Downtime Notice: Wednesday, April 6th, 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT)

[Frezar14]

Ultimately, if we did end up moving the needle too low here, it'll be easy to resolve. We'll have eyes on it.

I won’t hold my breath.

I feel like casters are constantly getting nerfed and nerfed hard. Please either stop the over nerfing or do a better job the first time.

Also thanks for the one day notice regarding this huge nerf.

[droid327]

Math here is wrong. Draconic mantle ticks every 2 seconds, not 4 ticks per 5 seconds. 5 seconds is just the cooldown to reapply it, but it still takes the full 8 seconds to do damage.
So: 30d6+180 = 285 base damage * 900 spellpower / 8 sec * 4 ticks = 1425 dps
Significantly less than old shiradi with a spam build. But yes, new shiradi is garbage. You'd need to hit 7 targets twice per second to keep up lol.

Fair enough, but also keep in mind that you *can* apply it every 5 seconds if there's more than one mob you're hitting - so you could have two DOTs ticking at the same time on two different mobs, both doing their full damage across 8 secs

Just like Shiradi can proc on multiple mobs at once, which is the whole reason Steel thinks its so OP

[enkka1]

For reference there is still like Goldenlichs video on youtube when he soloed eh fire thunder peak in 2015 with a shidari caster spammer. Posting it wasnt a good idea the build was nerfed into oblivion.
After epic destiny changes shiradi casters became viable option again. Some dared to play them again. For couple of months. And now they are once more nerfed out of the game. For old times sake ->

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTx6...GoldDDOYoutube

EH SOLO Fire on Thunder Peak 23:01 Goldenlich - Double Deviants of Khyber
175 katselukertaa4.7.2015

[Artos_Fabril]

Ultimately, if we did end up moving the needle too low here, it'll be easy to resolve. We'll have eyes on it.

I'm not sure it's never happened, but I can't call to mind a single time in the history of this game that a nerf has been scaled back prior to the system surrounding it being completely revamped.

[Ykt]

Nerfs have never been reversed.

[Dreppo]

The Unspent Action Point Alert now counts your points correctly.

Sweet!

[Lanttanno]

For reference there is still like Goldenlichs video on youtube when he soloed eh fire thunder peak in 2015 with a shidari caster spammer. Posting it wasnt a good idea the build was nerfed into oblivion.
After epic destiny changes shiradi casters became viable option again. Some dared to play them again. For couple of months. And now they are once more nerfed out of the game. For old times sake ->

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTx6...GoldDDOYoutube

EH SOLO Fire on Thunder Peak 23:01 Goldenlich - Double Deviants of Khyber
175 katselukertaa4.7.2015

They aren't even remotely the same thing though, back then shiradi procs were effected by metamagics for no reason at all and had no internal cd, if you had these two things in the new shiradi, casting 30MM in 60 seconds would do like 6k dps by itself lol.

[Oxarhamar]

Under destiny

It says Draconic reinvigoration now charges all boost

Does that mean duske Surge is fixed?

Dies that mean Draconic reinvigoration on Thunderforged is fixed?

I hope it means both will have to find time to get back to 30 and test this

[Ykt]

Has nerfing ever brought in more customers and more money?

This is why I buy xpacks on sale and don't renew VIP.

[Stormraiser]

So: let's break down the factors in mantle-based proc damage from Shiradi (current), Draconic, and EA, assuming we're level 30. The four main factors here are Damage Dice, Scaling %, Proc Rate (which is the chance for the effect to apply when the effect is not on cooldown), and Cooldown.


Draconic:
30d6+180 dice, 100% Spell Power scaling, 100% proc rate, 5 second cooldown.


EA:
30d3+90 and another 30d3+90 dice, 100% Spell Power scaling, 15% proc rate, 5 second cooldown.


Shiradi:
3d100+100 and another 3d100+100 dice, 100% Spell Power scaling, 30% proc rate, 0.1 second cooldown. (Note: Stay Good/Frosty currently say they scale at 200%, but don't. They're at 100% right now.)


On the top end, assuming fast casting and perfect luck, Shiradi procs are dealing more than double damage than these others, and occur 50x as often as the others just due to the cooldown. Granted, you'll never hit that exact level of luck (or cast 10 spells per second), but when you average it out Shiradi is still capable of doing significantly more damage than the other Mantle procs.


Post-Patch Shiradi:
3d100+100 and another 3d100+100 dice, 50% Spell Power scaling, 5% proc rate, 0.1 second cooldown.

Half the Spell Power scaling means your potential for double the damage compared to others evens out somewhat, especially as you get into higher and higher Spell Power. And even with 5% chance to proc when off cooldown, you're still going to see it more frequently on average than procs in other Mantles.


We wanted to retain Shiradi's signature frequency of procs here, so we were hesitant to touch the cooldown; it still has the potential to hit far more often than the other Mantle Procs. With the new numbers, a Shiradi caster casting at a single target may fall behind a similar Draconic or EA caster's proc damage, but they also might come out ahead. That largely depends on how often it DOES proc. And if they're dealing any AOE, they're quite likely to stay ahead.


Ultimately, if we did end up moving the needle too low here, it'll be easy to resolve. We'll have eyes on it.

Maybe another way to view the change is, assuming your old Shiradi damage is at 100%. Now lower the procs from 15% to 5%, so we go from 100% damage to 33.3%. Now you lower the damage scaling from 100% to 50%, and now our damage goes from 33.3% to 16.6% of original mantle damage. Yes, the .01 internal cooldown needs to be considered, but we are trying to simplify.

If it was so overpowering, to be nerfed by that degree, why wasn't it done earlier? And why only one day's notice?

Perhaps this can be revisited, as the majority of the comments below are pointing out some flaws in the reasoning?

[LT218]

Ultimately, if we did end up moving the needle too low here, it'll be easy to resolve. We'll have eyes on it.

aka "the check is in the mail, suckers".

Past history indicates that the chances of this happening are statistically insignificant.

Anyone remember OG warlocks after they got nerfed into 4th class citizen status after everyone bought them? Anyone remember those overreaching nerfs getting rolled back? No?...

How about the Henshin quarterstaff builds? Remember those getting busted down so far that there are 4 other classes general melee trees that far outclass the Henshin tree for quarterstaff builds? When did that nerf get adjusted? Oh, that's right, it didn't...

Don't forget the lovely IPS nerf, where the non-mathing devs thought reducing something that was barely too strong with an effective 40% damage reduction was reasonable. Don't recall seeing that one get rolled back. On the bright side, at least we don't have to burn a feat on that useless feat now.

RIP Shiradi evo casters. Long live Draconic evo.

[Monkey_Archer]

IMO Prism/Good/Frosty should be 7% chance, 100% scaling on ranged and spell power.

[Lanttanno]

IMO Prism/Good/Frosty should be 7% chance, 100% scaling on ranged and spell power.

That doesn't actually solve the problem though, anything that nerfs proc rate impacts the non-spam builds much more than the MM spamming builds. When you nerf damage scaling, it nerfs them both equally. They really need to focus on the only casters that overperform with shiradi which are multi-hit casters. You could give a global proc-lockout cool down, that way MM spammers still retain the 84% chance to get a proc but the 70% chance for them to get two procs in a single cast goes down to a 0% chance. For the sake of contrast, a single-hit spell has a 30% chance per cast for each damage type, with the same lockout, they would then have an ~50% chance of getting a proc on that spell cast (which is the same as current) but without ever getting two procs on the same cast (which is currently a 9% chance of occurring). It should probably roll them regardless and only apply the highest damage though if at all possible.

[Monkey_Archer]

That doesn't actually solve the problem though, anything that nerfs proc rate impacts the non-spam builds much more than the MM spamming builds. When you nerf damage scaling, it nerfs them both equally. They really need to focus on the only casters that overperform with shiradi which are multi-hit casters.

MM spammers aren't even good though.

Getting extra procs doesn't matter if your base spell does no damage
Top dps caster rotations use mostly single target spells like ruin, iceberg, word of balance, etc... and only fit in a handful of multi-hit spells like meteor swarm or multi vial. Usually this results in about 2 proc chances per second on average. MM spammers aren't doing well because you lose more damage by casting missiles than you gain from procs (even before this nerf)

[mikarddo]

Clearly, the reduction to Shiradi damage is far too heavy handed.

Still, those calculating dot damage from Draconic at a full 3 or 4 ticks need to consider that often the mob is dead well before those ticks all land. So adding those up at full value is certainly situational. Also, the fire dot doesnt stack with the Dripping with Magma dot further reducing its value to some builds (unless there is a trick here I dont know about).

If we want to, rightfully, point out that Steelstars math is flawed it won't be reasonable to do some with our own flawed math (even if less flawed).

[Archfae]

Shiradi could be minmaxed to get around 2-3x procs a second if you knew what you were doing. However, it consumed a ton of spe and required tedious play and timing of abilities. Additionally, the spells users were spells with very low damage themselves besides the chance for the procs.

Draconic may only proc every 2 seconds, but it procs no matter what. You can use tsunami, iceberg, energy burst, etc. and you'll trigger the proc no matter the amount of enemies. Your spell damage came mostly from using the spells with the mantle giving a small boost and a fallback sustainable option for when low on sp. Additionally the real value of draconic mantle was/is in the 10% cd reduction. This is invaluable as in conjunction with other cd sources lets you move your 6s base cd spells to 4s (e.g. iceberg). If you do the math, this cd reduction is actually a bigger dps boost than the damage from the mantle itself.

As these changes go live, even with a playstyle that full capitalizes on minmaxing the shiradi mantle, you're still better off going draconic. Even under perfect conditions. And ddo isn't under perfect conditions - a couple frames of lag are enough to reduce the proc rate for a proc fishing style significantly by messing up timing.

Lastly, at least make other options for casters. Right now, EA mantle is only used for the heals, Druid mantle is never used except for flavor, fatesinger mantle for caster is a trap option, and you've nerfed shiradi to be a trap option as well. Shadowdancer is a pretty good option for dc casters. But for dps casters, anything except draconic is going to be a trap.

And before you nerf draconic, don't. Buff the other mantles and sources that need it instead.

[Lanttanno]

Clearly, the reduction to Shiradi damage is far too heavy handed.

Still, those calculating dot damage from Draconic at a full 3 or 4 ticks need to consider that often the mob is dead well before those ticks all land. So adding those up at full value is certainly situational. Also, the fire dot doesnt stack with the Dripping with Magma dot further reducing its value to some builds (unless there is a trick here I dont know about).

If we want to, rightfully, point out that Steelstars math is flawed it won't be reasonable to do some with our own flawed math (even if less flawed).

Well actually, the point is that you never need to have flawless maths to determine the effectiveness of a solution, you just need to set what you are trying to show, and calculate it at the furthest possible point from that target. So my maths showing shiradi damage vs draconic, any assumptions or simplifications just have to be in favor of shiradi such as excluding spell crit, if at the worst possible point, it is still heavily in the favor of draconic then you have irrefutable evidence that shiradi is worse than draconic regardless of what other variables you use. It's how you can compare things in a complicated system without having to do countless iterations.

[Qlumsee]

So: let's break down the factors in mantle-based proc damage from Shiradi (current), Draconic, and EA, assuming we're level 30. The four main factors here are Damage Dice, Scaling %, Proc Rate (which is the chance for the effect to apply when the effect is not on cooldown), and Cooldown.


Draconic:
30d6+180 dice, 100% Spell Power scaling, 100% proc rate, 5 second cooldown.


EA:
30d3+90 and another 30d3+90 dice, 100% Spell Power scaling, 15% proc rate, 5 second cooldown.


Shiradi:
3d100+100 and another 3d100+100 dice, 100% Spell Power scaling, 30% proc rate, 0.1 second cooldown. (Note: Stay Good/Frosty currently say they scale at 200%, but don't. They're at 100% right now.)


On the top end, assuming fast casting and perfect luck, Shiradi procs are dealing more than double damage than these others, and occur 50x as often as the others just due to the cooldown. Granted, you'll never hit that exact level of luck (or cast 10 spells per second), but when you average it out Shiradi is still capable of doing significantly more damage than the other Mantle procs.


Post-Patch Shiradi:
3d100+100 and another 3d100+100 dice, 50% Spell Power scaling, 5% proc rate, 0.1 second cooldown.

Half the Spell Power scaling means your potential for double the damage compared to others evens out somewhat, especially as you get into higher and higher Spell Power. And even with 5% chance to proc when off cooldown, you're still going to see it more frequently on average than procs in other Mantles.


We wanted to retain Shiradi's signature frequency of procs here, so we were hesitant to touch the cooldown; it still has the potential to hit far more often than the other Mantle Procs. With the new numbers, a Shiradi caster casting at a single target may fall behind a similar Draconic or EA caster's proc damage, but they also might come out ahead. That largely depends on how often it DOES proc. And if they're dealing any AOE, they're quite likely to stay ahead.


Ultimately, if we did end up moving the needle too low here, it'll be easy to resolve. We'll have eyes on it.

Took my Shiradi toon out for a rare spin yesterday. I noticed a couple of 150k hits, which made me think a nerf was in order. Tada, here it is. Nobody is a fan of nerfs, but I think this one is in order.

[Iriale]

So: let's break down the factors in mantle-based proc damage from Shiradi (current), Draconic, and EA, assuming we're level 30. The four main factors here are Damage Dice, Scaling %, Proc Rate (which is the chance for the effect to apply when the effect is not on cooldown), and Cooldown.


Draconic:
30d6+180 dice, 100% Spell Power scaling, 100% proc rate, 5 second cooldown.


EA:
30d3+90 and another 30d3+90 dice, 100% Spell Power scaling, 15% proc rate, 5 second cooldown.


Shiradi:
3d100+100 and another 3d100+100 dice, 100% Spell Power scaling, 30% proc rate, 0.1 second cooldown. (Note: Stay Good/Frosty currently say they scale at 200%, but don't. They're at 100% right now.)


On the top end, assuming fast casting and perfect luck, Shiradi procs are dealing more than double damage than these others, and occur 50x as often as the others just due to the cooldown. Granted, you'll never hit that exact level of luck (or cast 10 spells per second), but when you average it out Shiradi is still capable of doing significantly more damage than the other Mantle procs.


Post-Patch Shiradi:
3d100+100 and another 3d100+100 dice, 50% Spell Power scaling, 5% proc rate, 0.1 second cooldown.

Half the Spell Power scaling means your potential for double the damage compared to others evens out somewhat, especially as you get into higher and higher Spell Power. And even with 5% chance to proc when off cooldown, you're still going to see it more frequently on average than procs in other Mantles.


We wanted to retain Shiradi's signature frequency of procs here, so we were hesitant to touch the cooldown; it still has the potential to hit far more often than the other Mantle Procs. With the new numbers, a Shiradi caster casting at a single target may fall behind a similar Draconic or EA caster's proc damage, but they also might come out ahead. That largely depends on how often it DOES proc. And if they're dealing any AOE, they're quite likely to stay ahead.


Ultimately, if we did end up moving the needle too low here, it'll be easy to resolve. We'll have eyes on it.

Again an unjustified nerf based on nonexistent evidence of overperforming? When are you going to learn? If Shiradi was that strong, don't you think people would have noticed, that the forums wouldn't be flooded with posts complaining? Beyond the typical ones who always complain without checking things the first few days there have been no more complaints from the shiradi, doesn't that tell you anything? Less math based on unrealistic assumptions, steelstar, and more empirical testing. Play the ED, play the draconic, and you'll see that what you say doesn't make any sense. And another thing that worries me, if you really believe in your math, why did you release the shiradi with those numbers in the first place? Isn't it because you are now making assumptions that are NOT real?

After doing a lot of testing with the EDs when u51 was released, my druid and sorcerer are on draconic, not shiradi. Do you know why? Because draconic is much better ED for specialist casters. My cleric is on exalted angel early on because she is a raid/high reaper healer. That leaves just my wizard on shiradi, which is on shiradi because it offers a more generalized bonus damage, not tied to a single element like draconic. Switching to the draconic like you're forcing me to do isn't that big of a trauma, because contrary to what you're thinking, the shiradi doesn't offer much more damage, it offered a much appreciated versatility to generalist caster classes. Now you have destroyed it, so you force us to change. But Steelstar, if you take away the generalist destiny from us, how about giving the wizard the bypass with negative energy as well? If you are going to standardize everything, really standardize it! Give us the bypass, don't just take away the only ED that offered generalist damage without giving us the bypass. Warlock needs it too, in this case.

On the other hand, I notice that you are quick to nerf something that did not need a nerf, but you do not touch the mantles that from the beginning have been pointed out as useless or underperforming: the mantle of the magus is a DISASTER and that of the primal avatar is lacking. So why is there a nerf but not a fix to those mantles?

Steelstar, is that you do not learn. Do you know that every time you do one of these overnerfs you lose paying customers? How many more clients are you willing to lose?

If you get bored, the crafting bank desperately needs filters. Please, that would be helpful. If you get really bored, it's time to take a look at the TR cache code, because emptying it every life is a horror of boredom and exasperation. People have been able to a cosmetic storage for centuries. If you get bored, here are useful challenges for your expertise.

[TheMaxpower]

1. As usual, this nerf is too extreme. Why not make small adjustments, rather than extreme ones? Going from 30% proc rate to 5% is extreme. The spell power nerf also is extreme. DDO history is littered with extreme nerfs that render certain builds obsolete. This is frustrating for your customers who spend time and effort to get into certain builds.

2. If in fact this extreme nerf is "necessary" why was this not discovered during the development stage? In other words, please slow down and properly test things before releasing them. Taking away power from players once they have already experienced it tends to make players upset. DDO history is littered with nerfs that should have been discovered during development.

3. A comment was made that this nerf could be re-visited in the future. In my experience, nerfs are rarely, if ever, reversed or adjusted. It just does not happen.