Why Inquisitive is an Exploit Build

[Shadow_Jumper]

Hi. This is a post about Inquisitive. If you don't care to have a meaningful discussion, or want to stick your head in the sand about the tree then avoid this thread. The title is click-bait for the devs, however, I believe it is easily within the realm of reason to call Inquisitive an Exploit build. I would like to state for the record that I am not calling anyone using Inquisitive an exploiter. However, here is why Inquisitive is an exploit build


What I think is causing Inquisitive to over perform is its unique fighting style, in conjunction with how doubleshot works. While I know the term gets thrown around alot, this is honestly an exploitative build. What is going on with Inquisitive is an unintended mash up of Ranged Doubleshot never being designed for what is in essence, a TWF style.

Ranged Doubleshot does two very important things in this game:

A) It continues to give benefits after 100% (essentially "wrapping" around)
B) It does not split into main and off-hand Doubleshot

These are massive when considering how Inquisitors deal damage. The Inquisitive style, for all intents and purposes can be best described as a TWF build, however it has some major glaring issues that cause it to outperform anything in the game right now.

1) They automatically get 100% off-hand strike chance (not off-hand DS).
2) They use a single weapon for their TWF style.

So, why are these features important? Well, while doubleshot going over 100% was obviously in the game before Inquisitive and was balanced throughout (and honestly a little underpowered), when combined with the TWFesque Inquisitive style, it becomes a whole nother level of broken. The key is that Inquisitive gets doubleshot for both attacks, with no off-hand DS reduction. Due to there never before having been a TWF ranged style, this has never been an issue. If an Inquisitor hits a reaper doubleshot boost and bursts up to 130% doubleshot, they are effectively having 4.6 attacks with a single "shot".

Why do I believe this is broken/exploitive instead of intended? Its simple really. The devs already ran into a semi-similar situation with repeaters when they first introduced doubleshot. Their solution was to reduce repeater doubleshot to only use 33% (ie; 1/3rd) because a repeater shoots 3 bolts per animation. There is already a precedence for more than one bolt per animation in this game, and it was balanced with a reduction in power suitable for the situation. Repeater actually compares very closely to what I imagine the devs want people complaining about Inquisitive to believe. A repeater with Mechanic T5 10% alacrity actually fires at the same rate as Inquisitor. But if a repeater build and an inquisitive build had the same exact DS, inquisitor would effectively have 6 times more benefit from that DS.

The current devs either do not realize that Inquisitor is getting full DS on both hands, or they honestly want to sell more trees full of exploitive power. I honestly lean towards the latter due to previous statements from devs saying that Inquisitor was balanced to be comparable with GXB. My own tests had Inquisitor taking 3:19 to unload 500 bolts with no DS and the T5 30% alacrity, compared to GXB taking 5:44 to unload 500 with its T5 alacrity. Inquisitor already has a 72% faster fire rate than GXB, and receives double benefit from DS (I tested with 2% DS, lowest i was able to go).

Solution: I am unsure of whether it would fully balance the tree, but doubleshot needs to be reworked to either only apply to one hand (ie; a 50% DS nerf) or it needs to be broken down into main hand and off hand and reduced. While there are other issues with the power level of Inquisitive (look at Undaunted lol) in its current state it is broken as a result of an incompatibility with TWF ranged, the newest universal tree is an exploitive tree compared to other DPS builds.

[erethizon]

Hi. This is a post about Inquisitive. If you don't care to have a meaningful discussion, or want to stick your head in the sand about the tree then avoid this thread. The title is click-bait for the devs, however, I believe it is easily within the realm of reason to call Inquisitive an Exploit build. I would like to state for the record that I am not calling anyone using Inquisitive an exploiter. However, here is why Inquisitive is an exploit build


What I think is causing Inquisitive to over perform is its unique fighting style, in conjunction with how doubleshot works. While I know the term gets thrown around alot, this is honestly an exploitative build. What is going on with Inquisitive is an unintended mash up of Ranged Doubleshot never being designed for what is in essence, a TWF style.

Ranged Doubleshot does two very important things in this game:

A) It continues to give benefits after 100% (essentially "wrapping" around)
B) It does not split into main and off-hand Doubleshot

These are massive when considering how Inquisitors deal damage. The Inquisitive style, for all intents and purposes can be best described as a TWF build, however it has some major glaring issues that cause it to outperform anything in the game right now.

1) They automatically get 100% off-hand strike chance (not off-hand DS).
2) They use a single weapon for their TWF style.

So, why are these features important? Well, while doubleshot going over 100% was obviously in the game before Inquisitive and was balanced throughout (and honestly a little underpowered), when combined with the TWFesque Inquisitive style, it becomes a whole nother level of broken. The key is that Inquisitive gets doubleshot for both attacks, with no off-hand DS reduction. Due to there never before having been a TWF ranged style, this has never been an issue. If an Inquisitor hits a reaper doubleshot boost and bursts up to 130% doubleshot, they are effectively having 4.6 attacks with a single "shot".

Why do I believe this is broken/exploitive instead of intended? Its simple really. The devs already ran into a semi-similar situation with repeaters when they first introduced doubleshot. Their solution was to reduce repeater doubleshot to only use 33% (ie; 1/3rd) because a repeater shoots 3 bolts per animation. There is already a precedence for more than one bolt per animation in this game, and it was balanced with a reduction in power suitable for the situation. Repeater actually compares very closely to what I imagine the devs want people complaining about Inquisitive to believe. A repeater with Mechanic T5 10% alacrity actually fires at the same rate as Inquisitor. But if a repeater build and an inquisitive build had the same exact DS, inquisitor would effectively have 6 times more benefit from that DS.

The current devs either do not realize that Inquisitor is getting full DS on both hands, or they honestly want to sell more trees full of exploitive power. I honestly lean towards the latter due to previous statements from devs saying that Inquisitor was balanced to be comparable with GXB. My own tests had Inquisitor taking 3:19 to unload 500 bolts with no DS and the T5 30% alacrity, compared to GXB taking 5:44 to unload 500 with its T5 alacrity. Inquisitor already has a 72% faster fire rate than GXB, and receives double benefit from DS (I tested with 2% DS, lowest i was able to go).

Solution: I am unsure of whether it would fully balance the tree, but doubleshot needs to be reworked to either only apply to one hand (ie; a 50% DS nerf) or it needs to be broken down into main hand and off hand and reduced. While there are other issues with the power level of Inquisitive (look at Undaunted lol) in its current state it is broken as a result of an incompatibility with TWF ranged, the newest universal tree is an exploitive tree compared to other DPS builds.

I'd be fine with capping doubleshot at 100%. As is all too often the case, the "exploitative" power of the inquisitive is limited to the very tiny portion of the population that are using the gear to achieve such numbers. Most people don't ever reach 100% doubleshot at any point in their game play (and especially not in the first 28 levels) so any change needs to avoid hurting the majority of players that are simply doing the best they can. Balancing the tree around level 30 characters is the last thing I want to see since that is not where most of the game is played.

[Shadow_Jumper]

I'd be fine with capping doubleshot at 100%. As is all too often the case, the "exploitative" power of the inquisitive is limited to the very tiny portion of the population that are using the gear to achieve such numbers.

I actually think this is the wrong way to go to be honest.

Here’s why. Ranged is not overpowered. Inquisitives are. Right now inquisitives are firing at what a repeater would be if they didn’t have the 1/3rd DS penalty. Capping DS would hurt non-powerful ranged builds that honestly need some help (bows), and would further nerf ranged to a point where I think they shouldn’t be.

Thinking more though, I’d say that honestly the best solution would be to apply repeaters 1/3rd DS debuff to the inquisitive style as well. I believe it would do a lot of good to bring them in line with other ranged builds.

This would have no affect on other currently balanced ranged builds.

[BigErkyKid]

INQ is essentially taking mechanic, making it double, and then adding fussilade to it without opportunity cost (no loss from splashing arti and missing on higher cores).

- knockdown on 20
- lots of procs like sneak attack, except that these are pretty much universal
- fort bypass that stacks with everything (Thrudh you are wrong, put a build in a planner and find out)
- insane ROF (I already posted on this, the highest rate of fire on a xbow, by far)

Plus quality of life stuff that it is actually useful (find traps and doors, conjure bolts), combined with powerful defenses (uncanny dodge, slippery mind).

I dare say that INQ is the strongest ranged PRE in the game, and it can stack with any other PRE, making truly imbalanced builds.

It is obviously broken good, and I have yet to find a person IG who does not agree with that statement.

When a dev then comes out and says that it is balanced (Steelstar), it devalues whatever reputation he had with the community. Devs start with a capital of trust and authority, and from then on they are evaluated on their statements and performance. Claiming one has spent hundreds of hours balancing something that is obviously not balanced is stacking one's reputation on a losing battle. INQ will be nerfed, it is just a matter of when.

[erethizon]

I actually think this is the wrong way to go to be honest.

Here’s why. Ranged is not overpowered. Inquisitives are. Right now inquisitives are firing at what a repeater would be if they didn’t have the 1/3rd DS penalty. Capping DS would hurt non-powerful ranged builds that honestly need some help (bows), and would further nerf ranged to a point where I think they shouldn’t be.

Thinking more though, I’d say that honestly the best solution would be to apply repeaters 1/3rd DS debuff to the inquisitive style as well. I believe it would do a lot of good to bring them in line with other ranged builds.

This would have no affect on other currently balanced ranged builds.

I can get behind your position. I do understand that some builds may need more than 100% doubleshot and that nerfing it would hurt them. The problem is that your solution nerfs all inquisitives, including the ones that are not overperforming.

We have a serious problem in this game were the game is getting balanced more and more around people with ridiculously overpowered gear. And when someone tries to play without that gear, they struggle. The game continues to get more difficult with each update (in terms of monster power) and so people are even more in need of great gear if they are going to survive.

Inquisitive was a great solution to that. It was an enhancement tree, that can be used by any class, that gives significant power built right into the tree. We need more character power and less gear power and inquisitive does a great job of providing that character power.

So the solution is not to nerf the tree so that it provides less character power, but rather to make it so that gear does not magnify that power as much as it does. Frankly, I don't care what you do to inquisitives that have 130% doubleshot. They are going to be fine. They are already playing a much easier game than the other 99%. But any proposed solution that makes the game harder for an inquisitive with 10% doubleshot is not a solution I can support. The game doesn't need to be any harder for the weaker players out there and any solution should avoid reducing the power of those that really need it.

[LurkingVeteran]

I think the main problem is that they balanced it against mech. Regardless of if Inq is actually better than mech (most would argue they are), there the two big issues here:
a) Mech is also overperforming after the reaper scaling changes. Nukers originally needed improvement in high reaper (mainly), but ranged didn't need this much of boost.
b) Does it not ruin class uniqueness to put rogue DPS in a ranged universal tree? A rusty bucket with 40 points in Inq would turn it into a force to be reckoned with.

The new Warpriest is B tier DPS at best, which I'm fine with because they have divine spells. Vistani strikes a difficult balance of near-top DPS with melee range downside and poor defensives. Inq as a ranged just shoots it out of the ballpark.

[BigErkyKid]

We have a serious problem in this game were the game is getting balanced more and more around people with ridiculously overpowered gear..

This is the game: grind until you get more powerful and run the same content at a higher difficulty with higher success rate.

If you want to "buff" newer / less powerful players, the solution is not to release OP PREs or classes. By doing so, you give those monsters to veteran / powerful players who then crush content, all while upsetting the class v class (broadly speaking) balance. It is, all in all, a losing and shortsighted strategy.

If you want to buff less powerful players, do that. Either curve the power of grind (cap PLs, reaper AP, don't release massively OP gear), or provide a "rookie buff": simply add a passive bonus that disappears as you get more powerful. Many games do that, they give you an underlevel or whatever buff.

I reepat: adding broken PREs or classes is the wrong way to address power imbalances.

[BigErkyKid]

I think the main problem is that they balanced it against mech. Regardless of if Inq is actually better than mech (most would argue they are), there the two big issues here:
a) Mech is also overperforming after the reaper scaling changes. Nukers originally needed improvement in high reaper (mainly), but ranged didn't need this much of boost.
b) Does it not ruin class uniqueness to put rogue DPS in a ranged universal tree? A rusty bucket with 40 points in Inq would be top tier DPS.

The new Warpriest is B tier DPS at best, which I'm fine with because they have divine spells. Vistani strikes a difficult balance of near-top DPS with melee range downside and poor defensives. Inq as a ranged just shoots it out of the ballpark.

The real problem with universal PREs is that they upset class balance. Classes are balanced around three PREs; INQ allows you to stack a tier 1 DPS PRE on top of that. Vistani has the same problem, but it is alliviated by the fact that it is on bad weapons, melee range, and not being all in all as powerful as INQ. It of course imbalanced assassin vs TA, but that's a different tale for another afternoon.

Other universal trees are far weaker and feel more support.

[Tlorrd]

This is the game: grind until you get more powerful and run the same content at a higher difficulty with higher success rate.

You are partly right for you and those that play as you ... But you are wrong for those that play unlike you which you seem to not consider or forget about.

[BigErkyKid]

You are partly right for you and those that play as you ... But you are wrong for those that play unlike you which you seem to not consider or forget about.

Present you arguments, forumite. I don't even know what you want, yet you seemed aggroed on me.

[Potatofasf]

If you want to buff less powerful players, do that. Either curve the power of grind (cap PLs, reaper AP, don't release massively OP gear), or provide a "rookie buff": simply add a passive bonus that disappears as you get more powerful. Many games do that, they give you an underlevel or whatever buff.

I like games that does it, balancing game through XP earned.
DDO would go with that, the character reaching milestones.

Exemple:

Every 24 (because is multiple of 3, past lifes needed to have a triple completionist at any race or class) Past Lifes the player reach a milestone and the game becomes a little more "challenging" (which is not challenging, just annoying like the reaper fest (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/508181-Reaper-Fest-Bonanza-WAI) spam).

So, when the players has 140+ lifes, the game is "challenging" balanced to the character and the players will have a learning and difficult curve ideal to their playing time spent.

[LightBear]

All that is said which would imbalance inq is equally so for other ranged trees. The rant of the op has nothing to back it up and equally can be said for any class with just as much merit.

[Seljuck]

I can get behind your position. I do understand that some builds may need more than 100% doubleshot and that nerfing it would hurt them. [b]The problem is that your solution nerfs all inquisitives, including the ones that are not overperforming.[\b]

We have a serious problem in this game were the game is getting balanced more and more around people with ridiculously overpowered gear. And when someone tries to play without that gear, they struggle. The game continues to get more difficult with each update (in terms of monster power) and so people are even more in need of great gear if they are going to survive.

Inquisitive was a great solution to that. It was an enhancement tree, that can be used by any class, that gives significant power built right into the tree. We need more character power and less gear power and inquisitive does a great job of providing that character power.

So the solution is not to nerf the tree so that it provides less character power, but rather to make it so that gear does not magnify that power as much as it does. Frankly, I don't care what you do to inquisitives that have 130% doubleshot. They are going to be fine. They are already playing a much easier game than the other 99%. But any proposed solution that makes the game harder for an inquisitive with 10% doubleshot is not a solution I can support. The game doesn't need to be any harder for the weaker players out there and any solution should avoid reducing the power of those that really need it.

Bolded: This is a false statement. There is no such thing like underperforming inquisitive (or one that is not overperforming)

[droid327]

If you don't care to have a meaningful discussion, or want to stick your head in the sand about the tree then avoid this thread.

What is going on with Inquisitive is an unintended mash up of Ranged Doubleshot never being designed for what is in essence, a TWF style.

2) They use a single weapon for their TWF style.

Why do I believe this is broken/exploitive instead of intended? Its simple really. The devs already ran into a semi-similar situation with repeaters when they first introduced doubleshot. Their solution was to reduce repeater doubleshot to only use 33% (ie; 1/3rd) because a repeater shoots 3 bolts per animation.

I honestly lean towards the latter due to previous statements from devs saying that Inquisitor was balanced to be comparable with GXB.

- You cant start off saying you want to have a meaningful discussion and then immediately pre-attack anyone who disagrees with you like that. That's intellectually dishonest.

- You've established how it works. You never establish why its BAD that it works that way, or exploitative. Why not, say, simply remove Offhand Doublestrike from TWF and make regular Doublestrike apply fully to both hands? Then, make the current "offhand doublestrike" into a unique second channel of Doublestrike (Triplestrike? :D), so Tempest and VKF can still maintain the highest TWF attack rates.

- Single weapon in DXB is actually a drawback. You cant use, say, a TF or LGS weapon in your offhand and get nice bonuses that complement your mainhand. You can only use a runearm, if you have the arti levels, which is a much more limiting stat stick.

- Repeater DS nerf was a mistake, long term. Not something to expand on. It actually DID go Live for a while with 100% doubleshot, and it was great. It wasnt nerfed because of the DPS, though - it was nerfed because, at the time, Shiradi builds were all the rage, letting anyone with a high ROF leverage that to massive proc rates. Repeaters gave anyone a really high ROF for relatively little opportunity cost, and you didnt need much else to make a Shiradi build work. The game's evolved away from that, though, and Shiradi proc spammers arent nearly as powerful as they used to be - so the need for DS penalties is gone. They should remove that penalty from Repeaters and restore a bit of parity to them compared to other xbows and shuris

- When you compare DXB to GXB, you're only looking at ROF. They're not equal, shot-for-shot. A GXB in the hands of a Mechanic hits much harder per shot, with higher base damage and a better crit profile, plus double vorpal.

[Bacab]

Wait...it just occured to me (just got back from a break)..

Does vistani grant auto TWF feats basically, so a ROG can dual wield without having TWF Feats?

I feel making Inquisitor burn feats for TWF (otherwise they just get the standard 20% off hand attack) would bring them into line...so that Fighters or Rangers who want to be Inquisitors would be really good, but the Zombie Wizards would be burning there feats for ranged and TWF.

[Shadow_Jumper]

- You cant start off saying you want to have a meaningful discussion and then immediately pre-attack anyone who disagrees with you like that. That's intellectually dishonest.

I’m sorry that you feel like I’m attacking anyone. I was simply clarifying what I believe should be nerfed versus what shouldn’t. Capping doubleshot would reduce all raged builds regardless of whether or not they are inquisitive. As is pretty obvious, most ranged builds aren’t over performing, only inquisitive is.



- You've established how it works. You never establish why its BAD that it works that way, or exploitative. Why not, say, simply remove Offhand Doublestrike from TWF and make regular Doublestrike apply fully to both hands? Then, make the current "offhand doublestrike" into a unique second channel of Doublestrike (Triplestrike? :D), so Tempest and VKF can still maintain the highest TWF attack rates.

This shows that you didn’t really pay attention. These are exploitive builds because they are taking advantage of the fact that there is no such thing as off-hand doubleshot.

Doubleshot has only ever applied to a single weapon because every ranged build up until now has fired a single weapon. It’s not built for this dps style, and as a result of the game never expecting something as silly as a twf ranged style, they never split it.

A more apt comparison would be to reduce doublestrike back to only one number (main hand) and apply that value to both weapons.



- Single weapon in DXB is actually a drawback. You cant use, say, a TF or LGS weapon in your offhand and get nice bonuses that complement your mainhand. You can only use a runearm, if you have the arti levels, which is a much more limiting stat stick.


Have you ever actually played inquisitive? They too use only a single weapon. But their fighting stance splits the crossbow into two and they fire as a twf with 100% offhand. This is mainly the reason why this is broken, DS is applying to one weapon, but for two attack animations.

Based on the comment above I’m pretty sure you’ve never played an inquisitive.



- Repeater DS nerf was a mistake, long term. Not something to expand on. It actually DID go Live for a while with 100% doubleshot, and it was great. It wasnt nerfed because of the DPS, though - it was nerfed because, at the time, Shiradi builds were all the rage, letting anyone with a high ROF leverage that to massive proc rates. Repeaters gave anyone a really high ROF for relatively little opportunity cost, and you didnt need much else to make a Shiradi build work. The game's evolved away from that, though, and Shiradi proc spammers arent nearly as powerful as they used to be - so the need for DS penalties is gone. They should remove that penalty from Repeaters and restore a bit of parity to them compared to other xbows and shuris

- When you compare DXB to GXB, you're only looking at ROF. They're not equal, shot-for-shot. A GXB in the hands of a Mechanic hits much harder per shot, with higher base damage and a better crit profile, plus double vorpal.

Yes. In this case RoF is important.

Inquisiitvies get Law on your side which becomes 1d8 die, scaling with 200% ranged power. That is in addition to SA die or a better base damage split from either rogue or fighter.

Inquisitive builds are hitting harder and faster than GXB.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Wait...it just occured to me (just got back from a break)..

Does vistani grant auto TWF feats basically, so a ROG can dual wield without having TWF Feats?


No. The only class that autogrants twf feats is ranger.

However the twf line caps out at 80% offhand attack rate. Vkf gives the user the ability to get that to 100%

[DaggomaticDwarf]

So basically OP just pointed out what others have already said about DS being too much and not having the same DS penalty as TWF. Very original thinking Hoss! Last I check an exploit is something NOT WAI.

The devs clearly knew this going forward, was it the right move? NAH. Can it be "Fixed"? SURE! There is a whole lot of wiggle room to bring em down a notch and still not feel like a nerf to sell the newest shiny.

Dagg.

[Chai]

I dont think of inquis as "twf crossbows" - what it does is increase the regular crossbow rate of fire to something near 2X, then give something akin to endless fusillade, with a skin overlay of two hand crossbows for flavor.

If you are talking about nerfing doubleshot, this can be addressed similarly to how its addressed with repeaters. Each "volley" of two shots has a chance to proc a third shot.

This way it doesnt get nerfed for everyone else. Archery doesnt need a doubleshot nerf, for instance, just because inquis might.

[Chai]

Inquisitive builds are hitting harder and faster than GXB.

Faster yes. Not harder.

Id like to see this demonstrated. I play one of each at cap, and would love to know what I'm missing.

[Tlorrd]

Hi. This is a post about Inquisitive...

Here is my response to your thoughts ... I agree with some and somewhat disagree with some and I will put forth my proposals to help "balance" (IMO). Underscoring this, is that I think Universal trees should be applicable in multiple ways for many classes and while yes now Light/Heavy Xbows can be used by most ... this tree seems more Semi-Universal currently.

Doubleshot ... I've previously posted this part and I think giving Repeaters full DS is over the top ... potentials of 6 Hunt's Ends is why.
- Repeaters 33%
- Dual XB 50%
- GXB/Single XB 100%

Now for the trees ...

BE Crossbow Training should be +1/+2 Hit and Damage with Repeaters (+1/+1 with all other XBs)
Mechanic Sharpshooter should be +1/+2 Hit and Damage and +1 SA dice with GXB only (+1/+1 with all other XBs, no extra SA dice)
Fighter Kensai keep as is
Ranger DWS keep as is
Inquisitive Crossbow Adept should be +1/+1 Hit and Damage with any XB (It's a universal tree)
- NHB can apply to any XB (shares cooldown with Fusilade, thus you can still have both, etc)
- Law damage only for light/heavy xbow

Edits

Runearms - keep as they are now, investing at least 2 levels of Artie is what's for and keeps build options open.
Fletching (T4 mechanic) - add Metalline to your bolts in addition to the effects it currently gives

Diplomatic Immunity should be able to apply to all XBs (its a universal tree)

[acemonkey]

This shows that you didn’t really pay attention. These are exploitive builds because they are taking advantage of the fact that there is no such thing as off-hand doubleshot.

Doubleshot has only ever applied to a single weapon because every ranged build up until now has fired a single weapon. It’s not built for this dps style, and as a result of the game never expecting something as silly as a twf ranged style, they never split it.

During development, the devs knew it applied to both hands, and left it that way.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/503512-U41-4-Preview-1-Inquisitive-Universal-Enhancement-Tree#post6186214

[droid327]

I’m sorry that you feel like I’m attacking anyone. I was simply clarifying what I believe should be nerfed versus what shouldn’t. Capping doubleshot would reduce all raged builds regardless of whether or not they are inquisitive. As is pretty obvious, most ranged builds aren’t over performing, only inquisitive is.



This shows that you didn’t really pay attention. These are exploitive builds because they are taking advantage of the fact that there is no such thing as off-hand doubleshot.

Doubleshot has only ever applied to a single weapon because every ranged build up until now has fired a single weapon. It’s not built for this dps style, and as a result of the game never expecting something as silly as a twf ranged style, they never split it.

A more apt comparison would be to reduce doublestrike back to only one number (main hand) and apply that value to both weapons.



Have you ever actually played inquisitive? They too use only a single weapon. But their fighting stance splits the crossbow into two and they fire as a twf with 100% offhand. This is mainly the reason why this is broken, DS is applying to one weapon, but for two attack animations.

Based on the comment above I’m pretty sure you’ve never played an inquisitive.



Yes. In this case RoF is important.

Inquisiitvies get Law on your side which becomes 1d8 die, scaling with 200% ranged power. That is in addition to SA die or a better base damage split from either rogue or fighter.

Inquisitive builds are hitting harder and faster than GXB.

Ok I came in here to discuss things in good faith, as requested...you apologized if you seemed like you were attacking anyone, then you attack me by questioning if I even play inqui :p. You lost a lot of credibility with me for that, and your specious arguments

Yes I get that inqui benefits the most from double shot. Again, you never showed why that was actually bad though, why that was a problem.

Dxb is not twf. It's single weapon. It's only a cosmetic effect. It's not dual weapons anymore than rxb is triple weapons because it fires three attacks per click. You need to get over that impression that dxb is actually dual wield. There is no spoon.

Yes rof is a component of dps but you're just willfully ignoring that mechanic hits harder per shot. It doesn't matter how it's broken down, all that matters in the end is dps, so if you want to make a case that inqui is over performing, use actual ttk benchmarks as your metric.

[Cantor]

Have you ever actually played inquisitive? They too use only a single weapon. But their fighting stance splits the crossbow into two and they fire as a twf with 100% offhand. This is mainly the reason why this is broken, DS is applying to one weapon, but for two attack animations.


You missed their point. They know it splits a single weapon, and say that is a disadvantage since they can't use a support offhand weapon.

[droid327]

Wait...it just occured to me (just got back from a break)..

Does vistani grant auto TWF feats basically, so a ROG can dual wield without having TWF Feats?

I feel making Inquisitor burn feats for TWF (otherwise they just get the standard 20% off hand attack) would bring them into line...so that Fighters or Rangers who want to be Inquisitors would be really good, but the Zombie Wizards would be burning there feats for ranged and TWF.

Ranged already have to buy three feats (unless ranger): pbs ps ips. That's their "combat style" triplet. Plus RR. So they're already paying a higher opportunity cost than twf.

[Chai]

- Repeater DS nerf was a mistake, long term. Not something to expand on. It actually DID go Live for a while with 100% doubleshot, and it was great. It wasnt nerfed because of the DPS, though - it was nerfed because, at the time, Shiradi builds were all the rage, letting anyone with a high ROF leverage that to massive proc rates. Repeaters gave anyone a really high ROF for relatively little opportunity cost, and you didnt need much else to make a Shiradi build work. The game's evolved away from that, though, and Shiradi proc spammers arent nearly as powerful as they used to be - so the need for DS penalties is gone. They should remove that penalty from Repeaters and restore a bit of parity to them compared to other xbows and shuris



Another perfect example of why nerfing as a knee jerk reaction doesnt work like people think it will. The "nerf shiradi" bandwagon collides with the "nerf repeaters" bus and "nerf throwers" trolley, and several ranged styles along with one caster style become barely viable, and one gets shelved completely save for flavor builds.

Not only can most if not all of the melee nerfs of the past be undone without creating some OP abomination, but alot of these older ranged nerfs can be reverted without causing issues as well. Diversify the number of viable builds by allowing some older builds a seat at the table again.

The reason this needs to get brought up is because this type of thing needs to be prevented when talking about inquisitors. If they straight up nerf doubleshot that hits all ranged builds, and archery which is already bad, gets worse, and the other styles also lose ground. Any nerf to inquis should hit inquis only and not touch the other ranged styles.

[Amorais]

I dont get it, why complain about a decent set of abilities in a co-op game thats supposed to be all about helping each other out?

Its like people going on about a particular class being "OP". Why does it matter? If it were PvP then yeah you have a point, but in coop I just dont understand why it would even matter. *scratches head*

[Potatofasf]

I dont get it, why complain about a decent set of abilities in a co-op game thats supposed to be all about helping each other out?

Its like people going on about a particular class being "OP". Why does it matter? If it were PvP then yeah you have a point, but in coop I just dont understand why it would even matter. *scratches head*

Because:

1 - It may be one of the source of Massive Lag Spikes, so it affects in bad ways others gameplay
2 - It bothers people because Monkchers were nerfed and the "motives" were the exacly same mechanics Inquisitive uses
3 - Split community, Reaper vs Elite players, Soloist vs Groupers, VIPs vs Premium/Free players


This game is out of co-op league a long time ago.

[HungarianRhapsody]

I dont get it, why complain about a decent set of abilities in a co-op game thats supposed to be all about helping each other out?

Its like people going on about a particular class being "OP". Why does it matter? If it were PvP then yeah you have a point, but in coop I just dont understand why it would even matter. *scratches head*

Because SSG keeps making content that's balanced for the most powerful builds and then the builds that sub-optimal end up struggling in newer content.

Why does it matter? Because new content that's added gets added with that OP build in mind.

[Thrudh]

I dont get it, why complain about a decent set of abilities in a co-op game thats supposed to be all about helping each other out?

Its like people going on about a particular class being "OP". Why does it matter? If it were PvP then yeah you have a point, but in coop I just dont understand why it would even matter. *scratches head*

Game balance is important.

An easy thought experiment. Would it be a good idea to introduce a class that with a single button push instantly kills all mobs in a room, no save, including bosses?

Following your logic, in a co-op game, why would this be a bad thing?

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Because:

1 - It may be one of the source of Massive Lag Spikes, so it affects in bad ways others gameplay
2 - It bothers people because Monkchers were nerfed and the "motives" were the exacly same mechanics Inquisitive uses
3 - Split community, Reaper vs Elite players, Soloist vs Groupers, VIPs vs Premium/Free players


This game is out of co-op league a long time ago.

Gathering power - as a build, as an elite player - is an highly egoistic thing, I fear.

[Thrudh]

I agree Inquisitive should have a doubleshot reduction of 50%, just like repeaters have a 33% reduction.

Makes very good sense to me.

[capsela]

Please don't nerf it before I have a chance to play it.

[BigErkyKid]

Because SSG keeps making content that's balanced for the most powerful builds and then the builds that sub-optimal end up struggling in newer content.

Why does it matter? Because new content that's added gets added with that OP build in mind.

Not only that. I do not appreciate being forced into whatever they decided is meta, with the only alternatives being: i) soloing, ii) being relegated to cheerleader of the people in the truly powerful builds.

No one (given a reasonable build, flavor will be flavor) should be forced into chosen a class they want to play or a powerful class / build.

I would grab one of these "lull ulul whatevcer" people, put them on a barb, and make them join for a week straight groups of sorcs and INQ exclusively. Then come back to me regarding whether it affects your fun or not.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Ok I came in here to discuss things in good faith, as requested...you apologized if you seemed like you were attacking anyone, then you attack me by questioning if I even play inqui :p. You lost a lot of credibility with me for that, and your specious arguments

Yes I get that inqui benefits the most from double shot. Again, you never showed why that was actually bad though, why that was a problem.

Dxb is not twf. It's single weapon. It's only a cosmetic effect. It's not dual weapons anymore than rxb is triple weapons because it fires three attacks per click. You need to get over that impression that dxb is actually dual wield. There is no spoon.

Yes rof is a component of dps but you're just willfully ignoring that mechanic hits harder per shot. It doesn't matter how it's broken down, all that matters in the end is dps, so if you want to make a case that inqui is over performing, use actual ttk benchmarks as your metric.

*attack mode off*. I apologize then, I misread part of your answer.

However why is it a bad thing? Its because inquisitive style with only the T5 alacrity (30%) fires at the same rate as a repeater with T5 mech alacrity, but benefits from 3x the DS.

Digressing further, the inquisitive tree is vastly superior to a pure rogue build due to better/higher law die and scaling, while still giving the build the option to also grab SA damage ofc. The 14d8 die is simultaneously more than the 10d6 a pure rogue split would get from their levels, and also scales better, and due to ash being available on the PN crossbow has the equivalent of LGS dust, which as you point out regular mechs don’t have the option to use. It’s much harder for a regular mech build to get dust to scale their SA die, it’s built into the BiS weapon for inquisitives. And simultaneously any benefit that a mech would get if there was a duster in the group is overridden by the fact that an inquisitive split can still get 7 of the 10 SA die of a pure rogue split, only missing 2d6 from the capstone and possible 1-2d6 because of not having the AP to grab from higher tiers of mechanic.

And I mean, Undaunted is like at least 3-4 feats worth of power for a single AP.

Edit: the fire rate for inquisitive is very comparable to a repeater.

With T5 fire rates from either mech or inquisitive it took me:

3:19 to unload 500 bolts with inquisitive style (30% T5 alacrity)
5:44 to unload 500 bolts with mech (30% T5 alacrity)
3:15 to unload 500 bolts with repeater (10% T5 alacrity)

[BigErkyKid]

inquisitive style with only the T5 alacrity (30%) fires at the same rate as a repeater with T5 mech alacrity, but benefits from 3x the DS.

and that is a bad thing because it means that the DPS is massively ahead of alternative xbow builds, or even the vast majority of martial builds.

Vastly superior ROF + superior procs + equivalent damage mods => mucho DPS, and orders of magnitude higher than the competition.

And why is that bad? Well, if you do not care about balance between classes, or power vs content, then it isn't bad FOR YOU.

For the rest of us, who clearly care, it is a slap in the face.

Of course, once you pair this OP PRE with content that pretty much exclusively FAVORS ranged archetypes, you get some unhappy players.

[Potatofasf]

Gathering power - as a build, as an elite player - is an highly egoistic thing, I fear.


Isn't a matter of being egoistic at all.

The game design, the hamster wheel of past lifes, the diminishing in-game population and the hardcore server has forced a good percentage of players to play DDO as a solo game. But when playing solo has a HUGE backside, LAG, playing alone a lag spike is fatal and a waste of time.

If Inquisitive fire rate is one of the cause for the constant massive lag spikes... so, Nwerf it to the ground...
If not... I don't care if they carry me through 1 to 20 on my racial grinding.

[Yamani]

Isn't a matter of being egoistic at all.

The game design, the hamster wheel of past lifes, the diminishing in-game population and the hardcore server has forced a good percentage of players to play DDO as a solo game. But when playing solo has a HUGE backside, LAG, playing alone a lag spike is fatal and a waste of time.

If Inquisitive fire rate is one of the cause for the constant massive lag spikes... so, Nwerf it to the ground...
If not... I don't care if they carry me through 1 to 20 on my racial grinding.

There is so many things contributing to lag. Like playing DDO on a potato, or mob AI pathing, or the weather... Sitting there and saying inquisitive is the sole cause of lag while you are soloing and probably not as an inquisitive is a joke.

[Shadow_Jumper]

If Inquisitive fire rate is one of the cause for the constant massive lag spikes... so, Nwerf it to the ground...
If not... I don't care if they carry me through 1 to 20 on my racial grinding.

Just roll a sorc for your racials

[erethizon]

This is the game: grind until you get more powerful and run the same content at a higher difficulty with higher success rate.

If you want to "buff" newer / less powerful players, the solution is not to release OP PREs or classes. By doing so, you give those monsters to veteran / powerful players who then crush content, all while upsetting the class v class (broadly speaking) balance. It is, all in all, a losing and shortsighted strategy.

If you want to buff less powerful players, do that. Either curve the power of grind (cap PLs, reaper AP, don't release massively OP gear), or provide a "rookie buff": simply add a passive bonus that disappears as you get more powerful. Many games do that, they give you an underlevel or whatever buff.

I reepat: adding broken PREs or classes is the wrong way to address power imbalances.

I do, more or less, agree with you. I don't mind front-loading past lives (though that only sort-of helps as you would have to then acquire X past lives to finally function and would be borderline useless until then). A "rookie buff" sort of works as well, though some people are rookies for 10 years and would need that buff forever.

The real problem is what the thread mentions in it's title: Exploit builds. When you give a powerful PRE to most people they end up with a nice character. In the hands of a few they become exploitatively powerful. The problem is not with the overall damage curve. Inquisitive does a great job of helping weaker players function better in the game. The problem is the upper end of what it can do. A good solution limits the upper end without bringing down the lower end.

I've brought up Armor Class before when it comes to this problem. I always liked the real D&D method of doing armor class. That is until this game actually made it possible to be a character in full plate armor with a large shield that gets hit 95% of the time (i.e. unless your opponent rolls a 1). At that point it became clear that with the inflated numbers that DDO designed into the game, a D20 system no longer worked.

If damage had a similar system exploit builds would no longer be a problem. If increased power (ranged, universal, melee, etc.) had diminishing returns then there would be less of a gap between exploit builds, regular builds, and weak builds. This would enable a lot more people to enjoy a lot more of the content and would open up the game to a lot more builds. As the content has become harder and harder (starting with ToEE and just getting worse as times goes on) overly powerful builds have become necessary to function.

The addition of Warlock and now the Inquisitive tree are two of the best improvements the game has made. The content is going to continue to become more difficult, because the players are obsessed with OP gear and pretty much demand that every pack add more OP gear to the game, and also because these same players that do everything the can to make the game as easy as possible by exploiting any power they can find, then complain if the game becomes too easy (as if they are not doing everything possible to try and make the game too easy).

When I meet a new player and they ask for class advice I first tell them to try whatever class sounds fun. But if they are struggling, if they find the game so difficult that they want to quit because it simply is not enjoyable because it is too hard, I recommend a mechanic rogue (now possibly with inquisitive if they have it) or a warlock. Those are the two classes that allow the average player to function in the game without having to first get 5 years of experience and a TR cache full of gear for every situation. We need more options like this, not less. And solutions for fixing OP characters need to be targeted at the characters that are OP and not the people playing the same builds but only achieving an average level of power.

[erethizon]

Bolded: This is a false statement. There is no such thing like underperforming inquisitive (or one that is not overperforming)

I have absolutely played with poorly geared inquisitives. If your argument is that their character is overperforming compared to what their character would be without it, then sure, it is a powerful tree that helps poor player play better. But I have absolutely partied with inquisitives that were the weakest members of the party. If they were 'overperforming' then so was absolutely everyone else in those parties and it looks like a wide variety of classes and builds need a nerf.

Inquisitive is good because it helps make up for a lack of gear and a lack of game knowledge. This is why it needs to continue to function as well as it does. Overperformance is when you give that same tree to someone that is perfectly geared and has excellent knowledge of the quest. The solution is not to nerf the inquisitive tree but to limit how much actual power you get from gear. To use a different example (that hopefully people are less emotionally invested in at the moment) the difference in damage between someone that 300 spell power and 1000 spell power is too large. A curve that offers diminishing returns (like armor class or PRR/MRR) allows you to prevent overperformance without hurting the weak at all. You could even give a boost in power to the very weak in the process.

And make no mistake, diminishing returns is not a cause I am championing. I don't care how powerful the super powerful get. But if endless nerf threads are going to continue to be created and they are going throw weaker players using the same build under the bus every time then I am going to propose a solution that only hurts the overly powerful. The majority of players are not OP no matter what build they are playing. They don't need a nerf.

[Karthunk]

Oh look, it's another one of these threads.

[Shadow_Jumper]

I have absolutely played with poorly geared inquisitives. If your argument is that their character is overperforming compared to what their character would be without it, then sure, it is a powerful tree that helps poor player play better. But I have absolutely partied with inquisitives that were the weakest members of the party. If they were 'overperforming' then so was absolutely everyone else in those parties and it looks like a wide variety of classes and builds need a nerf.

Inquisitive is good because it helps make up for a lack of gear and a lack of game knowledge. This is why it needs to continue to function as well as it does. Overperformance is when you give that same tree to someone that is perfectly geared and has excellent knowledge of the quest. The solution is not to nerf the inquisitive tree but to limit how much actual power you get from gear. To use a different example (that hopefully people are less emotionally invested in at the moment) the difference in damage between someone that 300 spell power and 1000 spell power is too large. A curve that offers diminishing returns (like armor class or PRR/MRR) allows you to prevent overperformance without hurting the weak at all. You could even give a boost in power to the very weak in the process.

And make no mistake, diminishing returns is not a cause I am championing. I don't care how powerful the super powerful get. But if endless nerf threads are going to continue to be created and they are going throw weaker players using the same build under the bus every time then I am going to propose a solution that only hurts the overly powerful. The majority of players are not OP no matter what build they are playing. They don't need a nerf.

I gotta disagree. Inquisitive, even undergeared is far superior dps to anything else.

A friend tested a non optimal and undergeared 14 ranger split. He hit 7k dps simply holding down left mouse button. Using the tree with actives he pushed that to 20k dps WITHOUT no holds barred. On a non optimal split mind you. An optimal split with more rogue for SA, or fighter for better dps trees would easily be pushing this further. Factoring in no holds barred (roughly 30% dps increase) this non-optimal split is pushing 25k dps, which was the outer limits of what my rogue could hit with suffering debuff.

Most tempest Rangers (the class the devs have said is in need of a nerf) probably average around 15-20k without prr debuffs.

[BigErkyKid]

I do, more or less, agree with you. [...]
When I meet a new player and they ask for class advice I first tell them to try whatever class sounds fun. But if they are struggling, if they find the game so difficult that they want to quit because it simply is not enjoyable because it is too hard, I recommend a mechanic rogue (now possibly with inquisitive if they have it) or a warlock. Those are the two classes that allow the average player to function in the game without having to first get 5 years of experience and a TR cache full of gear for every situation. We need more options like this, not less. And solutions for fixing OP characters need to be targeted at the characters that are OP and not the people playing the same builds but only achieving an average level of power.

Don't you see how this breaks balance? If you want to buff new players, buff new players.

Buffing new players by just making some classes more powerful than others, and directing them to those "OP" options, is not a real solution.

It just upsets the balance equation for everyone else, and you end up having people at the higher end who are forced to choose between what they know is OP and what they would like to play.

Some of us like classs balance: do not throw it under the bus to help "new players".

If you want to help new players, help them directly.

[droid327]

However why is it a bad thing? Its because inquisitive style with only the T5 alacrity (30%) fires at the same rate as a repeater with T5 mech alacrity, but benefits from 3x the DS.


You're still not showing that Inqui fires too fast. You're just showing that Repeater fires too slow. Give Repeaters 100% DS.

Also, DXB only benefits twice as much as Repeater, not 3x. At 100% DS, a DXB will get four shots (+2 shots). At 100% DS (33.3% after the penalty) an RXB will have a 70.3% chance of getting at least one extra shot, a 25.9% chance of getting at least two extra shots, and a 3.7% chance of getting three extra shots - which totals up to +1 shot on average, half the benefit of DXB.

Incidentally, repeaters get almost zero benefit from Alacrity, both from enhancements and from gear/haste/blinding speed. You can basically consider RXBs to be immune to speed bonuses (and penalties, ie Zombie). So that's another reason they're lagging so far behind GXB and DXB, and deserve to have their full DS restored (and probably another 30% DS added into T5 BE to complement the 30% Alacrity in Mech and Inqui T5s), which would greatly decrease the gap you're using to validate Inqui being OP.

[BigErkyKid]

You're still not showing that Inqui fires too fast. You're just showing that Repeater fires too slow. .

Wow! Do some work on your end too! The hardest part of computing damage in ranged DPS is figuring out the ROF. He did that for you, and it is not enough?

[droid327]

Wow! Do some work on your end too! The hardest part of computing damage in ranged DPS is figuring out the ROF. He did that for you, and it is not enough?

I dont see how it makes a difference either way? I'm not disputing his data, just his conclusions.

[Shadow_Jumper]

You're still not showing that Inqui fires too fast. You're just showing that Repeater fires too slow. Give Repeaters 100% DS.


Latest post.

Addon to further that discussion, volley gxb builds don’t reach anywhere near the dps output. Same person who tested his dxb build failed to get a gxb to break 15k. (He tested gxb pre-sharn). Iirc he did something like 9k dps, which is equivalent to auto-attack for an inquisitive

20-25k is teaching to tier-s dps. The fact that a 14 ranger split can reach that level with little effort is very troubling for balance.

While I don’t have a capped toon right now, I’ll probably be conducting some of my own tests once my alt gets to cap.

[redoubt]

*attack mode off*. I apologize then, I misread part of your answer.

However why is it a bad thing? Its because inquisitive style with only the T5 alacrity (30%) fires at the same rate as a repeater with T5 mech alacrity, but benefits from 3x the DS.

Digressing further, the inquisitive tree is vastly superior to a pure rogue build due to better/higher law die and scaling, while still giving the build the option to also grab SA damage ofc. The 14d8 die is simultaneously more than the 10d6 a pure rogue split would get from their levels, and also scales better, and due to ash being available on the PN crossbow has the equivalent of LGS dust, which as you point out regular mechs don’t have the option to use. It’s much harder for a regular mech build to get dust to scale their SA die, it’s built into the BiS weapon for inquisitives. And simultaneously any benefit that a mech would get if there was a duster in the group is overridden by the fact that an inquisitive split can still get 7 of the 10 SA die of a pure rogue split, only missing 2d6 from the capstone and possible 1-2d6 because of not having the AP to grab from higher tiers of mechanic.

And I mean, Undaunted is like at least 3-4 feats worth of power for a single AP.

Edit: the fire rate for inquisitive is very comparable to a repeater.

With T5 fire rates from either mech or inquisitive it took me:

3:19 to unload 500 bolts with inquisitive style (30% T5 alacrity)
5:44 to unload 500 bolts with mech (30% T5 alacrity)
3:15 to unload 500 bolts with repeater (10% T5 alacrity)

Could you expand on a few things please. I did some quick searches on the wiki, but did not find the details I was seeking.

What is Dust? What does it do? How do you get it? How does it relate to inquisitor?
Same questions for Ash.
What is the PN crossbow?

Thanks

[redoubt]

Isn't a matter of being egoistic at all.

The game design, the hamster wheel of past lifes, the diminishing in-game population and the hardcore server has forced a good percentage of players to play DDO as a solo game. But when playing solo has a HUGE backside, LAG, playing alone a lag spike is fatal and a waste of time.

If Inquisitive fire rate is one of the cause for the constant massive lag spikes... so, Nwerf it to the ground...
If not... I don't care if they carry me through 1 to 20 on my racial grinding.

Lots of things have been nerfed in the name of reducing lag. I don't believe it is working.

[Chai]

Game balance is important.

An easy thought experiment. Would it be a good idea to introduce a class that with a single button push instantly kills all mobs in a room, no save, including bosses?

Following your logic, in a co-op game, why would this be a bad thing?

That can be built in DDO with but one semantic technicality. The mobs get a save, but have no chance to actually beat it. The only places where this is not true are on the highest difficulty settings. They had to nerf self healing to single digit percentages and raise the roof on DCs needed to triple digits, just to "challenge" players.

Red name bosses which are immune are there because it is well known people would just kill those with one button as well if they could - so they are immune arbitrarily, not for some game lore reason.

So in DDO we are ~95-99% of the way to this absurd example, and yet still justifying class v class nerfs using game balance.

[BigErkyKid]

I dont see how it makes a difference either way? I'm not disputing his data, just his conclusions.

His conclusion is that ROF is a key element in making INQ too powerful wrt to other options, and he is absolutely right. He is comparing it to other xbow builds, and he just showed you that it is ROF that pulls it ahead. Then, obviously concluded that ROF needs to be nerfed for it be more balanced. He even gave you some empirical examples...

You are not contributing anything to this discussion other than asking for more and more and more and constantly disagreeing with...what exactly? Logic?

I am all for a spirited discussion, but in these forums too often some people put in the work just to get trolled, sniped, and asked again and again for more from people who are not putting in any work.

He chewed it up for everyone. If you do not get it, ask specific questions, and do some work on your end too.

Sorry if it came across harsh, but it is the accumulation of such posts that discourage anyone from putting any effort whatsoever.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Could you expand on a few things please. I did some quick searches on the wiki, but did not find the details I was seeking.

What is Dust? What does it do? How do you get it? How does it relate to inquisitor?
Same questions for Ash.
What is the PN crossbow?

Thanks

Dust/ash are originally LgS debuffs that applies -7 prr/mrr (dust reduces prr, ash reduces mrr) up to 5 stacks. For approx two years it was broken and did not apply as pot/mrr couldn’t go negative, and all mobs had 0. It was recently changed about 6-8 mo ago to work.

PN x-bow: https://ddowiki.com/page/Item:The_Hallowed_Splinters

I’m about 90% certain that mrr reduces the law damage. Every other encounter with law damage in this game has it reduced by mrr. I plan on 100% confirming whether the inquis law damage is reduced by mrr when I cap my toon.

The mind tear on the crossbow is equivalent (and does not stack) with LGS ash.

[Chai]

Isn't a matter of being egoistic at all.

The game design, the hamster wheel of past lifes, the diminishing in-game population and the hardcore server has forced a good percentage of players to play DDO as a solo game. But when playing solo has a HUGE backside, LAG, playing alone a lag spike is fatal and a waste of time.

If Inquisitive fire rate is one of the cause for the constant massive lag spikes... so, Nwerf it to the ground...
If not... I don't care if they carry me through 1 to 20 on my racial grinding.

If lag is the case, Id need a dev to post that it causes lag, similar to how they outlined old physics checks vs new physics checks for the twf nerf years ago, in order to convince me.

Players simply equating fast ROF to lag are not understanding the difference in processing between an actual physics check vs procs off previous physics checks, and how the latter requires a fraction of the resources to process than the former. If they coded this old school, where every shot fired has its own physics check, then that is a huge departure from how most if not all abilities have been coded (and what many where changed to) from years ago.

I highly doubt this is the case. From the way it plays it is likely coded to where the crossbow ROF is only making a physics check for the normal crossbow ROF, and everything else (the offhand cross bow as well as all doubleshot) is a proc off the same physics check. This is similar to how twf offhand is a proc off main hand physics check. Then they added things like doubleshot / doublestrike in order to be able to scale the perceived ROF / ROA without having to add in more physics checks.

[Shadow_Jumper]

If lag is the case, Id need a dev to post that it causes lag, similar to how they outlined old physics checks vs new physics checks for the twf nerf years ago, in order to convince me.

Players simply equating fast ROF to lag are not understanding the difference in processing between an actual physics check vs procs off previous physics checks, and how the latter requires a fraction of the resources to process than the former.

I do not know if inquisitives cause lag.

I will say as a long time twf player that dps lag is real, so it wouldn’t surprise me.

I’ll also say, as someone with eyeballs, that shadows in any, all, and every form cause massive lag. I would prefer the devs delete all shadows from the game and put floating balls with the words “ddo is lag free” in their place.

[redoubt]

I gotta disagree. Inquisitive, even undergeared is far superior dps to anything else.

A friend tested a non optimal and undergeared 14 ranger split. He hit 7k dps simply holding down left mouse button. Using the tree with actives he pushed that to 20k dps WITHOUT no holds barred. On a non optimal split mind you. An optimal split with more rogue for SA, or fighter for better dps trees would easily be pushing this further. Factoring in no holds barred (roughly 30% dps increase) this non-optimal split is pushing 25k dps, which was the outer limits of what my rogue could hit with suffering debuff.

Most tempest Rangers (the class the devs have said is in need of a nerf) probably average around 15-20k without prr debuffs.

To put it in some additional context, what dps did your assassin have when optimally geared? (Since many of the comparisons are to twf.)

[Shadow_Jumper]

To put it in some additional context, what dps did your assassin have when optimally geared? (Since many of the comparisons are to twf.)

20-25k.

Pre-sharn was around 15-17k in a non maximized dps setup, and maxed about 21-22k before sharn. Sharn has bumped the static numbers to about 25k.

Pre PRR/MRR parch the highest tested dps from around the endgame community on Ghallanda (disregarding adrenaline shield builds, pre-nerf duality&spite) never broke 25k.

Similar tempests from the same tests were about 17-18k

I would also like to add a disclaimer that the inquisitive build tested was a low PL toon, and a non-main. I’m quite curious what an optimal fighter or rogue split would do, I’m pretty sure the results would be/are quite stunning.

[FlavoredSoul]

Just reduce inq doubleshot scaling to 50%, they fire as about fast as repeaters (which only get 33% DS) but hit just slightly less hard than Gxbow (about equal when factoring in law dice).

reducing them to 50% will put them on about the same level as Gxbows, then you can buff repeaters from 33% up to 50% (or if technically possible put an ability that changes the repeater DS scaling from 33% to 50% in the mechanic and battle engineer T5s or something) to get all of them roughly similar in power.

Then buff bows, I don't know how maybe add a feat that gives alacrity with shortbows and + threat range to longbows or something with an autogrant for the feat in DWS (like how swords to plowshares works).

[DaggomaticDwarf]

Don't you see how this breaks balance? If you want to buff new players, buff new players.

Buffing new players by just making some classes more powerful than others, and directing them to those "OP" options, is not a real solution.

It just upsets the balance equation for everyone else, and you end up having people at the higher end who are forced to choose between what they know is OP and what they would like to play.

Some of us like classs balance: do not throw it under the bus to help "new players".

If you want to help new players, help them directly.

Don't you see, asking for blanket balance or as you put it "Class balance" got us here. You balance equates to just raw DPS output that's equal in all build, ignoring their class icon. Why have races, classes, enhancement, etc.? When all you want is for every toon to be the same.

And Last I checked no one is forcing you to do anything or play a certain way, that's your hang-up.

Dagg.

[Yamani]

Don't you see, asking for blanket balance or as you put it "Class balance" got us here. You balance equates to just raw DPS output that's equal in all build, ignoring their class icon. Why have races, classes, enhancement, etc.? When all you want is for every toon to be the same.

And Last I checked no one is forcing you to do anything or play a certain way, that's your hang-up.

Dagg.

Lets not forget it's because of people whining on the forums that drove away a major portion of the skilled players, due to them all wanting "balance"

[You_Salty]

20-25k.

Pre-sharn was around 15-17k in a non maximized dps setup, and maxed about 21-22k before sharn. Sharn has bumped the static numbers to about 25k.

Pre PRR/MRR parch the highest tested dps from around the endgame community on Ghallanda (disregarding adrenaline shield builds, pre-nerf duality&spite) never broke 25k.

Similar tempests from the same tests were about 17-18k

I would also like to add a disclaimer that the inquisitive build tested was a low PL toon, and a non-main. I’m quite curious what an optimal fighter or rogue split would do, I’m pretty sure the results would be/are quite stunning.

Are those Bruntsmash tests on R5?

[Karthunk]

Don't you see how this breaks balance? If you want to buff new players, buff new players.

Buffing new players by just making some classes more powerful than others, and directing them to those "OP" options, is not a real solution.

It just upsets the balance equation for everyone else, and you end up having people at the higher end who are forced to choose between what they know is OP and what they would like to play.

Some of us like classs balance: do not throw it under the bus to help "new players".

If you want to help new players, help them directly.

I have yet to join a group that wasn't a variety of different builds and classes. This is not a competitive "world first" to defeat an encounter game. People play what they like! If they get bored they TR into something else. I don't even see our few popular streamers, doing high level reaper, in groups filled with Inquisitive builds.

It's the same small group of posters calling for nerf after nerf and I have to wonder at the true motivation.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Are those Bruntsmash tests on R5?

The original ones were.

Nowadays you probably gotta do r10 due to dps increase and reduced reaper debuff curve.

[Shadow_Jumper]

I have yet to join a group that wasn't a variety of different builds and classes. This is not a competitive "world first" to defeat an encounter game. People play what they like! If they get bored they TR into something else. I don't even see our few popular streamers, doing high level reaper, in groups filled with Inquisitive builds.

It's the same small group of posters calling for nerf after nerf and I have to wonder at the true motivation.

Almost all of my leveling groups have consisted of two demographics;

1) Those who carried everyone, consisting of sorc or inquisitive (with a warlock sprinkled in for flavor)
2) pikers who were not inquisitive/sorc.

Endgame is quickly becoming 2-3 inquisitive DPS, and a single frustrated melee build who basically dodge tanks and breaks boxes.

[droid327]

His conclusion is that ROF is a key element in making INQ too powerful wrt to other options, and he is absolutely right. He is comparing it to other xbow builds, and he just showed you that it is ROF that pulls it ahead. Then, obviously concluded that ROF needs to be nerfed for it be more balanced. He even gave you some empirical examples...

Well not precisely...he's saying that because they have more ROF, they must have more DPS. I'm just saying if you're interested in DPS, then compare DPS directly. You can get that data. Having higher ROF is irrelevant if the DPS is still comparable - ultimately that's the only metric that's relevant to discussions of OPness.

[erethizon]

Don't you see how this breaks balance? If you want to buff new players, buff new players.

Buffing new players by just making some classes more powerful than others, and directing them to those "OP" options, is not a real solution.

It just upsets the balance equation for everyone else, and you end up having people at the higher end who are forced to choose between what they know is OP and what they would like to play.

Some of us like classs balance: do not throw it under the bus to help "new players".

If you want to help new players, help them directly.

Yes, that is fair. I would like to see a massive improvement to all the other classes. To start with all melees should take about 1/3rd of the damage they currently do each time they get hit. The defense of most melee characters is absolutely terrible in this game. On top of that many other improvements could be made to many other classes. But inquisitive and warlock are working as builds that are not highly gear dependent for people that want to function in today's game without needing to spend a lot time (or ideally any time) farming gear.

[Potatofasf]

Just roll a sorc for your racials

I'm doing it... intercalating Sorc and Warlock, just for the sake of variation.

[erethizon]

I gotta disagree. Inquisitive, even undergeared is far superior dps to anything else.

A friend tested a non optimal and undergeared 14 ranger split. He hit 7k dps simply holding down left mouse button. Using the tree with actives he pushed that to 20k dps WITHOUT no holds barred. On a non optimal split mind you. An optimal split with more rogue for SA, or fighter for better dps trees would easily be pushing this further. Factoring in no holds barred (roughly 30% dps increase) this non-optimal split is pushing 25k dps, which was the outer limits of what my rogue could hit with suffering debuff.

Most tempest Rangers (the class the devs have said is in need of a nerf) probably average around 15-20k without prr debuffs.

Just from the numbers you are giving off I guarantee your friend's "undergeared" and "non-optimal" character is still better than 90% of the inquisitives out there. Those numbers are off the charts compared to what most player ever see in their normal game play. It is best not to do such tests with players that know way too much about optimizing non-optimal situations. I've little doubt that this use of the word "undergeared" is vastly different from what I mean when I say undergeared.

[bracelet]

Just roll a sorc for your racials

Then the usual suspects will be in the forums screaming for a nerf to sorcs. The devs would be a heck of a lot better off just ignoring these threads. There is no possible way to prevent them and nerfing never brought one player back to the game.

[Chai]

I have yet to join a group that wasn't a variety of different builds and classes. This is not a competitive "world first" to defeat an encounter game. People play what they like! If they get bored they TR into something else. I don't even see our few popular streamers, doing high level reaper, in groups filled with Inquisitive builds.

It's the same small group of posters calling for nerf after nerf and I have to wonder at the true motivation.

The time factor is the agenda. Anything that does not require similar amounts of time to be similarly viable or similarly close to optimal has massive nerf demands from the same few people until the nerf bat is swung. This is the most obvious in Shiradi, Warlock, and Now Inquisitor discussions, but you will see it in most nerf (this new thing) threads.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Just from the numbers you are giving off I guarantee your friend's "undergeared" and "non-optimal" character is still better than 90% of the inquisitives out there. Those numbers are off the charts compared to what most player ever see in their normal game play.

From what I’ve seen other players on Ghallanda doing with actual geared builds.....no. It’s not over what most builds are currently doing. Out of a the gene pool of inquisitives (and there are many now) his is one of the underperformers.


It is best not to do such tests with players that know way too much about optimizing non-optimal situations. I've little doubt that this use of the word "undergeared" is vastly different from what I mean when I say undergeared.

And did you say that I should ignore people that know what they’re talking about? Because while I really hate to paraphrase, but that’s exactly what your advice sounds like.

[Chai]

Don't you see how this breaks balance? If you want to buff new players, buff new players.

Buffing new players by just making some classes more powerful than others, and directing them to those "OP" options, is not a real solution.

It just upsets the balance equation for everyone else, and you end up having people at the higher end who are forced to choose between what they know is OP and what they would like to play.

Some of us like classs balance: do not throw it under the bus to help "new players".

If you want to help new players, help them directly.

Selling character power is not solely marketed to new players. It is however, an option for those who see the hilarious amount of grind it takes to get regular builds up to par, to buy their way past it. Class balance is approachable, but not in a game selling character power straight cash. When new things are released the goal is to make people want to buy them, which equates to them being powerful and immediately playable at the high end.

Edit: The last time (and afaik the only time) they sold a painstakingly average AP tree, it had items which are deemed as "required" on many builds, such as KTA, which are too good to not have. The time before that was EDs, which are an all or nothing affair (cant just buy LD and call it a day).

[Potatofasf]

Lots of things have been nerfed in the name of reducing lag. I don't believe it is working.

In that we agree, nothing is working because maybe (and I'm putting it on bold to show that is a speculation of mine) they are not interested in deal with lag. Before some smart-hat pic on my "potato" that is rocking without lag on more top end and massive consuming games, several players have been relating lag spikes that frozen all actions without no apparent motives, the game just freeze. Now to add to it we have the mob pathing issue, so something say that their infrastructure is collapsing.
And they don't know how do deal with the game aging.


If lag is the case, Id need a dev to post that it causes lag, similar to how they outlined old physics checks vs new physics checks for the twf nerf years ago, in order to convince me.

Players simply equating fast ROF to lag are not understanding the difference in processing between an actual physics check vs procs off previous physics checks, and how the latter requires a fraction of the resources to process than the former. If they coded this old school, where every shot fired has its own physics check, then that is a huge departure from how most if not all abilities have been coded (and what many where changed to) from years ago.

I highly doubt this is the case. From the way it plays it is likely coded to where the crossbow ROF is only making a physics check for the normal crossbow ROF, and everything else (the offhand cross bow as well as all doubleshot) is a proc off the same physics check. This is similar to how twf offhand is a proc off main hand physics check. Then they added things like doubleshot / doublestrike in order to be able to scale the perceived ROF / ROA without having to add in more physics checks.

Okay, I just pointed out that could be. Like Monkchers were nerfed to oblivion because their mechanics were causing lags. Inquisitive maybe are stepping in the same spaghetti Monkchers were, but in different ways. If is that... nerf it.
If not... as I said before... I don't care. Let them roll like wildfire!

[Shadow_Jumper]

Selling character power is not solely marketed to new players. It is however, an option for those who see the hilarious amount of grind it takes to get regular builds up to par, to buy their way past it. Class balance is approachable, but not in a game selling character power straight cash. When new things are released the goal is to make people want to buy them, which equates to them being powerful and immediately playable at the high end.

If we want to discuss getting newer players more power to help level feel free to start a thread.

[Shadow_Jumper]

In that we agree, nothing is working because maybe (and I'm putting it on bold to show that is a speculation of mine) they are not interested in deal with lag. Before some smart-hat pic on my "potato" that is rocking without lag on more top end and massive consuming games, several players have been relating lag spikes that frozen all actions without no apparent motives, the game just freeze. Now to add to it we have the mob pathing issue, so something say that their infrastructure is collapsing.
And they don't know how do deal with the game aging.



Okay, I just pointed out that could be. Like Monkchers were nerfed to oblivion because their mechanics were causing lags. Inquisitive maybe are stepping in the same spaghetti Monkchers were, but in different ways. If is that... nerf it.
If not... as I said before... I don't care. Let them roll like wildfire!

See my point above.

This thread isn’t about lag. This thread isn’t about how hard newer players find leveling level 5 toons or about lag.

Please do not feed the troll derailing the thread.

[Chai]

From what I’ve seen other players on Ghallanda doing with actual geared builds.....no. It’s not over what most builds are currently doing. Out of a the gene pool of inquisitives (and there are many now) his is one of the underperformers.



And did you say that I should ignore people that know what they’re talking about? Because while I really hate to paraphrase, but that’s exactly what your advice sounds like.

Sounds more to me like he's saying theres a vast difference between 2nd-3rd BiS items being called undergeared, vs using randgen loot as being called undergeared.

[Potatofasf]

See my point above.

This thread isn’t about lag. This thread isn’t about how hard newer players find leveling level 5 toons or about lag.

Please do not feed the troll derailing the thread.

Okay, sorry, my bad!

[Chai]

If we want to discuss getting newer players more power to help level feel free to start a thread.

I'll stay in this one, thanks. The need for something to be superior in order to sell it is a valid point, often addressed by...wait...it actually never gets addressed.

Because its correct, and on topic.

For those who couch things in terms of desiring game balance: The pattern of demanding new things to be nerfed has not gone un-noticed, nor has the pattern of releasing OP things in order for them to sell better. This means if you ever want any traction on the game balance discussion, you will need to show how viable, but not optimal classes and AP trees sell better than optimal and even somewhat OP class and AP trees. In the context of this era, show us how inquisitive would have sold better if it was ~5% less powerful than mechanic.

I dont believe that to be possible, but who knows, maybe someone has that formula.

Until then, expect the new thing to be at the very least on par with the current meta builds, possibly even superior, and take far less time to "mature" into the upper tier difficulty settings.

[Thrudh]

Almost all of my leveling groups have consisted of two demographics;

1) Those who carried everyone, consisting of sorc or inquisitive (with a warlock sprinkled in for flavor)
2) pikers who were not inquisitive/sorc.

Endgame is quickly becoming 2-3 inquisitive DPS, and a single frustrated melee build who basically dodge tanks and breaks boxes.

Almost none of the PUGs I join while leveling or at end-game are like this.

I'm not saying INQs aren't broken... I'm saying plenty of people are still playing other builds.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Sounds more to me like he's saying theres a vast difference between 2nd-3rd BiS items being called undergeared, vs using randgen loot as being called undergeared.

Without qualifying what he would determine as a regular, anything can go more negative.

Basically the gist I’m getting from your statement is that inquisitive is balanced....if you take off your set bonus, and use subpar gear.

If a melee used the same “undergeared” excuse and tried a dps test they would struggle to break 15k in virtually any instance I can think of.

Using non optimal gear on a trash split you can overmatch a completely METAd rogue assassin build in dps.

[BigErkyKid]

I have yet to join a group that wasn't a variety of different builds and classes. This is not a competitive "world first" to defeat an encounter game. People play what they like! If they get bored they TR into something else. I don't even see our few popular streamers, doing high level reaper, in groups filled with Inquisitive builds.

It's the same small group of posters calling for nerf after nerf and I have to wonder at the true motivation.

This might be your experience, but it isn't mine. While not everyone is doing racials on warlock/sorc/inq, enough of them are. It is pretty much a given that I will encounter a few members per party of those in a PUG (levling or end game). It just takes a single decent sorc to ruin a quest for me, and there aren't enough people in the servers to be picky about who you group with.

Also, may I point how ironic it is to come to the forums to tell the people in the forums their voice isn't representative? For all you know, YOU are in the minority.

And finally, the is no secret agenda here. The agenda in this thread is out in the open: nerf INQ because they are too powerful, both wrt to content and other build alternatives.

[Tlorrd]

... which was the outer limits of what my rogue could hit with suffering debuff.

Bingo ... And now we see the motive ... Similar to Erky's threads ... Instead of looking at the build you play and asking for things to be improved, you're looking to nerf other's builds due to "interference" with your gameplay ..
Yet it's not even the normal build that you play.

[BigErkyKid]

Well not precisely...he's saying that because they have more ROF, they must have more DPS. I'm just saying if you're interested in DPS, then compare DPS directly. You can get that data. Having higher ROF is irrelevant if the DPS is still comparable - ultimately that's the only metric that's relevant to discussions of OPness.

Ehem, no?

They have more DPS, we already know that. He even gave you some numbers in that regard.

The point of the thread is to discuss what are the elements that make it imbalanced; i.e. ROF is the major reason (but there is some other stuff to discuss...).

[BigErkyKid]

Bingo ... And now we see the motive ... Similar to Erky's threads ... Instead of looking at the build you play and asking for things to be improved, you're looking to nerf other's builds due to "interference" with your gameplay ..
Yet it's not even the normal build that you play.

You are looking too hard for a gotcha moment.

He is giving you his build as a comparison because it is, among the non clearly broken, one of the highest possible single target DPS builds. It is, thus, a good comparison point for INQ.

But hey, ad hominem might be more fun for you...

And then we complain that the forums are toxic. I wish we had 10 moderators to deal with people who just post this kind of stuff consistently.

A self declared elitist comes and takes the chance to have a constructive discussion, just to be met with hostility, ad hominem remarks, and a whole bunch of unnecessarily hostile posts. I guess he would be better served limiting himself to a few snide remarks when someone posts a blunder around here.

[Chai]

Okay, I just pointed out that could be. Like Monkchers were nerfed to oblivion because their mechanics were causing lags. Inquisitive maybe are stepping in the same spaghetti Monkchers were, but in different ways. If is that... nerf it.
If not... as I said before... I don't care. Let them roll like wildfire!

Theyd likely find a way to address the issue with causing lag and keep the power similar (might toss in a token nerf but nothing too impacting). This DPS against non-moving HP bags aint gonna sell itself.

Keep in mind I'm fine if they nerf it. If it gets worse than mechanic, I'll just play the mechanic.

[Chai]

This might be your experience, but it isn't mine. While not everyone is doing racials on warlock/sorc/inq, enough of them are. It is pretty much a given that I will encounter a few members per party of those in a PUG (levling or end game). It just takes a single decent sorc to ruin a quest for me, and there aren't enough people in the servers to be picky about who you group with.

Also, may I point how ironic it is to come to the forums to tell the people in the forums their voice isn't representative? For all you know, YOU are in the minority.

And finally, the is no secret agenda here. The agenda in this thread is out in the open: nerf INQ because they are too powerful, both wrt to content and other build alternatives.

Why does a decent sorc "ruin" the quest for you?

[Tlorrd]

You are looking too hard for a gotcha moment.

He is giving you his build as a comparison because it is, among the non clearly broken, one of the highest possible single target DPS builds. It is, thus, a good comparison point for INQ.

But hey, ad hominem might be more fun for you...

And then we complain that the forums are toxic. I wish we had 10 moderators to deal with people who just post this kind of stuff consistently.

A self declared elitist comes and takes the chance to have a constructive discussion, just to be met with hostility, ad hominem remarks, and a whole bunch of unnecessarily hostile posts. I guess he would be better served limiting himself to a few snide remarks when someone posts a blunder around here.

I haven't read anything hostile in this thread other than folks debating and I've read the whole thing.

But all of these similar threads seem in the same vein ... "My build cannot tackle certain mechanics of the game or other builds ... Thus I need the other builds nerfed and change the game mechanics so that I may flourish."

Never once have I seen a thread start as ... "My build is overperforming and should be nerfed in the name of balance".

[BigErkyKid]

Why does a decent sorc "ruin" the quest for you?

booooom! boooom! booom!

And I am left piking, hoping to get a few hits on a boss, or breaking some boxes that got hidden around a corner.

But you already know that, so why do you ask?

[BigErkyKid]

I haven't read anything hostile in this thread other than folks debating and I've read the whole thing.

But all of these similar threads seem in the same vein ... "My build cannot tackle certain mechanics of the game or other builds ... Thus I need the other builds nerfed and change the game mechanics so that I may flourish."

Never once have I seen a thread start as ... "My build is overperforming and should be nerfed in the name of balance".

I was just using your posts as an example, I have no hope to change your posting style. That's why there is this IGNORE option, which I intend to use. Good day to you, sir.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Bingo ... And now we see the motive ... Similar to Erky's threads ... Instead of looking at the build you play and asking for things to be improved, you're looking to nerf other's builds due to "interference" with your gameplay ..
Yet it's not even the normal build that you play.

I haven’t asked for assassin to be buffed, because before inquisitive they were balanced on the outer tier of dps rankings, but because of their extreme single target focus it was relatively balanced.

If you think non optimal crossbow splits doing equal dps to assassin (without bothering to use no holds barred mind you)! And optimal pushing 10-20k over the current best split for melee dps, then I really can start to understand how something like this got released.

If I follow your advice, then what would Assassin need to be balanced? Well for starts SA should scale to 300-400% MP, and vkf should give you dance of death as a core. /s

Seriously? You can’t comprehend that hey, some people actually want a semi-balance that makes most builds on par to each other?

[Vorachtin]

The real question is, who cares? Isn't hurting the game, and I'm not the type that gets all butthurt if a team mate is doing more dps than me helping me clear dungeons and raids faster. So let them have at it.

[bracelet]

I haven’t asked for assassin to be buffed, because before inquisitive they were balanced on the outer tier of dps rankings, but because of their extreme single target focus it was relatively balanced.

If you think non optimal crossbow splits doing equal dps to assassin (without bothering to use no holds barred mind you)! And optimal pushing 10-20k over the current best split for melee dps, then I really can start to understand how something like this got released.

If I follow your advice, then what would Assassin need to be balanced? Well for starts SA should scale to 300-400% MP, and vkf should give you dance of death as a core. /s

Seriously? You can’t comprehend that hey, some people actually want a semi-balance that makes most builds on par to each other?

How do people measure DPS anyway? I am not sure I am hitting these numbers. The first step to fixing that would be getting an accurate measurement of what my DPS actually is.

[Shadow_Jumper]

The real question is, who cares? Isn't hurting the game, and I'm not the type that gets all butthurt if a team mate is doing more dps than me helping me clear dungeons and raids faster. So let them have at it.

See. This I disagree with. With a single update we went from static 20-25k dps being max for an unbuffed dps number on a top tier dps build to reaching to the stratosphere past 30k.

How does this affect me? I enjoy challenge in this game. This is removing challenge at a rather insane clip. R10 bosses now die in sub 10s in some case. If I want the heroic TR train I’ll level, and at this point endgame difficulties have become pathetic.

[Vorachtin]

See. This I disagree with. With a single update we went from static 20-25k dps being max for an unbuffed dps number on a top tier dps build to reaching to the stratosphere past 30k.

How does this affect me? I enjoy challenge in this game. This is removing challenge at a rather insane clip. R10 bosses now die in sub 10s in some case. If I want the heroic TR train I’ll level, and at this point endgame difficulties have become pathetic.

This isnt just inquisitive, they changed reaper a lot making it a joke. Honestly dipped a toe into hardcore for a minute, back on live now it is boring. Seriously eyeing retirement once i cap out on all reaper trees.

[Shadow_Jumper]

How do people measure DPS anyway? I am not sure I am hitting these numbers. The first step to fixing that would be getting an accurate measurement of what my DPS actually is.

There is no perfect way. The devs have never given us a useful combat log that would show actual damage over time, so players make do with monsters that they can see the HP of.

On live I use Bruntsmash in the first room of A Cabal for One. Back mathing the reaper debuff gives you a rough estimate of what you do.

There are several factors to consider, especially with sharn our now however. For one bruntsmash has a low fort, so that’s not a factor in tests on him. Mobs in sharn have a lot more compared to pre-sharn. Secondly, DPS gets worse overtime. The longer it takes you to kill something the less optimal your rotations will be, and your boosts will start to run out. That reason is one of the main reasons LD is still dps king, because it extends your uptime of ABs to be a 1-1. Other EDs would see a massive drop off of dps if a test extended past 20s.

[Shadow_Jumper]

This isnt just inquisitive, they changed reaper a lot making it a joke. Honestly dipped a toe into hardcore for a minute, back on live now it is boring. Seriously eyeing retirement once i cap out on all reaper trees.

I don’t disagree with this point. However I’d prefer to keep different discussions for different times :p

And you hit the nail on the head with how I view this as affecting me. The game is seriously starting to get that pre-reaper vibe of being too easy. A large majority of the endgame population on Ghallanda has already switched to inquisitive. People are running through r10 at heroic runspeed now, and short of raids very little else is challenging.

[Karthunk]

See. This I disagree with. With a single update we went from static 20-25k dps being max for an unbuffed dps number on a top tier dps build to reaching to the stratosphere past 30k.

How does this affect me? I enjoy challenge in this game. This is removing challenge at a rather insane clip. R10 bosses now die in sub 10s in some case. If I want the heroic TR train I’ll level, and at this point endgame difficulties have become pathetic.

This isn't a build problem, it's a PL problem. A group of first life players are not going to kill a R10 boss in sub 10 second times no matter what build they are using. You are trying to put a cork on a problem that is beyond fixing at this point. If you don't like people who have 80 PLs mowing everything down, using the flavor of the week, I would suggest grouping with some newer people. You will get that challenge you are looking for real fast.

[DaggomaticDwarf]

This might be your experience, but it isn't mine. While not everyone is doing racials on warlock/sorc/inq, enough of them are. It is pretty much a given that I will encounter a few members per party of those in a PUG (levling or end game). It just takes a single decent sorc to ruin a quest for me, and there aren't enough people in the servers to be picky about who you group with.

Also, may I point how ironic it is to come to the forums to tell the people in the forums their voice isn't representative? For all you know, YOU are in the minority.

And finally, the is no secret agenda here. The agenda in this thread is out in the open: nerf INQ because they are too powerful, both wrt to content and other build alternatives.

Not to get all Hallmark on you here but.. Only you can change how you feel. If a Sorc doing what a a Sorc do, make you feel this way. No amount of nerf will change that.

Look I'm not trying to be rude but this is on you not the game.

Dagg.

[Shadow_Jumper]

This isn't a build problem, it's a PL problem. A group of first life players are not going to kill a R10 boss in sub 10 second times no matter what build they are using. You are trying to put a cork on a problem that is beyond fixing at this point. If you don't like people who have 80 PLs mowing everything down, using the flavor of the week, I would suggest grouping with some newer people. You will get that challenge you are looking for real fast.

See, again I disagree.

I’m leveling my second lifer and absolutely blasting away a guildy who is on a 75+ reaper point melee toon with epic completionist.

Now you can argue that’s a good thing, that hey, this is a tree that gives everyone an extremely large amount of dps regardless of their class. However in my opinion having a tree where, no matter your class you can just openly trash any melee build in terms of dps, regardless of their class is a bad thing. I’ve not seen anything to the contrary that suggests that assassin or wolf are able to beat even sub optimal inquisitive splits.

[Yamani]

See, again I disagree.

I’m leveling my second lifer and absolutely blasting away a guildy who is on a 75+ reaper point melee toon with epic completionist.

Now you can argue that’s a good thing, that hey, this is a tree that gives everyone an extremely large amount of dps regardless of their class. However in my opinion having a tree where, no matter your class you can just openly trash any melee build in terms of dps, regardless of their class is a bad thing. I’ve not seen anything to the contrary that suggests that assassin or wolf are able to beat even sub optimal inquisitive splits.

Tell him to stop piking, problem solved.

[Oliphant]

INQs may be over performing a little, causing some spoiling of the fun for others that need to run around more time than they spend actually fighting. But that is nothing compared to the problem of veteran toons practically being 100x better than anything a new player can produce, at least in terms of results. I think INQ was intended to solve the problem of nothing functional for new players for Sharn and RL at cap. In my experience new players tend to finish their lives and then spend some time at cap. "End"game is just a name for capped, not for "veteran only play". They probably need to nerf INQ a little or otherwise rebalance game to slow down encounters for the track-and-field playstyles. But if they nuke INQs they are making a big mistake, or at least they need to pull an evil genie move with an OP Alchemist when they do so.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Tell him to stop piking, problem solved.

yea. he needs to break those boxes faster.

[Jetrule]

All the talk of the EXTREME damage potential of inquisitive based builds trashing all competition lvls 1-30 and 2nd lifers destroying the damage out put of well a established multi life reaper winger melee build character, well it makes me realize I am doing something very wrong.

Its probably not my build but my play mechanics. I find inquisitive shooters wastes a attack round usually when switching targets and I find it has alot of trouble hitting things in melee range.

My heroics inqusitive experience is largely on the hardcore server but I have faster quest clears at low levels with a cleaving two hander melee than a inquisitive. A heavy repeater out dps'es a two crossbow inquisitive in the lower levels at least. Inquisitive picks up for me in mid to upper heroics and becomes a better option by then in most quests unless i am on a inquiswizard or a gimp dex build which will never get ips. Then it is about as good as a many cleave barb and below a tempest in damage output. It's true inquisitive has the range advantage and can start the killing in most encounters before the mobs wakeup. And they do eventually get alot of attacks and good damage on those attacks. Dps caster though still owns heroics lvl 6+ as far as my anecdotal experience shows.

Are the complaints about the over performance of inquisitive dps really mainly a lvl30 mid to high reaper thing?

[redoubt]

WARNING: rambling post about the game, kill counts and play styles.

Summary: Inquis is powerful, no doubt. But I'm not yet convinced its game breaking (mostly because I put a lot of stock into play style.) What happens when the top 2-3% players get together is nothing like what happens when the rest of us play.


So Inquisitive came out with sharn at the end of March. I was waiting on the update with my capped assassin. I played sharn through many times on elite and reaper (mostly 1/2, but as high as 5/6.) I think I TR'd mid May. During that time I played almost nothing but sharn. I played it enough to get all the artifacts and almost every piece of non-raid gear. I played in pugs and with friends. Yes, sharn is tough on melee and really tough on a rogue due to the high fort and immune mobs.

My rogue cannot do what Shadow's rogue can do. He has, from reports, likely 50-100% more dps than I do. (I've never done the bruntsmash test etc.) Even so, in the 6ish weeks I played sharn, while inquisitor was already out, only a few people could out kill me. I do recognize that kill count is not a direct indicator of dps. I also realize that people were still figuring out how to build Inquisitors.

So what does it mean if I can lead the kill count in just business over ranged characters? (Including the initial inquisitor builds.) What it tells me is:

1) how the player plays does still matter in a large portion of the game. And by that I mean outside the top 2 or 3% of players. I totally understand that when you are running in that rarified air of the top fraction of a percent, that getting massively out killed can be demoralizing. There are a handful of players on my server that my friends and I love to group with where we just try to hang on. These players rock. It does not matter what build they are on. I learn from them, ask them questions and have a good time. My friends and I often joke that they play a different game than we do.

2) kill counts are about aggressive play and speed. Ranged builds by their nature are fast. You can't out run a bolt. A ranged build hanging back and rotating targets can, if they choose to do so, lead the kill count easily by sniping the lowest hp mobs all the time. In fact, this is often the encouraged mode of play taught to new players. (Let someone else get agro and hit the nearly dead ones so they don't come after you.) Aggressive play and speed is why my assassin is so good at leading the kill count. Part of it is the high rate of attack with twf and part of it is how aggressively I play to always be in striking distance while flanking and sheading agro. Inquisitors do have a high rate of attack. (Though there is a really jacked up delay in target swapping.)

Now, my assassin I talk about above is currently doing a couple lives as an inquisitive. (I'll still be going back to assassin.) I do feel that in heroic I can run about +2 R levels compared to my assassin. In absolute terms, I ran R2 on my assassin, and I run R4 on my inquisitive. At the end of my last life in epics I was still only running R2 in my usual duo and wanted a full group to run higher. (There was simply too much incoming damage otherwise.) I'm currently back to level 15. I can kill a lot of mobs before they can get to me even without kiting. On this build I tend to be the one who starts the fight. I pull everything to me and my wolf friend intims and I diplo when the group arrives. (Nope, I don't kite away from my party members unless its a tactic specifically for certain mobs). Because of the intim and diplo I rarely have agro when they get close and my SA kicks in. I lead the kill count by a wide margin. Yes, that margin is wider than as an assassin, but my assassin's usual margin is also wide (i.e. 4-10x the next person.) As an inquis, I end up 7-10x the next. Of course, I just ran some GH R4 with another inquis. I was 3x that players kill count. He is a good player. What causes this discrepancy? He is in sharn gear and I'm in ravenloft gear. We are both using using ratcather. I do have more past lives and about 30 more reaper points than he does.

All that to say, I will agree that well built inquisitives are very powerful. I've not gone back and played a warlock or assassin again since playing inquisitive, but I've facerolled lots of content before inquisitive. I've play a GXB mechanic/artie and gone back to assassin and not missed it. I do remember melting mobs with fusillade back then. I melt them now. Its hard to tell without a back to back run which melts them harder... Going from GXB to assassin I had to play differently, but I did not feel I was not contributing or that I was lacking in dps. At some point I will have to go from inquis back to assassin to get a closer compare. (Though, with everyone screaming nerf, I'm going to get the rest of the past lives I want that synergize with inquis done first. 8P )

[CaptainPurge]

WARNING: rambling post about the game, kill counts and play styles.


*snip*

I'm still Tempest at cap. People are playing INQ's and Sorcs. But I am fully ready and geared to go INQ at a moment's notice. It just seems....why switch to INQ? Groups already have them in abundance. Face-F'ing mobs has to be done by someone (melee). I don't mind death but will avoid it. As a famous musician once said, "Death don't hurt very long."

[BigErkyKid]

WARNING: rambling post about the game, kill counts and play styles.

Summary: Inquis is powerful, no doubt. But I'm not yet convinced its game breaking (mostly because I put a lot of stock into play style.) What happens when the top 2-3% players get together is nothing like what happens when the rest of us play.


So Inquisitive came out with sharn at the end of March. I was waiting on the update with my capped assassin. I played sharn through many times on elite and reaper (mostly 1/2, but as high as 5/6.) I think I TR'd mid May. During that time I played almost nothing but sharn. I played it enough to get all the artifacts and almost every piece of non-raid gear. I played in pugs and with friends. Yes, sharn is tough on melee and really tough on a rogue due to the high fort and immune mobs.

My rogue cannot do what Shadow's rogue can do. He has, from reports, likely 50-100% more dps than I do. (I've never done the bruntsmash test etc.) Even so, in the 6ish weeks I played sharn, while inquisitor was already out, only a few people could out kill me. I do recognize that kill count is not a direct indicator of dps. I also realize that people were still figuring out how to build Inquisitors.

So what does it mean if I can lead the kill count in just business over ranged characters? (Including the initial inquisitor builds.) What it tells me is:

1) how the player plays does still matter in a large portion of the game. And by that I mean outside the top 2 or 3% of players. I totally understand that when you are running in that rarified air of the top fraction of a percent, that getting massively out killed can be demoralizing. There are a handful of players on my server that my friends and I love to group with where we just try to hang on. These players rock. It does not matter what build they are on. I learn from them, ask them questions and have a good time. My friends and I often joke that they play a different game than we do.

2) kill counts are about aggressive play and speed. Ranged builds by their nature are fast. You can't out run a bolt. A ranged build hanging back and rotating targets can, if they choose to do so, lead the kill count easily by sniping the lowest hp mobs all the time. In fact, this is often the encouraged mode of play taught to new players. (Let someone else get agro and hit the nearly dead ones so they don't come after you.) Aggressive play and speed is why my assassin is so good at leading the kill count. Part of it is the high rate of attack with twf and part of it is how aggressively I play to always be in striking distance while flanking and sheading agro. Inquisitors do have a high rate of attack. (Though there is a really jacked up delay in target swapping.)

Now, my assassin I talk about above is currently doing a couple lives as an inquisitive. (I'll still be going back to assassin.) I do feel that in heroic I can run about +2 R levels compared to my assassin. In absolute terms, I ran R2 on my assassin, and I run R4 on my inquisitive. At the end of my last life in epics I was still only running R2 in my usual duo and wanted a full group to run higher. (There was simply too much incoming damage otherwise.) I'm currently back to level 15. I can kill a lot of mobs before they can get to me even without kiting. On this build I tend to be the one who starts the fight. I pull everything to me and my wolf friend intims and I diplo when the group arrives. (Nope, I don't kite away from my party members unless its a tactic specifically for certain mobs). Because of the intim and diplo I rarely have agro when they get close and my SA kicks in. I lead the kill count by a wide margin. Yes, that margin is wider than as an assassin, but my assassin's usual margin is also wide (i.e. 4-10x the next person.) As an inquis, I end up 7-10x the next. Of course, I just ran some GH R4 with another inquis. I was 3x that players kill count. He is a good player. What causes this discrepancy? He is in sharn gear and I'm in ravenloft gear. We are both using using ratcather. I do have more past lives and about 30 more reaper points than he does.

All that to say, I will agree that well built inquisitives are very powerful. I've not gone back and played a warlock or assassin again since playing inquisitive, but I've facerolled lots of content before inquisitive. I've play a GXB mechanic/artie and gone back to assassin and not missed it. I do remember melting mobs with fusillade back then. I melt them now. Its hard to tell without a back to back run which melts them harder... Going from GXB to assassin I had to play differently, but I did not feel I was not contributing or that I was lacking in dps. At some point I will have to go from inquis back to assassin to get a closer compare. (Though, with everyone screaming nerf, I'm going to get the rest of the past lives I want that synergize with inquis done first. 8P )


Any normal player on an inq will outperform him or herself playing most other builds. That is the definition of imbalance. It is a myth that this is about the 1%; I see inqs and lots of the currently op builds players by all kinds of players. While it is true that powergamers flock faster to the meta builds, that doesn’t diminish the fact that they are meta because they simply are more powerful.

[CaptainPurge]

Any normal player on an inq will outperform him or herself playing most other builds. That is the definition of imbalance. It is a myth that this is about the 1%; I see inqs and lots of the currently op builds players by all kinds of players. While it is true that powergamers flock faster to the meta builds, that doesn’t diminish the fact that they are meta because they simply are more powerful.

Can we as a people stop "quoting" full posts of this massive size? It is not necessary, but as a full people we can cut down on this madness.

[Oliphant]

INQ is being played a lot because its new, it has good all around reliability, its effective, but not so effective there is no play. Alternatively, a decently PL'ed and geared Sorc, Wizard, Favored Soul or Cleric at various times adding up to years could be built so overpowered on DC casting they quickly become boring so people move onto something else, rotate. Whenever I succeed in making a great DC caster it blows everything else away but there is no push and pull, no feeling of pressure in the environment pushing back. INQ is a bit OP but there's still sport in it, its fun and exciting and super functional for heal party support with the FVS route. I could steam roll much harder with my recent FVS DC caster or I could do a PM but of course I would never do that because their auras suck, audio-wise.

[BigErkyKid]

I think INQ was intended to solve the problem of nothing functional for new players for Sharn and RL at cap. .

This argument does not hold water. If you want to provide some "buff" for new players, do it directly. Creating an OP PRE is not the solution, since it of course imbalances existing class / archetype balance.

Class and archetype balance is desired by the player base. The myth that people don't care about balance was destroyed by the survey turbine did on character balance (here they discuss the survey: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/439018-Player-Character-Balance?highlight=balance). Overwhelmingly, the majority of players said that they cared about character balance. So people saying that only some "elite" and "loud" forumites care about balance are wrong.

That said, INQ breaks the balance of power:
i) among the options available to martial ranged characters, INQ is the best by a wide margin. This is due to a combination of very good procs, competitive DBs, competitive RP, and the best ROF of their style.
ii) it is so powerful that it also breaks the balance between martial melee and martial ranged. It has the same or superior DPS as the best single target melee characters, coupled with ranged advantage and AoE via IPS.

Again, allowing OP balance breaker builds as a new player entry tool is the wrong way to enable new players. There are far better options to achieve that without ruining the game for the majority of players who care about balance.

[Oliphant]

This argument does not hold water. If you want to provide some "buff" for new players, do it directly. Creating an OP PRE is not the solution, since it of course imbalances existing class / archetype balance.

Definitely help new players directly. What does not hold water is false dichotomies about DDO feature updates as they do several updates a year, with multiple features updated per update.

You posted about anti-melee Sharn tactics in another thread. If you care about you and the team winning then INQs are out there to help your melee do that. You're welcome for the heals, kills and traps. If you wanted to always being doing all the killing, not satisfied being an important team member providing reliability with your ability to serve as a frontline defense, tank and help us win when the going gets tough, then INQs harmed you I guess. To the extent you are not providing that reliability, maybe issue is game is too tough on melees. Good thing INQs are here to help for now.

They may be a bit OP but only game breaking for you if you let them be. It's not that big of a deal. This too shall pass. Melees were rocking it on Ghallanda for awhile before Sharn xpan and I still seem them. Now ranged get a turn. What you find fun is not objective. Some people like slower, more tactical, some more twitchy and quick. Lots and lots of playstyles beyond even describing. In PnP I liked totally zoomed in, full detail, conceptual, story based play; that will never happen in DDO but I don't worry about what it is not. They will obviously nerf INQ at some point. I would give generous odds on that. As we discuss INQ I can feel Alchemist looking over our shoulders. I still say I think INQ was intended to solve the problem of nothing functional for new players for Sharn and RL at cap. They can nerf it a bit and it will still be a great option for new players as long as they keep its character - full bodied and reliable. Of course I support them doing something to help new players any way they can, starting with quality of life throttles imposed on them to sell conveniences.

[Oliphant]

Scoundrel violin noise on sonic blasts, now THAT is OP.

[BigErkyKid]

Definitely help new players directly.
I already answered tot hat.


If you care about you and the team winning then INQs are out there to help your melee do that. You're welcome for the heals, kills and traps. If you wanted to always being doing all the killing, not satisfied being an important team member providing reliability with your ability to serve as a frontline defense, tank and help us win when the going gets tough, then INQs harmed you I guess. To the extent you are not providing that reliability, maybe issue is game is too tough on melees. Good thing INQs are here to help for now.

Players care about character balance, not only about winning.


They may be a bit OP but only game breaking for you if you let them be. It's not that big of a deal.What you find fun is not objective.
I brought up the only objective piece of evidence we have about the preferences of the broader DDO community. People care about balance, and balance is what we are discussing here.

In other words: your minority opinion that winning is what the game is about is just that, a minority opinion.

If you want to help new players in a way that sits well with the majority of players who care about character balance, then find another way that does not involve OP PREs.

But you are just repeating the same thing over and over again, without listening to arguments, bringing up data, or facts, or anything tangible. Is this all about people being hurt because they are not top kill account? Strawman much.

Discuss the topic, not the person.

[Eryhn]

This is the game: grind until you get more powerful and run the same content at a higher difficulty with higher success rate.

If you want to "buff" newer / less powerful players, the solution is not to release OP PREs or classes. By doing so, you give those monsters to veteran / powerful players who then crush content, all while upsetting the class v class (broadly speaking) balance. It is, all in all, a losing and shortsighted strategy.

If you want to buff less powerful players, do that. Either curve the power of grind (cap PLs, reaper AP, don't release massively OP gear), or provide a "rookie buff": simply add a passive bonus that disappears as you get more powerful. Many games do that, they give you an underlevel or whatever buff.

I reepat: adding broken PREs or classes is the wrong way to address power imbalances.


this is true, factually, but regardless of that at this point in time I honestly feel adressing this on forums is completely useless.

this kind of design is literally WAI.

a lot of people are outraged or sad as from a balance point it makes no sense. balance however is not the deciding angle on this, monetization is.

factors that presumably lead to this:

the engine and code is old and is at its limits still providing a fast paced gameplay with all the various class/enhancement/destiny procs and thingies running on sth turnbased straining the servers. a solution would be to upgrade servers to higher performance but they either cannot or do not want to afford that.

from this technical limitation follows that the sad truth is they actually cannot possibly have an interest in truly expanding the player base too much, as that would strain servers even more.

it also follows that for them to earn money, it is more efficient to have a smaller number of high paying customers, compared to a broad playerbase with many low paying f2ps sprinkled in.

the recent balance changes caused by OP racial trees and OP universal trees and OP gear reflect this:

people that have been with the game a long time and have been paying regularly and well need to be retained, hence, always dangle another carrot, always have them do another lap, another life, then go back to cap reaper raids a while, rinse repeat. keep selling sov pots and stones for those in a rush. keep selling warlock, then crazymonk, then inqui, next alchemist. and chest rolls, goodness, no better money generator than those poor idiots with no patience for random luck to hit whenever in the next half year ...(thats why gear puzzle is such a stingy mess btw, too, BY DESIGN. cause if you rly lack that one piece to make your set for R raids ..., hell just dump 50 bucks on reroll, lulz, poor sucker)

at the same time, the new trees and gear DO offer a quick way to reasonable power (as in: keep up on R1 pugs) to new players, however behind that paywall of buy ravenloft, sharn, buy supreme tome, buy the big bundles, then grind gear 3 months for lvl 10, 15, 29, after, be able to participate in the carrot game.


the current balance is saying: if you are a new player and want to f2p, or want to spend 20-50 bucks a year, we aren't really interested in you, we will make your life a bit harder in comparison.
you will have to play solo or find a layed back guild or static environment to slowly play and some things you wont have the build or gear power for to do. average speed pugs are not for you. endgame raids above LH are not for you, and for newer raids its stay out completely or LN.

if you go in with a big 100+ bucks investment from the start, add a VIP on top, become a member of the carrot army, hey, then, we pamper you a bit, all good.


anyways this is how it seems to me. I'm not sure I have a clear judgement on this. If they dont earn money the lights go dark completely. going for money from re-expanding the player base massively on an outdated game seems counterintuitive. gfx are niche. build diversity most here love compared to other mmo, niche. engine performance, could go in a museum ...

these are the facts.

they might oc also bleed away all the in between players more and more, till all the "toxic" grinders as somebody else called it in some other thread are what is left, and at some point there will be too little people left even of those. because some of that crowd left too, over blatantly idiotic stuff like TR bug, or over stuff like "ok I realize this money bleed grind is just stupid, ima go try new game"

but it could also be that with this current approach they keep servers open 2 years longer than otherwise.


game is slowly dying, slowly dying is never fun ...


edit: and like, radical visonary stuff like believing in the base concept of the game, taking a third or half of the devs and lock them in the basement for a year to silently recode on a new engine, then relaunch 2.0 and hope it takes off, there is NO WAY IN HELL anybody would finance that, there is no way the people involved would gamble their jobs on that, its rly not that unreasonable if you think about it.

so, here we are, atm there still is that inbetween group to some extent, people that played 5years+ and used to be casual, but by now find that in comparison to newbies they count as vets with power based on 5-10 PLs, 5-10 EPLs and reasonable gear not farmed but simply collected in passing, allowing them to keep up with the fast paced crowd, some of those stick around as before, some leave, some very few upgrade their investment and adjust their playstyle - but by and large this is the group currently bleeding out and leaving most I think ...

anyways, this is why we have "exploity" Inquis, and why the few devs comments on the matter feign naive ignorance as in "its same as gxbow" and why it will stay as is till alchemist, and THEN ONLY be nerfed some, and then later nerfed again "for balance"

[Potatofasf]

this is true, factually, but regardless of that at this point in time I honestly feel adressing this on forums is completely useless.

this kind of design is literally WAI.

a lot of people are outraged or sad as from a balance point it makes no sense. balance however is not the deciding angle on this, monetization is.

factors that presumably lead to this:

the engine and code is old and is at its limits still providing a fast paced gameplay with all the various class/enhancement/destiny procs and thingies running on sth turnbased straining the servers. a solution would be to upgrade servers to higher performance but they either cannot or do not want to afford that.

from this technical limitation follows that the sad truth is they actually cannot possibly have an interest in truly expanding the player base too much, as that would strain servers even more.

it also follows that for them to earn money, it is more efficient to have a smaller number of high paying customers, compared to a broad playerbase with many low paying f2ps sprinkled in.

the recent balance changes caused by OP racial trees and OP universal trees and OP gear reflect this:

people that have been with the game a long time and have been paying regularly and well need to be retained, hence, always dangle another carrot, always have them do another lap, another life, then go back to cap reaper raids a while, rinse repeat. keep selling sov pots and stones for those in a rush. keep selling warlock, then crazymonk, then inqui, next alchemist. and chest rolls, goodness, no better money generator than those poor idiots with no patience for random luck to hit whenever in the next half year ...(thats why gear puzzle is such a stingy mess btw, too, BY DESIGN. cause if you rly lack that one piece to make your set for R raids ..., hell just dump 50 bucks on reroll, lulz, poor sucker)

at the same time, the new trees and gear DO offer a quick way to reasonable power (as in: keep up on R1 pugs) to new players, however behind that paywall of buy ravenloft, sharn, buy supreme tome, buy the big bundles, then grind gear 3 months for lvl 10, 15, 29, after, be able to participate in the carrot game.


the current balance is saying: if you are a new player and want to f2p, or want to spend 20-50 bucks a year, we aren't really interested in you, we will make your life a bit harder in comparison.
you will have to play solo or find a layed back guild or static environment to slowly play and some things you wont have the build or gear power for to do. average speed pugs are not for you. endgame raids above LH are not for you, and for newer raids its stay out completely or LN.

if you go in with a big 100+ bucks investment from the start, add a VIP on top, become a member of the carrot army, hey, then, we pamper you a bit, all good.


anyways this is how it seems to me. I'm not sure I have a clear judgement on this. If they dont earn money the lights go dark completely. going for money from re-expanding the player base massively on an outdated game seems counterintuitive. gfx are niche. build diversity most here love compared to other mmo, niche. engine performance, could go in a museum ...

these are the facts.

they might oc also bleed away all the in between players more and more, till all the "toxic" grinders as somebody else called it in some other thread are what is left, and at some point there will be too little people left even of those. because some of that crowd left too, over blatantly idiotic stuff like TR bug, or over stuff like "ok I realize this money bleed grind is just stupid, ima go try new game"

but it could also be that with this current approach they keep servers open 2 years longer than otherwise.


game is slowly dying, slowly dying is never fun ...


edit: and like, radical visonary stuff like believing in the base concept of the game, taking a third or half of the devs and lock them in the basement for a year to silently recode on a new engine, then relaunch 2.0 and hope it takes off, there is NO WAY IN HELL anybody would finance that, there is no way the people involved would gamble their jobs on that, its rly not that unreasonable if you think about it.

so, here we are, atm there still is that inbetween group to some extent, people that played 5years+ and used to be casual, but by now find that in comparison to newbies they count as vets with power based on 5-10 PLs, 5-10 EPLs and reasonable gear not farmed but simply collected in passing, allowing them to keep up with the fast paced crowd, some of those stick around as before, some leave, some very few upgrade their investment and adjust their playstyle - but by and large this is the group currently bleeding out and leaving most I think ...

anyways, this is why we have "exploity" Inquis, and why the few devs comments on the matter feign naive ignorance as in "its same as gxbow" and why it will stay as is till alchemist, and THEN ONLY be nerfed some, and then later nerfed again "for balance"

Honesty!
I respected that!
/Agreed.

[DaggomaticDwarf]

I already answered tot hat.



Players care about character balance, not only about winning.


I brought up the only objective piece of evidence we have about the preferences of the broader DDO community. People care about balance, and balance is what we are discussing here.

In other words: your minority opinion that winning is what the game is about is just that, a minority opinion.

If you want to help new players in a way that sits well with the majority of players who care about character balance, then find another way that does not involve OP PREs.

But you are just repeating the same thing over and over again, without listening to arguments, bringing up data, or facts, or anything tangible. Is this all about people being hurt because they are not top kill account? Strawman much.

Discuss the topic, not the person.

This only affect you and how everyone outperforming your build has ruin your game time.

And please stop acting like you are speaking for the "Majority" you are speaking just for yourself and no one else!

Dagg.

[Eryhn]

Honesty!
I respected that!
/Agreed.


thx lol.

for the record, I DO have a judgement, which is I dislike and detest this development, which should have been apparent from the tone of last post but Ill spell it out after all.

but well, to like or not like is one thing, the harsh reality is another.

having said that, ima go log in half an hour watch mobs jump of cliffs, get some XP, got 2 toons that unlocked inqui but havent gotten them quite rdy to TR into it yet. I should, hypocritically, milk this a bit for my own casual keeping up before the next thing hits whenever lol


edit: and then Ill log back out and prly not play again for several days or a week or even 2, cause im part of that inbetween group currently slowly losing interest ...

[Potatofasf]

thx lol.

for the record, I DO have a judgement, which is I dislike and detest this development, which should have been apparent from the tone of last post but Ill spell it out after all.

but well, to like or not like is one thing, the harsh reality is another.

having said that, ima go log in half an hour watch mobs jump of cliffs, get some XP, got 2 toons that unlocked inqui but havent gotten them quite rdy to TR into it yet. I should, hypocritically, milk this a bit for my own casual keeping up before the next thing hits whenever lol


edit: and then Ill log back out and prly not play again for several days or a week or even 2, cause im part of that inbetween group currently slowly losing interest ...

Hehehehe I understand you!
Since to in-game support they are no-show when we need them, but to bash us on forums they are always up to the task.
During week, I log in because it is installed in my work station, so I play to past some time while the experiments rolls on lab...
During weekend, at home with more options (PS4, Pen 'n Paper, Kids playing around) DDO is long last on the line... not because I dislike the game, but for development treatment! (yeah, I'm total jaded with them)

[rabidfox]

I recently swapped builds around between AA and Inq just to see the difference. Inq was a bit easier to play on trash (that was spread out), but my overall times to clear instances I was farming was next to no difference (no more difference than what I'd see from run to run without build changes). A properly setup Hunt's End + Arrow of slaying is all that was needed to drop stuff fast. Twists were a bit different, I had to twist in Primal Hymn for the 10% extra attack speed on bow to make it work; but it worked well enough. Inq felt like I was pew-pewing faster because of all the numbers flying on the screen but run times showed it didn't matter overall for me; for spread out mobs or for constant pulls where the cool down on the hunt/slaying is a pain, AA could use a little more attack speed to be on par w/Inq. Maybe I'm just not playing at some hardcore level where Inq suddenly becomes god mode.

edit: Just to note, I also swapped manyshot for rapid reload at Fred at the same time. I had all the other ranged feats one would expect for a build. Ranged weapons were comparable with the same sentient slots/filigree setup inside both.

[Tlorrd]

I recently swapped builds around between AA and Inq just to see the difference. Inq was a bit easier to play on trash (that was spread out), but my overall times to clear instances I was farming was next to no difference (no more difference than what I'd see from run to run without build changes). A properly setup Hunt's End + Arrow of slaying is all that was needed to drop stuff fast. Twists were a bit different, I had to twist in Primal Hymn for the 10% extra attack speed on bow to make it work; but it worked well enough. Inq felt like I was pew-pewing faster because of all the numbers flying on the screen but run times showed it didn't matter overall for me; for spread out mobs or for constant pulls where the cool down on the hunt/slaying is a pain, AA could use a little more attack speed to be on par w/Inq. Maybe I'm just not playing at some hardcore level where Inq suddenly becomes god mode.

good feedback, thx.

[erethizon]

it also follows that for them to earn money, it is more efficient to have a smaller number of high paying customers, compared to a broad playerbase with many low paying f2ps sprinkled in.

While I don't disagree that this is their strategy I think what they did with the inquisitive tree (and previously with Ravenloft gear) has the opposite effect. They created a highly desirable universal tree (so no matter what class you like to play you can use it with that class) and made it so that the only way to get it was to buy the expansion (it still is not sold separately). Ravenloft gear worked much the same way. Ravenloft is the first ever content I purchased before it was on sale (not counting MoTU which I pre-ordered). It took me year to finally cave and pay full price with points for Ravenloft but the gear was clearly going to change my leveling experience (which it did) so I finally gave in.

Sharn, thanks to the inquisitive tree, works much the same way. If you want an easier experience in DDO (which many of the weaker players that struggle with content have been needing) or if you just want to get reaper experience faster (which more veteran players desire) then buying Sharn is your only option (assuming you want to use the inquisitive tree to accomplish these goals). Inquisitive is a great carrot to get the broader playerbase to make a purchase rather than simply getting a smaller number of high paying customers to fund everything.

[BigErkyKid]

Inquisitive is a great carrot to get the broader playerbase to make a purchase rather than simply getting a smaller number of high paying customers to fund everything.

Eryhn s point is that there is no "broader playerbase", most people playing DDO are consuming. Maybe not buying the expansion, but buying it for points. And then buying pots and what not.

Truth is, DDO's playerbase is a small blip compared to the bigger MMOs. One good way to measure that is google trends; it is humbling to look at it.

Of course, we all know that we have servers with pops that fluctuate between 150 players in Euro prime time, and 300 in American prime time (in normal servers, there are deserts out there).

In any case, I still think they could lean less on p2w and grind to keep it up. I am not convinced DDO money stays in DDO to the same degree as other larger MMOs.

[Eryhn]

Eryhn s point is that there is no "broader playerbase", most people playing DDO are consuming. Maybe not buying the expansion, but buying it for points. And then buying pots and what not.

Truth is, DDO's playerbase is a small blip compared to the bigger MMOs. One good way to measure that is google trends; it is humbling to look at it.

Of course, we all know that we have servers with pops that fluctuate between 150 players in Euro prime time, and 300 in American prime time (in normal servers, there are deserts out there).

In any case, I still think they could lean less on p2w and grind to keep it up. I am not convinced DDO money stays in DDO to the same degree as other larger MMOs.


yes and no. I meant to say the current system works in a way that the retention on new players will be relatively low, precisley cause like erethizon also said at least sharn, and for easy gear for 10-15 ravenloft is needed after a while, if you want to somewhat comfortably keep up with heroic r1 pugs. I dont know what the current price is on market for the cheapest expansion versions but its roughly something like after getting 1-20 at the latest on first life, people might bother putting in something like 45-55 bucks for both expansions. though, if they'd want some points bundled in for buying a supreme tome for a main, or buying some content, the question quickly is more like 100 bucks, or 50 bucks + VIP. I dont think so many new players will easily cough that out after their first somewhat cumbersome life. point in case, if you pug, 1-4 you run into newish players relatively frequently, 5-8 a bit less, 9-15 it goes down in pugs relatively noticable.

that doesnt have to be disfunctional for monetizing as long the amount of somewhat paying new players balances out somewhat paying oldtimers quiting. it does have an impact on population though and thus on pugging.

at the same time there is a relatively large group of middle players, but this from my personal experience is currently sliming down quite noticably. people that would run hard or elite when soloing, are fine with r1 pugs when they feel like it, occasionally jump into low skulls for the funs or for loots. people that raid sometimes but not super regularly on the guild schedule. in terms of what that group pays it is very diverse, some dont at all and did the looong time grind it all out pay once a tiny bit then f2p, some like me used to pay a little bit once or twice a year amounting to 20-100 bucks/year, some of them have always been vip and whenever they felt like it bought points atop for whatever they currently desire.

that is however the group that has the highest impact on the feel of pug health, imho, folks that might be around to take newbies through elite, at the same time might be around to fill out a speedy r1-r2 heroic, folks that sometimes are fine with the zerg but dont live it 24/7.

lets call it semi casual vets for want of a better word. many of those leave cause they feel its too grindy and also cause they are fed up with some quality issues.

thats not a good thing but well like i said, not sure if there is alternatives at this point...

@erkid, on the notion of them forking out some extra money to lotro as u hinted there, i highly doubt that. the question is not coming out with good earnings, the question is NOT coming out with a minus. point in case is those low player numbers you cited. 300 active max per day per server, lets say some play and pay regularly but not daily, so by a very uninformed rough gut feel guess 1k-2k max paying customers per server. prly 5k-10k total very rough guess. idk what the average yearly spending is, but i doubt the big spending whales are more than 25% which would already be a lot. out of that pay 10-20 staff and the servers? I dont see it.

imho hardcore wasnt a jab at doing something different to keep people interested, it was a desperate end of quater/end of year we gotta try hit the mark moneygrab.
thats where we probably are, and thats why talking about all that here is nice and good but ultimately pointless, cause they might not have any leeway to do differently ...

[Oliphant]

I already answered tot hat.



Players care about character balance, not only about winning.


I brought up the only objective piece of evidence we have about the preferences of the broader DDO community. People care about balance, and balance is what we are discussing here.

In other words: your minority opinion that winning is what the game is about is just that, a minority opinion.

If you want to help new players in a way that sits well with the majority of players who care about character balance, then find another way that does not involve OP PREs.

But you are just repeating the same thing over and over again, without listening to arguments, bringing up data, or facts, or anything tangible. Is this all about people being hurt because they are not top kill account? Strawman much.

Discuss the topic, not the person.

Ok. But when I said "It's not a big deal" that's because we can be pretty sure it's temporary and melees had their turn for like a year on my server in RL.

Did you mean to say this: "you are just repeating the same thing over and over again, without listening to arguments, bringing up data, or facts, or anything tangible" and this: "Discuss the topic, not the person"?

[BigErkyKid]

yes and no. I meant to say the current system works in a way that the retention on new players will be relatively low, precisley cause like erethizon also said at least sharn, and for easy gear for 10-15 ravenloft is needed after a while, if you want to somewhat comfortably keep up with heroic r1 pugs. I dont know what the current price is on market for the cheapest expansion versions but its roughly something like after getting 1-20 at the latest on first life, people might bother putting in something like 45-55 bucks for both expansions. though, if they'd want some points bundled in for buying a supreme tome for a main, or buying some content, the question quickly is more like 100 bucks, or 50 bucks + VIP. I dont think so many new players will easily cough that out after their first somewhat cumbersome life. point in case, if you pug, 1-4 you run into newish players relatively frequently, 5-8 a bit less, 9-15 it goes down in pugs relatively noticable.

that doesnt have to be disfunctional for monetizing as long the amount of somewhat paying new players balances out somewhat paying oldtimers quiting. it does have an impact on population though and thus on pugging.

at the same time there is a relatively large group of middle players, but this from my personal experience is currently sliming down quite noticably. people that would run hard or elite when soloing, are fine with r1 pugs when they feel like it, occasionally jump into low skulls for the funs or for loots. people that raid sometimes but not super regularly on the guild schedule. in terms of what that group pays it is very diverse, some dont at all and did the looong time grind it all out pay once a tiny bit then f2p, some like me used to pay a little bit once or twice a year amounting to 20-100 bucks/year, some of them have always been vip and whenever they felt like it bought points atop for whatever they currently desire.

that is however the group that has the highest impact on the feel of pug health, imho, folks that might be around to take newbies through elite, at the same time might be around to fill out a speedy r1-r2 heroic, folks that sometimes are fine with the zerg but dont live it 24/7.

lets call it semi casual vets for want of a better word. many of those leave cause they feel its too grindy and also cause they are fed up with some quality issues.

thats not a good thing but well like i said, not sure if there is alternatives at this point...

@erkid, on the notion of them forking out some extra money to lotro as u hinted there, i highly doubt that. the question is not coming out with good earnings, the question is NOT coming out with a minus. point in case is those low player numbers you cited. 300 active max per day per server, lets say some play and pay regularly but not daily, so by a very uninformed rough gut feel guess 1k-2k max paying customers per server. prly 5k-10k total very rough guess. idk what the average yearly spending is, but i doubt the big spending whales are more than 25% which would already be a lot. out of that pay 10-20 staff and the servers? I dont see it.

imho hardcore wasnt a jab at doing something different to keep people interested, it was a desperate end of quater/end of year we gotta try hit the mark moneygrab.
thats where we probably are, and thats why talking about all that here is nice and good but ultimately pointless, cause they might not have any leeway to do differently ...

We need money is not an acceptable answer for me. I behave like a consumer, and let the business figure out their business.

[Oliphant]

I've already come around to the opinion that INQs and casters are spoiling melees fun lately. Many people are saying its their personal experience so I just believe them. My main point is just nerf, don't nuke. What matters to me is people. People should not be made to feel put down or judged for doing nothing wrong. If the devs make monks OP or whatever, they can fix it but to "send a message" in the doing is just hurtful and not necessary. Be reasonable. I still say INQ feels like an attempt to let new players in on decent building. I agree the cap on the dps power is a bit high compared to what a mob can sustain in a reasonable time. However, I like that they put a lot of synergistic elements into one place so new players can get a clue what elements working together make a good toon. I love that part about INQ. Also, I have not found any ranged toon fun for years and this one is great, just plays fun compared to any ranged I've played. And it's animation sound is actually not that bad!(!!!)

My point about winning was a distinction about winning as a team versus having to be the top of the boards every season. I'm not saying not to nerf INQ (a lil) for balance. The point is probably moot because it does not have to do with anything the devs can fix, its about the philosophy of gaming and fun, an invitation to mindfulness about keeping it in perspective and remembering that kill boards are baloney as data (too many variables that distort the metric to absurdity). I don't mean to say anyone in particular is doing that but I suspect we all can be fooled sometimes when we have this metric poking us in the eyes.

[Kaboom2112]

When a solo inquisitive can clear R10 quests faster than full "balanced" groups your game is broken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXjjCV8tIuE&t=522s

[redoubt]

When a solo inquisitive can clear R10 quests faster than full "balanced" groups your game is broken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXjjCV8tIuE&t=522s

I'll be honest, I'm still at the point where I don't expect anyone to live through R10. So good on them. That said....

1. That quest is very ranged friendly. Several places where you can range and the mobs simply cannot get to you. Its bad enough that melee characters would stand and throw returners in that quest.

2. I think it would be faster is that player has 5 more helping them.

[Chai]

booooom! boooom! booom!

And I am left piking, hoping to get a few hits on a boss, or breaking some boxes that got hidden around a corner.

But you already know that, so why do you ask?

This is a myth I have yet to see in game, and it gets posted for every nerf demand. Its one thing to use hyperbole to make a point, but some folks are actually trying to pass this off as factual.

The same people told us warlock was 2.5x the DPS of the next best thing just to get that nerfed. They throw a token nerf at it which reduced it maybe 10% and can be made up in epic levels, and everyone stopped demanding nerfs - likely the same thing which will happen here. They will wait until the sales slow down, then toss a token nerf in there just to see how much of the vitriol dies down. This will coincide with another new thing (alchemist?) being released, and the nerf demanders will claim its 2.5x the DPS of pre-nerf inquis.

[AbyssalMage]

Why do I believe this is broken/exploitive instead of intended? Its simple really. The devs already ran into a semi-similar situation with repeaters when they first introduced doubleshot. Their solution was to reduce repeater doubleshot to only use 33% (ie; 1/3rd) because a repeater shoots 3 bolts per animation. There is already a precedence for more than one bolt per animation in this game, and it was balanced with a reduction in power suitable for the situation. Repeater actually compares very closely to what I imagine the devs want people complaining about Inquisitive to believe. A repeater with Mechanic T5 10% alacrity actually fires at the same rate as Inquisitor. But if a repeater build and an inquisitive build had the same exact DS, inquisitor would effectively have 6 times more benefit from that DS.
A) This is a solid explanation on why I feel Inquisitor will be nerfed once they have made the money they were hoping to make from development. Although, Inquisitor shouldn't be nerfed because SSG made a mistake in the past with Artificer.
B) It was a nerf to Artificers which has made them "flavor" builds in Epic. You don't see ranged Artificer because the delay in their attack cycle is crippling. Sorry, if anything can be learned from your statement is that DS needs to be 100% on Artificer. That the change crippled the Artificer build into "flavor only" destroys your argument about why Inquisitor should be addressed with the same outcome.

And yet past precedent tells me that the "community" will get its way. SSG will nerf them. And the communities vitriol will be directed at the next class/feat/build you dislike. The never ending cycle will continue.

[Karthunk]

When a solo inquisitive can clear R10 quests faster than full "balanced" groups your game is broken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXjjCV8tIuE&t=522s

A proper r10 group would have cleared that faster

[Chai]

When a solo inquisitive can clear R10 quests faster than full "balanced" groups your game is broken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXjjCV8tIuE&t=522s

Im cool with any finished character clearing max difficulty quests, regardless of class/race/level split etc...

Now go ahead and tell us how this is a first life character. Obvious reaper wings are obvious.

[AbyssalMage]

When a solo inquisitive can clear R10 quests faster than full "balanced" groups your game is broken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXjjCV8tIuE&t=522s
What was your excuse when the previous 10 other builds could do it?

As far as faster? I call BS. A ton of BS.

[Fivetigers33]

A proper r10 group would have cleared that faster

6 inquisitives would have done it 6x faster. :-P

[Chai]

And we want this nerfed because a mechanic with all the same PLs and reaper points would have taken 20 seconds longer?

[Yamani]

6 inquisitives would have done it 6x faster. :-P

Naw only 3x, they have to actually run to the end of the quest.

[Shadow_Jumper]

And we want this nerfed because a mechanic with all the same PLs and reaper points would have taken 20 seconds longer?

You offer your unverified opinion as facts.

GXB dps is significantly lower than DXB you would know if you actually bothered to care about dps tests instead of waving them off.

[acemonkey]

You offer your unverified opinion as facts.

GXB dps is significantly lower than DXB you would know if you actually bothered to care about dps tests instead of waving them off.

This whole thread is built on your opinion that Inq is exploiting unintended doubleshot, which has been proven wrong. You aren't in a position to criticize unverified opinions, imo.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/508690-Why-Inquisitive-is-an-Exploit-Build?p=6251971&viewfull=1#post6251971

[Shadow_Jumper]

This whole thread is built on your opinion that Inq is exploiting unintended doubleshot, which has been proven wrong. You aren't in a position to criticize unverified opinions, imo.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/508690-Why-Inquisitive-is-an-Exploit-Build?p=6251971&viewfull=1#post6251971

And the devs knew exactly the crit range/+ of duality.

Ranged doubleshot has never been built to accommodate such a fire rate. An inquisitive fires 72% faster than a GXB, the build that the devs say this is balanced against. At best GXB burst can reach into DXB dps. When not bursting it doesn’t hold a candle.

Dev laziness in not adjusting DS to accommodate such an attack style does not negate that this tree is standing on the legs of poor design.

Multiple precedents such as TWF having main/off, and INQ’s closest fire rate competition Repeaters point to this being an incompatibility. If this was not an exploit, then melee TWFers would have only main hand DS still.

Feel free to show that INQ isn’t overperforming however. If you can.

[Amorais]

Game balance is important.

An easy thought experiment. Would it be a good idea to introduce a class that with a single button push instantly kills all mobs in a room, no save, including bosses?

Following your logic, in a co-op game, why would this be a bad thing?

Turning the question on its head, would it be a good idea if all characters did the same dps, had the same hp, had nothing that may make them more fun to play than others?

Thats what "balance" does....when everyone is super , nobody is. I could care less if bob the INQ can wipe a room with a key press. Fair play to him. I dont like it, well I dont have to group with him. I just dont want to see a sea of clones as character choices. I say lets have sub par builds, lets have OP builds, lets have specialised builds...lets have silly builds, lets have builds with great back stories...I just find it sad in all the longer term MMO's when everyone is playing via a spreadsheet instead of having fun.

[Yamani]

Turning the question on its head, would it be a good idea if all characters did the same dps, had the same hp, had nothing that may make them more fun to play than others?


Nope, because everyone being able to do everything is what drove away a good chunk of players. Everyone gets self healing now(coccoon, heal scrolls!), pretty much every play style has some form of insta kills, every playstyle has CC ability.

[acemonkey]

Feel free to show that INQ isn’t overperforming however. If you can.

It’s the latest paid power, the only metric by which it can overperform is by generating excessive revenue.

That doesn’t matter though. The claim is that inq, played as intended by the developers (using doubleshot), is an exploit. That’s an insult and proven incorrect, so when repeated it becomes a lie.

[Paladin_of_Power]

This whole thread is built on your opinion that Inq is exploiting unintended doubleshot, which has been proven wrong. You aren't in a position to criticize unverified opinions, imo.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/508690-Why-Inquisitive-is-an-Exploit-Build?p=6251971&viewfull=1#post6251971

This.

And DXB is WAI. There is no exploit .

Some people don't like inquisitor and that's their prerogative but please don't call it an exploit when it has been shown not to be.

Stop screaming fire in a crowded movie theater .

[erethizon]

When a solo inquisitive can clear R10 quests faster than full "balanced" groups your game is broken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXjjCV8tIuE&t=522s

Somehow I knew before I even clicked the link that it would be Subversion. That has nothing to do with inquisitives or the game being broken, but rather a single quest having a bugged boss fight that makes ranging it for no damage possible.

[BigErkyKid]

Somehow I knew before I even clicked the link that it would be Subversion. That has nothing to do with inquisitives or the game being broken, but rather a single quest having a bugged boss fight that makes ranging it for no damage possible.

It is quite relevant, actually. It showcases the DPS of INQ, and it also gives us examples of how ranged can exploit enemy AI when encounters are designed to focus mostly against melee. The player was not even playing to max potential. For example, it took him a while to realize that titant missiles do not follow across corners, and wasted time taking unnecessary shots and healing. Needless to say, a melee cannot pull it off. The only r10s by melees you will see are those where there are relatively low HPs mobs that can be CC. A melee has no way to fight solo against those titans, for example. Even if you tried to cheese it using meld windows, the missiles cannot be avoided in melee range and they'd just blast you.

As for whether this is a one quest wonder, his channel is full of solo r10s. Contrary to other r10s to date that focused on charms and similar stuff, those INQ r10s are pure brute force and the power of kiting.

It is insultingly obvious that INQ is a new peak of power, and that it is far ahead of the rest of martial builds, everything considered.

At this point, the devs must have seen it too, we have given them ample evidence.

[zappy]

my good friend Kaos in these vids is one of the best players on the server. If you nerf his build, he will just do the same thing on another. However, I don't see anyone else doing what he is doing. he is one of those players like symb or vincii that just can do everything better than everyone else can. People like them will always find a way until you have driven them away. nerf too many times and the incoming revenue stream of players like this goes with them. also, when people see videos like this, some want to achieve what others are achieving and it creates the incoming revenue to keep the doors open for the rest of us.

also, more vids are incoming on his channel soon of more quests including some that are not so "range friendly" keep an eye out.

if you have issues keeping up with the OP inquisitors and sorcs, raise the Skulls. if you are at r10, enjoy the ride, but less people run r10's efficiently then I think some of you realize. The amount of sorcs I see that just try to energy burst a group of monsters and just die on high skull because they are only proficient from r1-4 is just mind boggling right now. Also, at least on Khyber, of the 10 or so amazing DPS players that we have for r10's during my normal playtime, they are split very nicely between shurythrowers, melee monks, wolf builds, tempests, assassins and inquisitor builds.

[BigErkyKid]

If you nerf his build, he will just do the same thing on another..

I'd like to see that!

[Quikster]

At this point, the devs must have seen it too, we have given them ample evidence.

Good so all the forum shenanigans about how inquis is OP can stop. Now maybe you can focus on sorc. Or wolf. Or tempest. I guess it just depends what class puts up a video doing something you think is impossible hence OP?

[scut207]

Good so all the forum shenanigans about how inquis is OP can stop. Now maybe you can focus on sorc. Or wolf. Or tempest. I guess it just depends what class puts up a video doing something you think is impossible hence OP?

You new here or something? We need at least three threads a day calling for nerfs.

[Chai]

You offer your unverified opinion as facts.

GXB dps is significantly lower than DXB you would know if you actually bothered to care about dps tests instead of waving them off.

DPS tests lol. I play the real GAME, and I play one of each at cap (mechanic and inquis).

Your DPS tests are burst only, with all boosts up, all debuffs on, not moving, while the mob doesnt fight back. The bursts arent even on cooldown when the HP bag dies. Youre measuring max burst DPS only, and falsely passing it off as straight up DPS it has all the time. After this many iterations of the pattern, its clear this level of misinforming the numbers is done on purpose.

Play the entire quest with each build (I have) and then you'll see...

The actual sustained DPS through the whole quest is not so much different that one build will complete the same quest another cant, or even create a significant time difference.

Your claim of significantly lower is simply incorrect. Its lower, but not the hyperbolous degree you claim it is.

I understand whats happening here. I see the pattern. You guys will say whatever it takes and stretch the truth however far it needs to be stretched in order to get your token nerf. Brought to you by the same folks who absurdly claimed warlock was 2.5x better DPS than the next best performing DPS build, and yet when they tossed you a token nerf of ~10% (which can be made up in epics) the vast majority of the nerf demands went away. The same thing will happen here.

Heres the real kicker. I can get as high, and sometimes higher XP/min on my mechanic as inquis who do not have trapping in their builds get, as while the DPS is lower to the point where medium length quests might take an extra 30 seconds, and longer quests might take an extra few minutes, when i get the trap bonus and they dont, my XP per minute doesnt suffer.

[Chai]

Good so all the forum shenanigans about how inquis is OP can stop. Now maybe you can focus on sorc. Or wolf. Or tempest. I guess it just depends what class puts up a video doing something you think is impossible hence OP?

Yeah pretty much this.

Some completionist with reaper wings reincarnated into the new thing and played through a quests with play quality of something higher than straight up having potatoes for hands, and the nerf demands get turned up to 11.

[Chai]

You new here or something? We need at least three threads a day calling for nerfs.

Yeap, its buddy bonus weekend, but some folks are soloing cherry picked quests to show how OP 'this new thing" is.

[Kaboom2112]

Good so all the forum shenanigans about how inquis is OP can stop. Now maybe you can focus on sorc. Or wolf. Or tempest. I guess it just depends what class puts up a video doing something you think is impossible hence OP?

Nobody screamed "nerf bards" when somebody solo'd R10 Grim on a Melee bard. His run required great skill to pull off.

A drunken Chimpanzee can clear quests in an Inq.

[Chai]

Nobody screamed "nerf bards" when somebody solo'd R10 Grim on a Melee bard. His run required great skill to pull off.

A drunken Chimpanzee can clear quests in an Inq.

Because the "nerf bards" screams were right after the bard revamp.

Now all that stuff from past revamp > nerf patterns is underpowered to the point where all the nerfs could be reverted and none of those builds would approach being meta.

And yet, here we are again...

[Cernunan]

This mind numbing thread of people trying to take away other people's fun still going?

I still do not understand people trying to take away the fun of people who play a thing you don't play, which does not affect your game.

All you are doing is trying to make the people who love the thing you don't play to stop playing the game. That is all you are doing, making it so there are less players.

[Shadow_Jumper]

DPS tests lol. I play the real GAME, and I play one of each at cap (mechanic and inquis).

Your DPS tests are burst only, with all boosts up, all debuffs on, not moving, while the mob doesnt fight back. The bursts arent even on cooldown when the HP bag dies. Youre measuring max burst DPS only, and falsely passing it off as straight up DPS it has all the time. After this many iterations of the pattern, its clear this level of misinforming the numbers is done on purpose.

Play the entire quest with each build (I have) and then you'll see...

The actual sustained DPS through the whole quest is not so much different that one build will complete the same quest another cant, or even create a significant time difference.

Your claim of significantly lower is simply incorrect. Its lower, but not the hyperbolous degree you claim it is.

I understand whats happening here. I see the pattern. You guys will say whatever it takes and stretch the truth however far it needs to be stretched in order to get your token nerf. Brought to you by the same folks who absurdly claimed warlock was 2.5x better DPS than the next best performing DPS build, and yet when they tossed you a token nerf of ~10% (which can be made up in epics) the vast majority of the nerf demands went away. The same thing will happen here.

Heres the real kicker. I can get as high, and sometimes higher XP/min on my mechanic as inquis who do not have trapping in their builds get, as while the DPS is lower to the point where medium length quests might take an extra 30 seconds, and longer quests might take an extra few minutes, when i get the trap bonus and they dont, my XP per minute doesnt suffer.


Wow.

Lmao.

A good INQ could hit NHB and do more damage than a GXB at max burst.

Since you have a mechanic, and claim that other crossbow builds could solo Subv 20s slower, do it.

[Shadow_Jumper]

All you are doing is trying to make the people who love the thing you don't play to stop playing the game. That is all you are doing, making it so there are less players.

False. I currently have a second life INQ. Why? Because it’s a stupid amount of power with absolutely no investment. And since I have eyeballs, I can tell it’s stupid. More players are going to leave the game because of how easy this tree makes the game.

Why play a game when there’s no challenge.

[Zites]

my good friend Kaos in these vids is one of the best players on the server. If you nerf his build, he will just do the same thing on another. However, I don't see anyone else doing what he is doing. he is one of those players like symb or vincii that just can do everything better than everyone else can. People like them will always find a way until you have driven them away. nerf too many times and the incoming revenue stream of players like this goes with them. also, when people see videos like this, some want to achieve what others are achieving and it creates the incoming revenue to keep the doors open for the rest of us.

also, more vids are incoming on his channel soon of more quests including some that are not so "range friendly" keep an eye out.

if you have issues keeping up with the OP inquisitors and sorcs, raise the Skulls. if you are at r10, enjoy the ride, but less people run r10's efficiently then I think some of you realize. The amount of sorcs I see that just try to energy burst a group of monsters and just die on high skull because they are only proficient from r1-4 is just mind boggling right now. Also, at least on Khyber, of the 10 or so amazing DPS players that we have for r10's during my normal playtime, they are split very nicely between shurythrowers, melee monks, wolf builds, tempests, assassins and inquisitor builds.

(someone said effort seperates the boys from the men) GLAND FOR LIFE where life is amazing DPS players!!! Nerf inq, sorc, pm, there all over perforing.

[Wipey]

All you are doing is trying to make the people who love the thing you don't play to stop playing the game. That is all you are doing, making it so there are less players.
Because the existence of stupidly strong ranged tree that completely overshadows every paladin, barbarian, fighter, archer, assassin or whatever "dps" archetype makes the game so enticing.

I have inquisitor, like everybody else apparently. Would be cool to make other builds worth even considering.
But why, when that "carefully tested" garbage does like twice the damage for really zero effort.

[Karthunk]

Because the existence of stupidly strong ranged tree that completely overshadows every paladin, barbarian, fighter, archer, assassin or whatever "dps" archetype makes the game so enticing.

I have inquisitor, like everybody else apparently. Would be cool to make other builds worth even considering.
But why, when that "carefully tested" garbage does like twice the damage for really zero effort.


False. I currently have a second life INQ. Why? Because it’s a stupid amount of power with absolutely no investment. And since I have eyeballs, I can tell it’s stupid. More players are going to leave the game because of how easy this tree makes the game.

Why play a game when there’s no challenge.



And? Play something else. I'm currently playing a two-handed barbarian and blazing through levels doing nothing but EE. No one is forcing you to play anything and no one cares what you are playing. If you don't like the Inquisitive tree because you think it requires "zero effort" then don't play the Inquisitive tree.

Kinda simple isn't it?

[Kaboom2112]

And? Play something else. I'm currently playing a two-handed barbarian and blazing through levels doing nothing but EE. No one is forcing you to play anything and no one cares what you are playing. If you don't like the Inquisitive tree because you think it requires "zero effort" then don't play the Inquisitive tree.

Kinda simple isn't it?

It is ignorant to think we exist in a vacuum and the actions of others have no long-term effect on you.

[psykopeta]

It is ignorant to think we exist in a vacuum and the actions of others have no long-term effect on you.

not as ignorant as trying to ruin other's fun to have fun yourself (ot maybe players asking nerf are simply not having fun and are trying to sink the rest of players to their lvl)

i mean, it's like sorcs or warlocks blazing, if they have fun doing 35 lives in a row with the same build, why should i say "hey no, it's not nice cause they outkill me, or ruin my fun or if they do 35 lives using the same build maybe it's because it's so blatantly OP that it needs a fix, even if i don't play it"

what i do say is "ugh, i would not do it, at least not so many lives lol, 3 is lot enough"

what i haven't seen yet is things like "template 6-6-8 builds shouldn't get a pl"

reason: i don't do it, and the fact that they can get a PL without playing the class itself makes it deserve a nerf, or well, just remove the option, only pure classes should get pl

and bam! magically i would become one of the few players with PL cause... i enjoyed for a while playing pure classes, 1 life for each capstone, did i demand nerfs for splashes or that trash? nah, i don't feel like getting jealous for a game XD

[DaggomaticDwarf]

It is ignorant to think we exist in a vacuum and the actions of others have no long-term effect on you.

The actions in a video game+ a fragile psyche will have long-term effect on some.

I like lamp

Dagg.

[Karthunk]

not as ignorant as trying to ruin other's fun to have fun yourself (ot maybe players asking nerf are simply not having fun and are trying to sink the rest of players to their lvl)

i mean, it's like sorcs or warlocks blazing, if they have fun doing 35 lives in a row with the same build, why should i say "hey no, it's not nice cause they outkill me, or ruin my fun or if they do 35 lives using the same build maybe it's because it's so blatantly OP that it needs a fix, even if i don't play it"

what i do say is "ugh, i would not do it, at least not so many lives lol, 3 is lot enough"

what i haven't seen yet is things like "template 6-6-8 builds shouldn't get a pl"

reason: i don't do it, and the fact that they can get a PL without playing the class itself makes it deserve a nerf, or well, just remove the option, only pure classes should get pl

and bam! magically i would become one of the few players with PL cause... i enjoyed for a while playing pure classes, 1 life for each capstone, did i demand nerfs for splashes or that trash? nah, i don't feel like getting jealous for a game XD

Yeap, it doesn't change anything about how they play the game but some people can not stand to see other people play/do what they do not approve of.

If you don't what a ranged Inquisitive build in your group then don't allow them in the group.

Love how one of these callers of nerfs doesn't even play reaper. There wasn't a quest, that didn't involve mechanics that require more than one person, that I couldn't complete solo with a melee two hander build last life. That was the character's first reincarnation. This game is way beyond balancing for EE.

[Chai]

Wow.

Lmao.

A good INQ could hit NHB and do more damage than a GXB at max burst.

Since you have a mechanic, and claim that other crossbow builds could solo Subv 20s slower, do it.

Per my previous post, its already been done.

Yeah, Im from the future.

In other news, the case history of hyperbole posted as factual information in these threads demonstrates why no nerfs should ever occur based on that type of feedback.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Per my previous post, its already been done.

Yeah, Im from the future.

In other news, the case history of hyperbole posted as factual information in these threads demonstrates why no nerfs should ever occur based on that type of feedback.

Lets see it, because quite frankly I don't believe you.

[shmagmhar]

I like Inquzi and hope it does not get nerf'd

[Chai]

Lets see it, because quite frankly I don't believe you.

Belief is not required by truth.

Even funnier, challenging for evidence that is 90 seconds of search-fu away.

Dont get to copy my homework, sorry. :p

[Kaboom2112]

Belief is not required by truth.

Truth requires proof.

[Chai]

Truth requires proof.

Nope. Its true regardless of whether your belief system latches onto it or fights against it.

[Kaboom2112]

Nope. Its true regardless of whether your belief system latches onto it or fights against it.

Prove it.

[Chai]

Prove it.

Theres enough evidence on these forums to keep you guys busy for months if you were actually willing to participate on equal footing.

Example. The claim that warlock was 2.5x better DPS than the next best thing. They hand you a token nerf of less than 10% in heroics, which can be made up in epics, and its no longer ruining your fun anymore? If the claim was true it would still be more than double DPS of the next best thing, and still ruining your fun.

Belief system is not a hard counter for truth.

The nerf demanders wouldnt know game balance if they saw it anyhow. When was the last time a balance demand was made for something other than DPS? Just cling to the current buzz terms (DPS, overperforming), , and making subjective claims (ruins my fun, aahhhH!!!). Little to no substance other than linking someone elses youtube video of a completionist w/reaper wings who TRd into the new thing soloing part of one of the easier quests to solo for a ranged class, claiming no one else can do it, then challenging for evidence that is 90 seconds of search-fu away.

This in and of itself is a pattern, of which no nerfs should be granted based on.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Truth requires proof.


Nope. Its true regardless of whether your belief system latches onto it or fights against it.




Imma get this framed.

[Kaboom2112]

Theres enough evidence on these forums to keep you guys busy for months if you were actually willing to participate on equal footing.

Example. The claim that warlock was 2.5x better DPS than the next best thing. They hand you a token nerf of less than 10% in heroics, which can be made up in epics, and its no longer ruining your fun anymore? If the claim was true it would still be more than double DPS of the next best thing, and still ruining your fun.

Belief system is not a hard counter for truth.

The nerf demanders wouldnt know game balance if they saw it anyhow. When was the last time a balance demand was made for something other than DPS? Just cling to the current buzz terms (DPS, overperforming), , and making subjective claims (ruins my fun, aahhhH!!!). Little to no substance other than linking someone elses youtube video of a completionist w/reaper wings who TRd into the new thing soloing part of one of the easier quests to solo for a ranged class, claiming no one else can do it, then challenging for evidence that is 90 seconds of search-fu away.

This in and of itself is a pattern, of which no nerfs should be granted based on.

Nonsense

[Kaboom2112]

Imma get this framed.

Next to a giant picture of Chewbacca :)

[Shadow_Jumper]

Nope. Its true regardless of whether your belief system latches onto it or fights against it.

And nah fam.

Truth is truth obviously. But if you want anyone to respect you or believe you, you have to provide evidence.

Einstein didn't go around saying; "Time is affected by Gravity, and the larger the gravity field the slower time runs. But I'm not gonna provide anything else to back it up."

[acemonkey]

And nah fam.

Truth is truth obviously. But if you want anyone to respect you or believe you, you have to provide evidence.

Einstein didn't go around saying; "Time is affected by Gravity, and the larger the gravity field the slower time runs. But I'm not gonna provide anything else to back it up."

He also wasn't responding to someone who had already been conclusively proven wrong in a debate based on the concept that the engineer who created the universe clearly messed up and didn't know what he was doing, so everyone using those particular laws of physics must be cheaters...

You really shouldn't be one to demand that people follow the rules of debating, given your own casual disregard for them...

[BigErkyKid]

He also wasn't responding to someone who had already been conclusively proven wrong in a debate based on the concept that the engineer who created the universe clearly messed up and didn't know what he was doing, so everyone using those particular laws of physics must be cheaters...

You really shouldn't be one to demand that people follow the rules of debating, given your own casual disregard for them...

The rules of debating?

Some people don’t care about balance and they do not want their builds to be nerfed. Discussing balance with that public is close to impossible, since they have zero interest in it.

OP already said what he meant by exploit, he actually meant oversight. Of course those who just want to derail will latch onto anything to not have to discuss the actual issue.

I blame ssg for this. They introduce easy buttons and people get used to them, it was the same with warlock. If you are used to hoping in and soloing most quests at a fast pace, chipping away at it just feels aggravating. So people get used to the fact that paying for a tree or new class just means paying for a powerful content demolished, and expect and demand it.

Never mind that the only time we have been polled people actually leaned towards a preference for balanced classes. The anti nerf army is particularly strong in the forums.

Rules of debate, again? When anti nerf people are accusing people who just ask for balance of being jealous, of having a fragile ego, of wanting to ruin other people s fun, of not being team players, of being bad players, and many more nasty things that go unmoderated. Never mind that it is actually true that inq is by far the strongest ranged pre, or that it is far too powerful wrt to martial melee. This is a fact that can be showed in spreadsheets, beat downs, quest completions, anything objective you could possibly want.

All that was accomplished in this thread is to discourage anyone who wants to debate game balance from coming to the official forums to talk about it. You will get harassed and insulted and here will be no real discussion, just various degrees of trolling. This even after detailed evidence based opening posts, and even in cases where it is very obvious that there is something OP. Because absolutely no person who understands the game mechanics well is unaware that inq is imbalanced.

[Oliphant]

Elite toon/old account versus new toon/new account imbalance is worse, so if they nerf stuff for class balance I hope they figure out the outlier mechanics used by elite toon/old accounts and aim the reductions there. You could fix class balance and you still cannot predict which classes elite toon/old accounts will show up with to trivialize the content, unless they do a fun-balance somehow and specifically aimed at that group.

[Bacab]

It is just honestly easier to find a different game and just check back in later to see if the game is in a place that you appreciate/like.

That is why I come and go.

I will always like the community, but maybe I just picked a bad time to check in on things.

Hard core is going on...there are very little LFMs, and inquisitive just seems so crazily broken to me (maybe it isn't...I dont care anymore)

Ultimately, SSG will decide what happens with Inquis, Alchemist etc.

We can choose to pay/play or we can choose to do other things with our time and money.

But the debate is no longer worth having. Neither side is going to concede anything, so just save your time.

Either SSG sees that a lot of people are very unhappy with the power creep and Inquisitive in particular. Or they willl see a lot of people love the power fantasy and find inquisitive really fun.

But I don't think we are going to convince them either way.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

There is no easy solution here.

The base equation must always be: "Is it FUN to play the toon WITH A GROUP?"

No build should be so powerful that it eats all the food and leaves the entire party lacking food.

The game should not be perfectly balanced. That's boring.

The game should allow all to PARTICIPATE at their prospective roles. It's ok for imperfection or failing. Team play, Variety and Challenge is what makes DDO different. Guaranteed success is boring and leads to people leaving. Difficulty settings have always been a secret sauce for REPLAYABILITY in DDO, as has guild life and camaraderie.

Somewhere in the above thoughts is the range SSG needs to shoot for :)

[Oliphant]

I reasonably hope SSG will do what I prefer, which is nerf not nuke INQ eventually. Meanwhile, it's not that big of a deal as a temporary thing, imo. I still say you could get perfect class balance but vets will still eat all the food if careless about it. If you are playing with your friends, especially in a bigger group unconcerned about wiping, let the newer players play the meta and the vets play support. My minor quibble right now is being left out of HC server because my way is to buy packs and whatever I need, not VIP; my tiny protest is I am spending but not buying DDO points until HC season is over.

[acemonkey]

All that was accomplished in this thread is to discourage anyone who wants to debate game balance from coming to the official forums to talk about it. You will get harassed and insulted and here will be no real discussion, just various degrees of trolling.

You're absolutely right, this thread was meant to discourage debate by opening with an unfounded insult (both against a dev in particular and all Inq players), and you're playing right along with OP, by accusing the other side of everything under the sun while ignoring and excusing OP's bad behavior.

Inquisitive is strong by design, and will be reduced by nerfs once the sales are done. It's really obvious to anyone who's played the last 4 years. Once it's nerfed something else will come along and be the latest power for sale. You don't like it, fine, but if SSG could get by on subs THEY WOULD. They aren't, so deal with it or move on to what you think is greener pastures. It's offensive when we're playing the game SSG is selling, and you guys come along and demand our purchased product be switched out for something worthless long before the expiration date. You don't like the flavor, or aren't hungry? Don't buy. Don't like it? Wait a few months. No need to stir up drama on the forum and insult people by calling them exploiters for playing the game as intended, something you're supporting by supporting Shadow_Jumper's shady debating tactics.

[BigErkyKid]

You're absolutely right, this thread was meant to discourage debate by opening with an unfounded insult (both against a dev in particular and all Inq players), and you're playing right along with OP, by accusing the other side of everything under the sun while ignoring and excusing OP's bad behavior.

Inquisitive is strong by design, and will be reduced by nerfs once the sales are done. It's really obvious to anyone who's played the last 4 years. Once it's nerfed something else will come along and be the latest power for sale. You don't like it, fine, but if SSG could get by on subs THEY WOULD. They aren't, so deal with it or move on to what you think is greener pastures. It's offensive when we're playing the game SSG is selling, and you guys come along and demand our purchased product be switched out for something worthless long before the expiration date. You don't like the flavor, or aren't hungry? Don't buy. Don't like it? Wait a few months. No need to stir up drama on the forum and insult people by calling them exploiters for playing the game as intended, something you're supporting by supporting Shadow_Jumper's shady debating tactics.

He is a rogue called Shadow (shady pun somewhere), and a power gamer. I am just happy he took the time to make the post instead of simply abusing the heck of INQ; I wish more power gamers were like him.

The problem here is expectation vs reality, and where the devs set those expectations. When Severlin came to the game he made a huge fuss about balance. For the first time since I remember, we were polled on the state of balance and our preferences. Then, we were delivered various system changes, along with dev diaries on the progress in balancing the game. So these are my expectations, that we have a manager that wants the game to be balanced. In part, because this is what the players answered, and I guess because inherently balanced games are considered better designed games, and they are professionals.

Now, given that, some of us believe them and then hold them accountable to the promise of balance. INQ is not balanced, warlock on release was not balanced, armor up was not balanced, and we said it openly and loudly. You are telling me that DDO is a typical cash grab p2win game where you can buy power ups and f2p classes are supposed to be worse than paid races, classes, and PREs. I did not come here for that, so I am not settling. The day the devs come out and say this, I will quit the game for good. Until then, I operate under the presumption that balance is desired, and that someone (steelstar apparently) dropped the ball with INQ.

The drama comes from the fact that the devs do not openly say (in the official forums, not the discord echo chamber) how they think INQ is currently balanced (or imbalanced). So players being players, the debate over whether it is balanced or not becomes extremely biased. Essentially, those who paid for it and are used to its level of power want to keep it that way. For various reasons, some because they like crossbows and this makes them powerful. Others because this enables them on toons that are not uber grinded. Another group because they like new players being lifted up (and darned be balance). I am sorry, this is what it is, INQ is demonstrably superior to other ranged builds, and a very clear leap in power wrt content. I do not need the approval of some partisan poster to confirm that reality; sometimes, not always, there is an obvious truth and one side is simply right.

Funny though, when they offer season passes, or HC leagues, or what not, people seems to be willing to pay for Vip or VIP equivalent. Even though VIP is, currently, a horrible proposition for anyone who has played the game long enough (you buy packs on sale and safe a ton of cash overall). More HC leagues, less selling power.

[Tlorrd]

The problem here is expectation vs reality, and where the devs set those expectations. When Severlin came to the game he made a huge fuss about balance. For the first time since I remember, we were polled on the state of balance and our preferences. Then, we were delivered various system changes, along with dev diaries on the progress in balancing the game. So these are my expectations, that we have a manager that wants the game to be balanced. In part, because this is what the players answered, and I guess because inherently balanced games are considered better designed games, and they are professionals.

Now, given that, some of us believe them and then hold them accountable to the promise of balance. INQ is not balanced, warlock on release was not balanced, armor up was not balanced, and we said it openly and loudly. You are telling me that DDO is a typical cash grab p2win game where you can buy power ups and f2p classes are supposed to be worse than paid races, classes, and PREs. I did not come here for that, so I am not settling. The day the devs come out and say this, I will quit the game for good. Until then, I operate under the presumption that balance is desired, and that someone (steelstar apparently) dropped the ball with INQ.

The drama comes from the fact that the devs do not openly say (in the official forums, not the discord echo chamber) how they think INQ is currently balanced (or imbalanced). So players being players, the debate over whether it is balanced or not becomes extremely biased. Essentially, those who paid for it and are used to its level of power want to keep it that way. For various reasons, some because they like crossbows and this makes them powerful. Others because this enables them on toons that are not uber grinded. Another group because they like new players being lifted up (and darned be balance). I am sorry, this is what it is, INQ is demonstrably superior to other ranged builds, and a very clear leap in power wrt content. I do not need the approval of some partisan poster to confirm that reality; sometimes, not always, there is an obvious truth and one side is simply right.

You're point of view is very etched in stone, yet skewed in such a way that no amount of "balancing" changes will make you happy.

Power gamers don't build the classes they want, they build around the game to combine various elements to give them the best chance to complete the hardest difficulties. They look for every shortcut, peer into every nook and cranny to see where they can get an edge (using non-exploit shortcuts or exploit shortcuts).

There is a reason as each new class pass came out and power was increased that you saw them trade up their previous class for the new one. Bard pass happened and everyone was spinning ice. Monkcher was created and folks were adrenaling manyshot. Vangard, smiting, shield bashing adrenaline became a thing. Mechanic came and folks started being ranged rogues, and then Barbs with massive healing amp and self healing kill shots came along, wolf melee builds (notice that both ranged and melee archetypes have been mentioned).

Yet some folks are lost in this river of change. They like DnD and this foreign, they like playing a pure Class, but the above is not. Sometimes it can be, but that is the rarity rather than the norm.

You may need to realize that the game you want to play is out there ... but how you want to play and your skill level relegate you to a lower tier of difficulty. What you want to play is not compatible with top tier of difficulty. The sooner you realize that and come to terms with it, the sooner you'll enjoy this game more.

[Chai]

And nah fam.

Truth is truth obviously. But if you want anyone to respect you or believe you, you have to provide evidence.

Einstein didn't go around saying; "Time is affected by Gravity, and the larger the gravity field the slower time runs. But I'm not gonna provide anything else to back it up."

Youre not even comparing apples to oranges, more like apples to sherman tanks.

Einstein also wasnt speaking on subject matter where it takes longer to type the post indicating your belief system rejects the others claim than it does to search up the objective evidence which supports it.

This of course, requires objectivity in the first place, which in the context of this discussion means getting out of a visceral mindset and into a logical one. The claim of "nerf this thing because it ruins my fun when others play it" is 100% visceral and 0% logical, as is showing negative bias toward the same posters over ~a decade of time.

When this pattern is recognized, feedback based on it should be summarily dismissed.

[Brother_Tuck]

Hi. This is a post about Inquisitive. If you don't care to have a meaningful discussion, or want to stick your head in the sand about the tree then avoid this thread. The title is click-bait for the devs, however, I believe it is easily within the realm of reason to call Inquisitive an Exploit build. I would like to state for the record that I am not calling anyone using Inquisitive an exploiter. However, here is why Inquisitive is an exploit build


What I think is causing Inquisitive to over perform is its unique fighting style, in conjunction with how doubleshot works. While I know the term gets thrown around alot, this is honestly an exploitative build. What is going on with Inquisitive is an unintended mash up of Ranged Doubleshot never being designed for what is in essence, a TWF style.

Ranged Doubleshot does two very important things in this game:

A) It continues to give benefits after 100% (essentially "wrapping" around)
B) It does not split into main and off-hand Doubleshot

These are massive when considering how Inquisitors deal damage. The Inquisitive style, for all intents and purposes can be best described as a TWF build, however it has some major glaring issues that cause it to outperform anything in the game right now.

1) They automatically get 100% off-hand strike chance (not off-hand DS).
2) They use a single weapon for their TWF style.

So, why are these features important? Well, while doubleshot going over 100% was obviously in the game before Inquisitive and was balanced throughout (and honestly a little underpowered), when combined with the TWFesque Inquisitive style, it becomes a whole nother level of broken. The key is that Inquisitive gets doubleshot for both attacks, with no off-hand DS reduction. Due to there never before having been a TWF ranged style, this has never been an issue. If an Inquisitor hits a reaper doubleshot boost and bursts up to 130% doubleshot, they are effectively having 4.6 attacks with a single "shot".

Why do I believe this is broken/exploitive instead of intended? Its simple really. The devs already ran into a semi-similar situation with repeaters when they first introduced doubleshot. Their solution was to reduce repeater doubleshot to only use 33% (ie; 1/3rd) because a repeater shoots 3 bolts per animation. There is already a precedence for more than one bolt per animation in this game, and it was balanced with a reduction in power suitable for the situation. Repeater actually compares very closely to what I imagine the devs want people complaining about Inquisitive to believe. A repeater with Mechanic T5 10% alacrity actually fires at the same rate as Inquisitor. But if a repeater build and an inquisitive build had the same exact DS, inquisitor would effectively have 6 times more benefit from that DS.

The current devs either do not realize that Inquisitor is getting full DS on both hands, or they honestly want to sell more trees full of exploitive power. I honestly lean towards the latter due to previous statements from devs saying that Inquisitor was balanced to be comparable with GXB. My own tests had Inquisitor taking 3:19 to unload 500 bolts with no DS and the T5 30% alacrity, compared to GXB taking 5:44 to unload 500 with its T5 alacrity. Inquisitor already has a 72% faster fire rate than GXB, and receives double benefit from DS (I tested with 2% DS, lowest i was able to go).

Solution: I am unsure of whether it would fully balance the tree, but doubleshot needs to be reworked to either only apply to one hand (ie; a 50% DS nerf) or it needs to be broken down into main hand and off hand and reduced. While there are other issues with the power level of Inquisitive (look at Undaunted lol) in its current state it is broken as a result of an incompatibility with TWF ranged, the newest universal tree is an exploitive tree compared to other DPS builds.


Let me start off by saying I had left DDO closer to a decade ago and decided a few months ago to re-up and join some OLD friends playing. Clearly the game has changed significantly since I left and the learning curve is HUGE. However, the same old playstyle etc still holds true to form.

I happened upon this thread TODAY and thought to give it a read, but like in the OLD days I couldnt get thru the whole thread due to the vocal minority saying THIS, THAT or the OTHER. Nothing changes.

Flavor of the month builds will ALWAYS be in games no matter what the Devs do (this applies to ALL MMOs not just this one) and there is no such thing as actual balance in any game, only an illusion of it. You want to make bold statements with your OP and that is fine, however, your OP is from your point of view. There is nothing wrong with your POV but not everyone in a game sees the same things from the same view. For example, I came back to game with 35 years of online gaming experience but my best gear for this game was GREEN STEEL. Now I want to play up the Epic levels etc with my old builds. Good luck to me. My view is NOT the same as yours. If your view is from the End Game prespective then you need to say that. I am not really sure where in game you are. Nor am I saying you or anyone else is wrong. I am saying I dont agree with your analysis from mine as I am no where near as powerful as other players. Now add in to your view how much you have TRd (any and all of the 3 types) as I have NONE done. The power creep from someone that is done with all 3 TR types vs me is ridiculous. That player can be a level 1 with min gear vs me at 30 and they might beat me in PVP.

In reading thru this post, someone stated how much DPS their lvl 14 player was doing in INQUIS (near 7k or 20k and still sub-optimal) and I am going to call BS on that. I know level 30s with all the top gear and all TRs completed (guildies of mine) that play the top content and they dont hit those numbers so PLEASE stop over estimating your numbers. So with that I would add, if you are an end game player that is great for you but PLEASE stop telling the Devs how to mitigate this game for the non end gamers. Your discussions and stats and proof and evidence do not hold any water to the non power gamers. Devs can not balance a game for power gamers and non power gamers. This is a simple fact. There are solutions but I am not about to discuss those here. I would also add, I was an long time Mournlander who used to speak with the Devs regularly and secretly play on live with them in our own guild. Regular players lack alot of general knowledge about this game.

Lastly, I would also add a simple fact. The age of this game is a serious issue when it comes to the actual hardware and software component of what the Devs can and can not do with changes. They are not about to go into this or explain this to the player base. Many changes that may make sense today can not be implemented due to the age of the hardware or lack of upgradability. Now I have been away ALONG time and maybe changes were made, but the game system would have to be brought down for an extended period in order to put it on a more modern platform etc. I am no IT person (finance guy here) but this again is simple knowledge from my part. The player base needs to be more understanding and thankful the game is still going strong and stop asking for NERFS etc. Instead ask for ADDS to favorite classes instead. Hey please bring my Ranger RANGED ability on par with INQUIS instead. Would love to see this.

Rant off, but more than welcome any feedback.

[Potatofasf]

...
Lastly, I would also add a simple fact. The age of this game is a serious issue when it comes to the actual hardware and software component of what the Devs can and can not do with changes...

As a comeback player as you, had to agree in almost everything, beside this ^

The game age (13yo) isn't a excuse for the anachronism self imposed by SSG (and Warner Bros or Turbine before them). Pretty old franchise games like WoW or Diablo or Elders Scroll or Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest or Mario or Zelda or Pokemon has aged pretty well.

Pokemon Sword and Shield are coming and will sell big numbers, we can say that, because it will happen.

DDO development has staled on changes that changes nothing, only adds Layers of Grind... grind for EXP, grind for Gear, grind for Reaper Points, grind for Epic Destinies, grind for Action Points, grind grind in an 13 years old anacronic mindset. While all their concurrences has upgraded, evolved to match the marketing and target audience.
DDO is a niche... and the niche is eroding.

[Dnarth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Elr5K2Vuo

[Brother_Tuck]

As a comeback player as you, had to agree in almost everything, beside this ^

The game age (13yo) isn't a excuse for the anachronism self imposed by SSG (and Warner Bros or Turbine before them). Pretty old franchise games like WoW or Diablo or Elders Scroll or Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest or Mario or Zelda or Pokemon has aged pretty well.

Pokemon Sword and Shield are coming and will sell big numbers, we can say that, because it will happen.

DDO development has staled on changes that changes nothing, only adds Layers of Grind... grind for EXP, grind for Gear, grind for Reaper Points, grind for Epic Destinies, grind for Action Points, grind grind in an 13 years old anacronic mindset. While all their concurrences has upgraded, evolved to match the marketing and target audience.
DDO is a niche... and the niche is eroding.


I understand what you are saying and totally agree.

[Shadow_Jumper]

He is a rogue called Shadow (shady pun somewhere), and a power gamer. I am just happy he took the time to make the post instead of simply abusing the heck of INQ; I wish more power gamers were like him.


Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm abusing the heck out of it. It's a stupid amount of power and I would be insane not to.


Let me start off by saying I had left DDO closer to a decade ago and decided a few months ago to re-up and join some OLD friends playing. Clearly the game has changed significantly since I left and the learning curve is HUGE. However, the same old playstyle etc still holds true to form.

First off, welcome back. Always good to see new faces.



Flavor of the month builds will ALWAYS be in games no matter what the Devs do (this applies to ALL MMOs not just this one) and there is no such thing as actual balance in any game, only an illusion of it. You want to make bold statements with your OP and that is fine, however, your OP is from your point of view. There is nothing wrong with your POV but not everyone in a game sees the same things from the same view. For example, I came back to game with 35 years of online gaming experience but my best gear for this game was GREEN STEEL. Now I want to play up the Epic levels etc with my old builds. Good luck to me. My view is NOT the same as yours. If your view is from the End Game prespective then you need to say that. I am not really sure where in game you are. Nor am I saying you or anyone else is wrong. I am saying I dont agree with your analysis from mine as I am no where near as powerful as other players. Now add in to your view how much you have TRd (any and all of the 3 types) as I have NONE done. The power creep from someone that is done with all 3 TR types vs me is ridiculous. That player can be a level 1 with min gear vs me at 30 and they might beat me in PVP.

I agree that FoTM will always be a thing, and that balance is rarely achievable to a perfect standard. However, while INQ may be FoTM (and for good reason) there is a difference between slightly out of balance, and blowing everything out of the water. INQ isn't "slightly ahead" its vastly ahead of any other DPS build on live right now. It being ahead will not help you get back into the game. Long time players will use it to advance our alts/mains to even greater heights, leaving newer/less experienced players like you behind. I currently plan on using it to knock out all my EPLs on my now currently retired melee alt, because its basically pointless to play him right now. INQ being overpowered doesn't solve issues that you face catching up to older players.



In reading thru this post, someone stated how much DPS their lvl 14 player was doing in INQUIS (near 7k or 20k and still sub-optimal) and I am going to call BS on that. I know level 30s with all the top gear and all TRs completed (guildies of mine) that play the top content and they dont hit those numbers so PLEASE stop over estimating your numbers. So with that I would add, if you are an end game player that is great for you but PLEASE stop telling the Devs how to mitigate this game for the non end gamers. Your discussions and stats and proof and evidence do not hold any water to the non power gamers. Devs can not balance a game for power gamers and non power gamers. This is a simple fact. There are solutions but I am not about to discuss those here. I would also add, I was an long time Mournlander who used to speak with the Devs regularly and secretly play on live with them in our own guild. Regular players lack alot of general knowledge about this game.

I'd like to clarify. My character was level 14 at the time. My character was not DPS tested. The player who tested their INQ used a level 30 alt on a sub-optimal split.

I'd also like to clarify that 20k DPS is ABSOLUTELY achievable. In light of what optimal INQ DPS is, it's actually subpar.

And finally, I agree that the issues at cap are vastly different than in other levels. However, the change I propose (reducing DS to be more in line with repeaters) would affect lower level builds less due to doubleshot not becoming a major factor on many builds until later epics once gear and set bonuses start pushing that into the 100+ rather than the 15-30% DS players have at level 15. Do I think it would solve everything? No. But it would be a way to at least bring the build more into line with other DPS builds that are currently being outclassed in a way that has very rarely been seen before.

P.S. Greensteel is still fantastic gear for its level and I would heavily recommend you keep it.

[Tlorrd]

I'd like to clarify. My character was level 14 at the time. My character was not DPS tested. The player who tested their INQ used a level 30 alt on a sub-optimal split.

I'd also like to clarify that 20k DPS is ABSOLUTELY achievable.

The quickest way to get Inq nerfed is to let the masses show how it trivializes content ... Happened with warlock.

So what are the incredible builds that set one up to do amazing DPS?

Once everyone runs these build flying through the latest content, the Nerf bat will swing. This is the real way to implement change.

[gravisrs]

I really like when people start complaining about OP enhancement tree just after it becomes available for TP.

Half the year everything was fine (p2w) and now we complain ? Let's others have some good times also!

[Shadow_Jumper]

I really like when people start complaining about OP enhancement tree just after it becomes available for TP.

Half the year everything was fine (p2w) and now we complain ? Let's others have some good times also!

Can’t speak for everyone.

I worked a 60-70 hour warehouse job over the summer and didn’t play for 3 months.

[liston33]

Funny though, when they offer season passes, or HC leagues, or what not, people seems to be willing to pay for Vip or VIP equivalent. Even though VIP is, currently, a horrible proposition for anyone who has played the game long enough (you buy packs on sale and safe a ton of cash overall). More HC leagues, less selling power.

Vip is where the game makes its money. Maybe just maybe if there were more money put into the game there could be more work done toward the balance of the game... I for one dont care about balance, I play my toon and only mine.. I dont care if an Inquisitive walks into the room and obliterates it.. less work for me. I have been playing since March of 2010 and no matter what is done to this game there will always be someone somewhere complaining about something... If you dont like Inquisitive done play with one or as one...