Why did you guys nerf my Ravenloft gear?

[SuperNiCd]

I haven’t been on the forum for a while. There’s probably a 25 page thread about this somewhere, so - apologies for what is probably a repeat.

I logged in today to find my Ravenloft gear nerfed. Why did you do that? Please don’t use “balance” for an answer because the game balance has always been out of whack and there’s plenty of lower hanging fruit if you really want to balance things.

I’m a good customer. I’ve purchased all your expansions.

I ran all those RL quests many times to pick up the various belts. And now you nerf them.

I’m going to quit spending money on your laggy game and find something else to play if you keep up this kind of nonsense.

Thanks

[yfernbottom]

I haven’t been on the forum for a while. There’s probably a 25 page thread about this somewhere, so - apologies for what is probably a repeat.

I logged in today to find my Ravenloft gear nerfed. Why did you do that? Please don’t use “balance” for an answer because the game balance has always been out of whack and there’s plenty of lower hanging fruit if you really want to balance things.

I’m a good customer. I’ve purchased all your expansions.

I ran all those RL quests many times to pick up the various belts. And now you nerf them.

I’m going to quit spending money on your laggy game and find something else to play if you keep up this kind of nonsense.

Thanks

If you mean the RL belts, yes "balance." Druids and casting artificers were way OP and needed to be reigned in.

[SuperNiCd]

If you mean the RL belts, yes "balance." Druids and casting artificers were way OP and needed to be reigned in.

Yes, RL belts.

I don’t play either of those classes so where does that leave me? Needlessly nerfed. Maybe they should have nerfed the class trees rather than the gear if some classes needed reigning in.

If gear is OP, they should be able to figure that out in the first few days or weeks, probably even on Lamma. Not years later.

Not a happy customer.

[grudgebear]

Henshin staff monks and barbarians with handwraps in Grandmaster of Flowers were too good.

So these belts had to be dropped.

It's better this way.

[kanordog]

barbarians with handwraps in Grandmaster of Flowers were too good.

I think they were not good enough and SSG wanted to adjust every better build so "handwrap barbs" will be the top tier dps.

[Oxarhamar]

Welcome back

[dennisck2]

Welcome back

I actually lol'ed at this. Perfect. Thank you.

[Lonnbeimnech]

Hey, you're late for that belt nerf.
But if you stick around you'll see the nerf to crossbow users real soon.

[Tsutti]

Yes, RL belts.

I don’t play either of those classes so where does that leave me? Needlessly nerfed. Maybe they should have nerfed the class trees rather than the gear if some classes needed reigning in.

If gear is OP, they should be able to figure that out in the first few days or weeks, probably even on Lamma. Not years later.

Not a happy customer.

Yfern was being ironic, druids and artis sucked for casting. It was sorc and alch that needed reigning in, and I think they overdid alch nerfs (a couple of the various nerfs they made would have sufficed I think) but the belts were more than just that. They regretted adding Enhancement spellpower because, like the bows they're adjusting in the coming bow revamp, the belts vastly limit what kinds of items they can ever make in the future. They needed to add enhancement spellpower on new gear if they want to make any belts casters might actually use.

Instead, they took the spellpower out of the game because it also caused aoe nuke casters to be too strong. Some people complained about their healers being nerfed as an effect of this, the devs said something along the lines of healers being too strong right now too and I didn't figure the belt change would actually affect them that much but I haven't played a healer and they're saying it affected their healing, so guess I'll take their word for it.

But yeah, basically it: 1) made dps casters as a whole too strong, contributing to the fact that a well built sorc or alch (may need past lives for the literally part to apply) was capable of literally one shotting entire encounters in r10; 2) it limited what items they could make. There may have been other reasons as well /shrug


Oh here's the thing about them being OP: when they came out, casters were not good. Another case of them overdoing changes imo was when they buffed casters by both decreasing the damage reduction for high reaper and also revamping a lot of arcane spells. Once again, I think just revamping the spells would have sufficed (though in this case I doubt just changing reaper damage scaling would have been enough), and the combination of both made nukers OP. I think the introduction of alchemist was more incentive for them to change something(s) because then there were two classes capable of pretending to be solo until the boss no matter what difficulty they're running, but alch was even worse in some ways because while sorc probably had slightly higher damage (I've heard varying opinions on that) alch also brought tons of utility and much stronger cc to the table, eliminated spellpoint problems, and also brought a very strong instakill (the single target Frog spell they have).

[janave]

Henshin staff monks and barbarians with handwraps in Grandmaster of Flowers were too good.

So these belts had to be dropped.

It's better this way.

+1

Ninja Monks using Stealth could complete dungeons by staring into the upper right corner of the screen for 15 seconds. The belts had to go.

[devashta]

I haven’t been on the forum for a while. There’s probably a 25 page thread about this somewhere, so - apologies for what is probably a repeat.

I logged in today to find my Ravenloft gear nerfed. Why did you do that? Please don’t use “balance” for an answer because the game balance has always been out of whack and there’s plenty of lower hanging fruit if you really want to balance things.

I’m a good customer. I’ve purchased all your expansions.

I ran all those RL quests many times to pick up the various belts. And now you nerf them.

I’m going to quit spending money on your laggy game and find something else to play if you keep up this kind of nonsense.

Thanks

People were completing R10 raids and developers had to do something to stop it. Whether this change achieved that, I will leave to the people who are still completing R10 raids

[darkniteyogi]

Its because of the Arcane Archer tree. The devs were afraid that the bonus spellpower would make them almost playable.

[KoobTheProud]

The RL belts got nerfed because they didn't belong, giving a type of spellpower not available elsewhere in the game and for only some of the damage types. This was the right move.

The question is why it took so long to do this?

Lately the nerfs seem to be coming fast and heavy as SSG tries to clean up some of the power creep. This is also the right thing to do. However if it is just being done so different power creep can be sold, well that's a completely different story.

Ideally SSG figures out where power levels should be and then stops releasing totally OP stuff that drives and distorts the meta into an unfun, unrecognizable mess. It isn't all that hard to release content in a way that 40% of the players aren't all jumping onto one of a few builds that then dominate play for a year+. Finding this sweet spot for content release is one of SSG's biggest tasks, alongside the bug clean ups and lag fixes and all.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

I never had this belt.

So I'm not missing anything and won't rage over a nerf, either.

[Valerianus]

The RL belts got nerfed because they didn't belong, giving a type of spellpower not available elsewhere in the game and for only some of the damage types. This was the right move.

The question is why it took so long to do this?

Lately the nerfs seem to be coming fast and heavy as SSG tries to clean up some of the power creep. This is also the right thing to do. However if it is just being done so different power creep can be sold, well that's a completely different story.

Ideally SSG figures out where power levels should be and then stops releasing totally OP stuff that drives and distorts the meta into an unfun, unrecognizable mess. It isn't all that hard to release content in a way that 40% of the players aren't all jumping onto one of a few builds that then dominate play for a year+. Finding this sweet spot for content release is one of SSG's biggest tasks, alongside the bug clean ups and lag fixes and all.

lgs had the same bonus and they came a lot of time before ravenloft belts. that kind of added spellpower existed for years and years.

also the meta about e.g. paladins and throwers? do they need spellpower to do dps? ravenloft belts had nothing to do with meta.

also, powercreep stays the same, the characters who had less spellpower cause less geared less developed got the hit, not the super powercreep minmaxer fans. if my sorcerer with pre-nerf 1000+ spellpower (and i am not a superpowercreep fan, you can do better) lost 200, it's a thing, if someone with 700 lost 200, it's a totally different thing.

but clean some powercreep, yes, some, to some extent, also fixing the fact that it was not covering all kind of spellpowers. so instead of adding them, they decided to remove the whole concept. ok. i understand, think about a future archmage pass...with no "force belt". not that interesting is it?

the problem is that sometimes they trap themselves into these kind of problems. good ideas, something new, something that you want to farm and aquire, flashy and cool! but that in the long run turns out bad for the long term plans, conflicting with other things.

[RebelMaverick]

But yeah, basically it: 1) made dps casters as a whole too strong, contributing to the fact that a well built sorc or alch (may need past lives for the literally part to apply) was capable of literally one shotting entire encounters in r10;

About a week ago I ran Heroic Wheloon on R4 (I think - It could have been R3 or R6, def wasn't R5) with a full group and I actually asked the Sorc at what Reaper setting he stopped one-shotting every single mob with Firestorm.

His answer was that he was casting spells at Lvl 26 which didn't really answer the question.

The rest of the group was basically just being carried by this Sorc - It's a great way to get XP but is it really "fun" for anyone other than the Sorc?

But the problem isn't one piece of gear - It's that there's such a vast range of power between players and characters in DDO!

[Loholt-UK]

I never had this belt.

So I'm not missing anything and won't rage over a nerf, either.

That's nice. There's a famous poem by Martin Niemöller that talks about this attitude and why it's the wrong one.

[Oxarhamar]

That's nice. There's a famous poem by Martin Niemöller that talks about this attitude and why it's the wrong one.

Yeah not at all what that peom are about.

[SuperNiCd]

Thanks for the thoughts. In my opinion, the whole thing stinks of something.

Either SSG doesn’t understand the dynamics of balancing their game (seems unlikely).
Or they are balancing at the top end without much regard for those who don’t play there (maybe - I don’t know).
Or they are trying to get me to buy the latest expansion’s power creep (quite possible). I did, the day it came out, btw.

If R10 is the issue, then they could certainly scale up at the top end of the game. I already face giant rat trash mobs that could devour anything in Deities and Demigods from PnP in difficulties well below R10. So the utter ridiculousness ship has already sailed there. Just throw in some new types of aliens types that don’t even fit the theme. The neon green with purple speckles “if it sees you, you die instantly” reaper that has 50 million HP. Problem solved. Why not.

If certain builds are an issue they could surgically nerf the trees or class granted feat stacks.

But to nerf something like this so deeply, years later - something they clearly put in because they felt like a boost was needed in that area. Just feeling like “I’ve been had” here. And this on top the game being barely playable due to the ongoing lag issues and freezing on load screens is really making me question whether I want to spend more time or money on it.

[RebelMaverick]

Lvl 24 Arti/Rogue running with a Lvl 30 Paladin.

EE Wiz King, OoB, Chains, ADQ1

Only reason running EE because the Paladin was willing to basically carry me through them.

I Still had tonnes of deaths. EE is not easy just because the best players with the best gear and builds can make basically any difficulty look easy doesn't mean those difficulties are easy. I wasn't running EE under level, I was at level for Sands at 24. The Paladin was of course massively over level and he didn't have any problems but if I got aggro I was in trouble which rather harms my ability to contribute rather than simply pike.
The problem with gear is that the best players get it the easiest and some players get carried through multiple runs just to get that gear whilst others are left behind.
If I'm soloing I can't run EE at all, I have to run EH or more realistically EN, which drastically reduces my ability to earn xp at a fast enough rate and get that required gear.
If I want to set up a group I can't go IP because I have to set up that group for a difficulty level that I'm not capable at (yet} and I run the risk of getting players who want to run at even higher difficulties where I cannot contribute at all. Some players might like that they become "The Man" and carry other players through but how do you think those other players feel when they can't contribute at all. Maybe it's ok for a quest here or there but not for every quest you run for days, weeks or even months on end until you reach a point where you can actually contribute.
I did at least get all the traps so that's some contribution but other characters don't have that capability and if the player who's carrying you through can do that themselves they probably will before you can even get to the boxes.

The Devs don't seem to understand that when nerfing the best players they're nerfing everybody and those best players don't really need that extra bonus enhancement in the first place as proven by the many naked runs we've seen over the years.
I personally think that what this game needs more than anything is set maximum stats that you cannot go above no matter what gear, enhancements etc. you have.
2nd Edition AD&D AC had a maximum (well minimum as it went down not up} where in the Monster Manual -12 was the lowest AC any monster had.
A Great Wyrm Gold Dragon had the best AC in the game at -12, a Great Wyrm Red Dragon had -11 AC and The Tarrasque had an AC of -3
Players were supposed to max out at -10 no matter what their stats.
Maybe that's something the Devs should think about with Spellpower. Should any caster have Spellpower above 200 no matter how much gear that caster has?
Or if 200's too low well the Devs could bring the Monsters' HP down a bit or they could make it 250 max or 300 max, whichever works best.

Gear should be more malleable where a player who knows the maximums can say well I don't need this +22 Con item as this +10 Con, +10 Cha item will get me to the max and also boost my Cha to allow me to not have to carry this +18 bluff item for the once in a blue moon when it's needed.