Player Character Balance

[Recared]

some form of either lowering the cost to open higher tiers or being able to have 2 tier 5 enhancments from different trees would really go a long way to making pure classes more powerful.

That is a very interesting, simple and original proposal. Seems reasonable at first glance, but should be carefully studied. Not so sure about lowering costs.

[Sam1313]

I do agree that epic melee mobs hit way too hard, but I also believe that certain elements of the EE endgame are too easy. Both can actually be true. Metagame choices and builds change due to the powerful nature of melee mobs. Builds like shiradi (or most any caster really) and monkcher are powerful builds yes, but they are more powerful because of the metagame push toward characters that don't have to engage in melee combat to deal damage. Metagaming builds make the game easier because that's what they do. They work within the advantages and disadvantages of the system. However, this doesn't mean that EE melee mob damage is balanced at all. It just pushes more and more players to take advantage of the system and not get anywhere close to those mobs if at all possible.

So you can have a game that is "too easy" with elements that are unbalanced (high melee mob damage). Your powerful builds are the ones that build to avoid the overpowered elements and are still effective. It doesn't make those overpowered elements balanced by having to metagame builds to avoid them.

Yes the EE Monster hit very hard but if our AC was working like it should or our gear was doing what its supposed to do then I think we could take the hits. But what boggles my mind is this: In pen & paper game a level 20 character was considered a god basically. Ok so how is it that these EE monsters has a kajillion hit points and we have maybe at the most 1k hit points? Lol The hit points on the EE Monsters is the problem for me. Its no fun standing there for many minutes pounding on the same monster lol. And off the subject another thing that bugs me is the re spawns. If I kill it then it should stay dead because if they kill me then I aint coming back to life unless theres a shrine near by or a generous Cleric lol.

[Singular]

Rather than focusing on nerfing multi-classing, you should consider boosting the capstone. Perhaps giving every class a free feat @ level 20 of that class. Additionally, the capstone enhancement available only if you have level 20 of that class should be as good as splashing in a few levels of others classes
- 2 levels of monk gives 2 feats + evasion
- 2 levels of paladin gives you amazing saves
- 2-4 levels of favored soul gives you sp + great crits
- etc., etc., etc.

The benefit of 20 levels of a single class should be equal to the benefit of splashing in other classes - currently that is not the case.

Very much the above comment. Excellent suggestion.

[murf201]

First of all ... that person you are agreeing with has a ranger and a monkcher and here is the difference between them.

"My Pure Build hits 68 to 75 points of damage per shot fired. My Monkcher hits 158 to 273 per shot fired. That is both of them with no ship buffs, no self buffs, and no adrenaline or slaying arrows or manyshots or 10k stars going that's just a normal fired shot. Both using the Silver Longbow. The highest number I have seen my Pure Build hit for was 258 with a Slaying Arrow."

So you are saying you think these numbers are realistic? I believe they invalidate the whole post. Monks get 10k stars/zen archery/shuriken for ranged ... that's it. Nothing else in the class or enhancement tree effects arrows at all. So if you have a lvl 20 ranger vs lvl 20 monk with comparable points spent in deepwood stalker/AA trees same gear same stats and you are getting this wild a variation in numbers between archer and monkcher ... than something isn't OP its broken.



The perks a monkcher gets they pay for. Keep in mind that in order to use 10k stars you must have ki ... you must be centered within weight restrictions, you can only use robes and certain weapons ... even having to take a feat in order to use bows. On top of that you have to have a decent wisdom .... 42 being the goal but not the limit. It is a fair trade vs. the pure ranger. You sacrifice quite a bit to get that extra feature from the monk class.

What do rangers get? What is the doubleshot capstone again? 25% now isn't it? Seems to me that you guys are getting enough doubleshot to compare with 10k stars now .... sure a monk might still be able to get a few more shots in by amping up his wisdom a bit more but it's still a trade off.... how else are they going to get the extra wisdom?

Where is the mismatch?


I've laid all this out before about 30 pages or so back ... still haven't heard the proof of imbalance between rangers and monkchers.

Ive played both as well with the best gear and past lives ! And her post is not invalidated cause the advantage outside of her wacky numbers is still huge !!

You still haven't answered what monks have to give up , Currently robes are better to use anyway so moot point there !!

What about the extra crit multiplier ? And omg they need more wisdom so that means there str takes a hit , lets say 15 points total or something in that range !! what does that mean ? Since the extra shots make that go away , And doesn't that enhancement grand master of flowers add to the base dmg of bows ?

Point and case is it's way more beneficial to be a monkcher then pure ranger in all aspects of this game !!!

No trade off at all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Recared]

Yes it is. Let's be honest here and not try to fool ourselves. With a ton of sp clickies available and sp pots you will never run out of sp. NEVER.

And with a ton of sf pots you will do the same, which I suggest should see their penalties eliminated, to be fair, as they are not cheap. The Reconstruction of Bladeforged is a sterile debate in my opinion. Besides it was sold as an inherent quality of them. Literally 'sold'... Also, changes are coming... Cocoon? I don't know... You can get over 300 hp back per tick with consecrated twist (for you and nearby party)... Now take 3 melees with consecrated ground (oh by the way, Bladeforgeds see their healing amount income quiet reduced, obviously)... Enjoy. The ones that could use that reconstruct as a real benefit (at a cost of 11 enhancement points (!)) are precisely the melee, which are who we precisely agreed needed help to mitigate incoming damage.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Bf melees get around 400-500 sp, that is enough for 20 reconstructs, is that a lot?

That would be 20 between shrines (assuming all math is correct).

My main uses Heal Scrolls for big heals, and I probably use about 20 for an average quest. And I pay plat for those 20.


Also, if I remember correctly, that could be 20 reconstructs in a single fight.

Is it OP?
Not sure.

One could argue that high UMD builds can carry several hundred heal scrolls into a quest and get better healing.

But BF don't spend any plat and do not even have to unequip their weapon.


Just seems very powerful to me.

And I am seeing so many BF builds that others must think so too.



Anyway, my non-expert opinion on this one is simply a small nerf to increase cooldown so that they cannot fire these off in rapid succession.

But I am not hard set in that opinion.



If they do nerf this, I hope they also look at adding more ways for melees of other (all) races to self heal.
Not to the point of being equal at self healing, but to help them slightly and give more options.
(I would really like to see Heal and Repair skills to be useful to melee guys for self healing. Maybe add Heal/repair to potions effectiveness.)

[rayworks]

I've got a better idea than nerfing us. Fix the bugs!!! Spend dev time on productive, positive change.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

The fact that people think Magister isn't the worst destiny in the game is a joke. It has 2 things worth a ****. Seriously?

It's great for my Pale Master.


But I do really wish they would add something in it for other classes.
I hate the sigils and I cannot confirm that the anti-magic stuff even works.

[SirValentine]

We like being D&D. We are unlikely to significantly alter or remove core feats or abilities from classes or races.
...
...there are definitely some builds that splash 2/3/4 levels for specific enhancements and synergies. While these synergies do provide extra power, they also provide a much wider array of possible choices while still being choices (compared to only requiring 1 level of a class to access the entire tree). There’s still some debate that perhaps 1/2/3/4/5 is too generous, but this isn’t something we’d change lightly.

I'd just like to make a point here:

What is YOUR vision for the role of core class abilities versus "enhancements"? Because those 2 statements seem almost contradictory to me.

Personally, I feel class abilities should be much more fundamental (I like DDO being D&D, too!), while enhancements should just add some extra flavor/power/specialization/diversification/whatever.

But since the enhancement pass, that's not how it is. The combination of much more power in enhancements, with ultra-easy access to enhancements, makes many class abilities almost irrelevant, and enhancements the main point. People do, many current builds do, deliberately give up class levels relevant to whatever their area of focus is, and instead take class levels from classes whose class abilities give them nothing much useful, solely because they give them access to some specific enhancements, which more than make up for the lost power of the class abilities. This seems, to me, to have thrown away the whole "we like being D&D" idea.

[SirValentine]

What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
Major caveat: Anything considered overpowered by some is also loved by others. We’re aware of this. Anything on this list is also NOT automatically going to be nerfed or changed in any particular way, but these are things we may take a closer look at. There’s quite a few other possibilities we might look at, but these were near the top of the list for discussions.
...
• Bladeforged Reconstruct

Also...though I hear from some good melee players that this is crazy-good, there's something more to consider for this item in particular:

Turbine has taken a lot of people's money for access to the Bladeforged Iconic, in large part specifically due to this crazy-good ability. Even if it would OTHERWISE be a prime candidate for nerfing, you might want to weigh in how much of a bait-and-switch sort of vibe you want to put out.

Nobody bought specifically bought Furyshot or 10K Stars the way they bought Bladeforged.

[Daze]

Ive played both as well with the best gear and past lives ! And her post is not invalidated cause the advantage outside of her wacky numbers is still huge !!

You still haven't answered what monks have to give up , Currently robes are better to use anyway so moot point there !!

What about the extra crit multiplier ? And omg they need more wisdom so that means there str takes a hit , lets say 15 points total or something in that range !! what does that mean ? Since the extra shots make that go away , And doesn't that enhancement grand master of flowers add to the base dmg of bows ?

Point and case is it's way more beneficial to be a monkcher then pure ranger in all aspects of this game !!!

No trade off at all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dead horse .. feel free to read the other posts on that topic ...

Don't really care to post here anymore. Not really a surprise why I only have 300 posts on this forum after 8 years of playing. Getting touched in a bad place for asking a new player to keep playing and learning in this very thread is enough for me.

You can read about it elsewhere ....

[maddmatt70]

This is irrelevant. It is blatantly bait/switch. Can you honestly tell me that the
1. Devs who made it
2. The ML’ers who tested it
3. The people on Lama who tested it

None of these people thought that it may have been OP up until now? C’mon. Pure BS.

They can nerf this for all I care, but it is just another reason why my wallet will stay closed.

I have no idea how this made it beyond any player tester worth a grain of salt. The player testers who allowed this through should never test again.

[maddmatt70]

A big part of what I read in the statement by Vargoille is that the devs plan to dumb this game down further by making mobs do less damage on ee. I really hope this is not the case. EE is a nice challenge at the moment it is just the mobs do not attack the players properly. There should be different spells used by the mobs and player ranged characters and spellscasters should be targeted more then they currently are. Epic Elite is epic elite. Epic hard is a joke. Making epic elite a joke will just cause more of us to leave.

[pasterqb]

It's great for my Pale Master.


But I do really wish they would add something in it for other classes.
I hate the sigils and I cannot confirm that the anti-magic stuff even works.

Its not bad for PMs which is why i sometimes use it but besides the tier 2 +3 DC and tier 4 Cooldown reduction i can't name a single thing i would want from it on my PM.

Like you said i hate sigils. In EE you cant stay trapped in a circle so their power is limited as well as pets are terrible. Only other thing decent imo is the 10% mana reduction and maybe the super long cooldown +5 dc.

Its just hands down worse than Draconic imo when you twist in the 2 things i mentioned.

[sirgog]

Yeah but with 2 berjillion build possibilities in DDO (ie not 20k).... there will always be those that are way behind in power.

As long as every ED and every class (not necessarily every pure class, but every class icon at least) has at least one build which is within 20-30% of the 'best' builds in overall performance, I'd say the game would be in good shape.

"Overall Performance" isn't a clear metric at all, but think of it this way - if at high heroic levels, a pure Paladin (IMO the weakest class; if you do not agree, imagine I said pure bard or pure fighter instead) applies to join your group, you know that if their playskill is comparable to the rest of the group, they will help more than the dungeon scaling penalty you suffer accepting them. This isn't true of at least half the EDs in high level EEs - someone in Fatesinger or Shadowdancer will, unless they are an extraordinary player, reduce overall group performance.

[Arianka]

rather than focusing on nerfing multi-classing, you should consider boosting the capstone. Perhaps giving every class a free feat @ level 20 of that class. Additionally, the capstone enhancement available only if you have level 20 of that class should be as good as splashing in a few levels of others classes
- 2 levels of monk gives 2 feats + evasion
- 2 levels of paladin gives you amazing saves
- 2-4 levels of favored soul gives you sp + great crits
- etc., etc., etc.

The benefit of 20 levels of a single class should be equal to the benefit of splashing in other classes - currently that is not the case.

this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No one is "focusing on nerfing multi-classing". If you got that impression from the writeup, perhaps we were not clear enough.

no one would EVER acuse turbine of being unclear, NEVER EVER.

[patang01]

is that casters or melees or both? i admit that i am only on my 2nd BF life and doing it as a pure paladin, so right now Communion of Scribing costs 25 sp. i know there are ways to reduce the cost, but not sure how melees could get the cost so low to be next to nothing. if this is the case for casters than i can see why reconstruct would be on the radar than. big difference with melees needing to repair themselves more often since they are in the middle of fights and the sp pool is by far greater for casters than melees.

I have it and if they decide to nerf it I'm probably going to wonder why I paid real money for it. More to the point, it's about the only special thing Bladeforged has, so if we need to nerf it's special ability nerf all the icons special abilities. In fact give me my money back for paying for iconic races provided that they would have something special too them.

I understand high end DPS and such but no amount of cheap reconstruct will stop someone from dying in EE when you can get hit by asinine amount of damage. And then we have of course the fact that Turbine seem to think 10% repair amp is something on a level 28 armor, when you can find 30% heal amp on level 20 items or make heal amp green steel items.

[Relem]

I seriously can not believe Reconstruct on Bladeforged is considered over powered because they have the ability to cast it 20 times in quest, and a fleshy character would have to take 20 heal scrolls that they paid plat for to do the same. I am going to remain calm, and I am not even going to attempt to give my view on that comment.

The devs have the tools to know exactly what is going on in the game, all the survey did was give them a chance to hear our views. I do remember that back in the days when MotU was released there was a massive up roar about the raid not working properly and that the devs are not listening to the player base. A dev stepped forward and quite clearly stated that they use data from the servers to make an accurate judgement of content. At the time I read that as the dev didn't give a **** what we said as it's one player view against the data from the servers. For reconstruct on bladeforged to be on the radar based on player views, that seems to me that they are not even going to attempt to process the raw data from the servers to get to the root as to why it's overpowered.

The silly thing is, this thread is only about player character balance. Why only player? Should it not be about player and Turbine character balance? Every decision we make about the characters we create is based on what Turbine has thrown at us. I do have fun with the Monkchers and BF Shiradi sorcs asking do they want any beef with their cheese burger and can I have Radiant Forcefield too, but accept that they are needed on the player side because the characters on Turbine side are unbelievable. Turbine characters do not follow the same rules of character creation as the players do. As this for a PvE game, this is highly disturbing. In PnP, if the GM just pulled numbers out of the air for his/her characters, then the players will find something better to do. The players that have designed the various heavyweight multi-class builds (note designed, not copy and pasted from the forum), I have respect for as they created a toon to be able to give players a chance if they choose to use that build.

Now I do believe that some time in the near future that we are going to get some new PvP content added, so I can see why there is a sudden interest in player character balance. Yet we are not going to make any progress on balance till the Turbine characters follow the same rules as the players do.

[BoBoDaClown]

We’ve read the forum posts and tallied the surveys, and want to echo back what we’ve heard from you guys along with some of our thoughts on some specific points. There’s definitely even more feedback we’ve got notes on than just the stuff we’re listing here, but this highlights the most common and passionate feedback.

A compilation of some main points we’ve gathered from your feedback
The presumption is that most comments are about Epic Elite, as explicitly mentioned by many players.

For most characters, it’s hard to stay alive unless you avoid damage entirely.
• Melee monsters hit very hard. This pushes towards playing ranged characters to avoid monster melee damage.
• The most dangerous ranged enemies tend to be casters using spells that can be avoided with Reflex saving throws, which makes Evasion the best way to mitigate ranged damage.
What’s going on with monsters?
• Damage per hit from melee monsters is very high, even if you are building to mitigate it.
o It may be OK to hit this hard against robe-wearing arcane casters, but characters should be able to greatly reduce this damage with medium or heavy armor, appropriate feats, enhancements, destiny choices, and other itemization.
• Some other statistics may need looking at for Monsters, including hit points, saving throws, and the DCs of monster abilities.

On Balance Changes
There’s a wide variety of general opinions, including everything from “buff everything”, “nerf everything”, to “balance nothing”, “have a vision at Turbine and do the right thing!”, each of these repeated by multiple people. The best course probably involves some elements of all of these comments, both buffing and nerfing, possibly including nerfing monsters.
Many players have urged caution with any changes, specifically to minimize collateral damage. As an example, if changes are made to nerf monkcher Furyshotters, don’t break monks, rangers, other Fury of the Wild characters, and all ranged characters at the same time. Favor the scalpel over the sledgehammer.

Some quotes:
• “Characters should have to make tradeoffs. At the moment this isn't happening; some classes are able to have top notch dps and defense.”
• “DDO's greatest differentiating strength is the depth and robustness of character creation and development. The current situation effectively renders that moot, leaving DDO without a competitive advantage.”
• “This is a fantasy game, I log on to feel awesome.”
• “I'd like to see balance change once, to something good enough that most players are satisfied with it, and then stay that way for the duration. That would be perfect. But, you know... many small corrections as the need arises might be good enough.”



On Diversity
A few seemed concerned that balance meant making everything the same. That’s not the goal, and the diversity of different build options represents one of the greatest strengths of DDO. The major reason we would want to balance anything would be to make more builds feel viable and fun to play, even in the most difficult quests.


On Synergy
Many players noted that “overpowered” builds combine amazing synergies that may or may not have been intended. There are occasional combinations that produce unanticipated results, but generally speaking we aim to provide some synergies in character building. It’s OK for certain combos to be more than the sum of their parts, as long as there are lots of different synergies that don’t end up too far apart from each other in terms of fun and viability.

Survival & Defense
We’re thinking about the possibility of making some changes to how armor and shields work, with the goal of making medium and heavy armor more viable forms of defense in epic content. These discussions are at the most preliminary stages, but we’re aware there are issues here.

Multiclassing (ignoring Enhancements)
This could be another entire discussion. But many players thought it was crazy that multiclassing wasn’t the forefront of the discussion, so let’s talk about it.

We like being D&D. We are unlikely to significantly alter or remove core feats or abilities from classes or races.

Evasion is probably the biggest single draw for taking 2 Rogue or Monk levels. However, we may think about how common Reflex saving throws are vs. other saving throws, and other no-save effects that feel fair for monsters and players both. This would be a long-reaching goal, and would need to be made in concert with other changes, such as making sure that players aren’t simply dying, if Evasion was the only thing keeping most characters alive.

Multiclassing and Enhancement Trees
The enhancement pass in Update 19 certainly affected multiclassing. As a matter of learning from history, here’s some reasons why, which we were mostly aware of at the time:
• Frontloading and Minimizing changes to characters: Many popular & powerful abilities are “front-loaded”; they are on low tiers in the enhancement trees. This was very consciously done so that most characters could still get most of what they desired without much hassle. We knew this would incentivize multiclassing, but decided that was an acceptable cost. Even with this, during the enhancement pass there was a great deal of outcry. This is something we could make incremental changes to affect, but each change would probably make some subset of players upset, and we’re in no hurry to revamp everything and move everything around. (Giant tangential discussion for another time or place: “Class” enhancement trees aren’t a simple solution to this.)
• Number of enhancement trees: A major part of the original design (intended to present choice as well as help balance multiclass builds vs. pure builds) was the limit of 3 enhancement trees. Yes, you could still make a Henshin Mystic + Thief Acrobat, but you’d have to make meaningful choices and give things up to get them. Multiclassing is still clearly an increase in power (you get the “best” 3 trees out of 6-9, instead of just 3), but not as much as it is with 6 class trees. Essentially, we changed this due to feedback at the time, knowing it would help lead to the rise of multiclass characters. This is one of those places where we had a vision but it simply wasn’t accepted by the community at-large (which is not to place the blame on anyone.) We try to strike a balance between design considerations and the desires of the people who play our game, so we changed this to 6 class trees.
• Class Level Requirements: The U18 Enhancements largely required 6/12/18 class levels to get “the good stuff”. Both internally amongst the design team and publicly amongst the players, during the Enhancement pass a great variety of class level restrictions were proposed for the 5-tier trees we have now. These included some very strong calls for 1/3/6/12/28 (similar to the old system), all the way down to not requiring any class levels at all (essentially just requiring access to the tree). I’ll take personal responsibility for fighting for the 1/2/3/4/5 system we have today, which was for the goal of meaningful choices along with interesting possible builds. Instead of nearly every build being 20 or 18/2 or maybe 12/6/2, there’s a much wider variety of builds that players consider and actually take. Along with the third Core enhancement requiring level 6, there’s at least some real reasons to want anywhere from 1-6 class levels at least. And there are definitely some builds that splash 2/3/4 levels for specific enhancements and synergies. While these synergies do provide extra power, they also provide a much wider array of possible choices while still being choices (compared to only requiring 1 level of a class to access the entire tree). There’s still some debate that perhaps 1/2/3/4/5 is too generous, but this isn’t something we’d change lightly.

Frequency and Speed of Changes
In the forums, many players agreed that if something was going to be changed, it should be changed right away. However, there were some interesting notes, such as: “sometimes it takes a long long time before the synergy of certain things gets ‘popular’ and then is perceived as ‘overpowered’. Many months sometimes. Just because people discover a synergy straight away doesn't mean it should automatically be nerfed.” Also, the survey responses suggested that we should try to avoid any kind of immediate kneejerk reactions.



As a contemporary note: When something is nerfed for Divine Crusader on Lamannia, or between Lamannia and live launch of the patch, this is sometimes an example of this in action. With our efforts to try to get features in front of players on Lamannia sooner, you are likely to see more changes, including ‘nerfs’. (It’s difficult for designers to even think of changes as nerfs, for a feature that has never been live. Internally here at Turbine, a design may change many times before players even seen it, the power level going up and down all the time.)

What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
Major caveat: Anything considered overpowered by some is also loved by others. We’re aware of this. Anything on this list is also NOT automatically going to be nerfed or changed in any particular way, but these are things we may take a closer look at. There’s quite a few other possibilities we might look at, but these were near the top of the list for discussions.
• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct

Survey
We always appreciate the passionate and detailed feedback you guys provide us, both as forum posts and as survey results. We’re still trying to improve how we construct surveys in the future, including adding N/A options. It was not our intent to only include information from players who were extremely knowledgeable with all classes and epic destines; we could have pointed out that it was fine to leave some answers blank (which many people did).

Here’s an overview of some of the survey results. Reminder that higher values indicate more power.





Thanks for the great feedback! We’ll be reading along and looking for your ideas and opinions.

A lot of interesting information there.

While I appreciate that you said heavy multi-classing was a predicted effect, and it must be noted, not an undesirable effect, it would be nice for balance changes to occur against pure classing. i.e. What does 2 levels of x get you? Ok, lets give Capstones something different but comparable.

[Qhualor]

I have it and if they decide to nerf it I'm probably going to wonder why I paid real money for it. More to the point, it's about the only special thing Bladeforged has, so if we need to nerf it's special ability nerf all the icons special abilities. In fact give me my money back for paying for iconic races provided that they would have something special too them.

I understand high end DPS and such but no amount of cheap reconstruct will stop someone from dying in EE when you can get hit by asinine amount of damage. And then we have of course the fact that Turbine seem to think 10% repair amp is something on a level 28 armor, when you can find 30% heal amp on level 20 items or make heal amp green steel items.

TBH, im loving BF Paladin. i don't feel like my character is OP in the slightest, but he is also not geared out for the class like i would do if BF Paladin was his last life. the only difference i can see between a fleshy Paladin and a BF Paladin is BF get a little more hp back in repairs than a fleshy would in a CSW spell. i am actually considering reincarnating my WF Kensei Fighter into BF Paladin. my hope is that the devs take into consideration how any nerf to BF reconstruct could actually hurt melees if its a universal change, but that depends if/when and how much of a nerf.