Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[Consumer]

I can certainly see that STWF is intended to provide fighter types with attack speeds equivalent to Tempest II, but it would seem clear to me that Tempest III and purchasing STWF should provide some sort of attack speed bonuses to endgame Rangers as compared to Tempest II/other STWF.

As others have pointed outline not only do Fighters far outstrip ranger TWF DPS, they also get many more attacks per minute due to Fighter haste boost.

Below 20th level this is also true, by level 12 a pure Fighter has up to 3 str from enhancements, 7 30% Haste boosts and power surge along with multiple specialization feats and enhancements, there is no comparison.



As others have said it seems it will be much better for turbine if they do not include the % proc chance for the offhand in this update.

[Irinis]

In any MMO you play, there's a balance between classes that are pure melee and those with utility/survivability. Fighters and Barbarians should have more melee competence, due to having less utility/survivability.

In epics, 800hp is survivability, and Monk AC "survivability" means nothing. So by your reasoning, Monks should get more DPS.

Or maybe the devs should make EVERY highlevel quest have AOE stuns so people feel they have to take a gimp along just for antistun.

These changes would only be okay if they massively rebalance the entire game. Gut the HP of mobs, especially on epic, etc. Epics are already a borefest.


I suspect the changes may be necessary to bring out something like epic greensteel however. If you make weapons too overpowered the only logical response is to nerf the attacks themselves. That way you can still give the player the illusion that they have amazing DPS only by having the uberest weapons.

[bryntian5]

No. Lag and nerf bat have be a seperate issue.

[Visty]

currently its twf > thf (twitching) > thf >> s&b
with the change it will be [thf (twitching) >]* twf ~ thf >> s&b

(*as twitching gets a small nerf too it shouldnt be there actually, but i put it there to show the point)

with the changes thf and twf will be alot better balanced then it is currently. thats also why glancing blows while mocing got removed

its not a nerf, its a overall game balance

[Asymetric_War]

Proposed Numbers:
A character with no two weapon fighting feats has a base 20% chance to proc off-hand attacks.
The Two Weapon Fighting feat grants a +15% bonus to proc off-hand attacks.
The Improved Two Weapon Fighting feat grants a +10% bonus to proc off-hand attacks.
The Greater Two Weapon Fighting feat grants a +10% bonus to proc off-hand attacks.
Monk Air stances now grant a +5%/+10%/+15%/+20% insight bonus to the chance to proc off-hand attacks instead of an insight bonus to attack speed. (Enhancement bonus to attack speed remains.)
Ranger Tempest now grants a +10%/+20%/+30% bonus to the chance to proc off-hand attacks when dual wielding instead of a bonus to attack speed or granting additional off-hand attacks.

<snip>


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.)

So in other words, Rogues will get screwed hard. As if we weren't screwed badly enough already by our low hit dice, lack of toughness enhancements, lack of feats, and the fact that the traps are so wussy most parties just run straight through them and don't need a rog to disable unless they're after bonus xp. Now you're going to nerf the one thing we're really good at - DPS - in order to give the barbarians yet another advantage.

Sure we attack faster then barbarians or fighters. WE'RE SUPPOSED TOO. That's our payback for being squishier then any other melee class and having a lower BAB! What you propose is to take away all the benefits of that trade while leaving all the costs intact. And that's just plain a crappy deal.

I've played this game since launch and I've given you hundreds of dollars over the years but there's a limit to how much more i'll pay if you continue to nerf my toons. As it is my multiclass builds get no PRE's and miss out on the ToD gear's bonuses that for some bizarre reason only benefits people with 18 or more levels in a single class. I mean seriously, ***? Are you people stupid? Don't you realize that the ability to multiclass and customize toons is the single best thing DDO has going for it and is the ONLY reason that folks like me are still playing after all these years? If I wanted to play a game where I'm stuck in a single class I'd play WoW or EQII or any of the other clones out there. (sorry for the tangent but ****!) Now to add insult to injury you're going to gut my my dps for a negligible reduction in lag!

Go ahead and use a single proximity check, that's fine. you can even give people a chance for a double attack on their main hand - I've got no objections! But keep your hands off my attack speed.

[irivan]

One of the major issues that we’ve been working on is the dps lag problem in high level content (especially raid content). We’re attacking this problem from many angles, and since some of the changes we’re considering will have significant impact on many characters, we’re interested in your feedback before it goes to Lamannia or live. We're trying to aggressively attack the issues that cause these lag problems and are interested in feedback regarding how aggressively we should be attempting to tackle them.

My post is a bit more technical than I normally write for public consumption, but I want to make the issues and the reasons we’re considering these changes extremely clear.

Some people may have noticed that problems occur most often when there are many monks or two weapon fighting characters that are loaded with many on-hit effects attacking en masse. These characters currently perform many attacks very quickly, and each attack is pretty heavy performance-wise. Rather than attack the problem by changing common heavy-load equipment, we’ve already taken some steps to optimize the way we perform attacks, and are considering the following changes to reduce overall performance loads:

Currently a single two weapon fighting attack makes a physics detection check with your main hand, followed by a second detection check for your off hand (roughly 0.15 seconds after the first one). Instead of making multiple physics checks, all two weapon fighting attacks (weapons or unarmed) would now make a single check for your main hand attack, and would “piggyback” on that detection check and have a chance to proc (trigger) an off-hand attack based on the number of two weapon fighting feats (or related enhancements) you possess. Off-hand attacks would have a chance to proc on any main hand attack now, instead of being predetermined on certain attacks. Having more TWF feats increases the % chance of proccing an off-hand attack.

We would now assume that if your opponent was within range for your first attack, it will still be in range 0.15 seconds later. We also go about determining whether or not a particular swing gets an off-hand attack in a much cleaner manner than before.

We’re also considering introducing a new mechanic to replace some speed bonus effects, called double strike:

A character with a double strike chance has a chance to make an additional attack roll with their main hand weapon any time they make a main hand attack, on the target of the first attack. (Note that two handed weapons count as “in the main hand” for these purposes.)

The Fighter Alacrity capstone, and the Paladin spell Zeal would be changed to a +10% bonuses to double strike.
A TWF Paladin that Smites something under the effect of Zeal would attack with the main hand, have a 10% chance to attack with the main hand again, and would have a chance (based on TWF feats) to attack with the off hand in one sequence. Level 20 Fighters with the capstone would simply always hit twice 10% of the time with their main hands. For a future update, we’re considering revisiting some old items (such as Jorgundal’s Collar, which currently doesn’t stack with Haste) and replacing the effects with a double strike effect.

For those that are interested in the “how does that help? You’re still making 11 attacks in 10 swings” – double strikes, like the proposed off-hand attacks, would bypass the additional physics detects and secondary characteristics of normal attacks such as glancing blows, while still providing an increase to overall damage over time. It would have the advantage over speed boosts of sometimes proccing on special attacks, and opens up a new itemization and enhancement pathway. (Warchanters, for instance, are likely to end up with a double strike song in a future update.)

.................................................. .................................
---

Some sample attack percentages with this system (assuming you took all possible available feats and enhancements) would be:

INVALID CHART FOLLOWS:
Build				Main-hand	Off-hand
20 Ranger (Tempest 3)		100%		85%
20 Monk (Wind Stance 4)		100%		75%
20 Fighter (Alacrity)		110%		55%
20 Paladin (Zeal)		110%		55%
20 [Other]			100%		55%
12 Ftr/6 Rng/2 Mnk		100%		70%
15 Pal/3 Mnk/2 [Any] (unarmed)	110%		60%
14 Pal/6 Rng			110%		65%
18 Rgr/2 Mnk			100%		90%

---

Edit:
Thanks for the massive amount of feedback all.

We're currently thinking of adjusting the numbers to:

	Doublestrike	Bonus	Main hand	Off hand
No feats	0	20%	100%		20%
TWF		0	+20%	100%		40%
ITWF		0	+20%	100%		60%
GTWF		0	+20%	100%		80%
STWF		0	+20%	100%		100%
Tempest I	0	+10%	100%		90%
Tempest II	0	+10%	100%		100% 
Tempest III	+5%*	0	105%		100%
Wind IV		+10%	0	110%		80%
Zeal		+10%	0	110%		80%
Alacrity	+10%	0	110%		80%

* Only when wielding two weapons.

This set switches Wind Stance and Tempest III to doublestrike bonuses, increases the benefits of the TWF feat chain, and adds an additional feat for high BAB characters.

All of the bottom rows assume that the person has GTWF, except for the STWF row.

I have given this a lot of thought, i am not an alarmist, I try really hard not to overreact to Turbines changes, and generally take all things DDO with a grain of salt, the only things that set me off are the conspiracy theorists and boy's that have cried wolf so many times.

That being said, i feel that these changes are unfair and will not accomplish the goals which the DDO team is setting out to achieve.

The reduction of Lag.

My claim is based on the culture of the game. Presently all this will achieve is the re-rolling of a lot of Characters, people will go with the flow and the game based calculation will be back through the roof in no time.

most people will not even buy their Heart of wood either, they will likely spend some dungeon tokens and get one for free, so turbine will not even likely make any money with it either.

To me this will likely end up just being one more giant inconvenience for some players, some will quit, some will adjust, etc.

Considering Turbine is not hurting for membership at the moment and the desire to see a drop in math processes on the server threatening to quit wont change their mind.

So i would like Eladrin to pass my comment on to the upper echelon if you will, i would like them to open their bank account and invest in more resources to reduce lag, meaning more servers, like for example bring back some of the old servers and that we lost during the server merges, thin the worlds out a little more and leave the game engine alone.

I feel like this is being done because Turbine does not want to invest in additional resources and is seeking to work with what resources they have, thus shifting the burden of solving their performance issues on to their customer base.

This may be thought of as sound business, but in the end, it is the kind of thing that leaves some players with a longer term bad taste in their mouth, and a disbelief that a person can go about attempting to invest hours of their time into a character with out having the very basis of it being tampered with by the game host.

That is when hopelessness sets in, and eyes start to set on other gaming horizons.

Me personally i will play this game until something better comes along, but with this kind of mechanical insolvency it wont be long before the competition provides something i want to pay for.

So in the end i am siding against any proposed change to game mechanics, I explicitly ask that you do not do this and leave it as is, and seek greater back end resources to solve your game based performance issues.

Thank you.

[Visty]

I have given this a lot of thought, i am not an alarmist, I try really hard not to overreact to Turbines changes, and generally take all things DDO with a grain of salt, the only things that set me off are the conspiracy theorists and boy's that have cried wolf so many times.

That being said, i feel that these changes are unfair and will not accomplish the goals which the DDO team is setting out to achieve.

The reduction of Lag.

My claim is based on the culture of the game. Presently all this will achieve is the re-rolling of a lot of Characters, people will go with the flow and the game based calculation will be back through the roof in no time.

most people will not even buy their Heart of wood either, they will likely spend some dungeon tokens and get one for free, so turbine will not even likely make any money with it either.

To me this will likely end up just being one more giant inconvenience for some players, some will quit, some will adjust, etc.

Considering Turbine is not hurting for membership at the moment and the desire to see a drop in math processes on the server threatening to quit wont change their mind.

So i would like Eladrin to pass my comment on to the upper echelon if you will, i would like them to open their bank account and invest in more resources to reduce lag, meaning more servers, like for example bring back some of the old servers and that we lost during the server merges, thin the worlds out a little more and leave the game engine alone.

I feel like this is being done because Turbine does not want to invest in additional resources and is seeking to work with what resources they have, thus shifting the burden of solving their performance issues on to their customer base.

This may be thought of as sound business, but in the end, it is the kind of thing that leaves some players with a longer term bad taste in their mouth, and a disbelief that a person can go about attempting to invest hours of their time into a character with out having the very basis of it being tampered with by the game host.

That is when hopelessness sets in, and eyes start to set on other gaming horizons.

Me personally i will play this game until something better comes along, but with this kind of mechanical insolvency it wont be long before the competition provides something i want to pay for.

So in the end i am siding against any proposed change to game mechanics, I explicitly ask that you do not do this and leave it as is, and seek greater back end resources to solve your game based performance issues.

Thank you.

another of those posts which think the twf nerf is hidden as lag fix

its not

eladrin said its a nerf cause twf is so overpowered

[Asymetric_War]

What I am seeing here is that we have a flat tire (dps lag)

They propose to use the physics calculation to work out whether you are in range of an enemy from the main hand attack for the offhand attack as well, thus cutting down some of the messier calculations (repair flat tire)

Then, while we're at it, lets completely rip the guts out of the combat system away from a set attack chain (ie - Full round attack in PnP, you know what attacks you get) to some % based system (lets replace the engine while we're at it)

Exactly! this "fix" has precisely NOTHING to do with the problem as they've identified it. My guild has been talking about this all day and not a single person thought it was a good idea. this is garbage.

[irivan]

another of those posts which think the twf nerf is hidden as lag fix

its not

eladrin said its a nerf cause twf is so overpowered

Visty i know you are not an idiot, this is exactly what he said, in the very first sentence, where the hell did you contrive that translation from?

Originally Posted by Eladrin
"One of the major issues that we’ve been working on is the dps lag problem in high level content (especially raid content)"

How am i misinterpreting that?

[Krag]

eladrin said its a nerf cause twf is so overpowered

He can't be serious, can he?
I mean, it happens too often that THF barbarians are declined because they deal so little damage. And every time leader feels the need for more DPS, they uncheck every class icon but monk, rogue, ranger and paladin. Right?

[zealous]

currently its twf > thf (twitching) > thf >> s&b
with the change it will be [thf (twitching) >]* twf ~ thf >> s&b

(*as twitching gets a small nerf too it shouldnt be there actually, but i put it there to show the point)

with the changes thf and twf will be alot better balanced then it is currently. thats also why glancing blows while mocing got removed

its not a nerf, its a overall game balance

2wf in general loose less than 10%, glancing blows is in general more than 10% for 2h twitch.

But aye it's not generally a nerf, as long as they don't add sup. 2wf.

[Visty]

Visty i know you are not an idiot, this is exactly what he said, in the very first sentence, where the hell did you contrive that translation from?

Originally Posted by Eladrin
"One of the major issues that we’ve been working on is the dps lag problem in high level content (especially raid content)"

How am i misinterpreting that?

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.)

emphasis mine

[Brannigan]

Eladrin,

Aside from TR will you be rushing the 'alignment' change item through for the same time this wil go live for those that do not want to TR but need an alignment change to be able to Greater Ress to alter thier characters that will need to be changed to allow for the TWF changes, example being 12 fighter / 6 ranger / 2 monk - that wanted to change to 12 fighter / 6 barb / 2 rogue following the changes and needs to lose the lawful to take barb as ranger no longer gives speed etc.

[Visty]

... as ranger no longer gives speed etc.

ranger still gives speed

[irivan]

And to continue my reasoning,

Wouldn't reducing the number of attacks over time actually increase the number of calculations it takes to swing and kill the monster?

I mean if the over arching issue here is, total calculations, and there are far to many being performed, isn't the real issue with Monster hit points?

If you lose an attack, trying to kill said monster is still going to require X attacks to get the job done, meaning the same number of dice rolls (math being performed to determine hit and damage, and further additional math being performed to determine the new double strike metric?

This is starting to seem like worse of an idea the more i think about it.

[Consumer]

currently its twf > thf (twitching) > thf >> s&b
with the change it will be [thf (twitching) >]* twf ~ thf >> s&b

(*as twitching gets a small nerf too it shouldnt be there actually, but i put it there to show the point)

with the changes thf and twf will be alot better balanced then it is currently. thats also why glancing blows while mocing got removed

its not a nerf, its a overall game balance

currently (with epic sos)
twitch->twf->thf AA->s&b

currently (without epic sos and xuum)
twf->twitch->thf AA->s&b

will be (with epic sos)
STWF->twitch->GTWF->THF AA->s&b

will be (wihout epic sos and xuum)
STWF->GTWF->twitch->THF AA->s&b

No glancing blows while moving is not a small nerf, it can be over 50+ DPS loss and will make twitch and AA almost equal.

[svinja]

estimated damage output over time for the two styles should be extremely close to each other if we go this route.

Well TWF is a lot more "expensive" to build a character for than THF. I sacrificed a lot on my paladin (for example, I started with 12 constitution and 14 strength) to be able to have enough dexterity, and you also absolutely need the feats.

So this means I could have went THF and spent all those points and feats elsewhere? There is absolutely no incentive for any character that doesn't get the feats for free to dual wield if this is true.

[irivan]

emphasis mine

I guess my assumption about you was wrong.

He clearly says:

"We're trying to aggressively attack the issues that cause these lag problems and are interested in feedback regarding how aggressively we should be attempting to tackle them."

You are making the assumption that the statement below means that this is the reason for their proposed change, but it does not say that here. That simply means that they are acknowledging the potential damage to some characters, and making a justification statement saying that if this is done it will result in more balance.

"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.)"

[Merlocke]

ranger still gives speed

Ranger Tempest now grants a +10%/+20%/+30% bonus to the chance to proc off-hand attacks when dual wielding instead of a bonus to attack speed or granting additional off-hand attacks.


We're currently thinking of adjusting the numbers to:

	Doublestrike	Bonus	Main hand	Off hand
No feats	0	20%	100%		20%
TWF		0	+20%	100%		40%
ITWF		0	+20%	100%		60%
GTWF		0	+20%	100%		80%
STWF		0	+20%	100%		100%
Tempest I	0	+10%	100%		90%
Tempest II	0	+10%	100%		100% 
Tempest III	+5%*	0	105%		100%
Wind IV		+10%	0	110%		80%
Zeal		+10%	0	110%		80%
Alacrity	+10%	0	110%		80%

* Only when wielding two weapons.

This set switches Wind Stance and Tempest III to doublestrike bonuses, increases the benefits of the TWF feat chain, and adds an additional feat for high BAB characters.

Tempest I attk speed is removed. dodge/mobility/spring attk for what now, lol a doublestrike 5% chance

[Visty]

Tempest I attk speed is removed. dodge/mobility/spring attk for what now, lol a doublestrike 5% chance

tempest I gives 10% offhand proc