The Balance Change post

[KoobTheProud]

Nice changes. Really glad you bit the bullet and went after Improved Critical. That was step one in getting things under control, without which you'd have been whack-a-moleing on specific class abilities forever to try to get things under control.

It was also really nice to see Holy Sword changed to only effect main hand melee weapons. It may still be a bit too powerful and you really need to watch the power creep in general. As a casual player who plays into epic levels I'm always a bit worried that power creep will turn the game into an unplayable mess for me.

[Walking_Ride]

Nice changes. Really glad you bit the bullet and went after Improved Critical. That was step one in getting things under control, without which you'd have been whack-a-moleing on specific class abilities forever to try to get things under control.

It was also really nice to see Holy Sword changed to only effect main hand melee weapons. It may still be a bit too powerful and you really need to watch the power creep in general. As a casual player who plays into epic levels I'm always a bit worried that power creep will turn the game into an unplayable mess for me.

No.

Rangers ?

[JOTMON]

Hm ok so what you call player feedback is actually "how many threads did these 3 people (who don't play the game anymore) post to rant about whatever we did?"

1% is unhappy and screaming, 99% is just fine and currently playing instead of going to the forums

1% are players that are actually impacted by the changes because they are hardcore players that have put in the effort make their toons the best that they can be..
they spend money to get every advantage, like tomes, store pots, run all the endgame content excessively to get every twinked item, they care about what happens in the game because they are invested.
as a result they tend to be passionate and vocal on the forums.

99% are players that haven't got that far so it doesn't matter what happens, they wouldn't notice the changes anyway.
Not really invested, don't really care enough about the game to go to the forums, bounce around various games without any real care as to what happens to the game.

[KoobTheProud]

No.

Rangers ?

This is how Holy Sword works in PnP:

Holy Sword
Evocation [Good]
Level: Pal 4
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Melee weapon touched
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

This spell allows you to channel holy power into your sword, or any other melee weapon you choose. The weapon acts as a +5 holy weapon (+5 enhancement bonus on attack and damage rolls, extra 2d6 damage against evil opponents). It also emits a magic circle against evil effect (as the spell). If the magic circle ends, the sword creates a new one on your turn as a free action. The spell is automatically canceled 1 round after the weapon leaves your hand. You cannot have more than one holy sword at a time.

If this spell is cast on a magic weapon, the powers of the spell supersede any that the weapon normally has, rendering the normal enhancement bonus and powers of the weapon inoperative for the duration of the spell. This spell is not cumulative with bless weapon or any other spell that might modify the weapon in any way.

This spell does not work on artifacts.

Note: A masterwork weapon’s bonus to attack does not stack with an enhancement bonus to attack.

What DDO did with Holy Sword in the Paladin pass was ridiculous to begin with. It was power creep at it's height of impact. Everybody began using 14 Pal/x in a bid to exploit it. It combo'd with Improved Critical, which was already out of control and with Overwhelming Critical in epic levels.

As it stands, once they've made the fix to both IC and Holy Sword it will just be pretty OP, not the thing a third of the melee base has to go to in order to compete.

With the recent pass Rangers are ridiculously OP also. Hopefully they'll fix that somehow if the IC fix doesn't bring things into line. It's true that Paladins are 1 weapon fighters by canon and Rangers are 2 weapon fighters but it still isn't going to be good if they are enormously more powerful than Paladins. They should have a DPS advantage because let's face it Paladins have a big survivability advantage, however if that advantage is too big we'll all run make Rangers because DPS is both offense and defense since the faster you kill something the more likely you will survive.

[Walking_Ride]

This is how Holy Sword works in PnP:



What DDO did with Holy Sword in the Paladin pass was ridiculous to begin with. It was power creep at it's height of impact. Everybody began using 14 Pal/x in a bid to exploit it. It combo'd with Improved Critical, which was already out of control and with Overwhelming Critical in epic levels.

As it stands, once they've made the fix to both IC and Holy Sword it will just be pretty OP, not the thing a third of the melee base has to go to in order to compete.

With the recent pass Rangers are ridiculously OP also. Hopefully they'll fix that somehow if the IC fix doesn't bring things into line. It's true that Paladins are 1 weapon fighters by canon and Rangers are 2 weapon fighters but it still isn't going to be good if they are enormously more powerful than Paladins. They should have a DPS advantage because let's face it Paladins have a big survivability advantage, however if that advantage is too big we'll all run make Rangers because DPS is both offense and defense since the faster you kill something the more likely you will survive.

Ok, lets stick to your pnp even when ddo =/= pnp.

Tell me where rangers get all this in pnp and i will shut up.

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

2. 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...

3. 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 (Advanced Sneak Attack) and +1 critical multiplier (Deflect Arrows) which translates to ~ 26 % dps .

Please tell me. I am all ears.

[slarden]

You're saying that yes, named items will be nerfed.

I'm asking why should named items be nerfed? Carnifex has been an iconic named item in DDO for years and years. It shouldn't be nerfed. None of them should.

It seems to me they can make the change to improved critical without changing keen, but they might be connected under the hood so I have no idea.

I am not sure why they are going on a nerf frenzy really. The timing is very odd.

[EllisDee37]

It seems to me they can make the change to improved critical without changing keen, but they might be connected under the hood so I have no idea.

Well, they have to change the way keen works, otherwise people could circumvent the nerfs by switching to keen weapons.

I would like to see the "base" crit range of the expanded-range named weapons with keen get expanded further so that they remain the same:

Carnifex is a 19-20x3 base weapon with keen resulting in 17-20x3 on live. Make it an 18-20x3 base weapon so after the keen change it remains 17-20x3. Do something similar for the other named keen items with increased crit range. (Tiefling Assassin's Blade comes to mind.)

[slarden]

Well, they have to change the way keen works, otherwise people could circumvent the nerfs by switching to keen weapons.

I would like to see the "base" crit range of the expanded-range named weapons with keen get expanded further so that they remain the same:

Carnifex is a 19-20x3 base weapon with keen resulting in 17-20x3 on live. Make it an 18-20x3 base weapon so after the keen change it remains 17-20x3. Do something similar for the other named keen items with increased crit range. (Tiefling Assassin's Blade comes to mind.)

That is probably a wise thing, but I doubt Turbine will do it for 1 good reason and 1 bad reason.

1) good reason - they are boxed into doing that with new items or people will complain old items are better
2) bad reason - they assume players will get over it

[KoobTheProud]

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

At the moment, with critical effect being the thing that's under scrutiny they might want to look at this if it's the thing giving TWF Rangers a huge edge over THF Paladins with a Greatsword and Holy Sword. I didn't say an edge, because Rangers probably should have an edge given everything else in play, a big edge is what would be the problem. 26% DPS would be a big edge.

[phalaeo]

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...ed-10-15-15%29

So, the balance changes are already instituted on Lama? Why bother saying you care about player input?

[Walking_Ride]

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...ed-10-15-15%29

So, the balance changes are already instituted on Lama? Why bother saying you care about player input?

They don't.

[Walking_Ride]

At the moment, with critical effect being the thing that's under scrutiny they might want to look at this if it's the thing giving TWF Rangers a huge edge over THF Paladins with a Greatsword and Holy Sword. I didn't say an edge, because Rangers probably should have an edge given everything else in play, a big edge is what would be the problem. 26% DPS would be a big edge.

Not just 26 %. They were ahead already by 30% before the nerf to holy sword now. 26% + 30% = 56 %. This is **** HUGE.

[KoobTheProud]

Not just 26 %. They were ahead already by 30% before the nerf to holy sword now. 26% + 30% = 56 %. This is **** HUGE.

They weren't ahead by that before the Ranger pass. They probably weren't ahead at all before the Ranger pass.

Obviously the devs want to avoid a rotating whinefest so I'm guessing they'll look at actual numbers and make sure things don't get too out of hand. Fixing the baselines is an important part of the process. You can't fix class and exploiter problems if the baselines are out of whack because every imbalance that a class-specific ability creates is multiplied by the baselines.

[Walking_Ride]

They weren't ahead by that before the Ranger pass. They probably weren't ahead at all before the Ranger pass.

Obviously the devs want to avoid a rotating whinefest so I'm guessing they'll look at actual numbers and make sure things don't get too out of hand. Fixing the baselines is an important part of the process. You can't fix class and exploiter problems if the baselines are out of whack because every imbalance that a class-specific ability creates is multiplied by the baselines.

They were ahead in terms of dps after the ranger pass when holy sword affected both weapons for obvious reason :


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.


Actually it is more than 30% dps. More like 40-50 %.

Now with the nerf of holy sword not affecting both weapons you can add another 26% for a total of 66%-76%.

[Walking_Ride]

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.

...

~ 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.

...

Sev~

Paladins are not outperforming other classes using the same style by 40% dps. Not even within their own fighting styles. Stop saying that.

Right now rangers do more than double the amount of dps when two weapon fighting.

Barbarians, rogues and bards hell even fighters are doing more dps when two weapon fighting.

Barbarians and bards do more dps when single weapon fighting.

Barbarians do more dps when two handed fighting.


Or was that meant to be - 40 % ? Because right now it is.

Also stop including other styles to give you a reason to nerf the same build within the very same fighting styles.

I am not that stupid to not notice a drop in dps by 30% when testing my twf paladin on lammania. You can't trick me.

[slarden]

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...ed-10-15-15%29

So, the balance changes are already instituted on Lama? Why bother saying you care about player input?

/thread

[Holyavatar]

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~

Nice,im fine with keep bow builds to use fury eternal legitimately...but i think for Shurikens and repeating crossbows its way too op..especially for some shurikens builds,adrenaline is almost infinite..plus arrow of slaying ..btw,did u guys make arrow of slaying work for most ranged weapons by prepense,or its a bug?

[Undying_X]

(Edited: I apologize as I cut and paste the wrong draft into this post... Sev~)

Balance has been once of the top topics of conversation in the community for a while now, and we've said that we need to implement some balance changes, so I am writing this post to discuss our plans. We have seen feedback that players want more insight into our long-term balancing plans, and hear more about why we've been doing the things we've been doing. I've even had some players poke fun at my "over performing" terminology. Let's start by talking about our plans past and present, and how it fits into our long-term goals for balance and itemization.

Game and class balance is an ongoing process. Our goal is to have a more balanced game, but we understand this is a refining process that involves continual re-evaluation. That means if your favorite class is slightly behind (or in front) after a pass, we are fully capable and willing to tweak more. We expect designs will be fine-tuned based on player testing and observations.


***

Our current measure of melee effectiveness is Swashbuckler. Classes like Bard and Paladin have good spells, and strong class abilities. They can expect, if they build entirely towards melee, to deal out good melee DPS. Barbarian, Rogue and Ranger's basic class abilities aren't quite as strong, so characters built entirely toward melee will do a little more DPS. Fighter has very little basic class utility (their competitive advantage is extra feats, and they run out of strong feats) so we have our work cut out for us to balance fighters.

(Our only complaint about Swashbuckler is that Coup de Grace is too easy to pull off for a Bard, and it makes the ability really good for a class with great magical mitigation and Crowd Control. That's fairly low on our list of concerns, though, and Bard builds aren't dominating the playing field. It's more of a design nitpick.)

Swashbuckler was already finished when I came aboard, and it was very popular. We decided that other than some bugs revolving around Single Weapon Fighting that Swashbuckler would be the default level of power we would strive for with our passes. Part of it was that it gave melee equal footing with the Manyshot ranged builds and casters, and part of it was that players felt at the time that melee was not competitive.

The other things that players communicated to us when we started talking about class updates:

• Armored characters were well behind Evasion builds.
• Shields didn't offer enough benefits to offset the loss of DPS.
• On-hit effects were “useless” at end game because they didn't scale.

There were also some design considerations we had:

• There were few important DPS stats except for crit.
• There was no good way to give characters an incremental increase in magic damage mitigation. Saving throws offer binary protection (you either make your Saving Throw or you don't), and are subject to bad luck.
• Spellpower was an excellent tool for gradual increase in power, and melee and ranged had no equivalent.
• There was no good way for abilities to scale into epic levels as a default.
• Temporary hit point abilities were considered "terrible".

Our overall design was to introduce some powerful stats that allowed a solid foundation for incremental power increase for both class balance and itemization. We introduced the melee and ranged equivalent to Spell Power since a similar stat already existed in game. We introduced the magic equivalent to Physical Resistance Rating since a similar stat already existed in-game. We tied on-hit damage scaling to these new stats so on-hit effects would scale into epic levels. We used these new stats to provide a gradual level-based scale for epic levels that could be used to scale various abilities.

When we look at the bigger picture, we've tried to pretty much keep to that design when working through character passes.

Here are our current goals and design challenges:

• 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.
• We have a problem with 14 Paladin hybrids being better than other options due to Holy Sword, yet a severe nerf to Holy Sword would drag down Two Handed Fighting and Vanguard paladins a little too much.
• Ravager barbarians have too much self healing for the DPS they are capable of.
• Basic armor offers too much mitigation for its cost. While we are happy that armored characters are relevant again, we want to cut back on it a bit.

Essentially the changes we've posted above are bug fixes and balance changes that not only continue this plan, but also address concerns, both public and private, of the player base about game balance and difficulty.

In the changes above we have also added a number of fighter only feats that will give them some powerful options for both active mitigation through tactical feats and abilities, and passive mitigation through the use of armor. This is not meant to replace the fighter pass.

We look forward to your feedback.

Sev~

Hey Sev,
I had an honest question about balancing the classes primarily with ranged Artificers. Are they next to get some attention? I'm curious about it because I love the class but around level 15 Artificer starts loosing the power needed to actually compete without respecing into casters. This problem get a worse in epic difficulty quests where they don't have the ability to keep up with the quest scaling with their ranging. And the pet isn't much help either because even though the stats for them are amazing they seem to be also unable to keep up with the scaling and remaining unglitched long enough to actually use the stats

P.S the hireling vendor sells a shiradi champion ranger labeled as 23 but is actually level 24 on the flavor text box

[Sunnie]

I'm not gonna read all the posts in this thread, but here's my criticism of the proposed changes as seen in the OP.

Holy Sword
It really should work for bows if you're a follower of the Silver Flame. It's their FAVORED WEAPON. Otherwise I approve

Two Weapon Fighting line
No longer granting melee power seems unnecessary. Rogues would be hit hardest by this change I believe.

Manyshot + 10k Stars
Using doubleshot and ranged power seems like a good idea to me, but looking at it, I'm having a hard time justifying more than 6 levels of ranger on an archer for the free feats. Doubly so with what I saw about using wisdom in the Arcane Archer tree. Monks are still at the short end of the melee dps stick, but it seems like you're really trying to make them the best bow users in the game.

Improved Critical + Keen
If this only affected basic weapons it would be fine... but it doesn't. It also affects every named weapon in the game. You'll kill off Q-staves again just when they started to get semi-competitive. Sireth, Thunderforged, Bone Crusher will be hit hardest, Elemental Bloom and the Stout Oak Walking Stick will suffer as well.
Some other weapons will become less effective as well, but for q-staff builds, that usually utilise named items to catch up to others in terms of critical damage, the proposed change is effectivelly a death sentence and would reduce build diversity overall.

I am less concerned about changing Keen/Impact in this way, since it will largely affect generic loot, and surely you would go through the named items that have the Keen or Impact afffix and rebalance them. Right? You would do that, right?

Divine Grace
This will actually only serve to make builds with lots of paladin levels more desireable compared to a splash of 2. If you go through with this, remember to rebalance the saves on monster abilities and spells so people who're not paladins with maxed out charisma can make them as well.

[gwonbush]

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...ed-10-15-15%29

So, the balance changes are already instituted on Lama? Why bother saying you care about player input?

They have made a couple changes already from the original post from the feedback in this thread. But yes, the time for theory-crafting in this thread producing any results is over. They want hard testing on Lam (which can't be done since it was brought down, hopefully to be brought back up again for one final round of change testing).