Paladin Changes

[Vellrad]

3 ideas how to make paladins suck less:

1. Spells:
1a: Zeal: make it give stacking doublestrike, attack speed and +0,5W. KoTC lvl18 core grants mass zeal, making it self centered AoE.
1b: Holy sword: annoints target's currently equipped weapon, granting it holy and pure good. Level 18 KotC core grants improved holy sword, adding greater good and holy burst instead. You can have only one annoint at time, but they can be used together with artificer's imbues.
2. KotC:
Make it all arround offensive line against all evil mobs. Make cores granting extra or improved spells in addition to other effects they currently have:
lvl3: Improved divine favor: Improved divine favor is add to your level 1 spell list. It works like divine favor, but got no level cap on maximum bonus provided.
lvl12: Haste: Haste is added to your level 3 spell list.
lvl18: improved holy sword and mass zeal are added to your spell list.

Also, paladins should get cure light as lvl1, cure medium as lvl2, cure moderate as lvl3 and cure critical and mass cure moderate as level 4.

3. Smite evil:
This should be seriously stronger.
At level 1, attack dealing extra 50% damage.
At level 5: +100%
At level 10: +150%
At level 15: +200%
At level 20: +250%
At level 25: +300%
(paladin+epic level)
Vorpal on smite leaves target stunned for 1 second per paladin+epic level.
Adrenalined smites dealing extra 700% damage should add decent DPS to this class.

Theese are my ideas, IDK if good or not.

[Munkenmo]

Theese are my ideas, IDK if good or not.

Or not.

There are rules Turbine has to follow, Paladin cure spells are pretty set in stone.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spellLists/paladinSpells.htm#firstLevelPaladinSpells

[ghtzxc]

Divine Grace is fine as it is. Instead of taking away from paladin I think more should be given to it. None of these changes to paladin are really big enough to get people to take more paladin levels. It's not divine grace that's the problem.

People who are asking for further nerfs are not really giving a good reason, especially since it's been around for a long time, now suddenly people are just jumping on the bandwagon. To those that are like, oh it's worth 4 feats, or should be nerfed further. It requires investment into CHA as well as 2 paladin levels, and restricting any other third class splash option.

Part of the fun is finding things that work well together and building a character from that. I think this proposed nerf hinders that and I say the proposed change to divine grace should not be realized.

Instead do more with the Weapons of Light, it looks good for heroics but could use a boost in epics for sure. Suggestions might include link the damage to spell power, extra affects on crits/vorpals, etc...

[EllisDee37]

This poorly thought out nerf is par for the course sadly.

The problem isn't that divine grace gives too large a bonus, that's never been the problem. Once upon a time, there were reasonable ways to get useful saves without divine grace. Now monsters have absurd DC's so people have turned to divine grace to get useful saves.

Devs if you address monster DC's instead of nerfing divine grace the following happens:

I no longer need absurd saves so I start to consider splashing:

1-2 wiz for a feat, cleave and spell points
1-2 fvs/cleric for divine might, spell points, empower heal
1-2 druid for rams might, spell points, empower heal
1-2 barb for rage, movement speed & sprint boost
2 rogue evasion, umd, traps
2 arti umd, traps, runearm
2 fighter hasteboost 2 feats
2 monk evasion, 2feats, 4dodge, qualify for stances.
etc.

If saves are still absurd, I still have to take 2 paladin, but you just nerfed my build and I'll be angry.Agreed on all that.

I still say divine grace needs a nerf, but I also agree that the game needs to change so that divine grace isn't mandatory.


In that scenario, the source of the imbalance isn't the splash classes. It's the crappy capstone.No, it's not the capstone, it's that (due to how EE is tuned) the pally saves are grossly more powerful than the alternative splashes. I don't know if you're being deliberately obtuse, but you really keep missing what I mean by balance by a country mile.

If it were balanced, you'd have a tough choice between the options fTdOmen listed above. Right now there's no choice at all because divine grace is clearly superior to any of the alternatives. That's unbalanced. It also reduces build diversity.

[EllisDee37]

People who are asking for further nerfs are not really giving a good reasonHere's why I want divine grace nerfed:

With divine grace in the game, we get EE content tuned as it is now, where massive saves are required and it's extremely difficult to hit them without divine grace. So players take divine grace.

If divine grace is nerfed, content tuned as EE is now wouldn't make it off lammania because it would be largely unplayable.

Having divine grace in its current incarnation, combined with the ability to jack up charisma much higher than we could when the level cap was 20, allows the developers to unbalance the game mechanics in a way that's detrimental to the overall health of the game. If divine grace gets reigned in, saves have to be brought down to more reasonable levels during the development phase.

[EllisDee37]

It's logic. If you nerf options, there are fewer options.This doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

If one choice is far and away more powerful than the alternatives, there are fewer options. If that one disproportionately powerful option is nerfed to the same equivalent power level as the rest of the choices, now you have more options.

[Munkenmo]

Here's why I want divine grace nerfed:

With divine grace in the game, we get EE content tuned as it is now, where massive saves are required and it's extremely difficult to hit them without divine grace. So players take divine grace.

If divine grace is nerfed, content tuned as EE is now wouldn't make it off lammania because it would be largely unplayable.

The problem is that now the devs are trying to make players with divine grace fail saves occasionally. The game would be better off if the devs completely ignored divine grace for the majority of monster/trap DC calculations.

Honestly, back when the cap was 20, I used to think of divine grace as a means for newer players to make their saves without all the pastlives and gear some vets would have. The opportunity cost of going lawful good and being forced to take 2 pally levels imo can justify being able to make all saves successfully.

If DC's were reigned in, Vets would drop 2pally in favor of 2fvs in a heartbeat, new players might still take 2 pally <- balance.

I'll repeat, players don't need max saves nerfed here. Content needs to be readjusted so pushing for max saves isn't so necessary. We'll always flock to the saves that are necessary, lowering the required save threshold will lower the need for divine grace.

[Cetus]

Here's why I want divine grace nerfed:

With divine grace in the game, we get EE content tuned as it is now, where massive saves are required and it's extremely difficult to hit them without divine grace. So players take divine grace.

If divine grace is nerfed, content tuned as EE is now wouldn't make it off lammania because it would be largely unplayable.

Having divine grace in its current incarnation, combined with the ability to jack up charisma much higher than we could when the level cap was 20, allows the developers to unbalance the game mechanics in a way that's detrimental to the overall health of the game. If divine grace gets reigned in, saves have to be brought down to more reasonable levels during the development phase.

What are you talking about? There are plenty of high save toons out there, fvs monk types, monk archers get right about where I am with no pally splash, high intel wizzy's with insightful reflexes get reflex saves as high as i do, dex based builds (especially rogues), and now the devs are coming out with some magic resistance rating to compete with the save evasion builds.

The argument that ee content needs to be tuned for divine grace builds is simply a red herring. I play a pure sorc, with craptastic saves - and he dominates most content, yes he dies more often and EE HH is a pain in the butt, but you figure your way around most of it.

[Grace_ana]

Ellis, you're usually pretty reasonable, but on this one you're way out in left field and I'm not sure there's any way to explain this in a way that connects. You seem to have a serious bone to pick with pally splashes to the point of thinking they far outnumber any other 2 level splashes and confer benefits far beyond what they actually grant. It's just not an OP ability no matter how you cut it, and nerfing it doesn't fix a thing.

[FlaviusMaximus]

The D20 system is inherently broken at high level. Divine Grace has nothing to do with it.

The Divine Grace saves bonus that people can get with a fairly minimal investment in starting charisma today is a whooole lot different than the saves bonus a person got a few years ago from Divine Grace. Big gear bonuses, ship buffs, big tomes, and stacking charisma enhancements from heroic trees and epic destinies have resulted in a much bigger saves bonuses. If the ability alone can make a player go from close to a saves auto fail to an auto success, then yes, that's absurd, and frankly I agree that the fault currently lies in the d20 system.

[capsela]

You want Pally saves be a Pally. Saves to match the Pally level please.

And make the damage scale. 1d6 lol. Srsy the US ED 1d6 at tier 4 is a joke, pallys are a joke and so is their ED.

[Xyfiel]

You want Pally saves be a Pally. Saves to match the Pally level please.

And make the damage scale. 1d6 lol. Srsy the US ED 1d6 at tier 4 is a joke, pallys are a joke and so is their ED.

Great plan. We should also make it so evasion only works 5% of time per respective class level and remove all clickies/scrolls from game. You want heal or displacement, be a x. This line of thinking can be applied to any class ability, feats, spells, skills, etc... That would remove the customization part of DDO which along with the combat is the games main draw. So no let's not do that.

[Merlin-ator]

Not enough to be helpful, I'm afraid. Pallys are horribly feat-starved and have poor PrEs, especially when compared to the Stalwart Defender tree. To be anywhere near decent, pallies need a 2 level Fighter or Monk splash - Often, both. Anybody with 19 or 20 levels in paladin won't need the +75 temp HP, because they'll be grinding a True Heart to make up for the gross error of not dipping 2 other levels, and the +50 will be just fine in Heroics.

One of the biggest problems with paladins is that every ability costs way too much AP. Every paladin made by anyone who knows the slightest thing about what they're doing is running with a tank build. Everything else just doesn't work. But when the only decent abilities add small bonuses for 2 ap per tier, it becomes very hard very quickly to spend any points in your racial tree, a multiclass tree, or even the Knight tree, as laughably pathetic as it is.


I would object to the cap to Divine Grace. Pala splash is not as high a bonus as most forumites make it out to be. It eats up one of your three class picks, eats 2 levels, and is useless without evasion. FOM works for magical holding (AKA the only things you really need high Will save for), DW works for instakills (AKA the only things you really need a high Fort save for), and half damage on spells and traps (AKA the only things you need a high Reflex save for) is still crippling, making 2 pala nearly useless without evasion. Since only 2 classes in the game get evasion, most chars need to take 2 Monk/Rogue, eating up your second class pick and leaving most toons with 16 levels in their primary class. Most classes get some killer abilities at 17 or 18, so this is a pretty big blow. The clincher? CHA is a pretty worthless ability, not used for much. All toons need at least 2 stats to be very high, always CON and something else. Sometimes they need a minimum score in something else, for a prerequisite, but raising these stats to acceptable levels eats up quite a few gear slots and ability points. Due to how the D20 system works, +3 saves doesn't mean much unless you're already seeing saves more than 5% of the time. Since you're now dealing with an evasion build, you need to raise DEX to improve reflex saves, eating build points and gear slots. Unless you're playing a CC bard, Rogue, Swashbuckling bard, or a fleshy sorc, Divine Grace is just too high a cost to justify. DDO is all about determining how many bonuses you can stack on your character, and overall Divine Grace isn't a massive boost for most characters.

[Aviya]

Greetings,

We have been going through player feedback and one of the concerns is that there is no compelling reason to level a Paladin past the early levels. While we hope the changes to armor and shield will help with this, we are looking for feedback on additional changes to make the class more compelling at higher levels.

The changes:

~ At 7th level the Paladin gets the Armor of Light ability. The Paladin gains 25 temporary hit points (non-stacking) each time they use Smite Evil, Lay on Hands, Cure Disease or Turn Undead. This ability provides 50 temporary hit points at 13th level, and 75 temporary hit points at 19th level.

~ The Paladin gains Weapon of Light starting at 8th level and increasing at 11th, 14th, 17th and 20th.

At 8th level the Paladin gains Weapon of Light. While this toggle is activated each weapon attack they make also cause 1d6 of Light damage. This damage is increased to 2d6 for two handed weapons and for shield bash attacks.

At 11th level the Weapon of Light damage bursts in a 10’ radius when the Paladin rolls a 20 on an attack roll with a weapon.

At 14th level the Weapon of Light increases to 2d6, or 4d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.

At 17th level the damage of a Weapon of Light burst (when you roll a 20) is doubled.

At 20th level the Aura of Light increases to 3d6, or 6d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.


We are also considering a controversial change as well:
Divine Grace is now limited to 2 + (3 x Paladin Level) for the total Charisma bonuses it will add to saving throws.

We want good saving throws to be a class feature of Paladins and a reason to go to higher level in the class. At the same time we don't want players to feel that there is no reason to increase your Paladin level beyond two or three. This change will provide an excellent +8 to all saving throws for a two level splash into Paladin and allow that saving throw bonus to increase as the Paladin levels.


The updated class table will look like this:

snip


We'd like feedback on both the good changes and possibility of a Divine Grace change which is more restrictive.

Sev~

I like the proposed changes.
I can live with Divine grace being capped at +8 saves for a paladin splash.

But you need to do more to boost dps of paladins because there are far behind.
Weapon of Light goes in the right direction and is related to the class so is very nice add but is not enough.

I'd recommend a easy change in the knight of the chalice tree that would help with this.
Holy Retribution tier 5 of knight of the chalice tree is currently too weak and not worth to chose it instead of any other melee t5
I'd recommend to change it to this:
Holy Retribution: Melee Channel Divinity Stance: When this stance is active your damage and speed ramps up. You deal +1W damage with all your attacks and gain a sacred 10% movement and attack speed and, only against evil enemies you deal 10d100 holy damage when you score a critical hit (save for half the light damage Will save DC 10 + Paladin Level + Charisma Mod).
To fit lore of paladin class, and to balance it, this stance costs 60/45/30 spell points for each minute that is toggled on so for long raids is something a paladin should learn to manage.

[Ausdoerrt]

Eh. What you call unbalanced I call multiclassing. I don't think that the definition of OP is having something you really really want. I mean, that's the case with any multiclass. By splashing, you also have to give things up. I have to give up DC and spells on my sorc. Someone else has to give up something on their build. If what they are giving up isn't great, that doesn't mean the splash is OP; it means the capstone stinks.

The fact that one splash is inordinately more popular than all the others is a testament to the fact that it's too front-loaded. Monks' WIS to AC is based on class level, so should be paladins' CHA to saves.


Divine grace isn't the problem. The lack of DPS and feats on pallies is the problem. Fix smite. Give some of the bonuses you can get with feats in the enhancement tree. Fix heavy armor as is being discussed in another thread. Problem solved.

In case you didn't notice, they're working on other issues too - so maybe instead of ranting about That One Thing you could try offering some specific, constructive advice.


What is so excellent about Loosing +8 saves with 40 Cha+ ? I Wont accept this
I want to play a proper Paladin class that's viable, not splash 2 levels. If 2 people will have their pet builds broken in the process, I'm okay with that. And given your entitled attitude, I honestly couldn't give a tressym's behind if you suffered in the process.

If you only understand "selfish baby" logic, then how about this: I had a pure pally tank before MOTU, I spent months upon months grinding all the epic gear to make him viable in raids and get a decent AC. He wasn't the best, but he was one of my favorite toons and I was proud of him. The AC changes and then the Enhancement Pass utterly broke him - naught but a mule now. I think it's about time I get something too. You've had your time, let me have mine.

[Ausdoerrt]

Divine Grace is perfectly fine. EE DCs aren't fine. If EE DCs were lower, divine grace would be absolutely optional, ie you could splash 2 pally and avoid slotting some item that boost saves or you could avoid the pally splash and slot items to have good saves, you would have choice. With the current EE you need to slot items that boost saves AND you need to splash 2 pally, there is no choice at all if you want your saves to be ok.

I'd say both are a problem. Yes, EE powercreep is obviously horrible, but it looks like they aren't ready to tackle it now, if ever. Besides, only a small portion of the playerbase are active EE players, so it's better to temporarily upset the few rather than the many.

On the other hand, the players needs a reason to take more than 2 paladin levels. Spreading out Divine Grace is part of the possible solution. IMO, paladins should be more like monks - a good splash, but the deeper, the better. Perhaps pallys could even get special paladin stances (e.g. defensive/offensive/healing) like the monks do.

[pesch1991]

The fact that one splash is inordinately more popular than all the others is a testament to the fact that it's too front-loaded. Monks' WIS to AC is based on class level, so should be paladins' CHA to saves.



In case you didn't notice, they're working on other issues too - so maybe instead of ranting about That One Thing you could try offering some specific, constructive advice.


I want to play a proper Paladin class that's viable, not splash 2 levels. If 2 people will have their pet builds broken in the process, I'm okay with that. And given your entitled attitude, I honestly couldn't give a tressym's behind if you suffered in the process.

If you only understand "selfish baby" logic, then how about this: I had a pure pally tank before MOTU, I spent months upon months grinding all the epic gear to make him viable in raids and get a decent AC. He wasn't the best, but he was one of my favorite toons and I was proud of him. The AC changes and then the Enhancement Pass utterly broke him - naught but a mule now. I think it's about time I get something too. You've had your time, let me have mine.

I dont care about you and your playstyle, who are you anyway ? Insulting others is also not allowed, your Attitude isnt any better. Regarding Paladins, if you want to play a pure paladin without multiclassing then so be it i wont hinder you, you can do as you please after all its your toon, but to wish others build to be nerfed because there is something you dont like for example people who splash 2 paladin lvls is none of your business they can decide what to do on their own you are not obligated to judge their playstyle thats pretty selfish and rude at the same time, work hard and dont be selfish. Suddenly pure classes want multiclasses to be nerfed especially melee... wow just wow.

[Ausdoerrt]

I dont care about you and your playstyle, who are you anyway ? Insulting others is also not allowed, your Attitude isnt any better.

I'm a player like you so I don't see why you seem to feel entitled to your playstyle at the expense of others'.

I also have no intent of insulting you, I am simply summarizing and analyzing all you have posted so far. Sorry to break it to you, but this game isn't and shouldn't be balanced around you.

[Ausdoerrt]

Paladins need more feats. The last beneficial breakpoint to play a paladin is taking zeal. Every level after that is pretty much literally wasted (it's "better" to splash into any number of other classes than stay pure). So, I'd back-load bonus feats into those levels (either 3@ 16, 18, 20 or, to be really kind 4@ 16, 17, 19, 20).

Someone else posted this list, but I'll borrow it: Paladin bonus feat list would be: Tower Shield, Bastard Sword, Toughness, Shield Mastery, Improved Shield Mastery, Improved Shield Bash, Shield Deflection, Empower Heal, Force of Personality, Extra Turning, Improved Turning, Magical Training, Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Improved Critical.

That gives a player some build flexibility without watering down fighters.

This is one way to do it. I'd rather be in favor of ranger-style autogrants or monk-style stances.


As other have pointed out the paladin spell book is a joke. It needs to be gone over and some epic-centric tweaks should be put in. I like the twin suggestions that the Holy Sword spell be turned into a weapon imbue (in effect making any weapon you wield holy) _and_ that the extra light damage being suggested be tied into using the holy sword. As a spell, radiance spellpower can easily apply (and would be sorely needed to be effective in epics). I'd go so far as to suggest that the devs re-work Holy Sword to work in a similar way to the longsword Divine Vengeance. As you gain levels, the spell could give you stacking SR (or maybe the new MRR), good damage (or light damage), radiance with blinding, etc. I'm sure someone could provide a reasonable curve where it doesn't steamroll heroics but still proves useful in epics.

This is great. Quoted for EXTREEEMEEE support :) Holy Sword is a traditional Paladin feature too, so this goes with the lore as well. I also think this is similar to how NWN2 did the "holy sword" spell, and it worked very well there.


The last point is the prestige classes. The tank prestige is terrible. It's close to useless and the sacred bonus has been gutted for paladins to the benefit of stalwart fighters. Hopefully the new PRR/MRR changes will make this more useful.
I don't think enemy-focused prestiges work very well in the long term, especially considering the looming changes in DDO. Sure, I get the lore, but paladins aren't and shouldn't be just about outsiders or undead. They are about smiting evil, period. So either make those bane bonuses work for all evil enemies, or add Ranger-like "favored enemies" for paladins. Things like "divine light" should also change to affect more than just undead, otherwise it's too situational.


Paladins still need their third prestige. Someone else provided the suggestion that there be a casting-focused one. That's not a bad idea...maybe something that boosts turning and creates a few SLAs that have a paladin flavor. Maybe a heroic heal over time that provides a temp hp buffer (a bit like a weaker cocoon) and some others that provide stacking PRR/MRR, and at least one nice alternate smite. A lot of good work has gone into divine balancing lately. I'm sure the same team could do wonders if assigned to paladins.
I'd say it should be about turning more than casting - unless they severely rework the spell list, of course. Make more abilities like Divine Light that modify paladin turns and make them useful. Alternate smite idea is also interesting - perhaps something with a spell component to it? Like a CC smite or a burst smite...

[pesch1991]

I'm a player like you so I don't see why you seem to feel entitled to your playstyle at the expense of others'.

I also have no intent of insulting you, I am simply summarizing and analyzing all you have posted so far. Sorry to break it to you, but this game isn't and shouldn't be balanced around you.

What problem do you have ? i am taking advantage of no one, ehh iam sorry to dissapoint you but thats what i call stalking which isnt allowed either, anyway THIS GAME isnt balanced around no one why dont you get it ? ALMOST everyone can splash 2 paladin lvls not just me thats what multiclassing is for, again its none of your business what i do with my build because it is my build not yours.

[Pandir]

Greetings,

We have been going through player feedback and one of the concerns is that there is no compelling reason to level a Paladin past the early levels. While we hope the changes to armor and shield will help with this, we are looking for feedback on additional changes to make the class more compelling at higher levels.

The changes:

~ At 7th level the Paladin gets the Armor of Light ability. The Paladin gains 25 temporary hit points (non-stacking) each time they use Smite Evil, Lay on Hands, Cure Disease or Turn Undead. This ability provides 50 temporary hit points at 13th level, and 75 temporary hit points at 19th level.

~ The Paladin gains Weapon of Light starting at 8th level and increasing at 11th, 14th, 17th and 20th.

At 8th level the Paladin gains Weapon of Light. While this toggle is activated each weapon attack they make also cause 1d6 of Light damage. This damage is increased to 2d6 for two handed weapons and for shield bash attacks.

At 11th level the Weapon of Light damage bursts in a 10’ radius when the Paladin rolls a 20 on an attack roll with a weapon.

At 14th level the Weapon of Light increases to 2d6, or 4d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.

At 17th level the damage of a Weapon of Light burst (when you roll a 20) is doubled.

At 20th level the Aura of Light increases to 3d6, or 6d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.


We are also considering a controversial change as well:
Divine Grace is now limited to 2 + (3 x Paladin Level) for the total Charisma bonuses it will add to saving throws.

We want good saving throws to be a class feature of Paladins and a reason to go to higher level in the class. At the same time we don't want players to feel that there is no reason to increase your Paladin level beyond two or three. This change will provide an excellent +8 to all saving throws for a two level splash into Paladin and allow that saving throw bonus to increase as the Paladin levels.


The updated class table will look like this:

1st +1/+1/+6 +2 +0 +0 Aura of good, Smite evil (1/rest), Follower of (your faith)
2nd +2/+2/+7 +3 +0 +0 Divine grace, Lay on hands (1/rest)

3rd +3/+3/+8 +3 +1 +1 Aura of courage, Divine health, Fear Immunity

4th +4/+4/+9 +4 +1 +1 Turn undead

5th +5/+5/+10/+15 +4 +1 +1 Smite evil (2/rest)

6th +6/+6/+11/+16 +5 +2 +2 Remove disease (1/rest), Deity-based feat
7th +7/+7/+12/+17 +5 +2 +2 Armor of Light (25)
8th +8/+8/+13/+18 +6 +2 +2 Weapon of Light (1d6)
9th +9/+9/+14/+19 +6 +3 +3 Remove disease (2/rest)

10th +10/+10/+15/+20 +7 +3 +3 Smite evil (3/rest)

11th +11/+11/+16/+21 +7 +3 +3 Weapon of Light (Burst on 20)
12th +12/+12/+17/+22 +8 +4 +4 Remove disease (3/rest)

13th +13/+13/+18/+23 +8 +4 +4 Armor of Light (50)
14th +14/+14/+19/+24 +9 +4 +4 Weapon of Light (2d6)
15th +15/+15/+20/+25 +9 +5 +5 Remove disease (4/rest), Smite evil (4/rest)

16th +16/+16/+21/+26 +10 +5 +5 -
17th +17/+17/+22/+27 +10 +5 +5 Weapon of Light (Burst x2)
18th +18/+18/+23/+28 +11 +6 +6 Remove disease (5/rest)

19th +19/+19/+24/+29 +11 +6 +6 Armor of Light (75)
20th +20/+20/+25/+30 +12 +6 +6 Weapon of Light (3d6), Smite evil (5/rest)


We'd like feedback on both the good changes and possibility of a Divine Grace change which is more restrictive.

Sev~

Well the added light damage is kinda nice but really not enough to make a difference imo.
Armor of light i honestly find to be useless, it's been a while since i played a pally, but health was never an issue, slow killing speed was and maybe running out of SP.
I'd prefer something like Temp SP or even better making smites recover faster.

Also i don't like the divine grace change, i believe it will do nothing but nerf some builds as long as there isn't more desirable abilities to be had in the paladin tree along with it.

[thesnoman]

@ Pesch and Ausdoerrt

Come on guys -this isn't about either of you in particular, can we get back on topic rather than trying to figure out who's better at slinging mud.


OK to summarize my thoughts that are spread around this thread:


Divine Grace is not as broken as many people think it is. In order to get the high saves we need for EE, we must give something else up. In respects to all classes except Sorc, there's an investment in Charisma required and the requirement to be Lawful Good.
While the proposed love to Paladin is a step in the right direction, it's definitely not enough - even with the proposed armor and damage mitigation changes, the root of the problem with Pally is not needing more survivability, it's the need for more DPS. There just isn't enough DPS love to make playing a Paladin beyond level 20.
If you want to stop the number of 2-splash and 4-splash Pally builds out there, fix EE content FIRST. I've played this game long enough to know what happens when Turbine makes changes promising further changes down the road. Either they never happen or they take so long to finish said promised changes that by the time they get to them they no longer are relevant. So, please - if you're going to "fix" Divine Grace, fix the root of the need for 2-pally splash FIRST - the need for such ridiculously high saves in EE content in the first place. Don't break what's working (for players) before you fix what isn't working (EE DCs, sub-par capstones, etc)
In regards to how the proposed Armor and Damage Mitigation Changes - it's completely the opposite thinking of nerfing Divine Grace. Making the proposed changes will require EE to be as difficult as it currently is, but nerfing Divine Grace will require you to change EE DCs. So please, I beg you - BEFORE you make any proposed changes to either Divine Grace OR Armor and Damage mitigation, FIX EE!

[slarden]

Reducing the benefit of divine grace with paladin splashes doesn't help paladin at all.

Why is it so necessary to reduce the save bonuses from people that are legitimately using divine grace to boost saves, and yet people are running around with +30 save bonuses from orbs from an exploit that was fixed, but people still benefit from it until they reincarnate or equip an orb.

There are so many builds that rely fully on game bugs to excel. Those should be fixed before nerfing legitimate builds that aren't overpowered.

I won't rage quit and I'll just figure out another build, but finding another build involves not using the thunderforge weapon that took me over 60 raids to make. I have no way to recover or partially recover my ingredients from that and it takes much longer to craft vs. greensteel.

I understand nerfs are necessary to balance the game, but you should really start by cleaning up favorable bugs that cause game balance problems. My legitimate saves from divine grace will be reduced by 17, but I gave up other things to get that save bonus. Other people are running around with +30 orb bonus to saves and they made absolutely no sacrifices at all for that bonus.

This nerf isn't going to fix any game balance problems. Please start with bugs and then figure out where the balance issues are once the favorable game bugs are gone.

[Kyshara]

All these 1d6, 2d6, 6d6 are pointless on epics.
I usually ignore class abilities and epic destiny abilities with damage varying between 1-200.
What is 30 damage against a mob under 6k health? Meh
But well, it's free, and like we brazilians say "For free? I could take a wrong bus."

[Timap]

I play a pal/monk-splashed sorc in EE content, so the Divine Grace nerf is going to suck for me.... but I've already gotten nearly all the Charisma/sorc high-end gear I want and am starting to get slightly bored, and this gives me an excuse to think about TRing into another build. I'm thinking about a monk-splashed wiz for Insightful Reflexes and Evasion. And this gets me excited about looting again, only this time for Intelligence gear. And maybe I'll throw a couple more past lives into the build, although I'm still miles away from any type of completionist.

But mostly, I'm happy that the proposed changes are communicated many months before they take effect. This way, we can start planning ahead. I only wish that RL curve balls are this easy to anticipate and work around.

I've only one complaint .... the 100 bank/inventory spaces I have is not enough for me to unload all my equipment from TR cache in preparation for a TR. I don't want to trash my hard-earned Cha/sorc eqp. Shuffling stuff between mules suck. I invariably lose track of stuff I don't see on my main toon. This is my only impediment to TRing right now. I don't mind DDO throwing me a curve ball, but more bank spaces will help me roll with the punches here. Make more storage. I'll buy them. (Maybe player housing??)

[Illethian]

Great. A reason to not take pally ever. While your at it why don't you tie evasion to rogue/monk/ranger levels? And traps too. Stunning fist to monk level instead of character level? I know, why dont we just use nothing but prebuilt characters to choose from? Its not like people play dnd for the versatility anyway right? I guess if I don't make the toon you think I should have you need to change the rules. I am premium with all content and races/classes but this may send me away.

[Mryal]

Allright... i took a while to reply here because i was uncertain if the change to divine grace is good or bad.After a while, ive reached the conclusion that its bad.Why?

1 - Breaking LEGITM builds to favor one class is not fair for anyone, and is certainly not the right way to improve that class.
2 - 2 pal splashes are there to benefit evasion based builds, after this whole batch of changes come Evasion will no longer be the only way, so why bother?

What paladin needs is to have their core mechanics revised.First of all i no longer see the point of having charges on smites.All melee classes have acess to special melee attacks on their enhancement trees and most are for free and all dont have charges like smite does.Smite should only be limited by cooldown.
Also, when i think of paladin, i think of either 1) tank or 2) more than decent melee with great self healing.That beign said, Lay on Hands should regenerate, peraphs 1/ 2 mins.

None of that will make paladin more appealing on its own, whats missing on paladins is dps.I realize the OP is trying to fix that but the way he is doing will work on heroics for a bit and will be garbage epic wise.Adding the vanguard tree would fix it a bit, dps with snb.
But paladins arent just snb users, they are close to fighters and can and should be usefull on all types of melee combat.I think the whole knight of the chalice tree has to be redone or even replaced by something more flexible, something more kensai-like.Or even warpriest like.While vanguard is the SNB DPS tree, chalice should be the Non-SNB DPS tree.
Another way would be to replace the tree with a more warpriest like tree.Focused on the religious weapons, but adding more substantial bonuses like +threat range at tier 5's, and general spellpower per point spent in tree, while borrowing some idea from the swashbuckler : Light damage on crits, that uses your spellpower.
Why spellpower you say? Boosts healing and - improves Divine Crusader, wich, should be a viable option for DPS paladins.Sinergy with divine crusader is always great.

[kierg10]

I will repeat:

Make it base 6d6 at paladin level 20.

Let another 6d6 be picked up in KOTC cores (1 at 1,3,6,12,18,20).

then add an epic feat that requires 12 paladin levels and let's say 21 cha base which allows you to get an extra 3d6 dice.

Make all this amplifiable by MBlitz, Adrenaline, crits, etc.

So potentially on an adrenaline each point of light damage adds 10 damage approximately if my math is right (1 point of damagex(400%+600%)-the 600% being a x6 crit, 3 base+1 ocrit+2 from LD-=1x1000% or 1x10=10)

This would match the progress of how other classes get their damage up there, and potentially might make paladins OP at the higher levels.....and honestly why shouldn't we make the historically weaker classes like paladin and bard OP and give them their chance in the sun? (I'm not including barbs here, because they have had a chance at being OP....i.e., when axer got everyone to play horc barbarians before MOTU XD).

DG changes are pointless without also nerfing EE enemy DCs......all you're going to do is make it so only a specific subsection of builds that can get good saves will ever get EE level saves, and the rest will die to traps and spells every time :)

[Qhualor]

I see some peoples line of thinking is a little lopsided here. Some people are worried about their builds with a pally splash and how it affects them negatively. The point of this thread is to make Paladins more enticing to play beyond the beginning levels. Put aside how these changes affect your splash builds and come up with some constructive suggestions for players to want to play a pure or at least mostly pure Paladin.

[pesch1991]

I see some peoples line of thinking is a little lopsided here. Some people are worried about their builds with a pally splash and how it affects them negatively. The point of this thread is to make Paladins more enticing to play beyond the beginning levels. Put aside how these changes affect your splash builds and come up with some constructive suggestions for players to want to play a pure or at least mostly pure Paladin.

many of us dont want to be pure and they especially dont want to be a pure paladin.

[kierg10]

I see some peoples line of thinking is a little lopsided here. Some people are worried about their builds with a pally splash and how it affects them negatively. The point of this thread is to make Paladins more enticing to play beyond the beginning levels. Put aside how these changes affect your splash builds and come up with some constructive suggestions for players to want to play a pure or at least mostly pure Paladin.

My suggestion if you adrenaline and get a x6 crit as a pure paladin could potentially get you 2160 damage if the adrenaline and crits are applied seperately.....

Okay, so I rethought my math and the adrenaline and crit are prob applied seperately. so theoretically each point of light damage under my suggestion could apply 24 damage.

[Monkey_Archer]

The D20 system is inherently broken at high level. Divine Grace has nothing to do with it.

Consider a Rogue vs. a Wizard at level 20. A Rogue has a "good" reflex save (+12), invests in Dexterity to start (18), puts level-ups into Dexterity (23), wears a +6 item (29), and uses a +5 tome (which are commonly bought in table-top D&D, and give our theoretical Rogue a Dexterity of 34). Our Rogue has a working reflex save of +24. Our Wizard has a "poor" reflex save of +6 and dumps Dexterity, because it is far less useful to a Wizard. He has a working reflex save of +5. In this situation, vs. any meaningful reflex save either the Rogue will auto-succeed or the Wizard will auto-fail.

Now consider DDO. As was posted earlier in the thread, it's possible for a Rogue to hit a +70 reflex save without Divine Grace. My Druid, at level 22, is sitting on a +29 reflex save. It is mathematically impossible to generate a reflex DC that challenges both characters, and Divine Grace hasn't even entered the equation.

This is actually a very good example of the d20 system working exactly as intended. A class with good reflexes that makes significant investment gets rewarded with no-fail saves, while a class with bad reflexes and no investment gets punished with auto fail saves. If the rogue did not make that investment into dexterity they would still have good saves but not quite auto-succeed, similarly, if the wizard makes a moderate investment (14 base dex, maybe a tome and item) they at least get some reward for it and might make 50% of their saves. This is what good balance looks like. Your success is directly proportionate to the investment you make.

This kind of balance actually can exist in high level DDO as well if you separate and limit exclusive abilities (like divine grace) from standard abilities available to all classes (items, feats, etc..) and then balance content accordingly.

For example a standard endgame setup available to all classes might look something like this:
~15 base saves depending on class (poor class splits would be around 10 whereas good class splits would be around 20)
10 resistance item
4 parrying
2 luck
4 GH
5 stat (assuming 8 base with basic items)
--
40

What this means is that 40 to saves in DDO is basically the equivalent to the wizard in the example. It deserves to auto-fail because it requires no build investment. This means that ideally most effects in endgame content "should" be somewhere close to DC 60. With 40 as a minimum available to all classes and endgame DC targets around 60, this means that any actual build investments into saves get meaningful results. A rogue for example might have +10 to 15 from additional dexterity, and lets say +6 from lithe in shadowdancer. Now you have made a significant build investment into reflex saves and get rewarded with no-fail is most situations. The wizard for example could maybe invest for an additional +5 from dexterity (not ideal but its possible) and +6 for unearthly reaction in magister and now they are able to make saves 50% of the time.

The point I'm trying to make is that when you randomly have a single ability that can add +20 to all saves with no real alternative, and then randomly include DC 70+ effects despite the average spectrum of character saves being 40-60, then the entire system breaks.

[Mryal]

I will repeat:

Make it base 6d6 at paladin level 20.

Let another 6d6 be picked up in KOTC cores (1 at 1,3,6,12,18,20).

then add an epic feat that requires 12 paladin levels and let's say 21 cha base which allows you to get an extra 3d6 dice.

Make all this amplifiable by MBlitz, Adrenaline, crits, etc.

So potentially on an adrenaline each point of light damage adds 10 damage approximately if my math is right (1 point of damagex(400%+600%)-the 600% being a x6 crit, 3 base+1 ocrit+2 from LD-=1x1000% or 1x10=10)

This would match the progress of how other classes get their damage up there, and potentially might make paladins OP at the higher levels.....and honestly why shouldn't we make the historically weaker classes like paladin and bard OP and give them their chance in the sun? (I'm not including barbs here, because they have had a chance at being OP....i.e., when axer got everyone to play horc barbarians before MOTU XD).

DG changes are pointless without also nerfing EE enemy DCs......all you're going to do is make it so only a specific subsection of builds that can get good saves will ever get EE level saves, and the rest will die to traps and spells every time :)

This is actualy a great idea.Kinda like sneak attack.I like it.

[pHo3nix]

The point I'm trying to make is that when you randomly have a single ability that can add +20 to all saves with no real alternative, and then randomly include DC 70+ effects despite the average spectrum of character saves being 40-60, then the entire system breaks.

It actually wouldn't break anything at all if they lowered the DCs of EE and leave DG alone.

Following your example, if 60 was no fail, a build sporting mid 70s save now with DG would be way overkill: you could lose 10-15 saves and still be no fail, so you would have the choice of keeping DG and unslotting some equipment or splash something different from paladin.

DG worked perfectly fine when the cap was 20, cause the saves we needed could be obtained without it, so DG was absolutely optional. DG stayed the same, but the saves we need skyrocketed, so DG was proxy-buffed by EE stats inflation: fix stats inflation and DG will go back to where it was, an optional way to boost your saves.

[ChicagoChris]

The only reason it is a toggle is in the specific case you run into something that is healed by light. It should stack with everything.



It is difficult sometimes for us to communicate the larger plan, but picture these changes with plans to have some new trees; Vanguard (a weapon and shield DPS tree) and Shieldbearer (a weapon and shield mitigation tree).

Also, we plan to have the light damage scale with certain types of spell power. We are still working on the details of the spell power scaling.

Sev~

Would you also consider some sort of synergy with the ED's? Something along the lines of:

Unyielding Sentinel Synergy
Vigor of Battle, Unbreakable and Stand Against the Tide stances get a +10% increase to Armor of Light HPs, and AoL causes the same 10% as an AOE Light Burst affect to harm nearby enemies
Stalwart Guardian, Heed No Pain and Steadfast get an additional 5 or 10% (to 15%/20%). AOE affect increases to same level

Divine Crusader Synergy
Just Cause, Aura of Purification, and Extraordinary Virtue get a +10% to Weapon of Light damage, and AOE Healing Burst for the same 10%
No Remorse, Sword of Justice, Zeal of the Righteous get an additional 5 or 10% (to 15/20%) and AOE Healing Burst for the same

Exalted Angel Synergy
Armor of Light also adds SPs
Weapon of Light also works with light based spells

I'm surprised that in general there isn't more synergy with the ED's and the base classes they represent.

[IronClan]

This is actually a very good example of the d20 system working exactly as intended. A class with good reflexes that makes significant investment gets rewarded with no-fail saves, while a class with bad reflexes and no investment gets punished with auto fail saves. If the rogue did not make that investment into dexterity they would still have good saves but not quite auto-succeed, similarly, if the wizard makes a moderate investment (14 base dex, maybe a tome and item) they at least get some reward for it and might make 50% of their saves. This is what good balance looks like. Your success is directly proportionate to the investment you make.

This kind of balance actually can exist in high level DDO as well if you separate and limit exclusive abilities (like divine grace) from standard abilities available to all classes (items, feats, etc..) and then balance content accordingly.

For example a standard endgame setup available to all classes might look something like this:
~15 base saves depending on class (poor class splits would be around 10 whereas good class splits would be around 20)
10 resistance item
4 parrying
2 luck
4 GH
5 stat (assuming 8 base with basic items)
--
40

What this means is that 40 to saves in DDO is basically the equivalent to the wizard in the example. It deserves to auto-fail because it requires no build investment. This means that ideally most effects in endgame content "should" be somewhere close to DC 60. With 40 as a minimum available to all classes and endgame DC targets around 60, this means that any actual build investments into saves get meaningful results. A rogue for example might have +10 to 15 from additional dexterity, and lets say +6 from lithe in shadowdancer. Now you have made a significant build investment into reflex saves and get rewarded with no-fail is most situations. The wizard for example could maybe invest for an additional +5 from dexterity (not ideal but its possible) and +6 for unearthly reaction in magister and now they are able to make saves 50% of the time.

The point I'm trying to make is that when you randomly have a single ability that can add +20 to all saves with no real alternative, and then randomly include DC 70+ effects despite the average spectrum of character saves being 40-60, then the entire system breaks.

Hi D&D is not intended to work the way you think.

For starters you assume that the INTENT of the system if to have either no fail saves, or always fail saves. This has never been true in any version of D&D and is even contra indicated by the fact that they roll a d20 for saves. If you gave this even a brief moment of thought you would understand that your base assumption is wrong, which of course means the entire rest of your post is fundamentally flawed, because it's based on something that's not true. Whats more your confused idea of how D&D is intended to work is contradicted by the fact that in most cases 1 is always a fail and 20 is always a success, except in very rare cases (special feats and epic abilties mostly). Saves, AC every d20 system is intended to have a range of poor to great, nothing about the d20 system suggests it was designed to be binary (on or off), and indeed if you grew up during the evolution of this system you would have read many an argument in dragon magazine about how to make the system MORE GRADUAL and less binary, including officially published alternate rules based on d% rolls and the like specifically targeted at giving more subtle gradients

Then there's the part where you say investments should be rewarded but at the same time you contradict that statment by listing a bunch of investments and concluding that they should lead to always fail saves. Making not a lick of sense.

[HungarianRhapsody]

I see some peoples line of thinking is a little lopsided here. Some people are worried about their builds with a pally splash and how it affects them negatively. The point of this thread is to make Paladins more enticing to play beyond the beginning levels. Put aside how these changes affect your splash builds and come up with some constructive suggestions for players to want to play a pure or at least mostly pure Paladin.

Here are some constructive suggestions:
1) scrap the massive nerf to Divine Grace. It shouldn't be necessary since absurdly high saving throws shouldn't be necessary in the first place.
2) tone down the saving throw target numbers on epic elite. It shouldn't be necessary to have absurdly high saving throws.
3) all of the KotC bonuses should apply to everything that's evil, not just undead or evil outsiders.
4) all of the defensive bonuses that Sacred Defender gives should be granted 24/7 regardless of whether you have a shield or not
5) let Paladins have SWF feats active with all shields. If you're going to make shields the Paladin "thing", then let Paladins use them for real instead of crippling their DPS
6) give them a good capstone. And give everyone else a good capstone too.

[Nascoe]

Here are some constructive suggestions:
1) scrap the massive nerf to Divine Grace. It shouldn't be necessary since absurdly high saving throws shouldn't be necessary in the first place.
2) tone down the saving throw target numbers on epic elite. It shouldn't be necessary to have absurdly high saving throws.
3) all of the KotC bonuses should apply to everything that's evil, not just undead or evil outsiders.
4) all of the defensive bonuses that Sacred Defender gives should be granted 24/7 regardless of whether you have a shield or not
5) let Paladins have SWF feats active with all shields. If you're going to make shields the Paladin "thing", then let Paladins use them for real instead of crippling their DPS
6) give them a good capstone. And give everyone else a good capstone too.

not going to get into 1) and 2) in this post.

I think 3) certainly should be considered, maybe get us to take an enhancement to make it apply to more. First start with a choice between evil and undead then at lvl 3 (for example) let us add the second one and then at say lvl 6 or so let us get damage to all evil critters. And make it a solid amount, possibly enhanced either by AP spent in the tree, by cores acquired or by lvls.

as for 4) I think that is more or less covered in the proposed chances to armour and defence (with allowing a choice of either wearing medium/heavy armour or using a shield)
5) I think that one is not a bad idea. Off course if you choose wearing heavier armour (as proposed - see 4.) that automatically means you can go all out with either TWF, THF or SWF. But putting in an enhancement for paladins to combine using a buckler, small shield or maybe (extra AP spend?) even a large shield (not a tower shield) and still be counted as SWF might be pretty good.

But lets say that IF you really take the option of doing defender with a shield, IMO you should get a way to get your shield mastery feat from the tree as a paladin, too, or alternately get the same benefits as long as you are in defensive stance. That would help with the lack of feat slots.

I am not a fan of adding a lot of extra points to take feats for a paladin. Why copy what a fighter does? Instead give a paladin light / devotion / positive energy based damage that scales with lvls and investment into stats, skills and enhancements.

[Psiandron]

1) scrap the massive nerf to Divine Grace. It shouldn't be necessary since absurdly high saving throws shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

Okay, this discussion has gotten completely out of hand and needs to take place in a separate thread. As Qualor pointed out, this is supposed to be about the paladin class, not about addressing issues that have arisen with exploiter builds.



2) tone down the saving throw target numbers on epic elite. It shouldn't be necessary to have absurdly high saving throws.

An interesting point, but again I think that this is a topic better discussed elsewhere.



3) all of the KotC bonuses should apply to everything that's evil, not just undead or evil outsiders.

Okay, that is just so completely OP it's insane. Even monks have to use SF, those enhancements are passive and proc constantly. It's nice that pallies are able to provide CC against certain enemies, but giving them that kind of power against all evil mobs is just too much.



4) all of the defensive bonuses that Sacred Defender gives should be granted 24/7 regardless of whether you have a shield or not
5) let Paladins have SWF feats active with all shields. If you're going to make shields the Paladin "thing", then let Paladins use them for real instead of crippling their DPS

Not sure how I feel about these 2. My first thought was that it was a 'having your cake and eating it too situation', but not 100% sure anymore. Doing something to make SD an attractive option is certainly worth looking at.



6) give them a good capstone. And give everyone else a good capstone too.

Yeah, capstones in general are a big problem. While making the pally capstones worthwhile would be great, doing so without at least an intention to buff the other capstones seems silly.

[Stanley_Nicholas]

Here are some constructive suggestions:
1) scrap the massive nerf to Divine Grace. It shouldn't be necessary since absurdly high saving throws shouldn't be necessary in the first place.
2) tone down the saving throw target numbers on epic elite. It shouldn't be necessary to have absurdly high saving throws.
3) all of the KotC bonuses should apply to everything that's evil, not just undead or evil outsiders.
4) all of the defensive bonuses that Sacred Defender gives should be granted 24/7 regardless of whether you have a shield or not
5) let Paladins have SWF feats active with all shields. If you're going to make shields the Paladin "thing", then let Paladins use them for real instead of crippling their DPS
6) give them a good capstone. And give everyone else a good capstone too.

The KotC capstone should further expand all of the abilities in the tree to work on all non-good enemies.

[Monkey_Archer]

Hi D&D is not intended to work the way you think.

For starters you assume that the INTENT of the system if to have either no fail saves, or always fail saves. This has never been true in any version of D&D and is even contra indicated by the fact that they roll a d20 for saves. If you gave this even a brief moment of thought you would understand that your base assumption is wrong, which of course means the entire rest of your post is fundamentally flawed, because it's based on something that's not true. Whats more your confused idea of how D&D is intended to work is contradicted by the fact that in most cases 1 is always a fail and 20 is always a success, except in very rare cases (special feats and epic abilties mostly). Saves, AC every d20 system is intended to have a range of poor to great, nothing about the d20 system suggests it was designed to be binary (on or off), and indeed if you grew up during the evolution of this system you would have read many an argument in dragon magazine about how to make the system MORE GRADUAL and less binary, including officially published alternate rules based on d% rolls and the like specifically targeted at giving more subtle gradients
I think you might be misunderstanding my post, or perhaps I didn't communicate it clearly. I definitely did not assume, or mean to imply that the d20 system is in anyway intended to be binary. I was merely listing the extremes, like the post I quoted. The d20 system at a fundamental level simply means that there are only 20 possible outcomes (and has nothing to do with D&D evolution into percentage based checks). What I mean by using these extremes in the example, is that the best possible saves (dex based rogue) is ideally going to be roughly 20 points higher then the worst possible saves (wizard with 8 dex) and therefor DC checks in appropriate level content should be balanced around these extremes so that the best possible saves will be nofail and the worst possible will be autofail due to the d20 system only having 20 possible outcomes (obviously this would be a guideline rather then a hard rule, allowing powerful bosses to succeed spell checks vs the rogue, and under-level monsters fail spell checks against the wizard). Every other build that isn't the absolute min/max examples given would be somewhere in between, resulting in the intended poor to great range like you said. A strength based ranger for example might make 50% of their saves where the dex rogue auto-succeeds and the wizard auto-fails.



Then there's the part where you say investments should be rewarded but at the same time you contradict that statment by listing a bunch of investments and concluding that they should lead to always fail saves. Making not a lick of sense.
When I say "endgame" I'm specifically referring to the top level EE quests ran by characters with access to top level gear. All the gear/buffs I listed are not "investments" they are just standard things that every character entering an EE quest would be expected to have if they care about saves. When I say investments I specifically mean build choices like stat investments, feats, enhancements, etc... not basic gear. Characters that make 0 build choices to raise their saves other then acquiring standard gear appropriate for their level should autofail saves.

[zwiebelring]

Basic gear is a vast area. I think basic gear is epic normal stuff others might see +10 stat items as basic (which is kind of true since you get these with a guaranteed random cobination as reward of stormhorn quests).

The benchmark of challenge I learned was: if you fail a roll on a 10-11 you have a challenging encounter. That is fine in a round based game. In DDO you have real time combat which kills you by statistic and needs characters to have no-fail conditions for 95% of the rolls.

Build choices should be vast, but reaching for the 95% condition you kind of have no-choice condition as well. Paladin was an easy option for this. I did not run ee deathwyrm or thunderpeaks. But if I have no problem with lowered DG bonus except those 2, I could see those quests as tough for their level.

[IronClan]

Is it really such a bad idea to make the already existing system (smiting) better and more up to date?

There's one thing that players often repeat, Turbine is fascinated with putting new layers in the game instead of just improving what already exists. This has lead to layer upon layer of obsolete no longer supported systems that are unused and disappointing. Those systems become "dead ends" for newer players who don't know the system is out of date and weak compared to the other options that have similar opportunity costs in AP or Destiny AP.

IMO a lot of improvement in Paladins could be made by simply improving what exists and getting them a few extra autograted feats or bonus feats.

.) Improve the Deity choices (for Paladins and Clerics and FvS) with more choices and flavors and abilities and most of all favored weapon choices.
.) Update smiting to be more usable, cooldown based instead of limited uses, make unlimited smiting ED stuff improve cooldown and add to damage.
.) At 16 Cleave gets half/smite power against all targets
.) At 18 the Greater Cleave feat gets half/Smite power against all targets
.) At 20 with AP's invested the Paladin's Deity favored weapon is automatically a holy avenger type weapon (gives good and alignment type damage, plus a couple other typical holy avenger affixes)

Boom you have a Paladin that is end game viable DPS if built for it.

[Qhualor]

many of us dont want to be pure and they especially dont want to be a pure paladin.

That's why there are more classes and hundreds of build ideas if Paladin isnt for you. Multi classing has been pretty dominant since the enhancement pass. Even before the pass many people said some classes were too front loaded. Pally is a good example with the saves, which should tell the devs that from level 4 and beyond needs some improvements.

I've personally never really had any major issues going pure. I've played both regular and BF, TWF and THF, taken just 2 monk levels, played 3 lives as a dwarf Paladin with no problems, focused only on KOTC and never regretted it or wish I had evasion. For 3 years I've been planning to play a drow Paladin, but just haven't had the time busy with the reincarnation hamster wheel for my other characters.

The only real issues I have had is they do need a little more of a DPS boost and more/better spells. Their best damage shouldnt just be tied to smites. Fix those 2 things and I'm a happy panda.

I do like the suggestion of boosting light damage either by enhancements or spell power. I think it would be cool to have an AOE light damage in epics on critical or a vorpal hit. Also, any armor you equip when any mobs hit you they take light or good damage. Nothing over the top though but could scale every 3 or 5 paladin levels.

[EllisDee37]

many of us dont want to be pure and they especially dont want to be a pure paladin.Many? I'd say most, or almost everyone.

That's the whole reason this thread exists.

EDIT: This thread isn't about 2-splashes. It's about actual paladins.

[thegreatneil]

Many? I'd say most, or almost everyone.

That's the whole reason this thread exists.

EDIT: This thread isn't about 2-splashes. It's about actual paladins.

I want to play a pure paladin.

Yes.

[Rautis]

The suggested balancing buffs have nothing to do with DnD roots of the game. This is the part I dislike. Also, by just adding extra damage on attacks feels like it is stepping on Barbarian's or Fighter's toes and doesn't add to uniqueness of Paladin play experience. This post will be listing different DnD Paladin abilities that I think would be great to have as version balanced for DDO. Links lead to whichever description of the ability I could find with google search that worked for me.

Great Smiting (http://dmreference.com/SRD/Epic/Feats/Great_Smiting_Epic.htm), about similar feat to boost smite damage as I suggested earlier as autogrant.
Deafening Clang (http://dndtools.eu/spells/spell-compendium--86/deafening-clang--4344/), great spell choice against spellcasters.
Bless Weapon (http://dndtools.eu/spells/players-handbook-v35--6/bless-weapon--2786/), very basic weapon buff that allows /good bypass.
Dispel Evil (http://dndtools.eu/spells/players-handbook-v35--6/dispel-evil--2312/), good spell for making that caster easier to kill.
Fracturing Weapon (http://dndtools.eu/spells/forge-war--105/fracturing-weapon--3548/), Eberron specific Paladin spell.
Holy Avenger (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Holy_Avenger). While this is an item property maybe the dispel part might be inspiration to some possible Paladin ability. For example in Neverwinter Nights Paladin Holy Sword spell gave Holy Avenger property on weapon and it gave about 25% chance to proc dispel check on foe. It was a powerful ability(and for some players the reason to go paladin) when fighting foes that had high level buffs on them.

Holy Sword is already a spell in game. It could be turned into an imbue that works on any weapon the paladin is using and it could make high level paladins about equal to shintao monks in damage reduction bypassing. This alone would be about as strong buff as suggested weapons of light thingy(and much more thematic) when fighting enemies with damage reduction.

While these all are either spells or pickable feats the DDO version doesn't need to be one. For example Divine Sacrifice (http://dndtools.eu/spells/complete-divine--56/divine-sacrifice--698/) is a paladin spell that was implemented as an enhancement(would've been kinda awkward as spell though). Keeping the spells as spells would however encourage taking more paladin levels as more levels means more spell slots for more great spells.

[EvilII]

We'd like feedback on both the good changes and possibility of a Divine Grace change which is more restrictive.

Sev~

This is a quote from our first run through Epic Hard Ghost of a Chance: "(Combat): You attempt to save versus trap:slash. You roll a 6 (+73): save failure! (Combat): You suffer a total of 511 points of damage from Trap:Slash after 7 were blocked by Cold Iron damage reduction." That was a trap that stikes 4 or 5 times if you pass through it, and again this was not on elite difficulty.

Now if you put out stuff like that, and then nerf divine grace, I'm not going to type on your forums what I think about it. I'm just going to say I consider it a step in the wrong direction.

[toapat]

1 - Gut the PRE trees and start over. Knight needs to work on ALL evil enemies, period. End of point. Fini. Every evil thing, be it Drow, Outsider, Politician, Used Car Salesman, or Manager. Defender needs to be not locked into shields, and needs more work. I've suggested this before, ad nauseum, Radiant Servant-type tree. Aura, Burst, etc... Make a high level Paladin something that raid groups would WANT in the group. Like Bards pre-U14 were greatly desired by everyone who ran a raid and Artificers generally still are. Like Healing Clerics. But, make sure they can do the dps to be worth a slot, or if built as a tank, hold aggro and survive while self-healing against the best dps a Barbarian or Monkcher can spew out.

2 - Sacrifice a goat.

I think barring the capstone DoS's core line is actually really good (If the only downside of Glorious Stand being that it needs to be Extendable to permanently maintainable)

Honestly i think it would be better if they just combined DoS + KotC as they are, reduce the stance improvements to a total of 5-6 enhancements costing a total of 12 points as opposed to the current where the entire tree is just defensive boosts. Throw in Hellreaver for good measure (so the end result would be Defender of Sealtiel + Knight of the Challice + Hunter of the Dead + Hellreaver) and stew in pure rightous hatred. Yield one badass dedicated tank template

and then add both an offensive tree built from a combination of several PrCs (the easy ones to call out would be combining Fist of Raizel from BoED with Ruby Knight Vindicator from Tome of Battle for this purpose. Add in the splashing blows that rogue and fighter get to here as well for single target attacks.)

Then a third prc that is combined from Bone Knight, Divine crusader, and Paragnostic Apostle into an SLA casting PrE as a sort of cross between Pale Master and Archmage for paladin.


I think the animal needed is not a goat, but a mature male bison though. this is no small task. and a goat only goes so far.

[Vallnar]

I play a pure pally, I couldn't be happier with changes, I was very happy before. All of you want DPS on your pallies comparable to a real DPS class, Paladins are not DPS classes. You all scream for balance, but you want to min/max everything. You want a tank, make a Paladin or a defensive fighter. You want a DPS? Make a hybrid or a pure DPS class. This is the first time they've tried to help paladins and everyone is bad mouthing it. Paladin's weren't broke before, they were working as intended, but people don't want that, they want their DPS and survivability. That's not very a very balanced game, nor is it DnD. They're doing this to make Paladins more appealing. So the two lvl splash benefits people, +8 isn't game breaking, a lot of the people that have low saves are still going to die and the ones that already have high enough saves to live, aren't going to splash in Paladin.

[toapat]

All of you want DPS on your pallies comparable to a real DPS class, Paladins are not DPS classes.

Your concern is valid but largely long ago invalidated by the monk, which since the last defense rework has been so excessively tanky that its not really fair to the fighter barbarian or paladin. the fact of the matter is paladins are so far behind in offense that they dont matter anymore. Not only that but they dont even beat most classes for raw single hit damage (what smite evil is balanced to) because everyone else gets similar if not better numbers on their own personal damage boosters

besides that, no one in this topic has suggested paladin match or exceed the damage of another combat class. I am of the oppinion that a pure offense paladin should fall somewhere between the current good classes but if they are intended to completely devastate one enemy type then a paladin would be uncontested in the damage output. The problem is, best case scenario, even with KotC's full line a paladin wont match a rogue at lvl 20

[HatsuharuZ]

I play a pure pally, I couldn't be happier with changes, I was very happy before. All of you want DPS on your pallies comparable to a real DPS class, Paladins are not DPS classes. You all scream for balance, but you want to min/max everything. You want a tank, make a Paladin or a defensive fighter. You want a DPS? Make a hybrid or a pure DPS class. This is the first time they've tried to help paladins and everyone is bad mouthing it. Paladin's weren't broke before, they were working as intended, but people don't want that, they want their DPS and survivability. That's not very a very balanced game, nor is it DnD. They're doing this to make Paladins more appealing. So the two lvl splash benefits people, +8 isn't game breaking, a lot of the people that have low saves are still going to die and the ones that already have high enough saves to live, aren't going to splash in Paladin.

I have played a pure paladin. I have also played a palading tank with two lvls of fighter. There were two things I wished for when I was playing a paladin: More spells, and a way to kill enemies more quickly. Currently, I can do both by taking only two levels of paladin on my melee cleric, who out-performs both my old pure pally and pally tank in terms of survivability and melee offense.

[SilkofDrasnia]

Here are some constructive suggestions:
1) scrap the massive nerf to Divine Grace. It shouldn't be necessary since absurdly high saving throws shouldn't be necessary in the first place.
2) tone down the saving throw target numbers on epic elite. It shouldn't be necessary to have absurdly high saving throws.
3) all of the KotC bonuses should apply to everything that's evil, not just undead or evil outsiders.
4) all of the defensive bonuses that Sacred Defender gives should be granted 24/7 regardless of whether you have a shield or not
5) let Paladins have SWF feats active with all shields. If you're going to make shields the Paladin "thing", then let Paladins use them for real instead of crippling their DPS
6) give them a good capstone. And give everyone else a good capstone too.

1. I like the nerf and think 2 levels should give +6 rather than +8, add in those lost 2 somewhere farther up. The multiclass bonanza needs to be toned done in this game in some instances.

2. I agree some of these saving throws are kind of high but that it might be difficult to balance things as the game is right now.

3. Yes for the love of god, paladins are suppose to be righteous warriors etc so anything evil should be fearful of them.

4. Agreed!

5. Aye, use a shield you get SWF feats BUT since this is the defensive line make it so if you go the kotc line (the offensive line) you get twf feats. This might make this feat starved class more appealing.

6. Yup seems like many of the capstones are kinda of meh. Maybe something improving a paladins smites, dunno havent thought about the capstones in awhile.

[kierg10]

1. I like the nerf and think 2 levels should give +6 rather than +8, add in those lost 2 somewhere farther up. The multiclass bonanza needs to be toned done in this game in some instances.

2. I agree some of these saving throws are kind of high but that it might be difficult to balance things as the game is right now.

3. Yes for the love of god, paladins are suppose to be righteous warriors etc so anything evil should be fearful of them.

4. Agreed!

5. Aye, use a shield you get SWF feats BUT since this is the defensive line make it so if you go the kotc line (the offensive line) you get twf feats. This might make this feat starved class more appealing.

6. Yup seems like many of the capstones are kinda of meh. Maybe something improving a paladins smites, dunno havent thought about the capstones in awhile.

how about the TWF or THF feats.....because I largely do not want to play TWF toons other than a monk or my rogue......

[Ayseifn]

1. I like the nerf and think 2 levels should give +6 rather than +8, add in those lost 2 somewhere farther up. The multiclass bonanza needs to be toned done in this game in some instances.


6 is too low as you can get 6 vs magic from a 2 FvS splash, heck even 8 might be too low.

[BDog77]

many of us dont want to be pure and they especially dont want to be a pure paladin.

Then why are you still in the Paladin thread instead of the thread that you started about DG?

Seriously.

You are not here to help Paladins, so go away. Honestly, it's hard enough to read through a dev's suggestions, and then what people are saying about them, without having someone adding 3-5 replies per page about his specific splash build. I've had to read so much about you and your build that, although at the beginning I was ambivalent about you and your build, now I really hope they do nerf DG as suggested just to nerf your build!

Man, I think there were some good suggestions to help Pallys ITT, but I'm blessed if I can remember any of them. I remember one guy talked about adding parts of Ws. I like this, base damage multipliers are nice (they scale with crits). Critical damage multipliers are nice (+1, +2, +3 to crit damage multipliers). 1d6, 2d6, 3d6 is kinda meh (if you do make them affected by spellpower, please use healing spellpower, not light. Synergizes with a pally better, and if we wanted to play a FVS, we could just play one). I agree that the Armor of Light is a bit meh, one can build a pretty survivable Paladin right now, and I think the proposed armor changes will take care of the rest.

I guess i just have it in my mind that the Pally stands in the middle of the front line, fighting alongside his fellows and bolstering the line with his shining presence. I would like to see some benefits along this model, maybe like a stance (or something like archer's focus) where the longer the Pally stands still, the better the bonus their aura gives to them and those around them. I think this could go as high as +15 to saves, to hit, to damage (before crit multipliers), much like archer's focus does (adding 1 per second), without being OP (drops to zero on move, of course). This would make the Pally in effect the anchor to the fight, a bedrock for his fellows to retreat to in case they started to get overwhelmed or things went pear shaped. I think one guy put some stuff like this into a tree, but honestly, i would rather this be a core class feature of Paladin rather than a PRE, even if that meant it was less customizable. Of course, this could always be a core feature with the ability to improve or focus it more left to the PREs.

I also agree the spell list needs a serious upgrade. Honestly, when you reach the point that you have 4 spells of each level, you are forced to take spells that no longer work (like bull's strength when you have a +4 or better item....).

I also like some of the ideas about the Holy Sword spell, it definitely needs help in today's DDO. Making it an imbue would seem to fix many of the problems it faces. I admit that I loved the idea of buying the sword, and then "spelling" it to make a powerful magic item out of it, but the truth is that as it stands now, random lootgen is better for the level, the DR breaking is not good enough alone to make it worth using.

I also know that we cannot add the Paladin's mount to the game, but perhaps Pally's could get some bonuses that reflect "having a mount". For example, a movement speed bonus in combat, perhaps a charge bonus to damage (if the Pally runs a certain number of steps, the bonus applies to the next attack if done within 1 second, maybe, with no penalty to hit because of the move), possibly some sort of "strike down" bonus to damage (as if the horse was rearing and added his momentum to a downward chop, for example), maybe some DR to reflect the horse being there, maybe even a retreat bonus, lol, when things are going badly a bonus to getting the heck outta Dodge!!

I realize that some of the things you can do are probably hampered by the need to keep the class "true" to PnP, but I wish we could change things and improve the class more in keeping with the flavor of a Paladin, rather then just add light damage, and turn them into a second rate FVS.

[Stanley_Nicholas]

Then why are you still in the Paladin thread instead of the thread that you started about DG?

Seriously.

You are not here to help Paladins, so go away. Honestly, it's hard enough to read through a dev's suggestions, and then what people are saying about them, without having someone adding 3-5 replies per page about his specific splash build. I've had to read so much about you and your build that, although at the beginning I was ambivalent about you and your build, now I really hope they do nerf DG as suggested just to nerf your build!



:rolleyes: Apparently you missed the part of the Dev's OP where he specifically requests feedback on what pesch is giving feedback on:



We'd like feedback on both the good changes and possibility of a Divine Grace change which is more restrictive.

Sev~

[Vorthian]

If they adjust end game DC so Divine Grace isn't so important, I could get behind the proposed change, but the DC adjustment must occur first. Once completed, a natural drop-off of 2 pali splash would occur, excepting those who really really want the save bonus. I was on the fence earlier, but after running Prove Your Worth on EH, and failing an reflex save against a fire trap with a roll of 14 + 74, I was reminded of the absurdity of end game DCs. Hopefully it was just a bug or another reason exists for an 88 reflex save failing...

[Hilltrot]

The point I'm trying to make is that when you randomly have a single ability that can add +20 to all saves with no real alternative, and then randomly include DC 70+ effects despite the average spectrum of character saves being 40-60, then the entire system breaks.


This!!

Personally I think (Player level -1) is more appropriate. This allows the paladin to get up to +19 to their saves.

[Hilltrot]

many of us dont want to be pure and they especially dont want to be a pure paladin.

That's fine, but you shouldn't get the benefits of a pure paladin with only 2 levels of paladin. You're wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

[Vorthian]

That's fine, but you shouldn't get the benefits of a pure paladin with only 2 levels of paladin. You're wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

Divine Grace and the save bonus it grants is a benefit of 2 levels of paladin, not the benefits of a pure (level 20) paladin. That you wish it weren't so doesn't change this fact. Your statements attempt to frame the argument in opposition to Divine Grace's current intended function, with an ad hominem logical fallacy as a little extra icing.

[nibel]

I realize that some of the things you can do are probably hampered by the need to keep the class "true" to PnP, but I wish we could change things and improve the class more in keeping with the flavor of a Paladin, rather then just add light damage, and turn them into a second rate FVS.

It might sound weird, but in 3.5 PnP, Paladin is perfectly represented in DDO, by being a dip class. In PnP, if you are taking more than 5 paladin levels, you are doing it wrong: 4 gives you all class features that matter. 5 is acceptable because of the extra smite, celestial storage teleporting bag (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/paladin.htm#thePaladinsMount), and because most melee prestige classes requires BAB+5 or equivalent.

Actually, there are very few classes in PnP that actually benefit from staying pure. Most can be heavily empowered by the right prestige class combinations. But even in a PrC-less game, from core, only full casters and MAYBE rogue/ranger are worthy to keep pure all the way to 20.

Monks, Druids and Artificers, however, show me that Turbine is willing to change core mechanics when it is needed to balance a class to the current game. Those three classes have some crucial changes when compared to their PnP equivalent. Paladin can be added to this list as well. For that, I think the two easiest ways to improve paladins are changing Smite Evil mechanic to something workable, and adding new spells.

[justagame]

As mentioned in the OP, it looks like you're trying to close the gap between the benefit from just splashing 2 levels, and from going deeper in the class. And you rightly hit on 2 fronts:

1. reduce the benefit of just splashing 2
2. increase the benefits of going deeper

#1 is fine. +8 for a 2-level splash feels like "enough" -- but you may want to revisit saves on elite overall, in that case.

As for #2, my gut feeling is that it isn't enough. I've played lots of paladins, and they are just completely outclassed by other melees, and melee divines, and melee arcanes, in every way. The main reason is that their abilities apply in too narrow a manner, and they don't scale well

For example, smites are limited. While you do get a few more, it's nowhere near enough to match the immense increase in mob HP over the years, particularly at the highest levels. And the one ED that at least shortens the regen time a little, isn't worth the dps loss of not being in a melee dps ED. So at low level, they are tools for taking selected tough enemies very quickly -- at high level they are drops in the bucket, because there aren't enough of them.

Another reason the benefits don't scale well is that they are additive. In an era where other melee abilities have multiplicative powers (increasing crit range, multiplier, adding pre-crit damage, etc) KOTC adds a few d6 of damage (and to just ONE kind of enemy). Ditto for the suggested light burst. Hardly noticeable at the highest levels. You want something that scales, at least have some of it be pre-crit damage, or damage that scales with the crit multiplier, or boosted by SP, or... something.

As a final note, some of the abilities are too narrow. The most notable is restricting KOTC damage to ONE of evil outsiders or undead. So you take 16, 18, 20 paladin levels, and effectively have the equivalent to ONE favored enemy? (actually less damage than FE in most cases). It doesn't need to be all evil (though it wouldn't hurt), but it needs to be broadened at least a little bit to make it respectable. I don't know, maybe something like "unnaturally evil", such as evil outsiders/undead/aberrations -- or something along those lines.

A boost against evil outsiders would be helpful -- if the endgame actually had a meaningful number, like it did years ago. But when the latest and greatest, most fearsome epic mobs are epic kobolds, epic wolves, and epic spiders, instead the old devils, demons, and pit fiends (sorry!) then having such a narrow scope just feels weak.

In short -- the light burst is a step in the right direction, but I think a bigger step is needed to truly make paladins feel like the meaningfully scale past levels 4-5.

[Silverleafeon]

As mentioned in the OP, it looks like you're trying to close the gap between the benefit from just splashing 2 levels, and from going deeper in the class. And you rightly hit on 2 fronts:

1. reduce the benefit of just splashing 2
2. increase the benefits of going deeper

#1 is fine. +8 for a 2-level splash feels like "enough" -- but you may want to revisit saves on elite overall, in that case.

As for #2, my gut feeling is that it isn't enough. I've played lots of paladins, and they are just completely outclassed by other melees, and melee divines, and melee arcanes, in every way. The main reason is that their abilities apply in too narrow a manner, and they don't scale well

For example, smites are limited. While you do get a few more, it's nowhere near enough to match the immense increase in mob HP over the years, particularly at the highest levels. And the one ED that at least shortens the regen time a little, isn't worth the dps loss of not being in a melee dps ED. So at low level, they are tools for taking selected tough enemies very quickly -- at high level they are drops in the bucket, because there aren't enough of them.

Another reason the benefits don't scale well is that they are additive. In an era where other melee abilities have multiplicative powers (increasing crit range, multiplier, adding pre-crit damage, etc) KOTC adds a few d6 of damage (and to just ONE kind of enemy). Ditto for the suggested light burst. Hardly noticeable at the highest levels. You want something that scales, at least have some of it be pre-crit damage, or damage that scales with the crit multiplier, or boosted by SP, or... something.

As a final note, some of the abilities are too narrow. The most notable is restricting KOTC damage to ONE of evil outsiders or undead. So you take 16, 18, 20 paladin levels, and effectively have the equivalent to ONE favored enemy? (actually less damage than FE in most cases). It doesn't need to be all evil (though it wouldn't hurt), but it needs to be broadened at least a little bit to make it respectable. I don't know, maybe something like "unnaturally evil", such as evil outsiders/undead/aberrations -- or something along those lines.

A boost against evil outsiders would be helpful -- if the endgame actually had a meaningful number, like it did years ago. But when the latest and greatest, most fearsome epic mobs are epic kobolds, epic wolves, and epic spiders, instead the old devils, demons, and pit fiends (sorry!) then having such a narrow scope just feels weak.

In short -- the light burst is a step in the right direction, but I think a bigger step is needed to truly make paladins feel like the meaningfully scale past levels 4-5.

+1

[pesch1991]

Then why are you still in the Paladin thread instead of the thread that you started about DG?

Seriously.

You are not here to help Paladins, so go away. Honestly, it's hard enough to read through a dev's suggestions, and then what people are saying about them, without having someone adding 3-5 replies per page about his specific splash build. I've had to read so much about you and your build that, although at the beginning I was ambivalent about you and your build, now I really hope they do nerf DG as suggested just to nerf your build!

Man, I think there were some good suggestions to help Pallys ITT, but I'm blessed if I can remember any of them. I remember one guy talked about adding parts of Ws. I like this, base damage multipliers are nice (they scale with crits). Critical damage multipliers are nice (+1, +2, +3 to crit damage multipliers). 1d6, 2d6, 3d6 is kinda meh (if you do make them affected by spellpower, please use healing spellpower, not light. Synergizes with a pally better, and if we wanted to play a FVS, we could just play one). I agree that the Armor of Light is a bit meh, one can build a pretty survivable Paladin right now, and I think the proposed armor changes will take care of the rest.

I guess i just have it in my mind that the Pally stands in the middle of the front line, fighting alongside his fellows and bolstering the line with his shining presence. I would like to see some benefits along this model, maybe like a stance (or something like archer's focus) where the longer the Pally stands still, the better the bonus their aura gives to them and those around them. I think this could go as high as +15 to saves, to hit, to damage (before crit multipliers), much like archer's focus does (adding 1 per second), without being OP (drops to zero on move, of course). This would make the Pally in effect the anchor to the fight, a bedrock for his fellows to retreat to in case they started to get overwhelmed or things went pear shaped. I think one guy put some stuff like this into a tree, but honestly, i would rather this be a core class feature of Paladin rather than a PRE, even if that meant it was less customizable. Of course, this could always be a core feature with the ability to improve or focus it more left to the PREs.

I also agree the spell list needs a serious upgrade. Honestly, when you reach the point that you have 4 spells of each level, you are forced to take spells that no longer work (like bull's strength when you have a +4 or better item....).

I also like some of the ideas about the Holy Sword spell, it definitely needs help in today's DDO. Making it an imbue would seem to fix many of the problems it faces. I admit that I loved the idea of buying the sword, and then "spelling" it to make a powerful magic item out of it, but the truth is that as it stands now, random lootgen is better for the level, the DR breaking is not good enough alone to make it worth using.

I also know that we cannot add the Paladin's mount to the game, but perhaps Pally's could get some bonuses that reflect "having a mount". For example, a movement speed bonus in combat, perhaps a charge bonus to damage (if the Pally runs a certain number of steps, the bonus applies to the next attack if done within 1 second, maybe, with no penalty to hit because of the move), possibly some sort of "strike down" bonus to damage (as if the horse was rearing and added his momentum to a downward chop, for example), maybe some DR to reflect the horse being there, maybe even a retreat bonus, lol, when things are going badly a bonus to getting the heck outta Dodge!!

I realize that some of the things you can do are probably hampered by the need to keep the class "true" to PnP, but I wish we could change things and improve the class more in keeping with the flavor of a Paladin, rather then just add light damage, and turn them into a second rate FVS.


wishing others Build to be nerfed Shows how selfish you are YES its a mistake to change divine Grace because the Game is already hard enough traps start Hitting you harder on a lower difficulty on epic normal for example and have higher dcs (about 60+ Reported on en and 90+ on epic hard ) so what Problem do you have ? What are you trying to accomplish ? You want Paladins to be better, good for you but nerfing divine Grace will have the opposite effect that means People Wont Even Bother with 2 paladin lvls anymore, to be honest you are not trying to help you are trying to destroy Paladins as a whole. also do not Tell me what to do i can do as i please i have any rights to no matter what you say. He wanted some Feedbacks and thats what he got, instead of flower sniffing you could also Provide some Feedbacks on that matter.

[Dalsheel]

wishing others Build to be nerfed Shows how selfish you are YES its a mistake to change divine Grace because the Game is already hard enough traps start Hitting you harder on a lower difficulty on epic normal for example and have higher dcs (about 60+ Reported on en and 90+ on epic hard ) so what Problem do you have ? What are you trying to accomplish ? You want Paladins to be better, good for you but nerfing divine Grace will have the opposite effect that means People Wont Even Bother with 2 paladin lvls anymore, to be honest you are not trying to help you are trying to destroy Paladins as a whole. also do not Tell me what to do i can do as i please no matter what you say. He wanted some Feedbacks and thats what he got, instead of flower sniffing you could also Provide some Feedbacks on that matter.

1st of all, 2 paladin splash is NOT playing a paladin, so stop trying to convince us otherwise. Paladin characters are not affected by the proposed change to DG, AT ALL!

In case you haven't noticed BDog77's post was 7 paragraphs long and he only bothered with you and your posts on the 1st one, the other 6 paragraphs are feedback and suggestions to make paladins better.

Somehow you seem to think that you build (it's not even yours) is important to the game and should be untouched. You're wrong. What we're trying to accomplish here is some decree of balance, so that more builds than just your build feel as powerful as your build.

As others said before me, you want what paladins have, play a paladin. You want to be part paladin, then you'll have part of what paladins have. It makes sense, doesn't it?

[Brightheart245]

Personally I feel that Divine Grace, as much as it can be overpowered with some builds, shouldn't be nerfed to an extent. I agree that the reason for taking 2 paladin is largely due to the high save EE environment. I also recognize that this may be an attempt to neutralize some huge overpowered advantages certain builds obtain from splashing only 2 classes of paladin while maintaining great DPS and survivability, as well as the attempt to encourage more to play the paladin class as a whole. However, this change could be so crippling to many builds that many would be disheartened at this. I do realize that part of the fun in this game is to experiment and challenge oneself, but I don't think nerfing (edit: to clarify, I mean to nerf Divine Grace with suggested changes within this thread or any other possibility that makes it so low to where multiclassing into paladin is not worth the splash) Divine Grace would be a very desirable change for many players, myself included.

There is the argument (and I realize this may be a slippery slope, but still is a possibility) that if paladins are nerfed, what makes us think they won't nerf Favored Soul's Just Reward benefits to Shiradi Spammers, or Rogue Evasion -- and not just that, but the whole controversy and differing perceptions of what is "healthy" multiclassing and exploiting classes. I'm definitely not saying that they should leave Divine Grace alone -- I think their proposed changes are pretty decent in my opinion. I just think that if they do change the formula for Divine Grace, it shouldn't be less than what helves receive - as much as splashing 2 paladin levels may not be sacrificing much of one's build, in consideration of non-Charisma based builds (or at least builds that solely invest into Charisma for saves), those builds would have to sacrifice a lot more just to attain those saves. Balance should not be reached by nerfing one side or buffing another to extremes, but rather approaching the direct source of the problem, which would be to change the dire need for saves in EE questing.

Overall, I tried to maintain a universal perspective while expressing my personal feedback/opinion on this proposed change for Divine Grace. I know for sure it will affect me by planning to splash my cleric with 2 levels of pally solely for the saves, as she is a battle cleric, and wading into EE combat would not be such a good idea with mediocre-low saves, or for any playstyle for that matter. Many of my guildies and friends would probably have to rebuild and re-gear their character(s). And if this change does get through, the need for LR Hearts would also have to be a factor to consider. I hope I did not come across as ignorant or overly expressive, as I did not read through all the posts in this thread. Thanks for reading! :)

[Monkey_Archer]

For example, smites are limited. While you do get a few more, it's nowhere near enough to match the immense increase in mob HP over the years, particularly at the highest levels. And the one ED that at least shortens the regen time a little, isn't worth the dps loss of not being in a melee dps ED. So at low level, they are tools for taking selected tough enemies very quickly -- at high level they are drops in the bucket, because there aren't enough of them.

Another reason the benefits don't scale well is that they are additive. In an era where other melee abilities have multiplicative powers (increasing crit range, multiplier, adding pre-crit damage, etc) KOTC adds a few d6 of damage (and to just ONE kind of enemy). Ditto for the suggested light burst. Hardly noticeable at the highest levels. You want something that scales, at least have some of it be pre-crit damage, or damage that scales with the crit multiplier, or boosted by SP, or... something.

These two points hit the nail on the head.

Right now, the formula for good endgame dps for (not all, but most) melee characters goes something like this:
- Pick a class with good base damage multipliers (kensai crit range/earth stance/manyshot/etc..)
- Pick a destiny with additional stacking multipliers (blitz, fury)
- Stack base damage.
- Deal 10x the damage you did in heroic levels

Paladins just don't follow this formula. Their base damage potential is low, and their only class based multiplier (smites) are weak and limited. Paladins can be about additive benefits, and there is a multiplier that exists that can benefit additive classes; its called double strike. Unfortunately though, there is no ED that gives +350% double strike. (That sounds ridiculous but it would still be weaker then a blitzing fighter)

The solution to endgame paladin dps CAN be additive light damage, but it would require major changes to blitz/fury and/or major buffs to other EDs to include more paladin friendly multipliers like double strike, but that is definitely a topic for another thread.

[pesch1991]

1st of all, 2 paladin splash is NOT playing a paladin, so stop trying to convince us otherwise. Paladin characters are not affected by the proposed change to DG, AT ALL!

In case you haven't noticed BDog77's post was 7 paragraphs long and he only bothered with you and your posts on the 1st one, the other 6 paragraphs are feedback and suggestions to make paladins better.

Somehow you seem to think that you build (it's not even yours) is important to the game and should be untouched. You're wrong. What we're trying to accomplish here is some decree of balance, so that more builds than just your build feel as powerful as your build.

As others said before me, you want what paladins have, play a paladin. You want to be part paladin, then you'll have part of what paladins have. It makes sense, doesn't it?

I will defend my Build at all cost no matter what you say, if you want to play pure so be it but going on about something which has not been Touched for a long time is selfish why do you want to make other Build worthless all of a sudden are you jealous ? As i Said before everyone Even you can Splash 2 paladin lvls its not hard you know.

[grandeibra]

For me the answer about Divine Grace is simple dear Turbine..

Do an analysis of your playerbase. Count the number of characters with 2 levels of paladin splashes compared to the number of players with 2 levels of monk/rogue splashes . My guess is that the evasion splashes outfactor the Grace splashes by a factor of at least 5 to 1.

[barecm]

Nerfing multiclassing doesn't really mean helping Paladins. Turbine needs to boost the mid to higher level feats, enhancements, and abilities not worry about levesl 1 - 4.

-Give Paladins a divine boost to healing amp of 10% at level 12, again at 16 and add an additional 20% to whatever winds up being the capstone.
-Give Paladins a divine boost to charisma at levels 12, 16, and 20.
-Divine PRR. It can start at level 8 and progress to 20 every 4 levels. Like +10 to PRR per 4 levels 8-20 for 40 total.
-The last piece is an agro holding boost. What good are you as a tank if you cannot sustain agro. Given Paladins a boost to intim by granting a divine boost to incite. Again, 8 - 20 every 4 levels. 10% each boost for a total of 40%.

Since these are divine boosts, they should be implemented to stack.

I think if you give inherent PRR, Healing amp, and able to hold agro, you do not nerf other toons, but give an incentive to stay Paladin. They are not going to be melee kings, so might as well be the tank kings. I don't think boosting these will break the game or create a superclass, just enogh of a bump to stay competitive and allow for high level pally classes to be viable.

[SilkofDrasnia]

how about the TWF or THF feats.....because I largely do not want to play TWF toons other than a monk or my rogue......

Yeah sure make it so you can choose TWF or THF. They could even make it exclusive if some think it might be too OP.


6 is too low as you can get 6 vs magic from a 2 FvS splash, heck even 8 might be too low.

I think 6 would be fine but I am willing to roll over on this one as long as we get those other goodies I mentioned.

@barecm Some of those proposed changes sounds nice but the thing is many other classes now can be tanky and not lose dps so turning paladins into a tank only class isn't very appealing.

The way I see it the divine warrior fights evil in all shapes and sizes he can take two paths on this route, a defensive path were he tanks to "shield" others from evil or an offensive path were he feels the best defense is a good offense and so strikes down his foes before they can harm him or others.

Dunno but making paladins tank only seems quite meh to me.

[toapat]

It might sound weird, but in 3.5 PnP, Paladin is perfectly represented in DDO, by being a dip class.

Hand over your PnP-fu belt. You dont deserve it.

Paladin is one of the few classes in PnP where you dont just cherrypick class features. you want an effective paladin, you may not necessarily go beyond 5 levels but thats only because you are then going to pile on paladin PrCs. its also 1 of the only 4 classes you can take to lvl 20 without gimping yourself, the others being Psychic Warrior, Druid, and Factotum. Most base classes in PnP are not longer then 2 levels if they dont have 9th level casting/manifesting. Out of all the melee classes, Paladin is reliably the longest of all.


Either way the paladin needs to have their casting stat converted to charisma.


and able to hold agro

Ya, and my main can hold aggro against anything except for someone able to hit Intimidate DCs, and even then they only get aggro for 4 seconds. Paladins holding Aggro is really easy

[Scrabbler]

At 11th level the Weapon of Light damage bursts in a 10’ radius when the Paladin rolls a 20 on an attack roll with a weapon.
At 17th level the damage of a Weapon of Light burst (when you roll a 20) is doubled.
That AOE burst effect is pretty bad. The actual DPS it adds is almost negligible, but it means Paladins will interfere with CC, aggro, and quest scripting at unpredictable times.

I'd prefer the AOE being replaced with 1d10 critical damage to your primary target. Then if the devs still want Paladin levels to provide a melee AOE effect, give them an active attack icon that does something like a Smite Cleave combo.

[Psiandron]

Is it really such a bad idea to make the already existing system (smiting) better and more up to date?

There's one thing that players often repeat, Turbine is fascinated with putting new layers in the game instead of just improving what already exists. This has lead to layer upon layer of obsolete no longer supported systems that are unused and disappointing. Those systems become "dead ends" for newer players who don't know the system is out of date and weak compared to the other options that have similar opportunity costs in AP or Destiny AP.

IMO a lot of improvement in Paladins could be made by simply improving what exists and getting them a few extra autograted feats or bonus feats.

.) Improve the Deity choices (for Paladins and Clerics and FvS) with more choices and flavors and abilities and most of all favored weapon choices.
.) Update smiting to be more usable, cooldown based instead of limited uses, make unlimited smiting ED stuff improve cooldown and add to damage.
.) At 16 Cleave gets half/smite power against all targets
.) At 18 the Greater Cleave feat gets half/Smite power against all targets
.) At 20 with AP's invested the Paladin's Deity favored weapon is automatically a holy avenger type weapon (gives good and alignment type damage, plus a couple other typical holy avenger affixes)

Boom you have a Paladin that is end game viable DPS if built for it.


This may well be the most sensible thing said in this whole thread.

[SilkofDrasnia]

This may well be the most sensible thing said in this whole thread.

Ironclans suggestion doesn't fix the core problem and seems to want to make paladins thf focused, paladin has enough of narrow focus and needs to widen that focus like so many other classes have done recently.

Plus half smite power? lol

[Certon]

Greetings,

We have been going through player feedback and one of the concerns is that there is no compelling reason to level a Paladin past the early levels. While we hope the changes to armor and shield will help with this, we are looking for feedback on additional changes to make the class more compelling at higher levels.

The changes:

~ At 7th level the Paladin gets the Armor of Light ability. The Paladin gains 25 temporary hit points (non-stacking) each time they use Smite Evil, Lay on Hands, Cure Disease or Turn Undead. This ability provides 50 temporary hit points at 13th level, and 75 temporary hit points at 19th level.

~ The Paladin gains Weapon of Light starting at 8th level and increasing at 11th, 14th, 17th and 20th.

At 8th level the Paladin gains Weapon of Light. While this toggle is activated each weapon attack they make also cause 1d6 of Light damage. This damage is increased to 2d6 for two handed weapons and for shield bash attacks.

At 11th level the Weapon of Light damage bursts in a 10’ radius when the Paladin rolls a 20 on an attack roll with a weapon.

At 14th level the Weapon of Light increases to 2d6, or 4d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.

At 17th level the damage of a Weapon of Light burst (when you roll a 20) is doubled.

At 20th level the Aura of Light increases to 3d6, or 6d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.


We are also considering a controversial change as well:
Divine Grace is now limited to 2 + (3 x Paladin Level) for the total Charisma bonuses it will add to saving throws.

We want good saving throws to be a class feature of Paladins and a reason to go to higher level in the class. At the same time we don't want players to feel that there is no reason to increase your Paladin level beyond two or three. This change will provide an excellent +8 to all saving throws for a two level splash into Paladin and allow that saving throw bonus to increase as the Paladin levels.


The updated class table will look like this:

1st +1/+1/+6 +2 +0 +0 Aura of good, Smite evil (1/rest), Follower of (your faith)
2nd +2/+2/+7 +3 +0 +0 Divine grace, Lay on hands (1/rest)

3rd +3/+3/+8 +3 +1 +1 Aura of courage, Divine health, Fear Immunity

4th +4/+4/+9 +4 +1 +1 Turn undead

5th +5/+5/+10/+15 +4 +1 +1 Smite evil (2/rest)

6th +6/+6/+11/+16 +5 +2 +2 Remove disease (1/rest), Deity-based feat
7th +7/+7/+12/+17 +5 +2 +2 Armor of Light (25)
8th +8/+8/+13/+18 +6 +2 +2 Weapon of Light (1d6)
9th +9/+9/+14/+19 +6 +3 +3 Remove disease (2/rest)

10th +10/+10/+15/+20 +7 +3 +3 Smite evil (3/rest)

11th +11/+11/+16/+21 +7 +3 +3 Weapon of Light (Burst on 20)
12th +12/+12/+17/+22 +8 +4 +4 Remove disease (3/rest)

13th +13/+13/+18/+23 +8 +4 +4 Armor of Light (50)
14th +14/+14/+19/+24 +9 +4 +4 Weapon of Light (2d6)
15th +15/+15/+20/+25 +9 +5 +5 Remove disease (4/rest), Smite evil (4/rest)

16th +16/+16/+21/+26 +10 +5 +5 -
17th +17/+17/+22/+27 +10 +5 +5 Weapon of Light (Burst x2)
18th +18/+18/+23/+28 +11 +6 +6 Remove disease (5/rest)

19th +19/+19/+24/+29 +11 +6 +6 Armor of Light (75)
20th +20/+20/+25/+30 +12 +6 +6 Weapon of Light (3d6), Smite evil (5/rest)


We'd like feedback on both the good changes and possibility of a Divine Grace change which is more restrictive.

Sev~

I think the save changes you are suggesting are not in line at all with the core class. I see how you're trying to balance class splashes and perceived abuses of your system--I simply disagree with your reasons behind it.

You see, the more you tweak the it, the less D20 it becomes, until it is so far removed from the core system that it metamorphosises into something completely derivative.

I get also that you're concerned with the Paladin DPS curve over its leveling history, so you artificially inflate their damage with core abilities that are dissonant with the Paladin archetype. It causes me considerable consternation to contemplate the faulty reasoning that, somehow, by adding increased damage, you will be adding allure to a tried-and-true (albeit at times flavorless by design) character concept.

What I'm trying to elucidate is that if you want to increase instances of higher level Paladins within the game, you should be working on the Prestige Enhancement trees, especially at the high tiers. This will give you the most 'bang for your buck' and would leave the core class unmolested.

[nibel]

Hand over your PnP-fu belt. You dont deserve it.

I think you are wrong, but let's not derail the thread. PM sent.

[Psiandron]

Ironclans suggestion doesn't fix the core problem and seems to want to make paladins thf focused, paladin has enough of narrow focus and needs to widen that focus like so many other classes have done recently.

I think that an awful lot of what's wrong with paladin could be addressed in what he lists. It certainly makes a better point of departure than piling up layers of new stuff straight out of the gate.

You completely lost me with the wanting to make paladins thf focused thing. Please explain what you mean.

[bsquishwizzy]

~ At 7th level the Paladin gets the Armor of Light ability. The Paladin gains 25 temporary hit points (non-stacking) each time they use Smite Evil, Lay on Hands, Cure Disease or Turn Undead. This ability provides 50 temporary hit points at 13th level, and 75 temporary hit points at 19th level.


Please, for the love of God just…no.

Enough with temporary HP, temporary SP, and so on. Add something definitive to the class.

Armor of Light you say? How about a Divine modifier to PRR, AC, DR/good as well as increased chance to miss based on light blindness?

Add a retributive effect when attacked by evil outsiders and/or undead?

Now THAT would be cool, and beneficial. Right now, a paladin has access to more HP than they really need, plus lots of self-healing on tap. There is no need to adjust that upwards. DPS, Damage mitigation and S&B benefits, however, is what is needed most.



~ The Paladin gains Weapon of Light starting at 8th level and increasing at 11th, 14th, 17th and 20th.

At 8th level the Paladin gains Weapon of Light. While this toggle is activated each weapon attack they make also cause 1d6 of Light damage. This damage is increased to 2d6 for two handed weapons and for shield bash attacks.

At 11th level the Weapon of Light damage bursts in a 10’ radius when the Paladin rolls a 20 on an attack roll with a weapon.

At 14th level the Weapon of Light increases to 2d6, or 4d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.

At 17th level the damage of a Weapon of Light burst (when you roll a 20) is doubled.

At 20th level the Aura of Light increases to 3d6, or 6d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.


Yes.



We are also considering a controversial change as well:
Divine Grace is now limited to 2 + (3 x Paladin Level) for the total Charisma bonuses it will add to saving throws.

We want good saving throws to be a class feature of Paladins and a reason to go to higher level in the class. At the same time we don't want players to feel that there is no reason to increase your Paladin level beyond two or three. This change will provide an excellent +8 to all saving throws for a two level splash into Paladin and allow that saving throw bonus to increase as the Paladin levels.

Cool. You should consider the same for rogues and evasion / trapping.

Might I suggest you do something with that near-useless spell Holy Weapon? Maybe allow them to cast it on any cold iron or silver weapon – magical or otherwise - and add to their existing attributes? Just a suggestion. You want to see Paladins close the DPS gap in epic content, that’s a small way to do it.

[SilkofDrasnia]

I think that an awful lot of what's wrong with paladin could be addressed in what he lists. It certainly makes a better point of departure than piling up layers of new stuff straight out of the gate.

You completely lost me with the wanting to make paladins thf focused thing. Please explain what you mean.

More deity choice is just meh and more meh flavor uselessness, the feats at 16, 18 is meh too, cleave and great cleave is nice but that hardly fixes anything and is thf oriented.

Holy Sword should not be tied to AP usage they need to just change the spell itself so it is useful like others have suggested.

Update smite to be more usable... is the only suggestion I would take from that post, the rest is just a quick slap a band aid fix and kick it on down the door treatment which is NOT what paladins need.

Not trying to be harsh here I just think theres only one good suggestion in that post which is updating smite as it just isnt up to par anymore and hasn't been for a good long time. Also updating smite is good in neutral fashion.

I also think like the previous poster that temp hp/sp etc is kind of meh and not really great either. Give them more permanent concrete boosts.

[Grailhawk]

I agree with the idea of improving Smite Evil this is what i would suggest.

Improved Smite Evil: At 4th level and evey 4 levels after that damage done by your smite evil is raised by 50%. (+250% at 20th level)
Smite Foe: At 6th level your smite evil is no longer limited to evil creatures and can be used to strike down any foe.
Stunning Smite: At 12th Level your Smite evil now has a 25% chance to stun evil creatures for 10 seconds.
Improved Stunning Smite: At 16th Level your Smite Evil now has a 50% chance to Stun evil creatures for 10 seconds.
Endless Smiting: At 18th Level your smite evil now regenerate every 30 seconds instead of 90.
Greater Stunning Smite: At 20th Level your Smite Evil now has a 100% chance to Stun any creature for 10 seconds.

All that said though Smite Evils animation needs to be tuned in such a way that it does not cause a delay in your attack cycle, basically how cleaves work.

[Hilltrot]

Divine Grace and the save bonus it grants is a benefit of 2 levels of paladin, not the benefits of a pure (level 20) paladin. That you wish it weren't so doesn't change this fact. Your statements attempt to frame the argument in opposition to Divine Grace's current intended function, with an ad hominem logical fallacy as a little extra icing.

"Your statements attempt to frame the argument in opposition to Divine Grace's current intended function"

Are you Skip Williams in disguise? Have you even met him? Talked to him? Asked him a question? Received an e-mail from him? Sent him an e-mail? Your statement about the intended function is clearly an ad hominem fallacy. You have no clue what the intended function was.

However, Divine Grace's function is clearly not to be used as an exploit to "win" the game. You argument comes from the PoV that things are not changing and that the original function is somehow important. This is a Ignoratio elenchi.

[Hilltrot]

For me the answer about Divine Grace is simple dear Turbine..

Do an analysis of your playerbase. Count the number of characters with 2 levels of paladin splashes compared to the number of players with 2 levels of monk/rogue splashes . My guess is that the evasion splashes outfactor the Grace splashes by a factor of at least 5 to 1.


I agree.

Do an analysis of your playerbase. Count the number of characters with 2 levels of barbarian splashes compared to the number of players with 2 levels of paladin splashes . My guess is that the Grace splashes outfactor the Rage splashes by a factor of at least 5,000,000 to 1.

[Psiandron]

More deity choice is just meh and more meh flavor uselessness, the feats at 16, 18 is meh too, cleave and great cleave is nice but that hardly fixes anything and is thf oriented.

Holy Sword should not be tied to AP usage they need to just change the spell itself so it is useful like others have suggested.

Update smite to be more usable... is the only suggestion I would take from that post, the rest is just a quick slap a band aid fix and kick it on down the door treatment which is NOT what paladins need.

Not trying to be harsh here I just think theres only one good suggestion in that post which is updating smite as it just isnt up to par anymore and hasn't been for a good long time. Also updating smite is good in neutral fashion.

I also think like the previous poster that temp hp/sp etc is kind of meh and not really great either. Give them more permanent concrete boosts.

One of the most common beefs about pally is the limited number of feats, adding a couple of feats would likely help the class out greatly, imo.

I forgot to put this in earlier, but I'd really like to see a complete redux of pally spells. Quite frankly they are one of the worst thing about the class.

The holy sword is the least important thing from the original, for me. If pallies got weapons of good I really don't see where a holy sword would be necessary.

Also, I agree with you about the temporary sp/hp. It's just weak sauce really.

[Cardoor]

...

At 20th level the Aura of Light increases to 3d6, or 6d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.


...

Sev~

I play a couple of pure Pali characters and I think the changes you propose make sense.

To make up for the slowness of a pali, I would add this to lvl 20 description:

One with Light - Paladins can use the turn undead ability to become one with light. All melee attacks are considered metalline, aligned, morphic and ghostbane for 30 seconds.

[Krell]

Greetings,

~snip~


We are also considering a controversial change as well:
Divine Grace is now limited to 2 + (3 x Paladin Level) for the total Charisma bonuses it will add to saving throws.

We want good saving throws to be a class feature of Paladins and a reason to go to higher level in the class. At the same time we don't want players to feel that there is no reason to increase your Paladin level beyond two or three. This change will provide an excellent +8 to all saving throws for a two level splash into Paladin and allow that saving throw bonus to increase as the Paladin levels.


~snip~.

Sev~



I'm leaning towards disagreeing with the approach of making splash multiclass less effective. If that game design strategy is determined to be desirable, then the same strategy would apply to other popular splashes like Rouge, Monk, and FvS. I think going down that path will lead to less build diversity which I think is one of DDO strengths. I know your overall purpose with making Paladins more desirable is to have more classes played at end game, which I agree with, but I don't think encouraging larger splashes will accomplish that and would do more harm than good overall.

I think a better goal is determining what would make players want to level primarily in Paladin, and then maybe splash in other classes. For that you need to consider what makes a class/build desirable in a group. I would pick from one of these themes and build from there:

*They kill things really fast (More DPS or instakill)

*They give others a noticeable increase in the ability to kill things quickly (Like Bard buffs used to be valued before numbers inflation. Ideas: Holy damage auras, +DC auras, +skills auras, auras to reduce evil creature saves which is a common EE complaint)

*They give others a noticeable increase in survivability, since taking a lot of damage or dying slows down killing things quickly. (Ideas: MRR/PRR/DR/AC auras, Saves auras, deathward aura, stacking resistance auras, auras to reduce evil creature damage which is a common EE complaint)

*Quick effective crowd control (Not like Bards that take forever and are easily broken. Ideas: Shun: Single evil target cowers in your holy presence - short cooldown.

*Less popular, but another consideration is unique skills required by some content (Ex. Like the unique Rogue skill to disable traps. Ideas: Effective true seeing aura-party members can spot most hidden creatures/doors, more benefit to purifying things like alters, artifacts)

The strategy here is: instead of making it less desirable to splash a little Paladin, make it more desirable for players to take mostly Paladin compared to other popular builds.

[Qhualor]

I took these from 3.5 and the descriptions aren't word for word and not translated to DDO math formulas. These that I found I thought would be good for Paladins. Some could be bonus feats, some could be enhancements, some could be just adjusting what already exists in game and some could be something you get at 20 or into epic levels. Either way, I'll just leave this here to sort out. Also, computer is broken for a few more days so doing all this on my phone so apologies.

Greater Smiting- on a successful Smite attack, add twice the appropriate level to damage. Or like Smite, instead it deals twice the damage.

Improved Aura of Good- +8 morale bonus to saving throws and against fear. Just like regular Aura of Good, your saves are increased. I don't know off the top of my head what Aura of Good is now.

Holy Strike- 2d6 holy damage. Obviously translate that to a better DDO number or just have it scale every X Paladin levels.

Planar Turning- ability to turn or rebuke outsiders as if undead. Self explanatory I think.

Positive Energy Aura- every undead that comes within your aura is automatically turned. HD, cleric level, etc still needed to determine the turn.

Spectral Strike- deal damage normally against incorporeal creatures. Self explanatory.

Spells level 1

Bless Weapon- makes a weapon strike true against evil foes. The weapon becomes good and all crits are successful.

Magic Weapon- weapon gains +1 bonus.

Spells level 3

Magic Circle Against Chaos- protection from chaos. Just like Protection from Evil.

Greater Magic Weapon- +1 bonus to weapon every 4 levels max of +5.

Spells level 4

Dispel Evil/Chaos- your body shimmers in white holy light. +4 deflection bonus to AC against evil/chaos. Successful melee attack against evil/chaos creature can drive that creature back to home plane. Successful save applies. Automatically dispel 1 evil spell by any evil creature. Works like Dispel Magic. This one sounds cool and powerful if worked right.

Mark of Justice- works like Bestow Curse, but only creatures willing or restrained. Cannot be dispelled but can be removed by Break Enchantment or Remove Curse. This one I was on the fence about and sounds weak to me, but maybe its stronger than it is?

[Psiandron]

Is it really such a bad idea to make the already existing system (smiting) better and more up to date?

There's one thing that players often repeat, Turbine is fascinated with putting new layers in the game instead of just improving what already exists. This has lead to layer upon layer of obsolete no longer supported systems that are unused and disappointing. Those systems become "dead ends" for newer players who don't know the system is out of date and weak compared to the other options that have similar opportunity costs in AP or Destiny AP.


The above was one of the key factors of why I liked Ironclan's proposal. At a time when so very much was so recently broken in-game because of the latest update, how do we not propose at least some moderation in making vast and sweeping additions to a very complicated game.

That said, I do think that if it is decided to add something(s) to paladin, it should be along the lines of:


I guess i just have it in my mind that the Pally stands in the middle of the front line, fighting alongside his fellows and bolstering the line with his shining presence. I would like to see some benefits along this model, maybe like a stance (or something like archer's focus) where the longer the Pally stands still, the better the bonus their aura gives to them and those around them. I think this could go as high as +15 to saves, to hit, to damage (before crit multipliers), much like archer's focus does (adding 1 per second), without being OP (drops to zero on move, of course). This would make the Pally in effect the anchor to the fight, a bedrock for his fellows to retreat to in case they started to get overwhelmed or things went pear shaped. I think one guy put some stuff like this into a tree, but honestly, i would rather this be a core class feature of Paladin rather than a PRE, even if that meant it was less customizable. Of course, this could always be a core feature with the ability to improve or focus it more left to the PREs.


or perhaps this: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/442088-New-Paladin-Tree-Battlefield-Commander

The latter is a suggestion for a new PRE, which isn't a bad idea. I think that Turbine should have as a goal the existence of three viable PREs for each class.

At any rate I'm against suggestions which just turn a pally into a dps fighter with healing, raise dead and great saves. I think that the goal for any redesign should be to make paladins special in their own right, not just tacking on bonuses which exist in other class(es). And, that that change be done in a way which does as little violence to the game and the servers as possible.

I am also starting to wonder about the efficacy of discussing limitations to any class splashes piecemeal. Perhaps it would be better to get the classes and the AC and mitigation situation more firmly established and then look at such limitations within the context of game and any necessary changes thereto.

[azrael4h]

I think the animal needed is not a goat, but a mature male bison though. this is no small task. and a goat only goes so far.

It either needs to be a goat or a maiden sacrifice. And maiden sacrifices are for evil characters. Since Paladins are LG, it must be a goat.

Though you may make an argument for an evil maiden.

[Stoner81]

We are also considering a controversial change as well:
Divine Grace is now limited to 2 + (3 x Paladin Level) for the total Charisma bonuses it will add to saving throws.

We want good saving throws to be a class feature of Paladins and a reason to go to higher level in the class. At the same time we don't want players to feel that there is no reason to increase your Paladin level beyond two or three. This change will provide an excellent +8 to all saving throws for a two level splash into Paladin and allow that saving throw bonus to increase as the Paladin levels.

Sev~

NO, NO, NO, NO! Jeez when you are guys going to learn! STOP NERFING AND START BUFFING!!!! How many times do you want us to say this before you actually listen? People splash 2 Pally because of the way YOU GUYS made EE content, saves are king now without them you die almost instantly. Buff Pallies they are in dire need of it, give them more feats for free, better abilities and please FFS do something about the god aweful PrE's that they have! Going down this route you would have to change Monk splashes (stances, Evasion and feats) and Rogue splashes (trapping skills, Evasion, Sneak Attack and UMD).

People are only finding good synergies with builds and it is not that whatever ability is over powered or anything else, people like Cetus for example (sorry to drag you in to this) represent a small tiny fraction of the player base. Most people (say 90% at a rough guess maybe more) are NEVER EVER IN A MILLION YEARS going to get to where he is. The investment in to one character is staggering! Tomes, gear, past lives (completionist) the list goes on and on.

My main epic level toon is 18 FvS / 2 Pally split, yes I get a decent boost to saves but I also lose out on a number of spells and slots which is something I have to sacrifice in return for getting that boost. Give people reasons to play Pallies to higher levels fine by all means go ahead and get it done but do it by buffing them and not nerfing them! Many classes are front loaded I mean hell look at Rangers for crying out loud the amount of feats they get is daft (don't nerf Rangers either I am simply trying to illustrate a point).

TL;DR - BUFF PALLIES INSTEAD OF NERFING THEM FOR HEAVENS SAKE!

Stoner81.

[nibel]

or perhaps this: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/442088-New-Paladin-Tree-Battlefield-Commander

The latter is a suggestion for a new PRE, which isn't a bad idea. I think that Turbine should have as a goal the existence of three viable PREs for each class.

Taking some inspiration from 4e's Warlord might not be too out of the table as well.

[Silverleafeon]

Yes, the class needs love, but the honest truth of why the paladins don't do decent damage
is the combat feat lineup that they are offered:


Let us compare:



Two Weapon Fighting
Usage: Passive
Prerequisite: Dexterity 15





Description

Two Weapon Fighting reduces the to-hit penalty when using two weapons at the same time. The penalty for your primary hand lessens by 2 and the one for your off-hand lessens by 6, so it becomes -4 (main hand) / -4 (off-hand) (instead of -6/-10 without this feat).

If the off-hand weapon is light, the penalties both decrease by another 2 points, down to -2/-2 (instead of -4/-8 without this feat). For wielders of non-light weapons, Oversized Two Weapon Fighting is recommended to bring their attack penalty down to -2/-2.

After Update 5, an off-hand attack would have a chance to proc on any main hand attack now, instead of being predetermined on certain attacks. The default chance to proc an off-hand attack is 20%.

Two Weapon Fighting increases the chance to proc an off-hand attack by 20%, bringing the total chance to 40%. Having more TWF feats increases the percentage chance of proccing an off-hand attack by 20% per feat, to a max of 80% with Greater Two Weapon Fighting. The first and fourth steps of the Tempest enhancements core abilities can increase the chance by 10% each, as can the Deft Strikes and Meditation of War (in Wind Stance) Shintao enhancements. However, there's no benefit of having more than a 100% off-hand strike chance.

This feat also works for unarmed Monks, and has the same effect but not for Druids in Wolf or Bear form.



Two Handed Fighting
Usage: Passive
Prerequisite: Strength 15+





Description

Increases the damage of glancing blow attacks when wielding a two-handed weapon by 10% (from a base of 20% normal weapon damage). Also grants a 3% chance for weapon effects to trigger on glancing blows.

Special: As of Update 5 This feat will also work with glancing blows caused by Bastard Swords and Dwarven Axes when wielded as a single weapon or weapon and shield combination.

Related Feats:
Improved Two Handed Fighting
Greater Two Handed Fighting




Shield Mastery
Usage: Passive
Prerequisite: Shield Proficiency (General)





Description

You are skilled with the use of a shield, and your physical resistance is increased by 3 when using a buckler or small shield, 5 when using a large shield, or 10 when using a tower shield. You gain 3% doublestrike while using a shield.

Related Feats:
Improved Shield Mastery




Power Attack
Cooldown: 6 seconds
Usage: Active, Toggled Stance
Prerequisite: Strength 13+





Description

This feat exchanges part of your attack bonus for extra melee damage. It reduces your hit bonus by 5, or your Base Attack Bonus, whichever is lower. Then your successful attacks will have their damage increased by the same amount. Two-handed weapons get twice that damage bonus. (Unarmed strikes count as one-handed.) Typically, this means one-handed weapons get +5 and two-handed get +10 to damage.

This feat is a stance. It may be toggled on and left active indefinitely. When deactivated, there is a 10 second cooldown before it can be used again.



Combat Expertise
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Usage: Active, Toggled Stance
Prerequisite: Intelligence 13





Description

Defensive Combat Stance: While using Combat Expertise mode, you suffer -5 to your attack rolls but gain +10% feat bonus to Armor Class. Spells have three times their normal cooldown when this mode is active. Combat Expertise dispels and wards against all Rage effects.

(Note: The in-game description incorrectly implies that the to-hit and AC modifiers are limited by your Base Attack Bonus, and the AC bonus type is unspecified.)




Note

Spell like abilities are not subjected to the increased cooldown

This feat does not replace the basic Defensive Fighting stance granted automatically to all characters with a BAB of at least +1. However, it is generally better than Defensive Fighting, and only one stance can be active at a time.
A Fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.
A Monk may select this feat as one of his martial arts feats.


So simply put, Shield mastery is granting +3% bonus damage.
Two weapon fighting is granting +20% bonus damage.
Two handed fighting is granting +10% bonus damage.

Can one see the large difference building already?
Yes, I know they might miss and their is AC concerns, but...
Add power attacks bonus to damage which is significant, and...

Can you see the problem staring you in the face?





Now, look carefully at what is happening here,
or let us do some simple abstract math.


Assume we have an end game one handed weapon named "X248" that does 100 points of damage,
never critical hits, never add extra effects. Simple and to the point.


Let us give the Paladin an awesome end game shield "Y136" that also does 80 points of damage,
although we all know that is unlikely for a shield to hit as hard as a weapon does.

Let us give the Barbarian an awesome end game two handed weapon "Z369"
that does 120 points of damage, never critical hits, never adds extra effects.

Assume everyone's strength is 10 for simplicity.
Assume they have not farmed out epic destinies.
Assume they forgot to spend action points on enhancements.



Ranger Joe is dual wielding the X248 weapon and has taken,
power attack, and the entire (all three of the) two weapon fighting feats.

Ranger Joe gets 100+5 damage with his main hand.
Ranger Joe gets (100+5) * 80% with his off hand.
Ranger Joe gets 185.6 ish total damage.



Barbarian Bob is wielding a two handed version of Z369

Barbarian Bob gets 120+12 damage with his main hand.
Barbarian Bob gets (100+12) * 50% glancing blows which hits multiple foes.
Barbarian Bob gets 188 damage to main target and more to side targets.



Paladin Tim is wielding X248 in main hand and y135 in off hand.

Paladin Tim gets 100 damage with his main hand.
Paladin Tim gets 8% doublestrike with his main hand or (100) * 8%.
Paladin Tim gets a 20% chance to shield bash with his shield Y135 (80)* 20%
Paladin Tim gets 124 damage to main target.



Now with plain and simple math, can we see why Paladins are awful at damage.
Their three feat combat line is terrible.

[Sebastrd]

I agree.

Do an analysis of your playerbase. Count the number of characters with 2 levels of barbarian splashes compared to the number of players with 2 levels of paladin splashes . My guess is that the Grace splashes outfactor the Rage splashes by a factor of at least 5,000,000 to 1.

So, nerf Divine Grace because Barbarian sucks? That's your logic? Really?

[Hilltrot]

NO, NO, NO, NO! Jeez when you are guys going to learn! STOP NERFING AND START BUFFING!!!! How many times do you want us to say this before you actually listen? People splash 2 Pally because of the way YOU GUYS made EE content, saves are king now without them you die almost instantly. Buff Pallies they are in dire need of it, give them more feats for free, better abilities and please FFS do something about the god aweful PrE's that they have! Going down this route you would have to change Monk splashes (stances, Evasion and feats) and Rogue splashes (trapping skills, Evasion, Sneak Attack and UMD).

Sad, sad, sad. So very, very sad. So they need to rework EE content to reflect that more will not have the needed saves. Or even better, don't. People are still soloing EE content. Pugging it easily. EE content should be EE. You should be failing your saving throws unless you have a severely high investment in saves. I should say a well built character with all the appropriate equipment should fail about half of his weak saves. (+6 at end of progression.)


People are only finding good synergies with builds and it is not that whatever ability is over powered or anything else, people like Cetus for example (sorry to drag you in to this) represent a small tiny fraction of the player base. Most people (say 90% at a rough guess maybe more) are NEVER EVER IN A MILLION YEARS going to get to where he is. The investment in to one character is staggering! Tomes, gear, past lives (completionist) the list goes on and on.

I don't get it. First, they are killing everyone's experience, including yours, and next they are only killling Cetus's character? Next, I think you overestimate Cetus by far too much. If one can slog to 20 on a third life once, one can do it 33 times. The question is - Do you really want to spend your time/money doing this?


My main epic level toon is 18 FvS / 2 Pally split, yes I get a decent boost to saves but I also lose out on a number of spells and slots which is something I have to sacrifice in return for getting that boost. Give people reasons to play Pallies to higher levels fine by all means go ahead and get it done but do it by buffing them and not nerfing them! Many classes are front loaded I mean hell look at Rangers for crying out loud the amount of feats they get is daft (don't nerf Rangers either I am simply trying to illustrate a point).

Seriously, the 2nd level grace ability is so important that you are willing to sacrifice anything to get it . . . and then you're wanting to solve paladin by making the rest of paladin super uber?! I think I've figured out what 99.9% of those left playing DDO will choose for their class!


TL;DR - BUFF PALLIES INSTEAD OF NERFING THEM FOR HEAVENS SAKE!

Stoner81.

They are buffing paladins, they are hopefully nerfing the 2 level splash.

[Hilltrot]

I'm leaning towards disagreeing with the approach of making splash multiclass less effective. If that game design strategy is determined to be desirable, then the same strategy would apply to other popular splashes like Rouge, Monk, and FvS.

For starters, something most of you are missing is that they ARE nerfing the evasion splash. They are doing this by having heavy armor confer the "benefits" of evasion. So, this constant comparison to how the Rogue and Monk splash aren't being

[get on soapbox]

Even back in the transition in PnP from 3.0 to 3.5 the desire to make "splashes" less desirable and make players want to go deeper into the class. For spellcasters, this was already worked in. Some, Like Rangers use to have all their abilities front-loaded. Literally, rangers got to have all their abilities at level One. Problem is - why take another level of Ranger? It wasn't as if the spells were worth diddly. Most would only take one level of Ranger. Tons of players with just one level of Ranger.

So, what did the original game designer(s) do? They took the most valued abilities and started giving them at level 2 and then spread out the other abilities across the entire class. Now considering that most players would not reach level 20 in PnP and that level 6 would represent about 40 hours of gameplay, this was a major nerf to the ranger splash. But it was a big buff to the Rangers who were "pure".

Paladins were less of a problem since there was an obvious barrier to entry of having to maintain your alignment restriction in gameplay. Not everyone liked to play goody-two shoes. A holy sword was the best weapon in the game by far. Raising your paladin to a high enough level to cast Holy Sword was vital. And having a 18 Charisma was rare even for paladins. So this Divine grace thing was not really considered to be that awesome.

However, turning this into an MMO, everything changes. Now *everyone* has an 18 Charisma. Higher Charisma's are pretty low hanging fruit. Even at +9 to all saves (+1 from the Aura) this is pretty major. I don't see any other way of getting this anywhere else. Am I missing something. Is there somewhere else I can get an *additional* +9 to saves for my character? Maybe the saving throw bonuses given from feats should be doubled?
[/soapbox]

I haven't heard of the FvS splash.

[grandeibra]

I agree.

Do an analysis of your playerbase. Count the number of characters with 2 levels of barbarian splashes compared to the number of players with 2 levels of paladin splashes . My guess is that the Grace splashes outfactor the Rage splashes by a factor of at least 5,000,000 to 1.I completely agree

but what is your point? Does that fact make the evasion splashes any less OP (and again:they are still more common than pally splashes)? Do you mean that they should nerf evasion splashes since they are most common,, and buff up barb splashes since they are the least common? If so, I concur :)

In any case I would have no problem if they nerf evasion first, pally 2nd, improve capstones all around etc. In fact I'd welcome it. And hey if you can figure out a nice way to make 2 levels of barb that fits the mythology of the class I'm all ears :)

My main wish though is that they fix the horrible AC mess they made a while back (that many of us numbercruncher types argued against before it was implemented). That made to-hit completely pointless and hence ensured all dpser could focus solely on damage, not both TH and damage, made AC even more pointless to many toons than before, made monk splashes (that they were trying to nerf) even stronger from easy access to BOTH PRR and dodge, etc etc etc etc


EDIT Ghallanda a minute ago (2 level splashes):
24 evasion splashes (14 rogue, 10 monk - surprised me I thought monk would have more than rogue)
9 pally splashes
6 fighter
4 ranger
4 FVS
2 druid

see my point?

[EllisDee37]

In any case I would have no problem if they nerf evasion first, pally 2nd, improve capstones all around etc. In fact I'd welcome it. And hey if you can figure out a nice way to make 2 levels of barb that fits the mythology of the class I'm all ears :)Nothing mentioned so far regarding capstones and barbarians, but they're talking about nerfing divine grace (directly) and evasion (by proxy) at the same time.

[Ausdoerrt]

NO, NO, NO, NO! Jeez when you are guys going to learn! STOP NERFING AND START BUFFING!!!!

Always a bad idea. Power creep is horrible as it is, if they buff all the time, we'll be playing "Final Fantasy" Online instead of DDO soon.

[Nascoe]

I completely agree

but what is your point? Does that fact make the evasion splashes any less OP (and again:they are still more common than pally splashes)? Do you mean that they should nerf evasion splashes since they are most common,, and buff up barb splashes since they are the least common? If so, I concur :)

In any case I would have no problem if they nerf evasion first, pally 2nd, improve capstones all around etc. In fact I'd welcome it. And hey if you can figure out a nice way to make 2 levels of barb that fits the mythology of the class I'm all ears :)

My main wish though is that they fix the horrible AC mess they made a while back (that many of us numbercruncher types argued against before it was implemented). That made to-hit completely pointless and hence ensured all dpser could focus solely on damage, not both TH and damage, made AC even more pointless to many toons than before, made monk splashes (that they were trying to nerf) even stronger from easy access to BOTH PRR and dodge, etc etc etc etc


EDIT Ghallanda a minute ago (2 level splashes):
24 evasion splashes (14 rogue, 10 monk - surprised me I thought monk would have more than rogue)
9 pally splashes
6 fighter
4 ranger
4 FVS
2 druid

see my point?

Off course your sample size is incredibly small there, as much as to be irrelevant. Maybe have a look at DDOracle, as far as I remember they do splits etc there for characters / splashes too but with a more reasonable sample size ("all").

The reason many choose rogue, is that especially for newer and f2p/premium players, monk is a) not available to them unless they buy it and b) the first thing a new player runs in to are traps and locked chests and many just want to open them/have to disable them because of not having damage limitation gear or quest knowledge, so they splash rogue because they can and because it adds some trap disabling.
Monk is great but you have to get into understanding enhancements and gear to make best use of it, and you have to spend TP to buy it first too.

[mezzorco]

*shield whining*

Paladins are not tied to shield feats. THF paladins can be built, but they are rare.
The problem here isn't shield feat line (it will be addressed in the future anyways).
The problem here is that paladins underperform if compared to other classes (e.g. fighters), in any fighting style.

[grandeibra]

Off course your sample size is incredibly small there, as much as to be irrelevant. Maybe have a look at DDOracle, as far as I remember they do splits etc there for characters / splashes too but with a more reasonable sample size ("all").

The reason many choose rogue, is that especially for newer and f2p/premium players, monk is a) not available to them unless they buy it and b) the first thing a new player runs in to are traps and locked chests and many just want to open them/have to disable them because of not having damage limitation gear or quest knowledge, so they splash rogue because they can and because it adds some trap disabling.
Monk is great but you have to get into understanding enhancements and gear to make best use of it, and you have to spend TP to buy it first too.Good point about monk being purchasable and traps - I would add the lawful restriction as well :).

Disagree about sample size. Statistically (unless there is some systematic deviation for example that toons at that time of day/week are more inclined to a certain build, or certain builds more likely to click anonymous) a sample size of a few hundred is plenty enough to get statistic significance at the common 5% level for a t-test or many other stats. So the odds that evasion builds are more common than pally builds is almost assured, as is that those three are the most common 2lvl-splashes. Whether rogues, monks, or pally splashes individually is most common is not assured since they were close.

[grandeibra]

Always a bad idea. Power creep is horrible as it is, if they buff all the time, we'll be playing "Final Fantasy" Online instead of DDO soon.Completely agreed. The powercreep in DDO the first 3-5 years was excellent. Old equipment was still viable, TRs weren't exceptionally more powerful than non-TRs etc. Nowadays the powercreep is off the charts. So even though I love 2 fighter, 2 pally, 2 rogue/monk, 2 FVS splashes and personally dislike pure builds, I would agree with some nerfing of the splashes and some gear (for example I will never get why they made eSOS such an outlier, even after mini-nerfs - I hope we never see another piece of equipment as OP).

[Ausdoerrt]

As someone mentioned, I hope Paladins get a proper DPS prestige line, because right now there isn't one. There are plenty of iconic Greatsword-wielding "pallys" (think Joan of Arc or King Arthur), and they sure as hell weren't "tanks". Also keep in mind that shieldless Bastard Sword pallys are also common (see swords of answering) - so something to benefit from SWF is also desired. Finally, I'm not too familiar with the divine sphere ED's yet, but can say that Unyielding Sentinel, the paladin-inspired destiny, is pathetically weak, and pallys should have better options than going Dreadnought for damage. Here's how I think the pally's prestiges should go.

Tree 1: Tanking tree (lightly modified SaD)
- As proposed, add multi-selection of shield vs heavy armor, with different bonuses (reasonably higher defenses for shields)
- Get rid of +AC and replace with other stuff - AC doesn't matter much now
- Enhancements with +MDB also give +Dodge Cap
- +Spell Resistance based on CHA (similar to Mind over Magic)
- Healing/buff/aura stuff should go here as well

Tree 2: Bane/holy tree (heavily modified KotC)
- Multi-selection of "favored evil enemies" (add evil drow, dragons, maybe others) + Ability to get several (2~4) enemy groups if capped
- More turn-based AoE abilities applying to all enemies (damage and/or debuffs)
- Smite-modifying abilities (spell-like)
- Powerful "Holy Sword" stance or cooldown ability - any weapon (incl. ranged) considered Lawful Good, extra alignment damage
- (possibly) CHA to hit and/or damage

Tree 3: Weapon Training tree (new):
- Enhancements for ONE specific fighting style: THF, S&B, or SWF
- THF line should have glancing blows, Improved PA
- S&B should have doublestrike and bash, perhaps auto-block
- SWF should have parry-like abilities, counter-strikes and such
- Classical smite enhancements go here (more powerful smites, better crits)
- Tactics and critical bonuses
- Special powerful weapon attack for each style, for example:
- THF gets something cleave-related
- S&B gets a shield bash or shield rush, damage plus high-DC knockdown
- SWF gets some debuffing and/or vorpal attack



Obviously very rough ideas, but that's how I think pallys should function. You choose whether you want to tank vs dps, alignment vs physical, choose a weapon style, then choose what to maximize. Good variety, nice viable options. For example, you could have a tank with AoE buffs and some holy smites, or a tank with S&B bonuses, or a tactician with good place defence, or a full on dps build etc etc

[toapat]

It either needs to be a goat or a maiden sacrifice. And maiden sacrifices are for evil characters. Since Paladins are LG, it must be a goat.

Though you may make an argument for an evil maiden.

The closest i can give you is Love's Joy and Distilled Joy. Sacrifice is inherently evil and can only be done to evil gods, as according to the BoVD (we need a trinket of that in Epic Orchard, also the Book of exaulted deeds)

[Grace_ana]

I completely agree

but what is your point? Does that fact make the evasion splashes any less OP (and again:they are still more common than pally splashes)? Do you mean that they should nerf evasion splashes since they are most common,, and buff up barb splashes since they are the least common? If so, I concur :)

In any case I would have no problem if they nerf evasion first, pally 2nd, improve capstones all around etc. In fact I'd welcome it. And hey if you can figure out a nice way to make 2 levels of barb that fits the mythology of the class I'm all ears :)

My main wish though is that they fix the horrible AC mess they made a while back (that many of us numbercruncher types argued against before it was implemented). That made to-hit completely pointless and hence ensured all dpser could focus solely on damage, not both TH and damage, made AC even more pointless to many toons than before, made monk splashes (that they were trying to nerf) even stronger from easy access to BOTH PRR and dodge, etc etc etc etc


EDIT Ghallanda a minute ago (2 level splashes):
24 evasion splashes (14 rogue, 10 monk - surprised me I thought monk would have more than rogue)
9 pally splashes
6 fighter
4 ranger
4 FVS
2 druid

see my point?

The point is obviously that rogues are incredibly OP and must be nerfed immediately. Because we have already decided that if a lot of people splash a class, that is direct proof the splash is OP.

I hope to Cthulu that the devs recognize the sarcasm here. I gave up hope that some posters will recognize their inherent logic failures.

[Severlin]

Some thoughts:

~ If we accept the argument that buffing something underpowered is, by proxy, nerfing something else then we will never get anything done. Therefore I can't give credence to the argument that Evasion is being nerfed "by proxy" of making armor competitive. By doing so we essentially kill any ability to make positive change.

~ We don't want to tie Paladins to sword and shield. Paladin buffs should be good regardless of the weapon style. We might not specifically try to support two weapon paladins, we don't want changes that punish that combo either.

~ We understand the purist argument to keep the base class close to pen and paper and use enhancements to buff Paladins. I will bring that viewpoint up with the team. The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.

Sev~

[Certon]

Some thoughts:

~ If we accept the argument that buffing something underpowered is, by proxy, nerfing something else then we will never get anything done. Therefore I can't give credence to the argument that Evasion is being nerfed "by proxy" of making armor competitive. By doing so we essentially kill any ability to make positive change.

~ We don't want to tie Paladins to sword and shield. Paladin buffs should be good regardless of the weapon style. We might not specifically try to support two weapon paladins, we don't want changes that punish that combo either.

~ We understand the purist argument to keep the base class close to pen and paper and use enhancements to buff Paladins. I will bring that viewpoint up with the team. The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.

Sev~

I'm suggesting tying the most juicy abilities to the core Prestige Enhancements at the bottom of the tree that require Paladin levels to acquire. This gives pure Paladins more power. It is my opinion that all Prestige Enhancement trees should be constructed in this manner.

[RKP]

I think it is ridiculous to penalize paladin splash players just because some people think paladins are too weak or whatever the "problem" is. Instead of taking something away from splash characters why not try ADDING to primary class paladins. It isn't rocket science or brain surgery. Try something creative for crying out loud. How about a new pally aura that boots saves by say a number equal to level or something. I don't care if you make it so paladins of level 3 or higher ALWAYS save. Just don't mess with divine grace which is the lynch pin of my build. Why does DDO find it necessary to ruin my build to make someone else happy? I have to tell you that if my main sucks after this DDO and I are done. I will switch to Pathfinder and you can kiss my hard earned dollars goodbye. In fact you just lost yourself a sale because I was going to purchase bladeforge and ITR but now I am not. Congrats.

[SirValentine]

The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.


You could always fix THAT problem first, thus giving yourself more options for addressing other issues, like here with Paladin.

[BDog77]

I think it is ridiculous to penalize paladin splash players just because some people think paladins are too weak or whatever the "problem" is. Instead of taking something away from splash characters why not try ADDING to primary class paladins. It isn't rocket science or brain surgery. Try something creative for crying out loud. How about a new pally aura that boots saves by say a number equal to level or something. I don't care if you make it so paladins of level 3 or higher ALWAYS save. Just don't mess with divine grace which is the lynch pin of my build. Why does DDO find it necessary to ruin my build to make someone else happy? I have to tell you that if my main sucks after this DDO and I are done. I will switch to Pathfinder and you can kiss my hard earned dollars goodbye. In fact you just lost yourself a sale because I was going to purchase bladeforge and ITR but now I am not. Congrats.

Seriously, dude? From day one, exploiter builds and FOTMs have historically been nerfed. It has always been the understanding that if you run one of these builds, you enjoy it while you can, cause eventually you will have to switch to TNNT (The Next New Thang). You are not the first, nor will you be the last, person effected by this.

Enjoy your new game!

[BDog77]

~ We understand the purist argument to keep the base class close to pen and paper and use enhancements to buff Paladins. I will bring that viewpoint up with the team.

I'm not convinced that anyone necessarily is coming from a "purist argument" as such, I think we are all a bit puzzled as to why it seems to be so hard to translate some of the good things about PnP Pallys to this game. As someone pointed out earlier the Holy Sword spell and the mount are justifiable reasons to stay pure in PnP. Since the Holy Sword spell in this game is so meh, and you can't add mounts, it's not surprising that we find Pallys somewhat underpowered. However, there are other things in PnP that would seem to be translatable to this game, and might add some power to the class (I believe someone posted a list of those things in this thread). Also, the Holy Sword spell could be improved (think SoS), and some benefits could be given to reflect the mount.


The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.

I'm not sure I really understand this argument, since one can get many tree enhancements from any character class with a relatively modest splash into it (for example, keen edge from 5 fighter).

[Grace_ana]

Seriously, dude? From day one, exploiter builds and FOTMs have historically been nerfed. It has always been the understanding that if you run one of these builds, you enjoy it while you can, cause eventually you will have to switch to TNNT (The Next New Thang). You are not the first, nor will you be the last, person effected by this.

Enjoy your new game!

It's hardly a FotM build, as realistically hardly anyone is using it. Numbers have been pulled up a few times now, and it looks to be less than 10% of the players using a 2 level pally splash. Also, multiclassing for additional power or survivability isn't exploiting. People toss that word around all the time and seemingly don't understand what it actually means.

The game encourages various build choices. It makes no sense to nerf it. Claiming it is inevitable is nonsense.

Also, I agree with what Sev said in his last post, particularly point 1. Readjusting by buffing elsewhere as opposed to nerfing stuff that works properly is the better way to go, and how the paladin situation should be handled.

[Roland_D'Arabel]

Some thoughts:

~ If we accept the argument that buffing something underpowered is, by proxy, nerfing something else then we will never get anything done. Therefore I can't give credence to the argument that Evasion is being nerfed "by proxy" of making armor competitive. By doing so we essentially kill any ability to make positive change.

+1


~ We don't want to tie Paladins to sword and shield. Paladin buffs should be good regardless of the weapon style. We might not specifically try to support two weapon paladins, we don't want changes that punish that combo either.

+1


~ We understand the purist argument to keep the base class close to pen and paper and use enhancements to buff Paladins. I will bring that viewpoint up with the team. The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.

Sev~

On this last point, not necessarily true. If significant improvements were made to Tier 5 Paladin enhancements, players would be forced to make a decision on which tier 5 tree to take. This would cement a more Paladin-centric build concept even if multi-classed while also avoiding being the low hanging fruit you are trying to balance.

[toapat]

However, there are other things in PnP that would seem to be translatable to this game, and might add some power to the class (I believe someone posted a list of those things in this thread). Also, the Holy Sword spell could be improved (think SoS), and some benefits could be given to reflect the mount.

most of PnP barring Psionics could be translated in. the only things i cant see being translated in are Proper Psionics, Magic of Incarnum, and the entire Tome of Magic. We already have a couple of the completes and the Tome of Battle being used.

Personally i think that Divine Spirit from Dungeonscape and the online suplement should be implemented in some way. Alot of the problem with paladin has always been that they get no new class features after lvl 6.

But all of what makes paladins bar none the most flexible of classes in pen and paper arent available (being the only class which can functionally participate in all possible ways at once except for battlefield control). you dont have the extreme flexibility of Sword of the Arcane Order or the ability to be a bard of Harmonius knight. You cant use Divine Spirit or Underdark Knight. You dont have Shield other, Lesser Visage of the Deity or Glory of the Martyr. About the only thing notable is that you do have Divine Sacrifice, which not a good percentage of the material in third that mattered.



Of the people complaining about being true to the SRD paladin: I dont agree with that. The entire reason why paladin doesnt have many supporters of deep investment is because the SRD paladin only has early class features. Barbarian is about the only core mundane who has a reason to go to 20 without multiclassing and thats because Rage > Everything else in the book for mundanes

[grandeibra]

The point is obviously that rogues are incredibly OP and must be nerfed immediately. Because we have already decided that if a lot of people splash a class, that is direct proof the splash is OP.

I hope to Cthulu that the devs recognize the sarcasm here. I gave up hope that some posters will recognize their inherent logic failures.I seriously have no idea what you meant by that post? Noone says, and noone used evidence that, rogues as a class are OP. Rogues as a 2-level splash on the other hand is very common since the cheap evasion on a non PtP-class is very powerful. Wouldn't you agree?

[toapat]

I seriously have no idea what you meant by that post? Noone says, and noone used evidence that, rogues as a class are OP. Rogues as a 2-level splash on the other hand is very common since the cheap evasion on a non PtP-class is very powerful. Wouldn't you agree?

Hes saying that the DG nerfs are inappropriate for the game, by lampooning that a quick survey of one of the servers yielded 40% more evasion splashes via rogue then monk. This topic is about parallel updates to the class which is currently the least common in the game relative to ownership to be implemented alongside proposed changes to armor, shields, and defense. Said changes were determined due to simple fact of not directly helping the paladin to be a necessity because of both the Fighter and Cleric, who would benefit more from the upcoming changes then paladins because of the inherent reason why Cleric and Fighter are more common then paladin. Those changes this topic parallels are theorized to largely invalidate the point of evasion splashes because large shields would provide similar if possibly superior defense to improved evasion.

Personally i agree with the need for DG to be limited but also recognize the needs of the game

[slarden]

~ If we accept the argument that buffing something underpowered is, by proxy, nerfing something else then we will never get anything done. Therefore I can't give credence to the argument that Evasion is being nerfed "by proxy" of making armor competitive. By doing so we essentially kill any ability to make positive change.



I agree with this, but by the same logic nerfing divine grace which hurts splash characters in no way helps paladins.

[B0ltdrag0n]

Some thoughts:

~ If we accept the argument that buffing something underpowered is, by proxy, nerfing something else then we will never get anything done. Therefore I can't give credence to the argument that Evasion is being nerfed "by proxy" of making armor competitive. By doing so we essentially kill any ability to make positive change.

~ We don't want to tie Paladins to sword and shield. Paladin buffs should be good regardless of the weapon style. We might not specifically try to support two weapon paladins, we don't want changes that punish that combo either.

~ We understand the purist argument to keep the base class close to pen and paper and use enhancements to buff Paladins. I will bring that viewpoint up with the team. The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.

Sev~

Please don't listen to the last point. The pnp ship has sailed long before now. The Class needs help, not just the trees.

[Yaga_Nub]

I seriously have no idea what you meant by that post? Noone says, and noone used evidence that, rogues as a class are OP. Rogues as a 2-level splash on the other hand is very common since the cheap evasion on a non PtP-class is very powerful. Wouldn't you agree?

Yes it is very powerful. Dodge, max UMD levels and the ability to max the important rogue abilities on certain classes after splashing is very, very powerful. Why isn't Sev and his team looking at this issue? It's because when they look out over all the characters, there's probably a much lower number of people nowadays that splash 2 rogue because 2 pally helps those classes that already have evasion more than trapping or UMD, in their opinion most likely.

[Monkey_Archer]

Some thoughts:

~ If we accept the argument that buffing something underpowered is, by proxy, nerfing something else then we will never get anything done. Therefore I can't give credence to the argument that Evasion is being nerfed "by proxy" of making armor competitive. By doing so we essentially kill any ability to make positive change.

~ We don't want to tie Paladins to sword and shield. Paladin buffs should be good regardless of the weapon style. We might not specifically try to support two weapon paladins, we don't want changes that punish that combo either.

~ We understand the purist argument to keep the base class close to pen and paper and use enhancements to buff Paladins. I will bring that viewpoint up with the team. The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.

Sev~

If you're looking into more purist ways to buff high level paladin damage, I'd say the best place to start would be level 4 spells. Zeal could easily be buffed to 20% doublestrike (or have it scale somehow with caster level) and holy sword could be converted directly to the PnP version: "This spell allows you to channel holy power into your sword, or any other melee weapon you choose. The weapon acts as a +5 holy weapon (+5 enhancement bonus on attack and damage rolls, extra 2d6 damage against evil opponents)." Basically just give it a extra multi-select option to buff your mainhand weapon in addition to creating holy swords from components.
If you buffed the base class in this way you could then transfer the light damage directly to the KOTC core abilities and armor of light to Sacred defender.

[Rautis]

~ We don't want to tie Paladins to sword and shield. Paladin buffs should be good regardless of the weapon style. We might not specifically try to support two weapon paladins, we don't want changes that punish that combo either.
This is good. Players should be able to create builds that suit their playstyle.


~ We understand the purist argument to keep the base class close to pen and paper and use enhancements to buff Paladins. I will bring that viewpoint up with the team. The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.
Possible choices besides enhancements or adding abilities that are not found at all in PnP are:

Adding or changing Paladin spells
Buffing existing Paladin class abilities

Reason I dislike weapons of light ability is that it doesn't make Paladin playstyle more unique. It is just rather boring extra damage without any tactical choices(for example choosing who you smite is a paladin specific tactical choice) or ability to choose how focused your character is into this aspect of paladin class. Also if your light spellpower is going to affect the damage it is probably better to go with strong favored soul splash to benefit the most. Extra light spell power probably adds more to the ability at some point than an extra 1d6. Paladins don't get spellcraft as class skill or any light spellpower from their enhancements.

Paladins do need a buff. I just think that you can do better than this.

[Coldin]

I think it is ridiculous to penalize paladin splash players just because some people think paladins are too weak or whatever the "problem" is. Instead of taking something away from splash characters why not try ADDING to primary class paladins. It isn't rocket science or brain surgery. Try something creative for crying out loud. How about a new pally aura that boots saves by say a number equal to level or something. I don't care if you make it so paladins of level 3 or higher ALWAYS save. Just don't mess with divine grace which is the lynch pin of my build. Why does DDO find it necessary to ruin my build to make someone else happy? I have to tell you that if my main sucks after this DDO and I are done. I will switch to Pathfinder and you can kiss my hard earned dollars goodbye. In fact you just lost yourself a sale because I was going to purchase bladeforge and ITR but now I am not. Congrats.

I would love to see your build that has Divine Grace as the linchpin of your build. You're still getting +8 to your saves from Cha, so you have to be running at least 28 Charisma to see a decrease.

[Yaga_Nub]

I would love to see your build that has Divine Grace as the linchpin of your build. You're still getting +8 to your saves from Cha, so you have to be running at least 28 Charisma to see a decrease.

I don't think it's the lynchpin of my build but it's an part of it and I usually rock in the high 30s to low 40s because of it and Divine Might. However, my build as basically be the same since day one - 2 rogue, 2 paladin and the rest Ranger. Only with the addition of epic levels did I stop taking rogue in favor of a build using pally, ranger and monk in various combinations (and not a moncher).

Even though alignment means nothing in DDO, I still hate the fact that I have to be LG to be a paladin so that in and of itself is more than enough penalty for a player. :)

[Thar]

Some thoughts:

~ If we accept the argument that buffing something underpowered is, by proxy, nerfing something else then we will never get anything done. Therefore I can't give credence to the argument that Evasion is being nerfed "by proxy" of making armor competitive. By doing so we essentially kill any ability to make positive change.

~ We don't want to tie Paladins to sword and shield. Paladin buffs should be good regardless of the weapon style. We might not specifically try to support two weapon paladins, we don't want changes that punish that combo either.

~ We understand the purist argument to keep the base class close to pen and paper and use enhancements to buff Paladins. I will bring that viewpoint up with the team. The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.

Sev~

Evasion is being nerf'd because you are making something equally powerful that has no cost. Armor has no character development choices. I'm not saying you shouldn't buff armor, but the amount of protection you are proposing is too much. IF this had no impact to my character, it wouldn't be horrible but your are further nerfing evasion but blocking our use of heavy shields which have been grinded, upgraded with augments, raided for for months and etc. Players don't like losing abilities. Make change so we don't LOSE anything and it will go over better. Don't ghostbane it and change EVERYTHING.

Pally buff's of any nature are good due to the issues with the class but it needs to be significant. 1d6 or two for limited effect doesn't help the class in end game when other classes have much better tier 5's. make something to the effect of slayer arrow, kensi tier 5's or etc. on that topic, fyi the tempest tier 5's stink as too short duration (20% over just going through animation and moving after clicking button) and too long a timer.

I support your all types of pally goal. classes shouldn't be restricted to one playstyle

How about making smites on a 30 sec timer? How about making the pally tree cost something reasonable so you can branch more into the dps tree? How about some inate evil/outsider dr breaker. How about some inate riposte to damage those that attack the pally?

[droid327]

Some thoughts:

~ If we accept the argument that buffing something underpowered is, by proxy, nerfing something else then we will never get anything done. Therefore I can't give credence to the argument that Evasion is being nerfed "by proxy" of making armor competitive. By doing so we essentially kill any ability to make positive change.


A very salient point...however, counterpoint:

You don't nerf something by proxy, directly...what may end up happening, though, is that you buff something in one or two classes/systems/playstyles, and that raises the average power, and then new content will be designed with the higher average power in mind, or old content rebalanced as such. Anyone who doesn't get a buff will have to contend with the new, buffed-up content with nothing new of their own. Its an indirect proxy nerf, through power creep.

Ultimately its a PvE game, so the only balance that matters is your effectiveness vs. monster's effectiveness. If you can express the dev's intent to keep current and future content design roughly equal in difficulty (ie how tough it is, and the ways in which its tough) to the current design philosophy, then no one can claim they're being proxy-nerfed. However, if you start building new content specifically tailored around the new AC/PRR/MRR/etc. system, with fights specifically designed to cater to/reward AC tanks over Evasion tanks, then that's absolutely a proxy nerf.

[Krell]

I agree with this, but by the same logic nerfing divine grace which hurts splash characters in no way helps paladins.

I agree. Unless the point is that incentive to take a bigger splash helps Paladins, which I don't think makes sense either.

I can roll with changes made to the game and it won't upset me if the proposal happens. I just think the big picture is to make Paladins competitive with other effective end game classes/builds, and I don't see reducing the value of a splash as a way to achieve that. If it is really just a game balancing move, maybe something tied to future pans to assess EE DC levels, then I could understand that.

[mezzorco]

Main lack of DDO paladin is its special mount.
Since mounted combat isn't part of this game, I suggest to give paladins Divine Spirit, an alternative class feature from Dungeonscape.

Here complete description: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20070209a

It's a good alternative feature, if correctly tweaked to work in DDO. You can take inspiration from this :)

[cronusdeathspell]

Just a thought:

I'd like to see the pally aura giving a bonus of some sort that is tied to how many enemies they have aggroed/intimidated.
Maybe something like +.1W per enemy aggroed enemy in aura, or even something like +.1 healing amp per enemy.

I'm not too sure on what exact buffs would make sense (math is not my strong point), but a pally should be in the forefront of combat, inspiring and leading their allies.

[sephiroth1084]

Greetings,

We have been going through player feedback and one of the concerns is that there is no compelling reason to level a Paladin past the early levels. While we hope the changes to armor and shield will help with this, we are looking for feedback on additional changes to make the class more compelling at higher levels.

The changes:

~ At 7th level the Paladin gets the Armor of Light ability. The Paladin gains 25 temporary hit points (non-stacking) each time they use Smite Evil, Lay on Hands, Cure Disease or Turn Undead. This ability provides 50 temporary hit points at 13th level, and 75 temporary hit points at 19th level.

~ The Paladin gains Weapon of Light starting at 8th level and increasing at 11th, 14th, 17th and 20th.

At 8th level the Paladin gains Weapon of Light. While this toggle is activated each weapon attack they make also cause 1d6 of Light damage. This damage is increased to 2d6 for two handed weapons and for shield bash attacks.

At 11th level the Weapon of Light damage bursts in a 10’ radius when the Paladin rolls a 20 on an attack roll with a weapon.

At 14th level the Weapon of Light increases to 2d6, or 4d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.

At 17th level the damage of a Weapon of Light burst (when you roll a 20) is doubled.

At 20th level the Aura of Light increases to 3d6, or 6d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.


I am, and have always been, a paladin fan. I've posted numerous threads, and given thousands upon thousands of words worth of feedback and suggestions regarding paladins, and buffing them.

So when I say that this looks fairly terrible, please understand that it is coming from someone who had desperately wanted paladins to get some love and improvements.

Armor of Light is okay. Not amazing, but okay.

Weapon of Light is terrible. The damage is fairly minor, and doesn't really address the paladin's problems very well.

They're still feat-starved, and this past year has seen an increase in the number of worthwhile feats.
Their DPS suffers when compared to that of the other martial classes, and while +2d6 or +4d6 is nice (and the burst), it's not all that compelling when you look at how much DPS relies on crit damage (meaning things that can be multiplied). Plus, this is fairly boring.
There are other problems, but I'm not going to get into them right now.


Why light damage, which, while it's hard to resist, doesn't do anything else. I know the devs seem to like the idea of keeping the Weapons of Good ability in the capstone, but with artificer weapon buffs, augment slots, and a few epic abilities all conveying the same bonus (treating your weapons as good for the purposes of bypassing DR), this doesn't hold the allure that other capstones do. Meanwhile, we have the essentially dead spell, Holy Weapon, for paladins at level 4, which hasn't been looked at in ages. Why dead? Because a +5 Holy Burst weapon that bypasses a few metal types of DR just doesn't stack up well against the loot inflation that has occurred in the game since the spell was released.

Some suggestions:

Add a 2nd level paladin spell that works like an artificer personal weapon enchantment buff to allow your weapons to be treated as Good aligned, and another that can treat them as Law aligned.
Change Holy Sword to be a special personal weapon enchantment buff that grants your weapon Holy Burst, and treats it as the same metal types as the spell does now.
Keep some of the Weapons of Light in there (but not all of it).
Rethink Divine Might, and how it doesn't stack with some things, and isn't as rewarding as the old version was, unless you are using it with tactical feats, which you probably aren't, since Paladins have no other way to boost them (and your boost to Str via Cha isn't usually as significant a boost to these abilities as the combined features of the fighter, barbarian, or monk).
Gut the enhancement trees, discarding the useless enhancements, improving the mediocre ones, and polishing the better ones.
Give us some real capstones.
Change Smite Evil (either base, or via enhancements) to do more--debuff, control, AoE, have a lingering effect, something--to counter the Swing>lag>miss>wasted attempt we see so often, and the limited utility of a severely limited use burst DPS ability.
Improved the paladin's "leader" abilities (healing, party buffs, aura) so that having a paladin along is a boon to the whole party beyond just a moderate bonus to their saving throws if they're stapled to his ass.
Been so long since I've gone over this stuff that I don't recall all of the ideas I had had, nor the good ideas other people had contributed.



We are also considering a controversial change as well:
Divine Grace is now limited to 2 + (3 x Paladin Level) for the total Charisma bonuses it will add to saving throws.
NO.

The reason paladins are viewed as a 2-level dip is because they don't offer anything more significant than what can be obtained with other classes. To remedy this, improved the tier 5 enhancements, the level 6-20 core enhancements (especially the capstones), add more worthwhile spells to all of their spell levels, and revamp some of the junky ones they have currently.

No one is going to stick with paladin for Weapons/Armor of Light. Even combined, they just aren't as potent or significant as what you can get from a dip in other classes.

The /2 paladin splash, while somewhat ubiquitous, is not the problem. The problems are that there isn't enough incentive to go beyond 2 paladin levels, and the game places too much of an emphasis on super-high saves later on, seeking, I imagine, to challenge the players with the super-high saves, and forcing the players without to modify their builds just to get close to being on the same d20. Reduce some of the save DC inflation, and make other options more attractive, and that will help far more than nerfing the splash adding a few mediocre scaling abilities.

[HatsuharuZ]

Some Do's and Dont's for theoretical paladin spells:

Do's:
- Take inspiration from PnP, but what's good in PnP isn't always going to be good in DDO.
- Weapon enchantments
- Personal Augmentions (see artificer spell list)
- Aura of Glory
- Increased maximum caster levels of current spells, like Divine Favor.
- Melee-ranged attacks that use spell points, such as the ones used by druids.

Don'ts:
- DC-based spells that use Wisdom as their DC modifier, unless said spell's DC can be improved by items/effects that increase sunder/stun/trip DCs.
- Summoning spells, unless said summon improves with paladin levels, such as druid and artificer companions.

[Hilltrot]

Evasion is being nerf'd because you are making something equally powerful that has no cost. Armor has no character development choices. I'm not saying you shouldn't buff armor, but the amount of protection you are proposing is too much. IF this had no impact to my character, it wouldn't be horrible but your are further nerfing evasion but blocking our use of heavy shields which have been grinded, upgraded with augments, raided for for months and etc. Players don't like losing abilities. Make change so we don't LOSE anything and it will go over better. Don't ghostbane it and change EVERYTHING.

Ok, ummm,. . . Wow. Sheeessh.

You must have seriously never played an online game other than DDO in your entire life. You really, really sound clueless.

Usually when a new expansion comes out in an MMO, all your previous gear is instantly worthless. As in vendor trash. You should never get attached to your gear in an MMO, because it will always change. So, when a new expansion comes out, you should expect to change your gear. This is a good thing. Really! It is!

When the big expansion comes out and you don't need to change your gear, it usually means that it was a pretty lousy expansion and they were more likely just filling in gaps instead of actually expanding the game.

I guess if you've only played DDO, this might be a relatively new thing. I know that for the first 5 years of the game, the best stuff was greensteel and characters would only play the shroud. Again, and again , and . . . However, I'm pretty sure this almost killed the game. Once you have your uber, uber item, the end game is over. Players leave. Go do something else. Etc. This means the MMO dies. This is what Greensteel almost did to the game. It was so awesome when it came out that it took years for the game to come out with something better. If it weren't for the TR train, DDO would have died a horrible death years ago.

I believe that the developers would like to have an actual end game. This is hard because they based their game on system where people were suppose to retire their characters sometime before they hit 20th level. So they have to do some pretty radical changes while hopefully keeping the "flavor" of the game.

Having to get new equipment is irrelevant to the argument as to whether the change is good or not. So is having to respec your character. Losing the exploitive character build many of you use is also irrelevant. What is relevant is whether it will be interesting and enjoyable to the majority of the present and future players.

[Cardoor]

...

Why light damage, which, while it's hard to resist, doesn't do anything else. I know the devs seem to like the idea of keeping the Weapons of Good ability in the capstone, but with artificer weapon buffs, augment slots, and a few epic abilities all conveying the same bonus (treating your weapons as good for the purposes of bypassing DR), this doesn't hold the allure that other capstones do. Meanwhile, we have the essentially dead spell, Holy Weapon, for paladins at level 4, which hasn't been looked at in ages. Why dead? Because a +5 Holy Burst weapon that bypasses a few metal types of DR just doesn't stack up well against the loot inflation that has occurred in the game since the spell was released.

Some suggestions:

Add a 2nd level paladin spell that works like an artificer personal weapon enchantment buff to allow your weapons to be treated as Good aligned, and another that can treat them as Law aligned.
Change Holy Sword to be a special personal weapon enchantment buff that grants your weapon Holy Burst, and treats it as the same metal types as the spell does now.
Keep some of the Weapons of Light in there (but not all of it).


...
.

Increasing DR bypassing (Alignment, Metaline, Morphic) seems like the best way to enhance already established abilities. I like your suggestions quoted above, but would go further and add a capstone that bypasses all DR to make a pure Pali more of an offensive threat without giving them Fighter or Barb advantages.

Using light damage seems to be a similar idea, because as you pointed out it is hard to resist. The more I think about it though, it should be a holy light and at lvl 20 no DR should be able to resist a pure pali.

[Nascoe]

Increasing DR bypassing (Alignment, Metaline, Morphic) seems like the best way to enhance already established abilities. I like your suggestions quoted above, but would go further and add a capstone that bypasses all DR to make a pure Pali more of an offensive threat without giving them Fighter or Barb advantages.

Using light damage seems to be a similar idea, because as you pointed out it is hard to resist. The more I think about it though, it should be a holy light and at lvl 20 no DR should be able to resist a pure pali.

Sure, DR bypassing is nice (can't you get most of it from equipment though?), but what if a Paladin got some kind of debuff aura to mobs, that would work against reds at high lvl and against purples (ofc. including epics, as you know that is what they will want to be hitting) with a capstone or something? Is this a crazy idea? It might make it interesting to get that capstone or at least a VERY deep splash. Alternatively it could be a tier 5 enhancement maybe?

[viktorserak]

Some thoughts:

~ If we accept the argument that buffing something underpowered is, by proxy, nerfing something else then we will never get anything done. Therefore I can't give credence to the argument that Evasion is being nerfed "by proxy" of making armor competitive. By doing so we essentially kill any ability to make positive change.

~ We don't want to tie Paladins to sword and shield. Paladin buffs should be good regardless of the weapon style. We might not specifically try to support two weapon paladins, we don't want changes that punish that combo either.

~ We understand the purist argument to keep the base class close to pen and paper and use enhancements to buff Paladins. I will bring that viewpoint up with the team. The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.

Sev~

I completely support your actions that are trying to make Heavy and medium armor relevant.

Right now, evasion is simply no brainer. I build every single of my characters with evasion implemented and would feel naked without it. Buffing armor will not nerf evasion, it will add posibilities.

while purists may have a point there or there, when you make the final decision, make sure about one thing: That it is enjoyable and fun an well thought. Cause that emans more than PnP relevant.

[grandeibra]

So, when a new expansion comes out, you should expect to change your gear. This is a good thing. Really! It is!

When the big expansion comes out and you don't need to change your gear, it usually means that it was a pretty lousy expansion and they were more likely just filling in gaps instead of actually expanding the game.

I guess if you've only played DDO, this might be a relatively new thing. I know that for the first 5 years of the game, the best stuff was greensteel and characters would only play the shroud. Again, and again , and . . . However, I'm pretty sure this almost killed the game.Well some may not have played a lot of other MMOs but from you post it looks like you haven't played DDO, or understood where the previous poster was coming from. For the first two years greensteel didn't exist. When they appeared they were only (often situationally) best for a year. After, with epics, GS turned into spot-savers, great for leveling, very good at end-game but nowhere near the very best. Yes people ran shroud a lot though for obvious reasons. But nowhere near the grinding they do now for Fire Peak/Wyrm imho.

As fior powercreep, old loot being extinct etc. To me (not saying I'm objectively correct, just subjective opinion) the strategy of DDO of NOT outdating old loot was what kept many longtime players interested. And if new loot was better the difference was small, and the effort to get them fairly high. Now with stuff like deadly outdating old hard-to-come-by uberloot AND being purchasable cheap on the regular AH, the fun of loot has dropped significantly.

I know many other games went new Monty Haul with each new update, and that is fine if people want that. That doesn't mean that is THE ONLY way to run a successful MMO.

[Kalevor]

I am, and have always been, a paladin fan. I've posted numerous threads, and given thousands upon thousands of words worth of feedback and suggestions regarding paladins, and buffing them.

So when I say that this looks fairly terrible, please understand that it is coming from someone who had desperately wanted paladins to get some love and improvements.

Armor of Light is okay. Not amazing, but okay.

Weapon of Light is terrible. The damage is fairly minor, and doesn't really address the paladin's problems very well.

They're still feat-starved, and this past year has seen an increase in the number of worthwhile feats.
Their DPS suffers when compared to that of the other martial classes, and while +2d6 or +4d6 is nice (and the burst), it's not all that compelling when you look at how much DPS relies on crit damage (meaning things that can be multiplied). Plus, this is fairly boring.
There are other problems, but I'm not going to get into them right now.


Why light damage, which, while it's hard to resist, doesn't do anything else. I know the devs seem to like the idea of keeping the Weapons of Good ability in the capstone, but with artificer weapon buffs, augment slots, and a few epic abilities all conveying the same bonus (treating your weapons as good for the purposes of bypassing DR), this doesn't hold the allure that other capstones do. Meanwhile, we have the essentially dead spell, Holy Weapon, for paladins at level 4, which hasn't been looked at in ages. Why dead? Because a +5 Holy Burst weapon that bypasses a few metal types of DR just doesn't stack up well against the loot inflation that has occurred in the game since the spell was released.

Some suggestions:

Add a 2nd level paladin spell that works like an artificer personal weapon enchantment buff to allow your weapons to be treated as Good aligned, and another that can treat them as Law aligned.
Change Holy Sword to be a special personal weapon enchantment buff that grants your weapon Holy Burst, and treats it as the same metal types as the spell does now.
Keep some of the Weapons of Light in there (but not all of it).
Rethink Divine Might, and how it doesn't stack with some things, and isn't as rewarding as the old version was, unless you are using it with tactical feats, which you probably aren't, since Paladins have no other way to boost them (and your boost to Str via Cha isn't usually as significant a boost to these abilities as the combined features of the fighter, barbarian, or monk).
Gut the enhancement trees, discarding the useless enhancements, improving the mediocre ones, and polishing the better ones.
Give us some real capstones.
Change Smite Evil (either base, or via enhancements) to do more--debuff, control, AoE, have a lingering effect, something--to counter the Swing>lag>miss>wasted attempt we see so often, and the limited utility of a severely limited use burst DPS ability.
Improved the paladin's "leader" abilities (healing, party buffs, aura) so that having a paladin along is a boon to the whole party beyond just a moderate bonus to their saving throws if they're stapled to his ass.
Been so long since I've gone over this stuff that I don't recall all of the ideas I had had, nor the good ideas other people had contributed.

NO.

The reason paladins are viewed as a 2-level dip is because they don't offer anything more significant than what can be obtained with other classes. To remedy this, improved the tier 5 enhancements, the level 6-20 core enhancements (especially the capstones), add more worthwhile spells to all of their spell levels, and revamp some of the junky ones they have currently.

No one is going to stick with paladin for Weapons/Armor of Light. Even combined, they just aren't as potent or significant as what you can get from a dip in other classes.

The /2 paladin splash, while somewhat ubiquitous, is not the problem. The problems are that there isn't enough incentive to go beyond 2 paladin levels, and the game places too much of an emphasis on super-high saves later on, seeking, I imagine, to challenge the players with the super-high saves, and forcing the players without to modify their builds just to get close to being on the same d20. Reduce some of the save DC inflation, and make other options more attractive, and that will help far more than nerfing the splash adding a few mediocre scaling abilities.

Agreed with almost all points here... I suggest to read some of the old threat about, there are some great ideas that some people write well and spend the time to do it... I think it is unfair to base a major change in the class when so many brainstorming sessions were carried out before.


https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/435821-How-to-fix-Paladins?highlight=how+to+fix+paladin

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/354572-Ideas-to-Fix-Help-Pallys?highlight=how+to+fix+paladin

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/360989-How-to-fix-Paladins?highlight=how+to+fix+paladin

My search-fu is weak, i can't remember more... anyone can post them?


That on is regarding armor but being the same dev, i guess it can be pointed here:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/435823-The-Ecology-of-Armor?highlight=history+armor

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/443023-Are-YOU-happy-with-the-current-AC-PRR-Evasion-system?highlight=change+paladin




I completely support your actions that are trying to make Heavy and medium armor relevant.

Right now, evasion is simply no brainer. I build every single of my characters with evasion implemented and would feel naked without it. Buffing armor will not nerf evasion, it will add posibilities.

while purists may have a point there or there, when you make the final decision, make sure about one thing: That it is enjoyable and fun an well thought. Cause that emans more than PnP relevant.

Agreed. If you buff armor you nerf evasion? nonsense

[grandeibra]

Right now, evasion is simply no brainer. I build every single of my characters with evasion implemented and would feel naked without it. Buffing armor will not nerf evasion, it will add posibilities.

while purists may have a point there or there, when you make the final decision, make sure about one thing: That it is enjoyable and fun an well thought. Cause that emans more than PnP relevant.
Agreed. If you buff armor you nerf evasion? nonsense Of course you nerf evasion if you make other items/feats/EDs etc do similar stuff. Saying the opposite is nonsense. That doesn't mean nerfing evasion is a bad thing (or a good thing). Nerf by proxy is a mainstay of MMOs. Often a pretty good solution, sometimes not.

And wow saying evasion is a no-brainer made me chuckle. To each their own but since I focus on EE doing evasion unless I have 55+ or better yet 70+ reflex saves is pointless. For me!. I got it on one of my five toons. Don't miss it on the others and even if I had taken it I would still fail most of the time and gain no benefit :)

[janave]

People play characters to the high levels if they are having fun with it, sadly i dont think any defense or armor change is going to help the Paladin class.

Why?

Speed.

With all the aoe instant kills, massive aoe dps, aoe cc, quicken heals - the game is very much tinkered toward classes that can be played fast.
There is no point standing face to face meleeing down 10k hps, when you can just debuff-> instakill -> move to the next group.

If you want paladins to be played, you need to make them able to keep up with the rest of the party.

I am still voting for tweaking content vs ceirtain OP abilities, to be less OP. But never ever I seen developer feedback on this idea. I think it is the actual solution, designing meaningful encounters where everyone feels like contributing to a party based game.

The greatest buffs/nerfs are there in the dungeon challenges, adjust them, and see players playing all sorts of characters to combine efforts to beat the encounters.

[CeltEireson]

Sure, DR bypassing is nice (can't you get most of it from equipment though?), but what if a Paladin got some kind of debuff aura to mobs, that would work against reds at high lvl and against purples (ofc. including epics, as you know that is what they will want to be hitting) with a capstone or something? Is this a crazy idea? It might make it interesting to get that capstone or at least a VERY deep splash. Alternatively it could be a tier 5 enhancement maybe?

Given that the current end game weapons are Thunderforged ones which already bypass all metal DRs giving this ability to paladins would seem to be a minor aid at best, although obviously once the cap hits 30 their may be better dps weapons floating around that don't have DR bypass properties.

Debuff aura sounds interesting, scale it with level, possible enhancement to improve its effect. Something along the lines of lesser version of curse, and weaken etc. Although it would have to be toggleable or at least no cause aggro - otherwise paladin may end up drawing in more mobs than he can handle if he's not playing the tank.

Still think the light damage should be changed to good damage which benefits from positive spellpower which is much more useful to a paladin. Add in an actual burst on critical to individual mobs at high levels (even level 20) that's a multiple of the base damage based on weapon stats so 6d6 on a 2x weapon, 9d6 on a 3x etc Probably not enough on its own to make them competitive but it depends on how spellpower effects it.

And to reiterate, don't think the changes to divine grace should be made unless some rebalancing of high level saves is made - so that in effect theres no overall difference to their chance to save i.e. if verage build loses 4 to their saves then save dcs go down 4. I have no problem with high dex characters having high reflex saves and evading almost all the time - one because it is just one save as opposed to paladin splashes giving substantial improvements to all saves (although currently reflex save is most important), two it needs a fair investment in dex or even being a dex based character which in itself is a penalty as str is much more easily boosted and therefore provides much better dps currently, and three - its a class feature, traditional dex based characters are supposed to have the best reflex saves.

[CeltEireson]

Oh and one of the few advantages paladins had was their ability to self heal which scaled with level to a degree. Unfortunately the introduction of various methods for self healing which is now almost obligatory took away from that.

[bloodnose13]

--------------------------------
~ At 7th level the Paladin gets the Armor of Light ability. The Paladin gains 25 temporary hit points (non-stacking) each time they use Smite Evil, Lay on Hands, Cure Disease or Turn Undead. This ability provides 50 temporary hit points at 13th level, and 75 temporary hit points at 19th level.

this seems pointless, i would like to see something else instead, like for example on smite a 1d4 stacks of physical vulnerability, caps at 20% same as all other things that give vulnerability but physical damage only this time, it would make paladins want to smite again. it would not only help paladins with their dps but also benefit the group running with them.

also smite charges get used too fast, so maybe something like 33% chance for getting a smite charge back on non crit smite, 66% on critical, 150% on natural 20 smite (150% would mean that you get 1 smite and get 50% chance for another) it would be something that would be way more useful than some temporary hp.
------------------------------------

~ The Paladin gains Weapon of Light starting at 8th level and increasing at 11th, 14th, 17th and 20th.

At 8th level the Paladin gains Weapon of Light. While this toggle is activated each weapon attack they make also cause 1d6 of Light damage. This damage is increased to 2d6 for two handed weapons and for shield bash attacks.

At 11th level the Weapon of Light damage bursts in a 10’ radius when the Paladin rolls a 20 on an attack roll with a weapon.

At 14th level the Weapon of Light increases to 2d6, or 4d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.

At 17th level the damage of a Weapon of Light burst (when you roll a 20) is doubled.

At 20th level the Aura of Light increases to 3d6, or 6d6 with a two handed weapon or a shield bash.

this is prettygood if it will be combined with some PrE damage, but i think it would be great if it had extra benefits, something like lvl 11 makes held weapons good aligned, lvl 14 makes held weapon have +2 to crit chance and crit multiplier ON A SMITE only, lvl 17 adds some kind of holy property to weapon, lvl 20? maybe some chance for a massive blast of damage on a smite, like ...... hmmm........ a golden lightning strike, that does 10d10 light, good and sonic damage, idk its just an example of the way of thinking about this.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We are also considering a controversial change as well:
Divine Grace is now limited to 2 + (3 x Paladin Level) for the total Charisma bonuses it will add to saving throws.

We want good saving throws to be a class feature of Paladins and a reason to go to higher level in the class. At the same time we don't want players to feel that there is no reason to increase your Paladin level beyond two or three. This change will provide an excellent +8 to all saving throws for a two level splash into Paladin and allow that saving throw bonus to increase as the Paladin levels.

now this i have trouble with understanding correctly, at least i think i do, +8 to saves is major boost, for just two levels, when d20 dice is used...

most paladins have trouble with going over 30 charisma before epic levels, and epic levels dont change that much, unless paladin is strictly built for charisma, this would mean that most paladins would gain not much more than a 2 lvl splash in. unless its not useing charisma mod anymore and it gives +62 to all saves at lvl 20.................

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one more thing i think could or shoudl be done, is shield mastery feat, after seeing how much diffrence single weapon fighting 30% does , i think that shield users could use some of that too, not that much as 30% maybe a 10-15% butit would raise hit rate a bit, also i would sugest changeing improved shield bash feat to sometihng like this (20%+character level) that would make shield bash base to be 40% at lvl 20, with shield that boosts bashes it would go to 60%, and that would make a big diffrence.

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almsot forgot about last but pretty important thing, tower shield proficiency, some of the prestiges in other classes give proficiencies, i think that gives a sufficient reason for paladin to get a tower proficiency in defender tree at least

[Arlathen]

~ We understand the purist argument to keep the base class close to pen and paper and use enhancements to buff Paladins. I will bring that viewpoint up with the team. The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.Sev~

Well, this is where abilities with DCs come into play.

Put a High powered ability in at Tier 5, and its likely to be attractive to many multi-class builds. Put a High Powered ability in at Tier 5 that uses actual Class levels as part of the DC, and boom, instant attraction being pure or mainly pure.

Rogue Assassinate ability is an absolute prime example of this. The suggested 'Celestial Justicar' tree I designed that's on the PC forums had great examples of this as well.

[Ayseifn]

Ok, ummm,. . . Wow. Sheeessh.

You must have seriously never played an online game other than DDO in your entire life. You really, really sound clueless.

Usually when a new expansion comes out in an MMO, all your previous gear is instantly worthless. As in vendor trash. You should never get attached to your gear in an MMO, because it will always change. So, when a new expansion comes out, you should expect to change your gear. This is a good thing. Really! It is!




DDO has been pretty decent until recently with gear progression, if you get some nice piece of loot it'd generally still be useful after a cap increase and if not still a sweet twink item for TRing. This is one of the things I like about the game, do 80 ADQs for a torc and it'd still be good for years to come, not so much anymore though.

You also missed the main thrust of his argument, heavy armour doesn't require much of an investment at all to reap huge benefits under this system and the heavy shield change is a slap in the face. Heavy shields don't have a dodge cap so I really don't get why they'd need to both block evasion and have a MRR multiplier that's so high. Nerf the heavy shield MRR multiplier to something much smaller but leave in evasion and things would be much better for everyone. If done well Cleric/FvS would need to take a Fighter level or burn a feat for tower shields if they wanted that massive MRR same with arcane casters, they're the classes right now that lose nothing equipping a shield and the game would probably go back to FvS being the best tanks again if things were so easy.

[RKP]

If it is unfair for paladin splashes to have the full save bonus from divine grace then it is also unfair for monk splashes to have the full AC bonus from wisdom. Monk splashes should also be limited to +8 to AC from wisdom for the same reason. To be fair you need to give the clonks reason to rage quit also!

[Irongutz2000]

If it is unfair for paladin splashes to have the full save bonus from divine grace then it is also unfair for monk splashes to have the full AC bonus from wisdom. Monk splashes should also be limited to +8 to AC from wisdom for the same reason. To be fair you need to give the clonks reason to rage quit also!

Because AC is meaningless in EE's?

And please change smites to adrenalines from FOTW that is all

[Kalevor]

You also missed the main thrust of his argument, heavy armour doesn't require much of an investment at all to reap huge benefits under this system and the heavy shield change is a slap in the face. Heavy shields don't have a dodge cap so I really don't get why they'd need to both block evasion and have a MRR multiplier that's so high. Nerf the heavy shield MRR multiplier to something much smaller but leave in evasion and things would be much better for everyone. If done well Cleric/FvS would need to take a Fighter level or burn a feat for tower shields if they wanted that massive MRR same with arcane casters, they're the classes right now that lose nothing equipping a shield and the game would probably go back to FvS being the best tanks again if things were so easy.

I really don't understant your point... There is no investment to wear a heavy armor or a shield? Really? Cap max DEX bonus and lose the possibility of Evasion is not enough loss? Then why is everybody running in pajamas??? There is NOT one single EE build wearing heavy armor and shield. Why?

1- No evasion means take high amounts of AoE damage. Evasion makes the life a lot more easy in EE.

2- Dex cap = dodge cap ---> if you want this to round 10-15 you need to make a HEAVY INVESTMENT in enhacement points.

3- Evasion is only 1 feat + high saves. Right now is really easy... split 2 monk/pally/rogue and its done... Staying pure rarely is better than split so...

4- Damage mitigation is weaker than avoidance (dodge). Why? dodge is cumulative with other sources of avoidance to make it even higher... PRR is caped ... You can say... well, you can have the 2. But do some math or try some programs that emulate this and you'll see that is better to focuse in dodge and take PRR as u can because the other way is weaker.

5- In orther to have high Ac you need to give up a lot of DPS. Enhacement and gear wise.

6- High AC is near useless

7- Heavy armor for warforge is 1 feat too...

In summary, wear heavy armor and shield DOES require an investment of resources equal or higher than evasion, so why don't make it JUST AS USEFUL. What's wrong with more options??

[MangLord]

I feel like every time we call for better capstones it falls on deaf ears, but I'll try again.

A nice paladin capstone would be +2 str/con/cha, Heal replacing the 4th level cure spell, and possibly a blanket holy burst effect for any equipped weapon and shield. That is something that would be helpful for epic levels. It's not OP at all for an epic level tank.

Weapons of good is something a paladin should get at level 12 or even 8. I don't know if it was ever great, but it's pretty pathetic now.

Smite Evil needs to be improved. As a DPS burst, it falls flat even at heroic levels.

Holy Weapons spell needs to be similar to arty Deadly Weapons, applying the holy burst and metalline effect to whatever equipped weapons the paladin wants to use. A +5 holy burst sword isn't very good past level 14. I used that spell once, then threw the rest of the sword components away. Not to mention that they don't stack and clog up inventory.

Unless a paladin can gain 10d6 or more light damage per hit at epic levels, a couple d6 worth of extra damage isn't going to mean anything. Doubling the light damage for THF only makes SnB even less relevant than it is now. Making the vorpal light AOE something spectacular (800-1200 at least past level 20. Rolling 20s are pretty rare when using SnB.) would be good if you're insistent on 4d6 or whatever, but it would have to be substantial for a paladin looking to hold aggro.

[toapat]

I really don't understant your point... There is no investment to wear a heavy armor or a shield? Really? Cap max DEX bonus and lose the possibility of Evasion is not enough loss? Then why is everybody running in pajamas??? There is NOT one single EE build wearing heavy armor and shield. Why?

The changes in the defense rework thread make fullplate + Tower shield superior to defense stacking with evasion, because you instantly drop to 40% damage taken on a failed save vs an Outfit's 50%. The problem there is that there is virtually no opportunity cost in the build as compared to evasion which has an opportunity cost for a non-monk

[maddong]

Paladins need unlimited smites (on cool down similar to fvs... Is smite evil better than fvs smite/touch of death/stunning fist... No, so don't limit it) and swf with shields (give them dps when using a shield).

[Qhualor]

Paladins need unlimited smites (on cool down similar to fvs... Is smite evil better than fvs smite/touch of death/stunning fist... No, so don't limit it) and swf with shields (give them dps when using a shield).

smites regenerate and you can spend points to increase the number.

[Ayseifn]

I really don't understant your point... There is no investment to wear a heavy armor or a shield? Really? Cap max DEX bonus and lose the possibility of Evasion is not enough loss? Then why is everybody running in pajamas??? There is NOT one single EE build wearing heavy armor and shield. Why?
Because heavy armour is terrible right now and offers nothing, these will be some big changes.



1- No evasion means take high amounts of AoE damage. Evasion makes the life a lot more easy in EE.

2- Dex cap = dodge cap ---> if you want this to round 10-15 you need to make a HEAVY INVESTMENT in enhacement points.

3- Evasion is only 1 feat + high saves. Right now is really easy... split 2 monk/pally/rogue and its done... Staying pure rarely is better than split so...

4- Damage mitigation is weaker than avoidance (dodge). Why? dodge is cumulative with other sources of avoidance to make it even higher... PRR is caped ... You can say... well, you can have the 2. But do some math or try some programs that emulate this and you'll see that is better to focuse in dodge and take PRR as u can because the other way is weaker.

5- In orther to have high Ac you need to give up a lot of DPS. Enhacement and gear wise.

6- High AC is near useless

7- Heavy armor for warforge is 1 feat too...

In summary, wear heavy armor and shield DOES require an investment of resources equal or higher than evasion, so why don't make it JUST AS USEFUL. What's wrong with more options??
1- Yes evasion right now is great because there is no viable alternatives, that will change. The PRR equation scales up better so you will actually see a difference when getting higher values(buff to armour wearers) and MRR will double the effectiveness of it vs magic(which is a much bigger list of things than evasion covers) if wearing a heavy/tower shield. A shield, not including buckler is a big inconvenience to melees, impossible for some ranged and changes almost nothing on a caster. They're actually pretty great on casters.

2- You can also you medium armour, no MRR cap and something like the med shadowscale is 8 MDB to start off with at the cost of 15 PRR. Add an aug for +2 and ship buff for 2 more and you're at 12 for almost no cost.

3- Mostly worried that dumping all saves will not only be an ok thing to do but better than investing in them. Depending on you split getting 70+ saves is hard and takes up gear slots for cha, dex, con and possibly wisdom as well as superior parrying, resistance, past lives and also the initial stat spread and tomes. FoM and DW cover most bad things, shield blocking(no serious DPS loss on a caster) blocks a lot more.

4- True which is why I'm hoping that the base MDB of armours in general goes back up to 20/10/5 or whatever it was for light/med/heavy. PRR will also work on more things though because MRR will be a thing.

7- This really needs to change.

[Kalevor]

The changes in the defense rework thread make fullplate + Tower shield superior to defense stacking with evasion, because you instantly drop to 40% damage taken on a failed save vs an Outfit's 50%. The problem there is that there is virtually no opportunity cost in the build as compared to evasion which has an opportunity cost for a non-monk

I don't think so, because with evasion you can avoid completely the damage, and if you have high saves (divine grace) it's almost all the time. With armor + shield you always eat damage, more or less but you eat ALWAYS.

[Kalevor]

Because heavy armour is terrible right now and offers nothing, these will be some big changes.


1- Yes evasion right now is great because there is no viable alternatives, that will change. The PRR equation scales up better so you will actually see a difference when getting higher values(buff to armour wearers) and MRR will double the effectiveness of it vs magic(which is a much bigger list of things than evasion covers) if wearing a heavy/tower shield. A shield, not including buckler is a big inconvenience to melees, impossible for some ranged and changes almost nothing on a caster. They're actually pretty great on casters.

2- You can also you medium armour, no MRR cap and something like the med shadowscale is 8 MDB to start off with at the cost of 15 PRR. Add an aug for +2 and ship buff for 2 more and you're at 12 for almost no cost.

3- Mostly worried that dumping all saves will not only be an ok thing to do but better than investing in them. Depending on you split getting 70+ saves is hard and takes up gear slots for cha, dex, con and possibly wisdom as well as superior parrying, resistance, past lives and also the initial stat spread and tomes. FoM and DW cover most bad things, shield blocking(no serious DPS loss on a caster) blocks a lot more.

4- True which is why I'm hoping that the base MDB of armours in general goes back up to 20/10/5 or whatever it was for light/med/heavy. PRR will also work on more things though because MRR will be a thing.

7- This really needs to change.

I think that the changes in armor and mitigation are in the right way to balance characters with pajama and characters with amor/shield. I still think that there is an investement similar in both sides that need to be rewarded in similar way.

[KoboldKiller]

Just my two cents but a lot of posters are saying the light damage isn't enough.

Unless the game has changed I have spent years watching people try to squeeze 5-6 more points of damage out of their builds so why is this additional damage not enough?

Maybe it's a matter of dps vs static damage that I'm missing.

[Qhualor]

Just my two cents but a lot of posters are saying the light damage isn't enough.

Unless the game has changed I have spent years watching people try to squeeze 5-6 more points of damage out of their builds so why is this additional damage not enough?

Maybe it's a matter of dps vs static damage that I'm missing.

I agree. whenever I loot stuff like Ruby of Superior Fire (1-8 points fire damage), they are sold within an hour or so. to me, that kind of damage is weak for level 20, but some people must be ok with it.

[RKP]

If I remember correctly when DDO first opened it used the "favored class" mechanic from pnp dnd 3.5, the purpose of which was (and still is) to prevent excessive multi-classing and cherry picking. The dropping of this mechanic opened the door to cherry picking splashes of paladin and rogue (later monk) for the non-humans races. So now Turbine is closing the door they opened themselves? I find that extremely annoying and hypocritical.


Why not go back to the favored class mechanic! It will tick off a lot of people but I will take xp penalties over nerfing any day. I say we spread the pain around!

[sephiroth1084]

A thread I posted months ago in which I graded the paladin's enhancements and made some suggestions for improvement: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/429147-DEVS-A-review-of-the-paladin-enhancements-from-u19-and-suggestions-for-improvement


Increasing DR bypassing (Alignment, Metaline, Morphic) seems like the best way to enhance already established abilities. I like your suggestions quoted above, but would go further and add a capstone that bypasses all DR to make a pure Pali more of an offensive threat without giving them Fighter or Barb advantages.

Using light damage seems to be a similar idea, because as you pointed out it is hard to resist. The more I think about it though, it should be a holy light and at lvl 20 no DR should be able to resist a pure pali.Simply bypassing DR isn't sufficient, since there are so many ways to do so for everyone, and many of those come incidentally on other things you want anyway (weapons, enhancements, epic abilities).


Oh and one of the few advantages paladins had was their ability to self heal which scaled with level to a degree. Unfortunately the introduction of various methods for self healing which is now almost obligatory took away from that.I think the Defender capstone can be added to, rather than replaced. Give it +2 Con, Mettle (Evasion for Fort and Will spells that have effects even if you pass the save), and a bonus to AC and PRR. Having the capstone grant the Heal spell as a 4th level spell is a great idea! The PrE already has a Core enhancement that grants Raise, Rez, and True Rez, so this fits with an established function of the PrE. Add some healing amp.

For KotC, change the damage part of the capstone to +1d6 good and +1d6 lawful, and +2d6 light vs. especially bad targets (undead, evil outsiders). Add +2 Str, decrease the regeneration time of Smite Evil by 50% (or more), and add a debuff to smite evil...maybe have it hit for 2dX stacks of Vulnerability. Or reduce monster PRR/AC/saves/Dodge/Fortification. Add some healing amp.

A good point brought up by someone else (that has been discussed ever since the enhancement pass), is that the cleric/favored soul Smite ability, while weaker than Smite Evil in terms of damage, is both unlimited, and does a lot more than just deal damage, and is in some ways far more useful. They get to grant/increase Vulnerability, which can account for much more damage than the paladin's smite evil if a whole group (especially a raid group) is beating down on one enemy), and they get an effective AoE heal ability.

Let's look at what paladins do/are supposed to do, and where they fall short:

a "front line" martial class -- they have full BAB, martial weapon proficiency, heavy armor and (non-tower) shield proficiency, a d10 hit die, and some damage abilities, but in DDO a primary combatant needs a lot more than this package to be effective.
a secondary healer -- they have a spell list with some Cure spells on it, and Lay On Hands; LOH is pretty good, but it isn't enough for anything but emergency party healing, and isn't quite enough for the paladin to rely on it as their primary method of healing through a whole quest.
a "leader" -- they have an aura that buffs the party, as well as a few spells that do the same, but aside from the bonus to saves from the aura, and Death Ward in parties without someone else that can cast it, no one cares about the rest of the paladin's aura benefits or their buffs.
a staunch opponent of evil -- smite evil is there, but even in pen & paper D&D, where monster stats aren't so outrageously inflated, smite is a fairly weak ability until you get to high levels and can go "nova" on a single big bad guy.
an incredibly tough, resilient, and self-sufficient character -- they have their healing abilities, immunities, spells that grant further immunities or protections, fantastic saves, and heavy armor, but in DDO DPS is king, since we have so many ways to gain a measure of self-sufficiency, and some of those measures seriously out-class the paladin's core abilities (hello Rejuvenation Cocoon); since, regardless of our defensive potential, if we don't exceed a certain bar of effectiveness in terms of offensive, we're going to end up losing (when solo, not necessarily when grouped, but a possibility).


Paladins need more DPS, which is what the developers were looking to do with Weapons of Light, but that doesn't go quite far enough, and still ignores all of the abilities the paladin already has that are under-performing.

Paladins need slightly better (self-) healing, and for their innate healing to be worth something still at end game where everyone that can't already heal themselves is running around with Cocoon, which is mostly better than LOH. Adding a healing effect to Smite Evil could be nice. Alternatives could include adding an AoE burst healing effect On-being-hit/crit, or granting paladins the Heal spell either as an SLA or as a 4th level spell. Include some healing amp in the paladin class, besides its enhancements.

Improve the paladin's aura with things everyone cares about: PRR, MRR, healing amp, offensive boosts (damage, attack, double-strike), and expand its size.

Improve the paladin's spell selection--right now, there is very little of value at level 2 (Resist Energy is nice, but we have many ways to gain Resists at this point, and Angel Skin's DR is both insignificant in epic levels and overridden by the DR on many armors a paladin would want to wear), and level 3 (Magic Circle Against Evil, which is a common buff from clerics, favored souls, wizards, and some sorcerers, and Prayer, which isn't that useful). There are some good spells at 4, but for most paladins they really just amount to Zeal and Cure Serious Wounds unless you desperately need Death Ward. The addition of the Raise Dead spells is nice, but they mostly just allow paladins to use scrolls without requiring UMD for them. There isn't enough in the level 3 and 4 spells, in particular, to make going to 19 or 20 paladin worthwhile (that's when you get a 3rd, then 4th spell slot for those spell levels). My Holy Sword idea would help. Heal would help. Mass Cure X wounds would possibly help. Other paladin spells being introduced from the Spell Compendium and Book of Exalted Deeds would help.

Give Smite Evil a duration, or debuff riders. Give them something like Weapons of Light, but not just a few d6 in extra damage. Regenerate Smite Evil faster. Improve Divine Might.

Paladin's saves are already an enormous boon (so big, in fact, that a lot of people splash paladin just for that), but there's not enough reason to take more paladin.

Look at the way Paizo worked on the paladin in Pathfinder: smite evil becomes a buff throughout an encounter against a single chosen foe, granting more damage and a bonus to hit, as well as a bonus to AC (and there are variants that do things like protect the rest of the party from damage instead of provide extra damage for the paladin). They gain some additional aura benefits (Charm and Compulsion in addition to Fear, etc...), including an aura ability that grants their whole party the benefits of their Smite Evil ability for a time. Lay On Hands gains status removing rider effects. And they gain a bunch of very useful spells at all spell levels.

Acknowledge that paladins are hurting for feats and either give them some bonus feats, grant them some feats as bonuses, or include the effects of some feats in their enhancements. At this stage, if you want to be S&B, not having a tower shield is a significant detriment, for example.

One thing that really galls me about the game as it stands now, from a paladin's perspective, is that if you want to have your paladin abilities be worthwhile in epic content you must be in Unyielding Sentinel for Endless Smiting and Lay On Hands and Light the Dark. It is particularly vexing that the paladin has to wait until epic levels before they can regenerate their Lay On Hands. Meanwhile, the other epic destinies do much less in terms of improving or working with existing class abilities, and much more of building on the themes and capabilities of the heroic classes. For example, Fury of the Wild doesn't do anything directly for a barbarian's rage (or Uncanny Dodge), but it has some abilities that confer extra benefits while raging, and has abilities that are 'in theme' for barbarians. Still, the barbarian can go to Legendary Dreadnaught and they won't feel like their heroic abilities aren't performing up to epic levels due to not being in Fury.

[HatsuharuZ]

smites regenerate and you can spend points to increase the number.

Personally, I'd rather have unlimited uses with a set cooldown, and spend points to increase the power and decrease the cooldown.

[toapat]

smites regenerate and you can spend points to increase the number.

Best case scenario you have 12 smites that take 63 second to recharge in serial. 1 of those will be dedicated to maintaining Intolerant Blows.

if all smites recharged in Parallel then the number would not be restricting, because i think the current CD is 4 seconds. Boosted to 6 seconds then a paladin of 10th level with all enhancements and the ED will have at least one smite available at all times.


Just my two cents but a lot of posters are saying the light damage isn't enough.

Unless the game has changed I have spent years watching people try to squeeze 5-6 more points of damage out of their builds so why is this additional damage not enough?

Maybe it's a matter of dps vs static damage that I'm missing.

Its not that more damage =/= Better, its that Paladin is Burried under the same 50' of **** that the Oakland Athletics are in Moneyball. That little boost they get? its not competitive to anyone else. My paladin at lvl 23 with dual balizardes deals the same damage as my 16th level range who has 2 crappy scimitars i got off the AH. Paladin just falls behind everyone in damage

[Silverleafeon]

Some thoughts:

~ If we accept the argument that buffing something underpowered is, by proxy, nerfing something else then we will never get anything done. Therefore I can't give credence to the argument that Evasion is being nerfed "by proxy" of making armor competitive. By doing so we essentially kill any ability to make positive change.
+1


~ We don't want to tie Paladins to sword and shield. Paladin buffs should be good regardless of the weapon style. We might not specifically try to support two weapon paladins, we don't want changes that punish that combo either.
Thank you that is a step in the right direction.

I still think that shield users lack a dps feat line, however one must be careful that shield users are not equal in
dps to non shield users, else shield usage with the resulting AC/PPR bonuses would be the only class played.

Can we consider a small threat generation toggles to be included with improved shield mastery?
Making the lesser dps overcome without unbalancing things?



~ We understand the purist argument to keep the base class close to pen and paper and use enhancements to buff Paladins. I will bring that viewpoint up with the team. The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.

Sev~

Core pen and paper has many variations such as the spell point system found in unearthed arcana.
DDO should enliven the spirit of the D&D not stick perfectly to the letter of D&D.
There are many editions and many optional books.

It is possible using all the books in D&D 3rd edtion to create a god out of a 4th level (or lower toon).
One must be a kobold and use certain books and worship a certain god, but it has been written up
in detail on the WotC forums.

[Cardoor]

...

Simply bypassing DR isn't sufficient, since there are so many ways to do so for everyone, and many of those come incidentally on other things you want anyway (weapons, enhancements, epic abilities).

...


Sure, DR bypassing is nice (can't you get most of it from equipment though?), but what if a Paladin got some kind of debuff aura to mobs, that would work against reds at high lvl and against purples (ofc. including epics, as you know that is what they will want to be hitting) with a capstone or something? Is this a crazy idea? It might make it interesting to get that capstone or at least a VERY deep splash. Alternatively it could be a tier 5 enhancement maybe?

There might be some crystal combos I am not aware of, but yes the right equipment can break all other DR. Keep in mind that you are currently juggling equipment and in mixed mobs might not be able to break it all.

Coupled with the proposed light damage, I think DR bypassing would be sufficient (particularly for cleavers) for beefing up Pali offensive capability.

I am not opposed to a debuff aura. An aura that makes evil vulnerable to divine light could be quite powerful.


...
One thing that really galls me about the game as it stands now, from a paladin's perspective, is that if you want to have your paladin abilities be worthwhile in epic content you must be in Unyielding Sentinel for Endless Smiting and Lay On Hands and Light the Dark. It is particularly vexing that the paladin has to wait until epic levels before they can regenerate their Lay On Hands. Meanwhile, the other epic destinies do much less in terms of improving or working with existing class abilities, and much more of building on the themes and capabilities of the heroic classes. For example, Fury of the Wild doesn't do anything directly for a barbarian's rage (or Uncanny Dodge), but it has some abilities that confer extra benefits while raging, and has abilities that are 'in theme' for barbarians. Still, the barbarian can go to Legendary Dreadnaught and they won't feel like their heroic abilities aren't performing up to epic levels due to not being in Fury.

Pali's who are not S&B have better synergy with Divine Crusader IMO. Consecrate, Strike down and Aura of Purification on a pali are not at all wasted. It takes some work to twist Endless smites and lay on hands, but at tier 2 and 3 respectively, the framework is there.

[Qhualor]

Best case scenario you have 12 smites that take 63 second to recharge in serial. 1 of those will be dedicated to maintaining Intolerant Blows.

if all smites recharged in Parallel then the number would not be restricting, because i think the current CD is 4 seconds. Boosted to 6 seconds then a paladin of 10th level with all enhancements and the ED will have at least one smite available at all times.

If anything, I would rather see smites recharge faster. What I would prefer is for Paladins to not be so reliant on them for good DPS. I don't think their current DPS sucks, but I would rather have access to other things that can boost damage like other classes can and I'm not talking twisting something in. A couple pages back I listed a few suggestions I think, if translated properly to DDO math, would be nice boosts in damage.

[Enoach]

Things I think would help make more paladins worth while.

Add Additional spells (some change ups to translate to DDO)

First Level
Endure Elements: Adds Divine elemental resistance Fire/Ice (Stacks with all other sources) per caster level - 3/5/7/10 - Amounts coordinate with paladin levels for getting spells - Last 1 Minute per level

Protection from Chaos - Similar to Protection from Evil just vs Chaos

Magic Weapon: Similar to Artificer Spell

Bless Weapon: Adds Blessed to Weapon bypassing DR similar to Holy/Good adds +4 bonus To-Hit vs Evil

Second Level
Delay Poison - Triples the Timer for applying poison damage but still allowing person to make their saves - 3 Saves before a Failed save would cause damage

Shield Others: Paladin Takes half of the protected persons damage - Should Work on NPCs for defend quests

Undetectable Alignment: Used to bypass Alignment Restricted items thus not suffering negative level

Third Level
Magic Circle against Chaos: Same as Evil just vs Chaos

Magic Weapon, Greater: Same as Magic Weapon but +2 Per 4 Paladin Levels Sacred Seeker and +1 Critical Multiplier on a Vorpal


Fourth Level
Dispel Chaos: +4 AC/Saves bonus against attack by Chaotic creatures (this should stack with Protection/Magic Circle)

Dispel Evil: +4 AC/Saves bonus against attack by Evil creatures (this should stack with Protection/Magic Circle)

Mark of Justice: No Save Bestow Curse (SR should still apply) Should have a 60 second cool down minimum

------------------
Note: For All weapon buffs listed only one should apply to a weapon at a time

------------------
Changes to Existing Spells

4th Level Holy Sword: Adds +5 Divine Bonus to Current Weapon, Adds Holy, Silver/Cold Iron and +2d6 damage vs Evil With Protection from Evil. Duration should be as long as the caster is holding the weapon (Self Only). Instead of creating a stand alone weapon

4th Level Zeal: Change from 10% sacred bonuses to double strike to - 10% Sacred Bonus to Attack Speed + 10% Bonus to Double Strike/Double Shot + 10% to Offhand/Shield Bash

--------------------------
Also Add in a More choices for Weapons for the Deity choices Faiths like the Sovereign Host have several weapons

[Uska]

If I remember correctly when DDO first opened it used the "favored class" mechanic from pnp dnd 3.5, the purpose of which was (and still is) to prevent excessive multi-classing and cherry picking. The dropping of this mechanic opened the door to cherry picking splashes of paladin and rogue (later monk) for the non-humans races. So now Turbine is closing the door they opened themselves? I find that extremely annoying and hypocritical.


Why not go back to the favored class mechanic! It will tick off a lot of people but I will take xp penalties over nerfing any day. I say we spread the pain around!

No ddo never used the favored class mechanic of pnp

[Airmaiden]

Let's start nerfing ALL 2 level splash build...... Move evasion to level 9 for monks and rogues........ Move disable traps so that only rogue points can be put into it. COME ON....... REALLY? ......STOP NERFING builds and spend more time adding content, items, crafting systems....... Something to get people back into DDO and not getting them frustrated and making them leave!

[losian2]

The point is obviously that rogues are incredibly OP and must be nerfed immediately. Because we have already decided that if a lot of people splash a class, that is direct proof the splash is OP.

I hope to Cthulu that the devs recognize the sarcasm here. I gave up hope that some posters will recognize their inherent logic failures.

To be fair, if *everyone* is compelled or nearly forced to splash something just for *one* single feat that is all but impossible to live without, or the benefits of which outweigh every other single option for them, then that is kinda over the top. D&D was never, ever designed, especially in the 3.0/3.5 era, to be an MMO, much less to have even a vague semblance of balance. Anyone without their head on backwards can recognize that. Realistically, evasion is incredibly powerful, period, no matter what way you slice it. That's just the way it was put together back with 3.0/3.5, but those editions weren't about min-maxing and squeezing out every crunched number, that's newer.

And that makes a huge 'what to do' for devs.. Do they leave it as is, pigeon-holing everyone into being forced to take the same couple splashes, invalidating nearly every capstone and purist option out there in many situations? Or do they step on the toes of almost everyone to try to shift it up? The third option, ideally, is best.. Add to other classes to make up the difference.. But how to do so? Do they add an evasion-like ability to *every single* class that needs it to survive? Well, at that point, why have it at all? They'd have to come up with uniquely desirable yet not-identical things for every enchancement/class build, and that's a monument of work, all because someone way back with PnP came up with evasion and, fast forward, DDO characters thrive from reflex saves mixed with it. The most crowd-pleasing option is to add to others and, really, I think I'd find it more interesting personally, but it simply isn't possible to pretend like being able to multiclass a level or two of some random, non-sense class into a build for one unbelievably good feat was ever an intended design point to begin with. Evasion is downright amazing, all the bonus feats and extra bits from other splashes are great. You shouldn't get a better payout from dedicating one level to some random off class than taking your primary classes to its highest-heights! Which capstones are supposed to achieve, but generally don't.

Multiclassing is, as much as I love it, a nightmare in the way it was implemented in 3.0/3.5. It's abusable to absurd degrees, especially in a game like DDO which cares little for the fluff or logic of a character, and only for its numbers. Just throwing my two cents out there - don't pretend like multi-classing in DDO isn't a nightmare of balance; it was never designed to be an MMO, much less balanced, in the first place. Best the devs can do is try to add more incentive to break those molds.

[Jerren]

IMO the problem in not with granted feats and they should be left alone. Personally I don't know why everyone has to complain about splash builds anyways but since they are, the problem is with the enhancement system! D&D 3.5 was a fairly balanced system before you added enhancements into the mix. The latest enhancement refresh has further encouraged splash builds and I have to believe that was the intention. If turbine decides to start messing with granted feats you are only going to cause more problems with balance and cause further angst with old PNP players!

[Seikojin]

You could always fix THAT problem first, thus giving yourself more options for addressing other issues, like here with Paladin.

Not a problem, it is to allow point spending without limiting your options.

[Seikojin]

Despite all the rage, I think the changes are a good step in the right direction. I can't wait till the Lam build with it comes up, people try their toons, and realize absolutely nothing changes.

[Full_Bleed]

I want to support the effort to make Paladins a more viable class.

I would like to see Smites mark a target so that every attack on that target by the Paladin for a particular duration would be a Smite attack. Otherwise it is a woefully underpowered ability.


And while I think the other proposed changes are reasonable I will say that I probably would not splash two levels of Paladin for only +8 to saves. As a matter of fact, the FVS/MNK/PAL character my gf is working on will now dump the Pal splash in anticipation of this change.

[Rautis]

Paladins need unlimited smites (on cool down similar to fvs... Is smite evil better than fvs smite/touch of death/stunning fist... No, so don't limit it)I've seen several players suggest this. I have to disagree as it would remove chain smiting ability Paladins now have. Chaining makes Smite Evil feel different than most other melee attacks. Choosing when to use Smite Evil and how many smites to use makes playing Paladin a bit less boring. Smite Damage, Smite regeneration rate and amount of smites could be adjusted instead and feel would still remain about similar. Smite Evil could be kind of manyshotlike burst DPS for melees.


IMO the problem in not with granted feats and they should be left alone. Personally I don't know why everyone has to complain about splash builds anyways but since they are, the problem is with the enhancement system! D&D 3.5 was a fairly balanced system before you added enhancements into the mix. The latest enhancement refresh has further encouraged splash builds and I have to believe that was the intention. If turbine decides to start messing with granted feats you are only going to cause more problems with balance and cause further angst with old PNP players!
In DDO Smite Evil bonus damage and Lay on Hands healing amount are already houseruled to be more than in PnP. Adding new non PnP feats feels very strange to me too. When it comes to Divine Grace change I think I have to agree. I first thought otherwise but after some time considering it I think the right way is to make monster Save DCs lower so it is easier to reach meaningful success rate without DG. Or give Saves some kind of AC treatment so wider range of save values means something.

[BananaHat]

~ We understand the purist argument to keep the base class close to pen and paper and use enhancements to buff Paladins. I will bring that viewpoint up with the team. The design reason we didn't keep the class pure and buff enhancement is that we would have to cram the buffs into the core abilities since you can get many tree enhancements with a relatively modest splash into Paladin.


Why don't you just add new paladin spells that replicate the new abilities? That nips the purist argument in the bud. It would level gate the ability automatically and just have the effect scale with caster level. Just make the buffs last 1 min/lvl unlike other paladin combat buffs. Let them cast it on others who are LG just like angelskin.

[toapat]

IMO the problem in not with granted feats and they should be left alone. Personally I don't know why everyone has to complain about splash builds anyways but since they are, the problem is with the enhancement system! D&D 3.5 was a fairly balanced system before you added enhancements into the mix. The latest enhancement refresh has further encouraged splash builds and I have to believe that was the intention. If turbine decides to start messing with granted feats you are only going to cause more problems with balance and cause further angst with old PNP players!

what drugs are you on and why are you on them and not happy pills.

Enhancements are not a problem remotely. overall they add less power into the game then 3.5 naturally has as well as compensating for the fact that 3.5's class design theory was absolutely horrible. Multiclassing in 3.5 was the most healthy balance wise (once you ignore the penalties for imbalanced ratios) but it didnt change the fact that most classes were entirely frontloaded except for fullcasters.


While the Divine Grace nerfs at low splashes are a necessity they cant be implemented as is because the game is too over-inflated to do so at this time.

[HatsuharuZ]

Why don't you just add new paladin spells that replicate the new abilities? That nips the purist argument in the bud. It would level gate the ability automatically and just have the effect scale with caster level. Just make the buffs last 1 min/lvl unlike other paladin combat buffs. Let them cast it on others who are LG just like angelskin.

This is a good idea.

There is less need to mess around with enhancement trees if you just add spells. Not only that, going pure will be a lot more interesting.

Edit: Paladin enhancement trees still need some work, though.

[BDog77]

Just my two cents but a lot of posters are saying the light damage isn't enough.

Unless the game has changed I have spent years watching people try to squeeze 5-6 more points of damage out of their builds so why is this additional damage not enough?

Maybe it's a matter of dps vs static damage that I'm missing.

Generally when you are trying to squeeze a few points of damage into your build, it is damage that will be multiplied when a crit happens. The weapons of light damage suggested will just be tack on damage, that won't scale, making a drop in the bucket for epic questing. Better than nothing, but still pretty meh.

[Erdrique]

I haven't caught up on all the posts in this thread but I just wanted to mention that anything that bolsters the paladin class would be a great thing to see in my eyes. I really enjoy playing paladin and my main character will eventually go back to being a paladin when I get him through his various heroic true reincarnations. The splash issue doesn't really bother me because I never multi-class, or at least haven't really invested a lot in multiclassing. A pure class should have the greatest abilities that the class offers, at least in my view point. The extra damage sounds good to me. Looking forward to seeing where this leads.

[RKP]

I purpose a new DDO log in message that reads, "Welcome to DDO where whiny players can become powerful by spamming developers who then screw with people that actually put thought and planning into their characters!"

[EvilII]

smites regenerate and you can spend points to increase the number.

However, they don't regenrate fast enough to matter. If they did we would se more people playing paladins.

[Qhualor]

However, they don't regenrate fast enough to matter. If they did we would se more people playing paladins.

I doubt that's a big enough reason why there aren't as many people playing Paladin. I did suggest that they should regenerate faster, but than again, it would be like a permanent rage affect for barbs. smites is something unique that stands out about Paladins, so I would rather see some other things that I suggested earlier with enhancements added, feats auto granted, spells added/improved to boost their dps.

[SilkofDrasnia]

I purpose a new DDO log in message that reads, "Welcome to DDO where whiny players can become powerful by spamming developers who then screw with people that actually put thought and planning into their characters!"

Welcome! You must be new here.



Back on topic,

The major problem is self healing was not so easy once upon a time so paladins which are basically fighters with less dps but had great saves and self healing were "worth" playing.

Zip ahead to today where most every class has easy self healing to the point BYOH isn't even put in lfm anymore and you can see paladins get screwed by proxy. They were penalized for self healing as a class yet then turbine turned around and made self healing the norm for other classes yet did not take away the penalties paladins pay for their self healing.

Some one in an earlier post said but paladins shouldn't just be fighters...well what do you think a paladin is? He is a holy "Knight" that gives up some stuff like dps for the saves and self healing. A paladin isn't a caster, he isn't a debuffer, he's basically a fighter that takes holy vows and gains some limited things like divine spellcasting, self heals etc.


If you then turn around and give away self healing to every boy and his dog you need to take away the penalty a paladins pays for self healing, which I think mainly is dps otherwise the class will remain meh.



Some basics things I think they need to rejoin the other classes,

1 ~ more feats or feats they auto get like twf, thf, swf ....
2 ~ they need some spells to be updated to be more worthwhile...way to many spells do not stack with gear at higher levels because luck/deflection based etc some just need reworking....
3 ~ weapons of good was a good capstone but no longer, auto-grant it somewhere tween lvls 12 and 20 give a better "capstone"...
4 ~ increase the damage they do with existing abilities/enhancements, looking at DS DM and smites here (they shouldn't "miss" btw) etc.

[Gargalarg]

It is annoying to not save to stuff, I take a 2 pally splash on some toons that I plan for them to have high saves... to combat the RIDICULOUS DCs. When I heavily inveast into CHA (40) +15 MOD on my centered kensai build, i would lose 7 to my saves which for EE content (Especially stuff like storm horns, Epic 3bc, gianthold) is EXTREMELY annoying...

Suggestions:
1) Decrease the ridiculous DCs (Especially for stuff like symbol of stunning and flesh to stone)
2) Change it to how it originally works.

Thanks.

[toapat]

Idea for sacred Defender capstone:

Bastion's Determination: for every 1 point of temporary HP you have, you deal 1% more damage

[gwonbush]

Idea for sacred Defender capstone:

Bastion's Determination: for every 1 point of temporary HP you have, you deal 1% more damage

That would need a cap. Otherwise they would be as a god with the temp HP from the Unyielding Sentinel Epic Moment and its 10,000 temp hp (giving a whopping 100x damage while it lasts.)

[Annyee]

We need to see all the changes to give good feedback. IMHO:
Change the light damage to PureGood. Clr/FvS should be the light damage classes. 3d6/6d6 is enough, no need to scale with spell power IF you drop the AOE burst for Crit Blasting, same as GS blasting with more PureGood damage of course.

Divine Grace is fine. Haters will hate, let them and we will move on.

Armor of light..... I am underwhelmed at Temp HP...... How about, at cap, no longer fail on a 1, for anything. That would get ppl to play caped out Pallys.......

[Jerren]

I purpose a new DDO log in message that reads, "Welcome to DDO where whiny players can become powerful by spamming developers who then screw with people that actually put thought and planning into their characters!"
^
|
Agree with this 100%! Has been a problem every since the beginning of DDO, though in the first 3 years the only option if the nerf made your character unplayable was to reroll, no TR/LR available!

[Jerren]

The major problem is self healing was not so easy once upon a time so paladins which are basically fighters with less dps but had great saves and self healing were "worth" playing.

Zip ahead to today where most every class has easy self healing to the point BYOH isn't even put in lfm anymore and you can see paladins get screwed by proxy. They were penalized for self healing as a class yet then turbine turned around and made self healing the norm for other classes yet did not take away the penalties paladins pay for their self healing.

Not sure how you can say this but opportunity knocks, how are pure rogues self healers?


Some one in an earlier post said but paladins shouldn't just be fighters...well what do you think a paladin is? He is a holy "Knight" that gives up some stuff like dps for the saves and self healing. A paladin isn't a caster, he isn't a debuffer, he's basically a fighter that takes holy vows and gains some limited things like divine spellcasting, self heals etc.

Paladins are not just fighters, they are knights and have special abilities vs. evil and undead, make this actually mean something and you might just have your fix! I think the problem is at end game smites are just not as effective as they should be and maybe rather than screwing with divine grace to try and force splashers to take more levels of paladin, make smite more effective!


Some basics things I think they need to rejoin the other classes,

1 ~ more feats or feats they auto get like twf, thf, swf ....
2 ~ they need some spells to be updated to be more worthwhile...way to many spells do not stack with gear at higher levels because luck/deflection based etc some just need reworking....
3 ~ weapons of good was a good capstone but no longer, auto-grant it somewhere tween lvls 12 and 20 give a better "capstone"...
4 ~ increase the damage they do with existing abilities/enhancements, looking at DS DM and smites here (they shouldn't "miss" btw) etc.

1 - Just say NO to granting more feats! This post is now 22 pages because they are discussing a nerf to one of the feats that pally's get.
2 - Have to agree, many of the spells are worthless and something should be done to make pally spells better, which would in turn encourage people to take more levels of pally.
3 - Yeah capstone really is not worth going 20 levels for!
4 - Autohit smites, ummm NOT!
Edit - On second though this might be a good idea for capstone, might see a lot more pure pally builds then!

[b3h0ld3r]

Some thoughts:

~ We don't want to tie Paladins to sword and shield. Paladin buffs should be good regardless of the weapon style. We might not specifically try to support two weapon paladins, we don't want changes that punish that combo either.

Sev~

Like Sacred Defense is tied to wearing a shield?. That should apply somehow (maybe workable with the Shield spell?) to people who DPS with TWF or THF in my opinion.

That would also raise a bit the love to the pallies in general (and not only the defender types).

[SilkofDrasnia]

Not sure how you can say this but opportunity knocks, how are pure rogues self healers?

Read properly, self healing was not easily achievable originally, it is a new thing more or less, pretty much all classes now can self heal reliably. This was a big advantage paladins had and were penalized in its class mechanics for having. If you can't self heal on pure rogue I dunno what to tell ya, I can self heal on a pure barb, look up some guides maybe on self healing ....



Paladins are not just fighters, they are knights and have special abilities vs. evil and undead, make this actually mean something and you might just have your fix! I think the problem is at end game smites are just not as effective as they should be and maybe rather than screwing with divine grace to try and force splashers to take more levels of paladin, make smite more effective!

No kidding? Read properly? Pay close attention to the second line is this paragraph you quoted of me? As that is basically what I have said, as for divine grace people that splash get too much to easy now but if you READ my previous posts I am willing not care about that if they buff paladins in other ways.



1 - Just say NO to granting more feats! This post is now 22 pages because they are discussing a nerf to one of the feats that pally's get.
This here is stupid, paladins have less feats and dps because they have self healing yet every one can self heal pretty easily now so paladins should no longer be penalized in this manner for it. If paladins still are going to get a penalty take away the easy access to self healing of other classes
2 - Have to agree, many of the spells are worthless and something should be done to make pally spells better, which would in turn encourage people to take more levels of pally.
3 - Yeah capstone really is not worth going 20 levels for!
4 - Autohit smites, ummm NOT!
Edit - On second though this might be a good idea for capstone, might see a lot more pure pally builds then!

In orange, dunno what to tell you PNP has left the building quite awhile ago in this game, it is Turbine house rules now and has been for awhile. Same can be said of balance, if you really want balance you need to balance things against how they are in the game now not how you wish them to be. Being an OLD PNPer myself I can assure you this would not cause me any "angst".

[Kalevor]

Some basics things I think they need to rejoin the other classes,

1 ~ more feats or feats they auto get like twf, thf, swf ....
2 ~ they need some spells to be updated to be more worthwhile...way to many spells do not stack with gear at higher levels because luck/deflection based etc some just need reworking....
3 ~ weapons of good was a good capstone but no longer, auto-grant it somewhere tween lvls 12 and 20 give a better "capstone"...
4 ~ increase the damage they do with existing abilities/enhancements, looking at DS DM and smites here (they shouldn't "miss" btw) etc.

I completely agree with these suggestion.

IMHO, i think that a The paladin is the punisher of evil, any evil being should shake just seeing her figure. I'd settle for the paladin DPS out 50% greater than that of a fighter / barbarian against such creatures and 50% lower against the rest.

Right now I'm not even sure that a paladin can do 50% damage as those classes to an evil being.

[slarden]

If you are going to nerf divine grace it shouldn't be done as part of buffing paladin since it in no way helps paladins.

There are other splashes that should probably be looked at the same time as the divine grace nerf so that all splashes are nerfed at the same time if you think that is good for the game:

2 monk - definitely the most uber splash in the game - 2 feats + evasion + access to all stances + favorable enhancement changes
2-4 fvs - basically for very favorable enhancement tree
2 fighter - 2 feats and access to enhancements
2 rogue - evasion + max UMD and trapping capabilities

The other thing is that if you are going to start ruining builds, just get it over with and make the changes all at once. In other words, if you are going to cut off my hand please don't do it one finger at a time. I will have to change my build after divine grace nerf. Then when you get around to nerfing 2 monk I may have to change my build again. It wasn't too long ago I had to redo my characters due to the enhancement pass.

I don't mind change, but a nerf that doesn't help paladin shouldn't be part of an exercise to buff paladins, it should be part of an overall balance review at the same time all splashes are looked at.

Lastly, balance nerfs should be done after fixing favorable game bugs which are much more powerful than any of these splashes.

[SilkofDrasnia]

If you are going to nerf divine grace it shouldn't be done as part of buffing paladin since it in no way helps paladins.

...snip...

I can agree with this, it should be a separate issue. This thread is about buffing paladins which has been a long long time coming and the whole "discussion" about DG should be taken elsewhere even if only to keep this about buffing paladins an not about multi-classing vs pure.

[toapat]

That would need a cap. Otherwise they would be as a god with the temp HP from the Unyielding Sentinel Epic Moment and its 10,000 temp hp (giving a whopping 100x damage while it lasts.)

considering its only 20 seconds once per rest on a class which is when going pure and in a tree that is extremely hard to avoid threat boosting on, its not really that extremely overboard.

its also not like paladins dont have alot fo backlog of love they need

[ArcaneArcher52689]

If you are going to nerf divine grace it shouldn't be done as part of buffing paladin since it in no way helps paladins.

There are other splashes that should probably be looked at the same time as the divine grace nerf so that all splashes are nerfed at the same time if you think that is good for the game:

2 monk - definitely the most uber splash in the game - 2 feats + evasion + access to all stances + favorable enhancement changes
2-4 fvs - basically for very favorable enhancement tree
2 fighter - 2 feats and access to enhancements
2 rogue - evasion + max UMD and trapping capabilities

The other thing is that if you are going to start ruining builds, just get it over with and make the changes all at once. In other words, if you are going to cut off my hand please don't do it one finger at a time. I will have to change my build after divine grace nerf. Then when you get around to nerfing 2 monk I may have to change my build again. It wasn't too long ago I had to redo my characters due to the enhancement pass.

I don't mind change, but a nerf that doesn't help paladin shouldn't be part of an exercise to buff paladins, it should be part of an overall balance review at the same time all splashes are looked at.

Lastly, balance nerfs should be done after fixing favorable game bugs which are much more powerful than any of these splashes.


Yeah, DG nerf should have been a separate thread.

As for the other splashes, I think 2 fighter +2 rogue are absolutely fine for the cost/benefit they offer at the moment.

2 Monk is still definitely the most valuable splash, but I really don't see anyway to nerf it. The best way I can come up with at the moment is to restrict their evasion feat to when centered.

[toapat]

2 Monk is still definitely the most valuable splash, but I really don't see anyway to nerf it. The best way I can come up with at the moment is to restrict their evasion feat to when centered.

the only way really to remove monk from there would be if they gave everyone access to the stances without any levels of monk. although im not sure how that would impact barb's balance.

[ArcaneArcher52689]

the only way really to remove monk from there would be if they gave everyone access to the stances without any levels of monk. although im not sure how that would impact barb's balance.

stances are only really OP w/ 8+ fighters. Every other class has to spend 1-3 feats, and restricts their weapon choices. Fighters get 5 bonus feats(reducing/eliminating that cost), and access to an enhancement that lets them remain centered while wielding any weapon. So stances are really only OP with the fighter splash build, and only because their opportunity cost is almost non-existent.

[Qhualor]

The change from class levels to character level was a bad idea. Change it back to class levels the way it should be to access top tier enhancements and feats would make tough choices to go pure or multi class. As mentioned many times, a lot of the capstones aren't worth investing more class levels and many enhancements and autogranted abilities are front loaded.

[toapat]

stances are only really OP w/ 8+ fighters. Every other class has to spend 1-3 feats, and restricts their weapon choices. Fighters get 5 bonus feats(reducing/eliminating that cost), and access to an enhancement that lets them remain centered while wielding any weapon. So stances are really only OP with the fighter splash build, and only because their opportunity cost is almost non-existent.

when i meant give them to everyone i meant remove the centered requirement and everyone gets the feats at their relative level

[bennyson]

when i meant give them to everyone i meant remove the centered requirement and everyone gets the feats at their relative level

Than everyone will be overpowered.

Also, just to remind you all

This thread is NOT ABOUT arguing and complaining about "oh my moncher is getting nerf!" or "Goodbye to my 18/2 sorc pally" or anything else that resalts in some characters being dead. This thread is for making Paladins MOAR compelling to level. Give them suggestions/ideas about feats and/or enhancements to drastically improve upon or add to the Paladin.

If you cant help but to argue about the "nerfs" than take it to a different thread, please.

[ArcaneArcher52689]

when i meant give them to everyone i meant remove the centered requirement and everyone gets the feats at their relative level

I know. however, stances aren't the problem at the moment. My point was that there is currently only one class that can make stances unfair. So, the solution isn't to give everyone stances, it's to fix the one class. It's like saying every class should have evasion and 2 bonus feats by level 2. Yes, it balances out the power, but not the right way.

[toapat]

I know. however, stances aren't the problem at the moment. My point was that there is currently only one class that can make stances unfair. So, the solution isn't to give everyone stances, it's to fix the one class. It's like saying every class should have evasion and 2 bonus feats by level 2. Yes, it balances out the power, but not the right way.

the problem is that there really are 4 things you get from monk in a 2 level dip when compared to everyone else who only gives 1 thing. you get the stances, wisdom to ac, 2 bonus feats, and evasion, vs a paladin's DG, a fighter's 2 feats, or Rogue's evasion.



but back to paladin:

Ways they could make the offensive tree useful:

give a smite cleave in the T5 enhancements. costs 2 smites per use.

give a modified version of Divine recovery from RKV as the lvl 12 ability,. (1 turn undead: recharge all smites)

Have the first core enhancement be +1 smite and smites regenerate 5% faster percore enhancement

Enhancements in tree that give short term buffs after using a smite.

Capstone gives a 20 second buff that causes AoE damage. costs 3 smites.

abilities which use a smite to cast heal

Pure good and Holy at lvl 3/18 respectively

A couple of multi-selectors for smite evil that determine how exaulted smite works.

[Seikojin]

If you are going to nerf divine grace it shouldn't be done as part of buffing paladin since it in no way helps paladins.

...snip...

This is Semantics. Changes to the class is fine no matter what they bundle into those changes.

These defensive options are great to help bolster Paladins, however I think if they had ways to bypass the no shield limit for SWF, they would have many more options to offer dps.

[Ausdoerrt]

This is Semantics. Changes to the class is fine no matter what they bundle into those changes.

These defensive options are great to help bolster Paladins, however I think if they had ways to bypass the no shield limit for SWF, they would have many more options to offer dps.

I disagree. For one, S&B and SWF have always been separate and different styles in classic D&D games.

Secondly, the whole point of SWF is giving up defense for more offense. The point of S&B is giving up possible extra offense of thf/swf for better defenses, and using the shield.

Thirdly, it'd be unbalanced because you'd be getting tank defenses plus swf offense while most other builds would get just the offense.


Conclusion: I'd rather see a separate unique S&B feat line.

[9001]

Hey, long time player (off and on since about 2010), first time poster. Wanted to throw an idea out about paladins.
Long story short: An enhancement tree that makes the turn undead mechanic useful. (Just keep reading...)

First off, an ability called turn evil (or something, point being it's for all evil creatures) which uses turn charges, animation (meaning it's an aoe ability), gains benefits from items. HOWEVER, it differs in the fact that its effects are different. No instant kill with high enough rolls, and it's more of a DAMAGE and DEBUFF centered ability. The instant kill COULD be added in another form as a chance (or against significantly weaker mobs). The tree could focus on aggressively debuffing enemies, (maybe some sla's and spell enhancements to make them sort of castery?) and would take the turning enhancements from kotc (I just feel like they're shoehorned in and since the tree is for EITHER undead or evil outsiders, having just undead focused things in it, which could honestly be replaced with better melee focused things) feels like it slants too much toward one end.

Having a turn based ability as a useful mechanic would encourage more levels of paladin (for stronger turning) and it saddens me to see all of the turn items and cool animation being wasted and used as a charge system for other things.

I also wanted to address divine grace and say that I feel that it needs a level based limit, BUT with 20 paladin should have no limit (perhaps as part of a capstone to the turning tree since it could be charisma focused?)

Maybe this is a stupid idea but I felt like posting it and I honestly feel like turning as a mechanic could stand to be made useful.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post!

[Psiandron]

Hey, long time player (off and on since about 2010), first time poster. Wanted to throw an idea out about paladins.
Long story short: An enhancement tree that makes the turn undead mechanic useful. (Just keep reading...)

First off, an ability called turn evil (or something, point being it's for all evil creatures) which uses turn charges, animation (meaning it's an aoe ability), gains benefits from items. HOWEVER, it differs in the fact that its effects are different. No instant kill with high enough rolls, and it's more of a DAMAGE and DEBUFF centered ability. The instant kill COULD be added in another form as a chance (or against significantly weaker mobs). The tree could focus on aggressively debuffing enemies, (maybe some sla's and spell enhancements to make them sort of castery?) and would take the turning enhancements from kotc (I just feel like they're shoehorned in and since the tree is for EITHER undead or evil outsiders, having just undead focused things in it, which could honestly be replaced with better melee focused things) feels like it slants too much toward one end.

Having a turn based ability as a useful mechanic would encourage more levels of paladin (for stronger turning) and it saddens me to see all of the turn items and cool animation being wasted and used as a charge system for other things.

I also wanted to address divine grace and say that I feel that it needs a level based limit, BUT with 20 paladin should have no limit (perhaps as part of a capstone to the turning tree since it could be charisma focused?)

Maybe this is a stupid idea but I felt like posting it and I honestly feel like turning as a mechanic could stand to be made useful.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post!

Turn undead is called a channel divinity ability. There are several such abilities in the paladin trees; the most common is Divine Might.

Welcome to the forums. :D

[toapat]

First off, an ability called turn evil

Turn undead is worthless as is. Giving it the ability to hit more types of enemies doesnt make it less useless.

the entire mechanic for how turn undead is rolled would have to be replaced with an entirely different system where the paladin and cleric are considered at least 20 levels higher then they actually are to get reliable and worthwhile results from the ability. And there would have to be exactly 0 other mechanics to make Turn undead useful. which no one wants because Divine might is simply better in every single way. Paladins need mechanics that work, not useless dog****

[9001]

Turn undead is called a channel divinity ability. There are several such abilities in the paladin trees; the most common is Divine Might.

Welcome to the forums. :D

That's exactly the problem I have though, sorry if I didn't make it clear. Turn undead is used for anything BUT turning. I just think it'd be an interesting thing to see turning made into something offensive that's useful. Divine Might in the case of paladins (which could easily be a spell point cost albeit less than the warpriest version).

I understand the idea that most people are ok with the current state of turn undead (mostly useless other than the aformentioned Channel Divinity), but I think the idea of turning things, including non-deaders, would be a good flavour option for paladins even if it was made to not be overpowered. Imagine just running up to some group of baddies, yelling TURN and seeing them weaken before your might.

Once again, sorry for not explaining myself clearly, and thank you for the welcome!

[9001]

Turn undead is worthless as is. Giving it the ability to hit more types of enemies doesnt make it less useless.

the entire mechanic for how turn undead is rolled would have to be replaced with an entirely different system where the paladin and cleric are considered at least 20 levels higher then they actually are to get reliable and worthwhile results from the ability. And there would have to be exactly 0 other mechanics to make Turn undead useful. which no one wants because Divine might is simply better in every single way. Paladins need mechanics that work, not useless dog****

Well it could be MADE useful. That's exactly what I think should happen. And Divine might could be made a cooldown/ use charges/ LOW sp cost. The fact that people are OK with turning being useless is what bothers me. It WOULD need work to make it useful, but I feel it deserves that work, and it would give the paladin something cool to call their own other than a mega damage buff.

I know a lot of you guys are cynical about this kind of thing, and of turbine in general, but things like these could be fleshed out and made useful.

Just my two cents.

[toapat]

Just my two cents.

your oppinion is noted and incorrect.

Turn undead is worthless because the mechanic for it renders the ability reliably innefectual at best and utterly worthless when it could be relevant. If an undead is not mindless it has innate turning resistance, while DDO has vastly inflated HD counts for enemies. The fact is that turning is bad. it always has been bad, and it will always be bad.

Leaving turn undead as fuel for actually useful abilities is better because it doesnt require going through a thousand quests and hand tuning Hitdice and charisma so that undead dungeons dont become a cakewalk. There is simply too much reason to not bother with the ability as anything more.

Yes paladin Divine Might needs to run on mana, but thats because paladin has other equally valuable or superior uses for turn undead.

[9001]

your oppinion is noted and incorrect.

Turn undead is worthless because the mechanic for it renders the ability reliably innefectual at best and utterly worthless when it could be relevant. If an undead is not mindless it has innate turning resistance, while DDO has vastly inflated HD counts for enemies. The fact is that turning is bad. it always has been bad, and it will always be bad.

Leaving turn undead as fuel for actually useful abilities is better because it doesnt require going through a thousand quests and hand tuning Hitdice and charisma so that undead dungeons dont become a cakewalk. There is simply too much reason to not bother with the ability as anything more.

Yes paladin Divine Might needs to run on mana, but thats because paladin has other equally valuable or superior uses for turn undead.

First off, the idea was to use the idea of turning and make it more universal and useful. Not "make turn undead better" but make something out of the guts of it that is 1) effective against most enemies 2) gives a flavour to the paladin 3) takes the turn enhancements from the kotc tree to make room for good stuff.

Secondly, within my idea, the whole turn resistance thing wouldn't apply to turn EVIL (perhaps with bosses) the point of it being to use the SPIRIT of turning rather than the REALITY of it. It wouldn't kill undead like TU would (however you could still ineffectively use it if you so desired).

Thirdly, again, the whole idea of channel divinity as using turn charges, is imo garbage. Give it its own set of charges and make something out of turn undead (again the turn evil idea is only the idea of turning rather than *boom fear and/or instant death* It's not "UNIVERSAL turn undead" It's "REVAMPED turn idea". It might not have any precedent in the source material, but turbine has strayed from it before and will again. You can say "well turn undead sucks, let's use the charges for non-turning" but I'm saying that the spirit of turning, ie the idea of throwing that aoe out and affecting a bunch of enemies with SOMETHING could imo give paladins a flavour, and in general they need a more general evil killing capacity, rather than just undead or evil outsiders.

EDIT: also, if inflated HD is an issue, inflate the bonuses epic gear gives to turn levels, add epic levels toward turning, etc.
If it doesn't work, it shouldn't be ignored, it should be fixed. I thought people didn't like systems/ideas being left to rot, and I feel like that happened when turn undead became a glorified charge system (seriously, if they took turn undead out and left the charges nobody would notice nor would they care).

[Qhualor]

Turn undead is worthless as is. Giving it the ability to hit more types of enemies doesnt make it less useless.

the entire mechanic for how turn undead is rolled would have to be replaced with an entirely different system where the paladin and cleric are considered at least 20 levels higher then they actually are to get reliable and worthwhile results from the ability. And there would have to be exactly 0 other mechanics to make Turn undead useful. which no one wants because Divine might is simply better in every single way. Paladins need mechanics that work, not useless dog****

I agree that Turn Undead is pretty much useless in DDO for Paladins. it does require quite a bit of investment to make it work well. at level I don't even bother using it because im lucky if I can Turn just 1 mob. this is something that maybe could be tweaked on by the devs to make it more useful. if so, than something like this would be very good to use

http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/SRD:Planar_Turning

http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/SRD:Positive_Energy_Aura

im not some wiz on Turn Undead and how exactly it works. maybe its part of the problem I cant Turn undead very well, but I know in PnP, Turn Undead for Paladins is 3 levels below cleric. there are some items in game to boost Turn Undead, but I believe there aren't really anything for enhancements for Paladins to make better Turn chances. you can get the feat Improved Turning, but meh. if it already sucks, it will only suck a little less :)

[9001]

except that everything natively has turn resistance because enemy hitdice scales at least at twice the rate of player hitdice (Undead and Illithids are the only exceptions). The mechanic of Turning doesnt work, it never has and it never will. Do not imagine a world where the mechanic exists as anything but fuel for divine badassery, Because there is no world where doing such improves the game.

Not sure what you mean about "talking out my ass". I'm not making anything up or claiming anything about how the game DOES work or how it SHOULD work, I was just trying to clarify my idea of something that could be implemented, but if nobody wants the status quo of turning to change then I won't press the issue.

[HatsuharuZ]

Personally, I find turn undead itself to be very useful on my cleric! However, it rarely worked in epic levels.

The best way to make TU work in heroic levels:

1) minimum 14 base CHA
2) Eternal Rest spell.
3) Enhancements.

A few updates ago Turbine lowered the hit dice of some enemies in lower level content, making them less resistant to TU. Toapat seems to be one of those posters who takes any opposing opinion to be a mortal insult, it seems.

[9001]

Personally, I find turn undead itself to be very useful on my cleric! However, it rarely worked in epic levels.

*other stuff*

Thanks for letting me know that. I feel like nobody even got what my idea was though(or didn't care). It was more to use the idea of turning things and make an enhancement tree based around it (my idea was a turn evil for it to do damage and maybe stun non-bosses sometimes instead of instakill/fear) and it turned into a debate over whether turn undead needs to be looked at again or if it should stay where it is. I guess I should have left the replies for later, it's a page back now which pretty much means nobody will read it (maybe this was stupid anyway, it was only a concept and might have went over better if I had taken more time on it)

[whereispowderedsilve]

Thanks for letting me know that. I feel like nobody even got what my idea was though(or didn't care). It was more to use the idea of turning things and make an enhancement tree based around it (my idea was a turn evil for it to do damage and maybe stun non-bosses sometimes instead of instakill/fear) and it turned into a debate over whether turn undead needs to be looked at again or if it should stay where it is. I guess I should have left the replies for later, it's a page back now which pretty much means nobody will read it (maybe this was stupid anyway, it was only a concept and might have went over better if I had taken more time on it)

Don't take this the wrong way but here read this:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/367872-Cleric-s-Guide-to-the-Turn-Undead

Very informative, however I am unsure if it applies to paladins or not though.

Cheers! :P! :)! :D!

[9001]

Don't take this the wrong way but here read this:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/367872-Cleric-s-Guide-to-the-Turn-Undead

Very informative, however I am unsure if it applies to paladins or not though.

Cheers! :P! :)! :D!

Reading now, what I'm getting out of it is that turn resistance would make this not at all viable....

Probably not worth the work I guess.

Thanks for the link though!

[toapat]

A few updates ago Turbine lowered the hit dice of some enemies in lower level content, making them less resistant to TU. Toapat seems to be one of those posters who takes any opposing opinion to be a mortal insult, it seems.

I consider the fixation on the desire for a mechanic that barely functions at best and that requires significant resources or a total rebuild of the game to function properly a worthless piece of suggestion that shouldnt be discussed when more pressing and valuable concerns could be brought up instead of demanding a total rebuild of the entire game. Would it be nice to have a mechanic that has existed since the beginning of DnD to finally work as intended? yes. Is it currently or could it potentially be worth the investment ever? No.

[Psiandron]

Thanks for letting me know that. I feel like nobody even got what my idea was though(or didn't care). It was more to use the idea of turning things and make an enhancement tree based around it (my idea was a turn evil for it to do damage and maybe stun non-bosses sometimes instead of instakill/fear) and it turned into a debate over whether turn undead needs to be looked at again or if it should stay where it is. I guess I should have left the replies for later, it's a page back now which pretty much means nobody will read it (maybe this was stupid anyway, it was only a concept and might have went over better if I had taken more time on it)

Actually, I thought you were doing a good job at giving it a miss.

It's just that Divine Might is something that pallies have that's still, despite being heavily nerfed, counts as a positive for the class. So, people tend to avoid doing anything that messes with it. I know that I won't take any other Channel Divinity abilities from the enhancements.

Also, you may have noticed that there has been some...chafing in this thread.

If you want to hang in the forums you should develop a thick skin and a reflex to say "wow, that guys an *******".

[9001]

*Point*

I have to concede that you make a good point. Not worth the effort.

[9001]

*other stuff*

If you want to hang in the forums you should develop a thick skin and a reflex to say "wow, that guys an *******".

Just wanted to say, even if people say things abrasively like that it doesn't mean that I should ignore it. Perhaps it could be said in a better manner, but he still makes the point that it would take a ton of work, and regardless of HOW he says it, it's still a valid point.

EDIT: Just wanted to say, regardless of what anyone thinks about the turn idea, one of the main issues I had was the turning stuff that feels shoehorned into kotc. It could go somewhere else and be replaced with other things. I feel like the tree needs to be looked at as a whole but that would be a good place to start.

[SilkofDrasnia]

I agree that Turn Undead is pretty much useless in DDO for Paladins. it does require quite a bit of investment to make it work well. at level I don't even bother using it because im lucky if I can Turn just 1 mob. this is something that maybe could be tweaked on by the devs to make it more useful. if so, than something like this would be very good to use

http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/SRD:Planar_Turning

http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/SRD:Positive_Energy_Aura

im not some wiz on Turn Undead and how exactly it works. maybe its part of the problem I cant Turn undead very well, but I know in PnP, Turn Undead for Paladins is 3 levels below cleric. there are some items in game to boost Turn Undead, but I believe there aren't really anything for enhancements for Paladins to make better Turn chances. you can get the feat Improved Turning, but meh. if it already sucks, it will only suck a little less :)

Yeah TU is pretty sucky. On my paladins I sometimes used to put on the Sacred red fens set but it was not really viable any more a few lvl later. I used to use it now and then for giggles more than anything.

I think the problem with it is that it would be kind OP on cleric if they made it anywhere near viable on paladins, and even then way back when I looked into it it wasn't very viable on cleric either.

While thematically 9001 idea seems good it just not a very viable or a likely possibility to use as a fix. I think we need to stick more to the basics rather than try to do something that is more complex like this.

[toapat]

I feel like the tree needs to be looked at as a whole but that would be a good place to start.

the reality is KotC shouldnt be an independant tree from DoS.

Realistically it is itself a tree based around defending people as much as DoS is, just through stopping the threat instead of just stopping it from getting to those it intends to harm. The PrCs in PnP arent exactly that mechanically rich either. KotC has extra damage, improved saves and a spell list. HotD is one of 2 semi-capable of using turn classes and progresses the entry class's spellcasting. it gives some really good protections as well. Then bring back the Defender of Syberies name


We also need to go back and get much better classes for the offensive combat PrC. Fist of Raziel gives multiple rider effects to smite evil, 5 more smite evil attempts, and 9/10ths casting progression. Ruby Knight Vindicator gives the benefits of being a crusader (a more mechanically sound but significantly less flexible paladin), 8/10ths casting, and multiple turn undead powered abilities which are fantastically effective. Its not like Tome of battle is outside of the things that they do because most of what makes monks really good in this are based off of abilities from that book. Name it Pious templar

Personally i want a caster prestige because in most games paladins can function as the tank, Dps or healer with some offense. Personally id also use the Bone Knight from eberron as the base of the PrC because the class presents aspects of DnD which are rarely explored. Combine it with Divine crusader (complete divine, not 4th/EDs)(because no to Ur-priest) and grey guard or blackguard. have an enhancement that lets you trade smites for mana with this. Call it Bone knight

[Nascoe]

Thanks for letting me know that. I feel like nobody even got what my idea was though(or didn't care). It was more to use the idea of turning things and make an enhancement tree based around it (my idea was a turn evil for it to do damage and maybe stun non-bosses sometimes instead of instakill/fear) and it turned into a debate over whether turn undead needs to be looked at again or if it should stay where it is. I guess I should have left the replies for later, it's a page back now which pretty much means nobody will read it (maybe this was stupid anyway, it was only a concept and might have went over better if I had taken more time on it)

Hey, 9001, thanks for the positive input into the discussion. I think you make a good point that if TU is in the game it should be something that actually helps beat down the Evil and Undead.
Sure, currently its not all that useful (although I've had fun with it both on my Paladin and on my Clerics in lvl 4-10 content esp. if I boost it a bit with crafted "sacred", hallowed - that one was a game changer for me and these STACK!), but as we are here discussing what Turbine can/should do to boost the Paladin class it is exactly the kind of thing that fits into this discussion. I think making Turning work (and Turbine has shown they want to go there with some of the 3BC loot), would do a lot to help divines and if it does something awesome and special for a Paladin, I think that would be a fun thing that fits the theme.

[Jerren]

Not sure how you can say this but opportunity knocks, how are pure rogues self healers?

Read properly, self healing was not easily achievable originally, it is a new thing more or less, pretty much all classes now can self heal reliably. This was a big advantage paladins had and were penalized in its class mechanics for having. If you can't self heal on pure rogue I dunno what to tell ya, I can self heal on a pure barb, look up some guides maybe on self healing ....

Sorry don't buy the BS on this one, especially at epic levels where a single hit is 500+. Care to prove me wrong then provide specific links rather than telling me to look it up. Also maxxing UMD so that you can use every scroll, wand, etc...is not always an easy thing to do and that build does suffer in other areas!


Paladins are not just fighters, they are knights and have special abilities vs. evil and undead, make this actually mean something and you might just have your fix! I think the problem is at end game smites are just not as effective as they should be and maybe rather than screwing with divine grace to try and force splashers to take more levels of paladin, make smite more effective!

No kidding? Read properly? Pay close attention to the second line is this paragraph you quoted of me? As that is basically what I have said, as for divine grace people that splash get too much to easy now but if you READ my previous posts I am willing not care about that if they buff paladins in other ways.

I am not sure that we are in total disagreement here except that if Turbine starts screwing with Devine Grace then they will start screwing with Evasion, 2 Weapon Fighting and every other granted feat at 2nd level. This is not the source of the imbalance IMO, the source of the imbalance is the poor implementation of enhancements. IMO it was actually better under the old enhancement system, though even that was broken, but now that you can take tier 4 enhancements with only 4 levels in the class makes it so much more broken that there is really no incentive to ever play a pure anything!


1 - Just say NO to granting more feats! This post is now 22 pages because they are discussing a nerf to one of the feats that pally's get.
This here is stupid, paladins have less feats and dps because they have self healing yet every one can self heal pretty easily now so paladins should no longer be penalized in this manner for it. If paladins still are going to get a penalty take away the easy access to self healing of other classes.

Again I challenge you to show me how pure rogue or pure barb as you have suggested have really meaningful self healing at epic levels. If you can show me easy access of self healing that is really meaningful at epic levels than I would say that you are right, that should be removed! If you can show me than I almost guarantee that it will be through broken enhancements which is what I have been saying anyways. Mind you paladins have some of those very same broken enhancements too like -40 for being dead and gaining 250 HP on a kill hit.

In short I think that my biggest gripe is that you can get some of the best enhancements in the game for taking just 5 levels in a class which is very broken. Worst decision Turbine has ever made and will continue to be a problem, yes talking to all the whiners, until it is fixed.

[Jerren]

stances are only really OP w/ 8+ fighters. Every other class has to spend 1-3 feats, and restricts their weapon choices. Fighters get 5 bonus feats(reducing/eliminating that cost), and access to an enhancement that lets them remain centered while wielding any weapon. So stances are really only OP with the fighter splash build, and only because their opportunity cost is almost non-existent.

Again this is only something that happened after the enhancement refresh. Plain and simple the latest enhancement refresh is broken and promotes multi-class/splash character builds! Don't get me wrong, it is not that I don't think the overall enhancements are wrong, just don't think you should get a tier 5 ability at level 5 in the class!

[Jerren]

The change from class levels to character level was a bad idea. Change it back to class levels the way it should be to access top tier enhancements and feats would make tough choices to go pure or multi class. As mentioned many times, a lot of the capstones aren't worth investing more class levels and many enhancements and autogranted abilities are front loaded.
^^^
This!

[Jerren]

Than everyone will be overpowered.

Also, just to remind you all

This thread is NOT ABOUT arguing and complaining about "oh my moncher is getting nerf!" or "Goodbye to my 18/2 sorc pally" or anything else that resalts in some characters being dead. This thread is for making Paladins MOAR compelling to level. Give them suggestions/ideas about feats and/or enhancements to drastically improve upon or add to the Paladin.

If you cant help but to argue about the "nerfs" than take it to a different thread, please.

Hard to argue with some that says 'MOAR compelling', what does that mean exactly?

[Jerren]

I know. however, stances aren't the problem at the moment. My point was that there is currently only one class that can make stances unfair. So, the solution isn't to give everyone stances, it's to fix the one class. It's like saying every class should have evasion and 2 bonus feats by level 2. Yes, it balances out the power, but not the right way.

Agreed! Don't give classes feats that they should not have. Don't mess with feats that classes should have. Fix the broken enhancements that Turbine has given. Either way you are likely to **** someone off but the closer you stay to core rules the more balance you will have!

[Jerren]

the problem is that there really are 4 things you get from monk in a 2 level dip when compared to everyone else who only gives 1 thing. you get the stances, wisdom to ac, 2 bonus feats, and evasion, vs a paladin's DG, a fighter's 2 feats, or Rogue's evasion.



but back to paladin:

Ways they could make the offensive tree useful:

give a smite cleave in the T5 enhancements. costs 2 smites per use.

give a modified version of Divine recovery from RKV as the lvl 12 ability,. (1 turn undead: recharge all smites)

Have the first core enhancement be +1 smite and smites regenerate 5% faster percore enhancement

Enhancements in tree that give short term buffs after using a smite.

Capstone gives a 20 second buff that causes AoE damage. costs 3 smites.

abilities which use a smite to cast heal

Pure good and Holy at lvl 3/18 respectively

A couple of multi-selectors for smite evil that determine how exaulted smite works.

You know I have read the whole thread, there is now 24 pages of it, but the one thing that seems to be overlook in what I have read is that pally's get aura's. Granted you have to take the enhancements to make the aura's better but perhaps the aura's should be better based on pally level to make more than 2 levels viable.

Personally I think that the new enhancement system is broken and each enhancement should be level based, not tier 1 level 1, tier 2 level 2, etc...but if the aura's that pally's get scaled by level then pally's might be more sought after by groups!

[Jerren]

That's exactly the problem I have though, sorry if I didn't make it clear. Turn undead is used for anything BUT turning. I just think it'd be an interesting thing to see turning made into something offensive that's useful. Divine Might in the case of paladins (which could easily be a spell point cost albeit less than the warpriest version).

I understand the idea that most people are ok with the current state of turn undead (mostly useless other than the aformentioned Channel Divinity), but I think the idea of turning things, including non-deaders, would be a good flavour option for paladins even if it was made to not be overpowered. Imagine just running up to some group of baddies, yelling TURN and seeing them weaken before your might.

Once again, sorry for not explaining myself clearly, and thank you for the welcome!

Smite Evil is kinda the Pally's way of dealing with things but I can see what you are saying. The problem is, and always has been, that Turn Undead has mostly been uneffective since the beginning of DDO. You would basically have to have a cleric/pally that is built and geared for nothing other than turning undead in order to be remotely effictive and I think that it has been proven that even then it is not as effective as it should be. I do like the idea but again, for me, it is a matter of going back to basics and readjusting monsters, traps, etc... back to attainable levels rather than trying to make those levels attainable through enhancements.

[tralfaz81]

This will probably be an unpopular suggestion but how about instead of gimping paladins you just change the alignment restrictions to pale masters? I personally think its kind of silly they get to use basically death/undead magic with a lawful good alignment and, lets be painfully honest, they're the ones who benefit the most from the paladin splash. With the proposed changes, you're giving paladins a nerf of their strongest feature to try and nerf another class. Just be direct and change the alignment restrictions for that build.

[Jerren]

I consider the fixation on the desire for a mechanic that barely functions at best and that requires significant resources or a total rebuild of the game to function properly a worthless piece of suggestion that shouldnt be discussed when more pressing and valuable concerns could be brought up instead of demanding a total rebuild of the entire game. Would it be nice to have a mechanic that has existed since the beginning of DnD to finally work as intended? yes. Is it currently or could it potentially be worth the investment ever? No.

I disagree. The whole game should be brought back to it's origins instead of boosted for the min/maxers. All of the monsters DC's have been boosted to give min/maxers more challenge. In some cases this works out all right, in other cases it has totally broken things that should be effective in D&D but are not. What gives you the right to say that this is not worth fixing? I get the feeling that you are one of those people that shoehorn clerics into 'heal me and do nothing else' and any cleric that would dare turn undead and possibly steal your kill is bad and deserves to be flogged. I personally never play clerics, and never will, because most people in this game think that the cleric should stand, balls in hand, and do absolutely nothing but heal them, how boring! Same thing goes for paladin, block with shield, intimidate, do nothing....boring!

Really, when that is what is expected of a class, why would anyone in their right mind play the class? You want a healbot? Get a friggin hireling. You want a bad ass that can heal you and destroy a majority of the EVIL creature or undead that you confront and leave just a few that you must confront get a REAL cleric or paladin! This game does neither justice in that respect and never has but that does not mean that it should not be fixed! Shame on you!

[Jerren]

the reality is KotC shouldnt be an independant tree from DoS.

Realistically it is itself a tree based around defending people as much as DoS is, just through stopping the threat instead of just stopping it from getting to those it intends to harm. The PrCs in PnP arent exactly that mechanically rich either. KotC has extra damage, improved saves and a spell list. HotD is one of 2 semi-capable of using turn classes and progresses the entry class's spellcasting. it gives some really good protections as well. Then bring back the Defender of Syberies name


We also need to go back and get much better classes for the offensive combat PrC. Fist of Raziel gives multiple rider effects to smite evil, 5 more smite evil attempts, and 9/10ths casting progression. Ruby Knight Vindicator gives the benefits of being a crusader (a more mechanically sound but significantly less flexible paladin), 8/10ths casting, and multiple turn undead powered abilities which are fantastically effective. Its not like Tome of battle is outside of the things that they do because most of what makes monks really good in this are based off of abilities from that book. Name it Pious templar

Personally i want a caster prestige because in most games paladins can function as the tank, Dps or healer with some offense. Personally id also use the Bone Knight from eberron as the base of the PrC because the class presents aspects of DnD which are rarely explored. Combine it with Divine crusader (complete divine, not 4th/EDs)(because no to Ur-priest) and grey guard or blackguard. have an enhancement that lets you trade smites for mana with this. Call it Bone knight

The problem as I see it is the PRE's as they currently stand are broken. I can't think of one PRE that gives me bonuses at level 1 much less 5 of them in the core rules. The old enhancement system was better, unless you want to min/max, which seems the direction that Turbine has gone. Now that peeps are screaming about splasing they want to nerf innate abilities to a class, feats, that the class is totally entitled to rather than fix their broken enhancement system! Divine Grace is just the tip of the iceburg and for me will be the last straw because I can already see nerfs coming for evasion on monks and rogues.

Turbine wants and has asked for this multi-class/splash nightmare. Monks and Paladins who change classes, in the core rules, can never return to their Monk/Paladin class. If they would follow this simple rule it would have avoided, or reduced, a lot of the exploiter builds. Both Monks and Paladins in PNP are so much more than what they are in DDO. Honestly I think that Pally's can still be really powerful if built right but I myself would never build a pure pally. The pally's that I play are splashed with favored soul for weapon enhancements since I only need to take 4 levels to get most of the enhancements that I want, actually I think I only take 3 of FvS.

In short, the enhancement system is broken!

[toapat]

You know I have read the whole thread, there is now 24 pages of it, but the one thing that seems to be overlook in what I have read is that pally's get aura's. Granted you have to take the enhancements to make the aura's better but perhaps the aura's should be better based on pally level to make more than 2 levels viable.

Personally I think that the new enhancement system is broken and each enhancement should be level based, not tier 1 level 1, tier 2 level 2, etc...but if the aura's that pally's get scaled by level then pally's might be more sought after by groups!

The aura should be expanded to a 30' radius. Id probably allocate the aura rider effects to the caster PrC though when not dealing with purely numerical defensive bonuses.

I think the 1-5 progression with enhancements should be lvl = 2^(T-1), so T1=L1, T2=L2, T3=L4, and T5=L8.


Both Monks and Paladins in PNP are so much more than what they are in DDO.

You are conflating Monks with Swordsages. Swordsages are where everything good about monk in DDO comes from. In PnP the only strength of monk is you get at best 2 fighter feats and wisdom to armor on a cleric or paladin. Swordsages also dont have multiclass restrictions. Monks in PnP cant really do anything truly effective without eating a mighty coarse of Steel and anger sandwiches to replace their class features with full barbarian rage and slightly worse then druid wildshape.

Paladin doesnt have legitimate reasons for having them either. Everything that lets them turn into a halfling amulet on a dragon's neck are PrCs with rather easy pre-requisites. They need 4-6 attributes depending on build, and need to invest into armor which they cant themselves craft because the rules for crafting are horrible.

[SilkofDrasnia]

I disagree. The whole game should be brought back to it's origins instead of boosted for the min/maxers. All of the monsters DC's have been boosted to give min/maxers more challenge. In some cases this works out all right, in other cases it has totally broken things that should be effective in D&D but are not. What gives you the right to say that this is not worth fixing? I get the feeling that you are one of those people that shoehorn clerics into 'heal me and do nothing else' and any cleric that would dare turn undead and possibly steal your kill is bad and deserves to be flogged. I personally never play clerics, and never will, because most people in this game think that the cleric should stand, balls in hand, and do absolutely nothing but heal them, how boring! Same thing goes for paladin, block with shield, intimidate, do nothing....boring!

Really, when that is what is expected of a class, why would anyone in their right mind play the class? You want a healbot? Get a friggin hireling. You want a bad ass that can heal you and destroy a majority of the EVIL creature or undead that you confront and leave just a few that you must confront get a REAL cleric or paladin! This game does neither justice in that respect and never has but that does not mean that it should not be fixed! Shame on you!

This here is your main problem your a PNPer that can't see the fight your trying to fight has been long lost. Your not going to get Turbine to go backwards to what we used to have. Many of us fought for things in the enhancement pass and we failed, plain and simple as that.

Move on already, your continued trolling in here and beating a dead horse is not constructive and realistically isn't helping to improve anything.

Sad thing is I agree with some of what you say but guess what? Others like qhualor and myself peed and moaned about those things for months before the enhancement pass and it still went through.

Shame on you for trying to blame others like myself that fought hard against some of these changes when you were no where around.

The only constructive thing we can do is work with how things are now because you are straight up delusional if you think they will change the whole system to make it like it used to be or should have been.


Btw here is a recent thread on BYOH (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/442809-Did-BYOH-take-a-wrong-turn?highlight=BYOH).

[nibel]

2 Monk is still definitely the most valuable splash, but I really don't see anyway to nerf it.

Lots of ways:

Move the extra Crit Multiplier to Fire Stance.
Add stats requirements to the Adept/Master/Grandmaster selectable feats as they used to be when monks were added to the game (Str, Dex, Con AND Wis 14 for Adept, 16 for Master, 18 for Grandmaster), or remove them as general feats.
Backload some of the class innate dodge bonus, making it more akin to Rogue/Barbarian class dodge bonus.
Reduce Shadow Veil incorporeal bonus to 10%, and raise it gradually with the other Ninja Spy cores, up to 50% at capstone.


Those four things would quickly reduce the power of the monk 2 splash to be more on par with fighter or rogue or pally.

[RKP]

I don't give a fig how powerful you make primary or single class paladins. I don't want to play one so I don't have a dog in the fight over paladins getting OP. As far as I can see it is the class for whiners and I will NEVER be like that.

So screw it, give them what they want. Let them be OP if that is what is required to shut them up. Just don't mess with divine grace.

So here is my suggestion inspired by pnp dnd paladin. And reminder: I WON'T EVER HAVE A PALADIN CHARACTER.

Create a 20th level capstone. Call it "Exalted Holy Sword" or some such.
It creates an aura that does all or some of the following.
1. huge bonus to PRR
2. huge bonus to MRR
3. +10 to +20 on saving throws.
4. no longer failing saves on a 1
5. stacking spell resistance
6. dispel magic aura- removes crowd control effects, ongoing spell damage, and destroys in place spells like wall of fire and otto's dance.
7. restorative aura- regenerates spell points, hit points, lay ons, smites and turns
8. DR 20/good

[RKP]

I think in this debate it is important to remember that DIVINE GRACE has been a stable unchanged character "feat" for MORE THAN 8 YEARS. It boggles the mind that the rug should be pulled out from under us splashers at this point. Why did it take 8 years to figure out it was a problem? And don't give me any EE garbage. I will happily promise never to run EE again if that helps.

[B0ltdrag0n]

Lots of ways:

Move the extra Crit Multiplier to Fire Stance.
Add stats requirements to the Adept/Master/Grandmaster selectable feats as they used to be when monks were added to the game (Str, Dex, Con AND Wis 14 for Adept, 16 for Master, 18 for Grandmaster), or remove them as general feats.
Backload some of the class innate dodge bonus, making it more akin to Rogue/Barbarian class dodge bonus.
Reduce Shadow Veil incorporeal bonus to 10%, and raise it gradually with the other Ninja Spy cores, up to 50% at capstone.


Those four things would quickly reduce the power of the monk 2 splash to be more on par with fighter or rogue or pally.

1 would not change it's usefulness
2 god no. The design should have been a minimum character level (like now) and for t2 to require 1 monk, t3 6 monk and grand master monk ultimately need min level 18 with 12 monk.
3 also not needed
4. 2 monks do not have veil, all this would do is make 6 monk only slightly better than paladin 6, which is already borderline bad

[Yaga_Nub]

I think in this debate it is important to remember that DIVINE GRACE has been a stable unchanged character "feat" for MORE THAN 8 YEARS. It boggles the mind that the rug should be pulled out from under us splashers at this point. Why did it take 8 years to figure out it was a problem? And don't give me any EE garbage. I will happily promise never to run EE again if that helps.

New people at the helm for a few months think that they know better than the people that have been playing the game for lots of years.

In their defense they are trying to fix the screw ups of previous devs. However, their suggestions, such as the change to DG, the changes to PRR, and the addition of MRR instead of making SR work correctly, shows just how clueless they really are about the game they are working on.

Love,

Yaga

[toapat]

I think in this debate it is important to remember that DIVINE GRACE has been a stable unchanged character "feat" for MORE THAN 8 YEARS. It boggles the mind that the rug should be pulled out from under us splashers at this point. Why did it take 8 years to figure out it was a problem? And don't give me any EE garbage. I will happily promise never to run EE again if that helps.

Divine Grace has always been problematic. The only thing is now its problematic and detrimental to the rest of the game because devs kept increasing enemy power linearly when player power for the most part scales in complexity at levelcap. before they started just boosting the levelcap willy nilly, the best gear was more comprehensive then weaker gear for what it contributed. An Epic Cavalry Plate gives more attributes on one item then basically anything else, and when the level cap was 20 nothing really could even compete with it because it opened the most slots up. Sure currently its not the god among armors but its still a very complex item.

Since MotU though, the devs have primarily relied on increasing power by simply bigger numbers and not just by giving the options necessary to squeeze tiny increases of damage or defense.

[B0ltdrag0n]

Which has nothing to do with divine grace.

The best way to need it is to reevaluate monster DC's and saves in E/ content. This l started during that first pass around motu

[MangLord]

Personally, I'd rather have unlimited uses (of Smite Evil) with a set cooldown, and spend points to increase the power and decrease the cooldown.

I like this a lot. Smite Evil isn't an incredibly powerful ability when compared with stuff that other classes get on simple timers. When compared to the sheer utility of something as basic as Monk stunning fist or Ranger manyshot, it's kinda pathetic. I never got through an encounter thinking that Smite Evil saved the day, but I sure have (many times) with manyshot, stunning fist, or even the simple Chill Touch archmage SLA on my pale master.

Other abilities that have limited uses per rest are far more useful, either to the entire party or as a single effect. A Radiant Servant can do very well against undead with their Turn Undead uses, which have the additional benefit of being alternately used as party utilities. (I gave up entirely on turn undead as a paladin very early on. Unless you invest heavily in equipment boosts, it hardly ever works. I don't want to redo my gear load-out every time I do a quest with undead.) Turning shouldn't be factored in to paladin overall power) Bard songs buff the entire party, or fascinate a mob entirely. Paladin smites only have a single weak effect, and the cost is too heavy. The other thing is that both bards and clerics, for example, have ways to get a large number of turns and songs. My paladin was limited to about 7 (if I recall correctly) on my TR life. I blew through those so fast on level 16 elites. Smite Evil also carries the disadvantage of being totally useless on animals, arachnids and other non-evil enemies.

Unless there are plans to drastically increase the potency of Smite Evil, it needs to be put on a 30 second timer or so. Some party-wide vulnerability effects, party-wide light damage dice, an AoE burst effect or a combination of each (solo and group play should both be addressed) would make Smites much better. They would have to stack with existing vulnerability effects that are very common with a party wielding thunderforged weapons. Otherwise no one will care. Personally, I like the AoE burst effect. Paladins want to keep and hold mob aggro. Anything to help that will be a bonus.

[MangLord]

Unless the game has changed I have spent years watching people try to squeeze 5-6 more points of damage out of their builds so why is this additional damage not enough?

The difference is that a deadly item contributes to your base damage, which gets factored over when you score a critical. Builds that rely on critical hits benefit greatly from seeker and deadly items. An item or effect that tacks on an extra couple d6 of elemental damage stays static and doesn't improve with multipliers. In the grand scheme of things, unless the elemental damage improves with a critical (why burst and blast effects are popular with rapiers and such) it may as well not be there at all.

I do like the system where a player benefits from investment in spell power for burst effects, such as eldritch knight and swashbuckler sonic effects. It rewards the player for investing in gear and skill points to boost specific spellpower. It's a caster version of seeker and deadly items. It would be cool if paladins and cleric warpriests might similarly benefit from light/good burst effects based on their positive/light spellpower, or have it scale by level like many spells do.

[MangLord]

If anything, I would rather see smites recharge faster. What I would prefer is for Paladins to not be so reliant on them for good DPS. I don't think their current DPS sucks, but I would rather have access to other things that can boost damage like other classes can and I'm not talking twisting something in. A couple pages back I listed a few suggestions I think, if translated properly to DDO math, would be nice boosts in damage.

I'm just curious as to what difficulty you normally play at where paladin DPS doesn't suck? Not judging you, just curious. If I were to play normal or maybe hard difficulty, I'd say paladin DPS is alright. It's at least enough to kill enemies faster than they can heal themselves.

The reason I ask is because when I did my paladin life, by the time I got to level 18 and hit Wheloon elites, I was absolutely dependent on rolling a 20 with a vorpal longsword, particularly on the stupid lizardman shamans when I tried to solo Lesson in Deception. This was at heroic levels, which got the thought in my mind that my sacred defender was going to get eaten alive at epic levels. I had very good defense and intimidate, and was able to whittle away mobs very slowly by turtling up with cleaves and self healing as needed, but if I didn't have a high DPS friend, it was a long, arduous experience. The problem was that even with the DPS sorc happily allowing me to run in first and grab aggro, I was unable to hold it after a few seconds, and then had to blow several LoH keeping him alive while I attempted to aggro the mob on me again.

I'd dipped into KotC for extra smites and such, but spent the vast majority of my AP in Sacred Defender. Defense was kinda new to me, as I tend to play DPS characters, so I was kinda determined to experience paladin life from a defensive perspective. I took a few shield feats, power attack and cleaves. I found the shield feats to be incredibly underwhelming. If I didn't have to basically redo all my feats, I'd have just switched over to greatswords and dumped Sacred Defender entirely by the time I got to 20.

Looking at KotC tree after playing a couple DPS classes, namely an AA ranger and Kensei fighter, it looked very weak to me in comparison. An extra few d6 of bonus damage, even with a greatsword or falchion, wasn't enough to make KotC particularly appealing even against undead or outsiders. If they gained an extra couple [W] worth, that might look a lot better on a high crit weapon at least.

I had taken all available hate generation abilities in Sacred Defender, and wore Fabricator's Bracers and a +13 crafted intimidate item with points spent in Intimidate skill at every level. I couldn't get my threat generation any higher, and was unable to hold aggro. I'd found that while soloing, many times enemies would run straight past me to get to my cleric hireling. Whatever threat generation they had, I wanted it.

My basic point is that I found paladin DPS to be terrible. It was fine up to level 12, but fell off very quickly once I got past Gianthold. I found Sacred Defender to be very good at a defensive role up to level 12, and I filled an important role tanking the end giant in Tempest Spine with no problems. However, it slowly degraded until it finally fell off a cliff with level 16 elites. I was able to kill enemies with lucky disruption/smiting/vorpal/etc 20 rolls, but my criticals were topping out at around 120 on a great cleave at level 18. Without some kind of burst effects better than cleaves, I can't see how I'd possibly hold aggro and provide party defense past level 20, even on EH.

Given my experience with a paladin defender at heroic levels, I wasn't in the mood to deal with epics of any kind. If I could hold aggro for any length of time, I felt like I could absorb a lot of damage, but enemies just seem to shoot straight for the casters just like we do as players, even if they haven't done anything. I didn't feel like I had anything worthwhile to contribute to epic play, since I couldn't hold aggro, heal efficiently or provide any DPS, so I just TRed into the next life. I'd like to work on epic destinies a little before I TR, but paladin life just felt like a total wash.

[MangLord]

In the effort to make changes to "underpowered" classes, I'm seeing a lot of argument between DDO players and PnP players that play DDO. DDO players call for more, while DnD players want the system to reflect the core principles of DnD. We're way past that. My PnP characters rarely had stats above 20, so the argument kinda falls apart there. My current level 4 elven warpriest has a 22 str already. My rogues didn't care much about high CON in DnD, but I will die in the harbor if I dump CON. The problem becomes where to draw the line. Does the development team scale back to reflect a more PnP approach, or further embrace DDO as a separate entity with its own metrics? Unless the division becomes more clear, certain classes will always fall behind.

I'm a DDO player initially drawn to the game by a personal history of PnP, but I've accepted the conventions of the game in an MMO state, and would prefer the development team to either scale back towards PnP, or allow all classes to abandon PnP rule restrictions in an effort to comply with DDO conventions and mechanics and become viable assets to a party.

What seems reasonable to a PnP player seems to be generally considered inadequate to a DDO player. I suggest the team pick a side, because trying to hit the middle is an impossible task. The problem is that, while everything is based on the concept of DnD, DDO has developed an inflated system that PnP rules can't address without "house rules". Changes to paladin (and every other class) need to reflect this. What works for normal difficulty, my basis for more pure DnD rules, can be horribly underpowered when attempting harder difficulties. Elite is where its at with DDO, lets face it. Normal is fine. I prefer to play Hard on epic levels, and I feel like all classes should be viable on EH at least. The premise for EE should be "pro only" instead of "savant" if you prefer to play an "off class". I'm fine with it being very hard, but it should be doable for a player that knows how to play their class, instead of just following a recipe of evasion and DPS. If that's the way the developers want to do it, fine, but a pro should be able to bring a dwarven stalwart defender into EE if that's the class they're best at, use their abilities tactically, and have a good chance of staying alive. PrEs, feats and destinies need to reflect that or continue to be laughably gimpy.

[RKP]

[QUOTE=MangLord;5361024]In the effort to make changes to "underpowered" classes, I'm seeing a lot of argument between DDO players and PnP players that play DDO. DDO players call for more, while DnD players want the system to reflect the core principles of DnD. We're way past that. My PnP characters rarely had stats above 20, so the argument kinda falls apart there. My current level 4 elven warpriest has a 22 str already. My rogues didn't care much about high CON in DnD, but I will die in the harbor if I dump CON. The problem becomes where to draw the line. Does the development team scale back to reflect a more PnP approach, or further embrace DDO as a separate entity with its own metrics? Unless the division becomes more clear, certain classes will always fall behind.

Of course you are 100% correct. I have been playing pnp dnd since 1979. On epic elite you find rats that have more hit points than any deity ever stated out in any edition. The 1st edition D&D version of the drow diety Lloth had 66 hit points! What does she have now on EE CitW? A million? There is still no justification for ruining someone's beloved character. There is always another way. The problem is that turbine seems to want to just take the most obvious and least creative: nerfing.

[Qhualor]

I'm just curious as to what difficulty you normally play at where paladin DPS doesn't suck? Not judging you, just curious. If I were to play normal or maybe hard difficulty, I'd say paladin DPS is alright. It's at least enough to kill enemies faster than they can heal themselves.

The reason I ask is because when I did my paladin life, by the time I got to level 18 and hit Wheloon elites, I was absolutely dependent on rolling a 20 with a vorpal longsword, particularly on the stupid lizardman shamans when I tried to solo Lesson in Deception. This was at heroic levels, which got the thought in my mind that my sacred defender was going to get eaten alive at epic levels. I had very good defense and intimidate, and was able to whittle away mobs very slowly by turtling up with cleaves and self healing as needed, but if I didn't have a high DPS friend, it was a long, arduous experience. The problem was that even with the DPS sorc happily allowing me to run in first and grab aggro, I was unable to hold it after a few seconds, and then had to blow several LoH keeping him alive while I attempted to aggro the mob on me again.

I'd dipped into KotC for extra smites and such, but spent the vast majority of my AP in Sacred Defender. Defense was kinda new to me, as I tend to play DPS characters, so I was kinda determined to experience paladin life from a defensive perspective. I took a few shield feats, power attack and cleaves. I found the shield feats to be incredibly underwhelming. If I didn't have to basically redo all my feats, I'd have just switched over to greatswords and dumped Sacred Defender entirely by the time I got to 20.

Looking at KotC tree after playing a couple DPS classes, namely an AA ranger and Kensei fighter, it looked very weak to me in comparison. An extra few d6 of bonus damage, even with a greatsword or falchion, wasn't enough to make KotC particularly appealing even against undead or outsiders. If they gained an extra couple [W] worth, that might look a lot better on a high crit weapon at least.

I had taken all available hate generation abilities in Sacred Defender, and wore Fabricator's Bracers and a +13 crafted intimidate item with points spent in Intimidate skill at every level. I couldn't get my threat generation any higher, and was unable to hold aggro. I'd found that while soloing, many times enemies would run straight past me to get to my cleric hireling. Whatever threat generation they had, I wanted it.

My basic point is that I found paladin DPS to be terrible. It was fine up to level 12, but fell off very quickly once I got past Gianthold. I found Sacred Defender to be very good at a defensive role up to level 12, and I filled an important role tanking the end giant in Tempest Spine with no problems. However, it slowly degraded until it finally fell off a cliff with level 16 elites. I was able to kill enemies with lucky disruption/smiting/vorpal/etc 20 rolls, but my criticals were topping out at around 120 on a great cleave at level 18. Without some kind of burst effects better than cleaves, I can't see how I'd possibly hold aggro and provide party defense past level 20, even on EH.

Given my experience with a paladin defender at heroic levels, I wasn't in the mood to deal with epics of any kind. If I could hold aggro for any length of time, I felt like I could absorb a lot of damage, but enemies just seem to shoot straight for the casters just like we do as players, even if they haven't done anything. I didn't feel like I had anything worthwhile to contribute to epic play, since I couldn't hold aggro, heal efficiently or provide any DPS, so I just TRed into the next life. I'd like to work on epic destinies a little before I TR, but paladin life just felt like a total wash.

I don't know what to say to prove that I think paladin dps isn't that bad. im not saying its top notch, but not as terrible as people make it out to be. I always build for dps, investing in cha, equipping items and gear that boost dps and focus on KOTC. like I mentioned in the other thread about damage mitigation, current tank trees need better focus instead of developing new tank trees. that could be where the problem lies for your dps.

[toapat]

I had taken all available hate generation abilities in Sacred Defender, and wore Fabricator's Bracers and a +13 crafted intimidate item with points spent in Intimidate skill at every level. I couldn't get my threat generation any higher, and was unable to hold aggro. I'd found that while soloing, many times enemies would run straight past me to get to my cleric hireling. Whatever threat generation they had, I wanted it.

Not sure how you couldnt. Im running about that much and barring Xyzzy (because of a number of epic spells that ignore her defense i dont have), i can basically hold aggro off of anyone. Unless you forgot to ever use Divine Righteousness.

The problem with DoS/SD are that both trees have very bad vertical scaling. Going up the trees doesnt really help beyond unlocking the core abilities which are pretty much the best part of either tree, with the only relly bad ones of those being Stand fast in SD and Eternal Defender in DoS. Im sorry, but upto -50 hp before dieing? if something is nuking me that quickly its going to drop me into the -100s almost immediately.

[Jerren]

This here is your main problem your a PNPer that can't see the fight your trying to fight has been long lost. Your not going to get Turbine to go backwards to what we used to have. Many of us fought for things in the enhancement pass and we failed, plain and simple as that.

Move on already, your continued trolling in here and beating a dead horse is not constructive and realistically isn't helping to improve anything.

Sad thing is I agree with some of what you say but guess what? Others like qhualor and myself peed and moaned about those things for months before the enhancement pass and it still went through.

Shame on you for trying to blame others like myself that fought hard against some of these changes when you were no where around.

The only constructive thing we can do is work with how things are now because you are straight up delusional if you think they will change the whole system to make it like it used to be or should have been.


Btw here is a recent thread on BYOH (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/442809-Did-BYOH-take-a-wrong-turn?highlight=BYOH).

Thanks for your input, although I am pretty sure I was not talking to you. Butt in on anothers conversation and then call them a troll, good one!