U28 Lamannia - Ranger: Tempest Feedback

[Seikojin]

I survive and contribute just fine on my rogue 1 / fighter 1 / ranger 18 harper tempest build in EE Storm horns today. I do not think rangers need anything, but these changes will make my chars stronger so I am happy

Would you roll it 20 ranger with these changes, or do you need the free fighter feats and trapping to be contributing? That is the idea here.

[maddong]

Are we taking into account manyshot every 2 minutes in these dps calcs?

[Seikojin]

Are we taking into account manyshot every 2 minutes in these dps calcs?

Most people don't. And when I did testing with manyshot, it helped a bit, but if you build for melee, your ranged suffers. Except for Holy sword users. Because holy sword for some reason was built to affect attacks, not just melee (not just swords for that matter). So you can take something with a x4 crit, get it to x5, increase the range a couple of ways, and manyshot with some damage stacks twisted and feated in and make dps go up considerably. I think dps tests (100k dummies that reported time to death from getting hit) were yelling 15 seconds when someone 14/6 pali ranger went twf, zeal, haste, 1000 cuts, haste, manyshot.

[sjbb87]

Why are you dividing by 4?

I think you did your math wrong. ATC is up 15 seconds out of every 90 in ideal situations that means that if you keep it on timer 100% of the time it will average out to 15/90 * 45 = 7.5 not 11.

So to turn ATC into a passive always on ability you would need to make it a 7.5 MP and DS enhancement.

You alternative 11 MP and DS 60 seconds every 22 seconds is basicly 11 MP and DS full time so I don't understand why you then switch to a 10 MP and DS passive.

You 10 MP and DS passive suggestion is a buff of 2.5 MP/DS not a loss of 1.

Really your post is very confusing I'm not sure if your just making 3 suggestions of alternatives or trying to say ATC as is is an average 11 MP/DS (its not).

divided by 4
Doublestrike/melee power 45/4 = "11,25 " .
Cooldown: 90/4= 22,5 seconds

buff time= 15 x 4= 60 seconds



I used a multiplier 4 to put the buff to last one minute
Then we have a recharge time of 22.5 on the 2nd
I removed this recharge time in exchange for 1.25 doublestrike / melee power, and the 5 [w]

I took an average in the buff last a minute, and cooldown was not as long and turned into a passive.

The dps would be almost the same, but better distributed.

[Vargouille]

Some changes we're expecting to work on soon:

• We're probably going to put in some Competence bonus to Critical weapon profiles. This is going to require removing quite a bit of power that is currently in the tree. A lot of melee power is likely to be removed.
• 1KC: A Thousand Cuts is probably going to get an multiple-choice option which is completely passive and mathematically inferior. It will be the case that we expect maximum DPS to only be achieved with the most interactive gameplay version of 1KC, but players who simply don't prefer that gameplay style have an option which doesn't give up all of that DPS.

Whirlwind: Is this actually that much of a Defensive increase? Because it's not the 5% being advertised, really.

No one "advertised" this as anything other than what it is - 5% Incorporeality. That said, let's examine why the following claim in red is mathematically incorrect:

Assuming:

• Running Displacement through DM, Scroll or Item clicky
• Only has enough AC to be missed when the mob rolls a 1
• Has a standing 15% Dodge
• Has a 10% Incorporeal item equipped
• = 1 *0.5 *0.95 * 0.85 * 0.9 = 0.36 or 36% chance to be hit per attack directed at the Ranger
• = 1 *0.5 *0.95 * 0.85 * 0.85 = 0.34 or 34% chance to be hit.

In this a-typical example its worth 2%, or 2 attacks out of 100 directed at the Ranger will now miss. A 10% Bonus would make a more significant contribution to defense.

Taking as a given this math is correct: If you got attacked 100 times for 1 damage each time, you take 36 damage without Whirlwind. With it, you take 34 damage.

36/34 => 1.058 ... => about ~5-6% less damage than you would otherwise take.

The TOTAL chance to be hit is irrelevant to whether or not this is reducing your chance to be hit or damage taken by 5%.

As an extreme learning example: If you (somehow) have 98% dodge, getting 1% more dodge would reduce (physical attack) damage by 50% of what it was previously. You are still only getting 1% dodge. You are also taking half the damage you used to. You can apply different words and interpretations here, but those facts remain true.

Yes, you can say you go from a total hit chance of 36% to 34%. That doesn't mean your miss chance is only changed by 2% by this ability, because this ability is independent of all sources except other forms of Incorporeality -- which has increasing returns, like Dodge. 5% Incorp is worth more the more Incorp you already have.

So, yes. It's true that 5% is probably not really 5%. It's probably bigger than 5%.

Overall DPS:

Waiting on Lammaland to come back up again, but I will find it interesting to test these changes out against some real EE questing instead of the 30 minutes of Kobold Boss bashing I got to do. I was polling times of around 28-30s a Kobold Boss, running a STR-based Khopesh Tempest running in Legendary Dreadnought.

This is similar to what we saw in Legendary Dreadnought. We're happy to hear what you were getting with a Swashbuckler in Dreadnought.

That said, Dreadnought was certainly not the best Tempest DPS in our tests.

Actually it's not, I appreciate that may have been your design aspiration but it's not what ended up live on Lamma. Not anywhere near it.

We are happy to hear your data and play experiences on this.

So please stop using it, or make the data and testing procedures you are using available to the community, it would go a ways towards restoring our trust, and would help you get much wider, deeper, testing data and benchmarks.

Players tested on Lamannia. Many players got some numbers pretty close to what we saw for similar builds and situations.

The best way for us to get wider, deeper testing data is to not restrict or constrain how players test and instead use any and all methods players come up with in addition to the methods we test with. Calling out one or a few methods is contrary to the goal of getting the right answer.

No. There is absolutely no way that you are getting that result with any kind of empirical repeated testing regimens, none. I'm not sure why you are trying to convince us of that instead of actually making the few changes to make it happen, but as the changes stand it is not possible, in any proper testing, done in a decent sample size. No chance.

Again, we welcome hearing your data and testing methods.

I'm sorry you feel that there's no way we got the results we got. We'd love to see the methods you used to get the results you got.

Additionally: Convincing players we're right is less important than being right. It's not entirely unimportant, but secondary. I'm not sure why you think we're trying to convince you. We're not. We're trying only to convince ourselves balance is where it should be.

This was responding to a crit expansion suggestion. Please finally take the time to explain why after 18 months of providing crit expansions to each class with each balancing pass you have decided the it would now "unbalance them". Please be aware that I am on the fence about crit expansion personally, I can live with or without it. But the past 18 months have established a pattern and power curve for class passes, and if you are not going to provide that to rangers it certainly deserves the upfront and honest explanation from Turbine to the players as to why you are changing tact mid-stream.

You seem to believe there was a change of goals where there were not any goals. We don't really have these wider goals inherent to "crit expansion" where you are pointing at them. Your question cannot be answered because it has a faulty premise.

Boosting Critical hits is a tool. The goal is class balance. Critical expansion is one tool amongst many that we can use. We are neither inherently for nor against altering chances or damage of physical critical hits.

Are you going to remove the crit expansions from the classes that got them during the passes? if so why? if not why?

If necessary for balance we will change anything. That's why.

How are you going to compensate the ranger class if you don't give it a crit buff? what you have proposed so far has been shown to be inadequate in testing, extensive rigorous testing.

It's already been done. We are currently planning to undo that balancing work for other reasons, mostly related to Holy Sword. Those discussions aren't fully ready.

We're happy to see and quite possibly try to replicate your extensive, rigorous testing. Perhaps I've missed it. I couldn't find it in this post. We've seen other hard-data testing results that agrees with neither you nor with us, and those posts are great.

Seriously Varg, address this head-on and in-depth, because just saying that you agree it is too strong and nothing more, after it being a acceptable strength for every other class pass of the last 18 months is contradictory and is creating havoc between the community, confusing others. So please stop making these one and two word statements and vague comments that muddy the water and just drive drama, explain why it was fine then but bad now.

Critical expansion is neither too strong nor too weak. In a vacuum, that's meaningless. There is no reason to think it is necessary, nor to think it unnecessary.

Master's Blitz provides a lot of melee power. Some players have suggested the current implementation is overpowered and/or that other Destinies should provide equal melee power. Yet, somehow Legendary Dreadnought is not consistently the highest DPS tree (including when testing Ranger). If anyone has testing showing otherwise, we want to hear the details - for Master's Blitz & Melee power, or for Ranger.

There is no reason a tool used in one place must be used in every other place. Melee Power, like Critical profile, is just another tool. It is neither inherently good nor bad.

MC should not be the definitive way to play ddo. Pure should not be the definitive way to play ddo.

Agreed.

I'd like to see a boost to Dex to help out rangers who are going dex and light weapons. What if "Improved Mobility" was changed to acrobats "Shadow Dodge". That would give a nice option to boost our dex another 3 points. I know I can also grab this ability from the acrobat tree by multiclassing, but I think it would fit in nicely in this tree.

We appreciate the idea, and have had discussed boosting Dexterity more in Tempest, but ultimately we decided we'd rather not go far down that path (and instead focused on rewarding you a bit more for having high Dexterity already).

[Vargouille]

So you are saying Haste Boost + Haste (Speed or Feat or Gear) matches Swashbucklers 75% speed (30% SWF + Haste + Haste Boost LD or Twist) thats just wrong. Your comapring apples to star-ships and saying there the same thing, lol.

TWF vs SWF is an interesting question with a very difficult answer as its going to be very build depended, there's no way to say they both have 45% speed boost and say its even. Which by the way isn't limited to there class or trees LD or Twist + Gear gives it to every one, honestly its not even a factor you can just assume its there.

If you are comparing SWF and TWF attack speeds, please remember to count offhand attacks as additional.

SWF can and should receive more general attack speed than TWF, because TWF generally gets 80% more attacks than SWF, taking only the Feats themselves into account

Feat Bonuses
SWF: +30% attack speed, producing +~30% more hits
TWF: +80% hits

TWF gets lots of hits. It is the king of hits against single targets. (The discussion does get more complicated when you start talking about AoE - Cleaves or Tempest/Dance of Death, etc.)

[mezzorco]

• We're probably going to put in some Competence bonus to Critical weapon profiles. This is going to require removing quite a bit of power that is currently in the tree. A lot of melee power is likely to be removed.

I'm not going to comment on this, since I did not test ranger on Lamannia. You said ranger was competitive with SB and I believe you.
I think you're just giving people what they want, changing the tool from melee power to crit.
I support this, so people will resume talking about design rather than balance.

• 1KC: A Thousand Cuts is probably going to get an multiple-choice option which is completely passive and mathematically inferior. It will be the case that we expect maximum DPS to only be achieved with the most interactive gameplay version of 1KC, but players who simply don't prefer that gameplay style have an option which doesn't give up all of that DPS.

Very nice and I long to see this new option.
I not even thought about the possibility of having a passive running bonus instead of an active ability.

[Lonnbeimnech]

We're probably going to put in some Competence bonus to Critical weapon profiles.

Imo, it should be a bonus while two weapon fighting. Rangers are masters of this fighting style, but are not masters of specific weapons, that is fighter flavor.

[sjbb87]

Some changes we're expecting to work on soon:

• We're probably going to put in some Competence bonus to Critical weapon profiles. This is going to require removing quite a bit of power that is currently in the tree. A lot of melee power is likely to be removed.
• 1KC: A Thousand Cuts is probably going to get an multiple-choice option which is completely passive and mathematically inferior. It will be the case that we expect maximum DPS to only be achieved with the most interactive gameplay version of 1KC, but players who simply don't prefer that gameplay style have an option which doesn't give up all of that DPS.

Nice.
But please do not do it only for light weapons

Then we have something like:

Whirlwind: +5% melee doublestrike and +1 Competence bonus to Critical Damage chance when dual wielding, +5 Melee Power, +5 Incorporeality (stacking).


A Thousand Cuts:
Passively provides: "x doublestrike", "x Melee Power "

[Grailhawk]

If you are comparing SWF and TWF attack speeds, please remember to count offhand attacks as additional.

SWF can and should receive more general attack speed than TWF, because TWF generally gets 80% more attacks than SWF, taking only the Feats themselves into account

Feat Bonuses
SWF: +30% attack speed, producing +~30% more hits
TWF: +80% hits

TWF gets lots of hits. It is the king of hits against single targets. (The discussion does get more complicated when you start talking about AoE - Cleaves or Tempest/Dance of Death, etc.)

I have no interest in comparing TWF and SWF right now, I just do not believe (hell I know) saying both classes have haste boost and haste is no way to say they have the same attack speeds.

[bbqzor]

We're probably going to put in some Competence bonus to Critical weapon profiles. This is going to require removing quite a bit of power that is currently in the tree. A lot of melee power is likely to be removed.

Sigh. This really didn't need to be here, but everyone wanting to see some big number fly by made it so.

Can it be made optional? Such as, leave the melee power in, but have the +1 Crit Enhancement provide a passive -40 (or whatever) to melee power to zero it out?

Like 1KC it would be superior to offer a choice here. Not everyone wants to get thrown into the same old "+1 crit" path the rest of the game is. Having better all-round damage and not needing to worry about crit immunity/bypass is an appealing approach to some.

...

The rest of the changes look okay. I would still like to see some dodge-cap increase via max dex to armor going up. And maybe something to make two weapon defense worth taking (like in the core, maybe a step where if you have that feat you get more bonus or something), but otherwise its looking pretty good. Just please consider some options for people re: melee power vs crit profile too please. Thanks.

[Grailhawk]

Some changes we're expecting to work on soon:

• We're probably going to put in some Competence bonus to Critical weapon profiles. This is going to require removing quite a bit of power that is currently in the tree. A lot of melee power is likely to be removed.

I don't care what gets scrapped to make this happen as long as at the end of the day tempest still has 100% offhand proc chance and 100% offhand stat damage. Just putting that opinion out there.

[Grailhawk]

Some changes we're expecting to work on soon:

• We're probably going to put in some Competence bonus to Critical weapon profiles. This is going to require removing quite a bit of power that is currently in the tree. A lot of melee power is likely to be removed.
• 1KC: A Thousand Cuts is probably going to get an multiple-choice option which is completely passive and mathematically inferior. It will be the case that we expect maximum DPS to only be achieved with the most interactive gameplay version of 1KC, but players who simply don't prefer that gameplay style have an option which doesn't give up all of that DPS.

Since you are doing some amount of redesign I would like to suggest that you change the capstones 25% offhand double strike to be "Your offhand gains a bonus to double strike equal to your main hand doublestrike"

Just throwing it out there.

[Qhualor]

Some changes we're expecting to work on soon:

• We're probably going to put in some Competence bonus to Critical weapon profiles. This is going to require removing quite a bit of power that is currently in the tree. A lot of melee power is likely to be removed.
• 1KC: A Thousand Cuts is probably going to get an multiple-choice option which is completely passive and mathematically inferior. It will be the case that we expect maximum DPS to only be achieved with the most interactive gameplay version of 1KC, but players who simply don't prefer that gameplay style have an option which doesn't give up all of that DPS.

This is similar to what we saw in Legendary Dreadnought. We're happy to hear what you were getting with a Swashbuckler in Dreadnought.

That said, Dreadnought was certainly not the best Tempest DPS in our tests.

ugh. hope removing MP works out for the better and changing 1KC? guess I need to do some Lama work. I don't read that to be something that is a happy change.

0.o LD isn't the best ED for Tempest?! ive been planning that ED for my Tempest since EDs were released /sigh yep, Lama time.

[Grailhawk]

ugh. hope removing MP works out for the better and changing 1KC? guess I need to do some Lama work. I don't read that to be something that is a happy change.

0.o LD isn't the best ED for Tempest?! ive been planning that ED for my Tempest since EDs were released /sigh yep, Lama time.

The change to +crit profile will probably push LD ahead. If LD wasn't the previous king it was because they were testing a high melee power build which isn't going to synergize as well with LD as it would the other destinies.

[Vargouille]

Can it be made optional? Such as, leave the melee power in, but have the +1 Crit Enhancement provide a passive -40 (or whatever) to melee power to zero it out?

I can truly sympathize with this thinking, but this isn't that likely to happen. It's more complicated, and the "fun" cost of negative penalties is pretty massive compared to the mathematical gain (even if players decide against it). Additionally, we're currently likely to put this as part of a Core ability, where we try a bit harder to avoid putting in negatives or abilities that some players are just going to dislike.

The rest of the changes look okay. I would still like to see some dodge-cap increase via max dex to armor going up. And maybe something to make two weapon defense worth taking (like in the core, maybe a step where if you have that feat you get more bonus or something), but otherwise its looking pretty good. Just please consider some options for people re: melee power vs crit profile too please. Thanks.

We'll still be keeping an eye on it, but this is essentially the role +5% stacking Incorporeality in Whirlwind is fulfilling - not quite the same as dodge cap increase or max dex, but on the whole is a similar kind of defense.

[Axeyu]

New calcs:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...T9gENrPV-b2l4/


Builds:
20 ranger
15 pal /5 ranger
20 pal
20 bard
20 pal vanguard/defender
20 barb
And I also added a pure ranger and a 15 pal / 5 ranger with my idea of +1 crit multiplier instead of Dual Perfection.

All are in LD.

PM for an edit link, I'm sure there are some numbers that can be adjusted.
If someone want to add a better bard build that would be great.


Scroll to the right (right of the orange column U) for the same builds with a bit less gear and stats.


Here is the relative DPS of the builds:
20 ranger: 100.00%
15 pal/5ranger: 122%
20 pal: 107%
20 bard: 80%
20 pal vg/sd 99%
20 barb: 126%


(And here is how it would look if Dual Perfection was replaced by +1 crit multiplier)
20 ranger: 100%
15 pal/5ranger: 108%
20 pal: 99%
20 bard: 74%
20 pal vg/sd 91%
20 barb: 116%

[btolson]

No one "advertised" this as anything other than what it is - 5% Incorporeality. That said, let's examine why the following claim in red is mathematically incorrect:

Taking as a given this math is correct: If you got attacked 100 times for 1 damage each time, you take 36 damage without Whirlwind. With it, you take 34 damage.

36/34 => 1.058 ... => about ~5-6% less damage than you would otherwise take.

The TOTAL chance to be hit is irrelevant to whether or not this is reducing your chance to be hit or damage taken by 5%.

As an extreme learning example: If you (somehow) have 98% dodge, getting 1% more dodge would reduce (physical attack) damage by 50% of what it was previously. You are still only getting 1% dodge. You are also taking half the damage you used to. You can apply different words and interpretations here, but those facts remain true.

Yes, you can say you go from a total hit chance of 36% to 34%. That doesn't mean your miss chance is only changed by 2% by this ability, because this ability is independent of all sources except other forms of Incorporeality -- which has increasing returns, like Dodge. 5% Incorp is worth more the more Incorp you already have.

So, yes. It's true that 5% is probably not really 5%. It's probably bigger than 5%.

This is important for people to understand, and relates to the concept of "Effective Hitpoints" (raw HP divided by % mitigation further divided by chance to be hit).

If you manage to find some spare time, it might be a good idea to include "Effective Hitpoints (melee)" (for miss chance & PRR) and "Effective Hitpoints (spell)" (for MRR) entries in the character sheet, within the HP tooltip somewhere below Heal Amp, which will make it a lot easier for people to understand and visually represent the impact of things like this.

[Mryal]

Some changes we're expecting to work on soon:
We're probably going to put in some Competence bonus to Critical weapon profiles. This is going to require removing quite a bit of power that is currently in the tree. A lot of melee power is likely to be removed.

This is sad.It really is.The tree will likely not be good in the end due to this, and even if it does, more importantly, it will simply change the tree into something that other classes alredy do.the option to use holy sword is alredy there, the people that want their crit multipliers can just do a paladin.It would be interesting to keep tempest with burst clickies and situational boosts instead, but now what...its gonna be close to every other tree of every other melee class.Wich is sad.

Theres no obligation to always listen to people, really.People are stupid, they hardly ever know what they really want.
I'd rather see the Dev team beign bold and keeping their first decision, specialy when they claim its more DPS on their end.

[sjbb87]

This is sad.It really is.The tree will likely not be good in the end due to this, and even if it does, more importantly, it will simply change the tree into something that other classes alredy do.the option to use holy sword is alredy there, the people that want their crit multipliers can just do a paladin.It would be interesting to keep tempest with burst clickies and situational boosts instead, but now what...its gonna be close to every other tree of every other melee class.Wich is sad.

Theres no obligation to always listen to people, really.People are stupid, they hardly ever know what they really want.
I'd rather see the Dev team beign bold and keeping their first decision, specialy when they claim its more DPS on their end.

For me the problem is not the multiplier or not, but
A Thousand Cuts

Now you get a choice of passive
Then I will look to see how it will be.