Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[bobbryan2]

Oh I absolutly agree this probably stems from a it's going to be a head ache perspective. Sadly, it ignores that the alternatives are head aches for most of the paying customers.

Sometimes, you just have to do the hard work. I will keep on calling them on it when they take these short cuts out, because it is incrementally making our game less fun to play.

Another game I played before this hit the decade mark. And by that time, all the code was completely obsolete, inefficient, and unmutable to additions. So they had to rewrite the game from the ground up. And it took over 2 years for them to get everything streamlined so they could update it when they wanted.

I'm just doubting Turbine would want to budget for 2 years of behind the scenes work that no players would see immediate benefits from.

In a perfect world? Sure. I just don't know that it's feasible with DDO right now.

[SquelchHU]

In absolute terms maybe, but they still end up on the top of the dps charts. You still won't find many other build options that will surpass them. You are complaining because instead of being 30% greater than all the rest, twf rangers are now only 10-15% better than all others. Even with the nerf they are still among the handful of top dps builds. Rogues and monks on the other hand were already working hard to just keep up. Now they'll fall further behind.

Rangers at the top of the DPS charts?

What are you talking about?

Rangers are mid tier. Which means they do enough to matter, but no means top DPS. Not even close. Try 'maxed out Tempest is 20% behind max DPS' before the nerf. Which hits them for -16.5%.

Fun fact. Monks are NOT that far behind Rangers in DPS. It's about -10% or so. Monks are often regarded as 'not a DPS class' due to insufficient DPS and taken sparingly or not at all, even when the Monk themselves is known to be good.

So what do you think is going to happen to Rangers when they drop from mid tier DPS to sub Monk DPS?

If you said anything other than 'hey, let's repeat early mods where Rangers don't get groups!' wake up.

And then Monks drop by a lower amount, but since they were borderline even -1% would screw em over.

Rogues are screwed not because they lack DPS, but because so many build Rogues that lack DPS the good ones are often caught in the crossfire. But if they legitimately do in fact lack it...

DDO: Now with your choice of Fighter, Barbarian, Favored Soul, and Songbot!

If the mob HPs were scaled down to the approximate DPS cut on average, I'd be okay with this. I wouldn't love it but I'd accept it.

You know that's not going to happen. If it did it wouldn't automatically invalidate all the effort spent on TWF characters. It would still greatly reduce the appeal of the game though because you'd be swinging through molasses.

I wouldn't mind the STWF feat if the feats were rebalanced.

no feats = 50% offhand attack rate.
TWF = 75% offhand
ITWF = 85% offhand
GTWF = 94% offhand
STWF = 100% offhand

You've got two big problems right now. #1 that all the feats are created equal, which makes them completely necessary. That's not how TWF is supposed to work. You're supposed to get lesser returns for each feat. And B, that TWF is so completely useless until you grab iTWF and usually gTWF at 12. So even characters that spec for TWF shouldn't use that style for the majority of their levels.

Something like this would add the feat and actually add options by asking the question, "Is it better to get a 3% increase in DPS or a different feat."

Obviously 10% is way too much. Maybe 3% is still too much. But the end result is that the vast majority of offhand attacks should be grabbed by iTWF.

Huh?

[Borror0]

Then re-read that post by Eladrin for me and explain how it does not tie the two together.

The sentence preceding the comment about Green Steel:

"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."

It was done with pathing coding for DA

Raph Koster gave an excellent talk about Moore's Wall in January 2006. At the time, he was Chief Creative Officer at Sony Online Entertainment and said that "40% of our CPU load has gone to doing path-finding. It's been 10 years, and we're still doing 40% path-finding. Standard A* algorithm, you know, nothing particularly surprising there, and it's still where we spend almost half of our CPU budget."

It's not a Turbine problem; it's an industry-wide problem. A lot of resources are put into path-finding because the technologies has never been improved.

Want to know the worse part? That 40% figure is worse for DDO because DDO actually does collision tests between players and monsters, unlike all MMOs at that time. The fact that DA was necessary was not due to poor coding or low hardware. It's the game's design that made it so heavy.

[Cyr]

The sentence preceding it:

"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."

Okay can anyone explain how Eladrin's statement about "maintaining their DPS is more critcal to them than a smoother play experience" does not strongly imply that the dps nerf is not part of the lag fix?

Oh and a look at this quote which states the opposite of what I am saying it means is not an explanation...

[Ponza69]

I think some posts here are taking this way to seriously. (maybe personally is a better descriptor)

Before spinning out of control each ask your self what are the priorities for DDO.

Some examples may be:
Smooth Play experience vs. lag
Balanced Classes vs. non balanced classes
Balanced Items vs. non balanced items
Interactive Combat vs. static combat
Balanced DPS vs. I am super uber at DPS and don't change it.

[bobbryan2]

Okay can anyone explain how Eladrin's statement about "maintaining their DPS is more critcal to them than a smoother play experience" does not strongly imply that the dps nerf is not part of the lag fix?

Oh and a look at this quote which states the opposite of what I am saying it means is not an explanation...

Well, not critical to the lag fix at any rate. But greensteel could probably use some streamlining at some point anyway.

[Borror0]

Okay can anyone explain how Eladrin's statement about "maintaining their DPS is more critcal to them than a smoother play experience" does not strongly imply that the dps nerf is not part of the lag fix?

Context. The whole paragraph was:

"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."

In other words:

"It's good to know that, if we decide not to fix the problem by reducing physical collisions, you guys don't want your DPS nerfed. The other alternative we had in mind consisted of changing how Green Steel works and that might involve nerfing your DPS, by necessity."

It's an unclear post, though, I will admit.

[bradleyforrest]

I didn't read through the entire thread because of its length, but I did a search real quick and didn't see this covered.

What about helpless Mobs? Held, stunned, etc. We should get 100% for off-hand attacks when the mob is helpless.

Thoughts?

[bandyman1]

The person you, and I responded to.

So, you were responding to him, but you quoted me???


Since the rogue in question wan't using ranged, but TWFing in fact, mind telling us how he pulled Suulo's agro off Shade, not once, but 3-4 times, considering " that doesn't happen " according to your posts, and the posts of several others in this thread???

[Thrudh]

Thanks for the clarifications, the thing is that pure barbarian have the 10% attack speed aswell, and even when fighter has better crit range, the barb has better crit multiplier (up to +3 for 19-20 rolls) so it seems to me that fighter could have better burst damage with the haste boosts, but barbarians have better constant damage output...

That 10% attack speed for barbarians is a bug and is going away...

[eonfreon]

Context. The whole paragraph was:

"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."

In other words:

"It's good to know that, if we decide not to fix the problem by reducing physical collisions, you guys don't want your DPS nerfed. The other alternative we had in mind consisted of changing how Green Steel works and that might involve nerfing your DPS, by necessity."

It's an unclear post, though, I will admit.

What's your point?
How can you possibly think that anyone had a problem with reducing physical collision detections by piggybacking on the main-hand.
How does that alone reduce DPS?
The chance of procs on the offhand reduce DPS. The collision detection is already reduced when it piggybacks.

[AbsynthMinded]

Just wanted to thank everyone for the feedback in the thread. I know it's a hot topic, and people will have strong opinions, but we really appreciate everyone's civility and thoughtfulness on this.

I've seen comments about "the lag". There is no such as "the" lag, there is lag in a general sense. It's more appropriate to think of lag like "disease" rather than a single particular illness that can be cured. There are many kinds of diseases in the world, but they all have the same result - the person is unhealthy. Saying "FIX LAG" is pretty much the equivalent of saying "CURE ALL DISEASE!" Obviously it is a wonderful goal to want to cure every known disease, but it's a bit outside of scope. Thus, you target as many forms as you're able to improve over all health. So too it is with lag. There are many types, and there are many situations that can contribute to it. We conduct tests and monitor performance, and target the worst offenders to improve game health. Threads like this are imperative to the development team's work, so thank you very much for your reactions, thoughts, ideas, and general curiosity.

I disagree about 'The Lag' being like a disease. Lag is a symptom of the larger sickness regarding dirty code, unsanitary implementation and underpowered hardware; Plus other causes beyond DDOs control.. To resolve the symptom we must attack the root causes. The phrase 'We are attacking the issue on many fronts' is so vague as to not need to be said. So there's 'The Lag' due to bad hardware, and 'The Lag' because of server side throughput 'The Pipe' issues, and 'The Lag' due to bad code, and 'The Lag' because of some circumstance unforeseen (DPS Lag).. Not to mention 'The Lag' that is all client side or ISP issues.

So in my humble opinion, do whatever you want to the game code. We players will respond with hoots and howls of support or damnation; Then promptly start min/maxing to make the best out of whatever it is you leave us with. Which will undoubtedly without question, bring 'The Lag' back over time..

My suggestion is to make the top end content easier and much less pretty, so no resources are spent on graphics and it doesn't take so much specialization to achieve victory in as short a time as possible. I mean seriously, a fully specialized player with Greensteel weapons and items and Dragontouched Armor trimmed out to their liking can One Man Elite content all over the game. The power difference between two level 20's when one has basic commonly available equipment and one with all specialized equipment is measured in magnitudes. The only reason to have all that top of the top end equipment is to make End Game Raids go smoother and take less time or resources.

No one much cares about the actual content anymore it seems. So start making the end raids as bland as possible. No one pays attention to graphical details in a Raid unless they are dead waiting for a resurrection.

[bandyman1]

Opinions on the various classes and how they should rank in pure DPS are all ove rhe place, people always seem to forget allt he other abilities of the various classes though. It's the players choice to not use those abilities, or to build them out of a charachter, while focusing onbyl on DPS. This is what confuses me... Barbs ARE the DPS class with little other to offer as far as self buffing, self healing, or anythign else, they are largely reliant on the rest of the party. While Rangers, Monks, Rogues, Fighters, Pali's.. They all have many other skills they can use. It is the PLAYERS choice to not use them when trying to create their specific "Max DPS" build. Get a clue people... There are different classes for a reason, if you choose to ignore the many other abilities of a class and focus solely on stretching the limits to maximize DPS on such a class.... Then dont' complain when the Devs actualyl do the right thing and attempt to bring you back down to where you should be in the first place.

The problem isn't now, nor has it ever been, that many people disagree with that.

The problem is that the freaking game is designed so that DPS>than any of the other options.

It's not a failure on the part of the people, it's a failure on the part of the developers.

[krud]

Rangers at the top of the DPS charts?

What are you talking about?

Rangers are mid tier. Which means they do enough to matter, but no means top DPS. Not even close. Try 'maxed out Tempest is 20% behind max DPS' before the nerf. Which hits them for -16.5%.

Fun fact. Monks are NOT that far behind Rangers in DPS. It's about -10% or so. Monks are often regarded as 'not a DPS class' due to insufficient DPS and taken sparingly or not at all, even when the Monk themselves is known to be good.

So what do you think is going to happen to Rangers when they drop from mid tier DPS to sub Monk DPS?

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...t=relative+twf
This may not have been updated recently, but take a look at the top dps in the list and see how many of the 400+ builds are tempest rangers (6 splash or18). Now, how many of those also include rogue as a major contribution? All those builds will get hit along with the ranger, so they'll all drop in effectiveness. Tempest3 ranger dps may fall by 15%, but all others will drop by ~10% or more as well, leaving the relative positions unchanged. And after all that it will still be above THF.

[Ollathir]

This is what I'm thinking as well. They're going to make this change that's going to completely overhaul the combat system and it's not loaded on their test servers with 26 days until its official release?

I understand what they're trying to accomplish. But the time window isn't on their side for fitting this in to Update 5.

Eladrin already answered this as, and I quote, "no?" When responding to, will update 5 be delayed for this change? I don't think the ? was unintentional.

I didn't read through the entire thread because of its length, but I did a search real quick and didn't see this covered.

What about helpless Mobs? Held, stunned, etc. We should get 100% for off-hand attacks when the mob is helpless.

Thoughts?

No worries. It was brought up but never answered by anyone in the know, only speculated by others myself included. The end result being that whether helpless or no, the off-hand calculations would not be affected. So if you have a 55% chance to proc an off-hand attack, you would still need to proc it before rolling to confirm damage.

[eonfreon]

Basically, this should be done in stages to see the actual effects, as far as the lag fix is concerned.

First reduce the collision checks by removing the offhand collision check. Leave everything else out of the equation.
Then see if it helps and by how much it helps.

Then work separately on TWF balancing using the offhand proc percentages.
That will allow people to see how much DPS is affected without the additional concept of "lag fix".

[grodon9999]

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...t=relative+twf
This may not have been updated recently, but take a look at the top dps in the list and see how many of the 400+ builds are tempest rangers (6 splash or18). Now, how many of those also include rogue as a major contribution? All those builds will get hit along with the ranger, so they'll all drop in effectiveness. Tempest3 ranger dps may fall by 15%, but all others will drop by ~10% or more as well, leaving the relative positions unchanged. And after all that it will still be above THF.

You've run with me, I'm not maxed out but I've got a good build and I'm a competent player. I can tell you right now my Tempest III does NOT do as much damage as TWF kensais and barb regardless of style. I'm basing this on the only valid test, combat and who gets the aggro. Rangers are NOT top DPS and don't need this nerf. We do not hit as hard as fighters or barbs, we need out swing-speed to stay close.

[Cyr]

Context. The whole paragraph was:

"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."

In other words:

"It's good to know that, if we decide not to fix the problem by reducing physical collisions, you guys don't want your DPS nerfed. The other alternative we had in mind consisted of changing how Green Steel works and that might involve nerfing your DPS, by necessity."

It's an unclear post, though, I will admit.

Ah, because the more logical interpertation of the post is not.

Poster "I'm okay with these changes, but lots of people are going to ****ed about the dps nerf"

Eladrin
"That is good to know. If lag is less important to people then their dps then we can do less to hurt their dps. However, if we don't nerf your dps now through this proc rate change we will probably just nerf GS weapon DPS instead."

In other words, if you guys don't take the thermometer in your mouth now it will hurt more later...

Your twisting of Eladrin's post also ignores an important point. What part of nerfing GS weapons would change the number of physics checks? It would only change the dps calculations...which is what I am stating the post is saying and you are insisting it is not.

[shadowowl]

As long as I stay alive, I will kill my enemy sooner or later. You know, dead rogues deal 0 damage. And do not forget about overhealing. Ask any cleric if they like to heal 150hp rogues or 800hp barbarians.

Speed is essential for skipping long/difficult combats when farming exp. Yes, some battles are won with legs, not swords.

I heal 800hp barbarians.. i resurrect 150hp rogues lol.

though as for the topic I guess my TWF pally is getting the worst of this one. though all in all I would rather be nerfed on my pally then trying to heal through dps lag on my fvs. so if it reduces dps lag then I'm all for it.
and really fighters and pallys where never really known for twf anyway. Though I'm guessing I'll be TR'ing my pally once again to compensate for changes in the game.

[grodon9999]

I heal 800hp barbarians.. i resurrect 150hp rogues lol.

I'm SO adding that to my Cleric's bio . . .