Player Character Balance

[Mercureal]

The Tear of Dhakaan for instance, it was made more solo friendly by making the shrines unlocked, and adding another shrine. Before if you didn't have a rogue you would need to conserve and be extra careful, now that element is lost. We couldn't have one quest with this extra challenge? This is the type of direction I am against.

Tear has been that way for a long time, though, probably four years. I don't think you can use that as an indicator of the current trend in DDO design - unless you're saying that they're making changes now that are similar to changes they made several years ago, which really isn't an indicator of any sort of trend at all.

[GrantAnderson]

I don't think you do as it stands. The very meager losses for some classes at higher levels are more than compensated by very powerful low hanging fruit.Sure, there's a few abilities that are lower in the enhancement trees than I would have expected, but when I'm designing a character, I still often find that I have to make painful trade-offs. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with moving the low-hanging fruit a bit higher up, too; I can adjust.

But...


I do think that people are increasingly unable to cooperate. I am rolling rogue now, first time (never felt the need to disable traps before) just for fun. When there is a quest that has deadly traps (a large number of quests have traps that can be avoided) I have been casted a few times heroism by other players(even though I carry hundreds of heroism pots on me, but how would they know). When there are no such traps, the only thing I see is a bunch of people running like crazy ants all over the quest. In wizzard king, one of the most common demands is be able to solo a tower.

Playing in groups seems to be done simply for faster completition (in quests where there is actually such gain), whereas in quests with few fights or very linear I can only see advantages to doing it alone. I dislike that. This is brought by the fact that people don't have a more meaningful way to cooperate.
... what I do not like is the idea of forced co-operation (co-operation by your definition, too; others have said they co-operate just fine at the moment).

I have a very young child; my gaming time is erratic and can be interrupted for long periods at any given moment. If people were depending on me (as they would be in your ideal grouping situation, I think) then they would be left in the lurch if my son needs me. This would make them unhappy, and is the primary reason I solo.


Outside of raids, 4 lever quests and a bunch of other quests I don't see much meaningful encouragement for grouping in this game. For me, one of the MAIN appeals of the DnD world is the group dynamics and I think this is the case for a large number of people too
Yes, and raids and 4-lever quests are a mild irritant to me, too. Raids (and this isn't limited to DDO) gate what are generally the best rewards in the game (and also in some cases, the main story of the game) behind cat-herding. I would much rather see very challenging quests as raids, with a variety of difficulty settings determined by group size, a la challenges, and Commendation style rewards. Get X Commendations for beating it on Y difficulty, and give the soloists a crack at the loot and story, albeit more slowly than your groupers.

As for 4-lever/pad quests, I have soloed a few of them anyway with Hold trickery and the like, but if I can't work around it at all, it's an annoyance.[/quote]

The thing is, you and other people to whom these group dynamics appeal could make four interdependent characters right now - Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User and Thief - and play them in the synergistic way you describe. Your disappointments appear to be that a) not everyone wants to play like that, and b) you don't get special rewards for doing so.


Encouraging more team play by providing obvious ways to cooperate does not necessarily mean making soloing impossible or a very ugly option.
When you've talked about incentivising co-operation, it has sounded a lot like you want to weaken builds that are good at soloing. You may not want to make soloing a very ugly option, but it sounds like your aim is to make it less attractive. I don't want to feel punished for soloing.


PS - So let me bring your attention again to the cooperation test. When was the last time or how frequently happens that:

1. Someone healed you.
2. You waited for someone to deal with a trap or did it yourself (for the group while they waited).
3. Casted or received NON group buffs (those that need specific targetting and are not just an externality).
4. Participated in an explicit group strategy (positioning, pulling, shield walls, whatever) with other party members.
(bring more if you come up with them)
A few months back, I did a couple of Shrouds in a group (at level 28, with other high-level characters :) ). I'm pretty sure we did 1, 3, and 4. And 2, if puzzles count.

In return, let me bring your attention to the fun test. When was the last time or how frequently does it happen that:
1. You have fun playing DDO?
In my case (more or less) right now. At least, I'm logged in typing this, and I'm going to go do an Epic Sentinels of Stormreach quest before work. I'm tossing around ideas for a beholder-punishing (I'm not bitter) max-SR drow Paladin/Ranger, and a pure Dark Monk to stealth as many quests as I can, in the character planner. I enjoy the game and the variety of builds available to me as a soloist, and it would make me sad if soloing were made punitively difficult because other people like to group.

It seems to me from the other comments in this thread that some enjoy grouping, and some enjoy soloing, and DDO supports both, better than many games I've tried. So I support it, with money. I'm pretty sure I'm not damaging the game, as has been suggested elsewhere in the thread.

[Vamm]

Briefly checking in: Still reading along!

We're taking a couple days of hiatus, but hopefully early next week we'll have crunched some data on the 1000+ survey results, and have gathered some additional feedback from the rest of the DDO team and have some more thoughts to share with you guys.

My thanks to all of you for your continued feedback, and to Cordovan helping to put together the extensive survey results!

Thanks again for your and the team's efforts!

Side note related to something you posted previously. If doing an analysis of melees and the effectiveness of their armor/PRR in higher level content, please don't forget how any changes would be applied to Warforged. Since their 'armor' is non-traditional, they've been overlooked in this area in the past. As things currently stand, a Warforged melee needs to take an extra feat to get armor ratings that are still substandard to fleshies wearing actual armor.

Looking forward to seeing you guys at PAX East this year.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

You do not achieve class balance by forcing players to work together, or preventing players from soloing quests.


You achieve class balance by making sure that similarly geared characters of any class can group together and feel that they are contributing roughly equally to quest completion.



Although you also have to take into consideration other things a class might give someone other than DPS.

A Ranger gets evasion, ranged and TWF feats, some useful spells... including healing spells and access to spell feats to beef those healing spells up.

Should a Ranger do equal DPS to a Barbarian, who gets none of those extra things? Plus can do even less when raging!


IMO, the classes will never be equal, but each should have strengths and weaknesses.


Barbarians strengths are super DPS.. and other benefits while raged.
High HP. (which should mean something in EE, both against monsters and traps.)

They are supposed to have better saves against traps too.... if the game would allow them to get a high enough Ref save and high enough HP, they would not feel they need evasion for traps.

Rage is suppose to add to For (by Con) and Wil saves.
If those two saves were more useful in the game, Evasion would be less useful, and Barbs would have a significant advantage against certain types of spells. (again, assuming they have ways to get their saves up high enough)


Barbs have Damage Reduction.
Unfortunately, Turbine kept the PnP DR numbers for Brbs despite multiplying monster damage by many exponents.
Barb DR needs to be beefed up! A lot! Maybe by a factor or 10 or more by the time they are running EEs.

Barbs can wear Medium Armor (and use shields)
If Medium armor gave more PRR, Barbs could stand longer in fights. (like they are suppose to!!!!) (and if certain Armor like Mithral Full Plate gave the PRR of Heavy Armor, that would be good for Barbs too.)
(oh, and beefing up shields would help Brbs too... at least by giving them an option for more protection in certain dungeons or situations.)


Epic Destinies: These would be more fun IMO, if every destiny offered something for every class.
Barbs could really benefit from destinies and twists that helped them overcome their limitations.... like no self healing.

Although.... is my memory correct? Do Brbs get the Heal skill as a class skill?
Even if they do not, Brbs get more skill points than most classes.

Find a way for the Heal (and Repair) skill to be more useful to non-casters. Please.




I could go on and say something about every class... but I'm too lazy right now.


But lets take a moment to mention some disadvantages of the all-powerful Sor.

Low HP. Unfortunately, most players of Sorcs pile on the Con, so that this is less of an obstacle.
But if other stats were more meaningful, in theory that high investment in Con means a disadvantage elsewhere. (I think it already does, but most players of Sorcs are convinced that the other stats are useless to them, so maybe something needs to be changed here to make them feel the pain of such a high Con investment)

No Armor!
Yes, they have some magical armor options, but they should be taking a ton of more damage then the guy who has (magical) Plate Armor and a Tower Shield.

Again.... beefing up Armor PRR would help those classes that can wear armor, and bring them closer to balance to the caster gods.


They are suppose to have limited Spells per day (SP).
But... the devs took us down a path that I see no coming back from there.....

Lolths SP drain attack was a move in the right direction though.

Add monsters that are immune to magic. (you soloist Sorcs can pull out a weapon too ya know.)(Or bring a melee hire, like those Brbs have to bring a healer hire)




I'm out of time... but do you see one pattern here?

Armor!
Reducing damage!

it can be the difference of a Sor walking into a room, the door shuts and the Sor is now trapped in a room with no where to run, from an army of magic immune monsters.

And a Brb walking into the same room, and the army of magic immune monsters is now trapped in the room with no where to run from the Barbarian!




That is class balance! ;)










(BTW, I practically hate playing Barbs, and I am not a Sorc fan either. I am a Ranger fan. But I support people being able to have fun with any class they choose to play)

[GrantAnderson]

Not sure why I need to provide evidence of my opinions. It's based on my experience and I am calling it how I see it. I already explained how many classes are being rendered obsolete. If you want to solo that's fine but the more solo friendly this game gets the more watered down generic hack and slash the farther it gets from D&D you seem fine with that but I think its a tragedy. I am glad that soloing is an option and I mainly solo myself but it should be harder than grouping and currently it is not. quest scaling needs to be tweaked and power builds need to be toned down. Soloing should be an accomplishment and all classes should have a place.

The Tear of Dhakaan for instance, it was made more solo friendly by making the shrines unlocked, and adding another shrine. Before if you didn't have a rogue you would need to conserve and be extra careful, now that element is lost. We couldn't have one quest with this extra challenge? This is the type of direction I am against.

Some people did play, and do play, D&D as hack-and-slash, you know; hack-and-slash is hardly 'far from D&D'. D&D supported many playsty- oh look, an analogy. D&D supported many playstyles, just like DDO does.

As for Tear, I did solo that pre-change, with and without Open Lock. Locking the shrines doesn't punish soloists in particular (some will build for Open Lock, some to endure without resting), it punishes people/groups without access to Open Lock. It wasn't made more solo-friendly, it was made more friendly in general. I'd be surprised if a change like that was made without some careful data mining, though.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Thanks again for your and the team's efforts!

Side note related to something you posted previously. If doing an analysis of melees and the effectiveness of their armor/PRR in higher level content, please don't forget how any changes would be applied to Warforged. Since their 'armor' is non-traditional, they've been overlooked in this area in the past. As things currently stand, a Warforged melee needs to take an extra feat to get armor ratings that are still substandard to fleshies wearing actual armor.

Looking forward to seeing you guys at PAX East this year.

This is important!

(I am not a WF fan either but.....lol)

My impression is that currently, WF cannot get as good an AC as fleshies can. (or PRR etc.)

I think Adamantine (and Mithral) body feats need to be beefed up.
But I am not a WF expert.... just how I think/feel right now. Others may know better than I here.

[BigErkyKid]

Sure, there's a few abilities that are lower in the enhancement trees than I would have expected, but when I'm designing a character, I still often find that I have to make painful trade-offs. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with moving the low-hanging fruit a bit higher up, too; I can adjust.

But...


First thanks for your answers. I do enjoy talking about it without having to keep the knife out. Now, regarding your joy of soloing. While I can understand, I am fairly sure this is a game build, in principle, mostly around grouping. If it was my decision, soloing would be possible but most likely require some hirelingas.

Now the debate I see is whether in balancing they encourage grouping understood as beyond the simple BYO-everything and every man on his own. Easy ones are:

1. Cleric slas for healing. Not current trade off between fun an heals. (similarly, slas and cheaper buffing spells, increased effectivity of bard songs...)
2. Nerf kiting. Either they do less damage or they avoid less. Both at the same time = soloing FoT.
3. Remove evasion from being a low hanging fruit.
4. Rethink the extend to which self heals are sufficient.

[EllisDee37]

what I actually said was "challenge" not "prevent".I originally disagreed with someone who said "prevent", not "challenge", and then you disagreed with me. Thus the confusion.


Also soloing is bad for the game, hurts the lfm and general community/life of ddo.Disagree. Soloing is good for the game because people who don't want to group are included in Turbine's bottom line. Your vision of the game would drive away paying customers. That makes your vision bad for the game.

[EllisDee37]

2. Nerf kiting. Either they do less damage or they avoid less. Both at the same time = soloing FoT.I rather like the suggestion someone made to include a balance check whenever running backwards or strafing. Fail the check and fall on your a%$. This is an elegant solution that can also be overcome with build choices. Perfect solution, IMO.

I wish I could remember the name of who proposed the idea; it's a good enough idea to merit credit.

[BigErkyKid]

Months ago. Not including healing aura, which doesn't really count.
Oh, ****. I'd have to say.. my second life.. probably a year ago?
Ooh.. I tend to pass some out while we're running, depending on the quest. Jump for the ones where it's useful, a resist if someone needs it.. few weeks, but it does happen.
Few weeks. I was running servants of the overlord with a couple of first lifers and I've seen how that ends in the past. Hell, even when I buff I sometimes get down to ~50 hp. For the first two rooms I told them to stay back while I pulled a few mobs in each, just to lighten the incoming damage on them.. then I cleaved everything to get agro. Was a fun run actually, though they were upset 3 melees didn't try the ritual optional

Edit: Your profanity filters suck, you're blocking some really common words..

Thanks, that's illustrative and similar to my experience. I wish more people would report what is going on.

[Scraap]

This is important!

(I am not a WF fan either but.....lol)

My impression is that currently, WF cannot get as good an AC as fleshies can. (or PRR etc.)

I think Adamantine (and Mithral) body feats need to be beefed up.
But I am not a WF expert.... just how I think/feel right now. Others may know better than I here.

They've traditionally had a bit less ac as a tradeoff for built in DR (at least if we're talking the heavy-equivalent feat, as well as the forged only feat and enhancements that add additional dr/adamantine). In that respect, they suffer alongside the barbs when it comes to damage inflation at high levels, and oversensitivity to dungeon scaling at lower ones.

[Sam1313]

Now if you can solo whilst demonstrating teamwork I'll be impressed. Also soloing is bad for the game, hurts the lfm and general community/life of ddo.

I would have to disagree with ya here. There is people playing this game that lives all over this globe. Different time zones, different work schedules. I have tried to set up dates and times with players across the pond and its very difficult because of the time difference. I'm USA they are Norway. That's a 6 hour difference. Ok add to it that most of us have wives, kids, pets and whatever and stuff comes up and I or some of us needs to go afk for extended periods of time. So to not hold up 5 other people I choose to solo 95% of the time, as do they. If I cannot solo it even with a hire (except raids) then its just not getting played. I know ALOT of folks who do this because of the same reasons. So to make this into a "group" game would be a bad idea. Yes it would be nice and the option is there IF people can actually sit down undisturbed and uninterrupted for long periods of time. But for the majority of us this is just not an option most of the time.

[Sam1313]

I rather like the suggestion someone made to include a balance check whenever running backwards or strafing. Fail the check and fall on your a%$. This is an elegant solution that can also be overcome with build choices. Perfect solution, IMO.

I wish I could remember the name of who proposed the idea; it's a good enough idea to merit credit.

Rangers do suffer a penalty to shots while running backwards. They miss a lot. And I mean ALOT while trying to fire and run. That is why they can get the feat "Shot on the Run" so they can perform this.
Just editing this to elaborate a little more on this feat. In order for a AA Ranger to get the feat shot on the run (Link here: http://ddowiki.com/page/Shot_on_the_Run ) They first have to take Point blank shot (which is a pre req if your going archer) so No big deal there. But then they have to take the dodge feat and give up the critical ranged feat, ok THEN they have to take the Mobility feat and give up the Improved Critical Ranged feat. Then Finally at level 15 they can obtain Shot on the Run. This actually hurts the ranger in the low to mid levels but they can gain at least critical ranged back at around 18 but then Improved critical ranged gets left off. Lets face it the capstone for a pure build AA Ranger just sucks period. As do all the capstones for all the pure builds except the casters. That's why so many people multiclass now days. What most Archer WONT tell you is that they MISS a lot while running and trying to fire their bows. Why? well it makes them look bad. But the shots they do hit with while running and kiting is usually from the manyshots, That's why they draw the aggro. If it was a single shot while running then the monsters would not even give the Archer a thought.
So no more about the nerfing or changing of the way archers kite. Now I cannot speak for the Monkchers they seem to do more damage than a pure build archer does with manyshots so kiting for them may be different.

[Mercureal]

I would have to disagree with ya here. There is people playing this game that lives all over this globe. Different time zones, different work schedules. I have tried to set up dates and times with players across the pond and its very difficult because of the time difference. I'm USA they are Norway. That's a 6 hour difference. Ok add to it that most of us have wives, kids, pets and whatever and stuff comes up and I or some of us needs to go afk for extended periods of time. So to not hold up 5 other people I choose to solo 95% of the time, as do they. If I cannot solo it even with a hire (except raids) then its just not getting played. I know ALOT of folks who do this because of the same reasons. So to make this into a "group" game would be a bad idea. Yes it would be nice and the option is there IF people can actually sit down undisturbed and uninterrupted for long periods of time. But for the majority of us this is just not an option most of the time.

This ^ is a very accurate point (also made by others in this thread), and very much applies to me. When I was first playing I grouped all the time, ran several guild raids a week, led raids, helped newer players out with training runs etc etc. Life got a lot busier, I took a break from the game, and when I came back I rarely was able to commit in advance to running scheduled raids, let alone play from unbroken stretches of time. My current playstyle (hopping in quest, kill 2 mobs, go AFK for 20 minutes, repeat) is not party-friendly, so I mostly solo. If that wasn't viable, I wouldn't be able to play.

I don't see how making it more challenging for those who run through a dungeon alone to finish a quest improves life and/or the playing experience for anyone else. It seems to just narrow the base of people playing (and paying).

[Qhualor]

I would have to disagree with ya here. There is people playing this game that lives all over this globe. Different time zones, different work schedules. I have tried to set up dates and times with players across the pond and its very difficult because of the time difference. I'm USA they are Norway. That's a 6 hour difference. Ok add to it that most of us have wives, kids, pets and whatever and stuff comes up and I or some of us needs to go afk for extended periods of time. So to not hold up 5 other people I choose to solo 95% of the time, as do they. If I cannot solo it even with a hire (except raids) then its just not getting played. I know ALOT of folks who do this because of the same reasons. So to make this into a "group" game would be a bad idea. Yes it would be nice and the option is there IF people can actually sit down undisturbed and uninterrupted for long periods of time. But for the majority of us this is just not an option most of the time.

This reads like guild and not pug. When people can't get a guild group together there is an lfm option. Tgeres lots of like minded players with time issues that could use the lfm to find groups.

[Mercureal]

Some of the quests particularly in the new content are quite easy to solo but become a lag inducing mess if grouping. Currently it is easer and faster to solo these quests and discourages grouping. This is bad for the game.

It seems to me that the element in this that is bad for the game is the laggy, frustrating experience you get when in a group. If some people solo to avoid that experience, it is a consequence of the frustration but is not itself the element that hurts the game.

And that's a development/technical issue, rather than one of balancing the game so that all players can contribute and enjoy their play.

[capsela]

frankly, i hate all of the proposals to make characters crappier (AKA nerfing)

They do not make "alternatives viable" they make better builds crappier. And crappier builds are less fun to play for some people and that is why some people avoud them. Forcing everyone into crappier builds does not make DDO a better game.

And lets consider shall we. The new firepeak raid, runs pretty smoothly with a couple monkchers grabbing aggro and separating dragons and a couple people with the ability to clear trash fast, ive got a dozen completions. Without those builds in the mix, the raid often fails. 3X in a row i tried to help a mishmash pug of first lifers, pure builds, barbarians, and whatnot through, fail fail fail.

not fun.

Try taking down a 300K HP mob when all of your damage boost abilities are gone. Just do 60HP of damage 5000X and you will be there.... boring.

If you take the time to look for synergies in this game, what we find out is that you can build an effective character and then it will get destroyed by nefrage.



Next for nerfing: i recon war-forged should not be able to cast as they are just machines.



This entire thread just annoys me

Don't nerf my 100K damage a second build because then I can't beat EE raids dozens of times. If I don't have 100K damage a second then I will be forced to use strategy and cooperation and it would be boring and we might fail a quest and that sucks a lot. I hate not having an easy win button. All players should build monchers like me and they should do it and they should like it and they should shut up about my OP build.

Well, makes sense to me... You heard him developers, no nerfs!

[MonadRebelion]

And that's exactly what "balance" is. Balance is not having everyone do everything. Balance means that when you place weight on the pros of a build, you place equal weight on the cons. Because right now the game is like:
Uber characters (4 builds) <vs> uber mosnters <vs> Normal characters (many builds/skilled players + 4 builds/non skilled players) <vs> Uber monsters <vs> Poor players (rest of the builds/non skilled players)
See, skilled players should be able to join an Elite run and use what they're skilled at without having to resort to one of the overpowered builds to beat the uber monsters. And of course uber monsters can't be gimped as long as 4 uber builds get advertized a lot. Poor players should just choose a lower difficulty.

That might very well be what balance is. I'd be happy if that was the kind of thing 'balancing' the game achieved. However, it seems to me that there are a lot of people who think balancing the game means something like "add a heal button to barbarians so I can solo quests as easily as this other guy with a monkcher." Since this kind of attitude seem prevalent enough, I figured I'd write a post expressing my disagreement with it, because the folks at Turbine are paying attention to this thread. So, it should be noted that I'm not arguing with anyone, and I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I am just stating my preference so the folks at Turbine will know that there are some people who think adding a heal button to barbarians is a bad way of balancing things. I hope there are a lot of people speaking up if they feel this way.

[elvesunited]

2. Nerf kiting. Either they do less damage or they avoid less. Both at the same time = soloing FoT.
It used to be that way. Used to be that if you wanted to move and fight you needed spring attack or shot on the run. But nowdays AC is increasingly meaningless for both the characters and the monsters along with much more options for getting to hit bonuses. That said. Kiting wouldn't be an issue if the tanks could hold out against the big bosses. They often can't. And once the tanks are beaten down or ignored all players have left is the kite. ( Unless they can somehow beat down the target's hundred thousand hp quickly before it walks up to them ) People are playing the game as it is presented to them. If kiting is the only path to victory that is what they end up doing.


3. Remove evasion from being a low hanging fruit.
Way too late. It was too late when the first wizard character decided to take two levels of rogue so he could evade spells and do traps. Now there are so many splash build characters that the purists may be outnumbered. Too many players to offend with "Elder Scrolls Online" just around the corner.


This reads like guild and not pug. When people can't get a guild group together there is an lfm option. Tgeres lots of like minded players with time issues that could use the lfm to find groups.
Many people who solo a lot are doing it out of consideration for everyone else. They have young children, girlfriends or wives, are on call, or have limited time and simply don't want to be the unreliable party member who spends half the quest "AFK".

[MonadRebelion]

What kind of pure class character?

If balance means a thrown-together character (pure or multi) is as powerful as a finely-tuned character, I'm against it, too.

If balance means a finely-tuned pure class character is as powerful as a finely-tuned multi-class character, of course I'm for it! Why would you be against that?

Hey Bud! This is an important question. I hope I can give you a satisfying answer.

Here are two important attitudes that inform play styles. According to the first attitude you begin with an archetype/idea of what your character is. You take that archetype (weaknesses, strengths, and all) and try to figure out how that character can achieve goals given its native abilities. This, for me, is the most exciting way to play, and it seems to me that pure class characters with roughly built in strengths and weaknesses afford a kind of baseline for this kind of play that should be preserved. According to the other attitude, you begin with the obstacles you know about in the environment and build a character specifically designed to overcome those obstacles. The idea is not that you see how you can handle the environment given your weaknesses. You figure out how to eliminate weaknesses, not live with them. Multiclassing in dnd has always been a way of doing this and basically I'm cool with it. It should be easy to see why it is generally appropriate for multiclass characters to be more powerful than pure class toons, namely, multiclass characters are typically designed based on prior knowledge specifically to fit the environment whereas pure class characters are designed around ideals whose overall environmental fit is not at all the first consideration.

[Ganak]

Yellow bars.

Many, many yellow bars.

[capsela]

Double capstones across the board. That would make pure a real choice instead of a hobson's choice.

[capsela]

It's a no brainer really. How long are noobs or non power gamers going to play when they cannot find a group? What would be the point in guilds or other classes for that matter? How long are vets going to stay interested when they can do everything themselves? Sure playing in God-mode is fun! but it gets boring very fast. People are going to stop spending money or time on their characters if there is no one else to play with. This is an mmo not a single players rpg with an epic story and cutscenes to keep one interested, even those lose their re-playability quickly. MMOs stay entertaining simply because of the community and grouping. Have you ever played an MMO on a private server by yourself? It's not very fun.

This is Dungeons & Dragons and the premise of the whole game is based around grouping and complementing each-others archtypes.
When traps can be ignored what is their purpose? Why not just remove them? further simplifying the game. Why have Rogues at all when there are better dps options? When everyone can self heal what is the point in Divines? They end up being weak Arcanes and their greatest strength is rendered worthless why not just remove them? Tanks are also all but useless in this game with the exception of a few raids. One of the Bard's greatest strengths were their buffs but in solo play the class loses meaning. Slowly all but the most powerful and self sufficient builds become less and less viable until you end up with a very shallow, pointless game.


That was a very eloquent argument. I'd like to see bosses pull out their bow of hamstringing when they start getting kited. Or a telekinetic bow that knocks perchers off their perch. That would be hilarious.

[GrantAnderson]

First thanks for your answers. I do enjoy talking about it without having to keep the knife out. Now, regarding your joy of soloing. While I can understand, I am fairly sure this is a game build, in principle, mostly around grouping. If it was my decision, soloing would be possible but most likely require some hirelingas.
I'm sure it was built around grouping. Most older-generation MMOs were built around, if not enforced grouping, then gating the story and best rewards behind forced grouping. I disagree that that's desirable, though. I would rather a game encourage both paths - and looking at the responses in this thread, there seem to be many other people in the same situation as me, with family commitments that interfere with gaming such that we'd rather solo than make life difficult for other players.


Now the debate I see is whether in balancing they encourage grouping understood as beyond the simple BYO-everything and every man on his own. Easy ones are:

1. Cleric slas for healing. Not current trade off between fun an heals. (similarly, slas and cheaper buffing spells, increased effectivity of bard songs...)
2. Nerf kiting. Either they do less damage or they avoid less. Both at the same time = soloing FoT.
3. Remove evasion from being a low hanging fruit.
4. Rethink the extend to which self heals are sufficient.
1. I have no problems with SLAs for Clerics, nor buffing bards. :)
2. I do recall the time when ranged was the poor cousin to melee. It's interesting to see how that's changed. I'd dial the damage down, although not as far as it used to be.
3. Amusingly, the levels at which evasion is gained are true to the 3rd ed. D&D roots, although that certainly does encourage the 2-level dip. If I was going to move it, I don't think I'd put it higher than 6th. That's not really a dip any more, but it's still accessible if you really want to multiclass it in.
4. Combined with 1, that just channels soloists into Clericking. :) Leave self-healing as-is.

I feel like you want the style of play you favour to be rewarded above other styles, even more than it already is. You can already play in a pure-class interdependent group if you want to. Implementing changes that force your favoured style detract from the style of play that I (and others) enjoy. By all means, prune down god-level builds, but just let soloists be.

[GrantAnderson]

MMOs stay entertaining simply because of the community and grouping.
You can have one without the other. I don't group much, but I participate in the community; I help in /advice and chat in /general.


This is Dungeons & Dragons and the premise of the whole game is based around grouping and complementing each-others archtypes.
When traps can be ignored what is their purpose? Why not just remove them? further simplifying the game. Why have Rogues at all when there are better dps options? When everyone can self heal what is the point in Divines? They end up being weak Arcanes and their greatest strength is rendered worthless why not just remove them? Tanks are also all but useless in this game with the exception of a few raids. One of the Bard's greatest strengths were their buffs but in solo play the class loses meaning. Slowly all but the most powerful and self sufficient builds become less and less viable until you end up with a very shallow, pointless game.
There's as much fun in D&D with a party of four Bards, or four Clerics, or four Rogues, as there is with a mixed foursome. Some traps may be able to be ignored, but not all; on Elite I have been one-shotted by traps. Divines are better at healing than most self-healers; tanking is a trade-off between damage and defence. And it's kind of refreshing playing an MMO that doesn't have the holy trinity of healer/tank/dps, to be honest. As for Bards losing meaning in solo play, I certainly enjoy playing mine.

As long as you trade power for self-sufficiency and vice versa, I think it will be fine. In any MMO, players gravitate to the most effective builds, there's not much developers can do about that, except do their best to make sure that there's a variety of fun-to-play builds available, and I think that the DDO devs have succeeded there.

[Book_O_Dragons]

Varg you are completely missing the WHY of the current imbalance. To the players the imbalance is that our enemies are so much more powerful than we are in the hardest difficulties that we need to use the most powerful abilities and synergies to defeat them in an efficient manner. Pre MotU there were combinations that would result in a drastic increase in power over their rivals but the general view among the players was that they weren't needed for top tier content as long as no major build mistakes were made and the biggest power increase came from past lives. The big gap between the top tier players and the aspirants was time spent grinding the best gear and even more than that it was PLAYER skill.

•Time and resources matter: We can save a great deal of time by only changing a few overpowered abilities, rather than changing all other characters, monsters, traps, and quests to match those few most overpowered abilities or features. If we can spend a day or a week pulling back on the strongest rather than months increasing everything else, that leaves us far more time to implement new features.
The questions you ask show that you are looking at the problem in a way that is different from the players but they also show that you are not seeing the problems that players are responding to with their search for synergy and powerful builds. You are seeing players with all the same builds as the problem without looking at the source of the problem. I am among those who think EE should be difficult but the current difficulty tools used by DDO devs are too blunt to maintain fun. When elite difficulties mainly increased drop rates and never the quality of named items I found the extreme power increase bearable but U15 changed the loot dynamic too much for that to work.

*Copied from my post on the topic of monster stats as I feel the same points are under contention here.*

I view EE as a prestige difficulty.


pres·tige [pre-steezh, -steej]
noun
1.
reputation or influence arising from success, achievement, rank, or other favorable attributes.
2.
distinction or reputation attaching to a person or thing and thus possessing a cachet for others or for the public: The new discothèque has great prestige with the jet set.
adjective
3.
having or showing success, rank, wealth, etc.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Prestige
Definition 2 as an adjective is how I am thinking about it.

Back when the level cap was 20 I viewed players who could regularly complete Epic Sands quests as an elite group I looked up to and dreamed of joining. I could regularly complete the easier epics in house P and the Red Fens with my first life characters but in the Sands epics I was a net negative to a group, or at least I felt that way and felt I was getting better.
Now I feel that players who can regularly complete EE quests are the elite group and dream of joining them BUT joining them feels so far beyond where I am that I despair of ever joining their ranks. Part of my despair is that the elite players are much more separate from the casual players in the epic levels now. I used to be able to put up an LFM for one of the epic quests I could do and there was a pretty good chance that an elite player would join but now an elite player won't seriously consider joining a group I feel comfortable making as it is too easy for them.
The lower levels were a nice time for me when the LFM panel was full and build advice was easy to get during quests from the experienced players running TRs but it has gotten hard to find LFMs at all levels of gameplay.

I feel that it is a good thing to have a difficulty that everyone needs to reach to play but the current reach is just too far.
*End Copied Text*

[BigErkyKid]

I figured I would offer a summary of what I think is going on in this thread and what has a bit of consensus.

In the game, as it stands the following is clear (to me):

1. Ranged > melee. (Arcanes, specially monkchers > any melee).

* Best defense: kiting > everything else.

Kiting best damage avoidance strategy in an environment where mobs hit like trucks (no matter your PRR, AC or even displacement/incorp/dodge).

* Best attack: ranged >= everyone else.
Damage by minmaxed ranged characters is equal if not superior to any other.
Proof: Monkchers soloing raids EE.

SOLUTION (no consensus here): Nerf kiting.

* Reduce the damage of kiters.
* Reduce the speed of backpedalling / reduce the speed of jump-casting, jump-shooting / introduce some unavoidable chance to fall down when backpedalling.

2. Multiclasses > pure classes. (exception wizzard, this is a general statement)

* 2 monk levels, two paladin levels, 2-4 fvs levels.

It is not a matter of trade offs, whatever you give up is obviously weaker than what you get in exchange.

Proof: the vast majority of top minmaxed builds are multiclasses.

SOLUTION (no consensus): A combination of raising the investment to get certain abilities (min levels, higher up in enhancement tree, requirements to stay pure) and improve A LOT the capstones

The following has little to no consensus, but has nevertheless been thoroughly discussed.

1. Self sufficient good (A) vs all situations VS specialists (B).

* Some people think that moving more towards (A) decreases the amount of meaningful cooperation in the game (other than just having some replica of you killing mobs in another area for faster completition).

* Others feel that moving towards B doesn't allow for solo play and that it is boring to have to wait for balanced groups (some classes are just more boring to play hence the difficulty of getting them in pugs). Special mention to clerics.

Some solutions (absolutely no consensus) to get back B without penalizing other styles:

* Allow for rogue hirelings (as regular hirelings, not money making ones), work a bit on the AI of hirelings

* Increase the power of buffs (for bards, clerics, fvs) specially those not self casted.

* Lower the SP cost of the spells that target OTHERS and give more slas of that cathegory. Currently it is either you have fun or you heal, which most people reward as boring, not gratifying, not needed! (with self healing being so extended).

* Scale dungeons / character power such that absolutely solo is hard (read hirelings being needed).

[EllisDee37]

* Reduce the damage of kiters.
* Reduce the speed of backpedalling / reduce the speed of jump-casting, jump-shooting / introduce some unavoidable chance to fall down when backpedalling.Nobody said unavoidable. The suggestion was a balance check.


* Scale dungeons / character power such that absolutely solo is hard (read hirelings being needed).I've seen this mentioned a couple times, how if something is really difficult you'll need a hireling. Hirelings do not add any power to self-healing builds. I'd go so far as to say hirelings decrease the power of a good build, not increase it.

[BigErkyKid]

Nobody said unavoidable. The suggestion was a balance check.

I've seen this mentioned a couple times, how if something is really difficult you'll need a hireling. Hirelings do not add any power to self-healing builds. I'd go so far as to say hirelings decrease the power of a good build, not increase it.


For the first, I mentioned it in the sense that I should be a real concern, not something one of those uber maxed builds can just ignore.

For the second, this is going from the assumption that self sufficiency is nerfed.

Again, this is my take on it, note that I didn't claim consensus on the solutions.

[Daze]

1. Ranged > melee. (Arcanes, specially monkchers > any melee).

* Best defense: kiting > everything else.

Which is why buffing the defense of melee characters is a good idea.


Kiting best damage avoidance strategy in an environment where mobs hit like trucks (no matter your PRR, AC or even displacement/incorp/dodge).

True for every MMO and DDO has had the physics engine for this since day one. You are penalized for moving while striking but that movement is the best way to avoid dmg. I don't see too many toons stand still when they are getting pounded on ... so now the melee strafing a circle around a mob should fall on his face? Doesn't sound like much of an epic warrior to me.


* Best attack: ranged >= everyone else.
Damage by minmaxed ranged characters is equal if not superior to any other.
Proof: Monkchers soloing raids EE.

Wrong. Melee can be more DPS then any ranged toon .... they just need to survive the experience. Again buffing the defense of melee toons is the best remedy. One example does not a proof make. I've seen a video of a Barbarian soloing EE WGU .... doesn't mean we nerf barbs. It just means that is a skilled player.


SOLUTION (no consensus here): Nerf kiting.

* Reduce the damage of kiters.
* Reduce the speed of backpedalling / reduce the speed of jump-casting, jump-shooting / introduce some unavoidable chance to fall down when backpedalling.

How is this balance? It's just being forced to play the game your way. Penalties to kiting doesn't solve any of the problems that have resulted in the rise of its popularity .... Like not being able to stand toe to toe with trash mobs on a well geared tanky melee.


2. Multiclasses > pure classes. (exception wizzard, this is a general statement)

* 2 monk levels, two paladin levels, 2-4 fvs levels.

It is not a matter of trade offs, whatever you give up is obviously weaker than what you get in exchange.

Proof: the vast majority of top minmaxed builds are multiclasses.

SOLUTION (no consensus): A combination of raising the investment to get certain abilities (min levels, higher up in enhancement tree, requirements to stay pure) and improve A LOT the capstones

Multiclassing has been around since the start of the game. It is what lends creativity to DDO. Penalize that at your own risk. I don't play Neverwinter anymore for a reason and I know for a fact I am not alone. Beef up capstones ... make going pure more of a choice instead of being a detriment to the majority of the people that play. Alienating your player base and friends and guildies by promoting the penalization of multiclassing is just insane.


The following has little to no consensus, but has nevertheless been thoroughly discussed.

1. Self sufficient good (A) vs all situations VS specialists (B).

* Some people think that moving more towards (A) decreases the amount of meaningful cooperation in the game (other than just having some replica of you killing mobs in another area for faster completition).

* Others feel that moving towards B doesn't allow for solo play and that it is boring to have to wait for balanced groups (some classes are just more boring to play hence the difficulty of getting them in pugs). Special mention to clerics.

Some solutions (absolutely no consensus) to get back B without penalizing other styles:

* Allow for rogue hirelings (as regular hirelings, not money making ones), work a bit on the AI of hirelings

* Increase the power of buffs (for bards, clerics, fvs) specially those not self casted.

* Lower the SP cost of the spells that target OTHERS and give more slas of that cathegory. Currently it is either you have fun or you heal, which most people reward as boring, not gratifying, not needed! (with self healing being so extended).

* Scale dungeons / character power such that absolutely solo is hard (read hirelings being needed).

You are dead wrong on multiple levels and seem to ignore counter arguments all together with complaints of personal attacks (knife reference) and off topic discussions (soloing vs grouping) in a character balance thread. The conceit of directing this 50 page thread with your outline of off topic discussions you started it on is railroading.

Bringing usefulness back to races/classes that have been left in the lurch is far more resonating than any of the other drums you are banging on.

[Ancient]

For the first, I mentioned it in the sense that I should be a real concern, not something one of those uber maxed builds can just ignore.

For the second, this is going from the assumption that self sufficiency is nerfed.

Again, this is my take on it, note that I didn't claim consensus on the solutions.

If the game goes in the direction you are pushing, then it is not compatible with my life that is often full of interruptions. I and many like me will be gone. Unavoidable tripping over yourself sounds like another "great" idea to run players off. Level 28, Demi-god status and cannot walk. The only thing epic about that would be epic fail.

You favor the nerf bat, I do not. Time will tell which side made the better case.

[BigErkyKid]

You are dead wrong on multiple levels and seem to ignore counter arguments all together with complaints of personal attacks (knife reference) and off topic discussions (soloing vs grouping) in a character balance thread. The conceit of directing this 50 page thread with your outline of off topic discussions you started it on is railroading.


I have yet to be given a single good reason (feel free to quote them for me if you think I have missed any), other that multiple claims that I wrong, why balance is not related to two of the topics that seem to be forbidden:

1. Skipping large chunks of quests IS a possibility that affects balancing (I have argued it elsewhere, it gets tiring to repeat it).

2. Self sufficiency vs relying on others.

I answer a lot to plenty of posts that reference me, as can be seen from the fact that I quote in almost every single message. Accusing is easy and in this case, unnecessary. I hit the topics that please me in a respectful manner and given that I think they belong to this thread.

For the rest, I gather that some people here is adept to saying that others are WRONG when they say things they don't like. I seldom ever use WRONG, I tend to refer to playstyles and preferences, which is what mostly of what we disagree on is.

PS - For soloers, I already said that I feel that more emphasis on specialization can be compensated with hireling changes. I gather that you don't like that. Fine, I don't like the way it is going now and from the replies in here and other places, other people don't like it either.

PS 2 - No, time will tell what turbine thought was the most comercially viable solution. Has absolutely nothing to do with any other concern.

[Daze]

I have yet to be given a single good reason (feel free to quote them for me if you think I have missed any), other that multiple claims that I wrong, why balance is not related to two of the topics that seem to be forbidden:

I have made my case against many of your proposals in the post you are quoting and yet you don't reply to those aspects of it. Just complaints and more off topic discussions ...


Soloing vs group content may be a concern you have ... make a thread discussing it. This one is about character balance.

I say you are wrong after making my arguments for it. Not just because you are mistaken.


I have yet to be given a single good reason (feel free to quote them for me if you think I have missed any), other that multiple claims that I wrong, why balance is not related to two of the topics that seem to be forbidden:

1. Skipping large chunks of quests IS a possibility that affects balancing (I have argued it elsewhere, it gets tiring to repeat it).

2. Self sufficiency vs relying on others.

I answer a lot to plenty of posts that reference me, as can be seen from the fact that I quote in almost every single message. Accusing is easy and in this case, unnecessary. I hit the topics that please me in a respectful manner and given that I think they belong to this thread.

For the rest, I gather that some people here is adept to saying that others are WRONG when they say things they don't like. I seldom ever use WRONG, I tend to refer to playstyles and preferences, which is what mostly of what we disagree on is.




Skipping large chunks of quests is not a balancing issue. You are given resources according to a formula in a build not according to the quest. Which means that the quest may need balancing more than the players .... considering this is a character balance thread it is off topic. That is without even mentioning that every single character in the game can cast invis of some form and it is far from full proof. Spiders can sense tremors, mobs get bonuses to spot based on your proximity and everything can hear and actively look for you unless you are actively sneaking. Something which everyone can do (some more skilfully than others) and then on top of that there are mobs that see invis. All of which has been said before and not responded to.

Self sufficiency is something many players build into their toons with a lot of effort and there are trade offs associated with it. Next thing you will want to do is nerf UMD ...

So I say again ... both off topic and just plain wrong. That isn't meant to be disrespectful. Just a statement of my disagreement. My not having respect for your views is also off topic.

[BigErkyKid]

I have made my case against many of your proposals in the post you are quoting and yet you don't reply to those aspects of it. Just complaints and more off topic discussions ...


Soloing vs group content may be a concern you have ... make a thread discussing it. This one is about character balance.

.

Character balance is related to specialization VS self sufficiency. You have very well argued posts in this thread precisely on that topic. I found you one.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/439018-Player-Character-Balance?p=5298263&viewfull=1#post5298263




Skipping large chunks of quests is not a balancing issue. You are given resources according to a formula in a build not according to the quest. Which means that the quest may need balancing more than the players .... considering this is a character balance thread it is off topic. That is without even mentioning that every single character in the game can cast invis of some form and it is far from full proof. Spiders can sense tremors, mobs get bonuses to spot based on your proximity and everything can hear and actively look for you unless you are actively sneaking. Something which everyone can do (some more skilfully than others) and then on top of that there are mobs that see invis.

Self sufficiency is something many players build into their toons with a lot of effort and there are trade offs associated with it. Next thing you will want to do is nerf UMD ...


How can you give resources to a character disregarding the content those resources are being used on? That doesn't make any sense to me at all. Resources and power of character are ALWAYS in relation to quests. Even more, it is ONLY through the relation to quests that characters compare to each other in terms of balance.

It is very hard to have balanced classes / builds whatever if a quest can be mostly skipped. The reason is that you need to give enough resources to those that don't skip for it to be reasonable AND you need to still make it challenging to those who skip. This is simply impossible. Specially because those who skip have NOT bought with a power trade of the stealth abilities. A barbarian can easily chuck an invis pot and he is not less powerful by it.

[Daze]

Character balance is related to specialization VS self sufficiency. You have very well argued posts in this thread precisely on that topic. I found you one.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/439018-Player-Character-Balance?p=5298263&viewfull=1#post5298263

My only post on that page is about melee vs ranged and to explain to you the perks and detriments to kiting ... I fail to see where self sufficiency vs specialization is in it considering a toons specialization can be self sufficiency.

Unless you think I am Oberon Shrader in disguise..... in which case. No I am not.





How can you give resources to a character disregarding the content those resources are being used on? That doesn't make any sense to me at all. Resources and power of character are ALWAYS in relation to quests. Even more, it is ONLY through the relation to quests that characters compare to each other in terms of balance.

It is very hard to have balanced classes / builds whatever if a quest can be mostly skipped. The reason is that you need to give enough resources to those that don't skip for it to be reasonable AND you need to still make it challenging to those who skip. This is simply impossible. Specially because those who skip have NOT bought with a power trade of the stealth abilities. A barbarian can easily chuck an invis pot and he is not less powerful by it.

Resources arent given to a character they are planned and grinded for with time and effort.

As for how it is balancing towards resources it is simple .... most people that invis through a quest tend to skip and/or miss out on rest shrines ... seems balanced to me.

Again ... off topic and belongs in a different thread about quest balance.


Toons are balanced not by being the same but by being useful. Various quests have different challenges and different toons have varying degrees of use and reward based on those challenges. Everything is variable. The problem lies in the frequency of uselessness. DPS is always good. Traps vary. Buffs vary (hello beholder). Heals and mana vary (curses and lolth and potions). This lends itself to having a variety of back up in your group/build but some builds are missing those abilities due to race/class and type of DPS ... that needs to be remedied to be more balanced. Which is why this thread is here.

[Ancient]

I have yet to be given a single good reason (feel free to quote them for me if you think I have missed any), other that multiple claims that I wrong, why balance is not related to two of the topics that seem to be forbidden:
You have a vision for the game that doesn't match the existing game, is not aligned with the strengths of the game. Some play DDO for the complex character builds... you want to railroad choices. Some play for the ties to D&D, you want to rearrange class feats to break that link, Some play for the challenge, you want to put artificial barriers in place that cannot be ignored.


1. Skipping large chunks of quests IS a possibility that affects balancing (I have argued it elsewhere, it gets tiring to repeat it).
UMD for invisibility scrolls is easy, invis clickies can be used by everyone as can invis potions. Invisibility therefore has absolutely no place in a thread about player character balance. Yet you keep bring it up.


2. Self sufficiency vs relying on others.

I answer a lot to plenty of posts that reference me, as can be seen from the fact that I quote in almost every single message. Accusing is easy and in this case, unnecessary. I hit the topics that please me in a respectful manner and given that I think they belong to this thread.
You keep beating your personal dead horses even when refuted by argumentes, rejected by a solid majority and told that your solutions are awful. The invisibility example above is one more case of you pushing your ideas where they don't fit.


For the rest, I gather that some people here is adept to saying that others are WRONG when they say things they don't like. I seldom ever use WRONG, I tend to refer to playstyles and preferences, which is what mostly of what we disagree on is.
You may not use "wrong", but you broadly claim there were no good points when they were made. You accuse others of having ill motives (which I view as worse that wrong) such as selfishly protecting their builds. Perhaps the most grating habit is that you keep claiming a false consensus to push bad ideas.


PS - For soloers, I already said that I feel that more emphasis on specialization can be compensated with hireling changes. I gather that you don't like that. Fine, I don't like the way it is going now and from the replies in here and other places, other people don't like it either.
Trying to fix hirelings to replace a player would take more effort than 95% of the other solutions mentioned here... and as soon as that task was actually done... people would complain about the adverse impacts on grouping.

[Ancient]

Specially because those who skip have NOT bought with a power trade of the stealth abilities. A barbarian can easily chuck an invis pot and he is not less powerful by it.
Here is a good opportunity to discuss one of your flawed assumptions.

The issue you have is trying to mix player skill and build abilities. There are players with Chuck Norris like ability. Ghostie could stealth quests even without sneak or invis (or it sure seems like it). Shattan could solo a raid on EE with a fresh off the boat vet toon (or it sure seems like it). Mr. Cow could complete an epic quest with a level 1 toon if he could just zone in (or it sure seems like it).

These are great players, their skill makes the builds seem stronger. Trying to "fix" perceived issues that are caused by their skill hurts the game because you are off target.

1. Invis zerg is a quest issue, not a player build issue. There are quests that can be invis zerged and some that cannot. Any build can use invis.

2. Invis zerg is not always an easy button. I'm not much of an invis zerger and I've had several quests where it is often better (even easier) for me to just stop an nuke a crowd of mobs into oblivion.

3. You can pick high complexity or perfect balance, but not both. I'm willing to accept that means on occasion the balance won't be perfect.

[BigErkyKid]

I am a bit tired, so to sum it up, you disagree on the following:

1. Ranged > melee
2. Multiclasses > pure classes.

Because those are the two only things I claimed we had some consensus on.

PS - I don't think any of us can talk of majorities here.

[Ancient]

I am a bit tired, so to sum it up, you disagree on the following:

1. Ranged > melee
2. Multiclasses > pure classes.

Because those are the two only things I claimed we had some consensus on.

PS - I don't think any of us can talk of majorities here.
You started your post with the stated purpose of summarizing the consensus of the threads... then spent more lines on your own non-consensus solutions.

You slipped no consensus disclaimers right by your word solution, then went on with bullet point after bullet point with no disclaimer.

As far as your two points.

1. A melee build can exceed a ranged build, but it is far far tougher to build, equip and play. Is there a ranged build that is even in the ball park for the EE devils assault time challenge from Zeus's build thread?

2. Pure classes do need a boost, but making a blanket generalization is overstating the case. One example, the pale-master threads get a lot of attention and are almost always pure class builds. Pure sorc builds are also getting some attention again. Confusing popularity with balance is not a good foundation for design changes.

I agree melee and pure classes do need a boost. No, I do not agree the game needs to be redesigned over that difference. Heck no, I don't think your hireling idea is even remotely close to the right solution.

[Daze]

I am a bit tired, so to sum it up, you disagree on the following:

1. Ranged > melee
2. Multiclasses > pure classes.

Because those are the two only things I claimed we had some consensus on.

PS - I don't think any of us can talk of majorities here.

No we cannot talk majorities .... only opinions. I'm not opposed to hearing yours provided it's on topic ... preferably with some substance.

You've only used the word consensus behind the prefix of non ...


That being said. These two points are balance issues that have been discussed at length in this thread. Vargouille can make the consensus and solutions post if you don't mind.

[BigErkyKid]

You started your post with the stated purpose of summarizing the consensus of the threads... then spent more lines on your own non-consensus solutions.

You slipped no consensus disclaimers right by your word solution, then went on with bullet point after bullet point with no disclaimer.

As far as your two points.

1. A melee build can exceed a ranged build, but it is far far tougher to build, equip and play. Is there a ranged build that is even in the ball park for the EE devils assault time challenge from Zeus's build thread?

2. Pure classes do need a boost, but making a blanket generalization is overstating the case. One example, the pale-master threads get a lot of attention and are almost always pure class builds. Pure sorc builds are also getting some attention again. Confusing popularity with balance is not a good foundation for design changes.

I agree melee and pure classes do need a boost. No, I do not agree the game needs to be redesigned over that difference. Heck no, I don't think your hireling idea is even remotely close to the right solution.


1. So, according to you a ranged build is NOT more powerful than a non ranged one (for the large majority of quests) right now. Interesting. So far everything points in the opposite direction, like the fact that monkchers are soloing raids like fot on ee and I don't seem to find any melee being capable of that. But I am sure you will point out to a large number of quests where melees have an upper hand, other than devils assault, of course.

2. I only stated multiclass>pure and you seem to agree. Again, I did include parenthesis mentioning wizzards...I guess it should have been in big red letters, like my multiple warnings of lack of consensus over solutions, etc.

[Ancient]

I took issue with a simplistic A > B format. Your response to that is a simplistic overstatement of what I said.

[Daze]

1. So, according to you a ranged build is NOT more powerful than a non ranged one (for the large majority of quests) right now. Interesting. So far everything points in the opposite direction, like the fact that monkchers are soloing raids like fot on ee and I don't seem to find any melee being capable of that. But I am sure you will point out to a large number of quests where melees have an upper hand, other than devils assault, of course.

2. I only stated multiclass>pure and you seem to agree. Again, I did include parenthesis mentioning wizzards...I guess it should have been in big red letters, like my multiple warnings of lack of consensus over solutions, etc.

Consensus is something that isn't any of our places to speak to. Laying yourself out for martyrdom on the altar of big red letters neednt be mentioned ....

Ancient has a valid point being that melee CAN be more powerful than ranged builds. Provided they have a means of defending themselves from the up close and personal contact with the beasts they are attempting to slay.

As I have stated previously ... melee vs ranged and multiclass vs pure ARE balance issues.

I would prefer to discuss them rather than argue over specific quests or what the consensus is.

[azrael4h]

I'll ignore the bit about soloing since it's not relevant to the discussion.

1) Melee vs ranged balance: While in Heroics and EN/EH it's not as big an issue, EE it is. The problem stems from mobs doing 200-400 points of damage, AC being made worthless deliberately by Turbine, PRR giving diminishing returns, making it only worthwhile to build up to a point, and the only actually effective damage mitigation methods being move yo buttocks, and displacement/incorporeal forms. Which either mean an entire inventory page or two of GS clickies, Dragonmarked Elf, or Bard/Wiz/Sorc levels for displacement, and 6 levels of Monk for Incorp.

This leads to the preponderance of builds going ranged, since there's simply no way to survive in close, toe-to-toe. Plus Monk 6 for the Incorporeal, though Monk gives a lot of low-hanging fruit on top of that (3d6 SA damage, +3-4 in one stat, usually CON in Earth, which also grants +1 to crit multiplier, etc)

My suggestion is three-fold: Rework AC and to-hit bonuses again, so that a) AC matters again, and b) to-hit matters again. Second, reduce incoming damage, mostly on EE. Even on EH, as a guildy found out the other night running a pre-U3 28 point Wizard build designed around PnP and NWN and not DDO's min-max design, there needs to be some reduction. A Wizard with 500 hp should not be one shotted, even if it's gimp by today's standards. Third, defensive trees, when you get around to adding viable ones (meaning not the current garbage Defender trees that are only worth a brief splash into right now), should offer some means of incorporeal like Monk can get.

2) Tanking sucks: This has been an issue since time immemorial. 95% of the content in DDO does not need a traditional MMO Tank. This is a good thing, as forcing requirements such as tank-dps-healer is bad design 101. It is multiplied exponentially in DDO, with it's more freeform character building. The issue is again, three fold: S&B tanks lack the means to hold aggro, either dps or threat, vs a straight dps character, they lack any real defensive advantage over a dps build, and because they lack dps and gain nothing but nothing in return, they pretty much are a waste of a party slot. While I wouldn't kick anyone over being a S&B Paladin or Fighter, no more than I kicked any Paladins back in the day when I led raids, or Rangers post U5, when they sucked so horribly and no one wanted one around because they were 'not dps', I would plan on a longer completion time vs say, a squishy sorc who dies every three mobs killed. Or maybe a Bard who does nothing but buff and summon monster VI.

Suggestion: Rework the Defender trees to be viable. Rework Shield Bash to grant automatic attack procs. No one shield bashes, because it sucks. No point to it. So make it an offhand proc like TWF. Defender stances should no longer be tied to S&B, so they'll actually be useful and not worthless. Add in similar incorporeal clickies to both, and maybe even perma-blur like in Warpriest. More dps and more threat. Then they'll be welcome, and not a hindrance, in most parties.

3) Class issues: In general, capstones need to be improved. Currently, for most builds you gain more by splashing 1 or 2 levels of something else. Even casters now can arguably gain more, either from low-hanging temp sp procs in FvS, Spell power, crit chances, etc... This is ignoring big-daddy evasion, which is only useful if you can get a viable (over 9000!) reflex for it. However, I do not advocate for shifting things around to discourage multi-classing. Build variety is DDO's strongest point, even post NGE/U19. We should give pure-class a reason to do so; we already have reasons to multi-class and that should not change. Just the balance between them.

(note I am only touching on a few of the weakest classes here. I feel Monk, Ranger save the AA capstone which sucks horribly, Rogue, and most casters are in a good spot.)

a) Bard: First off, Bard's songs need to be reworked to be made more useful. First off, they should be their own type, stacking with all else. Call it song bonus, call it Stevie Ray Vaughan bonus, call it Muddy Waters bonus, I don't care. (They should also wish they was a catfish. So all the good lookin' women would so' nuff be after them). Second, the values need to scale into the Commoner levels post 20.

Secondly, they need a third tree, built around sonic damage spells. I'd say grant them the Wall of Sound that was promised pre-NGE, and other sonic spells. A AoE damage song, as well, on this tree, doing sonic damage and scaling into epics. Another CC-based stunning song, also AoE. Call it "Dazed and Confused".

Thirdly, Warchanter needs a complete rework.

b) Barbarian: Hulk Smash! Barbarian remains the one class I have never played to 20 in DDO. So I'll be briefer with this than others.

Barbarian is a glass cannon archetype. Because of the obscene damage numbers, and their inherent lack of defense due to having only hp as their defensive measure, Barbarians are likely the first to die. When healing groups, I groan inwardly at the sight of a Barbarian joining a group because a) their dps is not significantly higher than anyone else's, meaning they add nothing over a straight fighter comparably geared, b) they will take three times the damage of anyone else, and c) the class attracts the worst players in DDO's history. Of any class I will decline based on class alone, it is Barbarian. Even pre U14, when they were not significantly behind defensively, and had a significant edge in dps over anyone else.

With that in mind, I would suggest giving them an AoE trip and AoE Stun somewhat like the Sweeping Strike in Acrobat/Henshin. Likewise a screaming warcry to freeze foes in place with fear. CC is defense! One tree, Occult Slayer, could even grant Evasion as a capstone ability. Ravager should get an insta-kill, at level 12. Tear Out Their Hearts! DC 10+ Barb level (not character!) + CON mod. The level 18 version has them eating said heart for a quick, dirty, and disgusting heal. They should also be able to dual-wield halflings with no penalty. On top of these, their DR should also be converted to 5PRR per point, giving them an inherent 35 PRR. Not much, but it's a start. They can even be granted perma-blur, on the basis that they're in such a frothing, demented rage that they're shaking so hard that they've become blurred as a result. Finally, maybe give a toggleable Vampiric Weapons (similar to Venom Blades or whatever from Assassin and Drow). This should be real healing, not worthless temp garbage that no one sane uses.

c) Paladin: The poor Paladin. Even when 'endgame' was nothing by evil outsiders, they were barely better than Battle Cleric melee dps, with basically no benefit to a group at all. Heck, IIRC a Ranger bested them against EO with that as a FE, and had more FE's to boot. In today's game Paladin is only good for a 2 level dip for a saves bonus, and then only if you've got the CHA for it. To top it off, every other class has at least one tree that is viable. Paladin has none.

My first character was a Paladin, and while it could solo (slowly), and could survive where others could not (thank you Monk splash (pre U19, actually TRed into Fighter pre U11), it sucked. I also was declined for more groups in favor of better classes more times than I care to remember.

My first suggestion is add a modified Radiant Servant tree as a third option. Paladins have a ton of turns, and now no use for them. Healing Aura will boost their survivability while benefiting the group as a whole. Burst gives them AoE healing. You can also give them regenerating LoH here, which is something that should have been added to the class ages ago. This was actually my intention to build, when the initial lies about the NGE came out, and Half-Elves and Humans were going to get a range of PrE options (instead of AA and none). Heal as a capstone ability would be nice.

Second, Knight of the Chalice can go. Give them a dps tree that works against all mobs, with an edge against evil critters such as politicians, used car salesmen, and managers. Like Barbarian, they should get a smite that insta-kills. They should also be able to sacrifice a goat at need (or for a BBQ).

MMM BBQ Goat.

I've already said my piece about the defender trees. They're horrible. They remind me of my ex-wife. Do you really want to remind me of my ex wife? *transforms into green rage monster with purple pants, puts on Cure album*

I'm getting tired, so I'll come back later for the rest.

[BigErkyKid]

Skipping the flame war.

So when I said a possible solution was to nerf somehow kiting, you disagreed. Instead you propose to boost the defenses of melees. My question is how much do you need to boost them to bring them to a level that balances melees with ranged.

I am talking about PRR, AC, dodge bonuses, elemental mitigation.

[Daze]

SNIP

Can't find a single thing to argue against .... it's a little disappointing. I am in the mood for a BBQ though so it isn't a total loss.

[Scraap]

My first suggestion is add a modified Radiant Servant tree as a third option. Paladins have a ton of turns, and now no use for them. Healing Aura will boost their survivability while benefiting the group as a whole. Burst gives them AoE healing. You can also give them regenerating LoH here, which is something that should have been added to the class ages ago. This was actually my intention to build, when the initial lies about the NGE came out, and Half-Elves and Humans were going to get a range of PrE options.


That does bring up that we are still viewing present issues in light of a partly completed system. Not to be a horses rear, but just when the heck are we getting the completed racials to flesh out the full range of combinations to balance? Only been 2 years in the making now. Not overly comfortable getting into the sub-discussion on capstones without serious consideration of what'll happen when folks can get capstones + more than just AA as an additional PRE.

[Daze]

Skipping the flame war.

So when I said a possible solution was to nerf somehow kiting, you disagreed. Instead you propose to boost the defenses of melees. My question is how much do you need to boost them to bring them to a level that balances melees with ranged.

I am talking about PRR, AC, dodge bonuses, elemental mitigation.

What flame war? Let's stay on topic shall we? Nobody is flaming, just trying to keep focused.

I will refer back to the many posts discussing that very topic not least of which is the one right before yours. Lots of ideas for developer perusal.

PRR should not have limiting returns once a certain amount is reached. Fixing mithral to give the PRR of the armor it is on instead of the armor it becomes due to being mithral is a start. Adding in more damage reduction based on armor type would also be a start. Also, warforged need a little love in all of these categories.

AC is irrelevant to most builds because the price of making it mildly worthwhile mitigates any hopes of being considered DPS. Reducing mob to hit inflation and dmg inflation would help. Even the AC tooltip is misleading seeing as a miss chance at level tells me nothing in reference to the CR 70 mob I am attempting to tank.

Dodge bonuses need to be increased or have more stacking paths to increase the max bonuses on tower shields and armor. I get the idea behind lithe abilities being limited in heavy plate but with enough skill or a skilled enough craftsman or material (see above about mithral) it should alleviate some of those restrictions without limiting the returns.

Elemental mitigation can replace evasion provided it is based on % instead of points reduced. Again though ... it needs to be enough to justify the foregoing of robe wearing + evasion and not be dependent on actively blocking. It might even be better than evasion due to the ability to survive rays spells (polar ray I'm looking at you)


Balancing with ranged is a matter of perspective of course and I can only hope Varg's notes will help him make that determination.

[azrael4h]

That does bring up that we are still viewing present issues in light of a partly completed system. Not to be a horses rear, but just when the heck are we getting the completed racials to flesh out the full range of combinations to balance? Only been 2 years in the making now.

About the same time the sun degrades into a chunk of coal about the size of my fist.

Better bring a sweater, it might get a little nippy.

[TheDr0wRanger]

That does bring up that we are still viewing present issues in light of a partly completed system. Not to be a horses rear, but just when the heck are we getting the completed racials to flesh out the full range of combinations to balance? Only been 2 years in the making now. Not overly comfortable getting into the sub-discussion on capstones without serious consideration of what'll happen when folks can get capstones + more than just AA as an additional PRE.

This, a thousand times this.
When Horcs have access to Ravager(the one I remembered being theirs) there will be much more to love about their THF and Rage centric enhancements, Drow with the Assassin tree will make for some incredible sneak attack builds, Human versatility will be righteous yet again.

I feel like having racial trees will reinforce the strengths of each race hopefully without skewing the game. Although I've long said I think Deepwood has far better synergy for Elves than AA, being from the forest makes you a good shot(and having a racial tree unlock full-range sneak attack will increase diversity). Imbuing arrows with magic doesn't have the same "Born to do this" flavor, and it gives the non-optional Slaying Arrow and Paralysis away for far too little opportunity cost(Or so I think). Rangers would be better with that particular goody removed from the racial tree, possibly to a Ranger feat. Give monks the Arrows-Per-Minute advantage, but Rangers get the Bang-Per-Arrow advantage.

In that vein I would emphasize different ways to get the same outcome(dead guys, primarily). Ranged Sneak attack looks sweet, but since I need full Deepwood to be good at it, and I can't take any splashes(or lose the range captstone), can't take feats(Rogues only), theres no way for that damage to stand against Slayer+Paralysis. If you make it comparable to take other avenues, even if we are doing...say....20% less, you will improve diversity. This is my example of missed potential in enhancing diversity, people would feel better with more ways to be who they want to be, but if they feel like who they want to be can't work, eventually they settle for effectiveness or flavor. Let them have BOTH.

If tank-esque builds are to exist, they can come many ways. The fighter Brick with HP and DR, the Paladin with healing and Divine help to prevent his demise, Monks that can't be touched even casters with Raid-viable CC(imagine Ottos Resistible with a really fast expiration but it works on bosses).
Even enemy-engagement can come in various forms too, ranged DPS with moderate damage but low risk, Casters with high-burst damage but weaker long-term damage(sp pools), Charm anarchists who turn rooms against one another(make charmed things off themselves after the spell expires), Instakills that wipe rooms but fail to affect bosses, CC that locks anything down but lacks the power to spank it all. Ranged and caster may work for solo, CC makes parties have their own appeal without ruining the fun for soloists.

Support should include buffs, heals and possibly more viable CC(paralysis Bardchers are great to have along even if their own damage is not apex), AOE heals on Tanky healers, rapid fire group heals for more caster oriented builds, give out more Aura buffs, they are beautiful.

Try making more than one way to skin a cat, and make them come closer to parity.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

1. So, according to you a ranged build is NOT more powerful than a non ranged one (for the large majority of quests) right now. Interesting. So far everything points in the opposite direction, like the fact that monkchers are soloing raids like fot on ee and I don't seem to find any melee being capable of that. But I am sure you will point out to a large number of quests where melees have an upper hand, other than devils assault, of course.

2. I only stated multiclass>pure and you seem to agree. Again, I did include parenthesis mentioning wizzards...I guess it should have been in big red letters, like my multiple warnings of lack of consensus over solutions, etc.

Powerful how?

Melee DPS is still great.

And ranged was always powerful because of distance... even when everyone said it was gimped.


While ranged did get a big buff in DPS, the main thing that changed was that melee guys started dying every time they tried to melee a bunch of EE monsters.


Melee is still powerful, and maybe I am blind, but I still think the better melee builds out DPS the better ranged builds. (assuming the melee build can stay alive long enough anyway)

[Ivan_Milic]

I'll ignore the bit about soloing since it's not relevant to the discussion.

1) Melee vs ranged balance: While in Heroics and EN/EH it's not as big an issue, EE it is. The problem stems from mobs doing 200-400 points of damage, AC being made worthless deliberately by Turbine, PRR giving diminishing returns, making it only worthwhile to build up to a point, and the only actually effective damage mitigation methods being move yo buttocks, and displacement/incorporeal forms. Which either mean an entire inventory page or two of GS clickies,

Lol, even 5 displace clickies will last you through whole quest, should hit at least one shrine in 15 min.

[Qhualor]

Powerful how?

Melee DPS is still great.

And ranged was always powerful because of distance... even when everyone said it was gimped.


While ranged did get a big buff in DPS, the main thing that changed was that melee guys started dying every time they tried to melee a bunch of EE monsters.


Melee is still powerful, and maybe I am blind, but I still think the better melee builds out DPS the better ranged builds. (assuming the melee build can stay alive long enough anyway)

yes, but ranged has the advantage of distance. if there is just a few mobs and enough distance, those mobs can be dead or almost dead before the melees get to them. if there are a lot of them or the distance is short, than melees are able to get to the mobs and dealing more damage. Monkchers with their burst dps can debatable as far as better, but without it they are just another archer. this is assuming comparable builds, properly prepared and skill in battle though.

[Daze]

Lol, even 5 displace clickies will last you through whole quest, should hit at least one shrine in 15 min.

Until you meet a group of mobs with truesight .... which are quite a few in the latest EE content. Not to mention the fact that needing 5 GS clickies to make not only a build but an entire playstyle viable is broken.

As to why a ghost or wraith doesn't have ghost touch is beyond me.

[Holleyz]

Please refrain from using the word Ranged or Ranger when you are referring to the Monkchers. Pure Build Ranger Archers do not compare to these guys at all. NOT EVEN CLOSE. When you say Ranged people think Rangers. Whether they are Monkchers or Pure Build Archers or Artificers. This type of mis-labeling and bad selection of words will make developers think the problem is in the Ranged class period, instead of making them take a look at the Monkchers who's using 10kstars + Manyshots + slaying arrows + adrenaline+ haste+ burst + whatever Stance they are in. Compared to a Pure Build who just has Manyshots with a stupid cool down and a broken Slaying arrow and that's it.
My first Character was and is a Monkcher. I took her to level 15. I then made a Pure Build Elf AA Ranger who is currently at the same level. And I can tell you from first hand experience that there is NO comparison. The damage my Pure Build does with Manyshots = the amount of damage my Monkcher can do in 2 single shots fired. My Pure Build hits 68 to 75 points of damage per shot fired. My Monkcher hits 158 to 273 per shot fired. That is both of them with no ship buffs, no self buffs, and no adrenaline or slaying arrows or manyshots or 10k stars going that's just a normal fired shot. Both using the Silver Longbow. The highest number I have seen my Pure Build hit for was 258 with a Slaying Arrow. The Highest I have seen my Monkcher Holleyz hit for was 2,536 Points of damage with slaying arrow. How does this even compare?

So again I ask of you all: Please refrain from using the word Archer or Ranger or Ranged when you REALY mean Monkcher.

[Enoach]

I've continued to think about this balance issue and it still comes down (at least for me) to not an issue of build X needs to equal build Y (ie in DPS) but that both builds should be able to capitalize on different ways to complete a quest - Hulk Smash vs Sneak and all variants in between.

Issue I feel need to be addressed...

1. Running while invisible should still be detectable by listen. Running quietly while dressed to the nines in gear really should not be possible. AI should be smart enough to pursue if this is the case - Obviously Invisibility should still contain the miss chance it affords for "Guessing" where a PC is.

2. Melee defense
AC needs to matter - It is a very important part of the Miss Chance especially for Heavy Armor builds. I'm not asking for "not hitable" I'm asking for a reasonable miss chance so the 200 - 400 per hit can be avoided

Physical Resistance Rating - Needs to be adjusted so that adding on more PRR has the same benefit for the First Point as the last. I believe this means Turbine needs to decide what is the Maximum Damage Avoidance they want to allow and then base the PRR numbers off of that amount. My opinion is Heavy Armor should provide the most PRR (Mitheral should also be based on it primary Armor type not its adjusted)

Damage Reduction - Needs to be adjusted to be meaningful for Epic content. The current levels is fine for the pre-Epic, but something needs to be built in at the epic levels to increase its effectiveness - FoTW has Damage Reduction - but 2/4/6 PRR and 1/2/3 DR bonus is not really worth it.

Elemental Reduction - This is actually the only aspect I currently feel that the S&B character currently has nailed down with the gear, spells, feats, enhancements and ED abilities that improve the shields ability to reduce this type of damage. This is already nearly as good as building for evasion.

Dodge and Concealment are the only forms of defense that do not scale based on Mob Level, Dodge is also more available to non-Armor builds (as it should be). But a heavy armor build should be able to build enough of a defense that they are also hard to hit - otherwise all Tank Type Heavy Armor builds will need to exceed 2K HP to survive and lets not go back down that path...


3. Effects like Attribute Draining, Level Draining and Length of time under the effect (such as spells)...
Attribute Draining (Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Chr) should not recover as quickly as they currently do at Epic Levels, it should take just as long for NPCs to recover as it does PCs. Opening these options back up will open up to the choices so that DPS does not have to be King. I'm fine with Epic Trash being resistant (not immune) to these forms of attacks but in its current state it makes these options very hard to use.

Level Draining - Similar to Attribute Draining. NPCs should recover at the same rate as PCs. This will open up DC abilities as Debuffs will actually last longer than 10 seconds. The problem with the fast recovery time is that AoE debuffs become a waste of resources as the NPC recovers to quickly for it to even matter.

Spell effect intervals - If a caster has the DC to land the spell, Epic mobs should not be able to recover in 10 seconds - They should follow the Spells DC for saving throws. I've seen far to often a charmed or suggested Epic Trash mob breaking from control nearly the same instant they get a party hat, they should get their second save role after the appropriate time frame and not before.

[Daze]

Being invisible DOES trigger a listen check and mobs DO actively look for things they hear. They also get spot checks to see through your invisibility based on proximity ....

http://ddowiki.com/page/Sneak


Also, S&B builds may get energy resistance good enough to forego evasion when actively blocking but not otherwise ... which is fairly useless against fireballs you don't see coming. As opposed to evasion which is passive. Therefore ... not equal.

[azrael4h]

Until you meet a group of mobs with truesight .... which are quite a few in the latest EE content. Not to mention the fact that needing 5 GS clickies to make not only a build but an entire playstyle viable is broken.

Which is why EE damage needs to be toned down. When that happens, there won't be the incentive to run high-dps ranged builds. Even if
AC suddenly became not worthless, the vast majority goes the easiest route that gets them the best reward. Despite all the complaining that the game is too easy, the exact same players do everything they can to make it as easy as possible for themselves.

[capsela]

Nerf Monks. Or the Monkchers. NOT ARCHERS! I have both a pure build AA Ranger and a Monkcher and I will be the first to tell you that a monk should not be able to do more damage with a bow than a pure build AA Ranger that specializes in that one weapon. Think about it a Pure Build dedicates all his time and his life to specialize in that ONE weapon and that ONE class. So how is it that a Monk who is a Monk using handwraps can pick up a bow and do more damage? The Monk has to DEVIDE his time and training to be able to use more than one weapon. That's all cool but in reality theres no way someone who devotes HALF of their time to a career is going to do it better than someone who devotes ALL of their time to it. For example your a human sorcerer can you pick up a dwarven axe and do more damage with it than a pure build dwarf? No you cant. So how is it that a monk can pick up a bow and out dps a pure build Archer?? Makes no sense
You guys have already nerfed the Archer class to the point that its almost unplayable and I for one no longer enjoy even playing that class. Thanks a lot. So I was FORCED to splash her with a Monk just to keep her viable. And you've gone and nerfed shiradi for the 2nd time now just because every one cried and whined about it. So why hasn't there been anything done to the monk class? Seriously people You are forcing everyone that plays this game to splash their favorite classes with the monk just so they can play the game.

Think about it a Pure Build dedicates all his time and his life to specialize in that ONE weapon and that ONE class. So how is it that a Monk who is a Monk using handwraps can pick up a bow and do more damage? The Monk has to DEVIDE his time and training to be able to use more than one weapon. That's all cool but in reality theres no way someone who devotes HALF of their time to a career is going to do it better than someone who devotes ALL of their time to it.

Think about it a Pure Build dedicates all his time and his life to specialize in that ONE weapon and that ONE class. So how is it that a Monk who is a Monk using handwraps can pick up a bow and do more damage? The Monk has to DEVIDE his time and training to be able to use more than one weapon. That's all cool but in reality theres no way someone who devotes HALF of their time to a career is going to do it better than someone who devotes ALL of their time to it.
Think about it a Pure Build dedicates all his time and his life to specialize in that ONE weapon and that ONE class. So how is it that a Monk who is a Monk using handwraps can pick up a bow and do more damage? The Monk has to DEVIDE his time and training to be able to use more than one weapon. That's all cool but in reality theres no way someone who devotes HALF of their time to a career is going to do it better than someone who devotes ALL of their time to it.

Think about it a Pure Build dedicates all his time and his life to specialize in that ONE weapon and that ONE class. So how is it that a Monk who is a Monk using handwraps can pick up a bow and do more damage? The Monk has to DEVIDE his time and training to be able to use more than one weapon. That's all cool but in reality theres no way someone who devotes HALF of their time to a career is going to do it better than someone who devotes ALL of their time to it.

Think about it a Pure Build dedicates all his time and his life to specialize in that ONE weapon and that ONE class. So how is it that a Monk who is a Monk using handwraps can pick up a bow and do more damage? The Monk has to DEVIDE his time and training to be able to use more than one weapon. That's all cool but in reality theres no way someone who devotes HALF of their time to a career is going to do it better than someone who devotes ALL of their time to it.

Think about it a Pure Build dedicates all his time and his life to specialize in that ONE weapon and that ONE class. So how is it that a Monk who is a Monk using handwraps can pick up a bow and do more damage? The Monk has to DEVIDE his time and training to be able to use more than one weapon. That's all cool but in reality theres no way someone who devotes HALF of their time to a career is going to do it better than someone who devotes ALL of their time to it.

Think about it a Pure Build dedicates all his time and his life to specialize in that ONE weapon and that ONE class. So how is it that a Monk who is a Monk using handwraps can pick up a bow and do more damage? The Monk has to DEVIDE his time and training to be able to use more than one weapon. That's all cool but in reality theres no way someone who devotes HALF of their time to a career is going to do it better than someone who devotes ALL of their time to it.

What are you trying to say here?

[murf201]

What are you trying to say here?

And i have to agree with her ! Monkchers in particular have so many advantages over the pure ranger .

Movement speed for kiting those fast mobs , Better saves , Improved evasion , Better APR= Arrows per minute , Which translates too more dps ! Better healing amp , Better defense from poor design .......... Robes !!!

And they get a better critical profile !! Where is there a feat or an enhancement outside of improved critical or overwhelming for the pure build without being unreasonable and going heavily into a near useless destiny ??

Monkchers and there variants " And i will add 12/8 rogue ranger into that mix as well " Are so op that i believe they left out the expanded crit profile on new bows to try and keep them at bay !! While at the same time hurting anyone who stays pure !!

So they heavily outdo a 20 AA ranger !!

There is no tradeoff what so ever !! Wait rangers can get more use out of doubleshot " They do as well "

But who cares about doubleshot when you can have a superior version of it named 10k stars !!


All this and at the same time i will agree that a slayer arrow should only work on the first arrow as well for any class that incorporates its use , But at the same time they would make everything else work like this and severely gimp rangers and ranged classes all together !!

And if they do put a nerf bat/fix in for adrenaline+slayer then they need to look at making another destiny explicitly for ranged , And i mean all types of ranged combat , Preferably a dps destiny for ranged combat !!

Shiradi could of been so much more , Running in shiradi as a ranged user means you really don't have a dps or worthy epic moment . Yeah tea is cool for utility . ill have more later

[BigErkyKid]

I think that it would be interesting to see what the devs propose as an alternative to some of the builds that currently are regarded as OP.

To talk specifics:

1. The monkcher: As ranger players pointed out, without the monkcher style combinations the DPS of an archer drops a lot.
Granted that survivability + very high DPS trump melees, but if you take out the "monkcher DPS", where do rangers stand?

I am curious regarding that, could anyone give some numbers of say a pure shiradi ranger?

2. The shiradi caster: From my own experience and based on reading the forums, the viable option for a nuker in end game is based on shiradi.
I don't know if this is WAI, if it is, it does look a bit weird.

Basically the best nuker becomes the one who can buy more tickets on the shiradi proc lottery. DC's being very high, this seems the to go option for a sorc that does not want to blow his/her SP bar in a few fights. So a sorc has to rely on the procs of an ED that was not designed to be an arcane ED (outside the arcane sphere). I assume it was initially meant to provide some twists, not to be the full destiny.

So suppose they don't allow for full spell power to affect the shiradi procs. Where would sorcs be then? Would they be viable in end game? I asked in my guild and looked at my own experience as a sorc and I honestly cannot find a top notch build which does not rely on shiradi.

It seems to me that, as pointed out by other people, these builds are an answer to the inability of more "traditional approaches" to deal with end game. It is extremely frustrating to build for DC to see mobs evading non stop or trash eating your blue bar in a few fights. I guess it is equally frustrating to have to shoot a million arrows to kill something.

Melees do seem to be able to do damage in more orthodox ways, but then they suffer enormously from a lack of capacity to survive the hits of the mobs.

So, what are alternatives to current OP builds?

************************************************** ************************************************** **

On a completely different topic. Suppose that the OP builds are not changed.

A solution could be to boost survivability of melee, as some people propose. However, by how much? What is the PRR; AC and dodge/incorp and elemental resistance that equates to a kiter? It has to be pretty **** high. Granted, in so far that melees could do a bit more damage than ranged, they wouldn't need as much defense (it is unclear to me whether the average melee can do more damage than an average OP ranged, I would say no but I don't know what others thing). So again, what would have to be the numbers?

In my opinion, it would have to be too high. I think that it needs to be a combination of nerfing damage of ranged options AND increasing survivability of the poor people restricted to close quarters. In addition, I would favor the inclusion of some kiting nerf, like decreased backpedalling spead (doesn't need to be for everyone, just curve it so that it hits worst the ones at the top).

Some evidence, the video of a FOT EE solo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KooRBgbm3Iw

[Eth]

I think that it would be interesting to see what the devs propose as an alternative to some of the builds that currently are regarded as OP.

2. The shiradi caster:

Alternative: The DC caster.

That wasn't too hard...

[Daze]

And i have to agree with her ! Monkchers in particular have so many advantages over the pure ranger .

Movement speed for kiting those fast mobs , Better saves , Improved evasion , Better APR= Arrows per minute , Which translates too more dps ! Better healing amp , Better defense from poor design .......... Robes !!!

And they get a better critical profile !! Where is there a feat or an enhancement outside of improved critical or overwhelming for the pure build without being unreasonable and going heavily into a near useless destiny ??

Monkchers and there variants " And i will add 12/8 rogue ranger into that mix as well " Are so op that i believe they left out the expanded crit profile on new bows to try and keep them at bay !! While at the same time hurting anyone who stays pure !!

So they heavily outdo a 20 AA ranger !!

There is no tradeoff what so ever !! Wait rangers can get more use out of doubleshot " They do as well "

But who cares about doubleshot when you can have a superior version of it named 10k stars !!


All this and at the same time i will agree that a slayer arrow should only work on the first arrow as well for any class that incorporates its use , But at the same time they would make everything else work like this and severely gimp rangers and ranged classes all together !!

And if they do put a nerf bat/fix in for adrenaline+slayer then they need to look at making another destiny explicitly for ranged , And i mean all types of ranged combat , Preferably a dps destiny for ranged combat !!

Shiradi could of been so much more , Running in shiradi as a ranged user means you really don't have a dps or worthy epic moment . Yeah tea is cool for utility . ill have more later

First of all ... that person you are agreeing with has a ranger and a monkcher and here is the difference between them.

"My Pure Build hits 68 to 75 points of damage per shot fired. My Monkcher hits 158 to 273 per shot fired. That is both of them with no ship buffs, no self buffs, and no adrenaline or slaying arrows or manyshots or 10k stars going that's just a normal fired shot. Both using the Silver Longbow. The highest number I have seen my Pure Build hit for was 258 with a Slaying Arrow."

So you are saying you think these numbers are realistic? I believe they invalidate the whole post. Monks get 10k stars/zen archery/shuriken for ranged ... that's it. Nothing else in the class or enhancement tree effects arrows at all. So if you have a lvl 20 ranger vs lvl 20 monk with comparable points spent in deepwood stalker/AA trees same gear same stats and you are getting this wild a variation in numbers between archer and monkcher ... than something isn't OP its broken.



The perks a monkcher gets they pay for. Keep in mind that in order to use 10k stars you must have ki ... you must be centered within weight restrictions, you can only use robes and certain weapons ... even having to take a feat in order to use bows. On top of that you have to have a decent wisdom .... 42 being the goal but not the limit. It is a fair trade vs. the pure ranger. You sacrifice quite a bit to get that extra feature from the monk class.

What do rangers get? What is the doubleshot capstone again? 25% now isn't it? Seems to me that you guys are getting enough doubleshot to compare with 10k stars now .... sure a monk might still be able to get a few more shots in by amping up his wisdom a bit more but it's still a trade off.... how else are they going to get the extra wisdom?

Where is the mismatch?


I've laid all this out before about 30 pages or so back ... still haven't heard the proof of imbalance between rangers and monkchers.

[BigErkyKid]

Alternative: The DC caster.

That wasn't too hard...

Well, I was refering to the nuke cathegory. But since you bring it up, the effort to build a DC caster viable in end game is a lot more than what it takes to create a shiradi spammer. I am talking about gear, past lifes and effort to play well. I talk from experience, but you can very well go on the forums and see what the top builds for each one require.

So suppose they nerf the easy button shiradi spammer. What is left to sorcs in end game? is it a viable option? I am curious, maybe I am missing something (been asking guildies, they cannot come up with a powerful sustainable build either).

[BigErkyKid]

First of all ... that person you are agreeing with has a ranger and a monkcher and here is the difference between them.

"My Pure Build hits 68 to 75 points of damage per shot fired. My Monkcher hits 158 to 273 per shot fired. That is both of them with no ship buffs, no self buffs, and no adrenaline or slaying arrows or manyshots or 10k stars going that's just a normal fired shot. Both using the Silver Longbow. The highest number I have seen my Pure Build hit for was 258 with a Slaying Arrow."

So you are saying you think these numbers are realistic? I believe they invalidate the whole post. Monks get 10k stars/zen archery/shuriken for ranged ... that's it. Nothing else in the class or enhancement tree effects arrows at all. So if you have a lvl 20 ranger vs lvl 20 monk with comparable points spent in deepwood stalker/AA trees same gear same stats and you are getting this wild a variation in numbers between archer and monkcher ... than something isn't OP its broken.



The perks a monkcher gets they pay for. Keep in mind that in order to use 10k stars you must have ki ... you must be centered within weight restrictions, you can only use robes and certain weapons ... even having to take a feat in order to use bows. On top of that you have to have a decent wisdom .... 42 being the goal but not the limit. It is a fair trade vs. the pure ranger. You sacrifice quite a bit to get that extra feature from the monk class.

What do rangers get? What is the doubleshot capstone again? 25% now isn't it? Seems to me that you guys are getting enough doubleshot to compare with 10k stars now .... sure a monk might still be able to get a few more shots in by amping up his wisdom a bit more but it's still a trade off.... how else are they going to get the extra wisdom?

Where is the mismatch?


I've laid all this out before about 30 pages or so back ... still haven't heard the proof of imbalance between rangers and monkchers.


I have never looked very carefully into those builds, but if we are talking end game, why is it that I see monkchers post big achievements in the forums and not pure rangers? Why is it that I barely see any pure rangers in end game, but I see many monkchers? I am not claiming this is a proof, but it is some indication that there are benefits.

As a first take at it, I would say that abundant step, stances and improved speed (important when kiting) are pretty handy things to have.

[Eth]

Well, I was refering to the nuke cathegory. But since you bring it up, the effort to build a DC caster viable in end game is a lot more than what it takes to create a shiradi spammer. I am talking about gear, past lifes and effort to play well. I talk from experience, but you can very well go on the forums and see what the top builds for each one require.

So suppose they nerf the easy button shiradi spammer. What is left to sorcs in end game? is it a viable option? I am curious, maybe I am missing something (been asking guildies, they cannot come up with a powerful sustainable build either).

Nuke cathegory? Yes, DC casters. High evocation/enchant DC. That's how you play a nuker outside of shiradi.

I played a shiradi spammer, I played a DC caster. I like the DC caster way more.

What's left for sorcs? Draconic.

Turbine already made adjustments. Higher DCs are easier to reach.
At the moment I see DC casters ahead of shiradi spammers. So what do you want to balance by nerfing shiradi?
Shiradi is less powerful but requires less effort. Sounds balanced to me.

[Teh_Troll]

That wasn't too hard...

That's what SHE said.

[elvesunited]

I think the logic behind the archer is that eventually they'd achieve enough doubleshot% that they'd stop using manyshot as it would lower their overall dps. This seems to me to be the answer. Give the top level core ranger enhancement abilities ( level 18 and 20 required core enhancements ) a boost. Monkchers effectively abandon doubleshot in favor of manyshot and ten thousand stars. So doubleshot does nothing for them.

As for the rest. Slay arrow+adrenaline is really an example of unintended synergy. I simply wouldn't allow both of them to be used at the same time.

From my experience, archers are often out-dps'd by melee and casters. I once saw a pure rogue absolutely dominate a pinion armed monkcher on the kill tally. I was impressed. ( and somewhat confused ) The big problem comes with bosses.

1) DC spellcaster simply aren't effective against red-named which are immune to most special effects.
2) nuker spellcaster run out of spellpoints. ( Even Shiradi slow down )
3) melee attackers simply can't stand toe to toe with many red-named. ( which from a role playing perspective might be realistic )

But the archer ( with limited item wear, high evasion, unlimited ammunition, self healing, and lots of temporary spell points ) can last forever. ( assuming that they don't get caught by some sort of hold ability ) And that is their real power.

[BigErkyKid]

Nuke cathegory? Yes, DC casters. High evocation/enchant DC. That's how you play a nuker outside of shiradi.

I played a shiradi spammer, I played a DC caster. I like the DC caster way more.

What's left for sorcs? Draconic.

Turbine already made adjustments. Higher DCs are easier to reach.
At the moment I see DC casters ahead of shiradi spammers. So what do you want to balance by nerfing shiradi?
Shiradi is less powerful but requires less effort. Sounds balanced to me.

Do you have any link to a good DC based nuker build?

[Daze]

I have never looked very carefully into those builds, but if we are talking end game, why is it that I see monkchers post big achievements in the forums and not pure rangers? Why is it that I barely see any pure rangers in end game, but I see many monkchers? I am not claiming this is a proof, but it is some indication that there are benefits.

As a first take at it, I would say that abundant step, stances and improved speed (important when kiting) are pretty handy things to have.

Indeed abundant step and run speed are the bread and butter of kiting.

The question is why nerf kiting when there are no viable alternatives?

Melee range is generally suicide against the bosses except for the rare tank which is way under powered in any other aspect to the point of being not only non viable but downright boring. Even against trash mobs .... all but tanks.

Casters are gimped when it comes to red named .... limited spells effecting them and a limited mana pool with which to do DPS (even shiradi drink pots in a long Fire on Thunder Peak) and the hit points are so high that even the big nukes barely move the bar.

That leaves ranged characters. Rangers are meant to be a blend of both range and melee. Monkchers generally don't melee at all. It's a specialized way of completing end game. It's not the only way but to many it is preferred as it is clean with low risk. Add in some skill at playing and it is an indestructible play style. You arent guaranteed to solo EE FoT as that video .... I'd even be willing to bet that Sestra died in several attempts of that solo before filming it. All of those past lives and all of those greensteel clickies and all of the yugo pots and abashai cookies .... for multiple attempts at 1 roll for raid loot. Hours spent and resources wasted for raid loot which a 12 person raid could get 12 chances at in 15 minutes.

My next question is ... who cares? I mean why bother with all of that effort to get a chest that probably has nothing worthwhile in it? Nerfing an entire playstyle because someone went after bragging rights doesn't make any sense to me. Even more so when it is a very skilled player with a lot of time and effort invested in the class at the far end of the curve..... Like I've said before. I've seen a video of a barbarian soloing WGU .. it doesn't mean nerf barbarians or melee are overpowered. It means that is a skilled player.

[Eth]

Do you have any link to a good DC based nuker build?

Comon - first topic sorc class forum at the moment:
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/415819-Farwind-An-Air-savant-Endgame-EE-DPS-Build

[BigErkyKid]

Indeed abundant step and run speed are the bread and butter of kiting.

The question is why nerf kiting when there are no viable alternatives?

Melee range is generally suicide against the bosses except for the rare tank which is way under powered in any other aspect to the point of being not only non viable but downright boring. Even against trash mobs .... all but tanks.

Casters are gimped when it comes to red named .... limited spells effecting them and a limited mana pool with which to do DPS (even shiradi drink pots in a long Fire on Thunder Peak) and the hit points are so high that even the big nukes barely move the bar.

That leaves ranged characters. Rangers are meant to be a blend of both range and melee. Monkchers generally don't melee at all. It's a specialized way of completing end game. It's not the only way but to many it is preferred as it is clean with low risk. Add in some skill at playing and it is an indestructible play style. You arent guaranteed to solo EE FoT as that video .... I'd even be willing to bet that Sestra died in several attempts of that solo before filming it. All of those past lives and all of those greensteel clickies and all of the yugo pots and abashai cookies .... for multiple attempts at 1 roll for raid loot. Hours spent and resources wasted for raid loot which a 12 person raid could get 12 chances at in 15 minutes.

I agree with you fully on the fact that this seems to be viable the way to deal with questing in EE (the tough ones). But that doesn't seem to be a good design of the difficulty plus there an evident lack of balance. What I am worried about is that if quests remain as it is, it is hardly possible that they will boost melees survivability to the level it would be required to match the kiting defense.

Now, as for the sorc posted (I was already aware of this one). I would have to play it. I am not convinced by it, to be honest. According to the damage reported by people in the thread, it doesn't seem to be a big difference with a MM shiradi spammer. In addition, it relies on DC which is hard to come by and I don't know if not fail proof for harder content. I would very much prefer to see the videos of his performance. Self healing is also a bit more tricky than the easy quickened reconstruct, as I can see. Overall Im not sure this is more powerful than a spammer and certainly harder to get. Am I missing something?

[EllisDee37]

Like I've said before. I've seen a video of a barbarian soloing WGU .. it doesn't mean nerf barbarians or melee are overpowered. It means that is a skilled player.That is indeed a very skilled player, but that particular achievement is quite attainable by most anyone due it being based on three key factors:

1) Max con build to give immunity to most spells even on EE via spell resistance (occult slayer capstone)
2) Master's Blitz
3) Silver Flame pots for self-healing

The skill of that player shone through during the many sections he wasn't blitzing (invisizerging) but the basic concepts listed above make that run doable by most anybody. Possibly even on a first life.

[Sam1313]

Snipped
Indeed abundant step and run speed are the bread and butter of kiting.

The question is why nerf kiting when there are no viable alternative?

That leaves ranged characters. Rangers are meant to be a blend of both range and melee. Monkchers generally don't melee at all. It's a specialized way of completing end game.
Rangers do suffer a penalty to shots while running backwards. In order for a AA Ranger to get the feat shot on the run (Link here: http://ddowiki.com/page/Shot_on_the_Run ) They first have to take Point blank shot (which is a pre req if your going archer) so No big deal there. But then they have to take the dodge feat and give up the critical ranged feat, ok THEN they have to take the Mobility feat and give up the Improved Critical Ranged feat. Then Finally at level 15 they can obtain Shot on the Run. This actually hurts the ranger in the low to mid levels but they can gain at least critical ranged back at around 18 but then Improved critical ranged gets left off. Lets face it the capstone for a pure build AA Ranger just sucks period. As do all the capstones for all the pure builds except the casters. That's why so many people multiclass now days. What most Archer WONT tell you is that they MISS a lot while running and trying to fire their bows. Why? well it makes them look bad. But the shots they do hit with while running and kiting is usually from the manyshots, That's why they draw the aggro. If it was a single shot while running then the monsters would not even give the Archer a thought.
So no more about the nerfing or changing of the way archers kite. Now I cannot speak for the Monkchers they seem to do more damage than a pure build archer does with manyshots so kiting for them may be different.

[Daze]

That is indeed a very skilled player, but that particular achievement is quite attainable by most anyone due it being based on three key factors:

1) Max con build to give immunity to most spells even on EE via spell resistance (occult slayer capstone)
2) Master's Blitz
3) Silver Flame pots for self-healing

The skill of that player shone through during the many sections he wasn't blitzing (invisizerging) but the basic concepts listed above make that run doable by most anybody. Possibly even on a first life.

Most anyone playing a barbarian .... as you need to be pure barb to get that cap stone. You also need the skills to pull it off. That speaks to the player more than the need for a nerf and that follows over to the current supposed OP builds. The skill of the player is what makes those videos possible so the videos aren't proof imho of anything other than bragging rights.

[Eth]

Now, as for the sorc posted (I was already aware of this one). I would have to play it. I am not convinced by it, to be honest. According to the damage reported by people in the thread, it doesn't seem to be a big difference with a MM shiradi spammer. In addition, it relies on DC which is hard to come by and I don't know if not fail proof for harder content. I would very much prefer to see the videos of his performance. Self healing is also a bit more tricky than the easy quickened reconstruct, as I can see. Overall Im not sure this is more powerful than a spammer and certainly harder to get. Am I missing something?
Don't think wizza has some videos, but moo_cow has a nice video collection of his top notch sorc in action.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX0ahRoV_KywFaE3IJoomoA

[Alfhild]

What do rangers get? What is the doubleshot capstone again? 25% now isn't it? Seems to me that you guys are getting enough doubleshot to compare with 10k stars now .... sure a monk might still be able to get a few more shots in by amping up his wisdom a bit more but it's still a trade off.... how else are they going to get the extra wisdom?

Where is the mismatch?


I've laid all this out before about 30 pages or so back ... still haven't heard the proof of imbalance between rangers and monkchers.
Based on the previous testing:

t
Just did a small amount of testing to add some data. Over 100 shots with 48 wisdom

1 star: 10 (10%)
2 stars: 51 (51%)
3 stars: 33 (33%)
4 stars: 6 (6%)

So assuming this testing has some validity, we can say that Monkchers with 48 have a 90% chance to get an extra arrow using 10K stars and 40% chance to get 2 extra arrows. If we then negate the 20 seconds out of every 2 minutes where both Ranger and Monkcher can employ Manyshot we are left with 100 seconds out of every 2 minutes where they are not Manyshotting.
For a monkcher therefore, during that 100 secs there are 60secs where they have the above mentioned chances to shoot extra arrows.
Compare this to a ranger who during that 100 sec period suffers a 50sec Doubleshot debuff where he is single-shotting leaving 50secs where he is doubleshotting. How much doubleshot can a Ranger realistically stack? Optimally he can stack say about 70% assuming the player gets the 20% capstone on Lam and is also an elf with 3 Primal past lives who is able to killsteal 100% of the time to maintain his Killer streak. This is of course an unrealistic best-case scenario but let's use it.

So during the 100sec non-Manyshot period, the 'perfect' Ranger averages a 35% chance to proc an extra arrow.

During the same period, the Monkcher gets an average of about 30% chance to proc an extra arrow, 25% chance to proc two extra arrows and about a 1% chance to proc 3 extra arrows.
However by proccing extra arrows beyond the first, that means the overall chance to proc an extra arrow during that 100 secs is 30+50+3 for 83%.

So there we have a significant disparity but even that disparity is not the real disparity.

Assuming both are in FotW, you need to concentrate on the 7 adrenalines you get to use OUTSIDE of the epic moment since the Epic Moment is a wash for both of them.
Realize that the monkcher is going to have those extra adrenalines to use with both Slayer and Snipershot while 10K stars is operative
That means the Ranger is going to have those adrenalines outside of the Manyshot debuff and therefore get a 70% if ALL the Ranger's stars align to create the optimal situation. 60% is the more realistic number assuming the Lam buff goes live.
The Monckher however will expend his adrenalines during 10k Stars where he will see a 90% chance of proccing at least one extra arrow and about a 40% chance of getting at least 2 additional arrows.
Also realize that the Monkcher's greater ROF will allow him to regenerate adrenalines faster than the Ranger.

The imbalance is the ability of the Monkcher to employ adrenalized specials Far more often than the Ranger without even taking into account the monkcher gets the extra crit multiplier on 19/20's while in Earth.



Both using the Silver Longbow. The highest number I have seen my Pure Build hit for was 258 with a Slaying Arrow. The Highest I have seen my Monkcher Holleyz hit for was 2,536 Points of damage with slaying arrow. How does this even compare?

The Silver Longbow is 1d10+3.
Slayer Arrow is (weapon damage +250)
Your Ranger's Slaying arrow is Max 258
You are basically saying you have never seen your Silver Longbow do more than 8 damage when using Slaying Arrow.
So I have to ask: is your Ranger a STR dumped Halfling with no STR gear fighting skellies with no Morphic Imbue running?

[Sam1313]

Edited
I am curious regarding that, could anyone give some numbers of say a pure shiradi ranger?

I have 3 pure build aa rangers. 1 is champion at level 28. Another one is on his 4th life as a pure build aa ranger at level 17 . And the last one is a level 7 champion aa ranger. What sort of numbers are you wanting? My level 28 is in shiradi.

[Daze]

Based on the previous testing:

So assuming this testing has some validity, we can say that Monkchers with 48 have a 90% chance to get an extra arrow using 10K stars and 40% chance to get 2 extra arrows. If we then negate the 20 seconds out of every 2 minutes where both Ranger and Monkcher can employ Manyshot we are left with 100 seconds out of every 2 minutes where they are not Manyshotting.
For a monkcher therefore, during that 100 secs there are 60secs where they have the above mentioned chances to shoot extra arrows.
Compare this to a ranger who during that 100 sec period suffers a 50sec Doubleshot debuff where he is single-shotting leaving 50secs where he is doubleshotting. How much doubleshot can a Ranger realistically stack? Optimally he can stack say about 70% assuming the player gets the 20% capstone on Lam and is also an elf with 3 Primal past lives who is able to killsteal 100% of the time to maintain his Killer streak. This is of course an unrealistic best-case scenario but let's use it.

So during the 100sec non-Manyshot period, the 'perfect' Ranger averages a 35% chance to proc an extra arrow.

During the same period, the Monkcher gets an average of about 30% chance to proc an extra arrow, 25% chance to proc two extra arrows and about a 1% chance to proc 3 extra arrows.
However by proccing extra arrows beyond the first, that means the overall chance to proc an extra arrow during that 100 secs is 30+50+3 for 83%.

So there we have a significant disparity but even that disparity is not the real disparity.

Assuming both are in FotW, you need to concentrate on the 7 adrenalines you get to use OUTSIDE of the epic moment since the Epic Moment is a wash for both of them.
Realize that the monkcher is going to have those extra adrenalines to use with both Slayer and Snipershot while 10K stars is operative
That means the Ranger is going to have those adrenalines outside of the Manyshot debuff and therefore get a 70% if ALL the Ranger's stars align to create the optimal situation. 60% is the more realistic number assuming the Lam buff goes live.
The Monckher however will expend his adrenalines during 10k Stars where he will see a 90% chance of proccing at least one extra arrow and about a 40% chance of getting at least 2 additional arrows.
Also realize that the Monkcher's greater ROF will allow him to regenerate adrenalines faster than the Ranger.

The imbalance is the ability of the Monkcher to employ adrenalized specials Far more often than the Ranger without even taking into account the monkcher gets the extra crit multiplier on 19/20's while in Earth.


The Silver Longbow is 1d10+3.
Slayer Arrow is (weapon damage +250)
Your Ranger's Slaying arrow is Max 258
You are basically saying you have never seen your Silver Longbow do more than 8 damage when using Slaying Arrow.
So I have to ask: is your Ranger a STR dumped Halfling with no STR gear fighting skellies with no Morphic Imbue running?

Right but that is with a high wisdom and on a centered monkcher. Both of which are the prices you pay for that ability. I agree 10k stars is better but rangers get close to it and keep their versatility which a monkcher does not get.

Hence I do not see the huge gaping disparity between monkchers and rangers. If you want the twf feats and the ability to use dual balizardes while manyshot is on cooldown you have that option. If you want pure ranged maybe pure ranger isn't the way to go ... I mean they get melee feats for a reason.

You could even pull out two of the new smoky khopeshes with just an extra feat whereas the monkcher needs 8 levels of fighter ... completely unmaking the monkcher.

[Sam1313]

Right but that is with a high wisdom and on a centered monkcher. Both of which are the prices you pay for that ability. I agree 10k stars is better but rangers get close to it and keep their versatility which a monkcher does not get.

Hence I do not see the huge gaping disparity between monkchers and rangers. If you want the twf feats and the ability to use dual balizardes while manyshot is on cooldown you have that option. If you want pure ranged maybe pure ranger isn't the way to go ... I mean they get melee feats for a reason.

You could even pull out two of the new smoky khopeshes with just an extra feat whereas the monkcher needs 8 levels of fighter ... completely unmaking the monkcher.

If you add all them extra arrows the monk gets along with manyshot plus slaying arrow plus primal scream plus adrenaline plus the earth stance that equals out to large burst of damage compared to a pure build aa ranger who just has his manyshots plus slaying arrow. Don't even bring up the capstone because the 25% double shot is not working.
And you mentioned that the monks has to obtain a high wisdom to do what they do. Same with pure rangers we have to obtain a high strength to do bow damage with the bow str feat. Same for the pure aa ranger ideal str is 42 just like the monks ideal wisdom is 42

[Daze]

If you add all them extra arrows the monk gets along with manyshot plus slaying arrow plus primal scream plus adrenaline plus the earth stance that equals out to large burst of damage compared to a pure build aa ranger who just has his manyshots plus slaying arrow. Don't even bring up the capstone because the 25% double shot is not working.
And you mentioned that the monks has to obtain a high wisdom to do what they do. Same with pure rangers we have to obtain a high strength to do bow damage with the bow str feat. Same for the pure aa ranger ideal str is 42 just like the monks ideal wisdom is 42

Yes but the monkcher is trying to get all of those stats simultaneously in addition to charisma for saves assuming a paladin splash. ... thanks for making my point for me. I actually went dex based elf on my monkcher to make it work using shuriken expertise and ninja spy enhancements to build up furies when on doubleshot penalty. Let me tell you, dumping strength makes remaining centered troublesome.

Also, see previous posts about versatility of ranger vs monkcher specialization.

As for the capstone not working .... you have every right to demand that gets fixed. Just as the shuriken folks demand their increased crit range.

[Alfhild]

Right but that is with a high wisdom and on a centered monkcher. Both of which are the prices you pay for that ability. I agree 10k stars is better but rangers get close to it and keep their versatility which a monkcher does not get.
A Pure Ranger's does not get the Monk's versatility either.
Assume a 12Mnk/6Ranger/2x split.
Better Saves
Improved Evasion
Superior Runspeed
Abundant Step
25% Incorp compared to 10%
Higher Dodge
+5% heal Amp
choice between +1 crit multiplier/more HP/ Slightly reduced Runspeed OR better saves/slightly increased RoF/better dodge/-1 damage
Your 2x Split adds even more versatility or DPS depending on the splash.
At least around 25% more DPS than the Ranger

What does a pure Ranged Ranger get in comparison?
Slightly more skillpoints?
Light Armor which does what exactly?
Better Self Healing from (assuming quickened) CSW
+3 or 4 more STR since level ups not used for WIS. (see below)


48 is not a High Wisdom on a well-geared non-completionist player at L28:
8ase 16
Tome +5
Level-ups +4 (other +3 in STR)
Gear +15
Acute Instincts +2
Ship Buff +2
Enhancements +2
Yugo Pot +2

For a less hard-core player 44 Wis is hardly taxing at L28
Base 16
Tome +4
Level-ups +4
Gear +14
Acute Instincts +2
Ship Buff +2
Enhancements +2

[Daze]

A Pure Ranger's does not get the Monk's versatility either.
Assume a 12Mnk/6Ranger/2x split.
Better Saves
Improved Evasion
Superior Runspeed
Abundant Step
25% Incorp compared to 10%
Higher Dodge
+5% heal Amp
choice between +1 crit multiplier/more HP/ Slightly reduced Runspeed OR better saves/slightly increased RoF/better dodge/-1 damage, ki regen
Your 2x Split adds even more versatility or DPS depending on the splash.
At least around 25% more DPS than the Ranger
and 3 monk bonus feats
the use of light monk buffs

What does a pure Ranged Ranger get in comparison?
Slightly more skillpoints?
Light Armor which does what exactly? More PRR
Better Self Healing from (assuming quickened) CSW
+3 or 4 more STR since level ups not used for WIS. (see below)
Access to empower heal... actually they both get this so it's a wash
More weapon choices
Twf feats
Improved precise shot for free
Access to more AA and DS cores including cap stones
More free gear/augment slots to stack on various perks due to not needing (Wis/Cha) other stats/insightfuls/exceptionals
Self buffs ... mainly FoM
Longer buffs
Hiding in Plain Sight
Favored enemies which can add up to 12 dmg for all providing enhancments
Ability to dump strength without worrying about weight
More AP's to spend on DPS


48 is not a High Wisdom on a well-geared non-completionist player at L28:
8ase 16
Tome +5
Level-ups +4 (other +3 in STR)
Gear +15
Acute Instincts +2
Ship Buff +2
Enhancements +2
Yugo Pot +2

For a less hard-core player 44 Wis is hardly taxing at L28
Base 16
Tome +4
Level-ups +4
Gear +14
Acute Instincts +2
Ship Buff +2
Enhancements +2

FTFY

and a 25% increase in DPS is overstating it ... and it applies only to ranged which on Rangers is an option not a mandate.

Let's compare apples to apples. Rangers are inherently not meant to be pure ranged, monkchers are.

[maddmatt70]

A Pure Ranger's does not get the Monk's versatility either.
Assume a 12Mnk/6Ranger/2x split.
Better Saves
Improved Evasion
Superior Runspeed
Abundant Step
25% Incorp compared to 10%
Higher Dodge
+5% heal Amp
choice between +1 crit multiplier/more HP/ Slightly reduced Runspeed OR better saves/slightly increased RoF/better dodge/-1 damage
Your 2x Split adds even more versatility or DPS depending on the splash.
At least around 25% more DPS than the Ranger

What does a pure Ranged Ranger get in comparison?
Slightly more skillpoints?
Light Armor which does what exactly?
Better Self Healing from (assuming quickened) CSW
+3 or 4 more STR since level ups not used for WIS. (see below)


48 is not a High Wisdom on a well-geared non-completionist player at L28:
8ase 16
Tome +5
Level-ups +4 (other +3 in STR)
Gear +15
Acute Instincts +2
Ship Buff +2
Enhancements +2
Yugo Pot +2

For a less hard-core player 44 Wis is hardly taxing at L28
Base 16
Tome +4
Level-ups +4
Gear +14
Acute Instincts +2
Ship Buff +2
Enhancements +2

More favored enemy damage for the pure ranger and they get doubleshot for a part of the time where Monkcher never does. It is a bit more closer then people realize from a damage standpoint between pure ranger and monkcher.

[Teh_Troll]

More favored enemy damage for the pure ranger and they get doubleshot for a part of the time where Monkcher never does. It is a bit more closer then people realize from a damage standpoint between pure ranger and monkcher.

Nonsense. Dance of flowers blows away any possible advantage a pure ranger could get.

[Daze]

Nonsense. Dance of flowers blows away any possible advantage a pure ranger could get.

12 atk/dmg per hit vs all 6 chosen favored enemies is not nonsense. Considering it stacks with Dance of flowers (a twist Rangers can use as well) ... I don't see the comparison.

Especially considering with Pinion base weapon dmg avg of 7 (2d6) A Dance of Flowers multiplies that by 1.5 .... 10.5 > 12?



Oh right ... trolled

[Alfhild]

FTFY

Access to empower heal
More weapon choices
Twf feats
Improved precise shot for free
Access to more AA and DS cores including cap stones
More free gear/augment slots to stack on various perks due to not needing (Wis/Cha) other stats/insightfuls/exceptionals
Self buffs ... mainly FoM

Again slightly better self healing, sorry I should have said empowered quicken CSW. But also note there are monkcher builds that allow for Empowered Healing.
TWF feats? uhm if we are comparing ranged capabilities is it irrelevant.
IPS is easily fitted into any Monkcher build. Do you really want to compare feat selection between a monkcher with 6 monk and 6 ranger and a Pure Ranger?
Compared to a Monkcher with 6 Ranger, a Pure gets Aligned arrows; the other cores are increased DS and +2 DEX. Since DS is virtually worthless on a Monkcher and does not make up for 10K stars, it can be ignored. So you get +1 reflex. Want to compare Saves?
A Monkcher with 6 Ranger can spend 13 pts in it for the T3 core and +30 Dam boost. When you compare further expenditures in that tree with what you can purchase in the monk trees, sorry I do not see DWS as an advantage.
Your CHA reference is to the specific pally splash. Stacking WIS and STR is not difficult given the wide ranged of aug slotted gear now available.


and a 25% increase in DPS is overstating it ...
25% increased in Ranged DPS is far from overstating it when you realize that it reflects the increased RoF and the ability to adrenalize more Slayers than a Pure Ranged Ranger.
In a 2 minute period, a Monkcher with 44 WIS averages a RoF of 2.1 arrows per volley.
In a 2 minute period, a pure Ranger averages about 1.75
In the 2 minutes BEFORE using your epic moment, a Monkcher can get an average of 13 adrenalized arrows off compared to the Doubleshotting Ranger's 10 when both expend 6 adrenalines of their 7.
After the Epic Moment, the Monkcher will be able to recharge adrenalines faster due to their increased RoF.


and it applies only to ranged which on Rangers is an option not a mandate.
A pure ranger built for range who chooses to melee is going to outdps a monkcher built for range?

[Daze]

Again slightly better self healing, sorry I should have said empowered quicken CSW. But also note there are monkcher builds that allow for Empowered Healing.
TWF feats? uhm if we are comparing ranged capabilities is it irrelevant.
IPS is easily fitted into any Monkcher build. Do you really want to compare feat selection between a monkcher with 6 monk and 6 ranger and a Pure Ranger?
Compared to a Monkcher with 6 Ranger, a Pure gets Aligned arrows; the other cores are increased DS and +2 DEX. Since DS is virtually worthless on a Monkcher and does not make up for 10K stars, it can be ignored. So you get +1 reflex. Want to compare Saves?
A Monkcher with 6 Ranger can spend 13 pts in it for the T3 core and +30 Dam boost. When you compare further expenditures in that tree with what you can purchase in the monk trees, sorry I do not see DWS as an advantage.
Your CHA reference is to the specific pally splash. Stacking WIS and STR is not difficult given the wide ranged of aug slotted gear now available.


25% increased in Ranged DPS is far from overstating it when you realize that it reflects the increased RoF and the ability to adrenalize more Slayers than a Pure Ranged Ranger.
In a 2 minute period, a Monkcher with 44 WIS averages a RoF of 2.1 arrows per volley.
In a 2 minute period, a pure Ranger averages about 1.75
In the 2 minutes BEFORE using your epic moment, a Monkcher can get an average of 13 adrenalized arrows off compared to the Doubleshotting Ranger's 10 when both expend 6 adrenalines of their 7.
After the Epic Moment, the Monkcher will be able to recharge adrenalines faster due to their increased RoF.


A pure ranger built for range who chooses to melee is going to outdps a monkcher built for range?


Apples to apples. A properly geared and tweaked out melee ranger can be good dps. You are taking a class that can do both and comparing it to a build that cannot. Rangers being comparable in intent to a focused and specialized build .... speaks to their power as a pure class.


The fact that rangers do not need to spend a feat getting IPS matters considering this is 2 base feats and not monk bonuses with the prereq PBS not being an automatic.

You'll note that I added more bonus to monkcher in that previous post for the sake of a true comparison. Being in a character balance thread I think they are as balanced as they are going to get.

[Alfhild]

You are assuming a ranger keeps manyshot on cooldown most monkchers just use 10k stars and save the manyshot for when a burst is needed. Comparing 60% doubleshot just to 10k stars is not that big of a difference so yes a 25% increase in DPS is overstating it.

I assume the Ranger uses Manyshot every time it comes up every 2 minutes..
I assume the Monkcher uses Manyshot every time it comes up every 2 minutes..
Saying Monkchers save Manyshot for burst is YOUR playstyle not most monkchers. I could also say Rangers save Manyshot for burst in my analysis but do not do that. In fact you will likely find many monkchers who say they no longer save Manyshot for burst situations since they feel 10K stars allows them to use Manyshot far more than they would if they were playing a pure Ranger.
You want me to compare a Ranger who maximizes his DPS to a monkcher who does not?



Apples to apples. A properly geared and tweaked out melee ranger can be good dps. You are taking a class that can do both and comparing it to a build that cannot.

Apples to oranges: A properly geared and tweaked out Melee Ranger is not a a properly geared and tweaked out Ranged Ranger.
Also the reason I am comparing Ranged to Ranged is due to the fact that a common voice heard throughout this thread is that Ranged Damage is superior to Melee Damage not due to DPS potential but due to DPS practical limitations created by the current anti-melee mechanisms seen in upper level EE play.


PS ... I use DWS on my monkcher .. as does Sestra in the video linked in this very thread. It is relevant. Heavy draw and favored enemy bonuses are significant when accounting for the difference in DPS. The capstone for DWS is always being in PBS range (+1 [W]) and sneak attack range. Having more points to spend in both trees is also significant for a ranged build.

Can you point to a thread that compares the DPS of a Heavy Draw build which forgoes Slayer Arrows to your standard AA pure Ranger?



The fact that rangers do not need to spend a feat getting IPS matters considering this is 2 base feats and not monk bonuses with the prereq PBS not being an automatic.

Both have to slot PBS
Both get Precise Shot.
IPS requires 1 slot.
It is easily slotted in a monkcher build which is why every monkcher build with a tomed and geared Monkcher has it.
Saying it is free makes for an advantage is only truly for a DEX dumped Ranger.
A difference which makes no difference is not a difference.



You'll note that I added more bonus to monkcher in that previous post.

As for being as balanced as they can get, I disagree: removing the Manyshot Doubleshot debuff for Rangers for instance would make them a lot closer.
I ignored the bonus monk feats since you really only get 1 since 2 are spent for Zen Archery and 10kstars.
Dumping STR means dumping Overwhelming Critical, correct me if I am wrong.
I admit FE plays a part in Ranger builds.
Monkcher's do get some FE damage as well, just not as much and against a smaller number of types.
We could go on comparing PRO's and CON's of feats but I think it would be better in another thread where builds kitted with gear could be posted and feats etc compared.

[Daze]

Ranger only get PBS if they spend a feat on it and in the monkcher case it is necessary instead of a choice in order to get IPS.

As far as manyshot goes it's circumstancial .... If I have to make sure a dragon dies within seconds of a giant it gets saved. If we have a large HP red named coming up it gets saved..... so generally I save it for when it is needed. As do many rangers I know.

Yes I do not have overwhelming critical on my dex based monkcher. I do have precision though .. and the fort bypass slightly makes up for that dps loss.

I don't have a thread for DWS just my experience. I get the same numbers from sniper shot as I do with arrow of slaying with heavy draw and FE with a shorter cooldown and less mana. Which means more fury shots during one manyshot/10k stars if needed. Considering heavy draw and FE dmg keep on going after the sniper shot and fury ... it's a net DPS gain. Add in more AA stuff that I do not have the AP's for and it means even more ranged DPS.

I have already cleaned up the previous post to convey my meaning more cleanly. ... probably while you were typing this one.

Ranger is a class ... monkcher is a build. The difference is in the intent. One has options the other does not ...

If you want to compare melee and ranged I am all for it. Melee need some love in the defense department. Saying that melee is not currently viable doesn't remove the twf from the ranger it just makes them currently useless. If melee get some buffing than they will not be..... which to me is a more appropriate topic for a balance discussion.

[MadGardener]

quick thought on character balance and game, it hard to separate one from the other and this mostly speaks to game then character but depending on how the game is balance it will decide the nature of the characters .

one off topic is incentives to play style (and character building) currently the hard/elite streak bonus and persistence (no death) although meant as incentives and bonus exps they seem to do the opposite. It may work better to not have them disappear perhaps a first life can't get a streak, 2nd heroic life can build a hard steak 1% per hard/elite quest up to hard streak cap and a 3rd life can get get an elite streak 1% per elite quest. this would carry into epics as it does now. and remove the persistence bonus or make it individual.

change epic destiny acquisition. everyone knows the capped in all destinies toon running in best line is far superior to similar character that has to farm up destines. I realize this was not the place the developers were going to but after the market place sit in the farming of destines concept changed. so now we have some toons blasting around in maxed out lines while the ones that can't afford the time slowly trying to group and increase destines or take no exps. this should change, it hurts the weekend warriors and well almost everyone but the top tier. not sure best solution, all i know is that it is night and day between them and it doesn't work.

lastly it not all about damage, everyone plays differently and for different reasons. If you can fix the imbalance in damage output then there are many reasons to play other types of characters, A bard that has great mass songs and can provide support damage that is effective, they don't expect to be the Barbarian (little joke there, but couldn't resist). dedicated healers with passive or reactive healing abilities, lets face it hirings (computer AI) sees and reacts faster the a human trying to find the critically hurt toon somewhere on the battlefield, but if they had reactive options then they would be more effective, example arcon of healing light, mass reactive heal spells, mass deaths door...this is epic after all. pacifism is pretty weak if u added hugh dr bonus then it's a heal turtle option. speaking of spells and epics, although no spells were 'epic' spells I though D&D had an option for epic casters to modify spells to epic levels through research? anyhow will epic spells happen (big game changer there) even if it's upgrades to existing spells like an mass version of deaths door

good luck getting the balance right, to me the bottom line is effective vs the challenges place in front of us. if u give us 140k orange name ( trash mob) then we need toons that do 1k's of points of damage, damage that is unavoidable and deadly without evasion then toons with evasion are preferred and the rest have to beg for help or be left behind for better combat toons. However if the balance can be achieved I would like to think we may be able to have more 'fun' options in characters and abilities.

good luck interesting post

(haven't read it all but seems to be degrading from the OP somewhat)

personally I am not a fan of the epic destiny design (although like the circles :D) is there a change coming to them like the heroic redesign? (would also be nice to 'epic' heroic abilities i find these more charter building and defining

[Alfhild]

Ranger only get PBS if they spend a feat on it and in the monkcher case it is necessary instead of a choice in order to get IPS.

A pure Ranged Ranger build and a Monkcher build are both going to contain both.
Thus this difference makes no difference.
The issue of difference only comes into play when assessing the loss of the feat in question on the monk and how it otherwise would be spent.
Which is why I suggest we take the discussion to another thread heh.



Yes I do not have overwhelming critical on my dex based monkcher.
I don't have a thread for DWS just my experience. I get the same numbers from sniper shot as I do with arrow of slaying with a shorter cooldown and less mana.
I have already cleaned up the previous post to convey my meaning more cleanly. ... probably while you were typing this one.

Which is why I suggest we take it to another thread where numbers can be discussed, a consensus possibly reached, and then linked in this thread if necessary.

[Alfhild]

Saying that melee is not currently viable doesn't remove the twf from the ranger it just makes them currently useless. If melee get some buffing than they will not be..... which to me is an appropriate topic for a balance discussion.
[/quote]
I am in complete agreement here. I am basing my argumentation on the current situation, not the one we both desire. Again, need to get back to work, but would love to carry the discussion elsewhere.

[Daze]

change epic destiny acquisition. everyone knows the capped in all destinies toon running in best line is far superior to similar character that has to farm up destines. I realize this was not the place the developers were going to but after the market place sit in the farming of destines concept changed. so now we have some toons blasting around in maxed out lines while the ones that can't afford the time slowly trying to group and increase destines or take no exps. this should change, it hurts the weekend warriors and well almost everyone but the top tier. not sure best solution, all i know is that it is night and day between them and it doesn't work.

/agreed

I'm sure Vargouille has it written down somewhere as I posted it previously but what do you think about gaining karma to a central pool for epic TR's and ability to gain XP in an off destiny while in your main (at a possible xp loss)?

[Desonde]

Rangers do suffer a penalty to shots while running backwards.


And monks don't?



In order for a AA Ranger to get the feat shot on the run (Link here: http://ddowiki.com/page/Shot_on_the_Run )


Shot on the run isn't worth it for any class, and how does a monk get it without jumping through the same hurdles?



But then they have to take the dodge feat and give up the critical ranged feat, ok THEN they have to take the Mobility feat and give up the Improved Critical Ranged feat.


I usually take dodge and mobility on both pure rangers and monkchers [Point Blank, Toughness, Zen Archery, Imp. Critical Ranged, Precision, Dodge, Mobility {monkcher moves two of those into earlier levels so that I can pick up the missing stances at higher levels, and 10k star at monk 6}], and you're taking Improved Critical Ranged twice? Or are you referring to Power Critical?.



Then Finally at level 15 they can obtain Shot on the Run. This actually hurts the ranger in the low to mid levels but they can gain at least critical ranged back at around 18 but then Improved critical ranged gets left off.


It's much more efficient to get the Elf/H-Elf enhancements to increase accuracy than it is to take that feat, especially if you're giving up Imp. Crit. Ranged.



Lets face it the capstone for a pure build AA Ranger just sucks period. As do all the capstones for all the pure builds except the casters. That's why so many people multiclass now days.


Agreed.



What most Archer WONT tell you is that they MISS a lot while running and trying to fire their bows. Why? well it makes them look bad. But the shots they do hit with while running and kiting is usually from the manyshots, That's why they draw the aggro. If it was a single shot while running then the monsters would not even give the Archer a thought.


The only time I miss while running on either ranged character is due to the lack of predictive trajectory where monsters moving across your line of fire cannot be hit. Otherwise I hit just fine [and have no idea how a monk is any different]. If a -4 from moving makes it impossible to hit with, how does a -8 from manyshot make you hit more?

The reason why Manyshot draws aggro is because when compared to 150 dmg hits with a bow vs a two handed weapon, the two handed weapon will attack 2.5 times between arrows, a 150% bonus to hate. When all four arrows from many shot hit the 150% damage bonus is on the rangers side. This also has nothing to do with having monk levels.



So no more about the nerfing or changing of the way archers kite. Unless you have played a AA ranger from level 1 to 28 (no xp stones used) then you have no clue what your talking about. Now I cannot speak for the Monkchers they seem to do more damage in ONE shot than a pure build archer does with manyshots so kiting for them may be different.


You can't state that someone else doesn't know what they are talking about and then make a baseless claim that lacks evidence to prove your point. I would like to know how you are suggesting that each Monkcher arrow does more than 600dmg, because that's how much my ranger's manyshot does [same amount as my monkchers too].



I read your reply to another archer in this thread and I would have to agree with her when she said it appears that you have never played a pure build archer. I have 3 pure build archers 1 of them is currently sitting at level 28 and I would also have to agree with her when she stated that the archers capstone of 25% double shot is a joke. This is not working as it is intended to, if it even works at all.


Is it a joke or is it broken, two different things (if the 25% was in fact working, this would boost the damage [not increase the damage over time to match a monkcher due to the long penalty to doubleshot from manyshot], as w/o manyshot active it will statistically do more damage over 2min than manyshot does in the same time frame (it has a 2min cooldown. You're just changing from burst to sustained).


As for the Monk Archers out dps'ing the pure archers this is correct. My level 28 pure archer runs with a guild mate who has a 28 monk archer and yeah pretty much the monk archer can do more damage in one regular shot than my pure archer can do with manyshots combined with a slaying arrow.

Yea, well my guild mate can hurl Tyrannosaurus Rex's at mobs with his halfling dart thrower, so this is correct. How about some numbers to back this up, because you just stated that your guildmate's monkcher is able to fire regular arrows for 1600+ dmg (1200 if you've built a non-optimal 20 ranger, which would than mean you can't compare non-optimal to optimal and say they are broken, you must create a best case scenario for both situations and back it up with numbers and facts, not hearsay and insults).



And before you tell me that I don't know how to build a archer like you had said to the other ranger in your reply. I do know the archer class very very well.


How about some math and hard facts to back this up instead of baseless statements and insults?



It is YOU who does not know that class. The proof is in your words stating that the ranged class can out dps the melee. This is so far from the truth that it cannot be described into words. Pure build archers has a "burst" of dps with manyshots combined with the slaying arrow, ok then theres this super long cooldown of manyshots to where we are firing one shot at a time. Somewhere between 78 points of damage to 250 with slaying arrow.


78 to 328 w/ slaying arrow ( it's +250, not 250 instead of base damage), and a monkcher has the same numbers (and if both have zen archery [it is not a monk feat, doesn't require any monk levels] you can get A Dance of Flowers and increase that to 100 -> 350, and if you optimize your gear/ED's you can get it to 150->400).



I have seen melee guys hit for in the 200 to 500 per hit every hit so how can you say that 78 points of damage is more than 200 per hit? How do you do your math?


Because you are comparing optimal to non-optimal, My pure ranger hits for 150, and it's not fully geared (in archer's focus I can get close to 200 as well [which would crit for 600]).

The only differences between Monkcher and Rangers in terms of damage are access to 10k stars which greatly increases their attack rate, and a +1 crit multipler in earth stance. Pure Rangers are actually able to get a higher base damage since they don't need to put nearly as many points into Dex and Wisdom (only need a base of 13 to get zen archery), using elf and putting everything into Dex you can get a few extra points of base damage.

[Daze]

Snip

Continue reading.

That basis for comparison was flawed because of a previous post it was centered around ... and ranged vs. melee DPS is what the discussion was about towards the end there ... calling me out on something they didn't think I agreed with until I quoted my own post to disprove them.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

BTW, I melee a lot in EEs.

But I do my best to not draw agro.

And I jump away to heal up if I get hurt bad enough.

Sometimes I die, but is is usually either because I agroed too many or against some orange and red named monsters.


Melee is not useless as some claim.




But yeah... you do have to be very careful.... and ready to run... lol

[BigErkyKid]

Alright, someone pointed me out to a big numbers DPS sorc that doesn't rely on Shiradi and has enough SP to last a long quest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Milshty2EN0

I am very impressed. I admit I was unable to generate one myself.

Now, some words of caution. The player knows extremely well the quests, in most cases he just runs out of SP by the end (all good). Second point, he has 4 relevant past lifes and awful lot of gear. Fine too.

Now my questions - could this be achieved by a top shiradi sorc? If so, would it need the same amount of effort to gather all the required stuff?

And finally, how viable is it to non "elite" players to play a non shirado sorc? Should it then be a default to go shiradi?

Those are my questions regarding balance.

[Teh_Troll]

And finally, how viable is it to non "elite" players to play a non shirado sorc? Should it then be a default to go shiradi?

Those are my questions regarding balance.

The non-elite players are pretty non-elite playing Shiradi also.

[Desonde]

Continue reading.

That basis for comparison was flawed because of a previous post it was centered around ... and ranged vs. melee DPS is what the discussion was about towards the end there ... calling me out on something they didn't think I agreed with until I quoted my own post to disprove them.

Fair enough, but there were a lot of baseless allegations in there about monkcher giving a substantial bonus to hit and base damage that I couldn't ignore.

[maddmatt70]

Nonsense. Dance of flowers blows away any possible advantage a pure ranger could get.

A pure ranger can get dance of flowers as well so your just flat out wrong here Troll.

[fmalfeas]

Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast...

Please, please, please, for the love of little kobold babies, either change their save off of Reflex, or let us Heighten them. I'm actually begging you. They already use non-loaded dice, and can't be empowered or maximized. And I'm okay with that. But please let us heighten them, or change their spell level! (And please make Arcane Blast spell level 5 while we're at it! Feels bad having a top tier enhancement be rendered useless by Mantle.)

[BigErkyKid]

The non-elite players are pretty non-elite playing Shiradi also.

From my experience, a red butted monkey could play a shiradi sorc. Mine was running around half naked and still did better than other builds in end game.

Now it was nowhere Dr Peppers, but I have the impression that there is a huge discontinuity in the power progression of sorcs. Either you are being constantly evaded and you burn through mana or you are Dr Peppers. I don ´t think that is balanced, I feel that shiradi was to sorcs more of an accident. So I feel it would be better to increase the power of their natural destiny so that even just moderately grinded builds can be OK. Not great, but at least OK.

[Teh_Troll]

A pure ranger can get dance of flowers as well so your just flat out wrong here Troll.

You really need to sign up for my course . . .

of course they can take it . . . but they can't be centered with the bow and be in fury. So while you're right on a technicality this idea is so insanely stupid that the best thing you could do now for DDO is set your PC on fire.

[Vargouille]

We’ve read the forum posts and tallied the surveys, and want to echo back what we’ve heard from you guys along with some of our thoughts on some specific points. There’s definitely even more feedback we’ve got notes on than just the stuff we’re listing here, but this highlights the most common and passionate feedback.

A compilation of some main points we’ve gathered from your feedback
The presumption is that most comments are about Epic Elite, as explicitly mentioned by many players.

For most characters, it’s hard to stay alive unless you avoid damage entirely.
• Melee monsters hit very hard. This pushes towards playing ranged characters to avoid monster melee damage.
• The most dangerous ranged enemies tend to be casters using spells that can be avoided with Reflex saving throws, which makes Evasion the best way to mitigate ranged damage.
What’s going on with monsters?
• Damage per hit from melee monsters is very high, even if you are building to mitigate it.
o It may be OK to hit this hard against robe-wearing arcane casters, but characters should be able to greatly reduce this damage with medium or heavy armor, appropriate feats, enhancements, destiny choices, and other itemization.
• Some other statistics may need looking at for Monsters, including hit points, saving throws, and the DCs of monster abilities.

On Balance Changes
There’s a wide variety of general opinions, including everything from “buff everything”, “nerf everything”, to “balance nothing”, “have a vision at Turbine and do the right thing!”, each of these repeated by multiple people. The best course probably involves some elements of all of these comments, both buffing and nerfing, possibly including nerfing monsters.
Many players have urged caution with any changes, specifically to minimize collateral damage. As an example, if changes are made to nerf monkcher Furyshotters, don’t break monks, rangers, other Fury of the Wild characters, and all ranged characters at the same time. Favor the scalpel over the sledgehammer.

Some quotes:
• “Characters should have to make tradeoffs. At the moment this isn't happening; some classes are able to have top notch dps and defense.”
• “DDO's greatest differentiating strength is the depth and robustness of character creation and development. The current situation effectively renders that moot, leaving DDO without a competitive advantage.”
• “This is a fantasy game, I log on to feel awesome.”
• “I'd like to see balance change once, to something good enough that most players are satisfied with it, and then stay that way for the duration. That would be perfect. But, you know... many small corrections as the need arises might be good enough.”
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/StayVsBalance.png


On Diversity
A few seemed concerned that balance meant making everything the same. That’s not the goal, and the diversity of different build options represents one of the greatest strengths of DDO. The major reason we would want to balance anything would be to make more builds feel viable and fun to play, even in the most difficult quests.
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/PersonalVsPower.png

On Synergy
Many players noted that “overpowered” builds combine amazing synergies that may or may not have been intended. There are occasional combinations that produce unanticipated results, but generally speaking we aim to provide some synergies in character building. It’s OK for certain combos to be more than the sum of their parts, as long as there are lots of different synergies that don’t end up too far apart from each other in terms of fun and viability.

Survival & Defense
We’re thinking about the possibility of making some changes to how armor and shields work, with the goal of making medium and heavy armor more viable forms of defense in epic content. These discussions are at the most preliminary stages, but we’re aware there are issues here.

Multiclassing (ignoring Enhancements)
This could be another entire discussion. But many players thought it was crazy that multiclassing wasn’t the forefront of the discussion, so let’s talk about it.

We like being D&D. We are unlikely to significantly alter or remove core feats or abilities from classes or races.

Evasion is probably the biggest single draw for taking 2 Rogue or Monk levels. However, we may think about how common Reflex saving throws are vs. other saving throws, and other no-save effects that feel fair for monsters and players both. This would be a long-reaching goal, and would need to be made in concert with other changes, such as making sure that players aren’t simply dying, if Evasion was the only thing keeping most characters alive.

Multiclassing and Enhancement Trees
The enhancement pass in Update 19 certainly affected multiclassing. As a matter of learning from history, here’s some reasons why, which we were mostly aware of at the time:
• Frontloading and Minimizing changes to characters: Many popular & powerful abilities are “front-loaded”; they are on low tiers in the enhancement trees. This was very consciously done so that most characters could still get most of what they desired without much hassle. We knew this would incentivize multiclassing, but decided that was an acceptable cost. Even with this, during the enhancement pass there was a great deal of outcry. This is something we could make incremental changes to affect, but each change would probably make some subset of players upset, and we’re in no hurry to revamp everything and move everything around. (Giant tangential discussion for another time or place: “Class” enhancement trees aren’t a simple solution to this.)
• Number of enhancement trees: A major part of the original design (intended to present choice as well as help balance multiclass builds vs. pure builds) was the limit of 3 enhancement trees. Yes, you could still make a Henshin Mystic + Thief Acrobat, but you’d have to make meaningful choices and give things up to get them. Multiclassing is still clearly an increase in power (you get the “best” 3 trees out of 6-9, instead of just 3), but not as much as it is with 6 class trees. Essentially, we changed this due to feedback at the time, knowing it would help lead to the rise of multiclass characters. This is one of those places where we had a vision but it simply wasn’t accepted by the community at-large (which is not to place the blame on anyone.) We try to strike a balance between design considerations and the desires of the people who play our game, so we changed this to 6 class trees.
• Class Level Requirements: The U18 Enhancements largely required 6/12/18 class levels to get “the good stuff”. Both internally amongst the design team and publicly amongst the players, during the Enhancement pass a great variety of class level restrictions were proposed for the 5-tier trees we have now. These included some very strong calls for 1/3/6/12/28 (similar to the old system), all the way down to not requiring any class levels at all (essentially just requiring access to the tree). I’ll take personal responsibility for fighting for the 1/2/3/4/5 system we have today, which was for the goal of meaningful choices along with interesting possible builds. Instead of nearly every build being 20 or 18/2 or maybe 12/6/2, there’s a much wider variety of builds that players consider and actually take. Along with the third Core enhancement requiring level 6, there’s at least some real reasons to want anywhere from 1-6 class levels at least. And there are definitely some builds that splash 2/3/4 levels for specific enhancements and synergies. While these synergies do provide extra power, they also provide a much wider array of possible choices while still being choices (compared to only requiring 1 level of a class to access the entire tree). There’s still some debate that perhaps 1/2/3/4/5 is too generous, but this isn’t something we’d change lightly.

Frequency and Speed of Changes
In the forums, many players agreed that if something was going to be changed, it should be changed right away. However, there were some interesting notes, such as: “sometimes it takes a long long time before the synergy of certain things gets ‘popular’ and then is perceived as ‘overpowered’. Many months sometimes. Just because people discover a synergy straight away doesn't mean it should automatically be nerfed.” Also, the survey responses suggested that we should try to avoid any kind of immediate kneejerk reactions.

https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/HowSoon.png

As a contemporary note: When something is nerfed for Divine Crusader on Lamannia, or between Lamannia and live launch of the patch, this is sometimes an example of this in action. With our efforts to try to get features in front of players on Lamannia sooner, you are likely to see more changes, including ‘nerfs’. (It’s difficult for designers to even think of changes as nerfs, for a feature that has never been live. Internally here at Turbine, a design may change many times before players even seen it, the power level going up and down all the time.)

What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
Major caveat: Anything considered overpowered by some is also loved by others. We’re aware of this. Anything on this list is also NOT automatically going to be nerfed or changed in any particular way, but these are things we may take a closer look at. There’s quite a few other possibilities we might look at, but these were near the top of the list for discussions.
• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct

Survey
We always appreciate the passionate and detailed feedback you guys provide us, both as forum posts and as survey results. We’re still trying to improve how we construct surveys in the future, including adding N/A options. It was not our intent to only include information from players who were extremely knowledgeable with all classes and epic destines; we could have pointed out that it was fine to leave some answers blank (which many people did).

Here’s an overview of some of the survey results. Reminder that higher values indicate more power.
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/CombatStylePowerAverages.png
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/ClassPowerAverages.png
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/EpicDestinyPowerAverages.png


Thanks for the great feedback! We’ll be reading along and looking for your ideas and opinions.

[Livmo]

We’ve read the forum posts and tallied the surveys, and want to echo back what we’ve heard from you guys along with some of our thoughts on some specific points. There’s definitely even more feedback we’ve got notes on than just the stuff we’re listing here, but this highlights the most common and passionate feedback.

A compilation of some main points we’ve gathered from your feedback
The presumption is that most comments are about Epic Elite, as explicitly mentioned by many players.

For most characters, it’s hard to stay alive unless you avoid damage entirely.
• Melee monsters hit very hard. This pushes towards playing ranged characters to avoid monster melee damage.
• The most dangerous ranged enemies tend to be casters using spells that can be avoided with Reflex saving throws, which makes Evasion the best way to mitigate ranged damage.
What’s going on with monsters?
• Damage per hit from melee monsters is very high, even if you are building to mitigate it.
o It may be OK to hit this hard against robe-wearing arcane casters, but characters should be able to greatly reduce this damage with medium or heavy armor, appropriate feats, enhancements, destiny choices, and other itemization.
• Some other statistics may need looking at for Monsters, including hit points, saving throws, and the DCs of monster abilities.

On Balance Changes
There’s a wide variety of general opinions, including everything from “buff everything”, “nerf everything”, to “balance nothing”, “have a vision at Turbine and do the right thing!”, each of these repeated by multiple people. The best course probably involves some elements of all of these comments, both buffing and nerfing, possibly including nerfing monsters.
Many players have urged caution with any changes, specifically to minimize collateral damage. As an example, if changes are made to nerf monkcher Furyshotters, don’t break monks, rangers, other Fury of the Wild characters, and all ranged characters at the same time. Favor the scalpel over the sledgehammer.

Some quotes:
• “Characters should have to make tradeoffs. At the moment this isn't happening; some classes are able to have top notch dps and defense.”
• “DDO's greatest differentiating strength is the depth and robustness of character creation and development. The current situation effectively renders that moot, leaving DDO without a competitive advantage.”
• “This is a fantasy game, I log on to feel awesome.”
• “I'd like to see balance change once, to something good enough that most players are satisfied with it, and then stay that way for the duration. That would be perfect. But, you know... many small corrections as the need arises might be good enough.”
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/StayVsBalance.png


On Diversity
A few seemed concerned that balance meant making everything the same. That’s not the goal, and the diversity of different build options represents one of the greatest strengths of DDO. The major reason we would want to balance anything would be to make more builds feel viable and fun to play, even in the most difficult quests.
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/PersonalVsPower.png

On Synergy
Many players noted that “overpowered” builds combine amazing synergies that may or may not have been intended. There are occasional combinations that produce unanticipated results, but generally speaking we aim to provide some synergies in character building. It’s OK for certain combos to be more than the sum of their parts, as long as there are lots of different synergies that don’t end up too far apart from each other in terms of fun and viability.

Survival & Defense
We’re thinking about the possibility of making some changes to how armor and shields work, with the goal of making medium and heavy armor more viable forms of defense in epic content. These discussions are at the most preliminary stages, but we’re aware there are issues here.

Multiclassing (ignoring Enhancements)
This could be another entire discussion. But many players thought it was crazy that multiclassing wasn’t the forefront of the discussion, so let’s talk about it.

We like being D&D. We are unlikely to significantly alter or remove core feats or abilities from classes or races.

Evasion is probably the biggest single draw for taking 2 Rogue or Monk levels. However, we may think about how common Reflex saving throws are vs. other saving throws, and other no-save effects that feel fair for monsters and players both. This would be a long-reaching goal, and would need to be made in concert with other changes, such as making sure that players aren’t simply dying, if Evasion was the only thing keeping most characters alive.

Multiclassing and Enhancement Trees
The enhancement pass in Update 19 certainly affected multiclassing. As a matter of learning from history, here’s some reasons why, which we were mostly aware of at the time:
• Frontloading and Minimizing changes to characters: Many popular & powerful abilities are “front-loaded”; they are on low tiers in the enhancement trees. This was very consciously done so that most characters could still get most of what they desired without much hassle. We knew this would incentivize multiclassing, but decided that was an acceptable cost. Even with this, during the enhancement pass there was a great deal of outcry. This is something we could make incremental changes to affect, but each change would probably make some subset of players upset, and we’re in no hurry to revamp everything and move everything around. (Giant tangential discussion for another time or place: “Class” enhancement trees aren’t a simple solution to this.)
• Number of enhancement trees: A major part of the original design (intended to present choice as well as help balance multiclass builds vs. pure builds) was the limit of 3 enhancement trees. Yes, you could still make a Henshin Mystic + Thief Acrobat, but you’d have to make meaningful choices and give things up to get them. Multiclassing is still clearly an increase in power (you get the “best” 3 trees out of 6-9, instead of just 3), but not as much as it is with 6 class trees. Essentially, we changed this due to feedback at the time, knowing it would help lead to the rise of multiclass characters. This is one of those places where we had a vision but it simply wasn’t accepted by the community at-large (which is not to place the blame on anyone.) We try to strike a balance between design considerations and the desires of the people who play our game, so we changed this to 6 class trees.
• Class Level Requirements: The U18 Enhancements largely required 6/12/18 class levels to get “the good stuff”. Both internally amongst the design team and publicly amongst the players, during the Enhancement pass a great variety of class level restrictions were proposed for the 5-tier trees we have now. These included some very strong calls for 1/3/6/12/28 (similar to the old system), all the way down to not requiring any class levels at all (essentially just requiring access to the tree). I’ll take personal responsibility for fighting for the 1/2/3/4/5 system we have today, which was for the goal of meaningful choices along with interesting possible builds. Instead of nearly every build being 20 or 18/2 or maybe 12/6/2, there’s a much wider variety of builds that players consider and actually take. Along with the third Core enhancement requiring level 6, there’s at least some real reasons to want anywhere from 1-6 class levels at least. And there are definitely some builds that splash 2/3/4 levels for specific enhancements and synergies. While these synergies do provide extra power, they also provide a much wider array of possible choices while still being choices (compared to only requiring 1 level of a class to access the entire tree). There’s still some debate that perhaps 1/2/3/4/5 is too generous, but this isn’t something we’d change lightly.

Frequency and Speed of Changes
In the forums, many players agreed that if something was going to be changed, it should be changed right away. However, there were some interesting notes, such as: “sometimes it takes a long long time before the synergy of certain things gets ‘popular’ and then is perceived as ‘overpowered’. Many months sometimes. Just because people discover a synergy straight away doesn't mean it should automatically be nerfed.” Also, the survey responses suggested that we should try to avoid any kind of immediate kneejerk reactions.

https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/HowSoon.png

As a contemporary note: When something is nerfed for Divine Crusader on Lamannia, or between Lamannia and live launch of the patch, this is sometimes an example of this in action. With our efforts to try to get features in front of players on Lamannia sooner, you are likely to see more changes, including ‘nerfs’. (It’s difficult for designers to even think of changes as nerfs, for a feature that has never been live. Internally here at Turbine, a design may change many times before players even seen it, the power level going up and down all the time.)

What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
Major caveat: Anything considered overpowered by some is also loved by others. We’re aware of this. Anything on this list is also NOT automatically going to be nerfed or changed in any particular way, but these are things we may take a closer look at. There’s quite a few other possibilities we might look at, but these were near the top of the list for discussions.
• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct

Survey
We always appreciate the passionate and detailed feedback you guys provide us, both as forum posts and as survey results. We’re still trying to improve how we construct surveys in the future, including adding N/A options. It was not our intent to only include information from players who were extremely knowledgeable with all classes and epic destines; we could have pointed out that it was fine to leave some answers blank (which many people did).

Here’s an overview of some of the survey results. Reminder that higher values indicate more power.
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/CombatStylePowerAverages.png
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/ClassPowerAverages.png
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/EpicDestinyPowerAverages.png


Thanks for the great feedback! We’ll be reading along and looking for your ideas and opinions.

Interesting read and great charts!

[rest]

What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
Major caveat: Anything considered overpowered by some is also loved by others. We’re aware of this. Anything on this list is also NOT automatically going to be nerfed or changed in any particular way, but these are things we may take a closer look at. There’s quite a few other possibilities we might look at, but these were near the top of the list for discussions.
• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct


Nerfs incoming.

[Alfhild]

Nerfs incoming.
Shiradi Shuricannons incoming.

[rest]

Shiradi Shuricannons incoming.

Incoming? They're already here.

I guess the silver lining is that no matter what they nerf, someone will figure out something else awesome which will then in turn become nerfed.
It'd be nice if, just once, they increased power to abilities to bring them up to the level of so-called "overpowered" abilities instead of nerfing the good ones.

[Cardtrick]

Thanks for the great feedback! We’ll be reading along and looking for your ideas and opinions.

Thank you for posting this excellent writeup.

Predictably enough, there's not a lot to be gleaned from the graphs and numeric survey results. But your summary of overwhelming player opinion from this thread and the survey comments seems pretty accurate to me, and it's nice to see that you're taking a nuanced and cautious approach to the whole thing.

No doubt I'll be back to arguing vehemently once it comes time for you guys to actually make changes, but for now I'm really impressed and pleased with the communication and the effort you're putting into this.

[Cardtrick]

What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
Major caveat: Anything considered overpowered by some is also loved by others. We’re aware of this. Anything on this list is also NOT automatically going to be nerfed or changed in any particular way, but these are things we may take a closer look at. There’s quite a few other possibilities we might look at, but these were near the top of the list for discussions.
• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct


I agree that these are the worst offenders. I know a lot of people would add Shiradi casters to the list, but I think they're going off old information or have simply never tried one themselves. I'm surprised to see an expensive iconic class like Bladeforged on the list -- I can't imagine this will ever actually be nerfed, given how many people payed real money for this precise ability, but it's definitely one of the more unbalanced elements in the current game. I would potentially add Master's Blitz -- not because I think it's overpowered compared to non-melee, but just because it's so much more useful than any other melee destiny ability that it may become overpowered if you make changes to allow melee in general to be more viable.

My one qualm is that it would have been nice to have a similar section for specific items players players think are underpowered that you're also going to take a closer look at. You definitely touched on that with the discussion of medium/heavy armor and the lack of ways for melees to mitigate danger. But it would be nice to see a breakdown like this of what you see as the areas to focus on potentially buffing. (My personal list would be barbarians and paladins throughout the game, bards throughout the game (but less so than barbarians/paladins), artificers in epics, and any non-evasion melees in high level heroics through epics.)

[sirgog]

Incoming? They're already here.

I guess the silver lining is that no matter what they nerf, someone will figure out something else awesome which will then in turn become nerfed.
It'd be nice if, just once, they increased power to abilities to bring them up to the level of so-called "overpowered" abilities instead of nerfing the good ones.

Something will always be the best.

The goal should be for at least the top 10-20 builds to be a few % behind the best one, at most.

5% behind the best is viable. 25% behind the best is marginal. 60% behind the best is unplayable in any content designed for the better builds.

[Daze]

Nerfs incoming.

yep


Funny thing is endgame rangers are getting nerfed almost as much as monkchers judging from the FotW ranged comment.

That's fine I'll just blitz .... until I get to a supposedly fixed portal and it strips them away.

[Qhualor]

why is BF reconstruct even on the radar? the lack of good reconstruct in this game and ways to boost your character to repair themselves like heal amp, outside of casters, has always boggled my mind. there is too much focus on positive healing when there are warforged in the game too that need reliable repairing, especially in this BYOH era of DDO. i don't think a BF Paladin or BF Ranger for example should have equivalent repairing to Cleric/FVS heal spells, but it should be equivalent to what a fleshy can do boosting positive healing with cure spells or a little more since BF have Power of the Forge. that's the only real issue i have with Vargs update. everything else seems to acknowledge the problems.

[Daze]

Something will always be the best.

The goal should be for at least the top 10-20 builds to be a few % behind the best one, at most.

5% behind the best is viable. 25% behind the best is marginal. 60% behind the best is unplayable in any content designed for the better builds.

Yeah but with 2 berjillion build possibilities in DDO (ie not 20k).... there will always be those that are way behind in power.

[slarden]

Multiclassing and Enhancement Trees
The enhancement pass in Update 19 certainly affected multiclassing. As a matter of learning from history, here’s some reasons why, which we were mostly aware of at the time:
• Frontloading and Minimizing changes to characters: Many popular & powerful abilities are “front-loaded”; they are on low tiers in the enhancement trees. This was very consciously done so that most characters could still get most of what they desired without much hassle. We knew this would incentivize multiclassing, but decided that was an acceptable cost. Even with this, during the enhancement pass there was a great deal of outcry. This is something we could make incremental changes to affect, but each change would probably make some subset of players upset, and we’re in no hurry to revamp everything and move everything around. (Giant tangential discussion for another time or place: “Class” enhancement trees aren’t a simple solution to this.)
• Number of enhancement trees: A major part of the original design (intended to present choice as well as help balance multiclass builds vs. pure builds) was the limit of 3 enhancement trees. Yes, you could still make a Henshin Mystic + Thief Acrobat, but you’d have to make meaningful choices and give things up to get them. Multiclassing is still clearly an increase in power (you get the “best” 3 trees out of 6-9, instead of just 3), but not as much as it is with 6 class trees. Essentially, we changed this due to feedback at the time, knowing it would help lead to the rise of multiclass characters. This is one of those places where we had a vision but it simply wasn’t accepted by the community at-large (which is not to place the blame on anyone.) We try to strike a balance between design considerations and the desires of the people who play our game, so we changed this to 6 class trees.
• Class Level Requirements: The U18 Enhancements largely required 6/12/18 class levels to get “the good stuff”. Both internally amongst the design team and publicly amongst the players, during the Enhancement pass a great variety of class level restrictions were proposed for the 5-tier trees we have now. These included some very strong calls for 1/3/6/12/28 (similar to the old system), all the way down to not requiring any class levels at all (essentially just requiring access to the tree). I’ll take personal responsibility for fighting for the 1/2/3/4/5 system we have today, which was for the goal of meaningful choices along with interesting possible builds. Instead of nearly every build being 20 or 18/2 or maybe 12/6/2, there’s a much wider variety of builds that players consider and actually take. Along with the third Core enhancement requiring level 6, there’s at least some real reasons to want anywhere from 1-6 class levels at least. And there are definitely some builds that splash 2/3/4 levels for specific enhancements and synergies. While these synergies do provide extra power, they also provide a much wider array of possible choices while still being choices (compared to only requiring 1 level of a class to access the entire tree). There’s still some debate that perhaps 1/2/3/4/5 is too generous, but this isn’t something we’d change lightly.



Rather than focusing on nerfing multi-classing, you should consider boosting the capstone. Perhaps giving every class a free feat @ level 20 of that class. Additionally, the capstone enhancement available only if you have level 20 of that class should be as good as splashing in a few levels of others classes
- 2 levels of monk gives 2 feats + evasion
- 2 levels of paladin gives you amazing saves
- 2-4 levels of favored soul gives you sp + great crits
- etc., etc., etc.

The benefit of 20 levels of a single class should be equal to the benefit of splashing in other classes - currently that is not the case.

[Cordovan]

Rather than focusing on nerfing multi-classing, you should consider boosting the capstone. Perhaps giving every class a free feat @ level 20 of that class. Additionally, the capstone enhancement available only if you have level 20 of that class should be as good as splashing in a few levels of others classes
- 2 levels of monk gives 2 feats + evasion
- 2 levels of paladin gives you amazing saves
- 2-4 levels of favored soul gives you sp + great crits
- etc., etc., etc.

The benefit of 20 levels of a single class should be equal to the benefit of splashing in other classes - currently that is not the case.

No one is "focusing on nerfing multi-classing". :) If you got that impression from the writeup, perhaps we were not clear enough.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

We’ve read the forum posts and tallied the surveys,

snip

Thanks for the great feedback! We’ll be reading along and looking for your ideas and opinions.

Thank you so much for letting us know what you guys are thinking.


Also, I am very impressed by your interpretation, and I think almost all of what you said is dead on!


One word of caution (or two).

While I am not a Fury fan, it "should" be a very useful destiny for Rangers. So don't nerf it too much.


Also with Blade Forge Reconstruct. Again... I am not a BF fan... but... don't totally kill their Reconstruct ability.
Others may have better ideas about this than me, but I was thinking simply a meaningful cool down would appropriate.
..with the goal of using it once per fight/room/area of dungeon maybe.....

[Bladedge]

When a problem comes along
You must nerf it
Before the cream sets out too long
You must nerf it
When something's goin' wrong
You must nerf it

Now nerf it
Into shape
Shape it up
Get straight
Go forward
Move ahead
Try to detect it
It's not too late
To nerf it
Nerf it good

When a good time turns around
You must nerf it
You will never live it down
Unless you nerf it
No one gets away
Until they nerf it

I say nerf it
nerf it good
I say nerf it
Nerf it good

Crack that nerf
Give the past a slip
Step on a crack
Break your momma's back

When a problem comes along
You must nerf it
Before the cream sets out too long
You must nerf it
When something's goin' wrong
You must nerf it

Now nerf it
Into shape
Shape it up
Get straight
Go forward
Move ahead
Try to detect it
It's not too late
To nerf it
Into shape
Shape it up
Get straight
Go forward
Move ahead
Try to detect it
It's not too late
To nerf it
Well, nerf it good

[Talon_Moonshadow]

why is BF reconstruct even on the radar? the lack of good reconstruct in this game and ways to boost your character to repair themselves like heal amp, outside of casters, has always boggled my mind. there is too much focus on positive healing when there are warforged in the game too that need reliable repairing, especially in this BYOH era of DDO. i don't think a BF Paladin or BF Ranger for example should have equivalent repairing to Cleric/FVS heal spells, but it should be equivalent to what a fleshy can do boosting positive healing with cure spells or a little more since BF have Power of the Forge. that's the only real issue i have with Vargs update. everything else seems to acknowledge the problems.

Well, I haven't used it much; but when I played around with it it looked like it cost next to nothing SP wise (so has almost limitless uses) and had a cooldown so short that it seemed you could just spam Reconstruct endlessly IMO.


Correct me if I am wrong.
I rolled one up to experiment with, but didn't really play him.

[Qhualor]

Well, I haven't used it much; but when I played around with it it looked like it cost next to nothing SP wise (so has almost limitless uses) and had a cooldown so short that it seemed you could just spam Reconstruct endlessly IMO.


Correct me if I am wrong.
I rolled one up to experiment with, but didn't really play him.

is that casters or melees or both? i admit that i am only on my 2nd BF life and doing it as a pure paladin, so right now Communion of Scribing costs 25 sp. i know there are ways to reduce the cost, but not sure how melees could get the cost so low to be next to nothing. if this is the case for casters than i can see why reconstruct would be on the radar than. big difference with melees needing to repair themselves more often since they are in the middle of fights and the sp pool is by far greater for casters than melees.

[Portalcat]

why is BF reconstruct even on the radar?

It falls along the lines of not having to make a survivability versus power trade-off.



Perhaps the problem is as much that the reconstruct SLA is too good as it is that many of the best FOTM archetypes are based off a core of class and destiny synergies that is independent of and agnostic to race. Either reconstruct SLA needs a nerf or race needs to matter more such that there's reason not to just slap any high DPS engine on a bladeforged frame.

[Ivan_Milic]

Well, I haven't used it much; but when I played around with it it looked like it cost next to nothing SP wise (so has almost limitless uses) and had a cooldown so short that it seemed you could just spam Reconstruct endlessly IMO.


Correct me if I am wrong.
I rolled one up to experiment with, but didn't really play him.

Bf melees get around 400-500 sp, that is enough for 20 reconstructs, is that a lot?

[oradafu]

Bf melees get around 400-500 sp, that is enough for 20 reconstructs, is that a lot?

By BF Melee, would that be something like a pure Paladin or a Paladin that splashes only non-blue bars? If so, how much of that 400 SP is used to buff them selves since those paladin spells aren't exactly long term nor cheap?

[Ivan_Milic]

By BF Melee, would that be something like a pure Paladin or a Paladin that splashes only non-blue bars? If so, how much of that 400 SP is used to buff them selves since those paladin spells aren't exactly long term nor cheap?

Splashes, mainly centered kensei.

[Dalsheel]

Bf melees get around 400-500 sp, that is enough for 20 reconstructs, is that a lot?

Yes it is. Let's be honest here and not try to fool ourselves. With a ton of sp clickies available and sp pots you will never run out of sp. NEVER.

[Qhualor]

By BF Melee, would that be something like a pure Paladin or a Paladin that splashes only non-blue bars? If so, how much of that 400 SP is used to buff them selves since those paladin spells aren't exactly long term nor cheap?

my current TR on a pure BF Paladin with a magi item and dumped wisdom can have an sp pool of 800-900 without even trying by level 28. there are 3 Paladin short term spells that are useful that cost 50 sp total and with extend can last for over 5 minutes. i don't know about other Paladin players, but i only use 4-5 buff spells if i don't get buffed by a divine. he wears a con op item as well so its helpful, but still runs out of sp after fights gone sideways. it can go fast. usually though if all goes well, i can make it with a couple hundred sp leftover at least. i know im doing it wrong, but it takes a few hits on my repair spells to fill my red bar back to full.

[Vint]

Yes it is. Let's be honest here and not try to fool ourselves. With a ton of sp clickies available and sp pots you will never run out of sp. NEVER.

This is irrelevant. It is blatantly bait/switch. Can you honestly tell me that the
1. Devs who made it
2. The ML’ers who tested it
3. The people on Lama who tested it

None of these people thought that it may have been OP up until now? C’mon. Pure BS.

They can nerf this for all I care, but it is just another reason why my wallet will stay closed.

[Lifespawn]

No one is "focusing on nerfing multi-classing". :) If you got that impression from the writeup, perhaps we were not clear enough.


some form of either lowering the cost to open higher tiers or being able to have 2 tier 5 enhancments from different trees would really go a long way to making pure classes more powerful.

[pasterqb]

The fact that people think Magister isn't the worst destiny in the game is a joke. It has 2 things worth a ****. Seriously?

[Portalcat]

No one is "focusing on nerfing multi-classing". :) If you got that impression from the writeup, perhaps we were not clear enough.

I got the exact opposite impression, to the point that I was disappointed not to see anything mentioned about the weakness of capstones and the lack of incentives to ever be pure. I could cut off a few fingers and still count the number of top-level pure-class builds on one hand.

[vengfarga]

[QUOTE=



rally speaking we aim to provide some synergies in character building. It’s OK for certain combos to be more than the sum of their parts, as long as there are lots of different synergies that don’t end up too far apart from each other in terms of fun and viability.



Multiclassing and Enhancement Trees
The enhancement pass in Update 19 certainly affected multiclassing. As a matter of learning from history, here’s some reasons why, which we were mostly aware of at the time:
• Frontloading and Minimizing changes to characters: Many popular & powerful abilities are “front-loaded”; they are on low tiers in the enhancement trees. This was very consciously done so that most characters could still get most of what they desired without much hassle. We knew this would incentivize multiclassing, but decided that was an acceptable cost. Even with this, during the enhancement pass there was a great deal of outcry. This is something we could make incremental changes to affect, but each change would probably make some subset of players upset, and we’re in no hurry to revamp everything and move everything around. (Giant tangential discussion for another time or place: “Class” enhancement trees aren’t a simple solution to this.)
• Number of enhancement trees: A major part of the original design (intended to present choice as well as help balance multiclass builds vs. pure builds) was the limit of 3 enhancement trees. Yes, you could still make a Henshin Mystic + Thief Acrobat, but you’d have to make meaningful choices and give things up to get them. Multiclassing is still clearly an increase in power (you get the “best” 3 trees out of 6-9, instead of just 3), but not as much as it is with 6 class trees. Essentially, we changed this due to feedback at the time, knowing it would help lead to the rise of multiclass characters. This is one of those places where we had a vision but it simply wasn’t accepted by the community at-large (which is not to place the blame on anyone.) We try to strike a balance between design considerations and the desires of the people who play our game, so we changed this to 6 class trees.
• Class Level Requirements: The U18 Enhancements largely required 6/12/18 class levels to get “the good stuff”. Both internally amongst the design team and publicly amongst the players, during the Enhancement pass a great variety of class level restrictions were proposed for the 5-tier trees we have now. These included some very strong calls for 1/3/6/12/28 (similar to the old system), all the way down to not requiring any class levels at all (essentially just requiring access to the tree). I’ll take personal responsibility for fighting for the 1/2/3/4/5 system we have today, which was for the goal of meaningful choices along with interesting possible builds. Instead of nearly every build being 20 or 18/2 or maybe 12/6/2, there’s a much wider variety of builds that players consider and actually take. Along with the third Core enhancement requiring level 6, there’s at least some real reasons to want anywhere from 1-6 class levels at least. And there are definitely some builds that splash 2/3/4 levels for specific enhancements and synergies. While these synergies do provide extra power, they also provide a much wider array of possible choices while still being choices (compared to only requiring 1 level of a class to access the entire tree). There’s still some debate that perhaps 1/2/3/4/5 is too generous, but this isn’t something we’d change lightly.


=QUOTE]

So ... you're saying we did this to ourselves, huh? Almost certainly true. Angry reactions in one direction will always tip something else into view!

[Holleyz]

I got the exact opposite impression, to the point that I was disappointed not to see anything mentioned about the weakness of capstones and the lack of incentives to ever be pure. I could cut off a few fingers and still count the number of top-level pure-class builds on one hand.

totally agree.

[Aeryyn]

*snip*

The benefit of 20 levels of a single class should be equal to the benefit of splashing in other classes - currently that is not the case.

I would say the benefit of a pure class character should be at least equal to a splash or two of this or that, if not better.

And thanks for the message, Varg. :)

[oradafu]

This is irrelevant. It is blatantly bait/switch. Can you honestly tell me that the
1. Devs who made it
2. The ML’ers who tested it
3. The people on Lama who tested it

None of these people thought that it may have been OP up until now? C’mon. Pure BS.

They can nerf this for all I care, but it is just another reason why my wallet will stay closed.

Pretty much. Since MOTU, Bladeforged and Monster Manual 3 are the only things I consider worth purchasing. Without the Recon for BF, WF would once again turn into a trash race like WF since the Devs won't fix Docents or make decent new ones.

[oradafu]

I got the exact opposite impression, to the point that I was disappointed not to see anything mentioned about the weakness of capstones and the lack of incentives to ever be pure. I could cut off a few fingers and still count the number of top-level pure-class builds on one hand.

The Devs stated back in Shadowfail beta that Pure Classes were in a good place and didn't need any boosting. I too don't see much from the Dev response that will really boost the capstones and level 18 core abilities.

[Sam1313]

Edited
I would say the benefit of a pure class character should be at least equal to a splash or two of this or that, if not better.

Agreed. This is a game. Keyword here is GAME. A game is played for enjoyment and relaxation.

When the game reaches a point that it is no longer enjoyable or relaxing then something is very wrong. In this case the very few who is playing a pure build is sitting at their computer cussing, getting angry, and punching a few holes in their screens because their pure builds cannot compete or keep up with those multi-classed Hybrids wich their pure builds helped to create.

I don't feel anything needs downgraded or "Nerfed" but I do feel there are classes that needs a boost. Most people have agreed that the epic monsters hit too hard. But at the same time you have some that say the game is too easy?

[Recared]

Rather than focusing on nerfing multi-classing, you should consider boosting the capstone. Perhaps giving every class a free feat @ level 20 of that class. Additionally, the capstone enhancement available only if you have level 20 of that class should be as good as splashing in a few levels of others classes
- 2 levels of monk gives 2 feats + evasion
- 2 levels of paladin gives you amazing saves
- 2-4 levels of favored soul gives you sp + great crits
- etc., etc., etc.

The benefit of 20 levels of a single class should be equal to the benefit of splashing in other classes - currently that is not the case.

You are right on what those splashes give. But then the natural question is: why not multiclass then? It is an option open to all classes. Why not use it if it is so good? Moreover, why should the 20 levels of a single class be equal to the benefit of splashing?? Sure, Bard 20 should get also +30 saves, +1000 spell points, +700% damage, ranged aoe instadeath spell, and instant quest completion button.

Funny that "Rather than focusing on nerfing multi-classing, you should consider boosting the capstone" line :DD Dialectics, implied premise recourse: "After stealing the money, did you spend it?" asked to someone who did not steal it.

Again, multiclass is not the cause of any imbalance, it is precisely (!!) multiclassing that brings balance to the classes, to the game. It actually creates character balance (!!). Also this are the core rules of this game. Multiclass options have already always been taken into account for DnD and DDO game construction. Always. No, it is not the "it has always been like this" argument, it is the "we play basketball and the ball is spherical, not squared, and it is a core rule which won't change" argument. You have n heroic levels, and you can take levels from max 3 classes. Choose wisely. Plan ahead.

The thread should have been named maybe "character and playstyle balance". I applaud the synthesis and the conclusions given by the devs on all the discussion. I feel they are listening very carefully and making a monumental effort in building and developing this deep, vast, complex, multidimensional and incredibly entertaining world of DDO.



As a side note... no so on the side... Most probably changes will be coming that will make melees quiet happy... -> I may be wrong, but if tough armor melee base damage income greatly reduced (hey, I'm for its reduction) + divine crusader extraordinary healing and dps synergies + gigantic dps potential of wyrm weapons on the proper hands takes place... We may be soon looking at a scenario where the playstyle ranged casting dps might become incredibly inferior (specially if people starts reading the chapter "Excelling at melee" from the "The path to legend" (I think it was called) book from grandmaster Troll (I recommend it, totally worth every dollar)).

PS: Anyway, the bacon changes will render this discussion obsolete. It should be nerfed as soon as possible!

[redspecter23]

I don't feel anything needs downgraded or "Nerfed" but I do feel there are classes that needs a boost. Most people have agreed that the epic monsters hit too hard. But at the same time you have some that say the game is too easy?

I do agree that epic melee mobs hit way too hard, but I also believe that certain elements of the EE endgame are too easy. Both can actually be true. Metagame choices and builds change due to the powerful nature of melee mobs. Builds like shiradi (or most any caster really) and monkcher are powerful builds yes, but they are more powerful because of the metagame push toward characters that don't have to engage in melee combat to deal damage. Metagaming builds make the game easier because that's what they do. They work within the advantages and disadvantages of the system. However, this doesn't mean that EE melee mob damage is balanced at all. It just pushes more and more players to take advantage of the system and not get anywhere close to those mobs if at all possible.

So you can have a game that is "too easy" with elements that are unbalanced (high melee mob damage). Your powerful builds are the ones that build to avoid the overpowered elements and are still effective. It doesn't make those overpowered elements balanced by having to metagame builds to avoid them.

[Propane]

The Devs can get the data to go along with these results - show us!

How many pure vs mulit charactors?
How many pure of each class?
What are the top 5 most popular builds -

Balance = hard choices - the above numbers will show what is under powered - under used....

[Recared]

some form of either lowering the cost to open higher tiers or being able to have 2 tier 5 enhancments from different trees would really go a long way to making pure classes more powerful.

That is a very interesting, simple and original proposal. Seems reasonable at first glance, but should be carefully studied. Not so sure about lowering costs.

[Sam1313]

I do agree that epic melee mobs hit way too hard, but I also believe that certain elements of the EE endgame are too easy. Both can actually be true. Metagame choices and builds change due to the powerful nature of melee mobs. Builds like shiradi (or most any caster really) and monkcher are powerful builds yes, but they are more powerful because of the metagame push toward characters that don't have to engage in melee combat to deal damage. Metagaming builds make the game easier because that's what they do. They work within the advantages and disadvantages of the system. However, this doesn't mean that EE melee mob damage is balanced at all. It just pushes more and more players to take advantage of the system and not get anywhere close to those mobs if at all possible.

So you can have a game that is "too easy" with elements that are unbalanced (high melee mob damage). Your powerful builds are the ones that build to avoid the overpowered elements and are still effective. It doesn't make those overpowered elements balanced by having to metagame builds to avoid them.

Yes the EE Monster hit very hard but if our AC was working like it should or our gear was doing what its supposed to do then I think we could take the hits. But what boggles my mind is this: In pen & paper game a level 20 character was considered a god basically. Ok so how is it that these EE monsters has a kajillion hit points and we have maybe at the most 1k hit points? Lol The hit points on the EE Monsters is the problem for me. Its no fun standing there for many minutes pounding on the same monster lol. And off the subject another thing that bugs me is the re spawns. If I kill it then it should stay dead because if they kill me then I aint coming back to life unless theres a shrine near by or a generous Cleric lol.

[Singular]

Rather than focusing on nerfing multi-classing, you should consider boosting the capstone. Perhaps giving every class a free feat @ level 20 of that class. Additionally, the capstone enhancement available only if you have level 20 of that class should be as good as splashing in a few levels of others classes
- 2 levels of monk gives 2 feats + evasion
- 2 levels of paladin gives you amazing saves
- 2-4 levels of favored soul gives you sp + great crits
- etc., etc., etc.

The benefit of 20 levels of a single class should be equal to the benefit of splashing in other classes - currently that is not the case.

Very much the above comment. Excellent suggestion.

[murf201]

First of all ... that person you are agreeing with has a ranger and a monkcher and here is the difference between them.

"My Pure Build hits 68 to 75 points of damage per shot fired. My Monkcher hits 158 to 273 per shot fired. That is both of them with no ship buffs, no self buffs, and no adrenaline or slaying arrows or manyshots or 10k stars going that's just a normal fired shot. Both using the Silver Longbow. The highest number I have seen my Pure Build hit for was 258 with a Slaying Arrow."

So you are saying you think these numbers are realistic? I believe they invalidate the whole post. Monks get 10k stars/zen archery/shuriken for ranged ... that's it. Nothing else in the class or enhancement tree effects arrows at all. So if you have a lvl 20 ranger vs lvl 20 monk with comparable points spent in deepwood stalker/AA trees same gear same stats and you are getting this wild a variation in numbers between archer and monkcher ... than something isn't OP its broken.



The perks a monkcher gets they pay for. Keep in mind that in order to use 10k stars you must have ki ... you must be centered within weight restrictions, you can only use robes and certain weapons ... even having to take a feat in order to use bows. On top of that you have to have a decent wisdom .... 42 being the goal but not the limit. It is a fair trade vs. the pure ranger. You sacrifice quite a bit to get that extra feature from the monk class.

What do rangers get? What is the doubleshot capstone again? 25% now isn't it? Seems to me that you guys are getting enough doubleshot to compare with 10k stars now .... sure a monk might still be able to get a few more shots in by amping up his wisdom a bit more but it's still a trade off.... how else are they going to get the extra wisdom?

Where is the mismatch?


I've laid all this out before about 30 pages or so back ... still haven't heard the proof of imbalance between rangers and monkchers.

Ive played both as well with the best gear and past lives ! And her post is not invalidated cause the advantage outside of her wacky numbers is still huge !!

You still haven't answered what monks have to give up , Currently robes are better to use anyway so moot point there !!

What about the extra crit multiplier ? And omg they need more wisdom so that means there str takes a hit , lets say 15 points total or something in that range !! what does that mean ? Since the extra shots make that go away , And doesn't that enhancement grand master of flowers add to the base dmg of bows ?

Point and case is it's way more beneficial to be a monkcher then pure ranger in all aspects of this game !!!

No trade off at all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Recared]

Yes it is. Let's be honest here and not try to fool ourselves. With a ton of sp clickies available and sp pots you will never run out of sp. NEVER.

And with a ton of sf pots you will do the same, which I suggest should see their penalties eliminated, to be fair, as they are not cheap. The Reconstruction of Bladeforged is a sterile debate in my opinion. Besides it was sold as an inherent quality of them. Literally 'sold'... Also, changes are coming... Cocoon? I don't know... You can get over 300 hp back per tick with consecrated twist (for you and nearby party)... Now take 3 melees with consecrated ground (oh by the way, Bladeforgeds see their healing amount income quiet reduced, obviously)... Enjoy. The ones that could use that reconstruct as a real benefit (at a cost of 11 enhancement points (!)) are precisely the melee, which are who we precisely agreed needed help to mitigate incoming damage.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Bf melees get around 400-500 sp, that is enough for 20 reconstructs, is that a lot?

That would be 20 between shrines (assuming all math is correct).

My main uses Heal Scrolls for big heals, and I probably use about 20 for an average quest. And I pay plat for those 20.


Also, if I remember correctly, that could be 20 reconstructs in a single fight.

Is it OP?
Not sure.

One could argue that high UMD builds can carry several hundred heal scrolls into a quest and get better healing.

But BF don't spend any plat and do not even have to unequip their weapon.


Just seems very powerful to me.

And I am seeing so many BF builds that others must think so too.



Anyway, my non-expert opinion on this one is simply a small nerf to increase cooldown so that they cannot fire these off in rapid succession.

But I am not hard set in that opinion.



If they do nerf this, I hope they also look at adding more ways for melees of other (all) races to self heal.
Not to the point of being equal at self healing, but to help them slightly and give more options.
(I would really like to see Heal and Repair skills to be useful to melee guys for self healing. Maybe add Heal/repair to potions effectiveness.)

[rayworks]

I've got a better idea than nerfing us. Fix the bugs!!! Spend dev time on productive, positive change.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

The fact that people think Magister isn't the worst destiny in the game is a joke. It has 2 things worth a ****. Seriously?

It's great for my Pale Master.


But I do really wish they would add something in it for other classes.
I hate the sigils and I cannot confirm that the anti-magic stuff even works.

[SirValentine]

We like being D&D. We are unlikely to significantly alter or remove core feats or abilities from classes or races.
...
...there are definitely some builds that splash 2/3/4 levels for specific enhancements and synergies. While these synergies do provide extra power, they also provide a much wider array of possible choices while still being choices (compared to only requiring 1 level of a class to access the entire tree). There’s still some debate that perhaps 1/2/3/4/5 is too generous, but this isn’t something we’d change lightly.


I'd just like to make a point here:

What is YOUR vision for the role of core class abilities versus "enhancements"? Because those 2 statements seem almost contradictory to me.

Personally, I feel class abilities should be much more fundamental (I like DDO being D&D, too!), while enhancements should just add some extra flavor/power/specialization/diversification/whatever.

But since the enhancement pass, that's not how it is. The combination of much more power in enhancements, with ultra-easy access to enhancements, makes many class abilities almost irrelevant, and enhancements the main point. People do, many current builds do, deliberately give up class levels relevant to whatever their area of focus is, and instead take class levels from classes whose class abilities give them nothing much useful, solely because they give them access to some specific enhancements, which more than make up for the lost power of the class abilities. This seems, to me, to have thrown away the whole "we like being D&D" idea.

[SirValentine]

What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
Major caveat: Anything considered overpowered by some is also loved by others. We’re aware of this. Anything on this list is also NOT automatically going to be nerfed or changed in any particular way, but these are things we may take a closer look at. There’s quite a few other possibilities we might look at, but these were near the top of the list for discussions.
...
• Bladeforged Reconstruct


Also...though I hear from some good melee players that this is crazy-good, there's something more to consider for this item in particular:

Turbine has taken a lot of people's money for access to the Bladeforged Iconic, in large part specifically due to this crazy-good ability. Even if it would OTHERWISE be a prime candidate for nerfing, you might want to weigh in how much of a bait-and-switch sort of vibe you want to put out.

Nobody bought specifically bought Furyshot or 10K Stars the way they bought Bladeforged.

[Daze]

Ive played both as well with the best gear and past lives ! And her post is not invalidated cause the advantage outside of her wacky numbers is still huge !!

You still haven't answered what monks have to give up , Currently robes are better to use anyway so moot point there !!

What about the extra crit multiplier ? And omg they need more wisdom so that means there str takes a hit , lets say 15 points total or something in that range !! what does that mean ? Since the extra shots make that go away , And doesn't that enhancement grand master of flowers add to the base dmg of bows ?

Point and case is it's way more beneficial to be a monkcher then pure ranger in all aspects of this game !!!

No trade off at all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dead horse .. feel free to read the other posts on that topic ...

Don't really care to post here anymore. Not really a surprise why I only have 300 posts on this forum after 8 years of playing. Getting touched in a bad place for asking a new player to keep playing and learning in this very thread is enough for me.

You can read about it elsewhere ....

[maddmatt70]

This is irrelevant. It is blatantly bait/switch. Can you honestly tell me that the
1. Devs who made it
2. The ML’ers who tested it
3. The people on Lama who tested it

None of these people thought that it may have been OP up until now? C’mon. Pure BS.

They can nerf this for all I care, but it is just another reason why my wallet will stay closed.

I have no idea how this made it beyond any player tester worth a grain of salt. The player testers who allowed this through should never test again.

[maddmatt70]

A big part of what I read in the statement by Vargoille is that the devs plan to dumb this game down further by making mobs do less damage on ee. I really hope this is not the case. EE is a nice challenge at the moment it is just the mobs do not attack the players properly. There should be different spells used by the mobs and player ranged characters and spellscasters should be targeted more then they currently are. Epic Elite is epic elite. Epic hard is a joke. Making epic elite a joke will just cause more of us to leave.

[pasterqb]

It's great for my Pale Master.


But I do really wish they would add something in it for other classes.
I hate the sigils and I cannot confirm that the anti-magic stuff even works.

Its not bad for PMs which is why i sometimes use it but besides the tier 2 +3 DC and tier 4 Cooldown reduction i can't name a single thing i would want from it on my PM.

Like you said i hate sigils. In EE you cant stay trapped in a circle so their power is limited as well as pets are terrible. Only other thing decent imo is the 10% mana reduction and maybe the super long cooldown +5 dc.

Its just hands down worse than Draconic imo when you twist in the 2 things i mentioned.

[sirgog]

Yeah but with 2 berjillion build possibilities in DDO (ie not 20k).... there will always be those that are way behind in power.

As long as every ED and every class (not necessarily every pure class, but every class icon at least) has at least one build which is within 20-30% of the 'best' builds in overall performance, I'd say the game would be in good shape.

"Overall Performance" isn't a clear metric at all, but think of it this way - if at high heroic levels, a pure Paladin (IMO the weakest class; if you do not agree, imagine I said pure bard or pure fighter instead) applies to join your group, you know that if their playskill is comparable to the rest of the group, they will help more than the dungeon scaling penalty you suffer accepting them. This isn't true of at least half the EDs in high level EEs - someone in Fatesinger or Shadowdancer will, unless they are an extraordinary player, reduce overall group performance.

[Arianka]

rather than focusing on nerfing multi-classing, you should consider boosting the capstone. Perhaps giving every class a free feat @ level 20 of that class. Additionally, the capstone enhancement available only if you have level 20 of that class should be as good as splashing in a few levels of others classes
- 2 levels of monk gives 2 feats + evasion
- 2 levels of paladin gives you amazing saves
- 2-4 levels of favored soul gives you sp + great crits
- etc., etc., etc.

The benefit of 20 levels of a single class should be equal to the benefit of splashing in other classes - currently that is not the case.

this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




No one is "focusing on nerfing multi-classing". https://www.ddo.com/forums/images/smilies/smile.png If you got that impression from the writeup, perhaps we were not clear enough.
no one would EVER acuse turbine of being unclear, NEVER EVER.

[patang01]

is that casters or melees or both? i admit that i am only on my 2nd BF life and doing it as a pure paladin, so right now Communion of Scribing costs 25 sp. i know there are ways to reduce the cost, but not sure how melees could get the cost so low to be next to nothing. if this is the case for casters than i can see why reconstruct would be on the radar than. big difference with melees needing to repair themselves more often since they are in the middle of fights and the sp pool is by far greater for casters than melees.

I have it and if they decide to nerf it I'm probably going to wonder why I paid real money for it. More to the point, it's about the only special thing Bladeforged has, so if we need to nerf it's special ability nerf all the icons special abilities. In fact give me my money back for paying for iconic races provided that they would have something special too them.

I understand high end DPS and such but no amount of cheap reconstruct will stop someone from dying in EE when you can get hit by asinine amount of damage. And then we have of course the fact that Turbine seem to think 10% repair amp is something on a level 28 armor, when you can find 30% heal amp on level 20 items or make heal amp green steel items.

[Relem]

I seriously can not believe Reconstruct on Bladeforged is considered over powered because they have the ability to cast it 20 times in quest, and a fleshy character would have to take 20 heal scrolls that they paid plat for to do the same. I am going to remain calm, and I am not even going to attempt to give my view on that comment.

The devs have the tools to know exactly what is going on in the game, all the survey did was give them a chance to hear our views. I do remember that back in the days when MotU was released there was a massive up roar about the raid not working properly and that the devs are not listening to the player base. A dev stepped forward and quite clearly stated that they use data from the servers to make an accurate judgement of content. At the time I read that as the dev didn't give a **** what we said as it's one player view against the data from the servers. For reconstruct on bladeforged to be on the radar based on player views, that seems to me that they are not even going to attempt to process the raw data from the servers to get to the root as to why it's overpowered.

The silly thing is, this thread is only about player character balance. Why only player? Should it not be about player and Turbine character balance? Every decision we make about the characters we create is based on what Turbine has thrown at us. I do have fun with the Monkchers and BF Shiradi sorcs asking do they want any beef with their cheese burger and can I have Radiant Forcefield too, but accept that they are needed on the player side because the characters on Turbine side are unbelievable. Turbine characters do not follow the same rules of character creation as the players do. As this for a PvE game, this is highly disturbing. In PnP, if the GM just pulled numbers out of the air for his/her characters, then the players will find something better to do. The players that have designed the various heavyweight multi-class builds (note designed, not copy and pasted from the forum), I have respect for as they created a toon to be able to give players a chance if they choose to use that build.

Now I do believe that some time in the near future that we are going to get some new PvP content added, so I can see why there is a sudden interest in player character balance. Yet we are not going to make any progress on balance till the Turbine characters follow the same rules as the players do.

[BoBoDaClown]

We’ve read the forum posts and tallied the surveys, and want to echo back what we’ve heard from you guys along with some of our thoughts on some specific points. There’s definitely even more feedback we’ve got notes on than just the stuff we’re listing here, but this highlights the most common and passionate feedback.

A compilation of some main points we’ve gathered from your feedback
The presumption is that most comments are about Epic Elite, as explicitly mentioned by many players.

For most characters, it’s hard to stay alive unless you avoid damage entirely.
• Melee monsters hit very hard. This pushes towards playing ranged characters to avoid monster melee damage.
• The most dangerous ranged enemies tend to be casters using spells that can be avoided with Reflex saving throws, which makes Evasion the best way to mitigate ranged damage.
What’s going on with monsters?
• Damage per hit from melee monsters is very high, even if you are building to mitigate it.
o It may be OK to hit this hard against robe-wearing arcane casters, but characters should be able to greatly reduce this damage with medium or heavy armor, appropriate feats, enhancements, destiny choices, and other itemization.
• Some other statistics may need looking at for Monsters, including hit points, saving throws, and the DCs of monster abilities.

On Balance Changes
There’s a wide variety of general opinions, including everything from “buff everything”, “nerf everything”, to “balance nothing”, “have a vision at Turbine and do the right thing!”, each of these repeated by multiple people. The best course probably involves some elements of all of these comments, both buffing and nerfing, possibly including nerfing monsters.
Many players have urged caution with any changes, specifically to minimize collateral damage. As an example, if changes are made to nerf monkcher Furyshotters, don’t break monks, rangers, other Fury of the Wild characters, and all ranged characters at the same time. Favor the scalpel over the sledgehammer.

Some quotes:
• “Characters should have to make tradeoffs. At the moment this isn't happening; some classes are able to have top notch dps and defense.”
• “DDO's greatest differentiating strength is the depth and robustness of character creation and development. The current situation effectively renders that moot, leaving DDO without a competitive advantage.”
• “This is a fantasy game, I log on to feel awesome.”
• “I'd like to see balance change once, to something good enough that most players are satisfied with it, and then stay that way for the duration. That would be perfect. But, you know... many small corrections as the need arises might be good enough.”
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/StayVsBalance.png


On Diversity
A few seemed concerned that balance meant making everything the same. That’s not the goal, and the diversity of different build options represents one of the greatest strengths of DDO. The major reason we would want to balance anything would be to make more builds feel viable and fun to play, even in the most difficult quests.
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/PersonalVsPower.png

On Synergy
Many players noted that “overpowered” builds combine amazing synergies that may or may not have been intended. There are occasional combinations that produce unanticipated results, but generally speaking we aim to provide some synergies in character building. It’s OK for certain combos to be more than the sum of their parts, as long as there are lots of different synergies that don’t end up too far apart from each other in terms of fun and viability.

Survival & Defense
We’re thinking about the possibility of making some changes to how armor and shields work, with the goal of making medium and heavy armor more viable forms of defense in epic content. These discussions are at the most preliminary stages, but we’re aware there are issues here.

Multiclassing (ignoring Enhancements)
This could be another entire discussion. But many players thought it was crazy that multiclassing wasn’t the forefront of the discussion, so let’s talk about it.

We like being D&D. We are unlikely to significantly alter or remove core feats or abilities from classes or races.

Evasion is probably the biggest single draw for taking 2 Rogue or Monk levels. However, we may think about how common Reflex saving throws are vs. other saving throws, and other no-save effects that feel fair for monsters and players both. This would be a long-reaching goal, and would need to be made in concert with other changes, such as making sure that players aren’t simply dying, if Evasion was the only thing keeping most characters alive.

Multiclassing and Enhancement Trees
The enhancement pass in Update 19 certainly affected multiclassing. As a matter of learning from history, here’s some reasons why, which we were mostly aware of at the time:
• Frontloading and Minimizing changes to characters: Many popular & powerful abilities are “front-loaded”; they are on low tiers in the enhancement trees. This was very consciously done so that most characters could still get most of what they desired without much hassle. We knew this would incentivize multiclassing, but decided that was an acceptable cost. Even with this, during the enhancement pass there was a great deal of outcry. This is something we could make incremental changes to affect, but each change would probably make some subset of players upset, and we’re in no hurry to revamp everything and move everything around. (Giant tangential discussion for another time or place: “Class” enhancement trees aren’t a simple solution to this.)
• Number of enhancement trees: A major part of the original design (intended to present choice as well as help balance multiclass builds vs. pure builds) was the limit of 3 enhancement trees. Yes, you could still make a Henshin Mystic + Thief Acrobat, but you’d have to make meaningful choices and give things up to get them. Multiclassing is still clearly an increase in power (you get the “best” 3 trees out of 6-9, instead of just 3), but not as much as it is with 6 class trees. Essentially, we changed this due to feedback at the time, knowing it would help lead to the rise of multiclass characters. This is one of those places where we had a vision but it simply wasn’t accepted by the community at-large (which is not to place the blame on anyone.) We try to strike a balance between design considerations and the desires of the people who play our game, so we changed this to 6 class trees.
• Class Level Requirements: The U18 Enhancements largely required 6/12/18 class levels to get “the good stuff”. Both internally amongst the design team and publicly amongst the players, during the Enhancement pass a great variety of class level restrictions were proposed for the 5-tier trees we have now. These included some very strong calls for 1/3/6/12/28 (similar to the old system), all the way down to not requiring any class levels at all (essentially just requiring access to the tree). I’ll take personal responsibility for fighting for the 1/2/3/4/5 system we have today, which was for the goal of meaningful choices along with interesting possible builds. Instead of nearly every build being 20 or 18/2 or maybe 12/6/2, there’s a much wider variety of builds that players consider and actually take. Along with the third Core enhancement requiring level 6, there’s at least some real reasons to want anywhere from 1-6 class levels at least. And there are definitely some builds that splash 2/3/4 levels for specific enhancements and synergies. While these synergies do provide extra power, they also provide a much wider array of possible choices while still being choices (compared to only requiring 1 level of a class to access the entire tree). There’s still some debate that perhaps 1/2/3/4/5 is too generous, but this isn’t something we’d change lightly.

Frequency and Speed of Changes
In the forums, many players agreed that if something was going to be changed, it should be changed right away. However, there were some interesting notes, such as: “sometimes it takes a long long time before the synergy of certain things gets ‘popular’ and then is perceived as ‘overpowered’. Many months sometimes. Just because people discover a synergy straight away doesn't mean it should automatically be nerfed.” Also, the survey responses suggested that we should try to avoid any kind of immediate kneejerk reactions.

https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/HowSoon.png

As a contemporary note: When something is nerfed for Divine Crusader on Lamannia, or between Lamannia and live launch of the patch, this is sometimes an example of this in action. With our efforts to try to get features in front of players on Lamannia sooner, you are likely to see more changes, including ‘nerfs’. (It’s difficult for designers to even think of changes as nerfs, for a feature that has never been live. Internally here at Turbine, a design may change many times before players even seen it, the power level going up and down all the time.)

What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
Major caveat: Anything considered overpowered by some is also loved by others. We’re aware of this. Anything on this list is also NOT automatically going to be nerfed or changed in any particular way, but these are things we may take a closer look at. There’s quite a few other possibilities we might look at, but these were near the top of the list for discussions.
• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct

Survey
We always appreciate the passionate and detailed feedback you guys provide us, both as forum posts and as survey results. We’re still trying to improve how we construct surveys in the future, including adding N/A options. It was not our intent to only include information from players who were extremely knowledgeable with all classes and epic destines; we could have pointed out that it was fine to leave some answers blank (which many people did).

Here’s an overview of some of the survey results. Reminder that higher values indicate more power.
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/CombatStylePowerAverages.png
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/ClassPowerAverages.png
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/EpicDestinyPowerAverages.png


Thanks for the great feedback! We’ll be reading along and looking for your ideas and opinions.

A lot of interesting information there.

While I appreciate that you said heavy multi-classing was a predicted effect, and it must be noted, not an undesirable effect, it would be nice for balance changes to occur against pure classing. i.e. What does 2 levels of x get you? Ok, lets give Capstones something different but comparable.

[Qhualor]

I have it and if they decide to nerf it I'm probably going to wonder why I paid real money for it. More to the point, it's about the only special thing Bladeforged has, so if we need to nerf it's special ability nerf all the icons special abilities. In fact give me my money back for paying for iconic races provided that they would have something special too them.

I understand high end DPS and such but no amount of cheap reconstruct will stop someone from dying in EE when you can get hit by asinine amount of damage. And then we have of course the fact that Turbine seem to think 10% repair amp is something on a level 28 armor, when you can find 30% heal amp on level 20 items or make heal amp green steel items.

TBH, im loving BF Paladin. i don't feel like my character is OP in the slightest, but he is also not geared out for the class like i would do if BF Paladin was his last life. the only difference i can see between a fleshy Paladin and a BF Paladin is BF get a little more hp back in repairs than a fleshy would in a CSW spell. i am actually considering reincarnating my WF Kensei Fighter into BF Paladin. my hope is that the devs take into consideration how any nerf to BF reconstruct could actually hurt melees if its a universal change, but that depends if/when and how much of a nerf.

[rcmcneil]

Throughout the game's history, builds have been made with the intention to operate most efficiently within its current environment. The aim will always be towards higher damage output, higher spell DCs, higher spell penetration, higher saves, higher player damage mitigation, fastest quest completion. "Character Balance" is a current reference point as to what will happen with player abilities in the next update. Players who have found the best "balance within the current environment" are deemed overpowered by others who either didn't figure it out first, or who have decided that some abilities should simply not exist in the game. The point remains the same: most efficient within the environment. There's a reason warforged pick barbarians are not the frontline in epics anymore.

The previous best reference point was Epic (prior to its changes). It was the target of many discussions about how a player could operate best in the game, and many builds existed with the main goal of operating within epics. Now, the current best reference point is Epic Elite, with its combination of incoming damage & its mitigation, saves requirement, offensive spellcasting requirements (DCs & spell penetration), healing needed, & player damage output needed for a timely completion. It is also a good reference point because of the majority of player's benefit to running only elites (Bravery Bonus, XP rewarded, named loot, Commendations of Valor, max favor). These incentives have made elite (especially Epic Elite) the most often run difficulty in the game, & Epic Hard & Epic Normal run mainly for a quick completion either for a raid flag, raid completion, or fast XP.

There is an issue with Epic Elite. Yes, it should be difficult. But there is a difference between challenging & suffering. The difference between Epic Hard & Epic Elite is significantly larger then Epic Normal & Epic Hard. Elite, on the quest entrance screen, states that it feels like a quest 2 levels above its difficulty on normal. However, a level 22 quest run on Epic Elite does not feel like a level 24 quest on Epic Normal. The monster hitpoints, saves, & damage output in a Epic Elite level 22 quest is much higher than monster hitpoints, saves, & damage output in an Epic Normal level 24. This means a much higher investment on the part of players to find builds that operate well in Epic Elites (massive damage output, insanely high saves/hp/sp, self healing, maximum spell DCs & spell penetration, as much miss chance gear as you can get (Ghostly, Blurry, Dodge, & PRR/AC if you can spare it). The squeeze on resources that Epic Elite has pressed on those who run it have created the new builds that survive best in them, & are therefore blazingly powerful on lower difficulties.

The dynamic between the game (& those who design it) & those who exist within it (the players) is one of Selective Evolution. The builds no longer capable & efficient in the game have gone extinct; outrun, out-survived, & out-built by new recombinations. This will always be the case. There is no true balance between player & player, the balance exists between the player & its environment.

[HatsuharuZ]

That was an interesting write-up, Varg. Thanks for posting! The "most powerful class" was a bit surprising, except for monks and sorcs being near the top. I would have thought that fighters would be less powerful than bards since they can't self-heal or use multi-target crowd control abilities.

On another note, I hope that if you must nerf the manyshot + fury synergy, then you do so at the same time EE mobs are nerfed. Otherwise EE will be... overwhelming.

[redspecter23]

A big part of what I read in the statement by Vargoille is that the devs plan to dumb this game down further by making mobs do less damage on ee. I really hope this is not the case. EE is a nice challenge at the moment it is just the mobs do not attack the players properly. There should be different spells used by the mobs and player ranged characters and spellscasters should be targeted more then they currently are. Epic Elite is epic elite. Epic hard is a joke. Making epic elite a joke will just cause more of us to leave.

I read it a bit differently. I'm hoping the intent is to make EE mobs hit less hard for players wearing heavy armor and shields and to a lesser extent, medium armor. This gives melee armor wearers a nice defensive edge against the current monk splashes and fotm multiclass toons. If this is the case then I'm all for it. If it's just an across the board reduction in damage, then it's not helping much.

I do think it's promising that we may see more mobs casting more spells that aren't reflex based, giving some defensive benefit to characters, even if they don't have evasion.

[jskinner937]

Interesting read and great charts!

Kiting aside, personally I believe its comical to see an archer or caster be as good or better at taking damage from mobs as a high DPS melee. This makes no sense considering their job is to smack mobs in the face toe to toe. It would make sense to give melees better defenses when holding melee weapons. Even without a shield, a weapon can be used to mitigate damage.I said this in another thread. Give Barbs, Pallys and Fighters a stacking PRR bonus when holding a melee weapon for every 5 levels...say + 15 PRR per 5 levels. Give Rogues, Rangers, Monks and Bards a stacking +2% dodge bonus and increase in dodge cap for every 5 levels when wielding melee weapons or handwraps.

This would go a long way to balance DPS melees versus ranged/casting.

[Postumus]

Turbine has taken a lot of people's money for access to the Bladeforged Iconic, in large part specifically due to this crazy-good ability. Even if it would OTHERWISE be a prime candidate for nerfing, you might want to weigh in how much of a bait-and-switch sort of vibe you want to put out.

Nobody bought specifically bought Furyshot or 10K Stars the way they bought Bladeforged.


I can see a lot of premium players being upset by this. If I had purchased BF because of this ability I would definitely want a refund depending on how they nerf it.

Personally I don't see the ability as OP in epics. You can't quicken it. You can't maximize it. You can't cast it on other players. And a 200ish point reconstruct isn't worth much when you lose that and more every time you're hit.

[Stanley_Nicholas]

IMO, anyone who ranked Favored Souls as more powerful than Druids and Clerics should have the entirety of their feedback considered highly suspect. FvS (beyond a 4 level splash) are weaker at both casting and melee than the other divine caster classes and could really use a bit of a boost.

[Singular]

What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
Major caveat: Anything considered overpowered by some is also loved by others. We’re aware of this. Anything on this list is also NOT automatically going to be nerfed or changed in any particular way, but these are things we may take a closer look at. There’s quite a few other possibilities we might look at, but these were near the top of the list for discussions.
• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct


Comments:

- Ranged Fury is basically the only thing that helps out xbow dps. If you nerf it b/c of monkchers, you're going to make artificers the new bards.

- people paid for Bladeforged. (I didn't, I don't play toasters, but I can guarantee you that those people will be upset if you nerf BF too hard).

- It would be nice if you looked at armor and being hit in EE stuff.

Thanks for going through 1000 surveys. That's time consuming.

[Singular]

TBH, im loving BF Paladin. i don't feel like my character is OP in the slightest, but he is also not geared out for the class like i would do if BF Paladin was his last life. the only difference i can see between a fleshy Paladin and a BF Paladin is BF get a little more hp back in repairs than a fleshy would in a CSW spell. i am actually considering reincarnating my WF Kensei Fighter into BF Paladin. my hope is that the devs take into consideration how any nerf to BF reconstruct could actually hurt melees if its a universal change, but that depends if/when and how much of a nerf.

That's the problem isn't it? Some of these abilities - like BF recon or Furyshot - make otherwise not-OP builds work like Paladin or pure Artificer. Nerfing them to "balance" out the OP builds simply moves everyone down the ladder of meh.

[rcmcneil]

I can see a lot of premium players being upset by this. If I had purchased BF because of this ability I would definitely want a refund depending on how they nerf it.

Personally I don't see the ability as OP in epics. You can't quicken it. You can't maximize it. You can't cast it on other players. And a 200ish point reconstruct isn't worth much when you lose that and more every time you're hit.

My Quickened, repair-spellpowered Reconstruct hits myself for 400-500 depending on my weapon, & about 425 on fellow construct players.

[Zerkul]

Sorcerer's main weakness in EE content is the mana bar VS mobs hit points and evade/reflex. You overcome the problem with a mixed approach which gimps the maximum DPS potential but gives you much longer low DPS rotation: 2 FVS levels and shiradi procs = almost endless mana on no Empowered/Maximise MM-like spells.

If you look at it this way Wizards MM are stronger and their survivability with 2+FVS levels and 2MNK it's much higher making this kind of builds the best for EE content. They can use metamagics on SLA and have stronger "endless" spellcasting rotation... Still inferior to sorcerers maximum DPS but almost endless. After all burning mana on few minutes is not going to "kill the boss" but it's more likely to make you drink pots to sustain it.

[Thumbed_Servant]

No one is "focusing on nerfing multi-classing". :) If you got that impression from the writeup, perhaps we were not clear enough.

Some forumites suffer nerf-xiety ;)

[Thumbed_Servant]

No one is "focusing on nerfing multi-classing". :) If you got that impression from the writeup, perhaps we were not clear enough.

And seriously...posters on the forums over use nerf. Nerfing implies making something completely useless. Reducing overpowered abilities/feats/enhancements (hereafter simply ability(ies)) does not necessitate them being nerfed. If one ability being reduced in power nerfs a character then that character has been 1) built poorly, and /or 2) built to unduly take advantage one very narrow mechanic.

How many players will willingly say, "This power I am using is over powered, please remove/reduce it?" We as humans find it easier to complain about things we don't want to lose than to complain about having too much of a good thing. Let this be a learned: It is far far easier to add things and grant MORE power to the player base than it is to later reduce power and remove things (NERF in the overused venacular) ...so be cautious and underwhelm us with power and abilities at first, and then adjustments can be made UPWARDS and the complaints from the community about the adjustments will be almost nil.

For those with the bravery (or gall) to ask for power reduction, there is a gaming term for things game-breaking-over-powered, the antonym for nerf...it's called broken.

When abilities are broken they need to be nerfed for the betterment and health of the game.

[Delacroix21]

Thank you very much for recapping your thoughts on the changes, and for the graphs. I do believe less is more with nerfs, and some abilities really aren't as overpowered as some have claimed them to be.


For example:
Fury with ranged is not OP. Fury with manyshot is.
Bladeforged SLA is not overpowered, lots of people can heal. The issue lies more with meele viability.
Monks using 10k stars. Yes this is nice, but would mean less if doubleshot was actually usefull. As it is now doubleshot is disabled on ranged characters 90% of the time and so it's considered useless. Changing this mechanic would make doubleshot and rangers capstone more desirable. I am ok with 10k stars being shurikens only, but please then buff shurikens more.


You mentioned you MiGHT consider nerfing monsters, and the fact that this is a "maybe" instead of a definately is very distressing. The only thing posters have agreed on is nerfing monsters, so why is this a maybe?


You also mentioned giving monsters no-save abilities. There should always be a save! Just add more will and fort save opportunities.


Some Eds and pres are just plain weak, mainly this is most relevant to bards and the fate singer tree (the tree is DESIGNED for bards, and yet is seen as a horrible ED for bards. This tree needs some SLAs for caster bards, and some more meele/ranged buffs for warchanters.


That brings me to another point, the trees offering a balance of ranged, spell, and meele boosts. The new diving crusader is a GREAT ed as it is viable for ranged (needs a bit more), meele, and spells. Every tree should have abilities useable by those 3 combat styles, but some are very narrow focused and are only usefull to one of the 3 combat styles. Considering players are forced to level these trees (barbarians in magister) in order to get fate points, this tree (and others like it) should offer some abilities that work with the other two combat styles as well.


I am glad shiradi casting was left off the list because it really isn't that powerfull compared to other builds. That being said DC and evoked casting needs love. Without shiradi, how is a caster supposed to kill multiple 5k+ hp monsters? They will run out of mana using "old spells" like fireball etc. after clearing a few rooms while meele keep swing and ranged keep shooting. Old spells need to somehow have their damage scale higher (maybe remove level caps on spells, and make caster level character level). It kinda sucks that in epic content all your heroic damage spells are to weak to kill monsters and use must then resort to SLAs and twists in order to deal adequate damage. Casters using 1-8 spells are the lowest dps there is, which should not be the case. SLAs should be nice additions to characters, not the ONLY way to deal "decent" damage with spells. Shiradi is favored because the procs give your weak old spells the needed boost to actually do damage. It is CLEAR something is wrong with damage output of spells when the procs account for the majority of your dps, not the spells themselves.


As far as multi classing goes I believe it should be encouraged and not discouraged. This character build system is the best of any mmo! and why should very narrow focused "pure" characters be as powerfull? That being said capstones across the board should get a buff, and the bonuses be more meaningful. The capstone should seem to offer a similar benefit to splashing 2 other classes, but they don't. They are rather weak and easily passed over in favor of a few enhancements from other class trees.


To sum up:
1. Fury and ranged is not OP. Manyshot with fury is. Simply make adrenaline only effect 1 arrow (or 2 with doubleshot)
2. 10k stars could be shurikens only, but then add some more enhancements to monk trees that benefits them. As is now there are very few enhancements that apply to shuriken.
3. Bladeforged SLA is fine. The real issue lies in meele viability without tons of instant heals.
4. Buff bards and fate singer, add some SLAs as well.
5. Offer more synergy in each tree with all 3 combat styles. Too narrowly focused trees are bad.
6. Buff DC casting and buff "old spells". Base caster level off character level (you do with NPCs) as remove damage scaling caps. SLAs and shiradi procs should not be the ONLY viable way to do spell dps.
7. Nerf monsters and buff meele damage mitigation (not just for plate, monk tanks exist too).
8. ED core enhancements that increase caster level should increase them for ALL casters (not just 1 type).

[Alternative]

There will always be fotm builds, how many times does this need to be repeated? if you want "variety" you should buff weaker builds/classes, nerfing will only make the existing fotm change into something else. Used to be a time when a pure barb was fotm, if you nerf monkchers/shiraid/BF we might just go back to that, only prob is there are no hjealbots anymore.

Also, when did all those surveys happen?

[Thumbed_Servant]

...

Survival & Defense
We’re thinking about the possibility of making some changes to how armor and shields work, with the goal of making medium and heavy armor more viable forms of defense in epic content. These discussions are at the most preliminary stages, but we’re aware there are issues here.

...

A+ for your paper here Vargouille! Well thought out, organized, and written, with graphics!!!

A feat suggestion for improving shields in epic:
*Epic Shield Deflection - When having equipped any type of Shield you are proficient with, you *gain a Competence bonus based on the type of shield to completely ignore Acid, Cold, Electric *and Fire damage.

***Buckler: 20%, Small Shield: 25%, Large Shield 30%, Tower Shield: 40%

*Actively blocking with a shield that you are proficient with raises the above values by +20% to:

***Buckler: 40%, Small Shield: 45%, Large Shield 50%, Tower Shield: 60%

*Prerequisite: Shield Deflection

[BigErkyKid]

To sum up:
1. Fury and ranged is not OP. Manyshot with fury is. Simply make adrenaline only effect 1 arrow (or 2 with doubleshot)
2. 10k stars could be shurikens only, but then add some more enhancements to monk trees that benefits them. As is now there are very few enhancements that apply to shuriken.
3. Bladeforged SLA is fine. The real issue lies in meele viability without tons of instant heals.
4. Buff bards and fate singer, add some SLAs as well.
5. Offer more synergy in each tree with all 3 combat styles. Too narrowly focused trees are bad.
6. Buff DC casting and buff "old spells". Base caster level off character level (you do with NPCs) as remove damage scaling caps. SLAs and shiradi procs should not be the ONLY viable way to do spell dps.
7. Nerf monsters and buff meele damage mitigation (not just for plate, monk tanks exist too).
8. ED core enhancements that increase caster level should increase them for ALL casters (not just 1 type).

4. Bards need love. This is the ONE that everyone wants.
5. While this can be interesting, I would like to see what the explanation of why we have to level in a given ED. Why not a central pool, even if it is by sphere? It just looks to me like a scheme to sell fate keys.
6. Whereas most people cannot DC nuke, some people have figured out very elaborate DC based nukers. Many past lifes, top gear, superior knowledge of mobs and quests can make it work. Check DrPepper s pure air savant. Needs to be a bit more feasible for someone without grinding for months (perhaps a DC nuker would require some more work, but def not AS MUCH work just to avoid being gimp).
7. They said they would do that, but the crow that needs urgent help are knights in shining armor. At the very least monks have good all around defenses.

[bbqzor]

While a summary of what we said is appreciated, as someone with a regular presence in the game and on the forums for years, it was generally all previously known information. At this point, its become beyond obvious that we play your game more than you play your game, and what is apparent to us as regular long-time players is not readily apparent to you. Even in those summaries, obvious bells chime over things like Grandmaster of Flowers being in the middle of the pack. Its great when its great, its not when its not, so in aggregate it came out in the middle. Despite having unique and useful abilities, and one of the best executed epic moments, it suffers from being a poor choice for many classes/builds.

Its impossible to say how that "balances" against anything without YOU, the developers, stating some direct goals. Or if not outright statements, at least a direction to move in. I appreciate your tone seems to have changed from your original post (which was "we don't have enough time so are going to do a few nerfs"), to a more reasonable one (which is "it will probably take many small adjustments made in many areas of the game over a large time frame"), but again that should have been obvious from the start. My point in all this is, you NEED to provide direction, or our feedback will be exactly what it was here: repeated commentary all over the board, with most of the conclusions being so common-knowledge for long time, high level veterans that often times they don't even rate as worth blinking over.

And, second to that extreme need for specific direction, you NEED to get up to speed on your game. I understand that may result in laughing at this post, but I mean it sincerely. You guys have been through a lot of personnel rotating, are stuck competing against ill-conceived time tables and deadlines, and generally don't get enough time to just get on top of everything to start seeing what we see. We, as epic veterans of millions of xp, have seen all the loot, seen all the changes, seen all the previous mistakes, and you guys NEED that trained eye. There is no substitute for experience. You need to level up yo! Or believe us when we start to get very specific on our feedback... notice most, if not all, feedback related posts have a great deal of CONTEXT. That is critical. This survey was garbage because it lacked context. Your summary was so general as to be common knowledge, it lacks context.

We NEED you to provide some goals. We NEED you to develop a trained eye. We NEED context, in order to achieve balance. We don't need a summary saying "furyshot is probably doing more dmg than intended lawlz". Welcome to over a year ago. You disabled it on Sep 10, 2012. You turned it back on Nov 12, 2012. You, Vargouille, know this. Indeed you were the dev commenting on it. See:

There was a bug at one point where Adrenaline could last for multiple hits of Manyshot. That should be fixed now, and if it isn't, expect that to change at some point!

So like, why has it taken nearly two years for you to do anything about it? And why did you need to do a survey to find that out? You should have known that for the last 17 months Adrenaline was landing on 4 arrows and was meant to land on 1 arrow. It works that way for every other attack in the game. And it is that one singular thing, which was stated, again, 17 months ago to be known as not working quite right, that is making archery a bit excessive. Not monkchers, with manyshot and 10k stars... thats not even remotely a problem. In fact, that multi-class is the only real way to build a viable 100% uptime-with-a-bow character. And there are tons, absolutely tons, of people who want to play a bow guy, and just use a bow, and thats fine, and the game should allow that. Its part of diversity. You know, that thing you are striving to have more of. And monkchers shouldn't get nerfed over a 17 month old unintended error you guys somehow forgot about fixing. But that error... yea it probably needs fixing. Like it has been. For 17 months.

See, its all about context. And, 9/10 times, that context falls on the unintended accumulation of detritus in your coding left over from a hundred barely met deadlines. More than anything else, WE ABSOLUTELY NEED A BREAK FOR FIXING. If that 17 month old bug never went live, that problem wouldnt exist. Tell your bosses, beg them, make them come read this post. You know what Id rather have more than a new quest? Fixed broken stuff. And that includes the new Deathwyrm raid... its broken. Oh it might work as intended, but anything that fun destroying, rage log inducing, irresistible everything, repetitive puzzle requiring, and long should be burned in a tire fire the likes of which tires have never seen. Cut the number of mirror puzzles down to 2. Delete half the other garbage, like jumping puzzles wholly dependent on mario skills which are just easy for people who can and impossible for people who cant. Dont limit completion to people with perfect latency, great eyesight, or fast precise character movement. Plenty of older people, or young people, or people with older machines play this game. Make beating level 28 raids about having level 28 characters, and level 28 playing experience, and level 28 game knowledge. Not about having perfect hand-eye ability and zero latency. Thats something a level 1 can do, level 28 has nothing to do with it, it should be deleted. Sorry side rant there... Point is, you need to stop churning out new stuff and fix old stuff. Believe me, people would be amazingly happy to see a patch that was just 1000 fixed enhancements, destiny abilities, items (handwraps are broken again you know, new crafted ones arent getting dragon bane, the Deconstructor aug doesnt apply dice to them, etc), and so on. Stop future issues like this before they start.

And since this has gotten long enough, and Ive already sidetracked over shadow dragon rage, heres some snips from your summary I thought worth commenting on. I hope this post has been helpful, if forceful. Ive been around a long time in MMO land before DDO, and a long time at DDO, and I grow weary of seeing the same errors repeated (evasion vs heavy armor vs ac issues anyone, next stop combat system rework 3.0). Thanks for (hopefully) taking the time to read.

Oh and one last thing: Haunted Halls was very well done. I could write an entire post on why that is, and maybe I should. But you should take a moment and realize the amount of win from making that step with other classic modules. Temple of Elemental Evil... its already done, waiting to be converted. Do it, and others like it. Everybody wins if the quality stays as high as Halls. Now, feedback:


we may think about how common Reflex saving throws are vs. other saving throws, and other no-save effects that feel fair for monsters and players both. This would be a long-reaching goal, and would need to be made in concert with other changes, such as making sure that players aren’t simply dying, if Evasion was the only thing keeping most characters alive.

No-resist mob and dungeon effects, totally a pet-peeve...

The harpies in the stormhorns are not no-save either, but each harpy that joins in the group attack debuffs the will save of everyone who can hear it, so it might be landing on you even on high will characters if you are caught by a large group of them.
I have never ever made a save against one of them. It doesnt show in the log, it doesnt seem possible to do, and I see no debuff icon or character screen modification of which you speak. My bard has a Fascinate DC of 111+d20 (which still doesnt land on half of anything it should via Spellsinger Core lines btw, whatever was fixed there isnt working on live as of today even with dc over 9000), so if youre giving the mobs DCs like that I should STILL have saved by now with a 20, even if nothing else works. Can you actually go check this?

And all the other epic no-dc abilities youve given mobs recently? Like battlerager slow? Things that just hit you that you have to live with are totally lame. Give us an out, that encourages us to work towards a specific goal IN CONTEXT instead of just weabooing around while it wears off or making builds which can simply tank through. Its okay for players to have no-save effects from time to time (like the fvs aura, it just hits you), or for some event/mob effects of that nature (the room effects in PoP are a great example). But just slamming us with deathward bypass negative energy because, I dont know, youre out of ideas? Lame. The Fire Dragon raid is a much better example, chance for real life reflexes to dodge the fire, or character reflexes failing that, but you get a chance. Your abilities matter. Your build, loot, time, progression matters. Battlerager slow? /puke.


Class Level Requirements: The U18 Enhancements largely required 6/12/18 class levels to get “the good stuff”. Both internally amongst the design team and publicly amongst the players, during the Enhancement pass a great variety of class level restrictions were proposed for the 5-tier trees we have now. These included some very strong calls for 1/3/6/12/28 (similar to the old system), all the way down to not requiring any class levels at all (essentially just requiring access to the tree). I’ll take personal responsibility for fighting for the 1/2/3/4/5 system we have today, which was for the goal of meaningful choices along with interesting possible builds. Instead of nearly every build being 20 or 18/2 or maybe 12/6/2, there’s a much wider variety of builds that players consider and actually take. Along with the third Core enhancement requiring level 6, there’s at least some real reasons to want anywhere from 1-6 class levels at least. And there are definitely some builds that splash 2/3/4 levels for specific enhancements and synergies. While these synergies do provide extra power, they also provide a much wider array of possible choices while still being choices (compared to only requiring 1 level of a class to access the entire tree). There’s still some debate that perhaps 1/2/3/4/5 is too generous, but this isn’t something we’d change lightly.
Your problem isnt with the low end here. Not at all. Its the high end. Having tons of reasons to do all kinds of crazy splash builds is great and good for the game. And I say that as a staunch pure-class kinda guy. The problem is, theres almost no reason NOT to do it. Its the Core abilities. The upper ones (sometimes level 12, often level 18, almost every single level 20 one) require a ton of levels, and even worse a ton of enhancement points. They often make little sense with the class or sometimes the tree itself. And in some cases, they dont even work. Warchanter for example, the 6th Core ability lasts 12 seconds, not even a full action boost duration. Knight of the Chalice, the 6th core ability doesnt provide the good dr bypass it should. And dont even get me started on Barbarian. On top of a T5 ability which requires Improved Trip (which requires combat expertise, which you cant even use when raging even if you somehow wanted to not power attack, and takes int 13 to boot, or basically the total opposite of barbarian anything), the Frenzy Berserker 6th core kills you so fast for such little damage how would it ever encourage anyone to take 20 barb? And while the Occult Slayer 6th core might (its actually pretty awesome to have SR of 70+, if not game-changing), the SR bugs out when your con changes (like, anytime different rage effects go on or off, so often) and the various Bond effects require resetting your counter every quest to work correctly which makes playing the tree annoying at best (really, just cut down the number of bond stacks needed to like 30: sitting out on your prestige enhancement abilities for an action boost cooldown seems more than enough balance for something as common as a weapon swap... its like making a weapon change cause an action boost cooldown, thats punitive enough, 2+ minutes is just cruel).


In the forums, many players agreed that if something was going to be changed, it should be changed right away. However, there were some interesting notes, such as: “sometimes it takes a long long time before the synergy of certain things gets ‘popular’ and then is perceived as ‘overpowered’. Many months sometimes. Just because people discover a synergy straight away doesn't mean it should automatically be nerfed.” Also, the survey responses suggested that we should try to avoid any kind of immediate kneejerk reactions.
This is true and a good point. I am glad you picked up on it.


As a contemporary note: When something is nerfed for Divine Crusader on Lamannia, or between Lamannia and live launch of the patch, this is sometimes an example of this in action. With our efforts to try to get features in front of players on Lamannia sooner, you are likely to see more changes, including ‘nerfs’. (It’s difficult for designers to even think of changes as nerfs, for a feature that has never been live. Internally here at Turbine, a design may change many times before players even seen it, the power level going up and down all the time.)
This is true, and fine, but also please try to remember that we like things for a reason too. And its not always because "zomg moar powerz". Sometimes its just neat, or fits a playstyle or theme which resonates with a particular player. And when it gets changed to peanuts, we go panda. Not that Divine Crusader was in that boat in particular, but some things like Bards getting Cha to atk/dmg in the original Epic/Enhancement drafts back in pre U14 days, that was really cool. And (Id link if I could but I think that beta forum got cube'd) you said something to the effect of "dont worry we got your back bards" and then no cha to atk/dmg anything in the live version... thats some sads. Instead we get warchanter adding cold damage... fitting for a Skald theme but as a warchanter it could just have easily been sonic damage. Or related to cha atk/dmg. Its not called WarSkald (not that warchanter needs changing, just that we do see things which are awesome which die or get changed so badly we no longer care). So both are true. Remember things we like, and try to work them in later even if its not right then (which I think you do sometimes, but wanted to say keep doing it).


What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
Major caveat: Anything considered overpowered by some is also loved by others. We’re aware of this. Anything on this list is also NOT automatically going to be nerfed or changed in any particular way, but these are things we may take a closer look at. There’s quite a few other possibilities we might look at, but these were near the top of the list for discussions.
Ranged Fury of the Wild
Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
Bladeforged Reconstruct
Again, this is all context. Fix quad adrenaline shot and Furyshot is probably fine. 10k+Manyshot is fine, the real culprit here is doubleshot being hard to get and almost pointless. Upping the Arcane Archery capstone was a good start, Id consider adding some more sources elsewhere (anything that does doublestrike should do doubleshot for items, perhaps also some other abilities or destinys could gain some doubleshot). Archery needs to be viable, and that build makes it viable. Thats not the problem. Once people can get some real doubleshot so 10k+MS isnt way out in front, itll be fine (note, monkchers should still be better, theyre building for it, but a ranger with a bow shouldnt be miles and miles behind. Just maybe 1-2 miles behind. Etc).

Side note... why is doubleshot 1/3rd for repeaters? Yes, they shoot three arrows, but they shoot slower. It may be equal "per mouse click", but its not equal "per unit time" and thats the only measure that matters. Let repeaters actually shoot more, its what they do. Its on the side, like Desert Eagle .50... I dont want my repeater to say Replica =(. Really, its all about attacks per minute, and repeaters shouldnt get penalized just because they attack in clumps, they have similar overall speeds. I believe as much was said when it went in, but Im saying it again now... attacks per unit time. Parse that. Then delete the silly reduction on the only crossbow people use, giving them a viable direction to itemize in.

As for bladeforged... any self heal worse than recon is useless even before epic, and people paid for this. Real dollars. Changing it now would kinda be a jerk move. That said, its a bit too good due to the lack of comparable options, not because its OP itself. Fvs can self heal, and theyre not on the list (random example). Point is, if other melee could get Potions of Cure Epic Wounds no one would notice this. The solution? Make some Silver Flame sized potions which A) dont debuff you and B) stack to 100 like regular pots and C) are just on a vendor so we can all get them to use, and things would be fine. Make them ML21 so its epic only if need be, or require some favor, or something. But recognize that nerfing bladeforged just shifts the focus back to things like casters self-recon and results in a lot of angry customers. We can already heal, so let us heal. The potions can have a 12s cd, so twice as long as recon, and (I think, going off memory) 4x as long as SF since they dont debuff. No new abilities gained, nothing we can do we couldnt do before, but now people got options and everyones happy.

None of those three need serious nerfs, just a fix to a 17 month old mistake, a pass to bring doubleshot up to par, and getting over adding heals to players who already have heals. Easy problems.


Thanks for the great feedback! We’ll be reading along and looking for your ideas and opinions.
I hope so. Even when its weary feedback. Cheers.

[EllisDee37]

And dont even get me started on Barbarian. On top of a T5 ability which requires Improved Trip (which requires combat expertise, which you cant even use when raging even if you somehow wanted to not power attack, and takes int 13 to boot, or basically the total opposite of barbarian anything)Ha! Brutal.

[SpiderPig]

I must be confused, they have mentioned that the BF, Monkchars and range fury are the 3 main problem areas. However the charts clearly state that arcane are the most powerful ?????

I am sure I am not alone when I say the only reason I purchased BF was for the reconstruct ability.

[danlan]

What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
Major caveat: Anything considered overpowered by some is also loved by others. We’re aware of this. Anything on this list is also NOT automatically going to be nerfed or changed in any particular way, but these are things we may take a closer look at. There’s quite a few other possibilities we might look at, but these were near the top of the list for discussions.
• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct


https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/EpicDestinyPowerAverages.png


Thanks for the great feedback! We’ll be reading along and looking for your ideas and opinions.


Dear Vargouille,

Thank you and other devs for the such high quality and thoughtful response.

Just one area that I would like to seek feedback from you.

The epic destiny power survey clearly shows that shiradi champion is considered by the player base as the most power epic destiny. And it has nothing to do with shiradi archers. It has everything to do with Shiradi arcane casters.

Quoting from my own post on page 32:

"Shiradi casters can hit from long distance, remain totally unaffected by monster saves, and do more damage than any other casters! Also worth noting is that current mechanism allows shiradi arcanes to multi class like 4 fvs and 2 monk/2 pal etc, and that allowed shiradi arcanes to enjoy top-notch dps, best sustainability and best saves. This is too much of a privilege inaccessible to all other builds. (well, except the furyshot shot build as noted below)

My suggestion would be while making adjustment to Epic elites, it would be necessary to make all procs by shiradi magnified by say, 40% (or another ratio deemed appropriate by the dev team) of spell powers.

I believe with this change in place, shiradi arcanes will remain as a top-notch build (retain solid dps and can maintain top notch defence/sustainability), but will not be so overwhelmingly better than other casters as the current situation stands."

My belief is that shiradi casters are significantly more powerful than all other casters. And the survey clearly shows the same opinion here.



IMHO, shiradi should be put in your list of "What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?".

[knockcocker]

The epic destiny power survey clearly shows that shiradi champion is considered by the player base as the most power epic destiny. And it has nothing to do with shiradi archers. It has everything to do with Shiradi arcane casters.


No, it only shows what people who responded to the survey thought. This != the player base.

This is what I find dangerous about this approach. You're only polling the people who
care enough to moan about it, have an axe to grind or have a vested interest in preserving
the status quo - entirely the wrong source IMO.

The most meaningful statistic is those who chose not to respond to the survey at all.

[Portalcat]

The whole, "...but a lot of people bought Bladeforged for the reconstruct and will be very upset at a nerf!" is kind of humorous to me. Isn't that a great point of evidence for the fact that it's in the pantheon of abilities currently good enough to warp the whole metagame, and has earned some scrutiny?

Look, every nerf stinks, even when it's obvious that it's necessary. See the amazing number of rationalizations and contortions about how U20 VoN3 epic XP was good for the game even though it was a nerf many people saw coming from a mile away and one that didn't invalidate anyone's character. Whoever gets nerfed is out significant time and/or money, and understandably feels burned. Nerfs are therefore something you want to avoid unless it's really clearly overpowered.



The entire point of this thread, though, was to take the temperature on game balance, and get as good a consensus from the players themselves on the state of what's too strong and too weak as possible. There will never be a better juncture for a nerf. If not nerf things now, then when?

I, for one, think nerfs should a be a game design tool that can at least be invoked on occasion. If this is one such occasion where it makes a lot of sense, then nerf away. I will adapt. I don't feel entitled to overpowered synergies forever just because they exist and I found them once.

[knockcocker]

What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
...
• Bladeforged Reconstruct


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch

[Portalcat]

No, it only shows what people who responded to the survey thought.

There's definitely a selection bias here, and you could definitely design a better survey simply by sending something out to a more select group of people who would be in a better position to know what they're talking about.



If I were in Turbine's shoes, I'd come up with a set of criteria that finds the low 3-figure number of active EE regulars per server, and send those people a survey, perhaps with a small incentive for completing it. Get the min-maxers of the world to tell you what's good and what's bad; they have expertise on the topic and it would be wise to give their opinions more weight. It still won't be perfect, but I think your signal-to-noise ratio would be much better.

[slarden]

No one is "focusing on nerfing multi-classing". :) If you got that impression from the writeup, perhaps we were not clear enough.

Understood. I guess my main point is to improve the benefits of taking 20 levels in a single class. It isn't as good as the benefits you get from multi-classing. The capstone needs some love.

[slarden]

You are right on what those splashes give. But then the natural question is: why not multiclass then? It is an option open to all classes. Why not use it if it is so good? Moreover, why should the 20 levels of a single class be equal to the benefit of splashing?? Sure, Bard 20 should get also +30 saves, +1000 spell points, +700% damage, ranged aoe instadeath spell, and instant quest completion button.

Funny that "Rather than focusing on nerfing multi-classing, you should consider boosting the capstone" line :DD Dialectics, implied premise recourse: "After stealing the money, did you spend it?" asked to someone who did not steal it.

Again, multiclass is not the cause of any imbalance, it is precisely (!!) multiclassing that brings balance to the classes, to the game. It actually creates character balance (!!). Also this are the core rules of this game. Multiclass options have already always been taken into account for DnD and DDO game construction. Always. No, it is not the "it has always been like this" argument, it is the "we play basketball and the ball is spherical, not squared, and it is a core rule which won't change" argument. You have n heroic levels, and you can take levels from max 3 classes. Choose wisely. Plan ahead.

The thread should have been named maybe "character and playstyle balance". I applaud the synthesis and the conclusions given by the devs on all the discussion. I feel they are listening very carefully and making a monumental effort in building and developing this deep, vast, complex, multidimensional and incredibly entertaining world of DDO.

The benefits of multi-classing in DDO are far greater than the benefits of multi-classing in P&P D&D.

I propose boosting the capstone and/or other benefits to match the benefits of multi-classing - not to exceed those benefits. This thread is about character balance. Boosting the benefits of a pure level 20 class would bring more balance to the game.

[twigzz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch

Yeah gonna have to agree to here.....

[Thar]

No one is "focusing on nerfing multi-classing". :) If you got that impression from the writeup, perhaps we were not clear enough.

lets be fair, the history of the game has not been one of "this class needs help lets fix or buff it up" it's been how are the players enjoying the game, lets take that away instead of finding other methods to limit those mobs. ie wounding puncturing (both in this case as non death and then mob stat regen killed any usefullness of this), instadeath, batman builds, ddoor scrolls (still don't get this one), etc etc. people put time and now possible real money into their builds. you take that away in any form and people will get fed up and leave. Imagine you had spent 6 months ETR spending x dollars on making your monk into some superforce or buying items that compliemented the build and it was all removed from a coding change. is it better than some noob who hit 20 for the first time. of course. is it fair... yes, you spent the time. At some point you say what is the point and move on to something else rather than find another build and work months at that. Is that what the game needs at this point? lfm's are scarce. it can't afford to drive more people away.

ie many people see ranged combat as too strong but rangers and arti's are not strong classes... why. not because you can do massive damage as a ranger but because you can live in epic content. does that need a nerf. no... look at barbarians... why the enhancements don't do much to help that class survive. why rage when you cant use half of the epic spells/twists. a few pts to hit and damage is not saving you in epic. Pally's can hardly spend any points in the damage enhancement line since the defense line is too crazy expensive. again, do some dps and get hit or do little dps and... still get hit but 5-10% less. your still not surviving in epic.

ending comment.. buff those classes that need help. pally/bard/barb and find someway of fixing ac to allow melee to survive at endgame. leave the rest alone...

[EllisDee37]

If I were in Turbine's shoes, I'd come up with a set of criteria that finds the low 3-figure number of active EE regulars per server, and send those people a survey, perhaps with a small incentive for completing it. Get the min-maxers of the world to tell you what's good and what's bad; they have expertise on the topic and it would be wise to give their opinions more weight. It still won't be perfect, but I think your signal-to-noise ratio would be much better.That's an excellent idea, and I'm not even one of those people.

Maybe offer a "survey reward box" which gives your choice of any one heart. (lesser+0, heroic, epic or iconic.)

[Recared]

I propose boosting the capstone and/or other benefits to match the benefits of multi-classing - not to exceed those benefits. This thread is about character balance. Boosting the benefits of a pure level 20 class would bring more balance to the game.

Yes the thread is about character balance, not "pure class" balance (actually the thread is about playstyle/character balance). What you suggest is not viable unless you completely destroy the very essence of the game. We have a different, almost opposite concept of the game...

[Hathorian]

Something will always be the best.

The goal should be for at least the top 10-20 builds to be a few % behind the best one, at most.

5% behind the best is viable. 25% behind the best is marginal. 60% behind the best is unplayable in any content designed for the better builds.

so all builds are the same then, gotcha.

[Hathorian]

Sledgehammer Nerfs incoming:

• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct

So I finally build a BF monkcher and almost right away you say you are going to nerf them. That is very disappointing.

[danlan]

Sledgehammer Nerfs incoming:

• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct

So I finally build a BF monkcher and almost right away you say you are going to nerf them. That is very disappointing.

IMHO, Shiradi Arcane Caster is far more worse than Bladeforged Reconstruct.

[Hathorian]

I don't understand why nerfs are needed. Buff up a few things (melee defense, etc) and we should be good to go.

I think the last few charts are pretty useless btw. Different classes are more or less effective at different levels and in different quests and to to try to say which ones, overall, are the most of least powerful is kind of pointless.

[Hathorian]

IMHO, Shiradi Arcane Caster is far more worse than Bladeforged Reconstruct.

Have you played both of them to level 28?

[danlan]

Have you played both of them to level 28?

I play a BF 14 wiz/4 fvs/2 monk shiradi, with 18 past lives and 9 epic lives and best geared.

Bladeforged= recon sla,

Shiradi arcane caster offers= better dps than any other casters when saves matter
= stay ranged
= best saves (thanks to the ease of multiclass 2 monk/2 pal with little opportunity cost)
= not affected by monster saves at all
= occasional tea time

In essence, with no real trade-offs Shiradi arcane caster gets:

= top notch dps
= best defense
= self healing
= best sustainability (thanks to the ease of multiclass 2-4 fvs with little opportunity cost)
= shiradi arcane requires little player skills which makes it a no brainer cookie cutter and it is way too effective than it should be.

[Chaimberland]

No one is "focusing on nerfing multi-classing". :) If you got that impression from the writeup, perhaps we were not clear enough.

Even if Turbine isn't focusing on nerfing multi-classing something still needs to be done to improve the cap stone for pure characters. From reading many of the posts in this thread this subject was brought up several times but wasn't addressed in your assessment . D&D is suppose to be about having many viable choices, but with multi-classing being so powerful compared to going pure, there just isn't a tough choice here. In fact right now its a no-brainer.

But you don't have to nerf multi-classing to even this out. Just improve the capstone so that when people consider their builds they have to think, "okay, if I splash a couple levels of x class with y class I'll get this. But if I go pure I'll get this instead which is also really good. Hmmm, which way to go?" If you can improve the capstone enough to make people at least pause for 5 to 10 seconds before making a decision then I'd think that would be a good thing.

[Hathorian]

I play a BF 14 wiz/4 fvs/2 monk shiradi, with 18 past lives and 9 epic lives and best geared.

Bladeforged= recon sla,

Shiradi arcane caster offers= better dps than any other casters when saves matter
= stay ranged
= best saves (thanks to the ease of multiclass 2 monk/2 pal with little opportunity cost)
= not affected by monster saves at all
= occasional tea time

In essence, with no real trade-offs Shiradi arcane caster gets:

= top notch dps
= best defense
= self healing
= best sustainability (thanks to the ease of multiclass 2-4 fvs with little opportunity cost)
= unlike moncher, shiradi requires little player skills which makes it a no brainer cookie cutter and it is way too effective than it should be.

I agree that monkcher takes more skill, but so far I have to say monkcher has more burst dps than shiradi caster does. In any event, I don't see why any nerfs are needed.

The term “crab mentality” is used to describe a kind of selfish, short-sighted thinking that runs along the lines of “if I can't have it, neither can you.” This term is especially widely used to refer to people who pull other people down, denigrating them rather than letting them get ahead or pursue their dreams. As a general rule, an accusation of having this type of mentality is a poor reflection on someone's personality.

This concept references an interesting phenomenon that occurs in buckets of crabs. If one crab attempts to escape from a bucket of live crabs, the others will pull it back down rather than allowing it to get free. Sometimes, the crabs seem almost malicious, waiting until the crab has almost escaped before yanking it back into the pot. All of the crabs are undoubtedly aware of the fact that their fate is probably not going to be very pleasurable, so people are led to wonder why they pull each other back into the bucket instead of helping the clever escape artist.

This way of thinking is a reflection of the famous saying “we all like to see our friends get ahead, but not too far ahead.” People who learn to recognize it in themselves can often find ways of counteracting it, which is a very good idea, especially for those who work or live in a highly competitive environment.

[Qhualor]

Sledgehammer Nerfs incoming:

• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct

So I finally build a BF monkcher and almost right away you say you are going to nerf them. That is very disappointing.

Actually, Varg didn't say they would be nerfed. He said they would be looked into down the road, just not right now.

The only one of those I think should be nerfed is 10k stars. Rather see it work with shuriken than with arrows, but if it stays as is than it shouldn't work with manyshot or a decrease in effectability.

[Ivan_Milic]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch

Are people really surprised by this?
This isnt even 100th time turbine does this.

[patang01]

I seriously can not believe Reconstruct on Bladeforged is considered over powered
I don't get it myself. It's a trickle. Compared to my fleshie ranger with twisted cocoon and con op item that can heal himself indefinitely. And with tons of heal amp that meager tick will heal him full before the temp HP runs out.
When did self healing become OP and something Turbine think they need to fix? Seriously? We bought these iconic races because they had special abilities and now this is on the same order as a Monkcher?

[Hathorian]

Actually, Varg didn't say they would be nerfed. He said they would be looked into down the road, just not right now.

The only one of those I think should be nerfed is 10k stars. Rather see it work with shuriken than with arrows, but if it stays as is than it shouldn't work with manyshot or a decrease in effectability.

He specifically singled out those 3 things to look at so you are kidding yourself if you don't think they are going to be nerfed....

[fool101]

I've never played a BF, but to me the premise seems simple. Is having a limited self heal that over powered?

I agree with others who have stated that instead, make healing more accessible to non-constructs (via removing penalties to SF pots, or introducing better cure pots). This would balance things out more than a nerf to BF IMO, especially since BF is a pay to access class in which many have paid already.

[Ivan_Milic]

That would be 20 between shrines (assuming all math is correct).

My main uses Heal Scrolls for big heals, and I probably use about 20 for an average quest. And I pay plat for those 20.


Also, if I remember correctly, that could be 20 reconstructs in a single fight.

Is it OP?
Not sure.

One could argue that high UMD builds can carry several hundred heal scrolls into a quest and get better healing.

But BF don't spend any plat and do not even have to unequip their weapon.


Just seems very powerful to me.

And I am seeing so many BF builds that others must think so too.



Anyway, my non-expert opinion on this one is simply a small nerf to increase cooldown so that they cannot fire these off in rapid succession.

But I am not hard set in that opinion.



If they do nerf this, I hope they also look at adding more ways for melees of other (all) races to self heal.
Not to the point of being equal at self healing, but to help them slightly and give more options.
(I would really like to see Heal and Repair skills to be useful to melee guys for self healing. Maybe add Heal/repair to potions effectiveness.)

It has 6 sec cd, in that time ee mobs can kill you 3 times.
YOu need to slot repair sp, you need to put points in repair, if you want it to heal you for over 400 hp.
Maybe it seems powerful to you because mostly good and experienced players with great gear are using it, get a new player to use it and see how well they will do.

[Qhualor]

He specifically singled out those 3 things to look at so you are kidding yourself if you don't think they are going to be nerfed....

I'm well aware of what it could mean someday, but we can only go by what the man says for now. I do get the impression character balance is something they really are trying to fix, so when the day comes that they ask for input on it than we can cry nerf or fair change.

[Pandir]

I'm well aware of what it could mean someday, but we can only go by what the man says for now. I do get the impression character balance is something they really are trying to fix, so when the day comes that they ask for input on it than we can cry nerf or fair change.

Even if it's nerfs i'm pretty sure everyone will have a few month enjoying things in it's current form before anything changes.

[danlan]

Realistically speaking, I can almost predict that if Dev determines to?

- Nerf EE

- Nerf Furyshot moncher

- Nerf BF's recon

- But leave Shiradi Arcane as is.

People will immediately switch to play a Shiradi arcane then, because although it might be a little weaker than furyshot moncher in some aspect (single target burst dps), it is still so much better than any other options out there. What is the point of playing other options except for flavors?

It will continue to severely threaten the player character balance and thus the health of the game.

[elvesunited]

To sum up:
1. Fury and ranged is not OP. Manyshot with fury is. Simply make adrenaline only effect 1 arrow (or 2 with doubleshot)
2. 10k stars could be shurikens only, but then add some more enhancements to monk trees that benefits them. As is now there are very few enhancements that apply to shuriken.
3. Bladeforged SLA is fine. The real issue lies in meele viability without tons of instant heals.
4. Buff bards and fate singer, add some SLAs as well.
5. Offer more synergy in each tree with all 3 combat styles. Too narrowly focused trees are bad.
6. Buff DC casting and buff "old spells". Base caster level off character level (you do with NPCs) as remove damage scaling caps. SLAs and shiradi procs should not be the ONLY viable way to do spell dps.
7. Nerf monsters and buff meele damage mitigation (not just for plate, monk tanks exist too).
8. ED core enhancements that increase caster level should increase them for ALL casters (not just 1 type).

1. I'd say slay arrow + adrenaline is OP. Slay arrow is meant to be increased by critical hits. But when combined with adrenaline +400% you start getting out of control multiplication of damage. ( 5000+ damage per arrow )

2. Zen archery and bow using Monk Archers is a game role-playing concept. Take away 10K stars from bow and the monk archer will have nothing to spend their Ki on unless they became shuriken users which would invalidate most of their elf/arcane archer enhancements and force a radical character redesign on them. Besides the shuikicannon is a questionable build at best due to a near complete lack of high level shuriken items.

Here's an idea. Create the "Improved manyshot" feat ( manyshot without the doubleshot penalty ) which would given free to rangers at level 15 but purchasable as a general feat as long as the character does not have "10K stars". ( for the non-ranger, non-monk archer builds such as the Kensai archer )

3. The self-healing bladeforged is another game concept. Nerfing it presents a problem as I think bladeforged are pretty resistant to standard healing.

4. I think that Bard is getting a whole new enhancement tree soon. ( Swashbuckler ) Hopefully they'll buff up the other enhancement trees to match it.

5. Unless you're a narrowly focuses build in which case diluting their narrowly focused tree hurts them. It's very hard to mess with an enhancement or ED tree without hurting some build somewhere. ( Unless the ability you're taking out is pretty much universally considered to be useless ) For example the Divine Crusader enhancement is going to hurt my Paladin tank by taking Endless Turns out of Unyielding Sentinel. ( Not sure what to make of Divine Crusader yet. From what I've read, not that impressed. )

6. Perhaps raising the maximum level of spells can be tied to the core abilities of the ARcane ED lines. ( or divine ED for divine casters and even the primal line for Druid casters ) That would help casters but not the Shiradi arcane users. ( which many consider OP or at the very least an already strong build concept )

7. I'd buff Melee damage mitigation but not nerf monsters. Buffing melee helps some characters who are having competivity problems. Nerfing monsters helps everyone including those who might not need the help.

8. Nah I'm okay with the way it is. Let's not penalize folks for experimenting outside their normal sphere. But it doesn't need to further encouraged either.

[patang01]

The whole, "...but a lot of people bought Bladeforged for the reconstruct and will be very upset at a nerf!" is kind of humorous to me. Isn't that a great point of evidence for the fact that it's in the pantheon of abilities currently good enough to warp the whole metagame, and has earned some scrutiny?

Personally I'd avoid fallacies as a way to prove that something is bad. I think the evidence should be about if the whole metagame is in fact warped by BF reconstruct as suppose to assuming it is indeed warping. I barely use my pure BF Paladin and that's because despite cheap reconstruct incoming melee damage cannot be effectively mitigated. But you could easily see the result of warping of content by how many casters, rangers and monk there are in most groups and raids.

Lots.

See, the only thing the reconstruct does is to allow the few who use them survive better, but it's just a survival tool - the DPS problem is one of null damage mitigation other than evasion and range. AC and PRR is currently worthless. So one of the few ways melee can survive is by going blitz and then use reconstruct. All of these are the result of the tilt from balanced content to ineffective damage mitigation. And since Turbine noticed that more people went ranged and evasion they tilted even more content towards going for them as suppose to re-balance the damage mitigation for melee.

Thus you have no barbs in the game since they can't heal themselves when raged, you have a few fighter types blitzing and mostly a mix of ranged, monk and arcanes. The BF reconstruct is not the problem, it never was - it's just a very meager survival tool in a increase of high damage critter damage against ineffective mitigation.

Plus, and this is true - if Turbine decide to nerf this ability they are in fact nerfing the major selling point with that iconic race. And that is bait and switch.
You can take this to the bank; if Turbine decide to make capstones better, they re-balance the top destiny features to be better over all for their respective roles and take a serious look at good melee mitigation, you will see a re-distribution of what the players will play to get there. That has always been the case. But until they do I will continue to use my ranged toons because that's the absolute best way for them to avoid a significant amount of damage.

[elvesunited]

To sum up:
1. Fury and ranged is not OP. Manyshot with fury is. Simply make adrenaline only effect 1 arrow (or 2 with doubleshot)
2. 10k stars could be shurikens only, but then add some more enhancements to monk trees that benefits them. As is now there are very few enhancements that apply to shuriken.
3. Bladeforged SLA is fine. The real issue lies in meele viability without tons of instant heals.
4. Buff bards and fate singer, add some SLAs as well.
5. Offer more synergy in each tree with all 3 combat styles. Too narrowly focused trees are bad.
6. Buff DC casting and buff "old spells". Base caster level off character level (you do with NPCs) as remove damage scaling caps. SLAs and shiradi procs should not be the ONLY viable way to do spell dps.
7. Nerf monsters and buff meele damage mitigation (not just for plate, monk tanks exist too).
8. ED core enhancements that increase caster level should increase them for ALL casters (not just 1 type).

1. I'd say slay arrow + adrenaline is OP. Slay arrow is meant to be increased by critical hits. But when combined with adrenaline +400% you start getting out of control multiplication of damage. ( 5000+ damage per arrow )

2. Zen archery and bow using Monk Archers is a game role-playing concept. Take away 10K stars from bow and the monk archer will have nothing to spend their Ki on unless they became shuriken users which would invalidate most of their elf/arcane archer enhancements and force a radical character redesign on them. Besides the shuikicannon is a questionable build at best due to a near complete lack of high level shuriken items.

Here's an idea. Create the "Improved manyshot" feat ( manyshot without the doubleshot penalty ) which would given free to rangers at level 15 but purchasable as a general feat as long as the character does not have "10K stars". ( for the non-ranger, non-monk archer builds such as the Kensai archer )

3. The self-healing bladeforged is another game concept. Nerfing it presents a problem as I think bladeforged are pretty resistant to standard healing.

4. I think that Bard is getting a whole new enhancement tree soon. ( Swashbuckler ) Hopefully they'll buff up the other enhancement trees to match it.

5. Unless you're a narrowly focuses build in which case diluting their narrowly focused tree hurts them. It's very hard to mess with an enhancement or ED tree without hurting some build somewhere. ( Unless the ability you're taking out is pretty much universally considered to be useless ) For example the Divine Crusader ED is going to hurt my Paladin tank by taking Endless Turns out of Unyielding Sentinel. ( Not sure what to make of Divine Crusader yet. From what I've read, not that impressed. )

6. Perhaps raising the maximum level of spells can be tied to the core abilities of the ARcane ED lines. ( or divine ED for divine casters and even the primal line for Druid casters ) That would help casters but not the Shiradi arcane users. ( which many consider OP or at the very least an already strong build concept )

7. I'd buff Melee damage mitigation but not nerf monsters. Buffing melee helps some characters who are having competivity problems. Nerfing monsters helps everyone including those who might not need the help.

8. Nah I'm okay with the way it is. Let's not penalize folks for experimenting outside their normal sphere. But it doesn't need to further encouraged either.

[pHo3nix]

Also...though I hear from some good melee players that this is crazy-good, there's something more to consider for this item in particular:

Turbine has taken a lot of people's money for access to the Bladeforged Iconic, in large part specifically due to this crazy-good ability. Even if it would OTHERWISE be a prime candidate for nerfing, you might want to weigh in how much of a bait-and-switch sort of vibe you want to put out.

Nobody bought specifically bought Furyshot or 10K Stars the way they bought Bladeforged.

^This.

It's too late to nerf it now. BF is not even cheap and if it wasn't for the Reconstruct i would have saved the TP and never bought it. Bait-and-switch is never fun, but when you do it with things that costs real money it's really annoying.

[Dalsheel]

Sledgehammer Nerfs incoming:

• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct

So I finally build a BF monkcher and almost right away you say you are going to nerf them. That is very disappointing.

So you build a toon that utilizes all 3 of the things that people report as OP in this thread... Cool!

[Teh_Troll]

Regarding BF reconstruct . . . any nerfs to it kill the race.

So I say KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!! Just give everyone a FREE LR+20 WITH race change and refund the TP.

It's the best option.

[count_spicoli]

TBH, im loving BF Paladin. i don't feel like my character is OP in the slightest, but he is also not geared out for the class like i would do if BF Paladin was his last life. the only difference i can see between a fleshy Paladin and a BF Paladin is BF get a little more hp back in repairs than a fleshy would in a CSW spell. i am actually considering reincarnating my WF Kensei Fighter into BF Paladin. my hope is that the devs take into consideration how any nerf to BF reconstruct could actually hurt melees if its a universal change, but that depends if/when and how much of a nerf.

Here in lies the problem. Why would you ever consider not being bladeforged? You can self heal immediately and no race offers that. At level 15 you can immediately begin quicken reconstruct yourself. Comparing it to coccon? Seriously? That is a precious twist spot and can't be used until 20! Heal scrolls? Try using a heat scroll when something is smashing your face in or archers are sticking g you or god forbid you have a dot. My shirardi bladeforged is so ridiculous my 6 year old daughter can play it in epic elite and kick butt. With reconstruct spell and sla on different timers you are invincible add in reconstruct scrolls for no sp and now 30% repair amp the race affords you it is ridonculous. Right now if you are not bladeforged monkchers or shirardi especially a wizzy FvS combo I don't want you in my ee group. You will essentially be a drain. Especially any pure class you will be denied. Sorry it's just where the game is at right now.

[pHo3nix]

Regarding BF reconstruct . . . any nerfs to it kill the race.

So I say KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!! Just give everyone a FREE LR+20 WITH race change and refund the TP.

It's the best option.

Yep, there would be no reason to be a BF if they nerf its reconstruct.

I would be ok with the TP refund and the free LR+20 :)

[knockcocker]

I play a BF 14 wiz/4 fvs/2 monk shiradi, with 18 past lives and 9 epic lives and best geared.


Erm, do you think you might have lost a little objectivity here?

[knockcocker]

Here in lies the problem. Why would you ever consider not being bladeforged? You can self heal immediately and no race offers that. At level 15 you can immediately begin quicken reconstruct yourself. Comparing it to coccon? Seriously? That is a precious twist spot and can't be used until 20! Heal scrolls? Try using a heat scroll when something is smashing your face in or archers are sticking g you or god forbid you have a dot. My shirardi bladeforged is so ridiculous my 6 year old daughter can play it in epic elite and kick butt. With reconstruct spell and sla on different timers you are invincible add in reconstruct scrolls for no sp and now 30% repair amp the race affords you it is ridonculous. Right now if you are not bladeforged monkchers or shirardi especially a wizzy FvS combo I don't want you in my ee group. You will essentially be a drain. Especially any pure class you will be denied. Sorry it's just where the game is at right now.

Whatever...

[Scraap]

Well, might as well be the one to open the can of worms: Should SLAs be able to take metas for no additional cost in the first place (any slas. and yes that'd sting me too)?

[Roland_D'Arabel]

As for bladeforged... any self heal worse than recon is useless even before epic, and people paid for this. Real dollars. Changing it now would kinda be a jerk move. That said, its a bit too good due to the lack of comparable options, not because its OP itself. Fvs can self heal, and theyre not on the list (random example). Point is, if other melee could get Potions of Cure Epic Wounds no one would notice this. The solution? Make some Silver Flame sized potions which A) dont debuff you and B) stack to 100 like regular pots and C) are just on a vendor so we can all get them to use, and things would be fine. Make them ML21 so its epic only if need be, or require some favor, or something. But recognize that nerfing bladeforged just shifts the focus back to things like casters self-recon and results in a lot of angry customers. We can already heal, so let us heal. The potions can have a 12s cd, so twice as long as recon, and (I think, going off memory) 4x as long as SF since they dont debuff. No new abilities gained, nothing we can do we couldnt do before, but now people got options and everyones happy.

None of those three need serious nerfs, just a fix to a 17 month old mistake, a pass to bring doubleshot up to par, and getting over adding heals to players who already have heals. Easy problems.


I hope so. Even when its weary feedback. Cheers.

Snipped the above quoted for space.

This is an excellent post, totally on target. Pure melee classes have been forced to abandon their play style due to lack of damage mitigation, OP EE mobs and lack of self-healing. This is why I abandoned my barbarian after 7 years (along with the poorly implemented barbarian enhancement trees. Improved trip and combat expertise, seriously?).

BF reconstruct is not OP at all. Amping repair spell power is very difficult in this game. Aside from the elite best geared players, the average player will only have around 300 spell points (not counting pure pally's, we all know they aren't part of this discussion) and SLA reconstruct for around 250 hp. There is no talk about nerfing cocoon even though anyone can twist it for self healing.

Why is this even under discussion?

[patang01]

Here in lies the problem. Why would you ever consider not being bladeforged? You can self heal immediately and no race offers that. At level 15 you can immediately begin quicken reconstruct yourself. Comparing it to coccon? Seriously? That is a precious twist spot and can't be used until 20! Heal scrolls? Try using a heat scroll when something is smashing your face in or archers are sticking g you or god forbid you have a dot. My shirardi bladeforged is so ridiculous my 6 year old daughter can play it in epic elite and kick butt. With reconstruct spell and sla on different timers you are invincible add in reconstruct scrolls for no sp and now 30% repair amp the race affords you it is ridonculous. Right now if you are not bladeforged monkchers or shirardi especially a wizzy FvS combo I don't want you in my ee group. You will essentially be a drain. Especially any pure class you will be denied. Sorry it's just where the game is at right now.

I never had any issues self healing my ranger before he got cocoon. At all. All it took was lots of heal amp and cheap cure serious boosted by heal amp and con op. Never ran out of SP, never had an issue surviving. Every time I hit with a potion or spell I got something like 100 SP back. Then with further heal amp items after 20 and destinies I've never been more self reliant. In any content. If the cocoon is not enough then go back to spells.

My paladin on the other hand can barely stay alive without jumping out of combat. That's because with EE melee he gets hit for 300-400 in damage then have to stay out of sight healing himself multiple times with 300 something reconstructs which the cool down going. The main way of surviving is either using fury hits to knock the assailants down or hit with massive damage. Or having a blitz going. No amount of healing will change the fact that close quarter brawling is by far the worst way to do things in DDO right now (at least in EE).

I got 3 constructs right now and the rest of my toons are fleshies. And I'm not using my barb horc kensei, or human hybrid tank because they have no way to self heal well or mitigate damage. If Turbine make damage mitigation a reality I will definitely use them.

Your experience with the ridonculous BF is so different from mine. I absolutely slay with my ranger and sorc - It's easy and it do moderately well with my BF paladin and Arti but not because of the reconstructs.

Seems like the real issue here is something like the BF Monkcher, personally I think they should make a Monk uncentered for using reconstructs. I mean there are some really huge negatives for use Silver Flame potions, they heal well but you lose a lot of stats for a long time. Make Monks uncentered for 15-20 seconds for using reconstructs since that's not Ki healing. And remove 10k for arrows. It should be for shurikens only. A few simple things like that will make it more in balance than being able to use several feats and enhancements together to make gold standard super toons like that.

[danlan]

Erm, do you think you might have lost a little objectivity here?

No I don't. In fact a 1st life 14/4/2 wf shiradi caster with a little epic exp (enough to twist in energy burst and two tier 1) and mediocre gear will perform essentially at the same level (provided same knowlege of quest and player skill does not matter much at all)



In fact, shiradi casters require little player investment and it is too accessible yet too powerful compared to other casters. That is another issue with it.

[Dalsheel]

Regarding BF reconstruct . . . any nerfs to it kill the race.

So I say KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!! Just give everyone a FREE LR+20 WITH race change and refund the TP.

It's the best option.


Yep, there would be no reason to be a BF if they nerf its reconstruct.

I would be ok with the TP refund and the free LR+20 :)

You really made me laugh, thanks!

So, after so many threads saying BF is superior to WF in every way possible, we now have this kind of comments... Make up your mind???

Nobody said they're going to remove the Recon SLA. But, I can certainly see it requiring a Turn Undead attempt to activate it, or doubling the cooldown, or both. It is too powerful to be spam-able every 6sec with -essentially- no cost.

[Wipey]

pally , ranger stuff
Why would pally be worse at self healing, same caster levels, same csw, LOHs and heal amp in Kotc.
Duh.

300 reconstructs are REALLY low. It's more like 550 - 700.

[knockcocker]

No I don't. In fact a 1st life 14/4/2 wf shiradi caster with a little epic exp (enough to twist in energy burst and two tier 1) and mediocre gear will perform essentially at the same level (provided same knowlege of quest and player skill does not matter much at all)



In fact, shiradi casters require little player investment and it is too accessible yet too powerful compared to other casters. That is another issue with it.

So you're not happy that your 18 past life, elite geared character is only slight better than a first life character? gotcha.

Not sure what that has to do with balance...

[Sokól]

No one is "focusing on nerfing multi-classing". :) If you got that impression from the writeup, perhaps we were not clear enough.

Cool that is what keeps me playing :)

[twigzz]

Yep, there would be no reason to be a BF if they nerf its reconstruct.

I would be ok with the TP refund and the free LR+20 :)

That would be the only way I'd be somewhat happy. I bought BF's for the recon ability.

[danotmano1998]

We’ve read the forum posts and tallied the surveys, and want to echo back what we’ve heard from you guys along with some of our thoughts on some specific points.

Awesome post, Vargouille.
Thanks to you and the team for the detailed analysis and write up.


It's clearer than ever to me that you guys do the best you can with the limitations you have and the difficult balancing act that must be done.
Kudos, and thanks again for working on a game so many folks enjoy.

[TorkRaider]

Rebalancing? Keep it simple and:


1. Make Many Shot, 10k Stars & Endless Fusilade share a cool down.


2. Move Monk & Rogue Evasion to Level 6 Feats


Pause, wait at least a month, review current top builds. If no one is able to complete end game EE (and i doubt this will be the case):


1. Adjust monster damage and HPs.


2. Boost capstone abilities.

[avepepix]

Rebalancing? Keep it simple and:


1. Make Many Shot, 10k Stars & Endless Fusilade share a cool down.


2. Move Monk & Rogue Evasion to Level 6 Feats


Pause, wait at least a month, review current top builds. If no one is able to complete end game EE (and i doubt this will be the case):


1. Adjust monster damage and HPs.


2. Boost capstone abilities.

rouge evasion at lvl 6? its too mutch for a rogue, at lvl 2 its ok

[count_spicoli]

I never had any issues self healing my ranger before he got cocoon. At all. All it took was lots of heal amp and cheap cure serious boosted by heal amp and con op. Never ran out of SP, never had an issue surviving. Every time I hit with a potion or spell I got something like 100 SP back. Then with further heal amp items after 20 and destinies I've never been more self reliant. In any content. If the cocoon is not enough then go back to spells.

My paladin on the other hand can barely stay alive without jumping out of combat. That's because with EE melee he gets hit for 300-400 in damage then have to stay out of sight healing himself multiple times with 300 something reconstructs which the cool down going. The main way of surviving is either using fury hits to knock the assailants down or hit with massive damage. Or having a blitz going. No amount of healing will change the fact that close quarter brawling is by far the worst way to do things in DDO right now (at least in EE).

I got 3 constructs right now and the rest of my toons are fleshies. And I'm not using my barb horc kensei, or human hybrid tank because they have no way to self heal well or mitigate damage. If Turbine make damage mitigation a reality I will definitely use them.

Your experience with the ridonculous BF is so different from mine. I absolutely slay with my ranger and sorc - It's easy and it do moderately well with my BF paladin and Arti but not because of the reconstructs.

Ranger is a class. Lots of classes give a self heal at some kind of cost. My point was no RACE gets this. So if you are not a self healing CLASS the choice is one only BF. Does shardi kai give self heal? Elf? Human? Pdk? Elf? Morning lord gives 2 time per rest big one and would have been ok with bladeforged getting this too. It's just ridiculous they give one race built in crazy self heal that no race gets. So to win ddo be a bladeforged monkchers and you won. Game over.

[Ivan_Milic]

Rebalancing? Keep it simple and:




2. Move Monk & Rogue Evasion to Level 6 Feats



Gonna give +20 lr hearts with that change?

[Teh_Troll]

Nobody said they're going to remove the Recon SLA. But, I can certainly see it requiring a Turn Undead attempt to activate it, or doubling the cooldown, or both. It is too powerful to be spam-able every 6sec with -essentially- no cost.

Do either of those dumb ideas and you've killed Bladeforged.

Seriously, any nerf to the SLA kills it. it's on OP ability that either has to remain in it's OP state or will be nerfed to useless.

For the good of the game . . . it should be nerfed. But refund the points and give people a free respec.

[jakeelala]

We’ve read the forum posts ... We’ll be reading along and looking for your ideas and opinions.

You know its funny:

Of the 3 things you took time to mention might need to be "looked at", 2 of them are things that WE HAD TO PAY FOR. You as Turbine intentioanlly made these things more powerful than other things so people would buy them, and now they're a problem. No kidding?

1. Monkchers
2. BF with Recon

Here's an idea: DONT nerf Monkchers and Furyshotting. You know why? I have talented guildies with well-built Centered Kensai Melee builds that TODAY can outkill the best Furyshotters in our guild when blitzing. Only the best ones though because content for melee's on EE is mostly just too much incoming damage. My point is: DPS is not too low for melee's right now compared to Shiradi casters and Furyshotters.

Incoming damage is TOO HIGH and melee damage mitigation is TOO LOW for melee characters.

Solutions:
-Fix your disastrous changes to AC and change PRR and Dodge accordingly.
-Increase Incoming damage to Ranged and Casters, or make more things to save against that are not Reflex saves.

That will change the entire game without NERFING ANYTHING. If you like, just to make things interesting, find a way to bring down damage of Shiradi Casters and Furyshotters by something small, like 10%. But right now melees played properly can do plenty of damage, they just die immediately if they try to.

[Ivan_Milic]

If you nerf bf recon, you will be seeing less than half melees in end game that you see now.



But refund the points and give people a free respec.

That will never happen, free respec maybe, but refund, lol.

[Ivan_Milic]

You really made me laugh, thanks!

So, after so many threads saying BF is superior to WF in every way possible, we now have this kind of comments... Make up your mind???

Nobody said they're going to remove the Recon SLA. But, I can certainly see it requiring a Turn Undead attempt to activate it, or doubling the cooldown, or both. It is too powerful to be spam-able every 6sec with -essentially- no cost.

You forgot 1 thing, you need to take at least 1 pally lvl if you go bf, wf dont have to.
Nerf recon, then also remove that 1 pally lvl requirement.

[TorkRaider]

Gonna give +20 lr hearts with that change?

Sure, no problem. Want 2?

[Ivan_Milic]

AC and PRR is currently worthless.



Idk about this, I find ac useful.

[Ivan_Milic]

Sure, no problem. Want 2?

Yea, from turbine.

[pHo3nix]

Ranger is a class. Lots of classes give a self heal at some kind of cost. My point was no RACE gets this. So if you are not a self healing CLASS the choice is one only BF. Does shardi kai give self heal? Elf? Human? Pdk? Elf? Morning lord gives 2 time per rest big one and would have been ok with bladeforged getting this too. It's just ridiculous they give one race built in crazy self heal that no race gets. So to win ddo be a bladeforged monkchers and you won. Game over.

Halfling got DM.

Reconstruct on BF is really good, nobody's arguing on that. The problem is that the reconstruct (and the nice looking armor kit :D ) is the only reason why most people bought BF. They should have thought about it before putting it in the game, now it's too late to nerf it without making it look like a bait-and-switch tactic. Or they could just nerf it and refund all those that bought BF, but i highly doubt this is going to happen.

[Dalsheel]

Do either of those dumb ideas and you've killed Bladeforged.

Seriously, any nerf to the SLA kills it. it's on OP ability that either has to remain in it's OP state or will be nerfed to useless.

For the good of the game . . . it should be nerfed. But refund the points and give people a free respec.

So you're saying that a 12sec cooldown Recon SLA is worse than no Recon SLA at all? People are self-healing just fine with 12sec cooldown Cocoon and nobody said it's OP. For all I know, there will be people believing that a 12sec Recon SLA is still OP just because you don't need to sacrifice a twist slot to use it, or anything else for that matter.

The fact that you're, at least, admitting it's OP is a start, I guess. Now you just need to realize that doubling the cooldown won't kill the race at all, but it will give a sense of fairness among the races.

PS: btw, I would be perfectly fine with a refund and the removal of BF from my character building options now that I have the past life stacked x3 on my main toon.

[pHo3nix]

So you're saying that a 12sec cooldown Recon SLA is worse than no Recon SLA at all? People are self-healing just fine with 12sec cooldown Cocoon and nobody said it's OP. For all I know, there will be people believing that a 12sec Recon SLA is still OP just because you don't need to sacrifice a twist slot to use it, or anything else for that matter.

The fact that you're, at least, admitting it's OP is a start, I guess. Now you just need to realize that doubling the cooldown won't kill the race at all, but it will give a sense of fairness among the races.

PS: btw, I would be perfectly fine with a refund and the removal of BF from my character building options now that I have the past life stacked x3 on my main toon.

The fact is that with cocoon you can use other form of efficient healing considering you should have good HA: so you can use cocoon, Halfing DM, CSW, CMW, SF pots. With BF you can only use reconstruct, everything else is going to suck bad. So putting Recon on a 12 sec CD is going to kill the race, cause you would be better off going fleshie with good HA.

[Krell]

Regarding BF reconstruct . . . any nerfs to it kill the race.

So I say KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!! Just give everyone a FREE LR+20 WITH race change and refund the TP.

It's the best option.

Yes, leave Bladeforged alone or provide adequate compensation. I could live with either option. I didn't buy it for the spiky avatar options.

[Wipey]

People are self-healing just fine with 12sec cooldown Cocoon and nobody said it's OP.
Ranged only , yes, with occassional scroll or two.
Melee ? No way with Cocoon only unless you are super careful ( aka piking and let others eat the damage ).

[Portalcat]

I want to really underline the advantages to buffing capstones, if the goal is to make as many things viable as possible:

(1) It promises few unintended consequences. You buff one build per capstone, and don't need to worry about interactions between different classes.

(2) It offers a non-nerf way to substantially expand viable build choice.

(3) It requires changing only one thing per enhancement tree. That's a low-cost, high-impact use of resources to implement.

(4) It's a very new player and casual-friendly buff, as pure builds are a common default option among them. Such players need not automatically have poor builds just because they don't know better than to remain pure. I don't generally think you should cater the tough-as-nails endgame to casual players, but buffing capstones lets you kill two birds with one stone.

[Ivan_Milic]

So you're saying that a 12sec cooldown Recon SLA is worse than no Recon SLA at all? People are self-healing just fine with 12sec cooldown Cocoon and nobody said it's OP. For all I know, there will be people believing that a 12sec Recon SLA is still OP just because you don't need to sacrifice a twist slot to use it, or anything else for that matter.



By people, you mean ranged chars.

[Qhualor]

Here in lies the problem. Why would you ever consider not being bladeforged? You can self heal immediately and no race offers that. At level 15 you can immediately begin quicken reconstruct yourself. Comparing it to coccon? Seriously? That is a precious twist spot and can't be used until 20! Heal scrolls? Try using a heat scroll when something is smashing your face in or archers are sticking g you or god forbid you have a dot. My shirardi bladeforged is so ridiculous my 6 year old daughter can play it in epic elite and kick butt. With reconstruct spell and sla on different timers you are invincible add in reconstruct scrolls for no sp and now 30% repair amp the race affords you it is ridonculous. Right now if you are not bladeforged monkchers or shirardi especially a wizzy FvS combo I don't want you in my ee group. You will essentially be a drain. Especially any pure class you will be denied. Sorry it's just where the game is at right now.

Quicken can be taken by any class that uses cure/heal spells. Quicken doesn't make BF suddenly better than any other race or class. They are still a type of warforged. I like BF, but I'm not seeing it as OP as people make it out to be. If its because they can repair a little more as a BF Paladin or Ranger than a fleshy Paladin or Ranger than there is nothing wrong with it. If its comparing casters, than I could see that as OP.

I don't who or why someone would compare Cocoon to reconstruct but it wasn't me and there just is no comparison because they both heal differently. Reconstruct is no different than a fleshy hitting a cure spell. They are both instantaneous with no worry to swap to scrolls. You get more benefit from cure/reconstruct spells as a melee than you would from scrolls. There are no enhancements for them to boost it unlike you could with reconstruct.

Just because the game has gravitated more to a certain play style and build doesn't make them all good players. You have to first know how to push a button to repair yourself and be able to play that build. I've grouped with plenty of Shiradis, Monkchers and BF whatever's that were more a burden than the pure fleshy Paladin was. You have to know how to play the OP builds to its full potential.

[Ivan_Milic]

Halfling got DM.

Reconstruct on BF is really good, nobody's arguing on that. The problem is that the reconstruct (and the nice looking armor kit :D ) is the only reason why most people bought BF. They should have thought about it before putting it in the game, now it's too late to nerf it without making it look like a bait-and-switch tactic. Or they could just nerf it and refund all those that bought BF, but i highly doubt this is going to happen.
They should have thought about damage mitigation on melee.
Because ee mobs hit for 200, how are going to melee if not on bf or keep jumping all the time with heal scrolls on fleshlings.

[Hathorian]

So you build a toon that utilizes all 3 of the things that people report as OP in this thread... Cool!

I did the TR a few weeks ago before this thread was even a twinkle in Varg's eye. Don't be that way.

[Hathorian]

So you're not happy that your 18 past life, elite geared character is only slight better than a first life character? gotcha.

Not sure what that has to do with balance...

Good call. I was wondering what his angle is. He is angry that other people might be as good as him so he wants newer players nerfed.

[Grimlock]

It was extremely refreshing to see you guys chart out your findings. I agree with much of what the rest of the player base has said. It is clear there is a gross imbalance with the Shiradi/monkcher builds and I certainly think examining those systems is important.

My thoughts on looking at fixing the balance in the game:

1. Leave LD alone. Melee's need to be able to put out damage and Blitz is our one hope of competing with casters.
2. Accept the fact that casters are the ultimate end game boogymen. This is true in pnp, it should be true in DDO. The amount of damage they put out is always going to be more than other build types and there is nothing wrong with that.
3. Leave Bladeforged Reconstruct alone. This is a Turbine Point purchased race/class.
4. Rework class capstones. They are ****.
5. Challenge yourselves to think of ways to change the multiclassing system. Provide incentive to migrate away from this. Multiclassed characters should be a melting pot of abilities and skills that provide a character with multiple resources and not be the ultimate end all be all compared to a pure class. Example - taking 12 levels of monk added in 6 ranger + 2 whatever should not have the damage output with bows that a pure Ranger should have. This is silly. 10k stars + manyshot = silly. Multiple imbues = silly.