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Neverwinter

Combat Rework

By Julia (nitocris83) | Fri 04 Dec 2020 11:08:29 AM PST

We are working on some upcoming combat changes which are available for early looks on the preview server right now. There is a good amount of information to cover. We will cover a lot of the details here and there will be posts in the preview forums for specific topics.

 

GOALS

Improved Scaling – Scaling should be seamless and smooth so that players don’t need to focus on it. These changes will allow that to happen both when scaling down and up. And players will no longer have to make gear changes when scaled to maximize their stats.

Easier to Understand – The live setup of our ratings leaves a lot of players asking others what numbers they should be aiming for in different content. It wasn’t easy to know what your percentages were.

Item Level More Accurate – We’ve had the measure of Item Level for a long time, but due to some different setups it wasn’t a solid measure of where a given character was and how they’d perform in various content.

Easier to Gear Up – It can be a challenge for a lot of players to get the correct mix of stats with their different gearing options. Players should be able to equip gear to get to a given item level and be able to complete that content without having to micromanage all of their individual stats.

Keep Options for Creative and Min/Max Builds – With all of the above, we also wanted to leave players plenty of avenues to customize their characters as well as fine tune their stats to optimize their builds. We needed to be careful with our changes to gearing up to not remove this element of the game from our most dedicated players. 

Those are some pretty big goals so let’s dive in to how we’re tackling improvements in those areas.

 

  

CHANGES

Ratings

The most requested changes from players was to have their stat percentages on their character sheet and to have their ratings not change when scaled. Those two aspects became our main focus and the core of our current changes.

Rating caps are now based on your Total Item Level. If your Total Item Level is 50,000, then each rating has a cap of 50,000 as well. They are always a 1 to 1 match. When a rating is at the cap it grants 50%. Each 1,000 your rating is below your Total Item Level is a 1% reduction from that Cap.

If you have 50,000 Total Item Level and have a Defense Rating of 45,000, then you have 45% Defense from ratings.

If you have 40,000 Total Item Level and have a Defense Rating of 30,000, then you have 40% Defense from ratings.

 

These ratings work the same in all content, even when scaled. This means when you’re character sheet says you have 45% Defense, no matter where your character goes, you will have 45% Defense. When scaled, your ratings still work off of your unscaled item level. This was the most requested change to scaling that players have asked for and we developed a system to make the possible throughout the game.

 

The only stats that change on the player when scaled are base Damage and Maximum Hit Points.

To improve scaling, tackle making Item Level more accurate, and to make it easier for players to gear up, we changed how base damage and hit points are calculated. Now both of these stats are based off of your Total Item Level.

 

Maximum Hit Points are your Total Item Level * 10 (tanks get a 20% bonus to that number, Healers get a 10% bonus).

Base Damage is your Total Item Level / 10 (DPS get a 20% bonus to that value, Healers get a 10% bonus).

 

These values work off of your scaled item level. If you have 50,000 Item Level and are a DPS then you have a base 500,000 Maximum Hit Points and 6,000 Base Damage. If you then go into content that is scaled to 20,000 Item Level than your base Maximum Hit Points changes to 200,000 and your Base Damage changes to 2,400.

 

Players now start with a 5,000 base Total Item Level which gives new players their initial stats and gives all players more health and damage. If you have nothing equipped anywhere on your character, you have 5,000 Item Level.

 

Players can have a total of 90% in any rating. 50% of that can come from Ratings and the rest comes from other sources such as Boons, Ability Scores, Racial Bonuses, Companion ACBs, and Player Powers. Both the rating value and the total percentage are shown on the character sheet.

 

Equipment

As mentioned above, your base damage now comes from your total item level. This means that weapons no longer provide damage. They still provide stats, item level, and equip bonuses as they always have.

There were other changes made to gear as well. The first is that, like Mount Passive powers after their recent update, most items now give a large portion of their item level as Combined Rating. This makes it easier for players to gear up generally as it gives a wide even distribution of stats. Items still give specific ratings as well which allows players to customize their characters and their stat spreads.

We’ve raised the item level of enchantments, runestones, and insignias to help them be a more meaningful part of the character as item levels in other areas have increased over time. These changes apply automatically to all of these existing items.

 

Companions

Companions have also had some changes. One of the biggest hurdles to making Item Level a more exact measure of a character was Bonding Runestones. Because these offered a varying amount of stats based on equipment, runestones, and the quality of the companion itself, their item level was never on the same scale as other sources. Bonding Runestones were also a hurdle to new players as it was the most meaningful improvement you could make to your character which was both unintuitive and resource expensive.

We removed Bonding Runestones from companions and turned off Companion Influence. In response to that we increased the Item Level of companions significantly so that a companion provides a much larger amount of stats directly. Companion stat transfer stats to players at a 100% rate.

There is an exchange in Protector’s Enclave where you can trade your Bonding Runestones in for either another Enchantment/Runestone of the same rank, or directly for AD.

Augment Companions will grant 85% of their Item Level to Combined Rating and the remaining percent split across the 3 bonus stats they previously gave. Fighting companions will give 85% of their Item Level to Combined Rating, the remaining percent is accounting for the damage they provide in combat.

Companion powers have also had an increase in item level. Like other items they grant a portion of their item level to combined rating. In addition, they grant other stats directly as a percentage instead of a rating. This allows them to better compliment your equipment by not competing with ratings. Their item level is based on their associated companion item level.

Companions no longer have levels. They still have quality ranks that players can upgrade which now go up to Mythic rank like mounts. Their bolster total has also been increased to a maximum of 100% with 10% per Legendary and 20% per Mythic. The top 5 quality companions per category are still the ones counted for bolster.

Fighting companions take their base stats from their owner to help them be a useful extension of the player in combat. The Companion Stat Panel now shows the ratings the companion is giving to their owner.

 

Boons

Boons no longer give item level and their stats are applied to the final percentage to make them better bonuses for players which compliment gear instead of competing with it.

 

Racial Bonuses

Racial Bonuses also give their stats to the final percentage. Many have been boosted up to give players more interesting options with their character building.

 

Player Power Magnitudes

One concern with the recent Mount Update was that mount powers were too strong compared to player powers.

We’ve increased the magnitude of player damage powers and slightly increased the base Action Point Gain rate to make player powers feel better.

 

Stats

We adjusted some of the stats on the character panel and moved some from Utility to Ratings.

All Ratings now cap at 50% from ratings and 90% total from all sources, including Power and Combat Advantage. This is how Defense and some other stats already worked on live. Ratings provided up to 50% and they had a cap of 90% from other sources. We made all stats uniform to have one ruleset.

 

Total Item Level (TIL) – the combined item level from all sources

Maximum Hit Points – Base is TIL * 10. Tanks get a 20% bonus to base, Healers get 10% bonus. Other sources add on top of this value.

Damage – Base it TIL / 10. DPS get a 20% bonus to base, Healers get a 10% bonus.

 

Ratings:

Rating cap = TIL

Power – works as it did before, now capped like other ratings.

Defense – works as it did before

Armor Penetration – this rating has been removed from the game.

Critical Strike – works as it did before

Critical Severity – is now a rating. Most sources of Armor Penetration were swapped to add Critical Severity.

Critical Avoidance – this now reduces Critical Severity instead of Critical Strike.

Deflect – works as it did before

Deflect Severity – a new rating which increases how much damage is reduced when deflecting. This previously existed behind the scenes for the most part.

Accuracy – now reduces Deflect Severity

Awareness – works as it did before

Combat Advantage – works as it did before, now capped at the same value as other ratings

Incoming Healing – is now a rating, but the end result works as it did before

Outgoing Healing – is now a rating, but the end result works as it did before

Control Bonus – is now a rating, but the end result works as it did before

Control Resistance – is now a rating, but the end result works as it did before

Forte – new stat which will be covered below

 

Utility:

All of the listed Utility Ratings work as they did before. Included here for completeness of the character stat list

Action Point Gain

Recharge Speed

Movement Speed

Stamina Regeneration

Magical Damage Boost

Physical Damage Boost

XP Bonus

Gold Bonus

Glory Bonus

 

Companion Influence sources were changed, check specific items for the stats but enchantments were changed to grant Forte.

 

Forte:

Forte is a new stat which works different for each Paragon Path. It is a stat which reflects the strength of your particular paragon path and applies to different stats for each path. The total percentage amount of Forte is split across the stats.

 

   Paragon

   50% Stat

   25% Stat 1

   25% Stat 2

Assassin

Power

Critical Severity

Deflect Severity

Whisperknife

Power

Combat Advantage

Awareness

Arcanist

Power

Combat Advantage

Deflect

Thaumaturge

Power

Critical Strike

Critical Avoidance

Hunter

Power

Accuracy

Awareness

Warden

Power

Critical Strike

Deflect

Hellbringer

Power

Combat Advantage

Awareness

SoulWeaver

Soulweave Regen

Combat Advantage

Critical Avoidance

Devout

Divinity Regen

Accuracy

Deflect

Arbiter

Power

Critical Severity

Awareness

Justicar

Defense

Critical Strike

Awareness

Oathkeeper

Divnity Regen

Accuracy

Awareness

Blademaster

Power

Critical Sev

Deflect Severity

Sentinel

Defense

Deflect Sev

Critical Severity

Dreadnought

Power

Accuracy

Critical Avoidance

Vanguard

Defense

Deflect

Accuracy

  

What You Will See On Login

  • When you log in for the first time after these changes you will see a few things:
  • Your Total Item Level will be higher
  • Your Bonding Runestones will be in your inventory and can be exchanged in PE
  • You will have a respec for your character
  • Your stats may be slightly different
  • You should be able to jump into any of the content you previously could play and play it without issue.

 

 

Preview

This is a lot of information to take in. One of the best ways to get a better understanding of these changes is to jump onto the Preview server and try them out.

A lot of these changes can still be adjusted. We want your feedback and we are looking to make improvements to make sure this is a positive and fun change for the game. And of course we’re looking for any bugs so we can get them fixed up before this gets live.

There will be many threads setup in the Preview Forums. We welcome all of your feedback.

 

Jared Sears
Lead Systems Designer

 

Accessing the Preview (Mimic) server

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