Monster Endurance

[Flashlight237]

Okay, so people are complaining about Stalagmites, which Robby stated to be a Level 30s monster, being too hard to kill. I'm a Level 43 player and I deal 8-15 damage to Stalagmites with my best build (Full Rusted Bronze Set + Crazy Hammer) and 61 Strength. 61 strength should be expected from a warrior who puts in 2 stat points into strength every level until Level 31, and 1.5 stat points into strength every level until 42. This should make me a Level 30s warrior stat-wise.

Also, note that the best pre-Alion warrior build strength-wise (achievable with either the Lunatic or Paladin sets) would only increase my damage to 9-17. While this doesn't take skills into account, it is important to note that the best players can do with the skills in the game right now are as follows:

Warriors: 600% (Rage+Power Smash)
Mage: 175% (Storm Clouds; not sure if Attack Field affects the wielder itself)
Archer: 150% (Homing Arrow)
Gunman: 900% (Grenade)

That and for every set tier, Warrior weapons deal 1.2 to 1.25x more damage as other class weapons. An archer with my exact build would deal 9-18 damage with a maxed-out Homing Shot. Bear in mind that skills shouldn't be crutches but rather tools that you can use at your disposal, meaning they should be "optional but helpful" rather than forced, especially given maxed-out skills are very costly.

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I knew I needed material to substantiate the complaints. Thankfully Robby had left behind Level Recommendations for several monsters. They are, as follows...

Shagdaw: Level 9
Ooze Horror: Level 20
Logon: Level 20s
Stalagmite: Level 30s

Knowing this, I went back to the Swamp to meet up with some old friends of mine: the Armadillos. Given their placement, they should be monsters meant for players from Level 15 to 17 to grind. For this setup, I decided to get the optimal build for a pre-20 warrior: a full Rusted Bronze set with Warrior Sandals. I grabbed an unsharpened Teardrop Blade (I doubt anyone that early on would have the patience to sharpen their stuff) since I didn't want to over-compensate given its unlikely anyone would get the best build available.

In practice, I would be doing 37 to 69 damage to armadillos, meaning I'd two-shot them with a very rare chance of one-shotting them.

A player's base attack power is separate from the player's weapon and is determined by the player's attack stat (strength, magic, archery, and artillery) and equipment total. If I had 30 strength (a fair value for someone at Level 20), I would have 76 base attack power instead of 107, reducing my damage to 26-49 damage (repeated two or three shots).

Also, Acrylic and Wolf builds are more likely, with the most likely build being a full Wolf set (8+8+8+4=28) and a Scythe (23 power). With this build and 30 strength, I would instead be dealing 13-24 damage (3-5 hits). With a full Acrylic set (6+6+6+4=22) and a Scythe, this would reduce damage down to 11 to 21 (4-6 hits).

While this is fair in a sense, it would come off as weird when you compare it to later monsters (Dumtilians and further), especially Dumtilians, Agents, Logons, and Stalagmites. Dumtilians weaker than Ground Spitters and Crabs? Really? With Agents, they're weaker, yet more valuable than Armadillos for some reason. Logons... I dunno, I would expect the entry build for them to be full Acrylic or full Rusted Bronze gear and around 40 strength. Based on that and an unsharpened Teardrop Blade, players would be dealing 9-18 damage to Logons with the Acrylic Set (10-20 hits; 13 from the median), and 13-25 damage with the Rusted Bronze set (7-13 hits; 10 at the median). Stalagmites because, well, come on, having 3.3x the endurance of a Grunt probably wouldn't be fair for a Level 33 player (approx. Grunt and Stalagmite level recommendation)

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That out of the way, I shall suggest some fairer values for monster endurance. Here's what I got.:

Squisher: 16 HP; same defense (16 seemed more well-rounded than 17)
Spiked Squisher: 25 HP; same defense as before (25 is a more well-rounded number than 23)
Hellshag: 54 HP; same defense value (54 is more well-rounded than 53)
Ground Spitter: 72 HP; 12 Defense (Also 12 power to make up for the debuff, maybe?)
Crab: 54 HP; 16 Defense
Armadillo: Same HP; 18 Defense
Dumtilian: 120 HP; 12 Defense (Much better... Also, maybe give it a Paintball Gun and a Wood Buckler so it would be more valuable; you can barely get literally anything out of Dumtilians)
Agent: 81 HP; 14 Defense (Seems fairer)
Rafflesia: 125 HP; 16 Defense; 39 Power (I mean you're fresh out of an Ooze Horror battle by the time you get to these guys)
Logons: 150 HP; 24 Defense (I think this is fairer than what we got right now. This should reduce the hits required to kill by 40%; enough to allow the Level 20s players it was meant for to save up for the Knight and Lunatic sets)
Grunts: 300 HP; 20 Defense (Seems fairer)
Stalagmites: 200 HP; 35 Defense (This is a much better stat build than what we got, especially given Mages and Archers don't have many damage boosts going for them, plus they're supposed to be battled by Level 33 players, not the best of the best, which are like Level 60+. Note that the best obtainable set before entering Alion City is the Lunatic set and equivalent)

Ooze Horror: 20000 HP; 10 Defense (I mean this is a raid boss that needs three players to kill that we're talking about, right? It's supposed to take minutes for players to kill this thing, not ten seconds (or near-instantaneously with Kriss-Vectors), right?)

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So yeah, there's my hot take.

[troopas]

Okay, so people are complaining about Stalagmites, which Robby stated to be a Level 30s monster, being too hard to kill. I'm a Level 43 player and I deal 8-15 damage to Stalagmites with my best build (Full Rusted Bronze Set + Crazy Hammer) and 61 Strength. 61 strength should be expected from a warrior who puts in 2 stat points into strength every level until Level 31, and 1.5 stat points into strength every level until 42. This should make me a Level 30s warrior stat-wise.

Also, note that the best warrior build strength-wise (achievable with either the Lunatic or Paladin sets) would only increase my damage to 9-17. While this doesn't take skills into account, it is important to note that the best players can do with the skills in the game right now are as follows:

Warriors: 600% (Rage+Power Smash)
Mage: 175% (Storm Clouds; not sure if Attack Field affects the wielder itself)
Archer: 150% (Homing Arrow)
Gunman: 900% (Grenade)

That and for every set tier, Warrior weapons deal 1.2 to 1.25x more damage as other class weapons. An archer with my exact build would deal 9-18 damage with a maxed-out Homing Shot. Bear in mind that skills shouldn't be crutches but rather tools that you can use at your disposal, meaning they should be "optional but helpful" rather than forced, especially given maxed-out skills are very costly.

-----

I knew I needed material to substantiate the complaints. Thankfully Robby had left behind Level Recommendations for several monsters. They are, as follows...

Shagdaw: Level 9
Ooze Horror: Level 20
Logon: Level 20s
Stalagmite: Level 30s

Knowing this, I went back to the Swamp to meet up with some old friends of mine: the Armadillos. Given their placement, they should be monsters meant for players from Level 15 to 17 to grind. For this setup, I decided to get the optimal build for a pre-20 warrior: a full Rusted Bronze set with Warrior Sandals. I grabbed an unsharpened Teardrop Blade (I doubt anyone that early on would have the patience to sharpen their stuff) since I didn't want to over-compensate given its unlikely anyone would get the best build available.

In practice, I would be doing 37 to 69 damage to armadillos, meaning I'd two-shot them with a very rare chance of one-shotting them.

A player's base attack power is separate from the player's weapon and is determined by the player's attack stat (strength, magic, archery, and artillery) and equipment total. If I had 30 strength (a fair value for someone at Level 20), I would have 76 base attack power instead of 107, reducing my damage to 26-49 damage (repeated two or three shots).

Also, Acrylic and Wolf builds are more likely, with the most likely build being a full Wolf set (8+8+8+4=28) and a Scythe (23 power). With this build and 30 strength, I would instead be dealing 13-24 damage (3-5 hits). With a full Acrylic set (6+6+6+4=22) and a Scythe, this would reduce damage down to 11 to 21 (4-6 hits).

While this is fair in a sense, it would come off as weird when you compare it to later monsters (Dumtilians and further), especially Dumtilians, Agents, Logons, and Stalagmites. Dumtilians weaker than Ground Spitters and Crabs? Really? With Agents, they're weaker, yet more valuable than Armadillos for some reason. Logons... I dunno, I would expect the entry build for them to be full Acrylic or full Rusted Bronze gear and around 40 strength. Stalagmites because, well, come on, having 3.3x the endurance of a Grunt probably wouldn't be fair for a Level 33 player (approx. Grunt and Stalagmite level recommendation)

-----

That out of the way, I shall suggest some fairer values for monster endurance. Here's what I got.:

Squisher: 16 HP; same defense (16 seemed more well-rounded than 17)
Spiked Squisher: 25 HP; same defense as before (25 is a more well-rounded number than 23)
Hellshag: 54 HP; same defense value (54 is more well-rounded than 53)
Ground Spitter: Same HP; 12 Defense (Also 12 power to make up for the debuff, maybe?)
Crab: 54 HP; 16 Defense
Armadillo: Same HP; 18 Defense
Dumtilian: 120 HP; 12 Defense (Much better... Also, maybe give it a Paintball Gun and a Wood Buckler so it would be more valuable; you can barely get anything out of Dumtilians)
Agent: 80 HP; 15 Defense (Seems fairer)
Rafflesia: 150 HP; 16 Defense (I mean you're fresh out of an Ooze Horror battle by the time you get to these guys)
Logons: 200 HP; 25 Defense (I think this is fairer than what we got right now.)
Grunts: 300 HP; Same Defense (300 is more of a well-rounded number than 290.)
Stalagmites: 240 HP; 35 Defense (This is a much better stat build than what we got, especially given Mages and Archers don't have many damage boosts going for them, plus they're supposed to be battled by Level 33 players, not the best of the best, which are like Level 60+.)

Ooze Horror: 20000 HP; 10 Defense (I mean this is a raid boss that needs three players to kill that we're talking about, right? It's supposed to take minutes for players to kill this thing, not ten seconds (or near-instantaneously with Kriss-Vectors), right?)

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So yeah, there's my hot take.

Sorry to quote your first part but I used to do like 50 - 100 damage to stalagmites but now I do 2

[Savage0]

I like how you go in depth .... but you could have just said "Nerf the enemies", anywhom I currently have no real issues ...... I thought since enemies gave less EXP that means they were already nerfed (EXP gained = Enemys stats .... I think thats what I saw 1 time) but people are saying they hit stuff for way less now, maybe thats fixed since the damage calc was adjusted by rob?

[yasvsV]

I like how you go in depth .... but you could have just said "Nerf the enemies", anywhom I currently have no real issues ...... I thought since enemies gave less EXP that means they were already nerfed (EXP gained = Enemys stats .... I think thats what I saw 1 time) but people are saying they hit stuff for way less now, maybe thats fixed since the damage calc was adjusted by rob?

Yeah, new damage formula made by Robby

[Flashlight237]

Just ran some numbers through. I had to adjust my suggested enemy stats to allow them to be fought more easily by the players they're targeting. Also, to compensate for the changes, maybe change the reducer from 0.4 to 0.5 for when monsters give out XP.