Player Character Balance

[HungarianRhapsody]

Do you honestly think that the fact that a good number of epic quests can be 75% invis run is WAI?

Yes.

[Scraap]

On the manyshot+adrenaline sub-discussion: If you can't or don't find the suggestion to fix the proc on ranged to a single arrow as desirable in keeping with melee attacks, perhaps altering it to a 15 second buff for all physical attacks might serve to a degree. (Can't remember offhand if it procs exhaustion at the end. If not, tacking that on as well might proxy-buff primary barbs a bit.)

As to the invis sub-convo: They've got 25% XP boost for committing genocide, and 15% for being a pacifist. Seems to me both methodologies are intended.

[Enoach]

Yes. Do you honestly think that the fact that a good number of epic quests can be 75% invis run is WAI?

I would answer yes, because part of balancing characters is balancing different ways to beat the environment

For me I'm not upset that one build can out DPS another, I'm upset because DPS is the only method of beating the environment.

However, I do believe there has to be some logic with invisibility. A person running by carrying weapons and wearing a pack/armor and is only invisible is still going to raise a few brows when they run by a guard. Part of balancing this is to have a variety of monster types that make this difficult to do unless you are actually sneaking (not running).

Doing something like this will allow a person to build towards stealth with the idea that they kill what needs to die and avoid the rest.

Balance extends to allow an Enchanter type to charm the pants off a room and proceed to the rest leaving that room behind and even forgetting the Enchanter was even there.

Or use the 'Hulk Smash' method popular among many in DDO

The balance does not need to be that build X does the same damage as build Y, but that an encounter has multiple options that can be used to resolve it.

[BigErkyKid]

I would answer yes, because part of balancing characters is balancing different ways to beat the environment

For me I'm not upset that one build can out DPS another, I'm upset because DPS is the only method of beating the environment.

However, I do believe there has to be some logic with invisibility. A person running by carrying weapons and wearing a pack/armor and is only invisible is still going to raise a few brows when they run by a guard. Part of balancing this is to have a variety of monster types that make this difficult to do unless you are actually sneaking (not running).

Doing something like this will allow a person to build towards stealth with the idea that they kill what needs to die and avoid the rest.

Balance extends to allow an Enchanter type to charm the pants off a room and proceed to the rest leaving that room behind and even forgetting the Enchanter was even there.

Or use the 'Hulk Smash' method popular among many in DDO

The balance does not need to be that build X does the same damage as build Y, but that an encounter has multiple options that can be used to resolve it.

I am competely for this sort of reasoning. The point I made is the following.

I am a dev sitting at my desk in the morning. My game is 1 quest. I have a fighter and wizzard as possible classes.

I have to decide how many SP give the wizzard.

Do I give the same amount if 75% of the monster can be avoided running invisible as I would give if you actually had to beat them?

This is the issue of balance that I wanted to bring to the debate table.

This is NOT a trivial issue isnce a lot of the new content can be run through invisible.

Of course I am all for allowing elaborate tactics to be able to go through the contend with stealth. But arguably those possibilities should come at a price too. Having to build for stealthm having to go slower, whatever. Those would then factor in the SP computation.

What I am afraid we are having now is a pool of SP designed as if we were running through most of the quest for situations where people are skipping 75% of it. And hence the balance problem. It is not as apparent because right now we have horrendous killing machines called monkchers that have sustainable top DPS without depleting permanently their resources. Fix that, balance the quests accordingly and the question i posed would emerge again.

[SirValentine]

I am a dev sitting at my desk in the morning. My game is 1 quest. I have a fighter and wizzard as possible classes.

I have to decide how many SP give the wizzard.

Do I give the same amount if 75% of the monster can be avoided running invisible as I would give if you actually had to beat them?

Really, that's beside the point for this thread.

SP gets used up, but so does HP. And Action Boosts. And Turn Undeads, and Smites, and Rages. Every character has resources that are limited, and every character can go invisible.

It's a QUEST-balancing issue, but not a character balance issue.

[Seikojin]

I am competely for this sort of reasoning. The point I made is the following.

I am a dev sitting at my desk in the morning. My game is 1 quest. I have a fighter and wizzard as possible classes.

I have to decide how many SP give the wizzard.

Do I give the same amount if 75% of the monster can be avoided running invisible as I would give if you actually had to beat them?

This is the issue of balance that I wanted to bring to the debate table.

This is NOT a trivial issue isnce a lot of the new content can be run through invisible.

Of course I am all for allowing elaborate tactics to be able to go through the contend with stealth. But arguably those possibilities should come at a price too. Having to build for stealthm having to go slower, whatever. Those would then factor in the SP computation.

What I am afraid we are having now is a pool of SP designed as if we were running through most of the quest for situations where people are skipping 75% of it. And hence the balance problem. It is not as apparent because right now we have horrendous killing machines called monkchers that have sustainable top DPS without depleting permanently their resources. Fix that, balance the quests accordingly and the question i posed would emerge again.

The problem with this logic is assuming everyone will do the easiest method to achieve the goals. On appear, yeah that is the best way to handle your peoblem, but a very large portion of the people playing wizards don't invis run to completion, nor do they 75% invis run to get completion. They do whatever they feel like doing. Most players battle their way through content.

The big balance problem people are looking at is split into a small number of groups.
Saves - pure classes are suffering versus splash classes by a huge factor (because rolling a 2 and dying is gimp)
Melee - anyone outside of pajamas is nerfed due to the EE scaled power (lack of mitigation)
DC casters - maxing is the only way to be viable (mainly because the thought of needing a d20 for success is gimp)
DPS casters - maxing spellpower is all you need, because slas are the defacto method for casting dps now. (because using a shrine is gimp)
Ranged combat - can pew pew with no threat whatsoever and burst dps to killcount (because playing pure is gimp)

My solutions for these:
Saves - hard to pin a fix. It is WaW (working as written) so it is WaI. So non monks and pallys are hurt here. To resolve, add mitigation into melee class enhancements outside of Pal and Monk. Make it so these boosts are the same type as pali's save boost, so they do not stack. If the armor feats provided boosts to the armor worn, it would benefit everyone without making the monk/pal splash over the top. It would make pure pali's over the top, since they keep their uber saves while in full plate. If the boosts were tied to enhancements, this would allow the boosts to be everywhere except pali, and allow pali's to get some targeted boosting that helps, without taking them too over the top.
Melee - See above pretty much. Every armor type outside of robes/clothes, needs some mitigation added. Adding the bonuses per enhancement tree, scaled like I mentioned earlier through feats, would allow scaleable boosting for melee classes, and make it so players had to put points in specific things to get a very high value, thus making it more difficult to go over the top. And ultimately allowing more playstyles to have the same survivability as a wai monk/pali splash.
DC casters - Bards need help here. Many of their enhancements do nothing to help get through to ee content, and even a lot of heroics at level. Offer some boosting from perform skill to the dc, or remove the old dc formula and use perform as a base. Everything else can push the d20 out, so that seems balanced to me (meaning, build (pure or MC) and gear can make or break the d20 variable, which is perfectly balanced in my mind).
DPS casters - Meh, they seem fine as well. It would be nice to see something done to help splash casters, but loading the enhancements so you got more from spellpower until caster level 6 and then have diminished returns so a pure class is the same spell power as a mcer... It seems like that would be not very beneficial. Spell count is what mainly keeps people from diverting when going for dps casters. It would be nice if there was a way to make it so taking 6 levels or less of a class gained spellpower from other trees (like doing a 12/6/2 ftr/wiz/mon, and your monk and fighter enhancements also boosted the spellpower given to wiz so you can be dps casting, but not as good as pure caster, still viable and worth the cost of mana).
Ranged combat - The only problem I see here is gripes about WaW/WaI abilities and the doubleshot penalties. That is why I think Manyshot and 10k stars should be a toggle that increases doubleshot as you get levels of that class. They can stack, but never one be better than the other.

[Ancient]

Really, that's beside the point for this thread.

SP gets used up, but so does HP. And Action Boosts. And Turn Undeads, and Smites, and Rages. Every character has resources that are limited, and every character can go invisible.

It's a QUEST-balancing issue, but not a character balance issue.

^^^^^^
Win

[Scraap]

DC casters - Bards need help here. Many of their enhancements do nothing to help get through to ee content, and even a lot of heroics at level. Offer some boosting from perform skill to the dc, or remove the old dc formula and use perform as a base. Everything else can push the d20 out, so that seems balanced to me (meaning, build (pure or MC) and gear can make or break the d20 variable, which is perfectly balanced in my mind).

Been kinda hesitant to suggest this one, since I'm one of those 'bloat is bad mkay' guys, but just to throw it out there: What if they altered heighten to:

This Feat makes spells harder for monsters to resist by raising the effective level of the spell to half your character level, but causes the spell to consume 5 more spell points per level raised.

Sound like enough of an additional inherent cost for keeping up with the Jones's?

[Violentbeginning]

I've read several people's posts regarding Fire Stance needing a little love. Why not have it add +[0.5]W per tier? I think this would make it a bit more competitive with other stances.

I would also like to agree that stance tiers should be based upon monk levels and not character levels. Grandmaster of X is pretty powerful for just a splash...

[Xenolich]

Ohh how many ways can one say No.

Stick with a relative hands off approach to balance.

The imbalance is what gives DDO its uniqueness. Most of us have played a good number of the "balanced" mmo's out there, there is a reason we do not play them and instead play DDO. In my opinion balancing things out will kill the uniqueness of the game, and in turn kill the reason i play DDO.

[Vargouille]

Briefly checking in: Still reading along!

We're taking a couple days of hiatus, but hopefully early next week we'll have crunched some data on the 1000+ survey results, and have gathered some additional feedback from the rest of the DDO team and have some more thoughts to share with you guys.

My thanks to all of you for your continued feedback, and to Cordovan helping to put together the extensive survey results!

[BigErkyKid]

Really, that's beside the point for this thread.

SP gets used up, but so does HP. And Action Boosts. And Turn Undeads, and Smites, and Rages. Every character has resources that are limited, and every character can go invisible.

It's a QUEST-balancing issue, but not a character balance issue.

I will not insist more on this because it is met with hostility by a good number of people and in any case what I had to say is clear by now. Those who do not want to understand / do not share it / do not want to lose the possibility of avoiding 30 mins of sandbag punching / power level / power loot or whatever have made it abundantly clear.

Let me just say though there for obvious reasons there is not such thing as character balance vs quest balance. Everything is a relation per quest or per mob or per whatever metric you want to use. And hence any comparison between builds also has to contextualized in PVE. This acknowledged by the OP:

To some extent this borders on discussion of player characters vs. quest difficulty (and all that entails)

At some point though it would be nice if the OP directed us a bit towards the sort of topics he would be more interested on.

PS - Seems that Varg posted while I was writing!

[nibel]

On the manyshot+adrenaline sub-discussion: If you can't or don't find the suggestion to fix the proc on ranged to a single arrow as desirable in keeping with melee attacks

It is worth to note down that it works exactly like that on cleave, great cleave, and lay waste: Only the first hit is dealt with the +400% damage bonus. So, making Adrenaline only work with the first arrow on Manyshot is just keeping it on line with the other multi-attack attacks.

[Scraap]

It is worth to note down that it works exactly like that on cleave, great cleave, and lay waste: Only the first hit is dealt with the +400% damage bonus. So, making Adrenaline only work with the first arrow on Manyshot is just keeping it on line with the other multi-attack attacks.

Yeah, I suspect there's some shenanigans goin on with the manyshot code treating things as one attack at one point, vs cleaves that treat things as an attack per mob. (And no, that is not in any way, shape or form a suggestion to nerf cleaves to one attack. /handsofftheshineyshineyvampirismandaoeprocs)

Figure if ya can't beat em (and if they could in any reasonable timeframe, it seems likely they would have by now) join em.

[vengfarga]

Ok, I think we can all agree this line of questioning from Devs is headed towards SOMETHING getting nerfed.

For Heroic, that's almost inevitably Monk splashes - those adept feats, the kensai/monk synergy and moving 10k might not have had quite the planned results. Fun, but the best fun toys always end up broken the fastest.

For Eds, perhaps a domino-nerf might work ... so that each type of build that is being slapped gets a new, interesting alternative.
For Example:
1 - Nerf FotW back to only charging/working with melee = Grumpy Monkchers. But...
2 - Nerf Shiradi to only work with arrows/bolts/thrown & BOOST procs to maybe double or triple = Grumpy casters but less grouchy Monkchers.
3 - BOOST DI to be a really serious choice for nukers & MAG for DC casters = less grouchy casters.
4 - Plenty of people still a bit grouchy ... but that seems to be the default state for most anyway, so they'll soon either find a way to hideously abuse the new stuff or slink off to join the Juggs, Exploiters, people who wear armour & other formers fotms.

Repeat for other over/underpowered EDs (Tame the dreadnought but buff the GM of fluffers and the Shadow mincer, for ex.)

Oh, and maybe a "Tech" sphere to represent Eberron - could give sth for ARtis, etc and give some love back to boring old non-iconic WF?

[Fhauvial]

Shadowdancer's "Move at normal speed when sneaking" is the single most enjoyable thing in the game for me. But, it's only for 30 or 20 seconds or something every 3 minutes, and you have to be in Shadowdancer.

Please either:
- Make it essentially permanent in Shadowdancer; that would be actually epic, even if it's a Tier 6 ability that means I can't get all the +Ints down the side.
- Make it a normal feat so sneaking about in heroics can be the joy it is in epics.
- Make it a level 26 or 28 feat.
- Make it a level 27 feat.
- Make it a Rogue capstone
- Make it a racial enhancement for Drow or Shadar-kai or some other gimp race like Half-Elves (maybe rogue dilettante half-elves to make that choice more viable compared with halfling)
- Put it on an item

Just get it in in there in more ways so the uptime can be greater than 1/6th.

Nooooooooooo!

Please don't lock my assassin out of this ability. Taking all the +Ints is simply not a choice for a DC build.

(Edit: Mostly referring to moving it to a Tier 6, or a non-innate.)

[Bart_D]

Splashes have always been used and popular, and not really a problem imo. It's not really a problem either that some builds are better than others. What IS a problem is that a few distinct combinations of abilities produce characters which are EXTREMELY A LOT more powerful than all other builds, even very similar ones.

Nerfs/adjustments like the 1-4 suggested above by vengfarga could help trim the top and make alternatives viable, and from the Dev posts here I am hopeful that something like that will happen.

[CaptainSpacePony]

A small thought here.

Many have chimed in that capstones need to be made more appealing to increase the viability of pure classes. I'd like to add, that the same holds true for the lvl 18 core abilities.

[Raiderone]

I don't mind talk of Balance. But I don't like nerf's. So if you are going to balance some classes, do it by making the others better instead of decreasing another.
Some changes I don't consider nerf's like when QP was decreased by removing Sunder bonuses. QP should never had sundering bonuses (not to bring up old arguments).

As others have mentioned, Barbarians and Bards are probably the weakest classes. Pally's and Fighters could use some love too.

Even some feats could use a change. I can never understand why Stunning Fist has higher DC's than Stunning Blow. Should use same formula for DC's.
Otherwise make Stunning Blow an AOE versus single target with Stunning Fist.

[Delacroix21]

Briefly checking in: Still reading along!

We're taking a couple days of hiatus, but hopefully early next week we'll have crunched some data on the 1000+ survey results, and have gathered some additional feedback from the rest of the DDO team and have some more thoughts to share with you guys.

My thanks to all of you for your continued feedback, and to Cordovan helping to put together the extensive survey results!

Can we get a recap of the items Devs will be working on? Meele was mentioned, anything else?