Start the nerf-bat deadpool

[TheMaxpower]

I agree that Sorc is next to be nerfed. Its DPS is so high that it acts like an AOE insta-kill with no limit to the number of mobs it can kill at once. Good Sorcs can even do this on high reaper. Clearly not working as intended.

[iasktoomanyquestions]

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.

This.

The best defense in this game is to be away from the mobs.

If caster and ranged can exploit this defense, they need to deal less damage or have way less defenses like less hp.

And thats not what happen in this game, casters have way more defenses with buffs and still can kite.

Ranged have insane burst dps that can kill any red named in seconds even in high reaper.

While they still can have the same or even more hp than other classes.

[MaeveTuohy]

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.

A terrific read. Thank you.

Currently playing a melee, so I shall try this method of dipping in and out of combat with a boss. Given the usually large (physically ridiculously large) range/hitbox they typically have, I'd never considered such an approach.

Is your ranged build principally an artificer?

[iasktoomanyquestions]

A terrific read. Thank you.

Currently playing a melee, so I shall try this method of dipping in and out of combat with a boss. Given the usually large (physically ridiculously large) range/hitbox they typically have, I'd never considered such an approach.

Is your ranged build principally an artificer?

That is one of the reasons for the melee r10 solos using the "epileptic" builds.

The other are exploits like some abilities in DC totally broken.

[LurkingVeteran]

The engine is the best thing DDO has going for it. The problem is that ranged/casters can neutralize most risk just by moving out of melee range and taking deflect arrows + evasion. Imagine if all mobs spammed force missiles w/o any immunity. Being ranged wouldn't help as much. This is obviously not fun, but they could make mob projectiles faster and more accurate, make deflect arrows require swinging a melee weapon, and make mob casters better at hurting fast side-stepping players. I would also reconsider why player casters can wear heavy shields and double their MRR at little cost. Perpahs even make evasion just an 85% reduction, or put a cooldown on it.

Meanwhile melee don't get significantly more mitigation, healing or mobility. I would approach this problem from both sides and also buff mitigation and mobility for all melee.

I suspect the recent THF changes have narrowed the gap a bit since they can now also AoE better, so I would look at how that plays out.

[SirValentine]

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.

If your character is stronger by not using IPS than it was before the IPS nerf, then...it's exactly as strong as it would have been if you had not used IPS ever and were unaffected by the nerf? So no game mechanics got stronger, you just figured out you had been doing it wrong before?

[SirValentine]

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.

Yes, it's due to power creep, but only indirectly.

+66 versus +62 is the same as +16 versus +12...on the d20 roll. The difference is erased because the devs abandoned the d20 for attacks and went to their grading-on-curve or whatever you want to call it.

If the devs had been willing to control the power creep, they wouldn't have had to nerf the d20, and then a -4 would mean as much as ever.

[KoobTheProud]

A terrific read. Thank you.

Currently playing a melee, so I shall try this method of dipping in and out of combat with a boss. Given the usually large (physically ridiculously large) range/hitbox they typically have, I'd never considered such an approach.

Is your ranged build principally an artificer?

At the moment it's an Artificer. It's been a Mechanic and a Shuricannon at other times. I'm staying with Artificer for the last couple of lives because it's nice to have real self-healing that is not scroll-based and the pet is very useful in combination with permanent hirelings.

[KoobTheProud]

Yes, it's due to power creep, but only indirectly.

+66 versus +62 is the same as +16 versus +12...on the d20 roll. The difference is erased because the devs abandoned the d20 for attacks and went to their grading-on-curve or whatever you want to call it.

If the devs had been willing to control the power creep, they wouldn't have had to nerf the d20, and then a -4 would mean as much as ever.

Also the addition of alternate damage modifiers had a huge effect. You hit more often now and you hit for much more than you used too.

Power creep has essentially changed the game completely from what it was at F2P release in 2009 to what it is now and there's no putting the genie back in the bottle on standard servers.

[Red_Knight]

Sorc/Alc is pretty powerful considering Alchemists get an elemental DR breaker.

I might consider this, except there's one minor problem. Okay, it's a fairly large problem. A good sorc has high Charisma. If it's not maxed, it's nearly there. Int, well, that's a stat that's useful only for skill points for a sorc. But what they really want is con and dex (to an extent). I know for a long while it was recommended for sorcerers to ignore Dex, if not dump it entirely. Then instead max out their Constitution. This was because AC was considered an "all or nothing" thing. And it was too detrimental to try getting enough AC on a sorc that it mattered on Epic Elite. Maybe even impossible. Such a build isn't going to have the spare stat points for Int.

An Alchemist on the other hand wants maxed or near maxed Intelligence, but doesn't care one bit about charisma. Depending on your build and feat choices, you're also going to want a high constitution (doesn't everyone?), high Dex (or at least decently high), and maybe a decent Wisdom score. You can take one class feat which will substitute your Int bonus for Reflex, Fortitude, or Will saves. But you'll want Con for the hit points at the very least and Dex for the armor class at the very least.

These are kind of mutually exclusive primary focuses. If you are trying to max out Charisma, you aren't doing the same for Intelligence. Similarly if you're maxing out Intelligence, you're not maxing out Charisma. Yes, you could gear up for both stats. And a +8 Tome will mitigate having one or the other low to an extent. If you went middle of the road and had 16 in Int and Cha instead of maxing one of them this might even be viable, unless I suppose you're trying to run Reaper 10.

For this and other reasons, I'm not sure if that's a good combo.

[KoobTheProud]

If your character is stronger by not using IPS than it was before the IPS nerf, then...it's exactly as strong as it would have been if you had not used IPS ever and were unaffected by the nerf? So no game mechanics got stronger, you just figured out you had been doing it wrong before?

IPS incentivized me to be lazier in play, yes. However the current style I use would not be made better by the addition of IPS and subtraction of Insightful Reflexes.

Just to add one point that should also have been included in the referenced post: the IPS nerf hurt players unable to adapt their play style and did very little to those who had the capability to make the change. This suggests strongly that the players most likely to ask for nerfs due to feeling under-powered compared to the meta are most likely to be even *more* under-powered after a given nerf occurs. The overall power availability has decreased however the players for whom finding an OP build is never a problem have not suffered much if at all.

I would argue that DDO and SSG's model of making power available via purchase and nerfing older powerful things to encourage people to play the new OP thing is actually devastatingly bad for the game, for the players and for SSG.

It would be much better to cap new power and begin whittling back older clearly abusive power to bring DDO more into line with what most MMO's find an acceptable range of power. This would encourage newer and more casual players to stick around and would gradually create a stable meta defined by new content as opposed to new power.

Better players would still get more out of the characters they built however the power difference between different builds wouldn't be so glaring.

There is one problem with this approach however. DDO is based on D&D and there is nothing about D&D that has ever been balanced outside of the ability of DM's to keep things in line in their campaigns. A D&D Fighter has always been much stronger than a Wizard at level 1 and completely below the power horizon at Epic levels. DM's ran shorter campaigns than those likely to get anybody to an advanced level and they also had a way of bollixing up the works for characters that got out of hand in terms of power in those settings.

So maybe there's just nothing that SSG can really do to keep things in line and also interesting and profitable. Maybe the focus should be on just making sure nothing reaches the level of completely trivializing Reaper content and ignoring the howls for nerfs that occur every time somebody takes an under-powered build into an adventure with etablished builds and suddenly realizes that a Fighter is just a guy waving a sword in a world defined by AE, instakills and vorpal heavy repeaters.

Food for thought.

[Red_Knight]

vorpal heavy repeaters.

And this is something which never should have come about. Vorpal is after all suppose to only be able to be added to slashing weapons. Similarly swords of disruption (a property that is suppose to be bludgeoning only) shouldn't be possible. Crossbows of any type are not slashing weapons, they do piercing damage. Or maybe bludgeoning if you use blunted bolts. But in that case it would be the crossbow bolt that has the disruption property, not the crossbow it's self.

[Oxarhamar]

IPS incentivized me to be lazier in play, yes. However the current style I use would not be made better by the addition of IPS and subtraction of Insightful Reflexes.

Just to add one point that should also have been included in the referenced post: the IPS nerf hurt players unable to adapt their play style and did very little to those who had the capability to make the change. This suggests strongly that the players most likely to ask for nerfs due to feeling under-powered compared to the meta are most likely to be even *more* under-powered after a given nerf occurs. The overall power availability has decreased however the players for whom finding an OP build is never a problem have not suffered much if at all.

I would argue that DDO and SSG's model of making power available via purchase and nerfing older powerful things to encourage people to play the new OP thing is actually devastatingly bad for the game, for the players and for SSG.

It would be much better to cap new power and begin whittling back older clearly abusive power to bring DDO more into line with what most MMO's find an acceptable range of power. This would encourage newer and more casual players to stick around and would gradually create a stable meta defined by new content as opposed to new power.

Better players would still get more out of the characters they built however the power difference between different builds wouldn't be so glaring.

There is one problem with this approach however. DDO is based on D&D and there is nothing about D&D that has ever been balanced outside of the ability of DM's to keep things in line in their campaigns. A D&D Fighter has always been much stronger than a Wizard at level 1 and completely below the power horizon at Epic levels. DM's ran shorter campaigns than those likely to get anybody to an advanced level and they also had a way of bollixing up the works for characters that got out of hand in terms of power in those settings.

So maybe there's just nothing that SSG can really do to keep things in line and also interesting and profitable. Maybe the focus should be on just making sure nothing reaches the level of completely trivializing Reaper content and ignoring the howls for nerfs that occur every time somebody takes an under-powered build into an adventure with etablished builds and suddenly realizes that a Fighter is just a guy waving a sword in a world defined by AE, instakills and vorpal heavy repeaters.

Food for thought.

Relying on vorpal alone really ain't the most efficient way to kill things with a repeater.

IPS was targeted largely because of the squeaky wheels

Insightful certainly does make a build more survivable but, multitarget IPS it still faster than killing single targets even with the nerf.

[Pyed-Pyper]

IPS incentivized me to be lazier in play, yes. However the current style I use would not be made better by the addition of IPS and subtraction of Insightful Reflexes.

Just to add one point that should also have been included in the referenced post: the IPS nerf hurt players unable to adapt their play style and did very little to those who had the capability to make the change. This suggests strongly that the players most likely to ask for nerfs due to feeling under-powered compared to the meta are most likely to be even *more* under-powered after a given nerf occurs. The overall power availability has decreased however the players for whom finding an OP build is never a problem have not suffered much if at all.

I would argue that DDO and SSG's model of making power available via purchase and nerfing older powerful things to encourage people to play the new OP thing is actually devastatingly bad for the game, for the players and for SSG.

It would be much better to cap new power and begin whittling back older clearly abusive power to bring DDO more into line with what most MMO's find an acceptable range of power. This would encourage newer and more casual players to stick around and would gradually create a stable meta defined by new content as opposed to new power.

Better players would still get more out of the characters they built however the power difference between different builds wouldn't be so glaring.

There is one problem with this approach however. DDO is based on D&D and there is nothing about D&D that has ever been balanced outside of the ability of DM's to keep things in line in their campaigns. A D&D Fighter has always been much stronger than a Wizard at level 1 and completely below the power horizon at Epic levels. DM's ran shorter campaigns than those likely to get anybody to an advanced level and they also had a way of bollixing up the works for characters that got out of hand in terms of power in those settings.

So maybe there's just nothing that SSG can really do to keep things in line and also interesting and profitable. Maybe the focus should be on just making sure nothing reaches the level of completely trivializing Reaper content and ignoring the howls for nerfs that occur every time somebody takes an under-powered build into an adventure with etablished builds and suddenly realizes that a Fighter is just a guy waving a sword in a world defined by AE, instakills and vorpal heavy repeaters.

Food for thought.

So maybe there's just nothing that SSG can really do to keep things in line and also interesting and profitable.

Only in opposite world. SSG literally codes the game.

They painted themselves into a corner, and their only choice of tools is a brush. Every time their poor choices bear fruit they grab a bigger bucket of paint.

[Pyed-Pyper]

Relying on vorpal alone really ain't the most efficient way to kill things with a repeater.

IPS was targeted largely because of the squeaky wheels

Insightful certainly does make a build more survivable but, multitarget IPS it still faster than killing single targets even with the nerf.

IPS was targeted largely because of the squeaky wheels

Really? Care to show any evidence? I don't recall any complaints about IPS being OP, ever (*at least not before Alki was announced*).

IPS was nerf'd as way to reduce all martial ranged to keep INQ king of the ranged hill and still make way for Alki.

[Oxarhamar]

Really? Care to show any evidence? I don't recall any complaints about IPS being OP, ever (*at least not before Alki was announced*).

IPS was nerf'd as way to reduce all martial ranged to keep INQ king of the ranged hill and still make way for Alki.

There's been calls of nerf ranged for being able to hit multiple targets & kiting for years Inquisitive being the most recent complaint HCL brought the nerfs including ship buffs.

Perching too was a big complaint even through the devs have said its WAI but honestly I dont see it as a problem there's so few places where perching is useful most of the game is spent moving.

[Katalissa]

Aren't warlocks way overdue for their annual nerf?

[Tilomere]

Aren't warlocks way overdue for their annual nerf?

Why don't we just settle this D&D style, with a roll of the d20? All classes in order of the past life for reincarnation, and all the extra #s we can assign to warlock.

[Pyed-Pyper]

There's been calls of nerf ranged for being able to hit multiple targets & kiting for years Inquisitive being the most recent complaint HCL brought the nerfs including ship buffs.

Perching too was a big complaint even through the devs have said its WAI but honestly I dont see it as a problem there's so few places where perching is useful most of the game is spent moving.

So, that's a "no", then?

[Oxarhamar]

So, that's a "no", then?

One thing ain't the other

So, that's a "no", then?

Help yaself

Here is just one example of the long running trend

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...ght=Bigerkykid