The Balance Change post

[Dalnarac]

On two weapon fighting:

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.

Sev~

I have a two weapon fighting pally/rogue 18/2 Dwarf with the Constitution for damage on war hammers. I just got him to lvl 28. He is pretty fun to play currently. I also have a two weapon fighting ranger/rogue 18/2 Drow who has been lvl 28 for a while. Scimatars with dex damage. My ranger does noticeable more damage than my pally. Not insanely higher but 20 or 30 more damage per hit. They both equip almost the same gear. But being a tempest ranger with Many Cuts and Dance of Death, I can bring up that damage even more. It is a nice increase but not insane either. My pally gets the cleaves of course which are fun.

I want to say that I don't understand why you would take away the benefit of holy sword to my pally if my ranger, who does not have holy sword, does more damage already. But then on top of that, all my two weapon feats will not increase my damage any more? I don't see myself even remotely as a min/max type player but play character that sound interesting and fun to me. And now my light armor characters are going to take more damage during the fight which they will not kill as quick as they use to?

My 28 dwarven axe and shield dwarf pally is a blast to play. Full plate and he is currently lvl 9 on his 3rd life. Not once have a played him and thought he should have the dps of my duel wielders. Since holy sword became useful, I haven't complained about his dps at all. It might take him a bit longer to kill but he will kill them without having to run away and heal. He is a lot more group worthy and does quite well at keeping aggro off squishy casters. I also have a blade master pally carrying a great sword. Fun and awesome dps but the whole robot thing isn't really for me so he has been hanging at lvl 20 for a long time.

My first character was a lvl 20 fighter many years ago. He was ok to level but his lack of healing made him not much fun. He was full plate and sword and board. In fact, that character is my 18/2 ranger/rogue now. I know fighters don't have and shouldn't have a lay on hands ability but maybe something along the lines of an enhancement or feat that makes healing potions heal for 300%? That would get me interested in a fighter again. But killing two weapon fighting is not going to make me interested in playing anything.

Without pvp I have to ask what this big deal is about balance? I am well aware casters do a ton of damage more than melee. But that's the great thing about it. Variety. If all characters types equaled the same damage/survivability then why would I create a different character ever?

[Runerock]

I dislike the armor changes and the downgrading of named weapons saddens me. I lave melee and you are making it more and more difficult to effectively splash melee into builds as I try to go for completionist.

[Mirta]

Does lowering the amount of crits and making 9000hp mobs take longer to saw down like trees enhance the game experience?

I kinda liked DDO how it's been for most of the last 5 years and don't want slower paced combat and less crits; I especially don't want this just because someone came in an made some clunky and not very well thought out changes.

Agreed. Taking longer to mow down mobs isn't adding much value to the game. Slow paced content has never been my favorite. I always loved to zerg through stuff, but they pointlessly slow us down and make the grind worse.

1. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in order to do a 4th attack you have to be stationary, i.e. not moving (and thus getting harder hits in your Light armor, and thus spending more time on healing, and thus ending up doing less DPS)
2. Where are you doing tests? Damage vs those kobolds on Lam? Please be real, and do DPS tests elsewhere since you need to keep yourself alive too. For example, go to EH DoJ with your pure Tempest ranger and tell me your DPS result (and compare the DPS of Paladin in heavy armor and your squishy Tempest in Light armor, also there are lag spikes, that's why I recommend DoJ for real DPS tests, by DPS I mean average damage per second, which means the time spent in your soul stone should be included too).

I don't know that I ever stand still long enough to get all the attacks. Good point. And as for testing in real world situations? Yes, please. Testing on kobolds under perfect conditions is very unrealistic.

[patang01]

I dont really understand any of it personally... i have a decent geared caster dps (well over caps before changes) warlock who is using the old one and chain as my main attacks with soul eater 5 and all the eldritch boosts from the other trees. My average single hit damage is about 345 total damage (because extra elemental damages do not work with current attacks) highest crit i have seen so far is 700. My barbarian who is only lvl 25 and is well under-geared average hit is 400 and with abilities and trees highest crit so far has been 4000 plus when i have my destiny proc going i am doing that 4000 damage every few hits for 30 seconds (which is as long as most boss fights outside of raids). My Fighter twf is similar not as high crit hits usually between 600 and 700 crits and average damage per hit is 250. Artificer at lvl 20 is doing roughly the same damage .. plus spells do alot more and increase damage of my lighting spells and weapons. I know before i TRed my rouge it was doing that much easily in sneak attack damage sometimes more depending on build and gear at the time.

So i really dont get why they where nerfed at all. The only problem with warlocks as they where is that sorcs and wizards do not have a basic attack like eldritch that doesn't cost SP. I have always been against dps nerfs over properly balancing other classes ... if one class is weaker then boost it dont nerf all the others. This is why MMOs can never effectively balance their games ... dont nerf just increase the challenge in new content and levels and slightly boost classes to bring them closer into balance.

And not to mention less diversity in spells, less opportunity to specialize in specific spells and overall less spike damage. My Shiradi savant was putting out reliable 3-5k easy where as most of the time I run backwards firing slowly against most mobs.

The main difference is resource use, it's definitely not a DPS leader.

[Talon_Dragonsbane]

Will the PRR/MRR changes affect the below shield ability?

Characters who are proficient with shields can now use larger shields for defense against magical attacks that would normally require a Reflex Saving Throw. Instead of using your Reflex Saving Throw to mitigate the damage, you can deflect the damage off of your shield. Physical and Magical Resistance Rating multipliers against magical attacks that normally allow a Reflex Saving Throw are as follows: ? Buckler: No additional mitigation
? Light Shield: No additional Mitigation
? Heavy Shield: 2.0
? Tower Shield: 2.0

I conclude that this means that shield users in heavy armor loses 24PRR and 60MRR against these magical attacks. Was this intended?

[EllisDee37]

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.

It might go a long way toward bridging the gap if you guys would post some testing videos on youtube (or wherever) so we (the players) could identify where the disconnect is.

[HatsuharuZ]

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~

Are you referring to that time when Nature's Warrior gained some buffs to it's core abilities and capstone? I think some of the negative feedback might have been due to the fact that the changes did not address player concerns regarding animal form-using druids.

[EllisDee37]

~ The changes to Improved Critical do mess up the balance for Assassins between kukri and daggers, and for Swashbucklers who can take enhancements to normalize weapon types. We are going to implement additional changes so that characters who have the Improved Critical feat will gain extra threat range for under performing weapons to maintain the weapon balance you have live using these builds.

Also staff builds...

~ We have been reading with interest the concerns with named weapons that have increased threat ranges built in and how they interact with Improved Critical. This interaction is part of the design, as these threat ranges provided too much benefit previously. The fact that some of these weapons with lower level requirements were better than end game weapons highlights the problem fairly well.

...but it sounds like you want to heavily nerf staff builds, so, good job?

[crazycaren]

So with pally AAs and monkcher nerfs everyone has to use repeating heavy cross bows now? Awesome, just gimme a sec while I turn off my combat sounds.

[Ovrad]

No. We will be compensating monks when we have a chance to go through the handwrap tech.

Sev~

Any rough estimate of when will that be?

It seems that almost every update makes monks a little more "under-performing". Granted the nerf to armors does help a bit close the gap, but monk dodge (and DPS) is still incredibly weaker.

[elvesunited]

Once of the most frustrating things in DDO is to go through a quest doing everything right, and then near the end get whacked by some enemy spellcaster who one shots you with a maximized damage spell. It got even worse in some of the raids. I really thought that MRR in armor was an attempt to widen the field. To provide something to help keep low hp builds without evasion viable. But I guess I was wrong for what was giveth can be taken away. I just don't get it. This nerfs the weaker builds harder than it does the more powerful ones.

Anyway this is how my stable of toons is looking after the balance pass: ( if my math is correct )

Purple Dragon Knight 18th Warlock / 1st fighter / 1st barbarian ( Con maxed, heavy armor, tower shield enlightened spirit Tank )
-30 MRR -13 PRR reduction in damage from Eldritch Burst(-17%), Spirit Blast(-17%), Consume(-17%), Stricken(-17%), Aura(-14%)
Verdict: Well the reduced damage was expected. The PPR and MMR were not but as those numbers are already high he can take it.
================================================== =======
Drow 18th Artificer / 2nd Monk ( Int maxed Evasion Artificer battle engineer )
-10 MRR -3 PRR
Verdict: Probably the least hurt. Helps that Needle increases the critical multiplier instead of range.
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Sun Elf 17th wizard / 2nd favored / 1st cleric ( int maxed non-undead harper evocation archmage armored mage )
-30 MRR -23 PRR
Verdict: That hurt! My squishy wiz just got a lot more squishier and lot less viable. Have to wonder if the heavy armor is even worth it anymore. This I believe is the closest I am to a build kill.
================================================== =======
Half-Elf 18th Paladin / 2nd Fighter ( str maxed sword and shield / half-elf / Paladin )
-30 MRR -12 PRR -1 critical range Oathblade
Verdict: Reliance on Oathblade shows just how powerful crit ranges are. Glad to hear that the outright kill of the archer paladin build was reversed.
================================================== =======
Elf 11th Ranger / 6th monk / 3rd Favored ( Dex Maxed Monkcher free feat monger )
Manyshot reduced from +300% doubleshot for 20 seconds to +95 Ranged Power / +95% Doubleshot for 20 seconds
Thousand star reduced from roughly +78% doubleshot for 30 seconds to +34 Ranged power/+33% Doubleshot for 30 seconds
Arcane archer changes coming, looks like slay arrow will be nerfed but others may gain.
-1 Critical range pinion. Likely changes to Fury of the Wild.
Verdict: Took the biggest hits of all but probably still viable. Play testing will tell.
================================================== =========
Half-elf 1st rogue / 4th fighter / 15th druid ( Str maxed stalwart defender beast warrior harper wolf )
-30 MRR -17 PRR -1 Critical Range(?)
Verdict: Far too feat starved to take advantage of new fighter feats. As he uses critical hits to generate a constant stream of temp sp this does hurt the puppy.
================================================== ==============
Drow 20th bard ( Char maxed SWashbuckler / Spellsinger using Throwing axe )
-10 MRR -2 PRR -2 points of critical range - OUCH!
Verdict: Once again punished for going in an unusual direction. Can't it be changed so improved critical if swashbuckling weapon adds +3 Critical range regardless of weapon?
================================================== ================
Sun Elf 20th level favored soul ( Wis maxed angel of vengeance / warpriest )
-20 MRR -8 PRR
Verdict: not that badly hurt though will miss the MRR.

[mons]

Will there be an Artificer pass/new enhancement tree/improvements to the class specifically any time soon™. Theres been alot of melee love and rogue love and even some ranges love but nothing Artificer exclusive.

[losian2]

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".

...

No dev team anywhere will ever release an update every in any game that will be considered by players to be resoundingly and decidedly "balanced" across the boards. Balance is all but a four letter word, it's a near unattainable idea, because it varies so much for each player and dev.

Be constructive. Ask for some of the builds/etc. used, don't just be like "yeah right lol your internel tests are worthless." Be constructive, people. Just naysaying and bickering doesn't help improve anything.

[RapkintheRanger]

~ Since Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars have a reduced rate of fire, fishing for Mortal Fear and similar procs will be slightly less effective. We understand this and designed with this in mind.

~ With the bug in certain Fury of the Wild enhancements, Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars can be used to get back uses of Adrenaline. With the new reduced rate of fire of Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars, utilizing this bug will be slightly less effective. We understand and have designed around this. We want to either legitimize this build by changing the wording on Fury Eternal so it officially supports ranged attacks or fix the bug, and we are looking forward to feedback on this from Lamannia.


~ Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars still provide a massive burst of damage; we really don't think these builds will lose their burst feel when these abilities provide an additional 200-300% damage increase depending on gearing.

***


~ Do we want to legitimize Fury Eternal's gain of Adrenaline while using missile weapons, or do we want to fix that bug?

Sev~

Once upon a time I was a pure ranger and i built for doubleshot. People hated monkchers becasue and so a penalty was designed and placed on many shot making rangers even less effective. As a result i had to switch to playing a monkcher to try and make up for it as 10K mitigates against the nerf to rangers.

Since ranged classes were not very effective in epic content, i switched to fury of the wild to get some burst DPS and at least be useful some times. I am not happy to see burst DPS (the only good thing about a ranger) potentially nerfed.

And i resent being told that Eternal Fury is a bug. Previously we were told it was WAI. It has been a part of the game for years. And i am perplexed that both my ranger and my monkcher will potentially get nerfed again by removing burst DPS even further... (my other character is a warlock who looks in for nerfing as well)

If you don't like ranged classes, just take the bows out of the game and be done with it.

I need DPS to get through the stupid amount of HP that surrounds me. I don't enjoy spending 10 min plucking off 900 arrows to whittle down some mob.....

[Unsmitten]

Sev or Varg, could you explain how doubleshot works on repeaters? My understanding was that each volley(3 bolts) could get 1 extra bolt(4 total) Is that correct?


Looking for a response on how it works now, and how it will work after the balance.





On a side note, Shadowdancer is in dire need of attention, it should have been looked at with the rogue update...

[PermaBanned]

~ The changes to Improved Critical do mess up the balance for Assassins between kukri and daggers, and for Swashbucklers who can take enhancements to normalize weapon types. We are going to implement additional changes so that characters who have the Improved Critical feat will gain extra threat range for under performing weapons to maintain the weapon balance you have live using these builds.

Uh-huh. When? Is this a reaction to feedback, or part of the initial plan? If the latter, why not include them in the "balance" patch?

~ With the bug in certain Fury of the Wild enhancements, Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars can be used to get back uses of Adrenaline. With the new reduced rate of fire of Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars, utilizing this bug will be slightly less effective. We understand and have designed around this. We want to either legitimize this build by changing the wording on Fury Eternal so it officially supports ranged attacks or fix the bug, and we are looking forward to feedback on this from Lamannia.

~ Do we want to legitimize Fury Eternal's gain of Adrenaline while using missile weapons, or do we want to fix that bug?

Are you serious? This "bug" has been around since MotU launched, and now you're thinking of finally getting around to fixing it? No, just change the text - or don't. It's not like Fury/Archer functionality is a secret. How about instead you fix the Shiradi stuff to be as interesting for Ranged builds as it is for casters? Oh, nvm that ship just sailed since opportunities to proc things is a key player in Rainbow/Double Rainbow and you're reducing those {opportunities for Ranged characters to proc things} anyway. Oh well, the Missle Spammer destiny it shall remain.

~ It's not that we mind two weapon fighting Paladins doing decent DPS, or two weapon barbarians doing decent DPS, but these builds should not be outperforming builds based on other styles by 40% or higher.

They should be doing DPS balanced by their survivability - a relationship all y'all have (I can only assume) intentionally ignored in all your designs & passes thus far. I'd agree though that if a TWF pally is doing 40% more DPS than a THF pally then something is probably off - is this the 40% comparison you're making?

~ We will be watching Vanguard Paladin builds to make sure they are still fun and competitive after the changes.

Given that Large & Tower shields are retaining their MRR advantage (doubling vs Reflex save based magical damage sources) Vangaurd survivability just got better compared to other non-shield using characters. Too bad "nobody" will care about that and most of the feedback you get will be about how much more slowly they can kill a kobold/Bruntsmash/training dummy.

~ We think there has been a lot of good discussion in particular on MRR, armor, and whether these changes will put us back into a state where everyone feel compelled to take Evasion. We have read suggestions that some smaller amount of MRR might be added back to armors and we've been looking at that option. I just wanted to point out the reductions do not put us back to pre Armor Up balance. The PRR formula is more generous, and the PRR offered by armor is still higher. Heavy armor mitigates a lot more damage than before Armor Up. In addition, there are many sources of MRR, including gear, that simply did not exist before, including enhancements that only work with medium or heavy armors. Armored characters are still in much better shape than in the past, which is why we'd like to see this on Lamannia.

Yes, Heavy & Medium will still provide a bit more PRR than Light armor - but will that bit be enough to be a value comparison vs the high Dodge (& likely Evasion)? I don't think Lama will be up long enough before this goes live to answer that. Even without testing, looking at armor contributions is now discouraging. A lvl 28 Rogue without Tensor's gets 6 PRR from Light Armor (9 w/Tensor's) while a lvl 28 {anyone with proficiency} gets 24 (28 w/Tensor's) PRR from Heavy Armor. That 22 point difference may be of consequence to a first lifer with no Sheltering gear, but a lot of folks with PRR PLs and Sheltering gear are likely going to consider a high Dodge rating (and likely Evasion too) as superior to 22 PRR.

~ We have been reading with interest the concerns with named weapons that have increased threat ranges built in and how they interact with Improved Critical. This interaction is part of the design, as these threat ranges provided too much benefit previously. The fact that some of these weapons with lower level requirements were better than end game weapons highlights the problem fairly well.

Bull spit. "Provided too much benefit previously..." my eye, some of those have been in the game for 3,4,7 or more years. I remember during the Pally pass you didn't know how IC worked in DDO (doubling all mods) vs how it works in PnP (doubling just the weapon's Crit range - how it should be working in DDO), but I don't for a minute believe every loot Dev that designed a named weapon with a special Crit range was equally... uninformed. It wasn't IC that made those lower level weapons so good, it was the combination of how Destiny abilities and the revamped class's bonuses interacted with eachother that did that. IC + SoS, Assassin's Blade and the rest have been working as designed and intended for (in some cases many) years, and you're directly nerfing those weapon's design intentions because of class revamps - any other spin you put on it just polishing a turd.

~ Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars still provide a massive burst of damage; we really don't think these builds will lose their burst feel when these abilities provide an additional 200-300% damage increase depending on gearing.

Is the reduced contribution on IC part of that 200-300%, or after the IC nerf will that percentage drop some? And considering how Manyshot + Slayer Arrow + Fury interacted, I'm guessing this 200-300% "increase" is still a significant decrease from what's available on live now.

***

Really, a general balance pass has been needed; and yes that general balance pass required a few nerfs here & there as well as bug fixes (ie getting BaB contribution to PRR w/o proficiency). But what you've got going here is the same ol' same ol' Turbine habit of using a chainsaw where a scalpel would've been more appropriate. I'm not part of the supposed mass exodus some forumites these changes will cause, but these kinds of things are why 2ish years ago I had no interest in a different game where as now I'm just waiting for one - and really, a lot of the last two years changes (and several on the forseeable horizon) are only making it easier for some other game to take the title of "better than DDO." What a shame...

[Retrodark]

I searched through the entire thread and saw many people ask about broken wolves and trees and also how imp crit blunt will affect them, based on new mechanics. I didn't see a single response on these matters from any devs. I think if you are literally going to break many builds by making these "balancing" changes, you should really consider fixing those that are not WAI balance issues first. Because breaking legit builds for what you consider "balancing" is really not fair. These unbalanced builds have gone unscathed for over a year now.

[nibel]

Sev or Varg, could you explain how doubleshot works on repeaters? My understanding was that each volley(3 bolts) could get 1 extra bolt(4 total) Is that correct?

Looking for a response on how it works now, and how it will work after the balance.

Each individual bolt have a chance to doubleshot. Currently, it uses your full doubleshot value for each bolt, and after the update it will be fixed to work as intended, and thus each bolt will use only one third of your doubleshot value. In general, you can consider that your doubleshot value is per volley, but it will be still possible to make a six-shot volley using a repeater.

[Thar]

• The crit range changes affect everyone. Though all Paly14 TWF'ers lose more on the offhand holy sword change.
• The melee power is in theory mostly accounted for by an animation speedup for TWF.
  
• Tempest with no ranged investment SHOULDN'T be as good a doubleshot/ranged focus character at many shot. Just because it mostly was before is not a justified reason to keep things that way. Manyshot will still be an excellent means for any normally melee character to get a good burst of damage done at range in a short amount of time.

-Gratch <- plays a tempest.

crit change impact twf characters twice as much as other styles.

animation speedup is unseen at this point. will it need to be stationary or will it turn to twitch skills to get better results from attacks 1-3. is the hitbox any better? and is 6% really worth taking away?

why shouldn't a 20 RANGER be good with a bow too just because they primarily focus in melee? Drizzit is just as dangerous with a bow as scimitar? yes an over hyped fantasy example but still applicable.

[justagame]

A number of these changes, especially the armor one, once again feel like you took the whole bottle of aspirin, when a single pill would have done the trick.

That's what's frustrating. Not that there are adjustments from time to time; it's that instead of minor adjustments, they feel like a real whallop to some builds, not to mention quite a few named weapons.

I wouldn't base any design decisions on my personal preferences. I'm admittedly not your target audience anymore. RL circumstances have left me with less and less playing time, and I've been having a hard time finding time to log on lately. However, the prospect of now having to use that limited time to redo my 2 main characters just makes it even less likely that I'll make the effort. I also know that whatever I change to, by the time I log enough playing hours to get there, THAT will likely be nerfed as well. And all too often, you guys don't nerf things from "great" to "almost as great". They get nerfed from "great" right to subpar.