2019 ED Pass: Martial Sphere

[Grailhawk]

Get a better server. Period. Full stop. Lynn keeps saying that DDO is in a great place, the future is bright, etc. So what? More people gonna start playing? What happens to these pathetic servers then? And why is this a performance issue now, just like 4 manyshot arrows was before? I don't believe you. We've had epic destinies for how long now? Since before all the server data center moves shenanigans? And now? Now its a performance problem?

How can EIN have been allowed to exist for all these years on OLDER hardware if it was such a problem? If you think about it, EVERYTHING is a performance hit. You technically could say any change you make to anything at all is for performance reasons.

What's the logical endgame here? Decreases over the years instead of more and better? Are we going to be playing a black and white stick figure, changing the game to a text adventure? Will we then be told the combat log cannot handle our stick drawing killing so fast, so mob deaths will be only allowed once a minute? When does it end? When is the company making money and spending that money on better hardware?

IMO EIN in its current state should have never existed in the first place. In ~2012 when the update that gave us EIN also nerfed Wail of the Banshee (I think it was the same one MoTU but Wail may have come first or right after but in the same time frame) in the same way EIN is being nerfed now. That was foolish and showed the dev bias of the the time hopeful this is the last time hey have to learn this lesson and they never add this kind of ability back (or they undo the Wail nerf and don't do this one).

[thunir]

How about 10d6 sneak attack, and an instant sneak attack deception debuff for 30 seconds, 4 min cool down.

I’ve been looking at this and can’t help but feel Dark Imbument got left out.


Sure the ap reduction and timer is nice, but 2d6 unholy damage is silly especially when compared to turn of the tide, fury, or blitz.

I’m glad your doing something but how does this compare? 2d6 vs 40% dmamge bost and 200 sonic and light damage that now effects red names?

I’m not even saying it needs to be a damage boost. You could put executioners shot/ strike every seven seconds for 45 seconds like fury. Maybe vorpal on a 19 and do level drain and aoe evil burst on vorpal for 30 seconds. Make the evil damage scaleable. It doesn’t need to be more physical damage ie. MP or crit enhancements, but something.

Please take a look at this.

[0ldschool]

I’ve been looking at this and can’t help but feel Dark Imbument got left out.


Sure the ap reduction and timer is nice, but 2d6 unholy damage is silly especially when compared to turn of the tide, fury, or blitz.

I’m glad your doing something but how does this compare? 2d6 vs 40% dmamge bost and 200 sonic and light damage that now effects red names?

I’m not even saying it needs to be a damage boost. You could put executioners shot/ strike every seven seconds for 45 seconds like fury. Maybe vorpal on a 19 and do level drain and aoe evil burst on vorpal for 30 seconds. Make the evil damage scaleable. It doesn’t need to be more physical damage ie. MP or crit enhancements, but something.

Please take a look at this.

I made some comments about proposed improvements to SD epic moment earlier in the thread, and I won't rehash those. My Mech runs in SD, mostly for the 'toys'. Shiradi is a good alternative. LD and FoTW have obvious DPS advantages that draw many away from both of these, but I'm one who likes the fun of Shiradi and SD. With the proposed changes to Shiradi giving a big boost to ranged damage, including the new T6 Adrenaline boost, I don't think remaining in SD is going to be justifiable anymore. And I'm pretty sad about that. SD is getting left behind in the DPS (especially burst DPS) realm. I proposed a new Adrenaline like boost, or alternatively a sneak attack uber-Assassins Trick boost, or perhaps even just up the MP/RP of the destiny, or at a bare minimum give a bunch more SA die (like 3 per level instead of 1).

Your idea RE a Fury version of Executioner's strike/shot is a good one. Maybe this is something they could more quickly create since Exec Strike/Shot already exists. Give it more MP/RP or scale up the damage and you have something pretty useful. Please don't leave SD in the dust!

[Noircere]

I am generally confused by the notion that insta killing a number of mobs STRESSES the server

It's not the killing that causes lag, but the player behavior it inspires. Prior to casting EiN, I try to round up everything in the dungeon to get the most bang for my buck. Me running around like a fool with 30, 50, or 100 guys trying to get to me is what causes the lag.

Unless the killing also causes lag, in which case... ¯\_(?)_/¯

[Tilomere]

Can the design of shadowdancer as an ED be changed from being centered around supporting rogue assassins (1 class 1 prestige tree) to instead be of more general use by also being wisdom based for falconry builds of all classes?

[Eryhn]

It's not the killing that causes lag, but the player behavior it inspires. Prior to casting EiN, I try to round up everything in the dungeon to get the most bang for my buck. Me running around like a fool with 30, 50, or 100 guys trying to get to me is what causes the lag.

hey, Im all about doing an EIN on lag monster itself, can never be a dumb move.

If rounding up 25+ mobs has to go I have no beef about that. but 4? idk man that's heavy lol.



In a more generalized way of looking at the game changing over time I have serious issues with the player experience getting tailored to crappy servers more and more. or to code not efficient but rather not touched with a 10 foot pole - I dont understand the tech side, I'm not a dev, but this is just one more move in a whole line of actions taken to dumb things down so it runs on whatever it runs however it runs.

I dont think it's a long term selling point, as as these kind of changes keep piling up they effectively kill more and more of the interesting aspects of this game's mechanics setting it apart from other more mainstream mmos.

when changes like these need to be implemented for lag reasons, they should be done as carefully as possible and with the intent to preserve as much as possible of what makes this game different from others.

fun fact on the side: I only bought monk 2 months ago and just now am getting a toon rdy to TR into one, I dont even have my personal stake in this as EIN aint on my list of things I totally am used to and want preserved.

anyways, more or less what mindos said, dont like the general direction this is going. kobold remember 1sec global cooldown ...

[Nickodeamous]

My main is a monk. In fact, I only play my main. I have spent years perfecting him. I like some of the changes you have here, but the EIN change is unacceptable. If you are reducing this to a 3 min cooldown with no charge (what fun is that by the way) and maxing at 4 mobs, you (Devs) are missing the point of saving the entire party! I use this when the entire party is in a jam, not for kill counts. I play a support role. My role is to kill everything I can as fast as I can. That's what a monk does. By nerfing this, and that is Exactly what you are doing (what problem with taxing the system....never seen it), you are not creating party balance, you are limiting kill counts only, and throwing us back to the stone age. BTW, how about when a warlock gets their instakills (hell and finger). they can stand back and just launch kills left and right with MP. There is no limit here as ling as the DC is high enough. A monk has to go into the battle and physically attack at close range. EIN is for everyone. I could care less about my kill counts.

So, here is my suggestion after my long rant (I normally type rants and then delete them, but not this time)...
EIN - 2 min cooldown with max of 6 mobs (no DC)

give monks the ability to stun Red names (oooohhhhhh)

ok, back to work

Nico

[LightBear]

Grandmaster of flowers:
Overall where ever something just focussed on melee or ranged plz make it inclusive for either melee or ranged, p.e. mostly running with the wind but also hail of blows.
A Scattering of Petals no longer grants Dodge, and instead grants +100 PRR and MRR for 12 seconds.
I hope this increases the cap or it is of little use for monk, if anything it should when wearing clothes or no armor.

Legendary Dreadnought:
(Edit: was thinking of another destiny here, looked it up... its not as bad but might be seen as worst), I can see a lot of folks now switching to Fatesingers new tier 4s instead. But a blanc 15% more damage output might still cut it for a lot of folks. I can understand why this is done but can also understand the feelings some players might have.
Oh, if I recall correctly tactical genius will reset your timers for cleave like attacks, so if you could keep that effect it would be most appreciated.


Shadowdancer:
Improved Invisibility cooldown should be 90 seconds instead of the 240 secs it is right now.
Shrouding strike/shot should add something that makes the target vulnerable for sneak attacks... until it dies. Move the Improved Destruction to Grim Precision.
Consume, it now says it has an effect on corporeal enemies only, could this be removed if it is in effect? Also would be nice if the timer is removed and instead a counter of 10 is used from which 1 is deducted for every enemy successfully consumed and goes out of effect when reaching 0. Maybe remove the save entirely?

Again overall great changes and can't wait to see those live.

[0ldschool]

How about 10d6 sneak attack, and an instant sneak attack deception debuff for 30 seconds, 4 min cool down.

Thanks for seconding my idea! I think this actually could be a really cool Epic Moment if done well, and stays true to the heart of SD.

Edit: to be clear, this is what I had initially proposed.

Death from the Shadows – Active Ability: (cooldown: 5 minutes) For 30 seconds, gain +10 sneak attack die and +20 RP/MP. In addition, ALL targets successfully hit will have sneak attack immunity removed and be subject to sneak attack damage.

I'm all for changes to the numbers, but I think that the basic idea has merit.

[Iriale]

As I see it, currently no monk who cares about dps chooses master of flowers over LD. The only reason to choose MoF was EiN. If you reduce his signature aptitude to something as useless as you propose, MoF needs a major buff in its dps, or a few new aptitudes that make up the loss suffered. Currently MoF needs more a buff than a nerf. If you do a nerf, the ED will also need a grand buff.

I do not like the change to dance of flowers. You take damage to the monk to add to the other melees. What is the reasoning behind that? The monk is not currently at the head of dps. Have not monk had enough nerfs already last year?

the changes that you have introduced to Showdancer help my artificer very little. He is still sold in his spellcasting. You have gotten a nerf to consume. He does not win much with his crossbow. Globally... meh. LD is still the star of this sphere. There is no ED that can be compared

[GramercyRiff]

I'll take the Combat Brute nerf as long as we retain Action Hero. When Action Hero goes, I probably go with it.


You gotta do better for Shadowdancer. Make this thing hit harder. or maybe I'm missing something. Essentially all that's happened is meh abilities work now and there's no shadow charges. All this looks like to me is a good start.

[redoubt]

Assassinate is already way behind instakill DCs.

While I do appreciate the opportunity to close the gap with the new option for +assassinate as an active stance, it comes at an opportunity cost of losing Doublestrike. (Also the casters are getting yet more DC.) With assassinate so far behind instakill casters, why force THIS choice? Doublestrike and assassinate are two of the hardest things to raise. Compare this to healing amp or saves boost in the divine tree. Both can already be raised quite high. That choice is a matter of tweaking a build. Assassins need to run at near 100% doublestrike just to kill stuff before we die AND we need a LOT of help on the assassinate DC side as well.

I know Stealthy gives +6, but you could add +1 to each core (as someone else suggested) and assassinate would still be 15-20 DC behind casters (and its harder to use, can't be cycled with other instakills, requires a physics hit, a to-hit success etc.)

Sidebar:
You may already have other thoughts on raising assassinate DCs, but here are a few we were talking about in group the other day.
1. Add to the shadowdancer cores (as previously mentioned)
2. Add 10% of (hide + move silent)/2 -- not my idea, but as it was explained to me, the concept comes from stealth going hand in hand with assassins.
3. Add higher DC assassinate items. Currently the highest number is 9 and it is on only two items. A ring from Killing time and the knifepalm gloves. The ring is VERY difficult to get and the gloves conflict with the appropriate sharn set.
4. insightful and quality assassinate is also too rare.

Thank you

[Nickodeamous]

As I see it, currently no monk who cares about dps chooses master of flowers over LD. The only reason to choose MoF was EiN. If you reduce his signature aptitude to something as useless as you propose, MoF needs a major buff in its dps, or a few new aptitudes that make up the loss suffered. Currently MoF needs more a buff than a nerf. If you do a nerf, the ED will also need a grand buff.

I do not like the change to dance of flowers. You take damage to the monk to add to the other melees. What is the reasoning behind that? The monk is not currently at the head of dps. Have not monk had enough nerfs already last year?

the changes that you have introduced to Showdancer help my artificer very little. He is still sold in his spellcasting. You have gotten a nerf to consume. He does not win much with his crossbow. Globally... meh. LD is still the star of this sphere. There is no ED that can be compared

Actually, when they buffed the cores to 10MP per for a total of +60 melee power in MoF, DPS exceeded LD. I did a test with my duality wraps and multiple ED combos and GoF was the highest on a per swing basis for me. I did over 1,100 per swing with GoF on helpless dummy vs. 950 or so for LD. If anything, I am excited for the the +1 to crit multiplier! for me, EIN was only used to clear difficult situations where the entire party was in trouble. It was never about kill count for me, but that's me

[PsychoBlonde]

I don't think Shadowdancer's Consume or Shadow Manipulation needed their cooldowns increased, even though you don't need to mess around with shadow charges any more. If anything, they needed them REDUCED.

I'd suggest 30 seconds for Shadow Manipulation and 90 seconds for Consume as being completely reasonable. This would make Shadowdancer more unique as a tree, because while none of the abilities are individually very POWERFUL, they can be used relatively FREQUENTLY compared to other high-tier destiny abilities.

If there were time, I'd suggest making the Consume on Shadowdancer work in a unique way--instead of having a cooldown, you gain one charge of Consume every ten seconds, up to 12 total charges, and when you activate it *that is the number of enemies that the Consume effect tries to hit*. So you can use it every 120 seconds and kill a fair-sized group, or you can use it fairly frequently for a small number of (potential) kills each time. And you can never directly control WHAT gets hit by the effect. This would be REALLY unique.

Dark Imbuement is a puzzle. It has NEVER been a good ability, so it's not even apparent what the heck to do with it. Honestly, and this may sound weird, I'd just say scrap it. Remove it completely, and let Consume and Shadow Form be the "Epic Moments" in this tree. They are both (or can both be) reasonably powerful.

I'd suggest removing the double light damage from Shadow Form and making it so creatures with Tremorsense or similar no longer auto-detect you (since you float). I realize you probably don't have time to do this (if the tech to make someone undetectable by Tremorsense is even in the game at this time), but this would make a good later fix. You could also add a Vorpal effect in this form where you inflict a Crippling effect with attacks on a vorpal.

[Kodwraith]

To build on what others have said. I pretty much only play monk and have stuck with it through everything. I'm a weak uber player with vastly fewer lives than my guildies and would consider myself at the very bottom of the veterans. A couple things:

The GMoF change is decidedly meh because I will still be in LD.
Why? Mainly because I die in one hit in GMoF. The blitz is what keeps me alive with all the extra PRR. I can't get hit outside LD or US. And I run with 50% dodge, as much displacement and incorp as I can get and 200ish prr a good chunk of which is from blitz because I need to be in hitting range to do anything useful. Without the blitz, I get one shotted left and right. These changes just nerf the DPS side and do nothing to address the defensive side. The whole point of GMoF is that it is more tactically oriented around abilities to help shape how the mob pull is going to go. Not just straight up killing things.

As already pointed out:
1) I already have vastly more ki than I can spend ever. Every single monk I group with after level 15 or so has more ki than they know what to do with.
2) I also have vastly more buttons than I can hot key press ever. The last thing I need is yet an additional +3w attack cluttering up my hotbar. I don't have space for all of them now.

What I'd love is more passive boosts to abilities that enhance my survivability. LD currently is better at both DPS and defenses especially considering that I'm almost always hitting helpless things with a boost on if I'm doing it right. This change does not make GMoF better at either of those things. The increase in MP helped but still was not enough.

I think devs need to rethink why monks found GMoF attractive over LD ever. Two things: CC and saves. GMoF has almost the only workable CC options for monks. These plus whirlwind and dire charge were pretty attractive once some of the MP balanced out. But it doesn't matter because I will die before I get to use any of these abilities in GMoF.

[0ldschool]

I'll take the Combat Brute nerf as long as we retain Action Hero. When Action Hero goes, I probably go with it.


You gotta do better for Shadowdancer. Make this thing hit harder. or maybe I'm missing something. Essentially all that's happened is meh abilities work now and there's no shadow charges. All this looks like to me is a good start.

Yes, they missed making it hit harder. I kind of see what happened. They are trying to limit the amount of work by staying withing the confines of existing abilities. For Shiradi, there are enough existing DPS abilities that huge strides have been made (compared to SD). 200% RP to Fav Winds, Stay Frosty, Stay Good, Rainbow, Wild Shots, and Rain of Arrows. 6% Doubleshot for Whirling Wrists!! And even a brand new Adreneline junior ability, Horizon Shot. In the Weeds, which would be a perfect SD ability if you just call it 'In the Shadows', got +3 PRR/MRR per stack too, something squishy rogues desperately need.

By comparison, in my opinion, SD got very little. A bump for Shadow Lance. The +1 crit mod 19-20 on Untouchable, which by the way Shiradi got too with Stand and Deliver. Maybe the ED is a victim of its own oddness. They didn't even see fit to fix the horrible Epic moment. Some EDs got complete reworks, and we couldn't get an Epic Moment fix. I'm a bit emotional about it because I simply don't want to see this ED die (or just be an Assassin's only tree). I want to be constructive, so I'm going to make suggestions.


+ add more SA die per level of SD (2 or 3 die). Sneak attack is the core of Shadowdancer.
+ EVERY ranged rogue twists Pin from Shiradi to proc sneak attack. Kinda silly, one of the 'shots/strikes' abilities in SD should absolutely be as good if not better at proc'ing sneak attack than a Shiradi ability. It should also be at Tier 2. Shrouding Strike/Shot sits at the Tier 3, and perhaps this is the best spot for it for now. Thematically, this would make make perfect sense for SD. Add sneak proc, keep the Improved Destruction addition too.
+ maybe increase Meld tiers to 12/15/18 sec
+ add Tier 4 'In The Shadows': exact duplicate of 'In the Weeds' from Shiradi (Tier 4 needs more anyway, only 3 abilities there)
+ add Doublestrike/Double Shot +2/4/6% to Grim Precision (or create a new Tier 3 just for this enhancement): duplicate of new Tier 3 Whirling Wrists from Shiradi
+ new crit mult +1 to Untouchable: good as is
+ new Epic Moment: Death from the Shadows(name?) – Active Ability: (cooldown: 5 minutes) For 30 seconds, gain +10 sneak attack die and +20 RP/MP. In addition, all targets successfully hit will have sneak attack immunity removed and be subject to sneak attack damage.

OR if simpler to implement, the other good idea here was this, assuming Shrouding Strike shot gets the sneak attack proc:

+ new Epic Moment: Death from the Shadows(name?) – Active Ability: (cooldown: 5 minutes) Every 3 seconds for 30 seconds(?), Executioner's or Shrouding Shot/Strike (whichever but I do like the idea of the sneak attack proc)

These moments would still pale in comparison to Fury or Blitz, but it's something. I'm open to any and all criticism or suggestions RE this list. The goal is simply to save SD. Thoughts?

[PsychoBlonde]

Only 4 targets on EIN seems low to me. Why not make it work like Wail or Consume where it hits one target at a time over the course of several seconds?

[Grailhawk]

In Shadowdancer can the requirements chaining of Shrouding Strike/Shot > Improved Invisibility be removed.

It seams to me like the only reason Shrouding Strike was a requirement for Improved Invisibility was because II increased Shadow Charges, this isn't the case any more and the thematic link seams to be gone.

[Hobgoblin]

steelstar

you said there was 2 very firm things

1 was the reborn in light nerf

2 - is it ein?


only thing i really that were about game balance

[0ldschool]

I'd suggest removing the double light damage from Shadow Form and making it so creatures with Tremorsense or similar no longer auto-detect you (since you float).

Sorry, just saw this. This is a spectacular idea and in perfect alignment with spirit with SD! Thanks PB