U51 - Reaper 4 is the new Elite

[Marshal_Lannes]

Here is more player feedback for those who doubt my experiences.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...n-and-powerful

I have most of the MM manual unlocked so I can confirm that red name bosses have lost at least 33% of their HPs. More in some cases. Generic mobs are harder hit some taking a 50% reduction. When Turbine introduced Epic play with VON/Sands/Carnival it was seriously difficult. Players had to do all sorts of workarounds with mass holds, invisible their way through quests and the like. Maybe this is why those quests are currently broken as SSG has to undo all the stuff behind the scenes? In any event, SSG has absolutely done the revamp with player fun in mind giving everyone a lot more power. Crazy how much grief was given to the devs by some when we have this fantastic result.

[DaviMOC]

My fort went from 192 to 319...
I got plenty of melee power (over a hundred) for TW which for a non Tempest (29 Cleric without a level 28-29 feat) is awesome
Got cool melee attacks and mantles
And not a single martial destiny
I think it will be okay for melee...

Yeah. As everyone else the numbers got higher. The boost that dont feel as great as it felt on my casting druid or gxbow rogue/arti while you actually playing. Also we will need to be pushing really hard content to be able to see melee shining. Nukers just got double or triple effective now for you to have a chance to swing a hit or 2 and start farming your crits.

[Oxarhamar]

Here is more player feedback for those who doubt my experiences.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...n-and-powerful

I have most of the MM manual unlocked so I can confirm that red name bosses have lost at least 33% of their HPs. More in some cases. Generic mobs are harder hit some taking a 50% reduction. When Turbine introduced Epic play with VON/Sands/Carnival it was seriously difficult. Players had to do all sorts of workarounds with mass holds, invisible their way through quests and the like. Maybe this is why those quests are currently broken as SSG has to undo all the stuff behind the scenes? In any event, SSG has absolutely done the revamp with player fun in mind giving everyone a lot more power. Crazy how much grief was given to the devs by some when we have this fantastic result.

The epic game play you refer to is long gone since MoTU so not really a thing to compare to

Mobs HP going down to better match player nerfs doesn’t mean that nerfs haven’t happened

You can see that feedback in the very thread you linked if you read past the first post

[elkorm]

Here is more player feedback for those who doubt my experiences.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...n-and-powerful

I have most of the MM manual unlocked so I can confirm that red name bosses have lost at least 33% of their HPs. More in some cases. Generic mobs are harder hit some taking a 50% reduction. When Turbine introduced Epic play with VON/Sands/Carnival it was seriously difficult. Players had to do all sorts of workarounds with mass holds, invisible their way through quests and the like. Maybe this is why those quests are currently broken as SSG has to undo all the stuff behind the scenes? In any event, SSG has absolutely done the revamp with player fun in mind giving everyone a lot more power. Crazy how much grief was given to the devs by some when we have this fantastic result.

please, try R10 in legendary content and come back with incredible tales, I can’t wait
cheers
elk

[GramercyRiff]

I was doing well in R1 solo with a 1st life trash Warlock, so yeah R4 is probably easy on a well developed character. Might need to do R7.

The game absolutely has to be more accessible to new players since the vets quit or are quitting.

[jskinner937]

please, try R10 in legendary content and come back with incredible tales, I can’t wait
cheers
elk

Epics and legendaries are not the same. Most of the uproar has been about epic levels and content, not legendary.

Now with full disclosure, I expected epic content to be harder than what it is, it’s easier than heroics. That’s not how it should be. It should be harder. As legendary content should be harder than epics.

This smooth transition between heroics and epics and legendaries is far from linear. U51, as many have said, is an epic fail thus far.

Stop defending it, when clearly you haven’t experienced it when you people keep bringing up legendary content.

I have never been a meta player. I play what I feel is fun. I have 300+ past lives on 2 main characters I play, so I would say I am a pretty experienced with regards to leveling. So this aspect of the game is broke now for people that enjoy leveling. Epics feels like favor farming.

[slarden]

And yet you don't see the problem with Randed in Shiradi try Ranged outside of Shiradi

I am just comparing the same build before and after. I definitely got a boost in ranged dps from Shiradi - especially the dps between big attack sequences and the epic moment.

I don't have any ranged builds or planned ranged builds outside shiradi.

[Logicman69]

I am finding things the same as the OP. I sorted out my PM Wizard last night. I went with Magus, Draconus (shadow), and Fatesinger.

My negative spell power got a huge boost. Pre-patch it was sitting at 683. Post patch I'm sitting at 785. Crit chance and crit multipliers stayed the same, so its a slight boost in DPS. I am still sorting out if my DCs are lower or not. Last I checked, my mass hold monster was a 105, but that was fully buffed. Post patch my DC is now 97, but that is without party buffs. I probably lost a little, but not enough to be totally concerned about it. Spell point costs went down as well.
.
The fun came with the new abilities. My new favorite combo is MHM into the new Dark Light of the Moon. That was hitting for about 900 points of damage a tick on monsters, and then when it blew up at the end.. did about 10k per monster (R1). Very satisfying to watch. Moonshadow is equally as satisfying, doing about 20k (R1) a hit, but its single target.

All in all, I'm happy with the changes. Working on leveling my THF fighter next, and playing with some new build ideas that opened up with this update. Sure, there are builds that took a big hit, but I see this as a shake up in the meta. New builds will come out of this that will be just as powerful as the old builds. Besides, isn't half the fun of this game thinking of new and exciting builds for our characters?

[elkorm]

Epics and legendaries are not the same. Most of the uproar has been about epic levels and content, not legendary.

Now with full disclosure, I expected epic content to be harder than what it is, it’s easier than heroics. That’s not how it should be. It should be harder. As legendary content should be harder than epics.

This smooth transition between heroics and epics and legendaries is far from linear. U51, as many have said, is an epic fail thus far.

Stop defending it, when clearly you haven’t experienced it when you people keep bringing up legendary content.

I have never been a meta player. I play what I feel is fun. I have 300+ past lives on 2 main characters I play, so I would say I am a pretty experienced with regards to leveling. So this aspect of the game is broke now for people that enjoy leveling. Epics feels like favor farming.

i am sorry, stop defending what? Epic levelling was dead easy before the changes. I read people are claming u51is a success “because it made epic easier”. What i am stating is that, and i apologize it’s a slice of data and not a comprehensive dataset, legendary content has been made a lot harder. Now is that how we want/need it to be? Was it the stated intention? This is not smooth progression.

cheers
elk

[Oliphant]

Good news is my toon is no longer Greater Beam: Frozen and someone found me in Wayward Lobster and gave me a rez so I can test it myself now. Still skeptical ranged dps has access to enough self healing for higher reapers without abandoning the trees that make sense for ranged dps flavor. Perhaps the monster scaling was changed in live due to the clamouring pre-U51. I don't recall seeing a thread where folks claimed to curb stomp like this on Lamm. Did I miss that?

Melees seem to have great healing options that fit melee in US. Casters seem to have a good option that fit casters in PA. Ranged have a vigor spell that will get crushed in higher reaper, and scroll mastery, which is not much help in higher reaper. I'm counting on group play to stay alive but I've always had to take SOME responsibility for it.

People really going to claim I'm meta for not wanting to splash a whole US 3-core in a ranged build?

[Assassination]

Here is more player feedback for those who doubt my experiences.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...n-and-powerful


In any event, SSG has absolutely done the revamp with player fun in mind giving everyone a lot more power. Crazy how much grief was given to the devs by some when we have this fantastic result.

Now we can all feel better, number one Fanboi approved. LOL

[Strider1963]

Before U51 went live there was some concern that players were going to be nerfed with the loss of twists and some feats. I was a vocal proponent of the fact that over the course of the game player power continually increases with every update and expansion. Well, after playing today, my statements have been validated as the game continues the cycle of increasing character power. In fact, mobs have been scaled back so much that Reaper 4 is going to be the new elite in epics.

I first started in Gianthold on R1, an area with meaty mobs, to test the changes. Keep in mind I'm not remotely optimized and using a lot of L15 gear on my sorcerer at L28. The quests felt like normal. Forget about meteor swarm, good old SLA fireball was smoking mobs. Lots of people were on checking out U51 so the group quickly filled and I pushed up the difficulty. A FVS and I were crushing Delera's on R4. DPS casting has tremendous power with the reduction in mob HPs.

It feels that SSG did not balance the game around people with full reaper or epic trees as some feared. This seems balanced around a first-life character just starting epics. I'm not going to say the monster cuts went too far, I've played a day with the changes. But I will say that I can quickly see R4 becoming the new black. I'll be running all my epics on R4 as the baseline. In the next day or two, I'll test out what Legendary quests look like on high reaper. If they've retained their difficulty and the lower epics have been significantly been made easier then SSG will indeed have created a stratification in questing where we will feel the difference between normal and legendary epics. That's solid game design.

Any concerns about it being tougher to epic TR have been put to bed. Character's are stronger and more dynamic in epic questing than ever before.

What you dont understand is that the only reason you have all that power with the new system is the fact that they nerfed the monsters more than they nerfed us. If the devs had to nerf the monsters for people to be happy with this update simply points out the fact that they knew we were getting nerfed and wouldnt like it.

[Marshal_Lannes]

What you dont understand is that the only reason you have all that power with the new system is the fact that they nerfed the monsters more than they nerfed us. If the devs had to nerf the monsters for people to be happy with this update simply points out the fact that they knew we were getting nerfed and wouldnt like it.

That is an irrelevant distinction. If you cap the speed of my car to 80 mph but a race only requires me to run 80 mph to win then I haven't been nerfed. Especially when I'm now winning the race by 5-lengths.

[erethizon]

My point was new content is always harder old content is always significantly easier. And he did it with a caster and proclaimed a conclusion for all builds and classes. He was over level. And well, my opinion of this particular individual is negative to the point if I were to post it I'd get banned.

It's perfectly reasonable to treat him as just one data point, but I am seeing a lot of agreement from others in this thread (am only level 18 myself so haven't tested it). It's looking like epics were seriously improved. The people that think heroics are too easy (because they always run R1 even though they really should be on R4 to R6 given their skill and power level) are finding that epics now are also appropriate on R4 to R6, which is exactly how epics should work. We've been asking for a catch-up mechanism for weaker characters to get reaper points and this is a good start (though they should ideally double the RXP for all non-legendary quests the way they did for legendary ones years ago so people can catch up without having to sit around at 30 running the same quests over and over).

[erethizon]

The epic game play you refer to is long gone since MoTU so not really a thing to compare to

Mobs HP going down to better match player nerfs doesn’t mean that nerfs haven’t happened

You can see that feedback in the very thread you linked if you read past the first post

Players just have number blindness. If they used to hit for 1000 damage and all monsters had 10,000 health and now they hit for 100 damage and all monsters had 100 health they would still cry nerf because they are bad at math and all they see is that 1000 has an extra zero. This is one of the reasons why so many of the complaints on the forums cannot be taken seriously. We've been hearing for weeks about the terrible nerfs that are coming and we have been saying in reply, "History shows us that we get stronger over time so it is much more rational to assume that this update, like virtually of the others, will make us more powerful relative to our opponents." Unfortunately forums are not where people go to express or accept rational thoughts. Instead they are a place for irrational frustration and anger.

[erethizon]

i am sorry, stop defending what? Epic levelling was dead easy before the changes. I read people are claming u51is a success “because it made epic easier”. What i am stating is that, and i apologize it’s a slice of data and not a comprehensive dataset, legendary content has been made a lot harder. Now is that how we want/need it to be? Was it the stated intention? This is not smooth progression.

cheers
elk

Even before the update dropped many of the complainers were saying Legendary content was going to be easier because the new level 30 abilities are insanely powerful. When you say Legendary content has been made a lot harder, do you mean it is harder for a sub level 30 character to run legendary quests than it it was before (because their epic destinies used to be filled out but now are not), or are you saying that the new destinies are weaker, in your experience, at level 30 than they were before? I have not tested them myself so am happy to hear the feedback from others.

[Oliphant]

That is an irrelevant distinction. If you cap the speed of my car to 80 mph but a race only requires me to run 80 mph to win then I haven't been nerfed. Especially when I'm now winning the race by 5-lengths.

Certainly relevant to wasting people's time testing on Lammania them swapping out the new "real monsters" on live. Not only did they rush it out, the test was just bs apparently.

[erethizon]

Perhaps the monster scaling was changed in live due to the clamouring pre-U51. I don't recall seeing a thread where folks claimed to curb stomp like this on Lamm. Did I miss that?

The monster changes were never on the test server so we knew they were coming but had no idea what the changes would actually be. This is why you saw so many people defending the update saying, "You can't claim the game is getting harder because we don't know how monsters are going to be rebalanced." All the previews showed us was what would be in the new Epic Destiny trees, not how powerful they would be relative to our opponents.

[erethizon]

What you dont understand is that the only reason you have all that power with the new system is the fact that they nerfed the monsters more than they nerfed us. If the devs had to nerf the monsters for people to be happy with this update simply points out the fact that they knew we were getting nerfed and wouldnt like it.

The devs had to nerf monsters because we have been saying for years that EE was too hard. There was a giant gap between EH and EE such that many people found EH too easy and EE too hard. That fix has been requested for years and it was finally included during this update.

[Oliphant]

Yeah my recollection is the monsters on Lamm were not scaled and it was known they were not scaled. Sort of silly way to test. I'm still waiting for the good news thread about DPS ranged healing actually being amazing.