Intimidate Useless

[Kourier]

I must of missed that somewhere I'll have to look into that.

Still a bit worried about this change over all however like I said I really enjoyed the idea of 'forcing' the mobs into a state that all they could think about was must smash Bowser however possible. Even if at times it was boring the idea that I could take everything they had via another method besides 1000's of hp's....not that I didn't have my fair share of HP's too.

You can still do that somewhat... Intimidate still locks mobs for about 5 seconds, but the timer is longer...

[Dragaer]

Do you realize how ineffective glorious stand is, or that stalwart defenders gain 2 more ac from their prestige than paladins do?

And stalwarts gain passive dr too.

No Junts, I do not. Having never played a pally but have read that they get to use a turn for one minute of 20dr. Does it not work that way?

Stalwarts do get passive dr...6. Compared to 40 while shield blocking (what we are used to) is rather meh.

Listen, I know how important DPS is. My SD is as DPS focused as he can be (WF Feats, WS Feats, TWF Khopesh, haste boost 4 etc. etc). Norm VoD? No problem. TWF all the way. But hard/elite ToD for example, that blocking DR is pretty important (to me). I do not have the gear or the HP to do otherwise.

I said earlier that I build him after playing a healer for awhile. He was built for a specific reason - AC and DR, to make the healers job easier. I studied the SD PRE, read other builds and learned the mechanics as best I could. I have not been posting as an us (SD) vs them (DoS)...I've been posting to find out if what I built my char off of is no longer valid (+ to AC and blocking DR). I have not been using the palli stuff for my examples to belittle that class (I know how important they are to you)...just using the DoS line as examples as to why I chose SD, how it is changing - and what I would want to continue to play it (DR DR DR).

If it changes it changes, I'm not going to cry about it. But I do want to understand what is happening to one of the classes that I play, and know if it is viable in the future.

[Junts]

No Junts, I do not. Having never played a pally but have read that they get to use a turn for one minute of 20dr. Does it not work that way?

Stalwarts do get passive dr...6. Compared to 40 while shield blocking (what we are used to) is rather meh.

Listen, I know how important DPS is. My SD is as DPS focused as he can be (WF Feats, WS Feats, TWF Khopesh, haste boost 4 etc. etc). Norm VoD? No problem. TWF all the way. But hard/elite ToD for example, that blocking DR is pretty important (to me). I do not have the gear or the HP to do otherwise.

I said earlier that I build him after playing a healer for awhile. He was built for a specific reason - AC and DR, to make the healers job easier. I studied the SD PRE, read other builds and learned the mechanics as best I could. I have not been posting as an us (SD) vs them (DoS)...I've been posting to find out if what I built my char off of is no longer valid (+ to AC and blocking DR). I have not been using the palli stuff for my examples to belittle that class (I know how important they are to you)...just using the DoS line as examples as to why I chose SD, how it is changing - and what I would want to continue to play it (DR DR DR).

If it changes it changes, I'm not going to cry about it. But I do want to understand what is happening to one of the classes that I play, and know if it is viable in the future.

Glorious stand provides dr 20, half damage from elemental energy and double healing amp for 30 seconds..with a 300 second cooldown.

As you can imagine, that is extremely powerful, but so rarely available that it isn't a significant factor in any fight in DDO except maybe the end of vod (bats). Also, turns are a resource that paladins need for a lot of other stuff, and are quite limited in number. the intimidate threat buff may reduce turn pressure somewhat, as I know I will rarely, if ever, need divine righteousness anymore.

You certainly have less dr now. On the other hand, you can actually contribute, maintain aggro while doing other things, etc.

As a whole, stalwart defenders have a larger host of Prestige bonuses. The main benefits paladin tanks have are generic paladin abilities and enhancements (like the capstone and associated better boss weaponry/threat, divine righteousness, and superior saving throws etc).

I would be quite open to seeing glorious tsand modified in some way that it's an advantage of my prestige line. Where you guys are getting 2 dr and 1 ac per tier, we're getting, respectively, the ability to use a rare resource (turns) to provide a spell we can cast (magic circle vs evil), the ability to use a turn to cast mass shield of faith, glorious stand, and +1 to the ac and saves auras at the top tier. This leaves you guys 2 ac and 6 dr ahead with all other things equal (though usually we're ahead because we have our own aura). In return we get a variety of things that we have anyway (protection 5, magic circle).

Fighters will also have an easier time gaining improved shield bash for extra threat (and need it more, since no capstone) and shield mastery (percentile dr is better in general, too), as paladins have very limited feat availability. You can have those abilities and still gain the twf line. Paladins won't have that option.

At the moment, only paladins can threat tank with a shield due to divine righteousness, however, I will rarely, if ever, use righteousness after these intimidate changes because I won't need to go above 185% threat bonus (35% items, 50% stance, 100% intimidate bonus). While fighters can't tank with a silver epic chaosblade, I suspect you guys will be able to generate more than enough threat to get the job done, especially with the advantage of having superior dps when you are not tanking. My silver epic sos is only better dps than what you have when I'm running tower: in every epic, a twf-using stalwart is a better dpser than I am, and that's most of the game.

The thing that's lost out here is lailat intimitanking, which is a pretty stupid strategy anyway (in terms of being able to work, not in terms of being ineffective). Being completely non-interactive with the game should be a rare, situational thing (your healer died, you block for a while to reduce damage), not a strategy. I used to intimitank this way, and its just ..so..boring, I could never go back after having developed reliable threat tanking back in Mod8 (righteousness+levik's bonus).

[stockwizard5]

No, they just made the characters who choose to sit around pressing the intimidate button while blocking reevaluate their life choices and consider using a weapon.

My Double TR Intimi-Cleric who "sits around pressing the intimidate button" ... and oh ya ... buffing, debuffing, healing, and generally letting the entire party/raid have a blast is going to enjoy "reevaluating" her life choices

Wonder what weapon will hold off the Kensai's, The Raging Barb's, The Nuking Sorc's?

[lugoman]

I said earlier that I build him after playing a healer for awhile. He was built for a specific reason - AC and DR, to make the healers job easier.

I do wonder where the healers are in this thread. To be honest it wont really effect my tank very much. With intim moving me to the top of the hate list plus the threat from SD, Leviks (bracer and dt) and intim temp bonus hate - I dont think I will have any trouble keeping agro while dueling dwarven axes. It just means I will have a lot less ac and dr so I will need to be healed more. I wonder who a healer would prefer now, a 650hp Stalwart fighter with ok ac or an 800hp barb with no ac?

[Lifespawn]

I do wonder where the healers are in this thread. To be honest it wont really effect my tank very much. With intim moving me to the top of the hate list plus the threat from SD, Leviks (bracer and dt) and intim temp bonus hate - I dont think I will have any trouble keeping agro while dueling dwarven axes. It just means I will have a lot less ac and dr so I will need to be healed more. I wonder who a healer would prefer now, a 650hp Stalwart fighter with ok ac or an 800hp barb with no ac?

how about the intimitanking wf sorc with 36 blocking dr and self healing not to mention a DoD to go off soaking up even more i was a healers dream never had to do anything for me never had to waste pots poor healers.

[Jendrak]

Pretty sure the other comments in this thread about the buffer being set to 0 by accident is a clear statement that intimidate is broken. Whether it will get fixed before this goes live is another story.

While common sense agrees with ya its been made very apperant that the Devs do roll a 1 on that skill check. Just trying to help avoid that.....again.

It was definitely not working in an especially interesting manner. Intimidate didn't work with DPS before, which was an issue, and tended to promote a very stagnant sort of gameplay that promoted the creation of characters that were rather useless in the majority of situations. This at least is dynamic and more interesting.

While it may have not been "espically interesting" it was working just fine. Maybe its just the mechanic side of me but if it aint broke don't fix it. As for the characters that were useless in the majority of situations that problem lies between the chair and the keyboard and not in the intim mechanic itself. This dynamic flushes most if not all high AC(85+), high (70+)intim builds right down the tubes. You might as well either TR into an exploiter build hate tank or delete it all together which after monthes of grinding gear and favor to attain is BS imo. If a change has to be done (which i dont believe it does) then there has to be a better way to do it.

I don't think it will be completely useless. There are still some situations where intimiblocking will be useful. For instance, on the last boss of Epic Devil Assault while the party is clearing everything that spawns with him, you're likely better off hitting intimidate and blocking than attacking at that point. If players are dying around you it may be better to block as well. If you're in a weak ToD group that still wants to take Sulu down, you could hit an intimidate after everyone has broken off for Sulu and block with aggro (likely go make a sandwich with a brick on the block button) until they're done.

Ok.....so our builds that we have been working on for months has gone from a viable option for completing some of the major end fights to being demoted to second hand alterative for a weak group and you don't see a problem with this?

If it was some kinda of oversight in how something works or even the intimatanks useing some kind of glitch/exploit I could understand loseing the viability of a build. However, to just have a mechanic randomly changed and be told sorry guys but we are gonna screw up your build and no we don't really care is pretty harsh to say the least.

It just won't be the primary focus of the PrE for many players who have managed to ignore the other benefits. I will say, though, that it would be really good if the devs good make attaining some AC gear a little easier, as intimiblocking was a sort of filler for characters interested in tanking, but lacking the excessive gear required for hate tanking.

Then what should be the focus of a PrE designed for high AC and intim????? The whole purpose of this PrE has always been to draw agro (via intim or hate) and hold it while the attacks fail against you massive AC, HP, and DR. With these changes the DR, blocking AC, and Blocking DR ( a huge portion of the build) are useless since you will have to be swinging a weapon and not getting any of these benifits. Hence, they need to be reworked into something more usefull like an increased inherant DR (say 10/- instead of 6/-) and possibly AC or even better threat mod (75% instead of 50%).

As for gear of anykind being easier to acquire.......HELL NO!!!!!! You want the high end stuff then you need to work for it just like rest of us. Alot of the problems in DDO have been a result of the Monty Hall loot and this would just make the problem worse.

[Maegin]

No, they just made the characters who choose to sit around pressing the intimidate button while blocking reevaluate their life choices and consider using a weapon.

My first character in DDO was an attempt at an AC tank.
My second character in DDO was an AC intimitank.
My first reincarnation of a character in DDO was from a weak AC intimitank to a hybrid AC-hate/intimitank.
My second reincarnation of a character in DDO was from a strong AC-hate/intimitank to a very strong AC-HATE/intimitank...

And I'm perfectly happy with the changes.

For every build thread I've seen with someone trying to build an intimitank, I've advocated leveling up in Strength and picking up Power Attack and Improved Critical, if not also one of GTWF or GTHF. The better players/character builders have made similar suggestions, while those who have chosen to take the narrowest possible outlook and turn that into their character's one and only function are in trouble now.

Building around a single strategy is usually a bad idea. Building around a single strategy that ignores your other inherent strengths is a bad idea. Building around a single strategy that is really only very useful in 1% or less of the content is a pretty terrible idea.

Building around a single strategy that ignores your inherent strengths and that is really only very useful in 1% or less of the content was a downright foolish idea, and now those people are complaining about their bad decisions coming back to bite them in the ass. The good news is that if you have already ground out the gear to be an effective intimiblocker, you probably are most of the way to being an effective hate tank and just need a few feat swaps or a Lesser Reincarnate to fix any major issues.

This was my point for this thread. Glad to see now you can't just hide behinde a towershield, with no contribution to dps, and clame your 'helping the party'.

It seems now intimi only makes your attacks draw more threat, instead of a skill subsituting for a sword. Now, you have to attack to multiply your threat, and intimi helps. Don't keep up the dps, your intimi wont help you. Nice.

[phalaeo]

I don't think you appreciate how drastic this change is. Its a bit like building a wizard to 20 and then being told that spells that target enemies no longer work and you will have to play as a buffer from now on.

Many characters are built primarily to intimidate enemies and hold their attention. In lamania this is frankly not possible any more. Its not less effective, its utterly ineffective.

It takes a lot of work and investment and pretty much flushes it. (Again, as its currently working.)

The voice of reason in this case is to acknowledge that it is currently non-functional and not a change we should have in the game under these conditions. If you don't play an intimidate based tank, you should probably reserve your judgement.

Um, she does play an Epic geared Intimidate based tank as one of her main characters, which she stated in her post.

[sephiroth1084]

While it may have not been "espically interesting" it was working just fine. Maybe its just the mechanic side of me but if it aint broke don't fix it. As for the characters that were useless in the majority of situations that problem lies between the chair and the keyboard and not in the intim mechanic itself. This dynamic flushes most if not all high AC(85+), high (70+)intim builds right down the tubes.

If you have 85+ AC why aren't you attacking?! That's enough AC to be seeing mostly misses for Horoth on elite. If that was only while blocking, go work toward the last few pieces of AC gear to get up that high when not blocking and just run normal in the meantime.

You know what I do with my intimi-hate-tank when he's buffed to 85 AC? I HIT THINGS! And when they try to hit me back, I mostly see MISS. Yeah, you lose some DR, but the difference isn't that huge. Heck, I typically tank Horoth on normal without a shield at all if we have a bard along! I bust out a 2-hander and swing for the fences with enough AC to not get hit. The DR isn't that important. Sure, it's the difference between a cleric sitting on Horoth's ass with their aura running and going AFK and their having to actually use some mana to heal you, but you're still not eating up much of their SP. I'm frequently complimented on how easy I am to heal through ToD due to high AC and good healing amp.

How were you dealing with getting stunned just before intimidate came off cooldown previously? Were you just running after Horoth at that point and bringing him back?

Sure, I've done ToDs where I intimiblocked, and some of the smoothest I've done had Maddon, a better intimitank than my character, doing his thing on Horoth while I tanked Sulu with either hate or intimidate. And you know what? Even when I was impressed with his ability to stand there and take no damage, and to have enough HP to not be at any real risk of dying to Disintegrate, I thought that I just couldn't play a character who was built to do nothing else. Intimidate was a really poorly implemented before as it ignored many of the features of the game. Now you have to work a little bit to do what you were doing before. Swinging a weapon is fun. You'll like it.

Ok.....so our builds that we have been working on for months has gone from a viable option for completing some of the major end fights to being demoted to second hand alterative for a weak group and you don't see a problem with this?

Look at it this way: instead of being third or fourth rate party members in 99% of the fights out there because you focused all of your energy on standing around and blocking, you'll become a 1st or 2nd rate contributor in 99% of the fights because you have learned to come out from behind your shield and look at the light.

Then what should be the focus of a PrE designed for high AC and intim????? The whole purpose of this PrE has always been to draw agro (via intim or hate) and hold it while the attacks fail against you massive AC, HP, and DR.

If you had enough blocking AC to avoid most attacks before, you should still have enough to avoid at least some of the attacks now while swinging a weapon, with the difference likely coming down to a few more pieces of gear or a feat swap here or there.

As for gear of anykind being easier to acquire.......HELL NO!!!!!! You want the high end stuff then you need to work for it just like rest of us. Alot of the problems in DDO have been a result of the Monty Hall loot and this would just make the problem worse.

No. What I want is for being an AC hate tank to be at least remotely similar to being a high-DPS character in terms of loot grinding. A difference of 5-10 points of DPS is much less than of 5-10 points of AC, while acquiring 5-10 points of AC gear is typically much more difficult than acquiring 5-10 more points of DPS. When you consider that most DPS improvements are rather easy to come by, or have easy to acquire alternatives vs. the incredibly limited nature of AC gear, you should see that as a problem.

It's also a problem that AC gear takes up nearly every slot on a character, while DPS gear tends to allow more room, and have more equivalent alternatives. Aside from the Bloodstone, how many ML 9-11 items are DPS characters wearing? How many are AC toons wearing because no alternatives have been released?

[Jendrak]

I understand hiding behind your shield and spamming intimidate wasn't the most 'fun' thing in the world but it sure felt good to stand in front of a boss and just dare him to try to take you down with all he's got and still be left standing after he tossed everything at you and the kitchen sink too (sure the healers helped make this happen too) but it was a viable strategy it was fun for me and I enjoyed it.

I ran off of a hybrid of the "Big Rock Candy Mountain" build I swung my khopesh's when I wasn't intimidating a boss I contributed too. But now the other side of the coin for my favorite toon seems to be in peril.

Can we perhaps instead of removing "hiding behind your shield" institute some way to attack from behind your shield? Get some passive dr from holding a shield even? There has to be some alternative to make shields attractive other than getting AC and not using their other function of preventing damage too.

This brings an interestign thought to mind......shield bashing.


Seriously though, if they gave shield bashing a serious boost i.e. gave improved shield bash feat or the SD/DoS PrE's extra threat gen or dmg and allowed WF and WS bludgeon to work with shields this would allow for the dynamic changes to Intim while still maintaining some sort of viability with current intim builds with minimal respecing. Grated it would have to be on hell of a boost but its an idea.

[sephiroth1084]

Seriously though, if they gave shield bashing a serious boost i.e. gave improved shield bash feat or the SD/DoS PrE's extra threat gen or dmg and allowed WF and WS bludgeon to work with shields this would allow for the dynamic changes to Intim while still maintaining some sort of viability with current intim builds with minimal respecing. Grated it would have to be on hell of a boost but its an idea.

That is something I might support, though I'm not sure they could possibly balance it to be enough hate to work. Shields are worse than basically every other weapon for DPS based on their stats alone. Add to that the incredibly slow swing speed and (current) inability for shields to bypass DR... The amount of hate they would have to add to the attack would be so high that even small increases in damage would likely make it impossible to ever overcome the basher's threat.

[Junts]

That is something I might support, though I'm not sure they could possibly balance it to be enough hate to work. Shields are worse than basically every other weapon for DPS based on their stats alone. Add to that the incredibly slow swing speed and (current) inability for shields to bypass DR... The amount of hate they would have to add to the attack would be so high that even small increases in damage would likely make it impossible to ever overcome the basher's threat.

Actually, this update makes it so adamantine shields bypass adamantine, and mithral bypass both silver and mithral.

in theory, capstone paladins could bypass with the new shield bash hooks on improved shield bash. Of course, capstone paladins need another threat bonus the way they need a second appendix at this point.

There's probably a cha-based paladin tank out there that uses them to increase their threat cause they have like 22 str or something.

[sephiroth1084]

Actually, this update makes it so adamantine shields bypass adamantine, and mithral bypass both silver and mithral.

in theory, capstone paladins could bypass with the new shield bash hooks on improved shield bash. Of course, capstone paladins need another threat bonus the way they need a second appendix at this point.

There's probably a cha-based paladin tank out there that uses them to increase their threat cause they have like 22 str or something.

Heheheh. (at the appendix comment)

You think shield bashing can contribute enough DPS + hate to retain aggro?

[Jendrak]

That is something I might support, though I'm not sure they could possibly balance it to be enough hate to work. Shields are worse than basically every other weapon for DPS based on their stats alone. Add to that the incredibly slow swing speed and (current) inability for shields to bypass DR... The amount of hate they would have to add to the attack would be so high that even small increases in damage would likely make it impossible to ever overcome the basher's threat.

Actually, this update makes it so adamantine shields bypass adamantine, and mithral bypass both silver and mithral.

in theory, capstone paladins could bypass with the new shield bash hooks on improved shield bash. Of course, capstone paladins need another threat bonus the way they need a second appendix at this point.

There's probably a cha-based paladin tank out there that uses them to increase their threat cause they have like 22 str or something.

The real trick would be how to impliment DR beaking into a SD??? Pally's got intim to shore up the inherent weakness for pally intims so it would onyl be right that a SD get treatment in kind. Although the new crafting system thats comming may go a long way to help this out as logn as the Devs allow shields to be crafted witht he same enchantments as weapons and maybe even GS shields would be an option. However, since I can almost guarentee that nothign like this has been looked at it would take soem time for them to do it.

Heheheh. (at the appendix comment)

You think shield bashing can contribute enough DPS + hate to retain aggro?

Well, its not just the shield DPS but guards as well. Any tank that hasn't put as many different guards on as possible is seriously missing a huge part of the build since even a glancing blow with 0 dmg can proc them. So combined with DPS, HATE, rework of feats and enhancments, and some creative crafting made available it could do the trick.

[Junts]

Heheheh. (at the appendix comment)

You think shield bashing can contribute enough DPS + hate to retain aggro?

I tihnk you need to re-read improved shield bash: it now provides additional shield blows while you are meleeing. I have no idea how good they are or how frequent they are or how hard they hit, but if you were needing more threat, they're a potential answer.

[Jendrak]

I tihnk you need to re-read improved shield bash: it now provides additional shield blows while you are meleeing. I have no idea how good they are or how frequent they are or how hard they hit, but if you were needing more threat, they're a potential answer.

Hmmmm....didn't know this. Might have to take a look and see exactly how good they are.

[IronClan]

Why?

Summon Archon, Intimidate Monster, Hit Monster, Shield Block, Let Archon attack to keep aggro.

Edit: Add on a Divine Judgement for all that lovely light damage.

The Archon early reports are 40 ish damage every 3 seconds so no.

[IronClan]

Eladrin, here's the way I'm looking at this, I have a freshly capped DoS S&B Pali

I have a "DPS mode" (THF)

And moderate Intim (full ranks, about 45-ish with items and AC gear on) enough to "do orthons in VOD"....

I have okay DPS while S&B...

I have sacrificed nearly every gear slot to obtain "workable" (but not in epic where I'll be hit on a 2 or 3) end game AC and nearly every AP to obtain usefull trash Intim and AC... I already swing my weapon instead of turtle. But I feel like this change will eliminate any chance my hate tank + trash intim has to keep (for example) Orthons in VOD intimed... My Tank role and playstyle have most likely been heavily nerfed out of existence even with +hate, because DPS builds will out DPS my build with no difficulty, and pure Hate tank TWF builds will also out DPS me, and shortly take agro even with massive hate Gen... because a DoS or SD build gives so much up in DPS for defensive ability.

THAT IS THE DESIGN OF THE PrE! You sacrifice DPS Enhancements to get better S&B AC and Intim/hate.

So can you please redesign the DoS (and Stalwart Defender) PrE's to provide some S&B DPS benefit where your new Intim paradigm and the broken (all in or you'll never get within a working AC range) AC have made those PrE's no where REMOTELY worth the opportunity cost?

I put a hell of a lot of thought and energy and gear grind into this character, I've lead PUG Titan raid completions, no one runs that raid in pug groups...

Why make a playstyle that sacrifices so much ALREADY, now completely pointless?

No I don't mean zero DPS shield hiders... I mean plain old S&B DoS Pali's and Stalwarts... My DPS option is now my only role in the party,,, Which means I need to buy a TR or an LR and reroll my character so that I'm "all in" for DPS.

Yay for all in DPS builds that is so what this game needs more of...

[LordDamax]

The hate does not degrade

Isn't that Khyber's motto?

That'd be Xoriat, actually.

Ok, so, gonna ask because it matters to a toon of mine who I thought was dead, but after reading E's posts I think he may still be viable.

I'd assume so, but would like clarification.

Damage from guards would apply for the hate multipliers, correct?

My intimi-porcupine-turtle build needs to know if he should be scrapped or tweaked. He's a lv 17 (hes been shelved) barbarian with a 10 base strength because I never intended him to attack anything (barbarian for DR, Con, and rage-buffed con). Also a dwarf praying for the day you finally allow Dwarves to take the Defender fighter PrE. Intim, turtle up, and let his 14+ guards do the work while he takes no damage.

Looks like he WILL have to swing a bit after popping an intim, but between his tower shield, a high intim score, and a few wacks after hitting intim he SHOULD be able to hold that aggro for a bit. Maybe. Time will tell. Seems I should level him up to 20 finally.