Post your favorite elemental balance charts

[Humble_Bee]

To anyone familiar with Ragnarok, you know that in the original game, the elements aren't balanced. Holy is resistant to darn near everything, while Fire is largely only resistant to itself. Since I'm a big of game balance, I re-did my elemental table to make both defensive and offensive elements balanced. Of course, there are a million ways to do this, so this thread is for people to post their favorite versions of their balanced elemental mods chart. Here is lv. 1 of mine:

 

// Columns - target's defense element           Element Lv. 1
// Rows    - attacker's weapon element

Neut	Watr	Erth	Fire	Wind	Pois	Holy	Shdw	Ghst	Und	
105	105	90	105	105	105	125	105	75	80	Neutral
95	75	100	125	85	105	90	100	100	125	Water
95	125	75	85	125	125	90	90	80	110	Earth
95	85	125	75	100	105	90	120	80	125	Fire
95	125	85	100	75	105	90	90	110	125	Wind
125	90	120	115	115	75	90	100	95	75	Poison
95	90	90	95	95	125	75	125	85	125	Holy
95	100	90	120	110	85	125	75	125	75	Shadow
75	110	120	90	80	95	100	120	125	85	Ghost
125	95	105	90	110	75	125	75	125	75	Undead

Note: The biggest thing to remember is that this about balance, which means it will be unlikely that a person will get everything they want for every element.

What I like about mine:

Neutral has a weakness, and it gives more of a reason for undead element to be used as a weapon.

Ghost players can actually get the full neutral resistance from Ghost armor on my server, instead of the hot mess that iRO did with Ghost armor.

Undead gets neutral resistance, which makes them more realistically undead for me.

The normal gameplay on my server will be more full of variety, especially when I make monster basic attacks 50% non-elemental 50% monster element, and once I change the monster spawn rates around so that there is more elemental mixing.

What I don't like about mine:

In order to get Undead and Earth with neutral resistance, it required giving other elements a small neutral weakness. Not as big of a deal at lv. 1, but becomes more of a bonus at the higher levels. I also wish Holy's neutral weakness wasn't so high, but since a lot of holy enemies will have heals, it will help against neutral using players.

Shadow doesn't have any poison resistance, so it's not as traditionally thematic compared to other games. I'm not fond of Water having such a high Earth weakness, but it would have messed up my thematic choices on other elements to lower it. 

When it comes to offense, people only need to use a neutral and a water weapon to have 100% coverage against everything. I don't like this feature, but there also aren't a ton of strengths between the two either, so it won't be that much of a boost. Given how happy I am with the rest of the balancing, I don't know that I would change this.

- - - -

Notes:

On my server-

Ghosts aren't inherently immune to neutral damage, but at lv. 4 they gain full immunity.

Undead armor element won't affect healing, but I will likely make a racial bonus that will give increased elemental/defensive resistances in exchange for lowered healing.

My lv. 2, lv. 3, and lv.4 elemental mods increase according to the lv. 1 bonuses, so a 10% bonus at lv. 1 turns into 20% bonus at lv. 2, and a 15% resist turns into a 30% resist at lv. 2 and a 45% resist at lv. 3.
- - - -
In order to have a balanced elemental table, both offense and defense must be balanced. It's easy to get stuck thinking about only defense, and this wouldn't be a problem if players had to use the same weapon element as they do their armor element, but if a shadow armor player can use any weapon type and one weapon is strong against half your elements and another weapon is strong against the other half, the player has an "easy win" button offensively.

EDIT: I recently edited my table after noticing that poison seemed too strong against the first 5 elements combined. Boosted water resistance to help with this.

EDIT2: My elements were messing up in game until I realized that the amount of lines between the charts must be the exact same as they are in the original file. In the original file you see something like:

Spoiler

1    // lv1 Attribute table
//Neut Watr Erth Fire Wind Pois Holy Shdw Gho  Und

In my updated elemental chart, I had spaced it out to be like:

Spoiler

1    // lv1 Attribute table
 

//Neut Watr Erth Fire Wind Pois Holy Shdw Gho  Und

The extra space between the two lines, even though there is nothing there, is apparently read as part of the array, and so can mess up the file.

Edited July 21, 2020 by Humble_Bee

[Tereco]

where can i edit it in src?

[Humble_Bee]

21 hours ago, Tereco said:

where can i edit it in src?

It's not in SRC. It is in rAthena->rathena->db->re (or pre-re, depending on if you are using a renewal or pre-renewal server). The file is called attr_fix . I will say, you will probably want to make a copy of the file and save it before changing anything. Also, the balancing work almost requires a program like Microsoft Excel, or OpenOffice, or LibreOffice, as it is there that you can do formulas for sums to make sure everything adds up properly. Of course, if you wanted to make a game based on Shadow being really over-powered and all the other elements having to fight against it, that could add a whole new dynamic to your server.

Edited July 18, 2020 by Humble_Bee