U51 Early Preview: Epic Feats, Destiny Feats, and Legendary Feats Changes

[Qlumsee]

Wow, you've taken a complicated system and made it more complicated. I know you don't play monks and want them out of the game, but in the meantime, Where is EIN?

[jetster11]

Basically Everything My Build uses to thrive and survive is gone from the trees or is only available at level 30.


I

[Edwinge]

None of the benefits of the Epic Past lives are changing, with the exception of the ratio of Past Lives to Fate Points. This ratio has been increased, meaning you earn more Fate Points for each Past Life. Everything else is exactly the same.

Since spheres are being removed, how will the epic past life feat toggle portions be restricted? Right now it's one per sphere can be toggled on. If there are no spheres, how will they work?

[Stormraiser]

The one extremely clear message from 4 pages of feedback is this:

Do not have the T5 abilities be only at level 30.

Right now, heroic leveling mostly follows a fairly set level band, of +2 bb. So you may typically see mostly level 10, 11, and 12 in one group for a level 10 BB quest. Epic leveling is much more spread out and you'll often see level 20s, 22s, 25s etc in a max 26 level quest. This is not a bad thing, and it's because there isn't as much power gain from level 22 to say level 24 or level 26, which is mainly due to epic destinies being fully accessible at level 20. Gating abilities, will further hinder this, in an area where many consider low level epics fairly tedious and boring and will further drive a wedge in epic group, something that is suffering as is. Please listen to the feedback.

Maybe put up a poll of when people think T5s should be available.

[GramercyRiff]

You really do need to give out more CC options for melee. That's pretty much it and all there is. Melee has to have varied powerful options that neutralize enemies. The population of this game just simply does not facilitate having a balanced party most of the time for those not in decently sized active guilds.

[Eme]

Reads like someone trying to sabotage the game

[Baahb3]

Will this change affect some builds? Yes, definitely. However, if a build was only being held up by its access to one of these two feats, it wasn't an especially good build to begin with; and again, it's still available to any build that wants to get it out of T5 of those Destinies. It's our hope that this new system has good, accessible abilities for most (if not all) builds, and ideally you'll find a good fit in this new system somewhere to fill the role left by these feats.

How do you justify this flat out being removed from every melee class that does not use a physical stat for hit and damage?

Paladins, Bards, Monks, Sorc/Wizard Eldritch Knights?

[Tobril]

Please consider adding critical chance to some combination of Epic Spellpower and/or Scion feats.

Add feats to every epic level or give some sort of choice instead of just "finish" when visiting the epic level trainer.

[VinoeWhines]

First of all I think it's great you want to re look at things and make them better, appealing and pretty neat as build concepts, and I applaud the devs for that very much. It's rare that this game has been able to grow and change and have a player base that can support the changes.

Here is the dangerous line though that you have to be very careful to not cross. Removing certain parts of the game that have been already baked into the player community for a long time. Epic Destinies have been this community that needed some fixes, but not certain removals of abilities that have been staples to many builds.

Here's a thought, how about keep the existing Epic Destinies, but put it in this new Enhancement Tree setup, that way all of us don't loose the AOE's, Special Feats, Abilities, and Insta-Kills we were doing fine in. Add the Stat's in STR,DEX,CON,INT,WIS,CHA in the Cores(+2STAT)instead of just removing them completely.(why take away important parts of builds, stats are more than just DC's it helps with skills, feats, enhancements and saves.
What is the point of nerfing our abilities. Just add to them if anything not take away.

Example to stop doing: We are gonna chop off your arm, but! we are gonna give you this adapter that will let you punch at things without feeling it. (our arms were used for more things than just punching, we use it to hold things in our other hand, it helps us carry things that are important). Stop taking away critical things and in return giving us something that we don't need. Improve or fix an ability or feat.

Dire Charge, Mass Frog, EIN, Consume, and Shadow Manipulation can be places in T4 or T3 trees in Multiple trees(Maybe Gated by Classes/Fight styles); each Tree should have their own form of CC, Damage avoidance, and Insta-Kill ability tied to that Tree. Damage by Ranged, Melee and Casting per Tree respectively as well.

Example 2: Shadow Dancer (old version) build "charges" to be able to use a active attack, charges stack up to 3,5,7 times. (Nerfed to: No more charges devs said to cumbersome, and instead increased the cooldown to be usable maybe once or twice per dungeon).
Current Shadow dancer was nerfed with longer cooldowns, which hurt but was doable with better scaling.
So was old ED-Shadow Charges to cumbersome(Consume: 2 minute cooldown) then? but "charges" are no longer cumbersome for new style?

Now they propose to COMPLETELY want to remove:
1. Shadow Manipulation: Very Important aggro magnet usability to starting a fight. For what? What is Better At This Tier?
2. Consume: A form of Implosion that would help when in trouble and about to get ganged up on? For what? What is Better At This Tier?
3. Dark Imbuement: An AOE reach in Melee and AOE splash damage when ranging. For what? What is Better At This Tier?
4. Executioners Strike/Shot: Only a 35% chance to instakill a target is gone? For what? What is Better At This Tier?

What on earth is the reasoning of removing 5, yes FIVE, with Meld into Darkness changes in this proposed Epic Destiny Tree change.
How has this tree improved, when loosing those four major abilities, let alone loosing Stats in Int, Dex as well, proposed to be a better ability.
If you don't want to waste the right side bar with stats, like I said put them in the cores; even costing an extra point if someone wants to enhance the cores as a multi-selector option to add a stat to a core.
But do not, don't take away a crucial part of a tree, just to "change it up." I have been playing ddo since I bought the boxed game from the box store COMP-USA an installed it on the PC. And watched the game loose things, it didn't need to. This will be a game breaker for many people like us who have spent allot of money and allot of time, years in investing in this game and class builds.
Why remove these things. Add to them or give hard choices from old to new, but don't take away major points to this Epic Destiny for the sake of changing it up.

Give everyone rogue skills, and cleric skills and make everyone the same build is what you are pushing along.
Whatever happened to ddo: A Fighter was a Fighter. A Cleric was a Cleric. A Caster was a Caster. A Rogue was a Rogue. A Ranger was a Ranger.
For those that wanted to multiclass, that was ok.
Introducing a new class = great.
Now the new dev team wants everyone all inclusive.
When I want a haircut, I go to a Barber.
When I want a choice of cut meat, I go to a Butcher.

Why can't your friends be your friends, your workers, be your workers and your family be your family. - Ed Truck

I really hope you add to a Epic Destiny and not remove and kill off abilities we are using very often and constantly.

I play in Reaper 10 and these abilities are mandatory. What is wrong with that?
Please flesh out a build as an example of what a good build is suppose to look like.
Reaper was introduced for the longtime player base that wanted a challenge in difficulty, we shouldn't be loosing abilities that will grossly affect how we are able to stay alive and complete quests; it already boxed us in, in having to kill 10 mobs to get reaper XP, which for stealthy players goes against the style of play of what a stealth player is all about.


Have a nice day, and thank you again for your time.

[SoVeryBelgian]

Shouldn't Scion of Water add Transmutation at least? Seeing as many Ice Spells / Vials use it as the DC school?

Or maybe I didn't read it right... hum


The change for Mass Frog makes sense to me, but I know Dire Charge was a universally used feat

[Elixxer]

Scion of Shadowfell

• Weapon and Unarmed attacks heal you for 1d6 Positive damage, or 1d6 Negative damage if you are Undead.

I'd advise changing this portion of the feat to something that can hold relevance in reaper. As it stands, this type of healing does nothing inside reaper quests.
So like, in what situation do you want a player to use this? (it's possible I missed an update that changed this, if so please let me know, but my statement is true from previous tests)

The neg crit dmg buff is nice but it's still a nerf compared to the old Scion of Fire feat (not even mentioning the lack of defenses)
Now I'm not against nerfs but this aspect of the feat really should change so it's not turned off upon entering reaper, because all the other scion feats don't have this weakness.

[zooble]

Draconic + other caster trees
+30% Spell Crit Damage to all spells - Current
+0% - New

Scions
+25% Spell Crit Damage to all spells - Current Scion of Fire
+20% Spell Crit Damage to a single element - New Scions

Epic Spell Power
+0% - Current
+10% Spell Crit Damage to a single element - New

Total:

+55% Spell Crit Damage to all spells - Current
+30% Spell Crit Damage to a single element - New

Which equals:

-25% Spell Crit Damage to your primary element
-55% Spell Crit Damage to heals and secondary elements


Now on its own it's a straight nerf. Even more so considering there are dual-element abilities in Primal Avatar and loss of some spell crit chance. However, with the DC gains, it's like all Sorcs are being shoved into "Magister mode" where they lose almost all the Draconic Spell Crit Damage for a lot of extra DCs. Good? Bad? It's the new norm in 51.

[Stravix]

Draconic + other caster trees
+30% Spell Crit Damage to all spells - Current
+0% - New

Scions
+25% Spell Crit Damage to all spells - Current Scion of Fire
+20% Spell Crit Damage to a single element - New Scions

Epic Spell Power
+0% - Current
+10% Spell Crit Damage to a single element - New

Total:

+55% Spell Crit Damage to all spells - Current
+30% Spell Crit Damage to a single element - New

Which equals:

-25% Spell Crit Damage to your primary element
-55% Spell Crit Damage to heals and secondary elements


Now on its own it's a straight nerf. Even more so considering there are dual-element abilities in Primal Avatar and loss of some spell crit chance. However, with the DC gains, it's like all Sorcs are being shoved into "Magister mode" where they lose almost all the Draconic Spell Crit Damage for a lot of extra DCs. Good? Bad? It's the new norm in 51.

Without being able to see Draconic at all, how do you figure that all of these nerfs are happening?

[mr420247]

They said there removing all spell crit multipliers from eds epic feats so that is a huge nerf across the board

LGS might still work or get the hammer later on who knows but good luck trying to kill epic bosses with no ED abilities and hammered spells at 20

Of course that is 1 way to make warlock dps suck less in epics lol

If they do all that they should at least add Double cast for dps spells

[Cernunan]

Without being able to see Draconic at all, how do you figure that all of these nerfs are happening?

New EDs will give no spell critical chance.

Here

[slarden]

Draconic + other caster trees
+30% Spell Crit Damage to all spells - Current
+0% - New

Scions
+25% Spell Crit Damage to all spells - Current Scion of Fire
+20% Spell Crit Damage to a single element - New Scions

Epic Spell Power
+0% - Current
+10% Spell Crit Damage to a single element - New

Total:

+55% Spell Crit Damage to all spells - Current
+30% Spell Crit Damage to a single element - New

Which equals:

-25% Spell Crit Damage to your primary element
-55% Spell Crit Damage to heals and secondary elements


Now on its own it's a straight nerf. Even more so considering there are dual-element abilities in Primal Avatar and loss of some spell crit chance. However, with the DC gains, it's like all Sorcs are being shoved into "Magister mode" where they lose almost all the Draconic Spell Crit Damage for a lot of extra DCs. Good? Bad? It's the new norm in 51.

As a long-time caster that built both DC and DPS builds it seems they want to all casters to be generalists rather than specialists. Prior to U51 there were 4 prevalent build styles:

Max DPS with Draconic and Scion of the Plane of Fire
Max DC with a DC scion + Magister
Exalted Angel for self healing and a little bit of everything
Unyielding Sentinel to plod through dungeons slowly but safely

DPS casters lose the DPS you mentioned and gain +14 to universal DC and +17 to any school where they pick a tier 3 speciality. A secondary focus of necromancy suddenly becomes viable for almost all casters.

DC casters potentially lose some DC and gain 30% crit damage to their primary damage type (illusion, conjuration, evocation only). In most cases DC casters won't lose much if any DC when epic resilience is factored in.

For a caster with a one-piece LGS 35% their base crit damage is 265% excluding class boosts (100% base + 100% std crit damage boost + 35% LGS + 30% Epic Power and Scions). So assuming a 70% crit chance you have 1*.3 + 2.65 x.7 = 2.155 compared to 1*.3 + 2.9x.7 = 2.33 with the extra 25% crit damage for a dps loss of 7.5%. If you were a build using empyrean magic that would have been 1x.2 + 2.9 x.8 = 2.52 for a dps loss of 15.5% dps 0 so arguably empyrean magic is a bigger dps loss for builds impacted.

From a purely solo perspective I think a 7.5% dps loss for a gain of +17 in support DCs is probably a winner - what I mean by that is that boss fights will take a little longer but the rest of the dungeon is likely cleared faster due to better use of utility spells and net net it's a win. From a grouping perspective in R10s it shouldn't matter because group dps will still crush R10s after this change.

Casters have continued to become marginalized in raiding as 8-9 roles are dps and caster dps is insufficient for dps if a group is pushing difficulty. I hope as part of U51 they provide some significant boosts to single-target dps with destiny abilities, feats, whatever so we can bring our casters to raids to fill dps spots.

[soulaeon]

@ Cocomajobo

A suggestion about adding additional abilities.
DDO already has a ridiculous amount of clickies and micromanagement. I noticed that the "builders" and mantles really just muddle everything else we have to manage. I would recommend focusing on streamlining, which seems to already be happening in some cases.
Why not add the builder effect to already existing SLA? 1. They have their own cool-down; 2. everyone already has them; and 3. SLA selection generally aligns with class choices.

[Haphazarduk]

Please don’t forget Apothecaries! Perhaps scion of Shadowfell can give +4 to Conjuration DCs as well? It’s already difficult to justify being in Verdanite versus Pyrite due to the Conjuration DC bonus in the latter.

Hap

[Cadic]

I am curious about the +skills change. Is there something replacing our lost skills as we level? I know it's not a huge loss, but it does suck for tanks to lose 10 intimidate, or trappers to lose 10 to all their trapping skills as an example.

[Drachmoril]

Will this change affect some builds? Yes, definitely. However, if a build was only being held up by its access to one of these two feats, it wasn't an especially good build to begin with;

Another perspective: Dire Charge "holds up" every melee build in the game, because Dire Charge is one of the few ways a melee player can survive in difficult content (mid-high reapers). I don't know what else a melee player is expected to have in their "build" to make it good, if not one of the few tools they can access for reliable crowd control. Dire Charge does not just prop-up "bad" builds; it's used by everyone.

Dire Charge should not be sidelined as an ability that "players can invest in if they choose to," as if Dire Charge is anything but necessary. It has now gone from a necessary feat, to a necessary T5 investment. This reduces the diversity of builds - even "good" builds - that can participate in endgame reaper content.

For an ED pass that seems to focus on build diversity and universality, I'm confused as to why we wouldn't encourage the build diversity that Dire Charge provided, in its apparent propping-up of "bad builds."