The Balance Change post

[Severlin]

Greetings.

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

Two Weapon Fighting no longer grants melee power.
Improved Two Weapon Fighting no longer grants melee power.
Greater Two Weapon Fighting no longer grants melee power.

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

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

Repeating Crossbows and Doubleshot
Fixed a bug where Doubleshot was not being reduced for repeating crossbows. (Doubleshot chance is divided by 3 for repeating crossbows.)

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

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

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

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

Improved Critical
These feats now add a bonus to critical threat range based purely on weapon type.
* Adds +3 to critical threat range for falchion, kukri, rapier, and scimitar.
* Adds +2 to the critical threat range of bastard sword, dagger, great crossbow, greatsword, heavy crossbow, khopesh, light crossbow, long sword, repeating heavy crossbow, repeating light crossbow, short sword, and throwing dagger.
* Adds +1 to all other weapons.

Keen
This loot effect now add a bonus to critical threat range based purely on weapon type.
* Adds +3 to critical threat range for falchion, kukri, rapier, and scimitar.
* Adds +2 to the critical threat range of bastard sword, dagger, great crossbow, greatsword, heavy crossbow, khopesh, light crossbow, long sword, repeating heavy crossbow, repeating light crossbow, short sword, and throwing dagger.
* Adds +1 to all other weapons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Spellpower scaling of Warlock Abilities

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

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

Sev~

[Severlin]

(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~

[WiseFreelancer]

snip Sev~

Number of comments about various things:

1) The manyshot/10k changes don't appear to be explained here, although I know the rational has been given in the AA threads for those who've read them.

2) The change to Improved Critical was mentioned in previous posts and seems eminently reasonable to me. HOWEVER, I found it very difficult to understand what was meant by reading this thread first time through. May need more explanation. My reaction was same as another poster - why boost scimitars/rapiers more when they're already better? It only clicked that this is only giving each weapon what they were already supposed to have after a minute or two. Doesn't this also do strange things to the attempted "balance" in the Swashbuckler Core 3?

3) Most of the "nerfs" seem relatively reasonable to me. I'm not sure whether Holy Sword really needs to be cut from bows/crossbows, given the improvements in Mechanics and Deepwood/AAs give similar bonuses to other builds now.

4) Divine Grace changes are more than fair, but does this mean we won't be getting new items with new save bonuses? This was mentioned as an alternative solution when it was discussed last time? Its still hard to get very high saves on lots of multiclass toons without paladin levels, even with appropriate stat investment.

5) I've never built a tactical DC toon, so take this feedback with a pinch of salt, but isn't +20 a bit overkill? My biggest fear is if fighters can get such a huge "up" on DCs then they might end up needing to be raised to justify characters taking these feats, but that will have very, very serious implications for DC-based casting. I'd lean towards too many new fighter feats too. Giving an incentive to get lots of fighter levels is very much needed, but maybe three each with slightly more power in the later tiers to even it out would be better? The idea of a toon with 4 armour feats is just a little boring.

6) Is the MRR going back in anywhere else? I think the current system gives too big an incentive to take Heavy armour unless you had evasion (why should a pure druid build get more out of Heavy Armour Proficiency as a feat than most other choices?), but for paladins its seems a bit tough? Is the view they are getting too much at present? Obviously Fighters can take the feats, but not sure they need that many?

7) Perhaps the strangest impact of these changes is that weapons with naturally improved crit ranges will gain relatively less than they did before. Not a big issue now that most end-game weapons don't have it, but makes a lot of the named Bows less desirable than before.

When are these changes expected? Next update? Are they all at once?

[Vargouille]

5) I've never built a tactical DC toon, so take this feedback with a pinch of salt, but isn't +20 a bit overkill? My biggest fear is if fighters can get such a huge "up" on DCs then they might end up needing to be raised to justify characters taking these feats, but that will have very, very serious implications for DC-based casting. I'd lean towards too many new fighter feats too. Giving an incentive to get lots of fighter levels is very much needed, but maybe three each with slightly more power in the later tiers to even it out would be better? The idea of a toon with 4 armour feats is just a little boring.

Actually one more comment on the fighter feats. I really like the tactical additions. They're going to make improved trip obsolete (unless someone really cares about 30 sec max vs 60 sec max, and anyway mobs save to stand up every 2 seconds so why would anyone care). But they give fighter a really compelling capability. +20 sounds extreme but it requires four feats and 16 fighter levels, the latter of which is a pretty miserable platform right now, at least pre fighter pass.

The four armor feats probably don't go far enough - again you're requiring four feats for the max +30/+30 prr/mrr. But that's not a whole lot more that you can attain from some low hanging enhancements. If you're not comfortable with increasing the prr/mrr what about adding a +1 max dex bonus for each feat in addition to the prr/mrr.

sev? was it a typo on those feats?

are those fighter only feats?

or can anyone take them?

i would prefer fighter only, but want to clarify them

Adding all those tactical and armor feats are really a kick in the scrotch to people who love to use tactical features. It seems fully reasonable to add more...but truly; in order to be viable as far as tactically you now have to add as many of those as possible.

Some comments about the fighter feats:

1. These require fighter levels. They can be taken with fighter bonus feats or regular feats.
2. We don't expect to rebalance monsters around Fighters with all these feats. Fighters who go all out on tactics are expected to reach 95% chance on most monsters (possibly excluding some rare bosses / raid bosses, who will often be immune to many tactics regardless.)
3. We don't expect all fighters who want to use tactical feats to take all of these new feats. This is largely why they are not a progression, but rather four distinct feats. Characters with 20 Fighter levels might opt to take just the +8 and that's enough (with other gear, STR, etc.) Characters with fewer Fighter levels won't have access to the best bonuses (as well as fewer feats, of course), so they might struggle to reach the same heights as someone who dedicates more class levels to Fighter.
4. Similarly, the armor feats can be taken one or some at a time. It's not really an all-or-nothing, and a 20 Fighter might skip the first one or two in favor or other bonuses.

These feats help power up the Fighter class, reward taking more Fighter levels, fit into the theme of "Fighters get more feats!", and help provide some differentiation for builds. It matters a bit more if you want to spend your final 2 levels on Fighter vs. another class, and we don't expect every player to make the same decision. We're happy for Fighter to remain interesting for multiclass builds, while also rewarding purer builds. We feel these eight new feats spread across levels 2-16 helps with many kinds of characters.

[Mojo_d]

Having played paladin hybrid throwers and twf melees,I can agree that they are pretty overpowered.And yes,pure fighters seems to have fallen behind in the last updates,but for way longer than fighters,poor monks havent gotten any love.While these changes will balance things,and maybe help fighters a bit,monks will fall even more behind,making them a class that someone picks only 2 levels of it for that evasion feat and the 2 extra feats,not even considering fighting unarmed.I understand that this would require even more work since unarmed combat has always been buggy,but wouldnt it be better to make some time and work on a monks pass maybe,some balance changes having this class also in mind?All I'm trying to say,instead of just rushing to balance some things,some other matters grow even bigger.I dont want to make monks overpowered or something,but at least be on par with the rest of the melee classes before nerfing them even more than they already are(seeing the changes in twf...)

[patang01]

Some comments about the fighter feats:

1. These require fighter levels. They can be taken with fighter bonus feats or regular feats.
2. We don't expect to rebalance monsters around Fighters with all these feats. Fighters who go all out on tactics are expected to reach 95% chance on most monsters (possibly excluding some rare bosses / raid bosses, who will often be immune to many tactics regardless.)
3. We don't expect all fighters who want to use tactical feats to take all of these new feats. This is largely why they are not a progression, but rather four distinct feats. Characters with 20 Fighter levels might opt to take just the +8 and that's enough (with other gear, STR, etc.) Characters with fewer Fighter levels won't have access to the best bonuses (as well as fewer feats, of course), so they might struggle to reach the same heights as someone who dedicates more class levels to Fighter.
4. Similarly, the armor feats can be taken one or some at a time. It's not really an all-or-nothing, and a 20 Fighter might skip the first one or two in favor or other bonuses.

These feats help power up the Fighter class, reward taking more Fighter levels, fit into the theme of "Fighters get more feats!", and help provide some differentiation for builds. It matters a bit more if you want to spend your final 2 levels on Fighter vs. another class, and we don't expect every player to make the same decision. We're happy for Fighter to remain interesting for multiclass builds, while also rewarding purer builds. We feel these eight new feats spread across levels 2-16 helps with many kinds of characters.

No. Not really.

A fully invested tactical user today will do fine in heroic. A fully invested tactical user will be increasingly more useless in Epic. 2 things - first. A ludicrous amount of CR on EE where trying to use tactical feats at level is generally worthless and the prolific use of orange and red named makes the whole thing moot anyways.

Second - by forcing people to add feats to close the gap you strike down diversity. A fighter build will generally compensate the generally lower DPS with more feats that add up some melee power but also weapon proficiency. Be it bow, blunt and slashing or say sword and board. By making it a condition to be proficient to invest so heavily in say feats in order to be 95% with upper end content, you kill diversity. Fighters will be single arms type and less overall DPS.

This is almost a fact. I've used tactical feats since 2009 on most of my guys, even when it wasn't in vogue - and it's near stupid to try in EE's at level. Pointless. But doing a basic investment of say improved trip and stunning blow at least add that option for EH. But adding 4 more feats will just make me be the typical stick that tries to find the best DPS weapon in order to compensate for the investment of feat.


Here's what this change will do. Few people are going to play fighters. Their viability comes from tactical diversity but with the removal of MRR people will instead move towards monkcher builds again. Since you now incentive it through this DC builds using Wisdom. This was the case after MOTU when turbine destroyed tanking and now going back on MRR you'll do it again. Fighters are the worst self healers in the game. Bar none. And once the situation stacks up where full investment means maybe useful in tactical feats but dreadful against red named you'll see people just moving away completely.

I see update 29 being another move where most go into arcane casting of some sort (maybe less Warlocks) and more Monkchers again.

Now for a while there you guys made it sound like you wanted to enhance Kensei again to be more tactical. But it seems you picked the worse choice by making high PRR and okay MRR with better tactical use be conditioned on fighter levels and feats. Tying up 8 total feats for anyone to be half okay at tripping and soak some damage but overall useless in a fight against a boss. It the point was to bring us back to how worthless tanks were back in the day outside not being hit - then maybe this will get us there. But it's a build no one wants to play.

I might be wrong of course. But that is what lead us to where we are today. Destruction of tanking through MOTU and eventually better in armor up. Now when we're disarming the armor up and making it feat heavy there's little incentive for anyone to even bother. Yes - you'll see a scant few doing the heavy tank, but all future content points at high HP ludicrous bosses like the one we see in ToEE. And I'm sick of standing and carving HP for 5 minutes out of something I can't effect tactically in any way shape and form.

I'm guessing I'll roll a Monkcher like everyone else.

BTW - destroying the threat range, burst damage of manyshot and taking away melee power from 2wf will make tempest rangers mediocre. Before the recent changes I hadn't played mine for years. And it seems it's time to put him back in the dusty locker again.

I get nerfs but most of these changes seems to remove diversity and favor explicit investments in order to be entirely singular good in something. And that will ALWAYS lead to path of least resistance.

[Wipey]

No. Not really.

A fully invested tactical user today will do fine in heroic. A fully invested tactical user will be increasingly more useless in Epic. 2 things - first. A ludicrous amount of CR on EE where trying to use tactical feats at level is generally worthless and the prolific use of orange and red named makes the whole thing moot anyways.

Tactics are good at level EE with proper gear. Except Stormhorns really underlevel and Demon Assault/Archon Trial.

I'm guessing I'll roll a Monkcher like everyone else.

Almost noone plays monk archers anymore.

[Thrudh]

Some comments about the fighter feats:

1. These require fighter levels. They can be taken with fighter bonus feats or regular feats.
2. We don't expect to rebalance monsters around Fighters with all these feats. Fighters who go all out on tactics are expected to reach 95% chance on most monsters (possibly excluding some rare bosses / raid bosses, who will often be immune to many tactics regardless.)
3. We don't expect all fighters who want to use tactical feats to take all of these new feats. This is largely why they are not a progression, but rather four distinct feats. Characters with 20 Fighter levels might opt to take just the +8 and that's enough (with other gear, STR, etc.) Characters with fewer Fighter levels won't have access to the best bonuses (as well as fewer feats, of course), so they might struggle to reach the same heights as someone who dedicates more class levels to Fighter.
4. Similarly, the armor feats can be taken one or some at a time. It's not really an all-or-nothing, and a 20 Fighter might skip the first one or two in favor or other bonuses.

These feats help power up the Fighter class, reward taking more Fighter levels, fit into the theme of "Fighters get more feats!", and help provide some differentiation for builds. It matters a bit more if you want to spend your final 2 levels on Fighter vs. another class, and we don't expect every player to make the same decision. We're happy for Fighter to remain interesting for multiclass builds, while also rewarding purer builds. We feel these eight new feats spread across levels 2-16 helps with many kinds of characters.

This is excellent thinking... As long as you don't balance monster saves with the new feats, this should work perfectly... My barbarian/rogue/fighter is a tactics build, and can stun and trip most stuff now, so I know these feats are not required in today's game... I may take a few more fighter levels for the extra tactics boost, or maybe even go mostly fighter instead of barbarian... because tactics is what I built this guy around. But I don't feel like I'm REQUIRED to take extra fighter levels to build a viable tactics build...

What this will do is allow me to swap some feats for some enhancements/gear, giving me a slightly higher stun and trip DC AND freeing up some enhancement points/gear slots.

[hit_fido]

• 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.

Maybe this is the disconnect, and I'm perfectly fine if it's on my end, but I thought the primary reason armored characters are relevant again was the added Magic Resist Rating achieved by having a base amount through armor as well as through some select class tree enhancements only available to certain armor wearing characters. And to some other degree, the adoration of the 30DR/60DR shadow plate.

So removing all Magic Resist Rating from armor is going to put a severe dip in that relevance, or so I would think?

[Erik_Loki]

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.

Sev~

Then we decided to nerf them. Seems legit,

[Blivit]

[*]Two Weapon Fighting builds are dealing too much DPS ... 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.

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.

I would like to see unarmed Monk also addressed before any further nerfing is performed to TWF. Unarmed Monks are hurting enough as it is :-(

[*]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.

Since paladins are so feat starved compared to a fighter, I am thinking that the nerfing of armor, such that additional fighter feats are required for MRR and additional PRR, will only lead to more reason to play a 14 Paladin / 4-6 Fighter hybrid. With the new method, 14 Paladin may still be better than pure Paladin, just for a different balance of reasons.

[HazyOne]

But instead of just making holy sword not work on missle weapons, why not require x amount of Pali lvls to apply holy sword to any weapon. As the changes stand I really hope they send out +20's!

HazyOne

[Nubom70]

[QUOTE=Blivit;5703564]I would like to see unarmed Monk also addressed before any further nerfing is performed to TWF. Unarmed Monks are hurting enough as it is :-(

Agree. Monks took it so hard over the last few years, and never got addressed, now they're getting another DPS nerf. Lowering DPS,
no innate PRR (since they lost any real AC benefit), wraps are still broken (yay augments), and still no greensteel. Way to go, dev team.

[Ellihor]

I like this kinds of threads, they show an intresting reality: most poeple here have no idea about what's going on the real game.

Really, crying about 16 points in PRR is very lame. I laigh when people say "tone down the defenses", as if it was a tone less. When you alreadt have over a hundred PRR, 16 PRR is extremly marginal. You can't feel it. You wouldn't notice if it was not on your sheet.

GO CRY TO YOUR MOM.

MRR claims are legit, it shouldn't have been completly removed from armors, but reduced.

Now the 2 things I don't like here is the TWF not getting the mlee power, and holy sword not affecting off-hand and shields. TWF is already the worse mlee style. Go try it out in real game, not on a kolbold or bruntsmash.Fix the hit box, as everyone is saying here.

Tanks are having real problems in current game. Nerfing theyr DPS even more is bad. Also, you may look at the damage at Thunder Peaks and tone them down. It's ridiculous that we need tanks only in 3 situations in current endgame (ok only 2, since in MoD the deathknigths don't need a real tank) and one of them (FoTP), well, you just can't tank and the best tank is a kitter. This sucks.

[Jetrule]

Just a few things that jump out at me from the original post. Sorry if I am echoing other posts I haven't read all the opinions.

Some mrr from armor is a good thing perhaps 5/10/15% I think dropping all mrr from armor is to regressive, especially to clerics fvs and arti who have nothing in their trees to help out. The prr reduction in armor, what is this nerf armor up round 3? It feels like a over nerf but I can't argue my high prr characters are unafraid in most combat especially with good layered defence. I doubt this will make them too squishy. The problem lies more in my borderline viable defence characters becoming suddenly to vulnerable. Once again I am thinking of my two handed fighting cleric. But I see this extending to fvs arti and bard especially warchanter too. My poor rogue assassin will be terrified of being hit once again.



I see the warlock basic focused blast takes a hit. It is single target only and a bit buggy when it comes to switching targets. I think it should remain 150% scale. Other wise warlock will remain very strong. Some more players may try cone shaped/wave blasters instead of 90% being aura blasters.

Great crossbow is taking a hit to crit range is this on purpose or a mistake? It is the only 18-20 crit range weapon not getting +3 range boost from Improved Crit.

There are some named weapons that have enhanced crit ranges. Can we make improved crit and keen simply double the weapon's base crit range as it is written? I agree with not making it double other bonuses.

Most of the other changes I am on board with or neutral about.

I would suggest a important change or two not covered.

Nerfing Mortal fear is key to balancing topend content without making every mob immune to everything by making them red named. Put it on a timer 5-10 seconds.

On the same note The tactical feats have to have a chance of working against red named. Let it only affect them half as long as a standard mob or make sure their saves will require a 1 to be rolled but just using tactical feats on standard enemies makes them very unattractive.

[UurlockYgmeov]

[QUOTE=Nubom70;5703571]

I would like to see unarmed Monk also addressed before any further nerfing is performed to TWF. Unarmed Monks are hurting enough as it is :-(

Agree. Monks took it so hard over the last few years, and never got addressed, now they're getting another DPS nerf. Lowering DPS,
no innate PRR (since they lost any real AC benefit), wraps are still broken (yay augments), and still no greensteel. Way to go, dev team.

I think everyone also needs to not just look at the proposed changes listed above, but also remember things like Cleric and Monk are yet to get a balancing pass. Weird how nobody seems to be screaming that their cleric is well... worse off after the changes....

Anywho, Kobold distracted me. Bad Kobold!

Monks are getting a pass AND handwraps are getting fixed. Can't do one without the other. Fixing handwraps is a massive undertaking, because how handwraps currently work in game. The are not considered weapons, and both handwraps and collars are based upon a spaghetti tonne of hand-tuned scripts. Yes, Scripts. So by changing them to weapons they are making them everything they need, can, and should be. There is really no point in doing a monk pass before the handwrap pass and vice versa. Just beware, hopefully they allow for a LONG lamannia cycle on handwraps because there will be unintended and unknowable consequences to fixing them.

But once the monk/handwrap/cannith crafted/random loot passes are done, there will be pajama wearing toons everywhere again.

So paraphrasing what one or more have said: "monk doom. monk Doom. monk DOOM! ™", while that might be the case, just remember these changes lead up to the great pajama party of '16!

and on Elven Silver Flame Bow Wielding Paladins: while I agree that a lv14 paladin shouldn't be able to holy sword his/her/it's bow - an ELVEN lv 18 Paladin should be able to.

And Will be playing halfling until Gnomes or Kobolds arrive as races! ;p

[FranOhmsford]

I think everyone also needs to not just look at the proposed changes listed above, but also remember things like Cleric and Monk are yet to get a balancing pass. Weird how nobody seems to be screaming that their cleric is well... worse off after the changes....

Because Cleric is already so bad that hardly anyone plays them anymore!

And yes those PRR/MRR Changes will be death to Battle Clerics!

[sjbb87]

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

• Armored characters were well behind Evasion builds.
  not on EE
  
• 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.
  
  Very careful what you do here.
  I play this game for six years, I have always done builds effect/hit
  
  
• 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~

Very careful what you do here.
I had written a huge text, but I lost everything and discouraged to write again.
no need to nerf holysword.
Give more melee power to Two Handed Fighting and Single Weapon Fighting

Two Handed Fighting +4 melee power
Improved Two Handed Fighting +5
Greater Two Handed Fighting +6

Two weapon fighting animations have been fixed so there is no longer a weird jump on the fourth animation. This has made the fourth attack slightly quicker.
And dont remove the melee power from Two Weapon Fighting

And again....
we've relaxed many internal cooldown limits on to-hit effects.
Very careful what you do here.

[EllisDee37]

Our current measure of melee effectiveness is Swashbuckler.

Unfortunately, the proposed changes to improved crit / keen are a massive nerf to many swashbuckler options. It's also a significant nerf to rogue/monk staff builds and rogue dagger builds.

I think I have solution that will a) prevent crippling nerfs to staff/dagger/swashbuckler builds, b) keep in the spirit of the balance changes in the OP, c) retains much of the same basic effect of improved critical (similar to the balance change in the OP), plus d) buff up the garbage weapons that nobody ever uses so that someone might.

The idea is to base the threat expansion on the default multiplier. Specifically:
x2 multiplier gets +3 range
x3 multiplier gets +2 range
x4 multiplier gets +1 range

This will keep staff and dagger builds viable and retain the weapon flexibility for swashbucklers, but won't accidentally make OP weapons like khopesh even more OP. The above rules end up with the following list:

Improved Critical:
+1 threat range to picks
+2 threat range to axes, bows, warhammers, mauls, and khopeshes
+3 threat range to all others

Note: Obviously, a single feat won't give you +2 range to both bludgeoning and slashing weapons.


EDIT: For a concrete example, consider my actual swashbuckler on live using Widowblight for heroics:

19-20x2 base => +2x1 swashbuckler => 17-20x3 => improved crit: 13-20x3 right now on live
19-20x2 base => +2x1 swashbuckler => 17-20x3 => improved crit: 16-20x3 after the balance changes

If swashbuckler is your baseline, nerfing my swashbuckler from 13-20x3 to 16-20x3 seems like the changes aren't doing what you wanted. Unless you wanted to significantly regress the baseline?

My proposed alternative here would instead make that Widowblight 14-20x3, which is still a nerf from the 13-20x3 he has on live but it's close enough that I could understand it.

[Propane]

(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~

Thanks for sharing - some good discussion going on - hope there are several good nuggets the DEVS can take and use...

I will add my first thoughts to the list...

My numbers may be simple (or gimp) - but are the first ones that come to mind from my playing time....

@ Holy Sword

Mostly sounds good - the shield nerf is unneeded with shield proc rate limited at 1 per sec.
Please consider lowering the time between procs to some more like 0.75. It is impossible to proc at 1 per sec anyways.

@ Two Weapon Fighting

Faster animations good-
Loss of 6 total melee power...
Assume 50 (before melee power) and base damage of 60.
1.50 X 60 = 90.0
1.44 x 60 = 86.4

How close does the faster animation come to off setting the loss of melee power?
Almost a wash I would bet.

@ Many Shot

4 arrows on live with 0 range power boost

Assuming 20 BAB --> 80 double shot and 80 melee power.

Number of arrows x ranged power

(1 normal + 0.80 + x.x (standard double shot)) arrows ) X +80 range power..

worst case 1.8 x 1.8 = 3.24

.... the base dmg should be too far off - but all the proc damage and on crit / on hit chance will be much less.

Expect to see fewer larger numbers... will have see how this plays out...

This still needs to feel like an epic moment!

I will again plug the idea of Rangers getting increase Many Shot up time and let other classes have an option.

Follow the fighter example

Improved Many Shot ML 12 (Auto granted to Lv 12 Ranger, Lv 16 Ranger , Lv 20 Ranger) + 5 sec added to Many Shot (stacking)
Allow other classes to take (after LV 12) if they want.


@ Keen

Makes sense - but has been this way a long time...

Wish there was time to tweak some weapons (light hammer for example)

@ Armor

Assume BAB of 20

Heavy goes from 56 to 40
Medium goes from 37 to 30
Light goes from 22 to 20

Heavy is hit the hardest - ouch.
Taking all the MRR way seem a little drastic - I would reduce by 50% and see how it plays.

@ Fighter Feats

Fantastic! Love the stacking and different tiers - introduces lots of options - well done.

Improved Trip will now be overshadowed - consider changing it to 50% reduction in cool down ML 6 fighter.

Add Improved Stunning Blow - 50% reduction in cool down ML 6 fighter.


@ Divine Grace

Assuming a lv 18X/2 pally with 60 CHR.

Live is +25 to saves
Proposed will be 8 per saves

This is 70% reduction - while the other changes are in the 5-10%

That is too big of a change!- it will be an easy choice for lots of people to change the build.


Make the choice harder... something like
12 + 3 x pally level (18 vs 25)
or
8 + 4 x pally level (16 vs 25)


@ Hearts of Wood

I would give some hearts out (coupon, but in game mail preferred)
1 x 20
2 x 5
3 x 3
4 x 1

10 hearts - total (like round numbers)