IMO, reversing the nerf to W/P...

[Tat2Freak]

and stat damage in general would go a long way to closing the power gap between melee and casters/ranged, or you know get rid of infinite mana and being able to run backwards...thoughts?;)

[Chai]

Stat damage still works to put things into helpless. The main issue I see is things which should be getting a minimum value of 1 are still rounded down to 0 in reaper.

Was supposed to be fixed per this thread: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/499333-Min-Stat-Damage-of-0-Bug?p=6135231&viewfull=1#post6135231

[myliftkk_v2]

and stat damage in general would go a long way to closing the power gap between melee and casters/ranged, or you know get rid of infinite mana and being able to run backwards...thoughts?;)

I'd argue that W/P needs to be a higher gated character specific skill, not a generic attribute on a weapon. A high character level rogue should be able to wound or puncture any character that can bleed out. And when their Con reaches zero they should die.

The whole helpless on stat = 0 is silly. Really, they are going to heal up from blood loss? Or having their mind melted by a wiz?

[HungarianRhapsody]

Stat damage still works to put things into helpless. The main issue I see is things which should be getting a minimum value of 1 are still rounded down to 0 in reaper.

Was supposed to be fixed per this thread: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/499333-Min-Stat-Damage-of-0-Bug?p=6135231&viewfull=1#post6135231

Stat damage doesn't do enough in Epic to actually make things helpless unless someone has a much bigger stat damaging output than I know of.

Is there a video of anyone making trash helpless in Epic with stat damage?

[Chai]

Stat damage doesn't do enough in Epic to actually make things helpless unless someone has a much bigger stat damaging output than I know of.

Is there a video of anyone making trash helpless in Epic with stat damage?

The higher H2K rises, the more value stat damage has.

If people are running epic hard with R5+ ready characters then sure, stat damage wont have value as mobs die too fast.

[PsychoBlonde]

I'd argue that W/P needs to be a higher gated character specific skill, not a generic attribute on a weapon. A high character level rogue should be able to wound or puncture any character that can bleed out. And when their Con reaches zero they should die.

The whole helpless on stat = 0 is silly. Really, they are going to heal up from blood loss? Or having their mind melted by a wiz?

Helpless on 0 is there to be nice to players. You really want your character to insta-die the next time you get hit with an epic poison that does 40 points of stat damage in one shot? They exist. Or the various beholders that can blow out your stats? No thanks, I'll take helpless on 0.

[Enoach]

Keep in mind i got my first w/p items one day before they were fixed from "you are now dead" to "you are stunned "

The problem that the developers seem to be trying to fix was that the stat damage became too abundant in the loot table. The change they made and then later in Epics made worse IMHO was the wrong direction as it hurt two main playstyles

1. Finesse Melee
2. Casters

It also made DPS King .

What should have occurred is implementing weapon versions with a limited Apply debuff. Such as charges.

Also both players and mobs alike should not have a "recovery over time" on this type of damage. Instead encounters should be created to account for players using this with supporting mobs and players should account for this being used against them.

[myliftkk_v2]

Helpless on 0 is there to be nice to players. You really want your character to insta-die the next time you get hit with an epic poison that does 40 points of stat damage in one shot? They exist. Or the various beholders that can blow out your stats? No thanks, I'll take helpless on 0.

Helpless is a silly mechanic when you could just create ways for the player to ward themselves from stat damage (for ones that don't already exist).

[myliftkk_v2]

Keep in mind i got my first w/p items one day before they were fixed from "you are now dead" to "you are stunned "

The problem that the developers seem to be trying to fix was that the stat damage became too abundant in the loot table. The change they made and then later in Epics made worse IMHO was the wrong direction as it hurt two main playstyles

1. Finesse Melee
2. Casters

It also made DPS King .

What should have occurred is implementing weapon versions with a limited Apply debuff. Such as charges.

Also both players and mobs alike should not have a "recovery over time" on this type of damage. Instead encounters should be created to account for players using this with supporting mobs and players should account for this being used against them.

It shouldn't have been a weapon related affix/prefix anyhow, or only in combination with a particular character level.

Just because a barb picks up a rapier shouldn't make it capable of puncturing and opponent.

They should restore stat damage instead to specific character trees at the higher/est levels as long as the weapon type qualifies. That alone would eliminate the "overabundance" they had before. They could even make it an executable skill or that specifically trades off DPS for stat damage.

The recovery times are just stupid fast on mobs where they shouldn't be.

[TedSandyman]

I recently decided to play an inquisitive, just to see what all of the hubub was about. I generally play melee and immediately saw several places where ranged players have advantages that, unless you played both you might not notice.

First is the poison throwers. As a ranged I can simply move back and forth as I call forth incredible amounts of damage and I get missed by the poison attacks. Any ranged DOT, if you are back far enough, gives you a pretty good chance to get missed completely just by moving back and forth a little bit. You will usually NOT get hit enough times for the dot to stack. As a melee you get hit again and again and the DOT damage that stacks up is quick and incredible. As a ranged, I hardly even notice the poison dot. It is simply not an issue. As a melee it is devastating. I was wondering how the heck people could possibly survive. I'm talking several hundred points of damage per tick over 10 seconds or more.

One particular room, the throwers will not exit the room. So I am force to run in, pick one, start wailing on him, and run out and heal (and hope the dots don't kill me). Neutralize poison, you would think, would, I don't know, neutralize the poison, but it doesn't.

Another issue is the wraithcallers, especially the red named ones. That fire blast is deadly. But if you are back, away from the wraitcallers, you almost never get touched by it. But the damage is insane. And as a melee you are almost ALWAYS going to get hit. If you are paying attention, you will see a big HP hit and that will be your first hint to need to run. The HP starts dropping WAY before you see the actual flames. You will almost assuredly get hit with it a few more times before you can run away. You better have many, many hit-points and a way to recover them or the fight will be a short one. Ranged might get hit once before they can easily back out of range.

The point I am making with the above, is that often, the developers think up a new monster give it some attacks and say "done" without really thinking about how devastating those attacks will be to one class and how those same attacks will be at the most a minor nuisance to other classes. I have always felt evasion is one of the most overpowered abilities in the game. OK. So assume you can dodge or jump out of the way of a fireball somehow. Surely, if that fireball is thousands of degrees hotter and causes 20 times the damage as a normal fireball, it should be harder to evade. Shouldn't it? No? If you jump behind a box and the fire doesn't hit you, the hot air still would. For a super fireball, the air behind the box should heat up to damaging levels too, shouldn't it?

The web traps in "Blown Deadline" yeah, they probably hit everyone from time to time. But if you are a melee, and are attacking one of the trappers, he will set the trap and it will immediately explode while you are attacking him. If you attack one of those guys you are almost assuredly going to get webbed. And those things last forever. SO you have this devastating slow effect and it is almost impossible to avoid getting webbed as a melee. But it is rare to get webbed unless you just are not paying attention as an inquisitive. The effect is overwhelmingly felt on melee players. I cant set a trap as a thief while something is hitting me. But they can. As a ranged I accidentally get webbed every four or five times I run that dungeon through inattention. As a melee, I spend MOST of my time webbed and slowed.

The same with those stupid exploding spiders. They blow up with incredible amounts of damage. They get set and blow up immediately. If you are a melee in the middle of a group, trying your best to cleave your way out, you wont even see the stupid spider. If you are an inquisitive, just kill them while they are still 100 yards away or when you see one, run 100 yards away and kill it. No problem.

There are a large number of effects in this game that are disproportionately felt by melees that are trivial or nonexistent to ranged players. And a lot of those are just not really thought about. But as the game gets harder and reaper gets piled on, the developers say, well lets make healing less and damage more. Yeah, that affects everyone. But it affects melee more. And the more those effects get multiplied the more the disproportion gets multiplied until melees are getting one punched and everyone else just runs around nearly immune. Yeah, these things affect everyone but they affect some a tremendously, stupid amount more than others.

What about negative levels? Everybody gets them right? Yeah, but some classes are far, far easier to get UMD up enough that you can get a few negative levels and still have a good chance of being able to remove them yourself. But who is more likely to get those negative levels? The person rushing the beholder because they have to get close. Who is more likely not to have enough UMD to get rid of them? Mostly melees (i know, monks don't count).

In pen and paper, you could only cast a spell once. So anything that would negative level you would only hit you once. You might lose a few levels but that was it, and, maybe you could make up for it. Here the mobs spam spells with infinite mana. As many times as they like as fast as they like. Get a mob spanning negative levels and you are down to zero in no time. I know this isn't pen and paper, but there are some spells that are just too powerful to be spammed without limit. There should be at least some time limit to it.

What about mummy rot? This used to bother me a lot. I carry potions of course, but if you fought a mummy there was always a chance you would get mummy rot. In pen and paper you would get hit two or three times maybe before your party had the mummy killed. If you had 90% immunity there was a good chance you wouldn't get the rot. But in DDO, the hit points and combat are extended. You get hit 10 or more times it is a big difference in the chance of getting mummy rot. It becomes very close to 100%. My fighter would get mummy rot EVERY TIME he fought a mummy. Every single time. Not that big of a deal really, but touch affects, and there are a lot of them, affect melee and simply don't affect others. And if any of those affects cause damage, that damage gets multiplied and the people who get those effects get pounded. You were never supposed to ALWAYS get mummy rot. There was always a chance though. But simply because no one thought of it, the transition to this online game made it nearly 100%, but only for melees.

The one advantage that used to make up for melee builds was the fact that you could deal out massive DPS and keep it up over time since there was no mana to limit you. The mana limit was the big difference. Yeah, a fireball does a lot of damage, but you can only cast a limited number. (In pen and paper it was 1). But with the invention of mana pots, the difference became less. And then warlocks, throw a tremendous amount of ranged damage, with no mana. We cant let the melees hit to hard because they are unlimited. But it is OK to let warlocks hit hard without being mana limited. And, on top of that, lets make them ranged, so they don't have most of the issues melee have.

And then wizards and sorcs are given great power, and the main limit, mana is pretty much gone. Most dungeons have enough shrines to allow these high power casters to devastate their way from one shrine to the next with little worry about running out of mana. And if they do, they can always buy some more from the store.

Casters used to have something called concentration. I know it is still in the game, but it has little effect. It is way to easy to get it to the point of not being an issue at all. Getting hit, or even moving, would cause a spell to fail. No longer. And rangers running backward and firing at full speed. That is insane. Put a group of archers and a group of armed and armored men with swords on a battle field and see which wins. It would be funny to watch in ddo as the archers run backwards around a castle or lake firing at will with deadly accuracy. And don't even get me started on how an inquisitive manages to manually reset two crossbows with his hands already filled with crossbows. Even a repeating crossbow SHOULD fire a few rounds and then require resetting the auto fire mechanism. Crossbows would be horrible to carry into a dungeon as would bows.

Now with all of that said, this IS a game after all. If I wanted real life I should play a sport or shoot skeet or maybe take up curling. But it is just disheartening to see ALL of these down-sides that are simply ignored in these classes that make them viable, when the melee is apparently held to a higher standard. Or to see all these supposed restrictions to reaper that are only restrictions in the strictest sense to specific classes.

And once again, if you read through this, know that I am speaking as a melee player, who knows most of the tricks to avoid issues and where to hide and run when soloing to get through these dungeons. I am playing a ranged inquisitive for the first time. You would think playing something for the first time, that something would be harder. I am telling you it isn't. It is easily 10 to 20 times easier.

You may know a melee player who does well. I don't do too badly. But I know 100% from playing both, that that melee player who does OK is an excellent player who is doing an incredible job just to break even in most cases.

[myliftkk_v2]

I recently decided to play an inquisitive, just to see what all of the hubub was about. I generally play melee and immediately saw several places where ranged players have advantages that, unless you played both you might not notice.

First is the poison throwers. As a ranged I can simply move back and forth as I call forth incredible amounts of damage and I get missed by the poison attacks. Any ranged DOT, if you are back far enough, gives you a pretty good chance to get missed completely just by moving back and forth a little bit. You will usually NOT get hit enough times for the dot to stack. As a melee you get hit again and again and the DOT damage that stacks up is quick and incredible. As a ranged, I hardly even notice the poison dot. It is simply not an issue. As a melee it is devastating. I was wondering how the heck people could possibly survive. I'm talking several hundred points of damage per tick over 10 seconds or more.

One particular room, the throwers will not exit the room. So I am force to run in, pick one, start wailing on him, and run out and heal (and hope the dots don't kill me). Neutralize poison, you would think, would, I don't know, neutralize the poison, but it doesn't.

Another issue is the wraithcallers, especially the red named ones. That fire blast is deadly. But if you are back, away from the wraitcallers, you almost never get touched by it. But the damage is insane. And as a melee you are almost ALWAYS going to get hit. If you are paying attention, you will see a big HP hit and that will be your first hint to need to run. The HP starts dropping WAY before you see the actual flames. You will almost assuredly get hit with it a few more times before you can run away. You better have many, many hit-points and a way to recover them or the fight will be a short one. Ranged might get hit once before they can easily back out of range.

The point I am making with the above, is that often, the developers think up a new monster give it some attacks and say "done" without really thinking about how devastating those attacks will be to one class and how those same attacks will be at the most a minor nuisance to other classes. I have always felt evasion is one of the most overpowered abilities in the game. OK. So assume you can dodge or jump out of the way of a fireball somehow. Surely, if that fireball is thousands of degrees hotter and causes 20 times the damage as a normal fireball, it should be harder to evade. Shouldn't it? No? If you jump behind a box and the fire doesn't hit you, the hot air still would. For a super fireball, the air behind the box should heat up to damaging levels too, shouldn't it?

The web traps in "Blown Deadline" yeah, they probably hit everyone from time to time. But if you are a melee, and are attacking one of the trappers, he will set the trap and it will immediately explode while you are attacking him. If you attack one of those guys you are almost assuredly going to get webbed. And those things last forever. SO you have this devastating slow effect and it is almost impossible to avoid getting webbed as a melee. But it is rare to get webbed unless you just are not paying attention as an inquisitive. The effect is overwhelmingly felt on melee players. I cant set a trap as a thief while something is hitting me. But they can. As a ranged I accidentally get webbed every four or five times I run that dungeon through inattention. As a melee, I spend MOST of my time webbed and slowed.

The same with those stupid exploding spiders. They blow up with incredible amounts of damage. They get set and blow up immediately. If you are a melee in the middle of a group, trying your best to cleave your way out, you wont even see the stupid spider. If you are an inquisitive, just kill them while they are still 100 yards away or when you see one, run 100 yards away and kill it. No problem.

There are a large number of effects in this game that are disproportionately felt by melees that are trivial or nonexistent to ranged players. And a lot of those are just not really thought about. But as the game gets harder and reaper gets piled on, the developers say, well lets make healing less and damage more. Yeah, that affects everyone. But it affects melee more. And the more those effects get multiplied the more the disproportion gets multiplied until melees are getting one punched and everyone else just runs around nearly immune. Yeah, these things affect everyone but they affect some a tremendously, stupid amount more than others.

What about negative levels? Everybody gets them right? Yeah, but some classes are far, far easier to get UMD up enough that you can get a few negative levels and still have a good chance of being able to remove them yourself. But who is more likely to get those negative levels? The person rushing the beholder because they have to get close. Who is more likely not to have enough UMD to get rid of them? Mostly melees (i know, monks don't count).

In pen and paper, you could only cast a spell once. So anything that would negative level you would only hit you once. You might lose a few levels but that was it, and, maybe you could make up for it. Here the mobs spam spells with infinite mana. As many times as they like as fast as they like. Get a mob spanning negative levels and you are down to zero in no time. I know this isn't pen and paper, but there are some spells that are just too powerful to be spammed without limit. There should be at least some time limit to it.

What about mummy rot? This used to bother me a lot. I carry potions of course, but if you fought a mummy there was always a chance you would get mummy rot. In pen and paper you would get hit two or three times maybe before your party had the mummy killed. If you had 90% immunity there was a good chance you wouldn't get the rot. But in DDO, the hit points and combat are extended. You get hit 10 or more times it is a big difference in the chance of getting mummy rot. It becomes very close to 100%. My fighter would get mummy rot EVERY TIME he fought a mummy. Every single time. Not that big of a deal really, but touch affects, and there are a lot of them, affect melee and simply don't affect others. And if any of those affects cause damage, that damage gets multiplied and the people who get those effects get pounded. You were never supposed to ALWAYS get mummy rot. There was always a chance though. But simply because no one thought of it, the transition to this online game made it nearly 100%, but only for melees.

The one advantage that used to make up for melee builds was the fact that you could deal out massive DPS and keep it up over time since there was no mana to limit you. The mana limit was the big difference. Yeah, a fireball does a lot of damage, but you can only cast a limited number. (In pen and paper it was 1). But with the invention of mana pots, the difference became less. And then warlocks, throw a tremendous amount of ranged damage, with no mana. We cant let the melees hit to hard because they are unlimited. But it is OK to let warlocks hit hard without being mana limited. And, on top of that, lets make them ranged, so they don't have most of the issues melee have.

And then wizards and sorcs are given great power, and the main limit, mana is pretty much gone. Most dungeons have enough shrines to allow these high power casters to devastate their way from one shrine to the next with little worry about running out of mana. And if they do, they can always buy some more from the store.

Casters used to have something called concentration. I know it is still in the game, but it has little effect. It is way to easy to get it to the point of not being an issue at all. Getting hit, or even moving, would cause a spell to fail. No longer. And rangers running backward and firing at full speed. That is insane. Put a group of archers and a group of armed and armored men with swords on a battle field and see which wins. It would be funny to watch in ddo as the archers run backwards around a castle or lake firing at will with deadly accuracy. And don't even get me started on how an inquisitive manages to manually reset two crossbows with his hands already filled with crossbows. Even a repeating crossbow SHOULD fire a few rounds and then require resetting the auto fire mechanism. Crossbows would be horrible to carry into a dungeon as would bows.

Now with all of that said, this IS a game after all. If I wanted real life I should play a sport or shoot skeet or maybe take up curling. But it is just disheartening to see ALL of these down-sides that are simply ignored in these classes that make them viable, when the melee is apparently held to a higher standard. Or to see all these supposed restrictions to reaper that are only restrictions in the strictest sense to specific classes.

And once again, if you read through this, know that I am speaking as a melee player, who knows most of the tricks to avoid issues and where to hide and run when soloing to get through these dungeons. I am playing a ranged inquisitive for the first time. You would think playing something for the first time, that something would be harder. I am telling you it isn't. It is easily 10 to 20 times easier.

You may know a melee player who does well. I don't do too badly. But I know 100% from playing both, that that melee player who does OK is an excellent player who is doing an incredible job just to break even in most cases.
Wizard and sorcerer tradeoffs used to be their squishy natures. Sure one could deal tons of damage at standoff distances, but it came at a real character HP cost, and if one screwed up and got caught without a plan of spell attacks for a group of mobs (because resistances varied), one could get smoked pretty fast. This is before you consider one had to grind out lives just to make the spells stick. I will say that I hardly ever drank a mana pot, free or paid for, outside of a raid, and that most casters who did aren't good casters to begin with. This isn't to say one cruised into every shrine with a full tank of gas, because it didn't used to be that way either.

Concentration has become a total dump skill, that is true. I have not put a single point into it in years and now casters are meat sacks just like every other character on the HP side.

The magically reloading chainguns, I mean crossbows, are hilarious. Inquisitives are essentially dual chain guns in any other game.

If they want to force ranged toons to actually play their characters, then just vary mobs mobs resistance to ranged damage, either through greater spell selection, greater ranged power outbound vs ranged characters. A few disjunktions later and most casters will look like a roast pig waiting for the apple.