Rebalancing Enchanted Grenades

[Thenixon]

First of all, full disclaimer: I've been on the receiving and distributing end of the chontnade equation plenty of times, as well as having benefited from the grind aspects in making them. I even named a few just for fun, but that didn't unfortunately show up to the lucky recipients. I haven't (yet) played a thrower but I've talked to several to hopefully get these details right.

The Problem:

I'm not trying to tell you all "how it is" here, just putting down my own observations to spark a conversation. For lots of active players the power of enchanted grenades isn't news, but I haven't seen much formal discussion about changing it. I would like to know whether I've got all the existing and intended mechanics right. A discussion about how to change things or why to leave them be would also be great.

What is possible right now is to fairly quickly save up enough enchanted grenades to take out any faction with really minimal work beyond bash. The only possible defense is to catch the bash in progress, or hope that attackers make a mistake or are whooping it up with emotes when they could be killin'. In the current state of the game, there seems to be a lot of excess enchanting capacity, and plenty of factions are making grenades like this to use AP/grind badges/save for a rainy day where the rain is magic deadly bombs. I do not believe any sort of gentledemon's agreement is going to lead to a detente (dechont?).


How it Works:

If any old character steps into a SH after a pet tick, they have a few seconds to lob grenades with impunity. Just like an Archon's Song or DH's Keen, grenade AoE doesn't trigger retaliatory pet strikes, it just adds the AoE-er to the top of the pets target list for the next pet tick. This does seem a bit odd, because if you stepped in and slapped the petmaster with a moderately-sized trout, the pets would be all over you instantly. But I can see how retaliation would make any AoE completely non-viable except for tanks, and I have to assume it's the intended behavior. Can't find it in the wiki entries for AoE attacks or pets, so please let me know if they're *supposed to* retaliate generally.

So this generic tosser gets two, maybe three grenades off with fast fingers, and steps outside before the pets tick. If the grenades are mundane, the pets are dinged up, but at most a few died. With Chontnades, probably 20-40 pets dead so far and maybe a character or five even though the forts are intact. Lather rinse repeat until pets are full dead, and you might just have a couple empty bar or dodgy/adapty characters left to clear. This is probably done after the second volley, provided some luck/skill with the timing. In my experience, somewhere between five and eight enchanted grenades can straight up clear the biggest holds we have right now. The inner workings of AoE are not entirely clear to me but it seems like per-target damage (approaching 80?!), to-hit% (>100% with thrown tree, CC and Sharp vis?), and even total damage dealt (I really have no idea how big the cap post-enchantment is) with grenades are as good or better than any of the (CP- MP- and AP- intensive) innate AoE attacks. They don't take any MP and only 1 AP to use on raid day. I'll grant they take a lot in prep work, but they effectively allow storing of all that AP/MP for a tremendously overpowered burst on raid day. Way beyond any other AoE in every way, the only thing you could compare it to damage-wise would be offensive pets but infinitely storable and instantly deployable.

Turn your generic character into a conduit for E-Z Bomb Mode. All of the above is still true, with zero CP investment at all outside of skills most conduits take anyway. Also now the pets will not strike you in wisp form, no matter how many damn grenades you lob or how many pet ticks you emote through. I'm pretty sure they're supposed to, but they do not in practice. Five clicks, maybe six? All your enemies dead in seconds. No forts, no tanking, no damage taken, no defense possible. If the above was OP, this is just silly unbalanced. It makes memories of Breath of Dead Child and that purple arcane wizard AoE from NW seem quaint, and if you'll recall Clash left those skills out as game-breakingly OP. A basher and a conduit can (and have) taken out any faction in the game for a pretty trivial amount of work, and it would still work with a much bigger playerbase and factions. The only weakness is that you need some prep time, but the prep work doubles/triples as badge grinds crafted/repaired!


Solutions?

I don't personally favor removing enchanted grenades, though the game did get on for a long time without 'em. Instead maybe nerfing them or some accessory skills, and maybe just polishing existing mechanics would do. Here are some off-the-cuff ideas to kick around - please add more and/or point out unintended consequences:

-Implement Wisp-pet interactions as described on the wiki
-No Area of Effect attacks from Wisp form
-Pets retaliate to grenades
-Lower per-enchant enhancement of the grenade power
-Higher per-enchant costs
-Modifications to per-target and aggregate damage caps and/or to-hit from grenades
-Fortifications apply differently to grenades/AoE

[Fellis]

So I don't think it's up for debate that chontnades are good, however I think the main problem is that the class that can get the most effect of them (Conduit) is probably a little too efficient at using them. This is mostly due to conduit also being incentivized to take the throwing tree, and having the most efficient enchanating and potionmaking among all the support classes, in addition to the other things mentioned in the OP.

I also agree that having a mechanism for extreme prepping shouldn't necessarily be removed from the game, it is nice for small factions to take out big ones with a focused raid team and prep. I'm not gonna spell out the math but it's ideally a day per fully enchanted grenade including making a batch of pots and generating all the MP required. That puts you about 3-5 days of prep to tackle any faction in the game, and I think that's fine? Conduits get more bonuses to enchanting/brewing than the other support classes and probably need to have some nerfs towards those abilities.

ANYWAY THAT'S ALL A TANGENT. I think that AoE is in need of a much bigger rebalance than just enchanted grenades. Nades should probably top out at 45/450 with 6 enchants and all the bonuses, so they are in line with the other premium AoE: Keen and Song. But I think those aoe's should also be changed to give some more shape to AoE so it's a little more than just pure numbers.

Grenade AoE should also probably cost like 3-5 AP per use, sure this doesn't make sense with the "effort" of the action, but it needs to be more in line with what AoE looks like in this game, especially as it's good right now. SMG/Flamethrower AoE can stay 1AP (functionally 2AP to reload after) because those AoE's suck right now.

I completely agree with other things Thenixon mentioned. Wisp form should only treat pets as defensive if the Conduit is not taking hostile actions towards the PM/Pets, and AoE should absolutely start retaliations unless they step outside to reset pet aggro.

I don't know if changing costs towards nades in particular is needed, just numbers hit. Forts should probably affect AoE a bit more but it's a weird situation because forts are a flat reduction instead of % reduction so the bigger the per-target of the AoE the less it is effected, which is the whole problem. But changing forts to % reduction really hoses regular attacks and assassination, so that's only viable if they can be separated.

Anyway some of these solutions are pretty easily implemented short term. I think the longer term solution is a complete rebalance of AoE values and not just nerfs and buffs but completely changing AoE to have a variety of effects. I've been working on an AoE effortpost on and off the last few weeks, but pretty much there are a variety of numbers that go into AoE and for the most part each AoE is designed the exact same way. I think with different accuracy%, per target, damage cap, special effects, etc, there are some really interesting AoE designs that could be accomplished.

e: this is very scattered because I've been writing it while chatting about the content with others but like I said I have my own post i've been working on, I GOT SCOOPED WTF

[Kandarin]

[SaltedSalmon]

[Fellis]

Yeah I need to gather my thoughts on that enchant change. MP expenditures vary pretty wildly between classes, and I think that might just change supports from maintaining enchantments to supports maintaining magic potion stocks so people can continue using class abilities and such. Hard to say without knowing numbers (which I assume are not set yet) and thinking about the raid from the viewpoint of different classes.

I think the activated armor with duration is a decent change, because you can use your spare MP to pop it before you log off, and it makes people a little easier to fight offline which fits in with the general lowering of damage that will take place with enchants getting toned down a bit. It makes innates a little better (they were already good) and makes crazy defense stacking less of a thing which can reduce some of the disparity between larger factions and smaller ones.

The weapons is where I'm less sure and it really depends on the shape of what things look like (tick vs timed, how much mp to activate, how much bonus). I think there would be some interesting design with enchants that are much less likely to degrade, but get consumed by activation. So you have similar maintenance but it is more planned and less dictated by "we got clobbered a bunch and everyone's stuff is broken to hell"

[Thenixon]

I'm not sure quite how much damage each 'nade does, but in one recent raid a bombadier dealt a minimum of 6656 damage for about 7 AP. Through full fortifications.

[Fellis]

I was chatting with Thenixon, and this was about 16 grenades of damage, but yeah nades still need to be nerfed

[Goliath]

If grenades could be enchanted in batches of 6, enchant damage could be tuned down accordingly. Plus this would require higher AP when using them, some more effort to gather them and would reduce their effect through fortifications and armor.

[Fellis]

Enchant batches would require new code, getting things balanced within the current framework (i.e. different numbers) requires less dev time. But reducing effect by 1/6th is a bit too punishing, probably like 40-50%. AP to throw could probably come up a bit as well, it doesn’t change much about the nades but it does mean the conduit couldn’t bash through all the forts safely THEN nade

[Kandarin]

This was addressed in a recent update.