Start the nerf-bat deadpool

[A-O]

I agree with your suggestion, but pretty much any new/returning player is in a similar position as people on the HC league w.r.t. loss of power creep, so I don't think it's an irrelevant position. Since they added all this power creep, they have to try to balance the game for both ends, but the current system of everything being flat additive bonuses makes this difficult. I think the HC league is very healthy for this reason, because it gives people more of an understanding of the differences.

The problem is that HC is just that, HC. No one wants to play the class that will get all the aggro, kill all the mobs, and have the least hp. To do well in HC, your best bet is to do as little damage as possible, while leeching your way to 20 by e.g. playing a heal bot.

While on live servers, first life or not, if you want to get to 20/30 fastest and contribute the most in quest, sorc is definitely the answer.

[Chai]

That would be a good argument if HC league was permanent, and if you had even 1/10th the power you have on main servers.

The thing that breaks sorcs are the synergy between R points and items. Which shove up any weaknesses the class was supposed to have. I've always thought that R points would be a 1000times easier to balance if the hp wasn't 4/8 hp per point spent. But rather tied to class split and base hp die. Right now base hp is pretty much pointless, difference between a d4 and d12 @ level 20 is merely 160hp, when people are running around with 2k+. If R points were, e.g., +base die/2 for offense dread and thaumaturge, and base die*0.75 for barricade. That would means sorcs get 2 for dread, and 3 for barricade. While a barb bets 6 for dread, and 9 for barricade. So slight buff for barbs, slight buff for d10s (make it 5 for grim, and round up to 8 for barricade) and nerf for all other classes. Make it so multiclass works the same way spellpoints do for sorc, so if you're 18/2 sorc/barb that would mean d4.2 average.

The numbers might need tweeking. But the idea is to tie this universal source of infinite power creep to actually affect builds differently - and thus be actually manageable balance-wise.

Just make everything that increases HP add hit dice. Theres already code in the game for power items for level splits where some classes get double and some dont. Use similar code for level splits between different dice-class split. If someone puts on a "false life 5" item it adds 5 hit dice worth of HP. If a 18/2 barb/rogue puts the item on it gets [(18*12)+(2*6)]*5/20. 228*5/20 = 57 HP

[Chai]

The problem is that HC is just that, HC. No one wants to play the class that will get all the aggro, kill all the mobs, and have the least hp. To do well in HC, your best bet is to do as little damage as possible, while leeching your way to 20 by e.g. playing a heal bot.

And dodge StrimLazers™
Does StrimBeams™ sound better?

While on live servers, first life or not, if you want to get to 20/30 fastest and contribute the most in quest, sorc is definitely the answer.

Until it ruins someone elses fun when others are playing it in different instances because they saw a YouTube video of someone on a do-deca-tuple-pletionist sorc making it look easy (which is what good players do).

[Tilomere]

2. Except if you're warforged of course? Plus, if we're talking hard content (R7+) no one has self-healing, so the point is moot.

Sorc's self-heal just fine in R7, as can any well-built caster, due to stacked spell power, spell crit, and spell crit multiplier, on top of amplification. At 67% spell crit with empyrian stacked, ~90% of the time one of recon/recon SLA will crit.



It's melee and ranged that can't self-heal, because their healing doesn't scale with the melee/ranged power and melee/ranged stats they are built for.

Sorc capstone passive is also excellent, and elemental form is a toggle, so it doesn't punish you at all if you don't use it except when it is beneficial. For example, you can toggle it on, drop incendiary cloud, then toggle it off, and that single cloud will break fire immunity AoE for awhile.

[palladin9479]

Discussions around "balance" aren't about build X being better then build Y, or class A having more DPS then class B, it's would be impossible to make those all equal without literally making everyone the same, and that's no fun. Instead you balance around effect vs investment vs skill of different builds and use things like effect floors / ceilings to incentivize different paths. There should never be a build / class that has a super high effect floor while also having both a low skill investment and a high effect ceiling, Inquisitive was a perfect example of that worse possible thing to introduce. Sorc, and casters in general, are next as they have a virtually infinite effect ceiling due to how magic damage scales up quadratically while melee damage scales linearly, that's an actual video game trope btw. They aren't as bad as Inquisitive because they have a very low effect floor, high investment and moderate skill requirement. The change needs to happen on the insane scaling of their effects, how reaper points and spell power synergize with the insanity that is spell crit rate and spell crit damage. Limiting the last two would pull them back in line. DC casters on the other hand are in a crazy situation because they are very binary, either it works or it doesn't. Either the monster takes -9,000,000,000 damage or it takes none.

[archest]

good luck trying to solo that sorc when your zerged into using all your sp on a mob at the start of the quest with no way to recover sp.
nerf the sorc as if.........
I don't think you have ever tried playing one.
server dead for groups and when you get a group its r4 and your left hanging back until you die consistently.
game is a disappointment.
designed for team play and having to solo consistently to level.
sorc is a weak toon al it has is a few spells to cast than its out of sp.
try hitting with charisma......
might work as a multi class cleric.
least you have a strong turn undead remaining once sp runs out after the 1st battle.

nerf the sorc....lol

it's already nerfed.

[LurkingVeteran]

The problem is that HC is just that, HC. No one wants to play the class that will get all the aggro, kill all the mobs, and have the least hp. To do well in HC, your best bet is to do as little damage as possible, while leeching your way to 20 by e.g. playing a heal bot.

While on live servers, first life or not, if you want to get to 20/30 fastest and contribute the most in quest, sorc is definitely the answer.

Sorcs also get diplo as a class skill :-)

[LurkingVeteran]

Sorc's self-heal just fine in R7, as does any well-built caster, due to stacked spell power, spell crit, and spell crit multiplier, on top of amplification. At 67% spell crit with empyrian stacked, ~90% of the time one of recon/recon SLA will crit.
...

It's melee and ranged that can't self-heal, because their healing doesn't scale with the melee/ranged power and melee/ranged crit they are built for.

Sorc capstone passive is also excellent, and elemental form is a toggle, so it doesn't punish you at all if you don't use it except when it is beneficial. For example, you can toggle it on, drop incendiary cloud, then toggle it off, and that single cloud will break fire immunity AoE for awhile.

Just nerf recon and problem solved then. Also not exclusively a sorc problem since Recon is an arcane spell, not a sorc spell, and any caster can use it via Bladeforged.

[palladin9479]

good luck trying to solo that sorc when your zerged into using all your sp on a mob at the start of the quest with no way to recover sp.

The SP expenditure is quite small if the Sorc is being conservative, Meteor Swarm is only 40 SP with a 10% reduction in epics, DLB is only 25 with the same 10% standard reduction. Sorcs can clear entire rooms with just those two spells. Couple this with them having 5~6K SP and there being several SP restoral items along with Eternal Faith and they won't run out of SP unless they want to. Looking over the Fire Sorc tree and it's just stupid OP for any caster period. That many boosts to caster level, then the ability to completely strip fire resistance off everything in the game is what breaks the whole thing. It's perfectly fine for a caster to do insane damage in a single element, this becomes balanced because elemental resistance, absorption and immunity tones them down on things not already vulnerable to the spells they specialize in. Stupid stuff like being able to remove those resistances / immunities on every spell that is cast turns fire spells into "god spells" and the "fire specialization" into "god specialization".

In other words, it's like specializing in doing every damage type possible all at once. That's no longer a specialization that's a broken mechanic.

[Tilomere]

Just nerf recon and problem solved then. Also not exclusively a sorc problem since Recon is an arcane spell, not a sorc spell, and any caster can use it via Bladeforged.

To be safe also need to nerf the healing from heal, harm, death auras, cocoon, renewal, and divine wrath/CMW Mass SLA in EA. Basically nerf any healing ability that any caster can get that can crit. Removing the ability for any healing to crit would stop casters from self-healing in higher reaper.

Or, instead of just cutting heroic item spell power in half to balance heroic casters, we could just cut all item spell power in half. I mean, technically it *IS* an option.

[Zretch]

Discussions around "balance" aren't about build X being better then build Y, or class A having more DPS then class B, it's would be impossible to make those all equal without literally making everyone the same, and that's no fun. Instead you balance around effect vs investment vs skill of different builds and use things like effect floors / ceilings to incentivize different paths. There should never be a build / class that has a super high effect floor while also having both a low skill investment and a high effect ceiling, Inquisitive was a perfect example of that worse possible thing to introduce. Sorc, and casters in general, are next as they have a virtually infinite effect ceiling due to how magic damage scales up quadratically while melee damage scales linearly, that's an actual video game trope btw. They aren't as bad as Inquisitive because they have a very low effect floor, high investment and moderate skill requirement. The change needs to happen on the insane scaling of their effects, how reaper points and spell power synergize with the insanity that is spell crit rate and spell crit damage. Limiting the last two would pull them back in line. DC casters on the other hand are in a crazy situation because they are very binary, either it works or it doesn't. Either the monster takes -9,000,000,000 damage or it takes none.

If your melee damage is scaling linearly, then you're doing it wrong. Melee damage scales multiplicatively with crit multiplier, attack speed, doublestrike, melee power, and weapon damage die. Arcane damage scales multiplicatively with crit damage percent, arcane alacrity, spell power, and caster levels. Melee crit mult is a FAR larger magnitude multiplier than crit damage percent (x5 to x7 vs x2.3?). Attack speed vs arcane alacrity is also of benefit to melee especially when haste boost is factored in. Spell power is far higher in arcanes than melee power, even with 150% scaling on melee power for sneak attacks. Weapon damage die is also quite a bit lower than arcane caster levels. Note that both melee and arcane have the same types of mulitpliers. Arcane multipliers are focused on spell power and caster levels. This is why a sorcerer in draconic pushes out more damage than a wizard in magistar. Melee damage has a more balanced spread across their mulitpliers, with the exception of crit mults. Care to guess why people are starting to complain about EKs using Arcane Tempest wielding 2 handers in Fury?

All classes have access to multiplicative damage increases at cap. If you don't, then you need to look at which melee multipliers you're neglecting and start building for those as well. If you focus only on melee power or only on doublestrike, then sure you'll have linear damage progression. Don't do that.

Also, for the folks in this thread who are bringing up 300k hits....stop it. Max hit is not a determination anything. Arcanes burst. They measure casts in seconds per attack. Melees and ranged sustain. They measure hits in attacks per second. You can't compare max hits and derive any useful information about anything.

[palladin9479]

If your melee damage is scaling linearly, then you're doing it wrong.

Whoosh

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...adraticWizards



Melee's damage is way below casters because melee damage scaling is linear while casters is quadratic. When a melee swings their sword, they aren't doing [1D4+4] * [Melee Level + Melee Level Bonus]. A "good" melee build will have about 200 melee power at rest that then spikes to 300~350 with the right conditions. Melee crit rate is about 20~30% depending on weapon with 2.0 ~ 2.05 being a "good" total damage multiplier from crits. Casters on the other hand get 70~100% crit rate with a 40~70% crit damage bonus along with ~1000 spell power.

As a caster's level rise's not only do they get spells that are stronger, their caster level also increases, their SP increases, their spell power increase's, spell crits increases, DC's increases and so forth. This gives casters an exponential power growth rate while melee's are limited to one that's more of a line with occasional spikes as milestones are met.

This isn't a DDO problem it's a problem every RPG based on Vancian magic has.

But please continue to do the same thing those who supported Inquisitive did.

[Zretch]

Whoosh

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...adraticWizards



Melee's damage is way below casters because melee damage scaling is linear while casters is quadratic. When a melee swings their sword, they aren't doing [1D4+4] * [Melee Level + Melee Level Bonus]. A "good" melee build will have about 200 melee power at rest that then spikes to 300~350 with the right conditions. Melee crit rate is about 20~30% depending on weapon with 2.0 ~ 2.05 being a "good" total damage multiplier from crits. Casters on the other hand get 70~100% crit rate with a 40~70% crit damage bonus along with ~1000 spell power.

As a caster's level rise's not only do they get spells that are stronger, their caster level also increases, their SP increases, their spell power increase's, spell crits increases, DC's increases and so forth. This gives casters an exponential power growth rate while melee's are limited to one that's more of a line with occasional spikes as milestones are met.

This isn't a DDO problem it's a problem every RPG based on Vancian magic has.

But please continue to do the same thing those who supported Inquisitive did.

You keep saying quadratic, I do not think it means what you think it means. There's no exponential factor to damage for any class. You're just focusing on two of the four multipliers that all classes receive. Casters have a higher crit rate but a MUCH lower crit damage. Spell power is a multiplier, not a exponential increase, just like melee power. Casters need more spell power because their speed boosts and crit damage are far lower than melee, and they don't have doublestrike at all, which is an additional up to 100% damage multiplier over and above everything else.

******** graphs pulled out of your butt aside, melee isn't the poor little weaksauce that you seem to proclaim. Melee was undisputed king of the DPS hill before Inquisitive was released. If you're going to make an argument, at least make it a factual one.

[palladin9479]

You didn't read the link...

Thought everyone knows your full of <insert here>, weakness of melee power vs caster power has been a known issue for years now.

[Chai]

******** graphs pulled out of your butt aside, melee isn't the poor little weaksauce that you seem to proclaim. Melee was undisputed king of the DPS hill before Inquisitive was released. If you're going to make an argument, at least make it a factual one.

And still nerf demands aplenty are premised with "nerf X because its not fair to melee when..."

[o2t4f]

Whoosh

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...adraticWizards



Melee's damage is way below casters because melee damage scaling is linear while casters is quadratic. When a melee swings their sword, they aren't doing [1D4+4] * [Melee Level + Melee Level Bonus]. A "good" melee build will have about 200 melee power at rest that then spikes to 300~350 with the right conditions. Melee crit rate is about 20~30% depending on weapon with 2.0 ~ 2.05 being a "good" total damage multiplier from crits. Casters on the other hand get 70~100% crit rate with a 40~70% crit damage bonus along with ~1000 spell power.

As a caster's level rise's not only do they get spells that are stronger, their caster level also increases, their SP increases, their spell power increase's, spell crits increases, DC's increases and so forth. This gives casters an exponential power growth rate while melee's are limited to one that's more of a line with occasional spikes as milestones are met.

This isn't a DDO problem it's a problem every RPG based on Vancian magic has.

But please continue to do the same thing those who supported Inquisitive did.

As you level your melee character, you linearly increase your weapon damage dice, linearly increase your attribute modifier for damage, linearly increase your melee power, your doublestrike chance. You also get a little bump on your crit chance and multiplier at some point. Most of these linear increases are multiplicative with each other (plus a few other small ones I didn't mention), giving you an overall non-linear increase in power as you level. So your graph might correspond to some other fantasy worlds, but certainly not to ddo melees.

And as your own link proposes, there are exceptions. In DDO for example, casters are so much ahead of melees in early heroics after they get their first few AoE spells, especially among not so geared characters, that the only reason they move in the dungeon is to reach the end chest and pull str levers.

In terms of skill level, as many of your posts seem to suggest, there is a much higher skill ceiling for melees than most people perceive, as most of them don't seem to be reaching their full potential at the later levels. Gearing is also more critical to melees. But every now and then you do see a really good melee and it is quite refreshing.

Bottom line is, there is no linear increase in power with level, for any class. Even if you are using grotto gear all the way to 30. Which if you are, I suggest you do it with a caster.

[KoobTheProud]

DDO is becoming un-nerfable at this point. I can think of about a half dozen completely broken things that I don't even bother to play because there are other completely broken things I like.

The point is that it would take a re-write of the game engine itself that included the physics alongside the other systems before you could create anything like a balanced game. That's not unusual in an FRPG and DDO is a multi-player FRPG, like Guild Wars 2, not an MMO. LotRO you can balance, it's an MMO. DDO you really can't because the number of options out there is just too large to make it work.

Point in case: the IPS nerf made my Artificer stronger not weaker. That's because it changed the way I played him and now he never gets hit while still destroying roomfuls of mobs in the process.

[MaeveTuohy]

Point in case: the IPS nerf made my Artificer stronger not weaker. That's because it changed the way I played him and now he never gets hit while still destroying roomfuls of mobs in the process.

Could you elucidate?

[KoobTheProud]

Could you elucidate?

Probably the simplest way to put it is that I used to manually line up targets to get the strafe-thru effect, by targeting the farthest target and shooting through the crowd and now I just tab-target and shoot. Damage starts earlier in the combat and with less thought involved. Secondarily I'm even more mobile than I was before because I don't need to maintain any kind of line of fire for maximum effect. The real difference though is that I now have Insightful Reflexes instead of Improved Precise Shot and the 20 odd difference in my reflex saves is huge on defense as I jig about the place.

The point is that the change in how Improved Precise Shot works lead to a change in how I play and the overall effect was a stronger ranged character in most situations.

The number of variables involved in the DDO character meta makes it highly unlikely that even targeted nerfs decrease the overall power in play. If a nerf really is effective it just causes the people playing that archetype to move to something else that is equally OP or more OP or in some cases to quit playing DDO - none of which help DDO in the long-run. Mostly players just adapt though and find other ways to break the mechanics in play with some variation of what they were just playing. The mechanics being very breakable because the engine itself has none of the characteristics that would constrain them.

As an example: mobile characters who can do damage at range are OP compared to virtually any characters that have to stand and fight to do their damage. The engine does not impose an endurance factor in any way shape or form on mobile ranged characters so they can skitter about, circle-kiting, jump-shooting, perching and just generally stay away from damage with very little penalty to their offensive output. There is no "getting tired" in the game and no significant penalty for shooting on the run. This was not the case early on before power creep when a -4 penalty to hit meant a lot but nowadays the difference between +66 and +62 (numbers included as a random set of examples) is much, much less than the penalty between +16 and +12 was. The power creep has made whatever effect the engine used to impose on a moving character negligible. To get back to the penalties meaning anything you'd have to have a scaling penalty that was probably 10x what the penalty is now at Epic levels.

Another example: many mechanics that are supposed to restrict the ability to cast on the run or get off a spell under duress are invalidated not by a chain of feats that lead to much better abilities but by a single feat - Quicken - that removes basically all penalties for casting on the move for the spells for which it is enabled, which are most of them.

So if SSG gets around to nerfing ranged characters who are constantly shooting on the run the players who like that style just switch to casters who are then nuking/ccing/instakilling on the run with Quicken.

Further example: while it is less effective than ranged mobile strategies it is definitely possible to play very mobile melee characters who are doing two-thirds of the damage the ranged characters are doing with not much more exposure to damage. The two-thirds of the damage comes from the fact that the engine tends to have weak hit detection on moving mobs and so you lose a fair amount of damage with the mobs registering as out of range or in collision mode when in fact it's just the difference between the front end detection and the backend detection exacerbated by your movement or the mobs that is causing the non-registration of hits.

I can tank a boss mob and hit it on about half my swings while taking very little *melee* damage from the boss. That's because it is easy to move in and out on the boss timing your swings to best effect using poke mode instead of auto-attack. The bosses melee swings will only hit you occasionally in that scenario. Spell damage, AE that they do and environmental effects around the boss will hit most of the time though. You see this fairly often with tumble tanks, however the tumble tanks aren't doing a lot of damage, they are just breaking the tumbles for an intimidate on rotation and other easy to target single actions that draw the bosses attention. In fact you can tumble tank and do a fair amount of damage assuming that your build has damage capabilities. It just requires a good sense of timing and the ability to put yourself on the flank with tumbles as the boss is striking. Cleaves and AE effects as well as environmental effects are largely unavoidable so when you watch R10 raid boss tanking you mostly see tumble tanks using obstacles to cut these off on timed sequences and generally just tumbling for their lives. If it was just melee damage or directed spells the tanks could still do damage but most bosses have different damage modalities and need to be tumbled.

Again, the point is that the engine itself would need to be reworked in a big way to avoid builds being OP based simply on movement/action mechanics.

Nerfing IPS just moved the power it didn't do anything at all to cut the power creep nor to help the classes that felt they were outclassed by IPS builds. The people who could adapt to the IPS nerf in their build without losing power did so. Many of the others just moved to similarly OP builds.

All of this is just my two cents but it is based on 20 years of playing MMO's and multi-player FRPG's and more than a decade with DDO.

[DaviMOC]

Yeah, melee issues never been DPS but inability to melee in a scenario trying to be challenging to ranged playstyle and failing. Its pretty easy and cheap to be an effective first life ranged character. You can have a significant high dps in a first life toon with a very high survival capability if you play smart in high difficulties specially if you are using Xbows. That dosent happens to melee toons. While the game tries to be hard for a ranged character in the process it gets even worse for those who are in the front line as most challenges are posed to the frontline and only a small part of it manages to get to ranged ones.

The price paid by a ranged character for being competitive in DPS and have a high survival rate is nearly non-existent even compared to spellcasters. If you insert inquisitive universal tree in that equation its even worse as it allows you to add full fledge ranged DPS to any role/class you want. Making good DPS that can also tank , heal, control or support. IMO the nerf was small and mostly only aftected multi-target and solo scenarios. In groups ranged toons still got very high DPS and all the survival rate it had before while still peforming pretty well in the "nerfed" scene. I do believe the nerf was needed, not because it would make a build less OP but it brings more challenge and more comparable to other playstyles decision making. I do believe the intention wasn't to objectively make some builds weaker but a less no-brain win-win choice of a build/playstyle for a very effective character build while making the scene less harsh to other by just not trying to be challenging to a playstyle that is above others if not in raw DPS it is in average and overall situations.


How do I convince a Dev that a monster hitting for a given amount is absurd when in a ranged toon I can kill it without even getting noticed by it or clean a whole room of that kind of monster with a single spell? The ranged problem is that it wins in most situations, if its no the groups highest DPS but still very competitive thats a very low price to pay.