Are Fighter just Gimp w the saves they get???

[Powskier]

my buddy just got to epic as fighter capstone and ..the saves are so bad..Fighter is frontline ;they deserve better than +6 ,at 20th lvl - UPDATE The Weak SAVES PLEASE...no wonder players hate fighter,I did my 1st 3 lives at fighter, and it wasn't easy.

[fmalfeas]

Fighter gets massive fort saves. Which provides good protection from Disintegrate, the bane the classes that have good reflex and will. Being a Heavy Armor class, the odds of them having enough dex to make for a good reflex save at 20+ is close to nil unless they're a monk-split or other multiclass, so it's not a big thing there. And will? Everyone has a weakness of some sort. That's the fighter's weak point. It can be mitigated with gear, race choice (warforged are immune to Hold spells, Dwarves get bonuses to saves vs spells, elves are immune to sleep spells) and epic destinies. Also, the +12 at 20 for a good profile save isn't that big of a thing these days, when people are toting around 60+ saves.

But, as a fighter, there are two buffs you want most of the time that make up for your will save, at least a bit. Greater Heroism, and Freedom of Movement. Fear immunity, and Hold immunity, respectively. The fear bit can be done with gear pretty easy (low level aug) and Freedom of Movement does exist as a constant buff on a few gear pieces.

[Fafnir]

It's about balance. Fighters get good dps and weak saves; paladins get great saves and... oh hang on, wait...

:confused:

[Enoach]

This is the trade off and one area where the difference between a Fighter (lots of feat choices, lower saves) and a Paladin (few feat choices but higher saves)

Now a fighter does not have to suffer from lower saves if they invest some of their feats into defensive feats especially feats that improve their saves. There are many of them, many that are also not given a second look because they don't contribute to DPS.

[Monkey-Boy]

It's about balance. Fighters get good dps and weak saves; paladins get great saves and... oh hang on, wait...

:confused:

Pretty much this.

Fighter is a dead class.

[FlaviusMaximus]

Fighters get good fort saves and reflex saves don't mean anything anymore if you wear heavy armor. Will saves can be a problem, but the + to saves from Defender can help a bit.

[Qhualor]

fighters are a weaker version of barbarian.

[Blackheartox]

It's about balance. Fighters get good dps and weak saves; paladins get great saves and... oh hang on, wait...

:confused:

Splash 2 palie, saves fixed.
Splash 6 monk dps fixed.

Only issue is that it lacks dps compared to pure palie.
But its still very viable.
Issue is people are chasing after the most effective thing and dont like to play out of the box builds.

But hey let me join in, sorcs got robes only and thus super low survival.
I dont want to splash 2 palie, i dont want to take harmor feats, but i want same survival as a 220 prr melle.
/makes sense, right? heh

[count_spicoli]

Before everybody and there mama was tripping and stunning because of this gimp bug 12 ftr was great. +8 str or 11 if human power surge was nice. Now ftrs aren't even tactics masters cuz a Wizzy can trip just as well. So ya they are a hot mess right now until that bug is fixxed.

[Powskier]

yea,it is Will saves fustrating the player-he is swappin enhances 4 g heroism before the thread was up...He cant twist some of the will stuff yet from diff destinies ,srry suggesting that wont work till l8r.I suggest to save the spell absorb stuff for tough times and wear diff items in those slots-swap in battle as needed. Any suggestions for will save boots for fighter builds could go here I guess....bring 'em

[Brac]

Items, feats, stat increases. There are plenty of ways to increase saves. Your friend just needs to build better. If you want to complain about fighters there are plenty of real issues, saves isn't one. Try harder.

[Powskier]

Items, feats, stat increases. There are plenty of ways to increase saves. Your friend just needs to build better. If you want to complain about fighters there are plenty of real issues, saves isn't one. Try harder.

relax dude ,it is his 1st fighter life...tellin people they didnt try hard enough is some weak rotten tripe.They get +6 will save at lvl 20 ,I think alot players dont know how low it is.

[Sehenry03]

relax dude ,it is his 1st fighter life...tellin people they didnt try hard enough is some weak rotten tripe.They get +6 will save at lvl 20 ,I think alot players dont know how low it is.

This...good news is you don't need good will saves as it is the easiest to build for. Prot from Evil and FoM fixes most will save problems.

[count_spicoli]

This...good news is you don't need good will saves as it is the easiest to build for. Prot from Evil and FoM fixes most will save problems.

You'll still boogie alot.

[Powskier]

Items, feats, stat increases. There are plenty of ways to increase saves. Your friend just needs to build better. If you want to complain about fighters there are plenty of real issues, saves isn't one. Try harder.


This...good news is you don't need good will saves as it is the easiest to build for. Prot from Evil and FoM fixes most will save problems.

yea FOM is the key for him....to bad cards are gone now...he coulda had a flask;( He may have umd enough for that scroll though,ill pass along /darn fighter get not enough skill points though or he'd have heal scroll stack)

[Sehenry03]

You'll still boogie alot.

Most people boogie a lot. The dancing spells are tough to plan for. Some don't even give a save and my druid has good will saves and he still fails a lot

[Thalone]

relax dude ,it is his 1st fighter life...tellin people they didnt try hard enough is some weak rotten tripe.They get +6 will save at lvl 20 ,I think alot players dont know how low it is.

Pretty sure the max base is +12 Will at 20. Fighters are only 6 points off the max, and this is quite small given the amount of gear and buffs you can get.

Others have already suggested FoM/Protection from Evil. Also: Trip, Sap, Stun to get the stuff which can attack your Will saves. Fighters have a billion feats for a reason.

[Kuttamia]

my buddy just got to epic as fighter capstone and ..the saves are so bad..Fighter is frontline ;they deserve better than +6 ,at 20th lvl - UPDATE The Weak SAVES PLEASE...no wonder players hate fighter,I did my 1st 3 lives at fighter, and it wasn't easy.

You are exactly right. Fighters are the most useless class in game atm to play a pure build. They are good with heavy splash though, giving you a nice 3 extra feat options for just 3 fighter splash. With rubbish saves, rubbish healing ability, rubbish dps, rubbish tactical abilities, rubbish damage mitigation, playing a fighter today is just a waste of time. Any class is more proficient then a fighter. Compare fighter with their other melee counterparts, a barb, paladine, bard and you will notice that fighter cant even reach high enough to kiss their boots.

[MonadRebelion]

I basically agree with the OP. A 20th level fighter is underpowered compared to a 20th level paladin. At the same time, all PC's are way over powered compared to content. This leaves us in a weird situation. It seems like fighters need a boost, they also need to be nerfed along with everything else. In my judgment the game is all whacked out in terms of balance.

[MacRighteous]

Fighters have an abundance of Feat slots - take some of those feats that buff up your saves. There are also save buffs in Enhancements and ED's - spend a few points on those too.

[Sharktopus]

http://ddowiki.com/images/Orcish_Privateer%27s_Boots.png

http://ddowiki.com/images/Jeweled_Cloak_%28Level_23%29.png

http://ddowiki.com/images/Reaver%27s_Ring.png

There is better gear, but this is easily obtainable for almost everyone. Check auction house for the cloak/ring, and farm slayers for the boots.

Edit. Also, optionally, because they're good for a fighter to have for a couple reasons.
http://ddowiki.com/images/Drow_Smoke_Goggles.png

Otherwise just carry blindness pots.

On that note, if he's a fighter, pots pot pots. Pots for what ails ya. Also the Legendary Dreadnaught cores that break helplessness will be his bread and butter.

[porkchorp]

My buddy just got to level 6 as a fighter and hasnt spent a dime on the game and was not twinked.

He has a +8 will save.

Its just common gear and feats yo, i could see how he is annoyed at lvl 20 having a +6 will save.

[Sharktopus]

My buddy just got to level 6 as a fighter and hasnt spent a dime on the game and was not twinked.

He has a +8 will save.

Its just common gear and feats yo, i could see how he is annoyed at lvl 20 having a +6 will save.

You're right. even with just a lootgen resist item and a wisdom item, and some pots he should be good to go until he can get better gear. If you're going to have low saves, you get the heaviest armor you can afford, the most hit points you can manage, and as much fort as you can slot.

[Rykka]

This is the trade off and one area where the difference between a Fighter (lots of feat choices, lower saves) and a Paladin (few feat choices but higher saves)

Now a fighter does not have to suffer from lower saves if they invest some of their feats into defensive feats especially feats that improve their saves. There are many of them, many that are also not given a second look because they don't contribute to DPS.

They (the feats) also don't do much of anything save wise IMO.

Pallies get ginormous saves and do respectable DPS. Fighters need those feats to do respectable DPS, because...

Kensai is still a multiclass fighter/monk tree and anything it did to help fighters would affect fighter/monks.

Vangard is a Pally extra damage/defence tree to augment KoTC and then slapped onto fighter so they had a 3rd tree.

So, Fighters are Tanks in a game that doesn't need or even use them.

[nibel]

But, as a fighter, there are two buffs you want most of the time that make up for your will save, at least a bit. Greater Heroism, and Freedom of Movement. Fear immunity, and Hold immunity, respectively. The fear bit can be done with gear pretty easy (low level aug) and Freedom of Movement does exist as a constant buff on a few gear pieces.

Add there Protection From Evil potions (last 5 minutes, buy at market) for immunity against dominate (rare) and Command/Greater Command (not that rare).

This leaves the only spell with some kind of will save that you are still vulnerable at high levels being... Disco. Otto's Irresistible Dance don't have a save, and the other will-based spells are not on high-level spellcaster lists (Sonic Blast, Sleep, Hypno, Hypnotic Pattern, Slow, Crushing Despair, Feeblemind, etc).

[Braegan]

I trd back into a pure human fighter because I was tired of easy buttons (personally).

He is not nearly as bad off as folks like to think fighters are.

Well built and well geared a fighter is great at tactics and DPS. The weak point being self heals and saves.

Saves get better with gear and/or timely uses of taking out the caster or if that fails using a harper pin, Unstoppable, etc.

Self Heals are there if you build for it, via SF pots, Heal Scrolls, and latter in Epics DC Concecrate or Cocoon.

It's not perfect and it's a run up-hill. But a fighter isn't gimp.

Does fighter class need a buff? Sure, a small one, BUT! It has to be a buff in the highest tier cores like 18 and 20. The Kensai/Monk Splash is fine powerwise, the pure fighter could use some love.

Edit:

Just logged in to check, my fighter has: Fort: 54, Reflex 44, Will 42 or 62/52/50 with PDK Shield Orb Proc. I would have to say that's pretty respectable for a pure human fighter. Other outside buffs could make it higher but I don't really count on ever getting them.

[fmalfeas]

Oh, btw, if you're a Sword and Board fighter, at level 18 you can have Light and Darkness from Inspired Quarter. +4 to your saves. +6 if you're true neutral. There's also Beholder Plate armor, which can be upgraded with +10 to will saves.

[Powskier]

My buddy just got to level 6 as a fighter and hasnt spent a dime on the game and was not twinked.

He has a +8 will save.

Its just common gear and feats yo, i could see how he is annoyed at lvl 20 having a +6 will save.

well, he is around a +22-26 ,i forget exactly ;the +6 is the base for lvl20 fighter(way low compared to other classes)but we are used to EH and EE... +26 or 28 is barely good enough for epic hard.

[Powskier]

nice about the prot evil, ill pass that along-TY;didnt think that helped on some will spells,cool. Part of the prob is he is below lvl24 where loot starts poppin... It isnt like he's lvl28, gimpin still ,like society ,but he fears that is what is goin to happen

[Powskier]

Oh, btw, if you're a Sword and Board fighter, at level 18 you can have Light and Darkness from Inspired Quarter. +4 to your saves. +6 if you're true neutral. There's also Beholder Plate armor, which can be upgraded with +10 to will saves.

nice item to farm;) +10 'will' catch some interest

[Powskier]

I trd back into a pure human fighter because I was tired of easy buttons (personally).

He is not nearly as bad off as folks like to think fighters are.

Well built and well geared a fighter is great at tactics and DPS. The weak point being self heals and saves.

Saves get better with gear and/or timely uses of taking out the caster or if that fails using a harper pin, Unstoppable, etc.

Self Heals are there if you build for it, via SF pots, Heal Scrolls, and latter in Epics DC Concecrate or Cocoon.

It's not perfect and it's a run up-hill. But a fighter isn't gimp.

Does fighter class need a buff? Sure, a small one, BUT! It has to be a buff in the highest tier cores like 18 and 20. The Kensai/Monk Splash is fine powerwise, the pure fighter could use some love.

Edit:

Just logged in to check, my fighter has: Fort: 54, Reflex 44, Will 42 or 62/52/50 with PDK Shield Orb Proc. I would have to say that's pretty respectable for a pure human fighter. Other outside buffs could make it higher but I don't really count on ever getting them.

awesome #s for pure ftr... yea fighter is not gimp! ,But it requires alot of perks in equipment(i love my GS displacement) and some usefull twists...I told my guildie he'd be fine once he had twists jammin ,by then equipment is sorted nicely...that dont help now while even slayer guys are holding him almost every spell cast. > oh,Fighter shield save boost ,yea...TY,ill mention idea ....and stalwart bonus maybe too if he has points to put. Appreciate input all;my head is wrapped around my own builds ,and workin past 2am ,i think i been in duhh mode l8ly.

[bsquishwizzy]

A summary of this thread:

“WHAAAAAA! WHAAAAA! FIGHTERS ARE GIMP WHAAAAAA!”

Do the words “Dwarf”, “Elf”, “Drow”, or “Half Orc” ring any bells…?

You can’t have an uber reflex save and wear heavy armor. That’s just stupid. Nor should you be a lightning-fast TWF in full plate. And you get LOTS of feats to choose from. Feel free to add some of those nice resistance feats as opposed to your 3rd Critical Stacking modifier.

There is nothing wrong with fighters, aside from the fact that Kensai was designed for a monk splash, as opposed to a pure fighter.

[Monkey-Boy]

There is nothing wrong with fighters, aside from the fact that Kensai was designed for a monk splash, as opposed to a pure fighter.

Wouldn't that be something wrong with fighters?

[Monkey-Boy]

awesome #s for pure ftr... yea fighter is not gimp! ,But it requires alot of perks in equipment(i love my GS displacement) and some usefull twists...I told my guildie he'd be fine once he had twists jammin ,by then equipment is sorted nicely...that dont help now while even slayer guys are holding him almost every spell cast. > oh,Fighter shield save boost ,yea...TY,ill mention idea ....and stalwart bonus maybe too if he has points to put. Appreciate input all;my head is wrapped around my own builds ,and workin past 2am ,i think i been in duhh mode l8ly.

Take all those perks and equipment and put in on a Pally.

You're fighter is a TWFing dwarf right? Have you had a look in the Tempest Tree lately?

[janave]

Pure Fighter has always been the worst class, period. People just did rarely if ever played one to realize that.

Now with PRR/MRR and access to Cocoon, its much less bad in epics, for late level heroics its probably best to build with towershield and shield mastery.

Of course, after bard and pally buffs Fighters got nothing to really show off.

[Blackheartox]

Pure Fighter has always been the worst class, period. People just did rarely if ever played one to realize that.

Now with PRR/MRR and access to Cocoon, its much less bad in epics, for late level heroics its probably best to build with towershield and shield mastery.

Of course, after bard and pally buffs Fighters got nothing to really show off.


Nope, pre motu, fighter tank builds achieved the highest god mode ac since palie coldnt use stalwart set, also 2 kopesh pure fighters were superb dps builds back then.
And anyone who played a tank back then knew how much those feats meant made when going tanking route.

Fighter was to strong with monk splash, has been destroyed by power creep that made harmor defact nm1 survival tool and will make its comeback when they "remake something" which will break it.
The way ddo is nowadays

[axel15810]

It's about balance. Fighters get good dps and weak saves; paladins get great saves and... oh hang on, wait...

:confused:

This. Pally DPS is too high right now. Considering their godly saves and good self-healing, they should NOT be top tier melee DPS. They should be 2nd tier.

Until this is changed, there is no reason to gimp your survivability by going fighter or barb when you can get the same DPS but also gain higher saves and good self-healing/some casting by going Pally.

Looks like they're moving in the right direction with proposed newest barb tweaks but we'll see what happens. In overall EE viability, pure pallies are still miles ahead of pure barbs and pure fighters.

[Ironforge_Clan]

I trd back into a pure human fighter because I was tired of easy buttons (personally).

He is not nearly as bad off as folks like to think fighters are.

Well built and well geared a fighter is great at tactics and DPS. The weak point being self heals and saves.

Saves get better with gear and/or timely uses of taking out the caster or if that fails using a harper pin, Unstoppable, etc.

Self Heals are there if you build for it, via SF pots, Heal Scrolls, and latter in Epics DC Concecrate or Cocoon.

It's not perfect and it's a run up-hill. But a fighter isn't gimp.

Does fighter class need a buff? Sure, a small one, BUT! It has to be a buff in the highest tier cores like 18 and 20. The Kensai/Monk Splash is fine powerwise, the pure fighter could use some love.

Edit:

Just logged in to check, my fighter has: Fort: 54, Reflex 44, Will 42 or 62/52/50 with PDK Shield Orb Proc. I would have to say that's pretty respectable for a pure human fighter. Other outside buffs could make it higher but I don't really count on ever getting them.

QFT....

Had to log on to check my original character - 1st life dwarven fighter - Fort +60, Reflex +41, and Will +45 base and with SD running they jump to +68, +46, and +50 respectively. There is nothing shabby about those saves and I know with that with some grinding of EDs I could make some improvements.

[bruener]

Items, feats, stat increases. There are plenty of ways to increase saves. Your friend just needs to build better. If you want to complain about fighters there are plenty of real issues, saves isn't one. Try harder.
Wow.....really not helpful.

[Qhualor]

Pure Fighter has always been the worst class, period. People just did rarely if ever played one to realize that.

Now with PRR/MRR and access to Cocoon, its much less bad in epics, for late level heroics its probably best to build with towershield and shield mastery.

Of course, after bard and pally buffs Fighters got nothing to really show off.

disagree. my pure fighter has great dps, saves and she has been around for a few years. never was disappointed by a pure fighter dps being a tier down from my pure barb. i have been disappointed though that there aren't better potions to heal with past CSW, or CSR in my fighters case. its only because of the lack of potion healing/repairing that has made me decide to go BF for CoS. Consecrated Ground and Cocoon is a line crosser for me and refuse to twist those.

[Blackheartox]

This. Pally DPS is too high right now. Considering their godly saves and good self-healing, they should NOT be top tier melee DPS. They should be 2nd tier.

Until this is changed, there is no reason to gimp your survivability by going fighter or barb when you can get the same DPS but also gain higher saves and good self-healing/some casting by going Pally.

Looks like they're moving in the right direction with proposed newest barb tweaks but we'll see what happens. In overall EE viability, pure pallies are still miles ahead of pure barbs and pure fighters.

After the teacher said the things aboce it was total silence.

Nothing but silence in clasroom, a little boy in 3rd row seat 3 with a slightly confused look on his face raises his hand with hesitation and scared says:
"Teacher i dont think you are correct, barbarians are ahead of paladins in dps now, and survival does not matter because barbarians selfheal very good for any epic elite content"

Teacher starts laughing and tells the boy that he should go outside of class and hold a bucket of water and to think what he just said.
While boy walks up to door, teacher burts out in laughter while thro tears you could hear 1 sentence.
Barbarians selfhealing...


Boy, slowly walks outside and confused stands there for the duration of the whole class.
After its finished, teacher calls him to faculty office and tells him, dont ever talk about that again.

Boy, learned a important lesson from that..
Things change rapidly in this world..

[the_one_dwarfforged]

yea fighters are just gimps now. period.

thanks to bard and pally and barb changes, they all deal as much dps or more than a fighter with better, i dont know, ability to do literally anything other than dps.

bards can self heal and self buff.

pallies can self heal.

barbs are in my opinion even more disgusting than pallies, because all you have to do is log in and youre self healing without stopping to heal yourself. barbs are best dps just because they spend closest to 100% of the time just fighting.

fighters have no tactical dc advantage.

fighters have no melee versatility advantage. nobody takes multiple weapon focus lines, and you only get keen edge for one anyway.

fighters have no defensive and/or self healing advantage. everyone who can wears heavy armor, and if you are going to tell me that barb healing is worse than scrolling and/or cocoon then youre an idiot.

extra feats doesnt add up to much. for me it means i keep all my ranged feats, but do you notice many people complaining that their pallies are gimp because they dont have manyshot? i dont. and is manyshot even better than just meleeing now? maybe a little bit i guess, but not that much if at all.

and if you dont take ranged then those extra fighter feats add up to nothing, which is the same as not having extra feats. and if you dont have enough feats to pick up basically everything you could want (especially on a ****ing pally, getting better cleaves for free...) then youre doing something wrong. and if you are spending your extra fighter feats on +2 will save because, youe a fighter and ahve bad saves, its still nothing because your saves probably arent high enough to matter anyway. trying to compare extra fighter feats being spent on iron will to divine grace is massively idiotic. i dont want divine grace, but i mean really, what a terrible comparison.


so the long and short of it is, fighters are not useless, but they are pointless. cant do anything that another class cant do better more easily, ***.

[mezzorco]

Now a fighter does not have to suffer from lower saves if they invest some of their feats that improve their saves.

This.
Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Luck of Heroes and your saves go from base 12/6/6 to 13/9/9. And you still have 8 more feats than a pure pally.
If you want to really invest on your saves, Snake Blood, Discipline and Bullheaded bring you to 13/10/11.

Also, Insightful Reflexes can be useful for pure fighters willing to take Know the angles, while Force of Personality is less worthwhile.

[FrancisP.Fancypants]

relax dude ,it is his 1st fighter life...tellin people they didnt try hard enough is some weak rotten tripe.They get +6 will save at lvl 20 ,I think alot players dont know how low it is.

Clearly a number of players don't know how to mitigate a low will save with gear and not dumping WIS. If "your friend" only has the bare minimum will save at 20, they're either going to figure out how to raise it or come to the forum and whine. One of those makes a better player.

[Araleas]

well, he is around a +22-26 ,i forget exactly ;the +6 is the base for lvl20 fighter(way low compared to other classes)but we are used to EH and EE... +26 or 28 is barely good enough for epic hard.

Low compared to what classes?

Fighter saves at level 20 are Fort:+12 Reflex:+6 WIll:+6
You get exactly the same saves when you are a level 20 Paladin or Barbarian.
Two other classes with a +6 Will save are Rogue and Ranger.

Now the classes with higher Will save
Wizard, Sorcerer, Druid, Cleric, Artificer, Favored Soul, Monk, Bard
With the exception of Bard and Monk (who plays in a different saves league anyway) all caster oriented classes.

Now please explain again why Fighters should get the same base WILL save as caster classes?
Additional question: Do all those caster classes get a +12 Fort save accordingly?

[Araleas]

*snip*

There is nothing wrong with fighters, aside from the fact that Kensai was designed for a monk splash, as opposed to a pure fighter.

I fully agree with that statement.

[Severlin]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

[UurlockYgmeov]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

Thank you for posting this. While I might not agree with everything - I like that you are doing something and generally your thoughts about what and how. Keep it up! Reposting to Tha Consortium private forums.

[mezzorco]

why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood.

Would you marry me?

[Braegan]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

All of that sounds very good. Especially the priority of things. Getting classes that are lacking their 3rd tree is good to wrap up before new classes are added or 4th trees are discussed. I really like the sound of tweaking kensai with multi selectors. Doesn't break those that want to splash but gives those that do not an option that's worthwhile. Can't wait to get some of this on live!

[dunklezhan]

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

Sev~

All good stuff to know, understood that it's early. I haven't any comments because the above list pretty much nails it for me. I do have one request: when looking at druid forms please do something to make pure druid bear at least as viable a tank as a fighter vanguard or stalwart. I appreciate that they have casting capability as well which makes this hard to balance as you don't want them to be automatically a better choice than a fighter tank. But please try! Its the only druid that appeals to me and currently it just doesn't work.

[PermaBanned]

...and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds.You mean other than the Shuricannon, Swashflingers that Metorthingy throwing builds?

[DarthCaedus]

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.



Does this mean you are considering not nerfing divine grace but instead giving builds without divine grace an opportunity to boost their saves? Or am I reading too much into this?

[Severlin]

Does this mean you are considering not nerfing divine grace but instead giving builds without divine grace an opportunity to boost their saves? Or am I reading too much into this?

Yes that's what we are currently discussing.

Sev~

[Grailhawk]

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.


~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.


QTF, Ranger defense is really poor, Hopefully that list gets taken care of this year.

[Zengar]

Does this mean you are considering not nerfing divine grace but instead giving builds without divine grace an opportunity to boost their saves? Or am I reading too much into this?

That Is *almost* the way I read it. What I see is that they are hoping to make Divine Grace into a bonus type that can be found on items, so that Paladins and Paladin splashes will have it built in, while other character types can equip it if desired. The reason why I say that this is *almost* what you said, is that they've run into problem when trying to ad new bonus types before, and a compromise version of Divine Grace might not end up stacking with some current form of saving throw bonus.

~~~and ninja'd by Severlin

[Rys]

Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds.


Oh great. So I guess you'll make me quit finally after all. Breaking existing builds is your speciality. No matter what you say.

Totally can see the future:
Manyshot puts 10k Stars on 2 minutes cooldown and vice versa. Doubleshot penalty removed. The only viable choice now is a pure ranger.

Now just fix the Fury Eternal to actually work as described or nerf it to the ground (what do you prefer) and leave the Shiradi as the only ranged option so we all can use one button - autoattack. And I can let my cat play instead of me.

[Qhualor]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

yeah, expect to be called on this :)

it looks to me like some things that have been a big concern and some needed improvements might be happening this year finally. glad to see Kensei will be getting a look, but i don't think Fighter needs another tree. rather see a rework to Kensei to be the DPS/tactical tree that still keeps the flavor of the prestige. definitely agree with Mechanic. i tried it for one heroic life on one of my rogue past lives and it lacked serious dps if you didn't use a crossbow. leery about the idea of creating saving throw items and bonus to compete with DG. sounds a little too power creep to me. i would rather see a look into maybe the races, classes and enhancements instead to see if there would be something that could be improved first.

[UurlockYgmeov]

SO what about HOrc? I haven't seen any around in ages... except for the one storage toon I have (Skelle Beater) which was rolled up to try the new race when it initially was made available.

[axel15810]

SO what about HOrc? I haven't seen any around in ages... except for the one storage toon I have (Skelle Beater) which was rolled up to try the new race when it initially was made available.

In my view it's a trash race at this point. The AP cost of the THF damage line is way too expensive and hasn't scaled well at all once we broke past level 20. Same with dwarf axe line. And the cores of the horc tree are terrible. And they get both a -2 to CHA and a -2 to INT. Yuck.

Really hope they do a racial pass at some point. I especially want to see some compelling reasons to pick a race other than bladeforged for a melee.

Right now Bladeforged is the best race by far for melees because of reconstruct SLA. The best by a decent margin over warforged for most arcanes. And human/pdk is the clear winner for divines because of the extra feat being so huge for feat starved classes.

Not a whole lot of min/max reasons to play any other races at the moment, other than a handful of niche builds. Drow rogues for assassinate DC and sun elf turners come to mind.

But basically we have 2 races, humans and bladeforged. For the vast majority of builds everything else is flavor. That's a huge problem. I get so annoyed playing my cleric that darn near every single fighter/rogue/ranger/paladin/monk I see in epics is a bladeforged now. Please give us something, anything on other racial trees that can compete with the bladeforged SLA on a melee.

[Fafnir]

Please please, more power creep....

:confused:

[Cetus]

Unfortunately, fighters have been killed. They are the new pally of DDO.

There are an enormous number of ways to fix kensei, and I appreciate that you acknowledged it sev.

[porkchorp]

Rename kensai tree to Man-at-Arms, dissolve samauri themes within the tree, destroy monk synergy, focus on killdudes.

Make ranger a melee achetype. Restrict multiclass options to 1 of melee/divine/arcane/specialist. In other words no more fighter/paladins and such.


But i think the op was answered already. No, fighters are not gimp because of the saves they get. :)

[RedOrm]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

/Snips some interesting/awesome stuff


Thanks very much! Looking forward to finding out what bits will have entered the game this time next year :)
For now, thanks again for the insight!

Greetz,
Red Orm

[the_one_dwarfforged]

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

1) it would be nice, but this means you have to change more than just fighters. a pure pally or barb will have more strength than a pure fighter. a barb will have more strength and know the angles. fighter gets +5 dc. so at best their tactical dc is break even, maybe? so what that means is if people are landing dcs now, why bother buffing them for just fighters? if you did buff them, by how much? so much that other classes cant reliably land tactical abilities at all (im not actually against this at all to be honest)? if you raise fighter dc bonuses by an actually significant amount, are you going to plan/change gear released with new content and/or monster saves accordingly?

so clearly theres a lot of issues with giving fighters a dc advantage. it might be easier (and absolutely necessary) to just boost their damage a bit and give them additional tactical abilities that are actually useful. also replacing a lot of the bad stuff in kensei would help.

slight passive buff to all the cores would be nice.
spiritual bond being replaced or hugely buffed would be nice.
one cut being replaced or hugely buffed would be nice.
fixing alacrity so it works properly would be nice.
replace reed in the wind, its worthless even if you splash monk.
lower the cost of tactics.
replace improved dodge.
replace or hugely buff weapon meditation.
replace or lower the cost of ascetic training.
replace improved mobility.
change dc of shattering strike to be based on str.
add a tier 4 enhancement or two. something along the lines of lay waste, or aoe stun would be nice. or just a single target stun would be acceptable i guess.
lower the cooldown of, or replace, or hugely buff a good death. eliminating its prereqs would also be great if you do end up buffing it.
replace or hugely buff deadly strike. another opportunity to create a tactics based dps/cc ability for fighters.


2) yea, melee ranger love would be great. FE should also add mp to keep it modern.


3) dont give divine grace to everyone via items... fighter saves are already useful enough with gearing, and tring (3 rogue lives = +6 saves vs traps; 3 bard lives = +6 saves vs enchant (hold, dancing ball); 3 divine epl brace = +3 saves) and all that, and with easily accessible buffs like fom, dw, and pfe there arent too many spells that can cc you just as long as you glance at your buff bar once in a while. and with heavy armor reflex is less necessary than before, though still absolutely helpful.

you shouldnt take away the uniqueness of one class to ungimp some whiny gimps. oh wait thats kind what you did with paladin by giving them holy sword in a manner which is an obvious rip off of keen edge +10... still, dont do it.

[Grailhawk]

Rename kensai tree to Man-at-Arms, dissolve samauri themes within the tree, destroy monk synergy, focus on killdudes.

Make ranger a melee achetype. Restrict multiclass options to 1 of melee/divine/arcane/specialist. In other words no more fighter/paladins and such.


But i think the op was answered already. No, fighters are not gimp because of the saves they get. :)

Man of Arms Samauri thing is meh what ever (Fighter/Monk=Samauri thing shouldn't be the only leg fighter has to stand on). But the multiclass idea would kill this game this games niche is 100% do its multiclass system, this game would have no leg to stand on without the deep multiclassing it allows.

[Severlin]

Please please, more power creep....

:confused:

If by "power creep" you mean more stuff in the Bard, Paladin, Barbarian range then yes. (Paladin is very good but it's not the healing that we are watching; it's the saving throw advantage.)

Part of the reason we allowed DPS to creep up is that hit point creep has been happening on the monster side for quite some time, and there was clear player feedback that many enemies at the game's end had so many hit points that they were boring to kill. As a result of this player feedback we've allowed DPS to creep up as a default.

Sev~

[Powskier]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

cool; glad to see some of the directions...Ill have to enjoy my mnk/ftr thf dwarf axe build while it lasts:)...since it looks like a few updates you all will be thinking of a kensai redo ? I suggest dropping the Vanguard or Stalwart-they could be combined .

[porkchorp]

Man of Arms Samauri thing is meh what ever (Fighter/Monk=Samauri thing shouldn't be the only leg fighter has to stand on). But the multiclass idea would kill this game this games niche is 100% do its multiclass system, this game would have no leg to stand on without the deep multiclassing it allows.

I dont beleive this games niche is multiclassing. I Think it is the rich dnd universe and the insanely fun real time twitchy combat system that give it a leg up. There would still be tons of multiclass building going on with a restricted system. I get where you are coming from tho.

[Rys]

Part of the reason we allowed DPS to creep up is that hit point creep has been happening on the monster side for quite some time, and there was clear player feedback that many enemies at the game's end had so many hit points that they were boring to kill. As a result of this player feedback we've allowed DPS to creep up as a default.

So instead of adjusting some red name meat bags, you have decided to invalidate all existing content. Do you realize that because of all that power creep there is zero things to do at the cap?

[Gremmlynn]

This is the trade off and one area where the difference between a Fighter (lots of feat choices, lower saves) and a Paladin (few feat choices but higher saves)

Now a fighter does not have to suffer from lower saves if they invest some of their feats into defensive feats especially feats that improve their saves. There are many of them, many that are also not given a second look because they don't contribute to DPS.Those feats aren't given a second look because the +1-2 they give is a joke above about 5th level. If it were +1 per 2-3 character levels, they likely would get that second look.

It's not about not giving DPS, it's about not giving much of anything.

[Tinco]

Bards and Paladins on top of the damage foodchain is already bad as it is.

What about monks and rangers and rogues? You completely neutered the value of class utility as a balancing factor for damage potential. I simply don't get it, all you can do now without swinging the nerfbat is to bring all melee options at least to one level. Welcome to homogenization.

TWF in general needs something more badly than fighters, I hope that's on the list.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

In my view it's a trash race at this point. The AP cost of the THF damage line is way too expensive and hasn't scaled well at all once we broke past level 20. Same with dwarf axe line. And the cores of the horc tree are terrible. And they get both a -2 to CHA and a -2 to INT. Yuck.

Really hope they do a racial pass at some point. I especially want to see some compelling reasons to pick a race other than bladeforged for a melee.

Right now Bladeforged is the best race by far for melees because of reconstruct SLA. The best by a decent margin over warforged for most arcanes. And human/pdk is the clear winner for divines because of the extra feat being so huge for feat starved classes.

Not a whole lot of min/max reasons to play any other races at the moment, other than a handful of niche builds. Drow rogues for assassinate DC and sun elf turners come to mind.

horc is still a really good tree if you can force yourself to stop at +1 str core, +3 boosts and +3 imp power attack. i mean, that is frickin juicy. and it costs less than bladeforged which is minimum ~20 points. id still go human because better str (horc will do more dmg between thf line and pa, human slightly better str is better for tactics dcs), dmg boost, and a feat for less ap, but horc is still really good. and if they got buffed everyone would play them because they are already so powerful. and -2 int/cha doesnt matter a ton because its -0.5 dmg/dc from kta, and -1 str from dm, both of which are more than made up for by having 20 str instead of 18.

and you are wrong about wizards at least, sun elf.


Unfortunately, fighters have been killed. They are the new pally of DDO.

comparing paladins at their lowest to fighters then, and fighters now to paladins now, i wouldnt quite agree, fighters are ok just not as easy. but yea fighters are pretty pointless except for flavor, which kinda doesnt exist.

[Grailhawk]

If by "power creep" you mean more stuff in the Bard, Paladin, Barbarian range then yes. (Paladin is very good but it's not the healing that we are watching; it's the saving throw advantage.)

Part of the reason we allowed DPS to creep up is that hit point creep has been happening on the monster side for quite some time, and there was clear player feedback that many enemies at the game's end had so many hit points that they were boring to kill. As a result of this player feedback we've allowed DPS to creep up as a default.

Sev~

Given this when all is said and done were do you (you as in the Dev team) think each class will fall in the pecking order of things (I'm talking in terms of DPS only)? Can we expect other classes to get as much love as the last three or will it be tempered in such a way that these three classes have taken what ever rank they have and will not let it go?

One more question in terms of DPS how do you expect the "Manyshot balance" to effect melee rangers who rely on it as a massive burst of damage, keeping 3 weapons up today and spending a 11 Ap and 2 Feat to have a massive burst of damage every 2 minutes is not insignificant? Do you expect that the "manyshot balanceing" will nerf that play style?

[the_one_dwarfforged]

If by "power creep" you mean more stuff in the Bard, Paladin, Barbarian range then yes. (Paladin is very good but it's not the healing that we are watching; it's the saving throw advantage.)

Part of the reason we allowed DPS to creep up is that hit point creep has been happening on the monster side for quite some time, and there was clear player feedback that many enemies at the game's end had so many hit points that they were boring to kill. As a result of this player feedback we've allowed DPS to creep up as a default.

Sev~

to make things less boring and less easy, instead of making our dps too much giving us different ways of dealing with encounters would be a lot more rewarding. so...less rednames, more skill options, more uses for high str in the environment besides enemies, basically just more stuff to do besides easy mode rampage.

[bbqzor]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

Finally, a post which makes sense from a player perspective. I am astounded. There are little things which I hope get caught (assassinate not playing nice with the new stealth system, requiring a 3rd party to have agro prior to use... itemization around divine grace diluting a paladin class feature and putting even more pressure to use certain combinations of items over others for no reason besides mudflation... the absence of reviewing and revisiting recent passes like kotc, sacred defender and (tomorrow pending) barbarian trees to balance them now while the iron is hot rather than waiting for months if not years.... etc). But overall this makes sense, and are all things I would do in your position. It is good to see.

I very much hope we get ample time and space to provide legitimate feedback when the time comes. I tire of seeing people post who have no direct experience with what they are posting on, such is the downside of forums. The number of people who, in one place, state they have not played epic barbarian, or done raids on barbarian, or havent played their barbarian since the changes etc, and yet still feel compelled to post regarding barbarian balance in other places based on years old perceptions or out of date characters amazes me. Trying to say why something should change when the people saying the other way havent even played that content yet is difficult and I imagine results in a lot of cross chatter making the job harder. I might suggest using different threads for heroic experience, epic experience, raiding experience and so on... it may help coordinate feedback into categories you can put to use easier. Or at least suggest that when providing feedback players state which experience(s) they participate in regularly on that class.

In closing, I hope some of the obviously bad ideas (repeaters having reduced doubleshot chance, as the payoff from this is based on shots per unit time not shots per mouse click, it makes no sense) get "reviewed" just as you suggest kensai should be (and I wholly agree, kensai should be). And I hope some of the more interesting options which exist, like melee artificer, arent swept under the rug as the passes go by. But its true, repeaters are behind, and runearms are *way* behind (and still lack information regarding their spellpower percentages as well). I could go on but what Im trying to say in closing here, is that the list you present is a good list. As an "early and mutable" list it doesnt include all these little details, but I hope that the version you have does. And that we get time to provide feedback *with* clarification on the experiences behind the feedback. Because, like Quivering Palm, theres heroic-only players saying its good, and epic-elite only players saying its bad, and people in the middle pointing out that it just needs to scale better to please both. But that doesnt come out when you just see posts of good vs bad.

Anyhow, thanks for the actual useful insight. That post was worth more than the producers letter, which I hope stands out as saying something. Maybe its the start of more information from you to us, as I have been hoping to see for a long time. So heres hoping. Cheers.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

It's about balance. Fighters get good dps and weak saves; paladins get great saves and... oh hang on, wait...

:confused:


You're not allowed to care about anything but DPS in this game.

If your DPS is down you have the right to demand that they boost your class until it is equal with the others.... and not allowed to point out any other advantage a class has to compensate for less DPS....






(BTW, Rangers are the real gimps in DDO, just look at their DPS)

[Gremmlynn]

Add there Protection From Evil potions (last 5 minutes, buy at market) for immunity against dominate (rare) and Command/Greater Command (not that rare). They actually still last 1 minute, the icon just lasts 5 mins.

[Vargouille]

cool; glad to see some of the directions...Ill have to enjoy my mnk/ftr thf dwarf axe build while it lasts:)...since it looks like a few updates you all will be thinking of a kensai redo ? I suggest dropping the Vanguard or Stalwart-they could be combined .

Things are still very much up in the air, but Kensei changes would probably involve some new abilities as multiple-choice selectors alongside existing abilities. Specifically targeting abilities that currently require or strongly favor being a monk. Not necessarily greatly changing the entire tree.

[Qhualor]

If by "power creep" you mean more stuff in the Bard, Paladin, Barbarian range then yes. (Paladin is very good but it's not the healing that we are watching; it's the saving throw advantage.)

Part of the reason we allowed DPS to creep up is that hit point creep has been happening on the monster side for quite some time, and there was clear player feedback that many enemies at the game's end had so many hit points that they were boring to kill. As a result of this player feedback we've allowed DPS to creep up as a default.

Sev~

but by doing so bard, paladin and barb are arguably "comparable" in straight up dps. with easy self healing for bard and paladin, CC for bard and saves for paladin, UMD/self buffing for bard and paladin, barb is overall still behind them. there is also still the problem with heavy armor benefits greater than every other armor arguably making evasion less desirable. what is supposed to be the ceiling? the balance of pros vs cons with each class like we used to have years ago is broken since the enhancement pass and EDs. imo, barb is not done when most barbs use Consecrated Ground and for those like me that refuse to use something too far outside the theme like that, my barb has to be penalized for decent self healing in EE content against these high hp mobs that hit hard while wearing armor that has much less MRR/PRR than heavy. heal amp and T5 self healing helped, but what would make barbs clearly better dps is if there was something better than SF pots and better damage mitigation for each armor type.

[Forul]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~


Thanks for the insight to your train of thought! hopefully this new design tactic works well! Personally i like the transparency of it :).

[Fafnir]

If by "power creep" you mean more stuff in the Bard, Paladin, Barbarian range then yes. (Paladin is very good but it's not the healing that we are watching; it's the saving throw advantage.)

Part of the reason we allowed DPS to creep up is that hit point creep has been happening on the monster side for quite some time, and there was clear player feedback that many enemies at the game's end had so many hit points that they were boring to kill. As a result of this player feedback we've allowed DPS to creep up as a default.

Sev~

You took the hardest and most annoying path to make adjustments... and, by doing so, spread out the DPS gap between builds. Now you need to rebalance mitigation, saves, dps and utility all over again. As you know, Paladins have huge survivability (beyond saves) and top notch DPS. If you weren't increasing DPS by so much, ancillary benefits (tactics, number of feats etc) become more interesting. As it is now, you are either one of your tweaked classes (bard, paladin, barb) or you are underperforming (as a melee).

[bbqzor]

Paladin is very good but it's not the healing that we are watching; it's the saving throw advantage

Just to comment... while saves may be most obvious with paladin, they are hardly good only on paladins. I have to assume theres a lot of people just not building their characters as well as they might and have very poor saves as a result. Paladins have an easy and obvious avenue to raise saves, but anyone can achieve good saves... but then thats a class feature they get. It seems that the majority (of players and devs) feel this needs to change in some fashion, but I wanted to chime in and say I hope it doesnt change too much or too significantly.

Its easy for even a fighter (back to OP) to have passable saves. Start with 12s or 14s in dex/wis (assuming con is already there or higher). Use a +2/3/4 tome. Use an item like Epic Boots of the Innocent, and slot it with good luck. Use destiny twists such as Brace for Impact (2 to all) or Dragonhide, Impregnable Mind, or Lithe. Use an item like Epic Ethereal Bracers for insight mods. Thats easily (ref/will) saves of 6 (base class) + 4 (epic levels) + 11 (resistance) + 4 (morale) + 2 (luck) + 4 (insight) + 2-4 (ability score) + 2-6 (twists) + 0-2 (bulwark of defense if your fighter is a combat expertise type) = 35-43. And thats without getting fancy using something like Epic Litany, or the Stone of Change Recipe. And its without getting thorough by counting Enhancements, or Ship Buffs, or anything. Its just 2 items, an aug, and one twist. Pretty minimal as epic investments go, really. There are plenty of things you *cannot* address with that little effort.

Its easy for a fighter actually working on saves at some cost elsewhere to pass 50s even in ref and will. And yes, those numbers are enough, even for EE. If your fighter is dying horribly to failed reflex saves, you need more MRR or a hotkey to get a shield on. If your fighter is dying horribly to will saves, you need to invest in some other protections like a harper pin, silver flame necklace, protection from evil potions, or orcish privateer boots. Fighters dont have 90 saves because thats the hallmark of other classes. But they do have enough to easily and meaningfully function, even in EE content, and even in the worst EE content.

Im sure people will disagree that 50s are enough, or that its "easy" to get the 35-43 figure. Shrugs. I have a vanguard with such saves (low 40s to mid 50s, swaps/twists pending by quest) and he works in all EE content just great, surviving and killing just fine. I have a paladin as well, who survives better in some situations (saves in 70s, but can swap/twist around to 80s if needed), but also has less dps options (as in, less cleaves, no shield stun, etc... both are fine with dps but paladin has less flexibility in type and scope). Honestly I prefer the vanguard... more options is more fun and the play is smoother.

Just tired of people acting like everyone has saves of +2 or +200 depending on paladin levels. Its not as big a problem as it seems... but the way to address it isnt transparent to everyone (its not always obvious which items to go for, what stacks, how to bring things together, etc). I mean some people dont use the wiki or know what items are out there... how do they approach the problem? But those are the same people that wont be helped by a paladin nerf, and wont be helped by adding items which dont stack with paladin. In the end Id just leave this alone but if its going to change at least make the change a smart one. Not sure I really like either idea presented so far.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Just to throw something out there in a thread where Devs are reading and talking about balance.

IMO DR needs an overhaul. Brb and WF DR mostly. (but I would still consider thinking about armor and shield DR too)



On a related note: many small minor class and race abilities meant a lot more in PnP than they do in DDO because of how stats are inflated in DDO.

For instance in this thread's topic, racial bonuses to saves. A +2 bonus against Enhancements means little in DDO.

Bonuses to skill are even worse. A +2 Bonus to Search means almost nothing in DDO.

It might make sense to find ways to makes some of that stuff scale with level, as everything is meaningful at lvl 1, but meaningless at lvl 28.

Back to DR, 1 DR is nice at lvl 1. 5 DR is meaningless at lvl 28.

etc.


But... I realize there are more pressing issues.
( and all anyone ever seems to care about is DPS.....)

[Severlin]

Given this when all is said and done were do you (you as in the Dev team) think each class will fall in the pecking order of things (I'm talking in terms of DPS only)? Can we expect other classes to get as much love as the last three or will it be tempered in such a way that these three classes have taken what ever rank they have and will not let it go?


In a perfect world the classes will be relatively balanced. What we have found is that classes with low DPS and lots of utility aren't as fun for a lot of players, and they tend to level slowly. We'd rather have each class have at least one decent DPS option and work on giving all the classes some kind of niche place or utility. The trick is doing that in a way that doesn't feel like everything is homogenized.

As you can see from Holy Sword and Barbarian changes we intend to revisit classes we've already looked at. We might not want to do a large revamp, but it's not a healthy place for us if players panic with a patch because they feel that they have "missed their chance" because our changes for their favorite class might need more balancing.

We do need to prioritize because we can't do everything.



One more question in terms of DPS how do you expect the "Manyshot balance" to effect melee rangers who rely on it as a massive burst of damage, keeping 3 weapons up today and spending a 11 Ap and 2 Feat to have a massive burst of damage every 2 minutes is not insignificant? Do you expect that the "manyshot balanceing" will nerf that play style?

Honestly we aren't ready to answer specific questions. Essentially our goal is to add in ranged power to epic levels and ED cores and find a way to dial back the top build by the same DPS amount while still keeping it fun to play. Yes we realize that's a non-trivial design goal.

Sev~

[Fafnir]

Bards and Paladins on top of the damage foodchain is already bad as it is.

What about monks and rangers and rogues? You completely neutered the value of class utility as a balancing factor for damage potential. I simply don't get it, all you can do now without swinging the nerfbat is to bring all melee options at least to one level. Welcome to homogenization.

TWF in general needs something more badly than fighters, I hope that's on the list.

As one of the players in the unfavoured category, I agree with this. I only play a handwrap monk. So many things mysteriously don't work with wraps (e.g. Sanctified Gages, Battlerager's Harness), wraps have such a horrible crit profile (basic: 1d6, crit 20x2) and the hit rate doesn't make up enough these days. It takes forever to kill red named. Don't blame monks just because Manyshot and 10k Stars are great.

Bards get incredible defences and amazing utility now. Plus an amazing insta kill in Coup de Gras. Paladins get amazing survivability (DR60, incredible saves, great AC+PRR+MRR) and top notch DPS. Barbarians are breaking all speed records (notwithstanding a bug).

[Krell]

Just to comment... while saves may be most obvious with paladin, they are hardly good only on paladins. I have to assume theres a lot of people just not building their characters as well as they might and have very poor saves as a result. Paladins have an easy and obvious avenue to raise saves, but anyone can achieve good saves... but then thats a class feature they get. It seems that the majority (of players and devs) feel this needs to change in some fashion, but I wanted to chime in and say I hope it doesnt change too much or too significantly.

Its easy for even a fighter (back to OP) to have passable saves. Start with 12s or 14s in dex/wis (assuming con is already there or higher). Use a +2/3/4 tome. Use an item like Epic Boots of the Innocent, and slot it with good luck. Use destiny twists such as Brace for Impact (2 to all) or Dragonhide, Impregnable Mind, or Lithe. Use an item like Epic Ethereal Bracers for insight mods. Thats easily (ref/will) saves of 6 (base class) + 4 (epic levels) + 11 (resistance) + 4 (morale) + 2 (luck) + 4 (insight) + 2-4 (ability score) + 2-6 (twists) + 0-2 (bulwark of defense if your fighter is a combat expertise type) = 35-43. And thats without getting fancy using something like Epic Litany, or the Stone of Change Recipe. And its without getting thorough by counting Enhancements, or Ship Buffs, or anything. Its just 2 items, an aug, and one twist. Pretty minimal as epic investments go, really. There are plenty of things you *cannot* address with that little effort.

Its easy for a fighter actually working on saves at some cost elsewhere to pass 50s even in ref and will. And yes, those numbers are enough, even for EE. If your fighter is dying horribly to failed reflex saves, you need more MRR or a hotkey to get a shield on. If your fighter is dying horribly to will saves, you need to invest in some other protections like a harper pin, silver flame necklace, protection from evil potions, or orcish privateer boots. Fighters dont have 90 saves because thats the hallmark of other classes. But they do have enough to easily and meaningfully function, even in EE content, and even in the worst EE content.

Im sure people will disagree that 50s are enough, or that its "easy" to get the 35-43 figure. Shrugs. I have a vanguard with such saves (low 40s to mid 50s, swaps/twists pending by quest) and he works in all EE content just great, surviving and killing just fine. I have a paladin as well, who survives better in some situations (saves in 70s, but can swap/twist around to 80s if needed), but also has less dps options (as in, less cleaves, no shield stun, etc... both are fine with dps but paladin has less flexibility in type and scope). Honestly I prefer the vanguard... more options is more fun and the play is smoother.

Just tired of people acting like everyone has saves of +2 or +200 depending on paladin levels. Its not as big a problem as it seems... but the way to address it isnt transparent to everyone (its not always obvious which items to go for, what stacks, how to bring things together, etc). I mean some people dont use the wiki or know what items are out there... how do they approach the problem? But those are the same people that wont be helped by a paladin nerf, and wont be helped by adding items which dont stack with paladin. In the end Id just leave this alone but if its going to change at least make the change a smart one. Not sure I really like either idea presented so far.

Some well presented points. +1

[Qhualor]

Just to throw something out there in a thread where Devs are reading and talking about balance.

IMO DR needs an overhaul. Brb and WF DR mostly. (but I would still consider thinking about armor and shield DR too)



On a related note: many small minor class and race abilities meant a lot more in PnP than they do in DDO because of how stats are inflated in DDO.

For instance in this thread's topic, racial bonuses to saves. A +2 bonus against Enhancements means little in DDO.

Bonuses to skill are even worse. A +2 Bonus to Search means almost nothing in DDO.

It might make sense to find ways to makes some of that stuff scale with level, as everything is meaningful at lvl 1, but meaningless at lvl 28.

Back to DR, 1 DR is nice at lvl 1. 5 DR is meaningless at lvl 28.

etc.


But... I realize there are more pressing issues.
( and all anyone ever seems to care about is DPS.....)

Sev said they cant balance DR out properly and it would take a lot to make it work better. that's why ive been pushing for the substitute PRR.

[HippieBallz]

i have found in my time playing the game over the last 4 years that fighter is slightly gimped in some areas but then so are all classes thats the point of having diffrant classes some have great saves some do not some can hit like a tank going 40mph or like a humming bird found the turbo botton and got it stuck ( ranger many shot / monk 1k stars ) this should not be about trying to get the devs to rework a class you dont like playing because they do not have the stats YOU think they should fighters have the saves they do because they have other abilties like being able to go from tank to 2 weapon fighting on a dime (if spec'ed in other please aply here) of the fack that when i had my now pally doing his fighter life he could stun and trip better than some monks i played with so yeah they have **** saves so do pure arty's with no insightful reflex it happens man get over it or splash thats why ddo is one of the few games where you can build a toon to your spec's even if it does take 15 lives and realy long gear framing hours if you ever played PnP you know about the girnd for gear and know about **** saves so please let not try to have the devs work on something that is where for the most part it should be even if they do share enhancement trees with pally (cough) they are ok for right now what we should be looking at as players and part of the active game base is the problems with quest/instance and server bog downs i would rather play a gimp fighter or gimp anything and have the next update be for new servers or updated hardware than for a new tree tweak in any class or new pack that bugs half of the old stuff i love to run but thats just me

[DagazUlf]

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

All of that monk stuff in Kensai has just never made any sense at all. This was even the feedback given at the time it was previewed. Kensai should be the ones that are just very specialized with particular (or particular set of), weapons. I like your thoughts on the tactical DCs being a good niche as well.

I've been a fan of the Fighter class from Day One and just can't wait until you guys manage to get tot hat Fighter pass!

Thanks,

-Dag

[MonadRebelion]

Just going to add some thoughts to each paragraph here. For the purposes of this discussion I'm going to consider just what I think in terms of classes balanced against each other. I'm just going to ignore the fact that I think everything is over powered in relation to the content.



I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Cool!


Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

I absolutely agree about the weirdness of Kensai.


Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

I agree with you about rogues here.


~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

I don't know what this really means. Although I do see phrases some people will be excited about.


~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

Yes, in relation to all the other trees, this is probably the weakest.


~ New Favored Soul tree.

Cool.


~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

Cool.


~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

Agreed. I also think the defender tree could stand to be looked at. Threat generation is a real issue for pure fighters trying to be tanks.


~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

I don't understand this. A ranger with light armor seems like its in a really good position to take advantage of dodge, mrr, prr, evasion plus all the other stuff available via scrolls items and dragonmarks. As far as I can tell rangers have great mitigation.


~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

I think rune arms could stand to be looked at.


~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

This isn't a bad situation in my view. This is how it's supposed to be. Paladins have awesome saves. No one is supposed to compete with them in this respect. If you want to nerf splashes, that's cool with me, but making everyone competitive with paladin saves ruins class distinctions in my view.


Sev~

Yes, you are.

[Tinco]

As one of the players in the unfavoured category, I agree with this. I only play a handwrap monk. So many things mysteriously don't work with wraps (e.g. Sanctified Gages, Battlerager's Harness), wraps have such a horrible crit profile (basic: 1d6, crit 20x2) and the hit rate doesn't make up enough these days. It takes forever to kill red named. Don't blame monks just because Manyshot and 10k Stars are great.

Bards get incredible defences and amazing utility now. Plus an amazing insta kill in Coup de Gras. Paladins get amazing survivability (DR60, incredible saves, great AC+PRR+MRR) and top notch DPS. Barbarians are breaking all speed records (notwithstanding a bug).

Yes, unarmed monks are among the laughing sticks nowadays, scaling killed what once was. The entire Shintao-Tree probably is less DPS than Holy Sword+Zeal alone. PRR/MRR Changes went by Monks, they still get AC for levels, which basically is an abandoned system. Stances are an illusion of choice, without earth you have zero base PRR. TWF is the weakest fighting style, unarmed monks can't opt out. Quivering Palm, well, we all know the story. ToD x-Burst Rings have no epic successors at all. Monk Strike scaling is almost non-existent, finisher scaling is non-existent. The Ki to damage ratio is abysmal, even in GMoF.

I don't want to whine, in balance everything comes and goes in circles, but I'd like some acknowledgement that basically every melee archetypes besides the recently fixed ones need work.

[Powskier]

You took the hardest and most annoying path to make adjustments... and, by doing so, spread out the DPS gap between builds. Now you need to rebalance mitigation, saves, dps and utility all over again. As you know, Paladins have huge survivability (beyond saves) and top notch DPS. If you weren't increasing DPS by so much, ancillary benefits (tactics, number of feats etc) become more interesting. As it is now, you are either one of your tweaked classes (bard, paladin, barb) or you are underperforming (as a melee).

multi character players just switch to the one that is working. Kinda rough on the super toughies that get a sudden nerf in their build.The game is changing as we go ;I guess we cant fall in love with our builds for to long anymore until balance is somehow found.

[Sebastrd]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts.

Thank you, so much.


Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

Love it...

Re: Divine Grace
Yes that's what we are currently discussing.

Sev~

...love it...


If by "power creep" you mean more stuff in the Bard, Paladin, Barbarian range then yes. (Paladin is very good but it's not the healing that we are watching; it's the saving throw advantage.)

Part of the reason we allowed DPS to creep up is that hit point creep has been happening on the monster side for quite some time, and there was clear player feedback that many enemies at the game's end had so many hit points that they were boring to kill. As a result of this player feedback we've allowed DPS to creep up as a default.

Sev~

...love it...


In a perfect world the classes will be relatively balanced. What we have found is that classes with low DPS and lots of utility aren't as fun for a lot of players, and they tend to level slowly. We'd rather have each class have at least one decent DPS option and work on giving all the classes some kind of niche place or utility. The trick is doing that in a way that doesn't feel like everything is homogenized.

As you can see from Holy Sword and Barbarian changes we intend to revisit classes we've already looked at. We might not want to do a large revamp, but it's not a healthy place for us if players panic with a patch because they feel that they have "missed their chance" because our changes for their favorite class might need more balancing.

Essentially our goal is to add in ranged power to epic levels and ED cores and find a way to dial back the top build by the same DPS amount while still keeping it fun to play. Yes we realize that's a non-trivial design goal.

Sev~

...love it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. If you can accomplish what you've outlines here, you will be getting my subscription dollars for a long time.

[Oxarhamar]

Misquoted

[cdbd3rd]

I am going to break tradition ....

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels...

Nice.

And thanks for a glimpse into the thoughts.

[Gremmlynn]

1)3) dont give divine grace to everyone via items... fighter saves are already useful enough with gearing, and tring (3 rogue lives = +6 saves vs traps; 3 bard lives = +6 saves vs enchant (hold, dancing ball); 3 divine epl brace = +3 saves) and all that, and with easily accessible buffs like fom, dw, and pfe there arent too many spells that can cc you just as long as you glance at your buff bar once in a while. and with heavy armor reflex is less necessary than before, though still absolutely helpful.Having to play as a Rogue, Bard, etc. to be able to play as a viable Fighter is just silly IMO. Past lives should always be perks over and above that for those obsessed enough with maximizing their character's potential to be willing to play something they very well may have no interest in playing to obtain them. Doing so should never be a prerequisite to getting to playing what one actually wants to play, especially not to the degree suggested here.

[Gremmlynn]

If by "power creep" you mean more stuff in the Bard, Paladin, Barbarian range then yes. (Paladin is very good but it's not the healing that we are watching; it's the saving throw advantage.)

Part of the reason we allowed DPS to creep up is that hit point creep has been happening on the monster side for quite some time, and there was clear player feedback that many enemies at the game's end had so many hit points that they were boring to kill. As a result of this player feedback we've allowed DPS to creep up as a default.

Sev~It would seem that fixing the mob hp creep would be a better solution. Especially with the proliferation of hp ignoring insta-kill in the game.

[Delacroix21]

I

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.



Sev~

For rogues I think we also need to beef up their sneak attack damage. I think the best way to do this is to allow sneak attack to gain more from melee power then 100%, like maybe 150%. So instead of 60 melee power boosting sneak attack by 60%, it will now boost it by 90%. Also this has been asked before= Epic feat to allow sneak attacks on undead/constructs etc.



Druid forms have been terrible since launch, a big issue is the increased spell cooldowns, this needs to be removed ASAP. There is honestly no need for it. Also druid animal attack DCs are the WORST.

[Ayseifn]

Talk of a possible 4th fighter tree gives me hope for the future as I mistakenly thought we'd be just getting 3 for all and then no more, fighter probably makes sense for the first class to get a 4th as right now they're stuck with SnB or monk splash which is very limiting.

I'd love a 4th rogue tree that's TWF friendly but isn't focused on int and dagger/kukri only. Before the enhancement pass you could play a viable assassin without daggers and without bothering with assassinate but these days especially with the Harper tree you're pushed pretty hard down that road. After what happened with Warpriest, Eldritch Knight and Vanguard I was guessing that Arti would get Mechanic with some tweaks for it's 3rd tree to save developer time and Arcanotechnician get turned into a more melee(SWF?) friendly prestige and was sad.

If a 4th tree is a distinct possibility though then all good, double up where it makes sense and hopefully make a new tree when re balancing a class.

[nibel]

@Sev: Any chance to review Weapon Focus/Specialization feat line while working on Fighters? Those alone does wonders to incentive more Fighter levels, if done properly. Of course, I have some suggestions on this issue (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/453869-Revisitng-Feats?p=5506001#post5506001) :D


Sev said they cant balance DR out properly and it would take a lot to make it work better. that's why ive been pushing for the substitute PRR.

I still believe DR can be balanced again in the game if they invert the math interaction between DR and PRR (PRR first, DR second). Of course, this should be accompanied with a nerf to heavy shadow scale DR from 30/60 to 10/20 or 15/25.

[LevelJ]

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.


I know virtually nothing in the Melee department, but I did wanna throw in a suggestion based on what you gave about DG bonus type on items. My concern here is we get something like what happened in Epic Orchard. We got light absorption on an item finally (Epic Purging the Pantheon) which was great, but the item's other effects were not strong enough to justify a casting palemaster getting it in favor of say, the Epic Thoughtful Rememberance.

My point is that if a DG bonus ends up on a item, it would help if it were included in either a crafting system (Epic GS, for example, but I doubt this will be added by then) where players can build the item how they want with the bonus. Then there's the second, much easier option that I somewhat prefer more...throw it on a Blue Augment slot, just like Resistance. It can be in lesser values, and even a named augment to up the challenge of obtaining, but I'm certain most non-pallys will seek to get their hands on one.

I know this stuff you provided is all way far in the future, but I figured offering ideas now is better than nothing. Everything you mentioned is pretty intriguing, and I look forward to seeing how it all turns out farther down the road. Thank you very much for giving us the glimpse. :)


-Jayron

[Wizza]

If by "power creep" you mean more stuff in the Bard, Paladin, Barbarian range then yes. (Paladin is very good but it's not the healing that we are watching; it's the saving throw advantage.)

Part of the reason we allowed DPS to creep up is that hit point creep has been happening on the monster side for quite some time, and there was clear player feedback that many enemies at the game's end had so many hit points that they were boring to kill. As a result of this player feedback we've allowed DPS to creep up as a default.

Sev~

Why can't you just fix the mobs HP? You always do that: put in place a stupid mechanic (mobs HP, PRR/MRR changes, Barbs/Pallie OP, etc etc,) and then, to fix the FIRST broken mechanic, you introduce a second, AS MUCH STUPID AS THE FIRST, (classes fix, Champions).

Fixing the first broken mechanic is twice as fast and twice as smart.

[Gremmlynn]

Just to comment... while saves may be most obvious with paladin, they are hardly good only on paladins. I have to assume theres a lot of people just not building their characters as well as they might and have very poor saves as a result. Paladins have an easy and obvious avenue to raise saves, but anyone can achieve good saves... but then thats a class feature they get. It seems that the majority (of players and devs) feel this needs to change in some fashion, but I wanted to chime in and say I hope it doesnt change too much or too significantly.

Its easy for even a fighter (back to OP) to have passable saves. Start with 12s or 14s in dex/wis (assuming con is already there or higher). Use a +2/3/4 tome. Use an item like Epic Boots of the Innocent, and slot it with good luck. Use destiny twists such as Brace for Impact (2 to all) or Dragonhide, Impregnable Mind, or Lithe. Use an item like Epic Ethereal Bracers for insight mods. Thats easily (ref/will) saves of 6 (base class) + 4 (epic levels) + 11 (resistance) + 4 (morale) + 2 (luck) + 4 (insight) + 2-4 (ability score) + 2-6 (twists) + 0-2 (bulwark of defense if your fighter is a combat expertise type) = 35-43. And thats without getting fancy using something like Epic Litany, or the Stone of Change Recipe. And its without getting thorough by counting Enhancements, or Ship Buffs, or anything. Its just 2 items, an aug, and one twist. Pretty minimal as epic investments go, really. There are plenty of things you *cannot* address with that little effort.

Its easy for a fighter actually working on saves at some cost elsewhere to pass 50s even in ref and will. And yes, those numbers are enough, even for EE. If your fighter is dying horribly to failed reflex saves, you need more MRR or a hotkey to get a shield on. If your fighter is dying horribly to will saves, you need to invest in some other protections like a harper pin, silver flame necklace, protection from evil potions, or orcish privateer boots. Fighters dont have 90 saves because thats the hallmark of other classes. But they do have enough to easily and meaningfully function, even in EE content, and even in the worst EE content.

Im sure people will disagree that 50s are enough, or that its "easy" to get the 35-43 figure. Shrugs. I have a vanguard with such saves (low 40s to mid 50s, swaps/twists pending by quest) and he works in all EE content just great, surviving and killing just fine. I have a paladin as well, who survives better in some situations (saves in 70s, but can swap/twist around to 80s if needed), but also has less dps options (as in, less cleaves, no shield stun, etc... both are fine with dps but paladin has less flexibility in type and scope). Honestly I prefer the vanguard... more options is more fun and the play is smoother.

Just tired of people acting like everyone has saves of +2 or +200 depending on paladin levels. Its not as big a problem as it seems... but the way to address it isnt transparent to everyone (its not always obvious which items to go for, what stacks, how to bring things together, etc). I mean some people dont use the wiki or know what items are out there... how do they approach the problem? But those are the same people that wont be helped by a paladin nerf, and wont be helped by adding items which dont stack with paladin. In the end Id just leave this alone but if its going to change at least make the change a smart one. Not sure I really like either idea presented so far.If 50's are fine, why would anyone bother swapping things around to go from "fail on a 1" 70's to "fail on a 1" 80's. Saves still use a d20 system, so those 20 point swings you describe are effectively no different from the +2 or +200 you say you are tired of people acting like exist. As, functionally, that is the situation you describe.

[Munkenmo]

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

Tier 5 : Tactical Mastery : You have a chance = to your double strike to land tactics twice, additionally if you have two weapon fighting feats, your off hand attack can also tactical abilities. (max 3 procs)


Things are still very much up in the air, but Kensei changes would probably involve some new abilities as multiple-choice selectors alongside existing abilities. Specifically targeting abilities that currently require or strongly favor being a monk. Not necessarily greatly changing the entire tree.

Something like Tier 2 Improved Dodge and Tier 3 Improved Mobility become a multi selectosr?

Improved Dodge (unchanged) or Improved Defences +5/10/15 PRR when wearing medium/heavy armor

Tier 3 Improved Mobilitty (Unchanged) or Improved Magic Defenses +5/10/15 MRR when wearing medium/heavy armor.

[Oxarhamar]

Why can't you just fix the mobs HP? You always do that: put in place a stupid mechanic (mobs HP, PRR/MRR changes, Barbs/Pallie OP, etc etc,) and then, to fix the FIRST broken mechanic, you introduce a second, AS MUCH STUPID AS THE FIRST, (classes fix, Champions).

Fixing the first broken mechanic is twice as fast and twice as smart.

I have to agree just a bit here maybe not with the wording.

Power creep to fix the HP bloat, followed by champions to fix the lack of challenge created by creep.

The situation to fix boring HP bloat beater owns could have easily been an HP reduction for EE mobs as well as increase in mobs damage. Making them more dangerous but, less of a boring beat down.


Still waiting for the nerf to the Icewall in Extended Haunted Halls there is no reason for that thing to have so many HPs. If it's there to enforce fighting the dragon if you wake it Fine! But, there's no reason for it to stay after the dragon is defeated. It's just another boring beat down.

[geoffhanna]

Things are still very much up in the air, but Kensei changes would probably involve some new abilities as multiple-choice selectors alongside existing abilities. Specifically targeting abilities that currently require or strongly favor being a monk. Not necessarily greatly changing the entire tree.

Please don't make it so that kensei must have heavy armor to be viable. The "Sword Saint" is a D&D tradition that goes all the way back to Gygax's Oriental Adventures and I still want to be able to make one that I am not embarrassed to take into a PUG raid.

[Tilomere]

If 50's are fine, why would anyone bother swapping things around to go from "fail on a 1" 70's to "fail on a 1" 80's. Saves still use a d20 system, so those 20 point swings you describe are effectively no different from the +2 or +200 you say you are tired of people acting like exist. As, functionally, that is the situation you describe.

My testing was that mob caster level and saves on abilities were about equal to mob CR, so go into the low 80s. EE Dragons in Fire Peaks are CR 83, for the reflex save, and Draeton in breaking the ranks is CR 76, for will save on mass hold. With tactics being bugged enemy mob stunning blow DCs for fort saves are higher than mob CR.

50s is automatic fail on a 19 against higher EE bosses. So +2 or +200 is accurate for challenging bosses, and against enemy tactics.

[Ayseifn]

If 50's are fine, why would anyone bother swapping things around to go from "fail on a 1" 70's to "fail on a 1" 80's. Saves still use a d20 system, so those 20 point swings you describe are effectively no different from the +2 or +200 you say you are tired of people acting like exist. As, functionally, that is the situation you describe.

Yep, low 50's are fine in lower level quests that you may still be running at cap but it does nothing in high level quests on elite. It's the AC problem all over again, once it goes off die and you can't realistically get on die without huge gimpage then you're better off dumping that stat and not bothering trying to get that save up at all. Lower level content should be a breeze and for high level stuff where you fail your saves on a 19 even with a lot of effort why waste gear slots, AP, build points, etc. at all?

Much prefer how this is getting handled compared to AC though, if saves went from d20 to d100 that'd be horrible.

[KezekTigh]

Talk of a possible 4th fighter tree gives me hope for the future as I mistakenly thought we'd be just getting 3 for all and then no more, fighter probably makes sense for the first class to get a 4th as right now they're stuck with SnB or monk splash which is very limiting.

I'd love a 4th rogue tree that's TWF friendly but isn't focused on int and dagger/kukri only. Before the enhancement pass you could play a viable assassin without daggers and without bothering with assassinate but these days especially with the Harper tree you're pushed pretty hard down that road. After what happened with Warpriest, Eldritch Knight and Vanguard I was guessing that Arti would get Mechanic with some tweaks for it's 3rd tree to save developer time and Arcanotechnician get turned into a more melee(SWF?) friendly prestige and was sad.

If a 4th tree is a distinct possibility though then all good, double up where it makes sense and hopefully make a new tree when re balancing a class.

+1... I agree

I think a Duelist prestige class could be pretty cool for either rogue or fighter and could easily be designed for twf or swf.

[axel15810]

In a perfect world the classes will be relatively balanced. What we have found is that classes with low DPS and lots of utility aren't as fun for a lot of players, and they tend to level slowly. We'd rather have each class have at least one decent DPS option and work on giving all the classes some kind of niche place or utility. The trick is doing that in a way that doesn't feel like everything is homogenized.


And that's a huge issue where DDO is falling flat. Right now the classes are far too homogenized. I completely get you putting in a DPS option in each class, but what I don't like (and many other players) don't like is that changes the past few years have killed off teamwork almost completely. Every viable character build in DDO right now is a DPS focused character. It's restrictive and one dimensional. There should be at least some viable support/utility focused builds out there.

You need to find that balance where no class is mandatory for a group, but classes with a traditional support component are able to provide that support to a level where they'll be wanted by groups.

Take clerics/favored souls for example. They have no niche at this point. Their niche, healing, is no longer useful because of the introduction of bladeforged reconstruct SLA. Everyone has excellent self-healing now. Arcanes are better offensive casters and melee classes are better at melee - so what's the draw to playing a divine? There isn't one.

I thought you all hit it out of the park with rejuvenation cocoon - it was good enough so groups didn't have to wait on healers. Yet it wasn't good enough to the point where a healer in your group was still very useful.

Bard songs like inspire courage don't scale past level 20, so they don't give enough of a DPS boost for you to really care if you've got a bard in the group. Warchanter, the support barb tree isn't good enough for anyone to build for a support bard. Warchanter capstone especially needs a buff to make me want a support bard in the party.

I could go on with other classes but I think you get the point. I really don't like this trend towards making every single class all about DPS. This is an MMO - I want team play to be a viable option. If you want to put a DPS option in each class that's totally fine - but don't forget entirely about support/utility. I want an option to build for support and have it be very helpful in groups. Lots of other players feel the same way. Support is completely dead right now in epics.

Support should be very helpful to groups, but not overly helpful to the point where groups have to wait on support types like healers again before they can start playing DDO.

[Systern]

Thanks for the post Sev. I like a lot of the ideas.


Regarding Paladins and saves: I'm not really wild about the thought of new must have itemization unless it comes in the form of an augment (preferably yellow). And in general, with the stat inflation on gear, the charisma bonus for saves with just an investment of 2 paladin seems far too good. Monks can't take adept, master, or grandmaster of forms until meeting the level requirement. Evasion is only as good as your reflex save, and then improved evasion is level gated. You don't get level 6 or 9 spells at level 2... I think some level gating might be in order. As it stands now, You're incentivised to take 2 levels or 14 levels (holy sword) of Paladin. That would be a good thing to spread out the love a little.


While I'm really happy that my beloved bards got some love and are shining at the top of the pecking order for the moment, I think addressing HP inflation with Power creep is treating the symptom and not the disease. The 2 major issues with DDO are:

1. Prior to PRR/MRR/Armor Up, players viewed the difficulty of quests as: Casual 1, Normal 2, Hard 4, Elite 10. Now with the new power creep: Casual 1, Normal 1.2, Hard 1.7, Elite 10. The power has completely trivialized non-elite content, and it's easy for a player to progress past the point where Hard content is engaging, but still a ways off to do elite (and then eventually progress further to the point where Elite content is easy).

2. Bravery Bonus feels like punishing a player for running non-Elite content. Don't want to break that streak. Ooops, can't raid. It'll break streak. Nah, don't want to check out the new content because we have to do it on elite....


Though I have 12 characters, I really only think I play 4. The others are retired, or mules, or what ever. One's the TR Junkie, completionist, and eComptionist (been a bard or bard splash since U22). One always has and always will (mebbe) be a bard (4th life bard atm). The other two are a Druid and Arti. What used to be called "Pay to Win" classes feel like bottom of the barrel. I'm a little nervous that Druid and Arti are going to get the Bard treatment. A third tree that is so obviously better than the other two, with maybe a quick pass done to the existing trees.

[Gremmlynn]

Yep, low 50's are fine in lower level quests that you may still be running at cap but it does nothing in high level quests on elite. It's the AC problem all over again, once it goes off die and you can't realistically get on die without huge gimpage then you're better off dumping that stat and not bothering trying to get that save up at all. Lower level content should be a breeze and for high level stuff where you fail your saves on a 19 even with a lot of effort why waste gear slots, AP, build points, etc. at all?

Much prefer how this is getting handled compared to AC though, if saves went from d20 to d100 that'd be horrible.That's not how AC was handled. It's more of a bell curve.

The issue with AC isn't the system so much as not adding huge bonuses to extreme defensive builds to make for meaningful difference despite diminishing returns. +100, 200, 300 or more AC capstones, or the like, that would have little effect vs poor to hit mobs due to where they are on the curve, but meaningful effect against the top end.

[ComicRelief]

*snip*
I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree...
*snip*

YES, YES, YES! A thousand-times YES!! The changes to "Stalwart Defender" (i.e. removal of most of the shield requirements) were a good start - it is now a much more palatable choice for those of us who don't want to "specialize" ("kensei") nor use a shield ("sword & board"). Still need boosts for TWF and THF builds, though...



*snip*
~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options.
*snip*
Yes to this, too. Additionally, non-"kensei" fighters should also have some way of boosting "to hit/damage" and "critical hit/damage", w/o requiring so many APs to be "spent in (kensei) tree" (I HATE that mechanic...yes, needed for SOME cases, but not ALL...).


*snip*
...We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.
*snip*

NNNNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Granted, a lot of fighters use tactics, so not trying to say this is a "bad" thing, BUT there are also a LOT of fighters who DON'T like using tactics (or clickies in general), so...how about some non-"action" and "tactic" boosts for us?

;)

[FlaviusMaximus]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance...

A good list from top to bottom.


Tier 5 : Tactical Mastery : You have a chance = to your double strike to land tactics twice, additionally if you have two weapon fighting feats, your off hand attack can also tactical abilities. (max 3 procs)

Something like Tier 2 Improved Dodge and Tier 3 Improved Mobility become a multi selectosr?

Improved Dodge (unchanged) or Improved Defences +5/10/15 PRR when wearing medium/heavy armor

Tier 3 Improved Mobilitty (Unchanged) or Improved Magic Defenses +5/10/15 MRR when wearing medium/heavy armor.

Pretty solid suggestions.

[bbqzor]

If 50's are fine, why would anyone bother swapping things around to go from "fail on a 1" 70's to "fail on a 1" 80's. Saves still use a d20 system, so those 20 point swings you describe are effectively no different from the +2 or +200 you say you are tired of people acting like exist. As, functionally, that is the situation you describe.


50s is automatic fail on a 19 against higher EE bosses. So +2 or +200 is accurate for challenging bosses, and against enemy tactics.


Yep, low 50's are fine in lower level quests that you may still be running at cap but it does nothing in high level quests on elite.

There are no EE bosses with automatic fail will save effects which are not preventable through another means outside of saving throws. There are no EE bosses with automatic fail ref save effects that dont have another way to approach the problem such as energy sheath, MRR using a shield, absorb items, or so on. Neither of those issues exist, for fighters, which was the point of this thread in the OP and the one specifically cited by my response. They dont have to likely pass, or even be able to pass, every save in the game to function and function well.

None of those comments take into account what happens on a fail. So what if a fighter fails a ref save on 1-19 against the toughest, highest level, most mean thing around. He takes full damage rather than half. Thats it. And if its a decently built fighter, MRR is going to take that number down to half or even less. So what really happens? Nothing. Nothing happens. It doesnt matter. Fighters have a way to tackle that problem that doesnt rely on having good odds at making their ref save. All the evasion guys complaining fighters now get "auto evade" through this mechanic are evidence of exactly this, that its not a problem. They have enough saves to meaningfully contribute at all difficulty levels. In all content. In all situations. Even on EE, even on high level EE, and even soloing high level EE. It doesnt mean all fighters can solo all quests as easily as a paladin or something, there are cases where paladin will have an advantage, of course. But any comparative disadvantage fighter has isnt universal to all situations just because it might exist in one.

There is no requirement that fighters suddenly be making ref saves half the time. There is no encounter which forces that upon the player. Miior, perhaps the worst offender of the "forced ref success" situation, has a mid 60s DC even on EE (think it was 66? finished farming that long ago). A fighter using the 100 pt resist boots found in the quest, with energy sheath, can easily use a 50/50 ref chance (from ref +56, readily obtainable) on that fight until they get a few stacks, shield block with Block Energy, and get through the fight just fine (assuming the party is coordinating things... if everyone just zergs in and does whatever then you might have to go into GMoF for no-fails on a 1 and twist ref way up... and even then you can do it). Point being theres no situation a fighter cant roll with. Making the save or not does NOT directly correlate to success. Failing the save does NOT mean failing the quest. People chronically overlook this. Fighters being able to adjust to meet specific quest demands is one of the great things about a class with lots of feats and a very broad range of gear and twist choices. They have a great amount of space to adapt and overcome using almost any tool available, thats what fighters are good at.

If people are saying "oh my rogue cannot pass a ref save to evade anything without paladin" thats valid complaint (though I strongly disagree thats the situation in game). But to have people say "oh my fighter cannot pass a ref save"... why is this a problem? You can readily pass many, many, MANY of the ref saves there are. My 50s example didnt count past lives, buffs, extra effort, or anything. Its the "easy with a little effort" value. If you want to go higher, add more than 1 twist. Add another item. Do some epic past lives. Go nuts. You can get higher. Those saves that you cannot pass, in the highest level areas, you have ample other solutions to bring to bear. Maybe it means farming fom boots to improve your guy against will effects. Maybe it means hitting harper favor for a pin. There are more solutions than "+90 svs". If you just want one character to be able to be all things and do everything, then youll probably have to multiclass and stack a lot of different perks together in one build, and thats what paladin splashes do. But they are NOT required to be successful in DDO... and I dont want to see every fighter turned into a paladin clone with 10 extra feats because of some item. Its totally unnecessary.

[Grailhawk]

Tier 5 : Tactical Mastery : You have a chance = to your double strike to land tactics twice, additionally if you have two weapon fighting feats, your off hand attack can also tactical abilities. (max 3 procs)



Something like Tier 2 Improved Dodge and Tier 3 Improved Mobility become a multi selectosr?

Improved Dodge (unchanged) or Improved Defences +5/10/15 PRR when wearing medium/heavy armor

Tier 3 Improved Mobilitty (Unchanged) or Improved Magic Defenses +5/10/15 MRR when wearing medium/heavy armor.

Enhancements to reduce tactical feat cool downs would be good to IMO.

[Blackheartox]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

Just a little question, i know those are priorities, but do you guys realize, now this might sound really silly to some but, do you guys realize that wraps monks are awfully behind in dps to even current rogues and i dont even want to compare to barbs and paladins.

Is there any chance to make unarmed combat finally working as intended aka working with most on hit effects and to scale into epic levels damage wise?

I want to have a proper reason to play a pure monk again ;) that doesnt throw shurikens or uses staffs, but is martial arts master in unarmed combat

[wodkaman]

this all sounds good however some other enhancement (new once) are not working correctly as example in the swashbuckler line tier 2 action boost, doubleshot boost or doublestrike boost.both options give a boost to doublestrike!

[Fnordian]

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.
Sev~

These (possible) changes sound good. I love my Artificer but he does struggle a bit in some epic content.

Is there any chance that Artificer pets could also get some epic scaling help? They seem to die rather easily in epics and overall they're not the ferocious killer mutts they used to be in heroic content.

Also, is there any possibility of scaling some Artificer spells into epic? For example, Flame Turret is a terrifically fun spell but becomes useless even before reaching epic. Artificer direct-damage spells could also use a boost at epic levels to remain viable options. Is there any chance of this?

Thanks for all the hard work and sharing of information! :)

[Fafnir]

Just a little question, i know those are priorities, but do you guys realize, now this might sound really silly to some but, do you guys realize that wraps monks are awfully behind in dps to even current rogues and i dont even want to compare to barbs and paladins.

Is there any chance to make unarmed combat finally working as intended aka working with most on hit effects and to scale into epic levels damage wise?

I want to have a proper reason to play a pure monk again ;) that doesnt throw shurikens or uses staffs, but is martial arts master in unarmed combat

Yes please. I want to play a DPS reasonable, survivable, handwraps user (and for items like Sanctified Gages to work with wraps).

I don't think the way to achieve balance is to go as far as has been done with clearly overpowered DR60, extremely high save potential, over the top FOTM DPS increases etc.

[MonadRebelion]

There is no requirement that fighters suddenly be making ref saves half the time. There is no encounter which forces that upon the player. Miior, perhaps the worst offender of the "forced ref success" situation, has a mid 60s DC even on EE (think it was 66? finished farming that long ago). A fighter using the 100 pt resist boots found in the quest, with energy sheath, can easily use a 50/50 ref chance (from ref +56, readily obtainable) on that fight until they get a few stacks, shield block with Block Energy, and get through the fight just fine (assuming the party is coordinating things... if everyone just zergs in and does whatever then you might have to go into GMoF for no-fails on a 1 and twist ref way up... and even then you can do it). Point being theres no situation a fighter cant roll with. Making the save or not does NOT directly correlate to success. Failing the save does NOT mean failing the quest. People chronically overlook this. Fighters being able to adjust to meet specific quest demands is one of the great things about a class with lots of feats and a very broad range of gear and twist choices. They have a great amount of space to adapt and overcome using almost any tool available, thats what fighters are good at.


I basically agree with everything you say, but I would go a bit farther. Let's pretend it was just impossible for a fighter to tank Miior. If that were the case then there would be one boss in the game a fighter tank couldn't take. Suppose the only thing capable of tanking Miior was a rogue. That would be cool, because it would be an unusual case in which a rogue's unique abilities shined through in a situation in which it was usually the fighter's unique abilities that shined. I would love if the expected roles typically shine where they are supposed to, but every once in a blue moon the planets align as if by some miracle another class outshines another class in its typical role. As it stands, dps is nearly the only role in the game. Characters are so tough and dps is so easy to get and widely applicable that it's just about the only thing people do or want/expect you to do.

[burningwind]

after they release warlock.. you can splash two level of warlock to get "darken one's own luck".. which does the same thing of adding cha mod to all save~~ (if they implement it this way.. or it could be a single save of your choice.. which would suck)

[Thar]

We might not want to do a large revamp, but it's not a healthy place for us if players panic with a patch because they feel that they have "missed their chance" because our changes for their favorite class might need more balancing.


Sev~

so pally defender tree getting some much needed AC help since the AC portions not adjusted since AC was changed?? same for fighter defender tree. 3 ap for 3 ac... really...
same with halfling. make it a stacking % or something that scales with epics.

[slarden]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

This all looks really good. Thank you for the update!

[ezmeweatherwax]

Rogues need a pass. About time someone acknowledged as much.

Yes, mechanic is particularly bad, but let's not forget about the utterly useless line of poisons in the assassin tree. Or the weakness of shadowdancer. And the overall lack of damage mitigation. (We never did get light armor out of Necro IV with all that lovely +Fortification). Since the standard for ee these days is to self-heal and a rogue can't scrollheal while being beat on...a mitigation pass would be nice.

Acrobats are currently all 7 monk, for shadow veil and such, so consider that for any changes to that tree. Mechanics are silly and pointless (who wants to listen to all that plinking?). Assassins could be so much more with just a little focused attention.

Gear items required that you can maybe integrate into enhancements: ability to hit 190% fortification (without wasting a twist on it) & blind (as with a RadII or a Celestia, not that utterly useless blind mechanic on the thunderforged weapons). RadII is obsolete. Celestia is great, if you're into shortswords....but what about dwarf assassins, for example? Where are their blinding axes? Blind is a MUST HAVE for assassin rogues when dealing with trash in any dungeon.

(For those who don't know, blind = full sneak attack on every hit regardless of aggro, plus that added layer of dmg mitigation given by miss chance.)

I'd say blurry and incorporeal and all the rest but it seems to be on repeat on most of the gear out there now these days. Maybe deal with the dodge cap and get creative there.

[depositbox]

Tier 5 : Tactical Mastery : You have a chance = to your double strike to land tactics twice, additionally if you have two weapon fighting feats, your off hand attack can also tactical abilities. (max 3 procs)



Something like Tier 2 Improved Dodge and Tier 3 Improved Mobility become a multi selectosr?

Improved Dodge (unchanged) or Improved Defences +5/10/15 PRR when wearing medium/heavy armor

Tier 3 Improved Mobilitty (Unchanged) or Improved Magic Defenses +5/10/15 MRR when wearing medium/heavy armor.

Make that tier 5 cost 2 AP. The PRR/MRR should not stack with Defender Stance. I like the idea of raising the dodge cap in heavy as a fighter thing only. Get it to 8-10% maybe. Dodge 10% might be better than 30 prr at such high levels netting only a 4% physical reduction increase. Although I do like the idea of MRR because fighter reflex and will saves are fails. Spells hurt when failed. I do not like Swashbucklers with fighter levels in stance getting another bonus though. Or anything using 3-6 fighter levels like monks or druids.

18 and 20 capstones need to be addressed as well as adjusting reliance on monk centering as a toggle for the many abilities currently in that tree.

Level 18 core : Vorpal is now gimmicky. Even Greater Vorpal is bad, but at least it fits the theme of Kensei. Just not in this game. Any longer. Maybe in Heroics. Two years ago. Throw in Limb Chopper if we're going to go with useless things no one will use.

Practical solution would be to move vorpal to lv 12 along with keeping Power Surge as is. Then implement a new level 18 core as a dps improvement. Something significant. +15 melee power and 4d6 slashing/piercing/bludgeoning damage on hit that scales with 100% melee power. Depending on chosen weapon.

The capstone. Remove the +2 action boosts and the +2 to tactics bonus while keeping 15% doublestrike/shot, and +2 to str. Give another stacking +1 to critical threat range of chosen weapon instead. No class in the game should be able to match a Kensei's prowess with a weapon they have mastered and spent greater specialization feats for. Keen Edge is good. Make level 20 the Grandmaster feat to cement kensei as the best swordsmen.

[depositbox]

Rogues need a pass. About time someone acknowledged as much.

Yes, mechanic is particularly bad, but let's not forget about the utterly useless line of poisons in the assassin tree. Or the weakness of shadowdancer. And the overall lack of damage mitigation. (We never did get light armor out of Necro IV with all that lovely +Fortification). Since the standard for ee these days is to self-heal and a rogue can't scrollheal while being beat on...a mitigation pass would be nice.

Acrobats are currently all 7 monk, for shadow veil and such, so consider that for any changes to that tree. Mechanics are silly and pointless (who wants to listen to all that plinking?). Assassins could be so much more with just a little focused attention.

Gear items required that you can maybe integrate into enhancements: ability to hit 190% fortification (without wasting a twist on it) & blind (as with a RadII or a Celestia, not that utterly useless blind mechanic on the thunderforged weapons). RadII is obsolete. Celestia is great, if you're into shortswords....but what about dwarf assassins, for example? Where are their blinding axes? Blind is a MUST HAVE for assassin rogues when dealing with trash in any dungeon.

(For those who don't know, blind = full sneak attack on every hit regardless of aggro, plus that added layer of dmg mitigation given by miss chance.)

I'd say blurry and incorporeal and all the rest but it seems to be on repeat on most of the gear out there now these days. Maybe deal with the dodge cap and get creative there.
The Rogues true purpose has never been fulfilled in DDO. I don't think it can be. Everything that makes a Rogue a rogue is better done by other classes. Sneaky and fast invis while jumping over obstacles? A monk in shadow fade and abundant step. And the super sexy slow fall animation too? GG rogues. GG.

Rogue is truly screwed. Mechanic is so badly positioned for this game. It can never be repeater/xbow builds. Arty and Ranger will always be splashed into and make it poor tier 5 and worse for pure 20 rouge to even consider outside of flavor roleplay builds. Acrobat is fine for the most part, but not much reason to go over Staff Alacrity and Improved Defensive Roll. Better off Holy Swording it. Assassins cannot out assassinate Swashbucklers or even Monks. Way to go!

One of the most design space eating black holes in the game are Epic Wards. Specifically Stat damage and status debuffs. This is where rogues should have had their niche. But worthless now. Consider changing this. Add blind and crippling to equipped weapons. And make stat damage mean something again. The Harper tree was nice but harper tier 5 shouldnt beat level 18 and 20 cores of specialized rogue prestige classes. Shouldnt even come close.

[Severlin]

Why can't you just fix the mobs HP? You always do that: put in place a stupid mechanic (mobs HP, PRR/MRR changes, Barbs/Pallie OP, etc etc,) and then, to fix the FIRST broken mechanic, you introduce a second, AS MUCH STUPID AS THE FIRST, (classes fix, Champions).

Fixing the first broken mechanic is twice as fast and twice as smart.

That would not have worked at all with our goals.

First that would have left a handful of builds over-performing. We would have had to nerf the game's most popular builds. We like the gameplay of the most powerful builds. That's where the game was fun. We wanted more of that, not less. If we just came in and nerfed those builds we would have just lost players.

Second, we would have lost the opportunity to create a DPS statistic we could use to scale abilities with gear and epic levels so they remained relevant to the end game. That groundwork is extremely important to the Cannith crafting changes and the new Greensteel for level 30.

I am sorry if I am not articulating the bigger plan to you effectively, but these changes are all leading to the updates for the coming years. Our balancing plans went well beyond that one simple issue.

Sev~

[davmuzl]

If by "power creep" you mean more stuff in the Bard, Paladin, Barbarian range then yes. (Paladin is very good but it's not the healing that we are watching; it's the saving throw advantage.)

Part of the reason we allowed DPS to creep up is that hit point creep has been happening on the monster side for quite some time, and there was clear player feedback that many enemies at the game's end had so many hit points that they were boring to kill. As a result of this player feedback we've allowed DPS to creep up as a default.

Sev~

Keeping "power creep" controlled is important. Players have to understand that introducing new things into a game doesn't work without some form power creep. When it comes to items the goal has to be to give players a reason to get the new stuff while keeping older items relevant (especially those that have been added recently).
When it comes to classes/races power my opinion is that choices that are made in the character creation have to feel relevant. I feel like the old enhancement system with the prestige classes did a good job at making players feel good when they reached certain levels. Taking the GS items out of the tr-cache and putting the points into the prestige enhancement always made me feel ready to go. Getting a little more doublestrike here and a single new icon for my hotbar there simply isn't the same. I played diablo3 for a while and there it was the worst. The gameplay didn't change at all after around lvl 30 to 60 because all that changed was that numbers were scaled up on both sides.
If something is op a nerf might be the best option.

[davmuzl]

We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Is there any chance for us to see a major change to how saves and AC work?
Saves are one of the last mechanics that still work like in pnp and while I hate to say it I feel like the d20 system doesn't scale very well in DDO. I do not want to see the same thing happen to saves that happened to AC where they would be pretty much irrelevant. There has to be a formula that makes stacking AC/saves relevant without keeping the d20 and making everybody without divine grace and maxed stats fail 95% of the time.

[fmalfeas]

I think one thing that would help a lot for Mechanics is a pass on Trapmaking. Take the traps and grenades and update them. Then on top of that, incorporate serious boosts to their performance in Mechanic, with the scariest boosts in T5 and capstone. An assassin tossing a grenade might hurt the mobs softening them up a bit, or maybe new grenades that do things like blind for a few seconds. While a mechanic busting out their grenades is closer to the real life situation if someone is chucking little bombs at you. Very, very bad news for the victim. And it's inherently got a partial balancer in that grenades and traps eat inventory and you can only have so many of them. (Would also boost AH activity with trap parts, as sins, artis, and acrobats sell parts to mechanics who make those traps terrifying.

Could even make some special traps that only mechanics can use (too complex for anyone without that much training.)

It's a far better, and roguier niche than repeaters.

[Fafnir]

When it comes to classes/races power my opinion is that choices that are made in the character creation have to feel relevant. I feel like the old enhancement system with the prestige classes did a good job at making players feel good when they reached certain levels. Taking the GS items out of the tr-cache and putting the points into the prestige enhancement always made me feel ready to go. Getting a little more doublestrike here and a single new icon for my hotbar there simply isn't the same. I played diablo3 for a while and there it was the worst. The gameplay didn't change at all after around lvl 30 to 60 because all that changed was that numbers were scaled up on both sides.
If something is op a nerf might be the best option.

This is quite perceptive. Fair chance the 'Severlinisation' of the game could wreck one of the core reasons it is better than other games (eg. Neverwinter)

[Fnordian]

I think one thing that would help a lot for Mechanics is a pass on Trapmaking. Take the traps and grenades and update them. Then on top of that, incorporate serious boosts to their performance in Mechanic, with the scariest boosts in T5 and capstone. An assassin tossing a grenade might hurt the mobs softening them up a bit, or maybe new grenades that do things like blind for a few seconds. While a mechanic busting out their grenades is closer to the real life situation if someone is chucking little bombs at you. Very, very bad news for the victim. And it's inherently got a partial balancer in that grenades and traps eat inventory and you can only have so many of them. (Would also boost AH activity with trap parts, as sins, artis, and acrobats sell parts to mechanics who make those traps terrifying.

Could even make some special traps that only mechanics can use (too complex for anyone without that much training.)

It's a far better, and roguier niche than repeaters.


Absolutely! In my experience, traps and grenades are largely ignored because they take time/money to collect parts, effort to create them, inventory space to store them, and then more effort to use them effectively (especially traps) -- it's far easier to just hack and slash your way through a quest, but if someone goes to the trouble of creating and then using a trap, make it worthwhile! The traps would have to have insane damage before they'd be unbalanced. And if they did have (almost) insane damage, Artis and Rogues would be a welcome and sought-after addition to parties again!

I wonder if there are any statistics showing how often traps are actually used in quests...and also, how often they're used in quests with more than two players.

[Oxarhamar]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

something to consider when you do the Ranged Pass.


Shot type attacks being lost into the reload cycle of Crossbows. (light/heavy/great/light repeater/heavy repeater)

Enhancements:
Artificer Battle Engineer
Wracking Shot: Ranged Attack: On Damage: Deals 1d6/3d6/5d6 extra damage to constructs and living constructs, and applies Wracked: This construct or living construct fortification is reduced by 10% and loses its inherent immunity to sneak attack. This effect stacks up to five times.

Elven/Ranger
Arcane Archer
True strike: Ranged Archery Attack: Perform a ranged attack with +20 to-hit. Rank 2/3: You receive a +2/+4 Insight bonus to hit for 6/12 seconds. Activation cost: 2 spell points. Cool down: 3 seconds.
Dispelling Shot: Ranged Archery Attack: Performs a ranged attack that deals +1/+2/+3[W] damage and dispels 1/2/3 beneficial effects from your target. (Activation Cost: 5 SP. Cool down: 3 seconds)
Inferno Shot: Ranged Archery Attack: Performs a ranged attack with +0/+1/+2[W] damage. On Hit: Target gain 1 stack of Inferno (target takes 1d6 fire damage every 2 second for 6 seconds. This effect can stack 20 times, and loses one stack on expiration.) (Activation cost: 6 SP. Cool down 3 seconds)
Shattermantle Shot: Ranged Archery Attack: Performs a ranged attack with +1/+2/+3[W] damage. On hit: Target gains 1/2/3 stack of Reduced Spell Resistance (-1 Spell Resistance. This effect can stack 100 times) on Vorpal Hit: Shattermantle (-100 spell Resistance for 10 seconds. Will DC 10/14/18 + Half Ranger Level + Wisdom Modifier negates.) (Activation Cost: 4 SP. Cool down: 3 seconds)
Arrow of Slaying: Ranged Archery Attack: Performs a ranged attack with +250 damage. (This damage can be multiplied by critical hits.) (Cost: 20 spell points. Cool down: 20 seconds.)

Fighter Kensei
Shattering Shot: Focus Ranged Attack: Deals +1/+2/+3[W] damage. On Damage: Target loses 15% fortification for 10 seconds (Fort DC 10 + Half Fighter Level + Wisdom Modifier Negates).
A Good Death (Ranged): Focus Ranged Attack: Perform a ranged attack with +1 Critical Damage Multiplier. On Damage: If the target is below 20% health, deal 500 damage.
Deadly Shot: Focus Ranged Attack: Expend a use of Action Boost: Attack to perform a ranged attack that is automatically considered a critical threat. On Vorpal: 500 damage.

Ranger Deepwood Stalker
Sniper Shot: Ranged Attack: Performs a ranged attack with +2[W], a +4 bonus to-hit, +2 to critical threat range, and +2 to Critical Damage Multiplier. On Damage: The target will become momentarily confused and rendered vulnerable to sneak attacks for four seconds as if affected by the bluff skill. (Cool down 6 seconds)
Ranged Attack: Performs a ranged attack with +10 to hit and +1 Critical Damage Multiplier. On Damage: If you are in the Archer's Focus stance and Manyshot is not active, gain three stacks of Archer's Focus. (Cooldown: 10 seconds)
Merciful Shot: Ranged attack: Deals +3[W] damage. On Sneak attack: If the target is below 20% health, deal 500 damage.
Leg Shot: Ranged Attack: On Damage: Slow your enemy's movement by 50% for 10 seconds. (Cool down: 10 seconds)
Head Shot: Ranged Attack: Perform a ranged attack that is automatically considered a critical threat. On vorpal: 500 damage. (Cool down: 60 seconds)

Rogue Mechanic
Wracking Shot: Ranged Attack: On Damage: Deals 1d6/3d6/5d6 extra damage to constructs and living constructs, and applies Wracked: This construct or living construct fortification is reduced by 10% and loses its inherent immunity to sneak attack. This effect stacks up to five times.
Leg Shot: Ranged Attack: On Damage: Slow your enemy's movement by 50% for 10 seconds (Cool down: 10 seconds)

Epic Destinies: --------------------------------------------------------
Shadowdancer
Shrouding Strike/Shot: Active Ability: (Cooldown: 15 seconds) Melee or Ranged Attack: Perform an attack with +[1/2/3][W] damage. On hit: Mark target. It if dies within the next [6/8/10] seconds, gain a Shadow Charge. You can retain a maximum of [2/4/6] Shadow Charges.
Executioner's Strike/Shot: Active Ability: (Cooldown: 30 seconds) Melee or ranged attack. Perform an attack with +[1/2/3][W] damage, +1 critical threat range and +1 critical damage multiplier. On hit: You have a 35% chance to kill a living target instantly if the target fails a Fortitude save (DC 7 + Character level + DEX modifier + Number of Shadow Charges). Even on successful save target takes an additional [50/75/100] damage from this attack.

Shiradi Champion
Pin: Ranged or Thrown Attack: (Cooldown [20/15] seconds) enemy takes [+2/+3][w] damage. If enemy is not moving, enemy is pinned in place for [9/18] seconds. Enemy is slowed if moving. (No saving throw observed for either effect)
Otto's Whistler: Ranged or Thrown Attack: (Cooldown [20/15] seconds) Deal [+2/+3][w] damage. If enemy is moving, enemy starts dancing for [9/18] seconds. (No saving throw observed)
----------------------------------------------------




To expand on this Crossbows have 2 sequences of attack Load/Reload and Fire.
During a sequence of attacks any of these Shot type attacks must be used when the Crossbow is loaded or the attack will go on cool down and nothing will happen.
Vs.
An Archer using a Bow however only has no reload sequence and can fire the shot attack at anytime.
A Melee using any of the respective Melee versions of some of these attacks also only needs to activate the attack at anytime in attack chain.

For these attacks to be effectively used in combat with any type of Crossbow/Repeater the player must pay very close attention to the cycle of reloading and make sure to activate the attack when a bolt is loaded or lose the attack and put it on cool down.

At times this is not such an big deal.
example: in a group where some melees have the agro and the Crossbow user can stand stationary relax and fire at will, they can take the time to be sure the crossbow is loaded (sometimes for me this means firing a test shot prior to the attack to make sure the Crossbow is loaded this is an utterly immersion breaking annoyance)

Other times its extremely difficult to use these attacks when in the heat of combat. (when these attacks would be most helpful to save your skin)
Example:soloing EE Line of Supplies, ranging a dangerous caster in the middle of a battlefield full of melee mobs. Jumping and strafing to avoid being stunned with a melee attack while laying down fire on the caster using Pin or a Deadly shot would be handy .

This is a long standing bug that was reported on Lamania during the testing of the Epic Destinies (Prior to the enhancement pass adding so many shot type attacks to the enhancement trees)
This bug is extremely immersion breaking and is considerably frustrating either ignoring these abilities at times due to the need to pay overly too much attention to weather the crossbow is loaded or not and also the frustration of mistiming the attack and losing it all together.

Proposed Fix:
If the attack is activated when the crossbow is not loaded and no attack takes place then the attack simple should not go on cool down since it was not used.
The attack should only go on cool down if a shot was fired.

these things effect all builds that would use any type of active attack with Crossbow/Repeaters.

This Quote I pulled was posted here https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/436651-Middle-of-the-Week-with-Major-Mal almost 1 years ago and these issues have existed longer than that.

**This may not be an all inclusive list as there have been changes since I complied it as well as I may have missed something or another. ( I edited the post to tonight try to make it more readable as I tend not to be the best at that bit.)

[janave]

Kensai
Fighter Core @12 - Add 20% cooldown reduction on all tactical feats.
Fighter Core @18 - Add 40% cooldown reduction on all tactical feats. (non stacking)
Fighter Capstone - Add 50% cooldown reduction on all tactical feats. (non stacking)

Basically a capped kensai gets a ton of reaction speed, so twichy players would benefit from playing a fighter, lazy players would not so much.

Another unique Fighter ability i would add to the Kensai capstone is Vorpalling on a 19 too with his specialization. This would fit the theme nicely, and would ceirtainly give an edeg to fighters to benefit from on Vorpal effects like no other can.

Light/Unarmored Kensai would have make sense in DDO if the AC was not changed(nerfed), or would have eventually gained in cores the following:

Evasion
Top AC
Super High Dodge
Super High Reflexes

Those were not accomplished unless you splashed the Monk class. This is what made Kensai a multiclass only tree.

Believe me I tried pure Kensai Half Elf before all the late late buffs, and it was terrible even with all the spell absorption gear, all the top defense gear... it just did not work with a THF DPS build.

[fmalfeas]

Absolutely! In my experience, traps and grenades are largely ignored because they take time/money to collect parts, effort to create them, inventory space to store them, and then more effort to use them effectively (especially traps) -- it's far easier to just hack and slash your way through a quest, but if someone goes to the trouble of creating and then using a trap, make it worthwhile! The traps would have to have insane damage before they'd be unbalanced. And if they did have (almost) insane damage, Artis and Rogues would be a welcome and sought-after addition to parties again!

I wonder if there are any statistics showing how often traps are actually used in quests...and also, how often they're used in quests with more than two players.

Expanding on the thought real quick, I'd also suggest that mechanics /not/ get massive buffs for spelltraps. Instead, artis should get that. Yes, artificers. They're a class of magical artisans, by nature. If /anyone/ should be an expert at making a trap that casts spells on you, it's artificers.

And have the Mark of Making help with both magical and alchemical/physical traps. But not /so much/ help that it's not worth messing with if you don't have the mark.

[Rys]

We'd rather have each class have at least one decent DPS option and work on giving all the classes some kind of niche place or utility. The trick is doing that in a way that doesn't feel like everything is homogenized.

So far, you are failing in it. Keep going and the game will as homogenized as never.

Also for some incomprehensible reason, you seem you want to destroy multiclassing. Why? Multiclassing is what makes this game unique and so fun.

Pretty sure it is what will happen to archery. The only viable choice will be pure lvl 20 ranger.

Sad, seeing the way this game is taking, really.



Second, we would have lost the opportunity to create a DPS statistic we could use to scale abilities with gear and epic levels so they remained relevant to the end game. That groundwork is extremely important to the Cannith crafting changes and the new Greensteel for level 30.


End game? What end game? Is it coming yet?

You are adding powercreep and creeping up DPS but where is the challenge? Where are those super difficult quests we can use it in? Champions? Don't be ridiculous. Adding new meat bags who hit like a truck from time to time isn't adding challenge, only annoyance. Make smart fights.

Look at the game. See what quests are run by players. Which ones have high replayability and why. Look at Stormhorns, WGU with a great end fight mechanic as the icing on the cake.

Gianthold. Although the loot is now pretty much outdated, it was the reason why it was and still is run so much. Tiered unbound loot was great and for many people farming and selling it at the cap was fun. So you introduce BTA loot. Go figure. Why not BTAOE?

VoN5 and 6. XP and loot, nuf said.

New Xoriat Madness chain. Run it twice. Zero interest to run it again. Haven't seen any lfms since the release. Crappy mechanics and crappy loot. Not a way to go.

[bbqzor]

especially when leveling where gear isn't available for the saves in the content you are running, or while collecting the will save past lives to make the saves (which are also bugged and don't stack with Epic Glimpse of the Soul), or against all saves and bugged enemy tactics DCs.

Saying that divine grace needs to be addressed because bugs are making player saves too low or mob dcs too high is irrelevant. Obviously, the bugs should simply be fixed without anything being rebalanced around them.


Plus it sounds crazy to explain to a barbarian level 4 guild mate who is asking about the Butcher's Path witch doctor optional and being held and fire balled 100-0 that in order to do that optional they first have to level to 24, farm boots in epic three barrel cove, and then go back to the Butcher's Path, preferably with some epic past lives and bard past lives thrown in, and a twist or two.

The OP I responded too cited a newly 20 fighter going into epic. In that case, yes, it makes sense to focus my comments on epic. If you want to start a thread about how you need divine grace in order to beat the butchers path, be my guest. I imagine youll get completely different feedback which does not include epic centric fixes. Even trying to suggest that the two are somehow directly related implies some kind of agenda to your post, as no one would seriously give a reply about epic past lives in regards to harbor quests. Come on, be real. Harbor content hardly requires any previous character investment to be beatable, and its obvious thats not what I was talking about from the specifics in the OP, the values used, and the fact I said fighter not barbarian.


You know what does work though and I found to be really simple? Just spend 5 minutes rolling a BF paladin and start being able to just naturally make some DC 80+ saving throws in starter gear at level 15, with the rest of the DC 80+ saves just naturally arriving by the time they are needed.

This too is an exaggeration. The posted pic shows a bladeforged saving against magical poison, to which they get +10 on top of their normal saves due to race, and is using their best save of fort. Yes, theyre good at that. So what. Anyone can down a neutralize poison pot and do the same... even that level 4 barbarian you mentioned. What is your point here, all youve done is make a statement that a bladeforged paladin can get a good fort save against poison. So?

If you are trying to say that "paladins have an easy time making saves relative to barbarians" okay sure. How is that inherently imbalancing? You havent used that statement to show anything or bring any new insights. Its just a statement, and one which reflects how things should be. Yes, a BF Pal should be good against poison. And? A shadar kai dex-focused rog should be good against ref trap saves. Hardly a reason to go changing anything.

If your friend cannot beat the shaman optional in butchers path, I would suggest one of the following (in no particular order): Drink some potions first, such as owls wisdom, resist fire, protection from evil, or the like; Party up with a few other people; Skip it, its an optional, not every character can do every optional and theres nothing wrong with that; Use a combination of abilities such as triggering Uncanny Dodge and Antimagic Boost at once while raging to increase his odds and then use Ear Smash when reaching melee to prevent further casting; Send in a hireling first and let them get agro so he can close the gap unharmed; etc.

None of that has anything to do with requiring "maxed out" saves or altering divine grace. If you want an easy button, and are saying paladin is an easy button, then hey great you found the class for you. It doesnt mean the entire game has to conform to that template, nor does it change the fact that by the time you get to content "requiring" higher saves, there are many tools available which can apply to anyone, divine grace or not.

[Powskier]

Kensai
Fighter Core @12 - Add 20% cooldown reduction on all tactical feats.
Fighter Core @18 - Add 40% cooldown reduction on all tactical feats. (non stacking)
Fighter Capstone - Add 50% cooldown reduction on all tactical feats. (non stacking)

Basically a capped kensai gets a ton of reaction speed, so twichy players would benefit from playing a fighter, lazy players would not so much.

Another unique Fighter ability i would add to the Kensai capstone is Vorpalling on a 19 too with his specialization. This would fit the theme nicely, and would ceirtainly give an edeg to fighters to benefit from on Vorpal effects like no other can.

Light/Unarmored Kensai would have make sense in DDO if the AC was not changed(nerfed), or would have eventually gained in cores the following:

Evasion
Top AC
Super High Dodge
Super High Reflexes

Those were not accomplished unless you splashed the Monk class. This is what made Kensai a multiclass only tree.

Believe me I tried pure Kensai Half Elf before all the late late buffs, and it was terrible even with all the spell absorption gear, all the top defense gear... it just did not work with a THF DPS build.

have you tried THF since then? it has been fixed apparently and is pretty fun now,past few months.... , Yea stick and move ,is awesome fighter tactic(my bud will get the idea fast/he was shooter most his other characters and lives) also it is amazing how much you can kite tough enemies around a pillar, or similar dungeon feature-till you get a handle in hot battles.

[ghtzxc]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts...
Sev~

First of all thanks for being so open and giving us a heads up for the coming changes. They sound very exciting!

I just want to say about Divine Grace. I think that adding a save type could be a good solution as long as the bonus from items is reasonable and doesn't get out of hand. Like maybe +5 to saves maximum might be okay be good but not +10 or something. There should still be SOME reason for taking paladin levels to use the DG/saves. As long as this is a new unique bonus type that doesn't conflict with already existing types/sources of saves.

I would also combine it with the cap to DG based on paladin levels. It makes sense that a 12 paladin/8 xx would get more from DG than a 18 xx/2 paladin.

Taken together, non-paladin would still get a bonus to saves from items instead of DG. 18 xx/2 paladin would still be worthwhile for more saves than the items would give. And 12 pal/8 xx would benefit more from DG than 18 xx/2 paladin.

Hope you guys would consider it. Thank you!

[janave]

Another approach would be to add tiers to Taint of Evil, then apply it to the +resistance items you are aiming at non paladin users. Altho this way most "lawful good" or just "good" alignments would be excluded.

Example:
Choosen item slot of exclusive resistance.
+5 profane bonus to resistances, Taint of Evil V.

Lawful goodness is mostly taken to allow Pally or Monk splashes so this might work almost the same. Just an idea, dont bite.

[Fafnir]

You say you want balance, well guess what: us too. You have been saying that for a year now. I still don't see any balance in the game.

Balance certainly isn't being achieved by having the tweaked classes be able to set new fastest quest completion time benchmarks across the board every time you do an update to them.

[Wizza]

Balance certainly isn't being achieved by having the tweaked classes be able to set new fastest quest completion time benchmarks across the board every time you do an update to them.

No idea if you actually mean to agree with me or not, but that is exactly my point. We are too strong and these buffs are making us even stronger. And then, the only way to challenge these strong build (according to the Developers, and I showed in my post how they can challenge us in smarter ways) is giving mobs tons of HP, which is awful.

[Loromir]

Totally can see the future:
Manyshot puts 10k Stars on 2 minutes cooldown and vice versa. Doubleshot penalty removed.




I support this.

[janave]

Most people would adapt and move on to another build after the nerfs, very few people would leave DDO with massive time/money investment to their characters.

All the X build is bigger than Y build is also very unreliable, not really backed up by facts.


If there was a template or something:

A powerful character rated: 1-20

Burst DPS
Ranged DPS
AoE DPS
Self Heal
Instakill
CC
AoE CC
Utility
Immunities/Resistances
Stealth
.........

Of course the many stacking past lifes and inherent bonuses make it harder to create this kind of comparisons.

[Xionanx]

You say that, but frustrated people who feel like they aren't being listened to lash out; basic psychology.

Take a look at the suggestion forums that are chock full of ideas to improve the game, by players TRYING to be constructive, yet no evidence that the devs even look at those.

But, on the topic of making the game harder..

People who think the game isn't hard enough can:
1. Stop using ship buffs (but they wont)
2. Make a non-TR character and refuse to TR it (but they wont)
3. Play are "pure" class (but they wont).

IMO what they dev's should do:
1. Broad across the board nerfs to everything (but they wont)
2. Remove the AP system entirely making players rely solely on classess and feats (but they wont)
3. Finally admit that shoe horning table top rules into an action game was a bad idea and just drop the pretense and go ahead and change the entire system to be one of their own making (maybe they are in the process??)

[Rys]

"I have seen the truth" contains I, but it still makes a general statement. So I and my does not help in this case.
How is it general statement? It was you, who have seen the truth thus you who think it's the truth but it don't have to be necessarily the truth in eyes of someone else. And please don't get to the discussion about what is the truth or if it even exists.

[Powskier]

How is it general statement? It was you, who have seen the truth thus you who think it's the truth but it don't have to be necessarily the truth in eyes of someone else. And please don't get to the discussion about what is the truth or if it even exists.

this is not thread related

[bartharok]

How is it general statement? It was you, who have seen the truth thus you who think it's the truth but it don't have to be necessarily the truth in eyes of someone else. And please don't get to the discussion about what is the truth or if it even exists.

Indeed. Truth is in the eye of the beholder. Thats why its so rare elsewhere (Would you dare look for it there)

[Powskier]

You say that, but frustrated people who feel like they aren't being listened to lash out; basic psychology.

Take a look at the suggestion forums that are chock full of ideas to improve the game, by players TRYING to be constructive, yet no evidence that the devs even look at those.

But, on the topic of making the game harder..

People who think the game isn't hard enough can:
1. Stop using ship buffs (but they wont)
2. Make a non-TR character and refuse to TR it (but they wont)
3. Play are "pure" class (but they wont).

IMO what they dev's should do:
1. Broad across the board nerfs to everything (but they wont)
2. Remove the AP system entirely making players rely solely on classess and feats (but they wont)
3. Finally admit that shoe horning table top rules into an action game was a bad idea and just drop the pretense and go ahead and change the entire system to be one of their own making (maybe they are in the process??)

not thread related

[Xionanx]

Indeed. Truth is in the eye of the beholder. Thats why its so rare elsewhere (Would you dare look for it there)

No.. thats beauty. "Truth" is "Fact" and is one and the same. "Belief" however IS in the mind of the "Believer"

1+1=2 is Truth, there is no "beholder" who can make it not be 2, but you can sure believe its not true:rolleyes:

[bartharok]

No.. thats beauty. "Truth" is "Fact" and is one and the same. "Belief" however IS in the mind of the "Believer"

1+1=2 is Truth, there is no "beholder" who can make it not be 2, but you can sure believe its not true:rolleyes:

The saying is about beauty, but the same goes for truth, since truth is subjective as well. (Two entirely different things can both be true, depending on who you ask)

1+1=2 is not Truth, but it may be true.

[Rys]

this is not thread related

It wasn't any of the forumities who has derailed it ;)

[Powskier]

where do we get this +2 truth augment that keeps bein mentioned???....fighters need that bonus too

[janave]

A Wizard Slayer themed Fighter tree would have done justice to the more solo/duo runners. Including the better stalwart perks, i mean lets face it old school tanking is almost never required in DDO.

WS could be balanced with restriction of what he can use, similarly to Kensai it would be more of a passive/back loaded build but better suited to take out Mages and survive encounters with ton of spell casting.

The sentinel dragon mark could be an interesting one for Fighters if it was suitable for high level play, lets say a globe of invulnerability clicky with 2-3minutes x3 times that creates a globe around you and follows you. With a higher tier that blocks maybe up to lvl6 spells.

In the Infinity Games, my Fighters were still useful if i used the proper protection scrolls on them. I know DDO is very different in this respect.

[Powskier]

It wasn't any of the forumities who has derailed it ;)

aw, its all good...just that we have dev responses here for build ideas being tossed around..kinda good thing to keep going

[Mryal]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

Well met.
Those are all great topics.Again i state that what i think should be priority is setting up the 3rd trees for druid and artificer and revamping them.Other classes may need attention too but anyone who is melee has alredy gotten a ton of attention with the addition of melee power.But if you guys dont have a timeline or priority for all that..you should make a poll or survey about it, should be quick and easy to do.If you do so i will speak to all my guildies and friends who dont use forums to vote on it aswell.
I see a few controversial things there, specialy regarding ranger...if you touch that stuff the whinning will commence..alredy started here.I dont think theres a reason to switch ranged ranger from burst ranged dps to more sustained ranged dps.If you want to experiment with ranged do it with artificer, its easier to experiment when you have nothing wich is basicaly what artificer offers atm.
Also be mindfull of thrower builds...they alredy exist.And breaking them with changes is really, really easy.
Also add unarmed monk to that list.

Theres a lot of comments about game difficulty in this thread and people fighting over it alredy as it always happens.What i think is : Most of DDO is currently super easy, even on EE.Some is somewhat easy when you run with a near full party of well geared people.EE raids such as deathwyrm and peaks are ultra hard, specialy when youre running with a guild like mine that gets at most 5-7 people before having to pug.Dedicated tank (wich is what i run) is also needed in those raids, and i have a lot of fun doing it.
Thought honestly ,i still think the highest difficulty we have in DDO is pugging on Argonessen without getting at least one person with an attitude that will ruin your day.

[lain5246]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

I think that kensei should get a tier-5 enhancement that lets them wear med/heavy armor while in monk stances, and a stance, (maybe even monk) in the cores no earlier than the fourth.

[bartharok]

I think that kensei should get a tier-5 enhancement that lets them wear med/heavy armor while in monk stances, and a stance, (maybe even monk) in the cores no earlier than the fourth.

I think kensai should be a fighter tree, not a monk one.

[Chette]

I want to note first of all that class balance involves more than just enhancement trees. Please when doing class passes also look at other class features, in particular spells. A class with poor spell selection, and spells that don't scale well into epic levels, probably won't be fixed by enhancements alone. Now some specific comments:



~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars.

Ranged is hard to balance because of IPS and the fact that the devs recently have decided that more active monsters at once is the best way to make the game harder. Giving equal damage to ranged vs bosses makes it OP against trash. I would suggest adding in some boss specific abilities boosts that only work on one target, as a way to give ranged effective options for both boss and trash DPS


~ New Favored Soul tree.

Right now favored souls and clerics are fairly well balanced with each other (though both are underpowered as casters, particularly since group healing is now obsolete). Please focus on making a new tree that will differentiate the two classes, as right now they're nearly identical, and it's a huge waste. Give FvS a new twist, instead of just returning them to their status as more powerful PTP clerics. Also please look at divine spells in general to better balance divine and arcane offensive casting, since divines no longer serve a healing role.


~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

Another area where a spell pass is needed in addition to enhancements.


~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

Ranged power will help the crossbow user but do nothing for the sword+rune arm melee artificer, who has been neglected since the class was introduced. I would recommend splitting battle engineer into two trees, one for hand and a half, and one for ranged. Please also add give them bastard sword proficiency automatically, which is the mate to their respective ranged proficiency. Glad you're going to look at rune arm scaling which is very much needed. A general spell pass would be nice too, as many don't scale well.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

[Tinco]

And what makes an (offensive) fighter tree? That class has had a serious identity crisis from day one due to the lack of iconic class features.

[Mryal]

Ranged power will help the crossbow user but do nothing for the sword+rune arm melee artificer, who has been neglected since the class was introduced. I would recommend splitting battle engineer into two trees, one for hand and a half, and one for ranged. Please also add the hand and a half feats to the arti bonus feats list (swf, IC slash, etc) and give them bastard sword proficiency automatically, which is the mate to their respective ranged feats. Glad you're going to look at rune arm scaling which is very much needed. A general spell pass would be nice too, as many don't scale well.

This is a great idea.

[Steelstar]

Ranged power will help the crossbow user but do nothing for the sword+rune arm melee artificer, who has been neglected since the class was introduced. I would recommend splitting battle engineer into two trees, one for hand and a half, and one for ranged. Please also add the hand and a half feats to the arti bonus feats list (swf, IC slash, etc) and give them bastard sword proficiency automatically, which is the mate to their respective ranged feats. Glad you're going to look at rune arm scaling which is very much needed. A general spell pass would be nice too, as many don't scale well.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

IC: Slashing, Weapon Focus: Slashing, and the first Single Weapon Fighting feat are already on the Artificer Bonus Feats list, as well as Bastard Sword/Dwarven Axe proficiency. :)

[Nascoe]

I think one thing that would help a lot for Mechanics is a pass on Trapmaking. Take the traps and grenades and update them. Then on top of that, incorporate serious boosts to their performance in Mechanic, with the scariest boosts in T5 and capstone. An assassin tossing a grenade might hurt the mobs softening them up a bit, or maybe new grenades that do things like blind for a few seconds. While a mechanic busting out their grenades is closer to the real life situation if someone is chucking little bombs at you. Very, very bad news for the victim. And it's inherently got a partial balancer in that grenades and traps eat inventory and you can only have so many of them. (Would also boost AH activity with trap parts, as sins, artis, and acrobats sell parts to mechanics who make those traps terrifying.

Could even make some special traps that only mechanics can use (too complex for anyone without that much training.)

It's a far better, and roguier niche than repeaters.

I think repeaters are nice for rogue mechanics (would be lovely if the enhancements would do more for repeaters instead of going for great crosbow etc tho), but are not enough to make it a good / interesting class. Now if you could do what fmalfeas proses - boost trapmaking to really be usefull (i like throwin the odd trap to stun or slow down mobs, would be nice to be able to do serious damage/debuff bosses) especially if it would somehow scale into epics, that would really make for a unique thing if done right. Blinding effects and slows/trips or even stat damage would do a lot (like enabling sneak damage for example).
Off course that also brings us back to epic ward - I would really hope you come up with something to put that away, as it takes a lot of fun out of many options if the mobs are all warded where it matters most.

[HuneyMunster]

For rogues I think we also need to beef up their sneak attack damage. I think the best way to do this is to allow sneak attack to gain more from melee power then 100%, like maybe 150%. So instead of 60 melee power boosting sneak attack by 60%, it will now boost it by 90%. Also this has been asked before= Epic feat to allow sneak attacks on undead/constructs etc.



Druid forms have been terrible since launch, a big issue is the increased spell cooldowns, this needs to be removed ASAP. There is honestly no need for it. Also druid animal attack DCs are the WORST.

Rogues already get Assassins Tricks to remove sneak attack immunity. Though the animation time needs reducing. Also Shadowdancer vorpal effect from Shadow Mastery also removes the immunity for a short time.

Though I would like to see something like Epic Precision (though not a dnd3.5) from Neverwinter Nights 2 that allows you to do halved sneak attack dmg to creatures normally immune. Maybe add it to Improved Sneak Attack feat if you have Precision active or even as something for a level 30 epic feat option for rogues.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

Tier 5 : Tactical Mastery : You have a chance = to your double strike to land tactics twice, additionally if you have two weapon fighting feats, your off hand attack can also tactical abilities. (max 3 procs)

if this worked for cleaves, id dig it. if not, then there would be no point because outside of stacking improved sunder debuff quickly, stun or trip either work or they dont. so pretty much this would only be useful for cc in cases where i would have stunned/tripped something but i rolled a 1 or didnt have true seeing on and the enemy was concealed. id rather have better improvements than that, unless like i said this were to include cleaves.


Kensai
Fighter Core @12 - Add 20% cooldown reduction on all tactical feats.
Fighter Core @18 - Add 40% cooldown reduction on all tactical feats. (non stacking)
Fighter Capstone - Add 50% cooldown reduction on all tactical feats. (non stacking)

Basically a capped kensai gets a ton of reaction speed, so twichy players would benefit from playing a fighter, lazy players would not so much.

Another unique Fighter ability i would add to the Kensai capstone is Vorpalling on a 19 too with his specialization. This would fit the theme nicely, and would ceirtainly give an edeg to fighters to benefit from on Vorpal effects like no other can.

Light/Unarmored Kensai would have make sense in DDO if the AC was not changed(nerfed), or would have eventually gained in cores the following:

Evasion
Top AC
Super High Dodge
Super High Reflexes

Those were not accomplished unless you splashed the Monk class. This is what made Kensai a multiclass only tree.

i would really like the cooldown reduction but if it applied to cleaves (cl/gcl both 3 sec cds, momentum swing 30 sec max cd) i think it would be overpowered. also it would seem wasteful to me because i have not noticed cleaves double striking ever, and fighters get high double strike. if this were combined with the above suggestion and it all applied to cleaves, that would be uber and id love it. probably would be enough to fix fighters with just that...

otherwise yea stun and trip really need cd reduc.

extra vorpal would be ok i guess but...meh, im not really into it. the only thing itd do for me is twice as much neg levelling from endless night aug, but that is dependent on 1) that aug being in the weap im currently using and 2) mob not being immune to negs. also its a direct copy paste of pswf, so id rather just not have them add this.


also i totally agree with the bottom of your post. if we were still on ac only, or if heavy armor still sucked then yea it makes sense to have kensei be an avoidance based tree. but seeing as thats the only fighter dps tree that supports multiple fighting styles, and heavy armor does not suck and defense is not avoidance based only, it no longer makes sesne for the main fighter dps tree to focus on anything other than offense.


I think that kensei should get a tier-5 enhancement that lets them wear med/heavy armor while in monk stances, and a stance, (maybe even monk) in the cores no earlier than the fourth.

they should just add this to one with the blade if they were going to, which i would approve of. if kensei is supposed to be a samurai, well samurais wore armor. and it would only benefit pures to the tune of +1.5[w] which you are getting if you go 12/6/2 or a gimp 8/x/x anyway. and 18/2 is just idiotic so yea, this would only be a slight buff to pures and i am all for it (plus it would make my twist choices a no brainer ;P).

they should absolutely not give monk stances as a class feature to kenseis though, not now and not ever. its one thing to make all kenseis centered fighters for a slight [w] buff, but you are suggesting full bab in heavy armor + t3/4 earthstance + defensive stance. currently you only get 2 of those 3, all 3 would be really strong defensively. on the flip side, you would get keen edge + earth stance multi with no squishieness, or 19% dstrike from fighter + 5-10% dstrike from wind stance.

monk stances are also unqiue to monks/monk splashes who remain centered. giving it easy mode to fighters would eliminate any reason for monks to exist, because there would already be a class that does monk, plus a whole bunch of other stuff. as much as ive disliked monk over the years no class should have its identity stolen and destroyed like that (looking at you holy sword).

giving fighters *both* is just wrong on so many levels.

[Oxarhamar]

snip

Ranged is hard to balance because of IPS and the fact that the devs recently have decided that more active monsters at once is the best way to make the game harder. Giving equal damage to ranged vs bosses makes it OP against trash. I would suggest adding in some boss specific abilities boosts that only work on one target, as a way to give ranged effective options for both boss and trash DPS

!

Archers focus is that boss/single target DPS option though many ranged players on the forum have said its useless since you must stand still. It has its uses but, can only be increased by Ranger enhancements.

[lain5246]

if this worked for cleaves, id dig it. if not, then there would be no point because outside of stacking improved sunder debuff quickly, stun or trip either work or they dont. so pretty much this would only be useful for cc in cases where i would have stunned/tripped something but i rolled a 1 or didnt have true seeing on and the enemy was concealed. id rather have better improvements than that, unless like i said this were to include cleaves.



i would really like the cooldown reduction but if it applied to cleaves (cl/gcl both 3 sec cds, momentum swing 30 sec max cd) i think it would be overpowered. also it would seem wasteful to me because i have not noticed cleaves double striking ever, and fighters get high double strike. if this were combined with the above suggestion and it all applied to cleaves, that would be uber and id love it. probably would be enough to fix fighters with just that...

otherwise yea stun and trip really need cd reduc.

extra vorpal would be ok i guess but...meh, im not really into it. the only thing itd do for me is twice as much neg levelling from endless night aug, but that is dependent on 1) that aug being in the weap im currently using and 2) mob not being immune to negs. also its a direct copy paste of pswf, so id rather just not have them add this.


also i totally agree with the bottom of your post. if we were still on ac only, or if heavy armor still sucked then yea it makes sense to have kensei be an avoidance based tree. but seeing as thats the only fighter dps tree that supports multiple fighting styles, and heavy armor does not suck and defense is not avoidance based only, it no longer makes sesne for the main fighter dps tree to focus on anything other than offense.



they should just add this to one with the blade if they were going to, which i would approve of. if kensei is supposed to be a samurai, well samurais wore armor. and it would only benefit pures to the tune of +1.5[w] which you are getting if you go 12/6/2 or a gimp 8/x/x anyway. and 18/2 is just idiotic so yea, this would only be a slight buff to pures and i am all for it (plus it would make my twist choices a no brainer ;P).

they should absolutely not give monk stances as a class feature to kenseis though, not now and not ever. its one thing to make all kenseis centered fighters for a slight [w] buff, but you are suggesting full bab in heavy armor + t3/4 earthstance + defensive stance. currently you only get 2 of those 3, all 3 would be really strong defensively. on the flip side, you would get keen edge + earth stance multi with no squishieness, or 19% dstrike from fighter + 5-10% dstrike from wind stance.

monk stances are also unqiue to monks/monk splashes who remain centered. giving it easy mode to fighters would eliminate any reason for monks to exist, because there would already be a class that does monk, plus a whole bunch of other stuff. as much as ive disliked monk over the years no class should have its identity stolen and destroyed like that (looking at you holy sword).

giving fighters *both* is just wrong on so many levels.
I disagree that allowing kensei to have monk stances would steal the identity of monks. My sugestion was because of Everything that could be done that is the easiest and most logical move. Monks are unique because of their play style and that they cant wear armor and max ttheir potential. As for kensei, it needs a stance to work like it should. also It getting earth stance would make it comparable to pally/holy sword, the ac boost would make using 2 handed weapons or dual wielding OK.

[goodspeed]

I disagree that allowing kensei to have monk stances would steal the identity of monks. My sugestion was because of Everything that could be done that is the easiest and most logical move. Monks are unique because of their play style and that they cant wear armor and max ttheir potential. As for kensei, it needs a stance to work like it should. also It getting earth stance would make it comparable to pally/holy sword, the ac boost would make using 2 handed weapons or dual wielding OK.

lol the robotic master race class split lives again! This time with HOLY SWORD CAPABILITIES!!! MWAHAHAHAH.

Ah the **** that just streamlines outa the mind lol.

[QuantumFX]

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

How about making caster level part of the calculations? It would be really nice to actually have to agonize over splashing caster classes again.

Example:
Save DC: Artificer Caster Level + Stat Mod + Evocation feats/enhancements/items + Charge Level.

[Chette]

IC: Slashing, Weapon Focus: Slashing, and the first Single Weapon Fighting feat are already on the Artificer Bonus Feats list, as well as Bastard Sword/Dwarven Axe proficiency. :)

Well herp derp, don't I look the fool! I must have missed that one, thanks for the reply.
The rest of the comment still stands though, and I'd very much urge you to make bastard sword a given, not just an optional bonus feat. Repeater is already a free feat, so why must melee artis spend the extra feat for their weapon? Bastard sword proficiency also requires 13 base strength, a stat an arti otherwise doesn't really need, so getting that feat for free would give added flexibility to this underplayed class variant.

Thanks for your reply, it's nice to know you're reading the responses!

[arcattaii]

I am also afraid of "Power Creep" like many other players, but I also don't want to see my favorite classes being far behind Brd and Pal only because unbalance.

Here are some thoughts about my favorite classes - rogue and ranger:

Assassin:
Not too bad. The biggest problem of assassin is the enhancements which has a "DC", especially Assassinate, cannot meet the requirement of EE contents.
Suggestion:
Improve the DC of various abilities in Assassin tree. Make all kinds of light weapons benefit from T5 Knife Specialization.

Mechanic:
Too weak. Too many mediocre abilities in T1, alchemical trap chain is even worse. Light/Heavy/Great crossbows are entirely useless.
Suggestion:
Redesign alchemical trap chain, add more higher level spell to magical trap and increase the damage of elemental trap. Revamp the trap system: shorten the animation and cooldown time of setting traps, make magical traps instantly cast spell when they are triggered. (Most magical trap are now useless due the lag between Triggering and Casting, mobs will have enough time to run out of the spell range, only Web and Glitterdust are useful.) Improve the performance of non-repeating crossbows, at least make Great Crossbow comparable to repeating crossbows.

Tempest:
Too weak in mitigation, and also too expensive. Offence side is ok due to the new Dance of Death, but it's too expansive and still weaker than SWF imo.
Suggestion:
Reduce the cost of mitigation enhancement. Make Improved Dodge and Improved Mobility into one ability or just add IM into core ability. Capstone 25% offhand doublestrike are divided into each core abilities. Capstone change back to the original design which gives full stat mod to offhand damage. Just like Swashbuckler, even a new stance - Tempest could be introduced, which may provide attack/defense systematically.

Deepwood Stalker:
Not too bad. The cost and tier of useful abilities are too high.
Suggestion:
Remove the requirement of Merciful Shot/Strike. Reduce the cost of Drill of the Hunt to 1AP per rank, and increase the damage to 1/3/5. Change melee ability Tendon Cut to reduce mob attack speed will make more sense and helpful. Fast Sneaking is useless for a ranger, I think the only reason of its existence is the name of this enhancement, and 2AP per rank is to tell people not to take it.
About Wild Empathy:
It was very good to introduce alternate uses to Wild Empathy, just like Turn Undead. It's a good start, but we need more. Mark of the Hunted requires level 18 ranger and Vigor is too expansive and useless. And the most important problem is the number of uses cannot be regenerated, 8 normal and 5 improved (including ship buff and enhancement) is too less. Personally I am more like the original effect of Improved Wild Empathy, it's not only very cool but also very helpful to charm a winter wolf or worg in a quest.
Suggestion:
Reduce the CD of Improved Wild Empathy and increase the DC of both, e.g. DC=1d20+Diplomacy or Heal skill. Versatile Empathy allows you to charm vermins and elementals when you use IWE on them. Regenerate number of uses over time. Introduce more alternate uses of Wild Empathy, e.g. Mark of the Hunter, you treat the marked target as Favored Enemy.
About Favored Enemy:
Too less, even for a pure ranger. The tier of Extra FE is also too high. If melee, I would probably choose Tempest T5. If ranged, AA slaying Arrow is obviously much better.
Suggestion:
Reduce the cost of FE resistance to 1AP per rank. Remove FE attack/damage from T3/4, and add Extra FE I and II instead. Remove Extra FE from T5 and add something else instead, e.g. an ability which allows you to choose a FE each time yo entered a quest, 1 use per quest/rest or have a x hours cooldown.

At last, every melee or ranged enhancement should give some MP or RP.

[Psiandron]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~


In a perfect world the classes will be relatively balanced. What we have found is that classes with low DPS and lots of utility aren't as fun for a lot of players, and they tend to level slowly. We'd rather have each class have at least one decent DPS option and work on giving all the classes some kind of niche place or utility. The trick is doing that in a way that doesn't feel like everything is homogenized.

As you can see from Holy Sword and Barbarian changes we intend to revisit classes we've already looked at. We might not want to do a large revamp, but it's not a healthy place for us if players panic with a patch because they feel that they have "missed their chance" because our changes for their favorite class might need more balancing.

We do need to prioritize because we can't do everything.



Honestly we aren't ready to answer specific questions. Essentially our goal is to add in ranged power to epic levels and ED cores and find a way to dial back the top build by the same DPS amount while still keeping it fun to play. Yes we realize that's a non-trivial design goal.

Sev~


Thanks, I really enjoyed reading these and feel like you have some solid thoughts.

I feel that one of the big problems with the game post-u14 has been that everything has come to be defined by dps. If it's too late in the game to completely change that, and it probably is, then your option, to "have each class have at least one decent DPS option and work on giving all the classes some kind of niche place or utility. The trick is doing that in a way that doesn't feel like everything is homogenized[.]" seems a reasonable approach.

While I do think that Turbine needs to focus first on fleshing out the available options for other classes, I would love to see a fourth tree available for fighters. The class is, of itself, boring; however, with it's large number of feats it does allow for a high degree of customization. If the available options in terms of enhancements were as wide spread, that could really bring out the inherent versatility of the class. And while giving those choosing fighter the option to move away from monk if they choose, I also think that making the differences between fighters and paladins would also be worth doing. Having fighters and paladins share 2 trees is absurd and only serves to create a situation where one will always clearly overshadow the other.

[lain5246]

lol the robotic master race class split lives again! This time with HOLY SWORD CAPABILITIES!!! MWAHAHAHAH.

Ah the **** that just streamlines outa the mind lol.

Well make the heavy armor tied to the core at Lv 12 than have stances at tier 5

[JOTMON]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

~Fighters will need something more than just a +to DC's..
There is more to fighters than just tactics killing trash mobs. Fighters are expected to go toe-to-toe with Bosses... and tactics DC's are worthless against Bosses.

~Tempest Rangers are lacking.. .

~Rogue ability to craft trap effects bolts for repeater rogues would go a long way.. House D shopping is pretty limited.

[Scrabbler]

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood.
It's not "designed" that way, because the word "design" means there was an intention by the person who did it. The Kensei Monk dependency was caused by assorted people changing things without paying enough attention to understand what they were doing.

History:
The original Kensei tree got Monk centered compatibility, but at level 18, and it was impossible to have any strong Monk-centered features with only 2 Monk levels.
But then the new enhancement system came around, which made it hard to require more than 5 class levels for an enhancement, so the level requirement for Kensei OWTB went way down, from 18 to 8 (due to a required feat). So instead of only 2 Monk levels, a centered Kensei could now have up to 12. At the same time, the new enhancement trees also forced Monk elemental stances from enhancements into feats, and someone made the silly choice of allowing those feats to be trained in generic slots, allowing builds to get a Grandmaster stance with only 1 Monk level. That drastically raised the power of OWTB centeredness.





In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree.
It would be wrong to base it on heavy armor; what you do is simply put some very powerful multiselectors on top of One With The Blade so there's a good alternative for people who don't want to be centered.



We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type.
Definitely Divine Grace should get a bonus type, but providing that same bonus on items would be a mistake. Divine Grace is a class-level feature, so the other sources of that bonus should also be from character features (enhancements probably, or anything else requiring X class levels). And since Divine Grace is dependent on an ability stat, the new sources should also depend on an ability score (usually not the same stat).

It isn't hard to think of excuses to give many classes an alternate bonus stat to saving throws, like a Ranger who adds Wisdom to Reflex and Dexterity to Will, but nothing to Constitution, etc etc.

[QuantumFX]

IC: Slashing, Weapon Focus: Slashing, and the first Single Weapon Fighting feat are already on the Artificer Bonus Feats list, as well as Bastard Sword/Dwarven Axe proficiency. :)

Could Artificers get a third option for SWF in the Battle Engineer tree then?

[SirValentine]

Part of the reason we allowed DPS to creep up is that hit point creep has been happening on the monster side for quite some time, and there was clear player feedback that many enemies at the game's end had so many hit points that they were boring to kill. As a result of this player feedback we've allowed DPS to creep up as a default.


If you're looking at letting DPS creep a bit anyway, I request a re-look at one specific thing in Divine Disciple: the fact that, unlike EVERY OTHER SINGLE OTHER OFFENSIVE-CASTING-ORIENTED TREE, it does NOT grant any spell power per action point spent.

I find it absurd that I get more offensive universal spell power out of 22 points spent in Radiant Servant (11) than out of 41 in Divine Disciple (ZERO). 1 per would match most of the casting trees, but even 0.5 per would be a bone-toss. It makes no sense right now to get none.

[Scrabbler]

If you're looking at letting DPS creep a bit anyway, I request a re-look at one specific thing in Divine Disciple: the fact that, unlike EVERY OTHER SINGLE OTHER OFFENSIVE-CASTING-ORIENTED TREE, it does NOT grant any spell power per action point spent.
Every other casting tree don't have a column of enhancements that specifically provide you with spellpower.



I find it absurd that I get more offensive universal spell power out of 22 points spent in Radiant Servant (11) than out of 41 in Divine Disciple (ZERO).
The only reason to get 0 USP from Divine Disciple is if you don't value USP much. Otherwise you can get 9 USP by spending 4 AP, or 45 USP by spending 32 AP.

There is indeed a design problem with the multiselector choices for spellpower, especially when it offers you 18 Fire versus 9 Fire+9 Positive+9 Light+9 Force+9 Negative... but don't pretend like Divine Disciple has no spellpower.

[Chacka_DDO]

If it come to the game balance in an Party, I often say its the Holy Grail in an MMO, you will never reach it.

Why? Because it is just to difficult to get to this point in practice.

I think a good example is chess, perfect balanced and even if its not so appealing, well 26 black and white chess pieces after all, but trough its game play (or the rules of the game) it's perfect enough to make millions of players play it since hundred years.

So take chess and connect it to an MMO each party got 16 Members and not 6. Now the game starts and after a while the pawn find out he has not much power and its much more fun to play the Knight.
Now he demands he must have the same power, otherwise it is unfair to him and less fun to play. OK, he is right, it is unfair so the rule is changed.
But now the King tells you, hey my friend why is the pawn now much more powerful then me? I might be important and I got a special attack but, I am the King after all so that can not be! etc.
I think you got my point at the end every chess piece got the same power and now you have a chess board filled with pawns and the game is not more fun to play as it was at start, after so much arguing and effort to balance it in the wrong way.

Why I tell you this? Its just a possible picture you could keep in mind the next time you talk about game balance where everyone knows it better than the other, with the best intention.
Its a game and a RPG in addition, every figure must be different to make it more fun but every figure must not have the same power to make it fun.

Sorry if this is of topic but its one thing I wanted to say after I flew over this thread.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Sev said they cant balance DR out properly and it would take a lot to make it work better. that's why ive been pushing for the substitute PRR.

Some way of adding PRR instead of DR sounds good to me.

My main point is that Brbs and WF have this bonus that is basically useless (at least at higher levels).
And Brbs could really use a boost to take more damage when they charge into a pack of EE mobs. (which is what they are supposed to do.... not always maybe, but they should be able to survive it for awhile in most cases)

PRR would work well instead IMO.

[General_Gronker]

I basically agree with the OP. Fair enough. That doesn't make you (or the OP) less wrong though. Base Will Save +6 @ 20. That's what Fighter's are suppose to get, that's what they get.

[Ellihor]

If it come to the game balance in an Party, I often say its the Holy Grail in an MMO, you will never reach it.

Why? Because it is just to difficult to get to this point in practice.

I think a good example is chess, perfect balanced and even if its not so appealing, well 26 black and white chess pieces after all, but trough its game play (or the rules of the game) it's perfect enough to make millions of players play it since hundred years.

So take chess and connect it to an MMO each party got 16 Members and not 6. Now the game starts and after a while the pawn find out he has not much power and its much more fun to play the Knight.
Now he demands he must have the same power, otherwise it is unfair to him and less fun to play. OK, he is right, it is unfair so the rule is changed.
But now the King tells you, hey my friend why is the pawn now much more powerful then me? I might be important and I got a special attack but, I am the King after all so that can not be! etc.
I think you got my point at the end every chess piece got the same power and now you have a chess board filled with pawns and the game is not more fun to play as it was at start, after so much arguing and effort to balance it in the wrong way.

Why I tell you this? Its just a possible picture you could keep in mind the next time you talk about game balance where everyone knows it better than the other, with the best intention.
Its a game and a RPG in addition, every figure must be different to make it more fun but every figure must not have the same power to make it fun.

Sorry if this is of topic but its one thing I wanted to say after I flew over this thread.

Wrong. Before MotU U14 the game was very balanced, not perfectly, but comparing to what we got today it was haven. You could be decent doing any class. Heck, even in EGH U17 it was way more balanced than what we see today. The best thing to balance the game now should be bring back the old enhancement system, and adjust from there. Should just need to buff rangers and bards, and pallys slightly, do some very little adjustments do casters, and see what happens. Then balance again. Cutting down the power of the overpowered.

The problem we have now is when they think something is overpowered they just raise the power of everyone to match that, and it brings us to the power creep vicious circle. When you balance raising the power of the weak, you create new overpowered builds with the new stuff you did to fix the weak builds, and then you have to balance again and if you do it raising the power of what is weak you will create new overpowered and this will never end. Power creep circle is a black hole, it is vicious. DDO has done that circle faster and faster in the last years, and what caused the bigger acceleration of power creep in last times was the enhancement pass, wich was supposed to fix balance but really broke everything with power and since then the power creep has happened faster and faster.

I just had to write a full detailed thread about it after the crazy statements from Severlin saying about their plans to the game and their intentions in how to fix stuff and balance, bringing an strategy that is totally nonsense. You can check it here https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/454603-How-to-Fix-DDO, if you have the will power to read something for more than 2 minutes.

[MonadRebelion]

Fair enough. That doesn't make you (or the OP) less wrong though. Base Will Save +6 @ 20. That's what Fighter's are suppose to get, that's what they get.

If you read my other posts (I don't expect you to or think you are somehow to blame for not doing so), you'll see I was being a bit too generous by saying I "basically agree with the OP". The thing I agree with is that fighters don't really sit in the combat tree where they are supposed to when you compare them to other classes. Paladins are way ahead of fighters these days. Even worse, Bards which aren't even a real primary combat class, are way ahead of fighters. I think this kind of thing is really what's at issue. I suspect if fighters really were where they are supposed to be the OP wouldn't be upset about having bad saves.

[Powskier]

Fair enough. That doesn't make you (or the OP) less wrong though. Base Will Save +6 @ 20. That's what Fighter's are suppose to get, that's what they get.

i agree, originally they should have the +6...but since the power creep and all the multiclass benefits,the pure class' like this one are accidentally weak w saves now; it just hasn't been addressed yet.

[Shadow7375]

I run a pure fighter at level 27 at the moment and he's performing well with saves of 63 / 57 / 43 self buffed.

Yes, he could do better if I multiclassed, etc. but he's in no way gimped.

[Powskier]

[/QUOTE]
kinda funny they boost the saves the fighter has the better ability score in.....backwords? but +6 is real cheasy ,as mobs have supernatural dcs compared nowadays..... and six hehe, there are better augments than that base bonus of the capstone character!

[Powskier]

I run a pure fighter at level 27 at the moment and he's performing well with saves of 63 / 57 / 43 self buffed.

Yes, he could do better if I multiclassed, etc. but he's in no way gimped.

yea,i mentioned b4- it was more he was below lvl24 ,and didnt have destiny stuff jammin yet..Ty for fighter morale boost though! a few way awesome builds showed up here to debunk the gimp myth:)

[Thar]

In a perfect world the classes will be relatively balanced. What we have found is that classes with low DPS and lots of utility aren't as fun for a lot of players, and they tend to level slowly. We'd rather have each class have at least one decent DPS option and work on giving all the classes some kind of niche place or utility. The trick is doing that in a way that doesn't feel like everything is homogenized.

As you can see from Holy Sword and Barbarian changes we intend to revisit classes we've already looked at. We might not want to do a large revamp, but it's not a healthy place for us if players panic with a patch because they feel that they have "missed their chance" because our changes for their favorite class might need more balancing.

We do need to prioritize because we can't do everything.



Honestly we aren't ready to answer specific questions. Essentially our goal is to add in ranged power to epic levels and ED cores and find a way to dial back the top build by the same DPS amount while still keeping it fun to play. Yes we realize that's a non-trivial design goal.

Sev~

find a way to dial back the top build ? what does this mean? Nerf in dev speak to moncher in the language of us common folk?

[Chacka_DDO]

Wrong. Before MotU U14 the game was very balanced, not perfectly, but comparing to what we got today it was haven. You could be decent doing any class. Heck, even in EGH U17 it was way more balanced than what we see today. The best thing to balance the game now should be bring back the old enhancement system, and adjust from there. Should just need to buff rangers and bards, and pallys slightly, do some very little adjustments do casters, and see what happens. Then balance again. Cutting down the power of the overpowered.

The problem we have now is when they think something is overpowered they just raise the power of everyone to match that, and it brings us to the power creep vicious circle. When you balance raising the power of the weak, you create new overpowered builds with the new stuff you did to fix the weak builds, and then you have to balance again and if you do it raising the power of what is weak you will create new overpowered and this will never end. Power creep circle is a black hole, it is vicious. DDO has done that circle faster and faster in the last years, and what caused the bigger acceleration of power creep in last times was the enhancement pass, wich was supposed to fix balance but really broke everything with power and since then the power creep has happened faster and faster.

I just had to write a full detailed thread about it after the crazy statements from Severlin saying about their plans to the game and their intentions in how to fix stuff and balance, bringing an strategy that is totally nonsense. You can check it here https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/454603-How-to-Fix-DDO, if you have the will power to read something for more than 2 minutes.

OK first of all i read all what you wrote and tried to understand the sense.
And i wonder why you don’t understand me.

You tell me I iam wrong? I say no, we are right.

Why? See

the holy grail is perfection you never get but this doesn’t mean you should not try it.
It is the goal of game designers artists etc.

chess is by balance in a mathematically way perfect equal because each one got the same number of chess pieces with the same moves.

But this already done if all pieces are pawns.

My picture is all pieces want the moves of each other. They indeed not all pawns thereafter, there all super heroes of the chess board.

Sounds good? I tell you no they are in fact pawns but they don’t see it.

And now the next part this: I tell you this is a game and this is an RPG that implies the difference between the classes the chess game gets interesting with the different moves and the rpg with the different classes. So the cannot have the same power (moves)


what we see now is everyone demands more dps, because dps = more fun the more dps the more fun. We tell them NO
the next step will be and it is already there, everyone demands self sufficiency because the clr got now dps but the warrior got no heal.
Now you may see we in the same boat.

Sorry again to be maybe of topic and I hope I read you good enough.

[Kuttamia]

Wrong. Before MotU U14 the game was very balanced, not perfectly, but comparing to what we got today it was haven. You could be decent doing any class. Heck, even in EGH U17 it was way more balanced than what we see today. The best thing to balance the game now should be bring back the old enhancement system, and adjust from there. Should just need to buff rangers and bards, and pallys slightly, do some very little adjustments do casters, and see what happens. Then balance again. Cutting down the power of the overpowered.

The problem we have now is when they think something is overpowered they just raise the power of everyone to match that, and it brings us to the power creep vicious circle. When you balance raising the power of the weak, you create new overpowered builds with the new stuff you did to fix the weak builds, and then you have to balance again and if you do it raising the power of what is weak you will create new overpowered and this will never end. Power creep circle is a black hole, it is vicious. DDO has done that circle faster and faster in the last years, and what caused the bigger acceleration of power creep in last times was the enhancement pass, wich was supposed to fix balance but really broke everything with power and since then the power creep has happened faster and faster.

I just had to write a full detailed thread about it after the crazy statements from Severlin saying about their plans to the game and their intentions in how to fix stuff and balance, bringing an strategy that is totally nonsense. You can check it here https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/454603-How-to-Fix-DDO, if you have the will power to read something for more than 2 minutes.

I disagree very strongly. Before MOTU the game was far from being balanced. Classes such as paladins, bards were utterly uselsss. Vast majority of people were running around in pajamas. Single minded gameplay, with the exact same builds, same techniques to beat the game was boring. After MOTU, epic destinies and enhancement pass, the possible build variations has gone through the roof. Now so many builds are highly effective for difficult contents. Sev has made the right decision in making every class having a dps tree, and the other 2 trees can be used for their own unique abilities. That is fantastic, as every class needs good dps to progress at a reasonable pace. I can hardly wait for whats to come next.

[Such755]

I loved being a fighter. I consider it one of my best lives.

[SirValentine]

... but don't pretend like Divine Disciple has no spellpower.

I'm not pretending.

Other casting trees, you spend points on non-spell-power abilities, get those abilities, and also get spell power on top of that. DD, you don't.

The fact that you can spend AP purely on spell power doesn't change the fact that every other caster tree gets it for free, while DD gets zero.

[Tinco]

I'm not pretending.

Other casting trees, you spend points on non-spell-power abilities, get those abilities, and also get spell power on top of that. DD, you don't.

The fact that you can spend AP purely on spell power doesn't change the fact that every other caster tree gets it for free, while DD gets zero.

DD gets Alignment SP 1:1 for free for every pos/neg SP you take, I honestly don't see the problem. DD'S design revolves around the pos/neg dualism which makes multiselectors a decent idea.

[Powskier]

I liked all my fighter builds,1st one was gimpy like all 1st lifers ,no complaints there. So little skill points 1st life and badly spent ,i coundn't clear jumps w the spell on me back in the day:)

[Ellihor]

I disagree very strongly. Before MOTU the game was far from being balanced. Classes such as paladins, bards were utterly uselsss. Vast majority of people were running around in pajamas. Single minded gameplay, with the exact same builds, same techniques to beat the game was boring. After MOTU, epic destinies and enhancement pass, the possible build variations has gone through the roof. Now so many builds are highly effective for difficult contents. Sev has made the right decision in making every class having a dps tree, and the other 2 trees can be used for their own unique abilities. That is fantastic, as every class needs good dps to progress at a reasonable pace. I can hardly wait for whats to come next.

If you say paladin and bard were utterly useless before MotU it is because you did not know how to play one. They both were one of the few mlee builds with acess to spell point based healing, and its added versatility from saves, some cc, buffs etc. Also paladins were the best class to tank. Sorry, your argument just shows how you do not know what you are talking about. Before MotU, you could play any class totally pure and still be useful. If you had to use an example for your point, that would be ranger, but, I have played a 18/2 ranger before MotU and it did not was useless as well. Nowdays the diference between the top builds and the sucky is just so much bigger... take a look at divines...

You probably didn't play before the expansion to say the build varation those days was worse than what we have now. It was about the same, but, you have to realize now people do more diferent builds because they are just doing ER lvling framework, many times for iconics, and also because people have nothing to do in the game instead of trying a new build, so, the build varation we have now is a consequence from a negative aspect of the game and has nothing to do with balanced classes. Another reason for that as well is that the game is so much easier now that people just build for wathever, and that is why you think "now so many builds are highly effective for difficult contentes". Of course, difficult content nowadays is what compared to pre-MotU?

[Ellihor]

OK first of all i read all what you wrote and tried to understand the sense.
And i wonder why you don’t understand me.

You tell me I iam wrong? I say no, we are right.

Why? See

the holy grail is perfection you never get but this doesn’t mean you should not try it.
It is the goal of game designers artists etc.

chess is by balance in a mathematically way perfect equal because each one got the same number of chess pieces with the same moves.

But this already done if all pieces are pawns.

My picture is all pieces want the moves of each other. They indeed not all pawns thereafter, there all super heroes of the chess board.

Sounds good? I tell you no they are in fact pawns but they don’t see it.

And now the next part this: I tell you this is a game and this is an RPG that implies the difference between the classes the chess game gets interesting with the different moves and the rpg with the different classes. So the cannot have the same power (moves)


what we see now is everyone demands more dps, because dps = more fun the more dps the more fun. We tell them NO
the next step will be and it is already there, everyone demands self sufficiency because the clr got now dps but the warrior got no heal.
Now you may see we in the same boat.

Sorry again to be maybe of topic and I hope I read you good enough.

You nailed it. Should have classes focused on support, cc, instakill, spell dps, high fort DPS, AOE DPS, single target DPS, ranged DPS, tank, sneak attack DPS, buffing, healer, etc, etc. While everyone should be able to do DPS enough to not be useless, the classes that are focused on DPS for single target, for example, should shine in that category, but lack on others. Also, there needs to have a change in quest desing to make buffs/cc/support/heal etc desireble. Not to make them absolutly necessary to completion, make in a way that these things are more valuable than another DPS to the party. This should come with mobs being more harder, nerf self healing, some other changes...

For me they should just double mob damage, and cut down all healing/repair in half, eliminate consacreted groud healing, change bladeforged reconstruct to repair moderate... Lower benefit of PRR/MRR. See what happens. Than, balance again whats needed. If people cant complete quests solo in the same time as with a balanced party (one with variety of roles), than that is balanced. While they can, or, while it is better to just have x6 DPS, than it is broken.

[Fafnir]

Both on topic and off topic, I thought this article had some comments that were similar to the Severlinisation of DDO and its risks...

http://kotaku.com/its-the-perfect-time-to-play-dungeons-dragons-1636855000


It [5e] takes Pathfinder, erases most of the bloat, adds in more roleplaying elements, and balances everything, retaining almost nothing from 4E. The best thing about it is a system called "bounded accuracy". Whereas in Pathfinder, skill checks and attack rolls could get up to the +30s very quickly, the most powerful people in 5E will have a +13 or 14 by the end of it. Nobody has very high armor class, and as such, even orcs can remain powerful in high enough numbers at high levels.


I've never noticed "bloat" in Pathfinder, but I understand the criticism about Skill checks and Attack rolls. It's been a little crazy with my DM telling my Alchemist "Okay, it'll be a DC 29 to craft that poison." "I don't have to roll for that."

So, if one of the learnings that went into D&D 5e is not to bloat damage, skill checks and so on, why are we so enthusiastic about it in DDO?

Why do bards get an insta kill on a 12 second cooldown at a DC of 97+1d20? Why does heavy armor at 28 get DR60?

[Scrabbler]

So, if one of the learnings that went into D&D 5e is not to bloat damage, skill checks and so on, why are we so enthusiastic about it in DDO?

Why do bards get an insta kill on a 12 second cooldown at a DC of 97+1d20? Why does heavy armor at 28 get DR60?
Although examples like Coup De Grace and Shadow Guardian are indeed clear errors, it's not the case that an online computer game should be following the same restrictions as a tabletop D&D. For one thing, there's no manual DM controlling things. For another, a character in DDO goes through literally tens of thousands times as many combats as a tabletop character can...!

[Powskier]

Although examples like Coup De Grace and Shadow Guardian are indeed clear errors, it's not the case that an online computer game should be following the same restrictions as a tabletop D&D. For one thing, there's no manual DM controlling things. For another, a character in DDO goes through literally tens of thousands times as many combats as a tabletop character can...!

oh yea- try leveling a tabletop character to 20 fast ,without your DM buddy giving free xps.... I have a character we played 1ce a week for years ,and he's lucky to be 16 - Gath the Deathdealer, forgotten realms, pure class fighter.

[Cetus]

Hey Sev,

Could I re-design the kensei tree?

Gimme the controls for a day =D

[janave]

Hey Sev,

Could I re-design the kensei tree?

Gimme the controls for a day =D

Wait,
I want to roll for it too.

[Powskier]

two defense trees are one two many ! :) one too one two one too one tou wait ,one too ,oh o k

[Eth]

Hey Sev,

Could I re-design the kensei tree?

Gimme the controls for a day =D

They already missed out on letting Axer redesign barbarians.

[depositbox]

They already missed out on letting Axer redesign barbarians.

You're on a roll as of late. Please continue.

[Cetus]

They already missed out on letting Axer redesign barbarians.

I'd side with the devs on that one...

[fmalfeas]

Wouldn't an axer redesign include removing all non-buff spells from wizards, doubling the potency of the remaining spells, and then assigning them to follow barbs around all the time?

[Vargouille]

Hey Sev,

Could I re-design the kensei tree?

Gimme the controls for a day =D

I'd certainly be interested in seeing your redesign.

Getting controls for "a day" probably wouldn't result in the changes you designed, though. I'm just guessing the changes you'd like would take a lot more than one day. :)

[Zerkul]

I'd certainly be interested in seeing your redesign.

Getting controls for "a day" probably wouldn't result in the changes you designed, though. I'm just guessing the changes you'd like would take a lot more than one day. :)I want to see what's going on in Cetus's mind right now! Should cast mind reading or something...

[patang01]

I'd certainly be interested in seeing your redesign.

Getting controls for "a day" probably wouldn't result in the changes you designed, though. I'm just guessing the changes you'd like would take a lot more than one day. :)

'My' changes would make well geared tactical feats viable in all EE format within a reasonable level gap. Say with a 80% or more success rate (given a solid investment of course). That's across all tactical feats (improved trip, stunning shield, stunning blow) and with a pay over to anyone who invest in kensei to bolster any other class.

[Lauf]

you could just make mobs roll twice when trying to save against a kensai, and voila, done.
tactical fighter achieved.

[Gremmlynn]

you could just make mobs roll twice when trying to save against a kensai, and voila, done.
tactical fighter achieved.How would you define one as "a kensai" though? I can't think of any fighter, or even splash, I have that didn't put something in the tree.

[Oxarhamar]

Hey Sev,

Could I re-design the kensei tree?

Gimme the controls for a day =D

Go ahead post it for all to see.

[Cetus]

Go ahead post it for all to see.

What's the point of spending a few hours on a redesign that won't really matter in this discussion? The only incentive I have is to enjoy the entertainment of the trolls and haters =D

[PermaBanned]

What's the point of spending a few hours on a redesign that won't really matter in this discussion? The only incentive I have is to enjoy the entertainment of the trolls and haters =D

I believe that's called "Doing it for ***** & giggles." ;)

Really, though: you did kinda make sound like you had some actual ideas, and Varg along with some players wanted to them... so why not post up?

[legendkilleroll]

What's the point of spending a few hours on a redesign that won't really matter in this discussion? The only incentive I have is to enjoy the entertainment of the trolls and haters =D

And the attention of the lemmings :P

[Cetus]

I believe that's called "Doing it for ***** & giggles." ;)

Really, though: you did kinda make sound like you had some actual ideas, and Varg along with some players wanted to them... so why not post up?

Well, I think I do have some decent ideas - but that comment was a bit more tongue in cheek.

[Oxarhamar]

What's the point of spending a few hours on a redesign that won't really matter in this discussion? The only incentive I have is to enjoy the entertainment of the trolls and haters =D

1) Might be fun even if nothing comes of it.
2) Something could come of it if the Dev's liked the ideas?

[Wonedream]

Fighter need something... a bone for the dog...

Their saves are doomed as is.

Perhaps a boost of 60 seconds at least for saves.. or some enhancements.. something..

Otherwise fighters are sitting ducks for EE lightning bolts... BZZZZZZZTTTT... DEAD!!!

[Holybird]

Fighter need something... a bone for the dog...

Their saves are doomed as is.

Perhaps a boost of 60 seconds at least for saves.. or some enhancements.. something..

Otherwise fighters are sitting ducks for EE lightning bolts... BZZZZZZZTTTT... DEAD!!!

Did you know there is an item that makes you completely immune to lightning bolts. They say it was forged in the days of old in some place that was infected by Quori..... Somekind of Forge.... Hmm Twilight Forge maybe.... Umm yeessss...... Go there and farm one Insulated Armor, and let no Lightning Bolt ever hit you again......

[Powskier]

Fighter need something... a bone for the dog...

Their saves are doomed as is.

Perhaps a boost of 60 seconds at least for saves.. or some enhancements.. something..

Otherwise fighters are sitting ducks for EE lightning bolts... BZZZZZZZTTTT... DEAD!!!

sometimes Ill twist perfection of mind..+6 will saves and no auto fail on a 1

[Monkey-Boy]

sometimes Ill twist perfection of mind..+6 will saves and no auto fail on a 1

GH, Prot Evil, and FOM cover everything you'd need a Will save for except dance balls.

[Ancient]

That groundwork is extremely important to the Cannith crafting changes and the new Greensteel for level 30.

My day just got a little brighter!

[Tilomere]

GH, Prot Evil, and FOM cover everything you'd need a Will save for except dance balls.

Or dispel before CC, disjunction, sonic blast, blinds/glitterdust, sleep, daze, electric loop/static shock daze, bestow curse, banishment, symbol of stunning, deconstruct, epic level mob Command/Greater Command, chaos hammer, and mind blast followed by having your brains eaten by a mindflayer. Plus mob special abilities like beholder eye beams.

[Monkey-Boy]

Or dispel before CC, disjunction, sonic blast, blinds/glitterdust, sleep, daze, electric loop/static shock daze, bestow curse, banishment, symbol of stunning, deconstruct, epic level mob Command/Greater Command, chaos hammer, and mind blast followed by having your brains eaten by a mindflayer. Plus mob special abilities like beholder eye beams.

You'll NEVER get a will save worth a **** on a fighter anyway, the buff suggestion will give you good enough protection in most situations.

[Powskier]

Or dispel before CC, disjunction, sonic blast, blinds/glitterdust, sleep, daze, electric loop/static shock daze, bestow curse, banishment, symbol of stunning, deconstruct, epic level mob Command/Greater Command, chaos hammer, and mind blast followed by having your brains eaten by a mindflayer. Plus mob special abilities like beholder eye beams.

U make it sound quite fun;)

[Qhualor]

tradeoffs for high dps if you go pure. something the game has steered away from for quite some time.

[Oxarhamar]

~snip~ That groundwork is extremely important to the Cannith crafting changes

Sev~

Something to consider in Cannith crafting revamp: Ammo

Currently to craft ammo you must
1) disjunction a +1-+5 item to get the +(x)enhancement ingredient. (No options to make multiples at once makes this extremely time consuming)
2) craft a stack of 100 ammo using the crafting device w/ +(x)enhancement, large, small, & dragon shards.


This makes crafting ammo eat up a lot of playtime considering a ranged build can easily go thru thousands of ammo in a single quest.


I'd suggest a change to craft stacks of 1000 ammo in a single go still using one +enhancement but, increased essences.

Less time crafting = more time questing.



I've largely ignored crafting ammo. Too much time investment, is extremely boring, & are expended at such a high rate.

I did craft up a stack of 1000 holy bolts 10x disjuncting 10x crafting bolts (20x total waiting for the crafting station to do it's painfully slow popping and steaming). I then fired them off in a single quest & returned to using conjured bolts.

[Braegan]

tradeoffs for high dps if you go pure. something the game has steered away from for quite some time.

Indeed.

But of late it's been a stronger choice to not go pure because you gain more DPS and survivability in the case of fighters. There is no either or choice to be made, and that's a problem that needs to be fixed. Going pure or splashing should both be viable with different drawbacks and different benefits.

[Sehenry03]

GH, Prot Evil, and FOM cover everything you'd need a Will save for except dance balls.

This - Not sure why people even bother trying to raise will saves as in my entire time of playing the game I have always been able to get around it with these couple of buffs that are easy to self buff with on any class.

[lain5246]

I am not a large fan of the fighter, but I am also one to find ways to use Gimp classes... so I am running my first iteration of a sword and board dps tank. I went the master race,(bladeforged) since I have not been able to find a chimera's fang shard.(I don't think it is in the loot tables on canith server) My goal will be to get and keep agro while killing things in a good party, while proving that fighters are not as gimped as is being claimed. I will make a new thread to show how I did my build and why I went with gear/feats/enhancements and so on.

[Braegan]

I am not a large fan of the fighter, but I am also one to find ways to use Gimp classes... so I am running my first iteration of a sword and board dps tank. I went the master race,(bladeforged) since I have not been able to find a chimera's fang shard.(I don't think it is in the loot tables on canith server) My goal will be to get and keep agro while killing things in a good party, while proving that fighters are not as gimped as is being claimed. I will make a new thread to show how I did my build and why I went with gear/feats/enhancements and so on.

My condolences on your choice of race! :)

Chimera Fang Shard does exist on Cannith, my fighter on Cannith has it epic'd (currently sitting in bank) so keep on it, luck will favor you at some point.

Good Luck on your ventures!

For reference this is my fighter on Cannith,

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/448718-Instigator-Rage-against-the-Machine

I really do need to update the thread, but I feel like a beast playing him and not at all gimpy.

[lain5246]

My condolences on your choice of race! :)

Chimera Fang Shard does exist on Cannith, my fighter on Cannith has it epic'd (currently sitting in bank) so keep on it, luck will favor you at some point.

Good Luck on your ventures!

For reference this is my fighter on Cannith,

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/448718-Instigator-Rage-against-the-Machine

I really do need to update the thread, but I feel like a beast playing him and not at all gimpy.
I am doubting that it is in the loot tables because I have spent about 1500 shards rerolling that chest, been through on elite hard and normal, and have every other shard but it

[SirValentine]

Did you know there is an item that makes you completely immune to lightning bolts. They say it was forged in the days of old in some place that was infected by Quori..... Somekind of Forge.... Hmm Twilight Forge maybe.... Umm yeessss...... Go there and farm one Insulated Armor, and let no Lightning Bolt ever hit you again......

I've vendored or given away Insulated Armor. Though if it works on the FoT BOOM! it might be worth it to keep the next set I pull around. Anybody tested that?

[Holybird]

I've vendored or given away Insulated Armor. Though if it works on the FoT BOOM! it might be worth it to keep the next set I pull around. Anybody tested that?

I don't have a set of that armor. But FoT is one of the reasons why I'd like to get one. SO anyone tested this?

[Singular]

I am going to break tradition and talk about some early musings on balance so player's get a glimpse into our early balance and design thoughts. These have not even gone to player's council yet so I hope players will keep an open mind and realize this is all subject to change. In the past we haven't talked about early design thoughts because players often consider that a promise or definite plan - which this is not intended to be.

Kensai has always been a pet peeve of mine; why the only Fighter DPS tree was designed so that you had to splash monk to maximize its potential is something I've never understood. In the long run we will probably add some heavy armor options through multi-selectors to the tree. I'd personally like to create a new fighter tree, but we really can't add a fourth tree - at least until Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer get their third trees.

Right now we feel that Rogue probably needs attention more than Fighter, and melee Rangers could use a bump in mitigation.

Our balance check list includes the following items in no particular order, and with no particular timetable attached. These are our current thoughts, but they are early and haven't even been discussed with the player's council.

~ Add Ranged Power to epic levels and epic destinies, while balancing Manyshot and 10k Stars. We want current high end ranged builds to keep their DPS - we just want to open up some underperforming ranged builds. This change will allow many more ranged builds to participate in the epic levels. Artificer repeater builds and ranger ranged builds will be better without needing to splash monk, and we might even see players experimenting with throwing builds. It also allows us to make some heroic abilities scale with ranged power.

~ Rogue pass. Mechanic is particularly bad.

~ New Favored Soul tree.

~ New Druid tree while we fix the many issues with druid forms.

~ Fighter pass. Kensai needs some non monk options. We think we might want the fighter advantage to be tactical DCs so fighters will probably get boosts to those.

~ Rangers could use some more tweaks, particularly with their mitigation.

~ Artificer pass. While the ranged power changes should really help Artificers, rune arms have fallen behind. Part of it is that they need better scaling into epic levels. Neither the damage nor the DCs scale well into higher levels.

~ We understand Divine Grace creates a bad situation where characters without it have a hard time competing with Paladin splashes when building for good saves. We don't want to nerf the saves of top builds, so we are looking into adding a bonus type to the Divine Grace saving throw bonus and creating some saving throw items with the same type of bonus type. In other words, players without Divine Grace will be able to make up some of the difference through itemization.

Sev~

Fantastic ideas - each and every one. I hope you find the resources to carry through with them.

Good luck!