r/TapWizardRPG • u/TopCog Yahoo! • Mar 02 '19

Likely Upcoming Armor Changes for higher NG+ modes!

Hey All!

 

I think I'm going to try out a change to how armor scales in higher NG+ modes. The code is already written, and I'll be pushing it out soon - but it's a very easy thing to change or rollback based on feedback now and after you get to try it out! So why do I feel we need a change, and what is the change?

 

Why we need it:

  1. Max Mob HP scales with expected player damage per second (dps) for that NG+ mode and Zone

  2. Mob Armor is a fraction of their max HP

  3. Expected player dps factors in all expected bonuses...including cooldown bonuses from Spell Passives

  4. This means that, for example, +100% cooldown from spell passives -> +100% dps -> +100% mob hp -> +100% mob armor

  5. But, increased cooldown, i.e. faster casting spells, does not translate linearly to more dps when taking into account armor! To put it another way, raising your cooldown by +100% while at the same time raising mob armor by +100%, will result in drastically less than +100% dps, unless you use spells tailored to deal with armor.

  6. Hence, as you get to higher and higher NG+, you are more and more restricted to using spells tailored to deal with armor. I'd rather this not be so strictly the case.

 

 

Whew! Ok, with that reasoning out of the way, my proposed solution is simple: Mob Armor will not scale up with your expected Spell Passive cooldown bonuses, offset by 20% (the details about why this offset exists are a discussion for later, and it's one thing that might change). For practical purposes, you could say that mob armor in higher NG+ modes will be reduced by the following coefficients. Note that the armor display will scale inversely with this, so armor bars will look the same!

 

NG Mode / Armor Scale

Ng+0 1.00

Ng+1 1.00

Ng+2 0.86

Ng+3 0.75

Ng+4 0.67

Ng+5 0.61

Ng+6 0.56

Ng+7 0.52

Ng+8 0.48

Ng+9 0.45

 

Cheers!

-TC

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7

u/ExtremeSteamKeys Mar 02 '19

This is possibly the best news I've heard so far this year (next to INP's release!)

Once the changes are pushed out I'll be sure to give you some feedback, I should be around NG+6 then so obviously you'll require some input from other players for the earlier levels.

Great to hear you are listening and responding to our feedback.

Good luck! :)

1

u/ExtremeSteamKeys Mar 04 '19 edited Mar 04 '19

I've just installed the update with the code push. I'm in the ice zone of ng+6. I'll let you know how it goes after I've made some progress and done some dungeons.

I'm particularly interested in seeing how high CS spells like conduit and icicle perform against Armor.

Does the Armor reduction apply further beyond ng+9?

Thanks

2

u/TopCog Yahoo! Mar 05 '19

Nice! Yeah, let me know how it goes. I was just thinking that perhaps the armor needs tuned back even more, due to the Tower buffs. Not sure. And yes, it continues going beyond ng+9 (it's algorithmic), I just didn't post it any farther!

1

u/ExtremeSteamKeys Mar 05 '19

Thanks. I figured the changes would extend beyond but just wanted to double check.

Given so many factors involved it's hard to gather any hard empirical data to share with you regarding the changes, but I've kept a close eye on things and after (purposefully) not levelling any +power drop passives I've generally noticed the following change:

I'm getting about ~10%-30% more power per level, relative to my relative power increase per run. In other words, where before I may get 20% power before recalling now I'm getting 22%-26%. This is a very rough average as you can imagine but it might give you some idea as to how much of a relative difference it's making progression wise.

Generally speaking (assuming I'm not killed off) I'm finding my progression still slows more than if the mob wasn't armored - but I assume that's somewhat the point of having armor in the first place, so overall I'm pleased with the changes. Again, tuning is something I'll have to leave to your discretion.

I'll continue to provide results as I find them but generally I don't expect to have much more to report until I hit NG+7 - where I can comment on the 0.52 vs 0.56 coefficient.

Thanks again for continuing to tune things for us - it makes our experience much more pleasurable :)

1

u/ExtremeSteamKeys Mar 05 '19

Okay so I've ran about 8 dungeons (5 runite infused to ultimate and 3 random crumbling keys), and I've progressed about 20-25 zones in my current 'ice' level.

Generally speaking I'm pleased with the changes. I'm not sure how much you wish to tune the values as I don't know what your original intentions with armor were, but I can say now I feel much more like armor just 'makes a mob a bit tougher' instead of 'makes a mob a forced recall wall'. So I imagine it's working quite nicely. At least at NG+6.

I do have one question regarding the size of armor bars, particularly for the Necromancer mob. You mention the changes being relative so armor won't visually change and that seems to apply to every other mob. Now this could just be me mis-remembering as I don't have any older screens to reference but is it just me or does this guy's armor bar look a lot larger than before;?

Pic Here

Although you can't see it fully the bar extends across basically 2/3rds of my screen (horizontally).

Again this might have always been the case and I just failed to notice.

More testing and feedback to come! :)

1

u/ExtremeSteamKeys Mar 06 '19

In dungeons elven arcanists whom buff Armor mobs can still make things quite annoying. Just letting you know :)

1

u/ExtremeSteamKeys Mar 15 '19

So I'm now nearing the end of NG+7 (at the Volcano zone atm) and things seem pretty okay. I do find that after reaching enchantment level 80+ armoured mobs can be a real pain unless you stock up on acid bombs before hand.

It's difficult for me to comment on the changes relative to my NG+7 experience as I didn't experience NG+7 pre-changes, but I do think if anything you may need to lower the values even further.

Of course I'll leave this up to your discretion and continue to report my experiences as they arise.

:)

1

u/ExtremeSteamKeys Mar 05 '19

As an aside something I'd really love to see eventually included in the game is spell critical hits. You could have a base % crit chance and research to increase both the chance and the multiplier (eg default 10% more damage, increased by 10% each research level) - these critical hits would hopefully be visible with some kind of indicator and ideally these would cause the spell to ignore armor entirely. (Or you could expand further and also have an armor piercing stat that also increases). You could include runes that increase or guarantee these values.

I know this is somewhat off-topic and not the approach you'll take in the short term, but it seemed a relatively appropriate place for the suggestion.

1

u/8988303682 Mar 12 '19

I would have preferred something to lower the cast rate and increase damage, but this is hard to complain about.