U57 Preview 1: Imbue Overhaul

[Pretty_Good_Old_One]

Next is EK getting decimated from losing it's higher damage dice. Going from D12 (6.5) damage per dice to (3.5) damage per dice is a 53% reduction and would require total dice increasing by 85.8%, which it's not.

I think this might not be correct. The OP said EK dice are d8’s. If this is true, it is only a drop from 6.5 to 4.5 average damage per dice. It adds additional dice at core 5 and 6, so it comes out pretty close for average damage. It mainly comes down to whether the passive +1 dice at level 20 is still there on top of turning the d12 upgrade into +2 dice. If it is, old was 7*6.5 for 45.5 average damage, and new is 10*4.5 for 45 damage, with the ability to add in elven arcane archer, drow, or other dice without multi-classing.

If the level 20 passive dice is lost, (so only +2 total), it becomes 45.5 vs 40.5 - so an initial loss for pure classed, but still ways to make it up.

The variance will be less with the new system, but especially if that passive level 20 dice is still there, it seems like EK did not get hurt by the change…. And elven EKs can do a lot of extra damage now, if you invest the APs.

[rabidfox]

From my perspective being someone who actively tries to get new players to come to ddo and play dungeons and dragons here with my work on Hardcore and my YouTube I think all the changes to keep the game fun and all builds generally viable a good thing, having said that, major core changes that over-simplify that actually are nerfs are they in the best interest of each unique class?

At the end of the day people come here to play Dungeons and Dragons -
each class is unique. Each is unique because it does things the others don't. Each is different. That is what we like. What is the argument for having all these imbue dice pull from the same pool? why is this better?

isnt this 'one dice for all' thing just dumbing our complex cool game down?
one step further away from Dungeons and Dragons -

On one hand, it takes away the flavor and uniqueness of a some classes/builds when everyone is running an imbue. EK/AA/etc. were all about the damage toggle; now it won't be their big difference from everyone else. And without multiple imbue toggles active at the same time, builds that had that going on will no longer exist. It'll be a fairly generic setup with everyone is running an imbue and just a different damage type for each build.

On the other hand, it'll make balancing builds and classes much easier (along with balancing fights). If everyone is limited to one imbue toggle and the devs know the limit of how many dice are involved, they can balance quests and raids around the damage output; and they can adjust damage output game-wide by shifting scaling/dice availability quickly without having to rebalance every DPS setup by hand. New classes & archetypes will be easier to balance since it's a simplified system.

So for the devs, this is probably an amazing change for maintaining balance, designing raid fights, etc. But for players, we definitely lose some flavor builds and uniqueness of some trees.

[GramercyRiff]

I don't like this but I am not surprised I don't like this.

[Monkey_Archer]

That's totally on the table, if it helps - right now my suspicion is that the Law/Chaos ED Feats are going to end up as alignment boosts (so the Chaos one gives you, say, 2 imbue dice, some prr, some HP, some melee/ranged power, etc etc, but only if you're chaotic, same deal with law and law) and then we go back to the drawing board entirely on the T5s. Maybe the t5 bonuses for Fury/DC are just "you gain these feats if you didn't have them already, if you do have them, double their bonuses" - in that case, if the base feats are cool enough, the raw stats might be good enough to make everyone happy. And if they aren't, we can always add more juice to other areas of DC instead, all of the power doesn't have to be consolidated into that singular space, yanno?

Would it be possible to add a feat based imbue elsewhere then?

With every class except fighter having an imbue now, it seems bad to take away their only source of one.

Fighters also don't yet have an epic "requires 12 levels of <class>" feat...

[Lynnabel]

Next is EK getting decimated from losing it's higher damage dice. Going from D12 (6.5) damage per dice to (3.5) damage per dice is a 53% reduction and would require total dice increasing by 85.8%, which it's not.

Old EK at level 20: 7d12, or 45.5
New EK at level 20: 10d8, or 45

Would it be possible to add a feat based imbue elsewhere then?

With every class except fighter having an imbue now, it seems bad to take away their only source of one.

Fighters also don't yet have an epic "requires 12 levels of <class>" feat...

Not bad ideas in the slightest. Part of me thinks that if we give Fighters an imbue it should be a fighter bonus feat, yanno? I feel like having them wait until epics is a little too far off though.

[Hobgoblin51]

I am worried about the barbarian especially to weapon fighting barbarians if there is say 13 dice of damage that is 13 damage with each hand a swing that they are taking. When frenzy berserker first came out a long long time ago it had the same hurt yourself mechanism and they took that away because it wasn't fun what has changed now that makes it fun?

[Lynnabel]

I am worried about the barbarian especially to weapon fighting barbarians if there is say 13 dice of damage that is 13 damage with each hand a swing that they are taking. When frenzy berserker first came out a long long time ago it had the same hurt yourself mechanism and they took that away because it wasn't fun what has changed now that makes it fun?

Not to worry, its 1 flat damage now. Still dangerous! But not as dangerous. I might even also be nice and add a 1 second internal cooldown on that damage to really soften the ability up.

[SpardaX]

Next is EK getting decimated from losing it's higher damage dice. Going from D12 (6.5) damage per dice to (3.5) damage per dice is a 53% reduction and would require total dice increasing by 85.8%, which it's not.

Your other stuff in the above post seemed to be correct so I won't comment on it. But this is not correct, and I have good news. The EK dice is d8. 4.5 average. I did the maths, and it checks out. The worst case scenario was a full pure wizard EK 20 with the capstone in it's temporary super powered state, going from:
11d12 = 11x6.5 = 71.5 down to
14d8 = 14x4.5 = 63.

But not including their proc, I think the only number that came out lower in the new system was being the above pure EK wizard capstone included. How much lower?
7d12 = 7x6.5 = 45.5
10d8 = 10x4.5 = 45.

A whole 0.5 damage worse.

My only suggestion to this to keep things in parity would simply be to add +2 more bonus dice to the capstone's proc. 63 + 9 = 72. Compared to previous average of 71.5.

If we include the Draconic Destiny's additional +3 Dice bonus, then the average (old) vs average (new) drops a bit though. But I'm ok with that.

Edit: and I scroll up a bit and see I have been Ninja'd be Lyn. lol

[ghale]

That's totally on the table, if it helps - right now my suspicion is that the Law/Chaos ED Feats are going to end up as alignment boosts (so the Chaos one gives you, say, 2 imbue dice, some prr, some HP, some melee/ranged power, etc etc, but only if you're chaotic, same deal with law and law) and then we go back to the drawing board entirely on the T5s. Maybe the t5 bonuses for Fury/DC are just "you gain these feats if you didn't have them already, if you do have them, double their bonuses" - in that case, if the base feats are cool enough, the raw stats might be good enough to make everyone happy. And if they aren't, we can always add more juice to other areas of DC instead, all of the power doesn't have to be consolidated into that singular space, yanno?

No amount of dmg dice makes up for taking away vulnerability if you remove that from the T5. Yeah an extra 1d6 makes up for 20% dmg...

Debuffs are infinitely more powerful than damage dice.

We get it you want to add in dice, but don't F up entire destinies that are fine to do it.

[Monkey_Archer]

Old EK at level 20: 7d12, or 45.5
New EK at level 20: 10d8, or 45

well...
live EK would be 12d12 with draconic, augment and feat, or 78
New EK would be 15d8 with draconic, augment and feat, or 67.5
or 22d8 with new set, scion, filigree, for 99.... but that requires sacrifices

net nerf for existing EKs, but with higher potential on different builds

Not bad ideas in the slightest. Part of me thinks that if we give Fighters an imbue it should be a fighter bonus feat, yanno? I feel like having them wait until epics is a little too far off though.

Fair enough.

[nobodynobody1426]

Old EK at level 20: 7d12, or 45.5
New EK at level 20: 10d8, or 45



Not bad ideas in the slightest. Part of me thinks that if we give Fighters an imbue it should be a fighter bonus feat, yanno? I feel like having them wait until epics is a little too far off though.

They do get more dice through tree's and so forth, and those dice are D12's currently. This is why I made a whole post about building a standardized system that expanded two ways, it would allow for switching systems without breaking so many things. A single universal system with a single metric of expansion is going to break stuff very badly due to how diverse the various current on-hit procs are.

That's totally on the table, if it helps - right now my suspicion is that the Law/Chaos ED Feats are going to end up as alignment boosts (so the Chaos one gives you, say, 2 imbue dice, some prr, some HP, some melee/ranged power, etc etc, but only if you're chaotic, same deal with law and law) and then we go back to the drawing board entirely on the T5s. Maybe the t5 bonuses for Fury/DC are just "you gain these feats if you didn't have them already, if you do have them, double their bonuses" - in that case, if the base feats are cool enough, the raw stats might be good enough to make everyone happy. And if they aren't, we can always add more juice to other areas of DC instead, all of the power doesn't have to be consolidated into that singular space, yanno?

Currently there is no realistic way you can do this and not have it a severe nerf.

Math time

Currently

Law of the Divine: You gain the Embodiment of Law feat. If you already had it, it instead enhances the feat to deal 1d6 Law damage per Epic Level scaling with 200% Melee or Ranged Power, and apply a stack of Vulnerability and Armor Destruction on Critical Hits. (1 second cooldown on the debuff application)

That last part is the import part as legendary levels count for this scaling to, meaning it's going all the way to 40 as 20D6 instead of the 12D6 right now.

12D6 is 42 base damage, 300 melee power is pretty common at 32 so would be a 7.0 multiplier for 294 per hit. At 40 it would be 70 base, same melee power (we should have way more then) would be 490 damage per hit.

2D6 ... at 100% melee power (lets make it 200% cause the SSG devs are trying not to nerf us), with the same 300 MP comes to *drum roll please*, 49 average damage. If it's doubled then it's ... 98 damage. And this doesn't scale, it's the same base all the way to 40.

The T5 would have to do 12 times it's value just to not be a nerf. But even that would be a nerf because it would disable the minor "imbue" from KoTC. The 294 damage from LotD is in addition to everything else being done.

This is why I have the pessimism you commented on before, it takes an act of congress to get you guys to divert from an idea that is fundamentally bad like changing Divine Crusaders T5 to something that belongs on Eldritch Knight. As presented folks are going to just ignore it entirely and pick a different 28 feat, dedicated Paladins in our discord have already commented they plan to abandon Divine Crusader for Fury of the Wild. This isn't a knock on the hard work you guys do, just pointing out that not all ideas are good ideas.

[Dukowski_]

Eldritch knights should be favored and not nerfed. I suggest increasing the base dice to 1d10, being an EK has many drawbacks that affect gameplay and clear speed. I see no problem in letting them having the strongest imbue dice.

[droid327]

scion

Old scion is 2d20 = 21
New scion is +3 die = 3d8 = 13.5

And since both scale 100% on Spellpower, that's a straight nerf no matter how you slice it. Needs to be +5 die = 5d8 = 22.5 to be effectively neutral

[Monkey_Archer]

Old scion is 2d20 = 21
New scion is +3 die = 3d8 = 13.5

And since both scale 100% on Spellpower, that's a straight nerf no matter how you slice it. Needs to be +5 die = 5d8 = 22.5 to be effectively neutral

Correct. I probably wasn't clear in that post, I simply meant that the imbue itself has higher potential. When you factor in losing the above scion damage, and potentially losing dripping with magma for the new set bonus dice, and swapping filigrees (probably a 5 melee power loss) its an overall net nerf to EK dps, on top of the hp nerf .

[Hobgoblin51]

Not to worry, its 1 flat damage now. Still dangerous! But not as dangerous. I might even also be nice and add a 1 second internal cooldown on that damage to really soften the ability up.

Can we make sure that the damage doesn't scale in reaper? I don't see why it would but I know how things can be unintended. But it did scale say by a factor of 100 taking 200 damage a swing with each hit is not good

[crackerjackwr]

Bard:

• (Warchanter Tier 3) 1d6 Cold Damage on hit, cold spellpower
• (Swashbuckler Tier 3) 1d6 Sonic Damage on hit, scaling wit Sonic Spellpower (note: this was the sonic on-crit thing)
• (Warchanter) Each core beyond the first grants +1 Dice

So! A pretty huge list of changes, lots to digest. Your thoughts, questions, suggestions are always welcome!

Would love if the SB bard imbue still worked off crits and had different dice mechanic. the old 6d6 damge felt very rewarding for a crit, and would love the dice treatment , 6d6 per dice? could be fun! quibble on the dice numbers later, but the effect was fun!

[Hobgoblin51]

Not to worry, its 1 flat damage now. Still dangerous! But not as dangerous. I might even also be nice and add a 1 second internal cooldown on that damage to really soften the ability up.

ok fair. but i guess what im asking is why? none of the other imbues hurt the user. like i said originally, this wasnt fun back in 2007?ish and i dont see it being fun now.

[helpfulguy1234]

ok fair. but i guess what im asking is why? none of the other imbues hurt the user. like i said originally, this wasnt fun back in 2007?ish and i dont see it being fun now.

Yeah toss this idea in the trash. It's not fun, and it's dumb.....yanno?

[Hobgoblin51]

Yeah toss this idea in the trash. It's not fun, and it's dumb.....yanno?

wait im confused. toss my question in the trash or dont go with slashie wrist barb?

[helpfulguy1234]

wait im confused. toss my question in the trash or dont go with slashie wrist barb?

NO! Not your question. You are spot on.

Toss the self harm barb idea in the trash.

I think they would be hard pressed to find literally a single person who plays barb who thinks that it is a good idea.