Shattered Kingdoms

I should have been clear, I understand you said you would address the ranged damage. That post was directed toward the Melee part of our damage. If we are getting dropped to 0 damage before we add in magical protections, sprites are going to be next to useless in melee combat.

I don't expect sprites to do giant like damage, but I would like them to have some competative ground to stand on in combat.

I'm thinking it's a byproduct of some combination of size and strength.

In two duels last night between sprite merc and human merc...

Duel 1:
Sprite deflects 4
Human deflects 0

Duel 2:
Sprite deflects 7
Human deflects 0

I am sure everyone understands that sprites are just not going to be as good in melee as a larger race. Sprite "society" values magical classes higher for that reason.

Even I am a little surprised by how much enhanced damage was contributing to the overall percentage of melee damage. But recognize that all melee classes suffered equally. Sprites have always been a sub-par melee choice. It is just more obvious with the current settings.

Will I tweak enhanced damage again? Maybe. I want to see more data.

You've done a lot more than evenly nerf all classes. Reducing damage this much increases the relative value of mitigation over avoidance and increases the value of damage over # of attacks, which I would expect to hurt sprites relative to other races. Sprites at least had some relative strengths before.

I think it might have been more elegantly done to leave e-dam but to make second attack 90% damage, third 80% and so on until a fifth natural attack is at 60%, leaving hasten and racial attacks at 100%. Not positive on math but pretty sure it'd leave non mercs and barbs in a better place in addition to helping with this issue.

I wouldn't quite say he's nerfed all classes. From what I can tell from my warlock, magma is still a beast. The fact that enhanced damaged got nerfed just means that magma is even more beast, and should definitely be looked at, just to see if the immense damage it puts out equals the nerfdom of enhanced damage. Still annihilate most everything in three or so magmas.

I think that races/creatures that have a damage modifier (negative or positive) due to size were impacted the most from what I seen since the update. If enhanced damage is a multiplier effect like size modifiers, I'm not surprised by that result at all.

I'm not noticing it take any longer than before the update for a medium sized mercenary or barbarian to kill my elemental or kill creatures in PvE. I think this is an issue of multiple modifiers making it more negatively impact the smaller races.



Even after the update, magma spray is not as lethal as a well geared mercenary or barbarian. In PvE, roughly 75% or more of the creatures you will fight in the Dreamscape, Outlands, Iron Citadel, Wastelands, Grey Wastes and Frozen Wastes are immune magma spray. I would recommend that you make aliases to have your elemental rescue F1-F3 and M1-M3 and be ready to use healing rays a lot - you won't be doing any damage at all once you get done leveling.

As for PK, even after this update you are going to lose to any mercenary or barbarian worth their salt.

While I held an optimistic attitude that I could make the sprite scout combination work, sadly it doesn't. The combination is pretty much useless. After playing around for a while I discovered my pets were doing my damage for me, I was doing very little to none. I ambushed a necromancer and pumped him full of another 12 shots and he survived. I am disheartened to see sprite damage dropped so far to make them useless in pve and pvp situations. <---sad

Perhaps scouts need their own stances much like swashies get their own. Maybe you can have a stance for precision shooting, that increases armor penetration and perhaps damage but lowers attack speed. Then like a volley stance where you're just shooting as fast as possible with no real regard for aim and so you put alot more ammo down field but with a slight penalty to accuracy.

The stances are...interesting, but I was more into the idea (whoever mentioned it) of a marksmanship skill for scouts that is similar to finesse for swashies. Since scouts are -supposed- to be masters of the bow/crossbow, it's a great idea.

I suggested the stances simply because I feel like ranged finesse would be too overpowered and ranged combat with bows would become the new standard of battle. Also an ambush with finesse would just be mean. Also the stances could be class specific.