Player Character Balance

[Sam1313]

Bolded for emphasis.

I cannot state firmly enough how backwards this game has gotten from the Dungeons & Dragons roots. Multiclassed archer specialists are BY FAR the most powerful builds in the game and single classed arcane spellcasters are among the weakest. This is simply incorrect.

Spellcasting as a whole, and ESPECIALLY spell casting at post Lvl15-thru-Endgame content needs to be completely beefed up.

Casting a spell is far slower than any other form of attack,
Is able to be interrupted unlike any other form of attack,
Drains a reserve of Mana, the most limited resource in the game,
Is entirely reliant on metamagic Feats to even FUNCTION properly,
And stops at level 17 (now mid-level). Full Stop. No more Spells.

In real Dungeons and Dragons, spell casting classes are the most powerful in the game. They take far longer to level, are much more difficult to acquire power in (because spell scolls are actually RARE), and they have VERY few castings of the few spells they have. The tradeoff is that those few casting are DEVASTATING. A Wizard in Dungeons and Dragons can (if he's lucky, and if he's put half his available slots into one thing) cast 3 or 4 fireballs spells before needing to stop for a rest. The tradeoff, is that those 3 or 4 spells will annihilate a massive area, something a fighter or archer would take many many rounds to accomplish.

In DDO casters sling spells nearly constantly, and they do very little to nothing at all. Most of the spells in the spellbook are now filler. Seriously, when was the last time you saw someone use Stinking Cloud ?

In Paper & Dice D&D, if used well it's one of the best spells in the game. In DDO, it's garbage.

Fix it by beefing up the casters at their base . Make spells BETTER. Fewer saves on spells, lower monster save levels, and (god forbid) better monster A.I.

I agree with this. And we don't need another NERF BAT to any of the classes. We need a to beef up some of the classes.
I love Arcane Archer Rangers they are my favorite class but Wizards in Pen and Paper Dungeons & Dragons was the most powerful. They ARE the ROCKSTARS of the game and that's how they should be in This game. No one or NOTHING should outpower a Wizard. They are after all a WIZARD.

[Alfhild]

I am going to reiterate some comments made by others on this thread that the Devs really need to understand::
Nerfing the perceived OP builds, regardless of whether they are OP or not, is not going to solve your problem. If my current build gets nerfed, in a month or two I will find another which will do a little less DPS and which in another month or two after that will become the target of cries for nerfs from those people who are playing broken classes now which will still be broken 4 months down the road.

If you are going to engage in a cycle endless nerfing, you might as well cut to the chase and eliminate diversity altogether and make everyone a D&D "Commoner" class. Or you can choose to fix what is CLEARLY broken, which is not build diversity which can never be balanced but game mechanics which force people into at-distance damage builds. Nerfing from the top down instead of buffing from the bottom up is not going to solve your problems. In fact, it is only going to exacerbate them since your right now your biggest problem is not game balance but customer dissatisfaction.

You needlessly revamped every class with the WoW/LOTRO look alike trees which needlessly opened Pandora's Box.
You launched an expansion which has been dubiously renamed by a significant portion of your customer base as the SHADOWFAIL Conspiracy.
I could name other major mistakes but let us just remark on the recent snafu with the launch and almost immediate cancellation of the Traveller's festival.

Your customer's are reaching a breaking point, and regardless of what delusions Fernando Paiz suffers from in regards to complaining customers, you are gazing into an abyss of your own making.
Fix the major design problems before doing any nerfs which will both alienate the nerfed and disappoint the un-nerfed who will find themselves in the exact same position they currently inhabit.
You can ignore this advice for whatever reason, but in any event, and I say this will no malice intended, if you do not satisfy your customers in the coming months, I would strongly suggest getting your resume out into the market (assuming you have not already done so).

[chrisdinus7]

You are looking at the same numbers I am, just missing a few easily accessible boosts. 150 base + 250 slaying + 20 seeker = 420. 420*1.3 for DWS Damage Boost = 546*1.3 from Archer's Focus 15 stacks = 709. x4 crit multiplier for earth stance, 2839, *4 from adrenaline, 11356. Then if you want to add Vulnerable, 13826, with EA 17035, and if helpless w/ nin. spy and fury (Though this won't work on red names), 35773 per arrow.

Likewise with called shot (which I usually follow up with), 150+20=170*1.3=221*1.3=287*6=1723*4=6895 (adding vuln.) *1.2=8274*1.25=10342.

but with proper timing you can easily deal 73004 damage with 2 attacks, 87604 if you build your own vulnerability as well.

Thanks. It was the damage boost and archer's focus that I wasn't thinking of. Good call.

[ishr]

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.


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!

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

• Character Balance Survey

Shiradi is the most overpowered destiny, so OP that the vast majority of caster classes run it. LOL @ draconic... magister... hahaha. Nerf shiradi or buff draconic/magister. Stop this silliness.

Non-monk-splash melee is pretty dead in EE, for a number of reasons. But the good news is this thread is pretty darn irrelevant outside of EE, because every build can stomp anything on EH. On top of that, all loot can be attained on EN/EH at a faster rate. So not too sure what all the complaints are about.

[Jasparion]

Just to draw more attention to this:

• Character Balance Survey

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

The Close button didnt work in Firefox

I hope this doesnt become a competition between fanbois and spoilers to try and flood you with responses. Hopefully you can see through those responses and ignore them, and focus on the ones which contain considered responses.

I just submitted mine. I dont have much hope that anything good will come of it. But I guess it is possible.

I wrote an essay at the end of mine in the Comments box.

I would have thought this is exactly what the Player Council is for. But maybe this is acknowledging that things are so serious that 20 views are not enough.

I hope this means good things are coming.

[Gizeh]

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 this post (and the half dozen other posts of yours in this thread) you keep insisting that certain classes should not be able to heal themselves because they can't do that in pnp D&D. Actually that makes me wonder if you actually play those classes in pug groups (in static groups or guild/channel groups getting healed is usually no problem). This impression is reinforced by the fact that you never criticize the way metamagic feats are handled in DDO, when in pnp D&D only a cantrip/orison (i.e. a level zero spell) could have quicken spell, empower spell and maximize spell active at the same time (according to the D&D 3.5 core rules).

So I guess that you either suffer from extreme tunnel vision when it comes to reasoning what certain classes should or shouldn't be able to do based on observations of pnp D&D or you simply want to deny the "unwashed masses" the means to take care of themselves without having to rely on other players. Again, reinforced by the fact that you don't seem to mind that pale masters can easily heal themselves even though there are no equivalent means in pnp D&D.

Regardless, my personal opinion is that fighters and barbarians don't necessarily need self healing, as long as they get class abilities that let them mitigate damage. For example, fighters could get reduced cooldown times on tactical maneuvers like improved trip or stunning attack based on class levels, and barbarians could get a meaningful (!) damage reduction and PRR, again based on class levels.

[FlaviusMaximus]

You launched an expansion which has been dubiously renamed by a significant portion of your customer base as the SHADOWFAIL Conspiracy....
Your customer's are reaching a breaking point, and regardless of what delusions Fernando Paiz suffers from in regards to complaining customers, you are gazing into an abyss of your own making.

You personally may not like the enhancement update, but please don't pretend to speak for the majority of players. Also, making the enhancements more user friendly, completing trees, and increasing the power of certain builds, like archers, is something the player base was asking for. If you want to be more accurate, you might say that we are gazing into an abyss of "our own making." I'm fine with the changes to the game so far. Adjustments just need to be made, as one would expect.

... if you do not satisfy your customers in the coming months, I would strongly suggest getting your resume out into the market (assuming you have not already done so).

I think the communication in this thread is a pretty direct attempt to satisfy the customers. I don't think the tough talk is really necessary when we are posting in a thread where they are attempting to do exactly what you are asking them to do.

[knockcocker]

Shiradi is the most overpowered destiny, so OP that the vast majority of caster classes run it. LOL @ draconic... magister... hahaha. Nerf shiradi or buff draconic/magister. Stop this silliness.

Not really - certainly not in terms of DPS. It's popular because it works, is SP efficient and doesn't require stupid high DCs.

Non-monk-splash melee is pretty dead in EE, for a number of reasons. But the good news is this thread is pretty darn irrelevant outside of EE, because every build can stomp anything on EH. On top of that, all loot can be attained on EN/EH at a faster rate. So not too sure what all the complaints are about.

This I fully agree with.

Devs, take kill count out of the game, please.

[Trillea]

No one or NOTHING should outpower a Wizard. They are after all a WIZARD.

Except a sorcerer. MUAHAHAHAHAHA

[Talon_Moonshadow]

More variety of monster/spells/challenges/etc. would be the proper way to provide balance.

Is Evasion OP?
Then start throwing things at us that have For and Wil saves instead of (in addition to would be best) Ref saves.

Is Nerve Venom OP?
More monsters immune to poison.

Melee getting beat up in EE?
More ways for melee guys to reduce incoming damage/ like PRR for armor and DR for Brbs and maybe WF.

Casters OP?
Un-nerf Golems for one thing.
More monsters immune to certain types of spell attacks.
(a mix, not a whole dungeon full of one type)

Ranged OP?
A tough one, but maybe add a spell that makes monsters immune to ranged attacks. (Protection from Missiles)
Or, one that has always bothered me... is shields should provide a ton of protection from arrows etc.
Maybe look at a way to make shooting things in the face with a bow less effective.


Multiclassing OP?
Well, for this one, the only fair thing is to beef up capstones.
Other than looking at a few enhancements maybe. (like Monk enhancements.... Monks do need a serious look at. But go slowly here.)

Actually... for any nerfs go slow.


Self Healing OP?
What was that Quell effect?
and what about Feeblemind? Had that on me today, couldn't use Heal Scroll. Make sure it disables SLAs too.





Stuff like that.

[Firewall]

(...)[*]Epic Destinies: We know some destinies are more popular than others, and also considered more powerful. Sometimes this is a result of unintended bugs.

I think everybody agrees that the appeal of DDO is the building and variety of characters and of course it should stay that way. Within limits. As you said in the OP there should be a limit to character power to keep the fun in the game for everybody. If there are abilities that can be horribly abused or that work far outside the limits that were intended by the Devs i would expect the Devs to state as much as soon as possible to warn people that they should not rely on such power for a character build and that these bugs are also fixed and brought back to the intended limits as soon as is possible.

The biggest error the Devs made with monkchers in my opinion was not to make clear if the behaviour of certain abilities was intended or not which was why so many people based builds on these abilities. And if you simply watch and do nothing when suddenly a certain type of build can do 10 times the damage of any other build even without a SP pool and there is no comment or upcoming fix then there is something wrong. There will always be FotM builds which are better than another and that is a good thing which keeps up creativity but if things are obviously broken i expect the Devs to act quickly and to state that something is percieved as broken and not WAI and will be changed.
If there are unintended bugs which make builds horribly overpowered - fix them asap!

[Alfhild]

You personally may not like the enhancement update, but please don't pretend to speak for the majority of players. Also, making the enhancements more user friendly, completing trees, and increasing the power of certain builds, like archers, is something the player base was asking for. If you want to be more accurate, you would say that we are gazing into an abyss of "our making." I'm fine with the changes to the game so far. Adjustments just need to be made, as one would expect.

Actually I enjoyed the enhancement update as well but not everyone did since many people were severely inconvenienced by it. I spent money on the Xpac and though I believe it's value was poor, I was willing to give my patronage to Turbine. Not everyone feels as I do. Yes Archery got buffed in the enhancement pass to the point where the most popular archer build type is regularly villified on the forums and seems to be heading for a nerf, which will not solve the problem that there are classes suffering from major problems who are still going to be suffering from major problems.

I think the communication in this thread is a pretty direct attempt to satisfy the customers. I don't think the tough talk is really necessary when we are posting in a thread where they are attempting to do exactly what you are asking them to do.

As far as attempts to satisfy customers I would say it fails in its purpose since the very survey fails to address major concerns. Ranking classes with no mention of splashed multiclasses? As for tough talk, if that is how you perceive it then fine, but giving the nature of both the Turbine statements in this thread and the nature of the survey, I believe they are heading down the wrong path completely. I am not alone in this feeling. You may not agree. I would like this game to continue, as do you. But given Turbine's recent history, I fear more harm than good will come from it if they choose to just nerf a few popular builds as a sop to those players asking for nerfs, who are going to be still asking for nerfs to the next crop of popular builds which are already waiting in the wings.

[Cyr]

You personally may not like the enhancement update, but please don't pretend to speak for the majority of players. Also, making the enhancements more user friendly, completing trees, and increasing the power of certain builds, like archers, is something the player base was asking for. If you want to be more accurate, you might say that we are gazing into an abyss of "our own making."

You are way off base here.

Some players asked for something. I did not see ANYONE ask for a way to stack slayer arrow and adrenaline. Turbine did that, not the players.

Measure twice, cut once is the saying. There are TONS of abilities in the game which were ill conceived from being massively overpowered (compared to similar costing abilities) to being massively underpowered. It is frankly amazing when you look at a single enhancement tree across a row (let alone different trees) how widely different the power of abilities there are.

Turbine if serious about addressing these things would not be looking for yet another easy way out (ie lets nuke something from orbit), but would be doing careful adjustments to equalize these trees/EDs/classes/races/combat styles. This would NOT look like the painful to even look at survey which is completely meaningless to anything relevant to character balance ingame.

Show me serious and have the one system developer working on these issues walk away from doing the easy thing and instead make a serious effort to balance the BAD JUNK that exists to be on par with more valued stuff of the same build investment.

[Captain_Wizbang]

Please do not waste time trying to balance character classes/races/destinies as IT IS NOT NEEDED. There is NEVER going to be equality between the killing ability (which is what I assume you mean by 'power') of all builds. D&D is not a game where this type of balance has ever been possible or even desirable
Seek balance for well put together parties filling by characters that target a role, not individual players out to top the kill count. DDO is a group game and should not go the path of dumbing things down to the point where everyone solos their way through using the flavour of the month killing build.

I agree on a similar point. I think (as mentioned by others) that more emphasis should be placed on class abilities. And give greater benefits as mentioned below by others.

There are quite a few of us who agree, trying to "balance" the classes isn't going to happen. And for many reasons. (that's a thread in itself)

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.

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.

Well said.

You personally may not like the enhancement update, but please don't pretend to speak for the majority of players.

*Ahem* By making this statement, you have have just made the same journalistic error. omg

You are way off base here.
There are TONS of abilities in the game which were ill conceived from being massively overpowered (compared to similar costing abilities) to being massively underpowered. It is frankly amazing when you look at a single enhancement tree across a row (let alone different trees) how widely different the power of abilities there are.
It's been this way for 4 years or so, I wouldn't say ill conceived either, rather it looks more like, as each new dev became assigned to these, the continuity of character development changed as well. Hence the big swing as you mentioned.
*edit, Not meant as a negative, every player is different, and so are the devs. We all have our own little twist on how this all is supposed to work. It's no secret the whole character development dept has changed hands many(?) times & would affect continuity to a degree.

equalize these trees/EDs/classes/races/combat styles.

balance the BAD JUNK that exists to be on par with more valued stuff of the same build investment.

I'm sure this is their goal. Let's hope they read everyone's posts, and then we can all decide on a more specific course. And more importantly, how to implement these changes without hurting what is actually working well.

Calling out a particular class isn't the answer.
Giving a few classes a meaningful boost in abilities is definitely in order.
Improving lvl 18 & 20 abilities is almost a given.

Thanks Cyr.

[nibel]

Essentially, this is what this discussion is really about. EE is so punishing that it requires high ranged DPS and/or hit avoidance via displacement, dodge and incorporeal. Smart people have created builds to meet this requirements and are thus deemed overpowered.

I said it when MotU was released, and I keep saying it again every time this discussion arrives: EE is not "hard" or "challenging". It is just EH multiplied by 10. And it creates a lot of issues.

There is no bridge between EH and EE. There is a lot of people in that middle ground where EH is easy, but EE is too punishing. People in that midway can either push hard to try to become EE-material, or just give up out of boredness.

People (specially gamers) have a tendency to search for the path of least resistance to achieve things. DDO is a PvE game which has "loot drop" as its main carrot. If people want a specific item, they will farm the same quest over and over and over, until they find it. And to do that, they will find the easiest path to repeat that quest over and over again. Since the mobs are so fricking unforgivable, this leads to exploits and shortcuts to avoid fighting the mobs as much as possible.

DCI (Dodge, Concealmente, Incorporeal) is a static defense that works the same, if you fight a lowly kobold or a spider goddess. Since the defenses that DO scale are almost useless, people gravitate towards the ones that don't. The same thinking can be aplied to DC casting and percentage-based procs (or no-save procs, like Overwhelming Force).

The root of the problem is the EE scaling. The single-mindedness of all endgame builds is a sympton.

In an effort to make melee viable, prr needs to be addressed.
Instead of diminishing returns, make prr a linear progression - 1 point of prr give .5% damage mitigation. Yes, this means with a prr of 200 it gives you 100% damage mitigation. Very few builds can attain that and they sacrifice a lot to get it. What's the difference if melee takes 0 damage from a hit vs. a moncher with dodge, evasion, displacement, blur and incorporeality running all over and never getting hit? -They both take no damage and melee becomes survivable in all content. As a balance, red named can bypass 5% prr and purple named 10%. So with a prr of 180 you get 90% damage mitigation - that 1000 point hit becomes 100 (150 vs. red and 200 vs. purple). It wil still take 10 minutes to pound EE critters into submission, but at least melee might have a chance to survive it for awhile.

While I agree that PRR is too frontloaded and should be fixed, I think another way is a hard cap on PRR based on which armor you equip. Basically, the opposite way Dodge cap works.

Eg, Heavy Armor have a 250 PRR cap (which should be rebalanced to ~80% reduction at cap), Medium caps at 150 (~50%), Light at 70 (~30%), and Robe at 25 (~10%). This way, if you are using lighter armor, you have a higher dodge (chance to avoid damage completelly), but the hits will hurt. But if you are wearing heavy armor, you will be hit more for less (and anyone that played a healer pre-MotU knows a reliable tank is much easier to heal than a tank that can take spiky damage form nowhere)

SO, it is a trade-off: You either get hit less for more, or get hit more for less.

[SirValentine]

While I agree that PRR is too frontloaded and should be fixed, I think another way is a hard cap on PRR based on which armor you equip. Basically, the opposite way Dodge cap works.

Eg, Heavy Armor have a 250 PRR cap

If you were going to do something like that with PRR & armor, I suggest that Heavy Armor have NO cap, same as robes/outfits have NO max-dex/dodge cap.

[nibel]

If you were going to do something like that with PRR & armor, I suggest that Heavy Armor have NO cap, same as robes/outfits have NO max-dex/dodge cap.

Robes have 25% dodge cap.

The intention would be the same: Caping the PRR benefit to ~80% reduction would prevent it from being excessivelly good, and gives the devs a target number to base their hardest content.

[macros123]

You created this; not by making blitzing good or Shiradi resources saving fun. Not by allowing manyarrow to be fueled by adrenaline - but by making lazy encounters using the worst mechanics (lots of HP and no way to use tactics on them). Thus your reaction is now to change the reaction so maybe you can balance the critter imbalance.

This right here is your fundamental problem. You are naturally on a schedule to produce content, and I think I am being polite when I say it is not often polished.

The basic foundation for this game is what is the root of the problem. Men in dresses are better tanks than those encased in steel, because AC doesn't matter. Why does AC not matter? Lazy new content creation.

Why is evasion the holy grail of toon building? Because not having evasion in Epic content means you are at a serious disadvantage. Why do people gravitate to caster/archers? Because lazy new content creation means your mobs are brutal to stand against!

A tank type toon is nearly worthless, as in an encounter where evasion is a strength he is a liability, and in an encounter where he tries to control aggro he gets hit, over and over, regardless of his 200 AC. The reason there are so few barbarians is not because Shiradi is overpowered, but because melee combat is hard to do reliably at the highest levels of play. It is a PITA to tank trash mobs in EE, let alone a dragon encounter! The last tank I saw in Thunder Peak took an 800 point breath weapon, and when he tried to book it he was hit with Shock and Awe, and then took a +400% buffed hit to the spine to finish him off.

• 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.

• Character Balance Survey

This right here is why so many of us can't take this seriously. It is exactly what is outlined above - laziness. What I see when I read that sentence is that you intend to do things the easy way, instead of the RIGHT way.

What I think will happen is that you will do what you want anyway, and this approach will fail, as it is fundamentally flawed. I am sure you will be able to say "Hey, at least we are trying" but you are trying to turn a screw with a hammer instead of a screwdriver. If game balance was the objective you had many opportunities to get things right in the past, but did not.

In this thread are many...MANY...suggestions that are quite worthwhile. Also many that are not, of course. Do us all a favor and read through them, and I mean REALLY read them, otherwise this conversation you started is worthless, and a waste of time. You will note that throughout people continue to talk about the underlying state of the game. Fix it. Forget all your new features that YOU want. Listen to what your paying customers are telling you that THEY want.

If you won't take care of the customer, somebody else will.




Martell

[Uska]

In this post (and the half dozen other posts of yours in this thread) you keep insisting that certain classes should not be able to heal themselves because they can't do that in pnp D&D. Actually that makes me wonder if you actually play those classes in pug groups (in static groups or guild/channel groups getting healed is usually no problem). This impression is reinforced by the fact that you never criticize the way metamagic feats are handled in DDO, when in pnp D&D only a cantrip/orison (i.e. a level zero spell) could have quicken spell, empower spell and maximize spell active at the same time (according to the D&D 3.5 core rules).

So I guess that you either suffer from extreme tunnel vision when it comes to reasoning what certain classes should or shouldn't be able to do based on observations of pnp D&D or you simply want to deny the "unwashed masses" the means to take care of themselves without having to rely on other players. Again, reinforced by the fact that you don't seem to mind that pale masters can easily heal themselves even though there are no equivalent means in pnp D&D.

Regardless, my personal opinion is that fighters and barbarians don't necessarily need self healing, as long as they get class abilities that let them mitigate damage. For example, fighters could get reduced cooldown times on tactical maneuvers like improved trip or stunning attack based on class levels, and barbarians could get a meaningful (!) damage reduction and PRR, again based on class levels.

I have said several times barbs should get more PRR and DR and yes fighters should get more tactical maneuver bonuses that follows pnp and since what people face both in intensity and numbers is greatly increased the ability of the characters should be increased by a like amount not grant them abilities that they didn't and shouldn't have. I have played dnd for nearly 40 years and its why I play ddo I don't want this game going to hell and this balance nonsense is a huge step in that direction.

[SisAmethyst]

As Barb was young, he had fun. Me did hit all the bad guys on the head, yes yes. Also found a nice shiny big axe that play nice with muscles.
But Barb here not like ranged characters, as they make me run a lot. Feet already hurt. Also not like bad guy that makes ouch to me.
Me tried throwing big axe, but missed and was not returning. Now sit with this Pally guy in the corner and play dice while others have fun.

While some classes or combos seem to be OP, it is rather the symptom as the root source of the issue, So I agree with the overall sentiment of a lot of posters that we should not call out any particular class for a nerf, but instead how to provide small simple improvements to make other options more viable, like increase the possibility of heavy melee damage mitigation (e.g. increase DR/PRR for fighters and barb). Make more stuff actually depend on class instead of character level. However do baby steps, avoid to throw out the baby with the water...