Damage caps in relative form are a bad idea because they punish races like loboshigaru/krokani (high health). If I'm standing beside Serella (first faeling I could think of) and Shuyin comes up, I'd like for my 2k more health to matter, instead of us both getting 4-shotted. (3000-ish health to 5500-ish health).

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't make a faeling warrior squish as slowly as a loboshigaru or krokani warrior.

If all it did was sip, sure.

Most (all but scrolls and sparkles?) healing skills are base amount + percentage. When you've got 6000 health, the percentage is the important part. When you've got 1500 health, that static amount becomes really important. If you've got a healing skill (so bards, druids, guardians, Moondancers, Aquamancers, healer Shadowdancers, Crow Ebonguard, Moon or Stag Serenguard, and ritualist warriors), you can burn a balance every so often and just straight up end any progress made. It wouldn't be as often as you think, either. That sip bonus is pretty major, and if that faeling is a druid, that faeling is pulling regen at the same time.

The point being, lower levels should never serve as an advantage. I'm not looking forward to the day where people start looking at lower levels as a more viable alternative than levels 80-98.

I've already addressed bard concerns over the envoy channel, noting that, imho, aurics should be excluded from any cap. m2 is a basic attack skill, however, and (if anyone remembers Xiel as a bard) can be just as bad with powergamed and boosted stats/artis as a warrior for nearly one-shotting people.

I think damages should be balanced and scaled correctly. But I dislike the idea of caps. In my paradigm of things, classes which do passive damage/afflictions should not be doing as much pure damage as classes that do not do passive damage/afflictions.

Those are the things which I think should be looked at and "capped" but not with pure numbers.

There is too much variance in health to have hard capped numbers. (2K - 12K health)

A unarmored, undeffed, level 30 merian (lowest con? not sure) should die in one hit. I don't see why you would argue they shouldn't.

So why not implement partial damage caps then? Static damage + a Percentage? If it works for curing, it'll work for damage, right?

I've always felt it should be a minimum of 3 hits to kill anyone who is above a newbie-ish level. There is nothing that can be called a game if it takes less than that. Damage caps should just be something like, no single attack can do more than 65% of the target's max health.

Another version would be a "damage shield" skill in discipline, prevents the first move which hits you from doing more than 50% of your max health, later hits can do more. Wouldn't really meet me own expectations but would also be pretty easy to balance. It could also be tweaked so that it does something like, activates on first hit, lasts for the next 4 seconds, to effect focusing someone down in team fights.

Wait, see what happens with these changes for a bit. It's going to take at least a little bit for knight players to hammer things out with the weapon changes to see what works best.

Remember, one of the big things that gave rise to this was a certain demigod axelord with a max damage weapon and elemental runes, and very high strength killing some people quickly with the Axelord "doubletap" (which compounded the high damage on soft targets).

The big thing is/was the high strength. In the outlier case above, it was the combination of several factors. Between the reduction to extreme stats and the weapon stat adjustments, we may well see some real bouncing around for knights.

You still can't. When I say sip, I am implying all forms of health healing. You still can't keep up. At 1500 life you sip for something like 300. How can you possibly consider it an advantage when all sorts of damage still goes through and destroys them? I can bleed for 200 and not care, that guy can't. A passive demesne tick for 200 doesn't hurt me much but that kid is reeling. Hell I could even use the useless pyrotoxin and kill him by tapping.

Your example would be true if everyone used newbiekick as their one and only damage source.

Aurics are not included in the capping. They are not listed and additionally it is the effect of an affliction, if you cap the damage on afflictions something is horribly wrong.

The ideal of capping should be based on what is examined. Should Damage weapons be a 20 second win (assuming not splendours/viscanti/trans resil)? No.

As I think desitrus was saying things like omen would increase the cap of the damage to allow them to work normally.

Cudgels are laughable at my levels of resistance short of pure bleed stacking.. if cudgel does say 1000 and 400 bleed or similar though..? Ouch.

Cosmicfire is a joke.

Symbol, more of a joke.

Minorsecond isnt meant to kill people alone, and generally wont.

Kata shouldnt be powerful, but doesnt generally seem to be.

For the most part caps are only needed if you arent optimized for resistance like the demigods. But wait, isnt that the point? Yes Shuyin can hurt me in full def with splendours as a Viscanti, fairly heavily actually.. but then again I think Shuyin was the inspiration for alot of this.

Shuyin, Ceren, Viynain (as bard), and (since someone said cudgel) Krellan are the people most likely to cause an alarm with damage levels.

Yeah, uhh...You didn't read what I wrote, Malarious. I think people aren't understanding exactly what the damage cap stuff is - right now it's still a proposed capping. Damage itself has been tweaked slightly but capping is being debated among the envoys (which, if any to include/exclude and so on). I've put forth that all aurics be excluded, and Ceren's made a very good case for DPS over time versus burst damage. Narsrim's request via Llandros doesn't address anything except straight-up damage augmented by artis and high stats.

YO I'm gonna weigh in here cause I have free time now, med school is OUT for the summer. WOO.

Ok back on topic, damage caps based of the target's max hp are a bad idea, for all the reasons we've heard. Mainly, someone with low health should suffer the consequences of said low health, and definitley not benefit from a damage cap system. High hp races shouldn't be punished, and lowhp races shouldn't overly benefit (the should DEFINITLEY not become more viable when taking damage, they take a penalty so they can have other nice things dammit)

The best way to do it, IF it's justified is this.

Make your damage cap so that no staff blast can do more than 2.5k damage up to a certain level. After this level, have the damage cap taper off in accordance with health.

EG 2.5k is the soft cap, however once a player reaches 5k health (note at 5k health, 2.5k is 50% of max hp) the tapering will commence. The damage cap is then raised so that no single attack will do more than 50% of max hp. This allows demigods with 10k health to fight other demigods with 10k health, and still kill with damage viably, but not roll around and 1shot the midbies. Similairly the cap at 6k health is 3k damage, and so on. Those with less than 2.5k health are nubs, and should be getting smashed by an artied demigod if they get in the way. Having 4k health however, isn't terrible but still shouldn't be getting rolled so hard. Don't forget if you have lower hp, you usually get balance or attack bonuses, allowing you to hinder the enemy from smashing you on each round with a damage attack.

Remember the damage cap is just a cap. Demigods will only do 5k to each other if their ORIGINAL ATTACK DAMAGE is intended to reach such illustrious heights. So you won't be absolutley doing more damage to these stamina monsters, you'll only have the potential to. This allows those with arties and high int etc the ability to do big damage (which is what you pay for) but it'll alleviate the ability to 1shot the scrubs.

Also gives rise to another saleable artifact, call it the Aegis of Murphy, it will allow the damage cap to be increased by another 50%, allowing the purchaser to still eliminate scrubs at their ultimate whim.

NOTE: 2.5k and 50% are interchangable, i'm using them to illustrate my point not as reccomended values (but logically, they aren't far off the mark)

EDIT: Don't forget most damage in this game is already based on a formula of damage done = (x% of max hp) + y amount. EG 20% of health +500 for cosmicfire (this is incorrect just exampling again). Therefore lower hp classes are already taking lower damage, this would just serve as an absolute failsafe to serve against ridiculous stacking of damage abilities.

4108h, 1789m, 5700e, 10p, 17142en, 28140w elrxkdp-
Your tail is poised high above your head, ready to strike.
sting nienla
4108h, 1789m, 5700e, 10p, 17142en, 28140w elrxkdp---/11:58:35.423/

You must first stand up before you can do that.
4108h, 1789m, 5700e, 10p, 17142en, 28140w elrxkdp-
You bleed 2337 health.
1771h, 1789m, 5700e, 10p, 17142en, 28140w elrxkdp-
Throwing a kick in the Spronghai style, Desitrus slams his right heel on your right arm.
Your forehead starts to throb.
Burst vessels!!!
Desitrus punctures a black steel nekai into your chest with the Angknek style, and a sharp pain streaks across your lungs.
75 approximated wounds added to chest.
Desitrus gouges flowing nekai of sleek silver in the Angknek style into your gut, spilling your steaming entrails.
75 approximated wounds added to gut.
Shrugged
900h, 1789m, 5700e, 10p, 17142en, 28140w elrxkdp---/11:58:35.632/
-3208

How about seem bleed cap? Even 25% bleed can't be sustained for that long if you are factoring in additional damage. 2.3k bleed... seriously? My health is only 5.7k, thats 40% of my health in one bleed. On top of 900 damage from a monk attack.

Yeah Murphy, they sort of destroyed the perks belonging to those races. Play sometime

They removed balance bonuses for fast races? they removed the high int for merians and for mugwumps (and eq too?)

Anyway my original point stands, low hp should not be rewarded for it, and high hp shouldn't be punished.

The bonuses were halved for pretty much every bonus except the damage resistances.

Yeah but you still get the good int to go with it, and it's a bit faster. Some mugwumps were getting overly tanky from memory! Still, you take a low hp race for a reason, which clearly is a sacrifice. The sacrifice should not be weakened in my opinion.

And I believe i WAS playing when they nerfed balance speed, which is why I went from aslaran to krokani.

They've nerfed balance speed twice since open beta, if I remember correctly. The first time might've been more significant. They've also nerfed the impact of high stats, meaning an 18 int race's damage isn't going to be as high compared to a 12 int race as it used to be.

Yah i'm positive i was around for both sets of nerfs, given i tested the balance part pretty extensively.

They put in a change to stats and weapon stats just a few days ago, so we still need to see how that works out too.