U50 Preview 1: Endgame Itemization Adjustments

[Singular]

Betrayed and bitter both apply to me.

I was talking to a long time in game friend last night. He reminded me how many nerfs I've gone through and that we have adapted and he is not wrong. But what I told him in response is that I am just tired....

I could be playing right now, but why? If SSG is just going to gut it on a "nuke it from orbit" scale, why bother? Why send good money and good time after bad???

That's kind of how I'm feeling. I was wondering about this because on the one hand, adjusting powercreep is good for all kind of reasons. I'll be a lot easier for the devs to build content with standardized loot, and a lot easier to see potential errors (i.e., force multipliers that are too strong) before implementing them.

On the other hand, this blanket change pulls back the curtain, exposing the hamster wheel for what it is: time wasting and ultimately pointless. Whatever shiny you're chasing because you spent enough time to figure out what items are best for your build, there'll be a better one soon and yours might be rendered useless by balance changes. Are there three upcoming updates that introduce level 30+ content? Don't buy the first two, wait till they're all out and farm the last.

But, whatever, that's the nature of MMOs.

[jakeelala]

what will max Dex be after this? wondering if it's another disproportionate thrower nerf (lower max Dex extra missiles)

[jakeelala]

also this whole thing seems legit and like a good idea, I might come back to try it. Not having to obsess over min maxing gear as much would make me way more able to play with limited time to grind

[FableFan]

I haven't been able to read the entire forum thus do not know if this has been covered, but what are the numbers going to be for parts such as insightful and other such benefits for stats from level 29 gear? I have been using the same Ravenloft gear and build for quite some time, barely reaching 84 INT total at cap with that including 4 from reaper points, 2 from the festive augment, 1 from heroic Litany of the Dead, 2 from the gnome and drow past lives, 8 from tome, the legendary phasecloak and legendary ring of nightfall, with +2 from being gnome, +6 from enhancements in gnome and harper agent, and I might be forgetting something still.
For that matter, will save requirements get lowered accordingly for players as all these benefits are lowering?
Also, my damage got to be severely dropped going from U48 to U49, dealing (at best) 1/3 the damage per hit on average and losing what benefit I could use of manyshot on top of that, while I have never seen above 3K damage on vorpals or anything with the build, rather the typical hits prior to U49 were below 500 average (with rare crits) and now I'm averaging a bit below 100 (with rare, same proportion, crits) at the same level with absolutely no change to my build nor gear. If I'm not mistaken, it has always been the deepwood sniper users that got the big numbers, and I don't like that tree. Is there any plan to get the damage better fixed? I can see wanting to reduce power of top tier players, but that's at the cost of making average tier players worse as well. I'm far from the only one with this type of issue with Update 49.
Next, has there been any plan to make poison trap damage more consistently occurring (some are able to be reflex saved against all the time, some only part of the time, and some I never noticed it with) and have some sort of reduction (like how most elements have buffs to reduce the amount of damage received)?
Finally, are there any plans for getting the 64-bit client out from being beta and adding DirectX 12 support?

[therobb]

I haven't tried playing on Lamannia yet but wanted to post an overview of the impact to my character, as an example. Here are some key stats for my character, self-buffed sustainable buffs only, in reaper mode. Live server vs. U50 on Lamannia.

With this update, I'm hoping mobs will be balanced to make the game, R10s specifically, somewhat harder than before. From the looks of all these nerfs, mobs will need pretty considerable debuffs to breakeven to the old level of difficulty.

[Rykka]

what will max Dex be after this? wondering if it's another disproportionate thrower nerf (lower max Dex extra missiles)

Im thinking that it'll be about 130-135.

Though if you are depending on easier to get items and running with a 80-100 now you'll be in the 60s to 80s after the update. This more of a nerf to common players than max stat players.

[Iriale]

I haven't been able to read the entire forum thus do not know if this has been covered, but what are the numbers going to be for parts such as insightful and other such benefits for stats from level 29 gear? I have been using the same Ravenloft gear and build for quite some time, barely reaching 84 INT total at cap with that including 4 from reaper points, 2 from the festive augment, 1 from heroic Litany of the Dead, 2 from the gnome and drow past lives, 8 from tome, the legendary phasecloak and legendary ring of nightfall, with +2 from being gnome, +6 from enhancements in gnome and harper agent, and I might be forgetting something still.
For that matter, will save requirements get lowered accordingly for players as all these benefits are lowering?
Also, my damage got to be severely dropped going from U48 to U49, dealing (at best) 1/3 the damage per hit on average and losing what benefit I could use of manyshot on top of that, while I have never seen above 3K damage on vorpals or anything with the build, rather the typical hits prior to U49 were below 500 average (with rare crits) and now I'm averaging a bit below 100 (with rare, same proportion, crits) at the same level with absolutely no change to my build nor gear. If I'm not mistaken, it has always been the deepwood sniper users that got the big numbers, and I don't like that tree. Is there any plan to get the damage better fixed? I can see wanting to reduce power of top tier players, but that's at the cost of making average tier players worse as well. I'm far from the only one with this type of issue with Update 49.
Next, has there been any plan to make poison trap damage more consistently occurring (some are able to be reflex saved against all the time, some only part of the time, and some I never noticed it with) and have some sort of reduction (like how most elements have buffs to reduce the amount of damage received)?
Finally, are there any plans for getting the 64-bit client out from being beta and adding DirectX 12 support?

Insightful is +6, quality is +3, resistance is 10, Insightful spell focus mastery is +2, on Lshattered onyx insightful resistance is +4 and insightful dodge 6% (but on live there are legendary items with higher numbers of these stats), MRR/PRR is 36, and so on.

I've played a couple of quests in r6 on lamma and haven't noticed that my toon's saves are any worse than normal, but I haven't been very attentive to that either.

[sweez]

I've noticed a lot of "this will be good for new and returning players" sentiments in this and the ED rework thread, and as someone who has returned to DDO after not touching it for almost 9 years - I have to wholeheartedly disagree. The way itemization was done for Sharn and FW specifically meant that I could catch up to people with tons of past lives and reaper points much, much quicker than someone in the same position will be able to once these nerfs happen. When you have +21 to a casting stat and bigger bonuses to various spell powers, all the additional points you can get for that stat/spell power from past lives/completionist/reaper tree aren't as drastic of an increase. With the way stats on items are getting squished, suddenly +3 to all stats from class completionist or points spent in reaper trees carry MUCH more weight, and if anything it will be harder, not easier, for new & returning players to contribute in difficult (whatever that means for you) endgame content. This will possibly just fragment the already very, VERY small playerbase (on my server I am often more than 1% of total server population in EU hours, and closer to 10% at cap), which is just a bizarre thing to do at this point in DDO.

It also meant that I could focus on running those 2 packs to get geared, which again is a huge positive for a new/returning player who will now potentially be overwhelmed with gearing choices, and who will be disincentivized from focusing on a smaller number of quests which they can then learn properly, and after that slowly branch out to other content for more niche items. I get it that *in theory* you want as many people running as wide as possible selection of content, but I'd argue that for new/returning players it's in praxis better to focus on a selection of packs/quests and learn them properly, instead of just running around all the content and grabbing what they can where they can while not really having the time to do a deep dive and properly learn the quests.

[Iriale]

I've noticed a lot of "this will be good for new and returning players" sentiments in this and the ED rework thread, and as someone who has returned to DDO after not touching it for almost 9 years - I have to wholeheartedly disagree. The way itemization was done for Sharn and FW specifically meant that I could catch up to people with tons of past lives and reaper points much, much quicker than someone in the same position will be able to once these nerfs happen. When you have +21 to a casting stat and bigger bonuses to various spell powers, all the additional points you can get for that stat/spell power from past lives/completionist/reaper tree aren't as drastic of an increase. With the way stats on items are getting squished, suddenly +3 to all stats from class completionist or points spent in reaper trees carry MUCH more weight, and if anything it will be harder, not easier, for new & returning players to contribute in difficult (whatever that means for you) endgame content. This will possibly just fragment the already very, VERY small playerbase (on my server I am often more than 1% of total server population in EU hours, and closer to 10% at cap), which is just a bizarre thing to do at this point in DDO.

It also meant that I could focus on running those 2 packs to get geared, which again is a huge positive for a new/returning player who will now potentially be overwhelmed with gearing choices, and who will be disincentivized from focusing on a smaller number of quests which they can then learn properly, and after that slowly branch out to other content for more niche items. I get it that *in theory* you want as many people running as wide as possible selection of content, but I'd argue that for new/returning players it's in praxis better to focus on a selection of packs/quests and learn them properly, instead of just running around all the content and grabbing what they can where they can while not really having the time to do a deep dive and properly learn the quests.

Actually that is not true, in both cases it depends on the importance that devs give to having PL bonuses. In both cases it is a d20 roll, so the efficiency range is exactly the same whether the numbers are larger or smaller, and it all depends on how the numbers of the npcs are against which you contrast the dice rolls.

So it doesn't matter if the items stats that are +14 or +21, in the end the bonus from past lives translates to: devs consider this to be a bonus and adjust the npcs against toons with no past lives (this means that those who have past lives have it much easier and those who do not have a lower but feasible hit probability), or if the devs adjust the npcs with the idea that the characters must have past lives (in this case, those who have past lives have a percentage of success similar to the second in the previous example, while those who do not have a low or zero probability of success).

Basically this. It is a d20 roll. It does not admit many variations. Past lives behaves the same way with higher or lower stats, as long as the npcs are well adjusted.

Another thing is the PRR / MRR (yes, those stats that do not belong to D&D). There the impact of past lives is more noticeable with low numbers. But the best thing is that you try for yourself what your survival is like, before they close lammania.

What I have noticed is that Sharn now has a difficulty more comparable to the rest of the content. In live, Sharn and Feywild have a noticeably higher difficulty, with obscene saves and fortification and npcs that do more damage than in other Legendary packs. It is good that the content is homogenized in difficulty; it was ridiculous that two packs had a much greater difficulty than the rest. And this does help returning / new players, because that difficulty was a barrier for them. I have not tried feywild, but I hope it is similar to Sharn.


PS: assuming things turn out like Lamma in the end,and the devs tune up some nerfed things, I don't think your character will suffer from the change. Now, if it is true what many players say that the devs have said in a stream that they are thinking not to adjust the saves and other npcs stats because they think that reaper is too easy, throw in the towel and look for another game, because directly they're kicking out new players. And to the veterans, we are already fed up with nerfs lol. If they do this, then yes it will be my goodbye to the game. I'm sick of these devs.

Devs, you can't make those sharp turns after showing the changes in lammania, that's why we don't trust you. Can you confirm if this is true?

[Jerevth]

Scorched Nerf.
We've been demanding it for any class we don't play when it outperforms our own build.

SSG is being transparent and provided the means for getting and sharing a lot of information.
They're laying out the plan and responding to some reasonable criticism.
(I wish we had more time to check things in Lamaland- I've been trying to download the lamalauncher for 24 hours now...) Thanks to those who provided so much information.

U50 could pave the way for more robust packs and expansions that avoid power creep and might even avoid the OP release/subsequent Nerf of enhancement trees.
But...
-Keen: I hope there can be a happy medium found. I like the concept of a keen weapon bypassing fort on a twenty- not even the need to confirm crit. But it should do more standard damage if we're calling it Keen.
-I don't like casters losing such a big chunk of crit potential but we'll see how it pans out, overall.

I'd like to see more build diversity but the ground work needs to be laid out before anything meaningful can be developed further. A benefit of this update, if done well, is fewer future nerfs. (The Nerf to end all Nerfs). Once this is done, those classes that have been sucking wind can be pulled up to the standard- Warlocks, among others.

Should SSG see some monetary gain for particular sales? Sure. It's a business, and they leave other avenues open to achieve the same ends, albeit more time-laden. (DDO points, Favor rewards, etc) They don't have to.
If done well, I doubt we'd mind paying for particular things, because we'll enjoy the overall game more (fewer nerfs, more balanced development) and the next big thing will be more for flavor and fun than buy-it-before-they-nerf-it!... (See signature- maybe I'll get to change it after this.)

SSG is giving a lot of what we've been asking for over the last year. I think it sucks that things are being changed so radically, but overall I can't see much I would do differently to achieve what we've been demanding. I'm trying to look at the big picture. DDO would benefit more if it doesn't try to emulate the faddish games- it's more subtle, requires more thinking. It's not a PvP or Team V Team. It requires cunning, guile, memory and planning, not the Floss dance.

Do I like it? Not necessarily.
Do we need it? Yes. It's necessary to establishing balanced means for development.

Gird your loins, tighten your Depends and grow up, kids. The ratio will be about the same for damage in: hp out. The big damage numbers that generate a Pavlovian response are a gimmick, a trick, an illusion, so long as the ratio stays the same.

But, again, I think those who ground out the rare items with superior stats (eSoS and others) should be able to keep them. It took a huge amount of time, dedication and patience. Let them remain as they are. Anything that gets upgraded, though, should fall into the guidelines established. How many of the S/S/S uber items are even in play at this time?

[scut207]

Given the Double Nerf from Orbit EDs and Itemization I'm concerned about more about monster scaling than I am the nerfs.

I like that gear will be more valid for longer as the gains aren't as severe. Running to 29 in ML15 sets + mishmash gear isnt going to feel so horrible providing the monsters scale proportionally with the nerfs.


Seems like it may affect Spell casters a little more than melee.

Augments change is good.
Gear set for 20 is good.
cutting the power creep is good, but only if it translates 1:1 with mob HP and power reduction.

Gating the tiers in EDs in U51 by level is pretty terrible idea imho. I think if you have points you should be able to spend them where ever. Gate the points not the tiers. Players that have ground out the 48EPLs (I havent, but those that have) deserve to have a pretty big power jump in epics.

[rabidfox]

I know there's been dev chatter about adjusting AC & HP bloat for mobs, is mob outgoing damage going to be adjusted too (especially on the legendary side of things)? With u50, players have less HP and defensive stats at cap combined with my heals having less crit/spell power. Damage at times (on live) is already in the 1-shot/2-shot range where a player needs enough HP to not get 1-shotted but will often die on a 2nd hit-- so as a healer, I've got be able to bring them from near dead to full constantly. This was already challenging (when mixed in with bits of lag and dry spell fires) but now people who were just above the 1-shot range may be under it from the stat crunch on gear (and if they do survive, some of my heals may not be able to get them back up fast enough at times- sometimes if I don't crit heals people die).

[jamkriz]

Disclaimer

Everything seen on the preview server, Lamannia, is not final and is subject to change or removal before live release.

Named Items found within Legendary content will be adjusted and normalized to values appropriate to their minimum level. This means that an item found within Ravenloft will match the power level of an item found within Sharn, or Feywild, or any of our other current Legendary content.

As always, we look forward to your feedback!

Is this why some of the sets from Legendary LoB/VoD/MA are losing effects?

Eg. On Lam, The Mantle of Suulomades set no longer has any Sneak Attack Dice and the Fastidious Fabricator set no longer has the 10% artifact bonus to AC

If intended, maybe there should be explicit details seeing as it's not reducing a value but is a removal of the effect completely.

[nobodynobody1426]

Lot of testing and number crunching was done yesterday / light night and the adjustments are a little out of whack.

Melee DPS builds lost 20-25% depending on build.
Ranged DPS builds lost 18-23%
Elemental casters lost 30-40%, these guys got it the worst for DPS.
DC casters didn't really lose anything, possibly a 5% lower land rate depending on saves and optimization level, these guys made it out the best.
Healers lost ~50% power, they got decimated.

Elemental casters are those relying on Spell Power and Spell Crit to kill enemies through magic damage. The combined effects of such a large reduction to total spell power and spell crit end up effecting them disproportionately then the rest. Further more the Healing Amp reduction combined with the Spell Power and Spell Crit reduction resulted in most non-Heal spell heals being nuked hard.

My feedback would be to buff up the Spell Power formula while keeping the Lore and HAmp values intact, should bring the reduction to elemental casters and healers back inline while also letting them do a universal nuke to monster HP to maintain a neutral power result after u50.

[mikarddo]

Lot of testing and number crunching was done yesterday / light night and the adjustments are a little out of whack.

Melee DPS builds lost 20-25% depending on build.
Ranged DPS builds lost 18-23%
Elemental casters lost 30-40%, these guys got it the worst for DPS.
DC casters didn't really lose anything, possibly a 5% lower land rate depending on saves and optimization level, these guys made it out the best.
Healers lost ~50% power, they got decimated.

Would you mind posting the details on how you did the testing?

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

homogenization is a great way to bore players and erode the player base

and nerfing gear that players have earned and used and played with for 3, 5, 10 years
is mind-bogglingly bad.

we all sign the ToS and legally cannot stop you - but it is, as one would say, bad form.

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

That's kind of how I'm feeling. I was wondering about this because on the one hand, adjusting powercreep is good for all kind of reasons. I'll be a lot easier for the devs to build content with standardized loot, and a lot easier to see potential errors (i.e., force multipliers that are too strong) before implementing them.

On the other hand, this blanket change pulls back the curtain, exposing the hamster wheel for what it is: time wasting and ultimately pointless. Whatever shiny you're chasing because you spent enough time to figure out what items are best for your build, there'll be a better one soon and yours might be rendered useless by balance changes. Are there three upcoming updates that introduce level 30+ content? Don't buy the first two, wait till they're all out and farm the last.

But, whatever, that's the nature of MMOs.

exactly and well said - it is the entropic force that kills MMOs ironically. If they just created content and stopped trying to balance a hallucination - we all might have fun. I've said it before Dungeons and Dragons was never balanced - it was not meant to be.

Wizards had access to a wish spell, a time stop spell.
Clerics could contact a Deity
Fighters could build a stronghold and rally an army
Thieves could murder and loot entire regions of the map single handedly

it is a game about heroes. Heroes are inherently unbalanced because they are anomalies. They exist OUT of the norm. We are here to play adventures with heroes because Dungeons and Dragons is about that epic story.

I have no idea what why or where they think this will go - it is the most afraid for this game I have been since Turbine decided to shut it off.

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

A superb intention , my impression is that players who are active on the forum are often such min-maxers and they come to the forum to tell everyone DDO is too easy (for them) and the developers seemingly felt driven to make DDO even harder then.
And those min-maxers maybe don't even have the intention that DDO has to be harder, it is even possible they only want to tell everyone they are good players .
The next thing is that if you increase for example the monster saves so that no ability works anymore it feels, of course, harder at the first glance but actually it is only unfair and in addition, you lower the quality of DDO with that.
In the extreme, you give monsters fortification that high that no player can bypass it, saves that high that you land any ability only when the monster rolls a 1 and so forth and at the end, you have a DDO where nothing else works other than beating a monster down with your weapon and hoping the monster is dead before your hp (and heals) ran out.
The same basically for red-named boss monsters, even when I love DDO, honestly the boss monsters' fights are usually much less interesting than fighting a normal champ monster, it only needs more time with less fun.
And I know, to raise the difficulty level and increasing the quality of DDO at the same time is difficult but not impossible, a good example is the introduction of vengeance reapers in my opinion.
But making DDO harder by lowering the quality (making DDO poorer) is, in any case, the wrong way and it is good to see you now going to correct that.

It is not the only issue in U50 with items but I'm not happy especially with the implementation of Spell Resistance in DDO.
Of course, it is hard to tell for a player because I cannot read the minds of the developers (what a surprise ) but my impression is there is no fundamental conception in how in DDO spell resistance is implemented.
I don't want to go too much into the details (e.g. ridiculous high monster CR or that monsters get in reaper unfairly high spell penetration) but with this change, it gets even worse for everyone who tries to get a working SR score on his character.
A lot of items have their spell resistance nerfed in U50, e.g. the Epic Phiarlan Mirror Cloak is now down from 30 SR to 21 SR and you completely removed SR from the Infested Armor (and the epic version).
Of course, it would be better when SR gets a real overhaul in DDO but for now, it would be good if you at least not nerf the existing items even more.

And I'm not even sure if you actually know how SR works in DDO when I see the following fact:
In a nominal level, 6 quest drops an ML 6 item that has 9 SR (Shadowshimmer Cladding) but if you would use this armor in the same quest you fight casters with CR11 and this means that your Spell Resistance on you outfit would NEVER work.

I know you can have different opinions on how high the success rate on spell resistance should be, but if I see you implement an item in that way it tells me you either have no idea about SR in DDO or at least something has gone horribly wrong here even if you basically should know it better.
It is of course not the perfect solution but SR on items should at least scale with the ML of the item like Spell Resistance (spell).
Remember, usually, you acquire an item in a quest that is made for your current character level, and the items you get should be not only sufficient for this quest level, usually, you also play even higher quests. (in this case, you get an ML6 item but play an effective level 8 quest).
This leads by the way to another fundamental design flaw in DDO, the conception of ML items is fundamentally wrong in my opinion and demands correction but I also don't want to go into details here.

And just as a reminder if you not sure how SR works in DDO you need an SR Score of 20 plus the monster's CR for a 100% working Spell Resistance unless the attacking monster got additional spell penetration.
And this means for my example IF the Shadowshimmer Cladding would provide 18 SR (and not 9) this only means your SR works only with a 35% success rate in the quest where you get that item which is in my opinion obviously FAR from being overpowered.
And even if I don't want to go too much into the details in my opinion a player should have access to 100% working SR at least against non-boss monsters.
Remember even 100% working SR gives in DDO "only" similar immunities like a Warforged or undead character has and for that reason also 100% working SR is for sure not overpowered.

Chaka - I agree with you 100% - I am a player who builds all of my toons around spell resistance - I really enjoy it; I managed to adjust to the nerf to it they did a while back. If they do another where they make it unattainable to have a working SR that would likely kill my desire to play 99.9%. I'm sorry I'm such a one-trick-pony, but its what I like - I've always liked drow, I always play drow, I want my drow to have a high SR as they should in the lore - its a RP thing for me, and greatly enhances my fun factor. I get made fun of by min/maxers who look at my builds, but I don't care. I do not want SR nerfed or removed from DDO. I am in a panic that it could be because I honestly don't know what I'd do then, but I do know it would delete my desire to play.

[Quikster]

For clarity, monster Armor Class and Fort were absolutely adjusted, and not by a little bit, either - every monster in Legendary Tier 2 content lost 100% Fortification. That being said, an early look has shown us that we may need to go much further on adjusting Armor Class. And that's okay, we're perfectly able to make more tweaks and changes to make monsters at our endgame feel fair. This is why we're so grateful that people took the time to copy their endgame characters to go try it all out (or spent time playing content with new characters made on Lamannia). The more feedback we get, the better our changes are going to feel. Players have a huge range of stats and we want to make sure that everyone is having a good time, not just our super-engaged and talented min-maxxers who will overcome any challenge no matter what

Any plan to adjust DC checks for social skills? Those seem to be the same. Not sure about traps though.

[Vorachtin]