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

[bartharok]

But it's not fun if your flavor is gimp.

Toon or player? Even a gimp toon can be fun, since its a lot harder to play, and thus more of a challenge. A gimp player is something else again.

[Qhualor]

But it's not fun if your flavor is gimp.

Gimp and not comparable to top builds are 2 different things.

[Wipey]

You can write litanies of texts about super trash removal or godly instakills, the reality is, it has never been that popular, and now 98% people just don't bring a caster to a raid or even quests.
Every.Single. Such character is played by uber vet with 743 lives, played the class for years.
Even then, you'd almost always see people on their other toons.
Someone asked me before : "Do you too have uber caster that you never play ?". Yeah. People might need you for that one or two raids and that's it.

Think I have been in few raids by now, it's super rare to see a blue bar.
Looking at the screenshots, or raid / quests party comps, just lol.

It's ****ton of "work" for almost zero benefit or "utility" now.
Cc, healing, buffs have been marginalized or almost obsolete.

[etotheipi]

No, I chose it as it had the highest DC's needed to insta-kill. Want to go with an undead quest.. that works too -- I have fewer options, but Death to Undeath, Consume, Evocation (Ruin, Hellball, Energy Burst, Fire Wall), and Web + Melee.

Consume and Web + Melee are all coming from a SWF Caster/Melee Hybrid running in Shadowdancer. I have already agreed that that build is pretty good. Can we talk about casters, and not melee/caster hybrids? That's what I'm talking about, and I don't think casters should be forced to be heavy armor wearing melee/caster hybrids in order to perform at the level of melees.

Yes, Melee has AoE dps.. but their AoE dps is no where near 5k.

It doesn't make sense to say their AoE DPS is "no where near 5K". It's not difficult to achieve 5K DPS. If your DPS against a single mob is 1.5K, then rounding up four mobs can easily take it to 6K. And there's also this thing called Mortal Fear, which you may have heard of. Melee AoE DPS is well above 5K.

I agree that Melee is strong (likely too strong .. I know I have 2 fully maxed out melees) but to say Casters suck and aren't the kings of trash is just silly.

If your melee DPS is as limited as you think melee DPS is, then I doubt your melees are maxxed out. And you are most certainly not the "king of trash" in undead heavy content. Nor are you the "king of Champions". And even if you were the "king of some trash", that's a pretty sad place to be, since it is, you know, trash. If ruling over a few refuse heaps is your idea of "just fine", then casters are "just fine".

With Heavy Armor as silly as it is, I don't have any issues with dealing with mass amounts of aggro.. death aura alone keeps me up in most cases..

And now we're back, yet again, to your FTR splashed WIZ. I realize you can't stop touting the benefits of the splash. It does come with some pretty huge benefits.

As for your comment on a solo run.. you must have missed the point where I said that red/purple named dps is a WEAKNESS of a DC caster.. We are talking about TRASH.

And I respond by pointing out that melees have no weaknesses. The DPS is always up, isn't limited by resources, doesn't fade on Undead, red-nameds, bosses or Champions, is higher than your DPS against many of those, and is competitive with your DPS on the kind of trash you can instakill.

I am not overlooking any obstacles.. I welcome them. I agree Melee toons are easier, I disagree with your notion that DC casters need a buff.. they are balanced as they are.

They're so balanced they need a party, or need to take the GSWF line and splash FTR while rollling in Heavy Armor? That's so convincing.

As for my "minions" comment.. you do realize that this is a MMO right? Do you know that it stands for Massivly-MULTIPLAYER Online? I didn't know that my desire to run with other people means that my toons are gimp

Yes, it's sooo MASSIVELY multi-player. Even Severlin has recognized that people don't want to be stuck waiting for groups to fill in this day and age, and so is pushing for more general self-sufficiency. Casters don't have that. If some toons perform just fine without groups, and others don't, the ones that don't need to be improved so that they aren't dependent upon relying upon other to patching all their weaknesses and shortcomings. We moved past that in this game a long, long time ago, Andoris.

No, wizards are not a "solo speed run class".. but so what? They are a very powerful class that can fill its role in an amazing way -- when played by a skilled player and well built.

They're a pretty gimped solo class, period. Your melee/caster hybrid is an exception, as I've noted about two dozen times. The only way to build a decent caster these days is as a melee/caster hybrid in Heavy Armor. That is a shame. And, as others have correctly observed, it is not remotely worth the effort (except for the few of us who are trying to keep casters from utterly sucking and already have the work done).

Casters are not in a good place right now. And you can't prove that they are by continuing to point at a Completionist Shadowdancer build with a dozen relevant Heroic Past Lives who is taking the GSWF line and running in Heavy Armor with a 2 FTR splash. I understand that you're enjoying your toon. That you are, and that it requires a ton of work, doesn't have anything to do with casters being "just fine".

[etotheipi]

You can write litanies of texts about super trash removal or godly instakills, the reality is, it has never been that popular, and now 98% people just don't bring a caster to a raid or even quests.
Every.Single. Such character is played by uber vet with 743 lives, played the class for years.
Even then, you'd almost always see people on their other toons.
Someone asked me before : "Do you too have uber caster that you never play ?". Yeah. People might need you for that one or two raids and that's it.

Think I have been in few raids by now, it's super rare to see a blue bar.
Looking at the screenshots, or raid / quests party comps, just lol.

It's ****ton of "work" for almost zero benefit or "utility" now.
Cc, healing, buffs have been marginalized or almost obsolete.

This is all correct.

[luvirini]

You can write litanies of texts about super trash removal or godly instakills, the reality is, it has never been that popular, and now 98% people just don't bring a caster to a raid or even quests.
Every.Single. Such character is played by uber vet with 743 lives, played the class for years.
Even then, you'd almost always see people on their other toons.
Someone asked me before : "Do you too have uber caster that you never play ?". Yeah. People might need you for that one or two raids and that's it.

Think I have been in few raids by now, it's super rare to see a blue bar.
Looking at the screenshots, or raid / quests party comps, just lol.

It's ****ton of "work" for almost zero benefit or "utility" now.
Cc, healing, buffs have been marginalized or almost obsolete.

Unfortuane, but so true. Casters are much a flavor build today.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

Rogues got the short end of the stick because paladins and bards stick was made short, due to the nerfs demanded of the new versions of them, thus taking away a good chunk of the overhead to make rogues better.

The better choice is to have a small amount of patience during the revamps, revamp ALL first, them compare the new versions of ALL to eachother, then have ONE round of nerfs.

Instead what we got is nerfing after each revamp, which in turn removes most of the overhead to make future revamps much better.

i think what you meant to say was:

rogues got the short part of the stick which was removed from the originally incredibly extremely very long stick given to bards and pallies (which despite being made slightly shorter is still stupidly long), and there is actually still plenty of overhead.

the better choice would have been to have a *small* amount of patience during the *timely* class revamps, revamp all of them in a *timely* manner, then compare them all to each other and have as many rounds of nerfs/buffs as would be necessary for the most balance. unfortunately the class revamps arent happening at a fast enough rate for this to work. not to mention the history of uncompleted projects... removes any patience most people have for this.

instead what we got is bards and paladins and barbarians being buffed to unholy amounts and now turbine realizes that it probably wasnt a good idea to make them thaaaaaaat much stronger than both the other classes and the current content we have.

i mean what happens when they want to release new content? do they balance around the big 3? or the other classes?

[Monkey-Boy]

This is all correct.

Because casters suck in Deathwyrm?

[BigErkyKid]

I don't know Andoris, do you honestly think that the wizard archetype is balanced right now?

Against content, I am not saying it isn't. Basically because I don't think that toons should be rolfstomping content anyway.

But against other archetypes? Have you seen the latest speed run of WGU on a melee?

You brought up WGU, how long do you think it would take to solo on you build? And how many pots?

This belongs to another discussion, but in any case if they start a Killer difficulty they should think hard how they balance it for different archetypes.

I wouldn't want it to be called Barbarian's Paradise.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

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

ok, this first sentence is 100% wrong. additionally, this second sentence is also 100% wrong.

lets start with the first sentence. fighter is not fine. by your own admission kensei should not have so much non fighter stuff in it. unless you are changing that position, you have already declared fighters not fine.

now the second sentence. fighters greatest weakness is actually a tie between their dps and their feat list. as cetus pointed out already, there are multiple issues with the extra feats. weapon spec feats (2) quick draw (1) and improved sunder (1) are the only melee feats (4 total) i take outside of the standard group of dps feats everyone, bonus feats or no, takes. the weapon focus feats are pointless because to hit pretty much means nothing and even if it did an accuracy 9 or 10 item is single-handedly more powerful. after that there is nothing else to be taken except for manyshot and its prereqs. i havent actually been playing an endgame fighter for a little while, but from what ive heard people dont like the ranged option for dps now because its not actually better dps than just meleeing. so why should a fighter even take this either (in the case of manyshot i will admit that even if its less dps than meleeing there is still a use for it, being that fighters dont have stupid amounts of easy self healing...)? combat expertise being mutually exclusive with powerattack, in addition to the fact its base version is an ac only buff makes it worthless. improved trip is not worth the useless prereq. hamstring is not really needed or useful right now and requires rogue levels anyway. improved feint also requires rogue levels iirc and afaik does not work properly or has any difference from the bluff skill, which has none of the weaknesses of that feat. stunning blow is a feat that anyone who wants it will have regardless of bonus feats. cleaves now require spending feats for a poor quality attack (seriously, compared to the pally cleaves which actually can be spammed one right after the other causing the second one to deal damage but have no animation which means more time doing regular attack which have better base damage thanks to class mp and mp scaling light damage and better crit profile is a big deal, not to mention the huge extra +[w]). the dodge line is useless because even with 3 rank of armor mastery from stalwart and a +2 mdb augment you are still only looking at like 9% dodge in heavy armor which for me is more than taken care of between t3 wolf cloak and shadarkai lives. lastly ive never personally used wwa but from what i understand it is useless unless youre an unarmed monk. and then there are the feats which cetus listed specifically which are utterly pointless. and i dont feel confident that this is going to change given a statement of yours in one fo the rogue threds that you will not be changing feats. pretty serious bird being given to fighters.

fighter dps is also a huge letdown now that paladins are fighters on steroids who can also heal themselves. haste boost is not exclusive to fighters/fighter splashes, so no dps advantage to be found there. keen edge is equivalent to critical rage, but cannot be stacked with death frenzy and pulverizer, making it inferior. keen edge is vastly inferior to the insulting and game break holy sword not only by crit profile but also because keen edge is a tier 5 and holy sword is a spell. this is the biggest disadvantage to vanguard fighters (stalwart fighter is not a thing any more believe it or not...) who cannot get +10 melee power and a crit bonus (not even the weak keen edge) whereas a pally can get both as well as better survivability. kensei has no melee power either. going pure fighter requires you to own the harper tree (at least it can be acquired via favor, phew) to gain access to what is now effectively a required class feature which is also inerior to divine might because for thf fighters it is only 2/3 as effective (divine might +str bonus is multiplied by 1.5 for damage on thf builds). stalwart defensive stance does not stack with inspire excellence (both are competence bonuses). the only advantages fighters actually have are: being able to pick up manyshot/imp sunder or quickdraw, 4 extra action boosts (alacrity is not properly applying both of its bonus charges), 9% doublestrike (paladins get 10% for no investment to the 19% a pure kensei does), 5 tactical dc (not really though, and this is ridiculous because it is expensive, 3/5 of it is too high a % to be so easily accessible to other classes (especially when youve stated, unfortunately, that dcs is what you want fighters advantage to be), and is not really necessary because barbs and pallies have roughly equal if not better strength depending on build and are able to land their dcs without the +5 bonus. power surge can be almost completely replaced in some situations by the titans grip gloves. read that again. a CORE feature of a class can be situationally almost COMPLETELY REPLACED by an ITEM thanks to the nerf a while back which made power surge a psionic bonus type. also divine might as adding over +10 strength to gimps in epics and +20 on non gimps at higher epics, power surge is only +8 strength, so fighters are getting +9 dc between tactics enhancement power surge and alacrity, while paladins are getting +10 dc just from divine might. lastly i reiterate the point that if anyone who actually wants to can currently both take stunning blow and land the dc regardless of class, what is the point of giving fighters a dc advantage? so that they can be the only class who can land teh dcs of their grand total of 2 abilities which really need it in some newer content? that would mean that this advantage would be 99% pointless. and i am arriving at this conclusion thanks to dev statements such as: "fighters advantage will be dcs, add difficulty through content".). so really there isnt any real advantage to a fighter at all frankly given that paladins get everything that a fighter has when it comes to dps either at half strength or better.

lastly poor saves are not a weakness on fighters, they are a feature. just like high saves and low dps are a feature of paladins. oh.........wait.................... but if we are going to make every class exactly the god **** same, then i guess you would have to define it as a weakness. looking at it from that point of view is a mistake though. but then again i guess you have no choice since youve already taken all the good parts of fighter and given them to paladin with no hope of undoing that.

so yea sev, if you can read through this stupid wall of text and explain to me point by point why fighters are "fine", then i will with no arguments accept that they are fine. i will know that you are wrong and secretly do not like fighters for some reason and just quit rather than suffer thinking i should be playing a paladin instead, but whatever.

[Andoris]

I don't know Andoris, do you honestly think that the wizard archetype is balanced right now?

Yes, and that includes pure 20 wizards (which are better at trash removal than my wonky build). Just because Barbs and Pally's are overpowered doesn't mean that everything else is unbalanced.

Fix Pally's and Barbs; don't make things worse by buffing wizards (who don't need it) to the moon as well.

You brought up WGU, how long do you think it would take to solo on you build? And how many pots?

Why do you guys think that you need to be a great solo build in order to be balanced? As for how long it will take.. not sure, but I might be able to tell you next week if I get bored this weekend.

Either way, it is not important -- and honestly, if you really cared about balance you would be talking about the builds that do really need a boost (Clerics and Arty's come to mind), instead of putting all this effort into trying to buff a class that really doesn't need it.

Also, by definition the builds that are knocking out speed runs and breaking records are not balanced -- if you continue to try to get every build to that level all you are going to have is more and more power jumps, trivializing even more content.

Wizards don't need to be "best at everything" to be a good class. They are best at trash and have great utility -- that is better than many other builds can say.

Fix Barbs and Pallys -- don't screw up everything else just because they are out of wack.

[Tebaco]

If someones wants to tackle a problem in an unconventional manner I don't know why someone else should care, much less look at it as proof of some greater problem.

A) most of them refuse to even consider multiclassing or splashing for Nuking.
B) most of them refuse to climb down off the "must have Lich form" ledge.
C) most of them refuse to think anyone but a Sorc can have the SP and crit chance to nuke even though some of the best nukes in the game are neither Sorc related, Elemental damage nor even necessarily Arcane. In fact the very best nukes outside of D-burst are often Force... which Wizards have a leg up on in multiple different ways, not all of which are obvious.

Well, I am pretty disapointed that such player with thouse ideas is in council.
With this way of thinking like multiclass, improve your saves, make special Gandalf the Gray - Elminster force like caster... Make an shiridi.. What about consider as council member that mobs should have on ee especialy protection against magic missiles..


Normaly it should be:
As meelee best dps should be pure barb, as best dps caster it should be pure sorc... (i count dps output not easy button instakills..)


But well, its ddo. Think direction now is op meelers and have special viable casters.. I have no problem with great dps barb if sux somehow but.. he is god mode.. As someone said he deal now 5000 dps.. Well my caped caster not (doesnt count sla, count general oldfashion spell with dmg cap..). and its far behind..
When i cc, things are different, but anyway i am still not satisfied enough. There is not much difference if i run as sentinel or draconic or high dc angel. And its problem. Top evo dc should generate much more dps.. But its seems that dmg numbers are same. Only difference is when you focus archers, as sentinel you just use sily scorching ray coz rest spells sux.
Thats because of archers saves. And When I am talking about saves.. Game is designed for making toon that have saves for beeing viable. And pure sorc havent saves, so should excell with dps.. Fix it.. Make at least 2x dps output for some spells especialy for sorcs..


And few words about wizards.. That weird force enhancement tree just prevent me making a wizard. Actualy wizards may be viable coz of int for reflex saves.. Please make wizard elementarist tree with maybe 50%-80% dps output of sorc.


Dont try force players for making mix spashs caster just for having paly saves with generating same dps.. It is like breaking physicals laws.. And I am afraid that with raise level to 30, caster become much much more weaker. It logical result of way how ddo go...


Thats my words about casters. But I know you are actualy happy with current state..

[etotheipi]

Yes, and that includes pure 20 wizards (which are better at trash removal than my wonky build).

This is pretty funny. Your melee wizard is better at removing non-fleshie, non-warded trash than a pure wizard. You conveniently forget or ignore the trash that is warded. You conveniently forget or ignore the trash that you can't cycle instakills on. You conveniently forget or ignore quite a lot. This is becoming a theme for you.

Your build isn't "wonky" either. I know it was hard for you because you've always been obsessed with chasing absolute maximum DC's and trash-killing abilities. You do love to kill that trash... But even you have finally learned that your three-bazillion past life wizard is kind of sucking unless it takes full advantage of the Rise of the Melees Update, rolls in Heavy Armor, splashes FTR, and swings a stick! And no wizard can pull that off well without those three-bazillion past lives. So yes, wizards are doing fine if they roll with melee options which requires so much work and effort, nobody except people like you and me would ever considering doing it. And I don't want to have to convert into a **** melee in order to not suck, though you seem fine with that.

This is not the way to make casters "just fine". The proper solution here is not to pick up at least a dozen past lives and swing a stick while wearing Heavy Armor. And that's what a caster has to do these days in order to not be a weak link who rules a refuse heap of some kinds of trash. Casters don't even rule the "trash" refuse heap any more. They rule, at best, the non-warded, non-Undead heap of trash. So the garbage dump they're supposedly ruling over is getting smaller and smaller. And honestly, I think you don't understand how to play a melee if you think casters are ruling the non-warded heap of fleshie trash either. Get yourself a proper melee. Give it a Mortal Fear weapon. Then come back here and tell me that melees aren't hitting 5K DPS (that was really funny, by the way).

[BigErkyKid]

Fix Barbs and Pallys -- don't screw up everything else just because they are out of wack.

You have missed the part where I say precisely this

As long as some classes can kill trash and bosses alike, soloing with ease a lot of content (certainly more easily than PMs), then I will continue saying there is no balance.

I want precisely this, a game where the PM cannot do everything, but neither do melees. Right now it is obviously not balanced.

Maybe Killer mode will be?

[Tebaco]

Coup De grace is OP because perception is > reality, when you make a mob helpless it dies moments later no matter WHAT you use, assuming you're doing respectable DPS. Who cares if you click one button and coup it to death or hit it twice with cleaves and kill it... It's just as dead, and swinging a weapon a few times has no cooldown and doesn't lock you into a T5 nor cost AP's... My Swash dropped CdG so it could take the stronger Spellsinger T5's. I haven't missed it, being able to cleave in my own pile of held mobs is WAY WAY more useful than being able to dispatch a Mob that is already basically dead every 15 seconds. Being able to alternate between Soundburst helpless mobs and mass hold while cleaving (mass hold for the mobs that pose more threat) Mobs are stobing to their death, it's like a sick game of red light green light that's going too fast for the Mobs to have a fair chance, and my Swash is the puppet master... You guys are complaining about Coup de grace? LOL

Man! You have to kidding us. What LOL? Coup de grace is nonsence ability for bard. Its more than assasinate. Well go to demonweb and EE solo reclaiming the rift on level with bard and with rogue.
bard = sucess, rogue = very probably fail..

Its logical? nope.. Both tries should fail..

Edit: Additionaly imagine scaling.. Mobs on later caps with much more tons of HP. than coup should be much more bigger advantage over all classes including rogues, exclude wiz..

[Oxarhamar]

You have missed the part where I say precisely this

As long as some classes can kill trash and bosses alike, soloing with ease a lot of content (certainly more easily than PMs), then I will continue saying there is no balance.

I want precisely this, a game where the PM cannot do everything, but neither do melees. Right now it is obviously not balanced.

Maybe Killer mode will be?

Both archtypes CAN do everything if built & played to do so.

You say a PM can not do things they certainly can if built for it.

[Tebaco]

You know the game is not balanced when the only powerful builds are heavy armor two handed or s&b melee.

In my dash of the last few lives to get triple everything I was missing among others one wizard and one sorcerer life. I did the sorcerer life as caster and hated it in harder content as I was then used to running the easy button melees(6 fighter or paladin, 12 what I needed and 2 rogue s&b), the really low power of the sorcerer was.. bad. Sure energy burst does good damage, but the other 19 seconds you are doing really low damage compared to a melee. So next life I did my wizard life as 12 wizard 6 fighter 2 rogue s&b and again everything seemed silly easy.

And that coming from a player who used to love playing casters with more than 1/3 of all my characters/lives ever having been sorcerer and more than 1/3 wizard. But I just could not stomach running two gimp lives after each other.

(Also the ranger twf build felt really gimp. on rogue life I did not even try anything fancy and went s&b)

So today choice is really: play melee or be gimp (and I hate playing gimps and melees so I find myself playing a lot less.)

Agree, same here.
You can roll adventurer meeleer god mode toon and be ee viable. Or make some splash caster shiridi and be viable. And do many caster pastlifes and be viable with **** saves, cc, and much worse dps than meelers..

[Tebaco]

Slow compared to the top 1% melee, compared to the average pug member my caster is still doing just great. Was doing EEs yesterday at level 20 and out-killed plenty of melee. I know that if any of the top-dogs show up, that I am not a tier1 killing machine. You know what... I don't care, I'm having fun.

This huge long forum rant is about an imbalance that only exists for the very top of the very top of the player base.

DC casting has not gotten weaker, they are just jealous that someone else got stronger. Yes, I play shiradi. No, I'm not feeling a ton of mercy for DC casters... every time they start doing well, the next thing they do is start railing for shiradi nerfs because those lesser builds need to ride in the back of the bus. DC casters have huge advantages in many areas, the current boss limitations are just fine in my book. They chose that style of play for the benefits and the drawbacks.



I agree with the destiny tweaks and the scaling. The rest of that just looks like a plea to nerf anyone who doesn't play the game your way.

As you said your toon is shiridi, you arent not a caster... Shiridi is something like mutants influenced by Fukushima factory.. Grown weird, stronger, unnatural.. But no offence from me, i know that easy build for ppl who didnt like work on PL must exist. But I dont believe you that you have fun with shiridi, noone have..

[maddong]

If a killer DM mode is introduced then what will be required of caster's to have viable DCs in it? It will be even more stupid than before.

I really like the suggestion (from another thread) of rolling back competence threat bonuses so that they apply after improved critical instead of all being doubled.

So maybe:
1. holy sword becomes +1 threat and +1 crit mult on 19-20
2. swashbuckling threats and mults all reworked to be equivalent to khopeshes instead of sword of shadows
3. nerf to barbarian self healing
4. fighters get another +1 crit mult on 19-20 at kensei 18 or 20

I'm fine if assassin tier 5 stayed at +2 threat +1 crit mult for daggers - that has existed much longer than the bard/pally revamp and there was minimal exploitation back then. I'm also fine if acrobat tier 5 stayed at +2 threat (it simply makes staffs viable vs the big swords).

For disclosure, I'm currently playing a paladin, a bard, a barbarian, and a swf twf wolf.

[Tebaco]

For now.. lets see how they perform in your new Harder difficulty content that is actually balanced for the FOTM revamped classes along with the overdone armor up changes. That's what you seem to be ignoring.

Everything is hunky dory for all the classes below the power of PALLY/BARd/BARB since outside of champs there has been very little content done to compensate for the new character power introduced by these revamps. Champs are a perfect example though.. PRR/MRR being the ONLY viable defense against them all. (which btw champs are still harder in heroics than they are in EPICS due to the difference in player tools @ level, of course if you have tons of ETRs for extra PRR they aren't as bad.. but expecting people to ETR to run heroic content is beyond silly)


In the future New content is going to be harder.. and those who fall below the base line set by the power of these classes are NOT going to perform well. Casters are likely going to run out of SP attempting to deal with the mass HP Meatbags you make in order to slow down the Upper tier of DPS. As well as be killed in one or 2 hits due to the mass damage required to slow down the upper tier of defense. (I'll leave out the entire discussion of the MAJORITY of spells and caster tools being completely unusable in epics. And many Buffs and debuffs are completely useless in heroics due to Items and design decisions. )

And that's just casters.. lets not ignore monks who are melee that HAS to wear pajamas. 80% dodge rate doesn't mean much if one shot can kill you.

That's the entire problem with any discussion of "balance". Most people are still discussing balance of current content.. not the content that has been ramped up to provide challenge for the new baseline OP classes.

You want to reduce instakills? Gotta give them high enough saves against bards.. what does that do to any other class who have save based abilities???
Want to have them hit hard enough to challenge High PRR paladins? Gotta make them hit hard enough that ignoring 75% of damage still hurts. What does that do to pajama wearers?
Want to slow down high DPS builds? Gotta give mobs enough HP so they can take the damage. What does that to do the SP bar of casters??
ETC
ETC
etc

You've increased the baseline of power so much that any attempt to provide challenge for that baseline is going to cause anything less to be deemed not viable for that content. (to be fair by "you" i mean the ddo dev team as a whole over the years.. not everything has been you personally)

From an MMO perspective I think you're in a bad spot. From a DnD perspective I think your campaign is broken.

+
Very clever post. Respect. Hope devs read that.