The Balance Change post

[unbongwah]

Conclusion - Manyshot for burst damage will be much less DPS than normal melee...

Did you have any Doubleshot bonuses on your Lama test toon? Remember that the DS penalty is going away, so it will now be vital to add those to any "real" archer builds, as well as the usual feats etc.

In any case, the goal all along has been to nerf burst DPS while buffing sustained DPS for archers to compensate. We know that got the nerf part right; let's hope the buff part works too...

[blerkington]

Conclusion - Manyshot for burst damage will be much less DPS than normal melee...

Hi,

The changes to manyshot are a real kick for the classic ranger who both melees and uses their bow, among others.

It's quite priceless that the change is being introduced in the middle of the ranger pass, making some ranger builds considerably less effective and less enjoyable to play. Why go to the trouble of developing a new enhancement tree for hybrid melee/ranged builds, only to so heavily nerf the core feat around which that style is built?

I'm hoping that someone will see sense on this after it goes live and more people become aware of the effect of the change. There have already been a number of good proposals to allow manyshot to retain its bursty goodness without that being at the expense of doubleshot the rest of the time, while also not boosting bow combat disproportionately.

The key is allowing people to build one way or another, and that is where the current proposal to change manyshot is so lacking. We have developers patting themselves on the back for dealing with the problem of very uneven DPS during the full two minute cycle for an archer, but their solution has damaged two other perfectly legitimate build types.

What was very revealing about the manyshot discussion is how it suddenly became about how adrenaline recharge in FoTW worked once a decent number of people were starting to voice their concerns about changes. That worked very well, both as a threat to make players ease off complaining and a distraction from the details of the discussion.

I think the developers are unable to understand the fact that not all archers play in Fury, and that feats which are common to all archers should not be balanced on the assumption that they do. Same issue with slaying arrow; not a particularly powerful ability at all if outside of Fury, but quite powerful within it.

If, even now that the damage output for melees has increased so much, they still think adrenaline works too well with manyshot and slayer arrows, then perhaps they should be looking at rebalancing how that part of FoTW works rather than everything else.

Or then again don't; and just leave it as it is, so we have the choice of building melees who are also occasional bow users, full-time archers who build for burst, and constant damage output archers too.

Their laziness of approach has really harmful consequences for two popular builds types, and there is absolutely no reason for it to be that way when other, better solutions are available.

Thanks.

[Vellrad]

Ugh, so turbine is really unable to change competence bonus non doubling, so they need to change IC and named weapons, while already having non-stacking Ravager crit range that works exactly how they want all the other crit range bonuses work in game...
You know how it sounds?

[Hipparan]

Thoughts on named weapons and threat range:

~ We definitely do not, going forward, want Improved Critical to affect any bonuses to threat range for named weapons.

~ We are also sensitive to players who don't want to see existing weapon lose relative power.

We will be increasing the threat range of the following named weapons. I am including the new threat range which is increased to compensate for the loss of improved critical. Keep in mind that this will be on top of the threat range Improved Critical adds for weapon type, so with that feat Epic Sword of Shadows, as an example, would have a threat range of 6 and become 15-20.

I apologize for the short hand in listing the threat range - that number represents the base range of the weapon and should be increased enough to match the previous range with Improved Critical. As a side effect this will make some weapons more powerful if your character does not have Improved Critical.

Named Item: Base Threat Range

....

Fossil: 3

....

(I believe we have all named items with a base threat range higher than their weapon type with this list.)

Sev~

Hold on, what is Fossil? As an amateur paleontologist I must know!

[Walking_Ride]

Some follow up news from the Lamannia thread:

~ Two Weapon Fighting Paladins are slightly behind where we want them in our Lamannia tests and in the player testing we've seen. We plan to boost them by allowing Holy Sword to work with non-shield off hand attacks. With the Improved Critical bug fixed this extra off hand damage will no longer increase the DPS of those builds too far.

Sev~

Will that be included in tomorrows update 28 patch 1 ? Or do i have to wait for the next update, so that i can properly play my twf paladin again ?

[Dirtywyrm]

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.
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.




So as a pure fighter build that is effective even in high level content due to feat selection, I'm now going to have to forgo my competence to avoid being squishy by selecting a pile of armor mastery feats? I thought you guys were going to improve fighters, not make them weaker. Taking away defense and critical hits, adding ungodly amounts of feat selections just to mitigate the nerf bat... What's wrong with you? I have no complaints about the previous barb, paly, bard, or warlock power levels. I understand that puts me in the minority. But please stop killing my fighter.

[Eth]

Hold on, what is Fossil? As an amateur paleontologist I must know!

Never heard of that weapon either.

What is this? I MUST KNOW!

[EllisDee37]

~ 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.

Where did we land on this for Thursday? Is my sickle swashbuckler screwed?

Also, related: Why would you require Improved Crit to normalize the weapons? What about keen/impact weapons? Aren't they valid choices?

[Ayseifn]

Any chance of allowing more than 100 Doublestrike to be meaningful? Right now it's possible to build for a lot more than 100% and with more gear increasing that stat coming out over time it'll just get easier and easier and be possible on more and more builds.

So as a pure fighter build that is effective even in high level content due to feat selection, I'm now going to have to forgo my competence to avoid being squishy by selecting a pile of armor mastery feats? I thought you guys were going to improve fighters, not make them weaker. Taking away defense and critical hits, adding ungodly amounts of feat selections just to mitigate the nerf bat... What's wrong with you? I have no complaints about the previous barb, paly, bard, or warlock power levels. I understand that puts me in the minority. But please stop killing my fighter.

The fighter pass will still happen, this is just a bone thrown to fighters in the interim. Previously fighters(mainly) got the changes to weapon spec/focus feats as well as the Vanguard tree and whatever else while the fighter pass was never mentioned as being cancelled.

[Rilok]

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.)


Sev~

Have not tested this personally but this seems like a different ability than the name implies altogether, Manyshot not you might get 3 if you are built well for double shot and are lucky. It does seem like it will help sustain DPS by leaving double shot chance debuff out of the equation but in the same stroke we go from 4 arrows per shot to "Maybe 3", might as well call it "Could get triple shot, maybe" I understand balance is trying to be achieved but how about trying something to bring it back closer to D&D, Possibly along the lines of making it a 2,3,4 shot (based on BAB as it currently is) burst on a 10-12 second cooldown. Test it out on cool down time and adjust on test server.

Edit: for concerns about FoTW refilling adrenaline......put all projectiles from this cooldwn based single volley on 1 attack roll so it can only proc once per Manyshot volley. (not sure how possible this is in comparison to interferring with standard double shot procs, but tossing it out there) If need be consider all the damage as consolidated but multiplied by number of intended projectiles, taking added effects into account.

[raeslys]

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.

Uhmm, I think that is not a good idea for balancing the game, it's hard to survive in EE in some quest, some mob have a heavy damage in aoe spells, if mrr you have to look for boulds with evation and high reflex, this chage do it that the game lose variety of choice (IMOO), any want do it a melle dps to just get beaten.

And the feat...This is a garbage, you hava spend 4 feats for get 30 prr/mrr, may with 2 feat of 15 prr/merr each can be best option and universal, not only for fighters, you forget paladin tanks (same for tactical feat, a good idea but too many feats).

[lyrecono]

First of all many thanks to Sev and other developers for laying out these proposals in advance, with reasoning. This has stimulated me to make my first foray onto a forum. I apologise that only read about one-third of the posts before commenting; this is because I realised that more were being added faster than I was reading them…
Overall I approve of the changes and critique of specific details below should be read in that light.

Snipped

Armour: (1) Definitely need to cut back on benefit, but is this going too far? I’d retain a little MRR. (2) Is the problem really with [heavy] armour generally or specifically with Shadow Plate, which seems to me grossly over-effective relative to all other options (including other heavy armours). Probably a bit of both. (3) Also, I do not like the change to an even more BAB-based formula: (i) effectiveness should be based on proficiency; BAB is an unrelated metric to do with hit chance. It is also related to level whereas PRR/MRR are percentage reductions and do not need to scale numerically with level (ii) the goal, I assume, is to reduce the inclination of ‘light/no armour classes” to wear medium/heavy armour. However such classes have to make a big investment – multiple feats and/or enhancements, ASF, etc to get there. If you took away the big prize of Shadow Plate I think a modest reduction in PRR and a larger reduction in MRR would do the job. The present proposal heavily penalises Eldritch Knights and similar and I think likely to reduce build diversity by enforcing a “follow your class stereotype” build straitjacket.

snipped

Dps for tanks: tanks don’t (necessarily) need more dps they need one or more of (i) better party tactics; (ii) reduced dps for others (provided in part by the proposed changes); (iii) increased threat; (iv) more dps. I feel that providing more dps would be the worst option as “balance” has to mean a trade-off between desirable features, e.g. defence and offense. High –defense characters (and ability to attack at a distance is a defense…) should have dramatically lower dps than the “glass cannons” just as their defences are dramatically stronger. Of course one could adjust other parameters – in ancient PnP heavy-armour types moved at half the speed of light/no armour…

Armor:
Scaling with BAB is done to make sure you wouldn't get a huge bonus at level 1 but grew into it as you level up, the idea is sound.
Too bad they choose bab over, for example level, because it shoehorns certain classes into certain roles, a fighter with a bow is now better protected then a ranger
The other problem i have with the changes is, fighter and paladin aren't the only ones affected, i see plenty of barbs, clerics, wizards and druids in platemail, they're gone be screwed over by this.

DPS for tanks
1, doesn't work, many don't use voice chat let alone speak the same language well enough, assuming their ego even allows for it. see *1 for more on this
2, that won't go over well, taking mobs down on the lv 30EE quests crossed tedious a long time ago and is bordering boring atm
3, Wouldn't take this in a 1000 years, why would i take an enh that emulates dps for that 1 boss in that 1 raid 5 years ago? (e.g. vod/tod)
4, The game was fine as it was before the changes. When i pug, my main barb takes all the agro because the sword and board pally only has 2 past lives and is working on a arcane destiny.
When i raid with channel members i have to work very hard to pull the agro of the tank because his is fully build tank is at the peak of his capabilities. I think this is why many tanks fail today, they're up against people who have put in the effort in building, gearing and playing their dps toons.
5, (your "heavy armor users should move slower" comment), the dev's tried that with the defensive stances, it failed because they were to slow to reach the mob to grab agro before it died.

*1 What i get from you and some other vocal minorities is that apparently have to go back to the classical party, a tank, a healer, a trapper and a glass cannon (sorc/wiz).
I'm really sorry, but ddo isn't pen and paper, we face far more monsters, we get poisoned/diseased/cursed/damaged on a rate no cleric can keep up with, we move far faster then pnp because we don't have 8 hours to emulate snails going through a dungeon, we face more monsters then a sorcs spell points could ever handle, etc.
I keep hearing the excuse of "group tactics", how many groups do you see running with a cleric of fvs? how many of those enjoy babysitting the group? How many of those are competently enough to do that job?
How long is it ok to wait for a healer? how long until people log out to play another game? aren't these "party tactics" ideas a bit selfish?

All in all, all the changes to bring it back to that will be detrimental to the game, i have played games like that, they were grind fests, doing 2 dungeons a day isn't on my wishlist thank you very much.
If people want to play like that, find people that like that too and go play like that, stop forcing people to play it your way

[Vanhooger]

Not enough, lost interest in this game, playing something else atm.

[Propane]

Did you have any Doubleshot bonuses on your Lama test toon? Remember that the DS penalty is going away, so it will now be vital to add those to any "real" archer builds, as well as the usual feats etc.

In any case, the goal all along has been to nerf burst DPS while buffing sustained DPS for archers to compensate. We know that got the nerf part right; let's hope the buff part works too...

I had some - have a screen shot at home (doesn't help me now...) maybe 30% or so....

I will miss the FUN of gabbing the bow for Manyshot during the hard fights for a burst of DPS, but the numbers just don't work out...

When I am 90% dead or for a mob on a perch - Manyshot will be ok - but no longer my go to FUN button....



The new system for ManyShot seems... clunky... the extra arrow from time to time throughs off the flow...

I much rather have seen a simple / clean speed increase... instead of a double shot %, just ratchet up the speed, faster and faster... even for manyshot.. make it fast enough to get the same number of arrows fired in the time allowed....

I wonder if 1 arrow at a time moving stupid fast is better than 2 or 3 arrows moving at "normal" speed...

[Kompera_Oberon]

One big benefit of fighters is the abundance of feats so they can easily take these feats. Clerics, paladins are more feat starved so they can't take some of these feats without sacrificing something other important.

This is very much a commonly assumed fallacy.

Fighters have more Feats as their only class ability. They get a total of 11 from 1-20, plus what I'll call the stock 7 that everyone gets for being alive. That's a total of 18.

A Paladin gets the stock 7, plus 2 Deity based Feats. And then they get 11 other class based abilities. That's a total of 20.

You can argue the relative value of things, but numerically Paladins have more class abilities than Fighters. And can cast spells (counted as 1 class ability) and Lay on Hands (also counted as 1 class ability) which add a huge amount of utility plus self-healing to the class.

Calling the Fighter's class ability to buy 18 things from the very limited list of all things Feats "an abundance" is really stretching things. And removing a large amount of PRR from armor and then offering Fighters the sweet, sweet ability (that's sarcasm, in case the text didn't convey it properly) to be taxed 4 Feats just to get back to where they were is laughable game design. It only severs to further erode the Fighter's sole class ability by reducing the amount of flexible Feat options by 4.

Severlin mentioned that fighters get so many feats that they many times are forced to take less than desirable choices.

There's a solution to that, and it doesn't involve creating Fighter-only Feats which are simply a tax on the Fighter's Feat total. Fix the Feat list! It was imported almost directly from PnP, where even there there were a great number of Feats which no one ever took because they were simply sub-standard compared to other Feats.

These are the things which a "Balance pass" should be addressing. The Feat list, the weapon list, and other things which will see player build diversity grow rather than shrink.

[elvesunited]

The biggest problem with the PPR and MRR drops is that they are going to hit the weaker characters the hardest. MRR and PRR are diminishing returns. The more points you put into them the less benefit each additional point provides. So paladins and fighters will be weakened. But the real damage will go to low hp builds for whom the PPR and MRR from armor is the lion's share of thier damage mitigation. Instead of improving balance this change actual weakens balance.

The damage reduction to warlock doesn't bug my warlock as much as the idea that Special Abilities under Warlock may soon be subject to Arcane Spell Failure. One is balancing DPS which causes grumbles but no real gameplay changes. The other completely disrupts a build making much hard won bound to character equipment useless.

Manyshot and Thousand star changes will lower dps. Though it doesn't look too bad. And even I who took advantage of it thinks they needed to do something about manyshot adrenaline slayer arrow. Really I'm more concerned about potential Arcane Archer changes and the possibility that slayer arrow might be rendered from a must have to a not worth the AP.

[karatemack]

Doubleshot Pass

Double the amount of doubleshot granted by all existing sources. Then increase the number of arrows possible from doubleshot to 4.

[Thrudh]

Not enough, lost interest in this game, playing something else atm.

I'm betting your sig has more to do with you losing interest in this game than these changes

Triple Heroic & Epic completionist. Eroic : 39/39 - Epic : 34/36 - Iconic : 12/12.

I'd be bored and off-playing another game too, if I had zerged through all those lives, and found at the end, no quest challenges me anymore, and there's not much to do at end-game anyway.

[Gideon999]

On the PRR/MRR thing, I agree with what it seems 90% of the people here said :

Too big a swing with the bat. I am just not getting a pure fighter up to epics, and have found that with HEAVY investment in defense I can get to the point where I can tank EH and some EE content, though with horrible DPS. Now I am going to have to spend 4 feats I am using on DPS and tactical feats (which make fighters interesting in my opinion) to get that same level of functionality back, or rather just to live long enough to hit something.

This seems like a heck of a big hit to me. Right now, spells kick my tail all over the place (duo'd the cultess in front of the deathwyrms raid door to flag for that raid and literally had to kill her with a throwing axe since her cone spells were hitting me for 4-500 damage. And thats the explorer zone, not even a proper quest. And thats with about 75MRR, greater resists and ship buffs along with the shiradi skill that gives 15% absorption. With no MRR that damage would be closer to 750 or so, or 1000 on the high side which to me is a almost a one hit kill. And that boss has 30,000 or so HP. So yeah, took a LONG time to kill her and my party make (a lightning sorc) ran out of mana and SP pots that she was literally using echoes of power to fuel her lightning bolt SLA as her only attack.

I get that that is a level 29 raid zone, so it should be tougher than average, but that still puts it close to EH and EE level 20-23 quests as far as difficulty, which isn't too far off where I am now.

I implore you to rethink this change at least. Leave the PRR scaling, that's not such a big deal I think, and actually makes some fluff sense in that a fighter would get better with his armour as he gets more experience, but the MRR bit is essential, and mitigating that damage with nothing but 30-50 points of resist spells and ship buffs does not help much.

[Kompera_Oberon]

The fighter pass will still happen, this is just a bone thrown to fighters in the interim. Previously fighters(mainly) got the changes to weapon spec/focus feats as well as the Vanguard tree and whatever else while the fighter pass was never mentioned as being cancelled.

So you agree with this methodology of "We're going to break it now, and we promise to change it again later, which may or may not fix it. At some unscheduled far future date. That date may or may not ever come to pass, because we tend to get distracted with other pet projects (like this one which broke it!) which always get jumped to the front of the line."

Is that what you're saying?