is melee defense buffing coming or not?

[ChaosBuddha]

its a problem many ppl talks about. imo its right behind lag and tr bank as one of the main problems with the game right now. but did any devs chime in on it yet? is this on the to do list or what?

[LilacDragon6]

The devs are concerned about more important stuff, like nerfing dodge

[Ghop15]

The devs are concerned about more important stuff, like nerfing dodge

Man they really want any non-heavy armor melee to get one shot by regular enemies. What did melee ever do to the devs?

[noinfo]

Man they really want any non-heavy armor melee to get one shot by regular enemies. What did melee ever do to the devs?

It's the heavy armour melee that are in the worst place TBH.

[jskinner937]

its a problem many ppl talks about. imo its right behind lag and tr bank as one of the main problems with the game right now. but did any devs chime in on it yet? is this on the to do list or what?

The issue is they do not want to break heroics to make end game viable. It’s just a backwards way of thinking.

[Oxarhamar]

The issue is they do not want to break heroics to make end game viable. It’s just a backwards way of thinking.

I don’t disagree but heroics is fine so buffs on defense that come in at epic wouldn’t hurt it

[Ghop15]

It's the heavy armour melee that are in the worst place TBH.

Really? I just assumed that a heavy armor melee would be better due to increased PRR and MRR. Have only played a light armor Two-Weapon Rogue DPS in epics.

[LilacDragon6]

Really? I just assumed that a heavy armor melee would be better due to increased PRR and MRR. Have only played a light armor Two-Weapon Rogue DPS in epics.

If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a doom reaper.

The Delta PRR between light armor and heavy is not enough to matter unless you go full tank.

[Eantarus]

The issue is they do not want to break heroics to make end game viable. It’s just a backwards way of thinking.

It is completely backwards. Why would making melees more viable in heroics EVER be a problem? If anything it would make the game more new-player friendly--which is always a good thing.

[yfernbottom]

As far as the dev are concerned, the only issue that melee has is that dodge works just as well in R10 as it does in normal. They also seem to feel that it's a little too easy for melees and martial ranged to land attacks. So they are nerfing dodge on melees and adding it to some mobs.

How this addresses the obvious issues that melee have with survivability completely eludes me. I mean a good ranged build has at least 95% of the defense of anything but a pure tank melee build, and tends to get hit far far less (never being in melee range of melee mobs is a pretty **** good defense). So just on first principles you would think melee needs a bit of a defense boost. But that isn't how the devs see it, so don't hold your breath for any buffs.

[Orangine]

Epic Defensive Stance should be buffed. I suggest it gives additional PRR/MRR and healing amp proportionally to the amount of combat feats you have. I would say 5 PRR, 5 MRR and 10 healing amp for each combat feat you have. This would help reaching a little bit of extra defense and self-healing.

Trip, Stunning blow and Sunder should have their DCs to scale with player level otherwise they are too hard to land. They should also scale with highest stat. Additional CC options would also help reduce input damage. For now, Trip, Stunning blow and Sunder are simply useless and unusable with their current formula.

Give some better self-healing that scale decently in reaper to classes such as Fighter, Monk, Paladin and Rogue. It's almost impossible self-sustain past R4 playing those classes.

[PedXing20]

Epic Defensive Stance should be buffed. I suggest it gives additional PRR/MRR and healing amp proportionally to the amount of combat feats you have. I would say 5 PRR, 5 MRR and 10 healing amp for each combat feat you have. This would help reaching a little bit of extra defense and self-healing.

Trip, Stunning blow and Sunder should have their DCs to scale with player level otherwise they are too hard to land. They should also scale with highest stat. Additional CC options would also help reduce input damage. For now, Trip, Stunning blow and Sunder are simply useless and unusable with their current formula.

Give some better self-healing that scale decently in reaper to classes such as Fighter, Monk, Paladin and Rogue. It's almost impossible self-sustain past R4 playing those classes.

+1

[noinfo]

Epic Defensive Stance should be buffed. I suggest it gives additional PRR/MRR and healing amp proportionally to the amount of combat feats you have. I would say 5 PRR, 5 MRR and 10 healing amp for each combat feat you have. This would help reaching a little bit of extra defense and self-healing.

Trip, Stunning blow and Sunder should have their DCs to scale with player level otherwise they are too hard to land. They should also scale with highest stat. Additional CC options would also help reduce input damage. For now, Trip, Stunning blow and Sunder are simply useless and unusable with their current formula.

Give some better self-healing that scale decently in reaper to classes such as Fighter, Monk, Paladin and Rogue. It's almost impossible self-sustain past R4 playing those classes.

The problem came into being when they started to add more sources of PRR other than armour. Now wearing heavy armour gives little return on defense and is infact worse since it provides lower dodge. The same can be said for shields. Currently based on the armour scales off bab and type of armour adding to PRR, having this as an unrelated stat for both armour and shield type then factoring DR at the end of the damage would go a long way.

Edit- I agree that something should be reworked with tactics.

I don't really agree with self healing. Not sure on the tech issues but the only compromise I would see on reaper is mob damage apply a 15 second (or whatever) self heal debuff rather than a global reduction allowing for self heals out of combat.

[Monkey_Archer]

What could be interesting is some sort of ablative protection from heavy armor similar to stone skin, but as a percentage reduction.

ie. First hit in combat has a 50% damage reduction from all sources, recharging after ~12 seconds being out of combat.

[Tyrande]

What could be interesting is some sort of ablative protection from heavy armor similar to stone skin, but as a percentage reduction.

ie. First hit in combat has a 50% damage reduction from all sources, recharging after ~12 seconds being out of combat.

Huh? There is something like that already.

See Draconic Incarnation T3: Scales of the Dragon.
Scales of the Dragon: Activate this to shroud yourself in the Scales of a Dragon. This has two components; first, it absorbs 15 points of damage per Character Level in Ablative protection. Secondly, it shields you from 50% of the Elemental Damage of your dragon type. Both effects last for 5 minutes. Cooldown: 30 Seconds. Costs 30 Spell Points.

Although, I doubt any melee (unless the character is already EK) is going to take draconic incarnation T3. Although that has benefits like a partial energy sheath for the dragon color selected. But 30 spell points and 12 AP is cheap, no?

480 points of damage shrouded is nothing in L32 reaper dungeons, but its a "thing"...

[Baahb3]

Epic Defensive Stance should be buffed.

This should have not been implemented in the first place. All it did was give more melees an excuse to not put any thought into defense and give the Devs and out for the ridiculous damage in Reaper on HP bloated mobs.

Trip, Stunning blow and Sunder should have their DCs to scale with player level otherwise they are too hard to land. They should also scale with highest stat. Additional CC options would also help reduce input damage. For now, Trip, Stunning blow and Sunder are simply useless and unusable with their current formula.

This should have been done a long time ago. When they started allowing so many stats for Hit/Damage, they should have made these scale to the highest stat. Player Level or 1/2 Level is debatable.

Give some better self-healing that scale decently in reaper to classes such as Fighter, Monk, Paladin and Rogue. It's almost impossible self-sustain past R4 playing those classes.

No. You realize you are proposing things to make Reaper easier when the whole point of Reaper was to have a difficult setting.

The whole ranged vs melee in Reaper needs to be addressed without making it easier to run Reaper quests, for anyone. Give some mobs the Deflect Arrows ability. Give some enemies Spell Turning (that would give single target casters something to worry about). Apply an increased SP cost to spells per skull.

I don't know what the solution here is, but please if anything is done, for sanity's sake, ONLY have it apply to Reaper difficulty. And while they are at it, finally fix the Reaper cores to ONLY apply to reaper quests.

[noinfo]

This should have not been implemented in the first place. All it did was give more melees an excuse to not put any thought into defense and give the Devs and out for the ridiculous damage in Reaper on HP bloated mobs.


The whole ranged vs melee in Reaper needs to be addressed without making it easier to run Reaper quests, for anyone. Give some mobs the Deflect Arrows ability. Give some enemies Spell Turning (that would give single target casters something to worry about). Apply an increased SP cost to spells per skull.

I don't know what the solution here is, but please if anything is done, for sanity's sake, ONLY have it apply to Reaper difficulty. And while they are at it, finally fix the Reaper cores to ONLY apply to reaper quests.

Sounds like a non melee or probably reaper player speaking to something with limited experience.

1. Improving the defense of melee will not make reaper easier. Its pretty obvious.
2. Adding deflect arrows does nothing to improve melee survivability. It means it may take an extra arrow to kill the mob.
3. Reaper cores changed to reaper only when Heroic TR abilites only apply in heroic only and Epic only apply in epic and Racial only when you are that race.

As far as EDF, it gave a solution ideal or not, that allowed hp to be scaled in favour of melee, something NO other defense in game caters for. What defenses do you see a melee getting over any of the others that they should invest in? Not armour type, not significant prr and not dodge. All of these things can just as easily be acquired by ranged and casters to relevant levels. HP was a significant difference in PnP due to hit dice but when bonus hp and con reach levels in game these are far far less relevant, EDF does something to address this (would not say perfectly)

[Baahb3]

Sounds like a non melee or probably reaper player speaking to something with limited experience.

You should keep your assumptions to yourself.

I prefer melee over ranged/casters. 1 Ranged rogue, 1 Light casting FvS and 1 CC wizard. Yep, that is the extent of my ranged desires in my 12 or so characters I consistently play.

As for reaper. I was all for it when the original reason it was created for was stated. Then they made trees to make an increasingly difficult setting increasingly easier. I stopped supporting it at that point. I play reaper only because my other guildies like it. I could do without it in its current state. Get rid of the trees, remove the extra XP over elite, I would preach about the excellence of it from the mountain top. Until then it is a poor mechanic that in my opinion makes the game worse for the community as a whole.

My suggestions were to make things more difficult for ranged and casters, not add more stuff to melees to bring them up to ranged/casters.

And if getting rid of reaper only benefits outside of reaper means only getting past lives in their respective areas of the game, by all means go for it. I would not mind that at all. Mind you that past life feats are a representation of overall progress on a character, not the reaper specific progress of the reaper trees applying outside of said area. But hey, you do you, as the kids say these days.

[Monkey_Archer]

No. You realize you are proposing things to make Reaper easier when the whole point of Reaper was to have a difficult setting.

The whole ranged vs melee in Reaper needs to be addressed without making it easier to run Reaper quests, for anyone. Give some mobs the Deflect Arrows ability. Give some enemies Spell Turning (that would give single target casters something to worry about). Apply an increased SP cost to spells per skull.

While I personally agree with this, it wont happen. The "All nerfs are just like the holocaust" crowd will be out in full force and the devs will either cave or implement a half-measure.

Since endgame r10s right now are a complete zerg fest for casters, ranged (and 100+rp melee builds that can actually survive ) it would be much easier just to fix melee cc options and defenses, then double or triple r10 monster hp, then add deathward to all champions, etc...

And voila! Both balance and difficulty restored... (Shush. I'm allowed to dream...)

[Kelledren]

Huh? There is something like that already.

See Draconic Incarnation T3: Scales of the Dragon.
Scales of the Dragon: Activate this to shroud yourself in the Scales of a Dragon. This has two components; first, it absorbs 15 points of damage per Character Level in Ablative protection. Secondly, it shields you from 50% of the Elemental Damage of your dragon type. Both effects last for 5 minutes. Cooldown: 30 Seconds. Costs 30 Spell Points.

Although, I doubt any melee (unless the character is already EK) is going to take draconic incarnation T3. Although that has benefits like a partial energy sheath for the dragon color selected. But 30 spell points and 12 AP is cheap, no?

480 points of damage shrouded is nothing in L32 reaper dungeons, but its a "thing"...

I say give heavy armor 7-10% Damage reduction from every blow, give medium armor 3-5% Damage reduction, and light armor 1-2%. Not sure what the actual numbers should be, but something that is inverse of dodge would make more sense. I know we have PRR- but dodge every 1% is equally as good as the first- PRR would have to hit silly numbers to scale at endgame. Straight damage reduction % on every hit makes more sense. Adjust numbers as needed, then maybe someone in this game would actually use heavy armor.