Pandjed
08-12-2021, 03:39 PM
The last few weeks in this U50-game has opened my eyes that maybe some people never really understood, how exactly the status-squish in U50 will affect the game. There are several of the usual outrages, the hurt, the insults, and a lot more.
In this post, I try to get most of the inevitable changes to character-building explained, so that you can link this to your friends, guildies, and whatever, and maybe they can finally grasp the current shift in balance and why it may be not bad.
Before I can dive into it, let me set the following things straight:
I don't think that the balance after the squish is where it should be at all places, there were several things overlooked or maybe just the result of guesstimation, I mean, even devs aren't always sure of what they do. These are humans, after all. However, in this post I'll just assume, that they nailed every single balance task
I also think, that some builds and combinations were hit, that never were considered, be it by their uniqueness or that those came together as a sort of accident in the first place
This is based on my thoughts and personal experiences, and I don't claim that I'm right overall. However, I also try to not be too specific to not get lost in details. Be sure to plug in some own thoughts and experiences yourself in a civil manner in this thread
Let's take a look first, at what makes a character powerful. This is needed as some context, especially when I refer to those.
1.) The build, which takes the following into account:
Race
Class Features
Enhancements
Skill Points
Feats
Epic Destinies
Twists
Reaper Enhancements
Tomes
2.) The gear, which accounts for:
Equipment
Augments
Set bonuses
Filigrees
Clickies
3.) Pastlives, which get their extra categorie, because most bonuses are passive and are the result of past choices, not current and they can't be traded/respecced:
Racial
Heroic
Epic
Iconic
[/LIST]
Before U50, gear was an overwhelming part of what made your bonuses. Let's take a thief acrobat at endgame, for example (cuz it only hit endgame).
Items give +22/+10/+5 to dexterity (+37), while you would start with 20, get +7 per leveling, and about +10 from the trees. Means, from your 74 dexterity, half comes from the items alone, without counting in filigrees or special augments and set bonuses, which may be countered by epic destinies and tomes, but around 50% still holds true.
You have an active that gives +50 PRR, which is less than what a Sharn item gives (+54)
The TA tree gives flat +13 to damage with quarterstaves, while deadly used to be +17 (and you could add insightful deadly as well).
This should be enough to give the impression, that the gear was around as weighty as the build in terms of numbers. So what happens, when we reduce the numbers of the items, but accordingly, the weight of the build goes up. The weight of pastlives also increases, though they're still at the bottom.
Which leads to the following conclusions:
1.) Whatever you used to compensate for with items won't work as good. Sorcerers and wizards are meant to be squishy and where items used to lift their PRR and MRR above a certain level, it won't be able to cover it all after U50. With so little MRR/PRR from the build, it'll be much harder to play a wizard tank with only wizard levels.
2.) Whatever your enhancements and ED brings will be worth more. I played plenty of spellcasters with only spellfocus to get the magister enhancement. Now I may actually see a need to choose greater spell focus or use my AP smarter.
3.) Semi-specialized builds will be hurt. Mostly, because there were certain target numbers to hit before, that are now harder to accomplish by just gearing. So if you're a DC-caster and only concentrate on insta-kills and CCs, then both DCs have to be relegated a bit more upwards, which then cause you to decide which school you want to CC with or the like.
4.) Hybrid builds might benefit. On the other hand, builds like melee/spellcasters or rangedDPS/CCs might get a boost, because there is less of a leap between fully geared towards one and semi-well geared to cover difference bases.
5.) Viva set-bonuses. As they were lowered the least from the bonuses of your gear, their importance goes up once more.
This seems to be the logical results of having lower numbers, less numeric differences between specialization and general gearing, and the whole weight shift where the end-numbers come in the first place.
I'm sure I only got at the surface.
What do I see in the future? For a while, DDO's meta should get a shove to leave certain jobs to classes and enhancement-trees made to do them. With U51 and the ED pass coming, there will be major shift once more, one that will make everyone forget their crying over U50. However, this might actually be a big benefit in terms of unusual characters, as this time it's the build, that is changing, instead of the gear. With the much more flexible building and the hybrid trees that we saw in the early preview, we might be able to have more than enough leeway in the build area, to compensate for what we lost in U50, with a emerging as hybrid builds as actually beneficial party-members at endgame. As long as the devs polish that.
In this post, I try to get most of the inevitable changes to character-building explained, so that you can link this to your friends, guildies, and whatever, and maybe they can finally grasp the current shift in balance and why it may be not bad.
Before I can dive into it, let me set the following things straight:
I don't think that the balance after the squish is where it should be at all places, there were several things overlooked or maybe just the result of guesstimation, I mean, even devs aren't always sure of what they do. These are humans, after all. However, in this post I'll just assume, that they nailed every single balance task
I also think, that some builds and combinations were hit, that never were considered, be it by their uniqueness or that those came together as a sort of accident in the first place
This is based on my thoughts and personal experiences, and I don't claim that I'm right overall. However, I also try to not be too specific to not get lost in details. Be sure to plug in some own thoughts and experiences yourself in a civil manner in this thread
Let's take a look first, at what makes a character powerful. This is needed as some context, especially when I refer to those.
1.) The build, which takes the following into account:
Race
Class Features
Enhancements
Skill Points
Feats
Epic Destinies
Twists
Reaper Enhancements
Tomes
2.) The gear, which accounts for:
Equipment
Augments
Set bonuses
Filigrees
Clickies
3.) Pastlives, which get their extra categorie, because most bonuses are passive and are the result of past choices, not current and they can't be traded/respecced:
Racial
Heroic
Epic
Iconic
[/LIST]
Before U50, gear was an overwhelming part of what made your bonuses. Let's take a thief acrobat at endgame, for example (cuz it only hit endgame).
Items give +22/+10/+5 to dexterity (+37), while you would start with 20, get +7 per leveling, and about +10 from the trees. Means, from your 74 dexterity, half comes from the items alone, without counting in filigrees or special augments and set bonuses, which may be countered by epic destinies and tomes, but around 50% still holds true.
You have an active that gives +50 PRR, which is less than what a Sharn item gives (+54)
The TA tree gives flat +13 to damage with quarterstaves, while deadly used to be +17 (and you could add insightful deadly as well).
This should be enough to give the impression, that the gear was around as weighty as the build in terms of numbers. So what happens, when we reduce the numbers of the items, but accordingly, the weight of the build goes up. The weight of pastlives also increases, though they're still at the bottom.
Which leads to the following conclusions:
1.) Whatever you used to compensate for with items won't work as good. Sorcerers and wizards are meant to be squishy and where items used to lift their PRR and MRR above a certain level, it won't be able to cover it all after U50. With so little MRR/PRR from the build, it'll be much harder to play a wizard tank with only wizard levels.
2.) Whatever your enhancements and ED brings will be worth more. I played plenty of spellcasters with only spellfocus to get the magister enhancement. Now I may actually see a need to choose greater spell focus or use my AP smarter.
3.) Semi-specialized builds will be hurt. Mostly, because there were certain target numbers to hit before, that are now harder to accomplish by just gearing. So if you're a DC-caster and only concentrate on insta-kills and CCs, then both DCs have to be relegated a bit more upwards, which then cause you to decide which school you want to CC with or the like.
4.) Hybrid builds might benefit. On the other hand, builds like melee/spellcasters or rangedDPS/CCs might get a boost, because there is less of a leap between fully geared towards one and semi-well geared to cover difference bases.
5.) Viva set-bonuses. As they were lowered the least from the bonuses of your gear, their importance goes up once more.
This seems to be the logical results of having lower numbers, less numeric differences between specialization and general gearing, and the whole weight shift where the end-numbers come in the first place.
I'm sure I only got at the surface.
What do I see in the future? For a while, DDO's meta should get a shove to leave certain jobs to classes and enhancement-trees made to do them. With U51 and the ED pass coming, there will be major shift once more, one that will make everyone forget their crying over U50. However, this might actually be a big benefit in terms of unusual characters, as this time it's the build, that is changing, instead of the gear. With the much more flexible building and the hybrid trees that we saw in the early preview, we might be able to have more than enough leeway in the build area, to compensate for what we lost in U50, with a emerging as hybrid builds as actually beneficial party-members at endgame. As long as the devs polish that.