Twitch THF is dead - TWF now reigns supreme

[justagame]

Zeal still procs double strikes for THF.

And the nerf was never about lag. It was about a nerf. Otherwise they could have balanced the numbers to keep DPS the same while still changing the system to prevent lag.

I'm aware of the doublestrike. So, in exchange for a 10% reduction in attack speed, you get a 10% change of a double smite?

So, out of a total of 12 smites (before they regenerate), you get on average 1 extra at random? Great for seeing the occasional big number, but that's all it is. And i agree, it was a nerf -- but according to the devs, it was to bring twf and thf dps a bit closer -- far from it; this really kills thf kotc paladins, absolutely kills them, because of all the stuff that procs 100% on glancing blows.

[Monkey_Archer]

I'm aware of the doublestrike. So, in exchange for a 10% reduction in attack speed, you get a 10% change of a double smite?

So, out of a total of 12 smites (before they regenerate), you get on average 1 extra at random? Great for seeing the occasional big number, but that's all it is. And i agree, it was a nerf -- but according to the devs, it was to bring twf and thf dps a bit closer -- far from it; this really kills thf kotc paladins, absolutely kills them, because of all the stuff that procs 100% on glancing blows.

Barbs get 6d6 worth of vicious damage that procs on 100% of glancing blows, so a THF KOTC (with up to 7d6) will only loose slightly more then the example barb.

[Oran_Lathor]

Incorrect.

I have been testing this on lammania and I have to say I disagree with you 110%.

Playing over there has made me see how much we actually do move constantly in combat. If you are not standing completely still, no glances. It is rare that my barbarian gets glancing blow damage anymore except on raid bosses and then, only if I choose not to twitch, and stand there.

Bottom line: You can nerf my numbers, but you cant nerf my playstyle, else I begin voting with my wallet. I actually agree with most of the numbers nerfs, as they make sense. When I have to play my character differently today than I did yesterday to be effective, thats where I and many others will draw the line. TWF does not have to play their toons one iota differently. THF does, or they are less effective. We either all have to start twitching, or we all have to start standing still. Merely chasing down mobs in combat loses ~30% dps. In a large group that #% becomes alot higher. Where are these mobs that stand still in combat again?

Numbers nerfs are fine. Playstyle nerfs are not. Box me in on my playstyle, and the new Star Wars game might start looking better and better.

In light of this, I can't say I disagree. I haven't tested it myself. If people who play THF honestly feel that it negatively affects their gameplay style it sounds to me like some revision is in order.

[Chai]

A lot of the discussion has focused on THF barbs, and other builds for whom glancing blows are a small % of ovarall damage. I have a THF kotc paladin, however, who is getting the kotc/capstone damage destroyed, because it procs on glancing blows. This feature helped make the build very effective dps-wise, much more so than many would think (I realize conventional wisdom is to make every single kotc paladin a twf).

When fighting non-bosses, THF's are moving all the time. So that toon just lost 40% of it's KOTC and capstone damage, in addition to the nerf that all THF builds were getting.

And why, why does this nerf need to happen? Where is lag the most frequent? Shroud parts 4 and 5. Stationary, non-moving targets, where twitching is next to impossible, and as a result, there are practically no moving glancing blows. So it can't possibly be the case that moving glancing blows are creating shroud lag. Correspondingly, I can't see how this nerf helps shroud lag at all. What it DOES do, however, is make me want to retire this character.

With zeal and GTHF rendered irrelevant, and attack speed slowed down, I just don't see how this character will continue to be enjoyable to play.

Barbarian frenzy and death frenzy damage procs on glances. This is 6d6 untyped damage when both are active, and for me this is most of the time, if not all of the time.

If I have to retire my barbarian, I am retiring either to Star Wars TOR, or Final Fantasy. Again, nerf my numbers, and I will usually suck it up. Nerf my playstyle, and I will leave. I am not one of those people who will threaten to leave, and then stay. I vote with my wallet.

[Emili]

I view this as some attempt by the devs to actually "Slow down" the game rate in zerge people play at... not really an anti-lag attempt. Otherwise they would be looking at investing time in reducing the bottlenecks in multiple message packets between server and clients - where lag really exist.

Interesting point is that DDO combat system was put together brilliantly and the pace was such to appeal and cater to the players in flash and style... Truth is movement is the appeal of the game... come trash mobs noone stands still, you're chasing these teleporting devils... you're running from mob to mob ... the only places a TWF see's their full chains are on the stationary bosses or in epics where mob hp outweigh what people deliver in dps, likewise the only place a THF would ever see full attack chains also... at least 70% of the game is chasing around hopping, teleporting, ranging, casting foe... these changes serve in actual practice to render the merits of twf and thf to less effective over a single weapon SnB and thus I can see in future an increase in SnB balanced AC characters as a more preferred melee or death by distance ever more desirable such as in casters and believe it or not ranged.

In a prior thread ... I have stated the changes as compared to live server left me feel like playing all my melee less - that's both my thf and twf builds - was a feeling of the flash and the appeal of the combat system be crippled compared to what it was once... long gone are the blitz, the zerge, the appeal of melee storming the stronghold of the enemy - what's left? Wail of banshee, slaying arrows and running circles round a bb.

[Vanshilar]

I think it's not so much that twitch is dead...for fighters, for example, it may still be preferable to twitch (depending on your stats), since glancing blows contribute a fairly small amount of the overall damage:

http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...&postcount=176

However, for barbarians and paladins, glancing blows provide a significant amount of the overall DPS since both have enhancement damage (6d6 per glancing blow for barbarian frenzy / death frenzy) that proc on every glancing blow. Losing those to twitch means that they lose fair amount of their DPS from not having glancing blows, so for those it'll be better to auto-attack, unless you have so much damage modifiers on your main attack that it overpowers the loss of glancing blows (which it looks like occurs if you have epic marilith chain for +10 seeker instead of +6, if you have 80 str instead of 60 str, and +38 damage modifiers from power attack, bard songs, etc. instead of the original +26 that I used):

http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...&postcount=170

However, because twitch will be roughly comparable to auto-attack for THF, this means that after the update, THF will effectively be given an ~12% decrease in DPS, more like a ~25% decrease in DPS if the epic sword of shadows is being used. My (admittedly not thorough) understanding is that TWF will be decreased by a roughly similar amount, so it seems like, far from the stated goal of decreasing TWF DPS to be similar to THF, they will still be roughly equal to their relative ratios now. In short the update looks like an overall DPS nerf rather than decreasing just one style. If currently TWF contributes more DPS than THF, then it will likely still be true after the update.

[Persnoody]

Incorrect.

I have been testing this on lammania and I have to say I disagree with you 110%.

Playing over there has made me see how much we actually do move constantly in combat. If you are not standing completely still, no glances. It is rare that my barbarian gets glancing blow damage anymore except on raid bosses and then, only if I choose not to twitch, and stand there.

Bottom line: You can nerf my numbers, but you cant nerf my playstyle, else I begin voting with my wallet. I actually agree with most of the numbers nerfs, as they make sense. When I have to play my character differently today than I did yesterday to be effective, thats where I and many others will draw the line. TWF does not have to play their toons one iota differently. THF does, or they are less effective. We either all have to start twitching, or we all have to start standing still. Merely chasing down mobs in combat loses ~30% dps. In a large group that #% becomes alot higher. Where are these mobs that stand still in combat again?

Numbers nerfs are fine. Playstyle nerfs are not. Box me in on my playstyle, and the new Star Wars game might start looking better and better.

Oh yeah, when a caster pops a fire wall what happens, generally they grab all the agro, what does the caster do? run away in a manner of kiting them through their firewall, and with this update, chasing them down and killing them fast has become a lot harder, you also have to think about the mobs that are built to just move around in combat.. kobalds for 1, they appear everywhere in this game.

Trying to challenge us by nerfing us?