I was wrong about the ED revamp... but not completely

[Certon]

I've spent lots of time (and plat) working out the new Epic Destiny system, and I have to admit that I was mostly wrong in my criticism, but not completely.

The new ED system is well balanced, but inflexible. Flexibility is what made the old system great.

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The monster revamp worked well, mostly. There are still tons of mobs in Barovia that hit for 500 on Epic Elite settings--werewolves and wolves and the like. There has got to be more QA on these changes because its kinda janky.

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The stat squish and DC squish did NOT work, however--especially in combination with the insane glancing blows for melee in Legendary settings. This high AC was created to mitigate stunning fist, trip, and the like in the old system, because players had gotten these abilities so high that it was trivializing content, and they wanted to avoid increasing HP further. Well, now many players have suboptimal DCs on their abilities, AND get a lot of glancing blows when they activate them anyway. Before, it was nearly 100% success on these abilities with a 30%- 50% chance to not get a glancing blow, but now it is 20%-40% (optimistically) with still a huge chance to get glancing blows, trivializing the players' abilities instead.

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I've enjoyed playing builds that struggled with EE settings in the old system. It was a good move for versatility on the execution side of the build. But you still have the problem of a few Epic Destinies being vastly superior to the rest--Draconic Incarnation, Shiradi Champion, and Fatesinger, respectively. Now, I'm not advocating these destinies be nerfed to balance things out. I think these destinies are satisfying to play as they are and should be the baseline for adjustments to the suboptimal destinies.

Divine Crusader is a great example of a destiny that needs major adjustment. People who use two handed weapons with a ton of strikethrough love to spend 6 points in the tree, just to get the weapon durability damage immunity AND THAT'S IT. The epic strike is a complete waste, and the mantle is a big ***.

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I kinda don't know why I even bother with the critique. I mean, I dropped a MONSTER HOME RUN of a suggestion to eliminate the TR cache from DDO by changing the way bank and inventory space was given by the Coin Lords and House K, but absolutely NO responses. Just disappointing. I want to contribute and help the game be better, but it's like I'm screaming into the wind. Bah.

[Seph1roth5]

One of the big things the devs were pushing was a smooth leveling progression in epics. Glossing over the big gaping hole at 29, the problem with that now is that there are a lot of ED abilities that just aren't good for your build. So when I hit 23 or 26 and go to spend points it's like "Oh....well i guess I'll put a couple points in this."

The only character I had that EDs felt good leveling with was my PM in draconic. There was something throughout the tree that was nice, and even then, the 26-30pts to unlock t5 was a bit rough. I've leveled a good 5-6 people from 20-30 since the update and each one was riddled with unexciting points and levels.

Whenever I bring this up people say I'm doing it wrong, that you're supposed to have 3 trees not just one. And I DO spend pts in other trees, but because of the way the majority of a tree's power is locked to mantle/epic strike, but pretty sure everyone is going to have a "main" tree.

I honestly don't remember this amount of wasted points in the old ED system, maaaaybe if you were a really weird build. Now I'm wasting stuff on bumping up summons/pets, skills I don't need, or the enhancements themselves are just so laughably week it fees like a waste, 1p for 1 prr/mrr? ***.

[Dandonk]

The new ED system is well balanced, but inflexible. Flexibility is what made the old system great.

The problem for me is that the balance came at the cost of abilities being interesting. Yay, +1 to hit/dmg, woo! I feel epic now! Not. +1 PRR/MRR, even better!

And yes, loss of flexibility was a really bad thing.

The monster revamp worked well, mostly. There are still tons of mobs in Barovia that hit for 500 on Epic Elite settings--werewolves and wolves and the like. There has got to be more QA on these changes because its kinda janky.

Monster revamp worked a lot better than I feared, but we didn't get a chance to check it out, so my past experience with unseen changes in DDO was all I had to go by.
And actually, the revamp was too much, IMO. Game is, in general, much much easier in epics now, even at cap. Didn't see that coming, and not sure it's a good idea.