The Balance Change post

[Ladywolf]

There are way better builds in epic than warlocks. I'm saddened you are again nerfing them. In heroics they are overpowered. In epics they are not. It doesn't make sense to nerf end game for a heroic imbalance

[Bluenoser]

Two weapon paladins are still doing better DPS than Paladins using two handed weapons or single weapon fighting by a good margin. But by all means, we'd love to see some test numbers from Lamannia! We added some bigger DPS kobolds in the test dojo to help players test.

Sev~

This comment troubles me, since it is a) wrong, and b) reflects a failure to grasp the trade-offs players make when they choose a playstyle.

TWF (non-Tempest): excellent single-target DPS, terrible AoE melee damage (and DDO is an endless stream of massive groups of mobs--not training dummies--especially the newer content); lose stat-based damage modifier and benefit of Power Attack on off-hand weapons; only get +5 from PA on main-hand weapon; cleaves only use main-hand weapon. Requires heavy investment in Dex to get full line of feats, which comes at expense of damage-dealing stat (unless Ranger is splashed and Tempest Improved Weapon Finesse is taken). Weaker defense than sword-and-board (including swash bard with buckler option). Also, requires twice as many weapons and inventory space. Notably, the feat that should allow better AOE melee damage, Whirlwind Attack, has been bugged for years (does not work with weapons) and requires a staggering four prerequisite feats, including the effectively-useless Combat Expertise feat that requires 13 Int.

TWF (Tempest): now negates much of the bad above, with large bonuses for doublestrike and off-hand procs, full damage from stat for offhand weapon, and Dance of Death. Tempests can also use their dex for damage (even without taking the weapon finesse feat first).

THF: good single-target DPS, best AOE melee damage thanks to cleaves, glancing blows, full benefit of damage-dealing stat, and +10 from PA. Can focus on just main damage-dealing stat (or reasonable cha for pallies, int for Harper, to get boosts to damage). Best weapon option in the game, with ESOS. Weaker defense than sword-and-board (including swash bard with buckler option).

SWF: good single-target DPS, good AOE damage from cleaves and (with Dwarven War Axe, B-sword or 'Bsword' Shortswords like Sun Blade, Star of Day and Celestia), glancing blows. Much better if combined with bard swashbuckler. Weaker defense than sword-and-board, but over-the-top with swash Skirmisher and buckler use when combined with fighter Defensive stance. Full damage to weapon from stat, +5 from PA (or Precision, if enhancement from Swash taken). Like THF, can focus on main damage stat + cha or int for boost.

S&B: best melee defense, typically weakest DPS, though can still be good with khopesh, B-Sword or D-Axe, PA and cleaves and the shield mastery line. Shield-bashing Vanguards can be strong defensively and offensively, but much less so if unable to cast HS on their shield.

So, yes, against a stationary, single-target training dummy, TWF dps shines. In the actual game, against the nearly-constant groups of moving. hard-hitting mobs, non-Tempest TWF is much less impressive than THF or a cleaving SWF (and far, far behind a swashbuckler with skirmisher and shield mastery feats + a defensive stance). Even buffed by Holy Sword on both weapons, a TWF pally is simply not that OP.

What I sense is really going on here is that the devs figured out belatedly just how good it is to mix 15 pal with 5 ranger, taking the tier 5 tempest tree and combining it with holy sword. Fair enough, that might be too good (wouldn't know, haven't run it, but many have). The problem is not HS tho--it's the silliness of allowing very powerful tier 5 class enhancements with only 5 levels of the class. A much better solution would be to move some of those tier 5s into Ranger Tempest core abilities, or to just require more ranger levels. HS was required to make paladins competitive in combat--their infamous weakness in DDO. It should not be changed to punish entire melee (or for that matter, ranged) playstyles unnecessarily.

[Bloodskittle]

I am catching up on the thread. I apologize for not replying yesterday as I spent a lot of time chasing down the character transfer issues trying to get that back up for Lamannia. We are still working on that.

That said, there's some interesting feedback here and I wanted to give the players some insight into our current thoughts as we head towards some testing on Lamannia:

~ The changes to Improved Critical do mess up the balance for Assassins between kukri and daggers, and for Swashbucklers who can take enhancements to normalize weapon types. We are going to implement additional changes so that characters who have the Improved Critical feat will gain extra threat range for under performing weapons to maintain the weapon balance you have live using these builds.

~ Since Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars have a reduced rate of fire, fishing for Mortal Fear and similar procs will be slightly less effective. We understand this and designed with this in mind.

~ With the bug in certain Fury of the Wild enhancements, Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars can be used to get back uses of Adrenaline. With the new reduced rate of fire of Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars, utilizing this bug will be slightly less effective. We understand and have designed around this. We want to either legitimize this build by changing the wording on Fury Eternal so it officially supports ranged attacks or fix the bug, and we are looking forward to feedback on this from Lamannia.

~ It's not that we mind two weapon fighting Paladins doing decent DPS, or two weapon barbarians doing decent DPS, but these builds should not be outperforming builds based on other styles by 40% or higher.

~ We will be watching Vanguard Paladin builds to make sure they are still fun and competitive after the changes.

~ We think there has been a lot of good discussion in particular on MRR, armor, and whether these changes will put us back into a state where everyone feel compelled to take Evasion. We have read suggestions that some smaller amount of MRR might be added back to armors and we've been looking at that option. I just wanted to point out the reductions do not put us back to pre Armor Up balance. The PRR formula is more generous, and the PRR offered by armor is still higher. Heavy armor mitigates a lot more damage than before Armor Up. In addition, there are many sources of MRR, including gear, that simply did not exist before, including enhancements that only work with medium or heavy armors. Armored characters are still in much better shape than in the past, which is why we'd like to see this on Lamannia.

~ We have been reading with interest the concerns with named weapons that have increased threat ranges built in and how they interact with Improved Critical. This interaction is part of the design, as these threat ranges provided too much benefit previously. The fact that some of these weapons with lower level requirements were better than end game weapons highlights the problem fairly well.

~ Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars still provide a massive burst of damage; we really don't think these builds will lose their burst feel when these abilities provide an additional 200-300% damage increase depending on gearing.

***

We look forward to seeing player feedback from Lamannia, and here are some additional questions we have:

~ Does the newly smoothed two weapon fighting animation look good, and is the shorter animation providing too much of a DPS increase?

~ Do we want to legitimize Fury Eternal's gain of Adrenaline while using missile weapons, or do we want to fix that bug?

Sev~

In regards to the MRR changes; due to the recent ranger pass tempest rangers are currently very capable of decent PRR (enough to wade in to battle in the same manner as paladins) and they also have evasion, so if you take MRR from armours I suspect you will see a lot of pure rangers in the same position as pure barbarians and the very strong 15/5 paladin ranger build.
In regards to the nerf to divine grace, if I am reading the new formula correctly 3 paladin levels will provide +11 saves, this is already an extremely popular splash due to the defensive stance, players with a 3 pally splash will have +14 to saves (including the saves enhancement). Point being the only thing the divine grace nerf will achieve is that people will splash 1 more paladin level.

In regards to the manyshot 10k stars changes; a year ago this would have made sense, however the way the game is today, monkchers are just ?*nother build rather than the be all and end all of burst DPS. Also if you change they way manyshot works you'll more likely see archers using blitz than fury, so at least leave the choice of destiny. (Also consider having shiradi procs scale from ranged power and give the tree a bit more inherent ranged power.
The change to twf is hardly noticeable as a dps increase.

[jalont]

THAT simply is not true. As long as there are a) items and b) favor and c) sagas bound to completing elite stuff, elite stuff will get run even by those that perhaps should not run elite. They will get fustrated and eventually leave. All DDO has from them is bad mouthing. No more money, no more player base, nothing. Except bad press. That´s why we need a difficulty above elite like Reaper, not a nerf-to-the-grounds of all and everything to make elite the reaper difficulty. Reaper should not provide better rewards than elite. Just perhaps better chances at elite rewards.

I always hear the "if elite is too difficult, try hard or normal". That is the usual statement by those having tripple completionist toons with all the best gear available. This is no statement from the "regular" player base. Elite should provide a challenge for all but the best toons. For the best toons, elite should not pose a challenge. Get over it, you won DDO!

I am still vocal for Reaper. I am against nerfing all and everything into oblivion to save on introducing Reaper. I strongly urge Turbine to re-think the whole whack-a-mole nerfing they do here.

You realize all this unbalancing has taken place in the last year, maybe two, right, and that even with the nerfs, we're not going anywhere near, powerwise, where we were before? If anything, you're making the case that we shouldn't change any of the other classes anymore because the player base is too immature to handle proper balancing. There needs to be some sort of spell pass, but I'm not sure it's even worth it because if the devs don't get it exactly right the first time, everyone will whine on the second pass.

All this stuff about new players will just leave and casuals will just leave is BS because they didn't leave in the 8 years where their power was even less than now. In fact, we had MORE players then.

[Severlin]

After some good feedback and more testing, we've made some adjustments to the two weapon animations while moving.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post5705999

Sev~

[Walking_Ride]

Paladins using the KotC cleaves actually does fairly decent AoE DPS, and can do even more against undead. Does it equal two handed weapons? No, but the cleave different is fairly small, leaving Glancing Blows as the main difference.

Paladin versus Tempest: You'll have to take into account that Paladin has better cleaves without wasting feats, has Divine Might, has much better on hit light damage, has much better healing capability because of it's healing amp, and takes less physical damage with armor. You might also want to consider that Paladin healing spells are better, and it gets Lay on Hands and turn undead that can be used for damage.

We'd need more data to put TWF Paladins back that far up the DPS chart.

As for using TWF on the move, we agree:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post5705999

Sev~

Yet again i am asking you this. Do you have a personal hate against paladins ? What more proof do you want until you realize that pure rangers are 50-60% ahead in terms of dps compared to a paladin ?

1. Cleaving on a two weapon fighting build is a noob trap and will further lead to dps loss across the board. No, it does no additional damage vs undeads.

2. Paladin has divine might but rangers have know the angels from harper enhancement tree which adds half your int mod to damage and tactics.

3. Self healing in ddo is hardly a problem anymore with epic destinies. Also a ranger gets cure light/moderate/serious wounds from ranger spells.
They also get freedom of movement...

4. Paladin get light damage core but rangers get a lot sneack attack dice from deepwood stalker.

Rangers also get the following...

Fortification bypass : 10(Advanced Sneak Attack) + 10 (Mark of the Hunted) + 25%(Mark of the Hunted) = 45% more than paladins.

Doublestrike : Dervish (25%) offhand + 10% offhand (whirlwind) + 5% mainhand (whirlwind) = 40% - 10 % zeal paladin spell = 30% more than paladins.

Oh yea paladins will loose on exalted smite/divine sacrifice if they choose to take killer from deepwood stalker. While rangers keep exposing strike.

So another +20% doublestrike for a total of 30% + 20 % = 50 % more than pali

+5 Incorporeality (stacking) (whirlwind) + deflect arrows every 2 sec.

Oh, yes especially this too. For rangers off hand weapons are affected by +1 critical threat range and +1 critical multiplier which translates to ~ 26 % dps .




How can you ignore all of this ? I am asking you this again. Why don't you give us back our holy sword affecting off hand weapons ? Why ? How much more proof do you need ?

And please stop this *But paladins gain more mrr/prr and lay on hands (which by the way is NOT unlimited) BS*

Rangers can get almost the exact same amount of prr/mrr through tempest core abilities including the capstone (dervish).


My twf paladin dps now on lammania, even single target dps is so bad due to 30% dps loss, due to the holy sword nerf, it is just disgraceful now.

[Spoonwelder]

After some good feedback and more testing, we've made some adjustments to the two weapon animations while moving.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post5705999

Sev~

Thank you - 50 times I thank you......but we are only half way there.....attack speed whilst moving has always been a major issue for TWF - I had just given up on any improvement there and had gotten to calling it Scissorhand mode. The only place it caused quest completion problem for me was in Lines of Supply - try chasing the Gnoll supply carriesr with TWF on and you fail without other CC sources. Soloable (EN/EH) on THF with relative ease but not TWF.

So the second half - hitboxes. You have patently ignored the comments on hitboxes (even in the post you link) and I know that it is in part due to the lovingly crafted animations (from your post a long while back) but I would like a carte blanche statement of whether this can be fixed as well as if it will be fixed in the near term. I want my main to be a TWFer but until that is fixed I can't, I just can't, the pain is too great. So I need to know if I should just shelve that plan forever OR if there is light approaching the tunnel?

Please and Thank You.

[unbongwah]

I'm assuming that they will make keen edge +2 when they get to kensei as they were the original crit threat enhancement.

IIRC, the +1 crit range bonus from the pre-U19 Kensei Weapon Mastery III was applied after Improved Crit, so it wasn't doubled by the feat. [See old threat range page for confirmation.] That changed with U19; and it was always unclear if that was a bug or WAI. It appears Turbine has decided to nerf competence bonuses to crit range, among other things. Which might not have been so bad, had they done that right after U19 came out and before people got used to the stacking; but they've added a lot of crit range bonuses since then...

[firebones]

The best part of this update is when I nerf my credit card.

[PermaBanned]

To the devs: Again, where is the fighter/sorc/wiz/healer pass that will make these worth playing? Please don't try to balance things before you fix those. You'll just end up having to do this "balance" thing again.

I think you have that totally backwards. This over buffing started with the Armor Up & Pally pass followed by the Bard. Everything that came after was compared to Pally/Swash levels of power, and the Devs were told repeatedly that if what followed was not as powerful as those then it was waste of time and effort. Sadly, they listened and here we are. If nerfs must happen to restore a better PvE balance, then better to do it sooner than later.

When the ship is off course, you correct the course as soon as you can - you don't wait untill you're closer to the destination and even further off course before making corrections. Nerf/fix/correct/whatever the work that's been done already, then going forward the class passes can be done with these power levels as the standard instead of the overly inflated lower levels as the standard.

[Grailhawk]

I think you have that totally backwards. This over buffing started with the Armor Up & Pally pass followed by the Bard. Everything that came after was compared to Pally/Swash levels of power, and the Devs were told repeatedly that if what followed was not as powerful as those then it was waste of time and effort. Sadly, they listened and here we are. If nerfs must happen to restore a better PvE balance, then better to do it sooner than later.

When the ship is off course, you correct the course as soon as you can - you don't wait untill you're closer to the destination and even further off course before making corrections. Nerf/fix/correct/whatever the work that's been done already, then going forward the class passes can be done with these power levels as the standard instead of the overly inflated lower levels as the standard.

Bard and Swashbucker came before Paladin and armor up. Every thing else you said is spot on.

[nomadicc]

~ The changes to Improved Critical do mess up the balance for Assassins between kukri and daggers, and for Swashbucklers who can take enhancements to normalize weapon types. We are going to implement additional changes so that characters who have the Improved Critical feat will gain extra threat range for under performing weapons to maintain the weapon balance you have live using these builds.

This is pretty encouraging, and I think it might need re-iterating. With all the histrionics, bloviating and popcorn-throwing in the general forum, I think this point might have gotten missed by many.

I understand and support the need to update the IC feat, but its pretty clear that quarterstaves, and by extension, acrobat rogues, are taking a big boot to the nadds here. Did you plan to address that setback in the rogue acrobat enhancements, like you plan for the assassin daggers and swashy weapons?

[McFlay]

Two weapon paladins are still doing better DPS than Paladins using two handed weapons or single weapon fighting by a good margin. But by all means, we'd love to see some test numbers from Lamannia! We added some bigger DPS kobolds in the test dojo to help players test.

Sev~

How about you stop it with the pointless test data from stationary test dummies and actually play the game? TWF gets the smallest hit boxes, by far the worst aoe abilities(no glances and aoe skills are a total joke), still bugs so sometimes when you hit mobs while moving even with 100% offhand you only hit once, and any time you use a tactical skill(trip, stun) you only get 1 hit. Literally the only time twf is superior is when you are fighting a single stationary mob, yet this seems to be the only metric the devs want to base their comparisons off.

I think you said somewhere in this thread something to the effect of twf being 40% ahead of thf. Maybe it is...but like I just said, only when you are fighting a single stationary mob. Anytime there are multiple targets or moving targets, the other styles pull further and further ahead as they get better cleave animations, larger attack areas, glances, and more powerful hits, and less punished for swinging while moving animations. If you guys want to balance styles its not going to work when you want to give swf/thf 90% of the single target dps potential of twf and twf less than half of the aoe potential.

And another rant while I'm at it...the holy sword nerf to offhand is ridiculous. I just don't see it when every other class makes use of their crit skills with offhands...but paladins aren't allowed to?

And the last thing I'd care to rant about...+20 tactical dcs for fighters? On a d20 system? I'm glad it seems like you want to work on giving fighters an area to shine, but I'm not really seeing good things coming from this. I still take stunning blow and use trip on my non-fighter melees...I'm just a little worried giving fighters access to this much dc is going to result in giving mobs higher saves and making tactics on other melees completely worthless. I don't want to see tactics end up like the old ac system where you end up with a small amount of very specific builds who are going to have successful rolls 95% of the time but the majority of builds just end up ignoring tactics because at high levels you end up so far off the bottom of the scale + or -5 dc ends up making no difference at all as you will only have success when your opponent rolls a 1 either way.

[elvesunited]

Fighters really aren't helped much by this balance pass.

Tactical attacks like Trip and stun are fun but they end up being useful only against mooks. And 4 feats for +20 DC is ridiculously expensive even for a fighter. The PRR and MRR fall into the same pit. Too expensive unless you plan to start giving fighters even more feats. The problem with fighters is simply that in a game were the players have moved away from dedicated healers, fighters just can't stay competitive in quests which involve wave after wave of enemies.

Glad to hear that the devs are looking to make sure Bards using swashbuckling to boost the ranges of low crit weapons and assassins won't be hurt by the critical update. Could you also do the same for Druid's in Wolf form?

[Adams]

Greetings.

We've seen a lot of community feedback, both public and private, about our ongoing plans for balance. These are some changes we are considering to increase game balance.

As with any post that outlines power reductions (aka nerfs) I am sure there will be a lot of players looking for explanations and our thoughts and results on balance that led to these changes. I will be following up this post with more details that talk about why some of these changes are being implemented.

***

Holy Sword (Paladin)
This is now a spell that affects the paladin and buffs whatever melee weapon is being wielded in the main hand.
It no longer persists on your weapon but instead buffs the melee weapon you are holding in your main hand. (Yes, this buffs your two handed weapons.)
It no longer affects missile weapons.
It no longer can be used to buff off hand weapons or shields.
If you change weapons the spell will drop off the unequipped weapon and instead be applied to the newly equipped weapon.

Blood Strength (Barbarian Ravager)
The portion of this enhancement that heals the user when they kill an opponent now has a 1 second internal cooldown.

Critical Rage (Barbarian Ravager)
The bonus to critical threat range is now a competence bonus.

Two weapon fighting animations have been fixed so there is no longer a weird jump on the fourth animation. This has made the fourth attack slightly quicker.

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.

Doubleshot values over 100% now have a chance of producing a third attack. The chance is equal to the amount the value exceeds 100. A doubleshot value of 130, for example, would always produce one extra shot and have a 30% chance to produce a third shot.

(Doublestrike will still cap at 100 for technical reasons.)

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.)

Manyshot
This ability is being redesigned.
For the next 20 seconds you add your (base attack bonus * 4) to your Doubleshot and Ranged Power. This ability puts Ten Thousand Stars on a 30 second cooldown. Cooldown 2 minutes.
(This ability no longer gives a doubleshot penalty when activated.)

Ten Thousand Stars
This ability is being redesigned.
For the next 30 seconds you add your Wisdom ability score to your Ranged Power and you add your monk level * 5 to your Doubleshot. This ability puts Manyshot on a 30 second cooldown. Cooldown 1 minute.
(This ability no longer gives a doubleshot penalty when activated.)

Mechanical Reloader (Rogue Mechanic)
The alacrity for non-repeating crossbows is now 30%. (Was 40%)

Pulverizer (Legendary Dreadnought)
The bonus to critical threat range for bludgeoning weapons is now an Insight bonus.

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.

Keen
This loot effect 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.

Armor Changes
The amount of Physical Resist Rating that armor provides has been changed.
* Heavy armor now increases Physical Resist Rating by (base attack bonus * 2) and no longer adds Magical Resist Rating.
* Medium armor now increases Physical Resist Rating by (base attack bonus * 1.5) and no longer adds Magical Resist Rating.
* Light Armor now increases Physical Resist Rating by (base attack bonus * 1) and no longer adds Magical Resist Rating.
Fixed a bug where players were getting Physical Resist Rating for armor with which they were not proficient.

(Note: The Physical Resist Rating and Magical Resist Rating offered by shields remain unchanged.)

As a result of dialing back armor, some fighter only feats that will boost their effectiveness with armor and add to tactical DCs will also be included.

Tactical Training
Requires Fighter Level 4
You gain +2 to the DC of all tactical feats.

Tactical Combatant
Requires Fighter Level 8
You gain +4 to the DC of all tactical feats.

Tactical Mastery
Requires Fighter Level 12
You gain +6 to the DC of all tactical feats.

Tactical Supremacy
Requires Fighter Level 16
You gain +8 to the DC of all tactical feats.

Notes: All tactical feats stack for a total of +20. The lower level feats are not prerequisites for the higher level feats so a higher level fighter could save a feat if he/she wanted to skip Tactical Training and forego the +2 but still have access to Tatical Supremacy.

Heavy Armor Training
Requires Fighter Level 2
You gain +3 Physical Resistance Rating and Magical Resistance Rating while wearing heavy armor.

Heavy Armor Combatant
Requires Fighter Level 6
You gain +6 Physical Resistance Rating and Magical Resistance Rating while wearing heavy armor.

Heavy Armor Master
Requires Fighter Level 10
You gain +9 Physical Resistance Rating and Magical Resistance Rating while wearing heavy armor.

Heavy Armor Champion
Requires Fighter Level 14
You gain +12 Physical Resistance Rating and Magical Resistance Rating while wearing heavy armor.

Notes: All Heavy Armor feats stack for a total of +30. The lower level feats are not prerequisites for the higher level feats so a higher level fighter could save a feat if he/she wanted to skip Heavy Armor Training and forego the +3 and still have access to Heavy Armor Champion.


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

Eldritch Blast and other enhancements (Warlock)
The spellpower scaling for Eldritch Blast and several enhancements has been reduced.

Spellpower scaling of Warlock Abilities

Ability	Old	New
Eldritch Blast	150%	130%
Eldritch Blast Cone	130%	130%
Eldritch Blast Chain	110%	95%
Eldritch Blast Aura	150%	130%
Stricken (Souleater)	150%	125%
Consume (Souleater)	150%	125%
Eldritch Burst (Enlightened Spirit)	120%	100%
Spirit Blast (Enlightened Spirit)	120%	100%

I will be following up this post with some details on our thoughts on balance and design.

Sev~

Why do this? Just because the warlock class does really well in heroic levels does not mean they dominate in the epic levels.
Did you ever consider that the people dominating with warlock class are 10+ past lives are the ones that make it look like the warlock is OP when it is not? What you did just now is took my 50.00 plus dollars I invested into this Fey warlock and made it useless. I am not VIP but I came out of a lot of money to play this toon and not I am not even effective in epic levels thanks to you. Do you not even consider the feelings of us pure toon players? Now I am going to have to multi class this toon to even be able to do damage as a Fey Warlock. I am playing a Fey and compared to the other warlocks, Fey was already lower than the others. Now you made fey a gimp class. Look at the numbers for yourselves and you tell my Fey got a fair shake out of this. Fey was low enough already and should not have been touched. Note: all things considered nothing should be able to out DPS Warlocks, Mages or Sorcerers thus the reason they are called nukes.

[BoondocksMike]

And the last thing I'd care to rant about...+20 tactical dcs for fighters? On a d20 system? I'm glad it seems like you want to work on giving fighters an area to shine, but I'm not really seeing good things coming from this. I still take stunning blow and use trip on my non-fighter melees...I'm just a little worried giving fighters access to this much dc is going to result in giving mobs higher saves and making tactics on other melees completely worthless. I don't want to see tactics end up like the old ac system where you end up with a small amount of very specific builds who are going to have successful rolls 95% of the time but the majority of builds just end up ignoring tactics because at high levels you end up so far off the bottom of the scale + or -5 dc ends up making no difference at all as you will only have success when your opponent rolls a 1 either way.

no one is going to take all four of those feats. at present, it would cost too much dps to pick up anything but the final tier of either the +dc or +prr/mrr. +20 dc doesnt even make stun that great currently because assuming that brought a current stun build up to 95% success rate, its still too much dps cost for one ability usable only on some trash ever 15 seconds, most of the effect of which is wasted because trash doesnt typically have that much hp.

Fighters really aren't helped much by this balance pass.

Tactical attacks like Trip and stun are fun but they end up being useful only against mooks. And 4 feats for +20 DC is ridiculously expensive even for a fighter. The PRR and MRR fall into the same pit. Too expensive unless you plan to start giving fighters even more feats. The problem with fighters is simply that in a game were the players have moved away from dedicated healers, fighters just can't stay competitive in quests which involve wave after wave of enemies.

rolling with the "wave after wave" comment, i just have to say that my fighter can. its be no means easy or new/casual player friendly to achieve, but its doable. the only problem is that i have to work really hard at staying alive, and my dps remains total ****, meanwhile some classes are doing thousands more dps than me and getting healing at the same time or with instant burst heals (loh).

[zeonardo]

Yet again i am asking you this. Do you have a personal hate against paladins ? What more proof do you want until you realize that pure rangers are 50-60% ahead in terms of dps compared to a paladin ?

1. Cleaving on a two weapon fighting build is a noob trap and will further lead to dps loss across the board. No, it does no additional damage vs undeads.

2. Paladin has divine might but rangers have know the angels from harper enhancement tree which adds half your int mod to damage and tactics.

3. Self healing in ddo is hardly a problem anymore with epic destinies. Also a ranger gets cure light/moderate/serious wounds from ranger spells.
They also get freedom of movement...

4. Paladin get light damage core but rangers get a lot sneack attack dice from deepwood stalker.

Rangers also get the following...

Fortification bypass : 10(Advanced Sneak Attack) + 10 (Mark of the Hunted) + 25%(Mark of the Hunted) = 45% more than paladins.

Doublestrike : Dervish (25%) offhand + 10% offhand (whirlwind) + 5% mainhand (whirlwind) = 40% - 10 % zeal paladin spell = 30% more than paladins.

Oh yea paladins will loose on exalted smite/divine sacrifice if they choose to take killer from deepwood stalker. While rangers keep exposing strike.

So another +20% doublestrike for a total of 30% + 20 % = 50 % more than pali

+5 Incorporeality (stacking) (whirlwind) + deflect arrows every 2 sec.

Oh, yes especially this too. For rangers off hand weapons are affected by +1 critical threat range and +1 critical multiplier which translates to ~ 26 % dps .




How can you ignore all of this ? I am asking you this again. Why don't you give us back our holy sword affecting off hand weapons ? Why ? How much more proof do you need ?

And please stop this *But paladins gain more mrr/prr and lay on hands (which by the way is NOT unlimited) BS*

Rangers can get almost the exact same amount of prr/mrr through tempest core abilities including the capstone (dervish).


My twf paladin dps now on lammania, even single target dps is so bad due to 30% dps loss, due to the holy sword nerf, it is just disgraceful now.

They are nerfing paladins because exploiters builds take advantage of a few levels of it. Instead of fixing those, they just nerf paladin altogether.
If they seek balance, they should quit the joke on 150/120/100% on warlocks. They still can erase the universe with a cleave.

Not only that. You can more often than not see a warlock just sitting there cleaving while a melee boss bashes away for no damage at all.
So, while my S&B paladin takes a lot of damage, some of which is mitigated by hardly earned prr/mrr (yeah, armor alone won't give you enough mitigation to stay toe to toe with EE footsoldiers. you need ap and sacrifice gear slots) and slowly mows down enemies one by one, the mighty warlock sits there unhindered and undamaged cleaving-happy with 150/120/100% or the heck% away.

I just despise the current implementation of warlocks. I, as a premium, purchased it to try (along with all other classes, races and packs), but refuse to play it. And even avoid to group with them because even a 1st life warlocks takes away all the fun and the merit of my hard-earned gear through 32 lives.

/rantoff

[Nestroy]

You realize all this unbalancing has taken place in the last year, maybe two, right, and that even with the nerfs, we're not going anywhere near, powerwise, where we were before? If anything, you're making the case that we shouldn't change any of the other classes anymore because the player base is too immature to handle proper balancing. There needs to be some sort of spell pass, but I'm not sure it's even worth it because if the devs don't get it exactly right the first time, everyone will whine on the second pass.

All this stuff about new players will just leave and casuals will just leave is BS because they didn't leave in the 8 years where their power was even less than now. In fact, we had MORE players then.

The unbalancing started back in U14 MotU with the introduction of EDs. Instead of letting toons gain power thru epic levels. what we faced the last four years, with each and every enhancement pass, was even more power creep. Making barb self healing *shakes head*. Nothing against Barbs. This were all strategic decisions by the devs. Now takign them back, after Pandoras Box is already open, what do they / you expect? That there is much rejoicing?

And take a close look at all the new quests since Shadowfell expansion. Epic Elite they are geared for the best of the best. And the best of the best are still complaining its too easy. What will change with the nerf? The best of the best will adapt and build their next FOTM build, going back on top and complaining DDO is too easy. And all other players will further fall behind in the power curve. And be frustrated that their builds (which woul dbe considered "orchid" by the power gamers) do not perform.

Metagaming already is the single most important factor to build a successful build, at least for EE. The new nerf/bug fix pass will not help with that.

I would never ever call any player "immature", not even those posting on the other forum. There simply is no propper balancing in DDO, at least not w/o scrapping all the enhancement passes and the EDs and going back to the drawboard. And that will not happen, let´s get over this. So there always will be players cookiecutting their builds and others trying to survive with what suits them best.

By the way, since you mentioned it, 8 years ago we were at what, cap 14? it´s much easier to balance for a small level range. And guess what, before ddo got much easier, opened up and went f2p, the game was neraly dead. It was going forward or closing. Want back into those times? Me not!

Why do this? Just because the warlock class does really well in heroic levels does not mean they dominate in the epic levels.
Did you ever consider that the people dominating with warlock class are 10+ past lives are the ones that make it look like the warlock is OP when it is not? What you did just now is took my 50.00 plus dollars I invested into this Fey warlock and made it useless. I am not VIP but I came out of a lot of money to play this toon and not I am not even effective in epic levels thanks to you. Do you not even consider the feelings of us pure toon players? Now I am going to have to multi class this toon to even be able to do damage as a Fey Warlock. I am playing a Fey and compared to the other warlocks, Fey was already lower than the others. Now you made fey a gimp class. Look at the numbers for yourselves and you tell my Fey got a fair shake out of this. Fey was low enough already and should not have been touched. Note: all things considered nothing should be able to out DPS Warlocks, Mages or Sorcerers thus the reason they are called nukes.

Warlock is still massvely OP, but not because of DPS. The only thing that does not need "fixing" in Warlock is DPS. What needs fixing is the tremendous advantage a WL (and WL splash!!!) gains thru ES tier 5 "Shining Through". That is the worst case of OP I have seen in DDO for years, and that includes the Pally before the 1st Holy Sword nerf. On a second thought, if WL is still perceived too OP after that fix, make blasts (not base blast, but all else, like chain blast...) cost SP. Problem solved. WL needs an up on DPS in epic levels, by the way. Any chance we get Draconic and Magister scale WL levels too?

They are nerfing paladins because exploiters builds take advantage of a few levels of it. Instead of fixing those, they just nerf paladin altogether.
If they seek balance, they should quit the joke on 150/120/100% on warlocks. They still can erase the universe with a cleave.

Not only that. You can more often than not see a warlock just sitting there cleaving while a melee boss bashes away for no damage at all.
So, while my S&B paladin takes a lot of damage, some of which is mitigated by hardly earned prr/mrr (yeah, armor alone won't give you enough mitigation to stay toe to toe with EE footsoldiers. you need ap and sacrifice gear slots) and slowly mows down enemies one by one, the mighty warlock sits there unhindered and undamaged cleaving-happy with 150/120/100% or the heck% away.

I just despise the current implementation of warlocks. I, as a premium, purchased it to try (along with all other classes, races and packs), but refuse to play it. And even avoid to group with them because even a 1st life warlocks takes away all the fun and the merit of my hard-earned gear through 32 lives.

/rantoff

I can see you have not been playing WL. Otherwise you would know that one single enhancement gives the WL that perceived OPedness you are ranting about. Any WL splash of at least 5 levels can take that enhancement at lv. 12 total. and ever there after is OP to the worst! The enhancement is named "Shining Through" and gives Con x 12 temporary hit points to the toon. You gain 25% healing amp on top of that for 20 seconds and the cooldown is just 30 seconds.

Take away exactly that one single enhancement, or even better, make it only give Con x 6 and make the cooldown at least one minute (better 2), and you will see how fast all the WL and WL splashes will vanish from EE or any content above lv. 12.

Pure WL needs some help until lv. 4. With lv. 4 WL gains enough power to do serious damage in heroic content. The WL reaches the damage maximum at lv. 20, and if EDs are available becomes nearly godlike powerful at that level. The Warlock does not gain more inherent blast DPS ever there after, with the exception of taking epic feats that give some few points of damage more. The WL power curve flattens significantly where most other builds quite finely get significantly more power - during epic levels. At lv. 28 the Warlock is barely on par with most medicore builds and clearly sub par compared to Swash, Pally, Barb and most fotm and exploiter builds.

So, WL is OP from lv. 4 onwards, gets a significant power boost at lv. 12 (Shining Through) and another upon reaching EDs on lv. 20. The WL maxes out at lv. 20, his power curve flattens out thereafter and upon reaching lv. 28 and end game, the WL is comparable to most other builds and even lags behind the EE power builds. Any build can take on 5 or 6 level of WL and profit from Shining Through.

What would be needed to do? In heroics, the DPS from a WL needs some tone down. A possible solution would be to make Blasts cost SP. That would keep WLs off too much DPS in heroic content. The Shining Through enhancement needs a complete nerf on both output and cooldown. Leave the current DPS intact, do the other nerfs. You will see how much the WL looses where it counts most: Heroic levels and early epics.

And for those telling me I do not play WL - I have played WL now several times, from 1 to 28. Yes, I know exactly what WL is capable and what not. WL is OP. But it´s not DPS.

[phalaeo2]

They are nerfing paladins because exploiters builds take advantage of a few levels of it. Instead of fixing those, they just nerf paladin altogether.

/rantoff

Please clarify what is exploiting about taking 2 levels Pally? Are people who take 1-2 levels Rogue exploiting? What about 2 levels Monk?

I think you and I have a different definition of "exploit".

[jrhuff]

So, you are telling us that this will BALANCE the game for the players, but it looks like the fighters will be the new class to make. After the changes people will now want to just make fighters instead of other classes. I played THF barbarian for about a year, that is about how long it takes me to TR. I ETR'ed into a TWF barbarian, and really enjoyed it. I didn't feel overpowered compared to when I played THF, I just had fun playing the game. And I was planning on TR'ing into a TWF again, so now I am not sure what I am planning on doing now. I feel like I am going to lose a lot of survivability with the changes to PRR and MRR. Fortunately, I still have my black scale robe, I guess I need to take a couple of levels of rogue and about 18 of fighter. I hate the idea of multi-classing, and I haven't even done it for the 6 years I have been playing.