AoO's Mechanic

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watermelon
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AoO's Mechanic

#1 Post by watermelon »

First off this is all based on the issue of Inf needing some buffs. She's been left mostly unchanged while other heroes have gained new abilities that let them thwart PKers more easily and almost all heroes have much more health thanks to items.

Now consider AoO's mechanic:
1. A modifier is calculated based on the angle difference between Inf and the target. If the target is stunned (sleeping/held/rooted/etc.), this modifier will have a minimum of 0.75. Otherwise the modifier depends on the angle difference with the smallest hit (a difference of 60 degrees) at 0.4.
2. Damage is first calculated as
Calculated Damage = Base Damage + (Random damage from 0 up to Some amount modified by Inf's Agi) .
The actual damage then dealt is Damage * Modifier or 50% of the target's max life, whichever is smaller.

Ignoring the cap, basically AoO's damage can range from 0.4 * (Base Damage) to the max damage listed by -s. This can lead to awkward situations like the worst-placed AoO having higher damage than a well-placed AoO or an AoO from an uninvested Inf doing more damage than an invested Inf. The current AoO is mostly a gamble and doesn't reflect how much (or less) skill Inf uses to actually land it.

Now I'm not arguing all randomness is bad otherwise I would also be ranting against Meteor Swarm and other spells.

AoO is a particular skill where I would want randomness to be removed. Unlike other spells in EotA that have some degree of randomness, it already has conditions that make landing AoO harder: it's in melee range and it usually has to be a backstab. For a spell that requires these conditions, there should be a reward proportional to how well the Inf player used AoO rather than being unreliable about it.
Randomness does not help Inf and the cap that's already in place of AoO is already an indirect nerf at the high damage rolls the randomness can bring. This already implies that balancing AoO is difficult due to the random mechanic. The mechanic that I am also proposing to replace the randomness is certainly a buff.

The mechanic to replace the randomness would just change the Calculated Damage:
Calculated Damage = Base Damage + Some amount modified by Inf's Agi
Damage Dealt = Minimum of Calculated Damage * Modifier or 50% of target's max life


Basically the max damage of AoO is always used and gets modified. This mechanic rewards the Inf player more reliably for landing AoO without randomness confusing the equation.

Obviously, this could result in AoO being broken but I doubt that considering the cap in place.
Number tweaks are also easy to do if AoO needs to be toned down and would hopefully result in the cap being unnecessary.

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