U57 Preview 1: Hit Point Pass

[Tsutti]

Cleric
T5 - Warrior Priest - Divine bastion - Gain 15% competence bonus to hit points in addition to it's original bonuses.
Core 4 - Warrior Priest - Warcasting - Sacred hit point bonus reduced to 5%.
Class Feat - Cleric Animal Domain hit point bonus reduced to 4 hit points per level and 2 hit points per epic/legendary level
Divine Bastion Updated: No longer increases threat but grants a 15% competence bonus to hit points in addition to it's original bonuses.

Favored Soul
Class Feat - Stout of Heart Changed reduced to : 4 hit points per level and 2 hit points per epic/legendary level.
Divine Champion: Updated: No longer increases threat but grants 20% competence bonus to hit points in addition to it's original bonuses.

This, as mentioned by one other person, is not great for healers. They aren't getting the % bonuses anyway from EDF so all this does is reduce their flat hp bonuses, compounded by the fact that while you can take Shield Mastery feats for tankiness this isn't something healers always do so someone not taking those won't have any of this hp made up for by combat mastery feats.

As also pointed out, the reduction by 10% competence on top of another 5% sacred is a much larger reduction for cleric tanks than for a paladin or fighter, and the 5% lost by those will probably be made up for by the flat hp from combat style feats but 15% is a lot more than will be made up for.

Barbarians
T5 - Uncanny Balance rank 3 gains +15% competence bonus to hit points in addition to it's original bonuses.
T5 - Accelerated Metabolism grants +15% competence bonus to hit points in addition to it's original bonuses.
Barbs are getting a lower bonus here because their so tough for other reasons (and their HD bonus from styles is larger)

Unyielding Sentinel:

Strength of Vitality reduced: Gain 2/4/6% insightful bonus to max hit points. Rank 3: Increase this bonus to 10% if the Mantle of the Sentinel is Active.

In here to make tanking less unyielding sent exclusive since this bonus was so large and to offset some of the increases from other sources.

Fury of the Wild:

Lore of the Wilds: reduced to 5% primal bonus bonus to max hit points from 10% (but now no lore feats required)

I'm sorry, but exactly zero dedicated tanks will use anything other than Unyielding Sentinel regardless; the tree is too important what with an insight % bonus and a possible quality % bonus, 35 hp from cores (next highest is Fury at 20 per), and by far the most useful epic moment to a tank.

Barbarian tanks are also hit quite hard here as like the cleric tank, they are losing more than the 5% pallies and fighters are losing. Occult Slayer tree has 10% quality hp, and will now be the only tree without a competence bonus, so barbarians tanks lose out on at least 10% of their previous competence bonus PLUS 5% quality IF they start taking the Deific Warding feat, or they lose out on the whole 10% quality if they would still rather not take Deific Warding--in other words, they could be mostly pointless now and we'll likely see a much lower diversity of tanks, with the only real options now being fighter and paladin for most cases.

• The large majority of Melee builds, in fact most builds, will see a hit point increase. For focused tanks and FVS builds using stout heart this will be more of a neutral change.

This is largely adding to existing enhancements but there are a few reworks. The competence bonus is lower but this should be more than counteracted by the bonuses from Part 1 and or the ability to now cast spells without impairment.

FVS healers using stout heart may see a neutral change if they take shield mastery feats, otherwise it will be a nerf to healing FVS. Focused tanks don't look like they're a neutral change at an eyeball look, gaining twice as much class hp and epic/legendary hp at the cost of a minimum 15% hp, and while that flat hp is a lot I don't think that it will make up 15% hp loss even with your other % bonuses added on. I can't be sure without running some numbers, for paladins and fighters, but it seems slightly suspect.

I am fairly sure, however, that cleric and barbarian tanks will see an unfavorable and not neutral change. The loss of EDF loses each of them 10% competence rather than 5%, and cleric loses an additional 5% from their sacred while barbarian probably loses 5% quality, opting to get the Deific Warding feat for 5% quality in Unyielding Sentinel and mitigate % hp losses.

That is 15% hp for both clerics and minimum 15% for barbarians compared with paladins and fighters, assuming the barb even takes Deific Warding otherwise it's 20-25% (depending on whether they decide it's more worthwhile to get that 15% competence but lose out on other tanky stats or more worthwhile to miss out on yet another 5% to get more tanky stats). Total, this is 25% hp for clerics and 25-35% for barbs depending on build choices.

Sorc/Wiz
Had to do a bit here since the "shorten" spell range play style is going away. Reminder any bonus marked passive works for just owning the enhancement.

Knight's Transformation Updated: While this toggle is active your base attack bonus is increased to equal your character level. When you successfully hit with an Eldritch Strike you gain Knight's Strike: +30 universal spell power and +3% Critical Spell Damage for 30 seconds.

Improved Knight's Transformation Updated: While Knight's transformation is active you gain a +1 comp bonus to your weapons crit multipler. When your Eldritch Strike hits you gain the additional bonuses to your Knight's Strike of +3 to Hit, Damage and 3% double strike. Passive Bonus: You gain 15% competence bonus to Max Hit Points (regardless if the toggle is on or not)

Knight's Striker: Knight's Strike gains +2 Evocation and Conjuration DCs and +20 melee power. Passive: You gain mobile spell casting.
Knight's Controller: Knight's Strike gains +2 Enchantment DCs, +2 Illusion DCS, +4 Spell Penetration and +20 Melee Power. Passive: You gain mobile spell casting.

I don't really get why Eldritch Strike needs to gate those previously permanent bonuses, but if we need a tradeoff beyond -10% competence hp (EDF 25% to 15% in this tree) then I'll take it

[Epicsoul]

Removing EDF is a welcomed change. It was terrible for hybrid builds. Making melee beefier is also necessary, though I'm unsure if the part 1 changes compensate enough for the loss of 5% HP for most melee.

The major issue I have is that tanks are being unnecessarily nerfed. As someone who likes to push raid content, we squeeze every HP and defensive stat we can into a build. This is going to be a nerf by losing 5% HP from EDF and 10% from US. Paladins and Fighters should at least get 30% Competence HP bonus from their tanking tree, which might be on parity where they are now with the increase in base HP.

[Yamani]

-Heroic Durability updated:

Heroic Durability - +30 Hit Points. In addition, for every melee combat style feat you take you gain a 25% bonus to the hit points gained from your class levels. Epic and Legendary levels count at half value. This bonus can only stack up to 100%.

Make this to where the % hp bonuses apply only with the melee feats active. Otherwise stuff like a ranged ranger will get free hp for no good reason at all, since they get twf feats for free.

[Duhboy]

Barbarian tanks are also hit quite hard here as like the cleric tank, they are losing more than the 5% pallies and fighters are losing. Occult Slayer tree has 10% quality hp, and will now be the only tree without a competence bonus, so barbarians tanks lose out on at least 10% of their previous competence bonus PLUS 5% quality IF they start taking the Deific Warding feat, or they lose out on the whole 10% quality if they would still rather not take Deific Warding--in other words, they could be mostly pointless now and we'll likely see a much lower diversity of tanks, with the only real options now being fighter and paladin for most cases.



FVS healers using stout heart may see a neutral change if they take shield mastery feats, otherwise it will be a nerf to healing FVS. Focused tanks don't look like they're a neutral change at an eyeball look, gaining twice as much class hp and epic/legendary hp at the cost of a minimum 15% hp, and while that flat hp is a lot I don't think that it will make up 15% hp loss even with your other % bonuses added on. I can't be sure without running some numbers, for paladins and fighters, but it seems slightly suspect.

I am fairly sure, however, that cleric and barbarian tanks will see an unfavorable and not neutral change. The loss of EDF loses each of them 10% competence rather than 5%, and cleric loses an additional 5% from their sacred while barbarian probably loses 5% quality, opting to get the Deific Warding feat for 5% quality in Unyielding Sentinel and mitigate % hp losses.

That is 15% hp for both clerics and minimum 15% for barbarians compared with paladins and fighters, assuming the barb even takes Deific Warding otherwise it's 20-25% (depending on whether they decide it's more worthwhile to get that 15% competence but lose out on other tanky stats or more worthwhile to miss out on yet another 5% to get more tanky stats). Total, this is 25% hp for clerics and 25-35% for barbs depending on build choices.

Frenzied Berzerkers that chooses Raging Blows over Accelerated Metabolism won't gain the competence bonus to HP aswell.

[Zdevor]

I agree with that opinion that the HP bonus in the T5 Enhancements should be lowered to T3 and/or T4 or in the Cores.
I run a hybrid tanky melee Artificer build, using Renegade Mastermaker T5 and went 41p in VKF tree. So it is impossible to get access to any HP bonus at the other T5s.
Also Battle Engineer Tree will be ahead of RMM tree HP wise? That is weird cause RMM is the Defensive tree and BE is the Offensive.
Another POV that a build with 5 levels in a class can get T5 but when someone goes deep like 16+ levels in a class but uses Enhacement Trees which dont have the HP bonus at T5 will be lock out of any possible Competence HP bonuses????????????? 25% loss is HUGE!

P.S.: RMM Paragon Body is a T5 +10% Quality bonus. If the Competence HP bonus is also a T5 (in another tree) those cannot be taken at the same time. Different bonuses stack, but this is an impossibility.
If every Enhancement Core in addition could cover 3-5%, maybe it would more fair.


my build: https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...56#post6340556

[Duhboy]

-Heroic Durability updated:

Heroic Durability - +30 Hit Points. In addition, for every melee combat style feat you take you gain a 25% bonus to the hit points gained from your class levels. Epic and Legendary levels count at half value. This bonus can only stack up to 100%.

Is this actually working on Lammania? Or is it borked and not working at all?

[Axcarth]

Epic Defensive Fighting: Will be removed from the game.

Weeeeeeeeee!!! Really nice to read this.

Warlock
(No Updates to enhancement trees. Warlock enlightened spirit already has a comp bonus in their tree).

Lol, you really don't have any love for warlocks, do you? xD

I Like what I read so far. Thanks for the work on this. Just curious about if AC-PRR-MRR mechanics is having a pass too on this U57, anytime soon?

[Duhboy]

I agree with that opinion that the HP bonus in the T5 Enhancements should be lowered to T3 and/or T4 or in the Cores.
I run a hybrid tanky melee Artificer build, using Renegade Mastermaker T5 and went 41p in VKF tree. So it is impossible to get access to any HP bonus at the other T5s.
Also Battle Engineer Tree will be ahead of RMM tree HP wise? That is weird cause RMM is the Defensive tree and BE is the Offensive.
Another POV that a build with 5 levels in a class can get T5 but when someone goes deep like 16+ levels in a class but uses Enhacement Trees which dont have the HP bonus at T5 will be lock out of any possible Competence HP bonuses????????????? 25% loss is HUGE!

Completely agree with this. should be in the cores instead of a T5

[Stradivarius]

Torc,

Real quick.

Why the massive nerf to melees? You do realize you need to head the other way, we get one shotted in high skull reapers, we need support not an overall nerf (absolutely bizzarre you guys would think in this direction.) My Frenzy barb is losing a sizeable chunk of HP (~10%) my cleric even more.

I'm mad but I would like your reasoning for this. I think you guys have your reasons, if you can lay them out (maybe future-proofing something?) I think these changes will go over better. Thank you.

[Khurse]

So A number of classes are being raised to have the same base hit die as Monks, Rangers are moving ahead, and these classes all get 20% buffs, while Handwrap Monk (Shintao) is 15%..or 25% if you go earth...but it's no longer a quality bonus..

All things considered (I'm not sure this is a bad change overall for the game), you guys really do hate the Monk class don't you?

[Fubbzy]

Running a ****** 20 wiz pm tank atm, went from 3996 hp with edf to 3694 on lamm (i have all the shield masteries). Would there be any possible solution for meme hybrid tanks such as this? Adding the competence bonus to zombie ascendant shroud on top of the existing 10% profane might be a bit of an ask but you never know.

[Infiltraitor]

Your base hit point score is a good 500 points higher than the top range of what we were expecting after the stat squish. (Congrats?) We were kind of expecting the tip top people to maybe drop 50-100 hit points which in the grand scheme of things probably won't change the time to kill on them on any meaningful difficulty.

This is why we have previews.

Please remember this is preview 1 (of I believe 3) and it's very easy to tweak numbers. Also consider that the EDF casting range limitations will be going away. This may not be something you've cared about on a tank build before, but you have an easier time flexing into caster healing or maybe something else and there has to be trade offs to that even if you have no intention of using them.

I'd love to know more about your build. How you put that total together and what PRR/MRR are you running?

-T

My cleric tank has 7000 hp, 490 PRR, 250 MRR, 240* AC. (Inside Reaper Difficulty, link in references at bottom)

A Paladin tank would be 7000 HP, 525 PRR, 325 MRR, 500 AC.

A Barbarian tank would be 7200 HP, 470 PRR, 290 MRR, 250 AC, and 14% damage reduction.**

My cleric warpriest is pretty much a min-maxed tank build with full gear, 115 reaper points, and all past lives and is at the very bottom of what is considered an acceptable for reaper tanking. This giant hp nerf is the end for all cleric tanks. It used to be BARELY able to keep up with the other 2 main tank classes. Now it will no longer be able to keep up.

There are currently only 3 classes that can tank reliably in reaper difficulty. Barbarian, Paladin/Fighter***, and Cleric. With cleric being the weakest tank of the three lagging defensively behind by about 12.5%. You are simply not going to have any more warpriest tanks after this nerf. The playstyle will simply be too far behind other tank builds.

Yes, we can now cast spells and so on without the limitations of EDF. Except the tank playstyle requires giving up all spellpower and sp and so forth. I COULD cast heal but it would barely heal anything because all my gear slots and all my filligrees and all my feats went into hp and defense. Sacrifices must be made to survive tanking 2 doom reapers at once. And that happens quite often in R10.

Tanking is not a popular playstyle as it is. Cleric tanks are the weakest and least popular among tanks. This nerf will cause every last cleric tank to LR +20 into a Paladin or a Barbarian or Fighter (ew gross). The good news is you will sell a lot of lesser hearts of wood. The bad news is no more cleric tanks.

If you have the internal numbers, you can easily verify how few cleric warpriests there are already. Being 12.5% behind other tanks is barely acceptable. After this nerf, warpriests will be nearly 20% weaker than other tanks. That is a huge margin and beyond what any respectable raid leader will accept.

TLDR: Animal Domain, 10% Sacred HP, and 25% epic defensive fighting HP are the only things keeping warpriests playable.


* the screenshot shows 490 PRR and 320 AC, pre-BAB nerf. Post-nerf I had to sacrifice 100 AC to reach 490 PRR again.

** Max completionist Barbarian tanks will have 8500+ HP and 410 PRR and 230 MRR.
Barbarians are currently #1. After this nerf, they will be #2 and Paladin/Fighter will be #1. Druid will be a distant #3.

*** A Paladin and a Fighter share the same Defender enhancement. It's functionally the same.

References

My current Cleric tank
https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...he-Septic-Tank

Paladin tank
https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...3-Paladin-Tank

Barbarian tank
https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...ame-Tank-Build

This barbarian tank has 10k hp. He's going to lose like 1200 hp from this nerf.
https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...-Reaper-6-Argo

[Nickodeamous]

So A number of classes are being raised to have the same base hit die as Monks, Rangers are moving ahead, and these classes all get 20% buffs, while Handwrap Monk (Shintao) is 15%..or 25% if you go earth...but it's no longer a quality bonus..

All things considered (I'm not sure this is a bad change overall for the game), you guys really do hate the Monk class don't you?

Dear Devs,

Here I am again, defending monks. Why are you essentially punishing monks here. I am going from a 20% bonus from EDF to a 15% bonus. Lets be upfront here...a monk literally has to jump INTO the mobs, and yet, here we are taking hit points away. Please correct me if I am wrong here, but this doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Please let me know if I am reading this wrong.

thanks,
Nico

[TPICKRELL]

Back of the napkin math says that my DPS barb is losing a few hundred hit points, and gets the privilege of swapping Raging Blows ( A solid DPS enhancement ) for Accelerated Metabolism ( a really crappy healing enhancement ) to avoid losing several hundred more.

My Barb Tank is getting an even shorter end of the stick.

Gotta love it when you see those big smiley Titles on SSG posts now days.

[TitusOvid]

I'd like to add to the tank feedback:
Even FvS (splashes) will lose a noticeably amount of HP and even threat. You need to work hard to build a viable tank. Taking 1 or 2 classes out of the equation will narrow the possibilities considerably.

Please take another look.

EDF: Just get rid of touch range.

Cheers,
Titus.

[Memnir]

Starting to get a real The Producers vibe.

[Tanky]

Removing EDF is a welcomed change. It was terrible for hybrid builds. Making melee beefier is also necessary, though I'm unsure if the part 1 changes compensate enough for the loss of 5% HP for most melee.

The major issue I have is that tanks are being unnecessarily nerfed. As someone who likes to push raid content, we squeeze every HP and defensive stat we can into a build. This is going to be a nerf by losing 5% HP from EDF and 10% from US. Paladins and Fighters should at least get 30% Competence HP bonus from their tanking tree, which might be on parity where they are now with the increase in base HP.

On-point summary and agree with both points.

[Duhboy]

I don't really see much of a point in putting the competence bonus to HP in Tier 5 as it's not that OP let alone that your supposed goal is to help melee toons. How is this so when your pigeonholing certain melee builds in choosing a tier 5 for a HP boost? I think it would be better and more entuned to what you are trying to do if you add the bonus to HP into the cores such as the 4th cores (Character level 12) across the board. Seeing that the bonus would be a competence bonus multiple cores wouldn't stack because of same bonus. But if you took a core that gives 20% competence bonus from a different tree you'd only see an extra 5% because of higher same bonus which comparably speaking isn't much of an increase.

[BigSlugger]

Hey Torc, what about Occult Slayer and Frenzied Berserkers that take Raging Blows instead of AM?

This. And also Renegade Mastermaker.

[LightBear]

Just to shed some light on the HP pool, 4000 hp is considered a low score for a tank.
There are wizards and sorcs running around with that score.

I don't know how you want us to complete some raids out there when you expect the chew toy to have 3k hp.