I agree with the changes to the AP regen.  My question becomes what about abilities that are "mirrors" but yet are different costs as far as AP goes.  Such as the Magus Indigo Fire of Change channeled ability which costs significantly more than other 6 sec damage channeled spells.

Also what about the fact that BW/Sorcs can recieve virtually unlimited AP for a very low cost of <5% of HPs.  While every other class must slot tactics or use mastery points to recieve anything even remotely close to this.

Overall I think most people think the AP fix was a good change (in general), but the current state of the game has now left even more things in flux. Combat is slower and healing especially is much slower (others may run out of AP after 4-5 attacks, while healers run out of AP after 4-5 heals...which have to be used on a whole party of people.)

The next task, as you stated, is to re-examine AP costs vs the effect of the power. Since this was such a huge fix impactwise (and SHOULD have been tested by the community on the test server), when can we expect to see abilities rebalanced? If you wait another 2-3 months like most of you major patches then you are going to make a lot of people very unhappy.

I don't think people understand that if you wait half a second between casts you gain AP.

This makes keeping your Ap bar full much easier.

As opposed to hammering buttons without pauses.

---

Hype wrote:

I don't think people understand that if you wait half a second between casts you gain AP.

 

This makes keeping your Ap bar full much easier.

 

As opposed to hammering buttons without pauses.

 

 

---

Exactly. Timing the tick is valuable.

I personally dislike the AP changes alot.

Before everyone had lots of AP, the game was fast paced, exciting, people still died, and you could use the abilities you needed to.

Now everyone has no AP, the game is slow paced, frustrating, people still die, and you can only use a few of your abilities before you have to stand there and wait for more AP.

The difference for me is entertainment value. The old AP rate was just more entertaining. You took away everyones AP, all that did was make the game slower paced.

I understand why you made the changes but did you think about this?

1. Almost all higher level gear has no AP regen on it.

2. PvE zone will be infinately harder for classes like AM and RP to heal compared to WP. (same goes for Destro)

3. You essentially made classes like WP/DoK and BW/SORC overpowered due to their ways to generate AP. And mechanics not needing AP but "Righetous Fury".

I personally dont mind the AP changes but right now taking down WP/DoK is very difficult. BW and Sorc are very powerful now due to their methods of AP regen. I have 3 classes; RP, BW, and a Slayer. Right now my slayer suffers the most just do to mechanics. Also the amount of AP drain the destro has is amazing. In my opinion reducing someones AP the whole fight is a form of CC. Sometimes in a battle Im staggered for 7 seconds while my healers are killed, helplessly doing nothing. Then once they are killed, I am AP drained and killed before I can do anything as well.

Again, I understand where you are coming from. But this one mechanic has so much bearing on the game.

---

Jennymay wrote:

I personally dislike the AP changes alot.

 

Before everyone had lots of AP, the game was fast paced, exciting, people still died, and you could use the abilities you needed to.

 

Now everyone has no AP, the game is slow paced, frustrating, people still die, and you can only use a few of your abilities before you have to stand there and wait for more AP.

 

The difference for me is entertainment value. The old AP rate was just more entertaining. You took away everyones AP, all that did was make the game slower paced.

 

---

Agreed,

I cancelled my account after less than a week.  Ended up being nothing more than a waste of money.  This broke it for me.

If by 'more entertaining' you mean 'made gear and AoE instacasts the most important things ever', then I guess that's right.

The folks who don't like this change aren't looking at the big picture here.  Yeah, Hacknbashn, your Choppa can't just hit Lotsa Choppin' until everything around him is dead anymore.  Nor, by the same token, can Bright Wizards just slam on Scorched Earth at Mach V until everything around them is dead.  Running in and ganking a bunch of folks doesn't work nearly as well anymore, leading to a longer time-to-kill and making decisions involving what moves to use, when, and on whom much more important.

With infinite AP regen, gear is king.  Now it's back to the point where my 15 Shadow Warrior can outfight an 18 Choppa who spams himself out of Lotsa Choppin' because I still have AP and I pay some Goddamn attention when I play.

If you MANAGE your AP, and control your usage of abilities until they're needed most instead of just hammering on buttons as fast as you can, you're going to find that your game is vastly improved.

With infinite AP, no real skill is required for many classes to rack up oodles and oodles of kills.

With finite AP, all classes have to make constant, conscious decisions, and they have to make them fast.  The folks who are the best at it perform better than the folks who are worst at it, and although gear is still a big help, solid playing will trump level (at lower ranks) or gear (at max rank) just about every time.

This is a GOOD change.  Although your character may now require more thought and attention to play (and thus be more boring, I guess?) the game itself will be much deeper and more interesting.

Don't cancel your accounts, folks.  Seriously.  Play it through a bit more, learn that there are abilities around which are not the highest-cost, fastest-cast things on your bars, and start using those instead of spamming one thing.  My Engineer has literally three bars packed with abilities and I use -every one- of them (except Static Discharge) and my Witch Hunter is in just about the same boat despite the fact that Burn Away Lies exists.

Spec different!  Gear different!  Play different!  All these things can help you overcome your inability to spam your highest-cost, hardest-hitting abilities.  They're not DESIGNED to be hit as fast as you can hit them except in certain situations (like when that roar that makes everything cost less is on, or the tactic that allows you to spend 5 or 10 less AP on every ability you use when Enraged or Furious) and at that point you have made a conscious decision to extend your burst period while reducing your burst damage... -which can increase your overall damage significantly-.

There's SO much you can do if you try.

Try! 

---

Bartman wrote:

I understand why you made the changes but did you think about this?

 

1. Almost all higher level gear has no AP regen on it.

2. PvE zone will be infinately harder for classes like AM and RP to heal compared to WP. (same goes for Destro)

3. You essentially made classes like WP/DoK and BW/SORC overpowered due to their ways to generate AP. And mechanics not needing AP but "Righetous Fury".

 

I personally dont mind the AP changes but right now taking down WP/DoK is very difficult. BW and Sorc are very powerful now due to their methods of AP regen. I have 3 classes; RP, BW, and a Slayer. Right now my slayer suffers the most just do to mechanics. Also the amount of AP drain the destro has is amazing. In my opinion reducing someones AP the whole fight is a form of CC. Sometimes in a battle Im staggered for 7 seconds while my healers are killed, helplessly doing nothing. Then once they are killed, I am AP drained and killed before I can do anything as well.

 

Again, I understand where you are coming from. But this one mechanic has so much bearing on the game.

---

With the change, you've got to start thinking of alternate tactics/skills you've never considered before.  RPs and Zealots can use their single target tree master rune/ritual to keep the parties AP up.  The faster they bring down a target, the less healing you'll need to do.  I know that after the patch, my zealot and others have had compliments on how much Ritual of Innervation helps.  There's also other tactics, like Restorative Burst and such.  A lot of classes also have AP draining moves that were next to worthless when you had infinite AP.  Trying to exhaust your enemies AP while maintaining yours is an aspect of the battle you've got to consider.

Well I noticed the change right off and at first I was not very happy with my character being humbled due to lack of AP during a fight.

After I played a bit more I learned to adapted what I was doing to fit with the new AP limitation and I actually discovered the game had become more enjoyable and very much more strategic in nature.

Gone are the days where both sides run headlong into a fight spamming away with a seemingly limitless supply of AP.....that whole thing just got to feel stale at best. 

These past few nights I have begun to take a moment to organize my attack and I also find that I will talk more to the other players to coordinate what we are all doing and TBH it is working pretty well, even better then I first imagined. Best of all the fights are lasting longer and I am seeing alot of new tactics come into play that I never saw before in WAR.

At this point I do think that some fine tuning is in order to make the whole thing work for everyone but it really is a step in the right direction.

Keep up the good work.

I have to say this is one of the few changes in 1.3.2 I had mixed feelings about, with only a slight lean to positive. That my enemy (destro) 2x the active choppas and sorcs that love to spam Lotsa and Surging like no tomorrow I certainly welcome that they cannot so freely do so anymore. However, I do have a slayer up and coming as well as a BW, so therein lies the mixed!!!

However, having played at least 4 of my classes long enough and in enough environments (ORvR, scenarios, PvE) I can say I do not believe the current pool/regen rate is sufficient. 

My larget note if that in doing PvE, specifically on my KotbS. Last night in Altdorf I main tanked Adell, the Lord inside the City siege instance.

I can tell you this, my Archmage healer was buffing my AP and I was not able to use any offensive attacks the entire fight, just holding aggro - My job.

I spammed taunt, challenge, sunder, perserverance(armorbuff), sun-sheild(thorn bubble), shieldslam(defensive buff-attack). all but sunder have signifigant cooldowns and I still was waiting on AP quite often to be able to use even defensive/aggro abilities. More than a few times I lost hate and someone died for it when Adell turned around and chopped someone in half simply b/c I didnt have AP to do anything about it.

ONLY defensive buffs/attacks, about 6 skills.

A wild guess would say another 20-30% would have made that 5-7min fight smoother, and more reasonable. I really dont think a tank should lose hate b/c he runs out of AP.

I had menace slotted and every defensive tactic/gear peice you could want for that fight, as well as 3 healers and it still wasnt quite enough - guarded by a full superior IB at that.

FYI I had no one draining my AP at all, so this was totally a PvE occurance.

Maybe bump it to 30ap/s instead of 25? OR give classes that dont have another source (draining/reduction/etc) of AP another method, or lower the cost of AP on certain skills, ones like sunder or taunt so that PvE isnt influenced. 

This patch lowers the ability for a group to function by what.. 20-30%.. well I can tell you this.. N'kari, Adell, Tomb-Lords.. they dont give a CRAP if we're out of AP lol.

Something needs to be adjusted... and thats just Knight. My ENG is still pouting about you gimping his range, now he cant even get off his dots without running out. Auto-attack dmg numbers doubled on my ENG with this patch, and ALL other abilities went down 5-10% in a given session according to combat cruncher. So I gained 5% and lost 50% dmg output.. ALL b/c of AP nerf. Great.

and ENG is another class with practically no way to save AP or gain with some tactic or skill. Many other classes dont need/use as much AP as ENG and have alternate AP pool-bolstering methods.

Summary, detailed AP cost and class spec adjustments need to be made. You cant just nerf everyone from "infinite AP" to certain classes having AP advantages that now create new gaps in balance/strategy, making some "OP" and some useful only for the first 7 secs of combat. Universal ANYTHING is bad, simply because the change affects classes differently. Someone mentioned that this doesnt hurt WP/Doks, b/c they use a different pool with which to heal from anyway. This is a serious problem. Now the faction with more -AP-pooless-healers will win every skirmish. Why, b/c they can heal - everyone knows healers win fights.

Please adjust. SOON.

---

JackKerras wrote:

If by 'more entertaining' you mean 'made gear and AoE instacasts the most important things ever', then I guess that's right.

 

The folks who don't like this change aren't looking at the big picture here.  Yeah, Hacknbashn, your Choppa can't just hit Lotsa Choppin' until everything around him is dead anymore.  Nor, by the same token, can Bright Wizards just slam on Scorched Earth at Mach V until everything around them is dead.  Running in and ganking a bunch of folks doesn't work nearly as well anymore, leading to a longer time-to-kill and making decisions involving what moves to use, when, and on whom much more important.

 

With infinite AP regen, gear is king.  Now it's back to the point where my 15 Shadow Warrior can outfight an 18 Choppa who spams himself out of Lotsa Choppin' because I still have AP and I pay some Goddamn attention when I play.

 

If you MANAGE your AP, and control your usage of abilities until they're needed most instead of just hammering on buttons as fast as you can, you're going to find that your game is vastly improved.

 

With infinite AP, no real skill is required for many classes to rack up oodles and oodles of kills.

 

With finite AP, all classes have to make constant, conscious decisions, and they have to make them fast.  The folks who are the best at it perform better than the folks who are worst at it, and although gear is still a big help, solid playing will trump level (at lower ranks) or gear (at max rank) just about every time.

 

This is a GOOD change.  Although your character may now require more thought and attention to play (and thus be more boring, I guess?) the game itself will be much deeper and more interesting.

 

Don't cancel your accounts, folks.  Seriously.  Play it through a bit more, learn that there are abilities around which are not the highest-cost, fastest-cast things on your bars, and start using those instead of spamming one thing.  My Engineer has literally three bars packed with abilities and I use -every one- of them (except Static Discharge) and my Witch Hunter is in just about the same boat despite the fact that Burn Away Lies exists.

 

Spec different!  Gear different!  Play different!  All these things can help you overcome your inability to spam your highest-cost, hardest-hitting abilities.  They're not DESIGNED to be hit as fast as you can hit them except in certain situations (like when that roar that makes everything cost less is on, or the tactic that allows you to spend 5 or 10 less AP on every ability you use when Enraged or Furious) and at that point you have made a conscious decision to extend your burst period while reducing your burst damage... -which can increase your overall damage significantly-.

 

There's SO much you can do if you try.

 

Try! 

---

I tried, I always stuck to a definite, careful rotation and was still out of Ap when the critter dropped, well the other 2 that aggroed because of pathing or the fact that they respawn before I could kill that one.  Hard to kite ranged mobs of equal rank.  

The simple fact is that all the abilities were tuned for the abundance of AP and not for the shortage.  The implementation of this was horrible and unannounced.  I doubt it was evaluated before it went live.  It simply changed the gameplay to the point that it is unplayable at lower levels.  I like to solo quests non-group quests and was able to do so before this so-called "fix."  My last night playing, I spent 45 minutes trying to clear 5 or 6 things to get to a quest objective.  They would respawn before I could get them all killed.

Don't ask me to waste money on a game experience I do not enjoy.  Thats why I cancelled.

I think it is funny that people assume that you spam abilities and thats why you are quitting.  You need to get a grip and realize that it is terribly broken and needs a great deal of work.

 AP issue.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93MEw3KqQxM

please don't just claim AP is fine.. when it still clearly isn't.

don't get me wrong, i'm all for the AP fix, however, it's broken. I'm all for AP adjustments, but AP has hurt caster classes far more then it has hurt melee classes.

casters don't have an autoattack other then staffing. Maybe give casters some form of ranged auto attack from their staffs such as how engs/sh/sw have a ranged auto attack.

casters such as BWs and Sorcs can't really do anything without AP, and just that everything they do do, cost them life, they are in a constant lose lose situtation.

---

Testpig wrote:

 AP issue.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93MEw3KqQxM

 

please don't just claim AP is fine.. when it still clearly isn't.

 

don't get me wrong, i'm all for the AP fix, however, it's broken. I'm all for AP adjustments, but AP has hurt caster classes far more then it has hurt melee classes.

 

casters don't have an autoattack other then staffing. Maybe give casters some form of ranged auto attack from their staffs such as how engs/sh/sw have a ranged auto attack.

 

casters such as BWs and Sorcs can't really do anything without AP, and just that everything they do do, cost them life, they are in a constant lose lose situtation.

Message Edited by Testpig on 10-26-2009 04:17 PM

---

I've already forwarded this along to the CnC team for investigation.

Bugs are different from the way things are intended to focus. The jist of this article is still valid, as bugs exist outside the parameters of intent. 

I am getting/have gotten used to the AP regen now; and can fight nearly as well as before, however, I am 40, I have LV jewelry that increases rate, as well as an AP regaining tactic. But what about lower levels Mythic? There are alot of T3 players that can't fight on their own anymore because four hits takes away all their AP, and pausing a second won't make them live longer. You need to give the T2-T3 players just as many ways of getting around the AP fix as T4 players,  as it stands without AP regen stuff in T4, there would be no solo fighting, no one vs. many, just zerg on zerg so you could live. Imagine how it is in T3?

Its a needed fix I suppose, though I never myself noticed an imbalance caused by the old regen, but you need to scale AP costs with the new AP regen, or give more ways to regain it faster, especially to lower levels.

On another note, I no longer main a White Lion and havn't touched mine in awhile, but I sympathazie with the White Lions that are still active... their abilities are the most expensive in the game, and you have to use two whole tactics slots to make up for it, I think you need to lower AP costs for them especially, as well as accross the board for everyone... Why does a detaunt cost 50 AP? The AP is fine, but scale peoples AP costs, like the White Lion, and give everyone more AP regen abilities in T2-T3.

My current paid time doesn't run out for a couple more weeks, and I plan to watch throughout that period.  As of now, I'll remain cancelled.  My wife decided she's not going to renew no matter what they do.  My buddy is cancelled but on the fence.  He's hoping for a miracle.

The OP didn't really tell us anything we didn't already know, and gives no timeline for the people who have been massively and negatively affected by the "bug fix".  That's my biggest objection.  Things change in MMOs, that's a given.  That being said, it does not give a company a free pass to provide a product that doesn't function for me.  I suspect that's the way a lot of people feel.  Since this was "fixed" without doing any testing on the fix, and the game now has new AP bugs - I call this whole thing a mistake.  The old bug at least did not make the game unplayable.  It made it easy to spam abilities and prevented the devs from balancing based on AP cost - but it didn't take away people's ability to play.  The new bugs halt AP regen totally, regen it at an uneven (and lesser rate), and maybe others I haven't read about.  That's a doubly negative affect and that's intolerable, frankly.

It's also telling that there are so few comments to this thread.  There do not appear to be as many people left from the camp that thought that the bug needed fixing but that the system as it is now is too severe.  Two possibilities; they've learned to adapt or they've left.

---

Andy wrote:

---

Testpig wrote:

 AP issue.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93MEw3KqQxM

 

please don't just claim AP is fine.. when it still clearly isn't.

 

don't get me wrong, i'm all for the AP fix, however, it's broken. I'm all for AP adjustments, but AP has hurt caster classes far more then it has hurt melee classes.

 

casters don't have an autoattack other then staffing. Maybe give casters some form of ranged auto attack from their staffs such as how engs/sh/sw have a ranged auto attack.

 

casters such as BWs and Sorcs can't really do anything without AP, and just that everything they do do, cost them life, they are in a constant lose lose situtation.

Message Edited by Testpig on 10-26-2009 04:17 PM

---

I've already forwarded this along to the CnC team for investigation.

 

Bugs are different from the way things are intended to focus. The jist of this article is still valid, as bugs exist outside the parameters of intent. 

---

I submitted a bug report about this AP issue almost 2 weeks ago in the combat and career forum, along with the exact steps to reproduce the issue, and have been completely ignored.

http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/board/message?board.id=bugs_careers&thread.id=5522

Maybe I should just use that forum for researching new bugs I can use in-game, like the stacking haste bug that was only fixed for one class...

---

Bartman wrote:

I understand why you made the changes but did you think about this?

 

1. Almost all higher level gear has no AP regen on it.

2. PvE zone will be infinately harder for classes like AM and RP to heal compared to WP. (same goes for Destro)

---

1) That's part of why AP regen is so valuable on gear: it's not as common (mostly just some set chests and the really rare epic rings/blue ap regen rings), but is very powerful in exchange.

2) PVE zones are perfectly easy for groups just as they always had been before this bug. It's players who never experienced them without infinite AP that will be thrown for a loop. The dungeons and encounters were all balanced around a finite pool of AP, not the other way around =)... 2.5 hour Lost Vale clears including a couple short afk breaks were doable by the group I ran with for awhile as Order, Crypts/Tunnels 30mins or so each. They aren't so easy you can sleepwalk through them, but with a group composed of decent-to-good players, they aren't impossibly hard either.

Part of the reason I came back from my 2-month break off the game was hearing that a fix for the AP regen bug was in the works, making it playable and more strategic again instead of just buttonmashing as it was in the bugged state. I'm glad it's fixed, and it has cemented along with the performance improvements my subscription for some time to come (paid through January already, and plan to continue past that).

Something you might want to consider is enjoyment vs strategy. While I agree with the quote 'it should be a pool and not an ocean,' right now, that pool feels more like a puddle.

One thing the 'spammable' nature of the AP previous to the fix achieved was making combat actually feel like combat. There was a definite large spam factor, but i think most people will agree, that it felt good to get in there and actually fight hard and furious.

I would be trying to achieve a middle ground - where you get a combination of higher AP regen that definitely has limits.

For example, perhaps when you first engage in combat, the regen is initially higher, allowing more openers - combo style attacks, so you have a decent enough pool to not only open, but react - and then the pace drops off.

I don't know specifically what i'd do, but i think a middle ground between the two would be for the best.

Couple of quick notes for everyone

• We tracked down the client bug that players have been reporting that causes AP bars to behave oddly. We're working on getting a fix up as soon as possible. As always client stability is a major concern so we will test this thoroughly before releasing a fix.

• We are expecting to see players change tactics and re-discover old strategies using AP managment tools. As such we're also expecting to have to put a bit more focus on AP managment skills and bug fixes in the next couple of patches.

• The team is carefully watching the high end encounters. Even though many of them were designed and tested before AP regeneration became significantly bugged we realize that many were already very difficult and as such they may need some additional tuning.

-Adam

Kudos to you for this change, the article and the overall understanding of the game and impacts of the changes you make to it (that wasn't always the case, this game is making great progress and getting closer to its full potential).