The Balance Change post

[Atremus]

All the more reason to not play monk

[hit_fido]

Actually one more comment on the fighter feats. I really like the tactical additions. They're going to make improved trip obsolete (unless someone really cares about 30 sec max vs 60 sec max, and anyway mobs save to stand up every 2 seconds so why would anyone care). But they give fighter a really compelling capability. +20 sounds extreme but it requires four feats and 16 fighter levels, the latter of which is a pretty miserable platform right now, at least pre fighter pass.

The four armor feats probably don't go far enough - again you're requiring four feats for the max +30/+30 prr/mrr. But that's not a whole lot more that you can attain from some low hanging enhancements. If you're not comfortable with increasing the prr/mrr what about adding a +1 max dex bonus for each feat in addition to the prr/mrr.

[EnziteBob]

Please reconsider the changes on MRR on armor. PLEASE! Yes it may help some fighter only feats, but so many classes and multiclass builds use heavy armor. It's really just going to make everyone splash monk and rogue on everything again. I would say take the time fixing the feats first instead of gimping all other classes but fighter. Now if you were willing to go back and add the loss in MRR to those classes that would be fine, but don't remove the MRR until this is done. Don't want to have to re-role/LR 12 toons because of this.

[JOTMON]

Divine Grace (Paladin)
Divine Grace now provides a maximum bonus equal to 2 + (Paladin level x 3).

This has been hanging over our heads for a long time and will be a deviation from the old school core rules.. but can understand why it is necessary.
but..
You need to address the ridiculously high save requirement in all your content.
We were forced into these /2 paladin splashes as the only means of surviving ridiculous save targets.
Removing this from the multi-class realm will mean many classes will no longer be able to obtain a reasonable level of saves for current content.

You are going to address this.. right...

[bracelet]

I have been running three back to back Iconic Bladeforged pure paladin lives, using each of the three fighting styles: single weapon, two-handed, and two-weapon.

The two weapon life used dual deathnips. It was not nearly as easy as it is being made out to be. TWF needs a lot more feats than the other styles to make it work well -and even once I had all the relevant feats, I was still straight up missing a lot of attacks with the second hand. Furthermore, the cleaves with heavy pick seem to have a very tight radius and don't hit nearly as many targets as a THF great sword cleave does. Are these things being taken into account when considering this nerf? Training Kobolds don't move away when you swing at them, and as far as I know AC isn't even a thing for them.

I am currently in the two-handed life and am enjoying it way more then TWF. Every attack hits, and cleaves have a huge area of effect. My DPS under actual quest conditions is noticeably much higher on this build using the current design.

Edit: Not to mention that TWF requires a much, much higher starting DEX score than the other builds which eats into what you can do in CON and STR.

[stoopid_cowboy]

Improved Critical
These feats now add a bonus to critical threat range based purely on weapon type.
* Adds +3 to critical threat range for falchion, kukri, rapier, and scimitar.
* Adds +2 to the critical threat range of bastard sword, dagger, great crossbow, greatsword, heavy crossbow, khopesh, light crossbow, long sword, repeating heavy crossbow, repeating light crossbow, short sword, and throwing dagger.
* Adds +1 to all other weapons.

The "+1 to all other weapons" is a little concerning. What about the "garbage" weapons in game, like Great Clubs? When is the last time you actually saw someone using a great club??? How about throwing us a bone on great clubs and mauls? You could give us a +5 threat range with a +2 crit multiplier and would still rarely see anyone actually using them.

Also, heavy picks could use a little lovin'. The x4 crit on a 20 gives some fun numbers. But they are still waaaaaay behind the DPS curve compared to most other martial weapons. A +2 range would put them closer and a +3 would make them fun again.

[CheeseMilk]

You guys are going to HAVE to offer +20 HoW if you're changing the game this much.

"HAVE to" is pretty strong, but these are pretty wide-ranging changes.

Some sort of +x Lesser Heart would definitely be appreciated.

[rygard]

Two Weapon Fighting no longer grants melee power.
Improved Two Weapon Fighting no longer grants melee power.
Greater Two Weapon Fighting no longer grants melee power.

what about pure monks? Nothing to Trade-off? you are crippling monks again for sake of monkchers.

[Siccan]

Just thought about it... What's the point of balance in a game that has no competitive PvP? Who care if you are OP in this game?

[Severlin]

Struggling with yet another proposed hit on PRR. I have had to reduce my defensive capabilities recently to increase dps in order to effectively tank in an environment where the dps of others is rising. PRR is a key part of those defenses and a previous update or two have both reduced PRR.

I know you have suggesting adding some feats to give the opportunity to mitigate some of this loss. But every feat I have is important to my build and sacrificing one or more to retain my current PRR levels will have impact elsewhere.

It is already hard enough to tank, especially in the more recent Epic Elite raids without this change, making it even harder.

Please reconsider this, or come up with a way for more defense oriented builds to retain the PRR whilst preventing the higher dps builds from taking advantage (Who I am sure are the real reason for the change). A suggestion might be to have a different PRR formula for Stalwart and Sacred Defenders, or beef up the PRR bonus earned from Durable Defense to compensate.

Heres hoping you are listening.

Two thoughts:

We haven't heard that characters built to tank are having a hard time surviving. We will watch for that.

We buffed the power of many threat boosts recently. PM me if your tanks are taking the threat boosting abilities and are still losing agro to DPS. There may be a bug.

Sev~

[Grailhawk]

Two Weapon Fighting no longer grants melee power.
Improved Two Weapon Fighting no longer grants melee power.
Greater Two Weapon Fighting no longer grants melee power.
Sev~

• Two Weapon Fighting builds are dealing too much DPS. This is generally because on-hit effects now scale with melee power, and we've relaxed many internal cooldown limits on to-hit effects. We expected Two Weapon Fighting builds to scale quickly when we changed on-hit effects, and balanced the fighting style feats to compensate, but that was a world before Assassin and Tempest were updated, and players largely equated Two Weapon Fighting to those trees. Now that those are updated we can look at re-adjusting the two weapon fighting feats.

Sev~

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~

Per the data we have the issue with TWF animations is that it gets more out of alacrity than any other styles. Is this true is this the DPS boost you are referring to?

If that data is good why not start there for balancing fighting styles would it not be better if there wasn't a style biases from the get go.

TWF gets 1.2% alacrity from every 1%
THF gets 1.03% or 0.96% from every 1%

All styles should just get 1% alacrity from every point of alacrity regardless of style.

[JOTMON]

Tactics.. meh.. whats the point.. worthless on bosses..and a waste of feats overall.

Fighter pass needs their revisitation before this.

[Hobgoblin]

sev? was it a typo on those feats?

are those fighter only feats?

or can anyone take them?

i would prefer fighter only, but want to clarify them


o and to stay on target


rabble rabble rabble

ya breaking ma build gimmme free stuff etc......

just to get in on it.....

[Cordovan]

The "+1 to all other weapons" is a little concerning. What about the "garbage" weapons in game, like Great Clubs? When is the last time you actually saw someone using a great club??? How about throwing us a bone on great clubs and mauls? You could give us a +5 threat range with a +2 crit multiplier and would still rarely see anyone actually using them.

Also, heavy picks could use a little lovin'. The x4 crit on a 20 gives some fun numbers. But they are still waaaaaay behind the DPS curve compared to most other martial weapons. A +2 range would put them closer and a +3 would make them fun again.

Encouraging/revamping the weapons that are not used very often is outside of the scope of the Improved Critical changes, but is certainly something that we would love to do in the future.

[Cordovan]

sev? was it a typo on those feats?

are those fighter only feats?

or can anyone take them?

i would prefer fighter only, but want to clarify them


o and to stay on target


rabble rabble rabble

ya breaking ma build gimmme free stuff etc......

just to get in on it.....

Yes, these are fighter-specific feats, with required levels of fighter as a prerequisite. They can be taken using any feat slot, however, not just the fighter bonus feats.

[jakeelala]

I'm totally ok with frequent and well thought out balance changes, games like Destiny and WoW are generally much better games than DDO at given points in time, because they simply change what must change.

That being said,

Throwing has ALWAYS been the red headed step child of combat styles.
-It has no improved combat style feats (it has SE, but that's weapon specific, not style). There are no Improved Throwing feats, though there are IPS and PS for general ranged.
-Shuriken are now, and from what I can tell into the future, the only remotely viable throwing weapon. And this requires at least 3 levels of monk. A big part of this problem is that passive bonuses to the crit multipliers (the very few that exist) don't work, ie Swashbuckler, and Rogue Mechanic (lvl 18 core). Holy Sword has never worked.

Really, the biggest issue with Throwers (and I bring this up in this thread because it is a BALANCE issue), is that no throwing weapon is compelling outside of Shurikens. And for the most part, an almost perfectly played and geared thrower (TF Tier 3, ToEE set, all the latest raid gear, etc. Like my main), can barely keep up with an above average-ly played 18-20 Rogue mechanic with middle to above average gear. If the very best incarnation of thrower is challenged and occasionally bested by someones xbow Rogue alt, we have a balance problem.

Please explain to me, if you please, why you think that is acceptable for what is arguably one of DDO's more interesting and unique combat styles?
-Do you have a future plan to address any of this? Most specifically, the issue with Throwing weapons not benefitting from increased passive critical multipliers.
-Have you ever played a thrower? Do you know that it's really fun and everyone should be able to try it like the other combat styles?
-Are you totally opposed to just adding a feat to the game called Throwing Expertise that works for all throwing weapons that is not a shuriken, and gives an extra chance for a projectile based on an ability score (Dex or Int)? Just remove Shuriken Expertise, and make it Throwing Expertise. Make it a multi-selector when you take the feat for which stat to use.

I'm am not looking to boost the throwing characters and builds I already have, though that would be nice since they are behind xbows, and may be behind archers depending on final AA and game balance changes.

I am looking for a couple of very small and easy changes that you could make to the game to make throwing, of all sorts, a viable endgame combat style for a number of different builds and classes.

I would really like to hear your (the devs) positions on these current issues, and your positions on fixing or addressing them in the future. I've spent 3 years playing and building throwers, and I want to know if it's just time to give up and go back to bows or not.

[Eldried]

Good changes mostly.
The only thing I dont like is the change to devine grace. Devine grace is an ability which comes directly from Pen and paper Paladins and isnt that overpowered anyway in my book. You lose a lot when you dont get the capstones by being l20 in a class. Its kinda the same as evasion a rogue gets with level 2. Nice splash able levels. With that change a paladin splash becomes irrevelant. Before Most people dont use it as it is.


Otherwise good changes in general for the whole game.

Thumbs up!

[patang01]

Adding all those tactical and armor feats are really a kick in the scrotch to people who love to use tactical features. It seems fully reasonable to add more...but truly; in order to be viable as far as tactically you now have to add as many of those as possible. The result is instead a much weaker character - good at perhaps tripping or stunning stuff but over all DPS will drop like a rock.

There just isn't enough feat slots as is. Your solution of helping DC starved tactical users only deprives them of everything else. Yes, now my fighter can potentially be better at tripping. But on the other hand his DPS will go down even further. This is a one way street build. It gets even worse for Pally's that want to add tactical play - they don't have that flexibility (much fewer feats). And it seems that multi classing in order to even be semi efficient in tactical feats is the way to go.

I applaud your interest in making it more viable. But adding feats will only tilt anyone that want to be 'expert in tripping' to also be useless in making a dent. Maybe the issue really is the ludicrous idea about exploding CR on creatures and not trying to figure out how to inflate player numbers?

[Firewall]

After my first read-through i think those are some well thought-out changes.
At first glance i like what i see but haven't fully absorbed the bottom line of what that changes for all of my characters yet.

Will you also add balance/bug considerations for Wolf and Tree builds?

[hit_fido]

Tactics.. pft.. whats the point.. worthless on bosses..and a waste of feats overall.

Fighter pass needs their revisitation before this.

I enjoy playing with more useful 'buttons' than "attack" and "forward". I'm probably not the only one.