Weekly Developer Activities: 3/24/08

[MysticTheurge]

Are we still going to see Rogue Way Of... IIs in this update or have they slid off to the backburner?

If (utter speculation ahead) Wrack Construct is a line that's separate from Way of the Mechanic II, which, say, allows you to sneak attack constructs, then it gets a whole different dynamic.

[Angelus_dead]

How is this different than using autoattack?

Because you don't need to take an affirmative action to deactivate it. Instead, it ends simply when you relax on the mouse button.

This means there is no chance you'll leave it on by accident long after the monster is dead, and then accidentaly pull aggro if you tab to a monster with a ranged weapon equipped.

[Yaga_Nub]

YAY!!!



How is this different than using autoattack?

Well as soon as you release the right mouse button you are no longer attacking. Makes it much better for people holding ranged weapons that like to cycle through mobs to see who attacks but forget to turn off auto-attack.

[gpk]

then barb improved crit should be diminished, if you are basically saying thatbecause of timing rogues, fighters and paladins will ever have really powerful enhancements, then this is completel unfair and unbalancing Basically nobody wants to roll a fighter, paladin or rogue, as they are just totally eclipsed by Barbarian improved crit 2. You have given an extremely powerful enhancement to one melee class basically telling players that only a barbarian is worth playing

QFT

Yes I think the time has come to admit the mistake made in Barbarian Crit Rage 2, replace it with some kind of massive criticals and move on.

There never seemed to be a problem nerfing paladins repeatedly over the last year, all of a sudden there's concern about "nerfing" other classes?
Fine, I can accept that, if the argument was to "give" to other classes rather than "take away".
Rangers were "given" a lot and I'll argue that they were less needy that Paladins, but so be it.

Now you don't want to "give" the same quality of love to the other classes because Bbn Crit Rage 2 is overpowered?
It's a hard pill to swallow.

[Angelus_dead]

Yes I think the time has come to admit the mistake made in Barbarian Crit Rage 2, replace it with some kind of massive criticals and move on.

It probably would be a good idea to do something like this:

Barb Crit Rage I: When raging, your attack rolls of a natural 20 have +1 critical multiplier.
Barb Crit Rage II: When raging, your attack rolls of a natural 19 have +1 critical multiplier. (Attacks outside the weapon's threat range are treated as having a base 1x crit multiplier, which might be raised to 2x by this enhancement)

(Note that this variation would apply equally to all weapons, instead of being biased towards weapons with a 3x or 4x multiplier, like barbs are now)

[Laith]

There never seemed to be a problem nerfing paladins repeatedly over the last year, all of a sudden there's concern about "nerfing" other classes?

don't fool yourself, there's ALWAYS concern when something gets nerfed.

Using pally nerfs as a justification for nerfing barbs?
A mistake being made once should never justify making the same mistake again.


We all know there's an imbalance. There are many ways to approach fixing it. Turbine appears to be trying to avoid the easiest route (nerfing).

[MysticTheurge]

Barb Crit Rage I: When raging, your attack rolls of a natural 20 have +1 critical multiplier.
Barb Crit Rage II: When raging, your attack rolls of a natural 19 have +1 critical multiplier.

I like this modification.

[QuantumFX]

[*]NEW Quest portal info screen text has changed. It now shows the quest difficulty along with the level.

So does this mean that the quest portal bug has been fixed? Where it will show the wrong difficulty to those who haven't entered a quest.

[*]NEW A new click and hold to attack option has been added to the game and is defaulted to on.[/LIST]

I am SO looking forward to trying this out!

[*]Paladin Bulwark of Good IV:

• Cost: 8 Action Points
• Prereqs: Level 15 Paladin, Paladin Bulwark of Good III, 48 action points spent.
• Benefit: Your aura of good provides an additional +4 Armor Class bonus.

I thought you said you we're gonna fix this last week!

[*]NEW Rogue Wrack Construct I[LIST][*]NEW Rogue Wrack Construct II[LIST][*]NEW Rogue Wrack Construct III

• Note: Final values on all of these enhancements are still subject to change based on play-testing.

So what you're saying is "Warforged BEWARE!!!!" You might want to not have them stack for living constructs or have the special damage bypass fortification...

[gpk]

don't fool yourself, there's ALWAYS concern when something gets nerfed.

Besides, because a mistake was made once should never justify making the same mistake again.
It just sounds like bitterness when you use pally nerfs as a justification for nerfing barbs.

We all know there's an imbalance. There are many ways to approach fixing it. Turbine appears to be trying to avoid the easiest route (nerfing).

It's more confusion than anything else, not bitterness.

I have would no trouble being nerfed for the sake of gameplay and class balance.
The nerfs to paladins seem to have come based on mod1-2 observations of the relative power between classes.
Mod3's changes and Mod3's enhancement re-design, new spells and abilities changed all that and the mod1-2 assessment was no longer correct. If you "nerfed" pallies back in mod 1-2 I doubt very many would have complaine; I know I wouldn't have.
It's important I think to take the historical timeline and context of the nerfs into consideration.

Turbine is clearly so gun shy now about both nerfing and giving other classes similarly powerful abilities that the game is continuing to suffer.
Give the other neglected class good abilities, they need not be as game breaking as Crit Rage 2, but don't make the "love" sub-par because Crit Rage 2 was too powerful; that makes no sense.

Rangers got quality love in Mod 6, why lower the bar now all of a sudden? Is there more to come?

[MysticTheurge]

So does this mean that the quest portal bug has been fixed?

I suspect it just means Devil Assault will tell you that Normal is 6, Hard is 12 and Elite is 18.

[Yaga_Nub]

It probably would be a good idea to do something like this:

Barb Crit Rage I: When raging, your attack rolls of a natural 20 have +1 critical multiplier.
Barb Crit Rage II: When raging, your attack rolls of a natural 19 have +1 critical multiplier. (Attacks outside the weapon's threat range are treated as having a base 1x crit multiplier, which might be raised to 2x by this enhancement)

(Note that this variation would apply equally to all weapons, instead of being biased towards weapons with a 3x or 4x multiplier, like barbs are now)

Very nice AD, I like that.

[QuantumFX]

I suspect it just means Devil Assault will tell you that Normal is 6, Hard is 12 and Elite is 18.

But a bugfix for a quest that's going away eventually?

[Heladron]

NEW A few wight priests will no longer cast cure spells on themselves.

Where does this happen because it would be a hoot to see?

[gpk]

It probably would be a good idea to do something like this:

Barb Crit Rage I: When raging, your attack rolls of a natural 20 have +1 critical multiplier.
Barb Crit Rage II: When raging, your attack rolls of a natural 19 have +1 critical multiplier. (Attacks outside the weapon's threat range are treated as having a base 1x crit multiplier, which might be raised to 2x by this enhancement)

(Note that this variation would apply equally to all weapons, instead of being biased towards weapons with a 3x or 4x multiplier, like barbs are now)

Personally I think Massive Criticals , like 4d6 extra damage on a crit is better for short term and long term balance rather than messing with critical ranges and multipliers

I'm throwing out 4d6 just like that, it may be too low, I don't really feel like looking at numbers to be honest.
I'm sure one can come up with some good numbers for it to still be a good enhancement line, but in all honesty it would be a nerf no matter what you wanna call it. A beneficial nerf mind you, one that's very good for the game as a whole, but a nerf nonetheless.

[Cowdenicus]

Still no love for clerics here. Nothing to see.

[Tallyn]

Pair the enhancement with body feeder weapon and you have something sick. As mentioned above by illuminati is a way to get sick numbers and if this enhancement grows.....could make paladins very attractive. Sacrificing life force and being able to self heal and take some of the new regen items or jerky pouch and this becomes a very viable enhancement chain if they fill it out to III.

[*]NEW Paladin Divine Sacrifice I

• Prereq: Paladin level 4, Paladin Extra Smiting I, 11 Action Points spent
• Cost: 1 Action Point
• Benefit: Giving up some of your life force to win the battle, you empower your next blow against your foe. This attack deals an additional 5d6 Good damage to evil opponents and increases the critical multiplier of your weapon by 1, but costs you 10 hp and 1 sp, whether or not the attack is successful.". (6 second cooldown.)

Am I the only one that wants to see a Strength based Paladin with a Deathnip use this and critical hit????

[Desteria]

You're not likely to see any new enhancements at the power level that Barbarian Improved Critical is currently at. There are some interesting synergies out there between certain item enchantments and other Paladin abilities with Divine Sacrifice. (Such as Bodyfeeder, noted earlier in the thread, or the Virtue spell.)

Edit: And Mystic Theurge beats me to the comment, again.

I hate that enhancemnt because it has to be the reason there are no greensteal great axes, in any oen but a barbarians hands a Great axe and a Great sword weapon stats are identical over time, (Note not accounting for DDO difrent swing speeds wich i consider a bug) so because barbs would a gain a LOT out of Axes compared to swords they left them out .... I'm a little sad beacuse it would have bene nice to final beable to make an axe on par with the SoS, as then my dwarf would actuyl take his neat racial enhancments.

[Solmage]

Yes. And that enhancement is overpowered. I'm glad they're not matching new enhancements to it and hope they reconsider the current effects of said barbarian enhancement.

And none of those characters will have the defensive capabilities of a paladin.

Well, how about giving paladins some actual defensive capabilities then?

From where I'm standing the pure paladin:

- Has (significantly) less attack power than the melee tempest dwarven ranger
- Has (significantly) less AC than said ranger
- Gets fried by area of effect spells, unlike said ranger
- Has (significantly) less attack power than the fighter, dwarven or not
- Has (significantly) less AC than the fighter
- has (significantly) less attack than the barbarian
- has (significantly) less DR than the barbarian
- has (significantly) less attack power than a melee bard
- has (significantly) less buffs than a melee bard

Heck, even if they hurt their stats for 13 int for combat expertise, they can't even keep it up and invoke divine favor or any of their semi-useful spells and abilities without loosing it. Well, good luck hitting things without that. But at least they have intimidate as a class skill right, so they can do SOMETHING useful right? oh wait, they don't. Not that they'd have the AC to actually take the heat.

So basically.. the pure paladins main contribution is standing around so his auras augment the real tanks. Thrilling game experience, no I mean, really.

They have high saves. Yay. So does a paladin 2-3 splash. And most dwarven non-splashes have saves that are good enough, specially considering the plethora of effects one is already immune to.

This is my wish: Make the paladins excel at something. You want it to be defense? Works for me! Let them be bastions of defense, able to shrug off fireballs, have blows glance off their holy armors, intimidate by their mere presence, be the hard place against which the rock pushes the enemies. (Or make them the rock, able to put the fear of the gods into anything evil. But please please don't make them the 3rd and 4th rate me-too pebbles that they currently are.)

(Note, I don't mean to insult anyone who plays a paladin and likes them as they are. I am highlighting that there are deficiencies when compared to the other classes, not claiming they're unviable or worthless or anything. The only thing I AM claiming is that everything else being equal, another melee is almost always more effective at the task at hand than a 100% pure paladin, and that this needs to be changed. There are some AWESOME paladin splash builds, but I want the class to be more than an awesome splash class. You may of course disagree.)

[Heladron]

If nothing else, just make all paladins have glowing, white and silver armor and a shiny aura. At least they'll look cool while being complete pansies.

[Aesop]

Am I the only one that wants to see a Strength based Paladin with a Deathnip use this and critical hit????

I would laugh... a lot

or a Shroud +++Khopesh while wearing a Bloodstone

Aesop