Let's be honest. DDO is mostly about combat against monsters. Denying this truth is ignoring the elephant in the room.

DDO created an interesting combat mechanic, and itemized it adequately in the beginning. Then, they added new item effects to increase the variety of items and their impact on your stats in combat, increasing the combinations of items and abilities, to craft very focused combat specialists. We had the Pajamabarians, who completely sacrificed armor for pure melee devastation. We had the Defender Paladins, whose AC was so high that almost nothing could hit them. We even had the twitch-jump wizards, who used the Jump spell and a keen eye to evade most damage simply by keeping away from the melee.

Then the complete overhaul of AC and to-hit happened. It evened out the specialists, and allowed less focused characters to compete with the specialists. + to hit items became almost worthless, as each +1 was equal to 1% when it used to be worth 5%--an 80% reduction in effectiveness (you'd need a +30 sword in the new system to equal the effectiveness of a +6 sword in the old system.) Evasion became the new thing. Dodge 25%, Blurry 20%, and Incorporeal (from 10%-35%) were the new, hot things. Every new item was a small 'tick' of improvement over the previous one instead of a 'grand' find!

Now, we have deadly I-X items and Accuracy I-X items, and dodge items have become more or less commonplace.

But, what are the next things we could do to items in combat to make it interesting?

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One idea I had was an escalating combat buff, which occurred on a combat event. Say, a weapon that gains a stacking +1 enhancement bonus for 10 seconds each time it misses a target, or a necklace that gained x charges every time you cast a combat spell, where x is the level of the spell, and when the necklace is fully charged, it can be used to give yourself spell points.

I also thought cursed items were a great idea, but horribly implemented. Curses should be nasty things, like reduced fortification, vulnerability to diseases, or increased spell failure chance. In contrast, the powers attached to cursed items should be tempting enough that people will use the items. A ring which decreases your fortification by 50% should give you a +1 critical threat multiplier on rolls of 19-20. A ring that gives you a 25% spell failure percentage should increase the spell power of all your spells by 30.

Items that build in power as combat goes on via buff/debuff as well. You vorpal hit something? got a 1 min buff of 'Looking to Blow!' Get 10 stacks of that and vorpal again? 'BOOM!' Everything around you takes damage!

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What about you? What 'new' effects would you add to combat to spice it up? How would you fundamentally change the game?