DDOGamer: Melee Power is a Bad Idea and this is Why

[geoffhanna]

I love the fact that DDO developers are engaging the community about changes. But I don't love all the changes.

-> No philosophical yearnings for D&D and the D20 here, these are all practical reasons why Melee Power is a problem.

[Bridge_Dweller]

Wrong.

[geoffhanna]

The overall quality of the forums trolling in recently months has hit an all time low.

[Bridge_Dweller]

Touche!

[Delacroix21]

While I have enjoyed many of your articles in the past, this one is just garbage and has a lot of wrong assumptions.

1. It brings all melee builds up closer in power to the top melee builds

Actually its to bring melee as a whole closer in power to ranged/casters who do FAR more dps.


2. It will lead to power creep.

Ummm... where have you been? Fooling around in EN and EH? Power creep came years ago with EDs, this wont change anything. 400k hp red named mobs in quests (not even the end boss!) is allready power creep. Even with the ORIGINAL (now nerfed) plan of giving all melee +150% damage (and blitz only 100% for the same 250 as live) they would still do less dps then competent casters/ranged. Competent casters/ranged can out dps fully Blitz melee now on Live (and thats with a 250% bonus!) so I hardly see your point.


3. It immediately devalues Thunder-Forged weapons.

No it doesnt, in fact you claim "future weapons" (that dont exist yet) will have procs that scale with melee power, and so somehow that IMMEDIATELY devalues thunderforge? Could these future weapons be the sentient weapons that are designed to REPLACE thunderforged? Could thunderforged procs also be made to scale in the future? Who knows? But you make a wild point not based on any facts.


4. Static enhancements still won’t scale into epic.

Over time they could be made to. Sneak attack already scales with Blitz, and if this is coded similarly will also get a buff. Do other PrEs and EDs still need a buff? Of course! But this is a Band Aid fix until then.





Dud you are WAY off base here.

[Impaqt]

Actually, Sev Specifically says Melee power will be added to “Gear”. While this may include Weapons, This implies to me it will more likely be on wearable items like Helms, Gloves, Bracers, etc etc etc. . This change would not obsolete any current weapons in the game. You are wrong.

[Stoner81]

I have to mostly agree with what Delacroix21 posted but I have a couple of points of my own to add...

1. Most melee based builds all run in LD because frankly all the others are utter garbage for DPS compared to LD. Buffing other melee ED's to give more melee power is a good thing and gives people more flexibility when building a character... having more options is never a bad thing.

2. Geoff sorry man I laughed so hard about what you said... power creep has been here for a long long long LONG time. Back when MoTU came out and ED's arrived that was a massive amount of power creep, when Thunder Forged weapons came out that was more power creep.

3. Devalue Thunder Forged? Utter nonsense imho... once the level cap is raised to level 30 sometime next year and we get sentient weapons they will be end game kit but that doesn't mean that Thunder Forged won't be worth having because it will, it might just mean you look at it differently than you do now. The thing to remember is that assuming that Turbine stick to what was said in the recent letter it is going to be next year before this even comes in to play so you still have 6 months or more.

4. Static enhancements are something that they are actively looking at... there was a post somewhere about the poison blade enhancement that Assassin's get and that scaling in to epics gave me a nerdgasm for my Rogue

Stoner81.

[ArcaneArcher52689]

It will lead to power creep.
The monsters aren’t changing, we are just getting more powerful. All of us, every build, even non-melees.

Power creep just means the Devs will later have to compensate by over-buffing up the monsters too, especially in new content. Power creep is a never-ending cycle of turbulence that only promotes gear turnover, makes all but the latest content too easy, and limits the availability of the latest game content to those who are willing and able to keep up with the cycle. And exploiters, and especially, dupers.

Solution: Don’t give everyone Melee Power. Either shelve the idea altogether, or give it only to Masters Blitz

The other way too look at this is "all of us that don't use LD are getting more powerful" If current EE is balanced at 5 stacks of blitz/melee, is it really that different? EE is already balanced around a huge power gap. If this change means that a melee can be okay in a destiny like unyielding sentinel or Grandmaster of flowers dealing less damage with more utility(self healing, knock down, stun, whatever), because the utility outweighs the damage, we then end up dealing less damage than before.

Also, the quote you linked was specifically in response to sev saying they weren't scaling monster damage

It immediately devalues Thunder-Forged weapons.
We know that future weapons will include Melee Power. We know that Thunder-Forged weapons do not. I will still acquire tier 1 or maybe even tier 2 weapons, as that can be done without grinding. But there is no way in hell I am going to run those raids 30 times each to get a tier 3 weapon that is already known to be obsolete.

Turbine spent a year building us an end game. And Severlin threw it away, casually and by accident, in one single day.

Solution: Drop Melee Power. Alternately, Severlin could mitigate this by posting an intent to add Melee Power to Thunder-Forged weapons retroactively, and some sort of timeline as to when that might happen. Or better, an unequivocal statement that it won’t appear on new weapons until it is also appearing on old weapons. All of the old weapons.

Future gear? as in Soon(tm)? As in, maybe never? All he said is that it made the option available. He also doesn't state what gear it will be on. It might be weapons, in which case this would be a worry(but it would depend on how much. 5MP<1st degree burns). It could be on trinkets, bracers, rings, boots, whatever. Personally, I'd use it as a set bonus.

Static enhancements still won’t scale into epic.
It doesn’t solve the problem that is it’s main purpose. Or at least not all by itself:

The main purpose of the design is actually to help scale static damage abilities from heroic like the Paladin’s light damage

It could solve this problem, but only in conjunction with changes to those non-scaling enhancements. In other words, the developers still have to change those enhancements too, they won’t do anything different until each enhancement tree gets a change pass.

Which at the current rate of one class per update will take three years. There is a very high probability (historically, a certainty) that we will have all-new systems by then. If the devs intend to hit every single melee-based enhancement, right now, then I withdraw this. But it appears that they do not, it will be added in over time, which we all know really means that it will never be added in completely.

Spell Power was implemented all at once. All enhancements and skills that could effect Spell Power were changed to use it instead of whatever they did previously. All of them. All weapons that were relevant were changed too, back-dated, even though this caused some of us some harm. The whole system went in at once.

Solution: Either shelve Melee Power or go all-in with it and put it everywhere – everywhere – that it ought to be, right from day one.

List of things I found that would have to be changed:

• Barbarian FB vicious/greater vicious
• Barbarian Ravager Cruel Cut's con damage
• bard warchanter's iced edges
• Druid NW's reaving roar sonic damage -rather see it scale with sonic spell power
• Cleric/FvS warpriest's wrathful weapons light damage -rather see it scale w/ light spell power
• Monk's Henshin mystic's lighting the candle
• Monk's Henshin mystic's shadows can not exist without light
• Monk's Henshin mystic's void strike
• Monk's Ninja spy sting of the ninja poison damage- not sure it's necessary as it scales with itself(and works w/ shuriken, which would be ranged power)
• Ranger Tempest's/Rogue Assassin's Bleed them out's bleed damage
• Rogue Assassin's/Drow racial's venomed blades
• Rogue Assassin's Shadow dagger
• Rogue Mechanic's Alchemical traps (5 items?, but as mechanics are normally ranged, I'd say use ranged power)
• Shadarkai chain attacks (2 items)

If you want to go outside enhancements, I'd also add monk elemental ki strikes.

Really not that much that would need to be scaled. Paladin's were a special case of wanting something with limited use(evil only) that would be effective against undead(so not just increasing base damage), that would scale without creating any additional gear requirement(why it doesn't scale with light spell power). They certainly don't need to do an enhancement overhaul on each class in order to make melee power work. I'm not sure why he said they'd wait until they were working on that tree, but I'm hoping that's a mistake.

It does not add anything to epic leveling.
Anything. Gaining a static amount of Melee Power at each epic level is no more fun than gaining the additional hit points we get now. Really, this whole line of thinking is an epic fail and I am surprised it even exists. If you want to make epic leveling interesting you are going to have to give us choices. Not more static numbers.

Solution: No solution exists. Stop talking about this as being a plus.

I actually like the idea of small amounts of melee power/epic level(I do think 10/level was too much). It gives some of my crazier build creations a chance to work. It also gives melees leveling up off destinies at cap something to work with. And we already have choices in epic levels. of the 8 epic levels, 5 of them (21,24,26,27,28) give us feats.

[Seikojin]

Spellpower gives an incremental step up in damage as you level with spells. From level 1, all the way to 28.

Melee and ranged power will do the same, for the exact same reason, in the exact same manner.

I would like it if they changed keywords like flaming, icy, etc, so they boosted melee power or took spellpower and did that as fire damage, ice damage, etc. Reducing the amount of 'rolling' the game does on each attack. This would reduce lag a bit as well as scale keyworded abilities as you level. So the weaksauce +1 flaming sword would be useable as a backup weapon when your thunderforged weapon breaks.

[Qhualor]

Another reason why according to Sev for melee power..

Players complained of their melee characters feeling lackluster while leveling from 20-28.

Part of the reason for this is because of the never ending reincarnation treadmill and there's a lot of reasons why players would not be in their main destiny. Many have been saying it since EDs first came out. Melees will feel lackluster in an off destiny and melee power is not how you address that issue.

[geoffhanna]

Hey Delacroix - I may be wrong, but I don't write garbage and shame on your for saying that.

I write useless tripe. Correctly spelled, attractively formatted, grammatically correct (more or less) useless tripe. Please get it right next time.

As for everyone else,

I am wrong all the time, in fact I am probably wrong about dozens of things as I sit here typing this, but none of you are providing convincing arguments as to why I wrong this time. It seems like you are all in such a hurry to starting pointing your WrongFinger at me that you are missing key points.

But then it was an 1100 word article about obscure DDOMath that hasn't even happened yet. I would have probably just skimmed it too if I hadn't written it.

But still. I can't go back and forth on this a lot today, I'm at work and on my phone, and I'd rather have this discussion in the comments of the post in question.

Yet.

#1 Why is limiting Masters Blitz completely off the table?

#2 I see complaints that there is already power creep in the game. Interesting but not relevant, and I see no one who says this change will not bring MORE power creep. But it doesn't have to.

#3 Six months of use is not making me want to run raids 30 times each either. And Impaqt, you are assuming as positively as you accuse me of doing negatively. History runs on my side here. I could have sworn that Deverlin said "weapons" or responded to a question that specified "weapons" but I cannot find it now; maybe I hallucinated it. But none of you are making me feel like I need to grind raids 30 times, and I did feel that way earlier this week.

#4 None of you are presenting an argument here so I won't rebut. All I am asking is that IF Turbine is determined to add Melee Power, then go all in. Change all of these enhancements, right now. Not over the next few years, because well, we all know how that goes.

Okay back to work with me.

Happy finding-whatever-I-am-wrong-about-now everyone!

[geoffhanna]

****, can't keep up. More stuffs to reply before I even finished my reply.

<sigh>

Back to work with me. We'll talk more tonight.

[Vargouille]

Thanks for all the detailed feedback from all of you.

List of things I found:

• Barbarian FB vicious/greater vicious
• Barbarian Ravager Cruel Cut's con damage
• ...

This is an interesting kind of list.

[sebastianosmith]

I write useless tripe. Correctly spelled, attractively formatted, grammatically correct (more or less) useless tripe.

Here's a rare photo of Geoff and his pet beholder in the process of purchasing writing supplies.

[patang01]

I see where you coming from, but the reality is that we're way beyond the d20 here. It was clear before we hit level 20 and it was abundantly clear in Epics. Second, keeping the system as is only leads to most melee splitting between FOTW and LD. One offer burst damage and the other sustained. It's possible that it will be the same after any changes, but I'd hope we would see an improvement and interest in all different destinies with all the over all changes. I'm already interested in making my half tank a full tank again.

So we'll see. I need to see some examples of this system at work before I can render a good opinion for or against. But you are right however that future content will be skewed of any power creep here. Just as we experienced the tilt towards ranged and evasion, to the point I don't even bother with pure melee anymore.

[Mryal]

List of things I found that would have to be changed:

• Barbarian FB vicious/greater vicious
• Barbarian Ravager Cruel Cut's con damage
• bard warchanter's iced edges
• Druid NW's reaving roar sonic damage -rather see it scale with sonic spell power
• Cleric/FvS warpriest's wrathful weapons light damage -rather see it scale w/ light spell power
• Monk's Henshin mystic's lighting the candle
• Monk's Henshin mystic's shadows can not exist without light
• Monk's Henshin mystic's void strike
• Monk's Ninja spy sting of the ninja poison damage- not sure it's necessary as it scales with itself(and works w/ shuriken, which would be ranged power)
• Ranger Tempest's/Rogue Assassin's Bleed them out's bleed damage
• Rogue Assassin's/Drow racial's venomed blades
• Rogue Assassin's Shadow dagger
• Rogue Mechanic's Alchemical traps (5 items?, but as mechanics are normally ranged, I'd say use ranged power)
• Shadarkai chain attacks (2 items)

More into the list :

Eldritch Knight Spellblades(thought spellpower seems to fit better here, specialy since they work with melee OR ranged weapons)
Shadar kai Winter Favored
Arcane archer elemental/force arrow stances (ranged power thought)

If you want to go outside enhancements, I'd also add monk elemental ki strikes.

This makes sense.

#1 Why is limiting Masters Blitz completely off the table?

Because its diplomaticaly hard for turbine to do that, they dont have the balls to fix the problem, this whole thing is beign done to bring others up to par with master blitz, totally ignoring the fact that the right thing to do when ONE thing stands out is to fix that thing, not turn everything else wrong so that that thing becomes right.The power creep has alredy been there in the form of master blitz for a while.Its sad that we will actualy embrace it instead of eliminating it

#4 All I am asking is that IF Turbine is determined to add Melee Power, then go all in. Change all of these enhancements, right now. Not over the next few years, because well, we all know how that goes.

I've pointed out that this should be done in thier specific feedback thread but no comments regarding that has been made.I'll say again, if it doenst happens this way, its a 'lazy fix'.I wouldnt mind if the release had to be delayed for em to have time for that.

[ArcaneArcher52689]

More into the list :

Eldritch Knight Spellblades(thought spellpower seems to fit better here, specialy since they work with melee OR ranged weapons)
Shadar kai Winter Favored
Arcane archer elemental/force arrow stances (ranged power thought)

Eldritch knight and shadarkai I forgot about, but I think EK should be spellpower as well.
Arcane archer should definitely use ranged power(I had actually included it before, but removed it when I thought about it.)

Ranged power upadate and Ranger pass should probably be done simultaneously.

[theRolf]

...this whole thing is beign done to bring others up to par with master blitz...

Let's not propagate this misconception further. Sev has stated that it is being done to get melee in line with ranged and caster power levels.

[Impaqt]

H

#3 Six months of use is not making me want to run raids 30 times each either. And Impaqt, you are assuming as positively as you accuse me of doing negatively. History runs on my side here. I could have sworn that Deverlin said "weapons" or responded to a question that specified "weapons" but I cannot find it now; maybe I hallucinated it. But none of you are making me feel like I need to grind raids 30 times, and I did feel that way earlier this week.

I've seen no indication that Sevs intention with the Melee power addition is to destroy the game.

Linking substantial amounts of melee power to specific weapons makes absolutely no sense what so ever.

[Enoach]

There are aspects of your article I agree with and disagree with.

I will start with agreeing with you that Severlin has more "hits" than "misses" in his last 3 Dev posts.

* Heavy armor and Shield changes
* Master's Blitz - change in prep/charge maintaining - Opening use up to not only a wider amount of builds but also making it possible to have more than one effective in a party
* Changes for melee tweaks
* Paladin changes such as the Spell changes to Zeal and Holy Sword (I still think they should go further and rework/add spells at all levels)

Now on Melee Power, if we stick with the initial premise that Melee Power was intended to scale static damage effects to epic levels, then yes adding additional power per Class or Character Level makes sense. But I fear that the problem is that MP will be used beyond static abilities like Paladin Light damage. I personally think that MP limited to the Epic Levels and static ability effects should be the limit. It should not effect base damage of a weapon.

However, it makes me wonder if it would not be better if the changes were simply made to the Tree abilities much like Spells where the formula includes the class levels associated with the tree. This would strengthen the abilities in the tree which is ultimately the goal, without introducing something that would not be balanced.

I don't think MP should be an effect on any Equipment, it should only be based on Epic Levels if it is implemented and it should not effect base damage but only Enhancements/Feats

I think calling out on the Thunderforge weapons is too early as I still get the impression these posts are more a "Hey I have an Idea, what do you think?". Which means we as a playerbase still have time to weigh out what we think and maybe shape the outcome - Hopefully for the better.

Again I think if MP is limited to Enhancements and Feats for damage scaling than it can be a good thing. But if it is added to increase base damage of a weapon and also added to gear/equipment than I agree that would be a bad idea.