Quote (thing @ Apr 1 2021 07:54am)
Yeah but there's still no argument here against buffing the bowside. It's nowhere near op/meta for pvm, and just to put things into perspective the current faith/fort meta is not very far off from pre 1.1 meta (windforce+160/60), while monster hp was increased about 5-10x along with physical resistances. So even a 50% increase in physical damage output will not put zons anywhere near being op in pvm. It's a no brainer: just boost zons. I am also going to conjecture that they are going to increase monster aggro distance with the increased screen res, and bowazons would not benefit from this increased screen res because they were already hitting things from offscreen without the added screen res, but increased monster aggro would only mean they get swarmed by more stuff in pvm, so it is only right to give zons more damage output on the bowside.
For pvp you can just see the number of rules enforced by pvpers (like 3x of the amount of guidelines for any other class) put there just to keep zons in the game (no holy freeze, slow target, decrep, bp, etc etc etc), and then you can see how crappy zons actually are. Zons are so much of a joke that most chars don't even bother using mb/dr versus zons, which is gm. Stormshield+doom = any char can completely counter a zon, so you can boost physical bowas as much as you want and they would never be op. You never need to worry about gm balance because the gm community would just adjust the rules to balance it out. They would be setting rules like allowing you to use +15% max poison resistance just like you are allowed to use spurs against some chars or even bar certain items like if xbows were boosted and it upsetted the GM "balance", they would just ban xbows from gm pvp altogether. You ascertain balance by looking at the BM game, not by looking at the GM game. If you want to know how much a char really sucks, and how much boosting is required to maintain balance, you just look at the amount of "GM" rules that was used to bail out that char.
Zons were nerfed for the whole of the past 17 years. It is time to boost zons already, because they will be even weaker in the remaster.
Hm, yeah those builds weren't that popular back in the day when I was actively dueling. Now just occasionally joining bm games, but zons are barely noticeable there. I usually just kill them with like a random hammer while going after some other char. The bowside is barely noticeable anyway. I've run into a few psn chars and they can be almost negated with antidotes+andy's mask, so I'd say in some ways bows are the only real weapon for a zon. That's in bm, and even with a significant boost to the bowside zons would probably at best be mid-tier. In gm the rules are completely fluid, so if zons were to ever become op, the rules would adjust so that zons would still be looking normal. So I'm pretty sure there won't be any downsides to boosting zons on the bow/xbow side.
Imo the only thing going for pvp in this game is team vs team, because solo duels are unviable without all sorts of restrictions. Team duels have more viable builds and can be competitive without restrictions (bm maybe, but tvts are competitive whether gm or bm, unlike solo duels). But even then, you are still not allowed to hf/decrep/bp zons, even when they've got all the advantages of group buffs/debuffs in tvt, and there are still a whole bunch of restrictions put there just to keep zons in the game, so that all says something about whether zons are really a good dueling class or not, even for tvt. There's a set of rules when up against any class in general, and then there's another set of rules in addition to that when up against zons just to keep zons in the game (I know it's general guidelines for frw/ias based chars, but it shows the limitations of zons as pvp chars. It's the only char that can't transcend the need for frw/ias. Having to build on those carries a bunch of inherent weaknesses, and it makes you susceptible to holy freeze/slow target/decrepify/bp and all sorts of other things, so you would have to factor that in when assessing the real strength of zons as a pvp char. The only REAL way to balance it would be to boost zons. GM rules are only an ad hoc fix). IMO only if zons are pulling their weight without holy freeze, decrepify and bp being banned, then you could call tvts "balanced", otherwise zons would be a redundant class altogether. If you have to self-nerf just for them to remain relevant opponents, then they are not really relevant opponents. Zons are supposed to be artillery characters but they don't even deal that much damage. A zon getting decrep'd, bp'd and holy frozen in a team duel should still be dealing enough damage with multi/strafe (strafe is useful sometimes. Counteracts ias debuffs) such that the bwalls/prisons go down immediately and the enemy team is still taking sufficient damage from your shots, and the enemy team is walking into your teammates' attacks while going after you (they only will if you are a real artillery char, but zons in the current state are not), to justify a zon's spot on the team. If a simple decrep or bp counters them then team pvp has no place for them. Imo a boost of the extent that I mentioned in the original post would rectify that (and way more fun as well).
IMO the only thing preventing tvt from becoming crazy popular, is that zons are underpowered (I haven't really seen plague zons in tvt though, but there's always a counter to it). Most of the classes cannot be fully countered and have some niche role in tvt, so there would always be sufficient variety in those games. Tvt is something that would always be balanced because teams choose from 4/7 of the pool of abilities available in the game. So it's always auto-balancing (or worst come to worst it will end up always being a mirror matchup) because you always pick effective combinations with the least weak points, and most classes can join in and it would usually be fairly competitive whatever your picks are. But the thing that sticks out is the zons, because while they play a key role as ranged attackers, they can be taken out of the game with a simple decrep or bp, and they have to be alotted so many provisions from the enemy team it takes discipline to adjust your gear accordingly and to remember not to use certain skills against zons that you use against every other char. The premise here is that team pk is already auto-balancing in bm, but zons are the only class (don't know whether to count sorcs or not) that won't conform to this premise, because they are almost completely useless with nothing more than a decrep/bp. Bm is also the way to go because the only way pvp will fly among the majority of players is if you didn't need to read a long set of rules and gear/skill restrictions, or at least if it was easy to monitor and enforce those things ingame. Most people in the remake aren't going to bother looking at that list at all. So I doubt there would be much GM pvps in the remaster. The only pvps that will fly there is if they were allowed to use any char they leveled, with any gear they were able to acquire, and it would probably be TvT, because solo duels would be full of mismatches.
I think the game is good the way it is, and I'm not very keen on changes in the game, but over here it's just a glaring balance error (I mean in general pvm and any form of pvp, not just gm pvp which tells you nothing about whether a class is inherently balanced). Makes every sense to rectify it.
Damn, I wrote more than I had planned to. They should make zons fun again, imo. LOL
I just want to say going back and reading this, I agree with most of what you wrote, its notable how many GM rules have to be artificially in place just to give zons a chance- BP even ruins tele zons if they have D/A/E and slow % from whatever source just ends zons so badly. Being one of the few classes so dependent on %IAS and with no %EIAS skills is a true handicap, you've got barbs and paladins using melee attacks that ignore %EIAS and even when they smite you've got fanat, zons have to use up all their gear slots on IAS even on their 'caster' builds'.
But I also want to say, I can't really tell you how good plague hybrids are in TvT. I never dueled TvT enough on my damach zon, I stuck to FFA mostly on her and used other chars in TvT, one issue is that TvT really lends itself to bowazons and an osama hybrid with high bow damage and maybe no teleport / no life/dr/resists would actually be a lot more useful in tvt than my super tanky damach zon. The plagues could be the same, but plinking away with a 1500 damage 1 point guided arrow isn't going to cut it in TvT in anyones imagination, not even with conc + amp.
Quote (EazyBone @ Apr 1 2021 10:26pm)
fire elemental druids or summon druids.
Ironically enough, shamans and maybe even pure fire and pure summoning druids are a higher tier char than zons, lul
A shaman can instantly hit you for 13000+ physical damage off a teleport without needing to reach his action frame on the next cast like a windy does, or give you time to finish your teleport away, it strikes in 7 frames from his first teleport's action point without beast/fanat.
And even that damage can feel lackluster sometimes, and that's compared to glass zons on dex builds with no life/resists/dr plinking for 6k avg