Depressingly low numbers in epic destinies

[Seph1roth5]

The "rebalancing" nerfs in the new EDs are very troubling.

When the EDs were first previewed long ago, many people complained about the loss of power. Devs emphasized how they were front-loading the first few tiers/cores, and how the 3-tree system coupled with the front loading meant players weren't getting nerfed.

Looking at this new batch of ED in the preview, I see a lot of stuff I like. What sticks out like a sore nerfed thumb is the pitiful numbers on some of these enhancements though. At first, I thought maybe devs were just clueless about what power level we want/expect from epic destinies. But then, I read steel's response when someone asked about the low numbers in the dreadnought thread.

"Part of this pass is doing a lot of rebalancing of what kind of numbers these abilities give and at what levels. We don't need numbers that high for low-tier abilities here."

This is just plain sleaze. When u50 was previewed and out of nowhere players learned that stats were getting squished, devs again told us that the ED pass would alleviate some of the power loss as well. Now it looks like much of the new enhancements are specifically being kept **** numbers, directly the opposite of what we were told.

People were worried that level 20 would suck because of the new level gating and spreading out of powers, I don't think anyone thought that they would also just scale back a ton of basic numbers.

Epic destinies should, by default, be BETTER than heroic enhancements. The main perpetrators seem to be the ones giving attack, damage, and dodge. Although spellpower is lacking all over the place as well.

Here's what the bonuses SHOULD be.

1. +1/2/3 to: spell dcs, spell penetration, max caster level, caster level, dodge cap, saves (all), skills (all), UMD, ability scores, # of limited use ability (smite, rage, etc.)

2. +2/4/6 to: skills, tactics, attack, damage, dodge, saves (specific), max dex bonus

3. +3/6/10 to: doublestrike, offhand strike

4. +5/10/15 to: doubleshot, AC, fort bypass, PRR, MRR, bonus damage to helpless, DR,

5. +10/15/20 to: healing amp, strikethrough, elemental absorption (plus or minus 5%)

6: +10/20/30 to: elemental resist, spell power, attack speed,

7: Multiples of 25/30: HP, SP, fortification. For the most part SP is done fairly well in EDs. But you should not be getting 15 HP for ANY number of points in an ED. (Cores are a little different but should still be at least 20)


*Rank 3 - some enhancements give a bonus separate from the rest of the effects if you have 3 ranks. This should be at the HIGHEST number it can be. 1 dodge should not be a thing here. Or if a bonus doesn't have 3 tiers, it should also be at the highest.

*What we don't need and shouldn't be used to weigh how good an enhancement is. If you want to throw it into something already good, sure why not.
- Movement speed, fear immunity, blindness immunity, trapfinding, immunity to slippery surfaces,

These are what I feel the numbers should be, but they should also be able to be grouped up. The numbers as they are now are just plain bad and insulting. Don't bump up the numbers and then at the same time take away the number of effects in enhancements.

A few examples of enhancements this preview that I thought were spot on:

Grandmaster tier 1 - Disciple's studies: "+2/4/6 Heal and Diplomacy, +3/6/10 Healing, Repair, and Negative Amp"
- heal amp is a little low but it covers all 3 so that's ok, and bonus to 2 skills, which can both be good, but probably not both wanted at the same time. So it's an enhancement with a good amount to offer to multiple builds.

Sentinel tier 3 - Legendary Shield Mastery "While wearing a shield, you gain +5/10/15 Physical Resistance Rating. Rank 3: You gain 6% Double Strike"
- 2 good effects right at the numbers I want. Slightly conditional but more likely that people in the tree will be using a shield.

Dreadnought tier 3 - Armor of Dusk "+2/4/6 AC and max dex bonus, -1/2/3 armor check penalty"
- AC is a little lower than I'd like, but the max dex bonus makes up for it by also raising max dodge (not counting cloth), and the acp helps as well.

It seems like the devs are worried about our dps since attack/damage were the hardest hit. Please raise these and the rest so that epic actually FEELS epic. Some of these epic enhancements are so bad that I wouldn't even take them at heroic, because of how small the numbers are.

[nobodynobody1426]

Yeah it looks like they deliberately did across the board nerfs after last preview. My suspicion is that some of the tree's the players liked had good power, while the tree's players heavily criticized were extremely under powered. The solution seems to be to make them all under powered so we wouldn't notice, and yes I think we know who is responsible for this.

[Infiltraitor]

I would have to disagree.

On Lammania, my tank is getting a rather large unwanted boost in DPS at the cost defense.

This is because I'm maxing out Unyielding, and splashing Grandmaster and Dreadnought. It gives a small increase in overall power, at least at the extreme ends of the player base. The points don't give as many stats, but I have a lot more points to spend.


On live, I have 24 points to spend + 5 twists.

On Lammania, I have 57 points to spend.

That's basically twice as many points to spend on abilities. The only possible balance for this would be decrease the stats provided by half, which they did.

[SlowDM]

Exactly. Same numbers as heroic. Not impressed much.
The UI is great though.
Like many others we’ll wait and see.

[Thar]

Agree any skill, hp or sp increases need to be double heroic levels to be significant in epic.

5/10/15 hps for 1 to 3 epic ap isn't worth my time. that's like 2% difference getting hit in epics. should be a min of 25/50/100 hp.

skills are similar. +1 perform? come on... how does that match up to new epic attack or defensive mantle... make each ap worth similar power.

[Seph1roth5]

I would have to disagree.

On Lammania, my tank is getting a rather large unwanted boost in DPS at the cost defense.

This is because I'm maxing out Unyielding, and splashing Grandmaster and Dreadnought. It gives a small increase in overall power, at least at the extreme ends of the player base. The points don't give as many stats, but I have a lot more points to spend.


On live, I have 24 points to spend + 5 twists.

On Lammania, I have 57 points to spend.

That's basically twice as many points to spend on abilities. The only possible balance for this would be decrease the stats provided by half, which they did.

If the numbers worked out this way that's even worse lol. It would take away the supposed "but you can be in any 3 trees you want!" the devs have been hawking. Change the system, change the points, so you can get to the same point.

[Infiltraitor]

If the numbers worked out this way that's even worse lol. It would take away the supposed "but you can be in any 3 trees you want!" the devs have been hawking. Change the system, change the points, so you can get to the same point.

In theory, it would be the same. In practice, it is a considerable powerup.

Being able to pick and target the best abilities of 3 different trees allows you to min-max way above what a pure tree allows.

80% of the power of any epic destiny tree comes from 20% of the ability point allocations.

[elvesunited]

I found them out of balance with each other:

The Cores, the epic strikes ( most of them ), sometimes the shroud, and a few hidden gems tend to be good.

Much of the rest is low level filler that provides low level buffs that aren't going to make a big difference.

And then most of the trees have a few headscratchers where you are stuck thinking what build could possibly use this? or how is this remotely practical?

[Seph1roth5]

80% of the power of any epic destiny tree comes from 20% of the ability point allocations.

Uhh I don't get what you're saying there. Are you talking about current ED, or the new ones that have no ability points to gain?

And like I said, ~halving the attributes so you have to take them multiple times blows and cuts down on options. Spreading out what we already have is never a good thing. It's like when u50 stat squished, and I brought up to devs that our spell pen was going down, and asked if monster spell resistance/cr would be changed. They said no, BUT, there would be spell pen options available in the new EDs. Which isn't really the same thing....

Most attack/damage/prr/mrr numbers have been severely cut, dreadnought's "legendary tactics" halved and became "epic tactics". It's fairly obvious that they plan to do what they said they weren't (but many people accuse/suspect them of doing) and taking away power and make us pay for it later.

100% we're going to see "legendary tactics" in one of the future dreadnought cores.