how about you just dont care about this since this probably doesn’t affect you anyways.

In another reply you said that KI’s “explanation in the update notes is perfectly sufficient for normal gameplay, that being “there are now diminishing returns when you get stats above x number, with a limit at y number.”
And KI says that these are the changes:
Affected Stat PvE PvP
Damage Intersection 150 100
Damage Limit 200 200
Resist Intersection 100 50
Resist Limit 125 70
And explicitly state that:
“A player with a Resist stat of 100 or below will see no change to his Resist values; players with a Resist stat over 100 will see diminishing returns in the amount of Resist he or she receives with a practical limit of 125%.”
So, you are saying that the anouncement is wrong???? Why include it in the anouncement then. Why not let people have resist of 200 in PvE if it really is unchanged? But clearly KI did change Resist for PvE.
Equally clearly, more such changes are being considered including the statement that:
“The Pierce stat is unchanged At This Time.” And you state in this article that Pierce “may change in the future (I have personally discussed and suggested several different ways pierce could function in the new system).” With this change – particularly for PvE – nothing is off the table for future changes and KI may well decide to have Pierce apply to Resist AFTER the limit function instead of before. Easy Peasy. Just a small code change. Or give Bosses 50% Pierce or 95%.
Nothing KI said and Nothing you said give PvE players any comfort that these stat changes were necessary or make PvE gameplay better. Muck with PvP all they want (probably wouldn’t say this if the kids did PvP) – they can look at the numbers on PvP to see if activity declined (esp for high level wizards) before and after this change. The effect on PvE will be very subtle. Membership renewls will drop off somewhat randomly as players feel the impact of Balancing – hard to tell the difference between a player getting tired of the game and those that don’t like this change.
And don’t forget the Spell Audits (“Our spell audit continues”). Balance wizards are hobbled while other schools get higher level traps and blades than Balance.
“Balance blades and traps, because they are universal-type damage and easily stacked, remain at +25%.”
So, any solo wizard with one trap (30%) and one blade (35%) will achieve a 76% hit boost except a Balance wizard (with 25% each) that only gets a 56% hit boost (look math). I guess that is fair because Balance wizards are just Helper wizards and don’t solo very much.

Judging from your most recent comment, you still haven’t read and/or understood the article. I suggest you take a closer look to understand why your statement “Resist is clearly changed in PvE” is incorrect. Pierce is calculated before resist is passed to the limit function.

Risist is clearly changed in PVE: “Resist Intersection – 100 / Resist Limit – 125”
With Armor Piercing jewels with up to 6% combined with Infallible with 20% and Extraordinary with 20% treasure cards, a player can get Armor Piercing to 46% (plus gear stats). What do the bosses have? Usually better than the players and so many of them cheat. The only way to keep Resist “effectively unchanged” is to never allow Bosses to have higher levels of Armor Peircing. And will the next world and new special dungeons have bigger and badder bosses? Of Course, but players are now capped on these two stats with KI keeping their options open to capping or changing other stats. BTW, will the wizard stats page show the pre-limiting levels of Resist since that is what applies to Pierce? Or just the limited/capped PVE and PVP value as shown now?

AND PvP with a resist cap at 70%, well that is a big change. (I get that facing another player that has 100% resist to your school is not fair.)

Immunity is not “easy to achieve” and is the significant effort worth it? Time will tell. People have gotten Imunity for single schools but I have not read any report where a wizard has achieved Immunity for all schools (unlike Malistaire the Undying). If Membership drops off (esp for ones with High Level wizards) it won’t be blamed on this change. After all, there is always something newer and better and more exciting around the corner. On the other hand, maybe people will stick around for the Fishing or Gardening – lol.

I didn’t say that Diminishing returns were useless – just that the effort to get to a capped wizard is not worth it. And once you reach these caps, there is no point in making a better damage and/or resist wizard, no point in getting higher level gear, no point in buying Crown gear. The challenge is over.

As far as players focussing on other stats… Am also sure that “Combat Balance Improvements” will continue. The announcement states that “The Pierce stat is unchanged at this time” – clearly indicating that Pierce IS on the table to being changed. Maybe max Health will be capped next. Or maybe a universal 10% chance of a fizzle regardless of the accuracy of the wizard. (Ever notice that with some Bosses or dungeons your wizard fizzles significantly more often that during other battles? hmmmm) Or maybe bosses will steal the wizards pips (oh wait, already have that). What will KI do about all those wizards that seem to cast spells always boosted with Critcal? Easy, diminish and cap Critcal too. And all those One-Shot wonders that show up in Team Up? Just let the Bosses cheat and recover like trick birthday candles (already have bosses that summon new minion when the old ones are defeated). KI could have just kept making bigger and better Bosses for PvE. They could have approaced the dynamics of PvP another way to balance PvP. Guardian Spirit was changed for PvE because people complained about the high level of health regained after being defeated in PVP. Taking stuff away from people that they worked so hard for the stats is a downward spiral.

Like this article notes, resist in PvE is effectively unchanged. The resist limit of 125 is irrelevant because the intersection is 100 and pierce is applied before resist is passed into the function (all explained in the article – I suggest you take a closer read if you need more info). Immunity is still equally easy to achieve and any resist over 100% will continue to act as a pierce buffer.

Diminishing returns doesn’t mean useless – stats are still useful (I suggest checking out the calculator linked in the article). If anything, it’s incentivizing weighing other stat options besides min maxing damage or resist.

Just find a quiet place to get them to One In A Million in steps.
It’s a great lesson in the power of compound interest.

What about Armor Piercing, a 2011 added stat?
“Armor piercing counters resist. This percentage lowers your opponent’s resist and can reduce the resist of shields. If you had 20% armor piercing and the boss had a 50% tower shield on, then your attack would lower the tower shield to 30%.” from Final Bastion
“The Pierce stat is unchanged at this time. It is important to note that Pierce is applied to the Resist stat before the Resist stat is applied via the new limit formulas. Players may find some value in chasing Resist well above the intersection in order to serve as Pierce insurance.” KI Damage/Resist Stat Limits anouncement
So, having 120% Resist against a 20% Armor piercing attack might be worth having. Hope those peircing stats don’t increase above 25% because the Resist limit is now 125% PvE (only 70% in PvP).
It takes a lot of time and effort to farm, craft and/or buy multiple Crown packs to get high value stats plus time and effort hatching pets over and over and over to get pets with high value stats.
Reducing these stats means that all that time, effort and Crowns only to get “diminishing returns for higher stat values” gear/pets means that higher level wizards have no reason to spend all that time, effort and Crowns.
And of course, KI leaves it open to changing other stats to “balance the game”.

One of the major issues is that resist cannot go above 100. This means that there was a natural limit (in the non-mathematical sense) to how strong of stats gear could give you. The developers provided an excellent example of this on their twitter page: robes designed in the early 2010s and robes designed in 2020 have similar resist stats, something that absolutely should not be happening since there have been 70+ levels added to the game since then. This means that as time goes on, it becomes more and more difficult to incentivize people to keep using new gear as opposed to old gear. I may be wrong here, but the highest resist robe (tied) was designed around 2014-2015 and there have only been riffs on that robe ever since.

Under this new system, it becomes possible to give gear “better” stats numerically than before without having stats that are so ridiculous the characters achieve literal god-like power. Imo, the point was that before this change there was a small and rapidly shrinking design space for gear upgrades (in addition to dampening out of control resist and damage stats in pvp). Now, the space has increased dramatically and there should be no issues with sustainability going forward.

I don’t have a background in mathematics so I presume I’m wrong; I’m asking a question not calling you wrong, but how does this actually balance anything? Doesn’t it still have the same dynamic?

To my understanding, Damage needed to rise exponentially just to keep up with the linear increase in Resist, because Damage has constant returns while Resist has exponential returns. Is this not still the case, just with lower values, under the new capped system?

In your own Case 2, all you’re doing is reducing 130% Damage and 55% Resist to 122% and 54% respectively Putting these through a calculator just gives has the new capped system as doing slightly less damage.

Damage still needs to increase more or less exponentially to counteract Resist’s linear increase. So what’s the point? Is this just about decreasing damage overall?

I know you’ve been working on this for a long time so I highly doubt I disproved its necessity with my ten-minute reading of the article, I’m just curious about the why.

“The biggest change in this update from a combat perspective will be the new Damage and Resist stat limits. Rather than continuing on a 1% bonus per 1 stat point linear progression, both Damage and Resist will now follow a stat curve – a limit function – that gives diminishing returns for higher stat values.” This “explanation in the update notes is perfectly sufficient for normal gameplay” – Seriously??? We get diminished returns. The more effort we put into the game, the less we get?
Actually, the simple explaination is that all that time and effort to make the best wizard has been a waste. No problem for early players and casual players. But for the serious hard core players, part of the game was making the biggest and baddest wizard. Guess those wizard will be leaving for the next new game.
It used to be as you leveled up your wizard got stronger and the bosses got stronger. Will KI be limiting the the bosses, retroactively as they have done our wizards?
Oh well, the kids will soon graduate and find more interesting things in life.