The Balance Change post

[Robai]

SOME. SOME TWF builds are overperforming. Not all.

Please find a way to fix the ones that are overperforming without hitting the rest.

Thank you.

^this

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.

The change to TWF feats compensates for the DPS increase from the animation change.

The only two weapon fighting build we changed is Paladin.

Sev~

Two things:

1. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in order to do a 4th attack you have to be stationary, i.e. not moving (and thus getting harder hits in your Light armor, and thus spending more time on healing, and thus ending up doing less DPS)
2. Where are you doing tests? Damage vs those kobolds on Lam? Please be real, and do DPS tests elsewhere since you need to keep yourself alive too. For example, go to EH DoJ with your pure Tempest ranger and tell me your DPS result (and compare the DPS of Paladin in heavy armor and your squishy Tempest in Light armor, also there are lag spikes, that's why I recommend DoJ for real DPS tests, by DPS I mean average damage per second, which means the time spent in your soul stone should be included too).

[1Soulless1]

. (I've even been advised that my responding to this thread so much should help cement my position as most hated dev and I should shut up more. ;] May be true - I've often been told I talk too much. No Worries about me actually shutting up... I'm not very good at it.)

Oh no FoS has you beat by a mile... He messed with our shines don't mess with our shines and the great ghostbaning never forget ^^


I do thank you guys for posting this 'update' for us to read over. I want to believe this dev team has a long term plan and vision for DDO, but so did all the other dev teams and mostly what it ended up being was a bunch of half assed fixes, more stuff broken and unfinished systems as they either where replaced or moved onto the next new thing ™.

Just remember one thing, nobody likes having their toys taken away from them (aka nerfs) even if its for the best. Players have been telling you in the official feed back threads about stuff and how it would interact and for the most part it was ignored ( not always but....). I find it's better to give a little and add to it then have something 'over preforming' and take away from it. Nobody likes a bait and switch, even if it isn't a bait and switch its what it feels like.

[Hobgoblin]

You still should need Charisma. The maximum bonus will be 2 + (Paladin level x 3). The actual bonus still will be determined by your CHA bonus. So a Sorceror 18/Paladin 2 with CHA 50 will drop to +8 from Divine Grace, because that is all that their 2 Paladin levels afford them. A pure Paladin 20 with CHA 50 will get all +20 from Divine Grace because 20 levels of Paladin gives a maximum of +61. However a pure Paladin with CHA 20 will only get +5, because that is all their CHA bonus grants.

i do have a question on this -

if you have a pally with cha 134(yes i know that is currently unreachable) - +62 mod - even a pure pally wouldnt get the full bonus. would destinies factor into this or is it hard coded?

so a say 4 pally splash in ld would have 2+ (4x3) = +14 max saves
would that same play splash in say dc have 2 + (10x3) = 32 max saves?

[Gratch]

I hope you realize that this is a triple nerf to the newly changed Tempest. First, changing crit range and melee power. Second, lower damage mitigation. And for builds that try to use divine grace for higher saves to adjust for the lower PRR and MRR (prior to change, now even lower) a nerf. And finally a nerf to manyshot that effects Tempest the most since it won't have much resources to invest in ranged and rely on the burst for additional DPS.

• The crit range changes affect everyone. Though all Paly14 TWF'ers lose more on the offhand holy sword change.
• The melee power is in theory mostly accounted for by an animation speedup for TWF.
• Not sure of a lower damage mitigation change affecting only Tempest or only TWF.
• The MRR was too high after the armor-up MRR changes. Took everyone from using evasion to everyone pushing to plate. And at cap almost everyone I knew went to the shadowplate. Of all the changes, this is probably the one most needed to rebalance the armor vs. evasion|saves pendulum.
• The divine grace was a known incoming listed on the KNOWN ISSUES for over half a year. You can tell it was needed balance by the number of paly2 splashes across all nonpaladin builds on the forums and in the game. Though a cap of +8 for 2 paly levels could be discussed as too low.
• Tempest with no ranged investment SHOULDN'T be as good a doubleshot/ranged focus character at many shot. Just because it mostly was before is not a justified reason to keep things that way. Manyshot will still be an excellent means for any normally melee character to get a good burst of damage done at range in a short amount of time.

-Gratch <- plays a tempest.

[PpalP]

Where are you doing tests? Damage vs those kobolds on Lam? Please be real, and do DPS tests elsewhere since you need to keep yourself alive too. For example, go to EH DoJ with your pure Tempest ranger and tell me your DPS result (and compare the DPS of Paladin in heavy armor and your squishy Tempest in Light armor, also there are lag spikes, that's why I recommend DoJ for real DPS tests, by DPS I mean average damage per second, which means the time spent in your soul stone should be included too).

This x2

[Mortas]

I've played a pali since day 1. I've spent years, Years, where they would not be accepted in groups because they were considered "The Gimp". Then coming back after years break and hey they don't suck so much anymore, then a few more improvements and now they are socially acceptable. I find nothing earth shattering OMG pali DPS everyone can pike now here. I still see barbs being the OMG DPS which is how it should be. I am very surprised they can self heal as much as they can, though.

Here is the balance part to stay on topic: The pali benefits are offset due with many things. An obvious one is being a feat starved class. Another is realistically needing the most of the basic stats to realize the class. Frankly, if DDO has improved the class to the point of there's talk of OP, I'm inclined to suggest pali players have earned it. Severlin said close to the same when announcing the PRR/MRR inclusions in Update 23 with phrasing to make Paladins more fun and competitive. Well, it worked - thanks !

I'd like to suggest it is not the pali but being able to multiclass is what has failed. To keep the paladin fun, I strongly suggest being allowed to keep the current Holy Sword/Improved Crit PRR/MRR advantages for full paladins via level/cap enhancements. This balances those players who stubbornly want a pure class even though it is significantly feat starved and one that needs multiple base stats spread out *unlike any other class in the game*. It is okay in a game to not have class equality. Not everyone wants to melee, nuke, plink, etc. It's why we play these types of games. We understand our rogue types will simply murder the opponent as long as they aren't seen. We are fine with that nebulous cloud of death approaching being electrocuted by the wiz instead of eating the fighter. Good stuff in variety. This balance everything pleasing everyone doesn't work and in the long run is very disappointing. No flavor...except chicken. Everything tasting like chicken sucks.

I'll bet a beverage of your choice, even with stapling current advantages to a pure class, you will not see a horde of pure paladins running around; it simply is not a play style for everyone. Going the level cap enhancement route still keeps options open for S & B style, TWF, etc.

After years of gimpness, I was happy to come back to the game to changes that made playing a paladin fun. The combat styles and armor improvements made a huge positive fun time impact for me and I'm sure others. I think you can work out the issues with multiclassed paladins with level restricted enhancements and possibly further balance being able to keep what some call over powered DPS by restricting the HS spell to religious favored weapons which makes a lot of thematic sense too. My guy has a few lives some decent raid equipment and I find EE a challenge; a fun challenge, not a walk in the park. I really hope my guy is not being sent back to gimpville. I'm not going to rage-quit but after a long time of -ick- way back, I'm not getting a snuggy feeling here.

Good luck with this.

[mole7777]

[LIST]
The MRR was too high after the armor-up MRR changes. Took everyone from using evasion to everyone pushing to plate. And at cap almost everyone I knew went to the shadowplate. Of all the changes, this is probably the one most needed to rebalance the armor vs. evasion|saves pendulum.
-Gratch <- plays a tempest.

However you don't want a pendulum, swinging it back the other way isn't the way to go. Classes that should wear heavy armour should do so because its the best option. The problem was letting anyone slap the heavy armour on and get the benefits. You don't slap on light armour and instantly get a massive dodge, you don't splash 2 rogue and get instantly to make all your reflex saves. The problem was all the rewards for no effort regardless of class, so of course classes that didn't have easy access to strong saves evasion and a good dodge are going to take the easy option.

I believe this proposed change is wrong because now the difference between light and heavy is too small and not enough to make up for the much higher dodge. When you then consider you will have the same MRR wearing light or heavy but you can have evasion with light where is the balance ?

[davmuzl]

I am looking forward to seeing how these changes are going to affect the game. Overall the changes look really good to me.

The crit changes are good, because it doesn't support mindless stacking as much.

I don't really know what to think about manyshot and 10k*. What I have to say on the topic is that I think it's bad when combined abilities allow burst DPS to go high enough to end big fights. When one character can deal 5 times as much damage as another, but only for 20% of the time (so the overall DPS stays the same), it is too much burst damage. Opting for high burst damage should mean sacrificing overall DPS.

I don't really like the changes to non-repeating crossbows. I feel like even if great crossbows are dealing more damage than repeaters it would often be better to go with a repeater, because of procs like deception.

I'm a bit sceptical about the tactics feats. It looks like a lot to me and I would rather see something like a tactical DC action boost or something that boosts the DCs while action boosts are active.
(suggestion for kensei: add enhancements that reduce the CDs on tactical feats, so they can stun as much as monks).

I am also a bit worried how the mrr changes might affect content that is already difficult in heavy armor(mainly thinking about abishai in new content here).

[patang01]

• The crit range changes affects everyone. Though all Paly14 TWF'ers lose more on the offhand holy sword change.
• The melee power is in theory mostly accounted for by an animation speedup for TWF.
• Not sure of a lower damage mitigation change affecting only Tempest or only TWF.
• The MRR was too high after the armor-up MRR changes. Took everyone from using evasion to everyone pushing to plate. And at cap almost everyone I knew went to the shadowplate. Of all the changes, this is probably the one most needed to rebalance the armor vs. evasion|saves pendulum.
• The divine grace was a known incoming listed on the KNOWN ISSUES for over half a year. You can tell it was needed balance by the number of paly2 splashes across all nonpaladin builds on the forums and in the game. Though a cap of +8 for 2 paly levels could be discussed as too low.
• Tempest with no ranged investment SHOULDN'T be as good a doubleshot/ranged focus character at many shot.

-Gratch <- plays a tempest.

You make a bunch of points that is irrelevant to the one I made. Specifically to the newly revamped tempest.

1. Irrelevant to the point I make about tempest.
2. In Theory.
3 and 4. Going from high to zero is less damage mitigation. I know how math works. It's irrelevant to the discussion whether or not something was too high - which is an assumption on those who claim it compared to others who don't exactly experienced that. But less is less. Arguing opinion about a fact is silly. And that it effects others is irrelevant to the question about tempest.
5. Yes - I am aware of the fact that the devs had been talking about changing divine grace. It's still factors into damage mitigation. Which is sorta what I'm talking about.
6. That's a nonsense argument. No it really is. We're now changing it from being based on 4 hits to some other formula. What is, is completely meaningless since we're changing how it always was. Considering that it used to be burst with 4 and now is much less, theoretically it can be increased through heavy investment in AA. In other words heavy investment in AA puts it back on par and perhaps even better while less investment makes it even less then before.
Your argument is that it should when it never was. That's an opinion based on an assumption we never had to deal with in the past.

Here's my simple argument that Turbine is not considering. The reason for armor up was to add diversity in melee. It accomplished that. Heavy tilt in a different direction (and anyone saying that these are tiny measured steps are lying to themselves) just means tilt in the other direction. If Turbine wanted to diversify the spectrum they would slap certain features so absolute. I for example will simply figure that most of my tempest investment in equipment such as khopeshes to be wasted and move towards AA instead. That is in particular since so much of the damage mitigation is getting hurt. Regardless if MRR was too much in your opinion or that divine grace was on the chopping block. These two facts does decrease survivability. And as such I will go ranged instead. That is what most players will do.
Why suffer more incoming damage with less or static output and then having to invest more into harder to slot gear or dilute melee DPS with ranged just to get slightly on par with what the burst damage was before, when you can just go full tilt in the direction of less pain.

To pretend that it won't strike the opposite way now is tomfoolery. It will happen. I know already that outside for example divine crusader a tempest ranger takes lots of spike damage. Less HP, less damage mitigation. That's true in Legendary and Fury.

It's both easier and smarter considering so many negative effects to go full tilt AA. Ranged and evasion. Drop strength and go full tilt on dex, con and wis instead.

[nibel]

~ Do we want to legitimize Fury Eternal's gain of Adrenaline while using missile weapons, or do we want to fix that bug?

With the manyshot nerf, I don't mind legitimizing its use. Save effort from both sides.

With old Manyshot, I was always advocating for fixing this bug, but that was because manyshotting was very good for fishing vorpals. Now it will be no different than a TWF melee on Fury.

[Ewynn]

Sev and the Development team,

I love that Turbine is investing in updating the game and working to keep balance in the game. I'm looking forward to seeing how we will overcome the new challenges with our builds, and in our cooperation and tactics too.

Keep up your hard work and don't let the turkeys get you down, it's easy to criticize it's hard to create.

+1

[dunklezhan]

Exactly. You'll see a small decrease in number of attacks (which at 26% is pretty much spot on where we want to be), and the large boosts in Ranged Power to compensate. The strategy of fishing for vorpals (similar to fishing for saving throw rolls of 1 to exaggerate the effectiveness of CC) will be slightly less effective while DPS will be close to live.

Sev~

It does feel like I will have far less viable diversity of weapon's worth carrying around now though. My situational lootgen weapons (banishers etc) are still good, but are they as good as that higher base damage bow with all that extra ranged power that's now been added? Probably not. Why would I waste the inventory space on situational weaponsif more base damage is always better whether manyshotting or not?

I like having utility options. Please do try to make sure all those on crit, on vorpal and % chance proc effects you put on our bows are not just there to make us feel sad that we are immediately vendor trashing them. Its not "fishing for vorpals" to simply want to get good use from the gear you've looted. Change the gear if you're not happy with those procs, not the playstyle.

NB - I'm not claiming my above worries as fact. Need to see the changes in action. The above is just a concern I have.

[IronClan]

Does increasing DPS automatically enhance the game experience?

Every one of these questions is about finding the right spot across a gray scale. Getting the exact right answer is always going to be quite difficult. Getting a group of people (developers, players, both) to agree on the exact right answer verges on impossible, so we can only do the best we can.

Does lowering the amount of crits and making 9000hp mobs take longer to saw down like trees enhance the game experience?

I kinda liked DDO how it's been for most of the last 5 years and don't want slower paced combat and less crits; I especially don't want this just because someone came in an made some clunky and not very well thought out changes.

Across a grey scale?

You mean like hacking out every point of MRR from armor with a big butchers cleaver?

Nuanced change guys.. I hope my sarcasm isn't too subtle...

[Drfirewater79]

So you are nerfing alot of warlock abilities but not eldritch wave which is the highest burst dps in all the trees. Everyone will now be running tier 5 souleater - why run anything else.

Not to mention Warlock dps is too high at heroic levels and by level 28 it is simply on par with paladin, barbarian and others. What you are doing is making a global fix to a heroic problem - I don't get it.

The divine grace change is as bad now as it was when originally proposed. You are making it so that being a high level paladin is the only way to get good saves. You are not following through on your previous statement that you were going to offer save bonuses for non-paladins that didn't stack with divine grace so good saves would be possible without being a paladin.

Alot of these change demonstrate a lack of understanding of what makes FOTM builds powerful. For the most part these changes make me want to take a break from the game. The whole balance attempts seem like a game of whack a mole.

I dont really understand any of it personally... i have a decent geared caster dps (well over caps before changes) warlock who is using the old one and chain as my main attacks with soul eater 5 and all the eldritch boosts from the other trees. My average single hit damage is about 345 total damage (because extra elemental damages do not work with current attacks) highest crit i have seen so far is 700. My barbarian who is only lvl 25 and is well under-geared average hit is 400 and with abilities and trees highest crit so far has been 4000 plus when i have my destiny proc going i am doing that 4000 damage every few hits for 30 seconds (which is as long as most boss fights outside of raids). My Fighter twf is similar not as high crit hits usually between 600 and 700 crits and average damage per hit is 250. Artificer at lvl 20 is doing roughly the same damage .. plus spells do alot more and increase damage of my lighting spells and weapons. I know before i TRed my rouge it was doing that much easily in sneak attack damage sometimes more depending on build and gear at the time.

So i really dont get why they where nerfed at all. The only problem with warlocks as they where is that sorcs and wizards do not have a basic attack like eldritch that doesn't cost SP. I have always been against dps nerfs over properly balancing other classes ... if one class is weaker then boost it dont nerf all the others. This is why MMOs can never effectively balance their games ... dont nerf just increase the challenge in new content and levels and slightly boost classes to bring them closer into balance.

[Delacroix21]

Any time we've tried to do a partial update to shore up a particular tree or class to give them some relief until their full pass we've had negative player feedback on those efforts.

Sev~

Sev ordinarily I would agree with you on this, but when it comes to unarmed I know this will not be the case. We are not talking about something that has been broken for a few months, but rather years. Also unarmed dps isn't slightly behind, its less then half other melee. Add this change and say out right that it is only a temporary change until the monk pass: make base unarmed die go from 1d6 to 2d6, with shintao tier 5 becoming 2d8 base.


Unarmed monks have suffered long enough, and there is a large portion of the player base very upset is has been left this way for so long. Please don't make us wait even longer to finally have a viable playstyle. It would be so easy to code my suggestion. Do the right thing Sev .

[Bennum]

You make a bunch of points that is irrelevant to the one I made. Specifically to the newly revamped tempest.

1. Irrelevant to the point I make about tempest.
2. In Theory.
3 and 4. Going from high to zero is less damage mitigation. I know how math works. It's irrelevant to the discussion whether or not something was too high - which is an assumption on those who claim it compared to others who don't exactly experienced that. But less is less. Arguing opinion about a fact is silly. And that it effects others is irrelevant to the question about tempest.
5. Yes - I am aware of the fact that the devs had been talking about changing divine grace. It's still factors into damage mitigation. Which is sorta what I'm talking about.
6. That's a nonsense argument. No it really is. We're now changing it from being based on 4 hits to some other formula. What is, is completely meaningless since we're changing how it always was. Considering that it used to be burst with 4 and now is much less, theoretically it can be increased through heavy investment in AA. In other words heavy investment in AA puts it back on par and perhaps even better while less investment makes it even less then before.
Your argument is that it should when it never was. That's an opinion based on an assumption we never had to deal with in the past.

Here's my simple argument that Turbine is not considering. The reason for armor up was to add diversity in melee. It accomplished that. Heavy tilt in a different direction (and anyone saying that these are tiny measured steps are lying to themselves) just means tilt in the other direction. If Turbine wanted to diversify the spectrum they would slap certain features so absolute. I for example will simply figure that most of my tempest investment in equipment such as khopeshes to be wasted and move towards AA instead. That is in particular since so much of the damage mitigation is getting hurt. Regardless if MRR was too much in your opinion or that divine grace was on the chopping block. These two facts does decrease survivability. And as such I will go ranged instead. That is what most players will do.
Why suffer more incoming damage with less or static output and then having to invest more into harder to slot gear or dilute melee DPS with ranged just to get slightly on par with what the burst damage was before, when you can just go full tilt in the direction of less pain.

To pretend that it won't strike the opposite way now is tomfoolery. It will happen. I know already that outside for example divine crusader a tempest ranger takes lots of spike damage. Less HP, less damage mitigation. That's true in Legendary and Fury.

It's both easier and smarter considering so many negative effects to go full tilt AA. Ranged and evasion. Drop strength and go full tilt on dex, con and wis instead.

This ^ I would +1 you if I didn't exhaust my resources already on the others fighting against this. To Tempests bows will now be worthless, this change makes me want to destroy my GS bows and i mean destroy not reconstruct (I don't have the ingredient for that)

[slarden]

Another perspective would be to flip each of these: Does adding PRR/MRR to all armor automatically make DDO better or "increase options"? If barbarians didn't take damage and never needed healing would it be a better game? Does increasing DPS automatically enhance the game experience?

Every one of these questions is about finding the right spot across a gray scale. Getting the exact right answer is always going to be quite difficult. Getting a group of people (developers, players, both) to agree on the exact right answer verges on impossible, so we can only do the best we can.

If having 10 MRR on light armor, 20 MRR on medium armor and 30 MRR on heavy armor is too powerful, why did you add 25 stacking MRR to the mysterious remnant cloak?

These are the type of decisions that boggle my mind. it's ok to add stacking 25 MRR to a cloak, but on armor it's way too powerful.

From my perspective things seem very chaotic and haphazard.

[Bennum]

I dont really understand any of it personally... i have a decent geared caster dps (well over caps before changes) warlock who is using the old one and chain as my main attacks with soul eater 5 and all the eldritch boosts from the other trees. My average single hit damage is about 345 total damage (because extra elemental damages do not work with current attacks) highest crit i have seen so far is 700. My barbarian who is only lvl 25 and is well under-geared average hit is 400 and with abilities and trees highest crit so far has been 4000 plus when i have my destiny proc going i am doing that 4000 damage every few hits for 30 seconds (which is as long as most boss fights outside of raids). My Fighter twf is similar not as high crit hits usually between 600 and 700 crits and average damage per hit is 250. Artificer at lvl 20 is doing roughly the same damage .. plus spells do alot more and increase damage of my lighting spells and weapons. I know before i TRed my rouge it was doing that much easily in sneak attack damage sometimes more depending on build and gear at the time.

So i really dont get why they where nerfed at all. The only problem with warlocks as they where is that sorcs and wizards do not have a basic attack like eldritch that doesn't cost SP. I have always been against dps nerfs over properly balancing other classes ... if one class is weaker then boost it dont nerf all the others. This is why MMOs can never effectively balance their games ... dont nerf just increase the challenge in new content and levels and slightly boost classes to bring them closer into balance.

I would actually be behind adding cantrips to our shelved caster classes such as clerics, sorcs, and wizzies that scale like eldritch blasts. I feel this change would go a long way towards bringing casters back into playability and putting the warlock in scale. Wizards and Sorcs could choose elements or force, and Clerics could get light or even posistive (healing blasts, what fun) or negative energy blasts. I use the word blasts lightly obviously warlocks should still be best at it but giving then a free ranged attack as well would go miles towards helping them out.

[slarden]

I dont really understand any of it personally... i have a decent geared caster dps (well over caps before changes) warlock who is using the old one and chain as my main attacks with soul eater 5 and all the eldritch boosts from the other trees. My average single hit damage is about 345 total damage (because extra elemental damages do not work with current attacks) highest crit i have seen so far is 700. My barbarian who is only lvl 25 and is well under-geared average hit is 400 and with abilities and trees highest crit so far has been 4000 plus when i have my destiny proc going i am doing that 4000 damage every few hits for 30 seconds (which is as long as most boss fights outside of raids). My Fighter twf is similar not as high crit hits usually between 600 and 700 crits and average damage per hit is 250. Artificer at lvl 20 is doing roughly the same damage .. plus spells do alot more and increase damage of my lighting spells and weapons. I know before i TRed my rouge it was doing that much easily in sneak attack damage sometimes more depending on build and gear at the time.

So i really dont get why they where nerfed at all. The only problem with warlocks as they where is that sorcs and wizards do not have a basic attack like eldritch that doesn't cost SP. I have always been against dps nerfs over properly balancing other classes ... if one class is weaker then boost it dont nerf all the others. This is why MMOs can never effectively balance their games ... dont nerf just increase the challenge in new content and levels and slightly boost classes to bring them closer into balance.

Main thing is this. A few haters don't like warlock being a "pay" class and don't even play warlock have been asking for nerfs since day 1.

Warlocks are insanely overpowered at heroic levels - that is a problem and devs won't address JUST that. It's an "A" build at level 28, but truth is my tempest which is also an "A" build at 28 can take down a boss in less than half the time. My warlock has better aoe and cc, but isn't that how the classes are designed? I think a barbarian aoe is roughly equal to a warlock aoe, but without the cc so I can sort of accept nerf, but instead of knocking off ES completely why not give things a 5% nerf across the board instead of making Tier 5 Souleater Tainted Scholar capstone the best warlock build. Prior to this change there were 5-6 solid warlock builds and after this change there wiil be 1 good build because eldritch wave which is already the best burst dps is untouched while other things get a 15-17% dps nerf.

The ES hate is caused by people running around with max con 200+ PRR 2000+ HP in unyielding and they have maybe 80% dps or less of a good warlocks dps but because they can survive anything people hate it. It has nothing to do with warlock dps.

[FlaviusMaximus]

Sooo many factors in DPS testing. Are we comparing how long it takes characters to kill one solitary enemy, a pack in close proximity, or clear a dungeon (and if so, what type of dungeon), is the character using Mortal Fear, has the character invested heavily in class granted on hit magical damage (such as light damage from KOTC) or an ability like Dance of Death, and the list goes on. Statistics like "x% more damage than other fighting styles" need to be accompanied by specifics about the testing scenario because the factors matter.