2019 ED Pass: Martial Sphere

[Arkat]

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.

Regarding the vocal minority, yes there is such a phenomenon.

I don't know how long you've been playing the game Alrik, but I just cannot tell you how many players I've played with over the 13+ years I've been playing the game but it's been a LOT. Lag has been a sensitive topic almost since the beginning. When there were awful lag spikes in Heroic Shroud, I was there and so were 15 other people. We ALL experienced it. When the lag in Defiler of the Just consistently wiped out parties, we eventually stopped running it because we ALL experienced it.

Not all of those people that I've run with posted or post on the DDO Forums but I did/do. I've seen so many things in this game and have experienced them with many other people. I feel pretty confident I can say that I am definitely vocal and am in the minority of players that actually posts here but I am also confident that I can say have experienced exactly what most other non-vocal players have experienced. So, regarding game-play experience, I am not in the minority.

Regarding the first-life newbie experience, you're quite right that my experience as a newbie was quite different but that's only because the game was way different in February 2006. But, as most people I know personally in real life generally think of me as a pretty fair person open to considering many points of view, I'd like to suggest that if the issue called for it, I could put forth a newbie viewpoint as well but that might take some doing on my part. Fortunately, the issue which I am addressing mostly, isn't related to a newbie experience. It's an experienced player issue.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Regarding saves changes. DC casters have gotten approx +11 DCs to deal with the power creep (ontop if the Sharn stat/DC inflation).

Quite a few melee builds only have 1-2 abilities to deal with some of the extreme dangerous mobs that they face on the front line, and due to the absolute disaster that is trying to fit everything into a gear setup, most dire charge DCs haven’t moved much.

Melee also appear to be taking the brunt of the nerfs in this, with very little power creep for melee from sharn compared to other styles and now a -35% helpless dmg. and to-hit has been a continuing issue as mobs get higher level and higher AC. While Sharn has a decent increase, I still feel like there is still needs to be more to hit options among a lot of builds.

Can Legendary Tactics be changed to +4/8/12 and also include to hit?

[J1NG]

Can Legendary Tactics be changed to +4/8/12 and also include to hit?

No, but we'll have a T1 ability in GMoF with this so you can Twist it in. How's that?

J1NG

[LT218]

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.

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.

You know, rather than use some odd, dismissive fallacy about begging on a chest, you could just log into the game, switch to GMoF and go use it on some mobs to if it causes any noticeable lag.

Consider that if what you "truly" see with the debug tools doesn't translate to in-game to something having enough of a performance impact for it to be noticeable by any players, does it matter enough to warrant a nerf?

The statements at issue here are:
1) SSG claims EiN causes performance issues, therefore EiN must be nerfed.
2) Players report having never noticed any visible performance impact from EiN use while pointing out multiple, repeatable sources of lag inducing abilities that they see daily.

So even if #1 is entirely true, nerfing EiN will likely not provide any noticeable improvement or value to players' in-game experience. In fact, it will reduce the in-game experience since you're going to nerf an already not-overpowered ability in a destiny tree designed for an already not-overpowered class.

[Dreppo]

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.
- The Flower's Thorn: Simply not interesting enough. Needs something added to it, maybe have it apply some sort of stacking debuff?

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.
- Tactical Genius: Move to tier 3.

Shadowdancer:
- Improved Invisibility: Remove prerequisite as it no longer makes sense with shadow charges going away.
- Cloak of Shadows: This needs help. The 120 damage cap makes this useless. Maybe make it immunity to light and negative for 30 seconds, or convert it to a passive that gives a bonus to light and negative absorption.
- Untouchable: I hate to balk at extra DPS, but thematically this ability should be purely defensive. Maybe +5% stacking incorporeality instead of the crit mult?
- Shadow Form: Anyone who is floating/flying should be immune to tremorsense. This would apply not only to SD's Shadow Form but also similar abilities like PM's Wraith Form.
- Shadow Mastery: Grant "do not automatically fail reflex saves on a 1" to builds that already have Evasion through class abilities. Still grant Evasion to builds that don't otherwise have it, so current usage is not nerfed.

[Shadow_Jumper]

No, but we'll have a T1 ability in GMoF with this so you can Twist it in. How's that?

J1NG

Sad panda

https://images.app.goo.gl/NDZvovTAbeGZQsEd7

[droid327]

and you'd be wrong, no matter how many people agreed with you.

"The good thing about code is that it compiles whether or not you believe in it"

[Salamandar]

You want some feedback, well I got yur feedback right here, straight from a Beta Tester & Founder...

All I know is every time I get on my monk I am asked to be in GMOF for EIN as insurance for a potential raid wipe, I do not know where your getting your data that monks do not run in GMOF often, The only time i'm out of GMOF is for your insanely overpowered THTH raid cause no healer can keep up on hard unless everyone is in US.

I guess it's s shame that I actually enjoy playing a classic Monk in the Monk ED, how so very wrong of me apparently. I see now I must conform and homogenize my ED so there can be more ridiculous triple class builds just to maximize the currently desperately needed stat (PRR, MRR, Fire Resistance, Evil resistance, Elec. Resistance, ranged DPS, the list goes on...). How silly of me not to want to play a Barbarian H2H, I guess i'm just short sighted and not broad minded enough.... pfft!

So great, your gonna screw with the one ability that was my ace in the hole, that made the Monk unique. Now i'm just another goddamned random DPS adding machine (insert ticker-tape adding machine here).

Yes, succinctly, the EIN area affect and number of mobs affected changes truly frustrates me Lynnabel.

Steelstar, boy where do I begin... ahh here! You always destroy whatever goodwill you might engender with statements such as "we are fixing what needs to be fixed" your increasingly antagonistic and defensive responses are indicative of your typical "this thread is getting out of hand, I better step on it harshly with a do you even know what your talking about statement". Welp, Steel is offended and putting us in our place, better act accordingly. Jesus that gets real old and real disingenuous real fast. Why do I even care when you make these "from on high you better listen to me" statements? What are you exactly threatening us with? Your vast knowledge of horribly dropped balls on the DEV team? Even more confusing TR and crafting formulas, ya whatever threaten away Nero.


-Salamandar

P.S. I submit the Emperor has no clothes!

[Arkat]

and you'd be wrong, no matter how many people agreed with you.

"The good thing about code is that it compiles whether or not you believe in it"

It's a good thing I wasn't arguing with the code, huh?

[Arkat]

I guess it's s shame that I actually enjoy playing a classic Monk in the Monk ED, how so very wrong of me apparently.

"You're doing it wrong." -Some random DDO employee.

So great, your gonna screw with the one ability that was my ace in the hole, that made the Monk unique. Now i'm just another goddamned random DPS adding machine (insert ticker-tape adding machine here).

Yes, succinctly, the EIN area affect and number of mobs affected changes truly frustrates me Lynnabel.

Amen, brother!

[Kielbasa]

This goes for every epic destiny. Please re-evaluate ap costs. Many of the 3 cost abilities should be reduced to 2 ap. For grandmaster of flowers if you plan to nerf ein and actually want to keep monks in destiny ein needs a passive buff as well. Consider giving it 25 melee power or +1 insight bonus to crit range if you possess the feat perfect self.

[thunir]

This goes for every epic destiny. Please re-evaluate ap costs. Many of the 3 cost abilities should be reduced to 2 ap. For grandmaster of flowers if you plan to nerf ein and actually want to keep monks in destiny ein needs a passive buff as well. Consider giving it 25 melee power or +1 insight bonus to crit range if you possess the feat perfect self.

I feel this way on the song buffs for Fatesinger, it should be 2 ap for the third tier. No one will want to do with less then max, they are not op, and it’s an ap sinkhole for anyone that wants that line.

[0ldschool]

Shadowdancer:
- Untouchable: I hate to balk at extra DPS, but thematically this ability should be purely defensive. Maybe +5% stacking incorporeality instead of the crit mult?
.

Please no. I understand it is a thematic issue, but I've detailed (ad nauseum) all of the DPS increases going into Shiradi along with a new DPS boost Tier 6 in this thread vs. very little going into SD along with no new epic moment. Please don't take away the one thing that we are being given to help the situation a little bit.

[0ldschool]

I am all for strengthening the cores, perhaps that is where I should have targeted more of my suggestions, beyond just adding SA die there. Spit-balling now, but a +5% fort bypass along with +3d6 sneak attack die per level could be a good start on strengthening the cores. and add in + 2 Hide, MS, OL, DD, and Assassinate per level while you're at it. Shadow Mastery proc on a 19 & 20. Give real benefits to those who commit to the destiny.

I am probably just talking to myself now, but I'm still going to throw out ideas for SD in hopes that some of them stick. I can't give up on the cause. Another thought: add +1% Dodge AND +1 dodge cap per level of SD (or add a bump in Dodge cap to a higher tier non-twistable ability). The Dodge cap increase is the really important piece of this. Or add +1% incorp or concealment miss chance per level of SD. One thing that most SD's probably have in common is that our PRR/MRR is relatively low and we rely greatly on not being hit.

There was a post (Dreppo) suggesting adding 'no fail Reflex on 1' with Shadow Mastery. I second this idea, I like this a lot. Most of us have Evasion if not Improved Evasion already, so currently there is no benefit in granting it. But this has a lot of merit, a nice perk for SDs. The key is to put these in cores or higher tier abilities so that SD doesn't just get twisted. Shadow Lance better at blinding now? Great, I'll twist it in to get blinding and sneak attack while I'm blitzing in LD. That is not really helping the cause of getting more players to come over to (or stay in) SD.


I'll add that my perspective is as a ranged rogue. If the thought was to pigeonhole SD for melee assassins, then proceed as planned. But why do that when the stated goal was to open up Destinies to a variety of builds? Everyone can get monk goodies now with GMoF, but ranged that aren't sticking with LD or FotW should be herded into Shiradi? SD is the primary rogue destiny. Mechanics are rogues too.

I'll crawl back into my hole now.

[Grailhawk]

I am probably just talking to myself now, but I'm still going to throw out ideas for SD in hopes that some of them stick. I can't give up on the cause. Another thought: add +1% Dodge AND +1 dodge cap per level of SD (or add a bump in Dodge cap to a higher tier non-twistable ability). The Dodge cap increase is the really important piece of this. Or add +1% incorp or concealment miss chance per level of SD. One thing that most SD's probably have in common is that our PRR/MRR is relatively low and we rely greatly on not being hit.

There was a post (Dreppo) suggesting adding 'no fail Reflex on 1' with Shadow Mastery. I second this idea, I like this a lot. Most of us have Evasion if not Improved Evasion already, so currently there is no benefit in granting it. But this has a lot of merit, a nice perk for SDs. The key is to put these in cores or higher tier abilities so that SD doesn't just get twisted. Shadow Lance better at blinding now? Great, I'll twist it in to get blinding and sneak attack while I'm blitzing in LD. That is not really helping the cause of getting more players to come over to (or stay in) SD.

I'll crawl back into my hole now.

I like the idea but the issue is they aren't going to increase dodge cap total dodge cap. Let me try an explain better right now (I'm not sure but lets just say this is right for the example) the max dodge cap increase value is +30 for a total of 55% dodge. Right now none of that is coming from an Epic Destiny (correct me if I'm wrong) So if they add Dodge Cap to a destiny they are just racing the total dodge cap which I don't think they are will to do.

They have a learned Fear of letting avoidance get out of hand (when AC "worked" and you had Rangers, Monks, Fighters, and others who only got hit 5%)

[Mindos]

When there were awful lag spikes in Heroic Shroud, I was there and so were 15 other people. We ALL experienced it. When the lag in Defiler of the Just consistently wiped out parties, we eventually stopped running it because we ALL experienced it

Careful! Remember? They floated the idea of 10 person cap raiding to solve the problem.

[Mindos]

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.

I'll take your poll! Try a Tempest with slashing, lightning damage enhancement from the tree, Scion of lightning damage whatever, with muliple ruby of tempest...... fighting a large pack of oozes/slimes that split. It's like a slow-mo JFK investigation of a 1920's 10 FPS movie of a flip-book drawing. But it's not a silent movie! You do get the drum beat sound of lag music.

[lifestaker]

Overall I do like the changes most will lead to more damage output and possibility for new uses of the trees in some build.

The thing I see missing is hate reduction. Something that should be twistable by any build (ranged, melee, casting). Pulling aggro in some raids can result in unneeded deaths. Even with the increased hate possible in unyielding, is it at all possible to work in a hate reduction into shadow dancer (twistable). This would allow higher dps characters to take a simple twist to be able to keep their hate down so that tanks who might not be as well geared can do their job.

[Chacka_DDO]

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.

Your analogy doesn't fit and but it needs a bit longer to tell you why...

You are right that players have sometimes strange ideas what is behind what they see in their perception of a game.
The problem a player has is simply that they see results and all they can do is to speculate about the reasons and mechanics (aka program code) that cause these results.
Just an example, I farmed an item and just out of fun I buffed myself with Luck of Olladra and BAM! it instantly dropped in this chest.
On one hand, it is not really absurd to assume that a spell with such a name can increase the drop rate for items.
But on the other hand, I know all this is purely speculation and even if it could be true a real proof of what is true or false is very difficult for a player.

BUT

You tell us that EIN causes performance problems, here the situation is COMPLETELY different.
You tell us with it that if we use EIN we should see as a result lag or any kind of performance issue and here the player can tell you they DONT see anything like that.
To compare a player who speculates of the reasons for a result is completely different from a player that tells you there is no result like you try to tell us.
This is an obvious logical error of you and I wonder if you dont see that or just think we players dont see it...

And yet again about EIN you tell us that each additional monster that is hit be EIN causes a performance hit (or how you want to call it) on the server.
Here I can tell you, I agree that this is most likely the case and even MUST be the case because obviously, this is an additional calculation for the server...
But the question is if this has a significant impact on the server load and if this causes noticeable lag?
And here I can tell you this is out of my sight and from what I read from other players in this thread NOT the case!
And therefore it is very questionable to take this as a reason for a nerf of EIN!

[Kodwraith]

+1 to what someone said up thread: Lynnabel, thanks so much for actually posting feedback.

Stuff I like about the GMoF change as a monk main:

I really like the extra crits in L5 (devastating Crit).
I love that the AoE//CC line is no longer linked and I can pick and choose.
I love that the tree (still) provides wisdom seeing as how I'm WIS based.

Middle column stuff:
In T2 Running with the Wind requiring 3 points for 6% doublestrike is better, but it still feels like it needs a speed or extra run boost given that the speed enhancement is irrelevant since everyone has speed boots already.
What would be ridiculously cool is a 5/10/15% stacking run speed boost. literally everyone would twist that.

Walking with Waves till only giving 6AC and 3%dodge for 3 DP? With no increase in dodge cap? Why would anyone take this over 1.5+ WIS which affects everything? I'm already dodge capped.
As others have stated, the Fire stance +1[w] is really weak.
The +15 PRR in earth stance seems better, but 10/20/30 would be better still.

On the Left hand side:

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.

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.

Suggestions: The whole point of the GMoF is that, like monks, it needs to have well rounded bonuses for the aspiring tactical interceptor. So speed, tactics, survivability, saves. And DPS but not as much as LD but also not none.

Can I make a crazy suggestion that is likely unimplementable? T6 ability that lets monks be in two stances at once? With benefits/penalties of both?