Battles are too fast in Leviathan

[pastel lark]

Friends, I want to conduct a quick survey.
I have the impression that in Leviathan, the balance between Illuvial damage and survivability isn’t quite right.
As I write this, I’m concerned that my words might be misinterpreted or lead to wrong decisions.
I’m not asking to reduce damage!
I’m talking about increasing survivability.
Today, our battles were way too fast — lightning quick.

I think that’s fine when playing against a weak deck.
But @lunar ingot and I had the same decks, and we kept wiping each other out. Sometimes I won, sometimes he did.

It’s possible this effect happened because both our teams had a lot of burst damage (my Phosphorus-Arcanite and his Rhamphyre). It’s important to note that I noticed the fast battle effect against other players as well.
That’s why I have doubts about any augments and enhancements that involve a delayed start (12-20+ seconds).

But I’m interested in your opinion.

Especially important: I am by no means asking to casualize or simplify anything.
Absolutely not.
I’m talking about increasing the health pool of Illuvials in this mode.

@lunar ingot @vapid salmon @soft lynx @glad iron @light citrus @mint mist @cloud latch

And:
@slim hawk @somber locust @empty ledge @mint wraith

[lunar ingot]

My Rhamphyre was doing most of the damage and I had a particularly ideal set of items and augments

I had +25% AS + 2 mind storm giving me 50 energy in the 5 first sec + Arcade Conduit giving 10 energy per hit so about 65 more energy in the first 5 sec + energizer giving another 25 energy

This will probably not happen often

In other circumstances I would gain 140 less energy in the first 5 sec

[empty ledge]

@burnt willow had similar feedback from regular Ranked, so maybe just a feeling of a new patch, not connected to Leviathan

[vapid salmon]

Probably need a few more games to determine the balance... but from the two games we just played, I tend to agree that some tweaking would be good to make the battles last a bit longer. maybe scale HP a bit higher from the stats/levels.
(That Rhamphyre was extremely nasty @lunar ingot 😁)

[mint wraith]

Agree. They should be epic battles not over quickly.

[cloud latch]

That does sound right more hp...i feel maybe all stats back to what they were before the hex change....my illuvial feel week even tho they lvl 60... on another point what is the point off lvl up my favourite illuvial if i can't use it in the fight? How can i get hyped for another combination if i can't experience it on my choosing 🙃 Make leviathan great again Like in OW it's obvious that bigger it's better and more choices means more fun.

[weak void]

This is mathematically accurate and was always going to be a problem.

If your Illuvial has 100 of each resistance and then gains 50% additional from leviathan stats. They just gained a 25% reduction in damage.

If your Illuvial has 100 attack damage and 100 attack speed and gains 75% via leviathan stats. They just gained 75% in terms of overall damage, maybe more because they scale together.

So Tank Illuvials gain 25% and DPS Illuvials gained 75% to their respective strengths.

And so yeah, games will go probably 2x faster at least than a game balanced around normal stats.

For anyone who's wondering. The more resistances you gain, the less effective they actually are for each additional point, due to the formula.

Because AS and DMG stack together its the opposite for DPS characters.

So the graphs are inversed, compounding the effect of the maths on the backend.

This is ultimately impossible to fix unless u make the formulas different for different stats btw.

Gonna be honest, I'm a little surprised you guys didn't catch onto this in this thread. A game balanced around non-Leviathan stats will always end up this way with the current formulas, there's no escaping that without slowing down the base game to a stupid degree.

[pastel lark]

+25% to survivability and +75% to damage?
I doubt those numbers are accurate.

Let’s go through a breakdown using an actual example: the Illuvial Pho at max stats and level 60.

In these calculations, we’ll ignore movement speed, although it does have some impact.
We’ll also ignore levels beyond 60.

📊 Base vs Maxed-Out Pho
Standard Pho Health: 1300

Max Pho Health: 2032
➡️ That’s a +56.3% increase in health.

Standard Pho Resistances: 40 (energy & physical)

Max Pho Resistances: 50 (both types)

Standard damage reduction: 28.57%

Max damage reduction: 33.33%

Standard Attack Damage: 110

Max Attack Damage: 173
➡️ That’s a +57.27% increase in base attack.

Standard Attack Speed: 90

Max Attack Speed: 113

🛡️ Effective Health Calculation
Standard Pho:
1300 HP with 28.57% DR ⇒ Effective HP = 1671

Max Pho:
2032 HP with 33.33% DR ⇒ Effective HP = 2709

➡️ That’s a +62.11% increase in survivability.

⚔️ DPS Calculation
Standard Pho:
110 damage × 0.9 attack speed = 99 DPS

Max Pho:
173 damage × 1.13 attack speed = 195.49 DPS

➡️ That’s a +97.47% increase in DPS.

💥 Omega Power
Omega Power is another important stat.
Of course, its effectiveness varies between Illuvials — but we’ll stay with Pho as the example.

Standard Pho: 100 Omega Power

Max Pho: 157 Omega Power
➡️ That’s a +57% increase.

Now, calculating the actual impact of Omega Power is tricky — it depends on a lot of variables like:

the lifespan of the summoned chick,

how many targets it hits,

how long it stays alive,
and more.

So I’ll allow a rough estimate.

Let’s assume the following weights in DPS output of the chick:

70% from attack damage

30% from Omega Power

Given +97.47% damage and +57% Omega Power:

Estimated Chick DPS increase ≈ ~80%
(with significant margin of error due to lack of combat context)

[pastel lark]

✅ Final Summary
Damage increase ≈ +80%

Survivability increase ≈ +62.11%

So based on these numbers, my preliminary conclusions are:

1️⃣ Yes, survivability scaling in Leviathan is not perfectly balanced compared to Ranked.

2️⃣ But the core problem may lie in the patch itself, since many players report that fights are noticeably faster even in Ranked.

3️⃣ Could you clarify where exactly our calculations differ?
 I genuinely want to understand if there’s a fundamental error in my reasoning.

I think the ideal approach would be to run computer simulations or outsource this work to a freelance mathematician.
Then, based on various calculations and extensive gameplay data, it would be wise to increase the effectiveness of stat boosts that impact Illuvials’ survivability.

Otherwise, we risk a situation where almost all augmentations and delayed-effect buffs become useless.

[lunar ingot]

The more resistance you gain the less % reduction you get out of it but your effective hp increase linearly

So going from 0 to 100 res makes you go from 1x to 2x effective hp
Going from 100 to 200 makes you go from 2x to 3x effective hp
+100% each time

[weak void]

Woah woah woah. Why did u drop your 97.47% increase in DPS down lol. U need to stack the Omega Power increase on top of that. So you are looking at 150% vs 62%

an almost 3x damage to survivability ratio

[weak void]

Yeah but we aren't starting at 0, which is an important factor

[weak void]

I actually half forgot about getting the 50% on top of your HP stat, so that did skew my thinking. But I actually think you reached the same conclusion. Because of the way resistances scale, compared to say Omega Power, Attack Damage and Attack Speed, DPS Units will naturally scale higher than anything defensive. I still think its by a factor of 2 or more. But even if its 20-30% like your numbers suggest, that's still plenty enough to make the game feel significantly faster than it would otherwise.

[weak void]

Honestly delayed effect buffs are always going to be nearly impossible to balance in both game modes. They will always either be too good, or not worth it. Not sure they belong in the game imo

[vapid salmon]

Increase in DPS scales higher than survivability, which I think was expected with current formulas. (but needed to test to have some better understanding of how it impact the gameplay). Its difficult to adjust this via scaling resists higher, so I guess the only way to make adjustments is to the HP. One way could be to make a small increase to how much HP scales from Stats/levels. 🤔

One thing that is really great is, that we are finally in a spot where we can start to test out the Leviathan mode, with all the main features in 🙂