Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[TiranBlade]

I hate to say it as much as I like two weapon builds, I find them a little on the over powered side in DDO, I have played a lot of P&P v.3.5 and found that Two Weapon build where either hard to play or hard to access, I think since Greater Two Weapon Fighting was given a Dex of 17 and not 19 it was made very easy to access. Since it was made this way, many people swarmed at the idea of fighting with Two Weapons, if you are having issues with Two Weapon Fighting cause lag or because it is more powerful than it was originally intended, then I suggest giving it it's original prerequisites, it will cause more players to draw back off of the feat or change thier builds to make it so they qualify for it, which in case would case a major change in builds and give a balancing weakness to the build.

Now for the logistics on altering Two Weapon Fighting, I think another type of implementation would be interesting to see, but with the throwing of numbers around in percentiles it starts to become difficult to approach it with certinty, especially when you deal with the issue of having an percentage total of over 100%. If there were some way to change this implementation to include a benifit of exceeding the 100% mark.

Another suggestion I have that would not include having to have a physics check I don't believe into the design is a Character takes a larger penalty on attacks after the first one for not having the later feats. I/E

Two Weapon Fighting Change Proposal
List Title
Main Hand: [One Handed Weapon(Light Weapon)]
Off Hand: [One Handed Weapon(Light Weapon)]
 
Base To-Hit Penalties on attacks for fighting with two weapons.
Main Hand: One Handed Weapon [-8(-6)/-8(-6)/-8(-6)/-8(-6)]
Off Hand: One Handed Weapon [-10(-8)/-30(-28)/-40(-38)/-50(-48)]
 
To-Hit Penalties for fighting with the Two Weapon Fighting Feat.
Main Hand: One Handed Weapon [-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-4(-2)]
Off Hand: One Handed Weapon [-4(-2)/-30(-28)/-40(-38)/-50(-48)]
 
To-Hit Penalties for fighting with the Improved Two Weapon Fighting Feat.
Main Hand: [-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-4(-2)]
Off Hand: [-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-40(-38)/-50(-48)]
 
To-Hit Penalties for fighting with the Greater Two Weapon Fighting Feat.
Main Hand: [-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-4(-2)]
Off Hand: [-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-50(-48)]
 
To-Hit Penalties for fighting with the Ranger Tempest III Prestige Enhancement*.
Main Hand: [-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-4(-2)]
Off Hand: [-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-4(-2)/-4(-2)]
 
*This doesn't include the bonuses from Ranger Tempest II and III.

I think this you wouldn't have to have as many recognition protocals and your only reducing penatalies and not having to add in extra abilities that are not already there. Also it takes away from the amount of rolls that would have to be made by taking out a percentile roll.

I think this also would prevent you from having to rewrite a lot of abilites in order to match the new mechanic.

Thanks yet again for listening,
TiranBlade

EDIT: Since I realize that attacks are scaled up on the further attack chains I have altered my chart to reflect. One that note if they scaled later attacks in the chain with a penalty and not a bonus to attacks then Two Weapon Fighting would see a balance to match other fighting styles.

[IronClan]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought DA fixed lag?

Ph

Yeah how many times do they have to asnwer this? He even answered this in this thread... see sig

[eonfreon]

Are there paople here that can HONESTLY say that TWF didn't need a nerf?
Really?

Until ESoS was introduced, TWF was King. The fact that so many builds now use ESoS as a base, and build upon the idea that they'll have it, is cause enough to say that it's overpowered.

That leaves us back where we were before it was introduced. Because it most definitely SHOULD get the bat. That leaves us with TWF as King again. But it still needs a nerf.

This accomplishes that.

Sure, perhaps it does need some nerf, although I don't see the huge difference that is claimed, especially since TWF is harder to build for. You need higher Dex and the full TWF Feat chain.
Exactly what sacrifices does a THF style make that it should be King? Lower Reflex Saves?

The fact that ESOS is overpowered doesn't mean that TWF is that overpowering.
At least not above THF.
And basically, S&B is just way too underpowered.

[Nevthial]

I play from NZ with a 300ms or so latency I think this combined with the DPS from my ranger is where the real problem is, I think it is something to do with clients timing out or not responding quickly enough to a large amount of data that causes all the problems otherwise if somone dissconnected it would immediatly make the lag better rather than worse.....

Yes! Everytime I mention client side, I'm a "bad guy". But it's true! LOL

[Calebro]

Sure, perhaps it does need some nerf, although I don't see the huge difference that is claimed, especially since TWF is harder to build for. You need higher Dex and the full TWF Feat chain.
Exactly what sacrifices does a THF style make that it should be King?

The fact that ESOS is overpowered doesn't mean that TWF is that overpowering.
At least not above THF.
And basically, S&B is just way too underpowered.

None. They should be fairly evenly matched. Remove ESoS from the equation and the original numbers reflect that.
The battle to raise those numbers succeeded, which was counter productive to the original intent. So the nerf isn't as large as it should be to produce the effect intended.

Now do you see my point? Barring whether you agree with it or not, do you understand it?

Oh, you snuck an edit in there.

[Desteria]

What about monk unarmed attackes being faster will they still retain there superior attack rate? because if this shows done monk atatkc significantly i'm goan be REALLLLY upset about the TR heart i just bought and used form teh store to rebuidl my monk to a fist fighter, and i had to buy extra popints to do it!..

[cdemeritt]

Ok, when I left for work there were 10 pages, now it is almost 60. I don't want to waste my weekend reading all of them. But incase this hasn't come up.

1: Thank you for discussing this with us before hand. How un-Turbine of you to raise the Cone of Silence, and let us in... After years of not being involved, this actually makes me happy, even if the subject doesn't.

2: if the Point of this change is truly to try and balance combat types, well, Not much I can argue with here... However, It is hard to say if it will be a good change or not... many classes who TWF are not going to get any compencation, and by giving the bonuses to capstones force more pure builds... this doesn't seem quite right.

However if this is about lag, as the Initial post made says, the I'd have to say there must be a better way... My math isn't great when it comes to the game, but it seems you are reducing one type of die roll but adding several others... Wouldn't it be better if you just made one Die/Damage roll per attack chain, and just used those numbers with the Plus's for each attack in the chain? seems like a much simpler way to reduce the die checks vs changing an entire combat system...

3: should this go through, as stated in the OP, I believe you should give every toon 1 free lesser heart of wood... not a +1, not a +3, just a plain old lesser... Why? many people have spent real money to respecing their toons for TWF... If done right, they have many feats invested in this... such a major looking change, to a mechanic that has been around for over 2 years now, after spending money... well, I wouldn't be happy... Some of my toons will not be affected by this, but, my plans to TR my cleric into a TWF melee cleric have been put on hold to see how this pans out... But since I built a test run first, that cleric is now likely going to have issues...


Well, I think that's All I have

[eonfreon]

None. They should be fairly evenly matched. Remove ESoS from the equation and the original numbers reflect that.
The battle to raise those numbers succeeded, which was counter productive to the original intent. So the nerf isn't as large as it should be to produce the effect intended.

Now do you see my point? Barring whether you agree with it or not, do you understand it?

Oh, you snuck an edit in there.

Sorry, realized I wanted to touch on ESoS, that's why I edited it.

But let me see if I do understand you.
You are saying that the original number of a GTWF (barring Tempest 3 and Fighter Capstone) of 55% chance to have a chance to hit with the offhand equalizes the two fighting styles?
And that simply reducing it by 20% makes it still too overpowering?

[CountHenri]

Yeah how many times do they have to asnwer this? He even asnwered this in this thread... see sig

Have some rep sir - in an Epic debate it is nice to see a little voice of reason

Personally a reduction in lag - particularly raid lag - is worth a lot to me as a player. This is the main cause of party wipes in what should otherwise be smooth runs on Shroud for instance (it wont of course fix stupid - like a Cleric deciding to melee Harry without warning).

If it means taking a hit on the effectiveness of say my Warchanter build so be it - as long as there is a worthwhile pay off.

I applaud Turbine for throwing this issue open - it really is a no-win situation for them in that no matter what they do people will still (shrilly) scream DooooOOOOooom...

Massively hungover BTW so I hope this all made sense...

[IronClan]

Tolero I must say that commenting in length with your arguments over specific things mentioned in thread and then saying that it is not productive to comment is a lot like saying "I'm going to state Turbine's position on this, but don't comment about it because it's off limits"

I hope that you notice this might rub people the wrong way.

I think you sound like someone who doesn't want his pet peave taken away. but... He's right it's derailing the thread if you want to quote him and start a new DA thread where you can insist that he's wrong I bet he wouldn't lock it! Heck go for it I'll jump into it myself love a good debate and the past few days have been a fantastic resource for confirming the "pro" DA side of the argument and getting specific long standing myths from the Anti DA side shot down in a blaze of glorious wreckage by people who are actually qualified to: Devs themselves =)

[eonfreon]

Have some rep sir - in an Epic debate it is nice to see a little voice of reason

Personally a reduction in lag - particularly raid lag - is worth a lot to me as a player. This is the main cause of party wipes in what should otherwise be smooth runs on Shroud for instance (it wont of course fix stupid - like a Cleric deciding to melee Harry without warning).

If it means taking a hit on the effectiveness of say my Warchanter build so be it - as long as there is a worthwhile pay off.

I applaud Turbine for throwing this issue open - it really is a no-win situation for them in that no matter what they do people will still (shrilly) scream DooooOOOOooom...

Massively hungover BTW so I hope this all made sense...

LOL.
You are falling for the trap that the TWF nerf is related to the dps lag fix.
It's not.
It's separate.
The problem is that both are presented in the original post even if it's explained in that same post that they are separate.
I realize that you're hung over, but many, many people are making this same mistake.

[Calebro]

Sorry, realized I wanted to touch on ESoS, that's why I edited it.

But let me see if I do understand you.
You are saying that the original number of a GTWF (barring Tempest 3 and Fighter Capstone) of 55% chance to have a chance to hit with the offhand equalizes the two fighting styles?
And that simply reducing it by 20% makes it still too overpowering?

Not still too overpowering, no. But that's close to what I'm saying. Since you brought up S&B, I'll repeat what I was saying before.

S&B will never be a valid choice until something is done to nerf both THF and TWF a bit. There's just no way to boost S&B enough on it's own to make that feasible. So THF and TWF need to suffer a bit in order for that to happen.
With the original changes to both the TWF attacks and the THF glancing blows nerf, this would be much more in line to see something like S&B become viable once again. It may not have been enough on it's own, but now S&B needs a whole lot less help to be viable.

The new numbers widen that gap once again. We were so close to making S&B at least to the point where it wouldn't automatically be called Gimp.... and we lost it.
Granted, that wouldn't have solved all of S&B's problems, but it would have closed that gap considerably.

All the cries of "you're going to nerf my toon into oblivion" ruined what could have been a great thing for S&B users. And it only happened because people are too concerned with running the numbers, and min-maxing.
At this rate S&B will never be viable again. Ever.

Most of my melee toons are TWFers, so I understand exactly what this nerf means. And still I was happy to see it, because it would have opened up more options. The newer numbers crush that hope.

[Brother_Solar]

After reading for a very long time, I finally became too fatigued to continue and stopped on page 40. I'll catch up when I have the opportunity. I apologize if I'm belaboring arguements that have come up in the past 20 pages or so.

I thought it might be worthwhile to note:
While in Shroud part 1 recently, I went the wrong way to beat on a portal. I was alone. The rest of the melee were somewhere else beating on the correct portal. I experienced zero lag, but the rest of the party was experiencing major lag. I killed the portal by myself in the same amount of time as the party killed their portal. When they were done, they came to where I was standing and milled about confusion for a moment (shouldn't there be a portal here?) before moving on.

Is this seemingly proximity-related lag really being caused by attack rolls rather than the concentrated mass of animations on the screen?


My own personal plea:
Please, please, please do not pigeon-hole unarmed monks further into using only Wind stance. Currently, Sun stance can be feasible, but the proposed change would increase the difference in DPS from the current 8% (which is already not good) up to 13% just from using a different stance.

If you are making this change to Wind stance, please consider making changes to the other stances to make them feasible as well (such as an increase to the base damage dealt for Sun stance, and allowing the damage reduction from Mountain stance to stack with or enhance the 10/Epic DR of a level 20 monk).

[TiranBlade]

EDIT: Since I realize that attacks are scaled up on the further attack chains I have altered my chart to reflect. One that note if they scaled later attacks in the chain with a penalty and not a bonus to attacks then Two Weapon Fighting would see a balance to match other fighting styles.

Edit Applied.

[eonfreon]

Not still too overpowering, no. But that's close to what I'm saying. Since you brought up S&B, I'll repeat what I was saying before.

S&B will never be a valid choice until something is done to nerf both THF and TWF a bit. There's just no way to boost S&B enough on it's own to make that feasible. So THF and TWF need to suffer a bit in order for that to happen.
With the original changes to both the TWF attacks and the THF glancing blows nerf, this would be much more in line to see something like S&B become viable once again. It may not have been enough on it's own, but now S&B needs a whole lot less help to be viable.

The new numbers widen that gap once again. We were so close to making S&B at least to the point where it wouldn't automatically be called Gimp.... and we lost it.
Granted, that wouldn't have solved all of S&B's problems, but it would have closed that gap considerably.

All the cries of "you're going to nerf my toon into oblivion" ruined what could have been a great thing for S&B users. And it only happened because people are too concerned with running the numbers, and min-maxing.
At this rate S&B will never be viable again. Ever.

Most of my melee toons are TWFers, so I understand exactly what this nerf means. And still I was happy to see it, because it would have opened up more options. The newer numbers crush that hope.

Well, I'm sorry. But it would have required a better change period.
The insane hit points and to-hit of MOBS at end game is what makes THF and TWF necessary.
And nerfing builds to this extent without a free respec and greensteel deconstruction would have been bad, IMO.

[Calebro]

Well, I'm sorry. But it would have required a better change period.
The insane hit points and to-hit of MOBS at end game is what makes THF and TWF necessary.
And nerfing builds to this extent without a free respec and greensteel reconstruction would have been bad, IMO.

Right, which is why they raised the numbers. Everyone should be satisfied now, or at least willing to give it a shot.
The end result is a whole lot less of a nerf that people are willing to admit to because they like the drama.
Personally, I don't think it was enough.
That being the case, I don't see anything to complain about.

[vVAnjilaVv]

Well, I'm sorry. But it would have required a better change period.
The insane hit points and to-hit of MOBS at end game is what makes THF and TWF necessary.
And nerfing builds to this extent without a free respec and greensteel deconstruction would have been bad, IMO.

I think they will make this work...I wouldn't worry about it....why?...because they have to if they want to continue to generate revenue.

It may be a change, but I don't see it as being drastic or game-breaking.

Wasn't haste at one time a 25% bonus to attack speed and is now 15%.......they changed things around so everything worked out fine with that...I don't even notice that 10% loss anymore.

Let's just wait and see what happens...I think the thing that irks me is this may make update 5 coming out take longer than expected...but oh well...we get to play with our current combat styles for longer then

[Phax]

Facts:
If someone dissconnects in Epic Von6 white fighting the dragon everyone dies.
If someone dissconnects in part 4 or 5 of the shroud all sorts of wierd thing can happen - i.e. part 4 noone dies when portal is clicked, heals don't go off etc.

These things are not related to DPS lag as far as I have been able to tell.



I have a 2H build rogue with an Epic SoS never have any lag problems unless someone dissconnects.

...

Fix that problem 1st and then see if the DPS lag still happens.

Kambuk.

Kambuk, you have brought up something that we have addressed for the next update. There was a bug where AOE spells were requiring all clients affected by the spell to be synchronized. Essentially, before an AOE (many, but not all) would go off all the clients had to report in to the server with a "I'm here!" message. This would cause exactly the problem you describe. We've fixed this, and now every player will get the effect applied immediately after the spell is cast.

Unfortunately, we still have other dps lag issues.

I was not in the office today, so I apologize if this was already addressed by Eladrin, I have not had the time to read 90% of this thread.

[Thar]

So if TWF contributes to lag, then does multishot? does aoe spells? if it's the physics roll on the 2nd attack then get rid of it. it hits because the primary attack was in range.

What about glancing blows? is this next on the nerf bat?

If this isn't about lag, i'd say stop trying to fix what ain't broken. People like their twf builds, spent years building, trading/finding equipment for them, numerous greensteel items made. People like thier THF builds. They are different and are that way for a reason. THF is more str based and HP in most cases. TWF is more finesse and favors the dex based classes who do more damage at the expense of being squishier. That's Dnd. they are not supposed to be equal.

so people hate cookie cutter builds, everyone will be using ESOS if this goes through. Why wouldn't you? change your twf rogue to esos thf.

to those that say people will say. Yes, many will. But some will leave. WOP did chase some people away. is it more a reaction, yes. But you play this game to have fun. Playing this game, putting the time in to make a character that you want to play and then it's core is changed to something different is fustrating and other options exist rather than being annoyed. Half my groups tonight were talking about half leaving... leaving the paying vip. go free to play. why pay monthly when what "work" you've done for years is gimp'd.

[Borror0]

Phax! You're alive!!