2019 ED Pass: Martial Sphere

[Hawkwier]

First off my 2p worth on EIN... I got no skin in the EIN game. Don't play a monk and never have to any significant degree.

What I will say though is that, like many folks these days, I run with monks regularly. Often with 2 or 3 in a party, and often there will be an EIN fired off (noticeable because the mobs are dead before I can smack em with something big and sharp) and I have to say I agree with the player observations that EIN, in my experience, hasn't caused any appreciable lag spikes that I have noticed.

I also agree that between Sharn (PS I've not incorporated one single bit of Sharn loot into my main, and remain unlikely to do so, given what I'd need to give up to change things - not a complaint, lateral power is fine by me) and these nerfs, melee are getting the pointy end of the stick it seems here.

So, seeing a lot of Dev response on EIN, and I'm reading similar issues of over-eager nerfing as I feel is being applied to combat brute.

Any comments on considering the feedback on the combat brute nerfs Devs?

As I've posted already, it seems too much and also unnecessary. There are other things you could do to make Fury and THF a more interesting choice. Have you considered them?

[J1NG]

The CC/AoE side of the tree adding Stunning is great. Hopefully it can act like an alternative to DireCharge. It's likely though that folks will only take/twist in a single T4+ ability not all of them seeing as how you just need to stun. Orchid and Lily petal would need massively more dmg to be useful relative to, well, anything. If I'm standing at range and doing 600dmg with a ki bolt I am loosing. No one will every take Lily Petal or Orchid Blossom EVER. These would need to scale as Force SP plus mp to be even moderately useful. Under these changes Only Lotus and Petals are at all useful, and only for the CC.

Only Lily Petal and Orchid Blossom can be Twisted in, because Drifting Lotus is T5.

But you are correct in that Lily Petal and Orchid Blossom serve no real purpose as they are. Lily Petals new design in giving +5 Ki per use however, allows partial Ki users to at least generate Ki without the ability to auto-regenerate Ki on their own. So that at least has some value. But Orchid Blossom absolutely has no value compared to Drifting Lotus. EiN neither if the new changes are implemented. Drifting Lotus will do idential amounts of damage as Orchid Blossom AND CC targets temporarily with knockdown. So there is absolutely no reason to take the current Orchid Blossom, EVER.

Personally, I suggested before, before Feather of Sun Ghost Bane'd the loot and left for other lands, that as GMoF was tactical based (DC heavy), why not add CC components to them. A ranged blind/daze would step on Ninja Spy territory, so I would suggest now a ranged Debuff (something that Ki Bolt currently has, but that's WAAAY too quick at dissipating after applying) that lasts a few seconds on a failed save but this time in a group. This gives GMoF users the ability to help another of their own ability land, or an ability someone else is using (Mass Hold, etc). This then makes Orchid Blossom extremely compelling, as both a ranged mass Debuff (which itself has a save against the debuff), whilst dealing damage.

Although, I will also suggest that Lily Petal and Orchid Blossom each have a +1 (or +2) Bonus to Stun as well. This means that someone who invests into them will see their later abilities land even more often. So it's no longer the 100% leave untouched ability, and instead becomes a "Do I want to make my Drifting Lotus, Scattering of Petals and Everything is Nothing land after I fire this first for another Destiny Point?". Make it an option (for Ranged/Special Ki fighting) and a hard choice (Lily Petal for more Ki in cycling between Ki attacks? Or leave something else out for even more Ranged Ki attacks when I need it?).

Can Light as a Feather be improved/removed? It's irrelevant to monks and useless to others since it's a ML4 topaz. Literally anything would be more useful.

Whilst we only have maybe 3 areas in the entire game where it is useful, Light as a Feather is superior to Feather Fall for ignoring "Falling" damage, something Feather Fall doesn't protect you from. I don't know what else you can realistically implement here for a T4 ability though, but as it will be Twistable, it can't be overly powerful.

J1NG

[Mindos]

Whilst we only have maybe 3 areas in the entire game where it is useful, Light as a Feather is superior to Feather Fall for ignoring "Falling" damage, something Feather Fall doesn't protect you from. I don't know what else you can realistically implement here for a T4 ability though, but as it will be Twistable, it can't be overly powerful.

J1NG

You can take falling damage while feather falling?

[J1NG]

You can take falling damage while feather falling?

Yep. Remember you can fall in a multitude of ways where Feather Fall doesn't work its magic:

Heavy Gravity, Reverse Gravity, Landscape collision, etc.

Reverse Gravity is found in two main quests most people will run into: The Dreaming Dark, and The Reavers Fate. If you only have Feather Fall, you still suffer damage on colliding with any obstacle you hit at the top. And you fall "upwards" as though with no slow down. This Destiny ability is supposed to treat you as though you had the same Level 20 version the Monk has, so you can fall "upwards" SLOWLY. Controlling your ascent, whilst others just go straight up FAST.

Heavy Gravity is found more commonly these days, but most people can safely ignore it because in most cases you are not forced into suffering Heavy Gravity from great heights casually. Curse of Strahd is the common one for this lately, but most often see the Illusory Spike damage over the fall damage.

However, the fall damage these days is miniscule. Anyone at Epic or higher will have enough HP to drop many times over and still be fine. So I agree that it can be altered, but since GMoF does have most of the defences that you may want in unknown circumstances (Knockdown Immunity, Slipper Surface Immunity, Fall Damage Immunity, No Fail Saves, Spell Resistance, etc), it may be prudent to keep this in the Destiny Tree just in case the Devs decide they need to add more "Gravity" situations to annoy players.

J1NG

[lyrecono]

overtuned? really what kinda mess is that? overtuned is barbs hitting 36k crits on Kt r+ while a monk might do 10k if lucky. i do believe you have lost a sub. and balance my hind side. why do all classes have to be equal, isnt that the point of having a specific class? i do believe i am done with this game AND this logic!!!

Imagine monks with barb crits ......a scary thought indeed.
Luckely, a monk has a heap of prr, 3 good saves, evasio , impr evasion, more powerfull base hits, a faster attack rate, a double strike that works, inate cc, run faster, need i go on?

For a class that was designed as a light skirmisher, not a frontline melee combatant, i would say monks had it well, for far too long.
Now i admit so e of these nerfs are a bit over the top but trying to compare it to the 2hf barb ....
Hahahahaha, no contest, the (2hf) barb is the quintesential gollum of eberron, everyone has stepped on or over this class like its a crazy homeless person whille pulling a face like they just saw a cockroach.

[Dark_Helmet]

Sticking to what I've seen in game causing massive lag:

-Dance of Death
-Haste Boosts (It's an actual tactic to not use Haste Boosts during Shadow Kiting due to lagging out the kiter)
-DPS Blaster Casters going full blaster
-IPS on Shrui/Inquisitive
-Shroud Chests
-Sentient Weapon Swapping
-Shadows spawning (Lots of experience of having an entire side dying in Baba on every difficulty due to shadows spawning in the second hut run through)
-Thunderholme. Just Thunderholme.

Hope it helps.

Disjunction... when they rewrote the code to allow disjunction to work, it cause massive issues with how buffs and auras interacted.

In Lynnabel's defense, I know what they are saying: They can measure the resource load created by the spell. Since it can be measured, it must be bad.

The issue is that some devs still don't understand that there are different types of resource loading and they are chasing the one that does not cause observable lag for clients in their instance (e.g. the hardware can compensate). They also ran fully into Observer Effect as they put in code to monitor things...

They fall back to the "we know more than you" without knowing our past (Alpha anyone?), capabilities (programming true real-time Safety or Life Care systems) and even if we have seen their code before.

For the last one, the last time someone tried to help them with their code issues (just minor table issues), they pretty much banned them and discouraged any more talk that could actually help them.

[gudal84]

Just my 2 cents, cause of all the uninformed comments I have read through the thread.

1) EiN Performance issue: The post stated it taxes the servers. This does NOT neccessarily mean that the person using it, nor the people in the same party, would notice any lag. Stuff that cause server lag is usually felt very so slightly by EVERYONE, rather than much by those close. People seem to used to connection lag or graphics/cpu lag/spikes to realize, but server taxing the server just means it will respond slightly slower to every request. I can therefore totally understand EiN causing performance issues. I do however see that the nerf is detrimental to the destiny, being far worse than frog, and I dont like the effort to make the tree less focused on being centered, at least not if diversity in EDs is the goal.

Incidently, I have wondered a lot if the xbow/cancel method to shrine and get out of dungeons fast does not have a similar server tax. It would be small, but noticable on total server performance (not centered around the moment it is done), especially if many did it all the time. Not sure how it is handled in DDO, or if it is handled at client or server, but user interuptions that still cause the initially desired effect have a tendency to leave lose threads on wherever it's handled. Of course, DDO devs can have taken this out or designed it in such a way it doesnt, but then again maybe not.

2) Reduction in helpless damage seems painful, but more so it puts its finger right on the point. I read a comment that said: "Why nerf dps of 1/3 to half of players?". Well, thats exactly the point. LD SHOULD be used by 1/12 of players, not 1/3, if EDs AND classes where balanced correctly. As it stands, its way to good, and imo this is mostly due to the action boost buffs and not the epic moment. The alternative would be to buff all trees up to LD level, but somehow I feel that s not the way to go.

3) The another monk nerf comments, well they can be right. But.... monk a year or so back where the undisputable dps kings, which is kindof not their archetype position within D&D. I thought them good still after first nerf, but... this could be to much I wouldnt know. Classes are indeed far too different and fun to bother staying at one for more than a week or so (dreading the time when I have al PLs and cap play is the thing to do)

[Innokentiy]

Sticking to what I've seen in game causing massive lag:

-Haste Boosts (It's an actual tactic to not use Haste Boosts during Shadow Kiting due to lagging out the kiter)
-IPS on Shrui/Inquisitive

+ IPS with GC fusilade
- Haste boost, never got lags on shadows with this.

[Hawkwier]

"
2) Reduction in helpless damage seems painful, but more so it puts its finger right on the point. I read a comment that said: "Why nerf dps of 1/3 to half of players?". Well, thats exactly the point. LD SHOULD be used by 1/12 of players, not 1/3, if EDs AND classes where balanced correctly. As it stands, its way to good, and imo this is mostly due to the action boost buffs and not the epic moment. The alternative would be to buff all trees up to LD level, but somehow I feel that s not the way to go."

This, ironically, misses the point. Whilst correct in principle that all EDs should be 1/12th represented in perfect balance, it makes no sense in context. I, for one, certainly won't be switching ED on the basis of this nerf, nor was combat brute ever in my thinking in terms of making LD the ED of choice.

You'd be right to support this nerf if it had the remotest chance of swinging the balance on EDs, but it doesn't do that.

The way to address ED imbalance isn't through some isolated nerf, or even several of them, but to MEANINGFULLY, improve the weaker EDs. If the Devs can spend their time in achieving that, then it gives us some interesting POSITIVE choices to make. Nerfing, like this, whilst easy to do, isn't effective, and only breeds dissatisfaction for no other tangible result. It's just wrong-headed imo.

Ironically, considering your opening statement, with all due respect, I think supporting such simplisic approaches to resolving complex balance problems is uninformed.

[Xgya]

"
2) Reduction in helpless damage seems painful, but more so it puts its finger right on the point. I read a comment that said: "Why nerf dps of 1/3 to half of players?". Well, thats exactly the point. LD SHOULD be used by 1/12 of players, not 1/3, if EDs AND classes where balanced correctly. As it stands, its way to good, and imo this is mostly due to the action boost buffs and not the epic moment. The alternative would be to buff all trees up to LD level, but somehow I feel that s not the way to go."

This, ironically, misses the point. Whilst correct in principle that all EDs should be 1/12th represented in perfect balance, it makes no sense in context. I, for one, certainly won't be switching ED on the basis of this nerf, nor was combat brute ever in my thinking in terms of making LD the ED of choice.

Small nerf to an ED that sees too much play, many buffs to destinies that don't.
It's quite easy to see why and how.

[Hawkwier]

Small nerf to an ED that sees too much play, many buffs to destinies that don't.
It's quite easy to see why and how.

Not really. Where is the impetus in any of these changes to make someone like me switch from LD back to Fury, which I ran in for years before realising it was neve going to change? And it hasn't in the two years since. Nor do these changes either. I submit these changes aren't easy at all to see how or why they will work.

There are blatant changes that could be made to make Fury interesting. These, regrettably, don't come close. Focusing on combat brute does ZERO in that regard. That's the the bit that is easy to see.

I get the principle. Indeed i support it. But dealing in generalisations here does nothing to actually make any difference to outcome. Combat brute has very little to do with LD being the melee ED of choice.

[LightBear]

Sticking to what I've seen in game causing massive lag:

Hope it helps.

Adding my experiences to the list:
- Someone in the party streaming video or downloading while on a slow internet connection
- Chests spawning a reward list with ingredients
- To many mobs, extra so if they have their own light sources
- Large maps and having Object draw distance set to very high and the whole of the party scattered all over the place
- Opening the bank while your tr cache is full
- Taking items out of tr cache
- Some DDOS going on somewhere on the internet

Edit: But really it doesn't belong in this thread.

[DaviMOC]

I hope for banishing this helpless damage meta. Maybe it could be sustained in a given specifc playstyle but it shouldnt be the mainstream for melees as its happening and its mandatory nowdays.
As one of our forum crusaders said: Being on melee is to trade blows with your enemies not waiting the allmighty spellcasters to CC everything for you. That thought also aplies to the tank role that is more about bosses and raid bosses as they hardly can take multiple target to tank without CC help.
Im not asking for banishing encounter dynamics as its something positive about ddo in face of other mmos . But would be nice if it were less biased over helpless dancing/hold/tentacle, etc mechanics.

[gudal84]

"
2) Reduction in helpless damage seems painful, but more so it puts its finger right on the point. I read a comment that said: "Why nerf dps of 1/3 to half of players?". Well, thats exactly the point. LD SHOULD be used by 1/12 of players, not 1/3, if EDs AND classes where balanced correctly. As it stands, its way to good, and imo this is mostly due to the action boost buffs and not the epic moment. The alternative would be to buff all trees up to LD level, but somehow I feel that s not the way to go."

This, ironically, misses the point. Whilst correct in principle that all EDs should be 1/12th represented in perfect balance, it makes no sense in context. I, for one, certainly won't be switching ED on the basis of this nerf, nor was combat brute ever in my thinking in terms of making LD the ED of choice.

You'd be right to support this nerf if it had the remotest chance of swinging the balance on EDs, but it doesn't do that.

The way to address ED imbalance isn't through some isolated nerf, or even several of them, but to MEANINGFULLY, improve the weaker EDs. If the Devs can spend their time in achieving that, then it gives us some interesting POSITIVE choices to make. Nerfing, like this, whilst easy to do, isn't effective, and only breeds dissatisfaction for no other tangible result. It's just wrong-headed imo.

Ironically, considering your opening statement, with all due respect, I think supporting such simplisic approaches to resolving complex balance problems is uninformed.

Good points, though overall I'm currently more in favor of nerf than more power. In my eyes, to many power creeps over the years have been down this lane:
- Class X can't solo hardest difficulty, it needs an improvement (no it doesnt, it needs to party up in content its not specialized in)
- Class Y is supposed to be more powerful than class X, so when X has seen an improvement, Y must too (saw this in pen and paper 3.5 too)
- This class can't do reaper first life, it needs a buff

I cannot say whether the nerf was enough, too much, or if it is sufficient to change from LD, though I can say that LD needed a nerf, cause it was "top ED", and power level was already too high (when some builds can solo r5 legendary).


I do think the DC increases in mage trees were a bit over the top as well, though I like the idea behind moving wizards over from EA to Magister.

[Paisheng]

Just my 2 cents, cause of all the uninformed comments I have read through the thread.

1) EiN Performance issue: The post stated it taxes the servers. This does NOT neccessarily mean that the person using it, nor the people in the same party, would notice any lag. Stuff that cause server lag is usually felt very so slightly by EVERYONE, rather than much by those close. People seem to used to connection lag or graphics/cpu lag/spikes to realize, but server taxing the server just means it will respond slightly slower to every request. I can therefore totally understand EiN causing performance issues. I do however see that the nerf is detrimental to the destiny, being far worse than frog, and I dont like the effort to make the tree less focused on being centered, at least not if diversity in EDs is the goal.

Incidently, I have wondered a lot if the xbow/cancel method to shrine and get out of dungeons fast does not have a similar server tax. It would be small, but noticable on total server performance (not centered around the moment it is done), especially if many did it all the time. Not sure how it is handled in DDO, or if it is handled at client or server, but user interuptions that still cause the initially desired effect have a tendency to leave lose threads on wherever it's handled. Of course, DDO devs can have taken this out or designed it in such a way it doesnt, but then again maybe not.

2) Reduction in helpless damage seems painful, but more so it puts its finger right on the point. I read a comment that said: "Why nerf dps of 1/3 to half of players?". Well, thats exactly the point. LD SHOULD be used by 1/12 of players, not 1/3, if EDs AND classes where balanced correctly. As it stands, its way to good, and imo this is mostly due to the action boost buffs and not the epic moment. The alternative would be to buff all trees up to LD level, but somehow I feel that s not the way to go.

3) The another monk nerf comments, well they can be right. But.... monk a year or so back where the undisputable dps kings, which is kind of not their archetype position within D&D. I thought them good still after first nerf, but... this could be to much I wouldnt know. Classes are indeed far too different and fun to bother staying at one for more than a week or so (dreading the time when I have al PLs and cap play is the thing to do)

I am in assent for your first 2 points but 3 is actually not accurate. I played the original dnd with the first 5 books and many editions thereafter. Monk was weak at first but starting after level 8 actually was the DPS king compared to all other melee builds. They were given more attacks and actually more damage per hit. They were designed to be the king of DPS at the drawback of less effective armor (cloth).
DDO has had the monk up and down in DPS over its storied 12 year career; currently after taking out the core Ws which are traditional to DnD the monk is down at least 4 or 5 spots from several other DPS builds in DDO.

[0ldschool]

Just my 2 cents, cause of all the uninformed comments I have read through the thread.

1) EiN Performance issue: The post stated it taxes the servers. This does NOT neccessarily mean that the person using it, nor the people in the same party, would notice any lag. Stuff that cause server lag is usually felt very so slightly by EVERYONE, rather than much by those close. People seem to used to connection lag or graphics/cpu lag/spikes to realize, but server taxing the server just means it will respond slightly slower to every request. I can therefore totally understand EiN causing performance issues. I do however see that the nerf is detrimental to the destiny, being far worse than frog, and I dont like the effort to make the tree less focused on being centered, at least not if diversity in EDs is the goal.

Incidently, I have wondered a lot if the xbow/cancel method to shrine and get out of dungeons fast does not have a similar server tax. It would be small, but noticable on total server performance (not centered around the moment it is done), especially if many did it all the time. Not sure how it is handled in DDO, or if it is handled at client or server, but user interuptions that still cause the initially desired effect have a tendency to leave lose threads on wherever it's handled. Of course, DDO devs can have taken this out or designed it in such a way it doesnt, but then again maybe not.

2) Reduction in helpless damage seems painful, but more so it puts its finger right on the point. I read a comment that said: "Why nerf dps of 1/3 to half of players?". Well, thats exactly the point. LD SHOULD be used by 1/12 of players, not 1/3, if EDs AND classes where balanced correctly. As it stands, its way to good, and imo this is mostly due to the action boost buffs and not the epic moment. The alternative would be to buff all trees up to LD level, but somehow I feel that s not the way to go.

3) The another monk nerf comments, well they can be right. But.... monk a year or so back where the undisputable dps kings, which is kindof not their archetype position within D&D. I thought them good still after first nerf, but... this could be to much I wouldnt know. Classes are indeed far too different and fun to bother staying at one for more than a week or so (dreading the time when I have al PLs and cap play is the thing to do)

I agree with you on #2.

#3 -AD&D - I also seem to recall (though it has been 30+ years) that monks were weak at low levels, but as they progressed up to higher levels, they become VERY powerful DPS machines. That was the main draw of the class, IIRC.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Good points, though overall I'm currently more in favor of nerf than more power. In my eyes

I do think the DC increases in mage trees were a bit over the top as well, though I like the idea behind moving wizards over from EA to Magister.

This is why I am completely opposed to the LD nerf.

Casters are already stupid powerful. They have 0 need for the power creep being given to them.

If the devs are going to make stupid power creep like that into the game, then LD shouldn’t be nerfed at all, blitz should be increased to 12 MP per stack, and any other melee ED should be buffed to 20 per core.

The devs can’t go around saying; casters using EA need to use the real DC caster tree, Magistar. But instead of keeping the power level the same, we are simply going to make Magistar stupid levels of power to entice them over. But MELEE who gravitate towards one ED are bad and their decision needs to be punished by needing their BiS ED nerfed to get them to go towards others.

If the caster changes were done the same way as the melee changes, EA would have its +3 DCs from the core removed and Magistar would be getting 0 DC increase.

Screw casters, here’s a video of me feeding a +2 Reaper stat INT helm;



Nerf casters.

[Arkat]

3) The another monk nerf comments, well they can be right. But.... monk a year or so back where the undisputable dps kings, which is kindof not their archetype position within D&D.

By a certain player with a certain build and certain equipment. None of what that guy used was EiN.

EiN was not the problem.

The Devs addressed what that guy was taking advantage of and now Monks are no longer the kings of DPS. As another user posted earlier in the thread, Monks aren't even in the Top 5 anymore.

Maybe the changes, in general, will increase DPS a bit but it will be at the cost of the coolest (in concept) ability in the game.

I will be very sad if all the proposed EiN changes go through.

[erethizon]

Keeping it as it is isn't an option anymore; we're trying to find a good, balanced fit. We buffed the DC, we buffed the cooldown, we buffed by removing the need to charge it. At the tradeoff of range and target numbers. Every number of targets it goes up is a quantifiable performance hit on the server.

Okay, if this is true (that every number of targets it goes up is a quantifiable performance hit on the server) then my first suggestion (to slightly increase the number of mobs it hits) may not be acceptable. If targeting 5 mobs really does hurt performance compared to 4 then I understand the need to keep it at 4 (but if 5 or 6 doesn't hurt performance then I would raise the number of targets by as much as you can).

But let's assume you have to keep it at 4. The two main improvements you can make are to give it no save (so it reliably kills everything it targets that isn't a red name) and to lower its cooldown. If it is going to have only 4 targets and is going to get a save its cooldown should be 30 seconds. If it gets no save you could have a cooldown of a minute I suppose.

[DeltaBravo]

Some initial suggestions.

Grandmaster of Flowers:
- A Dance of Flowers: Removing the centered requirement is OK, but make it 0.5[W]/1[W]/1.5[W] if centered so there is still a perk for being monk or kensai.

Legendary Dreadnought:
- Momentum Swing/Lay Waste: Removing the Power Attack requirement is great, but give some sort of extra bonus when Power Attack is active.

.

I agree with this.. If iam not going to be getting the 1,5w from being centered it a huge flavor loss for being centered..And same thing goes with lay waste.
Iam in a small guild atm.. and what we always talk about when talking the old days.. it was when there was a really meaningfull and flavor touch of being a specefic class. Its allready very very flat now. and most classes can do what the other classes can allready.. makeing classes less flavor full is just a HUGE set back in the real feel of DND. WHy is there even a reason for diffrent classes feats and enchaments when you can just twist it in or grap it from a univerisal tree. Its a sad way the game is walking right now. I wote no to flavor less class changes. But vote yes to real ingame balance.


Cheers DeltaBravo