Why is hybridization considered incomplete?

Avran_Sylt · September 13

Given some comments about the recent AMA there seems to be sentiment that hybridization isn't finished yet, but I'm kind of struggling to see how that's the case?

Aylish · September 13

For example, there is still buff food which buffs either Magicka or Stamina, not both. And there are sets that buff either Magicka (recovery) or Stamina (recovery), while other sets buff both magic and weapon power.

Treeshka · September 13

In some aspects there are some edge cases which does not sound nice in my opinion.

For example lets say you are playing a pure Sorcerer, one of the class passives gives you %6 spell critical rating when you activate a skill from a skill line. Similar thing exist in Nightblade as well but that gives you %6 weapon critical rating.

Now lets say you are playing a stamina sorcerer and using weapon power potions. Lets say you have X weapon critical rating and Y spell critical. In almost all cases your spell and weapon critical rating will be same without any external buffs applied. So X = Y we can say.

When you activate that passive from sorcerer your spell critical will be Y+6 but you are using weapon power potions, then your weapon critical will be X+12 but hybridization changed the calculation to account the highest value of the two. So you effectively waste your class passive. (X+12) > (Y+6)

Of course you can slot a skill that grants both of these +%12 critical change buffs such as Mage Light but still the existence of above calculation feels odd and can be fixed by making potion give both buffs.

BasP · September 13

Prophecy and Savagery could be combined into a single buff, since they basically do the same thing, and the same goes for Sorcery and Brutality.

If those buffs would be condensed, ZOS could theoretically alter some consumables as well. One of the 'Increase Magical Harm' and 'Increase Physical Harm' jewelry glyphs, for example, could get an entirely new effect. We also wouldn't need to have separate potions of 'Spell Power' and 'Weapon Power' anymore, so ZOS could maybe come up with a new Alchemy effect as well.

And since some classes would then provide the same groupwide Minor buff (the Templar's Illuminate and DK's Mountain's Blessing passives would be identical), ZOS could maybe add two new Minor buffs too.

Sluggy · September 13

I think the fact that we have completely superfluous stats on our character sheet is a pretty dead giveaway, no?

Avran_Sylt · September 13

Aylish wrote: »

For example, there is still buff food which buffs either Magicka or Stamina, not both. And there are sets that buff either Magicka (recovery) or Stamina (recovery), while other sets buff both magic and weapon power.

There are foods that buff both magicka and stamina. And unlike weapon/spell power that augment the effectiveness of skills, these resources also impact how many times you can cast skills as well.

You might have predominantly stamina costing skills, with the choice to take stamina focused food, or hybrid foods that let you cast off-resource supplimentary skills. This is notable with the design of Arcanist. (And of course that most defensive actions regarding CC cost stamina).

How you invest in these pools plays a role in your build. EG: I've got an easygoing Oakensoul BG's Bow build that has tri-stat food/gear and points into magicka, given the resource I can restore through HA's is only Stamina, yet all my skills are deriving their power from my max magicka stat.

Avran_Sylt · September 13

Treeshka wrote: »

In some aspects there are some edge cases which does not sound nice in my opinion.

For example lets say you are playing a pure Sorcerer, one of the class passives gives you %6 spell critical rating when you activate a skill from a skill line. Similar thing exist in Nightblade as well but that gives you %6 weapon critical rating.

Now lets say you are playing a stamina sorcerer and using weapon power potions. Lets say you have X weapon critical rating and Y spell critical. In almost all cases your spell and weapon critical rating will be same without any external buffs applied. So X = Y we can say.

When you activate that passive from sorcerer your spell critical will be Y+6 but you are using weapon power potions, then your weapon critical will be X+12 but hybridization changed the calculation to account the highest value of the two. So you effectively waste your class passive. (X+12) > (Y+6)

Of course you can slot a skill that grants both of these +%12 critical change buffs such as Mage Light but still the existence of above calculation feels odd and can be fixed by making potion give both buffs.

Oh, that's a fair point, so even if you wanted to make a thematic spellblade kind of setup, given the way that the maximum crit stat is calculated (As there is no use for the critical chance of the lower stat), being "hybrid" is actually detrimental with those buffs.

Avran_Sylt · September 13

BasP wrote: »

Prophecy and Savagery could be combined into a single buff, since they basically do the same thing, and the same goes for Sorcery and Brutality.

If those buffs would be condensed, ZOS could theoretically alter some consumables as well. One of the 'Increase Magical Harm' and 'Increase Physical Harm' jewelry glyphs, for example, could get an entirely new effect. We also wouldn't need to have separate potions of 'Spell Power' and 'Weapon Power' anymore, so ZOS could maybe come up with a new Alchemy effect as well.

And since some classes would then provide the same groupwide Minor buff (the Templar's Illuminate and DK's Mountain's Blessing passives would be identical), ZOS could maybe add two new Minor buffs too.

Interesting, yeah. Given that the "off-hand" stat isn't used for anything for crit chance and WD/SP, those buffs should certainly be looked at.

Treeshka · September 14

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Oh, that's a fair point, so even if you wanted to make a thematic spellblade kind of setup, given the way that the maximum crit stat is calculated (As there is no use for the critical chance of the lower stat), being "hybrid" is actually detrimental with those buffs.

Yes in some other cases same goes with Minor Sorcery and Minor Brutality buffs but these are all edge cases. Nowadays meta setups has skills that grant both of these buffs slotted.

Avran_Sylt · September 14

Treeshka wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Oh, that's a fair point, so even if you wanted to make a thematic spellblade kind of setup, given the way that the maximum crit stat is calculated (As there is no use for the critical chance of the lower stat), being "hybrid" is actually detrimental with those buffs.

Yes in some other cases same goes with Minor Sorcery and Minor Brutality buffs but these are all edge cases. Nowadays meta setups has skills that grant both of these buffs slotted.

So for Major Sorc/Brutality/Savagery/Prophecy it shouldn't matter which you use, it's only thematic (and/or tied to lore/materials) as all other sources of critical rating/WD/SP are applied generally to my knowledge, right?

As you say the minor passives are only an issue when not paired with their Major counterpart, which many skills that provide majors are now providing both types of majors, alleviating that problem.

Except for potions, should players wish to source those stats from them.

Treeshka · September 14

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Treeshka wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Oh, that's a fair point, so even if you wanted to make a thematic spellblade kind of setup, given the way that the maximum crit stat is calculated (As there is no use for the critical chance of the lower stat), being "hybrid" is actually detrimental with those buffs.

Yes in some other cases same goes with Minor Sorcery and Minor Brutality buffs but these are all edge cases. Nowadays meta setups has skills that grant both of these buffs slotted.

So for Major Sorc/Brutality/Savagery/Prophecy it shouldn't matter which you use, it's only thematic (and/or tied to lore/materials) as all other sources of critical rating/WD/SP are applied generally to my knowledge, right?

As you say the minor passives are only an issue when not paired with their Major counterpart, which many skills that provide majors are now providing both types of majors, alleviating that problem.

Except for potions, should players wish to source those stats from them.

Yes because game now considers the highest stats while calculating damage. If you are using skills to get these Major Sorcery, Brutality, Savagery and Prophecy buffs passively you should not worry, because all the skills you can use grant both versions of the said buff. Then whichever minor you get it will be not be wasted.

But if you use potions to get these Major Sorcery, Brutality, Savagery and Prophecy sometimes you may not benefit from the minor versions at all.

MincMincMinc · September 15

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Given some comments about the recent AMA there seems to be sentiment that hybridization isn't finished yet, but I'm kind of struggling to see how that's the case?

spell Pen and weapon pen is now pen, that was about it. Otherwise they reworked almost every instance of pen and armor to be the same stat. They did the hard work of recoding so skills would atleast consider both stats and pick the highest.....granted this only causes more calculations to take place unnecessarily

We still have:

Spell crit vs weapon crit. Most of these are down to only 1-2 niche differences. Like crit only has a difference because of old potions and class "unique" minor buffs
Spell vs Weapon damage has the same niche class buffs for minor, while also having silly things like the mundus stones that could be combined and have the extra stone changed to something like crit resist.
Spell resists vs Weapon resists I think only has the light armor passive which gives spell resists and then the breton spell resist proc. These could easily just be baked into % buff modifiers instead. For instance there is no reason for the light armor and heavy armor phys and mag rock paper scissors, just remove that layer all together and have the light armor %spellmit passive replace the spell resist

Then go on to look at systems like

food
mundus
alchemy
skill morphs
armor enchants
jewelry enchants

From zos's recent streams it sounds like they already contemplated rewriting alchemy, but didnt because it would upset the power balance between alchemy and the other systems. So instead we are just going to sit here with several outdated systems which have clear BIS choices that are more efficient than others.

Avran_Sylt · September 16

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Given some comments about the recent AMA there seems to be sentiment that hybridization isn't finished yet, but I'm kind of struggling to see how that's the case?

spell Pen and weapon pen is now pen, that was about it. Otherwise they reworked almost every instance of pen and armor to be the same stat. They did the hard work of recoding so skills would atleast consider both stats and pick the highest.....granted this only causes more calculations to take place unnecessarily

We still have:
Spell crit vs weapon crit. Most of these are down to only 1-2 niche differences. Like crit only has a difference because of old potions and class "unique" minor buffs

Spell vs Weapon damage has the same niche class buffs for minor, while also having silly things like the mundus stones that could be combined and have the extra stone changed to something like crit resist.

Spell resists vs Weapon resists I think only has the light armor passive which gives spell resists and then the breton spell resist proc. These could easily just be baked into % buff modifiers instead. For instance there is no reason for the light armor and heavy armor phys and mag rock paper scissors, just remove that layer all together and have the light armor %spellmit passive replace the spell resist

Then go on to look at systems like
food

mundus

alchemy

skill morphs

armor enchants

jewelry enchants

From zos's recent streams it sounds like they already contemplated rewriting alchemy, but didnt because it would upset the power balance between alchemy and the other systems. So instead we are just going to sit here with several outdated systems which have clear BIS choices that are more efficient than others.

Spell crit and weapon crit I look at as being thematic choices (still clunky from a streamlined perspective don't get me wrong), only with the caveat that the minor buff versions are incongruent when used with opposing major variants. EG: Are you a warrior that utilizes magical attunement to guide your blade true over your physical sense, or one who has honed their body to strike as needed where needed reflexively. Course you need to theater of the mind all that because there is no indication on a critical strike if it was caused by spell crit or martial crit. (Though that could be something interesting to explore).

Agree again on the WD/SP minor buff issues... Though you could thematically argue that a user of alteration could augment their strikes/muscles in some manner to empower physical effects... and physical users could leverage their stronger body to channel more volatile magicka through their body? (I dunno, that one's more far-fetched).

I don't actually think spell vs weapon resists should be homogenized. As these can be used as tools to diversify ability use in PvP to compensate that everything now scales off of highest resource. If certain meta abilities are one type, then build against that. (And if they ever make overland harder, a reason to use certain armors over others on given bosses/trials/dungeons could become a possibility). But yeah the passive is just weird, though I do certainly notice an effect on some of my builds. Full light armor and sneaking is a breeze and I can cast magicka skills much more often before needing to restock, full medium and I feel the urge to become a vamp and rely less on my magicka based skills, though this is with an Oakensoul build with a Bow (I can only regain stamina via HA, whereas with barswapping you can refresh both pools of stats).

Food already has hybrid choices. The base stats dictate your total maximum damage, your pool dictates how many you can perform before going empty, and regen allows for greater sustain. Green allows for slightly more peak max damage at the cost of a lower supplemental resource, compared to other options. The only issue I have is that the non-health variants have too little DPS/pool increase to warrant their use.

Mundus remains thematic, don't see a need to change.

Alchemy, thematic and the only outliers are the minor class passives, which, if those were addressed, would no longer be an issue.

Skill morphs: there's definitely still work to be done in that regard, especially given how arcanist was designed with supplemental skills using your minor resource, and main skills your major.

Armor enchants still dictate your pool size and max burst damage, but I agree, outside of PvP using the main-stat is pretty much mandatory.

Maybe if they introduced regen armor glyphs, made certain armor parts (based on light/medium/heavy) grant differing stat bonuses based on the enchant that could make it more complex and not so straightforward? (But why make a bigger mess? And it's not like PvE has any sustain problems now) (EG: Light head with Magicka Regen may give a significant enough of a bonus you'd want that over a max main-stat piece of another type)

I agree with you on the jewelry enchants.

Avran_Sylt · September 16

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Given some comments about the recent AMA there seems to be sentiment that hybridization isn't finished yet, but I'm kind of struggling to see how that's the case?

spell Pen and weapon pen is now pen, that was about it. Otherwise they reworked almost every instance of pen and armor to be the same stat. They did the hard work of recoding so skills would atleast consider both stats and pick the highest.....granted this only causes more calculations to take place unnecessarily

We still have:
Spell crit vs weapon crit. Most of these are down to only 1-2 niche differences. Like crit only has a difference because of old potions and class "unique" minor buffs

Spell vs Weapon damage has the same niche class buffs for minor, while also having silly things like the mundus stones that could be combined and have the extra stone changed to something like crit resist.

Spell resists vs Weapon resists I think only has the light armor passive which gives spell resists and then the breton spell resist proc. These could easily just be baked into % buff modifiers instead. For instance there is no reason for the light armor and heavy armor phys and mag rock paper scissors, just remove that layer all together and have the light armor %spellmit passive replace the spell resist

Then go on to look at systems like
food

mundus

alchemy

skill morphs

armor enchants

jewelry enchants

From zos's recent streams it sounds like they already contemplated rewriting alchemy, but didnt because it would upset the power balance between alchemy and the other systems. So instead we are just going to sit here with several outdated systems which have clear BIS choices that are more efficient than others.

Actually, I'm going to walk back my viewpoint on spell/weapon resists, thinking about it more.

The basic stats from sets/mundus are fine being universal.

But as far as the phys mag rock paper scissors with armor weights I think that ties into some of the lore of the world. And as far as resistances, the spell/phys resistance values are mitigation%, but sticking to the default mitigation% and its softcaps.

MincMincMinc · September 18

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Given some comments about the recent AMA there seems to be sentiment that hybridization isn't finished yet, but I'm kind of struggling to see how that's the case?

spell Pen and weapon pen is now pen, that was about it. Otherwise they reworked almost every instance of pen and armor to be the same stat. They did the hard work of recoding so skills would atleast consider both stats and pick the highest.....granted this only causes more calculations to take place unnecessarily

We still have:
Spell crit vs weapon crit. Most of these are down to only 1-2 niche differences. Like crit only has a difference because of old potions and class "unique" minor buffs

Spell vs Weapon damage has the same niche class buffs for minor, while also having silly things like the mundus stones that could be combined and have the extra stone changed to something like crit resist.

Spell resists vs Weapon resists I think only has the light armor passive which gives spell resists and then the breton spell resist proc. These could easily just be baked into % buff modifiers instead. For instance there is no reason for the light armor and heavy armor phys and mag rock paper scissors, just remove that layer all together and have the light armor %spellmit passive replace the spell resist

Then go on to look at systems like
food

mundus

alchemy

skill morphs

armor enchants

jewelry enchants

From zos's recent streams it sounds like they already contemplated rewriting alchemy, but didnt because it would upset the power balance between alchemy and the other systems. So instead we are just going to sit here with several outdated systems which have clear BIS choices that are more efficient than others.

Actually, I'm going to walk back my viewpoint on spell/weapon resists, thinking about it more.

The basic stats from sets/mundus are fine being universal.

But as far as the phys mag rock paper scissors with armor weights I think that ties into some of the lore of the world. And as far as resistances, the spell/phys resistance values are mitigation%, but sticking to the default mitigation% and its softcaps.

For resists its just silly since there are only like 2-3 places where you can get spell resists on its own. So the game is bloated in 99% of code because there are two resists going on instead of just the one

Avran_Sylt · September 18

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Given some comments about the recent AMA there seems to be sentiment that hybridization isn't finished yet, but I'm kind of struggling to see how that's the case?

spell Pen and weapon pen is now pen, that was about it. Otherwise they reworked almost every instance of pen and armor to be the same stat. They did the hard work of recoding so skills would atleast consider both stats and pick the highest.....granted this only causes more calculations to take place unnecessarily

We still have:
Spell crit vs weapon crit. Most of these are down to only 1-2 niche differences. Like crit only has a difference because of old potions and class "unique" minor buffs

Spell vs Weapon damage has the same niche class buffs for minor, while also having silly things like the mundus stones that could be combined and have the extra stone changed to something like crit resist.

Spell resists vs Weapon resists I think only has the light armor passive which gives spell resists and then the breton spell resist proc. These could easily just be baked into % buff modifiers instead. For instance there is no reason for the light armor and heavy armor phys and mag rock paper scissors, just remove that layer all together and have the light armor %spellmit passive replace the spell resist

Then go on to look at systems like
food

mundus

alchemy

skill morphs

armor enchants

jewelry enchants

From zos's recent streams it sounds like they already contemplated rewriting alchemy, but didnt because it would upset the power balance between alchemy and the other systems. So instead we are just going to sit here with several outdated systems which have clear BIS choices that are more efficient than others.

Actually, I'm going to walk back my viewpoint on spell/weapon resists, thinking about it more.

The basic stats from sets/mundus are fine being universal.

But as far as the phys mag rock paper scissors with armor weights I think that ties into some of the lore of the world. And as far as resistances, the spell/phys resistance values are mitigation%, but sticking to the default mitigation% and its softcaps.

For resists its just silly since there are only like 2-3 places where you can get spell resists on its own. So the game is bloated in 99% of code because there are two resists going on instead of just the one

Eh in terms of bloat I'd point more at the flame/frost/lightning/poison/disease resistances when they could simply be handled under spell or physical, presumably because they're an additional step.

I'd imagine that an ability would be tagged as physical/spell when calculating damage and pulling from the respective category which they'd have needed to do via accessing the defensive stat anyway. So really not too much bloat.

But those other stats are an additional layer ontop of physical/spell resistance.... Although depending on how damage is actually sent/received it might just be the same thing as spell/phys and choosing the higher of spell/phys or specific.

MincMincMinc · 1:32PM

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Given some comments about the recent AMA there seems to be sentiment that hybridization isn't finished yet, but I'm kind of struggling to see how that's the case?

spell Pen and weapon pen is now pen, that was about it. Otherwise they reworked almost every instance of pen and armor to be the same stat. They did the hard work of recoding so skills would atleast consider both stats and pick the highest.....granted this only causes more calculations to take place unnecessarily

We still have:
Spell crit vs weapon crit. Most of these are down to only 1-2 niche differences. Like crit only has a difference because of old potions and class "unique" minor buffs

Spell vs Weapon damage has the same niche class buffs for minor, while also having silly things like the mundus stones that could be combined and have the extra stone changed to something like crit resist.

Spell resists vs Weapon resists I think only has the light armor passive which gives spell resists and then the breton spell resist proc. These could easily just be baked into % buff modifiers instead. For instance there is no reason for the light armor and heavy armor phys and mag rock paper scissors, just remove that layer all together and have the light armor %spellmit passive replace the spell resist

Then go on to look at systems like
food

mundus

alchemy

skill morphs

armor enchants

jewelry enchants

From zos's recent streams it sounds like they already contemplated rewriting alchemy, but didnt because it would upset the power balance between alchemy and the other systems. So instead we are just going to sit here with several outdated systems which have clear BIS choices that are more efficient than others.

Actually, I'm going to walk back my viewpoint on spell/weapon resists, thinking about it more.

The basic stats from sets/mundus are fine being universal.

But as far as the phys mag rock paper scissors with armor weights I think that ties into some of the lore of the world. And as far as resistances, the spell/phys resistance values are mitigation%, but sticking to the default mitigation% and its softcaps.

For resists its just silly since there are only like 2-3 places where you can get spell resists on its own. So the game is bloated in 99% of code because there are two resists going on instead of just the one

Eh in terms of bloat I'd point more at the flame/frost/lightning/poison/disease resistances when they could simply be handled under spell or physical, presumably because they're an additional step.

I'd imagine that an ability would be tagged as physical/spell when calculating damage and pulling from the respective category which they'd have needed to do via accessing the defensive stat anyway. So really not too much bloat.

But those other stats are an additional layer ontop of physical/spell resistance.... Although depending on how damage is actually sent/received it might just be the same thing as spell/phys and choosing the higher of spell/phys or specific.

The problem is not that it seems like a drop in the hat, its that any drop in the hat over a million calculations adds up. Once you get a couple hundred players all in an area casting aoe dot/hots that proc multiple effects and buffs and cc how many ticks per second are we talking?

At some point you need to just start trimming the fat off and prevent excess calculations from ever happening. In an ideal world sure it'd be nice, but we are far from that at this point.

Avran_Sylt · 1:58PM

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Given some comments about the recent AMA there seems to be sentiment that hybridization isn't finished yet, but I'm kind of struggling to see how that's the case?

spell Pen and weapon pen is now pen, that was about it. Otherwise they reworked almost every instance of pen and armor to be the same stat. They did the hard work of recoding so skills would atleast consider both stats and pick the highest.....granted this only causes more calculations to take place unnecessarily

We still have:
Spell crit vs weapon crit. Most of these are down to only 1-2 niche differences. Like crit only has a difference because of old potions and class "unique" minor buffs

Spell vs Weapon damage has the same niche class buffs for minor, while also having silly things like the mundus stones that could be combined and have the extra stone changed to something like crit resist.

Spell resists vs Weapon resists I think only has the light armor passive which gives spell resists and then the breton spell resist proc. These could easily just be baked into % buff modifiers instead. For instance there is no reason for the light armor and heavy armor phys and mag rock paper scissors, just remove that layer all together and have the light armor %spellmit passive replace the spell resist

Then go on to look at systems like
food

mundus

alchemy

skill morphs

armor enchants

jewelry enchants

From zos's recent streams it sounds like they already contemplated rewriting alchemy, but didnt because it would upset the power balance between alchemy and the other systems. So instead we are just going to sit here with several outdated systems which have clear BIS choices that are more efficient than others.

Actually, I'm going to walk back my viewpoint on spell/weapon resists, thinking about it more.

The basic stats from sets/mundus are fine being universal.

But as far as the phys mag rock paper scissors with armor weights I think that ties into some of the lore of the world. And as far as resistances, the spell/phys resistance values are mitigation%, but sticking to the default mitigation% and its softcaps.

For resists its just silly since there are only like 2-3 places where you can get spell resists on its own. So the game is bloated in 99% of code because there are two resists going on instead of just the one

Eh in terms of bloat I'd point more at the flame/frost/lightning/poison/disease resistances when they could simply be handled under spell or physical, presumably because they're an additional step.

I'd imagine that an ability would be tagged as physical/spell when calculating damage and pulling from the respective category which they'd have needed to do via accessing the defensive stat anyway. So really not too much bloat.

But those other stats are an additional layer ontop of physical/spell resistance.... Although depending on how damage is actually sent/received it might just be the same thing as spell/phys and choosing the higher of spell/phys or specific.

The problem is not that it seems like a drop in the hat, its that any drop in the hat over a million calculations adds up. Once you get a couple hundred players all in an area casting aoe dot/hots that proc multiple effects and buffs and cc how many ticks per second are we talking?

At some point you need to just start trimming the fat off and prevent excess calculations from ever happening. In an ideal world sure it'd be nice, but we are far from that at this point.

That's the thing, I don't know if it's excess calculations. I've done some programming, but I've never touched networking.

You obviously need to call or be sent one defensive variable (related to resistances), and I don't know how it's called or sent to the client. But I highly doubt that it searches an array of defensive values, instead making a call with the predefined variables associated with that skill. Your local file size is probably larger to accommodate the permutations of calls associated with skills (by a miniscule amount), rather than the call itself taking more time to compute.

However when it needs to compare the targets sub-type resistance to their generic category resistance to pick the larger of the two, that does seem like an additional calculation on the servers end.

Avran_Sylt · 2:18PM

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Given some comments about the recent AMA there seems to be sentiment that hybridization isn't finished yet, but I'm kind of struggling to see how that's the case?

spell Pen and weapon pen is now pen, that was about it. Otherwise they reworked almost every instance of pen and armor to be the same stat. They did the hard work of recoding so skills would atleast consider both stats and pick the highest.....granted this only causes more calculations to take place unnecessarily

We still have:
Spell crit vs weapon crit. Most of these are down to only 1-2 niche differences. Like crit only has a difference because of old potions and class "unique" minor buffs

Spell vs Weapon damage has the same niche class buffs for minor, while also having silly things like the mundus stones that could be combined and have the extra stone changed to something like crit resist.

Spell resists vs Weapon resists I think only has the light armor passive which gives spell resists and then the breton spell resist proc. These could easily just be baked into % buff modifiers instead. For instance there is no reason for the light armor and heavy armor phys and mag rock paper scissors, just remove that layer all together and have the light armor %spellmit passive replace the spell resist

Then go on to look at systems like
food

mundus

alchemy

skill morphs

armor enchants

jewelry enchants

From zos's recent streams it sounds like they already contemplated rewriting alchemy, but didnt because it would upset the power balance between alchemy and the other systems. So instead we are just going to sit here with several outdated systems which have clear BIS choices that are more efficient than others.

Actually, I'm going to walk back my viewpoint on spell/weapon resists, thinking about it more.

The basic stats from sets/mundus are fine being universal.

But as far as the phys mag rock paper scissors with armor weights I think that ties into some of the lore of the world. And as far as resistances, the spell/phys resistance values are mitigation%, but sticking to the default mitigation% and its softcaps.

For resists its just silly since there are only like 2-3 places where you can get spell resists on its own. So the game is bloated in 99% of code because there are two resists going on instead of just the one

Eh in terms of bloat I'd point more at the flame/frost/lightning/poison/disease resistances when they could simply be handled under spell or physical, presumably because they're an additional step.

I'd imagine that an ability would be tagged as physical/spell when calculating damage and pulling from the respective category which they'd have needed to do via accessing the defensive stat anyway. So really not too much bloat.

But those other stats are an additional layer ontop of physical/spell resistance.... Although depending on how damage is actually sent/received it might just be the same thing as spell/phys and choosing the higher of spell/phys or specific.

The problem is not that it seems like a drop in the hat, its that any drop in the hat over a million calculations adds up. Once you get a couple hundred players all in an area casting aoe dot/hots that proc multiple effects and buffs and cc how many ticks per second are we talking?

At some point you need to just start trimming the fat off and prevent excess calculations from ever happening. In an ideal world sure it'd be nice, but we are far from that at this point.

And actually, thinking more about it, all these probably take the same computation time.

I'd imagine that physical resistance and spell resistance are only ever called for for Physical and magic damage abilities respectively.

All other types of damage simply call their respective damage resistance, as all that phys/spell resistance does is set the default value for those, and as the targets phys/spell data is updated, so too are those variables that will be called for incoming damage.

It's just far easier for the user to have too look at phys/spell resistance than having to individually manage each resistance type, or look at bloated text with the same numbers on all variety of resistances. (But that could be an interesting idea to take with potions/poisons, targeting specific resistances)

MincMincMinc · 2:35PM

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Given some comments about the recent AMA there seems to be sentiment that hybridization isn't finished yet, but I'm kind of struggling to see how that's the case?

spell Pen and weapon pen is now pen, that was about it. Otherwise they reworked almost every instance of pen and armor to be the same stat. They did the hard work of recoding so skills would atleast consider both stats and pick the highest.....granted this only causes more calculations to take place unnecessarily

We still have:
Spell crit vs weapon crit. Most of these are down to only 1-2 niche differences. Like crit only has a difference because of old potions and class "unique" minor buffs

Spell vs Weapon damage has the same niche class buffs for minor, while also having silly things like the mundus stones that could be combined and have the extra stone changed to something like crit resist.

Spell resists vs Weapon resists I think only has the light armor passive which gives spell resists and then the breton spell resist proc. These could easily just be baked into % buff modifiers instead. For instance there is no reason for the light armor and heavy armor phys and mag rock paper scissors, just remove that layer all together and have the light armor %spellmit passive replace the spell resist

Then go on to look at systems like
food

mundus

alchemy

skill morphs

armor enchants

jewelry enchants

From zos's recent streams it sounds like they already contemplated rewriting alchemy, but didnt because it would upset the power balance between alchemy and the other systems. So instead we are just going to sit here with several outdated systems which have clear BIS choices that are more efficient than others.

Actually, I'm going to walk back my viewpoint on spell/weapon resists, thinking about it more.

The basic stats from sets/mundus are fine being universal.

But as far as the phys mag rock paper scissors with armor weights I think that ties into some of the lore of the world. And as far as resistances, the spell/phys resistance values are mitigation%, but sticking to the default mitigation% and its softcaps.

For resists its just silly since there are only like 2-3 places where you can get spell resists on its own. So the game is bloated in 99% of code because there are two resists going on instead of just the one

Eh in terms of bloat I'd point more at the flame/frost/lightning/poison/disease resistances when they could simply be handled under spell or physical, presumably because they're an additional step.

I'd imagine that an ability would be tagged as physical/spell when calculating damage and pulling from the respective category which they'd have needed to do via accessing the defensive stat anyway. So really not too much bloat.

But those other stats are an additional layer ontop of physical/spell resistance.... Although depending on how damage is actually sent/received it might just be the same thing as spell/phys and choosing the higher of spell/phys or specific.

The problem is not that it seems like a drop in the hat, its that any drop in the hat over a million calculations adds up. Once you get a couple hundred players all in an area casting aoe dot/hots that proc multiple effects and buffs and cc how many ticks per second are we talking?

At some point you need to just start trimming the fat off and prevent excess calculations from ever happening. In an ideal world sure it'd be nice, but we are far from that at this point.

And actually, thinking more about it, all these probably take the same computation time.

I'd imagine that physical resistance and spell resistance are only ever called for for Physical and magic damage abilities respectively.

All other types of damage simply call their respective damage resistance, as all that phys/spell resistance does is set the default value for those, and as the targets phys/spell data is updated, so too are those variables that will be called for incoming damage.

It's just far easier for the user to have too look at phys/spell resistance than having to individually manage each resistance type, or look at bloated text with the same numbers on all variety of resistances. (But that could be an interesting idea to take with potions/poisons, targeting specific resistances)

Well what probably takes way more resources is when a single bug occurs somewhere in the convoluted code trying to make sense between all the resists. When the resists are 99% the same you probably wont be able to tell if something is calculating wrong. Where because of how complicated and butchered it is after 10 years, the code on the client sides don't match the server side causing desync hiccups. All it takes is the server to use your 30k phys resists and your client to use your 30,300 spell resists to cause constant desyncs each damage tick. It could literally be one intern misplacing a bracket.

I am not too sure how much a single desync impacts the server because that is where my game design knowledge stops. I doubt desyncs and the following hiccups are very performative. I do know from previous 100% mitigation bug testing that desyncs can cause delayed server halting and fixes. Like upwards of 1-2s of pausing until a calc is resolved. We throw a couple thousand of those all at once and maybe that is why cyro rubber bands during prime times.

React · 3:35PM

The obvious answer is that Major prophecy/savagery and major sorcery/brutality have not been combined, or their sources have not been adjusted to always offer both. Some things do, like nightblade's merciless or dragonknight's cauterize. But things like potions still do not, which serves no purpose other than an inconvenient roadblock in a system that was introduced to offer "total freedom". This gets even more frustrating when playing builds which utilize assassination, dark magic, dawn's wrath, or earthen heart as these lines offer the minor versions of the aforementioned buffs, which then can clash awkwardly with the major versions depending on how you're sourcing them (for example, using spellpower pots for your major sorcery whilst using earthen heart would prevent you from taking advantage of the minor brutality the line offers).

But even further, after hybridization was introduced they never did a "pass" on the lesser used abilities/morphs to bring them up to par. Since hybridization effectively removed all limitations on what you CAN use, the best in slot choices became very clear and rigid, which actually reduced the build variety instead of increasing it like the system was intended to do. There are dozens of weapon and class skills or morphs that became completely worthless once the cost/damage types didn't matter anymore, and overall this resulted in a less diverse meta than we had pre-hybridization rather than a more diverse meta, which was the intention of the system.

This pass needed to be done years ago, in the few patches following the introduction of hybridization. The meta has now become so clear and defined (especially in PVP), that you often see the exact same weapon and skill choices being used on 75%+ of the population. Subclassing only exacerbated this issue for the exact same reasons as it allows unlimited access to every skill and morph, and they have not done any balancing since it's inception to buff the lesser used skills/morphs.