Player Character Balance

[sirgog]

Why default PRR 100? If you wear robes then your starting PRR should be 0.

PRR should GREATLY depend on armor type. For example:
Heavy armor: 150 PRR (= 50.61% dmg reduction)
Medium armor: 100 PRR (= 41.21% dmg reduction)
Light armor: 50 PRR (= 25.67% dmg reduction)
Robes: 0 PRR

Now you might consider not taking evasion.

Spells will still hurt, but for tank builds there should be an option for reducing spell dmg.
Foe example, Sentinel should have like 50% Spell dmg reduction (and stacking with some pally enhancement, which should grant like 10%, 20% if holding shield, and 30% if actively blocking)

Under my suggestion, PRR of 0 would mean that any melee hit insta-kills you. Dividing by zero is bad. PRR of 100 would mean 100 incoming damage causes 100 lost HP, ie no actual reduction, but unlike the present system, stacking more PRR would continue to help.


With your suggestion, someone wearing heavy armor would have basically no incentive at all to equip other gear that adds to PRR. At present the difference between 50 PRR and 100 PRR is bigger than the difference between 150 PRR and 57 million PRR. (Check the formula if you do not believe that).

[Thumbed_Servant]

Vargoiulle,

When you all next work on armor, PLEASE do not forget Mithral. The Cavalry plate is used by a lot of us up to 20 and some into the lower 20's...it is supposed to be heavy armor that behaves like medium due to a special material, Mithral, but was never properly coded to give the same PRR as heavy armor. Fix this when you all revisit armor again?

Thank you

[Robai]

Under my suggestion, PRR of 0 would mean that any melee hit insta-kills you. Dividing by zero is bad. PRR of 100 would mean 100 incoming damage causes 100 lost HP, ie no actual reduction, but unlike the present system, stacking more PRR would continue to help.


With your suggestion, someone wearing heavy armor would have basically no incentive at all to equip other gear that adds to PRR. At present the difference between 50 PRR and 100 PRR is bigger than the difference between 150 PRR and 57 million PRR. (Check the formula if you do not believe that).

Sorry, I was a bit confused.

Do you mean this
50 PRR = you take 200% dmg
100 PRR = you take 100% dmg
150 PRR = you take 66.66% dmg
200 PRR = you take 50% dmg
250 PRR = you take 40% dmg

[Amundir]

I still think its a streach to say "Go this route and take 40% of the damage" vs "Go this route and take 0 damage x% of the time".
Currently, that is. I feel the weight of which makes more sense is relative to how much damage your talking about.

Edit: And in how many hits the damage is accrued in.

[Free2Pay]

I'm going to borrow some idea from an ARPG which successfully buffed Melee:

1) Viable Life Steal/Leech that scale with dps.
2) Static Life Gain on hits.
3) An ability which allow 2H weapon to be thrown for a somewhat reduced range dps.
4) Increasing the rates of attacks per second.

We seem to have some form of mechanics already in DDO that looks somewhat similar : bodyfeeder and speed.

[EllisDee37]

Please, please just NO!

I wish everyone would stop trying to pigeonhole roles and responsibilities etc.

We're down the rabbit hole when I'm being accused of a "play your role" advocate. I'm one of the "self-sufficient or GTFO" people.

My point was that a DC caster isn't going to be able to use his strength (DC casting) against red names, so it's fine if that same DC caster is way more powerful than dps characters against trash mobs.

[Scraap]

We're down the rabbit hole when I'm being accused of a "play your role" advocate. I'm one of the "self-sufficient or GTFO" people.

My point was that a DC caster isn't going to be able to use his strength (DC casting) against red names, so it's fine if that same DC caster is way more powerful than dps characters against trash mobs.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but which archetype: The one contenting with ASF, or the one with superior PRR if they should fix that so it's not a bad joke, and to what degree should that be taken into account all other things being equal (not that they are)?

That's the kind of thing that gets me leery of aspects-in-isolation, and why I was referring to classes as packages way up thread. Not that I disagree with the general point.

[CaptainSpacePony]

That would be easy, but... I don't think it's a good idea. Warpriest has already made paladins redundant.

I don't think War Priest made paladins redundant. In fact I think the enhancement pass made them mostly irrelevant (nerfed the heck out of defender tree/stance while upgrading almost everyone else)..
But I'm afraid I may not understand what you're saying here so I'll try to strengthen my point.

1. Paladin's defensive abilities are inadequate. War priest adds PRR, AC, blur, and some lesser things.
2. Paladin's DPS sucks. Most classes have enhanced damage/to hit with a weapon. War priest would give that and be in flavor.
3. Smite is an iconic ability of paladins... that sucks in DDO. (Too rapidly depleted to be worthwhile IMO). The war priest smite line would parallel the paladin's smite and be in flavor. (I don't like WP smite either, cool down is WAY too long but I'm talking about a quick fix here.)
4. Frankly paladin enhancement tress are pretty lame atm.
5. This would be a fast, easy way to address a long know issue. It would not be adequate to balance paladins with other classes, but would throw them a bone and increase their viability.

[CaptainSpacePony]

I'm sorry but every time I see some one say this I want to slap them. We're not playing in realistic medieval times. We're playing where magic applies. When you see cloth enchanted with +8 armor bonus that means it literally protects just as well as full plate does. ... <snip>

But if you want to impose something that heavy armor SHOULD mean? Enjoy your 1/3rd movement speed loss unless you're a dwarf which is already moving at 2/3rds the rate of a medium sized creature anyway.

I don't mean to point out your post in particular. Just that part. Magical fantasy land that ebberon is set in > Earth's actual historical battles (which ebberon isn't set in.) which full plate was both expensive and impractical for anyways. Chaim and leathers is where the real benefits were. Any one with a mace could eff up a person in a suit of plate.

I see your point, but offer the following counters:

a. Magic cloth does protect as well as full plate (pretty cool, yeah?) but wouldn't magic plate protect even better?
b. Well made heavier armors wouldn't have to be as restrictive as you say, especially if they were magical, would they?
c. Actually, blunt weapons were mostly foiled by rigid armors. Piercing weapons were generally preferred against most armors. Ancient Egyptians had used maces until helmets were widely adopted rendering them much less effective than alternatives. Centuries later when maces returned they were not usually widely adopted and often were more like picks. (Which brings me to war hammers. War hammers were not the mallets we see in fantasy games, but were basically picks.)
d. Most importantly, this is a fantasy genre wherein warriors wade into close combat with dinosaur-sized opponents while wearing heavy shiny armor and impractical winged helms and wielding archaic light sabers with blades as long as the monsters' hides are thick. Give us the darn fantasy!

[Uska]

Sorry, I was a bit confused.

Do you mean this
50 PRR = you take 200% dmg
100 PRR = you take 100% dmg
150 PRR = you take 66.66% dmg
200 PRR = you take 50% dmg
250 PRR = you take 40% dmg

That would be terrible damage shouldn't be multiplied and yah I know that's not yours.

[EllisDee37]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but which archetype: The one contenting with ASF, or the one with superior PRR if they should fix that so it's not a bad joke, and to what degree should that be taken into account all other things being equal (not that they are)?

That's the kind of thing that gets me leery of aspects-in-isolation, and why I was referring to classes as packages way up thread. Not that I disagree with the general point.

I'm not entirely sure why this was directed to me. I also can't really parse what you're trying to say.

[elvesunited]

Having thought it over

Things to Change
------------------------------------
1) Accidental synergies. Biggest example being slay arrow and adrenaline. Slay arrow could be disabled once adrenaline is activated and until adrenaline is expended. This could be spread out to other enhanced attacks such as sniper shot/strike if they become a problem as well.

2) Make AC relevant again for tanks by increasing its effectiveness at high levels.

3) Increase enhancement, destiny AC, PRR bonuses to give melee characters more a boost.

4) Provide some resistance to elemental spell attacks for non-evasion types. Perhaps let PRR affect it.

5) Increase the bonuses for 20th level required prestige enhancements to make pure characters more attractive without hurting multi-class ones.

6) Bards need to be reworked. They're a dying breed in epics. Some have suggested some useful SLAs. Or changing inspire from +x bonus to +x% bonus.

Things to not change
-------------------------------------
1) When and where feats can be gotten. Getting Monk stance upgrades through normal feats, for example. It's part of some melee and ranged builds. No changes that will require the game to give out lesser reincarnation hearts +20 again.

2) massive change to a feat that will invalidate a build concept or pigeonhole characters into a specific weapon style. such as changing ten thousand stars to thrown only. Don't pigeonhole Monks into shurikens, bow using monks is an established game concept. A pure 20th level monk who specializes in the bow is viable.

3) Restricting epic destiny abilities to certain classes. Variety is important. The ability to experiment with destinies outside your natural sphere adds to the gameplay. Besides many builds work best with destinies well outside their given sphere and poorly with those within. ( such as the DPS Paladin )

4) Do not change shiradi casters until something is done to make nuker casters able to participate against high level epic elite without it.

[Teh_Troll]

2) Make AC relevant again for tanks by increasing its effectiveness at high levels.

If AC actually matters in EE monk AC needs a huge nerf. Monk get stupid high ACs even without trying.

I'd rather we started saying "Make ARMOR relevant."

[Delacroix21]

I would also like to point out that some posts were repeated because they got buried under more random nerf this! Nerf that! Posts that went off topic from real player balance.


As others have said these builds have become required to do EE, and many others are not viable. Nerfing the builds that are viable while not simultaneously nerfing the EE mobs themselves would result in no builds being viable.


I proposed changes repeatedly that were nerfs, but the class and ed combos would still play the same. Ideas like removing shiradi from multi proc spells or no adrenaline with ranged totally kills builds, and even a free +20 LR will not keep players from quitting.


Maybe there is also a lot of angst here because it seems you guys are so out of touch with the game. Hearing that DC casting etc. is not effective in EE should not be a "surprise" as the ENTiRE community has known about it and posted about it. Devs need to test EE themselves more and actually play the game more then just RPing on casual difficulty.

[elvesunited]

If AC actually matters in EE monk AC needs a huge nerf. Monk get stupid high ACs even without trying.

I'd rather we started saying "Make ARMOR relevant."

I'd much rather boost the armor wearing character then nerf the monk. In any event I got no problem with any melee monk having high AC. They'll likely have lower PRR and hp. They need it.

[Cardtrick]

4) Do not change shiradi casters until something is done to make nuker casters able to participate against high level epic elite without it.

Yeah, I'm a bit disconcerted by all the calls to nerf shiradi. Compared to most of the other things being discussed, shiradi casters are far from overpowered and shiradi ranged character are underpowered. Really, shiradi is about right for casters and could stand to be buffed for ranged DPS.

I feel like people still are thinking about shiradi from when it was first released. It's in a pretty good place right now (except for the radiant forcefield thing, of course). Shiradi casters can contribute in all content, and extremely well-played, well-built, well-geared ones can even do the hardest content solo. That's fine. Unlike a max DC instant kill build (in the old days), shiradi isn't harming the experience for the other players in a group. The damage output is steady, but not excessive, and doesn't prevent others from contributing.

[HatsuharuZ]

I don't think War Priest made paladins redundant. In fact I think the enhancement pass made them mostly irrelevant (nerfed the heck out of defender tree/stance while upgrading almost everyone else)..
But I'm afraid I may not understand what you're saying here so I'll try to strengthen my point.

1. Paladin's defensive abilities are inadequate. War priest adds PRR, AC, blur, and some lesser things.
2. Paladin's DPS sucks. Most classes have enhanced damage/to hit with a weapon. War priest would give that and be in flavor.
3. Smite is an iconic ability of paladins... that sucks in DDO. (Too rapidly depleted to be worthwhile IMO). The war priest smite line would parallel the paladin's smite and be in flavor. (I don't like WP smite either, cool down is WAY too long but I'm talking about a quick fix here.)
4. Frankly paladin enhancement tress are pretty lame atm.
5. This would be a fast, easy way to address a long know issue. It would not be adequate to balance paladins with other classes, but would throw them a bone and increase their viability.

I was saying that if anyone wants to play a melee divine, they don't need to take more than two levels of paladin and then take the rest in cleric or fvs. Almost anything that a paladin can do, a cleric or fvs can do better. Simply giving warpriest to paladins reinforces that. However, I agree with your third and fourth points.

What paladins needs is their own original tree, and a revamp of the trees they currently have. Sacred Defender is especially ugly. It has exactly one useful offensive ability.

If Turbine gave warpriest to paladins, how long do you think it would be before they went back and put in the effort to actually make paladins competitive? Consider how long it takes them to react to major issues.

[Scraap]

I'm not entirely sure why this was directed to me. I also can't really parse what you're trying to say.

Sorry. One of these years I'll remember to stop combining coffee, coding, and convos.

Think we can both generally agree that if it's a class feature, it should be something that can be built for to have relevance, or there's no point in having that aspect as class feature aside from fluff.
In this case, DC casting applies to arcanes (including bards), divines, and druids.

Armor proficiency is also a class feature to varying degrees, and directly ties to the PRR sub-discussion.
At 50% asf baseline, comparable pure armor-based casting for an arcane vs a divine would be a 50% failure rate.

Since nobody sane would build a DC caster to flip a coin barring pure AoE casting, I think we can generally agree that the most tanky-from-armor DC caster could weigh in at a 75% success rate.
If PRR shaved off half the damage of robes (to keep the math simple, and match that 50% asf) it'd seem to me that'd require putting an arcane at an 85% success rate (12.5% being half the failure rate of 25%, rounded down to the nearest 5%), with medium armor wearers ending up somewhere in the middle.

(Alternatively, they could up the target-count for the target-limited DC casting spells, and drop the success rate further of course, but that'd be at the expense of single-target ones.)
That makin more sense?

[SirValentine]

Think we can both generally agree that if it's a class feature, it should be something that can be built for to have relevance, or there's no point in having that aspect as class feature aside from fluff.
In this case, DC casting applies to arcanes (including bards), divines, and druids.

Armor proficiency is also a class feature to varying degrees, and directly ties to the PRR sub-discussion.
At 50% asf baseline, comparable pure armor-based casting for an arcane vs a divine would be a 50% failure rate.

Meanwhile, while Clerics have Heavy Armor, and FvS & Druid have Medium, and all a few more HP, Wizards do have FIVE BONUS FEATS, or Sorcs faster casting. Armor is also only one part of class balance, and it's not really meaningful to directly compare just divine armor versus arcane armor.

While also only part of the equation, to me it makes perfect sense to compare, say, maximum Finger of Death or Destruction DCs across all 5 primary caster classes, since it really is the same ability.

[Timap]

I see even you are talking about Epic Elite. The general consensus is that the thread itself became oriented around
EE play because that seems to be the only content where certain build choices are almost required. I wonder how
many of the player base regularly play at this level - in other words are we excessively worrying about a problem
which might only exist on EE?

While a smallish portion of the population plays at EE, its still important to balance for EE because

1) A build that is OP on EE is still OP on EH/EN. Its just not that obvious. Playing an OP build on EH in a party just makes the experience ridiculously easy for everyone involved, and decreases the fun. OP builds are effectively segregated from players other than other OP builds because of this.

2) A lot of social activity occurs around EE and raids, the only 2 situations where a balanced party is really necessary. I estimate at least 50% of LFMs are EE/raids. If every other toon you group with is a ranged kiter, it makes for a very boring social experience.

3) While not everyone makes it to EE, lots of people aspire to EE. The builds that are viable at EE influences the builds people play at EH/EN levels. I would say it even influences whether people start or stop playing DDO. If you love to play a bard, but you know that bards are not viable at the hardest content, and will be permanently consigned to second-class citizen status, would you still keep playing DDO?