Reaper/Champion Changes: Recommendation and Reasoning, Jan10-12, Lamma Patch

[Sam-u-r-eye]

Preface. Jan10th played Harambegorilla (my pure necrolock with 2-3 DCs below max) in TOEE skull 10, Skull 10 Tempest's Spine, and Skull 5 Tempest's Spine.
We wiped in ToEE @ the air temple human boss. We wiped after exiting the outdoors in Skull 10 Tempest's Spine. We completed Skull 5 Tempest's Spine.
In all cases I had ~80% of the kills before we wiped or I swapped toons for STR lever.

Recommendation: Saves on mobs should be higher. +2 per skull, rather than +1?
Reasoning: My character has DCs 10 lower than a pure FVS/CLERIC or Wizard. (But DCs comprable with Sorc.) I felt like the instakills were cheesy. This is the problem that old epics had, and I think we as a community just need to raise the DC bar until it becomes more prohibitive. TOEE has the highest saves in the game and is the worst place in the world for a DC caster, and I was dominating compared to my melee, ranged, and shiradi companions.

Recommendation: The CC reduction needs tuning. Add 3 seconds to the minimum duration thingy.
Reasoning: Spells like web which only can "grab" mobs a few seconds after being casted are disproportionately affected by the CC reduction. I cast web and 6-8 seconds later its gone. Web only takes effect after 2-3 seconds and you have to kite mobs into it. Maybe it would be easier to adjust the length of web directly? I haven't tested all the spells but maybe I can get around to that today.

Recommendation: The champion naming should display when mob health bars are displayed.
Reasoning: Is it a bug that they're not currently? Mob health bars are more useful than champion naming. If I have to choose between one and the other then I won't be able to see champions except for crowns, and this project of "types" will be a failure. I know several other people in party felt this way quite strongly. This is the biggest complaint I had about the patch.

Recommendation: Summons, and companions shouldn't receive damage bonuses that scale with skull.
Reasoning: My ooze outkilled everyone in the party in a 10 skull LOD. (I was playing a TWF melee). I know we're over level but I was seeing 6-10k hits from the thing. Seems like a bug or exploit lol. ^^ Not that I don't love my oozes but if their damage stays the same (~600 a hit) they will still be out-dpsing me on 10 skull unfortunately.

Recommendation: Add a lock-out. Disenable cakes. Add a timer to pots and/or add more "magic gems" back in. General cheese reduction tactics.
Reasoning: Re-entering and cakes will become a problem for people trying to brute force a completion. Pot abuse is an issue throughout the game. This could be remedied I think by increasing the magic gem drop rate back up a little. It seemed a lot lower than last patch and last patch it was OP. Somewhere in the middle is what my feelers are tellin meh'.

Recommendation: A lot of us are having a ton of fun and you should remember that!!
Reasoning: You have great QA, and this patch is lookin good with the necro healing. Thank you.

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I hope ya'll take care of some of the cheese I've identified above to make it a more stream-lined gaming experience. Good luck!

[SirValentine]

Preface. Jan10th played Harambegorilla (my pure necrolock with 2-3 DCs below max) in TOEE skull 10
...
Recommendation: Saves on mobs should be higher. +2 per skull, rather than +1?
Reasoning: My character has DCs 10 lower than a pure FVS/CLERIC or Wizard. (But DCs comprable with Sorc.) I felt like the instakills were cheesy. This is the problem that old epics had, and I think we as a community just need to raise the DC bar until it becomes more prohibitive. TOEE has the highest saves in the game and is the worst place in the world for a DC caster, and I was dominating compared to my melee, ranged, and shiradi companions.

I feel we need more data, and more importantly, clarity on goals, before we jump to conclusions.

I thought you were only getting 50% success, and only that much when targeting mob weak saves?

Sure, devs can just inflate mob saving throws, but what's the goal? To make DC casting completely unworkable? What would be a good success rate, against strong saves, versus weak saves? What are the actual DCs of players, and saves of mobs, and in what content?

"What content?" matters. Reaper isn't just level 30s in Legendary content, either; it spans from level 2 quests on up. How does a level 4 Wizard land a Resistible Dance in Reaper Harbor if mobs all have +20 to saves?

[Kebtid]

Ah you did write in devchat that you get 50% of mobs in temple, i recall that.

Good analysis

[BigErkyKid]

I feel we need more data, and more importantly, clarity on goals, before we jump to conclusions.

Here, some shameless promotion of my thread:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...S-self-healing

I believe I have the formulas they used to scale damage and to debuff our DPS.

So now it is just a matter of whether you believe those numbers are "fun".

[Tlorrd]

from this thread and another, it sounds like summons (and hires i suppose) will be back in vogue ... they get the damage boosts applied to reaper ... thus my cleric can just spam some summon monster IX and VIII and sit back with invis scroll and heal them ... muhahaha.

[mikarddo]

I am a bit worried that some are already playing 10 skull decently well even if not completing without any of the benefits thats likely to come from "Reaper XP". It makes me wonder if - incredibly hard as it is - it may not be hard enough even so.

Imho Skull 10 completions should not happen at all for a long while - think AoW hard in EQ1 for those familiar with that.

[Mr_Helmet]

I am a bit worried that some are already playing 10 skull decently well even if not completing without any of the benefits thats likely to come from "Reaper XP". It makes me wonder if - incredibly hard as it is - it may not be hard enough even so.

Imho Skull 10 completions should not happen at all for a long while - think AoW hard in EQ1 for those familiar with that.

They're doing 10 skull SIGNIFICANTLY over-level without the healing debuff. Nobody is completely 10 skull at level content.

[Eth]

Recommendation: Summons, and companions shouldn't receive damage bonuses that scale with skull.
Reasoning: My ooze outkilled everyone in the party in a 10 skull LOD. (I was playing a TWF melee). I know we're over level but I was seeing 6-10k hits from the thing. Seems like a bug or exploit lol. ^^ Not that I don't love my oozes but if their damage stays the same (~600 a hit) they will still be out-dpsing me on 10 skull unfortunately.

Hope the devs catched that. Not that I'm against summons being finally useful, but those Oozes are just to powerful.
Oozes doing equivalent of adrenalined slayer arrows per hit is stupid. They also make way to good tanks.

[LavidDynch]

Whatta refreshing post from the OP!

Content will be so much harder, for all, when CC and Instant-kills are more in line.

[Vanhooger]

I completely agree with OP, quest should be impossible 7-10 skull for long time, or reaper is going to die in a month or less. Doesn't matter if the quest is lvl 20.

[Ellihor]

Recommendation: Saves on mobs should be higher. +2 per skull, rather than +1?
Reasoning: My character has DCs 10 lower than a pure FVS/CLERIC or Wizard. (But DCs comprable with Sorc.) I felt like the instakills were cheesy. This is the problem that old epics had, and I think we as a community just need to raise the DC bar until it becomes more prohibitive. TOEE has the highest saves in the game and is the worst place in the world for a DC caster, and I was dominating compared to my melee, ranged, and shiradi companions.

Warlock capstone (SE) and hurl are overperforming. But I don't think it is a problem that a specific build is dominating a specific task, in this case, killing trash. Builds are supposed to dominate the role they're specialized for, isn't that how it's supposed to work?

[JOTMON]

Warlock capstone (SE) and hurl are overperforming. But I don't think it is a problem that a specific build is dominating a specific task, in this case, killing trash. Builds are supposed to dominate the role they're specialized for, isn't that how it's supposed to work?
~snip~
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Meh, only the extremely heavily invested warlock builds are performing reasonably. which is what I would expect from a 100CHA warlock build.. or even the 100+stat Int wizards..
besides, they are dealing with trash mobs.. not the bosses...

Shiradi spammers are the easy button builds. no heavy stat investment, no heavy gear investment required, no past lives needed, completionists not needed, Slavers gear/sets not needed...
ranged keep-away and spam low cost SLA's on bastardized multi-class abominations.. dealing random massive damage against every mob..

Give Reaper mobs a permanent globe of invulnerability to protect them from all these low cost level 1-4 spells and SLA's

[Ellihor]

Meh, only the extremely heavily invested warlock builds are performing reasonably. which is what I would expect from a 100CHA warlock build.. or even the 100+stat Int wizards..
besides, they are dealing with trash mobs.. not the bosses...

Shiradi spammers are the easy button builds. no heavy stat investment, no heavy gear investment required, no past lives needed, completionists not needed, Slavers gear/sets not needed...
ranged keep-away and spam low cost SLA's on bastardized multi-class abominations.. dealing random massive damage against every mob..

Give Reaper mobs a permanent globe of invulnerability to protect them from all these low cost level 1-4 spells and SLA's

On quest it's about ok, in raid it's beyond broken. Instakill is basically the only way to kill stuff. They have to raise the saves so that you need debuff

[Zoriaan]

Preface. Jan10th played Harambegorilla (my pure necrolock with 2-3 DCs below max) in TOEE skull 10, Skull 10 Tempest's Spine, and Skull 5 Tempest's Spine.
We wiped in ToEE @ the air temple human boss. We wiped after exiting the outdoors in Skull 10 Tempest's Spine. We completed Skull 5 Tempest's Spine.
In all cases I had ~80% of the kills before we wiped or I swapped toons for STR lever.

Hey Sam,

Some very good points you made in the post! I truly hope the devs listen, as, at least on Cannith, this is the last grasp, final thing that can keep a lot of us in the game...if reaper fails Cannith end-game population will be decimated I think...I will leave for sure...and there are many others who feel the same way...

Anyway, I do have one concern...if Necro insta-killing was over-performing so much, why did you wipe? I completely agree with Ellihor here...let them be good at trash killing, as you would still need the other party roles to complete...or at least I would hope so!

I think if they make it that only the best of the best geared and completed insta kill builds can manage to insta-kill in 10skull that would be the happy place...so basically someone would need max all gear, past lifes, etc etc to be able to do it...but suggesting that even the top end (I am talking maybe 3-5 players on Cannith here) insta killers need to dump 140SP to kill a trash mob is silly, and to me that is a instant raper mode fail already...if they make insta-killing useless in 10 skull they are just pigeon-holing again and you will end up with 6 shiradi or 6 furi-shotter or 6 *whatever is OP* again...remember the blue-bar only Epic Chrono days

Anyway, keep the good feedback coming! Hopefully some of this is taken on-board by the dev team and we get a great product that brings excitement and sweaty palms back to ddo!!! I'm thinking tanking at level elite ToD waaay back when I started playing DDO, and people would scroll heal the tank...and people actually made GS absorb gear to tank those ice shadow things...

Z