Videos of Mater's Blitz Round Two - Pure Paladin

[B0ltdrag0n]

In my personal opinion, the only thing that promotes group play is harder content, not more "group friendly" mechanics. Players don't only solo stuff with blitz, shiradis, sorcerers, fury archers solo just the same, to only mention a few.

I do agree somewhat with this. More challenging content should always be on the table. Completely removing scaling for parties below 4 on all difficulty setting would go a long way toward this as well.

Yes I know elite supposedly has no scaling, but it seems that it does.

[B0ltdrag0n]

I am also curious are effects such as Power of the Forge and Damage boost (not from the paladin tree) applying a multiplier after the effects of melee power?

It seems like they might be. Is the developer intention for this to work in this way or for all 'damage boost' effects become melee power?

[Monkey_Archer]

There are a lot of opinions in the thread, so I am trying to get a handle on everything. I am seeing some anger in the thread, and I want to make sure I understand why.

~ We changed Master's Blitz because it discourages grouping. It doesn't play well in a group, it makes players compete with each other to keep up their DPS, and it rewards top players for sticking with solo play. We want group play to be, if not more rewarding, at least not less effective. One of the biggest concerns from the community is that it's hard to find groups. While we certainly don't want to force grouping for players that aren't interested in it, we also want to re-examine designs that actively discourage it.

The changes to charging blitz make it more group-friendly and have no effect on solo play. Its only positive. I don't really understand why people are still debating whether last hitting requires skill. (except as some kind of justification for more power)

~ I've been watching videos of the live servers with Swashbucklers soloing EE. (I am setting aside my own play experiences for the moment to try to keep the perspective of the players posting here.) The performance looks competitive with the videos presented in this thread. I am not sure that these are over-performing live builds. I realize that direct comparisons are difficult.

~ From what I see in the videos posted in this thread, the LD and the DC builds look close in effectiveness. I think the balance there is better, though DC might be slightly ahead. If that's that case we can tweak Blitz's damage up, but they look close to me.

IMO blitz is in the right spot now. The only reason people are complaining about blitz now is because it seems weaker then DC. Yet still no mention of the other destinies... where are the fury/shadowdancer EE solos?

Blitz numbers do not need tweaking up, and I think Cetus's video is direct proof of that.

If you're interested in the other destinies that actually do still need tweaks, Ive added a couple TWF rogue solos in fury and DC here: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...entinel-Videos
I'll try to add more non-blitz, non-DC videos as well if I have time.

[Pescha]

The changes to charging blitz make it more group-friendly and have no effect on solo play. Its only positive. I don't really understand why people are still debating whether last hitting requires skill. (except as some kind of justification for more power)


IMO blitz is in the right spot now. The only reason people are complaining about blitz now is because it seems weaker then DC. Yet still no mention of the other destinies... where are the fury/shadowdancer EE solos?

Blitz numbers do not need tweaking up, and I think Cetus's video is direct proof of that.

If you're interested in the other destinies that actually do still need tweaks, Ive added a couple TWF rogue solos in fury and DC here: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...entinel-Videos
I'll try to add more non-blitz, non-DC videos as well if I have time.

Stop Comparing 1 Person to everyone else in the Game, l don't care about your Videos because Videos don't mean anything why can't you Understand ? Legendary dreadnought Should NOT be weaker than divine crusader.

[Enoach]

...
~ For the players arguing against the Blitz change (Cetus as an example) I am not sure I understand to issue. Is it a matter of effectiveness?

...
Sev~

I think of my reading of the back an forth there are two themes

1. Charging to 10 Stacks - On live a kill guaranteed a stack. Being able to kill 10 things in s set time period means 10 Stacks bringing the Blitzer to approximately 250% of their non-Blitz DPS potential. The proposed system does not guarantee a stack on a Hit, in fact it is only a 10% chance a stack will occur. Some melee characters have the potential of killing mobs in only a few swings even without blitz. This means they will have less of a chance to get stacks over other melee which may need 4+ hits to kill. Also the idea that it is only 50 MP over what is currently available. I think one idea to have the best of both worlds is to include a 33% or better chance of activation on a Kill. This will make it so that charges are possible for all levels of DPS

2. Group mechanics, some people work this out be in in static groups or guild make-up and some still work with PuGs where to borrow from the Oak Ridge Boys... Everyone wants to be the lead singer in the band. This is why in my opinion you will see a disagreement on this feature working while grouping. This ability on live can work rather nicely even in a PuG, but only if others are willing to help.

To me the skill in Blitz is really to know when and when not to activate. Part of that is learning to read your group and what actions will or won't come next. This can be tricky or in some cases you can read the person like an open book. The other part comes down to knowledge of the quest knowing if there is going to be a hindrance to

[Enoach]

Stop Comparing 1 Person to everyone else in the Game, l don't care about your Videos because Videos don't mean anything why can't you Understand ? Legendary dreadnought Should NOT be weaker than divine crusader.

I think that should be based on the build.

Personally I think DC should be stronger in the hands of a build that has a moderate amount of SP to spend towards its abilities, while LD should be stronger in the hands of builds that have greater access to tactical abilities.

I would hope that a Fighter in LD vs a Paladin in DC should be very comparable as far as DPS is concerned.

I don't know if that is a goal Turbine is looking at, but maybe...

[Stoner81]

There are a lot of opinions in the thread, so I am trying to get a handle on everything. I am seeing some anger in the thread, and I want to make sure I understand why.

~ We changed Master's Blitz because it discourages grouping. It doesn't play well in a group, it makes players compete with each other to keep up their DPS, and it rewards top players for sticking with solo play. We want group play to be, if not more rewarding, at least not less effective. One of the biggest concerns from the community is that it's hard to find groups. While we certainly don't want to force grouping for players that aren't interested in it, we also want to re-examine designs that actively discourage it.

Blitz may or may not be as effective in a group due to the mechanic but that same mechanic is what keeps it in balance, every other ED's epic moment can be useful no matter the quest/party make up/etc. Frankly people who "compete" with others while in a group DON'T FREAKING BELONG IN A GROUP! Grouping is not about zerging in front of everybody just so as you can have your fun with Blitz just NO NO NO! Myself when I group I hardly ever use Blitz if at all because for me personally it is practically impossible to keep going with how fast stuff dies. On my own soloing then oh yeah I fire Blitz up and have at it like a man possessed.

Players mentality now while using Blitz is so wrong imho

~ I've been watching videos of the live servers with Swashbucklers soloing EE. (I am setting aside my own play experiences for the moment to try to keep the perspective of the players posting here.) The performance looks competitive with the videos presented in this thread. I am not sure that these are over-performing live builds. I realize that direct comparisons are difficult.

For gods sake here we go again! The people soloing EE's like those in this thread are more than likely using toons that have had years of investment in stat tomes, past lives (heroic and epic) and gear coming out of their wazzoo! THESE PEOPLE DO NOT REPRESENT THE MAJORITY OF THE PLAYER BASE!!! How many more times do we have to say this before it gets listened to?

~ From what I see in the videos posted in this thread, the LD and the DC builds look close in effectiveness. I think the balance there is better, though DC might be slightly ahead. If that's that case we can tweak Blitz's damage up, but they look close to me.

LD is THE primary melee based ED and it SHOULD have more DPS than other tree's by a good margin, the flip side is that you don't (or shouldn't) get defence boosts with it too.

~ For the players arguing against the Blitz change (Cetus as an example) I am not sure I understand to issue. Is it a matter of effectiveness?

Current Blitz = 250%
U23 Blitz = 102% at level 28 with all feats for fighting style!

ALMOST A 150% REDUCTION IN DAMAGE OUTPUT AND YOU ARE WONDERING WHY PEOPLE ARE JUMPING UP AND DOWN ABOUT THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Imho Blitz is the only thing that makes a melee viable in EE content specifically when soloing. Blitz hasn't just been hit with the Nerf Bat it has been royally battered with the Nerf Forest, fed in to a wood chipper and then Lolth takes her morning constitutional on it! The current mechanic of having to land the killing blow is what gives it the flip side to the power it grants, if a player can not keep it going then that is their problem and they should not be telling people not to kill stuff just so they can charge it up! In guild runs OK this would work pretty well but in random PUG's it's flat out rude in my book!

You guys changed the way Toughness works because it was a "must have" feat and by tying Melee Power in with the fighting style feats you have done the same thing by your own standards, the fighting style feats will become mandatory for melee characters otherwise they will be losing out on a lot of Melee Power which a further reduction in damage output!

~ The various EDs look closer in effectiveness than they have been. If people feel melee as a whole is underperforming but the EDs are balanced we'd rather boost them across the board then just buff Blitz and risk it's ED becoming head and shoulders better like it is on live.

Sev~

They "may" be closer together under the current propossed changes but that is AFTER you have BATTERED BLITZ AND LEGENDARY DREADNAUGHT DOWN IN ORDER TO "BRING UP" OTHER ED'S!!!! If you want to bring up other ED's then buff those ED's and leave LD and Blitz the hell alone for crying out loud! The mechanic has been around for what 2 years ish and now you want to bring out the nerf bat come on get real and wake up and smell the nerfs Sev please!

I am sorry for all the capitals and stuff but I honestly don't know how the hell to get my point over just how angry these changes have made me without resorting to a ridiculous amounts of swearing (amongst other things) which would only land me in trouble so hence not doing it so there :P

Stoner81.

[Pescha]

Blitz may or may not be as effective in a group due to the mechanic but that same mechanic is what keeps it in balance, every other ED's epic moment can be useful no matter the quest/party make up/etc. Frankly people who "compete" with others while in a group DON'T FREAKING BELONG IN A GROUP! Grouping is not about zerging in front of everybody just so as you can have your fun with Blitz just NO NO NO! Myself when I group I hardly ever use Blitz if at all because for me personally it is practically impossible to keep going with how fast stuff dies. On my own soloing then oh yeah I fire Blitz up and have at it like a man possessed.

Players mentality now while using Blitz is so wrong imho



For gods sake here we go again! The people soloing EE's like those in this thread are more than likely using toons that have had years of investment in stat tomes, past lives (heroic and epic) and gear coming out of their wazzoo! THESE PEOPLE DO NOT REPRESENT THE MAJORITY OF THE PLAYER BASE!!! How many more times do we have to say this before it gets listened to?



LD is THE primary melee based ED and it SHOULD have more DPS than other tree's by a good margin, the flip side is that you don't (or shouldn't) get defence boosts with it too.



Current Blitz = 250%
U23 Blitz = 102% at level 28 with all feats for fighting style!

ALMOST A 150% REDUCTION IN DAMAGE OUTPUT AND YOU ARE WONDERING WHY PEOPLE ARE JUMPING UP AND DOWN ABOUT THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Imho Blitz is the only thing that makes a melee viable in EE content specifically when soloing. Blitz hasn't just been hit with the Nerf Bat it has been royally battered with the Nerf Forest, fed in to a wood chipper and then Lolth takes her morning constitutional on it! The current mechanic of having to land the killing blow is what gives it the flip side to the power it grants, if a player can not keep it going then that is their problem and they should not be telling people not to kill stuff just so they can charge it up! In guild runs OK this would work pretty well but in random PUG's it's flat out rude in my book!

You guys changed the way Toughness works because it was a "must have" feat and by tying Melee Power in with the fighting style feats you have done the same thing by your own standards, the fighting style feats will become mandatory for melee characters otherwise they will be



They "may" be closer together under the current propossed changes but that is AFTER you have BATTERED BLITZ AND LEGENDARY DREADNAUGHT DOWN IN ORDER TO "BRING UP" OTHER ED'S!!!! If you want to bring up other ED's then buff those ED's and leave LD and Blitz the hell alone for crying out loud! The mechanic has been around for what 2 years ish and now you want to bring out the nerf bat come on get real and wake up and smell the nerfs Sev please!

I am sorry for all the capitals and stuff but I honestly don't know how the hell to get my point over just how angry these changes have made me without resorting to a ridiculous amount of swearing (amongst other things) which would only land me in trouble so hence not doing it.

Stoner81.

Agreed, i want for what i have paid for (masters blitz) and not a battered blitz.

[B0ltdrag0n]

yes Sev I agree with one thing. You should look into buffing blitz just a tiny bit more to get it just right.

[LordArkan]

Imho Blitz is the only thing that makes a melee viable in EE content specifically when soloing.

Which is largely the point of this update, yeah?

They "may" be closer together under the current propossed changes but that is AFTER you have BATTERED BLITZ AND LEGENDARY DREADNAUGHT DOWN IN ORDER TO "BRING UP" OTHER ED'S!!!! If you want to bring up other ED's then buff those ED's and leave LD and Blitz the hell alone for crying out loud!

I disagree entirely. An old Dominions 3 quote springs to mind:

"should only ever buff UP stuff to make it competitve with OP stuff" is a pretty bollocks idea on which to base a gameplay mod around.

[slarden]

I so don't care about devs taking the time out to address an 8 year old feature of this game that has been talked about ad nauseum years ago. Now, some new cats come around with their sense of entitlement crying about the difficulty of EE - forcing easy acquisition of the best gear, complaining that they can't get kills - so they dumb down skill-based maneuvers such as master's blitz on-kill mechanic, and now want normalized melee attack rates - so they can do the same damage as the elites while auto-attacking, with the same melee damage regardless of how you move your character.

I'm sick of it

I don't even run melee on my 2 characters. I just think it's a stupid mechanic that people use combat feats 50 times (against no enemy)and then tell the rest of the party not to kill anything while they get their blitz up. Then they die or go through a portal and rinse and repeat. It just creates a frustrating social situation whether the melee in LD is acting reasonably or not.

I've had some top tier melees on Sarlona specifically ask me not to kill anything until they got their blitz going so I don't think this is limited to casual players.

Your perspective that this is because people think EE is too hard or have a sense of entitlement is not correct. It's just a stupid mechanic and while I understand it's fun for you, most people hate the negative impact it has on grouping. If not for the fact that it impacts others in the party I could care less.

I get your point about a skill being diminished and I don't know how the devs can really deal with it. I also agree with your points that high dps characters will have more difficulty building up charges because they kill things too quickly. I hope they come up with a system you like before U23, but I won't miss the negatives of the current blitzing mechanic.

[slarden]

Killing things is difficult when you have 5 other party members NOT accommodating you. Hence there's competition, and competition involves player skill - this includes running speed, quest knowledge, TWITCHING, effectively switching between weapons based on encounters, and timing your blitz activation. Then there's cycling of buffs, and recharging blitz after entering doorways while party members are ahead - all of these dynamics are SKILL based.

That is indeed an interesting perspective. When I am in a dungeon with other party members I always think of the competition is group vs. dungeon and not player vs. player.

I guess there are different ways of looking at it. I never once think of my party members as competitors. but there is certainly nothing wrong with that viewpoint.

I am glad none of the mechanics of my character requires me to compete against party members for kills to be effective/optimized. That would completely suck the fun out of the game for me and the people I run with.

The devs have a tough job for sure with such a diverse player base. The same mechanic you love I would never consider playing for the same reasons you love it. I do not have a problem running EEs, but I am also fine running other difficulties with my friends that only like EE in small doses.

I have been amazed at some of the recent ideas by the devs - so hopefully Sev and the team will find a way to give you what you while also addressing some of the negative feedback about blitz.

[jalont]

For gods sake here we go again! The people soloing EE's like those in this thread are more than likely using toons that have had years of investment in stat tomes, past lives (heroic and epic) and gear coming out of their wazzoo! THESE PEOPLE DO NOT REPRESENT THE MAJORITY OF THE PLAYER BASE!!! How many more times do we have to say this before it gets listened to?

The majority of the playerbase should not be playing in EE. EE should be balanced around top tier players. Others should be showing these builds soloing EN. If they are struggling soloing EN, then we can look to lower EN's difficulty.

[Monkey_Archer]

I think it would be an interesting experiment to see videos from players that are unable to succeed with the new blitz. Comparison videos of completing a quest on live, then failing the same quest on lamannia due to "nerfs", just to get a good indication of where the issue lies.

I'd do it myself, but I'm not having these issues. The only failed attempts I've had so far are in fury, and it was due to my own bad play.

[B0ltdrag0n]

Agreed.

[Thayion516]

I think it would be an interesting experiment to see videos from players that are unable to succeed with the new blitz. Comparison videos of completing a quest on live, then failing the same quest on lamannia due to "nerfs", just to get a good indication of where the issue lies.

I'd do it myself, but I'm not having these issues. The only failed attempts I've had so far are in fury, and it was due to my own bad play.

I'm thinking of posting some video on a sub optimal exploiter ranger build with more average gear and some t2 thunderforge. Maybe on EH in GH to see more average play. Maybe FoF or Cabal. Maybe Pop would be more telling due to the named encounters? Can look at same build comparisons at non top end levels? Think that would help any? I feel like that would be more representative of the actual player base.

[B0ltdrag0n]

Please do I think it would be valuable data for the developers to see. Not proof, just like all the videos so far...but a nice addition to the data set.

[redoubt]

Agreed, i want for what i have paid for (masters blitz) and not a battered blitz.

Just so I'm clear:

You want 250% damage boost that lasts the entire duration of the quest? If not that, then you are not getting what you paid for?

I could be wrong, but blitz seems more like a toggle than an epic moment...

[Cetus]

That is indeed an interesting perspective. When I am in a dungeon with other party members I always think of the competition is group vs. dungeon and not player vs. player.

I guess there are different ways of looking at it. I never once think of my party members as competitors. but there is certainly nothing wrong with that viewpoint.

I am glad none of the mechanics of my character requires me to compete against party members for kills to be effective/optimized. That would completely suck the fun out of the game for me and the people I run with.

The devs have a tough job for sure with such a diverse player base. The same mechanic you love I would never consider playing for the same reasons you love it. I do not have a problem running EEs, but I am also fine running other difficulties with my friends that only like EE in small doses.

I have been amazed at some of the recent ideas by the devs - so hopefully Sev and the team will find a way to give you what you while also addressing some of the negative feedback about blitz.

You know, when any EE run you do is essentially a guaranteed completion - most of the fun I have nowadays is competing for kills with other elite skilled players, this is fun for me. The mobs simply don't pose much of a challenge anymore.

The very essence of the problem (I guess, just judging from what I've read here) is blitz management. People simply have a rather shoddy attitude using blitz and expecting their party members to accommodate it - I'd be ****edoff about this too.

When I blitz, I just do it - I don't tell anyone anything. I know who I play with, and I know in which situations I'll have a tough time - so i tend to adapt around that to get my blitz charges. If I lose them, that's on me - I'd NEVER ask any party member to accommodate my blitz. It seems that the people who had the entitled attitude are the ones who are responsible for this change.

Again, I'll deal with this new mechanic - I'm not 100% on either side here. I don't know what the solution is - all I can say is the overt drawbacks to this charging mechanic -

1. The more damage I do, the less of a chance I have at charging it - since my enemy dies quicker.

2. Charging it is guaranteed on a boss. Period. The opportunity cost is auto-attack for a minute, and you have your 10 blitz charges. You don't have to chase after mobs, or swap destinies on boss heavy quests - you just....have it. No skill involved at all.

[Pescha]

Blitz needs to Provide 100 melee power, right now it is just too weak and i don't care how good a player is to offset the dps Loss which belonged to blitz in the first place, one Person doesn't represent the whole Community and yet again i don't care about Videos made by an elite player. I want for what i have paid for, i want a Brand new car (blitz at 100 melee power) not a crappy one (battered blitz at 50 melee power) if you still refuse to Provide that i will just simply leave and play another Game which respects things what others have paid for.