You know the game is not balanced properly when...

[arkonas]

Sev, thanks for chiming in. Also, you can't take all the blame I and a few others pushed Pallys up more than we should have (especially vanguard) and I know enough of the math to have known better.. I just missed it.

I agree, the class re-vamps have made DDO a better place, and it is good that we now have reason to wear heavy armor and not all builds are splashing 2,6, or 12 monk. However; I think we went too far. Now, splashing monk (outside of 14 pally / 6 monk archer ) or some thrower builds is just gimping your toon (which is cool if it is for flavor.. but not good for "game balance", whatever that is ) which tells me we went too far.



Overall the base armor changes will have little effect, but it is a step in the right direction. Much of the problem rests with the "all or nothing" mitigation of displacement and to a lesser extent dodge. I don't have a good solution for it (but I think I am re-thinking my comments on your solution from last year) .. but I understand how it is causing issues from a design standpoint where PRR has become the "king of defense".

Also, just my opinion again, but Heavy armor can use a nerf.. but I would leave medium and light armor as is.. 30/30 (or 25) /15 might be better (heavy still gets more of a boost from BAB). Wearing medium and light armor is where we need to apply some incentives.



Agreed on Barbs.. disagree on KotC. Holy Sword and Zeal are issues more than the light damage. That and the neg level immunity.. but that is more a case of current content than a long term issue.



Fair point.. but this is a good use for the PC. I am hoping your using the 2015 group to its fullest. There are a few math junkies in the current crop. Assuming they can get past their pet projects you should be in good shape.


CdG is too good, and Assassins need a lot of love (from the current proposal I saw). As for DPS, I am actually running through a swash builds at present (running EEs below level) and I will say that it is stronger than most other builds.. but weaker than Pally/Barb in overall play (I know Bard DPS is above Pally.. but Pally has better defensive options). If you are looking to overall buff all the builds.. Bard with a change to CdG might be a good target (still to powerful imo.. but reasonable at least).




You have covered near-term plans.. but not the "Vision". In your minds... what is "balanced"? What is your Vision for "end game"? Do you have any thoughts for CR inflation and what it does to niche builds like "Turn undead" clerics and Spell Resistance? What classes do you think need help (hint: Arty at end game ... and no I don't have a Arty toon) and which don't (Barbs, Bards, and Pally's)?

That is what I am talking about when I speak of understanding the "Vision"

As for Fighters, I respectfully disagree... they are nothing more than a "splash" class now



As a self-declared "expert" in the matter.. I agree. Just be careful with the DC's needed with ToEE... players should not need a build like mine to feel like they are useful.

Thank you again for all the interaction over the past year... it has given me renewed faith in DDO's future

i disagree about the energy drain. this has been there for a long time even before the revamp of all of the trees. so this is not something that should be taken out. its not like it was new or anything.

[MrWindupBird]

Some good discussion.

While classes aren't balanced very well right now, character building has never been more fun, IMO. There are a huge number of ways to build viable/fun to play characters now, more than at any time than I can remember.

To address a few points in this thread:

1. Holy sword probably does need to be nerfed. This isn't news, but with 0 ap spent a lvl 14+ paladin has a better base damage/crit profile than any other non-paladin build with T5 enhancements. This has spillover effects, as I'm sure you are well aware: by loading so much power (and it really can't be overstated, it's BIG) into a class feature you have to either underpower the paldin enhancements to leave the class level with non-paladins, or else just accept that paladins will always be ahead of classes without such power comin from class features (eg everything else). I'd recommend changing holy sword to +1 crit range (like Ravager crit-rage, non-stacking with improved crit), and +1 multiplier on 19-20. That would still be quite strong, but not as imbalanced as it is now, where a paladin genuinely can not spend a single AP on damage enhancements and still have good offense (along with excellent defenses). The issue with holy sword isn't so much that it is strong (it is) but that it precludes adding some other powerful enhancements in other classes trees, since a player can take 15 pally for Holy Sword/Zeal, ignore the pally trees, and dump all their AP into whatever else new and interesting comes out.

************************************************** *************************************************

2. TWF is terrible, and only looks ok because of barb TWF with ridiculous added effects. Rangers, monks, and rogues are all underpowered now (rogues however are actually a bit better than advertised, they just are difficult for forumites to play I guess), which is not a coincidence. The intent for TWF is for it to have smaller but more frequent hits, and to benefit more from procs than other styles. That really isn't the case right now- the attack rate is essentially the same as SWF for many classes (largely a consequence of doublestrike not proccing off-hand and therefore advantaging SWF/THF) and it suffers from a lack of melee power, poor hit-boxes/targeting while moving, and you still have to make two weapons. TWF should not be worse on sinle-targets than SWF/THF, and it is currently (pure barbs excepted).
Here's a fun little example: consider a rogue TWF vs SWF with a shield (via /3bard swashbuckling).
Attacks/animation:
TWF: 100% mainhand + 80%offhand + 9% Doublestrike past life +8% DS item + 3% DS destiny (Shadowdancer) + 20% DS(Killer enhancement) + 5%DS (perfect TWF) + 8%(perfect TWF offhand)
= 2.3 attacks/animation, 0.88 attacks are at 0.5 x stat damage bonus

SWF: as above, but no offhand, and gets 1% (Swashbuckler core) + 15% (shield mastery + legendary shield mastery)
= 1.61 attacks/animation, all at 1.5 x stat damage bonus
But SWF attacks 30% faster, so this is actually
= 2.1 attacks /equivalent TWF animation

So TWF does have slightly more attacks, but it's a factor of only about 10%. The fact that SWF gets much more base damage, better cleaves, and melee power shifts the pendulum far to that side. A rogue, who ought to benefit more from #of hits/TWF (due to sneak attack) actually gets just as much sneak attack damage when SWF'ing. Little bit of a problem, no?
Since someone will object that losing the capstone means the /3bard splashed rogue will do less damage, I encourage you to check out Resonant Arms. 6d6 sonic on crit, scaling with spellpower, works out to be more than 5d6 sneak attack, even assuming 100% sneak attack. Further sources of doublestrike (and more are available in-game than what I listed) increase the advantage of SWF.

Long example, but my point is that the weapon styles need work. There is absolutely no advantage for TWF now- if it isn't a clear-cut choice for a rogue, it isn't for anyone.

************************************************** *******************************************

3. Monk diatribe starts now!
It kind of bugs me that bards (freezes), as well as pure 20 fighter and pally vanguards are far better at stunning than monks. They can stun more mob types, have AOE stuns, and can reach a higher DC without sacrificing their damage: Wisdom remains the only stat left without a stat-to-damage option, I believe. Why is beyond my comprehension: I think that the community still has a hangover from 2012 when monks were good. Or else the implicit assumption is that monk=ranged, which tells you everything that you need to to about the viability of unarmed combat.

In case there's any confusion, unarmed monks are not anywhere near high-DPS right now. Before epic levels, monks traded off terrible crit profile for better attack speed and good base damage, but as the game has evolved the tradeoff has gotten increasingly bad. Monk crit profile has not evolved with that of other melees, and the increases base damage across the board made the unarmed die steps comparatively weaker. Lousy enhancements, and non-functioning abilities and items (eg Know the Angles not applying damage bonus to unarmed, Sanctified Gages not applying light damage) have exacerbated this. Here's another example
Let's put a pally with warhammers in LD, and compare it to a monk, also in LD. Both have overwhelming critical. The monk is in Master Earth stance for +1 mult on 19-20.
Pally: Crits 15-18 x4, 19-20 x 6
Expected physical damage over 20 hits: 13x1 + 4x4 + 2x6 = 41 times base damage (plus 28 x seeker)

Monk: Crits 19-20 x 5
Expected physical damage over 20 hits: 17x1 + 2x5 = 27 times base damage (plus 10 times seeker)

Assuming equivalent base damage (** See note below), the paladin does 50% more physical damage than the monk, ignoring seeker damage (so total difference is probably closer to 60%). That assumes no-fort, which is reasonable even in undead content with the fort-reduction we have available now. The 60% figure seems about right to me from my play experience. The pally incidentally has a large defensive advantage (MRR, PRR, Lay on Hands, cures, saves) as well for anything and everything that is not EE Miior.

**As far as comparable base damages:
Pally has 7d6 light damage scaling with melee power, in addition to 15 bonus melee power, higher Str from Divine Might.
The monk gets an extra ~5d8 (if shintao T5) from monk bonus die steps. 2.5 [w] from 20 monk, 1.5 Dance of Flowers, 1 Improved Martial Arts. Monk also gets 10% offhand and full-str offhand bonus. The 7d6 light damage and monk extra die steps are very comparable (at the cost of a feat, and a twist for the monk), and the 15 melee power and full-str off-hand balance out nicely too. If you start including things like Sanctified Gages not working with unarmed, and the scale shifts further away from Monk.

************************************************** **********************************************

TL;DR the new enhancements give really interesting character building possibilities, but aren't balanced. TWF is bad, monks are bad. Game is still fun, fortunately.

[mudfud]

And you are saying that you would run it more than once? And even if you would only run on killer dm difficulty all the time you are part of a minority. Most players will only do quests for the reward. They will rather run 20 enorm MoDs than try to get a group for ee and the result is that the raid itself is easier than getting people to do it with. It would definitly not be more popular.

I can only speak for the people I quest with and a few others. If you need nothing in MoD why even run it? Most people I play with only login to help guildies. We need nothing, want nothing, have anything we want or could get. The point for logging in would be to get a challenge a real challenge, where the reward would be the challenge itself.
Me, personally if it was really challenging I would run them until I do them so much I get bored of them. Which could be hundreds to thousands of times. Or we could just login once or twice a week just to chat and see if people need help with things. To me playing more would be a benefit to all but without any real challenge what's the point?

[Mryal]

I was going to read the entire discussion but then i saw this:

And an Artificer ED for that matter.

Sev~

THIS is all that matters.When? this update? Yes yes!

[PermaBanned]

Our plan to encourage teamwork is to make the XP rewards encourage teamwork, make the death penalty character specific, and make new content hard enough on hard and elite that friends are welcome.

Sev~

HOOOOLLLYYYYYY {Samule L. Jackson tirade worth of expletives}

You've said & done a lot of cool things with our game - both before and after your latest promotion - but this is by far the coolest.

THANK YOU <- is simply not enough...

[Mindos]

Some good discussion.......... Game is still fun, fortunately.

Very nice post, very nice. I think part of the problem is Sev's style. No offence, just his way of doing things seems to be: Pack it up, ship it, lets get real life data on it!
While other's, possibly Varg, have a more math spreadsheet style, which is: Predict it, model it, balance it based on the math/model, see if real life matches expected.

Each has it's merits and downsides. But how long has it been since swash has been out? And this is the first post I've seen that summarizes nicely the TWF comparison problem?

[davmuzl]

I can only speak for the people I quest with and a few others. If you need nothing in MoD why even run it? Most people I play with only login to help guildies. We need nothing, want nothing, have anything we want or could get. The point for logging in would be to get a challenge a real challenge, where the reward would be the challenge itself.
Me, personally if it was really challenging I would run them until I do them so much I get bored of them. Which could be hundreds to thousands of times. Or we could just login once or twice a week just to chat and see if people need help with things. To me playing more would be a benefit to all but without any real challenge what's the point?

You are possibly going to have a lot of fun figuring out how to beat the difficulty the first time. Worst case it is just scaled up numbers, which would probably mean that not even the first time would be fun. But even if it is fun it is going to be easier very fast after the first time. I would very much appreciate having fun in challenging content but right now it is pretty much impossible to find a group for lvl 28 ee raids and the rest is too easy(Maybe not ee terminal delirium but honestly I just didn't bother trying again after being 100-0ed without having a chance to react on a character that easily tanks large groups of ee mobs in most other quests). I don't know how frequently you run those raids on ee but I would prefer if it was possible to find a group and the only way I see is having better loot or tons of xp.

[Thar]

We had the exact same feedback about Paladin and Barbarian before they hit Lamannia. We *still* have players mad that Barbarians didn't get enough of a boost even though there are Barbarian builds that are performing as well as Paladins in every test we've tried with them.

The game is in a much better place. Previously the end game was limited to pretty much casters and ranged Evasion builds. That was all that was really considered for top end builds. Everything else was considered a niche build. Melee wasn't really viable, nor was armor. Now Bard, Paladins, and Barbarians are doing well. People have a reason to actually wear heavy armor. Melee is an actual playstyle, and characters built for it can actually melee against foes without immediately dying.

If we want to talk about imbalance I think they can be listed with several issues. (Note that most of these are my fault.)

~ The base values for armor are a little too high. When we changed the formula to 100/(100 + Rating) we changed most of the sources, but didn't change the base armor values from 45/30/15. This will be rectified in the next update when they are changed to 30/20/10.

~ Holy Sword is over-performing. This is also my fault. My math did not take into account that Improved Critical is not working like the pen and paper version and is instead doubling the entire critical range. Varg (and some of the more math oriented players) discussed this, but by the time I could get hard numbers on the issue and figure out why my math was wrong it was really late in the update's cycle. Unfortunately critical threat range and multipliers really can't be dialed back without removing them entirely, and at the time there was a lot of forum concern that the Paladin changes still wouldn't be enough. So rather than pulling it at the last minute I let the changes go through. This is MY fault.

(The light damage is probably a bit too high for Knight of the Chalice but it doesn't scale in the same fashion.)

~ For Barbarians the Ravager heal is probably too strong and the overall extra damage is probably too good for TWF barbarians. We are seeing some impressive numbers from builds using TWF to take advantage of all the barbarian damage bonuses. This is my fault as well because, to be honest, I let myself be talked by the community into some over-buffing.


Note that even though we talk about some abilities over performing we have not planned any nerfs to Paladin or Barbarian other than the armor changes. We probably want to see how these builds perform in the harder Temple of Elemental Evil hard and elite modes before we talk about further balancing. One of the reasons we avoid frank discussions about power balancing is we don't want players to get stressed about potential nerfs when we aren't planning them.

~ Swashbuckler does not seem to be overperforming in our tests. The DPS is strong, but it is mostly single target and it is in a good place for us. We understand that Coup de Grace has a high DC. Using Perform as a DC has been a bard thing for a while and even though it makes the DC very high it seems fine since it is single target, has a 15 second cooldown, and requires the enemy to be helpless. Yes, we know its easy to compare to Assassinate, but we want Rogues to have their own advantages and not just copy the Bard enhancements. We are watching Coup de Grace for potential issues, of course, but we think it will be fine.

As for future plans, we have gone over our plans several times. We are working on a Rogue pass, we have Ranged Power coming, and we have a Ranger pass coming at some point. We are looking at Warlock of course, and we want to get the third trees for Favored Soul and Druid in this year. When we do the Druid tree we will also fix up forms so they can get good DPS without exploiting other systems. Fighter is in good shape as it just got Vanguard and an update to Stalwart Defender, but at some point we want to touch up Kensai.

(We are fairly happy with the performance of casters.)

Sev~

45/30/15 to 30/20/10 just hurts light armor builds more. what are you doing to make those viable? why isn't bab the same for all? light armor with full bab still wouldn't get as much slapping on heavy armor.

[Thrudh]

Replace any caster in a party with a proper melee, and you've improved the group.

This is 100% wrong... You can say melees may solo better than casters... but a 1 good caster and 5 good melees will far out-shine 6 good melees.

Making statements this far out there means no one will take your feedback seriously.

[IronClan]

If someones wants to tackle a problem in an unconventional manner I don't know why someone else should care, much less look at it as proof of some greater problem. I have multiple end game EE viable casters, and none of them struggles to kill bosses.

The truth is a creative caster can find ways to insta kill well and still get some good SLA's or reduce meta-magic costs enough to use SP for nuking efficiently. Wizards get a ess ton of Feats.

The problem usually arises (and I am not accusing anyone's build here just generalizing I haven't even looked at that PM build) when the Insta kill build gimps itself by over specializing against an idealizaed target Fortitude save. Like insisting on having 78 Necro DC ... getting say 15% more chance to instantly kill the highest Fortitude 0.01% of mobs in the game, going from a 75% chance say to a 90% or a 85% chance to a 95% chance (because mobs can still roll a 20).

In these cases (I've seen many of them on the forums) the player's "full ******" DC is basically 110% or even much more than that, than what is actually needed to insta-kill 99.9% of the Mobs in EE... It's even more massively wasteful outside of the top 5 or 10 quests and raids with the highest fort save mobs. Perhaps bordering on 150% more than needed to kill on a 19 save.

In my experience so many casters are so geeked up on wringing every last utterly inefficient insta-kill DC that they completely tank their spellpower and crit chance. I've even had arguments with some who are totally incredulous when I say they should have at least high 4 digit AOE damage (as if that's amazing) and wont even listen when it's suggested they could trade say 110% DC (15% more than necessary in a best case scenario) for 90% or 95% DC (translation: 5% to 0% actual loss of insta kill effectiveness) and by doing this, make Ruin, or D-Burst or less obvious but still high base damage spells and SLA's do serious DPS.

A) most of them refuse to even consider multiclassing or splashing for Nuking.
B) most of them refuse to climb down off the "must have Lich form" ledge.
C) most of them refuse to think anyone but a Sorc can have the SP and crit chance to nuke even though some of the best nukes in the game are neither Sorc related, Elemental damage nor even necessarily Arcane. In fact the very best nukes outside of D-burst are often Force... which Wizards have a leg up on in multiple different ways, not all of which are obvious.

[Andoris]

If someones wants to tackle a problem in an unconventional manner I don't know why someone else should care, much less look at it as proof of some greater problem. I have multiple end game EE viable casters, and none of them struggles to kill bosses.

The truth is a creative caster can find ways to insta kill well and still get some good SLA's or reduce meta-magic costs enough to use SP for nuking efficiently. Wizards get a ess ton of Feats.

The problem usually arises (and I am not accusing anyone's build here just generalizing I haven't even looked at that PM build) when the Insta kill build gimps itself by over specializing against an idealizaed target Fortitude save. Like insisting on having 78 Necro DC ... getting say 15% more chance to instantly kill the highest Fortitude 0.01% of mobs in the game, going from a 75% chance say to a 90% or a 85% chance to a 95% chance (because mobs can still roll a 20).

In these cases (I've seen many of them on the forums) the player's "full ******" DC is basically 110% or even much more than that, than what is actually needed to insta-kill 99.9% of the Mobs in EE... It's even more massively wasteful outside of the top 5 or 10 quests and raids with the highest fort save mobs. Perhaps bordering on 150% more than needed to kill on a 19 save.

In my experience so many casters are so geeked up on wringing every last utterly inefficient insta-kill DC that they completely tank their spellpower and crit chance. I've even had arguments with some who are totally incredulous when I say they should have at least high 4 digit AOE damage (as if that's amazing) and wont even listen when it's suggested they could trade say 110% DC (15% more than necessary in a best case scenario) for 90% or 95% DC (translation: 5% to 0% actual loss of insta kill effectiveness) and by doing this, make Ruin, or D-Burst or less obvious but still high base damage spells and SLA's do serious DPS.

A) most of them refuse to even consider multiclassing or splashing for Nuking.
B) most of them refuse to climb down off the "must have Lich form" ledge.
C) most of them refuse to think anyone but a Sorc can have the SP and crit chance to nuke even though some of the best nukes in the game are neither Sorc related, Elemental damage nor even necessarily Arcane. In fact the very best nukes outside of D-burst are often Force... which Wizards have a leg up on in multiple different ways, not all of which are obvious.

Iron, check out my build -- your post couldn't be farther from what we are discussing.

Oh, and I will not get off my "Lich Form ledge"..

[Thar]

Bards are fine. The only reason Paladins are over-performing is Holy Sword for reasons I mentioned above.

Melee can finally have the fun that casters and ranged Evasion builds have enjoyed for years?

Anyone can get Heals, Evasion, self cast Displacement, Dimension Door and traps with a little planning and two levels of Rogue. And there are many builds as strong as that combo right now.

Sev~

People REALLY need to get over pally/holy sword. try a full DOS and dps isn't great by any means even with it. you have to take best of kotc and vanguard to make it work so no race tree, nothing else. AND 14 so no pally splash. Better than fighter yes, but we can all agree fighter needs and will get some help he says. give it a rest.

Ranged Evasion - monchers are good, but otherwise full rangers are bleh ranged. attack speed too slow. Monchers are only good in one destiny, what about the rest of the world. don't define ranged based on one hybrid build please.

how can you self cast dimension door in non rogue epic destiny? scrolls are not avaiable and haven't been for years? Displacement... 30 sec per scroll is garbage and almost half done by the time you cast, reslot weapons and move to engage. heals. yes cocoon is king. other stuff not so much.

Barbs - needed the good healing since they can't take cocoon. THF barbs aren't healing that great in ravager. yes twf is, how to compensate if it's reduced?

As i've said before, people have to be PATIENT and let the devs execute their class revamp plan as slow as it's been. I'm guilty here too, as rangers stink compared to everything else.

no talk of divines here. why aren't they mad they can't dps?

[Thar]

Mortal Fear is definitely too powerful. Any effect that reduces a percentage of total hit points will probably scale too well. It isn't on our radar for changes because a.) that would be a huge player pain point and b.) what Oxarhamar said above.

Our biggest concern about Mortal Fear is we could have weapons that are statistically superior in future content and players would still complain that their Mortal Fear weapons are better.

Sev~

i'm all for statistically superior, preview? I like having more choices for weaons than cotw weapons till TF... gets boring when everyone has the same.

and yes it's the forums. where people go to complain. It's a fine line between taking good feedback and listening to the one guy who's loud and thinks he knows everything about rogues, pally or bards and doesn't have any at epic levels..

[Hafeal]

~ Holy Sword is over-performing. This is also my fault. My math did not take into account that Improved Critical is not working like the pen and paper version and is instead doubling the entire critical range. Varg (and some of the more math oriented players) discussed this, but by the time I could get hard numbers on the issue and figure out why my math was wrong it was really late in the update's cycle. Unfortunately critical threat range and multipliers really can't be dialed back without removing them entirely, and at the time there was a lot of forum concern that the Paladin changes still wouldn't be enough. So rather than pulling it at the last minute I let the changes go through. This is MY fault.

~ Swashbuckler does not seem to be overperforming in our tests. The DPS is strong, but it is mostly single target and it is in a good place for us. We understand that Coup de Grace has a high DC. Using Perform as a DC has been a bard thing for a while and even though it makes the DC very high it seems fine since it is single target, has a 15 second cooldown, and requires the enemy to be helpless. Yes, we know its easy to compare to Assassinate, but we want Rogues to have their own advantages and not just copy the Bard enhancements. We are watching Coup de Grace for potential issues, of course, but we think it will be fine.

As far as faults go, this is a minor one if a fault at all, imo. Running my Pally up to 24 as of today, as 'over-performing' as Holy Sword may be - it is not "over powered" in comparison to other players. Bard's coup de grace? That is over-powered. Need a much longer cool down on that - match it to assassinate. Seriously, a Bard can get 2 -3 in an encounter whilst a rogue *may* get one - on incapped mobs? Something is not right there.

We believe that the best use of our time is to provide difficulty in newer content.

Sev~

Thank you for listening.

Why even offer a different xp reward or item reward for a "killer dm mode"? I know of people, including me who would play it strictly for the challenge, not for any reward or item. It's something your "researching" or whatever you called it is clearly missing. Heck, "killer dm mode" could even give 0 xp and 0 chests and they would probably be more popular then nearly everything just because of the challenge that some want.

There are maybe 10 of you who exist and the other 9 are too busy trying to find ways not to pay Turbine money to make anything like this ever worthwhile.

[Thar]

I know there is a sub-section of players that want even *more* difficulty in existing content. We have to make decisions about where to spend our time, and we think our time would be better spent making new challenging content with new Mythic treasures to reward those challenges than trying to back track and introduce difficulty where a lot of players don't want it.

We've considered a Killer DM mode - something even harder than elite - where content always scaled to 6 people, champions have nastier effects, and monsters did more damage. The problem, outside of implementation time, we ran into is this; what could we possibly use to reward players for playing it? We don't want to add even more XP into the game. Higher level loot drops aren't really useful while leveling since it already out levels players on higher difficulties. No one is going to grind for power items if they will level past them quickly. Our data shows that such a difficulty would probably sit unused for a vast majority of the player base. As much as the idea intrigues me, I don't know if that's a good use of our time.

We believe that the best use of our time is to provide difficulty in newer content.

Sev~

new is good and you can sell new.

[Artagon]

Fighter is fine, though I agree it is behind Paladin. Their greatest weakness is actually saving throws.

Fighter is far from fine. It has two trees which are poor clones of Paladin trees, and the one unique tree it has, kensai, falls so far behind the curve that it is laughable. Fighter has awful saves, which you pointed out, no self healing, no self buffing, and no distinct add-on damage to make it a viable alternative to Paladin or Barbarian at this state of the game. This, btw, is coming from a guy who used to make almost every character have fighter levels. Extra feats do not make up for all the advantages granted to the other melee classes via enhancements or spells. I don't want to harp on Holy Sword, but it completely negates the only reason for a player to go T5 in Kensai. The Kensai pass should happen sooner than later (I might suggest an armor allowed stance that lets them build ki for one thing. Steel Stance perhaps?).. and the defender tree could stand to be made more interesting than a watered down pally defender.

We've considered a Killer DM mode - something even harder than elite - where content always scaled to 6 people, champions have nastier effects, and monsters did more damage. The problem, outside of implementation time, we ran into is this; what could we possibly use to reward players for playing it? We don't want to add even more XP into the game. Higher level loot drops aren't really useful while leveling since it already out levels players on higher difficulties. No one is going to grind for power items if they will level past them quickly. Our data shows that such a difficulty would probably sit unused for a vast majority of the player base.

Completely remove the XP reward for it. Grant Turbine Points or Astral Shards for Killer DM mode at the appropriate level. Maybe provide achievement levels.. like changed character name color or special titles based on the total number of Killer DM dungeons have been completed at the appropriate level.

[Monkey-Boy]

Fighter is in good shape as it just got Vanguard and an update to Stalwart Defender, but at some point we want to touch up Kensai.

Sev~

No, fighters suck right now.

[Monkey-Boy]

Fighter is fine, though I agree it is behind Paladin. Their greatest weakness is actually saving throws.


Sev~

How the heck is that "fine?"

[Monkey-Boy]

We believe that the best use of our time is to provide difficulty in newer content.

Sev~

Four updates year ain't gonna cut it.

[Tesrali]

My vanguard THF-spec'd fighter with madstone rage, and every concievable damage buff did 2400 dps.
Ash's vanguard pally does 4k dps.

Holy sword is that silly, and fighters are unfortunately outclassed pretty hard atm.

I'm definitely ok with this though. Fighters were the dominant species for a while. Changing holy sword to +1 multiplier atm would address many issues.

Am happy steel will get his day with that arti tree---I look forward to it.