Player Character Balance

[nibel]

Have not read the topic beyond the first page. I don't play Epic Elite. I prefer Eberron over Forgotten Realms, which makes me TR more than I would like to, since there is no Eberron content beyond level 24.

Said that, there is my pinch on balance:

Artificer

Artificer is the most powerful soloing class in the game right now. The dog is helpful to take off the heat and pull levers, you frontload a lot of crossbow feats to make it useful from level 1, and most things die quickly under your shooting volley (or blade barrier). With self-healing, UMD and trap skills, the only thing keeping it to be a perfect class is the lack of evasion (and that can be fixed with Shadowdancer).

Besides that, I think artificer class is actually in a good balanced spot. Yes, it is a powerful solo class, but it does not dominate the field when grouping. The buffs are welcome in any party, and the class is not multiclass-friendly because of their best spells being on their highest level acessible.

Barbarian

Barbarians are in a sad state for a few years now. Rage prevents you from doing MANY things, including some that shouldn't, like quaffing potions. Their DR used to be decent when the level cap was lower, but now any level 3 cleric/fvs can get the same DR as a level 14 barbarian (5/-). They have innate dodge, but have a low dodge cap for being medium-armor users. And don't get meaningful AC because of all the sub-buffs that lower AC under what a wizard can attain.

Supposedly, the trade off for all those weakness were massive melee damage. That they simply do not have.

Barbarians should have a HUGE increase on melee DPS. Link them to the 5th and 6th core enhancements to incentive pure classing (Maybe changing Storm's Eye to be Blitz-like?). Give them some easy way to recharge temporary hit points (let's say, 5 per character level when an enemy dies), so what it is not "true" self-healing, it should be enough to keep him alive between heals, or while soloing lower difficulties.

And we need a way to recharge Rage uses.

Bard

I have zero experience with bards after the enhancement pass, so I'll not give any outdated info.

Cleric

Clerics are supposed to be to Favored Souls like Wizards are to Sorcerers: You have a lower SP pool in exchange to access to a larger spell set to cast. That is not a real benefit currently for the simple lack of high level divine spells. A Cleric 20 can slot all level 9 divine spells that exists. Where are the options? We need more divine spells. Specially high level ones.

Turn Undead got some nice buffs in the previous updates and are working at-level as it should be. The Enhancement Pass was also nice to clerics, allowing them to go full melee, full casting, or full support. Or a mix at your desire. Their trees are well distributed (I miss every cleric having a Healing Aura, but that is ok), and you can give good uses for all their abilities.

I think clerics are ok-ish as they are now. The only balance pass necessary for them are better capstones (it is hard to not splash 2 monk for +2 Wis, 9% dodge and Evasion) and more level 7-9 spells.

Druid

I have zero personal experience with druids. Pre or post-EP. I'll skip them.

Favored Soul

As said previously, they are suppoed to be the sorcerer of cleric's Wizard. However, while wizards get more spell slots and feats to play with, fvs get more toys to play than their divine brothers: three innate elemental resists, and wings.

Wings, by itself, is a game-changer. I think you guys know this well, considering how many wing-like abilities you added to the game recently (Exalted Angel, Air Savant, Thief-Acrobat, Shadar-kai, Cannith Boots of Propulsion, druid's wolf form spells...). The problem that make FvS such an easy choice when going for your divine class is that it does not have any significant drawbacks when compared to a cleric. Sure, you lose Turn Undead, but your Warpriest Divine Might is powered by spell points. So, you basically do not lose anything.

FvS need to be a harder choice between it and clerics. Adding good high level spells is a way to do this. The other is making Divine Might turn-required regardless of class (So FvS should multiclass for it, or twist turns from Exalted Angel). The third option is giving Cleric extra feats, like Wizards have.

Strengthening the capstones will also make them miss the easy and cheap monk/pal splash for god-like saves.

Fighter

Fighters have the same basic innate problem of Barbarian: Absolutely no way to self-heal. However, you can raise UMD, use clickies, and still retain your full capability. You are not crippled out of your battle mode if you want to whip a wand, like barbarians are.

Currently, there are three types of fighter archetypes that vastly differs on power and balance solutions.

The first one is the tank archetype. This one goes deep on the Stalwart tree, and dons heavy armor and shield, to lock down the most powerful threat in the room, while your group deal with it. There are two inherent problems with this character: 1) There is almost no tanking required nowadays (and on EE, intimidating a full room of monsters is a death sentence), and 2) most of your tree abilities relies on a shield (I think it should rely on heavy armor).

The second one is the Monk splashed Kensai. Using One With the Blade to harness the benefits of monk stances with any weapon is dangerous (I'll say more about it on the monk entry below), and it should require an AMAZING capstone to avoid every non-tank fighter to just splash 2 monk and be done with it. Fighters have enough feats to waste all the way to the Grandmaster Stance.

The third one is more rare, and is the non-monk Kensai. This one in the current game is just justified if, for any reason, you don't have access to monk. Otherwise, the access to monk stances just make it a poor choice.

So, basically, boost the Kensai capstone, and make heavy armor an requirement for Stalwart stance, and work on it knowing it will have a low dodge cap and no evasion.

Monk

Monks have a ton of balance issues. The only drawback is that you can't wear armor if you want the stances, and can't go over light armor if you want Evasion. Considering all the buffs you get from Earth stance, it is a non-issue.

Monk 2 is VERY frontloaded. For two levels of monk you get the elemental stances, Evasion, +3 to all saves, 4% dodge, two feats, and access to Fists of Iron. There is no other 2-level class splash that give so many benefits.

Monk 6 gives you a third feat, Shadow Veil, 2% extra dodge, Adept of Forms, and access to 10k-Stars. If you want to be a decent archer, you requires 10k stars, so it makes that funny situation where the class with a bow icon is worse at ranged attacks than the class with a fist icon.

There is also the problem that the elemental stances are very unbalanced currently. Earth giving out PRR on par with heavy armor is what makes the no-armor requirements so trivial. And as a bonus, Earth is also the best melee stance to be anyway because of the bonus it gives to weapon critical multiplier. And that is funny, because Earth is supposed to be a defensive stance. Why is it giving out offensive benefits?

Backload some of Monk dodge bonus to the levels of rogues and barbarians, move the critical multiplier form Earth stance to Fire stance, and make 10k-stars either only work with shuriken, or not requiring monk levels at all.

Paladin

I haven't played a paladin post-Enhancement Pass, so I'll skip deep commentaries. I will just say that everything I said about Stalwart Defender is valid for Sacred Defender, and that paladins need a lot of more spells for all levels. Ah, and that Holy Sword should be an imbue spell.

Ranger

Ranger is another great solo class, with 9 free feats up to level 11, decent melee and ranged damage, and good enhancement trees. But since the enhancement pass, it is hard to keep up both melee and ranged damage on par with each other. Either you specialize in one of them, or you end up not using half of your tricks while you are on each mode. But other than that, I think the class is on a balanced spot.

On top of that, they only need more spells. The only worthwhile level 4 spells they have is Cure Serious Wounds and Freedom of Movement.

Rogue

Since the changes on U21 to Mechanic and Acrobat capstones, I think the class is on a nice place as well. The three trees are vastly different from each other, but all of them have generic stuff that makes them important for the others.

However, there is an issue, not with the class, but with a specific attack: Assassinate. Currently, there is only two items that allow us to raise its DC (and a third one that is Shadar-kai exclusive). Give us a bone and make at least generic Tactics bonus add up for it as well.

Sorcerer

Currently, it is considered the most powerful class in the game (unlike monk, which is just an amazingly good splash class). Can we list out the reasons?

• It attacks from far away, so you can stay mobile while dealing your full damage potential.
• If you are War/Bladeforged, you can self-heal reliably.
• Full Casters requires less gearing than melee classes (Fortification, Ghostly, spell power, spell crit, Constitution/False Life, and Charisma, and you are at 90% of your gear power).
• Double Rainbow and multi-hit spells means you have tons of chances to proc an effect.
• Lots of SP.

Sure, a MM-caster deals much less damage than almost any other character. But the constant procs of Rainbow and Nerve Venom make them efficient. I think it is more a Shiradi issue than a Sorcerer issue. By themselves, using only spells, they are basically the magic barbarian. Excepot this time, they DO deal double damage over everyone else.

Wizard

There are seven spell schools in the game. We basically only use three (Necromancy, Enchantment, Evocation). Give the other schools more spells.

Other than that, almost everything I said about the sorcerer also apply here: Most of the cheesiness of the class is based on EDs, not the class itself.

=============

I might take the time to write about the EDs in a future post. Maybe not.

[BOgre]

I ardently hope that you are taking to heart the excellent anti-nerf posts here. There have been some VERY good posts.

I sincerely feel your survey is fundamentally flawed and should be discarded out of hand. Whatever data you could glean from that will not lead you to meaningful changes. I did not get to the end, I did not hit submit.

Here are my thoughts on balance:

1st, I do not believe that balance is attainable in DDO. I don't even think it is DESIRABLE, and here's why. Each class is designed differently. Some are more front-loaded, others achieve their power in metered doses, and still others are heavily end-loaded. Because we are able to multi-class more or less at-will, this means we will ALWAYS be able to create powerful builds based on heavily invested end-load classes, with shallow splash front-load classes. This should be self evident and require no further explanation. That being said, this is the one area where you CAN achieve some balance, in the form of multi-class v. pure balance; and that is of course to drastically improve capstone abilities. And by drastically, I mean take your wildest dream and triple it. Any other form of cross class balancing act you envision is a wild goose chase.

2nd, you don't need to have been here very long to know that every class and every new ability and every new level cap raise has resulted in a slew of forum posts crying OP. Nothing will ever stop that. There will always be unhappy people wanting to have what others have, wanting to take away what others have, not willing to put in the effort on their own builds, gear, imagination, etc. Your original post tries very hard not name names and quote threads, but it seems obvious that you are reacting to the current complaints about "evasion required" and "nerf BF reconstruct". For the love of all that's holy, please make it SOP to ignore those types of threads. I mean, unless you intend to either a) make all classes play exactly the same, or b) play an endless game of catchup as you rotate nerfs around every class, chasing everyone who feels their neighbour has better shinies.

3rd, take your cue from Magic: The Gathering. No, seriously. Why is M:tG so successful? Why is it so strategically deep? Because there are tens of thousands (100's of 1000's?) of cards in play. Yes, they regularly obsolete some cards that are deemed to be game-breakingly OP as the environment evolves and grows. BUT it's only because they constantly are adding new spells and abilities that their players are able to come up with fantastic, strategic, winning decks. As far as DDO is concerned, sure, many players gravitate to FotM builds (just like the M:tG community tries to replicate or at least base their decks around champion players ideas), but the vanguard players, the theory-crafters, the flavour build experimenters, ... these players will be constantly finding new and interesting ways to build for power. Have faith in those people, and feed them what they need. MORE choices, in the form of more gear, more abilities, more PrEs, more EDs, and yes, MORE challenging quests. The LAST thing you need to be trying to do is remove abilities, nerf abilities, pigeon hole classes, restrict build options. Expansion, not Restriction should be your mantra.

And finally, I have to pick on one phrase in your OP: "remain competitive." Or more simply: "competitive." Besides the few places here where bragging rights are valued (1st completions, solo raid, highest DC/HP/etc.), there IS no real competition in DDO. Or if there is, it's not something you should have on your radar at all. Every class here is viable. Even complete gimp builds have a place here. If there is a competition, you can bet that for every "winner" in the DPS, or DC, or Saves, or whatever, race, there will be two new builds nipping at their heels to be the next big thing.

So, in conclusion, please abandon your quest for balance, and particularly your quest for balance-based nerfage. Spend your time instead on building new things, adding new things, confuse us utterly with an avalanche of new spells, abilities, tactics, mechanics, gear, and weapons.

[Delacroix21]

I forgot!


PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE allow barbarians and bards to be lawful. It will open SO MANY build options for them, and they really suffer from being locked out of paladin and monk.


I also agree with the anti-nerf con census, don't listen to a few whiners about another build be stronger than their own. This only holds water if there is one build that rules all, and there has never been such a build. There have always been equally competitive builds out there.

[mikarddo]

Thanks for caring, I believe this is a very important issue but also one to approach very carefully.

In my humble opinion I believe you should start carefully with a few well placed buffs and some minor nerfs to the worst offenders - but never in such a way as to completely invalidate anything.

I would like to suggest the following changes initially (which will hurt my own characters somewhat but be good for the game). The first two are buffs while the rest are nerfs - but nerfs that reduce rather than remove completely and hence still offer a choice.

1) Make medium and heavy armor better
Add an extra level*2 PRR innate for wearing medium armor and level*3 PRR innate for wearing heavy heavy (thats 60 prr at level 30 for medium and 90 prr at level 30 for heavy)
Add level*1.5 PRR to Mithral Body and level*3 PRR to Adamantine Body.

2) Make going pure more appealing.
Add 5 ap for having 20 levels of the same class.

3) Make evasion less all-or-nothing
Change evasion on non-trap damage from "a success negates all damage" to "a success makes you randomly take 0-25% of the damage". Improved Evasion continues to remove all damage on a success and so does normal evasion for trap damage so evasion classes with more than just a splash and trappers dont suffer from this.

4) Make Divine Grace capped.
Cap Divine Grace so it adds at most (paladin levels) * 3 to saves. Thus a /2 Pal splash adds no more than +6 to saves while a /4 Pal may get up to +12. With stat inflating getting uncapped +saves from cha even with just a small splash of paladin is far too good.

5) Lessen the effect of displacement
Lower displacement from 50% to 40%. This is still good but slightly less so and makes either having the spell or farming clickies less all-important while still very worthwhile.

6) Lower the effect of Blitz.
Change Blitz from +25% damage per stack to +20% damage per stack for melee damage and +15% damage per stack for ranged damage. This is still very competitive but without the extreme edge it enjoys right now.

7) Change Adrenaline to not affect multiple arrows
Change Adrenaline so it only affects the first arrow in a volley. Getting 4 arrows worth of major damage is over the top.

8) Change Just Rewards to not allow low level spells
Change Just Rewards so it does not work with spells that are spell level 1 or 2. (MM and Scorcing Ray, I am looking at you). The effect is still very worthwhile but the worst offenders are gone.

9) Increase the cooldown on Reconstruct
Change the cooldown on Reconstruct (spell) from 5 sec to 8 sec. Change the cooldown on Reconstruct (SLA) from 30/15/6 sec to 30/20/12 sec. Reconstruct, in particular the SLA, is simply too good compared to other forms of healing. With a longer cd it will still be very good but now comes with slightly more risk.

10) Monk chances
Reverse the change so monk stance feats no longer can be taken but only granted with monk levels.
Make the +1 crit part of Earth stance only apply to melee damage.

Thats it as far as I am concerned. None of these changes should completely invalidate any builds - but medium/heavy melee and pure builds get a boost, while certain other builds get a slight nerf so they are still playable just less powerful.

Once thats done start looking for the weakest classes/enchancements/EDs and buff those carefully.

In case anyone is wondering I currently play a Shiradi Wizards/FvS/Mnk and a Monkcher, so I will be taking the full nerf of these changes without a buff - yet I still think its reasonable and to the best for the game.

[Jurgi]

Master Blitz is the only thing that keeps Mele around, if MB will get nerf, mele will be completly useless.

[Desonde]

[*]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.[/list]

Be careful with this notion, in order to maintain balance you're going to need at least one person making minor tweeks here and there (making some enhancements 2ap instead of 1, and some 1 instead of 2) every month or two. And the largest reason for the prominence of certain class combinations/must have abilities/combat styles isn't because they are over powered, it's because the meta game requires them (If you want cr 28 mobs to hit lvl 28 characters for 90-140 a hit, give them the ability to hit 3 times a attack, and spawn them in groups of 3-8, all melee are going to have to have a source of concealment, incorp, dodge, AC, and PRR if they want to stand up for longer than 1-5 seconds).

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

• 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.

You can't group things entirely like this, Ranged needs to be broken down into 5 groups, Bows, Throwing Weapons, Shurikens, Crossbows, and Repeating Crossbows. Repeating Crossbows are fine, they don't need an adjustment at this time.
Shurikens are fine as well, but closer to the edge of unbalanced (not quite).
Throwing Weapons (other than shurikens due to feat/enhancements options) fire too slowly to compete with the other ranged weapons.
Crossbows Fire even slower than throwing weapons.
And Bows are in Limbo because without the special feats they would be in the same group as Throwing Weapons at being too slow to be useful in higher end content, but with the special feats they become the most powerful physical weapon for a short time.

Bows are also further skewed by being the only enhancement tree to be accessible by a race, granting the strongest ranged combat enhancements with the ability to earn a capstone ability on a multiclassed toon.

Melee has started to balance itself out (from the days where eSoS rained supreme), unfortunately, the game no longer allows them to be viable (requiring a huge investment into AC so that high damage mobs don't kill you nearly instantly, but sacrificing damage so you can't quickly take down their high hp pools). Monks are emerging as being extremely OP, but that's not because they are, it's because they are the only melee class with the tools to survive the content [if the critters turn other melee toons into rag dolls and the monks are the only ones standing it looks like they are imbalanced, but if you take away their survivability, then what, clerics, arcane, and ranged are too strong?].

Arcane is another one of those, it's complicated, things. Death magic seems OP, but no one wants to spend hours beating up different shaped meat bags all night, it's balanced out in that Death Magic doesn't work on bosses so it can't be the only trick in the parties/players composition.

Sorcs. are probably over powered, they fall into the all or none damage category, but being able to 1-3 spell kill entire mobs, and hit bosses for 1000's of damage a hit, a well built sorc can clean up. However, due to scaling, it's almost required in high level content to have one to help bring the mob's massive hp back into manageable ranges.

CC magic is suffering due to the influx of DC's to resist death magic that casters must put everything into making them land resulting in the inability to kill or damage.

• 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.

Races aren't imbalanced, they suffer from requiring too many AP to become useful, and having high pre-reqs resulting in massive saturation [this is the largest flaw with the current enhancement system as it's built on the premise that you put 41 points into your main enhancement, 16-18 into your race, and the remaining 20ish into a splash. The problem being that many trees are back heavy so you spend 20-40 points into multiple trees that you don't have points to build up your racial tree, and it's more efficient to splash in the trees that have decent front loaded abilities so as not to burn points to get that extra +1d6 sneak attack].

Classes aren't inherently overpowered, it's that many are underpowered. 6 of the 13 classes only have 2 trees to choose from, and don't fully support the character they are built for.

Artificer and Druid, though limited in their choices have one enhancement tree that makes them viable (Arcanotechnician doesn't support epic game builds, can't comment on Druid trees yet).

Barbarians have fallen into the group of hard to tell, being damage magnets that reduce their defenses to increase their damage and being melee focused, they just can't survive long enough in higher end content (dr /20 is a drop in the bucket against 100+ dmg [not to mention it's effectiveness is reduced by PRR (50% dmg reduction from PRR makes the dr/20 a dr/10 equivalent)]. They maybe balanced, but they die too quickly to tell.

Bards are the jack of all trades class, problem is when everything requires a focus in one area to be effective a class that lacks focus falls short.

Fighter is a special case, they don't have a tree that supports their class. Kensai is built specifically to support monk abilities (and if you try and work away from it you don't have very useful abilities), and Stalwart forces a very niche build that doesn't play well with others (very ap heavy, requires shields and heavy armor).

Monk has a lot of front loaded abilities, but it doesn't lack in back end abilities either, the reason why this is so prevalent is that it's one of the best sources of melee defense, and doesn't force you into burning points to get that one ability that ties the class together. The other classes need this flexibility. [Granted Henshin Mystic is very flat, it does have it's special qualities].

Paladin has a near Stalwart Defender clone with the same flaws and lack of strong draw, but it does have a class specific tree, unfortunately it doesn't support DDO's gameplay [They almost have to re-spec every night to get full benefit from that tree, and are stuck only playing content that involves undead, demons, or devils].

Ranger is hard to call because AA is extremely powerful, but in itself no imbalanced [it's actually both OP and underpowered at different moments]. The DWS has too much flavor not enough substance, and Tempest falls flat in the back end.

Rogue is another that's fairly well designed, it favors splashing withing itself with decent flexibility, and it has decent front end abilities as well. TA is a little flat and expensive, but it can still mix fairly well with assassin.

Sorc and wiz are pretty much summerized above in the combat styles, the EK also suffers from the concerns with melee.

[*]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.[/list]
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.

Apart from the abilities you've hinted at, you have to understand as well that these are the major source of improvement on a character between levels 20 and 28, the level of the dungeon has very little relevance to the level of the character and is entirely dependent on the level of the ED. Each ED must make the character viable in the higher level content because leveling up doesn't.

That said, there is no reason why my ranger should be able to do 100,000dmg in a one second window [Build a 30% Archer's Focus, Adrenaline, 30% Damage Boost, Manyshot, Arrow of Slaying, Adrenaline, Called Shot].

We're happy to hear general thoughts on character balance, what you'd like to see, and also why you'd like to see certain changes (or non-changes.) We don't want to change any particular things without good reasons, so convince us!

The most important thing I would like to see is to bring the entire system in check, once you start to see game play start to balance you will know what is over powered and what to lower.

Most of the imbalanced sections of the game are a result of the old process of increasing the difficulty to match what has become overpowered and common, instead of adjusting the balance to be within acceptable levels. This resulted in things that weren't part of that curve getting left behind and becoming further and further away from the rest of the game.

[Vanhooger]

1- Capstone and lvl 18 core ench rework, atm going pure is not worth it at all in any class, spalshing is way more powerful.
2- Dc casting is somewhere achievable but require the grind of many past life that could be ok, but the shiradi just make me so disappointed that I grinded out all those pl for nothing.
3- Shiradi caster, yes they need a nerf:

Remove those unlimited temp spell point, or at least make the proc once every few sec not on spell cast
Remove the possibility to take metamagic discount on two tree at same time (or put them on higher tier lke 4-5) as well for critical line.
Make more high level mob caster and all red named runnning with shield...they have dw..why not a lvl 1 spell like shield?
Force dmg is affecting nearly everything, too many mob have immunity to other element or strong elmental resistance.

4- Monkcher they're fine like that, all you need to do is just make adrenaline work with the first arrow with manyshot.

5- Paladin is just a splash class for save.

6- Monk too overpowered on splashing build. Remove all the feat stance and the 1.5[w]from gmof, they should be just for monk or staff build

7- Bard and Barbarian, they dont need to be commented

8- Sorcerer/Wizard,Cleric/Fvs (non shiradi), increase on dc/sr and make pure viable.

9- Primal avatar and shadowdancer not worth using them, the only useful thing is cocoon

10- Do not nerf self healing or I will stop play, I can't wait half a day to get a cleric or fvs to do one quest, all you need to nerf is repair spell, remove it. Self healing just with cocoon and or scroll on EE is not that easy when they hit for 300 x hit and you have a 12 sec cooldown. It's not acceptable that a 1 click repair give you full health like if you was an healr type lol.

I could list many more but just don't have time....

[EllisDee37]

Either remove the extended lockout timer for doubleshot on Manyshot outright, or give high level rangers a way to remove it (in the DWS core at 18 or 20, or as a granted class feature at level 15+);

That's a solid idea. Maybe have the AA 18 core reduce the manyshot cooldown by x%, and the AA capstone reduce it by an additional 2x%. What "x" should be I can't say with any insight.

I also agree with the anti-nerf con census, don't listen to a few whiners about another build be stronger than their own. This only holds water if there is one build that rules all, and there has never been such a build. There have always been equally competitive builds out there.

In today's game, there are pretty much four builds that rule them all, right? In no particular order:

Monkcher
Bladeforged Centered Kensei
Shirardi arcane
Pale Master (pure 20 sun elf completionist)

There's no justification to roll up a pure arcane archer instead of a monkcher. There's no justification to roll up any front line melee other than a bladeforged centered kensei. For first life arcanes trying to play EE content, it's shirardi or bust. The least dominant is the pale master, who has the darkside cleric nipping at its heels as a slightly weaker but viable alternative. The first three are head and shoulders above the alternatives.

[blerkington]

That's a solid idea. Maybe have the AA 18 core reduce the manyshot cooldown by x%, and the AA capstone reduce it by an additional 2x%. What "x" should be I can't say with any insight.

In today's game, there are pretty much four builds that rule them all, right? In no particular order:

Monkcher
Bladeforged Centered Kensei
Shirardi arcane
Pale Master (pure 20 sun elf completionist)

There's no justification to roll up a pure arcane archer instead of a monkcher. There's no justification to roll up any front line melee other than a bladeforged centered kensei. For first life arcanes trying to play EE content, it's shirardi or bust. The least dominant is the pale master, who has the darkside cleric nipping at its heels as a slightly weaker but viable alternative. The first three are head and shoulders above the alternatives.

Hi,

This is an interesting post because it highlights the extent to which the focus of this discussion has turned to be about endgame EE content.

The balance between classes/races/builds is quite different at different points in the game, both level wise and difficulty wise. It's even quite different in EH upper level quests compared to EE endgame.


Thanks.

[danlan]

Hi,

This is an interesting post because it highlights the extent to which the focus of this discussion has turned to be about endgame EE content.

The balance between classes/races/builds is quite different at different points in the game, both level wise and difficulty wise. It's even quite different in EH upper level quests compared to EE endgame.


Thanks.

I think the problem of balance is only evident in the context of epic elite, which is directly caused by the following features of epic elite (and the issue is worsening):

1. inflated monster hp (especially for orange and red named)

2. inflaged monster saves (literally untouchable)

3. inflated monster damages (renders non-ranged combat styles nonviable)

4. infated monster dc (causes players to overly focus on building up saves at the expense of all other varieties; if you dont build saves, you die instantly from cometfall/evo spells/soundburst etc.)

5. especially from update 19, the number of trashes also increase dramatically. This is very annoying combined with the above 4 points.


All of the above render almost all classes combinations powerless except for the below:

1. Shiradi casters who can hit from long distance, who are totally unaffected by monster saves, and who can do much more damage than any other casters!

My suggestion would be while making adjustment to Epic elites, it would be necessary to make all procs by shiradi not magnified by of spell powers (0%).

Alternatively, maximum one proc for each spell cast.


2. Furyshot moncher

I would suggest that adrenaline can only work on the first damage from manyshot/ten thousand star (if techically possible)

If the above is not possible, then maybe make adrenline not regenerating from ranged attacks.

At the very least, maybe change ten thousand star to not work on bows.

[knockcocker]

The approach here seems bass ackwards. Are you really going to propose nerfs based on surveying player's
perceptions?

There's a context for all of this so called power balance:

Certain race/class/ED combos have much better synergy and utility than others. This is one of the
few things that makes DDO stand out. Lose that and you're done.

Builds adapt to suit circumstance. At the moment certain combos are more effective for the content
being ran than others. Many other intelligent posters have explained this previously in this thread.

Surely you have a vast amount of metrics to support whatever changes you are proposing? I seriously
hope you aren't basing this off anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is useless in this context as
players are not balanced. If you're suggesting that some special little snow flake should be as effective
as a very good player with all the past lives, gear and skill then I'm going to have to disagree.

Honestly, I think you should look at buffing certain EDs and classes - particularly so called epic
moments. Nerfs are always bad, particularly if you're taking away the only thing that works to make
the content you've created bearable. The game is fun, not work.

[Flavilandile]

First I stopped reading after the first page ( 100 posts )... Because honestly it's a can of worm better left to rot IMHO.

Dungeons & Dragons: Online isn't perfectly balanced. We're interested in discussing what balance means, and how important balance is to you, the players. We want to know how often you'd like to see balance changes.

You can't Balance classes in DDO, D&D Classes are inherently unbalanced.

At low level in D&D the melee rule the playing field and the higher you go the more powerful spellcasters become. At high level they are the decisive factors. Melee ( and ranged ) are just faire valoir. ( at least until the magic users expand all their daily spells, then it's back to the good old melee )
So don't even try to balance anything.... And that's not even starting with Multiclass characters.

For this thread, we're looking particular at character balance, and how characters compare to one another. To some extent this borders on discussion of player characters vs. quest difficulty (and all that entails), but the focus here is player characters compared against other player characters (but not PvP). At some other time we may also look at other balance issues, such as Normal/Hard/Elite, or more specific issues like items, quests, monsters, traps, raids, or boss monsters.

Well then you have two main problems : ( and several other... not always related to characters, so I'll avoid them for now. )
- The first one there's Classes and Prestige Classes. and you mixed it in the Enhancement Trees.
The result is that we only have Prestige Classes Enhancements but no Class Enhancement Trees.
To Fix that would mean yet another full enhancement revamp. ( As there's some Basic class things that are spread over all the Prestige Class enhancement trees )

- The Second one is the whole mess that has been created by the Epic Destinies and the way they work....
The result is that we just spend our time in destinies we do not need or want, because we have to develop them to be able to develop the destiny we want a twist from.
One of the fix for that would be to bring back the Shears and let them work as unintended ( with a check so that you can't twist more than once ), that way we could level these off destinies we hate to level while benefiting of the powers from a destiny we like.

Why does Character Balance matter?

We'd like a variety of roles and styles of play to be supported at a high level of play, without some builds that look like fun feeling bad to play because other characters seem so much more powerful. We've heard some level of concern over these topics and related issues. Perfect balance doesn't need to be achieved, and probably can't be achieved, but most or all playstyles should feel competitive. (We recognize that creating terrible character builds with the vast possibilities offered in DDO is always going to be possible, but we can probably all agree that's not the real issue.)

There's the Build du moment... If you nerf one of it's power it will be replaced by something else, but that's not the only way to deal with a supposedly overpowered build.
Yes everybody and the dog is making Monkcher because they are supposedly ( too ) powerful. Except that they are Monkcher... If they end up in melee they are mana sponges for the clerics.
( unless they have enough past life and other things to make them really resilient )
Use quest mechanisms to force them to become entangled in melee instead of nerfing them.

Just remember : whatever you do, in two month a new build, supposedly more powerful ( read : more adapted to the current tactic in end game raids ) will replace this one.
It's been that way since the beginning... At first we had the plain classes, then people discovered the power of multiclassing and we ended up with Power Rangers, then we had Drow Sorcs, then Light Monks, then...
The list is long.

In short, we want you to be able to play what you want to play, have fun doing it, and feel like you can be a worthwhile contributor to a party (if that's how you choose to play).

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.

As I said above, D&D ( and by extension DDO ) is inherently unbalanced when it comes to Player Classes.
If you want to spend time on a class that needs love : I'd say that the Bards are the ones that need the most love.

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.
• 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.
• 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.

Ranged/Melee : I'm with Teh Troll here : Nerf the Monks !
( only if there's no other option though )

Class/Race : why bother, the system is inherently unbalanced, don't try to balance there.
The only thing you could do is create Class Enhancement Trees. ( but as I said it would been to be yet another complete enhancement overhaul )

Destinies : See above, bring back Shears and let us level an off destiny while being able to use the powers of our main destiny ( or of an interesting one )

Just one important thing :

Frontloaded enhancement trees + frontloaded class splashes = cherry pick cookiecutter build ftw.

We really don't need a WoW/SWTOR Clone here where there's only 1 or 2 typical tree use for a given class...

What makes DDO so great is that there is not a single way to achieve the same result in character build.
Well you killed that a bit with the Enhancement Trees, before the Trees it was really true, after the trees, we have partial cookie cutter builds....
We still have some liberties in builds, but they have been restricted by the trees compared to what we had before.

[luvirini]

Comment on epic level balance as there is a huge problem:

The epic levels give fairly low benefit and a level 20 in right destiny is normally(not always for all builds and destinies, but normally) much more powerful than a 28 in wrong destiny.

Thus unless we get actual class levels instead of the commoner levels in epics all balancing and what content you can enter in epic levels should not be based on epic level, like the new raids should be enterable with a level 20 character that has level 5 destiny and not a level 28 in level 1 destiny as the epic level just does not matter as much.

[Seljuck]

Main point of view all players here is: 'Don't nerf MY character!! Buff others.' We all fear it, but we understand it. Someone wrote here Adopt or Die. Why no one can adopt the changes, known as nerf? I mean changes that are clearly thought out and do not lead to fall into extremes.

The question is:

If I have the biggest weapon why others can't buy bigger or the same us mine??

This leads to a loop. Now I'm the strongest, but for a while, after the changes someone else will be stronger, so then I will need strengthen. This point of view leads to endless power ****.

Besides, Vargouille wrote:

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.

[knockcocker]

Main point of view all players here is: 'Don't nerf MY character!! Buff others.' We all fear it, but we understand it. Someone wrote here Adopt or Die. Why no one can adopt the changes, known as nerf? I mean changes that are clearly thought out and do not lead to fall into extremes.

The question is:

If I have the biggest weapon why others can't buy bigger or the same us mine??

This leads to a loop. Now I'm the strongest, but for a while, after the changes someone else will be stronger, so then I will need strengthen. This point of view leads to endless power ****.

Besides, Vargouille wrote:

This is always true, even with nerfs. All you've done is removed the most efficient (and usually) fun ways
to play their content. Why play at all?

If the 'classes' were wildly imbalanced I'd agree, but they are not. Does any build feel OP
in the new content or it simply a case of do what works?

Too much tall poppy syndrome on this thread and too many confusing OP with effective.

[pHo3nix]

The real problems aren't characters builds, the real problem is how EE is implemented. Most things people are complaining about aren't OP in a vacuum, they are just the most efficient way to deal with EE quests now, so they look OP.

Ranged vs Melee: as you said in the OP, ranged has been considered suboptimal for a long time, except when you could manyshot. Why? Cause meleeing was way more dps and you could actually melee. Melee in current EE requires a lot of skill, a lot of gear and even if you are pretty good player it's still the hardest way to do things, cause mobs hit so **** hard that you are required to have great self-healing, 25% dodge, 10%+ incorporeality, a decent PRR, a way to make mobs helpless, a hotbar of displacement clickies or 100s of scrolls and you basically need to be blitzing(FotW is fine too, but blitzing is way better ). Anything less and you are going to be a soulstone more often than not, unless you are piking. When mobs hit so hard that you can be killed in 3-4 hits even with 1k hp the smartest solution is to not get hit at all: that's why ranged toons (both archers and shiradi) are so popular.

Saves: when you need a 65+ to save in EE you are basically forcing people to splash 2 pally lvls. Yes, there are some builds that can achieve good saves even without pally splash, but it's far from the norm. Saves are the new AC: you either go full ****** on them or you could as well not bother and use immunities and twicthing skills. The easiest way to fix this is to lower the saves required in EE: pally splashes are going to save on a 1 anyway, but at least they won't be "required" anymore to have decent saves.

Evasion: when the main threats for our toons are reflex-based spells or traps(see above ranged vs melee, if you are a ranged toon melee mobs aren't a real threat), evasion becomes that good. Is it required? No. But it's amazing. Couple it with the other benefits you get from splashing 2 lvls of monk or rogue and it's really hard to justify not having it. To make it less desiderable just proxy nerf it by making capstones better and by making threats different form reflex-based ones. Currently evasion is really useful in 100% of the game; if it was useful in 30-40% of the game and there were better capstones you will see a lot less people splashing 2 monk or 2 rogue for it.

Monk: 2 or 6 lvls of monk are really good cause they give really nice perks. Do not nerf what these splashes give, just proxy nerf them by making what they give less desiderable and/or by making other options more valid.

I'm surely missing something, but that's enough for now

Do not focus on characters, you should first change how EE work and then with minor tweaks you can make the game a little more "balanced"

[knockcocker]

That's a solid idea. Maybe have the AA 18 core reduce the manyshot cooldown by x%, and the AA capstone reduce it by an additional 2x%. What "x" should be I can't say with any insight.

In today's game, there are pretty much four builds that rule them all, right? In no particular order:

Monkcher
Bladeforged Centered Kensei
Shirardi arcane
Pale Master (pure 20 sun elf completionist)

There's no justification to roll up a pure arcane archer instead of a monkcher. There's no justification to roll up any front line melee other than a bladeforged centered kensei. For first life arcanes trying to play EE content, it's shirardi or bust. The least dominant is the pale master, who has the darkside cleric nipping at its heels as a slightly weaker but viable alternative. The first three are head and shoulders above the alternatives.

My biggest problem really is that your 'four builds' - with which I don't disagree much (Zeus?) - is
actually mostly only relevant to EE. In fact, what a lot of this discussion has boiled down to,
materially, is what builds work on EE. This is a different subject to the OP - but one which is mainly
more relevant?

Most things work just fine on EH- so I'm struggling to see what the fuss is about.

[knockcocker]

The real problems aren't characters builds, the real problem is how EE is implemented. Most things people are complaining about aren't OP in a vacuum, they are just the most efficient way to deal with EE quests now, so they look OP.

Ranged vs Melee: as you said in the OP, ranged has been considered suboptimal for a long time, except when you could manyshot. Why? Cause meleeing was way more dps and you could actually melee. Melee in current EE requires a lot of skill, a lot of gear and even if you are pretty good player it's still the hardest way to do things, cause mobs hit so **** hard that you are required to have great self-healing, 25% dodge, 10%+ incorporeality, a decent PRR, a way to make mobs helpless, a hotbar of displacement clickies or 100s of scrolls and you basically need to be blitzing(FotW is fine too, but blitzing is way better ). Anything less and you are going to be a soulstone more often than not, unless you are piking. When mobs hit so hard that you can be killed in 3-4 hits even with 1k hp the smartest solution is to not get hit at all: that's why ranged toons (both archers and shiradi) are so popular.

Saves: when you need a 65+ to save in EE you are basically forcing people to splash 2 pally lvls. Yes, there are some builds that can achieve good saves even without pally splash, but it's far from the norm. Saves are the new AC: you either go full ****** on them or you could as well not bother and use immunities and twicthing skills. The easiest way to fix this is to lower the saves required in EE: pally splashes are going to save on a 1 anyway, but at least they won't be "required" anymore to have decent saves.

Evasion: when the main threats for our toons are reflex-based spells or traps(see above ranged vs melee, if you are a ranged toon melee mobs aren't a real threat), evasion becomes that good. Is it required? No. But it's amazing. Couple it with the other benefits you get from splashing 2 lvls of monk or rogue and it's really hard to justify not having it. To make it less desiderable just proxy nerf it by making capstones better and by making threats different form reflex-based ones. Currently evasion is really useful in 100% of the game; if it was useful in 30-40% of the game and there were better capstones you will see a lot less people splashing 2 monk or 2 rogue for it.

Monk: 2 or 6 lvls of monk are really good cause they give really nice perks. Do not nerf what these splashes give, just proxy nerf them by making what they give less desiderable and/or by making other options more valid.

I'm surely missing something, but that's enough for now

Do not focus on characters, you should first change how EE work and then with minor tweaks you can make the game a little more "balanced"

HA! well said!

[SirValentine]

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.

I think power creep is inevitable, and, in very small doses over a very long time, good for the game.

But, yes, it has gotten way out of proportion. Shadowfell was a particularly pernicious example of this. Between the enhancement pass, and the really dumb things done with loot, player power level went up a lot very quickly.

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.

Agreed. Lots of half-finished things that would be cool to see done.

[oradafu]

6- Monk too overpowered on splashing build. Remove all the feat stance and the 1.5[w]from gmof, they should be just for monk or staff build

I disagree with the GMOF part. Grandmaster of Flowers absolutely sucks if you aren't a robe wearer. Instead of making A Dance of Flowers even more restrictive, I'd rather see it open for all builds by removing the "while centered" criteria and move it to a tier 2 or 3 ability. Instead, I'd make it something like:

A Dance of Flowers -- Passive Bonus: +[0.5/1.0/1.5][W] to attacks. While Centered, attacks gain an additional +[4/6/8] damage.