The Balance Change post

[Cleanincubus]

Greetings.
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.
Sev~

The only actual change I see is the Great Crossbow being nerfed by losing a +1 critical threat range. So it will have it's own, very odd, critical threat range of 16-20.

I don't see how this can be considered a "balance" when the rest of the weapons that are still behind those getting the +2 or +3 critical threat range, aren't getting a buff, and the ones staying the same (+2/+3) aren't getting a nerf.

[Severlin]

Great Crossbow is indeed 18-20 and should have been included in the +3 group for Improved Critical. That's a bug that we will correct, though you might not see the fix in the first Lamannia.

Sev~

[Caarb]

Unsubbing

[nibel]

How so,
Kukri is 1d4 @ 18-20x2 and goes to 15-20 x2
Dagger is 1d4 @ 19-20 x2 and goes to 17-20 x2
light mace 1d6 @ 20 x2 goes to 19-20 x2

which weapon do you choose

Kukri is a martial weapon. It is expected to be superior to the simple weapon alternatives. (Light Hammer is an aberration)

Dagger have higher crit range in exchange for a lower weapon damage die. Within the weird mechanic of D&D 3.5 this is supposed to be balanced. It is the same thing between Falchions (2d4, 18-20/x2) and Greatswords (2d6, 19-20/x2).

[WiseFreelancer]

PS:Consider changing the base for manyshot from BAB to character levels, so that pure rangers don't get shafted in favour of tensers/divine might in epic levels

This please. So much this. Or some other measure than BAB. I may be mistaken, but don't ranged attacks already get significant speed bonuses with higher BAB already? It makes Divine Crusader really ridiculous with both a significant boost to manyshot (30-40 doubleshot AND ranged power for 1/6 time) AND the only crit range expansion for ranged in an ED. How is anything supposed to compare? Some LD builds probably will, but LD almost always compares favourably for DPS. I don't see how a nerfed Fury can keep up, and it puts Shiradi/Fatesinger/Shadowdancer even more behind then they were.

[Stoner81]

1. Removing Melee Power from the combat fighting feats is flat out stupid! It is a nice but small boost which adds up over time as you level and take the feats which is still 3 FEATS!
2. Removing MRR from all types of armour is again flat out stupid! You do remember the discussions about magical damage in the first place and now you want to put it back the way it was?
3. TWF is dealing to much DPS? Any data to back that up? TWF was king of the hill for single target until SWF came along. THF is generally the better way to go due the sheer amount of monster spawns in a quest, unless you have the defenses in place to mitigate incoming damage which you are now removing!

There is probably more but I am tired and beyond angry at some of these changes which frankly seem like a waste of Dev time (imho).

Stoner81.

[Vellrad]

Dude. It's the same as it is now.

The crit ranges just won't double from enhancements and EDs into ridiculously large ranges like 7-20 anymore.

And those things were only way to make those 20 x3 weapons usable without beign terrible flavor gimp.

[CheeseMilk]

Within the weird mechanic of D&D 3.5 this is supposed to be balanced.

The other balancing factor in PnP is the gold cost of the item, which is absolutely a non-point in DDO.

[KevinMullins]

+1 BAB per level, the best BAB progression, is reserved for the warrior classes (Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger).
Heavy armor 30 6 + BAB

Old prr would be 56 for a heavy armor at level 20 (Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger).


* Heavy armor now increases Physical Resist Rating by (base attack bonus * 2) and no longer adds Magical Resist Rating

New prr would be 40 for a heavy armor at level 20 (Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger).

I am against changes in PRR. If i figure right lose 16 points of PRR with the changes. After a recent change of a loss of 5 PRR notice a huge leap in damage to my paladin. Soon after last nerf of PRR, tomes +1 and +2 was seen in Mysterious rement exchange. With a loss of 16 points of PRR ( if i figured right ) total unacceptable to be able to play paladin. MRR how much are we losing, if all in one fell swoop than that also is totally unacceptable to play a paladin with that much loss.

Very Sad Day

[Vellrad]

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.

Remove visage of terror (ravager capstone) while you're at it, because it becomes absolutely worthless pile of garbage with blood strength nerf.

[Requiro]

Great communication threat, and great explanations, Sev.
This is what community always need, and always was upset that, they feel like Devs ignore them.

My thoughts below:

Paladin

Acceptable nerf to Holy Sword and Divine Grace
Just one note: With these changes to HS, there is no need for ranged Enhancements Tree (like AA, Mechanic), to put critical profile upgrade on level 18 anymore.

Barbarian

Good changes. I guess lots of Barbarians will be sad...

TWF balance

Good start. But I think that balance to combat styles need a lot more changes.

Doubleshot, Manyshot and 10K stars

Overall good changes. This time I guess that Monkchers will be even more upset then Barbarians.
But I still hope for more improvements to AA Tree (that poor Capstone for example), to compensate lose of Manyshot Burst damage, and overall lose of Total Arrows per 120 second period.

Nerf Rouge Mechanic

I don't know the reason to do so. Are Great Xbow or normal Xbow are better than Repeaters?

Criticals Threat Feat and rest

While I understand, why you guys do this changes, I'm very upset that named weapons with better critical profile get nerf.
Maybe you consider a little revamp for named weapons? They was designed, with old, double effect of Criticals Feat.
Every low level Silver Longbow user will cry with these changes.

Armor Changes

It's logical improvement. But, you guys need add some more way (class depend maybe?) to gain MRR.

New Fighter Feats

Good. Very good. Fighter need some good Feats. This is a good start.

Warlock Nerf

Well... Something is never changed in DDO. And this nerf is just a proof.
Nevertheless that is good start to balance this class.

Additional comment:
I wonder - If you guys already plan changes to Improved Critical Feat and Keen ability, why not change it a little more?
It's a great opportunity to improve garbage weapons and almost useless Keen ability.

One more idea: You can add one more feat line for Fighters, that improve critical profile even further

[Lonnbeimnech]

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.

So how will this effect wolf form druids? Wolf has a crit range of 19-20, but if it falls into the all other weapons category (as I suspect natural fighting/unarmed would) it would only get +1 to crit range instead of the +2 it got before this update.

Or will it depend on the weapon equipped, making all druids only use scimitars for the +3?

[Lonnbeimnech]

+1 BAB per level, the best BAB progression, is reserved for the warrior classes (Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger).
Heavy armor 30 6 + BAB

Old prr would be 56 for a heavy armor at level 20 (Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger).


* Heavy armor now increases Physical Resist Rating by (base attack bonus * 2) and no longer adds Magical Resist Rating

New prr would be 40 for a heavy armor at level 20 (Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger).

I am against changes in PRR. If i figure right lose 16 points of PRR with the changes. After a recent change of a loss of 5 PRR notice a huge leap in damage to my paladin. Soon after last nerf of PRR, tomes +1 and +2 was seen in Mysterious rement exchange. With a loss of 16 points of PRR ( if i figured right ) total unacceptable to be able to play paladin. MRR how much are we losing, if all in one fell swoop than that also is totally unacceptable to play a paladin with that much loss.

Very Sad Day

and at level 28 your bab would be 28, so *2 it's 56, same as before.

[rezo]

If your going to remove MRR from all armor just remove PRR too then so the game will be going backwards in changes. I can see all tanks going two lvl of monk or rogue for evasion and using a light or buckler shield from now on.

[Wipey]

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.

What data do you use as base ? Is it class / build popularity, forum "opinion" or some kind of your own damage testing ?

Let's take monkchers for example :
Forum hate stuck in 2012. Average damage output of Fury monkcher is certainly lower than any blitzing mechanic.
In reality, very few people still play monkcher. 14/6 pally splits that people play and bring to EE raids and such you can probably count on one hand. I really don't know more than one person. Or when you look at whatever other server raid parties. Every ranged character is either pure rogue, 14/6 pally mechanic, 18/2 arty mechanic.

Pulverizer buff is just facepalm worthy. When 95% of "dps" builds are running ( or should be ) in LD for last three years.

Does not compute.

[mikarddo]

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~

Please reconsider the use of BAB for this. It will make having full BAB incredibly important meaning that anyone without other means of doing so need to scroll Tensors for Manyshot always. Be that pure rangers or monkchers. Thats simply annoying for no good reason. Please change to use character level instead for basically the same effect without the annoyance.

[Saekee]

Great Crossbow is indeed 18-20 and should have been included in the +3 group for Improved Critical. That's a bug that we will correct, though you might not see the fix in the first Lamannia.

Sev~

Could you clarify assassin knife spec and daggers with IC Pierce? Krelar reinforced my suspicion that it will be 16-20/3 instead of 15-20/3, making Kukris the assassin weapon of choice. . .despite all the named assassin daggers that have been added.

[Caprice]

I am impressed with the sweeping change list. I find them generally reasonable, or at least I think I can understand the reasons behind every change offered.

I am sure that lots of us will be unhappy with the combined Holy Sword and Divine Grace nerfs but I think both abilities are too good at present. I think what you have laid out makes sense for your achieving stated goals. I will have to rework some characters but I can live with that.

I don't think the MRR loss will make the Heavy and Medium Armor classes unplayable. All of them except Fighter have some form of self-healing, albeit Barbarian's takes a long time to kick in. But it is a serious change and one bone you could throw would be to share the love on the new Heavy Armor feats somewhat:
1) Smooth out the bonuses to be something more like 6/6/8/10, and
2) Change the requirement to be either the designated Fighter level, or the preceding feat (or Heavy Armor Proficiency for Heavy Armor Training).
I feel that the feat cost itself would be a sufficient balance mechanism for other classes. Fighters still would be able to cherry pick to get the best bonuses but there is enough of a benefit that a few other builds might find room for one or two. I doubt many would but it would be an option at least.

I would not ask for the same for the Tactics DC feats. Thanks to the enhancement passes, Tactics DCs for most class abilities are generally already designed to be somewhat usable outside EEs (or if left low can be considered to be deliberately so) and could become unbalanced with extra bonuses from feats.

One side effect of some of these changes is that it is relatively boosting the value of Past Life passives (e.g. PRR and MRR). Is this a design goal?

[nibel]

Holy Sword (Paladin)

Honest question, with zero sarcasm: It is really hard to code the spell so it only affect the favored weapon of the paladin's deity?

Sure, DDO Paladin is a main Melee class, but the Silver Flame is a deity with Longbow as their favored weapon. There is PnP support to make ranged smite evil attacks and such for Silver Flame devotees. Trying to build a SF paladin that is mainly a ranged character is within lore, and while I agree it should not be the top tier ranged build in the table, it should be within viable.

If that is a technical issue (either because of hours needed of code, or complexity of code, or whatever), then this solution is reasonable.

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.

Not the ideal solution in my mind (that would be allowing break 100% only while manyshot/10k is active), but it is ok. I think. I'll learn to live with that.

Improved Critical
These feats now add a bonus to critical threat range based purely on weapon type.

Keen
This loot effect now add a bonus to critical threat range based purely on weapon type.

I expect a lot of rage on this. I'll get the popcorn.

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.

I don't like this change at all for three reasons:

1) PRR is a percentual reduction anyway. So if you have 100 PRR at level 1 or 30, it will have the same effect: Reduce damage in 50%. This is equally useful in all content, and thus I don't believe base PRR should vary between the levels. Sure, some bumps for choosing a defensive character archetype are expected above plain heavy armor (Eg, Sentinel ED, Sacred/Stalwart Stance, Shield Mastery feats, etc).
2) MRR was a response to Evasion. It worked. You had to choose between diminish the damage constantly (but be damaged), or have a chance (up to 95%) to avoid the damage completely. I don't see a problem diminishing the MRR value on armors, but please don't take it all away.
3) We have a mechanic that could work wonders to keep damage mitigation scaling up. It is called DR. I asked back in the Barbarian revamp, and I will keep asking every time PRR changes are coming: Make DR counts AFTER PRR reduction and it gets back to be a useful mechanic. I know Shadow Dragon armor have a ton of DR on it because it was designed considering PRR would slash the DR benefit away. But that is just one item that can be rebalanced.

Tactical Training
Tactical Combatant
Tactical Mastery
Tactical Supremacy

Heavy Armor Training
Heavy Armor Combatant
Heavy Armor Master
Heavy Armor Champion

Fighter exclusive feats are never too much. Keep adding more. Fighters need to have a really big ton of options so that they can put their 18 feat slots into use.

[redoubt]

Could you clarify assassin knife spec and daggers with IC Pierce? Krelar reinforced my suspicion that it will be 16-20/3 instead of 15-20/3, making Kukris the assassin weapon of choice. . .despite all the named assassin daggers that have been added.

That would be good to know.

And for the first time I'm suddenly thinking... oh f*** that's a lot of comms I spent on two fully upgraded and now subpar Agony's... and oh... that's a lot of TF materials on my daggers.... dammit!