User blog:LadyAlys/Skills Rebalancing and Other Changes

''This blog post is primarily to help wiki editors update the wiki for the some changes that are going live at about 18:00 GMT on 1 May. However it can also serve as a detailed but non-technical description of all the changes for anyone who is interested. Please note that the wiki changes will not be finished by the time the new skills are released. Please be patient. Our wiki editors have school and jobs and families. They will update the wiki as soon as they are able to but their real-life commitments have to come first.''

'If you have feedback about these changes that is not related to how we will be editing the wiki, please do NOT comment here. We need to keep the comments section dedicated to changes that need to be made on the wiki. I will be reluctantly deleting any comments that aren't related to the wiki.'

The primary source of information about the changes is this GitHub comment however it's written for programmers. The same material is presented in this blog post in a less programmery format.

Most of the changes are related to making the skills more balanced. Some skills were vastly overpowered and could make significant undesirable changes to player's progress (ref 1, ref 2), while others were too weak. Other changes are related to how mana is gained and lost from tasks. One or two changes aren't related to skills or mana but are being released at the same time because of reasons related to programming efficiency.

Task Mana Changes
Previously, the only tasks that would give mana were To-Dos. No longer!
 * To-Dos still give the same amount of mana as they did previously.
 * A Daily gives the same amount of mana as a To-Do.
 * However checklist items on a Daily have no effect on the mana gained (they do on a To-Do). This is in line with the different functions of checklists for Dailies and To-Dos. A checklist on a Daily helps you reduce the health loss if you can't complete a full Daily; a checklist on a To-Do increases the earnings from the entire To-Do (as if each checklist item were a separate To-Do item).
 * A Habit gives one-quarter as much mana as a To-Do, when you click on its plus button.

Because it is now possible to earn more mana than before, and because we thought an extra source of motivation would be helpful, it is now also possible to lose mana:
 * If you click on the negative button of a Habit, you lose the same amount of mana as you would gain if you clicked on the positive button
 * If you do not complete all your due (non-grey) Dailies before Cron, Cron will give you less mana than normal. For example, if you complete only 70% of your due Dailies, then you will get only 70% of the mana that you would get if you had had a Perfect Day.
 * If you don't complete a due Daily but do tick some of its checklist items, the Daily will partially count towards earning mana. E.g., If you have 10 Dailies and complete 9 of them, Cron would give you 90% of your total possibly mana. But if you completed 9 Dailies and also ticked half the checklist items on the final uncompleted Daily, Cron would give you 95% of your total possible mana.
 * An intended side-effect of this is that if you don't complete a due Daily but do complete all of its checklist items, your mana gained on Cron will NOT be reduced at all because of that Daily (in the same way that your health is not reduced at all). E.g., if you have 10 Dailies and complete 9 of them, and also ticked all of the checklist items on the final uncompleted Daily, Cron would give you 100% of your total possible mana.

Other Task Changes
Previously, the only tasks that could damage a quest boss were Dailies and To-Dos. Now, Habits do boss damage at one-half the rate of To-Dos.

There's a very interesting new mechanic for Grey Dailies that have checklists:
 * Previously for any Daily, due or not, if you ticked any of its checklist items, Cron would untick them all.
 * That still happens for due Dailies (Dailies that are not grey). I.e., the next morning, Cron will untick the Daily (if you completed it) and untick all of its checklist items.
 * That also still happens for Grey Dailies if you complete the whole Daily. I.e., the next morning, Cron will untick the Daily and untick all of its checklist items.
 * But now it does NOT happen for a Grey Daily if you did not mark the Daily itself as completed. I.e., cron will not untick any checklist items until the end of a day when the Daily was due, or you complete the Daily itself.
 * Here's how you can use this:
 * Say you have a set of tasks that you want to complete each week, but it doesn't matter on what days - e.g., you want to go to the gym three times a week.
 * You create a Daily called "gym" and you make it due only on Sundays. It's a Grey Daily every other day of the week.
 * You give that Daily three checklist items ("day 1", "day 2", "day 3").
 * On any day that you go to the gym, you tick one of the checklist items but NOT the Daily itself! The next day, that checklist item will still be ticked.
 * On Sunday, the Daily is no longer Grey, but all the checklist items that you previously ticked are still ticked. You can now see how many times you went to the gym. If you have ticked off all of the checklist items, you can mark the whole Daily as completed. If you ticked off some of the checklist items, Cron will punish you as usual for not completing the whole Daily by removing some health and by reducing mana Cron gives you.

Attribute Points Change
Previously, at levels above 100, you would keep getting a new attribute point every time you leveled up. This has been a bug for a while - we have wanted attribute points to stop being at level 100 but we've never had time to make that change. Now the change has been made. When you reach level 100, you will get your 100th attribute point. After that, you can keep levelling up as high as you want, but you won't get any more attribute points.

This is to prevent the game becoming unbalanced at very high levels. It's very difficult to make equipment stats and prices, quest boss strengths, and skill strengths balanced for a very wide range of player strengths. Balancing them for level 1 to 100 was hard enough; it would be nightmarish to keep them balanced at unlimited levels and we simply don't have enough developers to work on that, or to work on other solutions. Capping attribute points at level 100 is simple, reliable, and allows us to focus on providing balanced content for a majority of players.

Note that at level 100, the Orb of Rebirth is free, so you can restart at level 1 if you wish to.

Critical Hits Change
Previously, players with very high stats could get huge bonuses from critical hits. Now, a critical hit cannot give you a bonus greater than about 450%. This applies to both ticking off tasks and casting skills.

Skill Changes
This Skill changes post describes how we will be formatting the skills. In brief:
 * There's a single large table of all skills on the Skills page and all we have to do is update the Description column.
 * On each class page, there'll be a new template (created by Janetmango) for displaying information for each skill. This will replace the old templates that are there now; they can be marked for deletion.
 * We might not have the templates completely filled in at the time the skills go live. For example, Calculation and Examples might not be done. That's perfectly okay! We can put "coming soon" or something in those fields.

All of the skills still have the same names and mostly the same basic functions, however some skills have had a feature removed (e.g., a couple of skills that used to make task values less red now do not affect the task value at all), and many skills are either stronger or weaker.

New descriptions are listed here - good for copy-pasting into the templates for the "Description" field.

Additional notes are listed here - good for populating the "Maximize Effects", "Critical Hit", and "Notes" fields.

One important change has been made to the buff skills (those skills that increase players' attributes until the next Cron) - the strength of a buff is now determines by your UNBUFFED stats. For example, Defensive Stance buffs (increases) your CON. How much it does that is based on your CON (e.g., a player with a low CON gets a low buff to CON; a player with a high CON gets a high buff to CON). Previously, if you cast Defensive Stance once, its strength would be based on your CON from your attribute points, your equipment, and any CON buffs you already had. It would increase your CON buff, so if you cast it a second time, it would have a greater effect than the first time; the third time would have a greater effect still, and so it became possible for a buff skill to build up to an enormous effect. However now it depends on your unbuffed CON - this means it depends on only the CON from your attribute points and equipment. You can still cast the skill multiple times, and each time will increase your CON, but it will increase your CON by the same amount each time. This is one of the ways that too-strong skills were rebalanced. This affects only skills that buff your attributes (increase your attributes until Cron runs). It does not affect other skills - their strength still depends on your total attributes (including buffs). See the new task descriptions - they say either "Based on: CON" or "Based on: Unbuffed CON".

Below are my notes about what is new for each skill. These are not complete descriptions of the skills - they are just what has changed. For example, if a skill below says "uses diminishing returns" that means that the previous version of the skill did not use diminishing returns (diminishing returns has been added). Other skills might well use diminishing returns, but if the old AND new versions both use it, I haven't mentioned it.

Where it says "no changes" it means exactly that, except that the skill's description has been changed (i.e., the text that is in the note of the skill, which you see when you hover your mouse over the skill). All descriptions were changed to make them easier to understand, even when the skill's mechanics did not change.

Healer

 * Healing Light
 * no changes
 * Blessing
 * no changes
 * Searing Brightness
 * stronger
 * Protective Aura (buff)
 * stronger
 * uses diminishing returns
 * uses unbuffed stat to determine the strength of the skill

Mage

 * Chilling Frost
 * no changes
 * Burst of Flames
 * does not change the task value
 * does less damage to quest bosses
 * will damage a quest boss even if it is cast before the quest starts (but on the same day)
 * Ethereal Surge
 * no significant change to effects of skill
 * uses diminishing returns
 * is not capped at 25 MP (but diminishing returns gives a similar effect)
 * Earthquake (buff)
 * stronger
 * uses diminishing returns
 * uses unbuffed stat to determine the strength of the skill

Rogue

 * Pickpocket
 * weaker (Alys to confirm; check back here soon)
 * uses diminishing returns
 * Backstab
 * does not change the task value
 * weaker
 * uses diminishing returns
 * Tools of the Trade (buff)
 * stronger (Alys to confirm; check back here soon)
 * uses diminishing returns
 * uses unbuffed stat to determine the strength of the skill
 * Stealth (buff)
 * weaker (a single cast will hide at most 50% of your due Dailies)
 * no longer wasted on Grey Dailies
 * uses diminishing returns
 * bug fix: when Stealth hides a due Daily, the Daily's checklist items are now unticked by cron

Warrior

 * Brutal Smash
 * stronger for lower level players; about the same for higher level
 * will damage a quest boss even if it is cast before a quest starts (but on the same day)
 * uses diminishing returns
 * Defensive Stance (buff)
 * stronger especially for lower level players
 * uses diminishing returns
 * uses unbuffed stat to determine the strength of the skill
 * Valorous Presence (buff)
 * stronger / weaker / same ? (Alys to confirm; check back here soon)
 * uses diminishing returns
 * uses unbuffed stat to determine the strength of the skill
 * Intimidating Gaze (buff)
 * stronger especially for lower level players
 * uses diminishing returns
 * uses unbuffed stat to determine the strength of the skill

'Please remember, this blog post is primarily to help wiki editors update the wiki. If you have feedback about these changes that is not related to how we will be editing the wiki, please do NOT comment here. We need to keep the comments section dedicated to changes that need to be made on the wiki. I will be reluctantly deleting any comments that aren't related to the wiki.'