Crowd Control/Heroic Surge Feedback

[Samadhi]

... Let me ask this first: what would be your argument for excessively long CC durations? One could take the approach that CC has done it’s job if it lasts the length of time it takes to kill a mob (or two). Is it the (prohibitive) spell point cost to re-cast?

The prohibitive spell point cost is not the direct issue but it is along the lines of the issue. If I am a typical caster, I have XX mana to spend on a given set of encounters. The goal of a successful caster is to find the most effective and efficient way to use this mana. So let's look at the possible ways to spend mana.

1) Buffing - Playing a buff-bot is not exactly fun for the vast majority of the player base. This is why buffing is such a demand at lower levels / lower mana pools; but come higher level this is relatively balanced so that buffs can be cast without significantly weakening the player's mana pool. Additionally, if buffing is the priority position of casters, no one will want casters, because a bard can do it better.

2) Nuking - This is a very popular use of mana throughout the mid levels where firewall is king (and the old cloud kill was often used in a similar way). The problem with this, though, is it obsoletes melee classes. I think Turbine did a good job of recognizing this issue, but unfortunately have only responded with various workarounds so far (fire resistance/immunity, removing the ability of firewall to stack, etc). Balancing the nuking ability of casters with the sustained DPS capabilities of melees often results in casters that are out of mana extremely early in a quest (dull/boring for them) or casters that are so powerful that melees are not wanted (unbalanced).
Historically, the reduction of the value of nuking made crowd control a valid choice in how to spend mana.

3) Crowd Control - IMO, the development team should strive to make crowd control the most effective choice in how a caster spends their mana. It is fun for the caster, who feels like they are contributing to the fate of the party as more than just a buff bot. It is fun for the melees, because they are still able to contribute reliably outside of sustained DPS raid scenarios. It is also better for the cleric who possibly can contribute in other ways to the party rather than being glued to red bars.
The more that crowd control options are limited, the more casters are either going to switch to nuking, or not even be wanted in the party as compared to the better buffs of a bard. Nuking is much harder to balance and to retain the ability of the melee classes to stay relevant.

So in conclusion, you are skimming the tip of the issue in regards to the prohibitive mana cost to re-cast. To be more specific, though, the more "re-casting" becomes necessary, the more these crowd control spells are just not going to be used in the first place. This reduces the caster classes to either nukers and/or buffbots; the first of which is extremely difficult to balance, and the second of which is both boring and inferior to a bard.

Keeping crowd control as the preferred option for caster use of mana is probably the most balancing way to do things, and considering how difficult it is to already land most crowd control in endgame, any further reductions in its viability would most likely result in it not being used at all.

Hope this helps

[Zenako]

On the matter of stoning...Flesh to Stone represents one of our ways to solve an encounter without necessarily killing the monsters. It also permits us to remove certain monsters from fights when we don't want to be killing them. The spell already has a once per minute save, which should be sufficient. If players are complaining about getting stoned for too long, then grant them a +2 bonus on each subsequent save. It is an inconvenience at times, and may not be fun for everyone, but this game should still be about challenging players, not coddling children who can't handle losing on occasion.

Now the FtS saves are every few seconds, meaning that most mobs of any consequnce are free in 15 seconds or less, unless you Energy Drain (or the like) on them to give them substantial save penalties.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Your immaturity is remarkable.

Actually I think its perfectly responsible to be upfront and inform him that I'm not going to spend 5 pages or more describing my own opinion to him. It's unnecessary. Bor is just twisting and turning peoples words around and adding pages and pages of needless chatter. That takes hours and hours to follow for the readers. You see through his eyes or your opinion isnt as good as his.

You I guess are taking the same approach, and thats a sad thing Junts.

There is nothing wrong with his or your opinion. But my opinion matters as much as every other opinion in here that DOES NOT AGREE WITH YOU TWO. We ALL have the right to our opinions. And if you dont like that junts... TOO BAD.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

3) Crowd Control - IMO, the development team should strive to make crowd control the most effective choice in how a caster spends their mana. It is fun for the caster, who feels like they are contributing to the fate of the party as more than just a buff bot.

This is truth.

[Junts]

Actually I think its perfectly mature to be upfront and inform him that I'm not going to spend 5 pages or more describing my own opinion to him. It's unnecessary. Bor is just twisting and turning peoples words around and adding pages and pages of needless chatter. That takes hours and hours to follow. You see through his eyes or your opinion isnt as good as his.

You I guess are taking the same approach, and thats a sad thing Junts.

There is nothing wrong with his or your opinion. But my opinion matters as much as every other opinion in here that DOES NOT AGREE WITH YOU TWO. We ALL have the right to our opinions. And if you dont like that junts. TOO BAD.

I think you're missing the point, which is that this isn't an opinion poll; the point is to analyze what works and doesn't and why, because the game is an actual system which can be improved and understood. "I like x make x better" adds absolutely nothing to the conversation whatsoever. I don't agree with every one of Borr's analyses, but at least he's trying to present things in terms of factual and cause-and-affect analysis. Every one of your posts to him is taunting and immature in a way that suggests that you're posting more to say 'ha ha i disagreed with borror hee hee' than to actually contribute anything meaningful to the discussion.

For example, I disagree with Samadhi in that I think spamming 1-2 cc effects and watching people kill things is just as, if not more, boring than buffing, but I'm not going to make a post about it because my preference and his are not really that informative or helpful to formulating a game in which both my preferred way of playing and his are viable strategies. My problem with Sam's post is that it amounts to 'I like it this way and think it would be easier, therefore, don't try to do it the other way becuase its harder and I don't like that way as much'. What individuals happen to prefer is completely irrelevant to the discussion, which is to find systemic ways to make cc more useful, but also not the only solution to endgame situations. That you or I prefer to do it one way is irrelevant; both need to work, both have actual mechanical flaws in doing so well, and making this discussion helpful involves explaining what those problems are and making suggestions to counter them, not saying 'I like to spam ball make it work again!'. That contributes nothing.

[Ranmaru2]

So here we are – back to the drawing board so to speak. I hope this sheds some light on things and gets the conversation flowing. Let me ask this first: what would be your argument for excessively long CC durations? One could take the approach that CC has done it’s job if it lasts the length of time it takes to kill a mob (or two). Is it the (prohibitive) spell point cost to re-cast?

Excessively Long CC durations is quite an interesting idea considering that most of our crowd control durations have been nerfed down already and mobs rarely stay stuck in a CC spell for the duration of the spell like we do. The world of Crowd Control has been lopsided for quite a long time, even if there are rare instances where we can use it to our advantage in few situations (Tower of Despair, Madstone Crater, and the old version of Prey on the Hunter). Only recently was epic difficulty introduced, where crowd control is very sub-par anyways, as Irresistible Dance is about the only thing you want to use.

Here is my problem with the introduction of the heroic surge system:

It's a blanket system that wouldn't do much to improve the true problem, Very low saves on characters created by newer players and/or vets. If Heroic Surge ever went live, it would be used as a crutch rather than be used as a system where a player learns to make characters better or try and improve the stats of their character to a workable level.

Mobs have higher saves, even in low level content (more than once I've seen kobolds in Kobold Assault save against a Otto's Dance Sphere within the first 3 save periods), sometimes the saves are so high they leave you scratching your head wondering how you're supposed to do anything but direct damage them to help the party. Long duration crowd control spells can make all the difference in the world in a bad party to help keep you from wiping every time more than 5 mobs come along (like each period you move forward in Feast or Famine or Cabal For One). They also provide that extra Umph for mobs to be able to hit us as well, so if you shorten the CC durations on players, you're going to massively decrease the difficulty of your own dungeons in the later parts of the game. I realize you're going for accessibility, but you shouldn't be making your own comment that much easier just to adjust for the following....

The introductory quests need to be adjusted to better reflect the rest of the content of the game. Yes, I realize this is bringing up an older debate, but if you have players on the Korthos Island never really having to make much, if any, saves other than a reflex save, you're not helping them understand what Fortitude and Will saves mean later on in the game. I realize the developers probably don't want to create a giant introductory area equivalent to Lineage II or Rohan: Blood Feud that explains things over and over, but adjusting the content that the players run right off the bat to reflect more of everything that you'll encounter in the game goes a long way in teaching players the necessity of different aspects of the game. This is why the harbor quests are usually such a huge eye opener to newer players and one of the reasons why Stopping the Sahuagin should be reverted back to "Surviving the Low Road" and made a mandatory quest in the Harbor right by the Dinghy. The old version of Stopping the Sahuagin threw (almost) every important save at you and actually made players who can remember the quest realize the importance of a will save (early introduction to the hold person spell). As a result, you have a slew of players who concentrate on saves on their characters and realize the importance of them wherever you are.

Another option you have is to increase the different types of spells that mobs use against players in the late game. Make them use symbol of stunning more commonly, ramp up the use of Greater Command, Hold Monster, Dominate Person, Flesh to Stone, Crushing Despair, Snare, Electric Loop, Greater Shout, Otto's Dance Sphere, Power Word series, Chaos Hammer, break enchantment, and, even, Ghoul Touch. There are two ways you could implement this:

a) Introduce a new type of caster mob, "Enchanter" or some other fancy title where the mob will specialize in crowd control spells and actually has the focuses. In this way, you could take the spells from the repertoire of the other caster mobs and allow them to be Healing, Crowd Control, and Damage spec'd. The healing mobs could be given more "Cure X Wounds, mass" to keep their brethren standing as well as maybe providing them with recitation as well as prayer and other kinds of buffs in between healing. Damage spec'd mobs could concentrate more on spamming damage spells at us as we do to them, and they would even be complemented by the Crowd Control expert mobs that would be running through their huge repertoire of spells to keep us under control.

b) Expand the amount of spells available to current monsters, although this might lead to too many useless spells being cast in a situation that a mob should have otherwise healed it's brethren.

Another thing you could do to balance out Crowd Control is to make mobs have to roll a save just as often as players do in spells such as Web and Otto's Dance Sphere. This is actually part of the reason why we opt to use Flesh to Stone or Mass Suggestion over the other "save" orientated forms of Crowd Control. Under the effects of Flesh to Stone we can be sure that the monster is actually going to be pinned in place as long as we would under the same effect. This doesn't happen when we use Otto's Sphere of Dancing or Web on an enemy mob, as their inflated saves make them break out of the spell and then for some unknown reason, they'll keep fighting in the middle of the spell and NEVER EVER HAVE TO MAKE ANOTHER SAVE, versus if we try to replicate their behavior we find ourselves potentially stuck in the crowd control again. You've created a situation where one thing is not like the other and the only way to replicate that situation is to use crowd control with similar durations on enemy mobs to the duration we'd be stuck for.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

this isn't an opinion poll.

Excuse me? Its our opinions that were sought. And it's the community's opinions that have brought us to this point. Theres a difference between hearing peoples opinions and having to read Boror0 debating for pages why people's opinions are WRONG.

THAT is what I had a problem with. I am reading his comments and yours. Sorry, I disagree with both of you, and if you havent noticed yet, most others in here do as well.

[Pharaun78]

The introductory quests need to be adjusted to better reflect the rest of the content of the game. ...

Another option you have is to increase the different types of spells that mobs use against players in the late game. ...

a) Introduce a new type of caster mob, "Enchanter" ...

Personally, I'd love such additions/changes, since I love my games challenging ... that being said, I seriously doubt this will make the game 'more accessible' as MacFloyd's indicated ... In fact, quite the opposite.

But yes, changing monster AI can go a long way towards solving issues, rather than changing skills/spells themselves.

[Ranmaru2]

Personally, I'd love such additions/changes, since I love my games challenging ... that being said, I seriously doubt this will make the game 'more accessible' as MacFloyd's indicated ... In fact, quite the opposite.

The problem is that they've taken too much of a gear shift in making the game more accessible. One of the prominent issues they're trying to address here with heroic surge are game mechanics that they fail to introduce to newer players. While I realize the game no longer comes with a game manual, their compendium doesn't exactly work as an introductory tool for newer players, and there's really nowhere for them to go other than to sign up on the forums and spam the new player area with question after question (even if they've been asked so many times that they've become nauseating at this point). They need to change the introductory quests to include all of the saves, or create a quest that might poison/blind/curse/command you while also giving you an option to save against it. If you fail, then a person will appear and dispel it while also telling you about the save associated with it. The heroic surge system would have ended up as a blanket rather than solving the problem of incomplete knowledge of game mechanics.

[sephiroth1084]

That's a good point.

My solution to that is to 1) nerf Death Ward and 2) make Death Ward more prevalent.

Here is my suggestion for a new Death Ward:

Death Ward:
Grants a +2 untyped bonus to saves against death spells for every four caster levels up to a total of +10 at level 20. Additionally, the enchanted target does not automatically fail his save on a natural 1 but is threated like a normal roll.

By doing this, the save of monsters (and players) against death spells is much higher than its saves against other less powerful Fortitude-based spells which restores some balance among spells. At the same time, it allows players to still use their death spells rather than being forced to resort to other spells because the mobs are immune.

On the player side, Death Ward is no longer a an "easy button" that blocks all spells with a simple cast. Players can still achieve immunity to death spell but they have to work for it by increasing their saves high enough to succeed on a roll of 1. It's good to allow players to be immune to death spells because "you're unlucky, you rolled a 1 and died - sorry bud" isn't outstandingly fun.

I think that just +1 per 2 levels would be more appropriate: how many monsters are failing saves vs. our spells by 10 or more? How many players are failing saves by 10 or more? Also, I think that leaving a failure on a 1 would be reasonable, but perhaps give a reroll once. In other words, you'd gain up to +5 on saves vs. death effects and negative energy spells, and, if you roll a 1, are given a single reroll.

I think that would come pretty close to immunity for most characters, but would still emphasize actually having good saves.

The negative energy and energy drain part have been removed because 1) they are not flavorful and 2) it would have made the description a little too complex for my tastes.

Another possibility could be to make immunity spells ablative, like Stoneskin; Deathward will protect you from X number of spells, or levels of spells and then will disappear.

I can of like this idea.

QFT

Over the years, Turbine has repeatedly nerfed all strategies through immunities or other tweaks to mobs instead of rebalancing the spell. I highly encourage them to rebalance the spells however lot of older content was balanced under the assumption that those spells were overpowered. As a result, some of the older quests will become much harder and/or more simplistic as the number of options in those quests will have gone down.

It's not a good reason to oppose the rebalancing, per se, but it's something that might result in increasing the work load associated with the change...

I think you underestimate it. If I remember, your first character was a paladin. After that, you probably knew enough about the game and had enough twink gear to overcome most of the stuff thrown your way. And, you probably grouped a lot considering it was in the pre-Module 9 era.

The problem is that, while dungeon scaling does affect things such as HP, DPS and CC duration, it does not reduce the number of mobs in the quest. While three casters spamming CC on six players is not a big deal, three casters spamming CC on one player is far more problematic. Especially if that player is new, with one of those horrible pre-made builds and terribad gear.

If it's Hold Person, you're dead either way so it's no big deal. If it's Soundburst or Trip, though, you can stay stuck for a while and that's annoying.

QFT

If these spells get nerfed in this fashion, old content absolutely needs to be readdressed, removing immunities and rebalancing some encounters to reflect such changes.

As it stands, there are so few spells that work in Amrath and Epic content that nerfing those that do will just push casters further into the buff-bot roll. Even at a max DC, monsters rarely remain in my wizard's Dancing Balls in epic content for more than 12 seconds, which is not nearly long enough to deal with them in most cases, and they make their saves better than 50% of the time. Now, if they become immune to the ball for some span of time after being subject to it, there hardly is a point in using it.

Similarly, the point in using Irresistible Dance is that it is one of the few spells that works against a lot of monsters at this point. And it's not like it's super-easy to use, as it doesn't have the fastest casting time, needs to be used very close to monsters, and frequently fails due to the monster moving. If monsters are going to break this almost immediately, what is the point?

If you guys at Turbine are really sold on giving saves to players and monsters more regularly on CC spells, why not do so with a penalty? Say, you get a new save vs. X spell while under its effect every Y seconds, but start at a -10 penalty when saving against the spell. This penalty would get reduced every time a save is attempted until the monster breaks or the spell duration expires.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Part of this effort included making the game more solo and small-party friendly

I think the game is significantly more solo friendly then it was in the old days. Wanna run with 1 or 2 others. Much easier. Dungeon scaling his its pros and cons, but for this aspect I agree, good job.

CC can still be a problem when the debuff is immediately re-cast on the character. Player still ends up being held for a long time, feels helpless and dies. Fun? Obviously subjective, but for many, not really.

I have no problem with this. This is where the toon with high saves WINS. Everything isnt meant to be balanced for all builds. D&D was NEVER BALANCED. I know you dont want to get into the fact that D&D always was a team sport, but making ALL CONTENT SOLOABLE by all builds will be a great big mistake.

I’d prefer that we try to focus on the motivations behind Heroic Surge with the goal of addressing the issues while preserving the gameplay depth that makes DDO so special.

The way Heroic Surge was introduced was what the community had a problem with. It was just impossible to implement it that way WITHOUT affecting CC.

I see Heroic Surge the way it was introduced in Dragonlance Nexus. In Dragonlance, its a FEAT players can take. You can even tie it to a PrE. This is an ultra powerful feature that allows the player to get an extra move. Cant be used all the time. THIS is the way to best use Heroic Surge in my opinion. This way it doesnt affect player CC, and it becomes m,uch less of a HOTROD. It actually becomes something people may WANT.

So this alone was the original goal of the feature. I’m going to quote someone who posted early in this thread wondering why we just didn’t to this:
1) Don't allow debuff effects (spells, trip, knockdown etc.) to be reapplied until the current timer has expired.
2) Allow, say, three seconds of immunity before an effect can be reapplied

Focus on the monsters. Air ellies, wolves... give them a longer cooldown timer between trips/knockdowns.

The above is certainly pretty close to what I had in mind. It didn’t get implemented this way, however. It mutated somewhat

Thats ok, we live and learn. I think many of us have shown immense satisfaction that you came to the community. You will not make everyone happy... but this is a great step. Thanks for the opportunity to help shape our game.

[Junts]

Excuse me? Its our opinions that were sought. And it's the community's opinions that have brought us to this point. Theres a difference between hearing peoples opinions and having to read Boror0 debating for pages why people's opinions are WRONG.

THAT is what I had a problem with. I am reading his comments and yours. Sorry, I disagree with both of you, and if you havent noticed yet, most others in here do as well.

Its possible for your opinion to be formed based on factual inaccuracies. You don't really seem to differentiate between helpful feedback and 'OMG DO WHAT I LIKE'.


"I think crowd control is underused because other methods are dramatically more effective due to prohibitive monster immunities in level 18 and higher content" is an opinion that also presents something that can be examined and potentially changed.

"I like ccing mobs more than nuking so it should be better" is barely more helpful than posting a random agglomeration of letters and numbers. It isn't in any way an answer to something that begins with 'Why do you think..'

[Pharaun78]

... They need to change the introductory quests to include all of the saves, or create a quest that might poison/blind/curse/command you while also giving you an option to save against it. ...

Nice idea, in terms of introducing people.

Part of the charm of DDO however, is being based on DnD. You can reference the ruleset (to some extent) to get an idea what things do, how to defend yourself, what monsters are likely to throw at you etc. Which is also why the argument to at least try and stick as close as possible to DnD carries weight.

By the way, here's another plug for a ruleset based spell to maybe include:

"Clarity of Mind – The touched living creature gains a +4 Insight bonus on saving throws vs.
spells with the Charm, Compulsion, and Glamer sub-schools"

-- No Immunities Borror0

What I'd agree with, is that the real problem seems to be knowledge that is lacking, or not readily available. I knew from previous experience with various DnD games, that I don't want to gimp my will save, ever, on any toon. People new to DDO should be taught that, not the game changed so they don't have to.

[sephiroth1084]

Focus on the monsters. Air ellies, wolves... give them a longer cooldown timer between trips/knockdowns.


.

Totally agree. This seems a far more elegant solution to a problem than the Heroic Surge idea. There aren't very many instances where players get CC'ed and are going to stay alive long enough for iterative says to matter and where they are likely to be subject to the same spell repeatedly: if you get held, you're likely dead before the spell duration expires. If you survive somehow, chances are slim you're going to get held again almost immediately. The same is true for most CC.

Trip and air elemental knockdown/back are glaring exceptions, and should be fixable for particular monsters. Reduce the duration, give them a cooldown, or give us subsequent saves vs. those effects.

[Aashrym]

Some suggestions:

1) Change Heroic Surge to a feat that needs to be activated, with cool down timer, that grants a new save to each existing effect on the player.

2) Add the Improved Heroic Surge feat that includes a bonus and the Heroic Surge feat as a prereq.

Those two feats would make it easier to avoid CC for players and still fall within similar existing game mechanics. This would not be too easy for new player and can still help them.

3) Don't stack negative levels. This might be a topic worth discussing

[Junts]

Some suggestions:

1) Change Heroic Surge to a feat that needs to be activated, with cool down timer, that grants a new save to each existing effect on the player.

2) Add the Improved Heroic Surge feat that includes a bonus and the Heroic Surge feat as a prereq.

Those two feats would make it easier to avoid CC for players and still fall within similar existing game mechanics. This would not be too easy for new player and can still help them.

3) Don't stack negative levels. This might be a topic worth discussing

Neg level stacking is kind of a core mechanic to how negative levels are supposed to work. Individually lowering mob saves with neg level spells is not a particularly mana-efficient way to deal with things, its far from overpowered when its not being used to create permanent statues.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

"I think crowd control is underused because other methods are dramatically more effective due to prohibitive monster immunities in level 18 and higher content" is an opinion that also presents something that can be examined and potentially changed.

"I like ccing mobs more than nuking so it should be better" is barely more helpful than posting a random agglomeration of letters and numbers. It isn't in any way an answer to something that begins with 'Why do you think..'

Nice attempt to quote me. Those were never words that came from my mouth. Those are your ideas.

We are ALL trying to give the devs ideas. The fact that only you and borro agree with each other should be a sign that you 2 need to delve a little deeper.

I can say my piece in one or two sentences. Just because your posts are longer, doesnt mean your opinion holds more weight then ANYBODY else's.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

3) Don't stack negative levels. This might be a topic worth discussing

Well, neg levels against us are a reality. Thats normal. I wouldnt touch those. But Im with ya on everything else...

[Junts]

Nice attempt to quote me. Those were never words that came from my mouth. Those are your ideas.

We are ALL trying to give the devs ideas. The fact that only you and borro agree with each other should be a sign that you 2 need to delve a little deeper.

I can say my piece in one or two sentences. Just because your posts are longer, doesnt mean your opinion holds more weight then ANYBODY else's.

That's true. Your posts consisted of likening other posters to women and random pictures of Sarah Palin. I was giving you -way- too much credit.

[Ranmaru2]

@Jaer and Leslie - Take this to PMs maybe?

@Madfloyd - Has there been attempts to tie together both the Whirlwind save and the knockdown?

I know that currently failing the whirlwind has no effect on what happens.

This actually leads me to a suggestion on fixing air elementals. If you have to increase the save of whirlwind, do it, but you could change the whirlwind to operate like Phantasmal Killer (which is really the only kind of "If Then" example in the game) wherein if you fail whirlwind, then you roll against the knockdown and are thrown, if you save against whirlwind, you don't roll against the knockdown and the telekinesis throw effect doesn't happen. I currently know of no circumstances where mobs or players fail a save against the illusion but die anyway from Phantasmal Killer, meaning the script for the "If..Then" is working here. Look into transferring it over and you might have a fix for Air Elementals.

Now with wolves and such..I want to ask if there is any real proof on your side you can provide of a simulation wherein player characters roll more rolls above 9 against trip saves than lower. I know for me, watching my combat log when a trip-type monster is around, I observe a very large amount of saves lower than <9 than I see >9. The results of these saves I see nowhere else in the game, not even on UMD/Trap save rolls, it only seems to be on trip effects (giants/Air elementals/trip attacks). I have no problem with monsters using these attacks, but the problem comes that it seems like the dice are stacked against us when these attacks are executed.

Also, if you need to, add more types of attacks to the mobs like Sunder and Stunning Blow (but keep the bewildering blow reserved to certain ones atm until the dice rolls are confirmed and/or evened out/fixed), but if you're going to give them to monsters, you need to start coming up with a system wherein the base stats of monsters are no longer made in an inflationary manner (monsters need to start being created with equipment - Even dogs can have bangles/collars to increase certain things and even earrings). This is the main problem I have with the trip attacks/stunning blow attacks/etc used by monsters. Their base stats are inflated so much that even making a trip save in gianthold is almost impossible (13+ needed in gianthold with ~28 str, meaning that the monster has a 36 str with a basic trip attack). This is another situation where the table is one-sided against the players, as we can't even pull off trips/stunning blows that often unless we're barbarians and/or completely spec'd for it. This makes characters great anti-regular mob builds, but the innate immunities once again stalk up and crush these builds down to nothing.