Changes to roots and snares.

[Shrubberyman]

What we know so far:
- They will get a local cooldown (Apparently attacker-side)
- Their duration will be reduced by a lot (Max 15s so far)
- Cast and recharge times will be close to instant (Att 2s or 3s (capped?), Rech 1s)

These are pretty drastic changes, but they can work provided the fulfilling of all the following conditions:
- Innate immunities must be capped to a maximum of 30%, 40% if Spatial Displacement is perked. Motr should be the only exception. (3 professions out of the 4 we have info upon can reach 60%+ resistance still)

- Cooldown should trigger only on landing. (Seems like it will trigger on casting...)

- The chance to break on damage/debuff should be removed. Alternatively, if FC goes into nebulous and highly arguable considerations like “are roots and snares offensive or defensive tools”, and choose the defensive way, break chance could stay, but roots and snare should as such be in the defensive nanothread. (regular nano based snares and roots are so far planned to have 25% break chance)

- Stims like (BS) Free movements, IS/TOTW rods, ancient spirit purges should lockout each other (and see their lockout extended for a few of them). (No news yet)

Discuss.
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Abilities, Resistances and Defenses related to roots and snares, based on the released documentation :

TL7 Martial Artists:
Nano based resistance to roots/snare (self): 0%
Potential perk+nano based snare/root resistance (self): 45% snares, 70% roots
No nano based root/snare remover.
Fear’s snare: 6s duration, 150s cooldown, 50% NR Check

TL7 Keepers:
Nano based resistance to roots/snare (self): 20% (Loss of 15%)
Potential perk+nano based snare/root resistance (self): 65%
Nano based root/snare remover: once every 20s
Root: 5s duration, 65s cooldown, 50% NR check
Snare: 8s duration, 30s cooldown, 50% Evade Cl Check
Other: Tractor Beam, 30s cooldown, 50% NR check

TL7 Enforcers:
Nano based resistance to roots/snare (self): 0%
Potential perk+nano based snare/root resistance (self): 0%
Nano-based root/snare remover: once every 10s. (including all fixers’ and crats' CC, but seemingly NOT including Keepers’ root).
Noteworthy: the 1200 NR mod is a somewhat efficient (if uncertain) defense against CC.
Fear’s snare: 5s duration, 160s cooldown, 50% NR Check

TL7 Fixers:
Nano based resistance to roots/snare (self): 15% (Loss of 10%)
Potential perk+nano based snare/root resistance (self): 60%
Nano based root remover (self): once every 20s
Nano based snare remover (self): once every 30s
Best AoE snare: 10s duration, 20s cooldown, 90% NR check, 25% break chance
Best snare: 15s duration, 10s cooldown, 80% NR check, 25% break chance
Best root: 7s duration, 10s cooldown, 90% NR check, 25% break chance

TL7 Bureaucrats
Nano based resistance to roots/snare (self): 0% (Loss of 40%)
Potential perk+nano based snare/root resistance (self): 0%
Nano based root remover (self): once every 20s
Nano based snare remover (self): once every 20s
Best AoE snare: 9s duration, 30s cooldown, 100% NR check, 25% break chance
Best AoE root: 10s duration, 20s cooldown, 90% NR check, 25% break chance
Best snare: 10s duration, 10s cooldown, 100% NR check, 25% break chance
Best root: 10s duration, 10s cooldown, 90% NR check, 25% break chance

[crattey]

Spatial displacement, Tacky Hack, FM stims, advy boon, keeper aura, Rage, etc. should all be burnt with a cleansing fire. Innate immunity is silly if it goes up to these levels.

Roots should be used to regain a positional advantage, not to keep people in place for extended periods of time. Roots should have a very high chance of landing. They should have a short duration, as in, seconds. They should have a reasonable lockout period, think, 5-10 times their duration.

Immunities and removers should be weighted decisions that allows people to counter roots, not something that is innate or spammable. Temporary immunites are a good idea, for use when you feel a root incoming, and thus making the CC profession to blow his cooldown and allowing you to remain mobile in critical situations. Should have a very short duration, and long lockout. Removers should be limited to a point where you can't actually use them more often than the other guy can root you. And don't make people perk 10 points into it, just make it a nano/usable item or something. Mobility should be a core competence, not something you an opt out of. Look at all the retarded whining about SD, let's not go there again...

[Vgman01]

What we know so far:
- They will get a local cooldown
- Their duration will be reduced by a lot
- Cast and recharge times will be close to instant

These are pretty drastic changes, but they can work provided the fulfilling or all the following conditions:
- Innate immunities must be capped to a maximum of 30%, 40% if Spatial Displacement is perked. Motr should be the only exception.
- Cooldown should trigger only on landing.
- The chance to break on damage/debuff should be removed. Alternatively, if FC goes into nebulous and highly arguable considerations like “are roots and snares offensive or defensive tools”, and choose the defensive way, break chance could stay, but roots and snare should as such be in the defensive nanothread.
- Stims like (BS) Free movements, IS/TOTW rods, ancient spirit purges should lockout each other (and see their lockout extended for a few of them).

Discuss.

Considering that roots are going to be casted just as fast as they are now (virtualy instant) and mele still prety much dosent have a way of closing the gap im not really for roots and snares even being in the game atm for ranged profs.

Give mele ranged snares and then we can talk about the effectiveness of roots/snares.

[Vgman01]

and why not? mele currently dont have a reliable way of closing the gap. Roots and snares make it even easier for ranged to stay out of range of the mele. if your going to be out of ranged 100% of the time at the very least you should have to hold down your W key.

[Shrubberyman]

How the situation is now is pretty irrelevant. The topic, and as a matter of fact the whole forum section, is about how the situation could or should be after the rebalancing.

After the rebalancing, run speed will be handled differently than it is now. We don't know how, but we know it's on the table. Other changes are gonna happen, like, if I'm not mistaken, a "reversed knockback" addition to Keepers' toolset.

The topic is how roots and snares can remain potent and useful tools in the light of the changes we already know are bound to happen, meaning local cooldowns, reduced duration and fast casting/recharge.

Edit : can't seem to find where I did read about reversed knockback. Might have imagined it.

[-Klod-]

What I know is, several ranged professions will definitely need additional CC tools when all this melee love hits the fan.

[Genie]

and why not? mele currently dont have a reliable way of closing the gap. Roots and snares make it even easier for ranged to stay out of range of the mele. if your going to be out of ranged 100% of the time at the very least you should have to hold down your W key.

After it breaks, are removed or runs out, the rooter will have a cool down before he can root you again, so thats when you can close the gap. Remember that the purpose of roots is to keep melee profs from closing the gap and instantly kill the ranged prof.

[Moonbolt]

alot of the CC profs are already unperkable w/o MR... wait for MR to fire off and root and back up.. failed MR gank and easy win ..... not a working solution imo.

[Essessceeaych]

Edit : can't seem to find where I did read about reversed knockback. Might have imagined it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV1HrOsj3fU

thats the video of it, although idk where you got the keeper part.

[crattey]

alot of the CC profs are already unperkable w/o MR...

I get to crats and fixers as being the two only professions that are, in general, unperkable. And that's it.

Traders, NTs and agents have roots as well. None of them are unperkable by any means.
Docs have UBT, but aren't all that unperkable, last I checked.
MPs are only unperkable if they are shieldnubs, and let's face it, who gives a crap about shield MPs?
Engis have blinds, which I suppose is a sort of CC. Not so much unperkable, though...

So..

I think not.

As for the reverse knockback as shown in that vid... In the current situation, with synch as it is, it'll hardly be of much help I'm afraid, unless there's a hefty snare/root component added to it, which would of course make it way over the top.

[mr_road]

- Cast and recharge times will be close to instant
- Cooldown should trigger only on landing.

this would make NR / root or snare resist almost useless since a couple spam's of the nano would nullify any form of resistance (root resist or NR).

[Vgman01]

How the situation is now is pretty irrelevant. The topic, and as a matter of fact the whole forum section, is about how the situation could or should be after the rebalancing.

After the rebalancing, run speed will be handled differently than it is now. We don't know how, but we know it's on the table. Other changes are gonna happen, like, if I'm not mistaken, a "reversed knockback" addition to Keepers' toolset.

The topic is how roots and snares can remain potent and useful tools in the light of the changes we already know are bound to happen, meaning local cooldowns, reduced duration and fast casting/recharge.

Edit : can't seem to find where I did read about reversed knockback. Might have imagined it.

As you said we dont know how RS is going to be changed. Therefor I can't assume that mele will be able to catch up to the kiting ranged. Based off what we have now I can tell you that most ranged profs dont need roots/snares to begin with and only end up using them if the mele trys to run or if they dont want the mele following them but dont want to kill them. Once I know more about how melee will (or will not) be able to close the gap then I can start commenting on how effective ranged profs snares/roots are.

After it breaks, are removed or runs out, the rooter will have a cool down before he can root you again, so thats when you can close the gap. Remember that the purpose of roots is to keep melee profs from closing the gap and instantly kill the ranged prof.

So if both the ranged and the mele are at caped rs I can close the gap while we are both runing at the same speeds and his root/snare is on cd? Yea that makes sense.

[Xtremtech]

There was also mention of "Affected by" nanos being used to prevent the same effect being landed too often on a single target. That is, the "Affected by" nano is run in the target's NCU when a hostile effect lands on them, which gives a short immunity to the nanoline.

I think what we're likely to see is different cool-downs that are applied depending upon whether the effect lands or not - similar to many existing perk specials, which have different lockouts based on whether the effect lands.

All of the balancing elements of hostile nanos will need to be adjusted to take into account the changes. That includes Def Checks, Breakability, Nanocosts etc. It's also clear that immunities, resistances and removers will need to be re-examined too.

Nanocost in particular is an interesting one I think. FC have mentioned wanting to address nanopool and nanodelta to make nano more the limiting factor that it should be. The new nano structures could lead to considerably more casting of a broader range of effects (due to fast casting and cool-downs)... or they could lead to less overall casting, depending upon the profession to an extent.

A lot depends upon just how many other effects are available that will be worth the nano to cast. A fixer who has cast a snare and a root and is in cool-down on them, doesn't really have a lot else to cast. They may find that they end up casting a lot less overall - so we might see nanocosts on their roots/snares rising considerably.

But a Trader that has 14 or so different hostile nanolines, may find himself taking full advantage of casting many of them, overlapping their cool-downs - and so the nanocosts will need to be balanced accordingly.

As you said we dont know how RS is going to be changed.

We don't know exactly how anything's going to be changed... including these changes to hostile nanos. But this forum is here to discuss the changes they have announced as part of the balance effort, which definitely includes rescaling run-speeds so that the stat matters, general reductions in available run-speed and addressing synch issues.

We should certainly take announced changes as being expected when having these discussions, otherwise everything that's said in this forum becomes pointless because you can just turn around and say "we don't know that for sure".

can't seem to find where I did read about reversed knockback. Might have imagined it.

Keeper Reverse Knockback was mentioned in the details released by Professionals on each profession with FC's blessing, summarised here.

X

[Shrubberyman]

this would make NR / root or snare resist almost useless since a couple spam's of the nano would nullify any form of resistance (root resist or NR).

That’s right. However, I reckon triggering the cooldown on casting is way too strong a nerf to roots and snares when added to the short duration, in particular since, short of a huge nerf of them, stims will prolly cancel any CC on a click.
What could be a midway would be:
- cooldown triggers on landing OR counter but not on resist. That way there is some point to twink nano AR for caster and Nano resist for defender, while immunity lose more of its uberism (and yes, I’m thinking in addition to being capped to 30/40%with SD max).
- Different cooldowns whether the nano landed (normal cooldown) or was countered/resisted (short cooldown).

As you said we dont know how RS is going to be changed. Therefor I can't assume that mele will be able to catch up to the kiting ranged. Based off what we have now I can tell you that most ranged profs dont need roots/snares to begin with and only end up using them if the mele trys to run or if they dont want the mele following them but dont want to kill them. Once I know more about how melee will (or will not) be able to close the gap then I can start commenting on how effective ranged profs snares/roots are.

FC fixed the strafe run absurdity and announced they would rework the whole RS system (availability, core ability, caps…). I will therefore work on the basis that they will do it with the ranged vs melee vs CCers vs immunities in mind and manage a decent result in the making. Seriously, we can’t base our brain storming on the hypothesis that the new RS system is bound to screw up melees big time.

There was also mention of "Affected by" nanos being used to prevent the same effect being landed too often on a single target. That is, the "Affected by" nano is run in the target's NCU when a hostile effect lands on them, which gives a short immunity to the nanoline.

Indeed, the “Affected by…” has been mentioned, but I’m not sure it was in relation with the CC. The question is how it would be implemented: if it’s in an “Affected by Specialized Burden of Atlas” then it’s ok, but the cool down on BoA should be considerably lowered then if not totally inexistent, given you’re already locked out of rooting that one opponent again for some time. If it’s in an “Affected by root” way, then f*** no. Several CCers should be able to keep another opponent rooted if they want to, no matter what. Personally, I’m more inclined to think roots will get an implementation close to Detonation Matrix’ or Optic Plague’s.

Nanocost in particular is an interesting one I think. FC have mentioned wanting to address nanopool and nanodelta to make nano more the limiting factor that it should be.

Yea, the nano cost will prolly be reviewed, but for the purpose of this thread, I would rather consider no shortage of nanopool, just because starting an argument over how much this or that nano should cost is likely to make me puke.

Keeper Reverse Knockback was mentioned in the details released by Professionals on each profession with FC's blessing, summarised here.

Thx for the link, I knew I couldn’t have totally imagined something like that!

[Kinkstaah]

Roots should be used as an attempted emergency escape.

Snares should be used by melee to keep in range, to avoid doing no damage at all. This is how it works in pretty much every other game in existence..

[-Klod-]

They could also make CC tools to be equally effective as the ones in AoC but, again, AoC is one completely different game, with completely different rules... And again, people still whine about even such, highly nerfed version of CC tools.

[Shrubberyman]

Roots should be used as an attempted emergency escape.

Snares should be used by melee to keep in range, to avoid doing no damage at all. This is how it works in pretty much every other game in existence..

Trouble is that's close from being exactly the opposite of the way it is/used to be in AO. Getting in line with the way other games work would mean readjust considerably pretty much every professions. Not saying you're wrong, just that it seems unlikely to happen.

They could also make CC tools to be equally effective as the ones in AoC but, again, AoC is one completely different game, with completely different rules... And again, people still whine about even such, highly nerfed version of CC tools.

Mmorpgs are whinehouses, a mmorpg without whining players must be doing something wrong.

[Genie]

So if both the ranged and the mele are at caped rs I can close the gap while we are both runing at the same speeds and his root/snare is on cd? Yea that makes sense.

This assumption suggests that no melee prof has ever killed a ranged prof in AO ever. We know this is not true. Try to make a better argument.

[Moonbolt]

Don that is just silly.
it doesnt mean that... first fo all they nerfed strafe running just this last patch.
second of all not every ranged players kite..
its theoretically possible to have the situation now tho where no melee ever kills a ranged.

[Hellrule]

Crats are far from unperkable =/ wtb more crat love please