A comprehensive guide to fixing these imbalances behind the dashboard
So, I've been thinking (a dangerous thing).
I'm going to try to break this posts up a little so they're not just a wall of text.
I think the general consensus on balance in this game is that it is, bluntly, skewed badly towards hitting first, for as hard as you can.
I'm going to ignore the speed issue for now. I'm not sure how the changes I'm going to lay out would affect it precisely, but I suspect it would solve 80% of speed issues (possibly including Poe).
The goal is not to make all characters homogeneous, but to make some characters from all types usable and useful in a team composition.
3 main points:
1.Health
2.Damage
3.Armor and Resistance
Health:
Currently, the gap between tank-ish characters, and glass cannons is between 50-80% at max level and gear (Think 10k Health on Leia, Rey, etc. vs 18k Health on Ben or Barriss) in the most extreme cases. In many cases, there is NO difference, or as low as 10% (Think GS vs Han). This limits effective health (A combination of health and damage reduction for those unfamiliar with the term).
In comparison, high damage attackers damage potential ranges from 400% (A 15k critical vs a 3k critical) at maximum to around 100% (6k vs 3k)
Health also limits effective healing for Healers, because all healing is based off either the life of the healed, or the healer. What is the point of healing for 40% of 10,000 health when 1 turn from 1 character deals 6,000 damage?
The first fix should be to increase health gained per point of Strength by 25% from 18 to 24.
This would provide STR based characters with the highest benefit, obviously, but it would raise overall health on every character, taking most out of the OHK range.
It would also make Healing more effective, yielding much larger numbers from standard healers,
and would also rebuff Barriss to usable levels. Healers could potentially become part of the metric in Arena again.
The result at current levels would raise STR based characters health by between 3150 and 3570 (3360 for 8 stat gain characters)
Most other characters gain between 5.3 and 5.9 STR/lvl, and would receive between 2226 and 2478 Health.
More important is the fix for Armor in Tank marked characters below. The Health increase is to move the marker slightly away from OHKs in combination with slightly lowered damage.
Damage:
A lot of discussion centers around lowering damage at a flat rate across the board, In combination with the health increase, damage should be lowered, but should also be targeted. Again, the goal is not to become homogeneous, but to slightly tone down overall damage and also slightly close the gap between damage done and health per character.
First, the Physical and Special Damage modifiers on The Primary stat and INT should be lowered from 1.4d/point to 1.2d/p (Possibly leaving Special from INT at 1.4/p, to account for the cooldowns on abilities that use SD). This is a reduction of about 15% across the board in base physical damage, but only from stats.
Most high damage attackers also have large amounts of Physical Damage from gear. The most efficient way to further tone them down without completely gimping non-Attacker damage is to remove 10-15%% damage from abilities from leveling abilities through Ability Materials.
This will further lower the chances of unbuffed, 1st turn OHKs, while still allowing for large hits from buffed, augmented abilities by Attackers. They should remain far more dangerous than the other classes, but require some set-up to hit for staggering amounts.
Again, homogeneous characters are not desirable.
Armor/Resistance:
Are currently near-useless stats, and require the greatest amount of focus.
I'm gonna make a separate post for it.
I'm going to try to break this posts up a little so they're not just a wall of text.
I think the general consensus on balance in this game is that it is, bluntly, skewed badly towards hitting first, for as hard as you can.
I'm going to ignore the speed issue for now. I'm not sure how the changes I'm going to lay out would affect it precisely, but I suspect it would solve 80% of speed issues (possibly including Poe).
The goal is not to make all characters homogeneous, but to make some characters from all types usable and useful in a team composition.
3 main points:
1.Health
2.Damage
3.Armor and Resistance
Health:
Currently, the gap between tank-ish characters, and glass cannons is between 50-80% at max level and gear (Think 10k Health on Leia, Rey, etc. vs 18k Health on Ben or Barriss) in the most extreme cases. In many cases, there is NO difference, or as low as 10% (Think GS vs Han). This limits effective health (A combination of health and damage reduction for those unfamiliar with the term).
In comparison, high damage attackers damage potential ranges from 400% (A 15k critical vs a 3k critical) at maximum to around 100% (6k vs 3k)
Health also limits effective healing for Healers, because all healing is based off either the life of the healed, or the healer. What is the point of healing for 40% of 10,000 health when 1 turn from 1 character deals 6,000 damage?
The first fix should be to increase health gained per point of Strength by 25% from 18 to 24.
This would provide STR based characters with the highest benefit, obviously, but it would raise overall health on every character, taking most out of the OHK range.
It would also make Healing more effective, yielding much larger numbers from standard healers,
and would also rebuff Barriss to usable levels. Healers could potentially become part of the metric in Arena again.
The result at current levels would raise STR based characters health by between 3150 and 3570 (3360 for 8 stat gain characters)
Most other characters gain between 5.3 and 5.9 STR/lvl, and would receive between 2226 and 2478 Health.
More important is the fix for Armor in Tank marked characters below. The Health increase is to move the marker slightly away from OHKs in combination with slightly lowered damage.
Damage:
A lot of discussion centers around lowering damage at a flat rate across the board, In combination with the health increase, damage should be lowered, but should also be targeted. Again, the goal is not to become homogeneous, but to slightly tone down overall damage and also slightly close the gap between damage done and health per character.
First, the Physical and Special Damage modifiers on The Primary stat and INT should be lowered from 1.4d/point to 1.2d/p (Possibly leaving Special from INT at 1.4/p, to account for the cooldowns on abilities that use SD). This is a reduction of about 15% across the board in base physical damage, but only from stats.
Most high damage attackers also have large amounts of Physical Damage from gear. The most efficient way to further tone them down without completely gimping non-Attacker damage is to remove 10-15%% damage from abilities from leveling abilities through Ability Materials.
This will further lower the chances of unbuffed, 1st turn OHKs, while still allowing for large hits from buffed, augmented abilities by Attackers. They should remain far more dangerous than the other classes, but require some set-up to hit for staggering amounts.
Again, homogeneous characters are not desirable.
Armor/Resistance:
Are currently near-useless stats, and require the greatest amount of focus.
I'm gonna make a separate post for it.
