The Rumored Con Damage Nerf

[HumanJHawkins]

I agree. If I'm using the best DPS weapon in the game, I should be able to compete with the guy with the best stat damager in the game and we should be able to kill the mob in roughly the same amount of time, all other things being equal.

Not exactly... It would make for a very boring game if all methods of success worked equally well. (I say "method of success" instead of "killing" because this includes things like rogue sneaking around, etc.)

It is important to have each method of success be better than others in different places, and at different stages of leveling up. Players need to have different challenges to adapt to at every level. Like, we need to learn to use banishers in Coalescense, and con damage in RWTD.

And, it's OK for DPS to be king at low levels, and firewall to be king at mid levels, and stat damagers to be king at the current end game, as long as something else takes their place when the level cap goes up.

All it would take to make this whole issue go away, is to introduce a new monster with either really high CON and relatively low HP, or (god forbid) a plain old immunity to CON damage. Then sprinkle the next mod with a significant number of these so that WoP builds would have to learn a new trick to compete in the new content.

The player base would learn, adapt, and stat damage would turn into just another weapon in the arsenal to be pulled out when useful and put away when not.

[EightyFour]

Not exactly... It would make for a very boring game if all methods of success worked equally well. (I say "method of success" instead of "killing" because this includes things like rogue sneaking around, etc.)

It is important to have each method of success be better than others in different places, and at different stages of leveling up. Players need to have different challenges to adapt to at every level. Like, we need to learn to use banishers in Coalescense, and con damage in RWTD.

And, it's OK for DPS to be king at low levels, and firewall to be king at mid levels, and stat damagers to be king at the current end game, as long as something else takes their place when the level cap goes up.

All it would take to make this whole issue go away, is to introduce a new monster with either really high CON and relatively low HP, or (god forbid) a plain old immunity to CON damage. Then sprinkle the next mod with a significant number of these so that WoP builds would have to learn a new trick to compete in the new content.

The player base would learn, adapt, and stat damage would turn into just another weapon in the arsenal to be pulled out when useful and put away when not.

I see what your saying, and I agree that several quests should have different ways of completing them. But I feel that WoP's are harder to find than any other weapon, my question is that if you think that WoP's should be the best solution in some quests, do you think it would also be a good idea to make WoP's as common as banishers?

I think when asking that question the majority vote would be no, maybe it's because banishing is a prefix so it doesn't require the WoP combo to line up, it's not like you need a banishing of whatever to have the best equipment for the quest, you just need something with the prefix and for the most part your set.

But if you look at a WoP weapon as a piece of equipment that is the best method for a quest, where other methods are so vastly not as good for those quests, should the tables be adjusted so that Wounding and Puncturing line up more frequently so that there are several people able to take part in having the tools to complete the quests?

However I also can't say that other weapons are not available to people to help out with those quests, you can pick up a wounding weapon or a high crit. range puncturing weapon and help out or just make a bigger difference than just trying to do it with DPS alone. So I can see that. However when it comes to putting together a group who do you want in your party, the sword and board with a wounding weapon who well take less damage but take longer to kill things, or the TWF WoP wielder who is going to take even less damage, because with the time it takes to take something down with a wounder no matter your AC, once in awhile that mob is going to roll a 20.

I'm thinking that most groups are going to want the TWF with the WoP's. And I think it's because that person with the duel WoP's has that much more of an advantage for even someone with just a wounder. Or even two wounders for that matter.

I hope that I explained my thoughts on it well enough.

Just so you know, I'm against WoP changes as it took me a long time to get mine, and I only have a few, 3 to be more specific. But I'm just making observations to things that I see, however I know that is not the end all be all.

[Snoggy]

Nerfing all CON damage would have the unintended consequence of making all sorts of builds gimped

That works in the dev team's favor. By decreasing the playability of certain builds from time to time (patch to patch, update to update), it increases the replayability of the game.

In short, people have to "scrap" that "nerfed" build and start a new build designed around some other gimmick or combination of gimmicks. And play that from the ground up. This keeps those types of people playing. And keeps giving "new" players (as in latecomers who have only recently started playing the game) a core group of players to "team-up" with so they aren't all by themselves as they try to play catch-up with an entrenched playerbase that is so far ahead of them.

Nerfing has its upside.

[Thorzian]

That works in the dev team's favor. By decreasing the playability of certain builds from time to time (patch to patch, update to update), it increases the replayability of the game.

In short, people have to "scrap" that "nerfed" build and start a new build designed around some other gimmick or combination of gimmicks. And play that from the ground up. This keeps those types of people playing. And keeps giving "new" players (as in latecomers who have only recently started playing the game) a core group of players to "team-up" with so they aren't all by themselves as they try to play catch-up with an entrenched playerbase that is so far ahead of them.

Nerfing has its upside.

any character based on a gimmick or even a small combination of gimmicks is nerfed before it even starts and will end up being a rewrite by some angry guy in his moms basement.

[Thorzian]

my own personal example. the 1000 hp barbarian by 16. i pulled it off (had to be in the reaver, quad raged, gh, aid, virtue, and reaver buffed) but i hit 1000. the guy missed as often as he hit in the shroud, had no power to his attacks when he did hit, and then they changed dwarven hp. sad sad day. thank god for dragonshards. now i have a powerful, con based, str second barbarian who is gonna run amok when frenzied barb shows up. but the gimmick nearly caused me a rewrite when the nerf showed up is the point. dont gimmick.

[Turren]

any character based on a gimmick or even a small combination of gimmicks is nerfed before it even starts and will end up being a rewrite by some angry guy in his moms basement.

Sorry but that is total ignorance.

[bobbryan2]

any character based on a gimmick or even a small combination of gimmicks is nerfed before it even starts and will end up being a rewrite by some angry guy in his moms basement.

Wow...

Combined with your example of you gimping YOURSELF by making 1000 HP barbarian...

Just wow....

Guess those 1000 HP were too uber...

[Thorzian]

call it ignorant if you want. i dont care. and the barb was gimped. thankfull only feat exchanges were needed to fix. but i got lucky and didnt have to rewrite. the toon will be an ideal frenzied barb with his hp. the point is, and thanks to everyone for again ignoring it the first time, to base a toon on a gimmick is a mistake and it will be nerfed if a large portion of the ddo population exploits the same gimmick. that will lead to the complaining we currently see about the con damage rumor. next will be monk ac... just wait and see.

[Frodo_Lives]

The only reason it is superior is their con scores do not reflect their HP as it should be. In PnP it would be almost an equal time to DPS a critter with a 30 con as it would be to knock out his 300hp. When that 30 con critter has 10k hp what do you think people will do. We have greensteel weapons that are critting over 200hp+ the devs dont want their minions one shotted so they bloat up their HP, forgetting to increase their con respectivly.

I agree that high hps compared to low mob con scores is the problem, lower hps raise con and you won't have to change a thing about WoP to make it better balanced. The difference is just so outlandish that DPS is simply not even in the same range as Con damage in terms of effectiveness against trash mobs. That can't be a good thing.

It all goes back to the beginning of the game were we had too good of loot for our level, and it has gotten exponetially worse.

The answer to me isnt to change stat damage, it is to change the creatures and the greensteel items that are driving the HP skyward. Oh fix the khopesh

I agree, greensteel is probably one of the worst things to happen to this game. Crafting you own items is a great idea and an ideal time sink. Making them so overpowered was a mistake on a grand scale. I don't know how they'd fix that without half the playerbase going in open revolt and quiting, but then again I don't know how they expect to balance content without assuming that everyone who plays past level 14 has multiples of GS.

[samagee]

Like I always say. Balance kills diversity, which in turn makes individuality rare.

If people in the quest don't have WOP, then they kill them in another way and perhaps the caster gets more kill counts? I think we should make it that if a fighter has buffs from a caster then 75% of the kill count goes to the caster.

[Frodo_Lives]

Like I always say. Balance kills diversity, which in turn makes individuality rare.

Quite frankly I don't understand this. If things are balanced which give a player more viable options on how to build a character or what weapons to use doesn't that make for more diverse characters and playstyles? Not asking to make everything the same, just for more viable options.

If (as it is right now) one type of character build using one type of weapon is vastly superiour to most others, basing it only on statistics and numerical data, how does that make more individuality? Right now statistically speaking a ranger/monk peircing spec'd using Con damaging weapons are the cat's ass and put most other melee builds to shame. Way to encourage diveristy and individuality.

If people in the quest don't have WOP, then they kill them in another way and perhaps the caster gets more kill counts? I think we should make it that if a fighter has buffs from a caster then 75% of the kill count goes to the caster.

It's not about kill counts, it's about killing things as a group in an effecient manner. Right now if I dual wield plain old wounding weapons I'll kill end game mobs much faster than if I dual wield my best DPS weapons. It's not about who gets credit, it's about one method of killing mobs being vastly better than the other. So why even bother DPSing most mobs, just Con damage them. Again how is this good for the game?

[ahpook]

Like I always say. Balance kills diversity, which in turn makes individuality rare.

This is backwards. You are either confused or you do not understand the meaning of the word balance.

balance means that any number of builds using different techniques can accomplish the goal thus encouraging diversity (ie, objective can be overcome through DPS, stat damage, charm, stealth, etc). If one technique (e.g. stat damage) is unbalanced (e.g far superior), everyone creates a character to use that technique and there is no diversity.