2019 ED Pass: Martial Sphere

[Ughh]

There's no hate. We're fixing things that need to be fixed. Monks were objectively overtuned for years. This unfortunately means in the course of balancing the game, we've had to do more to them than we've needed to classes that weren't objectively overtuned for years.

We like Monks. My main's still a Monk. Liking or not liking a class has nothing to do with balance here. I'd nerf my main into the ground if it brought overall better game balance (and have done so many times).

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!!!

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

What all are you going to do for these kinds of builds?

Currently, Melee Artificers are homeless in epic destiny trees, tensor's transformation doesn't even last 5 minutes even when extended, and further more Tensor's Transformation enhances strength rather than intelligence while the top tier Melee artificer builds will use intelligence to hit and damage via the Harper Tree. This makes the Divine Crusader Tree appealing.

When building my melee artificer, I found that the Renegade Mastermaker tree is essential for survivability, meanwhile there are but two means of acquiring full BAB (Divine Crusader, and casting Tensor's Transformation every 3 or so minutes).

Since I am using the Harper Tree and Renegade Mastermaker Tree, I am unable to get weapon attachment from the top tier in Battle Engineer and until I get all of my racial past lives knocked out, also unable to get weapon attachment from a racial tree or from the Battle Engineer Tree.

BAB improves offense and defense, not just offense!

Meanwhile, both Eldritch Knights and Artificers have a problem with effect scaling (Artificers for their runearms, and Eldritch Knights for their spellswords). To make a viable Eldritch Knight, you need to have multiple swap out items for each spellsword as the Spellswords do not all use a single spellpower type. This can be tedious and dangerously inefficient when you need to swap said gear in a flash. Sure the artificer's runearm blasts aren't something all artificers use as often as me, but it does deal a little bit of decent damage depending on the runearm equipped and the enemy targeted (As well as the dice roll outcomes) that can help quite a bit from time to time.

While it would hurt to extend the ability to use one's highest spellpower to determine scaling outside of runearms and spellswords and maybe sentient filigrees, I really don't think it would hurt anything if you made it possible for runearms and spellswords!

When it comes to my builds, Knockdown immunity is something I would definitely twist in if I were able to, and this talk of turning Knockdown immunity into Knockdown resistance actually gives me some hope that maybe you'd be making such more available, if I could cut down the chance of getting knocked down to just 20%, I'd be a happy camper for that!

My favorite tier four twist is Autumn harvest, because I like healing allies by killing enemies!

Anyhow, please do something with this information and thanks in advance.......

[Shadow_Jumper]

There's no hate. We're fixing things that need to be fixed. Monks were objectively overtuned for years. This unfortunately means in the course of balancing the game, we've had to do more to them than we've needed to classes that weren't objectively overtuned for years.

We like Monks. My main's still a Monk. Liking or not liking a class has nothing to do with balance here. I'd nerf my main into the ground if it brought overall better game balance (and have done so many times).

I would like to report a soon to be gigantic overbalance in the arcane sphere.

Casters are about to become straight stupid. In light of the gigantic buffs that casters are getting, I find any reason to nerf ANY build suspect.

[Arkat]

Or make so you can actually evade them and keep as is. Too much magic with no evasion check makes 50 mrr near useless.

Yes

[Arkat]

Sadly, no, pressing the button EiN actually just causes lag

I'm skeptical of this claim.

No one has been playing Monks or using GMoF with EiN longer than I have.

I have NEVER seen any lag at any time during or after a use of EiN.

Even if it actually is a lag inducer for others, Steelstar's lag claim from yesterday, or the day before, is the first time I've ever heard the claim. It couldn't have been a serious problem, otherwise Turbine or SSG would have said something about it LONG before now.

[draven1]

We're fixing things that need to be fixed. Monks were objectively overtuned for years.

So, is 'Inquisitive or Sorcerer or Magister' new monk? Do you have plan for those for next years?

[Xgya]

We are much more likely to destroy that ability than make it more accessible.

Frankly, I'd also accept that.
While it exists, it's too much of a boon.
Which means any way to obtain it gets first pick, no matter how bland the rest of might seem.

I'd compare it to a single tree with a stackable +1 crit mult and range. Bland, simple numbers, boring, impossible to pass up.

[J1NG]

I'm skeptical of this claim.

No one has been playing Monks or using GMoF with EiN longer than I have.

I would challenge this claim by you for being being a GMoF with EiN user with the longest history of having it in use.

I have NEVER seen any lag at any time during or after a use of EiN.

Even if it actually is a lag inducer for others, Steelstar's lag claim from yesterday, or the day before, is the first time I've ever heard the claim. It couldn't have been a serious problem, otherwise Turbine or SSG would have said something about it LONG before now.

Same.

I would again reiterate that if it's a "Cool" ability, that changing it too drastically (removing passive light from Archon, etc) removes uniqueness, and you only have another game out there.

J1NG

[Lynnabel]

I'm skeptical of this claim.

To be pretty blunt, being a developer means we've got much better methods of measuring client strain than a player would. DDO is pretty complex, and sometimes players draw totally reasonable conclusions from an incomplete set of data.

[LT218]

To be pretty blunt, being a developer means we've got much better methods of measuring client strain than a player would. DDO is pretty complex, and sometimes players draw totally reasonable conclusions from an incomplete set of data.

And yet the developers still come up with off-the-rails theories such as Henshin quarterstaff monks being a top 7 DPS build and being overpowered to the point of needing to be nerfed hard when the in-game reality was that they weren't even a top 15 and are now one of the worst options out of the various quarterstaff builds.

That's the main problem. There is often times a serious disconnect between what your internal data shows and the reality, or at the very least the perception of reality, in actual game play, particularly at the highest levels of min/maxing.

Take for example the players reporting that they've noticed no significant bouts of lag when triggering EiN. Now try putting up a poll asking users if they notice lag when a few tempest rangers trigger Dance of Death on a pack of mobs. I'm pretty comfortable saying that you'd get a very different response from the players.

I know of multiple ways to generate significant, noticeable lag on-demand with various abilities and in missions, but simply pressing the EiN button has never been one of them.

[Nickodeamous]

I have never seen lag either from the use if EIN. I tild my guildies last night and they were to be blunt in shock from this claim. The only lag i have ever seen happens out of thin air and at random times during a quest. How old is this game engine? I am trying hard to hear what steel and lynn are saying, but seeing the sheer amount of calls from fellow monk players that are in complete opposition of this change to EIN , and seeing the responses that this has been a problem for years makes me wonder why it has taken this long to even make a change. Nerfing 6 times in the last 2 years is crazy guys. Why not just rip the bandaid off instead of releasing radioactive isotopes into ddo and letting monks die a slow and painful death. If this is about revenue for the company and people having faith that this is the last one, then that is one thing. But, if this is just people whispering in the devs ears that monks are OP and this is why the changes are happening, that is another.

I just cant fathom why this needs a change.

Again, my suggestion is to keep it at max 6 mobs and 2 minutes. I think we can live with that.

Love this game, but hate that monks are picked on more than any orher class, and everyone knows this is true.

Please help us out here been running with EIN for years and no trouble ever.

[Shadow_Jumper]

To be pretty blunt, being a developer means we've got much better methods of measuring client strain than a player would. DDO is pretty complex, and sometimes players draw totally reasonable conclusions from an incomplete set of data.

Same data that made the devs believe that monks needed to be nerfed 3-4 times due to their trees being OP instead of handwraps that were 8W[1d6+6] 17-20 x3?

[Arkat]

You seem to be outnumbered, Lynnabel.

In-game experience matters.

You and other Devs can pretty much say whatever you want because the players are not privy to whatever tools, data, and interpretations of that data you may have. But we, the players, know what we see in the actual game.

For YEARS, Turbine kept telling us there was no lag (or something very similar) but it was as plain as the nose on your face to the players that there was. Over the course of many years, Turbine started to believe us and started to do something about it. I don't know why they eventually believed us, but they did. BTW...EiN was never a lag-inducing suspect from the players' perspective, as far as I can remember.

Anyway, the players' thousands upon thousands of hours of practical experience on the live servers won out and we were proven correct despite what Turbine tried to tell us. Why should I not believe we're right again?

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

There is often times a serious disconnect between what your internal data shows and the reality, or at the very least the perception of reality, in actual game play, particularly at the highest levels of min/maxing.

Apart from min-maxing (being still a low-level player here), this phenomenon seems to be in most MMOs.

I really have no idea where this comes from, but this discrepancy was seen by SWTOR players there as well.

I don't have the slightest clue, only the overly vague idea that maybe data normalizes too too much, especially normalizes outliers too much.
This overly vague idea of mine is like having a bell curve which says this, but doesn't reflect that *within* the data of the bell curve there are actually several "landscapes".

I got this idea from a bell curve regarding sensitivity - there are less sensitive people, there are "normally" sensitive people - and then there's the group of highly sensitive people (so-called HSPs), to which probably Autists belong to.
All these "inner groups" appear within a bell curve - but they are still "inner groups" (meaning "groups within the bell curve").
The perceivement of Reality is quite different from any of these groups.
But the bell curve doesn't see that there are several groups within the bell curve. The bell curve "normalizes" them.

A same thing could be true for - just as an example - kinds of sexual orientations.

This is the gist of my overly vague idea.

Edit : It's like Luke Skywalker being a mere fluke (outlier) in the bell curve of ALL humans within the "Star Wars" universe - BUT he's the one Fluke Skywalker who kind of changed the history of that setting !

You seem to be outnumbered, Lynnabel.

In-game experience matters.

Read this : https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.../VocalMinority

You say, "in-game experience matters".

I say : By whom ? Surely not by Newbies with first lives, since they have no lobby here. In discussions, Newbies showing that their first-life in-game experience would be radically different from the in-game experience of long time members would soon be - as you say - outnumbered by those long-time members who are not at all interested in the experience of Newbies - but rather in an selfish way about THEIR OWN in-game experience. I could even imagine - because I have see that in SWTOr PvP discussions - long time members badmouthing the opinions of Newbies because they just don't care about these Newbies in their self-righteousness.

[ironmaiden-br]

I'm skeptical of this claim.

No one has been playing Monks or using GMoF with EiN longer than I have.

I have NEVER seen any lag at any time during or after a use of EiN.

Even if it actually is a lag inducer for others, Steelstar's lag claim from yesterday, or the day before, is the first time I've ever heard the claim. It couldn't have been a serious problem, otherwise Turbine or SSG would have said something about it LONG before now.

Same here i've never seen a lag spike after na EIN , and i mostly play my Monk GMOF ..... this looks like and excuse for nerf

[Xgya]

To be pretty blunt, being a developer means we've got much better methods of measuring client strain than a player would. DDO is pretty complex, and sometimes players draw totally reasonable conclusions from an incomplete set of data.

Please (you can use technical terms if you want, at least some of us will be able to understand ), tell us exactly how this strain happens (unless it could lead to an exploit, of course)
I'm curious. Also, the reason why and how it happens might actually explain why players using the ability do not directly feel its effect.

I mean, if the ability destroyed the mob but left behind its pathing logic and a memory ghost followed players around, we'd feel no lag when using the ability, but it'd clearly explain why pressing that button would cause lag. (not that I think that's what it is, but, well, we all know DDO is haunted by now, so memory ghosts are still on the menu)

If you know the ability causes lag from raw server data, but do not know exactly the source of said lag, you can say so too, and then we'll find a decent cleric to hunt those ghosts.

Edit: Sorry for all the stress this conversation is bringing you. I'm still genuinely curious about the inner workings of my favorite game - though I'll understand if you'd rather close the subject now.

[Lynnabel]

You seem to be outnumbered, Lynnabel.

You claiming you know how DDO's internals function has literally no relevancy on what does or does not stress performance. You guys could be telling us that you're 100% sure that using /beg on a chest helps with dice rolls, but it doesn't and you'd be wrong, no matter how many people agreed with you.

In-game experience matters.

For determining what strains DDO internally? I mean, superficially, sure, I suppose. There are definitely things that you need to step into client to truly see.

In any case, this side conversation has turned truly unproductive and I'm going to step away from it. If you've got some rad feedback about the changes to the trees, please continue letting us know what you think

[Shadow_Jumper]

For determining what strains DDO internally? I mean, superficially, sure, I suppose. There are definitely things that you need to step into client to truly see.

In any case, this conversation has turned truly unproductive.

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.

[Arkat]

You claiming you know how DDO's internals function has literally no relevancy on what does or does not stress performance. You guys could be telling us that you're 100% sure that using /beg on a chest helps with dice rolls, but it doesn't and you'd be wrong, no matter how many people agreed with you.

Nice (awful, actually) straw-man attempt.

I've NEVER, EVER claimed to know how DDO's internals work.

I HAVE claimed, however, what I can see with my own eyes while actually playing the game.

For determining what strains DDO internally? I mean, superficially, sure, I suppose. There are definitely things that you need to step into client to truly see.

Of course.

In any case, this side conversation has turned truly unproductive and I'm going to step away from it.

Understood.

If you've got some rad feedback about the changes to the trees, please continue letting us know what you think

I've already suggested what I think SSG should do regarding EiN. In my opinion, a radical change isn't needed. If you still think EiN is a source of lag, try using a scalpel first instead of a sledgehammer by just reducing the Area of Effect by a bit first. If that doesn't help, consider a slightly bigger change later. Make incremental changes instead of moving straight to the "blow it up" option. What's the hurry?

[J1NG]

I've already suggested what I think SSG should do regarding EiN. In my opinion, a radical change isn't needed. If you still think EiN is a source of lag, try using a scalpel first instead of a sledgehammer by just reducing the Area of Effect by a bit first. If that doesn't help, consider a slightly bigger change later. Make incremental changes instead of moving straight to the "blow it up" option. What's the hurry?

The hurry is because it's SSG's modus operandi. Power Surge, remember that? It was brought up, found to be using older out of date code and didn't comply with current SSG code standards for game design and coding practice. So it was given the heave ho and rebuilt from the ground up. This is just a repeat of history.

Only thing is, I still haven't read a single thing by the Devs acknowledging the issue about targets within their new AOE of the EiN being Immune and how to tackle that. Which is why I'm still kicking a tiny bit of a fuss over it for players because if it's left alone as it is, they might as well have deleted the ability. Because it won't even compare to the T5 ability Drifting Lotus, which has no limit of enemies hit and CC's them better now with the Sun bonus increases. Potentially also doing more damage as well, because we have to assume that EiN retains its piddly 500 Bane Damage on a failed save or vs a Boss. And if they feel Drifting Lotus needs a nerf to make EiN seem better, they might as well delete the Destiny.

That's all logical feedback. But I wonder how much the Devs read that instead of ignoring it because it's against their goals?

J1NG