Player Character Balance

[SirValentine]

Robes have 25% dodge cap.

This is the first time I've heard such a claim. Please provide evidence to back it up.

Your armor caps dodge with it's max dex bonus; robes have no max dex bonus.

So far as I know, the fact that the devs built in an overall dodge cap of 25% is unrelated to whether you are wearing robes or not.

[SirValentine]

...a UI overhaul, a little tweaking to some abilities, and finishing off the PREs, was what most of the community wanted.

That.

Instead of offering little enhancements to existing classes, and a reason to play those classes, it's become the main consideration when building a character.

The game is so little about its classes now, and so much about finding clever ways to work the enhancement system. It's almost unrecognisable.

And for that reason we now have a game which is pretty broken...

And that.

[SirValentine]

Thought experiment here.
If party-wide DPS drops from 50000 to 20000, but 18000 of that DPS is still being performed by the newly nerfed builds, has the problem been solved?

If build A is doing 9 times the damage of build B, it's an improvement to A doing 24 times the damage of B.

What does "solved" mean? We're looking for better balanced, not perfect balance.

[BOgre]

Here is a very simple recipe for an AA ranger who is running in shiradi to safely melee even in EE content; use Pin, or Otto's Whistler, then go nuts on your helpless victim with your melee weapons for the duration of the CC effect.

This is a joke post, right? If not, exactly who are you counting on to handle the other 3-10 mobs swarming you with 100-300 point hits while you tickle the one or two CC'd bags of HP you're standing still in front of? That is NOT how a competent AA handles EE content. Well, not unless he likes being a soulstone.

[danlan]

The state of balance in the game is terrible.

At the 20 cap, there were several 'best' archetypes for character builds and many more that were good. To list a few, ALL of which were viable in speedruns of the harder content:

- Primarily healing divine (viable but mediocre)
- Offensive casting divine (top-notch)
- Melee divine, monk splash (solid)
- Melee divine, no splash (mediocre)
- Evasion melee warchanter (solid)
- No evasion melee warchanter (solid)
- Spellsinger with Enchantment DC casting (fringe viable)
- Spellsinger with personal melee capability (fringe)
- Rogue, TWF Khopesh all-out DPS (solid)
- Barbarian melee DPS (solid)
- 'Wall of HP' Stalwart fighter (top-notch in some raids, meh in 6 person content)
- AC/HP Stalwart fighter (solid in some raids, absolutely incredible in others)
- Barbarian 'wall of HP' tank/DPS hybrid (fringe)
- Paladin self-healing tank with or without AC (fringe)
- Enchantment WF wizard with DoTs (top-notch)
- Necro WF wizard with DoTs (top-notch)
- Necro Pale Master with Torc (the best build)

That's just a few archetypes that come to mind.

Now we have Monkchers if you want to do physical damage, and Shiradis if you want to cast spells as the ONLY top-notch builds, and Master's Blitz and Fury of the Wild as the ONLY other viable builds. Everything else is so far behind that it is ridiculous. And now content has been designed that (at least on EE) assumes all players have one of these broken builds.



The solution is simple but a lot of work.

First, nerf the hell out of Furyshot and Blitz and Shiradi, with the goal of reducing their effectiveness to at most 105% of the effectiveness of other characters.
Secondly, rebalance all of the quests that were designed under the assumption that players are using broken builds. If optimal group DPS falls from 50000 party-wide to 20000, then mobs need to lose 60% of their HP.
Third, there'll be a couple of people that whine over the nerf (despite the fact that their characters are still capable of completing quests in about the same amount of time and with the same overall difficulty). Grease the door, so that it DOES hit them on the way out. Hard. These people are poison - let them go and ruin a competing MMO.
Finally, offer some form of respec options to players whose characters are significantly broken by the change, ideally including the option to 'respec' now-useless Ranger past lives into different passive past life feats.



Edit: Perfect balance is unattainable. That is no excuse for having a situation that is so unbalanced that only 2-3 builds are even remotely viable. In Heroic levels, Sorcerers are significantly overpowered compared to every other class, but the Fighter doesn't feel totally useless in most content.

As always, Sirgog presented truthful and accurate description of the situation.

Dev please look at threads like this one.

[blerkington]

This is a joke post, right? If not, exactly who are you counting on to handle the other 3-10 mobs swarming you with 100-300 point hits while you tickle the one or two CC'd bags of HP you're standing still in front of? That is NOT how a competent AA handles EE content. Well, not unless he likes being a soulstone.

Hi,

It's not a joke post, no. My main is on his 23rd heroic life, and most of the time I spend in game right now is in EE content, solo or in group. My character is a ranger/rogue AA melee/ranged hybrid who usually runs in shiradi when at epic levels. I did as many of those heroic lives as I could in some version of the ranger/rogue mix, because I really like it, and that gave me some experience in the strengths and weaknesses of the build and playstyle.

A very, very basic part of the game is learning to control the amount of aggro your character has. If you are engaging 4-11 EE mobs simultaneously you have already made a very serious mistake, unless you have a method for handling them. The solution to this is don't do it if you are soloing, if you don't have manyshot ready, or can't be sure you can CC or kill your attackers by getting them lined up to use IPS most effectively. In group, you spread the aggro across other members of the group and only pick up what you can deal with.

Can you tell me why you would allow this situation, described in your example, to occur? Is it part of your normal playstyle, to be so careless? Do you think this is how difficult content should be played? Are you making EE content far more difficult for yourself than it has to be, like many players do, simply by giving up the opportunity to be the one who dictates how the battle unfolds, but rather just running into the fray and hoping it all turns out okay?

Some of the people who complain about how difficult EE content is lack these basic skills. Knowing how aggro is acquired, how much you can handle, and how to shed aggro if needs be are important play skills in harder content. Unfortunately the faceroll level of difficulty of most content, and the gap to EE, means many players never learn to think in these terms. Thinking of the game in these terms is particularly important if you play a skirmisher typed build which is a little fragile, which may not be capable of excellent sustained DPS, and doesn't have an arsenal of overpowered abilities at its disposal. And yet it can be done.

This scenario you've described is exactly why newer players on rangers are often so obviously bad; they attack ahead of the group with their bows, pick up more aggro than they can deal with, kite furiously while preventing others from taking aggro for them, then drop dead because they built a glass cannon that can't cope with close combat. And sometimes, after that, they make a whiny post on the forums about how their preferred class is too weak and the rules of the game should be changed to benefit their bad playstyle.

Thanks.

[sirgog]

If build A is doing 9 times the damage of build B, it's an improvement to A doing 24 times the damage of B.

What does "solved" mean? We're looking for better balanced, not perfect balance.

9 times is still broken beyond belief.

The aspirational goal should be that every class and every ED (note: not every combination of the two) should have a build that's at least at 80% of peak performance.

At the 20 cap post-spellpass, few would disagree that Torc-powered fleshie Pale Masters with DoTs were the 'best' build, but there were at least a dozen builds that were performing at 80% of that level or more and across a majority of classes.

In the early days of the 25 cap (before all of the ED theorycrafting was done and the broken combinations found) it was somewhat similar. But that did not last.

Now we have a situation where the same characters have the game's best survival tools (fast movement, great saves and improved evasion), and the game's best offense (Furyshot/10k).

[Deamus]

The state of balance in the game is terrible.

At the 20 cap, there were several 'best' archetypes for character builds and many more that were good. To list a few, ALL of which were viable in speedruns of the harder content:

- Primarily healing divine (viable but mediocre)
- Offensive casting divine (top-notch)
- Melee divine, monk splash (solid)
- Melee divine, no splash (mediocre)
- Evasion melee warchanter (solid)
- No evasion melee warchanter (solid)
- Spellsinger with Enchantment DC casting (fringe viable)
- Spellsinger with personal melee capability (fringe)
- Rogue, TWF Khopesh all-out DPS (solid)
- Barbarian melee DPS (solid)
- 'Wall of HP' Stalwart fighter (top-notch in some raids, meh in 6 person content)
- AC/HP Stalwart fighter (solid in some raids, absolutely incredible in others)
- Barbarian 'wall of HP' tank/DPS hybrid (fringe)
- Paladin self-healing tank with or without AC (fringe)
- Enchantment WF wizard with DoTs (top-notch)
- Necro WF wizard with DoTs (top-notch)
- Necro Pale Master with Torc (the best build)

That's just a few archetypes that come to mind.

Now we have Monkchers if you want to do physical damage, and Shiradis if you want to cast spells as the ONLY top-notch builds, and Master's Blitz and Fury of the Wild as the ONLY other viable builds. Everything else is so far behind that it is ridiculous. And now content has been designed that (at least on EE) assumes all players have one of these broken builds.



The solution is simple but a lot of work.

First, nerf the hell out of Furyshot and Blitz and Shiradi, with the goal of reducing their effectiveness to at most 105% of the effectiveness of other characters.
Secondly, rebalance all of the quests that were designed under the assumption that players are using broken builds. If optimal group DPS falls from 50000 party-wide to 20000, then mobs need to lose 60% of their HP.
Third, there'll be a couple of people that whine over the nerf (despite the fact that their characters are still capable of completing quests in about the same amount of time and with the same overall difficulty). Grease the door, so that it DOES hit them on the way out. Hard. These people are poison - let them go and ruin a competing MMO.
Finally, offer some form of respec options to players whose characters are significantly broken by the change, ideally including the option to 'respec' now-useless Ranger past lives into different passive past life feats.



Edit: Perfect balance is unattainable. That is no excuse for having a situation that is so unbalanced that only 2-3 builds are even remotely viable. In Heroic levels, Sorcerers are significantly overpowered compared to every other class, but the Fighter doesn't feel totally useless in most content.

Best Post ever for balance ! Accurate post explaining what has happened and what needs to be done !
+1 Sirgog thank you for your time posting this!
As another poster noted Developers this is the only Feedback you only need from this thread !

[zwiebelring]

Exactly what sirgog says. Except *nerf the hell out of...*. I fear that's the only thing, they remember of his post.

[nibel]

This is the first time I've heard such a claim. Please provide evidence to back it up.

Your armor caps dodge with it's max dex bonus; robes have no max dex bonus.

So far as I know, the fact that the devs built in an overall dodge cap of 25% is unrelated to whether you are wearing robes or not.

You said yourself. Dodge cap is 25%. Even if you are wearing robes, you can't go over that. Exception being the few enhancements that raise the dodge cap (One in Halfling, one in Kensai, one in Ninja Spy).

The suggestion on the PRR cap would work similarly: With caps of 25/70/150/250, the devs could frontload the PRR on each tier, while giving diminishing returns until you reach the next tier. Giving a rough example, and in no way exact math:

10 PRR could give 5% damage reduction, then raise slowly up to 25 giving 10%. (No armor cap)
40 PRR could give 20% dmage reduction, then raise slowly up to 70 giving 30%. (Light armor cap)
100 PRR could give 40% dmage reduction, then raise slowly up to 150 giving 50%. (Medium armor cap)
180 PRR could give 70% dmage reduction, then raise slowly up to 250 giving 80%. (Heavy armor cap)
From there on, each PRR point is an extra straight 0.5% reduction, up to 290 giving 100% (Tanking enhancement/ED tree bonus to go over the cap)

SO, if you are on a non-heavy armor, and get the enhancements to raise PRR cap, you get the next tier frontloaded, but still is nowhere near the next level cap.

[Dalsheel]

The state of balance in the game is terrible.

At the 20 cap, there were several 'best' archetypes for character builds and many more that were good. To list a few, ALL of which were viable in speedruns of the harder content:

- Primarily healing divine (viable but mediocre)
- Offensive casting divine (top-notch)
- Melee divine, monk splash (solid)
- Melee divine, no splash (mediocre)
- Evasion melee warchanter (solid)
- No evasion melee warchanter (solid)
- Spellsinger with Enchantment DC casting (fringe viable)
- Spellsinger with personal melee capability (fringe)
- Rogue, TWF Khopesh all-out DPS (solid)
- Barbarian melee DPS (solid)
- 'Wall of HP' Stalwart fighter (top-notch in some raids, meh in 6 person content)
- AC/HP Stalwart fighter (solid in some raids, absolutely incredible in others)
- Barbarian 'wall of HP' tank/DPS hybrid (fringe)
- Paladin self-healing tank with or without AC (fringe)
- Enchantment WF wizard with DoTs (top-notch)
- Necro WF wizard with DoTs (top-notch)
- Necro Pale Master with Torc (the best build)

That's just a few archetypes that come to mind.

Now we have Monkchers if you want to do physical damage, and Shiradis if you want to cast spells as the ONLY top-notch builds, and Master's Blitz and Fury of the Wild as the ONLY other viable builds. Everything else is so far behind that it is ridiculous. And now content has been designed that (at least on EE) assumes all players have one of these broken builds.



The solution is simple but a lot of work.

First, nerf the hell out of Furyshot and Blitz and Shiradi, with the goal of reducing their effectiveness to at most 105% of the effectiveness of other characters.
Secondly, rebalance all of the quests that were designed under the assumption that players are using broken builds. If optimal group DPS falls from 50000 party-wide to 20000, then mobs need to lose 60% of their HP.
Third, there'll be a couple of people that whine over the nerf (despite the fact that their characters are still capable of completing quests in about the same amount of time and with the same overall difficulty). Grease the door, so that it DOES hit them on the way out. Hard. These people are poison - let them go and ruin a competing MMO.
Finally, offer some form of respec options to players whose characters are significantly broken by the change, ideally including the option to 'respec' now-useless Ranger past lives into different passive past life feats.



Edit: Perfect balance is unattainable. That is no excuse for having a situation that is so unbalanced that only 2-3 builds are even remotely viable. In Heroic levels, Sorcerers are significantly overpowered compared to every other class, but the Fighter doesn't feel totally useless in most content.

this.

+1 to you, sir.

[Qhualor]

Hi,

It's not a joke post, no. My main is on his 23rd heroic life, and most of the time I spend in game right now is in EE content, solo or in group. My character is a ranger/rogue AA melee/ranged hybrid who usually runs in shiradi when at epic levels. I did as many of those heroic lives as I could in some version of the ranger/rogue mix, because I really like it, and that gave me some experience in the strengths and weaknesses of the build and playstyle.

A very, very basic part of the game is learning to control the amount of aggro your character has. If you are engaging 4-11 EE mobs simultaneously you have already made a very serious mistake, unless you have a method for handling them. The solution to this is don't do it if you are soloing, if you don't have manyshot ready, or can't be sure you can CC or kill your attackers by getting them lined up to use IPS most effectively. In group, you spread the aggro across other members of the group and only pick up what you can deal with.

Can you tell me why you would allow this situation, described in your example, to occur? Is it part of your normal playstyle, to be so careless? Do you think this is how difficult content should be played? Are you making EE content far more difficult for yourself than it has to be, like many players do, simply by giving up the opportunity to be the one who dictates how the battle unfolds, but rather just running into the fray and hoping it all turns out okay?

Some of the people who complain about how difficult EE content is lack these basic skills. Knowing how aggro is acquired, how much you can handle, and how to shed aggro if needs be are important play skills in harder content. Unfortunately the faceroll level of difficulty of most content, and the gap to EE, means many players never learn to think in these terms. Thinking of the game in these terms is particularly important if you play a skirmisher typed build which is a little fragile, which may not be capable of excellent sustained DPS, and doesn't have an arsenal of overpowered abilities at its disposal. And yet it can be done.

This scenario you've described is exactly why newer players on rangers are often so obviously bad; they attack ahead of the group with their bows, pick up more aggro than they can deal with, kite furiously while preventing others from taking aggro for them, then drop dead because they built a glass cannon that can't cope with close combat. And sometimes, after that, they make a whiny post on the forums about how their preferred class is too weak and the rules of the game should be changed to benefit their bad playstyle.

Thanks.

ive never had a problem with you on the forums or in game. your attitude on here seems to reflect the same way in game, but ive grouped with you quite a bit recently and ive never seen you CC a mob than switch to melee. ive always seen you stay ranged.

[Candela90]

1. Classes
a) FvSes and Clerics - as healing is almost unneeded now in 80% of content yoi should boost them to be able to get higher DC on not only evo but necro too and give them more dmg. They're not int/charisma based gto have good energy burst. They dont really have spells that hit a lot so Shiradi doesnt work so good. Also they have no CC options practically at all. So right now divines are one of less desirable classes in pty in expetions of those teams that need healing - but most will take druid instead of FvS/Cleric. Also - add them some more PRR and more faiths that actually use weapons that are useful (because heavy maces and longswords are not really useful).
2) Druid - I think Druid is pretty well balances. Has good healing (Id say better than FvS/Cleric), has best CC in game for non-flying mobs (btw why Disco Ball is overwritting EQ?) and decent damage spells -but most single target not mass so is not OP. Hardly has any usable instantkills, so it's pretty balances.
3) Bard - too low healing, too low damage in both melee and CC, some buffs are not stacking with other buffs - basically you can make a bard to be a good character uf you love the class very much but it needs boosting. Id say - give it some more melee damage. Make every bard buff song stackable, maybe add a few new songs. Also add bard or some PRR or some dodge because it needs some protection while in melee combat.
4) Fighter - is not a bad class. Id add some PRR/AC and boost capstone. Enhancements are not that good but not bad either and bonus feats rescue this class.
5) Monk - needs both nerf and boost. I think all abilities with lower than 6 monk levels need nerf, but pure class needs buff. QP should never be nerfed. It should have DC wih maxed wisdom in around 60-65 DC achievable. Wizards can have 2 masses and 1 single target with insane DC and monk cannot? When monk has only single target CC (Stunning) and is actually fighting face to face so takes more damage than casters I hardly see the fairness. Boost 20 monk and make QP usable. Nerf /2 and /6 splashes.
6) Paladin - needs buffing, but on higher levels like 10+. Splashes are very common but not so much pure paladins. They need more PRR/dodge but also some more DPS.
7) Rogue - in heroics rogue is in good place. But Id add some more PRR options and any way of CC option. At least 1.
8) Wizard - newbie/casual wizards need buff, maxed out wizards need nerf. I mean casual wizard will probably be able to kill nothing in EE, while maxed out wizard being in shiradi has like 65 standing DC, great damage due to shiradi, awesome CC and can instankill 90% of mobs before melees get to them. This is my experience while running with 65DC wizzie in EE GH and EE Stormhorns. I can kill a mob when I plead my friend to not instantkill them and give me some fun, because e can kill more effectively and faster. In both damage and instantkill. So needs nerf.
9) Sorcerer - enough of toasters! Toasters are ********. But besides that I think sorcerers are pretty well balanced.
10) Rangers - rangers are not the best bow class in game - I think it says enough. But I believe it's rather monkchers that need nerf than rangers needing buff.
11) Barbarian - from all melees he dies the fastest. Yes he does great damage but not good enough to be worth it over a lot longer standing monk/fighter/paladin. Id boost their PRR/dodge in some way.
12) Artificers - I think they need some small boost in higher levels.


Epic Destinies:
1) Exalted Angel - needs buffing. More DCs and more DMg options - I believe they need something as good as energy burst - like light burst. And at least 3 DC available in tree. And Epic Moment should have lower cooldown - you made some changed for a day or two some time ago - they were ok, but you nerfed Divine Wraight and SLA should be stronger.
2) US - needs more DMG options, and throw out AC bonuses.
3) Magister - is pretty well balanced.
4) Draconic - i pretty well balanced.
5) Grandmaster - you nerfed EiN DC and lso other abilities DC are so bad (with maxed wisdomn around 55-56) so they're basically useless, which makes this ED useless - needs heavy boosting.
6) LD - is pretty ok balances - Id nerf Blitz a little though to give less dmg/dodge.
7) Shadowdancer - too many abilities are connected with each other forcing you to take useless ones also Epic Moment is trash and you know it - boost it.
8) Fury - is ok balances but shoud have a little nerf while in ranged combat. Also - when activating adrenaline the animation should be shorter - it really is a bother while in melee combat.
9) Primal - Id boost it a little. But is not bad.
10) Shiradi - needs balancing a lot, its waaaay to powerful.
11) Divine Crusader - I didnt play it yet so can't say.

Thats all. Id also add that you should do MAJOR changed (oc after testing them) because if you do it small changed people mauy get mad - itll end the way when you nerf build A so they TR into build B,and then you nerf build B and they're even more mad etc. You should make those needed big changes in one update and throw out +20 hearts again to make people less angry and able to readjust their builds.

[Recared]

The solution is simple but a lot of work.

First, nerf the hell out of Furyshot and Blitz and Shiradi, with the goal of reducing their effectiveness to at most 105% of the effectiveness of other characters.
Secondly, rebalance all of the quests that were designed under the assumption that players are using broken builds. If optimal group DPS falls from 50000 party-wide to 20000, then mobs need to lose 60% of their HP.
Third, there'll be a couple of people that whine over the nerf (despite the fact that their characters are still capable of completing quests in about the same amount of time and with the same overall difficulty). Grease the door, so that it DOES hit them on the way out. Hard. These people are poison - let them go and ruin a competing MMO.
Finally, offer some form of respec options to players whose characters are significantly broken by the change, ideally including the option to 'respec' now-useless Ranger past lives into different passive past life feats.

First of all, I am not a usual poster, but the game I love suddenly feels threatened by an obsession for balancing in favor of non viable builds (as ugly as that sounds). And there is an obsession for pure builds effectiveness as well. I do not talk out of the vacuum, I have been here since the beginning, played extensively ee, and lately playing mostly my 60+ lives main (I stopped counting them long time ago). Used to have several accounts flooded with alts with very efficient and different build approaches, now almost exclusevily playing main character.

"reducing their effectiveness to at most 105% of the effectiveness of other characters".

Which other characters? There are an extreme number of possibilities. Barbarian20/e8? What does "effectiveness" stand for? The ability to obtain a result? Efficient or no? This again brings us back to multiclassing eternal debate. There are so many build possibilities, many are effective, some excel, and many are simply non viable. So what? Why balance in favor of fighter 20 and not pally9/sorc5/clr6? The latter build does not deserve also that "effectiveness"?

Why should Barbarian 20 Fury of the wild 8 be as effective as a Monkcher/evasionist juggernaut, etc. (and I don't play any monkcher at the moment) in a top difficulty quest with unavoidable traps where either you evade them/disable them or most likely will die? You have two options: bring a trapper or become able to survive the trap (building for evasion or having enough saves/hp, whatever to survive the damage, let's not invest too much time in accessories). To become able to survive you have to invest time in planning multiclassing. What is wrong with that? Multiclass is and should be rewarding, and is open to everyone. What is wrong with that?

Is it wrong to solo? Should solo be impossible for non raids? If not, should characters be balanced to complete quests ee (all discussion refers to top difficulty) at similar rate of "effectiveness"/efficiency? Why? Because once you do that, the game is back to being ridiculously easy, because to make a pure non evasionist low save toon as effective as the high save evasionist toon, you can only decrease the need for evasion/high saves, and therefore, if it is no longer a requirement to be effective, then everyone will ONLY build for top dps.

Barbarian case study

A class that has the biggest restrictions and problems to selfheal. Yet the possibility exists to achieve some decent level of selfheal (although right now a bit below what is needed for ee)? By the way Barbarian has some nice tools at its reach: no save ear smash/top end stunning blow if properly build (yes, take those 2 levels of fvs, what is wrong with that? The game has taken into account that. It is your choice if you want to stay pure 20 disregarding all the paths multiclassing opens to you)/knockdowns on adrenaline/AoE CC through tier 3 Blitz twist/etc. The only thing wrong is it is taking to much damage on ee if no dedicated permanent healer.
-> Barbarian deserves help/buff, because even multiclassing (!) is extremely difficult to be effective/efficient on ee -> help damage mitigation (proposals have been given: increase PRR cap/appy DR AFTER prr/apply energy resistance AFTER energy abosrption, do something to AC)

Selfsufficiency

We have also been given the tools for selfsufficiency -> effectiveness. You have the option to use bladeforged and its reconstruct sla, you can multiclass, you have some boots that propel you through air for some special situations, etc. This is not wrong, this is precisely right (yes, my opinion), and it is what makes the game fun.
Again, I have played melee builds (juggernaut/acrobats/fightermnkpal/battleclerics, etc.) that performed extremely well on ee. Yes of course they all used the tools that are already there: multiclass, items, etc. The only thing I would have thanked for is some form of extra damage mitigation (and I mean reduction of damage income). If damage taken would have been reduced (through heavy armor, prr or whatever) to 50-65% of what I was taking, literally I would have been as efficient if not more than shiradi casting (whose dps is not amazing at all, just fine (but yes, very easy to handle)). That is all I needed to comfortably, easily manage ee (soloing). I had 0 issues with dps with none of my melee builds.
However I believe viable saves for EE should remain as is.

Maybe furyshot is debatable, maybe. But that is a very specific thing. But one thing is burst dps and then average dps.
-> Petition: it would be great if we could have in Lamannia, in the dojo, one megakobold with 1 million hp to make some detailed testing comparison between a monkcher and all it can put and a top melee dps and all it can put and see time to beat that kobold (10k hp kobolds die so incredibly fast it's even possible to compare). Also make some kobolds lvl 30 to charge blitz and do further testing with the megakobold.

That's it for now.

Gygaxotron of Thelanis

[SirValentine]

You said yourself. Dodge cap is 25%.

Which, as I said, is unrelated to wearing robes or not. Any body slot item, be it Full Plate or Robes, has it's Dodge cap directly from it's Max Dex Bonus. Robes have no Max Dex Bonus, therefore, robes have no Dodge cap. I'm talking about equipment. The fact that characters have an overall Dodge cap is not relevant.

If you actually have any evidence of your claim that robes have some kind of built-in Dodge cap, I'd still like to see it.

[SirValentine]

9 times is still broken beyond belief.

The aspirational goal should be that every class and every ED (note: not every combination of the two) should have a build that's at least at 80% of peak performance.

Oh, agreed. Well, I wouldn't even worry too much about 80%...I'd call it good if they got everything within a factor of 2 (weakest at 50% of peak).

The specific made-up figures of 9 times were from the guy trying to imply that even attempting to balance was futile. I'm not saying 9 times isn't still broken, but it certainly is less broken than 24 times.

[EllisDee37]

Why? Because once you do that, the game is back to being ridiculously easy, because to make a pure non evasionist low save toon as effective as the high save evasionist toon, you can only decrease the need for evasion/high saves, and therefore, if it is no longer a requirement to be effective, then everyone will ONLY build for top dps.

I don't agree with your vision that the game is only good if it requires high saves and evasion. I see no qualitative difference between "you have to have top saves and evasion to be effective" and "you have to have top dps to be effective." (The latter being your version of the bad result of not requiring high saves and evasion.)

One of the near-universal issues brought up in this thread is that meleeing is too punitive in EE, giving range an imbalanced advantage. I don't see why addressing that issue would destroy the game.

[blerkington]

ive never had a problem with you on the forums or in game. your attitude on here seems to reflect the same way in game, but ive grouped with you quite a bit recently and ive never seen you CC a mob than switch to melee. ive always seen you stay ranged.

Hi,

The balance of melee and ranged I use very much depends on who else is in group, how quickly we are moving, how difficult the content is, and exactly what we are fighting.

I do favour ranged when fighting monsters which have quick or unpredictable attack animations (eg, hobgoblins), or large AOE attacks and knockdown or other nasty effects like giants and shadar-kai assassins, or when I can be sure I can hit quite a few targets at once using IPS.

I also tend to use it more in EE content if the party is less organised or moving very quickly, and it becomes more difficult to judge where the focus of aggro will be moment to moment. In EH and below I melee mostly so I am still making a solid contribution when manyshot is on cooldown.

Pin and Otto's Whistler are two of the staples of my playstyle because of the helplessness they cause. I run with Sense Weakness twisted in, so a quick pin followed by melee attacks will see an enemy's health go down reasonably quickly even to a character who is not full melee spec. Like I've been trying to argue in my other recent posts about rangers, some investment in melee is very useful, even if you aren't the guy on point in your EE groups.

When I am soloing EE content, ranged play for CC then melee becomes even more important. On a non 10k stars shiradi archer outside of manyshot it can be difficult to kill a CC'd EE mob with arrows alone before the CC expires due to the low rate of fire. It's considerably less difficult, and makes for quicker play, when you are swinging a pair of balizardes against a helpless foe, especially if you are using a deception item and adding a decent amount of sneak attack damage per swing.

If you are sufficiently interested, we could run some more stuff together to illustrate my point. The times I remember us grouping together were good, and my playstyle works well with someone else in front who I can play off. The same offer goes to you, BOgre, if you play on my server or ever visit it.

Anyway, my apologies for derailing the thread.

Thanks.

[cru121]

Few random nerfs for greater good (and/or drama):

The Reconstruct spell / SLA now receives half benefit from spell power. It no longer grants the haste buff, instead, it provides a stacking debuff if multiple reconstructs are used in short succession (duration 12 seconds).

The Monk class / enhancements changes
-move Evasion to monk 9
-move Incorporeality to monk 12
-nerf 10k stars to throwers only or make it a universal feat
-crit multiplier to fire stance

Paladin
-The saves bonus from Divine Grace cannot exceed your paladin levels.

PRR
-Your total PRR score is now multiplied by a value dependent on the type of armor you're wearing: robes/outfits 0.1, light armor 0.2, medium armor 0.5, heavy armor 1.0.

A Dance of Flowers
-applies only to handwraps

[Pooklebunny]

The state of balance in the game is terrible.

[...]

The solution is simple but a lot of work.

First, nerf the hell out of Furyshot and Blitz and Shiradi, with the goal of reducing their effectiveness to at most 105% of the effectiveness of other characters.
Secondly, rebalance all of the quests that were designed under the assumption that players are using broken builds. If optimal group DPS falls from 50000 party-wide to 20000, then mobs need to lose 60% of their HP.
Third, there'll be a couple of people that whine over the nerf (despite the fact that their characters are still capable of completing quests in about the same amount of time and with the same overall difficulty). Grease the door, so that it DOES hit them on the way out. Hard. These people are poison - let them go and ruin a competing MMO.
Finally, offer some form of respec options to players whose characters are significantly broken by the change, ideally including the option to 'respec' now-useless Ranger past lives into different passive past life feats.



Edit: Perfect balance is unattainable. That is no excuse for having a situation that is so unbalanced that only 2-3 builds are even remotely viable. In Heroic levels, Sorcerers are significantly overpowered compared to every other class, but the Fighter doesn't feel totally useless in most content.

Amen and hallelujah!

What Sirgog said, absolutely. And for everyone suggesting nerfs to the Monk class because *splashed* builds are OP... stop. Just stop. The issue with "Monks" is the fact that the devs have thrown their most significant class ability open to every random toon who splashes a couple of levels. Almost every suggestion made thus far has a moderate nerfing effect on splashes, but utterly kills the viability of pure Monks. It's still one of my favourite classes to play pure, just because I like it, but it's sorely underpowered compared to any decent build that just splashes 2-6 levels in it. Earth stance is just fine as-is; what *isn't* fine is being able to get access to Master/Grandmaster with only a handful of Monk levels, and the benefits being of greater value to people using non-Monk weapons.