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

[janave]

Fighter is fine, though I agree it is behind Paladin. Their greatest weakness is actually saving throws.

Sev~

One specific fighter build, maybe;
Otherwise absolutely not, whats the edge of Fighter? Feats? Most of which was outdated in 2009 and still the same today?

Fighter still requires specialization to be semi-competitive, where paladins and barbs can beat up stuff with anything, cast holy-sword on a wooden spoon and win. Dunno, at least rename it "Holy Weapon" if we can just cast it to any weapon?

[bartharok]

Or it could be that they really are a weaker overall archetype right now. It takes enormous investment to get enough DCs for most content (and how fun is to have to debuff mobs constantly?) and yet someone with a barb, paladin or bard will outclass you with only moderate gear against bosses.

Trash in a lot of quests can just be out runed and then rubber banded anyway.

I don't know how I got your aggro, but you sure are persistent. Is this thread red DA for some people or what?

Its a matter of visibility. Make yourself seen and you get red DA.

[BigErkyKid]

Its a matter of visibility. Make yourself seen and you get red DA.

Makes sense.

[Angelic-council]

Again none of my comments are specific to your build, they are mostly directed at BigE's insistence that you tackling a problem one way, is an indicator that there's something wrong with the game. I agree that the average PM is not doing so hot in Boss DPS, but I believe that to be a case of overspecializing because they read on the forums that you need a 75+ Necro DC or you might as well re-roll.

Whoever said that you need Necro DC 75 are crazy folks.. I just can't stand those people -- who constantly keep screwing up others mind. Necro wizard's most unique ability is that they can massively drain enemies level. With the combination of magister, they are the beast DC casters: every Necro damage they deal, including death aura, energy drain and much more - they have 15% chance to reduce enemies fortitude save by further -10 (no save, consistant 30 sec). Totaling their Necro DC = 85+

Now, 15% is not a small chance when you can do something like: cast lesser death aura - death aura - - gather 20 mobs - cast wail of banshee - circle of death - waves of exhustion - any AoE Necro spells and then boom... even Necro DC60 caster can kill EE storm horn Giants.

Now.. divine casters are another story.. they have laughably poor instakill spells and almost zero draining power, also bad spell pen... Yet some people believe divine casters are OP because of implosion and slay living, destruction. Don't get fooled guys.. Please. I hope Sev understand that at least.

[slarden]

Whoever said that you need Necro DC 75 are crazy folks.. I just can't stand those people -- who constantly keep screwing up others mind. Necro wizard's most unique ability is that they can massively drain enemies level. With the combination of magister, they are the beast DC casters: every Necro damage they deal, including death aura, energy drain and much more - they have 15% chance to reduce enemies fortitude save by further -10 (no save, consistant 30 sec). Totaling their Necro DC = 85+

Now, 15% is not a small chance when you can do something like: cast lesser death aura - death aura - - gather 20 mobs - cast wail of banshee - circle of death - waves of exhustion - any AoE Necro spells and then boom... even Necro DC60 caster can kill EE storm horn Giants.

Now.. divine casters are another story.. they have laughably poor instakill spells and almost zero draining power, also bad spell pen... Yet some people believe divine casters are OP because of implosion and slay living, destruction. Don't get fooled guys.. Please. I hope Sev understand that at least.

My main 2 characters are a Wiz 20 Palemaster and a 16 fvs / 4 paladin caster. My PM is much improved compared to a few years ago since I've been able to tap into the archmage tree for some low cost Magic Missle and Chain Missle SLAs. This wasn't possible before the enhancement pass. Both characters perform fine in EEs in a party - The Favored Soul is much more capable of soloing EE due to the spell point regeneration. Overall the favored soul is better because of the balance between insta-killing and DPS. With spell point regeneration I effectively have 6k spell points between shrines. My favored soul it significantly more survivable with heavy armor and a shield.

One thing I can tell you for sure about your stormhorns example. There is a difference between "possible" and "reasonable". What you are saying about PM insta-killing in stormhorns is not reasonable at all and a great way to run out of SP. I'll use a mass hold in that situation and get some dps help from the rest of the party. My favored can use raw dps.

PMs are definitely less effective when their DC can't land spells reliably, but it's not nearly as bad as when eGH came out.

The devs need to be very careful with the new favored soul tree because the existing casting tree is so good.

[slarden]

If I play my DC FvS caster aggressively, I can easily out kill any ranged/melee OP builds. All thanks to the EDs/Epic feats.

And a really great casting tree.

[Blackheartox]

You don't have a deep enough understanding of the game if you don't know how to build every class in the game as OP. Case in point. Most players think pure ranged rangers are weak. In my hands, they are OP if I feel like making them so. So is everything else.



Can a barb, bard, or paladin hit for 2.4k at level 10 against a target with 100% fort?

Do you at least have heroic sos?

[slarden]

Oh, don't get me started on this bard issue, I have a rule not to engage in negative feedback on a class I do not play, but at the very same time I was discussing the fate of Quivering Palm* I received a PM from another build tester about how they were making Bards the new uber insta-kill class. I could only shake my head then and can only shake my head now. Where was this kind of logic Sev when they killed QP?! Ya, they gave me the ability to smash my button over and over and over and over and over and over until it works... I can't tell you how "FUN" that is. I don't have QP on my current build as you made it worthless, but I did give it the good ole college try and with the other 7 to 10 buttons I have to smash as a monk every tenth of a second to make my DPS useful, it just made playing a PITA.

This reminds me. At this time you were working on quivering palm I was questing with you quite a bit on Owlander who was on the ETR train and I remember how much time you were devoting to maximizing your quivering palm including build choices and farming for the ring.

That is one of the reasons I think Sev is wise to use the nerf bat with caution. In the example you gave, they could have adjusted the quivering palm formula less drastically than they did since a pure 20 monk using handwraps in today's environment is basically a flavor build.

[Chai]

One specific fighter build, maybe;
Otherwise absolutely not, whats the edge of Fighter? Feats? Most of which was outdated in 2009 and still the same today?

Fighter still requires specialization to be semi-competitive, where paladins and barbs can beat up stuff with anything, cast holy-sword on a wooden spoon and win. Dunno, at least rename it "Holy Weapon" if we can just cast it to any weapon?

Additional crowd control, protection, and increased effectiveness when wearing a shield.

[slarden]

There is far less variety at the top as a direct result of the last two updates regarding paladins, armor changes and barbarians.

This I disagree with. None of the previously powerful builds are any weaker and there are more viable EE builds now which is why more people are running EE.

There is definitely more variety compared to U19 (I think tihs is when ETR was released - maybe U20) when people starting ETR'ing and running EE became a must due to coms of valor. Whether it's a good thing that more people are running EE is a point of contention for the community, but Sev made it clear that newer content will be amped up significantly and I suspect the # of viable builds will again be lower when this happens.

For me I am glad that more people are enjoying ETR'ing their builds running EE, but I am also glad they are adding some super challenges to the game like temple of elemental evil that fewer people will be able to complete on EE. I just hope it isn't solely amping up how hard the enemies hit which will make high PRR the gate for difficult content.

[mikarddo]

Mortal Fear is definitely too powerful. Any effect that reduces a percentage of total hit points will probably scale too well. It isn't on our radar for changes because a.) that would be a huge player pain point and b.) what Oxarhamar said above.

Our biggest concern about Mortal Fear is we could have weapons that are statistically superior in future content and players would still complain that their Mortal Fear weapons are better.

Sev~

Dear Sev

I much appreciate the answer which I understand - but which also saddens me because you see a clear problem but do not wish to moderate the issue.

Further, when you write "a percentage .." you are only covering the smaller part of the problem - the real problem is that the 50% isnt the final and fixed number but due to helpness state its often more like 100%.

Following the most knowledgeable players posting here (which isnt me by a longshot) I sometimes see ".. dps at 28 is mostly about MF procs per second..." and when the cap goes to 30 that will only get worse. I am simply worried that you either need to completely unreasonable boost new damage to keep up with MF in the 30 game which will then be far better than MF on "low" hp mobs in the sub 30 epic game. As far as I see it you really painted yourself into a corner with MF and holding off on fixing the issue will only make things worse.

[mikarddo]

double post.

[patang01]

No shared tree. Steelstar would kill me. He's been dying to work on the third Artificer tree. And an Artificer ED for that matter.

Sev~

Please make it so, especially the arti destiny. I know you want to add more favored soul and whatever but they already have some strong stuff. Both on the enhancement side and the destiny side. Arti for most part need to use other classes destiny stuff and while they're okay it's not uniquely Arti.

[Monkey-Boy]

Whoever said that you need Necro DC 75 are crazy folks..

Yeah, 75 is low

[Madja]

We've considered a Killer DM mode - something even harder than elite

Sev~

I'd be fine with an additional, harder, difficulty. I just don't think it should award any unique items. If people feel that the "easy" difficulties we have now are boring then the increased difficulty should be it's own reward.

If we start having content that only the best players are able to access then I feel like we'll divide the player base into "casuals" and "elitists" like many other MMOs do. The friendly community of DDO is one of it's greatest features and I'd hate to see things like WoW's "Link achievement and ilvl for invite" to become commonplace here.

When people are aware that there's more XP or better loot to be had then they'll always try to run the highest difficulty. If they're not prepared then it'll simply be a wipe fest which will lead to frustration and reduced enjoyment of the game.
Something like an increased drop rate on items would be okay, I guess. That way there won't be any unique items and unlike XP (which we need so much of) you only need an item once, so people will be more likely to settle for running hard or elite and waiting a bit longer for that item.


I really like the idea of making Death Penalty character specific. It won't solve all the problems, but it'll help to reduce frustration in groups when someone dies and reduces everyone's XP. I feel like more people would be likely to invite randoms into their XP farming groups if this was changed.
Personally I solo a lot because I simply enjoy being able to do the quest my way, with as few or as many breaks as I want. It can take a long time to do a quest solo, so if I want to zerg through it, then I'll join a group.
The problem is that it can be really hard to find a group. There aren't that many LFMs up, especially not since I live in Europe, so it's not exactly prime time when I log on.

[Monkey-Boy]

If we start having content that only the best players are able to access then I feel like we'll divide the player base into "casuals" and "elitists" like many other MMOs do.

We already have this divide, this would be nothing new.

And if the "elitist jerks" weren't bored maybe people would be nicer.

[bartharok]

We already have this divide, this would be nothing new.

And if the "elitist jerks" weren't bored maybe people would be nicer.

I wouldnt be nicer to elitist jerks even if they were having fun.

[Blackheartox]

Yeah, 75 is low

Indeed you need a bit more for wgu.
Generally i did not notice you need that much in necro.
Wonder how much we need for temple

[Blackheartox]

I wouldnt be nicer to elitist jerks even if they were having fun.

Think they care what you think about them?

[bartharok]

Think they care what you think about them?

Yes, they want me to hate them.