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Math problem - balancing armor & attack speed

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Hey I'm having trouble with balancing my map stats.

So i've read this:
http://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads/symmetrical-hero-scaling.227709/

It's a pretty good tutorial for balancing heroes so that they can scale indefinately. There are, however, a couple things not covered in the tutorial, namely balancing armor and attack speed. I could make my map with a fixed 1 sec atk speed and zero amor for everyone, but i believe having those extra stats would make the map more interesting.

One idea I have is making armor work as in StarCraft II, so that you take one less point of damage for every armor you've got. An armor effect such as this would be a great counter for high attack speeds, because damage reduction would be applied more often.

Basic example:

Unit one has 30 damage and 1s atk speed. His DPS vs a unit with 10 armor is 20.
Unit two has 15 damage and 2s atk speed. His DPS vs a unit with 10 armor is 10.

I think the only way to balance this is setting a price difference between items that grant +dmg and +atk speed, so that against armored opponents +dmg is more effective. I'm afraid however that prices wont matter in the late late game and +spd will be just insane, because stacking atk speed *multiplies* dps, whereas +dmg just adds. That means, late game, a measly +20% attack speed will be equivalent to a +300 damage item.

Could there be any way to dinamically update heroes atk speed like in wow? That would be a possibility: basically in wow, the higher your level, less effective atk speed is. So achieving a +20% effect with a level 20 character requires much more bonus points into attack speed than achieving the same effect with a lvl 10 char.
( Im not sure if the above method is applied to atkspeed, but im quite sure thats how it works with wow's armor )

Any ideas??
 
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With the default constant each point of armor effectively adds 6% health and regeneration(healing too). If you want attack rate and armor to be equivalent, then you just need 6% attack speed to cost the same as 1 armor. This would make it equivalent at least in combat.
 

Dr Super Good

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One idea I have is making armor work as in StarCraft II, so that you take one less point of damage for every armor you've got. An armor effect such as this would be a great counter for high attack speeds, because damage reduction would be applied more often.
It results in the problem of usless armor for high damage sources and usless damage for low damage sources.

For example 99 damage against 100 armor causes 0.5 damage (~100% reduction). 1000 damage against 100 armor causes 900 damage (10% reduction).

I think the only way to balance this is setting a price difference between items that grant +dmg and +atk speed, so that against armored opponents +dmg is more effective. I'm afraid however that prices wont matter in the late late game and +spd will be just insane, because stacking atk speed *multiplies* dps, whereas +dmg just adds. That means, late game, a measly +20% attack speed will be equivalent to a +300 damage item.
What would happen is everyone would stack damage to mostly null the armor and then they would stack attack speed when the damage no longer raises attack much. On the other hand tanky players might stack armor and effectively become invulnerable, or if monster damage is too high they might just not bother with armor at all and instead focus on HP and damage.

In WC3 attack speed is limited to +400% (or on other extreme -80%) which is +400% attacks per second (limited by attack back swing). Armor has no limit but works pretty much the same with the default constant of 6% meaning that every point in armor allows you to take 6% more damage.

Assuming default constants, a maxed out attack speed unit (+400% APS) can be canceled out with 66.6 armor (+400% health) to last as long as default attack speed and no armor. After that attack speed no longer helps and armor will make you take longer to die. This can be best seen in the map DBZ Tribute Ultra where a late game match becomes pretty much an ability fest because auto attacks do nothing against the huge armor values while most abilities bypass the armor so scale better. For this reason attack speed and armor should be very limited quantities, possibly disjoint from agility and only from items.

For clarity I recommend lowering armor constant to 0.01. This way 1 armor means 1% more health against attacks which is much more intuitive for people. An armor which adds 100 armor will make you survive twice as many auto attacks. On the other hand a weapon which adds 100% attack speed will double your damage.
 
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Thanks for the replies!

I guess i will use 0.01 for the constant then. It seems like it would work very well.

And I did already use zero for +armor and atk speed from agility, but of course theres the issue of +agility being useless for non-agi based heroes. I had many ideas for agility bonuses but none of them seem balanced.

What would you guys suggest me use as a bonus for agility? I could trigger a bonus outside of armor/atkspeed/movespeed, because those would surely outscale the other stats in the long run, wouldn't they?
 

Dr Super Good

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And I did already use zero for +armor and atk speed from agility, but of course theres the issue of +agility being useless for non-agi based heroes. I had many ideas for agility bonuses but none of them seem balanced.
Which is why most well made RPGs detach from the "prime attribute" concept. Instead all heroes have the same prime attribute or prime attribute does nothing. Even in Diablo III Blizzard eventually balanced prime attributes such that they all function practically the same (intelligence adds 1 unit of all resistance, while dexterity and strength add 1 unit of armor). This concept is taken further in Heroes of the Storm where the concept of attributes is removed entirely with scaling based on levels and talents.

Attributes themselves are kind of a legacy concept which remains from the days of Dungeons and Dragons and such paper RPG games. Instead of a hero having intelligence, it can have mana maximum and mana regeneration which scale with level. Instead of an item adding intelligence, it can add mana maximum and mana regeneration. If abilities are made to deal damage based on intelligence (fairly common in WC3 RPGs) then they can be made to deal a base damage which scales per level and items can add ability power then.
 
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