Armor and Mitigation Changes

[Psiandron]

or an actual S&B line of feats.

In addition to the 4 shield feats currently available?

Because to me, that seems a bit much.

Now if you felt that those might be amended somewhat, I wouldn't mind hearing that.

[Grailhawk]

In addition to the 4 shield feats currently available?

Because to me, that seems a bit much.

Now if you felt that those might be amended somewhat, I wouldn't mind hearing that.

Shield Mastery, Improved Shield Mastery, and Improved Shield Bash whats the 4th?

[Psiandron]

Shield Mastery, Improved Shield Mastery, and Improved Shield Bash whats the 4th?

Shield Deflection

[lyrecono]

In addition to the 4 shield feats currently available?

Because to me, that seems a bit much.

Now if you felt that those might be amended somewhat, I wouldn't mind hearing that.

on a tank these days i rather have the swf feats over the shield ones, tanks can use all the help they can get in terms of dps
Shield Mastery, Improved Shield Mastery gave diminishing returns once your prr hit certain levels, shield bash is somewhat weak, shield deflection doesn't work well enough for everyone due to lag and can be taken with epic destinies and epic past lives if needed.

[Psiandron]

on a tank these days i rather have the swf feats over the shield ones, tanks can use all the help they can get in terms of dps
Shield Mastery, Improved Shield Mastery gave diminishing returns once your prr hit certain levels, shield bash is somewhat weak, shield deflection doesn't work well enough for everyone due to lag and can be taken with epic destinies and epic past lives if needed.

I understand that. I wasn't the one who proposed a new line of S&B feats.
My thought was that if anything is done in this direction, it would probably be better to modify existing feats to make them useful, rather than adding more feats to the game. You know, less clutter and all that.

[Thar]

So Dev's,

is it fair to give up 2 levels of another class, AC for wearing light armor, prr for wearing light armor, slotting reflex for maxing saving throws due to insane dc's and now heavy shields reduce the above even more?

what does the heavy armor tank give up. nothing for the same protect with the proposed mrr change.

don't change heavy shields not to work with evastion.... most heavy armot tanks would use tower shields anyway. Don't mess with 7 yrs of ddo coding.

[lyrecono]

I understand that. I wasn't the one who proposed a new line of S&B feats.
My thought was that if anything is done in this direction, it would probably be better to modify existing feats to make them useful, rather than adding more feats to the game. You know, less clutter and all that.

I think i quoted the wrong person (that's what you get for posting 04:00-ish at night...)
But i think you're right about the feats, i highly doubt that they'll listen, the last couple of years, i've seen the dev's trying to pigeon hole the classes into certain roles.
The idea of having a "defensive Tank" do a few points of damage more with those swf feats must horrify them.... XD

So Dev's,

is it fair to give up 2 levels of another class, AC for wearing light armor, prr for wearing light armor, slotting reflex for maxing saving throws due to insane dc's and now heavy shields reduce the above even more?

what does the heavy armor tank give up. nothing for the same protect with the proposed mrr change.

don't change heavy shields not to work with evastion.... most heavy armot tanks would use tower shields anyway. Don't mess with 7 yrs of ddo coding.

That's exactly the point of these changes, a pure paladin has no dps (vs a sorc), no defence vs aoe spells(vs a pal18/monk2), has no defence in EE melee since the dev's broke the entire thing. Even with the changes in effect, "tanks" still have to struggle with armor penalty:
assuming a full plate with tower shield, thats a -16 to:
Balance, due to the close combat nature, tanks are always at the risk of being tripped, lag issues prevent proper blocking of it.
Hide&move silently: how many runs are made invissed to avoid as many EE mobs as possible? (due to their nature of having to much hp)
Jump, essential to melee's for their jump&clicky/scroll usage and getting out of thight spots
Tumble, essential to avoid boredom.

Last but not least: a -32 to swim!
Furthermore the AC that's supposed to come with it still doesn't work in EE,
You're still not getting in high level parties because you're not contributing according to the elitists, no dps to speak of. even with these changes, you're nothing more then a speedbump towards the ranged dps, assuming you can hold a mob down after he presses manyshot or 10k stars.
I'm sorry to say but i think a toon with full plate& tower shield looses more then one might realize.

[MangLord]

I feel like this conversation could be a lot simpler. Given the track record, I know it's not the Turbine way to simplify, but it would really help new players get a handle on the system, and for veterans to get a handle on big, drastic changes in a core system relatively quickly. Rather than have all these different systems of damage mitigation, misses, % differentials and such, wouldn't it be easier to just tie an AC number to given amount of overall damage mitigation?

As it is now, we have three separate systems all working in tandem. The other day, I tried to explain to a new guildie (she's been playing for a year, but new to my guild) how AC, PRR and evasive defense all worked together. The easiest system to explain was that a 20% blur, 20% dodge (rounded to simplify the explanation) and 10% ghostly effects all worked together, and allowed her character to outright avoid X amount of incoming damage based on a percentage. Boosting AC was much harder to justify, given that epic enemies rarely miss, and damage was much better absorbed through temporary HP proc items and blanket miss chances. When she asked what the point of armor was, I had no good answer. I feel like the entire system needs to change for me to have a rationale for wearing armor.

I honestly don't know what my 70AC is worth. I have a % miss chance based "at level", 20ish %, but basically every enemy I face is above my level. Given how often I'm hit with a 20% blurry, 10% incorporeal and 23% dodge, my AC doesn't account for much. I never paid attention because it was unreliable after elite Harbor quests.

PRR is a monolithic system that gets even harder to explain, but I summed it up as a system that if you are hit after your blanket miss chance, it absorbs a portion of incoming damage, unless its a spell. She's a smart girl, but she said it felt like a college math class she had to sit through.

Given how tedious the system is, couldn't we just do away with PRR and MRR and make a blanket effect that negates X amt of damage, straddling the line between outright miss chances and PRR? Rather than adding in another factor of MRR, could we not make different types of armor absorb a certain level of damage outright?

Another option would be to scale back enemy to-hit so that AC becomes useful in the current state. It should be pretty reliable even if a player chooses to deviate from full defense on their build. It shouldn't be all or nothing. DDO is about customization, its what separates this MMO from all others. A decent AC should count for something, instead of being basically worthless. There should be some significant benefit for a fighter kensei to THF with a great-weapon and still gain a passive, meaningful benefit from heavy armor without blocking. Existing PRR is ok, but obviously not enough to ditch over sleepwear and dodge bonuses in the current state of the game. Passive PRR alone is not enough, or should be tripled.

Couldn't AC just provide a blanket bonus to damage ignorance similar to existing dodge/blur/ghostly bonuses and PRR? A suit of full plate armor should count for much more than it does. At least enough to be a viable option based on play preference? It would still reward a player choosing to wear armor while not penalizing players that chose to rely on reflexes and a lightly armored style. It seems intuitive that a warrior decked out in full armor should have a lot of incoming strikes just glance away and be ignored.

As a basic example, say you're wearing a suit of celestial full plate as a level 26 Dwarf Greataxe Kensei. Armor might outright block 50% of all incoming damage as a general armor bonus. (Medium armor might be 30% and light might be 15%) If I were a Stalwart Defender, my shield might add another 10% passive shield bonus, boosted to an additional 25% while actively blocking. If I were playing EE Gianthold, I could run into a room, block, and my defense would mitigate a single hit from 200pts down to 50pt per hit. That is something I could deal with, but would still become an emergency if the cleric wasn't on the ball with 5-6 enemies beating on me at once with 1200hp to break down.

Clearly DDO has drawn away from the core PnP rules, especially in epic difficulties, so I feel like now is the time to either scale back towards PnP, or fully embrace DDO as a similar but separate MMO system. Everything has gotten so esoteric that I'm getting embarrassed talking about my game to other hardcore gamer friends who console or play WoW. They think I'm nuts. That's bad.

New players just don't have the time to acquire a PhD in DDO in order to learn all the various systems, and lose interest.

K.I.S.S.

[Faltout]

Noone has to get a PhD in the game they play for the first time. You always start by understanding a small basic part of the game and then build up your knowledge piece by piece as you play. That's why new players don't have the best characters.
Now while for some other games complexity may be limited, the thing that makes D&D and eventually DDO one of the most successful games is the complexity, customization and balance of it.

[Ausdoerrt]

I think i quoted the wrong person (that's what you get for posting 04:00-ish at night...)
But i think you're right about the feats, i highly doubt that they'll listen, the last couple of years, i've seen the dev's trying to pigeon hole the classes into certain roles.
The idea of having a "defensive Tank" do a few points of damage more with those swf feats must horrify them.... XD

We should keep pressing though, they'll come around eventually. Remember how they used to be afraid of ranged damage, now look at the game today

[lyrecono]

yes, but where did that leave us?
Mob hp/dps so high (to facilitate "tanks") backfiring so that everyone had to go ranged....
hmmmm, i guess i'm still a tad bit sceptic and not willing to wait another 4 years, like they did with ranged XD

[Ausdoerrt]

In addition to the 4 shield feats currently available?

Because to me, that seems a bit much.

Now if you felt that those might be amended somewhat, I wouldn't mind hearing that.

I think what he meant was an actual feat LINE, rather than 4 vaguely related feats not necessarily connecting into a single combat style.

Shield mastery feats are a good start, but IMO should be expanded to a full 3+1 epic feats and improved to match other fighting styles. Improved Bashing should be removed and its benefits added to the mastery line (scaled). Shield Deflection could stay a single feat or disappear, for all I care.

[Kalevor]

I think i quoted the wrong person (that's what you get for posting 04:00-ish at night...)
But i think you're right about the feats, i highly doubt that they'll listen, the last couple of years, i've seen the dev's trying to pigeon hole the classes into certain roles.
The idea of having a "defensive Tank" do a few points of damage more with those swf feats must horrify them.... XD


That's exactly the point of these changes, a pure paladin has no dps (vs a sorc), no defence vs aoe spells(vs a pal18/monk2), has no defence in EE melee since the dev's broke the entire thing. Even with the changes in effect, "tanks" still have to struggle with armor penalty:
assuming a full plate with tower shield, thats a -16 to:
Balance, due to the close combat nature, tanks are always at the risk of being tripped, lag issues prevent proper blocking of it.
Hide&move silently: how many runs are made invissed to avoid as many EE mobs as possible? (due to their nature of having to much hp)
Jump, essential to melee's for their jump&clicky/scroll usage and getting out of thight spots
Tumble, essential to avoid boredom.

Last but not least: a -32 to swim!
Furthermore the AC that's supposed to come with it still doesn't work in EE,
You're still not getting in high level parties because you're not contributing according to the elitists, no dps to speak of. even with these changes, you're nothing more then a speedbump towards the ranged dps, assuming you can hold a mob down after he presses manyshot or 10k stars.
I'm sorry to say but i think a toon with full plate& tower shield looses more then one might realize.

agreed, people keep saying that wear heavy armor is cost free... nonsense

[Psiandron]

I think what he meant was an actual feat LINE, rather than 4 vaguely related feats not necessarily connecting into a single combat style.

Shield mastery feats are a good start, but IMO should be expanded to a full 3+1 epic feats and improved to match other fighting styles. Improved Bashing should be removed and its benefits added to the mastery line (scaled). Shield Deflection could stay a single feat or disappear, for all I care.

I think that's what he meant too, but again, I was asking him (or someone else should they want to do so) to provide something more concrete. If I missed someone's post where they listed such an idea I apologize (given the thread, the number of text walls, and fact that I am not a big shield user myself, it's quite likely that I did), but I haven't seen anyway say anything more than you just did.

I'm certainly not adverse to redoing the shield feats to make them more useful. It appears to be an especially good idea in that so many people seem interested in the S&B thing. That said, I do not want Turbine to just plop 3 more shield feats into the game. If a redux of the existing ones is required then fine, but some more substantial proposals might be in order.

Ofc, it would probably be best if we at least had some idea of where armor is going before deciding shields should be such and such. Any possibility of Sev posting this week I wonder?

[Psiandron]

K.I.S.S.

Yeah, I'm a firm believer in K.I.S.S. as well and i often find fault with Turbine for not following that maxim, I will say that it isn't so straight forward.

D&D was developed using the D20. Gygax and the other leading lights of D&D limited the PCs to 18th level because at that point the d20 was overwhelmed and the game system completely fell apart. Really, once you got to 12th level things started to go south for the d20 system, but as very few campaigns got that far and when they did, they were often more about the RP than about hack and slash.

This game equates to the biggest Monte Hall campaign ever. Power creep has been massive and the player-base has come to feel entitled to the power they've attained. The devs have felt it necessary to respond by grossly inflating everything about, not just the bosses, but even the mobs. This wasn't very surprising at first; however, after some vast improvements to the mob AI I had hoped that Turbine would back off it's reliance on inflated numbers for mobs. Such was not the case. In the grand tradition of power creep, that has ofc led to the players demanding yet more power.

Further muddying the waters is the fact that many players, myself included, want to see the game stay as close to the source as possible (source being rather arbitrary, as there are proponents of all the TSR and WotC variants to the game represented as well as some who prefer the direction taken by companies outside the main game). Edit: In addition, it should be remembered that there are unknown although reported contractual obligations Turbine has to Atari/Hasbro/WotC.

The result is of the above is that in order to get past the first point and then to also try to deal with the second, Turbine has chosen to add layers of complexity to the game. It doesn't seem likely at this point that they are going to back off this view.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't continue to argue for K.I.S.S., just be prepared for disappointment. ;P

[BYOHordie]

The original plan proposed by the OP has a lot of promise. The only part I did not get was Heavy shields and med armor getting the same Lack of PRR cap as tower shield and heavy armor.
Then you let a few cry baby types buffalo you into start changing things.
There is absolutely no plausible reason cloth wearers should be able to achieve the same PRR as those with full plate. MRR mabey I could see that being the same as it is based off of the magic in the item.
The one exception to all this is past life bonus should stack on top of the 100 max PRR to give a total of 138 PRR max. Otherwise why did you run all those past lives.

[Ausdoerrt]

I think that's what he meant too, but again, I was asking him (or someone else should they want to do so) to provide something more concrete. If I missed someone's post where they listed such an idea I apologize (given the thread, the number of text walls, and fact that I am not a big shield user myself, it's quite likely that I did), but I haven't seen anyway say anything more than you just did.

I'm certainly not adverse to redoing the shield feats to make them more useful. It appears to be an especially good idea in that so many people seem interested in the S&B thing. That said, I do not want Turbine to just plop 3 more shield feats into the game. If a redux of the existing ones is required then fine, but some more substantial proposals might be in order.

Ofc, it would probably be best if we at least had some idea of where armor is going before deciding shields should be such and such. Any possibility of Sev posting this week I wonder?

There was a post early on suggesting specific numbers for such feats. I don't know the game well enough to offer my own, unfortunately.

[Kalevor]

Any possibility of Sev posting this week I wonder?

Yes please, we need some answers.

[Bardgellor]

I have not read all 19 pages of this thread, so I apologize if I am repeating something already said:

Re: no more heavy shields with evasion. So, shields get buffed so they help that lumbering 8 dex tank wearing heavy armor who only saves on a 20 to automatically avoid a significant percentage (could exceed 75%) of that incoming dragon breath but a 70 dex rogue is so weighed down by it that he cannot evade and takes full (non-evasion) damage (likely half due to a high reflex save). You are greatly increasing the value of the shield but penalizing the character who should be best able to timely position himself behind the new supper shield? Really? REALLY?

Re: trivializing EE content. Please don't inflate the value of armor/shield so anyone wearing it can wade into EE melee and survive. EE is the only challenge left in this game. There is EC, EN and EH to use as training grounds. Keep EE a challenge that has to be geared for and built around.

[lyrecono]

for one that has read all 19 pages, and responded a few times too:
The purpose of this entire suggestion (see starter post by the op), was to help out heavy armor&heavy/tower shield wearing toons, since their thick armor and shield means nothing in terms of armor class, especially in EE, the dev's proposed to have m get more prr and add mrr to it as well.
This way the class can do what they think they designed them for in the first place, soak up damage.

As a correction: no self respecting tank has a dex of 8
A rogue is not proficient with a heavy shield, no self respecting or game savvy rogue would bother wielding one, it bothers him with skills, dps, etc
The suggestion is not made for rogues, just for the plate mail/shield characters, though rogues do benefit, although in a small way, from the creation of mrr, just like all the other classes.
Please reread the openings post and the rest of the thread for their justifications. This is not a nerf, everybody gets more protection out of it

As a frequent EE player: even with these changes a "tank" type of toon would have a hard time in EE, the low dps and lack of agro management gets him replaced by the first monchker that walks by.
The suggested changes are a nice step in the right direction, yet still so far from the goal