Defender's abilities

[kipar]

5. Defensive Evasion(Passive, level 1)
Effect: A percentage of your Defense is added to Agility and Magic Defense.
Bonus: 10% of Defense skill to Agility and Magic Defense.
Extra points: +10% of Defense added to Agility and Magic Defense.

Very funny ability. Looks like absolute 'must have' for every character i can imagine(well, except monsters. And except someone who can somehow create 100%magic and physical defense ). Everybody else have a choise: increase three skills or spend ten AP and increase only one. So with only 10 AP your defense will be tripled or your atack will be much higher because you spend skillpoints to your atack skills.
And this works on the adiitional defense from items - so enchanters and blue items users benefits from it too.
And I'm not talking about spending more then 10 points - this will give enormous bonus to magic defense but yes, it's not for everybody.

So I have two suggestions about it:
1. Limits maximum skill bonus from this ability to 10+10 per AP. So if you want to maxize it's effect you need to spend a lot of points in it.

OR

2. Count in this ability only natural Defense, not gained from items. So only defender-like characters will benefits from it.

6. Great Guard(Passive, level 1)
ffect: Absorb great damages. You may get confused in the process.
Reduction: Damages are divided by this ability's level.
Extra reduction: 1000
Extra points: +1000 to extra reduction.

With 1 million HP this is a waste of AP.

I suggest replace 1000HP to
1. 20% of your maximum HP (or even 100%, really - amount of damage isn't main limitation of this ability )

OR

2. 20% or even 100% of your to_AC (so this ability will be useful for defenders even if they have a little hp)

OR

3. completely protects against damage no matter how high is it. Then additional AP will decrease chance of getting confused instead. But I think variants 1) and 2) are more balanced and easier to do.

7. Armored Health(Passive, level 6)
Effect: Gain an hp bonus while wearing hard or dragon armor.
Hp bonus: armor's AC * 3.
Extra points: +((armor's AC * 3)) to hp.

Bonus too small. With new HP system digits of to_ac and HP are comparable, so i suggest
1. bonus of 5% (maybe 10%) of to_ac.

OR

2. bonus to CON same as Armored Might bonus to STR(if Armored Might will be nerfed of course).

10. Armored Might(Passive, level 1)

Variaz already agreed that bonus 100STR per 1 AP is too high so it's listed just for length of post.

[Variaz]

Hmmm... nerfing Defensive Evasion? Didn't think it was broken... With the enemies becoming stronger and stronger, and hit rate and mind stats getting higher as well, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to nerf it.

With 1 million HP this is a waste of AP.

Don't forget that the damages are divided by the ability's level BEFORE the 1000/points reduction is applied. With 10 points, you can completely soak 100000 damages. 1000000 damages becomes 90000. I do agree that the 1000/points eventually becomes obsolete, but to say the ability is a waste, I wouldn't go that far.

Your second suggestion is probably the best, as it goes with the armor and defense concept of the Defender.


Armored Health may be a little underpowered at the moment. Improving it would be a good idea.

[kipar]

About Defensive Evasion - I'm sure ability which makes every character who has much better than character who hasn't is broken. Yes, even this ability doesn't make you uberpowerful - but forcing all characters get Defender class because without these 10 AP your 'defense rating' will be three times less isn't OK IMHO.

[Gando]

Kipar I don't want to offend you but here is what I think: I think your way of thinking about Portralis is a) not normal and b) a little twisted.

WHY on earth would anyone think they MUST get Defender levels to get just one ability?? That doesn't make sense. The point of this game isn't to get some high score or bragging rights. (Though I can imagine a few people thinking it is) it is about having fun and trying different things. But even if it was about cheating your way to the top (of what??) Defender would not be the route to go.

Defender is a fine Prestige class for those who focus on melee but it is not necessary. I have had perfectly successful Kensai and other melee characters without ever taking a level of Defender or Defensive Evasion. Now if you say "Well that is stupid because the obvious strategy is to do this X" I say you are barking up the wrong tree. The game isn't about doing things just one way. Not only that but if I were to add Defender levels to my Kensai I would be sacrificing valuable aps from other areas for a purely defensive (non-winning) ability. So what IS the problem?

Now with all that said the Defender class to my mind seems weak. It could stand some tweaking. Defensive Evasion is OK but it isn't amazing. You still need to invest a ton of skill in Defense to make that 10 points worth it. For an ability that doesn't kill anything that is a lot to invest in.

Btw Welcome back...glad to see you are still with us.

[Gando]

Just to illustrate this point more clearly about Defensive Evasion: I am playing my Miner Dwarf Defender and I decide it is time to start doing some of the quests. I've got some levels as a Paladin so the Ruins quest is a cinch most of the way through until the end boss. I try using Defensive Evasion to up the points I have in Magic Defense to make his spells less effective. It works slightly but he still manages to get through for 8k damage a pop once in a while. This being unacceptable I rewind and try again this time putting the points into Greater Guard and suddenly I am able to stand up to the beating. Greater Guard saved me in that situation where Defensive Evasion only helped mildly. Sure at 10 points it becomes cost effective but at that point you have already survived worse than this boss and hopefully already have points in other abilities. In otherwords it still isn't broken. It isn't even that good. I would rather have 10 points in greater guard and Heavy Armored Defense, both of which directly contribute majorly to my survival against the monsters that matter. The skills Agility and Magic Defense only help a little in those kinds of battles compared to being able to absorb damage coming through. It is VERY unlikely to run across bosses that can't hit your armor class no matter how high you get it.

[kipar]

Glad to see you too Gando.
Well, I'm judging from a 30+ lvl characters' point of view. Because maximum level is 100 and only 1\3 of the game in term of levels\main quests\main dungeons is complete. So I don't think that ability useful only for 10-25 level characters (Gread Guard now) is worth spending AP. Yes, bosses will hit you sometimes no matter how high your defense is.
Example: you have 3millions HP and they hit for 500.000 (this is near to some lowlevel flow bosses) - great guard won't help you against it, increasing your hp won't help you too (because they are already high)but if you have 3*AC they will hit three times rarer. So one turn with 8 or so melee atacks won't instakill you and you can run regenerating your hp.
Yes, and boss have 25millions HP and 7 lives, so don't hope to kill him before he hit you.

Again - i'm judging from a long run perspective, about characters will full levelling items set and level 30, 35 or so.

[Variaz]

Because maximum level is 100

It's actually 200.

[kipar]

200?? Good, very good! I wasn't sure that 100 levels is enough. 200 is like infinity. Chaos Cult have no chance to withstand now.

[Gando]

Example: you have 3millions HP and they hit for 500.000 (this is near to some lowlevel flow bosses) - great guard won't help you against it, increasing your hp won't help you too (because they are already high)but if you have 3*AC they will hit three times rarer. So one turn with 8 or so melee atacks won't instakill you and you can run regenerating your hp.
Yes, and boss have 25millions HP and 7 lives, so don't hope to kill him before he hit you.

Imho anything that instakills you when you have that much hp is too high a level to be messed with.

[Variaz]

Some changes:

Great Guard: The extra reduction is now 20% of total ac per points.
Armored Might: Will now give you +10% of your armor's AC value to strength.

Haven't decided what I will do with Armored Health yet...

[Variaz]

Well, kipar may have been right about Defensive Evasion. It may need to be nerfed a bit.

After playing for a while, I've taken the ability for my Warrior/Defender build, and it's indeed very good. However, with levelable items, it becomes too powerful, especially if you dedicate more than one item, and place more than 10 points in Defensive Evasion.

So I've nerfed it a bit, and it will now only use your base Defense for the bonus. It's still a powerful ability, but less abusable now.

[Variaz]

Shield Mastery will now give you a bonus to Defense instead of a rather useless +100 to_ac per points. It gives 10% of your shield's base AC per points.

[kipar]

Tested these abilities with level 37 Enchanter.

Shield mastery.

Crafted adamantium shield: AC 270, bonus 27 points\AP. High, but maybe ok.
Same shield with defense transfer from adamantium plate mail - AC 534, bonus 53 points\AP. Yes, you need spend most of your AP to defense transfer to make it possible, so I see this ability is ok.

Armored might

Adamantium plate mail, base AC 2138.
bonus to strength - 213points\AP. _213_. I think basic idea of bonus %AC -> skills\stats is wrong, these numbers are incomparable.

[Gando]

yeah there probably is some ratio that needs to be chosen for stat conversion. like 10 ac = +1%

so at 2138 your strength goes up by 213.8% which is little over triple. Still a fine bonus but not necessarily huge.

[khan]

Just tried a defender. I agree that defensive evasion needed nerfing, but it seems you have nerfed it twice. It now requires 20 AP for synergy and only uses base defence. I'm unlikely to use it at all now any chance you could reverse one nerf or the other, so that either 10 AP spend is enough for synergy or if 20 AP it uses total defence not base?