So....

Nerf for 917 or "everything is working as intended"?

I've had someone confirm in logs that as of the push out of PSM2 at the start of the year, the bonus roll of SMRv2 for 917 is hard capped at 80. Pre 2021 they have logs showing 80+ bonus for 917 casts.

They have mentioned other SMRv2 skills for abilites, such as charge, they see 80+ bonus rolls.

Right now it only appears this hard cap of 80 bonus is tied to spell 917.

The bonus cap appears to be specifically tied to the wound/health loss bonuses that stack. These seem to be capped at 25. So regardless of how many wounds and how much health is lost, the bonus is capped at 25. I don't know if there was a wound/health loss cap to begin with, but I know it wasn't 25 because the bonus on SMRv2 rolls for 917 used to hit 100+ at times.

Hey, as long as that cap is in place for "stuff cast at PCs", I am totally down with that.
(I would routinely see 80-120 penalties on later rounds, when "heavily-injured by previous rounds" has kicked in.)

Thank you for the reply.

Note that a (primarily intended as a Bolting class) Wizard with NO skill in Aimed Spells is just as much of a mutant path as a WarWizard with full CM, or a Warrior with no weapon skills.
Translated: "that's on you, dog."

Many/most of the changes over the last several years have been adding more options to professions. Clerics used to be "Hit it with CS, or you lose." (Okay... they had a bolt spell. Then two. Now, they have three that I can remember, AND a maneuver. In addition to their warding attacks, disablers, and something that has the potential to "cast it again, Sam.")

Deliberately backing yourself into a corner of limited options is... yeah, that's still on you. <shrug>

Note that a (primarily intended as a Bolting class) Wizard with NO skill in Aimed Spells is just as much of a mutant path as a WarWizard with full CM, or a Warrior with no weapon skills.

Translated: "that's on you, dog."

Many/most of the changes over the last several years have been adding more options to professions. Clerics used to be "Hit it with CS, or you lose." (Okay... they had a bolt spell. Then two. Now, they have three that I can remember, AND a maneuver. In addition to their warding attacks, disablers, and something that has the potential to "cast it again, Sam.")

Deliberately backing yourself into a corner of limited options is... yeah, that's still on you. <shrug>

I just love how someone - could be anyone - posts some kind of distaste about a change and you chime in to defend the GMs or chastise the person for their choices. Shame on you. You're not being constructive. You're just coming off as a smart mouth.

I wasn't asking for folks to come to Simu's rescue over the stealth nerfs they put out there. I was merely pointing out my distaste for it and also the fact that the information only comes out to us after someone badgers them enough to let us know that, yes, a "fix" was put in place.

Honestly, how many other people out there actually noticed the stealth cap put in place?

One of the best things about pures and semis is that they are easy as heck to diversify well enough to hunt in most places they care to without having to fixskill into a completely different hunting style. By all means, put more TPs into beefing up your favorite spell/ability, but if you're a semi or pure it doesn't cost much to invest in a couple others to make them useful enough to be back-ups.

I understand the idea of wizards - bolt! Yeah! Bolt! They're designed around bolting.

Yet we're given other routes to be successful and only to have them brought down a peg or two because NIR decided so.

519 used to be a great way to hunt with a wizard, it's kind of "meh" now in comparison and not really worth the mana it costs to rely on it as a main hunting spell.
415 was a solid go to spell until the "bug" that allowed a single target to be hit twice was removed.
917 was a great hunting spell (and is still pretty solid), but it's now been taken down a peg on it's dependability without a single peep from NIRs.

They design spells for wizards so they don't have to solely rely on casting bolts, only to strip the power level down from these spells. I don't see why anyone is okay with these changes.

My capped mage that does bolt, I really haven't felt any change. He bolts around 70% of the time and casts 917 around 30% of the time with some tossed in 519 and 502 here and there.

My level 98 mage that has been solely using 917/502 since level 27 has adjusted what he hunts due to not using bolts. He's progressed just fine. I found new hunting grounds that I've never hunted before with a bolting mage. I've even found creatures I would normally avoid with a bolting mage to be great creatures to hunt with 917. Now that a cap has been snuck in there, I find that 917 is slightly less effective for my level 98 mage....I think it sucks. I think it sucks we weren't told about the change put in place nearly 6 months back.

In the end, you guys can spin it all you want to make yourself feel better or to coddle the GMs if you want, but these stealth nerfs absolutely suck - regardless of what they nerf. They put out the nerfs and don't tell people. Even if they have a good reason for it it's like a big no, no. Don't tell anyone. And that is what pisses me off the most, that they don't tell anyone. On top of it, it takes over a week to even get a response about it. The response itself was something, but it felt kind of like a PR reply - tell the guy something that kind of answers his question without actually giving him a reason as to why.....at least it was something....even though it felt pretty bland, but it was something to acknowledge the a change was made.

>>Honestly, how many other people out there actually noticed

I think this is a pretty fair question - and exemplifies the point you're trying to make in my view. I think it would be pretty cool when something like this is being contemplated, if the GMs could reach out to two or three of the players likely affected and say 'hey, hit the test server and run a few dozen casts of 917 and let me know what you think'. This has been tried a time or two and never with good results, so we made our own beds there.

The problem it feels is a sense of lack of good-faith dealings. Every change is a 'nerf' to someone. Even a change that does nothing but adjust one profession slightly upwards is oft considered as undesirable by the current power profession that didn't get adjusted upwards a like amount. Damn hard road. . .

I can say I'm honestly happy that some players enjoy watching this stuff to the point that such changes can be called out. I never would have known that what took me 10 casts yesterday suddenly takes me 11 today.

Doug

It's always our intention to announce changes when implemented. This simply slipped through. With the hundreds to thousands of changes we make each year, it sometimes happens, but fortunately is an extremely rare occurrence.

GameMaster Estild

Not a shot at you, Estild, but this has been an ongoing issue for years. It could be minor things or major things. A few off the top of my head (correct me if I'm wrong) that may or may not have pissed a lot of people off:

Treasure nerf in the confluence.

Loot cap.

Merchants able to unlocked, locked enchanted projects: Back during the last enchanting change and items could be LOCKED. We were told RSN it would possible for merchants to unlock the locked enchanted items....yet it took multiple times of folks asking when it was going to be implemented so they could get locked items unlocked at a merchant and no word ever came about until one day someone was complaining on the forums about sitting on a locked project for months and getting pissed they couldn't get it unlocked. Finally a NIR chimed in that it's been possible to have a merchant unlock items for a while now and then made it sound like it's the players fault for not asking merchants.....seriously?

917 SMR bonus adjustment (cough nerf cough).

Don't you guys have a plan in place to post bug fixes/adjustments/new additions/removals of things in the game that you could post on the forums? You know, make an official Update/Bug report topic that only GMs can post in (restrict posting for users...basically a read only topic for players) just post a monthly update on any and all changes?


I guess my last question about the 917 bonus adjustment. Is this capped bonus for SMR only tied to 917 or does it apply to all SMRv2 skills/abilities on both creature and player sides?

>You're conflating two separate issues - unannounced vs. unpopular changes.

No, I'm not. I don't recall the changes I listed ever being made officially announced. But, searching through the official announcement folder can be daunting so it is possible I missed them. And those are the few changes that stick out in my mind.

>For the record, we received significantly more positive than negative feedback on the loot cap.

I never said the loot cap was bad, but I could certainly make arguments for both pros and cons, but that is not what my question was about.

>Yes, we have a process. And processes can fail.

So, you guys are telling me you have a place on the forums that's lists a change document of all changes that players can read about each month? Guess I suck at navigating the forums because I haven't seen it.

>It was an update to the SMRv2 system itself, so it affects all SMRv2 rolls for both characters and creatures.

Okay. I guess I find it odd I've had people show me use of SMRv2 abilities/skills that still generate a bonus on the calculation that exceeds what I am able to produce using 917. That's why I was asking, because right now it seems like 917 took a small adjustment, but other skills/abilitirs haven't.....

Unless all skills/spells/abilities build up the bonus portion of the SMRv2 calulation differently...?

"I just love how someone - could be anyone - posts some kind of distaste about a change and you chime in to defend the GMs or chastise the person for their choices." -- BBRodriguez

I'm not chastising you, I'm pointing out that you made a conscious choice, went through a character progression all the way to cap... and are now complaining that it might not be entirely optimal.

.

In my D&D5e game, one of the characters is a Barbarian. His skill set basically boils down to, "Hit something with a stick." After making 5th level, it now includes, "Hit it again."
- What about something you cannot reach for melee?
* Useless.
- What about something immune to the damage type of your weapon?
* Useless.

It's exactly the same thing as what you built around. Awesome damage with that ONE aspect--you happen to luck into a second one, with CS spells--of combat... but if something reduces the power of that, it affects you disproportionately.

72 spells available to Wizards in three lists, over 10% of them use Aimed Spells. ClueStick?

There was just recently a directly analogous conversation over in the weapon-users' talking about <some weapon type> against <some creature type>; I think it was slashing versus undead? Something to do with the new weapon skills coming in PSM3, I don't recall the specifics.
And the point was... you train in "Edged". Use a different one, when hunting <that particular type of creature>.
"But I want to use this weapon!" Fine, learn the CMan to select the type of damage that it deals.
"But I don't wanna!"

Substitute "sink all my training into Earthen Fury/ignore other avenues" for "slashing damage weapon against undead/insist on that weapon", and it is literally the same conversation.

Any character deliberately and consciously being a One Trick Pony--particularly at the level of the game that you are at--is NOT the GMs' fault.

I think his point was just not to put all your eggs in one basket. Lots of characters still need to use alternate strategies hunting certain critters, and will carry different weapons or "tools" to do so.

<Recently, game staff have posted Google documents related to proposed changes to systems... heck, they've actually encouraged feedback through those documents. That never happened before. I don't remember where all of them are or were, but I know I've seen them.>

Might be missing a couple, but here's the links to the ones I cared about enough to bookmark:

Archery- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z6rt_HxSgSrmAoOwhVKmlgjG5vvSkHRn8c6CConnS7U/edit#

Ranger spells- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k6dEeEhpsnyaFOePHUvPwxT7fUQ0IfyzLcsul2VZEEs/edit

SMR- https://docs.google.com/document/d/13jRROmbQMFwmLn8MqtMY82ODpmbK4-slQemVNvhEny0/edit

Skill TP changes- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T3ogxn9RxZVlTVhPNInFl2XwLB7jOWEGHEs9pbHkg8w/edit

PSM- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eSyzok0aMhP8AuP7TufyMymHmqOm0tRoSP0Ragh3p88/edit#

Sorcerer- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vFQcOJVAVCMLnXD8UksBBxgFJDJE4xMVXCdVmxXPFBk/edit


Starchitin, the OG

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

> 917 - bonus adjustments calculation capped for wounds+health loss at 25

I know this wasn't the point of your post and I do agree with a changelog (that's another topic), but I don't want someone reading this and misinterpreting it. There were situations where creatures and players were hitting far more of a penalty than we from wounds stacking up. We get alerted when a SMR modifier is outside the bounds of the design which is why it was noticed and why it was corrected. This change had nothing to do with 917 itself, or PSM: Phase 2. If it was intended as part of Phase 2 it would have been in the design document with everything else.

The injury portion of SMR has been capped at -250 since around the New Year. This translates to a penalty of 25 for the defender, or a bonus of 25 for the attacker. This cap applies to both creatures and players.

> I don't know, Estild. It's starting to feel like it was an adjustment just to 917. So, either some skills got missed on applying a bonus cap or only the cap was applied to 917?

I've already said this was not the case.

> Here are some skills that clearly show the bonus can build up past the cap that 917 appears to have. These skills were used today.

Maneuvers such as feint, charge, and sweep in your examples go through PSM and have additional modifiers on top of the base SMR system. These are the likely cause for additional bonus you see. The displayed bonuses have absolutely nothing to do with race or profession outside of access to certain boosting maneuvers. Racial size modifiers will modify the roll after the display similar to how the channeled warding bonus modifies that roll. For example, stone giants are huge so the charge you listed as a 267 roll is being reduced by 30-40 due to their massive size. The final roll is 227 to 237. These modifiers existed prior to the SMR conversion, but was done as part of the roll (shown as bonus/penalty) meaning you were more likely to outright miss rather than your damage being reduced if you connected.

Note: everything listed below was present in CML rolls and were translated with the exact same bonus/penalty to SMR. Many of the modifiers listed did not show as a bonus/penalty in the CML roll and were instead just hidden in the final roll itself. They are now intentionally listed as bonuses/penalties to more accurately reflect what's applying and remove that hidden factor. You can use CMAN HELP {skill} and look at the attributes listed to get a general idea of what modifiers may apply per maneuver.

Some examples of modifiers include:

* Weapon Specialization: up to a +10 bonus for weapon based maneuvers. Can also apply a +10 bonus to the defender.
* Weapon Bonding (and 1625): up to a +10 bonus for weapon based maneuvers. Can also apply a +10 bonus to the defender.
* Skill discretionary modifiers such as having a bonus to subdue with a blackjack.
* Crowd Press.
* Spikes on applicable gear.
* Having bulky items (penalty) for maneuvers like tackle.
* Shield Focus: applies in a similar fashion as weapon bonding/weapon specialization.
* Modifying your GLD STANCE.
* Having Martial Prowess (Moonstone Cubes) active.

Now, let's dissect that kneeling stone giant. I'm making some assumptions since I lack all the information, but the following is probably pretty close to what happened:

* Max Wounds: +25
* Kneeling: +25
* Stunned: +35
* Weapon Specialization: +6 to +10. +6 is the minimum for weapon bonding, and a common stopping point for weapon specialization.
* Weapon Bonding: +10

That adds up to a total max bonus of 105. If you have weapon specialization 3, that adds up to a total bonus of 101. It's not exactly 102, but that's pretty close.

Naijin - Thanks for the break down. Makes more sense with things now.

One thing still bothers me, though. I'm unsure why it's taken years to fix the aspect of the SMR bonus roll value when it has been "outside the bounds of the design" for such a long time. I understand why you guys say it was fixed and how it functions now, but come on....seriously....it's taken years to fix it?

I did a lot of testing with SMRv2 and 917 back in start of 2019 (that's over 2 years ago now) and I did testing on wounds and health loss and I was able to successfully figure out the bonus of the equation based on wounds and health loss, being prone and/or stunned. Much to my surprise over the past 4+ months things were no longer adding up and there had been no mention of any kind of adjustment. I do hope you guys can see how this looks like a stealth nerf.



I also do hope you guys can start actually filling out a basic change log and putting up a monthly update. This way instead of digging through what could be 10s or possible hundreds of "Official Announcement" posts, someone could just check the change log topic and open up a couple of monthly logs and do a quick browser search (ctrl+F while using Chrome) to hopefully find a snippet of useful information or a link to more information (such as a google doc or gswiki page).

>For the record, we received significantly more positive than negative feedback on the loot cap.

I'm going to assume that Discord was the primary source of feedback on this?

~ Methais