Lamannia Update 59 and beyond Preview 2 - CLOSED

[Cordovan]

Welcome to our second preview of Update 59! There are also elements in this week's preview slated for release after Update 59, and even a few bits from Update 60. Lamannia is expected to open later today and remain open until 3:00pm Eastern (-4 GMT) on Thursday, April 13th.

Of Special Note:

Update 59: Performance Work

We have fundamentally changed how bonuses are calculated behind the scenes to be using a more performant algorithm to reduce lag in the game. This change impacts:

• Feat bonuses
• Enhancement bonuses
• Epic destiny bonuses
• Past life bonuses
• Toggled bonuses
• Temporarily granted Feats
• Armor Class bonuses
• Blocking Armor Class bonuses
• Attack bonuses
• Damage bonuses
• Savings throw bonuses

Please keep an eye out for discrepancies in bonuses on your character sheet between the regular Live game worlds and this Lamannia build. Adding and removing Feats, Enhancements, and acquisition of Past Lives are the primary mechanisms that might cause these bonuses to exhibit erroneous behaviors. There are more than 485 bonuses affected and not all of them are on the character sheet and easily displayable. So if character abilities are not acting as you would expect them to normally, please report your experience in a separate Lamannia forum thread here.

Update 59: Droaam Legendary Edition

This preview includes Legendary version of all seven quests in the Droaam chain:

Attack on Stormreach:

• Assault on Summerfield
• Blockade Buster
• Undermine
• Siegebreaker

Free quests:

• Diplomatic Impunity
• Frame Work
• Eyes of Stone

You can find the NPCs for these quests in the Lordsmarch Plaza, located off of the Marketplace in Stormreach. Feedback threads for each of the Legendary quests is linked to above.

After Update 59: Underdark-themed Mount preview

A preview of an Underdark-themed Mount is available in the Test Dojo for you to check out! We are specifically looking for things like animation bugs as this is a new mount "rig type" compared to a horse or dinosaur. We are not yet announcing where this mount will be available in the future, but it will be after the release of Update 59 and not with it.

Update 60: Hireling Wererats

Hireling Wererats are now available in the Test Dojo to check out! These hirelings are expected to be released with Update 60: Vecna Unleashed. We are not yet announcing how players will be able to acquire the Hireling Wererat.

News and Notes:

Changes are in blue!!

Bug Fixes:

• Level 32 skill augments now grant their listed amount of +skills
• The offhand slot should no longer go missing sometimes after reincarnation as an Artificer.
• The Legendary Spiked Turban should now have its proper visuals.
• Mirrors of Glamering now have a clearer tooltip to explain how their eligibility works.
• Energy Vortex Poison and Negative now both have their correct tooltips within the spell.
• The web barriers in the quest Sacrifices can now be broken with Eldritch Blast.
• Technomage filigree now provide their 5% Armor Class set bonus and no longer call the set the wrong name.
• Divine Righteousness (Paladin Sacred Defender 3rd core) is now untyped and grants its correct amount of threat generation.
• Mass Suggestion now has its correct icon.
• A few pet benefit icons have changed to reflect their passive states.
• Black Dragon bolt's damage to PLAYERS has been reduced to its original values (from before Blightcaster update.)
• Natural Fighting Feats will now work correctly with Blight Wolf.
• Fixed the bank issue where moving an item from the shared crafting storage to character bank if the character bank was full would result in the 'loss' of the item and the breaking of inter bank transfer. If this did happen to you, please contact Customer Service for your character to be fixed as well.
• The Soul of Cruelty Dot now has a cooldown again so no more triple stacks from a Frost Lance.
• Fix for monsters who keep attacking recently dead pets/defenders/NPCs. They should no longer do so.

Gameplay Changes:

• The firing arc tolerance for general missile weapons (bows, etc.) has been upped from 45 degrees to 60 degrees. This should help avoid dry fires when the player is strafing circling a monster up close with a missile weapon.
• Darling the Wererat Rogue Henchmen has gotten a new special ability for her hot bar. For 15 seconds Darling becomes a cute little rodent who is simply to precious to harm. Darling becomes immune to all damage, and monsters will ignore her but her physical damage drops by 100%. This has a 2 minute cooldown.
• Most individual Resistance, Insight, and Quality bonuses to Reflex, Fortitude, and Will Saving Throws on items have been increased by 1, putting them slightly above the values on Resistance items.
• Work has been done behind the scenes for Universal Tree tomes to make them work slightly differently on our end. This should have no effect on Universal tome functionality - existing tomes will still function - but we wanted to let you know work had been done in case something goes pear-shaped.
• The Fast Nightmare mount is now Bound to Account.
• When you spot or automatically detect a secret door, a "?" icon will appear over your head.
• When you spot or automatically detect a trap, a "!" icon will appear over your head.
• Fury of the Wild - Great Leveler
  
  • Reduced the duration of the movement pause.
  • Removed awkward pause to your ability to attack after using the great leveler.
  • Detect size increased on none enhanced smash.
  • Visualizes on enhanced smash better match detect size.
  • +500 attack bonus applied to hit roll.
  
  
• The cooldown on Sacred Vial has been increased from three to ten seconds to match Banishment and other death effects.
• Tsunami's correct max caster level and CC duration have been adjusted. The Max caster level is down to 20 from 25 to match other level 9 spells, CC duration down to 6 seconds to match other CC/Damage Combo Spells.
• Caster damage in Reaper difficulty has been adjusted for Skull 7 and higher:
  
  
  • Skull 7: From 25% damage to 23%
    
  • Skull 8: From 20% damage to 18%
    
  • Skull 9: From 18% damage to 15%
    
  • Skull 10: From 15% damage to 10%
  
  
• The self-healing penalty in Reaper Difficulty has been adjusted. The penalty for self-healing while outside of combat is now the same as the existing penalty for healing others while in or out of combat.

UI:

• Pet character sheet now only sorts its pet feats by alphabetically instead of nonexistent categories.
• Pet character sheets saving throws label is now no longer cut off visually.
• The crafting storage sort should no longer reset if you hover over the options.

[GoldyGopher]

[*]The self-healing penalty in Reaper Difficulty has been adjusted. The penalty for self-healing only applies while in combat. While out of combat, there is now a penalty to healing others.[/LIST]

What exactly does this mean?

What determines out of combat?

[rabidfox]

While out of combat, there is now a penalty to healing others.

Why? This sounds silly and pointless for healers to not be able to top people off as effectively when combat is over...

[Cordovan]

What exactly does this mean?

What determines out of combat?

Sorry, this was erroneous text caused by a version error. The correct note is:

The self-healing penalty in Reaper Difficulty has been adjusted. The penalty for self-healing while outside of combat is now the same as the existing penalty for healing others while in or out of combat.

[mikarddo]

Sorry, this was erroneous text caused by a version error. The correct note is:

The self-healing penalty in Reaper Difficulty has been adjusted. The penalty for self-healing while outside of combat is now the same as the existing penalty for healing others while in or out of combat.

I dont mind that change - but I am curious why you decide to make (soloing) reaper easier?

[DarkSkysz]

I dont mind that change - but I am curious why you decide to make (soloing) reaper easier?

The key thing here is OUT OF COMBAT.

Healing 100 or 10000 out of combat means nothing for difficult, its just more or less wasted time waiting for cooldowns.

[Bolo_Grubb]

Sorry, this was erroneous text caused by a version error. The correct note is:

The self-healing penalty in Reaper Difficulty has been adjusted. The penalty for self-healing while outside of combat is now the same as the existing penalty for healing others while in or out of combat.

Curious as to the reason for this change?

[gorocz]

Curious as to the reason for this change?

Because for the majority of people that do solo reaper, this just means they spend less downtime wasting heal scrolls and/or can stop bothering with a hire. The self healing penalty out of combat doesn't actually make reaper any more difficult, just vastly more annoying.

[mikarddo]

Because for the majority of people that do solo reaper, this just means they spend less downtime wasting heal scrolls and/or can stop bothering with a hire. The self healing penalty out of combat doesn't actually make reaper any more difficult, just vastly more annoying.

More annoying and taking more time is part of being more difficult if you are looking at an rxp/xp per time though. Difficulty is not only measured in being able to win - sometimes also in being able to win at a decent pace.

[Cordovan]

Curious as to the reason for this change?

Convenience, and to save casters a few spell points or scrolls perhaps. Waiting around for healing cooldowns while out of combat seemed unnecessary.

[Bolo_Grubb]

Convenience, and to save casters a few spell points or scrolls perhaps. Waiting around for healing cooldowns while out of combat seemed unnecessary.

Thank you for the response

[Yamani]

Convenience, and to save casters a few spell points or scrolls perhaps. Waiting around for healing cooldowns while out of combat seemed unnecessary.

Yep soloing reaper becomes much easier and one less need of a healer overall.

[Michele]

Convenience, and to save casters a few spell points or scrolls perhaps. Waiting around for healing cooldowns while out of combat seemed unnecessary.

I love you Cordovan

[DeltaBravo]

-Snip..

[Amoneth]

• Caster damage in Reaper difficulty has been adjusted for Skull 7 and higher:
  
  
  • Skull 7: From 25% damage to 23%
    
  • Skull 8: From 20% damage to 18%
    
  • Skull 9: From 18% damage to 15%
    
  • Skull 10: From 15% damage to 10%

This is in blue but there has been no change

[Zeklijan]

• Skull 7: From 25% damage to 23%
  
• Skull 8: From 20% damage to 18%
  
• Skull 9: From 18% damage to 15%
  
• Skull 10: From 15% damage to 10%

The problem with a blanket nerf is that it will reduce build diversity. The lower damage classes are gonna be affected the most, forcing people to play one of the top performing classes to stay relevant as a nuker instead.

For the longest time in DDO, Sorc was the only viable nuker in the game. This changed when the spell pass happened. I believe if some classes are performing above expectation, going back to tweak the numbers a bit on spell damages would be the best long term solution.

[LuisIre]

Can you make it so the Universal Enhancement tome shows up on the "Special Feats" tab? It currently doesn't.

[rabidfox]

The problem with a blanket nerf is that it will reduce build diversity. The lower damage classes are gonna be affected the most, forcing people to play one of the top performing classes to stay relevant as a nuker instead.

For the longest time in DDO, Sorc was the only viable nuker in the game. This changed when the spell pass happened. I believe if some classes are performing above expectation, going back to tweak the numbers a bit on spell damages would be the best long term solution.

Yeah, bard, arti, divine nukers will feel this. I went from excited (a few weeks ago) for planning out an arti caster build to scrapping my plans and not caring once lam preview 1 came out and they junked the damage I would do. I'm not going farm raid gear and boosted items for a class that's already on the low end of caster damage in high skulls just to perform even worse with u59.

[slarden]

• Caster damage in Reaper difficulty has been adjusted for Skull 7 and higher:
  
  
  • Skull 7: From 25% damage to 23%
    
  • Skull 8: From 20% damage to 18%
    
  • Skull 9: From 18% damage to 15%
    
  • Skull 10: From 15% damage to 10%
    

I think it's fine, but a better solution would be to reduce the helpless damage boosts for spellcasting and increase the helplessness damage boosts for melee. Too many helpless damage boosts is the reason casters are wiping out mobs.

[EinarMal]

I think it's fine, but a better solution would be to reduce the helpless damage boosts for spellcasting and increase the helplessness damage boosts for melee. Too many helpless damage boosts is the reason casters are wiping out mobs.

I agree with this, to me a better approach than the blanket nerf in reaper would be caps along the lines of Jump skill. The problem with casters is the top end, not every build and every class. An easy way to get at that is to cap key damage components by level, it does require a bit more thought.

This can also be done with other key values like Melee Power, Range Power, Doublestrike, Doubleshot. There are in the end only 10 or so key values for balancing DPS. Cap those and you can ignore all the build combinations and complexity.

For example at level 32 it might look something like

(Max cap for values, anything over that amount does nothing ala Jump cap)
Level 32
Spell Power - 800
Spell Critical Chance - 50%
Spell Critical Damage - 75%
Helpless Damage - 40%

This also gives great tool to balance by just tweaking the numbers. You probably only need a few of these at key levels:

Level 5 (and under 1-5)
<Insert Caps>

Level 10 (and under 6 -10)
<Insert Caps>

Level 19 (and under 11 - 19)
<Insert Caps>

Level 28 (and under 20 - 28)
<Insert Caps>

Level 32 (and under 29 - 32)
Spell Power - 800
Spell Critical Chance - 50%
Spell Critical Damage - 75%
Helpless Damage - 40%