FYI, we removed the healing of cosmic lords/ethereal avatars.

I've been gold-bashing a lot in the last week, and I noticed the XP / gold and health changes quite well. Hunting primarily on Prime, manticores for example actually gave me a bit of a scare at the start. Gold / hour doesn't seem that much higher, I just feel value per mob has gone up but as time also has gone up it evens out a bit. Credit prices already make me cry so I hope the effect won't be too big. On the other hand it makes fixed cost things such as manses easier to reach, for which I am glad, as it makes the dream of a personal aethership that bit easier to reach

Wondering what situation this will place novices in though, not too long ago they could count on 6.5k per needle which also got them a credit, but will the new esteem per hour and esteem prices match up to them gaining credits at the same rate still? I know I wasn't the brightest novice around, but it would be a shame if new players were even more forced into buying credits for real life currency because ingame is less of an option.

A four person astral party against lobs didn't go well. Haven't tried solo, for a few reasons.

Well, granted, most people in that group aren't strong bashers. Nyde died because Ryboi couldn't handle the 2 lobs on him and went away, and Nyde simply can't tank 7 lobs at once. If we had a group of good demi bashers I'm sure it would have been peachy keen.

As a reminder, this is a quote of you talking about the xp reward of smobs. Sojiro already pointed out that enemy territory deaths for demis hit for 2 million + cost of phoenix/reforming. And let's just say, even with them dying in 5 minutes in the past, people always died. So now you expect people to stay longer in discretionary powers, shrine powers, and defenders longer. People are definitely going to die. Not to mention Supernals/DLs/avatars are only taken down by groups of about 25 and up, your "XP Reward" is divided by that same group.

Personally, oh well, we don't actually raid these figureheads for the XP and Gold. It'd be nice to do it for that, but we just do it to raid. I think enemy territory deaths and the essence lost associated with that should be reviewed and removed. It should cost the same to die anywhere. Have you noticed that no one uses temporary demigod or ascendant powers? It's mostly cause of cost, but also because everyone has to keep their essence up for enemy territory deaths. Yes, even non raiders have to keep their essence up because they likely bash in enemy territory at some point or another.

I also feel like the combination of nexus and shrine powers has also gotten too strong, but that's another issue not related to mob updates.

I'm going to say warriors, but monks have a clear advantage in this as well. My main issue with bashing mobs being made tankier is that it has proportionately widened the disparity in effective bashing by classes. More hits means critical hits matter more and speed matters more. I seriously cannot comprehend how this hasn't been addressed yet, especially when it comes to warriors versus casters. I mean, it takes the same number of hits to kill things between warriors and casters. the damage stat on warrior weapons seems to have little to no effect on bashing mobs, which means that the warrior can maximize speed for no cost.

Warriors hit nearly twice as fast as casters; it's absurd. Casters do not hit proportionately harder. Even doing it that way doesn't make things equal because the speed is still a factor that contribute to increased number of hits and increased opportunities for critical attacks.

I always hear this complaint that warriors can miss, well a miss takes 1 second of balance or less on a miss. Warriors hit every 2.5 seconds. A warrior can literally miss every single hit and still bash faster than any caster. Even if a caster maximizes their speed by going mugwump, a neutral balance race warrior will still hit faster. Let's not forget that warriors have weapon auras and artifact weapon runes to increase their speed. I don't see speed increasing artifacts for casters?

There is also the smaller issue of cleave and raze. Razing takes a second to do. Why does invoking nullify or evoking void take between 2.5-3 seconds (over twice the time) to do and not even have a follow up attack? Without a follow up attack or an attack that pierces through such as cleaving, the mob just puts the shield back up anyways. Razing works because the other hand is free to swing his sword and then the razing hand is free a second later anyways.

I strongly feel that the mob updates have widened this gap into an end of the bashing world canyon.

My solutions are simple. It's not meant to be all of the ideas below combined, but some combination of them or just picking and choosing from them:

1) Create a bashing attack for the caster classes that has a 2.5-2.75 second equilibrium. Can't be used on players or just deals negligible damage to players (whichever is easier to code or an alternative solution with the same end result)

2) Add an extra syntax to the end of said bashing attack that will let it cleave through magical shields for an extra second of equilibrium. Example: PUNCH SHUYINSFACE

3) Change bashing attack speed (either of current skills or make a new skill) to 3-3.5 seconds. Increase damage of attacks respectively keeping in mind that speed still trumps damage, especially over time which is relevant because of the changes that have increased mob health. To summarize, attacking 25% faster is not the same as hitting 25% more damaging simply because of critical hits.

4) Add in solutions in the form of artifacts, something that costs credits/dingbats, purchasable demigod power (this would need extra demi weight given I feel)

Bashing is a large part of Lusternia. It's about time the playing field is made level instead of raising the bar higher for the non warrior/monks. Destruction was supposed to be the equalizer, but since the removal of ascendance, it no longer is. Not to mention, it has exclusive access rights to use it.

On a personal side note, adjust the cost of destruction or update the ability to match it's cost

Yes, this here. When I heard that the essence shop was coming out, I thought Destruction would be available. If you want to balance bashing, like Krellan said, across the board..Then opening Destruction to Demigods would make life so much easier.

It would for Demigods. It wouldn't really fill the target of "balancing bashing across the board" though. Demigods != the board.

Downside is that it costs like 25 million essence and 50 demi weight. So uh one power for you. In addition, it's not the same ability it was since the removal of ascendance. It was a skill based ability, meaning more effective at transcendant. Now it's kind of like a 25 intelligence stat caster bashing even though no one can actually reach 25 intelligence.

I hate you, Britishman.

First, more hps for mobs means that the disparity between casters (slow, high damage) and warriors/monks (fast, low damage) is lessened, not increased.
Second, I'd like actual numbers on the warrior vs. caster speed and damage. So far, the only numbers I've had were from being an axelord with a 340+ damage axe (rest into speed), which I knew was worse than maxed speed, but I used it for fun.
That (klang)axe, maxed for damage, did 180ish damage per hit to my beast (with beast armour) and hit at 3.x seconds, not really fast. As a merian aquamancer, I hit 210+ damage per staff attack without etchings or magical damage artie rune. And, especially with etchings, you can easily reach 3.5 or less recovery times. Add to that the miss rate of warriors, and I have to wonder why people think they're faster, even with weapons maxed for speed. They may get an edge once the (bashing) weapons have maxed out stat runes and they ARE faster against small mobs, but that's it.

I agree with what Krellan said. I find myself pestering warriors to tag along with to hunt because splitting the gold between both is a faster gain for me than solo. And pretty sure they make a loss when taking me along. Not quite how it should be, really.

miss rate is 5% and less now with sharpness oil. It's a 1 second miss rate. If you're bashing 3.5 seconds and a warrior misses every single time before they hit, they're hitting at the same speed as you. That is they miss 100% not less than 5%.

They are faster against high health mobs because faster attacks equates to more critical hits, leading to faster kills. I'm not sure I understand why it is only against low health mobs. Please explain so I can be on the same page as you.

High health mobs means less wasted damage on crits for the high damage attacks of casters. Having your dps split among more smaller attacks will always mean less wasted damage and thus mean faster bashing for equal dps. But I wanna see numbers on warriors being equal or better dps wise than casters.

Okay, I can agree with that.

Our disagreement is on the dps then.

Time to start gathering (and posting) numbers then!

You're discounting sweet raze/cleave and the added opportunity to critical hit. Over the lifetime of playing Lusternia, all those shields I have to wait for and rebound off of start to add up.

And is bashing pets an accurate representation of the damage that you do to other mobs? (question to the admin)

Firstly, thank you Veyrzhul for your guild-hopping insights. Of the active playerbase, you probably have a wider variety of experience than most, at higher tiers of everything.

For my part, I can only speak on mage and knight bashing. The disparity wasn't nearly as great between the two as it is often made out to be. All else being equal, increasing mob health should only narrow the gap, for exactly the reasons stated- less wasted overkilling damage from big mage criticals. The advantages of more numerous, low damage criticals remain the same whether you're fighting 100 mobs with 500 health apiece, or 10 mobs with 5000 health apiece.

except for the fact that his numbers were a difference of 30 health. 30 health doesn't sound like a game breaker between more damaging criticals and less damaging ones. It would mean he does 60, 120, 240, 480 and 960 more damage as a mage. While the speed difference means he gets X amount hits more over time times a roughly 50% crit rate. I think approximately 54% is quoted somewhere on the forums at demi level 3 crit rune, higher for ascendants plus time saved on cleaving and minus 5% of X, seconds

The cleave/raze difference can easily be made up by having mobs not shield. Solo, it evens things up a bit and in raids, well, if you have 25 guys and no one to raze, something is wrong.

RE: Mobs not shielding

That is a good suggestion