Discussion about the new Reaper trees

[kanordog]

This unity puts a smile back on my face.

Haven't seen this since update 20...

Why are we increasing the distance between vets and new players with more power creep

+1

So if you somehow have lots of points in those trees, and then TR, I understand the 'xp' in them remain. Then, at level 5, you enter a Reaper 1 quest with...+500 hp if you spent 50pts in those trees? Sounds like reaper lowskull will be easier than elite once you have run it a bit before a TR.

wow


please no reaper trees
extra xp and reaper only cosmetics good enough

[imTonE]

Dear SSG,

Historically, when item duping was at its height, you decided to celebrate DDO's 10th anniversary by releasing crafting ingredients (cards) that could be turned in for DDO store items. Inevitably chaos ensued.

Just another reason to not implement reaper xp or trees.

Thank You

[Grace_ana]

Called it.

Players: The game is too easy. There has been too much power creep, and now I am bored. Make reaper mode to challenge me.
DDO: Sure, no problem.

(Introduces reaper, which gives power creep benefits beyond what we have already.)

(Players run reaper for two months, gain all the power creep things, and now can run 10 star reaper blindfolded and solo.)

Players: The game is too easy. There has been too much power creep, and now I am bored. Make ultra reaper mode to challenge me.

***

Moral of the story: If you want to give a lasting challenge to players, don't add power creep to it. They could just have added a leaderboard for bragging rights, and that probably would have been enough for the people that wanted to run it anyway.

[Avantasian]

This would have made a lot of sense and be great if reaper was an endgame feature, but now it just cranks the power creep up to 11 at all levels and makes the game even less challenging.

[Cableman]

I like the trees, to each their own. Frankly, who cares, it's just a game and I will continue to pay my sub until it is no longer fun.

[Morroiel]

See My Post in Main discussion thread: Coco Directly Said - Reaper Trees aren't going away the best we can hope for now is to try to make them acceptable. This is my attempt at doing such. I hate power creep just as much as the next guy probably more actually.

Notes:
*All enhancements are inactive when outside reaper. You can only have a maximum of 1 tree active at a time to further specialize roles.
*When a reaper dies your party has a 100/(# of skulls)% of gaining a reaper charge. (All party member in the instance gains a charge).
*On death, you lose all reaper charges.
*Can't have more than 2 of the the Tier 5s - choices. This is also to specialize roles.
*There's a fair amount of spell point regen because imo its not really power creep its more a quality of life thing nowadays. Especially with people's stockpile of pots. (might be a bit too much though.... thoughts?)
*I tried to emphasize the reaper charge / ability mechanic because I think there's actually a lot of fun/unique potential there.
*I'm not good with names so yeah.....
*Numbers might need to be tweaked but they look fairly balanced to me.
*I took a crack at spellcasting tree first because I know that one best. I'll probably post attempts at others later.
*Let me know what you think. If the dev's are willing to bend a little, these trees don't have to be the worst thing to come to ddo.... though i still hate the added hamster wheel....

Reaper Tree II: Spells
Cores:
Reaper's Arcanum I: Every core ability you take in this tree you gain +2.5% stacking spell efficiency and +1 maximum reaper charge.
Reaper's Arcanum II: You gain the feat eschew materials.
Reaper's Arcanum III: The minimum duration of single target cc spells is increased by 1 second.
Reaper's Arcanum IV: You can reuse shrines x2 a quest. The second time you use it - it only restores sp.
Reaper's Arcanum V: When you take damage or die your mnemonic pots no longer break.
Reaper's Arcanum VI: When you die, your gear ceases to take any damage.

Tier 1:
CC:+1/1/2 spell pen
Damage:+1/2/3 usp
Healing:+2/4/6 pos spell power
Utility: an additional +2.5 stacking spell efficiency

Tier 2:
CC:+0/+0/+1 DC
Damage:+1/2/3 usp
Healing:+2/4/6 pos spell power
Utility: Expend 1/6 reaper charges - for the next 30 seconds - you can use scrolls without having to use a concentration check.

Tier 3:
CC:+1 second on the minimum duration of multi target cc spells
Damage:Expend 1/6 reaper charges - decrease cooldowns on all spells by 1 for 5 seconds.
Healing:Positive healing now affects robots for full. (Negative healing/harm should be bug fixed).
Utility: Expend 1/6 reaper charges - increase movement speed by 100% for 10 seconds on self only.

Tier 4:
CC:Expend 3/6 Reaper Charges - remove a non red/purple name mob of its buffs except DW for 6 seconds. Afterwards the buffs come back and you receive full aggro from the target.
Damage:Expend 3/6 Reaper Charges - inflict the target (a non red/purple name) with a damage debuff. Your damage against that target is only reduced by 90% of the reaper penalty for the next 8 seconds.
Healing:Expend 3/6 Reaper Charges - allow the target to heal themselves normally for the next 30 seconds. (not self targetable, does not stick to auras). For the next minute they receive reaper reduced healing from all incoming sources.
Utility:Expend 3/6 Reaper Charges - fully restore equipment (no chance of perm damage) at the cost of your entire sp bar (can't be performed in combat)

Tier 5:
CC: expend 6/6 reaper charges - freeze any mob including boss mob for .25 seconds, gain full aggro of mob (no helpless, giving target immunity to ability for 10 minutes afterwards)
Damage: expend 6/6 reaper charges - inflicts a mob a 1.2 amplification to damage debuff for 10 seconds, gain full aggro of all dps down to mob during duration, mob deals 1.2x damage for 30 seconds after debuff expires (immunity to debuff for 10 minutes afterwards).
Healing: expend 6/6 reaper charges - in the next 10 seconds if you die, you'll be given a jibbers type raise. Upon death from jibbers (death timer lasts for 2x).
Utility: expend 6/6 reaper charges - buff self with greater displacement giving them 50% concealment which can not be pierced by true seeing. This lasts for 30 seconds.



*Addendum at bottom - tier 5s might appear really OP but 6 charges on average will take 60 reapers to build up. Still might be op. Especially the damage and healing ones.ng ones.

[FranOhmsford]

See My Post in Main discussion thread: Coco Directly Said - Reaper Trees aren't going away the best we can hope for now is to try to make them acceptable. This is my attempt at doing such. I hate power creep just as much as the next guy probably more actually.

Most of this is still unbelievable Power Creep but these things below stand out as nice Bonuses for running Reaper {and wouldn't need to be Reaper only}:

Reaper's Arcanum II: You gain the feat eschew materials.Total QoL Feat, Adds no Power whatsoever
Reaper's Arcanum III: The minimum duration of single target cc spells is increased by 1 second. Minimum duration so only a very minor boost in Power
Reaper's Arcanum V: When you take damage or die your mnemonic pots no longer break. You could make this ALL pots as it would probably be easier to code.

There are a bunch of other "Quality of Life" Feats already in game and possibilities not in game that the Devs could award to players for completing Reaper Quests.

I'm not sure why we need actual Extra Power though?

Everyone asked for Cosmetic boosts for Reaper - QoL is another great idea but why extra power and especially so much of it?

[Saekee]

Can someone post a poll to see how players feel about the reaper trees and power creeplosion? Maybe you Wizza if you are up for it? Something like:

1) Yes, I love the trees and their power rewards for all levels of reaper questing
2) No, dump trees outside cosmetics. No more power creep!
3) I do not care because I will never run Reaper
4) Other

[Eryhn]

was hoping for cookies, got trees instead:

[Wizza]

Can someone post a poll to see how players feel about the reaper trees and power creeplosion? Maybe you Wizza if you are up for it? Something like:

1) Yes, I love the trees and their power rewards for all levels of reaper questing
2) No, dump trees outside cosmetics. No more power creep!
3) I do not care because I will never run Reaper
4) Other

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...ancement-Trees

[Jetrule]

The near unanimity of the rejection for these trees and the oft expressed desire for tangible rewards in other threads for reaper mode seem like contradictory feedback. It would suggest that the design and excessive power of the trees is the problem. May I suggest rather than the trees we ad a new monster manual for reaper with all the special champion and reaper types. the rewards being more or less the same as in other monster manuals but with top end exterminators offering special pet or cosmetic awards for each one.

If this monster manual with its proof of prowess bragging rights along with increased drop rates, and challenge proves to be to little incentive for running reaper mode, I would suggest that the reaper trees be similar in power to racial trees not roughly 5x the power.

Before lamania broke for me again after I reinstalled it. I ran a tower of frost reaper1 with my trusty soling warlock. Granted I respected to draconic to try out the the fully meta enabled dragon breaths but the quest was to difficult for me to solo without free cakes and shard equipment repair. Atleast 8 deaths. One champ killed him 3 times. This proved to me that the reaper trees would be very useful and maybe needed for tougher content soloing. But do we want characters soloing even reaper1 routinely without death? With past experience as a guide I could spec for and learn the quest and maybey be able to solo this eventually with current power.

[dunklezhan]

It wasn't enough to add reaper bonuses to gear? I hadn't noticed the enhancement trees - surely even if everything only applies in Reaper its defeating the point of reaper?

"Fear the reaper! You will suffer penalties to self healing and a bunch of other stuff! Mwah ha haha! The GM is trying to kill you with arbitrary house rules! Only the best of the best need apply*! Dare you enter?!"

*terms and conditions apply: instead of helping people just get ready for Reaper by just bringing out new gear from new adventure packs that might then be useful in Reaper, penalties from Reaper will eventually be overcome by special Reaper item bonuses and special Reaper character progression - so you can just do Reaper on 1 skull if you want, you'll still get there!

I don't get it.

[Talonthedruid]

Scrap the trees.

Scrap reaper XP.

Far too much of this game is about the acquisition of XP, a lesson SSG seams to be incapable of learning.

+1 and also, remove the level cap, I was looking forward to running old quests and raids that are super fun yet super easy on reaper to make them challenging.

[Vish]

Some further comments on reaper
This time about the trees
I've noticed, there are three trees, and they roughly correspond to the trinity: dps, healer, tank

While dps and tank are covered, I would rather see the spells tree have some tiers including bonuses/allowances to increased healing,
Or unmitigated nerfage.
Maybe something along lines of, personal self healing restored 20/40/60%. That allows the cleric to keep himself alive, usually via aura, or would at least allow him to cast heals on himself in an emergency.
At any rate, the spells tree should be more inclusive of the healer. Not just increasing DCs and spell pen.
There needs to be specific clerical persuasion.
Say replace spell pen with healer augmentation, keep the DCs but reduce them.

Also on the hit points of trees.
I would keep dps at +10,
Reduce caster to +5,
And increase tank to +15.
That allows a better representation of roles, and grants better variance.

On the dps trees, I would double the melee/ranged power.


Ps
Post #500
And it's about healing

[Fanaval]

Have you considered that to max out a tree are required 2,916,000 reaper xp?

Let's suppose an avarage of 300 rxp during a farming in R1... It's about 9720 quests. Say zergfarming 10 min a quest? We have about 1620 hours of play... Ehrr...

Are we sure that farming reaper xp is strategically relevant on the long term? Or, maybe, it is better to run reaper for fun?

Just a question...

[Rys]

Have you considered that to max out a tree are required 2,916,000 reaper xp?

Let's suppose an avarage of 300 rxp during a farming in R1... It's about 9720 quests. Say zergfarming 10 min a quest? We have about 1620 hours of play... Ehrr...

Are we sure that farming reaper xp is strategically relevant on the long term? Or, maybe, it is better to run reaper for fun?

Just a question...

Reaper rewards should have never offered any kind of power.

[FranOhmsford]

Have you considered that to max out a tree are required 2,916,000 reaper xp?

Let's suppose an avarage of 300 rxp during a farming in R1... It's about 9720 quests. Say zergfarming 10 min a quest? We have about 1620 hours of play... Ehrr...

Are we sure that farming reaper xp is strategically relevant on the long term? Or, maybe, it is better to run reaper for fun?

Just a question...

At 8hrs a day that would be 56 hrs a wek or 224 hrs a month.

So even for the most hardcore of 8hr a day Veteran Reaper Only Zergers we SHOULD be looking at a minimum of 7 months before ANYONE has a single Reaper Tree Maxed or 21 months before we have our first "Reaper Completionist"

At that rate the vast majority of players will never get close to maxing out all three trees - The vast majority of players will never get close to maxing out ONE tree.

Heck even if the Devs TRIPLED the Reaper XP given or divided by three the Reaper XP required you'd still be looking at an average of 2 years for even the hardcore to max out - Because sorry but no-one's running Reaper all day every day without getting burned out long before they max it out!

[Fanaval]

At 8hrs a day that would be 56 hrs a wek or 224 hrs a month.

So even for the most hardcore of 8hr a day Veteran Reaper Only Zergers we SHOULD be looking at a minimum of 7 months before ANYONE has a single Reaper Tree Maxed or 21 months before we have our first "Reaper Completionist"

At that rate the vast majority of players will never get close to maxing out all three trees - The vast majority of players will never get close to maxing out ONE tree.

Heck even if the Devs TRIPLED the Reaper XP given or divided by three the Reaper XP required you'd still be looking at an average of 2 years for even the hardcore to max out - Because sorry but no-one's running Reaper all day every day without getting burned out long before they max it out!

A lot more than 21 months because each point over the 54 costs a huge amount. Maxing out all trees will cost 26,244,000 reaper xp. It is more or less 70 months of farming 8 hours/day. Good luck to the brave that dare of farming reaper completionist. More than 5 years online for 8 hours/day? Please.

Enjoy reaper for the challenge.

[EllisDee37]

Should I bother to add reaper trees to my character builder, do you think? I'm leaning toward "no."

[Wizza]

Should I bother to add reaper trees to my character builder, do you think? I'm leaning toward "no."

Nah.