Player Character Balance

[Free2Pay]

If it is a foregone conclusion that melee should never overtake arcane in term of dps and survivability, then it should be a courtesy to state so. If one had the early warning that melee is not viable in late game, one would not have wasted time to build a melee toon - whose sole purpose in party seem to be reduced to being just a spectator. There is nothing fun being a melee in DDO right now. Not when mobs are getting CC by ranged when tactical feats are useless. Not when melee dps is reduced by fortification the constant hassle to equip the right weapon to beat DR when arcane has spells to bypass spell resistance. Not when there is no need for a tank in raid when you can't even build a decent tank without godly gears. Not when you respond to the outcry of arcane DC but ignore the AC of melee. Not when arcane has more hitpoints than melee. Not when kiting has no real drawback. Not when melee has no real advantage. Not when reconstruct on arcane warforged is okay but considering nerfing melee BF SLA.

Do you think newcomer's perception of balance is the same as the veteran? Newcomer who tried DDO and perceive the imbalance would not stick around long to understand any late game mechanics. And if they do make it to late game, melee players would be quite shocked when they realise they should either TR to arcane or just leave the game.

[Ancient]

If it is a foregone conclusion that melee should never overtake arcane in term of dps and survivability, then it should be a courtesy to state so. If one had the early warning that melee is not viable in late game, one would not have wasted time to build a melee toon - whose sole purpose in party seem to be reduced to being just a spectator. There is nothing fun being a melee in DDO right now. Not when mobs are getting CC by ranged when tactical feats are useless. Not when melee dps is reduced by fortification the constant hassle to equip the right weapon to beat DR when arcane has spells to bypass spell resistance. Not when there is no need for a tank in raid when you can't even build a decent tank without godly gears. Not when you respond to the outcry of arcane DC but ignore the AC of melee. Not when arcane has more hitpoints than melee. Not when kiting has no real drawback. Not when melee has no real advantage. Not when reconstruct on arcane warforged is okay but considering nerfing melee BF SLA.

Do you think newcomer's perception of balance is the same as the veteran? Newcomer who tried DDO and perceive the imbalance would not stick around long to understand any late game mechanics. And if they do make it to late game, melee players would be quite shocked when they realise they should either TR to arcane or just leave the game.

Zeus is an example of a viable top end melee build that beats arcane in dps. It is not an easy build to make, equip or play. Turbine does unfortunately have a trend of nerfing the wrong things.

[Ancient]

there is nothing wrong with taking care of your own health. my argument was about melee BF, not casters. WF/BF casters are expected to take care of themselves.

The point of having a reconstruct SLA is to be able to heal like a WF/BF caster.

[Qhualor]

The point of having a reconstruct SLA is to be able to heal like a WF/BF caster.

my stance stays the same. some people say BF reconstruct is OP, but I don't see it that way for melees. caster builds would be able to benefit from it way more than a melee build can with a sp pool vastly greater than a melees and there is gear that they would have to boost the benefits. a melee isn't going to keep a reconstruct scepter in their hands while fighting and there isn't enough boosts and it doesn't last long enough between shrines for Power of the Forge. a smart melee that groups with other players wouldn't dump Healers Friend for Mechanist either.

[BigErkyKid]

Zeus is an example of a viable top end melee build that beats arcane in dps. It is not an easy build to make, equip or play. Turbine does unfortunately have a trend of nerfing the wrong things.

Zeus is a good example of DPS and the reconstruct helps a lot. However, I wonder how Zeus would do in real quests.

Besides, to make a Zeus you need more effort, IMO, that to build say some shiradi nuker.

The point isn't so much that melee are IMPOSSIBLE to pull in end game, rather than it is comparably much harder than other builds

Even if you make a melee happen, it will have to be a raw DPS one (except for monks), which for me it kills a lot of the nice tactical options a melee has.

It is absurd the cooldown that a lot of the tactical abilities have (seriously!). That, coupled with the insanely huge DCs one has to reach, kills a lot of the fun of the game. Not to mention that abundant red names make those tactical abilities even more useless.

I used to be excited about building a good powerful end game character for every class (melee, arcane, divine and archer) but nowadays I have given up and gone back to heroics. I feel that 3/4 of the options of the game disappear in end game. Most of the abilities don't scale well and you end up with a much narrower set of options.

[Standal]

I used to be excited about building a good powerful end game character for every class (melee, arcane, divine and archer) but nowadays I have given up and gone back to heroics. I feel that 3/4 of the options of the game disappear in end game. Most of the abilities don't scale well and you end up with a much narrower set of options.

First I would say type and not class, but 3 out of 4 isn't bad. You can build excellent end game melee (Cetus, Zeus), arcane (Shiradi), and archer (monkcher) fairly easily. I don't think there's a great divine build right now, but my caster cleric in US is pretty unkillable and can dish out the heals like all get out. I just hope nobody can tell how pathetic his damage is swinging his mace.

[BigErkyKid]

First I would say type and not class, but 3 out of 4 isn't bad. You can build excellent end game melee (Cetus, Zeus), arcane (Shiradi), and archer (monkcher) fairly easily. I don't think there's a great divine build right now, but my caster cleric in US is pretty unkillable and can dish out the heals like all get out. I just hope nobody can tell how pathetic his damage is swinging his mace.

I would like more options than those. For melee, the to go option seems to be a fighter / monk splash with a mention to rogue staffs. For caster, a shiradi. For archer, monkcher.

Variations exist, but all rely on very similar combinations. Compare that to the viable options in heroics and it is just sad.

I do think that the big problem is that many enhancements and feats do not scale well. Thoughts on that?

PS - I know it is POSSIBLE to have other options in epics, but I don't think that overall there are as many.

PS - Yes, I clearly meant "type".

[Ancient]

First I would say type and not class, but 3 out of 4 isn't bad. You can build excellent end game melee (Cetus, Zeus), arcane (Shiradi), and archer (monkcher) fairly easily. I don't think there's a great divine build right now, but my caster cleric in US is pretty unkillable and can dish out the heals like all get out. I just hope nobody can tell how pathetic his damage is swinging his mace.

Dc casting is viable, draconic is viable, monks in grandmaster are viable, assassins are viable, throwers are viable, light based divines are just shy of viable. There are other builds, some easy, some not so easy. I think "much less effort" is a far smaller balance issue than not possible. In fact, I think there needs to be builds that take different amounts of effort. It lets people play the game, but still have something to strive for. The balance issue I see is that divines are weaker and that melee and ranged require high stats and past lives to even build.

[Ancient]

my stance stays the same. some people say BF reconstruct is OP, but I don't see it that way for melees. caster builds would be able to benefit from it way more than a melee build can with a sp pool vastly greater than a melees and there is gear that they would have to boost the benefits. a melee isn't going to keep a reconstruct scepter in their hands while fighting and there isn't enough boosts and it doesn't last long enough between shrines for Power of the Forge. a smart melee that groups with other players wouldn't dump Healers Friend for Mechanist either.

You can have your opinion, most posted builds disagree, anything I would build would disagree, but opinions are easy. If you try to claim you have better teamwork because you make poor build choices, I'll file that in the nonsense pile and tell you so.

If the bf melee is taking care of their own red bar except for rare emergencies, the best conservation of resources is mechanist (repair amp). If the melee needs a rare emergency heal, heal amp isn't the point since they can top themselves off when they are out of trouble. Wasting resources by optimizing the rare divine heal over the normal repair is simply squandering party resources.

The only place you might have a point is for a raid tank... But maybe not even there. If you are going for a heal amp raid tank, why be bladeforged?

[Qhualor]

You can have your opinion, most posted builds disagree, anything I would build would disagree, but opinions are easy. If you try to claim you have better teamwork because you make poor build choices, I'll file that in the nonsense pile and tell you so.

If the bf melee is taking care of their own red bar except for rare emergencies, the best conservation of resources is mechanist (repair amp). If the melee needs a rare emergency heal, heal amp isn't the point since they can top themselves off when they are out of trouble. Wasting resources by optimizing the rare divine heal over the normal repair is simply squandering party resources.

The only place you might have a point is for a raid tank... But maybe not even there. If you are going for a heal amp raid tank, why be bladeforged?

we agree to disagree than. I don't see it as wasting party resources helping each other out and investing in some heal amp so players wont mind tossing you a heal as needed. my BF Paladin has Healers Friend maxxed out along with heal amp in KOTC maxxed out. I know he could get more out of his reconstruct, but right now getting 200 per reconstruct has been plenty while I get no complaints and plenty of teamwork from others for an occasional heal. ive been in some groups where people say they refuse to heal other BF and watched them die. as I enter epics now I will get more out of it, but this is a past life for me so I wont be investing too much just for that. you make it sound like divines don't heal or teamwork is nonexistent. that's a fallacy started by the forums.

[knockcocker]

my stance stays the same. some people say BF reconstruct is OP, but I don't see it that way for melees. caster builds would be able to benefit from it way more than a melee build can with a sp pool vastly greater than a melees and there is gear that they would have to boost the benefits. a melee isn't going to keep a reconstruct scepter in their hands while fighting and there isn't enough boosts and it doesn't last long enough between shrines for Power of the Forge. a smart melee that groups with other players wouldn't dump Healers Friend for Mechanist either.

I don't think this kind of nonsense belongs in this thread. Sorry.

[BigErkyKid]

Dc casting is viable, draconic is viable, monks in grandmaster are viable, assassins are viable, throwers are viable, light based divines are just shy of viable. There are other builds, some easy, some not so easy. I think "much less effort" is a far smaller balance issue than not possible. In fact, I think there needs to be builds that take different amounts of effort. It lets people play the game, but still have something to strive for. The balance issue I see is that divines are weaker and that melee and ranged require high stats and past lives to even build.

As you say, divines seem hard to pull in end game.

In any case, my complaint is that the builds that the range of builds is smaller in end game. Don ´t you agree with that?

And I point out in the direction of poor scaling of enhancements and feats. Again does someone disagree with that?

So people complain about balance because they feel that they are channeled into playing a narrow set of builds and if they don't don't, they are clearly relatively (to the true powerful builds) gimp.

[pHo3nix]

we agree to disagree than. I don't see it as wasting party resources helping each other out and investing in some heal amp so players wont mind tossing you a heal as needed. my BF Paladin has Healers Friend maxxed out along with heal amp in KOTC maxxed out. I know he could get more out of his reconstruct, but right now getting 200 per reconstruct has been plenty while I get no complaints and plenty of teamwork from others for an occasional heal. ive been in some groups where people say they refuse to heal other BF and watched them die. as I enter epics now I will get more out of it, but this is a past life for me so I wont be investing too much just for that. you make it sound like divines don't heal or teamwork is nonexistent. that's a fallacy started by the forums.

So in your opinion it makes perfect sense to max healer's friend and wear healing amplification items on a BF for the rare occasions when you need an external divine heal cause you are incapacited or stunned/knocked down and not to maximize the input of your own reconstruct that you are going to use 99,9% of the times? If you play with other BF/WF with reconstruct the % of divine heals you are going to need is even smaller.

[Ancient]

As you say, divines seem hard to pull in end game.

In any case, my complaint is that the builds that the range of builds is smaller in end game. Don ´t you agree with that?

And I point out in the direction of poor scaling of enhancements and feats. Again does someone disagree with that?

So people complain about balance because they feel that they are channeled into playing a narrow set of builds and if they don't don't, they are clearly relatively (to the true powerful builds) gimp.

I have zero desire to play a special snowflake game where you can make random choices and be just as powerful as a well tuned build. Working on your build should mean something. I have posted my thoughts on how to help some of the enhancement trees, destinies and pure class builds that fell behind. If end game doesn't have a difficulty bar to get past then It isn't much of an end game.

"Narrow" set of builds is subjective. I would like to see more options, but I think there already more options than the 3 or 4 thrown around here. Some people would like to see no options where end game content requires the holy trinity tank/healer/dps. To me, that is the narrowest set of choices and an unpleasant one at that.

[Ancient]

we agree to disagree than. I don't see it as wasting party resources helping each other out and investing in some heal amp so players wont mind tossing you a heal as needed. my BF Paladin has Healers Friend maxxed out along with heal amp in KOTC maxxed out. I know he could get more out of his reconstruct, but right now getting 200 per reconstruct has been plenty while I get no complaints and plenty of teamwork from others for an occasional heal. ive been in some groups where people say they refuse to heal other BF and watched them die. as I enter epics now I will get more out of it, but this is a past life for me so I wont be investing too much just for that. you make it sound like divines don't heal or teamwork is nonexistent. that's a fallacy started by the forums.

I agree with knockcocker that your anti-BYOH bigotry belongs in another thread. Just like you can't heal stupid, you can't heal amp a jerk player into being nice.

[pHo3nix]

"Narrow" set of builds is subjective. I would like to see more options, but I think there already more options than the 3 or 4 thrown around here. Some people would like to see no options where end game content requires the holy trinity tank/healer/dps. To me, that is the narrowest set of choices and an unpleasant one at that.

Sadly a lot of people think that only form of team play is the holy trinity. If i'm still playing DDO it's only because it doesn't require the trinity.

[Sloene]

Just a thought, Bladeforged are an Iconic race that has been beefed up by their god to be the perfect war machines ( at least in his eyes ), they are SUPPOSED to be superior to other races, that's kinda the point of them.

[Qhualor]

I agree with knockcocker that your anti-BYOH bigotry belongs in another thread. Just like you can't heal stupid, you can't heal amp a jerk player into being nice.

im not anti BYOH. please quote where I said anything like that. stop trolling and stick to the discussion.

[Qhualor]

So in your opinion it makes perfect sense to max healer's friend and wear healing amplification items on a BF for the rare occasions when you need an external divine heal cause you are incapacited or stunned/knocked down and not to maximize the input of your own reconstruct that you are going to use 99,9% of the times? If you play with other BF/WF with reconstruct the % of divine heals you are going to need is even smaller.

that's what works best for me, but anybody can do it anyway they want. like I said before, if you don't have a decent heal amp, you wont get help from others or you will hear complaints for being a manna drain.

[Ancient]

im not anti BYOH. please quote where I said anything like that. stop trolling and stick to the discussion.

If I had more heal amp, would you not call me mean names?