Wings wings wings: A Discussion

[omen33]

I believe the original notion was a step in the right direction, but now we're limiting things to a flat rate. Paladins, Bards, and Cleric abilities are based on their stats, in part, enhancements, in part, and Gear -- for example, items with Anthem built in. There is NOTHING currently existing to buoy this change in a Favored Soul, unless there is some "Winged" advantage added to the "Angel of Vengeance" Prestige Class.....

Maybe an item that gives 2-4 to the total uses after resting like the Frenzied Berserker set does for rages. (This seems the best bet)

or an item the sets the recharge timer to 10 secs (This may be a bit op).

or even an item that recharges your uses when you get hit in combat (Same proc rate as a Con Op item?, I like this the best)

[voodoogroves]

I think it'd still be fine to also have chains cancel wings ... let's actually solve the problem.


Otherwise you may just end up with multi-FVS groups tag-teaming who is kiting when, and no one wants that either.

[mournbladereigns]

I find it amusing that you are targetting the ability that makes FvS really awesome at taking down trash mobs and soloing, but is not really the integral part of why they are awesome in groups and in boss fights.

I have to agree here. Nerfing Divine PUnishment, Plus giving bosses more ranged attack tactics/counters makes more sense, since it is the OP factor here. Though better wind dance on my Sorc is ok

1. Give players new movement and or attack abilities.

2. Players with good twitch combat skills start ruling the game.

3. Nerf ability instead of mitigating the system.

4. Fail.

Q: Now chai, what do you mean about mitigating the system?

A: Instead of having two spells that are insanely powerful, have 6 or 7 spells which are far less powerful each but add up to being as powerful as the two spells add up to being right now.

Example: Right now, in single mob fights while kiting a FvS can cast a blade barrier + divine punishment, then kite until divine punishment cycles, then cast it again, etc - when blade barrier runs out cast that again too if needed.

Solution through mitigation of the system: Have 6 or 7 spells that each target different weaknesses on mobs which add up to the same relative DPS that can be done with blade barrier + divine punishment.

Result: Sure, there will still be a VERY FEW people who have mastered actions per minute gaming techniques who will still be uber beyond comparison, but the rest of us will have to keep tabs on cooldowns, mob strengths and weaknesses per spell, timed delivery, AND damage mitigation through kiting / healing. Right now as it stands just about anyone can cast one spell every few seconds while kiting, and renew the other spell every 30 seconds.

Taking away the ability to to use leap of faith is not the answer here. Taking a system where 2 undefendable spells = uber damage and pairing it down to a system where 7 defendable spells managed correctly = uber DPS, but good luck doing all that while kiting with wings at the same time, creates a system where situationally it will be still as uber as it used to be, but there will be MANY situations where a mob is immune to one or two of the spells, and other situations where its not viable to kite and maintain the constant vigil on cooldowns and spell stacks.

This should have been learned in the firewall days of old, where casters just specced into fire and ran fast while turning left around their single cast firewalls. Nowdays players just run fast and keep distance between them and the mob while the DOTs remain on the mob itself, and kite round blade barriers. And to "balance" this they take away the ability to kite. I think we just learned what the new generation of hate tanks is going to look like. /sigh 2 steps forward, 3 steps backward.

^THIS^

though 4 or 5 might be better. And while your nerfing DP, how about Reducing the quadruple dmg vulnerability on PM's.

A good option for new 'entangle/root' abilities is letting mob's/players grapple. Having 3 mobs grapple toon = limb chopper slowdown, depending on number, would be interesting idea. And add some excitement to dealing with trash, plus it looks cool in the movies when dudes get swarmed, and then throw them off.

That'd actually make an interesting raid 'phase' Get swarmed by fast mooks and boss heads to you to squash you. Party members have to get you free beforehand.

[Lifeblood]

I like that idea quite a bit. So does Torc.

You win the thread!

Edit:
We're currently thinking 3 second cooldown, 5 uses, recharging one use every 15 seconds. Wind Dance would have the same rules attached to it. This lets you have a nice burst of speed when you need it, and the recharge rate is fast enough that it's not totally burdensome.

great idea..limits use but does not take the spirit of the ability away

[BlargneyTheSecond]

This proposed change to leap of faith is confusing me. It doesn't strike me as the correct solution to the problem, mainly because the problem has been thus far inadequately defined, so any solution seems ill-considered.

Evidently the devs think there is a "correct" way to solve the Lord of Blades raid. This must be true because they've clearly decided that one specific sort of currently feasible solution is "incorrect" and must be prevented.

So to isolate the most problematic component, here are a few steps that ought to be undertaken:
Step 1) Could someone please explicitly state the one true way to complete the raid boss fight with the Lord of Blades?
Step 2) Exactly what is involved with successfully using the blasphemously incorrect solution? (ie rough sketch of party, relevant character build, gear, and tactics.)
Step 3) Examine the differences between those two cases.

By the way, despite the tongue in cheek verbiage, I am sincerely interested in exploring this problem space. I'd really like to have more data, if only to better understand the proposed solution.

Thank you!
-blarg

[muffinlad]

I want to add that I dislike the proposed changes and would suggest improving Boss AI, rather than nerfing player ability, which they use on FAR more than simply bosses.

I understand that the Dev's need a fix here, because they are seeing some behavior that lets one class kite and kill things that they never intended to be kited in killed. I applaud that the Dev's don't want fights to be trivial, but I suggest looking for a challenge upgrade, rather than a nerf.

Regards,

muffinstuffin

[Angelus_dead]

We're currently thinking 3 second cooldown, 5 uses, recharging one use every 15 seconds. Wind Dance would have the same rules attached to it. This lets you have a nice burst of speed when you need it, and the recharge rate is fast enough that it's not totally burdensome.

It would be great if Manyshot could use a recharging system like that, instead of being limited simply by one big cooldown. (Of course Manyshot would take longer than 15 seconds to recharge, but the point is that someone whose MS is off cooldown shouldn't feel that every second she doesn't use it is another second of recharge time wasted)

[BlackPantha2]

So it's a change . . . that doesn't actually nerf anything . . . that doesn't actually even address the problem?

Par for the course . . .

shhhhhhh.... i don't think they even know what the problem is

[Angelus_dead]

So to isolate the most problematic component, here are a few steps that ought to be undertaken:
Step 1) Could someone please explicitly state the one true way to complete the raid boss fight?

Hopefully the developers are too smart to answer something like that.

[Tazar]

I was so looking forward to getting my wings as well. only 4 levels off and now you've just killed the excitement for me.


Have i got this correct? you are killing a class defining feature in order to stop people kitting in one raid that has not even been released yet?

[gloopygloop]

So it's a change . . . that doesn't actually nerf anything . . . that doesn't actually even address the problem?

Par for the course . . .

In a long boss fight with continued Wing use, you'll end up with 1 Wing every 15 seconds. If Turbine considered kiting the big HP bosses to be a problem, the boss kiting problem is now solved.

In other fights that don't last a significant amount of time, there wasn't a problem in the first place.


I'm not especially happy with this change, but it's not horrible and it's actually a decent buff for Air Savants as far as I'm concerned.

[Seph1roth5]

This seems ridiculous to me. The only time I ever see wings being used a lot is in ToD and A New Invasion.

ToD - It's easier to kite suulomades around, but I've seen people just plain tank him while someone kept him healed and busy.

A New Invasion - I did this on my fvs w/o wings actually, not sure how other people handle the boss. Either way, I've seen wizards and sorcs solo the boss as well. I think any caster that can self-heal can do it really. I've done it in a melee moving ball as well, but usually it's just really hard to do unless everyone in the party knows what they're doing and has done it before. Otherwise you get people not moving simultaneously or in the wrong direction.

Like some people have said, I think some fights SHOULD be kite-able. It's going to get really boring once every boss is the same. They're already throwing out blanket true seeing and fort. Maybe the devs do want everyone to just surround the boss and wail on them, and just keep beefing up the bosses so that the healers will have to buy sp pots from the ddo store.

Pretty soon they're all going to chain, dispel, summon you, heal-curse, change elemental weakness/healing, and grow 4 more arms. That really makes a game unfun I think. I used to play Ragnarok Online and the server I played on thought the wussier bosses were a joke, so they beefed them all up to the same level and gave them all the high-level spells newer bosses had. It made them harder but yeah...boring.

Wings make kiting easier but you can still do it without it, just need some striding/haste. I say leave wings alone, and if you're going to beef up bosses make it scale on n/h/e so a lv 14 raid boss isn't the same strength as ToD,

[gloopygloop]

So to isolate the most problematic component, here are a few steps that ought to be undertaken:
Step 1) Could someone please explicitly state the one true way to complete the raid boss fight?

No one has ever officially announced Turbine's policy on this (just like no one has ever officially announced Turbine's policy on whether to allow people to keep the loot/renown/XP/etc. that they got through exploits), but signs point to

a) big HP tank (possibly with Healing Amp, but never with AC) gets aggro while one or two healers babysit that character and everyone else either plays with trash or just stands there and picks their nose
2) everyone else jumps in and beats on the boss's back while the tank from (a) attacks and maintains aggro.
iii) everyone except the tank leaves the boss occasionally to deal with extra waves of trash or secondary boss/minibosses.

[slimkj]

In other fights that don't last a significant amount of time, there wasn't a problem in the first place.

Sure, if you think only in terms of time spent fighting mobs, it sounds reasonable. Some of us, though, loved the abilities for their speed boost between fights and didn't primarily use them to wingkite bosses.

Now, it is a problem. To solve one tiny issue, they've proposed limiting a very popular ability hugely elsewhere in the game. How much time do people proportionately spend in boss fights, given timers? Not much, nothing compared to running from place to place, zipping through quests, etc.

This just feels like another nerf (mis)aimed at zergers; another step towards a slow, dull DDO that I won't enjoy. DA, TWF speed, now wings. Just deleting Striding from the loot tables left to do now. Oh and maybe get rid of sprint boosts too. :/

[BlargneyTheSecond]

Hopefully the developers are too smart to answer something like that.

Are you worried about spoilers? If so, then just don't read any replies to my question. I still want to know the answer.

[Diyon]

Are you worried about spoilers? If so, then just don't read any replies to my question. I still want to know the answer.

I think they may have been implying that if the devs are smart, there isn't an answer for that because there shouldn't be one true way to run a boss fight.

[blkcat1028]

This seems ridiculous to me. The only time I ever see wings being used a lot is in ToD and A New Invasion.

ToD - It's easier to kite suulomades around, but I've seen people just plain tank him while someone kept him healed and busy.

A New Invasion - I did this on my fvs w/o wings actually, not sure how other people handle the boss. Either way, I've seen wizards and sorcs solo the boss as well. I think any caster that can self-heal can do it really. I've done it in a melee moving ball as well, but usually it's just really hard to do unless everyone in the party knows what they're doing and has done it before. Otherwise you get people not moving simultaneously or in the wrong direction.

Like some people have said, I think some fights SHOULD be kite-able. It's going to get really boring once every boss is the same. They're already throwing out blanket true seeing and fort. Maybe the devs do want everyone to just surround the boss and wail on them, and just keep beefing up the bosses so that the healers will have to buy sp pots from the ddo store.

Pretty soon they're all going to chain, dispel, summon you, heal-curse, change elemental weakness/healing, and grow 4 more arms. That really makes a game unfun I think. I used to play Ragnarok Online and the server I played on thought the wussier bosses were a joke, so they beefed them all up to the same level and gave them all the high-level spells newer bosses had. It made them harder but yeah...boring.

Wings make kiting easier but you can still do it without it, just need some striding/haste. I say leave wings alone, and if you're going to beef up bosses make it scale on n/h/e so a lv 14 raid boss isn't the same strength as ToD,

Excellent post.

It's not the leaping ability that's the issue. It's the leaping plus the DoTs that make the Fvs awesome in certain situations. I say certain situations because, like the above post states, there's only two that come to mind.

It would be a mistake to nerf the abiility by increasing the timer or sp cost.

If you have to change anything, add a concentration check in combat situations. If you fail, you land on your backside.

It would probably be a fail on a 1 only, but it would add some risk to using the ability. This would effect Monks, Fvs, and Air Savants equally.

And you have to admit, it would be kinda funny to watch a leap turn into a dive

[BlargneyTheSecond]

I think they may have been implying that if the devs are smart, there isn't an answer for that because there shouldn't be one true way to run a boss fight.

I'm fine with that answer as well, because it means there should be multiple solutions to the raid. If there are different ways to solve it, then precisely what is wrong with the one solution that has been judged as incorrect?

[azrael4h]

I think they may have been implying that if the devs are smart, there isn't an answer for that because there shouldn't be one true way to run a boss fight.

Then why is there even a discussion on nerfing wings if there's no "right" way to run this or any raid? Obviously there must be a "right" way, and thus wings get nerfed. Because God help you if you try different things the devs didn't expect or *shudder* have fun playing a game.

[Diyon]

I'm fine with that answer as well, because it means there should be multiple solutions to the raid. If there are different ways to solve it, then precisely what is wrong with the one solution that has been judged as incorrect?

I think it comes down to risk/danger potential and skill requirement. If a method of completion is very low risk and/or very easy, or trivializing other party members contribution (ie, killing level of fun), then there's probably something wrong with that method that needs to be changed.