Player Character Balance

[Grimlock]

Out of curiosity, how does the DPS on your two monkchers compare?
I mean you obviously have a Monkcher with the 23 STR for OC, the 21 DEX for CA, the sustainable WIS of 40+ as well as the high CHA to use your pally splash, twisted Bane of Undeath Divine Might and get your UMD high enough to use for tensers/heal without gear swapping, as well as your 3 Ranger PLs.
How does that compare to your 28pt 1st life dex to damage Elf?
I would be interested in you posting videos of each against a test dummy to assess the possible disparity in DPS.

Wow he has all of that since starting in January of this year? How can I be that awesome?

[Qhualor]

If bladeforge are nerfed in any way....

Turbine should refund everyone who purchased the class their money back.

I can't agree with this. As a VIP I could say the same exact thing about every class. I've invested real money making my characters powerful and than over the years watch them get nerfed in some form or fashion. Same with any loot that I've seen get nerfed and become useless.

There is lots of confusion with reconstruct and people are generalizing when they should be more specific. Reconstruct for melees doesn't need to be changed. Reconstruct for casters, maybe or maybe not. I can't comment on that since I don't play them, but what from what I have heard and read it does seem OP. The name of the thread is character balance and if that means a pay for class gets nocjed down a notch to be more in line with other classes than that's a good thing in my book, not a bad thing. I really can't stand entitlement issues when DDO has been constantly changing since the beginning and we all know this.

[mons]

You have asked us what classes are overpowered yet did not clarify "multiclass" as thats where the OP issue lies along with ED's accessabilty and Enhancement pass.

Numerous people have mentioned Pure builds not being upto par with the OP multiclass versions yet you fail to mention/discuss/acknowledge the existence of said issue.

Perhaps asking:

How many of you play a Pure Class 1-20 - 20-28?

Would you play a Pure Class 1-20 - 20-28 if the Capstone was enhanced tenfold?

Has anyone tried playing a Pure dc Artie in EE content?

Has anyone tried melee'ing as a Pure Barbarian in a BYOH group doing EE content?

How many out there can rock it with a Pure Bard doing CC/dps/heals in EE Content? (yes, I know a few who can for those who were about to go off)

How many Pure Paladin's out there take multiple Toughness feats because it boosts their confidence of survival?

Dont get me wrong, I love multiclassing as it makes a character more diverse/sufficient but thats where it needs to end, to gain something benefical, something in turn needs to be sacrificed.

[sephiroth1084]

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.

While this is true, I want to make sure that you've acknowledged that not all of the concerns are EE specific. In particular, the problems with barbarians are present during heroic levels (the more popular ways to achieve a barbarian past life is to work in 6-10 levels of bard, or cleric for Ameliorating Strike), and barbarians have a tough time even in EH if the group doesn't have a healer.

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.

You didn't mention it at all in this reply, specifically, so I just want to make sure that you're seeing and acknowledging the multitude of comments indicating that the changes the devs made to the AC and to-hit mechanics back around MotU are problematic, and that the ineffectiveness of AC plays a strong role in why being in melee in tough content is a death sentence, and why building to stand up to that onslaught just doesn't work.

I'll reiterate that one of the major contributing factors to that problem, is that, for whatever reason, monster to-hit bonuses skyrocket in high level content, and especially Epic Elite, beyond anything that is reasonable for players to achieve on their AC. This doesn't serve much purpose, since it isn't actually making the game more difficult in a meaningful way, but rather simply invalidating certain character choices--it does nothing to punish the characters that are strongest earlier in the game, or in easier content, because they probably are getting hit all the time in that content anyway. Most characters don't care about AC, even after your changes, in easier content, because they can simply take the hits/heal through them with scrolls/Cocoon/a hireling.

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.

Would you consider adding some new class features? Some classes could really use some additions being made at their back end.

As has been suggested many times in the past, a couple of ways ot try and balance the /2 rogue or monk splash for some characters would be a two-fold change: first, capstones need to be much stronger for many classes (the changes you made to the Mechanic and Acrobat capstones recently were steps in the right direction), and allowing pure-classed level 20 characters to take tier 5 enhancements in more than one of their trees. Right now, say for paladin, sure, the trees are expensive on their own, but if you aren't interested in spending 50 or 60 AP in one of your two Paladin trees, staying pure looks incredibly unattractive, because you have to choose between the tier 5 stuff in Defender and the tier 5 stuff in KotC. Making this change would be helpful, should be fairly quick and easy, and, for most builds, isn't going to represent too big a jump in power (cleric and wizard are probably the biggest exceptions).

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.

I was against limiting enhancements to 3 class trees, and I maintain that stance. I do think, however, that the 1/2/3/4/5 class requirements are too generous. I think something between that and 1/3/6/12/18 would reasonable, particularly since single-classed characters could find themselves with little to spend AP on if they're locked out of tiers 4 and 5 for so long. Maybe 1/3/6/9/12? Tier 5 already requires character level 12, so that isn't too big a hit, but it puts the best stuff out of reach of some heavily multi-classed characters, while still allowing for some reasonable multiclasses, and puts a bit of a limiter on how much players get to cherry pick from their classes' enhancements. I think it might also see more 9/9/2 splits, in addition to the continuation of the 12/6/2 builds.

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

Keep in mind that this is partially due to the discussing further up about how dangerous it is to stand in melee in tough content. The other half of this is how damage-boosting effects interact with Manyshot and Improved Precise Shot. Personally, I think some of the stuff in Fury (Adrenaline, Fury Eternal, the epic moment) working with ranged attacks, despite some descriptions, is a good thing. Requiring characters to swap to melee to recharge their Adrenaline doesn't do a whole lot to actually balance things, but it does irritate dedicated ranged characters who have no interest in having to swap to melee 50% of the time, or who aren't built to melee effectively. After all, melee characters only have to swap to a ranged weapon about 0.01% of their time in DDO from 1-28.

• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)

This is largely due to their being no real alternatives to 10K Stars. The long doubleshot lockout on Manyshot means that non-monkchers are behind, even with a lot of doubleshot, because it doesn't stack up, while monkchers are largely unaffected, since they aren't spending that much time single-firing after a Manyshot. Ideally, I think, the doubleshot lockout timers would be matched to the duration of Manyshot and 10K Stars, then the ranger class would gain some new stuff to make it competitive with monkchers (a reduction in the Manyshot cooldown, or extension of the Manyshot duration, some new spells that enhance combat abilities, both melee and ranged...though these should be high up in ranger to preclude their being mixed with 10K Stars...so, added as new ranger class abilities at level 15 or higher, or added to Deepwood Stalker in the Core enhancements for level 18 or the capstone).

• Bladeforged Reconstruct

I've no experience with this, but I suspect the problems here are twofold: first, this may be too cheap/have too short a cooldown, and second, it serves to highlight how poor the self-healing options are for many other characters, placing Bladeforged as the obviously best choice for a lot of characters. Although, here is yet another example of where barbarians didn't get an invitation to the party.

[Cardtrick]

How Just How did Magister not claim the bottom spot here its all but useless

It's useful for at least one useful build (DC pale master wizards). And well geared, well built necro-specced pale masters are still extremely powerful.

That's the problem with looking at epic destinies in a vacuum. I can understand the logic of people who rated this highly, and also that of people who rated it poorly. It's true that a completely maxed out necro wizard running in Magister -- the kind for whom the fact that there's an extra point of intelligence in tier 5 of Magister is a big deal, who uses every possible bit of gear, past lives, twists, etc. to maximize their DCs -- is an extremely powerful, perhaps even game breaking character (in some content). I don't feel like that's overpowered at all, since they give up so much to get to that point, and since there are still huge classes of content or enemy types against which they're very limited.

There is absolutely no way that any build running in Fatesinger or Unyielding Sentinel could possibly approach the power of a pure DC wizard in Magister. So from that perspective, it's a powerful destiny.

The other perspective is that of those who have to use Magister on a build that it's not designed for, because they're grinding destinies for fate points or epic past lifes or working their way through the destiny map. Unlike most other epic destinies - even the weak ones like Fatesinger and Unyielding Sentinel -- there's almost nothing of value in Magister. (Unearthly Reactions is a major exception -- that's an extremely useful ability for nearly any build, especially those with evasion.) A melee build in Magister is not significantly more powerful than a melee build with no destinies at all. From that perspective -- ignoring class builds and viewing the destinies in a vacuum -- it's certainly one of the least powerful destinies, if not the single least powerful.

[mons]

100% agree. I'm one of the people who spent real life money for this Iconic Class. I want what I paid for. Please leave it as it is.

Tell that to all the folks who purchased the Reign of Madness Pack to farm the no min level rings. That went well for the player base.

[Teh_Troll]

Can we see a pivot table that shows players that have a Bladeforged character and want Reconstruct nerfed versus players that do not have a Bladeforged character and want Reconstruct taken away? I would hate to see a game feature removed because of resentful players who cannot afford to buy the Bladeforged Iconic Class.

I play a bladforged-centered-kensai with many-shot.

Nerf the hell out of them.

[Alfhild]

I play a bladforged-centered-kensai with manshot.

Nerf the hell out of them.

But before doing any of that, Turbine needs to address the single most glaring omission in the game.

Reskin trolls to include nipples.

[Teh_Troll]

Oh, I see. Fearsome presence isn't worth it. -10% slashing damage - meh. Extra PRR whenever dealt slashing damage - meh again. Power of the forge (aka 4-action-boosts-merged-in-1) - meh yet again... the list goes on, but you probably know all these better than I do.

Human is a much better choice without that SLA working as it is now.

You can pretend that Recon SLA is all there is to BF, but you're not fooling anyone. The truth is BF has a lot to offer to a melee build, even a Recon SLA. But 6sec CD is game-breaking and you know it.

sign up for my course at www.howtonotbeterribleatddo.com. You might like know what it's like to actually understand the game mechanics.

YES . . . the 6 second SLA IS game-breaking . . . but without it BF is garbage. You can't really balance this, it's either OP or ****. That's why I'm saying njerf it and give us a refund and LR+20 hearts with race-change.

[Teh_Troll]

But before doing any of that, Turbine needs to address the single most glaring omission in the game.

Reskin trolls to include nipples.

Get a rope . . .

[kgoodson3]

I'm curious, to those who say don't nerf Bladeforged because I want what I paid for, how many of you agree that the Reconstruct SLA is too powerful? Would you accept a reduced SLA, such as lowering the amp or giving it a slightly longer cool down?

Would you also accept a slight nerf to it, if it improves the game long term from everyone's perspective. Would you not get more enjoyment out of an entire well-balanced game rather than one ability. This of course assumes the game gets balanced well. It may also be that balancing involves upgrading things and not toning things down.

I have paid for most classes, races and quests and welcome ANY changes to the long-term enjoyment or playability of DDO regardless of what I have paid for....

[fmalfeas]

YES . . . the 6 second SLA IS game-breaking . . . but without it BF is garbage. You can't really balance this, it's either OP or ****. That's why I'm saying njerf it and give us a refund and LR+20 hearts with race-change.

Here, a nerf that you can get behind, without touching the SLA.

Give Bladeforged an automatic extra feat! Improved Fortification.

Most players will then abandon them completely.

[Teh_Troll]

I'm curious, to those who say don't nerf Bladeforged because I want what I paid for, how many of you agree that the Reconstruct SLA is too powerful? Would you accept a reduced SLA, such as lowering the amp or giving it a slightly longer cool down?

Njerfing it at all kills the race, so don't pussyfoot around and half-measures. go full-****** and kill it.

I'll tell ya what . . . remove the caster-level limit on CSW/CCW so a bard/ranger/pally of the fleshie variety can hjeal themselves for some more and it would be fine.

And while we're at it . . . adjust the Tempest and KoTC trees to be closer to Kensai in damage dealing. Since the main advantage of ranger/pally was the self-hjeals and fighters now can get that one the BF race there really isn't ANY reason these two classes should be lower DPS.

[redspecter23]

I consider SLA reconstruct overpowered, but not necessarily in a bad way. It's overpowered because it's lightyears ahead of other self healing alternatives. If there were more alternative self healing abilities, it wouldn't be quite so amazing. I'd say they could put a slightly higher level gate on it if they wanted to. Having it kick in at level 18+ would be a good start so it's mostly used in epic play and doesn't warp heroic as much.

My proposed solution is to only nerf recon slightly with the higher min level and perhaps a slightly longer cooldown between 8 and 10 seconds. In addition add a comparable SLA to each of the other iconics. Heal for PDK. Harm for Shadar-Kai (which wold make for some interesting Shadar-Kai pale master builds) and perhaps a regen SLA for morninglords. Give them all a min level of 18 and 8 to 10 second cooldown at the highest tier. I'm not usually a huge fan of rebalancing by bringing everything up to the top tier powered ability, but I think it's justified in this case. Give all the iconics a similar edge.

[SirValentine]

30 to mid 40 is not old.

For a male in the USA, life expectancy is 77.4 years. So the way I see it, split that in two: 0 - 38.7 = young, and 38.7 - 77.4 = old. So, yes, late 30s+ is old.

Feel free to adjust figures for your country & sex. (E.g., women in Monaco aren't old until 45!)

[kgoodson3]

I'll tell ya what . . . remove the caster-level limit on CSW/CCW so a bard/ranger/pally of the fleshie variety can hjeal themselves for some more and it would be fine.

And while we're at it . . . adjust the Tempest and KoTC trees to be closer to Kensai in damage dealing. Since the main advantage of ranger/pally was the self-hjeals and fighters now can get that one the BF race there really isn't ANY reason these two classes should be lower DPS.

That part makes a troll ton of sense. I'm all for buffing other classes. It should already be like this for these classes....or give them a way in the upper levels of the enhancement trees or cores to up the caster level of their positive energy spells.

[EllisDee37]

I never had any issues self healing my ranger [...] My paladin on the other hand can barely stay alive without jumping out of combat.

Why would pally be worse at self healing, same caster levels, same csw, LOHs and heal amp in Kotc.
Duh.

Presumably because his ranger stays safely out of harm's way pew pewing with a bow while the paladin has to get up close and personal to do his damage.

Duh.

[SinnJinn2]

I consider SLA reconstruct overpowered.

i don't fully agree with this, maybe in heroic levels it can be considered overkill, in epics not so much. i find it's sometimes not easy to keep my bf pure arti ( yes i said pure) alive with 2 quickened recons, 1 the sla the other the spell, both set to those 2 little buttons above the scroll wheel for quick access. i could live with raising the min level of when it can be taken, but anything else would make bladeforged just as worthless as pallys, fighters ect.

[BigErkyKid]

Wow he has all of that since starting in January of this year? How can I be that awesome?

Not playing since January 2014, but rather choosing to come to the forums then. I feel I get a lot of hate for the joining date, since people seem to think I am a newcomer talking $hit :P

Answering the original message, I do not play monkchers. I did play a ranger life and when I played with buddy I would use the CC from the ranger or if things got ugly would go kiting mode to finish a boss. We are talking about an heroic life. Note that the ranger was a twfer, but kiting remained an effective, albeit that long (due to lack of dps) strategy.

For monkchers, I have the experience of running with some frequently. I have played extensively with a 8 years vet with EVERYTHING on his monkcher and with 2nd life monkchers that pretty much had build intend and felt short of everything else.

It is clear that the second type did not perform so admirably. However, they were not the first to die and could still contribute. I repeat, I agree with you that ultimate monkchers do require stuff, but I think that it is nowhere near the division between gimp DC sorcs and uber Dr Pepper's sorcs.

[capsela]

This is funny, and accurately summarizes the problem. Ranged is not only OP, it interferes with melee play and is actively anti-social. People who enjoy the social aspects of the game (healer-tank husband/wife pairs typically, and some monkchers/shiradis are actually also rather nice people) are not able to play socially at EE levels. If there is 1 ranged toon in the party, a melee toon stands a slim chance of killing a few mobs not being kited by him. If the number of ranged toons is greater than half the party, then melees can reliably sit back, relax, and watch the show, because there is no way they can catch up with all the running mobs. So once the number of ranged toons reaches a critical level, there is no point in adding non-ranged toons. EH does not demand group play, but in the one difficulty level where group play actually makes quests go faster, you need only ranged toons. Some of the really sociable elite players have respecced into evasion/dodge monk builds which can tank at EE and thus help other melee/healing toons, but most people will just try and find other ranged toons to group with at EE.

The Devs probably believe that this end-game social situation will lead to increasing player bleed from the game, and want to rebalance to prevent this. I will add here that the problem is problem more serious than they think, because once the number of ranged toons cross a critical threshold, I predict massive exodus of players who have no interest in playing ranged toons. And there are many people who just want to be a dwarf and swing an axe, and have no interest in arrows. But Devs have gotten A LOT MORE COMMUNICATIVE recently, and this is an encouraging sign.

There are 3 ways to balance

1) Buff many classes. Varg has already ruled this approach out, on the basis of excessive resource usage. This is a very good idea. Aside from resource consumption, making multiple changes at once vastly increases the number of possible bugs and exploits, will likely introduce more FoTM builds, and invalidates all the information about game balance the players have accrued thus far.

2) Nerf/buff selected abilities. Least resource usage, and least chance of introducing bugs. I add 2 suggestions 1) Always introduce some buffs along with some nerfs. If you just nerf, quests become harder to complete, low morale will set in, and people will accuse you of breaking their already-paid-for monk class etc. Give players some reason to cheer amid the inevitable grumbling. 2) Publicize nerfs/buffs on the forums way in advance. Some people will threaten to leave as you break their toons, some will be serious while others will be faking, but you will have actual data in the form of log in stats and the kinds of toons being played more often pre- and post-publication of said nerfs/buffs. Potential problems will be spotted, and if the player hemorrhage proves to be higher than anticipated, you can always rescind the changes.

3) Nerf/buff monsters. Likely very labor intensive. But potentially will upset the player base the least, since from a psychological perspective, many players will not notice these changes. An approach worth considering. And since you guys just collected feedback on monster behavior/stats anyway, might be the way to go.

As a cleric who played back in 09, the lack of teamwork and plain rudeness of today's uber soloist builds is especially disheartening. And to all the ubers who say they will leave when you nerf their broken builds, I say good riddance. They never spend money in the store anyway. All they do is farm ee loot probably multiboxing and sell on the ASAH or for TP codes. If they take their ball and go home the game will probably be better for it. I certainly won't miss their snobbery. Let them go exploit a different mmo and continue being kings of their mom's basement.