@Lyrian what opponent is this?
Also, what happened prior to their turn where they matched 4 skulls?
This specific opponent is Outlander (Bear) in the Open Tourney.
The 59k fire damage is the 25% bonus damage from a mythic Warlord Axe (also probably augmented 20% by red elemental advantage over green).
The 65k blocked damage is straight skull damage though. On top of very high stacked +Aim/+Cleave attributes, players can get a further 500+% more crit damage from the effect on the Runic Armbands (10% of highest elemental mastery to Critical Damage Amount), resulting in players easily generating 1000-1500%+ bonus crit damage when stacked on top of the Aim/Cleave attributes.
This is happening as well in the Green tourneys this week.
My turn 1⌠matched a few gems, nothing special happened. AI side moved normally, matched a few gems as well and the 4 skull match, and the screenshot was the end result of the skull match being resolved.
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Something is also amiss with the Bubble Shot spell. The bonus damage being generated by the spell is almost as high (or higher than!) as the base spell damage itself on a very cheap to cast spell.
This is broken (this is a bug)⌠the team is looking into it currently, as this is not how it should be working. Fix is being released currently
It seems to me that Outlander has put a ton of effort into his character. This is a true âglass canonâ build.
Assuming Runic wrists, maybe Warlord II, and other gear that is pushing the crit to 1500%, the math checks out.
If you are able to deny skulls and red on their first turn it is a pretty easy fight. With a 40% crit chance you still have 3/5 odds of surviving that attack with just a scratch.
You are playing a disadvantaged color against one of the best PvP configurations currently in the matchmaking. I really donât see how you can argue that you should survive that without question, or that something is âbrokenâ. Broken implies it is not working as stated. Maybe you mean something else?
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I like having these types of âbrokenâ opponents, they give some excitement to PvPs. Full mana spells were broken, because they were nearly impossible to defend against. This is just a high power opponent, not so difficult to win against with the correct level and build.
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Total agreement. Their berserker is one of the top characters in the game, full stop.
Also in full agreement. The Warlord set build is especially nasty in PvP. The effect on the axe is a gruesome bonus on top of a very effective set bonus in general. The Elven Bow is also especially nasty in the right setup, but the Warlord Axe synergizes so well with its own set that its excellence cannot be denied.
A couple of nitpicks:
- That pic is an out-of-combat stat screen and is mostly irrelevant. The in-combat numbers with stat bonus applied are much higher. You even mentioned this yourself.
1500% crit damage is just a wee bit higher than 661%.
- Any build with capped 80/80 Block stats is not a glass cannon build. The high crit build in combination with maxed Block stats is highly impressive though and perhaps should be looked at for feasibility. Should a player be allowed to field both a high defense and high offense build at the same time? Hard to say, as this is more of a design decision for the game and none of us outside the dev knows what the intended design for maximum player effectiveness is and wasnât relevant to my claim of brokenness.
Back on topic,
That 40% crit rate is very close, if not at 100% crit rate in-combat.
Also, you are aware of how nearly impossible it is to prevent free skulls for the AI side to drop in from the skyfall on the playerâs side Turn 1 match or the AIâs side Turn 1 match skyfall? It is very easy for the AI side to get 6+ skyfalled skulls (often more) from either sideâs first turn. Iâd place the chance of somehow avoiding a single skull match from either Turn 1 skyfall at maybe 35-40%.
Otherwise, you are looking at incoming damage of all skulls that skyfalled or matched at ~100% crit rate for 16x base damage before defenses are applied.
So, the question really is whether or not a standard of guaranteeing 16x (1x normal + 15x crit) base skull damage is appropriate or not or if it is âbrokenâ.
Ignoring everything else for sake of simplicity, 80/80 block reduces skull damage by a factor of 5. So, that 16x skull damage gets reduced to 3.2x damage.
Is that appropriate? Well, letâs look at the other side of the equation, spell damage. Right now, the optimal mage weapon is the freshly released Dragonking Axe. The Axe, with appropriate setup can yield ~2x spell damage over all other previous mage builds. Thatâs a hefty jump in spell effectiveness for sure. Slow, high-cost DD spells can easily hit in the six-digit range if the opponent lacks the appropriate defenses. However, spells canât crit. At best, they can only enjoy elemental advantage which only acts as a 20% crit modifier with 100% crit rate. So, the max damage modifier is ~2.4x when attacking with spells with elemental advantage. But, countering that with the appropriate resistance, again reducing damage by a factor of 5, results in an effective damage modifier of ~0.5x against maximum defenses against that spell.
So, with maximum defenses, skulls currently enjoy ~3.2 / ~0.5 = ~640% damage advantage over spells on crit modifier alone before all of other damage modifiers are even considered.
That is IMO definitely in the range of being out-of-bounds or âbrokenâ.
As you note, though, very importantly:
Of course the question that really matters is whether or not the devs believe that this damage advantage is broken or not. Spells are being revamped in the next update. Itâs entirely possible that spell damage will be buffed to match the damage output of skulls from high +Aim/Cleave/Runic Wristband builds (or some magical equivalent to these attributes/gear pieces are being developed to duplicate the spell effect ). If that is the case, then the damage currently being outputted from these builds would definitely not be broken.
Weâll have to see what the outcome the spell revamp in 2.4 is.
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I like to complain, especially on weekends; as long as they hide their coding from the community things like this will happen over and over again:
I am not sure about their intensions NOT to talk open minded about their pvp changes but it will end up in a desaster at some point. Btw, no chances to improve my ranking ⌠once again âŚ
I had the exact same situation, Nana Berserker is my âglass ceilingâ, meaning that she is the current best player the game offers me, but doesnât give enough points to improve my total, even with a flawless win. So I got her again and again. 
But recognizing the situation, from this point forward I only farm honor points, and hope my ranking doesnât suffer much. 
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I believe the rules are very clear. Once you win the battles against the top 10 contenders you wonât get more points unless a new top player appears in the PvPs. So that means that you get only around 3 days of matches giving points, with the rest being honor farming battles with some isolated big match. But at least, contrary to past PvPs, we do get the opportunity to face against the big players. It is just that instead of starting low and working upwards, we go the other way, reaching the score cap faster.
I do like it this way: half of the week exciting but long matches trying to gather as many points as I can, and the other half fast battles for farming honor without having to spend hours on it. But this is just a personal opinion, I guess others would prefer all 33 x 7 PvP battles to count towards your final score, which sounds really tiresome to me.
First i have to say that i like the new PvP. The Devs are on a good way but matchmaking is still not fair. I see two problems, the first is already mentioned, the second i havenât seen mentioned until now.
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Top10-Players in perceived strength can not reach place 1 in the ranking even if they win all their fights perfect because they can not fight aginst themselves.
-
Players with lower perceived strength can not reach place 1 in the ranking because of the possibility that in some cases opponents can taken out of other leagues.
This means that there is a chance for a player with very high perceived strength to take a player from another league that gives him more points then one of the top10 perceived strength players in his own league. With that he can reach a higher score than the sum of the top 10 perceived strength players in his own league.
Example for this is the player donpiky who plays in challenger in the open tourney with a very high perceived strength. He was encountered by some players in the Champions-League. These players are now in the top rankings with a score that can never reached from players with low perceived strength which didnât get donpiky as opponent because they always get +10%-opponent from the Champions-League.
My solution for both problems:
Mirror the players and their perceived strength in each league at the end of the weekly tourney and letâs play ONLY against them in the following week. With that a player can face himself and all players have the same opponents.
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I like that aspect too. But I donât like the order of the opponents. The first match - against the top player - is very hard sometimes, and effectively blocks the others.
My choice: shall I accept this weak win from them, or shall I loose deliberately, and try again (and maybe I can never repeat the win against them?)
I currently donât have a suggestion bettering it, maybe the reverse order could be better, maybe notâŚ
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I completely agree with you, those 2 are the main issues with current matchmaking.
The question is: is it really necessary to be matched against players from other leagues/tourneys? If we always face the top 10 it shouldnât, since if even we donât have opponents stronger than us we would still have the opportunity to be first. However, this can be a way to allow top 10 players to still get top places by fighting other strong opponents instead of themselves. Mirror matches would fix the problem better, but can also be more easily exploited. And, what I believe to be the key here, without that possibility of being able to match players from other leagues/tourneys, we would go back to 1st place ties, something I guess devs donât want to happen.
So yes, PvPs are on a good way but we will have to see how the devs try to keep improving them taking into account both sidesâ needs and wishes.
Iâm sorry, thinking deeper i see that mirror canât work properly. Only in open and not in the coloured leagues.
I donât really know how a player is saved for future battles against others. Atm i believe he is saved with the equipment of his last fight in a league. It seems cause of that the pool of opponents is empty at the start of a week which is the reason for taking opponents from other leagues when a new week starts (canât check this because itâs 2 AM then in my time-zone).
In my eyes some players exploit that (in lower leagues), play shortly after the start and take opponents from other leagues which give them more points than they can get in their own league. On the other side we have the âDonpiky-poblemâ i mentioned above.
So i agree that opponents should only taken out of the own league.
Solution 1 (weekly start): Put some dummys into each league which allow people the first fights.
Solution 2 (fighting myself) : Every player starts the week with one fictional fight against himself giving him the maximum points of his perceived strength. Changes which result in a higher perceived strength during the week will be added to that points but not in the last 2 battle-days to avoid manipulations.
@Jeto
Please share the changes coming to PvP in 2.4 with us.
And please find a way to allow all players to reach the top score.
Iâve won all battles against the (my) Top10-Opponents in Open and Restricted perfect last week and was ranked on 7 and 11 at the end. Really frustrating!
I mentioned my guess for the reason already above, but perhaps iâm wrong and you can enlighten me?
Another problem:
Youâve won perfect against a Top10-Opponent.
That player changes his gear to a higher pointvalue.
All players fighting him after that will get the higher value.
Not you, cause he is already in your ranking.
Sure, we all can try to play the Top-Scorer as late as possible, but i donât think thats intended.
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Yes, please.
And a new, updated roadmap will be useful too.
The only solution to this that I can see is to have us submit a defense build when we enter the tournament and then lock it in for the week.
We likely wonât have another âroadmapâ for a little bit, as we released this huge blog last month
As for 2.4 PvP details, we usually post the full patch notes before the update, but Iâll follow up if we will share anything before the patch notes release.
Yes, I see.
But you wrote there:
As it was exactly 1.5 month ago, some may be interested in the refreshed timelinesâŚ
The Spell Rework is coming in 2.5 but that will have itâs own blog so we can explain as much as we can in advance. It will be⌠long
I can see how writing soon might be confusing, as I will write soon when I am about to post the patch notes - Whereas our Producer Morgz (who wrote the blog) was writing âsoonâ in terms of our games development, it is very much a 1-2(ish) updates at minimum away, seeing as we only release about one update every 3 months.
So âsoonâ for the Spell rework is right on track, which is so lucky in game development for what is planned to be a large change and update to get it out around when we expected/planned to.
As for another blog like this, the earliest might be for the holidays but will be less of another âroadmapâ as most things written within the September Fall Blog are still Later/Way Later, excluding Spell rework and would be more of a happy holidays and thanks.
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