Armor Up - Developer Diary #2

[CaptainSpacePony]

Since its too late for them to go back and create epic class levels (its also probably cost prohibited) what they should do IMO is grant a new feat on every epic level (this would be in addition to any normal epic feat or destiny feat) and have the character choose from a list of 3 or 4 feat that can be taken more then once. Exaples of the feats would be
Martial Training: +10 Melee Power, +1 BAB, +20 HP
Arcane Training: +2 Spell Power, +25 SP, +1 Arcane Caster level
Primal Training: +5 Melee Power, +5 Ranged Power, +10 HP, +10 SP

It gives the illusion of choice at the very least which epic levels are missing.

'
I like this sort of idea. Probably only on "dead" levels though (those w/no other feat). 3 options are not enough, however.

[Thrudh]

Some follow up:



Actually we are saying that non-blitz melee is behind ranged and casting builds. Reducing monster health does nothing to balance the relative power of various builds.



If we just nerf blitz then melee won't have any option or build to stay competitive with good ranged and casting builds.

Great well-thought answers... Sev, you rock....

[Firewall]

If we nerfed all of the top performing builds we'd still have no way to scale up static damage effects into the epic levels, which is the whole point of melee power.

Sev~

The problem that i see with introducing Melee Power with at least 250% damage compared to now is that it will make Epic Hard and Epic Normal quests be as easy as Epic Casual and in combination with the AC changes will make EE content the new EH (or EN). The only problem with the combat system in my opinion always was with Epic Elite quests and only because you scaled monster HP, DCs, Attack values and whatnot way too high.

There already are builds from all class types able to do EE quests, be it ranged characters (e.g. Monkchers), casters (e.g. Shiradi Sorcs) or melee characters (e.g. Cetus or Zeus). Yes you need special well-thought through builds that use every flaw and tweak in the system to do this effectively but it is always the challenge to find those. And that will not change when you scale melee damage to 250% except that the mostly used FotM build will do 250% more overall damage.

You take the actual highest damage build, use it as reference for other builds and even make it more powerful in the future by letting other effects scale with Melee Power and not only physical damage. People tend to use the most powerful builds out there and scaling damage will not change that. People will find ways to exploit that new system and it will certainly introduce new bugs.

I would have preferred if you had restricted the changes to Epic Elite content only and then only with slight changes like reducing group scaling for monsters and lowering attack values, hp and saves a bit.

[CaptainSpacePony]

The power should be in the levels and the abilities should be in the destinies. This way leveling through archmage on a fighter doesnt seem like a slogfest compared to being in LD.

Great idea, but I fear that boat sailed long ago.

After catching up on the thread, my current thoughts:

I like the idea of the new proposals HOWEVER, the #s suggested are all way too high. *****Devs please take notice*****usually most of the backlash you get regarding proposed changes is that people (wrongly) fear it will weaken their builds. This time, most of the backlash is that it is too powerful and will too greatly unbalance the game.

Blitz is currently an "Epic Moment" that is OP because it often acts like an always-on stance. IMO it could use some nerfing. I understand that much effort is being made to preserve this design error, but that may not be wise. I completely agree that other EDs need help too and scaling up w/lvls etc. Look at all this.

Swasbucklers should be able to take and use both shield and SWF feats. Not allowing that will be counterintuitive and... yucky bad. Realizing that with the current proposals that would be OP, the proposals should be changed. Regarding the argument that all the benefits of Swashbuckling and shield mastery are not a problem because bards have limited feats--I say Balderdash! Last I looked, bards could also take many ftr lvls. If stacking melee power is available through feats, then it will be too much.

There's only been a little talk about this, but I feel SWF is currently OP and may become glaringly so with this system. I recommend reigning SWF in a bit now.

[Thar]

If we nerfed all of the top performing builds we'd still have no way to scale up static damage effects into the epic levels, which is the whole point of melee power.

Sev~

light armor evasion w/heavy shields is a nerf but not top performing.... stop the pain!

[Thar]

Actually we are saying that non-blitz melee is behind ranged and casting builds. Reducing monster health does nothing to balance the relative power of various builds.

my non blitz two handed dwarf does average 200 per hit, my ranger does average 70 a hit. Monchers are not the only ranged builds out there.

[EllisDee37]

light armor evasion w/heavy shields is a nerf but not top performing.... stop the pain!

I think you're the only person on the forums who cares about heavy shields keeping evasion. It's certainly a niche build.

I think those of us who don't play such builds -- which appears to be everyone but you -- we kind of think of heavy shields with evasion as discordant, a bit of a cheese flavor. So we (or at least I) consider it a good thing to make heavy shields not work with evasion.

As a concession to you, because you clearly care very much about this, I suggested adding a tier 4 enhancement (2 AP) to the S&B trees to allow heavy shields with evasion, and a tier 5 (2 AP) to allow tower shields with evasion. But that suggestion was made solely for you and because of you. I haven't seen anyone else care about the issue.

[Monkey_Archer]

Thinking more about using divine crusader as the point of reference, instead of blitz...
Right now Zeal of Righteousness gives +50 melee power, which diminishes over time. What if you removed that 50 melee power and made that permanent for all melees (something like 10 melee power at level 20, +5 for each additional epic level). This would only be a very small buff to Divine crusader(which is already strong as is), and a fairly significant 50% increase to all the weaker destinies to get them closer to the power of divine crusader. Then the weaker destinies like shadowdancer would only need a few minor buffs to be competitive. Legendary dreadnought could still remain as a more healthly powerhouse destiny by adding the +5 melee power per core and leaving blitz at +100.

That would make
DC - permanent 50 melee power instead of diminishing
Blitz - 80 permanent +100 while blitzing
Everything else - 50 permanent melee power

[Scraap]

Actually we've gotten a lot of player feedback that the leveling from 20-28 is lackluster at best. Many players feel that the levels are meaningless, and advancement in the EDs is all that matters. We'd like to see the actual levels have more meaning.
Sev~

I'll simply reiterate what others have said as well: Just like the 'flaming X' changes served as nothing more than elevator leveling*, choice-less bumps in meta-stats degrades the experience, and I'd far far rather see levels either a) refining a character further with select-able abilities, or b) an enhancement or ed point gain for discretionary use so that as you progress the characters become more yours and less... generic, would be the only PC way I can really put it.

*elevator leveling: Ding, level up! On this floor we have.. bigger numbers, same swings, maybe a different mob look.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

Yeah also a little worried about this change for melee happening but, the ranged change coming in some future update.

Does this mean ranged will become subpar again until the changes come because, changing the EDs and waiting for ranged will leave ranged lost.



Also Artificer's need thier own ED one similar to Divine Crudsaider that is both ranged/melee and caster focused but, with the ability to either focus pure ranged, pure caster, or a mix of both.



While we are talking ranged All crossbows need a serious fix.

"shot" type attacks can be lost in the reload cycle of the crossbow and go on cool down without the attack being performed.

The is a work around to avoid this but, it's very immersion breaking and is toughest in heavy combat when a shot attack like pin might save your skin. The work around is to be sure you have a bolt/bolts loaded which outside oh heavy combat is easier to judge but since an unloaded crossbow and a loaded crossbow look the same you can't tell if your just standing at rest either without trying a test shot first.

*snip of examples*

To expand on this Crossbows have 2 sequences of attack Load/Reload and Fire.
During a sequence of attacks any of these Shot type attacks must be used when the Crossbow is loaded or the attack will go on cool down and nothing will happen.

My suggestion is simply for the attack not to go on cool down if no "shot" is fired

My suggestion would be to make more of these attacks similar to Adrenaline - proc on the next actual attack roll. And probably code things so there's no stacking, or limited stacking - enhancement + ED but not multiple enhancements, for instance. I can't tell you how often my ranger/rogue misses a Shiv, or my FvS misses a Smite Foe, or my barb misses a Vicious Strike, because my finger twitched or the bugger dances away JUST as I hit the button, etc.

[edrein]

Thinking more about using divine crusader as the point of reference, instead of blitz...
Right now Zeal of Righteousness gives +50 melee power, which diminishes over time. What if you removed that 50 melee power and made that permanent for all melees (something like 10 melee power at level 20, +5 for each additional epic level). This would only be a very small buff to Divine crusader(which is already strong as is), and a fairly significant 50% increase to all the weaker destinies to get them closer to the power of divine crusader. Then the weaker destinies like shadowdancer would only need a few minor buffs to be competitive. Legendary dreadnought could still remain as a more healthly powerhouse destiny by adding the +5 melee power per core and leaving blitz at +100.

That would make
DC - permanent 50 melee power instead of diminishing
Blitz - 80 permanent +100 while blitzing
Everything else - 50 permanent melee power

As far as a compromise goes this could work with some further tweaking, but frankly I think you don't see the bigger picture. The new version of Blitz would be 'easier' for everyone to use, thus there wouldn't be the need to keep it as the almighty god of abilities. Or to put it better let me compare the old Blitz/proposed Blitz at the power you've described with another destiny.

Take Primal Avatar for instance, a permanent 50 melee power would help. But without the ability for it to scale with the epic moment it would be wasted and still make Blitz the ultimate choice for competent DPS. Now, a 50 base scaling with the actual Avatar of Nature form would be fine if you added an additional say 50-100 power to the current form would be comparative to various min-maxer Blitz builds. Assuming that all of our math is based entirely on min-maxers.

Primal Avatar would then be on par with Legendary Dreadnaught. But I'm starting to think that you are against really evening the playing field so that more build options can spring up. It looks like you're more in favor of keeping Blitz on top for the FoTM builds rather than opening the doors for other ideas to spring forth.

[Munkenmo]

As a concession to you, because you clearly care very much about this, I suggested adding a tier 4 enhancement (2 AP) to the S&B trees to allow heavy shields with evasion, and a tier 5 (2 AP) to allow tower shields with evasion. But that suggestion was made solely for you and because of you. I haven't seen anyone else care about the issue.

When Lord of blades first came out I was making full use of a heavy sheild on my evasion tank. Since the introduction of PRR though it's not really been an issue. Rather than nerfing builds that do make use of heavy shields though, what I'd really love to see is a paladin shield enhancement :

T5.One with the shield:
When you have a buckler / Light / Heavy shield equipped you are granted evasion.
1/1/1 ap Requires: Improved Shield Mastery.

[Monkey_Archer]

As far as a compromise goes this could work with some further tweaking, but frankly I think you don't see the bigger picture. The new version of Blitz would be 'easier' for everyone to use, thus there wouldn't be the need to keep it as the almighty god of abilities. Or to put it better let me compare the old Blitz/proposed Blitz at the power you've described with another destiny.

Take Primal Avatar for instance, a permanent 50 melee power would help. But without the ability for it to scale with the epic moment it would be wasted and still make Blitz the ultimate choice for competent DPS. Now, a 50 base scaling with the actual Avatar of Nature form would be fine if you added an additional say 50-100 power to the current form would be comparative to various min-maxer Blitz builds. Assuming that all of our math is based entirely on min-maxers.

Primal Avatar would then be on par with Legendary Dreadnaught. But I'm starting to think that you are against really evening the playing field so that more build options can spring up. It looks like you're more in favor of keeping Blitz on top for the FoTM builds rather than opening the doors for other ideas to spring forth.

The thing is, there will always be a FOTM min-maxed build, regardless of how many balance changes go through. I do want to see every destiny become equally viable, but that does not mean that every destiny needs to do exactly the same dps as legendary dreadnought. In fact, if every destiny does do the same dps as dreadnought, that would make it the worst destiny because it doesn't even offer anything but damage.
For example, shadowdancer is a weak destiny, but it offers a lot of useful things like instakills, sneak attack, dodge, skills, spells, etc.. If shadow dancer does just as much damage as a blitz, but also has all these extras, why would you want to blitz?
As I see it, dreadnought is the destiny that should remain as the highest dps, simply because it doesn't offer anything else, and there would be no reason to use it otherwise. The difference between lower-dps destinies and blitz definitely shouldn't be by a factor of 4 or 5 like it is on live, but a factor of 2 seems reasonable given how many benefits other destinies offer besides raw dps.

[maddong]

Here is a way you could lesson the inflation of melee power having it have more effect on the 6d6:
When a crit happens crits count as melee or ranged power so it is additive instead of multiplicative.
Eg x2 crit = 100 melee power
X3 crit = 200 melee power

That lets you be a little more liberal with the melee power without totally wrecking the game.

I still think you need to tone down all the bonuses and maybe only give melees a 20% bonus vs ranged, otherwise ranged will be dead and content will be too easy.

Blitz needs to be weaker if every person in the group gets to keep it up. Or you could turn it into an action boost (super damage boost).

[EllisDee37]

When Lord of blades first came out I was making full use of a heavy sheild on my evasion tank. Since the introduction of PRR though it's not really been an issue. Rather than nerfing builds that do make use of heavy shields though, what I'd really love to see is a paladin shield enhancement :

T5.One with the shield:
When you have a buckler / Light / Heavy shield equipped you are granted evasion.
1/1/1 ap Requires: Improved Shield Mastery.

I'm against enhancements granting evasion. Not super thrilled with the swashbuckler one either, but at least it's a capstone.

[Scraap]

As a concession to you, because you clearly care very much about this, I suggested adding a tier 4 enhancement (2 AP) to the S&B trees to allow heavy shields with evasion, and a tier 5 (2 AP) to allow tower shields with evasion. But that suggestion was made solely for you and because of you. I haven't seen anyone else care about the issue.

As someone else with a variant on that particular theme, I could live with something along those lines.

[Qhualor]

I'm against enhancements granting evasion. Not super thrilled with the swashbuckler one either, but at least it's a capstone.

Holy ****! I wasn't aware of the evasion so I looked up Swashbuckler. that tree has a ton of damage enhancements. I can see now why their dps is so good.

you can also get evasion in Shadowdancer or Primal Avatar, but those aren't optimal for S&B. at least the devs are making it a capstone.

[Systern]

This guy gets it.

Swashbuckler with buckler = 15% doublestrike, 20 PRR, 10% dodge, 20% shield bash, all the stats on the buckler you are wearing, (possibly +20 melee power unless an exception is created)
Swashbuckler with emptyhand = 10% double strike, +5 damage

What kind of choice is that?

The way I see it, is that there needs to be a decision on whether S&B is a stand alone combat style, or just additional feats that tack on to another style.
If it is going to be its own fighting style, then it should not work with SWF, even if that means nerfing existing builds (and swashbucklers can still be buffed to compensate)
If its not going to be its own fighting style, then all S&B builds should be able to take a real combat style (SWF) in addition to shield master feats.

You neglect that 2 feats and a Tier 2 twist are freed up:

I listed my feats for my dex based elf pure bard earlier...
Swashbuckler w/ buckler: 15% doublestrike, 20 PRR, 10% dodge, all the stats on the buckler you are wearing, (possibly +15 melee power unless an exception is created, no room for bash)
Swashbuckler with Power Attack and new Overwhelming Critical and Hail of Blows: +10 damage, 13% double strike, +1 crit multiplier. -5 to Hit.

The difference isn't that amazing, and empty handed will end up being more DPS, while the buckler will be more survivable. I don't see the reason why a build would be prevented from purchasing either feats.

[fearlesswolf]

Rather than create something that will be misinterpreted in 12 months, adjust the skills that are doing too much damage, and reduce mob hp by 60% rather than increase player damage by 1.5x.

Yes to this, yes 1000x to this

I'll be one to say that maybe -60% health on EE mobs may be a bit drastic but you sir, you know what is up! I'll also reconize that this solution is also not such an easy task as we are asking for a widescale balancing across epic levels in general; which to say the least, isn't something the devs can solve over a cup of coffee

my opinion to all this MP stuff is to scrap it, and remember 3 nice little words
SMALL. CLASS. BUFFS.

NONE of this "90% more damage fixes everything MP"
MORE of these class buffs like what you are proposing for pally's (which are not at a "good" stage yet btw)

I hope that im not the only one to say I'd prefer small buffs to several melee classes and enhancements rather than this massive buff to every melee class ever.

NOTE: I do approve of a redesign of blitz as it is just a broken epic moment

[Monkey_Archer]

Yes to this, yes 1000x to this

I'll be one to say that maybe -60% health on EE mobs may be a bit drastic but you sir, you know what is up! I'll also reconize that this solution is also not such an easy task as we are asking for a widescale balancing across epic levels in general; which to say the least, isn't something the devs can solve over a cup of coffee

my opinion to all this MP stuff is to scrap it, and remember 3 nice little words
SMALL. CLASS. BUFFS.

NONE of this "90% more damage fixes everything MP"
MORE of these class buffs like what you are proposing for pally's (which are not at a "good" stage yet btw)

I hope that im not the only one to say I'd prefer small buffs to several melee classes and enhancements rather than this massive buff to every melee class ever.

NOTE: I do approve of a redesign of blitz as it is just a broken epic moment

I wouldn't go so far as to completely scrap everything, but I fully agree with the concept of buffing classes and nerfing destinies as a better way to balance things. Most endgame builds nowadays are entirely defined by their destiny. The class level choices are basically secondary only to compliment the destiny. The biggest examples of this are definitely Shiradi and Blitz. Nobody cares what melee class you are, if you can blitz you are a blitzer and your job is the same. Nobody cares if you are a wizard/sorc/fvs/cleric/mutt build, if you are in shiradi you are a shiradi caster and function pretty much the same way.