U45 Preview 1: Balance: Two Handed Fighting Changes

[J-mann]

Those 30 points can crit though, your 60% gb can't. And it's on every hit while gbs were only on some. And DR doesn't apply to it separately.

Only the dr in your list is any great advantage. In ideal situations against a mob whose dr you can break gbs are about 30% of your damage give or take a few points based on weapon choice and luck. An extra .5 mod is less than 10 on a legendary character, a bit higher at low levels, but you only get the mod at gthf so that doesn't really apply.....

[justagame]

I hate to pile on, and appreciate the advance notice, but this is "giving THF some love"???

Single target: Definite nerf to dps despite the higher multiplier. Especially for situations where builds had additional damage that also procced on GBs (like KOTC)

AOE: Double whammy, as damage to all beyond the 2nd target is eliminated altogether. And cleaves, which were not great before but necessary to make THF palatable, got unnecessarily nerfed as well. They already suffered from slow animation, didn't get DS, no benefit from melee speed enhancements, but at LEAST they got GBs. Now they don't even get that.

As many others have said, the ONLY situation in which this is an improvement is where there are 2 targets. That's it. And the last time I checked, virtually every encounter was:

1. A large swarm of mobs (WAY more than 2)
2. A bunch of archers / casters spread out
3. A boss

THF will now be rendered less effective in all 3.

I was looking forward to the promise of changes with "some love for THF". Yikes.

[Steelstar]

Regarding Dance of Death:

• Tempests have very strong single-target weapon damage; some of the best in the game. (I understand this point is debatable.)
• One of the things we are actively trying to do in this Update is more heavily weight AOE weapon damage toward Two Handed Fighting.
• It has been clear to us for quite some time that Tempest's ability to hit four targets simultaneously for full damage AND its very strong single-target output were not where we wanted them to be for balance. It should be very strong at single-target, OR less strong at single-target but able to do that damage across multiple targets, but not both.
• In shifting AOE toward Two Handed Fighting, Two Weapon Fighting's role becomes better defined as "strong single-target damage", and Dance of Death needed to be adjusted as a result.

We're game for adjusting it further in a number of ways; there have been good suggestions in this thread, including making it not require a hit first. We're going to poke at it a bit before Round 2.

[Qeistalan]

Why do game updates (touted as "improvements"), more often than not, ultimately result in being detrimental nerfs to the whole of DDO gameplay?

SSG: STOP selling players -- YOUR CUSTOMERS -- a bill of goods; make this game better instead of making it worse!

[Wipey]

DoD is the single reason why would somone even consider playing a tempest.
It surely isn't versatility - archery has been dead for years. And it sure isn't self healing which is pointless above r3 and EDF was nail in the coffin for healing others too.

Without DoD why would you choose tempest over Shintao or Asassin.

And by the way I still wonder what kind of gameplay/players do you base your "data" on.
I am sure all two or three "better" players still on tempests are going to be exalted to hear this lol.

[Komradkillingmachine]

Regarding Dance of Death:
[LIST][*]Tempests have very strong single-target weapon damage; some of the best in the game. (I understand this point is debatable.).

You mean, like you guys claimed that Henshin staff mystic is/was one of the TOP 10 DPS builds in the game? Roflmao.

[Kielbasa]

Regarding Dance of Death:

• Tempests have very strong single-target weapon damage; some of the best in the game. (I understand this point is debatable.)
• One of the things we are actively trying to do in this Update is more heavily weight AOE weapon damage toward Two Weapon Fighting.
• It has been clear to us for quite some time that Tempest's ability to hit four targets simultaneously for full damage AND its very strong single-target output were not where we wanted them to be for balance. It should be very strong at single-target, OR less strong at single-target but able to do that damage across multiple targets, but not both.
• In shifting AOE toward Two Handed Fighting, Two Weapon Fighting's role becomes better defined as "strong single-target damage", and Dance of Death needed to be adjusted as a result.

We're game for adjusting it further in a number of ways; there have been good suggestions in this thread, including making it not require a hit first. We're going to poke at it a bit before Round 2.

Feel free to nerf a thousand cuts then. Dance of death is what makes tempest unique compared to other 2 weapon fighters. If you would rather people not play the ranger class at all this update is doing a bang up job of sending that message loud and clear.

[Kinerd]

Those 30 points can crit though, your 60% gb can't. And it's on every hit while gbs were only on some. And DR doesn't apply to it separately.

this is a case where i think devs could go a long way to defusing tensions by just showing the math. it's plausible to me that at the very high end of critical profile the extra .5 wins out and at the very low end glancing blows are better, but if we knew exactly what comps the devs were doing we could then compare our own situations (current and goal) to them and have a better idea of where we shake out

single-target DPS is just too important a parameter to hope for the best imo

[Kinerd]

Is the reduced speed of the THF attack animation while moving on test intended? By my back of the napkin math it appears to be about 2/3 of current live animation speed. With a 30 BAB THF character I count 18 less swings per minute while moving . . .

this feels extremely important to verify either way

[SpartanKiller13]

I am potentially poking into making the cleave animation scale with your melee attack speed, would that be something you'd be interested in?

Some sort of scaling would be very nice (currently it's only worth cleaving 3+ enemies, likely 4+ after U45), but melee attack speed scaling would favor SWF cleaves more than THF; maybe scale via BAB?

Regarding Dance of Death:

• One of the things we are actively trying to do in this Update is more heavily weight AOE weapon damage toward Two Weapon Fighting.

Is that a typo? I think you meant that in U45 you're trying to weight AoE weapon damage towards THF, not TWF as stated above.

At the very least cleaves should get double strike. I'm not sold on the changes, they still feel a little underpowered vs where we were. What percent of our damage is .5 our stat mod? I am hard pressed to believe that its 38%+ of our base damage that gbs were. These changes are a need at 4+ targets which is very normal for ddo. And the dev's still haven't addressed melee survivability much at all, my ranged tons with no ap invested in defensive talents get 85+% of the statistical defenses of my melee who spend points on defensive talents but lack ranged attacks, the literal ultimate defense in ddo. Gear creep has made many defensive talents less valuable.

2.0 crit multiplier and 90% Doublestrike (pretty easy with Bloodrage) = +280% base damage, so that +38% base damage from GB is more like a 10% DPS bonus. Adding another 50% of your stat mod could reasonably hit that; endgame Str toons are easily into the triple digits, so this is like stacking Deadly 30 or something. Pretty solid?

U45 nuking of Tempest AND ranged combat? Taking Ranger levels after U45 will be pointless/useless. You devs have ZERO clue how to run and manage a MMORPG.

Congratulations, SSG: You have found a shiny new way to drive away longtime players with the annihilation of yet another class.

Brought back Paladin as a viable option though, so a shiny new way to bring back longtime players

[Steelstar]

Is that a typo? I think you meant that in U45 you're trying to weight AoE weapon damage towards THF, not TWF as stated above.

Yes, you are correct. Fixed now.

*gets more coffee*

[J-mann]

this is a case where i think devs could go a long way to defusing tensions by just showing the math. it's plausible to me that at the very high end of critical profile the extra .5 wins out and at the very low end glancing blows are better, but if we knew exactly what comps the devs were doing we could then compare our own situations (current and goal) to them and have a better idea of where we shake out

single-target DPS is just too important a parameter to hope for the best imo

Even with everything favoring the new system, gbs produced more damage bearing the case that you cannot break the targets dr. At 3 or more targets gbs pull ahead. I would be ok with the reduced st damage if 2hf had greatly improved aoe but right now that is simply not the case. Additionally they have only mentioned a possible partial fix for cleaves (and they have done nothing much about precision basically being required making power attack just a fear tax, at least they made sunder useful for boss fights) and nothing about defenses as stat bloat has made ranged and melee statistical defenses almost the same despite melee investing ap in defenses and ranged largely not.

I believe that if the dev's want the currently proposed system then strike through for 2hf needs to be near 200% on feats alone not 100% and the enhancement bonuses need a bump (seriously 5% for 3 ap is an insult). Additionally special attacks should benefit from strike through. Cleaves need to be affected by speed, doublestrike, AND adrenaline. Fix these and the lower st damage is a fair trade for the actually improved aoe.

[J-mann]

Some sort of scaling would be very nice (currently it's only worth cleaving 3+ enemies, likely 4+ after U45), but melee attack speed scaling would favor SWF cleaves more than THF; maybe scale via BAB?



Is that a typo? I think you meant that in U45 you're trying to weight AoE weapon damage towards THF, not TWF as stated above.



2.0 crit multiplier and 90% Doublestrike (pretty easy with Bloodrage) = +280% base damage, so that +38% base damage from GB is more like a 10% DPS bonus. Adding another 50% of your stat mod could reasonably hit that; endgame Str toons are easily into the triple digits, so this is like stacking Deadly 30 or something. Pretty solid?



Brought back Paladin as a viable option though, so a shiny new way to bring back longtime players

Nope the .5 mod doesn't hit the same as gbs even in ideal conditions for the mod. At 130 str with 100% ds and a 2.3 crit mod is worth 138 damage/swing. Note that these are IDEAL conditions to favor the mod, go into new quests with their insane fort values and the mod falls behind. Gbs are worth far more than that, especially on equal stats (my gbs are about 400 dmg a swing and I'm nowhere near the high end). The extra mod is an additive bonus, whereas the gbs were multiplicative, so on the low end the mod wins out but as you scale up gbs win easily. The only situation where the mod pulls ahead is against a mob you cannot dr break, which is a user problem imo.

[Qeistalan]

Brought back Paladin as a viable option though, so a shiny new way to bring back longtime players

What a shiny new absurd response.

How long was Paladin nerfed? So players should leave DDO for the same length of time until devs deem the Ranger class worthy of "fixing"? Ridiculous.

[Fedora1]

This thread of "balancing" THF (and DoD):

When they try to balance by "improving" something, they do it by inches. When they want to balance by "reducing" something, they do it by the mile.

[lronEnema]

I thought it would be useful to put some figures to the DOD nerf

Taking the four parts to the change:

1. Number of targets
2. Cooldown
3. No movement in order to qualify for strike-through
4. No special attacks qualify for strike through

1. Number of Targets

Currently DOD hits 2/3/4 targets for 1/2/3 AP. Change will see this in effect go to 0/1/2

SO that is a 50% / 33% / 25% reduction in effect

2. Cooldown

Fairly straight forward - doubled cooldown. Because it is a front loaded ability (the first 10s of combat you have it up 100%, then the downtime follows) it doesn't translate to a 50% nerf. Being generous it is probably a 40% nerf. The longer combat goes on the close to a 50% nerf it gets.

1 and 2 together represent a 70% (1 - 0.5 * 0.6) / 60% (1 - 0.67 * 0.6) / 55% (1 - 0.75 * 0.6)

So - best case scenario the effectiveness of DOD has been reduced by 55%. Lower tiers it could have gone down by as much as 70%. That's a massive nerf just in the first two parts. Can't remember the last time I saw an ability squashed to quite such a degree.

But it doesn't stop there:

3. No Movement in Order to Qualify for Strike-Through

Can't really put numbers to this as it will depend upon circumstances. Rangers do not get ultra high AC, PRR, dodge, or hit points. IMO in challenging content (whatever that is for your particular character depending upon past lives, gear etc) it may make the ability completely or partially unusable. If you can't move to avoid some blows and can't take the damage your options may be limited.

Noted that on Lamania moving doesn't stop ability to use strike-through

4. No Special Attacks Qualify for Strike Through

Again, difficult to put numbers to. There is a long list of abilities that hit multiple mobs currently with DOD which apparently won't in the future: exposing strike, the sneak attack bonus on the extra mobs following exposing strike, merciful strike, the extra damaging hits from things like cuts, bleed them out.....oh and the bleed damage. It is easy to underestimate how much damage is being lost here, for me it is as significant as the cooldown nerf.

Suggestions
I thought of putting suggestions in each section. However, it seemed a bit obvious to say after every change 'Suggestion: put it back the way it was before'. However I can certainly say that taking away the requirement to hit a mob to activate the ability isn't gonna cut it as compensation...…...so, please put everything back the way it was (or if you are going to introduce Strike-through then make DOD number equivalent to the way it works now).

Rangers are not a flavour-of-the-month, over-powered, every-power-gamer-running-one build. Even their single target DPS, though good, is not ahead of all the other classes IMO. From what Steelstar said, thematically THF is to be the AOE melee style and therefore Rangers must sacrifice dance of death to be somewhere less than half as effective...… and maybe to the point where it is of no real use. If that is the case then it is not a reasoned change, but a dogmatic one. If there is hard numbers to support this change please let us see them because no player is calling for this nerf.

We all saw the nerf to Inquisitive coming from a mile off (if you didn't you should have). Even when you guys said - 'nah, they're good, but inquisitive numbers are not out of line'. Played one - knew they were going to be reigned in, told friends to get any class/race/iconic lives they didn't fancy doing before the nerf comes. It will be nice to get in to a raid that isn't tank, healer and 10 inquisitives.

I don't know of any player that thinks ranger is over powered or that dance of death is out of line with the toys other classes get. Nobody saw this nerf coming and the unanimous response is why are you taking the stick to a class and enhancement that is useful, fun and not over powered. Please consider the feedback.

The world won't be populated by tempest rangers once everyone TR's out of Inquisitives...…...I promise.

[count_spicoli]

NO MELEE SHOULD BE GETTING NERFS AT THIS TIME PERIOD!!!!. You have casters wiping out whole rooms on r10, inquisers perching up and mowing down stuff with out taking any damage i really dont think now is a time to nerf ranger dps. Noone barely plays them now because noone barely plays melee period. Why nerf them as result of thf buffs. THat tier 5 gives them some advantage over other classes and is a decent unique abiltity.

Right now i would not nerf any melee classes at all whether it be Ranger, Pally, Fighter, Monk barb whatever. They are all in a terrible place right now.

And going thru all this seems a bit much when all you had to do is make glancing blows not take the reaper reduction penalty or maybe a lesser version of it. Seems like that alone would have made thf more viable.

[Fauxknight]

Regarding Dance of Death:

We're game for adjusting it further in a number of ways; there have been good suggestions in this thread, including making it not require a hit first. We're going to poke at it a bit before Round 2.

I think it should retain it's ability to be used on the move as well. Having to stand still as a tempest is both out of character and suicide.

[krimsonrane]

Does this apply to staffs?

Will we be getting hearts of wood to a adapt to the changes?

[Kinerd]

Rangers are not a flavour-of-the-month, over-powered, every-power-gamer-running-one build. Even their single target DPS, though good, is not ahead of all the other classes IMO. From what Steelstar said, thematically THF is to be the AOE melee style and therefore Rangers must sacrifice dance of death to be somewhere less than half as effective...… and maybe to the point where it is of no real use. If that is the case then it is not a reasoned change, but a dogmatic one. If there is hard numbers to support this change please let us see them because no player is calling for this nerf.

it seems like they came to a figure of what THF should be doing, then balanced the rest accordingly, and since DoD was as good or better than that it had to be nerfed

it seems like a better answer would be to boost THF AoE to a degree that DoD would be able to stay without meaningfully encroaching on THF's AoE niche

and it seems like the easiest way to do that would be to keep strikethrough AND turn glances back on and go back to 1.5 Str - glances on every target, % chance to get a full hit on another target thanks to strikethrough. voil?*! THF has identical single-target DPS to before so it's still behind Tempest there, but now it's inarguably improved across the board for AoE, and if it's not to the point where it's better than DoD bump up the strikethrough %s until it is

we're still making cleaves pointless, but since it's "still" that's not a net loss compared to the present proposal