The Great Hybrid Debate

[Ergorion]

[Ergorion]

A couple things that jump out at me right away.

Neither the drow nor the elf pinnacled categories has nearly enough of a sample size to say anything about their respective race/class combos. There was only one pinnacle of each, which tells me that the long road to 50 for each of those race/class combos seems particularly brutal. The other three hybrid combos hover around a 33% pinnacle rating. Elf comes in at around 17% and drow is just abysmal.

Another thing that I noticed was that efficiency ratings within each race/class combo (for the relatively significant combos: human, human and half-elf) dropped significantly when they reached their pinnacles.

Finally, I don't really know what these numbers say in isolation. It would be interesting, albeit extremely time consuming, to compile similar data sets for each race/class combo and compare their relative efficiencies.

[Fireballer]

Wall of text does UNSPEAKABLE THINGS to your sanity.
your sanity is dead.

[Fireballer]

to update this...

I think it's worth going back to the great way back when of before combat modules.

On the subject of defenses, fighters got 3, rogues got 2, clerics got 2, mages got 1, and hybrids got 2 buffed to 3.


Here's the typical setup.
dirt, disarm, bash, trip, grapple, throw, cleave weapon or shield, flee+murder, and rake.

Used in whatever combination you like, this was more or less the sum of fighter and rogue classes' attacks. NUKE skills were limited to the rogue classes, which had less health and one less defense than fighters. In addition to that, the nuke skills were limited in a certain capacity. Backstab could only be used on really healthy targets and ikuzachi had a cooldown.

It's these limited use nukes that were designed to help these classes overcome fighters. There was a distinct lack of nukes for fighters, and deadly skills such as dirt and disarm and trip and rake, all had to be executed manually to work. You only performed one of these with any action input. fighters try to wear you down with dirt;disarm and flee;murders. Rogues really performed the same way, but had ways to level fights with their nukes.

What's important here is that fighter classes relied on their tankiness and a consistent stream of damage that was reliable. The similar is true of rogues apart from their nukes. If a fighter did one thing like disarm, you could work to beat that. If they dirt kicked, you could run away for the rest of the tick. If they raked and you weren't lagged you could flee.

each skill provides a near one round benefit. It's benefit only lasts a round unless the person is fast enough to flee or wear a weapon before the next round starts.

Second issue: Armor setups and power.

Red dragon with dreamseeking cloaks was standard base armor for pk the same way today malicious beast or treant thews is baseline. that's a huge boost in the amount of damage, hp bonus, and some minor poison or weaken or caltraps protection thrown on top, since malicious gives 3 extra strength and 2 extra dex when it's all gathered. Much larger teeth as a baseline leads to shorter fights and less turnaround time for people on their slippery slopes.

Back to pre-modules, mages relied on flee;hell or flee;flame, or acid;acid;acid with zombies, or color spray with dupes, and sometimes dispels. The post module change of weapon ward keeps this old behavior alive for mages.

Now we get to hybrids. The thing is, hybrids have less health, were previously designed with only 2 defenses, and made up the difference with high damage spells or enemy combat effectiveness degrading spells, such as curse and the wraths effect of cursing. These are the guys who are able to use both third attack and enhanced damage, and also use NUKES at will. Every time they don't get to cast their damage spell, they aren't making up the difference in health. lag skills degrade their performance, unlike in warrior vs warrior where, prior to weapon type advantages, lagging another warrior was worthless unless you out damaged them or disarmed them.

Hybrids themselves have an issue where they have no warcry. This is vastly underestimated, as it leads to a 3-6 point hit/dam deficit, spread however the hybrid player chooses, but still there and no small potatoes. That can mean warcry classes could have up to 30% more hit/dam in the same gear, more if people choose to play with just some crap gear. If you've got a fighter class right now, go ahead and roll into game and take off 6 dam. That's the where of hyrids needing to make up for lacking as a class in the ability to cast nukes at will. Even so, they can be shut down with lag skills.

I don't know if the lag skill bug was always in the game, but I remember getting consecutive bashes on people prior to combat modules. Dodge is supposed to protect against this, and higher dex races, who have low strength and can't afford to be bashed, are more protected against it connecting, as long as dodge is present. Was dodge overpowered on hybrids? Yes and no. I think a different solution could've been worked out, or perhaps dodge not removed at all after the modules went in, as all other classes benefited while hybrids were simultaneously nerfed, as I will now show.

So, The established reason for hybrid power is that they carried 3 attacks and at-will nukes. Note if they use 3 defenses, they are fighting with one weapon, at a -3-6 dam or hit or combo roll compared to other players, and etc etc. paladins give up weapon selection, making them vulnerable to foreign types, and have no lag skills in exchange for heals and sanc. DKs give up heals and sanc in exchange for wide weapon selection, lag skills, and mals. What I think is important is to consider that when dodge is removed, hybrids NEED to augment their physical attacks with magical use. I don't disagree and it feels right, however it screws with hybrids post modules, especially the elven kind.

Pre-modules, the 18 str races always took a back seat in the warrior class, because they were just subpar compared to power combos like fire giant or slith or even human. Playing an elf or drow warrior was more difficult, due to needing to make use of autosneak to make up the hp difference. If you fight mobs, you can immediately see the difference in how well an elf/drow warrior stacks up against defilers or medics compared to the "above 20" str races.

Losing dodge wouldn't have been too bad in pre-changes, becuase dirt didn't kill you back then, hobble didn't kill you, or destroy autosneak, and barrage and sideswipe don't exist. Rogue skills too.



Now, Let's get into POST-change.

Suddenly, rogues have at-will nukes. Warriors have skills that cause damage, but also cause rake/disarm/lag/faceplants. They also have one or two forms of at-will nuke themselves. hybrids were protected, as mages and clerics were in pre-module, by the fact that you couldn't do more than one harmful thing at a time, allowing the ability to flee or commit another action. Warrior skills can rake weapons, as well as lag hybrids, leading to ZERO damage in a round, where they need to be constantly casting spells and hitting with weapons to win. There's no compensation, such as a reverse situation where the hybrid gets extra attacks or spell damage to make up for the opposition playing well. Hybrid playing well merely means that you stay on even ground against the opposition, by being allowed to hit with weapons and cast spells continually. The same is true of rogues, who can disarm and even double disarm, while at the same time doing NUKE damage in addition to their regular attacks. This deprives the hybrid of damage and defense, which is again half of their required ability.

Hybrids gain no advantage playing combat or weapon style, apart from the generic advantage everyone has of overcoming parry. The other physical classes all gain an advantage. Hybrids aren't really designed to play combat style or weapon type games anyway, they're meant to throw out spells. But as is shown, if the other person plays well and gets an uncanny attack or sideswipe in, the hybrid is out of their weak defenses and also out of their damage and possibly also lagged, meaning no spells either.

getting advantages confers no benefits apart from being able to play down to the wire in health against an equal opponent, via weapons and spells. It only keeps you even.

nightmare stallion is this new spell that really does the same thing as all those lag skills and such do, limits and degrades performance of spells and other skills the DK is REQUIRED to use to win. hybrids have always been about being able to get their spells off as fast as possible while hitting with their weapons. failed castings and dirt kicks due to a skill that hybrids have which protects them from lag skills is basically trading one form of combat degradation for another.

elf/drow races of hybrids got the biggest nerf. It wasn't ever that these races were superior to human hybrids in the first place. They however got nerfed the most by the changes. elf and drow parry and shield block are terrible. Not bad, terrible. The saving grace prior to modules was dodge, which also allowed them to avoid lag skills. These races have the worst parry and shield block, and strength is a huge factor in the ability to parry incoming blows. For a 2 minute fight against a mob that ends in a dropped rare for a warrior, it's a 15-17 minute fight with a hybrid. Hitroll also factors into getting through parry, but with only two defenses, both of them the worst of all races in the game, you can drop hitroll and simply load damage, just like you would against a mage or cleric. How many successful elf or drow mages have there been recently? Why do we see a trend of human and beast rangers, of clerics who are human, half-elf, or giant, of successful mages being most often human, Minos and sliths? Where are all the casters of the non-human variety?

Well terrible defenses, with penalties on top, light for cleric and heavy for mage shield block, are probably the biggest factors. A level 21 mino fighting lady rangers loses the same percentage of health in the same number of 30 rounds as a level 28 dark knight who is drow and using a polearm for parry and set parry. if we think of hybrids as low defense fighter/casters, then elvish races which are designed to cast spells with bonuses to success rate, and penalties to defenses, are even more of a mage than humans, which btw get that nice 21 str to parry. If we changed the hybrid bonus to give intelligence to dk and wisdom to paladin as bonuses instead of str, human hybrids would probably fare less well than they have done, which is already not that great.

Then comes in holy and unholy armor. It's a skill that was meant to be designed so it could provide the same bonus against bash as dodge. However, these skills are designed to be most useful for their bonuses at the highest stacking rate, granted by the heaviest armor. Again the elf and drow races have been nerfed, in their carrying capacity for weapons and preps, and their ability to switch out armor of hit/dam for saves. Even half-elf is not immune to this level of pain. Even if you do kill someone, the situation is one where killing someone with equal or less gear usually means you just sac all because you can't take any goodies away, or you kill someone with better gear and have to drop all; get all corpse; sac all or allow the enemy to be fully equipped by your ex-equipment. This causes hybrids to play unlike any other class, in that they are punished with the certainty of less loot reward for winning fights, while at the same time they're already fighting against people 4, 5 or even 7 ranks above. Maybe dying is the more appropriate term, since there's logs on invokation proving that a 5+ level difference means no attacks land for the hybrid and the opponent lands all their attacks on the hybrid.

in summary, as far as hybrids go, elf races were punished more than humans because of str and weight capacity. Their str lends to being 3 round lagged, their weight capacity limits how much un/holy armor they can have or how much consumables they have, the class itself was overpowered with dodge when people could only do one action per command, and have radically swung to the other side of the pendulum now that classes can perform two actions or more with one command. Overhead is a double disarm, nuke, lag, single command skill. Ouch. Another point of the bashes is that both humans and elves and drow get the same bonus vs bash for unholy armor. This also nerfed non-humans with high dex more than humans by the fact that the skill grows the same and maxes the same for both races, yet if hybrids had dodge, elf races would be superior in avoiding bashes. Now they're only as good as humans.

The loss of dodge would've been fair in the environment of no faceplant hobbles and dirt kicks, with a reliable rub out time, and a limit of one skill hitting you per lag "session" the enemy chooses to use against you, but with the new weapon superiority > parry and skills that can rake and damage and lag for 2 rounds of lag, the number of options for fighter and rogue classes to overcome and kill hybrids has multiplied tremendously, while the number of options a hybrid has to deal with these incoming attacks and skills has either stayed the same or been reduced.




As rogues were given at-will nuke damage skills and fighters were given skills to allow them to do things that previously only berserkers were supposed to do, e.g. rake, while also giving lag or extra damage, it is my contention that due to this "rebalancing", the classes should've ended up like this:

[Olyn]

the bonus from max unholy is better than any dodge bonus the available hybrid races would get with their max dex to avoid those skills

[Fireballer]

Then the point remains that to make use of that protection you must sacrifice weapons and consumables, and the ability to change suits for different needs.

Even so, it still means that humans actually came out better than elves and drow, which really doesn't change the issue.

In light of the bash bug being found and removed, I wonder if the bash protection needs to be revised for dodgers and armor skillers, given that luck can just turn the game into one person spamming a command and the other dying, which is antithetical to the design philosophy of AR.

http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4953
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4954
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4949

the last one has decent or near max armor bonus, and it still happens. I think the chain bash should be a concern and one of the bonuses of giants, but not a complete shutout. maybe if a penalty to the maximum possible lag time was introduced, similar to eyes being too watery to be dirted again so soon. Either that or we have to reduce the max lag time, or put the bug back in action so that misses are more common.

[Davairus]

I'd have to amend what I wrote there to say that shield block was actually a pretty fine option vs fighters. What it causes is you aren't suspecpitible to any of their lag skills (sideswipe, overhead) and that means you can cast your spells without being pounded into mulch quickly. The math is easy here. A warrior has more hp and more defenses, and more melee autoattacks. If you put yourself in a situation where you'll be lagged, you'll lose on just that. Whereas if you are in a shield, casting spells, you're circumventing his 3 defences while at the same time blocking some of the extra damage from auto he's doing with the safest defence in the game (shield block is also immune to hitroll). Even if they barrage it, you're at least casting your fireballs still. Dwarf warriors popping that favored axe on you makes it more of a clencher, but having to tank dirted while you cast fireballs, you really need that shield. Anyway, so just wanted to fix that statement. I haven't had a chance to read the other long posts yet.


This should make sense in light of the design philosophy of the DK. Youre basically (like a paladin) turtling behing a big suit of armor to allow you to cast spells. Future enhancements to dark-knights should be upgrades to their spells, not their defense. Think we might do/already did a mount? I' m not sure if they have came along that far. But the plan should be to round their spells out , I personally wanted a sort of situational revenge-based spellset, like for instance, if you dirt kicked me then I get to cast stronger than usual damage spell to make you regret it (this would not apply to a lot of stuff.. but generally the easy to use things like ..well, dirt kick and win fight) . But we'd have to think these spells through properly.

[Ergorion]

The thing about turtling up in defensive against a warrior class is such:

against warriors: dual wielded warriors get potentially 8 attacks per round. If they dirt you, sure you can cast your spells, but since you don't have blind fighting, you're probably not going to be hitting them as much. They're going to hit you a ton. Also, they can bash it up preventing you from using spells.

against rangers: dual wielded rangers only get up to 6, but the offhand enhanced makes their dual wield pretty powerful as well. dirt and dual disarm is a great combo that hits hybrids hard.

berserkers basically can play it up like warriors.


I don't think there's a problem with hybrid defenses. I think there's still a problem with combat/weapon styles. Every class except the hybrids have some way to deal with combat and weapon styles.

Mages/clerics annul everything with weapon ward.
Warriors, rangers, and berserkers all have skills they can use in any situation.
Rogues have weapon skills that they can use in a variety of different styles.

Hybrids have disarm and charge. Paladins do have shield slam, but I haven't seen anyone using it to any effect since no one wields a two-hander against a paladin. I just feel like there is absolutely no perk to dual wielding as a hybrid with the sole exception of drow dk. The damage otuput is not worth the loss of a defense. Crippling hybrids to only two available styles without giving them any way to counter their opponents' weapon skills seems like the product of a bygone era.

I also haven't seen the holy/unholy armor skills helping avoid bodyslams either. There was one log where a dark-knight had a -140 bonus from unholy armor and still got chain lagged to death. Maybe he got pwned by RNG, but being forced to carry heavy armor cripples the low-strength hybrids (drow/elf).

[Fireballer]

[Davairus]

It shouldnt be that simple unless Olyn forgot to put the damage bonus for mounted vs opponent on foot thing (have to be flying to avoid that, which messes with lag skills). Having perfect casting on top of that damage bonus would be pretty OP. That's a pretty crucial element of the mounts...

Also, while linking stats is cool and all, I find it much more illuminating to look at the logs that have been posted. It helps to filter out the players that just lost fights because they fought wrong / outgeared etc.

[Olyn]

[Davairus]

OK then this guy doesnt know what he is talking about. It might require some tuning.

[Fireballer]

[Davairus]

Fine.... have it your way then.

1. the mount change was the relief and its been around for barely any time, so basically you have little to no experience.. its not possible for you to have that yet. I'm not sure who you are, nevermind whether you have a lot of experience caballed at level 50, but right now you look a step behind us because we've just made changes to address the issue you brought up. So now you are .. bringing it up? What? We just addressed it already. Now when I made my original post, I DID have a lot of experience including caballed at level 50, and I was still wrong. And I've got logs to show that, which really show well what a dark-knight can do, and I feel those logs are already rather well known about. I didn't feel like a suped OP level 50 toon while I was full geared but I didn't have trouble killing most of my targets. What I am saying here is any opinion should be taken with a grain of salt . I remember for example paladins were lamented as being terrible for years before someone rolled Runath and stomped the playerbase so hard they cried for those paladin nerfs. You'll be surprised how little tweaking needs doing to get things right back there again. This game has a lot of complexity and it can be difficult to see the potential in something. Before the combat style changes, almost nobody wanted to play warriors because all they had is dirt and bash, and bash wasnt reliable on a non-giant amyway (and its worse than that now). Now I think you might find it hard to imagine a warrior doing poorly just because those skills got reverted into non-existence but that is what would happen to them. And those problems that they cause hybrids are important to keep relevant for that reason.

2. citing players pk records from the last year (before the change was made) is what strawman actually means - that kind of evidence is tainted by the fact that changes came in after their lifetimes. Its not a very good way to gauge game balance especially when things have been tweaked recently. Also note that my original post was written well over a year before any of those things were changed and I would certainly not have slammed DK so hard in light of them. If you are going to use words please use them correctly. I took psychology class in college too bro.

3. because nobody has even noticed other changes that were done - like the ratio being touched up on vamp touch, the new contagion spell, the unholy strength garbage-ness issue being greatly relieved, the buff to energy drain.. and on that note, I doubt few players really understand the dark-knight properly. For instance, you guys don't see the value in plague screwing over the "pip" kind of player who tries to run and reset fight when his dirt kicks miss. You guys pretty much have to be told that to figure it out. its obvious that you all need a lot more than a "helping hand" in the skills department to do well with this class. Maybe you should find Behelros' and ask him why he stuck with dark-knight for so long, for instance. He didn't rush to delete his human dk, and why is that? Could be somehow he enjoyed the character despite the shortcomings it has. Perhaps he has figured something out YOU didnt? I don't see how class shortcomings are a bad thing. Warriors not having detect invis is a shortcoming. Dark-knights have invis. And that is something that you can take advantage of against crappy warriors. You would rape them so hard that they come to the forum and complain dark-knights are too fucking strong with no idea what they are talking about (hopefully this sounds familiar).

4. the bottom line is dark-knights lost dodge and since then all of the noobs who just griefed with dk's have had no idea how to adapt with them, and the same goes for the paladins, and there have been very strong examples of both that you wouldn't want to see coasting around whooping everyone with a bunch of really strong buffs. They dont have dodge and thats a big deal, and this may not be the class for you, they play like tanky mages now, without weapon ward, and that's probably stressful to somebody who is looking for more survivability rather than more lethality (which is what you get for that handicap). Wrath, fireball, and lightning bolt are pretty deadly spells, and I believe dark-knight has harm on top, so they're especiallly good at shitting on people, its kinda like the berserker issue, where they rage and win, you want the berserker locked into combat style so players can have a chance, because without that they won't have one. the vulnerability is intentional and it is not excessive to the experienced eye.

I don't really want to waste my time on this kind of arguing. Pony up the logs and provide some real evidence of your points. Make sure they are recent enough to be relevant to this discussion. And realise that changes were already recently made and we need to wait to see how those unfold properly. The first couple guys jumping on a DK with no idea how to play one is obviously going to be painful for them.

[kammkala6]

[Fireballer]

[Davairus]

I refuse to do anything more about it until I see real logs of combat instead of conjectures based on population. Even in a much larger playerbase, that's still not been a fair measure of OP. Nobody played duergar shamans until Burzuk for example and right after him they became ubitiquous, because he demonstrated they could kill anyone with just gear, cure crit, and kick. Yes kick. A decent log with fair gear involved is much more convincing than a "bahh dk's are rubbish" sentiment. Plus there is a big change in the pipeline (which I'm a bit hesitant on) which could make warriors considered pretty crap basically instantly. As far as the PAST goes, dark-knights certainly have had their day, but that's not what I'm interested in. I need CURRENT LOGS OF FIGHTING TO MAKE CONCLUSIONS.

[Ergorion]

Ceridwel, Sia, Berndamir, Iendlir. POST MORE LOGS. I can't think of any dark-knights off the top of my head.

[Fireballer]

http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4963
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4961
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4983
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4962
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4971

The paladins, as ergorion has stated, aren't posting logs, but the legions are ( or were ) posting their ez sauce kills against paladins. The logs above are the latest and greatest dk that was 50. Who else dk is above 40?


You have said before that lowbie dks and particularly drow ones are really good, but are they? A giant is having it's vuln subverted and still wrecks the drow.
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4986
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4987
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4990

some paladin logs that exist.
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4980
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4978
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4959
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4958
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4953
http://ar.invokation.net/logs/view.php?id=4954

http://www.abandonedrealms.com/players/index.php?sort=rating


1. [LEGION] Valox the Wrath of Nature - 12 hours 38 minutes
2. [JUSTICE] Kurlson the Battlemaster - 10 hours 53 minutes
3. Kopraonu the Holy Patriarch of Healing - 10 hours 27 minutes
4. [JUSTICE] Eloret the Enforcer of Order, Commander of Justice - 6 hours 40 minutes
5. [KNIGHT] Aexolt the Grand Mistress of Assassins, Champion of Valour - 4 hours 12 minutes
6. [KEEPER] Jaux the Last Bastion of Balance - 1 hours 25 minutes
7. Linaro the King of Devils - 7 hours 16 minutes
8. <HERALD> Aldinio the Angel of Arcana - 28 hours 57 minutes
9. [LEGION] Graulog the Wrath of the Blasphemers - 8 hours 47 minutes
10. [KNIGHT] Iendlir the Holy Knight, Footman of Valour - 21 hours 25 minutes - PALADIN
11. Jund the Holy Shaman - 14 hours 40 minutes
12. Mendal the Battlemaster - 1 hours 26 minutes
13. Ikaork the Barbarian of Reckless Frenzy - 22 hours 18 minutes
14. [LEGION] Taudon the Battlemaster - 7 hours 58 minutes
15. Nevek the Hand of an Immortal - 9 hours 18 minutes
16. Xain the Master Thief - 1 hours 22 minutes
17. [LEGION] Vendert the Volcano of Infinite Rage - 1 hours 11 minutes
18. Adranq the Shield of the Forest - 14 hours 28 minutes
19. Treavin the Lord of the Templars - 2 hours 52 minutes
20. Zabxilce the Master of Trickery - 21 hours 48 minutes
20. Nadeth the Keeper of the Glen - 16 hours 20 minutes
20. Gihkig the Barbarian of Force - 5 hours 29 minutes
20. Waitu the Captain of Assault - 4 hours 35 minutes
20. Fronbur the Master of Dragons - 1 hours 17 minutes
20. Gnilpax the Master of Song - 12 hours 36 minutes
21. Stalagolith the Captain of Assault - 10 hours 12 minutes
22. [KNIGHT] Eidren the Master of Displacement, Footman of Valour - 41 hours 9 minutes
23. [JUSTICE] Ozmandion the Holy Shaman - 1 hours 43 minutes
24. [KNIGHT] Sia the Champion of the Templars, Footwoman of Valour - 30 hours 4 minutes -PALADIN
25. [JUSTICE] Veruliane the Queen of Devils - 9 hours 34 minutes
26. Thura the Battlemistress - 2 hours 0 minutes
27. Tora the Stronghold of Fury - 16 hours 25 minutes
28. Berndamir the Holy Knight - 2 hours 4 minutes - PALADIN
29. [KNIGHT] Ceridwel the Holy Knight, General of Valour - 1 hours 1 minutes - PALADIN

[Davairus]

You needn't post the ratings. Those don't mean a whole lot other than the player is active and doing some pk'ing. I will view the logs when I have a bit more free time, which will be some time next week.