2019 ED Pass: Martial Sphere

[DYWYPI]

The DDO Developers' seem to be using a different definition of diversity...

Steel just posted that they constantly talk about diversity of play styles, but it's pretty clear that just means equal dps for all.

Yes, I think they are thinking more on the lines of a 'variety' of different classes and builds. For example Multiclass or classes that wouldn't normally choose or Shadowdancer, or people finding themselves off-destiny and just wanting a stepping stone to another sphere or Density. Rather than focusing upon "unique play style", and Rogue archetype diversity. So it's looking like they were using the term in the loosest sense and not meaning Rogue play style. :-)

Whereas some of the players we asking specific questions about what helps to make Shadowdancer abilities more diverse and unique. For example: some of the responding players were asking for other than; increased SD melee power. They were asking for alteration to stealthy and manipulative deception like techniques, within this thread, subtle roguish tactical stuff, etc. Those questions weren't specifically answered - if I recall correctly.

[0ldschool]

I don't know anyone that ever had trouble building or keeping shadow charges while in Shadowdancer, so reading that this was a big problem and that no charges with timer is some benefit reads to me as people that haven't or don't know how to play. Making any timer longer because of this also shows lack of understanding, as the timer was always the limitation.

I made a similar comment earlier. While Shadow charges are an annoyance, I never had much of an issue keeping them up. And I'm a first life newb. Sometimes I forget to charge them up, but that's on me. Removing them is a good design change, but it is a QoL improvement only. I would happily keep the annoyance of Shadow Charges in exchange for a shiny new Epic moment. Shadow Form (which I do really like) is the only thing close to a real epic moment in SD now, IMHO. Since we don't have to use a shadow charge now for it to be enabled, will Shadow Form now persist indefinitely like a stance, including public spaces?

[DYWYPI]

If you have a poor internet connection and are in a large Raid group Shadow Charges can be annoying to manage via Shrouding Strike. I think it really needed you to apply Assassinate at one stage for to function properly and was limited to working on living targets.

[...] I made a similar comment earlier. While Shadow charges are an annoyance, I never had much of an issue keeping them up. [...] will Shadow Form now persist indefinitely like a stance, including public spaces? ...

I suspect you are using Shrouding Shot and I'd expect it is slightly easier to gain, than if you had to chase a fleeing mob. I would certainly presume Shadow Form would persist after leaving a quest or they'll likely be getting complaints from people logging in an having to toggle it, all the time LOL. Actually you can already use Shadow Form in Public places, but you have to activate it while still in a Wilderness Area zone. ;-)

[0ldschool]

Whereas some of the players we asking specific questions about what helps to make Shadowdancer abilities unique and more diverse and unique. For example: some of the responding players were asking for other than; increased SD melee power. They were asking for alteration to stealthy and manipulative deception like techniques, within this thread, subtle roguish tactical stuff, etc. Those questions weren't specifically answered - if I recall correctly.

No, they weren't specifically answered. Early on, I was one who proposed some changes that would provide things like removal of sneak attack immunity / proc sneak attack additions to existing abilities or with a new epic moment, something like what Assassin's Trick provides, and something like what Pin can provide to ranged rogues. It's weird to me that SD has no real targeted SA immunity removals / SA procs, other than the 'on a 20' effect from the capstone. Oh, there is Shadow Lance which blinds and may be better now, but that's an easy Tier 1 twist. I was trying to go beyond 'just up the base DPS' suggestions into improvements that would go with the spirit of SD, since there was zero response on the 'straight DPS' suggestions. The suggestions to add SA die or other things to the cores seemed to be good ones too. Seeing no response was a bit disheartening, esp. while there was more active engagement in other ED Pass threads. I still hold some hope that they read what was posted here and are giving all of suggestions some serious thought. I continue to post due to this hope.

For ranged specifically, I do still think that capping SD and Shiradi at +24 RP is just making Blitz way too desirable, especially when adding in +30 PRR. I agree that more MP should be provided than RP for the EDs in general, but a side effect of this is that there is a difference of just 12 RP (vs. 42 MP) between LD and Shiradi/SD. This creates the same problem that existed with Blitz for melee that caused them to up the MP to +10 per level for the other non-LD martial EDs (and Primal Avatar).

[Thrudh]

LD gets a nerf, and other destinies get minor buffs, but not enough to seriously compete with LD.

This is incorrect. Shadowdancer was already close to power to LD with my Dex-based sneak-attack guy. Shadowdancer now is definitely equal and probably even better with my play style with that character. My barbarian will remain in LD. I don't currently have a monk... I'm not sure if the monk destiny is now a match with LD.

[Thrudh]

1. The nerf to Dance of Flowers is a double nerf, really - it scales down monks who already lost a lot in the handwrap weapon change, and it nerfs them in comparison to other melees who will certainly twist this. Also, having it turn into a melee must-twist is just a bad idea for any ED ability. I see no reason to change this from what it is on live.

I agree with this.. Especially the melee must-twist... That's ALWAYS a bad design choice.

[JoeCamb02140]

Shadowdancer
This tree needed help. -- Agreed

Shadow Lance adds Assassinate Bonuses to its DC calculation, uses the higher of your Intelligence and Dexterity Modifiers in its DC calculation, uses full character level in its DC calculation, tries to apply Blind on each hit, scales with 400% of the higher of your Melee and Ranged Power, damage is now (4d8+18)/(6d8+24)/(8d8+30), with a cooldown of 30/20/10 seconds.

--This seems fine. I never saw the use for this skill. Will it be like the Vistani tier 3 skill, Fan of Knives? If so that would be useful. Frankly I would prefer AoE blind, but this is okay.


Shrouding Strike/Shot no longer mark the target for Shadow Charges; instead, they apply a stack of Improved Destruction and has a 6-second cooldown.

- THANK YOU, but how long does each stack last? The devil is in the details here.

Consume adds Assassinate bonuses to its DC calculation, uses the higher of your Intelligence and Dexterity Modifiers in its DC calculation, has a 3-minute cooldown.

- So basically an underpowered Wail of the Banshee, this seems like a waste.

Shadow Manipulation adds Assassinate bonuses to its DC calculation, uses the higher of your Intelligence and Dexterity Modifiers in its DC calculation, and has a 3-minute cooldown.

- Why would you even use this? Will it work on Reapers? The only way I can see this being remotely useful is to dominate a reaper and even then this seems of marginal use.

Cloak of Shadows no longer uses Shadow Charges, nor grants Maximum Shadow Charges, no longer requires Shrouding Strike/Shot.

-Okay. But kobold still hate this.

Executioner's Strike/Shot has a 12-second cooldown, a DC of (10 + Character level + INT or DEX mod + Assassinate bonuses), can be used while under Antimagic, and you can move while using Executioner's Strike/Shot.

- These are all welcome and logical.

Dark Imbuement has a 2-minute cooldown, costs 1AP.

- Meh. Why is this a tier six ability? A 2-minute cooldown on a non-scaling damage boost for 30 seconds? Even if it was on a 40 second cooldown, you could not make an argument for this being a tier six ability. Dance of Death is way more powerful than this. Either make the attacks bypass dodge/fortification and apply sneak attack damage automatically or this is still worthless.

Shadow Form costs 1AP.

- Fine, but this form should grant immunity to knockdown and ghost touch.

Untouchable now passively grants 3% Dodge and +1 Critical Damage Multiplier on rolls of 19-20.

- Awesome. Will this stack with Devastating Crit?

[ThreadNecromancer]

• Inner Focus and Wholeness of Spirit now allow for movement during use
• Wholeness of Spirit has its cooldown reduced to 2 minutes
• Ki actives (the left column) now scale with the higher of Melee or Ranged Power
• Ki actives get Stunning bonuses added to their DC calculations
• Ki actives can now be used under Antimagic, as they are not spells
• Ki actives are no longer linked in a line
• Lily Petal and Orchid Blossom now care about levels 26-30 in terms of scaling with character level (was previously capping at 25)
• Lily Petal now grants 5 Ki instead of costing Ki
• A Scattering of Petals no longer grants Dodge, and instead grants +100 PRR and MRR for 12 seconds.
  
  • A Scattering of Petals also reduces enemy Fortification by 200% for 12 seconds, and affected creatures lose immunity to Sneak Attack for that duration.
  • A Scattering of Petals now has a detect the same size as Drifting Lotus (i.e. twice as large).
  • A Scattering of Petals now has a 90 second cooldown.
  
  
• A Dance of Flowers is now 0.25[w]/0.5[w]/1[w], but no longer requires you to be Centered.
• Running with the Wind now adds 2/4/6% Doublestrike to everyone (no more stance requirement)
• Hail of Blows now adds +3 melee damage in addition to its doublestrike
• Walking with Waves no longer requires Ocean stance for its Dodge bonus
• Standing with Stone no longer requires Mountain Stance for its PRR.
• Dancing with Flame no longer requires Sun Stance for its (w) bonus.
• Everything is Nothing moves to a 3 minute cooldown, no longer requires charging.
  
  • Everything is Nothing now has a smaller detect (double the size of Drifting Lotus, but still smaller than its existing version), and hits a maximum of 4 enemies. This is for both balance and performance reasons, as it significantly taxes the game on use & will now be used more frequently.
  
  
• NEW: T2: The Flower's Thorn: +3[w] attack. 6 second cooldown. Does not require Centering. Has cool petal FX. (1 Rank, 1AP)
• NEW: T5: Devastating Critical (+1 Critical Multiplier on a 19-20) (1 Rank, 1AP)

• Nice QoL fixes to Inner Focus and Wholeness of Spirit.
• Buffs/Fixes to Ki actives look excellent. Especially the DC bonus and MP scaling. One issue I noticed with Lily Petal and Orchid Blossom is their interaction with Epic Defensive Fighting. Given the nature of this tree, they shouldn't be affected by that range reduction.
• Scattering of Petals now looks... interestingly situational. Could be a great defensive ability, but with how many abilities in this tree look good now, I'm already worried about losing some Wisdom. The MRR cap is ultimately what will prevent this ability from being used, unless it ignored your MRR cap for the duration. A bit like Meld into Darkness does for Dodge cap. Petals is a tier 6 ability, after all.
• Untethering Monk stances from some abilities is fine, making them nice twists for those that don't enjoy the "Transcended Monk" feel of the tree. I'm wondering if they'll somehow still benefit from being in-stance? Or even being centered? Elemental resists is... a bit weak, unless I missed something and they're typed as Insight bonuses.
• I'm sure, without looking through the thread much, that others complained about EiN. (Which I refer to as "My Snap" for those familiar with Infinity War/Endgame) I'll preemptively agree with them on the limit of 4 targets, combined with that 3min cd. At that cooldown I'd hope it'd hit at least six targets, but I suppose I'll have to actually play with the ability in that form to see. Don't you dare touch that animation, it's perfect. *shakes finger*
• Flower's Thorn seems tame, and I have an idea here. What if it were a multiselector that allowed you to choose Light/Dark/Void for its attack type?

[HungarianRhapsody]

Legendary Dreadnought

• Unmoveable and Thick Skinned are no longer Action Boosts (they didn't really act like them anyway, they were just using their charge counters). Instead, they are instead simply restricted to their respective cooldowns (which are unchanged).

Please don't do this. Having them count as Action Boosts means that things that key off Action Boosts can use them. Like Prowess and Combat Brute and various Racial abilities.

This is a significant nerf even though I'm guessing it isn't intended to be such.

[liston33]

A couple of things could be fixed with this destiny... First, when in the quest Thru a Mirror Darkly,and a couple others i can not remember which ones, but when you use a portal to a different instance inside of the quest,, when you have Blitz active and use the porting mirror blitz deactivates.. also could we have the activation cooldown for Blits activation reset upon using a rest shrine??..

[apep1412]

[/LIST]
Please don't do this. Having them count as Action Boosts means that things that key off Action Boosts can use them. Like Prowess and Combat Brute and various Racial abilities.

This is a significant nerf even though I'm guessing it isn't intended to be such.

None of the things you mentioned actually work with these abilities on live. This is a buff with no downside as far as I can see. Functionally, the only change is that they no longer have a maximum number of uses.

The option to fix them to actually be action boosts would just hurt Prowess/Deadly Rain users. Those filigree set abilities don't activate if you already have an action boost running while activating a new boost. With the 30 and 60 second durations on these, they would just reduce the time you benefit from those filigree sets in the same way Power Surge used to.

[HungarianRhapsody]

None of the things you mentioned actually work with these abilities on live. This is a buff with no downside as far as I can see. Functionally, the only change is that they no longer have a maximum number of uses.

The option to fix them to actually be action boosts would just hurt Prowess/Deadly Rain users. Those filigree set abilities don't activate if you already have an action boost running while activating a new boost. With the 30 and 60 second durations on these, they would just reduce the time you benefit from those filigree sets in the same way Power Surge used to.

Thank you for that reply. I didn't know those were broken, so that will now make this life's button mashing a lot simpler when I get back to 20.

[Hara]

Please please please do NOT remove the requirements for Lay Waste and Momentum swing. PA, Cleave, and Great Cleave should remain as required feats.
If your reason for the change is you believe the investment in 3 feats is too costly then improve the pay off, but do not remove the requirements simply to allow more builds to access these abilities.

[Cantor]

Please please please do NOT remove the requirements for Lay Waste and Momentum swing. PA, Cleave, and Great Cleave should remain as required feats.
If your reason for the change is you believe the investment in 3 feats is too costly then improve the pay off, but do not remove the requirements simply to allow more builds to access these abilities.

I don't see why there is any pushback on this change, it's meaningless. They are garbage abilities without cleave because you can't reset them. The cooldown without cleaves more than limits them and no one is going to twist them without cleave, and will only take them if they need to fill in the tree for higher tiers. (which is probably a mistake as any action boost would be better) I think you guys are all used to having cleaves and think they are great, without cleaves they are junk. If anything they become a noob trap for someone without cleaves.

[Cantor]

For a minute there I thought devs had actually responded to input about Shadowdancer, but I believe these are your suggestions???


A great way to balance the power of assassinate would be to have it require tactics to use, like requiring you to be in stealth, and making staying and moving in and out of stealth a tactical and challenging option. If only we had an example of such a system... I'm sure there are other ways to do this, but taking away tactical play is a way to dumb down DDO in the name of monetization. Players should be rewarded for using tactics, and these tactics should be opposed to make build choices important. Simply ignoring player abilities is flat out terrible design, and it shows a lack of effort or thought.


Someone at SSG is going to have to start learning about unique play styles and what a tactical option is. Their design creates almost zero competing play decisions, and they have gone after play decisions for some time now.

People charging and using EiN are on the chopping block now. Removing the charging and putting it on a timer, dramatically nerfing it's core ability, while giving access to it to everyone. More vanilla, less unique play styles.

While I agree with your sentiment: charging EIN is not unique tactical play, it's what you do waiting for everyone to get into the raid. And popping in and out of stealth for MtF is not tactics either, it's just annoying.

[draven1]

from SteelStar,
"Ability DCs keeping competitive ahead of the Reaper curve is not something we balance for.
It is definitely intended that some skills are going to fall off in effectiveness as you move into upper skulls."

So, huge DC gap between instakill spells and physical skills is intentional.
We need to TR into casters to keep competitive DC on high skulls.

In high skull reaper, Assassins are just DPS who lost its signature skill : assassinate.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Please please please do NOT remove the requirements for Lay Waste and Momentum swing. PA, Cleave, and Great Cleave should remain as required feats.
If your reason for the change is you believe the investment in 3 feats is too costly then improve the pay off, but do not remove the requirements simply to allow more builds to access these abilities.

Great Cleave is not listed as a required feat for any of the abilities in LD. Not in the Wiki and not in the game.

My Druid Wolf melee murderhobo has PA and Cleave and has Momentum Swing and Lay Waste. It would be really nice if I could use BOTH of those when I'm murdering bad guys in Wolf form.

If that means removing requirements, so be it.

[lyrecono]

Great Cleave is not listed as a required feat for any of the abilities in LD. Not in the Wiki and not in the game.

My Druid Wolf melee murderhobo has PA and Cleave and has Momentum Swing and Lay Waste. It would be really nice if I could use BOTH of those when I'm murdering bad guys in Wolf form.

If that means removing requirements, so be it.

great cleave isn't a requirement, it does help reset the cooldown of the momentum swing (wich in turn can reset lay waste).
i haven't played wolves in epics for a while, why can't you use both cleave and momentum swing&lay waste?

[HungarianRhapsody]

great cleave isn't a requirement, it does help reset the cooldown of the momentum swing (wich in turn can reset lay waste).
i haven't played wolves in epics for a while, why can't you use both cleave and momentum swing&lay waste?

My guess (not 100% sure) is thst it doesn't like the fact thst I'm a wolf and wants me to count as a weapon attack in order to deny that ability to monks. Which is dumb because there's no good reason to keep Monks and Wolves/Bears and giant trees from using that attack

[DYWYPI]

Shadowdancer

Slightly off topic: I've noticed 'Shadow Manipulation' still has minor bugs, a few days ago I was in the: Haunted Halls of Eveningstar. For amusement, I targeted the Kobolds. However, they were still semi-hostile and would also try to attack me when still under my full control. That also used to happen in Smuggler's Rest occasionally, perhaps a few years ago. I had to warn people to stay away from any dominated Ogres LOL.

I suspect Shadow Lance, still won't function past "touch range" when 'Epic Defensive Fighting' is active? So presumably that's aimed more at the ranged Characters.

Steelstar, I'm slightly interested as to why you are considering incorporating Assassinate DCs into those [Shadow Lance] calculations. Or do you think, that most Characters that have "Assassinate ability" aren't mostly in 'Epic Defensive Fighting' stance? :-)