Thunder-Forged Weapons - a formal introduction

[harry-pancreas]

+2 Enhancement bonus means +6 Implement Spellpower.

yeah... was that sarcarsm ?

+6 XD
also there are a few 2 handed divine casters but...it's just stupid IMO.

[danotmano1998]

Appreciate the adjustments for the ML's of these, it's a step in the right direction (IMO).

Except you are discouraging upgrading them by raising their ML's.
Please consider removing this restriction. Thank you.

[Henky]

AFAIK off hand not working with cleave is both logical and WAI.

Increasing effects on THF by 50% would still result in TWF having an edge (would need at 80% boost to fully compensate for the off hand procs), but it would be close enough that THF would remain viable. That TWF would require more mats is fair given that they would still be getting extra capability.

If it's logical and WAI they should change the animation for TWF, you are loosing a lot of DPS if you use it.

[Oxarhamar]

If it's logical and WAI they should change the animation for TWF, you are loosing a lot of DPS if you use it.

what they should do is change Perfect TWF which benefits THF to this:

Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting:
Prereq: Greater Two-Weapon fighting
Benefit: You have a chance to produce an offhand attack along with your main hand attack while using the Cleave type attacks chance is equal to half your normal offhand chance.

[Hathorian]

wow, these look awesome! Great work Dr O and the rest of the Dev team!

Question...what is the binding status of ingots, scales and Plogiston? BTA?

[dunklezhan]

A suggestion in general, for Tiered loot and how this might work for that whole 'reward elite play', rather than having straight normal/hard/elite loot, or a tiering system using ingredients only available at certain tiers. The idea is that this is a hybrid between the two systems. I will point out now that I am not an 'elite' player, I am casual. And I firmly believe elite players should at the very least get the best loot faster than other players. I have no particular issue with Elite players getting the BEST loot, but that appears to be the point of conflict here, so this suggestion is based on everyone getting there, but elite players getting there way ahead of the rest:

1. allow appropriate tiers of the item to drop straight from each difficulty tier but with a very low drop rate, (so nothing on casual, potential for T1 on normal, T2 hard, T3 elite). These could be the equivalent differences between current norm/hard/elite gear, or could be more similar to the Tiers of raid loot. Whatever. Power balance of items from quests vs raids is a very fine balance and I don't pretend to be able to get that right. The important thing is that the levels effectively represent upgradeable tiers and that it be rare for them to drop at the relevant tier for that difficulty level.

2. Allow lower tiers of preupgraded tiers of item to drop at those higher difficulties at a higher rate than the 'max tier' for that same difficulty level, and very slightly higher than the max tier of the previous difficulty (e.g. on elite you should have next to no chance of a T3 on elite, but still have a slightly better chance of a T2 dropping than if you were just running the quest on hard).

3. The drop for ANY tiered item at ANY level would have to still be (very) low, but endless grind can be prevented by adding an escalating % chance per completion (a SMALL percentage, less then 1% certainly. Just enough to make it more likely each time). To me, that keeps the feel of 'get a better item for running at different levels... but still keeps those items in eventual reach for players who are willing to take longer to get there

4. have recipes for each weapon and tier, but have them all use different combinations of the same number of ingredient flavours (say there's, I dunno, 5 different ingredients types total, each recipe uses all five types at all tiers but in different proportions and quantities). I mean this to be a bit like GS but without the different 'levels' of ingredient. This is "dumbed down" in comparison but easy to grasp and follow and maintains that same 'recipe' feel as GS

5. Include a Tier 4 for each item which cannot drop and must be crafted (so even the elite players have something to work towards if they get lucky and get a T3 item). This could entail 'significant' grind. I guess. If you really must. I'd rather it didn't, especially if you continue to run on elite at level for your ingredients.

6. Allow tiering up from T1 all the way to T4.

7. Allow crafting of blanks (i.e. T0 items) using just those ingredients which can then be tiered to T1, and up to T4. Eventually, even if you are the unluckiest looter in the world and NEVER get an actual item drop, you can still have a T4 item.

8. Make ingredients BTA or unbound but certainly not BTC, for the love of mike.



I might run on Hard and get very, very lucky with a pre-upgraded T2 item in one Hard run! I might get slightly less lucky and got a T1 item after ten Hard runs, but all the while I'm getting ingredients too. Once the tier I want drops, I could choose to run elite to more quickly get the ingredients I need to get it to T4 (or get lucky and get a T3 item, and I can vendor my T2), or I could go run normal, and get a small but steady amount of the various ingredients needed, but eventually achieve the same thing as running elite a much fewer number of times. Either way, it should be quicker to run on elite and get a T2 or T3 to drop and then get it to T4 than running normal until you get get a T1 and upgrading that.

Not sure whether the items should be BTC, BTCoE, BTA, unbound or what. I wouldn't care if they were BTC if they were worth clearly more plat than a random lootgen of similar ML so there was clear reward for the drop even if you can't really use it. Or if you could break them down for ingredients.



Would that work?


A last minute thought, and I'm just putting this out there really: how about lowering the drop rate of everything (base items, tiers of items, ingredients) once the player is 2 levels over the quest difficulty. When at cap running cap content, this will never happen. When not at cap and presumably acquiring levelling gear, this discourages farming and gives TRing/eTRing a bit of a purpose beyond the past lives, slowing down the loot acquisition and therefore slowing down the power creep, as well as encouraging more grouping/play through at level.

I'm also more or less - more or less - fine with store pots of some kind to increase the ingredient drop rate (in fact, lets have those for cannith crafting anyway as well as the crafting XP boosters and wilderness slayer count boosters), provided the basic "drop rate:numbers required" isn't stupid in the first place (CoVs would be what I would describe as a stupid "drop rate: numbers required"). I'd prefer not to add anything to the store I can't loot in game reasonably often though.

[Hathorian]

Please make all ingredients unbound, similar to shroud (although shroud does have shards of power so maybe one ingredient could be bound).

These weapons already seem quite powerful. A few more options per tier would be good (as would a system for non-weapons) but I think adding crit range/mult would be overpowered at this point. I think if you had tiering for weapon effects, similar to bursts, where higher crit mults give bigger weapon effects that would help even things out a bit between weapons.

Also, if you could move the +7 spell pen to tier 1 or 3 that would be nice for DC casters as the three best options are all currently in tier 2.

[Hathorian]

would you please tell me where the caster love was last riad?

or citw??

citw was all about MELE love... and you wanna say *yet again*......

and would you please tell me where casters got off better than meles in egh?????

lol. apparently lyrecono is the 'nerf caster all the time no matter what' type. I posed in another thread...monster saves have gone up at roughly twice the rate that caster DCs have gone up since just before the start of the new epic system. there has been no DC caster love for a long, long time.

[Kamode_Corebasher]

I have yet to read this whole thread, but I agree with bbqzor's whole post, especially this:

Feedback Ahoy:
I hope a lot of adjustments are yet (to be) made. There are gaps and holes in whats there, as well as glaring situations where some choices are just plain terrible and I feel for those not savvy enough to spot them before wasting materials on things which either wont work as advertised, or will lead to people feeling bad about their character underperforming the first time they group up with someone who made a mechanically sounder item. Thats the sort of thing I hope these threads catch, so again heres hoping. Thanks for reading, cheers.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...06#post5256606

[Hathorian]

Skybreaker is a nice weapon but these absolutely blow it out of the water. That said...I think having double base weapon damage and reducing the number before the brackets would be pretty awesome (epic even!). i.e. 2[4d6] rather than 4[2d6].

I'm re-reading the original post....please don't make the scales a common drop and the Phlogiston an uncommon drop. They should both drop every raid similar to how hcomms drop in FoT. You can always adjust the # required to upgrade the loot. I prefer guaranteed drops and a sense of progress rather than commonly getting skunked.

[Hathorian]

One other thing.....thanks for putting an orange slot on the base item!!! I think it is outstanding that you made this change. The base item would be totally useless to casters otherwise.

One other recommendation/suggestion...change the tier 3 slot to red instead of colorless and get rid of the option to take a red slot in tier 2. Melees are getting something for baselines tiers 1 and 2 and casters are getting almost nothing....but I think that is ok....

[Nightmanis]

One other thing.....thanks for putting an orange slot on the base item!!! I think it is outstanding that you made this change. The base item would be totally useless to casters otherwise.

One other recommendation/suggestion...change the tier 3 slot to red instead of colorless and get rid of the option to take a red slot in tier 2. Melees are getting something for baselines tiers 1 and 2 and casters are getting almost nothing....but I think that is ok....

That slot idea isn't bad. Just get rid if the red slot at tier 2 outright, and change the colorless to red.

Also, just a suggestion to lessen the power of my suggestion, just give everything elasticity or the like for melee weapons. Don't increase the crit range at all, just increase the multiplier on 19-20. The last thing we need is for a falchion to rule everything with a 10-20.

[lyrecono]

lol. apparently lyrecono is the 'nerf caster all the time no matter what' type. I posed in another thread...monster saves have gone up at roughly twice the rate that caster DCs have gone up since just before the start of the new epic system. there has been no DC caster love for a long, long time.

not realy, my casters still hate the EE mob saves, but atleast my necro and shiradi sorc are thriving (my dc caster cleric is still screwed, never bothered to play him enough to get decent dc back on him)

mob's saves might have doubled, mob hp has more then doubled. so melee's have to stay in range longer, increasing the risk. i don't want casters to be nerfed, i want melee's handed better tools for the job they were designed to do, not a bunch of whet noodles we get now.

[DrOctothorpe]

Hi everyone. Thank you again for your feedback. I can’t repeat enough how valuable it is to us as Update 21 moves toward release. I wanted to take a moment to address some of the topics that have come up in this and the other U21 Treasure Lamannia threads.

Scaling Treasure (Normal/Hard/Elite differences)
For Update 21, items will not be different based on the difficulty of the content run. You can consider this to be the default status for this year’s coming releases, but we are constantly reviewing the incentives for running different difficulties, and we’ll adjust our approach as needed. The difficulty incentives in U21 content rely on drop rates, and we are attempting to scale those so there is a real, worthwhile difference.

Extra Commendations of Valor in Thunderholme
Speaking of which, we have put extra Commendations of Valor in a) chests in the Temple of the Deathwyrm raid, in amounts that scale to difficulty, and b) chests in the Thunderholme adventure area.

DC’s
The goal for DC’s on these craftable raid items is not that they be underpowered! We’re listening and we’re looking hard at all the relevant numbers.

Critical Profiles
As some of you may have noticed, we’ve been shifting Critical Range and Multiplier bonuses away from equipment and into Enhancements and Epic Destinies. It’s our view, for a variety of reasons (some of which are “under the hood”), that these critical stats are “tapped out.” That said, we think we grok the appeal underlying altered critical profiles (damage spikes, synergies, creative build strategies), and part of our goal for Level 28 and above is to find new avenues to get that kind of goodness in - but from new or different sources.


Thanks again,
Dr#

[sirgog]

Hi everyone. Thank you again for your feedback. I can’t repeat enough how valuable it is to us as Update 21 moves toward release. I wanted to take a moment to address some of the topics that have come up in this and the other U21 Treasure Lamannia threads.

Scaling Treasure (Normal/Hard/Elite differences)
For Update 21, items will not be different based on the difficulty of the content run. You can consider this to be the default status for this year’s coming releases, but we are constantly reviewing the incentives for running different difficulties, and we’ll adjust our approach as needed. The difficulty incentives in U21 content rely on drop rates, and we are attempting to scale those so there is a real, worthwhile difference.

Why not just delete the Epic Elite difficulty then?

You know that, regardless of player skill, EH always offers more loot drops per hour than EE. We all know that too. Any group capable of completing EE can do EH in less than half the time, unless the limiting factor on speedrunning a quest is covering distance.

And finally, you know that the vast majority of the playerbase capable of completing content on EE is focused on optimization, meaning that running EH twice will be done in preference to running EE once.

My suggestion (same combat stats on all difficulties, lower ML on EE than EH and lower on EH than EN) was generally well received, will create an incentive to run EE that caters to the majority of people capable of doing so, and will address any concerns you have about increasing maximum character power too high.

[sirgog]

Hi everyone. Thank you again for your feedback. I can’t repeat enough how valuable it is to us as Update 21 moves toward release. I wanted to take a moment to address some of the topics that have come up in this and the other U21 Treasure Lamannia threads.


DC’s
The goal for DC’s on these craftable raid items is not that they be underpowered! We’re listening and we’re looking hard at all the relevant numbers.

Because of the way you generate mob stats, anything with a save-or-incap effect that is balanced in EE will be obscenely overpowered in EH, and anything balanced in EH will be utterly worthless in EE.

An EH-ready player (first life, well chosen but not super rare gear, and a solid but not optimized build) will be ~5-8 DCs behind an EE-ready player (multiple useful past lives, well chosen and rare gear, fairly minmaxxed build). So saves on mobs should differ by ~8 points between the difficulties, not the ~20 points they do now.

Critical Profiles
As some of you may have noticed, we’ve been shifting Critical Range and Multiplier bonuses away from equipment and into Enhancements and Epic Destinies. It’s our view, for a variety of reasons (some of which are “under the hood”), that these critical stats are “tapped out.” That said, we think we grok the appeal underlying altered critical profiles (damage spikes, synergies, creative build strategies), and part of our goal for Level 28 and above is to find new avenues to get that kind of goodness in - but from new or different sources.

Critical profiles stack multiplicatively with everything else in game. The only other thing that does this is doublestrike or attack speed (attack speed increases that exceed Haste). The latter causes lag, the former is bland but workable.

It can't be stated enough that the present system already renders almost every Thunderforged weapon obsolete.

If you want to balance around crit profiles that are lower than the Khopesh that is fine - but make the Thunderforged Khopesh have a weaker crit profile so that it isn't obsoleting all the other Thunderforged weapons and de-facto deleting them after you spend so much work on the art for them.

Or, have the Thunderforged weapons with weaker critical profiles get a bonus to doublestrike natively that the Khopesh does not receive.

[Satyriasys]

Why not just delete the Epic Elite difficulty then?

You know that, regardless of player skill, EH always offers more loot drops per hour than EE. We all know that too. Any group capable of completing EE can do EH in less than half the time, unless the limiting factor on speedrunning a quest is covering distance.

And finally, you know that the vast majority of the playerbase capable of completing content on EE is focused on optimization, meaning that running EH twice will be done in preference to running EE once.

My suggestion (same combat stats on all difficulties, lower ML on EE than EH and lower on EH than EN) was generally well received, will create an incentive to run EE that caters to the majority of people capable of doing so, and will address any concerns you have about increasing maximum character power too high.

He just said they will be adjusting the rates to make higher difficulties worth it. If the drop rate for a rare item on EE were twice as much as EH would that not be worth it? With the level cap increasing to 30 running EE is going to be much faster than currently as our power increases.

we are constantly reviewing the incentives for running different difficulties, and we’ll adjust our approach as needed.

[nibel]

DC’s
The goal for DC’s on these craftable raid items is not that they be underpowered! We’re listening and we’re looking hard at all the relevant numbers.

Just an opinion directly related about this point, from someone that DO NOT play EE, unless I'm allowed to pike.

The traditional consensus in the forums about anything DC-related is that it must work 95% of the time or it is useless. You "need" high 70s in your Finger of Death DC because the EE mobs have ~50 Fortitude save, thus this is the mark where your spell land all the time, unless they roll a 20.

Everything DC related when put in discussion on the forums boils down if you can either rise the DC enough for it to be as effective as a no-save thing (as discussed above), or if you can spam it fast enough that the DC doesn't matter (as the old Cursespewing).

The main problem it that the gap on mob saves between Epic Hard and Epic Elite is so vast that something that auto-land on EH might have problems landing on EE. No matter how you thinker around with the DC. If you turn it to be "effective" on EH, it will never land on EE. If you turn it to be "effective" on EE, it will land on EH all the time.

I can see only two ways to avoid this pitfall: Plain percentage proc chance (like most Tier 3 Greensteel stuff), or crit-based proc chance (that have the problem of benefiting rapier-like crit weapons over axe-like crit weapons). But one thing is certain: If you have one, you should not have the other.

IE: Your effect should only proc X% of the time, or only proc on a crit. NOT Proccing X% of the time you crit.

[Ungood]

Hi everyone. Thank you again for your feedback. I can’t repeat enough how valuable it is to us as Update 21 moves toward release. I wanted to take a moment to address some of the topics that have come up in this and the other U21 Treasure Lamannia threads.

Scaling Treasure (Normal/Hard/Elite differences)
For Update 21, items will not be different based on the difficulty of the content run. You can consider this to be the default status for this year’s coming releases, but we are constantly reviewing the incentives for running different difficulties, and we’ll adjust our approach as needed. The difficulty incentives in U21 content rely on drop rates, and we are attempting to scale those so there is a real, worthwhile difference.

Extra Commendations of Valor in Thunderholme
Speaking of which, we have put extra Commendations of Valor in a) chests in the Temple of the Deathwyrm raid, in amounts that scale to difficulty, and b) chests in the Thunderholme adventure area.

DC’s
The goal for DC’s on these craftable raid items is not that they be underpowered! We’re listening and we’re looking hard at all the relevant numbers.

Critical Profiles
As some of you may have noticed, we’ve been shifting Critical Range and Multiplier bonuses away from equipment and into Enhancements and Epic Destinies. It’s our view, for a variety of reasons (some of which are “under the hood”), that these critical stats are “tapped out.” That said, we think we grok the appeal underlying altered critical profiles (damage spikes, synergies, creative build strategies), and part of our goal for Level 28 and above is to find new avenues to get that kind of goodness in - but from new or different sources.


Thanks again,
Dr#

Thank you for the response.

Personally I think this system works better overall, and will hopefully address one of the main faultings of the LoB quest.

The way the Loot works right now, is:

• Normal = Tier 1
• Hard = Tier 1 & Tier 2
• Elite = Tier 1, Tier 2, & Tier 3

This is a positively brilliant idea, as that way, people can run whatever difficulty they feel the most comfortable with, and get their weapon to the highest possible upgrade they have the skill and means to acquire.

It is sorta like scaling loot, without the need to make 3 variants of the same thing, Which is a great plan IMHO.

I did notice that the gear seemed very build dependent, but if it is meant to be an End-Game item, then this is a pretty good plan to be "Build Dependent" as the Heroic Build does not change any at the end game, only the ED that is backing it up, so there is not as much a need to for a "generic Skull-Buster" that a TR might want to invest in because they will need across several classes, and thus they can focus on an item that synergies with their build and play-style better.

Anyway, overall, this is looking to be a great system, and a new fun style of gear. Can't wait to see what becomes of it.

[Ungood]

Because of the way you generate mob stats, anything with a save-or-incap effect that is balanced in EE will be obscenely overpowered in EH, and anything balanced in EH will be utterly worthless in EE.

Not really, it just means that EH mobs won't make their save, they are not going to get "More Incapacitated" then an EE mob that failed it save will.

No different then a HH mob always failing at the Radiance Guard, and a HE Mob saves some of the time.