Tackle/Sweep/Shield Charge retune

[Rias]

Per the changelog:
- Tackle, Sweep, and Shield Charge no longer causes balance loss to the target on failure, and cause less balance loss to the target on success. Success will always stagger, but requires a success of 50% or greater to cause knockdown.
- Sweep balance cost reduced to 3 and roundtime reduced to 3.

These knockdown moves were some of the very first abilities in COGG. The combat system was quite a bit different then than it is now, but these abilities never really evolved along with the reworks. In particular, balance had a much greater impact in combat even in the positive range, and affected both offense and defense. It was considered a large investment to therefore spend balance on these moves and lower one's own offense and defense as a result, with only a chance of actually landing the move. This is a big part of why they originally had the target balance loss even on failure.

The chance to only stagger and not knock down was implemented to prevent too much dependence on knockdown and just keeping opponents from acting at all, which is frustrating for the target and, I think, a little boring for the attacker. We want to try and keep combat more active, rather than locking opponents down and leaving them unable to actually do anything.

This is going to take some getting used to I'm sure, so I ask that everyone please go out and get a feel for it both on the giving and receiving end where possible, and then provide feedback on how things feel with this update.

[Teri]

My feedback, far less painful being tackled with successes so far. Keeping my feet is great on the 50% or less change

[Marcuson]

Overall, I like the change (and I'm sure non-warriors really appreciate it!), but I'm confused about what "a success of 50% or greater" entails. Is it based on the endrolls?

(Also, flip flank appears to not be working at the moment.)

[Teri]

I haven't had time to test it beyond once (by testing, going and getting tackled haha) but I'm assuming it will take an end roll of 50% or more to knock the target down. In this case, I was staggered, but stayed on my feet with the 1%

= 10 (1%)
The tackle connects!
[Balance -5]
You are staggered for 8 seconds!
[Balance -10]
You can't do that while staggered!

[Marcuson]

After some group combat today, from what I've experienced myself as a Warrior, and from what the mobs were dealing out, I don't have any complaints about the retune. It seems fine. I'd like to hear a non-Warrior's perspective on it, though.

[saladbowl]

Oh, blessed day. Blessed day ten days ago?

It feels great. There's still that chance someone can throw out a tackle without preparation and hit, but with the reduced penalties and knockdown margin, you may not have to crawl away and do nothing for the next thirty seconds. If you're fighting mobs and not players. Players are evil things which always use their strongest attacks.

I hope the stagger time is changed to fluctuate with the margin of success. You can tag someone with 1% success and still saddle them with eight seconds of stagger.

My new secret sauce for PvE is waiting for an enemy to enter the room, Tackle, feint, and Shield Bash. Feint into bash happens under that eight seconds of tackle stagger. So the instant -25 balance eight second stagger fight winner has been changed for a string which culminates at -25 balance. But now it takes far longer, players have time to use (hopefully future) defensive abilities, and there's more opportunity for something to go wrong or someone to intervene. It's a massive leap in the right direction.

Also, Tackle now has the same weird interaction with Stability like Shield Bash: you'll often want to roll low while still succeeding for the stagger to not be ignored.

[Karjus]

I do think Shield Bash now needs a bit of a nerf. It's a superior version of Shield Charge now. Less energy, less cooldown and same knockdown chance.

Beyond that note, definitely a change for the better though some moves may now need tweaking as some abilities stand out as strong despite not being "main disablers". Beyond the note on Bash, mount knockdown might tweaking as well as some of the passive stuff that can fire off frequently.

[Gorth]

I do think Shield Bash now needs a bit of a nerf. It's a superior version of Shield Charge now. Less energy, less cooldown and same knockdown chance.

Beyond that note, definitely a change for the better though some moves may now need tweaking as some abilities stand out as strong despite not being "main disablers". Beyond the note on Bash, mount knockdown might tweaking as well as some of the passive stuff that can fire off frequently.

Touching someone with a shield with a zero percent endroll with zero percent damage and getting five seconds of stagger and -25 balance is..bad. But in a balance wa,y if you'll forgive the pun. I'm hesitant to make it entirely damage based, though, so perhaps even just endroll based for the amount of balance loss? It's one of those things where, yeah sure, they lose five balance, but you will be taken to or below zero regardless of how much balance you have, so like..what do you do?

[Gorth]

Bumping this again to re-point-out my above post. Shield Bash is good. Perhaps the best disabler in the game, no definitely the best. It works directly off of your Melee against there's, which for some people just means they can't defend, and a single touch of zero percent endroll results in -25 balance. Why? No seriously, why? It's overkill beyond anything. Stagger is it's own discussion, and I am of the opinion that taking away a player's autonomy is one of the worst things you can do.

It is also, of course, one of the most defeating experiences in this game to build up enough balance for your ability to have it all sucked away for three+ rounds while you try desperately to CIRCLE it back up. It's worse, even, because you have to make sure you don't put yourself in roundtime for other attacks or another shield bash. Can we make this ability actually based on endroll? Or just nerf it's balance reduction entirely? Please? It elevates areas that use it quite a bit higher in difficulty, and actively means that I avoid mobs without shields, to the point of reducing my actually ability to fight because I'm walking around with the constant paranoia that I'll walk into a room and instantly be in disadvantage for the fight or the next even if I run away.

[Dennis]

Gorth brings in an interesting issue with balance resource management and player actions. I think this is two problems, one of poor resource engagement and the latter of frustration by unable to act and this is something on both sides of the argument of mobile versus player.

If Shield Bash is reducing target balance by 15, and STAGGERED causes a further 5, one strike of a shield that hits will immediately disable all of a classes advanced maneuvers for more or less the entire duration of a fight. More means of generating balance or ways to mitigate this loss would be important. Between knockdowns, staggers, and balance reduction, higher balance moves become nearly impossible to reliably maintain during a fight.

You could implement endroll% calculations on balance loss, but flat staggerlock will continue to pose an issue of constricting player action economy. When two or more NPCs attack with these abilities, it can and has often chained into a stagger-lock. This might not always kill the player, but is frequent and frustrating. on the flipside, players can do this to NPCs which makes them staggeringly weak.

If that's an intended way to play, I think that it can generally be frustrating, especially if you're fighting against equally skilled opponents. In many traditional MMO settings, temporary immunities are conferred to allow for more engaging gameplay. You can add a variety of different CC to each ability pool so people can alternate between actions if needed.

For example: If shield bash balance reduction were based on endroll%, a guardian could shield bash and stagger an opponent to take away 5+variable balance. If two such guardians attempted this, the second would only benefit from his variable balance reduction on success, as he would see the target is stagger immune for a short period of time.

In summary, what I am saying is that one possible solution could be to adjust the balance reduction values of Shield Bash, STAGGERED, and knockdown based on end roll %, or to introduce additional ways for players to regain balance. I would recommend introducing them in a generalized manner, as this issue affects more than a single guild. Alternatively, you could introduce a temporary immunity to CC effects such as staggers and knockdowns after a unit has been staggered a certain number of times in a row, to prevent them from being completely unable to act during a fight.