Poll: What do you think of the upcoming changes to DDO's combat system?

[Cormalindo]

Dislike.

It tries to fix an inbalance inherent in the system that Turbine increased by their bonus inflation.

Heavy Role - shield and armour, is supposed to see the ac effectiveness diminish against Bosses when nearing Epic lvl.
Light Role - without shield- This translates to a -9 ac compared to a heavy in PnP. That is a lot. Without debuffing mobs and bosses the AC could be dropped, but every debuff helps the ac count for more. Still worthless against bosses. From PnP.

Heavy characters stand there and take it, trading offencive power for survivability. Light characters help the heavy by Crowd Control, hindering combat moves and fast killing. Casters deal with enemy heavies/bosses with hig burst dmg or debuffs/charms. This is the standard PnP tactic.

In PnP Monks are not AC tanks but have AC comparable to Rogues, Rangers and Wizards. Heavies get 10-11 points more and those points are important. Light characters can solo mobs by using tricks and combat feats against them, not by standing there and take it. They are not designed for that.


The bonus inflation means that something needs to be done, but trying to make every build work as tank is not the right way. Bring the bonus inflation under control and make the active combat feats more worth it and teach those people in a light build to use them and stop thinking that they are heavy AC tanks.

And the God Mode AC that some people apparently can get, they are a part of the underlying system and are supposed to be countered by among other things touch attacks. Try to balance the underlying system we are here to play instead of making a new one.

http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...&postcount=254

[grandeibra]

completely agree about the touch attacks

Not sure what you mean about monks/light being 10-11 behind heavies in pen'n'paper AC. When I played 3.5 monks had great ac if they focused on dex/wis

[Cormalindo]

My short calculations are:
Monks can not use armour or shield.
Lets say you start with 18 in dex and wis for a human monk. 4 level up bonus to stat gives 22 dex for extra to hit with finess.
+6 from 22 in dex
+4 from Wisdom
+4 from having both Cat's Grace and Owls Wisdom
+4 from Monk Levels.
+18 without doing those bonuses that the fighter can also get, like rings of protection and barkskin.

Fighter in full gear, mithral for the 2 extra max dex points.
+13 From +5 Full Plate
+3 From Dex, Mithral Shield and Armour
+9 From +5 tower shield
+25 without bonuses the monk has access to.

The monk gets closer than a rogue, bard or ranger does. But this one has 7 points lower than the fighter and in a Mirror fight or with a melee oriented adventure boss those seven points can represent 35% more hits on the monk, if the monk tries to stand and take it without fighting smart. And in a Mirror fight the Fighter would probably hit himself on 12+ with a medium powered character, or even better in a high power campaign.
The monk gets 2 more in bonus, at least, than the others do. Probably 4 as the others would have armour with max dex already reached or reached with the spell from the cleric.

[grandeibra]

periapt of wisdom shrinks the difference even further

I agree real tanks may have a couple of points higher AC but nowhere near 11 higher. Pretty similar to the way DDO until the expansion

[joaofalcao]

Strongly Dislikes with a cherry on top.

Its a half-tought system full of black holes thats going to bring a lot of headaches and wont work with the rest of the game.

Just like the DoTs. Nonsense from nowhere the D&D scope that just doesnt works.

[Cormalindo]

@Grandeibra

A Periapt and perhaps a Dex item +6 will help, but only by one point each as they do not stack with Owl's Wisdom and Cat's Grace +4. Just like in DDO. That being said, a monk is perhaps the closest we have to a mediumwhen talking about AC in D&D. And while the lower AC than a fighter/Paladin/Cleric can hurt a lot against a Full BAB melee class, against the 3/4 and 1/2 BAB their AC will be much more meaningful.

[Kadran]

WF melees get the shaft hardcore style. You pretty much have to use a feat on a body to get a meaningul ac/prr. This is a problem on all melee classes with the exception of fighter.

I know things weren't perfect, but they weren't so messed up you had to scrap everything and start new. You don't have to reinvent the wheel here.

[Stanley_Nicholas]

WF melees get the shaft hardcore style. You pretty much have to use a feat on a body to get a meaningul ac/prr. This is a problem on all melee classes with the exception of fighter.

I know things weren't perfect, but they weren't so messed up you had to scrap everything and start new. You don't have to reinvent the wheel here.

Good point. Warforged should absolutely get a racial bonus feat at first level that has to be used on body type: composite, mithral, or adamantine. Half elves don't have to spend their regular level 1 feat on their dilettante.

[ZapperGhandi]

Strongly Dislike.

Seems like a big nerf to melee damage and overall viability - widening the gap between casters and melee even more.

[Persiflage]

Strongly dislike. Not that it's making any difference to gameplay for me; I've never had a toon with AC worth a ****, and now the changes are live I still don't (apart from my AC64@L16 Arti pet now getting hit all the time) but it's not what I came here to play. I object to these changes on the same grounds that I object to Warforged and undead characters losing poison and disease immunities (and an iron dog getting poisoned?!?), the same grounds that make me miserable that Displacement can't be cast on others, that Wail of the Banshee has been changed, the stupid hp bloat and so on.

It's not Dungeons & Dragons.

I didn't come here to play "an MMO", I'm not interested in any old game, I came to play Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 in an online format and this is not it. I'm OK with *extra* stuff (Cannith Crafting, the twist on action points), and I'm more-or-less cool with most of the adaptations that have had to be made to get the game to work in real time, but those elements that are clearly documented in D&D rules which have always worked perfectly well in the online iteration should not, as far as I'm concerned, be changed. The current system is confusing, complicated and unbalanced, sure; but worse, it's not recognisable as D&D. D&D is the only reason I came, it's the only reason I stayed.

I'd hoped that, over time, the game would become more like 3.5 D&D - yes, despite its flaws - as developers got smarter about quest design and the implementation of spells and character features. I'd hoped for Tome of Battle classes so that melees would have more interesting options. I'd hoped for proper illusions and charms to be added along with decent stealth mechanics so that there were ways to beat a quest that didn't involve killing everything, along with commensurate XP awards. I'd hoped for real prestige classes, and more varied and interesting ways to build characters. Instead, we get an unhealthy preoccupation with somehow balancing the classes between each other (in what world were melees *ever* balanced with spellcasters at high levels in D&D before the Book of Nine Swords?!) and mob rule by a handful of vocal uber-players (often fixated not on the effectiveness of their own character, but its effectiveness compared to everyone else's, which is wrong-headed) that together have led to an erosion of the "D&Dness" of the game and a gradual emergence of a generic AnyFantasyMMO.com with a D&D skin over the top. It's not about Wizards and Barbarians and Monks any more, it's about "DPS" and "crowd control" and "evasion". The shorthand (understandably) used on the forums to discuss this stuff has become the reality of how the developers think about the game; they're not trying to find ways to turn Dungeons & Dragons into DDO, they're trying to find ways of cramming the mechanics for a generic fantasy MMO into a DDO suit.

It may be that this will be a successful strategy for the game and that nobody cares about the other stuff; I'm not going to pretend that I know that anyone else turned up here just because it's D&D, but it's how I feel.

So yes, I say again, strongly dislike...

Give me Dungeons & Dragons. Online. Like it says on the tin.

[Merlin-ator]

Strongly dislike

Destroy the tank, the rest fall like dominoes. A simple adjustment of monster to-hit and AC would have fixed the brokenness I've heard about, but never actually experienced.

[Chai]

Like.

All building on defense matters now, where it did not before.

If a kensai throws on a shield at least they gain some defense in trade for the offense they gave up.

[voodoogroves]

Like the goal; not liking the implementation. Tying defense to BAB is a bad idea, and the abstract nature of it and the diminishing returns makes actual planning and the like pointless. It needs to be more visible.

[Quarterling]

Strongly Dislike for me.

[saco]

Strongly Dislike

Whats the point of a 1d20 anymore? They are taking more away from what was little left of a D&D feel and "WoWifying." If epics made AC trivial or causing a lot of the issues then perhaps the problem lies not in the combat system but with how epic mobs were implemented.

[Eme]

this new system after trying it out is more broken than the old system and has so many flaws and complications its crazy, its easier to not even bother worrying about AC anymore, let alone understand it then strive to improve it.

[Jaid314]

like.

i agree with the idea of what they're trying to do, but feel that there is probably some room for improvement. in particular, i'd like to see the bell curve a little less curvy, such that each point of to-hit AC is a little bit more relevant (and so that the people who invested so much in reaching the extreme high end would be a little bit better off). i wouldn't be surprised to find that there are other tweaks that could be made to improve things, as well (in particular, to-hit bonuses from sources like weapon focus are very expensive in costing a feat, but offer far too little value right now, particularly compared to other feats which are less restrictive and offer better bonuses and more bonuses, such as precision, or even when compared to equipment which at the very least offers higher bonuses and only takes up an equipment slot as opposed to a very valuable feat slot).

i am also not opposed to people in heavy armor, or who have higher BAB, getting better PRR. more particularly... quite frankly, fighters and paladins can definitely use the boost to get closer to where casters are at, rogues are at least better off than wizards and sorcerers (and get more mileage out of BAB-increasing effects), clerics could use the boost over favored souls... monks are hurting a bit though, if only on the PRR front. particularly because of the dodge cap, and the fact that it's so hard to get dodge high enough to hit the cap - or will be, once water stance is changed. some tweaking there, imo, would be a good idea (6% innate dodge iirc is what monks are supposed to have; i think a level 20 monk could stand to have a little more to compensate for having generally lower PRR.

i do think it is better than before, when a number of builds could reach the point where a modifier to your to-hit or AC was irrelevant, the ability to wear heavy armor was completely irrelevant, and melees had substantially worse damage mitigation than casters because a caster could DPS not only while not in melee, but even while facing in the opposite direction or while shield blocking.

completely without flaws? no. but i do think it is an improvement. still needs polishing, but overall, it is more good than bad.

on a side note... why the 2-week necro?

[garlor]

would really help the OP if there was a link with an explanation ( or an explanation itself ) of the changes

[voodoogroves]

like.

i agree with the idea of what they're trying to do, but feel that there is probably some room for improvement. in particular, i'd like to see the bell curve a little less curvy, such that each point of to-hit AC is a little bit more relevant (and so that the people who invested so much in reaching the extreme high end would be a little bit better off). i wouldn't be surprised to find that there are other tweaks that could be made to improve things, as well (in particular, to-hit bonuses from sources like weapon focus are very expensive in costing a feat, but offer far too little value right now, particularly compared to other feats which are less restrictive and offer better bonuses and more bonuses, such as precision, or even when compared to equipment which at the very least offers higher bonuses and only takes up an equipment slot as opposed to a very valuable feat slot).

i am also not opposed to people in heavy armor, or who have higher BAB, getting better PRR. more particularly... quite frankly, fighters and paladins can definitely use the boost to get closer to where casters are at, rogues are at least better off than wizards and sorcerers (and get more mileage out of BAB-increasing effects), clerics could use the boost over favored souls... monks are hurting a bit though, if only on the PRR front. particularly because of the dodge cap, and the fact that it's so hard to get dodge high enough to hit the cap - or will be, once water stance is changed. some tweaking there, imo, would be a good idea (6% innate dodge iirc is what monks are supposed to have; i think a level 20 monk could stand to have a little more to compensate for having generally lower PRR.

i do think it is better than before, when a number of builds could reach the point where a modifier to your to-hit or AC was irrelevant, the ability to wear heavy armor was completely irrelevant, and melees had substantially worse damage mitigation than casters because a caster could DPS not only while not in melee, but even while facing in the opposite direction or while shield blocking.

completely without flaws? no. but i do think it is an improvement. still needs polishing, but overall, it is more good than bad.

on a side note... why the 2-week necro?

I'm not against PRR itself, or change to AC scaling. The BAB component actually HURTS the 3/4 melee classes more than the casters ... as the casters are more likely to already rely on Divine Power, whereas many Rogues / Bards / etc. don't bother.

I'm kinda sad that in the desire to get AC under control we went to a 2-part system ... and then amped the heck out of armor values. REMOVING more additions to AC and changing the defender and other boosts to PRR instead of AC would have probably allowed AC to become much more meaningful and probably even back on the die, instead of the crazy and abstracted % value and wonky non-linear to-hit system.

[Jaid314]

I'm not against PRR itself, or change to AC scaling. The BAB component actually HURTS the 3/4 melee classes more than the casters ... as the casters are more likely to already rely on Divine Power, whereas many Rogues / Bards / etc. don't bother.

I'm kinda sad that in the desire to get AC under control we went to a 2-part system ... and then amped the heck out of armor values. REMOVING more additions to AC and changing the defender and other boosts to PRR instead of AC would have probably allowed AC to become much more meaningful and probably even back on the die, instead of the crazy and abstracted % value and wonky non-linear to-hit system.

why are casters more likely to use BAB-increasing clickies? you think that rogues, artificers, and melee bards don't like a +5 to hit or a faster attack speed or something like that?

also, the PRR change is additionally based on armor type. i haven't seen a ton of wizards or sorcerers running around in leather, nor do they have the proficiencies to do so by default, so unless they're spending the vast majority of their time shield blocking, they're getting nothing out of higher BAB (armor PRR requires that you actually be *proficient* in the armor you're wearing).