Do you feel stronger or weaker with U51?

[Chai]

I am MASSIVELY stronger in relation to the monsters, because the monsters became cannon fodder.

I am nearly invulnerable, actually. The problem for me is, well let me diagram it for you:

before, my choices were 1-10, and while my rotation usually started out with 1 and 2, after that i could choose any ability in combat from 3-10
1-2-4
1-2-5-6
1-2-3
1-2-7-8-9-4-5
the list goes on...

now, combat is 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3

OH MY GOD I hate that so much. That's why I quit playing WoW. Is DDO turning into WoW?

There has been a heavy lobby on these boards for less activated skills and more passives.

[Jerevth]

It's complicated:

Trash, reapers and orange names die quickly.
In older content the bosses are much easier to overcome.
In the new content on elite, I'm able to keep going until the end boss and then 2-3 hits leave me on the floor. This is with 2k hp.

Previously, at level 30, with the same gear I had no problem with the end fight.
-The damage coming in is higher (Even from the trash mobs, but the EDs compensate for that with healing pulses and temporary defenses.)
-The damage I'm causing is more on average- faster kills means less incoming fire.
-The end bosses seem to have more HP in the newer content because, while I'm inflicting more damage on average, their red bars only move down incrementally. (This is the third epic run 20-30 with the same gear, same choices in heroic APs.) I finally rearranged some Winter Feywild gear into the mix for an increase in defense (PRR/MRR, etc) with the Sharn PotF set but haven't been able to test those in Epic, let alone Reaper for the final fights.

I might need to cave in and group again. Mostly I just soloed my Epics.

[Eantarus]

Would have liked an option for "Considerably weaker". I've got many weeks of LRs ahead of me to find out how much weaker. Probably will have to abandon half my alts entirely. So, brighter side, more mules?

[Nissebror]

My Acid-alch give 20% more dps with less spell point cost

[Oxarhamar]

I am MASSIVELY stronger in relation to the monsters, because the monsters became cannon fodder.

I am nearly invulnerable, actually. The problem for me is, well let me diagram it for you:

before, my choices were 1-10, and while my rotation usually started out with 1 and 2, after that i could choose any ability in combat from 3-10
1-2-4
1-2-5-6
1-2-3
1-2-7-8-9-4-5
the list goes on...

now, combat is 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3

OH MY GOD I hate that so much. That's why I quit playing WoW. Is DDO turning into WoW?

This is what I been saying about combat homogenized

[pjw]

I think the results from the OP question are likely to mislead.

As was discussed many times on Lamannia, relative power at level 30 is likely to increase. The problems are more insidiuos and at lower levels:

• Level 20-25, and 26-29: So far, my 21-22 experience has been horrible. The main gain at 20 is sentient gear; he feels like a Heroic guy wearing better gear, not Epic at all.
• Pigeon-holing: two characters I kept at 30 are now horribly pigeon-holed and just LESS FUN TO PLAY, even at 30. Shiradi represents the epitome of brain-dead play styles.
• Balance: At cap, I used to be able to CC and (less reliably) insta-kill in select R10s. Now, no spells land (based on one long-ish test with multiple deaths and ONE spell landing). This includes Greater Colour Spray and the new Fey one. This may be a transient balance issue, but several people have said that they can no longer do the fun things that they did before.

I also agree with what others have said:

...
now, combat is 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3

OH MY GOD I hate that so much. That's why I quit playing WoW. Is DDO turning into WoW?

This. So much this. Add also that while my caster has greater single- and multi- target DPS, the lottery spell-casting style (Shiradi) just plan sucks. Spamming missiles to get useful random effects is not a play style I have ever enjoyed.

There has been a heavy lobby on these boards for less activated skills and more passives.

Please, let this happen. Anything with a timer should have an optional toggle that says "always recast".

So, where does this leave me?

• Not having fun with my mains at 30
• Dreading any TR in the 20-30 range
• Thankful I avoided the Trinity games in the past, now that I understand the true horror that they represent.
• Likely to have a few more productive hours each day, at least until this mess is stabilized.

Edit: Just read the release notes for next patch: "Circle of Death now functions again"...this may explain why some of my spells were not landing. I hope so. Sad that I reported a CoD bug on Lamannia and it was not fixed.

[Oxarhamar]

[B]I

Please, let this happen. Anything with a timer should have an optional toggle that says "always recast".

[.

That's exactly how I feel about it should be optional and have a passive options weather it's a multiselector or just a toggle otherwise it just feels like a game of cooldown management keyboard mashing

[Weemadarthur]

Sorry but this is a bad and misleading poll.

1) at what level range do those claiming to feel more powerful actually feel more powerful.

2) What class is more powerful and does level range complicate that result (my Barb as an example is insanely more powerful at 28 but almost no different at 26 and incredibly weak in comparison before that).

3) Are those claiming lesser power or greater power solo or in party? This does make a huge difference. If your playing the new meta builds you will seem a lot more powerful compared to those that aren't and visa versa. This can completely skew how you perceive your level of power.

In short i expect anyone over level 26 would immediately answer yes I feel more powerful. Those at the start of epics not so much (although hard to actually tell yet as most low epic content can't actually be run). Those in the 24-26 range will probably answer about the same. I think you would need to leave these new ED's to be tested for a couple of months at least before you would get any relevant information back rather than knee jerk reactions.

How many players that have answered this poll for example have actually run 20-30 yet? How many different classes/builds have they tried? I expect the answer at this point is they have logged in and done a few runs on a few toons and maybe 1 or 2 players have done a full ETR cycle. That's not really enough to give any verdict either way tbh.

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

I think all these 'more powerful' votes are in fact just erroneously reporting that the monsters were weakened.

All of my toons in epic are significantly, noticeably weaker - to the point some are unplayable without a new epic build. All the old builds are void now.

In fact, All builds, all epic metas, were weakened, reduced, flattened and vanilla-ized so everyone has significantly less power, less abilities, less of everything.

And it is mind-blowing to me that more are not complaining.

U51 was - flat out - an artificially devised way to reduce our power across the board so over the next 10 years they could be sold back to us. Think I'm being harsh? Why not grant anyone who purchased the old Epic Destiny system, that applied to every toon, the +1 historic destiny tome that we only received 1-4 of? you already paid for it! all your toons should receive 1 but they did not - why? it is not an accident that these tomes are now for sale in the ddo store.

This is 100% a way to generate higher revenues taking a risk that the loss in players who are upset will even out with the new money.

Why does it matter to anyone? SSG is a biz - yes - but it does matter bc rather than focusing on say, Isle of Dread, that hey have literally been talking about and teasing us with doing for 5 years 'oh we want to do it we just dont have time' instead of that, we got a very cleverly devised way to upsell us on things we already played and paid for, which ironically took up over a year of their time- time they could have used to create the entire Isle of Dread story arc.


Example - my JEDI builds (Knight, Sentinel, Shadow) utilized Fatesinger - which in the old destiny system was very powerful for melee. Fatesinger has been nuked - it is literally 90% weaker for melee than it was. I used to have a scaling sonic dmg on hit, every hit, plus a way to make mobs more susceptible to sonic dmg - now I get 2 lame abilities and a mantle that is so weak its a laugh - literally its garbage.

And people are voting 'more powerful'

SMH

what game are you all playing? You know this was a poll for DDO right?

[Seph1roth5]

Only really played/tested on my lv 30 GOO enlightened spirit warlock.

He seems beefier in general. I'm able to do r4 relatively well, whereas before I think r1 was the sweet spot for him. I went t5 in draconic, with 15-20 in primal for cocoon/primal spell/protection v energy.

Problem is, it feels like I lost all the active attacks that made epic fun. Now, I basically dragon breath and....that's it. Shard storm is interesting but not really consistent enough, I mostly just throw it in randomly.

Before, I had energy burst, vortex, draconic leap (that DID stuff other than just wings), energy vortex, dragon fear. With maybe primal scream, divine energy resist, and a few other twists.

Like I said, feels so much more limited in what you can do. This new system was supposed to give lots of options but it feels like the exact opposite. Feels like 20 out of my 52 destiny pts were spent in random **** I didn't want/need just to get to the next tier. I don't even have a third tree because I couldn't find any with low tier stuff that I wanted.

[Oliphant]

Weakening the monsters was a way of listening to feedback. Seems like most builds are in normal zone. My ranged dps did well after I finally got to test. One thing to note, raids were full and heals from others were bubbling, which still counts in my book. My scrolls and healing spring better than nothing I guess but others kept me up. Wrecked the kill boards in all the raids I did, except I did not check MoD board since not the point. I only died once and in KT which happens, so was able to DPS and (got) healed. Wrecked bosses.

Everything seemed in order

[TFerguson]

Caster seems about the same.

I still hate all of this. Can I adapt to these changes? yes. The question is do I want to? The game is less fun, there is too much worthless garbage in these trees, very little of it is "epic" in anyway.

Let's put this in perspective . . . I had a great day at work, a wonderful evening with my woman last night, a steak dinner, and my stocks are up $35k since Tuesday. Overall having a great week until I log into DDO.

You failed SSG. Fix this garbage.

[CraithRhandir]

It's complicated.

The character are relatively stronger, but only because the enemies are weaker - one quest where the trash mobs had >10k hp before on E1 now had 3k on R2. (Two Toed Tobias, the undead kobolds)

But combat has become boring. My Shadowdancer has 1! active skill I regularily use, and that is on a 15s cooldown. The rest is highly situational, bound to stealth stuff or epic moment that has a huge cooldown and my stealth only abilities still won't work. The bonus from the stealth stuff is usually to low to be worth it (apart from a combat opener maybe), I lose more damage trying to set it up than we gain from it (because mobs are dead before the debuff would make a difference). Even on Raid bosses there is usually enough vulnerability thrown around to reach 20 stacks quickly.

No more reacting to the situation, using consume or executioners strike to thin out mobs quick, meld in case I got to much attention, dark imbuement when applicable. Only 1.2.3.4.5 repeat, with auto attacks until the 15 seconds have finally passed. gotten to much attention? better hope the epic moment is not on cooldown. It's no real use offensively anyhow, so it kind of becomes an old meld (with a longer cooldown)

My son was happy first that he could get into fury with his fighter directly. His happiness took a nosedive when he realized that the level gating means he was way weaker than the LD he had before (he's level 22 atm, so a lot is not available yet)

I am 30, 3 Epic Reincarnations that net me 6 hit points and 3 spell points - took me over 10 years to get there (2 true reincarnations too, when I restarted with my friends and with my kid)... and no way to improve my build, unless I start the reincarnation treadmill (only 6 more epic lifes for ... 1 AP) - thanks to the level gating I have to play an even more limited build until at least level 23 when a few things open up.

So ... it's complicated. I still have fun playing the game, I'll need to find the new happy difficulty for me, instead of Hard to Elite (= easy to challenging), and R1 with a friend it will probably be Elite (easy with the kids) to R? - what reason does Normal have to exist anymore? or Casual?

They just destroyed a part of the things that were fun and unique just to replace it with a bland WoW copy that can't even catch the interest of my kids (the apparent target audience). I still hope they at least patch a few of the worst offenders.

[elkorm]

I'll be clear. I feel weaker because the trees are bugged beyond any wildest dream. The cores don't give the dc they state they give (core 1 2 3 from a tree should give +3 total, just give +1) , tier 5 +3 dc to all spells does not work, mantle going on and off for no reasons. I lost 8 DC. if that's your definition of stronger and a successful update, we have different opinions. And yes, I am comparing to performance in legendary content which has monster stats unchanged.

cheers
elk

[DaviMOC]

Looks like rocket science kicks in when the obvious answer is not negative as you were doom saying before the patch to go live. Keep on searching folks you may find your excuse to be angry at the game someday.

[EinarMal]

Looks like rocket science kicks in when the obvious answer is not negative as you were doom saying before the patch to go live. Keep on searching folks you may find your excuse to be angry at the game someday.

I feel like the mobs are much weaker now, really mostly just in hp. Hard to really say anything about it. I am killing things with a polar ray (roughly same damage) that before the update would have taken four of them. Before they nerf a bunch of stuff they should really get the hp scaling evened out.

Also lots of bugs need fixing before I can really say as well.

[Oliphant]

Looks like rocket science kicks in when the obvious answer is not negative as you were doom saying before the patch to go live. Keep on searching folks you may find your excuse to be angry at the game someday.

I don't always fly on rockets, but when I do, I like my rocket science based on internet forum pols.

[Synthetic]

I am MASSIVELY stronger in relation to the monsters, because the monsters became cannon fodder.

I am nearly invulnerable, actually. The problem for me is, well let me diagram it for you:

before, my choices were 1-10, and while my rotation usually started out with 1 and 2, after that i could choose any ability in combat from 3-10
1-2-4
1-2-5-6
1-2-3
1-2-7-8-9-4-5
the list goes on...

now, combat is 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3

OH MY GOD I hate that so much. That's why I quit playing WoW. Is DDO turning into WoW?

You're the second person to make this argument. Any chance you could actually list your previous abilities?

[MistaMagic]

Well I have leveled my Inquisitive from 27 - 30 easier than in all my other lives. I will be doing a etr when the servers come back so will be trying 20-30 with 3 more destiny points than what I had before so the 27 - 30 should actualy be easier. My wizard and mele toons I have not sorted out yet as they require some thought. Hopefully I will be running my Shuri build tonight on R10 so ill then have an idea on that one then

[Fallout47]

It's complicated:

Trash, reapers and orange names die quickly.
In older content the bosses are much easier to overcome.
In the new content on elite, I'm able to keep going until the end boss and then 2-3 hits leave me on the floor. This is with 2k hp.

Previously, at level 30, with the same gear I had no problem with the end fight.
-The damage coming in is higher (Even from the trash mobs, but the EDs compensate for that with healing pulses and temporary defenses.)
-The damage I'm causing is more on average- faster kills means less incoming fire.
-The end bosses seem to have more HP in the newer content because, while I'm inflicting more damage on average, their red bars only move down incrementally. (This is the third epic run 20-30 with the same gear, same choices in heroic APs.) I finally rearranged some Winter Feywild gear into the mix for an increase in defense (PRR/MRR, etc) with the Sharn PotF set but haven't been able to test those in Epic, let alone Reaper for the final fights.

I might need to cave in and group again. Mostly I just soloed my Epics.

I am in agreement with your statement that, "It's complicated."

Update 51 hit right at the end of our R10 TR project. We finished yesterday with a dedicated group leveling from 3 - 30.

The R10 content in the 27 - 28 range was much easier, at points, almost a zerg. Stepping into Sharn, not so much. Casters were not attaining the DCs necessary to completely assist the group and reds were difficult to manage with no tank and no meld (same group of players brought different toons). I will say this, at cap R10, there will be renewed need for tanks.

I am, at the same time, completing epic past lives on a thrower, and the EE sagas I have been completing just got a whole lot easier. One thing I did notice yesterday, are players in EE who are not twisting cocoon. My advice, don't skimp because there is no reason to be dying for lack of cocoon in EE. With EDF, don't expect that the party will be healing you, and I don't think we will ever return to dedicated healers for EE groups.

So, IMHO, a mixed bag. EE has been reduced to a mindless zerg and cap R10 has been momentarily inconvenienced. On the whole, with the amount of bugs generated, this needed another month before release.