U50 Preview 1: Endgame Itemization Adjustments

[nobodynobody1426]

Yeah it's looking like they are rolling this into a planned nerf due to certain groups of players doing high reaper too much. The previous plan to bring both items and monsters down equally has been pushed off to just brining players down with a sprinkle of monster power reduction.

[slarden]

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.

As far as DC casters there is really no such thing with U51 forward. Elemental casters and DC casters can be effectively grouped together as "pure casters" due to caster ED homogenization and a new arcane warrior hybrid that use a mix of spellcasting and martial dps will be viable with the new ED system since DC casting no longer requires deep specialization.

Players will also need to tweak their builds and playstyle. For example an alchemist thrower probably doesn't use any dc support spells at end game today, but with U51 an alchemist thrower hybrid with wallwatch + magewright set + amber pendant will be more effective with mass turn to gold and other non-conjuration dc spells than either alchemist nuker or alchemist thrower can do today -by a very large margin - and they won't have to give up much dps to add top-tier spellcasting to the arsenal.

It makes sense to compare current builds, but we also have to look at new viable builds also to see how they perform which will take a huge amount of testing and likely can't be done until we are closer to U51.

My guildy did testing and noted dps might be down a little even when comparing player reduction to enemy reduction, but DC spells worked better and overall dungeon clearing was very comparable to now. This was not just looking at player numbers, but actually running a dungeon with at least partial monster reductions.

Yeah it's looking like they are rolling this into a planned nerf due to certain groups of players doing high reaper too much. The previous plan to bring both items and monsters down equally has been pushed off to just brining players down with a sprinkle of monster power reduction.

You are going to have to provide alot more than that. Every indication is that the devs intent is for this to be a stat squish where enemy and player power are reduced roughly the same. If you have information to the contrary you will need to cite it.

I do have a suggestion for the devs and that is to provide an npc that fills up our monster manual so we can actually compare at least monster hp to live.

[songswrath]

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?

i think a great replacement would be a greater keen feat option give back a +1w that way maybe with min BAB of 15

[Seph1roth5]

When people brought up reaper in the discord, asking if those monsters would be weakened too the devs said no. They seem a bit hesitant to lower monster HP across the board too, since it's been brought up a TON and there's just the usual "We may adjust it later" line.

IF reaper is a big problem, I don't see why they can't just make a separate buff/debuff. Like...they're already taking out legendary tier 2 buff from legendary quests. Just cut monster HP by (some %) across the epic board, and then give monsters in reaper quests a new buff that gives them HP. Would be nice if it scaled by skulls too.

It definitely sounds like many balances are aimed at the R10 crowd that thinks everything is too easy and posts their solo clears.

Devs, not everyone is a R10 juggernaut. There's a noticeable drop in damage dealt/taken in the last lamannia build. It wasn't HUGE or anything. But if every single mob now takes a few more weapon swings or another spell or 2, that adds up to an insane difference between what we're used to on live and the last lamannia build.

Much of our numbers feedback seems to have been dismissed as small/negligible.

Example: I questioned if monsters were going to lose some of (whatever intimidate checks against) since we're losing a lot of intimidate, and (not naming names) the devs thought it was just a difference of 2, because the gear is going down from intim+22 to 20 at cap. BUT, when I brought up insightful/exceptional/quality intimidate, and the loss of charisma and IT'S insightful/exceptional/quality there wasn't much budging.

Same with traps, I asked if those would be balanced since we're losing tons of skills. On cordovan's stream steel did acknowledge skills/traps (that youtube question was me!) might need work, but again, no idea. And steel had singled out possibly modifying raid bosses when it came to intimidate, which is nice but not really fixing it...

The problem is the r10 ultra high end crowd is going "Well I lost a ton of intim, but I still have 130 so I can't fail" and devs see that and think the balance is fine.

Tbf it's possible that's going to get changed, but it's hard to tell. The u50 feedback process definitely feels very different from the u51 one. It's extremely hard to tell if our complaints/suggestions are getting anywhere because we keep hitting the wall of "we'll discuss it with the team" and such. Whereas with u51 there was a ton of back and forth that felt like we were making headway.

[Son_of_the_South]

I expect some people will whine about the long overdue nerf to the massive stat inflation, but even greedy powergamers should be able to get behind having values be consistent across packs.

I am this greedy power gamer you speak of and I am ok with these changes.

[Quikster]

When people brought up reaper in the discord, asking if those monsters would be weakened too the devs said no. They seem a bit hesitant to lower monster HP across the board too, since it's been brought up a TON and there's just the usual "We may adjust it later" line.

IF reaper is a big problem, I don't see why they can't just make a separate buff/debuff. Like...they're already taking out legendary tier 2 buff from legendary quests. Just cut monster HP by (some %) across the epic board, and then give monsters in reaper quests a new buff that gives them HP. Would be nice if it scaled by skulls too.

It definitely sounds like many balances are aimed at the R10 crowd that thinks everything is too easy and posts their solo clears.

Devs, not everyone is a R10 juggernaut. There's a noticeable drop in damage dealt/taken in the last lamannia build. It wasn't HUGE or anything. But if every single mob now takes a few more weapon swings or another spell or 2, that adds up to an insane difference between what we're used to on live and the last lamannia build.

Much of our numbers feedback seems to have been dismissed as small/negligible.

Example: I questioned if monsters were going to lose some of (whatever intimidate checks against) since we're losing a lot of intimidate, and (not naming names) the devs thought it was just a difference of 2, because the gear is going down from intim+22 to 20 at cap. BUT, when I brought up insightful/exceptional/quality intimidate, and the loss of charisma and IT'S insightful/exceptional/quality there wasn't much budging.

Same with traps, I asked if those would be balanced since we're losing tons of skills. On cordovan's stream steel did acknowledge skills/traps (that youtube question was me!) might need work, but again, no idea. And steel had singled out possibly modifying raid bosses when it came to intimidate, which is nice but not really fixing it...

The problem is the r10 ultra high end crowd is going "Well I lost a ton of intim, but I still have 130 so I can't fail" and devs see that and think the balance is fine.

Tbf it's possible that's going to get changed, but it's hard to tell. The u50 feedback process definitely feels very different from the u51 one. It's extremely hard to tell if our complaints/suggestions are getting anywhere because we keep hitting the wall of "we'll discuss it with the team" and such. Whereas with u51 there was a ton of back and forth that felt like we were making headway.

Its actually going to be much worse than you speculate. Once the epic destiny pass goes live there will be less ability to hit those social skills you mentioned (not sure if trap dcs are an issue as well). Devs say difference of 2, my tank copied over to lam had 10 less intim than on live. Devs, you set the dc on elite Qaspiel to 173, and Elite LoB to 154. Most tanks arent hitting that on my server. So while my tank with tons of PL and reaper points will be fine, the rest can F off? Those DC checks need to be addressed. And if its difficult and a lot of work, that's too bad, you decided to do this stat squish, the least you can do is address these end game raids. It's like 3 bosses you need to change, get to work.

[mikarddo]

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.

As always, we look forward to your feedback!

I get the point. All items with the same MinLevel will provide the same numerical values with raid items being slightly better. This means all items across the board are "useful" which is good.

However, that is a two-edged blade. It also means that pretty soon anything new coming out wont offer anything to someone that already has a well mixed setup of gear. If the new gear offers nothing I do not already have - there is nothing to aim for, and thus less reason to run the new content after a few runs for the first time experience.

Like it or not, new gear being better than existing gear is a good part of what makes us run new content over and over. If the new gear isnt better and we already have old gear with the same stats with +mythic +reaper why should we run the new content much?

Basically, having more options with the same outcome may be good because it gives us options but it could just as easily be bad because it takes away the carrot to run at all as we have something just as good already.

I am curious how the Dev Team intends to handle that issue.

[Merrillman]

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.

Yup!! ALL I PLAY is DPS ELEMENT! Ruins the entire game for me, and for my group’s ability to survive, and destroys years and years and years of grinding and play. It is so disproportionate to everything I play it completely destroys the fun of playing DDO for me. The knock-on effect is that if I don’t play the group is extremely hampered as there are no other DPS characters in our group, and no one likes playing them but me. It ensures i will never open my wallet the way I did to spend on this game, and frankly, this game needs every dime it can get after 15 years and limited population outside our group and guild to group with. When we are on? Maybe 10-15 others on our server, TOPS. There is just not a tremendous player base and to do this to those people who spend the money to keep this game afloat is game breaking tor many. There is not ONE person in my group who doesn’t HATE what they’ve done to my character, who took YEARS to be able to really catch up and help the group in the way that it should. All the patience of people who had way more lives than me, who helped drag me along, healed the character and raised the character where I would never have been able to survive, just to help get me to a point where I am survivable at all in low reaper now is basically just a huge waste of time and slap in the face. Now the gap between they and I are even more stark, as all their racial AP, PL, completionists vs mine makes me even MORE relatively underpowered and basically useless all over again. You’re not just killing me, you’re “killing time” that we have to play, because we all have a limited window each night between family responsibilities and such that instead of two or three quests, we will be probably lucky to grind through one. By this, you destroy the fun, enjoyment, and drag out completions in a way that affects the whole group, not just me. RESTORE ELEMENTAL CASTER DPS. We’re getting really hosed. Please reconsider these draconian changes.

[xBunny]

What about: Keen and Impact add +0.1W per rank per natural multiplier but only on critical hits, not on all hits.

Keen V with a heavy pick would come out to +2W on critical hits

Keen V with a falchion would come out to +1W on critical hits

Sounds better than it is proposed by devs now. But would leave +w as it is - +2W on all weapons for keen V

[nobodynobody1426]

As far as DC casters there is really no such thing with U51 forward. Elemental casters and DC casters can be effectively grouped together as "pure casters" due to caster ED homogenization and a new arcane warrior hybrid that use a mix of spellcasting and martial dps will be viable with the new ED system since DC casting no longer requires deep specialization.

This is just wrong...

The difference between elemental casters and DC casters is how they kill monsters. Elemental casters require stacking spell power and spell crit on spells like Meteor Swarm, Fire Storm or Thunderstrike and can only afford to pump up one or two DC's. DC casters rely on spells that deal 100% of the monsters max HP and because they don't need to bother with Spell Power or Spell Crit, they can focus on a variety of DC's. Meteor Swarm vs Finger of Death type stuff.

[Taraborn]

Did a few quick and dirty calcs on the Keen change; I assumed 300 base damage at 200 MP for a raid greatsword with a x5 multi on 19-20. This gives 4500 damage on a vorpal hit vs 900 damage on a non crit, so an avg. of 180 extra damage per attack against mobs with 100% net fortification. The +2W does +78 damage at 200 MP on non crits, with a GS crit profile of 1.65 that is an avg. of 128.7 damage against 0% net fortification. Thus the new Keen outperforms the old 180 to 78 at 100% net fort., and the old does 128.7 to 0 at 0% net fort. I calculated the break point where the new Keen equals the old as 59% net fort for the GS, I also did the calc for a greataxe and got a 40% net fort break point. So the new Keen does well against heavily fortified mobs but will often do nothing. I think adding a few points of stacking Seeker damage would solve this, perhaps 1 point per Keen level, so +5 at Keen V.


Edit: It is actually 180 to 74.1 at 100% net fort, forgot the miss on a 1.

[Stravix]

Question, is this retroactive to all level 30 loot as well?

I ask mainly because of event items, like the crystal cove lvl 30 items, because if those are no longer just randomly worse than everything else, that would be great.

[Aelonwy]

They seem a bit hesitant to lower monster HP across the board too, since it's been brought up a TON and there's just the usual "We may adjust it later" line.

See that^ is exactly why my support and my confidence is hesitant and lacking. If they are going to rebalance OUR characters from gear to EDs they need to commit to rebalance everything about monster stats including HP and DCs on social skills, traps, runes etc.

There can't be any of this "well maybe if/when we get around to it" nonsense or its a two-faced nerf. It becomes entirely less about rebalancing the game appropriately and far, far more about slowing us down, and extending the grind. There is enough of that in this game. Too much already.

[Firebreed]

Quick question (haven't read the thread replies, sorry);

The chart shows that ML30 items will have better stats than ML29 items. Will the current named legendary items (Sharn, RL, Feywild etc) remain ML29 and thus have worse stats than the new Saltmarsh/SSS/ML30 event gear? Because that would be atrocious.

[Mininin67]

See that^ is exactly why my support and my confidence is hesitant and lacking. If they are going to rebalance OUR characters from gear to EDs they need to commit to rebalance everything about monster stats including HP and DCs on social skills, traps, runes etc.

There can't be any of this "well maybe if/when we get around to it" nonsense or its a two-faced nerf. It becomes entirely less about rebalancing the game appropriately and far, far more about slowing us down, and extending the grind. There is enough of that in this game. Too much already.

Their unwillingness to address these matters really speaks volumes IMO.

I have asked several times about heroics as Epics is not the only place with bloated mobs and there has been nothing but crickets.

[xBunny]

RESTORE ELEMENTAL CASTER DPS. We’re getting really hosed. Please reconsider these draconian changes.

Is it going be so bad? Like wouldn't they make mobs weaker?

[Arctigis]

I have only played sporadically over the last four years i.e. 3 months on 6 - 9 months off (but still
maintaining my sub, often on two accounts). I generally don't do the forums much either
so I didn't realise that they'd talked about raising the level cap in the 2020 Producer's
Letter (despite polls I can find showing that the forum population was approx. 2:1
against). I recently returned in March and have been enjoying the game again.

However, am I wrong in thinking the first time the stat compression has been made
public knowledge is with this preview? I can certainly find no mention of it before
this. I feel something like this should have been treated the same as the ED pass.
If past performance is any indicator of future performance, we're getting this update
pretty much as it is in 3 - 4 weeks tops. One of the reasons given to do this was to
smooth the transition between heroics and epics. I didn't find any evidence of this in
preview 1 and, as someone has already mentioned, the devs who've commented on
discord have been really cagey about mob HP deflation etc. The impression I got was
that they were happy with the reduction in saves as a 'solution'. The only HP reduction
that seemed to be given serious thought was that in 'old' epics (i.e. L20 House P, House
D etc.). Initially it was talked about as if the mobs would be cut back so that PVE
felt the same - I seriously doubt this will actually be the case.

[Lynnabel]

Hi all! Happy Friday!

This has been a pretty wild series of previews but we wanted to take some time here and check in on a few things. These are in no particular order:

1: We are pretty confident that our changes are fair for DC casters but are not meeting the mark for those who actually deal damage - either via melee or ranged or by spellcasting. Melee/Ranged players specifically are also fighting against an old problem made new again, namely that our AC formulas climb much higher than our accuracy does. With that in mind, here's our tentative solution (although this is subject to change):

a: We're going to apply a blanket debuff to monsters at cap that takes a chunk out of their AC.
b: We're exploring ways to safely globally adjust monster HP at cap downwards.

Both of these exact solutions have numbers we're still noodling on, so please forgive us if we don't give you exact numbers until we're 100% confident on our end. We've gotten a ton of great feedback on the adjustments on the player end that we're still cataloging, and we're incredibly thankful that so many people took the time to test out their current loadout on Lamannia.

2: We're also going to adjust certain specific quests in Epic (such as Tower of Frost and the White Plume Mountain auxiliary dungeons) by drastically pulling down their scaling.

3: Now that all items are on a set scaling curve, we can also start doing something that I've been personally excited for: namely, doing across-the-board individual stat adjustments. What this means is that we're going to try adjusting the actual ratio of item power level to statistics, effectively adjusting all items that use that specific statistic without further intervention necessary on the part of the player. The two stats we're exploring this for are:

a: Raising the values of Spell Resistance found on items
b: Raising the values of Spell Penetration found on items

Why these stats specifically? Mostly because they're very binary and, due to how our monster CRs are calculated, could stand to be inflated slightly. As part of this overhaul, we may not actually be adjusting monster CRs, which means that the only way to adjust how players interact with this system is to adjust their SR and SP stats directly. And since we can now do per-stat adjustments... why not start here?

That's just about it for right now, but we're not done tinkering behind the scenes. So please, if you have further feedback, absolutely feel free to share it here. Thanks for your patience as we work through this significant overhaul!

[Stravix]

Hi all! Happy Friday!

This has been a pretty wild series of previews but we wanted to take some time here and check in on a few things. These are in no particular order:

1: We are pretty confident that our changes are fair for DC casters but are not meeting the mark for those who actually deal damage - either via melee or ranged or by spellcasting. Melee/Ranged players specifically are also fighting against an old problem made new again, namely that our AC formulas climb much higher than our accuracy does. With that in mind, here's our tentative solution (although this is subject to change):

a: We're going to apply a blanket debuff to monsters at cap that takes a chunk out of their AC.
b: We're exploring ways to safely globally adjust monster HP at cap downwards.

Both of these exact solutions have numbers we're still noodling on, so please forgive us if we don't give you exact numbers until we're 100% confident on our end. We've gotten a ton of great feedback on the adjustments on the player end that we're still cataloging, and we're incredibly thankful that so many people took the time to test out their current loadout on Lamannia.

2: We're also going to adjust certain specific quests in Epic (such as Tower of Frost and the White Plume Mountain auxiliary dungeons) by drastically pulling down their scaling.

3: Now that all items are on a set scaling curve, we can also start doing something that I've been personally excited for: namely, doing across-the-board individual stat adjustments. What this means is that we're going to try adjusting the actual ratio of item power level to statistics, effectively adjusting all items that use that specific statistic without further intervention necessary on the part of the player. The two stats we're exploring this for are:

a: Raising the values of Spell Resistance found on items
b: Raising the values of Spell Penetration found on items

Why these stats specifically? Mostly because they're very binary and, due to how our monster CRs are calculated, could stand to be inflated slightly. As part of this overhaul, we may not actually be adjusting monster CRs, which means that the only way to adjust how players interact with this system is to adjust their SR and SP stats directly. And since we can now do per-stat adjustments... why not start here?

That's just about it for right now, but we're not done tinkering behind the scenes. So please, if you have further feedback, absolutely feel free to share it here. Thanks for your patience as we work through this significant overhaul!

Thank you for the communication, and thank you for looking into spell resistance. Any chance that could be set to a non d20 based system, similar to AC, so that it could be less binary, and actually useable by people who are not barbarians or monks?

[Aelonwy]

I didn't find any evidence of this in
preview 1 and, as someone has already mentioned, the devs who've commented on
discord have been really cagey about mob HP deflation etc. The impression I got was
that they were happy with the reduction in saves as a 'solution'. The only HP reduction
that seemed to be given serious thought was that in 'old' epics (i.e. L20 House P, House
D etc.). Initially it was talked about as if the mobs would be cut back so that PVE
felt the same - I seriously doubt this will actually be the case.

They better be as forthright as possible with what is happening or there is going to be massive upheaval and backlash. If they think the forums are chaotic now, just wait till all those players that ignore the forums get slapped with all these changes unawares and find they've been nerfed from orbit and the mobs haven't been? Yeah that will go down well, I'm sure. *smh*

If this is a rebalance to us and the game, fine, good. Bravo. If this is just to take back all the power they've sold us over the last 9 years without rebalancing what we've been playing against only to sell it back to us for levels 30 to what? 54 as supposedly that's what level 29 gear was previously? Well forget it. I'm already sick of single-character power climbing into the stratosphere with stackable past lives. I'm already sick of Reaper difficulty being shoved down my throat any time I have the temerity to PUG. I'm already sick of insane storage issues, lack of foresight, cash grab tactics, the sell OP nerf sell new OP cycle, I have a belly full of it. This is a good game, it could be a great game but it isn't flawless by any stretch of the imagination. They can go ahead and keep making it less fun if they want but they shouldn't expect me to pay for the privilege.