Kensei Competence HP bonus

[SpartanKiller13]

Medium permits lots of MRR, but it's pretty hard getting MRR over 120~130 without ugly sacrifices. If you're not wearing a shield, you won't get the 2x bonus to boost MRR high enough to be noticeably better than Light.

Personally, after running the numbers and seeing how futile it would be without spell absorb, I decided to just die when wilted. I don't like swapping gear (especially not tactically) and it's typically not even one death per life.

My brain says 150 shouldn't be that hard but honestly could just be b/c I was most recently on melees that had some stuff from class that Barb mostly doesn't get (aside from OS, which can get like 67 MRR lol - maybe worth considering XD). But I see your point, if it's only -12 PRR/-25 MRR why not get the Dodge.

Ya know what I'll give it a shot next time I'm after a Barb life, will probs be 3-4 lives from now (finishing HComp now that it's autogrant lol) but seems reasonable. IG could go like Tabaxi w/Shadowdancer as 3rd tree and get Improved Evasion to help out a bit too? I mean I need Tabaxi lives...

I'm building to tank a Doom with zero heals (at least for 20s), which is usually enough. More often than not, groups don't have a healer and don't have a tank. It's all casters & ranged. Most puggies are fine healing now and then, but having a player that likes to focus more on heals than dps/cc/etc is the difference between R8 & R10 for me.

That's fair, definitely more on the tankier side than I'd usually consider. I generally assume that either I can get some heals or I'm not going to hold aggro lol, but I feel like I've seen a lot more healing in pugs? Hopefully the EDF change will help a little too, but like it's pretty low opportunity cost to pick up a heal on most builds. But yeah if nobody's throwing them it's a bad day.

Outside R6+, I'd definitely agree. Once you've got the one~two hit deaths covered it becomes a matter of recovering the lost HP or doing odd things to hugely extend TTK.

Yeah, and those are more where I'd tend to focus through stuff like running SD mantle or building stupid tactics DC's or something, vs trying to be basically a full tank while boosted.

SSG designed reaper to badly want a healer for melee. That's the entire reason for the self-heal penalty. The population responded (as expected) with "lets get some healers" but when they discovered there wasn't a vast pool of healers languishing away, that quickly became "let's get rid of melee". It's not overt malice. It's pure convenience.

SSG failed to consider tank/healer scarcity. Based on rough healer/tank:dps ratios, leveling a healer or tank is about 20x less fun than a DPS. There are two general ways to fix this:

1. D&D style: turn every melee into a tank and every healer into a DPS.
2. MMO/trinity style: make it impossible for ranged+casters to play without tank+healer

IMHO, every melee should naturally be a tank. That's how it is in D&D. The trinity is an MMO-thing. It doesn't exist in D&D. And, healers should be able to DPS. A D&D cleric is a powerful DPS class. DDO is chasing the MMO trinity so hard it's loosing sight of it's D&D roots.

Table-top D&D has itself pulled off non-trinity play successfully for decades. Pretty sure SSG will do nothing. If by some miracle, they do anything, it would be dumb (but easy to code) & pro-trinity; eg. all mobs reflect 10xSkull% of spellpower/rangedpower based damage when you have agro. They're very much more MMO than D&D in mindset.

Yeah, it's pretty easy to pick up a heal or two on a lot of builds but that just isn't enough to keep a squishy melee alive while tanking (my Sorc has 3 heals, but they have 12s, 20s, and 15s + epic strike for CD's lol). Healers are mostly seen in raids or someone who happens to be on a blaster that came with heals (like Cleric/FvS) who decides to heal (like for a big HP boss).

I think making healing more fun/interesting or more AFK would also both be better than the current - like Beacon of Hope tries to have fun buttons, but isn't quite enough. Or EA's Core 4 is pretty neat, if anyone ever uses it instead of the blasty bit. Or conversely AFK healing so you can do other stuff (like heal-wall or mass regen or Bard songs) but those usually come with high opportunity cost or low effectiveness (or both). Radiant Servant's Divine Healing would be there if it scaled with Pos SP and crit, but it's just too small past early levels.

As in like a melee Rogue should be on the same tank scale as a Paladin, even if a few steps lower? You can sorta get there in DDO, but only with some effort and at a bit of a cost.

I'm not sure if you're saying DDO should move towards the trinity or that it shouldn't? I personally enjoy that there isn't as much of "well you're a Cleric so you're a healbot" in DDO, like you can have a Wizard tank (well, could - idk about now) and a blaster Cleric.

[QUOTE]Yep, both my current/pre-U57 melee had T5s and lucked into getting 25% and are thus OK in U57. Both are high-dodge D.Roll builds. The first one was highly speculative. I was not sure it would work even for R4. Was a very nice surprise to find out how tanky it was.

U57 killed a couple planned builds (one used OS) because not enough AP to buy 25%. Post-U57 melee will all have a 25% HP enhance: T5 or 3 Bard / 3 Fighter. I thought it killed my planned caster druid heal+tank, but I might have found a way around it (druids are riddled with silly restrictions on their 25%)./QUOTE]

Defensive Roll looks really strong but I'm always scared b/c it requires you to be below half lmao. But 62% standing Dodge w/77% during Meld and 3 clickies to cap Dodge? Hmmmm. Probably worth going more like 50% Dodge but still...

Yeah, I had a T5 PM + Pally 15 zombie mega-Adrenaline build planned, and more recently a Fighter/Monk/Ranger which is why I started this thread that are likely both binned, although I guess I could run SaD on the Pally split if I can get up to Medium armor somehow.

I was speaking of what I hear melee talk about (new to R6+). I often get "how are you living?" questions. They get very seriously demoralized when I talk about how I build. Maybe 1 in 4 get determined to do similar builds. Most kinda sigh with "ugh, that's not for me".

It's OK that everyone has different tastes, but I very seriously dislike that the game artificially reduces potential groupies with what is seen as severe build burdens. MMOs are much more fun with a nice deep vat of happy squealing puglets.

It's pretty hard for sure, esp when you party up with like a Cold druid or something that just clears the room in a spell or three and isn't even close to taking damage. I got my Druid PL as one of those a month ago, and with terrible gear and no filigree (and 1 level of Ranger) I was happy in like R6; I'm not sure I could do that on any melee build, and I have a lot more experience with those (maybe like a Visage build? or PDK Pally?). Hard to justify going back to THF even if it's my favorite style.

I don't think you have to get as tanky as you are to be useful/have fun in mid-high Reaper, but you're definitely more dependent on your party then.

IMHO, it goes deeper than forums. It's basic human nature. People want simple choices. "What's the best class?" "What's the best weapon?" If the square answer isn't round enough, the hammer of willful ignorance pegs it down anyway.

"Probably something not melee unless you have like a few PL's, great gear, a bunch of reaper points, and a pretty solid build"

LOL, YES! No one liked the T5 method. The Lamannia HP thread was soundly lambasted. I'm fine with squirrelly, but even I hate the T5 approach. It killed TONS of fun builds. ; ;

And it's limited in a variety of ways as well... Gonna be a lot of Fighter/Pally /3 dips again lol. VKF is gonna be a bit more popular as well...

[Bjond]

I think making healing more fun/interesting or more AFK

More fun for tanking and healing would be amazing. The only times I had fun playing a healer was in FFXIV and ESO. Both games support a healer that mostly DPS's and only incidentally covers heals via hots, splashes (like FS shouts), and proactive TMP HP.

It's possible to make a fun tank in DDO, but it's not obvious and quite far from SSG's "ideal" of a fat Paladin cowering behind a shield.

As in like a melee Rogue should be on the same tank scale as a Paladin, even if a few steps lower?

In base D&D, AC from Armor + DEX bonus ends up the same regardless of the armor type or at most off by 1 or 2 AC. HP gives a tiny nudge to full BAB classes, but only arcanes end up as squishy by design in real D&D.

Defensive Roll looks really strong but I'm always scared

LOL, yup! I wanted to do one for a long time. It looked possible, but I was worried it would die before D.Roll triggered. When Tilo actually played and posted it working in his "Flowers" builds, I reworked the idea for no racials and (almost) no PLs.

D.Roll has steep build requirements: 10 Rogue, 23 AP in TA (minimum), 100 Reflex, and "lots" of HP. If you can hit that, you get 50% mitigatation while at 50% or lower HP; it's mathematically identical to HP+50% (at best).

Since you rarely get knocked down to exactly 49.99% HP, the actual equivalent HP boost is more like HP+20~40%. So, Barbarian's base HP+DR ends up with greater effective HP than D.Roll, works at all levels, and works versus magic -- d.Roll is only physical and only at-cap. Rogue IUD wins by far, though, since it can get it's base Dodge up to 45+.

"Probably something not melee unless you have like a few PL's, great gear, a bunch of reaper points, and a pretty solid build"

Yeah. The classic newbie advice that pretty much all MMOs and even D&D gives is "play a Fighter". Melee is the last thing to play in DDO. The first should be INQuisitive. Melee newbie is fine in heroics, but epics and cap? You're just asking to be pack-stoned.

For contrast, a newbie ranged could even join an R10 group if they're willing to give him a little advice.

[Marshal_Lannes]

The first should be INQuisitive. Melee newbie is fine in heroics, but epics and cap? You're just asking to be pack-stoned.

For contrast, a newbie ranged could even join an R10 group if they're willing to give him a little advice.

I agree completely with this. Although I think you still have to buy/unlock Inquisitive so it would be rare if this was the first character rolled by a new player. Still, rolling any version of a Ranger with a bow and unlocking Inquisitive (plus getting the Ranger PL) is what I recommend any new player take. Both Rangers and Inquisitive can be successful in R10 with minimal gear and PLs.

Per the lack of healers in DDO - all they would have to do is add a healing metric in the Quest stats. If players could see that oh, I healed for 54,234 points in this quest while the sorcerer only healed for 4302 then they aren't going to be bothered by getting overwhelmed in the kill count since there is tangible "proof" that their build is working. Neverwinter captures heal metrics, for example.

[SpartanKiller13]

More fun for tanking and healing would be amazing. The only times I had fun playing a healer was in FFXIV and ESO. Both games support a healer that mostly DPS's and only incidentally covers heals via hots, splashes (like FS shouts), and proactive TMP HP.

It's possible to make a fun tank in DDO, but it's not obvious and quite far from SSG's "ideal" of a fat Paladin cowering behind a shield.

Also takes a bit more investment in terms of like PL's and RXP to be as effective, in general.

In base D&D, AC from Armor + DEX bonus ends up the same regardless of the armor type or at most off by 1 or 2 AC. HP gives a tiny nudge to full BAB classes, but only arcanes end up as squishy by design in real D&D.

In a D20 system 1-2 AC is still like a 10-20% difference a lot of the time? But fair enough.

LOL, yup! I wanted to do one for a long time. It looked possible, but I was worried it would die before D.Roll triggered. When Tilo actually played and posted it working in his "Flowers" builds, I reworked the idea for no racials and (almost) no PLs.

D.Roll has steep build requirements: 10 Rogue, 23 AP in TA (minimum), 100 Reflex, and "lots" of HP. If you can hit that, you get 50% mitigatation while at 50% or lower HP; it's mathematically identical to HP+50% (at best).

Since you rarely get knocked down to exactly 49.99% HP, the actual equivalent HP boost is more like HP+20~40%. So, Barbarian's base HP+DR ends up with greater effective HP than D.Roll, works at all levels, and works versus magic -- d.Roll is only physical and only at-cap. Rogue IUD wins by far, though, since it can get it's base Dodge up to 45+.

If soloing yeah, but if you're in a party and below 50% usually that's when I'd expect anyone with a heal to be throwing it at ya? So you get less value out of it too, or at least perceived value. Tabaxi Rogue can do it with Rogue 4 with 16 AP in racial too, FWIW. And yeah, it's pretty backloaded for hitting high Reflex...

Yeah. The classic newbie advice that pretty much all MMOs and even D&D gives is "play a Fighter". Melee is the last thing to play in DDO. The first should be INQuisitive. Melee newbie is fine in heroics, but epics and cap? You're just asking to be pack-stoned.

For contrast, a newbie ranged could even join an R10 group if they're willing to give him a little advice.

I mean Barb and Pally are both pretty reasonable for getting into DDO, but I'd say that more as learning the ropes vs joining R10 groups lol. You'll learn a lot more a lot faster IMO vs standing in the back plinking? But yeah for sure if you just want to get some RXP anything other than melee > melee.

Per the lack of healers in DDO - all they would have to do is add a healing metric in the Quest stats. If players could see that oh, I healed for 54,234 points in this quest while the sorcerer only healed for 4302 then they aren't going to be bothered by getting overwhelmed in the kill count since there is tangible "proof" that their build is working. Neverwinter captures heal metrics, for example.

It might help some, but if you measure overall heal than like a Sorc using Reborn in Fire will be pretty far up the list by accident (I hit 11k on a crit earlier today), anyone in EA mantle will be pretty far up, and it's not really showing how useful said healing is. If you measure only the effective portion of healing, a slower healer in a group will get nothing when there's a faster one, and then be like "yeah no need for me to be on a healer" and yeet out XD

But still, I'm usually in favor of additional metrics and healing stat is a lot less provocative than like a highest Damage stat or something.