Player Character Balance

[Desonde]

Does slaying arrow work during many shot? As in, do you get 4 slaying arrows if you use it during many shot? If not, it has no impact on fury shot. If it does, then the fix is to simply change slaying arrow - the much newer ability. Outside of manyshot / multiple hit effects, slaying arrow + Adrenaline is fine. An arrow of 4k every 20s is reasonable. Heck, it is only marginally better than boulder toss (before the unneeded U21.1 nerf).

Arrow of Slaying does work with manyshot, and 4k dmg arrow is about the minimum it's going to do (it can exceed 10k per arrow).

[chrisdinus7]

Arrow of Slaying does work with manyshot, and 4k dmg arrow is about the minimum it's going to do (it can exceed 10k per arrow).

Yeah, a volley of 4 is starting to get excessive, especially in the build with the highest burst damage anyway. For 10k damage, are you referring to the case where the target is helpless? That is the only common way I see of getting that high. If not, I'd love to know the breakdown.

Without helpless, I figure you are looking at perhaps 150 base arrow damage + 250 slaying + 20 seeker. Maybe 420 an arrow, roughly. Multiply by 3 for a critical, and 4 for adrenaline, and that gets you to 5,040. On a 19 or a 20 (which only occurs once every 3 min 20s, on average), you get what? +1 multiple from earth stance, +1 from overwhelming critical. Then you are at 420 * 5 * 4 = 8,400. Not sure where else you'd get multiplier from on a typical build. Being fury rules out the +crit from primal or LD. If you went barb instead of monk I could see it on a 19 or 20, due to the higher crit multiplier. Or, I guess if you stacked up 20 stacks of vulnerable, that'd get you there (10,080). Plus, going all out, you could have someone in EA render them an additional 25% vulnerable to physical, and get to 12,180. Of course, being a bit silly, if you combined that with rendering them helpless (with the +30% from ninja spy and +30% from fury), you'd get 2.1 times that, around 25k - per arrow. It'd make an amusing screen shot to strike a guy for a 100k volley, but a bit impractical to setup.

But again, rather than nerfing archery in general or fury shot in specific - if slaying arrow is all that is causing the issue, then change slaying arrow. Don't break other abilities / combinations just because of one new ability.

[Desonde]

Yeah, a volley of 4 is starting to get excessive, especially in the build with the highest burst damage anyway. For 10k damage, are you referring to the case where the target is helpless? That is the only common way I see of getting that high. If not, I'd love to know the breakdown.

Without helpless, I figure you are looking at perhaps 150 base arrow damage + 250 slaying + 20 seeker. Maybe 420 an arrow, roughly. Multiply by 3 for a critical, and 4 for adrenaline, and that gets you to 5,040. On a 19 or a 20 (which only occurs once every 3 min 20s, on average), you get what? +1 multiple from earth stance, +1 from overwhelming critical. Then you are at 420 * 5 * 4 = 8,400. Not sure where else you'd get multiplier from on a typical build. Being fury rules out the +crit from primal or LD. If you went barb instead of monk I could see it on a 19 or 20, due to the higher crit multiplier. Or, I guess if you stacked up 20 stacks of vulnerable, that'd get you there (10,080). Plus, going all out, you could have someone in EA render them an additional 25% vulnerable to physical, and get to 12,180. Of course, being a bit silly, if you combined that with rendering them helpless (with the +30% from ninja spy and +30% from fury), you'd get 2.1 times that, around 25k - per arrow. It'd make an amusing screen shot to strike a guy for a 100k volley, but a bit impractical to setup.

But again, rather than nerfing archery in general or fury shot in specific - if slaying arrow is all that is causing the issue, then change slaying arrow. Don't break other abilities / combinations just because of one new ability.

You are looking at the same numbers I am, just missing a few easily accessible boosts. 150 base + 250 slaying + 20 seeker = 420. 420*1.3 for DWS Damage Boost = 546*1.3 from Archer's Focus 15 stacks = 709. x4 crit multiplier for earth stance, 2839, *4 from adrenaline, 11356. Then if you want to add Vulnerable, 13826, with EA 17035, and if helpless w/ nin. spy and fury (Though this won't work on red names), 35773 per arrow.

Likewise with called shot (which I usually follow up with), 150+20=170*1.3=221*1.3=287*6=1723*4=6895 (adding vuln.) *1.2=8274*1.25=10342.

but with proper timing you can easily deal 73004 damage with 2 attacks, 87604 if you build your own vulnerability as well.

[Alfhild]

I am going to reiterate some comments made by others on this thread that the Devs really need to understand::
Nerfing the perceived OP builds, regardless of whether they are OP or not, is not going to solve your problem. If my current build gets nerfed, in a month or two I will find another which will do a little less DPS and which in another month or two after that will become the target of cries for nerfs from those people who are playing broken classes now which will still be broken 4 months down the road.

If you are going to engage in a cycle endless nerfing, you might as well cut to the chase and eliminate diversity altogether and make everyone a D&D "Commoner" class. Or you can choose to fix what is CLEARLY broken, which is not build diversity which can never be balanced but game mechanics which force people into at-distance damage builds. Nerfing from the top down instead of buffing from the bottom up is not going to solve your problems. In fact, it is only going to exacerbate them since your right now your biggest problem is not game balance but customer dissatisfaction.

You needlessly revamped every class with the WoW/LOTRO look alike trees which needlessly opened Pandora's Box.
You launched an expansion which has been dubiously renamed by a significant portion of your customer base as the SHADOWFAIL Conspiracy.
I could name other major mistakes but let us just remark on the recent snafu with the launch and almost immediate cancellation of the Traveller's festival.

Your customer's are reaching a breaking point, and regardless of what delusions Fernando Paiz suffers from in regards to complaining customers, you are gazing into an abyss of your own making.
Fix the major design problems before doing any nerfs which will both alienate the nerfed and disappoint the un-nerfed who will find themselves in the exact same position they currently inhabit.
You can ignore this advice for whatever reason, but in any event, and I say this will no malice intended, if you do not satisfy your customers in the coming months, I would strongly suggest getting your resume out into the market (assuming you have not already done so).

[FlaviusMaximus]

You launched an expansion which has been dubiously renamed by a significant portion of your customer base as the SHADOWFAIL Conspiracy....
Your customer's are reaching a breaking point, and regardless of what delusions Fernando Paiz suffers from in regards to complaining customers, you are gazing into an abyss of your own making.

You personally may not like the enhancement update, but please don't pretend to speak for the majority of players. Also, making the enhancements more user friendly, completing trees, and increasing the power of certain builds, like archers, is something the player base was asking for. If you want to be more accurate, you might say that we are gazing into an abyss of "our own making." I'm fine with the changes to the game so far. Adjustments just need to be made, as one would expect.

... if you do not satisfy your customers in the coming months, I would strongly suggest getting your resume out into the market (assuming you have not already done so).

I think the communication in this thread is a pretty direct attempt to satisfy the customers. I don't think the tough talk is really necessary when we are posting in a thread where they are attempting to do exactly what you are asking them to do.

[Alfhild]

You personally may not like the enhancement update, but please don't pretend to speak for the majority of players. Also, making the enhancements more user friendly, completing trees, and increasing the power of certain builds, like archers, is something the player base was asking for. If you want to be more accurate, you would say that we are gazing into an abyss of "our making." I'm fine with the changes to the game so far. Adjustments just need to be made, as one would expect.

Actually I enjoyed the enhancement update as well but not everyone did since many people were severely inconvenienced by it. I spent money on the Xpac and though I believe it's value was poor, I was willing to give my patronage to Turbine. Not everyone feels as I do. Yes Archery got buffed in the enhancement pass to the point where the most popular archer build type is regularly villified on the forums and seems to be heading for a nerf, which will not solve the problem that there are classes suffering from major problems who are still going to be suffering from major problems.

I think the communication in this thread is a pretty direct attempt to satisfy the customers. I don't think the tough talk is really necessary when we are posting in a thread where they are attempting to do exactly what you are asking them to do.

As far as attempts to satisfy customers I would say it fails in its purpose since the very survey fails to address major concerns. Ranking classes with no mention of splashed multiclasses? As for tough talk, if that is how you perceive it then fine, but giving the nature of both the Turbine statements in this thread and the nature of the survey, I believe they are heading down the wrong path completely. I am not alone in this feeling. You may not agree. I would like this game to continue, as do you. But given Turbine's recent history, I fear more harm than good will come from it if they choose to just nerf a few popular builds as a sop to those players asking for nerfs, who are going to be still asking for nerfs to the next crop of popular builds which are already waiting in the wings.

[Cyr]

You personally may not like the enhancement update, but please don't pretend to speak for the majority of players. Also, making the enhancements more user friendly, completing trees, and increasing the power of certain builds, like archers, is something the player base was asking for. If you want to be more accurate, you might say that we are gazing into an abyss of "our own making."

You are way off base here.

Some players asked for something. I did not see ANYONE ask for a way to stack slayer arrow and adrenaline. Turbine did that, not the players.

Measure twice, cut once is the saying. There are TONS of abilities in the game which were ill conceived from being massively overpowered (compared to similar costing abilities) to being massively underpowered. It is frankly amazing when you look at a single enhancement tree across a row (let alone different trees) how widely different the power of abilities there are.

Turbine if serious about addressing these things would not be looking for yet another easy way out (ie lets nuke something from orbit), but would be doing careful adjustments to equalize these trees/EDs/classes/races/combat styles. This would NOT look like the painful to even look at survey which is completely meaningless to anything relevant to character balance ingame.

Show me serious and have the one system developer working on these issues walk away from doing the easy thing and instead make a serious effort to balance the BAD JUNK that exists to be on par with more valued stuff of the same build investment.

[Captain_Wizbang]

Please do not waste time trying to balance character classes/races/destinies as IT IS NOT NEEDED. There is NEVER going to be equality between the killing ability (which is what I assume you mean by 'power') of all builds. D&D is not a game where this type of balance has ever been possible or even desirable
Seek balance for well put together parties filling by characters that target a role, not individual players out to top the kill count. DDO is a group game and should not go the path of dumbing things down to the point where everyone solos their way through using the flavour of the month killing build.

I agree on a similar point. I think (as mentioned by others) that more emphasis should be placed on class abilities. And give greater benefits as mentioned below by others.

There are quite a few of us who agree, trying to "balance" the classes isn't going to happen. And for many reasons. (that's a thread in itself)

There have been a lot of suggestions to back-load class abilities (as in shift abilities that are gained earlier to make them abilities that are gained later) in this thread in order to encourage more pure class builds and discourage multi-classing. To me this looks a lot like players trying to get the power to shift toward build styles that they personally prefer, which I totally get. I just don't like the idea of taking away from some builds to add to others - unless some builds are clearly overpowered. I don't think multi-class combinations are overpowered right now in general. This is a matter of single classing being underpowered.

If capstones and level 18 core abilities are further improved, there should be no reason to destroy everyone's current builds just because some find them distasteful.

Power creep isn't an issue if the level 18 and level 20 class abilities are improved either, because enhancing those abilities only helps bring single-class characters up to the level of the multi-class builds that are predominantly being used.

Well said.

You personally may not like the enhancement update, but please don't pretend to speak for the majority of players.

*Ahem* By making this statement, you have have just made the same journalistic error. omg

You are way off base here.
There are TONS of abilities in the game which were ill conceived from being massively overpowered (compared to similar costing abilities) to being massively underpowered. It is frankly amazing when you look at a single enhancement tree across a row (let alone different trees) how widely different the power of abilities there are.
It's been this way for 4 years or so, I wouldn't say ill conceived either, rather it looks more like, as each new dev became assigned to these, the continuity of character development changed as well. Hence the big swing as you mentioned.
*edit, Not meant as a negative, every player is different, and so are the devs. We all have our own little twist on how this all is supposed to work. It's no secret the whole character development dept has changed hands many(?) times & would affect continuity to a degree.

equalize these trees/EDs/classes/races/combat styles.

balance the BAD JUNK that exists to be on par with more valued stuff of the same build investment.

I'm sure this is their goal. Let's hope they read everyone's posts, and then we can all decide on a more specific course. And more importantly, how to implement these changes without hurting what is actually working well.

Calling out a particular class isn't the answer.
Giving a few classes a meaningful boost in abilities is definitely in order.
Improving lvl 18 & 20 abilities is almost a given.

Thanks Cyr.

[blerkington]

You are way off base here.

Some players asked for something. I did not see ANYONE ask for a way to stack slayer arrow and adrenaline. Turbine did that, not the players.

Measure twice, cut once is the saying. There are TONS of abilities in the game which were ill conceived from being massively overpowered (compared to similar costing abilities) to being massively underpowered. It is frankly amazing when you look at a single enhancement tree across a row (let alone different trees) how widely different the power of abilities there are.

Turbine if serious about addressing these things would not be looking for yet another easy way out (ie lets nuke something from orbit), but would be doing careful adjustments to equalize these trees/EDs/classes/races/combat styles. This would NOT look like the painful to even look at survey which is completely meaningless to anything relevant to character balance ingame.

Show me serious and have the one system developer working on these issues walk away from doing the easy thing and instead make a serious effort to balance the BAD JUNK that exists to be on par with more valued stuff of the same build investment.

Hi,

Two very good points here.

The enhancement pass was just a huge bribe to the community to accept the idea of an unpopular change. From what I remember, a UI overhaul, a little tweaking to some abilities, and finishing off the PREs, was what most of the community wanted.

From a balancing point of view, the enhancement pass was actually much worse than the EDs. Instead of offering little enhancements to existing classes, and a reason to play those classes, it's become the main consideration when building a character.

The game is so little about its classes now, and so much about finding clever ways to work the enhancement system. It's almost unrecognisable.

And for that reason we now have a game which is pretty broken, because instead of avoiding power creep and trying to work within certain constraints necessary to keep a d20 based system functional, the game went down this other road instead.

My prediction for how this all ends is a couple of very selective nerfs to certain EDs (shiradi, fury, dreadnought), then the rebalancing exercise will be called good and left alone. All the stuff that doesn't work or there is no point choosing will just be completely ignored.

Thanks.

[FlaviusMaximus]

You personally may not like the enhancement update, but please don't pretend to speak for the majority of players.

*Ahem* By making this statement, you have have just made the same journalistic error. omg

I can see how it could be taken that way, but I didn't make any claims about what popular opinion is. I simply said that it would be disingenuous to claim that one knows what most people think about the enhancement update. Although I must admit, there was a tinge of something more in those words...

Stop reading between the lines, **** it! :P

[Captain_Wizbang]

I can see how it could be taken that way, but I didn't make any claims about what popular opinion is. I simply said that it would be disingenuous to claim that one knows what most people think about the enhancement update. Although there was a tinge of something else in there...

Stop reading between the lines!

And I speak for no one really, but the enhancement update is a good design that has mediocre, restrictive, content that made true class builds undesirable. ergo it sucked for me.

[chrisdinus7]

You are looking at the same numbers I am, just missing a few easily accessible boosts. 150 base + 250 slaying + 20 seeker = 420. 420*1.3 for DWS Damage Boost = 546*1.3 from Archer's Focus 15 stacks = 709. x4 crit multiplier for earth stance, 2839, *4 from adrenaline, 11356. Then if you want to add Vulnerable, 13826, with EA 17035, and if helpless w/ nin. spy and fury (Though this won't work on red names), 35773 per arrow.

Likewise with called shot (which I usually follow up with), 150+20=170*1.3=221*1.3=287*6=1723*4=6895 (adding vuln.) *1.2=8274*1.25=10342.

but with proper timing you can easily deal 73004 damage with 2 attacks, 87604 if you build your own vulnerability as well.

Thanks. It was the damage boost and archer's focus that I wasn't thinking of. Good call.