Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

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DarnYak
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Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#1 Post by DarnYak »

So after doing some balancing passes on the raw data, I can get well rounded builds to balance out well but heroes maxing out their dps is still completely broken in favor of strength based skills. Buffing casters to numerically balance out quickly got to completely insane numbers (some of the spells I was testing with would be required to deal 2k damage).

Before I discuss the options, I need to make it clear that an Angelstone nerf is going to come with this. Currently, it's more or less mandatory to be effective in hero combat and I dislike how that limits item build options. I haven't decided on the exact form of the nerf yet.

So these are the remaining options I've come up with:

#1 Nerfing strength spells is the second half of it but they would need to drop to basically nothing (imagine taking most the str nukes and keeping them at rank 1 while you're at level 30). I've already gone through two passes of nerfing strength spells. Strength multipliers would probably need to be cut further to 0.5 to 0.75.

#2 Buffing items to give out more health in general. Giving the caster set an extra 500 health was very effective in evening things out. This is presuming they didn't take Angelstone. This would probably be spread out among a few items (something like 300 health to sorc robes, 200 health to mana regen helm or such).

#3 Nerfing health gain per strength to 10 from 15 (which effects everyone proportionately), but giving an additional 10 health per hero level (bumps things back to roughly where they are now without any items).

Before I commit to making any changes I'd like to hear your feedback on the options, or any other suggestions you may have.

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Re: Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#2 Post by watermelon »

About the Angelstone nerf, the health regeneration makes it easy to not have to use the active.

I'm not really in favor of the second option since I feel like casters are supposed to start out fragile and can choose to take items that could boost their survivability or items that boost their damage output.

If you go with option 1, it seems like it would be simpler to not have a strength modifier at all. This could mean that Str heroes get outscaled faster by casters in terms of spell damage, but they could do things like invest in auto-attack damage or magic resistance.

Option 3 seems interesting though it feels like would impact early-game a lot since heroes would have lower health.

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Re: Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#3 Post by Executor »

I'll start by thinking about certain questions:
Does it take too long to kill strength heroes?
Do other heroes die too quickly compared to strength heroes?
How does strength hero's ability dps compare to other heroes' ability dps?
Tanks and support should have lower dps than normal.

I'll need to think about it some more. I'll be out of town for the next few days, but I'll eventually respond to the balance threads this week.

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Re: Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#4 Post by DarnYak »

watermelon wrote:About the Angelstone nerf, the health regeneration makes it easy to not have to use the active.
At +5 angelstone gives 5 regen and the active heals 700...that's still 140 seconds of regen required. 100 seconds if you factor in average hero regen. Besides it not the active that's the problem, or the regen (both of which are primarily quality of life boosts), its the +700 health which is too significant of a health boost for lower health heroes.
I'm not really in favor of the second option since I feel like casters are supposed to start out fragile and can choose to take items that could boost their survivability or items that boost their damage output.
I don't strictly disagree, but at the same time if its more fun for players I'm not against it. But its a side effect of tank heroes getting tankiness and dps where other heroes get only pure dps. Buffing items would still leave them more frail, but even things out (we're talking 2k health casters vs 3k health tanks). My primary concern with this one is it'll leave a bigger gulf between heroes with items vs heroes with lesser or no items.
If you go with option 1, it seems like it would be simpler to not have a strength modifier at all. This could mean that Str heroes get outscaled faster by casters in terms of spell damage, but they could do things like invest in auto-attack damage or magic resistance.
This would make all tank damage flat, which might have its place on some heroes but far from all. I also did try this and the skills did fall behind but not as much as expected. However my big concern here is people building for pure survivability without another option, which is just going to ruin everyones day.
Option 3 seems interesting though it feels like would impact early-game a lot since heroes would have lower health.
Nah, the health values will remain pretty similar throughout (assuming no items). A gain of 2 str per level breaks even, above has slightly less health (3 str/level would go from 45 health per level to 40) and those below have more (1.5 str/level goes from 22.5 health to 25). Base health would actually need to be raised by roughly 100 since everyone starts with about 20 str (300 health before becomes 200 now, so just adjust starting health +100).
Does it take too long to kill strength heroes?
In the scenario I'm trying to fix, yes. Casters tend to have ranged spells which come with higher cooldowns, whereas tanks have low cooldown melee skills, but they also have twice the health. The rough numbers for "pure balance" are a tank with 3k health dealing 500 a hit on 8s cooldown vs a hero with 1.5k health on 15s cooldown, which to balance would need to deal about 2000 damage. Now, "pure balance" isn't what I'm striving for (for one, melee hits are rarely able to be used consistently on cooldown), but either the tank would need to start dealing 150 damage a hit (80s to kill, caster nuke would deal about 600 damage to kill in roughly 80s, and 600 damage per nuke is about the top end of reasonable for caster vs caster).
Do other heroes die too quickly compared to strength heroes?
Half the health so yes.
How does strength hero's ability dps compare to other heroes' ability dps?
The raw dps tends to be higher since their cooldowns are lower, but the per hit damage is lower (at least, with my current revised numbers, before they often were about tied).

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Re: Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#5 Post by Softmints »

The problem with str-based damage on abilities is that players are not offered a choice between "tanky" and "damage". Buying +strength gives both, so it's a no-brainer.

To solve this problem, there needs to be a choice, and that means either strength contributes less to tanky, or less to damage. Ideally I would scrap any stat which has side-effects, because I prefer more granular control when balancing, but that's not very practical in War3.

I dislike messing with what str does and introducing separate life scaling, because now heroes gain 4 stats when they level, two of which are very correlated (but different), which isn't intuitive to War3 and needs to be learned. But it should solve the problem in theory.

I dislike adding maxlife to more items, because that's just item inflation, and indirectly nerfs spending money on anything which isn't items. A strategic game should be offering players as many viable choices as possible. Also there is the risk of messing up the existing balance for caster versus caster, troops versus heroes, etc.

Yak mentioned to me that most abilities with str-based damage also happen to be physical spells. I think making the str-modifiers low, and introducing an item stat which increases the damage dealt by physical abilities ("power") would create a fair choice between tanky and damage.

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Re: Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#6 Post by Jouven »

I'm against point 1, I don't think str heroes have an edge on the damage, only on the survival in the late game that makes them really good siegers compared to the rest, they can hit and run/die? better than the rest.
I like points 2 and 3, ¿the 10 hp is for everyone or only for the str ones?

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Re: Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#7 Post by DarnYak »

the 10 hp is for everyone or only for the str ones
Everyone.

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Re: Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#8 Post by Jouven »

DarnYak wrote:
the 10 hp is for everyone or only for the str ones
Everyone.

DarnYak
Then I'm between #2 and #3, #2 for forcing people to decide on the items and #3 because the laziness hehehe... but I think I prefer #2 more.

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Re: Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#9 Post by Scheba »

Option #1 might help solve the problems in hero vs hero combat, but if the strength skills lose too much damage they will become useless against army units. At the moment, the situation is that most AoE damage skills can kill standard army units (not the bigger spawn tower units, like the elite melee ones) in two casts at around level 30 with moderate item support. In the late game, any skill that can't kill them in one cast makes me wish I had chosen a different hero to not be overrun.

Whirl is a good example of this (although it's an agility skill, the point is that it was nerfed heavily). With full agility equipment (5 items + 1 mana regeneration item), full agility upgrades from the altar and fully stacked agility bonus from Whirl at hero level 80, it barely reaches 900 damage. When playing against Creeps or Fel Horde, I spend almost the entire game unable to kill army units in one cast, with a hero that needs to get close to enemies to damage them and is anything but tanky.

Another example of a skill that barely reaches enough damage now is Rockslide. It covers a fairly large area and has quite a long range, but comes with a very long cooldown to compensate. The damage, however, is physical (like Whirl), so it can't be boosted except by increasing strength. Balancing the damage is especially difficult in this case because Gravel has another damage skill, Smash, which allows him to deal a considerable damage spike to a hero, but the area of Smash is so small that it can barely be considered an AoE skill at all when dealing with armies.

In the end, nerfing strength skills might turn the strength-based heroes into pure tanks (or supports, in the case of Bane who isn't really tanky) that can't deal with units anymore, so I'm very suspicious if this is a good idea.

Option #2 seems like a better approach, allowing intelligence-based heroes to equip some survivability without weakening their skills in the process.

But this currently doesn't address agility-based heroes. There are very few agility-based heroes in the game (especially few with AoE skills), and I'd hate to see them become useless. Agility heroes are typically just as fragile as intelligence heroes, but without the added survivability of having a high range. Harpy, Forlorn Martyr (I'd consider a Whirl build as agility-based, as opposed to an intelligence-based Stormspire build), Scarlet Maiden, Mystic Swashbuckler are all very fragile. If intelligence items are buffed to give some additional survivability, the same should probably be applied to agility items as well.

Option #3 confuses me: health gain per point of strength is currently 20, not 15. Reducing this value by 50% seems like a huge change. Even with an additional bonus of 10 health per hero level, this would reduce the health of strength heroes in the late game by about 40% (example: a 300 strength hero at level 61 currently has 6100 health, after that nerf it would be 3700). The health bonus per hero level would only bump things back to where they are now if heroes only received a strength increase of 1 per level. As far as I know, no hero in EotA currently is that weak. In addition, level 1 heroes would have significantly reduced health.

If you really want to follow this approach, nerfing health gain per point of strength to 15, adding 10 health per hero level and increasing hero base health from 100 to 200 might be a starting point. This would break even at level 1 for heroes with 20 strength; those with less receive a slight buff while those who start with more receive a slight nerf. 10 health per level would break even for heroes with a strength increment of 2 per level; again, those with less receive a slight buff while those with more receive a slight nerf. Increased survivability from strength equipment would be reduced, as currently intended. I'm not sure, however, if the survivability of strength heroes would still be enough that way considering that they are typically slower, bigger and have to get closer to their enemies. More number tweaking might be necessary.


Overall, I like option #2 the best; if this isn't enough, #3 might have to be considered again, but please check the numbers again before you cut everyone's health in half :lol:

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Re: Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#10 Post by DarnYak »

I've decided to go with option #2. While I have some concerns about the side effects, I generally feel like people will be happier with higher health pools. Plus, items used to compete with other team resources for gold expenditures, most of which have now been eliminated so item purchasing is far more standard than it used to be so the gulf between heroes with items vs heroes without shouldn't be as bad.
But this currently doesn't address agility-based heroes. There are very few agility-based heroes in the game (especially few with AoE skills), and I'd hate to see them become useless. Agility heroes are typically just as fragile as intelligence heroes, but without the added survivability of having a high range. Harpy, Forlorn Martyr (I'd consider a Whirl build as agility-based, as opposed to an intelligence-based Stormspire build), Scarlet Maiden, Mystic Swashbuckler are all very fragile. If intelligence items are buffed to give some additional survivability, the same should probably be applied to agility items as well.
Yea, they aren't represented well in my data but of what there is their problem is similar but worse than casters, with the same fix.
Option #3 confuses me: health gain per point of strength is currently 20, not 15.
After being sure you were wrong, and knowing this is like the 4th time I checked it, I have to concede you are correct. I was reading the wrong row in the editor (mana per int) which is right next to health. Which actually means all my charts are incorrect but in equal proportions. Anyway, the 10 health per level would have been correlated to a 5 per str drop, which comes out to the same numbers you got - dropping it to 10 health per str would just mean 20 health per level instead.

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Re: Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#11 Post by Executor »

I had to get my computer fixed, so I wasn't able to reply last week. I like the method for option 2 since it is the simpler solution and doesn't change as many variables. Option 2 addresses the survivability of strength heroes, but other things might need to be fine-tuned.

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