Agility feels too random and weaker in relation to Defence

[bright flame]

In my eyes, the current current agility dodge system is flawed and leads to many people having misgivings about high agility low defence builds.

As of right now I'm using a build with around 140 Agility (~75% dodge chance) and 0 defence, resulting in the following ehp calculations:

• Effective HP: 31923
• Effective HP (no agi): 10565

If i were to instead use a build with 140 defence (~68% damage reduction) 0 agility i would get the following ehp calculations:

• Effective HP: 32782
• Effective HP (no agi): 32782

While both of these cases have similar ehp values, it is safe to assume most people would rather use the latter build.

Why?
In this case, due to the randomness associated with agility dodges, a 75% chance to dodge instead feels like a % chance to get hit twice in a row (or more) with only 10k ehp.

In an example where you take 4 hits (same damage), the odds that 2 or more of them don't get dodged in a row is around 13.3% (this would increase for longer hit "chains", which is usually what happens in game during, for example, a lootrun challenge or a raid challenge room). Unfortunately, taking quick successive hits at 10k ehp is usually a death sentence to most archetypes.

Meanwhile, with a defence heavy approach those 4 hits would always result in taking equally damaging hits for a total equivalent damage of 1.28 hits at 10k ehp. This results in a much better survival chance since each hit will be relatively weaker and the burst damage window will be much greater, allowing for more time to react appropriately by either escaping from danger or healing.

My proposal
The only other game similar to wynncraft that i have any experience with would be Path of Exile (an ARPG) which has similar defensive mechanics with amour (defence, outside the scope of this post) and evasion (agility).

The evasion system works in a very intuitive/interesting manner, it still works based off of a % chance of dodging a hit but instead utilizes an entropy based calculation system for whether a hit gets dodged or not, resulting in a much more deterministic approach to dodging.

You can read more about it on the game's wiki but the basics of the system would work as following:

• When first attacked (or if the last attack was a while ago) a random entropy value is rolled between 0-99.
• To calculate whether an attack hits or not, add (100 - dodge chance) to your entropy value.
• If the resulting entropy value exceeds 100, subtract 100 from the value and the attack registers as a hit, otherwise it is dodged.

Here's an example using 70% dodge chance:

The player is attacked, their starting entropy counter is randomly assigned between 0-99, in this case 83.

• The first hit adds 30 to the counter, raising it to 100 or greater, and therefore doesn't get dodged. 100 is subtracted and the entropy is now at 13.
• The second hit adds another 30 to the counter, for a total of 43 (dodged).
• Third hit adds 30, entropy of 73 (dodged).
• Fourth hit adds 30, entropy of 103, doesn't get dodged and entropy is now at 3.
• The 5th, 6th, and 7th hit would be a dodge
• The 8th hit doesn't get dodged
  The player runs away for some time (say for example like 1 or 2 seconds) without getting hit, so a new starting entropy counter will be rolled on the next attack. (ensuring the first attack in a chain is always random and not a guaranteed dodge from being hit by the previous attack that happened long ago).

Pros and Cons

+ What results from this is that having 75% dodge chance, which basically means 1 in 4 chance to get hit, will result in you always getting hit exactly once out of every 4 attacks.

+ Removes/heavily diminishes the feeling of randomness associated with high agility playstyles, making survivability more dependent on player input and less so on a slot machine gambling system.

+ Brings Agility closely in line with Defence in terms of consistent defensive power, for example in our first 4 hit example you would always be receiving 1.30 hits at 10k ehp in comparison with Defence's 1.28 hits.

+ Somewhat maintains the High-Risk High-Reward playstyle of heavy agility investment playstyles, while also making it more deterministic

+ what @sky said here #1283389962624176179 message

- Only way I see this being implemented is if max dodge chance is reduced to bellow 75%, in which case we would be gaining less ehp from agility but that ehp would certainly feel more "real" than the current version

- dev time 😭

PS: I will eventually post this on the forums when i have the time

[calm gale]

I would agree if there was a like emoji to click

[bright flame]

added

[calm gale]

yay

[unique imp]

i always was annoyed by agility. unless you already have a metric ass load of EHP, you have to play the game as if you have 0 agility because agi not proccing on a low HP build easily spells death. it's so frustrating. hope this thread does well

[untold marten]

This seems very much like just a flat reduction in hits taken, not a dodge system.
Yoy would always be taking 1/4th of the hits consistently, which I don't think works well.
Maybe a similar system but instead of just a flat "100 - 70 dodge chance" make it "160-80 roll - 70 dodge chance" which would add more randomness to it.

Also, the reason Agility is the way it is is because defence is the stronger defensive option, while agility allows for higher damage and higher mobility. It has its role in the game.
I agree it could be a lot better, since the idea is to play high damage with risky sustain but if you really want ehp you build defence

Also consider how this would pair when you add defence to it. It would pretty much negate damage unless you made dodged attacks do 50% of their intended damage (bypassing defence) instead of the current 90%

(That would actually make for some very interesting playstyles since hypertank would be more complex than just 150 def/agi. Agi would be compromising the def)

[bright flame]

1. Well, yeah, that's what dodging is, it allows you to not receive certain hits, this system just reduces the randomness (it's still there, the first hit in a chain is completely random and will determine how the following hits will behave in a way you cant fully predict) adding even more randomness into it kinda defeats the point of this system, keep in mind you cannot really control whether the dodge is going to trigger on a heavier hit or a weaker one, while playing you will be receiving various hits, some really weak and some really strong, this system might make you "waste" your dodges on weaker ones just to be hit by one of the big ones.
   Also your proposed values are incredibly unfair (and just a straight up nerf to how agility works by around -20% dodge chance)?? i dont know if you're missing some kind of scaling factor but that just makes any build with less than 60% dodge chance liable to getting hit 3 or more times in a row (kinda defeats the point of this proposal...)

2. read the first negative point in the Pros and Cons part

also "if you really want ehp you build defence"... wow ok thats certainly a take

3. it would be the exact same it is right now? when you dont dodge you rely on defence, nothing would change... Also the current 10% damage for dodged hits is totally fine? Also this would just make investing into agility wildly unviable if you have more than like 50sp in defense? I dont think there should be any counter synergy within the skill point system... also this makes any FA item completely ass...

[exotic kayak]

what about warrior counter?

[bright flame]

I mean unlike agility you don't really rely on counter procs for survivability (taking 10% damage or 0% seems kinda negligible in most use cases) so in my eyes there is no need to adapt this system for counter, keep that as being a completely random dice roll

[exotic kayak]

you can get 70% counter chance max tho

[north inlet]

Okay but why do you want that much randomness who notices agi procs most of the time anyway

[bright flame]

ok? i fail to see your point here

[gritty quiver]

80 actually (with max aspect)

[exotic kayak]

yeah forgot its 30 + 30 + 20

[bright flame]

I still don't see how this affects counter in any way 😭 on average you're dodging the same ammount of hits with this system and the currently implemented one... This is no way changes the ehp gain from counter or alter it's average dps...

[glass escarp]

good idea unfortunately air item dps 😁

[bright shale]

Agility is satan

[bright flame]

yeah air items being hilariously strong doesnt quite help, but there's always the option of nerfing the %dodge scaling from sp down to like 65-70% at 150sp. This would atleast prevent people from being randomly smited by god himself and taking 3 hits in a row with high agi

[bright shale]

I use divzer to cancel out all possible agi

[bright shale]

War 😭

[bright flame]

It's dead anyways 😭 8 emseek 💀

[untold marten]

Because unless the skill was turned into a simple "you only take 30% of hits" its too consistent
That's exactly what this post is asking for.
After your initial "random roll" you have a flat increase every time, meaning you can accurately predict exactly what hits you will be taking.
Another layer of randomness would fix that but again, at that point you have agi as is.

Basically, I read this post as a request for agi to be a static "you take [dodge chance] hits out of 100" which would be far too broken

[bright flame]

Well I'm asking for it to be more consistent... being unlucky and getting hit 3 times in a row with 140agi doesnt really make me feel like i died from a missplay

Its only 100% predictable if you have values like 50% or 75% dodge, for all other values it behaves relatively randomly, sometimes you dodge 3 in a row, sometimes you dodge 2 in a row, you wouldnt really be able to tell, just look at my example, hits 2 and 3 were dodged, then hits 5, 6 and 7 were dodged...

That's basically how it behaves when you average it out... this just makes it more usable for builds with less than like 12k ehp (no agi)

[sturdy wadi]

i like the idea of it being more consistent and having the entropy value reset after not being hit for a while, lets you go in with a knowledge you can take some hits and then back out and wait for it to reset

[glass escarp]

war

[shy summit]

gamblers will dislike this idea 🤑 🤑 🎰 🎰 🃏

[bright flame]

5k ehp 1 agi builds should be meta 😡🤑🎲

[bright shale]

old rage gma 😢

[gilded path]

While I do this suggestion would make agility better, I still think agility would be way too random to pick over defense.

[gilded path]

And even then, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of how many times you get hit in a row anyway in most situations due to tick damage and generally how chaotic fights can get, especially in raids and world events.

[bright flame]

The intended use wouldn't ever be to try to keep track of how many hits you have taken/dodged since this would be straight up impossible in most end game scenarios, it just serves to give you more time between each highly damaging hit so you can have more time to react to imminent danger

[bright shale]

8k non agi ehp 40k agi ehp
9k dmg rngs dying randomly
40k def ehp
9k dmg can tank 4x

[gilded path]

So you’re saying that you’ll never have to worry about being unlucky by agility not proccing 3 times in a row or something?

[bright flame]

Ok but 8k non agi 40k agi is just not reasonably

[gilded path]

With enough agility

[bright shale]

:warp:

or other heavy agi weapons

stratiformis even

[bright flame]

You would still get hit equally as often but you would never get hit 3 times in a row

[gilded path]

Ah, I see

[bright flame]

Thats like 11k 33k

[gilded path]

Damn that’s a really good suggestion

[bright shale]

ok then 8k non agi ehp 30k agi ehp
30k def ehp tanks 3 9ks while agi risks imploding randomly

[gilded path]

I always wanted agility to be about increasing your base speed and/or stamina, but this works a lot better with the current game.

[bright flame]

I'm just shamelessly copying the system used in path of exile

[gilded path]

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery :3

[bright shale]

weathered build i found

still dies to half the tna random projectiles on bad rng

[bright flame]

Yeah but its never a one shot, it's always 2 or more very quick hits

[bright shale]

you start to get a good feel of what agi rng is when you war really hard hqs
bad agi rng = death no matter what

[bright flame]

Which this change would mitigate

[gilded path]

Do you think defense would still outclass agility even though it’s theoretically the same ehp?

[bright flame]

Yes

[bright shale]

agi gets walkspeed
defense gets crusade sabatons

[bright flame]

Agi items are very strong

[bright shale]

trance builds are like -30ws

[gilded path]

But as a stat more so

[bright shale]

yeah but its a really crucial stat to the point where an entire raid (tna) revolves around having positive walkspeed

[bright flame]

Uhh not would (i dont really know if it would be better, some testing would be needed) but defence should still be better than agi for defence related purposes

[bright shale]

only builds that can afford to not run high walkspeed are divzer and trance

[gilded path]

There’s no other hybrid non-agi builds with decent walkspeed? I would think thunder items would also have some.

[bright flame]

Delirium

[bright shale]

trance runs crabs/frenzied mockery etf and divzer runs pure dmg cause its a waste not to

[primal rock]

No ws insid 3 sounds unsafe (divz)

[bright flame]

Because it is, the point is you deal enough dmg to compensate for possibly dying early

[bright shale]

tower does displayed damage and can randomly crit
these are the stats of a hard hq
108-160k dmg 4.7 times a second
random crits are 2x dmg
a high roll crit would do effectively 320k dmg
thats enough to oneshot all guard builds (maybe through mantle too) if no agi proc

[primal rock]

That’s dumb and not pfinder friendly

[bright flame]

Yeah thats why he runs it in guild raids

[bright shale]

i used to run et cata nuke greg for 11m hp and die on pre 2.1 💔

[gilded path]

That seems more so that the damage is way overturned.

Because even with agility there’s a chance you’ll die anyway

[bright shale]

no that hq is pretty easily healed and both guards have second chance
so it is a sort of safety barrier against cringe

[gilded path]

Gotcha

[bright shale]

i lied its not easily healed but it is doable

[primal rock]

Anyway slightly off-topic but I would argue that same amount of Agi and Def should give more EHP in favor of Agi

[bright shale]

used to be equal pre agi nerf
because agi used to fully nullify dmg
now it makes you take 10%

[bronze jacinth]

Tna can be crabs monsterd

[bright shale]

thats effectively a tank build

same as saying you can do tcc as statue guardian melee

[primal rock]

And I would still consider Agi to be equal to ETW then cause rng

[bright flame]

Yeah with like 5 digit dps 💀

[bright shale]

i use divzer chaoswoven to cleanse my stats of the evil skill point

[bronze jacinth]

Idk my success rate is high since i can solo when everyone die at 1st phase watchdd

[bright shale]

yeah but it takes 3-5 business days

[simple current]

they are still equal, the only thing is that with agility you have the risk of taking more damage at specific points, but over time they are equal

[bright flame]

You can solo without having the fight take 15mins

[bright shale]

isnt agi "dodge" a 90% dmg reduction instead of 100%

[bronze jacinth]

Better than getting rng skulld on warp

[bright shale]

rather run etw divzer and die on first watched because i am shit at the game

[bright flame]

Certainly it averages out over time but that would be assuming we have infinite hp, since our hp is limited an unlucky streak with dodges very easily results in a death for an agi user

[bright shale]

150 def vs 150 agi on another class
idk that doesnt seem equal

[tender hedge]

First off, while I agree with the concept here, allow me to elaborate a bit.
Clarification from back when stat points were changed 3-5? years ago. The main reason CT gave back then was: "making a def/agi hybrid is giving too much sustain and we need to differentiate between what 'def' is and what 'agi' is." That's a very summarized version but I think it gets the point across.

[finite cave]

pre 2.0 agi is just busted

[tender hedge]

Well, not exactly

Def and Agi were very similar back then, but taking 50 def and 50 agi gave more ehp than taking 100 def or 100 agi, was the problem

[bright flame]

Imma be real with you I dont think theres a single meta build running Def Agi (besides like rainbow slap...), I also dont see how this proposed change would in any way make agi too similar to def besides just being a bit more consistent

[tender hedge]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against the idea. I'm just saying that they had reasons for making it into what it is now and if you want to change it, you have to find a way that also works alongside those reasons. If the idea you've already proposed works for that, great. If it doesn't, you're going to have a tough time getting the idea passed.

[teal helm]

Poe is really nice about it

[bright flame]

Imagine if poe evasion wasnt entropy based and instead just rng like wynn 💀

80% evasion builds straight up evaporating in the presence of precision aura rare mob

[sour topaz]

remove it 🙏 give bmonk a new ability

[shy summit]

it honestly feels more like a paladin skill, being hit to benefit from that

[glass pond]

Remove

[tidal portal]

Agree with this post 100%, and I would argue it’s been particularly exacerbated by the design structure of current raids (can’t speak to other content).

It feels like most raids focus on a few hard-hitting but telegraphed attacks (e.g greg swipes, roar, tna worms, tcc meteors, lazers). This is the perfect scenario for a defense meta because if you fail to maneuver, you’ll consistently survive and can just heal up in the time between the next attack. Compare this to agi where you have to gamble on survival each time. Agi only shines with many smaller attacks, where the law of large numbers has a chance to apply within the context of a single raid. It seems misguided to suggest that they’ll always be equivalent in the long run because of this structure.

[bright flame]

posted to the forums https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/slight-rework-to-agility.318893/

[sour topaz]

epic

[hoary coral]

Agility's inherent risk is counteracted by having significantly stronger items than def. Positive walk speed instead of negative, positive damage instead of negative, higher base damage, ...
Meanwhile def shines with higher reliability and health sustain

I am not opposed to this change though, just wanted to point that out. If agi gets changed to not be as risky it might have to come with according nerfs.

[untold marten]

I don't think anyone is actually opposed, but yes it would change the balance of the game significantly

[hoary coral]

It could also be abused in other ways: Getting exactly 75% dodge chance, intentionally getting hit on 3 hits, then dodging everything so you're able to tank a big hit

Sounds impractical but in some scenarios (annihilation specifically) it could definitely be a viable strategy

Since Anni hits slowly and predictable, and you can get small hits by walking back towards minions

[untold marten]

Me when wynntils makes a "dodged bar" that shows you how many hits you can take

[bright flame]

they would need to have access to your current entropy counter (which they probably wont lol)

[bright flame]

the whole getting hit intentionally gets counteracted by

• really not an easy thing to do lol
• lower entropy counter reset time requirements would make these "free dodges" only available for like 1 or 2 seconds of not getting hit

[untold marten]

No, they wouldn't. It would take 4 hits at most to calibrate since you have a consistent increase. You don't roll entropy every time you're hit, only the first time. After that your decay is consistent

[hoary coral]

It could simply count how often you get hit

[bright flame]

this would only work for dodge chances that are like exactly 50% or 75%, for any other values the starting entropy value affects it enough to where you would need more than 4 hits

also any information it gets is gone after 1 or 2 seconds of not being hit...

[untold marten]

And in situations like orphions roar?

Taking 1/4th of the hits would be fine for even low hp builds

[bright flame]

you get hit so many times it would functionally be the same as the current system

all this system does is prevent unlucky streaks of many undodged hits and lucky streaks of many dodged hits (no more 10 dodges in a row lol)

[hoary coral]

Say you have 62.5%, it would be alternating for 8 hits and then you'd get an extra dodge right

Or would it be partly fixed partly random?

[bright flame]

you wouldnt know when the extra dodge comes

until it happens once, then you could predict

[hoary coral]

Oh you'd want that to reset after 1-2s? So when dodging everything and only getting hit frequently agi never procs, or agi always procs? Or a chance, the way it is now?

I like the idea of making agi more reliable but I just don't think it can be executed well

[hoary coral]

And players would be upset about dps nerfs

(or without nerfs agi would just be the better def)

[sour topaz]

ingo u dont have agi's formula by any change?

like what sp-->dodge chance

[bright flame]

wiki has it

just search for agility

[hoary coral]

No

[bright flame]

ok so, if you havent taken a hit in like 1 or 2 seconds, the game will roll a random value between 0-99 on your first hit

it will then add 100-dodge chance to this value every time you get hit

when it goes over 100 it counts as a hit and you subtract 100

the way this works is that the first hit is completely random (if you have 63.5% dodge chance your first hit will have a 63.5% dodge chance

and in average, if your agility gives you like a chance of being hit 1 in every 2.74 hits, it means that you will only be hit once for every 2.74 consecutive hits you take (sometimes you will dodge 1 and then get hit, sometimes you will dodge 2 and then get hit)

[sour topaz]

i went there, but didnt see it initially. i see now that it's in the "notes" tab, not the "agi" tab

[bright flame]

what determines whether you will dodge 1 or 2 hits is the entropy value rolled on the first hit, which basically means that this will be random and not predictable.

This system will thus still average out to the intended dodge chance while avoiding lucky or unlucky streaks of too many consecutive dodges/hits

you dont even have to explain this system when implementing, you can just showcase the %dodge chance and just say you added a protection against lucky/unlucky streaks

[hoary coral]

So when you dodge 2 you absolutely know you will dodge the next hit, am I getting this correctly?

[sour topaz]

it's accurate for str/dex, but not for def/agi (and obv int is its own thing entirely)

[bright flame]

https://wynncraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Skill_Points#Agility-0

i think you went to fandom wiki lol

[sour topaz]

i did not

[bright flame]

in what way is this outdated then??

[sour topaz]

the formula isnt accurate?

[sour topaz]

^

[bright flame]

ok but like im pretty sure the error is like +-0.1% to the values showed in game

[sour topaz]

80.8 vs 76.8

4% diff is pretty big

[bright flame]

you are not looking at the Agility tab...

[sour topaz]

yes, that's the table

[bright flame]

oh the formula itself

[sour topaz]

🤦

if i wanted values i could just use wb lol

[bright flame]

its probably just multiplied by like 0.9 or something

[bright flame]

ok closest approximation i bothered looking for is just multiplying the whole formula by 0.951

you'll get like +-0.1% error

[sour topaz]

thats what im thinking

ill do that for now while i wait for a wb dev to share the formula

i mean honestly that might be how the game calculates it

uses the same formula as it does for str/dex and then just reduces every value by a constant (like 0.951) so that it scales to a lower max

[bright flame]

uhh if you dodge twice you will know for sure the next one is a hit, you won't be able to know if you get 1 or 2 dodges after this hit tho, keep in mind not being attacked for 1 or 2 seconds will just invalidate any information you might have and make the next attack random

this would be so hard to purposely utilize to gain any advantage (good luck controlling when mob AI decides to attack you lol)

[untold marten]

Copied from another conversation about this:
You can either have a 70% damage reduction to every hit at 150, or you can have only every 4th hit land.
Considering that not all hits are equal you could take pretty much 0 damage.

Not to mention that someone would have a tracker for that up in 0.2 seconds allowing players to tank hits they know they'll dodge.

It's literally why Forseen Swordsman is such a stupid gambit. You are only allowed a certain amount of hits before invulnerablity kicks in.
It's less noticeable but imagine if one of the gambits was "the boss only takes 1/4th of your hits"

More reliable is great, but this particular suggestion isn't. Maybe have an agi pity system where if you get hit once you "stumble" and are less likely to get hit again, but having a flat out "if you get hit once you won't get hit again for 3 more hits" is too op imo

What I described is a pity system yes. What OP is describing is a flat counter.

Main difference:

• Pity system builds up to a guarantee.
  Vs. This gives a guarantee.
• With a pity system you can still get hit 5 times in a row no matter your agi, you just need to be really unlucky
  Vs. With this you literally cannot be hit 5 times in a row if your agi is high enough

[bright flame]

This change, if implemented, should probably include a nerf to the dodge chance scaling, something like 70% at 150 agi (any value above 75% would straight up be too strong otherwise)

1. "you could pretty much take 0 damage" I mean yeah, if you get lucky and every big hit somehow places itself within your guaranteed dodges, and you're taking enough simultaneous small damage hits alongside it that perfectly reset your dodges... at that point the stars themselves are aligning for you and its not much different to say that exact same thing about the current agility system... just get lucky and coinflip the big hits!...

2. only hit you would be able to prevent with 100% certainty would be the first one or two after getting hit, and any information you acquire will just become useless after 1 second of not getting hit when the entropy counter gets rerolled. Keeping any kind of tracker seems wildly unusable, if you knew in-game that at some random point in time the next hit you take (within a 1 second time window) would be dodged, could you really react and plan accordingly? what if the big hit you are planning to take doesnt get dodged because your dodge got wasted on a random hit from some random trash mob? once more just feels like the stars would have to aligning for you...

3. Nah fuck that, this take is so dogshit I ain't even gonna bother...

4. If you really want to make this slightly more random you could honestly just change the "100 - dodge chance" part into "120 to 80 - dodge chance" or something

5. a pity system would result in just a straight up buff to the overall ehp bonus of agility (since it does nothing to affect lucky streaks of numerous dodges in a row) and would thus still have to be implemented with a nerf to the dodge chance scaling

[teal helm]

All that can be balanced by making the timer on entropy lower, and is completely beside the point of not being instagobbed by 2 hits in a row

[sour topaz]

this is the number wb uses, so ty

[bright flame]

holy shit im so goated 🤑

[sour topaz]

the biggest difference (which has VERY miniscule impact) is that instead of the super long polynomial that the wiki uses, wb (and i assume the game) use:

x is the # of sp

[bright flame]

wait thats the original formula??? holy shit wtf did the wiki do... some interpolation algorithm??

[sour topaz]

i guess? 😭

[bright flame]

way too much fucking work just be off by like 0.1% on most values 😭

[bold jolt]

Air items would need massive retuning if this were implemented

Mobility and high DPS are perks of Agility

see: Olympic vs Absolution

[flat loom]

completely agree with this. there is so much healing in the game that you only get punished if you get one shot- and agi allows this. if you run def you don't get one shot and thus go unpunished because you just heal back up

[bright flame]

i mean you would still die if you made a massive missplay and decide to eat 2 or 3 boss attacks in quick succession

I do not believe this would change enough about the game to warrant a big change to air items, at most just the big offenders (dark shroud, conduit)

[north inlet]

You didn't answer my question, why is this bad. Why do you want Rng. Having some consistency might qctaully promote working around it(and if too op it can be nerfed as said in the post)

[bright flame]

I just realized, if the rng gets reduced I can no longer type "agi fail" after every death, it's so joever bros 😭

[bold jolt]

So just kill the enemy faster? You have higher DPS than a def-focused build

Air builds are already far more popular than Fire builds

There is a reason (multiple, actually)

[bright flame]

Crabs is very much in style right now, only meta air weapon is warp and that's more so a lightbender issue

[bright flame]

Also this example is wild considering abso pcycle is (was?) a thing...

[cerulean sigil]

they nerfed it for some reason tho

also no entropy bad ... the whole identity of a dodge is the rng

[bright flame]

There's still rng, it just prevents lucky/unlucky streaks of being hit/dodging too many times in a row...

[cerulean sigil]

if you want consistency theres litterally a mechanic for that xD

and its not agi

[cerulean sigil]

you prevent it by stacking other layers so that on the times it does fail you dont instantly die

[bright flame]

That is certainly a take...

[bold jolt]

Making agi as good as def in terms of actual survivability will just further widen the gap between air and fire builds

Again, air already gets higher damage and mobility than fire

[bright flame]

In case you didn't notice, agi already gives less ehp than defence, my proposed change would further reduce the ehp gain from agility...

[bold jolt]

All right, let's take this piecemeal. Is this going to be an overall buff or nerf to agility?

[bright flame]

I don't know! It's a rework for a reason, only time would tell and thankfully this system provides far more avenues for buffing/nerfing besides just changing the dodge scaling

I already stated that only way this gets implemented without being too strong is if the max dodge gets reduced to somewhere below 75%

Lemme just add that to the main post

OK I changed the pros and cons part

[solemn burrow]

agi was never supposed to be as good as def

[bright flame]

Oh yeah I should probably fix the title too huh

[bright flame]

This change still wouldn't make it as good, just less infuriating to play with

[hollow hull]

It’s because the sp formula is a geometric sum iirc

[bright flame]

Yeah I can tell, trying to interpolate a geometric sum using 4th degree polynomials is certainly a choice of all time tho

[shy summit]

hoaly fuck that's a massive amount of upvotes, well done on the suggestion 👍

[bright flame]

Imma be real I just ripped this straight from Path of Exile, that game is so complex when it comes to build making it makes wynn look like child's play in comparison 😔, the evasion system seems to work fine enough in PoE despite the fact it should face similar downsides to the ones showcased in this thread (evasion builds have very high mobility and damage but feel squishy against big damaging hits)

[shell meadow]

anything in path of exile as an example? (the problem stated)

[teal helm]

Molten shell, endurance charges, suppression, armor

[bright flame]

Bro forgot to overcap his ele resists 💀 can't even run yellow maps gg

[teal helm]

Savage hit life flask

[bright flame]

Also Block and Petrified Blood... fuck man when does next league even drop?

[cerulean sigil]

probably december or late november

[bright flame]

I uhh don't really understand the question here

[cerulean sigil]

actually

[bright flame]

Fuck man I got exams this is so joever 💀

[cerulean sigil]

taking this from path of exile ... there is a bad problem that popped up in path of exile BECAUSe of the dodge change

it basically became mandatory that EVERYONE uses suppression

[bright flame]

That has nothing to do with evasion 😭

[cerulean sigil]

because consistency made it too good

[bright flame]

Most non evasion builds still really want suppress

It's just more available on right side of the tree

[cerulean sigil]

also another problem being that suppress doesnt overlap with evasion like dodge did

[cerulean sigil]

at least in hardcore if you arent running 100% supress your build is bad lel

been like that since it got added

sadge ... and it just became harder to do that but it didnt remove it being mandatory later

[bright flame]

OK but like using hardcore as an example is... also didn't that update come with a lot of other nerfs to survivability? I think that's what caused suppression to be so utilized, merely as a sort of band aid fix for the very harsh nerfs

Anyways this already went very off-topic so let's stop with this convo here

[sleek portal]

whenever i think about agility i always thought it was less a dependent thing and more something you don't realise works while you're actively dodging

[untold marten]

I am not against changing agility, only agi builds aren't viable and I think that's a problem since there are only 2 defensive options in terms of skill points.
I am against agility being too consistent. At that point it becomes simply better than Defence for defense, which is an issue because Agility gets a huge amount of extra goodies on top of being defensive (ws, good items, mobility in general, good powders, higher base damages, supporting stats)
Basically, if this change were to go through, the whole game would have to rebalance around it, making Air builds significantly weaker (maybe even on par with Fire builds) which would make many Air based items nearly useless, and would cause a massive metashift.

Tl;dr
I'm not against making agi reliable, just against it being game breakingly reliable

[sour topaz]

also just so much more effort than it's worth

like agi with all its upsides and downsides is balanced, why go through ALL this effort to buff agi's consitency if it means hours and hours of dev and IM work rebalancing all the endgame air items just to make agi as a whole balanced

like yes it'd be nice for rng to play less of a role, but it doesnt feel worth all the effort needed for that to be the case

[hollow hull]

this might be callous but i don't think "we'd have to rebalance items" is a good argument

a good mechanical foundation will pay for itself as it makes future balancing easier (fewer contradictions to resolve)

this isn't a statement in favor of or against the proposed change but yeah

[north inlet]

It being it's identity doesnt mean it doesnt need to change what point is this.
This also still has the same jumping up and down in damage, it's not consistent.

[north inlet]

You could still balance the chances to not allow it to be as powerful, increase range for the randomness or make it less effective, so it's still weaker than defence.

[thick fog]

Give up argueing with sense.

[hoary coral]

And at the same time def comes with significantly lower dmg than agi, because it's a tradeoff of safety vs damage. If agi becomes reliable air items have to be nerfed accordingly to be closer to fire items. I'd be interested in the public opinion on nerfing all air items' damage...

(or if air items don't get nerfed this straight up becomes better defence: just as reliable but more damage and mobility)

[bright flame]

Hmm I don't think you guys understand how big of a nerf it is to go from 76.8% max dodge to like 70%...

150 agi ehp (76.8% dodge)
32.5k hp
10k (no agi)

124 agi ehp (69.9% dodge)
27k hp
10k (no agi)

150 def ehp (70% resist)
33.5k hp

121 def ehp (63% resist)
27k hp

The entire purpose of this change is to make agi ehp actually feel somewhat real, obviously this would come with a nerf to agi ehp...

[bright flame]

The actual implementation shouldn't be that hard (?)

You wouldn't need to rebalance the items if the overall ehp gets nerfed hard enough. The whole idea is:

30k agi
10k non agi

Feels like shit because you eventually get hit 2-3 times at 10k ehp in a row and explode, so how about making it more consistent but at like 20k ehp? It would never compete with defence in terms Investment vs. Survivability but it would make it not feel as shit, it's currently advertised as being the second "defensive" skill point so I don't see why it shouldn't atleast provide some safety...

[bold jolt]

You do have to rebalance the items. I think you're severely underestimating the strong qualities of air items. Take walk speed, for instance. It may look like a very minor ID but it's incredibly effective at allowing a player to kite mobs. In fact, with enough walk speed, you can kite Greg so easily that the boss fight is a cakewalk.

Then you get into the really funny items like Olympic, which not only has walk speed but also jump height which allows you to essentially be out of reach of most mobs most of the time.

So, no. A lot of items would need to be rebalanced, and in a massive way. The only way this wouldn't be needed would be if the max dodge was nerfed to the point of being completely useless, and by then, why even get into the work of reworking agility in the first place?

[bright flame]

You do understand that the only agi weapons currently meta are warp, hana and epoch and that's more so a lighbender/acrobat/epoch issue right?

Shaman: abso pcycle crabs, resonance (either crabs or rainbow slap)
Assassin: inferno/animosity hmelee shade, hana acrobat
Mage: Trance ETF/Warp lbender
Archer: Laby (crabs), Any build with nuclear emesis, divzer 💀, epoch tstack
Warrior: bbath/tcrack fallen/monk (and like hero for lootruns...)

We are in a really defence centric meta since mob health and damage was increased and agility no longer fares nearly as well since longer fights means more chances for agility builds to just eat shit and die from 2 undodged attacks in a row...

At most you would just nerf dark shroud sp by like 5-10 and call it a day

[bold jolt]

idk why you're refusing to list olympic and panic zealot

meanwhile the meta fire items are....absolution, immolation (? it's a fire/air relik), monster

it's also good to note that paincycle is an air item

[bright flame]

I honestly do not consider olympic as being meta but ok...

Meta fire items would be:
Labyrinth
Trance
Inferno + Dawnbreak
Absolution
Nuclear Emesis
Crusade Sabatons <- this is so broken lol

I do not understand in what world you believe monster to be meta but aight.

On the topic of pcycle

1. it's already getting nerfs
2. 80% of the time its getting used with crabs...

[cerulean sigil]

seems like the problem isnt agi at all

its the stat point system as a whole

specifically what items they show up on vs what char is actually using them

[bright flame]

Can you explain that point better? Any examples?

[gilded path]

I don’t think you’re taking into account that Fire items get HP bonuses and health regen bonuses, so even if Air and Fire were theoretically equal defensively (which they currently aren’t), Fire would still have an overall edge in EHP due to its indirect item buffs.

[bright flame]

The high walkspeed in air items provides a massive increase in survivability that is difficult to quantify in any reasonable way

[gilded path]

There’s also lag though and sometimes it can be hard to control your player with high enough walk speed.

So I’m just saying that the argument “We have to directly nerf the EHP of Agility or else it would be equal to Defense” is not true. Again, keep in mind that this change only applies if you get hit multiple times in less than a second. Otherwise, it’s the same system as before where you can easily get unlucky and die.

Your change should be seen as nice quality of life buff rather than a quantifiable EHP buff.

[bright flame]

That changes nothing 😭

[bright flame]

Problem with old system is that eventually your 30k ehp build will get hit 2-3 times at 10k ehp and fucking explode, this system would make it so the ehp value it shows is much more real with less chance for bullshit like that to happen, which would just be a massive buff to the survivability of high agility builds, this obviously requires some nerf to compensate...

[bright flame]

While implementing this wouldn't in any way change the ehp, you can't measure survivability with just that...

[hollow hull]

again, there's no issue with just rebalancing the items

agility items getting much higher dmg boosts and sp and such (compared to defense items) is something that is easily undone (alternatively, if you think defense items are boring or weak, you can raise defense items) (by easily, i mean relatively so)

i think agility being useful on its own will also reduce the reliance of air items on having ws, too; you can produce air items with -ws more readily in a world where agi is actually equal to defense

you should only make agility give a lower % than defense, if you think each % agility gives is intrinsically better than each % defense gives

because you can always get an id without gettings its related skill point (ws, agi here)

[gilded path]

I don’t think it’s worth it to try to measure the broader survivability given how so many other factors affect survivability (abilities, class defense, class range, etc.).

The best way to measure and compare Defense and Agility is with EHP and their related common item bonuses.

[bright flame]

You are going to pretend like walk speed isn't a massive factor in most agi builds' survivability??

[gilded path]

Again, I’m not ignoring walk speed. I’m just not buying that walk speed automatically outperforms the direct HP bonuses and HP regen of Fire Items. Especially since the latter is a lot more quantifiable than walkspeed on survivability.

[bright flame]

That is definitely a take...

Do you think giving +200 ws to a build is less impactful to survivability as giving it like +4k hp??

[gilded path]

It would depend on the archetype and idk how you could compare raw HP bonus to walk speed anyway.

And plus there’s still HP regen, both raw and percent.

It just seems like you’re trying to correct for something that shouldn’t even happen to begin with. Like how are you supposed to react if you get hit multiple times in less than a second and your agility just doesn’t proc?

[gilded path]

Not to mention you can get walkspeed with abilities too.

[bright flame]

Part of the reason walk speed is so broken is that it let's you position yourself away from danger very quickly, due to high walk speed you will run into these situations much less often

[bright flame]

OK?

[bright flame]

You need very high investment into both of these for them to be noticeable in any way... also you can just run away with like 100+ws and use a health potion 😱

[cerulean sigil]

why even have 2 defenses if they are mostly gonna be the same

[gilded path]

I understand that walkspeed is good; the only classes I have ever fully leveled are Archer and Ritualist Shaman. And I still like Archer overall, in part bc of walkspeed.

[cerulean sigil]

zoom zoom

id like assassin for that if vanish cooldown werent so annoying to manage for the 125% boost

[gilded path]

But I also understand that walkspeed isn’t everything and it’s biased towards classes with range because you naturally just don’t get hit as much and have more leeway to maneuver.

[bright flame]

The only archetypes that wouldn't make use of walkspeed are acrobat and bmonk upper surfing...

[gilded path]

But mine and Megafern’s point is that walkspeed isn’t exclusive to air items.

[hollow hull]

if you make agility weaker because walkspeed is stronger, you'll just encourage using walkspeed without agility

rebalancing the fundamental mechanics to account for desired item-element associations is backwards

item-element associations should flow outwards from your baseline mechanics, not the reverse

[gilded path]

I do this every playthrough because it’s safer to invest more in defense and get walkspeed from alternative sources than invest in Air as a full element.

[hollow hull]

also if i may add, i think healing is mismanaged in wynn; it is in need of a full reconsideration from the bottom-up

potions should not both occupy two incompatible roles: the baseline healing every player has access to & immediate health regain in massive quantities

this issue exists because natural hpr isn't good enough to serve as the baseline healing

[bright flame]

Good point, however my original point in all of this is that implementing this change (without any nerfs) would result in just a straight up buff to agility survivability (warranting a nerf)

[hollow hull]

i agree

i just think the nerf should be delivered to the items (or, if people think it's just that defense items are underwhelming, you can go in the reverse direction), rather than the sp itself (because of aforementioned issue)

and as i said, if you make agi comparable to defense you can make it so that air items can actually play around with the idea of -ws, enabling tradeoffs between high dmg, defensive capabilities, ws, etc. (just like how many fire items might have -hp or -hpr/-ls to attain high dmg)

[bright flame]

-ws in agility items kinda goes against the whole idea behind agility (risk/reward with high mobility)

[hollow hull]

to be clear, a nerf to these items won't rely on adding -ws (as mentioned, many air items get a lot of undue sp, dmg %, etc. that can be altered as necessary)

but i do want to argue here that -ws, in the right places, won't be counter to that philosophy

right now, you just get a bunch of walkspeed for running an air build regardless of how you choose your items (because agility is relying on automatically having ws to carry it rather than its intrinsic benefit)

you can't opt to choose an air item with much more ws or much less ws

so that ironically means, you have very little freedom to lean into the "risk/reward with high mobility" motif: you will have about as much mobility as another air build that only cares about raw damage/survivability

-ws items (and conversely ws items that sacrifice a lot for their ws) would allow you to actually express the value you place on this mobility by acting as soft "exchange rates"

and it's something that only air can do because having overall -ws is really bad for regular gameplay (and the built-in surplus air has for ws would allow for a reasonable safety net)

[tardy charm]

Agility being weaker rn isn't rly a problem at all simply because air items are so strong and versatile

[gilded path]

The problem isn’t that it’s generally weaker than defense… defensively. It’s just too inconsistent, and air shouldn’t have to rely on items to be good in of itself. Items should be balanced around stats, not the other way around.,

Especially since people can build walkspeed and damage without agility.

[hallow grotto]

this might need some rebalancing tho since agi is way easier to get than def in current meta, and also agi comes with walkspeed :/

[hoary coral]

I'd rather keep the current system where it's riskier but provides more value on average than making it more reliable but weaker. We don't need another def. Yes, agi comes with downsides, build accordingly

Want more safety? Increase raw hp or add def (or... Increase walk speed. Agi helps with that.)

Higher mobility also decreases the chance of being hit multiple times in a row

[hallow grotto]

imo agi is fine since air weapons do baller damage anyways

fire weapons can’t get close it makes little sense to make their affects similar

[bright flame]

laby... trance...

[shell meadow]

ef and tf, trapper aspects and mega sorrow

[cerulean sigil]

just unnerf it first

[sour topaz]

quetz is still meta also collapse and hero?? hello?? and im not talking lrs

[bright flame]

Hero gets outclassed by bath and tcrack

And why tf are you bringing up collapse 💀

I don't really see how quetzal wouldn't get outshined by warp but I don't really play much mage

[sour topaz]

never said whether it did or didnt

[sour topaz]

you clearly needed help with your list of the meta mythics

[bright flame]

In what world is collapse meta outside of like lootruns

[bold jolt]

i had a party member using collapse tstack in NOL

they got highest dmg, it was funny as hell

[tardy charm]

bro is delusional if he thinks those are the only viable air weapons 💀

[bright flame]

Fairly big difference between "viable" and "meta"

[hoary coral]

That's like saying Monster gets outclassed by Fatal

Hero is much tankier than fallen bloodbath/tcrack

[hallow grotto]

olympic is goated for lootrunning

quetz arcanist is more dps than trance with rage

strati's gimmick is ws, and its REALLY good at ws

hero is probably the best weapon in the game when you consider ehp to damage

compare these to the fire weapons

ignis is dogshit
guardian is dogshit (fuck wars)
abso is good
monster is good
inferno is ok

warp is really really good for lootrunning, probably best option aside idol/hero

oh weathered is also really good

[bright flame]

Le epic offhand weapon!! So meta!!

[bright flame]

I ain't even played much mage so tbh I don't know much about quetz, don't see how usable rage arcanist is tho

[hallow grotto]

its really really good

if ur good at least. outdamaged nearly anything in tcc

[hallow grotto]

ignis !! so good !! gives LITERALLY NOTHING USEFUL ANYMORE

not even good as an offhand

[bright flame]

I'm not saying ignis is good 💀

And saying abso is "good" and then also not mentioning labyrinth or trance is...

[bright flame]

I don't see quetz outdamaging divzer or like any trapper build but ok

And why would you rage on a +ls wand??

[hallow grotto]

idk how much dps divzer does, and I’m half confident that trapper is only that broken because of whatever trap stack is

it’s like 300-400k consistent, 500k peaks

[gritty quiver]

Guardian is fine if you try to build it with more dps in mind, yet it really didnt need a damage nerf

[hallow grotto]

but

can it do hero dps

[gritty quiver]

Also, if there were more good fire damage items Guardian would be much better

[hallow grotto]

while still no crafted

[gritty quiver]

of course not, nor it should considering how much ehp it gives

[hallow grotto]

and at least 40k ehp

[gritty quiver]

on that topic, the Hero nerf really reduced its damage, it reeally felt excessive

[hallow grotto]

ok yeah tbf hero is kinda awufl

if you ignore ehp, zephra shredder will out dps on most builds

since you can just assign like the extra 40 sp from lower agi req into str/dex for massive damage

[quick bobcat]

not really

especially w divzer it is better not to trap stack a lot of the time

[hallow grotto]

idk I don’t play trapper just people saying trap stack or whatever is broken or something

can someone explain what a trap stack is

[sour topaz]

🤔

discombobulate when

[hallow grotto]

with max discombob

and dodge

send a hero (bash scream) build I’ll convert to zephra

[tardy charm]

Zeph shredder has only air and 2 powder slots 💀

[sour topaz]

https://hppeng-wynn.github.io/builder?v=8#9_0tx0px0ai07W0W70K20K40UB0Qi0U0U1u-z2C1g1006FU10039I11Z6FU10039I101c3I0z0z0+0+0+0+0-1TltuIpnCwi1
WynnBuilder build:

Keratoconus
Time Rift
Ringlets
Capricorn
Old Keeper's Ring
Moon Pool Circlet
Prowess
Renda Langit
Hero [w6e6f6t6]
https://hppeng-wynn.github.io/builder?v=8#9_0tx0px0ai07W0W70K20K40UB0tE0Z0Z1u-z1G1g1006FU10039I11Z6FU10039I10009C0z0z0+0+0+0+0-1TltuIpnCwi1

holy shit he wasnt lying too bad wynnbuilder only has 60 discomb

hero wins with a single bmonk aspect

Hero (15 discomb hits, max dodge, max conc)

zephra (same)

zeph gets 260 less dmg on war scream tho

[bright flame]

+500 bash -1.5k scream with 90 discomb 💀

[hallow grotto]

-10 stx

was it worth though

fun fact idol sweep

https://hppeng-wynn.github.io/builder?v=8#9_0P-0px0ai0Qr0W70050T40tt0Qf040w2I1Q041g1006FU10039I11Z6FU10039I1007iC0z0z0+0+0+0+0-1TltuIpnCwi1

you could bash scream scream idol too

pure def ehp 😍

[sour topaz]

scales worse with boons ✅
scales worse with raid buffs ✅
no catamaran OR rots usage ✅
worse damage than hero ✅
10% walk speed ✅
no counter activations to save a use of mantle ✅

oh fuck yeah lets use some idol 🔥

[hoary coral]

Guardian also is suffering from low base damage

Below Ignition and well below RotS btw

[gritty quiver]

yep, it really didnt deserve a base dps nerf, specially since it was low alr, I tried to argue it with the IMs, but was ignored. Atm I off hand RoTS for both damage & healing, if U have to solo Greg its much better than guard

[hoary coral]

I'd say Guardian is one of the very few mythics that are balanced now and all others still are too strong.
Compare Guardian and Ignition: base dmg is similar, but Guardian clearly is mythic because it has much better IDs. That's how it should be.

But when only very few mythics are balanced and all other are op that simply means that the op mythics are the norm and the balanced mythics are bad

[gritty quiver]

fair enough

[shell meadow]

with all the small buffs it honestly feels nice to play