Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[smatt]

/Glazed eyes

/Don't care about the nerfs enough to care really, will adjust as neccesary...

/Thinks Eladrin a brave soul for even trying to solve a problem that effects all players, while incuring the wrath of the ubergamer tiny population of self-important specials...

/Will wait and see some of the actual changes before liking or disliking any of them.

/Think it's important to at least attempt to address the raid instance lag issues, even if it means some people will find their toons a bit less than they were before, as has happened from day one in DDO, and will continue to happen from time to time.

/Claps for Eladrin, for brining this out into open discussion. Hopefully, the many very smart peopel that play DDO, will engage in a reasonsible debate aobut he pros and cons, as well as maybe throw out some other ideas. Not likely but we can always hope...

/Not a big fan of nerfs to people after you've given them something, even msyelf, but don't really care that much if it makes the game more playable on a day to day basis for the whole population.

[Yaga_Nub]

So those thousands of THF barbarians and kensei going around with greensteel falchions and greataxes prior to the release of Epic Sword of Shadows... what were they doing?

Thousands?

[Razcar]

So, TWF becomes pointless (and something of a noob-symbol), and the game will be filled with THF dwarves wielding a ridiculously overpowered Sword of Shadows. How did that Prince song go again, "let's party like its 2007"?

If anyone will leave over this NGE:ish move, just come back in around three years - the game will be balanced back again and you can carry on where you left. I wonder if rangers will be the first class they bring back up from the cellar this time around as well? Probably - Turbine are just not very imaginative in their auto-dafés.

[lolwatboomer]

Attacks with two handed weapons while moving no longer perform Glancing Blows.

what's the thought process here

seriously

youre forcing all THFers to just stand there like goofs anytime they attack, and if they decide to move around to kite/etc they get a huge dps decrease

you say you want to bring THF closer to TWF, well gj - implementing his proves otherwise

[MarcusCole]

And I was beginning to think that monks might eventually be able to come close to an eSoS wielding Barb or Fighter... Here you are proposing a drastic change to the system which will result in less lag and less dps for TWF classes. If this change is for the "greater good" of less lag then please introduce a boost to TWF along with this mechanics nerf. In that way there will be less lag while maintaining class/combat style dps balance

[Cyr]

We all know double the grinding time is a load of **** too. It's such a red herring. It implies you have 1 character running the shroud. If you are really grinding for the purpose of crafting, you are running multiples and swapping components you don't need for ones you do. It doesn't end up being double.

Yes running multiple toons does speed up GS grinding. However, two items still take twice as much time as one item as there is a crunch point for required components called large scales.

[bobbryan2]

We all know double the grinding time is a load of **** too. It's such a red herring. It implies you have 1 character running the shroud. If you are really grinding for the purpose of crafting, you are running multiples and swapping components you don't need for ones you do. It doesn't end up being double.

Double the bonuses is only not a benefit because Red Names and quest design are screwed leading to a huge favoring to dual wielding Aspect of Mineral otherwise Exception Str in one and Con/Dex in the other would be a large benefit.

And there are reason to stay TWF other than only boss DPS saying a DPS reduction removes any reason to be TWF is why I bring up paralyzers and etc.

Uh... so needing double the larges isn't double the grind? Run that by me again... this time more slowly.

[Ricter]

So the classes struggling to define themselves as DPS in the first place (re: Bard, Monk, Rogue) are getting a significant DPS nerf in this "update", coming soon.

Awesome.

[Khurse]

In a game all about DPS, which means DPS.

By the way, a THF Fighter or Barb did more damage than a TWF 18/1/1 even without factoring this nerf.

Yes, but in everything but Epic the TWF 18/1/1 is usually harder to hit, requires less healing/stays alive longer.

I've got a 20 KOTC Paladin who can out DPS most Barbs/THFs fairly easily (when smite is up and I get lucky die rolls)And I know there are better TWF KOTCs out there.

In comparison, a friend's 18/1/1 does less damage, but is far more survivable.
I don't think you should get utility,(geneally speaking) more survivability, and equal DPS.

[Khelden]

So those thousands of THF barbarians and kensei going around with greensteel falchions and greataxes prior to the release of Epic Sword of Shadows... what were they doing?

Well I can tell you what they did not do. Bought glasses.

[Yajerman01]

Thousands?

Give it time..

If this is implemented there will be thousands

[dkyle]

TWF benefit should not be more DPS, it should be more attacks and being able to wield an extra weapon, an extra item slot if you will. Now we have to create ways to make it still worth taking.

That's a reasonable approach, but I don't trust the devs to make it happen. They've been reducing the effectiveness of anything other than DPS for so long, I doubt they'll reverse course. And they shouldn't nerf TWF DPS until they do.

[Elaril]

I would allow for an additional + to the proc chance based on the character's dex and allow characters with weapon finesse to add at least a portion of their dex bonus to their damage. But it doesn't matter what I would do.

[Aesop]

Knockdown? You mean trips? Yes, trip and stunning blow are utility. However, it'd be hard for a barbarian to come close to the tactical abilities of a fighter without sacrificing too much, given their limited amount of feats.

Actually a fully raged Barb has about the same (and in most cases higher) DC for trip as a Kensai Fighter. The problem comes down to AP for the Fighter. They could get +7 to the trip DC from Action points, but the Barbs Strength when full out is more than 14 points higher than a Fighters thus completely negating the benefit of the the bulk of the 20+ Action Points and doing more damage.


And that only includes 1 tactic while the barb could get that for all tactics and damage


Aesop

[bobbryan2]

Yes, but in everything but Epic the TWF 18/1/1 is usually harder to hit, requires less healing/stays alive longer.

I've got a 20 KOTC Paladin who can out DPS most Barbs/THFs fairly easily (when smite is up and I get lucky die rolls)And I know there are better TWF KOTCs out there.

In comparison, a friend's 18/1/1 does less damage, but is far more survivable.
I don't think you should get utility,(geneally speaking) more survivability, and equal DPS.

If 18/1/1's were so much more survivable... then why are there so many WF THF barbarians that are the main tanks in TOD, VOD, etc?

[Maxelcat]

ugh, wack too many responses already TLR

Speaking as an experienced DM, when dealing with only one enemy, (like a dragon) In P&P I would:

Ask the Players to roll their Initiative.

Inform the players of the monsters AC/DR/MR etc (could be passed to client side?)

then going in order, top to bottom, the players (client side?) would tell me how much damage they did in their round.

Then I as the DM (server side) would process that info, and on the dragons turn issue out the dragons changes/attacks/damage/actions/whatever...

granted, DDO isn't P&P, isn't done in turns/rounds yadda yadda... also I'm not a programmer (other than some basic) in any way...


but it seams to me:

Client says: attack on
server: attempts to roll dice and apply effects (that's a lot of numbers... what RND# are you using? could you make a machine that only rolls numbers? then the game servers could just sample from it (when needed) instead of rolling it themselves? cause a server just rolling d2/d4/d6/d8/d12/d20/d100/d? could do that all day)

how i used to do it P&P

Player: rolls dice works out damage and effects sends to server
Server: takes it and then responds

end effect: huge combats go by easy with out waiting for the rolling of mountains of dice, and since every character has a set amounts of attacks per second...

alot of us are running pretty wikkid machines on the client side, i don't see why not off loading some of the load to the client wont work (other than lag from the ISP side but that's changing)

Personally, I run a duo core and the other core and more than half my RAM isn't doing anything, and my wifes quad core with way more RAM is barely clicking over. total bandwidth use from here (both running DDO and a server on top of it) is only topping out at 10% of 5Mbips down and 3/4Mbips up...

personally i think sharing more of the load on the client side might help... Its all known values set down by you...

granted, that does expose you to packet shaping on the client side, but you could always stick in a one time encryption key (for packets) on every log in...

gone are the years where the server was king. most of us are running machines that used to be servers back in the day.

(granted, im not a programmer, but I am a 11 year system admin, and co-op computing is new)


as i see it...

if the crunching numbers is the problem... then build a machine that just does that then wire that in. granted, that's a probably a huge rewire of code... but link that number generator with the rest of the farm with OC and let it run...


Server: !needD20? (call#1,call#2,call#3)
numergen(x): !#!

that's how i would do it. **** the rewrite. (just don't forget to have a back up machine generating numbers, and a back up of that, and a back up of that...) last thing you want to say to a customer is "oh wait, the only thing doing this job has crashed..."

[Cyr]

Thousands?

I had a few dozen toons in my guild alone before epics released. So yeah, thousands across all the servers. More like hundreds on a single server though.

[Backley]

This. The 0.15 second delay and re-target after the main hand assassinate is probably what allows the 2nd hand to connect to another mob and assassinate it too. Even more nerf to my TWF rogue.

/sad panda

Replying to myself with a suggested fix:
Check for a death at the end of each attack and re-target any following attacks. If the mob dies in the main-hand attack, the off-hand attack (or 2nd main-hand attack for double attacks) should target another mob.

[Karranor]

I L O V E my two handed fighters. I play em all. If this takes a large bite out of DPS lag I would be OK with the nerf bat. As much as this is going to jack with my characters I do like the idea of bringing things closer for THF and TWF.

[mboger]

If this goes through, then something needs to be done about monk DPS. Right now, monk attack speed is the only thing keeping monks even close to other melees in terms of DPS. Slowing them down and taking away some of their off hand attacks is going to gimp them hard.

The devs *have* to address this. Monks don't get Green Steel wraps. Monks don't benefit from "multiple effects" like other TWF builds, because they still only equip one handwrap (yes, they can switch to kamas to get multiple weapon effects, but at the cost of even more speed and half their attack die in damage). This whole trainwreck of a "lag fix" is just another way to further widen the gap between monk DPS and other melee DPS.

What makes it even more disgusting is that monks are a premium class THAT NEED TO BE PAID FOR TO PLAY. If anything, they should be slightly more powerful than other classes, not further gimped into irrelevance. Increase handwrap crit multiplier or crit range or add another prefix to wraps. Do SOMETHING to make monks an actual PREMIUM class.

Could a dev please reply to this with either possible solutions to rebalance monk DPS or at least tell us why they so hate a class that they charge us to play.