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[PTU Blog] Polka and Poaching; a look at Dancer and Hunter revisions
Topic Started: Nov 10 2014, 06:21 PM (5,943 Views)
Matanui3
Pokémon Trainer
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Onidrill
Nov 13 2014, 12:26 AM
I suspect its change to Scene x2 was in part because Dancer had access to it, and it takes away from the handful of otherwise unremarkable butterflies that learn it.
Unremarkable butterflies... and one quite remarkable Sun Moth.

Volcarona is love, Volcarona is life.
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Pandora
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Cursed
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Nomad
Nov 14 2014, 10:19 PM
My concern was with how a ranged trainer would proc their Pack Hunt/Team Work ability they got with Hunter without having to be in melee range, which none of the current feats address.
I would like to ditto that. Currently, it just doesn't work for ranged trainers, and that's a pretty damn shame when the first thing I think of when I hear Hunter is someone with a bow or a gun. The Finisher clause that cast added on doesn't exactly help that, it just makes it feel like you need to sink in extra feats to become useful.
Edited by Pandora, Nov 25 2014, 02:46 AM.
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castfromhp
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I answered outside of this thread before, so I guess I may as well say it here too.

One frustration we've had with designing the system in general is that it's usually a much better proposition to be a ranged fighter in Pokémon than a melee fighter. Aside from the obvious reasons why being a ranged attacker is advantageous to being a melee attacker, some of this comes from how existing Abilities from the Pokémon video games like Iron Barbs/Rough Skin, Static, Flame Body, etc punish melee attacks. So when we make rules like flanking or Abilities like Teamwork and Pack Hunt, part of the intention there is to try to offset that advantage and give reasons why someone might prefer to stick around in melee. Additionally, part of what makes Teamwork and Pack Hunt work is the idea you have to stick close to your prey and hound them, whereas being able to trigger them at range makes it very easy to switch who you're targeting with those Abilities on the fly.

I feel that as it is, a ranged Hunter already has some pretty pronounced advantages, even if it doesn't trigger its own Teamwork and Pack Hunt Abilities as frequently. The Class is designed to lock down one target with their Pokémon and the help of allies, and when the Trainer using the Class is attacking at range, this means you can keep yourself pretty safe and prevent an enemy from closing in on you. That said, you will never be able to fully avoid being next to enemies, and there will be occasions where you find yourself adjacent to them. Ultimately, I don't feel it's a problem that some of the Class's effects are better when you're willing to get up close and personal. Not every combat Class is going to cater equally to ranged and melee combatants, and that's fine.

On another note, I updated the Dancer draft with a more recent revision. It's just a simple change to make the base Feature grant Spinning Dance or Own Tempo instead of Dance Moves and put the Dance Move Feature where Dancer used to get its Ability choice.
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Lockdown
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Minor thing, but why does Dance Form have HP and Speed as its stat tags, while all the others are Any and Speed?
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castfromhp
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Because the Class as a whole is supposed to be HP/Speed now, and I forgot. Updating it.
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Paperblade
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TM93
Nov 14 2014, 07:45 PM
Major
Nov 13 2014, 08:38 PM
To be fair multitasking would also allow someone to just nail you just as face. At higher levels (which is the only level that CS are going to be brutal) an EoT+STAB+Abilities+Atk can already get pretty high up there.
Can I just say one thing, that the major difference between the Multi-tasking used to hit someone twice and gaining +3 CS, is that +3 CS has that Lasting Power angle, you're gonna burn AP with Multi-tasking fast, whereas you can use it for the CS's once or twice then be set for the fight and STILL have AP to spare for other things instead of having to burn it over and over to keep up that Damage rate. Plus you could still use Multi-tasking AFTER CS Buffing the next turn, which leads to the CS Buff being far better for the long run.

CS Buff: 0 Damage, 3.2X Damage (1.6 due to being at +3 in a Stat after Psuedo-DD+Pseudo-SD, x2, per Round), 6.4 Damage
Attacks: 2x Damage, 4X Damage, 6x Damage.

That's right, after 3 rounds, the CS Buff abuse of Multi-tasking is outdamaging the flat-offensive Multi-tasking.

Edit: if you get to +6 CS, which is somewhat reasonable on Turn 3, it turns into something even scarier for the long haul. Also note the variable X in these equations essentially stands for "one use of the Attack", so basically the amount of Damage relative to having fired off the Attack once. Also this is admittedly for the Stat damage, this doesn't really take Damage Bases into account. But eventually the difference becomes so great that the Damage Base wouldn't be considerable (Turn 4 on average is where the CS Buff prep starts to outshine flat offense without many exceptions.)

0 Damage, 3.2x Damage, 3.2x Damage (used to buff again with an EoT move, now the Rate is 4.4x Damage per turn with continued Multi-Tasking), 7.6x Damage, 12x Damage.
This math isn't entirely accurate because combat stages aren't straight up damage multipliers like they are in-game, although I'm not saying a conclusion of "spamming +combat stages asap in a fight is super broken." I'd agree with that a lot of the time.

+60% Attack doesn't straight up translate to +60% damage, since damage reduction from defenses is additive (Attack - Defense) and it doesn't effect your damage roll from the move at all. This is why combat stages are pretty "whatever" early, when you're doing like 20+2d6+8 damage (DB6, which I think is a pretty good standard for early game attacks, stuff like Bite is DB6 as are many STAB moves) and that gets a +5 on top of it, that doesn't matter too much because it increases your damage range from 30-40 to 35-45, which gets reduced by 10 or something so it goes from 20-30 to 25-35, so 25 to 30 average damage becomes only a 20% increase in damage, meaning you need 5 attacks to break even, not too likely without the battle either ending or your pokemon getting switched out (due to fainting or otherwise) from my experiences. However, if we increase the target's defense to 20, meaning we're attacking something more tanky, our average damage goes from 15 to 20, a 33% increase!

But then, let's jump ahead to, I dunno, like 70, where something like 40 Attack/Defense is more likely, and attacks are a bit stronger, something like DB10, maybe (this really depends on the mon, something with a lot of situational scene moves might be more in the DB12+ range, plus abilities and STAB messes with things). 40+3d8+10 is 53-74 damage, averaging out to about 63.5, meaning you'd do 23.5 to something with 40 defense. But then, if we throw out a Swords Dance, our average damage jumps to 43.5. Goddamn, we nearly doubled our damage! Obviously, the % increase will be much smaller vs. something less defensively inclined. Something with 20 defense it will jump from 43.5 to 63.5, which is more in line with Swords Dance's +50% boost, but still better compared to Sharpening at level 20 or so.

So, as you level up, attack and defense, in a vacuum, increase at roughly the same pace (from my experience, attack increases quicker due to the soft cap of 30 for Def/SDef, so my playgroup tends to like offense as the highest stat unless the mon has a non-direct attacking niche, but I dunno if this is widespread so I'm not gonna make assumptions), so damage done does not increase much outside of getting better moves and feats/abilities that boost damage, *ignoring combat stages*. But then we add in combat stages and everything gets fucked up, because something that boosts stats is going to scale much quicker than your normal damage with levels. If you raise your attack by 1 every 2 levels, your actual damage output won't quite increase that much in context because as you level so are enemies (presumably, anyway), so your actual damage done won't increase that much. However, combat stages don't really give a fuck about enemy defense, because unless you're facing some crazy thing it's already being canceled out by your attack, so you just get a nice boost that gets bigger and fatter the higher level you are. This also gets compounded with the fact that early game your combat stage raising stuff is rare and sucks (+/- 1, whereas later you get +2 and in rare cases even +3 or more).

Note that for some fucker that's running around with technician stab skill link'd five strike moves that have like DB20 because fuck your god (yes I know skill link is scene) or is a status bitch whose only attack is a "see you in hell" Explosion this math loses accuracy because damage dice continues to play a huge part in your damage.

If the level squish that was mentioned as being in the works several months ago is still a thing and is coming with a stat squish this will be less of an issue. Another alternative is to make combat stages a flat boost (maybe scaling a bit with level, I've always liked PTA's STAB even if PTU's is probably better for the actual STAB mechanic). You could ALSO make DBs be a larger jump in damage but that screams "danger could break the game"
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castfromhp
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To be honest, I don't know why all of this combat stage discussion is occurring as if it would all be in a vacuum where enemies don't focus on you more for trying to buff up, try to force you into a situation where you'd want to Take a Breather, or use effects like Snatch, Haze, and Clear Smog to screw with your Combat Stages. I'd put those Moves up there with cleric effects when it comes to things that most parties will try to pack on adventures and be ready for.

In practice, Combat Stages have not been this scary all-dominating thing at high levels that it's being made out to be. They were very potent for us in Visiwa towards the end of the game (we hit Trainer Level 50), but a LOT of that came from the fact zoof was nice to us when it came to packing counters and even let us reroll a Metronome that resulted in a Haze after our Dancer spent a couple of turns buffing himself up.
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Paperblade
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I just like to ramble about numbers

edit: Although from my experiences as a GM it's players spamming -stages on stuff to neuter its damage that's more annoying
Edited by Paperblade, Nov 27 2014, 01:27 AM.
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Major
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castfromhp
Nov 27 2014, 12:30 AM
To be honest, I don't know why all of this combat stage discussion is occurring as if it would all be in a vacuum where enemies don't focus on you more for trying to buff up, try to force you into a situation where you'd want to Take a Breather, or use effects like Snatch, Haze, and Clear Smog to screw with your Combat Stages. I'd put those Moves up there with cleric effects when it comes to things that most parties will try to pack on adventures and be ready for.

In practice, Combat Stages have not been this scary all-dominating thing at high levels that it's being made out to be. They were very potent for us in Visiwa towards the end of the game (we hit Trainer Level 50), but a LOT of that came from the fact zoof was nice to us when it came to packing counters and even let us reroll a Metronome that resulted in a Haze after our Dancer spent a couple of turns buffing himself up.
Combat Stages is one of the things I actually agree with you guys on. I don't feel Dancer is broken. I also don't feel that even at high levels that combat stage buffing is an automatic crush. If someone powered up enough that they suddenly nailed my pokemon so hard that it dropped it in one hit you can bet we'd either throw out debuffs or just have the whole party target that guy. Given, if we left a guy to sit in a corner and buff an entire fight that's our fault.

Personally, I think the new dancer is pretty cool. Sucks that our party's Dancer will lose one of the big things that made him useful for a few levels (he's all support so he took it for passing waltz or whatever the share buff thing is, but we aren't at master rank yet), but we're only a few levels away so hopefully by 1.05 we'll be there and he won't notice the difference.

Nonetheless, *I* think the new dancer is really cool. Given, I don't play a dancer :P
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TM93
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I wasn't trying to say that Combat Stages were broken, simply that "just spamming Multitasking to Attack two times every turn" isn't really a better way to deal damage. Just to clarify.
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