A Call to Improve the Viability of Elves

[AltheaSteelrain]

Whatever the devs decide how to boost my favored race, I just hope they don't charge us for an upgrade of a f2p race.

That's all

[painindaguild]

at least now its clear to evryone elves indeed did extinct...

[AylinIsAwesome]

I've updated the OP with some more suggestions people have made. Hopefully the devs'll notice this thread and we'll see some improvement to the race by U9.

[grodon9999]

These numbers sometimes give increasing returns per AP spent, but that's okay. Bonus spell points inherently give diminishing returns. The first 50 bonus spell points on a Ranger means he can afford to cast his buffs. Give him another 50, and what can he do? Cast the same buffs again? It's useful, but nowhere near as useful as that first 50 sp. Meanwhile, Wizards have a LOT of good enhancements to choose from. The spell point bonus needs to constitute actual firepower at the level where they get it.

If he takes the Maximize feat he can heal the heck out of himself . . . but I digress . . .

Many good ideas presented here none of which are over-powering and I've seen no objection to any of it. Hopefully the devs are reading this stuff.

[der_kluge]

/signed

They need something more.

Problem is, elves are also the weakest race in PnP. And since DDO is *largely* based on the PnP rules, stuff that is gimp there, also makes it way into the game here.

Part of the problem is that some of the stuff that doesn't translate to DDO doesn't get copied over, and thus creates slight balance issues. Elves in PnP get low-light vision, but there isn't any such thing in DDO, so that's an advantage PnP elves have over their DDO cousins.

I rolled an elf cleric just because I wanted to, but I knew it wasn't the most optimum choice. Elves really do suffer quite a bit overall.

[noinfo]

Since they sre suppsosedly meant to be superb twf'ers why not give them some nice double strikechances on their favored weps or maybe melee alacrity with favs weps becuase they are one of the more dexterous.

Actually, historically (kind of a joke with dnd ) the drow are the best 2wf (see 1st ed Fiend Folio)

I have suggested before an option for them to choose as an alternative to current favoured weapon, a weapon set bonus while dual weilding:

+1/+2 to hit/damage while dual weilding any weapon. This would lock out bonus to rapier/ss.
fully specced would give +2 to hit and +2 to damage.

I would also have a defense line while 2weapon fighting for them the equivalent to DAM of up to +2 stacking.

[QuantumFX]

I'd lower the AP costs. On some build's it's so AP-tight (my kensai for example) that I was literally forced to take Khopesh. And for those builds that aren't AP-tight, so what?

Then it would need to be another universal change and affect half-orcs as well. I would probably go 2/2 AP cost then. (1/2 and 1/1 seem to be unusually low costs IMHO.)

Another fun option would be to allow Racial Attack I count as Weapon Focus for Warchanter and Arcane Archer and Greater Weapon Focus for Kensai II. Also, count Racial Attack II count as Superior Weapon Focus for Kensai III.

(Interesting note here: the racial weapons seem to be Early-DDO's way of emulating the Racial weapon affinity feat from Races of Eberron. Basically the feat is Weapon Focus: Racial Weapons.)

[Noctus]

Problem is, elves are also the weakest race in PnP.

Thats Half-Elves.


Humans have their cool Bonus Feat and extra skillpoints, Elves have lowlight vision and several really nice racial Prestige and/or substitution stuff.


Halfelves get +2 to Diplomacy....

[QuantumFX]

Elves have lowlight vision and several really nice racial Prestige and/or substitution stuff.

Funny you should mention that… I was thinking more race restricted PrE's would also help solve the problem. (Now, if only good PrE's came at us at a faster pace…)

[voodoogroves]

Thats Half-Elves.


Humans have their cool Bonus Feat and extra skillpoints, Elves have lowlight vision and several really nice racial Prestige and/or substitution stuff.


Halfelves get +2 to Diplomacy....

In 3.5; in 4e they are one of the stronger.

But yeah ... poor, poor elves. They wish they were Whisper Gnomes.

[Delolith]

Actually what people said in this thread about TWF is correct. TWF was always the idiom of drow. Elves mainly fight with single weapons (no shield, no 2h weapons). I would like to see an enhancement line for elves corresponding to old 3.5 bladesinger AC bonus. When wielding a single weapon in one hand and empty offhand and wear light armor you gain your intelligence as "dodge" AC bonus.

Also in order to bring in par this enhancement line with other DPS options they could introduce the "Flurry" of bladesingers as another enhancement line giving 20% permanent increase in attack speed (stacking with haste and fighter boost) when wielding a single (non 2h) weapon.

This should give some nice "character" back to the ancient race.

[MrCow]

Another thought to add to the pot would be more potent metamagics, such as a racial enhancement for making Extend last longer, Empower/Maximize adding a bit more to numeric spell aspects, Heighten increasing cast spells at a spell level 1 higher than standard, and Enlarge having a longer cast range.

The sorcerer capstone partly piggy-backs off of Empower's coding to add its +20% spell damage so there may be fragments of this already implemented for use.

[soulaeon]

Infravision!

[Kaiserkreuz]

I would use the 3 most popular settings as references since Eberron is ?

Actually halflings and gnomes are the ones who deal the smallest damage in PnP because they receives a penalty on their weapon damage due to their their size. Refer to 3.5 Players Handbook page 114 conversion table of medium weapons to tiny weapons.

What actually make things inconsistent here are the imbalances due to the enhancements which they need to fix. They also need to make Racial Prestige Classes only available to that certain race coughs ..ehem ehem.. Arcane Archer.

Elves are not weak in PnP version coz they have access to their very strong racial prestige classes. I personally play a elf Knight/Champion of Corellon (not available to Eberron setting) in PnP and the only thing that hit me is a critical. Regarding two weapon fighting, Elves prefer to fight with two weapons but they commonly use the longsword and short sword style. While drows prefer using the twin sword style (using the same type of weapon on both hands) TWF are not something to be attached only to drows they are only popular because of using that said style. Guess they should give the elven race an enhancement on using Two Weapon Fighting regarding what style. Or they could give Elves their Elven Slim Sword and Elven Court Blade.

I think the ones most hit hard here are Drow unfortunately they are just that cool here.

[Mister_Peace]

I would like to see a racial enhancement that gives an elf a small stacking bonus to run speed.

[painindaguild]

why not improve scimitar enhancements more? scimitars are great weapons with a nice threat range, and with double or triple enhancement benefits they will become greatly more viable giving the elfs a nice niche in the melee. or something like extend enhancements wich would benefit casters.

in each case i always learned that in these type of games u vary between glass cannons and lower dps tanks. not in ddo, here the highest hp also does the most damage, effectively killing other ways to play the game.
just looks to me that races that get serious penaltys should also get serious benefits.

[Artos_Fabril]

I'm not sure I'd say "most dexterous", since Halflings have the same DEX and are also better for AC characters (yay +1 free AC from being tiny), but I do see your point.

I think it might me more accurate to say "most agile" or possibly "fastest".

If they hadn't just made a pass through eliminating haste bonuses, I'd have suggested something like +2.5% haste added to the Aernal/Valenar weapon enhancements. Perhaps this would work with doublestrike just as well.

Damage lines:
Aernal: +1/+2 damage, +2%/+4% doublestrike chance (2/4 AP)
Valenar: +1/+2 damage and +2%/+4% doublestrike with scimitars, +2/+4 damage and +2%/+4% doublestrike with falchions (2/4 AP)
Drow: +1/+2 damage, +2/+4% doublestrike with shorswords and rapiers, +2/+4 damage with shuriken

Accuracy lines:
Aernal: +1/+2 to hit, -3%/-6% fortification with rapiers, +1/+2 to hit, +1/+3 stacking seeker bonus with longswords. (2/4 AP)
Valenar: +1/+2 to hit, +1%/+2% (stacking) doublestrike with scimitars, +1/+2 to hit, +7%/+15% glancing blow damage with falchions.
Drow: +1/+2 to hit, -3%/-6% fortification with shortswords and rapiers, +1/+2 to hit with shuriken

Special enhancements: (2AP each, requires full relevant enhancement line (8AP Pre-req, 10 total)
Aernal Rapier Mastery: +1% doublestrike, -4% fortification with rapiers
Aernal Longsowrd Mastery: +1% doublestrike and +1 crit multiplier with longswords (bringing LS to khopesh level damage in the hands of a trained elf)
Valenar Scimitar Mastery: +4% doublestrike with scimitars
Valenar Falchion Mastery: +1% doublestrike and 10% glancing blow damage with falchions.
Drow Rapier Mastery: +1% doublestrike, -4% fortification with rapiers
Drow Shortsword Mastery: -4% fortification, +1 crit multiplier with shortswords (shortsword still worse damage profile than khopesh, but with fort bypass and benefit of being light weapon)
Drow Shuriken Mastery: +4 to crit range, +1 to crit multiplier, +10% attack speed with shuriken (LOL, let's see some Thousand Stars specced drow monks!)

[Alabore]

Lots of sensible suggestions to tweak offence.
I would mention defence being still weak - maybe a stacking PrE-based blur-like effect, which would make sense with the whole "not getting hit in the first place" philosophy.

[Artos_Fabril]

Caster ideas:

Elven Arcane Fluidity needs to be scrapped, it's just plain ****, and as many melees as you see wearing robes, I don't see any casters strapping on armor. Elven Arcanum is basically worthless too, if only because the RoI is terrible, much easier to fix, but I don't see a way to make it good enough, without some other addition to make elves a viable caster race until and unless they get a caster PrE (Spellsword, or maybe an elven archmage). Elven Divines... basically get shafted straight up. So here's what I've come up with.

(Requires ability to cast arcane spells)
Elven Arcane Rapidity I: Decrease cast time by 5% for all arcane spells.
Elven Arcane Rapidity II: Decrease Casting time by 5% for all arcane spells, reduce cooldown for all arcane spells by 5%
Elven Arcane Rapidity III: Decrease cast time by 10% for all arcane spells, reduce cooldown for all arcane spells by 5%
Elven Arcane Rapidity IV: Decrease Casting time by 10% for all arcane spells, reduce cooldown for all arcane spells by 10%

(Requires ability to cast arcane spells, Magic Training feat)
Elven Arcanum I: Increase spell points by 40
Elven Arcanum II: Increase spell points by 50 (90 total), decrease all metamagic costs by 1
Elven Arcanum III: Increase spell points by 60 (150 total), decrease all metamagic costs by 1 (2 total)
Elven Arcanum IV: Increase spall points by 75 (225 total), decrease all metamagic costs by 1 (3 total)

Elven Arcanum Majora: Increase all spell DCs by 1, +1 to all caster level checks to overcome spell resistance (Requires Elven Arcanum IV, level 15, Arcane casting)

(Requires Favored/Follower of the Undying)
Boon of the Ancestors I: Increase spell points by 25
Boon of the Ancestors II: Increase spell points by 35 (total 60)
Boon of the Ancestors III: Increase spell points by 50 (110 total)
Boon of the Ancestors IV: Increase spell points by 65 (175 total)

Elven Arcane Heritage I-IV: (4/3/2/1 AP) As half-elf wizard dilettante (AP order reversed to reflect the benefit of 1st level granting wand use vs later levels)

[Artos_Fabril]

Lots of sensible suggestions to tweak offence.
I would mention defence being still weak - maybe a stacking PrE-based blur-like effect, which would make sense with the whole "not getting hit in the first place" philosophy.

Unfortunately, defense is inherently weak in DDO. AC is either a focus or a throw-away, there are a few items *coughMabarCloakchough* that give blur-like effects, and the elven dragonmark gives displacement at tier 2, which Phiarlain Dragonmark Heir is likely to expound on, when and if it ever comes out.