"Why balance is something desirable?"

[swooshrp]

aw Borror0, let them keep that illusion of the clerics inferiority....

until they wield the true power of a well focused minion of destruction and death (aka Cleric) they will never understand....

I understand that clerics are powerful, but look at the tactics a cleric would use if not for a band of blood thursty melees going to get killed or at least find out how much damage they can take before the mob dies. Clerics wouldn't melee something, they are similiar to casters and use stretgic placement of their spells.

6 clerics in a group will always be powerful since all they have to do is worry about themselves for healing, not 5 others and themselves. what makes a cleric less powerful is the other classes around them, as you say, we are played out to be healbots. And yes I have a cleric too.

Again, apologize to hijack, but the overall point is as classes are "balanced", clerics need to be adjusted to relate to the changes of the evolving class.

[Borror0]

Again, apologize to hijack, but the overall point is as classes are "balanced", clerics need to be adjusted to relate to the changes of the evolving class.

As someone said previously, clerics in 3.0 and 3.5 are purposely overpowered to attract players into playing.

Sure, you can boost them a bit again for that reason, but be careful with it. Clerics aren't really a 'weak' class. Even with the recent updates, they haven't became any close to weak. Module 4.1 helped them a lot. So did Module 5.0 and the Metamagic changes. They aren't close to lacking behind. They don't need to be 'boosted', but tossing something their way to create an interest again isn't a bad idea.

[SableShadow]

Beautifully articulated and elegantly written.

[Varr]

Personaly I would put a cleric behind only a drow high umd sorc in power and capability. Ie, the most powerful and impactual class, able to overwhelm a quest single handedly better and faster (faster being better of course...hehe) than any other class. I can see more specialization for clerics and even sorcs, but not 'love' or power tweeking, they are dominate as is.

[negative]

Just to throw my 2cp in for why balance is important, from a different angle. If you don't aim for balance, and just let things continue to escalate, you will end up at a point where one group of players/classes [my personal fear is powergamers] find the elite setting of a quest a snoozefest while another group [my fear being casual or average gamers] not even having a chance at finishing the same quest on normal.

Obviously that's an extreme example, but it is something to watch out for. Of course, that's why the norm/hard/elite quest setting is such a brillant idea, because it does give you much more flexibility in dealing with this problem. Though, favor kinda ruins the point of the whole thing.

And while my fear is powergamers vs. casual gamers, this same gap in power could manifest on a class vs. class basis or a build vs. build basis.

[MysticRhythms]

One thing to consider is that the inherent balance in the game will be flawed simply becaue of the basic flaws associated with D&D3.5 - at high levels, spellcasters dominate.

The same thing is happening in DDO because the core rules of the game make spellcating a lot more relevant than BaB.

That's going to be an issue for Turbine to deal with throughout the history of the game.

In PnP, TWF actually takes a backseat to Sword&Board and even more of a backseat to Two-Handed Fighting simply because of the way power Attack and Attack bonuses scale. It's rather amusing to see that Turbine completely flipped this characeristic around in the online version.

As it stands, the pen-and-paper rules just don't carry over to an MMO without a lot of tweaking but the power gap between spellcasting and non-spellcasting is pretty obvious regardless. It should have been no mystery.

[Cowboy]

very well thought out post with some great points

[Mithran]

One thing to consider is that the inherent balance in the game will be flawed simply becaue of the basic flaws associated with D&D3.5 - at high levels, spellcasters dominate.

The same thing is happening in DDO because the core rules of the game make spellcating a lot more relevant than BaB.

That's going to be an issue for Turbine to deal with throughout the history of the game.

In PnP, TWF actually takes a backseat to Sword&Board and even more of a backseat to Two-Handed Fighting simply because of the way power Attack and Attack bonuses scale. It's rather amusing to see that Turbine completely flipped this characeristic around in the online version.

As it stands, the pen-and-paper rules just don't carry over to an MMO without a lot of tweaking but the power gap between spellcasting and non-spellcasting is pretty obvious regardless. It should have been no mystery.

How many casters for a Shroud raid? Typically one. Hound of Xoriat/Vision of Destruction? One or two. The current demand for glass cannons is pretty small, right now.

[Mithran]

All my melee characters are now TWF, but the TWF imbalance is a logical one apart from A/C. I think A/C is what the core issue is, these days, but my main still wears a shield for going into turtle mode.

[frugal_gourmet]

One thing to consider is that the inherent balance in the game will be flawed simply becaue of the basic flaws associated with D&D3.5 - at high levels, spellcasters dominate.

They mainly dominate because of the imaginative openness of the game, though. Take the straight PNP versions of the abilities arcanes been given in this particular game into a pen and paper dungeon and they shouldn't dominate at all. They can't actually do the same creative stuff in this game. In D&D, an arcane spellcaster didn't do imbalanced amount of direct damage. Their imbalance came from a wide range of other powers that could be used creatively. DDO inflated spell damage to insane proportions here (whilst removing touch attacks and spell resistance to said damage), and then -- oddly -- decided to fix the problem by inflating the hit points of enemies. Bizarre fix, in my opinion.

[frugal_gourmet]

How many casters for a Shroud raid? Typically one. Hound of Xoriat/Vision of Destruction? One or two. The current demand for glass cannons is pretty small, right now.

I agree. It's such an artificially created imbalance, too. It feels all wrong.

[Ryavin]

that experience plays a lot into this as well. By trying out tons of different builds since headstart a player knows how to customize his toons to his playstyle and abilities. I have heard all the arguements. Elves suck as melees, barbs are the best, Rangers suck (this one was my favorite)...the list will go on and on. Thing is, if you know how to play your toon you will be able to contribute. You can't expect someone new to be able to keep up with an experienced player. Of course they will drag behind in kill count, die more, use more resources. While some classes need some boosts it doesnt' mean that you can't make effective ones. I have seen great players rock in very difficult quests with these so called underpowered classes. The player behind the keyboard mean a ton in this game. This is my first MMO, but that is what I have noticed. Exp and the person playing the toon means more than the build or class.

BorrorO: Great post and well spoken

[Borror0]

Bizarre fix, in my opinion.

It's not bizarre at all.

Since HSinclair left, the DDO Developers are very cautious about nerfing. It's seen as bad, bad, bad even though the effect is the same (or less disastrous) at the end of the day. Inflating the HP isn't that bad, but they had to put it so high that Vorpal was faster than DPS...

A better way would have been energy absorption, IMO.

[Naso24]

Good post.

While not per D&D game mechanics, I think it would be better to balance S&B with better damage reduction, rather than focus so much on AC.

The AC spread is a problem that is made worse by non-progressive/regressive mob attack chains. The D20 window fails to work when the spread is greater than 20.

Almost any character can get to 35 AC with some thought and reasonable equipment (non-named or raid specific loot). It takes specific builds with specific equipment to hit 65+.

It would take a combo TWF nerf and S&B buff to make S&B the AC kings, without further increasing the spread.

I'd rather see an inherent damage reduction from using shields (when not even blocking) to add value to S&B fighting style. Existing S&B feats or a new one should be required. The balance could be kept with enhancements (easy way to scale the reduction available to certain character levels, and not make it so equipment dependent).

Balance is important to provide a variety of tactics and playstyles that can be utilized to accomplish quests. = More fun

[frugal_gourmet]

Since HSinclair left, the DDO Developers are very cautious about nerfing. It's seen as bad, bad, bad even though the effect is the same (or less disastrous) at the end of the day. Inflating the HP isn't that bad, but they had to put it so high that Vorpal was faster than DPS...

A better way would have been energy absorption, IMO.

Agreed on the last statement.

I believe what's most "bizarre" or problematic to me is that it completely reverses the experience. The spellcaster has a finite amount of resources at his disposal. He is (originally) balanced by not always being able to constantly fling said spells infinitely. So, if he is smart, he saves them for the hardest battles. Now that his entire spell pool cannot directly even dent the main bad guy, his role changes abruptly. He goes from kill specialist to 100% support or utilitarian. Now the steady but lesser stream of DPS is where it's at.

It's actually not a problem so long as not all future quests are like this. I'm fine with classes adjusting strategies.

But it worsens the game experience, IMO, if one class is featured significantly less in the end game in every single end-game raid just as it worsened it when one class was featured significantly more.

I guess I feel the change was a little too unnecessarily much in one direction.

[swooshrp]

Personaly I would put a cleric behind only a drow high umd sorc in power and capability. Ie, the most powerful and impactual class, able to overwhelm a quest single handedly better and faster (faster being better of course...hehe) than any other class. I can see more specialization for clerics and even sorcs, but not 'love' or power tweeking, they are dominate as is.

Yes, I agree. My choice of words wasn't accurate in the point I was trying to give. More of a specialization is right on course for what I meant.

[Cold_Stele]

There already is a learning curve in power, actually.

Play a barbarian. Pretty simple.

Step One: Rage.
Step Two: Drink Rage potion.
Step Three: Kill stuff!!

Silly Borro, it's

1. Drink Rage pot
2. Rage

Your completely game breaking Rage lasts longer if you take the pot first.

[Turial]

Silly Borro, it's

1. Drink Rage pot
2. Rage

Your completely game breaking Rage lasts longer if you take the pot first.

Especially if barbs are suddenly unable to drink rage pots while raged anymore. Dun Dun Dun!

[Gennerik]

I actually did read the entire post, and you do have a number of good points, however I wanted to know a few things.

First off, have you played DnD4.0? It really is a game about balance. Pretty much, all the classes have been balanced, so much so that they all seem to play the same. I think that's one of the biggest problems of balancing characters against each other is that they all become the same. That's seriously the problem with 4.0 since pretty much every character has many of the same abilities, just with different names.

Impaqt really touched on it when he was talking about things being balanced for only a few monster types. You really didn't touch on another method of balancing a game, and that's by making classes unbalanced so that they actually have a role during the quest. I'm not talking about haphazard monster distribution like what you find in Threnal, but a more balanced approach where there might be more effective classes during parts of the quest, but overall each character actively contributes to completion. Imbalance is fine between classes as long as your accept that there will be situations where someone else is better at something than you.

Our problem is that because monsters take so much development time, when we get a new monster, that tends to be all we see, resulting in quests that all seem saturated with a single type of monster. We need more monster variety throughout the quests, where some playstyles excel at certain points, so then the party is balanced, nor necessarily each class.

Our classes could still stand to be balanced some, especially when you have a character type that is better at many things (such as the two-weapon fighting AC master that can out-DPS any but a max strength Barbarian while having an AC higher than a sword-and-board melee, or quickly switch to ability score damage and kill something faster than a caster can insta-kill it, all while being able to heal themselves. I honestly think that one quick way to solve the splash problem is to institute the actual favored classes for races, including the XP hit for becoming unbalanced. Maybe getting 50% XP would keep everyone and their mother from playing the same type of uber character.

[Cold_Stele]

Seriously though, you're right on the money with the whole post.

I see two solutions to the problem myself -

1. A respec option, so the devs can nerf bomb builds that are out of control without damaging customer relations too much.

2. High level enhancements - players should have a difficult decision to make between (for example) Barb 20 or Barb 14/Rgr 6 Tempest - both should have interesting abilities, but neither should overshadow the other.