Devs: Why play melee?

[J-mann]

Devs,

We need a serious answer to why anyone would play melee now outside of flavor. Reaper mode blatantly favors ranged builds, all your recent "challenge" blatantly favors ranged, and you have taken away everything that makes a melee build in any way attractive. Lets do direct comparisons:

In dps, ranged do at least equal damage to melee (when you account for uptime they do far better), with far better burst damage.

Ranged and casters have far superior cc, that can be used at range, with shorter cds, and have much earlier access to mass cc

Melee need to stand right next to mobs to do damage, right where mobs can inflict massive damage back

Melee dps cannot attain statistical defenses any better than their ranged counterparts, despite the fact that ranged are, I know big surprise, ranged (which is easily worth 50+ percent miss chance)

Melees have far less time, chance, and opportunity to react to a change in situation during a battle

Melees are vastly more in need of healing than ranged characters, and the healing nerfs in reaper vastly disproportionately effects them.

Melees largely come with less to none of the needed buffs that casters have access to

melees have the largest number of gear slot requirements

Melees, quite frankly, bring nothing to the table that is desirous to a raid/party that a range or caster couldnt do better and safer.

Quite frankly the huge disregard for the melee playstyle is disappointing in fantasy mmo, there is litterally no reason to be a melee in the game currently and the devs have done a great job to undo all the work they did to bring melees back to life since armor up. Melees need to be able to take hits in melee range, recover from said hits, and have something special they can bring to the raid. One suggestion might be to REMOVE the cd on tatics abilites except dire charge. That would make melees interesting in that they might only have single target ccs most of the time but they are spamable. Dont know how to fix the fact that melees are exploding when mobs start looking at them funny, but im sure the forums could offer some suggestions.

[NaturalHazard]

Because it hurts so good?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dOsbsuhYGQ

[cultofthefish]

I for one am VERY happy when a competent tank joins my healer in a reaper quest - I'm glad reaper mode has forced people to *shockingly* play together.

[J-mann]

Another point to note is that with the ai so terribad for hires, melees have a much harder time with them. On my ranged toon I park my healer in a safe place, run back to him when I need a heal and jump back in after. As a melee this really isnt feasible and the dumb hire stands right next to you and watches you die with nothing on cooldown. Or the healer dies in the aoes without even trying to save themselves then you go too.

[NaturalHazard]

I for one am VERY happy when a competent tank joins my healer in a reaper quest - I'm glad reaper mode has forced people to *shockingly* play together.

So melee should only be tanks? And only with a *healer* of course.

[J-mann]

I for one am VERY happy when a competent tank joins my healer in a reaper quest - I'm glad reaper mode has forced people to *shockingly* play together.

Why bring a tank? your much better off with 6 rdps and cross heals than a tank and a healer. Further, even with a tank none of my points are disproven, as melee need to be in the splash zone with the tank to do their damage and yet they can take hits no better than ranged toons. Even to not further, that ddo has no taunt mechanism and most dps can vastly overpower a tanks intimidate hate with little to no problem, which spells death to melee and idc to ranged.

[NaturalHazard]

Another point to note is that with the ai so terribad for hires, melees have a much harder time with them. On my ranged toon I park my healer in a safe place, run back to him when I need a heal and jump back in after. As a melee this really isnt feasible and the dumb hire stands right next to you and watches you die with nothing on cooldown. Or the healer dies in the aoes without even trying to save themselves then you go too.

a hire is there to be parked, and used as a buff clickie, I liked the ones with the DVs as well, but those where hardly needed.

They are too dumb to survive combat, trying to keep them alive in herioic elites especailly the higher level ones......... let alone EE's I can imagine what its like for people to try and rely on them in reaper difficulties lol.

[J-mann]

So melee should only be tanks? And only with a *healer* of course.

but of course, he wants his play style to be required so he needs to invalidate so many more to force a trinity system into a non trinity game.

[NaturalHazard]

but of course, he wants his play style to be required so he needs to invalidate so many more to force a trinity system into a non trinity game.

its not required though, except maybe for raids but in most quests you can get away with a party that can dps at range and heal each other, no need for a *tank* and main healer I would guess. It just pigeon holes melees. Don't do any damage and just be a meatsack.

[Eth]

I'm having a ton of fun on my melee in reaper mode.

[NaturalHazard]

I'm having a ton of fun on my melee in reaper mode.

what build is it? and how many skulls? Are you soloing or grouping? Are you a tourist or an adventurer?

It might be helpful for those people who are not having a ton of fun on a melee in reaper mode to see what your doing and maybe trying that?

And it might also be helpful for those who are thinking of playing a melee in reaper mode.

[J-mann]

a hire is there to be parked, and used as a buff clickie, I liked the ones with the DVs as well, but those where hardly needed.

They are too dumb to survive combat, trying to keep them alive in herioic elites especailly the higher level ones......... let alone EE's I can imagine what its like for people to try and rely on them in reaper difficulties lol.

I use mine as a top off station, a buffer, and a way to drag my soulstone back to a shrine if needed (just today got high enough for res hire yay). My ranged character basically only cares if there is a reaper with ranged spells (basically only famine reapers or multiple fear reapers bother me, or when they spawn right on top of you) or champions with annoying debuffs that still effect you even if they didnt hit you...... My melee is scared to death of carnage reapers, just as scared of famine, has a harder time with fear reapers (they can hide behind a horde of mobs, cant from my ranged toon), and plague reapers make it impossible to heal them. Melees are also disproportionately affected by champs due to the fact that, usually anyways, a champ needs to be able to HIT you to apply its nastiness. Ranged avoids them and burns them down, melee needs to eat the champs nastiness.....

[J-mann]

I'm having a ton of fun on my melee in reaper mode.

Hey they arnt bad in a well coordinated party with great cc and healing. Problem is that ranged needs NONE of that to play just as well. Been doing reaper on my ranged, I can do r 5 without too much trouble, r1 or 2 is what I mainly do though because I can complete much faster for a better xp/time.

Edit: Besides the fact that your comment addresses nothing with what I have stated. Your party would flatly be better off with you as another rdps than a melee in every conceivable metric. You as a melee have brought nothing to the table that you couldnt have brought flat out better as either a caster or ranged build.

[NaturalHazard]

Hey they arnt bad in a well coordinated party with great cc and healing. Problem is that ranged needs NONE of that to play just as well. Been doing reaper on my ranged, I can do r 5 without too much trouble, r1 or 2 is what I mainly do though because I can complete much faster for a better xp/time.

You peobably can get some pretty good CC with ranged builds too eh? At the least twist some stuff in when you get to epics?

[J-mann]

You peobably can get some pretty good CC with ranged builds too eh? At the least twist some stuff in when you get to epics?

Most ranged builds have better cc outside of a melees dire charge. Problem is dire charge is a level 29 ability and ranged cc can be gotten at level 5/6 and from then till 29 ranged is flat out in every way better. At 29 melee has something to compete with ranged, unless they mob saves in which case melee is in much more trouble than ranged.

[NaturalHazard]

Most ranged builds have better cc outside of a melees dire charge. Problem is dire charge is a level 29 ability and ranged cc can be gotten at level 5/6 and from then till 29 ranged is flat out in every way better. At 29 melee has something to compete with ranged, unless they mob saves in which case melee is in much more trouble than ranged.

or the dire charge misses, ranged and casters can get dire charge too, but it has to hit and they need to wear gear for it, stuff with stunning and insightful stunning...........

I hate the long cool down on stunning blow and its just a single target but oh well.

[J-mann]

or the dire charge misses, ranged and casters can get dire charge too, but it has to hit and they need to wear gear for it, stuff with stunning and insightful stunning...........

I hate the long cool down on stunning blow and its just a single target but oh well.

For sure, sb and trip should have at most a 3 second cd same as sorcs with their st ccs. Ideally it should have NO cd to compete with the fact that they are melee only abilities.

[NaturalHazard]

For sure, sb and trip should have at most a 3 second cd same as sorcs with their st ccs. Ideally it should have NO cd to compete with the fact that they are melee only abilities.

I remember from a long time ago there has been requests to improve melee CC's and tactics but its mainly fallen on deaf ears they did give them and everyone else Dire Charge at level 29.

You fight hordes now, so single target with such long cool downs is not so great, I do try and save it for more problem mobs but, sometimes I don't use it when I could of because I dont want ot have it on timer just in case I really need it. That TA knockdown is bugged as well, that would be really great to have a melee ranged cleave time trip workign properly and it would not be Op with all the other stuff out there available.

[cultofthefish]

Let's be clear - reaper is an entirely different beast. Your *self* heals will heal much less (but healing others is largely unimpeded), you deal significantly less damage to enemies on the highest reaper settings, and man do those champions hit hard. Reaper mode has forced players to slow down, work together, and consider tactics. Is it necessarily a bad thing to not be able to plow through everything solo?

I understand what you're saying 'ranged + casters can kill everything just as fast without any negative repercussions' but have you ever been on the receiving end of a kiting fest? I hope you can agree it's often not very pretty - 'tagged' once, and that player is probably out. Further, melee most likely have dodge/AC/PRR or a whole host of other defensive abilities in excess of many ranged characters, let alone casters. Most likely, melee can take a few punches or at least mitigate more damage than a wizard.

I'm simply sharing from my experiences, and what I've found is that a well balanced party ensures a more successful completion in any quest, and most especially in reaper mode. We can't always be focused on ourselves - there are (hopefully) other people in the quest with you. Honestly, to me, this just feels like some growing pains as the player population adjusts to the demands of reaper mode and decides whether they want to work in a cooperative manner in the hardest possible settings.

[NaturalHazard]

Let's be clear - reaper is an entirely different beast. Your *self* heals will heal much less (but healing others is largely unimpeded), you deal significantly less damage to enemies on the highest reaper settings, and man do those champions hit hard. Reaper mode has forced players to slow down, work together, and consider tactics. Is it necessarily a bad thing to not be able to plow through everything solo?

I understand what you're saying 'ranged + casters can kill everything just as fast without any negative repercussions' but have you ever been on the receiving end of a kiting fest? I hope you can agree it's often not very pretty - 'tagged' once, and that player is probably out. Further, melee most likely have dodge/AC/PRR or a whole host of other defensive abilities in excess of many ranged characters, let alone casters. Most likely, melee can take a few punches or at least mitigate more damage than a wizard.

I'm simply sharing from my experiences, and what I've found is that a well balanced party ensures a more successful completion in any quest, and most especially in reaper mode. We can't always be focused on ourselves - there are (hopefully) other people in the quest with you. Honestly, to me, this just feels like some growing pains as the player population adjusts to the demands of reaper mode and decides whether they want to work in a cooperative manner in the hardest possible settings.

Ranged builds can get high dodge too its not something that is *melee* only. As for AC and prr Casters can get that too, they can at least get as much and often more than a lot of DPS melee builds, they can use shields and heavy armor and splash for some fighter or paladin SD enhancements, many often have just as much or more HPs than DPS melees. Especially non DC casters, like sharadi spammers or non dc warlocks.

Even back when most melees did not heal themselves and I had melees who could i would still play cooperatively. I would still heal others in a bind yes even on a melee ranger even at heroic levels, even the healer if they where in a tough spot, or any toon that would umd a heal scroll. I would save my stuns for the casters or more dangerous enemies on the toons that could stun, I would try and time my abilities with the other parties abilities, CC's and whatever.

Nerfing self healing was not needed in order to encourage co-operative group play. They could of made it hard enough that you could not just run off and even if you can self heal your still more likely to die than if you work with your group.

[J-mann]

Let's be clear - reaper is an entirely different beast. Your *self* heals will heal much less (but healing others is largely unimpeded), you deal significantly less damage to enemies on the highest reaper settings, and man do those champions hit hard. Reaper mode has forced players to slow down, work together, and consider tactics. Is it necessarily a bad thing to not be able to plow through everything solo?

I understand what you're saying 'ranged + casters can kill everything just as fast without any negative repercussions' but have you ever been on the receiving end of a kiting fest? I hope you can agree it's often not very pretty - 'tagged' once, and that player is probably out. Further, melee most likely have dodge/AC/PRR or a whole host of other defensive abilities in excess of many ranged characters, let alone casters. Most likely, melee can take a few punches or at least mitigate more damage than a wizard.

I'm simply sharing from my experiences, and what I've found is that a well balanced party ensures a more successful completion in any quest, and most especially in reaper mode. We can't always be focused on ourselves - there are (hopefully) other people in the quest with you. Honestly, to me, this just feels like some growing pains as the player population adjusts to the demands of reaper mode and decides whether they want to work in a cooperative manner in the hardest possible settings.

Nope, ranged/casters can most certainly achieve almost the exact, if not the exact, same statistical defenses as a melee. My current build will likely have a no fail will and reflex save, 44 dodge in water 36 in wind, 100ish prr, 25percent incorporeal and 20/50 concealment, not to mention 170 or more ac. Melee dps cant really top that sorry. And no, a well balanced party will loose out to 6 rdps no contest as long as the rdps have a clue, know how to cross heal, and have enough umd to scroll raises.

Edit: In addition, many casters have more hps than melee dps because casters have less stat investment in most cases. Additionally, the addition of all the different hp boosting mechanisms has greatly watered down the hp bonus melee class should naturally have. The difference from a well geared fighter to a well geared wizard in hp is fairly minimal these days. Melee need a primary, a secondary, and con in most cases, and in some even a fourth stat. Casters generally need casting stat and con and nothing else.

[NaturalHazard]

anyway in answer to the OP.

The Devs play DDO?

[J-mann]

Not to mention that cross healing is much easier to do as a ranged than a melee. Yes I know its self heals only, problem is melee need more healing in general, so less self healing is much much less an issue to a ranged where trickle of heals isnt such a big deal because you shouldnt be getting hit whereas melee need heals in greater quantity and frequency.

[NaturalHazard]

Not to mention that cross healing is much easier to do as a ranged than a melee. Yes I know its self heals only, problem is melee need more healing in general, so less self healing is much much less an issue to a ranged where trickle of heals isnt such a big deal because you shouldnt be getting hit whereas melee need heals in greater quantity and frequency.

a lot of people though do not know how to kite, as in make it easier for the group with how they kite, I guess the good thing with reaper is it might make them change, running all over the place and not paying attention to where the people who can heal you might not be such a good idea anymore.

[J-mann]

a lot of people though do not know how to kite, as in make it easier for the group with how they kite, I guess the good thing with reaper is it might make them change, running all over the place and not paying attention to where the people who can heal you might not be such a good idea anymore.

But we are talking about at least semi competent players not chickens without heads lol.

[NaturalHazard]

But we are talking about at least semi competent players not chickens without heads lol.

Makes me want to do an experiment, log into ddo, start a quest, chop a chickens head off and place it in front of the computer, see how it goes.

[blerkington]

Seems just like Epic Gianthold all over again. Perhaps it's time for Armour Up 2: Electric Boogaloo!

If the issues with lack of challenge in the game can be solved by adding ten new difficulties, then perhaps this one can be solved by adding yet another defensive stat: Reaper Physical Resistance Rating!

Thanks.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

seems like a very small number of people driving this thread. a very small number. maybe even a lonely number. hmm.

[NaturalHazard]

seems like a very small number of people driving this thread. a very small number. maybe even a lonely number. hmm.

You are the only other person besides me in this thread. I like talking to myself, so could you just leave me in peace please?

[Robbenklopper]

Devs,

We need a serious answer to why anyone would play melee now outside of flavor. Reaper mode blatantly favors ranged builds, all your recent "challenge" blatantly favors ranged, and you have taken away everything that makes a melee build in any way attractive. Lets do direct comparisons:

In dps, ranged do at least equal damage to melee (when you account for uptime they do far better), with far better burst damage.

Ranged and casters have far superior cc, that can be used at range, with shorter cds, and have much earlier access to mass cc

Melee need to stand right next to mobs to do damage, right where mobs can inflict massive damage back

Melee dps cannot attain statistical defenses any better than their ranged counterparts, despite the fact that ranged are, I know big surprise, ranged (which is easily worth 50+ percent miss chance)

Melees have far less time, chance, and opportunity to react to a change in situation during a battle

Melees are vastly more in need of healing than ranged characters, and the healing nerfs in reaper vastly disproportionately effects them.

Melees largely come with less to none of the needed buffs that casters have access to

melees have the largest number of gear slot requirements

Melees, quite frankly, bring nothing to the table that is desirous to a raid/party that a range or caster couldnt do better and safer.

Quite frankly the huge disregard for the melee playstyle is disappointing in fantasy mmo, there is litterally no reason to be a melee in the game currently and the devs have done a great job to undo all the work they did to bring melees back to life since armor up. Melees need to be able to take hits in melee range, recover from said hits, and have something special they can bring to the raid. One suggestion might be to REMOVE the cd on tatics abilites except dire charge. That would make melees interesting in that they might only have single target ccs most of the time but they are spamable. Dont know how to fix the fact that melees are exploding when mobs start looking at them funny, but im sure the forums could offer some suggestions.

I´m on a melee pure Monk and still like the game, even on reaper i am viable and contributable. Ofc it takes some Investments to get offensive and defensive to a certain Level. Reaper requires teamplay, no question for me.

In the coreidea you´re right, it´s unlogical to play a melee and risk your life in close-combat instead of safely gun´em down by far on a ranged. There are certain reasons why the chainsaw was not the best weapon of choice to play Doom.
Why do I still play melees exclusively? Question of attitude and thrill. Any non-Close-combat System in DDO appeared to me not matured from the beginning, so i sticked with melee.

[kmoustakas]

Well if you like something enough you figure out ways to make it work

[Ballrus]

seems like a very small number of people driving this thread. a very small number. maybe even a lonely number. hmm.

Maybe because few still have the guts to play melee?

[Wonedream]

I love this game. Now because of reaper though, my alts wont really have enough flair to be worth keeping up with. So time to focus on my TR main toon only.

He is on his 4th life... so many alts.. so much time I could have spent making his top notch already. But this means getting triple completionalist will give wings :P By the time he is all caught up reaper will be history :P

How am I going to deal with new reaper environment?

I will not make a single melee while TRing the next 35 heroic lives.!

No thanks to getting one hit killed when I am trying to farm and move fast!

So.. ranged or magic... each and every 35 lives..

From crossbow expert kensai to spell blasting SLA casters... whatever it is.. it isnt getting close to those monsters that kill you so fast...

The game has turned into one of those.. don't let them get close to you and shoot it games :P

Melee is just bait and distraction now...

[Skunkhunt42]

The problem buffing melees is that others playstiles can easily splahs 1 or 2 melee levels and get the benefits.

They should make something that only melees can use.

Add melee power is not needed, even if we could do the same damage as others playstiles or even more it wont solve the melee problem.

We need a way to survive some hits.

Melees need to go close range, in heroics and most EE's it is just fine. But not in an endgame where the hits pretty much kill you and hamp is like 0.

[NaturalHazard]

The problem buffing melees is that others playstiles can easily splahs 1 or 2 melee levels and get the benefits.

They should make something that only melees can use.

Add melee power is not needed, even if we could do the same damage as others playstiles or even more it wont solve the melee problem.

We need a way to survive some hits.

Melees need to go close range, in heroics and most EE's it is just fine. But not in an endgame where the hits pretty much kill you and hamp is like 0.

put it high up in the melee trees tier 5s basically, could make it a stance also that you have to have melee weapons only equipped for it to work.

i dunno it might be a tough ask for a caster to lock themselves out of their casting tier 5 s and invest so much points into what is generally melee trees, like kensei, TA, HSM or whatever, if they do that they are welcome to the extra defensive bonuses.

And if they want to make things more challenging for ranged/caster builds they can probably try different approaches besides just ramping up MOB melee dps.

[Wonedream]

put it high up in the melee trees tier 5s basically, could make it a stance also that you have to have melee weapons only equipped for it to work.

i dunno it might be a tough ask for a caster to lock themselves out of their casting tier 5 s and invest so much points into what is generally melee trees, like kensei, TA, HSM or whatever, if they do that they are welcome to the extra defensive bonuses.

And if they want to make things more challenging for ranged/caster builds they can probably try different approaches besides just ramping up MOB melee dps.

Tier 5 solutions and core tier solutions at level 12 or above...

Then they are investing so much in melee that they arent really casters anymore to get the melee defenses. Make the defenses reaper only, add them to pre-existing things like sacred defender's tier 5 ability now adds +25 prr and mrr and another +30 prr / mrr in reaper mode. When this is in the class tree of melee prestiges, it will fix melee's handicap. So, melee gets nothing if it doesnt do reaper, it wont need it anyways. And it gets added cap defenses without needing to invest for reaper because they include additional reaper buffs!

Problem solved!

[NaturalHazard]

Tier 5 solutions and core tier solutions at level 12 or above...

Then they are investing so much in melee that they arent really casters anymore to get the melee defenses. Make the defenses reaper only, add them to pre-existing things like sacred defender's tier 5 ability now adds +25 prr and mrr and another +30 prr / mrr in reaper mode. When this is in the class tree of melee prestiges, it will fix melee's handicap. So, melee gets nothing if it doesnt do reaper, it wont need it anyways. And it gets added cap defenses without needing to invest for reaper because they include additional reaper buffs!

Problem solved!

its a bit much to spend real Aps you only get 80 for soemthing that only works in reaper, but I guess, well you mianly only need it in reaper, though in some LE and some LE raids having that extra defense would be nice esp on squisher melee types.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

what build is it? and how many skulls? Are you soloing or grouping? Are you a tourist or an adventurer?

It might be helpful for those people who are not having a ton of fun on a melee in reaper mode to see what your doing and maybe trying that?

And it might also be helpful for those who are thinking of playing a melee in reaper mode.

Am using a centered kensai and its great.

People underestimate the sustained DPS of melee in a party with CC, and a tank.

On lower skulls I can tank if I put my shroud set on.

[NaturalHazard]

Am using a centered kensai and its great.

People underestimate the sustained DPS of melee in a party with CC, and a tank.

On lower skulls I can tank if I put my shroud set on.

Is Eth your alt account?

[Vanhooger]

Monk is also a beast especially 1vs1. Mob stunned forever and tomb of jade to help if its an undead or construct etc. Also instakill, I got ( well I had since I tr to a bard spellsinger) 90 Qp and instakill on extraplanar creature and a self rez.

You just need to change the way you play melee completely from EE.

[NaturalHazard]

You just need to change the way you play melee completely from EE.

So what do you do differently?

[Grandern_Marn]

Why play melee? So the non-melee don't get munched.

I prefer playing my Paladin to my Warlock in reaper.

[Vanhooger]

So what do you do differently?

I don't run solo.
I don't run forward alone.
I don't aggro mob, I let the tank get aggro first
After the tank has aggro I wait for cc
Then I start dps

on EE run cleave done

[NaturalHazard]

I don't run solo.
I don't run forward alone.
I don't aggro mob, I let the tank get aggro first
After the tank has aggro I wait for cc
Then I start dps

on EE run cleave done

what do you do if there is no tank,

and you have to contribute to CC sorry.

[Vanhooger]

what do you do if there is no tank,

and you have to contribute to dps?

Im not doing reaper if I don't have a tank and healer at least 5+

If you want to run reaper high skull you need all roles. Wasn't reaper meant to be difficult and promote different classes and cooperation?

[NaturalHazard]

Im not doing reaper if I don't have a tank and healer at least 5+

ok so the key word is patience.

Sound a bit like how the old epic was for a bit.

[Vanhooger]

ok so the key word is patience.

I understand your point, the fact is 90% of people want to run dps then they have to wait for a tank or healer or cc. Since reaper came out I tr'd one toon to healbot and another to ccbot / healer.

[Wizza]

Im not doing reaper if I don't have a tank and healer at least 5+

If you want to run reaper high skull you need all roles. Wasn't reaper meant to be difficult and promote different classes and cooperation?

You don't need a tank nor a healer for 5+, but a good CC is necessary. Someone in Exalted Angel is a good addition as well (Mass cure SLA).

[Vanhooger]

You don't need a tank nor a healer for 5+, but a good CC is necessary. Someone in Exalted Angel is a good addition as well (Mass cure SLA).

You don't but it make your life easier.

We did a slaver r5 without tank and healer and with tank and healer. I can tell a big difference.

As well boss/red named in genral for a melee without tank are impossible. You get oneshot. You can't cc the boss.

[NaturalHazard]

You don't need a tank nor a healer for 5+, but a good CC is necessary. Someone in Exalted Angel is a good addition as well (Mass cure SLA).

maybe a warlock?

Just saying because I see a ton of warlocks in EA, though yes a class/build that could amp up the SLA with more pos spell power whatever mgiht be more effective but will all the heal amp most people are going to have how much pos spell power is the person in EA going to need.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

My rules on difficulty have been kinda the following lately...

(1-2) Solo
(3) 2 or 3 man
(4) 4 people, or full party without tank/healer
(5) if party is good
(6) if either healer or tank is present
(7) if both
(8-10) if you're with a dedicated group of friends

Raids are way different.
Some quest are much easier than others, etc.

[Vanhooger]

My rules on difficulty have been kinda the following lately...

(1-2) Solo
(3) 2 or 3 man
(4) 4 people, or full party without tank/healer
(5) if party is good
(6) if either healer or tank is present
(7) if both
(8-10) if you're with a dedicated group of friends

Raids are way different.
Some quest are much easier than others, etc.

Pretty much that.

[Gremmlynn]

its a bit much to spend real Aps you only get 80 for soemthing that only works in reaper, but I guess, well you mianly only need it in reaper, though in some LE and some LE raids having that extra defense would be nice esp on squisher melee types.Not to mention that adding it to t5 sacred defender wont be doing melees any real favors. Just lock them into being very boring meatsacks as both defender trees add very little in the way of active abilities. Just a lot of passive AC, PRR and such (my guess is the devs figured it was tough to use any active abilities anyway, while holding shift with one hand and a sandwich with the other).

Most of the issues brought up just seem to me to be issues with D&D not working so well in a real time format with as close to the PnP mechanics as the devs stayed. Especially the 3.5 edition that was basically designed to sell splat books to munchkins. The game is basically designed to create the issues that are being discussed.

[NaturalHazard]

Not to mention that adding it to t5 sacred defender wont be doing melees any real favors. Just lock them into being very boring meatsacks as both defender trees add very little in the way of active abilities. Just a lot of passive AC, PRR and such (my guess is the devs figured it was tough to use any active abilities anyway, while holding shift with one hand and a sandwich with the other).

Most of the issues brought up just seem to me to be issues with D&D not working so well in a real time format with as close to the PnP mechanics as the devs stayed. Especially the 3.5 edition that was basically designed to sell splat books to munchkins. The game is basically designed to create the issues that are being discussed.

well it does not have to be in the defender trees only every primarily melee tree could have it, with the melee weapons equipped only for it to work.

[noinfo]

Devs,

We need a serious answer to why anyone would play melee now outside of flavor. Reaper mode blatantly favors ranged builds, all your recent "challenge" blatantly favors ranged, and you have taken away everything that makes a melee build in any way attractive. Lets do direct comparisons:

In dps, ranged do at least equal damage to melee (when you account for uptime they do far better), with far better burst damage.

Ranged and casters have far superior cc, that can be used at range, with shorter cds, and have much earlier access to mass cc

Melee need to stand right next to mobs to do damage, right where mobs can inflict massive damage back

Melee dps cannot attain statistical defenses any better than their ranged counterparts, despite the fact that ranged are, I know big surprise, ranged (which is easily worth 50+ percent miss chance)

Melees have far less time, chance, and opportunity to react to a change in situation during a battle

Melees are vastly more in need of healing than ranged characters, and the healing nerfs in reaper vastly disproportionately effects them.

Melees largely come with less to none of the needed buffs that casters have access to

melees have the largest number of gear slot requirements

Melees, quite frankly, bring nothing to the table that is desirous to a raid/party that a range or caster couldnt do better and safer.

Quite frankly the huge disregard for the melee playstyle is disappointing in fantasy mmo, there is litterally no reason to be a melee in the game currently and the devs have done a great job to undo all the work they did to bring melees back to life since armor up. Melees need to be able to take hits in melee range, recover from said hits, and have something special they can bring to the raid. One suggestion might be to REMOVE the cd on tatics abilites except dire charge. That would make melees interesting in that they might only have single target ccs most of the time but they are spamable. Dont know how to fix the fact that melees are exploding when mobs start looking at them funny, but im sure the forums could offer some suggestions.

As always it comes down to scaling, defenses of melee vs others as they go up in levels scale poorly in that wiz and ranged have similar defenses and such as Hp and prr damage reduction.

There really needs to be a scaling mechanism that gives melee their niche in reaper. I have suggested that after x time based on skull if they have not used a spell etc they get a defense buff vs melee based on their BAB if they have a melee weapon in their primary hand (significant buff) cast a spell and it goes away for x amount of time. this prevents ranged from using it or casters. This can be expanded to melee and ranged defense if they ALSO have a shield equipped. I would also suggest buffing their damage based on the number of times they hit a mob similar but stacking with vulnerability not fantastic vs trash fights but significant vs bosses.

Unlike others melee still have to go toe to toe with reds who cannot be CC and purple.

[Chai]

Most of the issues brought up just seem to me to be issues with D&D not working so well in a real time format with as close to the PnP mechanics as the devs stayed. Especially the 3.5 edition that was basically designed to sell splat books to munchkins. The game is basically designed to create the issues that are being discussed.

3.5E D&D worked just fine in a real time format. The contradiction occurs when people start demanding balance, due to what you bring up here. I however do feel the need to bring the following up as well:

The generic MMO mechanics added to this game which are not 3.5E based, are far more responsible for the lack of balance in DDO, than any of the true 3.5E D&D mechanics are.

A prime example of this is max spell power values attainable being over 1000 as of last year. We can line the stars up, pull the boss mob, then hit it with a 140k crit. With 2 of those builds in the group, its a dead boss mob with no real fight.

[NaturalHazard]

As always it comes down to scaling, defenses of melee vs others as they go up in levels scale poorly in that wiz and ranged have similar defenses and such as Hp and prr damage reduction.

There really needs to be a scaling mechanism that gives melee their niche in reaper. I have suggested that after x time based on skull if they have not used a spell etc they get a defense buff vs melee based on their BAB if they have a melee weapon in their primary hand (significant buff) cast a spell and it goes away for x amount of time. this prevents ranged from using it or casters. This can be expanded to melee and ranged defense if they ALSO have a shield equipped. I would also suggest buffing their damage based on the number of times they hit a mob similar but stacking with vulnerability not fantastic vs trash fights but significant vs bosses.

Unlike others melee still have to go toe to toe with reds who cannot be CC and purple.


why not just have it as I suggested? its not so bad now for paaldins as they do not have to keep rebuffing as many short duration buffs but, what if the code misreads DM as a spell? also builds with low number of ranger or druid levels woudl like to rebuff rams might for example and there are also other buffs melee builds like to cast, like how about displacement on melee bards?

[KingNite]

As always it comes down to scaling, defenses of melee vs others as they go up in levels scale poorly in that wiz and ranged have similar defenses and such as Hp and prr damage reduction.


Bingo! Just give DPS melees more HP and PRR/MRR that are not easily accesible for other builds by adding it in tier 5's or 12+ cores of the DPS trees.

[noinfo]

why not just have it as I suggested? its not so bad now for paaldins as they do not have to keep rebuffing as many short duration buffs but, what if the code misreads DM as a spell? also builds with low number of ranger or druid levels woudl like to rebuff rams might for example and there are also other buffs melee builds like to cast, like how about displacement on melee bards?

Imo you want to cast in melee you take your chances including bards, choose your timing. Code won't misread, it could be misswritten but that's a bug to fix. I personally don't want anything added to any trees to me it needs to be a system fix. Just my opinion

[noinfo]

Bingo! Just give DPS melees more HP and PRR/MRR that are not easily accesible for other builds by adding it in tier 5's or 12+ cores of the DPS trees.

If you do that it becomes patchwork rather than system based, just my opinion.

[NaturalHazard]

Imo you want to cast in melee you take your chances including bards, choose your timing. Code won't misread, it could be misswritten but that's a bug to fix. I personally don't want anything added to any trees to me it needs to be a system fix. Just my opinion

Some ED effects are spell effects, anyway it depends on how long the cool down is, but really what about if you want to heal another party member? Why should the melee be the most at risk by doing this? By having their defenses lowered?

[Gremmlynn]

3.5E D&D worked just fine in a real time format. The contradiction occurs when people start demanding balance, due to what you bring up here. I however do feel the need to bring the following up as well:

The generic MMO mechanics added to this game which are not 3.5E based, are far more responsible for the lack of balance in DDO, than any of the true 3.5E D&D mechanics are.

A prime example of this is max spell power values attainable being over 1000 as of last year. We can line the stars up, pull the boss mob, then hit it with a 140k crit. With 2 of those builds in the group, its a dead boss mob with no real fight.The issue comes from trying to mix and match them. In that case adding spell power to a different system, rather than developing a system that works well with spell power.

But as far as D&D 3.5 goes. The primary thing I was referring to was the lack of multi-class restriction that 3 and 3.5e brought. Not just with what classes could be mixed, but with multi-classing adding ability, rather than restrictions. As, in 2e, weapon or armor use was generally a restriction of a class, multi-class thieves or mages, for example, could wear armor, they just couldn't use thief skills (or did at a major penalty) in heavier armor or cast spells in (nearly) any armor. While clerics simply would no longer be clerics if they didn't follow their weapon restrictions. While 3 and even more so 3.5e went out of their way to make work arounds for, or simply added the ability to do so with minimal investment (in earlier editions, multi-classing was a permanent decision, with all xp being divided between all classes at all levels, so no grabbing off one level for low hanging fruit).

One thing with D&D, being a PnP game, it's stuck using small whole numbers and very basic math, for the most part. A lot of addition. That really doesn't make for a good game system, but it makes for a reasonably playable PnP game system due to not letting the math get in the way of the game play.

An issue brought up here was the lack of real difference between hps from character type to character type. That could have been regulated better if all hp bonuses wetre based on a multiplicative function of base hps (just what was gained from class levels). So that a wizard and a fighter with the same con, same false life, same etc., would end up with the wizard still having 40% the hps of the fighter due to all those bonuses being multiplied by their class granted hp bases rather than simply adding to them equally for all. The same could be done with PRR, etc. That would keep the intended differences between builds valid.

[Gremmlynn]

Imo you want to cast in melee you take your chances including bards, choose your timing. Code won't misread, it could be misswritten but that's a bug to fix. I personally don't want anything added to any trees to me it needs to be a system fix. Just my opinionI agree. The only way to get it to work is to rebuild the system around it working. Not try to tweak the fundamentally broken system we have. All that will result in is players finding the holes in the fix.

[Mr_Helmet]

Bingo! Just give DPS melees more HP and PRR/MRR that are not easily accesible for other builds by adding it in tier 5's or 12+ cores of the DPS trees.

Too easily exploitable, just have all incoming damage double if you have a ranged weapon equipped.

[Simard]

If you do that it becomes patchwork rather than system based, just my opinion.

That ship sailed long ago. Adding PRR/MRR and healing amp gated through core enhancements would help level the playing field. Make the level and AP investment significant though to prevent a two level splash from getting most of the benefits, along the lines of once you hit the third core enhancement it gives you a one point PRR/healing amp boost per two action points spent in the tree. Or MRR or melee power based on logical choices in the trees.

Also reconsider some of the boosts included in the trees. For instance ritual scarring giving 3 PRR (plus intimidate I realize) for 3 action points? Make it more like 5/10/15 PRR. If you've taken the third tier of Improved Stalwart Defense, give 25 PRR instead of 15. Etc.

[Mr_Helmet]

That ship sailed long ago. Adding PRR/MRR and healing amp gated through core enhancements would help level the playing field. Make the level and AP investment significant though to prevent a two level splash from getting most of the benefits, along the lines of once you hit the third core enhancement it gives you a one point PRR/healing amp boost per two action points spent in the tree. Or MRR or melee power based on logical choices in the trees.

Also reconsider some of the boosts included in the trees. For instance ritual scarring giving 3 PRR (plus intimidate I realize) for 3 action points? Make it more like 5/10/15 PRR. If you've taken the third tier of Improved Stalwart Defense, give 25 PRR instead of 15. Etc.

All too easily exploitable.

Half all mob damage, double it if you're holding a ranged weapon (do something so casters get the same, not sure how to do that so it's not exploitable).

[Qhualor]

seeing more and more suggestions to boost enhancement trees for Reaper.

again we circle back around to the inevitable power creep and trivializing content discussions.

leave the enhancement trees alone that were NOT designed around Reaper and make your power creep suggestions for the Reaper trees that ARE designed around Reaper.

[Gremmlynn]

seeing more and more suggestions to boost enhancement trees for Reaper.

again we circle back around to the inevitable power creep and trivializing content discussions.

leave the enhancement trees alone that were NOT designed around Reaper and make your power creep suggestions for the Reaper trees that ARE designed around Reaper.Which does nothing to fix the issue.

Though I agree, simply playing with any trees wouldn't really help without deeper systematic changes.

[psykopeta]

Too easily exploitable, just have all incoming damage double if you have a ranged weapon equipped.

Lol dat's an awesome idea!

I was expecting something more like 1/4 damage with ranged weapons because... Well, they're ranged

Same to nukers and ahiradi procs

Just to balance damage with risk of dying

[Simard]

All too easily exploitable.

Half all mob damage, double it if you're holding a ranged weapon (do something so casters get the same, not sure how to do that so it's not exploitable).

If you're going for an outright nerf or specific target vs ranged and casters then just base the increase of mob damage on your own ranged power or the highest of your non positive or repair spellpower. Doesn't affect instakill casters but gets most of them. I was trying for something to buff melee without necessarily directly targeting casters etc.

[KoobTheProud]

Why do I still play melees exclusively? Question of attitude and thrill. Any non-Close-combat System in DDO appeared to me not matured from the beginning, so i sticked with melee.

I'm mostly playing ranged at this point and with the exception of Arty's and Warlocks you're exactly right about matured vs not at the beginning. My FvS is an Evoker build with capped Wis and close on Con and both Str and Dex as dump stats. She was very painful to play with low DPS for the first half dozen levels and now she's got the DPS but her mana pool is too low to keep going like the energizer bunny. It's a real trade off playing a caster early on vs a melee. The caster gets better slowly and eventually comes into their own near the capstones and the melee just gets better and better with each level until about the same point.

Then you get to epic levels and things turn around a bit and the caster is now stronger and getting better level by level and the melee is the one that is slowly progressing. Arty's and Warlocks aside, both of whom are devastatingly OP in heroics and then flat in epics.

[Phil7]

I like melee, I've said before that if I can't play melee then I will stop playing (a break from the game is good now and then)
So in my case it is flavor.

Melee is still playable in reaper and has very strong dps. The problem is, u need cc and a tank for boss fights, otherwise u are a wasted party slot.

The second problem is, the 5 ranged players in your group don't care about cc and tank and they also don't care if u die.

There is of course the option to switch to tank as a melee player, most melee fans tend to enjoy tanking too anyway.
But it seems that with 6 ranged, tanking is also pointless and burning an extra party slot for the healer is even worse.

[KingNite]

Too easily exploitable, just have all incoming damage double if you have a ranged weapon equipped.

Then add some prerequisites that don't allow them to exploit it easiliy. Like you can only take it if you have gtwf, gthf or gswf feat and it only works with melee weapons equiped, like dire charge.

Anyway it would be pointless, adding 30 or 50 more PRR on top of 200 PRR won't change its survivality much, or not enough to matter. The problem is not as much melees having too low defenses as it's casters having too much. DPS melees having only 200 PRR is not the problem, the problem is casters with 200+ PRR. I don't think ranged dps is as much problematic as casters since they have way lower PRR than melees.

They should cap caster and ranged PRR in some way, but that is not going to happen anytime soon because the tears would be to much, and experience tells that in this kind of situations they usually opt for buffing the classes that are behind rather than nerfing what really needs to be nerfed.

[KoobTheProud]

Ok, so here is a proposal to make melee relevant and ranged less effective without it in Reaper content: how about having Reapers and bosses have an attack that drags the person highest on their hate list to them and roots them (not stun just root) until that character is dead or the mob is dead, that attack only to trigger when the boss or Reaper does not have another player in contact with them for 3 full seconds 10 seconds or more after they become active for the first time?

Voila! Tanks required. With tanks required then dedicated healers become required and DPS can be whomever does the best DPS. The Trinity is re-assembled and all it takes is making bosses and Reapers unkite-able. As they should have been in the first place.

[Wizza]

They should cap caster and ranged PRR in some way, but that is not going to happen anytime soon because the tears would be to much, and experience tells that in this kind of situations they usually opt for buffing the classes that are behind rather than nerfing what really needs to be nerfed.

The only tears we see on the forum all the time is from melees, and their cries to get everything else nerfed. Case in point, your quote.

[Bolo_Grubb]

I for one am VERY happy when a competent tank joins my healer in a reaper quest - I'm glad reaper mode has forced people to *shockingly* play together.

I am enjoying playing my tank with a good healer in reaper mode.

[Blastyswa]

My current build will likely have a no fail will and reflex save, 44 dodge in water 36 in wind, 100ish prr, 25percent incorporeal and 20/50 concealment, not to mention 170 or more ac.

The bolded totals would be pretty low for most melees, just saying. My DPS paladin sits at around 250 PRR and 250 AC; my fighter has even more, although he has less DPS. With that said, I do agree that ranged can get enough defense, especially with how universal most defense things are now (past lives+sheltering item+legendary devil commander boots and you're at 100) which makes melees not really have a lot of advantages.

[J-mann]

The bolded totals would be pretty low for most melees, just saying. My DPS paladin sits at around 250 PRR and 250 AC; my fighter has even more, although he has less DPS. With that said, I do agree that ranged can get enough defense, especially with how universal most defense things are now (past lives+sheltering item+legendary devil commander boots and you're at 100) which makes melees not really have a lot of advantages.

Um its an evasion build. Did you miss the 44 dodge? I should expect it to have much less prr than a heavy armor and what apears to be shield build. It also will out dps any pally build by quite a fair margine and out burst it on orders of magnitude.

[Skunkhunt42]

Since casters get free sp in reaper mode, why melees can't get free hp orbs?

[Blastyswa]

Um its an evasion build. Did you miss the 44 dodge? I should expect it to have much less prr than a heavy armor and what apears to be shield build. It also will out dps any pally build by quite a fair margine and out burst it on orders of magnitude.

I assumed you remembered what you wrote that i was responding to.


Nope, ranged/casters can most certainly achieve almost the exact, if not the exact, same statistical defenses as a melee. My current build will likely have a no fail will and reflex save, 44 dodge in water 36 in wind, 100ish prr, 25percent incorporeal and 20/50 concealment, not to mention 170 or more ac. Melee dps cant really top that sorry. And no, a well balanced party will loose out to 6 rdps no contest as long as the rdps have a clue, know how to cross heal, and have enough umd to scroll raises.

Edit: In addition, many casters have more hps than melee dps because casters have less stat investment in most cases. Additionally, the addition of all the different hp boosting mechanisms has greatly watered down the hp bonus melee class should naturally have. The difference from a well geared fighter to a well geared wizard in hp is fairly minimal these days. Melee need a primary, a secondary, and con in most cases, and in some even a fourth stat. Casters generally need casting stat and con and nothing else.

I bolded the first line to make it easier to see what I was responding to. You said that your ranged/caster builds have the exact same statistical defenses as a melee. 100ish PRR and 170 AC is not the same defenses as a melee. If you were trying to say that the defense comes out to be the same, that's not really true either; 44 dodge can keep you from dying by avoiding hits, but when you eventually get hit you'll likely die. Focusing on PRR more (Although most armored builds still sit at 20%+ dodge) instead of having damage spikes that kill the character you take more hits for less damage, which is easier to heal. This is actually the PRR breakdown on the build anyway, so you can see how easy it is to get decent PRR.

45 Sheltering Item
18 Insightful PRR (Legendary Boots of Devil Commander)
9 Quality PRR (Legendary Boots of Devil Commander)
18 Past Lives
25 Sacred Defense
30 Master's Blitz
10 Miscellaneous Mythic/Reaper Bonuses
25 Harbored By Light
25 Cores
10 Epic Damage Reduction
45 Medium Armor (Epic Hardened Hide)

=260 PRR

That's the PRR on my TWF DPS focused paladin build. Even if I was deeper in the KoTC tree and less in the sacred defender tree (Which wouldn't gain much DPS and would sacrifice a lot of survivability) the build would still easily have over 200 PRR, and fighter builds can get an additional 30 from heavy armor mastery feats. I'm not going to argue DPS between a broken furyshot build and a melee, especially because I agree that melees are behind ranged on DPS, but I see that more as something to be fixed than something to brag about for your build.

[slarden]

Since casters get free sp in reaper mode, why melees can't get free hp orbs? Not really comparable things. I found it beneficial to run a melee vs. caster in reaper and it's almost broken that the free sp doesn't scale with character spell point pool. My melees effectively have unlimited mana for kta, healing, etc. as I get the same sp bonus even though I have a much smaller sp pool.

At least for the 3-5 skull 2-man reaper I think melee is working great. Obviously it would suck in LE tempest spine 10 skull end fight, etc. Getting a working prr, hp, fort is super easy and it's fairly obvious which enemies need to be killed quickest to avoid the huge damage spikes.

[Jasparion]

its a bit much to spend real Aps you only get 80 for soemthing that only works in reaper, but I guess, well you mianly only need it in reaper, though in some LE and some LE raids having that extra defense would be nice esp on squisher melee types.

Dont have to make it a spend.

For Vanguard core (and equivalent tanky cores) for levels 6, 12, 18, 20 add 5 AC/PRR/MRR, 20 AC/PRR/MRR, 30 AC/PRR/MRR, 50 AC/PRR/MRR to what is already there.

For Tempest core (and other more DPSy cores) for levels 6, 12, 18, 20 add 2 AC/PRR/MRR, 10 AC/PRR/MRR, 15 AC/PRR/MRR, 20 AC/PRR/MRR to what is already there.

I posted something in another thread which works here too. It is a simple fix:

The only big issue with Reaper is that it is a ranged game where melee types get smashed far too easily. Even guys who dedicate every last bit of their build to maximising health and damage reduction still get smashed in only a couple of hits. That is wrong.

That is also an easy fix.

Change the max PRR and MRR you can have without a shield equipped. We did something similar with caps based on type of armor - but Devs can take another look at that and see if there should be further improvements. Change the max PRR and MRR you can have with a bow/xbow/thrown weapon equipped. Change the way PRR and MRR scales and give melee builds more access to PRR and MRR. And nerf the ridiculous amounts Warlocks get access to - its stupid - we get it - you want people buying Warlock - but stop it.

As it is, PRR and MRR have got far too out of hand with past-life bonuses and gear, compared to what you can get through Enhancements and Feats. Right now with full past lives and gear you can be a Ranged toon and be not too far behind a Melee toon set for tanking.

Right now with full past lives and gear you can be a pure DPS Melee toon and not be too far behind a pure Tank.

Fix those and have the focus be on boosting melee builds (so 2H and 2WF type builds still get access to reasonable levels, but proper tanks get the best).

Done.

Easy.

Solved.


If you do that it becomes patchwork rather than system based, just my opinion.

See above. It is system based. The amount you get is more, the more tanky the spec you are playing. Melee get more than ranged. Splashes will get a bit, pure will get a lot.

The actual numbers can be fiddled easily enough too, based on what should be "reasonable" for "very good" players to achieve (because Reaper should be for "very good" players - especially at the highest levels).


Too easily exploitable, just have all incoming damage double if you have a ranged weapon equipped.

How would you exploit my suggestion above?

As I said, the numbers can be adjusted so that they give what seems to be the desired outcome - melees not being useful as meatbags for the initial onslaught then rezzed once combat is under control.

[Morroiel]

Not really comparable things. I found it beneficial to run a melee vs. caster in reaper and it's almost broken that the free sp doesn't scale with character spell point pool. My melees effectively have unlimited mana for kta, healing, etc. as I get the same sp bonus even though I have a much smaller sp pool.

At least for the 3-5 skull 2-man reaper I think melee is working great. Obviously it would suck in LE tempest spine 10 skull end fight, etc. Getting a working prr, hp, fort is super easy and it's fairly obvious which enemies need to be killed quickest to avoid the huge damage spikes.

Pure dps melees are actually doing decent in 5+ skulls as well (obviously the example in LE TS barred). Clearing trash extremely fast and when paired with a tank can do top dps in endfights.

Also dps casters are disadvantaged due to the sp gems in higher skull - the rate doesn't scale with your sp usage. While shiradi's might be a lot of fun / great, the amount of pots you go through is fairly ridic.

IMO throwers/monkchers, mechanics, wolf builds, dex ranger, monk, are the go to dps builds. Leaning ranged if you don't have a tank - otherwise leaning melee.

[RoberttheBard]

So melee should only be tanks? And only with a *healer* of course.

Or, alternatively, join that group? Man, what a difficult situation you found yourself in.

[RoberttheBard]

Too easily exploitable, just have all incoming damage double if you have a ranged weapon equipped.

That's a great idea. Here's the end result: That caster that's nuking you while you're fighting that melee mob? He's going to keep nuking you until you kill him, because I'm not taking double damage to save your ass in a quest. I'll help you kill that mob that's fixing to one shot you, if the caster doesn't get you first.

[Selvera]

45 Sheltering Item
18 Insightful PRR (Legendary Boots of Devil Commander)
9 Quality PRR (Legendary Boots of Devil Commander)
18 Past Lives
25 Sacred Defense
30 Master's Blitz
10 Miscellaneous Mythic/Reaper Bonuses
25 Harbored By Light
25 Cores
10 Epic Damage Reduction
45 Medium Armor (Epic Hardened Hide)

=260 PRR


It's worth noting that there is not a huge difference in the PRR of a fighter and a paladin; a full paladin in sacred defender gets +65 PRR/MRR and a fighter with all of the heavy armour feats and stalwart defender gets +65 PRR/MRR.

Now let's look at this list:
45 Sheltering Item -> Available to everyone, including ranged
18 Insightful PRR (Legendary Boots of Devil Commander) -> Available to everyone, including ranged
9 Quality PRR (Legendary Boots of Devil Commander) - Available to everyone, including ranged
18 Past Lives -> Available to everyone, including ranged
25 Sacred Defense -> Exclusive with barbarians or furyshotting, but available to everyone else
30 Master's Blitz -> Available to everyone, including ranged
10 Miscellaneous Mythic/Reaper Bonuses -> Available to everyone, including ranged
25 Harbored By Light -> Available to anyone with a 5 level paladin dip if they're willing to give up their T5s
25 Cores -> Available to all level 20 paladins, including ranged
10 Epic Damage Reduction -> Available to everyone, including ranged
45 Medium Armor (Epic Hardened Hide) -> Available to everyone, including ranged (if they have proficiency)

So you could, with your build, pick up a crossbow and plink away at things with the exact same defenses PRR as you have right now. Your dps might be a little sub-optimal, but if you swapped out your fighting-style feats for PBS, Rapid Reload and Manyshot (also do you have power attack? Swap that out for IPS) would your dps be much lower then it is now?

The only real incentives I see for paladins to go melee is that zeal only gives doublestrike, (not doubleshot) and that they have no in-built stat to damage with ranged weapons (can be fixed with multiclassing or the harper tree). Or that other classes do ranged better then them.

In terms of stats on any gear; the only incentive I see for melee is that doublestrike is easier to get then doubleshot on items (Cannith crafting gives 17% doublestrike, but only 9% doubleshot).

Melee tends to have 150% stat to damage (if you count offhand attacks as 50% stat to damage) unless they're using a shield (large boost to defense that ranged can't effectively get); while ranged attacks only get 100% (Both ranged and melee have access to KTA and simmilar effects to increase this "equally"). Also, most ranged weapons have a slightly worse critical profile then some melee weapons.

As for feats; melee styles usually give melee power, while ranged feats rarely give any ranged power. Then there's the question what's better damage? Cleave+Greatcleave or IPS?

So melee does have higher damage (In theory) then ranged combat; but mostly just small damage buffs over the ranged counterparts; which is typically offset by ranged characters building less defenses in favor of higher damage (but does not have to be); and by the large amounts of burst damage available to ranged characters via multishot or 10k stars (feats which have no real melee-only equivalent).

So what is the point of going melee? For starters, the game system inherently favors melee for tanking; as many of the most dangerous enemies get up close and personal the tank is likely to be within melee range regardless of if they are ranged or melee fighting style. Melee allows for a shield which using a bow or crossbow doesn't allow; while many shuriken uses would prefer to not have an uncentering shield equipped. And the AoE available to melee in the form of cleave is arguably better suited for someone who can allow the enemy to surround her before wipes everything out (because she can take the hits).

But what about melees who don't want to tank? Arguably they have higher damage if they build as little defenses as ranged; but they don't have the burst damage of multishot or 10k stars. They can get burst damage through fury just like ranged, but without a similar super damage boost they won't be able to match the same burst damage. If (as has been alluded to) Fury gets fixed so that it works with cleaves, it will help their burst damage a bit. Their sustained damage mathematically should be higher then ranged, but having to stay toe-to-toe with dangerous enemies can easily mean the melee is kiting and healing a lot, thus lowering their dps. (or worse; they die and lower their dps by a lot).

There is very little in this game which makes a melee character tankier then a ranged character except for the fact that melee are much more likely to build tanky out of nessesity; and that the classes with the best bonuses for ranged combat are inherently less tanky then those who have more melee leaning abilities. (Even Fighter and Paladin both come with competitive critical profile increases available for ranged weapons!).

[Jasparion]

There is very little in this game which makes a melee character tankier then a ranged character except for the fact that melee are much more likely to build tanky out of nessesity; and that the classes with the best bonuses for ranged combat are inherently less tanky then those who have more melee leaning abilities. (Even Fighter and Paladin both come with competitive critical profile increases available for ranged weapons!).

Which is the point I made above. With gear and past-lives you can have pure ranged/caster builds be not far behind tank builds who are dedicated to reducing damage taken. You could even go a tanky type of tree then focus on DPS feats and some splashes in to DPS trees and get the bulk of the defences of a tank while still having plenty of DPS options.

That is why there should be caps on AC/PRR/MRR if you dont have a shield, or are using a ranged/throwing weapon. Just like we have caps on different armor types.

Flavour is the only reason to play a non ranged toon, really even casters too, outside of Warlocks.

[Selvera]

Caps aren't a good solution because they are very static. Perhaps today 200 PRR is a reasonable cap for ranged characters, any more then that is for a melee/tank, but what about 5 years in the future when the level cap is 40 and all the melees are running around with 500 PRR while the ranged are still capped at 200? Sure ranged should be squishier, but the order of magnitude different changes vastly which each update that power increases. It also does nothing for balance at lower levels, where a ranged character at level 10 could happily run around with just as much PRR as a melee if that number happens to be lower then the cap. And it gets to the point where ranged characters just stop caring about PRR tomes, mythic bonuses, past lives or any other defensive bonuses that they could get, since they're already capped.

Rather, I like Mr_Helmet's suggestion better, as it still gives ranged reason to build defensive stats (even if they take more damage then melee, building defensive allows them to take more damage then if they didn't at all), and it gives melee a solid edge in terms of survive-ability over ranged at all stages of the game.

[Chimmy]

This is just like that other post where the guy was saying melee should be higher damage than ranged conceptually (not including casters). And it is, but only by a noticeable margin in the early game (or without the extra bonus damages considered), once you accumulate enough damage + and stat point boosts, that extra 5-10 damage that melee tends to do, becomes very easy not to notice.

And in concept I still agree, and still think that boosting the way melee scales over ranged would be the best way to handle it.

[Jasparion]

Caps aren't a good solution because they are very static. Perhaps today 200 PRR is a reasonable cap for ranged characters, any more then that is for a melee/tank, but what about 5 years in the future when the level cap is 40 and all the melees are running around with 500 PRR while the ranged are still capped at 200? Sure ranged should be squishier, but the order of magnitude different changes vastly which each update that power increases. It also does nothing for balance at lower levels, where a ranged character at level 10 could happily run around with just as much PRR as a melee if that number happens to be lower then the cap. And it gets to the point where ranged characters just stop caring about PRR tomes, mythic bonuses, past lives or any other defensive bonuses that they could get, since they're already capped.

Rather, I like Mr_Helmet's suggestion better, as it still gives ranged reason to build defensive stats (even if they take more damage then melee, building defensive allows them to take more damage then if they didn't at all), and it gives melee a solid edge in terms of survive-ability over ranged at all stages of the game.

You dont think any time in a 5 year period they couldnt increase the PRR cap from 200 to 250?

As for lower levels, past lives are going to be a far bigger issue here, but there is still nothing stopping caps being based on armor type - especially if you set caps based on the ML of the armor... which would mean it doesnt matter if you have 18 EPLs and 3 Warlock lives if you wear PJs at level 1 you are only getting 10 PRR (or whatever).

Again, there are very easy solutions to this problem. If nothing is done then it is a sign that SSG doesnt care or doesnt think it is a problem. Or they really do just care about balancing the game around ranged/caster toons - because also trying to balance around melee is just too much hard work (despite how easy it actually is).

[Gremmlynn]

It's worth noting that there is not a huge difference in the PRR of a fighter and a paladin; a full paladin in sacred defender gets +65 PRR/MRR and a fighter with all of the heavy armour feats and stalwart defender gets +65 PRR/MRR.

Now let's look at this list:
45 Sheltering Item -> Available to everyone, including ranged
18 Insightful PRR (Legendary Boots of Devil Commander) -> Available to everyone, including ranged
9 Quality PRR (Legendary Boots of Devil Commander) - Available to everyone, including ranged
18 Past Lives -> Available to everyone, including ranged
25 Sacred Defense -> Exclusive with barbarians or furyshotting, but available to everyone else
30 Master's Blitz -> Available to everyone, including ranged
10 Miscellaneous Mythic/Reaper Bonuses -> Available to everyone, including ranged
25 Harbored By Light -> Available to anyone with a 5 level paladin dip if they're willing to give up their T5s
25 Cores -> Available to all level 20 paladins, including ranged
10 Epic Damage Reduction -> Available to everyone, including ranged
45 Medium Armor (Epic Hardened Hide) -> Available to everyone, including ranged (if they have proficiency)

So you could, with your build, pick up a crossbow and plink away at things with the exact same defenses PRR as you have right now. Your dps might be a little sub-optimal, but if you swapped out your fighting-style feats for PBS, Rapid Reload and Manyshot (also do you have power attack? Swap that out for IPS) would your dps be much lower then it is now?

The only real incentives I see for paladins to go melee is that zeal only gives doublestrike, (not doubleshot) and that they have no in-built stat to damage with ranged weapons (can be fixed with multiclassing or the harper tree). Or that other classes do ranged better then them.

In terms of stats on any gear; the only incentive I see for melee is that doublestrike is easier to get then doubleshot on items (Cannith crafting gives 17% doublestrike, but only 9% doubleshot).

Melee tends to have 150% stat to damage (if you count offhand attacks as 50% stat to damage) unless they're using a shield (large boost to defense that ranged can't effectively get); while ranged attacks only get 100% (Both ranged and melee have access to KTA and simmilar effects to increase this "equally"). Also, most ranged weapons have a slightly worse critical profile then some melee weapons.

As for feats; melee styles usually give melee power, while ranged feats rarely give any ranged power. Then there's the question what's better damage? Cleave+Greatcleave or IPS?

So melee does have higher damage (In theory) then ranged combat; but mostly just small damage buffs over the ranged counterparts; which is typically offset by ranged characters building less defenses in favor of higher damage (but does not have to be); and by the large amounts of burst damage available to ranged characters via multishot or 10k stars (feats which have no real melee-only equivalent).

So what is the point of going melee? For starters, the game system inherently favors melee for tanking; as many of the most dangerous enemies get up close and personal the tank is likely to be within melee range regardless of if they are ranged or melee fighting style. Melee allows for a shield which using a bow or crossbow doesn't allow; while many shuriken uses would prefer to not have an uncentering shield equipped. And the AoE available to melee in the form of cleave is arguably better suited for someone who can allow the enemy to surround her before wipes everything out (because she can take the hits).

But what about melees who don't want to tank? Arguably they have higher damage if they build as little defenses as ranged; but they don't have the burst damage of multishot or 10k stars. They can get burst damage through fury just like ranged, but without a similar super damage boost they won't be able to match the same burst damage. If (as has been alluded to) Fury gets fixed so that it works with cleaves, it will help their burst damage a bit. Their sustained damage mathematically should be higher then ranged, but having to stay toe-to-toe with dangerous enemies can easily mean the melee is kiting and healing a lot, thus lowering their dps. (or worse; they die and lower their dps by a lot).

There is very little in this game which makes a melee character tankier then a ranged character except for the fact that melee are much more likely to build tanky out of nessesity; and that the classes with the best bonuses for ranged combat are inherently less tanky then those who have more melee leaning abilities. (Even Fighter and Paladin both come with competitive critical profile increases available for ranged weapons!).You missed the biggest difference. With the way the game works, ranged have much better ability to move their hit box away from where an attack is coming. Especially for AoE type attacks, while maintaining their DPS. The games AI simply isn't capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, so melee opponents will always stop to swing. Nor is it given the ability to track targets that ranged players have, so the mob's arrows don't chase targets the way ours do.

[Chimmy]

Yeah, there should be obvious inherent bonuses to playing a melee, much like there is for ranged, the bonuses to ranged combat may not always be intentional but they massively outweigh the inherent negatives of melee combat, at the moment literally everything about the mechanics and AI favors ranged players very heavily.

What would make sense is calling "nerfs" to ranged combat by making AI melee combatants much more effective at doing their job, even vs backrunning jumping archers, but considering how many just play like this naturally I am sure their would be way too much community backlash over such balancing systems.

[noinfo]

That ship sailed long ago. Adding PRR/MRR and healing amp gated through core enhancements would help level the playing field. Make the level and AP investment significant though to prevent a two level splash from getting most of the benefits, along the lines of once you hit the third core enhancement it gives you a one point PRR/healing amp boost per two action points spent in the tree. Or MRR or melee power based on logical choices in the trees.

Also reconsider some of the boosts included in the trees. For instance ritual scarring giving 3 PRR (plus intimidate I realize) for 3 action points? Make it more like 5/10/15 PRR. If you've taken the third tier of Improved Stalwart Defense, give 25 PRR instead of 15. Etc.

I have to say I disagree (and i am talking in particular reaper here) the amount of hp and prr and heal amp that you would have to add to make a difference in reaper would be game breaking outside of. Its a system issue not a trees based issue.

[noinfo]

Some ED effects are spell effects, anyway it depends on how long the cool down is, but really what about if you want to heal another party member? Why should the melee be the most at risk by doing this? By having their defenses lowered?

Because they have broken their concentration to do something other than melee which they were getting a bonus for. Yes its nice that you saved your party member by sacrificing yourself! Or you withdraw to do so.

[Jasparion]

Yeah, there should be obvious inherent bonuses to playing a melee, much like there is for ranged, the bonuses to ranged combat may not always be intentional but they massively outweigh the inherent negatives of melee combat, at the moment literally everything about the mechanics and AI favors ranged players very heavily.

What would make sense is calling "nerfs" to ranged combat by making AI melee combatants much more effective at doing their job, even vs backrunning jumping archers, but considering how many just play like this naturally I am sure their would be way too much community backlash over such balancing systems.

Heaps of benefits to melee:
1. You dont have to kite
2. Hmmm... okay Im out of ideas


I have to say I disagree (and i am talking in particular reaper here) the amount of hp and prr and heal amp that you would have to add to make a difference in reaper would be game breaking outside of. Its a system issue not a trees based issue.

I dont think so. You can reduce the amount of AC/PRR/MRR which ranged toons can have, and cap various armor types based on ML. So in the end you can end up with a system where melee tanks have the most, then melee DPS, then ranged/casters.

The actual potential caps can be decided based on whatever level SSG think is appropriate for Reaper. Outside of Reaper does it really matter? Pretty much everyone is able to smash Hard, most people can smash Elite... so a change to AC/MRR/PRR doesnt matter much at all. Especially since people may well be levelling in other Enhancements because they simply dont need to be a tank for other content.

But really, I think it is silly that you need to accumulate gear and lives in anything but melee, in order to go melee in Reaper. No other class/play-style requires that. Something really should be done.

[McFlay]

I don't think focusing on defenses so much is going to fix things, although I don't disagree the amount coming from gear really makes whatever bonuses we get from most skill trees seem rather trivial from one tree to the next. If people are saying melee builds that aren't pure tanks are too squishy, and ranged builds get pretty much the same defensive options as those builds...doesn't that mean ranged builds are already squishy enough?(getting 2 shot or 4 shot really isn't any different when mobs hardly ever even get a shot on goal) Yeah sure...kiting is effectively a huge amount of damage mitigation not accounted for on a your stat screen...but, maybe the issue is that builds can run and take actions with basically no penalty anymore whatsoever. You can run in circles jumping up and down shooting a bow or slinging spells at the same effectiveness as you could if you had a situation where mobs were not chasing you and you could just focus on attacking. If ranged was simply less effective while kiting the fact that mobs get less chances to hit them wouldn't really be as much of an issue.

Basically it seems like the devs have just pushed things in a direction where melees need their heal and cc baby sitters again yet ranged builds can just carry on as is. That isn't promoting group play, its just making melee pointless.

[KingNite]

How would you exploit my suggestion above?


Playing a caster with shiled.

[Jumiyo]

I'm having a ton of fun on my melee in reaper mode.

Same same - love my Barb in Reaper mode. Was quite concerned at first but all good and love Reaper!

[Skunkhunt42]

Playing a caster with shiled.

This is one of the biggest abominations in this game.

Casters wearing tower shield should not be able to cast spells at all.

There's no trade off playing casters, they have cc, self heal, high defenses, ranged damage, aoe, perma displace, higher damage, buffs, infinity sp thx to the reaper free sp balls...

[Jasparion]

Playing a caster with shiled.

In heavy armor as well? Then really, Im actually okay with that. You still wouldnt hit the heights a melee build would because you wouldnt have access to the melee cores which would be giving bonuses, but if you want to spend all those feats and use up those augment slots so you can wear heavy armor and carry a tower shield, then all the best to you.


This is one of the biggest abominations in this game.

Casters wearing tower shield should not be able to cast spells at all.

There's no trade off playing casters, they have cc, self heal, high defenses, ranged damage, aoe, perma displace, higher damage, buffs, infinity sp thx to the reaper free sp balls...

If you want to spend feats and use augments to reduce failure rate, then you are giving up other things.

The problem is Turbine bringing out shields which are specifically designed to help casters reduce their failure rate. That was a terrible idea. Everything in the game should have a trade off, but casters were gifted shields which just encourages people to then spend feats on Shield Mastery and go down that path.

As I said in my post, the problem with the game is past lives and gear can you get a huge amount of AC/PRR/MRR which allows a ranged build to be nearly as defensive as a melee build, and really not a huge distance behind a tank. That is just plain bad development.

We went from a game which encouraged tanking and healing to a game where everyone could solo everything, or you could group up with 6 monks or rangers or warlocks or whatever and steamroll... but now with Reaper it is obvious the game is looking to returning to having roles for tanking and healing.

Healing I think is working great, with the massive nerf to self-healing. If tanking can be restored then I think Reaper will be incredible.

[Skunkhunt42]

Theres some people solo'ing 10 skulls already, guess what kind of builds....

[Jasparion]

Theres some people solo'ing 10 skulls already, guess what kind of builds....

Which dungeons are they doing, and what level are they?

Pretty sure they arent Melees... :)

So does the Warlock HP buff which can give you about 750 health (Shining Through?) get adjusted by the self-heal reduction? Or does that get a free run?

[Wonedream]

Only melee I know of that can handle Reaper best is Sacred Defender... he will live longer then any other tank I have seen so far...

[Blastyswa]

It's worth noting that there is not a huge difference in the PRR of a fighter and a paladin; a full paladin in sacred defender gets +65 PRR/MRR and a fighter with all of the heavy armour feats and stalwart defender gets +65 PRR/MRR.

Now let's look at this list:
45 Sheltering Item -> Available to everyone, including ranged
18 Insightful PRR (Legendary Boots of Devil Commander) -> Available to everyone, including ranged
9 Quality PRR (Legendary Boots of Devil Commander) - Available to everyone, including ranged
18 Past Lives -> Available to everyone, including ranged
25 Sacred Defense -> Exclusive with barbarians or furyshotting, but available to everyone else
30 Master's Blitz -> Available to everyone, including ranged
10 Miscellaneous Mythic/Reaper Bonuses -> Available to everyone, including ranged
25 Harbored By Light -> Available to anyone with a 5 level paladin dip if they're willing to give up their T5s
25 Cores -> Available to all level 20 paladins, including ranged
10 Epic Damage Reduction -> Available to everyone, including ranged
45 Medium Armor (Epic Hardened Hide) -> Available to everyone, including ranged (if they have proficiency)

So you could, with your build, pick up a crossbow and plink away at things with the exact same defenses PRR as you have right now. Your dps might be a little sub-optimal, but if you swapped out your fighting-style feats for PBS, Rapid Reload and Manyshot (also do you have power attack? Swap that out for IPS) would your dps be much lower then it is now?

The only real incentives I see for paladins to go melee is that zeal only gives doublestrike, (not doubleshot) and that they have no in-built stat to damage with ranged weapons (can be fixed with multiclassing or the harper tree). Or that other classes do ranged better then them.

In terms of stats on any gear; the only incentive I see for melee is that doublestrike is easier to get then doubleshot on items (Cannith crafting gives 17% doublestrike, but only 9% doubleshot).

Melee tends to have 150% stat to damage (if you count offhand attacks as 50% stat to damage) unless they're using a shield (large boost to defense that ranged can't effectively get); while ranged attacks only get 100% (Both ranged and melee have access to KTA and simmilar effects to increase this "equally"). Also, most ranged weapons have a slightly worse critical profile then some melee weapons.

As for feats; melee styles usually give melee power, while ranged feats rarely give any ranged power. Then there's the question what's better damage? Cleave+Greatcleave or IPS?

So melee does have higher damage (In theory) then ranged combat; but mostly just small damage buffs over the ranged counterparts; which is typically offset by ranged characters building less defenses in favor of higher damage (but does not have to be); and by the large amounts of burst damage available to ranged characters via multishot or 10k stars (feats which have no real melee-only equivalent).

So what is the point of going melee? For starters, the game system inherently favors melee for tanking; as many of the most dangerous enemies get up close and personal the tank is likely to be within melee range regardless of if they are ranged or melee fighting style. Melee allows for a shield which using a bow or crossbow doesn't allow; while many shuriken uses would prefer to not have an uncentering shield equipped. And the AoE available to melee in the form of cleave is arguably better suited for someone who can allow the enemy to surround her before wipes everything out (because she can take the hits).

But what about melees who don't want to tank? Arguably they have higher damage if they build as little defenses as ranged; but they don't have the burst damage of multishot or 10k stars. They can get burst damage through fury just like ranged, but without a similar super damage boost they won't be able to match the same burst damage. If (as has been alluded to) Fury gets fixed so that it works with cleaves, it will help their burst damage a bit. Their sustained damage mathematically should be higher then ranged, but having to stay toe-to-toe with dangerous enemies can easily mean the melee is kiting and healing a lot, thus lowering their dps. (or worse; they die and lower their dps by a lot).

There is very little in this game which makes a melee character tankier then a ranged character except for the fact that melee are much more likely to build tanky out of nessesity; and that the classes with the best bonuses for ranged combat are inherently less tanky then those who have more melee leaning abilities. (Even Fighter and Paladin both come with competitive critical profile increases available for ranged weapons!).

The DPS on a pure paladin that uses a crossbow (Or manyshot with a longbow, manyshot doesn't work with crossbows so the provided build doesn't really work anyways) would be incredibly suboptimal. I do completely agree with the statement that a ranged character can be as tanky as a melee, but the build ceases to be effective. Let's take a realistic look at the difference between a melee and a typical partial monk furyshot ranged, which is the typical decent ranged build:

Partial monk ranged loses the core bonuses, sacred defender, and harbored by light because they don't have 20 paladin (Even 14/6 paladin/monk would only have 5 from core), they can't use stance, and they have t5 arcane archer for slayer arrow (And potentially vulnerability arrow as well). That's a loss of 75 PRR/MRR.

They're in cloth armor, because a manyshot build without 10k stars as well is much much worse than the centered version of the build. They just lost 45 PRR.

They're in fury of the wild and not dreadnought. They just lost 30 PRR.

The difference is 150 PRR between the melee build and the ranged build. Now a decent monkcher likely will try for iron skin from shintao for +20 PRR, but it's still not going to likely be over around 150 PRR, even with maxing out PL's for the full 36 instead of 18. That's for a build that actually works. Someone could certainly make a 20 paladin crossbowman in dreadnought using t5 core 6 sacred defender, but it's going to be absolutely terrible; if you really disagree, make one and solo some EE quests and see how terrible the build does compared to an actual paladin or an actual ranged. Now, the melee character using that setup (As TWF, if you're S&B you're no longer still a DPS) is sitting 5-6 times per second or more using haste boost with 9 charges and no downtime thanks to dreadnought core, has +10% doublestrike from zeal as well as additional gear doublestrike over doubleshot, and overall just performs better on DPS. The only reason a 20 paladin crossbowman would work is if it was running backwards at all times shooting behind itself, in which case you're better off dumping all the paladin stuff and going more DPS so you can kill it quicker and run faster.

As to critical profiles, lets compare a longbow and a khopesh. 20 x3 vs. 19-20x3. With improved critical, in dreadnought with overwhelming critical, and with holy sword, the longbow has 18x4 19-20x6 as a profile, while the khopesh has 16-18 x4 19-20x6. The khopesh is critting every time the longbow would for the same damage, and crits on two extra numbers, which is incredibly significant. Furthermore, as anyone who has played both a melee and a ranged can typically tell you, the sustained damage on a well built well played melee is higher than ranged if constant attacking can be maintained, while the ranged has higher burst damage. Notice the "if constant attacking can be maintained", which is because melees are typically exposed to so much more danger than a ranged character.

I'm all for people building 20 paladin crossbowmen, but it's going to be highly inferior to the monk counterpart or the melee counterpart.

[McFlay]

The difference is 150 PRR between the melee build and the ranged build.

Nonsense...because not all melee builds are pure heavy armor/shield paladin defender tank builds. How about you compare one of the many builds that isn't a pure tank to a ranged? What is the difference in defense between a melee monk and a ranged monk? How about between a tempest or a barb and a typical ranged build? You'll find the difference is a heck of a lot smaller than 150 prr.

[Blastyswa]

Nonsense...because not all melee builds are pure heavy armor/shield paladin defender tank builds. How about you compare one of the many builds that isn't a pure tank to a ranged? What is the difference in defense between a melee monk and a ranged monk? How about between a tempest or a barb and a typical ranged build? You'll find the difference is a heck of a lot smaller than 150 prr.

The melee build in question was the melee build talked about in every other line in the post. Taking the words out of context doesnt change that, I was comparing the difference between a pure dreadnought paladin with sacred defender and a thrower build. If you compare a melee monk and a ranged monk (Assuming 12 monk levels and not deep shintao) the melee monk has no extra PRR unless it goes earth stance and the ranged doesnt or something. As for the tempest/barb and the typical ranged build (Again using the same one as before) the tempest has 50 additional PRR (Core 6, Improved Parrying, Light armor with BAB 30) and the barb has 55 or 60 more PRR, depending on medium or heavy armor (barbs at level 12 get +10 PRR in medium armor while raging). Consequently, I completely agree that not all melee builds have over double the PRR of all ranged builds. I was disagreeing with the statement that ranged and melee characters have the same defenses, especially when the example given was a build with 100 PRR and 170 AC. My only statement would be that many melees can get higher defense for less dps sacrifice than ranged, in particular when comparing melee blitzers with armor and ranged furyshotters with monk.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

Maybe because few still have the guts to play melee?

totally misunderstood my comment, but...thanks for the compliment jefe. +1.

[J-mann]

The melee build in question was the melee build talked about in every other line in the post. Taking the words out of context doesnt change that, I was comparing the difference between a pure dreadnought paladin with sacred defender and a thrower build. If you compare a melee monk and a ranged monk (Assuming 12 monk levels and not deep shintao) the melee monk has no extra PRR unless it goes earth stance and the ranged doesnt or something. As for the tempest/barb and the typical ranged build (Again using the same one as before) the tempest has 50 additional PRR (Core 6, Improved Parrying, Light armor with BAB 30) and the barb has 55 or 60 more PRR, depending on medium or heavy armor (barbs at level 12 get +10 PRR in medium armor while raging). Consequently, I completely agree that not all melee builds have over double the PRR of all ranged builds. I was disagreeing with the statement that ranged and melee characters have the same defenses, especially when the example given was a build with 100 PRR and 170 AC. My only statement would be that many melees can get higher defense for less dps sacrifice than ranged, in particular when comparing melee blitzers with armor and ranged furyshotters with monk.

Im sorry, but if you are t5ing sacred defender AND going capstone you are not a melee dps, even dual wielding. Not even in the same ballpark as a dps. A thrower build (or any serious ranged) will outdps you literally on an order of magnitude, and out burst you by two. And still have nearly the same defenses (you keep forgetting 44 percent dodge and 25 incorporeal). A thrower is using fighter so can get stance for 25 prr, iron skin for 20 prr (may trade for more dps), 6 for fury, 18 for pls (what you counted), 10 for reaper (because you counted that, I wouldnt), 10 for edr, 45/18/9 for items. Thats 161, thats with his dodge being 44 vs your what? 4-6? as well as having 10 percent more incorpreal and being RANGED. I measure my builds at 20 as thats more important than the time I spend at 30 (how long does it take to walk to the reincarnation grove?)

Further you bring the party NOTHING that a ranged toon does not bring better, and a caster even better. That is what I am not seeing addressed, not in the least. WHAT does a melee dps bring to the table that ranged and casters do not bring BETTER. Once upon a time it was the sustained dps and better defenses, now that isnt even close to the truth.

Edit: origional count done by Selvera not Blastya, point still stands though. Why are people discounting the much much better dodge and incorpreal?

[J-mann]

Nonsense...because not all melee builds are pure heavy armor/shield paladin defender tank builds. How about you compare one of the many builds that isn't a pure tank to a ranged? What is the difference in defense between a melee monk and a ranged monk? How about between a tempest or a barb and a typical ranged build? You'll find the difference is a heck of a lot smaller than 150 prr.

Yeah, even dual wielding a capstone sacred defender is not a dps in any way shape or form. A better comparison would definitely be a tempest, a barb, or at least a swashbuckler (though they are pretty light on the dps by todays standards). A sacred defender paladin isnt even doing a quarter the dps of a true dps build, and as I said my numbers are at 20 not 30 because 30 isnt very useful in todays game (most will tr right off) and my 30 numbers are showing 161 (without many pls) prr 44 dodge, 25 incorp, blurry/displacement, and plenty of ac (main stat dex, sub stat wis, all to ac). I figure with the reaper trees I can get pretty near 90+dex without too much finagling at 30 and at least 50-60 wis.

[Blastyswa]

Im sorry, but if you are t5ing sacred defender AND going capstone you are not a melee dps, even dual wielding. Not even in the same ballpark as a dps. A thrower build (or any serious ranged) will outdps you literally on an order of magnitude, and out burst you by two. And still have nearly the same defenses (you keep forgetting 44 percent dodge and 25 incorporeal). A thrower is using fighter so can get stance for 25 prr, iron skin for 20 prr (may trade for more dps), 6 for fury, 18 for pls (what you counted), 10 for reaper (because you counted that, I wouldnt), 10 for edr, 45/18/9 for items. Thats 161, thats with his dodge being 44 vs your what? 4-6? as well as having 10 percent more incorpreal and being RANGED. I measure my builds at 20 as thats more important than the time I spend at 30 (how long does it take to walk to the reincarnation grove?)

Further you bring the party NOTHING that a ranged toon does not bring better, and a caster even better. That is what I am not seeing addressed, not in the least. WHAT does a melee dps bring to the table that ranged and casters do not bring BETTER. Once upon a time it was the sustained dps and better defenses, now that isnt even close to the truth.

Edit: origional count done by Selvera not Blastya, point still stands though. Why are people discounting the much much better dodge and incorpreal?

27% dodge. Kind of the entire reason for Hardened Hide Armor. A thrower who is using fighter stance isn't able to adrenaline, I said REAPER AND MYTHIC bonuses, which is counting the little +1-+3's from bonuses on items, not the enhancement trees. We aren't even getting into DPS here (Although the build can solo EH DoJ, so whatever bud) this is strictly about the defense attainable by the monk thrower builds and melee builds. I'm completely for melees getting buffed; I just find it hilarious that your melees have 4-6 dodge and can't output decent blitzing damage.

[J-mann]

27% dodge. Kind of the entire reason for Hardened Hide Armor. A thrower who is using fighter stance isn't able to adrenaline, I said REAPER AND MYTHIC bonuses, which is counting the little +1-+3's from bonuses on items, not the enhancement trees. We aren't even getting into DPS here (Although the build can solo EH DoJ, so whatever bud) this is strictly about the defense attainable by the monk thrower builds and melee builds. I'm completely for melees getting buffed; I just find it hilarious that your melees have 4-6 dodge and can't output decent blitzing damage.

In stance I would either go ld or sd (so 30 more prr for ld, looks like im only 70 prr behind despite being ranged and a real dps doing well over 5 times your damage, more like ten times), I would loose a decent amount of burst and gain on sustaned. No one said that a real melees cant out put damage I said YOUR build cannot output damage because it cannot (dear god the strawman you should go into politics you can twist things into pretzels like they can). Like I said a real ranged dps will out dps you by an order of magnitude, so would a real melee dps build (and it wouldnt have your borderline tank stats hint:because you are a shield away from being a sub-optimal tank). All the while only having 120 less prr but 15 to 20 more dodge and 10 more incorporeal while being RANGED (hint, worth much more than 120 prr to a competent player). So yes dps is a MAJOR factor in this discussion, please stop being intentionally obtuse. Again, a ranged/caster does EVERYTHING you can do, but better, why should I put you in a slot over a ranged character? Simple answer is that if I am min maxing I will not.

[Selvera]

As to critical profiles, lets compare a longbow and a khopesh. 20 x3 vs. 19-20x3. With improved critical, in dreadnought with overwhelming critical, and with holy sword, the longbow has 18x4 19-20x6 as a profile, while the khopesh has 16-18 x4 19-20x6. The khopesh is critting every time the longbow would for the same damage, and crits on two extra numbers, which is incredibly significant. Furthermore, as anyone who has played both a melee and a ranged can typically tell you, the sustained damage on a well built well played melee is higher than ranged if constant attacking can be maintained, while the ranged has higher burst damage. Notice the "if constant attacking can be maintained", which is because melees are typically exposed to so much more danger than a ranged character.

I'm all for people building 20 paladin crossbowmen, but it's going to be highly inferior to the monk counterpart or the melee counterpart.

I said that the dps would be lower then a ranged character built for DPS, this is obvious and a lot of the reason you don't see crossbow paladins running around everywhere. But, a 41-point sacred defender paladin isn't going to top the dps charts of melee dps either, monk, ranger, fighter(kensai) or even barbarian can easily out-dps a 41 point SD build; which makes the comparison of this build's dps to a dps-focused ranged build rather moot.

As for the damage of longbow vs a khopesh, the difference you listed is only 2 threat range at x4 damage, this if you buypass all fortification; is a difference of a damage multiplier from 1.8 (longbow) to 2.2 (khopesh). Yes, this is pretty significant, but the damage multiplier of a soulstone is 0; and the khopesh wielder has a higher chance of being that when the difficulty gets ramped up.

Also; there are various ways of improving the longbow's multiplier, either by using Pulverizer with a Epic Bow of the Silver Flame (2.0 multiplier) or by using named longbows with improved threat ranges (2.2 multiplier). An elf with some AP investment (20 AP) can get both pulverizer and named longbows for a 2.4 multiplier. This still leaves plenty of room for 41 AP in SD. Yes, a khopesh build can get higher damage; but it's not "incredibly suboptimal". Closer to "slightly less".

[CSQ]

If you're like me, you play melee for one of two reasons.

1. You want the TR bonus. Not a great reason, but a reason, and one that I think a lot of people share. I personally like single classing characters and only do splashes if, say, I really don't want to play that class and I can dump some warlock in to make it fast, but as long as the class isn't a pain to play (which really happens for me more with cleric than, say, fighter, since I never really bothered learning to play divine casters and that's my own fault, not the devs', and I play them like really bad fighters with healing spells), I stick with all 20 of a class for the experience of playing the class and to learn how it plays.
2. For fun. I know, I said it, but you can play a game for fun. Not just meta, not just raiding and loot, but fun. I've been really enjoying my quarterstaff monk since the update, and I plan on going all the way to 20 with monk. Is it the most powerful build? Nope! But I enjoy it, for the most part, and that's enough for me.

[Skunkhunt42]

Fun? How you dare?

Reported for trolling, wrong forum my friend. Wrong forum...

[nokowi]

If you're like me, you play melee for one of two reasons.

1. You want the TR bonus. Not a great reason, but a reason, and one that I think a lot of people share. I personally like single classing characters and only do splashes if, say, I really don't want to play that class and I can dump some warlock in to make it fast, but as long as the class isn't a pain to play (which really happens for me more with cleric than, say, fighter, since I never really bothered learning to play divine casters and that's my own fault, not the devs', and I play them like really bad fighters with healing spells), I stick with all 20 of a class for the experience of playing the class and to learn how it plays.
2. For fun. I know, I said it, but you can play a game for fun. Not just meta, not just raiding and loot, but fun. I've been really enjoying my quarterstaff monk since the update, and I plan on going all the way to 20 with monk. Is it the most powerful build? Nope! But I enjoy it, for the most part, and that's enough for me.

"Why play melee?" refers largely to reaper, and usually refers to builds that are not pure tanks.

Someone that plays on higher reaper settings, or even mid settings on harder content could extend this even to melee tanks.


If you are playing level 1-20, you may not be part of the segment affected.

Hopefully you are one of the few that can accept the concept that there might be portions of the game where melee have issues, even if that differs from your own experience.


If someone wants to play R8 difficulty, and they can only do so on a ranged toon, and not their favorite melee builds, then they have a right to complain. R8 could be what is fun for them. That doesn't mean the player is choosing not to have fun on their melee, it means the options does not exist for their preferences, while it does exist for another players preferences (someone who has a favorite ranged build).

[Skunkhunt42]

Looks like we still need a "melee" to pull that str lever in TS....

[AzB]

Looks like we still need a "melee" to pull that str lever in TS....

My caster druid's pet can do it. No melee needed.

[Chai]

Theres some people solo'ing 10 skulls already, guess what kind of builds....

Citation. Id like to see a few of these.

[RoberttheBard]

My caster druid's pet can do it. No melee needed.

Irony: Your druid's pet is melee... /runandhide :p

[Skunkhunt42]

So the solution is to give borelocks a melee pet?

[AzB]

Irony: Your druid's pet is melee... /runandhide :p

And all he does is wait at the entrance until a lever needs pulling or a rune needs to be used.

In other words, useless 99% of the time.

[zehnvhex]

ITT: A bunch of people who do not do high skull reaper content at cap doing some theorycrafting. The fact that anybody is talking about PRR makes that pretty obvious.

Melee are fine if they have someone to enable them.

Fix doesn't need to adjust players at all. The problem is not melee/ranged balance, never has been.



Fix safe spots
Boss health resets on party wipe
Boss mobs gain 1% move speed per health they are missing
Boss mobs with bad AI (Search and Rescue dragon) updated slightly to not be so easily exploited on a case by case basis


Done. No need to rebalance classes at all. Only reason we're beating R10 fights as is are thanks to the plethora of safe spots and the fact that any character can kite most bosses all day. If hey fixed that we'd all be forced back down to ~R6/7 where tank/healing can actually be pulled off at which point any melee that dies needs to learn to not engage mobs with randomized hate lists.

A much more intuitive fix would simply be to remove auto-attack damage from mobs and make all their attacks telegraphed. Plenty of other games do this and it works to a certain degree. DDO doesn't have the engine and/or developer hours to make that sort of change however so simply boosting bosses a little bit would be enough.

[slarden]

I think I am going to mostly run melees for reaper lifes except for final life builds. I like not having to worry about resource management and shrines.

[Skunkhunt42]

I think I am going to mostly run melees for reaper lifes except for final life builds. I like not having to worry about resource management and shrines.

Or just keep playing your borelock, it don't need resources and shrines either.

[Blastyswa]

Or just keep playing your borelock, it don't need resources and shrines either.

If you get through an entire endgame quest without running out of spellpoints on a warlock, you're not doing it right. If that's your experience with warlocks I'd advise posting your build on the warlock forum so some more experience players can give you some tips.

[slarden]

Or just keep playing your borelock, it don't need resources and shrines either. A blasting warlock's dps is too low when relying solely on the 0 spell point dps options. I am running melee through reaper for a reason - it's easy sustainable dps and if PRR and HP is reasonable one-shotting is somewhere between non-existant to extremely rare.

With reaper blasting warlocks are no longer as good as they once were. Various warlock DC builds are better for reaper, but hard to pull off due to the lower DC and spell pen potential compared to wizards. The spell points are used for cc, instakill, etc. with some dps contribution from 0 sp low-dps eld blast stuff. It's a solid build choice, but by no means the best or the only build to play. The build benefits alot from past lifes and gear - it's not an easy button like blasting warlock is.

Blasting warlock isn't dead, it just becomes more marginal the higher skull rating you play so you have to understand it's strengths and limits and choose what to play accordingly.

[slarden]

ITT: A bunch of people who do not do high skull reaper content at cap doing some theorycrafting. The fact that anybody is talking about PRR makes that pretty obvious.

Melee are fine if they have someone to enable them.

Fix doesn't need to adjust players at all. The problem is not melee/ranged balance, never has been.



Fix safe spots
Boss health resets on party wipe
Boss mobs gain 1% move speed per health they are missing
Boss mobs with bad AI (Search and Rescue dragon) updated slightly to not be so easily exploited on a case by case basis


Done. No need to rebalance classes at all. Only reason we're beating R10 fights as is are thanks to the plethora of safe spots and the fact that any character can kite most bosses all day. If hey fixed that we'd all be forced back down to ~R6/7 where tank/healing can actually be pulled off at which point any melee that dies needs to learn to not engage mobs with randomized hate lists.

A much more intuitive fix would simply be to remove auto-attack damage from mobs and make all their attacks telegraphed. Plenty of other games do this and it works to a certain degree. DDO doesn't have the engine and/or developer hours to make that sort of change however so simply boosting bosses a little bit would be enough.

There is a big difference with how you play between R5 and R10 for all builds. It's not so much people don't understand R10 - it has more to do with the bell curve for reaper play is somewhere between R3 and R5 for players as a whole. So build strength is more important when shortmanning middle range reaper quests as you will generally want an optimized party for R10. R10 might include support builds you wouldn't even bring to a short man R3-R5 quest. I have a few builds specifically in mind for reaper 10 level 30 and other builds in mind for leveling 1-30 R3-R5 short man.

[KoobTheProud]

Only reason we're beating R10 fights as is are thanks to the plethora of safe spots and the fact that any character can kite most bosses all day. If hey fixed that we'd all be forced back down to ~R6/7 where tank/healing can actually be pulled off at which point any melee that dies needs to learn to not engage mobs with randomized hate lists.

Kiting is the part of the AI that is most in need of a fix at this point. The fact that almost any mob in the game can be circle-kited successfully in a very tight circle is the biggest break in the game systems in my opinion.

Possible fixes:

1. All bosses, orange-named and champs that do not make a completed attack action (hit, miss, completed cast that either lands, misses or fails to Spell Resistance or is saved against) over any 10 second period in which they are not cc'd or otherwise disabled by an intended game effect immediately regen to 100% health. In effect if a character does not make a game mechanic interaction based on a mob action with one of the types of mobs listed over 10 seconds that mob regens to 100% health.

2. All bosses, orange-named and champs gain a stack of a reflective shield that mirrors damage done to them back on the source of the damage when they have gone 10 full seconds without a completed attack action against a character. Stacks to remain on the mob until it dies or kills a player character.

Both would do the trick.

[Wizza]

Kiting is the part of the AI that is most in need of a fix at this point. The fact that almost any mob in the game can be circle-kited successfully in a very tight circle is the biggest break in the game systems in my opinion.

Possible fixes:

1. All bosses, orange-named and champs that do not make a completed attack action (hit, miss, completed cast that either lands or fails to Spell Resistance or is saved against) over any 10 second period in which they are not cc'd or otherwise disabled by an intended game effect immediately regen to 100% health. In effect if a character does not make a game mechanic interaction based on a mob action with one of the types of mobs listed over 10 seconds that mob regens to 100% health.

2. All bosses, orange-named and champs gain a stack of a reflective shield that mirrors damage done to them back on the source of the damage when they have gone 10 full seconds without a completed attack action against a character. Stacks to remain on the mob until it dies or kills a player character.

Both would do the trick.

3. All the bosses, orange-named and champions will delete your toon as soon as they see you.

[KoobTheProud]

3. All the bosses, orange-named and champions will delete your toon as soon as they see you.

Even if this were true, which I do not believe to be the case, would you rather have:

a) a game in which every big mob could be endlessly kited to victory

or

b) a game in which every big mob would beat a soloist 100% of the time?

For me answer b) is the no-brainer and right now we are living in an a) world.

[cave_diver]

Am using a centered kensai and its great.

People underestimate the sustained DPS of melee in a party with CC, and a tank.

On lower skulls I can tank if I put my shroud set on.

Think it depends, if the tank cant tank cause it gets one shotted (like rednamed bosses in TS R7+), then ranged group is the way to go, but in other content its fine.

[Skunkhunt42]

If you can't tank r10 stuff you are doing it wrong.

Now you just need to intimi then start to run and jump.

Likeaboss.

[goodspeed]

ITT: A bunch of people who do not do high skull reaper content at cap doing some theorycrafting. The fact that anybody is talking about PRR makes that pretty obvious.

Melee are fine if they have someone to enable them.

Fix doesn't need to adjust players at all. The problem is not melee/ranged balance, never has been.



Fix safe spots
Boss health resets on party wipe
Boss mobs gain 1% move speed per health they are missing
Boss mobs with bad AI (Search and Rescue dragon) updated slightly to not be so easily exploited on a case by case basis


Done. No need to rebalance classes at all. Only reason we're beating R10 fights as is are thanks to the plethora of safe spots and the fact that any character can kite most bosses all day. If hey fixed that we'd all be forced back down to ~R6/7 where tank/healing can actually be pulled off at which point any melee that dies needs to learn to not engage mobs with randomized hate lists.

A much more intuitive fix would simply be to remove auto-attack damage from mobs and make all their attacks telegraphed. Plenty of other games do this and it works to a certain degree. DDO doesn't have the engine and/or developer hours to make that sort of change however so simply boosting bosses a little bit would be enough.

lol the heck it wasn't. Were you never segregated being a filthy ranger back in the day?




Even if this were true, which I do not believe to be the case, would you rather have:

a) a game in which every big mob could be endlessly kited to victory

or

b) a game in which every big mob would beat a soloist 100% of the time?

For me answer b) is the no-brainer and right now we are living in an a) world.


omg thats it!! bwahaha devs make it happen I wanna see lol. Make Monsters all Teleport to you. Just instant BAM!!! RIGHT THERE! Come on just for the death threat posts lol.

[Skunkhunt42]

To be fair i think all ranged toons should explode every 10 secs in any quest or dif...

[Mr_Helmet]

To be fair i think all ranged toons should explode every 10 secs in any quest or dif...

/signed

[Skunkhunt42]

Why the devs hate melees?

[Mr_Helmet]

Why the devs hate melees?

We are quite hate-able.

[AzB]

Why the devs hate melees?

They were probably picked on in school by melees.

[Phoenicis]

Kiting is the part of the AI that is most in need of a fix at this point. The fact that almost any mob in the game can be circle-kited successfully in a very tight circle is the biggest break in the game systems in my opinion.

Possible fixes:

1. All bosses, orange-named and champs that do not make a completed attack action (hit, miss, completed cast that either lands, misses or fails to Spell Resistance or is saved against) over any 10 second period in which they are not cc'd or otherwise disabled by an intended game effect immediately regen to 100% health. In effect if a character does not make a game mechanic interaction based on a mob action with one of the types of mobs listed over 10 seconds that mob regens to 100% health.

2. All bosses, orange-named and champs gain a stack of a reflective shield that mirrors damage done to them back on the source of the damage when they have gone 10 full seconds without a completed attack action against a character. Stacks to remain on the mob until it dies or kills a player character.

Both would do the trick.

Either of those happens SSG can kiss my VIP rump goodbye.

I solo mainly to keep my RL interruptions from hampering a party.

Not fair to others to ask them to wait while I deal with RL.

Fix Hireling AI so they actually heal when needed and not blow a heal when I'm 10 HP down, or stand and watch while I frantically try to tell them to heal me as I'm getting beaten to death and I'll stop playing ranged kiters and solo with melee more.

[J-mann]

ITT: A bunch of people who do not do high skull reaper content at cap doing some theorycrafting. The fact that anybody is talking about PRR makes that pretty obvious.

Melee are fine if they have someone to enable them.

Fix doesn't need to adjust players at all. The problem is not melee/ranged balance, never has been.



Fix safe spots
Boss health resets on party wipe
Boss mobs gain 1% move speed per health they are missing
Boss mobs with bad AI (Search and Rescue dragon) updated slightly to not be so easily exploited on a case by case basis


Done. No need to rebalance classes at all. Only reason we're beating R10 fights as is are thanks to the plethora of safe spots and the fact that any character can kite most bosses all day. If hey fixed that we'd all be forced back down to ~R6/7 where tank/healing can actually be pulled off at which point any melee that dies needs to learn to not engage mobs with randomized hate lists.

A much more intuitive fix would simply be to remove auto-attack damage from mobs and make all their attacks telegraphed. Plenty of other games do this and it works to a certain degree. DDO doesn't have the engine and/or developer hours to make that sort of change however so simply boosting bosses a little bit would be enough.

None of this addresses the fact that ranged is superior to melee in every measurable metric. All your suggestions will do is require a tank and a heals for ranged, not change the fact that melees bring NOTHING to the table vs a ranged character besides the great and wondrous ability to more easily become a soulstone. ranged will have better uptime, have equivalant or better dps, far and away better burst, dont have to sit in the splash zone, have a chance to react if they pull agro, have far, far, far better cc, can gear just as much stat defense as a melee dps, and all this at RANGE. Something needs to change in this formula, somewhere, or as ive already experienced, high end content will be almost exclusively ranged.

[Skunkhunt42]

How about you play some r10?

Then you can find your citation.

You and the goal guy keep talking about r10 but you don't event try it out.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

Be aware ya'll.
Testing shows that melee do more dps than ranged/casters on reaper, relatively.

(The percentage reduction (based on skull) of damage of melee) / (The perecentage reduction (based on skull) of damage by ranged or caster) = 1.3

This remains relatively constant across skulls.

Unfortunately I can't link the math, but you can find it on the wiki.


ITT: A bunch of people who do not do high skull reaper content at cap doing some theorycrafting. The fact that anybody is talking about PRR makes that pretty obvious.

Melee are fine if they have someone to enable them.

Fix doesn't need to adjust players at all. The problem is not melee/ranged balance, never has been.



Fix safe spots
Boss health resets on party wipe
Boss mobs gain 1% move speed per health they are missing
Boss mobs with bad AI (Search and Rescue dragon) updated slightly to not be so easily exploited on a case by case basis


Done. No need to rebalance classes at all. Only reason we're beating R10 fights as is are thanks to the plethora of safe spots and the fact that any character can kite most bosses all day. If hey fixed that we'd all be forced back down to ~R6/7 where tank/healing can actually be pulled off at which point any melee that dies needs to learn to not engage mobs with randomized hate lists.

A much more intuitive fix would simply be to remove auto-attack damage from mobs and make all their attacks telegraphed. Plenty of other games do this and it works to a certain degree. DDO doesn't have the engine and/or developer hours to make that sort of change however so simply boosting bosses a little bit would be enough.

+1

[Sam-u-r-eye]

melee provide higher sustained DPS
Monkchers do 25k burst.
Wolves do 15k sustained.

25/1.3 = 19k

The opportunity cost of melee goes up in reaper but you get more dps.

The best players should play melee since it gives the most bang for buck.

just my opinion

obviously you should never melee a dragon

(Pulls out his shuriken)

[nokowi]

melee provide higher sustained DPS
Monkchers do 25k burst.
Wolves do 15k sustained.

25/1.3 = 19k

The opportunity cost of melee goes up in reaper but you get more dps.

The best players should play melee since it gives the most bang for buck.

just my opinion

obviously you should never melee a dragon

(Pulls out his shuriken)

That does not include downtime of running from mob to mob, using that shuriken, waiting for things to be cc'd, needing more player resources (heals) to stay alive, or needing a rez more often than ranged. It's totally naive. That being said, who cares which is better.

The focus should be on making sure melee is fun to play, and making sure all builds are challenged. It's too bad RXP made this about the easiest rewards - we could be having some real player effort put into increasing challenge. As it stands, very few ranged (or melee or caster) players are going to speak up about adding challenge, because that competes with the fastest rewards. Melee are going to spend their time complaining about ranged, instead of how to improve the reaper experience.

How quickly we went from Hurl is too good (players trying to add challenge pre RXP) to reapers need to be cc'd by everything (making reaper easier in the name of "fairness").

Who would have guessed?

[Jasparion]

Citations please. I see this claimed alot on the forums currently, but have yet to see it occur. Not onlyu does it not reflect in game experience, but videos of this occurring on social media are absent.

I would say the videos where there are 100+ deaths would count as brute forcing it. Though Im unsure how many are all ranged type builds and how many are going in with melee types.

Im also unsure how many deaths melee types are having - but Im going to guess a lot.

I could be wrong.

[Skunkhunt42]

That does not include downtime of running from mob to mob, using that shuriken, waiting for things to be cc'd, needing more player resources (heals) to stay alive, or needing a rez more often than ranged. It's totally naive. That being said, who cares which is better.

The focus should be on making sure melee is fun to play, and making sure all builds are challenged. It's too bad RXP made this about the easiest rewards - we could be having some real player effort put into increasing challenge. As it stands, very few ranged (or melee or caster) players are going to speak up about adding challenge, because that competes with the fastest rewards. Melee are going to spend their time complaining about ranged, instead of how to improve the reaper experience.

How quickly we went from Hurl is too good (players trying to add challenge pre RXP) to reapers need to be cc'd by everything (making reaper easier in the name of "fairness").

Who would have guessed?

This.

i don't give a flying f... if ranged toons do 3 times more damage than melees.

I do care that soulstones do 0 dps.

[Lopnel]

I for one LOVE the new reaper mode. IF you are planning to play a melee in the scaling 1-10 here is some advice:
PRR and ARMOR CLASS is going to be a huge focus --> the higher the better. Dodge is great but not always reliable... better for monks, rangers, druids, rogue, bard.
Tactics... not just feat and enhancements but the player itself. Flanking and enemy and playing smart by retreating only to return to fight again later.
-stunning blow is a great feat to take for STRENTH builds... don't forget to throw in charisma for few cleric/fvs or paladin levels to convert some cha into additional str using diving might providing stronger str tactical dc's.
-trip and improved trip work great in one on one situations. Works against some bosses too if your dc is high enough!
-bluff using this feat lowers your threat allowing yourself to flank enemies and deal some backstab damage. CHARISMA is a viable stat to take for melee builds
-improved feint if you have rogue level(s) in your build this feat is a must... bluffing aoe effect and no longer requires combat expertise. Lowers your hate generated while attacking for a short duration.
-DIPLOMACY ... basically -->you see my buddy over there you should attack him not me. Resets your hate generated to all nearby monsters (not just the one you target).

Another good melee tactic is having travel speed clickies. Used for Getting in fast and getting out fast.

As for weapons try using hamstring and limb-chopping! There are no saves versus these added effects that slow enemy movement and attack speed!
Having invis guard is excellent to have --> lures in ranged enemies and having a good move silently aids your ability to attack and not be found. Most of the enemies don't have true seeing however watch out for those crowned critters... most of them do have TS!

Reaper mode forces melees to use tactics and a retreating play-style. If you are not using these tactics you are doomed!

[Sam-u-r-eye]

That does not include downtime of running from mob to mob, using that shuriken, waiting for things to be cc'd, needing more player resources (heals) to stay alive, or needing a rez more often than ranged. It's totally naive. That being said, who cares which is better.

You don't play the game atm(?), and I am running high skull at cap, and in heroics on a melee.
Naive is a hyperbolic thing to call me.


The focus should be on making sure melee is fun to play, and making sure all builds are challenged.

They are fun to play. That's what I'm saying. I don't discount run-time between mobs, but honestly in many cases there isn't run-time.
Take MOD for example. We've been running it bi-weekly on 4 or 5.
Melee dps is king in there.
Take Slavers for example. Tank initiates, holds land, ranged focus the caster down and the melee goes to town. Do you think DOD or even Cleave < IPS with a 30% edge?



t's too bad RXP made this about the easiest rewards - we could be having some real player effort put into increasing challenge.

The reward scaling per skull in heroics is fine. It incentivizes the highest skull possible. I'm a big fan.


As it stands, very few ranged (or melee or caster) players are going to speak up about adding challenge, because that competes with the fastest rewards. Melee are going to spend their time complaining about ranged, instead of how to improve the reaper experience.

How quickly we went from Hurl is too good (players trying to add challenge pre RXP) to reapers need to be cc'd by everything (making reaper easier in the name of "fairness").

Who would have guessed?

I specifically asked for the Hurl nerf BTW and ran with Coco to talk about it.
I played a warlock on Lamma and show-cased what a soul-eater was capable of.

That said, there needs to be something a CC caster can do to a reaper. I don't care if its only stoning them. That's the CCs job, and Reapers are literally everywhere on higher skulls.
It makes for a better experience if your tactical dude can tacticalize the reaper. (I do not think they should be stun immune but that's another issue.)

Cheers, Noko, I know you mean well but don't be callin' me naive.
There's honor in playing a melee, lets not cry until there isn't any.

[Ellihor]

Be aware ya'll.
Testing shows that melee do more dps than ranged/casters on reaper, relatively.

The percentage reduction (based on skull) of damage of melee) / (The perecentage reduction (based on skull) of damage by ranged or caster) = 1.3

This remains relatively constant across skulls.

Unfortunately I can't link the math, but you can find it on the wiki.

Testing shows ranged do more dps, because soul stones do no DPS. And you'll loose blitz, trust me. And besides being a melee, you spend sp to DPS (it's just that it's not yours).


Take MOD for example. We've been running it bi-weekly on 4 or 5.
Melee dps is king in there.

Not a suprise you take MOD as an example, and only example. That raid is the only quest I know with mechanics against ranged. They should make that widespread. What about having that knight debuff to some champs and reapers (you know, there is the debuff to melee attack speed so what?).


Tank initiates, holds land, ranged focus the caster down and the melee goes to town.

And dies. With 2k hp and 250 PRR.


The focus should be on making sure melee is fun to play, and making sure all builds are challenged. It's too bad RXP made this about the easiest rewards - we could be having some real player effort put into increasing challenge. As it stands, very few ranged (or melee or caster) players are going to speak up about adding challenge, because that competes with the fastest rewards. Melee are going to spend their time complaining about ranged, instead of how to improve the reaper experience.

Sad and true that very few ranged players are going to speak up about adding challenge. I have to side M*** on this one, at this point I just wished ranged exploded when they started throwing their bananas. Guess I'll join the dark side soon.

But you are wrong abot this being related to rxp. This is actually about having fun, not about melees competing with ranged in completion times (if that was the case we'd be talking about warlocks instead of ranged). It's terribly frustrating and NOT FUN to die for no reason when hitting the back of a boss... then you just stare at the screen for a whole minute, to come back without buffs/blitz etc and die again (oh wait, you didn't die for no reason, your fault was playing a melee). Or for a random trash mob in non-boss situations, when he aggroes you you are done (also melee is terribly dependent of other party memebers not commiting mistakes - when they do you die, they may or may not).

[Ellihor]

This guy can do so much DPS with his buttocks, can't he? First monk dies from full, idk about his stats, just know his pure. Then I die from 2k hp, 250 PRR.

And no, you can't avoid this cleave even if it has a teller. I tested.

Presenting, the KILLER BUTT:


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

[AzB]

That said, there needs to be something a CC caster can do to a reaper. I don't care if its only stoning them. That's the CCs job, and Reapers are literally everywhere on higher skulls.
.

Ottos irresistable.

[Vish]

You know,
What were seeing is a new playstyle,
That's actually a old playstyle
But the issue is its a bunch of soloers trying teamwork for the first time
When was the last time a cleric was actually needed in a quest?
Not for years
Dead class
Now we're suddenly seeing a complete turnaround
And nobody is used to this new idea,
Heal the party

So it's gonna take time for reaper to influence the whole game
The best are doing it,
The herd will follow

[Chai]

To be fair i think all ranged toons should explode every 10 secs in any quest or dif...

It would do too much damage and nerf demands abound would ensue on the forums soon afterward.

[KoobTheProud]

You know,
What were seeing is a new playstyle,
That's actually a old playstyle
But the issue is its a bunch of soloers trying teamwork for the first time


This is the part that seems to be worth repeating.

People have gotten used to running DPS melee in tandem with other DPS melee with BYOH the standard mode of play. That just does not work in Reaper at high difficulties and it does not work in ways that are immediately apparent to people who try.

The player community will adjust or they will go back to playing Elite as they run the wheel yet again. Reaper is a choice not a demand.

[Mr_Helmet]

But you are wrong abot this being related to rxp. This is actually about having fun, not about melees competing with ranged in completion times (if that was the case we'd be talking about warlocks instead of ranged). It's terribly frustrating and NOT FUN to die for no reason when hitting the back of a boss... then you just stare at the screen for a whole minute, to come back without buffs/blitz etc and die again. Or for a random trash mob in non-boss situations, when he aggroes you you are done (also melee is terribly dependent of other party memebers not commiting mistakes - when they do you die, they may or may not).

SSG is incapable of getting this game right. Just find another game and be happy.

[Mr_Helmet]

This is the part that seems to be worth repeating.

People have gotten used to running DPS melee in tandem with other DPS melee with BYOH the standard mode of play. That just does not work in Reaper at high difficulties and it does not work in ways that are immediately apparent to people who try.

The player community will adjust or they will go back to playing Elite as they run the wheel yet again. Reaper is a choice not a demand.

Watch the above video, please tell me what he could have done differently as a melee to not die.

[Ellihor]

Watch the above video, please tell me what he could have done differently as a melee to not die.

To be fair I could slot a 2 piece LGS so I'd have hp to survive that. By why? Why should I do this? Why should spend 4000 codex runes to be a burden to healer in order to do my role, if I can do this by staying at range? Why should I do this and have zero DPS while wait the heal me to full, or have zero for a minute and subsequently less after raise, if I can just play a ranged and have more burst damage with almost no cost to the party?

The anser to that in a game worth it's salt is that the melee does a lot more damage than ranged to justify people playing them. Not the case in DDO.

[KoobTheProud]

Watch the above video, please tell me what he could have done differently as a melee to not die.

Ok, so lets run the possibilities:

1. Is the cleave on a timer?

If so melee not wearing a shield can run out when the time for it approaches and get out of range. This is a time-honored practice in every other MMO I've played. Some AoE effects are too strong to live through reliably so the people endangered by them run out of range or LOS when the timer is up.

Note that when the video begins Carver is at half-health so it's not like he died 10 seconds into the fight. He died 10 seconds after the video began. Based on Carver's health at the time the video began and at the time that he died it looks like the fight had been going for a minute or so before he died.

2. Is the cleave damage based on a save?

If so melee can boost that save for the fight to try to mitigate the worst results.

3. Is the cleave damage random and likely to occur at any point in time?

If so then melee can swap to a better defensive posture for this fight. Potentially adding a shield to the mix but more likely going to range for the fight and adding what they can do from there. Again, this is a time-honored tactic in MMO's. Not all fights are approachable from the same angles for all classes.

Basically I would have to see the entire fight a couple of times to get a clue as to what the best tactics are. Clearly standing behind the boss and dual-wielding without doing any of the above isn't a 100% survivable tactic. It's possible none of the above would make a difference. Maybe it would take a different tactic to make a 2WF melee viable for the fight. Maybe a 2WF melee just isn't viable for this particular fight and the role for the fight would have to switch to something else that lets the group progress.

A 16 second clip that cuts in halfway through the fight just doesn't give anybody enough info to make a clear call on the issue.

Eliihor, do you get routinely one-shotted standing behind mobs at random, without pulling aggro or is this one of a few fights where that happens? If it's one of a few fights you're likely just to have to adapt your tactics to the fight instead of expecting that what works most of the time will work in those fights as well.

That's what Vish was suggesting and what I responded too.

[Phil7]

Have been playing melee only for almost a year, it was fun, time to say goodbye. RIP melees... again

Last time this happened a lot of people and some friends of mine quitted the game, myself included.
I would do the same again, but I want to finish my main toons past lives first.
So me and my TR buddy are just going to cheese heroic reaper lives with cc-lock builds and freezing ice/paralyzing ranged builds.

And if u think melee is for the fun, well think again. It is not anymore, it used to be.

Now u just die randomly from everything that accidentaly swings at you while chasing ur thrower buddy, get laughed at when u die, from ur teammates who safely kill from ranged, struggle at R1 from rooms of mobs filled with champs who hit u for 150+ dmg at level 10 with each hit (with 100 prr), laugh at ur stunning blow and trip that never lands, despite the fact that you have 54+ Str and crafted tactics item at level 10 and also watch the locks who run r4-5 the whole TR, while a stupid Beast Marked champ 2 shots u in a r3 quest.
YEY!

Nope... sry... not anymore.
Now you get 2 choices, be a man and quit the game or join the *** side so u can properly play reaper and don't smash ur computer.
Playing for ever as a melee is not a choice, because eventually u will just stop playing that toon.

And for the trolls who say "If reaper is too hard4u, then play elite". Reaper won't be hard anymore, because I will just cheese it from now on <3

Maybe SSG will release Armor Up #2 some day, who knows. They are making the same mistakes again, so I guess they will apply the same fixes again.

Edit: Grats to Omni for r10 FoT btw. Let's count how many melees were in the group

[J-mann]

Have you ever played melee in this game? The things you are saying makes me think muchly not.


Ok, so lets run the possibilities:

1. Is the cleave on a timer?

If so melee not wearing a shield can run out when the time for it approaches and get out of range. This is a time-honored practice in every other MMO I've played. Some AoE effects are too strong to live through reliably so the people endangered by them run out of range or LOS when the timer is up.

Note that when the video begins Carver is at half-health so it's not like he died 10 seconds into the fight. He died 10 seconds after the video began. Based on Carver's health at the time the video began and at the time that he died it looks like the fight had been going for a minute or so before he died.

2. Is the cleave damage based on a save?

If so melee can boost that save for the fight to try to mitigate the worst results.

3. Is the cleave damage random and likely to occur at any point in time?

If so then melee can swap to a better defensive posture for this fight. Potentially adding a shield to the mix but more likely going to range for the fight and adding what they can do from there. Again, this is a time-honored tactic in MMO's. Not all fights are approachable from the same angles for all classes.

Basically I would have to see the entire fight a couple of times to get a clue as to what the best tactics are. Clearly standing behind the boss and dual-wielding without doing any of the above isn't a 100% survivable tactic. It's possible none of the above would make a difference. Maybe it would take a different tactic to make a 2WF melee viable for the fight. Maybe a 2WF melee just isn't viable for this particular fight and the role for the fight would have to switch to something else that lets the group progress.

A 16 second clip that cuts in halfway through the fight just doesn't give anybody enough info to make a clear call on the issue.

Eliihor, do you get routinely one-shotted standing behind mobs at random, without pulling aggro or is this one of a few fights where that happens? If it's one of a few fights you're likely just to have to adapt your tactics to the fight instead of expecting that what works most of the time will work in those fights as well.

That's what Vish was suggesting and what I responded too.

1. Likely, but with no tell, how is one suposed to be able to avoid it? Also why should a melee have to switch or get out at these times when ranged does not and gets the same/better dps and much much much better burst?

2. Depends, spells are melee cleaves are not. Not that it matters because ranged dgaf because it has zero impact on them, all the while they get the same dps, better burst, better cc, and very similar stat defenses.

3. So melee need to gimp themselves to be able to play, gotcha. Do you realize how bad that sounds and how obviously biased towards ranged that is? It doesnt matter what trick you come up with, none of that will change the fact that ranged is so vastly superior in the current meta that it makes no logical sense to be anything other than that. Melee is pretty much flavor at this point, bringing nothing to the table that a ranged or caster doesnt do much better.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

Testing shows ranged do more dps, because soul stones do no DPS. And you'll loose blitz, trust me. And besides being a melee, you spend sp to DPS (it's just that it's not yours).

I don't use blitz anymore.


Not a suprise you take MOD as an example, and only example.

I don't, lol. Calm down dude. You didn't even bother to finish reading before telling me I was wrong.


And dies. With 2k hp and 250 PRR.

If you die on 10 skull you have absolutely NO RIGHT TO ASK FOR NERFS. You shouldn't even be able to complete that stuff because the dps is so high. Your argument is invalid because the game isn't balanced around 10 skull. Its there FOR YOUR TO ADAPT TO.

Let's say you were on 7 skull though. You still probably would have died. You selected one of the mob boss types that are tough to melee. Most of the bosses in the game are not a rogue type. Rogues with random cleave, Dragons, etc are immune to you on skull 10. You can deal with that one in particular easily though.

Wait for your affirmation to come off timer.
Get a 4 piece LGS set.

You'll be fine. Will you do less DPS? Well ya. There are encounters that demand something different from your toon. If something isn't working, then adapt.

Don't be a wimp.

Some bosses are force immune.
Some bosses have a particular elemental immunity.
Some bosses do obscene melee damage and need to be kited (I.e., dragons and rogues).
Some bosses require you to have obscene saves (Whisper ending of Haunted Halls).
Some bosses stone you.
Some bosses cast boom.
Some bosses drain your SP.

Let's not suck the variety and interest out of our most difficult content because you're not willing to adapt to an encounter.

[KoobTheProud]

Have you ever played melee in this game? The things you are saying makes me think muchly not.

I only played Rogues, Clerics, Monks and Fighter/Rogue hybrids for the first 6 years I played the game. The character I came back to the game with was a Paladin/Monk/Rogue hybrid.

It's only in the last 4 years that I have played casters in DDO, first Warforged Sorcerors and then various Elven Warlocks and Wizards.

I remember when you used to get eyes over yourself instead of over the mobs to tell you how good your stealth was and when lighting effected the eyes as well as mob facing and distance.

None of your objections makes much sense.

If the cleave is timed you can anticipate it. If it is random you cannot. Anticipation is a skill that comes with time and exposure and there will be 2WF DPS who routinely avoid that death after a few attempts where they see it happen.

I didn't suggest that melee should nerf themselves in Reaper - I suggested that there were likely to be fights where melee didn't want to be close to mobs - maybe even the named fight in question.

I certainly didn't suggest that melee have no role in Reaper. I saw a stationary tank holding mob aggro in the short clip in question and he lived through the cleave. I also saw a bunch of other characters standing in cleave range holding shields and they lived through the cleave also. Sometimes going balls to the wall on DPS is a bad idea. Clearly for the 2WF in this video going balls to the wall got them killed because they were not prepared for the cleave and it one shotted them.

[KoobTheProud]

Some bosses are force immune.
Some bosses have a particular elemental immunity.
Some bosses do obscene melee damage and need to be kited (I.e., dragons and rogues).
Some bosses require you to have obscene saves (Whisper ending of Haunted Halls).
Some bosses stone you.
Some bosses cast boom.
Some bosses drain your SP.

Let's not suck the variety and interest out of our most difficult content because you're not willing to adapt to an encounter.

This is the attitude that makes for a great game.

"Oh, I died to a cleave on hardest difficulty, buff me or nerf the cleave!"

This is the attitude that makes a game into baby food in a hurry and then what's the point of playing it anyway?

[Sam-u-r-eye]

Sometimes going balls to the wall on DPS is a bad idea. Clearly for the 2WF in this video going balls to the wall got them killed because they were not prepared for the cleave and it one shotted them.

+1

[Ellihor]

If you die on 10 skull you have absolutely NO RIGHT TO ASK FOR NERFS. You shouldn't even be able to complete that stuff because the dps is so high. Your argument is invalid because the game isn't balanced around 10 skull. Its there FOR YOUR TO ADAPT TO.

Let's say you were on 7 skull though. You still probably would have died. You selected one of the mob boss types that are tough to melee. Most of the bosses in the game are not a rogue type. Rogues with random cleave, Dragons, etc are immune to you on skull 10. You can deal with that one in particular easily though.

This issue is not related to reaper. It has been in place since the introduction of legendary. And yes, I will adapt, that means, will just TR to a thrower.

I did select that hand picked. Most bosses do not one shot on cleave but still, you are missing the point: why would I play at close range if I can play ranged and not waste party resources/risk death etc.


Wait for your affirmation to come off timer.
Get a 4 piece LGS set.

Stop being ridiculous. You're fighting a battle for a dead cause.


Some bosses are force immune.
Some bosses have a particular elemental immunity.
Some bosses do obscene melee damage and need to be kited (I.e., dragons and rogues).
Some bosses require you to have obscene saves (Whisper ending of Haunted Halls).
Some bosses stone you.
Some bosses cast boom.
Some bosses drain your SP.

What does it has to do with the issue? Look to what point have you come in this melee white knight

[Ellihor]

I saw a stationary tank holding mob aggro in the short clip in question and he lived through the cleave. I also saw a bunch of other characters standing in cleave range holding shields and they lived through the cleave also. Sometimes going balls to the wall on DPS is a bad idea. Clearly for the 2WF in this video going balls to the wall got them killed because they were not prepared for the cleave and it one shotted them.

That warlock not in melee range. He was blasting there and at that distance he's immune to it. You guys are so funny you want to teach me to play melee. Also the tank did die in there, and more than once, but I don't know what's your point when you said "he lived through the cleave", because I lived through the first that killed the monk, but that didn't help a lot did it?

If you played melee, you'd know you can't avoid those cleaves. I have other videos where I start moving out as soon as the teller comes, and it does not matter, the cleave hits you anyways. But even if it did, why would I bother doing that, if I can just go ranged and grab some water?

[Qhualor]

Ok, so lets run the possibilities:

1. Is the cleave on a timer?

If so melee not wearing a shield can run out when the time for it approaches and get out of range. This is a time-honored practice in every other MMO I've played. Some AoE effects are too strong to live through reliably so the people endangered by them run out of range or LOS when the timer is up.

Note that when the video begins Carver is at half-health so it's not like he died 10 seconds into the fight. He died 10 seconds after the video began. Based on Carver's health at the time the video began and at the time that he died it looks like the fight had been going for a minute or so before he died.

2. Is the cleave damage based on a save?

If so melee can boost that save for the fight to try to mitigate the worst results.

3. Is the cleave damage random and likely to occur at any point in time?

If so then melee can swap to a better defensive posture for this fight. Potentially adding a shield to the mix but more likely going to range for the fight and adding what they can do from there. Again, this is a time-honored tactic in MMO's. Not all fights are approachable from the same angles for all classes.

Basically I would have to see the entire fight a couple of times to get a clue as to what the best tactics are. Clearly standing behind the boss and dual-wielding without doing any of the above isn't a 100% survivable tactic. It's possible none of the above would make a difference. Maybe it would take a different tactic to make a 2WF melee viable for the fight. Maybe a 2WF melee just isn't viable for this particular fight and the role for the fight would have to switch to something else that lets the group progress.

A 16 second clip that cuts in halfway through the fight just doesn't give anybody enough info to make a clear call on the issue.

Eliihor, do you get routinely one-shotted standing behind mobs at random, without pulling aggro or is this one of a few fights where that happens? If it's one of a few fights you're likely just to have to adapt your tactics to the fight instead of expecting that what works most of the time will work in those fights as well.

That's what Vish was suggesting and what I responded too.

you don't play melees, do you? you also seem to have never ran that quest before or only ever play a build that typically doesn't fight toe to toe with mobs. when you play melees you learn to look for tells like when a mob is about to cleave. sometimes mobs are slow enough to react in time, but in the case of the video you're either very likely to die depending on your defenses, take a lot of damage depending on your defenses or get lucky and move out in time. there was a lot of spam healing going on, but it looked like the healing didn't cover enough of the damage taken. it didn't look to me much could have been done to avoid the cleave.

that video is a good example of why I have no interest in Reaper.

[Chai]

I would say the videos where there are 100+ deaths would count as brute forcing it. Though Im unsure how many are all ranged type builds and how many are going in with melee types.

Im also unsure how many deaths melee types are having - but Im going to guess a lot.

I could be wrong.

If there are 100+ deaths, the brute force game isnt being won by the players.

[Chai]

A much more intuitive fix would simply be to remove auto-attack damage from mobs and make all their attacks telegraphed. Plenty of other games do this and it works to a certain degree. DDO doesn't have the engine and/or developer hours to make that sort of change however so simply boosting bosses a little bit would be enough.

DDO used to be like that. The common speculation is due to the U5 modifications made to reduce lag, it now plays out that if a mob was in its wind up while you were in its hit box, you will take the hit no matter how far you moved away from the hit box before the strike occurred. Previous to U5 I used to dodge mob arrows with strafing and watch them hit other party members behind me. Some bosses required quality play to tank rather than just stats (chronoscope, lord of blades) because their swings could be dodged through controlling the character rather than just using raw AC to tank it.

[PermaBanned]

This issue is not related to reaper. It has been in place since the introduction of legendary. And yes, I will adapt, that means, will just TR to a thrower.

...why would I play at close range if I can play ranged and not waste party resources/risk death etc.


...why would I bother doing that, if I can just go ranged and grab some water?
Seems to me the answer to those questions starts with a different question: Why are you playing a melee in the first place? Because melee is cool, fun & different from ranged?

I have a melee, and I enjoy it in Reaper very much. It's certainly not easy, especially compared to my (pew-pew not Aura) Warlock. But then that's why I have multiple characters: when I want easy, I drop to easier difficulties or play easier builds; when I want fun & challenge I bust out the melee.

So what do you want?
• Challenge - melee has that.
• Ease - mele doesn't have that.
• Efficiency - not currently a melee thing in my experience.

Why do I play a melee? Because I like it. Why should anyone else play a melee? Because they like it. Simply put: if someone doesn't want what melee play offers, they should play a non-melee.

[Jasparion]

If there are 100+ deaths, the brute force game isnt being won by the players.

It is if they eventually beat the final boss.

[PermaBanned]

If there are 100+ deaths, the brute force game isnt being won by the players.

It is if they eventually beat the final boss.
Isn't there a stacking /per death Reaper XP penalty? I'm not one to bother checking out the XP report all that often, but I've heard several folks in-game mention it. If there is such a thing, what is "won" by beating the boss after repeated deaths?

[Jasparion]

Isn't there a stacking /per death Reaper XP penalty? I'm not one to bother checking out the XP report all that often, but I've heard several folks in-game mention it. If there is such a thing, what is "won" by beating the boss after repeated deaths?

Being the first to beat the boss, I would think.

Plus, Reaper 10 level chance at buffed named loot in the chest.

[Chai]

It is if they eventually beat the final boss.

Brute force =/= losing 100x but winning once.

Unless its the mobs saying they brute forced the players. :p

[starbuck1771]

Because swords are cool

[PermaBanned]

Being the first to beat the boss, I would think.
If eating a hundred Res Cakes gets them the "I win" feeling, then let them eat Cake.


Plus, Reaper 10 level chance at buffed named loot in the chest.
If they're eating a ton of Res Cakes to get that gear, the bonuses are too small to prevent them from needing a ton more after they have it ;)

[Kotharsjach]

You missed the biggest difference. With the way the game works, ranged have much better ability to move their hit box away from where an attack is coming. Especially for AoE type attacks, while maintaining their DPS. The games AI simply isn't capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, so melee opponents will always stop to swing. Nor is it given the ability to track targets that ranged players have, so the mob's arrows don't chase targets the way ours do.

Personally I would LOVE to see something like this - Two weapon fighting/Two handed fighting - This feat also gives a +8% combat style to movement speed and a +10% combat style to the reach of your weapon (hitbox)............. with a stacking bonus per tier of feat including perfect a melee would have +32% movement speed and a +40% hitbox range extension. Naturally you would have to have the combat style weapons equipped for this bonus to apply. So if a caster wants to burn 4 feats to get the bonus duel-wielding scepters, sure that's a choice and a sacrifice.

Melees would be able to better duck in and out of combat, get to their targets faster, land blows on mobile targets better.........etc. And most of all, big boost in fun factor in playing a melee.

[J-mann]

I only played Rogues, Clerics, Monks and Fighter/Rogue hybrids for the first 6 years I played the game. The character I came back to the game with was a Paladin/Monk/Rogue hybrid.

It's only in the last 4 years that I have played casters in DDO, first Warforged Sorcerors and then various Elven Warlocks and Wizards.

I remember when you used to get eyes over yourself instead of over the mobs to tell you how good your stealth was and when lighting effected the eyes as well as mob facing and distance.

None of your objections makes much sense.

If the cleave is timed you can anticipate it. If it is random you cannot. Anticipation is a skill that comes with time and exposure and there will be 2WF DPS who routinely avoid that death after a few attempts where they see it happen.

I didn't suggest that melee should nerf themselves in Reaper - I suggested that there were likely to be fights where melee didn't want to be close to mobs - maybe even the named fight in question.

I certainly didn't suggest that melee have no role in Reaper. I saw a stationary tank holding mob aggro in the short clip in question and he lived through the cleave. I also saw a bunch of other characters standing in cleave range holding shields and they lived through the cleave also. Sometimes going balls to the wall on DPS is a bad idea. Clearly for the 2WF in this video going balls to the wall got them killed because they were not prepared for the cleave and it one shotted them.

It is clearly evident that you have not played a melee in the modern meta. Seriously, your suggestion is to lower your melees dps to get tougher, well that would be valid if ranged werent ALREADY OUT DPSING melee. Your suggestions are, quite simply, bad. Once again, what does a melee bring to the party that a ranged or caster isnt doing better? It is evident the answer is nothing, in fact it is further evident by your suggestions that they are in fact a detriment to the party over another ranged. Your suggestion that there are fights that melee shouldnt be close to mobs is assinine to the 9th degree, show me a single fight in the game where a ranged is useless? quite simply not a single one exists, even if you had antiranged mechanics, they can simply stand in melee range for 0 detriment. This option does not exist for melee toons. The more you post the more and more it is clear you have no clue about balance between the playstyles.

[goodspeed]

Hey maybe we should have penalties like a reduction in reaper xp with team deaths and stuff. And a penalty for leaving the dungeon with the lock. Really band teamwork together right?

[Wizza]

Hey maybe we should have penalties like a reduction in reaper xp with team deaths and stuff. And a penalty for leaving the dungeon with the lock. Really band teamwork together right?

Quest failed if one party member dies

[KomradKillMachine]

Quest failed if one party member dies

Quest failed, Char loses 10 levels, game uninstalled, CC charged $50 everytime a party member dies.

[Chai]

Once again something heavily lobbied for on the forums in a previous era backfires, creating an issue in the current era. Much of this has to do with previous heavy lobbying to keep mob ranged DPS at a fraction of what mob melee DPS is. Its the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about, and a remnant of the melee meta era when people refused arcane archers to groups because they were "gimps". If they raised mob ranged back up to where mob melee damage is currently, it would invalidate all of the claims that ranged is more safe due to the ability to kite, risk factors would be similar for each style, and no other adjustments would be needed. When this inevitably gets shouted down yet again, by many of the same folks demanding melee parity currently, the true agenda will be transparent.

[PermaBanned]

Once again something heavily lobbied for on the forums in a previous era backfires, creating an issue in the current era. Much of this has to do with previous heavy lobbying to keep mob ranged DPS at a fraction of what mob melee DPS is. Its the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about, and a remnant of the melee meta era when people refused arcane archers to groups because they were "gimps". If they raised mob ranged back up to where mob melee damage is currently, it would invalidate all of the claims that ranged is more safe due to the ability to kite, risk factors would be similar for each style, and no other adjustments would be needed. When this inevitably gets shouted down yet again, by many of the same folks demanding melee parity currently, the true agenda will be transparent.I'm not so sure that one flys Chai. Even if Ranged Mobs did equivalent DPS to Melee Mobs, Ranged Characters would still be safer than Melee Characters because Ranged Characters are still only taking Ranged Mob damage while Melee Characters are still taking Ranged and Melee Mob damage. So while both Character types are facing increased incoming damage, Ranged Characters are still subject to less incoming DPS than Melee Characters - or did I miss something there?

[KoobTheProud]

There's a big difference in DPS between a melee character and a ranged character. The melee does much more sustained DPS because the attacks are much faster. I switched my Ranger/Rogue back to melee to play with stealth some more, working out some of the aggro issues in the process, and the thing that I noticed right away was how much more damage even a couple of daggers do compared to the GXBow. Mobs that were taking 4 or 5 shots from the GXBow were dropping in a couple of seconds in front of the flashing blades.

The idea that there's no trade off that matches the defensive loss of being in close proximity is wrong.

This is a play style issue and it's going to require a very tight play style to make that trade off worthwhile. It's out there but people need to find it, at which point they will be doing more damage than most ranged characters can approach.

Of course if the easy button is what you're looking for then just whining heavily about how unfair it is that you die when you're careless/don't know the fight/get unlucky is probably the way to go. SSG might boost melee defenses significantly or cut down mob damage significantly and then we'd switch to a mostly melee meta again as a result of that.

[ReaperLover]

agreed with everything you said... it's basically ranged mode. not reaper mode.

it's also unbelievable how they don't give a flying frak. just kill melee. who cares. make it completely useless. who cares...

this can't be shortsightedness.

this is plain middle finger for the melee.

[Vish]

Y'all,
It's a perspective thing
Everyone's talking about reaper 10

That's not the norm
That's a future that hasn't been written yet
Right now,
You better meta 1-5

It's the new range of normal, hard, elite
Those past life's show now
And there's a new way of tackling it
Healers and tanks

But everyone's looking at 10
And crying ranged only
Because its too deadly
Well,
How many fing reaper points you got?
Right?
You guys are too far ahead of the curve before
The curve has new toys added to it

And you're beating youR head against a wall

[jalont]

Y'all,
It's a perspective thing
Everyone's talking about reaper 10

That's not the norm
That's a future that hasn't been written yet
Right now,
You better meta 1-5

It's the new range of normal, hard, elite
Those past life's show now
And there's a new way of tackling it
Healers and tanks

But everyone's looking at 10
And crying ranged only
Because its too deadly
Well,
How many fing reaper points you got?
Right?
You guys are too far ahead of the curve before
The curve has new toys added to it

And you're beating youR head against a wall

100 percent this. You're playing DDO. The ridiculous power creep will catch up in an update or two and 10S will be like playing normal again and we'll all have to complain about how the game is too easy again. Enjoy the difficulty for the few months it lasts.

[SerPounce]

I'm not so sure that one flys Chai. Even if Ranged Mobs did equivalent DPS to Melee Mobs, Ranged Characters would still be safer than Melee Characters because Ranged Characters are still only taking Ranged Mob damage while Melee Characters are still taking Ranged and Melee Mob damage. So while both Character types are facing increased incoming damage, Ranged Characters are still subject to less incoming DPS than Melee Characters - or did I miss something there?

As a percentage increase in incoming damage raising mob ranged DPS will be a bigger change for ranged PCs than melee PCs. Eg. if right now melee mobs do 100 dps and ranged mobs do 10 dps then melee PCs take 110 dps, and ranged PCs take 10 dps. If this was changed to 100/100, then melee PCs would take 200 dps, and ranged PCs 100 dps, a little less than a 100% increase for melees while a 1000% increase for ranged.

Also *generally speaking* melee builds are going to have better defenses than ranged builds so they're better equipped to deal with an increase in incoming damange.

[ReaperLover]

most people looking for reaper 1 solo...

if melee you get hit continuously.

if ranged you kite.

healing reduction works only against melee.

---------------

ranged doesn't need to adapt anything.

and only melee have to?

i will actually start banging my head against a wall soon...

[RoberttheBard]

most people looking for reaper 1 solo...

if melee you get hit continuously.

if ranged you kite.

healing reduction works only against melee.

Hmm, I get the same damage on a dot from reapers on my AA as I do on my Assassin, so no? The reduction is the same across the board. That same reaper can teleport to me on my AA, no matter where I am, or how much I kite. Again, no, the debuff applies equally to all.


---------------

ranged doesn't need to adapt anything.

and only melee have to?

i will actually start banging my head against a wall soon...

You obviously haven't played ranged in Reaper? I have, and I have had to adjust what and how I play to compensate for the couple of issues I listed above. I've also had to adjust for higher mob saves vs imbues on my AA, just as I've had to adjust to needing a higher DC on my Assassin for Assassinate. Stop banging your head on the wall, you've obviously knocked something loose.

[SerPounce]

most people looking for reaper 1 solo...

if melee you get hit continuously.

if ranged you kite.

healing reduction works only against melee.

---------------

ranged doesn't need to adapt anything.

and only melee have to?

i will actually start banging my head against a wall soon...

If we're talking soloing heroic reaper 1, I still like melee. Sure you need to mange your healing a bit more, but you can still faceroll most content, and you're going to do it a lot quicker by jumping in and cleaving then by plink-plinking mobs while kiting in a circle. I'm on my second life now soling reaper 1/2. First one a barbarian, now on a monk/fighter. Both have performed quite well, and my characters aren't that ground out (3/4 life toon, mostly cannith crafted gear) and I'm not an amazing player.

If you're looking for the best build to get achievement style completions for then sure ranged/caster is probably the way to go (not that I really know anything about that). But for fast solo completions melee still works great.

[Gremmlynn]

I only played Rogues, Clerics, Monks and Fighter/Rogue hybrids for the first 6 years I played the game. The character I came back to the game with was a Paladin/Monk/Rogue hybrid.

It's only in the last 4 years that I have played casters in DDO, first Warforged Sorcerors and then various Elven Warlocks and Wizards.

I remember when you used to get eyes over yourself instead of over the mobs to tell you how good your stealth was and when lighting effected the eyes as well as mob facing and distance.

None of your objections makes much sense.

If the cleave is timed you can anticipate it. If it is random you cannot. Anticipation is a skill that comes with time and exposure and there will be 2WF DPS who routinely avoid that death after a few attempts where they see it happen.

I didn't suggest that melee should nerf themselves in Reaper - I suggested that there were likely to be fights where melee didn't want to be close to mobs - maybe even the named fight in question.

I certainly didn't suggest that melee have no role in Reaper. I saw a stationary tank holding mob aggro in the short clip in question and he lived through the cleave. I also saw a bunch of other characters standing in cleave range holding shields and they lived through the cleave also. Sometimes going balls to the wall on DPS is a bad idea. Clearly for the 2WF in this video going balls to the wall got them killed because they were not prepared for the cleave and it one shotted them.I think you are missing their point.

It's not that anything you say isn't plausible. It's that, with the exception, maybe, of the tank, there is really no good reason to be a melee in this game.

For all those reasons you bring up.

There simply aren't comparable trade offs to be payed by ranged players, so it is always at least as good and often better to just build for range and not have to deal with making the wrong choice as to which way to gimp oneself to deal with any particular mob.

[KoobTheProud]

I think you are missing their point.

It's not that anything you say isn't plausible. It's that, with the exception, maybe, of the tank, there is really no good reason to be a melee in this game.

For all those reasons you bring up.

There simply aren't comparable trade offs to be payed by ranged players, so it is always at least as good and often better to just build for range and not have to deal with making the wrong choice as to which way to gimp oneself to deal with any particular mob.

There's a big trade off to be made when playing a DPS focused ranged character vs a DPS focused melee character. At heroic levels that trade off is damage pure and simple except for Warlocks and builds designed to do AoE damage. Even then the melee cleaver is often doing similar damage but without spending resources in the process, again excepting the Warlock case.

I have 3 characters I am playing off and on at this point.

The main is an Evoker-based FvS. She has the lowest DPS of the 3 and in Elite content she plugs through, with mob packs that are susceptible to Blade Barrier being easy and all other fights tending to be a PITA in one way or the other.

The secondary is a Ranger/Rogue that I flip back and forth between GXBow and dual-wielding Scimi's or Daggers. The reason I keep flipping him is that the GXBow is just not as good for solo damage as the 2WF. In Elite content I wind up kiting some of the higher hitpoint mobs and all of the bosses and it takes a bit to kill them. The 2WF build basically downs stuff easily and the trade-off is that I can only approach tough mobs/packs when I have Uncanny Dodge or Meld into Darkness plus Harper Pin available to get me through the potential trap of being immobilized in front of a lot of damage. The melee side of the Ranger/Rogue is better at DPS whether I take Dance of Death and Dual Perfection or Measure the Foe and Knife Specialization. It's not even close against packs and really it's not close against any very tough mob with lots of hitpoints. Cuisinart beats a shot every second no matter how you look at it.

The third is a little Warlock and her DPS is very similar to the melee Ranger/Rogue, just at range.

The point of all of the above is that people who say that their defenses are the only part of the equation that is out of whack are being just disingenuous in their presentation. A 2WF melee does a tremendous amount of damage compared to the cost of swinging. Much more damage than any ranged character, including a Warlock in most cases, is likely to be able to sustain. The trade off is that they're standing right next to the mob to do that damage and are addressing a much more limited hit box in the process. That's a trade off. The question is how to best address it as the 2WF in question.

Active players who really like playing their characters probably just stay 2WF and profit from their active play.

Less active players who like to park it next to the target and just do their rotation, well maybe they *should* get a ranged toon instead. Although most of the ranged characters are pretty active in avoiding damage.

[Gremmlynn]

Once again something heavily lobbied for on the forums in a previous era backfires, creating an issue in the current era. Much of this has to do with previous heavy lobbying to keep mob ranged DPS at a fraction of what mob melee DPS is. Its the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about, and a remnant of the melee meta era when people refused arcane archers to groups because they were "gimps". If they raised mob ranged back up to where mob melee damage is currently, it would invalidate all of the claims that ranged is more safe due to the ability to kite, risk factors would be similar for each style, and no other adjustments would be needed. When this inevitably gets shouted down yet again, by many of the same folks demanding melee parity currently, the true agenda will be transparent.Well, ranged would still actually be better off as they would only be dealing with that mob ranged DPS while kiteing, melee would have to deal with both melee and ranged DPS.

There really isn't an easy fix for this, as any good fix would take quite a bit of coding and probably stress processors as well. Things like significant penalties for shooting into melee engagements, penalties for shooting while engaged by melee, attacks of opportunity, etc.

[KoobTheProud]

The problem would mostly be solved if everybody wasn't playing Reaper at this point.

If you're not particularly skilled as a player but you've been convinced that Reaper is the new default, well melee are going to be the redheaded stepchild in that arrangement because they're going to be flopping over like Kenny on half the pulls and convinced melee is completely broken in the process.

It's maybe not politically correct to say it but if Reaper is a difficulty in which anybody can survive, well it's not Reaper.

[RoberttheBard]

Well, ranged would still actually be better off as they would only be dealing with that mob ranged DPS while kiteing, melee would have to deal with both melee and ranged DPS.

How does that work, exactly? Because, for example, the ranged skeletons in Menechtarun can hit you from half way across the map, I've seen it happen.


There really isn't an easy fix for this, as any good fix would take quite a bit of coding and probably stress processors as well. Things like significant penalties for shooting into melee engagements, penalties for shooting while engaged by melee, attacks of opportunity, etc.

You mean things like animations playing, but no arrows being fired, that happens every day now? I've seen that a lot, and I mean a lot. Significant penalties for shooting a melee mob that is actively attacking you already exist too: I take more damage on my ranged toon than I would on my sword and board paladin, when mobs actually hit me. It's a real thing.

[KoobTheProud]

How does that work, exactly? Because, for example, the ranged skeletons in Menechtarun can hit you from half way across the map, I've seen it happen.



You mean things like animations playing, but no arrows being fired, that happens every day now? I've seen that a lot, and I mean a lot. Significant penalties for shooting a melee mob that is actively attacking you already exist too: I take more damage on my ranged toon than I would on my sword and board paladin, when mobs actually hit me. It's a real thing.

The real problem is that the AI to deal with ranged characters effectively is mostly not in place. That's the only problem that I see in the current combat systems from a solo perspective. Even my melees can exploit the AI if they need too to kill a particular mob with a nasty melee effect.

If you look at the R10 Hound completions you see the problem in a nutshell. A fully geared obviously competent tank with 5k-ish hitpoints is kiting in a non-stop circle with Xyzzy and a couple of pups on him. When he gets hit twice, meaning he lagged for a split-second, he dies and the raid slowly wipes at that point. Other than that it is just hopping in a circle for a few minutes and using Intimidate on cooldown. Clearly that is an AI failure because he's just circle-kiting against 3 mobs and they never catch up to him except when his connection burps for a second.

[Gremmlynn]

There's a big trade off to be made when playing a DPS focused ranged character vs a DPS focused melee character. At heroic levels that trade off is damage pure and simple except for Warlocks and builds designed to do AoE damage. Even then the melee cleaver is often doing similar damage but without spending resources in the process, again excepting the Warlock case.

I have 3 characters I am playing off and on at this point.

The main is an Evoker-based FvS. She has the lowest DPS of the 3 and in Elite content she plugs through, with mob packs that are susceptible to Blade Barrier being easy and all other fights tending to be a PITA in one way or the other.

The secondary is a Ranger/Rogue that I flip back and forth between GXBow and dual-wielding Scimi's or Daggers. The reason I keep flipping him is that the GXBow is just not as good for solo damage as the 2WF. In Elite content I wind up kiting some of the higher hitpoint mobs and all of the bosses and it takes a bit to kill them. The 2WF build basically downs stuff easily and the trade-off is that I can only approach tough mobs/packs when I have Uncanny Dodge or Meld into Darkness plus Harper Pin available to get me through the potential trap of being immobilized in front of a lot of damage. The melee side of the Ranger/Rogue is better at DPS whether I take Dance of Death and Dual Perfection or Measure the Foe and Knife Specialization. It's not even close against packs and really it's not close against any very tough mob with lots of hitpoints. Cuisinart beats a shot every second no matter how you look at it.

The third is a little Warlock and her DPS is very similar to the melee Ranger/Rogue, just at range.

The point of all of the above is that people who say that their defenses are the only part of the equation that is out of whack are being just disingenuous in their presentation. A 2WF melee does a tremendous amount of damage compared to the cost of swinging. Much more damage than any ranged character, including a Warlock in most cases, is likely to be able to sustain. The trade off is that they're standing right next to the mob to do that damage and are addressing a much more limited hit box in the process. That's a trade off. The question is how to best address it as the 2WF in question.

Active players who really like playing their characters probably just stay 2WF and profit from their active play.

Less active players who like to park it next to the target and just do their rotation, well maybe they *should* get a ranged toon instead. Although most of the ranged characters are pretty active in avoiding damage.Try using a heavy repeater in your comparison. A GXbow is more of a spike damage/CC weapon than it is a straight up DPS weapon. Gxbow is, IMO, closer to what ranged should be like in this, or really any, game. Ranged should compare DPS-wise to tanks IMO, though with other perks thrown in such as spikes and CC. This is due to having comparable survival advantages and more flexible engagement options (they often need to do no more than turn a bit to engage a new target and moving targets offer much less difficulty).

So, to my mind, what you are describing is about as close as the game comes to being where it should be. If your Gxbow were under-performing to a full up tank build, I'd say you have a valid concern though.

[Gremmlynn]

How does that work, exactly? Because, for example, the ranged skeletons in Menechtarun can hit you from half way across the map, I've seen it happen.If so they can also hit melee from half way across the map. So unless the melee mobs can also hit you from half way across the map, melee are going to be at a disadvantage.


You mean things like animations playing, but no arrows being fired, that happens every day now? I've seen that a lot, and I mean a lot. Significant penalties for shooting a melee mob that is actively attacking you already exist too: I take more damage on my ranged toon than I would on my sword and board paladin, when mobs actually hit me. It's a real thing.If as many mobs are hitting your ranged character as your S&B I'd say you simply aren't taking advantage of the rather healthy kiteing options the game offers. This would explain your confusion in the first part though.

[KoobTheProud]

Try using a heavy repeater in your comparison. A GXbow is more of a spike damage/CC weapon than it is a straight up DPS weapon. Gxbow is, IMO, closer to what ranged should be like in this, or really any, game. Ranged should compare DPS-wise to tanks IMO, though with other perks thrown in such as spikes and CC. This is due to having comparable survival advantages and more flexible engagement options (they often need to do no more than turn a bit to engage a new target and moving targets offer much less difficulty).

So, to my mind, what you are describing is about as close as the game comes to being where it should be. If your Gxbow were under-performing to a full up tank build, I'd say you have a valid concern though.

I don't disagree with what you're saying.

I don't use a heavy repeater on the Ranger/Rogue because it costs me a feat to do that and the ammo requirements are really annoying, basically requiring me to use +3 bolts from Deneith instead of switching the +5's around depending on what I am fighting at the moment. I also have noticed in the past that repeaters have a tendency to miss at a high ammo cost after you kill one target and before you lock onto the next. However you're right the DPS would be a bit higher with a repeater at a significantly larger opportunity cost.

I do take exception to the overall damage argument though. Ranged classes do not do as much damage, except via AoE effects, as DPS melee do. I already build in that concept to my planning and like I said above when I get frustrated at plinking and kiting, which is a safe but not particularly fast way to level, I switch over to a more tried-and-true method, which is optimized melee DPS. In that case I am meta-gaming the defenses required and being careful not to engage the wrong fight when my CD's are down.

[J-mann]

I'm not so sure that one flys Chai. Even if Ranged Mobs did equivalent DPS to Melee Mobs, Ranged Characters would still be safer than Melee Characters because Ranged Characters are still only taking Ranged Mob damage while Melee Characters are still taking Ranged and Melee Mob damage. So while both Character types are facing increased incoming damage, Ranged Characters are still subject to less incoming DPS than Melee Characters - or did I miss something there?

The only thing you missed is if you know how to play then ranged mobs miss a ranged character over half the time too. L2P for a lot of the people in here if they think ranged an melee are anywhere near on the same level.


There's a big difference in DPS between a melee character and a ranged character. The melee does much more sustained DPS because the attacks are much faster. I switched my Ranger/Rogue back to melee to play with stealth some more, working out some of the aggro issues in the process, and the thing that I noticed right away was how much more damage even a couple of daggers do compared to the GXBow. Mobs that were taking 4 or 5 shots from the GXBow were dropping in a couple of seconds in front of the flashing blades.

The idea that there's no trade off that matches the defensive loss of being in close proximity is wrong.

This is a play style issue and it's going to require a very tight play style to make that trade off worthwhile. It's out there but people need to find it, at which point they will be doing more damage than most ranged characters can approach.

Of course if the easy button is what you're looking for then just whining heavily about how unfair it is that you die when you're careless/don't know the fight/get unlucky is probably the way to go. SSG might boost melee defenses significantly or cut down mob damage significantly and then we'd switch to a mostly melee meta again as a result of that.

No, a properly built ranged will do similar or much better dps than a melee depending on the style. What I am seeing here is that you dont know how to properly build ranged characters, a shuri or a repeater will have dps right on par with a melee while being much much safer.


As a percentage increase in incoming damage raising mob ranged DPS will be a bigger change for ranged PCs than melee PCs. Eg. if right now melee mobs do 100 dps and ranged mobs do 10 dps then melee PCs take 110 dps, and ranged PCs take 10 dps. If this was changed to 100/100, then melee PCs would take 200 dps, and ranged PCs 100 dps, a little less than a 100% increase for melees while a 1000% increase for ranged.

Also *generally speaking* melee builds are going to have better defenses than ranged builds so they're better equipped to deal with an increase in incoming damange.

No, melees do not have better defenses unless they are going tank. This was already covered earlier in the thread, and no the ratio doesnt matter, absolutes matter. Or do you think that a poor man with 1 dollar in the bank getting 10 dollars is much better off than a rich man will millions getting 10k? Your idea also discounts that ranged can avoid ranged almost aswell as they avoid melee if they know how to play.


Hmm, I get the same damage on a dot from reapers on my AA as I do on my Assassin, so no? The reduction is the same across the board. That same reaper can teleport to me on my AA, no matter where I am, or how much I kite. Again, no, the debuff applies equally to all.



You obviously haven't played ranged in Reaper? I have, and I have had to adjust what and how I play to compensate for the couple of issues I listed above. I've also had to adjust for higher mob saves vs imbues on my AA, just as I've had to adjust to needing a higher DC on my Assassin for Assassinate. Stop banging your head on the wall, you've obviously knocked something loose.

reaper teleport doesnt matter, circle kite ignores it completely if you know what you are doing. Melees need drastically more healing, so the self healing nerf impacts them far and away more.


If we're talking soloing heroic reaper 1, I still like melee. Sure you need to mange your healing a bit more, but you can still faceroll most content, and you're going to do it a lot quicker by jumping in and cleaving then by plink-plinking mobs while kiting in a circle. I'm on my second life now soling reaper 1/2. First one a barbarian, now on a monk/fighter. Both have performed quite well, and my characters aren't that ground out (3/4 life toon, mostly cannith crafted gear) and I'm not an amazing player.

If you're looking for the best build to get achievement style completions for then sure ranged/caster is probably the way to go (not that I really know anything about that). But for fast solo completions melee still works great.

Trust me your melee is not out doing ranged as soon as the ranged gets ips. Further what exactly does your melee do that the ranged doesnt do better, besides becoming a soulstone.

[J-mann]

There's a big trade off to be made when playing a DPS focused ranged character vs a DPS focused melee character. At heroic levels that trade off is damage pure and simple except for Warlocks and builds designed to do AoE damage. Even then the melee cleaver is often doing similar damage but without spending resources in the process, again excepting the Warlock case.

I have 3 characters I am playing off and on at this point.

The main is an Evoker-based FvS. She has the lowest DPS of the 3 and in Elite content she plugs through, with mob packs that are susceptible to Blade Barrier being easy and all other fights tending to be a PITA in one way or the other.

The secondary is a Ranger/Rogue that I flip back and forth between GXBow and dual-wielding Scimi's or Daggers. The reason I keep flipping him is that the GXBow is just not as good for solo damage as the 2WF. In Elite content I wind up kiting some of the higher hitpoint mobs and all of the bosses and it takes a bit to kill them. The 2WF build basically downs stuff easily and the trade-off is that I can only approach tough mobs/packs when I have Uncanny Dodge or Meld into Darkness plus Harper Pin available to get me through the potential trap of being immobilized in front of a lot of damage. The melee side of the Ranger/Rogue is better at DPS whether I take Dance of Death and Dual Perfection or Measure the Foe and Knife Specialization. It's not even close against packs and really it's not close against any very tough mob with lots of hitpoints. Cuisinart beats a shot every second no matter how you look at it.

The third is a little Warlock and her DPS is very similar to the melee Ranger/Rogue, just at range.

The point of all of the above is that people who say that their defenses are the only part of the equation that is out of whack are being just disingenuous in their presentation. A 2WF melee does a tremendous amount of damage compared to the cost of swinging. Much more damage than any ranged character, including a Warlock in most cases, is likely to be able to sustain. The trade off is that they're standing right next to the mob to do that damage and are addressing a much more limited hit box in the process. That's a trade off. The question is how to best address it as the 2WF in question.

Active players who really like playing their characters probably just stay 2WF and profit from their active play.

Less active players who like to park it next to the target and just do their rotation, well maybe they *should* get a ranged toon instead. Although most of the ranged characters are pretty active in avoiding damage.

Again, you are not building your ranged toons correctly if twf is so terribly outdpsing you st, and if you really want to st dps bring a bow swap for manyshot and melt any st far and away faster than a twf can. You REALLY are not building it correctly if your ranged toon isnt far far far far out dpsing your twf in aoe. And not to mention, while you are kiting your 2wf is doing nowhere near the dps of a ranged toon. Melees simply are not outdpsing a properly built ranged toon, and a properly built ranged toon is bursting on several orders of magnitude higher than melee. Further, the defenses of a ranged are near equivalant to that as a melee while having the added defense of being ranged.


How does that work, exactly? Because, for example, the ranged skeletons in Menechtarun can hit you from half way across the map, I've seen it happen.



You mean things like animations playing, but no arrows being fired, that happens every day now? I've seen that a lot, and I mean a lot. Significant penalties for shooting a melee mob that is actively attacking you already exist too: I take more damage on my ranged toon than I would on my sword and board paladin, when mobs actually hit me. It's a real thing.

Shock, your ranged toon that does an order of magnitude more dps takes more damage than a s and b pally.... in other news water is wet. A s and b pally pales in comparison in damage to a proper ranged toon and you are comparing apples to oranges. So while you take less damage in a hit you are: doing far and a way less damage, have worse ccs, have worse aoe, have worse reaction windows, have to move mob to mob, and are likely still taking far and a way more damage overall because the ranged is just stepping out of that damages way so taking 0 damage.


I don't disagree with what you're saying.

I don't use a heavy repeater on the Ranger/Rogue because it costs me a feat to do that and the ammo requirements are really annoying, basically requiring me to use +3 bolts from Deneith instead of switching the +5's around depending on what I am fighting at the moment. I also have noticed in the past that repeaters have a tendency to miss at a high ammo cost after you kill one target and before you lock onto the next. However you're right the DPS would be a bit higher with a repeater at a significantly larger opportunity cost.

I do take exception to the overall damage argument though. Ranged classes do not do as much damage, except via AoE effects, as DPS melee do. I already build in that concept to my planning and like I said above when I get frustrated at plinking and kiting, which is a safe but not particularly fast way to level, I switch over to a more tried-and-true method, which is optimized melee DPS. In that case I am meta-gaming the defenses required and being careful not to engage the wrong fight when my CD's are down.

Build a proper ranged toon with a repeater or a shuri, do as much or more damage than melee (more than swf, thf, SandB, and almost/same/much much much much more than twf) heres a hint, a repeater is more than a little dps more in heroics, using a repeater I wouldnt be shocked if you increased your dps by 50 percent or more. Also you do realize that the plus on your bolts doesnt matter if the plus on your bow is better..... right? In heroics, outside of specific bane/dr piercing bolts, the simple fire bolts from the spell is one of the best ways to get good bolts.... lol.

[PermaBanned]

As a percentage increase in incoming damage raising mob ranged DPS will be a bigger change for ranged PCs than melee PCs. Eg. if right now melee mobs do 100 dps and ranged mobs do 10 dps then melee PCs take 110 dps, and ranged PCs take 10 dps. If this was changed to 100/100, then melee PCs would take 200 dps, and ranged PCs 100 dps, a little less than a 100% increase for melees while a 1000% increase for ranged.

Also *generally speaking* melee builds are going to have better defenses than ranged builds so they're better equipped to deal with an increase in incoming damange.
Given the context of what I was replying to, no I don't see how looking at it from the perspective of "who would face the greater percentage increase of incoming damage" would bring anywhere near the parity of peril Chai suggested in the post I quoted - especially when we close the spread sheet and log in to play. Ranged Characters would still have the physical (as in player based, not character sheet) defense advantage of dodging incoming Ranged Mob attacks that melee-engaged Melee Characters usually lack - not to mention comparing the DPS loss of a Ranged Character making such a physical dodge vs the DPS loss of a Melee Character making such a physical dodge.

So no, it still doesn't fly that making Ranged Mob DPS equivalent to Melee Mob DPS would take away a big Ranged Character advantage. Reduce it sure, but only by making the Melee Character's lives harder in the process. Not a win for anyone.

[RoberttheBard]

If so they can also hit melee from half way across the map. So unless the melee mobs can also hit you from half way across the map, melee are going to be at a disadvantage.

Which doesn't address "kiting ranged mobs". Once you have their attention, you have it, you can LoS them, but then you're not doing any damage either.


If as many mobs are hitting your ranged character as your S&B I'd say you simply aren't taking advantage of the rather healthy kiteing options the game offers. This would explain your confusion in the first part though.

Or I don't subscribe to the "run backwards to the entrance" method of kiting. If I'm running in a group with an actual tank, I'll do here what I've done for decades in any other MMO: Run to the tank. If there's no actual tank, but a bunch of melee in the group, then I kite through the group, in order to give them a chance to try to get aggro off me. Circle kiting is all well and good, when I'm solo, but that has the effect of making melee chase, or ignore the mobs on me, which, when I'm playing melee, I choose to ignore them, just like I choose to not chase feared mobs. It's amazing what some intelligent gameplay can do for a group. It's also nice to read "hey, glad you're here" when I join a group full of melee on my AA, because they've played with me before, and know they're not going to be chasing mobs. It's also nice to get a whisper from a tank thanking me for pointing out flaws in people's kiting strategies.

[J-mann]

Which doesn't address "kiting ranged mobs". Once you have their attention, you have it, you can LoS them, but then you're not doing any damage either.


Seriously? Juke them, they will miss over half their shots. I am seeing this issue in this thread a lot, lots of people simply do not know how to take advantage of being ranged in this game.


Or I don't subscribe to the "run backwards to the entrance" method of kiting. If I'm running in a group with an actual tank, I'll do here what I've done for decades in any other MMO: Run to the tank. If there's no actual tank, but a bunch of melee in the group, then I kite through the group, in order to give them a chance to try to get aggro off me. Circle kiting is all well and good, when I'm solo, but that has the effect of making melee chase, or ignore the mobs on me, which, when I'm playing melee, I choose to ignore them, just like I choose to not chase feared mobs. It's amazing what some intelligent gameplay can do for a group. It's also nice to read "hey, glad you're here" when I join a group full of melee on my AA, because they've played with me before, and know they're not going to be chasing mobs. It's also nice to get a whisper from a tank thanking me for pointing out flaws in people's kiting strategies.

Um, you can circle kite in a way that an individual mob will be almost stationary..... Not sure how you kite, but if you do it right melees should have no problem catching your mobs. Further if you are taking anywhere near the same damage from ranged mobs as a melee you are not taking advantage of ranged mob "kiting". Juke them by moving slightly side to side and they will miss half or more of their shots due to physics and not stats.

Edit, jumping up and down with a high jump also induces this effect, and that jump will frequently take a melee out of range, but not a ranged character of course.

[RoberttheBard]

The only thing you missed is if you know how to play then ranged mobs miss a ranged character over half the time too. L2P for a lot of the people in here if they think ranged an melee are anywhere near on the same level.



No, a properly built ranged will do similar or much better dps than a melee depending on the style. What I am seeing here is that you dont know how to properly build ranged characters, a shuri or a repeater will have dps right on par with a melee while being much much safer.



No, melees do not have better defenses unless they are going tank. This was already covered earlier in the thread, and no the ratio doesnt matter, absolutes matter. Or do you think that a poor man with 1 dollar in the bank getting 10 dollars is much better off than a rich man will millions getting 10k? Your idea also discounts that ranged can avoid ranged almost aswell as they avoid melee if they know how to play.



reaper teleport doesnt matter, circle kite ignores it completely if you know what you are doing. Melees need drastically more healing, so the self healing nerf impacts them far and away more.

Yep, you can circle kite your way right out of that Reaper dot. One of us knows what we're talking about here, I wonder which one that is?


Trust me your melee is not out doing ranged as soon as the ranged gets ips. Further what exactly does your melee do that the ranged doesnt do better, besides becoming a soulstone.

Mine kills faster on single target dps. If your melee isn't, it's time to reevaluate your build, because something is wrong.

E ToEE yesterday: The THF Paladin had more kills than my AA, even with IPS. He was also relatively safe, since I was having success with Para Arrows. Nothing was hitting him, but he was free to pound out that dps, and with cleave/great cleave, even good AoE, not to mention Consecrated Ground. But I play to support my group, more than I worry about the kill count, or really huge numbers. I had a goodly number of kills too, I couldn't tell you how many, because I wasn't the one that looked, or brought it up. It was just another one of those funny things that come from the forums that we like to laugh about while playing.

[RoberttheBard]

Seriously? Juke them, they will miss over half their shots. I am seeing this issue in this thread a lot, lots of people simply do not know how to take advantage of being ranged in this game.



Um, you can circle kite in a way that an individual mob will be almost stationary..... Not sure how you kite, but if you do it right melees should have no problem catching your mobs. Further if you are taking anywhere near the same damage from ranged mobs as a melee you are not taking advantage of ranged mob "kiting". Juke them by moving slightly side to side and they will miss half or more of their shots due to physics and not stats.

Edit, jumping up and down with a high jump also induces this effect, and that jump will frequently take a melee out of range, but not a ranged character of course.

Regarding that last bit, that's exactly how I kill the ballistae in Epic Storm the Beaches, since they shoot where I hit them from, instead of where I am. Oh, wait, I wasn't supposed to know that, sorry for attempting to steal your thunder...

I've been playing AAs since they weren't welcome in groups because their damage sucked, at least, it did according to forum DDO.

[Gremmlynn]

Which doesn't address "kiting ranged mobs". Once you have their attention, you have it, you can LoS them, but then you're not doing any damage either.Um, maybe do what the melee have to do to ALL the mobs...kill them.

Though, yes you can LoS mobs while DPSing them. It's just a matter of using angles to your advantage. As in, find something you can shoot at them from either side of and atraf back and forth behind it, shooting as you come out from behind either side. Your arrows, etc., will pass the obstruction before you go back under cover and clear it, but theirs wont reach you before you do and thus track into it.


Or I don't subscribe to the "run backwards to the entrance" method of kiting. If I'm running in a group with an actual tank, I'll do here what I've done for decades in any other MMO: Run to the tank. If there's no actual tank, but a bunch of melee in the group, then I kite through the group, in order to give them a chance to try to get aggro off me. Circle kiting is all well and good, when I'm solo, but that has the effect of making melee chase, or ignore the mobs on me, which, when I'm playing melee, I choose to ignore them, just like I choose to not chase feared mobs. It's amazing what some intelligent gameplay can do for a group. It's also nice to read "hey, glad you're here" when I join a group full of melee on my AA, because they've played with me before, and know they're not going to be chasing mobs. It's also nice to get a whisper from a tank thanking me for pointing out flaws in people's kiting strategies.So you are basically saying, because you don't use the methods the game allows one to use, they don't count?

[RoberttheBard]

Um, maybe do what the melee have to do to ALL the mobs...kill them.

Though, yes you can LoS mobs while DPSing them. It's just a matter of using angles to your advantage. As in, find something you can shoot at them from either side of and atraf back and forth behind it, shooting as you come out from behind either side. Your arrows, etc., will pass the obstruction before you go back under cover and clear it, but theirs wont reach you before you do and thus track into it.

So you are basically saying, because you don't use the methods the game allows one to use, they don't count?

No, I'm saying "learn to kite". In other MMOs where people can be kicked from groups, these "kiters" would find themselves looking for another group. Heavens forbid they ever had to be relegated to "puller", as I was in Rappelz for 3 years. They'd never be able to figure out what they're doing wrong when they get owned by the mobs they pulled whilst kiting to the entrance.

[Odysseus2011]

No, a properly built ranged will do similar or much better dps than a melee depending on the style. What I am seeing here is that you dont know how to properly build ranged characters, a shuri or a repeater will have dps right on par with a melee.

Further what exactly does your melee do that the ranged doesnt do better,

1. What I'm seeing here is that you don't know how to properly build a melee character.

2. What does my guildy's melee toon do better? He does better DPS than any ranged toon ever could. High skull reaper, low skull reaper, LE; whatever we run he will out DPS, out survive, and out kill any ranged toon anywhere anytime.

If you want to see how to properly run a melee toon in high level reaper content PM me ingame, we usually have a spot or two open. Just don't expect to out DPS/Out kill this melee toon anytime soon.

[J-mann]

Yep, you can circle kite your way right out of that Reaper dot. One of us knows what we're talking about here, I wonder which one that is?


Kill the fear reaper, its friggin easy as a ranged as you dont have to expose yourself to all the other mobs to do so like a melee does. Seriously learn to play properly.



Mine kills faster on single target dps. If your melee isn't, it's time to reevaluate your build, because something is wrong.

E ToEE yesterday: The THF Paladin had more kills than my AA, even with IPS. He was also relatively safe, since I was having success with Para Arrows. Nothing was hitting him, but he was free to pound out that dps, and with cleave/great cleave, even good AoE, not to mention Consecrated Ground. But I play to support my group, more than I worry about the kill count, or really huge numbers. I had a goodly number of kills too, I couldn't tell you how many, because I wasn't the one that looked, or brought it up. It was just another one of those funny things that come from the forums that we like to laugh about while playing.

No, you will not out dps a proper ranged toon (as in a repeater or a shuri or a caster) st if they know *** they are doing unless you are a twf tempest, and even then a ranged toon can use a cd to vastly vastly out dps you if something needs to die (manyshot/10k). Sounds like that pally was simply better than you, but the last time I was out killed on my shuri or repeater by a melee was when I ran a few quests that Cetus was pugging, the only other time I ever see it is when I run with a good necro dc wizzie, and even then its a close call. Seems to me that you need to learn to build better ranged toons, hint, AA isnt near the top, stop using it as your standard for comparison to tempest and start using a good shuri/repeater/MoK build

[J-mann]

1. What I'm seeing here is that you don't know how to properly build a melee character.

2. What does my guildy's melee toon do better? He does better DPS than any ranged toon ever could. High skull reaper, low skull reaper, LE; whatever we run he will out DPS, out survive, and out kill any ranged toon anywhere anytime.

If you want to see how to properly run a melee toon in high level reaper content PM me ingame, we usually have a spot or two open. Just don't expect to out DPS/Out kill this melee toon anytime soon.

Again, build a better ranged toon. If you are not doing dps better than any thf, swf, and sandb build can you built it wrong. A tempest in an infinte st beat down that does not attack back can beat out ranged builds, but if mobs start swinging back and finite hps are taken into account this is no longer true. And I call absolute bs on your out survive comment.

[Odysseus2011]

Again, build a better ranged toon.

Our guild also has the best ranged DPS build on the server, most of the server has asked, and implored about it. You seriously must have never seen a decent melee build before. Melee toons are harder to make, but have a higher ceiling. Most people who make melee builds utterly fail to make a half decent one, but it doesn't mean it's impossible.

[J-mann]

Our guild also has the best ranged DPS build on the server, most of the server has asked, and implored about it. You seriously must have never seen a decent melee build before. Melee toons are harder to make, but have a higher ceiling. Most people who make melee builds utterly fail to make a half decent one, but it doesn't mean it's impossible.

Ok sure whatever you want to state. Ive played many a variation on melee builds, most successful, some ideas that just didnt pan out, but in almost all cases, ranged is simply easier, more efficient, less resource draining, better dps, far and away better burst, far more survivable, and far more versatile.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

Our guild also has the best ranged DPS build on the server, most of the server has asked, and implored about it.

Who's that?
Am curious who the claim is about.

[Odysseus2011]

Who's that?
Am curious who the claim is about.

I'm kinda surprised you don't know, since your guild has asked both of them time and time again to join your guild. Even going so far as to change names to get away from the constant and ever present annoyance that appears to be Captains Crew's recruitment policy.

[Jasparion]

1. What I'm seeing here is that you don't know how to properly build a melee character.

2. What does my guildy's melee toon do better? He does better DPS than any ranged toon ever could. High skull reaper, low skull reaper, LE; whatever we run he will out DPS, out survive, and out kill any ranged toon anywhere anytime.

That is quite simply not true. Not true in the slightest.

The only time a melee will out-DPS a ranged is when there is a tank to take aggro and a healer to keep you up. Without those 2 things the melee DPS is 0.

Because you are dead.

But really, please explain to us how to build a melee toon properly. Because no-one here has any clue. Unlock the mystery for us.

How do you get 4k HP, 300 PRR, 300 AC and massive DPS?

[Phil7]

1. What I'm seeing here is that you don't know how to properly build a melee character.

2. What does my guildy's melee toon do better? He does better DPS than any ranged toon ever could. High skull reaper, low skull reaper, LE; whatever we run he will out DPS, out survive, and out kill any ranged toon anywhere anytime.

If you want to see how to properly run a melee toon in high level reaper content PM me ingame, we usually have a spot or two open. Just don't expect to out DPS/Out kill this melee toon anytime soon.


Our guild also has the best ranged DPS build on the server, most of the server has asked, and implored about it. You seriously must have never seen a decent melee build before. Melee toons are harder to make, but have a higher ceiling. Most people who make melee builds utterly fail to make a half decent one, but it doesn't mean it's impossible.

ok buddy take a breath and don't forget to go to the toilet sometimes

[McFlay]

has the effect of making melee chase, or ignore the mobs on me, which, when I'm playing melee, I choose to ignore them, just like I choose to not chase feared mobs.

It seems that somewhere along the line devs got the idea to make mobs a little faster so they could chased down ranged players better or something. This only compounds the problem. Good luck chasing a now faster moving mob on a melee and doing consistent dps to it. Melee dps to a moving mob now...pretty much 0...ranged dps? 100% still. Melees are workable in reaper if you have some top tier CC in the group...but the thing is they still aren't any better than ranged...a grouped of ranged with an awesome CC caster is just as effective as the melee with the CC caster. Remove the CC caster and add one more melee to a melee group and its a wipe. Add one more ranged to the ranged group and its a kite fest but still very doable.

So now they make reaper that is supposed to be about grouping...and melee need some CC backup and some heal backup...yet ranged needs...nothing? This isn't telling me to group...this is just telling me its time to reincarnate into a ranged build on my toon I've been doing reapers on. I don't claim to know everything about this game and every build...but anyone who is acting like ranged and melee are anywhere close to equal in reaper is completely clueless or trolling.

[qwert-y]

Lot's of hate and angst going on in this thread. These forums are sad and it sucks to see player pitted against each other over the most base and obvious issues and half of them cannot get past the initial argument of whether something is broken or not. If you can't agree that something is broken stop debating and go have a cookie. Nothing will get fixed until you agree on what the debate is actually about.

I agree that melee is broken. Here is why:

I switched from a self healing melee build to a self healing ranged build. I won't go back. I run with guilds I run in pugs. The players that beat my kill score are warlocks (only good ones) monk / archers or Ranger / bow builds. Melee is laughable in this game at this point. I am reading here how someone is saying that they "know a melee" or "got a melee in my guild" that you can never beat..I just can't fathom that. It is a far cry from the reality of the game mechanics as they work now. There is a reason you run into very few decent melee builds now. It is because AC does nothing for them and stacking PRR to the levels required to survive as melee is an auto gimp.

I am not going back to melee unless I have no other alternative in my path to completionist. There is just no reward for it. As a ranged player I can CC / self heal and out dps any melee build I have run into. If I get hit sure I take damage but I have a nice cushion of distance and I can slow the enemy mob down or stop them completely several different ways without the need to stack DC for combat feats.

I am not sure what needs to happen to give melee builds the helping hand they deserve. Maybe raising the dodge cap or making AC actually functional?

[McFlay]

1. What I'm seeing here is that you don't know how to properly build a melee character.

Problem is, you can't. Before my last reincarnation I think I was around 210 prr and 25% dodge. I was getting absolutely steamrolled by mobs in reaper. I understand you aren't supposed to be facetanking 6 mobs at a time like a lot of us have gotten used to doing in easier content...but how am I going to "properly build a melee" when even if I added another 50 prr I'm going from what...67% damage reduction to 69%? Big deal...if I'm lucky...at most...I'll survive one more hit, which in a lot of situations, is a very, very short amount of time to the point where it will rarely matter anyhow. So what are defensives now? just like what they used to be...go all out dps because if a mob breaths on you you will die anyhow. The fact that ranged toons get the same defense as melees who aren't pure out heavy armor shield tanks, but ranged can also kite, means ranged are simply more effective.


2. What does my guildy's melee toon do better? He does better DPS than any ranged toon ever could. High skull reaper, low skull reaper, LE; whatever we run he will out DPS, out survive, and out kill any ranged toon anywhere anytime.

I do alright on low skull with a melee if the right party is there to support...problem is...ranged doesn't need this. They just kite so they don't get hit as much, which means the healing penalty is less of a factor, and the inflated mob damage is less of a factor. Reaper was like a giant nerf bat to melees that had minimal impact on a well played ranged toon.


If you want to see how to properly run a melee toon in high level reaper content PM me ingame, we usually have a spot or two open. Just don't expect to out DPS/Out kill this melee toon anytime soon.

Make video please...I'm too lazy to roll a toon and level it to witness the epicness when I've played plenty of reaper on my own server and have already seen the huge gap between melee and ranged in it.

[Chai]

I'm not so sure that one flys Chai. Even if Ranged Mobs did equivalent DPS to Melee Mobs, Ranged Characters would still be safer than Melee Characters because Ranged Characters are still only taking Ranged Mob damage while Melee Characters are still taking Ranged and Melee Mob damage. So while both Character types are facing increased incoming damage, Ranged Characters are still subject to less incoming DPS than Melee Characters - or did I miss something there?


Well, ranged would still actually be better off as they would only be dealing with that mob ranged DPS while kiteing, melee would have to deal with both melee and ranged DPS.

There really isn't an easy fix for this, as any good fix would take quite a bit of coding and probably stress processors as well. Things like significant penalties for shooting into melee engagements, penalties for shooting while engaged by melee, attacks of opportunity, etc.

The claim that ranged mobs never take melee damage is yet another forum myth, not congruent with actual game play.

People continue to lobby for what causes the issue, then continually complain about the issue, but refuse to let go of what they are lobbying for. Its like the forums are its own hamster wheel, completely separate from the hamster wheels we encounter when playing the actual game.

[Ellihor]

This thread is grwoing fast, just today 4 pages. But the issue being discussed here is wrong. The problem is not surviving. You can survive, but you are overexposed to random (or not) fatality, while demanding more group resources., while getting nothing in return. That creates a situation where melee are flavor (disclaimer: flavor =/= useless), and it's not a meta option.

That boss video I posted is probably the highest cleave damage on the game because that guy is twf (don't know why boss cleaves proc offhand/dstrike wathever but they do). From full HP a build like the one I was using would survive if I had 2 piece LGS (+360 HP and the unconscious range would do it), but the problem is: you require constant healing spam to survive, and that not always work, but even if it does, you're a waste of resources. The meta is clear to not play melee.

You are also 100% dependant of other party members to survive. If mob rolls 20 on a save for intimi or cc, you're done. If other party members commit meta mistakes, the one who is the first to suffer the consequences is the melee. If heal fails, you're done. You are also more subject to randomness.

The first thing that could be done to make them better would be look at those unavoidable cleaves and make their damage applies after the end of animation instead of at the start, and also make the animation more loud. That guy with chain in Slavers part 3 endight is a good example of how a cleave should be.

The second issue is, of course, you have to make the damage of melees higher than ranged to justify the risk exposition. This is just commom sense, in any game. When you have the ranged damage higher or close to the melee, there is not reason to play a melee. All games work like this, except games that are PvP like dota, where the ranged can do more DPS but in those games everyone attacks the ranged because they know they die easly. That just doesn't work in a game with DDO's AI (PvE games that don't suck while the ranged do more DPS than melee have AI and mechanics that prevent ranged onwning it).

Even if ranged did only 80% of melee damage it would still be favoring them.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

I'm sympathetic to a lot of what you're saying Ell but I think its not as bad as you think.


Even if ranged did only 80% of melee damage it would still be favoring them.

I believe that with them doing inherently less damage + the reaper debuff favoring melee that in fact ranged do about 60% the damage of melee.

E.x., Mech VS Kensai

Kensai 10k dps
Mech 8k dps

Take kensai times 1.3 and divide by mech dps.

The result is 1.6

1/1.6 = 62.5%

In other words you're worth almost 2 mechanics, but you die a lot more, need to gap close, and are much more exposed.

Don't bring a melee to FOT.
Don't bring a caster to DOJ.
Don't bring a ranged to ....
well lol
ya kiting is OP and physical damage is great.
Even teleporting devils can be kited.

Movement speed is so much fun, but honestly its a bit out of control. Mechanics and Monkchers getting 20-30% base movement speed should not be a thing.

[Odysseus2011]

Who's that?
Am curious who the claim is about.

I'm not sure who you would consider the best ranged build to be, but as a measuring stick my friend has 2 accounts, his main who is nearly a completionist and a second for a dual box. His dummy alt was a watered down version of his original ranged build on his main character and was a first life, no TR/ETR 32 point build that was below his original. For the last year he has consistently beat shavara in kill counts on this first life alt that was more of a lever puller than anything else.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

For the last year he has consistently beat shavera in kill counts on this first life alt that was more of a lever puller than anything else.

I'm sorry you didn't answer my question, and I'd like to see that because you can't spell Shav's name right.
I beat Shavara in kills frequently, but a build is optimized to a task. Some builds are made to DPS, some are made to be the most useful in most situations. And that's pretty general so builds being "the best" boils down to optimizing for what you like to play.

That said, Monkchers are typically generalists, the monkcher in question is the game's wunderkind ATM as far as I can tell:

E.x.,
1) https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/483818-10-Skull-Trail-By-Fire-solo
2) https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/483760-Slave-Lord-s-Part-3-3-Skull-Solo

Do you really think your bud is better or has a better "build?" I'm sure he's decent. That's why I was curious who you were talkin' about... nevermind.

[Odysseus2011]

I'm sorry you didn't answer my question, and I'd like to see that because you can't spell Shav's name right.
I beat Shavara in kills frequently, but a build is optimized to a task.

I'm pretty sure my remarks were started as a point that melee DPS can still be effective and in general have the capacity to outperform ranged DPS if built correctly. This was not a measuring contest to impossibly prove who is better, just that in response to the person who mentioned that I have must've not seen a good ranged build since I still think melee can perform as well and better in reaper, that yes I have seen ranged builds that can deal a truckload of DPS, and I've seen melee builds that can do more.

[PermaBanned]

The claim that ranged mobs never take melee damage is yet another forum myth, not congruent with actual game play.The claim that "Ranged Mobs never take Melee Character damage" was not made in my post you quoted. The myth you're perpetuating is that increasing Ranged Mob damage would bring some kind of parity to Ranged and Melee Characters.

[Jasparion]

I'm pretty sure my remarks were started as a point that melee DPS can still be effective and in general have the capacity to outperform ranged DPS if built correctly. This was not a measuring contest to impossibly prove who is better, just that in response to the person who mentioned that I have must've not seen a good ranged build since I still think melee can perform as well and better in reaper, that yes I have seen ranged builds that can deal a truckload of DPS, and I've seen melee builds that can do more.

You claimed that melee could out DPS ranged/casters anytime, anywhere. That is the issue here. I dont think too many people are doubting the DPS that melee can pump out under the right circumstances.

The problem is those circumstances generally involve the inclusion of a tank and a healer in the party. So already its not anytime, anywhere.

And this is the issue. Melee are restricted because without the tank and heals they get slaughtered far easier than ranged/casters.

The question is how do you solve it. And given Reaper was meant to be a return to the balanced party, it would seem the solution would involve changes to the way ranged/casters work.

[Qhualor]

one thing that should be pointed out about ranged is that in order to maximize damage, the ranged really wants the front line melees grabbing the agro and wanting to line up mobs for precise shot. I don't know if that tactic is the norm in Reaper, but its not outside of Reaper. typically in a group mobs die pretty fast outside Reaper so its more about damage output than ducks in a row to maximize that damage output. if ranged has agro, typically ranged does a lot of back pedaling to avoid the damage by mobs. they don't stand still. again, I don't know how this is all working in Reaper, but I bet without someone else grabbing the agro of mobs ranged must be at just as a disadvantage as melees when it comes to survivability.

[MonadRebelion]

I think melee are awesome in reaper. I think reaper has done more to balance the game than anything else they've done in the past few years. In reaper every character has a chance to shine at what they are built for, and what they are built for can actually benefit the party. In my opinion the game is in the best shape it's been in since the level cap was 20.

[KoobTheProud]

You claimed that melee could out DPS ranged/casters anytime, anywhere. That is the issue here. I dont think too many people are doubting the DPS that melee can pump out under the right circumstances.

The problem is those circumstances generally involve the inclusion of a tank and a healer in the party. So already its not anytime, anywhere.

And this is the issue. Melee are restricted because without the tank and heals they get slaughtered far easier than ranged/casters.

The question is how do you solve it. And given Reaper was meant to be a return to the balanced party, it would seem the solution would involve changes to the way ranged/casters work.

It looks to me like the changes need to be in the group compositions, because if not enough tanks are around then groups will go ranged kitey no matter what you do because nobody wants to sit around waiting for a tank to login.

The community appears to be treating Reaper like just another level of Elite, except that DPS melees can't survive in that kind of environment - because the incoming damage is higher and the ability to self heal is lower and they get caught in the middle. The necessary changes need to be to Reaper to make it clear that no tank is no go and then the community can work out the tank/healer part of the trinity if they want to play Reaper.

Most of what is happening right now was very predictable once Reaper became a grind for XP exercise. People are going to find the fastest grinds in that situation and with not enough tanks and healers that's going to turn into kite city.

What SSG needs to figure out is how to make kiting impractical as a strategy in enough fights in an instance that an all ranged group can't pull it off even by brute force.

[J-mann]

It looks to me like the changes need to be in the group compositions, because if not enough tanks are around then groups will go ranged kitey no matter what you do because nobody wants to sit around waiting for a tank to login.

The community appears to be treating Reaper like just another level of Elite, except that DPS melees can't survive in that kind of environment - because the incoming damage is higher and the ability to self heal is lower and they get caught in the middle. The necessary changes need to be to Reaper to make it clear that no tank is no go and then the community can work out the tank/healer part of the trinity if they want to play Reaper.

Most of what is happening right now was very predictable once Reaper became a grind for XP exercise. People are going to find the fastest grinds in that situation and with not enough tanks and healers that's going to turn into kite city.

What SSG needs to figure out is how to make kiting impractical as a strategy in enough fights in an instance that an all ranged group can't pull it off even by brute force.

OOOOORRRR you can stop trying to turn ddo into wow. Required trinity is a horrible uninspired lackluster stupid form of game play and entirely anti dnd, ya know the game the game is based on? How about we let melees play like melees just like they do in dnd?

[J-mann]

one thing that should be pointed out about ranged is that in order to maximize damage, the ranged really wants the front line melees grabbing the agro and wanting to line up mobs for precise shot. I don't know if that tactic is the norm in Reaper, but its not outside of Reaper. typically in a group mobs die pretty fast outside Reaper so its more about damage output than ducks in a row to maximize that damage output. if ranged has agro, typically ranged does a lot of back pedaling to avoid the damage by mobs. they don't stand still. again, I don't know how this is all working in Reaper, but I bet without someone else grabbing the agro of mobs ranged must be at just as a disadvantage as melees when it comes to survivability.

Not to be contrarian, but that is not the ideal situation for ranged toons. For casters maybe, but ranged want them in a straight line (which kiting produces) not grouped up on a melee.

[Jasparion]

OOOOORRRR you can stop trying to turn ddo into wow. Required trinity is a horrible uninspired lackluster stupid form of game play and entirely anti dnd, ya know the game the game is based on? How about we let melees play like melees just like they do in dnd?

Are you saying D&D has never been about tanks and heals? Really?


Im pretty sure every AD&D dungeon/campaign I played had a Fighter or a Paladin and had a Cleric...

[Qhualor]

Not to be contrarian, but that is not the ideal situation for ranged toons. For casters maybe, but ranged want them in a straight line (which kiting produces) not grouped up on a melee.

That's what I said in the first sentence of my post, but lining up mobs for precise shot isn't easy to do. That only happens if the ranged draws the initial agro and the melees stand back and wait. Unless that is happening in Reaper groups in which case how are ranged not taking damage and melees dying so easily like what is being said in these Reaper threads?

[KoobTheProud]

Are you saying D&D has never been about tanks and heals? Really?


Im pretty sure every AD&D dungeon/campaign I played had a Fighter or a Paladin and had a Cleric...

He's arguing that Reaper should be like the DDO of the last half dozen years, with melees self-sufficient and able to play without the support of anything other than other melees. It's the Legendary Dreadnaught chain that he wants to run.

Trying to explain to him that this just turns into Elite all over again, with no challenge involved, is probably not going to work because that's probably what he wants.

[J-mann]

Are you saying D&D has never been about tanks and heals? Really?


Im pretty sure every AD&D dungeon/campaign I played had a Fighter or a Paladin and had a Cleric...

And they played nothing like mmo tanks now did they. Heck intelligent mobs activley saught to go after your ranged characers and casters and you had to plan around that, not herp derp theres a tank so I do nothing but attack him.

[J-mann]

He's arguing that Reaper should be like the DDO of the last half dozen years, with melees self-sufficient and able to play without the support of anything other than other melees. It's the Legendary Dreadnaught chain that he wants to run.

Trying to explain to him that this just turns into Elite all over again, with no challenge involved, is probably not going to work because that's probably what he wants.

Nope, not in the least. Straw man to the extreme. There is a reason just about every new fangled mmo is trying to get away from the trinity style, and its for exactly my stated reasons. It also lessens the need on one particular class/build to show up to be able to complete content. I certainly remember the days of waiting hour+ times while you needed a heals or a trapper, it wasnt fun, and ssg should actively seek to NOT go back to those days, forced trinity certainly does.

[Wizza]

Do you guys have a test to get into Ghallanda or...?

Btw, Argo has the best ranged build, Rys, when she is not graze-hitting. Almost up to 3 DPS when using Furyshot.

We also have the best cleric and druid in the world.

[KomradKillMachine]

Melee: Why play Devs?

[ReaperLover]

it is like, when it comes to ranged everything thought through...

dev1: we are going to implement this new difficult mode

genius dev2: then we should give free mp to casters, since the mode gonna be difficult and they will cast more spells.

dev3 who is responsible for melee: *watching porn* (probably sissy hypno) huh? what? yeah... melee will adapt whatever that is.

[Chai]

The claim that "Ranged Mobs never take Melee Character damage" was not made in my post you quoted.

You most certainly did in fact, make that claim.


I'm not so sure that one flys Chai. Even if Ranged Mobs did equivalent DPS to Melee Mobs, Ranged Characters would still be safer than Melee Characters because Ranged Characters are still only taking Ranged Mob damage while Melee Characters are still taking Ranged and Melee Mob damage. So while both Character types are facing increased incoming damage, Ranged Characters are still subject to less incoming DPS than Melee Characters - or did I miss something there?

Right there.


The myth you're perpetuating is that increasing Ranged Mob damage would bring some kind of parity to Ranged and Melee Characters.

My claim cant possibly be myth, as it has actually occurred a few times in DDO already, when ranged mobs did in fact did as much damage as melee mobs. Forumites argued against this and labeled it "buggy behavior" and with enough lobbying and filibustering, the devs toned down ranged mob damage to a fraction of melee mob damage. This is one of the key adjustments made in the game's history that resulted in todays ranged/caster meta, and players basically have two options:

1. Advocate it be readjusted to provide ranged mobs with similar damage numbers as melee mobs, or...
2. Get used to the ranged/caster heavy meta, your advocacy of keeping ranged mob DPS down helped create.

The problem is of course, people are yet again in contradiction with their own game requests. Advocating ranged to have similar risk to melee, while advocating mob ranged damage be kept much lower than mob melee damage, while complaining about power creep repetitively, is a direct contradiction in logic. Buffing melee would mean powercreep and would throw melee out of balance with the rest of the game just to have parity in a minor percentage of the game. Parity in the damage types however, equates to more parity in the risk each archetype takes, in the entire game, regardless of difficulty. Settings that are easy for one are easy for all, and settings that are difficult for one are difficult for all.

[McFlay]

Nope, not in the least. Straw man to the extreme. There is a reason just about every new fangled mmo is trying to get away from the trinity style, and its for exactly my stated reasons. It also lessens the need on one particular class/build to show up to be able to complete content. I certainly remember the days of waiting hour+ times while you needed a heals or a trapper, it wasnt fun, and ssg should actively seek to NOT go back to those days, forced trinity certainly does.

The problem is though, if you want to play a melee right now, you have to be in a cookie cutter group for harder content or you are useless. If you don't have a healer and a CC caster, you will not be effective as a melee, you will just get wrecked and die super fast. If you want to play a melee it basically is a trinity game right now...just replace tank with CC for most content.

Casters/ranged though...the same does not apply to them. They can more effectively kite and avoid damage altogether, which means less need for a healer, and again...while kiting...CC is not as important when they are not in range for mobs to hit them to begin with.

So like the title of the thread says...why play melee? Why play a character that has to be baby sat and who is going to die a lot thanks to super inflated mob damage and you having to put yourself in range of that damage to do dps of your own when you could just roll up a ranged toon, be much less reliant on others, and avoid inflated mob damage through kiting bad ai and broken game mechanics. Maybe the devs should focus on giving mobs some new anti-kiting tools to use in reaper difficulties rather than just massively inflating damage that ends up being a change extremely biased against melees. Its just stupid like it is right now where the most effective damage mitigation tool is kiting and all melee classes are excluded from it. The builds that mobs are going to have the most shots on goal against, melee, are the builds with the least effective damage mitigation skill set.

[Ellihor]

I'm sympathetic to a lot of what you're saying Ell but I think its not as bad as you think.

I believe that with them doing inherently less damage + the reaper debuff favoring melee that in fact ranged do about 60% the damage of melee.

E.x., Mech VS Kensai

Kensai 10k dps
Mech 8k dps

Take kensai times 1.3 and divide by mech dps.

The result is 1.6

1/1.6 = 62.5%

In other words you're worth almost 2 mechanics, but you die a lot more, need to gap close, and are much more exposed.

You can't do 10k DPS on a kensei because you aren't going to have blitz, while the mech will.

Now let's talk about banana throwers. This is not news from reaper. Ever since legendary elite shroud was the thoughest content in the game, our comlpetion times have been inversely proportional to the number of throwers we bring, what is weird considering the DR of the portals favors high damage/low attack speed instead of high attack speed/low damage.


Don't bring a melee to FOT.
Don't bring a caster to DOJ.
Don't bring a ranged to ....
well lol
ya kiting is OP and physical damage is great.
Even teleporting devils can be kited.

Movement speed is so much fun, but honestly its a bit out of control. Mechanics and Monkchers getting 20-30% base movement speed should not be a thing.

Thank you

[Ellihor]

1) https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/483818-10-Skull-Trail-By-Fire-solo
2) https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/483760-Slave-Lord-s-Part-3-3-Skull-Solo

Intresting how your offtopic discussion had the result of you dropping these here. I don't think it helps your case at all.

BTW can I request footage of these builds in R10? There is none around. We need more objective information.

[RoberttheBard]

OOOOORRRR you can stop trying to turn ddo into wow. Required trinity is a horrible uninspired lackluster stupid form of game play and entirely anti dnd, ya know the game the game is based on? How about we let melees play like melees just like they do in dnd?

Despite your hyperbole here, WoW did not invent the trinity style of gameplay. If I were to venture a guess, it would be that, back in the '70s, a little table top role playing game did. It was a game where you sat around a table, with dice, and character sheets and a DM that was trying to kill you, or to tell a story, sometimes. That little game was DnD.

What is "anti DnD" is this notion that it was supposed to be 6 people soloing an instance. What is anti DnD is this notion that some fighter in the group had self healing, or that a rogue was going to tank a dragon. Be careful what you ask for, because trying to make this game more like DnD is going to break this community, especially a lot of the forum going members of it. Since the base game was supposed to be 3.5, that means no enhancement trees, and no Epic Destinies. Instead, we'd have Prestige Classes. Neverwinter Nights capped at 40, but there wasn't such a thing as "twisting in Cocoon". If you wanted self healing, you had to either stock up on pots, or splash some class with healing ability. It better have some synergy with your build though, because you're limited to 3 classes.

The short version? The last thing you want is this game to be more like DnD, at least, not like the version it was initially built around. However, this claim that DnD was never a group based game, which is what you're saying with "turn DDO into WoW", is the farthest thing from the truth. The reality is that, trying to play actual DnD the way some here play DDO would result in a very happy DM, because the party would be dead by the end of every session, with no one to blame but themselves.

[Chai]

The problem is though, if you want to play a melee right now, you have to be in a cookie cutter group for harder content or you are useless. If you don't have a healer and a CC caster, you will not be effective as a melee, you will just get wrecked and die super fast. If you want to play a melee it basically is a trinity game right now...just replace tank with CC for most content.

Casters/ranged though...the same does not apply to them. They can more effectively kite and avoid damage altogether, which means less need for a healer, and again...while kiting...CC is not as important when they are not in range for mobs to hit them to begin with.

So like the title of the thread says...why play melee? Why play a character that has to be baby sat and who is going to die a lot thanks to super inflated mob damage and you having to put yourself in range of that damage to do dps of your own when you could just roll up a ranged toon, be much less reliant on others, and avoid inflated mob damage through kiting bad ai and broken game mechanics. Maybe the devs should focus on giving mobs some new anti-kiting tools to use in reaper difficulties rather than just massively inflating damage that ends up being a change extremely biased against melees. Its just stupid like it is right now where the most effective damage mitigation tool is kiting and all melee classes are excluded from it. The builds that mobs are going to have the most shots on goal against, melee, are the builds with the least effective damage mitigation skill set.

Havent needed to play strictly trinity at all yet. All we have needed to do is play with others who are willing to throw heals when needed. Sure in a stars aligned circumstance (boss character, R10, brute style mob, even numbered tuesday in an odd numbered month etc) people will get one shot but for the most part, if theres a consecrate on the ground, and the melee is played actively (not nailed to the same spot on the ground bursting) then its playable. If people insist on being able to play in the hardest setting immediately, then its only a short matter of time before even that becomes too easy. This isnt to say the archetypes all have equal risk. Its just that much of the hyperbole (holy trinity, need a healbot etc) is what causes the pendulum to swing so far the other way that the new meta it creates is just as unbalanced if not more unbalanced than the previous meta people provided negative feedback about.

[Forzah]

My claim cant possibly be myth, as it has actually occurred a few times in DDO already, when ranged mobs did in fact did as much damage as melee mobs. Forumites argued against this and labeled it "buggy behavior" and with enough lobbying and filibustering, the devs toned down ranged mob damage to a fraction of melee mob damage. This is one of the key adjustments made in the game's history that resulted in todays ranged/caster meta, and players basically have two options:

1. Advocate it be readjusted to provide ranged mobs with similar damage numbers as melee mobs, or...
2. Get used to the ranged/caster heavy meta, your advocacy of keeping ranged mob DPS down helped create.


False dichotomy. There are other and better options for making the game more challenging for ranged. For example, any change that temporarily slows ranged characters.

Increasing all ranged damage to melee numbers has unintended side-effects. You'd get killed almost instantly if multiple ranged mobs shoot at you. That's why it's not a serious option.

[Eth]

Increasing all ranged damage to melee numbers has unintended side-effects. You'd get killed almost instantly if multiple ranged mobs shoot at you. That's why it's not a serious option.

Increasing ranged damage would only increase the problem.
Getting hit by ranged attacks is a problem of not moving in combat. Who does that the most? Melees.
Dodging ranged attacks by movement gets only easier the bigger the distance is.
The result would be even more incoming damage on a melee, while not much changes for ranged toons.