Armor Up - Developer Diary #2

[Dandonk]

This is very sad. I was really happy to see other EDs becoming relevant for melee DPS, but sadly it seems we'll be mostly back to status quo after this change :/

[Monkey_Archer]

I am sad to hear this. I, as other were, was actually excited by this change. I fells a bit like you are caving in to the uber-elites who want blitz to continue to be the only "truly effective" way to melee at end game. When you said that EDs like shadowdancer would get a good boost.

Now as you cut that boost in half, its just doesn't seem as cool. Please reconsider.

The problem is that you could raise the melee boost to +500 and it still wouldn't make shadowdancer a good destiny. Melee on live is not as simple as blitz > everything else. Divine crusader for example, is very clearly much stronger then shadowdancer, and giving both the same increase is not going to change that.

Reducing the melee boost to 75 (while I think its still too high) is a better foundation upon which future buffs to weak destinies can occur. If it gets left at +150, then trying to balance shadowdancer vs divine crusader would more likely have to happen with nerfs instead. And people don't like nerfs...

[Eth]

So now we are back to what we have on live. You either blitz or your melee DPS is a joke compared to a blitzer.
Only difference being that blitzing will be super easy, so everybody can do it without taking quest/raid design into consideration.

This does not help the other destinies it outright kills them. You either are in LD or you are not a melee.
Bad Change.

[Eth]

To clarify:
Before, you could not have more than 1-3 People blitzing at a time, because it all depends on how many the quest/raid at hand can support.
With this change there is absolutely no reason to not blitz, since all you have to do is hit mobs.
I really don't see how this should help melees for other destinies.

Personally I'd say just kill blitz. It was bad since it came out.
Go back to adjusting other destinies melee power to be at 5/10 of a current blitz stack and give LD a new time limited moment.

This encourages groupplay, since total power level shifts away from 1-3 People groups with blitzers being optimal to 5-6 people running in any destiny.

[Wizza]

So now we have 5 MP per Epic level for a total of 45 at level 28.

And 5 Melee Power per Epic Destiny core for a total of 30. Both united are 75.

That means Blitz is up to 175 Melee Power but you can keep it ALWAYS on. This is not good.

My suggestions would be:

• Keep the 5 Melee Power per Epic level.
• Upgrade the Melee Power in the Epic Destinies' cores to 10/level, bringing the total to (45+60)= 105 Melee Power.
• Scale down Blitz to have a max 125 Melee Power, for a total of 230 Melee Power.
• Both of these changes make it so that Blitz lose 20% MaxDamage from Live and only grants 125% more Damage than any other destiny.
• Keep the on-hit mechanic with these changes. Otherwise, keep the on-kill mechanic.

[Monkey_Archer]

To clarify:
Before, you could not have more than 1-3 People blitzing at a time, because it all depends on how many the quest/raid at hand can support.
With this change there is absolutely no reason to not blitz, since all you have to do is hit mobs.
I really don't see how this should help melees for other destinies.

Personally I'd say just kill blitz. It was bad since it came out.
Go back to adjusting other destinies melee power to be at 5/10 of a current blitz stack and give LD a new time limited moment.

This encourages groupplay, since total power level shifts away from 1-3 People groups with blitzers being optimal to 5-6 people running in any destiny.

I agree that giving people a reason NOT to take 6 blitzers is going to be the next major concern. Limiting the duration of blitz could be one way to go on that.

Since it seems that many people are underestimating how much 75 melee power actually means let me do a bit of math:

Lets say you hit for 100 damage. With the new 75 melee power this means you now hit for 175 damage. Now you have 2 choices for destinies: Dreadnought or Divine crusader.

Blitz will now start at 175 damage and stack up to 350 damage. Pretty simple, lots of damage and not much else.

Zeal of righteousness on the other hand will now immediately give 225 damage AND 50% doublestrike, resulting in 337.5 damage, but starts to diminish over time. This of course is in addition to all the AOE and healing DC also provides. Thats extremely close to max blitz damage and you get that damage instantly instead of starting out slow.

(Obviously this isn't 100% accurate as melee power doesn't actually multiply all sources of damage, and double strike doesn't multiply offhands or any existing doublestrike you might have from other sources, but its close enough to make the point)

If you give ALL melees any more then 75 melee power, all that will do is make divine crusader replace blitz as the max dps choice. Whats needed next is targeted buffs or targeted nerfs to even out the destinies, not more changes to melee power.

[Standal]

The reduction in melee power is a good thing. +70% + 10% per level was too much. +75% is a huge boost to my characters, who really don't have any problem blowing through any quest on EH solo, or participating in EE groups.

Regarding Blitz, please just leave it alone. The charging mechanic is stupid, but it is a limiter. The on-kill effect is also a necessary limiter. The game will just be ridiculously easy if we have multiple blitzers in every quest who can never lose blitz. Blitz is not trivial to maintain now and can't universally be used. Making it stack on hit would just be a complete disaster for the game.

[Glascanon]

Since i started playing this game every new Patch brought more powers to the Characters.

Arguments -> More Power

LVL 25 to 28 -> More Power

New enhancement system -> More Power

Epic Past lives -> More Power

The Content doesn't grow with all these buffs.
Im running EE content all the time with pickups and casual gamers and don't give a ***it on red dungeon alert.
Its Zerging a content witch was challenging "once uppon a time".

Now u want to boost Meele DPS in a way that makes them deal more then double DPS.
Other games make balance overhauls with maybee 1-5% buffs but not 150%+
U guys are out of your mind!
How could that fit to the existing content in any kind of way?

If u want to bring meles at the same level like Shiradi Casters and Monkcher Fury Shotters then nerv Shiradies and fury shotters please.

There should not be ANY build in this game to be able to solo EE!!!

Why should i play a MMO where every player doesn´t need anyone else to do a quest?

Every patch just brought less teamplay to this game and with this patch u will totaly kill teamwork and the last little bit of challenge in this game.
Its not that ppl where not playing EE´s before all those power buffs came out.

And now? PPL are grinding it in off destenie in half of the time solo!

The most Challenging Part of Running EE is to show the Newbies the way to the Entry!

But i see where this comes from: This game gets balanced from ppl who did not even know trhat masters Blitz is working with a Bow!
So the ppl who are responsible 4 the Balancing doesn't even seem to play this game!
Great Idea!

And next update we just get a button in our window after popping into a EE quest witch asks u if u want to directly complete the quest and loot the chests or play it.

I want EE difficulty to be: Have a Tank a healer 3 DD´s a Trapper all in Main ED or go Home!

We have EN and EH for the rest.

But i might also be a bit hardcore. Isn't there something in between?

[Monkey_Archer]

Since i started playing this game every new Patch brought more powers to the Characters.

Arguments -> More Power

LVL 25 to 28 -> More Power

New enhancement system -> More Power

Epic Past lives -> More Power

The Content doesn't grow with all these buffs.
Im running EE content all the time with pickups and casual gamers and don't give a ***it on red dungeon alert.
Its Zerging a content witch was challenging "once uppon a time".

Now u want to boost Meele DPS in a way that makes them deal more then double DPS.
Other games make balance overhauls with maybee 1-5% buffs but not 150%+
U guys are out of your mind!
How could that fit to the existing content in any kind of way?

If u want to bring meles at the same level like Shiradi Casters and Monkcher Fury Shotters then nerv Shiradies and fury shotters please.

There should not be ANY build in this game to be able to solo EE!!!

Why should i play a MMO where every player doesn´t need anyone else to do a quest?

Every patch just brought less teamplay to this game and with this patch u will totaly kill teamwork and the last little bit of challenge in this game.
Its not that ppl where not playing EE´s before all those power buffs came out.

And now? PPL are grinding it in off destenie in half of the time solo!

The most Challenging Part of Running EE is to show the Newbies the way to the Entry!

But i see where this comes from: This game gets balanced from ppl who did not even know trhat masters Blitz is working with a Bow!
So the ppl who are responsible 4 the Balancing doesn't even seem to play this game!
Great Idea!

And next update we just get a button in our window after popping into a EE quest witch asks u if u want to directly complete the quest and loot the chests or play it.

I want EE difficulty to be: Have a Tank a healer 3 DD´s a Trapper all in Main ED or go Home!

We have EN and EH for the rest.

But i might also be a bit hardcore. Isn't there something in between?

I hear you... As much as I'm trying to ... temper ... these changes, my actual plan when this hits live is to bring out one of my old level 20 characters and see how many EE quests I can solo without even activating a destiny. The endgame raid/group scene just doesn't exist like it used to, and only more content can possibly rejuvenate it. I'd love this game to be an actual challenge for group play, but even something as extremely minor and insignificant like nerfing divine grace unleashes a hoard of ragers, and "I'll Quit" posts. So what I've learned is that if you want a challenge you have to do it yourself. Solo, play permadeath, find a static group with house rules, apply your own limitations, etc... Unless casual players accept that they shouldn't be running EE and hardcore players accept that their overpowered builds need nerfs (which will never happen), nothing is going to change unless turbine decides to make it so.

[Grailhawk]

To clarify:
Before, you could not have more than 1-3 People blitzing at a time, because it all depends on how many the quest/raid at hand can support.
With this change there is absolutely no reason to not blitz, since all you have to do is hit mobs.
I really don't see how this should help melees for other destinies.

Personally I'd say just kill blitz. It was bad since it came out.
Go back to adjusting other destinies melee power to be at 5/10 of a current blitz stack and give LD a new time limited moment.

This encourages groupplay, since total power level shifts away from 1-3 People groups with blitzers being optimal to 5-6 people running in any destiny.

So now we have 5 MP per Epic level for a total of 45 at level 28.

And 5 Melee Power per Epic Destiny core for a total of 30. Both united are 75.

That means Blitz is up to 175 Melee Power but you can keep it ALWAYS on. This is not good.

My suggestions would be:

• Keep the 5 Melee Power per Epic level.
• Upgrade the Melee Power in the Epic Destinies' cores to 10/level, bringing the total to (45+60)= 105 Melee Power.
• Scale down Blitz to have a max 125 Melee Power, for a total of 230 Melee Power.
• Both of these changes make it so that Blitz lose 20% MaxDamage from Live and only grants 125% more Damage than any other destiny.
• Keep the on-hit mechanic with these changes. Otherwise, keep the on-kill mechanic.

Both of those are great ideas.

Turning blitz on and having a full stack should not give more then double the base Melee Power. If we are going with 75 base Melee Power blitz should not give 1 more then 150 and IMO 150 is too much.

[maddong]

Both of those are great ideas.

Turning blitz on and having a full stack should not give more then double the base Melee Power. If we are going with 75 base Melee Power blitz should not give 1 more then 150 and IMO 150 is too much.

I agree.... Please let's either leave blitz mechanics unchanged or nerf it. You can't expect to keep the same boost if every party member gets to keep it running....

And could we please backload these overpowered boosts to melee power from levels and ED to the later levels? I don't have the destinies farmed or eq for EE on most of my characters so I play a lot of en/eh. I only have 1 monkcher which I don't play because melee is more fun (and definitely won't ever play after these changes).

I'm thinking instead of +5 per level it becomes +15 at 26, 27, 28 and instead of 5 per innate core you get +10 at core 4, 5, 6. That way when I'm playing en eh on my non maxed melees I can still have a challenge. You will also feel those last level gains a lot more. I still think we should cut the initial rollout to 20 to 30 melee power and see what happens. I think even with 0 melee power you will be seeing a lot more melees just from the prr and paladin changes.

If this massive inflation is just so we don't have to nerf fury shot could we please just nerf fury shot instead?

I notice that this armor up thread has 10 more pages than the other two.... That should tell you something. Maybe we could delay these changes until a later patch and see where the cards fall instead of so many big changes at once.

[Vanhooger]

I was excited about those change, so I could finally play another melee destiny.

With the new proposal nothing is going to change...everybody will blitz again and maybe worse, having possibly up to 12 blitzer in a raid.

I like the removal of 50 charge and killing blow that is so against-party.

What you should do is...make blitz an ability similar to DC Epic moment.

Why LD Epic moment should be able to last forever when all the other just few sec/min?

The first proposal was a lot better, reduce the power creep between blitz and other destiny.

Very disappointed.

Dev's don't waste your're time coding melee power if LD will be top choice again. On live is already like that, no need to be coded.

[bennyson]

Sev, why did you listen to a couple of cry babies?

You just made blitz the MOST OVERPOWERED ABILITY IN THE GAME!

Nobody is going to use the other destines after this nonsense of a change. Also, cry babies are the ones that always ruins games when a positive change was coming to said game.

Master's Blitz should be unimportant to any player. I have few ideas on how Blitz could be rebalanced so that LD doesn't make every other destiny look worthless and uninteresting.

1. Change everything back to the original proposal, get it in-game on Lamaland, ignore the cry babies, and let US, the Players, test this before making any changes, don't change stuff at the drop of a hat.

2. Nerf Blitz down to like 25 or 50 MP, 75 MP vs. 175 MP is too much of a difference. 75 MP to like 100 MP or 125MP might be okay, just don't make it stay at 175.

3. delete Blitz and replace it with a different epic moment, I can clearly see that trying to rebalance Epic Gameplay around this ability is a living nightmare.

[IBCrabin]

Yes.

Sev~

Given how easy EE quest became when 2 players had blitz running on live, the damage output for say 4 blitzer should be roughly scale to about the same damage output.

As an example.
Assuming

80 damage per 1h swing

If one player maintain 8-10 blitz stacks (200-250% total) = 250-300 damage per swing
Then 2 player = 500 - 600 per swing average

With the proposed system
If 4 player run in Dreadnaught because blitz stacks is easier to maintain,

Then the average damage from 4 blitzer = 1000 to 1200 per swing.

The quest become even easier than what is on live.

Suggestion

To promoted teamwork / team play, the average damage of 4 blitzer should be no more than 800

Works out to about 200 per player

80 at innate + level up 75% = 140
80 with innate + level up and blitz at 100% total 175% = 220 per swing
----

220 average = 880 with 4 blitzer per swing

A bit more damage on average than the current 2 blitzer on live. The overall to quest will be a bit harder because 1 player cannot man handle and solo mobs as quickly. In a teamwork environment when 4 blitzer are working together, mobs is easier to kill than when 1 player was soloing.

That being said, if Adrenaline in Fury of the wild is change to work with Cleaves for all the mobs that get hit by the cleave instead of the first mob in the cleave, there will be more incentive for cleave-rs to use fotw. This is also a nice way to kill trash effectively than just blitzing.

For Primal avatar, the Avatar of Nature attack speed should be increase. 1 swing every 4-5 second for 1k damage is hardly comparable to a player hitting 1k per damage every second in Dreadnaught or fotw or anywhere else.

Increase the attack speed of Avatar of Nature to average about 1k per second.

[Vanhooger]

A question, why LD Epic moment should be the best of the best epic moment (as it actually is)?

Can someone answer this?

Bad design is when you feel that a melee toon won't be competitive without it.

[Grailhawk]

A question, why LD Epic moment should be the best of the best epic moment (as it actually is)?

Can someone answer this?

There is nothing wrong with it being the best that's fine something will always be the best. The issue is how much better it is than any other Epic Moment. The first proposal fixed that issue (it likely did create another issue by making every thing Overpowered) this current proposal does not fix anything.

[Vanhooger]

There is nothing wrong with it being the best that's fine something will always be the best. The issue is how much better it is than any other Epic Moment. The first proposal fixed that issue (it likely did create another issue by making every thing Overpowered) this current proposal does not fix anything.

That's exactly what I'm saying...is the best of the best because the others just s...k , and a lot

[Wulverine]

Adding multiplier over multiplier is exactly what got us into this unbalanced mess in the first place.
One of the biggest reasons i see Sev wanting to introduce this is so it can be used to scale (heroic) abilities and give epic levels a bigger feel of progression (power wise).

There's enough mechanics already in place that allow to fine tune this.
Spellpower can be used to effect melee procs or paladin Light dmg procs.

Abilities are already using or should be using the [W] system.

Special damage procs/abilities can scale using Heroic Levels and Epic Levels with 2 different rates, instead of just scale using character level. This alone addresses the original concern.

Introducing a new multiplier that affects SO much, is just asking for trouble.

[Severlin]

So now we have 5 MP per Epic level for a total of 45 at level 28.

And 5 Melee Power per Epic Destiny core for a total of 30. Both united are 75.

That means Blitz is up to 175 Melee Power but you can keep it ALWAYS on. This is not good.

My suggestions would be:

• Keep the 5 Melee Power per Epic level.
• Upgrade the Melee Power in the Epic Destinies' cores to 10/level, bringing the total to (45+60)= 105 Melee Power.
• Scale down Blitz to have a max 125 Melee Power, for a total of 230 Melee Power.
• Both of these changes make it so that Blitz lose 20% MaxDamage from Live and only grants 125% more Damage than any other destiny.
• Keep the on-hit mechanic with these changes. Otherwise, keep the on-kill mechanic.

To clarify the updated OP, Blitz is an additional 100 Melee Power for a total of 175. That said, it is easier to maintain and works on long boss fights.

We are in the process of examining Master's Blitz with ranged attacks. For the time being we will likely add Ranged Power to the Master's Blitz buff as well as Melee Power.

Sev~

[Wizza]

To clarify the updated OP, Blitz is an additional 100 Melee Power for a total of 175. That said, it is easier to maintain and works on long boss fights.

We are in the process of examining Master's Blitz with ranged attacks. For the time being we will likely add Ranged Power to the Master's Blitz buff as well as Melee Power.

Sev~

Wait, you are saying that Blitz went down from 250 MP to 175 MP max, meaning just 100 after the 75% of Epic levels and Destinies are added?