking at. source The reduction in DR categories is welcome indeed, as we've discussed here in the past, there are 117 abilities across 13 categories, excluding things which CC and don't DR at all. This is baffling for new PvPers, and even advanced players often won't know every spell's category. As part of the big CC cull in Warlords, Blizzard's devs are looking to simplify DR. And Holinka has added more detail to their plans.
Warlords of Draenor: More information on player CC removal
Blizzard Community Representative Lore has been over on the official forums providing players with more information on the planned reduction in CC that will be implemented in Warlords of Draenor. While Lore isn't exactly spelling out what will and won't be removed, he is talking about how the devs currently like CC in talent trees, particularly when it's three abilities over one row. The reason for this is that it forces players to make intelligent choices about the CCs they take. Struggle with casters? A root won't do you any good. Know you're facing a lot of fear breaks? Don't take that, then. And it cuts down the overall number of CCs available to existing players. This, to me, is far better than the current trees for, say, warriors, where Storm Bolt and Shockwave are both on trees with two DPS abilities -- although Dragon Roar is a knockback. These two abilities would be far better off on the same tree, perhaps with Dragon Roar as the third. Bladestorm could then join another CC break + damage increase -- Avatar -- on another tier. Lore also mentions, in the blue post after the break, that they will not just look at talent tree CC, but at baseline abilities as well. What's more, given the removal of CC abilities, CC breaks will need to be slimmed down, and that is on the devs' radar. In a subsequent tweet, he adds that DR categories are being looked at. With 14 at the moment, this is also a welcomed change. Hit the break for Lore's full post.
The future of CC and Diminishing Returns
Following his post on Friday listing out the giant categorization of Diminishing Returns (DR) in PvP, Blizzard Community Manager Lore has posted again regarding the future of DR and its PvP implications. Lore As our senior PvP designer Brian Holinka tweeted over the weekend, we've got some pretty solid goals for the future regarding crowd control. We do think it needs to be toned back a bit, both in the amount of CC effects available and in how frequently they can be used. That said, CC is still an integral part of World of Warcraft PvP. Dealing with it intelligently, both in choosing when to use your own CC as well as reacting to opponent CC's, does have strong gameplay value. Quote: Honestly going to guess they're getting the exact opposite of what they planned from it. Our only "plans" were to try to make an admittedly confusing system less so. Confusion about which CC effects share DR's doesn't help anyone. source So where do we go from here? First up, the post he's referring to in the section about their "plans" is the Diminishing Returns list published last week. This is an incredibly useful resource, which all teams should have at least a cursory glance at before they start trying to make CC chains. There's no need to memorize it, but it's good to have an idea of how your comp's CC works. But that aside, it's a pretty scary list. As Lore mentions above, Brian Holinka tweeted about their plans to rectify the issues behind the DR system in the next expansion. What are the options? What should they do? What shouldn't they do?
Definitive word from Blizzard on Diminishing Returns
Diminishing Returns on CC is one of PvP's more confusing systems. DR, as people call it, is the mechanic whereby if you're repeatedly CC'd by CCs of the same nature, the duration is shorter the second time, shorter again the third, and then you're immune. The tricky question is, of course, what DRs with what? So if you're feared, does that mean subsequent Seductions will be shorter? If you're CCing with Sap, does that mean that a Hex used straight out of it will be shorter in duration? Various sources have had a stab at sorting out just exactly what DRs with what else, but there is so much mixed messaging and conflicting information out there. I was researching it for a column, and struggling, so I dropped PvP Designer Brian Holinka a line on Twitter. He came back saying that he'd try to get the CM team to put something together, and he's a man of his word. Community Manager Lore just posted a summary of just what DRs with what. How do you use it? Well go on over to the forum thread he made, do a CTRL+F of the spell you're looking for, and you'll be able to see what it DRs with. If you want to look at specific categories, then follow the links in the first post. This is a truly fantastic resource, and it's about time there was a definitive source of this information. But my god, there needs to be some optimization done in this system. It's insanely huge and confusing and hard to remember. Stick with your own spells at first, when you're working out your comp's CC chains, and worry about the rest as you go! Do you want to capture flags, invade cities, attack towers, and dominate the enemy for your faction? Do you dream of riding your War Bear with pride? We'll steer you to victory with secrets of Battlegrounds and Arena, prepping you with proven addons and keybindings that win! Send questions or comments to olivia@wowinsider.com.
WoW Insider Round Table: Diminishing returns on valor?
The WoW Insider staff at the Round Table this week are Dawn Moore, Matt Low, Sarah "Sally" Pine and Olivia Grace. We all sincerely hope you notice that we got lower thirds. Welcome back to another WoW Insider Round Table! In this second round table, we're talking diminishing returns on valor. Managing Editor Adam Holisky posted a brief editorial last week on this topic, and it was interesting enough that we decided to bring it up for discussion. We began by explaining just exactly how such a system would work, as clarified in Adam's original article, and then delved into the pros and cons of such a system. The Round Table was pretty universally opposed to such a system, based purely, of course, on our own gaming experiences, and while we tried our best to isolate redeeming qualities, we failed pretty miserably. And, finally, on comparing previous expansions' dungeon valor methods, the surprise winner was Cataclysm! We're really hoping you continue to enjoy this new format, and do remember that you can actually watch the Round Table live on our YouTube channel every week. Keep an eye on Twitter for announcements of when we're going live. And if you have any ideas for future round table discussions, let us know!
Diminishing returns on valor instead of a cap?
Ghostcrawler tossed out a tweet last night that raised my eyebrow: @_kaedis Yes, and we have been considering designs along these lines. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) May 30, 2013 The design of valor (and the emblems before points) has been an interesting progression. We've gone from many types of emblems to a point system, and then to a system where you could do a week's worth of points in a day, and then to a system where you had weekly caps but to hit them in the most efficient way you had to log in every day, and now (likely and as to be expected) more changes in the future. What exactly theses change will be is up for debate, but diminishing returns is a popular option. As a simplified example, the way the system would work is as follows: Heroic #1 for the day: 200 valor points Heroic #2 for the day: 100 valor points Heroic #3 for the day: 66 valor points Heroic #4 for the day: 50 valor points Heroic #5 for the day: 40 valor points The idea is that after each heroic (or after some number of heroics), the amount of valor you'll get continues to decrease to the point of not making it worthwhile at all to run them. This concept could also be applied to raids and other systems that distribute any kind of currency. In the example above the rate of change is linear (200 valor/number of runs), however in practice the rate of change would likely be piecewise (the rate not determined by a function, but by set values the designers choose that are loosely based on a function), and also it'd probably have minimums so running heroics would never return virtually zero valor. It's an interesting exercise to write numbers down on paper and see what the best way to reward valor for yourself would be. For me a 1/x curve with a lower-bound limit of 33% feels about right (ie: the lowest valor you'd get for running a heroic would be 33% of normal valor). As with most things Ghostcrawler, please be aware that his insights should often be taken as an academic discussion of WoW's design. Don't try to suss out truths and what the future of WoW will hold. Instead use them as interesting bits into the minds of the designers, realizing that the final product of WoW comes from hundreds of ideas from hundreds of people.
ArenaNet offers explanation for Guild Wars 2's diminishing returns mechanics
ArenaNet game designer Jon Peters has explained the reasoning behind the diminishing returns karma mechanics that many Guild Wars 2 players have complained about in recent weeks. "These systems are put in place to protect the economy from botters and exploiters. We will close exploits as quickly as we can. These thresholds help create a safety net to keep the economy safe when we aren't there to deal with the offender," Peters says in a post on the GW2 forums. Peters also says that the devs need to work out a few kinks, and that ArenaNet does not intend to put an end to legitimate farming gameplay. "We believe some of the threshold systems are just too harsh empirically and we'll be adjusting those systems within the next few weeks to ensure that fewer legitimate players are being impacted," he wrote. [Thanks to Divalicious Diva for the tip!]
Encrypted Text: The new style of rogue PvP
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we discuss how rogue PvP is going to fare in the next expansion. I often see players talking about their experiences in PvP, sometimes in trade chat or a battleground. Almost inevitably, after a few minutes of chatting, the old stereotypes about each class start coming out. They'll start complaining about paladins having three lives, due to Divine Shield and Lay on Hands. They'll label any arena composition with a warlock as a "drain team," even though warlocks are clearly capable of massive burst damage now. If there's an arena team composition that they don't like to face, that comp is immediately labeled as cheesy or unskilled. I don't really care if warlocks get a bum rap, it's up to them to convince the public that they can nuke too. What I am concerned about is that rogues have been stereotyped since the earliest days of vanilla WoW, and we need to break that cycle. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I would suggest watching the World of Roguecraft films. These early pieces of WoW machinima firmly cemented rogues as stunlocking gods in the minds of thousands of players. Even now, with Cataclysm putting the final nails in stunlocking's coffin, we will still be thought of as dirty fighters that need to be nerfed.
Lichborne: PvP pointers for Death Knights
Welcome to Lichborne, Your weekly peek into the world of the Death Knight.Death Knights have it pretty good in PvP. Thanks to big whomping two-handers and magic damage strikes and spells, we can do massive burst damage and tear through armor defenses pretty easily. On the control front, we have Strangulate, Mind Freeze, Chains of Ice, and, depending on spec, maybe even a few other ways to silence, slow, or shut down an enemy player. Finally, our plate armor and defense cooldowns assure that should we the unlucky target of the burst train, we can hold out a lot longer than many. Still, it's not just being a Death Knight alone that gets you PvP fame and godhood. It does help to have the right talents, gear, and strategy. So we're going to talk about that a bit, focusing mostly on the talents. Here's two popular PvP Talent builds.
Changes to Monster Play in LotRO's Book 14
Considering the fact that Lord of the Rings Online's Book 14 should be just around the corner, it's always great to get those little tidbits of information fed to us from the devs to keep us excited. This time though, we get fed a whole lot more than just a tidbit, we get some detailed information on some important changes that will be made to Monster Play with Book 14.First there's the updates to crowd control and diminishing returns, namely the fact that root and daze effects will now share diminishing returns. Then there's the new revamp of the Weaver in PvMP, giving what promises to be a monster class that is more effective in battle. Finally, what we've all been waiting for: emotes for the monsters! This large list includes such favorites as cheer, dance1 and tantrum. It's certainly about time the monsters got a little RP love, too!
We meet again, Alterac
As I've mentioned in a recent warrior column, I'm running the new Alterac Valley on my prot warrior. Mostly it's not intended to accomplish anything, it's just to see how I'll do. I average about four games before I get bored and go do something else. However, in the days leading up to patch 2.3, these four games would probably have been miserable timesinks with no honor gain to show for it and a lot of complaining in /bg.Nowadays, as you can see to the right, four games is about 1500 honor.I've found, at least on my Stormstrike BG toons, that the games go a lot faster now. Towers are still being capped, and the Horde still wins more than we do, but it's not so much the intolerable blowouts I'd become accustomed to where they crush us and we can't even take Iceblood GY. In the past two days I've won three and lost five, and almost all of the matches were pretty close. (We tend to do better when the Horde defends, I'm noticing, although I don't know why.) So from my perspective as an Alliance player (look, pro-Alliance bias in a WoW Insider post! Get those flames ready, kids!) and a very casual PvP'er who probably won't bother to run arenas, the changes have been for the good.How about you all? Thumbs up or thumbs down for the new AV and the immediate honor updating? (I think immediate honor is my favorite thing.)
Removing diminishing honor to the fix the AFK problem
Relmstein's latest post asks an interesting question: will the removal of diminishing honor returns in patch 2.4 help Blizzard combat the ongoing AFK problem? His suggestion is that removing the diminishing honor will mean that there is more honor available in the BGs, and that that will drive players back from the "peace cave" out into the battlefield (since they were only AFK-ing because they didn't think they could earn honor fast enough.But I've got to disagree-- people were (and are) going AFK not because they couldn't pick up enough honor, but because they didn't want to play at all. Going AFK is free honor, and it will keep being so until Blizzard just plain cracks down and starts kicking AFKers. Diminishing honor returns means nothing to serious AFKers-- all they care is that they're earning honor for free. When (or maybe if) Blizzard stops that from happening, then they'll be able to stop AFKers.As for the removal of returns, I can only think that it'll mean, if anything, more honor farming and turtling. Blizzard says they've crunched the numbers and determined that it's the right thing to do, but I don't see how supplying those Iceblood turtlers will constant honor is going to help things. We'll have to see what effects arise when the new patch drops on the PTR.
2.4 lifts diminishing returns on honor
var digg_url ='http://digg.com/pc_games/WoW_Patch_2_4_removes_diminishing_returns_on_PvP_Honor_gains'; According to Drysc, 2.4 will fix one of the biggest issues causing minimal honor gain for losing teams in Battlegrounds, namely Diminishing Returns. As things stand currently, according to Drysc, "What diminishing returns mean for honor is that each subsequent kill of the same target will reward you with less and less honor; 10% less per kill to be exact. One of the major downsides to diminishing returns is that the calculations, for potentially hundreds of thousands of players, is too intense to do real time, so they are calculated during off-peak hours. This in turn requires that the honor you gain be temporarily displayed as "estimated" until the calculations are run. It's a system that we've certainly improved (moving the calculation from weekly to daily) but still always disliked. It creates a very uninteresting and sometimes aggravating or confusing detachment from your achievements and the actual reward." I can't say I disagree with him on that score, I hate waiting till the next day rolls around. It's interesting to me to see that Blizzard always disliked it, too, as I would not have guessed that to be the case.Drysc goes on to further point out that the original reason for DR on honor was to prevent exploitation of the system that is no longer a real problem, what with battlegrounds providing a more reasonable reward for effort as far as honor is concerned compared to trying to exploit by corpse camping or otherwise killing the same mob over and over. The new system still only allows you to kill a single target so often, though: after 50 deaths, a player in a BG is worth no more honor until that BG is over. Better still, with the new system, honor gain will be instant. No more waiting for tomorrow, you get your honor as soon as you make a kill and can spend it as soon as you're done.Thanks to World of Raids and our tipsters for the heads up.
Nethaera explains Honor calculations
Ever since Patch 2.3 was released, there have been some honor controversies -- particularly with Alterac Valley. The way AV honor was calculated was changed and, for a while, not working. Though honor is working as intended now, people are still confused. This is understandable because it took quite a long forum post for Nethaera to explain how the whole thing works. Here are the main points: Diminishing Returns: In all PvP in WoW, every time you kill the same player, you get 10% less honor. After you kill the same person 10 times, you stop getting honor for the kill. Estimated Honor: This number does not take into account Diminishing Returns. Also, all fractions of honor are rounded up to 1, causing the Estimated Honor to be inflated. And the time of day that you view your Estimated Honor could affect the accuracy because the honor just earned may actually not be added until the next day's honor. Battleground Bonus Honor on Call to Arms or Holiday weekends: Bonus Honor is not a percentage of honor earned in a Battleground on a holiday weekend, but it is instead awarded for accomplishing certain specific Battleground objectives. Nethaera posted a long chart detailing all of the objectives for the Battlegrounds for Normal days and Holiday weekends. I've broken out the specific Holiday objectives and the Bonus Honor each awards as well as included the entire chart after the jump.
Diminishing returns on silencing effects repealed
Alright, Shamans, you can stop spamming the forums now. It appears that the much-decried diminishing returns on silence effects, like Earth Shock, have been repealed: After further discussion about the change in patch 2.3 which adds diminishing returns to silencing effects, we've decided to revert the change. Though we do feel that being chain school locked is a problem and plan to address it at some point in the future, we weren't comfortable with the amount of testing this particular change received. (Eyonix)I really hate to say this, but it almost looks like these forum "revolts" are working. Earlier in this patch cycle we had Paladins making thread after thread about threat reduction, and they got it. Now, Shamans have beat the stuffing out of their own little corner of WoWdom, and poof, here's the change they hated so much removed. Is this really a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, or is it more that the change was bad and that's the cause of both the revolt and the repeal?[thanks, Hybrys]
Blood Pact: Fear kiting 101
Everyone talks about fear being overpowered in PvP, but that's not a discussion we're going to have today No, here we're going to talk about using Fear in PvE situations, where it can easily be just as useful. The main reason for this is that Fear in PvE isn't on diminishing returns. You can cast it until you run out of mana (though it costs 12% of your base mana per cast), and your target will never become immune. Compare this to Fear in PvP, where your target will become immune on your forth attempt to fear it. And while it has a chance of breaking on damage in both PvE and PvP, its maximum duration in PvE is twice as long as its PvP duration (at least it will be as of patch 2.2).With a 20-second duration and no diminishing returns, you can kill nearly anything that you can Fear, and if you want to know how, just keep reading!
