Gaias related questions

[Gripphon]

I open this thread to serve as thread where you can ask whatever you want about Gaias. Instead of searching through gazilion of other threads, chances are in such general thread as this someone else already asked a question you were about to ask and already got an answer. My experience from a several other games is this kind of thread was real deal what players needed. I hope here it won't be any different. I will surely use this thread to ask questions instead of opening new thread for every single question I might have.




My question is about soul vault and I wanna ask is there any chance to get eight slot designed specifically for identifying souls? Idea is to identify soul in that slot (perhaps if all others are full) to decide whether to keep the soul or not (soul is not active and cannot be activated in that slot). In short, this means we still have same amount of soul slots as now (7), but have special slot to identify them too which could make things easier for people who are already near 7 limit with useful souls and could offer a more practical way to upgrade their souls.

Now we effectively have 6 soul slots since 1 is needed to identify a new soul. Having all 7 souls is not major problem as well and does not prevent seeking for upgrades, but could be annoying to search for an upgrade via doing strange shenanigans with vault (meaning saving vault code before the game so you can throw random seventh soul out to identify a new ones and if you don't get what you wanted, you simply load saved vault the next time you enter the game to have all 7 souls back and can do that stuff again).

Solution of having eight slot where souls can be identified (but not activated) kinda removes the need to do these shenanigans and there is still same amount of souls players can have. I agree with philosophy that players should be forced to choose souls wisely, hence the 7 limit is fine, but problem is once you reach the limit and still want to seek for soul upgrades (instead of not picking new souls which seems lame to me or you could also choose to make a new vault maybe).

How do players feel about this in general? Also question is of practicality since I assume there are only few players who are already at 7 limit.

 

[Gripphon]

Second question is about -critdmg aura from legendary souls. Don't know if I'm correct, but that aura seems a bit... underwhelming, at least compared to other auras available. Bosses have what, 15-20% chance for a critical? This means this aura is useful only minority of time and I'd also say it is practically useless against weaker opponents. -%critchance aura seems ok-ish, reducing boss critical chance from 20 to 15 or from 15 to 10% seems solid enough for me. Don't know, is there something magically useful from this -%critdmg aura I don't understand? If you don't have another -critdmg on yourself, it seems nearly useless to me, and if you do have another -critdmg on yourself, then it seems like a very underwhelming upgrade. Opinions?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

To your first question:
What would happen if you wanted to equip the soul in the 8th slot? You'd have to swap it to a different slot first? That would require me to implement many extra mechanics, like a mechanic to swap the slots of souls. Besides, if I add such a swapping mechanic, how would the 8th slot be any different from the other 7? I would just swap souls around before equipping them and effectively have 8 soul slots now.
As you can see, this creates more problems than it solves.


To your second question:
Reduced critdamage aura is very powerful on hard-hitting boss encounters. An unlucky crit in the wrong situation can easily kill a tank, if your healer is busy. The Critdamage aura is useful to reduce such damage spikes. Crit chance aura does something similar to that by reducing the chance for such a spike, yes, but it doesn't remove the danger from a spike itself.
When healing, it's sometimes better to have reliable, consitant damage on your tank than rare but deadly spikes.

Consider this: When combined with a critdamage reduction soul and a critdamage reduction talent, certain classes can reduce the damage multiplier on criticals from x1.5 to x1.1, which pretty much negates the danger of critical strikes entirely.

 

[BoxOfFaith]

Well to address his first issue, I think the 8th slot would just be to view the soul, and you can either keep it or dismiss it. To keep it you'd need to obviously have a free slot available in the seven original slots. If you don't have a free slot then you'd need to release one of your seven souls before you could keep the eighth. On top of this it would be helpful if we could remotely dismiss the eighth slotted soul if its trash that we have no intention of keeping to begin with. It kinda sucks needing to teleport to the vault just to dismiss an obviously crappy soul each time you use one.

I don't -think- too many more mechanics would need to be provided, you're just changing the original path of the soul to always target the eighth "identify slot", rather than selecting the first available slot in the seven. If your identify slot is filled, then you'll need to either keep or dismiss it before you can identify a new soul. Then if you click to keep your soul it'd take the first available slot of the seven as it has now.

 

[SaikoDeMoN]

That's basically just asking for one more soul slot and dressing it up as a "swap slot" but instead of having the choice of using your last slot to swap with, it's forced upon you. It comes down again to RPG players wanting to collect as much stuff in the game as they possibly can even though it's unnecessary and devalues simple RPG elements like choosing the path (including strengths and weaknesses) of your avatar.

-critdamage is underrated because, for most of the game, it has a very small effect on any encounter. When you reach the endgame, however, it can play a huge role. At this point it's actually even more noticeable than armor/resistance since boss AD and SP are so high. The biggest reason for wipes in the endgame is untimely or chained crits. It's difficult for the healer to plan for; and considering international internet delay, almost impossible to instantly react to. This is one of the reasons that bishops with their shield have been more popular healers than druids even though druids have more Heal/Sec.

 

[Gripphon]

Yeah, idea of eight slot is to be just identify type of slot for souls.

Also, sorry if I write too much, I'm used to writing much on forum discussions and be detail in my opinions. I'm just trying to develop some discussion on forum too, discussing game mechanics seems fun to me.

@Zwiebelchen
I agree with your points regarding first question, there are things I didn't consider and you are right it opens up for a different kind of problems. Thanks for pointing that out.

Crit damage reduction aura
It is true what you say for comparison between -crit chance aura and -crit dmg aura, but my issue is focused more toward frequent situations: first one is if you don't have any crit damage reduction (most classes I believe) and someone comes with -crit dmg aura. Would reducing crit damage from 150% to 143% actually do anything at preventing those "dangerous situations" from endangering tank or helping anything for someone else? It potentially might, but we do talk about only 5% damage reduction from critical damage which somehow I doubt could mean anything in practice. If spell does 1000 critical damage normally, now it would do 953 damage instead at average. It might mean it potentially won't 1 shot someone or 2 shot tank, but hardly. Should be really specific damage of spell for that.

On the other hand, if tank (or anyone) takes soul with -15% critdmg reduction, now it is again question on how much effect does this extra -7% have, but I find it most useful for this case actually. Without it it is 135% critdmg, with it it is 128% critdmg. Even in this case aura reduces similar amount of damage from critical hit (from 135% to 128% aka 5.5% damage is reduced while in previous case reducing from 150% to 143% it is 4.9%). In this case, if spell does 1000 damage with 150% critdamage, then it would do 900 damage if you have -15% critdmg soul, or would do 853 damage if you also have -7% aura. In both cases we talk about another 47 damage reduction of critical damage which is kind of narrow window to help someone. I believe most cases since tanks have like 1000 life and much more for crusader. Question for tanks is can they withstand 2 critical hits in a row? Well, in a case of 1000 damage spell, they have window of 100 damage to do it more or less in discussed case, but not something you can really hope for considering the damage we talk about in here (we could take less damage, but then also window for survival is lesser from an influence of aura).

Only way to go to perfectly comfortably counter critdamage is to literally stack it up. But, in this case I find this aura to be least desirable since its effect is almost not important (or so I think it is like that). Crusader has -15% critdmg talent which can be paired with -15% critdmg soul to reduce critdmg of boss from 150% to 120%. Would crusader in that case even bother having another -7% critdmg stack on top of that, or is 120% critdmg from a boss basically almost like his dangerous crit is not dangerous anymore at all? In a case of our 1000 damage crit spell, it will be now 800 damage. Or 753 damage if you really stack it with aura which could mean Crusader could survive 2 hits. But how often are those specific cases I wonder.

So, for your example of reducing 1.5x damage to 1.1x, my question is how much beneficial is to go lower than 120% critdmg unless there is really specific amount of damage spell does to survive it. On the other hand, influence of this aura is good because... does anyone actually use -critdmg souls or such talents? I could see myself use such talent on a Crusader, but I hardly see myself using -critdmg on casters or whatever similar in which case I'm not really sure do I feel someone having -critdmg aura benefits me. Perhaps if all other auras are already taken and then as a bonus aura since there is nothing else there.


For -critchance aura, reducing critchance from 20% to 15% actually significantly reduces chance to have 2 criticals in a row to endanger tank, but does nothing at reducing danger factor of random critical when it happens. Reducing from 20% to 15% critchance, to get 2 hitted with critical in a row reduces chance from 4% (20% critchance) to a 2.25% (15% critchance), or double event is almost two times as rare. Reducing from 15% to 10% it reduces to 1% chance, 2.25 times as rare than when it is 15% chance.

So yeah, I do see the point of having critical damage reduction aura, but I just don't know how much it is really beneficial for a team, while I see more benefit from a -critchance (unless some bosses have like 30% or whatever amount of critical strike). First aura makes for a less 1 shots and 2 shots from a critical (questionable due to narrow window and considering how much hp tanks and everyone else has in comparison to critical damage bosses are doing) and second aura makes for a considerably less amount of situations where team has to deal with 2 fast critical hits from a boss, but 1 can be fatal on a wrong teammate...


So, to continue to conclusion of my post, @SaikoDeMoN , I agree with your point that -critdmg aura could be underrated, but it is also a question of just how frequent are those situations where this aura actually does help (I lack experience from the field, but mathematically aura is really not impressive in comparison to other auras). There are more things that could be underrated, like -threat reduction from souls. It would allow spammers to spam like a maniacs without ever worrying about aggro, though it seems to me no one even considers using that talent/soul or even bother to check their aggrometer. Me included.

Game is awesome and is still developing, so who knows what will players find to be useful in the future.

 

[Ira]

is the critdamage aura used by addition or by multiplication? (diffrence is 3,5%)

 

[Zwiebelchen]

All critdamage reductions are calculated via subtraction. And let's not forget that the main advantage of the critdamage reduction aura is that it is an aura. Which means that your DPS can provide it for the tank.

 

[SaikoDeMoN]

So, to continue to conclusion of my post, @SaikoDeMoN , I agree with your point that -critdmg aura could be underrated, but it is also a question of just how frequent are those situations where this aura actually does help (I lack experience from the field, but mathematically aura is really not impressive in comparison to other auras).

I see where you're going with your theorycrafting, I really do, but in practical raid situations, it's less about average damage and more about high damage spikes that break your team's rhythm. Gaias has a lot lower numbers than most RPGs so that 50 damage difference can quite often mean the difference between dying and just barely surviving so you can get healed up instead of requiring a mid-fight revive. Also, you forget that you can't think about auras in terms of choosing one over the other explicitly. Your raid team can have up to 5 different auras.

Note that bosses in D4 will start going over lvl50, but you're stuck at lvl50 so they will start gaining bonus crit% and critdamage over you.

Lengthy mechanics, gameplay and balance discussions are always welcome IMO.

 

[Gripphon]

Also, you forget that you can't think about auras in terms of choosing one over the other explicitly. Your raid team can have up to 5 different auras.

Note that bosses in D4 will start going over lvl50, but you're stuck at lvl50 so they will start gaining bonus crit% and critdamage over you.

Lengthy mechanics, gameplay and balance discussions are always welcome IMO.

How up to 5 different auras, can't all 9 auras be active at the same time in theory? I was not aware there is some limit on this.
Choice is pretty much about scenario where you find red soul and you check which aura did it get. Some red souls are, in my view, pretty much dependent on what aura did they get to make them or break them (because similar blue souls with perhaps better combo of affixes might be simply superior to that red soul depending on which aura did red soul get). Since red souls are considerably rare (unless someone invests time into farming them), I was just wondering about benefits of this particular -critdmg aura since it is the only one which I really don't wanna find on an otherwise good red soul. In 5-6 man team it doesn't matter much since it will stack with other auras from other players, but for a lesser parties I could name a combo of auras I'd rather prefer than having this aura. This is a matter of choice I thought of, when you find red soul, to decide whether to keep it or not based on aura it got. Unless it is IntIntSp or something like that which is keep-without-question type of soul regardless of aura.

I do understand explanation you offered, though I'd have to check in practice how good -critdmg actually is since I'm not really into using those talents or souls. Maybe new bosses will have dangerous spikes where it would be really beneficial to go higher on -critdmg especially since their multiplier will be above 1.5x due to level, but I'm not sure does that make this aura better or worse. It is certainly better if you do stack -critdmg with a tank, but it would be less useful for those who don't stack at all.

Also, agreed about discussions. Actually any discussions since, from my experience, active forum can very well keep game alive for years even if nothing is updated.