Ahem, as the title said, more things came over to my mind after I put my survey's answers up. So it's best to log them somewhere, it may be useful, it may not, it may open good discussions or it may put me to walk in the plank. By all means, this is an open discussion so feel free to add your own woes if you want, or rebut my own opinions, but here goes nothing.
===
DEF and RES are fine the way they are. The real problem with the stat imbalance is the factor where people who invest in those two stats still have room to build enough, if not more damage than people who forsake defenses for the gamble of basic hits. This is to be -fully- blamed on equipment, which allows them to have high damage on their weapon despite not really building for it.
Mages are the more glaring issue, having the widest option of "thematic scalings" they can use and abuse just because "yeah why not".
===
The game should have at the very least six roles, when the term is 'adventurer type'.
- Assassins (or "DPS", "Damage Specialists"), who forsake all protection to go big on their numbers and hope to kill the enemy before their fragility gets to them. (Void Assassin being the prime example, Kensei for secondary and Evoker for a magic counterpart)
- Bruisers, who forsake some damage to have some protection and more reliable sources of damage, such as using auto-hitting skills. (Boxer and all of Martial Artist's promos being the prime example of 'well-rounded classes', followed by maybe Ghost.)
- Tanks, who fully forsake direct damage and opt to use indirect sources of damage such as retaliation, damage over time and more reliable but weak sources of damage. (I can't quite tell if we have any of those in SL2 anymore, the closest example of what a Tank's gameplay could be is using Soldier and Incise only, while taking lowered damage from all sources as, hypothetically, you lack investment in damage stats.)
- Support, who can come in many, many flavors. They bring utility, buffs and debuffs to the game and thrive in weakening enemies to have their Assassins and Bruisers make a short work of it. (Curate and their promos, Spellthief, Tactician, you name it. Even Rune Magician counts as one, if not for its absurd damage potential.)
- Healers, who fully ignore dealing damage for the sake of keeping their teammates alive and running, while offering minor buffs to their performance. Currently and after the healing nerfs being half-baked with 'slap a cooldown on it', these became extinct. It doesn't feel rewarding to play a fully devoted healer, because cooldowns are not a fun mechanic. (It was supposed to be Priest using staves, and Lantern Bearer for its AoEs. But RIP them.)
===
Elemental ATK should not be dependent on your stat distribution (WIL), they should be a distribution of their own. The way they should behave after this proposed change is that for every 2 Elemental ATK you invest in one element, you gain +0.5% resistance to said element, and 1% weakness to its opposite element. So let's put for example, a Hyattr with Fire ATK investment gains Fire Resistance, but gains Ice Weakness in exchange.
This way it allows a player to further customize what element they're more aspected to. And this will also allow celerity-based to use Earth, for example, and defense-based characters to use Wind if they want, since the counterplay of that is based on their element of choice.
===
Tanks should not be Bruisers, Assassins should not be Tanks. In a simple conditional, if you have high DEF and RES, you should have low damage, if you have high DEF OR high RES, it should give you room for damage investment. Likewise, you shouldn't expect someone with 0 DEF/RES to take things to the face and shrug them off because of their nat class mitigations.
This should be an easy fix if weapon scaling is standardized to only STR/SKI/WIL/FAI and GUI, really. Or I hope so.
===
All classes should be less homogenized in terms of what damage they're based on. Mages shouldn't be able to cast meteor fist for 500 physical damage, just as how Boxer shouldn't punch the ground and deal 500 magic earth damage.
Basically, all classes should focus on a single source of damage, be it either magic or physical, with only odd skills out to even out the grounds. Duelist is a good example of that, being solely physical damage-oriented, with one or two skills that deal magic damage for a change. (We all remember how painful a 3M Power Gradation was, essentially turning the class into melee mages.)
Sure, theme wise it'd be fair to call things magic or physical, but it's balance we're talking about. If we have things that are purely based on STR/SKI/GUI investment, we'll want it to do physical damage, same way with WIL/FAI and magic damage.
===
Critical Hits should not be mandatory for your gameplay, even if it's thematic for a class. Critical Chance should be lowered, and missing a critical hit shouldn't mean the end of your combo. Duelist being an example, and why we can't have fun things for other classes. I believe that critical hits should be decisive blows that leave a mark and cannot be easily mitigated, since it's the opponent's fault for being sloppy or wide open, or plain unlucky.
Keyword is 'luck/unluck' here. There's no dopamine produced when every critical you score is just 'eh, a critical, cool, next'. That's why many people love Vorpal Strike so much, because that's an -actual- critical hit, it feels like a decisive blow, and also doesn't feel like it was given to you for free. You rolled that 10%, or positioned yourself well with a Vorpal Fang. That's your reward, take it son.
If we remove all momentum economy gained or loss from hitting criticals, or being resisted!, we can afford having basic attacks costing 2M (maybe for melee weapons only), which will immediately make basics more viable across the whole class board, and even allow them to do more base damage, since GUI won't be as mandatory. (I hope?)
===
Your race should not majorly matter for your performance in combat. Amber put a good point. If power is being moved around, I'd rather all races get washed down to be only "RP flavor with minor boons", so distribution is more personal and more a player's choice, rather than the game dictating they'll 100% lose to something. Like for example, trying to play as a Vampire/Amalgama and 100% going to lose vs Holy, or playing a Theno or Mechanation, and 100% going to lose vs anyone with Splash + Idol + Mercalan Mist + Lightning Damage.
Or worse. Trying to play an archetype, like for example, making an Ice-based Hyattr and now suffering an absurd amount of Wind weakness.
At most, racial weaknesses and resistances should be like 5%.
===
I forgot the rest and I'm hungry- I'll edit this later.
===
DEF and RES are fine the way they are. The real problem with the stat imbalance is the factor where people who invest in those two stats still have room to build enough, if not more damage than people who forsake defenses for the gamble of basic hits. This is to be -fully- blamed on equipment, which allows them to have high damage on their weapon despite not really building for it.
Mages are the more glaring issue, having the widest option of "thematic scalings" they can use and abuse just because "yeah why not".
===
The game should have at the very least six roles, when the term is 'adventurer type'.
- Assassins (or "DPS", "Damage Specialists"), who forsake all protection to go big on their numbers and hope to kill the enemy before their fragility gets to them. (Void Assassin being the prime example, Kensei for secondary and Evoker for a magic counterpart)
- Bruisers, who forsake some damage to have some protection and more reliable sources of damage, such as using auto-hitting skills. (Boxer and all of Martial Artist's promos being the prime example of 'well-rounded classes', followed by maybe Ghost.)
- Tanks, who fully forsake direct damage and opt to use indirect sources of damage such as retaliation, damage over time and more reliable but weak sources of damage. (I can't quite tell if we have any of those in SL2 anymore, the closest example of what a Tank's gameplay could be is using Soldier and Incise only, while taking lowered damage from all sources as, hypothetically, you lack investment in damage stats.)
- Support, who can come in many, many flavors. They bring utility, buffs and debuffs to the game and thrive in weakening enemies to have their Assassins and Bruisers make a short work of it. (Curate and their promos, Spellthief, Tactician, you name it. Even Rune Magician counts as one, if not for its absurd damage potential.)
- Healers, who fully ignore dealing damage for the sake of keeping their teammates alive and running, while offering minor buffs to their performance. Currently and after the healing nerfs being half-baked with 'slap a cooldown on it', these became extinct. It doesn't feel rewarding to play a fully devoted healer, because cooldowns are not a fun mechanic. (It was supposed to be Priest using staves, and Lantern Bearer for its AoEs. But RIP them.)
===
Elemental ATK should not be dependent on your stat distribution (WIL), they should be a distribution of their own. The way they should behave after this proposed change is that for every 2 Elemental ATK you invest in one element, you gain +0.5% resistance to said element, and 1% weakness to its opposite element. So let's put for example, a Hyattr with Fire ATK investment gains Fire Resistance, but gains Ice Weakness in exchange.
This way it allows a player to further customize what element they're more aspected to. And this will also allow celerity-based to use Earth, for example, and defense-based characters to use Wind if they want, since the counterplay of that is based on their element of choice.
===
Tanks should not be Bruisers, Assassins should not be Tanks. In a simple conditional, if you have high DEF and RES, you should have low damage, if you have high DEF OR high RES, it should give you room for damage investment. Likewise, you shouldn't expect someone with 0 DEF/RES to take things to the face and shrug them off because of their nat class mitigations.
This should be an easy fix if weapon scaling is standardized to only STR/SKI/WIL/FAI and GUI, really. Or I hope so.
===
All classes should be less homogenized in terms of what damage they're based on. Mages shouldn't be able to cast meteor fist for 500 physical damage, just as how Boxer shouldn't punch the ground and deal 500 magic earth damage.
Basically, all classes should focus on a single source of damage, be it either magic or physical, with only odd skills out to even out the grounds. Duelist is a good example of that, being solely physical damage-oriented, with one or two skills that deal magic damage for a change. (We all remember how painful a 3M Power Gradation was, essentially turning the class into melee mages.)
Sure, theme wise it'd be fair to call things magic or physical, but it's balance we're talking about. If we have things that are purely based on STR/SKI/GUI investment, we'll want it to do physical damage, same way with WIL/FAI and magic damage.
===
Critical Hits should not be mandatory for your gameplay, even if it's thematic for a class. Critical Chance should be lowered, and missing a critical hit shouldn't mean the end of your combo. Duelist being an example, and why we can't have fun things for other classes. I believe that critical hits should be decisive blows that leave a mark and cannot be easily mitigated, since it's the opponent's fault for being sloppy or wide open, or plain unlucky.
Keyword is 'luck/unluck' here. There's no dopamine produced when every critical you score is just 'eh, a critical, cool, next'. That's why many people love Vorpal Strike so much, because that's an -actual- critical hit, it feels like a decisive blow, and also doesn't feel like it was given to you for free. You rolled that 10%, or positioned yourself well with a Vorpal Fang. That's your reward, take it son.
If we remove all momentum economy gained or loss from hitting criticals, or being resisted!, we can afford having basic attacks costing 2M (maybe for melee weapons only), which will immediately make basics more viable across the whole class board, and even allow them to do more base damage, since GUI won't be as mandatory. (I hope?)
===
Your race should not majorly matter for your performance in combat. Amber put a good point. If power is being moved around, I'd rather all races get washed down to be only "RP flavor with minor boons", so distribution is more personal and more a player's choice, rather than the game dictating they'll 100% lose to something. Like for example, trying to play as a Vampire/Amalgama and 100% going to lose vs Holy, or playing a Theno or Mechanation, and 100% going to lose vs anyone with Splash + Idol + Mercalan Mist + Lightning Damage.
Or worse. Trying to play an archetype, like for example, making an Ice-based Hyattr and now suffering an absurd amount of Wind weakness.
At most, racial weaknesses and resistances should be like 5%.
===
I forgot the rest and I'm hungry- I'll edit this later.
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