Runes of Magic US / AU

Ok I have gained enough knowledge to have a base for a review of pvp and how to improve it. Please read the whole thread before you respond, and if you have a negative response, please first try to look at it from another class and another person's point of view first, and try to give a constructive response that doesn't include comments that are biased and/or strictly based on the power of your class. Now that all of that is out of the way, let me go into a little bit of history.

Chapter 1... my absolute favorite chapter for pvp. First of all, if you could 1 shot someone it was only because they were completely undergeared or way lower level than you. Almost any level 50 could face another level 50 and the balance between the classes was stunning. You could utilize all your skills without one class being more "overpowered" than another. Then came chapter 2. Still quite balanced and it was a little bit more fast paced. No class completely destroyed another yet, and it was about at the absolute max difficulty level it could be at without one class completely overpowering another every time. Then we got chapter 3. It was at this point where guilds with a mere 6 or 7 people could completely wipe out a guild with 30 people. To give you an example, it was I, vanfanelx, melanee, droode, gaieus, and a couple others against a decent guild... pandoras. I got close to as many kills as vanfanel which was in the hundreds. We completely destroyed a guild with 5 times as many people. They were absolutely frustrated and accused us of cheating. I personally could attest to our innocence, we just had really well geared players. As the chapter reached the end, guilds were able to obliterate other guilds. Players were running around with what might as well have been a tommy gun (fury of the defender of the jungle). Alas, we have reached chapter 4 and PVP is worse than ever. Its not even about skills anymore, its about who has more pattack/mattack and who can hit who faster. Any guild that is able to run a better instance then a guild they face in pvp will absolutely destroy them. Classes are completely unbalanced, skills mean nothing, defense means nothing, I can really say this game has taken a horrible turn for the worse.

Ok now that thats out of the way, there have been many suggestions floating around on how to fix pvp. So I will list a few topics, suggest what can be done about it, and hopefully you can provide a constructive critical point of view on how bad that would affect the game or what could be changed about it to make it a better suggestion, or maybe you will 100% agree on it. Whatever be the case this is NOT a thread intended to start arguments, I am looking for feedback and/or support comments only.

First topic: Pets
Pets are awesome. Pets are fun. Pets help while questing and instances, and just about every part of the game. Pets should NOT be available in PVP! Pets give your gear a major boost that makes your power too strong. Pets are only beneficial, and unless they start attacking are indestructible. The only unfortunate part is while hidden, your pets make you a target, but thats only a problem for rogues and people who use invis pots nonstop. The rich people are able to absolutely abuse the power of pets compared to the average player or the poor player who can only obtain what they are lucky to get. Pets are able to be boosted major with golden eggs, which happen to be farmed nonstop by rich players. In fact thats probably what makes them rich players. Pets are trouble and should not be accessible in pvp areas, such as arena or siege.

Second topic: Critical Hits
This was a REALLY hard topic to figure out a solution for, and I have not been able to figure out a reasonable solution to modify critical hits in a way that they could not be overpowered, but there is just nothing. With the current gear and ghost stats, players are able to get anywhere between 50% to 80% critical hit unbuffed, and even more with pots. We are practically saying if you use a shot, you are most likely going to crit another player. Critical damage in this game is REALLY powerful. And its buffed even more with pets and rings and in a rogue/scout's case, a simple buff to give them and extra 60%! Sad to say but the solution is simple, remove critical hits in pvp. I am already prepared to hear a bombard of negative comments on this topic, because gearing is really all around critical hit. People just want more and more and more, because of how powerful it is. But on players, the power is just too extreme and makes pvp a quick battle and extremely disappointing.

Third topic: Defense and Knights (Added this on because thats where this topic ended up. Sorry for its length.)
This is a very very important topic. Where in the heck is the defense in this game? Magical defense is just about nonexistant on gear because in order to run instances you need as much physical defense and hp as possible. Wisdom is the main carrier of magical defense, and thats only on priests. Not even mages use much wisdom. Just enough to last a boss fight really. Not a single player with as much knowledge of the game as anyone whos been here for more than a month would consider putting a magic defense stat on their gear intentionally. Maybe it would help with mages power reduction, but probably not. I suppose you could have a second set, but hell the first set of gear you have is already EXTREMELY costly to make, just to make a second set would be just about everyone's nightmare who isnt married to the cash shop.
And then we have physical defense. This is a majorly important aspect of the game, and is almost NOT important as magic defense! As a knight you can gear up to a minimum defense needed for a boss in an instance just fine, but that is using pots and buffs and this stuff is really expensive. Now you expect me to use all of this in pvp? No way jose! I am not Bill Gates, I cannot afford to buy a weeks worth of pots to use every time I die in pvp, which is just about right away. Plate gear is absolutely 100% pathetic. You get almost no offense (which is what this game is) and you dont survive long enough in a pvp fight to even want to attempt it! I told this to my guild and they said "its fun to go in there and be a distraction." Pfft that is totally untrue, maybe it could possibly be for some people, but definitely not for me. I am wearing the strongest armor in the game with as much defense as i could put while just being able to use melee stats to hold the aggro, and that works in pve but NOT in pvp. Attackers walk right through you! And dont even bother against a priest, because they heal themselves up too quick to ever take down by a defensive geared knight. Now this leaves the only option of wearing chain gear. Its slightly less defensive than plate, but has so much attack on it and is still slightly harder to break through. Also if you have a warrior as a second or third class, you can gear both! There is almost no reason to be a knight in plate. Now a knight in chain has potential, espeically since they can put it on warrior for dps, and knight to tank, but that is just ridiculous. Plate needs to have much more power! Defense needs to have much more benefits! One of my guildies pointed out that you never see ANY defense ghost stat bonuses on ANY dps gear. Because they just dont need it. It makes them get owned a LITTLE bit quicker, but it makes them killing machines with too much power.
Ok now that I get my opinion out of the way, I will move on to my suggestions on these matters. First off all increase the power of plate armor. Dont just give them ghost parry stats, give them ghost parry and ghost crit and ghost pattack and ghost dodge, essentially buffing them up better than any other armor. Make them a dps's worst nightmare, tough to break through but giving the knight a fighting chance. Also I would suggest increasing the defense of plate 100%. Things that are only reaching 3.5k defense should be at 7k defense. As for the second thing, decrease the bosses melee aoe power, but increase its magical aoe power. Give players a reason to add magic defense to their gear. Hopefully increase its value as a stat, and give players a reason to use it. Every single player on the server groans if their is magic defense on their stats and it should NOT be that way. People should be excited to see magic defense appearing.
A little addition to this, you will have to rework pvp gear to a way that it will be useful again, or you might as well just remove it. I never ever see players bothering to buy gear with crappy crit resistance stats on them that are just about meaningless, and sometimes only equip the gear to use the unrooting power held within the gloves.

(To be continued)

I have written as much as I could think about for now, however I am sure there are many other topics that can be discussed, especially about siege. I am extremely open to suggestions and any other topics that you wish to be added. ANY FLAMES OR ARGUMENTS will be quickly forwarded to a forum GM to be removed in an effort to keep this thread clean and healthy.

NOTE: This is only based on a PVE server point of view!

Quoted from "Slayrix;439581"

Well, i read and i do have 1 question(was hoping to whisper you in game) but the part about COMPLETELY removing critical hits from PVP seemed to stretch a little far(even though you mentioned that you know that your going to gain a lot of negative comments for this). You mentioned a lot of areas in where critical hit percentage is gained but what about a lessening of those areas? doesn't seem like the whole concept of criting should be completely removed but lessening the items/skills which contribute seems more appropriate

You have not mentioned its necessity in PVP. And as it stands it has no necessity, it is an all beneficial effect that in almost no way can be negated and has potential to cause mass amounts of extreme damage that will just be a way players with extremely high crit can just run around siege and arena critting everyone all the time just increasing their kill count. The only way I have ever seen critical hits working like a charm were in chapter 1 and 2 in this game when they were very rare (when ghosts stats were non existent). In another pvp game I play called Bloodline Champions where the only way to critically hit someone is by hitting them in the back, which makes sense because you want people coming straight at you and facing you or moving side to side or back up to make it a bit tougher. If they are running away its 100% crit chance, which is a darn good reason you should never run away.

Other than the absolute removal of crit, I see no way it could possibly be a useful affect in pvp, other than just absolutely nuking your opponent.

Quoted from "Jekk;439612"

I dont agree with nerfing crits in the way you suggest. Instead I would add 3 new stats the look like:

+96 Dex
+96 PA
-5% chance to be critically hit

+96 Str
+96 PA
-5% chance to be critically hit

+96 int
+96 MA
-5% chance to be critically hit

Put one of these on each piece of gear and youre immune to crits.

That would not be an Effective way to change things because not being critically hit is not a good way to gear in PVE. You could have separate gear, but that just goes right back to the point of having to have a second set of extremely expensive gear. Of course you could have pvp sets that do this, but it STILL brings us back to regearing, which people do not want to have to do. Taking critical hits out is still the best method anyone has come up with so far in pvp. It was not my idea but I cannot remember who suggested it either, I am sorry. (It was also the person who suggested removing pets)

that sounds like it would be very complex and hard to balance by having different calculations for PVP

Quoted from "Jekk;439715"

That is why its a good idea people who want the best for pvp and the best for pve will have 2 sets of gear. Which = more $$$$ for frogster. More $$$$ for frogster = better diamond deals, bug fixes, better content, improvements.

No matter what this will not fix the problem in pvp, only make it slightly less of a problem, but still a problem nonetheless. Removing crit in pvp all together is a much more viable solution and would cause no need to build a second set of gear just for pvp.

Quoted from "Funkomatic;439773"

As far as I am concerned, the only real way to 'balance' pvp(as far as siege only) is to rework the engine so that NO GEAR STATS/BONUSES APPLY WHILE IN SIEGE...only base stats. This would, in my opinion, turn it back in to a skill vs. skill game...as opposed to a targeting speed/1-shot battle. I imagine that far too many people would complain that they are losing their eliteness if this were to be the case though. If all servers were either PvP, or all PvE, this would not be the case. I only say this because, when you have PvP Guilds going against PvE guilds, there's going to be a LOT more imbalance as opposed to how it'd be if all servers were either/or....in other words, someone is going to have an 'unfair advantage' for some reason or another.

Not a bad idea, but probably dont see it being likely to happen at any time. If gear didnt matter, people would stop trying to make it and the game would just get really dull..

Quoted from "Jekk;439802"

If you put that stat on 12 pieces you reduce their chance to crit by 60% not many people have crit higher than 60%. You also dont have to make 2 sets if you dont want to the stats arnt the best for pve, but theyre better than tomb.



You cant just take crits out of pvp, what happens to the classes with high crit? do they get a buff elsewhere? does this buff affect PVE? What happens to people with crit heavy gear?

1. 60% is just the power rogue/scout gets with their buff, even without it i still crit people like a mofo. And to other people that would probably only reduce crit to about a 20% bonus from rings... Which is still a heavy hit and just too hard.

2. Already explained in the initial post if you read it. "This was a REALLY hard topic to figure out a solution for, and I have not been able to figure out a reasonable solution to modify critical hits in a way that they could not be overpowered, but there is just nothing. With the current gear and ghost stats, players are able to get anywhere between 50% to 80% critical hit unbuffed, and even more with pots. We are practically saying if you use a shot, you are most likely going to crit another player. Critical damage in this game is REALLY powerful. And its buffed even more with pets and rings and in a rogue/scout's case, a simple buff to give them and extra 60%! Sad to say but the solution is simple, remove critical hits in pvp. I am already prepared to hear a bombard of negative comments on this topic, because gearing is really all around critical hit. People just want more and more and more, because of how powerful it is. But on players, the power is just too extreme and makes pvp a quick battle and extremely disappointing." People build their gear around chance to crit, and strength of crit. So yes that would probably bother a lot of people to just remove it all together (as I can see you are one) but trust me it was WAY better back in chapter 1 when you were REALLY lucky to get a crit. Rogues could always get at least one with premed but the rest of the time you only had about a 5% chance to crit. And it WORKED!!!!!!!! No one moaned and complained about the low crit chance, RW decided to add it all on their own, and now its too OP!

I still believe armor should have much more significance than it has vs the power of other players. It really seems like all gear is just a bunch of cloth. They just need a boost of defense and removal of crit is all.

Its not really about the power of crits, its about how often they hit... which is nearly every shot. Even if you really reduce crit damage its still really an op characteristic of the game as far as pvp goes. The only things that would make it fair are extremely low chance to crit or no chance at all. There is just no way it could change. Even with a really low crit power, critting still makes a first trigger pull win.