EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

March 01, 2013

NEW CHANGES/FEATURES:

• New Cores
  • Nanosteel Armor
    Decreases the ignored defense of incoming Critical Strikes by 8%
  • Plasma Meteor
    Disintegrate an enemy with cosmic debris, increasing weapon damage by 110%
  • Dead Battery
    Due to some last minute issues that came up with this core it wasn't quite ready for today. We plan to have them resolved by next week's update.

• Your current item now remains selected when equipping and unequipping items

• New Concussive Shot animation

• Websites are now filtered in chat

BALANCE CHANGES:

GENERAL

• Primary, Gun, Auxiliary damage
  This change is designed to help with weapon damage on builds with very high amounts of a single stat. For more details see the final section of the Patch Notes labeled "Diminishing Returns."
  • The amount of stats you need per point of damage has increased. This will be most noticeable in builds with more than 85 points in Strength or Support.

• Base Energy
  We felt that characters were getting too much free energy, preventing the need to stat for it. This change is a first step for helping with this.
  • Base Energy increases by 1 every 5 levels, from 1 every 2 levels
  • This will decrease base Energy at level 35 by 10

SKILLS

• Bloodlust
  • Increased lifesteal by 4% at all levels

• Malfunction
  This change brings Malfunction in line with Smoke Screen. Malfunction was stronger to account for the old, faster scaling of Resistance.
  • Technology debuff lowered by 3 at all levels

• Fireball
  • Energy cost lowered by 2 at all levels

• Plasma Bolt
  This skill was doing a bit too much damage for the cost, and the lack of a requirement allowed Tech Mages to overperform at low levels.
  • Energy cost increased by 2 at all levels
  • Added Strength requirement (15 - 33 depending on level)

• Defense Matrix
  This skill was providing a bit too much defense on Support builds without needed to put many points into it
  
  • Gains an extra point of defense every 4.5 Support, up from 4

CORES
These cores were giving a bit more free power than intended. These changes are designed to bring them more in line.

• Azrael's Will
  • Lowered damage on use from 100% to 85%

• Azrael's Torment
  • Lowered damage on use from 100% to 85%

• Massive Strike
  • Lowered defense ignore from 15% to 10%

BUGS FIXED:

• Changed Mercenary Power Armor name to Metal Marine. Tech Mage Power Armor unchanged.
• Fixed discrepancies in skill details between level 0 and level 1
• Name changes were not being reflected in the Gold Yeti Leaderboard
• Stat required could incorrectly show up red in battle under certain circumstances

NOTE: Diminishing Returns

For those unaware, there is a system in place to make stats less effective as they pass certain thresholds (55 stats, and again at 85 stats). For example, in the last update, you needed 4.5 Strength to get 1 point of weapon damage. After reaching 55 Strength, you would then need 5.5 Strength to get each extra point of damage. Finally, after 85 Strength, you would need 6.5 Strength per point of damage.

So the “diminishing returns” of Primary and Gun damage was (4.5 → 5.5 → 6.5). In this patch, the diminishing returns for Primary, Gun, and Auxiliary damage was changed to (4.5 → 6 → 8). This means that builds with less than 85 points in a single stat will see at most a small change in damage, while those with more than 85 points in Strength / Support may see a more noticeable drop in their Primary / Gun / Aux damage.

Tags: RabbleFroth Patch Notes