my 2 cents on the melee side of things

[lyrecono]

Disclamer:
English isn’t my first language.
Text heavily rewritten after my gf read it and decked me in the nads for using more swear words then James Rolfe
Broken/bleedin emo hearts will not be refunded
All bugs stated here, have been reported

Hi all^^
After spending some time on the beta, it’s about time to give my 2 cents….
I transferred some melee’s over, the rest will follow later
The visuals:
The harbor had a much needed facelift; the layout will help newer players get around after getting of Korthos. With these changes i assume the Risia games won’t be held in the harbor anymore?
Wheloon looks very dark and a bit generic; the purple misted variant annoys me greatly (then again so does glitter dust).
Characters, the iconic purple dragon knight’s face, some of them look like a joker, they have very long chins and noses. Some of the Shadar-kai look like a over the top emo punk rockers. They might make nice villains but in a non metropolitan land in rpg where you need to interact with people those looks might not be the most useful (breaking believability).

The expansion:
The slayer area feels small and boring at times, especially compared to the previous expansion and updates.
Small in size, generic mobs, string table errors and dark visuals.

The quests:
Again, dark, buggy and breaking immersion.
The sewer system is bigger than most of the harbor sewers quests, too big for a backwater place like Wheloon. I had mobs getting stuck a few times as well.
The mirror mechanic looks nice; working the angle on 2 sides is fun (if the visuals weren’t so drab).
Can’t shake the feeling this has been done bigger and better years ago…. (Inferno?)
The worst offender is the lack of grey matter stimulation. Nowhere in Wheloon did I felt my mind nor my morals being challenged.

Mechanics:
Though it has been done before in inferno, I did like the mirror stuff. If they had implemented it (via a magical item) in the wilderness area and all the quests there would be a reason to revisit them more often.
The hide markers broke my sense of immersion a lot. I hope there will be a way of turning of all those question marks above the mobs heads.
The Shard option at certain npc’s is a slap in the face! Please move this to the bottom of the list, I would rather see it go in general but that probably won’t happen.
The rerolling of chests…. Kinda weird, I hope there will be an option (ui settings?) to turn it off.
Shadar-Kar damaging their team mates….. now if they changed the dominate person spell so that the computer takes over the players toon and starts attacking the rest of the party, now that would have been priceless….(imagine everybody running from the frenzied berserker and his 8k crits during a raid XD)

Gear:
The named weapons are a huge let down but the loot generated clothing and jewelry is extremely powerful, finding a set of (not named) goggles with slaying (or whatever the +to confirm and critical damage is) 11 and a +10 resistance bonus to saves with 2 slots on a EN quest is just baffling and invalidates working hard for those EE Giant hold items.
Also found plenty of +8 stat gear (ml 15)
The Reign of madness (ml0) rings have been nerfed too.

The enhancements:
i love the layout in general, very newbie friendly.
Dwarf, very nice enhancements indeed, a bit steep for tanks though.
Half Orc, this one got skewered and became unplayable. The costs are too high and the fluff enhancements (really, +8 str at 10%hp?) won’t be taken on live and drain points in the beta…
Half elf, nice but on the (expensive) fluffy side.
Classes tested so far:
Fighter: after making dwarven tank with an unbuffed (just using stance) 1838 hp I worried a little about the dps. Still I soloed through EE Orc lair fine and EE cabal was a synch (no traps) up to the end boss (they kept healing and I lacked the dps to take m down). The lack of gear was hurting too; all I had was an lv 14 battle axe from the dojo. I will try grouping with him later today to see if i can keep the agro of people. I expect proplems with barbs and shiadri sorcs. The new shield feat works like a charm on this guy!

Weapon master:
Fighter 12 ranger 6 monk 2 wielding 2 kopeshes while being in monk stances. Top tier stuff didn’t work (wielding kensai weapon in monk stance ) had to tr m into fighter 18 monk 2 for now.
Word on the street is that they will lower the lv 18 to lv 12 for that one… I see this build as a fun option though not as EE material (mostly due of my lack of gear and experience with this type of build). The saves and attack speed went through the roof. The damage was a bit lackluster and tactic DC was lacking… hp felt low too

Tried a purple dragon knight fighter 15, took 2 paly levels but abandoned him, it suffered to much from MAD to work, most of the melee feats require a hefty str modifier needing 23 for the devastating critical feat, or even a 17 for the 2handed fighting feats, a decent con for hp, and cha for their “racial” abilities. I might return to this when you can tr into 1

And now the biggest thing (at least for me)
Barbarian: in general not regarded as any good at all, having been denied access to EE groups because they are considered too weak for EE, they now got nerfed even further.
Seeing a 50% drop in base damage while having selected all the dps related enhancements is not a motivational thought (using exactly the same gear and ED’s mind you)
I have used all 3 prestige classes and they all felt pretty weak, yes you get more options, but the only thing barbs were good for (fast running and ******** dps) is now gone.
Power attack deactivating after engaging rage doesn’t help either.
Needing combat feats for the top tier FB stuff…. 2 mediocre feats at best and trip (so… needing combat expertise and int 13) on a feat starved class? the barb capstone is instant suicide....

Please Devs, put barbs on the map again, in a positive light this time around….

Emersion (rp wise)
The pay with shards bit really needs to get a box in the ui settings so we can tick it off.
The hide notifications need to get a box in the ui settings so we can tick it off.
The Emo bits need to be taken down a few notches.
Give us more puzzles, we don’t play ddo just for the mindless action, our grey matter is on life support!

Now the hard part. I understand that there are many fans out there of Faerun (you know, when D&D was cool and later editions hadn’t reared its ugly head, looking at you 4.0), I have played many p&p sessions in waterdeep and I loved it but…
The ending ofthe druids chain was facepalming…
CitW made us feel like spectators while Anna did her thing
Elminsters actions are questionable at best downright lacking common sense at best.(so far for the legend)
Wheloon is by no means an epic place to be, it feels to small for a lv 15… more like a lv 7, maybe 10 if I’m generous
We’re people coming from a high tech steam punk world, getting thrown in with a backwater medieval lot work with that, these people should be hillbillies to us. Let that impact sink in.
Have the scum of Eberon muscle in on Faerun, make some sence of it all.


Verdict:
Devs seem to discourage TR- ing even more (to keep Emo land, I mean Faerun filled?)
The enhancements still need lots of work, balancing things out.
Immersion needs work!!!
The gear need way more work, please, put some effort in this, I feel ashamed to say it but for 2handed fighting the top weapons are still: (not in any order)
ESOS (how many years ago now?)
Eaga, for dr breaking (how many years ago now?)
Greensteel triple positive maul, for skellies, abbot and the truthfull one (how many years ago now?)
Cleaver, when fully upgraded and paired with trinket (over 1 year ago)
Skybreaker, good-ish vs 100+ fort mobs
How about some proper 2hf love? (And fixing the barb enhancements?)
Losing 50% base damage from live will not go well with people.
Knowing this is beta and meant to test things out I expect things to go wrong but…

Please Devs take this stuff into consideration, because, as it stands now I can not approve this expansion.
Friends of mine are waiting to buy this pack (after all the huff about the first expansion), for now, I will tell them to hold off (though I can’t tell m why due to the agreement)

Still with the deepest regards and modest skepticism,

Lyr


ps, whoot first post after many years of lurking XD