You know the game is not balanced properly when...

[BigErkyKid]

This is better than nerfing after every single revamp due to knee jerk reaction by those who are comparing 2015 paladin to 2012 fighter.

I don't need to see how other classes are balanced to realize that for my taste paladins, bards and barbarians are too powerful.

I don't care if other classes are buffed to that level. I do NOT like this new washed out classes. DPSing paladins, self healing barbarians and all around awesome bards.

I do not like the balance against quests of those classes. Hence, I don't need to wait for other classes to be buffed to this level to voice my opinion.

[BigErkyKid]

D&D was never a balanced game. After level 8 or so theres no reason other than flavor to roll a pure melee. If you wanted the game to be more D&D, PMs would be doing everything, and the other classes would be riding in a wagon hitched and pulled by the barbarian.

This "balance" people keep bringing up is an MMO thing, not a D&D thing.

DnD relied on the DM and itemization for balance. Hence, the experience was balanced.

DDO relies on game mechanics for balance and they are doing it wrong.

[Monkey-Boy]

I would concede that a PM has to be as bad at DPSing red-named mobs as traditional melees are at soloing trash groups.

You will agree with me that this is not the case.

No, i do not agree with you. Have you played a top-DC/max-geared PM? They are still the best trash-killers in the game.

You won't see them in the speed-run threads because of their red-name kill-times being terrible.

It cannot be that some classes are good at everything. Then all classes have to be good at everything for balance, then we might as well remove the Dungeons and Dragons tag from the game. Call it Soloing Online - Forever Alone.

It should be possible that a class is good at everything, but it shouldn't be BEST at everything. Pallies over fighters for example is insanely stupid right now, pallies getting better damage AND better defense is just plain dumb. I think barbs are even worse with the "Wolverine" like self-healing they get. No weaknesses except saves and who cares when you have that much HP.

Turbine completely screwed up making Bards, Pallies, Barbs god-mode. They should reverse course and nerf them but they won't.

[BigErkyKid]

it's taking Turbine way to long for people to be patient about this, if they upped to two-three classes an update then maybe people would be more patient. but at this rate they'll be done in 2018 . . . who thinks DDO will still be getting updates then?

Seeing these recent updates, I don't.

They can claim whatever they want, but the oracle shows a steady decline. Bumps aside, it is almost linear. I bet that if we had run some time series model on it 2 years ago we could have predicted very well the current situation.

The updates to the classes are not good. They are going deeper down the whole of BYO everything and trivialize content and I fail to see how this is good for the game.

[Tinco]

This is better than nerfing after every single revamp due to knee jerk reaction by those who are comparing 2015 paladin to 2012 fighter. Lack of patience to wait for all revamps is what kills progress.

But you don't just balance classes against each other, you also (imo primarily) balance classes against content. I'm with you that we need patience, but dialing back when fresh revamps overpower content too much is not something that goes against that MO in my opinion. Bard, Barbs and Pallies are still on the top even with the nerfs coming through, and I even argue that the current baseline is way healthier than the baseline drawn with the old Holy Weapon/Storm's Eye/SWF. Game Design is an iterative process and while it would be perfect to redo all classes and release them all together, that's simply not going to happen.

[Monkey-Boy]

D&D was never a balanced game.

Neither does DDO have to be.

BUT . . . the power differences should be a hell of a lot closer than it is now.

Back in the day a flavory build could do 80-90% the damage of the optimized builds.

Now the optimized are doing DOUBLE or TRIPLE the damage.

Just get it closer.

[BigErkyKid]

No, i do not agree with you. Have you played a top-DC/max-geared PM? They are still the best trash-killers in the game.

You won't see them in the speed-run threads because of their red-name kill-times being terrible.

No, my PMs were not to that level. I do know what it is to chase after a good insta killer though. But as long as they suck so much at red named while others kill trash only a bit slower AND are excellent at boss killing, I don't think the game is well balanced.

It should be possible that a class is good at everything, but it shouldn't be BEST at everything. Pallies over fighters for example is insanely stupid right now, pallies getting better damage AND better defense is just plain dumb. I think barbs are even worse with the "Wolverine" like self-healing they get. No weaknesses except saves and who cares when you have that much HP.

Turbine completely screwed up making Bards, Pallies, Barbs god-mode. They should reverse course and nerf them but they won't.

I think we would have to get a closer look at what "good at everything" means, but I agree with the general tone.

There needs to be trade offs and ideally parties should have better synergies. I see non of this in those updates.

[Monkey-Boy]

There needs to be trade offs and ideally parties should have better synergies. I see non of this in those updates.

I guild we have a saying . . . if you can't solve a DDO encounter with brute-force then you didn't bring enough brute force.

Welcome to the 2015 DDO Barbarian.

[BigErkyKid]

I guild we have a saying . . . if you can't solve a DDO encounter with brute-force then you didn't bring enough brute force.

Welcome to the 2015 DDO Barbarian.

It's funny, accurate and sad at the same time.

[Monkey-Boy]

No, my PMs were not to that level. I do know what it is to chase after a good insta killer though. But as long as they suck so much at red named while others kill trash only a bit slower AND are excellent at boss killing, I don't think the game is well balanced.

I'm okay with best-at-trash casters being meh against red-names.

What I'm not okay with is heavy armor pallies having better defenses AND better offense than fighters/rogues.

I'm not okay with Barbarians having arguably the best self-healing in the game.

Those two examples are what's broken, not somebody with a DC 77 wail being bad at killing bosses.

[Sharktopus]

DnD relied on the DM and itemization for balance. Hence, the experience was balanced.

DDO relies on game mechanics for balance and they are doing it wrong.

D&D relied on group mechanics as well. D&D is a group of friends doing some co-op story telling, with dice rolls being the great equalizer.

Comparing pnp balance to MMO balance is apples and oranges. Comparing class balance between the two, DDO is way more balanced than D&D could be.

Class inbalance is at the core of D&D. Classes rely on each other to do various things. There are broken exploit pnp builds too. In every edition.

If you open any pre-fab d&d adventure, usually somewhere near the beginning it says "this is designed for 4-6 plays of level 1-3" or some such. The balance is based around the fact that the players and DM would be playing the game as intended. But overall, you nailed it. There's no human DM to call shenanigans or fudge a roll on the fly, so DDO as a game is not going to have the kind of balance any live d&d game can achieve.

[BigErkyKid]

Those two examples are what's broken, not somebody with a DC 77 wail being bad at killing bosses.

Fix them to the point where the overall difficulty (trash + boss) is similar across classes and you can lower the power curve all you want.

[BigErkyKid]

But overall, you nailed it. There's no human DM to call shenanigans or fudge a roll on the fly, so DDO as a game is not going to have the kind of balance any live d&d game can achieve.

And this is why special care needs to be put in balancing the game mechanics. Current updates were gross mistakes in that sense.

[FlaviusMaximus]

I don't like the job we did with their upgrades.

Fixed that for you.

Make no mistake, player feedback is what is causing these upgrades to be too extreme. People ask for more and more in the feedback threads and there is rarely opposition to making classes overpowered. Coup was a player idea brought up in a thread. There was a fair amount of support for it. The initial distracting debate over Holy Sword was whether it should stack with Assassin, Monk, and Thief Acrobat T5 enhancements. Believe it or not, the people saying it shouldn't stack barely outnumbered those that said it should, and after the change to make it a competence bonus, nearly no one said it was still too powerful (even though it clearly was).

The stuff that was hitting the regular forums for feedback was pretty imbalanced, which means that the ideas were not kept in check or were actively encouraged or even suggested in the pre-public stages. The same things happened when the changes hit the public input stage.

The bottom line is that people like the idea of having something new and powerful to play...for a while. Once the honeymoon period is over or once people start to see what the on-paper numbers actually look like in game, the nerfs get called for. By that time, it is too late to really do much nerfing, however.

That being said, I mostly don't mind the changes that have been made lately. There are a lot of ways to make very powerful characters that don't include utilizing one of the latest three classes to be changed or exploits. The only thing that really bugs me is the somewhat inescapable black hole that Paladin has become when it comes to character creation, since they currently offer the best offensive ability along with the defensive abilities that were already in place.

[Nestroy]

I think it would go a long way to balance if most of the classes enhancement trees were not that front loaded. With basically 2 levels of something I can get most of the cool stuff from everywhere. Nit picking the raisins out of the cake, going uber into EE and profit!

Well, any time somebody tells me DDO got too easy, I answer the same. Try some pure build for a chance. Or try to play the builds as they were intended to be played, not as they were put into exploitation mode.

And then there is the topic of Pally, and Swashbuckler Bard and Ravager Barb. Try a witch hunter if DDO got too easy ^^.

[MaeveTuohy]

This is the reason I have not been posting much here. Too many people that can't help but crying all the time.

Someone can "win" quicker with a flavor build than I can. This mimic event sucks. Turbine should make it so I don't have to pay a dime in game.

Why is it so hard for players to just play and not cry so much? These entitlement issues are over the top.

-1

Total straw man.

The OP did not list any of those things and his post has nothing to do with those whiny "entitlement" issues you list. "Entitlement" is the lazy, catchall to decry anyone who thinks the game could be improved.

[slarden]

The problem with specialist classes is they rely on things that don't always work where raw dps always works. For a newer player, raw DPS is usually the way to go if they want to run EE.

I had a pre-u14 dwarf barbarian sitting on the bench at 25 that only got from 20 to 25 farming Impossible Demands for renown back when it was the only way to keep up with decay for our guild. He had most of his destinies filled even.

I converted him to an Occult Slayer based on this build

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...arbarian-Build

But the build is very out-dated so I needed to make quite a few changes and didn't go with a two-weapon fighting variety either. I built this toon specifically to farm EE GOP, but liked it so much I decided to keep it.

I am glad the game has some easy-button builds that I can use on my less-accomplished alts - Barbarians, Swashbucklers, Paladin, Shiradi caster. I don't have a problem with it, but periodically my more advanced specialist builds just stop working, e.g., my PM stopped working when eGH came out because DC requirements were not reachable at the time for EE quests so I had to put him on the bench and eventually convert him to a shiradi caster until the enhancement pass improved PMs quite a bit.

[Fedora1]

Then all classes have to be good at everything for balance, then we might as well remove the Dungeons and Dragons tag from the game. Call it Soloing Online - Forever Alone.

SOFA? Nice. Now pass the Mountain Dew and Cheetohs.

[slarden]

It wouldn't be unprecedented if new content completely invalidated a play style.

Looking at the spell resistance formula here: http://ddowiki.com/page/Spell_Resistance

Will spell penetration #s be high enough to break through EE devil and fiendish spell resistances when eVale comes out? Without new gear and feats I am doubting it will be possible to achieve a no-fail spell penetration or even close to it.

These are the kind of problems that specialist builds face.

There is a huge investment to get close to a max spell penetration number and then a new level cap and new enemies can make it unachievable. Of course this is speculation since the new content isn't out yet and we don't know what new gear and level 29-30 feats might exist. However, we can predict the CR value of EE devils and fiendish creatures and see how that computes to SR in the wiki.

With that said, I am glad the easy-button builds were introduced to the game. It's useful to provide an entry bridge to harder content for newer players and those wishing to move from lower difficulties to EE. It also works nicely for less-accomplished alts to try out different builds.

[Monkey-Boy]

It wouldn't be unprecedented if new content completely invalidated a play style.

Looking at the spell resistance formula here: http://ddowiki.com/page/Spell_Resistance

Will spell penetration #s be high enough to break through EE devil and fiendish spell resistances when eVale comes out? Without new gear and feats I am doubting it will be possible to achieve a no-fail spell penetration or even close to it.

ONLY DROW have SR numbers that are stupid high. With the few exceptions like Will-o-wips and a few other odd mobs.

Devils and other fiends will be high, but only drow should be insanely high.