Player Character Balance

[Talon_Moonshadow]

One of the things I see for balancing and making different classes viable for one is rogue and arti. Since when should 2 levels of rogue or arti be enough to do traps with a CR of 30? Hell even a cr 10. I think a 2 level splash of rogue or arti should only be able to do up to a cr 5 maybe trap. It doesn't make sense that they can do epic traps. If you think about it from the perspective of how much trapping training would one receive with just 2 levels of that class? Not that much. How could you be competent at something that would take a skilled mechanic rogue or artificer to do?

This argument has been brought up many times.

It's like telling me my Cleric should not be able to have a useful Move Silently score at end game... because I am a Cleric.
Yet, I point extra points into Int and Dex and put all of my skill points into MS.... equipped gear and buff items/spells/potions/etc.

But because I do not choose to play a Rogue like you do, I should not be allowed to sneak past epic monsters...


No... that kind of thinking will ruin fun for many people.





(and BTW, your trap monkey is very much wanted in EE Halls right now)

[Ivan_Milic]

I think you guys are coming at this from the exact opposite direction than you should be.

Lower mobs melee damage in EE.

Why do enemy archers hit for 30 and enemy melee hit for 300? It is the main reason why everyone uses range builds and caster builds, to stay out of melee range.

It makes it super hard to build an effective melee for EE. They must be self healing, they must have high dodge and shadow fade and a stack of displace clickies and good prr. In other words, 6 monk in earth stance + whatever else.

Whats funny is that those archers that hit for 30 with their primary weapon(bow) will hit for 200 melee, same deal with casters.
I would like to know how do the devs build mob casters that good that they can hit for 200 per hit?

[HungarianRhapsody]

We'd love to also get feedback from as many of you as possible from this survey!

• Character Balance Survey

Seriously, you drop this on the forums on a Friday afternoon, 10 minutes before the moderators leave for the weekend?

Just how much do you hate Cordovan, anyway?

[Talon_Moonshadow]

I think you need to (massively) beef up PRR for armor and DR for Barbs (and maybe others).

Also capstones.


PRR first IMO. It's easier, and less likely to suddenly become OP IMO.

Keep EE monster damage the same, but give armor wearers a way to melee and reduce incoming damage to tolerable levels.





I would also suggest a long look at monks.
With an eye toward Monk multiclasses.

I have no problem with a Monk 20 being Superman.
But I have a big problem with a guy slapping on his white belt from his single Karate lesson and being Superman.

[EllisDee37]

My preference would be a solution that does not force monkchers to TR into different builds.

I'm genuinely curious: If manyshot and 10k stars were made to share a common cooldown similar to how flasks work, what would you TR your monkcher into?

[Lonnbeimnech]

I'm genuinely curious: If manyshot and 10k stars were made to share a common cooldown similar to how flasks work, what would you TR your monkcher into?

They would all become pure monk halfling shuriken throwers.

[Uska]

I think you need to (massively) beef up PRR for armor and DR for Barbs (and maybe others).

Also capstones.


PRR first IMO. It's easier, and less likely to suddenly become OP IMO.

Keep EE monster damage the same, but give armor wearers a way to melee and reduce incoming damage to tolerabl

I would also suggest a long look at monks.
With an eye toward Monk multiclasses.

I have no problem with a Monk 20 being Superman.
But I have a big problem with a guy slapping on his white belt from his single Karate lesson and being Superman.

I don't think pure monks are the problem its the splashes they need to make the stances take more lvls of monk that's for sure you can see that by how common monks splashes are.

[HatsuharuZ]

"Balance" isn't the issue. The issue is that some options, meaning multiclass + ED options are enherently more useful than others in the most difficult content. These are often called Flavor of the Month builds, but unless something changes they'll become Flavor of the Year builds.

Let me offer some suggestions, observations and examples that don't end up with "Nerf Monks!"...

1) The most damaging and dangerous hazards that players are spells with reflex saves. This is why evasion is so important.

2) In Epic Elite content, physical damage done by mobs is much greater than the ability of armor-wearing melee characters to mitigate that damage. Much greater.

3) Armor-wearers, monks and spellcasters all have the same AC cap. When approaching this cap, equipping more AC-increasing items or abilities becomes useless. The same goes for PRR. On the other hand, self-healing options and a high Jump skill do not have the same limits. Please give armor-wearers a more favorable formula for both AC and PRR.

4) Not all class enhancement trees are created equal. I can tell that different trees were created by different developers, and not all the trees were made by a dev who had extensive knowledge of the class (this is just a guess on my part). For example: the Pale Master tree gained several improvements, such as a skeletal minion to take agro for the wizard, and negative energy healing amplification. On the other hand, most of the enhancements in the paladin's Knight of the Chalice tree were copied and pasted directly from the old enhancement system, with few if any improvements.

I'll write up another post later on enhancements. That deserves it's own post.

[Winter_storm]

well you balanced (nerfed) the caster and people left. You balanced the cleric radiant servant and people left. You took the fun out of earning xp and people left. Soo balance of what you do is not balance its boring. I should be OP on a character been playing for a long time, not praying for a drop sometime this year or next so maybe one day I can enjoy elite for a casual player. Eveningstar fixed some of this with weapons connected to favor which is awesome but game balance has already proven not to work....

You guys need to get out of the box and look at it a different angle because nerfing is just frustration and not enjoyable or fun.

And need a solo waiting area for a when you guild or group slow to come on activity that you can jump out easily. Too bad ESO already thought of the walk in with "whoever is in there" dungeon. where you help people as your going through and they help you but there is no party, its a shared dungeon.

DDO has good thing going but seems so detached from players who like it here. Can't say to much about support either, but granted they was very nice last time asked for help. it was the first time for me to experience this....

[FlaviusMaximus]

I'm genuinely curious: If manyshot and 10k stars were made to share a common cooldown similar to how flasks work, what would you TR your monkcher into?

Something that doesn't utilize both 10k stars and Manyshot since there would no longer be a point having both. Possibly a Ranger/Rogue if they take the doubleshot penalty off Manyshot or a Monk that doesn't have Ranger splashed into it. Either way, "fixes" that cause characters to TR and rebuild are a touch inconvenient for people who utilize such builds.

[Turbosilk]

Hi,

Turbo, I think you may be misreading what I've said here.

All I am saying is that it is frequently claimed on the forums that shiradi casters are overpowered.

If you need evidence of this very mild claim, ie, that people are claiming on the forums that shiradi casters are OP, just take a look at the post right above yours.

Thanks.

This is my point. Claims are nothing more than claims. Perception lacking facts.

[Turbosilk]

Well, I've thrown up my hands in disgust in the Divine Crusader thread because the devs either do not understand or do not care about this clear and obvious imbalance:

Master's Blitz: +250% base damage for the entire quest
Wrath of the Righteous: +50% base damage w/50% doublestrike (+125% base damage net) for 3 seconds, decays 1%/1% every 3 seconds until completely gone, then after the long cooldown ends you get to start over with +50%/+50%

If the cooldown is 150 seconds, meaning you can keep it going 24/7 -- and it's likely to be closer to 300 seconds -- you would average +62.5% damage bonus. That's a QUARTER of the power that blitz brings to the table.

It's hard to argue that away as being a matter of perspective.

It is still perspective. If you take two characters each with the two builds you are describing above with equal and appropriate gear and the DPS for case #1 is 300dps and the DPS for case #2 is 325 DPS then there is no real basis for calling it an imbalance.

[Snowstar81]

It is nice to see that you asked the players about a possible problem you see. But I believe this is a slightly more multi-faceted issue. The game was originally built upon the 3.5 system and the core of the classes basically adhere to this philosophy. However, the AP system has greatly changed and has now included the concept of prestige classes within the AP system and the Epic Destiny system. Ok, I can probably give here since the systems are already here, but the thing is, these prestige classes that show up in the AP system and Epic Destiny system had draw backs. You had to stop progressing in the core class, you had to meet feat requirements, level requirements, skill requirements, and sometimes other unique requirements. This lead to you choice that prestige knowing that you are giving up something to get it and you are not just constantly gain abilities. This leads more to the question of why do people need these abilities....sure some will want them to be awesomeness to the awesome power, but the content has practically demanded that this happens. Players become powerful, smack baddies down quickly, baddies become powerful, no longer as easily smacked by players, players learn what works best and make that and down goes baddies again, baddies become equivalent to a party of players and now you have extreme optimized builds to play in content and that isn't always what people want. Me personally, I have given up seeing one of my favorite prestige classes because I do not see it being possible in this game. That is ok, I went to a second one kinda, but when I do that the character becomes unplayable. Why? Because of everything being inflated, a wizard must up those DCs or they fail, so no AA elven wizard.

[EllisDee37]

Something that doesn't utilize both 10k stars and Manyshot since there would no longer be a point having both. Possibly a Ranger/Rogue

What I was getting at is that I suspect he would TR out of a range build altogether, possibly into a shirardi sorc or bladeforged centered kensei. My question was implying that the only reason people play monkchers in the first place is solely because they can spam both 10k stars and manyshot essentially nonstop. They don't play monkchers because they particularly like or are invested in range builds.

If that's the case, then making those people TR is fine and dandy. If, on the other hand, they'd be trying to TR into some kind of pure ranger or maybe even a thrower build, then yeah, saying they shouldn't be forced to TR has some merit.

[shawnvw]

Just to draw more attention to this:

• Character Balance Survey

We love survey answers. Flood us with information, please!

Here's some information for you: I've been playing this game from the beginning, but of the 26 "Please rate the overall power" questions of the survey, I would have to answer "N/A (I have no experience)" to 15 of them. Unfortunately, the survey doesn't permit that option.

Similarly, it's already been mentioned that there's no way to answer "0" to the first two questions ("How many different classes have you played for at least 12 levels?" and "How many different Epic Destinies have you 'capped out'?"). If you Devs feel that only players with that experience can give you meaningful answers, I think you should say that up front.


But if you do want the rest of us to join in the survey, how should we answer those questions?

[EllisDee37]

It is still perspective. If you take two characters each with the two builds you are describing above with equal and appropriate gear and the DPS for case #1 is 300dps and the DPS for case #2 is 325 DPS then there is no real basis for calling it an imbalance.

I'm not sure you understood what I wrote. There is no possible way for the same character design to get 300 from one and 325 from the other. Not remotely close. One gives +250% damage per swing, the other gives roughly (on average) +50% damage per swing. That's not even in the same ballpark.

[LucasMacKinnon]

I knew the moment i brought up changing the ability for 2 lvls of rogue or arti being able to do all traps i knew i there would be those justifying it. I'm just saying mainly pure rogue, or mechanic rogue with lvls of arti for the conjure bolts and fusilage are still 20 levels of trapping. or vice versa 18 lvls of arti and 2 lvls of rogue. yes you spend skill points in those skills. I acknowledge that. Just as others have brought up already if you look pre epic lvls, mainly the only splash of rogue you would see would be wiz/rogue. Now however people are doing it with all types of builds. I would love to see something like a perception check. or spot check. If you can't spot you can't search and therefore can't disable. It would make spot even more viable of a skill. I already know people will complain about the idea, but hey it would be a way to help keep things balanced and not just have a couple levels splashed in so you can do everything

[Deathdefy]

What I was getting at is that I suspect he would TR out of a range build altogether, possibly into a shirardi sorc or bladeforged centered kensei. My question was implying that the only reason people play monkchers in the first place is solely because they can spam both 10k stars and manyshot essentially nonstop. They don't play monkchers because they particularly like or are invested in range builds.

If that's the case, then making those people TR is fine and dandy. If, on the other hand, they'd be trying to TR into some kind of pure ranger or maybe even a thrower build, then yeah, saying they shouldn't be forced to TR has some merit.

Agreed.


This argument - "Don't nerf Monkchers because they exist" is not compelling to me.


I'll happily clamor for LR +20 hearts, but I don't think the prevalence of an OP spec is a reason to not address it.

[Grizzt14]

The issue I see with this topic outright is this: Will the Devs do the sloppy and dirty fix of nerfing a few abilities and classes, or the complete and well-implemented fix of bringing less popular classes back into the spotlight? The pro-nerf attitude of Turbine (and it's raving forumite population) leads me to believe nerfs are coming instead of needed buffs to lacking classes, but I'll put in my opinion here nonetheless.

Monks, Rangers, Fighters, Wizards, Sorcerors, Rogues are probably the most well-rounded and complete of the group. This group is largely well-designed (they have issues, but I'm going to spare details for this post since it's irrelevant to my point.)

Druids, Clerics, Favored Souls are functional, but could be improved for sure. They're necessary for most groups, which has stemmed off most of their popularity from dropping off. They have definite room for improvement.

Artificers, Paladins, Bards and Barbarians are the bottom of the barrel. I rarely seem them ingame, and their enhancement trees and/or class design has left them as the least popular classes in DDO. This group needs an improvement more than any other.

EDs are a completely different animal and frankly I have a group waiting for me at the moment, I'll save that for another post.

[EllisDee37]

If you can't spot you can't search and therefore can't disable. It would make spot even more viable of a skill.

That's not a terrible idea.

I'm currently leveling up a rogue-splashed paladin with full search and disable skills dumping spot entirely. Since I know by memory where most traps in the game are I don't need spot at all. And if I'm being honest, this makes it feel kind of cheesy.