What happened? Was there another nerf?

[Nite_Prowler]

For some reason, unbeknownst to me, it appears that all of my characters (melee and casters) have been nerfed, or the gameplay difficulty has increased significantly.

I've gone looking for a reason for this, but I can't find anything anywhere on the forums about it.

[LeoLionxxx]

Gonna need some more details to try to be helpful.

Nerfed since when?

Do you have specific examples to drill into?

Are you playing on Reaper? Maybe you're doing more skulls than you're used to.

[Nite_Prowler]

Gonna need some more details to try to be helpful.

Nerfed since when?

Something changed during this last week

Do you have specific examples to drill into?

Other than mobs being far tougher than they were, no not really.

I was with a bunch of guildmates running some quests that we've run before, but we had a MUCH harder time finishing the quest. Bosses seemed tougher, mobs seemed tougher. Everything was far harder to kill than last week

Are you playing on Reaper?

Nope, I rarely play Reaper.

Im not the only one who noticed this. Both my guildmates were aware of things being FAR tougher than they were.

I even took one of my toughest melee toons out to test my idea, and he had trouble finishing a quest that he'd blasted through just last week.

Something has been changed in the game dynamics somehow.

[droid327]

Diiiid you maybe accidentally run it on Epic instead of Heroic?

To answer your question directly - no, nothing has changed systemically. Or else everyone would be talking about it

[Bjond]

You'll need to be VERY specific. What exact level? What exact difficulty? What type of character (melee, ranged, caster)? What quests?

BTW, nothing has changed and I haven't noticed anything much different playing R4'ish in Epics while leveling and R1 in Heroics. However, I have noticed that "wing lag" (via EA Core-3) has been horrendous lately. Leaping in combat yanks the character back and forth 3 or 4 times before settling. Using wings just to speed up outside combat is a less of an issue.

It could be there's some network problems that are much worse on your path than on others. That can make things harder for you by a fair bit.

[Dunspartacus]

As everyone else said, gonna need specifics, what were the quests/levels? Did damage numbers look lower? Ect. To throw my own data into the sample size I've been running some R1 mid-level heroics (7-14) for the past few days and everything feels like its performing as it should.

[MaeveTuohy]

For some reason, unbeknownst to me, it appears that all of my characters (melee and casters) have been nerfed, or the gameplay difficulty has increased significantly.

I've gone looking for a reason for this, but I can't find anything anywhere on the forums about it.

No, there was no recent nerf. There must be another explanation.

[Valtan]

For some reason, unbeknownst to me, it appears that all of my characters (melee and casters) have been nerfed, or the gameplay difficulty has increased significantly.

I've gone looking for a reason for this, but I can't find anything anywhere on the forums about it.

That is why we ask you to play casual or normal mode. Your characters cannot handle hard, elite or reaper modes.

[LightBear]

The only reasonable things I can think of are:
* Non consistent party set up and this time around no Nuker in the party
* Accidental swap of an item

[ShifterThePirate]

The only reasonable things I can think of are:
* Non consistent party set up and this time around no Nuker in the party
* Accidental swap of an item

Or too much alcohol

Also newer quests are usually harder than old quests on the same level.

[archest]

finally noticing the lag hua....

[drathdragon]

OP has my usual reaction any time i play on heroic till lvl 15 and then... you go to sharn to find out that mobs are harder to kill and quest, in general,
are tougher than the others at same level.

[AbyssalMage]

That is why we ask you to play casual or normal mode. Your characters cannot handle hard, elite or reaper modes.

OP has my usual reaction any time i play on heroic till lvl 15 and then... you go to sharn to find out that mobs are harder to kill and quest, in general,
are tougher than the others at same level.

Except in his initial response he says (paraphrased) that he was doing fine last week on the same quest (not sure why he was repeating it but /shrug).

To the OP,
Honestly I haven't seen any difference from before/after server wide restarts. Then again I am extremely over geared for the content I am currently playing (single digit heroics). I can say from past experience that occasionally my character would not fully load when loading into a game world due to lag. I've had things like Ghost Touch from the enhancement tree not apply, Passive Feats, or equipment be detected (although that was solved by taking it off and back on), etc. The only way to fix it was respec or log completely out, restart my laptop, and log back in. It takes longer but was cheaper. Simply logging all the way out and logging back in didn't work. Restarting my Laptop was a key part in the "fix."

The fact that others you were running with felt the same way though makes me think the above case was not your issue and restarting your computer before logging in would NOT be helpful. Maybe what ever caused your problems will be resolved in the next weekly restart?

[J1NG]

Approximately when OP posted, which was when the group XP bonus ended, I too noticed that my usual walkthroughs of content (that I run routinely, daily, for a long time now, using same toons and equipment; I do test after all) in non Reaper and Reaper underwent an unexpected and unexplained shift of increased difficulty during completion. Requiring more than my usual snooze fest afk runs in completing, and needing to be a lot more hands on to recover and complete. And I am not talking about sudden spawn of Reaper enemies being increased or large amounts of them being spawned and being overwhelmed that way. No, I mean the usual enemies, including (but most especially) non Champions were inexplicably hitting a lot harder and more often.

Now, like others in this thread, most likely it's simply a spate of bad RNG just hating on me (and OP) and hence the increase of difficulty here and there. However, given that I basically test these quests daily (and completion is basically like breathing or muscle memory now) and there was no change until recently (hence the coincidence factor involved as well), it is easy to see how questions could not be raised over this sudden change. Even though again, most likely answer is simply bad RNG rolls.

J1NG

[Aelonwy]

Two things I can think of but one usually only affects one person and the other randomly affects a single quest instance (and is only an unproven theory).

1) Loading/logging character in was somehow incomplete and even though the character moves and functions in the world many of its associated feats/effects are not working properly. This is usually resolved simply by restarting the game and reloading the character. The MOST OBVIOUS example of this is a warforged character that can somehow drown because their racial trait of not needing to breathe was one of the effects that didn't load properly. Has happened to me many times, and yes I have had a warforged drown, joked with hubby that was what the race required warforged underwater action items were for all along.

2) For as long as I can remember there has been just this random oddity where a quest instance loads with its settings somehow out of all proportion. That is mobs will hit harder, have better saves, trap damage is crazy, my fortification might as well be a wet paper towel. To be fair this has only happened to me perhaps 3 times, the whole time I have been playing this game (over a decade now with a few breaks.) And it has occurred in quests with heroic-only versions, not that you should be able to open epic level if your character is not epic-level. This will affect an entire party but resetting the quest or just moving on to another one ends whatever happened. I suspect much like the first issue this weirdness has something to do with how the quest initially loads. The last time I recall this occurring was in Stormcleave Outpost a quest that is pretty easily doable on elite for even just one person but one time we went in and just getting past the wolves before talking to the guy was a near fatal chore. I recall dying before getting to the part where we break the crates and the giants just having so much HP and clubbing us like we were party piñatas. We decided to leave, go repair, get some more healing pots/scrolls/etc. Reset, went back in and it was like night and day - almost like it was an entirely different quest. No trouble at all.

But neither of these would explain an entire party feeling a difficulty difference going through a whole series of quests.

[LightBear]

Now, like others in this thread, most likely it's simply a spate of bad RNG just hating on me (and OP) and hence the increase of difficulty here and there. However, given that I basically test these quests daily (and completion is basically like breathing or muscle memory now) and there was no change until recently (hence the coincidence factor involved as well), it is easy to see how questions could not be raised over this sudden change. Even though again, most likely answer is simply bad RNG rolls.

J1NG

I as well am running with a severe over geared character.
While I can't hard pinpoiunt when or what it is since I just did a TR for that character on the Tuesday before restart.
I do notice that my normal AoE spell isn't one hit wiping anymore while I did an upgrade to the specific spellpower.

I just shrugged it off as bad rng and join good pugs to be able to complete it just as fast.
Still, sucks when you were able to do R10s and now barely are able to do R4, well not really but feels like that.
So yeah, something is off for sure.

[CherryLaBomb]

I have absolutely no proof of such, just anecdotal experiences.

My whacked out theory from years ago is that the game applies a random difficulty attribute. Some days things are a bit easier, some days things are quite harder. It can vary from day to day. This theory was formed at a time long before reapers or epics were ever conceived.

I had one guildie that swore that Saturdays were the worse for increased difficulty.

[Sylvado]

I have absolutely no proof of such, just anecdotal experiences.

My whacked out theory from years ago is that the game applies a random difficulty attribute. Some days things are a bit easier, some days things are quite harder. It can vary from day to day. This theory was formed at a time long before reapers or epics were ever conceived.

I had one guildie that swore that Saturdays were the worse for increased difficulty.

Interesting, I always thought it would be interesting for characters to have biorhythms in a role playing game. That said, there isn't much role play in DDO and the Saturday difficulty is more likely just a player biorhythm (read as hangover from Friday).

[erethizon]

It sounds like you're probably playing elite (since you say you rarely play reaper), so I'm not certain what that is like since I rarely play anything but reaper, but I know the Black Dragon Bolt spell was recently overtuned and getting hit with that causes major damage. Not sure if there are any other effects that are hitting harder than they are supposed to.

[Fireball241]

I LR a old Character couple weeks ago. It sat dormant for a few years though. Returning player. Put on the same gear and the Stats were lower that should have not dropped so much. Noticed some glitching with old Epic destiny twists that disappeared too as probably a fix.