Armor Up - Developer Diary #2

[mikarddo]

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.



As we test the changes to see how they perform this is a very real option.



Yes.

Sev~

A blitzer with 10 stacks is ahead of top ranged and caster builds. A further buffed blitzer with no worry of losing stacks below 6 no need for killshots and no build up time will be superior to any ranged or caster build in almost every situation. Please reconsider in this light.

[Nascoe]

Scrabbler is right in this.
You can choose between 10% dodge + whatever the buckler gives you
or 10% doublestrike and +5 dmg
That choice is fine as it is. Don't need the feats for that, just get that tradeoff to work.

I think the "whatever the buckler gives you" may need to be looked at.
It feels very very weird that holding a shield, even a tiny one like a buckler, does not increase your defense in the form of inherent PRR and MRR, even if it's just 3. The AC is not doing it. I disagree on that part of the overhaul.
Not having it work inherently but do having it benefit from masteries is upside down imo.


I too am a bit sad though, we were so close. It would have been one of my design goals, to create an environment where the shield mastery weapon style is used, and in particular also used by someone other than the old intimitank.
If you could somehow, in some way, make a Shield Mastery (instead of SWF) swashbuckler viable, that would be quite the accomplishment (oh, and a phalanx while you're at it)

With the proposed changes a buckler gives next to nothing, as it won't give PRR anymore, it won't give you any MRR either. And without taking the feat line that makes this choice a non issue flavor only option. Currently shield mastery DOES work with swashbuckler and the skirmisher enhancement was specially designed to do so.

[Nascoe]

The bug here is that you can take SWF and Shield Mastery feats at the same time. While this isn't a big issue right now, it could lead to problems with the DPS boost. Making the two sets of feats exclusive may not be the best solution, but players wouldn't lost much if this change happened during the update.

Wait a moment, its NOT a bug, this was possible and discussed right from the start of using buckers with swashbuckler (you can't use SWF and SM together at once apart from limiting yourself to bard, to light weapons and wearing light armor). And so far the "bard" destiny is not even getting any DPS boost in the destiny either so they need all the power they can get.

Why should it be fine that something introduced a month ago as flavor and something to get people to roll up some bards has to be nuked out of orbit with the next update. Not to mention it takes a big chunk of the newly developed tree and just delegates it to the wastebin because this option would be completely gimp (you gain a dodge but nothing much else from using a buckler without SM feats).

It just shows that Severlin has to read up on the "stances should be mutually exclusive" idea, because that is a major change from current game - you can currently use Daxes and Bswords with THF and SM and taking that away will more or less mean that option dies out too. I think the whole idea needs to get a rethink because I doubt that was the target as on the one hand boosting shield use, but then taking away a relatively wide spread way to use them is a big mistake.

[lyrecono]

I have read 13 pages before my boss started to suspect something, so i don't know if Sev has answered this yet:

Sev, you have mentioned not wanting to mix fighting styles, and this:

Two Handed Fighting adds 10 Melee Power while wielding a two handed weapon.
Improved Two Handed Fighting adds an additional 5 Melee Power while wielding a two handed weapon.
Greater Two Handed Fighting adds an additional 5 Melee Power while wielding a two handed weapon.

Shield Mastery adds 10 Melee Power while wielding a shield.
Improved Shield Mastery adds an additional 5 Melee Power while wielding a shield.
Improved Shield Bash adds an additional 5 Melee Power while wielding a shield.
Sev~

but these have been used together by tanks for years (using dwarven axes and b.asterdswords)
Will they now stop working together? why?

[Nascoe]

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.



As we test the changes to see how they perform this is a very real option.



Yes.

Sev~

Hm, I doubt ranged is ahead on most builds. Maybe on the monkchers using the full toolkit AND blitzing (or furyshot), but ...
The biggest pre of ranged (and casting) is that you can keep your distance and avoid much of the damage done from bosses and mobs hitting like a tank. You adress that in the pass of MRR and PRR already. And if you do change Blitz etc. to give melee power instead of a boost to damage as such, that automatically takes down the ranged top damage usage in blitz (and fury if you change that one too), meaning that suddenly melee blitzing is top DPS and you enabled playing more close up, so maybe the rest of the change is already over the top?
Because with adding as much power to melee as you suggest, it really will make things in DC problematically overpowered and will mean that a group with more melee gets boosted to a point where EE content might not be much challenge at all.

[Desonde]

I'll be one to say that maybe -60% health on EE mobs may be a bit drastic...

Thanks for the kind words, I just want to highlight and explain this statement as well.

-60% wasn't just a random number, in the situation of currently doing 100 average damage, against a 10,000hp foe the killing blow will be delivered on the 100th hit. Boosting the 100 average damage by (100+150)/100 brings it to 250 dmg a hit resulting in the killing bow delivered on the 40th hit. That is equal to 10,000-60%=4,000hp where the killing blow will still occur on the 40th hit.

Therefor if -60% health may be a bit drastic, than +150% damage is equally as drastic just with further inflated numbers.

The only difference is that the hp reduction boosts all builds equally (and will make it easier to swallow nerfs to the over powered builds).

[Rull]

With the proposed changes a buckler gives next to nothing, as it won't give PRR anymore, it won't give you any MRR either. And without taking the feat line that makes this choice a non issue flavor only option. Currently shield mastery DOES work with swashbuckler and the skirmisher enhancement was specially designed to do so.

next to nothing?

A buckler gives at least 6% doublestrike, parrying VIII and guardbreaking last time I checked.

6% doublestrike, parrying VIII, guardbreaking + 10% dodge from skirmisher
vs
10% doublestrike , +5 dmg

that tradeoff is good, don't need feats in that equation.

[Terebinthia]

Just adding my voice to the many saying that Swashbuckling with a buckler and the Shield Mastery feats is a valid build choice - and a fair amount of feat investment / trade off. Why on earth would you start hacking up something only introduced a month ago, particularly when there was extensive discussion Lama about being able to use Shield Mastery with the build?

If you go ahead with this terrible change, you'd better be handing out hearts of wood for the folk who need to respec. New players don't necessarily have dragonshards or tons of plat.

[Scrabbler]

Just adding my voice to the many saying that Swashbuckling with a buckler and the Shield Mastery feats is a valid build choice

Of course Swashbuckling with Shield Mastery feats should be a valid choice. Just as long as you aren't SWFing at the same time.

Unfortunately the devs are looking at making those groups of feats exclusive with each other, which wouldn't be the best approach.

[Rull]

We are currently looking at top performers. In the future when we look at ranged builds in more depth we can discuss under performing ranged builds.

Sev~

If you are going to try scaling other range options up to that I fear you are going to fail.

Due to the -I believe- extreme multiplicative nature that's extremely hard to balance.
You can deal 100 on a regular shot and, what is it, 40000? on a manyshotted adrenalined slaying arrow hitting 10 mobs with improved precise shot, or whatever it us that maked them work.

Balancing around that is bound to be a disaster. Changing a couple things to +RP so they won't multiply is not enough to get you there..

I'd love for you to prove me wrong but it's high stakes you are gamblimg with, especially if you don't have a plan other than "In the future when we look at ranged builds in more depth".
I suspect you find out you still need to nerf certain interactions and then boost RP by 150 to compensate :-/

I'll make explicit this is all my gut feeling though

Besides, what really needs to be looked at first is not the offense but the extreme defense ranged characters have in the fact that the don't get hit. Instead of nerfing their damage by 2.5x rather decrease their movement speed by 2.5x for 0.2 seconds during/after each shot.
Take a look at how starcraft or league of legends balances.

[Terebinthia]

Of course Swashbuckling with Shield Mastery feats should be a valid choice. Just as long as you aren't SWFing at the same time.

Unfortunately the devs are looking at making those groups of feats exclusive with each other, which wouldn't be the best approach.

Sorry, I guess I should have typed it out in full so my comment couldn't be misconstrued.

A buckler is a shield. It should therefore benefit from Shield Mastery, as it always has done. The Swashbuckling enhancement tree includes an option, Skirmisher, to use a buckler and still benefit from Single Weapon Fighting. None of these things are exclusive, nor should they be. It's not really rocket science.

[Monkey_Archer]

If you are going to try scaling other range options up to that I fear you are going to fail.

Due to the -I believe- extreme multiplicative nature that's extremely hard to balance.
You can deal 100 on a regular shot and, what is it, 40000? on a manyshotted adrenalined slaying arrow hitting 10 mobs with improved precise shot, or whatever it us that maked them work.

for the record, a manyshotted adrenaline slaying arrow can hit over 20k on a single mob... if you could manage to line up 10, that would be 200k damage, not 40k.

Besides, what really needs to be looked at first is not the offense but the extreme defense ranged characters have in the fact that the don't get hit. Instead of nerfing their damage by 2.5x rather decrease their movement speed by 2.5x for 0.2 seconds during/after each shot.
Take a look at how starcraft or league of legends balances.

Obviously SC and LOL are balanced for competitive play, and that level of scrutiny would not only be impossible, but extremely bad for an MMO. That said, the reason almost all ranged abilities force you to stop moving in those games is because ranged would always win every encounter just by the fact they could kite endlessly. That kind of limitation for ranged abilities is widely considered correct game design, and could be a good idea for ranged combat in DDO as well. Especially since casters already have this limitation in a sense.

[Sloene]

for the record, a manyshotted adrenaline slaying arrow can hit over 20k on a single mob... if you could manage to line up 10, that would be 200k damage, not 40k.


Obviously SC and LOL are balanced for competitive play, and that level of scrutiny would not only be impossible, but extremely bad for an MMO. That said, the reason almost all ranged abilities force you to stop moving in those games is because ranged would always win every encounter just by the fact they could kite endlessly. That kind of limitation for ranged abilities is widely considered correct game design, and could be a good idea for ranged combat in DDO as well. Especially since casters already have this limitation in a sense.

We actually used to have this for casters, then ( I forget which module ) they basically gave everyone the mobile spellcasting feat.

[Chai]

Instead of changing the shield feats into a combat style, create a feat line for that combat style, and leave the shield feats as they are. Anyone should be able to pick up a shield and benefit from using it, not just the build which specced into shield feats. Locking out other combat styles penalizes folks for using a shield in a way that is not logically realistic on any terms, game mechanic or lore/RP.

[droid327]

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~

I get the feeling, just qualitatively, you're taking a "baby with the bathwater" approach to that problem by pumping base damage alongside melee effects.

I'd propose a much simpler, more targeted system that achieves the same thing without changing everything else so radically:

1) Melee power applies only to added damage, *not* base damage. There's no opportunity cost for Melee Power, you get it "automatically" with levels and feats you're taking anyway. This means damage effects will be a much greater % of everyone's total DPS, without incurring ridiculous power creep. Base damage is not considered "too low", so why are you boosting it so significantly?
2) Reduce Blitz from 250% to 100% max (and keep it +% Damage, not +% Melee Power). Its a nerf, but that's offset by removing the Tactical Use requirement and making the counter increment on-hit instead of on-kill. This brings Blitz down to a relative balance that's the same as your proposal.
3) Change Melee Power to just "Effect Power" and have it work with Ranged as well, and add it to all non-caster destinies....no reason to not just have one unified stat, when its not affecting base damage.

[Scrabbler]

We actually used to have this for casters, then ( I forget which module ) they basically gave everyone the mobile spellcasting feat.

Uh, DDO used to have that for ranged combat. Then they gave everyone the Shot On The Run feat. Ranged had originally had it worse than casters, because for spellcasting you could do a jump first to lower the movement penalty. (Trying to jump before every single arrow wouldn't be manageable)

It was SO hard to fight the original Warforged Titan, because he shot these AOE energy balls you had to run out of, but ranged weapons stuck your feet to the floor...

[Sloene]

Uh, DDO used to have that for ranged combat. Then they gave everyone the Shot On The Run feat. Ranged had originally had it worse than casters, because for spellcasting you could do a jump first to lower the movement penalty. (Trying to jump before every single arrow wouldn't be manageable)

It was SO hard to fight the original Warforged Titan, because he shot these AOE energy balls you had to run out of, but ranged weapons stuck your feet to the floor...

I'd forgotten that, but no one really played pure range other than a few repeater rogue builds ( at least on the server I was on )
The original titan you could spam cometfall scrolls to keep him on his back :P

[Scrabbler]

Due to the -I believe- extreme multiplicative nature that's extremely hard to balance.
You can deal 100 on a regular shot and, what is it, 40000? on a manyshotted adrenalined slaying arrow hitting 10 mobs with improved precise shot, or whatever it us that maked them work.

Yes, it'd be super-hard to balance. So maybe this is finally the time to fix Manyshot so it doesn't scale with level.

It makes no sense that 40% of a ranged Ranger's output happens in 16% of the time, and for the rest of battle he's primarily waiting for Manyshot to come back so he can be effective again. If Manyshot is balanced with 2x at level 6, then it must be overpowered with 4x at level 16 (imagine if a melee feat got that much of a boost from your levels!). Remember that the reason the original D&D game had Manyshot scale up with level was simply to keep pace with the increasing speeds of your regular attacks; there was no intention those speeds could be stacked together.

Ranged Fixing Steps

• Raise the damage and attack speed of bow users passively (maybe via Rapid Shot feat)
• Take away self-debuffs after using Manyshot.
• Change Manyshot to only 2x arrows at all levels, with a small amount of added duration by level.
• Change 10k stars to about the same amount of arrows (assuming normal Wisdom)
• Manyshot and 10k stars share cooldowns; a build can only use one or the other. (They're nearly the same feat, but with different prereqs and Shuriken compatibility)
• Change Archer's Focus to not be a toggle. Instead the bonus applies on any shot that didn't benefit from Manyshot or IPS (meaning there was only 1 monster in the row)

Or if that is too extreme, here's a different plan to improve Ranged balance with Fury and so on:

Everything stays the same, except special attacks or bonuses like Fury apply only to one Manyshot arrow, not the extra 3.

[Scrabbler]

I'd forgotten that, but no one really played pure range other than a few repeater rogue builds ( at least on the server I was on )

At that time it was also good for Wizard or Sorcerer to learn Repeater, since they had no meaningful DPS spell options.

The original titan you could spam cometfall scrolls to keep him on his back :P

I wonder where they got those scrolls, since there was no vendor (or player) with Cometfall when the Titan raid came out. It's true that in Titan area content you could find higher-level scrolls as chest drops, but that would've taken multiple years to get a stack.

[Sloene]

At that time it was also good for Wizard or Sorcerer to learn Repeater, since they had no meaningful DPS spell options.



I wonder where they got those scrolls, since there was no vendor (or player) with Cometfall when the Titan raid came out. It's true that in Titan area content you could find higher-level scrolls as chest drops, but that would've taken multiple years to get a stack.

Titan came out when cap was 12, cometfall is a lvl 6 spell ( so lvl 12 cleric ) and yes, they were available from house J at the time, as were dd scrolls and several others that are now no longer available