Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[Calebro]

Is this a troll or do you actually play the game? Either case is wrong a well built and played thf deals out same and often times more that of twf dps all you have to do is play it correctly.

I'm not going to get into this again, but barring ESoS (which NEEDS a nerf and thus shouldn't be counted in this scenario), and twitching (which was never intended and is also getting a nerf), TWF is superior to THF in most cases.

[Natashaelle]

Coding around the casual gamer is not a desirable thing...

In a business you cater to the returning customer... those who come back and your intention is to create more returning customers keep them coming back. The casual walk up you wish to offer incentive to become a frequent customer ... you do not push your frequent customer to become more casual ... the other way around...

I wouldn't disagree with that as far as it goes, but it has been explained to me quite clearly by a few RPG professionals, including some quite prominent ones, and this would apply to MMOs as well to some extent, that the focus of any gaming business has to be focused on new players more than on veterans. Basically, because there are relatively high attrition rates among returning customers, who may decide to stop paying to play your game.

It's true though that game balance needs to be provided somewhat differently in MMOs and RPGs, because there is no easy way to prevent the exploitation of imbalances in an online game -- so that I would agree that coding needs to address *every* level of play ; which is of course why I think that simply analysing the effects that the proposed changes will provide among endgame powergamers is only a part of the picture.

Fact be if you end up with players spec'd twf ... a greater expenditure in build than thf ... and the build is not on par with that of thf then it eventually becomes a gimp signature. As it stands at this very moment THF is about equal as TWF ... actually under many conditions a little ahead... pushing back the functionality of twf only will eventually mothball it as a viable option in the player eyes of those who know.

... although I do agree that analysing this from the endgame powergamer's perspective certainly does provide useful information

The one thing I can condone about Shade is he looks into the actual - in practice - results rather than estimating in a numbers game...

I certainly didn't wish to imply that I was dismissing any of Shade's information

[Emili]

I really doubt that would help at all, if it even worked. A common random system such as Mersenne Twister makes the cost pretty trivial. If there are inefficiencies in DDO's combat math software, they can probably be resolved without making changes that are externally evident. (I'd imagine the inefficiencies would be more in the area of table lookups for stats or growing the size of data structures)

Note that the suggestion you just gave would change the sample 15d6 strike from producing around 53 damage on almost every hit to having an equal chance to be 15, 45, or 90. That can be a bit bursty and change the outcome of combat when creatures suddenly die.


That's an amazing mystery! I'll make a guess that it involves changing the effect of properties like Lightning Strike to have different trigger rates depending on the handedness of the weapon.

I really suspect the lag has more to do with each die getting it's own packet message back to the client ... which is why they're going after the procs. You swing you hit the clacs are rolled but each and every die roll is tcp/ip packet returing to the client ... one event and ten packets sent in return.

[Consumer]

I'm not saying tempest rangers shoudl be the best *DPS* for two weapon fighting.

This will bring fighters back in line with rogues, will seperate Arcane Archers melee from Tempest Melee, and will make Tempest the best Two Weapon Fighters again.

Um....

Rangers provide utility where as Fighters specialize in one area of expertise, thats the reason for lower ranger DPS.

Giving Rangers more base attacks than a Fighter still wont change the 30% haste boost Fighters get.

[stormwolf1972]

It seems to me i picked a bad time and bad class to play. Range is not very effective and now twwo weapon fighting is getting the big nerf axe. Whats the point of playing a ranger now that both types of damage they do is normal or subpar. No pets allowed either. May as well kill off the ranger altogether.

[Souless]

Once again:
The TWF nerf has nothing to do with lag.

The DEvs have known for a long time that TWF exceeded THF and needed a nerf. This wasn't such a large need that it had to happen immediately, but it had to happen eventually.
The devs came up with a solution to help reduce lag which involved removing the distance check for off-hand attacks.
Since they were already going into the code for off-hand attacks, now was the perfect time to address the TWF issue.

Just... wow. 80+ pages and people still don't understand that the two are separate issues that just happened to share a common link in the code....

What grps r u running with?????

In almost all cases and I'm talking about actually in raids (ie epic dragon) the THF has the agro of the djinn on the bases....

And tell why are the BEST 2 twink weapons in the game Maelstrom and Carneflex?!?!? Last time I checked they cant be dual wielded! How are low level 2wf's even a consideration here?

The only place where twf outstrips 2hf (and im still not conviced about this) is the STATIONARY raid bosses.

Oh, and btw, is ur main a twf or a 2hf? I'd be willing to bet 100k plat u r an sos user or gs greataxe (assuming u have a toon thet is high enough level to actually use 1)

The Bytcher~

Souless/Xbow/Valice/Tazzor/Spectry/Vampir/Xindao/Richgirl

[Emili]

I'm not going to get into this again, but barring ESoS (which NEEDS a nerf and thus shouldn't be counted in this scenario), TWF is superior to THF in most cases.

Oh, think what you wish...

... what if I told you the character above can shave off up ten seconds off the life of a portal or boss - seven out of ten samples - just by substituting a few minor feats for the thf chain and twitching a min II greataxe? All other things being the same. Where does the twf shine? Is in the double hit of two weapons... where does the thf shine ... shear power of the single hit plus the glance proc ... where is the edge of a twf - standing still ... and the thf - twitching and moving.

[Calebro]

What grps r u running with?????

In almost all cases and I'm talking about actually in raids (ie epic dragon) the THF has the agro of the djinn on the bases....

And tell why are the BEST 2 twink weapons in the game Maelstrom and Carneflex?!?!? Last time I checked they cant be dual wielded! How are low level 2wf's even a consideration here?

The only place where twf outstrips 2hf (and im still not conviced about this) is the STATIONARY raid bosses.

Oh, and btw, is ur main a twf or a 2hf? I'd be willing to bet 100k plat u r an sos user or gs greataxe (assuming u have a toon thet is high enough level to actually use 1)

The Bytcher~

Souless/Xbow/Valice/Tazzor/Spectry/Vampir/Xindao/Richgirl

Again you bring up epics, so I assume you mean ESoS.
Again I tell you that you KNOW it needs a nerf and therefore shouldn't be considered.
And if you'd have read the thread, you'd know from the multiple times that I've said it, the majority of my melee toons are TWFers.

[R0cksteady]

they will NEVER do a GS deconstuct. The Devs have said this MANY times. Everyone get that through your thick skulls!!!!
Its not a nerf, twf is still a viable option, and this ISNT SET IN STONE
STOP THE WHINNING

How is it a viable option? As it stands, Fighters will be better than Tempest without even using Fighter haste for TWF. And THF will be on par or maybe even slightly better, with MUCH lower cost. It makes no sense for TWF to not be more powerful than THF.

If this happens, and there is no way to deconstruct weapons, then the Devs are basically smacking us in the head, while they force us to buy their hearts of wood, and then go through the grindfest all over again for GS weapons.

[Calebro]

Oh, think what you wish...

... what if I told you the character above can shave off up ten seconds off the life of a portal or boss - seven out of ten samples - just by substituting a few minor feats for the thf chain and twitching a min II greataxe? All other things being the same.

Well, apparently *some people* agree with me....

I won’t hide that these proposed changes do reduce the effectiveness of off-hand attacks, which reduces the two weapon fighting style’s extreme dominance over two handed fighting. Skipping the extreme outlier of the Epic Sword of Shadows (we got a little carried away there, didn’t we?), estimated damage output over time for the two styles should be extremely close to each other if we go this route. (Which style is superior ends up being heavily dependent on your character's abilities.)

[Visty]

How is it a viable option? As it stands, Fighters will be better than Tempest without even using Fighter haste for TWF. And THF will be on par or maybe even slightly better, with MUCH lower cost. It makes no sense for TWF to not be more powerful than THF.

If this happens, and there is no way to deconstruct weapons, then the Devs are basically smacking us in the head, while they force us to buy their hearts of wood, and then go through the grindfest all over again for GS weapons.

you might have missed the part about not beeing set in stone yet

[LupusVai]

Round and round we go

Hahaha i rember that film its the village idiot who charges around the village screaming all day long pretending to be a samurai.

[Winteris]

What grps r u running with?????

In almost all cases and I'm talking about actually in raids (ie epic dragon) the THF has the agro of the djinn on the bases....

And tell why are the BEST 2 twink weapons in the game Maelstrom and Carneflex?!?!? Last time I checked they cant be dual wielded! How are low level 2wf's even a consideration here?

The only place where twf outstrips 2hf (and im still not conviced about this) is the STATIONARY raid bosses.

Oh, and btw, is ur main a twf or a 2hf? I'd be willing to bet 100k plat u r an sos user or gs greataxe (assuming u have a toon thet is high enough level to actually use 1)

l

Can u explain me pls why then u use that gimped fighting style ? It costs more feats, more farming, u have to spread your ablity points, u have worse "twink" weapos (lol), all THF chars out dps u and u still use it ?
Im really eager to see answer

btw i think that THF do enough damage and nerf solely for twf is no needed, what is needed is general DPS nerf.

[Daehawk]

How is it a viable option? As it stands, Fighters will be better than Tempest without even using Fighter haste for TWF. And THF will be on par or maybe even slightly better, with MUCH lower cost. It makes no sense for TWF to not be more powerful than THF.

If this happens, and there is no way to deconstruct weapons, then the Devs are basically smacking us in the head, while they force us to buy their hearts of wood, and then go through the grindfest all over again for GS weapons.

I believe Eladrin stated that if this change gets decided against then yes. Your current greensteel will be getting hit with the maul instead.

All we see is numbers with %'s basically at the moment. All this crying is silly. Keep it in the main thread about it as well. Wait till Lam next week before you start jumping the gun even more.

[R0cksteady]

you might have missed the part about not beeing set in stone yet

Can you read? I never said it was. pointing to phrases such as "as it stands" and "if this happens".

[SquelchHU]

You must play a different style of PnP from me if it really boils down to one play-style. A good DM can deal with problems like reach in many ways.. in any case it is a red-herring. I posted it as a red herring, although, it's in the d20 rules, so no fooling, I want it here.

Nope, standard rules.

PnP:

Sword and board is gimp, because you do far too low damage, and AC is irrelevant.
TWF is gimp, because you pay far more gear/resources/opportunity cost for the privilege of sucking anyways.
THF with no reach is gimp because you'll take a free hit on closing with... well just about anything whereas reach prevents most of the occurrences of this. Since the difference between dead in 1 round and not is very often a single hit's worth of damage, not having reach forces you to one round the enemy or be one rounded in turn whereas you might have survived otherwise.

Compare to:

D&D:

Sword and board is gimp, because you do far too low damage, and AC is irrelevant.
TWF is... actually a valid style since almost everything that made it suck has been altered or mitigated in some way.
THF is... actually a valid style. It was gimp, and then made fine, and then Epic SoS came out. Which actually made it better.

If you want the exact details as to why this is so PM me.

[sephiroth1084]

I really doubt that would help at all, if it even worked. A common random system such as Mersenne Twister makes the cost pretty trivial. If there are inefficiencies in DDO's combat math software, they can probably be resolved without making changes that are externally evident. (I'd imagine the inefficiencies would be more in the area of table lookups for stats or growing the size of data structures)

Well, as I've stated elsewhere, my programming-fu is pretty weak, and I'm more interested in seeing the devs entertaining/addressing some different solutions, if at the very least just so the community can see how the current proposal is the best solution at this this.

Note that the suggestion you just gave would change the sample 15d6 strike from producing around 53 damage on almost every hit to having an equal chance to be 15, 45, or 90. That can be a bit bursty and change the outcome of combat when creatures suddenly die.

I had had the same thought when I read this idea some dozens of pages back, but felt it was worth repeating. If it's no good, it's no good, but discussing why it isn't good with the devs may give us a glimpse of where the other lag issues originate (as said, whether it comes from the base code, or...whatever).

That's an amazing mystery! I'll make a guess that it involves changing the effect of properties like Lightning Strike to have different trigger rates depending on the handedness of the weapon.

I would have assumed reducing, or eliminating, some of the additional die-based effects (Bursts, Blasts, extra dice on base weapon damage).

The implication from Eladrin's post was that this might serve as an alternative to some or all of the changes being discussed in this thread. With that being a possibility, I feel that it behooves the devs to open up some debate on that as well.

Is this a troll or do you actually play the game? Either case is wrong a well built and played thf deals out same and often times more that of twf dps all you have to do is play it correctly.

Well, from what I understand, if you exclude the Epic SoS and twitching, TWF is ahead of THF, and the game obviously can't be balanced around an apparently unintended game mechanic. Personally, I'd be fine with THF and TWF being balanced a bit better, with the possibility of THF pulling ahead vs. single targets a bit for someone who twitches well, but twitch attack speed cannot be the point of comparison for the two.

[Emili]

Well, apparently *some people* agree with me....

... and does Eladrin consider the twitch and movement which nearly all the good thf players use? I am not chatising or playing down his or your words. He sees the attack chain, I see more efficency in breaking the attack chain on one style while is detrimental on the other... I will lay this to rest but ask you to decide - take the experiment yourself and deem what you find.

[Calebro]

... and does Eladrin consider the twitch and movement which nearly all the good thf players use? I am not chatising or playing down his or your words. He sees the attack chain, I see more efficency in breaking the attack chain on one style while is detrimental on the other... I will lay this to rest but ask you to decide - take the experiment yourself and deem what you find.

I think Seph answered that more eloquently than I could have directly above you.

[Borror0]

Well, from what I understand, if you exclude the Epic SoS and twitching, TWF is ahead of THF, and the game obviously can't be balanced around an apparently unintended game mechanic.

Spot on.