U57 Preview 1: Imbue Overhaul

[Stravix]

Is the barbarian taking damage per dice staying in?

This is extremely crippling in higher skull content, and melees already are not doing great.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if it was (the tree already has a focus on spending HP for more damage, why not lean into it), but if it does stay, the bonuses for it need to be raised substantially.

[Lynnabel]

Is the barbarian taking damage per dice staying in?

This is extremely crippling in higher skull content, and melees already are not doing great.

You're going to be heartbroken to hear this but unfortunately last night I made the sad and regrettable decision to cut the feature. I know, I know, its a pretty huge loss in flavor and fun factor, and watching players blow themselves up in the Test Dojo is going to remain in my top 10 DDO team memories, but it simply had to be done. Unfortunately the self-damage feature seems to trigger the on-hit "flinch" behavior on certain combat styles (most noticeable in Claw from my end) which causes a pretty drastic reduction in the visual flow of our animation system and also made a lot of horrible noise. So it's sad to say, but the self damage will end up on the cutting room floor for now. Please send flowers and well wishes to - well, you get the joke by now :P

[Ereshkigal]

My experience was, I gained +10 Temps per "Bonus Imbue Dice". I had +8 at the time, 5 out of DA (not including the actual Imbue itself, since it doesn't count as a "bonus" dice), T2, T3, T4, and Core 3 and 5 and 3 out of Warpriest, Core 2, 4 and 5.

And I gained 80 Temps.

hmmm i wonder why its saying i am getting the benefit but they're not showing up in health bar nor does the combat chat say how many... ill play around with toggles and gear and see if something is blocking it somehow... thanks for the reply.

[Stradivarius]

Agree with the notion the Barbarian bonuses need more rawr oomph especially with them hurting themselves every swing.

[Aredharr]

You're going to be heartbroken to hear this but unfortunately last night I made the sad and regrettable decision to cut the feature. I know, I know, its a pretty huge loss in flavor and fun factor, and watching players blow themselves up in the Test Dojo is going to remain in my top 10 DDO team memories, but it simply had to be done. Unfortunately the self-damage feature seems to trigger the on-hit "flinch" behavior on certain combat styles (most noticeable in Claw from my end) which causes a pretty drastic reduction in the visual flow of our animation system and also made a lot of horrible noise. So it's sad to say, but the self damage will end up on the cutting room floor for now. Please send flowers and well wishes to - well, you get the joke by now :P

I hate to laugh at this sad, unfortunate turn of events but I just love this answer so much!

[axiom21]

I hardly come onto these forums, just quietly play for the last decade and a half since beta, but this annoyed me enough.

I get the codebase is old and janky, that the network stack is old and janky, it's all built on top of the two MMOs with similar name you cannot utter here so I digress...

I understand a system performance impetus - go ahead and have some "master" imbue that is available to every character like an innate skill such as Search or what not and then roll the appropriate Enhancement damage into it so you have one Toggle instead of several. Cool, I am tracking that.

What I am not tracking is why you're putting in whatever database & codebase logic work to do this roll up into Imbues but ALSO NERFING a bunch of classes in the mean time. Vile Chemist and pretty much any source of Law and Chaos damage we had - which is already dismal with two being locked until very late Epics (Embodiment of X) is being HALVED. I understood the OG Inquisitive nerf when we had obscene amounts of Doubleshot but why are you cutting that damage in half? Why is anyone's damage being cut in half? Hence why this is just a nerf in disguise of a refactor.

This feels like an okay justification to start that is turned into a half-assed, half-baked, nerf. Retain the original scaling, retain the original dice, but roll it into one Imbue effect with others. If you absolutely have to scale the dice down to a d6 or a d8 at least make it consistent - 7d8 =/= 6d12 for Vile Chemist. So folks who run Vile Chemist + Inquisitive for instance don't lose almost 50% of their damage depending on their splits and point spreads.

It's already painful update after update having to be penned into the opinion of an amorphous, faceless game developer sitting in Massachusetts and forced to chase a "meta" of sorts, it makes it worse when its the same classes/trees over and over that are getting crapped on.

[helpfulguy1234]

You're going to be heartbroken to hear this but unfortunately last night I made the sad and regrettable decision to cut the feature. I know, I know, its a pretty huge loss in flavor and fun factor, and watching players blow themselves up in the Test Dojo is going to remain in my top 10 DDO team memories, but it simply had to be done. Unfortunately the self-damage feature seems to trigger the on-hit "flinch" behavior on certain combat styles (most noticeable in Claw from my end) which causes a pretty drastic reduction in the visual flow of our animation system and also made a lot of horrible noise. So it's sad to say, but the self damage will end up on the cutting room floor for now. Please send flowers and well wishes to - well, you get the joke by now :P

Ty! That would have been real rough since it scaled with skull.

[Kortar]

Alrighty, lets get into Divine Crusader. As many of you have pointed out, and I quote, "don't mess with the law damage rargh" - so I'm simply going to not mess with the law damage and call it a day.

So, with that in mind:
Law of the Divine: (t5 DC) You gain the Embodiment of Law feat if you didn't have it already. If you did have it, you now deal 1d6 Law damage on hit per Epic/Legendary level scaling with 200% of the higher of Melee or Ranged Power. (you'll notice this is pretty much the same as before, except...)
Bring Down Wrath: (t5 DC) On a critical hit, you apply 1 stack of Vulnerability and 1 stack of Armor Piercing. In addition, your shield is now considered a Favored Weapon for the purposes of your Divine Crusader Destiny Mantle, and now Doublestrikes at 50% of the rate of your main hand Doublestrike as if it were an offhand weapon. - This is a relatively small change, we're moving the on-hit debuffs over a step from Law of the Divine over to Bring Down Wrath. This is for 2 reasons: 1 is to make sure that each t5 has something for you even if you are not a shield user, and the other is so that we can decouple the debuffs from requiring the feat.

And in Fury, Scarred by Chaos is remaining exactly the same.

So, tldr, Law damage is back, huzzah! Onwards to part 2:

What is still changing is the actual Law and Chaos ED Feats. We've got a pretty unique opportunity here to change them from badly-scaling small procs into something relatively unique, so...

Embodiment of Law: +2% doublestrike and doubleshot. If you are lawful, you also gain +2 imbue dice

Harbinger of Chaos: +3 PRR and MRR. if you are chaotic, you also gain +2 imbue dice

We hope very much that these feats encourage players to step out of the True Neutral experience a bit. We want to offer incentives for alignment to mean more in character building and these feats are an excellent place to try that kind of design out. You won't need to actually be the listed alignment to take the feats, just to get the imbue dice, so if you just want doublestrike or some PRR feel free to snag em as you level up.

Anyway, thank you all for your feedback so far! We can't wait to show you this and all of the other changes we're making during the next preview.

How about this :
Embodiment of Law : With weapon and unarmed attacks, deal 10 Bane damage against all targets and an additional 20 Law damage against Chaotic targets. This scales with Melee or Ranged Power depending on your weapons. If you are Lawful +2 imbue dice.
Harbinger of Chaos : With weapon and unarmed attacks, deal 1d20 Bane damage against all targets and an additional 2d20 Chaos damage against Lawful targets. This scales with Melee or Ranged Power depending on your weapons. If you are chaotic +2 imbue dice.

That way fighters/monks who don't have access to an imbue can keep what they have on live and you can still add to it based on alignment.
The replacement you are proposing are too weak, by comparison doublestrike feat grants 5% and Deific Warding grant +10 PRR and MRR (+extra when hit).

I really can't see it how it makes sense to replace feats that are flavorful that player are using, for flavorless feats that are weaker versions of already available feats but also happens interact with your new toy.
In the meantime barbarians now have to take damage to do less damage than they used to for the sake of flavor.
Design decisions in this game really lack consistency.

[Stravix]

What I am not tracking is why you're putting in whatever database & codebase logic work to do this roll up into Imbues but ALSO NERFING a bunch of classes in the mean time. Vile Chemist and pretty much any source of Law and Chaos damage we had - which is already dismal with two being locked until very late Epics (Embodiment of X) is being HALVED. I understood the OG Inquisitive nerf when we had obscene amounts of Doubleshot but why are you cutting that damage in half? Why is anyone's damage being cut in half? Hence why this is just a nerf in disguise of a refactor.

Which makes it a good thing that the devs have stated specifically that they are willing to look into the scaling on these, so that they don't become substantial nerfs, like what you described.

[Stradivarius]

You're going to be heartbroken to hear this but unfortunately last night I made the sad and regrettable decision to cut the feature. I know, I know, its a pretty huge loss in flavor and fun factor, and watching players blow themselves up in the Test Dojo is going to remain in my top 10 DDO team memories, but it simply had to be done. Unfortunately the self-damage feature seems to trigger the on-hit "flinch" behavior on certain combat styles (most noticeable in Claw from my end) which causes a pretty drastic reduction in the visual flow of our animation system and also made a lot of horrible noise. So it's sad to say, but the self damage will end up on the cutting room floor for now. Please send flowers and well wishes to - well, you get the joke by now :P

Awww, I liked the little flinching animation while my character took self-hurt damage, seriously, especially on my WF.

Hmmmmm..... maybe it can be added but in a bit unorthodox way. Like it can seriously hurt you and it's randomized, on the order of 20~200 (if unlucky) damage per swing. BUT it will drastically scale up your damage die for imbues and it's on a randomized timer.

So basically it's a last minute gamble to clear out the room or finish off that last 10% on a boss. You don't know when the darn things going to end (hidden timer) all you know is you're taking chunks of damage per swing but also doing massive damage as well.

[Talnar00]

Alrighty, lets get into Divine Crusader. As many of you have pointed out, and I quote, "don't mess with the law damage rargh" - so I'm simply going to not mess with the law damage and call it a day.

So, with that in mind:
Law of the Divine: (t5 DC) You gain the Embodiment of Law feat if you didn't have it already. If you did have it, you now deal 1d6 Law damage on hit per Epic/Legendary level scaling with 200% of the higher of Melee or Ranged Power. (you'll notice this is pretty much the same as before, except...)
Bring Down Wrath: (t5 DC) On a critical hit, you apply 1 stack of Vulnerability and 1 stack of Armor Piercing. In addition, your shield is now considered a Favored Weapon for the purposes of your Divine Crusader Destiny Mantle, and now Doublestrikes at 50% of the rate of your main hand Doublestrike as if it were an offhand weapon. - This is a relatively small change, we're moving the on-hit debuffs over a step from Law of the Divine over to Bring Down Wrath. This is for 2 reasons: 1 is to make sure that each t5 has something for you even if you are not a shield user, and the other is so that we can decouple the debuffs from requiring the feat.

And in Fury, Scarred by Chaos is remaining exactly the same.

So, tldr, Law damage is back, huzzah! Onwards to part 2:

What is still changing is the actual Law and Chaos ED Feats. We've got a pretty unique opportunity here to change them from badly-scaling small procs into something relatively unique, so...

Embodiment of Law: +2% doublestrike and doubleshot. If you are lawful, you also gain +2 imbue dice

Harbinger of Chaos: +3 PRR and MRR. if you are chaotic, you also gain +2 imbue dice

We hope very much that these feats encourage players to step out of the True Neutral experience a bit. We want to offer incentives for alignment to mean more in character building and these feats are an excellent place to try that kind of design out. You won't need to actually be the listed alignment to take the feats, just to get the imbue dice, so if you just want doublestrike or some PRR feel free to snag em as you level up.

Anyway, thank you all for your feedback so far! We can't wait to show you this and all of the other changes we're making during the next preview.

Thank you for this idea/planned change. Great change imo. Nice to see Bring Down Wrath be more than a shield only T5, and makes Law of the Divine still good, but not the end all be all option.

[Triaxx2]

Lich: We were chatting on the discord and got to discussing cleaves, which is slightly outside of this discussion, but:

Cleave (Passive): on a killing blow your next hit gains 100% strikethrough.
Great Cleave (Passive): on a killing blow your next hit gains 100% strikethrough, if that is also a killing blow you gain another stack, works up to 3 times.
Supreme Cleave (Active): Same effects plus: Your next hit gains +200% strikethrough with a 12/9/6 second cooldown.

We've also been running some maths, and honestly the amount of damage we're getting is having a bit of issue comparing to what we can do now. And while I get that we're lacking some scaling effects and some of the nerf in this is intended, I wonder if some of the stuff isn't going too far down.

Also please, can Half-elf get some +dice in it's racial tree for the Warlock Dile. Right now you take it and then ignore it because while it's bonus damage it's so horrifically bad, and Rogue Helves get SA dice each level of their Dile. I'm not even hoping for a d6 or anything. Even if it's scaling on bonus dice and proccing on spells it's so hilariously far behind everything else because it's got 0 support.

[LiveFast]

You probably are working on changing EK quite a bit since you are giving imbues to everything that moves (hence taking away the uniqueness of this tree) and also taking away offhand versatility auto-crit. Mind giving a hint about those changes? Or do I TR right now into a sorc/alchemist/druid nuker like most players?

[Lotoc]

regarding flavor of imbues, I'm somewhat sad to see Lighting the Candle losing the extra damage for two handed fighting vs dual wielding, it was basically the only on hit effect that accounted for how much harder TWF can scale imbues.
Could we perhaps see a feat added for 2hf that improves imbue damage by 50% or so when using a two handed weapon, autogranted in Henshin Mystic cores? 2hf is at the moment the only combat style without an auxiliary feat like Offhand Versatility, Two Weapon Defense etc so it'd be a decent space to give such an option.

[droid327]

You probably are working on changing EK quite a bit since you are giving imbues to everything that moves (hence taking away the uniqueness of this tree) and also taking away offhand versatility auto-crit. Mind giving a hint about those changes? Or do I TR right now into a sorc/alchemist/druid nuker like most players?

EKs still get the most die of any imbue source, and their choice of element, though yeah it's a lot more homogeneous now

They never said OHV was losing auto crit, they just said it was getting +1 die

[LiveFast]

EKs still get the most die of any imbue source, and their choice of element, though yeah it's a lot more homogeneous now

They never said OHV was losing auto crit, they just said it was getting +1 die

oh thanks for clarifying OHV.

[Stravix]

regarding flavor of imbues, I'm somewhat sad to see Lighting the Candle losing the extra damage for two handed fighting vs dual wielding, it was basically the only on hit effect that accounted for how much harder TWF can scale imbues.
Could we perhaps see a feat added for 2hf that improves imbue damage by 50% or so when using a two handed weapon, autogranted in Henshin Mystic cores? 2hf is at the moment the only combat style without an auxiliary feat like Offhand Versatility, Two Weapon Defense etc so it'd be a decent space to give such an option.

That's actually a really nice idea! Maybe even make lighting the candle a d6 imbue, but a d10 imbue if using a quarterstaff, to further incentivize it.

[dkyle]

Lich: We were chatting on the discord and got to discussing cleaves, which is slightly outside of this discussion, but:

Cleave (Passive): on a killing blow your next hit gains 100% strikethrough.
Great Cleave (Passive): on a killing blow your next hit gains 100% strikethrough, if that is also a killing blow you gain another stack, works up to 3 times.
Supreme Cleave (Active): Same effects plus: Your next hit gains +200% strikethrough with a 12/9/6 second cooldown.

Big double thumbs down. You're taking feats that are useful for all melee, and making them exclusively THF (and a small subset of SWF). THF absolutely does not need a buff at severe detriment to every other style. You're also taking a conscious tactical choice, and making it just mindless auto-attack.

[Yamani]

Embodiment of Law: +3 PRR and MRR. if you are chaotic, you also gain +2 imbue dice

Harbinger of Chaos: +2% doublestrike and doubleshot. If you are lawful, you also gain +2 imbue dice

So if I already have one of these feats. Can I get an alignment change token as well as a feat swap token when this change goes live? While it is minor this does effect some builds...

Also yay for being 1 step closer to blackguards. Need some Chaotic paladins for their doublestrike bonuses!!!!

[Lynnabel]

Alrighty, brace yourselves, more math!

Inquisitive Before: max 14d8 at 150%, which means 14 * 4.5 * 1.5 = 94.5 av damage
Inquisitive Now: max 8d8 at 150%, which means 8 * 4.5 * 1.5 = 54 av damage

So, lets poke at the scaling a bit. At 200%: 8 * 4.5 * 2 = 72 av damage

This puts the break even point somewhere between 2 and 3 bonus dice:
8 * 4.5 * 2 = 72 av damage
9 * 4.5 * 2 = 81 av damage
10 * 4.5 * 2 = 90 av damage
11 * 4.5 * 2 = 99 av damage

This means that each dice is worth 9 damage, versus before where each dice was worth 6.75, so the bonus dice mean more than they did before.