Paladin Changes

[Tscheuss]

These changes look promising.

[kierg10]

Here's the difference:
breaking a character =/= breaking the game

If people stop playing because they don't want to have to redo their toon again yes it does

[HungarianRhapsody]

If people stop playing because they don't want to have to redo their toon again yes it does

Apparently I didn't explain that well enough.

Breaking one character for one player =/= breaking the game balance for most players by making most builds non-viable.


For me, this comes down to two separate problems that Turbine isn't addressing. If Turbine addresses these two problems successfully, then Paladin will be balanced just fine with no changes to Divine Grace. If Turbine fails to address these two problems successfully, then the change to Divine Grace isn't going to matter anyway.

1) EE save target numbers are absurd. You shouldn't need to even consider Paladin splash in order to hit those target numbers. Paladin splash should be overkill (and therefore unattractive as an option compared to other class splashes).
2) Paladin levels 3-20 still suck.

[nibel]

Replying from the OP only, and saying in advance that I personally do not play on EE:

We have been going through player feedback and one of the concerns is that there is no compelling reason to level a Paladin past the early levels. While we hope the changes to armor and shield will help with this, we are looking for feedback on additional changes to make the class more compelling at higher levels.

Before giving feedback on your suggestions, I think you guys should know exactly why Paladin is mostly a 2-level dip instead of going full to 20. That is my personal list, based on my personal experience with paladins.

• Paladins are feat-starved. Fighters, rangers and monks have extra feats as class features. Rogues have a lot of class benefits that cover the feat gap (improved evasion, UMD, trap skills, sneak attack...). And Barbarians are a sad mess. So, if your only interest is playing "a melee-focused class", paladins are not your best option.
• Paladins are very frontloaded. Paladins get 90% of their class features at level 4, only missing spells and remove disease. Except by thematic or past life reasons, you get a lot more benefits from multiclassing than keeping on pally shoes.
• Smite Evil is a bad converted attack from PnP. While you can boost SE a lot via Exalted Smite, you kept the charges from PnP in a fast-action game. It have the same impact on a paladin playstyle as if you had kept vancian magic instead of adding a SP bar. You can fix this either by making it Adrenaline-like (buffs your next melee attack that hit), or Fusilade-like (Wind up a bit, and for a 6-10 seconds every hit is a smite). Or, with some math crunching beforehand, change it to an always-active bonus, since it only works on evil mobs (not neutral, like vermin, animals and oozes).
• Turn Undead, in the hands of a cleric, is quickly turned useless by mob CR inflation. You can equip a level SEVEN item with your best turning bonus, and can never upgrade it anymore via items. A paladin Turn Undead is a weakened version of an already limited power. The only reason people don't call it more is because we have uses for turns to charge other abilities.
• We need more spells. No arguments here. Paladin's spell list is short, sad, and mostly useless. You have Cure Wounds, Resist Energy, Divine Favor, Zeal, and MAYBE Protection From Evil and Deathward (If you don't party up with a divine). Everything else is situational at best, and newbie traps at worst. If we had four GREAT spells in each level, this alone would be enough reason to keep a paladin pure to 20. See what having 4 good top level spells do to artificer builds.
• Holy Sword is too weak. It creates a weapon you can find around at level 12-14, and requires a unique component. Please, change it to a imbue spell.
• Knight of the Chalice is too specialized. While some people don't mind changing enhancements before going into Outsider/Undead content to switch their KotC focus and maximize damage (which makes sense), there is a ton of content that do not have any of those mobs, making the KotC bonus as good as non-existent. It can be fixed raising their enemy types to "tainted cratures" like Shintao (Evil Outsiders, Undead, Aberrations, Elementals), or broadening the tree to be more effective against evil mobs in general.
• Tanking requires a ton of feats. So, read above about how paladins have few, precious feats. While a pure paladin tank can do its job well, a fighter tank have a lot more tools to play, only lacking the paladin self-healing capabilities (which in epics is covered by cocoon and family)
• Last, but not least, alignment restrictions are on the heavier side with them. By being lawful good by default, you remove multiclass possibilities with barbarian, bard, or druid. And taking extra damage from Unholy Blight and Chaos Hammer (which divine mobs love to cast). I know the alignment restrictions are there from source, but I hate it anyway.

People complain about paladin DPS, but I think they are in a good place for such a survivor class (high defensive stats and self-healing). Fix Smite Evil to work fine in a fast paced real time combat, and everything will be ok.

~ At 7th level the Paladin gets the Armor of Light ability. The Paladin gains 25 temporary hit points (non-stacking) each time they use Smite Evil, Lay on Hands, Cure Disease or Turn Undead. This ability provides 50 temporary hit points at 13th level, and 75 temporary hit points at 19th level.

Paladins are already a tough class, and I don't see where adding more HP on top of that would help them.

~ The Paladin gains Weapon of Light starting at 8th level and increasing at 11th, 14th, 17th and 20th.

I think those benefits would be better placed in the KotC core benefits than the general class benefits. Of course, extra damage is cool, and adding +10 damage per hit per hand is nice and all, but during HEROIC, paladins don't really need this extra DPS, and on epics, this damage being non-multiplicative will make them inferior to base-damage increases.

We are also considering a controversial change as well:
Divine Grace is now limited to 2 + (3 x Paladin Level) for the total Charisma bonuses it will add to saving throws.

Too high. Think more double paladin levels. +4 at level 2, up to +40 at cap (If you somehow have a 90 Charisma score). Maybe 2 + (2 x Paladin Level), to cover for starting charisma 18 at level 1. But I think 2x is better simply to allow an easier explanation. No need to involve third grade arithmetic when we can achieve the same with basic math.

"But then, instead of getting pally, I will go half elf with pally dilettante". Ok, and good luck not needing those 17 AP somewhere else for your +5 to all saves.

[nibel]

I don't recall people splashing paladin left and right a couple years or more ago. Now why do you think that is? Paladin didn't change.

I remember specifically when ToD was endgame, to ask on advice if getting 2 pally levels in my sorc would be good for the massive save bonus. The answer was something in the lines of "you don't need saves that high to succeed."

[Grace_ana]

Damage has skyrocketed, but stats haven't. We have +6 tomes now compared to +4 tomes a few years ago. That's not "skyrocket". Even +11 stat items compared to +7 stat items isn't "skyrocket. Take *both* of those things together and you're looking at just +3 to saves from Divine Grace today compared to two years ago.

The difference isn't that max sustainable Cha on a non-Sorc is vastly higher than it used to be. The difference is that EE save requirements are vastly higher than they used to be, so you now have to go to absurd lengths (like taking 2 levels of a terrible class just to make your saves viable) to hit those target numbers for saving throws.

Bingo. Which is why diving grace and paladin splashes aren't OP. It's just that you have to search out everything you can to survive, and some classes have less access to save boosting than others. Balance EE and this isn't a problem.

[Stanley_Nicholas]

We are also considering a controversial change as well:
Divine Grace is now limited to 2 + (3 x Paladin Level) for the total Charisma bonuses it will add to saving throws.

We want good saving throws to be a class feature of Paladins and a reason to go to higher level in the class. At the same time we don't want players to feel that there is no reason to increase your Paladin level beyond two or three. This change will provide an excellent +8 to all saving throws for a two level splash into Paladin and allow that saving throw bonus to increase as the Paladin levels.

Sev, I think you need to have a little chat with Sev and make sure you're on the same page before implementing anything:

We don’t want to hurt Evasion builds. We would rather bring the mitigation of armor and shields to those levels. Our only caveat is we don’t want Evasion builds to be able to reach the highest levels of physical mitigation on top of their existing defenses.

...

Meanwhile characters in light or no armor could use Evasion to attempt to negate the damage entirely.

...

Note that we have designed this so characters cannot gain both Evasion and the shield bonus coupled with high levels of resistance rating. This is intentional.

~ The Evasion builds with high Dodge will have more severe damage spikes, but overall damage will still be lower thus conserving healing spell points *if* the healer can keep them alive during the spikes.

...

~ ...We love our Evasion builds, but we do want other options that can compete in tough content.

Sev~

You know, your proposed nerf to Divine Grace, which is working as it has since 2006 and as per 3.5 PnP on which DDO is supposedly based, would definitely hurt some of those Evasion builds you stated in the other thread that you don't want to hurt. Evasion melee need exceptionally high saves to go with their evasion, since they are not getting the high PRR and MRR values that medium and heavy armor users are now slated to receive. Nerfing the reflex saves on evasion melee by 5, 6, 7, even 10+ points will make those builds no longer viable. Without a very high reflex, evasion doesn't count for squat.

It's great that you are looking to make medium and heavy armored melee worthwhile in high level content, but it makes no sense to add those new options while removing a number of the evasion build options at the same time. Your buffing of non-evasion armor already does the job of making non-evasion melees a viable choice (combined with improvements to enhancement trees of those melees in need of it, of course). A nerf to Divine Grace on top of that is entirely punitive, doing nothing constructive but breaking some current builds and needlessly upsetting a subset of players.

Once evasion + very high reflex aided by Divine Grace are no longer required for melee to survive in high end content, that will merely be one of several viable options. Unless, of course, you make the unfortunate and unnecessary decision to remove that as an option at the same time. In light of your other changes, I think it's pretty clear that Divine Grace is best left alone to function as it always has. More diversity = better.

[Cetus]

Youre free to roll a pure fighter again now, in heavy armor! Afterall, there was a lot of complaints about not beign able to do that when the enhancement pass came, coming from you.

I know I am, except pure fighter has been royally shafted as far as defense, offense, AND tactics are concerned.

You learn to adapt. In any MMO, if you come up with something that's too good you can expect it to be nerfed. Maybe it's time to start thinking about a new build then

P.S. IMO, Paladin splash is as broken as monk splash. PnP DMs realized this, that's why all the multiclass restrictions were in place for these classes.

I know how to adapt, I hate doing so for reasons I don't agree with. I'd gladly adapt by going back to pure fighter if they got buffed, I'm not glad to adapt to a change that helped melee's withstand the pressures of toe-to-toe combat if the player was able to *invest* for it. All the improved evasion monchers without divine grace could dance around EE bosses all day, so nerfing the all-so-powerful divine grace accomplishes what exactly?

1 point less, and you free up a twist spot... Also gives you access to Empower Heal feat, which might be useful for some builds.

Use that hard work and brainpower to adapt to 4 levels of paladin.

The only constant is change... How many times have you changed your build before now? Did you really think your current build would remain unchanged forever?

Sure I free up a twist slot, can get quicken, etc.. whatever. These are just other perks to the 4 pally splash that have existed in the past - and were as such weighed, very rigorously, against the competing perks when I crafted my build. The issue were zeroing in on here is divine grace. And as such, I still don't see the reason for this change, and how things turn out for the better after it. If I switch to 4 pally, I essentially get all my saves back, a free twist, perhaps quicken, but lose shadow fade if I cut into monk or I'll lose power surge if I cut into fighter. What exactly has been solved here? How is pally a more attractive class as a result of this change? The logic behind this is pure nonsense, and it arouses my suspicion that it emerged solely from the cries of people who might have watched videos of myself or others who performed well. In reality, this only acts as a major nuisance for people with builds such as mine - and still won't deter us from being just as efficient as we are today. I have gear, a crapton of past lives, and consumables to get my strength based characters charisma to a 40. Why should all of this investment undergo a proxy-punishment of a sort? I'm still waiting to hear a sensible answer. And by sensible, I mean a practical improvement in both paladin efficiency and appeal, and an increase in the appeal of going deeper in the remaining class (fighter, in my case).

My build is just an example, there are sorcerers who find good synergy here with the paladin splash. They sacrifice a LOT to gain a massive boost to their saves. Would anyone argue that a sorc running a 60 charisma receiving a 25 bonus to all their saves is unbalanced with respect to losing 2 caster levels, extremely important spell slots, and capstone which affects ability to enter apotheosis forms and -2 charisma? Now these sorcs would have to splash >>2 pally to get these same benefits if they so choose. No sorc in their right mind would splash pally that deep, so this change would virtually obliterate the little sorc build variety that currently exist. Pure sorcs are generally power houses now, the pally splash added a bit of flavor, now its gone.

Change for the sake of change isn't healthy for this game. There needs to be a practical improvement to a pressing issue here, and I don't see it.

[Sebastrd]

Ok. I'll make the "correct" argument for why divine grace should be nerfed. The reason it needs to be nerfed is not because its OP, and its definitely not to encourage more paladin levels. The real reason it needs to be nerfed is because it completely breaks the D20 system.

The D20 system is inherently broken at high level. Divine Grace has nothing to do with it.

Consider a Rogue vs. a Wizard at level 20. A Rogue has a "good" reflex save (+12), invests in Dexterity to start (18), puts level-ups into Dexterity (23), wears a +6 item (29), and uses a +5 tome (which are commonly bought in table-top D&D, and give our theoretical Rogue a Dexterity of 34). Our Rogue has a working reflex save of +24. Our Wizard has a "poor" reflex save of +6 and dumps Dexterity, because it is far less useful to a Wizard. He has a working reflex save of +5. In this situation, vs. any meaningful reflex save either the Rogue will auto-succeed or the Wizard will auto-fail.

Now consider DDO. As was posted earlier in the thread, it's possible for a Rogue to hit a +70 reflex save without Divine Grace. My Druid, at level 22, is sitting on a +29 reflex save. It is mathematically impossible to generate a reflex DC that challenges both characters, and Divine Grace hasn't even entered the equation.

[Munkenmo]

This poorly thought out nerf is par for the course sadly.

The problem isn't that divine grace gives too large a bonus, that's never been the problem. Once upon a time, there were reasonable ways to get useful saves without divine grace. Now monsters have absurd DC's so people have turned to divine grace to get useful saves.

Devs if you address monster DC's instead of nerfing divine grace the following happens:

I no longer need absurd saves so I start to consider splashing:

1-2 wiz for a feat, cleave and spell points
1-2 fvs/cleric for divine might, spell points, empower heal
1-2 druid for rams might, spell points, empower heal
1-2 barb for rage, movement speed & sprint boost
2 rogue evasion, umd, traps
2 arti umd, traps, runearm
2 fighter hasteboost 2 feats
2 monk evasion, 2feats, 4dodge, qualify for stances.
etc.

If saves are still absurd, I still have to take 2 paladin, but you just nerfed my build and I'll be angry.

[Vellrad]

3 ideas how to make paladins suck less:

1. Spells:
1a: Zeal: make it give stacking doublestrike, attack speed and +0,5W. KoTC lvl18 core grants mass zeal, making it self centered AoE.
1b: Holy sword: annoints target's currently equipped weapon, granting it holy and pure good. Level 18 KotC core grants improved holy sword, adding greater good and holy burst instead. You can have only one annoint at time, but they can be used together with artificer's imbues.
2. KotC:
Make it all arround offensive line against all evil mobs. Make cores granting extra or improved spells in addition to other effects they currently have:
lvl3: Improved divine favor: Improved divine favor is add to your level 1 spell list. It works like divine favor, but got no level cap on maximum bonus provided.
lvl12: Haste: Haste is added to your level 3 spell list.
lvl18: improved holy sword and mass zeal are added to your spell list.

Also, paladins should get cure light as lvl1, cure medium as lvl2, cure moderate as lvl3 and cure critical and mass cure moderate as level 4.

3. Smite evil:
This should be seriously stronger.
At level 1, attack dealing extra 50% damage.
At level 5: +100%
At level 10: +150%
At level 15: +200%
At level 20: +250%
At level 25: +300%
(paladin+epic level)
Vorpal on smite leaves target stunned for 1 second per paladin+epic level.
Adrenalined smites dealing extra 700% damage should add decent DPS to this class.

Theese are my ideas, IDK if good or not.

[Munkenmo]

Theese are my ideas, IDK if good or not.

Or not.

There are rules Turbine has to follow, Paladin cure spells are pretty set in stone.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spellLists...lPaladinSpells

[ghtzxc]

Divine Grace is fine as it is. Instead of taking away from paladin I think more should be given to it. None of these changes to paladin are really big enough to get people to take more paladin levels. It's not divine grace that's the problem.

People who are asking for further nerfs are not really giving a good reason, especially since it's been around for a long time, now suddenly people are just jumping on the bandwagon. To those that are like, oh it's worth 4 feats, or should be nerfed further. It requires investment into CHA as well as 2 paladin levels, and restricting any other third class splash option.

Part of the fun is finding things that work well together and building a character from that. I think this proposed nerf hinders that and I say the proposed change to divine grace should not be realized.

Instead do more with the Weapons of Light, it looks good for heroics but could use a boost in epics for sure. Suggestions might include link the damage to spell power, extra affects on crits/vorpals, etc...

[EllisDee37]

This poorly thought out nerf is par for the course sadly.

The problem isn't that divine grace gives too large a bonus, that's never been the problem. Once upon a time, there were reasonable ways to get useful saves without divine grace. Now monsters have absurd DC's so people have turned to divine grace to get useful saves.

Devs if you address monster DC's instead of nerfing divine grace the following happens:

I no longer need absurd saves so I start to consider splashing:

1-2 wiz for a feat, cleave and spell points
1-2 fvs/cleric for divine might, spell points, empower heal
1-2 druid for rams might, spell points, empower heal
1-2 barb for rage, movement speed & sprint boost
2 rogue evasion, umd, traps
2 arti umd, traps, runearm
2 fighter hasteboost 2 feats
2 monk evasion, 2feats, 4dodge, qualify for stances.
etc.

If saves are still absurd, I still have to take 2 paladin, but you just nerfed my build and I'll be angry.

Agreed on all that.

I still say divine grace needs a nerf, but I also agree that the game needs to change so that divine grace isn't mandatory.

In that scenario, the source of the imbalance isn't the splash classes. It's the crappy capstone.

No, it's not the capstone, it's that (due to how EE is tuned) the pally saves are grossly more powerful than the alternative splashes. I don't know if you're being deliberately obtuse, but you really keep missing what I mean by balance by a country mile.

If it were balanced, you'd have a tough choice between the options fTdOmen listed above. Right now there's no choice at all because divine grace is clearly superior to any of the alternatives. That's unbalanced. It also reduces build diversity.

[EllisDee37]

People who are asking for further nerfs are not really giving a good reason

Here's why I want divine grace nerfed:

With divine grace in the game, we get EE content tuned as it is now, where massive saves are required and it's extremely difficult to hit them without divine grace. So players take divine grace.

If divine grace is nerfed, content tuned as EE is now wouldn't make it off lammania because it would be largely unplayable.

Having divine grace in its current incarnation, combined with the ability to jack up charisma much higher than we could when the level cap was 20, allows the developers to unbalance the game mechanics in a way that's detrimental to the overall health of the game. If divine grace gets reigned in, saves have to be brought down to more reasonable levels during the development phase.

[EllisDee37]

It's logic. If you nerf options, there are fewer options.

This doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

If one choice is far and away more powerful than the alternatives, there are fewer options. If that one disproportionately powerful option is nerfed to the same equivalent power level as the rest of the choices, now you have more options.

[Munkenmo]

Here's why I want divine grace nerfed:

With divine grace in the game, we get EE content tuned as it is now, where massive saves are required and it's extremely difficult to hit them without divine grace. So players take divine grace.

If divine grace is nerfed, content tuned as EE is now wouldn't make it off lammania because it would be largely unplayable.

The problem is that now the devs are trying to make players with divine grace fail saves occasionally. The game would be better off if the devs completely ignored divine grace for the majority of monster/trap DC calculations.

Honestly, back when the cap was 20, I used to think of divine grace as a means for newer players to make their saves without all the pastlives and gear some vets would have. The opportunity cost of going lawful good and being forced to take 2 pally levels imo can justify being able to make all saves successfully.

If DC's were reigned in, Vets would drop 2pally in favor of 2fvs in a heartbeat, new players might still take 2 pally <- balance.

I'll repeat, players don't need max saves nerfed here. Content needs to be readjusted so pushing for max saves isn't so necessary. We'll always flock to the saves that are necessary, lowering the required save threshold will lower the need for divine grace.

[Cetus]

Here's why I want divine grace nerfed:

With divine grace in the game, we get EE content tuned as it is now, where massive saves are required and it's extremely difficult to hit them without divine grace. So players take divine grace.

If divine grace is nerfed, content tuned as EE is now wouldn't make it off lammania because it would be largely unplayable.

Having divine grace in its current incarnation, combined with the ability to jack up charisma much higher than we could when the level cap was 20, allows the developers to unbalance the game mechanics in a way that's detrimental to the overall health of the game. If divine grace gets reigned in, saves have to be brought down to more reasonable levels during the development phase.

What are you talking about? There are plenty of high save toons out there, fvs monk types, monk archers get right about where I am with no pally splash, high intel wizzy's with insightful reflexes get reflex saves as high as i do, dex based builds (especially rogues), and now the devs are coming out with some magic resistance rating to compete with the save evasion builds.

The argument that ee content needs to be tuned for divine grace builds is simply a red herring. I play a pure sorc, with craptastic saves - and he dominates most content, yes he dies more often and EE HH is a pain in the butt, but you figure your way around most of it.

[Grace_ana]

Ellis, you're usually pretty reasonable, but on this one you're way out in left field and I'm not sure there's any way to explain this in a way that connects. You seem to have a serious bone to pick with pally splashes to the point of thinking they far outnumber any other 2 level splashes and confer benefits far beyond what they actually grant. It's just not an OP ability no matter how you cut it, and nerfing it doesn't fix a thing.

[FlaviusMaximus]

The D20 system is inherently broken at high level. Divine Grace has nothing to do with it.

The Divine Grace saves bonus that people can get with a fairly minimal investment in starting charisma today is a whooole lot different than the saves bonus a person got a few years ago from Divine Grace. Big gear bonuses, ship buffs, big tomes, and stacking charisma enhancements from heroic trees and epic destinies have resulted in a much bigger saves bonuses. If the ability alone can make a player go from close to a saves auto fail to an auto success, then yes, that's absurd, and frankly I agree that the fault currently lies in the d20 system.