User:Raine Valen/Musings/Momentum

Opposition and "Trade-offs".
Defensive power is largely based on a team's ability to resist pressure; spike resistance is usually reserved for Monk skill, until Passive Defense becomes so powerful that a team is hard pressed to spike through it: maintaining Defensive Anthem on a party makes them very hard to spike, for example. Everyone on a team running 600 Health with specced shields makes them very hard to spike, for example.

The cost of adding more defense is usually a decrease in your team's offensive pressure ability; this seems fair: adding resistance to pressure should result loss of ability to create pressure, in similar amount. Adding defense without somehow hampering your ability to do damage would be bad.

Offensive power is largely based on a team's ability to score kills. It is not necessarily based on ability to create pressure. Spiking generally scores kills, even on most teams that don't break under pressure. However, against overly defensive builds, spike value falls apart. Try spiking through an Aegis, for example.

Flaws in the System.
The problem. While increasing your team's defensive power decreases your team's ability to pressure, it is often the case that it does not decrease your team's ability to spike. For example, Earth Elementalists can pack defense to the point of making themselves all but immune to damage, yet they retain the ability to kill with spikes even if their pressure consists solely of wanding. While increasing their defense has drastically reduced their ability to pressure, it has not much affected their ability to score kills at all. They can kill you, but you can't kill them.

This is not exclusive to Ele Ball. In fact, this is common. One of the most popular examples is rawrspike. The methodology is different, but the end is the same: they can kill you, but you can't kill them.

They win. You lose.

How do we fix this?

The Solution.
There are several ways to go about it.

One way would be to make passive defense detrimental to offense.
 * "For seconds, all party members within earshot have a 50% chance to block attacks, but deal 25% less damage."

Another way would be to remove passive defense altogether.
 * "Create a Ward Against Melee at your location. After  seconds, all attacking foes in this ward are knocked down."

Yet another way would be to make passive defense crack under pressure.
 * "All party members within earshot have a 50% chance to block attacks. Whenever an attack skill is blocked in this way, the chance to block is decreased by %."

Alternatively, we could add methods to penetrate defense.
 * "Melee Attack. If this attack is blocked by an Enchantment, target foe loses  Enchantments.  If this attack is blocked by a Stance, target foe's Stance ends and they are knocked down."

Or, one could even rework more passive defense into active defense.
 * "Stance (1 second). You block the next attack against you.  Block effect: gain  Energy."

These have all been changes to individual skills. However, though they may cure the symptoms, fixing the underlying problem still remains to be done. The problem is that offense isn't rewarded. If Defenseway X can get you kills, why run Offenseway Y?

The New System: Rewarding Good Play.
I think the way to go about this is to reward effective offense.
 * Whenever you deal 100 points of cumulative damage, you gain one point of Morale. When you interrupt a skill, you gain 3 points of Morale.
 * Note: every time you do something right, you should gain Morale. I'm not sure of how to incorporate this into every class, but you get the point.
 * For each point of Morale you have, you gain 1% maximum Health and 1% maximum Energy, you attack 1% faster, your skills recharge 1% faster, and you deal 1% more damage. For every ten points of Morale you have, your attribute levels are increased by one.
 * Every time your team scores a kill, your team gains 5 points of Morale and the other team loses 5 points Morale, and the killed foe suffers a 15% Death Penalty.
 * Every time you block an attack, you lose point of Morale.
 * You lose one point of Morale every minute.
 * You lose an additional two points of Morale every minute that your team does not score a kill.
 * For every ten seconds that you are below 75% Health, you lose one point of Morale.
 * For every five seconds that you are below 50% Health, you lose two points of Morale.
 * For every second that you are below 25% Health, you lose one point of Morale.
 * You cannot gain Morale if you have a Death Penalty. Instead, you will lose 1% Death Penalty every time you would have gained a point of Morale.
 * You may not have more than 30 points of Morale.

I'm not sure that this system would be perfect; in fact, I am almost certain that it is flawed due simply to the amount of time I spent on it. But the idea is that teams that are doing things right should be rewarded for it, and passive defense should be have a drawback (hence the loss of morale for blocking).

I think that rewarding good play is never a bad thing, and a system like this would go far toward that end.