Armor Up - Developer Diary #3

[Nayus]

So, i can build a 15 palie 3 ranger 2 monk centerd full saves evasion max dps longsword or shortsword user who will have supreme dps no issue to get oc crit and so many selfheals that its sick, coupled with prr skyhigh and dodge..
IS this really what i want to do?
Yes, this is what i want to do...
Cool change, very welcomed

This is indeed a nice opportunity to discuss a nerf to monks.

Nice one Blackheart, just like I trained you.

[Ayseifn]

I'd go the other way. Keep zeal and smites as proposed, and change divine favor to:

Divine Favor: +1 melee power per caster level, 1 minute per caster level

Thanks to the attack formula we don't much care about to-hit bonuses anyway.

To hit still matters a lot to me, every little bit here and there adds up.

[janave]

From now on every new player character change is going to result in wonky multiclasses to creep out even more power?

Maybe it is time for someone to design meaningful content that is nearly equally challenging for all types of players, and not cheat to win with various OPdome.

[Bridge_Dweller]

From now on every new player character change is going to result in wonky multiclasses to creep out even more power?

Maybe it is time for someone to design meaningful content that is nearly equally challenging for all types of players, and not cheat to win with various OPdome.

I can't wait until the "fix" for barbarians

[dunklezhan]

Said something similar in the other thread - I don't particularly like, conceptually speaking, that LIGHT damage scales with melee power instead of Light or Universal spellpower. That doesn't make any sense at all in terms of what one might expect from class to class - in fact if we're adding 'power' mechanics to melee and ranged, I think I'd rather that relevant spellpower just started working on weapon effects, guards and so on in general.

I don't think melee base damage is really that much of an issue these days with all the [W] and crit range/mult effects that are available, it's more that effects such as 1-10 cold damage on L28EE are such a tiny proportion of the damage on a so called 'epic' weapon. In that particular example i would expect COLD spellpower to boost that output. Melee power/ranged power should be affecting the pure underlying damage - the weapon dice, sneak attack damage, heartseeker type effects and so on. Anything with a 'magical' flavour ought to be boosted by relevant magical spellpower, and this would itself start presenting interesting gear choices for melees without actually needing to add the ranged/melee power abilities to the loot tables making them even more incomprehensible, devaluing named items further (sure as eggs is eggs, as with other new 'gear types' named items won't get a proper pass to bring them up to date for ages after the new system goes in, if ever), moving further away from Cannith Crafting (sheesh just admit you've abandoned it already and remove it from the game so new players don't get caught in the trap and we can free up some **** bag space) etc.

[Bingobong]

Holy Sword
We wanted to discuss changes to the Holy Sword spell as part of our ongoing discussion of Paladins.

We have several goals with this spell:

~ Make Paladin spellcasting more valuable.
~ Make the spell valuable when the Paladin has high end gear.
~ Increase the effectiveness of the Paladin class.

The spell is being redesigned as follows.

Holy Sword
Evocation (Good spells)
Paladin 4
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Metamagic: Quicken
Range: Touch
Target: Self
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
Cooldown: 3 seconds

Channels holy power to increase the effectiveness of your equipped weapons. Weapons you currently are wielding gain an additional +2 holy bonus to enhancement value. The spell also increases the threat range and critical weapon multiplier of these weapons by 1.

Not sure if I'm reading this right, but does this mean someone with 14 paly + 3 bard can basically use a rapier and add +1 threat range and +2 critical multiplier (+1 crit from holy sword and +1 crit from swashbuckler)? That would make balizard a 40% threat range 5x multiplier weapon!

[EllisDee37]

Holy Sword
We wanted to discuss changes to the Holy Sword spell as part of our ongoing discussion of Paladins.

We have several goals with this spell:

~ Make Paladin spellcasting more valuable.
~ Make the spell valuable when the Paladin has high end gear.
~ Increase the effectiveness of the Paladin class.

The spell is being redesigned as follows.

Holy Sword
Evocation (Good spells)
Paladin 4
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Metamagic: Quicken
Range: Touch
Target: Self
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
Cooldown: 3 seconds

Channels holy power to increase the effectiveness of your equipped weapons. Weapons you currently are wielding gain an additional +2 holy bonus to enhancement value. The spell also increases the threat range and critical weapon multiplier of these weapons by 1.

Just to clarify, Holy Sword works on all weapon types?

The spell on live only works on a subset of bladed weapons.

[Monkey_Archer]

Not sure if I'm reading this right, but does this mean someone with 14 paly + 3 bard can basically use a rapier and add +1 threat range and +2 critical multiplier (+1 crit from holy sword and +1 crit from swashbuckler)? That would make balizard a 40% threat range 5x multiplier weapon!

Yes! Except for those pesky alignment restrictions...

[Bingobong]

Yes! Except for those pesky alignment restrictions...

Oh right, forgot about the non-lawful requirement on bard.

[N-0cturn]

I like the changes so far.

One exception:

The holy sword spell should not stack with any T5 crit enhancement (competence bonus). Otherwise the new Fotm will be 14 or 15 Pala with 5 levels or rogue, fighter etc to take the T5 of the second class.

Just an example:

Sireth has a 18-20 x 2 Crit rate
add Holy Sword for 17-20 x 3
add Staff Specialization for 16-20 x 4
add Celestial Champion from Divine Crusader for 15-20 x 4

Finally improved Critical for 9-20 x 4, Which is a 60% chance to do quadruple damage.

An assassin build with thunderforged daggers would still have 11-20 x 4

Please re-think this.

[Wipey]

Pulverizer is competence too.
That would be bad news for Blunt weapon using pally in LD.

[blackdae]

I have a question regarding Paladin..

Can you please, please change the animation for Smite Evil using q-staff?

It's so slow that once you click it most of the time the effect apply when the mob is already dead or has moved few steps away in an unpredictable direction.. so it goes wasted.

Thanks!

[Slasheboy]

Severlin, thanks for your hard work in bringing Paladins back into the game. Here are my thoughts of some of the changes.

Melee Power: Its a very good medium term solution in fixing the whole Master Blitz and melee DPS problem, and I can see it really going a long way in fixing almost all the other non-Blitzing melees. That being said, I really do hope that you guys continue to refine the formula (together with PRR/MRR) to bring it to usability.

Cleave pseudo-feats: I think this are quite brilliant in alleviating the feat shortage in Paladins, with the capstone being the pseudo Overwhelming Critical with its +10 melee power. I think perhaps you should point that out to the other players so that they'll stop looking at OC as the be all/end all to DPS improvements.

Holy Retribution and Turn Undead uses: Holy Retribution now really pales in comparison to the cleave feats that are available. I do like that it regenerates Smites though, trading TU uses for Smite Uses. How about dropping it to T4 and bumping Censure Demons to T5 as a two-step enhancement to free up space?

In the same vein, how about giving a weak Turn Undead regeration at Core 12 - Regen 1 Turn Undead Use every 2 minutes, or 10% faster if it already regenerates.

Range Smites: What happened to them? Could we get some ranged supports for Paladins and Ranged Warpriests as well?

Sealed Life and Vigor of Life: I think you should consider merging Sealed Life into Vigor of Life at 2nd step of VoL at T5. These enhancements were useful in the old system, but now only take up space for T5 enhancements.

Empowered Smites: I really enjoy what you did here, making up choose between spamming smites quickly to get out damage ASAP or to spread them out to maintain the bonus. You should ad a descriptor to mention where it stacks with itself. Also, why not add +10 Ranged Power?

The design space for Smites are rather large here, so you could consider (in this tree, defender or the shield tree) adding more effects to Smites like blind (for damage mitigation vs thrash-mob), no-fail Intimidate (for boss tanking), vulnerability (for team dps) and so forth.


I've gave some suggestions which freed up two T5 slots, and as such urge you to think of a T5 that perhaps helps KotCs to be able to apply some of their light damage against evil (but non-undead enemies) or even neutral enemies, albeit at 50% or 25% rate. In the same vein, I hope that Melee Power scales with Sneak Attacks and you find a way to make SA relevant against undead/elementals and the like.


Again, thanks for the hard work, and please continue to work on and refine the state of Combat in the current DDO metagame.

EDIT: On reflection, perhaps the Capstone needs a little more ommp, like an additional +1d6 and +5 melee power. Again, how about addition Ranged Power to this as well?

Also, would you be slowly transitioning all the Capstone Doublestrike/Doubleshot bonuses into Melee/Ranged Power? I do think that Doubleshot bonuses should be changed into Ranged Power because how wonky-ly it interacts with Manyshot and Repeaters.

[CaptainSpacePony]

The spell and core ability changes are nice.

The enhancement cleaves are nice.

Tier 1 and 2 abilities are still all ****. (Disclaimer--divine might isn't ****, but compares poorly when looking at warpriest).

I still want to see the entire war priest tree made available to paladins.

A lot of the tree is still pretty meh.

Endless turns is painfully absent, especially now that there's an attempt to make smites relevant (by burning the irrelevant turns).

[Kalevor]

A lot of awesome changes... some comments...

Greetings,

To give insight to player about the changes involved with our Armor Up changes, Paladin buffs, and other balance changes we are writing a series of developer diaries to explain upcoming changes we have planned for the game.

In the last developer diary we discussed how Melee Power will work with Epic Destinies. If you haven't read through it you can check it out here:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...eloper-Diary-2


With this post we go into more depth about:
~ The redesign of the Paladin spell Holy Sword spell.
~ The increase of the duration of the Zeal spell.
~ Knight of the Chalice changes.

Awesome news, but remember that all the spell book from pally need to be reworked and need to add more, there are so few spells in there that make me feel sad every time i need to choose ...

We have previously posted some proposed Paladin changes. While players were happy that we are giving Paladin's much needed attention, we received feedback that some players preferred that the core classes remain close to D&D. As a result we have moved our improvements into the Paladin enhancement trees, and made changes to two spells to help keep Paladin's fun and competitive with other classes.

Holy Sword
We wanted to discuss changes to the Holy Sword spell as part of our ongoing discussion of Paladins.

We have several goals with this spell:

~ Make Paladin spellcasting more valuable.
~ Make the spell valuable when the Paladin has high end gear.
~ Increase the effectiveness of the Paladin class.

The spell is being redesigned as follows.

Holy Sword
Evocation (Good spells)
Paladin 4
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Metamagic: Quicken
Range: Touch
Target: Self
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
Cooldown: 3 seconds

Channels holy power to increase the effectiveness of your equipped weapons. Weapons you currently are wielding gain an additional +2 holy bonus to enhancement value. The spell also increases the threat range and critical weapon multiplier of these weapons by 1.

evocation? transmutation maybe? why not extend too?

I think i'm gonna cry but i have to say ... arg... this is... arg ... too ... arg ... powerfull... :_(
the combo win options are insane... and i'm just started to think...
This bonus can't stack with the other bonus to crit from enhacements...

Zeal
Zeal is already quite good, but as a quality of life change we are increasing its duration to match the new Holy Sword spell. It will now last one minute per caster level.



Knight of the Chalice
As part of our ongoing Paladin examination, we have made a number of changes to Knight of the Chalice to increase the effectiveness of the Paladin.

Keep in mind that many of these abilities scale with Melee Power. If you are unsure what that entails I encourage you to read our previous developer diaries.

More fan of that melee power thing each time i read this...

Tier One (0 AP Required)
• Extra Turning: +(1/2/3) Turn Attempts per rest.
• Divine Light: Your Turn Undead ability now also deals 6d6/12d6/18d6 light damage to nearby undead. Scales with 200% Melee Power.
• Extra Remove Disease: +(2/4/6) Remove Disease uses per rest.
• Exalted Smite: You gain 2/4 additional use of Smite Evil per rest.
• Action Boost: Attack: Activate to gain a +(4/6/8) Action Boost bonus to hit for 20 seconds.

Tier Two (5 AP Required)
• Improved Turning: You count as (1/2/3) levels higher when turning undead, and add (2/4/6) to the number of hit dice turned. I think that regenerate turnings is better or more usefull
• Divine Might: Channel Divinity: Channel Divinity: You gain an Insight bonus to Strength equal to your Charisma modifier for 30/60/120 seconds. (Cooldown 20 seconds)
• Rally: Channel Divinity: Remove fear from nearby allies. You and the affected allies gain a +2/+4/+6 Moral Bonus to Will Saves vs. Fear effects and a +1/+2/+3 Morale Bonus to Attack and Damage for 60 seconds. (Coodown: 3 minutes)
• Exalted Cleave: Shares its cooldown with the Cleave feat. Make a sweeping attack against all nearby enemies for +1/+2/+3[W] damage.
• Action Boost: Damage: Activate to gain a (+10/+20/+30)% Action Boost bonus to Melee Power for 20 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 Seconds)

Tier Three (10 AP Required)
• Improved Restoration: Your Paladin Remove Disease ability now also applies a (Lesser Restoration / Restoration / Greater Restoration) effect.
• Divine Sacrifice: Giving up some of your life force to win the battle, you empower your next blow against your foe. This attack deals an additional (5/7/9)d6 Light damage and increases the critical multiplier of your weapon by 1, but costs you 5 hp and 1 sp, whether or not the attack is successful. Light damage scales with 100% Melee Power. Awesome fix with the melee power thing
• Vigor of Life: Your Positive Healing Amplification is increased by (5/10)%, and you take (5/10)% less damage from Negative Energy.
• Exalted Smite: Active: An improved smite that adds +1/+1/+2 to your weapon's critical damage multiplier and 0/+1/+2 to your weapon's critical threat range.
• Str or Cha: +1 Strength or Charisma

Tier Four (20 AP Required)
• Censure Demons: You gain On Vorpal: Stuns Chaotic Evil outsiders for 3 seconds.
• Passion: Your Divine Sacrifice ability gains: On Damage: Gain (5/10/15) temporary spell points if you strike an undead or evil outsider an evil creature with this attack. still not usefull, make it regain sp in a 5/10/15% possibilty in every hit
• Vigor of Life: Your Positive Healing Amplification is increased by (5/10)%, and you take (5/10)% less damage from Negative Energy.
• Empowered Smite: Your Smite Evil and Exalted Smite abilities now grant a buff that increases Melee Power by 10 for 10 seconds. nice!
• Str or Cha: +1 Strength or Charisma

Tier Five (40 AP Required)
• Censure Outsiders: Your Censure Demons ability now applies to all Chaotic or Evil outsiders.
• Vigor of Life: Your Positive Healing Amplification is increased by (5/10)%, and you take (5/10)% less damage from Negative Energy.
• Holy Retribution: Melee Channel Divinity: Executes a powerful holy strike against the target that deals +1/+3/+5[W] damage. On Damage: Evil creatures with less than 1,000 HP have a 50%/75%/100% chance to be forced to make a Will save (DC 10 + Paladin Level + Charisma Mod) or be destroyed. On a successful save, the affected creature takes 100 holy damage from this attack as well as -6 to all ability scores for ten seconds. (Cooldown: 6 seconds) This ability also recharges one Smite Evil. Again, why the 1000 hp cap?? nonsense! a mob with 1000 hp right now is as good as death... why make a tier 5 ability worst than vorpal??? recharging smites is nice though
• Sealed Life: You are immune to Energy Drain.
• Avenging Cleave: Shares its cooldown with the Great Cleave feat. Make a powerful sweeping attack against all nearby enemies that deals +1/+3/+5[W] damage. Each creature gains one stack of Vulnerability.


We are still in the process of examining the Sacred Defender tree and will describe those changes in a future post.

Sev~

added comments...

strength requirement is fine. removing great cleave is fine and it makes sense. there are already a number of epic feats that must meet a stat requirement, so might as well remove that too if you remove strength or it will seem like this change is to cater to paladins. this is a good feat that stands out for your high strength melees, namely barbs and fighters.

agreed

[Rathic]

Holy sword should add positive spell power and/or make your weapon an implement in addition to the proposed changes

[FranOhmsford]

Overwhelming Critical will have no feat requirements at all. The intention is to have Paladins take Exalted Cleave (better than Cleave), Avenging Cleave (better than Great Cleave) and then they can take Overwhelming Critical if they wish.

FAN TAS TIC!

and Power Attack is completely optional.
Sev~

What?

How exactly is PA Optional?

PA's been a must have feat for heavy melees for as long as I've been playing!
The Player consensus is that even rogues should take it over Precision AND that CE is a waste of time even for Defenders!

If you want to make PA Optional then you seriously need to BUFF the other stances!

CE should give far more AC than current + PRR, MRR and Dodge bonuses!
Precision is pretty good already but if you can find something small to add to it that would be better.
Resilience should be separate so you don't have to drop your melee/ranged stance to use it!

[FranOhmsford]

This is indeed a nice opportunity to discuss a nerf to monks.

Nice one Blackheart, just like I trained you.

A nerf to Monk SPLASHES!!!

Pure Monks need buffing NOT nerfing!!!

[Alistina]

Overwhelming Critical will have no feat requirements at all.
Sev~

Excellent!! This makes my artis very happy. Thank you

[janave]

Why is the solution is to add more attributes? Honest question.

Looking especially at "melee power", there are systems in place to achieve the same result, why not use those for balancing?