2019 ED Pass: Martial Sphere

[DYWYPI]

Shadowdancer: I agree that gaining "Shadow Charges" tended to be hit-and-miss and finicky; it was slightly annoying that you lost them if you used rest Shrines, etc. So their suggested removal will be mostly a positive step. :-)

The proposed; three minute 'cooldown' timer, on 'Shadow Manipulation' seems rather lengthy. As the target can be dominated for one minute; assuming it doesn't get destroyed beforehand.

The 'Dark Imbuement' Epic Moment; really needs more work or just completely removing...

[...] I'd suggest [...] Shadow Form and making it so creatures with Tremorsense or similar no longer auto-detect you (since you float). ...

Even though the DDO (Shadowform) Rogue is counted as a Shadow; it possibly still touches the floor, but is effectively weightless. Certainly that form, shouldn't really be alerting things like Spiders (Tremor Sense) even though the Rogue is likely still in contact with its ground terrain because shadows don't cause vibrations through the floor.

However, immunity to Tremor Sense (or Blindsight) has likely got a snowball's chance in hell of happening. I certainly can think of scenarios, where that "suggestion" could be employed - in innovative ways - by nefarious players to exploit the system. :-/

Currently the DDO Developers seem to have great difficulty programming monster aggravation without some malfunctioning chain reaction anyway. Because of their failings; we've ended up with unwanted and bizarre things such as Assassinate no longer requiring Sneak attack, etc.

Oozes tend to be a major source of chain-reaction aggravation, erroneously alerting other species, in some quests. Sometimes it's as if the other close-by mobs to ooze will also temporally magically gain abilities like Blindsight, etc.

I've always found 'Shadow Training IV', slightly strange and partly out of place maybe its because of the text description isn't all that clear. Certainly the Shadow Walk visual aspect tends to be more of a hindrance; in most scenarios I come across, rather than actually being useful.

[Tilomere]

This game has been out of balance for 10 years and nothing short of a complete rebuild is going to fix that, so let's stop acting like any of this is about balance.

Legendary Dreadnought
For balance vs. other destinies, we did diminish some of their damage vs. Helpless targets only.

The bill comes due. You don't get to just run over the game with power creep. The day the sentience system went live payment from LD was set in stone. It just was delayed while sentient gems were being leveled. It's just like how monks paid for falconry with HeM and EiN.

If you have a problem with it, the time to argue to reduce the payment was two years ago in reducing the power of sentient gems. We could have had melee/ranged sentience be the very small increase in dps that caster sentience was and the price would have been far smaller.

If you happily accepted the much larger increase in dps for melee from sentience than what casters received, well guess what, your bill is equally higher. That's called balance.

[lyrecono]

The bill comes due. .

I agree, it isn't a new thing though .
Remember when someone spoke out of character, the dual activation of a class and racial boost got nerfed, just in time for the reaper anouncement?

The devs take with 1 hand and make us pay to get it back with the other. Paid with exp pots used in reaper.
Almost sounded like a robbery back then and we never forgot.

[Chacka_DDO]

I have a slight suspicion, that you also going to change EIN because it can save a raid from a wipe in the too hot to handle raid.
I was in this raid only for two tries so far in a pick-up group and therefore I cannot tell much currently (I play DDO mostly in pugs because I'm not in a big raiding guild).

Howsoever, I have the impression that you have in general a big misconception about who is responsible for server performance issues.
Rather than thinking at the first place what YOU can do against lag you just assume in the first place that the players are responsible for performance issues and it needs to punish them so they play in a performance friendly way.
One of your "great ideas" is the Dungeon Alert mechanic...
And now another "genial idea" is to nerf EIN from an ability that can potentially save the day to a simple death spell.
Yes, indeed EIN as it currently is encouraging players to pull as many as possible monsters together and wipe them out of existence all at once and yes indeed I just assume this can cause server performance issues.
But I hardly believe that it causes issues when one EIN kills 6 instead of 4 targets at once...

Anyway, I wonder still if you ever get the idea that you have to make DDO player friendly and not the players DDO friendly?
Do you not see that DDO is for the players and not vice versa?
e.g. if too many agro monsters cause performance issue you should get ideas to prevent that no matter what the players do.
The best way for this would be most likely code optimization and/or better performing servers, my suspicion is that the foremost better code would use much fewer server resources.
And if you going to handle the problem with game mechanics, then you should think in the first place about things like limiting the monster spawn or how many monsters can be agro at a player at once.

This reminds me of a player who started a group with his 2.5k HP barbarian on R8 in the oath of vengeance quest.
He died in like 1-2 seconds and his opinion was the healer heals him not fast enough.
While he is of course not completely wrong because healers can, of course, heal faster if he is not literally one shot...
As I asked him that his character might be simply not ready for R8 in that quest he told me: no he is completely fine and it is just the healer who is the problem.
(as additional information, I told him before the start that my FvS is an Arcane Archer and only a semi healer)
Just to mention it, I created a barbarian on my next life with 4.7k to 7.5k HP and with this, it was not very hard for any healer to keep me alive in that quest on R8, even a Warlock was able to heal me enough.
Unfortunately many have the misconception to rather make others responsible than thinking about ways what they could actually do to improve themselves.

Basically the same with the DDO developers, you think with DDO everything is fine, but you should rather think about ways to improve DDO rather than punish players for there normal playing.
Many other games can handle way more monsters than DDO without any noticeable performance issues.
So please stop to find cheap excuses by making players responsible and find real solutions!

[ironmaiden-br]

Grandmaster of Flowers
This tree needed a lot of love. It was only OK for Monks, and really not-great for everyone else. There's now a fair bit of twist fodder in here, and fewer things require strict centering. Top-tier actives became massively more powerful with the changes, so they were scaled back somewhat to reflect being able to use them much more often.

• Inner Focus and Wholeness of Spirit now allow for movement during use OK
• Wholeness of Spirit has its cooldown reduced to 2 minutes OK
• Ki actives (the left column) now scale with the higher of Melee or Ranged Power OK
• Ki actives get Stunning bonuses added to their DC calculations Very nice
• Ki actives can now be used under Antimagic, as they are not spells Its a fix
• Ki actives are no longer linked in a line OK
• Lily Petal and Orchid Blossom now care about levels 26-30 in terms of scaling with character level (was previously capping at 25)OK
• Lily Petal now grants 5 Ki instead of costing Ki OK
• A Scattering of Petals no longer grants Dodge, and instead grants +100 PRR and MRR for 12 seconds. Very nice
  
  • 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. Complete non sense! you should be centered.
• Running with the Wind now adds 2/4/6% Doublestrike to everyone (no more stance requirement) IMO you shoudn't change that ... you must make an option of what you want in your toon... what you doing here is the same as giving to a caster crital and damage bonus to all elements.
• Hail of Blows now adds +3 melee damage in addition to its doublestrike OK
• Walking with Waves no longer requires Ocean stance for its Dodge bonus IMO you shoudn't change that ... you must make an option of what you want in your toon... what you doing here is the same as giving to a caster crital and damage bonus to all elements.
• Standing with Stone no longer requires Mountain Stance for its PRR.IMO you shoudn't change that ... you must make an option of what you want in your toon... what you doing here is the same as giving to a caster crital and damage bonus to all elements.
• Dancing with Flame no longer requires Sun Stance for its (w) bonus.IMO you shoudn't change that ... you must make an option of what you want in your toon... what you doing here is the same as giving to a caster crital and damage bonus to all elements.
• Everything is Nothing moves to a 3 minute cooldown, no longer requires charging This is a huge NERF and put EIN almost out of the table.. keep the charging, keep the cooldown , keep as it is... this will make it almost useless.
  
  • 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) OK
• NEW: T5: Devastating Critical (+1 Critical Multiplier on a 19-20) (1 Rank, 1AP)OK

Honestly IMO it's better you keep the way it is than "improve" as you sugesting

[Chacka_DDO]

I was really in hope that you finally go to better the cooldown to effect ratio on Lay Waste and Drifting Lotus, the duration of 3 seconds is in my opinion way too short.
I would expect at least 6 seconds duration to make it really worthwhile to prepare your character to be good at it.
And of course, I expect that the DC calculation makes it possible with reasonable means to make both abilities working!

Also at this point, I have to say that I'm basically against the whole idea of a DC check that makes an ability either working or not.
In DDO you should assume that every player character is an exceptional being and a kind of hero...
This means that you should presume that every player character fails on ability only if a monster has exceptional resistances against something.
So the player should be normally 95% of the time successful with everything he does!
And the character progression should instead decide how fast a character can use their abilities.

But if you have a DC calculation, it should be possible to make an ability work and this means a uniform DC calculation.
Therefore I would suggest a DC of 10 + half character level + ability modifier + bonuses from items etc.
In the case of Drifting lotus therefore 10 + half character level + wisdom modifier + trip bonuses from items etc.

Maybe better but more complicated would be a calculation based on the class level and the current Epic Destiny adds up to 10 class level if you are in the right destiny.
But one big downside of this is that you basically force the classes into the there destiny sphere with that which reduces the variety in general.

[Innokentiy]

[*]First and foremost, try to put each Destiny in a place where it's worth using for at least some builds.[/LIST]

The only way to make all Martial destinies viable comparing to LD is to make Action Hero from LD twistable. Just kick it from Innates to T1 or T2. Reserve plan: remove it completely. Very simple decision.

Another suggestion: add somewhere (preferable to LD) full BAB ability. There will be a good bonus for all melee-ranged builds using Martial destinies. And it is just stupid thing casting Tensers every minute.

[Chacka_DDO]

I just assume that many players dont even know how it is now because it is currently so bad...

But your improvement of this is in my opinion very questionable.
At first, it is a good idea that the defensive improvement of this ability is now at least useful on a monk who operates at the dodge cap!
But the question is if the MRR bonus is also improving the MRR cap if a monk uses outfits.
You also dont mention if A Scattering of Petals still uses Ki so I assume that is still the case and most likely also that you need to be centered, therefore an increased MRR cap is the only way that makes sense but unfortunately with DDO you never know
Also, you dont mention if the DC calculation is still the old or if bonuses for stun improve your DC for A Scattering of Petals.

The next thing is the very low duration of the blind effect, I dont get why a caster can spam e.g. Sun Burst every 2 seconds with a blindness duration of 2 minutes and A Scattering of Petals comes currently with a cooldown of 45 seconds and the blindness lasts 6 seconds.
Yes indeed, I expect that the blindness lasts also 2 minutes and this is not too powerful at all and still much weaker than the blindness effects casters have available due to the much longer cooldown!

And last but not least, I absolutely dont get why you double the cooldown time to 90 seconds, already the 45 seconds is very long but 90 seconds? really?

[Paisheng]

The jokes are coming in fast now on the monk EIN change: Instead of "Everything Is Nothing:" "4 Is Nothing." Or should that be: "4 Is Everything?" Or how about: "Everything Is Less Than Nothing"

The joke may truly be on monks. Has there ever been a monk nerf that the Devs have not loved? The history of the last 2 years speaks for itself: Henshin MP nerfed, Shintao MP nerfed, Duality nerfed. And perhaps
the harshest prior reduction: Monk core W's nerfed, Now with new ED changes: A Dance of Flowers Nerfed. All the other proposed GMOF changes have some pluses and minuses for monk. But the biggest change to the GMOF is EIN and it is a huge nerf.

What is so tellingly sad about EIN is that this is the tier 6 epic moment. And if feels like at best a heroic moment. Many caster spells from level 17 on are more powerful (killing more mobs) than EIN and have shorter cool downs. Frog --the same. Keep in mind 4 is the new max ability -- some will still save and many are still immune. So we run up and Pzza! One or two regular mobs vaporize! After 3 min we can do it again! Hurrah! I mean Yawn.

I would rather have EIN not changed at all. I don't even mind the build up -- that took skill, time and effort. And knowing that you may only use it once in a quest made you strategize. You trigger at the wrong time, or you are not ready at the right time and it is wasted. At the right time: Pzza! An epic moment!

Monks keep speaking up if you want any chance to save your GMOF uniqueness and epic glory.

[Chacka_DDO]

At first the good news, it is cool that you no longer need cleave and therefore it is most likely enough to have e.g. a cleave-like-ability from an enhancement!

But here I was in hope that you remove the cooldowns.
I'm not sure why you have this cooldown time, I just assume it is mostly because you think it is too powerful if a player can theoretically spam Momentum Swing and Lay Waste.
But you should be good enough at probability calculation to know that every additional reset in a row with Momentum Swing is more and more unlikely.
Therefore it is actually very unlikely that you can spam Momentum Swing and Lay Waste, there is no additional limitation need!
You should see that it is just the fun you limit for the players while you dont limit the disappointing when the reset doesn't happen again and again.
And that the reset of Lay Waste happens is already less likely than that it actually happens!
Not to mention that it is not correct working, often enough the reset apparently happen on your client and you hit the button, but nothing happens because of the cooldown on the server.

[Nickodeamous]

Actually, the monk's role is tactical battleground mobility. It's the job of fighters and barbarians to kill everything they can as fast as they can. Your job is priority targets.

Agreed 100%, and my first target is always a Reaper, which I Jade immediately. I always try to Jade Orange Names, etc first before killing anything else. I should have been more specific. My job is to help the party out as a whole

[thunir]

In the spirit of: You'll notice that every Epic Moment that required you to do weird things to charge it up no longer requires that.

I would like to suggest you remove the cool down ( make it a toggle) or at least shorten the blitz timer. I’m coming from the view that you can get 60 MP from the cores of Fatesinger and Shadowdancer alone, but in LD you have to rely on this count mechanic that you have to time JUSTRIGHT to ensure you don’t blow it and go on timer in order to get some decent MP.... on the melee ED..... throw us a bone.

We are rocking blitz most of the time anyway, it’s just some of the time we get screwed out of it due to the timer. What’s up with the wonky mechanic. I don’t even mind the build and decay, its the expiration with timer that hurts.

[Nickodeamous]

If EIN is now below Mass Frog, which it is and everybody knows it, then how about the devs open up Tier 5 to be able to twist in a higher ability?

I'm going to call it like it is. There nice things about the change, and some not so much. This is like the 5th monk nerf in a row. If EIN is truly made to kill 4 mobs, which 4 get killed? How does the game decide which ones out of mob of say 8 get killed. what if there are 4 crowns and 4 non-crowns in a mob? Is it 50/50? or does it only hit the closest ones? As a monk, I would have to jump in and gather them all up and hope to kill the 4 crowns. This seems like poor logic. Not sure how the coding would determine which of the 8 were rolled on. This seems illogical to me.

[0ldschool]

The only way to make all Martial destinies viable comparing to LD is to make Action Hero from LD twistable. Just kick it from Innates to T1 or T2. Reserve plan: remove it completely. Very simple decision.

Another suggestion: add somewhere (preferable to LD) full BAB ability. There will be a good bonus for all melee-ranged builds using Martial destinies. And it is just stupid thing casting Tensers every minute.

Similar problem with SD. They are not giving much DPS increase to the destiny, with Shadow Lance getting most of the love. That is Tier 1, and easily twistable. If I want it, I'll just twist it in running Shiradi on my Mechanic. Destinies obviously cannot be compared straight up, due to the existence of twists. If one ED has stronger cores and higher tier abilities, and another has great Tier 1,2 abilities, guess what's going to happen.

I believe that SD will just be a twist destiny now (if that) for ranged rogues. Maybe it already is and I'm hanging on to something I shouldn't be. The cores got no love, the Shrouding/Exec Strike/Shots aren't enough improved, and the Epic Moment, well I've talked too much about that already. It seems that the thought was taking away Shadow Charges was a boost to the destiny by itself. I don't see it that way. They were an inconvenience and removing them is a good change, but removing them does not make it a more powerful destiny, just more convenient to use. I've gotten pretty good at building up charges. Personally, I would happily keep Shadow Charges in exchange for just 2 or 3 of the suggested improvements that I've made in earlier posts, or even just for a new Epic Moment.

[Lynnabel]

What's crazy about a lot of this feedback about Monk is a lot of our discussion internally was "wow monks are going to be way too good with new GMoF, maybe we should tone it down a little" and then you guys are all "this is clearly the end of the monk class as a whole!!!" Gonna be honest here - I didn't see this coming at all :P

I guess the crux of the issue is - GMoF as it stands was pretty OK for monks but unusable for everyone else. We're at 14 (almost 15!) classes, and it's not a great long term plan to leave an entire destiny at a stage in which only one class can actually effectively use it. The other destinies try their best to synergize with a playstyle, NOT a class (although obviously some classes are better fits for some destinies, etc etc) and gmof was the clear exception in that regard. Another big exception was Fatesinger, which we opted to literally remake in order to fix those problems. New Fatesinger has stuff that makes your Bard things better, but it doesn't ever say "wellll, you're not a Bard, so I guess half of these abilities are going to be extremely bad for you" like gmof does.

When I see monks around on live I don't see them in Gmof - I see them in LD along with 98% of the rest of melee players. It's not enough to make GMoF the best monk destiny, we actually should just make it... a good destiny. A playstyle alternative to LD or DC or SD. Something different. Something fun. I'd much rather have Monks have the choice to run in a variety of destinies than for everyone to go "well, I'm a monk, so gotta take monk levels and then take the monk ED." That puts us back at square one for Epic balance. We want people to debate, to theorycraft, to make a cool build with their own tweaks and twists, and trapping an entire class into a narrow corridor is pretty counter to what makes DDO awesome.

I definitely understand the EiN comparison to Frog from your end but on our end, when everyone says "yeah but Frog kills this many enemies at this cooldown and everyone uses it and it's the only reason this content is completable" it just makes me think "ugh, Frog is too good." Ideally, ED t6's (formerly known as Epic Moments) aren't directly comparable in power to the level 28 Epic Feats. Frog and Dire Charge are definitely overtuned, I'm sure we'll cross that bridge eventually, but the solution here isn't to throw more and more sauce into a single ability instead of actually helping a destiny that is currently barely limping above "maybe playable... maybe" for the majority of the melee builds in the game.

As far as Shadowdancer goes, it's currently extremely strong. Sneak Dice, flat melee power, Evasion, even a free DDoor. All that tree really needed to shine was some Spring Cleaning, and having played it internally the tree actually... works. It's fun. It does a lot of damage. Builds that focus on sneak dice stacking will probably want to consider landing here. Shadowform being just a toggle instead of being trapped in the Maze of Shadowdancer Confusion does a lot.

There's a lot of time before these changes even make it to public preview (we have an entirely new Raid to release before then!) and we're happy to see such lively discussion.

Semi-related - I actually played a pure handwraps barbarian gmof internally for a bit and it was pretty rad. Your mileage may vary.

[Grace_ana]

Legendary Dreadnought

• Momentum Swing and Lay Waste no longer require Power Attack to be active to use.
• Momentum Swing and Lay Waste no longer require Cleave and Great Cleave (though those feats still reset the cooldown of Momentum Swing).

To reiterate what some have said about this, taking away the prereqs for these attacks doesn't really do any good if the cooldowns are still really long unless you have those prereqs. Unless I have a way to reset the cooldowns the same way or the cooldowns are much lower, it's still a waste for me to put points into them on a toon that doesn't have cleave, and since cleave requires power attack...we're back to the original issue you were trying to resolve.

[kain741]

Dance w/ Flower will now be +1(w) and no longer requires anyone to be centered or anything and is a T1 twist...just a pulse
Imp Power attack requires a stance and adds +.5(w) and is a T2.

So why do we have a more restrictive ability add less to DPS while also costing more to twist? Being centered is what used to balance that out but now there is no balance. Either DwF will be too powerful or Imp PA is way under powered. Given the restrictiveness of the stance and higher tier it seems like Imp PA should be +2(w) in order compete with DwF.

[chrysahor]

We want people to debate, to theorycraft, to make a cool build with their own tweaks and twists, and trapping an entire class into a narrow corridor is pretty counter to what makes DDO awesome

I think a good way to achieve that would be to take the highest ability for the purpose of DC calculation, like sure charge does.

No other change would make Gmof be even remotely interesting for a Dex or strength monk.

Str barbarian going GMoF for str-based Ein is exactly what you are describing.

[Discpsycho]

To reiterate what some have said about this, taking away the prereqs for these attacks doesn't really do any good if the cooldowns are still really long unless you have those prereqs. Unless I have a way to reset the cooldowns the same way or the cooldowns are much lower, it's still a waste for me to put points into them on a toon that doesn't have cleave, and since cleave requires power attack...we're back to the original issue you were trying to resolve.

Note that all cleave attacks reset these two abilities - that goes for Whirlwind Attack, Alpha Strike, Supreme Cleave, Eldritch Strike and many other go-to active cleave enhancements, which give a modicum of aoe damage to several builds that may not have the space for those feats. While the knockdown on Lay Waste is Str-based and doesn't scale particularly well, both do a decent amount of damage.

It also allows folks to use these abilities while running Combat Expertise for the extra PRR, or Precision for more meaningful damage. I've run into issues with both of these on various builds

[SerPounce]

When I see monks around on live I don't see them in Gmof - I see them in LD along with 98% of the rest of melee players. It's not enough to make GMoF the best monk destiny, we actually should just make it... a good destiny. A playstyle alternative to LD or DC or SD. Something different. Something fun. .

I'm all for that in theory (I wish that theory was being applied to the primal sphere stuff instead of making fury a 2HF only tree with specific exclusions for animal druids), but is remotely close to that? You need ki to use most of the abilities which means being unarmored and centered. I guess you could do that on a non-monk, but why?

No one really cares if a destiny is very bad for your character or kind of OK-ish, it has to be actually competitive with the best alternatives. I'm having a hard time seeing GMoF ever being that for non-monks. OTOH fury and primal avatar could be competitive options for some melees, but you seem to have chosen not to go that road with the possible exception of 2HF barbarians and fury.


I don't want to be too negative, I think there's a ton of awesome changes happening. I'm just worried that at the end of the day everyone is still going to be in LD. And that would be a unfortunate outcome of a systems change that includes a lot of good detail work.