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Martial Arts Rebalance for Tiger Kung Fu #34847

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merged 1 commit into from
Oct 21, 2019
Merged

Martial Arts Rebalance for Tiger Kung Fu #34847

merged 1 commit into from
Oct 21, 2019

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Hymore246
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Summary

SUMMARY: Balance "Martial arts rebalance for Tiger Kung Fu"

Purpose of change

Partially implements #32422
Update for the martial art: Tiger Kung Fu

Describe the solution

One of the five Shaolin animal styles. The Tiger focuses on relentless attacks above all else.

Current Buffs, Techniques, and Special Abilities

Name Level Available Type Effect
Tiger Strength Unarmed 0 Static Buff Bash damage increased by 80% of Strength
Tiger Fury Unarmed 2 OnHit Buff +3 Bash damage for 3 turns, stacks 8 times
Tiger Takedown Unarmed 4 Unarmed Tech Down duration: 1

Tiger Kung Fu is one of the most damaging style in the game and is easy to use. You walk up to an enemy and keep swinging until it dies or you die.

Problems and issues

  • Bash damage increased by 80% of Strength.
    This is common problem with most the animal kung fu's. Having 10 in the given stat is worth +8 bash damage and when you consider that normal bash damage is 75% of Strength you will realize just how powerful this static buff is.

  • The style does too much damage.
    Tiger Kung Fu ends up being too good at what it was designed to do. A character with 10 Strength and a full 8 stacks of Tiger Fury gives +32 (8 + 24) extra bash damage. This is before any other damage calculations. This is way more damage than a martial art should do. For the sake of comparison, the average damage of a 9mm pistol is 26 damage.

Rebalance Goal
Tiger Kung Fu was built to deal damage and nothing else. It falls into the classic "putting all your eggs into one basket" problem where it can only do one thing well. Since Tiger Kung Fu needs a damage nerf, the entire style suffers because it has nothing else to fall back on.
Rebalancing Tiger Kung Fu is a bit difficult because the real life version is basically the same. Tiger Kung Fu is all about power and overwhelming your opponent by sacrificing everything else. As such, I can't added anything defensive to the style and need to focus on adding offense without simply adding more damage.

New Buffs, Techniques, and Special Abilities

Name Level Available Type Effect
Tiger's Strength Unarmed 0 Static Buff Strength determines bonus Accuracy instead of Dexterity.
Tiger Takedown Unarmed 1 Unarmed Crit Tech Down duration: 1
Tiger Fury Unarmed 2 OnHit Buff +10% damage for 3 turns, stacks 4 times.
Tiger Rampage Unarmed 3 OnCrit Buff Grants Armor Penetration equal to 50% of Strength. Lasts 1 turn, stacks 2 times.
Tiger Palm Unarmed 4 Unarmed Crit Tech Stun duration: 1

Important Changes

  • Strength determines bonus Accuracy instead of Dexterity.
    A theme between all animal kung fu's is that the static buff will change what stat is considered for a damage or accuracy calculation. Tiger's Strength add 25% of Strength and subtracting 25% of Dexterity to Accuracy. This effectively changes which stat is used for to-hit calculations. The base accuracy calculation can be found in
    character.cpp - line 2371:
float Character::get_hit_base() const
{
    /** @EFFECT_DEX increases hit base, slightly */
    return get_dex() / 4.0f;
}
  • Tiger Fury stacks 4 times and increases damage by 10%.
    Most of Tiger Kung Fu damage problems came from Tiger Fury. Reducing the stack size to 4 helps greatly to curb the styles damage problems. Second is the replacement of the +3 bash damage with +10% bonus to all damage. As per GAME_BALANCE.md, under the Damage section
To-hit

While not a direct measure of damage, to-hit bonus has to be included in the calculations, as it has a significant effect on actual damage output (through hit and crit rate).

Each point of to-hit is "worth" roughly a 10% increase/decrease in damage per turn or 2.5 points of damage per turn (whichever is higher).

Using this formula we can determine that +3 damage is roughly "equal" to a +12% damage bonus (.5 damage = 2% bonus damage). Since I am changing Tiger's Fury to all damage instead of just bashing, I reduced the increase to 10% from 12%. It's unlikely the player will every be able to use an unarmed weapon that uses all three damage types, so they will usually only gain the benefit of two at most.

  • Added Tiger Rampage buff.
    This buff is a way to improve the offense of the style without directly increasing it's damage output while still making use of the Strength stat. A critical hit (or two) will give you an edge against opponents with high armor.

  • Added Tiger Palm technique.
    Adding a technique that increases damage would be too much due to Tiger's Fury boosting all damage. Instead Tiger Palm is a crit technique that stuns for 1 turn by overwhelming your opponent.

Advantages

  • Tiger Kung Fu is all about damage. After a few hits, you will be being doing a high amount of damage with every strike.
  • The style can stun and knockdown enemies, making it harder for them to fight back.
  • Strength is the main focus of the style. Nore strength means more damage, accuracy, and armor penetration.

Disadvantages

  • This style offers no defensive abilities at all. You can only dodge to protect yourself.
  • The style also offers no utility either.
  • Beware of groups unless you can kill enemies very quickly.

Describe alternatives you've considered

If the style is too strong...

  • Reduce the duration of Tiger's Fury.
  • Reduce the armor penetration on Tiger's Rampage.

If the style is too weak...

  • Increase the damage buff on Tiger's Fury from 10% to 12%.
  • Increase the duration of Tiger Rampage from 1 turn to 2 turns.

Additional context

References:
Five Animals wikipedia page
Kung fu animal styles
Imperial Tiger Kung Fu

@Hymore246 Hymore246 mentioned this pull request Oct 18, 2019
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@ZhilkinSerg ZhilkinSerg added [JSON] Changes (can be) made in JSON Game: Balance Balancing of (existing) in-game features. Melee Melee weapons, tactics, techniques, reach attack labels Oct 18, 2019
@Aphegis
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Aphegis commented Oct 19, 2019 •
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I loved every rebalance Hymore but i was really afraid of this particular one because as a avid tiger kung fu player (my favorite style, i played more than 150 hours with high STR characters and tiger) i think this rebalance took out a lot of personality from the style, let me explain why, but please, if the community believes i'm wrong let me know!

There are dozens of unarmed styles, and a lot of them have CC's (stuns, knockdowns etc), tiger was always the "big numbers" style, if you played this style that meant you didn't wanted Crowd Control like stuns/knockdowns, you didn't wanted precision/accuracy, didn't wanted blocks or defense mechanisms and you didn't wanted speed, you were looking for a "glass cannon" style who rewarded high STR characters with the highest amount of unarmed melee damage of all the styles in the game, because otherwise you would simply choose a different style. I know that this particular playstyle is not the most optimal but believe me, there are players who love melee big numbers, included me!

After those changes i feel like tiger kung fu is too similar to the muay thay or krav maga style or some other styles (maybe even weaker) and unfortunately there is no more 100% "glass cannon" styles that rewards high strength characters like tiger did in a unique way.

I would suggest to remove the CC and give a little buff to the damage, changing the Strength buff from accuracy to damage again, maybe from 80% to 40% or something like that, so tiger would offer a unique playstyle like it did but more balanced!

@Hymore246
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I loved every rebalance Hymore but i was really afraid of this particular one because as a avid tiger kung fu player (my favorite style, i played more than 150 hours with high STR characters and tiger) i think this rebalance took out a lot of personality from the style, let me explain why, but please, if the community believes i'm wrong let me know!

There are dozens of unarmed styles, and a lot of them have CC's (stuns, knockdowns etc), tiger was always the "big numbers" style, if you played this style that meant you didn't wanted Crowd Control like stuns/knockdowns, you didn't wanted precision/accuracy, didn't wanted blocks or defense mechanisms and you didn't wanted speed, you were looking for a "glass cannon" style who rewarded high STR characters with the highest amount of unarmed melee damage of all the styles in the game, because otherwise you would simply choose a different style. I know that this particular playstyle is not the most optimal but believe me, there are players who love melee big numbers, included me!

After those changes i feel like tiger kung fu is too similar to the muay thay or krav maga style or some other styles (maybe even weaker) and unfortunately there is no more 100% "glass cannon" styles that rewards high strength characters like tiger did in a unique way.

I would suggest to remove the CC and give a little buff to the damage, changing the Strength buff from accuracy to damage again, maybe from 80% to 40% or something like that, so tiger would offer a unique playstyle like it did but more balanced!

Tiger Kung Fu is all about the damage but it was simply doing too much from both a balance and realism standpoint. I get where you are coming from but this is actually something I talked to Kevin about. Part of the problem isn't just that the damage was high, it's also a problem because the human body can't do that much extra damage while unarmed. Like I said, the old version had more damage than a handgun. It would let you instantly kill a normal zombie at full power. I discussed this with Kevin and we determined that at most, Tiger Kung Fu's bonus bash damage could be +12. Since I was converting the bonus bash damage to affect all damage, I reduced the damage bonus 12% to 10%. This makes the "constant" damage bonus for all attacks +40% damage.

Like you said, the style is a glass cannon but I couldn't give it more damage and I had to add other offensive options to compensate. When you have a style that completely discards defense and ignores utility but also has a damage cap, it can become hard to improve the style. That is why I settled on crowd control techniques.

Tiger still has it's unique playstyle, it does the most damage of the unarmed styles at the cost of defense. It still uses Strength for it's OnCrit buff too and it's a lot stronger than people might think.

Also, don't forget that #31858 reduced the power of all unarmed martial arts. At this point, it's a good idea to use unarmed weapons to make up the difference in damage.

@AirPhforce
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I agree with Aphegis. I feel the style is very same-y compared to the others.

Have you considered perhaps making it all 'on-hit' and removing the 'on-crit' and adjusting the abilities accordingly? That way it could have its niche of ultra damage and also be unique in that it's all about pushing forward for constant attacks with no reliance on RNG for crits, just buffs for keeping up constant offense.

@Hymore246
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I agree with Aphegis. I feel the style is very same-y compared to the others.

Have you considered perhaps making it all 'on-hit' and removing the 'on-crit' and adjusting the abilities accordingly? That way it could have its niche of ultra damage and also be unique in that it's all about pushing forward for constant attacks with no reliance on RNG for crits, just buffs for keeping up constant offense.

Your going to need to be more specific about "making it all on-hit". As it stands, I don't think I can add anything else to Tiger's Fury. I'm open for suggestions but keep in mind the limitations I've mentioned before.

@AirPhforce
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Apologies for the confusion. I was suggesting changing the 'on-crit' abilities to 'on-hit.' specifically with Tiger Rampage, and adjusting the power of the ability accordingly.

As Tiger encourages raw strength, which as I understand is not part of any of the three crit hit checks, it would perhaps be appropriate to make the style focus on high damage normal hits instead of using crits at all.

@Hymore246
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The bigger issue is that the style already has an OnHit buff and just adding more to Tiger's Fury isn't a good idea. While I can add a new OnHit buff, I would probably have to restrict it somehow and I don't want to do that because Tiger is supposed to be super straight forward. Nothing complicated, attack stuff till they die.

I don't think there is anything wrong with having an OnCrit buff with Tiger Kung Fu. Tiger hits hard so it does make sense in my eyes. I could make Tiger Rampage 100% for 1 turn with no stacking. I just worry about people cheesing it with the Hydrolic Muscles CBM.

Other than that the style is kinda limited on what can be added. Anything defensive is out. Same with disarms. Knockback is counterproductive. An OnMove buff or a move cost effect would be ok but then it will end up looking more like Leopard or Centipede.

@AirPhforce
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I think that tiger rampage change you proposed would be a step in the right direction. Perhaps a small but constant, flat bonus to unarmed damage at high ranks, or change tiger strike to a damage boost instead of a stun?

It is the all offense style.

@Hymore246
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I think that tiger rampage change you proposed would be a step in the right direction. Perhaps a small but constant, flat bonus to unarmed damage at high ranks, or change tiger strike to a damage boost instead of a stun?

It is the all offense style.

Style is already at max damage. I can't make it any higher. This is coming from Kevin. +40% constant damage is the best Tiger is going to get.

@AirPhforce
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Any chance you can make 'Tiger Palm' into a bonus damage maneuver instead of just stun?

@Rivet-the-Zombie Rivet-the-Zombie merged commit 330984b into CleverRaven:master Oct 21, 2019
@Hymore246 Hymore246 deleted the rebalance-tiger branch October 21, 2019 11:12
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@Hymore246 @Aphegis @AirPhforce @Rivet-the-Zombie @ZhilkinSerg