The Balance Change post

[Blastyswa]

Upon reading feedback from players and re-examining our builds, we are making Holy Sword once again affect missile weapons. No, we don't want 14 Paladin missile weapon builds to be the best missile option. The removal of missile weapons from Holy Sword, however, has more ramifications that most of the other changes in this balance pass as it negates a design goal for a specific kind of build. The other changes have statistical changes, but the design intent for other builds is still intact and the builds play the same. This particular aspect of Holy Sword we feel goes beyond statistical change; removing the missile option actually messes up a design intent for a specific build.

Thank you very much. I've said this a few times but I don't think I've said it enough, my thanks to the development team for adding in so many valid options for alternate melee/ranged builds in the past few years. I think that keeping Holy Sword functioning how it is will help keep development going in the right direction for a fun and diverse game.

[blerkington]

Hi,

I am not sure how you are getting this unless you are completely avoiding doubleshot.

So once again, what do you think the reduction will be during the active periods for new manyshot and 10k stars? No best case scenarios please, use a doubleshot figure which is realistically obtainable.

We, and players, are pretty strongly agreed that we want this to remove the Doubleshot penalty. Therefore, it is right to balance under the assumption that players are going to get it. Yes, we realize that can be frustrating for builds that don't care about the penalty currently, but it's essential and necessary to plan around those builds gaining Doubleshot after this change. Otherwise we basically have to leave the penalty in place.

This is a false dichotomy. What you seem to be doing here is ruling out the possibility that the game can be changed in a way to support both burst and constant damage styles for archery while making sure people can't spec both ways and thereby get too much benefit from the changes. Several solutions were presented for this in the AA thread, and none of them were addressed by the developers. Do you feel that you have done everything you can to solve this problem? It does not seem that way to me.

Thanks.

[RD2play]

Yes, we understand that builds without Doubleshot will now want to get some. This is also with the knowledge that by removing the Doubleshot penalty that will happen anyway (to varying degrees for each character, but most will want moderate or high amounts).

We, and players, are pretty strongly agreed that we want this to remove the Doubleshot penalty. Therefore, it is right to balance under the assumption that players are going to get it. Yes, we realize that can be frustrating for builds that don't care about the penalty currently, but it's essential and necessary to plan around those builds gaining Doubleshot after this change. Otherwise we basically have to leave the penalty in place.

To maintain a high level of on-hit effects will require getting more Doubleshot. This may be more of a nerf to players who usually melee and switch to Manyshot only 1/6 or less of the time, since they also didn't care about the Doubleshot debuff. Straight up damage during Manyshot isn't drastically changed (but it is changed).

These are some of the costs we considered when deciding to remove the Doubleshot penalty, which players have strongly lobbied for, for some time now. We do it with the knowledge that there are costs for doing so and it's not just developers paying some of those costs. That doesn't mean we shouldn't make the change, nor that we should try to go through this level of detail for every single change (which isn't even thorough, really), because almost inevitably it just makes more players upset and missing a single beat or thought makes us look worse. (I've even been advised that my responding to this thread so much should help cement my position as most hated dev and I should shut up more. ;] May be true - I've often been told I talk too much. No Worries about me actually shutting up... I'm not very good at it.)

Nearly every balance change is like this, including buffs. (As recently as the Tempest/DWS pass, players threatened us "because Rangers were getting buffed too much", so it definitely goes both ways.)

Thanks Varg for better clearing up about the 10k+MS change I don't feel as bad about it now

[arkonas]

Yes, we understand that builds without Doubleshot will now want to get some. This is also with the knowledge that by removing the Doubleshot penalty that will happen anyway (to varying degrees for each character, but most will want moderate or high amounts).

We, and players, are pretty strongly agreed that we want this to remove the Doubleshot penalty. Therefore, it is right to balance under the assumption that players are going to get it. Yes, we realize that can be frustrating for builds that don't care about the penalty currently, but it's essential and necessary to plan around those builds gaining Doubleshot after this change. Otherwise we basically have to leave the penalty in place.

To maintain a high level of on-hit effects will require getting more Doubleshot. This may be more of a nerf to players who usually melee and switch to Manyshot only 1/6 or less of the time, since they also didn't care about the Doubleshot debuff. Straight up damage during Manyshot isn't drastically changed (but it is changed).

These are some of the costs we considered when deciding to remove the Doubleshot penalty, which players have strongly lobbied for, for some time now. We do it with the knowledge that there are costs for doing so and it's not just developers paying some of those costs. That doesn't mean we shouldn't make the change, nor that we should try to go through this level of detail for every single change (which isn't even thorough, really), because almost inevitably it just makes more players upset and missing a single beat or thought makes us look worse. (I've even been advised that my responding to this thread so much should help cement my position as most hated dev and I should shut up more. ;] May be true - I've often been told I talk too much. No Worries about me actually shutting up... I'm not very good at it.)

Nearly every balance change is like this, including buffs. (As recently as the Tempest/DWS pass, players threatened us "because Rangers were getting buffed too much", so it definitely goes both ways.)

i ignore the haters. everyone wants their class worked on or some hate the ones that were worked on. people can't complain about the current passes because it brought people back to all of those classes. some were actually happy to play them. as for posting too much. who cares imo. while i might not agree with some things you did i still think you try to make the game better for most of us. some just are never happy with any changes. we all get so used to the game as it is and think its never going to change. lol maybe they're new to mmos. i would like to know a mmo that doesn't constantly change their abilities over time.

As for the mmr i would hate to see it completely removed from armor. there still are builds out there that really need some of it that don't have evasion. i think it would just kill them even more losing it. i think a reduced rate is the best way. people will now start taking heavier damage from magic. for example heroic elite devils gambit and all. those acid blasts and fireballs really hurt if there is a nasty champion. now if you take away mrr from those who can't normally find it at that level. it takes away whatever defenses they had. reduce it by half or something but i don't see a need to remove it completely but just my thought.

[Kamode_Corebasher]

Our thoughts on Holy Sword:

Holy Sword was very strong when it first appeared. Over time, however, it's relative power has been blunted by additional class passes that offer alternate ways to gain those competence based critical bonuses. As such we've introduced alternate options to the ever present 14 Paladin version of builds. As we continue our class passes we feel that Holy Sword will remain a strong option, but not the only option.

This is why Holy Sword didn't see as much of a change as people might have been expecting. We really hit two weapon fighting builds as they were putting out a lot of DPS for the mitigation provided by Paladin.

Our thought behind removing a missile weapon version was feedback that many of the best missile weapon options were actually better in the 14 Paladin variant. This concerned us, and we addressed it early.

Upon reading feedback from players and re-examining our builds, we are making Holy Sword once again affect missile weapons. No, we don't want 14 Paladin missile weapon builds to be the best missile option. The removal of missile weapons from Holy Sword, however, has more ramifications that most of the other changes in this balance pass as it negates a design goal for a specific kind of build. The other changes have statistical changes, but the design intent for other builds is still intact and the builds play the same. This particular aspect of Holy Sword we feel goes beyond statistical change; removing the missile option actually messes up a design intent for a specific build.

(It also bugs us that the game has long bow as an option for the Paladin's special weapon and then we take away a strong DPS boost for Paladins that go that way.)

If 14 Paladin builds are still vastly more desirable than other ranged builds even though other builds have ways to pursue similar bonuses then we will find a way to address that.

Sev~

Thanks for this initial adjustment and thanks for this broad balance pass. I'm unsure any/all negatives and positives that will result, but your efforts to make this a better game is appreciated!!

[arkonas]

Any time we've tried to do a partial update to shore up a particular tree or class to give them some relief until their full pass we've had negative player feedback on those efforts.

Sev~

that reasoning is because they want their pass now. they don't want to wait ever. most come from being impatient. they want everything done without thinking how much work can go into it. its just the customer thinking only about themselves without thinking reality if this would even be possible to get it all done. so i'll take a partial update for some classes until a real pass. sometimes you also just need to put your foot down and ignore us. we act like children sometimes when we get use to something or don't get something enough. :P

[Astoroth]

My guess is your testing isn't really checking end cap characters burst damage. If you are not comparing it to thf with adrenaline, or smite. You can regularly get 5 digit hits with those. A lot of players use combat interupts and don't rely on auto attacks. If your balancing is based on normal auto attacks, and not burst damage; just wow you're missing the boat. Burst damage is of course why many shot/fury shot as well as holy sword needed a nerf. Its not your average hit that is the issue, but the most likely critical hit special attacks.

Your missing a huge opportunity to fix the combat paradigm in general. Asherons call had weapon speed correlate inversely to weapon damage, so all attack styles were pretty much equal; it was one of the best features of that game. Just because the base weapons have differences in the d&d rules; its no real reason to exacerbate the issue, by multiplying the flaw in epic feats that you've made up. You propose some changes to overwhelming critical, but it just makes the feat 3 times as valuable for people playing certain weapons types than others. Just make it a flat +2 to critical threat, that will make the feat equally valuable to all people who take it, and not 3 times as useful for certain builds over others.

You could easily apply the same flat critical threat bonus to the heroic feats that modify critical threat as well. This would go a long way to balancing the weapon system.

That being said, from what I see your proposed changes single out twf, and probably ruins the game in general. You have all these bloated hp monsters. you cant nerf burst dps and expect the game to still function well, after spending years of trying to resolve pve balance by just giving monsters more hit points.

On two weapon fighting:

There has been a lot of two weapon fighting talk, specifically about the changes to the feats and to Holy Sword and I wanted to talk about our design intent.

First, we smoothed out the Two Weapon Fighting animation and we saw a small bump in DPS. Since those builds are strong we were concerned that it would just exaggerate the difference in styles. We needed to compensate ~6% due to the change.

That said, our live builds using two weapon fighting are testing really high. I'll be honest, it concerns us that there seems to be a large disconnect on what we are seeing in testing and the players perception on two weapon fighting. We are seeing two weapon fighting build posting numbers that are 30-40% higher than builds that use two handed weapons and single weapon fighting. These builds can still generate a lot of AoE through cleaves and cleave replacements. Although the AoE of two weapon fight would be behind two handed fighting, it isn't far enough behind to warrant such a large damage differential.

As an example, we don't want to remove a two weapon fighting option for Paladin, but we also don't think it should be doing 30-40% more damage than other styles either.

I wanted to bring this up because as we read the thread I don't think we've done a good enough job communicating why we are concerned about two weapon fighting builds. As we get ready for Lamannia we will be watching player feedback on their experiences with these changes and hopefully some DPS testing to see if the players are seeing more balance or if we need to look more closely into two weapon fighting.

Sev~

[mikarddo]

I am not sure how you are getting this unless you are completely avoiding doubleshot.

Sev~

As a halfling 12 monk / 6 ranger / 2 paladin using AA tier 5 I can get a maximum of 29% doubleshot. (2% ship, 9% epl, 10% epic feat and 8% quiver). With that and high wisdom I am looking at 25% fewer arrows over the course of the full 2 minute cycle.

I am very much not ignoring doubleshot - I cannot possibly get more with this build - yet I am 26% behind for on-hit and vorpal effects. Is that what you consider slightly or what kind of percentage reduction did you have in mind when you wrote "slightly"?

Calculations.

Now:
MS = 20 sec * 4 arrows/sec = 80
10k = 60 sec * 2.75 arrows/sec = 165
Nothing = 25 sec * 1 arrow/sec + 15 sec * 1.29 arrows/sec = 44
Total 289

Proposed (using Tensors for full bab, which is annoying so kindly change that to char level):
MS = 20 * 2.41 = 48
10k = 60 * 1.89 = 113
Nothing = 40 * 1.29 = 52
Total 213

A reduction from 289 to 213 is a reduction of 26.3% arrows. Kindly elaborate on "slightly".

[BigErkyKid]

Any time we've tried to do a partial update to shore up a particular tree or class to give them some relief until their full pass we've had negative player feedback on those efforts.

Sev~

Throw monks a bone. You are doing it with fighters. Are monks less worthy for whatever reason?

They lack DPS and their abilities are completely outdated. You could rework some of the abilities just by scaling them and reducing the cool down.

[Thar]

Why not just nerf mortal fear or make barbarian capstone only affect main hand? Why nerf the whole twf style that has the worst cleaves?

Swf wolf?

Tree form 4 hit cleaves while shield blocking?

my god enough with the nerf moral fear. if you don't like it don't build one. if you did build one then it's because nothing else was good.

[blerkington]

As a halfling 12 monk / 6 ranger / 2 paladin using AA tier 5 I can get a maximum of 29% doubleshot. (2% ship, 9% epl, 10% epic feat and 8% quiver). With that and high wisdom I am looking at 25% fewer arrows over the course of the full 2 minute cycle.

I am very much not ignoring doubleshot - I cannot possibly get more with this build - yet I am 26% behind for on-hit and vorpal effects. Is that what you consider slightly or what kind of percentage reduction did you have in mind when you wrote "slightly"?

Calculations.

Now:
MS = 20 sec * 4 arrows/sec = 80
10k = 60 sec * 2.75 arrows/sec = 165
Nothing = 25 sec * 1 arrow/sec + 15 sec * 1.29 arrows/sec = 44
Total 289

Proposed (using Tensors for full bab, which is annoying so kindly chance that to char level):
MS = 20 * 2.41 = 48
10k = 60 * 1.89 = 113
Nothing = 40 * 1.29 = 52
Total 213

A reduction from 289 to 213 is a reduction of 26.3% arrows.

Hi,

Good post.

This is a very generous assessment of the reduction too, because it takes into account the boost provided from doubleshot for the entire two minute cycle.

Builds which alternate between melee and manyshot actually face a much higher reduction. It's considerably more than "slightly".

There is no need to pretend that burst and melee/manyshot builds must be nerfed to benefit full-time archers, when a solution could be found for all styles. All it will take is a little more effort.

Thanks.

[redoubt]

(I've even been advised that my responding to this thread so much should help cement my position as most hated dev and I should shut up more. ;] May be true - I've often been told I talk too much. No Worries about me actually shutting up... I'm not very good at it.)

I'm a person who can disagree with someone without hating them.

I've agreed with you on about as many things as I've disagreed. While I may not have liked all your decisions, I've felt you (and the team) have been professional about it.

I'm glad to see you and Sev participating like you are.

[Severlin]

My guess is your testing isn't really checking end cap characters burst damage.

I am not sure why you have that belief. We test end game characters in full end game gear on a variety of EDs both doing the Bruntsmash test and also grinding through our high end test kobolds. When we see videos we sometimes hunt down and make copies of those characters and use them to test DPS as well.

Sev~

[redoubt]

I am not sure how you are getting this unless you are completely avoiding doubleshot.

Sev~

On live, manyshot takes you from 1 arrow to 4. This is a 300% increase.

Yes, manyshot and 10k builds mostly (the ones I know and the ones I have played) ignore doubleshot. With the penalty there was just not enough time without the penalty to invest in doubleshot.

Now when you fast forward to the proposed change, most will push as hard as possible into doubleshot and likely be shooting 2 arrows most of the time. From that baseline, the manyshot and 10k buffs will, at most add a single arrow and sometimes not even that.

[bloodnose13]

nvm

[1Soulless1]

Anybody who has played this game long enough can tell you these are release notes. Turbine made up their minds long ago about these changes. They do these "feedback" threads to soften the blow for when it goes live. They do not listen to feedback about things until long after they go live, and then usually ignore anything constructive.

Pretty much this, 48 pages atm and very little to nothing will change. Lama will come up, people will test for new 'features' and keep quiet about them. This Mess will go live and if anything benefits the players the game servers will be ripped down for a hotfix. If it doesn't it will be put on the 'known issue list' and fixed soon™.


Rinse lather repeat, all is good at turbine HQ moving right along, btw try the kool-aid I hear its fantastic

[patang01]

Yes, we understand that builds without Doubleshot will now want to get some. This is also with the knowledge that by removing the Doubleshot penalty that will happen anyway (to varying degrees for each character, but most will want moderate or high amounts).

We, and players, are pretty strongly agreed that we want this to remove the Doubleshot penalty. Therefore, it is right to balance under the assumption that players are going to get it. Yes, we realize that can be frustrating for builds that don't care about the penalty currently, but it's essential and necessary to plan around those builds gaining Doubleshot after this change. Otherwise we basically have to leave the penalty in place.

To maintain a high level of on-hit effects will require getting more Doubleshot. This may be more of a nerf to players who usually melee and switch to Manyshot only 1/6 or less of the time, since they also didn't care about the Doubleshot debuff. Straight up damage during Manyshot isn't drastically changed (but it is changed).

These are some of the costs we considered when deciding to remove the Doubleshot penalty, which players have strongly lobbied for, for some time now. We do it with the knowledge that there are costs for doing so and it's not just developers paying some of those costs. That doesn't mean we shouldn't make the change, nor that we should try to go through this level of detail for every single change (which isn't even thorough, really), because almost inevitably it just makes more players upset and missing a single beat or thought makes us look worse. (I've even been advised that my responding to this thread so much should help cement my position as most hated dev and I should shut up more. ;] May be true - I've often been told I talk too much. No Worries about me actually shutting up... I'm not very good at it.)

Nearly every balance change is like this, including buffs. (As recently as the Tempest/DWS pass, players threatened us "because Rangers were getting buffed too much", so it definitely goes both ways.)

I hope you realize that this is a triple nerf to the newly changed Tempest. First, changing crit range and melee power. Second, lower damage mitigation. And for builds that try to use divine grace for higher saves to adjust for the lower PRR and MRR (prior to change, now even lower) a nerf. And finally a nerf to manyshot that effects Tempest the most since it won't have much resources to invest in ranged and rely on the burst for additional DPS.

[Severlin]

I am very much not ignoring doubleshot - I cannot possibly get more with this build - yet I am 26% behind for on-hit and vorpal effects. Is that what you consider slightly or what kind of percentage reduction did you have in mind when you wrote "slightly"?

Calculations.

Now:
MS = 20 sec * 4 arrows/sec = 80
10k = 60 sec * 2.75 arrows/sec = 165
Nothing = 25 sec * 1 arrow/sec + 15 sec * 1.29 arrows/sec = 44
Total 289

Proposed (using Tensors for full bab, which is annoying so kindly change that to char level):
MS = 20 * 2.41 = 48
10k = 60 * 1.89 = 113
Nothing = 40 * 1.29 = 52
Total 213

A reduction from 289 to 213 is a reduction of 26.3% arrows. Kindly elaborate on "slightly".

Exactly. You'll see a small decrease in number of attacks (which at 26% is pretty much spot on where we want to be), and the large boosts in Ranged Power to compensate. The strategy of fishing for vorpals (similar to fishing for saving throw rolls of 1 to exaggerate the effectiveness of CC) will be slightly less effective while DPS will be close to live.

Sev~

[Caprice]

ok i still dont understand this and i dont see answer anywhere:

Divine Grace (Paladin)
Divine Grace now provides a maximum bonus equal to 2 + (Paladin level x 3).

does this mean that paladin will get that much save bonus just for levels, in effect circumventing charisma? if it is like that its insanely bad idea, i understand that there has to be a change to that feat, but it should be sometihng that would put a hard cap on charisma to saves based on number of paladin levels in general value of levels, a no charisma splash of 14 paladin will be getting 14 levels worth of levels to saves???

You still should need Charisma. The maximum bonus will be 2 + (Paladin level x 3). The actual bonus still will be determined by your CHA bonus. So a Sorceror 18/Paladin 2 with CHA 50 will drop to +8 from Divine Grace, because that is all that their 2 Paladin levels afford them. A pure Paladin 20 with CHA 50 will get all +20 from Divine Grace because 20 levels of Paladin gives a maximum of +61. However a pure Paladin with CHA 20 will only get +5, because that is all their CHA bonus grants.

[BigErkyKid]

I am not sure why you have that belief. We test end game characters in full end game gear on a variety of EDs both doing the Bruntsmash test and also grinding through our high end test kobolds. When we see videos we sometimes hunt down and make copies of those characters and use them to test DPS as well.

Sev~

We believe that because you passed some updates that presumably had been tested saying it was balanced and now you say it is not. So it is clear you didn't make the right tests, with the right characters or you made some other mistake. That's why there is a lot of skepticism regarding you "internal data".

Sorry if it sounds harsh but I prefer saying directly what I think. Can you tell us exactly what classes do you think would catch up with the proposed changes? Also, had you seriously not taken into account that swash weapons were not going to be equal anymore after the IC changes?