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Board index » SMITE - Official Forums » SMITE - Beta Forums [Public] » SMITE - Public Test Server » Dec 13th - Dec 16th [Archive]

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The problems with protection and pen.



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 The problems with protection and pen. 
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CAPSLOCKFURY
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Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2012 12:13 pm
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Post The problems with protection and pen.
There's a real problem that a lot of people are bringing up about tanky characters right now. Currently they're just becoming too tanky to take out even with glass cannon builds. A lot of people are blaming this on different things but it's really a problem with how pen is scaling up with protection right now.

Percent penetration items are not new to MOBAs. They're made to be the main counter to high resist targets with the basic idea that eventually penetrating a percentage of a target's resist will be more effective than reducing it by a flat amount. Flat applies before percentage pen - thus makes percentage pen less powerful when the two are combined (but against high resist targets - not enough that it means flat isn't worth it). However, percentage pen is capped - and thus eventually you'll hit a damage cap that you can't pass, meaning the tank will be able to out live your damage, and simply needs to get through your glass defense build. This means that there's counterplay when there are only a couple targets you have to worry about. When you're behind, you buy defense in order to come back.

Other MOBAs however, make you choose when you buy protection. If you're buying tons of magic resist in a MOBA like League, you're buying it without buying health. Meaning while they'll be doing less damage, you'll have a smaller health pool as a result. Similarly, when you stack a lot of resist, you're generally stacking one kind of resist per item, so while you're mitigating the enemy mage by a large percentage, their physical carry will still hurt you quite a bit. It's a system of checks and balances tied to choice. If you choose to limit their mage's damage because he's too strong, you'll still have to watch out for the things you DIDN'T build for.

In the smite PTS - that's not the case.

You've added high resists to almost all tank items, and on a few, you've added every kind of resist. We can now buy lots of health, lots of magic prot, and lots of physical prot all at the same time. Not only that, it becomes even more problematic on items like Mystical Mark - which now gives a considerable amount of every kind of resist and a true damage aura. There's no counter to a true damage aura outside health. So the counter to tanky builds right now, is to build tanky. If you're building tanky items, you can't scale off of your abilities as well - so characters who are reliant on that scaling are starting to fall off, and characters with high bases become far better. The characters with the highest bases are generally the tanky/support characters, thus making them become a problem.

Basically; we now have gotten rid of that system of checks and balances, and decided to go with a "you can have everything!" kind of design when it comes to tanks.

________

If I were to recommend a change on the tank items ATM (that still made them powerful) I'd make resists a choice. Don't let players buy every kind of resist. Make them choose between one or two. (M prot + Health or P prot + Health) If you're going to let an item give all three - scale it down. A good reference item from another moba is something like Aegis of the Legion from league. It gives every kind of resist (health, M prot and P prot) as well as giving a tiny attack boost; but it gives a minor amount. Meaning it's a great midgame item that can make the bruisers and/or tanks looking for cost effective solutions more powerful - but doesn't scale to the unstoppable point that Smite currently has.

If you want to keep current design, you most definitely need to up the penetration current items are giving. 45% is not enough (even with the 15 flat) - it's about on par with league's void staff + haunting (40% + 15), where high resist targets get around 150-180 resist each game. In smite, high resist targets hit somewhere around 230, and often times 230 with 180 of the other. That's an especially relevant example considering Smite is using the same resistance calculation formula: 100/(100+resist). This doesn't even take into account that you can get flat pen from masteries and runes in league, where you can't in smite.
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Sun Dec 16, 2012 5:42 pm
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HERR0
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Post Re: The problems with protection and pen.
Not to mention primary tank items like sovereignty give +30 focus. So on an item like this you get a large amount of the 4 stats a tank/support needs. I feel like if you want 30 focus on one item it should hinder you build some what in terms of the other stats your trying to get. Also the offensive items need a slight price reduction because all of the defensive ones are cheaper.
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Sun Dec 16, 2012 6:14 pm
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gruntmaster1


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Post Re: The problems with protection and pen.
I agree that tank items currently cover too many stats at the same time, giving less of a drawback for selecting one item over another. I also belive that making the items more focused on a specific protection and toning down the health they give is a way to fix it.

In ragards to the cap that you were speaking about, did you mean the hard cap on penetraton? Keep in mind that it only counts for Obsidian Shard and Titans Bane as the rest are debuffs and flat penetration (which I don't belive have a cap). I am not sure if the passives of Spear of the Magus and Demonic Grip stack, as similar passives usually don't do that, though I think that they mentioned that they wanted items to have more synergy, so they might have made it less common.

If the passives stack, you can get this with Spear of the Magus, Obsidian Shard and Demonic Grip:
MPen: 30
MPen%: 33 %
MDeb: 35
MDeb%: 41 %

The final MD (magical protection) would be: ((MD - MDeb) * (1 - MDeb%) - MPen) * (1 - MPen%)
This is assumming debuffs is applied in the same order as penetration. So 300 MD would become 156 MD from the debuffs (what anyone without penetration items would have to deal with) and 97 MD after the penetration is applied. Applying and maintaining the Spear and Demonic passives would be hard and because of the way Spear works, you would only get the full benefit after the 3rd hit with an ability.


Sun Dec 16, 2012 7:17 pm
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MarkyX
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Post Re: The problems with protection and pen.
Unfortunately this is what I was afraid of when I got a first glance of the items.

And I keep saying this, but it seems to go on deaf ears: Forcing players to make tough viable decisions is what gives competitive games depth.

The tank items we currently have are NOT examples of this. They give you everything, therefore it isn't a big deal picking one tankish item over another. Items in this game need to give less things overall. If you want an example of an item that I think you guys should follow, Titan's Bane. Only two things: Damage, and penetration. No "slow down the enemy", no "+30" focus. Just straight up damage and armor pen.

Deathbringer is another example. It's the "go to item" for crits.

Smite needs more items like Deathbringer and Titan's bane that are designed with a very clear purpose. It is up to the players to pick these items to make the build. By having items that specialize for specific goals, players are forced to make decisions and it is a better overall balance. Frostbound hammer, for example, could just be +30 phy damage item with a passive that gives 10% movement reduction as an aura, and 35% movement reduction on hit. It doesn't need attack speed or movement speed to be viable.

Start looking at each item and ask "what problem does this item solve?" Because really, that's what items are in a MOBA: A solution to whatever obstacle the enemy has.
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Sun Dec 16, 2012 7:28 pm
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CAPSLOCKFURY
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Post Re: The problems with protection and pen.
MarkyX wrote:
Unfortunately this is what I was afraid of when I got a first glance of the items.

And I keep saying this, but it seems to go on deaf ears: Forcing players to make tough viable decisions is what gives competitive games depth.

The tank items we currently have are NOT examples of this. They give you everything, therefore it isn't a big deal picking one tankish item over another. Items in this game need to give less things overall. If you want an example of an item that I think you guys should follow, Titan's Bane. Only two things: Damage, and penetration. No "slow down the enemy", no "+30" focus. Just straight up damage and armor pen.

Deathbringer is another example. It's the "go to item" for crits.


I'm pretty sure they're moving toward doing this, actually. A lot of the items have had stats removed as if to say, "look, this item only does this." The problem is - a lot of those changes aren't thoroughly explored. For example, Spear of the Magus: The health is completely gone on this item, it's now all about penetration and damage, similar to obsidian. It's an "If you pick this, you're picking it for damage, not utility" item.

Look at Frostbound - again, no longer has health. It's now entirely based on speed. It makes them slower whilst making you faster - adding to the feeling of the slow. It also gives focus, which theoretically makes the rest of their CC better, etc.

The problem is - most of the "choice" now, is "Do you want to tank? Here have everything." and, "Do you want to do damage? Here, have everything." Focus just seems randomly dispersed in the tank items and on other items that were lacking a bit before.

If I want to tank I should have to choose when building between resisting their magic or their physical - I shouldn't be able to build significant amounts of both AND health.

If I want to do damage, I should have different kinds of damage options to choose from, IE: Do I want to crit/auto attack or do I want to be a phys caster? Do I want to sustain in a fight, or do I want to be the biggest nuke possible? League has this with things like Triforce vs Infinity Edge on Ezreal, or Rabadon's rush vs Wota rush.

gruntmaster1 wrote:
The final MD (magical protection) would be: ((MD - MDeb) * (1 - MDeb%) - MPen) * (1 - MPen%)
This is assumming debuffs is applied in the same order as penetration. So 300 MD would become 156 MD from the debuffs (what anyone without penetration items would have to deal with) and 97 MD after the penetration is applied. Applying and maintaining the Spear and Demonic passives would be hard and because of the way Spear works, you would only get the full benefit after the 3rd hit with an ability.


With the damage that's being pumped out even with full penetration builds against high resist targets - I seriously doubt it's working like that. And if that is how it was supposed to work - it's not working properly.

The percentage debuff on spear I'm pretty certain is being applied after flat. It's also either applying before %pen, or it's stacking muliplicatively on it - thus making it worse. I don't think there's much synergy going on ATM.
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Sun Dec 16, 2012 7:45 pm
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Horrighon


Joined: Sun Nov 18, 2012 3:25 pm
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Post Re: The problems with protection and pen.
I think they had a good idea of what they wanted to do and a lot of items now show more what the intention behind them is but, as you said, they went a bit over the top with tank items. Tanking items were a bit closer to being balanced before but there really was a lack of proper Magic Defence items. They should be as much of a strategic choice as other items and it seems they may have forgotten that or were just seeing how it would go this way.

I'm sure they've got a lot of feedback about it now though. Hopefully it'll show next time we can get in the PTS.


Sun Dec 16, 2012 8:17 pm
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HirezShadowControl

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Post Re: The problems with protection and pen.
Penetration is % first then flat. Some items (I think spear of magus) did not work properly.


Sun Dec 16, 2012 9:14 pm
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Narrian
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Post Re: The problems with protection and pen.
CAPSLOCKFURY wrote:

________

If I were to recommend a change on the tank items ATM (that still made them powerful) I'd make resists a choice. Don't let players buy every kind of resist. Make them choose between one or two. (M prot + Health or P prot + Health) If you're going to let an item give all three - scale it down. A good reference item from another moba is something like Aegis of the Legion from league. It gives every kind of resist (health, M prot and P prot) as well as giving a tiny attack boost; but it gives a minor amount. Meaning it's a great midgame item that can make the bruisers and/or tanks looking for cost effective solutions more powerful - but doesn't scale to the unstoppable point that Smite currently has.


It's also an aura item that buffs allies around you armor/magic resist.

But, it also has a new upgrade able item(Runic Bulwark). 400hp/20armor/30MR and the aura is 10armor/30mr/15hp5.

While i agree with your points i was just pointing out that with S3, the item has changed and it does now scale.
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Sun Dec 16, 2012 9:38 pm
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expman


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Post Re: The problems with protection and pen.
HirezShadowControl wrote:
Penetration is % first then flat. Some items (I think spear of magus) did not work properly.

so you guys changed it then? it used to be flat then percent.


Sun Dec 16, 2012 9:41 pm
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CAPSLOCKFURY
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Post Re: The problems with protection and pen.
HirezShadowControl wrote:
Penetration is % first then flat. Some items (I think spear of magus) did not work properly.


Spear most certainly wasn't working, or at least not well.

And I thought there was another HiRez post on the forums saying it was flat then %. If it runs % first followed by flat - you're going to cause a ton of problems with heavy penetration builds on burst casters.

Narrian wrote:
It's also an aura item that buffs allies around you armor/magic resist.

But, it also has a new upgrade able item(Runic Bulwark). 400hp/20armor/30MR and the aura is 10armor/30mr/15hp5.

While i agree with your points i was just pointing out that with S3, the item has changed and it does now scale.


Fair outside the fact that Runic only upgrades MR and health from its purchase. Aegis' armor value doesnt change from the extra purchase. That, and it's fairly expensive as an upgrade.

It wouldn't be a problem if a base item gave 10 armor 20 MR, and we could upgrade it to a tier 2 10 armor 40 MR. They're 2 protections, but your money is going toward favoring one, rather than just buffing the item up as a whole. =/
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Sun Dec 16, 2012 10:09 pm
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