Let's Talk: Enhancements!

[LeLoric]

Basic structure of this scheme is being discussed now. If we don't point out the potential interesting combinations and percieved flaws of these things quick enough then the dev team moves on and sets it in stone. We have seen this time and time again. They almost never actually give us these things at a stage where it is really feasible for them to take a step back and reconsider. They claim they are doing so now, so let's take advantage of it and not worry about not knowing enough, but instead give our feedback based upon what is currently being discussed. When that changes we can change our feedback to address that.

Yes basic structure not class specifics we should be debating issues we see with things like not having enough panels for multiclass toons that is clearly apparent. Not knowing anything in those trees means saying x+y tree is too strong has no basis.

I am sure devs are aware of some glaring combos like have been mentioned in this thread and in reality they probably already have some built in safeguards from it becoming overpowered.

They seem pretty involved in providing us information early enough on this to give some valuable feedback that could result in changes here and this is a long long project more than 6 months out so theres plenty of time to get into specific combination issues as more info comes out to allow us make a more educated satement of x+y is too good.

[Riggs]

Sorry Thrudh i cant agree.

Turbine allowed us to keep Crit Rage in exchange for never being able to reset our enhancements.

Those that kept their Crit Ragers signed on that particular dotted line. That was nearly three years ago. You have to be pretty committed to have never Reset or Tr'd in all that time

Are you telling Zexxi that after 30 months of hard Epic grinding to give her the best set of equipment it is possible to get that i'm going to sit idly by and let Turbine kill her off.

We are talking literally thousands of hours here. Everyone that plays top end stuff on Khyber knows me and knows this to be true. Resetting the enhancements now is far more painful than if they had simply finished it totally with the introduction of U9

I have a unique Character, the last of her kind on Khyber. No way am i going without a fight

Welcome to what everyone else has been doing for years now - redoing characters due to new changes.

Dont expect any sympathy over a clearly OP enhancement that was 'removed' years ago.

[orakio]

Yes basic structure not class specifics we should be debating issues we see with things like not having enough panels for multiclass toons that is clearly apparent. Not knowing anything in those trees means saying x+y tree is too strong has no basis.

I am sure devs are aware of some glaring combos like have been mentioned in this thread and in reality they probably already have some built in safeguards from it becoming overpowered.

They seem pretty involved in providing us information early enough on this to give some valuable feedback that could result in changes here and this is a long long project more than 6 months out so theres plenty of time to get into specific combination issues as more info comes out to allow us make a more educated satement of x+y is too good.

And yet if you had more than 3 panels then any pure characters would lack for options compared to a multiclass toon. No matter what you do with the number of panels somebody is going to feel shortchanged.

3 is a great number if you consider the fact that each class has 3 pre's and you can't have more than 3 classes on a multiclass toon. You can do 1 panel for each PrE, 1 panel for each class or any combination in between. The concept of multiclassing is one of sacrificing one portion of your character to focus on another and until you have actual data you can't say whether that sacrifice is acceptable or not. Personally i feel that until i see data the concept of 3 trees is sufficient depending on how things are broken down.

If you go back to Meat-Head's post on page 55 he outlines a concept in which you can make sure enough general enhancements are included and shared between each PrE so that nobody feels like they NEED to take all 3 of a classes tree to do similar to what 12point rogue may have had access to for example.

[dkyle]

Another thing to watch out for, given the general "everything stacks" philosphy: will we gradually get to the expectation that DPS should have three DPS trees, tanks should have three Tank trees, and casters should have three Caster trees, or else each will be too weak to meet Raid standards? And how many builds will actually be able to produce those combos?

Looking over the previously announced PrEs, it looks like only one class has two clear DPS-oriented PrEs: Barbarians with Ravager and Frenzied Berserker. And what Racial PrE naturally goes with them, for maximum DPS? Tempest. Assassin is nice, but it's actually more of an insta-kill, trash-handling PrE; it's not actually that much DPS, especially since Tempest would apply a multiplicative bonus to Ravager and Frenzied Berserker's damage bonuses. So given what we know now, I would expect the ultimate, full-******, DPS-machine to be a Drow Tempest/Ravager/Frenzied Berserker. Ironically, Half-orcs will make poor Barbarians because their Ravager PrE goes to waste.

Of course, with multiclassing, it will be possible to have other triple-DPS combos, but with all the costs of multiclassing, will they really be able to compete? That Drow build is a pure Barbarian. As long as the Racial PrE overhead isn't more than 10 AP, it could fit all of FBIII, TempestII, and Ravager II. On any multiclass build, it'll be possible to get at most one tier III from the Racial, plus one tier II, and one tier I, thanks to having to split class levels.

[Calebro]

That build does mean that you'd have to be using a melee weapon. Not that you couldn't swap to a weapon that had int-bonus to hit cast on it, assassinate, then swap back to ranged of course.

So what. I have a DM'd halfling arty. He has stealth skills in the mid 40s. He has plenty of Dex and Int that either a +5 finesse dagger of whogivesaratsass or an eMG would work perfectly well.
Trust me, as soon as I saw that halfling's racial PrE was Assassin he is exactly the first and only thought that entered my brain.
With the possible changes to DMs freeing up a feat or two and some AP, believe you me, I would find a way to fit A3 into the build.

[Chai]

I would simply recommend to everyone to write down your feats/skills/enhancements, and if needed, the concept/goals for each character you have. Play a bit on Lamma land and check out the mechanics yourself before everything goes live. Once YOU are ready to go live, you'll be well prepared.

Yeap, for everyone who hasnt done this yet, do it now. Right now? Yes now. Before you forget.

[Riggs]

The 'right way' would be to give everyone, reguardless of build or feat selections, a heart of wood to fix their character. Also, its easy to do.

Time limited is only okay if the timer starts when you get the token and you can control that. Because people who come back to the game a year after this change shouldn't be screwed because they weren't playing right when it happens.

A +6 heart of wood for all? Short of that if a build is broken by the new changes, anything less wont fix a lot of builds.

And the guy you quoted mentioned bowbarians as a popular build. Credibility is questioned there.

[Cyr]

They seem pretty involved in providing us information early enough on this to give some valuable feedback that could result in changes here and this is a long long project more than 6 months out so theres plenty of time to get into specific combination issues as more info comes out to allow us make a more educated satement of x+y is too good.

IDK about you but the whole reason I am listing all these combos is to demonstrate that there are LOTS of them to choose from.

Basic structure is the thing indicating these combos are possible. Sure they could make everything puchasable together like they have now and then end up having to make a stance for all sorts of PrE's making them not stack with this and that, but that seems backwards to me when the basic structure itself then is being worked around systematically.

What makes more sense?

Have the developers code in tons of exceptions to get around their basic design structure with all the extra coding time and possibility for bugs or have the basic design structure follow a pattern that will require as few as possible workarounds?

[Psyker]

Sounds like a good idea to me.

If it means finishing some of the PRE's it sounds like a really good idea.

If it means we get Acrobat III and or Spellsinger III it may be the best idea I've ever heard and I will start singing the Devs Praises!

[Chai]

Welcome to what everyone else has been doing for years now - redoing characters due to new changes.

Dont expect any sympathy over a clearly OP enhancement that was 'removed' years ago.

Clearly OP enhancement then. In todays game its not OP at all.

And what "everyone else" is doing? No. What the end game forumites are doing, which is a severe minority in terms of headcount.

[dkyle]

And yet if you had more than 3 panels then any pure characters would lack for options compared to a multiclass toon. No matter what you do with the number of panels somebody is going to feel shortchanged.

Not exactly. Any multiclass gives up their highest level enhancements, for access to lower level enhancements of other classes. If we assume that enhancements are evenly distributed among all class levels, with all PrEs having equal numbers of enhancements, then even with unlimited trees, every possible class split would have the same number of enhancements available at level 20. The tradeoff would be that the multiclass gets to pick among a wider variety of low level PrE lines, while the Pure gets to pick up the highest level, likely more powerful, enhancements of his own PrE lines. Sounds pretty fair to me.

Of course, it depends on how enhancements are actually distributed, and how front/backloaded they are, but at least in principle, unlimited trees are not unfair to pure builds. The problem with 3 trees is it starkly limits the actual variety available to multiclass builds. Once those trees are locked in, they have much fewer options of enhancements to pick up. The deeper the multiclasses, the fewer the options.

3 is a great number if you consider the fact that each class has 3 pre's and you can't have more than 3 classes on a multiclass toon. You can do 1 panel for each PrE, 1 panel for each class or any combination in between. The concept of multiclassing is one of sacrificing one portion of your character to focus on another and until you have actual data you can't say whether that sacrifice is acceptable or not.

Triple PrE splits like 8/6/6 will be almost certainly be dead, because grabbing those low level PrEs will mean eschewing the full-20-range Racial PrE. Given what we know of Racial PrEs, I doubt that will ever be a good idea. Once you multiclass past a splash, it's entirely likely that your Racial PrE will be your most important PrE, not any of your class PrEs.

[Darkrok]

So what. I have a DM'd halfling arty. He has stealth skills in the mid 40s. He has plenty of Dex and Int that either a +5 finesse dagger of whogivesaratsass or an eMG would work perfectly well.
Trust me, as soon as I saw that halfling's racial PrE was Assassin he is exactly the first and only thought that entered my brain.
With the possible changes to DMs freeing up a feat or two and some AP, believe you me, I would find a way to fit A3 into the build.

Oh, I completely agree with you. Even without the assassin option I've contemplated an eMG on a caster/ranged-based arti. With the PrE that's even more powerful.

In fact, if they go this route and stick with human getting to pick one I might do the same thing on my human arti. Assassinate + artificer ftw!

[QuantumFX]

That build does mean that you'd have to be using a melee weapon. Not that you couldn't swap to a weapon that had int-bonus to hit cast on it, assassinate, then swap back to ranged of course.

Or… you could get to tier III and enjoy your vorpal radiance II heavy repeater.

[Calebro]

Or… you could get to tier III and enjoy your vorpal lit II heavy repeater.

Don't need Rad2. Puppy has aggro.

[stainer]

I like the sounds of this change. I hope it will be implemented in the near future, rather than Soon™. People are pretty excited about it.

[Darkrok]

I really hope they stick with the Humans get to pick.

That said, there'd have to be some huge enhancement changes to arti's for me to fit it in because I already dump pretty much everything but the rune arm and force lines (35 points between just those 2 lines).

[Riggs]

I agree. Forget new UI, forget new tabs. All you proposed we have already in existing UI with existing enhancements.
Let them just finish undone prestiges, slightly alter those who are to expensive/weak/not needed, fix broken ones.

You seriously think a developer, or the boss of a developer - is going to spend resource time on designing a completely new set of tier 3 lines, new lines, and finish whatever is missing from the current lines - and then 1 month later REVERSE all that work by redoing ALL the pre lines from the ground up?

Your suggestions are utterly laughable. Except its not funny because you keep repeating them over and over.

The new system is clearly already in the works and coming - the only question is the exact forms and numbers that will be in it. Not whether it is going to happen or not.

[Riggs]

You make some assumptions: first, that mobs would be fortified to compensate. Maybe Turbine sets a baseline for success, and if you can surpass that by a wide margin with an uber-build, then they say kudos to you?

But the biggest assumption that you make is that enhancements, especially PrE enhancements, will remain unchanged in this new system. There's no indication one way or the other that Archamage and Pale Master will continue to add to Necro DCs.

My guess is that the devs will begin addressing the issues with stacking PrEs as the system starts fleshing out, and that there will be substantial revisions to PrEs, especially caster PrEs.

Yes, the assumption that is based on 5 years of Turbine history.

100% of the time - extra player power = even more monster power. 100%

[Meat-Head]

A couple problems.
1 - It would require a major change in the current spell system that's probably not needed.
2 - It would make lower level casting a **** hole.
3 - it would REQUIRE every caster to take all those enhancements thereby limited their options instead of expanding them

I think an easier solution is the put the Int modifier high enough on the tree in order for only 2 lines to be taken (+4 Int) and not 3. Possibly make the +1 Int line low and then the additional +1 Int after +30AP line (basically tier III prestige). This would require a lot of sacrifice in the build just to get that extra +1 DC. I don't see and increase in 1 DC as game breaking.

Yeah.. deleted OP cause it was prolly dumb. I like your idea better.

[dkyle]

IDK about you but the whole reason I am listing all these combos is to demonstrate that there are LOTS of them to choose from.

There are certainly a lot of exciting combos, but I'm worried that almost all seem to be pure class (or 18/2), plus a racial PrE. What happens to multiclassing? What happens to most builds working with most races, with an interesting decision to decide which one to use? I'm feeling like this threatens to severely reduce both, in favor of obvious and inflexible Race+Class combos.