Melee OP

[Arkat]

legendary content will include mutant champions and we'll need sentinel weapons to defeat them.

lol!

[Arkat]

sentinel weapons.

what is that?

He means "sentient weapons."

[timmy9999]

Infinite stun DC? Who cares about that??

It's not all that hard to get a 130-140 stun DC without any "tricks" and that's good enough in upper skulls content.

If people are pushing their stun DCs to 200-300, or whatever, they're just wasting time and effort.

Stuns or whatever they are doing or raising the stats isn’t the problem, it the lag or creates. Seriously, I’ve noticed it for sometime playing with some of the top guild players. Original I wondered if they were doing so much damage it was lagging out the whole instance. But Somone highlighted why it’s happening. It freezes the game for everyone. Yet the solo hero charges ahead and dominates.

[Komradkillingmachine]

Stuns or whatever they are doing or raising the stats isn’t the problem, it the lag or creates. Seriously, I’ve noticed it for sometime playing with some of the top guild players. Original I wondered if they were doing so much damage it was lagging out the whole instance. But Somone highlighted why it’s happening. It freezes the game for everyone. Yet the solo hero charges ahead and dominates.

Sounds like macro chopping and is an absolute disgrace to every legit melee player on all servers.

[Komradkillingmachine]

Is it just me, or have any other ranged builds noticed that the melee's are now crushing content?

I'm just asking because while running R-10's last night, I would click NHB....and before I would fire a shot, everything would be dead.

I know everyone playing melee were screaming for changes, but I think just like the hammering of ranged builds, Inquisitive in particular that were so overpowered...running last night I watched a Melee in the portrait end fight with Strahd...And, he was crushed (in seconds) before I even fired a single shot at his ugly mug. Even on my best (in R-10) I was unable to solo the portrait fight. And somehow my Inquisitive Xbow user is overpowered?!?!

Maybe I'm just having sour grapes. But if the complaint that ranged inquisitive builds were waltzing through content, SSG should take a hard look at what the changes you have made have wrought.

This just goes to show that Devs are completely out of touch with the current endgame. In R10 even 0,5 second delay usually means death.

Yet they think that adding 2-3 second delay to NHB is somehow "balanced" and promotes "fun and enjoyable" gameplay.
I doubt anyone would complain (outside of certain short-sided individuals here) if EF received pre-nerf NHB treatment instead.
None of the xbow variations or splits can even compare to what Dagger throwers can do these days.

NHB/EF wind up animation and the delay it causes is a major QoL problem for all xbow players everywhere.

Melee players would raise a huge stench on the forums if their bread and butter Haste boost/ MP boost suddenly received a 2 second delay for "balance" purposes.

[kanordog]

Is it just me, or have any other ranged builds noticed that the melee's are now crushing content?

Come on Souless, you could just mention my name as the melee who crushed that portrait yesterday.

ROFLMAO

So a player who's hobby is to squeeze as much as possible out of melee builds buffed by the whole party using all boosts he can puts down a rednamed quick is the same as your average melee...

Funny thread.



Great marketing btw

[Strider1963]

A couple of uber players make op (whatever class) toons then when other people see them destroy content, they get jealous then they cry for nerfs. Then the devs oblige and the run of the mill players like me pay the price. Will anyone ever just stop crying for nerfs and play the game for fun??? The only thing I will agree with the op on is the delay for NHB and the arty equivelant. It does take way too long to start shooting.

[SerPounce]

Something is always going to be the flavor of the month. Personally I like it thematically a lot more when it's something iconic like 2HF barbarians, fireball chucking sorcerers, and paladins in heavy armor than when it's walking spreadsheets like throwers and inquisitives.

[Elfishski]

A couple of uber players make op (whatever class) toons then when other people see them destroy content, they get jealous then they cry for nerfs. Then the devs oblige and the run of the mill players like me pay the price.

When every group has 50%-80% of the same flavor of the month - yes, nerf that specific build. Nerfs are sometimes necessary (see: warlocks, inquisitive) for the health of the game.

When the same usual handful of players on your server faceroll R10? Yes, they are clearly overpowered don't pretend otherwise. But there's no point nerfing their thing as they'd just move on to some other thing nearly as OP within a day.

The best solution I've found is to not group with those players if you want to have fun playing the game. Do group with them if you want a free pile of reaper points.

[Souless]

A couple of uber players make op (whatever class) toons then when other people see them destroy content, they get jealous then they cry for nerfs. Then the devs oblige and the run of the mill players like me pay the price. Will anyone ever just stop crying for nerfs and play the game for fun??? The only thing I will agree with the op on is the delay for NHB and the arty equivelant. It does take way too long to start shooting.

I was not jealous. And yes I was with Cetus during that fight. I was just pointing out that the xbow builds I used Pre Nerf could NOT shatter the portal like what I witnessed. And my builds were called OP. As a "run of the mill" player, over the last day I have been shouted at, reticuled, and generally worked over with statements like the above, and some of the following statements:

Ranged should NEVER have the DPS output of melee.....Why? Because your safe at range (and that's the ultimate defense)...I say balderdash. Content has proved time and again that they can get to me no matter where I am inside the dungeon. Also, that it is inherently harder (and therefore must be rewarded) to run up to a mob and swing a sword -VS- fire from range. Why? Because the mobs hit back? I get hit too.

I didn't primitively start my boost 2-3 secs be4 the fight started...Why? Oh, because of the NHB EF nerf (my mistake...realignment to bring it in balance). Since the nerf, I have wasted countless boosts or had my boost severely reduced in an attempt to predict when the fight will start.

The "burst" DPS of ranged far out performs melee DPS....How? I'm not sure one shot from Hunt's End can qualify as "burst" DPS.

At any rate, I was wondering if other Xbow guys were feeling the same sour grapes that I felt. I withdraw my complaint. Melee is wai.

Flame on.

[Ganak]

Thanks for posting this thread Soul

It feels like a tribute to all the kills I steal from you.

[Quikster]

This just goes to show that Devs are completely out of touch with the current endgame. In R10 even 0,5 second delay usually means death.

Yet they think that adding 2-3 second delay to NHB is somehow "balanced" and promotes "fun and enjoyable" gameplay.
I doubt anyone would complain (outside of certain short-sided individuals here) if EF received pre-nerf NHB treatment instead.
None of the xbow variations or splits can even compare to what Dagger throwers can do these days.

NHB/EF wind up animation and the delay it causes is a major QoL problem for all xbow players everywhere.

Melee players would raise a huge stench on the forums if their bread and butter Haste boost/ MP boost suddenly received a 2 second delay for "balance" purposes.

It used to have that delay and it was removed (haste boost). I’d rather the uptime be reduced or cool down be increased than have an animation that causes the delay(NHB/EF).

[redoubt]

5. Limit turn undeads somehow, either total, or regen rate, or increase cooldown between uses, effectively the same as increase Confront any Foe's cooldown. How many Turn Undeads can you run around with? Maybe make it so that they don't replenish fully at shrines, but instead like the Pale Lav stone you only get a partial return? You could still have the same damage, but would have to be more judicious about when and how often? What about all the ways to regen them overtime? Make Confront any Foe use more then one charge of Turn Undead per use?

Consider what this does to turn spec'd clerics please.

[CSQ]

My opinion is that non-tank melee should be doing more damage than ranged anyway, not that that's the tradition in DDO or that SSG necessarily designs around this. My reason for thinking this is roughly as follows:

Characters have three basic elements- damage, durability, and utility.

Elements that go into damage are things like raw DPS, resistance mitigation, debuffs that increase the damage targets take (though this can also be in utility if it's designed as a party support role instead of single target damage boosters), and death effects that eliminate targets regardless of health left.

Elements that go into durability are things like health point pools, mitigating damage when hit, not getting hit in the first place, protection against debuffs and status effects, and ability to fight for long periods of time without compromising combat viability.

Elements that go into utility are things like party buffs to increase damage or durability, control effects that don't directly damage mobs but do result in easier damage or mitigation, and healing.

Leaving aside how that should look for casters and melee, which is quite debatable in DDO given the diversity and differences inside those two categories, let's look at how ranged characters generally stack up. Obviously, there are different ranged builds, and some do better at some of these than others, but here's a bit of generalization. Don't hate me for not touching on support/crowd control builds for rangers or janky hybrid builds- I'm just going to talk about a generic ranged build that's primarily focused on damage, since that's what most people are talking about when they have a damage measuring contest with other archetypes. Again, this is my opinion of how these builds look at the moment, from someone who has played several different ranged builds. For argument's sake, I'm going to work with a hypothetical build in line with an Inquisitive or a well built Arcane Archer.

Damage- 4/5- decent DPS, especially on Inquisitive builds or effective Ranger builds. While these builds are not usually the best builds in the game for damage, their relatively easy play style and the safety of ranged DPS in general makes them able to do sustained damage over a long period of time. Usually, resources are a trivial concern, with the ability to summon or bring enough arrows or bolts to continue shooting constantly. There is basically no resource management, aside from the occasional need to replenish ammunition which by endgame is trivial. We're not considering hybrid ranged-caster builds here, because I don't think those really are borne out as being the best ranged DPS and they kind of defeat the biggest advantage of building a ranged character- simplicity and reliability. Almost all ranged builds depend on Improved Precise Shot to do huge amounts of damage compared to single target builds, and range allows them to hit many targets at once. Point Blank Shot and other feats and abilities frequently found in ranged builds also gives high damage early on, making dedicated ranged builds quite effective at most level ranges. There are builds that easily do more damage than generic ranged builds, but they usually rely on sacrificing defensive ability, lengthy farming for a perfect BIS gear list, or require very active, involved, and technical gameplay that often results in significant DPS loss if poorly executed.

Utility- 2/5- most ranged trees do not have great control options, with the exception of some Arcane Archer choices that really compromise damage output. That said, they don't have nothing. Ranger builds probably can qualify for 3/5 with their buffs and healing spells (not that you're not just going to be using potions or UMD'ing scrolls, but let's focus mostly on what the characters can do and not DDO's meta), but there are some disabling, slowing, and other controlling effects that occasionally pop up in ranged trees or on equipment that make ranged builds somewhat useful, even if they're pretty bad at it compared to an utility caster or even just a decent UMD score.

Durability- 4/5- durability in DDO comes down to the following three factors, which I've ordered in the list of things I consider to be the most valuable to the least valuable. The first is not getting hit. While ranged builds, on paper, usually have less evasion than dedicated melee evasion builds, relatively poor AC (which is almost always below the threshold for AC to be a useful metric), and mediocre at best HP. However, ranged combatants in DDO are able to simply not engage with melee based enemies. Even enemies with ranged damage, which ranged builds struggle to mitigate, tend to hit much more gently than the brutal meat grinders that melee occasionally encounter. Any crowd control options that ranged builds have also helps much more here, since ranged builds, unlike melee builds, can apply those effects without entering danger zones. With the proliferation of ghostly/ethereal/blur/displacement items, ranged builds can get sufficient effective miss chances to be able to mostly survive without major compromises to damage, since the rarity of the most dangerous attacks actually rolling against those defenses and the relative weakness of most ranged attacks puts most ranged characters into a decently acceptable spot with just a little work, compared to insane gearing needed for AC tanking or the ludicrous defensive array required for evasion type defense to be viable. Couple this with the fact that ranged can kite, take advantage of unpathed spots, and fire before enemies have a chance to react and you've got some really great resources to not get hit in the first place. The second most important function for durability is saving against effects. Since control, death, and other nasty effects can ruin your day, having strong saves is important. While ranged builds aren't necessarily the best here, I think they do well enough by having options to operate outside of some spell ranges, avoiding touch range debuffs, and dealing with casters before they get their nastiest spells off. It is also significant that both ranger and rogue get access to evasion, and these are two of the most accessible classes for building ranged characters. Ranged monk builds also benefit from evasion. This is a huge bonus for damage mitigation, as many damage effects that cannot be mitigated by physical defenses can be completely nullified with evasion, while builds without evasion will always take half damage (which can then be further mitigated, but that's a story for another time and this is getting quite long already). However, the greatest advantage that ranged builds have in this category is definitely their ability to strike before targets can react. While you can't always kill casters before they do nasty things, being able to get first strikes on targets really reduces the amount of risk. This gives ranged a huge advantage, beyond also being able to avoid some spells, like Ray of Enfeeblement, much more easily than close combat builds. The final element of durability, and the one ranged builds usually do the worst at, is surviving the hits you do take. Unless you have such blistering damage that you're killing everything before it can react, you will probably end up taking at least a few hits, and ranged builds are pretty squishy. Even here, though, they significantly outperform most casters. Even if you wear light armor instead of just taking the relatively meaningless heavy armor penalty (which only meaningfully punishes arcane casters), you still have at least some PRR and MRR, and most ranged builds that aren't just shoving a casting class into Inquisitive have decent hit dice compared to sorcerer or wizard. Combine this with the fact that the majority of damage you'll be taking will hopefully be relatively weak ranged attacks and you should still have passable defenses, though probably not quite 5/5 worth overall. That said, optimized builds can probably pass this threshold, and I would say that outside of dedicated tank builds that sacrifice damage for durability, ranged builds are almost always innately second best just because of kiting and ranged shenanigans.

So, long story short, even though I derailed the thread a bit, ranged DPS probably shouldn't be in the number one spot. Even fairly easy to build and generic ranged damage builds like any random Inquisitive or the sorely in need of an update Arcane Archer can do highly competitive damage while eschewing the risk of trading hits regularly. I think ranged is perhaps overperforming, and definitely not in need of buffs. The idea that ranged should be the holy grail of damage is not really valid- if you look at the three elements of a character build, ranged builds almost fundamentally have a huge durability advantage that comes from shooting at things instead of going toe to toe. I certainly think dedicated, non-support ranged builds should do good damage, and I don't necessarily like some of the changes like the Improved Precise Shot nerf (which disproportionately impacted already poorly performing builds instead of actually addressing the brokenness of additional damage dice on Inquisitive). That said, I do think melee could use a bit more love than it's had recently, even with progress in the right direction.

[Loholt-UK]

Is it just me, or have any other ranged builds noticed that the melee's are now crushing content?

I'm just asking because while running R-10's last night, I would click NHB....and before I would fire a shot, everything would be dead.

I know everyone playing melee were screaming for changes, but I think just like the hammering of ranged builds, Inquisitive in particular that were so overpowered...running last night I watched a Melee in the portrait end fight with Strahd...And, he was crushed (in seconds) before I even fired a single shot at his ugly mug. Even on my best (in R-10) I was unable to solo the portrait fight. And somehow my Inquisitive Xbow user is overpowered?!?!

Maybe I'm just having sour grapes. But if the complaint that ranged inquisitive builds were waltzing through content, SSG should take a hard look at what the changes you have made have wrought.

It's my opinion that it's not all ranged builds. I played an Inquisitive and after the nerf I could still compete. Then melee got a buff and I could no longer compete as an Inquisitive. I built an Alchemist thrower and I can now compete again but it is definitely the melee who hold the crown. The balance between Alchemist thrower and melee is ok, a little weighted to the melee side but not game-breakingly so but the nerfs to Inquisitive mean that the Inquisitive tree isn't worth buying unless you want to roleplay steampunk.

Melee got a buff which made them good, Alchemist was introduced with a ranged option that is viable, Inquisitive got a nerf that made them useless in comparison. This is what SSG call "balance" when it is usually, and certainly in the case of Inquisitive, knee-jerk overreaction.

[TheMaxpower]

The original post is spot-on, IMO. I am seeing melees do over 1 million points of damage, frequently, and destroying R10 content. Had SSG just left Inquisitive alone, today it would be on-par with, and no stronger than, the current builds for Sorc, Alchemist, and yes THF melee. Please return Inquisitive to its original form, the form that people paid for. And please stop over-reacting with the nerfs. Nerfs will happen naturally as you introduce more powerful stuff.

[Alttab]

Melee is frontline, they should be a little bit stronger. Every time I play, I see them get hit the most.

[Zites]

I was not jealous. And yes I was with Cetus during that fight. I was just pointing out that the xbow builds I used Pre Nerf could NOT shatter the portal like what I witnessed. And my builds were called OP. As a "run of the mill" player, over the last day I have been shouted at, reticuled, and generally worked over with statements like the above, and some of the following statements:

Ranged should NEVER have the DPS output of melee.....Why? Because your safe at range (and that's the ultimate defense)...I say balderdash. Content has proved time and again that they can get to me no matter where I am inside the dungeon. Also, that it is inherently harder (and therefore must be rewarded) to run up to a mob and swing a sword -VS- fire from range. Why? Because the mobs hit back? I get hit too.

I didn't primitively start my boost 2-3 secs be4 the fight started...Why? Oh, because of the NHB EF nerf (my mistake...realignment to bring it in balance). Since the nerf, I have wasted countless boosts or had my boost severely reduced in an attempt to predict when the fight will start.

The "burst" DPS of ranged far out performs melee DPS....How? I'm not sure one shot from Hunt's End can qualify as "burst" DPS.

At any rate, I was wondering if other Xbow guys were feeling the same sour grapes that I felt. I withdraw my complaint. Melee is wai.

Flame on.

hey souless just wait till the new range specific REAPERS come out than you will really BURST

[devashta]

I was not jealous. And yes I was with Cetus during that fight. I was just pointing out that the xbow builds I used Pre Nerf could NOT shatter the portal like what I witnessed. And my builds were called OP. As a "run of the mill" player, over the last day I have been shouted at, reticuled, and generally worked over with statements like the above, and some of the following statements:

Ranged should NEVER have the DPS output of melee.....Why? Because your safe at range (and that's the ultimate defense)...I say balderdash. Content has proved time and again that they can get to me no matter where I am inside the dungeon. Also, that it is inherently harder (and therefore must be rewarded) to run up to a mob and swing a sword -VS- fire from range. Why? Because the mobs hit back? I get hit too.

I didn't primitively start my boost 2-3 secs be4 the fight started...Why? Oh, because of the NHB EF nerf (my mistake...realignment to bring it in balance). Since the nerf, I have wasted countless boosts or had my boost severely reduced in an attempt to predict when the fight will start.

The "burst" DPS of ranged far out performs melee DPS....How? I'm not sure one shot from Hunt's End can qualify as "burst" DPS.

At any rate, I was wondering if other Xbow guys were feeling the same sour grapes that I felt. I withdraw my complaint. Melee is wai.

Flame on.

You still waffling here? Game has moved on, TR into something viable other than the same old inquis. Tons of people who only played casters for years (including me) because of self-heals and other factors, have TRd/rolled new toon into so many different kinds of builds. I bet you never played a ranged or inquis in d&d, jumped on the bandwagon here when it was OP and now crying - get over it.

[Arkat]

I am seeing melees do over 1 million points of damage, frequently,

Suuuuurrrre you are.