Armor and Mitigation Changes

[Thumbed_Servant]

I'm kinda sad to see the 100 PRR cap for robe wearers. My current plan is/was to grind out the 9 divine epic past-lives, but now I don't see the point as it would put me way over the PRR cap
I think it's great to see armor get some love though!

I THINK that is only a base *cap* based on armor type, but still it will be modifiable via past life feats, other feats, and enhancements. So, if I'm correct, your planned past life feats would RAISE that cap for you.

Cheers

[Thumbed_Servant]

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 thought out and well stated. To me it DOES seem silly to even have armor in the game if the most viable builds are viable by NOT wearing armor. These proposed changes go a long way to making armor useful again in the game at the high end; otherwise, just remove armor from the game and then we can all wear fashionable clothing everywhere.

PS....MITHRAL armor....can has fix to this please?

[L2Marshall]

I brought this up once already, but would really like a dev response so I will do so again, and again and again until I get a response. One of the benefits of epic TRing through the divine sphere is increased PRR, but you are applying hard caps to builds based on armor type worn now. For many robed builds these epic past life feats are going to become useless, and lets face it, we didn't TR through 9 divines for power over life and death or block energy stances or even the three PDK for the action boost. I and many others did these past lives to INCREASE our PRR, not to make it easier to get to a then nonexistent cap. I think this issue should be addressed. The fact that 9 of the epic past lives and 3 of the iconic passive past life feats are all bonuses to PRR makes the decision to hard cap PRR unfair to people who have already put in that effort and are now looking at a slap in the face for playing through the content you made for us. If you are dead set on hard capping PRR then the past life feats need to be able to break that cap or be retroactively changed. At the very least you can tell us you know you made us waste our time doing the past lives and that you just dont care.

[thegreatneil]

I brought this up once already, but would really like a dev response so I will do so again, and again and again until I get a response. One of the benefits of epic TRing through the divine sphere is increased PRR, but you are applying hard caps to builds based on armor type worn now. For many robed builds these epic past life feats are going to become useless, and lets face it, we didn't TR through 9 divines for power over life and death or block energy stances or even the three PDK for the action boost. I and many others did these past lives to INCREASE our PRR, not to make it easier to get to a then nonexistent cap. I think this issue should be addressed. The fact that 9 of the epic past lives and 3 of the iconic passive past life feats are all bonuses to PRR makes the decision to hard cap PRR unfair to people who have already put in that effort and are now looking at a slap in the face for playing through the content you made for us. If you are dead set on hard capping PRR then the past life feats need to be able to break that cap or be retroactively changed. At the very least you can tell us you know you made us waste our time doing the past lives and that you just dont care.

So how does a caster get over 100 prr (without monk levels)
If this is a big issue you could get Light Armor Proficiency From EK raising it to 200.

[PsychoBlonde]

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.

Didn't I suggest this a while back in one of the suggestion threads? Neato. I like this idea.

I also suggest that you make it so that items/enhancements that grant PRR ONLY grant MRR if you are WEARING ARMOR (even light armor). Wearing pajamas or robes should leave you vulnerable to damage from spells.

PRR and MRR Cap for armor

Robes or Outfit: 100
Light Armor: 200
Medium Armor: No cap
Heavy Armor: No cap

I'm not sure if this is necessary but it makes sense . . . it's rude that there's a dodge cap for heavy armor but in pajamas you can have all the PRR you can get your grubby hands on. So there should be reciprocity.

~ 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.

Outstanding.

~ The Paladin class has fallen behind beyond the second level so we plan to look at some more compelling reasons to advance in that class.

In large part this is due to the fact that a Paladin is basically just a fighter . . . without the feats. (Same for barbarian). A few quickly-used-up LoHs and Smites do not make up for this. Couple this with the fact that the paladin DPS tree is BAD and, yeah, paladin isn't worth taking past the level where you get the only really good thing the class has going for it, namely, saving throws.

These trees would be available to Fighter, Paladin and perhaps even a new class that supported heavy armor and martial abilities.

Please don't add any new classes until you've got the existing ones solidified. Barbarian in particular still needs work. Artificer, Fighter, (sort of) Sorcerer and Favored Soul all still need a 3rd tree, and I'd like to see the racial trees implemented, too. How about making Vanguard the Dwarf-accessible tree? Mechanic would make a cool halfling-accessible tree (more versatile than Assassin, IMO). Frenzied Berserker for Half-orc, perhaps? Tempest for drow? Not sure if human really needs one, it could just be "one of the above".

But, overall I really like this proposal.

[Thumbed_Servant]

As a few others have already said: Welcome to the forums Severlin

[maddmatt70]

So there is no reason for a heavy armor wearer to concern himself/herself with reflex saves? I am not sure I like that - I think Will, Fortitude and Relfex is very nicely done in D&D in terms of balance, builds and ability scores. MRR does not require much investment that I can see unlike evasion requires saves and dexterity - I think that this is an insufficient proposal and ironically an odd nerf to paladins. I would like a comparable investment to reflex save for this new concept.

By the way D&D has officially left the building.

[Theolin]

I THINK that is only a base *cap* based on armor type, but still it will be modifiable via past life feats, other feats, and enhancements. So, if I'm correct, your planned past life feats would RAISE that cap for you.

Cheers

but I hit 150 already without all the past lives for extra ........ would of been 200+ with everything

[L2Marshall]

So how does a caster get over 100 prr (without monk levels)
If this is a big issue you could get Light Armor Proficiency From EK raising it to 200.

If you read my initial post you will see that I was refering to my originally planned monk build, which could get past 100 without the past life feats. And like you stated casters can now equip heavier armor via EK, and divines have no spell failure anyway so can wear heavy armor with no problems. The point is people put in time to get these past lives specifically to INCREASE their PRR. Now the devs are saying, oops forgot to tell you way back when we put out that release, don't bother if you plan or wearing an outfit/robe. I understand that the past life feats will open up other character/gear options if there is a cap at 100, but that is not what we did all the work for, we wanted to INCREASE what we could already achieve. And BTW casters have ALWAYS had options to wear shields if they wanted a little defense, it is very east to get around the spell failure on Skyvault and Light and Darkness. SO with one of them equipped and the bracers from Deathwyrm and the past lives, yes there is a good chance they can push 100 PRR if they so choose. Monks however don't have any option to break that 100 cap and stay centered (as far as we know at this point). If they want to nerf monks I am fine with that, go ahead do whatever, but if I just spent 3 months TRing to gain a benefit I am now being told I will no longer be able to use, I will be loosing some serious trust in turbine, and I can not really validate continuing to spend the time or resources I have spent in the past. I have paid my VIP dues since 7/27/2006 and this is the first time I have actually come to the forums to complain about some crappy thing turbine is about to do. I am not whining about my build getting nerfed, I am angry at the months I spent to gain a specific benefit I am now being told will not be available. I just want turbine to take into account that they released a game feature that people poured time into and they should not now retract that game feature's benefits.

[Theolin]

So how does a caster get over 100 prr (without monk levels)
If this is a big issue you could get Light Armor Proficiency From EK raising it to 200.

who says caster ... how about a clonkish with about 200 you cannot use stances in armor ..... unless that is the point of course which if so they should just say, yes we are ruining your build to bad

[Thumbed_Servant]

Hello.

As we are talking about armor and changes to armor, I would like you all to consider a change: Raise the Maximum Dexterity Bonus of armors as their minimum levels rise.

DDO's numerical values, as has been stated previously in this thread, has gone outside of the scale of the DnD game that it is based on. As the game progresses and challenges arise for the game much due to this increasing larger numbers scale the developers change things to keep many things/classes/builds viable. One thing, one number, that has not changed for all armors with this growing scale is Maximum Dexterity Bonus for armors.

Level 1 a toon may acquire Plate Armor, a heavy armor with a Maximum Dexterity Bonus of +1: http://ddowiki.com/page/Full_plate

Level 22 a toon may acquire a NAMED heavy armor ALSO with a Maximum Dexterity Bonus of +1: http://ddowiki.com/page/Embrace_of_the_Spider_Queen

Some heavy armors have different Maximum Dexterity Bonuses, but the above example begs that the Maximum Allowed Dexterity be re-examined and re-evaluated across the board with due diligence. It just does not make sense to me that a named heavy armor of lvl 22 would not allow more dexterity to be used than a level 1 non magical set. Not in a game with stats going into the 60's

[Desonde]

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.

Which these suggestions help address but;

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.

Here lies the problem, those certain builds are utilizing the top end of the system to actually thrive in epic elite content (Procing Double Rainbow as fast as possible as much as possible for as little sp as possible, maintaining master's blitz with a stack of displacement and incorp. to drop your chance of being hit to ~25% and tearing down their swarms of hp, waiting for the perfect situation to clear an entire room with absurd spike damage).

All other builds have to figure out a way to not get hit (since in a party you can only get hit 3 times before death) and kill the enemies.

No one change is going to change anything, other than alter the heroic content which is already fairly well balanced, everything needs to be looked at together and addressed as closely as possible (Monster HP/Damage/DCs, Top end of player DPS [look at the exponential curve, there shouldn't be a need for the top 1% to deal 1000x more than the mean], Player defenses).

Let's look at Paladin for example. Capping the saves bonus doesn't stop us from taking paladin levels, the +8 to saves is still going to be needed to actually save against things in EE content, unless it's capped too low it's not going to change anything [if it's capped too low than only Paladins will be able to save against spells in top content and you'll see more paladin levels added into splashes just so their builds can survive]. However, if you lower the amount of saves needed and add a cap to divine grace you'll see paladin splashes removed from many builds to bring in more build variety.

This is because the paladin levels are taken for one reason, and if you attack the solution rather than the problem, you won't invoke any positive change.

[Qhualor]

I'm still trying to understand MRR. With all the gear, past lives, enhancements, etc make certain builds OP that already grant additional saves or boost existing character saves? Seems redundant for evasion builds, especially monks, or builds with good magical saves.

I feel like this is a band aid fix for melees to be able to stand in a fight longer if they don't have evasion or 2 Pally levels.

[Krell]

Say... I've never seen you around here before today. Could you please tell us your job title and/or what you have worked on in the past in DDO?

Those of us that also play Asheron's Call or Asheron's Call 2 are familiar with Sev. I believe he can get credit for resurrecting Asheron's Call 2 not too long ago.

[PsychoBlonde]

It is important to remember in doing these MRR calculations that, UNLIKE PRR, spell damage is further reduced by absorption and resistance items. There are no 30% physical damage absorption items and the only really high DR item is . . . heavy armor.

Is MRR going to stack additively or multiplicatively with absorb items/spells? I'd assume multiplicatively, since that's how other types of absorb currently seem to stack.

Don't think you need to make MMR AS GOOD as PRR, though. SOME mitigation, good. ALL TEH MITIGATIONZ not so good.

I know I'd very seriously consider taking my divine casters out of monk, though. They don't have quite enough reflex save to get the full evasion benefit and that way they'd get some melee damage mitigation from armor PRR. So that would be neat.

[Stoner81]

We will definitely need to address the lack of good small shields in future content. I know we plan to have small shields and bucklers in the loot for the epic version of Orchard which would be released at the same time as these changes.

Sev~

Was talking about making other packs epic with a guildy a few weeks ago and I said then that they should do Orchard and all of Necro at least that would have another epic level raid for people to run. The downside though is yet more undead which I am sick and tired of seeing now to be honest but still would be cool to do a Orchard run with epic level toons!

Anyway back on topic since this is being looked at would it help by changing how PRR is calculated? By this I mean instead of 82 PRR giving x% why not make it like Dodge so that every point represents a 1% chance of course this would mean re-working a lot of stuff but would it solve issues in the long run? Oh and would you change Sheltering to stack with other sources off PRR (like augments) please.

Stoner81.

[PsychoBlonde]

I brought this up once already, but would really like a dev response so I will do so again, and again and again until I get a response. One of the benefits of epic TRing through the divine sphere is increased PRR, but you are applying hard caps to builds based on armor type worn now. For many robed builds these epic past life feats are going to become useless, and lets face it, we didn't TR through 9 divines for power over life and death or block energy stances or even the three PDK for the action boost. I and many others did these past lives to INCREASE our PRR, not to make it easier to get to a then nonexistent cap. I think this issue should be addressed. The fact that 9 of the epic past lives and 3 of the iconic passive past life feats are all bonuses to PRR makes the decision to hard cap PRR unfair to people who have already put in that effort and are now looking at a slap in the face for playing through the content you made for us. If you are dead set on hard capping PRR then the past life feats need to be able to break that cap or be retroactively changed. At the very least you can tell us you know you made us waste our time doing the past lives and that you just dont care.

Considering that you can only get 27 PRR from past life feats, you know what you SHOULD do with a hard PRR cap? Take some of the feats/enhancements/gear you're using to get PRR and put it in something else. You're not FORCED to wear gear and take feats etc. that will increase your PRR above the new cap and make your "hard work" "useless". Swap out some of your gear/feats/enhancements/etc. Those are optional.

If you actually had 150 PRR *purely* from grinding epic past lives, that might be something. But you don't. You have 27, if that. The rest all comes from somewhere that you're now free to get rid of and take something else. You might (OMG) even be able to use a stance that's NOT EARTH STANCE!!!

The difference between 100 PRR and 150 PRR is 7% damage. SEVEN. PERCENT. If a mob hits you for 250, you take an extra SIXTEEN DAMAGE. OOOOOOOOOOO. End of the frickin' world there. Unlike heavy armor wearers who have a dodge cap around 5%, so compared to YOU they're taking (on average) an extra TWENTY percent damage. Oh, wait, more than that, because you probably have ninja spy incorporeality to boot. And you have evasion, so you're ignoring most spell damage while heavy armor folks are eating it full in the face.

Yeah, you're totally the one getting the dirty end of the stick.

[gelgoog]

Just a quick note on MRR and such.

If more numerical information is added to our characters in game via MRR/PRR etc., then you have to update our character sheet pages eventually. The current user interface does not show enough breakdowns or actual effects (blur, ghostly, displacement, etc.) that our characters currently have active.

The user interface for our character sheets is in need of an overdue update.
Also certain feats like trip and stun need to show proper numbers when you hover over the feat.

Please take into consideration as you update the game in the future that the character sheet needs to update with game.

[Delacroix21]

Greetings.



PRR and MRR Cap for armor

Robes or Outfit: 100
Light Armor: 200


Sev~

Ummmm... ***?


So why do monks get 1/2 the physical damage mitigation? Are we able to "evade" damage now? This is ridiculous. Not to mention Robe wearers need insane saves for EE, yet now plate can totally ignore saves and have good mitigation.


Im all for plate getting a boost, and they did get one, but capping robe PRR is a NERF.

[Delacroix21]

Also it should be considered getting an EE worthy reflex save requires a lot of sacrifice, and now plate gets spells reduced with no effort.