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Food and Drink Power Budget

WrathOfInnos
WrathOfInnos
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I’m a little confused by the change to Artaeum Pickled Fish Bowl today. I can’t say I’m particularly bothered by it myself, since the only effect will be a negligible reduction in DPS (about half of a %) and survivability, with the benefit of saving tens of thousands of gold every week (many players may save hundreds of thousands depending on play time). It also makes end game a little more accessible to those that have not accumulated a fortune that they can blow on raid preparation. The reason I’m making this post is not to complain about the APFB nerf, but because it gave us a small insight into the dev’s power budget for consumables, and I’m still very puzzled.

Is food quality (color tier) intended to affect its combat effectiveness? The change today implies no, but nearly every other example in game shows the hierarchy: Green > Blue > Purple > Gold

I’ve spent some time in the past trying to understand how the different consumables are balanced, and it always seems like there are more exceptions that rule followers. I understand that it is a complex issue, and trying to find a balance that works both for stat density and combat effectiveness is difficult. For example, giving a flat number of set bonuses produces very different results if they end up distributed into:
A. All Max Magicka
B. Max Stamina + Max Health
C. Max Magicka + Max Stamina
D. Max Magicka + Stamina Recovery + Health Recovery

Obviously Option A shouldn’t have double the values of Option B, but it should have more than one component of B (this one seems to be handled appropriately already). Option C is typically less useful than Option B because hybrid builds don’t work well, but historically this hasn’t really been reflected in food/drink power (with some exceptions). Then there’s Option D, which I wouldn’t consider any better than Option C even with the same value on each stat, but since it has 3 lines it is typically balanced to be weaker on each one. This becomes even more difficult to balance when you have to consider what is useful in PVE vs PVP, and for tanks, healers and damage builds.

Another aspect of the balance is foods vs drinks. I have a strong opinion on this one, and believe they should be equally strong (all else being equal). Currently drinks are universally about 7% weaker than foods with the same quality and bonuses. The last comment we received on this stated it was necessary because some sets (Bright Throats and Bone Pirate) that required drinks would be too powerful. This could easily be fixed by adjusting the set bonuses, and doesn’t make sense anyway because other strong sets require food (Green Pact). All the imbalance does is remove half of the recipe options for anyone interested in optimizing their build.

I know this has been a very generalized post, but this is because I don’t understand if there exists any attempt at a formula (or I would explain the one that seems to fit best). I expect this thread to result in various theories about how the values on foods are standardized, followed by numerous examples disproving each one. Maybe eventually resulting in a path to fixing the many inconsistencies and making a logical consumable buff system.
  • Fennwitty
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    I've also heard the theory, "Bright Throat's Boast and Bone Pirate were too strong so instead of fixing those two sets, they nerfed all drinks into oblivion."

    Edit for clarification: This is from PvE perspective primarily.

    At this point I believe it's mainly an issue of the inability to balance max resources vs. regen.

    There's very few scenarios where you'd want regen MORE than you'd want max resources.

    This is because of the ongoing balancing problem of "Damage is King" 99 times out of 100.

    If max resource (food) gives you more damage, but a comparable ability to use skills, then why would anyone choose pure restore?

    Regen is also hampered made less important by the current "chug potions nonstop meta" where top end gameplay rewards always having potion buffs active. Potions tend to give a chunk of at least one resource plus a hefty resource regen. Stacking regen on top of regen is almost redundant -- so use food for higher max and more damage.

    There are useful drinks. But they tend to be hybrid special recipes that gives some stats also.

    EDIT: And for health, it's very simply this: No amount of Health Regen keeps you from dying to attacks equal to or greater than your max HP value. So better to raise your max value and stay alive, dealing with health restore later through self heals or other party members.
    Edited by Fennwitty on May 10, 2021 7:02PM
    PC NA
  • WrathOfInnos
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    @Fennwitty Yes, you make a good point about max resource often being superior to resource recovery. The 4.9k max Magicka on the new Artaeum Pickled Fish Bowl is still going to be a much better option than the 493 Magicka Recovery on Orzoga’s Red Frothgar. This is because the current 10:1 ratio between these stats doesn’t reflect the usefulness of each. I’m sure there exists a ratio that would make them more balanced.

    Many of the recent changes to other areas of the game seem to do a better job at balancing different stats. A semi-recent example is the mundus stone rebalancing. Atronach/Serpent give 310 Mag/Stam recovery compared to Mage/Tower’s 2023 max mag/stam. This results in a more reasonable 6.5:1 ratio on the weighting of max resource to resource recovery. Imagine if you had to choose between 4.9k Max Magicka or 750 Magicka Recovery. That sustain may be overkill, but at least the stat density feels like a significant trade off.

    Note that’s different from the more common set bonus approach. Set bonuses would show 129 recovery equals 1096 max resource, or a ratio of 8.5:1. This one hasn’t been touched in several years, so I’m inclined to think the mundus stone analysis is a better representation of developer intent currently. However I also believe the Mage and Tower (max resource) mundus stones are severely undertuned, so maybe that’s also not a great point of reference.

    There’s also one more easy point of reference, jewelry traits. Infused can provide 60% of a 169 recovery enchant, for 101 Mag or Stam recovery. Arcane/Robust provide 870 max mag/stam. The ratio here is 8.6:1. The problem with this one is that Infused is obviously the stronger trait in every build, and Arcane/Robust are considered starter traits before you’re able to transmute. This doesn’t necessarily mean the ratio is wrong, because Infused on recovery glyphs as also a weak option. This is partially a problem with the infused trait (should be closer to 70% if it’s to have any hope of competing with bloodthirsty), but more a problem with the recovery glyph giving only 169. That’s less than a weapon or spell damage glyph at 174, and if it followed the mundus stone rebalance, recovery jewelry enchants would be 174 x 310 / 238 = 226 mag or stam recovery.

    So we have a few contradicting examples of relative power for recovery vs max resource, maybe the fair answer is somewhere in the middle, around 7.5:1. I don’t know of anything that uses that ratio in game, but it sounds a lot closer to balanced than the 10:1 we see on food/drinks right now.
    Edited by WrathOfInnos on May 10, 2021 11:21PM
  • WrathOfInnos
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    To attempt to understand food power budget, we can look at max-level base game foods. I’ll speak in terms of single resource, and often use Magicka for easy comparisons, but the same applies to stamina with equal values, or health with a 10% increase. I’ll also keep this independent of the max resource/resource regen split mentioned above, but that would have to be considered if any other foods are rebalanced.

    Green: 6048 single resource (6048 total)
    Blue: 4936 double resource (9872 total)
    Purple: 4105 triple resource (12315 total)
    Gold: No established baseline, every special example different (more on this later)

    So already we can see that increased food quality means more total stats given, but less of each individual stat. It’s still debatable if combat effectiveness is intended to increase through each food tier. I’d say yes, because the tri-stat purple foods offer more than half the value of each stat that green food offers, and the established balance for tri-stat is a ratio of 2:1 (seen in triune trait and prismatic armor glyphs). In fact it’s easy to point out that standard purple foods are 4105 / (0.5 x 6048) = 36% better than green food.

    We can do a similar comparison for blue bistat food, but the only tool for comparison is Shacklebreaker set, which shows that 2065 bistat resource is equal to the 2550 on single stat sets. This means that blue food is giving 4936 x 2550 / 2065 = <1% more stat density than green food. This is interesting because it aligns more with the dev comment yesterday about Pickled Fish Bowl, where the color/quality/tier should not affect its combat effectiveness.

    So which is it? Is there a hierarchy? Or are all qualities of food equal? The answer gets complicated because if you’re looking at tri-stat food like Longfin Pasty with Melon Sauce the hierarchy applies, but when you look at food with stats that align with an effective build, like Witchmother’s Brew, that 36% increase in stat density is not found. Instead Witchmothers gives 3 stat bonuses equivalent to 2856 Magicka. If this were a food, I assume it would be closer to 3060 Magicka, which means that even in terms of total stats it is weaker than Blue bistat food. There’s no scenario where this phenomenon makes sense, Purple consumables split across 3 stats should never have lower total stat density than Blue consumables split across two. Dubious Camoran has the same issue, there must have been a glitch in the spreadsheet the day these were nerfed.

    Now to look at Gold food. These are difficult to define, but we can use a few different examples:

    Sugar Skulls imply quad-stat 4250 resource (total 17000). This is ridiculous mathematically because it’s more of each stat than tri-stat food gives, and everything we’ve seen so far shows that the more stats are in a consumable, the lower each one gets, despite the total stat density increasing. Then again, many players believe that Gold food should be better than alternatives, and that the Health Recovery on Sugar Skulls is nearly-useless, so the expense buys a small stat increase over Purple food. I don’t know which viewpoint is correct here.

    Clockwork Citrus Filet implies quad-stat 3080 resource (total 12320). This seems low because the total stat density is barely more than Purple tri-stat, and spreading it across a 4th stat like health recovery obviously dilutes the more useful lines. In terms of combat effectiveness, CCF ends up very similar to WPB or DCT if they existed as foods. Maybe that’s the intent, for purple and gold foods to perform the same in combat, but I’m sure it’s not the intent for Purple and Gold to both be objectively worse than Blue food for combat. Artaeum Takeaway Broth faces the same problems.

    Orzoga’s Smoked Bear Haunch implies 3920 quad-stat resource (15680 total). This is probably a more reasonable power budget for gold food than the previous two examples. It continues the pattern that Green, Blue and Purple foods established, where adding an additional resource means slightly less of each resource, but a few thousand more resources overall. The problem here is that Orzoga’s stats are split between such diverse things that I can’t really justify using it as a combat baseline for other foods. It may be sensible to bring Orzoga’s total stat density up to meet Sugar Skulls, while bringing Clockwork Citrus and Takeaway Broth up to where Orzoga’s is currently.
    Edited by WrathOfInnos on May 11, 2021 7:07PM
  • WrathOfInnos
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    I left out a few interesting examples of Gold food/drinks.

    Purifying Bloody Mara gives 4620 Max Magicka + 5051 Max Health with the utility of reducing vampire stage (not a benefit while in combat, just convenience, much like the fishing passive on APFB). What exactly makes this a gold recipe? It only gives 2 stats in combat, and the magnitude of each is lower than equivalent Blue bistat foods (I’m guessing this goes back to drinks being universally weaker), even if you count the vampire utility that’s 3 effects that could maybe explain it being Purple, but not Gold.

    Corrupting Bloody Mara has the same stats as Purifying Bloody Mara + 505 Health Recovery and the utility is reversed. If this worked it would obviously be better stat density than Purifying, but since it forces you to become stage 4 vampire the health regen is a joke. Jester’s Fest is over, maybe this one could get some relevant stats?

    Pack Leader’s Bone Broth gives 4620 Max Stamina + 5051 Max Health. Again worse stats than the Blue bistat equivalent, but this one also gives a combat bonus of reducing Werewolf cost (vague description, but could potentially be balanced). It also feels more like a Purple food with 3 effects.

    Hissmir Fish-Eye Rye gives 529 Magicka and Stamina Recovery, with a non-combat fishing bonus. This consumable is simply a better version of a Blue bistat recovery drink, which gives 493 Magicka + Stamina Recovery. This one is extremely similar to Artaeum Pickled Fish Bowl pre-nerf, where color quality just adds more stats, and a non-combat bonus is not considered in its power budget (which makes sense). Maybe this one is next on the “fixed an issue” chopping block, or maybe nobody cares because loading up hybrid regen isn’t really an effective build strategy. It’s also possible this drink is using the food power budget, since its about 7% better than the similar blue drinks (which I would fully support, it’s not like overpowered Hissmir + Bright Throat + Bone Pirate builds are going to be a problem).
    Edited by WrathOfInnos on May 11, 2021 10:05PM
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