DDOCast 691 - Update 57 Review

[pjstechie]

Patrick is joined by Grubbby, Tashr and Vooduspyce this week to review Update 57: Grip of the Hidden Hand!

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[FuzzyDuck81]

Having festivult on hardcore probably explains why the spiderweb cookie no longer has rejuvenation cocoon I guess, as that was a really handy one to have especially at lower levels. The others that give the offensive destiny abilities like epic strikes etc. are less of an issue with how they're at a lower caster level without spellpower taken into account so they're more just some fun tricks to play with. The change to the warforged titan one having converter will be handy though as with a few of those, in a pinch the wizard can gain the ability to heal party members.

I feel a load of the changes that seem linked to hardcore, both the nerfs & the positive ones, are a result of the devs being able to gain a much larger volume of up to date data to analyse regarding the impact of both player skill & character power levels when you remove all the benefits of past lives & already having plenty of gear from the equation - I remember the 1st hardcore season where a lot of very established players had a severe wake-up call in the 1st few days when they realised just how heavily they'd been relying on those benefits to walk through early quests on elite difficulty & hadn't yet adjusted their playstyle to take it into account.

For new augments, here's an idea; more set bonus augments, available through faction favour & giving appropriately themed bonuses, with additional or increased bonuses if you have high favour levels with that faction (if you TR you'll have to do the quests again to regain full power, meaning more people running more variety of quests), & technically-speaking it could probably be implemented via linking to the +HP feats - Legendary Chimera's Fang gets extra bonuses depending on which dragonmark feat you have so it should be possible at least, though I have no idea about the complexity of coding for it.

[GeneralDiomedes]

Grading the new expansion is difficult - the quest quality is pretty uneven. I think there is one A quest (three paths to battle), one B+ quest (Army of Eternal Night) one B- quest (Growing Pains) and the rest being C. The unfinished looking Hand and the Eyes being especially disappointing as the supposed capstone.

Anyhow thanks for having an opinion, make for more interesting listening than 'everything is great, play what you want'.