Melee Survivability Changes - Some First Steps

[J1NG]

Uhm, what type of weapon were you using? 2hf/ bastard sword What were your ac and attack bonuses? Any foul play in the form of blur, displacement, etc.
This is not much info to work on.

Echo of Blackrazor vs Pain and Suffering
Level 30 each
110 vs 107 Attack Bonus
86 vs 123 AC (although AC won't matter since AC doesn't even get a look in whilst Dodge is 100% or greater)
Have Blur but both have True Seeing and Ghost Touch. So any Concealment and Incorporeal is negated.

Yes, both toons swinging and just seeing Dodge all day long (whilst Dodge sustains that is). And yes, it's very much looking at level 1s swinging away and never seeing a hit.

It's a fairly simple test, just grab Meld into Darkness, activate (fully) and swing away. You will only see Dodge as Dodge is the first check for defence. So AC, Concealment, Incorporeal, etc will never get triggered until Dodge bonus is over.

J1NG

[lyrecono]

I would also vote against this change on the face of it:

1. People are already crushing high skulls reaper, do we really need more buffs for the sake of buffs rather than even as "progression"?
who are crushing those r8+? Didn' t torc explain that by their data, melee is under represented?

2. This is designed, explicitly, to allow melee DPS to solo high skulls reaper (either actually solo or in the kind of uncoordinated party that's 6 people solo'ing). It even explicitly encourages that solo uncaring play by reducing the ability of melees to support party members. An extra thousand HP isn't something you "toggle on and off" option during any content that you aren't steamrolling, it's always on.
Remember: abilities should not be designed with reaper difficulty in mind.
solo melee in high skull reaper? Who's healing, cc-ing, buffing? Torc is talking about repairing ballan e, by pulling melees up to the level of the non melee classes, not to pull them ahead.

3. As has been has pointed out, high skulls reaper at the moment is dominated by melee DPS in conjunction with healers and excellent CC (and tanks for raids).
as pointed out by torc, according to the data, melees are under represented.
Data>feelings and anecdotes.

4. As per (3) very skilled melee players don't need any kind of buff relative to other playstyles, but as per (2) being able to take a couple more hits won't help less skilled melee players.

5. Adding a bunch of character power that trivializes content (anything except the newer R10 raids pretty much, to the top players) then trying to add back in challenge with new "spice" is the wrong way to do it. Add the new spice first, otherwise you're stuck with a boring dead game with only a couple of "relevant" quests for months in between. Just like it was in the years leading up to reaper.
if they hadn't given casters and range the benefits prior to reaper and full perks in the caster reaper trees i might have taken your word for it, all this does is allow for more diverse builds to join the fray.

My suggestion is to change as many abilities as possible that at the moment that add static HP and make them add multiple of hit dice instead. E.g. instead of +4/+8 HP for reaper points they could be +0.5/+1 HD. Many other bonuses likewise (like epic HP). (HD being the average across all heroic levels, don't forget to round at the end of the calculation).

This would create the desired greater difference between what should be lower HP classes and what should be higher HP classes in a much more natural way and help in that goal of balance going forward.

Just no, a dps melee isn' t a tank but should be ablr to survive a few stray hits.
Reaper mode quests shouldn't just be for tank melees, though a spot should be reserved for them in raids.
Hence a lot of people suggesting 2 more shield feats and all 4 be included in the list

[lyrecono]

Echo of Blackrazor vs Pain and Suffering
Level 30 each
110 vs 107 Attack Bonus
86 vs 123 AC (although AC won't matter since AC doesn't even get a look in whilst Dodge is 100% or greater)
Have Blur but both have True Seeing and Ghost Touch. So any Concealment and Incorporeal is negated.

Yes, both toons swinging and just seeing Dodge all day long (whilst Dodge sustains that is). And yes, it's very much looking at level 1s swinging away and never seeing a hit.

It's a fairly simple test, just grab Meld into Darkness, activate (fully) and swing away. You will only see Dodge as Dodge is the first check for defence. So AC, Concealment, Incorporeal, etc will never get triggered until Dodge bonus is over.

J1NG

I see, verry nice indeed, i don't run builds with that much dodge, so this is a nice refreshing look on things, thanks!

[Bobby88888]

I'm afraid that "notice" can be very subjective in middle of battle. So I tend to work on more actual results. I hope you don't mind that.

J1NG

Naturally, I just originally noticed it in combat and went on to test from there.

i have no idea why it sometimes seems to work about right and doesn't other times. Maybe this entire thing just comes down to my truly abysmal luck with any and all dice.

I dont regularly test with dodge more than in the 100-150% range either, I just went up to 340 something% for a few tests to be extra sure. As a side point, I usually use Meld Into Darkness in testing or play (unless going for the 300+% dodge). In regular play I also do not use Primal Travel either, so the clunky animations aren't an issue there and I always check my dodge in char sheet and animations are completed correctly in testing.

I wouldn't swear to no glancing blows but I usually test vs enemies using 1 handed weapons, maybe they are scripted in to have glancing blows behind the scenes?

Also since champs can have dodge bypass and procs on miss I don't do testing on them, just makes life simpler.


I am glad dodge is working fine for you and I believe you when you say it does, however, I do know that some things work perfectly for me all the time and other people have them not work right on a regular basis so based on your experience I would be inclined to believe this would be the case here. It never matters which char, or if they do any form of reincarnation, some people just have things that never work for their account. I can however say for certain that dodge does not work right for me a lot of the time, and as dodge is my primary defense mechanism on my main, this is a glaring issue that the devs have ignored for some time and a survivability pass seems like the perfect time for them to dig into it and resolve the issue.

I must admit that of late though, it has been working a little bit more reliably, which is great, but its still not working right all the time for me.

Sometimes I will also deliberately test with say around 90% dodge (and 50% concealment, 25% incoporeal, 5% from the epic feat and lets just assume 5% from ac) and I will be hit a lot harder and faster than I should be, considering all of that works to ~3% chance to be hit

Just performed a test in PvP with a toon at 350% Dodge and just like 100% Dodge, the attacker was unable to land a single attack on me.

For fun, I had both attacking each other, One at 350% Dodge and the other at 100% Dodge and with no Dodge bypass on both toons, it looks like two level 1 toons swinging away at each other and missing all the time (except much faster of course).

J1NG

HAHA, that would be hilarious to watch

As an aside, I have seen plenty of concealed, incorporeal and misses float up over my head whilst I have 100% or greater dodge.

Just my luck that I would get dodge not working for my account when its my primary defense.

[redoubt]

Just in case it isn't clear, to be explicit about it: This change would have no impact on self-healing.

And in reaper EVERYONE is expected to heal party members.

[Iriale]

Dare I say that it started with some folks complaining?

Though it was probably more like three things...

• - We have periodically seen traffic on the forums from melee players complaining they’re having trouble surviving. Folks often posted counter to this, stating this could be overcome.
  
  
• - As we watch players play the game, we've noticed melee dps was under represented on high difficulty. Not gone entirely, but, noticeable more uncommon. I'm talking mostly about raids, or
  reaper 6+ skulls.
  
  
• - When the team would run play days on elite/reaper we would often experience some of what the forums seem to be talking about. "Random" deaths on our melee dps due to stray shots, even
  when the tank was on top of aggro. While better builds help, it took noticeably more work than say a ranged dps build.
  

So... We have concluded that melee dps (not counting tanks) is at least much harder to play, from a player skill point of view, if not needing some help in general.

You do not understand what the real problem is. There are two groups of melees in this game. One, melees with many past lives & reaper points and top ten gear. This group of melees is not having survival problems, and they are really dominating the raids and the reaper game. The other group is the melees that do not have many past lives & reaper points, nor top ten gear. These melees are paper in reaper and have serious survival problems. (I presume that both groups have a good build, obviously players who do not know how to build a great character have a lot of problems ... and there are more players than you think do not have the idea to not fall into flavor builds)

When you add a % hp, you make gods to the first group (which will end with thousands of hps) and you will barely help the second group.

The real problem, Torc, is that there is a huge disparity of power between toons in this game, and that the gap is not filled in 1 or 2 months as in other games. The grind to reach the top ten veterans is such that it takes YEARS. Are you aware of the enormous difference that it is to play a toon with hardly any past lives, and one with all the past lives? Are you aware of the huge difference between a toon with few reaper points and one with many points? And are you aware of the amount of time it takes to reach a top ten veteran, when you start an endless grind from a mediocre toon that achieves its accomplishments dozens of times slower than a veteran top ten?

Torc, the problem is not in the melees. Casters that are not top ten are also going badly in reaper. The problem is that there is an incredibly large disparity of power between characters, and that there is no way to jump that gap in a reasonable period of time, nor do we have a sufficiently large population for there to be a consistent segregation between difficulties. New players, not intensive players and alt-lover players are really behind of top ten veterans focused in one or two toons. And your last solutions seem to exaggerately enhance the toons that are already gods, and just put a cable to the toons that are really having problems

That said, I've always hated the way that reaper has destroyed playing styles (Who heals the pale master in a group without a cleric?) and the D&D rules (absurd that the classes with innate healing spells are penalized...), but your reaper rules oblige everyone to heal other players. Yes, melees too, even if it is not their main job. Healer needs to be healed too in high reaper (and that, if there is dedicated healer, which is not as frequent as you seem to believe). So either eliminate the penalty to self-healing in reaper, or do not exclude the melees of party healing and resuscitation.

Another thing, in case you did not know, it is harder to do high reaper without the dps of the melees and a tank than without casters.

[sephiroth1084]

On the one hand, I like this quite a bit. I've been frustrated for a while that, even after some respeccing and gearing-up, my melees have felt incredibly squishy in epic/legendary elite content, in that if something looks at them funny, they die.

Even more, my friends who I brought to DDO recently-ish, and are still under-built/geared feel that to an even greater degree and get incredibly frustrated at times. However, we don't play Epic/Legendary Hard, because it's boring for me, because it's far too easy. We don't have a middle ground. This feat may help a bit there.

On the other hand, I view this as another step in an arms race that should be moving toward cessation rather than continuance.

You made Reaper to offer players more challenging content, but included the reaper trees with outrageous buffs in them. I'm sure part of the thinking there was that DDO has been suffering from a lack of end game for a long time, and providing one more, deep hamster wheel could only prolong the game's life, so why not? Part of my problem with this approach is that reaper trees separate players much more than we ever saw when some were comfortable on hard, while others were crushing elite.

Personally, I don't think we needed the kind of crazy ability and HP scaling that we have in the reaper trees. Reaper difficulty could have been scaled up more gradually (and tuned a bit differently) without any additional "class" abilities being introduced. The real problem we have now is that continued acquisition of reaper XP trivializes the difficulty of lower-skull reaper; meanwhile, acquiring reaper XP is an inordinate grindfest, and characters with few reaper points cannot participate in high-skull reaper on the same level as characters with a bunch of reaper points. That wasn't ever really true for Hard vs. Elite.

The proposed HP stance would be good for players like my friends, stuck playing content too difficult for them, because there is too small a jump from Normal to Hard, and too large a jump from Hard to Elite, but for most other players, it just contributes to the excessive stat inflation of DDO.

I'm torn.

[Dragavon]

I can't say how soon we'll be presenting reaper changes, (yet), but we see the desire for spicing it up a bit as more and more players have mastered the content.

-T

I am completely unable to understand how you think here.

First you come up with a buff that will trivialize lower reaper settings, then you say you want to make reaper harder, as you see people have begun to master reaper difficulty settings.

You have changed how much dex bonus / dodge you can get on newer armours, the Ravenloft light armours have significantly lower max dex and dodge than celestial armours.

There is no sense or logic to this.

[lLockehart]

Seriously, the solution to "mobs can't damage kiters well" isn't "buff melee," it's "nerf kiting and then nerf mob dps down to a sweeter spot."

For once in this game's development I wish you guys would actually target the root problem instead of one of its symptoms. This is going to have unintended consequences, because that's the universal law of DDO - buffs always bring unintended consequences.

But I still think this the exact wrong direction to go on this problem. Currently the vast majority of mobs have exactly 1 tool in their toolbag - a hammer. This does not lead to compelling game play. Give them some more tools, especially anti-kiting ones. See my previous post for some specific ideas.

Things like that should ramp up unpredictability of encounters in general. Mobs won't group up so easily for a single aoe-CC-and-beat-down repetitious flow.

The voice of reason!

I've been saying and elaborating on this for so long now.

By Torc's post: Yeah of course an HP buffer will differentiate Melee from Ranged, (including spellcasting) but it's the lazy way of doing things by very poorly emulating the base Hit die in classes and the base premise that classes play differently and some need larger Hp pools (obviously). All it's achieving is robbing further identity from certain classes and enable a strong, very messy proactive melee meta which will be incredibly hard to balance in the future (assuming SSG is planning for the future).

As someone who has played a lot of melee, in higher difficulties most of the time: I strike my menacing pose when entering the dungeon and what do I fear the most? a spooky Red named with an enchanted weapon who drives the dungeon story forward? Nah, it's a couple of spiders or wolves whom on first spotting, my first instinct is to never engage them outside a Dire charge because if I do and they get a couple hits on me, it's over right?

Reaper doesn't need spicing, you complete R10 the same way you complete R5, 100% alike - it needs balancing. LE also needs balancing.

What if the spider would deal reduced damage because it's not a truck, it's a small spider and its venom projectile would deal bonus damage to further targets? That would be preeetyyy gooood and intuitive riiiiiight since the Ranged builds won't be in clear point blank range for no reason.... right?


You know, today, i give up entirely. I do enjoy the game very much and it's been my most invested MMO, mostly because it's where my friends are but if they were to quit, I'd just drop it on the spot honestly.

I mean, sure you refuse to balance the game because the engine is dated and it would mean a loooot of hard work, okay I can get behind that but this overly complex, weird auto granted feat? this could not be more lazy.
If Reaper wasn't already established with its Tree, you could instead design a "playstyle tree" that would be available since lvl 1 and would have multiple of these complex feats as they would be developed which would grant a faaaaar better leeway to balance and spice things accordingly.

This "solution" is so bad that it doesn't even work mid-game, much less with say, like - imagine that you guys finally make peace with having a dual Melee/spellcasting class, a proper Eldritch Knight, how would you balance this feat then? You won't, that's how it would turn out, it limits future balancing with crystal clear evidence. Did no one raise this concern, seriously?

...

I'm just going to embrace this lack of regard for the game and the chaotic nature that's been nurtured in development as a whole and ready myself for our new melee overlords because at this point, I have greater faith in the 5th Indiana Jones than whatever we're trying to do.

[sephiroth1084]

You do not understand what the real problem is. There are two groups of melees in this game. One, melees with many past lives & reaper points and top ten gear. This group of melees is not having survival problems, and they are really dominating the raids and the reaper game. The other group is the melees that do not have many past lives & reaper points, nor top ten gear. These melees are paper in reaper and have serious survival problems. (I presume that both groups have a good build, obviously players who do not know how to build a great character have a lot of problems ... and there are more players than you think do not have the idea to not fall into flavor builds)

When you add a % hp, you make gods to the first group (which will end with thousands of hps) and you will barely help the second group.

The real problem, Torc, is that there is a huge disparity of power between toons in this game, and that the gap is not filled in 1 or 2 months as in other games. The grind to reach the top ten veterans is such that it takes YEARS. Are you aware of the enormous difference that it is to play a toon with hardly any past lives, and one with all the past lives? Are you aware of the huge difference between a toon with few reaper points and one with many points? And are you aware of the amount of time it takes to reach a top ten veteran, when you start an endless grind from a mediocre toon that achieves its accomplishments dozens of times slower than a veteran top ten?

Torc, the problem is not in the melees. Casters that are not top ten are also going badly in reaper. The problem is that there is an incredibly large disparity of power between characters, and that there is no way to jump that gap in a reasonable period of time, nor do we have a sufficiently large population for there to be a consistent segregation between difficulties. New players, not intensive players and alt-lover players are really behind of top ten veterans focused in one or two toons. And your last solutions seem to exaggerately enhance the toons that are already gods, and just put a cable to the toons that are really having problems

That said, I've always hated the way that reaper has destroyed playing styles (Who heals the pale master in a group without a cleric?) and the D&D rules (absurd that the classes with innate healing spells are penalized...), but your reaper rules oblige everyone to heal other players. Yes, melees too, even if it is not their main job. Healer needs to be healed too in high reaper (and that, if there is dedicated healer, which is not as frequent as you seem to believe). So either eliminate the penalty to self-healing in reaper, or do not exclude the melees of party healing and resuscitation.

Another thing, in case you did not know, it is harder to do high reaper without the dps of the melees and a tank than without casters.

Pretty much this.

When characters are running around with 1,000 HP, the difference between low reaper XP and high reaper XP being close to 500 HP is a big deal. When one melee has 900 HP, and another has 3000+, that's an issue. Then add another 135 for Epic Paste Lives, another 30 for Completionist, another 60 for Racial Completionist, and you're looking at one group of players on characters with 2-5 times as much HP as another group, and as Iriale said, there's no reasonable path to catching up--one group has spent months worth of gameplay time (not saying they have played for months, but have accumulated months worth of actual time, in minutes and hours), whereas the other group simply won't get there.

I would take a long, hard look at the separation of difficulties, but it seems like that ship has sailed.

[J1NG]

Naturally, I just originally noticed it in combat and went on to test from there.

I'd do the same.

i have no idea why it sometimes seems to work about right and doesn't other times. Maybe this entire thing just comes down to my truly abysmal luck with any and all dice.

It "shouldn't" (operative word there) have anything to do with luck, so I'm thinking there's something more going wrong here for you.

I dont regularly test with dodge more than in the 100-150% range either, I just went up to 340 something% for a few tests to be extra sure. As a side point, I usually use Meld Into Darkness in testing or play (unless going for the 300+% dodge). In regular play I also do not use Primal Travel either, so the clunky animations aren't an issue there and I always check my dodge in char sheet and animations are completed correctly in testing.

Excellent. Always good to eliminate possible causes of errors in calculations first.

I wouldn't swear to no glancing blows but I usually test vs enemies using 1 handed weapons, maybe they are scripted in to have glancing blows behind the scenes?

Ah, here's an easy first mistake then. The "visual" weapon you see is not representative of what actually is being used. And some enemies do have other attributes attached to them that you would not expect from the "visual" weapon. Some some 1 Handed Weapons are actually considered 2 Handed or has those attributes, etc.

So whilst I can't say for certain you were taken down by these, there's a possibility this was an issue you was unaware of. You need to keep a record of who or what you was fighting when taken down. It'll make your Dodge toon much more survivable when you recognise enemies you need to change tactics on more easily.

Also since champs can have dodge bypass and procs on miss I don't do testing on them, just makes life simpler.

Same.

I am glad dodge is working fine for you and I believe you when you say it does, however, I do know that some things work perfectly for me all the time and other people have them not work right on a regular basis so based on your experience I would be inclined to believe this would be the case here. It never matters which char, or if they do any form of reincarnation, some people just have things that never work for their account. I can however say for certain that dodge does not work right for me a lot of the time, and as dodge is my primary defense mechanism on my main, this is a glaring issue that the devs have ignored for some time and a survivability pass seems like the perfect time for them to dig into it and resolve the issue.

I am concerned about this statement as I've accessed numerous accounts with access to Meld and repeated the same defined test. Never has a result not been as expected. So the fact that you are experiencing it suggests something very amiss that may not even be in game related

Side questions:
1. Are you playing over Wifi?
2. Are you playing over a Power Line Ethernet?

These connections typically introduce a type of latency that may see funniness with clickies, especially if the main net connection may also be a bit flakey. So if you are on these, that will impact on clickie effectiveness and could be the source of your problems.

I must admit that of late though, it has been working a little bit more reliably, which is great, but its still not working right all the time for me.

Sometimes I will also deliberately test with say around 90% dodge (and 50% concealment, 25% incoporeal, 5% from the epic feat and lets just assume 5% from ac) and I will be hit a lot harder and faster than I should be, considering all of that works to ~3% chance to be hit

From my tests, if you have 99% Dodge, 50% Displace, 25% Incorp, you'll still be hit often enough. As it's simply not 100% (temporary full mitigation of damage). Although in your case that might be an issue since you are experiencing hits whilst in 100%+, although you really need to narrow down the list of possible suspects to the cause first if possible. You seem to have locked down the mechanics of the clickies, but may be missing out on specific enemies. And of course the possibility of connection induced issues. Hopefully one of those will help explain the issues you are experiencing. Because 100% Dodge is quite fun, even if temporary.

HAHA, that would be hilarious to watch

May get something up at a later point to share for fun.

As an aside, I have seen plenty of concealed, incorporeal and misses float up over my head whilst I have 100% or greater dodge.

If this is the case, then for some reason your Dodge is not being applied. At 100% Dodge or above, the only time you should see Incorp or Conceal, is when you are against a Champ with Dodge bypass (which is 100% of your Dodge bypass, so 3%, 60%, 99%, 150%, 200% or 350% it will bypass ALL of it), so they (Conceal and Incorp) are then checked next for avoidance.

Just my luck that I would get dodge not working for my account when its my primary defense.

Hope you can figure out the issue that's causing the Dodge to not trigger.

J1NG

[Stingae]

Echo of Blackrazor vs Pain and Suffering
Level 30 each
110 vs 107 Attack Bonus
86 vs 123 AC (although AC won't matter since AC doesn't even get a look in whilst Dodge is 100% or greater)
Have Blur but both have True Seeing and Ghost Touch. So any Concealment and Incorporeal is negated.

Yes, both toons swinging and just seeing Dodge all day long (whilst Dodge sustains that is). And yes, it's very much looking at level 1s swinging away and never seeing a hit.

It's a fairly simple test, just grab Meld into Darkness, activate (fully) and swing away. You will only see Dodge as Dodge is the first check for defence. So AC, Concealment, Incorporeal, etc will never get triggered until Dodge bonus is over.

J1NG

Please please please record this and post to YouTube!

[Bobby88888]

<snip>
J1NG

I know my connection does provide issues due to my geographical location the best I can get is a 300 latency, however my internet connection is just fine and whilst this should see some delay between me activating it and it being registered as activated I don't really see how this would impact things overly.

I know weapons shown and weapons wielded don't always align, but I hadn't considered the glancing blows before so thank you for bringing those to my attention.

Well it has been informative and good to discuss it at any rate, I still think there is something wrong with it in game somewhere causing it but if you aren't experiencing the issues too that makes things more complicated but I don't really see how it could be coming from me. At any rate hopefully either I or the devs can resolve this, but surely even if its from my end I can't be the only one??

I did consider a build that had >50% uptime in combat for 100% dodge for fun but since I have all the dodge issues I never did make it, would have been really fun to play though.

Thanks J1NG

[DeltaBravo]

I Am absolutley sure. that giveing players +50% HP for melee builds with all the restrictions on it, is not gonna help em enough. The melee classes (builds) that die in epic quests have around 1500 hp. give and take.(proberly in the high end) at cap. you add 750 to that. = 2250 Hp. So they will now perhaps survive 1 shot in the end game content. but wont be able to do other then stand alone melee.(no balance here) But honestly they will still be one shot in higher reaper content. Sooo why do i want them in an R7 group ? when i can get the DPS from a ranged toon that wont die. O and he will eb able to still cast a spell on me or heal me or so with no issue. (Cordovan have many times in live streams said that this is where main issue is, and i actully agree on this) But why not make a fix that helps on the balance of the classes rather then some kind of Hotfix that aint gonna be that hot.


My suggestion.
Add bonus +5% HP/PRR/MRR/AC/HA Stacking with all. To the Melee feats instead as a bonus. Only add it to the feats you allready said so. But no need for restrictions other then you have to take the feats for it. It does not matter if it will work in heroic. ( it will only benefit the game here tbh. Maybe players will actully play higher reaper content and play as groups, rather then solo all on a warock r1. It does not matter if the ranged builds get the bonus aswelll. Hey they are not really getting hit anyways. and what kills em is spells most of the time. and they are likely running in a 50MRR cap there. same thing goes for casters. and the melee caster builds out there will have likely same surviability issues as the rest of the melee builds. And it should absolutly benefit the Tanks aswell and healers aswell. You made alot of effort to get Clerics/FVS/ARTI/Druid better. but if there will be a power creep here (wich it is with your suggestions) you will have to redo them again. becourse they will get left behind, again.

There is a very very very limited effect for give +50% healing boost to melee builds with the restrictions.

I like that you are atleast trying now to help the weaker builds. But you should worry about balance and not about only adding HP to the weakest link.

[Elfishski]

Just no, a dps melee isn' t a tank but should be ablr to survive a few stray hits.
Reaper mode quests shouldn't just be for tank melees, though a spot should be reserved for them in raids.
Hence a lot of people suggesting 2 more shield feats and all 4 be included in the list

As others have said... melee has a much higher skill [/gear] ceiling. Melee DPS is over-represented in the kinds of difficulties that are "achievements" at the moment. Ranged DPS is much easier, can take advantage of more cheesy safe spots for the "easy" legendary quests, and doesn't require the same kind of coordination so I've no doubt it's statistically much more common for ranged builds to be doing higher skulls than melee builds.

Melee are fine in low skull reaper, they're awesome outside of reaper, and they're awesome in very high difficulty quests in conjunction with other builds that can do the dedicated CC, heals, tanking.

These changes then are only necessary for melees that want to solo or join uncoordinated mid-high skulls reaper. Surely the changes should be such that uncoordinated ranged have a harder time in high skulls reaper too, so that it remains a challenge?

Agree that the game is more fun for melees if they can take a hit or three and I would have tapered off the bonus damage after mid skulls reaper instead, and added more reaper/champion abilities that make life harder rather than just make it binary "you CC the monster it's dead, it hits you then you die". Just adding more HP to melees is treating the symptom rather than the disease.

If everyone can join a random 10 skull uncoordinated endgame PUG and expect not to get slaughtered instantly, then what do the much-better-than-I players do with maxed out chars and coordinated groups have left to do?


I mean, if it goes live, I'll solo at the same number of skulls on melee as I do with ranged instead of stepping it down a notch or two and not cry about it, but as all the things that are designed with the best intentions in this game, it only makes gods of the top players who at most get hit once or twice in succession anyway, and doesn't much help the less skilled/geared players who will just get hit an extra couple of times anyway and die.

[Stingae]

Everyone has missed the most important thing in this thread....the nerf to Byron Scoutsword.

The switch to % damage reduction is actually a nerf to low level barbarians. Even with 3% DR a low level barb sees no real effect until hits average 33 damage a go. For the first few levels taking a couple of points off each hit is HUGE for barbarians. Some hits especially archers are literally doing nothing to you. As somone not obsessed with epic/legendary reaper, I like all levels of the game and this is something that helps define barbs, especially for new players. This change, though welcome, only works for mid game onwards.

Back to Byron, this is part of what makes him so good, he takes less damage from the korthos mobs in the unlikely event they survive his first hit and get to attack him.

[J1NG]

I know my connection does provide issues due to my geographical location the best I can get is a 300 latency, however my internet connection is just fine and whilst this should see some delay between me activating it and it being registered as activated I don't really see how this would impact things overly.

The thing is, your client might see the clickie fully activated, the DDO server might not have seen the clickie yet if the connection has "issues". That's why I suggested that might be a possible issue, which is often made worse with a WiFi or Power Line connection since you're going over two poor mediums in most cases with latency before getting to the main connection.

It's basically lag damage, as the server hasn't seen your clickie activated yet, but the mobs on it have already calculated it's attack and damage so your Dodge basically hasn't been realised yet. That's a possible scenario for your described case.

Well it has been informative and good to discuss it at any rate, I still think there is something wrong with it in game somewhere causing it but if you aren't experiencing the issues too that makes things more complicated but I don't really see how it could be coming from me. At any rate hopefully either I or the devs can resolve this, but surely even if its from my end I can't be the only one??

Any chance there's anyone you can trust over somewhere else who can log in and test for you? A family member maybe?

I did consider a build that had >50% uptime in combat for 100% dodge for fun but since I have all the dodge issues I never did make it, would have been really fun to play though.

Thanks J1NG

Hope you get it sorted and join the fun sometime.

J1NG

[J1NG]

Theory:

Reaper HP nerf is coming afterwards (and likely more to other aspects too). Stances will replace the power being offered so it scales better throughout epic levels and Reaper difficulties (since they don't want to remove Reaper Trees and the time invested in them).

So, nerf to top 1%, who was demanding a challenge anyway. You still retain beneifts, but not as much. So R10 becomes challenging again as more decisions need to be made to remake effective toons.

Bottom larger % gets a buff and isn't steamrolled by LH content when everyone else who could help join their runs to make a LE run easier (much less LH) is busy in R10 and don't want to waste time further down the ladder.

Win win for everyone.

J1NG

[Ausdoerrt]

[*]The Complete list of "Fighting Feats" that apply:

• Single Weapon Fighting
• Improved Single Weapon Fighting
• Greater Single Weapon Fighting
• Perfect Single Weapon Fighting
  
  
• Two Handed Fighting
• Improved Two Handed Fighting
• Greater Two Handed Fighting
• Perfect Two Handed Fighting
  
  
• Two Weapon Fighting
• Improved Two Weapon Fighting
• Greater Two Weapon Fighting
• Perfect Two Weapon Fighting
  
  
• Natural Fighting (Counts each time taken)

Shield mastery / bashing feats should be on this list as well, because otherwise you might as well throw any shield that's not a buckler out of the game.

[*][*]Paladin Defensive Stance HP buff bonus will be changed to competency (which it appears it always was, but the text was incorrect)

So wait, it won't stack with the new feat? Why the nerf to pallies, who are probably the last class to need a nerf right now?

[blerkington]

Thanks for the strawman,
I never said it wasn't possible, i think torcs post explains it better then i could, melee is under represented in uper tier reaper.

...

In my neck of the woods, melee is often looked down upon in the end game meta an end game&tr community and due to those reasons caries consequences.

There was no straw man. I was responding to exactly what you said, which included a quotation of your own words.

You were the one who said melees were dying all the time in harder content, as if this is some sort of general problem when it is not. In fact, you specifically stated it was a problem even for characters that had all the gear and the past lives too. What you did not say was just that melees are simply underrepresented, so evidently you are changing your story now.

Twice now you've commented that your group doesn't believe melee is part of the meta for completing harder content. This and the repeated exaggerations about the problems melee face in harder content should be large red flags for anyone evaluating your contribution to this thread.

These changes to melee are a terrible idea. It's not needed, reduces challenge in harder content, is a tacit admission that the game as a whole is now being balanced around reaper despite developer protestations to the contrary, will reduce the value of cooperative play, is a further step down the bad path of special house rules for reaper, is likely to have unanticipated effects on grouping, devalues the process of becoming a better player in order to overcome more difficult content, and is very unequal in how it assists various melee builds.

This thread also fails comprehensively as a discussion piece because of the lack of information about what other changes are being planned for reaper, if such changes are really being considered and do end up being implemented. So rather than providing us with an overview of these changes with necessary context, this sounds far more like the tired old excuse of possible good future changes justifying bad changes being made to the game now.

It would make far more sense to present all of these changes at once, rather than just fishing for inevitable approval from people who are struggling with the game while once again ignoring the advice of people who have a better understanding of it. So please give us the rest of the information we need, and don't implement any of this piecemeal.

Thanks.