Armor Up - Developer Diary #2

[Munkenmo]

The solution is NOT to prohibit SWF and Shield but to rework the Shield line so that it provides the right balance of defense/offense based on the shield type.

Seems to me that the solution definitely is to make SWF and Shields exclusive.

At the moment SWF, TWF and THF are all meant to be balanced against each other as standalone melee styles.
By granting SWF the ability to pair their offensive combat style with a defensive shield option, you're allowing me to make a SWF character that has compatible damage to a 2weapon fighting build, whilst only needing to grind out half the weapons and as an added bonus giving me the option to pair it with a shield for better defense....

That seems like a stupid decision and incredibly difficult to balance. A better solution is probably to create a S&B, IS&B, GS&B feat chain. Remove shield mastery & shield bash feats, merge them together in this new feat chain & add some other bonues for S&B characters and come up with another unique combat style that is exclusive of the others.

It's pretty obvious that there's something wrong with combining unique styles:

• SWF, ISWF, GSWF + shield mastery + improved shield mastery + shield bash + improved shield bash
• THF, ITHF, GTHF
• TWF, ITWF, GTHF

I see nothing wrong with well balanced exclusive:

• SWF, ISWF, GSWF
• S&B, IS&B, GS&B
• THF, ITHF, GTHF
• TWF, ITWF, GTHF

It's never been possible to mix 2wf & 2hf, or 2wf and shields, or 2hf and shields (with the exception of bastard swords and daxes). Why should SWF be different? Make a standalone S&B combat style and finally put the issue to bed.

[Therigar]

S&B is just as important a combat style as SWF, TWF or THF if it didn't have any sort of offensive boosts than nobody would use it.

You are wrong. If it gave appropriately scaled offensive and defensive boosts players WOULD use it being compelled to choose among offense > defense, defense > offense or a balance between the two.

You act as if the only thing that matters in DDO is how strong a character can be offensively. But the problem that exists is exactly there because the shield line does not compel a player to deliberately choose where to camp out on the line from defense to offense but lets them have both at too high of a level.

SWF plus buckler in Swashbuckler generates offense > defense because Swashbuckling requires light armor and light armor plus buckler = negligible AC and PRR.

Shields do not improve the ability to double strike. To the contrary, they reduce that ability. The larger the shield the greater the impact. From a game perspective, the struggle is to create a third melee combat style that is competitive with TWF and THF.

The way to do this is two-fold.

First, the third enhancement tree for fighters and paladins needs to be Swashbuckler like. Not Swashbuckler, but similar. Combat stances that enable the character to gain increased offensive skill with a class of weapons generating increased double strike, threat range and threat multiplier. Armor choices that enable those benefits to be used in first medium and then heavy armor (likely STR and/or CON connected to have the power and endurance to bear the armor's weight and restrictive nature and perhaps with an AC/PRR penalty of -5% and -10%).

Second, tie the amount of defensive power and offensive power to the type of shield. Tower shields should get defensive perks only. Large shields should be ~80% defensive and ~20% offensive, small shields should be ~50% of each and bucklers should be ~20% defensive boosts and ~80% offensive. Force the players to choose which line they want by making the shield decision a multi-select.

That is how we should have proceeded. All of which is likely moot since we are now so late in the discussion and Lammania is opening for testing.

[Scrabbler]

stuff

That post was loaded with incorrect material, and worse. But nevermind the details of that.


What it comes down to is that regarding whether Shield-specific feats can be used at the same time as SWF, the devs have only these 3 choices:

1. Prohibit a character from benefiting from SWF and Shield feats at the same time.
2. Make the Shield feats weak, so that it requires 3 additional SWF feats in order to get a decent combat style. This means that S&B combat is unusable to non-Fighters (such as Paladins, Clerics, FVS, Bard, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Barbarian).
3. Make the Shield feats strong, so that having them alone gives you a decent combat style, and adding SWF on top makes you overpowered. That adds tons of power to Fighters, makes all non-S&B non-Monk Fighters into a mistake, nearly forces S&B Paladins, Clerics, etc to devote most of their feat slots to passive combat style effects, and undermines the value of THF, TWF, and SWF builds.

Which of those three choices do you think they should try?

[Scrabbler]

A better solution is probably to create a S&B, IS&B, GS&B feat chain. Remove shield mastery & shield bash feats, merge them together in this new feat chain

That kind of simplification isn't really needed. You can think about Shield Master+Imp Shield Master+Imp Shield Bash as being a three-feat chain in the style of THF+ITHF+GTHF, but still give players the flexibility of deciding if they want to get Imp Shield Bash before the others, or after them. It's not very important either way, but it can be more fun to give them the choice of getting offensive or defensive effects first while leveling.

If it gave appropriately scaled offensive and defensive boosts players WOULD use it being compelled to choose among offense > defense, defense > offense or a balance between the two.

That might be possible; it would probably entail far more developer manhours than Turbine is able to invest, but it could work in theory.

However, even if they did do it that way so that the S&B feats were purely defensive, it would still be a mistake to allow SWF to be used at the same time.

[Failedlegend]

It is that plus Power Attack, Precision, Cleave, Great Cleave, Whirlwind (if you can qualify by also taking Combat Expertise,Dodge, Mobility

This difference is you don't NEED those feats to function as a melee actually some of them are very optional...I'm suprised you didn't list off all the tactical feats whereas a Bow user MUST take all the feats I listed to even function...for example in most cases a Ranged combatant cannot do ANY damage w/o Precise shot another example being PBS which is a completely useless feat but is only taken due to being a pre-req for so many ranged feats.

Melee builds can usually function from Level 1 just fine most ranged builds are pratically piking until at LEAST level 6 and aren't really all that useful until they pick up IPS around level FIFTEEN!! so much so that Morninglord AAs are quite popular.

That said IF the devs were to go my route of the Basic Style, Improved Style, Greater Style (and Perfect Style, whihc I think Doubleshot should be renamed to Perfect Shot) I'd like to see some ranged equivalents (NOT copies) of those optional feats you mentioned.

A couple ideas:
Tactical feats -> Called Shot: Say 4 toggleable effects (4 diff feats, only one active at a time)...Head, Arms, Legs and Chest these would have a similar DC to stunning blow, etc. except it uses Dex or Int (highest) for it's DC (Zen Archery changes this to Wis)

Called Shot: Head - Some sort of blinding effect or possible just a higher crit chance
Called Shot: Legs - Either Slowed movement or immobilize effect
Called Shot: Arms - Slowed attack speed and applies a ASF effect (hard to cast with an arrow in your arm)
Called Shot: Chest - A knockback effect

Cleave, great Cleave -> Spread shot/Greater spread shot - basically the same idea as C/GC except less of a "fan" of damage and more multiple arrow shots like Shadowdancer's shadow lance....these attacks utilize's IPS's "Penetrating" capabilities if the user has the feat

Whirlwind -> Arrow Rain: An AOE effect around targeted creature or self in no target is present basically procs a single attack (with any modifiers ie. flaming) on all enemies within the zone, pre-req SS, GSS, Precision

These would all have a comparable cooldown to the existing melee feats


Dodge Mobility Spring attack, Combat expertise, precision -> same, works just fine for ranged

I'm open to more ideas...DC & Marvel are great for this...Artemis, Speedy, Red Arrow, Green Arrow, Hawkeye...oh and don't forget Hawkeye (one's DC one's Marvel) even stuff like the Bat Family, Ironman and Spiderman can be repurposed into ranged use but I'd save some of that stuff for Rogue Mechs specifically.

Shield Mastery with Improved Shield Mastery

SM, ISM & ISB are considered the Basic, Improved and Greater Feats for S&B combatants and no one else would take these.

If your issue is that you don't like the effects of these or you think their underpowered the solution is to give feedback on these feats not suggest that they be usable with unrelated SWF feats.

Oh and ranged combatant being somehow "safer" is a myth I can "kite" just as much on a melee as a ranged character.

[Therigar]

At the moment SWF, TWF and THF are all meant to be balanced against each other as standalone melee styles.

You are correct. They are meant to be balanced but they are not. Go ahead, search the forums. How many new, front-line DPS builds do you find for SWF characters? They just are not out there.

With TWF you have a whole host of builds that have come and gone and you have an ongoing debate about whether TWF>THF or THF>TWF. Similar situation with THF. Where's the crush of SWF builds?

What you have are Bard Swashbuckler builds. And even those cannot really match the bladeforged fighter/monk/paladin THF DPS, self-repairing, every player wants one builds.

If you think that SWF, TWF and THF are currently balanced, regardless of what is intended, then you are not observing what really goes on among the players. SWF is still a distant third.

I have two paladin/fighter sword and board builds on live that I spent my carefully horded LR20 on to convert to SWF. They are LESS powerful than they were previously, not more. My dwarf with broadsword (so I could use the raider's box Nightmare) did more damage with the THF feat line. My human with Celestia (also from the raider box) lost damage in spite of wielding arguably one of the better weapons in the game.

SWF plus the shield feat line will only pawn TWF and THF because the shield line is exploitable. It is only exploitable because it increases offensive power in addition to defensive power and does so indiscriminately and without restrictions. Fix that and you fix the (potential) problem.

[Therigar]

This difference is you don't NEED those feats to function as a melee actually some of them are very optional...I'm suprised you didn't list off all the tactical feats whereas a Bow user MUST take all the feats listed to even function.

Actually, you DO need all of those feats. I didn't list the tactical feats because i got tired of having to draw you a picture for every single thing. And, bow users DO NOT need all of the feats to "even function." I have a ranged character and she does not have every single feat -- at least she did not purposefully select them. That is because she is a ranger and many were auto granted to her.

That seems appropriate given the background of DDO and D&D. While rangers are not "ranged" characters per se they have for a long time been intentionally pushed into either a ranged or a melee style choice. Moreover, ranged with running away seemed to fit their table-top and fantasy role much more closely.

What you complain about only applies to players who want to get ranger-like characters but without actually being rangers. In the case of crossbows (and here we are dealing primarily with artificers and rogues in the mechanic enhancement line) the number of feats is reduced and, for artificers at least, many are also auto granted.

So, to function is vastly different from to dominate. Yes, you have to sacrifice a lot in order to dominate. But to function, you do not. In fact, to function you need only splash 6 ranger levels and go on about your business. If you choose to build otherwise then it isn't the game or the feats that are restricting you -- it is your own choices.

And that is a GOOD thing, not a bad one.

[Failedlegend]

With TWF you have a whole host of builds that have come and gone and you have an ongoing debate about whether TWF>THF or THF>TWF. Similar situation with THF. Where's the crush of SWF builds?

TWF & THF came out years ago (I assume at the start or shortly after DDO was released...it was there when I joined in 2009) SWF is new everyone is still trying to optimize it and test it in-game that said I've seen several builds on the forums and am personal trying to decide on which of over a dozen SWF builds I'm going to TR my Main Wakut Mindfilleter into.

What you complain about only applies to players who want to get ranger-like characters but without actually being rangers. In the case of crossbows (and here we are dealing primarily with artificers and rogues in the mechanic enhancement line) the number of feats is reduced and, for artificers at least, many are also auto granted.

So what your saying is non-rangers should not be allowed to use ranged weaponry (at least not easily) and you hold some odd disdain for xbow and thrown weapon users. NOW I'm starting to see where your views are coming from.

[Therigar]

SWF plus the shield feat line will only pawn TWF and THF because the shield line is exploitable. It is only exploitable because it increases offensive power in addition to defensive power and does so indiscriminately and without restrictions. Fix that and you fix the (potential) problem.

Random thought on how to salvage this without redesigning the Shield feat line and completely reworking the proposed figher/paladin third enhancement lines:

What if only the offensive part of the Shield line were disabled for players with SWF? That is, what if the offensive benefits did not stack?

Maybe that is the current intent and it is lost in the discussion. My perception is that players choosing SWF will lose the defensive benefits of the Shield line because the offensive boosts stack on top of SWF making it (at least in perception) too powerful. So, why not just prohibit them from stacking?

We already have multiple types of boosts -- alchemical, competence, inherent, insight, etc. What if the double strike and similar boosts from SWF and Shield were typed to one that does not stack while those from gear were typed to one that does?

[Scrabbler]

TWF & THF came out years ago (I asusme at the start or shortly after DDO was released...

Interestingly, there were TWF feats present at launch, but you can't honestly say they worked as a style.

1. There was no way to equip an offhand weapon except by dragging icons around the inventory window.
2. With a level cap 10, there was no such thing as GTWF.
3. Without Fortification, holding a shield was actually a pretty important defense.
4. The -2 attack roll actually mattered.
5. Equipping an offhand weapon reduced your mainhand swing rate. So the added offhand procs had to make up for that reduction before turning into any kind of bonus; the net attack improvement was under 10%.

[Therigar]

So what your saying is non-rangers should not be allowed to use ranged weaponry (at least not easily) and you hold some odd disdain for xbow and thrown weapon users. NOW I'm starting to see where your views are coming from.

I am saying that eveyone has to make choices and choosing to exploit non-ranged class lines for the other benefits they provide in order to get a ranged character should be costly. I am saying that your notion that "functional" is "dominating" is flawed.

Regarding thrown weapons and crossbows, these are niche builds. You get what you get when taking them. That, too, is a player choice.

As to disdain, I have great disdain for ranged characters in general. I have similar disdain for arcane characters and divine characters. That is why you will seldom find any of them among my 20+ characters. But, my personal feeling about the value of builds does not color my understanding of how DDO works and why it works as it does.

Melee characters need few feats to "function." That is also true for ranged characters. Melee characters need many feats to "dominate." That is also true for ranged characters. That many feats are needed is a good thing. Reducing or eliminating the feats lets players have characters that are too powerful and able to instantly jump from one area to the next while continuing to dominate. That is bad for the game.

Again, we do not need more bladeforged self-repairing fighter/monk/paladins running around (as halfling favored souls or drow sorcerers or human whatevers) because we make it too easy. No. DDO is a game where you as a player have to choose. If you want to dominate as a ranged character you take lots of range related feats. If you want to dominate as a melee character you take lots of melee related feats. If you want to dominate as a spell caster you take lots of spell casting related feats.

That is how the game works and it is that way so we have "balance."

The thing with DDO is that if you want to function in multiple areas you give up being able to dominate in order to be at least functional and potentially useful in a variety of roles. That too is how the game works and also part of the "balance" of the game.

If you do not understand that then it is further reason why you should not be on the Player's Council.

[Therigar]

Interestingly, there were TWF feats present at launch, but you can't honestly say they worked as a style.

1. There was no way to equip an offhand weapon except by dragging icons around the inventory window.
2. With a level cap 10, there was no such thing as GTWF.
3. Without Fortification, holding a shield was actually a pretty important defense.
4. The -2 attack roll actually mattered.
5. Equipping an offhand weapon reduced your mainhand swing rate. So the added offhand procs had to make up for that reduction before turning into any kind of bonus; the net attack improvement was under 10%.

Kudos for knowing about the game.

More kudos for explaining Turbine's often questionable development decisions and player's propensity to exploit every segment of the game. I know you didn't mean to do that, but it is there.

[Grailhawk]

Probably way too late to make this suggestion but this is a thought.

1) Standardize all attack animations to have the same rate of attack (80 attacks per minute (1.33 aps) sounds good IMO)
2) Remove any animation based scaling of Alacrity Bonus.
3) Remove the 1.5 Stat bonus from innate THF
4) Add a 20 MP bonus to innate THF.
5) Remove 1/2 Stat damage penalty on offhand attacks while TWF.
6) Remove the no shield in the offhand restriction from SWF.
7) Add new mitigation system similar to Dodge called Deflection.
8) Add 5% Deflection to Bucklers, 10% to Small Shields, 15% to Large Shields, 20% to Tower Shields.
9) Change the Combat style feat to do the following.

THF: +20 MP each feat.
PTHF: +10 MP, Requires GTHF.
TWF: +20% offhand Proc Rate each feat.
PTWF: +10% Doubletrike, and you gain offhand doublestrike equal to your main hand doublestrike, Requires GTWF.
SWF: +10 MP, +10 Doublestrike each feat.
PSWF: +5MP +5 Doublestrike, Requires GSWF.
S&B: +10% Deflection, Glancing Blows 30%/60%/100% proc rate, at +15% of base damage and +5% chance to proc weapon effects each feat.
PS&B: +10% Glancing Blow damage and +5% chance to proc weapon effects, Requires GS&B.

[Therigar]

That post was loaded with incorrect material, and worse. But nevermind the details of that.


What it comes down to is that regarding whether Shield-specific feats can be used at the same time as SWF, the devs have only these 3 choices:

1. Prohibit a character from benefiting from SWF and Shield feats at the same time.
2. Make the Shield feats weak, so that it requires 3 additional SWF feats in order to get a decent combat style. This means that S&B combat is unusable to non-Fighters (such as Paladins, Clerics, FVS, Bard, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Barbarian).
3. Make the Shield feats strong, so that having them alone gives you a decent combat style, and adding SWF on top makes you overpowered. That adds tons of power to Fighters, makes all non-S&B non-Monk Fighters into a mistake, nearly forces S&B Paladins, Clerics, etc to devote most of their feat slots to passive combat style effects, and undermines the value of THF, TWF, and SWF builds.

Which of those three choices do you think they should try?

If there is incorrect material or worse in my post and you don't want to burden others with it, please send me a PM and tell me what you find incorrect (or worse).

Next, you are not right. There are more than just three choices.

The ongoing frustration is that on live the shield feats give a PRR boost and a DPS boost, players are using them, and the characters are not dominating the game. The game is still dominated by the power builds -- primarily the bladesworn THF builds.

If the build forums were full of builds that suddenly put TWF and THF on the trash heap then I would see the argument for not allowing SWF to work with the shield feats. But, they are not. Nobody is posting videos of them soloing EE content and dishing out 2000+ damage on nearly every hit.

Like I said at the start, I came late to this discussion. But, if that is suddenly the situation with the update that SWF plus shield feats puts TWF and THF on the trash heap then the problem is in the design of the shield feats.

And, just as others have done, you confuse S&B as its own combat style. It is not. It is SWF plus shield -- that is all. It is Swashbuckling but with balance based on shield type so that a player can choose where on the defense <-> offense sliding scale they want to be.

So, you can choose from among the three equally wrong solutions or you can take the fourth choice -- make the two feats work together appropriately so that players have choice about where they want to be regarding the balance point between offense and defense.

[Scrabbler]

If there is incorrect material or worse in my post and you don't want to burden others with it, please send me a PM and tell me what you find incorrect (or worse).

I don't have an incentive to go through that effort.

And, just as others have done, you confuse S&B as its own combat style. It is not. It is SWF plus shield -- that is all.

You keep on making that claim, which is clearly contrary to the way things are defined currently. Claiming that things already work the way you wished they worked is a poor way to advocate for changes.

[Scrabbler]

So, you can choose from among the three equally wrong solutions or you can take the fourth choice -- make the two feats work together appropriately so that players have choice about where they want to be regarding the balance point between offense and defense.

Can you spell out more of how that could be possible?

Suppose that Shield feats are boosted to give a really strong defensive benefit. A serious amount of defense, so that it balances out for the 40% lower attack speed of not using TWF.

Now take that Shield feat character and let him use SWF feats at the same time. He gains 30% attack speed and +100% str damage, which is a pretty huge offense boost.

Knowing that SWF is already similar in power to TWF (a little more or less, depending on exact gear available), how can you say that using SWF at the same time as Shield feats is balanced and fair?

[Failedlegend]

Before it's too late to change this in time for this update...please make Buckler's and Light Shield Finessable

I learned whilst trying to build a swashbuckler (Dex/Cha based) that buckler's and light shields are not finessable this makes no sense especially in the context of a swashbuckler.

I mean their light enough to use evasion with so it makes sense that they should be finessable.

Edit: Apparently IC:Bludgeon doesn't work either, it should

[Therigar]

You keep on making that claim, which is clearly contrary to the way things are defined currently.

In 2e there were four melee combat styles. In current terms we would call them single weapon, two weapon, two handed and sword & board. In 3e those gave way to a multitude of fighting styles. With 4e there are also many styles.

The way things are "defined currently" is only applicable to DDO and it is only that way because we have wrongly identified S&B as somehow different from SWF plus shield. It is not. Functionally, S&B is precisely SWF plus shield and it has been that way for a very long time. Only this forum and the Turbine/DDO community seem to be confused by this.

SWF plus shield = S&B. On live, right now, that combination is absolutely NOT too powerful. Therefore, if it becomes too powerful as a result of the update it is because the developers screwed up the shield feats -- not because S&B is a 4th combat style in addition to SWF, TWF and THF.

[EllisDee37]

Would this still be your POV if the Shield feats did not give offensive bonuses but only gave defensive ones? Would this still be your POV if the balance between offensive and defensive bonuses scaled with the type of shield being used?

Yes, it would still be my position that SWF and shield feats should remain mutually exclusive.

The way things are "defined currently" is only applicable to DDO

Of course it's only applicable to DDO. DDO is the only thing that matters in this conversation. PnP is wholly irrelevant to this discussion.

SWF plus shield = S&B.

I strongly disagree. In real life, adding a shield radically changes the fighting style. Your stance changes. Your positioning changes. Your tactics change.

For a common example many of us have hopefully seen, consider in the movie the Princess Bride, the fight between Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black. To me, that fight is between two swashbucklers, and if you gave either or both of them shields, that fight would be radically, unrecognizably different.

[Therigar]

Can you spell out more of how that could be possible?

Suppose that Shield feats are boosted to give a really strong defensive benefit. A serious amount of defense, so that it balances out for the 40% lower attack speed of not using TWF.

Now take that Shield feat character and let him use SWF feats at the same time. He gains 30% attack speed and +100% str damage, which is a pretty huge offense boost.

Knowing that SWF is already similar in power to TWF (a little more or less, depending on exact gear available), how can you say that using SWF at the same time as Shield feats is balanced and fair?

You postulate enough defensive increase to balance out the lower attack rate compared to TWF (that is, kill faster so that there is less incoming damage thus giving roughly equivalent defenses). That addresses the balance between offense and defense and, if damage output via SWF were roughly equivalent to damage from TWF then this would be eminently fair.

You also postulate that SWF and TWF are presently about equal. Live includes the ability to combine shield feats with SWF. So, if you are right and SWF is roughly equal to TWF, then there is currently no problem.

If there is currently no problem, then how does a problem suddenly appear with the update?

And, note that live currently includes all of the abilities to wear heavy armor -- if that is what a player wants their character to do -- or to select destinies that have large defensive boosts to them. Of course, TWF characters can do the same thing. So, even that does not change the equivalency.

What I propose is similar to your speculation but only for one class of shields. For the others I suggest that the defensive boost be lowered and the offensive boost be raised -- but the end effect is the same: The balance between offense and defense causes the character to remain roughly equal to other shield classes while retaining rough equivalency with TWF and THF.

The only way you can argue that this is NOT fair and balanced is if you argue that SWF on live results in players throwing TWF and THF characters on the trash heap. I keep insisting that this is not the case. I continue to assert that the build forums are not filled with SWF builds and that none of them threaten to overtake the top TWF and THF builds as DPS gods.