TwisTED

Join Date 10/2007

[Balance] Stun's -=- Suggestions to stop stun locking

As it sits right now you can be stunned and two hited by just about any 2 player combo out there. Now I believe that any combination of DG's should be able to take down one like level, and maybe 1 - 2 LVL over DG without much fuss, but if you get stunned by one rook, while another slams, then vice versa, you have no chance to get away. you simply sit there while you wait to see the death screen.

I see a couple of problems with stuns, and some rather simple fixes:

1. Stun locking. Having one stun after another hit you so that you have no chance but to die.

2. Consumables cool down timer starts if you have been stunned.

Now to fix #1 I would propose, a Stun immunity of 2-3 times the length of the stun with a 2 second minimum. This would help negate the constant spam of Mageslayer’s, without making them useless. I would also say to make it so there is one Stun in Queue so that after an immunity wears off, if someone had used a stun, say a boulder, the effect would take effect. The queued stun should be the largest stun used.

Here is how I see this playing out.. Let’s say you get Mageslayerd, then boulder roll III’d

0.2 second stun > 2 second Immune > 5 second stun > 10 – 15 second Immune

As for #2, stun should interrupt anything you are doing, not make you looses the ability. Any ability, clickable, consumable that was not completed needs to reset to usable state. Cool down timers should continue to count down while stunned, but should never be reset.

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Wouldn't that negate the effect of teamwork?

I would suggest maybe not a stun immunity but a stun *Reduction* per stun cast. Diminishingly until it indeed became an immunity, at say... 5 different stuns in 15 seconds.

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I think infact that may increase teamwork. It means stunlocking someone actually takes skill and isnt the most basic thing two random people will do. They actually have to think about when to stun some right after their team mate just has.

Also, it might actually make 3v3's viable without having to have at least 2 stun lockers on your team to win.

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Quoting Fire-Ice,

reply 1

The problem with the whole Diminishing use idea is that by the time you have diminished it enough to allow you to be safe, you will be dead. Lets just look at 2 five second stunners. Lets say that you spread the stun out like this 100%-80%-60%-40%-20%-0% the first stun hits for 5 seconds.. The second stun hits for 4 seconds. That is 9 seconds of not being able to do anything. If the team you are against is good enough to have 2 people that know how to stun, you won't be alive after 9 seconds of immobility.

Now if we had a immunity to stun after the first one, there is a chance for escape. 5 seconds stunned is still a long time in Demigod. Against the AI, it is nothing, but against 2 skilled players or 3 - 5 unskilled ones, you will be lucky to escape with your hide in place.

I think that some of the stuns that are in the game should be tweaked to other forms of debuffs. I can think of 4 basic annoyance / tide changing skills.

Stun - Stops you in your tracks, breaks any casting you where doing, no movement, no casting, no melee. This should be the most powerful, but the shortest or rarest.
Root - Stops you in your tracks, breaks any casting you where doing, no movement, able to cast, able to melee. This would be the second strongest. As rare of an ability as stun. Make it so that it has a separate immunity timer from stun, but still is usable right after stun and vice versa. This would allow a Double Stop, but not compleatly helpless.
Snare - Slow you to a crawl ( X%), able to cast, able to melee. Does not break casting. This should be rather common. As a mater of practicality, if you are running and enter a group of minions / reinforcements they should impede your movement. This would be an environmental type of Snare. This would add a little more strategy into the game, and could be used to help get away / trap someone. ( run an 'L" route around the reinforcements, if the enemy DG goes strait through they will get slowed. ( make it like a small slow like 1- 2% per minion / reinforcement ) Beyond the environmental would be the ones that are already in the game. They could compound, or be set to only effect the higher of the two.
Silence / Hiccups - Just as a Silence right now, but with a new version that is instant. The instant " Hiccup" would breaks any casting you where doing, but not stop movement, melee. You would be able to cast again immediately, the hiccup would have just broken the previous cast. It would not cause the Cool down timer to start. Silence would be a long version that prevented you from using any abilities, but did not effect movement or melee. Only Sedna Should have Silence as it is now, but all DG's should have access to Hiccups in one form or another. This is what I would see taking the place of a lot of the short term stuns that we have now.

Again, just an observation, and some Ideas on how to balance it out a little.

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By multiplying the type of adverse effects the need for stun mitigating mechanics would be lowered.

The main thing I don't like with the stun counter is that is basically, unintuitive. You cast a stun ---> DemiGod not stunned, wtf ? At least diminishing returns keeps the causality : cast a stun ---> stunned demigod -> earlier end of stun.

Anyway, rather than introducing obscure underlying system, even if diminishing returns could work, the main thing to do is to keep an healthy relationship between stun durations and combat durations. It doesn't work at the moment, because, -to a certain extend- the pace speeds up at higher levels, with maxed combos and higher dps. That means, in late game, a few seconds of stun have decisive impact. Where the system logics starts to go insane, is that you precisely get longer stun durations as you skills are upgraded. That means early game stuns are quite inneffective while late game stuns are just abusive.

I agree with TwisTED propositions : spread out stun effects into a array of gentler effects. Keep the real core stun to short durations and add side effects for higher skill levels. Boulder for instance should keep a short stun duration but could get a CD lenghtening/armor decrease side effect.

Currently one of the best stuns in the game - from a tactical and fun viewpoint - is the UB one. Short, melee ranged, and of course since the UB itself can't move while draining life, it's the most teamplay oriented.

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Especially since UB can arguably splash the highest DPS in the game while mainting high hp and the highest armour, so if you get 1v1'ed with him he will also slow you down (passive ability) and have higher base speed then you. He can also stun/interupt you with that move. Well...ok, fine, give him a interupt - but dont make it reset cooldown time completely. Either let its cooldown be only increased by a set amout of seconds (e.g 4 seconds, 2 seconds - w/e) or just dont let it reset cooldowns at all. If it resets your cooldown it just means that heal/scroll/warp that you used early on to be safely will now only be usable when your dead.

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I have to say that I'm a little bit confused. Stunlocking has been a major problem in every build that had 2 DGs with stun spells...I'm not really sure I understand why the devs would leave it this late to fix - Testers have been putting this out there since December or earlier...

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Currently one of the best stuns in the game - from a tactical and fun viewpoint - is the UB one. Short, melee ranged, and of course since the UB itself can't move while draining life, it's the most teamplay oriente
Especially since UB can arguably splash the highest DPS in the game while mainting high hp and the highest armour, so if you get 1v1'ed with him he will also slow you down (passive ability) and have higher base speed then you. He can also stun/interupt you with that move. Well...ok, fine, give him a interupt - but dont make it reset cooldown time completely. Either let its cooldown be only increased by a set amout of seconds (e.g 4 seconds, 2 seconds - w/e) or just dont let it reset cooldowns at all. If it resets your cooldown it just means that heal/scroll/warp that you used early on to be safely will now only be usable when your dead.

Arguably, interrupts and stuns should be two differents things, with interrupt = the CD of your action is screwed, stun = CD not screwed. I agree that individually, the rook is big nasty killer, but so is the rook (with a non melee Demigod, going melee with either one won't make such a difference). The most important aspect as far as I'm concerned is that UB stun is single target/melee ranged. A boulder launched into a group of fighting demigods, a Ice nova or such have for more impact atm.

This needs further testing, but in no warpstone games, UB need some effective support to do anything in early to mid-levels. Demigods stats at last levels are another issue , especially with UB and Rook

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Personally the CD getting messed up is the single moist frustrating thing in the game right now.... OK actually Targeting with UB is the most, and this is a close second.

Rather than have any stun/interrupt completely reset the CD, how about a 3 - 10 second lose of abilities. It shouldn't effect consumables or clickable’s. The basis behind stun’s and interrupts is that you lose your train of thought and forget how to cast for a few seconds. Since there is now thought in opening a jar or rubbing a magic ring consumables shouldn’t get reset as they do now.

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Somehow, when interrupting, I want to negate an action. Without CD reset to max, one could immediately resume the corresponding action. An good example of this mechanic is with Oak invulnerabilty vs Hammer slam. If the Rook spots the invulnerabilty and sucessfuly cancels, he can slam only a pair of seconds after. (while the invulnerabilty itself has 35s CD). Interrupt must screw the CD to avoid that.

But stuns shouldn't do that or to a limited extend, like you said, only a few seconds, or a fraction of normal cooldown.

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