The Balance Change post

[EllisDee37]

I think I'm going to go pull out all of my enhance-crit-range named weapons (eg: Carnifex, Whirlwind, etc...) from my various TR caches just to make sure they don't miss out on an auto-update tomorrow morning.

[nibel]

I think I'm going to go pull out all of my enhance-crit-range named weapons (eg: Carnifex, Whirlwind, etc...) from my various TR caches just to make sure they don't miss out on an auto-update tomorrow morning.

I don't think it will be necessary. It is not the weapons themselves that are being changed, but a feat. That only requires you to log in to change.

[Ayseifn]

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?

I'm of the belief that heavy armour was too strong and needed a global nerf. Wizards and sorcs were wearing it, rogues were wearing it, barbarians were wearing it, etc. Maybe they went too far and HA needs a bit of a buff to balance it but it did need a nerf.

When we have a better baseline for what HA is it'll be easier to do the fighter pass as there'll be a balanced standard for it that won't likely change and no Sword of Damocles dangling over your head like paladin nerfs have been ever since their pass.

[Runerock]

Heading toward 1500 posts. You can do it!

[EllisDee37]

I don't think it will be necessary. It is not the weapons themselves that are being changed, but a feat. That only requires you to log in to change.

The weapons themselves are being changed. Specifically, named weapons with greater than normal crit range are getting more base crit range so that they add up to the same profile they have now on live after taking improved critical. Here's the list.

That's why I said I think I'm going to pull out any weapon from that list I have in any tr cache.

(A few are missing from that list, and were pointed out later in the thread. Hopefully the missing ones got added.)

[elvesunited]

I'm of the belief that heavy armour was too strong and needed a global nerf. Wizards and sorcs were wearing it, rogues were wearing it, barbarians were wearing it, etc. Maybe they went too far and HA needs a bit of a buff to balance it but it did need a nerf.

When we have a better baseline for what HA is it'll be easier to do the fighter pass as there'll be a balanced standard for it that won't likely change and no Sword of Damocles dangling over your head like paladin nerfs have been ever since their pass.

Wizards, Sorcerors, and Rogues were wearing it because they were sick of being "one shot"'d by enemy spellcasters. Builds evolve to counter the opposition. PPR and MMR helped make some low hp builds more viable and resulted in more variety. Now there will be less.

[Kompera_Oberon]

I'm of the belief that heavy armour was too strong and needed a global nerf. Wizards and sorcs were wearing it, rogues were wearing it, barbarians were wearing it, etc. Maybe they went too far and HA needs a bit of a buff to balance it but it did need a nerf.

The problem with a global change is that when you paint with such a broad brush you're bound to run into unintended consequences. To impact things which were in no way the target of or the reason for the changes in the first place.

Here are Severlin's own words on the intent of this "balance pass":

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.

With that as an intent, you'd expect that classes which were delivering greater melee damage than a Swashbuckler would have that capability reduced, and classes which were delivering less melee damage than a Swashbuckler would have that capability either unchanged or increased. But this isn't what is happening at all.

To give a personal example, and with the caveat that my objection to these changes is not just all about me, my main is a L20 Cleric in a Warpriest spec. Yes, all 20 levels in Cleric. Its sole distinguishing factor is survivability, as with its 136 PRR and 64 MRR at the level cap it could withstand the attention of a raid monster or a critter in an EE dungeon long enough for the DPS delivery characters to either take the aggro or kill the monster.

I don't think anyone would say that my build is "overperforming," over powered, or whatever. And yet this patch is going to hurt my character's performance. It will lose 30 MRR and I think about the same in PRR. Its ability to take a few hits from a raid mob or an EE mob will go down significantly. And of course it will be taking a lot more damage from spells as well. The rather pitiful DPS it deals is also going to go down. And if you believe Severlin's own words on the subject none of this was intended at all, but it's still going to happen.

Why? Because the devs can't be bothered to address the actual issues at hand and target their changes to address their own stated intent for the changes. Instead they have decided to shake up the entire box of puzzle pieces and see if a new picture might magically appear to solve the problems they seem to be incapable of solving by examining each puzzle piece individually and fixing them as needed.

[nibel]

The weapons themselves are being changed. Specifically, named weapons with greater than normal crit range are getting more base crit range so that they add up to the same profile they have now on live after taking improved critical. Here's the list.

Oh, thanks. I didn't saw that list.

[Clemeit]

~ 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.

"Holy Sword no longer affects off-hand, and it no longer works on throwing weapons!"
*1 day later*
"Holy sword actually will affect throwing weapons again."
*1 day later*
"Ah screw it, we'll make it work with off-hand weapons again. Just not shields."

So.... why don't you just make it work with shields again and we can all go home.

======

Fighters... yeah. I'm totally going to give up EIGHT FEAT SELECTIONS to get my PRR back to where it already was and gain a little more stunning blow DC that won't help me in epics anyways.
If those were condensed down into, say, 2 feats granting 15 PRR/MRR each, and 2 feats granting +10 Tactical DC each, then yeah, I mean I might be interested.

======

Why are we pounding PRR into the ground with the nerf bat? I ran EE Ghosts of Perdition the other day and was getting pounded by non-champion mobs hitting me for 350-450 per hit! This was with 212 PRR and 60 DR mind you... I died nearly instantly. But yeah, I mean I guess we should lower player's PRR.

On the other hand... this is an end-game EE quest, so I was pretty happy to see that even such a heavily geared toon couldn't just run through with his eyes closed. It's a toss up here!

======

Many of the other changes look nice. I see that there are some balancing issues that need to be addressed, but this update seems very rushed for something that is so terribly important.

As for the 8 hour down-time tomorrow... well... at least it's more realistic then in the past when we were promised 3 hour down-times that turned out to be 6-8 hours. But wow that's still a long down-time as compared to other games; some of which don't even need to go down to update.


It's not all bad though! I like DDO, and I think I speak for quite the majority when I say that a single balancing pass such as this won't make me stop playing. I might throw down my toys for a little while as I sit in the corner and pout, but I'll be back. I appreciate all the hard work the developers put into this game, and I loop forward for what they have to offer in the future.

P.S. A +20 heart sitting in my inventory would make me forget all about that down-time...

[FlaviusMaximus]

...Epic Sword of Shadows: 4
Sireth: 5...

Good changes.

Also, glad you guys are cutting back on the crit ranges in general. Thanks for listening to player feedback.

[nibel]

Pinion made the list and I don't see too much of a difference when I look closely at these 2 weapons side by side:

Standard crossbow is 19-20/x2. Needle is 19-20/x3.
Standard longbow is 20/x3. Pinions is 19-20/x3 (now 18-20/x3).

Both versions with Improved Critical are 17-20/x3.

[Ayseifn]

Any chance of buffing Divine Grace or at least dropping Divine Might to tier 1 with 1/1/1 progression?

With this change I can just go 18 whatever for the 18 core ability, 1 monk, 1 FvS and get +4 to all saves, +3 save vs magic, and Divine Might cheaper than getting just Divine Might on a /2 paladin(6 AP vs 11 AP). Also don't need to twist in turn undead, can pick up metamagics and also get a monk feat. Basically instead of /2 paladin becoming weaker instead I just don't see the point of it at all any more, at least for melees.

The problem with a global change is that when you paint with such a broad brush you're bound to run into unintended consequences. To impact things which were in no way the target of or the reason for the changes in the first place.

Here are Severlin's own words on the intent of this "balance pass":


With that as an intent, you'd expect that classes which were delivering greater melee damage than a Swashbuckler would have that capability reduced, and classes which were delivering less melee damage than a Swashbuckler would have that capability either unchanged or increased. But this isn't what is happening at all.

To give a personal example, and with the caveat that my objection to these changes is not just all about me, my main is a L20 Cleric in a Warpriest spec. Yes, all 20 levels in Cleric. Its sole distinguishing factor is survivability, as with its 136 PRR and 64 MRR at the level cap it could withstand the attention of a raid monster or a critter in an EE dungeon long enough for the DPS delivery characters to either take the aggro or kill the monster.

I don't think anyone would say that my build is "overperforming," over powered, or whatever. And yet this patch is going to hurt my character's performance. It will lose 30 MRR and I think about the same in PRR. Its ability to take a few hits from a raid mob or an EE mob will go down significantly. And of course it will be taking a lot more damage from spells as well. The rather pitiful DPS it deals is also going to go down. And if you believe Severlin's own words on the subject none of this was intended at all, but it's still going to happen.

Why? Because the devs can't be bothered to address the actual issues at hand and target their changes to address their own stated intent for the changes. Instead they have decided to shake up the entire box of puzzle pieces and see if a new picture might magically appear to solve the problems they seem to be incapable of solving by examining each puzzle piece individually and fixing them as needed.

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.

That's the issue at hand, HA proficiency offered so much for so little investment. You could even ignore taking the proficiency feat for a while too and still get a lot of the benefits and no downsides on certain builds.

I'm sure when clerics get their pass they'll have a buff to their preferred armour type(heavy) just like every class has so far, it's a similar issue with punchy monks. They'll have to take the nerf and wait til their pass before things get better, and just like monks the devs are probably reluctant to make changes to the cleric tree until they can do it all in one pass lest they have to nerf the change they just made here.

Oh and paladins and fighters* are also losing 30 PRR/MRR too, and I wouldn't call pure fighter nor certain paladin builds over performing either.

Do you have any better ideas to fix issue this other than just not nerfing it until the cleric/fighter passes though? I'm struggling to see any way to do it, tie the MRR and maybe PRR bonus to pally/fighter/cleric levels and it's still almost zero investment for those characters, tie it to a particular save and then you'd have some ridiculous low hanging exploitable fruit. BAB, a certain skill, and almost everything I can think of wont really work to make it equitable to what evasion has with its AP, dex/int and/or cha investment as well as the associated gear on a d20 roll instead of always on mitigation.

*yes they can claw back the PRR, still a big nerf and now they need to invest build points in the form of feats to get it where it was.

[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 todays update 28 patch 1 ? Or do i have to wait for the next update, so that i can properly play my twf paladin again ?

[JOTMON]

"Holy Sword no longer affects off-hand, and it no longer works on throwing weapons!"
*1 day later*
"Holy sword actually will affect throwing weapons again."
*1 day later*
"Ah screw it, we'll make it work with off-hand weapons again. Just not shields."

So.... why don't you just make it work with shields again and we can all go home.

~snip~

not throwing weapons, never worked for throwing weapons.. by intent which I still don't understand.
~the fiasco was about bows and TWF and it was resolved another way... so they say...

~snip~
P.S. A +20 heart sitting in my inventory would make me forget all about that down-time...

apparently we are getting coupons for two +5 lesser hearts per account.
~so its great for the one character accounts especially for those that don't need to LR anything because they don't' have paladin and are not affected..
~decent for the single character player who was affected and wants to fix their only toon.
~Good bonus for the multi-boxers who have 12 free accounts because they were intuitive enough to roll up multiple accounts instead of purchasing character slots.
~Its a screw you to players that have purchased and expanded their stables with extra characters and have multiple affected toons.
at the end of the day we will take what we get and ultimately adapt and change.. I see alt accounts in my future instead of account investment..

[PNellesen]

I'm sure when clerics get their pass they'll have a buff to their preferred armour type(heavy) just like every class has so far, it's a similar issue with punchy monks. They'll have to take the nerf and wait til their pass before things get better, and just like monks the devs are probably reluctant to make changes to the cleric tree until they can do it all in one pass lest they have to nerf the change they just made here.

Yeah, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for this so-called "Cleric pass". I've actually enjoyed playing my pures over the past few months, I just have a feeling that's going to change now. Maybe the armor changes won't be as bad as I expect - we'll have to see. It's not like we (or I, at least) had much chance to test them on Lammania in "game-realistic" situations... (sigh)

[Steelstar]

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

Per the release notes:

Holy Sword's effect has been changed to: "While you are enchanted with Holy Sword, any weapons in your hands gain +1 to their Enhancement bonus and +1 Competence Bonus to Critical Threat Range and Critical Damage Multiplier. This does not apply to shields, orbs, or Rune Arms."

[grausherra]

P.S. A +20 heart sitting in my inventory would make me forget all about that down-time...

That would cut into heart sales after they change everything on us, so it isn't happening. Don't forget, you are just a wallet!

[JDCrowell]

That would cut into heart sales after they change everything on us, so it isn't happening. Don't forget, you are just a wallet!

Truth.

New class releases and is highly powerful! The masses spend money to get it!

Turbine: "Sales of the new class have waned, but subscribers are back up. Time to nerf it so they buy hearts in the store!"

Premium classes are now on par with Free classes. Isn't that what everyone wanted? True balance? I'm no fan of Pay to Win or anything, but if I spend money on something, it had better be more powerful and fun than what is offered for free. Just sayin....

[FlyMage]

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

Thanks for the insightful comments. I could quibble – that was my first ever post, so hardly “vocal” – but on the whole I recognise your points; there are divergent views on many of their issues which often come down to how one weighs one factor against another. I’ll just pick up on one point, which is regarding “party tactics”.

For me a tank is a party function, taking aggro. Classically, they need others to kill the monsters in timely fashion, presumably high-dps types. This is a symbiotic relationship. If the high-dps types can handle the aggro themselves (strong defences, good self-healing, whatever) they are self-sufficient and don’t need a tank, the symbiosis then breaks down and the tank feels useless. Conversely if the tank has good dps he/she doesn’t really need the high-dps help (maybe luxury rather than necessity). Recognising the two-way relationship, the high-dps type could (should?) help by, for example, letting the tank grab aggro before wading in and/or spreading their dps out or getting some threat reduction. From a personal perspective – and YMMV – my high-situational-dps-but-squishy assassin tries to do all of these as he really, really doesn’t want aggro so he does everything I can think of to help the tank keep it. Obviously his raw dps suffers a bit – but that’s the point.

Your comments focused on clerics - there are doubtless things that clerics and other casters can do to help – group tactics has many dimensions – but I did not have healbots in mind when I mentioned tactics. On the other hand, I do think that inter-dependency is key to group play and a distinctive feature of D&D. The alternative is to have a mob of self-sufficient individuals running around each doing their own thing, albeit perhaps in the same general vicinity. That’s OK too, and I recognise that some prefer to play that way, however I’d prefer that the extra effort required for coordination provided a return in superior overall performance (though not so much that you HAD to do it - I certainly don't want to force anyone down one particular path, but I do think you need some such benefit in order to provide a situation where more party-oriented and synergistic (vs solo) roles can thrive, or at least survive). That’s not quite harking back to the classical PnP party, though I can see it could look like that. Incidentally, another distinctive role feature in ancient PnP (I only played up to 2nd edition) was that aoe attacks were the exclusive province of caster – all weapons were exclusively single-target. The proliferation of aoe or multi-target weapon effects is one of many aspects that has diminished the role of offensive casters (plenty more to say on that but probably off-topic here).

[Arekane]

(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~

I don't really think you thought anything out correctly. You need to not put these patches out like this but instead sit down and figure out where you want the balance to be at and then release it in one patch.

What you have done to warlock was stated in another post, you only put it out to increase revenue and took no consideration to the game balance.

You have to look at the game itself as a whole not parts and pieces just to temporarily make complainers happy. Go back to the basics of D&D and set it so that no matter what, the way a person builds their character is up to them and can make it weak or powerful.

I have a few Warlocks but I made them partially overpowered in order to solo if needed but not too much as to take over in a group. If people are complaining about over powered characters then they need to either group with like minded or readjust their game play.

I think the developers need to sit back and (on paper) start over to get everything balanced to their satisfaction and then bring it to the community for possible adjustments. Then release it in the test environment (if needed offer incentives for testing).

As it stands this game is starting to become like others (that basically went down the drain) in the way that the DEVS are making changes after release for no real reason except to make a few people happy.

I do believe some of the changes may be needed but at the very least consult the whole community first and test for a long time before releasing it so you will make the people who fund your pay either happy or satisfied that you did the best for the game to continue,