The Balance Change post

[Sephenis]

Why is everyone crying? PRR and MRR is the most idiotic thing ever introduced to the game. Nerfing it, or transfering it from armor to feat, is still not solve the overpowered melee problem. Just PLEASE not call it "balance". Wizards have been not developed since the epic levels are introduced, and i'm not surprised they are forgotten again. But every OP melee lovers please accept my condolence for losing SOOOOO much power.

[hit_fido]

On the wiki (http://ddowiki.com/page/PRR) it says that you get some PRR for wearing armor, and more PRR if you are proficient with it. If this is true, are we losing PRR from the proposed changes?

For heavy armor as an example, using BAB of 24 (20 full BAB levels, +1 per two epic levels):

old: 30 + 6 + 24 = 60
new: 2 * 24 = 48

Medium:

old: 20 + 4 + 2/3 * 24 = 40
new: 1.5 * 24 = 36

Light:

old: 10 + 2 + 24/2 = 24
new: 1 * 24 = 24

So heavy armor takes a 20% cut, medium down by 10%, light unaffected, if I ready the wiki correctly (percentages of armor PRR only, not absolute mitigation!)

[FranOhmsford]

IMO they made a great job and bring balance. See my post #331 coded here:

Try compare these 2 feats in other perspective: 

10K Stars:
Monk only
Significant Ranged Power Boost need high Wisdom score (theoretical no cap, but estimate 50-70 bonus). No other improvements are possible.
Significant Doubleshoot Boost need very high Monks levels to get (cap at maximum 100 if you stay Pure Monk). No other improvements are possible. 

Manyshoot on the other hand:
Can be obtain by everyone (Ranger 6 get it even for Free)
Significant Ranged Power AND Doubleshoot Boost (both) need only Full BAB progression.
Full BAB progression is Free for fighter style class, Low cost at DC Destinies and some other T5 stuff. Rest can use spells like Tenser or Divine Power, just for the duration of the Burst damage.
Ranger Power AND Doubleshoot on Heroic have cap at 80, but in Epic it can rise to 112 (or 120 with new 30 cap level)

But yes, 10K Stars can have 60 second Boost within 120 second time period, while Manyshot only 20 second Boost within 120 second time period. 
When you do some math comparison you will see that it's good and balanced improvement.

Yes, there is still option for Pure Monk Elf AA build, but that cost you 14 less AP, and week race.

Prereq for 10K Stars is only Monk 6 {and a Dex Score that any Ranged Build is going to have!}.

If it was Monk 10 {or even better 12} I'd be a bit happier BUT what annoys me the most is that Pure Monks should NOT be better than Pure Rangers with a Bow and that Monk Splash should absolutely NOT be required for the Uber Ranged Build.
AND BOTH OF THOSE ARE UNDENIABLE FACTS WITH THESE CHANGES!


A Pure Ranger can only get Manyshot.
A Pure Monk can take Manyshot as well as 10k Stars. {at least Wiki doesn't state that they can't}.
A Multiclass Monk/Ranger gets both with ease.


Add to that that 10K Stars is undeniably better than Manyshot at Lvl 20 {Maybe Manyshot pulls ahead at 30 maybe not} and you've got a situation that is completely and utterly broken!

[Basura_Grande]

Come on people, the game got too easy because we got too powerful. We should have seen some nerfs coming.

The only thing i think the devs should reconsider is the Holy Sword and off-hand weapons. TWFing pallies are getting overly nerfed with that change.

You're still more powerful than you were 12-18 months ago by far.

[Manganakus]

Many years ago, DDo was about exploring and doing quests with alts.

Now it is just about doing and doing our alts every six month or so since feats, enhencements and rules chances over and over again.

I know several of us yet noticed and comment that point, but it is really, really boring.
I sometime supect that my few friends still on the game spend more time in managing the rules changes than actually playing...
Once upon a time, we were 40+ peoples in our player group. Now 11 only remains, some even remove their VIP subscription, and from 3 nights a week we only go for it once a week...

What about new real quests instead of the 10-minutes-to-finish quests we had for the last two modules ?

Will some heart of wood be given to alts to allow theme to cope with these changes and potentially respec ?

What about people that bought deeply nerfed classes such as Warlock ? As some previously says, it is not that hard to suspect some 'let's sell lot of them !!' intention from you guys at Turbine, since despite players feedback you kept them very powerful, and now only nerf them !really toughly.

Well, as usual, whatever people says, you'll do it, until everyone will be bored...

And as usual too, the change that you'll make will be wrong and will involve other deep changes in a couple of month or so, etc...

[Delacroix21]

Please undo the crit changes. They are an absolutely horrible idea that no one even asked for, ****ing off your player base that you actually wasted time coding it as well instead of fixing other things like monk unarmed.


You know the reason you guys clash with your players so much is there seems to be a huge disconnect from what YOU think needs to be changed, and what the PLAYERS think, and that is a bad sign for the future of this game. You: let's totally rework how imp crit works, who cares if NOBODY has ever asked for this change! Players: Monk unarmed has been broken for years, surely it must be the Devs top priority to fix (as years roll by and no fix is planned for MONTHS from now!).


Also removing MRR from armor makes no sense, the whole point was to give medium and heavy armor players (who don't have evasion) some survivability.

[UurlockYgmeov]

[QUOTE=Nubom70;5703571]

I would like to see unarmed Monk also addressed before any further nerfing is performed to TWF. Unarmed Monks are hurting enough as it is :-(

Agree. Monks took it so hard over the last few years, and never got addressed, now they're getting another DPS nerf. Lowering DPS,
no innate PRR (since they lost any real AC benefit), wraps are still broken (yay augments), and still no greensteel. Way to go, dev team.

I think everyone also needs to not just look at the proposed changes listed above, but also remember things like Cleric and Monk are yet to get a balancing pass. Weird how nobody seems to be screaming that their cleric is well... worse off after the changes....

Anywho, Kobold distracted me. Bad Kobold!

Monks are getting a pass AND handwraps are getting fixed. Can't do one without the other. Fixing handwraps is a massive undertaking, because how handwraps currently work in game. The are not considered weapons, and both handwraps and collars are based upon a spaghetti tonne of hand-tuned scripts. Yes, Scripts. So by changing them to weapons they are making them everything they need, can, and should be. There is really no point in doing a monk pass before the handwrap pass and vice versa. Just beware, hopefully they allow for a LONG lamannia cycle on handwraps because there will be unintended and unknowable consequences to fixing them.

But once the monk/handwrap/cannith crafted/random loot passes are done, there will be pajama wearing toons everywhere again.

So paraphrasing what one or more have said: "monk doom. monk Doom. monk DOOM! ™", while that might be the case, just remember these changes lead up to the great pajama party of '16!

and on Elven Silver Flame Bow Wielding Paladins: while I agree that a lv14 paladin shouldn't be able to holy sword his/her/it's bow - an ELVEN lv 18 Paladin should be able to.

And Will be playing halfling until Gnomes or Kobolds arrive as races! ;p

[Basura_Grande]

Also removing MRR from armor makes no sense, the whole point was to give medium and heavy armor players (who don't have evasion) some survivability.

It gave them too much survivabilty. With the exception of two encounters I've always felt more safe in heavy armor than I did with evasion and high saves.

This is what leads to them making raids where if you don't kill the boss in 30 seconds the whole room explodes.

Too much defense leads to stupid challenge, leads to the game feeling like it's being DM'd by a petty 10 year old.

[Bennum]

Two reasons:

~ Two Weapon Fighting is well out pacing the other styles in classes not specifically designed to use that style.
~ The animation change to Two Weapon Fighting that makes it look better also gave it a slight DPS boost.

Sev~

So you are against the choice for classes to use whatever weapon style they please, thats what I get from this. Paladins should be free to choose to be TWF if they please and not be penalized for it. It is a choice which I though was encouraged in this game, they trade aoe dps for single target it was fine as it was.

[FranOhmsford]

I think everyone also needs to not just look at the proposed changes listed above, but also remember things like Cleric and Monk are yet to get a balancing pass. Weird how nobody seems to be screaming that their cleric is well... worse off after the changes....

Because Cleric is already so bad that hardly anyone plays them anymore!

And yes those PRR/MRR Changes will be death to Battle Clerics!

[zerit2002]

I can understand the rage and I can understand the dev's. I'm just mentioning that the concept of Vanguard is weapon and shield with shield bash as a good portion of the enhancement tree.

2nd point - The loss of MRR from armor is strange. If someone is wearing heavy armor and is blasted with a fireball then the armor should protect them from some of that, shouldn't it? So should the shield now that I think of it. I get that it shouldn't save you from Wail or most spells that are Will or Fort based but reflex saved spells should have some benefit.

I'm NOT a power gamer and I DM'd a few on PnP so I understand the eternal struggle. I don't want to succeed at soloing EE content. I guess everyone is going to voice their opinions and people will get upset, if they aren't already, and you guys will do what you will do. I simply felt compelled to share MY opinion and ask you to pause long enough to read and understand all of the other opinions here. We obviously love this game enough to spend time to voice our opinions. Show us some consideration and respect.

Thank you for your support... Dew...

Agreed!
Specially on the vanguard part!

[Boneshank]

It gave them too much survivabilty. With the exception of two encounters I've always felt more safe in heavy armor than I did with evasion and high saves.

This is what leads to them making raids where if you don't kill the boss in 30 seconds the whole room explodes.

Too much defense leads to stupid challenge, leads to the game feeling like it's being DM'd by a petty 10 year old.

Yes. Exactly.

[FestusHood]

You say it like that would be a great thing? Did you notice that the player population stabilized after armor up when you saw greater player diversity? It was nosediving before when everything was ranged, arcane and evasion builds.

Now instead of everything evasion it's everything heavy armor, even mages. People have repeatedly said there is no reason to use anything but heavy armor. Balance would be if evasion was better against magic, and armor was better against physical damage. Choose one, you can't have it all. Fact is, my shield paladin is stronger against magic than my evasion toons right now. He doesn't care if he makes saving throws, though he usually does because he's a paladin. The combination of heavy armor and shield was too strong, it needed to be adjusted.

People are acting like these changes are much bigger than they are. Remember, they added more prr and mrr to armors not long ago, and since armor up. The formula will different, but it will probably end up around the same place it was before that change. Using a shield will still be strong for defense, as it should be.

[Chaoscheerio]

I'm sorry but how is making evasion the only way to get through magical damage balance?

Everything I've read points to one point in DDO history- Pre-MOTD epics. Where they only way to make it through was to have a DC caster. If you were a melee that wasn't a barbarian, you were useless.
Those were not fun times. I do not wish to go BACKWARD in history.

I cannot see the removal of MRR being any sort of fashion of balance. It's balanced as is, the issue for balance does not lie in heavy plate wearers having too much survivability. The issue is that they can deal too much damage WITH that survivability.

Did you all forget the reason why MRR was introduced in the first place? Because before it, the only way to get past magic as a melee or ranged character was to have evasion. Pure fighters or paladins were NOT viable options. What balance should strive for is the removal of power creep introduced, and with the addition of warlock it seems you have no intention of doing that.

So to hell with it I suppose. Your idea of balance is to make us all glass cannons. Whatever.

EDIT:

Now that I'm a little cooled down I feel like I should clarify my points.

If you want balance and to re-introduce the old party system you need a few things:

1: More people playing.
You can't force this, but as it is right now it's near impossible to get a full group for anything regardless of how much self healing we have. How is making content less accessible a good thing for a game that seems to be dying?

2: Remove said self healing.
- Part of the major issue that I have with the removal of MRR is that it reduces people's abilities to survive even with healing. Remove that self healing and you make healers viable. Remove defenses and you make it so that even with healers people will die.

3: Make things more viable for first lifers.
- As of said "balance" changes all I'm seeing is that you're trying to balance epic elite, while nerfing everything else. This makes the game even harder to get into because people can't understand why they're dying so much when they just don't have the means to survive and GET those past lives. I'm almost double heroic completionist and I can't imagine going back to a first lifer just because I don't think I could make it through without being an artificer or warlock. I could be wrong, but what's up with that?

[Ellihor]

I disagree that Blood Strength needs a timer.

I could agree with that too. Have to test on gamee how new blood strength plays out.

The changes to Improved Criticals and Keen are unwanted and unwarranted basically devaluing nearly every melee build in the game along with the armor changes. Pulverizer does need to be a unique bonus but what this is gonna do is force everyone to use hammers just to try to retain current crit profiles. In short don't just don't, we don't need any of these changes you are going to cause more harm than good. There was probably more I wanted to say but I think I've said enough for now. From a newer more casual player's perspective I hate most of these ideas.

This is the kind of feeback DEVs should avoid. The criticals you have now with the changes are still better than what you had one year ago. And pulverizer doesn't make what you are saying, khopeshes are still better than warhammers and mauls are equal to axe now.

[Augon]

Some of these changes will hurt a couple of my current builds.
I guess I will scrap my idea to TR my Archer into a Paly14/mnk6. Oh well.

But overall, the changes are fine.

When we were given the +20 hearts last time, it was due to the ENTIRE enhancement system completely changing. This included major changes in Feat Pre-reqs, class pre-reqs, etc.

These dozen or so changes do NOT come any where near the level of those changes. We do not need a +20 heart to get through these changes. I'm sorry, but losing 5-10% chance to crit is not going to totally break any character. None of these changes completely destroys any decent build. You may need to re-spec a little (for example if you do have a Holy sword archer)
At most, a free feat swap token would be nice. But even without that, it will be ok.

Few of these changes are a surprise to me.
I've always felt that Holy sword should be only useable on swords. Silly for it to work on bows (although I had planned on testing it with bows when I TRed next.)
I've seen a couple of posts where Devs have commented that Imp Crit was one of the most over performing feats in the game. - that was a hint that I need to expect a nerf of some kind.

I was surprised this week by the changes to manyshot. To me it is a balancing device to give archers a chance to be as affective as melee (or at least respectable) but if they feel the need to change it, so be it.

Bottom line, folks: change happens. If you build your character around one or two oddities of the game design, then changes can be devastating. that is not the Devs fault. It is a good idea to build your characters a bit more well rounded.

[CThruTheEgo]

I have not yet seen a response to this:

Repeating Crossbows and Doubleshot
Fixed a bug where Doubleshot was not being reduced for repeating crossbows. (Doubleshot chance is divided by 3 for repeating crossbows.)

I never understood why it was supposed to work like this in the first place. See this wiki page for some testing. Here is how it works currently:

Fire 100 arrows with a longbow and 20% doubleshot - you end up using 120 arrows.
Fire 100 bolts from a repeater and 20% doubleshot - you end up using 120 bolts.

In other words, both repeaters and bows receive the exact same benefit from doubleshot. Why should it be any different than this? Now if doubleshot on a repeater meant that you fired an extra volley of bolts, then I could understand why it should only benefit from 1/3 doubleshot, but that's not how it works.

Can you please explain why you all want/expect repeaters to receive a much weaker benefit from doubleshot than other bows? I would just appreciate some clarification as to why.

If repeaters receive 1/3 benefit from doubleshot, will doubleshot's effect with repeaters be changed so that it will proc an entire extra volley instead of only a single bolt? That would be acceptable, but would also make no sense whatsoever, because you would end up with the exact same result as what is on live now but would spend dev time, changing not one but two things, to get that result.

I would appreciate any clarification about this.

[Manganakus]

These dozen or so changes do NOT come any where near the level of those changes. We do not need a +20 heart to get through these changes. I'm sorry, but losing 5-10% chance to crit is not going to totally break any character. None of these changes completely destroys any decent build. You may need to re-spec a little (for example if you do have a Holy sword archer)
At most, a free feat swap token would be nice. But even without that, it will be ok.

Do not agree, if you have a full line of feat that you consider as now uneffective/not in the scope of you character, you'll need to change em all, and maybe some attributes too. Same for some class splash you might have taken and you now consider useful now.
Oh, yes, of course, you spoke about 'decent' builds', so I suspect you evaluate at a glance ALL possibilities those changes might have on ANY build ^^

[cru121]

This change nerfs Carnifex. End of an era...
*ragequits*

[Cordovan]

Before answering some questions, we want to thank everyone for discussing these changes extremely well. We've been getting a lot of great feedback, and this thread has managed to get 20+ pages long in less than a day while staying largely focused on the subjects. I've had to do a bit of moderation, but overall it's been great. Thank you!

I guess I don't understand why you need to "fix the fact that paladin 14 hybrids...". I have been running one for a long time and did a demo test for the Dev team with mine. If that fed into this happening, then I can think of no reason to help the Dev team in the future. It is a different style of play that the 12 monk 6 ranger 2 whatever, or pure Ranger. Yes the damage is slightly higher. But as with any ranged toon, there are lots of variables that go into damage what happens if your adrenaline charges are slow to charge for example, you lined up poorly on an improved precise shot, etc. With going on cool down you suddenly do much less DPS than other toons for a period of time and make up that difference when you go off cooldown. I enjoy playing my ranged toon. But how many pally archers are on the servers that are played compared to other classes. Why ruin the diversity of toons on a server in destroying a build simply because it wasn't "as intended".

I get the balance thing. But it has also been one of my biggest frustrations over the years. Classes should do DIFFERENT damage. Otherwise they all become the same and it doesn't matter what you play. I love this game despite all the complaints people make, but the one thing that gets me frustrated, is when I put a lot of time into building and tweaking a build, and the entire build gets squashed by the Dev team in the interest of Balance.

So my question stands. Why is the fact the 14 pally hybrid ranged toon exists a problem There are a TON less on the server I play on than there ever were the tradition 12/6/2 monitor. Bring up the classes that lag, don't tear down the ones that exist.

We appreciate your frustration, but would like to point out that adjusting Holy Sword is being done in part to increase build diversity. Due to the significant power jump that Holy Sword currently provides, it has become perhaps overly dominant in-game, to the point that we are seeing less build diversity. To put it colloquially (and perhaps reductive), for too many players NOT going 14 Paladin is "building it wrong", and we want to encourage build diversity by adjusting abilities that limit choice for too many people.

It all looks promising except the Warlock stuff, which seems more like tinkering than actually balancing. It seems likely to be about as effective as the last Warlock nerf.

We clearly see the power that Warlock brings in heroic levels, but also want to make sure that Warlock remains competitive in upper Epic levels, including Epic Elite. If more needs to be done, we'll consider it.

I don't get all the complaints people are making. People want balances but don't want the nerf. Instead they want to see classes beefed up. But if all classes are beefed up, then content (quests) need to be harder. With the proposed changes, then perhaps there will be no need for a "Reaper Mode" as Elite will be more challenging, especially on L30 quests.

I just want to play the game.

The overwhelming feedback we've been getting for about the past year (except for the first implementation of Champions) has been that the game has become "too easy" for many players. We recognize that there is always an array of opinion, so while the game may be too easy for some, others would see it as just right, and still others feel the game remains difficult. The general trend has been to increase class power as we've been working on our "class passes", and these balance changes are meant in part to keep the game challenging but fun for as wide a group as we can. We expect to get a lot of feedback in the coming weeks and months on these changes, and if things need further work, we want to react to that.

sooooo what you are saying is...free +20 hearts of wood are in order?

We are discussing how best to help the community adjust to these changes. Nothing to announce yet, though.

When you plan to open Lamannia for the public to test these changes?Because right now its closed for me.

We are hoping to get Lamannia reopened this week. Stay tuned.