Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[Thrudh]

Green alert has an effect...

It does? What?

[dasein18]

/not happy with this change

Buy better processors to handle the mathematical computations.

[chubbs99]

Well, because I didn't see any brown nosing on page one, and this is a little too technical for my brain to process just before I head to bed, I will say.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you for looking at one of the biggest problems right now. (nothing like going from 100% smooth raid to wipe in the blink of an eye). I think these are the kinds of posts people are very happy to see.
Screw serving the silver flame and their lack of ability to keep the dead dead. If this works, I'll devote my time to building monuments all over Stormreach in Eladrin's honor. (well... i would if I could anyways)

[bobbryan2]

It does? What?

Increased AC on bosses and increased run speed on monsters.

[Razcar]

It seems they finally nerfed the khopesh. In a way that puts the whole game upside down.

[The_Ick]

Initial Impression:
The fact that you came to the forums with this is awesome. The specificity, the detail, and the approach are just flat out great. I would love to see more of this. I would also like to commend the players for some great replies. Both the “thumbs up” and the “thumbs down” posts when well written and thought out. No flaming, trolling, etc…

Initial impression of the change:
I like the idea of lessoning the number of roles to lessen the calculation loads and at first glance was OK with the idea. Seemed like a good solution to a valid problem in the game. The one concern I had initially was that we were moving further away from the real-time combat we love so much and toward more of the standard “click this icon to perform an attack chain”. I am sure it is a bit of a double edged sword because the combat that makes this game so great is also the cause of some of the lag, none the less that is what makes DDO stand apart from the rest.

As I read:
As I read through the responses from players and devs my opinion changed a little. The idea of bringing the DPS for THF and TWF closer together bothers me a little. I have both and I really like the changes that have been made to THF recently. That being said, it is much more expensive (both in the building of toons and the equipping of toons) to create a top tier DPS TWF, then a top tier THF. I am also concerned that the more equal things are, then less variation will be brought into the game. And toon variation is what keeps DDO going.

Final thoughts:
I like the idea of piggy backing the “detection” role. I think that is a good change. As for the off-hard proc changes, I am less thrilled about them. I think TWF should be better than THF in general. I would say this, if the DPS lag is a BIG (and I mean major) part of the lag problem that exists in the game and it allows a little more flexibility in the future for you to add some more cool features in combat and (this is the biggie) this change will fix it, then I support it. If on the other hand, it is a “there is a good chance it might help, but we don’t really know” change, then I think the downsides outweigh the risks.

If you do put the change in, I think that there should be a way to keep the advantage of TWF over THF. Inequality is what makes creative toon builds possible. I think it is important that it stays in DDO since this is mainly a PvE game.

[MrCow]

Eladrin is a he, he is the voice of harry in the shroud.

The voice of Arraetrikos was actually former content designer Eldorudo (who also did the narration of Devil Assault).

[Angelus_dead]

TWF requires dexterity and strength, while THF only needs strength.

I'll toss out a semi-wacky idea, which would not maintain the existing game balance:
Make the chance for offhand attacks with the TWF feat series somehow dependent on actual current dexterity.

There's a lot of interesting implications, blah blah, I won't distract from this thread by elaborating on them all. It could be said that high dexterity is not currently useful enough in melee, and it would be interesting to let characters with very good dex gain the same TWF benefits as the Tempest line gets (maybe with the restriction that it'll only work with finessable weapons, meaning no khopeshes)

[Dylos_Moon]

The voice of Arraetrikos was actually former content designer Eldorudo (who also did the narration of Devil Assault).

Was it? Well Eladrin is still a he, his voice has been on ask the devs atleast once.

[bobbryan2]

I'll toss out a semi-wacky idea, which would not maintain the existing game balance:
Make the chance for offhand attacks with the TWF feat series somehow dependent on actual current dexterity.

There's a lot of interesting implications, blah blah, I won't distract from this thread by elaborating on them all. It could be said that high dexterity is not currently useful enough in melee, and it would be interesting to let characters with very good dex gain the same TWF benefits as the Tempest line gets (maybe with the restriction that it'll only work with finessable weapons, meaning no khopeshes)

I thought about posting that myself. That you add your dex modifier to your percent chance to trigger an offhand attack.

But then I realized that you would probably be getting bigger DPS boosts by boosting dex rather than str.. and that would make the world go pear shaped.

[Galacticus]

That is correct.


Dungeon Alert was meant to control one particular source of lag. (Specifically, pathing and perception systems of large numbers of monsters in a small area, since that's an n^2 problem.) It was never expected to banish all of it. Likewise, these changes are not expected to banish all forms of lag, but should help some of them.

You're proposing a major change to game mechanics, subsequently nerfing some major builds, slowing attack speeds with the notion that it might change the lag...but fractionally.

I believe you are going to lose alot of people in this change and the way you folks work is that you make the change even though you have a large public outcry.

I for one am against this change. The game will change too much and will be far from it's former self.

[Daehawk]

I've seen comments about "the lag". There is no such as "the" lag, there is lag in a general sense. It's more appropriate to think of lag like "disease" rather than a single particular illness that can be cured. There are many kinds of diseases in the world, but they all have the same result - the person is unhealthy. Saying "FIX LAG" is pretty much the equivalent of saying "CURE ALL DISEASE!" Obviously it is a wonderful goal to want to cure every known disease, but it's a bit outside of scope. Thus, you target as many forms as you're able to improve over all health. So too it is with lag. There are many types, and there are many situations that can contribute to it. We conduct tests and monitor performance, and target the worst offenders to improve game health. Threads like this are imperative to the development team's work, so thank you very much for your reactions, thoughts, ideas, and general curiosity.

So the server just isn't carrying enough Remove Disease Pots? Maybe it needs a dedicated Paladin or Cleric to follow it around and cast Remove Disease on it.

Regarding Lamannia - we will be wiping characters, however, we don't have plans to regularly wipe the Lamannia account info. This means that if you use Lamannia-only points to purchase premium features for preview, they will be there for you later. So if you're premium and have restricted access to a certain race or class, it behooves you to use any of the Lamannia-only points you receive to unlock these features so you can copy your most important characters when you want. We plan on having more Lamannia points give-aways for those who are participating in the preview/feedback of Update 5. We're targeting next week if all goes well.

Cool cool, go go next week...if all goes well. Also, why can't you just make it to where we can transfer our account information from Live to Lam?

[Cyr]

I'll toss out a semi-wacky idea, which would not maintain the existing game balance:
Make the chance for offhand attacks with the TWF feat series somehow dependent on actual current dexterity.

There's a lot of interesting implications, blah blah, I won't distract from this thread by elaborating on them all. It could be said that high dexterity is not currently useful enough in melee, and it would be interesting to let characters with very good dex gain the same TWF benefits as the Tempest line gets (maybe with the restriction that it'll only work with finessable weapons, meaning no khopeshes)

Interesting, but full of halo effects just like Eladrin's proposal. Wouldn't that just mean that str. based rangers are still shafted for example?

[Vhlad]

imo, to be in line with SRD it should be
Mainhand 100%
Offhand without any feat 25%
Offhand with TWF 25% (so it just reduces penaltys how it should be)
with ITWF 50%
with GTWF 75%
with tempest 3 100%

that way its how it is in pnp and could fit in here too

I think if he changed it to 20% for each TWF feat, it would be close enough.

20 fighter/paladin would be at 110% mainhand. It's close enough to your 100%
Offhand without a feat is 20%. That's close enough to your 25%
Offhand with TWF 40%
with ITWF 60%
with GTWF 80%
with tempest 3 110%

These numbers are close enough. In fact, they're closer to the SRD with this change than they are in-game currently. We're seeing a maximum difference of 5-15% between your & my numbers here. The maximum difference in-game currently is more than double that!

If you want things to be closer to pnp, you should really like this change, assuming he uses 20% for each TWF feat.

[Monkey_Archer]

Ok.. going over some numbers to see exactly how bad this nerf is...
On the assumption that mainhand provides 55% and off hand provides 45% of overall dps

Any basic GTWF character:
100 mainhand 100 offhand - changed to 100 mainhand 55 offhand
55+45 = 100 -- changed to 55+24.75 = 79.75
79.75/100 ~= 80% of previous dps
= 20% nerf

Fighter 20 or Zeal Paladin:
110 mainhand 110 offhand - changed to 110 mainhand 55 offhand
60.5 + 49.5 = 110 --- changed to 60.5 + 24.75 = 85.25
85.25/110 ~= 77% of previous dps
= 23% nerf

Monk Windstance:
110mainhan 110 offhand - changed to 100 mainhand 75 offhand
60.5+49.5 = 110 -- changed to 55+33.75 = 88.75
88.75/110 ~= 80% of previous dps
= 20% nerf

Tempest 1 Character:
110 mainhand, 110 offhand - changed to 100 mainhand, 65 offhand
60.5+49.5 = 110 --- changed to 55+29.25 = 84.25
84.25/110 ~= 77%
= 23% nerf

Tempest 3 Character
110 mainhand, 137.5 offhand -- change to 100 mainhand, 85 offhand
60.5+61.875= 122.375 --- changed to 55+38.25=93.25
93.25/122.375 ~= 76% of previous dps
= 24% nerf


Ok enough of that...
Apparently this is to be a 20% dps nerf to all TWF builds...

The trouble i see is that builds that currently have a 10% alacrity bonus (tempest rangers, pure fighters and paladins with zeal) get hit harder because the fighter/pali double attack only applies to the mainhand, while the tempest bonuses are only applying to the offhand.

Simple fix:
Make the fighter capstone and zeal also grant a 10% bonus to offhand attacks, in addition to the 10% chance to double attack
Increase the offhand bonuses provided by tempest (possibly 15% for each tier, brining the total offhand attacks to 100% for a tempest 3)


So how does this match up with THF?
Well, on the assumption that moving attacks no longer proc glancing blows...
Using a Frenzied berzerker dps calculation for example:

Lets say a twitching FB does ~450 dps (averaging 90 base damage hits using a min2 with death frenzy going)
Of that 450 dps about 67dps is from glancing blows
67/450 ~= 15% of overall dps

funny thing... twitching gave the FB 15% extra dps in the first place. So removing glancing blows would actually make twitching pointless overall (assuming regualar glanincing blows remain unchanged)

So to summarize...
TWF gets nerfed 20%, THF gets nerfed 15%, S&B remains unchanged.

[Maleth]

I don't mean to be rude, but instead of doing some serious load balancing, you're just going to hack apart the combat system and nerf TWF as a result? What kind of choice is that when you've got a small portion of players consistently playing high end content and you're going to introduce a change that affects everybody?

I don't understand how this is, when your talking about 12 person raids max and your hardware can't handle it? Why can't you prioritize an instance dynamically as needed? Eve Online has ONE universe running on ONE farm with instanced galaxies where 200+ person battles occur with ships having 8 guns each all banging away at once with tracking, hit detection, damage, etc and you can't handle calculations for 12 person raids with weapons that require multiple calculations for procs, etc? In Eve, if 200 people port into an instance at once and it requires it, they move that instance to a dedicated CPU temporarily. Granted, the Eve team did some clever stuff to get their lag issues worked out, but it just seems like you guys are using this as an excuse to nerf TWF...

[grodon9999]

On the other hand, we as players need to understand that sometimes we have to bite the bullet and take a nerf for the continued good of the game as a whole. . .

No, we don't.

[Visty]

I think if he changed it to 20% for each TWF feat, it would be close enough.

20 fighter/paladin would be at 110% mainhand. It's close enough to your 100%
Offhand without a feat is 20%. That's close enough to your 25%
Offhand with TWF 40%
with ITWF 60%
with GTWF 80%
with tempest 3 110%

These numbers are close enough. In fact, they're closer to the SRD with this change than they are in-game currently. We're seeing a maximum difference of 5-15% between your & my numbers here. The maximum difference in-game currently is more than double that!

If you want things to be closer to pnp, you should really like this change, assuming he uses 20% for each TWF feat.

the reason i gave TWF no increase is because TWF doesnt give an extra attack in pnp
and in pnp tempests have 5 mainhand attacks and 5 offhand attacks (at least the 3.0 version, not sure on 3.5 one) while others only have 5 main- and 4 offhand

also i stopped at 100% because i find it silly to have a more then 100% chance to get an extra attack^^

[Angelus_dead]

The trouble i see is that builds that currently have a 10% alacrity bonus (tempest rangers, pure fighters and paladins with zeal) get hit harder because the fighter/pali double attack only applies to the mainhand, while the tempest bonuses are only applying to the offhand.

I imagine that could be an intentional nerf to compensate for accidentally allowing stuff like Divine Sacrifice to apply two-for-one when you have an offhand weapon.

[Khelden]

So to summarize...
TWF gets nerfed 20%, THF gets nerfed 15%, S&B remains unchanged.

ATM, TWF is way better than THF too... Especially for paladins etc. I don't have any number, but if we take Nomical number in this post (considering pretty much the best gear avalaible):
http://forums.ddo.com/newreply.php?d...eply&p=2989850

The TWF is ~20% above THF. So considering your post, the THF nerf is way too high to balance things out.