Weapon Skills Update 2012

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See Also: Weapon Skills Update 2012/FAQ

The following information is the most recent released by Turbine Developers regarding the major overhaul of Weapon Skills to take place in the February 2012 patch. This information is not set in stone and will likely change in minor ways before final implementation and possibly in significant ways as well. Once implemented, the content of this page will provide a tutorial/summary of the changes.

Player Goals and Requests

We have rounded up player feedback and the players have, over time, put forth the following goals and suggestions.

  • Address the racial imbalance in templates.
  • Allow a greater variety of weapons to be useful.
  • Allow greater freedom in player templates and racial choices.

We want to reiterate that this design is still in its early stages, and the details will change based on testing and player feedback. This is not the final version and the details, numbers, and balance are not set in stone.

Racial Skills

Racial Skills have had balance issues essentially since the game launched. New players are currently able to choose a race and already have an inferior template even as they enter the training academy. Our goal is that races retain their initial flavor, but in the end no race is the superior choice as all races can achieve template parity.

  • All current racial skills will be removed.
  • All races will get Arcane Lore automatically trained for free
  • All races will get 2 additional skill credits to spend at creation
  • All races will get 6 additional points added to the specialization cap
  • Skill/Attribute Reset NPCs and the Temples will have their timers/uses reset to allow players to easily adjust to the new changes.
  • Races will still have their free starting augmentation.
  • Races will gain a free augmentation that provides a small damage boost to one weapon type. Higher level characters can work toward changing this augmentation to any other weapon type so any racial choice can ultimately achieve any template. Characters will be able to change to alternate weapon types that may not be included in the preferred weapon type of any race. Ultimately a character can only achieve one augmentation for a melee skill and one augmentation for a missile skill.


Melee Skill Consolidation

Due to the varying costs of melee skills, several choices are ignored due to being underpowered. Also, unlike Two Handed, Magic, and Missile combat, each skill is missing/weak in certain elements where as the other combat types have access to all damage types. We feel two handed is a great example of how a melee skill should work.

  • All of the melee skills will be condensed into 3 new skills.
    • Heavy Weapons: A 6/6 one handed melee combat skill based off Strength/Coordination.
    • Light Weapons: A 4/4 one handed melee combat skill based off Strength/Coordination.
    • Finesse Weapons: A 4/4 one handed melee combat skill based off Quickness/Coordination.
  • Weapons of all types (mace, sword, dagger) will drop for each weapon skill.
  • Most one handed weapons will use the Heavy Weapons skill.
  • Some weapons will be designated as light weapons and use the Light Weapons skill. These weapons will do less damage than heavy weapons.
  • Some weapons (stiletto, rapier, etc.) will be designated as finesse weapons and use the Finesse Weapons skill.
  • Heavy weapons will be balanced against each other and competitive with one handed swords.
  • As you might expect from the lower skill cost, light weapons and finesse weapons will do lower damage than heavy weapons.


Missile Skill Consolidation

  • All of the missile skills will be condensed into Missile Weapons: A 6/6 missile combat skill.
  • All missile weapons will use the Missile Weapons skill.
  • Bows, crossbows and thrown weapons will be balanced against each other and competitive with Bow.


Weapon Flavor

With the consolidation of melee skills and missile skills we want to make sure we preserve a sense of flavor depending on the weapon you choose.

  • All melee and missile weapon types will have uniqueness to their stats. Daggers, for example, might all be multi strike, and axes might have lower damage but bigger crits.
  • Each race will gain one melee Mastery and one ranged Mastery which will provide a small damage boost with that type of attack. Higher level characters can work to change this mastery to favor any weapon type.
  • Characters can only have one melee mastery and one ranged mastery at any one time. Melee masteries will include Axe, Dagger, Mace, Spear, Staff, Sword, and Unarmed Combat. Ranged masteries will include Bow, Crossbow, Magic, and Thrown Weapon.
  • Existing characters will get one free change to either the melee weapon augmentation or ranged augmentation of their choice.


Shield Skill

At the same time as the consolidation skills we will be adding a 2/2 shield skill that uses Strength and Coordination.

  • This skill will determine how much al/aegis effect you gain from equipping a shield.
  • Specializing in Shields and leveling your skill will provide the full benefit to top end shields.
  • Training in Shields and leveling your skill will provide a lesser benefit.
  • The idea is that Two Handed Combat, Weapon and Shield Combat, and eventually Two Weapon Combat will all have similar 8/8 total cost. These styles will be balanced against each other.


The Shield skill will cap the armor level a shield will provide. The skill formula for Shield will be (Strength + Coordination) / 2. The formula for the maximum armor level your shield can provide will be total skill level for untrained or trained Shield skill, and double the total skill level for specialized Shield skill. This means a specialized Shield user can get full benefit for top end Shields even if they start at 10 for both Strength and Coordination. We plan to have a similar curve for Aegis benefit. If a Finesse Weapons fighter or even a mage are willing to specialize they will see full benefit for all the current shields.


Skill Adjustments

Some skills could use a bit of an adjustment to make them more useful.

  • Missile and Magic Defense formulas would be adjusted to mirror the offensive skills.
  • We will be doing a balance pass on all creatures to rebalance Missile and Magic Defense skills to reflect these new values. As a result this should fix defenses on creatures to more consistently reflect the relative power of the creature.
  • We will be doing a balance pass on all creatures to rebalance melee and skill attack skills to reflect these changes. As a result this should fix offensive values on creatures to more consistently reflect the relative power of the creature and make Missile Defense more useful.
  • Gearcrafting would be folded into Item Tinkering with no increase in cost to Item Tinkering.


Wands will appear in loot with attack modifiers on magic skills of up to 15%. This will bring mage loot up to par with weapon loot. We expect that casters will need extra attack bonus to compensate for the formula change so we plan to either modifying current wands to have a 10% attack bonus if that is possible, or making a vendor that can give out free (but temporary) one month casters available with a 10% attack bonus if modifying existing wands can't be done for technical reasons.

Missile Weapons will also appear in loot with attack modifiers on missile skills of up to 15%. This will bring missile weapon loot up to par with melee weapon loot. We expect that missile weapons will need extra attack bonus to compensate for the formula change so we plan to either modifying current missile weapons to have a 10% attack bonus if that is possible, or making a vendor that can give out free (but temporary) one month weapons available with a 10% attack bonus if modifying existing missile weapons can't be done for technical reasons.


New Skills

Although we are not close to finalizing new skill options, we wanted to give the players a taste of a few of the new skills we want to add to promote template diversity. The February patch would bring in new skills that would enhance different aspects of combat. Part of the goal is to give the height/power attack options more of an effect. To give a slight tease into what we are considering, here are some skills that might appear.

A 2/2 Dual Wield skill may be on the table. This skill would allow you to wield a weapon in your off hand and use an alternate Dual Wield animation while attacking. Your attacks would alternate between the two weapons, and your weapon swings would be delivered faster than a single weapon. Attack modifiers for each weapon would only apply to attacks with that weapon, and you would use only the highest defense modifier from the two weapons.

A 4/2 Sneak Attack skill based on Coordination/Quickness has been discussed. This skill would do extra damage from behind by making a check against your attack roll when you hit from behind. If the Sneak Attack also hits you'd do an extra 10 damage rating for trained and an extra 20 damage rating for specialized Sneak Attack hits. In addition, characters with high Deception skills would have a small (2-5%) chance to proc some of the extra damage with front hits, but the extra damage rating would be halved for Deception hits.

A 2/2 Dirty Fighting skill based on Coordination would have different effects based on the attack height of the swing. Your high swings would have a chance to debuff attack skills. Your low swings would have a chance to debuff melee defense and missile defense. Your mid swings would have a chance to cause a bleed effect on the target and to debuff healing effects as well. The bleed effect would scale with the value of the weapon; weapons from lower tiers would have a light bleed effect, weapons from mid tiers would have a medium bleed effect, and weapons from the highest tier would have a heavy bleed effect. The heaviest bleed effect would not be as good as any of the Nether damage over time spells.

The chance to activate the debuffs would be based on the skill level and could range as high as 25%. Characters with the skill specialized would use a better version of the debuff effects. The values of these debuffs are still being discussed.

A 4/2 Recklessness skill based on Quickness and Strength would be activated only when you were swinging at nearly maximum speed. All hits that are *not* critical strikes would be boosted by up to 20 damage rating, and all incoming strikes against you that were *not* critical strikes would similarly be boosted by up to 20 damage rating while this skill was active. The actual damage modifier would be based on your Recklessness skill and how close it was to your attack skill. If Recklessness is equal to or greater than your attack skill then you get the full benefit of 20 damage rating on strikes that are not critical hits. The additional damage you take from non-critical hits is always equal to the damage you output so you could intentionally not raise the skill if you wanted an option to do 10 damage rating and take an additional 10 damage rating from hits that are not critical strikes.


Loot

Due to the changes in the skills section, there will be changes to loot.

Armor, jewelry and other non-weapon pieces will remain largely unchanged. Weapon buff spells will be updated to one of the three weapon skills. Our current plan is to change spells on loot pieces and quest pieces as follows:

How spells that buff weapons skills will change:

  • Sword spells on armor and jewelry change to buff Heavy Weapons.
  • Axe, Mace, Unarmed Combat, Staff and Spear spells on armor and jewelry change to buff Light Weapons.
  • Dagger spells on armor and jewelry change to buff Finesse Weapons.


This will make suits easier to put together since the weapon skill buff spells will be consolidated into 3 options instead of 7.

New versions of the existing Rare Weapons will be introduced and balanced to be on par with each other. As such, the use of all three skills will be distributed among the weapons depending on the flavor of the weapon. Players with existing Rare weapons will be able to trade them in for a melee Rare Weapon of their choice. Sadly this means that experience earned for that weapon will be lost.

(For the one person in game who obtained a name change for their rare weapon, PM me if players choose this option.)

Existing weapons will be changed to use the new skills as follows:

  • Existing Swords changed to use the Heavy Weapons skill.
  • Existing Axes, Maces, Unarmed Weapons, Staves, and Spears changed to use Light Weapons
  • Existing Daggers changed to use Finesse Weapons


Where possible we will try to keep existing weapons competitive within their new weapon category. Existing characters who are more than two weeks old will gain some kind of item that will allow them to move existing slayer, imbues, and other non-tinkering weapon enhancements to new weapons. Our current plan is to give each character the ability to move those enhancements from a current (old) weapon to a new weapon three times.

Tinkering is preventing us from some melee weapon modifications we wanted to do. Tinkers were implemented to mutate weapons directly and only track the total number of tinkers on the weapon. Because of this we have no way of knowing what tinkers have been used on a particular weapon. This means that we can't move tinkers from weapon to weapon, and we can't update the statistics of existing loot weapons since it is impossible to know what the baseline for the weapon was before the weapon was affected by tinkers.

Because of this we will not be modifying existing melee weapons at all. Instead we will be balancing new loot weapons where we can to approximate the damage output of the old weapons where possible. If values need to change for balance, then new weapons that drop will be slightly better than current weapons. We expect this will be especially true for the current 4/4 weapons like Staves and Daggers as they are currently well below our expected values for Light Weapons and Finesse Weapons. Loot Spears will also be better than existing Spears. We are still examining the numbers on other weapons to determine how competitive they are within the new categories.

We will be combating loot dilution by narrowing the various mutations so the low ends will no longer appear in loot. How much this will be changed is still being determined, and will likely be changed based on player feedback on the test server.

List of Forum Threads

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