Beethoven's (U)29th Balance

[Beethoven]

So with everyone making their own threats and me being too lazy to bother with multi-threat discussion I'll do as well, just to get some stuff off my chest and share my thoughts (which, really, is just a fancy way of saying make myself feel better). DDO used to be a cooperative environment in the good old days between healing, CC and (usually melee) heavy hitters (dps/tanks) not because the game was too difficult for a (non-balanced) group of ranged or because archers/casters/throwers had no way to compensate for incoming damage without healers, but because the traditional CC/Heals/DPS combo simply was the safest, easiest and fastest/most effective way to beat every content.

(Non-Magic) Ranged had a defense benefit by operating at range which made them nice to have around if things went south, but could not churn out the same kind of dps melee heavy hitters could.
Arcanes would have higher spike damage than melee, which helped (a lot) against tough opponents and bosses, but could not easily sustain that damage over a full quest.

These days though, Arcanes (particularly Warlocks, Sorcerer and everyone running Shiradi) can sustain their dps with relative ease.
Ranged dps has been boosted to compete with melee levels (especially once you factor the time it takes for melee to actually get from mob to mob).
That put melee really at a place were they had no special benefit, doing roughly the same as everyone else except at a greater risk.

Armor up was supposed to address this but ended up hardly ideal because:
a) standing still is easier than moving, thus making easy even simpler
b) DDO's diversity allowed for everyone to simply slap on a set of heavy armor, hold a shield and use splash levels from other classes to gain the maximum defensive benefit.

[Beethoven]

Now that I am done rambling, my actual suggestions. It'd be up to me I'd try balance game and stats based on build rather than class. For instance:

The way I see it the main benefit of light and unarmed builds should be mobility, but this right now does not come into play (beyond dodge) at all. What I would do is:

Melee
* implement a hard cap on the jump skill based on Max. Dex. Bonus of an Armor and Shields
* implement a system decreasing movement speed by, say, 5% for each level of Armor above light (ie: -5% movement speed for medium armor, -10% for Heavy)
* add a similar system to shields (ie: -5% for heavy shields, -10% for tower shields)
* add a movement penalty to Defensive stance effectively halving it.

Mobs
Add more abilities that specifically target ranged; ie:

* Beholder, devil telekinesis that pulls toons towards them as opposed to throwing them in a random direction
* Telekinesis spell for casters that does the same thing
* Rush/charge ability on melee mobs allowing them to traverse a great distance fast
* Pin and crippling shot abilities for enemy archers
* Shadow step on rogue mobs allowing them to teleport to their target
* Chain attacks on certain mobs that, unlike whirling them to threaten melee only and be easy picking for ranged, shoots straight, lodges into their target and pulls it towards them.

It is my opinion that this would address following:
* it creates a greater difference between unarmed and heavy armored build due to vastly different mobility which will affect playstyle
* it makes the damage mitigation from heavy armor and shields come at a price not everyone wants to pay just because
* it could create low-level tactical play by making (already slower) tanks decide when to sacrifice even more mobility for damage mitigation (defensive stance)
* it would allow tanks to mitigate significant abuse without being overpowered since they cannot engage and disengage as quick - everything that causes only more damage to them than they can easily self heal should be a threat unless they have a healer following, in which case it encourages cooperative play
* ranged tanks would actually be more like tanks (less mobile)
* typical ranged would be as mobile but due to being unlikely to use armor and shields potentially more squish
* a larger number of mob abilities targeting ranged, particularly those who address perching (telekinesis, chain) will mean ranged can no longer rely on never being hit and thus will have to make more decisions (aka use more strategy); ie:
** sacrifice mobility for additional damage mitigation
** proceed even more careful (and potentially slower)
** cooperate with other party members to have CC, a tank grab aggro, etc.

Finally,

Nerf Healing Amp

I am sorry, but if you have healing amplification that can be high enough for a toon heal 600+ damage a tick while standing in consecrated ground you effectively have only two options:
* balance the game around these builds by making incoming damage so high that every other build becomes irrelevant because dead too quick
* balance around the average build, which means those builds with that heal amp will become indestructible since they heal more than they take damage.

Half it, put a hard cap on it but as long as the gap between no or even average healing amp and max healing amp builds is as big you cannot balance for it, you either bore one side or frustrate all others.

[Vanhooger]

Well another great thread. Sadly, it's not going to happen, since DEV didn't spend a word on the raid balance.

[Elfishski]

Now that I am done rambling, my actual suggestions. It'd be up to me I'd try balance game and stats based on build rather than class. For instance:
Nerf Healing Amp

I am sorry, but if you have healing amplification that can be high enough for a toon heal 600+ damage a tick while standing in consecrated ground you effectively have only two options:
* balance the game around these builds by making incoming damage so high that every other build becomes irrelevant because dead too quick
* balance around the average build, which means those builds with that heal amp will become indestructible since they heal more than they take damage.

Half it, put a hard cap on it but as long as the gap between no or even average healing amp and max healing amp builds is as big you cannot balance for it, you either bore one side or frustrate all others.

Yep, the doubling of all healing amp for 99% of builds in the game aside from that one person who stacked all the multiplicative sources was a really bad mistake in terms of balance, unfortunately.

I'd like it to either be halved back to where it was or - my preference seeing as that cat is out of the bag - add a whole lot of other effects to the game beyond an occasional champion like traps, spells, ??, that reduce healing amp substantially a large portion of the time when it matters in combat, meaning mobs can do less than one-shot fatal damage and still be threatening, and we can still heal our 1000+ with a cocoon out of combat without having to stand around for what feels like an eternity.

[Holymunchkin]

part of the problem is the old multiplicative benefits from human (and monk) working

[Thatguy234]

whats with the healing amp hate? it takes an investment to have high amp it's not others fault you ignore it.

[Elfishski]

whats with the healing amp hate? it takes an investment to have high amp it's not others fault you ignore it.

It takes some investment to have really high healing amp, but 100+ is pretty easy in epics without making any special investment and just using good equipment that has other desirable properties, or maybe using some otherwise inferior gloves from a lower level, perhaps with a couple of spare enhancement points thrown in for low hanging healing amp fruit in human or elsewhere.

The problem is that with so much healing amp if a character isn't dead from being hit by a monster then they almost instantly heal to full HP again, so the monster isn't threatening unless it kills a character in exactly 2 hits. 1 hit is too lame and nobody really enjoys it, 3 hits and they're no longer really a threat by themselves because there's plenty of time to hit the heal button. That makes content impossible to balance against a variety of different player characters with different defenses - 2 hits on the tank will always kill a scrawny wizard and probably anything else, if it takes 2 hits to kill the same wizard then the monster is almost irrelevant to a serious tank and no threat at all.

If healing is harder, then you can take smaller slices off of tough characters, or bigger but non fatal chunks out of a scrawny wizard, and everyone has time to enjoy panicking that they might not live through the fight because they can't heal fast enough.

I don't want to *need* a cleric, and I'm all in favor of rewarding people who sacrifice something else in their character build for high healing amp, but cocoon or consecration or renewal plus readily available high healing amp is "overperforming" in the current game, and it's forcing some bad design decisions into newer quests.