Fighter past life and new system

[voodoogroves]

A melee with the fighter PL should be compared to a melee that lacks the PL, not to a completely different class and play style.

Attempting to balance one feature of a game around something that you feel (presumably) is unbalanced simply results in more imbalance.

It's clear that it should be "better" to have the PL.

I think cross-class comparisons are useful, especially since we've got a matrix (past life, if any ... current life, etc.). Does this make a fighter PL as useful for a melee as a wizard PL is for any caster?


This isn't a "balance" question with only two individual factors; the game is far more complex than that.



(EDIT and just so I'm clear - you're only talking about the framing of the comparison; there's no implied opinion on your part that it is or isn't OMFG-broken?)

[MRMechMan]

It's clear that it should be "better" to have the PL.

I think cross-class comparisons are useful, especially since we've got a matrix (past life, if any ... current life, etc.). Does this make a fighter PL as useful for a melee as a wizard PL is for any caster?

.

Obviously it should be *better* to have the past life. But how much better? I feel on live it is balanced.

Making it roughly the equivelent of +8 to hit (8x more powerful) would be too much.

Making it do .5%-1% more hits (1/5 to 1/10 as powerful) would be far too little.

Comparing it to a wizard PL? Well if you are already at 32ish spell pen (possible with zero PLs), any more is not incredibly useful unless you want to wail epic drow...and then you need to fully spec to do that...and we will see in 2 weeks if wail is even useful for that.

You really should be comparing it as fighter PL vs no fighter PL...dragging casters in to muddy the waters and say fighter PL should be buffed 8x what it is because sorcs are shiney is not condusive to a good discussion, nor is it fair.

[voodoogroves]

Obviously it should be *better* to have the past life. But how much better? I feel on live it is balanced.

Making it roughly the equivelent of +8 to hit (8x more powerful) would be too much.

Making it do .5%-1% more hits (1/5 to 1/10 as powerful) would be far too little.

Comparing it to a wizard PL? Well if you are already at 32ish spell pen (possible with zero PLs), any more is not incredibly useful unless you want to wail epic drow...and then you need to fully spec to do that...and we will see in 2 weeks if wail is even useful for that.

You really should be comparing it as fighter PL vs no fighter PL...dragging casters in to muddy the waters and say fighter PL should be buffed 8x what it is because sorcs are shiney is not condusive to a good discussion, nor is it fair.

Possibly. Maybe you convinced me with your "don't reward mediocrity" thread to look at things differently.

Heck, I still want Power Surge as a freaking stance and on all the time.


Diminishing returns **** keeps new folks competitive, right?

[Stillwaters]

OOOH even better make the pun-pun a sorc in the first place, swinging 'tween spells,
over a big enough timeline,
and with a big enough boss AC
"sorcy pun pun" wins!!!

lol I must be tired. stupid american time slot forums keeping me awake

Making melee casters that hit with no investment tween spells was one of my 1st rants in closed beta

[Phidius]

...
(EDIT and just so I'm clear - you're only talking about the framing of the comparison; there's no implied opinion on your part that it is or isn't OMFG-broken?)

Correct. I'm still not 100% clear on how the upcoming combat changes are calculated. I keep meaning to find the thread that will allow me to accurately predict my 12/6/2 battle casters' to-hit, armor class, dodge, etc...

But I keep getting sidetracked

Edit:

Details from Eladrin

Dayum... this is going to be a good release for WF battle-casters. The struggle to stay in the relevant areas of to-hit/AC has always been a major weakness, and now the gap between one and a true melee has been closed significantly.

[voodoogroves]

OOOH even better make the pun-pun a sorc in the first place, swinging 'tween spells,
over a big enough timeline,
and with a big enough boss AC
"sorcy pun pun" wins!!!

lol I must be tired. stupid american time slot forums keeping me awake

Making melee casters that hit with no investment tween spells was one of my 1st rants in closed beta

Ya know, Pun Pun was eventually optimized to have the "fastest" route to power as a Level 1 human paladin. No longer required sorc or kobolds. Go figure.

;-)

[Stillwaters]

/snip darn dbl post

[Stillwaters]

Ya know, Pun Pun was eventually optimized to have the "fastest" route to power as a Level 1 human paladin. No longer required sorc or kobolds. Go figure.

;-)

+1 for the total over usage of pun pun you caused in this thread!

And the only good pun pun is a kobold

DM: you approach a clearing where you see a kobol-

Fighter: i charge him!

DM: are you sure you want to do th-

Fighter: i charge him i rolled a 20

Party: "YEAH, Natural 20!!"

DM: sorry guys the kobold looks angry you all die!

Party: ..... .... .... "good one Fighter"

Fighter: this game stinx (walks out)

<party rolls up new toons>

DM: so you approach a clearing, in the clearing you see a gazeebo with--

Party: "run for your lives!!!"

[voodoogroves]

+1 for the total over usage of pun pun you caused in this thread!

And the only good pun pun is a kobold

DM: you approach a clearing where you see a kobol-

Fighter: i charge him!

DM: are you sure you want to do th-

Fighter: i charge him i rolled a 20

Party: "YEAH, Natural 20!!"

DM: sorry guy the kobold looks angry you all die!

Party: ..... .... .... "good one Fighter"

Fighter: this DM stinx (walks out)

<party rolls up new toons>

DM: so you approach a clearing, in the clearing you see a gazeebo with--

Party: "run for your lives!!!"

I was more sad when Nut-Nut wasn't required either. Poor, overlooked squirrels.

The real pity is that folks probably think I care so incredibly much about this, but the reality is I'm posting at work. If I were home in front of the game, I wouldn't be on the forums. Ah well ...

[Cetus]

I completely agree

The weapon focus triplet and the fighter past lives are completely underpowered now. With the introduction of percentage based mechanisms, actual numerical improvements to our attack scores have completely lost their position in our character builds.

I think that this system absolutely caters to the undergeared and the more casual player. I have no problem with more efficient casual players, but what I absolutey have a problem with is making my achievements such as the years of TR'ing and years of grinding gear to perfection mean much less in comparison to the undergeared first life casual guys.

With the rounding mechanism in place, I'd absolutely need to know what the AC is of the opponents I fight. I am not going to wear a +X attack item, if I calculate that it still isn't enough to round me up, but in order to know that, I absolutely must know the AC of my target.

Additionally, I refuse to have to calculate my %chance to attack a monster with whatever AC they have. This is much like what I do today on live for my tactic DC if I get curious, since the devs just blatantly removed that piece of information.

So, my requests here are two fold:

1. Weapon focus feats and fighter past life to-hit portion needs a more meaningful adjustment. Either converting them to %age based effects or inflate the numerical values to a more meaningful number.

2.Provide a way for us to KNOW what our % chance is to hit our target currently, maybe involve the monster manual this way. Lets say, I encounter a monster for the first time- its stats are mysterious to me. But, after I kill it- I would like its stats available to me and employed in an area that can tell me what my miss chance is and what not. I don't feel like crunching out the impacts of every piece of to hit gear I wear in every particular case to be absolutely efficient with my melee.

[Indoran]

5% chance to-hit would be too much under the current system. Far too much.

For a +65 to-hit melee vs an 80 AC mob (72% chance to hit) to get to the same as a character with 3 fighter PLs (87% chance to hit), they would need a +90 to-hit. Those fighter past lives are the same as the following effects for to-hit:

Eravens sight (4)
+4 cannith crafted (4)
Imp sundered (5)
flanking (2)
power surge (4)
SA +5 item (5)
bless (1)

Combined

So 5% stacking 3x would be too much. But the current +1 to-hit is nothing. Maybe make it a stacking 2% chance to-hit (still a lot). This new "based on 100" system really means every to-hit effect needs a major look at.

Exactly... this is my position... for those of us that grinded the 4 mill - 13 mill xp to get a meaningful benefit... we need soemthing... i think maybe 2% would be good.

Regarding the 1% doublestrike... its sooooo not the same I would take +2% to hit any day.

To hit is actually a dps multiplier. What do i mean? for the sake of the example lets simplify, lets say you do 100 damage per hit. and you have a 70% chance to hit. then you are actually doing:

70% * 100 = 70 damage

what happens to weapon specialization (as the poster above says) if you go from 95% chance to hit to 70%

95% * 2 = 1.9 damage

70% * 2 = 1.4 damage

By changing the way to hit works the whole weapon specialization line got punched in the groin. that 0.5 less damage is well evidently 25% less.

Melee dps is not OP and because of this Weapon Specialization might need to get revamped to make it worth taking for anything besides being a kensei (which got hit with the nerf stick too, but that is topic for another already running thread).

and for those who havent run the math... there is a calculation that shows that +1 to hit might amount to 0% increase in to hit in certain circumstances... (lost the link but it should be easy to find it's a hot topic currently)

[Postumus]

I have one character who I serially TR, but I'm parking all of my other L18-20s until after u14 to see what the PL situation looks like when the dust settles.

[Chai]

Obviously it should be *better* to have the past life. But how much better? I feel on live it is balanced.

Making it roughly the equivelent of +8 to hit (8x more powerful) would be too much.

Making it do .5%-1% more hits (1/5 to 1/10 as powerful) would be far too little.

Comparing it to a wizard PL? Well if you are already at 32ish spell pen (possible with zero PLs), any more is not incredibly useful unless you want to wail epic drow...and then you need to fully spec to do that...and we will see in 2 weeks if wail is even useful for that.

You really should be comparing it as fighter PL vs no fighter PL...dragging casters in to muddy the waters and say fighter PL should be buffed 8x what it is because sorcs are shiney is not condusive to a good discussion, nor is it fair.

Melee are already getting the nerf bat in the scenario, because melee who used to hit on a 2 are now not hitting on a 2. "The 8x more powerful" comment is not accurate when you look at the big picture, because even with 3x fighter PL, fighters will not be hitting mobs 95% of the time like they used to. The overall effect it will have will still not bring fighters to where they currently were in the heroic game, even if it was +5%.

[Magictones]

For those times that you didn't hit on a two in the live system because you were debuffed, running content over your lvl, using CE to survive, or some other reason, doesn't the +3 to hit raise your to hit 15%?

So is it not fair to assume you should get the same in the new system?

[ThePrisoner]

1% is an extra attack every hundred, x3 bring that sown to thirty-three. It does not benefit ranged and likewise neither do the tactical benefits of a fighter PL.

Doublestrike doesn't proc on offhand attacks, so if you are a two weapon fighter, 1% doublestrike would be an extra attack for every 100 mainhand attacks, which would be approximately one extra attack for every 180 attacks total (mainhand + offhand, full twf chain). Third fighter past life it would be an extra attack for about every 60. Seems too weak.

As for 5% to hit per past life, this doesn't seem too powerful to me. I'm not completely familiar with the new to hit mechanics, but past lives don't exactly come easily. It's a lot of work to get three fighter past lives for a total of +15% to hit.

[Indoran]

Obviously it should be *better* to have the past life. But how much better? I feel on live it is balanced.

Making it roughly the equivelent of +8 to hit (8x more powerful) would be too much.

Making it do .5%-1% more hits (1/5 to 1/10 as powerful) would be far too little.

Comparing it to a wizard PL? Well if you are already at 32ish spell pen (possible with zero PLs), any more is not incredibly useful unless you want to wail epic drow...and then you need to fully spec to do that...and we will see in 2 weeks if wail is even useful for that.

You really should be comparing it as fighter PL vs no fighter PL...dragging casters in to muddy the waters and say fighter PL should be buffed 8x what it is because sorcs are shiney is not condusive to a good discussion, nor is it fair.

looks like someone here is talking about wizard pl without knowing the real value of spell pen... I really appreciate Sibeli's 2 wiz pl when farming epic scrolls (I actually took them because of that and Sib's geared for spell pen)... and remember MORE epics are coming.

Now... maybe by judging from live you dont understand the new system (this last statement should be tautological) the new system is different and you will no longer auto hit on everything besides a 1.

So being that the fighter pl is all about being good at hitting stuff ... well guess what is thematically coherent with having a meaningful effect on to hit. This is no longer accomplished by a +1.

[Cyr]

I agree with the OP.

The fighter past life should get a boost, but it's not alone in that distinction. There really are only a few PL feats that are really good. The rest are just mediocre to plain bad.

[Vulgari]

People are saying 5%/10%/15% is what is needed; others say it is too high. One of the problems seems to be the universal 25% to-hit regardless of BAB or other stat/gear.

The point of my earlier post is that an acceptable solution does not have to be confined to adjusting to-hit.

The 1% doublestrike I used earlier is merely an example. The 1% wasn't supposed to be some type of hard number, but something to illustrate an alternative solution. Maybe I should have started with 20% doublestrike so that people would say it's too high. One of the reasons I went with doublestrike is because its effectiveness is fairly linear which makes it just as effective at the low lvls as at the high and should be easier to balance.

Another possibility could be to have the fighter PL grant a fighter bonus feat. Now maybe having the PL grant a fighter bonus feat per PL is too much. So maybe it's granted at 3xfighter PL. With some of the feat changes and pre-reqs for epic feats, the fighter PL with this change could be useful for otherwise feat-starved builds.

Regardless there seems to be agreement that the fighter PL as currently constructed is rather useless after the update, other than being a requirement for completionist.

[Stillwaters]

and for those who havent run the math... there is a calculation that shows that +1 to hit might amount to 0% increase in to hit in certain circumstances... (lost the link but it should be easy to find it's a hot topic currently)

Here ya go:

As for a +1 always contributes (even not rounding to nearest 5%)
If a mob/non proficient player attacks a target with 100AC
+65 tohit vs 100AC = (75.5)/(2*100) =38% <-- i could buff this guy with a bless spell and notice NOTHING
+66 tohit vs 100AC = (76.5)/(2*100) =38% <-- i could debuff this guy with a bane spell and notice NOTHING
+74 tohit vs 100AC = (84.5)/(2*100) =42% <-- i could give 4 neg levels to this guy = 4% change

If a proficient player attacks a target with 100AC rounding in blue for believers
+65 tohit vs 100AC = (75.5)/(2*100) =38% +25% = 63% ->65%
+66 tohit vs 100AC = (76.5)/(2*100) =38% +25% = 63% ->65%
+74 tohit vs 100AC = (84.5)/(2*100) =42% +25% = 67% ->65% <--9 more to hit = 0% change

If you do some numbers, you can see a +1to hit change may not even contribute 1% in high-end play!!!

HERE too:

If you would prefer me to use a 75AC epic lvl mob/ moderate AC player I can....

+31 to hit vs 75AC = 41.5/150 = 28% +25% = 53% (55% rounding)
+54 to hit vs 75AC = 64.5/150 = 43% +25% = 68% (70% rounding)
+60 to hit vs 75AC = 70.5/150 = 47% +25% = 72% (70% rounding)


+54 to +60 = 6 more to hit = 0% change (4% for mobs or if you dont believe in rounding)
+34 to +60 = 29 more to hit = 15% change (19% for mobs or if you dont believe in rounding)

so the difference between a +31 tohit guy with little to no gear/investment and a +60 dedicated geared melee is
The dedicated guy hits on 6+(using d20), the newb hits on 9+, for 29 less tohit

EDIT: on the reverse you need 10 neg levs, a sunder, a curse, and a bane spell as debuffs for -29 to hit,
and the mob would have 19% less to hit same damage!!!!<-you used to get more than this for curse alone

The age of the self healing melee battle caster has begun

[Cetus]

Here ya go:


HERE too:


The age of the self healing melee battle caster has begun

Yea, everytime I think about how that works, and then look at these required weapon foci- i die a little inside.