Harper tree feedback

[Bernaise]

Yeah I don't intend to argue about the price. It's a moot, predecided point I suspect, and Devs don't deal with that bit of the game anyway.

I would expect it to cost no less than unlocking Drow 800-900TP (I think)

[9001]

I'm really worried about the melee power in the tree. I feel like it's waaay too much. I don't think handing it out like spell power is going to work well balance wise unless other trees have some of it to offer. Other than that the only thing I see that could be too strong is (maybe) the int to damage AND know the angles, but if divine might was changed to damage like that a few builds could do that with charisma (not sure if you're going for that). All in all, watch how melee power is given out or you might end up making this tree TOO powerful.

If you plan on doing more of these trees it MIGHT be a good idea to limit the number of them to 1 or 2 (maybe have them as an option to racial trees ?idk) but I'd like to see more cool stuff like this. More build options gives me more builds to think up (my favourite part of DDO)

[CSQ]

Unfortunately you need to spend a lot of points in both arti trees to be a good viable pure arti and there won't be many points over for this. So it's either strong in main abilities, or meh in a lot of them.

Or you could spend no points what soever and still be entirely viable because artificer. I'm trying an Harper only arti for testing and with admantine plating and low dex the harper enhancements let me go pretty tanky without an sacrifices to damage or spellcasting. Saves take a hit, but PRR and MRR balance that out.

[erinye2000]

I do like a lot the generalist tree of the harper, It can fits to a lots of builds and class. AP is definitely an issue, but power should come at the cost of sacrifice... All is a matter of choice.

From my 1st reading, I have some problem with the weapon enhancement of the tier 5. To me the difference between +3 enhancement bonus + righteous on weapon, and the 10 harper bonus to spell power, will in fact only be a 1 spell power difference for a pure caster. The difference should perhaps be a little more marked.

I'm really looking forward for the big changes in this patch. It looks good! And the general boost to melee power and the boost to PRR and MRR (specially for melee survivability on Elite content) is more than welcome and was needed.

Continue the great work!

[Full_Bleed]

2. Please don't call it a harper tree unless you can't get it till you have at least done a harper quest. This game starts in eberron and you don't meet harpers officially enough for them to offer you training until you're almost done with heroic levels. And then only if you have the expansions which in your wisdom you chose to break your VIP promise over so it is by no means guaranteed that a VIP will actually get to do those harper quests anyway.
3. If its a generic "spy" tree don't name it after one organisation! "Versatile Agent" or something would do.

They should just call it "Operative" as that's really the feel they said they were going for.

At 250 Phiarlan favor, rename it to "Operative (Phiarlan)". Give people who need to unlock it access to only the first 2 tiers.

At 250 Harper Favor, unlock the next 3 tiers and rename it to "Operative (Harper)".

For VIPS (and people who buy the tree) the name changes would just be cosmetic because they are forgoing playing the game to gain access anyway.

4. Regardless, please tie it to a low level of favour. You can sell it and give it to VIPs, or throw it in with a pack or whatever - but don't let people use it on a character till that character has earned it, because you have linked it to espionage organisations - therefore at least some kind of sop to the idea of in character reward and progression would make it more DND like.

This would be interesting (especially with my idea above)... but they've already been told that they are full access without strings attached so it would be hard to un-ring that bell without much gnashing of teeth.

5. Don't rip people off over the price when it goes in the store. Your whole classes or races all i think cost over 500tp. A single tree ought to be no more than 150tp. Ideally 100tp. And no, the fact that any of your classes can use it should not justify a higher price.

With ED's you're getting trees at the cost of 83 TP each (12 trees for 995 TP). But I do believe that there is some added value to a universal tree so it should command a higher price.

[poltt48]

I'll bring this up with the team. Not only does it protect strength builds, but I can see how a two handed build would be outside the flavor of the tree. (We might not have time to add it, though.)

Sev~

Please please pleasae no. The int to damage really helps my rogue only thing in the whole update helping a assassinate rogue since your already screwing us on melee power not modding sneak attack are 1d4 weapons are crappy no matter how much melee power we have. The int to damage was only saving grace for this build cause with harper tree have 64 int need that 27 extra damage on weapon to make my 1d4 actually do damage to mobs.

[Full_Bleed]

3000 favor @ 25tp per 100 is 750tp.
Add at 25 and 50 (I think) and you get 800tp just getting to 3000 favor.
That is one life and its not getting everything you can get.

Please know I'm not arguing either way about the price. Just trying to point out what can be earned easily.

In a vacuum where this is the only feature to purchase this is a good argument. But last I checked there are a tons of other things in the game to spend player earned TP on and at some point people can't keep making this same argument every time they add something to the game.

A comparative analysis for what features cost and give should be the standard we expect. Someone, for example, mentioned that this tree should cost what it costs to purchase Drow. That makes no sense to me as what you get with a truly new race is significantly more than you get from a single enhancement tree, not to mention that the developer time and effort to produce a brand new race (which, btw, comes with a brand new tree included as well) is apples to aardvarks.

I'd maintain that if this thing is priced like a Race, Adventure Packs, or like ED's then you're getting a LOT less for a LOT more.

It's pretty obvious that the developers don't have the time to give us full races/classes like they used to. So we're getting iconics built on existing races and, now, extra trees. And while I am ok with that, you might want to think about how much MORE we should be paying for LESS.

This tree is supposed to be a condiment. Not a meal.

[Full_Bleed]

Please please pleasae no. The int to damage really helps my rogue only thing in the whole update helping a assassinate rogue since your already screwing us on melee power not modding sneak attack are 1d4 weapons are crappy no matter how much melee power we have. The int to damage was only saving grace for this build cause with harper tree have 64 int need that 27 extra damage on weapon to make my 1d4 actually do damage to mobs.

They are talking about TWO HANDED weapons. Your rogue is not likely using TH weapons.

That change will not affect you.


And since I'm responding to the issue... I'd like to support the change. It's a good idea to protect STR builds and it is outside the flavor of the build. I hope they follow through.

[Oxarhamar]

They are talking about TWO HANDED weapons. Your rogue is not likely using TH weapons.

That change will not affect you.


And since I'm responding to the issue... I'd like to support the change. It's a good idea to protect STR builds and it is outside the flavor of the build. I hope they follow through.

I don't see them needing protection

an INT based THF Harper could use insightful reflexes for saves but, they will never get the damage a STR build will or any of the goodies like stun, trip etc...

[Ausdoerrt]

Oh look! Now you don't have to think when multiclassing, you can get all the cool stuff from this one enhancement tree! Just head on to the store!

[kmoustakas]

After some quick math, if I am tier 5 battle engineer and I put all my spare points into harper instead of arcanotechnitian, I end up with a much much stronger character. I hope the tp cost is not prohibitive but I can flat out spent 20 points on it and go very strong.

[Monkey_Archer]

~ Versatile Adept is probably too good and should probably be 1/2/3 instead of 2/4/6. That's my bad, as I wrote up the tree early in the Melee Power cycle and didn't adjust. We will be looking for player feedback on these specific enhancements.

Definitely agree with this. Even 1/2/3 is still extremely strong. A character with about ~100 base damage would still see a +12 damage increase for maxing this line. Thats still way stronger then say, the kensai weapon line or racial weapon enhancements for only +4 damage.
Although, considering how weak fighter is compared to paladin, and racial weapons are compared to bladeforge, I'd say that those trees could use buffs rather then tone down harper even more.

[Kalevor]

Definitely agree with this. Even 1/2/3 is still extremely strong. A character with about ~100 base damage would still see a +12 damage increase for maxing this line. Thats still way stronger then say, the kensai weapon line or racial weapon enhancements for only +4 damage.
Although, considering how weak fighter is compared to paladin, and racial weapons are compared to bladeforge, I'd say that those trees could use buffs rather then tone down harper even more.

That is not always true, i think a lot of people make the same mistake:

- it is not the same a bonus to the base damage that one to the multiplicative effect. Usually add a number to the base is better than adding to the multiplicative effect
Ex: if a toon makes 100 of dmg and have 100 melee power, earning +4 to dmg is better than a gain in melee power.
[104 x (1.00+1.00)= 208] > [100 x (1.00+1.04)]= 204

- Comparing a character with 60 raw damage and 52 melee power, that must choose to spent 22 AP in kensei to take all the 4 Weapon Group Specialization for +4dmg 1handed or +6dmg 2handed (not counting all the stuff from kensei cores and other enhacement need it to), or choose to spent 23 AP to get 9 melee power at tier 4 (not counting all the other stuff that adds dmg). It is not that easy to see.
[64 x (1.00+0.52)= 97] vs [60 x (1.00+0.61)]= 97
Same amount of damage.

This is not always true with diferent configurations but you can cath the idea...

[Bernaise]

Oh look! Now you don't have to think when multiclassing, you can get all the cool stuff from this one enhancement tree! Just head on to the store!

How much "extra" AP do you have in a Multi-Class build that's available to invest in the Harper's Tree? Yeah, I didn't think so. The big winners here are Pure builds (mostly INT) that want a little boost without splashing.

[dunklezhan]

I would expect it to cost no less than unlocking Drow 800-900TP (I think)

Rofl, 900TP? Is that how much Drow costs? No wonder I've never bought it. At that price I would just file it away under 'vote with your wallet and vote no' like I did with per-character storage, Astral Diamonds and the like. Which means Turbine lost my sale. Of course, they'll never know, because vote with your wallet is an extremely silly way to send a company a message (they only have stats on what you DID buy, duh), but here we are, and that's all we have short of expressing an opinion here, which I'm also doing - at 900TP the rent would not only be too **** high, it would be more like a mortgage. 900 TP, lol!

To be honest, I'm fine with not having access to the tree so long as the game is still entirely do-able, even on Elite, without it - like it is without ship buffs. The instant they start (publically) balancing the game on the assumption that everyone has these supposedly optional things... I'm outta here. I appreciate that, in modern capitalism, every day in every way anyone selling anything is trying their hardest to rip the customer off and there's no reason Turbine should be different... but that sort of money for a supposedly 'universal' ability would be a: blatantly ripping people off, b: bad for the game in terms of the messages it sends and c: ignoring what made DDO F2P work - and that thing is micro transactions. Macro transactions, particularly where it concerns 'needed' power just make you look like rip off merchants. And make no mistake, as a universal tree this will defacto become perceived as 'needed' by a certain type of person who just has ?to be 'competitive' in order to have fun.

Note - this isn't about me not being able to afford it. I can, easily. Its about right and wrong. I'm not enough of an egomaniac to think my version of 'right' is definitely so - but I reckon my alignment is Lawful enough that I try to have the courage of my convictions. If I think something is a rip off, or that I'm being manipulated, I reserve the right to have a moan about it from my moral high horse then offski on my own terms.

But it's not the end of the world if they do. I'd just fill out my leaving survey and go off to happily play Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, and a PS2 emulator with GT2 on it, and stick two fingers up at the entire modern game industry in general. I'm good, no biggie.



Anyway - Turbine will price it as they price it, and there's nothing I have ever said here or even ML that has ever changed anything Turbine want to do, on cost or any other score. So /meh. I'll wait and see what they finalise with. My main concern is they don't just abandon immersion and call it a Harper tree without some actual link to the Harpers faction tied to appropriate quests. If they don't do that I won't be using the tree regardless of the TP cost so the whole thing is moot anyway!

[Desonde]

~ Versatile Adept is probably too good and should probably be 1/2/3 instead of 2/4/6. That's my bad, as I wrote up the tree early in the Melee Power cycle and didn't adjust. We will be looking for player feedback on these specific enhancements.

9-12% is still drastically better than anything else you can currently get and multiplies the current exponential curve.

Why not just keep thing in line with what's currently available?

Versatile Adept I and III give: You gain +1 to hit and damage with melee and ranged weapons, and +5 Spell Power.
Versatile Adept II and IV give: You gain +1 to hit and damage with one handed weapons and repeating crossbows, +1 to hit and +2 damage with two handed weapons and non-repeating crossbows, and +5 Spell Power.

By adding flat damage you boost the percentage of damage done by the lower damaging builds while increasing the potential damage of the top performing builds by much much less (builds that are 30-40dmg will go up to 34-46 (+13-15% dmg), and builds that do 250-400 dmg will go up to 254-406 (+1.5-1.6% dmg) as apposed to 32-44 and 272-448 at +9-12%).

[LuKaSu]

I would expect it to cost no less than unlocking Drow 800-900TP (I think)

Maybe if there were like 4 different new Enhancement Trees based on various groups (PDK, Harpers, The Twelve, etc.) as well as all the racial enhancement trees, it would be worth that amount.

There are, how many, like a dozen EDs, and they are around 1000 TP for all of them together. This one tree for 90% of that? Definitely not on my buy list at that pricepoint.

[maddong]

Energy Burst.

That's and interesting thought. If you are melee, would it be worth giving up "sense weakness"?

I was more thinking paladin 14/6 ranger int based in fotw that I posted earlier.... So you get both. But I'm sure others can come up with ideas.

[CaptainSpacePony]

I agree that there should be a harper favor unlock for this.

I may have missed it, but shouldn't this tree only be available to characters of Good alignments?

[Oxarhamar]

How much "extra" AP do you have in a Multi-Class build that's available to invest in the Harper's Tree? Yeah, I didn't think so. The big winners here are Pure builds (mostly INT) that want a little boost without splashing.

I think the player you quoted was implying Multi classing for feats, spells, & other class specific traits while spending AP up the Harper tree.

Instead of mixing and matching trees just ignore(for the most part) and go Harper take classed for other stuff.