Player Character Balance

[Scraap]

Balance can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different folks. I can say the surveys weren't helpful from my perspective as a tool to highlight balance issues largely because they ignore a few points:

(Full disclaimer: I've always looked at classes as packages of grouped aspects, not a particular role. So this may very well not make sense to folks that insist on the notion of one class = one and only one role. example case: Fighter with hefty feat count vs paladin with fewer feats but innate spellcasting vs barb with barred spellcasting capacity.)

1) Does a given class have an aspect that when focused on make it shine in that area?
2) Is that situation common enough to warrant focusing on it for the entire amount of time it takes to roll up, level, and gear a character?
3) Is an aspect of a given class equivalent, inferior, or superior to that of a similar class with the same aspect?
4) Of the aspects shared across classes, do they synergize, and if so, are the costs of doing so commensurate with the benefits?
5) Of the aspects shared across classes which do not synergize, are the rewards for focusing on that aspect commensurate with the opportunity cost of forgoing other benefits?
6) How sensitive is a given aspect to dungeon numeric inflation (be that mob count, HPs, or mob/trap DCs).

[Thrudh]

I don't think we need a lot of changes.

(1) AC and PRR need to be buffed immensely to give heavy and medium armor wearers protection equal to dodge, incorp players...
(2) Move crit multiplier from Earth stance to fire stance for monks.
(3) Put manyshot and 10k stars on the same timer so you can't use both, and get rid of the doubleshot penalty

Maybe (this is more work)
(4) Buff epic moments for EDs that are lacking.

[GeoffWatson]

Multi-classing is the main balance issue. There are enough front-loaded class abilities and enhancements that make multi-classing really powerful.
The capstones are really weak for 20th level, so there is not much incentive to stay pure.

Geoff.

[Livmo]

Lokeal has posted some nice rune arms to address some arty wants, needs, and desires on the forums. Good stuff.

To help arties address the spell power drop from the changes to arty enhancments it would be nice to see rune arms that can slot spell power. For instance, orange augment slots.

To me, the biggest part of balance problems is the lack of build options for Melee artificers, simply a runearm that grants Tenser's Tranformation, Dream Vision 9, speed X, and Exceptional Fortification +50%

As a nerfing measure, it should curse you with 5 negative levels for the next five minutes when you switch to using a ranged weapon (Regardless of resistances).

Force Imbue

Force type blast

Nightshade Venom!

Colorless Augment Slot

Blue Augment Slot

[lostgunman]

Ranged combat vs. Melee Combat vs. Spellcasting - I believe (In My Experience) That spellcasting is definitely the most powerful of the 3, melee is second and Ranged is third. It would better balance out the types with more varied use of the "crappy" weapons (IE Warhammers, Crossbows and ALL throwing weapons.) So many types are missing "Named" versions spread across the levels. So many characters are stuck with just a few weapon types at higher levels. Certain classes are completely stuck with a weapon type and there are few named versions (Artificer/Repeaters). GEAR could be a great way to balance out the classes without massively changing the classes themselves.

Class & Race Balance: Finishing out the Eberron races would be a great start. Dragonborn, Kalashtar, Shifter, Tiefling and Genasi are all easily added. We are still missing some AWESOME classes...Hexblade!

Epic Destinies....my only comment....there should be a destiny for every class....ARTIFICER!

[Zakharov]

In my fantasy world we would never have had any enhancements or destinies.. it would be straight 3.5 edition + epic lvl handbook all the way. Since that is not an option I'll offer my surely unpopular opinion: NERF EVERYTHING

The power curve since MotU is just ridiculous - I would much rather it continue in a more linear fashion all the way to 30 rather than wild multipliers generating the massive numbers we are seeing now. I would nerf every ability - both enhancements and destinies - that are more powerful than what would be considered the equivalent of 1 feat appropriate for that level. (Heroic feats for enhancements and epic feats for destinies)

Feats should be the standard against which everything is balanced. Currently enhancements vary wildly but many easily outweigh the power of feats, even ones costing just 1 AP. I would suggest an approximate exchange of 4 AP = 1 feat. This would grant you the equivalent of 1 extra feat per lvl instead of currently granting .5~4 times that amount which makes feat selection less important. Epic Destiny points should probably exchange at something closer to 2 EDP = 1 epic feat assuming they stay as is, or 4 EDP = 1 epic feat if destinies are expanded to 10 levels.

This would make choices much more important but would only work if we could choose abilities more freely, like feats. Lowering or removing the "AP spent in tree" requirements would solve that problem, allowing us flexibility but forcing us to make hard choices rather than just choosing everything good in multiple trees like we do now. You could also create new feats based on many of these abilities for additional customization.

Some might consider shifting more of a character power to enhancements and destinies is a positive, I feel the opposite. Enhancements and destinies should augment and enhance your current character, not overpower it so heavily. Base build should matter as much if not more than enhancement or destiny choice.

Epic destinies need to be toned down across the board and I think the entire destiny system should tie more closely with character lvl. The mechanic of switching destinies feels completely awkward, forced, and unnatural. We now max out destinies so early in our epic career we are forced to switch to the "wrong" destinies to continue "advancing". I would expand each destiny and flesh them out to 10 levels in the long run. The XP curve should more closely follow 21~30 whatever that ends up being.


Aside from all that dreaming that will never happen - class balance is less about the classes and more about content and well designed encounters. If you actually revamp the AI as was wished for in your monster stat thread the class balance issue will be easier to deal with. All you have to do is give enemies the same abilities we have and make them smart enough to use them all.

[Uska]

OK, monks do not need nerfed! If you play P&P then you would know monks are OP, always have been, because its how they are specked. They are powerful hand to hand combatants. They do not need nerfed, it would be stupid and unnecessary.

For the person that said Monk should be splashed with Barbs and Bards... LOOK AT THE ALIGNMENTS! They can't, always will and should be that way. Also monk splashes aren't bad, some like my builds utilizes the stances to help improved my survivability as a character, some for 10k some for other reasons, but its what makes the builds special and thats what DDO is about...multiclassing.

Nothing really needs nerfed, instead how about just finding a way to up melee's damage and improved them, theres a thought. This could solve so much with out stepping on players feet.

My survey is done, just wanted to point out some issue I saw.

he wasn't serious about them crossing with bards and barbs and monks aren't overpowered really in pnp they are really underpowered in both ad&d, 3.x, and pathfinder and yes I play them here and in pnp and no they don't need a nerf but the splashing of monks does need looking at because of the enhancement system allows people to get more out of monks then there should be. In pnp there are strict rules on multiclassing monks and paladins to try and prevent people casually splashing those classes for an advantage so that needs looking at here. ED's do need looking at some are rather overpowered and others are pitifully weak its in epic that the unbalancing really becomes apparent.

[MangLord]

I agree that artificer needs some help. It starts out so strong, but completely falls off a cliff the second you get to epic levels.

The most annoying thing is that in Thunderholme, the halls are so tight that with the most effective runearm i have (Archaic Device), 3-4 of the 5 bolts just hit the walls and never reach the target. They just evade the glass cannon outright, which I was expecting to be half decent given the amount of kobolds I had to lead around to make it. I'm not much help in that place, aside from traps that everyone jumps over anyways. I can imagine rogue is even more useless.

[Uska]

If you can not balance it right then do not do it at all.

Balancing it easy by nerfing just makes people leave. That has always been true and you guys have driven so many players over the years away that I have played with it is just silly.

You guys do not get what is really good and what is not. Example, the recent colors of the queen change. Double Rainbow/Colors IS NOT what makes the builds in shiradi great nor would a foolish change that makes the ability not only worse, but downright griefing to use in parties the way to address it if it was.

That is why you need to buff not nerf. You buff something no one uses and you get someone to use it maybe. It is much less dangerous and much easier to slowly increase the power of and see the results. (For nerfs they are too often binary like the colors change...you use it and you are now griefing your party/playing a bad build/just plain destroys build)

Suggestions for BUFFS to help the game overall...

* Paladin class needs more DPS. It is behind the 8-ball. Not just pure pali, but through the level range.
* Real self healing outside of twists should be reasonable for any build which invests. Barb rage if it prevents these needs to be WAY MORE POWERFUL then it is now.
* Pile of hit point toons should have that option OR dps. Now they often have only that option. Look into that wherever it comes up (US/comparative trees for classes/cost of these things in build resources)..I am talking the well over a 1000 HP toons not the well built dps plus decent HP toons.
* Less mobs who kill clerics who do not gain agro otherwise. Seriously, this is a critical issue for people who USED TO play these types of toons and those who wanted them around.
* Restore the forum settings to a state where people are not typing black on a grey background...seriously.
* Stop wasting time on marginal abilities like boulder toss and double rainbow and addressing them like they are OP. Buff the STUPID GIMPED ABILIITES that are everywhere in destinies and enhancements.
* MORE DPS for melee outside of the top 2 destinies for melee DPS.
* More DPS for ranged outside of shiradi and Fury.
* More DPS for casters outside of shiradi and draconic.
* More nasty attacks for mobs to use on enemies which gain their agro in EE. Stuff like feeblemind really really hurts in the new content when you are hit with it. That is a good example of a nasty attack for a mob to use. Always attach things which have to overcome for these attacks to land...no more no save no nothing abilities. Something like a magical net that some EE sahagin throw in AoE and grants a reflex save/to hit roll to land. There should be mobs which are better at taking on casters (like the feeblemind guys mentioned before), mobs which are better at taking out ranged (tendon slice really does suck on a ranged toon when it hits you, but more creative less no save garbage is better), and mobs which are better at taking on melee (lots of mobs in game like that now). So really more focus on the first two is needed. What is NOT needed is more mobs who take out people who have no agro. They are not really as big of a threat or help in current DDO play...this is not shroud release time after all.
* Make more abilities work on all types of combat (ranged/melee/unarmed/thrown) and work equally. It is easier to balance without having to put in so many speciality abilities to get players to play really bad options (like ranged used to be and STILL IS if you are not built right and in the right destiny).

NO self healing outside the classes that aren't healers needs to be decreased across the board not increased.

1. Clerics
2.Favored souls
3. Druids
those are the healers
1. Atrificers
2. warforged casters
3. Palemastrs
4. Bards
5. Rogues
6. Rangers
7. Paladins
8. monks

Those classes can be back up healers at reduced effectiveness in general or healers for themselves

Fighters and barbs shouldn't be given some kind of healing ability just because! self-healing is already to easy for to many classes as it is adding more wont help the "balance issue" It just makes it worse.

























Figh

[MangLord]

I think it would work wonders for you as developers to roll up some well geared characters, make a balanced party of pure, core classes (fighter, wizard, cleric and rogue. Throw in a ranger and druid to fill out the party), and try to complete some epic elite wheloon or stormhorns. I think you would get a lot of insight from that experience, both as a group and the limitations of your individual characters. You'd be able to make a lot of informed decisions regarding balance with that perspective.

If your intention was to make epic elite so hard that only a small percentage of the player base will even try it, then you have succeeded. I don't like to play it, and none of my friends do. Seems odd to cater to such a small portion of your paying customers. I feel like a fairly knowledgeable, competent player, but I get sick of dying over and over really quickly because I happen to like playing dwarves with axes.

[Kmnh]

I don't think the balance is being affected by combat stats, with once class or build doing too much damage or anything like that. Different classes do damage in different ways but I don't think there is any class that cannot solo EE quests if built and played properly. If anything, the game is too easy.

There are two things that stick out as broken: The no-save helplessness procs from shiradi champion and adrenaline multiplying all arrows during manyshot. That's the sort of stuff that's so broken that it warps quest design - All the anti-burst boss invulnerability stuff and the hordes of undead in the new raids look like they were meant to mitigate that. I would prefer to have crowd control be tied to DCs and the damage to be more consistent instead of 20s bursts of insanity.

The AIs inability to fight back while being ranged feels bad. The trash on the new raids is more stupid than the kobolds on the harbor: The kobolds will at least stop chasing and throw stuff at you. Maybe add some snare effects that let people keep fighting but not run away, or give the mobs some sticks to throw at flying monks.

[Toro12]

I read the first 4 or so pages of responses.
Many say 'everyone needs a self healing option'

I couldn't disagree more. If everyone has a self healing option it would throw the game further out of wack IMO.

Probably going to get burned at the stake for this but what DDO really needs is fewer self healing options.
Why?
1. Means fewer LFMs that say BYOH
2. Means a greater need to bring trapper to save healing resources
3. Means easier time designing new and balancing existing content and or abilities

How toro do you suggest going about this you say?
Here you go (this is the part I get strung up for)

Remove the ability to self target with cure/repair spells. You can still drop masses with AoEs with their associated costs but no more quick easy cheap self heal/repairs.

I know , I know it would make a whole lot of current content tremendously difficult, if not impossible.

Yes many, many tweaks would have to be made to balance the content by both the devs and the players to adjust. But adapt the players would (after about 99thousand I'm quitting nerf rage threads)

Besides making healers more desirable trappers and tanks would also gain a little more love from the playerbase. As I suspect would Cc casters and bards. What you would see less of is BYOH.

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Before the hate starts flowing in copious amounts, take a deep breath count to 10 and truly consider this suggestion.
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Ok now you may furiously slam your keyboards with all caps responses and break your left click buttons in your rush to neg rep me.

[maddmatt70]

For classes I would say do the following - this is a gradual type of improvement that hopefully would not be too taxing on dev resources:
-I like the divine destiny addition, but make sure that is pretty solid and that cleric/FVS have some options for this patch. I would also like about 3 offensive spells added to cleric/divine in the following two updates after this patch.
-The addition of swashbuckler next update is good for bards, but also add about 5 spells to bards, combine some of their songs, and buff up the tier 5 enhancements/last 2 core abilities of warchanter enhancment. That should help the class immensely.
-Paladin the update after this next one should be buffed. Add a third enhancement like you are doing with bards and fix up the paladin. Add a handful of paladin spells and some paladin feats centered around their turns.

Those are the three current worst character types in my opinion from a power game standpoint: paladin, bard, and cleric/fvs (non nuker build).

I would say after the Paladin update look at Barbarians and Fighters. Barbarians should get a dps bump in my opinion and some other defensive options. Fighters could use their third enhancement. It would be interesting if the third enhancement forced a fighter to be chaotic.

The other thing that you need to do is go over every single level 20 core ability enhancement and buff it and at least look at the level 18 abilities while you are at it. Try to get this done in about a year's time so every update look at three classe's core enhancement abilities and try to improve them every update

Finally, look at monk stances which do not make much sense. Resolve this whole 10k stars mess - if you want really bump up doubleshot somehow. Another thing is the weird FVS splash builds figure out a way to fix that because a wiz or sorc splashing 2 level of FVS should not be encouraged.

[Uska]

I read the first 4 or so pages of responses.
Many say 'everyone needs a self healing option'

I couldn't disagree more. If everyone has a self healing option it would throw the game further out of wack IMO.

Probably going to get burned at the stake for this but what DDO really needs is fewer self healing options.
Why?
1. Means fewer LFMs that say BYOH
2. Means a greater need to bring trapper to save healing resources
3. Means easier time designing new and balancing existing content and or abilities

How toro do you suggest going about this you say?
Here you go (this is the part I get strung up for)

Remove the ability to self target with cure/repair spells. You can still drop masses with AoEs with their associated costs but no more quick easy cheap self heal/repairs.

I know , I know it would make a whole lot of current content tremendously difficult, if not impossible.

Yes many, many tweaks would have to be made to balance the content by both the devs and the players to adjust. But adapt the players would (after about 99thousand I'm quitting nerf rage threads)

Besides making healers more desirable trappers and tanks would also gain a little more love from the playerbase. As I suspect would Cc casters and bards. What you would see less of is BYOH.

---------
Before the hate starts flowing in copious amounts, take a deep breath count to 10 and truly consider this suggestion.
.
..
...

Ok now you may furiously slam your keyboards with all caps responses and break your left click buttons in your rush to neg rep me.

There is no more neg rep so your safe there

I agree with less self-healing options but not with the no self-targeting clerics and such don't need to be nerfed

[Thumbed_Servant]

I am not going to get in to the specific details about this destiny, or that OP feat or monk splashing etc. because there are going to be many more people after my post with more to say about how everything OP should be nerfed and all the FotM builds are going to get what they have coming to them. Instead, Varg, I want to point out to you what I feel is the most important issue regarding this topic... all of these things that are overpowered, that people gravitate to are some of THE MOST FUN abilities and play styles in the game.

In my opinion, the devs should be looking at how to make other classes, builds, destiny abilities more powerful, hence more fun. It is not a matter of Turbine looking at how the game is balanced because EE is still a big challenge to 95% of the player base even when they do build a FotM. What you need to do is address the reason why, despite the build diversity the game offers, people are drawn to only a few playstyles, destinies and builds. Fix the lame in the game and you will achieve better balance.

POWER CREEP! It is anathema to the longevity and enjoyability of a game, and DDO has gone past Power Creep into full blown Power EXPLOSION. Do NOT raise the power of other classes/powers/destinies to balance with the most powerful, lower the most powerful!
WHY are ranged toons the most prolific at end game? Because the game was made TOO damaging/too powerful for melee toons! Why are pure healer toons scoffed at in upper levels? Because epic destiny self healing abilities were made too powerful. Why are monk splashes everywhere? Because Monk defensive abilities were made too powerful. When the enhancement pass was made, the game didn't simply change the enhancements over to tree form, it rewrote many of them and made many MUCH more powerful. Epic Destinies are 10 fold what the new enhancements are.

If you want Balance, you MUST reign in the desire at each update to UP the power of classes/spells/abilities/enhancements/destinies. Sure, we will continue to have change, but the changes that UP power considerably must be stopped. When you give the players more power, you must then give the monsters more power to challenge the more powerful players who then migrate to a few builds with the maximized potential to defeat the now over powered monsters, and it's a nasty upward spiral.

We as a community WILL complain when you take something away that we've enjoyed..but when it's something that is breaking the game you must make that tough call, suffer the complaints of those that were using the most powerful builds, and bring the game power back down so that you don't have to make insanely stupid...and I say STUPID....monster damage/hit points/saves that you now have to challenge the meta-gamers using min/maxed builds. I still remember standing on a building in first-released-Epic VoN 3, letting firewalls get aggro, then having the melees drop down to beat on the mobs who wouldn't hit them as they were now aggroed on the arcane who cast the firewall; It was a not too fun style of play necessitated by the decisions to make the mobs stupidly high in hit points and immune to many things. We'll cry and scream when you take away the ubber powerful toys..but in the end we'll enjoy the game more if we have challenging combat without insane numbers. You can't give us that if you don't take away the ubber powerful toys.

STOP trying to make every class an ubber combat class, re-balancing by upping the weakest to match the most powerful. Bards should not be potent melees, clerics should not be powerful combat casters, mages should not be able to self heal as though they were clerics. DDO is built on D&D, and the premise of D&D was that a group of differing classes with different and often distinct abilities would come together to make a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. Blending abilities between classes to satisfy the desire of every solo player to be able to solo with any class at any difficulty has weakened the need for group play and different classes to defeat content. If I want to play a solo game I can pull out the x-box...this is a Mass MULTI Online Game. The LFM's aren't vacant because there aren't players playing...they are vacant because players don't need each other as much because they've got *solo* capable characters of almost every class. I play cleric healers, I love to heal...if I can't walk through a quest and kill everything by spell I won't complain...clerics are NOT combat casters. If I play a bard and can't melee my way through a quest, I'm ok with that..bards are support and enchanter characters, using spell and song to buff and mesmerize...let my bard charm them and let the guy with the barbarian (whom I've buffed with spells and more song) kill them. If I'm playing a mage, I'll LOVE killing/holding/debuffing the mobs...and expect that the nice healer player will heal me when I need it and not expect that I should be able to heal myself as well as a cleric could.

I say this because it's been on my mind...most of this is the cat already out of the bag and past being put back in.

My speculation is that some of this is brought on by the latest-newest hires coming in and saying, *Hmm, I don't like that, won't it be cool if we change this to....*. Leave the game systems alone, stop bringing in a new system with each new hire...work on the systems we have, improve and build upon and COMPLETE them.

My two cents.

[sephiroth1084]

First thing off the bat: yes, I think changes need to be made, but please allow the time to do them RIGHT!! No offense, but Turbine has a history (in DDO at least) of applying a band-aid to a bullet wound, on the one end, and seriously overdoing it on the other. Specifically, there are numerous cases where the right change would require a lot of time and effort coding, and was therefore eschewed for a quicker, easier solution, that, more often than not, doesn't really solve the problem, and can lead to more issues down the line.

That said, I appreciate that you're starting this thread Vargouille, and it seems to me like you guys at Turbine have been trying to get ahead of that rep, and really start dealing with some of the issues the game has had in the past, and are seeking input from the community more than we've seen in a long time. These are good things. Hopefully this trend will continue, and good things will happen!

Why isn't every character made stronger, to match the strongest characters already out there?

• Challenge: We want to be able to provide challenges to those who seek that kind of gameplay. There should be limits to player-character power in order to achieve this, when comparing player characters against monsters, traps, bosses, etc.
• Understanding what's already there: Minimizing changes also allows everyone to keep a consistent idea of what exists. If almost everything changes, it's like starting over from scratch, and therefore much harder to get everything right.
• Time and resources matter: We can save a great deal of time by only changing a few overpowered abilities, rather than changing all other characters, monsters, traps, and quests to match those few most overpowered abilities or features. If we can spend a day or a week pulling back on the strongest rather than months increasing everything else, that leaves us far more time to implement new features.

I mostly agree with this: you can't just elevate all the weak options to be on par with the strong ones, because that just leads to an arms' race of ever more powerful stuff, which is part of what led us to our current state of affairs. That said, simply nerfing the strongest abilities is going to leave a lot of problems unresolved.

For example, even if you nerf Blitz into the ground, Unyielding Sentinel (pre-update, because I haven't played with the new version on Lama) would still be utterly worthless. Some changes are going to require more than a simple fix, and while that may conflict with time and resources, devoting those resources is going to be necessary if you want certain facets of the game to improve/stop being worthless/stop being a joke. On this point, I'm thinking specifically of a few things, including the paladin class enhancements, AC, and PRR as they relate to light/no armor builds, Dodge, and endgame content (mostly Epic Elite, but not exclusively so). You made some rather large changes to the combat mechanics (to-hit and AC) over a year ago, which I presume was kind of a big undertaking, but only did it halfway--now we've got tons of +1 and +2 effects floating around that are almost entirely worthless (certain worth less than they were before the changes in most cases), and AC is just as useless in EE now as it was in Epics back then; characters not devoted to AC are no more encouraged to invest a bit than they were before, and heavy armored, shielded characters are worse off than they were before. With the system of diminishing returns (and the ease with which on can hit a fairly ideal point on PRR), it's simply not effective to invest heavily in AC or PRR, which, along with the over-emphasis on Dodge and Evasion, makes some builds incredibly weak. Fixing this isn't going to be a small change, but it's something that really needs to be done.

What are some examples of things that could be better balanced?

We're keenly aware that each player probably has some topics they are concerned about, and we don't like to break characters or take away fun things that are already there. However, we may have been too cautious about balance changes in the past, especially after a new ability or feature has been launched. We'd like to know if you'd prefer changes to come more quickly, or if we should sit back and let you guys show us what can really be done before making changes.

That said, some broad areas that we know perhaps could use some consideration:

• Ranged combat vs. Melee Combat vs. Spellcasting, at all character levels. As an example, not so long ago, ranged combat was largely considered inferior to melee combat. We made some conscious decisions to try to improve the viability of ranged combat. That's at least a partial success, but has brought along some issues of its own.

Ranged combat (archery and casting) is stronger than melee by a longshot (bdum-chh) once you get into epic destinies. In heroic content, that's not really the case for a couple of reasons:

1. Archery's ability to burst DPS doesn't dramatically outpace melee DPS (or burst DPS) without adding in things like Adrenaline and Unbridled Fury.
2. Foes aren't so dangerous that standing toe-to-toe with most heroic monsters isn't the death sentence that it is in higher level EH, and most EE content, so the advantage of distance that ranged combat has (counting both archers and casters here) isn't as significant. Archery killing power in EE isn't much stronger than that of melee for the most part, but it's just so much more survivable than melee, because it stays out of reach of those suped-up EE monsters.

Personally, the changes I think should be made, as a starting point would be:

• Change Manyshot so that big proc effects (like Adrenaline) only affect one arrow in a volley.
• Change Improved Precise shot so that big proc effects only affect the first target hit in a line.
• Maybe impose a speed debuff on characters while Manyshot and 10K Stars are active), and while casting a spell even when jumping. I'm not too sure on this one, since I, and many others, enjoy the caster playstyle of jumping around and casting spells, but it does cause problems to be able to do so.

• Class & Race Balance: They don't all need to have identical appeal from a power perspective (as there are other reasons to play any class), but we should try to get them close enough that it doesn't feel bad to play any particular race or class, or that you feel forced to take any levels in a particular class to feel powerful.

Paladin is too weak, and has basically always been too weak. It's offensive potential is abysmal, and doesn't make up for it enough with survivability. It's feat starved, pulled in multiple directions--a fighter doesn't have to concern themselves with Empower Healing and Quicken or spell power items, and if you ignore these on a paladin, you're really just playing a terrible fighter with good saves and a few OH S**T! buttons per rest--but cannot adequately support the disparate focuses of DPS, survivability, and tanking.

Back when we first got out PrEs, paladin Defender of Siberys and fighter Stalwart Defender, the two tanking PrEs were built almost identically, except the fighters got DR, more Intimidate, and as much AC as the paladin, which meant that when they were standing next to the paladin, they had higher AC, meaning that, if you had two otherwise identical tanks in your party, one a paladin, the other a fighter, the fighter was almost always the better choice for main tank. When we got the enhancement pass, of which one stated goal was to address the problem paladins had with their PrEs being too limited--KotC was useless if you weren't facing evil outsiders, and Hunter of the Dead was similarly weak when not facing undead--yet we're basically stuck with the same problem, where we only get one or the other, and in content with neither evil outsiders nor undead (there's quite a lot of that these days), half the tree is worthless.

Let's look at some big differences between the fighter and paladin version of their Defender trees:
Fighter gets: Last Stand: Passive: You gain +2 Constitution and +2 to the DCs of all Tactical Feats. Shield Action Boost: Your gain +100% Maximum hit points, +50 Physical Resistance Rating, and On Attacked: You are healed for 1d10 positive energy healing. This Action Boost does not share a cooldown with other Action Boost abilities, and can be used while helpless. (Cooldown: 3 minutes.).

Threatening Countenance: +1/+2/+3 Haggle, Intimidate, and +5%/+10%/+15% melee threat generation


Shield Melee Attack: Performs a melee attack with your main hand weapon that deals +1/+2/+3[W]. On Damage: You gain a 10%/15%/25% Morale bonus to melee doublestrike for 10 seconds. (Requires an equipped shield and melee weapon.) (Cooldown: 20 seconds.)

While Paladin gets: Eternal Defender: Passive: You gain +2 Charisma, and your range of unconsciousness extends by 40 hitpoints.Toggle: While Eternal Defender is active, if you drop below 0 hit points but are not killed, two uses of Turn Undead are immediately expended and you receive a reactive heal for 250 points of Positive Energy healing.

Harbored by Light: You gain +10/+15/+25 Physical Resistance²
In addition, while you are actively blocking with a shield, enemies that attack you will take 3d4/4d4/5d4 Light Damage.

Harbored is the only offensive ability in Sacred Defender. Now, sure, fighters are supposed to be more offensively focused





than paladins, but they're also getting more threat (note: paladins get Divine Righteousness, but it doesn't stack with some other sources of threat generation, due to being typed Sacred), Intimidate, HP, tactics, a (admittedly weak) healing guard effect, and ultimately more PRR while their boost is running. They've got paladin beat on all fronts: HP, DPS, threat, PRR, and feats (which puts them even further ahead in those categories, because they can afford all the shield feats, Exotic Weapon Proficiency, the THF feats, and the additional feats needed to have a strong offensive mode without a shield if they want). Paladins meanwhile have...Lay On Hands, Cure spells, immunity to disease, and in their Defender tree, a discount on having to spend money on Raise Dead and Resurrection scrolls (even fighters invest in UMD). It's just not enough. They don't need to be as strong as a fighter or barbarian, but paladins need to have some offense, and they can't be giving up all of their Defender territory to fighters--they need something to make them worth playing in their intended role(s).
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For the two defenders in general, all that you accomplish by tying half the tree to holding a shield is punish players who want to build and play a tanking character. Tanking in DDO has always been a fairly niche devotion, which was solved, in part, by building your character to be able to swap to a reasonable DPS set-up. My paladin, for instance, has the one Epic Sword of Shadows I've been able to make, rather than my barbarian, just so that he can contribute when a shield is not useful (against spell casters, beholders, portals, DPS-dependent situations such as self-healing bosses, places where AC is meaningless, and places where AC without a shield is sufficient), but with the change to the Defender lines, my DPS swap actually weakens my character significantly, by reducing his Str, Con, AC, PRR, saves, and HP. It becomes a fairly bad idea to swap to DPS, even when holding onto the shield isn't helping.

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Moving on...

Barbarians are currently the weakest class in DDO by far thanks to their total inability to heal themselves. Every other character can invest in UMD for Heal scrolls, or twist in Rejuvenation Cocoon, but barbarians can't use either effectively due to their entire class being built around their being raged, and rage prohibiting the usage of all healing options of any value. Silver Flame potions are still popular, almost exclusively with barbarians these days, because they are the only effective way for barbs to heal themselves, and they tack on a -10 penalty to all saves! (plus, they take up a ton of inventory space thanks to only stacking to 10). Something needs to be done here.

There are options: remove the restriction on being able to use scrolls, or SLAs, while raged, or add some form of healing into one of the barbarian trees low enough to be accessible to any dedicated barbarian (maybe, upon killing an enemy, gain a Heal effect; or Heal when you save against a spell in Occult Slayer), or some ability that improves potions by a large amount for barbs (Chug! Chug! Barbarians can consume 3/6/10 Cure potions at one time). Or, give us some potions available for purchase in game that stand up to the sort of punishment we're taking in tough epic quests. They should be healing at least close to a pumped-up Heal scroll (you can make UMD still worthwhile by not including all of the additional benefits of Heal in the potion).
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Monks currently gain too much:

• Thanks to Ten Thousand Stars (I don't consider this to be the problem), the double-strike lock-out from Manyshot, the best parts of Ranger being available with a dip/from being an Elf (Arcane Archer), and not enough high-level non-monk abilities, monks are the best archers in the game (at least a 6+ monk/whatever is).
• They're more survivable than basically any other melee thanks to having Evasion, Improved Evasion, 3 good saves, enough PRR to get to the point at which investing more is just wasteful (around 80, which is easily achievable with some combination of enhancements, Earth Stance, items, augments, Destiny abilities, past lives, etc...), fairly easily maxed Dodge (and the ability to exceed the 25% cap), healing amp, 25% Incorporeality, an AoE healing ability, a buff that can grant immunity to Stun, very fast movement, and Abundant Step. They basically get everything you'd want for a character's defense.
• They gain, over all, probably more offense than almost any class: double-strike, off-hand strikes, something like 8d8 base damage for their unarmed strikes, sneak attack, fastest attack speed, some strong triggered attacks, and a decent improvement to their crit profile.
• They had the strongest insta-kill in the game. Now, I suspect that Quivering Palm is fairly useless at endgame. You missed the mark here, I believe.

Then, with Epic Destinies and feats figured in, they also gain Vorpal on all of their attacks, and one of the strongest DPS boosting twists available requires monk levels (A Dance Of Flowers), some AoE crowd control (Drifting Lotus, although the DC kind of sucks) and a strong Epic Moment (not too strong, just icing on top in my opinion).

I don't they need to be heavily nerfed, but they definitely need some scaling back in a couple of areas. There should be some penalty to running around without armor, and right now they have none thanks to their easily achievable PRR and competitive AC (in content where that matters). I think one step in the right direction would be taking the +1 crit multiplier out of Earth Stance and sticking it in Fire. Earth is currently the flat-out best monk stance, since it gives a significant DPS boost, PRR, HP, and AC. Ocean is useful for running through traps, and if you really need to bump your DCs by a little, but it's not something to run around in. Wind is a decent DPS boost, but may not be as much as Earth, and doesn't give any other benefit. Fire is fairly useless, partly because a small bonus to Str just doesn't stack up offensively against +1 crit multiplier or +10% double-strike, but also because so many of our Ki abilities are worthless in post-20 content that we aren't all that pressed for Ki (due to DCs not scaling well into epic levels, and Ki Strike damage effects scaling terribly into tough epics), and because the penalty to Wis works against the few abilities you'd want to be using that would starve you for Ki.
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Warforged used to be a fairly powerful race, but their strengths have been eroded over time, even with the nice buffs they got with the enhancement pass (this absolutely excludes Bladeforged...they are a separate issue).

• A penalty to healing hurts a lot when you're in a situation where group healing is going to be your primary lifeline.
• A lack of docents, especially a lack of docents replicating the best non-docent armors for each role hurts them a lot.
• Their innate DR and enhancements just don't mean anything when you're getting hit for so much damage.
• Sources for repair amplification are much rarer than those for healing amp, which means warforged will be harder to self-heal with than most other characters.
• Between Pale Master becoming more accessible, 39 UMD being easily within reach for epic level characters, and Rejuvenation Cocoon, the classes that previously turned to WF for their self-healing needs have (for the most part) better options.
• Now, the top-end armor of the game requires a WF Body feat to use if you want the abilities that can be found on the non-WF versions.

There need to be more docent version of armors introduced, or competitive with them. Remember: if you stick a light armor, a medium armor, a heavy armor, and a caster-focused armor into a pack's loot list, you REALLY need to also stick in 4 different docents, or provide some way for the docents to be keyed to one of those armors...or just cram all of the stuff onto one docent.


There needs to be more repair amp available.

WF should probably get a free bonus feat at first level that allows them to select a body feat, or some other feat in place of the body feat (maybe Toughness, or a new feat that stacks up well and is attractive to those people disinterested in the body feats).

More needs doing here, but I'm not sure what--I stopped playing my WF characters a long time ago.
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Most classes seriously need revised capstones and new abilities from level 15-20 to make multi-classing a choice. Right now, the question isn't whether or not to multi-class, it's what to multi-class with, because going pure simply does not compete. The new Mechanic and Acrobat capstones are a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done.

Rangers, for instance, need much better abilities in their tier 5 Deepwood Stalker enhancements, and in both DWS' and Tempest's level 18 and 20 core abilities. Rangers also are desperately in need of new spells, particularly at level 3 and 4.

Right now, rangers are a 6-11 level dip for some archers and some melee builds. Paladins are a 2-6 level dip for basically everything. Fighter draws you up to 12, but doesn't do much to push you to invest further.

Monk is a 2-12 level multi-class, depending on what you're looking for, but the /2 monk is stupidly popular. +4% dodge, 2 feats, Evasion, +3 to all saves, access to monk stances...I know that a lot of that is just core monk from D&D 3.5, but we need stuff in the last 2 levels of other classes that competes with all that in some way. I would also strongly recommend spreading out the monk's Dodge bonuses...6% in 6 levels is a bit much, and far out-paces every other class. 1% per 3 levels would probably be fine.

Casters are still the most likely characters to go pure, although there are still strong incentives to splash 2 monk or rogue or paladin on them.
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As far as balance goes, casters still out-pace everyone else in EN and most EH content, and some EE, though for EE I believe that's just mostly Shiradi casters. This is due to the confluence of their being able to self-heal and attack from range, while also having better crowd control and insta-kill abilities than anyone else...which is basically what casters do in 3.5 as well. I'll admit that they are better balanced in DDO than in pen and paper, but that's largely due to DDO's insistence on DPS being the only solution to solving most problems. Other than slowing casters down a bit (jump casting specifically), I don't think there's much that could, or should, be done here.

Epic Destinies: We know some destinies are more popular than others, and also considered more powerful. Sometimes this is a result of unintended bugs. This could include discussions of Twists of Fate, so individual abilities vs. other abilities can still matter, though we don't expect to make every ability equally viable as a Twist of Fate (for its tier). Abilities that can't be twisted (Innate abilities and tier 5 & 6) should be largely considered as a group when comparing entire Destinies.

This does mean potentially looking at things that rhyme with ten-thousand cars, many fought, caster's fritz, chirashi cambrian, the bunk crass, or american overtoad.

Blitz needs to be weakened a bit, though I'm not sure how.

Shiradi needs to be weakened a bit for casters (not sure how), while Magister, Exalted Angel, and Draconic Incarnation are buffed enough to be viable alternatives in EE content. Part of that means addressing the issues with over-inflated HP and saves on monsters.

Personally, I'd also like to see a de-emphasis on having to spend Action Points and Destiny points on casting stat increases. I'd like to see the destinies all have the +1 <stat> enhancements knocked down to just 2 available per tree (lower DCs across the board by 2 as well to make up for taking away +4 <stat> from everyone). It kind of sucks that you really only have 12 points to play with if you're a DC caster, because you need to spend the other 12 in Int/Cha/Wis in order to be effective in tough content (this also goes for monks and Assassins, and to a lesser degree fighters and barbarians who use tactics feats).

Magister is very weak, partly because it's too expensive to get the stuff you want, largely due to the stuff you want being dependent upon stuff you don't want. All the worthwhile stuff in the Magister tree is rank-linked and vertically linked, which precludes spending points on any of the other abilities in the destiny (though, the Sigils are largely unimpressive anyway; and the summon ability is ATROCIOUS).

Draconic Incarnation is possibly overpowered in EN and some EH content, and kind of weak in some EH and most EE, thanks to monster HP being too **** high, and so many things gaining Evasion.

Unyielding Sentinel looks better than it did, but I haven't had a chance to play with it yet (not logging onto DDO til the Akamai business gets taken care of), but it still looks weak--you still need some DPS on a tank to hold aggro, especially when in the field with Blitzers and Adrenaline junkies, and Manyshotters. Plus, tanking has been thoroughly ruined in DDO by having monsters against which AC is irrelevant, and PRR is too minor a defense to matter. As such, things like +15 AC in US are just a waste of points.

Dreadnought, without Blitz is a pretty cool destiny...if you can use the abilities in it /coughunarmedcougharcherycough.
Fury of the Wild is a cool destiny, even without Unbridled Fury...if you can use the abilities in it /coughunarmedcougharcherycough. Adrenaline could probably use a little dialing back. Really, +400% damage and auto-crit is too much, and necessitates an endgame where trash mobs have 10s of thousands of HP.

I think Shadowdancer is awesome! My only complaints about this are that there's too much emphasis placed on having to raise Int as much as possible, which severely cuts down on what you can do with the destiny, and that I've spent most of my rogue's career in other destinies due to the ****ing awful destiny, twist, and karma mechanics. Well, okay, my other complaint is that it doesn't offer enough to non-rogue characters with poor Int.

Grandmaster of Flowers is pretty cool, but the DCs for the abilities on the left side are too low to really be effective in EE content unless you go all-in on Wis (and even then may be too low), and the destiny is a real chore to work through on a character that wears armor/uses non-centered weapons.

As far as twists go...there are some ubiquitous ones: A Dance of Flowers and Cocoon being the biggies. The former is probably too strong, and places too much additional incentive on working monk into your melee build, while the latter is probably fine, except that it excludes barbarians, and has no real competition. I would have liked to see Light the Dark be able to compete with this, or Endless Lay On Hands at least, but with ELOH and LtD being dependent on Healing Hands, it's just too expensive to bother. If Healing Hands and ELOH were rolled into one, that would make for a decent twist (weaker than Cocoon in the long run, but stronger when a lot of heavy healing is needed).

It's not a balance issue, rather a fun issue, but the whole ED system, and the insane grind through off destinies to unlock twists, gain fate, get to the destiny you want, needs to be looked at. It's a chore, and the reason I stopped playing DDO 2 months after MotU came out for almost a year despite enjoying most of the new stuff--I spent a few days in the destiny I liked on my characters, and then spent weeks in destinies that were not at all enjoyable to be slogging through.

[MangLord]

barbarians are in the back of the bus when it comes to self sufficiency. they cant cast spells while raged and they don't have a blue bar for cure/heal spells. they have to rely on pots for self sufficiency and the best in game we have is CSW and SF pots. CSW is fine in heroics. sometimes in high levels its not enough, but that's where skill and character build should prevail. in epics don't bother. better off just grabbing a hire or asking someone to play healer role. SF pots has too big of a penalty. its the best thing barbarians have to be self sufficient, but your ability scores drop up to 10 points (except con), you lose up to 9 points in saves and your run speed is decreased 50% for 30 seconds. nothing else comes close to this kind of penalty for healing and think a change is in order. at one time it was good for balance purposes, but its far easier today to build for self sufficiency with 0 loss in character power through other class/multi classes than it is for barbarians. generally, barbs will have a lot of hp. CSW pots healing for 36 per pot aint gonna cut it. by level 20, barbs would more than likely be about 1000 hp raged up just to get an idea.

fast healing really isn't fast in DDO. in PnP it works fine, but not here. I made a GS regen item a long time ago for my barb and I was only gaining back 6 hp per minute. Fast Healing in FOTW really isn't any better. I wont waste the points because it heals very little per minute. when mobs are hitting for 300+ constantly, im relying on party members, my penalizing SF pots and Healing Spring. Healing Spring is a problem too because its a random number up to per 20 seconds. it can be a good top off saving me pots, but it sucks when you see you were healed for 1 hp than 36 hp than 14 hp than 96 hp... barbarians need a reliable source of healing for when it counts since they are front line melees taking on a number of mobs at a time and generally grabbing agro with such high dps.

I suggest enhancements that boost the amount of hp gained from drinking pots. if balance is a concern with removing the penalty from SF pots as every class would benefit from it, than enhancements would be the next best thing. make the amount at minimum equal to what you can get from SF pots based on heal amp, whatever the math on that would be. right now, my main barbarian can heal from SF pots for 600+, just to give you an idea and that's with Claw set, 3x paladin lives, ship buff and human enhancements.

Good points. My main epic character is a dwarven tempest, so I feel a lot of your pain. I stay alive mostly by twisting in cocoon and I could not imagine not having it. Fast healing looks good on paper, but it does no good when one encounter can cut through your 1000hp in a matter of seconds. Twisting in Healing Spring won't keep you alive, either. Even a quickened and empowered CSW doesn't feel like enough.

My problem with Silver Flame pots is that if I have to chug one, I'm almost guaranteed to be chased down and die shortly after by whatever necessitated its use in the first place, since I'm now moving in slow motion. Even worse is if I've died already and lost my ship buffs, my CHA will be low enough to render me unable to do anything to help myself after drinking another. My gear is carefully planned out and I have no space for a CHA item.

Everyone knows that a hireling can't be counted on in a mob situation, even set to defensive, and I have little time to manage their actions when I'm in need of their services. Mine always seem to think they're helping more by obsessively attacking some random enemy.

My suggestion would be to put a ML20 on the pots and remove the negative effects and/or give barbarians, paladins, fighters and rogues a destiny or enhancement option to ignore the ill effects. Realistically, there needs to be a better option than the hopeless CSW pots for epic levels. They were great up to level 10, but pretty worthless after that. I've wondered why epic level potions are needlessly hard to obtain. Who is going to grind Kings Forest to build up a usable stack of cider pots, or has the time to do so? It would take days and they're not that great. Especially for melees, it would be a really big boon to set up a potion stand in Eveningstar where we could just buy pots of heal and get on with our questing. Even if they healed for a set 200hp, it would be enough to get out of a pinch until the cleric notices.

[sephiroth1084]

Part of the problem in the game right now is that dodge, concealment, and incorporeality are almost always effective, and their effectiveness scales with difficulty: getting missed on a hit that would have done 50 damage isn't a big deal, but getting missed on one that would have dealt 500 is a big deal. Meanwhile, AC becomes entirely useless, and while PRR also scales, it doesn't account for the same level of survivability, particularly when you look at the typical figures of a character with 20-25% dodge and 60-90 PRR vs. a character with 150 PRR and 3-6% dodge.

When you (the Turbine devs) implemented the combat changes (moving away from the d20), you stated that some of your goals were:

• to make AC relevant for more characters, because you felt that it was poor design for a small subset of characters with excellent AC (then an AC in the 90s) to have use for an AC buff or item (or debuff), while the rest of the populace wouldn't care even if they received a big boost to AC (going from 40-60 is meaningless if the guy in the 90s is getting hit).
• to make AC relevant again for endgame use, since AC had become worthless in epic content.
• to pull the value of AC a little closer to the middle of the bell curve, where it would be useful most of the time without being the nigh-perfect defense it was if you were maxed out, and totally worthless defense it was if you weren't.

However, you basically failed on all of these goals. AC is worthless in end game content when you're maxed out, and no one else would even care. Now, instead of +1 AC meaning +5% defense for some people, it usually means +0% defense for everyone. Even +4 AC can be 0% depending on where your starting AC is. Now, sure, part of a meaningful AC was always about stacking bonuses, but once you were getting missed, under the old system, adding a small boost to AC (from an item or enhancement or buff) was meaningful and sought after. Now, even if you are getting missed, you need to be adding 2 or more items/buffs/enhancements before you're seeing any kind of difference at all.

At least one part of the problem here is that, for some reason, you like to boost monster to-hit values much too high on higher/harder content. That doesn't improve anyone's experience, and doesn't really challenge us more if you move from Hard to Elite and go from getting missed thanks to your armor 50% of the time to getting missed 0% of the time. All it does is marginalize certain builds and abilities, and send a lot of loot to the vendor.

Ideally, there would be a stepping down from normal, to hard, to elite in effectiveness of AC, but not so much so that AC becomes worthless, while there's also some impact on other defensive abilities, like dodge. Additionally, a much wider range of ACs need to be useful than we had on the base d20, while also not making bonuses to AC largely worthless for everyone due to the nature of the diminishing returns system. There have been numerous suggestions made on how to address these concerns over the years, to which I've added my own, but I'll not make this post much longer by including that here. I can PM you, Varg, if you like, or link you to some of the threads with these ideas (mine and those of others).

PRR also needs to become more meaningful for characters investing in it, and less meaningful for those characters running around in no armor and rocking 25% dodge. Right now the pajamas crowd are getting the best of everything.

[MangLord]

There are two things that stick out as broken: The no-save helplessness procs from shiradi champion and adrenaline multiplying all arrows during manyshot. That's the sort of stuff that's so broken that it warps quest design - All the anti-burst boss invulnerability stuff and the hordes of undead in the new raids look like they were meant to mitigate that. I would prefer to have crowd control be tied to DCs and the damage to be more consistent instead of 20s bursts of insanity.

Thunderholme was obviously designed without a care towards several classes. Rogues and artificers in particular. Not that there's much point in either class at epic levels, but whatever.

If you're playing a ranger in (gasp!) shiradi and you can't count on Pin and Whistler working for you every time, you're going to have a short night. Nerve Venom is terrific for keeping me alive. If it had a save, there is no way it would be high enough to surpass the saves of anything on EE.

Am I the only person that thinks the fact that the best destines for casters was designed for archers, and the best destiny for archers was designed for barbarians is evidence of a completely broken system overall? People sounded perplexed when I would tell them that I liked shiradi better than fury for my ranger because of all the no save CC abilities and how they worked with the ability to shoot through a line of enemies.

The solution is simple to me. Shiradi abilities no longer work with spells. Fury adrenaline is changed to melee only. At the very least, it would force people to squeeze more out of other destinies, or perhaps prefer the destiny that was intended for their class, instead of phoning it in with the standard stuff. The archer might shift focus to more of a crowd controller, which wouldn't be a bad thing.

[grimthanos]

I personally don't think certain things should be limited by weapon types like rogue poison can not be used for ranged weapons.
or how lacking throwing builds are no master thrower or hulking hurler or Halfling slinger.
barbarian is limited to melee and lacks throwing or ranged as well as healing.
certain weapons properties scale to high with level min.
make crafting canneth a lil better by not limiting to one pre and one sufx.
cause melee and ranged always suffer to casting and range suffer to melee.
also create warfronts for pvp purposes like rift and other games if players choose to pvp to gain ex as well as random questing that takes random players of balanced level to balanced quests with no wait time waiting for players to get to dungeon