Body and Mind - unreliable and weak

[Jumbo]

Let's talk about the Body and Mind monk ability.

In my opinion, it is one of the only bad abilities in the game at the moment. While it's effect sure is nice, the triggering condition is so random that any other spell choice would, in my opinion, be selected by every player if there was a choice. Even with the 12% talent it isn't good.

There are at least four options here:

1. Increase the chance of triggering. Simple, and may not really solve the problem, but instead make it more unbalanced.

2. Change the trigger mechanics to something else. For instance, like the divine fist (after a certain amount of attacks).

3. My personal favorite. Increase its chance to trigger exponentially with every hit. This would mean that after 5-6 or so attacks it would almost certainly trigger. The chance could be 50% increase for each attack: 8% 12% 18% 27% 40% 60% 90%
If this seems too high, it could of course be reduced a bit.

4. Make it an activate ability with a fairly long CD: All Heal and Soul Strike abilities are instantly cast within the next 5 seconds. (something like that)

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Number 3. sounds like a good solution to me. I don't like the other ideas, though.

 

[Jumbo]

So, do you think you will make this change anytime soon?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

It will come with the other new ability releases.

At the moment, I have kind of halted all developement until the patch that increases the map size limit, as Gaias is at 7.99MB and any bigger chunk of code would be enough to tip it over the 8MB threshold right now.

 

[S0ulseeker]

Has there even been any new information on that patch yet, was it confirmed they are even increasing mapsize or is that all speculation on what will likely come? The announcement and last patch with screen resolutions was several months now and it seems blizzard is in no rush

I get it though, can't obviously continue the map if no space

 

[Zwiebelchen]

They are working on it, as you can see here:
http://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20745594507#post-2

 

[Shamu]

I know that I'm a bit late to the party here, but I wanted to propose some other things concerning this ability.

1. Increase the trigger chance drastically, but reduce mana cost and damage/healing of the spell. This would make it more consistent without making it broken.

2. Increase the trigger chance, but add an internal cooldown. If you have it trigger at 50% or so, and don't let it proc for x seconds afterwards, it would be a reliable and predictable spell, which is something that I would personally always prefer over an unreliable spell. It would also remove the possibility of overwriting a proc in two consecutive attacks, in case that has ever been an issue to anyone.

3. Don't have it trigger off of autoattacks, this would lead to multiple possibilites:

3.1 Have it trigger off of special attacks, and maybe guarantee a trigger on them. This would mean that after every skill use (or after some, if it doesn't trigger off of everything, like Heal or Soul Strike by themselves) you would get an instant cast. That could be kind of stupid though, because it just means you have to use two spells instead of one.

3.2 Have it trigger at time intervals, unrelated to any attacks, and have unlimited duration. This would be the most consistent version of the skill, and probably the easiest to balance. The unlimited duration would allow you to always have an instant cast at the beginning, instead of having you wait with a pull until it triggers to start off with it (i.e. removes the need for weird pull tactics, if the time interval for the next trigger begins only when the instant spell is used). This might be boring to some people though, even though I'd like it.

4. Remove the need to cast the spell after a trigger. This is just my personal beef with the spell, because I don't like that I have to cast the instant spell manually. You could just have it trigger automatically, at least in the case of Soul Strike. This would allow you to change the damage it does without having to do weird things to Soul Strike. However, this sounds a bit too similar to how runes deal elemental damage, and it would just be another passive skill. To make it differ from that, you could distribute the damage between all enemies. However, this would make it too useful as an AoE threat generator, which is something that has to be reliable to not completely suck.
To fix that, you could have it be an active spell that makes the next few autoattacks deal elemental damage (maybe element according to your rune, to not make soul choice weird), distributed among all enemies. If that generates too much threat, have it deal physical damage.
Another way would be to have it work on the next few autoattacks, but leave a stacking DoT instead of direct damage, so there isn't too much burst threat.

An extension to this would be to have the spell come in two different modes ("body" and "mind", I guess). Body would be the healing version (since I negelcted that part before), and Mind the damaging version. If Body is active, you could heal yourself after taking a hit (to not unnecessarily boost your EHP), if Mind is active, you could damage the target of your attacks. This would conflict with it being an active skill though, and having it activated permanently would probably royally screw balancing.
You could relate it to Steel Body, setting the mode to Body if steel Body is inactive (unfortunately producing confusing skill names), and mind if it is active, since you can't heal when steel Body is active anyhow. This would, however, conflict with the talent that lets you use heal in Steel Body, and remove any actual choice of skill use. Also, dps Monks would probably not like it.
A solution would be to have both parts at the same time, and have it remain an active skill. That way you would get the bonus damage, and bonus survivability, and this forces you to choose between using it for more damage and threat, or using it for absorbing burst damage (if burst damage is ever any issue, that is. Staggering damage (taking only 70%, have the remaining 30% dealt to you as a DoT, or something of the like) would probably be a better way to create a counter to burst).


Since I'm starting to deviate more and more from the spell as it is now, I think I should stop there. Maybe you'll find some of the ideas useful.

 

[Gripphon]

My complain about the skill is there is basically no obvious visual indicator when it activates, but instead I have to constantly look among buffs to have a clue when it triggers. I just thought it would be a nice upgrade to have obvious (and not some hardly visible) effect on Monk himself to know when he triggers Body and Soul to know when to cast things.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

The skill has a visual effect when it triggers, emits an audible "ping" when it triggers and will also be displayed in the status monitor in the upper right corner. How much more indicators does someone need here?

 

[Gripphon]

I just gave idea what could be upgrade to skill in my opinion. I don't really understand your attitude there in the last sentence, but if you think idea is bad, I'm perfectly fine with that.

 

[Jumbo]

Gripphon it is easy to see in the status window (upper right corner).

 

[spartan_97]

Sorry I'm late to the party.

I just wanted to point out that option 3 while being exciting and fun, it is mathematically equivalent to option 1. The only thing that differs between the two options is the overall shape of the probability distribution of the two strategies. Currently (not really see below) the 8% is a uniform probability distribution with respect to the number of attacks that have occurred before the current attack without mind and body being activated. Option 1 would simply increase the probability, but not change it's shape. Option 3 would change the shape of the distribution entirely, while you could tune it (with a lot of complicated math, or painstaking trial and error) to have the same number of expected attacks between occurrences of body and mind, it would be a lot of work.

All of this is complicated by how the WC3 engine actually deals with percentage based occurrences in game. link

The WC3 engine doesn't use a uniform probability distribution function, it uses something similar to the proposal made above, expect a linear increase in probability rather than an exponential one.

I will say that option three is more 'fun and exciting' than just making body and mind have a higher base proc rate.... at the cost of being more complex to code, and given the nature of probability calculations and the like, much more prone to bugs and the accompanied bug-fixes, and finally much harder to test since we won't actually know what flat percent chance the exponential increase strategy will actually be equivalent to without doing the necessary math and probability.

My vote is for 1 since it's equivalent to 3 and generally much more easy to implement and balance.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Sorry I'm late to the party.

You are:

CHANGELOG (v1.2C(9)):
- "Body and Mind" now triggers on a pseudo-random (instead of true random) distribution to make it more reliable

I implemented the same mathematical algorithm that is used in DOTA 2 to make proc attacks more balanced and reliable. Dozens of versions ago.

 

[MiroBG]

o.0 you know maths zwieb? nice

 

[spartan_97]

I implemented the same mathematical algorithm that is used in DOTA 2 to make proc attacks more balanced and reliable. Dozens of versions ago.

I assume you mean that it now uses some custom logic that entirely bypasses the WC3 internal pseudo-random generator for proccing attacks, the one the DOTA 2 algorithm replicated, to replicate the way procced attacks worked in dota?

Well as long as you're happy with it.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I assume you mean that it now uses some custom logic that entirely bypasses the WC3 internal pseudo-random generator for proccing attacks, the one the DOTA 2 algorithm replicated, to replicate the way procced attacks worked in dota?

Well as long as you're happy with it.

It was true random before, now it replicates the way DOTA 2 does it (and also WC3 does it on stuff like critical strikes), which is more reliable.

 

[spartan_97]

It was true random before, now it replicates the way DOTA 2 does it (and also WC3 does it on stuff like critical strikes), which is more reliable.

Ahhh, now I understand. I had wrongly assumed that the original talent was implemented using the underlying WC3 engine for proccing attacks, rather than the true distribution. Thanks for the insight!

 

[MiroBG]

@spartan_97 wanna play with us right now ?