Update 7, Patch 1 - Preview Live on Lamannia

[Irinis]

Still no fixes for Bard songs not working on WF? Or is that WAI?

[Kourier]

Well... Considering the short time frame those changes look pretty **** good.

[XaatXuun]

I see that Half-Elves haven't received any beauty treatment yet. They are so ugly almost no one will play them on the live servers. Yes, there are threads to back up that statement.

you could just get a mask ???

Well I'm late, but only recently been able to finally play on Lamannia (YaY )

Not sure what the problems was with starting Vet, I saw no difference

Haven't tried Grotto yet

And late testing the ship

the changing instances, well that is faster, and me likes

I am playing on a old machine so the lag was more noticeable, but it could have been more latency on my end, waiting till later when there is less traffic and see if it was or was not a connection on my end.

I'm just happy because it took me 6 weeks once I started downloading Lamannia to finally getting to log in, sux when one is on a FAP, and limited to the amount of Bandwidith can be used.

[ARcdevil]

How do you fight on the ship is it mobs or is it just attacking the air?

[Thoon]

Still no fixes for Bard songs not working on WF? Or is that WAI?

We are aware of the issue. It did not make it in time for Update 7, Patch 1. Update 8 will be coming up quick though, and it may make it in there. I don't do the scheduling though, so do not interpret that statement as any sort of confirmation or commitment.

[Myrddinman]

With all of the fixes to the Mabar event in 7.1, does that mean that we will see the event again after the patch? Or did I miss something? Thanks.

[sephiroth1084]

Thoon, can you comment on why the hate generation for the Stalwart Defender PrE was fixed, yet that for the Defender of Siberys was not?

[Jacoby]

Fear spell was broken in that it would no longer use the fear animation, scream or cone effect. It was working as an individual target spell with no animation or sound.

I logged onto Lamania, cast the spell utilizing a directional cone but it would not cast. I targeted a mob and cast the spell. The spell animation initiated from the mob and feared the mob and the target next to the mob that was targeted. In simpler terms it is working like a group effect spell instead of a cone effect spell. It's actually quite funny to observe...

[shortdevils]

Thoon, can you comment on why the hate generation for the Stalwart Defender PrE was fixed, yet that for the Defender of Siberys was not?

it was listed in the notes as both being fixed.,,except u mean its not working

[sephiroth1084]

it was listed in the notes as both being fixed.,,except u mean its not working

While functional stances is nice, the decision to make divine righteousness not stack with the stance is pretty poor. +50% threat is not an adequate tool for a s/b character to retain aggro from dps characters on DDO. It should not be a threat loss to activate your stance and lose Song of Recklessness, but it will be.

I play a character who is extremely optimized for dealing damage with 1 hand. I require minimal rampup time even in combat expertise when using divine righteousness. I will not be able to get by using the 50% from the stance when others are dpsing my target. In consequence, I will gain primarily a secondary benefit: extra threat while others are killing Suulomades in tod, for example.

However, my character is optimized to use divine righteousness and can still barely do so effectively. I have the paladin capstone, paladin damage buffs, the Khopesh feat exclusively for my s/b dps, an extremely high strength and great divine might, etc. More of my feats are devoted to DPS than are devoted to my armor class.

Many people have made defender builds, both paladin and fighter, which were defensive in nature, enhancing intimidate, dr, and other defensive effects. These characters remain ineffective, because a 50% threat modifier will not even come close to enabling them to hold aggro; in many cases they are 30-40% dps behind my S/B mode. Not using Khopeshes, having starting strengths well below 17-18, etc are tremendously negative effects on their threat generation. It is really unfortunate that these builds and characters are not supported by the defender lines. Not being specced to deal damage is a gigantic problem to overcome on DDO in general because its so rare that traits that aren't damage dealing are useful. These builds are being told that they are in fact not just usually useless, but always useless and the only way to do the job for which they're created is, again, to max out their dps as much as possible.

This is even worse for fighters, who have no divine righteousness option.

A much better alternative would have been to accord the stances larger bonuses (topping out at +100%, possibly), and then if divine righteousness is intended to be slightly better than stance, reduce its benefit and make it stack.

Right now, you can get better threat generation through investing in 6 paladin levels (divine righteousness) than you can gain from 18 levels of fighter or paladin. The defensive stances are further relative nerfs to threat generation because of the loss of rage effects, especially inspire recklessness. If you want to be a good threat tank on DDO, the last thing you want to do is be a defender, or if you are one, use a defensive stance. Outside their +4 ac modifier, they are entirely inferior to the buffs which they now preclude you from gaining. You gain more damage and more hit points from rage+madstone rage+inspire recklessness than you could possibly garner from defensive stance.

Further, this contributes to the already-noticable factor that defender of siberys is less appealing than stalwart defender:

Defender of Siberys' threat generation is superceded by a level 6 enhancement; hybrid fighter/paladins can stack that enhancement with stalwart stance.

Defender of Siberys provides +1 ac above its dex-bonus/stance modifiers (improved auras). Stalwart defender provides 3 more (1 ac per tier).

Stalwart defender provides static dr/6. Defender of Siberys provides 3 clicky effects that compete with the much more important divine might/divine righteousness for turn undead usage: a magic circle effect, a mass shield of faith effect, and a very powerful 30s buff on a 5m cooldown.

Defender of Siberys provides some useful modifications to generalist paladin abilities (extra lay on hands, extra turn undead attempt) which do help compensate for this drawback.

However, its disturbing when the main focus of both enhancement lines is tanking and armor class, and the fighter line consistently provides larger benefits (ac), unique benefits (dr) or benefit stacking not available to the paladin variant (threat generation). It would be appropriate if the paladin variant contained some of its own inherent, tank-related benefit, like increased healing amplification or something else appropriate to the paladin class. However, it doesn't.

There's also the fact that, now, defender of siberys is gigantically more expensive in terms of AP than stalwart defender, because the standardization of "improved skill" enhancements does not benefit paladins whatsoever, as all their prestige enhancement lines require specific paladin abilities that were not impacted by this change. Defender of Siberys is incredibly expensive in AP terms on the most AP-intensive class in the game.

While I'd agree a stacking +200% threat modifier might have been an outsized compensation for this, in practice paladin tank play will not change more than the tiniest little bit due to this change, as divine righteousness will remain essential for doing the job, and it renders the stance's threat benefit completely obsolete.

This.

Basically, Stalwart was fixed, going from non-functional, to working and useful, while Defender of Siberys went from non-functional, to working and pointless, since 3 tiers of an expensive PrE yields less threat generation than, and doesn't stack with, Divine Righteousness, a paladin enhancement with no prerequisites that costs 1 AP and is available at lvl 6. So, the paladin threat on stance wasn't fixed, it was merely changed to not be non-functional.

[Angelus_dead]

So, the paladin threat on stance wasn't fixed, it was merely changed to not be non-functional.

You're using a sarcastic definition of "not fixed" to indicate your dissatisfaction with the design, which will be unclear to a community relations staffer who's just flipping through changelogs to see if there was literally a bugfix applied to Fighters that Paladins didn't get yet.

I say "design flaw" a lot to emphasis that the problem was in the realm of the designers and not programmers. Like Bluff in combat: technically it's working because you can get another Sneak Attack, but the design fails because the ratio of time to benefit is unfavorable.

[sephiroth1084]

You're using a sarcastic definition of "not fixed" to indicate your dissatisfaction with the design, which will be unclear to a community relations staffer who's just flipping through changelogs to see if there was literally a bugfix applied to Fighters that Paladins didn't get yet.

You're correct.

I think I shouldn't post complaints to the forums while playing Modern Warfare, as I tend to get pretty aggravated. In any case, the sarcasm was warranted.

[Irinis]

We are aware of the issue. It did not make it in time for Update 7, Patch 1. Update 8 will be coming up quick though, and it may make it in there. I don't do the scheduling though, so do not interpret that statement as any sort of confirmation or commitment.

Thank you Thoon... I'll resume crossing my fingers then and hope it's fixed Thoon(tm).

[Sonofmoradin]

We are aware of the issue. It did not make it in time for Update 7, Patch 1. Update 8 will be coming up quick though, and it may make it in there. I don't do the scheduling though, so do not interpret that statement as any sort of confirmation or commitment.

Are you also aware that decay is bugged? Still no official statement regarding that issue, and no fix on patch release notes.

[XaatXuun]

I just found one problem with the the starting ship for Vet Status.

The Half-Orc cannot run up the starboard ramp to the Captain, He's just too big.

it's a minor problem not a game breaker, just need to run up Port side instead, I only found this with the Half-Orc. No problems with Humans or Half-Elfs

[Necrological]

so the DoS stances wont stack with divine righteousness ................phooey. suggestion: make the DoS stances a sacred bonus to hate gen and make divine righteousness a comp bonus to hate gen.. there, everybody is happy.

[sephiroth1084]

so the DoS stances wont stack with divine righteousness ................phooey. suggestion: make the DoS stances a sacred bonus to hate gen and make divine righteousness a comp bonus to hate gen.. there, everybody is happy.

I'd recommend the reverse, actually, that way a paladin/fighter combo would be worthwhile, and maintaining incentives, or at least benefits to multiclassing is important.

My suggestion would be to type Divine Righteousness as a sacred bonus, drop it to 50%, type the hate bonuses on DoS as competence and have them scale up to 100%. That caps out at +150% generation vs. the 300% that we were supposed to have had while DoS was broken, which seems to be the dev's intent.

[Thoon]

Are you also aware that decay is bugged? Still no official statement regarding that issue, and no fix on patch release notes.

We are aware of some issues with guild decay, and I expect them to be addressed on Live very soon.

[Noelemahc]

I'm just curious. Why is it that now you guys finally address the defensive stance threat generation, and then you feel the need nerf the **** out of it? Granted, it didn't work before so we're getting more than we were, but still it's really stupid. 50% threat means garbage if you're a tank against a fully specced out Barb. That's not even the worst part though. Stalwart Defender at least gets a bonus to their prestige now because the extra threat is working. Defender of Siberys does not because for some reason, you guys felt the need to make the threat generation of Defender of Siberys not stack with Divine Righteousness.

Divine Righteousness costs 1 AP, and is available at level 6, same as the first tier of Defender of Siberys. However, Divine Righteousness is 100% threat, as opposed to stance being 25% threat. Is this a joke? That makes the Defender of Siberys prestige worthless in it's entirety. Sure, you get +4 dodge ac at tier 3. AC is worthless in this game, you guys designed it that way. You get +4 str/con... whatever, Knight of the Chalice is still way better for doing damage, which makes that bonus minute and pointless. Saves? Paladins already have overkill saves. So now Defender of Siberys went from a broken prestige, to a pointless prestige and is now the most useless prestige in the game. Defender of Siberys stance should be changed to a competence bonus, same as Stalwart Defender, or completely rewritten to do something different. As of now, it's garbage.

Everyone might as well TR their paladins to half-orc barbarians. At least then you could use the brute fighting enhancements (which are cheaper than the Defender of Siberys prestiges and do better at threat generation) and hate tank anything all day long. Barbs also have intim as a class skill, so there is no reason to be a paladin tank ever.

[Tom318]

+1 add the horrible throwing weapon sounds too, and I am in.

(however love the new arrow sounds)

/signed.. omg the throwing weapon sounds :P