RobbinB
05-29-2010, 08:22 AM
DDO's combat system is in serious need of an overhaul. Heck, it's completely broken. Here's how to fix it, especially with respect to sword-and-boarding.
1. Larger relevant AC window
Lots of ways to accomplish this. Previous suggestions made on forums:
- move from d20 to larger die
- altered statistical distribution
My suggestion: mob to hit changed to bab plus d20 plus dCr plus bonuses.
Mob base attack bonus would be 1-20 but would top out at 20 for most mobs at end game. Add that to the First d20 roll which is also applied in the usual manner for determining crits and auto-hit/vorpal 20s. Add that to the second roll which is 1 to the Cr of the mob. Then add special attack bonuses the particular mob may have such as fighter types having +1 due to weapon specialization and additional bonuses for hard and elite difficulties. Tweak as necessary for logical roll windows.
Bottom line: current AC window is 20, revised AC window would be 20 + mob Cr
2. Shield attacks for sword and boarders
Lots of previous posts/suggestions/ideas. Any of them will do. Additional attacks instituted as "hooks" or as "double strikes" or as retaliations whenever a mob rolls a l. Given to anyone equipping a shield, but improved/increased via feats (such as improved shield bash) or class/prestige enhancements.
Bottom line: current sword and board is 50% (or less) of TWF/THF. That needs to be increased to about 60% if no feat investments are made and 70-80% if full feat investments are made into offensive shield usage.
3. Defense and dr without turtling; turtling giving marginal increases thereafter
In dps (non-turtle) mode, the amount of dr a fighter might gain from adamantine armor is laughable, but the dr gained from active shield blocking (when intimitanking for example) can be significant. Likewise, there is no point in wearing full plate for ac reasons if you aren't going to equip a shield. This is backwards.
Base ac and dr from wearing medium and heavy armor should be higher, and equipping a shield should provide only a small increase to that ac and dr. Turtling (active shield blocking) should again up these increases only marginally. The point of equipping a shield is blocking blows, this needs to be introduced (yeah its not PnP, but PnP is broken, especially in DDO.)
Specific suggestions:
- reduce AC benefit of shield by removing +1 to +5 from AC calcs (only increase to AC from shield is from base type of shield: 0 for buckler, 1 for light, 2 for medium, 3 for heavy, 4 for tower)(maximal increase to this of 1-5 pts from feats/enhancements, because it should be better than shield spell)
- so we've just lost 1-5 pts of AC for shield users, add that difference back into the base AC of different armors (current range is something like 1 ac for padded to 8 ac for plate armor; increase that to 2 ac to padded up to a whopping 15ish for plate)
- give medium and heavy armors base dr of 2 and 4 which is then double for adamantine versions; medium, heavy, and tower shields +1 to +3 passive dr (raid shields could increase this by 1 pt)(possibly add the +1 to +5 item bonus to dr instead of ac)
- active shield blocking? +2 to ac and +2 dr only, no whopping increases, no improvements thru feats/enhancements
- add feat/enhancement bonuses to shield or armor ac/dr passively so they are useful in both dps and turtle mode (I believe at least some of the stalwart defender bonuses are currently like this)
4. Shield blocking bonuses
Small chances to absorb blows independent of ac. Examples would be 3/6/9/12/15% for bucklers/light/medium/heavy/tower shields. An additional +5% if actively blocking/turtling, some small additional bonuses thru prestige enhancements or shield related feats.
5. Changes to intimidate/diplomacy
This one might be controversial, but I would remove the whole idea of "intimidating" causing the mob to focus all hate on you. There's really no way to make this work right, as evidenced by current raid dynamics. If you allow intimidate to be effective (ie reset timer as long as effect, significant benefit of intimitanking to lower incoming damage), then this can trivialize raids....boring. But if you counteract that by not giving significant benefits to intimitanking, then what's the point of it at all? (ie most groups hate-tanking Horoth)
Solution:
- give players "threatening" and "diplomatic" stances (mutually exclusive - "normal" stance if neither is toggled)
- hate generation is the active damage * multipliers where the multipliers are determined by gear, class/prestige enhancements, and intimidate/diplomacy skill
- in "threatening" stance the intimidate skill is added as a percentage to increase hate
- in "diplomatic" stance the diplomacy skill is added as a percentage to decrease hate
- in "normal" mode, only damage done factors into hate
- active "intimidate" skill does not make mob focus aggro on you but instead actually causes mobs to be intimidated (penalty to hit and to saves stacking with other penalties, slightly larger reset timer, but much longer duration of effect; larger penalty for barbarians with intimidating rage)
- active "diplomacy" skill functions as current, ie can make a mob stop attacking you
- give paladins "warrior diplomacy" enhancement line adding x/y/z% of their diplomacy skill to their threatening stance bonus
Summary:
For armor-wearing fighter types, current game mechanics mean only a sword-and-board fighter attains meaningful defense, but at the cost of about 50% dps. My suggestions are to change the mechanics in such a way that a sword and board fighter would sit in the 60-80% dps range, but not be the only way to have meaningful ac and dr. Prior to factoring in feats and enhancements, the majority of ac and dr should come from armor and be passive, as opposed to coming from shields and be only when turtling. Shield feats and defensive-focused enhancements should allow for increased dps for shield users and/or better contributions of shields to defense.
Light armor and no armor wearers (like monks and rangers) might be able to achieve equal AC to defensive-focussed plate/shield fighter types, but the armor wearers would have the additional benefits of improved dr and blocking.
1. Larger relevant AC window
Lots of ways to accomplish this. Previous suggestions made on forums:
- move from d20 to larger die
- altered statistical distribution
My suggestion: mob to hit changed to bab plus d20 plus dCr plus bonuses.
Mob base attack bonus would be 1-20 but would top out at 20 for most mobs at end game. Add that to the First d20 roll which is also applied in the usual manner for determining crits and auto-hit/vorpal 20s. Add that to the second roll which is 1 to the Cr of the mob. Then add special attack bonuses the particular mob may have such as fighter types having +1 due to weapon specialization and additional bonuses for hard and elite difficulties. Tweak as necessary for logical roll windows.
Bottom line: current AC window is 20, revised AC window would be 20 + mob Cr
2. Shield attacks for sword and boarders
Lots of previous posts/suggestions/ideas. Any of them will do. Additional attacks instituted as "hooks" or as "double strikes" or as retaliations whenever a mob rolls a l. Given to anyone equipping a shield, but improved/increased via feats (such as improved shield bash) or class/prestige enhancements.
Bottom line: current sword and board is 50% (or less) of TWF/THF. That needs to be increased to about 60% if no feat investments are made and 70-80% if full feat investments are made into offensive shield usage.
3. Defense and dr without turtling; turtling giving marginal increases thereafter
In dps (non-turtle) mode, the amount of dr a fighter might gain from adamantine armor is laughable, but the dr gained from active shield blocking (when intimitanking for example) can be significant. Likewise, there is no point in wearing full plate for ac reasons if you aren't going to equip a shield. This is backwards.
Base ac and dr from wearing medium and heavy armor should be higher, and equipping a shield should provide only a small increase to that ac and dr. Turtling (active shield blocking) should again up these increases only marginally. The point of equipping a shield is blocking blows, this needs to be introduced (yeah its not PnP, but PnP is broken, especially in DDO.)
Specific suggestions:
- reduce AC benefit of shield by removing +1 to +5 from AC calcs (only increase to AC from shield is from base type of shield: 0 for buckler, 1 for light, 2 for medium, 3 for heavy, 4 for tower)(maximal increase to this of 1-5 pts from feats/enhancements, because it should be better than shield spell)
- so we've just lost 1-5 pts of AC for shield users, add that difference back into the base AC of different armors (current range is something like 1 ac for padded to 8 ac for plate armor; increase that to 2 ac to padded up to a whopping 15ish for plate)
- give medium and heavy armors base dr of 2 and 4 which is then double for adamantine versions; medium, heavy, and tower shields +1 to +3 passive dr (raid shields could increase this by 1 pt)(possibly add the +1 to +5 item bonus to dr instead of ac)
- active shield blocking? +2 to ac and +2 dr only, no whopping increases, no improvements thru feats/enhancements
- add feat/enhancement bonuses to shield or armor ac/dr passively so they are useful in both dps and turtle mode (I believe at least some of the stalwart defender bonuses are currently like this)
4. Shield blocking bonuses
Small chances to absorb blows independent of ac. Examples would be 3/6/9/12/15% for bucklers/light/medium/heavy/tower shields. An additional +5% if actively blocking/turtling, some small additional bonuses thru prestige enhancements or shield related feats.
5. Changes to intimidate/diplomacy
This one might be controversial, but I would remove the whole idea of "intimidating" causing the mob to focus all hate on you. There's really no way to make this work right, as evidenced by current raid dynamics. If you allow intimidate to be effective (ie reset timer as long as effect, significant benefit of intimitanking to lower incoming damage), then this can trivialize raids....boring. But if you counteract that by not giving significant benefits to intimitanking, then what's the point of it at all? (ie most groups hate-tanking Horoth)
Solution:
- give players "threatening" and "diplomatic" stances (mutually exclusive - "normal" stance if neither is toggled)
- hate generation is the active damage * multipliers where the multipliers are determined by gear, class/prestige enhancements, and intimidate/diplomacy skill
- in "threatening" stance the intimidate skill is added as a percentage to increase hate
- in "diplomatic" stance the diplomacy skill is added as a percentage to decrease hate
- in "normal" mode, only damage done factors into hate
- active "intimidate" skill does not make mob focus aggro on you but instead actually causes mobs to be intimidated (penalty to hit and to saves stacking with other penalties, slightly larger reset timer, but much longer duration of effect; larger penalty for barbarians with intimidating rage)
- active "diplomacy" skill functions as current, ie can make a mob stop attacking you
- give paladins "warrior diplomacy" enhancement line adding x/y/z% of their diplomacy skill to their threatening stance bonus
Summary:
For armor-wearing fighter types, current game mechanics mean only a sword-and-board fighter attains meaningful defense, but at the cost of about 50% dps. My suggestions are to change the mechanics in such a way that a sword and board fighter would sit in the 60-80% dps range, but not be the only way to have meaningful ac and dr. Prior to factoring in feats and enhancements, the majority of ac and dr should come from armor and be passive, as opposed to coming from shields and be only when turtling. Shield feats and defensive-focused enhancements should allow for increased dps for shield users and/or better contributions of shields to defense.
Light armor and no armor wearers (like monks and rangers) might be able to achieve equal AC to defensive-focussed plate/shield fighter types, but the armor wearers would have the additional benefits of improved dr and blocking.