Somehow I still get Aion newsletters, even though I have unsubscribed. I am always curious about game design changes, so I read it anyway. The newsletter talked about the introduction of a new 'stun defense' ability that will be introduced for 'balance'. I will first paste what they have to say about it, and then I will talk about how this is an example of an overzealous designer (Chris "Kinslon" Hager) trying to fix a problem by not completely understanding the crux of the problem, doing too much, missing the mark, ultimately not really fixing anything at all and creating more problems elsewhere. This happened time and time again in WAR and I wish I had documented every counter-productive patch and hotfix. But I guess better late than never:
Aquilanius: How exactly will the stun defense skills work?
Kinslon: You can purchase the Remove Shock skill from your character's appropriate skill trainer (preceptor). Once your character has learned the skill you've purchased, if your character becomes stunned in combat, Remove Shock becomes available as a chain skill that you can use to remove the stun and increase your character's resistance to stun, knockback, and similar conditions for 7 seconds. At later levels, class-specific skills that you can also learn will act as chain skills that let you go on the offensive in addition to the basic abilities of Remove Shock.
Aquilanius: What purpose does this stun defense have in overall class balance?
Kinslon: With each update in an MMO, the game designers need to rebalance the game's classes as players progress in skill and learn tactics that allow them to optimize (and sometimes overly optimize) specific class abilities. In the Aion 1.9 update, every class can now counteract and counterattack stun blocks to a degree. This strengthens the balance of all of Aion's classes. Future updates will continue to balance and shape each class, allowing players to shift tactics as new and different skills are introduced, and 1.9 is no exception.
First of all, it's good that the designers are aware that there is a problem with some classes (e.g., a well-geared Assassin can burst someone down from stealth while his target is stunned/disabled the entire time). But the problem with the stun defense is that they plan to give it to everyone. Here's a example to illustrate why this is a bad idea using Spiritmaster vs Chanters, since I am familiar with them. The only ranged stun a Chanter has is Soul Strike. It's a 4 sec stun with a 12 sec cooldown. If Spiritmasters are given this "blanket" stun defense ability, Chanters are pretty much f*cked. They just took away the only ranged stun a Chanter has, and the only way for a Chanter to get into melee range or kite a Spiritmaster. To make matters worse, Soul Strike doesn't even stun 100% of the time, AND pretty much all the CC a Chanter has is in the form of stuns! Might as well rename the 'Remove Shock' ability to 'F*ck you Chanters, LOL'.
Besides, I'm not even sure if this will fix the original problem of classes like the Assassin. Okay, so you can hit the button and be stun-free for 7 seconds. But within that 7 seconds, Assassins also can cast a buff to resist 2 magical attacks (this includes CCs). If you do wipe that buff off, there's no way you can CC him either. Snare/root him and the game already allows people to remove that with a potion. And now, he's buffed to be unstunnable as well because the new stun defense grants everyone the 7-second stun immunity. This change only marginally improves the problem scenarios, and hurts everyone else that didn't have a problem with stuns to begin with.
What they should have done instead, was specifically fix the problem classes, instead of taking this lazy one-size-fits-all fix.
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