Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[Gurbatonden_Puggh]

1st, dual chaosblade = dual epic chaosblade.

2nd, you DON'T have to invest MUCH MUCH MUCH more into a TWF. What do you invest more? Time? EVERYBODY invest time to get better, thing is, the cap of potential for TWF is HIGHER than THF, and it should not be. Stats? Yeah... a THF will start with 8-10 dex, while a TWF will start with 15. 5-7 points is no big deal when you compare with the attack speed of TWF (good for effects), the way their attack skills works (ex: smite evil on 2 attacks instead of 1).

Considering everyone's answer, it would be ok to make a THF, but only if you plan on not playing much. RIGHTTTTTT, that's really a nice way to look at things.

You are missing the point....every fighter or barb who cares about there dps will switch to THF, why would they not? They can put more build pts in int or con and limit the weapons they need. So how does that encourage variety in builds?

As for monks, rangers and to some degree rogue all who will most likely not switch form twf because it is how their class is designed. So this is just a nerf bat for classes who are NOT overpowered and in the monks case, may already BE underpowered.

So your DDO will be filled with pure 20 barbs and fighters swinging away with great axes breaking up CC and yelling for heals.....sounds like fun

[Skull_49]

I am not flaming on the Free to play players that have come after mod9 but i am curious if you have ALL these new people spending money on worthless or worth full items and worthless novelty items in the store and more vips why cant you upgrade your servers or invest this time into a diffrent code instead of nerfing all twf's. most of the ddo population is ftp with all those people on the server it really causes them to lag especially when they get close to or even full.Also atm you have a pretty close balance of dps between twf and thf people.

[Wurmwood]

Why don't you upgrade the server hardware instead of doing this. Seeing as your numbers are growing.

SSD's are more stable, and throw in a couple io fusion drives for instances

http://www.fusionio.com/products/ioxtreme/

spend some freakin money

[Creeper]

So your DDO will be filled with pure 20 barbs and fighters swinging away with great axes breaking up CC and yelling for heals.....sounds like fun

The yelling for heals part, while not entirely accurate, should be a big clue for everyone as to WHY THF 20 babs and fighters SHOULD be doing more DPS than those not "yelling for heals".

[Monkey_Archer]

A slightly less nerfed alternative proposal:

-Treat TWF offhand attacks and THF glancing blows in the same manner. Each mainhand attack has a chance to trigger an offhand attack or glancing blow.
-Replace all abilities that increase glancing blow effects (FB/kensai, WF great weapon aptitude) with an increased chance to trigger glancing blows.

Start with a base 25% chance to proc offhand/glancing
TWF reduces attack penalties, THF increases glancing blow damage (no change)
ITWF/ITHF gives +25% chance to proc (total 50%)
GTWF/GTHF gives and additional +25% chance to proc (total 75%)

Tempest 1 gives +25% chance to proc offhand (total 100%)
Tempest 2 gives +10% chance to double strike with offhand attacks
Tempest 3 gives a 10% chance to double strike with mainhand attacks

Fighter Capstone/Zeal gives a 10% chance to double strike on both mainhand and offhand/glancing

Each tier of wind stance gives a 2.5% chance to double strike, and a 2.5% increase in offhand/glancing proc rate.

Instead of increasing glancing blow effects procs, each tier of kensai/FB would give a +5% chance to trigger offhand/glancing blows

Sample numbers:
Basic GTWF:
Pre change 100% mainhan, 100% offhand
Post change 100% mainhand, 75% offhand/glancing

Pure 20 Kensai/FB:
Pre change 110% mainhand, 110% offhand
Post change 110% mainhand, 100% offhand/glancing

Tempest 3:
Prechange 110% mainhand, 137.5% offhand
Post change 110% mainhand, 110% offhand

Monk wind stance 4:
Prechange 110% mainhand, 110% offhand
Post change 110% mainhand, 85% offhand/glancing

[dkyle]

Right, and the question is: how far behind in melee DPS should a ranger be to a THF Barb?

You make a good point. Perhaps Rangers should be lower DPS than a THF Barb, but the problem is, in the new system, TWF Rangers are the best TWF DPS, and they can't even beat THF Barb. The best TWF character should beat the best THF character in DPS, because the TWF requires twice as much work on weapons. If that means Fighters, not Rangers, should be kings of TWF DPS, that's fine with me. But the system outlined puts Fighters behind Rangers, and they don't get any of the cool stuff Rangers get either. They don't even get the massive HP barbarians get.

[Eladiun]

You can disagree... but paralyzer, enfeebling, puncturing weapons are all nominal to DPS. None of those really work on red names in any real capacity.

Great so now the whole game is about the Red Name. Soloing a twf with an offhand paralyzer is one of the easiest things in this game. You cruise and never get touched...saying just because it doesn't apply at 20 and in Epic doesn't mean that it wasn't a huge benefit you had over a THF is ignoring a big piece of the game for a large percenatge of players who aren't just grinding epic.

[Yshkabibble]

Can't you come up with a solution that will reduce lag and not effect DPS? I think I state the obvious here when I say that you are playing with fire on this one.

I think I can summarize most (not all) people's opinions:

1. We want reduced lag.
2. There does not need to be a radical rebalancing of DPS.
3. We like the pace of combat so don't slow down the number of swings.

I mean to drop some peoples off hand dps by 45% or more seems a bit harsh and will alienate a lot of folks.

Also where do we go from here? I imagine we will see epic levels at some point right? Let's leave some room there.

[grodon9999]

Right, and the question is: how far behind in melee DPS should a ranger be to a THF Barb?

Because they SHOULD be behind in DPS to barbs and fighters, the way I figure it, because of all the other cool stuff rangers get (IE. Evasion, Spells, Many Shot, Free TWF, non-dependancy on short term boosts IE. Rage, Frenzy, Powersurge, Shield Spell every minute, Zeal, etc.)

The question only should be how far behind Barbs in DPS should Rangers be?

That is just my opinion though.

Based on my observations of who gets aggro in a fight . . .

The current status quo was fine. THF-Fighters were gimpy without the Epic SoS but that's nothing a few new enhancements couldn't have fixed. THF-barbs and TWF Kensai beat the rangers right now as is.

[Yajerman01]

I have already said free respecs and deconstruction should come along with the change for all affected characters. Nominal...I'll disagree that double enfeebling/puncturing is nominal. I'll disagree that running with a paralyzer and a burster of pure good is nominal. I'll disagree double the customization slots are nominal.

Ill agree to disagree - your referncing stuff that most people use in mid levels because in engame what are you paralyzing? enfeeb/puncturing? (that being probably the only exception to the rule). It has been my experience that in endgame that side effect items are fodder or nominal. Stunning being the main application or side effect, but then I might as well use a maul and arc my hits to a bigger mob.

In the end, that bone tossed by E about beneficial IS nominal.

[grodon9999]

You can disagree... but paralyzer, enfeebling, puncturing weapons are all nominal to DPS. None of those really work on red names in any real capacity.

Double the customization slots? Uh... pretty sure epic Two-handers have double the customization slots. And as far as stuff like greensteel? Yes... they have double slots for double the cost. It takes upwards of 10 large scales to outfit a melee with 2 min 2's.

In terms of end game DPS, the added weapon slots are nothing more than a trap. At best, you're looking at lightning strike as the extreme example.

With a 2% proc rate... a TWF (who spends double points) will have 2% proc with main hand and 1.1% proc with off hand. A total of 3.1% proc.

A THF will have 2% proc rate +10% for double strikes. So 2.2%... then you have a slight chance of proccing one on a glancing blow. So a TWF has less than 50% additional benefit for double the larges.

And that's the extreme example in TWF's favor!

Twice as many larges, think about it.

[thenalim]

So what would be the point of using TWF?

TWF costs:
1. Need double the amount of all weapons: crafted greensteel, vorpals, undead bashers etc. Expensive and very time-consuming (and takes up inventory space to boot).
2. Requires a natural 17 Dexterity to qualify for GTWF, 15 for TWF.
3. Need to buy three feats in the line to reap full benefits.
4. Gets minus to hit on all attacks

THF costs:
1. Need to buy three feats in the line to reap full benefits.

The advantage of TWF was higher DPS. That will now be gone. That makes TWF not only pointless, but actually stupid to take since there's only costs left (and severe ones!) and no benefits.

This is true.
I am sure this change will happen and it makes me horribly sad. It will kill half the monks in the game mine included.

Please find a better solution; maybe something simple as making this change, but: check the average damage output of a well geared TWF toon under one ruleset then the other. Add a damage bonus together with the TWF feats to make up for the difference. That way you get less numbers on the screen but slightly higher numbers, just enough to make TWF toons not fall behind THF.

[GottDDO]

So your DDO will be filled with pure 20 barbs and fighters swinging away with great axes breaking up CC and yelling for heals.....sounds like fun

The yelling for heals part, while not entirely accurate, should be a big clue for everyone as to WHY THF 20 babs and fighters SHOULD be doing more DPS than those not "yelling for heals".

Someone who gets it.

[bobbryan2]

Great so now the whole game is about the Red Name. Soloing a twf with an offhand paralyzer is one of the easiest things in this game. You cruise and never get touched...saying just because it doesn't apply at 20 and in Epic doesn't mean that it wasn't a huge benefit you had over THF is ignoring a big piece of the game for a large percenatge of players who aren't just grinding epic.

DPS lag is all about red names. Wouldn't it stand to reason that the fixes for DPS lag revolve around red name fights?

You're changing the argument on the fly... stay on topic. Right now there is almost zero DPS benefit for doubling the grinding time.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

There's a reason half the raid is composed of characters using TWF and Khopeshes. Let's see some more diversity.

That's a rather niave thing to say. If they make TWF Khops less powerful it will only put something else in first place, which will mean over a couple months that's all you will see.

[Angelus_dead]

Barbarians DPS. That's all they do, and they should be the best, by far, at it.

Have you heard about running speed, hitpoints, fortitude, knockdown, stun, or DR?

[TheMeanDM]

http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...&postcount=527

What Monkey said. This is very much in line with what I was thinking for Rangers and Monks, and I'm glad he incorporated Fighter and Paladins into it too.

Thumbs WAY up!!

[Thrudh]

This I think is an excellent idea. I didn't realize there were actual physics involved in the determination until this thread. I don't see where there was ever a need for it. If you're in range you're in range. The attack roll itself is what determines if you hit and the misses can be the explanation of 'well for that attack you were just barely out of range'.

The collision detection is what makes the combat systems in DDO great.... Side-stepping an arrow shot at you from an archer up on that ledge? Collision detection makes that possible... Blocking a doorway so that only one troll instead of all ten can swing at you? Collision detection...

This game plays like a First Person Shooter because of collision dectection...

[Sillk]

This is correct. I'm certain that people have noticed that dps lag is worst off when you have a large number of dual wielding or unarmed monks in the party. We didn't want to attack the equipment they're using, but decreasing the number of off-hand attacks has a significant effect on the problem, while also bringing weapon styles closer together in general balance.!

But should the different weapon styles be closer together? TWF carries a number of things to overcome. You MUST have a Dex of 15 (17 for ITWF & GTWF) unless you get the feat for free. There's a chance to miss because of penalties to the second hand. And it takes up 3 feats. A Two Weapon Fighting Barbarian would have to sacrifice something to get a 17 Dex, use 3 feats for the TWF line, AND could still miss due to a lower strength (because of the points given to Dex), or die faster (lower Con as points may be given to Dex), or just miss because of a penalty to the style. This shouldn't be closer in DPS to a Barbarian that is swinging a Great Axe, without any penalties to hit, without a minimum to any stat to achieve, and no extra Feats needed. The THF line deals more damage to the surrounding mob, but I'm focusing on the single target here.

That's useful feedback as well. We're attacking the lag issues because people often say it's the most important thing for them. If maintaining their DPS is more critical to them than a smoother play experience, that's valuable for us to know, and we'll look at other, less aggressive (or different) options to solve the problems. I'd bet that greensteel weapons would be changing significantly in a future update if we revert these changes.

I am on the keeping DPS up and looking elsewhere, at least for the time being. The top DPS builds in this game, and something people aspire to, are TWF. Gear has been acquried, or crafted, characters are TR'ing into these builds, etc. Sudden changes will probably result in a number of angry customers, and conspiracy theorists, who then have to use Turbine Points for +3 & +5 Hearts of Wood to fix these problems. If there is going to be a major DPS change, let us know NOW that in DECEMBER, it'll change. There wasn't much of a problem with the Minos Legens change because we knew about it long before it was changed.

[Yshkabibble]

9 person raids.