It's been a year...

[Hawkwier]

...since I stopped playing DDO.

Reason being the ridiculous risk-reward imbalance between melee and non-melee the devs had presided over, which only seemed to be getting worse.

So, I thought I'd check in after a year or so to see if anything has improved in that regard and if it was worth playing this game again.

Be grateful if anyone could summarise the positives, or negatives, of any changes to the game in this context...

[mrfantastic1]

The last episode in my podcast DDO DM, link in my signature, We talked around this issue, we did discuss game balance, but the melee, caster topic is something I would like to see debated here on the forums, so I could have the other sides perspective. Most folks agree with you as do I that there is a large gap.

And it is the gap that we spoke about on the podcast, it's the last half or so.

[Smelt32]

so the changes to rebalance the caster/melee imbalance.

They changed some classes HD, giving warlocks and rogues (amongst others) more base HPs. They also added stuff to the enhancement trees giving more HP in all (i think it's all, but could be most) of them, but they got rid of Epic defence, the over all effect though is, I think, a nett gain in HP for most melee toons.

They also brought in and Imbue system to help melee get closer to casters in DPS. Now I am no expert, and have no data to go on here, but.... every class that wants to go down the imbue route has a way of doing so, granted some have much better access to many more dice than others, with the exception of Fighters. The only way a fighter can get an imbue toggle and bonus imbue dice is through racial and universal trees. oh and epic destinies of course. Seems strange to me that they say they are trying to make melee more viable with this system and exclude the base class that is all about melee. Fighters got a new granted feat at level 2 called second wind. It heals you (target is self only) for 50% of your max HP's. You one use per rest, but this increases to 5 or 6 as you level up. I believe you can increase the healing up to about 75% of your max too.

This being said I think a lot of people are happy with the imbue system, works well on EK's I believe. Worked well on the fire sorc life i just ran. Probably works very well for Druid and FVS too. I think I remember some one saying inquisitives lose out a little.

So in conclusion I would say that the game balance is slightly better for melee's unless you play the original melee class of Fighter in which case it's probably worse DPS wise, but you will have a few more HPs and you can heal yourself sometimes.

[spifflove]

https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...Hardcore-build

[droid327]

https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...Hardcore-build

I was thinking that was going to say the next season was going to be melee only - like everyone is under the old EDF mechanic where RP is zeroed and all spells are touch range. That might actually be a fun twist, an all melee server

[Oxarhamar]

I was thinking that was going to say the next season was going to be melee only - like everyone is under the old EDF mechanic where RP is zeroed and all spells are touch range. That might actually be a fun twist, an all melee server

that won't happen

[Isolani]

The removal of Epic Defensive Fighting is the biggest change I can think of recently. They moved the HPs from that into enhancement trees, and also, the martial fighting feats like TWF, THF, etc give you HPs now too. I guess people with very high HP say they lost some HP from this change. For me, it just seems like more HP on all my melee characters.

Oh, and imbue damage. There are a lot of ways to stack imbue damage dice depending on your build, so they can be significant or not depending on what you want to do.

Low reapers is the hardest stuff I do, so I didn't see any problem with melees in the first place aside from just being slow to level solo compared to a caster that can clear mobs much faster. I just played a 18 fighter/2 rogue on HC, killed stuff kinda slow, but had a lot of HP and was basically unkillable in elite/low reaper. If you play high reapers, I can't tell you anything about how the changes impacted that.

[Hawkwier]

Many thanks to all of you for taking time the respond.

From what I'm seeing it looks like whilst the good news is that things have, at least, not gotten worse in context, they don't appear to have improved sufficiently to assuage my reasons for leaving. This game wasn't for me anymore a year ago, and regrettably that seems to remain the case today.

No worries - I might check back in again in a year or so to see if the devs ever do come to thier senses (though after reading that Producer's Letter, I have my doubts - at least I apparently won't be missing much!).

Thanks again folks. Good luck to you all!