DDOCast 476 - DDO Debates: Proposed Cleric Changes

[pjstechie]

This week we take a closer look at the proposed cleric changes with Asheras & Draculetta! We also look at the coming changes to the artificer battle engineer enhancement tree!

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[FuzzyDuck81]

Assorted disjointed musings as I listened

Turn undead already does some damage against undead for paladins with that KotC enhancement (sun elves get it too) & I use it frequently through lower to mid levels as a nice AoE attack - seems to me that the proposed changes were basically to make that a universal functionality & then make the CC element actually useful through switching it to DC based.

The way I'd amend it for the "i wanna be able to outright kill" crowd is to make it a double save, so one save for the stun then a second, lower DC save-or-die. Death domain would have the full stun DC for instakill & then a stun if they make the instakill save (similar to how EiN & hurl work)

Honestly, the main issue I can see with turn undead being primarily damage-dealing is that it'll generate a lot of aggro from things that aren't destroyed outright.

Overall I like the domains, few specific thoughts:

Animal domain I can't see staying as-is, I suspect it'll be reduced to something like 5 per class level & then maybe 10 per epic level, so essentially a much stronger version of the toughness feat, still great but not ridiculous. I think the CON-for-party on turn is actually kinda troublesome, since you know there will be some people "oh, i'm safe with 100 or so HP" dropping dead from the sudden HP loss when that extra CON disappears. Similarly, iirc wasn't there a problem a while back with CHA score changing causing UMD recalculations contributing to lag? Other stat-boosting on turn effects might run into a similar issue.

Death domain I think will be a great one for cleric splashes, because death ward SLA while keeping most of your main class features? YES PLEASE! The other 2 SLAs are pretty tasty too.

Destruction domain will be a fun one for a battleclerics... frenzied berserkers who can heal? sweet!

Earth domain - Earthquake SLA might be problematic, drawing away from a very valuable role provided by druids.. I'd balance it out by making the cooldown far longer, similar to how druids can get storm of vengeance as an SLA for a cheap super-powered version that can't be used as often.

Good domain - cheap mega-powered bladebarriers I like... can see this being multiclassed with warlock & combined with brilliance from enlightened spirit to make a build that can do AoE damage & temp HP buffers as well as actual healing from the front line to make a party near-unassailable.

War domain - good job holy sword was changed a while back to be a competence bonus so it doesn't stack with others or this would be sickeningly powerful for multiclassing, particularly combined with swashbuckling which gives some big boosts on those specific weapon types for very low investment. Even so, handaxe & light pick in particular will still benefit from part of the HS boosts in addition to what swashbuckling gives and then there's the base damage dice increase...also, even though it wouldn't benefit from holy sword, I'm thinking using dagger could be interesting for a swashbuckling war domain cleric of Vol with that fun vampirism effect going on.

[FranOhmsford]

My replies are on You Tube.

Terrible Video!

You've literally turned DDOCast into pure propaganda!

[Faltout]

Patrick: They say it works fine in heroics. It needs to work in epics as well. --> The system needs to change.
I don't see how we go from the 2 truths to the conclusion. The system needs to remain the same and just add some more boosts for epic. Which we've already proposed and with numbers to back it up. It's a very easy change.

Patrick: You no longer need to worry about Hit Dice and bloated Hit Dice because this is changing to a DC.
So now you need to worry about the DC. And saves are all over the place. They are actually way higher than the hit dice. So a cleric would need to reach wizard-like saves with Charisma... Not saying that it can't be done though. Which brings us to the next point:

Patrick: If you are surrounded by 20 undead and you turn, you'll only turn like 10 of those. With the proposal, you'll turn all 20. And that's better.
That's true. But that's not better. The reason the death part of turn undead was removed was because they thought "Turn Undead is overpowered in heroics". Well, with a working DC and no limit to hit dice, turn undead is gonna be even more overpowered. The way a cleric needs to act while turning is isolate few undead that he can turn and hit multiple turns in small undead groups. It's not like a sorc "gather them all in place, blast repeatedly with fireball". You need to play it smart. And this was a fair limitation.

Patrick: The system moves away from binary and that's a good thing.
This excuse has been used many times and we accept it unconditionally like it's a great thing. But when you come to think of what all your abilities do, if you find out that all you can do in the world is a portion of something, then you stop enjoying and feeling like a hero. There are other measures put in place to ensure that you can't do everything by yourself. But your abilities need to do something complete. Imagine if mass hold instead of holding the monsters in place, it damaged them over time and lowered their damage output. You can turn everything into DPS and HP. But then what game are you playing? Perhaps an idle game?
AC moved from binary to "meaningful". Now we can see what AC's place is in the game. Almost non-existent.
Instead of the devs fixing the monster stats bloating to work with existing binary systems, they convert binary systems into "stuff that does something, but not much".

Patrick: It will be easier for newer players to use it.
That's not necessarily good. You present a game to the player. "Ok, here's how it works. There's HP, there's damage, there's healing. And here's thousands of abilities that will aid HP, damage or healing or combinations of them. Some more, some less. Enjoy." The player will lose interest in the game that shallow. When I was a cleric for the first time, I tried using Turn Undead. It didn't work most of the time. So, next life I researched a bit more, planned a bit more, understood a bit more and then opened my present which was Turn Undead having an impact on the dungeon. Then next life as a paladin I opened another present which was Turn Undead as a pure pally also dominating Delera's. It was so awesome hearing from the party members how impressed they were that I was able to turn a room as a pally.
Every time I understand a peculiar ability and find a way to utilize it, I open another present that DDO's gameplay offers me. Every time I select a +1 to damage and +10 to PRR, I feel nothing.

[pjstechie]

Patrick: They say it works fine in heroics. It needs to work in epics as well. --> The system needs to change.
I don't see how we go from the 2 truths to the conclusion. The system needs to remain the same and just add some more boosts for epic. Which we've already proposed and with numbers to back it up. It's a very easy change. If i said "system", I think my thoughts would more accurately be reflected with "something" instead. Also, I don't have the experience that it works "fine" in heroics and this was more of a response to a specific argument i saw that said something along the lines of "it works fine in heroics up to a certain level, it doesnt work well past that, it doesnt need to change" which I do not think is a good argument.

Patrick: You no longer need to worry about Hit Dice and bloated Hit Dice because this is changing to a DC.
So now you need to worry about the DC. And saves are all over the place. They are actually way higher than the hit dice. So a cleric would need to reach wizard-like saves with Charisma... Not saying that it can't be done though. Which brings us to the next point: Well sure, clearly you would have to worry about DCs, and you raise an interesting problem in that the DCs would be Cha based, but I still think its a more easily understandable system compared to the current pnp based one - and DCs I would think would be easier to balance/add things (maybe including existing things). I like what you are pointing out though.

Patrick: If you are surrounded by 20 undead and you turn, you'll only turn like 10 of those. With the proposal, you'll turn all 20. And that's better.
That's true. But that's not better. The reason the death part of turn undead was removed was because they thought "Turn Undead is overpowered in heroics". Well, with a working DC and no limit to hit dice, turn undead is gonna be even more overpowered. The way a cleric needs to act while turning is isolate few undead that he can turn and hit multiple turns in small undead groups. It's not like a sorc "gather them all in place, blast repeatedly with fireball". You need to play it smart. And this was a fair limitation. I suppose it depends on how they want to balance it, but sure point taken.

Patrick: The system moves away from binary and that's a good thing.
This excuse has been used many times and we accept it unconditionally like it's a great thing. But when you come to think of what all your abilities do, if you find out that all you can do in the world is a portion of something, then you stop enjoying and feeling like a hero. There are other measures put in place to ensure that you can't do everything by yourself. But your abilities need to do something complete. Imagine if mass hold instead of holding the monsters in place, it damaged them over time and lowered their damage output. You can turn everything into DPS and HP. But then what game are you playing? Perhaps an idle game?
AC moved from binary to "meaningful". Now we can see what AC's place is in the game. Almost non-existent.
Instead of the devs fixing the monster stats bloating to work with existing binary systems, they convert binary systems into "stuff that does something, but not much". I think this issue is more about players than Devs. My experience is that players love binary effects when they work all the time, but despise them when they dont. As in if a [randomly generated] player only was able to finger of death or mass hold a random selection of monsters 50% of the time I think they would generally find those abilities to not be "meaningful"

Patrick: It will be easier for newer players to use it.
That's not necessarily good. You present a game to the player. "Ok, here's how it works. There's HP, there's damage, there's healing. And here's thousands of abilities that will aid HP, damage or healing or combinations of them. Some more, some less. Enjoy." The player will lose interest in the game that shallow. When I was a cleric for the first time, I tried using Turn Undead. It didn't work most of the time. So, next life I researched a bit more, planned a bit more, understood a bit more and then opened my present which was Turn Undead having an impact on the dungeon. Then next life as a paladin I opened another present which was Turn Undead as a pure pally also dominating Delera's. It was so awesome hearing from the party members how impressed they were that I was able to turn a room as a pally.
Every time I understand a peculiar ability and find a way to utilize it, I open another present that DDO's gameplay offers me. Every time I select a +1 to damage and +10 to PRR, I feel nothing. This is a great point. I still personally dont see a conceptual problem with it being DC based instead of the voodu magic it currently is but I understand what you are saying. (these feelings come from more of a pnp background than DDO specifically fyi)

first, thanks for a respectful and well thought out entry into the conversation - These shows are meant to and work better with this kind of post show dialogue.

thoughts in red