How Will Loss of U51 Survivability Options impact your play?

[slarden]

With U50 we saw spike damage increase relatively compared to our drop in hit points.

With U51 we are losing meld into darkness and effectively losing energy sheath.

How will this impact your play?

[Tyrande]

We all can vote that we dislike the change, but in order to sell future expansions and future updates and future ED updates, they need to nerf EDs and nerf meld and plus, in order to sell us back the stuff.

Low survivability ===> more powah sales in cakes, resurrection items and perhaps Sovereign II Experience Elixirs

i.e. When its at 100% there is no difference between 100% and 150%... or even 200%.

But when our characters die a lot, and we were wasting time, we would think of new ways of making the runs faster...

[droid327]

The fact you can point out meld and sheath as extraordinary defense measures only validates removing them...no one skill should comprise so much of a balanced defensive design.

[Tyrande]

This topic made me think of when I visited disneyland in Florida, actually Epcot Center.

The Jeopardy question posted was: "unlimited power source" answers might be solar, wind, nuclear, electric, tidal, and?

The answer is "what is brain power?". We would think of new ways to make this work.

others might have think of Dilithium, dark matter, black hole...

[Eme]

The fact you can point out meld and sheath as extraordinary defense measures only validates removing them...no one skill should comprise so much of a balanced defensive design.

I find I only use it as a last resort, otherwise it's on timer when I need, I wouldn't call it extraordinary in the slightest, and can't see any problem with that used like that, the skill and fun is knowing when to use it and that is far superior to a beat the numbers fest

[AbyssalMage]

The fact you can point out meld and sheath as extraordinary defense measures only validates removing them...no one skill should comprise so much of a balanced defensive design.

One is on a timer. 2 minutes which is a considerable amount of time in a game that is fast paced as DDO. It's also a tier 3 twist which means you are making a decision of either survivability or DPS. And our DPS took a hit in U50 (and prior patches). Seems extremely balanced to me.

Energy Sheath - Yeah, why do the developers continue to make content where we need to twist/need this? It would make more sense to create content based on resists and absorption but that shipped sailed back when DDO was released.

Yup, going to have to disagree with you Droid327. The developers claim "balance" and "lag fix" but it has been neither for quite awhile. Weekly resets need to be adjusted to every few days. "Balance" has no meaning if you continue to move the "goal posts" about what it means. Gah!...I'm on a soap box again...

I'm really perturbed with this batch of supervisors/developers. I really didn't think you could do worse than Turbine/WB. I was wrong!

[TFerguson]

Impact my play? It's looking now like a cancelled sub and new games. I'll reserve final judgement for the final release.

[mikarddo]

With U50 we saw spike damage increase relatively compared to our drop in hit points.

With U51 we are losing meld into darkness and effectively losing energy sheath.

How will this impact your play?

I am indifferent wrt. Energy Sheath but the removal of Meld will very negatively impact the fun I get from playing DDO in epic and legendary levels.

Meld adds a decision making that matters - when to use Meld and when not to. As one of few epic abilities it actually makes a difference which is fun - yet on so long a timer that its not really overpowered.

[MistaMagic]

With U50 we saw spike damage increase relatively compared to our drop in hit points.

With U51 we are losing meld into darkness and effectively losing energy sheath.

How will this impact your play?

Well last week Meld was available as I tried it is in my build. If your starting point for dodge is low then it is not realy viable to take it even though it now has a lot smaller cooldown.

[dredre9987]

Well last week Meld was available as I tried it is in my build. If your starting point for dodge is low then it is not realy viable to take it even though it now has a lot smaller cooldown.

It is no longer 100% uncapped dodge on the preview it is 10% uncapped

[dredre9987]

I only used it as an "oh ****" button when I pulled too much aggro. I will now have to be more aware of my aggro and other ways to shed it. Neutral on the change. There are other ways to get the same end result.

[Carrow12]

I am indifferent wrt. Energy Sheath

I'm not quite as indifferent as you as there are at least 3 raids that pretty much require energy sheath to complete on higher difficulties. So removal of energy sheath will mean 1 of 2 things. 1.People will gear for those raids in particular, killing DCs or dps, and possibly be unable to complete the raid - which will kill the raid. Or 2. People will decide it's too much bother to regear for one raid- which will also kill the raid. RSO is a pretty good example of this. Electrical Sheath is pretty much required to run RSO, when was the last time you saw that raid being run?

[Hawkwier]

The fact you can point out meld and sheath as extraordinary defense measures only validates removing them...no one skill should comprise so much of a balanced defensive design.

Sorry but with all due respect, this is a terrible line of argument and makes little sense.

Because these examples are given, they are automatically discounted??

Best not posit anything at all then by that measure! Why not list all your defences and we can have them removed from the game too?

Anyway...

Losing Meld is the single biggest nerf for me from U51. That said it will not, thankfully, be a huge issue in low R quests for me as the self healing gains should largely compensate.

Where it almost certainly will have a negative impact will be in high R quests, and in specific situations, such as beating down one, or more, Doom Reapers. I've found its often a DPS/time battle to kill a Doom before Meld wears off and I'm toast a couple of swipes later - usually followed by, or following, the rest of the party as we reach for our Jibbers (whoops, should we remove those too now I've mentioned them?)

Sure, I might be able to find some sort of workaround, but as melee, having to be in swatting distance, the very fact I need find another solution (if such exists and is available), is a negative. Simple as that.

In the past the Devs had to introduce Epic Defensive Fighting (so having mentioned that does it get removed too now?), as melee in particular were getting squished too easily. If it turns out removing meld puts us back in anything like that ballpark, I, for one, will be pressing for some sort of compensatory change maybe to Improved Uncanny Dodge duration (dang! did it again!)

[Tyrande]

[...] Electrical Sheath is pretty much required to run RSO, when was the last time you saw that raid being run?

By the way, the raids I join on my server environment channels ALWAYS DOES NOT include RSO nor THTH. People can slot for the items and do the energy sheath thing, but the thing is the raid is neither fun being constantly zapped or burnt crispy nor rewarding...

Electrical Sheath is pretty much required to run RSO AND Killing Time AND Legendary Master Artificer. Without those, even on Legendary Hard or higher, people will get one shot or two shot by electricity dots.

Let's say that people slot in the Legendary Flickering Steel ring or the Ring of Djinn. But it conflicts w/ the slot for the Profane +2 DC ring and/or the ring for the Legendary Slavers set or the Mind and Matter set or Ravenloft set...
and perhaps other sets I do not remember.

Sure, you could Cannith craft something that does Electric Resistance and Electric Absorption but then that character also looses an equipment slot when in those raids. What gives?

If only you could extract the soul of that Legendary Flickering ring and put that in an augment...

[Vorachtin]

Energy sheath is meh who cares, end game folks usually carry their own absorb anyway. Hurts the casuals and mid tier people, wont have an impact on me.

Meld will limit some choices, will have to adapt. It's an mmo, things always get nerfed. Neither of these things is as bad as the horrible level gating.

[dredre9987]

By the way, the raids I join on my server environment channels ALWAYS DOES NOT include RSO nor THTH. People can slot for the items and do the energy sheath thing, but the thing is the raid is neither fun being constantly zapped or burnt crispy nor rewarding...

Electrical Sheath is pretty much required to run RSO AND Killing Time AND Legendary Master Artificer. Without those, even on Legendary Hard or higher, people will get one shot or two shot by electricity dots.

Let's say that people slot in the Legendary Flickering Steel ring or the Ring of Djinn. But it conflicts w/ the slot for the Profane +2 DC ring and/or the ring for the Legendary Slavers set or the Mind and Matter set or Ravenloft set...
and perhaps other sets I do not remember.

Sure, you could Cannith craft something that does Electric Resistance and Electric Absorption but then that character also looses an equipment slot when in those raids. What gives?

If only you could extract the soul of that Legendary Flickering ring and put that in an augment...

No worse than boots for ToD or risk a banishment I guess.

[rabidfox]

You're missing options like:
This will negatively impact my *current* play - I love the change

Not having meld will impact my current playstyle and methods for surviving some stuff. But I'll adapt and it'll be fine. I've had some lives where I go from 1 to 30/TR and don't die once; so the occasional risk of extra death is probably where things should be at.

[Oliphant]

At this point, I'm more influenced by the effect on the people I play with, specifically if they play less or leave. I'll be fine otherwise.

[cru121]

I don't care. Meld frees a hotbar slot.

[SpartanKiller13]

I like it, speaking as someone who heavily uses or has used one or both on a lot of my characters. Meld's too strong right now. It's not a "use this to increase defenses" button - something that I think is good, it's a "don't die" button - which I think is bad. It's pretty much like having US's epic moment on a 2-minute CD as a T3 twist.

I'm currently on a WF Barbarian life and have been testing running with no Body feat or Meld; with 27% standing Dodge my IUD and Hood both boost me to 77% which has been pretty instructive as an experiment. I've been enjoying that a lot more than the existing paradigm of Meld, and I think it's a lot healthier of a gamestate compared to like 12% Dodge (of my last life) boosting to 95% via Meld. It's 3.2x Dodge defenses, not 17.6x resistance to Dodgeable damage which seems slightly excessive.

Yes, Meld is on a CD - but if you use it for dangerous spots (multiple champs/Reapers, Doom munching you, some bosses etc) it's up for nearly all of those (and you have Hood to help for back-to-back encounters). If you see a bad pack ahead it's pretty easy to say "wait 10s my Meld's on CD" and if everything is uber-dangerous you probably shouldn't be at that difficulty (or you can wait 2min per fight and just be immortal lmao).

As far as Energy Sheath, it'll be harder for sure; but there are often raid mechanics that are ignored that can be used to mitigate the loss thereof (like swapping aggro in KT, or actually using the crystal pattern in MA) and if swapping gear costs +2 DC's for a few minutes it seems valuable to have tradeoffs (or swap > cast > swap if it's that critical). Primal Avatar Core 3 also will add a lot of party energy mitigation as well that can be spammed by one person as needed (given a fair amount of party healers will have at least a few points there). Mass Cocoon and more spammable Consecration will also help a lot against DoT effects in general.