Spell mechanics and weird interactions. (Mobs can still cast when stunned, etc.)

Here's a small list of things which outright don't make much sense mechanically or don't match up with the game logic or patch notes. Either "broken" or bugged or dubious things or design choices which don't quite add up.

Not posted in suggestions since I don't really have any "Suggestions" since fixing or changing or investigating this is mostly up to the developers.


1)Starting off- Class and subclas skills, unique class skills and "roles" seem.. Off for some classes.


Page - Knight

This subclass has quite the identity crisis- Labeled as an in between of tank and damage and getting no new skills to really facilitate either role except a beefy cooldown strike with all of 1 seconds worth of blind attached to it.


Hunter- Warden (with minor mentions of other hunter subclasses)

Warden has a short range centered on your character AOE stun and a few self heals. Only lifeblood is unique to you- As herbal remedy is available to ranger as well.

Becoming the subclass grants no new ranged skills and only one "New" melee-ish ranged skill (Shadowbleed, which is shared with shade.) All your damaging skills have no higher than a 5 vital scaling no matter the cooldown. Making your abilities uselessly weak even as pure agi when compared to simple auto attacks.

You basically only get lifeblood and entangle as skills unique to your subclass as the rest are shared with shade or ranger or both.

You also get meditate- a completely pointless skill that's a waste of a slot and a potentially useful skill you could have (As do shades.. Which is still wasted despite them having a skill that scales damage wise with int, No hunter is putting in int. Let's be clear here.)

Warden is perplexing since it has no clear skills to lean you towards melee or ranged. And has no real party utility besides a whopping 25 second cooldown 3 second stun with very weak damage, with the added insult of a cast time even if it is very short. It has no buffing or healing that affects others, it has no defensive tank buff that isn't a generic skill anyone else can buy and use. It essentially gets nothing.

Also the base hunter ability echo blast is fairly useless, A vital 3 scaling, 20 second cooldown, two second cast time and a two second stun- The time spent casting it basically negates the benefit of the stun.

TL;DR Warden has no clear cut role or skills that help them to do any particular thing better. And meditate should be replaced with something actually useful to hunters in general, Echo blast is fairly junk. And vital/damage scaling on all skills barring sneak attack and soul shot are heinously low.


Magi - Cleric

A healer role that has too many punishments and penalties and not enough of bonuses to offset them. With a hefty penalty to their existing spell damage from their generalized 25 magi skills.. And having no fairly low-ish cooldown healing ability to fill in the gaps when their bigger heal is on cooldown. Especially in a game riddled with burst damage and "Oh now you're dead" 3-4 second crisis windows.

Also neglected because of the meta of the current game and the bizarre defense gating of mobs. Since anyone who isn't a tank won't need your "assistance" in party because they build like a glass cannon and rely on not getting hit or mount's soaking up their damage anyway. You can't heal a one or two shot, And especially not with high cooldown limited healing spells.

This isn't the players fault so much as a game design fault... Which brings us to point two....


2)Defense, Mob damage and general confusing mechanics in regards to them


The difference between being "heavily armored but not as much as a tank" and "lightly armored" doesn't really exist. Defense is a very all or nothing issue in this game.

There seem to be defense break points based on specifics zones and mobs and specific bosses which divides you between "Barely taking any damage" and "Taking 200-300 damage a hit". The gap sometimes being as small as 15-20 points of defense. So being balanced in your stats and armor just means you're going to not put out ideal damage and you're not going to survive more than a handful of extra hits over someone who went all damage.

This ultimately pushes the meta towards being a slab of mitigation and endurance/defense.

And being made of paper with maximum damage and no thought given to your defensive stats at all since you'll still die in two hits to level 40-50 mobs whether you have 200 defense or 100 defense.


And the areas and mobs where this happens have little rhyme or reason. I can endure marken mobs with 300 defense like they were nothing in some spots, but in firefly forest the golems will one or two shot me.


A serious long look has to be taken at how defense works in this game and how skewed defensive and offensive values are in general.


3)Invisible/Unspoken stats and class bonuses and penalties are a hassle.

I have to hear third hand from people who've been directly informed by devs before about things like clerics having a spell damage penalty and how much HP bonus exactly some classes get. It makes choosing and gearing and plugging in talents and points into a subclass a crapshoot of blind testing most times.


4) This one is ULTRA specific. The spell "Silver Wind" and developer communication confusion.

The only mention in the patch notes for example- of the spell silver wind is "That it's now a small aoe" in patch logs 1.1.1 and even the more recent devlogs mention nothing else.

In game after a lot of party testing- It is not the case, It cannot heal others, it doesn't do an odd damage AOE on top of the heal. It's just a weirdly expensive to cast self heal.

So was it changed silently? Is this a bug or broken mechanic? It's hard to tell given how hard it is to get clear information on abilities.




I don't mean to drone on and on- I love the game and have put money in and keep playing it and having fun, but I also want it to be improved over time and the issues resolved.


Edit: Woops. I meant to clean up the subject too to better reflect what my list turned into- Ah well.

 

Debated where to post this but I guess it fits here.

Do mobs have lethality? If they did it would explain the weird damage jumps; I think they do as I've noticed when going from pure int magi to def based necro that sometimes I seem to get hit with almost 200 def for about the same as when I was a magi

 

Mobs do have lethality, namely the ranged mobs.