Destruction changes!

[TheDearLeader]

So one str based TWFer with +5 holy burst(silver/adam/cold iron) of shatter +8 and a
+5 holy burst (silver/adam/cold iron) of imp. destruction can Debuff a boss for everyone in the group by 8 AC, 18% fort, and -15 fort save. Not too bad for costing one feat, 100? DPS, and some canith crafting.

So on top of looking for:
FvS that is AoV
Light Monk
Dark Monk
Another healer
Arcane
Bard
Artificer
Tank
Off Tank
I now also need a "Debuff Melee"
To make my Rogue work? Sounds *great*

[CaptGrim]

Sounds *great*

Perhaps not great but even you would have to agree, that its better than it was yesterday.

[TheDearLeader]

Perhaps not great but even you would have to agree, that its better than it was yesterday.

But worse than it was three months ago. Much, much worse.

[Iwinbyrollup]

I'm actually a bit curious what the devs intended with this change because it looks like it was intended to be a buff. So I'm thinking they might be a bit surprised that everyone is calling it a nerf.

The easiest way to see why it's a nerf is to compare it to pre-U11 game. We've lost 40 seconds off of Destruction/Improved Destruction, they don't stack making weapons with Destruction useless and armor with Destruction near-useless (still good only in parties where no one is using Improved Destruction on a weapon), it takes 4 times as many hits to get what you could have gotten with a Destruction/Improved Destruction weapon combo then switch, and sure, it lowers fort, but fort for hard/elite raid bosses will likely STILL be higher than pre-U11.

So the reason why it's a nerf is because it's significantly nerfing a very useful weapon effect to undo only some of what was changed in U11. It's robbing Peter to pay back Paul some of the money you stole from him last week.

[TheDearLeader]

Reposting this in all the Destruction threads. Guess what? It's bugged.

Per the release notes:

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.

However, tested on Lammania, and Improved Destruction with a quad-stack gives -4% Fortification, -4 AC.

Go into a Tavern Brawl with two characters. One must have Destruction and Improved Destruction weapons. For our test, we used a Favored Soul, Mserika of Sarlona as our "Dummy" with AC 15, 100% Fortification, and my Rogue, Oschkosch of Sarlona, with a +5 Khopesh of Destruction, and +5 Khopesh of Improved Destruction (Both Cannith Crafted).

First Test:

• Main-hand, +5 Khopesh of Improved Destruction, Off Hand Muckbane.
• Four hits. Confirmed the quad-stack via character examination window.
• 96% Fortification, 11 AC. Should have been 92% Fortification, 7 AC.

Second Test:

• Main-hand, +5 Khopesh of Destruction, Off Hand Muckbane.
• Four hits. Confirmed the quad-stack via character examination window.
• 96% Fortification, 11 AC. Working as Intended.

Third Test:

• Main Hand, +5 Khopesh of Improved Destruction, Off Hand +5 Khopesh of Destruction.
• Hit FvS for about ten seconds of straight auto-attacking. Confirmed 4-stack.
• 96% Fortification, 11 AC.

Regardless of combo used, Improved Destruction did not work "as described".

Bug has been reported.

[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.

[Gratch]

Imp Destruction in Pit Results: It could be bugged or could be another "effect limited when in PvP".

May need to go find a mob with lotsa hp's (or decrease your damage) and see how tier 4 imp destruction affects the combat log to-hit.

[TheDearLeader]

Imp Destruction in Pit Results: It could be bugged or could be another "effect limited when in PvP".

May need to go find a mob with lotsa hp's (or decrease your damage) and see how tier 4 imp destruction affects the combat log to-hit.

I highly doubt it's PvP Specific. As I confirmed earlier in the day, using Destruction and Improved Destruction on a mob gives a single "debuff" and shared "stack" under their examination -- this was the same, regardless of of PC vs PC, or PC vs NPC. This to me look like the text that we read is different the actual magical effect being applied in the background is the same.

[Aliss7]

I'm a ranged toon and I'm not happy with the duration nerf. I could hit with a cursespewing, then destruction, then have time to use a more DPS bow, proc a manyshot even to boot. I presume it's not possible now to get a full 20second manyshot burst off now.

(waiting for you to do the same nerf to cursespewing now that I mentioned that)

[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!

[ShadowFlash]

Hey Devs !!! ?

Any chance we could get this upgraded with improved destruction to make it a useful off-hand Axe for us short bearded folk while yer at it ?

http://ddowiki.com/page/Sever

So few named Dwarven Axes in the game. This plus the Axe of Famine would work out real nice as a de-buffing set. Of course, you still got get past DR, but ya can't have everything. That combo on one, and plus someone else with a Vampiric Fury Short Sword and Polycurse Dagger would make for a real good time Maybe not the best, but certainly nice for some fun.

[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.

[Scraap]

Kinda left-field, but: any chance of seeing the stacking properties front-loaded for the AC reduction aspect? After all, part of the point of those weapons is for folks that haven't geared themselves up to hitting on a 2 yet, which means first they have to make a solid connection to even start the AC debuff stack (or am I misremembering and that does in fact go off on grazes?)

[Angelus_dead]

I think the principle of 'higher difficulty = higher base fortification' has potential

I don't see a potential benefit to higher difficulties impairing Rogues much more than any other class in their role.

They should strive to keep class balance pretty independent of difficulty setting; for some classes to be Normal and others Elite is quite undesirable.

[sirgog]

I don't see a potential benefit to higher difficulties impairing Rogues much more than any other class in their role.

They should strive to keep class balance pretty independent of difficulty setting; for some classes to be Normal and others Elite is quite undesirable.

Hence my suggestion assuming players on Normal aren't skilled enough to sustain Fort debuffs (Normal fortification - 25% - rogues are good at that level), and assuming more 'Elite' players are (debuffed Elite fortification - 25-30%).

This would have a side effect of making rogues top melee DPS in Normal raids with good groups. I don't think anyone would object to that.


Edit: Oh and the reason Rogues are weak in most of the post-U11 raids is their low HP, not their DPS. All >50% Fort bosses except tMA, Shroud and Abbot have low fortification trash that rogues can kill, and in most of them, neutralising trash is the most important job in the raid. Rogues are in a bad spot not because of their DPS but because they almost impossible to get over ~520hp and have no meaningful protection from AoE melee attacks.

[Angelus_dead]

Hence my suggestion assuming players on Normal aren't skilled enough to sustain Fort debuffs (Normal fortification - 25% - rogues are good at that level), and assuming more 'Elite' players are (debuffed Elite fortification - 25-30%).

That suggestion does not address the observation that increasing Fortification impairs Rogues more than any other class.

The existence of techniques to reduce Fortification does not change the fact that no class besides Rogue has as much need to lower Fortification.

This would have a side effect of making rogues top melee DPS in Normal raids with good groups. I don't think anyone would object to that.

I objected to it above.

The relative power of classes should not change according to the difficulty setting. If class A is the best DPS on Normal, it should also be the best DPS on Elite. Some amount of balance slippage according to difficulty will be inevitable, but the devs should try to minimize it. Increasing Fortification percentage with difficulty is almost like they were trying to increase it.

It's as if they gave the Elite/Epic modes of Lord of Blades a "Suppress Rage" spell, which negates any benefit of Rage. Regardless of whether or not the players have access to effects to counteract it, just the fact that it's there means that Barbarians lose more than other classes.

Edit: Oh and the reason Rogues are weak in most of the post-U11 raids is their low HP, not their DPS.

The fact that Rogues lose more DPS in higher setting has been observed to be a significant factor in their being less useful in Elite/Epic raids, including Laliat and Velah.

It is true that both medium AC and Defensive Roll should be better at lowering incoming melee damage than they are. The shortcomings with Defensive Roll have been examined in depth, and some fixes are obvious.

[Jahmin]

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.

Bravo on figuring out what the community has known since iDestruction was introduced

How about making them stack again so that there remains a point to regular Destruction? Really? The lack of foresight should be astounding, but sadly it is all too routine these days at 'new turbine'

[jkm]

Reposting this in all the Destruction threads. Guess what? It's bugged.

This isn't surprising since there is only one debuff type on the bar.

The intent was probably to have a hierarchy of destruction debuffs:

Improved Destruction
---Destruction

With Impr Destruction supressing Destruction (although they were on the same counter). However, the code is acting as if the ID is actually adding to the destruction stack.