The Balance Change post

[RD2play]

Greetings.


Ten Thousand Stars
This ability is being redesigned.
For the next 30 seconds you add your Wisdom ability score to your Ranged Power and you add your monk level * 5 to your Doubleshot. This ability puts Manyshot on a 30 second cooldown. Cooldown 1 minute.
(This ability no longer gives a doubleshot penalty when activated.)

Sev~

Note, for a halfling monkcher with 12 monk levels using AA tier 5 the actual number is 29% and thats only at level 28.
Ship, quiver, EPL and epic feat.

That would mean 29+ 12*5 = 89% so not even a full extra arrow !

maybe turn RP and DS around in 10k or take a look at the 5*monk level part, maybe change to 40%+monk*3

it would push this exsample to 29+ 40+ 12*3 = 105%

[Matadorz]

In a nutshell... So you are nerfing the builds that are doing good in the game to enhance the gaming experience of other players that feel somehow uncomfortable with those builds?

And in the process affecting and probably destroying countless hours of character building for everyone else.

Way to go...

[Vargouille]

4 Feats for a viable Trip? {There's a reason hardly anyone takes Improved Trip!}.

4 MUST HAVE Feats for a class that has the least Healing potential in the game?

We don't expect you to take eight new feats. They are options.

Frankly, I personally only expect someone going for a sort of theme build to take all four Tactics feats. I'd be strongly tempted to take the +6 and +8 feats, but after that I'm probably landing 95% of time on not just low-save monsters (usually Fortitude, for Stunning Blow), but probably managing to get pretty high chances even against monsters with strong Fort saves. That's not taking into account using other feats vs. other saves, etc.

Maybe there's some crazy non-Strength Fighter Build that will want all four Tactics feats to keep DCs up, but that's just a new build that probably couldn't get viable tactics before. That would be great.

For the armor feats, it is obviously helpful to maximize defenses as much as possible, but in this case we do explicitly expect players to make a lot of tradeoffs and decide what they want. We aren't autogranting these feats because you shouldn't need them - but they can help a lot. Do they help more than your other feat choices? Maybe!

Don't forget each weapon focus feat gives stacking Melee Power even though players doesn't use specific(ex> slashing weapon & slashing focus) focus for their weapon.

So, if you have weapon focus : slashing, piercing, bludgeoning, ranged, thrown weapon at once,
you will have stacking 10 melee power, it's obviously a bug. And some pally & barb using this exploit.

These are not bugs. These were very explicitly changed to improve the value of these feats, and Fighters who may be looking for small bonuses with their 12th or 15th or whatever feat options they have.
Ranged and Thrown of course give Ranged Power.

Depending on how this plays out, the diversity we have now will be gone once these changes go live. So we will be losing diversity. Ranged combat will totally be useless except Mechanic (AA hasn't been released yet). The changes to 10k and MS are heavy handed, as the poster who put the numbers up showed. Without the burst damage, non-mechanics will be further behind melee than they already are.

We disagree strongly. The only majorly impacted ranged build would be those dependent on Holy Sword.

1. Monkchers should still be fine.
2. Arcane Archers should still be as fine, regardless of the state current AA work. (Not sure why you assume AA won't be out until after these changes.)
3. What other ranged combatants do you think are just going to be "gone"?

10k and Manyshot still give pretty massive burst damage, with greatly increased sustain available for most builds, if only in the form of doubleshot. Plenty of players have posted their existing builds with 50%+ Doubleshot (sometimes much higher). Especially for Manyshot builds, removing the Doubleshot penalty is a large DPS increase for those builds.

[redoubt]

In todays video you comment on the fighter feats. You said you want to keep them fighter only because you think opening them up to everyone would just make them "something everyone felt they had to take" (or close to those words I hope.)

If that is a concern, then one of two things is happening:

1. The feats are too good and should be removed (not implemented)

2. Something is wrong with tactical DCs and/or PRR/MRR that makes these feats that needed.


I've said before I feel like DDO is chasing its tail with some of these changes. Why not roll them out slower? You talk about wanting to see how things affect the "ecosystem" but when you drop all this at once you will have no way to tell what is the actual root of an observed change.

I would say that you should pick a few things that are not used on the same build and see what you get. For example:

1. Holy Sword change. This affects TWF, S&B and ranged. Put this in and don't touch anything else on those builds/styles and then observe how it affects them.

2. Dial back warlock. This only affects warlock. Put it in and observe.

Don't change anything else. Then, if after observation, you determine you need to do more, do a couple more targeted "adjustments".

I think your total plan approach and putting out for us to see is good. Do that so that people know what you are considering and then as you roll out the adjustments in a phased manner players have options:

1. Based on seeing the total possible changes, move their characters early to something else and not waste time on something they think might be nerfed.

2. Play the smaller adjustments as they come and evaluate how they feel about them.

I truly appreciate your communication with us here and with things like the today's video, but I still believe rolling this out all at once would be a mistake and not provide any truly valuable data as a result. There is just too much to know what is actually having specific affects.

[mikarddo]

1. Monkchers should still be fine.
2. Arcane Archers should still be as fine, regardless of the state current AA work. (Not sure why you assume AA won't be out until after these changes.)
3. What other ranged combatants do you think are just going to be "gone"?

10k and Manyshot still give pretty massive burst damage, with greatly increased sustain available for most builds, if only in the form of doubleshot. Plenty of players have posted their existing builds with 50%+ Doubleshot (sometimes much higher). Especially for Manyshot builds, removing the Doubleshot penalty is a large DPS increase for those builds.

50% DS sounds nice - but a halfling 12 monk / 6 ranger monkcher taking AA tier 5 gets at most 29% DS. Kindly acknowledge that DS is not readily available for many builds. Note that the 29% is only at level 28 - below that its 19% maximum!

If you think 50% DS is achievable generally your numbers will be way off.

Mind, I think the changes are overall fine - just that you seems to have forgotten about Trees and Wolves - but you need to base calcs on reasonable numbers

[TakeItToTheLimit]

I have never understood why players rave about throwing weapons (like shuriken) here. As a PnP player of many years, I have never seen anybody carry more than one throwing weapon. Throwing weapons are for lobbing at the enemy as you wade in. If you are going to engage in a missile battle, you use a bow. Why does that not happen here?

Then I realised - RANGE!

Throwing weapons are short range weapons - or should be! Spells have limited ranges so the logic is already present in the game so why are throwing weapons not also restricted - say to the range of a Magic Missile?

Returning throwers also need time to return - there should be a cooldown on returning throwing weapons. Returning throwers make sense for characters who are going to lob one or two shots only prior to melee. If you are going to spam the field, a single returning weapon won't be enough and you will need a bagful...which brings me nicely to bows.

If you want to limit bows, there is a very simple mechanic that could work here too - think logistics!. Abolish conjured and returning ammunition!
Being able to spam 150 shots in a minute is all well and good but how are you going to carry all those arrows? Quivers should be reduced in capacity to 100 arrows and regular inventory slots to 20

I personally would rather see a massive increase (a ranger with a long bow should be doing comparable damage to a barbarian with a greatsword) in missile weapon damage PER SHOT at the expense of rates of fire and ammunition carriage.

[blerkington]

We disagree strongly. The only majorly impacted ranged build would be those dependent on Holy Sword.

1. Monkchers should still be fine.
2. Arcane Archers should still be as fine, regardless of the state current AA work. (Not sure why you assume AA won't be out until after these changes.)
3. What other ranged combatants do you think are just going to be "gone"?

10k and Manyshot still give pretty massive burst damage, with greatly increased sustain available for most builds, if only in the form of doubleshot. Plenty of players have posted their existing builds with 50%+ Doubleshot (sometimes much higher). Especially for Manyshot builds, removing the Doubleshot penalty is a large DPS increase for those builds.

Hi,

So what about the role of a higher RoF from the existing version of manyshot? The larger number of arrows leads to more on hit chances for things like mortal fear, from arrow imbues, ED effects and helps with charging certain ED powers.

Your changes make things worse for burst archery builds and melee/ranged hybrids. For melee/ranged hybrids, like the classic ranger, sustained damage with a bow is quite unimportant. So please stop repeating these claims that what you are proposing is better for everyone, because it obviously isn't. It is only a partial solution at best.

If you can refute what I'm saying here then go right ahead, because it seems to me like you and your colleagues have made no effort to address this problem and have been studiously avoiding any discussion of it. And if you can show us, the people who believe you are hurting our builds, that we are better off, I will be the first to thank you.

Thanks.

[redoubt]

I wish you could collect better in-game data.

epics except the high level EEs are too easy because ED power is front-loaded and most people on the ETR train have their ED filled. Epic doesn't scale well in general.

When I ran through EE orchard recently one of the most vocal complainers about the game being too easy on Sarlona died 4 times within a few minutes and rage quit. I think part of the problem is alot of people take the path of least resistance on ETR and barely run the difficult content. Of course the game is too easy for them.

I think EE should scale from 3-6 instead of 1-4 people and that would probably add enough difficulty the high level EEs. Making enemies simply hit much harder is not the right answer.

This is a very good point and something that should be considered.

Yes, there are people who can take a first life pure fighter and run at level EE. Who that person is I don't know. But what I can say is that I experience completely different gameplay on my epic completionist that I do on my characters that do not have full EDs. Running in the right destiny for a build brings a LOT of power. Running in an off destiny brings very little. That said, I am okay with EE being balanced on being in your favored destiny and having it filled for quests above level 25.

[Gratch]

Hmmm... I guess this may be an actual useful 3x epic past life feat now? http://ddowiki.com/page/Double_Shot

Especially with fewer procs from manyshot/10k giving less advantage to Colors of the Queen as the selection.

These proc reduction changes also seem to even further kill off Shiradi as an epic ranged destiny. Will there be a rebalancing of ED's at some point once the weapon-damage heroic PRE's and system balancing is done?

[Zavier]

I did want to say in regard to those who feel we are overly weighing forum-only feedback on this issue that we are, and will continue to be, getting feedback from many sources, including those outside of the forums. While this forum thread is one of the largest and most vocal places we are getting feedback, it is by no means the only place we are listening.

I really have no clue as to how Turbine does anything ( unless it involves a Magic 8 ball or Pacman larping ) but it is a real shame you guys couldn't have invested some energy in analzying play time, stable of characters, and characters lives ( you know because once upon a time multiple TR lives actually meant something, that it is until you all turned the game into the TR merrygoround) long before the sad sad PC.

Point being, many quality players I used to know on Sarlona never posted on the forums and basically had nothing to do with Turbine but log in. Yet, their depth of game knowledge and mechanics were astounding. Those are the folks you guys should have tapped into a long long time ago. Sadly, 90% of them are gone.

Turbine a day late and a dollar short...yet again.

[slarden]

Obviously what used to be the best weapon choice is no longer the best weapon choice. It would go a long way if Turbine provides some way to exchange our thunderforged weapons so all that work isn't invalidated.

Is this something you will consider?

A simple example- today shortsword and rapier have the same crit profiles for a swashbuckler. After this change rapier will be better. It would be nice if we can re-make our weapons.

[patang01]

I hear you. This was a longstanding bug, as in probably years old, but it was acceptable in the past when Artificers and Rogue Mechanics were both relatively weak performers. However now that Rogue Mechanics are overperforming I guess it is considered a priority. Alas but this means that your Artificer, who was indeed already low on the DPS totem pole, gets knocked a few pegs lower. It won't be a competitive class until after it gets its enhancement pass sometime in 2016. If you want to feel powerful again you might try Rogue Mechanic, or if you haven't done any Ranger Past Lives yet now would be a great time as that adds +2 ranged damage as a passive bonus (stacking up to 3 times) and Ranger is in a pretty good spot right now. Then you'll be even better when Artificer is brought up to par in the future.

Arti's need a better destiny, not more enhancements. They do fine in Heroic...they trail behind more and more in Epic since their primary source of damage are run arms and repeaters but everything else falls behind in utility. There simply is no destiny that has a good synergy with them. Particularly with rune arms other then electric and force.

[redoubt]

1. Monkchers should still be fine.
2. Arcane Archers should still be as fine, regardless of the state current AA work. (Not sure why you assume AA won't be out until after these changes.)
3. What other ranged combatants do you think are just going to be "gone"?

10k and Manyshot still give pretty massive burst damage, with greatly increased sustain available for most builds, if only in the form of doubleshot. Plenty of players have posted their existing builds with 50%+ Doubleshot (sometimes much higher). Especially for Manyshot builds, removing the Doubleshot penalty is a large DPS increase for those builds.

This is where I feel you don't know how we are playing in game, every archer I know falls into one of two categories:

1. Built for manyshot (and 10k) with zero effort put into doubleshot. These are burst dps builds.
2. Ignores manyshot, 10k and being a burst dps build. These builds push for doubleshot.

While it may be true that you see "plenty of players" with doubleshot, are you considering that they don't bother with manyshot and 10k? For these builds, your proposal will be a buff because they will start using manyshot now that there is no penalty to DS. Builds that went for burst will see their burst dps decrease significantly and find that doing things like recharging adrenaline are much more difficult. These builds will require significant restructuring and regearing.

Also consider the best doubleshot item comes with -50 concentration, so that still does not mix well with 10k stars builds.

Bottom line, you have it backwards. The buff is to the builds that don't use manyshot, the builds that already use manyshot are taking a nerf.

[redoubt]

Obviously what used to be the best weapon choice is no longer the best weapon choice. It would go a long way if Turbine provides some way to exchange our thunderforged weapons so all that work isn't invalidated.

Is this something you will consider?

A simple example- today shortsword and rapier have the same crit profiles for a swashbuckler. After this change rapier will be better. It would be nice if we can re-make our weapons.

Yes, I have daggers that need to become kukris and my friend needs to turn a bow into a cross bow.

This would be great!

[dunklezhan]

Hi,

So what about the role of a higher RoF from the existing version of manyshot? The larger number of arrows leads to more on hit chances for things like mortal fear, from arrow imbues, ED effects and helps with charging certain ED powers.

Your changes make things worse for burst archery builds and melee/ranged hybrids. For melee/ranged hybrids, like the classic ranger, sustained damage with a bow is quite unimportant. So please stop repeating these claims that what you are proposing is better for everyone, because it obviously isn't. It is only a partial solution at best.

If you can refute what I'm saying here then go right ahead, because it seems to me like you and your colleagues have made no effort to address this problem and have been studiously avoiding any discussion of it. And if you can show us, the people who believe you are hurting our builds, that we are better off, I will be the first to thank you.

Thanks.

I wouldn't phrase it in the same tone Blerk's post, but I think the point is well made that fewer arrows DOES mean a lower number of on crit, on hit, and chance on hit effect procs, and that is a large part of the attractiveness of those high bursts periods for manyshot/10K stars.

I would be interested in seeing a dev response to that specific point as I don't think I've seen one here or in the AA thread. Is that loss factored into the balance changes in terms of overall damage output? I'm not sure the temporary loss of doubleshot really is worth the loss of DPS when you start thinking of it this way, certainly my heroic archers aren't getting the kind of standing doubleshot figures you're talking about expecting people to have and the 'flurry' type figures I see on lootgen bows aren't enough to warrant using them over bows that just have another damage effect on them.

EDIT: that should say 'loss of temporary doubleshot penalty'. Don't know what happened there.

[FestusHood]

biggest loser: Forester Brush Hook in DC
* currently 11-20x4
* postpatch 15-20x4

This is exactly the kind of thing that most needed fixing. 15-20x4 is still a monster crit profile. Be honest, does 11-20x4 really seem ok to you?

[Vargouille]

Regarding the new fighter feats:

The first feats in each "line" are nothing but noob traps. They sound like they are good, but in practice they should be ignored until you get higher level so you can take the higher tier ones instead.

Yes. We expect that to be true for characters who take 16+ levels of Fighter.

It's very likely that you will end up in a position where you cannot fit every feat of the line, and if you have taken a lower tier one you will just be straight up better off if you never had taken in in the first place. It feels pretty awkward, and for no real reason.

Fighter remains an excellent splash class. There are many, many characters with between 2-12 levels of Fighter, who cannot take the final, strongest form of these feats (available with 14 or 16 Fighter levels).

You seem to have accurately judged how we expect these feats to work for pure Fighters. We are always trying to build for all builds - especially the ones no one is thinking of, if we can!

I hope you are not basing this on kobold DPS tests. I have the feeling that THF is still very strong against groups or enemies. TWF should stay ahead for single targets. You already nerfed TWF Paladins and I think that THF barbs are quite common. In the end you remove Power from some builds that are definitely not OP, like Monks or TWF bards.

It would be wrong to say we're basing balance solely on single-target DPS tests. It would be wrong to say we ignore that data, as well.

We know that many, many melee players spend most of their time with groups of monsters around them and cleaving. We're hoping to get better testing grounds for both us and players (it's easier for us with cheaty admin tools, of course) - including against multiple "trash" monsters, bosses, champions, etc.

On the wiki (http://ddowiki.com/page/PRR) it says that you get some PRR for wearing armor, and more PRR if you are proficient with it. If this is true, are we losing PRR from the proposed changes?

Yes. The proposal is the entirely of the PRR you will get. So a pure Paladin at level 28, with 24 BAB, would get 48 PRR. (56 if they are using anything that gives full BAB, such as Divine Crusader or some other Tenser's-like effect.)

The crit range change appears to me, and it seems to many others, to be the worst thought out part. Many weapons : Sireth, Drow weapons, (E)SOS and innumerable heroic weapons (there's a decent list here) are special BECAUSE of their expanded crit range.

Each of them will still have a stronger critical profile (chance or damage multiplier) than other weapons. These just won't be twice as special.

[dunklezhan]

Arti's need a better destiny, not more enhancements. They do fine in Heroic...they trail behind more and more in Epic since their primary source of damage are run arms and repeaters but everything else falls behind in utility. There simply is no destiny that has a good synergy with them. Particularly with rune arms other then electric and force.

Yes. Though their ranged DPS actually plateaus by about L15 in my experience (changes to the +W values for higher value lootgen have helped somewhat with this). Since thats the point their heightened DCs start to top out as well, I'd say they could use something to keep their ranged side 'advancing' in the last few levels. Epics is a whole other thing I am not remotely qualified to talk about.

[mikarddo]

I wouldn't phrase it in the same tone Blerk's post, but I think the point is well made that fewer arrows DOES mean a lower number of on crit, on hit, and chance on hit effect procs, and that is a large part of the attractiveness of those high bursts periods for manyshot/10K stars.

I would be interested in seeing a dev response to that specific point as I don't think I've seen one here or in the AA thread. Is that loss factored into the balance changes in terms of overall damage output? I'm not sure the temporary loss of doubleshot really is worth the loss of DPS when you start thinking of it this way, certainly my heroic archers aren't getting the kind of standing doubleshot figures you're talking about expecting people to have and the 'flurry' type figures I see on lootgen bows aren't enough to warrant using them over bows that just have another damage effect on them.

Thats exactly the key part of the changes to archers that needs a dev reply. Overall it looks like my monkcher is down 25% arrows meaning fewer mortal fear procs and fewer adrenalines in particular. Normal damage looks about the same but thats not the key issue at all.

We badly need a dev reply to this.

[Blastyswa]

I did want to say in regard to those who feel we are overly weighing forum-only feedback on this issue that we are, and will continue to be, getting feedback from many sources, including those outside of the forums. While this forum thread is one of the largest and most vocal places we are getting feedback, it is by no means the only place we are listening.

The question is, are the developers actually getting a good representation of the entire population of the game? Anything where people are responding based on their own decision to do so or where they are selected because of already being vocal can not be applied to the entire population. Unless the overwhelming feedback is being received from random samplings of all players of DDO, any data gathered can not be applied to the entire population. The statement would look like "Based on our data, a vast majority of the most vocal players on fan sites, the forum, and the players council, (or any other source that isn't random selection) feel the game is lacking in difficulty." This would be a horrible misrepresentation of data, as the correct statement to actually merit these changes would be (truthfully) being able to say "Based on the feedback we've received from random samplings of the general populace of all DDO players, an overwhelming number feel that the game is lacking in difficulty." The difference between these two sampling methods is huge, as one of them I can get on board with more (while I would still be against the idea, numbers trumps logic).