Armor and Mitigation Changes

[btolson]

While you are working on this, can you please work in proper support for armor material types (mithral, adamantine, etc). Some new bonuses are needed (e.g. adamantine dr is useless), and typing needs to be fixed (e.g. mithral full plate should gain PRR/MRR as if it were heavy armor, not medium). This is still very important to do, along with adding these material types to random loot-gen items, as druids still cannot wear any random loot-gen medium armor (it's all metal).

Please, please. It's been at least two years since material types were busted.

[Dimack]

Anyone else notice that Teh_Troll vanishes and suddenly we have a new dev who isn't a monk fanboi... hmm

[LuKaSu]

This looks like it has a lot of potential! Thanks for making Heavy Armord types valid again. It oens up tons of possibilities. Again, Thank You Very Much!

What if any changes are planned for Mithril, especially named mithril.

Also this. I know Mithral is supposed to be give the AC of one level, with the weight of the next one down (like Mithral Chain Shirt giving the AC of medium, but being light) Is there a chance that this might be taken into effect with the PRR/MRR system as well? Like, give the PRR of medium, while being light? Not giving all the benefits, like the Stalwart stuff, but just the PRR/MRR. I'd love to give my Favored Soul (initially only proficient in Medium) some damage resistance, since he also isn't an evasion character.

I know I saw a lot of hate from people with super maxxed evasion tanks, but I think these changes will be great for the vast majority of players. Yes, with anything, you'll have your griefers, but I think this will help a lot more people than it will break.

It just seems to me that heavy duty warriors shouldn't have to run around in robes to have good defences. This really has potential to help that.

Once change that I would recommend, however, is making buckers function the same as light shields. We've just set up this whole idea of Swashbuckling, with a one handed weapon and a buckler. I think it would be nice to have some synergy there.

Thanks again, I'm really looking forward to this!

[Nightmanis]

That's what I'm saying, the Duelist's Leathers I'm wearing has a 28 Max Dex Bonus, so it doesn't interfere at all with the max Dodge Cap I am able to have. The Duelist's Leathers is a Light Armor, so if the max Dodge Cap for Light Armor becomes reduced to 20, then I will no longer have a 25% Dodge Cap while wearing Light Armor anymore for the Duelist's Leathers if this change goes through.

I'm not sure if it's just plainly obvious to me or not, but he's said multiple times that it will use whatever is higher.

One poster did point out that he's using max dodge cap where most of us think of max dex bonus.

So your armour that gives 28 MDB will also allow for a 25% dodge cap. Because that number is higher than the 20 that is being laid out to overwrite any armour that doesn't have that much.

[Thar]

Greetings.

Physical Resist Rating
The first change is to prepare Physical Resist Rating for use in the armor changes. The formula for the rating will change to the following formula, with the resulting multiplier applied to all physical damage.

150 / (150 + PRR)

This progression follows the current formula very closely out to 300 and then this formula is more generous at those higher end values.

As examples, a PRR of 50 would offer a damage multiplier of 0.75, a PRR of 100 would offer a damage multiplier of 0.6, and a PRR of 200 would offer a damage multiplier of 0.4285.

Magical Resist Rating
In addition, we are adding a new value called Magical Resist Rating. The formula for the rating will be the same as for PRR, with the resulting multiplier applied to all magical damage.

150 / (150 + PRR)

This new rating will apply to most non-physical damage sources including spells, elemental damage, poisons, lingering damage, and similar effects.

It is our intention that existing magical items that provide PRR would also provide MRR.



In addition, characters who are proficient with shields can also use the larger shields for defense against magical attacks that would normally require a Reflex saving throw. Instead of (or in addition to) using your Reflex saving throw to mitigate the damage you can deflect the damage off your shield. This is represented by increasing your Physical and Magical Resist Ratings against those types of attacks when using a shield. Note that you gain this additional mitigation whether you make your Reflex saving throw or not.

Physical and Magical Resist Rating multiplier against magical attacks that normally allow a Reflex saving throw.

Buckler: 1.0 (no additional mitigation)
Light Shield: 1.0 (no additional mitigation)
Heavy Shield: 2.0
Tower Shield: 2.0

This means that characters with heavier armor and/or heavy or tower shields have an alternate mitigation against large area of effect attacks to help them compete in high level content with characters who use Evasion.

As an example, let’s take the case of a character built today to use heavy armor and tower shield and maximize PRR. Assuming a character had a PPR rating of 200 previously they would have a damage multiplier of ~ .4370 to physical damage.

While this mitigation is decent, characters built this way tend to die quickly once effects like Fireballs and dragon’s breath are flying around the battlefield.

Under the new system they would have a PRR and MRR of 260 which would translate to a damage multiplier of .4285 for both physical and magical damage. Against area of effect attacks (magic requiring a Reflex saving throw) this would be increased to 520, which translates to .2238.

In this example, when the heavily armored and shielded character is hit by dragon’s breath for 500 damage it would be reduced by his/her enchanted armor and shield down to 112. Meanwhile characters in light or no armor could use Evasion to attempt to negate the damage entirely.



Sev~

So what your saying is that you can have a light armor, light shield tank with good dodge with no prestige class benefits ie pally/defender, or have a heavy armor, much higher ac, and magic damage dr with prr.

so

light armor tank will come up against 1000 hp attack melee or magic. *who gave up dps, capstone, 2 classes in non class

vs melee 1000 hp vs 90 ish prr = 600 hp damage but hit more often than option 2 since way lower ac
vs 1000hp magic = save so % of the time for zero. so full damage 10% of time with normal evasion? so 1000 damage one time out of - resist= 950 x 50% sheath = 475 - 33% = 313.5ish 10% of time?

vs.

vs melee heavy tank 1000 hp vs 200 prr = 400 hp damage and hit less since way higher ac.
vs magic 1000 hp vs 200 mrr = 400 hp damage - resist = 350 x 50% sheath = 175 -33% absorb item = 115 damage

so any non monk evasion tank is not viable after changes.

[Xaxx]

Greetings.

~ The Stalwart Defender and the Sacred Defender will no longer be shield based trees. Instead, the enhancements that current require shields will be changed to require medium or heavy armor.


Sev~

Why not simply give the option of any of the three shield or medium or heavy armor required for use, so as not to bone any current builds already in use. I like alot of the changes, but if this is ment to make heavy armor wearers and tanks more effective again, people who chose to be an evasion tank (light armor stalwart) rather than moving to this would get hurt in this. Im all for making other things viable but not to make a current build much less useful. Hence make it shield or medium/heavy... or both for those inclined. Just my 2 cents.

[ForgettableNPC]

I'm not sure if it's just plainly obvious to me or not, but he's said multiple times that it will use whatever is higher.

One poster did point out that he's using max dodge cap where most of us think of max dex bonus.

So your armour that gives 28 MDB will also allow for a 25% dodge cap. Because that number is higher than the 20 that is being laid out to overwrite any armour that doesn't have that much.

Yeah, I caught onto that after going through a few pages.

But thanks for trying to help.

[Severlin]

Why not simply give the option of any of the three shield or medium or heavy armor required for use, so as not to bone any current builds already in use. I like alot of the changes, but if this is ment to make heavy armor wearers and tanks more effective again, people who chose to be an evasion tank (light armor stalwart) rather than moving to this would get hurt in this. Im all for making other things viable but not to make a current build much less useful. Hence make it shield or medium/heavy... or both for those inclined. Just my 2 cents.

This is a good suggestion; make the shield based enhancements into multi-selectors. I will bring this up to the team.

Sev~

[Hawkwier]

I like the premise, but this also has a knock on effect in nerfing THF by comparison.

Unless THF is boosted by increasing associated DPS it is in danger of becoming obsolete by the power-creep in alternative styles.

Also I think the dodge cap limits are too restrictive. Consider doubling them if not using a shield.

Is any improvement to fix AC out the window now? Seems so.

Finally can you please also take an opportunity to overhaul Barb DR. Like my concerns over THF, this has been stealth nerfed by power-creep to be almost inconsequential at epic levels. Seems like this might be an opportune time to redress that?

[Yaga_Nub]

Instead of adding in ridiculous new formulas and code that will just break at some point and have to be recoded why not do the real reasonable thing which is to reduce the damage these FRACKIN' mob do. It doesn't matter if it's physical or magical, they do to much GD damage. We have to do insane amounts of damage that you keep bumping up with more and more augments and new types of weapons which in turns makes you bump up the HP of mobs even more. It's like an arms race that you're running against yourself to win. Yes we like big numbers and different types of damage but we don't like swinging for 5 min per mob (in EE of course. it's not quite as bad in EH but it's still not fun). The inverse goes for us. We can't keep absorbing multi-hit 500+ damage from mobs that bypass our fort as well and have true seeing to get past our blurs and displacements. We can't live through 12K hp breath weapon attacks from a mob. We already have several ways to reduce the damage from elemental damage. Give us a way to protect against force and light damage and we don't need your MRR. Reduce the damage that mobs are doing by 50% and we don't need a need PRR formula or MRR at all. Change Magic Resistance to work like it is supposed to and you've got your frickin' MRR. People will want to be drow and paladins a bit more. Remove PRR from anyone wearing robes or outfits. They shouldn't have it in the first place even if they have a blue augment, planar focus or any other item that gives PRR. Or set it to 1 for robes and outfits, 50% for light armor, 75% for medium and 100% for heavy armor.

However, back to my original plea - stop trying to be clever with this stuff because you're not and you're just screwing things up.

[thegreatneil]

Why not simply give the option of any of the three shield or medium or heavy armor required for use, so as not to bone any current builds already in use. I like alot of the changes, but if this is ment to make heavy armor wearers and tanks more effective again, people who chose to be an evasion tank (light armor stalwart) rather than moving to this would get hurt in this. Im all for making other things viable but not to make a current build much less useful. Hence make it shield or medium/heavy... or both for those inclined. Just my 2 cents.

This is a good idea. take what we have now and makes it better.
Buff not nerf!

[Severlin]

why not do the real reasonable thing which is to reduce the damage these FRACKIN' mob do.

We have been looking at the epic elite melee damage.

That said, the reason we don't only do this is because there are a number of well designed builds currently in play that already thrive in the epic elite content. Lowering the damage and capabilities of the creatures would do nothing to convince the players to move to less powerful builds, nor would it provide a compelling reason to examine the benefits of lots of builds, classes and items that are being largely ignored at the end game. Our goal is not to make the game easier, but rather to provide a wider variety of compelling and fun character builds.

When we examined the current builds being used and read through the player feedback in the balance thread one thing was clear; armored characters were not well represented in the end game. Not only does this shut down a lot of classes, but the heavily armored character is an iconic figure in D&D lore and art. We wanted to give players a reason to develop those types of characters.

Sev~

[Mryal]

Ok so..first things first:

If i have to do an epic abbot version that is exactly like the heroic one to get new loot, i am quitting.Or shooting myself.wichever comes first in a 1d2 roll.


So armor changes! its long overdue.Looks cool.Paladins viable.Few points :

1- What will be the balance between fighter and paladin? Seems paladin will be an unkilable god.(pure).Compared to figther wich will have horrible saves.

2 - so different mechanics and bonuses for armor types.OK.Makes sense.What are the bonuses?

robe - enables evasion,lets you be centered,and caps your PRR to 100. Capping PRR is pointless when armor is alredy giving way more than robe.
light - enables evasion, and caps PRR to 200.Again, cap to PRR is not needed
medium - adds more PRR/mrr.
Heavy - adds more PRR/MRR than anything else.
Ok so its clear that people using medium armor will be the worst.But.how much of a problem is that? Heavy armor proeficency is a feat.It can be fixed.Like some others pointed, using heavy armor only takes one feat wich is autogrante by some classes at 1.

Ok so, heavy armor = gives more magic resist.What is magic resist? it means you take less damage versus magic, duh.Seems obvious.This is a dnd game, nothing is that simple.What it really means is:
Reduces damage versus : reflex,fort,will, and no save spells.

Now, quick comparison!

evasion - lets you take no damage versus a REFLEX based spell.If you fail the save, you take full damage.Rolling a 1 auto fails.All you invested can be wasted in a 5% chance.You can take one feat to solve that.
Improved evasion - lets you take no damage versus a REFLEX based spell.If you fail the save, you take half.
The line of thought its clear here.Heavy armor is the best 'armor' for defense, and imp evasion is the best evasion for defense.Lets not even count the fact that armor blocks non reflex spells aswell.Lets only look at this :

What are the requirements for evasion? 2 rogue, 2 monk.For improved evasion? 5 ranger TWF, 9 monk or 10 rogue.
What are the requirements for using Heavy armor? 1 fighter/paladin to get it for free.Or one feat that can be taken by ANYONE.

What have we concluded? Evasion limits your build.But we alredy knew that.Splashes can be ok.But improved evasion? Fitting improved evasion is hard.Its much, much easier to get a heavy armor instead.
So how about we let Improved Evasion be taken as a feat.With Evasion as requirement.

Last but not least :

~ The Stalwart Defender and the Sacred Defender will no longer be shield based trees. Instead, the enhancements that current require shields will be changed to require medium or heavy armor.

Sev~

This kills builds.Anything that kills builds is not nice.You killed my monk build by changing this stance before.Again, those changes are nice.But theres a lot of overkill here.Theres gonna be so much bonuses for using armor, we alredy established a few lines ago that going heavy armor is the easy route.Theres also more buffs to shields, wich i am not mentioning here.How about you change those stances back to how they were.With NO requirements.Everyone will be happy.
By the way nice to meet you Severlin! looks like youre the barbarian/fighter designer!
So, who is the bard designer? Who am i giving my gratitude for a job well done?

[Hendrik]

Instead of adding in ridiculous new formulas and code that will just break at some point and have to be recoded why not do the real reasonable thing which is to reduce the damage these FRACKIN' mob do. It doesn't matter if it's physical or magical, they do to much GD damage. We have to do insane amounts of damage that you keep bumping up with more and more augments and new types of weapons which in turns makes you bump up the HP of mobs even more. It's like an arms race that you're running against yourself to win. Yes we like big numbers and different types of damage but we don't like swinging for 5 min per mob (in EE of course. it's not quite as bad in EH but it's still not fun). The inverse goes for us. We can't keep absorbing multi-hit 500+ damage from mobs that bypass our fort as well and have true seeing to get past our blurs and displacements. We can't live through 12K hp breath weapon attacks from a mob. We already have several ways to reduce the damage from elemental damage. Give us a way to protect against force and light damage and we don't need your MRR. Reduce the damage that mobs are doing by 50% and we don't need a need PRR formula or MRR at all. Change Magic Resistance to work like it is supposed to and you've got your frickin' MRR. People will want to be drow and paladins a bit more. Remove PRR from anyone wearing robes or outfits. They shouldn't have it in the first place even if they have a blue augment, planar focus or any other item that gives PRR. Or set it to 1 for robes and outfits, 50% for light armor, 75% for medium and 100% for heavy armor.

However, back to my original plea - stop trying to be clever with this stuff because you're not and you're just screwing things up.

Die Yaga, die!

[Thumbed_Servant]

These changes will make or break a LOT of builds, can we put in now for another LR +20?

....greedy, but maybe appropriate

[count_spicoli]

We have been looking at the epic elite melee damage.

That said, the reason we don't only do this is because there are a number of well designed builds currently in play that already thrive in the epic elite content. Lowering the damage and capabilities of the creatures would do nothing to convince the players to move to less powerful builds, nor would it provide a compelling reason to examine the benefits of lots of builds, classes and items that are being largely ignored at the end game. Our goal is not to make the game easier, but rather to provide a wider variety of compelling and fun character builds.

When we examined the current builds being used and read through the player feedback in the balance thread one thing was clear; armored characters were not well represented in the end game. Not only does this shut down a lot of classes, but the heavily armored character is an iconic figure in D&D lore and art. We wanted to give players a reason to develop those types of characters.

Sev~

Well said. Me and many of my friends zerg blast alot EE Con tent. IN NO WAY DO I WANT TO SEE IT NERFED. I PLAY AN EXTREMELY VI ABLE MEL EE IN EPIC. So it is good to see the devs taking this approach.

[LuKaSu]

I had interpreted it as multiclassing between fighter, barbarian, and designer. Instead of being the designer for fighters and barbarians.

[Thumbed_Servant]

Any chance you guys will use this occasion to fix Mithral?

Right now mithral armor is worse than normal armor. It gives PRR like the lighter armor, yet tends to have dodge caps like the heavier one.

Can you reverse that? Mithral plate, such as the Cove armor, should be giving PRR of heavy armor yet the dodge cap of medium armor....

Yes, PLEASE fix Mithral, ty

[Thumbed_Servant]

Stat inflation ruined a D20 based system. DnD characters do not get stats in the 60's by level 28. PC's do not get abilities with DC's in the 60-100 range in DnD (by level 28). In PnP, If you run into Asmodeus, you will most likely fail the DC 50 will save, and willingly serve him. With DDO stats, a rogue (DC 70 Reflex) can auto-succeed while another toon (DC 35 Reflex) can auto-fail. This doesn't happen often in PnP because the Rogue might have a DC 30 Reflex and the other toon might have a DC 18 Reflex. DDO can not operate well on the D20 system because of broken mechanics from stat-inflation.

Having ruined the D20 system (auto-succeed or auto-fail happens on a regular basis), dev's implemented a curve based system for AC. PRR was added as a way to allow tanks (heavy armor) to be useful. These changes seemed to work fairly well, but revealed a flaw in that light or no-armor toons with evasion (using dodge) could tank as well as heavy armor users.

The best answer would be to fix stat creep. Lowering stats to reasonable levels would not be popular, and is probably not a realistic solution that players would accept. I see 2 solutions.
1. Go to a D30 or D40 (instead of D20) system to reduce the auto-fail, auto succeed issue.
2. Stat bonuses could be cut in half for saves. (58 Reflex gives you +12 to saves instead of +24 to saves).

I like #2 better because it sticks with the D20 system. Mob DC"s would need to be dropped by 10-15. Both will help fix most of the problems with DC based builds (necro, monk QP, assassin). Either solution would also allow dev's to reduce evasion-based damage (most classes will fail some of the time now, making evasion useful but not required). This will fix most of the heavy armor issues (taking too much elemental damage) while remaining true to DnD.

Please stop making increasingly complex mechanics and fix the core problem. Complex mechanics cause problems when players find all of the "holes" in your new system designed to fix the last set of mistakes.

Astute observation with some interesting ideas.

Yes, DDO has gone outside of the DnD d20 system as far as scale, and this inflation in my opinion too has made the core mechanic less viable.

[Thar]

This is a good suggestion; make the shield based enhancements into multi-selectors. I will bring this up to the team.

Sev~

same with the heavy shield restriction on evasion please, otherwise all the current good shields (ie named) are uselss to light armor stawarts.