2019 ED Pass: Primal Sphere

[Steelstar]

I'm really glad to see you guys are still reading these threads; there's been so little dev interaction in them.

Yep! Still reading. Have read every post in each of the threads (with the exception of the ones from people who've earned a spot on my Ignore list), we've made some changes and further fixes based on the feedback in them. Sorry for not deep-diving longer on these threads, I've been trying to finish this pass, move ahead on the new class, and prepare the new Raid for Lamannia simultaneously.

[Hipparan]

You say that like there's no way to amplify Poison Spell Pow-

Oh, right. (glances at top-secret internal notes)

Well, not yet, anyway.

Is there any chance of Creeping Doom coming back as a poison spell rather than acid?

[Lynnabel]

I'm really glad to see you guys are still reading these threads; there's been so little dev interaction in them.

If you cut out all of the off-topic discussion about THF the ratio flips way back in our favor :P

[LT218]

You say that like there's no way to amplify Poison Spell Pow-

Oh, right. (glances at top-secret internal notes)

Well, not yet, anyway.

Sweet! Just what all the players have been wanting. A new effect to increase the already nearly unmanageable gear tetris hell.

[thunir]

Sweet! Just what all the players have been wanting. A new effect to increase the already nearly unmanageable gear tetris hell.

Well maybe this is something we can fix with the augment pass. I for one would love to see spell power on more than just red augments or gear with red slots.

[Aelonwy]

If you cut out all of the off-topic discussion about THF the ratio flips way back in our favor :P

Eh, I really meant dev interaction across all these threads not just this one. You could start an official THF thread and then all this off-topic... well sort of off-topic, I mean its an important play-style to barbs and Fury is their destiny... anyways this portion of the discussion could be shunted to a thread specifically for it.

But anytime you guys pipe in with even a "still reading" post, it goes a long way towards making us feel heard.

[Lynnabel]

But anytime you guys pipe in with even a "still reading" post, it goes a long way towards making us feel heard.

We are always reading. Always. If we chimed in with "we're still reading" every time we opened a thread we would be 99% of the posts in it :P Reading a thread is the default, not the exception.

[Mindos]

people who've earned a spot on my Ignore list

ooh, ooh, testing testing! Crosses fingers! sorry for everything
pls rply

[zurnad]

Thanks for the feedback so far! To tackle some replies:




(This is regarding Primal Travel): Nope. It's got 50% Dodge that ignores your cap, plus it's a get-out-of-a-bad-situation jump; compare to Meld Into Darkness, which has a higher No-Dodge-Cap-Dodge but no jump, and a 33% longer cooldown.

Primal Travel --> C3 (Primal Avatar is already an underpowered destiny) / Meld Into Darkness -->T3 (Can be twisted)

Primal Travel --> %50dodge cap / Meld Into Darkness -->100% dodge cap (a heavy armored tank with 10% Dodge can be untoucheable for 15sec!)

Primal Travel --> 12sec / Meld Into Darkness --> 15sec

Primal Travel --> a silly jump when activated (If the jump interrupted, dodge bonus do not apply) / Meld Into Darkness --> instant activation (You can do any action or continue fighting)

Primal Travel --> Needs a spirit to activate (ok, no need the spirit after the pass but 1 spirit is easy to gain) / Meld Into Darkness -->Nothing needed to activated

Primal Travel --> 60sec CD (90sec after the pass) / Meld Into Darkness --> 120 sec CD

To you really think this is fair to nerf Primal Travel??? Really???

If you think there are not equal

-->get rid of this jump or make it not interrupted while jumping

-->make primal travel a T3 like Meld and we can twist it

-->and increase CD to 90sec


Please reconsider your decision.
This is not fair.

[Grailhawk]

Primal Travel --> C3 (Primal Avatar is already an underpowered destiny) / Meld Into Darkness -->T3 (Can be twisted)

Primal Travel --> %50dodge cap / Meld Into Darkness -->100% dodge cap (a heavy armored tank with 10% Dodge can be untoucheable for 15sec!)

Primal Travel --> 12sec / Meld Into Darkness --> 15sec

Primal Travel --> a silly jump when activated (If the jump interrupted, dodge bonus do not apply) / Meld Into Darkness --> instant activation (You can do any action or continue fighting)

Primal Travel --> Needs a spirit to activate (ok, no need the spirit after the pass but 1 spirit is easy to gain) / Meld Into Darkness -->Nothing needed to activated

Primal Travel --> 60sec CD (90sec after the pass) / Meld Into Darkness --> 120 sec CD

To you really think this is fair to nerf Primal Travel??? Really???

If you think there are not equal

-->get rid of this jump or make it not interrupted while jumping

-->make primal travel a T3 like Meld and we can twist it

-->and increase CD to 90sec


Please reconsider your decision.
This is not fair.

Interesting I think the value of the jump is the issue and where you are coming from determines how much you like it I could see Ranged/Casters potentially seeing the jump as a boon where melee see it as an annoyance.

To math this out:

• Meld: 100% Dodge for 15 sec, on a 120 second cooldown. That's on average a 12.5% increase to dodge. (15 * 100)/120 = 12.5
• Travel (proposed): 50% Dodge for 12 sec, on a 90 second cooldown. That's on average a 6.66% increase to dodge. Plus a jump that at worst 50% of user will find annoying.
• Travel (original): 50% Dodge for 12 seconds, on a 60 second cooldwn. That's on average a 10% increase to dodge.

So I know that's not perfect comparison Meld will always be better than Travel, but this is a good way to see the relative value of cooldown, effect, and uptime.

The original Travel was in the same ball park as Meld the proposed change is not.

The jump is seen as a boon by Ranged/Caster types who can stay out of combat and still apply there DPS (ability to kill) while its seen as an annoyance by melee who loose a second or two of the uptime duration getting back into kill range making it even less useful.

[Arkat]

Is there any chance of Creeping Doom coming back as a poison spell rather than acid?

Creeping Doom should definitely be a poison effect.

[zurnad]

Interesting I think the value of the jump is the issue and where you are coming from determines how much you like it I could see Ranged/Casters potentially seeing the jump as a boon where melee see it as an annoyance.

To math this out:

• Meld: 100% Dodge for 15 sec, on a 120 second cooldown. That's on average a 12.5% increase to dodge. (15 * 100)/120 = 12.5
• Travel (proposed): 50% Dodge for 12 sec, on a 90 second cooldown. That's on average a 6.66% increase to dodge. Plus a jump that at worst 50% of user will find annoying.
• Travel (original): 50% Dodge for 12 seconds, on a 60 second cooldwn. That's on average a 10% increase to dodge.

So I know that's not perfect comparison Meld will always be better than Travel, but this is a good way to see the relative value of cooldown, effect, and uptime.

The original Travel was in the same ball park as Meld the proposed change is not.

The jump is seen as a boon by Ranged/Caster types who can stay out of combat and still apply there DPS (ability to kill) while its seen as an annoyance by melee who loose a second or two of the uptime duration getting back into kill range making it even less useful.

1- Did you see any ranged or caster in Primal Avatar? I don't. So jump 100% of user will find annoying.
2- Do not need to forgot that Primal Travel is a C3 and Meld is a T3 that we can twist.

Anyways thank you for your calculations on average increase to dodge!

[Grailhawk]

1- Did you see any ranged or caster in Primal Avatar? I don't. So jump 100% of user will find annoying.
2- Do not need to forgot that Primal Travel is a C3 and Meld is a T3 that we can twist.

Anyways thank you for your calculations on average increase to dodge!

The Druid caster level increase and it only being -2 DC from EA (Sprit Boon is +1) can gets the rare (cause most there good spells don't scale well into epics) Druid nukers (DOTers really) into PA.

Truthfully I haven't seen any one in PA is 5 years since everyone i know maxed it out

[Tilomere]

Truthfully I haven't seen any one in PA is 5 years since everyone i know maxed it out

Mechanically and game play wise, I loved Tree builds.

The buttons you hit were meaningful, the resource use and pros/cons of your build were meaningful. The combat was fair-ish in that mobs got to fight back and you weren't always beating on helpless mobs, and the timing and ebb and flow of combat and cool downs was meaningful. The bonuses and penalties were meaningful to play around. Ok maybe the combat wasn't that fair since you could build pure tank and healing while still dealing good damage, but it was a lot fairer than the current dire charge 6 seconds > class/race/universal tree AoE CC 6 seconds > dire charge 6 seconds.

[Kylstrem]

Primal Avatar
[/B]This is another Fairly Weird tree. There's things we didn't hit that I'd still like to (the complex spell that is Tsunami, in particular) but the primary thing we tried to do was to make it more accessible and less frustrating by eliminating the Spirit Charge mechanic. Before, it was very difficult to perform well in this tree if you couldn't min-max Spirit regeneration; that should no longer be a concern. Tree Form still isn't amazing, but that's unfortunately something that'll need to get addressed another time. (At the very least, you should get to use it more reliably and longer in most cases).

• Spirit Charges no longer exist in this tree.
• Strength of Spirit is now a Passive granting +20 Universal Spell Power. (The tree still grants +10 Melee and +4 Ranged Power per core).
• Primal Travel no longer costs Spirit, and now has a 90 second cooldown.
• Mighty Among Spirits no longer reduces Spirit Decay (as Spirit no longer exists), and instead grants +15 MRR (in addition to the +20 HP it currently gives).
• Eternal Return no longer costs Spirit.
• Walk With Spirits is no longer a toggle. On activation, you gain its effects for 30 seconds. It now has a 4 minute cooldown.
• Spirit Boon (both versions) no longer requires Spirit.
• Avatar of Nature no longer requires Spirit. Each of its Sizes now lasts for 6 seconds, except for the largest, which lasts for 12 and then shuts off the Form. It now has a 5 minute cooldown.
• Summer Smoke, Supple as Spring, and Chill of Winter are now applied more efficiently, should cause fewer performance issues, and should no longer get stuck on players - Like Bard Auras, the effects are re-applied every few seconds and expire after some time. These now only apply to party members (sorry, this was important for performance reasons).

FYI, there was no real problem maintaining spirit if you built character correctly. Now, I understand trying to make sure spirit was available if you didn't have cleric, warlock, or wizard in the build.

But you made Primal Avatar Tree Form completely useless with the slow-ass animations that were added. After you "broke" tree form with animations, DPS was higher by not ever going into tree form.

And I'm not sure why the devs felt there was a need to change this. There were approximately 3 of us on Khyber that played Trees. Now there are NONE at all.

It took a lot of practice and learning how to play it to be good with it, so it was very satisfying to play.

Now it will never be played.
And now adding restrictions on each form only lasting 6 seconds and then having a 5 minute cooldown really make it useless.
Just get rid of tree form entirely and put some other effect there if this is the solution.
Even if you removed the slow attack animations, with the 18-24 seconds of use every 5 minutes, no one is going to ever play this destiny.

[Steelstar]

FYI, there was no real problem maintaining spirit if you built character correctly. Now, I understand trying to make sure spirit was available if you didn't have cleric, warlock, or wizard in the build.

But you made Primal Avatar Tree Form completely useless with the slow-ass animations that were added. After you "broke" tree form with animations, DPS was higher by not ever going into tree form.

And I'm not sure why the devs felt there was a need to change this. There were approximately 3 of us on Khyber that played Trees. Now there are NONE at all.

It took a lot of practice and learning how to play it to be good with it, so it was very satisfying to play.

Now it will never be played.
And now adding restrictions on each form only lasting 6 seconds and then having a 5 minute cooldown really make it useless.
Just get rid of tree form entirely and put some other effect there if this is the solution.
Even if you removed the slow attack animations, with the 18-24 seconds of use every 5 minutes, no one is going to ever play this destiny.

Tree Form's old abilities were breakable in ways that we could not allow to continue. We're sorry that this negatively impacts the experience of people that like Tree Form.

We'd like to give it new animations in the future and re-balance the damage and abilities of Tree Form around them, but that's not something we can do for this Update.

In the meantime, we're opening up the Destiny as a whole so that it works for more than just the few build types that structured their Heroic abilities around maxing out Spirit gain, which was neither ideal nor (for many, at least) fun.

[dragons1ayer74]

Tree Form's old abilities were breakable in ways that we could not allow to continue. We're sorry that this negatively impacts the experience of people that like Tree Form.

We'd like to give it new animations in the future and re-balance the damage and abilities of Tree Form around them, but that's not something we can do for this Update.

In the meantime, we're opening up the Destiny as a whole so that it works for more than just the few build types that structured their Heroic abilities around maxing out Spirit gain, which was neither ideal nor (for many, at least) fun.

Hey Steelstar thanks for the feedback again on this issue whether or not the tree gets used anymore is yet to be seen. Even in its broken form with the rework any chance of reducing the 5 minute cool down and upping the up time?

[bracelet]

Tree Form's old abilities were breakable in ways that we could not allow to continue. We're sorry that this negatively impacts the experience of people that like Tree Form.

Tree was, bar none, the most fun build I ever played in DDO. It was incredibly difficult to master but exhilarating when you did. It is a shame that option is gone now. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I saw them on my server. It was not widely abused. The old wolf build on the other hand -that is a good example of where toning down was appropriate. That was abused endlessly. I think tree would have been fine left alone.

[Kylstrem]

In the meantime, we're opening up the Destiny as a whole so that it works for more than just the few build types that structured their Heroic abilities around maxing out Spirit gain, which was neither ideal nor (for many, at least) fun.

Thanks for the feedback... I appreciate it and I definitely understand that those of us who knew what we were doing were just killing machines (still had to be careful around those flaming skulls in Amber Temple... those and the Tharaak hounds were the only thing that scared me).

But your last segment that I highlighted doesn't help the argument.


Before the new animations "broke the reason to play it", the people that were playing it found it fun to play and managing spirit was actually a good part of the fun. Mainly because you really had to know what you were doing to managed to stay in Tree form almost indefinitely. If you didn't know what you were doing you'd be in it for only 12-24 seconds.

So, while there probably people who may have wanted to play tree before, but didn't like or understand the spirit management or didn't like how they were limited with heroic class choices, there were still people who did enjoy it.

The current state of the tree and the current planned pass for it will not bring anyone back to "playing a tree". 18-24 seconds every minutes with the slow attack animations means it will be detrimental to actually change into tree form for those 24 seconds. You will be worse off for those 18-24 seconds in tree form.

The only way it would be of any use at all is would be to remove the new animations and have it work like before. Then this would almost be like the monks "Everything is Nothing". Someone could play tree and save this 5 minute cooldown for bosses for great DPS and it might encourage someone to play it. But keeping those current animations and then only allowing a maximum of 24 seconds in it is a waste of dev time.

[Requiro]

Yep! Still reading. Have read every post in each of the threads (with the exception of the ones from people who've earned a spot on my Ignore list), we've made some changes and further fixes based on the feedback in them. Sorry for not deep-diving longer on these threads, I've been trying to finish this pass, move ahead on the new class, and prepare the new Raid for Lamannia simultaneously.

Great!

>About Horizon SHot<

We're considering pulling the cooldown down slightly; need to run a few numbers first.

Also, blrgh. I forgot we used that name in Deepwood. (Name literally a few hundred things a year and you start to forget what's already taken). Well, we're open to suggestions.

Ballistic Shot.

>About Rain of Arrows<

We can pull the Positive out of Rainbow.


(...)

Any news about these improvements? “Ballistic Shot” name is quite good for me. But it really need lower cooldown to be more attractive.

Also consider two more improvements:

Minor one:
Healing Spring (T1) uses Wild Empathy charge to activate.
Fey Favor (Core 1) grants Wild Empathy feat if you don't have it already
Illusion of Well Being (T1) and Fey Spring (T2) grants additional uses of Wild Empathy.

Major one:
Stay Frosty (T1), Prism (T2) and Stay Good (T4) can be used simultaneously if you have Fey Power (Core 6) ability

And some Tweaks:
Fey Form (T2) - additional 5/10/15 Ranged Power
Stand and Deliver (T5) - additional 2 Ranged Power stacking every few second (max 20)
Rain of Arrows (T6) - Passive: additional 20 Ranged Power