Destruction changes!

[Diyon]

"Destruction and Improved Destruction have been changed. These effects now have a duration of 20 seconds each, and reduce Fortification as well as Armor Class. Destruction reduces Armor Class and Fortification by 1% every time this effect hits an enemy, up to a -4 AC and -4% Fortification. Improved Destruction now reduces Armor Class by 2, and Fortification by 2%, up to -8 AC and -8% Fortification."

It's not much, but it's something more! I know acrobats will be happy to get a little more use out of Rahl's.

I am curious as to whether the two ability's debuffs will stack with each other though.

[Thrudh]

The important change is that the duration is only 20 seconds...

That's going to make it very hard to switch back and forth between your DPS weapons and your destruction weapons.

[grodon9999]

The important change is that the duration is only 20 seconds...

That's going to make it very hard to switch back and forth between your DPS weapons and your destruction weapons.

it'll allow for garbage DPS toons like my bard to actually contribute more, and ID shards are cheaper to make then GLoB and GCoB

[Thrudh]

it'll allow for garbage DPS toons like my bard to actually contribute more, and ID shards are cheaper to make then GLoB and GCoB

Ah crafting... I guess I'll need to get into crafting now...

Holy silver/adamantium of Improved Destruction matched with a Chimera's Fang. Not too shabby.

[Kinerd]

it'll allow for garbage DPS toons like my bard to actually contribute more, and ID shards are cheaper to make then GLoB and GCoB

Mine, too!

Good point, but it means just a little more switching. Someone should crunch the numbers on this (hopefully, Turbine did this already) to see if the dps lost by potential weapon swapping is less than or greater than the dps gained by fort decrease.

Actually just thinking about that, one person using an improved destruction weapon, their dps loss from weapon swapping should be much, much less than the dps gain from the other often at least 5 people in a raid from the fort reduction.

Well, it depends pretty heavily on group composition. A group with a tank, a destructor, and 6 rogues doing DPS will obviously see more of an increase than 6 fighters doing DPS. Some quick estimates I just put into the spreadsheet got me about 4% DPS gain for a THF barb or TWF fighter and 7% for a rogue starting against a 50 fort target, or 10% against an 80 fort target and about the same for the other two. It gets more compelling if the destructor role can be played by an otherwise unoccupied character, especially with a ranged weapon.

[Diyon]

The important change is that the duration is only 20 seconds...

That's going to make it very hard to switch back and forth between your DPS weapons and your destruction weapons.

Good point, but it means just a little more switching. Someone should crunch the numbers on this (hopefully, Turbine did this already) to see if the dps lost by potential weapon swapping is less than or greater than the dps gained by fort decrease.

Actually just thinking about that, one person using an improved destruction weapon, their dps loss from weapon swapping should be much, much less than the dps gain from the other often at least 5 people in a raid from the fort reduction.

[Thrudh]

I must now redouble my efforts to procure an epic Chimera's Fang since it's a DPS weapon that ALSO has Destruction.

[Qezuzu]

I must now redouble my efforts to procure an epic Chimera's Fang since it's a DPS weapon that ALSO has Destruction.

Indeed. I might get Epic Kron'zeks on my rogue.

[TheDearLeader]

From what I can tell, does NOT seem like they stack.

Just had both equipped, and you only get one debuff tooltip.



Checked, seemed they are not stacking.

I tried using one both weapons. Noticed a single tooltip.

I used Improved Destruction, hit.
Swapped to Destruction, hit.
Swapped back to Improved, hit twice.

And it went Debuff, Stack, Stack, Stack. Regardless of weapon being used.

I don't know if that means we're getting properly applied Fortification/AC loss or not. I'll need someone online to hop into a Tavern PVP instance with me to check it out.

[Backley]

By making Destruction and Improved Destruction no longer stack, they just made every random-gen Destruction weapon in the game trash (and Breastplate of Destruction for me, sad I wasted TP on an armor kit for that as it will be trashed if this change goes live).

Where my Bard helped the party hit better with Breastplate of Destruction and Rahl's Might (for Improved Destruction), I'll now have no use for the Breastplate of Destruction. I don't think anyone else will have a use for it any more either. I very much dislike this change.

[mystafyi]

By making Destruction and Improved Destruction no longer stack

I love how they just cant resist tossing a nerf in everything they do

[Eladrin]

By making Destruction and Improved Destruction no longer stack

I love how they just cant resist tossing a nerf in everything they do

The old Improved Destruction was actually only giving -4 AC, which stacked with the Destruction effect (the description was incorrect).

The new Improved Destruction applies a Destruction effect along with the additional -1/-1%. It's now actually better than vanilla Destruction, instead of being exactly identical, and can actually get to -8 AC/-8% Fort on its own.

[Backley]

It's now actually better than vanilla Destruction, instead of being exactly identical, and can actually get to -8 AC/-8% Fort on its own.

But is still useless to swap from Improved Destruction to your real DPS weapon, and still makes every Destruction weapon (and the Breastplate of Destruction) into trash.

Over-all, a major nerf.

[Indoran]

But is still useless to swap from Improved Destruction to your real DPS weapon, and still makes every Destruction weapon (and the Breastplate of Destruction) into trash.

Over-all, a major nerf.

some ppl seriously see nerfs where there are none...

it's a buff... now it's actually worth using... not like before (unless you needed destruction to hit... in which case...)

[Cyr]

The old Improved Destruction was actually only giving -4 AC, which stacked with the Destruction effect (the description was incorrect).

The new Improved Destruction applies a Destruction effect along with the additional -1/-1%. It's now actually better than vanilla Destruction, instead of being exactly identical, and can actually get to -8 AC/-8% Fort on its own.

Eladrin with all these fort reduction changes can we get one for the shroud ooze items? It seems like a natural one to have a fort reduction on it after all.

[TheDearLeader]

The old Improved Destruction was actually only giving -4 AC, which stacked with the Destruction effect (the description was incorrect).

The new Improved Destruction applies a Destruction effect along with the additional -1/-1%. It's now actually better than vanilla Destruction, instead of being exactly identical, and can actually get to -8 AC/-8% Fort on its own.

Well and good - but is the Duration up for debate at all? Losing a full two-thirds of it's duration is, indeed, a nerf, no matter how you cut this pie.

[BossOfEarth]

The old Improved Destruction was actually only giving -4 AC, which stacked with the Destruction effect (the description was incorrect).

The new Improved Destruction applies a Destruction effect along with the additional -1/-1%. It's now actually better than vanilla Destruction, instead of being exactly identical, and can actually get to -8 AC/-8% Fort on its own.

You're absolutely correct, but you're missing out on something more important. Stacking destruction and improved destruction is FUN. See how excited people were when they were talking about stacking them? People enjoy talking about stacking destruction in-game too. We ask who's got destruction? Who has improved destruction? And then people brag about this or that item and how it fits into their gearset. Then we decide who has to use which kind of destruction while everyone else gets to use real weapons. I don't understand player psychology enough to explain why it is fun, but stacking destruction is fun.

By way of analogy, you're saying "Good news everyone! I sold your birthday candles but now you can have an extra serving of cake!" And I'm saying "I agree that fire on a cake kinda illogical, but people like birthday cake."

Anyway, please allow destruction stack with improved destruction so I can continue to enjoy mixing and matching my destruction gear. Thanks!

[Iwinbyrollup]

The old Improved Destruction was actually only giving -4 AC, which stacked with the Destruction effect (the description was incorrect).

The new Improved Destruction applies a Destruction effect along with the additional -1/-1%. It's now actually better than vanilla Destruction, instead of being exactly identical, and can actually get to -8 AC/-8% Fort on its own.

I somehow missed this post when I posted earlier.

Eladrin, the new Improved Destruction doesn't offer any AC debuff that we can't already get with a Destruction/Improved Destruction combination, and it offers it at a considerable sacrifice: we don't really have the option of unequipping the Improved Destruction weapon because the duration is too short.

And yes, there's -8% fort. Sure, that's kinda nice, but the fort issue has been so prominent because you guys increased the fort on raid bosses in the first place. I would appreciate being thrown a bone more if it didn't feel like you guys took it from us and ate all the meat off it in the first place.

[Angelus_dead]

The new Improved Destruction applies a Destruction effect along with the additional -1/-1%. It's now actually better than vanilla Destruction, instead of being exactly identical, and can actually get to -8 AC/-8% Fort on its own.

Comments on the recent change to Destruction weapons from a more theoretical perspective. (Refering to Imp Destr as well).

Among other things, what this change does is essentially turn that weapon property from damage irrelevant to damage relevant. With the old version of Destruction, you could pretty much use it once per minute on high-AC enemies, and then change back to regular weapons the rest of the time. (Remember that DDO's cooldown delay and UI load for weapon-swapping is substantial, and the Quickdraw feat does little to help). But the new Destruction requires hitting it every 20 seconds to maintain the debuff, and you can't miss the end by a few seconds or you'd have to repeat the ramp up. So now if the players want Destruction on an enemy, they've got to dedicate one of their weapon slots to using it persistently.

What this does to loot design balance:
Previously a Destruction weapon was just an occasional thing, used once per 60 seconds on high-AC monsters. If your Destruction weapon had low DPS that didn't really matter, because you weren't swinging it much. So when a named item was created which had Destruction on it, that was in many ways just a convenience or a minor benefit. The Destruction property on something like Epic Kronzek's Cruelty wasn't much of a benefit over simply pulling out a +5 Dagger of Improved Destruction every minute. Sure it was more convenient and avoided the switching delay, but those were minor factors overall.

But in the new version that's different. You're no longer free to hit with a Destruction weapon just for a second, and instead are stuck using the Destruction weapon longterm. Therefore the combination of having Destruction on an item that is also decent DPS is suddenly much more valuable. In some ways that's good, because some named items like Rocksplitter were unattractive. But now a random (or Cannith crafted) item with Destruction is far less useful than it was. The DPS added by the extra crits and Sneak Attack will likely be counteracted by the loss from using a low-damage weapon.

This is similar to the same thing that happened with Vorpal: originally Vorpal was basically an alternate non-DPS method of killing things, so to have Vorpal on an Epic Chaosblade or pirate scimitar was mostly slot-consolidation. Then Vorpal was changed to also cause hp damage, and the named items became stronger relative to the random ones.

Suggestions to deal with it for Destruction:

• Lower the plus cost of Destruction and Improved Destruction on random items. Honestly that won't help much because it still costs the whole suffix, but it's something.
  
  
• Be aware of the increased value of Destruction when building new named DPS items.
  
  
• Create several new named weapons which have Destruction or Improved Destruction, along with adequate DPS effects. Ensure that light and ranged weapons are well-represented.

Other suggestions:

• Change the relationship between Destruction and Improved Destruction so that one doesn't obsolete the other so completely. For example, give them both the same limit on the debuff (such as -5 AC and -10% Fort), but make the lesser effect take slower to ramp up (like with a 50% proc rate, or the existing -1 vs -2).
  
  
• Go back and revert the scaling boss Fortification with difficulty settings and reconsider that whole thing, including the underlying Fortification percentage concept.

[sirgog]

Comments on the recent change to Destruction weapons from a more theoretical perspective. (Refering to Imp Destr as well).

Among other things, what this change does is essentially turn that weapon property from damage irrelevant to damage relevant. With the old version of Destruction, you could pretty much use it once per minute on high-AC enemies, and then change back to regular weapons the rest of the time. (Remember that DDO's cooldown delay and UI load for weapon-swapping is substantial, and the Quickdraw feat does little to help). But the new Destruction requires hitting it every 20 seconds to maintain the debuff, and you can't miss the end by a few seconds or you'd have to repeat the ramp up. So now if the players want Destruction on an enemy, they've got to dedicate one of their weapon slots to using it persistently.

What this does to loot design balance:
Previously a Destruction weapon was just an occasional thing, used once per 60 seconds on high-AC monsters. If your Destruction weapon had low DPS that didn't really matter, because you weren't swinging it much. So when a named item was created which had Destruction on it, that was in many ways just a convenience or a minor benefit. The Destruction property on something like Epic Kronzek's Cruelty wasn't much of a benefit over simply pulling out a +5 Dagger of Improved Destruction every minute. Sure it was more convenient and avoided the switching delay, but those were minor factors overall.

But in the new version that's different. You're no longer free to hit with a Destruction weapon just for a second, and instead are stuck using the Destruction weapon longterm. Therefore the combination of having Destruction on an item that is also decent DPS is suddenly much more valuable. In some ways that's good, because some named items like Rocksplitter were unattractive. But now a random (or Cannith crafted) item with Destruction is far less useful than it was. The DPS added by the extra crits and Sneak Attack will likely be counteracted by the loss from using a low-damage weapon.

This is similar to the same thing that happened with Vorpal: originally Vorpal was basically an alternate non-DPS method of killing things, so to have Vorpal on an Epic Chaosblade or pirate scimitar was mostly slot-consolidation. Then Vorpal was changed to also cause hp damage, and the named items became stronger relative to the random ones.

Suggestions to deal with it for Destruction:

• Lower the plus cost of Destruction and Improved Destruction on random items. Honestly that won't help much because it still costs the whole suffix, but it's something.
  
  
• Be aware of the increased value of Destruction when building new named DPS items.
  
• Create several new named weapons which have Destruction or Improved Destruction, along with adequate DPS effects. Ensure that light and ranged weapons are well-represented.

Other suggestions:

• Change the relationship between Destruction and Improved Destruction so that one doesn't obsolete the other so completely. For example, give them both the same limit on the debuff (such as -5 AC and -10% Fort), but make the lesser effect take slower to ramp up (like with a 50% proc rate, or the existing -1 vs -2).
  
  
• Go back and revert the scaling boss Fortification with difficulty settings and reconsider that whole thing, including the underlying Fortification percentage concept.

All true on this, although due to the frequency of the game not registering your requests to swap weapons, high DPS Improved Destruction weapons were better than you give them credit for.

(Let's say you have a 130 damage per swing two-hander without Destruction, and a 70 damage per swing one with Destruction, and are considering upgrading the latter to a 100 damage per swing weapon. If you only swung once per minute with the Destructor, it was only a 30 damage per minute upgrade to make that upgrade; but if the game's unresponsive controls force you to swing ten times with the Destructor before registering the weapon swap, that's a 300 damage increase).


I think the principle of 'higher difficulty = higher base fortification' has potential but isn't there yet. Reducing mob/boss fortification could require teamwork, and you can then tune raids to not assume that teamwork is used on Normal, but to rely upon it on Elite/Epic.

That said, with one exception (FvS retributive procs) the fortification debuffs we can use aren't high enough.

My suggestion:

- Nerf the FvS retributive fort% debuff to 3/6/9/12/15%
- Set Destruction at 2.5/5/7.5/10% (alongside 1/2/3/4 AC).
- Set Improved Destruction at 5/10/15/20% alongside 1/2/3/4 AC. Consider retuning monster AC on Malicia to compensate (but only her, other high AC bosses like Turigulon/eLOB are fine, but house P are the introductory Epics). If a monster has a stack of Destruction, Improved Destruction 'builds upon' that stack, but this doesn't apply the other way around.
- Replace Sundering Ooze (Weapon) with Improved Destruction
- Replace Sundering Ooze Guard with a 20% proc rate Improved Destruction effect on being hit
- Change Improved Sunder to 20% fort alongside 5 AC
- Change most raid boss fortification to 25/50/75 (for n/h/e raids) and 0/15/30/75 for most n/h/e/P raids. Deviate from these guidelines if there's a good reason (undead boss, etc).

That would create the following situation:

Normal raids, group that doesn't work together to debuff Fort: 25% Fortification, the magic number where all melee classes are viable and aren't too far behind casters.
Elite raids, cohesive group: The Bard keeps up Imp Destruction, the Fighter keeps up Imp Sunder. FvS aura averages 3 stacks. Effective Fortification is 26% most of the time, but if the Fighter goes AFK for a minute, or the Bard has to put the weapons away and healbot for a while, it jumps up to 46%.

Indeed. I might get Epic Kron'zeks on my rogue.

I'm glad I still have 16 or so scrolls of it stockpiled.