Loadouts Changes

[cczz]

hello all, it is me cczz / kyro

I want to preface this thread by saying that I am by no means an expert in balancing or analytics, but from the research and analysis that I have done there is a crazy amount of imbalance in loadouts.

Charms Master is the ONLY loadout used for players who play Charms/Jinx, the exceptions only being the odd few (active) duelist that use warlock for curse, and healing loadouts like medicinal master, which Charms Master does not provide any decent stats for.

In my research / inquiring active duelist that I know, 24 out of 26 (That I know or have gotten a response from) use Charms Master as their main loadout, not counting secondary loadouts which are not used competitively for obvious reasons which I will go over below.

The main issue with Charms Master : Damage.

Charms Master blatantly outclasses all of the other Charms and Jinx loadouts (there's 6 of them combined and Charms Master is the only one seeing use from those in the more competitive side of dueling) out of ALL of the Jinx classes, Charms Master has 74 more Jinx damage than the highest Jinx damage class (Duelist), which may not seem like a lot, but once you take into consideration the extra 395 Charms damage, and the extra 267 Curse damage that charms master provides, it is just not worth it to choose duelist, even for the extra cooldown that you get on Jinx spells. This does not count any of the other classes.

The only reason it would be better to choose a different loadout in competitive or even casual play would be if one was to play healer, as none of the other classes offer nearly as much healing as the healer loadouts do, which is good, because that's what they're meant to do, same with curse and transfig loadouts.

Charms Master should not be the best (and literally only option for) loadout for Charms AND Jinx, and outshining any of the loadouts, that practically nobody uses.

Some tests I've ran using a default wizard alt as a dummy (0 defense) with the most common damage spells, those being Cascamorus, Baulectrium, Stupeficus, and Ignatium.
For simplicity sake, I will be comparing damage between Charms Master and Duelist, as they are both the best in their respective categories (Charms / Dueling), although still Duelist is considerably underwhelming compared to Charms Master.
Note: HS = Headshot, All tests were with 3 points in the spell. Red Text = Lower Damage, Green Text = Higher Damage

Cascamorus
Charms Master: HS 2926 | Body 1951
Duelist: HS 2707 | Body 1805

(Charms focused class should NOT be doing 219 more Jinx damage than the highest damage Jinx class.)

Baulectrium
Charms Master: 3566 (No bonus HS damage)
Duelist: 1764

*Usually not used for duelist loadout but the difference in the damage is major, considering that Duelist has the highest charms damage from the Jinx lineup

Stupeficus
Charms Master: HS 2975 | Body 1983
Duelist: HS 2328 | Body 1552

*A must have spell really, even though it is charms.

Ignatium
Charms Master: HS 2391 | Body 1594
Duelist: HS 2253 | Body 1502

Same issue as Casca, why does the Charms focused class have more Jinx damage?

[Charms Master beats Duelist in all forms of damage, Jinx and Charms being the numbers recorded]

This leads me to the second part of this thread.. balancing these loadouts.
Personally, I like where Duelist stands in terms of stats, but Charms Master is just an amped up version of that, it's to a point where the extra Jinx cooldown you get from the Duelist loadouts doesn't matter, as you can pick Charms master and you'll still be doing more damage. The extra debuff duration also allows spells like Stupeficus and Contagios to deal more damage, which makes them more viable using Charms Master, compared to increased knockback, and Charms Master offers a 7% higher range than Duelist.

I think that the damage on Charms Master needs to be reduced, Charms a bit, although it is a Charms focused class the damage is soo high. The Jinx damage should also be decreased, which I think is a better idea than buffing Jinx loadouts. I feel it would be unhealthy to up the damage on other loadouts, as damage creep will just make duels shorter, and people would just pick whichever loadout can kill others faster.

The thing with Jinx loadouts is that there is a purpose for each loadout, which gives you a reason to choose one over the other, as they are all around a similar damage output / each have their own specific use.
An example of this being Alchemist / Jinx Master, although I think that Alchemist could use the increased debuff duration, as it allows for Curse spells (Curse Damage), and would make it a bit more useful, while Jinx Master would benefit from the defensive cooldown that Alchemist currently gets.

Charms loadouts... you really just can't compare them to what Charms Master gives, especially with meta spells, Mage is the closest but still lacks a bunch of damage that Charms Master has.

There's not much I can say about Curse/Transfig loadouts, as there is so little of them being used, and I haven't gotten around to testing. I will probably start testing them as I've reached level 80 and will add them here if I do.

Please take this thread with a grain of salt, dueling is very stale at the moment, and the current state of loadouts does not allow for variety as it's mostly centered around Charms Master, and I'd like to know how the community feels about this

Your input would be appreciated and questions / feedback is appreciated.

 

[LiviDk]

Loadouts do be tricky

 

[oPitfed_]

I also wanna add that increase jinx cooldown reduction doesn't help (as was done for jinx master class-31% to -36%) since u will get even more cooldown due to mana.
I'd suggest taking some tests with classes before doing some changes, maybe with some duelists.

 

[lightning_boss]

i feel the same way about the charm master is too overpowered with the stats at this moment but i think the plan was to cancel jinx meta which kinda succeeded but its also about the spells, classes like curse and transfiguration have no fast skillshots, the fast skillshots like stupeficus, ignatium, cascamorus,levosus and baul are meta rn and those classes dont have that much of that spells or are just not strong or have something about them why people also dont use them. i think the loadouts are an issue but also the spells can fix this

 

[sara astrial]

so true!

 

[EdenLovesMommy]

So literally staff wanted more diversity than just jinx users but cc is right this is just not how you do that :/

 

[RainbowElfe]

cczz based

 

[Ivan_]

Ok so since I was summoned here, here's my thoughts.
There's absolutely no debate that charm master is over powered. Just the fact that it has more jinx damage than jinx classes themselves is ridiculous. I personally use this class with jinx spells, the only charm i use is stupeficus. Even if I ignored the stats and played with the different loudouts, I noticed that charm master did me more justice than the jinx loadouts did.
The point of loadouts/gear or any other system was to make variety in the duelling community, and obviously all of them failed at the end. We have entered the stage where mostly everyone is using the same loadout, I would say the duelling is balanced but there is no variety.
Now, I can't stress this enough but this isn't the right time to change loadouts. The reason behind that is that the talent system is in the works, and it would be dumb to mess up with loadouts before they officially replace spell points. Like I said, we have entered a stage where there's no variety, but we can still duel with the same class. Removing spell points will drastically change how spells work, so I would first wait for talents to come out and only then fix the loadouts to match up with those. Changing the duelling system every month is really not effective.

 

[TallBlondeDude]

I think lightning is 100% correct in that the issue lies more with the spells available then just loadouts, although cm is obviously busted. If the goal is to have the different schools be distinctive, some are going to get the short end of the stick. We have to ask ourselves, what is good in pvp? And right now, it appears to be skill shots. Lace is coming soon, as teased somewhere, although im not linking, find it for yourself , Which might help somewhat with curse, curse as an identity seems to be based on powerful aoe charge up spells. While this is cool and diverse, it shouldn't ever be expected to be at the top of PVP unless they were strong enough to justify the inferior spells, which makes them OP for pve and possibly over centralizing. Jinx and Charm both have skill shots, and both are used. Transfig has some, but just not enough good spells to justify it over charm, having balectrum; stupify; and more, and jynx, casca; ingnit; and wind spells, among others. Talents may help with this, but honestly I dont see a significant overhaul of spells coming with them. Breaking the jynx/charm duality will definitely help, but certain spells (cough balectrum and friends) just seem so warping to me that they cant help be good. Possible idea, move ignatum to transfig, which has a lot of other fire spells and anti-appereo to curse. Both are good spells, but not game breaking ones. Overall, I have no idea what i'm talking about in relation to dueling and you just wasted your time reading this.

 

[cczz]

Now, I can't stress this enough but this isn't the right time to change loadouts. The reason behind that is that the talent system is in the works, and it would be dumb to mess up with loadouts before they officially replace spell points. Like I said, we have entered a stage where there's no variety, but we can still duel with the same class. Removing spell points will drastically change how spells work, so I would first wait for talents to come out and only then fix the loadouts to match up with those. Changing the dueling system every month is really not effective.

While I do agree that this may not be the best time to change loadouts.
Charms Master needs to be nerfed.

Even with talents, it still will outshine the rest of the loadouts by far, (for Jinx / Charms) changing other loadouts is not necessarily a priority but I think that nerfing Charms Master will not harm any of the other loadouts, but bring more life back into exploration of other loadouts and potentially bring some more variety. This isn't changing the dueling system, this is a balance change that should be addressed.

Removing spell points would not fix this, unless I have my idea of the talent system mistaken. Unless this removes the need for loadouts [???], the damage numbers would still be way too high on Charms Master.

Feel free to let me know if I've overlooked anything

 

[marmitemira]

Hello @cczz!

Thank you so much for the feedback provided! We appreciate the effort and detail you put into this post. There are a lot of good points made however, as we are switching to talents we will not be taking this specific feedback. When talents we released we hope you continue to provide feedback and suggestions on it! Thank you again and have a fabulous day!!