An adjustment to the combat formula will be tested on dev tomorrow for roughly a week starting its rollout there.

What the formula changes is a modifier value in the armor absorption that was recently changed. The previous update's modifier was * 3/2. We'll be increasing this modifier to 7/2.

Effectively, what this means (formula's posted in the feedback thread) is that more damage will come through/less absorbed than what is now the case.

Justification for it is that it is still better than the original hard cap we had on absorption, and could allow for tighter/shorter fights while letting more damage through (i.e. void bows..etc can come thruuuu).

We will additionally be testing +10 to min and max damage on the core staff, +15 armor and +10 dskill to the DL with the adjustment tomorrow.

A lot of us on the volunteer team have been doing a lot of simming and playing around with values. Bongo has especially run the proposed changes above in depth (I can share a pastebin of his several simulations/results) and seems to provide for more balanced builds.

Our focus here was allowing for more balanced builds + tighter fights, given the current formula changes as well as not leaving behind the low damage hitters.

I hope this post explains our rationale in these changes.

Once this update has been tried, tested, discussed, and rolled out after next week, we'll look at an armor swap/exchange, among other combat related things.

Reverting things or wiping progress of over a week would've been way too devastating for this game. I think the best course of action here is to fix-forward with these changes with the best and most thoroughly tested (and beneficial) adjustments we can collectively as a team create.

Thanks for your understanding!

~Aldo