Developing Verminskills Pt. II: Dealing with Skill Ceilings and Frustration

[OenKrad]

@SKushon1

Same thing goes for the entire combat system, even more so now with the mystery of stagger dynamics and the talents that interact with them. The kill breakpoints may be irrelevant in some case now, and stagger breakpoints are confusing.

Stagger demo(to understand and compare stagger talents). I made this for those that like visual demonstration. Hedge also created a very detailed explanation in the Winds of Magic - Patch 2.0 - Patch Notes.

@Fatshark_Hedge

New Gameplay Considerations / Adjustments

• Introducing stagger damage bonus, damage vs staggered enemies will increase with stacking staggers.
  • This scales from 1x bonus (no stagger), 1.2x bonus (1 application of stagger) up to 1.4x (for 2 stagger applications) bonus damage:
  • You’ll do between 1 and 1.4 times your damage depending on number of staggers stacked on an enemy. Effectively, it will take more hits to kill unstaggered enemies while less hits for staggered ones, compared to current Live balance.
  • Pushes on unstaggered enemies will have a higher heavy stagger threshold - meaning that pushes should keep enemies a bit closer for easy follow-up hits across the board.

All available difficulties use the same scale and settings: 0%, 20% or 40% damage increase per stagger count by default. Stagger count is how many times an enemy have been staggered in succession (hit once for 1, hit again during that stagger for 2, further hits cap out at 2).

Pushes and heavy tank attacks (2h hammer heavies for instance) will put stagger count to 2 on first hit because they’re better.

Stagger is any reaction that interrupts an attack (which is every single attack on any weapon against horde enemies or Clan rats/Gors, only elites and since last week Marauders have a level of stagger reduction and resistance that makes them ignore a hit).

There are three default animation categories of stagger;

• Light: a flinch in place (fencing sword vs Clan rat),
• Medium: a stepback (sword vs Clan rat,
• Heavy: a throw and fall over (big hammer vs face of Clan rat)

We also made a slight slight change so that pushes against unstaggered enemies in particular and staggers in general will favour Medium stagger (raising the threshold for heavy staggers), not displacing enemies so badly and help set them up for further hits.

Further, the talent choices introduced towards the stagger damage dynamic have been tweaked to allow better control of how players interact with the mechanic. Smiter (a flat ”count everything as stagger count 1, or flat 20% dmg bonus” on first target) and Assassin (a nice ”count headshots and crits as full stagger count, or 40% dmg bonus) gives and option to bypass the system and hit breakpoints but with limitations or skill requirements. Both Bulwark (add an extra 10% dmg taken buff to all enemies staggered by you for 2 seconds on top of any stagger-damage bonuses) and Mainstay (add 0%, 40% or 60% dmg per stagger count instead) had their effects increased for those who like to play towards the mechanic.

Ranged attacks use the stagger damage and get bonuses against staggered targets But count all targets as stagger count 1, or 20% extra damage (basically all ranged attacks have the Smiter talent, but for all targets hit). This is to align them with breakpoints.

Squirrel Squad’s discord also has a “#resources” section where you can find things like:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xnnRCjZzO-R0udz5C_u45ydHRNx6w53YcDtr8JEHOV0/edit#gid=62597031
This is a breakpoint calculator updated(at the time of this writing) to 2.0.3 . You can do “field testing” like what I often do or you can use this handy excel spreadsheet. You can see if it’s working by field testing after you’ve figured out what should or shouldn’t work for breakpoints and the like.

@SKushon1

Achievement, is not just about mindset and a can do attitude. It also requires knowledge of the intricacies of the system you are looking to achieve within.

This is accomplished through both experience and research. Taking the time to experience things, trial and error, and seeing what reliable resources exist. Mindset may not be the only thing, but it’s a critically important factor in self-improvement. I’ve seen countless people blame everything else but themselves and never improve. “Oh this game is bad. It isn’t me at all.” Often times for self-improvement, the biggest hurdle a person faces is themselves. @Exanimia addresses this in her guides she has posted. There is a psychological element to things and most people will ignore that truth.