Changes Based on Preview 2 Feedback

[HungarianRhapsody]

There's 14 soon to be 15 classes in the game that can melee. But we only need to buff fighter because pali, barbs are completely OP now. Makes sense to me. Yeah, buff fighter so it's OP, too. Don't worry about the other 12 classes which can also melee. Those other 12 classes are supposed to be terrible.

Sorcerer and Wizard are fine. They underperform a bit (not even by a huge amount) in melee and make up for it with tons of offensive and utility spellcasting.

FvS is fine because it has TONS of options and it's sitting in a fine spot right now.

I don't find Clerics fun to play, but Clerics only need a little melee love because they have SO MANY other options that they can use and have you ever seen a Cleric turned down for a raid? Ever?

Druids are sitting pretty right now and that's with Bears finally coming up to Wolf level.

Artificers are kind of lame and have ALWAYS been lame for melee, but they had about a year of being everyone's favorite splash, so I don't think they need a lot of love at the moment. They just had their turn.

Rangers should not have had Dance of Death nerfed. That was a Bad Thing(tm).

We'll see how Alchemist turns out. Time will tell if it's overpowered or merely "just fine".

Monk has some solid options, but they're a weird class. Their floor is terrible and their ceiling is pretty impressive.

And Rogue has never been in a bad place in the history of this game. They've never been on the top, but a decent player can have a really good time with a Rogue and it's one of the best splashes in the game.

And I honestly don't are about Bard even a little bit.

[AlmGhandi]

I don't find Clerics fun to play, but Clerics only need a little melee love because they have SO MANY other options that they can use and have you ever seen a Cleric turned down for a raid? Ever?

Cleric turned down for a raid..... I seen one booted from a raid group before start....

[Captain_Wizbang]

There's 14 soon to be 15 classes in the game that can melee. But we only need to buff fighter because pali, barbs are completely OP now. Makes sense to me. Yeah, buff fighter so it's OP, too. Don't worry about the other 12 classes which can also melee. Those other 12 classes are supposed to be terrible.

[Seph1roth5]

So much math...hey after the second quote/reply/argument to the same person maybe take it to PMs lol.

[PsychoBlonde]

Elven AA. It still requires Arcanum for Elven AA, according to the Wiki.

The wiki hasn't been updated to reflect the changes.

[Atronos_The_Titan]

Is dragon breath's cooldown longer, or will it still remain the same?

[Blah2]

The wiki hasn't been updated to reflect the changes.

Not sure what the wiki says but just checked an elven alt and it requires 1 rank of arcanum not 3

[Synthetic]

Twisting smites is not a possibility, as the melee power depends on religious lore feats. Obviously paladin will maintain that a lot better.

So I guess the fighter is stuck with Prowess for 16MP on average cause they both have to take shattered devices.

Feats: And ignore the fighter tactic and PRR/MRR bonuses? Maybe that's how you'd build it, but let me tell you: that's wrong.

I don't but you seem obsessed with MP so I'm presenting you options.

Maybe you don't know how to read?

It would save me a lot of aggravation if I didn't know how to read.

Likely miscalculated the melee power scal. Doesn't change the conclusion.

Argue with the other guy about it.

Shattered device filigree is likely to remain common to both. The twists do not even *begin* to counteract the difference. Another moot point.

You used up all your cheap Twists on the barbarian to get Doublestrike. So the fighter gets Dance of flowers and IPA for 18.5 more damage - you didn't count 5 more KTA damage due to fighters power surge and capstone being to all stats or 6 more damage from spiritual bond so the fighter is up to 46.5 extra damage at that point. Math also suggests you're better with deadly than one cut if you can get it so 59. The barbarian is down from 111 - 18 Storm rage calc was wrong 93 - 6 cause you didn't calculate strength difference correctly 87 - 6 assuming they're both in fury 81. So the barbarian gets 22 extra base damage and the fighter gets 27 extra melee power assuming we don't do something "that's wrong".

The barbarian also needs to twist haste boost or run in LD, which I've read isn't the best for THF any more. Leaving you with 2 twist options, and I like Martial Hymn, Meld, brace and cocoon... darn it what do I drop.

Assuming you calculated melee power for barbarian using driving force from OS you don't have much AP room too. 41 FB, 23 OS, 8 KTA means you can't get Doublestrike from VKF until they come out with a +3 tome for universal trees.

Please, ignore this section the twists are moot.

LMAO, ok there...we're reaching for an R10 legendary shroud to force in the point that the boosts are better. Definitely a serious advantage to consider.

It's an extreme example. I figured you like extreme examples based on all your writing in this thread.

Wrong.

I came here for an argument not just simple contradiction.....

This is the reality: Paladins are strongest in some situations. Barbarians are the strongest in the rest. Kensei literally has no place with barbs and pally's being the way they are.

The Paladin gets so little extra base damage it likely off sets his MP advantage i.e. he skews to high on the MP side compared to the barb and kensei. I think they get 14 total extra damage from tree/spell changes and 4 less strength than fighter if they are keeping up a psionic bonus.... They are also short on DS compared to Kensei and may want to twist haste boost so they have less twists to play with, but better healing options so maybe they can pull it off.

The Barbarian is going to hit more targets when he strikes through, but his special attacks aren't great. If kensei gets auto-crit on 3 guys with double strike it's going to be beautiful. If the kensei single target stuff doesn't Strike through you have a point. The Kensei also gets more to hit which may matter under specific circumstances.

Paladin will not obtain KTA. Paladin will use DM.

Correct

A couple of last thoughts

One cut vs deadly weapons is going to go the other way if you are using adrenaline, but the death frenzy bonus is only on 19-20 even with adrenaline. Most of the time you're going to use a big hit attack for adrenaline so you're going to get +XW on it, and that favors the fighter since he gets the bigger multiplier with MP. I don't think either fighter or barbarian gets a better attack than Boulders Might for use with Adrenaline.

Some of this depends on how high MP goes and how high base damage goes. If one is a lot higher than the other than getting the other makes more sense and gives that class a greater advantage. I believe they will be close to the same after U45 about 300 base damage and 300 MP.

Some guys on reddit think 2 rogue quarterstaff builds are the big winners and will dominate all other THF.

[Malusny]

Sorcerer and Wizard are fine. They underperform a bit (not even by a huge amount) in melee and make up for it with tons of offensive and utility spellcasting.

FvS is fine because it has TONS of options and it's sitting in a fine spot right now.

I don't find Clerics fun to play, but Clerics only need a little melee love because they have SO MANY other options that they can use and have you ever seen a Cleric turned down for a raid? Ever?

Druids are sitting pretty right now and that's with Bears finally coming up to Wolf level.

Artificers are kind of lame and have ALWAYS been lame for melee, but they had about a year of being everyone's favorite splash, so I don't think they need a lot of love at the moment. They just had their turn.

Rangers should not have had Dance of Death nerfed. That was a Bad Thing(tm).

We'll see how Alchemist turns out. Time will tell if it's overpowered or merely "just fine".

Monk has some solid options, but they're a weird class. Their floor is terrible and their ceiling is pretty impressive.

And Rogue has never been in a bad place in the history of this game. They've never been on the top, but a decent player can have a really good time with a Rogue and it's one of the best splashes in the game.

And I honestly don't are about Bard even a little bit.

Sorcerer and Wiz underpeform a bit? Are you nuts??? The sorcerer is TOTALLY OP now. He blasts R10s... I see that on my server by many players.

[korgzz_bloodaxe]

Sorcerer and Wiz underpeform a bit? Are you nuts??? The sorcerer is TOTALLY OP now. He blasts R10s... I see that on my server by many players.

I guess you didn't read what he wrote? He said they underperform in melee....

[Elearim]

(Note: You will likely notice that these lists do not contain any further Ranged Style changes despite the large amount of feedback about the Archer's Focus/Improved Precise Shot dynamic that was available in preview 2. For the time being we are comfortable with where Ranged has landed. It is possible that we will revisit that in the future but we'd like to see how players adjust to the new dynamic before considering pulling back on the Archer's Focus movement restriction in the ways suggested in the Ranged thread.)

To bad, since much of the feedback was quite justified.

Altho it might be to late here are my thoughts of the overall changes:

• IPS is called OP solely for its aoe capability for ranged builds, altho i dont agree at all with this statement, i think a much better way to nerf it whould be:
  
  full dmg on 1st target hit
  -10% dmg on 2nd target hit
  -20% dmg on 3rd target hit
  and so forth,
  
  that way you nerf the aoe capability of ranged builds, while you dont nerf the dps when only one target is hit. This way it whould be much more logical as well, since the projectile whould loose kinetic energy while it passes through a target. It whould be in line with almost every feedback given to ips nerf, the pros as well as the cons. Since it is a significant nerf to IPS when it hits many targets, but it isnt a nerf at all if IPS only hits one target and only a small nerf while IPS hits very few targets. At the point of 5 targets the nerf to overall dps is the same as the current implemented -20%. If someone hits fewer than 5 targets with IPS, the progressive dps drop is lower than the 20% nerf (which is in line with the ppl argueing, that its very hard to line up several mobs in party gaming) if someone hits more than 5 mobs its even a bigger nerf to overall dps than the 20% nerf (which is in line with the ppl arguing, that IPS is still OP even with its 20% nerf) and it whould cap the capability of ranged to do aoe dmg to 10 mobs, since the 11th whouldnt get anymore dmg at all (unless you like to cap the nerf to anything like 20% min dmg for every mob striken).

• AA really needs a way to get the 10% alacrity, that DWS gets in its tree, pls go ahead and bring in a new AA Tier 5 Enhancement, that gives 10% Alacrity to Bows and drop the AF requirement in DWS, just make both enhancements passiv 10% Alacrity with bows. Else AA is loosing to much compared to DWS which isnt even a ranged focused enhancement line and forces ppl to take DWS instead of AA.

• Almost everyone has a capped Dodge stat, regarless of the armor they are wearing. Thats the main reason melee dont use Whirlwind, since they are forced to take 3 feats (Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack) which dont benefit them at all, same goes for Ranged with the new Shot on the Run Alacrity which forces them to take 2 Feats (Dodge, Mobility) which dont benefit them at all. Hence change Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack to give Dodge Cap as well as Dodge Value that way the feats do give some sort of improvement to everyone and evens the way to WWA and SotR (altho some ranged builds still dont have enough feats to get to SotR at all).

• I very much appreciate the changes to Doubelstrike on Cleaves as i proposed them in a earlier post myself. The changes to Strikethrough seem ok, except that Fighter is left behind compared to Barb. But the main balance issue with melee Vs any ranged dps build is still the survivability and not so much the dps. There needs to be the point of balancing when mobs onehit players!! Melee need some sort of improved survivabilty so they can go in and actually hit a few times before the mobs eat them alive. I did give some ideas to this in earlier posts, feel free to check on them

Sers ....

[TitusOvid]

To bad, since much of the feedback was quite justified.

Altho it might be to late here are my thoughts of the overall changes:

• IPS is called OP solely for its aoe capability for ranged builds, altho i dont agree at all with this statement, i think a much better way to nerf it whould be:
  
  full dmg on 1st target hit
  -10% dmg on 2nd target hit
  -20% dmg on 3rd target hit
  and so forth,
  
  that way you nerf the aoe capability of ranged builds, while you dont nerf the dps when only one target is hit. This way it whould be much more logical as well, since the projectile whould loose kinetic energy while it passes through a target. It whould be in line with almost every feedback given to ips nerf, the pros as well as the cons. Since it is a significant nerf to IPS when it hits many targets, but it isnt a nerf at all if IPS only hits one target and only a small nerf while IPS hits very few targets. At the point of 5 targets the nerf to overall dps is the same as the current implemented -20%. If someone hits fewer than 5 targets with IPS, the progressive dps drop is lower than the 20% nerf (which is in line with the ppl argueing, that its very hard to line up several mobs in party gaming) if someone hits more than 5 mobs its even a bigger nerf to overall dps than the 20% nerf (which is in line with the ppl arguing, that IPS is still OP even with its 20% nerf) and it whould cap the capability of ranged to do aoe dmg to 10 mobs, since the 11th whouldnt get anymore dmg at all (unless you like to cap the nerf to anything like 20% min dmg for every mob striken).

• AA really needs a way to get the 10% alacrity, that DWS gets in its tree, pls go ahead and bring in a new AA Tier 5 Enhancement, that gives 10% Alacrity to Bows and drop the AF requirement in DWS, just make both enhancements passiv 10% Alacrity with bows. Else AA is loosing to much compared to DWS which isnt even a ranged focused enhancement line and forces ppl to take DWS instead of AA.

• Almost everyone has a capped Dodge stat, regarless of the armor they are wearing. Thats the main reason melee dont use Whirlwind, since they are forced to take 3 feats (Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack) which dont benefit them at all, same goes for Ranged with the new Shot on the Run Alacrity which forces them to take 2 Feats (Dodge, Mobility) which dont benefit them at all. Hence change Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack to give Dodge Cap as well as Dodge Value that way the feats do give some sort of improvement to everyone and evens the way to WWA and SotR (altho some ranged builds still dont have enough feats to get to SotR at all).

snip

Many made these points that are actually based on some logical thinking and is not something derived out of thin air.

Cheers,
Titus

[bloodnose13]

Im not sure if English is your native language but if its not the DEFENDER tree is supposed to be all DEFENSE

since you apparently try very hard not to understand what i mean, ill only send you (and anyone interested) to take look at bear tank tree (natures protector) on druid, it is more recent than other defender style trees and somehow it can have what others are missing, all im asking to bring defender trees in line with it.

[majster67]

Great! I asked two specific questions about main threat and upcomming changes(at end of page 10). And no respond, only sterile cockfighting about paladins going to be OP or not OP, thats the question and lots of pointless math about it. It shows clearly why forum going to die and hence the game(loong chain of cause and effect sequence)...

[Ashlayna]

Not sure what the wiki says but just checked an elven alt and it requires 1 rank of arcanum not 3

Indeed, but I need all three for the spell pen I'm giving up taking feats needed to get to AA on a non-ranger build, that's why I indicated the necessity of 3 levels. It's likely that PB is confusing Ranger AA with Elven AA, I couldn't say at this point, but every non-ranger AA I've built required one level of Arcanum.

[DRoark]

As it stands now, Artificers took the biggest hit from this, but in general ranged (non-INQ) is so far behind now compared to actual AOE it's pretty sad.
Running with a sorcerer and a bard, we managed to get a couple kills, but the cone/flamethrower nukefest that ensued was impossible to compete with.

The artificers job? "Hey, this door's locked."

Great.

[Ashlayna]

As it stands now, Artificers took the biggest hit from this, but in general ranged (non-INQ) is so far behind now compared to actual AOE it's pretty sad.
Running with a sorcerer and a bard, we managed to get a couple kills, but the cone/flamethrower nukefest that ensued was impossible to compete with.

The artificers job? "Hey, this door's locked."

Great.

I hadn't really given this much thought, mainly due to the "3 shots per trigger pull" mechanic on repeaters, but frankly, by the time I get, if ever now, my endgame artificer to endgame, I don't think I'll be hit as hard as an archer that is firing one shot per pull. With Repeater with whatever effects, Rune Arm with whatever effects, and a dog supported by 3 druid past lives and augment summoning, the arti is going to win out. This is before I take spell casting into consideration, because some of my endgame AAs may be close to equal on that.

Ironically, I bought Artificer because "hey this door's locked".

[palladin9479]

I wouldn't put much stock in what that Paladin guy is talking about. He think Cleaves (on live) have no value for Barb's and Fighter THF apart from Momentum Swing and Supreme Cleave (for Barb's).

Cleave are trash on live near end cap because they are static animation and could not double strike. There are a few good cleaves, Supreme Cleave, Momentum Swing and Strike Down come to mind because they either multi-attack or have a super fast animation. Notice what the Dev's are changing in U45 referencing cleaves? Yeah that's going to make cleaves useful again at cap.

In DDO useful things must scale from Heroics to Epics and the Legendary tier levels. Each of those has it's own power jump and things that were super useful in one tier might not be useful in another due to static effects. Original Vorpal is a prime example, death to a monster under 1000HP on a natural 20 is useful in heroics and completely useless once monsters are running around with 5,000+ HP and we're criting for over 1000 HP anyway.

Cetus's math was really wrong along with his conclusions that Paladins are going to be running around with 300+ melee power. KoTC Paladin is in a bad place on live right now, not enough was changed to warrant moving them out of that position. What we are comparing is Paladin on live now vs Paladin on soon U45, and this is just Paladin not THF or other components because everyone gets those. The two biggest benefits to KoTC Paladin from this update is the free KT and the making a favored weapons an entire category. I have a sneaking suspicion that their gonna do another class pass sometime in the post-expansion pack future and that's why they deliberately underbuffed KoTC.

As for the poster about content, nobody cares if KoTC is good in mid epic content, seriously nobody cares because we can solo that on reaper anyway. What we care about is content where your in a group, meaning raids and mid to high legendary reaper. KoTC Paladin can already solo all the way to cap really well, it's the group play we're interested in.

[DRoark]

I hadn't really given this much thought, mainly due to the "3 shots per trigger pull" mechanic on repeaters, but frankly, by the time I get, if ever now, my endgame artificer to endgame, I don't think I'll be hit as hard as an archer that is firing one shot per pull. With Repeater with whatever effects, Rune Arm with whatever effects, and a dog supported by 3 druid past lives and augment summoning, the arti is going to win out. This is before I take spell casting into consideration, because some of my endgame AAs may be close to equal on that.

Ironically, I bought Artificer because "hey this door's locked".

The 3-shots-per trigger isn't what it's cracked up to be, you miss out on what the other classes have to augment damage on a per-hit basis. The extra runearm
damage is negligible compared to scaling damage effects from AA or constant mechanic SA damage.

Repeaters are good at low levels, but the time you actually get IPS they're already behind the curve. Every rogue and ranger we've tested smoked it, once we hit 12 there was no contest.

The pet is boderline garbage, even with 3 druid lives, ship buff, both feats, and harper tree skill (+25 stats total), he's abysmal vs what you're actually fighting. He's basically a lever puller.

I'm not saying the ranged Artificer wasn't OK to use, I'm just saying it REALLY didn't need a damage reduction.

[Triaxx2]

Post 20 Arti dog is best as a lever puller, or permanent HoT. 4d4*heal amp means you just stand still and regenerate to full HP. Even if you run dry on SP, it'll keep leaking heals.