U50 Preview 1: Endgame Itemization Adjustments

[Stravix]

TL;DR / Balance Summary

I think you guys are disproportionately nerfing DPS casters more than other groups.

DPS caster (DoT) as an archetype would need to exist for that to be possible.

That said, considering that DPS casters do less DPS than burst casters, I wish that would get addressed first.

[Zoveride]

This is true. But the greater lesson here is that people need to STOP purchasing content just for access to gear. People need to STOP purchasing raid bypass timers. People need to STOP astral shard rerolling chests. Its a complete waste of money and effort because its been clearly demonstrated there is a willingness to nerf what you paid (sometimes twice) to acquire into near obsolescence.

So stop people. Buy the content if you are going to enjoy those adventures but don't spend twice (content price + astral shard reroll or bypass timer). Its not worth it.

Absolutely. I learned the lesson with the big nerf to longbows not too long ago. I have not and will not purchase any more raid timers or spend money to buy power creep content. If I happen to have DDO points from playing, cool, I'll pick up some content but with previous nerf and proven intentions to further nerf and/or change anything on a whim, it is now on players to smarten up.

Fool me once, shame one you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.

[arminius]

Ah, yes, blame their anti-player decisions on the elite guilds. You should just come out and call them all "cheaters and exploiters". You would have a job at SSG quicker than Lamania comes down.

Well, I mean, first of all, I was in one, before it got very famously banned. And that's exactly what they did, and exactly how they found every major exploit before anyone else, and exactly how they perfected the exploitation of the exploit in the most efficient and risk-free manner.

Again, it worked out because it was perfectly cost free, so that if you, say, moved key ingredients from your ingredients bag to another location, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, for 8, 12, 20, 30 hours at a time - as a hypothetical, mind you - you didn't ever risk losing them for real.

And I didn't say top level guilds are all cheaters and exploiters. I would say that top level guilds have the resources, strategy, tactics, and motivation to do this, and they have demonstrably historically done it. This IS where the major exploit discovery has historically come from.

[Merrillman]

TL;DR / Balance Summary

I think you guys are disproportionately nerfing DPS casters more than other groups with regard to damage output capability.

Pre-Update 50 Meta Top Tier DPS:
1 melee is worth 2.2 top tier DPS casters
1 archer is worth 1.5 top tier DPS casters

Post-Update 50
1 melee is worth 2.5 top tier DPS casters
1 archer is worth 2 top tier DPS casters

CONCLUSION (See data further below if interested)
Dmg Casters: Lose 21% spell crit chance and 13% spell power (33% overall dmg loss)
Melee: Lose 20 dmg per hit (from deadly + stat adjustments), but gain from mob's fortification loss (Estimated net 10-20% damage loss)
Ranged: Lose 20 dmg per hit (from deadly + stat adjustments), but gain from mob's foritification loss (Estimated net 10-20% damage loss)

Solution Suggestions:
- Leave our spell power alone! You already took 25% of our damage with the loss of the ravenloft belts
- Give us access to more mana so we can stay in fights that look like they will be lasting longer
- Stop picking on damage casters! I don't want to swing a stick to do relevant damage, that's what sports games are for!

------------------------------------------------

Here's the data I used for this logic:

DMG CASTERS
Crit Chance Nerf:
Exceptional: -5%
Equipment: -10%
AutumnSet: -1%
BoundRingSet: -5%
Note: 21% less effective damage (assuming 1000 spell power and 100 spell crit dmg)

Spell Power Nerf:
Equipment: -77
Insightful: -37
Quality: -15
Total: -129 Spell Power
Note: 13% less effective damage (assuming 1000 spell power)


MELEE
Doublestrike nerf:
Enhancement: -8%
Insightful: -5%
Note: -9% dmg'ish at cap

Stats nerf
Equipment:-8
Insightful:-4
Quality:-2

Note: -7 hit/dmg

Deadly nerf:
Competence: -7
Insightful: -4
Quality: -2
Note: -13 dmg at cap


RANGED
Doubleshot nerf:
Enhancement: -5%
Insightful: -3%
Note: -5%'ish dmg at cap

Stats nerf
Equipment:-8
Insightful:-4
Quality:-2
Note: -7 hit/dmg

Deadly nerf:
Competence: -7
Insightful: -4
Quality: -2
Note: -13 dmg at cap

Other data to validate my conclusion:
I used to be able to kill R5 Gardak in 12s, and in u50 it takes me 16s over multiple attempts. This experiment lines up nicely with the decrease in damage I would have expected from the paper math.

THIS THIS THIS!! You’re killing ALL my characters ability to survive and be useful! I pretty much ONLY play DPS caster. This destroys the game and all the usefulness I have taken years to grind up to. LEAVE CRIT ALONE. LEAVE SPELL POWER ALONE.

[Thar]

Keen moves from one of the most desired effects into a waste of an effect slot.

Either reconsider the removal of the W's or change what you are replacing the W's with at least something desirable.

Perhaps a Small but desirable unique debuff. Or a scaling hemorraghing effect or...

this...

a 5% chance of an effect is garbage (on 20) on it's own and the other half of the power is something most people would have already taken as a feat in heroics

[Carpone]

THIS THIS THIS!! You’re killing ALL my characters ability to survive and be useful! I pretty much ONLY play DPS caster. This destroys the game and all the usefulness I have taken years to grind up to.

Sorcerers and alchemists are fine through low reaper, from level 1 to 30. They only fall off in high skulls, and SSG doesn't balance around R10.

[elvesunited]

TL;DR / Balance Summary
Other data to validate my conclusion:
I used to be able to kill R5 Gardak in 12s, and in u50 it takes me 16s over multiple attempts. This experiment lines up nicely with the decrease in damage I would have expected from the paper math.

Well, yes, this is to be expected. You're a level 30 with 29 level gear beating up on a boss monster from a level 24 quest. Only the monsters and gear from legendary content are getting nerfed. Gardak ain't legendary but the gear you are using is.

For my favored soul caster I'm losing about 13 DC. I think I read that legendary saves are going down a little more than that so I should be okay with DC casting. Probably losing about 25% of DPS. But as long as legendary monster defenses drops by that amount I also should be fine. Not a big fan of losing all those spell points though. ( I think other casters are hit worse than me )

I get why this is happening. The key will be balance. Don't hit one type of characters harder than another type of characters. Don't make legendary content significantly harder than it was before. If weapon users start crushing casters in quests or raid wipes increase significantly then you know you've got a problem.

[Tilomere]

Can't tell if you're invoking Poe's Law or not? you think the game can handle further splitting
the population over another 10 (or more) levels?

Stat consolidation of top end characters and monsters doesn't split the population, it brings the population together. Maybe this helps illustrate:



Besides, on live right now I have no qualms walking into legendary reaper even solo on a level 20 melee, ranged, or caster, or completing high skulls in a group with a level 20 gear set, so it's not like those added 21+ stats are even necessary.

[Arctigis]

Stat consolidation of top end characters and monsters doesn't split the population, it brings the population together. Maybe this helps illustrate:



Besides, on live right now I have no qualms walking into legendary reaper even solo on a level 20 melee, ranged, or caster, or completing high skulls in a group with a level 20 gear set, so it's not like those added 21+ stats are even necessary.

I'd say nice theory, let's see how it actually pans out. Also, I meant adding 10 more character levels (30-40). IMO
this will thin out the already low playerbase further and make PUGs more difficult to find.

[Iriale]

Ok, I have played solo several quests on r6 with my wizard, and I have to say that the change is not bad. The saves seem correct. The spell penetration seemed correct too. The spell dps is not bad in relation to the new life of the npcs, although a little low (the mana has been shorter than in live, I would like a little better spell dps or more spell points). I would say that here there has been a nerf in relative efficiency, although not a big one.

What I have noticed worse is the reduction in healing amplification. On r1 it is a nerf that does not matter (it is not noticiable in relation to the damage you receive), but on r6, where the damage is more intense and faster, the worse healing is ****. Devs, take a look at this, please.

My wizard is triple all, 120+ reaper points etc. I have yet to test my weaker alts, but at least for my main the changes are not bad.

(Of course, this is with the current EDs, and as they are designed for u51, there is going to be a considerable nerf... I hope the design of the EDs for u51 improves a LOT)

[Qlumsee]

I imagine Elite+ Legendary Tempest Spine will be played a lot less than it already is.

[Iriale]

I imagine Elite+ Legendary Tempest Spine will be played a lot less than it already is.

I don't think so, the changes are not as drastic as for that.

Although devs need to lower the str needed for that lever xD. And that they lower it a lot, it is very tiring that there are so few toons that can do that lever. In comparison, the int check is ridiculously easy.

[Tilomere]

I'd say nice theory, let's see how it actually pans out. Also, I meant adding 10 more character levels (30-40).

If what Lynnabel says holds, we won't have the extreme stat difference we see now between 20+ players until level 54:

A +22 stat item is, behind the scenes, scaled for a character that is level 54. So when we get to level 54 in DDO, yes, we'll get to +22 stat items again.

[Rull]

Note that currently on lammania, the old raid items seem to be outperforming the newer raid items sometimes.
It seems like for example the Molten Silver Gauntlets, at ML28, get deadly 11, while the raid items from later packs get deadly 10 (while also being worse because ML29).

Dumathoin bracers (ML26) also seem to have higher stats than I'd expect for level26. Yes it's raid loot, but it seems to have comparatively higher stats than other ML26 items, compared to how the ML29 raid items compare to ML29 non-raid items.

Maybe the dryad and the demigod doesn't have as high of a mysterious raidplus as the ravenloft raids have? ravenloft raids had 20-stat items compared to 19-statted nonraid items, but dryad has just 21-stat-items like the rest of feywild. If you then equalize it, the result looks wrong.

[Arctigis]

If what Lynnabel says holds, we won't have the extreme stat difference we see now between 20+ players until level 54:

I'm talking about having characters spread 1 - 40 instead of 1 - 30. Unless you expect
L20s to be grouping with L35s?

[GoldyGopher]

I am pretty sure the Development Team views most of my post as pretty arduous. I never am truly happy with their plans and wish they do things a little different. When Lamannia is up I go out of my way to play test the proposed changes and give it the old college try before posting my displeasure.

Shockingly I found this change really didn't bother me.

Give it a second I am sure a couple devs have fallen out of their chairs and may need help getting up.

I played a DPS Melee, a Assassin Rouge and a DC caster on Lamannia for a good six hours and really can't complain about my offensive numbers on Hard, Elite or Reaper 1. I have a minor compliant about the loss of ~300 Hit Points as I lost 12 Con on all three builds and some number of false life (HP) and the multiplier(s) was in effect.

My Melee build and my Rogue Assassin took approximately 20% longer to complete quests; regardless of quest level or difficulty. It didn't feel that much longer nor did it seem like I was doing anything different other than paying more attention to my HP the entire time as I was down 300 plus HP from usual on live. Meaning there was a lot more casting of self healing to keep myself full. Even in R1 I never got hit for that 800,800 (double hits) that are my doom on live. I lost 400(ish),400 a few times, so maybe that was balanced too.

My DC caster is another story. In some quests I was fine, in others it seemed like more saves, but I couldn't tell you how many more. I zipped right through one quest as fast as my melee normally does. And in another quest it took a long time as everything seemed to make their saves. I want to add I had already been considering adjusting his gear and current Epic Destiny layout to get a point or two of DC improvement, so it may not be the best min/maxed comparison.

I would like to see one adjustment to this. I wish named loot was 1 power level higher (stronger, above) Cannith Crafted or max Random Generated Loot (and Raid Loot/Minor Artifacts 1 power level higher than that. For a Ability Stat as example at level 30 - Cannith or Max Random Generated +13, Named Loot should be +14, and Raid Loot +15. I know that is slight increase in power over what the devs are currently planning, but to me it make sense and makes grinding for the named gear more appealing. Otherwise just grind out a crafter and use double augment slot items to equip you character with far less gear tetris.

I also hope that in the near future named items from levels 20 to 28 is normalized as their power is all over the place and many pieces I would normally consider using are under powered.

They one thing to watch, at least I think, is a character's defensive stats, AC, HP, Dodge. I think builds like Monks or many of the glass cannon builds have the potential to smacked around pretty hard. My Monk lost 30 some points of AC (wisdom and dex) and 350 HP (con and False Life) and 10% Dodge, but I wasn't fully able to test on enough of the more difficult content.

[Merrillman]

Sorcerers and alchemists are fine through low reaper, from level 1 to 30. They only fall off in high skulls, and SSG doesn't balance around R10.

Nah. People don’t seem to understand that Everyone does NOT have unending time to spend on DDO. The time I already spent in years and in dollars just RECENTLY made playing reaper even doable. I don’t have umpteen past lives (hate the heroic grind with a passion) and I ONLY have epic completionist. It took near 5 YEARS of playing to start to get that by playing 2-3x a week. Almost no “weeks off” and we don’t use WIKI or other cheats to just blow through content. We like being clueless and actually figuring it out. So it took a LOT of effort and a LOT of money spent on shards, spell points, healing and packs to just be able to keep up a LITTLE with people who blow through heroic levels in a week. You get in a group and people expect you to know everything. It’s nonsense. I want to figure it out, without reading wiki and without cheating every “strategy” for every dungeon. So maybe I worked harder and took longer than most and maybe I’m pretty damned annoyed when they screw my purchases up. No, it’s NOT that easy to just do reaper. It wasn’t even easy to get robbed able to solo elite. No I don’t want to look everything up on the internet for “perfect builds” or whatever. I want to just play and not have everything I worked for disproportionally nerfed. So yeah. I’m ****ed.

[Rull]

Interesting topic by the way.

Augment Scaling - This change will mean that our revamped Augments and Augment system are comparatively more valuable than they were before. Our Scaling augments (aka non-named Augments) currently stop at level 28, and will now represent a larger chunk of numerical power compared to their usage before this change.

That is not really a good thing. It's nice if augments can be used to fill some gaps in your gear, but they should have a slightly lower value (across all levels) than actual gear.

Smooth Leveling - Our long term goals with DDO involve providing a smooth and exciting leveling experience across all levels and difficulties, not just from 1 to 20. This change allows us to provide a smoother leveling curve by removing the large jump in power at level 29.

Call it smooth, I call it monotonous. The jumps in power at 19->20 and at 28->29 were good for the game, they made a distinction between heroic, epic and legendary and each was slightly different game from the other.

Future Proof Design -One of the biggest benefits of this change is how future proof it is. We will only need to do an endgame adjustment like this once, and then it's largely done and we can continue onwards into the future with a better end game.

I remember when the cap was 20 and there were quest packs with no new items for many builds. That wasn't great for endgame, so I'm curious to see how you will tackle it this time around.
The current way things were done with a stat jump to 19 was slightly ridiculous, but I wouldn't call the new system intrinsically better than when you DO allow for difference between item level and minimum level.
I can imagine you stating 5 or 10 years from now that you have future-proofed the design by de-coupling those.


I'm not against these changes, I think they made a mistake 5 years ago when they went the current route.
But I think what you are doing is not an endgame adjustment. It's smoothening the 28-30 experience, which would otherwise have been weird with the vastly different power levels within the same levels.... but which is soon going to be not-endgame. For the actual endgame I don't think you'll be any better equipped.

[Anuulified]

Disclaimer

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

With Update 50 we are making some adjustments to curtail power creep within DDO's end game, focusing specifically on the power level of items at the level cap. These adjustments will change how you approach gearing, and will encompass both adjustments to player power in addition to content difficulty. We want to go into more detail about why we are doing this and what it means, and we look forward to hearing from you after checking things out on Lamannia.

Background Information

We have steadily increased the amount of power available in itemization in order to provide a sense of progression as our end game has matured. This strategy has resulted in two long term challenges, both of which we are here to address:

Challenge 1: Item power level increases over time as we release new content, and we progress beyond the item power level of older content at the same challenge level.

Challenge 2: As we follow along this system of progression, we in turn increase the difficulty of content to provide challenge. This leads to a situation where content meant to be played at a certain character level ends up with a wide range of difficulty.

With those two challenges in mind, we are aiming to equalize and reduce the power level of items found in end game content, and adjust the power level of monsters at end game to match.

Solution Part 1: Itemization

In summary:

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.

• This adjustment will pull the item values to more reasonable levels across the board, resulting in a streamlined curve that extends upwards from 1 to 30 with fewer jumps and tracks with both randomly-generated loot and Cannith crafted loot.
• This will not affect anything other than the named items found within legendary content and Cannith Crafted Loot that used the "Minimum Levels 31-34 Shards". Random Loot, Augments (named or otherwise), Items found within events, or anything else other than named items found within legendary content and Cannith Crafted Loot that used the "Minimum Levels 31-34 Shards" will be changing.
• Items will be adjusted in place without any necessary intervention on the player's part, to prevent the situation where legacy versions of items are more powerful than newly found versions.
• These items will continue to drop in the same place they currently do at the same drop rates.
• Items with crafted components, such as Slavers Crafting, will have their crafted components adjusted just like the statically set effects found on non-crafted gear.
• Set bonuses at endgame will have their numerical power adjusted to appropriate values to match our new goals for player power sourced from itemization at endgame.
• The +W bonus from Keen has been adjusted to instead provide complete fortification bypass on a Natural 20. Note: The fortification bypass isn't yet working in this preview
• Raid items and Minor Artifacts will retain their proportional power boosts to other items at the same level, and therefore will remain a step stronger than other items at the same level.

What this means is that the items you find at end game will be lower in item power than they were before, but are now evenly scaled across content packs. This means that an item found in Feywild will be equally as strong as an item found within Sharn or Ravenloft or the Dragonblood Prophecy, or any other Legendary content featuring level 29 items.

To provide some concrete context, this is where the numbers will likely end up at the current level cap. Also note that raid items and artifacts will be a few steps higher than what's shown here as well.



Solution Part 2: Monster Power

We have been increasing the power level of monsters found at the level cap as the power level of items increased over time, and since we are adjusting these items downwards, we will be adjusting monsters downwards to match. The most notable change with this system is the removal of the Legendary Tier system as it relates to monsters. A monster at end game will ideally be just as difficult no matter which dungeon it is found in. The removal of the Legendary Tier system will represent a significant reduction in the offensive and defensive statistics of monsters found at the level cap, which means that monsters will be much weaker than they were before. We are also removing the Epic and Hard Saves boost found on all Monsters across our Epic content.

Given that each monster in our game has different stats and therefore a different starting point, it is hard for us to tell you exactly where each number will end up, but we can give out some comparisons to help demonstrate how dramatic this change will be. For example, Monsters across all of Epics will have 6 fewer Saving Throws, and Monsters at Endgame specifically will instead have 16 fewer saves. This also does not include our current planned removal of Epic Resilience, which will remove an additional 6 saving throws, for a total reduction of 22.

Monsters will not just be losing saving throws. The Legendary Tier II buff corresponded to 150% Fortification Bypass, 60 Attack Bonus, and 10 Spell Penetration, as well as a whole host of other offensive and defensive buffs designed to make them hit harder and take more hits. We hope that our monster rescaling ends up making content feel more realistic and more accessible, and are able to do more adjustments if necessary.


Short and Long Term Benefits

We are compelled to make these adjustments for a large number of reasons, and we want to provide a few of the reasons today:

1. Content Pack Parity - This change will put all of the content packs at end game on the same item level scaling, which means that gear found within those content packs will be equally valuable numerically. This means that a large number of items that had previously been crunched out of viability are now able to be worked into gear sets without fear that you are settling for a subpar option.
2. Cannith Crafting Viability - This change will mean that if you have missing parts of your gear set, Cannith Crafting is now a more appealing way to fill those gaps, similar to its benefit at lower levels. It also means that we can dedicate more time to improving Cannith Crafting in the future, as its viability doesn't fall off as we approach end game.
3. Random Loot Viability - This change will mean that it is more likely that Random Loot will end up numerically viable for use at endgame. We don't generally expect established players to use Random Loot provided they have spent some time working on gear, but newer or less engaged players will now have more viable sources of power to select from.
4. Augment Scaling - This change will mean that our revamped Augments and Augment system are comparatively more valuable than they were before. Our Scaling augments (aka non-named Augments) currently stop at level 28, and will now represent a larger chunk of numerical power compared to their usage before this change.
5. Avoiding Difficulty Spikes - The adjustments of monsters at end game will help us avoid difficulty spikes, which in this case means content where there is no outward indication that it is more difficult than normal but in reality contains tougher enemies than in other quests at the same level. Our goal is to provide an end game in which everyone can contribute, but still encourage dedicated play and mastery, with a variety of options that reward a more challenging experience for those able to handle it.
6. Impact on Content Creation - Being able to use existing monster formulas without the need for additional and oftentimes lengthy one-off work makes it easier to stat monsters for dungeons, and that helps us spend more time polishing dungeons and doing cooler and better things.
7. Combat and Statistical Granularity – One of the game's greatest strengths is the granularity of numbers in its content, but working with larger numbers is generally more challenging than working with smaller numbers. We want to retain as much granularity as we can while making gear set math easier.
8. Smooth Leveling - Our long term goals with DDO involve providing a smooth and exciting leveling experience across all levels and difficulties, not just from 1 to 20. This change allows us to provide a smoother leveling curve by removing the large jump in power at level 29.
9. Future Proof Design -One of the biggest benefits of this change is how future proof it is. We will only need to do an endgame adjustment like this once, and then it's largely done and we can continue onwards into the future with a better end game.

As always, we look forward to your feedback!

Sounds like you are trying to erase the last 10 years of progression in a feeble attempt to keep content relevant (another form of cancel culture at its finest??). Just like Amber,you couldn't fix it so you break it into submission. Or Confront any foe, cant fix, so now it is a buff, or lag, so you break doublestrike or whatever is the excuse of the week. Start making challenging content, and stop trying to make playing the challenge.

[Singular]

Keen moves from one of the most desired effects into a waste of an effect slot.

Either reconsider the removal of the W's or change what you are replacing the W's with at least something desirable.

Perhaps a Small but desirable unique debuff. Or a scaling hemorraghing effect or...

The keen change is bothering me, too. I'm thinking the rationale for it is that adding a whole weapon dice is just too multiplicative for melee power. What about halving the benefit keen gives? Why scrap it altogether?