Quote Originally Posted by Zuka View Post
Other than both of the caster destinies, and the bard destiny, and shadowdancer. My arti has gone through all of the destinies getting fate points and the shiradi is only okay, it only has real strong bonuses for the crossbow. Arti's are a LOT more than a crossbow, people really need to wrap their tiny brains around that fact.

A lot of people have posted about monk and monk builds, here's the thing, monks aren't allowed to multiclass, that's why they keep breaking DDO. Monks are supposed to be able to stand side by side with a character in expensive awesome gear and hold a candle to that person in the nude. As a penalty for this they are supposed to shirk material possessions (like epic gear) and they are heavily penalized, losing all of their monk abilities if they multi out of monk even once, a few exceptions include monk specific prestige classes and classes designed with hybridization in mind, but nothing from the core books.

So while you're leveling yes, monks have a lot of well balanced power that makes them play very smoothly once you get the hang of them, a lot of the time they are even quite OP. However, once we get into the epic levels those sharp contrasts begin to really fade away, monks remain viable, and when well built they're down-right pretty powerful, but they never have and I fear never will hold a candle to ranged characters, certainly not after recent updates.

I can't address ever issue of balance in the game, I can't speak from every viewpoint. I can say though, as a melee who loves epics, it is RIDICULOUS to try to be useful in an EE party on a monk, our epic DR from class levels, USELESS, PRR, well it's pretty tough to push it past like 70 on a monk, so again, useless, AC, tough to get above 140 on a monk, heck, mine's at 110 and that was tough, once again, USELESS. Then to top it all off there's no epic HP booster monks can pick up, no way to get an extra 20% health like a fighter or paladin, so they're a heavy melee without any heavy, it works okay as long as defensive stats are beneficial, but when enemies seem to have a guaranteed hit rate (seriously my pali has a 160 AC buffed up and he is NEVER missed in EE) and they're dealing 1/4 of your HP per hit (most of the mobs that get on me in EE on a monk are swinging for like 250+) well it's just a recipe for disaster, and it's no fun to run up smack things twice and flee in terror to behind a wall of self healing 900 HP casters, and bows that inflict every status effect in the game and explode for a kadrillion damage every 2 minutes.

If you want game balance you have to start thinking of the fact that melee is something people enjoy. There may be fewer melees these days than ever but that's exactly what is going to happen when you make a build like the Fury Shot so tremendously overpowered.

So this will anger people, make FotW only effect melee, that was the original idea, it seems plain to see that the idea was for barbs to have another type of stackable rage, however we have resulted in a setup that's simply an easy button, and there should never be an easy button. But then again let's be honest, FotW was a bad idea in the first place, it was obviously going to make a HUGE shift to the game balance and it was broken at the moment of it's inception. I say ditch it all-together and replace it with something similar so those builds can still function, but far more restricted so that the easy button build no longer exists (other than every W/F arcane but that's a dead issue at this point.)

In summary I think melee has been overlooked in recent updates, leading to a serious disadvantage in upper tiered content, disadvantages are fine, some classes should have an easier time with some quests, sometimes it's better to be ranged, these are facts. However everyone who builds carefully and plans well, has a bit of luck and good decision making on their gear, they should be able to stand up in EE, if really truly well built they should be able to thrive with a friend or two. I don't think EE should be a solo run, but I also don't think it should be impossible to duo if you have for example, a paladin and a monk, or a melee ranger (I know unheard of these days) and a bard. DDO was designed with the original pnp goal of being all inclusive, making it possible for any type of player and any type of playstyle to at the very least approach a difficult quest, fair that some playstyles take longer to make progress, and some simply aren't as tough as others, but the simple fact remains that many aren't viable options at all after level 10-12, the game makes a sharp and sudden incline and build styles that aren't heavily defensive start finding themselves in trickier and trickier positions. Yes archers and mages should have to duck and dodge enemies, it's always been the policy that ranged characters kite things around annoyingly, lol. However a class intended to be a heavy melee, like a barb, monk, fighter, or paladin, should not be completely destroyed at that impasse and should if built well be just as viable in end game epics as it is in mid game raids. That however is not the case.

In summary, the biggest balance breaker to me is that the ranged DPS has skyrocketed over the last two years, and it was already nothing to scoff at, with defenses and difficulties also changing so dramatically melee builds are nearly useless in end game, that's a problem. I like ranged and I like casters, but I also like melee, and my favorite job is tanking, which is very disheartening when that's an impossibility because of crazy inflated mobs.

Please pardon my spelling and grammar, I've just woken up.
Actually in pnp monks are allowed to multiclass but once they take any class other than monk after their first monk level they may no,longer gain. Monk levels if they did that here it might reduce some people splashing monk but not many.