Is Trip broken?

[Nite_Prowler]

I have a lvl 26 barbarian with 12 points in trip and only 1 in sunder ... yet I can sunder monsters on a fairly regular basis but I can't trip anything, not even a skeleton .. what's going on here?

I was going to get the improved trip feat in the Fury of the Wild tree, but don't see the point if it doesn't work

[TPICKRELL]

I have a lvl 26 barbarian with 12 points in trip and only 1 in sunder ... yet I can sunder monsters on a fairly regular basis but I can't trip anything, not even a skeleton .. what's going on here?

I was going to get the improved trip feat in the Fury of the Wild tree, but don't see the point if it doesn't work

I use and land trip all the time on my Barb and Pally up to around R6-7. Above that it gets a lot more dicey.

[Jerevth]

The only way I managed to get reliable trips was with fighter and investment into tactics.
Otherwise it seemed to be a maybe.
Trip appears to be one of those things they scaled against certain feats that only a few classes can obtain, which makes it useless for many of the others.

[KoobTheProud]

What's your trip DC?

Lots of things stop working well in Epics if you just put them on cruise control and keep playing.

[Smelt32]

Heh! I remember the time when an update bugged trip so it worked almost every time on anything. Those were fun times tripping spiders and driders with my wizard.

[Nite_Prowler]

What's your trip DC?

Lots of things stop working well in Epics if you just put them on cruise control and keep playing.

My trip DC is 12 and my sunder DC is only 1 ... yet sunder works and trip doesn't

[Bjond]

I have a lvl 26 barbarian with 12 points in trip and only 1 in sunder ... yet I can sunder monsters on a fairly regular basis but I can't trip anything

IMHO, every tactical tests something different than it really says it tests -- or mobs have specific resists for each tactical. Sunder works almost every time with zero investment. It's supposed to be fortitude save. Yet, it works when dire stun fails with the same or (much) better DC.

BTW, real trip (from the feat) never works. I made a STR-based full tactical fighter to (among other things) check trip. It pretty much never worked at any level -- not down low, not in epics, not at cap. Maybe 1 in 30 critters would sometimes take a fall.

Rogue Acrobat Trip works well (balance check) and it's AE.

Adrenaline Trip always works (no DC), but it's single-target and strike-through doesn't apply.

Dire Charge trip works well (suspect it's a balance check) and it's AE.

Dire stun does not work well (suspect high fort check). I usually don't put any AP into this even on builds with high stun and lots of AP in LD. Most of the utility comes from the trip part of dire and I have a suspicion that when stun works it prevents the face-plant and results in a shorter overall CC time.

Stun is much more desirable than trip as a DPS increaser (stun = helpless), but I've found the (non-feat) trips to be more useful than stuns -- for both ease of gearing and total CC time.

[adamkatt]

My lastest life as a wolf druid(first time trying it) dosent seem to have any probs tripping most mobs. as for what my bonus to trip is i havent even checked. On a side note this toon is a multi lifer with tomes. also its a str based toon.

[KoobTheProud]

My trip DC is 12 and my sunder DC is only 1 ... yet sunder works and trip doesn't

Trip DC's on builds using the skill in Epics tend to be in the 60's-70's with builds looking at reaper play as high as 110.

Just saying that you can build to make Trip work extremely well but you have to build around Trip DC's and all the things that go into them to make that work.

[Nite_Prowler]

Trip DC's on builds using the skill in Epics tend to be in the 60's-70's with builds looking at reaper play as high as 110.

Just saying that you can build to make Trip work extremely well but you have to build around Trip DC's and all the things that go into them to make that work.

I wasn't 'trying' to make trip work .. seems kinda stupid to even make a statement like that.

If a skill is available it should work. It "may" work better if you focus on said skill, but it should still work.

Why does sunder work with only 1 point yet trip doesn't work with 12?

That seems like a game design fail to me rather than an issue with how one builds their toon.

[Lotoc]

I wasn't 'trying' to make trip work .. seems kinda stupid to even make a statement like that.

If a skill is available it should work. It "may" work better if you focus on said skill, but it should still work.

Why does sunder work with only 1 point yet trip doesn't work with 12?

That seems like a game design fail to me rather than an issue with how one builds their toon.

Ok for a start mouseover your sunder and trip feats and tell us the actual DC they have instead of whatever bonus you've got in the character sheet.
Trip immunity is a lot more common in enemies than sunder immunity, and enemies with high Reflex saves are a lot more common than Fort saves these days.
This is a dungeons and dragons derived game and saving throws are a fundamental asset of the combat system "it should always work no matter what" would screw us over insanely hard, you have no idea just how often you save against monster CC if you would even consider suggesting such a thing.

[Dendrix]

You make a trip attempt with a given DC based on your characters abilities (stats, level, enhancement, feats, items). What is your DC for Trip?

The monster saves vs this DC using (Reflex Save)+1d20.
If their (Reflex Save) is greater your trip DC that they always succeed (that might in fact be true even if they roll a 1 on their save).

A comparison with sunder is immaterial, trip is not sunder and sunder is not trip.
The rules applied to these two effects are different from each otherwith different effects.
It's much more likely that sunder is broken

[Bjond]

A comparison with sunder is immaterial, trip is not sunder and sunder is not trip

Sunder is fortitude, trip is reflex according to wiki. Based on playing an instant-kill PM, mob fortitude is typically as high or higher than reflex. Yet, strangely, Sunder v Fortitude seems to always work with no investment while Trip basically never works even with heavy investment. This is where the comparison comes in.

BTW, I was very surprised when my STR-based full-tactical fighter couldn't trip anything, since I'd heard anecdotally (and again here in this thread) that Trip was nice and useful on STR builds. It could be that I only tried to trip rogue-based mobs. It was a live play "test" mashing it during fights from 1->30, not a rigorous test versus select mob types. However, my takeaway was that Trip was utterly pointless and essentially so broken as to not be worth a button slot even on a STR-based fighter with full tactical feats & gear.

My experience with tacticals in general leads me to think that each is uniquely coded and their tooltips vary from outright lie to (at best) a significant hint. The only solid conclusions I have is that those that can fail all seem to test something and that the DC for most can be raised via appropriate gear & skills (ie. trance helps them all, stun helps stun, etc..).

A comparison with sunder is immaterial, trip is not sunder and sunder is not trip

I'm not even sure that the fortitude, reflex, & will that spells check for DCs are the same as the things tacticals test. That's how weird tactical DC checks seem to behave. If that's true then you're unfortunately correct about there being no way to draw conclusions from anything other than directly testing just that particular tactical.

That would be very unfortunate. It would mean DDO isn't even trying to follow it's own DC rules.

[Nite_Prowler]

Sunder is fortitude, trip is reflex according to wiki. Based on playing an instant-kill PM, mob fortitude is typically as high or higher than reflex. Yet, strangely, Sunder v Fortitude seems to always work with no investment while Trip basically never works even with heavy investment. This is where the comparison comes in.

Thanks for the confirmation.

The DCs for my trip is about 20 points higher than my sunder DCs hence the posting of this thread

BTW, I was very surprised when my STR-based full-tactical fighter couldn't trip anything, since I'd heard anecdotally (and again here in this thread) that Trip was nice and useful on STR builds. It could be that I only tried to trip rogue-based mobs. It was a live play "test" mashing it during fights from 1->30, not a rigorous test versus select mob types. However, my takeaway was that Trip was utterly pointless and essentially so broken as to not be worth a button slot even on a STR-based fighter with full tactical feats & gear.

I'm not even sure that the fortitude, reflex, & will that spells check for DCs are the same as the things tacticals test. That's how weird tactical DC checks seem to behave. If that's true then you're unfortunately correct about there being no way to draw conclusions from anything other than directly testing just that particular tactical.

That would be very unfortunate. It would mean DDO isn't even trying to follow it's own DC rules.

My sentiments exactly.

[HardNEET]

Adding my 2c here to say that there is definitely something wrong with trip.

Did a fair bit testing with my tactics-focused fighter in all levels of content. Like Bjond, the conclusion I came to is that whatever trip is checking against, it is not reflex as advertised. Of note was that epic and above was where my success rate especially fell apart. I went from tripping enemies in R4 Shavrath with almost 100% consistency, to never tripping anything in EE Phiarlan and Deneith quests. Needless to say, this feels really bad.

— My trip DC at level 21 was ~77 (+more depending on how much hp I was missing). I had a Fvs friend come in and try a DC 50 cometfall against the same mobs. They all fell over instantly. It is not possible to fail a DC of 50 and succeed against a DC of 77, if they are indeed using the same save.

— At endgame with a DC of 129, I can again trip most things reliably...unless it's post-Ravenloft expansion content. When I'm doing slaver's or ToEE, it's all gravy. But Feywild/Sharn/Saltmarsh/IoD? Back to failing against basically anything that isn't a mage. My falconry monk had zero issues blinding this stuff with a DC of ~108. Again, jarring inconsistency for no discernable reason.

I hope SSG understands how frustrating all this is — building your character to work around a mechanic that turns out to be either partially or totally non-functional. If I can't trust the information the game is giving me, it puts me off from playing at all. I know there's tons of other broken abilities out there, but trip feels like a core feature for fighter and barb builds, and not having it hurts their survivability. If nothing else, it would be prudent to fix in-game descriptions so we know what these abilities ACTUALLY do and not what they're merely intended to do.

(misc. note: Not 100% positive about this but my testing seemed to indicate that whatever number is being used for the trip check isn't subject to reaper skull scaling like fort/reflex/will are. I appeared to have roughly the same proc success on R6 as EE. Dropping down to Hard however suddenly made the trips start landing again.)