U27: The Sudden End of All Endgame DC Casting in DDO?

[Mindos]

Tentatively, amongst other balance changes, we're planning to:

1. Remove the general +4 bonus to saving throws from the Shavarath Environmental Effect (affecting all player characters and monsters in Shavarath).
2. Remove Epic Resilience from Update 27 quests. We still want to revisit this in a more thorough fashion (ideally along with some other factors, such as Epic Ward and related things), but this should make a big difference for Update 27.

This reduces "healthy" monster saves by -10, compared to the most recent Lamannia. The Shavarath Environmental Effects still give player and monsters characters +4 to Will saves vs. Fear and +4 to Will Saves vs. Enchantment (as well as Attack and Skill bonuses), keeping some of the flavor and gameplay differences present in Shavarath. This doesn't cover every change, and there are likely to be some changes to saving throws for some individual monster types as well. (We're likely to make sure that each monster has at least one sufficiently "low" save that moderately built characters should be able to target that save on that monster very effectively.)

We're still exploring options for Spell Resistance, which is potentially "causing problems" for DC casters as much as saving throws, since about 75% of monster types in Update 27 have some kind of Spell Resistance. On Epic Elite, most Update 27 monster types have Spell Resistance between 40->45. To some extent this is the nature of the lore and content, but we still want players to feel like they can contribute here with their characters. It may very well come down to simply lowering Spell Resistances for some groups of Monster Types in ways that aren't necessarily "normal" for those monster types, but we want to explore options before committing to that route. Ideas still welcome. (Some demonstrative but crazier ideas that are less likely to come to pass: Limited, temporary and/or consumable items that increase Spell Penetration; environmental effects that reduce Spell Penetration "on-hit", potentially for spells and/or physical attacks, etc. Most such ideas are probably either just bad design or not feasible due to tech issues, but we'd like to at least consider some such ideas.)

This is the best epic later Friday weekend troll post evar.

This seems like a drastic last moment seat of the pants change. The Shav effects that have always been there will now be changing? I think this could be worded differently. At first glance, it appears that the effect is gone, but then further reading shows +4 to will saves only vs fear and enchantments. Oh, and attack and skill. TLDR: A handy chart of before and after effects to ease comparison instead of poorly formatted/worded too much coffee post.

1. Not all characters need to be equally viable in all content. Sometimes ranged can shine, sometimes a trapper can be best. This homoginization of content is not what I want. I think it leads to bland, choices and teamwork don't matter kind of gameplay.
2. You are setting yourself up for future update/patch problems! By selectivly removing Epic Resilience and now leaning towards a Shavarath Environmental change, it only takes one attribute error on patch day to turn them back on, setting their states incorrectly and ruining gameplay for who knows how long until it's noticed and fixed. Speaking of which...
3. How is it that no one communicates at the DDO roundtable? My second point happens PRECISELY because one Dev doesn't tell the next Dev about Epic Resilience, for example. I know you just started doing Monsters. Good luck


It seems to me that I only see forum posts from the same people all the time, I wish there was a way to get the masses of players into here, but I have to ask finally:

Why is it that news of thoughts of having an increase in difficulty leak recently, suggesting a demand for harder content, but a Llammania build comes out that's perceived so impossible that the lead Dev jumps so high and makes posts like this? Instead of vision of leadership this seems so reactionary. Who plays your game and why do they play it? Even premium accounts have more than one character slot: we don't need to cater to all the classes all the time. (or to the most vocal of the posters either, but that's just my humble internet opinion)