Player Character Balance

[nibel]

What changed in the last 18 months that make fury shot OP compared to 2012? What have you learned about it now that you didn't know then?

Slaying Arrow.

[Delacroix21]

I dont even know why Fury shot is being mentioned.


Adrenaline working on ranged/multi is FINE. Sure it does allot of dps for a bit, but thats every 5mins! The rest of the time the archer will have to meele! Hardly game breaking. People just watch youtube videos of fury manyshot and think that the dps is sustainable when its not. This should be left ALONE.



P.S. If you nerf shiradi, fury, etc. without nerfing monsters this game would really suck

[Lonnbeimnech]

I dont even know why Fury shot is being mentioned.


Adrenaline working on ranged/multi is FINE. Sure it does allot of dps for a bit, but thats every 5mins! The rest of the time the archer will have to meele! Hardly game breaking. People just watch youtube videos of fury manyshot and think that the dps is sustainable when its not. This should be left ALONE.



P.S. If you nerf shiradi, fury, etc. without nerfing monsters this game would really suck

Agreed.

People also stress about the dps of a shiradi...

It's only good dps when they get joy of the queen. And that's maybe 10% of the time, on a once per rest buff that only lasts 5 min. The rest of the time shiradi is much lower than draconic dps.

What makes it good is nerve venom randomly ccing mobs for a few seconds. Not the dps.

[madmaxhunter]

Because this game IS STILL BASED ON DND and if they changed that then should change the name of the game to UBER POWER GAMERS ONLINE.

In case anyone hasn't caught this, Uska doesn't feel melee should have a self-healing ability. You might have missed that. Uska has only said it a dozen times in this thread.

Let me know who your healer toons are on Sarlona. I will hit you up to healbot us whenever we run a quest. You're willing to do that obviously, since you are so fixated on making DDO play just like DND.

[Alfhild]

I dont even know why Fury shot is being mentioned.


Adrenaline working on ranged/multi is FINE. Sure it does allot of dps for a bit, but thats every 5mins! The rest of the time the archer will have to meele! Hardly game breaking. People just watch youtube videos of fury manyshot and think that the dps is sustainable when its not. This should be left ALONE.

If you define Furyshotting as merely using your epic moment, then you are correct. But you have 7 Adrenalines (or more since they can refresh) which can be manually expended in conjunction with Slaying Arrows + Manyshot/10Kstars prior to using the epic moment.

[FlaviusMaximus]

There have been a lot of suggestions to back-load class abilities (as in shift abilities that are gained earlier to make them abilities that are gained later) in this thread in order to encourage more pure class builds and discourage multi-classing. To me this looks a lot like players trying to get the power to shift toward build styles that they personally prefer, which I totally get. I just don't like the idea of taking away from some builds to add to others - unless some builds are clearly overpowered. I don't think multi-class combinations are overpowered right now in general. This is a matter of single classing being underpowered.

I'm not in favor of backloading class abilities because
1) I'm not in love with the idea of most of the DDO population having their builds wrecked and having to TR, and
2) As a personal preference, which is, I believe what we partially sharing when we discuss this topic (personal preference), I believe the more possible class combinations there are, the better.

There are better ways to achieve single class/mult-class balance.

Some rogue and ranger capstones have been improved recently to address the issue of multi-classing being more powerful than single-classing. To me, improving the high class level abilities is the right way to go, and that they have already started to do so shows that they are aware of the problem and are already actively addressing it. If capstones and level 18 core abilities are further improved, there should be no reason to destroy everyone's current builds just because some find them distasteful.

Power creep isn't an issue if the level 18 and level 20 class abilities are improved either, because enhancing those abilities only helps bring single-class characters up to the level of the multi-class builds that are predominantly being used.

[Uska]

In case anyone hasn't caught this, Uska doesn't feel melee should have a self-healing ability. You might have missed that. Uska has only said it a dozen times in this thread.

Let me know who your healer toons are on Sarlona. I will hit you up to healbot us whenever we run a quest. You're willing to do that obviously, since you are so fixated on making DDO play just like DND.

Go play wow! And if you supply the pots I might be willing to heal you! I said they should have self-healing added and I also said cocoon needs to be harder to obtain and keep,on a character. Barbs and fighters shouldn't be able to easily heal themselves. Monks, paladins and rangers can heal themselves as well as others to varying degrees. That's how it should be. Less changes from dnd not more.

[Lonnbeimnech]

Go play wow! And if you supply the pots I might be willing to heal you! I said they should have self-healing added and I also said cocoon needs to be harder to obtain and keep,on a character. Barbs and fighters shouldn't be able to easily heal themselves. Monks, paladins and rangers can heal themselves as well as others to varying degrees. That's how it should be. Less changes from dnd not more.

In dnd orcs don't hit for 300 damage. In dnd 300 damage is enough to kill 60+ men at once.

[Uska]

In dnd orcs don't hit for 300 damage. In dnd 300 damage is enough to kill 60+ men at once.

Still doesn't justify giving barbs self-healing it does justify boosting their DR by a significant amount and doesn't change the flavor of the class. Inflate the abilities that a class already has to go with game inflation don't grant new abilities!

[chrisdinus7]

Slaying Arrow.

Does slaying arrow work during many shot? As in, do you get 4 slaying arrows if you use it during many shot? If not, it has no impact on fury shot. If it does, then the fix is to simply change slaying arrow - the much newer ability. Outside of manyshot / multiple hit effects, slaying arrow + Adrenaline is fine. An arrow of 4k every 20s is reasonable. Heck, it is only marginally better than boulder toss (before the unneeded U21.1 nerf).

[chrisdinus7]

A Specific Comparison of Draconic Incarnation verses Shiradi Champion on a Sorcerer:

First, a DC based sorcerer can get very reliable DCs. An evo DC in the 70s is achievable. See this thread for a break down for wizards: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...e-Master-Guide. Sorcerers will have a lower DC. Even a lowly sorc will be able to reach the low 70s. Which is relatively good in the current content.

Crowd Control
Shiradi: Nerve Venom gives a 7% chance to render a target helpless per proc. A chain missile spell produces 11 procs if you have 2+ foes. There is a 45% chance nerve venom won't proc at all (0.93^11).

Draconic: Twist the Sound burst SLA from U21.1 Exalted Angel. It can render a group helpless for 6s. It can currently only be used half the time (12s cd - this might be a bug, since it looks like you are supposed to be able to spend more points on the ability). Every foe in the AOE has to save or be CC'ed. The DC is high enough to matter.

Both have moderate and comparable CC ability.

DPS
I'll primarily look at the base damage of spells and procs before spell power. The spell power and critical chance washes out as a multiplier for both builds. Heck, it is probably easier to get a high Fire Spell power than it is a high force spell power, given the current state of enhancements.

Draconic:
First, we need to compute the expected damage per proc. Our caster gets:
7% of 2d100 force
7% of 10d10 sonic
7% of 1d100 random element
7% of Double Rainbow

1d100 of a random element does not equal 1d100 damage. Consider that in mosts cases:
It can proc either negative energy or positive energy. These cancel each other out. One will heal the mob, the other will hurt it.
It can proc either rust or repair. One will heal and the other will hurt, or it will be immune to both.
The damage types I can think of of-fhand are: Untyped, Fire, Ice, Sonic, Acid, Electric, Positive, Negative, Repair, Posion, Light, and Force. Twelve total types. Lets round it up to 16, supposing I am forgetting some useful ones. That means that, on average, it only nets doing damage 75% of time (4 of the 16 types do nothing, or are paired in a heal / harm set).

So, we get:
= .07 * 101 + .07 * 55 + 0.07 * 0.75 * 50.5 + .07 * DoubleRainbow
= .07 * (101 + 55 + 37.875 + DoubleRainbow)
= 13.57 + 0.07 * DoubleRainbow

I'll estimate that double rainbow nets out to be about as useful as the sonic proc. I personally consider that an over-estimation. Even without radiant force field and other mob buffs, it has a lot of useless effects.

So, 17 per proc then.

A cast of magic missile then does 4.5 + 17 per missile. Or, 5 * 21.5 = 107.5. We'll need another spell to mix in, say force missiles. That gives us 4 procs of (2d3 + 8) + 17 shiradi, or 4 * 29 = 116. About 111 base damage and 6 sp per second (again, before spell power and criticals).

Chain missiles does 10 proces of a magic missile (4.5 + 17 for procs) + a main hit of 10d2 + 30. So, chain missiles gives us 277 base damage, if we have 2+ foes. Against a single foe, it deals only the main hit of 45 damage + 1 proc = 62. Which is silly for us, since it is significantly less than cheaper options such as magic missile or force missile.

Draconic:
Consider Fireball, assuming we have an appropiate ToD set handy. Unlike some spells, fireball is affected by max caster level bonuses. We get a +9 MCL (4 from our core abilities as a fire savant, 2 from out ToD set, 3 from Draconic). That gives us a base damage of 19 * (1d3 + 3) = 95. So, it is more powerful than chain missiles against 4+ foes, and it is the same against 3 foes (285 * 0.975 for non-evasives = 277.875 verses 277), but is a lot weaker against 2 foes. It has the same cost as chain missiles. It is a bit weaker against a single target than magic missile, at 95 verses 107.

We can alternate our fireball with Delayed Blast Fireball, also affected by MCL. That gives us a base damage of 29 * 5 = 145. While a bit more expensive than chain missiles, it always wins. Against 1 foe, it is 145 verse 62 for chain missiles (or even the 116 for force missiles). Against two, its weakest point, it is still 290 verses 277, slightly ahead. And it pulls much father ahead against larger groups. At 4 foes, it deals 580 verses 277. More than twice as powerful, for less than twice the price. We could even mix even meteor swarm, which will do even better damage than DBF. But probably not enough more to justify the extra cost. Chain Lightning gives us a comprable spell, if we are lightning focused. Otherwise, it amounts to a slightly weaker version we can mix in. Same with ball lightning, if we needed the extra spells.

Now lets consider lightning bolt. We only get +5 MCL here (2 draconic, 3 from electric savant cores). We can't wear the tod set, since we are wearing the fire one. Still, that gets us 15 * (1d3 + 3) * 1.5 (for the double strike chance). That nets a base damage of 112.5. It has a slightly shorter cooldown than does force missiles (2s v 2.25s). But it does slightly less damage, and at a cost of 12 instead of 8. But it does have a linear AoE, which can pay off.

Draconic also gets Energy Burst, Energy Vortex, and Dragon Breath, for additional large group options.

Energy Vortex also helps single target dps. We get 22 ticks every 120s, each tick dealing d6 * caster level. Our CL is 20 + 5 (Draconic) + 6 (sorc cores) = 31. That gives 108.5 per tick, about 20 per second in addition to whatever rotation you are spamming. So, alternating Fireball + Lightning bolt and using energy vortex gets you comparable dps against a single target to the MM + FM spam in Shiradi, though it'll cost about twice as much per second.

Conclusion for DPS: Draonic has better AoE dps. Against a single target, it can have comparable or even better dps, but the at a notably higher sp cost.

Overall, Shiradi only pulls ahead when:
You get the proc chance buff from Tea with the Queen, which is rare.
Quests with few shrines.
You don't have good gear or lots of past lives.

Shiradi falls way behind when double rainbow is broken. For example, like now if it procs radiant forcefield. They end up losing almost a quarter of their dps (by turning off double rainbow / prism, or by dealing with the forcefield).

Proposed Solution: Leave Shiradi alone. There should be a casting destiny for first life toons. Instead, buff Draonic Hunger to be per comparable to Just Rewards from the FvS tree. Consider replacing Fearsome Invulnerability with something better. A tanking epic moment for a casting dps destiny is weird. Finally, be mindful of too much save inflation on mobs. That is the only reason that Shiradi sees as much usage as it does.

Note that come U21.1, Exalted Angel will be a better DC destiny than Draconic for Sorcerers (but not Wizards, due to the lack of an Int option). It will also compete reasonably with Shiradi. Nuker wizards get comparable results when analyzed, though they have more that pushes them to Shiradi (their SLAs fit better there than they do with the draconic, since the evo ones don't allow saves except Cyclonic, which has had broken damage for a long time).

[MadGardener]

Glad to see this topic and the many responses,

quick vote for theses two comments...evasion splashes seem to greatly outweigh pure class bonus. I like the ability for most if not all classes able to have some self-healing.


Now for my personal balance adjustments:


first is turning epic undead, turn works fine on heroic but doesn't scale to match the increase of epic undead.

second is the animal form melee damage doesn't scale, a lv9 dire bear hits the same as a lv 20 druid bear with 8 epic lvs.

I have posted my thoughts on upgrading the druid bear https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...d-bear-update?

I have highlighted two specific points that I feel could be adjusted without a lot of pain.


I believe when it comes to game play the elephant in the room is evasion, on difficult content effective evasion trumps, so depending on overall direction of content this will be a hugh factor, if content has massive damage with evadable content then evasion is a must, if game-play has universal evadable content that can be survived without evasion then builds without evasion are viable (plz change shields to mitigate damage from block only, to equipped). I believe the current view is evasion, so 2 monk/ rogue none or light armour and increase survivability. This doesn't really matter to me one way or the other, but if you are wondering why some classes, builds, splashes I feel this is the main reason. (exception to the rule are casters, who use long distance and fast feet to try and survive).


Good luck this is a daunting task

[Uska]

Glad to see this topic and the many responses,

quick vote for theses two comments...evasion splashes seem to greatly outweigh pure class bonus. I like the ability for most if not all classes able to have some self-healing.


Now for my personal balance adjustments:


first is turning epic undead, turn works fine on heroic but doesn't scale to match the increase of epic undead.

second is the animal form melee damage doesn't scale, a lv9 dire bear hits the same as a lv 20 druid bear with 8 epic lvs.

I have posted my thoughts on upgrading the druid bear https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...d-bear-update?

I have highlighted two specific points that I feel could be adjusted without a lot of pain.


I believe when it comes to game play the elephant in the room is evasion, on difficult content effective evasion trumps, so depending on overall direction of content this will be a hugh factor, if content has massive damage with evadable content then evasion is a must, if game-play has universal evadable content that can be survived without evasion then builds without evasion are viable (plz change shields to mitigate damage from block only, to equipped). I believe the current view is evasion, so 2 monk/ rogue none or light armour and increase survivability. This doesn't really matter to me one way or the other, but if you are wondering why some classes, builds, splashes I feel this is the main reason. (exception to the rule are casters, who use long distance and fast feet to try and survive).


Good luck this is a daunting task

Yes it is a daunting task and the whole idea is giving me NGE nightmare flashbacks, many thought the enhancement revamp would be DDO's NGE but not this balance baloney will be I am sure even to the point of reducing the number of classes even if they don't reduce the actual number making them all basically the same would have the same effect.

[Desonde]

Does slaying arrow work during many shot? As in, do you get 4 slaying arrows if you use it during many shot? If not, it has no impact on fury shot. If it does, then the fix is to simply change slaying arrow - the much newer ability. Outside of manyshot / multiple hit effects, slaying arrow + Adrenaline is fine. An arrow of 4k every 20s is reasonable. Heck, it is only marginally better than boulder toss (before the unneeded U21.1 nerf).

Arrow of Slaying does work with manyshot, and 4k dmg arrow is about the minimum it's going to do (it can exceed 10k per arrow).

[Qhualor]

Go play wow! And if you supply the pots I might be willing to heal you! I said they should have self-healing added and I also said cocoon needs to be harder to obtain and keep,on a character. Barbs and fighters shouldn't be able to easily heal themselves. Monks, paladins and rangers can heal themselves as well as others to varying degrees. That's how it should be. Less changes from dnd not more.

than you are in support of role playing in DDO and bringing back healers. fighters and barbs are too far behind in self sufficiency when mob damage is way too high to reliably keep yourself alive with pots that heal for 50 hp or penalize your abilities and movement. every other class/build is easily able to self heal without sacrifice to dps and maintain continuous damage output. DDO takes the idea of PnP and implements it into a video game. there has to be some rules to bend since the translation cant be transferred over that well. for your PnP idea to actually work would mean decreasing mob damage significantly and 7 DR that barbs inherently gain would actually have to matter. by doing that would make every other class much more powerful, but hey, at least barbs would be able to stay alive in an EE mob fight drinking 50 hp pots.

you cant preach PnP for one aspect of the game but still go along with everything else. you need to preach a lot more than barbs having better defenses and self sufficiency to keep in line with all the other builds that are able to have it a lot easier. why aren't you rallying to make it so casters can only use spells one time per day instead of the ability to spam them as much as their blue bar allows? why aren't you rallying for cure potions to be as rare to find as they are in PnP? why aren't you rallying for more xp required when you multi class? we could go on and on all day about what is so far away from PnP, but i don't have all day to list them.

[Trillea]

Remember in pen and paper that a "round" of combat will take a group of switched on players about 15-20 minutes. That's one action each:six seconds of game time. Most serious combats in my groups last about an hour or so. In DDO we have scores of actions per minute so 6 spells would go awfully quickly.

Ever tried making a sorc in pen and paper with twinned quickened empowered scorching rays? That's OP.

Technically sorcs in PnP cannot take quicken.

[Lonnbeimnech]

7 DR that barbs inherently gain would actually have to matter. by doing that would make every other class much more powerful, but hey, at least barbs would be able to stay alive in an EE mob fight drinking 50 hp pots.

Even if they made it DR 250/ - they would still get crushed in EE as soon as they meet a caster and roll a 1. Heh, who am I kidding? With a fighter/barb's saves it's more like roll a 1-19.

But then they would be almost invincible outside EE, which is game breaking.

[Protasious]

I haven't read every post in this thread, so sorry if this has already been pointed out.

I think the biggest balance issues come with epic destinies, or the lack of epic destinies for different builds. mainly the latter.

take ranged for example, if your an AA using a longbow and the fury of the wild destiny. you have the ability to deal 400% damage on every attack for 20 seconds, this coupled with many shot (which also lasts 20 seconds) gives you nearly the highest damage output of any build...

compare that to an artificer who uses a repeating heavy crossbow. the repeating heavy crossbow gets reduced chance to proc double shots, and half the damage from any/all abilities that add damage. because of this, they suffer more then any other weapon type when the mob they are attacking has any DR. they do have the advantage of firing 3 shots per attack, but they also have a much longer reload time when compared to a longbow / shortbow.

the weapon attachment buff for artificers is just a joke. the extra .5w damage that requires you to have construct essence feat and takes 6 seconds to activate is absolutely terrible. this actually reduces the artificers ability to bypass DR even more because it limits his ability to switch weapons during combat. I personally do not take this ability on any of my artificers. it nets a dps loss to have it rather then a dps gain. If it were changed to always apply the .5w damage to any weapon you have in your main hand and not require an activation time, then it would actually be a useful ability. basically make it take effect as soon as you pick up the ability and never be removed unless you drop the ability, no toggle involved or anything like that, just make it apply that +.5w damage to any weapon as soon as the weapon is equipped... another thought to make this ability better would be to add an additional +1w damage to the level 18 core ability for battle engineers... thus adding a total of +1.5w to any weapon in the main hand of a level 18+ battle engineer artificer. +2.5 if they use the deadly weapons buff (which can be cast on any player and not just the artificer casting it)

aside from the terrible top tier enhancement for artificers, there is a complete lack of any destiny for artificers. sure they can use sharadi, but its a proc based destiny and repeating crossbows have a reduced chance to proc weapon effects and one can only assume that that extends to procs from sharadi and colors of the queen (not 100% sure on this).

what artificers really need is a destiny designed around them. a destiny in the arcane sphere that would give increased effectiveness and damage on their weapon effects as well as increasing the enhancement bonus of their weapons and adding additional effects to weapon attacks. this could/should also include adding spell power implement to their weapons as well as a bonus to spell power based on the damage type of their rune arm. (why are there no thunderforged rune arms?)

another option would be to add a destiny to the martial sphere that would greatly increase the base damage of ranged weapons while also giving DR breaking abilities and damage boosts that stack with class damage boosts. basically make this destiny based on increasing the weapon damage of ranged weapons. other options to add to this destiny would be bane damage, and sneak attack damage / range for ranged weapons. maybe couple silver dr with a choice of either undead bane or lawful outsider bane. cold iron DR and byeshk DR could also be coupled with choices of different banes. good/evil/lawful/chaotic DR could be coupled with extra damage of those types.

in order to fill out the destiny spheres a bit better and allow for more choices of gameplay, there should be a destiny added to the divine shpere which is based on zen archery and thrown weapon damage. this destiny could also include some healing bonuses such as increased range of cure spells as well as adding reactive healing procs to ranged attacks as long as the character has zen archery.

currently the primal sphere is the only sphere with a ranged based destiny, this destiny fits a nice niche and should not be changed. however the primal sphere is lacking in the caster / healing aspect. It could greatly benefit from a destiny that is based around the elemental forms for druids and add spell power based on the elemental form they are in (should also work for sorc elemental forms). this destiny could possibly give bonuses to damage over time and healing over time effects, including effects that persist on the ground (such as wall of fire. ice storm, entangle, storm of vengeance, etc). it could also add a couple new SLA's for either healing or damage. such as a healing rain type of effect that would persist on the ground and heal any friendly target in the area of effect.

[Captain_Wizbang]

Go play wow! And if you supply the pots I might be willing to heal you! I said they should have self-healing added and I also said cocoon needs to be harder to obtain and keep,on a character. Barbs and fighters shouldn't be able to easily heal themselves. Monks, paladins and rangers can heal themselves as well as others to varying degrees. That's how it should be. Less changes from dnd not more.

Still doesn't justify giving barbs self-healing it does justify boosting their DR by a significant amount and doesn't change the flavor of the class. Inflate the abilities that a class already has to go with game inflation don't grant new abilities!

than you are in support of role playing in DDO and bringing back healers. fighters and barbs are too far behind in self sufficiency when mob damage is way too high to reliably keep yourself alive with pots that heal for 50 hp or penalize your abilities and movement. every other class/build is easily able to self heal without sacrifice to dps and maintain continuous damage output. DDO takes the idea of PnP and implements it into a video game. there has to be some rules to bend since the translation cant be transferred over that well. for your PnP idea to actually work would mean decreasing mob damage significantly and 7 DR that barbs inherently gain would actually have to matter. by doing that would make every other class much more powerful, but hey, at least barbs would be able to stay alive in an EE mob fight drinking 50 hp pots.

you cant preach PnP for one aspect of the game but still go along with everything else. you need to preach a lot more than barbs having better defenses and self sufficiency to keep in line with all the other builds that are able to have it a lot easier. why aren't you rallying to make it so casters can only use spells one time per day instead of the ability to spam them as much as their blue bar allows? why aren't you rallying for cure potions to be as rare to find as they are in PnP? why aren't you rallying for more xp required when you multi class? we could go on and on all day about what is so far away from PnP, but i don't have all day to list them.

You are both right AND wrong.

There, now lets stay away from the OLD D&D vs DDO debate.

After reading some great posts by the community, I see a lot of references to the AC/PRR vs evasion & dodge. (which includes me)

I still think the majority have overlooked the fact that balancing classes (or attempting to) is just one piece of the pie.


Refer to my post early in this thread.

[Uska]

than you are in support of role playing in DDO and bringing back healers. fighters and barbs are too far behind in self sufficiency when mob damage is way too high to reliably keep yourself alive with pots that heal for 50 hp or penalize your abilities and movement. every other class/build is easily able to self heal without sacrifice to dps and maintain continuous damage output. DDO takes the idea of PnP and implements it into a video game. there has to be some rules to bend since the translation cant be transferred over that well. for your PnP idea to actually work would mean decreasing mob damage significantly and 7 DR that barbs inherently gain would actually have to matter. by doing that would make every other class much more powerful, but hey, at least barbs would be able to stay alive in an EE mob fight drinking 50 hp pots.

you cant preach PnP for one aspect of the game but still go along with everything else. you need to preach a lot more than barbs having better defenses and self sufficiency to keep in line with all the other builds that are able to have it a lot easier. why aren't you rallying to make it so casters can only use spells one time per day instead of the ability to spam them as much as their blue bar allows? why aren't you rallying for cure potions to be as rare to find as they are in PnP? why aren't you rallying for more xp required when you multi class? we could go on and on all day about what is so far away from PnP, but i don't have all day to list them.

In order do like what you say they would have to reduce the number of mobs in each dungeon and their hp dramatically and you cant say what I can and cant or should support. I will never support all classes having healing not matter what else occurs. DDO just like dnd breaks down once you get above level 10 or so and in epic its just stupid. That's why I rarely play epic other than trying to get tokens to tr again and yah tr adds a lot but that's another story