Warrior Class Flavor plus Explanations on DoD, Duration, and FATE
A couple of Monday night nuggies for the team.
The DFK team just released the Warrior skill list in its full glory. Check it out over at their Medium here.
The Warrior class is a spicy one and I hope brings some smiles to the community. For a class that is in pretty much RPG ever in the history of time, it’s hard to deviate too much from the fantasy we all would expect and enjoy.
So! We focused on three paths that felt the most universally fun:
Gladiator: Straight-up big DPS
Juggernaut: Simple prot warrior vibes
Bloodthirst: Lifesteal and self-sustain bruiser
I hope they strike your fancy.
Also, there are a couple of juicy nuggets in the class drop today that I wanted to make sure I could explain before poor Wowee starts his speculation stream tonight.
DoD (Degree of Difficulty)
This is something you’ll see a lot more of. It made its first appearance in the Archer’s capstone skill “Masterful Shot”, which featured a DoD that reduced the accuracy of the attack by 50%. But, we liked it so much as a balance lever that you’ll see it in almost every class moving forward (and we’ll tie some DoD back into Archer, Knight, and Priest in the coming weeks). Special note, this is a big W on the balance side and makes both my and Hubert’s brains feel nice, this way we won’t have to rely on pricing-out high mana costs to nerf overpowered skills.
In short, the way damage is dealt in this game has several rolls and checks akin to what you might expect in DnD (don’t worry, I’ll post a blog breaking that all down soon). After an Action is confirmed by the player to attack an enemy, the first thing to happen after that confirmation is an Evasion (EVA) check to see if the attack actually hits the target.
That Evasion check takes the Accuracy of the attack itself (this is derived from the Hero’s stats, and the weapon the Hero is using) and subtracts the Evasion of the target Hero — but also the Degree of Difficulty (DoD). That value is then rolled to determine if there was a successful hit or not.
For example, let’s say CryptoGrady’s Warrior is about to hit my Priest with “Final Blow” in an attempt to Execute my Priest, which has 9% remaining HP. Grady’s Warrior is using a Sword that, when derived with some fancy math we’ll share later, has a 100% chance to hit my Priest. But! “Final Blow” has a 50% DoD, so the check would be:
100% Initial Accuracy - 50% DoD - 5% EVA = 45% Hit Roll
In turn, Grady’s Warrior would have a 45% chance to successfully hit my Priest at this point in the check process (there are several more steps to this that I’ll get into another time).
FATE (The Hand of Fate)
The math behind FATE is a secret for now, but what FATE actually is is pretty cool. In short, the world of DFK is governed by a pantheon of gods who love to interact and mess with the denizens of the realm. As a result, the Hand of Fate is ever-present in the daily lives of all of our Heroes, especially in battle.
So, FATE is a derived value that represents that godly influence of mischief and malice. Think of it like a sprinkle of luck that could ever-so-gently turn the tide of a battle.
Duration (formerly known as a Round)
Oooookay, so there’s been a fair amount of confusion around what a Round is, what a Turn is, how long persistent status effects last, and a pile of other confusing things around this topic. So! We decided to clarify this a bit by swapping to “Duration” to describe how long something lasts in-battle.
I’m gonna draw a quick diagram to see if that helps:
Real quick, “A” means “Action” and the 1, 2, 3 are Hero Turns.
Here, you see a Skill that has a Duration of 3 — for example, the Knight’s “Forever Vigilant” that provides allies with “50% resistance to Daze for 3 Rounds”.
Now, that read as “resistance to Daze for a Duration of 3”.
Let’s say your Knight takes the action of casting “Forever Vigilant”, then starting from that moment and until the start of the third (3rd) turn of the Hero, the effect persists. All of the Hero actions (Turns) that occur between when this Knight first takes an action and the next time the Knight gets to take an action, is referred to as a Duration of 1 or 1 Duration.