Fixing melee in higher difficulties and reaper: a solution.

[HastyPudding]

I have been stewing over this for a while, and I thought I'd just write it down and see what everyone else thought about it.

The problem: Melee builds have little-to-no survivability in legendary elite quests in quests in reaper mode above 5-skull due to high enemy damage and comparatively lower play defenses.

Other problems: Buffing melee does nothing because multiclassing can always exploit class-specific buffs. With this, you end up having melee in the same position they are in and ranged and caster builds gaining more defenses than they need.

My solution: Class-based and level-based passive feats that work ONLY when wielding a melee weapon in your main hand.

Some details:
Artificer: Arcane Defenses
For every artificer class level you possess, you gain a +1 bonus to physical and magical resistance ratings. Additionally, for every two artificer class levels you possess you gain a +1 bonus to armor class. This feat is only in effect if you are wielding a melee weapon in your main hand or have a two-handed melee weapon equipped.

Barbarian: Anger Management
For every barbarian class level you possess, you gain a +1 bonus to physical resistance rating and a +2 bonus to positive healing amplification. Additionally, for every three barbarian class levels you possess, you gain a +1% bonus to your dodge. This feat is only in effect if you are wielding a melee weapon in your main hand or have a two-handed melee weapon equipped.

Bard: Musically Defensive
For every bard class level you possess, you gain a +1 bonus to armor class. Additionally, for every two bard class levels you posses you gain a +1 bonus to physical resistance rating and +1% bonus to dodge. This feat is only in effect if you are wielding a melee weapon in your main hand or have a two-handed melee weapon equipped.

Cleric / Favored Soul: Divine Providence
For every cleric or favored soul class level you posses, you gain a +1 bonus to physical resistance rating. Having a shield equipped further increases your armor class by +1 for every two cleric or favored soul class levels you possess. This feat is only in effect if you are wielding a melee weapon in your main hand or have a two-handed melee weapon equipped.

Druid: Natural Protection
For every two druid class levels you possess, you gain a +1 bonus to physical resistance rating and a +1 bonus to armor class. If you are in an animal shape-shifting form, you gain an additional +1 bonus to physical resistance rating for every two druid class levels you possess. This feat is only in effect if you are wielding a melee weapon in your main hand, have a two-handed melee weapon equipped, or are in an animal shape-shifting form.

Fighter: Militant Defender
For every fighter class level you possess, you gain a +1 bonus to physical resistance rating and a +1 bonus to armor class. If you have a shield equipped you also gain a +1 bonus to magical resistance rating for every two fighter class levels you possess. This feat is only in effect if you are wielding a melee weapon in your main hand or have a two-handed melee weapon equipped.

Monk: Iron Body
For every monk class level you possess, you gain a +2 bonus to armor class. Additionally, for every two monk class levels you posses you gain a +1% bonus to dodge. This feat is only in effect if you are wielding a melee weapon in your main hand, are using handwraps, or have a two-handed melee weapon equipped.

Paladin: Faithful Guardian
For every paladin class level you possess, you gain a +1 bonus to physical resistance rating and a +1 bonus to armor class. If you have a shield equipped you also gain a +1 bonus to magical resistance rating for every two paladin class levels you possess. This feat is only in effect if you are wielding a melee weapon in your main hand or have a two-handed melee weapon equipped.

Ranger: Block and Parry
For every two ranger class levels you posses, you gain a +1 bonus to physical resistance rating, a +1 bonus to armor class, and a +1% bonus to dodge. This feat is only in effect if you are wielding a melee weapon in your main hand or have a two-handed melee weapon equipped.

Rogue: Evasive Maneuvers
For every rogue class level you posses, you gain a +1 bonus to armor class. Additionally, for every two rogue class levels you posses, you gain a +1% bonus to dodge, and for every 3 rogue class levels you posses you gain a +1% bonus to maximum dodge. This feat is only in effect if you are wielding a melee weapon in your main hand or have a two-handed melee weapon equipped.


Not good? Too good? Questions? Comments?

[Amundir]

Would these only work in reaper?

[cru121]

One of the problems of your solution is that caster sticks are melee weapons.

Here's my odd idea from the big old thread of whines.

could a new mechanic like this help?

When you swing a melee weapon, you get a defensive focus counter. Which would stack up to let's say 500.
Whenever you cast a spell or SLA, you lose some of your defensive focus (say 40 for a cocoon or 100 for a wail of the banshee).
Defensive focus would somehow increase your defense. Maybe a multiplier to your PRR/MRR?
Switching to a ranged/thrown weapon would lose all stacks.

Not sure how to make this compatible with tanks though...

[Chacka_DDO]

maybe read this and this.
If you want to make melee more durable it needs to give them more defensive power if you have a melee weapon equipped in your main hand as you said.
To prevent an abuse by a caster, this defense bonus must deactivate for a certain time if he casts a detrimental spell.
The pattern in your suggestion is not hard to see and there is no reason for a lot of different feats who basically do the same, they give more defensive per character level.
If a caster doesn't cast a spell I see no real reason why he should not get this benefits too if you want to give such passive defensive benefits.
And a caster can be a melee build too after all.
But in general, I'm against a straight buff of the passive defense and self-heals.
Because this is basically just a nerf of monster damage.
If you want to improve melees you should take the chance and strengthen their active abilities.
Dumb "power creep" is not a good solution in my opinion.

[Yamani]

Monk: Iron Body
For every monk class level you possess, you gain a +2 bonus to armor class. Additionally, for every two monk class levels you posses you gain a +1% bonus to dodge. This feat is only in effect if you are wielding a melee weapon in your main hand, are using handwraps, or have a two-handed melee weapon equipped.

What about the 90% of current monks who sit near or at dodge cap especially while in reaper?

[masterofthewand]

Why don't we just drop the reaper trees and raise the difficulty on DC casters a bit? The only reason ppl are complaining about melee not being viable is because they see all these casters walking through content that they shouldn't be able to. In my opinion, maxed out with all the past lifes etc.. you should have no better than 50% chance to DC anything on r10. And this is coming from someone who exclusively plays casters. I guarantee "almost" none of this banter would be happening if the devs had paid closer attention to what they were doing in regards to DC casting at reaper level.

[HastyPudding]

One of the problems of your solution is that caster sticks are melee weapons.

Here's my odd idea from the big old thread of whines.

And? You'd have to get a deep splash into a melee-oriented class to get any useful benefit from the passives, which does almost nothing for your spellcasting capabilities. I deliberately left out warlocks, wizards, and sorcerers, as they have very easy access to defensive spells like blur, displacement, stoneskin, invisibility, etc, as well as strong aoe cc capabilities to protect themselves.

What about the 90% of current monks who sit near or at dodge cap especially while in reaper?

Better itemization and more AC? Again, this is just a suggestion: exact numbers would have to be ironed out.

[masterofthewand]

Better itemization and more AC? Again, this is just a suggestion: exact numbers would have to be ironed out.

We already had a armor up back in 2012, but they took a lot away from us. If they did it again, they'd have to make it so you only get the bonus from the armor if you are proficient in it. At least that way you would have less cases of abuse like we had back then.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

i mean, if you compare the artificer passive bonuses to the fighter passive bonuses youve proposed, they dont really seem balanced to me, not to mention i dont see why classes like artificers "need" to be in the same ballpark of defense as top tier avoidance defense builds or mitigation defense builds. idk when artificers became a melee class entitled to the same level of defensive capability as things like fighter and paladins or even rogues and monks but its ******** and needs to stop. i can see the case for clerics and fvs getting defensive buffs but thats kinda iffy honestly.


ive been saying for a long time that i think melee players should have an improved form of active defense. just make a feat that improves blocking to give some sort of buff to prr/mrr/dodge/ac/whatever the scales off of a stat and possibly decays over time.

example:

while blocking with a melee weapon you gain an untyped/universal/stacking bonus to dodge that ignores maximum dodge bonus equal to the higher of your strength or dexterity modifier, this bonus fades after 2 seconds if not using a shield and is doubled if using a shield

or while blocking with a melee weapon you gain an untyped/universal/stacking bonus to dodge that ignores maximum dodge bonus equal to half of the higher of your strength or dexterity modifier and an untyped/universal/stacking bonus to your prr equal to the higher of your strength or dexterity attribute score, this bonus fades after 2 seconds if not using a shield and is doubled if using a shield

the above is balanced because the strong defensive bonus is balanced by:
-being mutually exclusive with dealing damage
-requiring awareness and timing
-requiring stat investment in specific stats


as for passive bonuses, i think classes that are supposed to have more hp than others should attain a greater hp advantage more easily. since a lot of hp in the game these days comes from flat bonuses from gear that is available to all classes and not as much from the hd system which was not designed to scale into the thousands, either high hd classes need their hp increased to need a passive % increase in the health gained from health items/effects based on class levels of said classes. i think this would be balanced while giving the same sort of scaling or increase to passive defenses would not be balanced because increasing defensive statistics reduce the amount of damage you take and increase the efficiency of your healing while adding hp does not reduce damage taken or increase healing efficiency but does provide more time for a player who is taking damage to respond in some manner.

[Miow]

Fighter: Militant Defender
For every fighter class level you possess, you gain a +1 bonus to physical resistance rating and a +1 bonus to armor class. If you have a shield equipped you also gain a +1 bonus to magical resistance rating for every two fighter class levels you possess. This feat is only in effect if you are wielding a melee weapon in your main hand or have a two-handed melee weapon equipped.

Would this even make a difference with the way PRR/MRR work and drop off at higher levels?

[Chacka_DDO]

Why don't we just drop the reaper trees and raise the difficulty on DC casters a bit? The only reason ppl are complaining about melee not being viable is because they see all these casters walking through content that they shouldn't be able to. In my opinion, maxed out with all the past lifes etc.. you should have no better than 50% chance to DC anything on r10. And this is coming from someone who exclusively plays casters. I guarantee "almost" none of this banter would be happening if the devs had paid closer attention to what they were doing in regards to DC casting at reaper level.

The "problem" with casters is just only their ability to instantly kill monsters at the same speed as if they play normal difficulty.
The Difficult Check is not the point here, this just only shifts the problem.
The cooldown is what is need to be changed if you play higher skulls.
In the same way as the DPS of weapons and spell DPS is tuned down, the instant kill rate of casters must be tuned down too.
Casters are already too strong in the elite difficulty.
But the power of the instant kills increase even more relative to everything else if it comes to reaper difficulty.
Charm might be also an issue but due to the very low duration of charm, I see it not as a big issue out of my personal experience.

The base problem is in my opinion also here that DDO got still the all or nothing system from Pen and Paper.
Not the Difficulty Check should be most important for your success, it should be the selection of the right targets and the right tactic in a dynamic combat.
A hard cap of your Difficulty Checks in reaper at a success rate of 50% would be better as what we currently have.
But in my opinion not much better.
To disable abilities with ridiculous high Difficulty checks makes DDO just poor and lowers the quality of the game in my opinion!

Therefore I am going to make also here a suggestion.
A suggestion to handle the spells different from that what we have now.
I am pessimistic this will ever happen, but I am sure what I have in mind goes in the right direction.

[Chacka_DDO]

i mean, if you compare the artificer passive bonuses to the fighter passive bonuses youve proposed, they dont really seem balanced to me, not to mention i dont see why classes like artificers "need" to be in the same ballpark of defense as top tier avoidance defense builds or mitigation defense builds. idk when artificers became a melee class entitled to the same level of defensive capability as things like fighter and paladins or even rogues and monks but its ******** and needs to stop. i can see the case for clerics and fvs getting defensive buffs but thats kinda iffy honestly.


ive been saying for a long time that i think melee players should have an improved form of active defense. just make a feat that improves blocking to give some sort of buff to prr/mrr/dodge/ac/whatever the scales off of a stat and possibly decays over time.

example:

while blocking with a melee weapon you gain an untyped/universal/stacking bonus to dodge that ignores maximum dodge bonus equal to the higher of your strength or dexterity modifier, this bonus fades after 2 seconds if not using a shield and is doubled if using a shield

or while blocking with a melee weapon you gain an untyped/universal/stacking bonus to dodge that ignores maximum dodge bonus equal to half of the higher of your strength or dexterity modifier and an untyped/universal/stacking bonus to your prr equal to the higher of your strength or dexterity attribute score, this bonus fades after 2 seconds if not using a shield and is doubled if using a shield

the above is balanced because the strong defensive bonus is balanced by:
-being mutually exclusive with dealing damage
-requiring awareness and timing
-requiring stat investment in specific stats


as for passive bonuses, i think classes that are supposed to have more hp than others should attain a greater hp advantage more easily. since a lot of hp in the game these days comes from flat bonuses from gear that is available to all classes and not as much from the hd system which was not designed to scale into the thousands, either high hd classes need their hp increased to need a passive % increase in the health gained from health items/effects based on class levels of said classes. i think this would be balanced while giving the same sort of scaling or increase to passive defenses would not be balanced because increasing defensive statistics reduce the amount of damage you take and increase the efficiency of your healing while adding hp does not reduce damage taken or increase healing efficiency but does provide more time for a player who is taking damage to respond in some manner.

To give improved active defense is in my opinion a good way maybe read also this.
The problem is that it should not be possible to abuse such a active defense. If you go permanently into a block mode the active defense turns into a permanent passive defense.
My thought is that block should reduce all incoming damage and no makes you dodge attacks.
I could also imagine that you can tumble and get a dodge bonus equal to your tumble skill (ignoring the dodge cap) for like 3 seconds with a cool down of 10 seconds (just a first guess of the possible duration to cooldown ratio).