Wings wings wings: A Discussion

[Stormbringr]

Why not just give bosses a leap of faith suppressing aura if you're so concerned about boss kiting? Or make them faster. Having a capped fvs, if I'm going to tank, I'm going to shieldblock so melees can contribute dps and I'll take much less damage than a traditional tank, thus requiring less healing resources from the party. This is a non-issue, Turbine. Being party healer is a thankless enough (and sometimes challenging depending on the party) job, please don't take away some of the few perks we get.

[FooWonk]

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.

That's not offensive.

[badbob117]

Why do we need to nerf classes? If the melee's are being left out to dry because a few classes have dots and wings then why not just give the inferior melees some loving, balance it out with a step forward not backwards.

I am guilty of being one of those fvs who spams leap of faith. I spam it like crazy going from quest to quest. I Have used it to solo Vision of destruction. But for the most part i am not kiting raid bosses around in a full group. I usually just tank em. Sit there all lame like shield blocking and throwing dots and healing. If anything the dot has actually stopped a lot of fvs from this "kiting" behavior. Now we just sit on our Virtual butt n use DP.

I sit in front of raid bosses on my FVS, My Barbarian, My pally and my Bard. Is that really the direction the devs want to go. a linear one strategy brute force method for every single boss fight? This gets tiresome man. People roll up ranged builds and casters/Divines just for a change of pace from the same old brute force gathering of the melee. It is mind numbing some times doing the same quest you did 200 times, the exact same way on every toon. A bit of kiting every now and then is welcome in my books.

I personally like the way casters and divines are right now. I think it is great fun. However i do think certain classes are falling behind in terms of actual effectiveness. But they will still be falling behind after this clip of the wings nonsense. The solution should be help the melee's/ranged out a bit . Not nerf the casters!

The devs need to either go in a route that changes game mechanics of enemies or improve the classes that are falling behind. There is no other alternative that i can see here. They either nerf us back to pre update 9. Or tweak out some AI/game mechanics and give melee some cool new tools to get the job done and be happy with their toons.

They should leave it as is. Add a game mechanic to stop us from flying like mad men in a certain raid or two and leave it at that.

No one wants their wings clipped. The irony in this is that after the nerf, melee's will still be inferior meat bags who are boring to play and fvs and sorc will be a bit less fun to play. So basically no one wins once again.

/shrug, There has to be a better way to sort this stuff out devs! no one likes getting nerfed

[Diyon]

I'd rather they remove the cooldown entirely from savants and FVS,

That might be a bit far. That essentially means that they could go warp speed AND get across ridiculously huge pits (although that last part would make it comparable to actual flight that might have been there otherwise).

[Rizzyn]

I still have not seen or received a reasoned answer as to why this is necessary.

We started playing, my Wife and I, because of the change to Free to Play that spawned an e-mail to me because I had beta-tested years ago, not enough to be a Founder, but I had a taste, and they remembered my e-mail. Not long after we joined, we liked the Favored Soul class so much, I bought it as a Gift to her (us), and we went VIP not long after that, after some discussion and a decision to jump into DDO completely.

Favored Soul is either a hard-earned Favor Class, top tier as has been pointed out, or in our case, we spent real money to get it. As much as the FTP/Pack-buying folks might dislike it, we are subscribers, and indeed, Buyers of this class, which means we invest in DDO in a manner that FTP and Single-Shot pack folks do not. We also, like the FTP folks, buy into extras that our 500TP a month doesn't always cover; pots, hirelings, cakes, etc. This means on top of subscription dollars, we invest still more into the game. A Paid/Top Tier Class SHOULD have some perks that others do not. That is the nature of your business model; Free to Play is the Draw, Buying into the Little Extras is the money maker. It's an excellent model, so long as the Extras are worth the expense.

I've yet to see a reasonable answer as to why this is necessary. Nor have I seen, from either the DEVS are those few complainants, how this will "Fix" the problem, which is supposedly kiting, but is really aggro management and the supposed marginalization of Melee or Tanking classes due to the presence of DoT spells that blow aggro management all to Hades. The latter being marginalized because of changes in the Intimidation and Shield-based systems previously in place. It has been stated that changing Leap of Faith will not resolve the problem. It will not change the spell that made or makes Raid Bosses easier to defeat if there is a group of Favored Souls willing to band together to do so. It will not change the viability of Tanks, the necessity of Melee DPS, or the Kiting tactic. I am not unreasonable, but I think a measured explanation beyond the completion and defeat of a single new Raid which has collected a small percentage of opinion needs to be given. I've heard about more Wipes in the new raids than I did about successes, and the one Epic Success early on was in Master Artificer by the images.

Perhaps the Scaling is off? I know I took 500-600 point hits in LoB on NORMAL. Like I said, more wipes than successes, and the successes are from folks known for SUCCESS, due to gear, persistence, and familiarity with the game. Many Raid groups took balanced parties in, and MANY failed. The DEVs watched several failures, as my Wife was in those groups, as a Favored Soul, healing the crazy barbarian that dragged her in there on Epic--and hardly ever using her wings, because she was chained and electric greased to death, and then the LoB decided healers had to go. A recent post discusses how the scaling is off against an AC as high as 89, and he was still being abused, on NORMAL. With this kind of thing happening, KITING is a viable strategy. His estimates are that his AC was perhaps as much as 70% successful, often less than that, but not more. What is he left with but kiting? Anyone can kite, that folks gathered up some Favored Souls to "kite better" is not going to fix the Raid or resolve the "Kiting issue" if in fact there is one.

PS: Please please address the instance crashing on Lam. It makes testing difficult, particularly if we're trying to find a particular Runearm and the same quest in the chain keeps crashing. 3 nearly complete runs of Acute Delerium; poof, time we'll never get back.

[Kabaon]

I'm confused about the issue with DoT spells. I'm confused as they are a nice increase to Caster DPS, and because they tick away for between 400-and 1k dmg when fully stacked (at least for me) everyone is calling for nerfs? If I was kiting maybe, but if I stand there and let the mobs hit me (as I usually heal pretty fast... woot Death Aura) what's the issue. Especially in raids when everyone is looking generally for the fastest completion possible.... is it because melee's want to feel useful. Probably, but given that we have two new raids coming, where people have STATED that they are tough and a balanced group is probably better, and the fact old raids are having the bosses improved, pretty much proves to me that they will still have their place. And they still have a pretty good DPS ratio seeing as the only limitation on damage they have is the red bar.

The DoT's are fine, melee's need some love, without nerfing casters back to the buff bots they were a couple years ago.

[LordPiglet]

It's just sad that players asking for challenging content, variety in how raids worked are upset that their high hp mana sponge is out performed by another class when it comes to dealing with the raid boss.

He's bored in one raid, divines are pretty bored in every other raid boss fight in the game. Me, I'd gladly trash kill on my melees to let the divine serve a purpose.

Apparently, no matter what some people ask for, variety is bad, unless it fir their narrow view of the game.

[wiglin]

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.

Here is a comparison of wings per minute.

Currently = 20 uses per minute / cost 45sp
Torc's Idea = 9 uses per minute / cost 90sp
Omens' Idea = 8 uses per minute / cost 0sp (5 back to back with 1 every 15 seconds)

I still say leave them as is, but implement more boss abilities that will restrict their use.

Chains: when under the effect you can use wings 1 time, but they do not cooldown, you cannot use them again until the effect wears off. This would still allow an initial escape, but prevent kiting. (the idea is you have enough strength for an initial burst, but cannot maintain the extra weight of the chains)

Raid Bosses: Give more mobs the abilities to use chains (or an ability like chains) when you do not want kiting to be the method used in killing the boss.

Red Named Hounds: Give them a grease ability that restricts the use of leap of faith / wind dance / abundant step for 15 seconds. This would eliminate the ease of kiting in the raid. (the idea is you have heavy grease covering your body and cannot get the lift needed for flight)

Crippling Strike Hamstring Effect: Triple the cooldown of wings when under this effect. This is used pretty often by epic archers, and would eliminate the ease of bb kiting in epics.

What you accomplish with this set of changes is two fold.

1) Wings kiting will be eliminated in every raid where you do not like the tactic.
2) The general use of wings for a fvs is not effected. (running around town and getting to desert raids at level 20)

[Yaga_Nub]

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.

So instead of fixing mob AI and quest mechanics, you'd rather nerf the players?

[scottmike0]

So...this boss kiting...is it something anyone playing a Monk or FvS can easily do or is it something that comes easy after many, many hours of playing? I've only had Leap of Faith on my FvS (and I did buy the class with TP so I could play with AoV) for a few months now, I think and I still flat-out smash my face into walls just as often as I elegantly turn a corner and vault up stairs/over obstructions...sure I can land on top of the 5th portal in Shroud part 1 (pattern as run on Thelanis) consistently now, but I've yet to see game-breaking kiting tactics, much less how to pull it off easily.

Anyway, I'm just asking you to consider if this is more of a concern for your die-hard professional player base or if the need for a nerf is because the average player can readily reproduce the professionals' performances....your pros will always find ways to break your game, you already know this, of course.

ya, fvs are wayyyy to over powered with there wing ability glad to see a cooldown on it so that they cant easily wing spam alll the time, i mean really you see all fvs kiting through blade barriers and what do they use, WINGS!!!
well anyways at least fvs wont kite to well . mAn im tired of a fvs stealing aggro when im tankin ..... i mean really they do like 1000 damage on dots when 3 arua's on a boss.... its like a miny sorc

[wiglin]

i mean really they do like 1000 damage on dots when 3 arua's on a boss.... its like a miny sorc

Its takes multiple light debuff procs, spell crits, and 3 active dots to see the 1000+ dmg on the dot. It is also extremely spell point intensive to keep the dot active. If you are doing anything other than dot tanking you will not keep all going at once. I also do not have unlimited mana potions, so this is not possible for any length of time, especially if you are healing the party.

The idea that the average fvs can solo dot or even bb kite is very misleading on level 18 elite raids and epic. The bb save is only that high on evocation focused fvs. Once you dump wisdom to be a melee soul all you have left are the dots, which are good, but you don't kite with dots. It takes alot of sp to dot tank and the average player does not have unlimited sp, so this is not really an issue. If the top few percent have the resources to do this, it shouldn't cause any type of nurfing for the rest of the player base.

[Faent]

A 15 second cooldown after nine uses is not acceptable. FAIL.

If you want to put them on a 15 second cooldown after three minutes of use, that's still a huge nerf, but it wouldn't make me want to see Turbine lose tens of thousands of dollars in subscriptions and the dev's salaries halved as a result. This could be achieved by upping your current five uses to fourty uses, and it would still prevent what you want to prevent.

It would make it impossible to wing through Sins, wing to Chains of Flame, and so on as well. And so it would still be a MASSIVE NERF you're implementing to fix a problem in the wrong way. But your proposed "solution" is to almost completely take away the FvS's winging ability. This is not clearheaded thinking.

[scottmike0]

Its takes multiple light debuff procs, spell crits, and 3 active dots to see the 1000+ dmg on the dot. It is also extremely spell point intensive to keep the dot active. If you are doing anything other than dot tanking you will not keep all going at once. I also do not have unlimited mana potions, so this is not possible for any length of time, especially if you are healing the party.

The idea that the average fvs can solo dot or even bb kite is very misleading on level 18 elite raids and epic. The bb save is only that high on evocation focused fvs. Once you dump wisdom to be a melee soul all you have left are the dots, which are good, but you don't kite with dots. It takes alot of sp to dot tank and the average player does not have unlimited sp, so this is not really an issue. If the top few percent have the resources to do this, it shouldn't cause any type of nurfing for the rest of the player base.

true but if you have 5 healers that are fvs and 2 are meant for dps and the other 3 arre meant for healing then your fine..., also it is possible to get 1000 light damage if you stack 4 of em + eardweller + all other spell buffs... and most fvs i know actually never dump wisdom. even when i met this wf fvs with 14 wisdom at lvl 4 without any gear it was pretty insane.... and anyways you could probably do more than 1000 depending on what buffs you have and what echancements you have in line... or just in terms a regular spell crit
and of course it is spell point instensive tis why i spam it alot for i know i love using sp potions

[jandhaer]

Leap of Faith is fine how it is.

When will the ***Devs*** admit that they BROKE the game with Update 9 the dots in the game from that point on have made the absolutely rediculous possible. Our tanks are now FvS and Sorcs AND THEY ARE WAAAAY BETTER AT IT then the old melees were on their greatest nights. They can do amazing damage and hold the aggro against any infinite number of melees without even trying while often keeping themselves healed .

NOTHING truely feels hard anymore. As a gamer I like doing amazing damage and doing things that I really shoudn't be able to do BUT honestly since then Ive played ALOT less since going into whatever quest the question isnt IF were going to win its how fast.

Dont get me wrong I LOVE the work their putting out excellent really top notch content coming out in respectable frequency. Interesting and thoroughly entertaining storylines that other games cant seem to compete with. Just saying Leap of Faith isnt the mechanic thats making all their bosses trivial by a long shot.

[Rizzyn]

Its takes multiple light debuff procs, spell crits, and 3 active dots to see the 1000+ dmg on the dot. It is also extremely spell point intensive to keep the dot active. If you are doing anything other than dot tanking you will not keep all going at once. I also do not have unlimited mana potions, so this is not possible for any length of time, especially if you are healing the party.

The idea that the average fvs can solo dot or even bb kite is very misleading on level 18 elite raids and epic. The bb save is only that high on evocation focused fvs. Once you dump wisdom to be a melee soul all you have left are the dots, which are good, but you don't kite with dots. It takes alot of sp to dot tank and the average player does not have unlimited sp, so this is not really an issue. If the top few percent have the resources to do this, it shouldn't cause any type of nurfing for the rest of the player base.

Don't forget that usually, for that Light Debuff, someone has to take a hit.

Taken from the Wiki:

Enemies that strike you have a chance of suffering divine condemnation, increasing their vulnerability to light and alignment-based damage by 20%, and decreasing their fortification by 10%. This debuff stacks up to 5 times, and is dispelled by Bless effects.

It's not like we stand around and this just happens. It has to be a hit, not just a shield-blocked hit, but an actual hit, a difficult proposition if a Raid Boss can kill you in one or two.

And as a nod to resources, I believe someone stated that the community should not be underestimated in coming together to provide a Healer or a Arcane with enough Pots to be a factor in the LIVE game. I believe this statement was to counter the idea that on Lamannia, the Pots are Cheap and Plentiful, and that they would not be available on LIVE. While I and Venny have had people GIVE us Pots they've collected over time, that is not something we can rely on on our Server, and while the community may come together, pool resources and give their healer 50 or more pots to use -- umm, why is that a bad thing?

This is an MMO. IF the community gets together to give their Clerics and Favored Souls a deep supply of Pots; Congratulations, you've created a startlingly successful MMO which is a game whose mechanics are based on Social Networking and you've successfully created an environment that encourages Teamwork over individual in-game greed. This is not a game-breaker, it is success, unless we mean to somehow Nerf Teamwork and the sharing of resources as well.

[Shade]

Congrats to omen on winning the thread!

I think the idea is good also..

But being it was my talk of wing clipping that started this evil.... What do I win?

heh.

Actaully my idea was more wing clipping while under the effects of things like chains, or other speed debuffs specificly in lord of blades.. and adding more of those to elite/epic lord of blades.. Hopefully those ideas aren't forgotten. As LoB is a challenging raid, and on elite/epic should really bring us to ur kneess.. But seems the more I run it on elite, the easier it seems, especially in regards to kiting the hounds. That can really be done without wings, and he chains so infrequently that 5 uses would actually be fine...

Dogs should get some kinda movement speed debuff.

[Riggs]

Umm, I hate to point it out, but anyone with a simple haste spell can kite nearly as well as someone spamming wings... If you have sprint boosts you will move even faster than wings ever can, and the AI doesn't deal with that any better than it does with wing kiting.

As for BB kitting, since when have wings even been close to needed for that? Even on epic, mobs still tend to happily follow you back and forth through the barrier as you run around in neat little circles, hardly ever getting around to taking a swing at you. We have been doing that since long before the FvS was even avalible.

Mostly what I see here is a Boss that has been spcificly designed to be impractical to tank, given ddo general lack of reliable tank swap methods, and general nerfing into obivion of pure tanks, then being confused when players try something other than tanking it.

+1

Make tanking less and less effective.
Make AC less and less effective.
Make a new boss that is even harder to melee than others.
Be shocked when people decide not to 'tank' it.

Fix? - Nurf Fvs....

That chain of logic makes my brain hurt.

[wiglin]

true but if you have 5 healers that are fvs and 2 are meant for dps and the other 3 arre meant for healing then your fine..., also it is possible to get 1000 light damage if you stack 4 of em + eardweller + all other spell buffs

The eardweller is not easy to get, I still do not have one and it is limited in its use and no way sustainable over the entire raid.

Stacks of major's are not cheap and I would not spend tp on them, so again it is very resource heavy to sustain the dots for any length of time.

The dots have been out for a while and on Ghallanda I have never seen an all FvS run of anything ever advertised in the lfm. People as a whole do not play what is the most effective, they play the style and or class they enjoy. This is easily proven by taking a stroll down puggers lane during tr. The majority of time I join a raid as a fvs and their are multiple fvs or clerics, someone always says..."we are good on healing, I am going to get my barb" and the dots have been out a while proving that as a whole this doesn't cause people to play that style.

Seeing a handful of veteran players using a tactic should not be a reason to nurf what the majority of players do not care about. It is a waste of time. If someone does not like a tactic they can keep from using it without everyone else losing out.

The dots are not effected by caster stat, but caster level. That was never in question, and neither are the dots atm. Whats in question is bb kiting and to be effective at that you have to have max wis.

[Rizzyn]

Congrats to omen on winning the thread!

I think the idea is good also..

But being it was my talk of wing clipping that started this evil.... What do I win?

heh.

Actaully my idea was more wing clipping while under the effects of things like chains, or other speed debuffs specificly in lord of blades.. and adding more of those to elite/epic lord of blades.. Hopefully those ideas aren't forgotten. As LoB is a challenging raid, and on elite/epic should really bring us to ur kneess.. But seems the more I run it on elite, the easier it seems, especially in regards to kiting the hounds. That can really be done without wings, and he chains so infrequently that 5 uses would actually be fine...

Dogs should get some kinda movement speed debuff.

Shade has run these new raids the most, arguably, at least that I have seen, and he is saying that you don't need the wings to kite, and yet the tactic is still viable. He, as have others, has posited the notion that the Raid Boss itself, or the environment should provide the "debuff", not that the ability be altered or changed. If it must be altered, then Striders, Haste, Class and Prestige Class speed boosts, and everything else with regards to speedily leading a Boss on should be "under review" as well.

[Riggs]

Please don't nerf my wings.

Personal preference:
Have chaining effects stop wings. Your wings are chained up and it always felt like you were skirting the CC the devs intended.

It is fun to have the cooldown be 3 seconds, please don't take away fun.

Give the LoB a deadly bullrush ability or something. Have his speed and damage increase 10% every 5-10 seconds he doesn't get to melee something. He wants to use his blades badly. Heck, give it trample after 3 stacks so he will just start charging through everyone to get at his target. He'll catch that guy with wings and it will hurt.

Alternatively, give him a ranged blade throw that disables wings and cripples the target. Or, even better, let him have a "Come here!" ability with a bladed chain. If we can be teleported to Harry in part 5 of the shroud, why can't we have an anti-range come-die-in-melee-like-the-rest-of-you-scum ability on the LoB?

Indeed.

Why is the idea of chains stopping flying a bad idea? Esp is it is 'easy to code'. Makes the anti flying debuff raid specific and doesnt affect everyone's enjoyment in the other 99% of the game.