Drop the grazing blow system

[Borror0]

It's called an attack roll vs AC not attack roll vs. 15. Pretty ham-fisted solution to stratospheric ACs, IMO.

Consider telling those who designer 3.5 D&d that it's called attack roll vs AC not attack roll vs. 20!!

[Aspenor]

Though I agree that people should pay more attention to what the quest is about and not just a hack-n-slash fest, your comment is non-sequitur.

It's called an attack roll vs AC not attack roll vs. 15. Pretty ham-fisted solution to stratospheric ACs, IMO.

Godspeed.

And your comment is irrelevant. This is a real-time MMO that has different rules than 3.5. Changes to the game system can, and will, be made for the betterment of the game.

[Cyr]

/signed

People whine about whatever build is better then theirs. They keep on forgetting though that when the devs listen to them it is just another merry go round of rebalancing which is more likely then not to alienate and frustrate players who lose their 'good' toon to the whims of Eladrin. This is particularly bad form now that the game has changed business models and players have to buy leveling sigils which is even one more hoop they have to jump through if their guy gets nerfed into oblivion. (if they are not paying monthly).

[efreet5]

My main toon is an ac build (See my sig-though i dun see it for some reason...) and I have found little trouble with grazing hits. Before mod 9 I could pretty much solo anything I wanted to. Now, I can still solo most things easily enough with very few exceptions. Grazing hits merely added another wrinkle to my preparation for questing.

I have quested with a lot of "ac toons" that were built before mod 9 and many of them failed to take the grazing hits into consideration and prepare either via stoneskin clickies/wands, blur wands, displacement clickies/scrolls, etc. Another problem with this is that the same people that are now struggling with these "ac toons" got too used to combat being like other mmo's. Before the mod change a high ac toon could throw on auto-attack and stand toe to toe with any monster with little incentive to attempt to dodge via movement in combat. Now, grazing blows hurts these people that have gotten used to their ac toons being a way to play their toon like a standard mmo tank where they just stand in place and swing.

Armor class is only one of many means of helping our toons survive in this game. Before mod 9 armor class got the the point where it was too powerful. Grazing hits, while not perfect, brings high ac toons back in line. They take damage, yes, but not nearly as much damage as the no ac barbarian standing next to them (ask your cleric if you doubt this). Armor class should be used in conjunction with other means of protection to survive. It should NOT be the only reason a toon is able to stand in the middle of 10 attackers and come out unscathed.

My Advice:
Make a radiance rapier (I did)- The blind effect makes 50% of ALL attacks, even grazing hits miss, not to mention it gives them a -2 penalty to hit.

Stoneskin clickies/wands-You can get these from the shroud, demon queen (new perm flag FTW!), or umd via wands.

DR Items-There are many little used dr items in the game such as Bloodrage Symbiot, Golden Greaves, etc.

Crowd Control-FIGHT IN THE FOGS! I know many casters that don't drop a lot of cc due to melees not actually making use of it. If there's a fog, get in it! No excuses. It will mitigate 20% of the enemy attacks from concealment. CC ideas for casters reading-Solid fog (-2dmg/-2atk as well!), Cloudkill, Acid Fog, Sleet Storm (Auto Blind-just FOM everyone), Incendiary Cloud (Auto Blind, no save). There's even clickies of solid fog that are readily available or better ones that can be made in shroud.

Move in Combat- DDO combat is very active and fast paced. By focusing on avoiding the mobs' attacks one can mitigate a lot of damage w/o armor class ever coming into play. As I said before, AC should NOT be an easy button.

[redoubt]

My Advice:
Make a radiance rapier (I did)- The blind effect makes 50% of ALL attacks, even grazing hits miss, not to mention it gives them a -2 penalty to hit.

Stoneskin clickies/wands-You can get these from the shroud, demon queen (new perm flag FTW!), or umd via wands.

DR Items-There are many little used dr items in the game such as Bloodrage Symbiot, Golden Greaves, etc.

Crowd Control-FIGHT IN THE FOGS! I know many casters that don't drop a lot of cc due to melees not actually making use of it. If there's a fog, get in it! No excuses. It will mitigate 20% of the enemy attacks from concealment. CC ideas for casters reading-Solid fog (-2dmg/-2atk as well!), Cloudkill, Acid Fog, Sleet Storm (Auto Blind-just FOM everyone), Incendiary Cloud (Auto Blind, no save). There's even clickies of solid fog that are readily available or better ones that can be made in shroud.

Move in Combat- DDO combat is very active and fast paced. By focusing on avoiding the mobs' attacks one can mitigate a lot of damage w/o armor class ever coming into play. As I said before, AC should NOT be an easy button.

Thank you for a well thought out response. Overall, nice suggestions. (Albeit, ones I already use as much as I can, though the lag is killing me on the move in combat one right now.)

I would like to point out one thing in your suggestions that is telling however. When you say make a radiance rapier you are implying a build type. Whenever my rogue gets high enough, he will have one of course, but my L17 monk is SOL on those. He is a handwrap user and Turbine has seen fit to not allow us GS. Sure I could make kamas, but it feels like a waste of resources.

While I understand that they may have been trying to lower those with god like AC and god like dps, the blanket approach is affecting others such as the pure monk-dex build who did not have huge dps but relied on AC and has to take longer to kill.

[TheJusticar]

Now, I can still solo most things easily enough with very few exceptions.

Therein lies your flaw in rationale. When I solo stuff with my pally post Mod9, I can shrug off grazing hits as merely a nuisance. However, when you are in a full group, those _SAME_ grazing hits are not trivial anymore. In fact, those grazing hits are killer when compounded with hits you would've gotten hit with anyway. Sorry but when a dog or a rat hits you for 30-40 (-17 DR from shield and armor) damage/paw or when a windlasher gnoll bites you for 40 or so points when your AC is high enough that you should've never gotten hit to begin with (unless they rolled a 20) you know the system is broken. This has nothing to do with combat styles.

Godspeed.

[efreet5]

To redoubt:
In regards to the radiance rapier, no, my toon is not a rogue. He is a ranger/paly/monk halfling w/tharne's goggles, so i do benefit to some degree from getting the blind effect, but even were he human I would have made the rapier. I made the rapier last mod the very second i heard about grazing hits coming as I didn't want to put a toon on the backburner that I put so much hard work into farming his gear. Radiance is nice even if you're not a rogue if you want to counter grazing hits.

The radiance rapier isn't a great option for casual players w/the high scale requirement, but for those that have the ingredients lying around, it is a sound investment. Besides, it was either that or I put on a shield...

---------------------------------
To TheJusticar:
I said that I can solo most things, not that I always solo. I am most often questing in full groups with my guildies or helping pugs through the quests. My suggestions are completely unaffected by scaling. Use them and find out yourself. Fogs mitigate a LOT of dmg. Buffs like blur/displacement are also very helpful. Grazing hits really are just a minor inconvenience and I've yet to have a huge issue with them. I seem to find that many of the most outspoken players against them don't seem to use many of the tips I posted. Simply standing there going toe to toe with a gang of monsters should not be possible. (this isn't suggesting you do so) AC was overpowered. Now, it got nerfed, yes, but not to the point of being useless. Next time you quest try getting a wizard w/incendiary cloud, it won't do damage, but if you're fighting in it the whole time you WILL notice a huge difference in the damage you take and a similarly noticeable difference in the number of grazes/hits you take.

I didn't say the system was perfect. It does need to be adjusted somewhat for the reasons you mentioned. No character should ever be hit for 40 points of damage on a "graze." That's not a "graze" that's a hit! It is difficult for the devs to come up with a system though as this problem is an inherent flaw with the d20 system that the game is based on. The devs had to do something to counter our sometimes ridiculous AC's and this was their choice.

[redoubt]

To redoubt:
In regards to the radiance rapier, no, my toon is not a rogue. He is a ranger/paly/monk .

Sorry for the confusion. I had pegged your character as a ranger/monk-splash. My comment about my rogue was simply to show I understand the usefulness of a radiance weapon.



As a side question: Do you think a pure monk having 80 AC is rediculous?

[efreet5]

A pure monk with 80 ac? No, I don't think that's much of a problem as they currently lack much in the way of offense. Their primary strengths are all in their defensive abilities, which include: high saves, Improved Evasion, Easy-to-achieve high ac, poison/disease immunity, Spell Resistance, crowd control (stunning fist, finishers, etc.) and, if you take way of the monkey, stacking bonus to elemental resistances. Plus, as long as one stays pure, they'll get dr10/epic, which should take care of most grazing hit damage anyway and eliminates the need for stoneskin against any mobs dealing non-epic damage.

[Letrii]

Get rid of the grazing hit system and use the rules. Either hit my ac or roll a crit if you wanna hit me in melee.

[redoubt]

A pure monk with 80 ac? No, I don't think that's much of a problem as they currently lack much in the way of offense. Their primary strengths are all in their defensive abilities, which include: high saves, Improved Evasion, Easy-to-achieve high ac, poison/disease immunity, Spell Resistance, crowd control (stunning fist, finishers, etc.) and, if you take way of the monkey, stacking bonus to elemental resistances. Plus, as long as one stays pure, they'll get dr10/epic, which should take care of most grazing hit damage anyway and eliminates the need for stoneskin against any mobs dealing non-epic damage.

Okay, now we have a place to work from.

A pure monk, we agree is a defensive character and is low-ish on dps. Agreed, right?

So how do you pull back the ranger/monk who has the same AC and much more dps without screwing the pure monk?

Yes a pure monk gets the DR 10, but most of those ranger/monks also have 1 rogue and just umd to get their DR. I still think its hurting unintended classes.

Unintended consequences are something Turbine is very familiar with, and yet...

[efreet5]

I understand what you're saying about unintended consequences, but I don't have a complete solution.

Before lvl 20 monks don't have dr, but I could see possibly making their centered bonus to ac function as dr against grazing hits?? It would only be dr 1-4 while you're lvling your monk, but it would mitigate a lot of the damage. Personally, I think monks have enough defensive abilities to mitigate damage that grazing hits kind of balances it out by leaving physical attacks as the main way to attack them until lvl 20.

As for ranger splashes utilizing umd to overcome grazing hits, that's an investment. It takes a lot of stoneskin clickies/wands to keep it up all the time running content on elite where you're constantly grazed. The monk gets it for free later on, but he doesn't have to make the plat investment or time investment of farming say the seal of the earth. Any class can still equip items like the bloodrage symbiot and golden greaves which provide unlimited and unbypassable dr. They will take more damage than someone using stoneskin, but they dont have the plat commitment or the requirement of having umd to get the dr.

I said in one of my earlier posts that grazing hits are not perfect, and this is true. What I meant by that is the dex classes are justifiably hurt by grazing hits. My main is a dex based toon and I enjoy taking damage again it makes combat more fun. The problem I have with this change is for the sword and board using toons that go for ac. Grazing hits bring the rangers more in line by making them take additional damage despite their ability to maintain high ac and have high dps, but paladins and fighters also take more damage and grazing hits shouldn't do much to these toons wearing full plate and using a shield for ac. A graze on someone wearing a robe could do damage with nicks and cuts, but someone wearing fp really shouldn't be harmed in the same way. I know, real-life based arguments don't do much when "magic" is involved, but this is the problem I have with the system.

The toons wearing fullplate cannot benefit from evasion, so they've made a concession to take fireballs to the face, but the rangers/monks can have the same ac while also not having to worry about much of the spell damage. For me, this is a big problem. The toons wearing fullplate already took more damage than those wearing light armor and using evasion, but now they take more ON TOP of what they were already taking due to grazing hits, even if having a shield reduces this damage. I would really like to see a change to the system that would benefit toons wearing heavier armors, even medium armor, as they are covered in metal plating and they need some kind of reason for doing so besides role-playing or flavor. Heavy and Medium armors should reduce the amount of grazing hit damage, either with a form of dr that would stack with any other dr on the toon or simply by a %, though heavy armor should provide more protection. This would benefit those toons using a shield to already lower grazing hit damage and make it so that wearing fullplate is something that could be desireable in the late game.

What do you think? As you can see, I'm not to worried about the dex-based classes that go for ac, but the pure fighters and paladins that get screwed from a nerf not even aimed at them.

[redoubt]

Shields:

Damage reduction applies normally to these grazing hits. Miss chance from concealment effects like Blur / Displacement still apply. If the target is wearing a shield, they take reduced damage from grazing hits, after DR is applied. (90% damage when using a Buckler, Small Shield, or under the effects of a Shield spell, 75% with a Large Shield, or 50% grazing hit damage when using a Tower Shield.) Experienced monks also take reduced grazing hit damage - every 4 monk levels grant -10% to grazing hit damage as long as they are centered, after DR is applied.

After a re-read of Eladrin's post, we both find some assistance. Both shields and monks are supposed to take reduced grazing hit damage.

[efreet5]

I already knew about shields reducing the amount of grazing hit damage, but I think that characters in fullplate should take less damage from a grazing hit than a similar character that's wearing Dragontouched Leather Armor for evasion while using a tower shield. This would make more sense as one can still get small nicks and cuts through leather but not through steel plating. I know, I know, another real life argument...I don't know what to tell you. I have to get them out of my system.

Shields should do what they currently do, which is lowering the damage take by a person utilizing one; but the type of armor they are wearing should also affect these small grazes that are occurring during combat now. At one time I recall someone making a suggestion of having fullplate or heavier armors provide damage reduction, but this was a while ago (around when Icy Raiments first came out and we saw dex based ac toons taking off). While I don't believe they should just get dr against all hits from wearing it, having the dr apply solely against grazing hits would seem to be a decent idea to me.

With shields providing a % of damage reduction I think that the armor should provide a solid number. Maybe give a value to each armor type.

For instance: (not finalized just a rough idea)

Leather/Studded Leather/Robes/padded: 0
Chainshirt: 1
Breastplate/chainmail: 2
ScaleMail/Banded Mail: 3
HalfPlate: 4
Fullplate: 5

By doing something like this characters would gain protection against grazing hits simply by wearing heavier armor. This kind of change would benefit both hardcore and casual players since armor isn't that hard to come by. This change would also make some kinds of armor better, such as mithril and adamantine armors. Mithril, while dropping a fullplate to medium armor, doesn't make the armor less protective, which would result in a medium armor with a higher damage reduction against grazing hits. Adamantine armors' dr that is already in the game could apply in addition to the inherent dr against grazes already on each type of armor. A change like this would provide additional protection for those in fullplate and make a difference for them in reducing the physical damage they take, but leaving the robe wearing ac toons unaffected and still reliant on stoneskin and other magical items for protection.