Monster Champion Feedback

[Monkey-Boy]

and this is why I hate the BS of Champions with Ignore fortification.
I can work with a high fort bypass that was the point of investing into a higher fortification, to survive those sneaky assassination attempts..
a random wandering wolf gets a champion crown , trip. dead.
This is the kind of BS that must end. a trash champion that does more damage than the red named end boss.

My 285% fortification is completely worthless as I get popped for 825 points of crit damage. from a stupid trash roving wolf with a champion crown in a level 24 quest.
What is the point of investing into Fortification when random Champions can just ignore it completely.
Are The Dev's telling us we should just say screw fortification and invest into becoming meatsacks of HP .. I used to think 900hp was enough for a wizard.

And this is why Champions are dumb.

Why keep shoving this terrible idea down our throats?

[Ancient]

My 285% fortification is completely worthless as I get popped for 825 points of crit damage. from a stupid trash roving wolf with a champion crown in a level 24 quest.
What is the point of investing into Fortification when random Champions can just ignore it completely.
Are The Dev's telling us we should just say screw fortification and invest into becoming meatsacks of HP .. I used to think 900hp was enough for a wizard.

PRR 17 is the equivalent of what used to be running with zero fortification.

[Qhualor]

and this is why I hate the BS of Champions with Ignore fortification.
I can work with a high fort bypass that was the point of investing into a higher fortification, to survive those sneaky assassination attempts..
a random wandering wolf gets a champion crown , trip. dead.
This is the kind of BS that must end. a trash champion that does more damage than the red named end boss.

My 285% fortification is completely worthless as I get popped for 825 points of crit damage. from a stupid trash roving wolf with a champion crown in a level 24 quest.
What is the point of investing into Fortification when random Champions can just ignore it completely.
Are The Dev's telling us we should just say screw fortification and invest into becoming meatsacks of HP .. I used to think 900hp was enough for a wizard.

this may or may not be the confusion with Champions, but wolves are able to sneak attack which means... math that I cant figure out with 285% fort. so heres the link and the info im talking about.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Fortification

Bypassing Fortification

Since Update 13, monsters with sneak attack dice are able to bypass some of the player fortification equal to monsters' Challenge Rating. E.g.:
If a CR 1 Kobold Sneak attacks someone with 50% fortification, the Kobold Sneak has a 51% chance to normally conduct a critical hit or sneak attack.
If a CR 20 Lava Mephit attacks someone with 100% fortification, the Lava Mephit has a 20% chance to normally conduct a critical hit or sneak attack.
If a CR 54 Sellsword Footpad attacks someone with 150% fortification, the Sellsword Footpad has a 4% chance to normally conduct a critical hit or sneak attack.
If a CR 29 Earth Elemental attacks someone with 125% fortification, it is still going to have a 0% chance to critically hit or sneak attack, as it has no sneak attack dice

[Ayseifn]

What is the point of investing into Fortification when random Champions can just ignore it completely.
Are The Dev's telling us we should just say screw fortification and invest into becoming meatsacks of HP .. I used to think 900hp was enough for a wizard.

I just wish the ones with fort bypass had a different colour crown or something, I like it though as it's equally rough on everyone. You can dump fortification if you want to, but you'll start getting crit in raids and by non champs too so I wouldn't advise it.

[JOTMON]

PRR 17 is the equivalent of what used to be running with zero fortification.

It is a declining scale of benefit , 17Prr is a bit more than 15% damage reduction...
This means that that wolf's initial damage was around 1,000 hit points mitigated by my 5 DR and 15% Damage reduction from 17% PRR to get to the 825 damage that ultimately killed me.
Currently running TR lives, so don't have my endgame gear to equip to boost my PRR. optimal is in the 90-100 range for 47-50 damage reduction.. after that the declining returns hit pretty heavily.
Still going to take a lot of ETR lives to get myself into the higher end of PRR on a PJ caster..

this may or may not be the confusion with Champions, but wolves are able to sneak attack which means... math that I cant figure out with 285% fort. so heres the link and the info im talking about.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Fortification

Bypassing Fortification
~snip~

There is no confusion.

1. Fortification bypass is based on the CR of the mob if they are capable of bypassing fort/sneak attacks.. so the CR 42 wolf could bypass fortification of 142
.. nowhere near being able to break my 285% fortification.. that would take a CR185 mob.

2. Ignore Fortification
Champions have a pretty good chance of getting the Misc buff of Fortification Bypass - Ignores All Fortification .

[Qhualor]

There is no confusion.

1. Fortification bypass is based on the CR of the mob if they are capable of bypassing fort/sneak attacks.. so the CR 42 wolf could bypass fortification of 142
.. nowhere near being able to break my 285% fortification.. that would take a CR185 mob.

2. Ignore Fortification
Champions have a pretty good chance of chance of getting the Misc buff of Fortification Bypass - Ignores All Fortification .

this is where PRR comes in handy and any other ways to absorb damage. I don't know what kind of wizard you play, but if you are going to be close to mobs with a low PRR than you are going to get hit hard when mobs are able to bypass your blur and displacement. doing it just for past life or no past life.

I will say the same thing I said many months ago when we were able to stack fortification over 100%, however, that its just stupid to get to the point where you actually need more than 150%. I don't see any reason why we should have anymore more than that.

[fmalfeas]

This would be the golden opportunity for them to make 'the forbidden feat' actually usable. Make it actually do what it /says/ it does. Make Improved Fortification actually render you immune to SA and Crit. As is, as far as I can tell from testing, all it does is give you 100% fort, at a cost of a feat, and total immunity to all positive energy healing...making it pretty wretched. But if it worked like it says it does, the Fortification Bypass buff wouldn't work against an Improved Fort forged.

[JonasSimbaca]

I've been playing since shortly after DDO was released. I've been a paying client and VIP the entire time. I've taken every bug and questionable developer decision in stride because the game always entertained me.

Champions have broken that. They do not make the game more fun for me. I am playing less than 1/2 as often as I used to.

I like to be well equipped and prepared for the dungeon I'm going in. I like to think things though, solve puzzles and progress. I don't want to be one-shotted in Tangleroot for over 250 points of scorching ray from a stealthed caster in the corner of a room.

I select the difficulty level based on what I'm likely to face in the dungeon, hard or elite.

I am a well-equipped completionist/epic completionist and almost iconic completionist. It doesn't matter, I still get one-shotted by some random monster that has 10x the firepower of anything else around it. That's just stupid.

To those who say "get better equipment" - I have it all.

To those who say "play smarter, you lack skill" - I've been playing longer than many of you and I'm good at this game.

To those who say "play at a lower difficulty" - I don't want to just one-shot everything on normal and I don't want to be one-shotted on hard. There is no longer anything in between mind-numbingly easy and ridiculously difficult.

To those who say "group up" - I ran all of Wheloon and and all of the Stormhorns quests with an LFM up, no one joined on Thelanis the entire morning.

I'll still play when friends want to, but I've got better things to do than run the same quest three times until the outrageous champion randomness comes up in my favor.

[Ancient]

It is a declining scale of benefit , 17Prr is a bit more than 15% damage reduction...
This means that that wolf's initial damage was around 1,000 hit points mitigated by my 5 DR and 15% Damage reduction from 17% PRR to get to the 825 damage that ultimately killed me.
Currently running TR lives, so don't have my endgame gear to equip to boost my PRR. optimal is in the 90-100 range for 47-50 damage reduction.. after that the declining returns hit pretty heavily.

That "declining returns" is repeated a lot, but it is mathematically false. It is based on the flawed assumption that every percentage point of damage reduction is the same. This is easily shown to be false.

* going from 99% to 100% damage reduction is an infinite increase (because it is 1% damage to zero).
* going from 98 to 99% damage decreases your incoming damage by 50% (because it is 2% damage to 1%).
* going from 97 to 99% damage reduction decreases your incoming damage by 33% (because it is 3% to 2%)

Each point of PRR reduces your incoming damage by the same percentage (what was incoming after the previous one). The survival increase is the same. One more way to explain it:

If you have 100 hitpoints.
* One hit for 100 will kill you.
* Two hits for 50 will kill you.
* Three hits for 33 1/3 will kill you.
* Four hits for 25 will kill you
* Five hits for 20 will kill you.

To survive one more hit (from one to two) took a 50 point damage reduction.
To survive one more hit (from four to five) only took a 5 point damage reduction.

Every point of PRR is just as valuable as the last one.

Still going to take a lot of ETR lives to get myself into the higher end of PRR on a PJ caster..

Really?
Because I thought for sure you could get 10 PRR from EK.
I thought you could equip a skyvault tower shield with zero arcane spell failure... even a heroic one.
I thought you could get 24 PRR just from a guardian ring... even a heroic one.

It isn't tank quality PRR, but it is pretty easy to do better than 17.

[Vellrad]

You should invest into spot, so you can see champ from afar and then hypno+hold or whatever to stop it.

[phillymiket]

You should invest into spot, so you can see champ from afar and then hypno+hold or whatever to stop it.

That or something.

Champions have had a nerf and then another and also been removed from lv 5 and lower quests plus they are working on other refinements.

Even though I have argued against them ( I still feel they are just a cheap and ineffective way to avoid a proper balance effort) i must admit a good deal of compromise has been offered by the Dev's on this one.

What you now have to do is think about who is likely to be the 'killer Champ"?

In tangle root that is clearly going to be Hob Casters and maybe the Prince Spiders.

Ogre Champs and Doggies wont one-shot very readily.

Then just plan for that worst case.

I admit, it's really hard to plan around 250 points of fire damage at that level but that's really on the outer edge of what you will see for damage (at least by my observations - I've taken 3 TRs though Tamgleroot post Champs).

But you certainly can plan for surviving almost all Champ scorchers.

You also might want to do some old school things, like open that shrine door by the prison cells in case you get zapped, or pull back the visible melee because you know there are always casters in the mob pack then go after the casters after. Or even park a healer by the enterence just in case.

But bottom line is if dude isn't feeling the game anymore with Champs then that's how that is.

[JOTMON]

That "declining returns" is repeated a lot, but it is mathematically false. It is based on the flawed assumption that every percentage point of damage reduction is the same. This is easily shown to be false.

* going from 99% to 100% damage reduction is an infinite increase (because it is 1% damage to zero).
* going from 98 to 99% damage decreases your incoming damage by 50% (because it is 2% damage to 1%).
* going from 97 to 99% damage reduction decreases your incoming damage by 33% (because it is 3% to 2%)

Each point of PRR reduces your incoming damage by the same percentage (what was incoming after the previous one). The survival increase is the same. One more way to explain it:

How is this Mathimatically false? The line definitely curves to the right..
http://ddowiki.com/page/Physical_Resistance_Rating


Every point invested in PRR is less Damage reduction the forumula is designed to give declining returns. (100/(100+PRR)

10 PRR gives 9% reduction
25 PRR gives 20% reduction
50 PRR gives 33% reduction
75 PRR gives 43% reduction
100PRR gives 50% reduction
150PRR gives 60% reduction
200PRR gives 67% reduction


Your representation of Damage reduction is just BS numbers that have no useful representation and accordingly not relevant.

98-100% Damage reduction isn't achieveable in the game.
98% damage reduction would require a PRR of 3900
99% Damage reduction would require PRR of 6567
100% Damage reduction would require PRR of 19,900 (assuming it rounds up)

The survival increase is the same. One more way to explain it:

If you have 100 hitpoints.
* One hit for 100 will kill you.
* Two hits for 50 will kill you.
* Three hits for 33 1/3 will kill you.
* Four hits for 25 will kill you
* Five hits for 20 will kill you.

To survive one more hit (from one to two) took a 50 point damage reduction.
To survive one more hit (from four to five) only took a 5 point damage reduction.

Every point of PRR is just as valuable as the last one.

even here you are skewing numbers of irrelevance.

Reducing damage from 100 to 50 requires 100 PRR.
Reducing from 100 to 33 1/3 requires a PRR of 200.
Reducing it to 25 requires a PRR of 273
Reducing it to 20 requires a PRR of 388


My relevant in game example.
The wolf hit me for 1,000 points of damage reduced by my DR of 5 and my PRR 17 reduction of 15% for recordable damage of 825 points of damage.
My wizard has 919HP so effectively I was hit for 90% of my Hp.

To survive two hits I would need a PRR of 116 which would be pretty tough to achieve on a level 27 evasion Wizard/Rogue.
To survive 3 hits I would need a PRR of 224.

I am also assuming you do not expect every caster and evasion toon in the game to re-roll and become heavy armor wearing builds focussed on only PRR at the expense of everything else.

Also Keep in mind level relevance.
Shadowscale and any other level 28 endgame items are not relevant because this is a level 24ish quest.. not endgame.

Really?
Because I thought for sure you could get 10 PRR from EK.
I thought you could equip a skyvault tower shield with zero arcane spell failure... even a heroic one.
I thought you could get 24 PRR just from a guardian ring... even a heroic one.

It isn't tank quality PRR, but it is pretty easy to do better than 17.

Equipping a shield negates my evasion and removes a spell focus weapon/or staff bonuses. so that doesn't work.

adding 10 PRR from EK would increase me to 21%reduction (from15%) (don't know if this stackswith the PRR from my Lich stance Palemaster enhancements.)
8AP cost has to come from other investments.
So I would lose 5 points from Shadar-Kai- 1 Int (potentially a DC) shadow phase/jaunt (so lose a ethereal burst and way to become unstuck when trapped),
and lose 3 from Harper - basically just the 20 SP since Toughenss and Universal spell power I recover in EK.


Ring slots are tough to give up. lose a green slot for a yellow
http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Epic_Eye_of_the_Beholder
http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Lantern_Ring
I could probably work in a Augment of PRR 14 that would get me an additional damage reduction of 9%

That still only gets me to the low 40's range of PRR which gives me a Damage Reduction of about 30%.
While yes it is better than the 15%, its not relatively any better than my current setup when the wolf has crit output damage of 1,000HP and can ignore any and all fortification.

I am still dead in two hits or less.
Relatively speaking the scaled up roving wolf is trivial compared to higher level content mobs that can actually land a solid hit with scaled Crit profiles..

The champions themselves I have no issue with, the ability for random champions to completely ignore fortification is what I find disconcerting.

[JOTMON]

You should invest into spot, so you can see champ from afar and then hypno+hold or whatever to stop it.

I have spot invested( I am a wiz/rogue trapper), but spot would have done nothing , I know the wolves were there and had setup the aoe for them

I had cast Otto's dancing ball for the incoming 2 champions and rest of the pack of regular wolves, most of the wolves danced,
First champion I insta-killed but the 2nd champion tripped me and 1-shot killed me before the CC hit him even though it was within the cc area.
it was also death warded to the insta-kill I tried to throw at it before it killed me.. which is quite difficult to identify beforehand.

The same champion wolf also sayed aggro'd on my dead self as I ran to the shrine to rez completely ingnoring the other two players in the party.
What ever happened to losing aggro when you encapped/died..

[Powerhungry]

and this is why I hate the BS of Champions with Ignore fortification.
I can work with a high fort bypass that was the point of investing into a higher fortification, to survive those sneaky assassination attempts..
a random wandering wolf gets a champion crown , trip. dead.
This is the kind of BS that must end. a trash champion that does more damage than the red named end boss.

My 285% fortification is completely worthless as I get popped for 825 points of crit damage. from a stupid trash roving wolf with a champion crown in a level 24 quest.
What is the point of investing into Fortification when random Champions can just ignore it completely.
Are The Dev's telling us we should just say screw fortification and invest into becoming meatsacks of HP .. I used to think 900hp was enough for a wizard.

Instead of ignoring all fortification, it should either ignore the first 100% of fortification - or fort bypass and critical hits should be mutually exclusive (if it ignores fort, it cannot crit).

[Monkey-Boy]

Instead of ignoring all fortification, it should either ignore the first 100% of fortification - or fort bypass and critical hits should be mutually exclusive (if it ignores fort, it cannot crit).

Fort bypass is acceptable.

Ignoring all fort is utterly stupid.

[Ancient]

Every point invested in PRR is less Damage reduction the forumula is designed to give declining returns. (100/(100+PRR)

And you missed my point that each additional percentage point of damage reduction is worth MORE than the previous one.

Your counter point about why your equipment is so precious that you cannot swap it in even for a special situation speaks only to your inability to adapt to survive. In upper level content, I do have to be careful around champions... and that is a good thing.

You are free to tell me that my numbers are bs.... but I'm not the one getting one-shotted by champions.

[Ancient]

even here you are skewing numbers of irrelevance.

Reducing damage from 100 to 50 requires 100 PRR.
Reducing from 100 to 33 1/3 requires a PRR of 200.
Reducing it to 25 requires a PRR of 273
Reducing it to 20 requires a PRR of 388

Using your numbers...

It takes 100 PRR to survive one more hit
It took 100 additional PRR to survive two more hits
It took 73 additional PRR to survive three more hits
It took 115 additional PRR to survive four more hits.

Pretty dang close to a straight line. The curve down in percentage damage reduction is offset by the increased value of each additional point of damage reduction.

[Ancient]

I have spot invested( I am a wiz/rogue trapper), but spot would have done nothing , I know the wolves were there and had setup the aoe for them

I had cast Otto's dancing ball for the incoming 2 champions and rest of the pack of regular wolves, most of the wolves danced,
First champion I insta-killed but the 2nd champion tripped me and 1-shot killed me before the CC hit him even though it was within the cc area.
it was also death warded to the insta-kill I tried to throw at it before it killed me.. which is quite difficult to identify beforehand.

You can swap gear with a hot key. If you have the disco ball up, you might consider swapping to a shield/other defensive gear until the CC kicks in and you can kill them at your leisure. You don't have to do this every time, just against mobs that seem to have your number like a tripping wolf. Alternatively, you could focus less on trying to get off quick instakills and more on jump kiting or other defensive maneuvers.

[JOTMON]

And you missed my point that each additional percentage point of damage reduction is worth MORE than the previous one.

Your counter point about why your equipment is so precious that you cannot swap it in even for a special situation speaks only to your inability to adapt to survive. In upper level content, I do have to be careful around champions... and that is a good thing.

You are free to tell me that my numbers are bs.... but I'm not the one getting one-shotted by champions.

I understand your point, I am saying it wasn't relevant.
A champion is not a special situation, it is commonplace, swapping in heavy armor and a shield everytime I see a champion is not conducive to the build.
If it was I wouldn't be playing an evasion build I would be playing a tank build.

My issue is with champions that can ignore fortification.
How does your Nova build stand up to 2 back to back swipes from a fortification ignoring champion of 1k damage each along with a spattering of 100 hp's of damage from regular mobs. in the level 24 range.. not endgame.
How does your PRR hold up against 2400ish incoming damage before you can cast heal.

and your reference comparison numbers are BS, when you can demonstrate a build that has 3900 PRR for your example of 98% damage reduction then I will concede this point.

[JOTMON]

You can swap gear with a hot key. If you have the disco ball up, you might consider swapping to a shield/other defensive gear until the CC kicks in and you can kill them at your leisure. You don't have to do this every time, just against mobs that seem to have your number like a tripping wolf. Alternatively, you could focus less on trying to get off quick instakills and more on jump kiting or other defensive maneuvers.

Only a small percentage of champions will have the Ignore fort option 10% or less in my experience.
So the overall percentage chance is generally low.
and its not like we have minutes to target the mob, select examine and check to see if every champion may or may not have the ignore fort buff before engaging.

I don't see how defensive gear will help in this situation regardless of the minor bump in PRR..
also have to consider you are losing dodge bonus due to equipping shield/armor
These mobs are ignoring fortification all together. so unless you can maintain high HP and high PRR along with decent heals then it becomes pointless.

Quick insta-kills are useful. a dead mob does no damage... Clerics like dead mobs that don't hit people,,.. less healing required
same for CC.. melee like cc.. melee do not like chasing a pew-pewer around the dungeon trailing mobs in their wake.

So this is just going to promote the ranged keep-a-way builds and kiting casting waiting for that big random shirardi proc..
Is this the direction the game wants to go, eliminate tanks and toe to toe builds and play runaway pew-pew-ers.
.