U38 Balance Changes

[Ellihor]

This "glass cannon" is the second time in this thread.
Care to elaborate which (melee) class has better defences ? 200 + prr, 45+ Dodge, 25% Incorp, improved evasion, great mobility, okay hp, ac and saves. Not to mention crowd control options and DCs for it.

There's nothing "glass cannon"y about the monks I see or play with ingame.

You know, people here come to say the Devs don't undestand the game, but forumites don't either. People saying can't survive on monks, people thinking LD is not better than other EDs out of blitz, people wanting to nerf DC caster because of killcount (omg now people saying non-monk melees are useless near casters), people saying saying things so obviously false like shintaos being dominated by paladins... well I hope DEVs select what kind of player they take posts seriously.

[glmfw1]

• Fatesinger :
  
  • Current: +4 MP per core
  • New: +10 MP per core
  
  
• Shadowdancer :
  
  • Current: +4 MP per core
  • New: +10 MP per core
  
  
• Divine Crusader :
  
  • Current: +2 MP per core
  • New: +3 MP per core
  
  
• Unyielding Sentinel :
  
  • Current: +4 MP per core
  • New: +5 MP per core

Seriously? What do you guys have against Clerics, that the Divine Crusader tree doesn't grant as many spell points as the other Divine Trees and they don't get to be as good at base combat as rogues and bards? I get that an increase of +1 MP is better than no increase at all, but the DDO Cleric lags way behind its PnP origins far more than other classes already. In PnP, Clerics were reasonable with Spells AND in Combat AND had undead powers and healing. In DDO you have to choose between in order to be good at one (far more limiting on the classes base abilities than other classes' choices). Now the "Cleric" destiny gets a +1 boost as opposed to a +6 boost, keeping them mediocre at best in combat if you want to be able to use the undead/healing abilities well.

[Joinaxx]

Henshin Mystic vs Shintao

- I understand that you're trying to decrease unarmed twf dps because they're surely overperforming.
- I also understand that you're trying to discourage builds taking advantage of the low-lying fruit in HM cores
- But why did you nerf HM capstone melee power and didn't touch the MP from core 5 and core 6 shintao?
- You already said that pure HM 20 monk is just #7 in your dps tests. This nerf will just nuke them from orbit.
- suggestion: revise the cores to 3/3/3/3/3/25. add another 20 mp to a tier 5 HM enhancement

Henshin Mystic vs other THF builds

- Yes, both can get glancing blows and maybe better when fighting against a group of mobs
- But the thing is quarterstaff base damage and crit profile is way way less than maul's or greataxe's
- This means that quarterstaff glancing blows is garbage
- The only advantage quarterstaff has over mauls and greataxe is the 15% attack speed (which is ridiculously placed in the HM capstone)
- suggestion: give HM tree the 15% attack speed enhancement at tier 1 just like TA
- suggestion: improve quarterstaff base damage or crit profile (not sure what number will be "balanced" with other THF weapons, maybe give them spear crit profile 20/x3?)
- suggestion: give quarterstaff a unique advantage if you're reluctant to change the base damage/crit. Maybe give quarterstaff knockdown on vorpal? Guardbreaking (Flow, cove buckler) is also a good idea and I think is thematically sound

[SerPounce]

This looks like one of those builds you strive for and exist more in the "1%" category. This set up I would strongly believe isn't what your typical monk builds are currently running around with.

Yeah sure, it's a top tier build. I certainly didn't meant to imply that was your standard monk. The post I responded to said it was impossible to get over 200 PRR on a monk. That shows you can, as well as having a lot of other impressive stats.

Monks are the strongest melees in legendary reaper and it's not very close. Best DPS, best CC, best survivability (Of DPS builds, not including tanks). That's the consensus among the top players, and has been confirmed by the devs.

I LOVE monk builds so this isn't anything personal for me, and I'm not a balance fanatic (you can't be and love this game), but it's gotten to the point where an adjustment was needed and this is the first step. Hopefully more enhancement and destiny changes are coming.

[Jasparion]

To be fair, this is not remotely near what most people can get, and it's far easier to get most of this in other builds. Taking a fully maxed out outlier and holding it up as the typical stats for a specific class is not really helpful.

To be fair you can get 80% to 90% of the way there with a solid amount of work. This would mean doing really well in R5 or R6 rather than R7 or R8.

Same can be said of pretty much any "best in slot" build.

[Jasparion]

Yeah sure, it's a top tier build. I certainly didn't meant to imply that was your standard monk. The post I responded to said it was impossible to get over 200 PRR on a monk. That shows you can, as well as having a lot of other impressive stats.

Monks are the strongest melees in legendary reaper and it's not very close. Best DPS, best CC, best survivability (Of DPS builds, not including tanks). That's the consensus among the top players, and has been confirmed by the devs.

I LOVE monk builds so this isn't anything personal for me, and I'm not a balance fanatic (you can't be and love this game), but it's gotten to the point where an adjustment was needed and this is the first step. Hopefully more enhancement and destiny changes are coming.

Which is the key. How long after Monks are brought back down to earth will melees get some boosts to make them more competitive in high reaper without having to be completely reliant on CC/healers/ranged/etc.

[Mindos]

I'd be very interested to know more details of the testing process. Details of builds, gear and test circumstances. For example, do you test melee dps against single targets and groups? If so, how do you balance differences between builds there?

While revealing your methods might lead to argument and embarrassment in the short run

Short run? They would be laughed out of the building. I do not KNOW FOR SURE, but I strongly suspect that testing includes various tiers of training dummies. From the ship dummy, to the Kobold dummy, to the Advanced Kobold dummy(with moar hitpoints), etc.

I would also hazard a guess that if they wanted to test multple mobs, they would spawn more then one dummy, and stand next to it. I also strongly believe that they simply watch the numbers scroll by, i.e., they have no organized method of collecting info and just "eyeball" it.

Now that all being said, it's just my opinion, man. I could be very wrong. In fact, I would LOVE to be proven wrong. But I think its just auto-attack and training dummies by any other name...

[Dream_Marauder]

The wraps change to twf die boost is only natural and should have come that way to start honestly. Really, it never should have made it off lama, it was obvious to everyone.

The henshin mp reduction is only natural and should have come that way to start honestly. I'm not saying staff is too strong, but this much melee power this easy is too much. They need to buff staves in another way, such as giving the weapon line damage boosts closer to kensei levels, giving boosts to the clickies, etc.

I think you could have left the heshin 18 core and capstone at 10/25, it's the dipping that's the major issue after all. Is there going to be a corresponding reduction in the shintao 18 core and capstone? or just don't change the henshin 18/cap.

This is true --- the mp from heshin is so easy to splash for other melee builds as is. There are certainly some builds that can use some of that MP in their own trees, but fixing staffs in other ways would be good. What I think might be a fun idea is to give Henshin something akin to AA imbues, but apply to staves. It could scale with the amount of ki that you currently have for damaging imbues (at least the Henshin force / fire damage), and maybe have some CC imbues as well. This would still be a useful splash investment for staff builds, but wouldn't be the ridiculously high 20 mp for a 6 point investment with any character, or even 10 mp for 1 point.

[Thar]

Which classes have better defenses? Paladins. Fighters. There are at least 5 ways that non-monks can get 25% incorp - Pale Masters can hit 35, and Exalted Angel ED can hit 50

Care to elaborate how you get 200+ PRR on a monk? Preferably at a usable level (sure, there are epic feats like Epic Damage Reduction, Scion of the Plane of Earth that a monk (and everyone else) can get at lvl 27+ - not very useful for farming heroic, iconic, epic, or racial past lives).

OK HP? I see pure Paladins, Fighters, and Barbs running around with 3k + HP. Even with a 6 augment Opposition bonus from LGS, I barely hit 1/2 of that.

and pally/fights hit for 1/10th the dps. hp don't do any good when you take 10x as long to kill something that hits you for 400 a shot.

[Tilomere]

Here you go:

Stats of someone who could spend all their time farming gear and reaper points at an exploited power level and at cap where it is easier because they previously exploited saga experience for past lives doesn't count.

[FuryFlash]

In addition, the process of this balance check helped us identify a bug where characters who were Two Weapon Fighting (as well as those using Handwraps) were receiving Doublestrikes, Offhand Attacks, and Offhand Doublestrikes at a far lower rate than intended while moving. We've now fixed that internally. For comparison, most fighting styles deal similar damage numbers while moving vs. standing still; TWF on Live deals about 40% less damage while moving because of this bug. With Update 38, Two Weapon Fighting damage will be roughly the same when standing or moving, as it is for other styles.

THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

...

Also, what do you mean, "helped us identify a bug"?! Did you not previously know of this, despite this and TWF's horrific mobile attack range being one of the main reasons (at least for me, I assume for others too since it's a very well-known problem) to not play one? This fighting style still to this day (it has been like this since I started playing) essentially cannot hit a moving enemy while the player is also moving, unless the player is quite literally knocking against the collision bounds of the monster.

In any case, this alone is an *awesome* change.

[Qhualor]

Short run? They would be laughed out of the building. I do not KNOW FOR SURE, but I strongly suspect that testing includes various tiers of training dummies. From the ship dummy, to the Kobold dummy, to the Advanced Kobold dummy(with moar hitpoints), etc.

I would also hazard a guess that if they wanted to test multple mobs, they would spawn more then one dummy, and stand next to it. I also strongly believe that they simply watch the numbers scroll by, i.e., they have no organized method of collecting info and just "eyeball" it.

Now that all being said, it's just my opinion, man. I could be very wrong. In fact, I would LOVE to be proven wrong. But I think its just auto-attack and training dummies by any other name...

you have it backwards. there have been numerous posts by players that have used the kobold Lama dummy and the ship buff dummy as proof of dps tests. in combat tests have been called Bruntsmash. I've been in plenty of discussions over the years with players who use these kinds of tests and translate them into everyday questing where mobs can dispel buffs, where you cant always keeps buffs going 100% of the time, where you cant calculate when you will crit, gear layout and feat and enhancement choices will always be argumentatively subjective, when player meta figures into it, when group play can alter the numbers, etc. most times these players are dismissive of all that because their calculator says their builds can put up those numbers consistently.

dummy dps testing is nothing more than getting a ballpark idea of what a build can do.

[Kylstrem]

Welp, there went my plan to go to Henshin Monk after they screw up the trees.

Probably long due to find a new game after 12 years here.

[Ladislaio]

This, more than anything else, highlights the disconnect between your "DPS numbers" and actual in game reality. I play in one of the top guilds on Khyber, I am certainly not one of the top players, but I do get to run in a lot of content with my fellow guildies and other top notch guilds. NO ONE PLAYS A HENSHIN MYSTIC QUARTERSTAFF BUILD. There is no way that a melee build that is substantially better than all other non-monk 2HF builds would have no presence on the server. Especially given the cool animations and flavor of a stick build. Something is wrong with how you do your analysis.
Also, the only change to monks in the last year has been the new handwraps. Pure monks weren't dominant amongst melees, if they performed "in game" like you suggest by your numbers, they would have already been the main melee class on the servers. They were not.

Poppytop, from Khyber also. The reason you didn't see people on endgame monks were thus:
1) Warlock
2) Warlock
3) racial TR's
4) The DPS wasn't enough to make up for their tendency to be dead most of the time. Monks, esp qstaff monks, are SQUISHY.
5) Some people are not the best at understanding how numbers work, and continue to try to do dps in setups that are far sub-optimal.
6) Thrower builds
7) Wizard/Warlock/Sorc/Cleric insta-kills

I run a lot in the endgame. Not mentioning names, I'll just list a few melee high-kill count builds that I regularly saw on our server.
18 ftr / 1 (fvs/clr) / 1(monk/wlk/barb) - usally single or twf
18 rog / 2 monk - qstaff
12+ fighter / 3 + bard / 2 rogue - Handaxe using swash, pretty nice
20 monk - wraps
20 barb - most the kills likely came from the capstone, not the damage they were doing
- tree builds - (these were getting rare)

Post rloft?
20 monk
20 barb
- various kensi setups getting less kills than either of those -

By the numbers people should have been playing 20 monk wraps builds, but were not because there was not a decisive lead. After the new wraps came out almost everyone who is all-in on dps TR'd into or rolled a pure 20 monk.

[J-mann]

Stats of someone who could spend all their time farming gear and reaper points at an exploited power level and at cap where it is easier because they previously exploited saga experience for past lives doesn't count.

Technically you probably could get within 75% of those stats with just a little grinding of ravenloft. Though in the current game enviroment level 30 stats matter less to me than level 20 or 10. That does beg the question to me though, why is prr scaled with level? its a percentile difference and not a flat difference, never made much sense to me to level scale it.

[blerkington]

Short run? They would be laughed out of the building. I do not KNOW FOR SURE, but I strongly suspect that testing includes various tiers of training dummies. From the ship dummy, to the Kobold dummy, to the Advanced Kobold dummy(with moar hitpoints), etc.

I would also hazard a guess that if they wanted to test multple mobs, they would spawn more then one dummy, and stand next to it. I also strongly believe that they simply watch the numbers scroll by, i.e., they have no organized method of collecting info and just "eyeball" it.

Now that all being said, it's just my opinion, man. I could be very wrong. In fact, I would LOVE to be proven wrong. But I think its just auto-attack and training dummies by any other name...

Yes, this is what I'm worried about.

And I'm not saying this for the sake of a free kick at the devs. I'm really worried about a bad method being used to estimate this stuff and that being the basis for changes to the game that will last for years afterwards.

Thanks.

[Dreppo]

The post I responded to said it was impossible to get over 200 PRR on a monk.

Just on that point, I was under the impression that there was a PRR cap of 100 on cloth, 200 on light armor, none on medium/heavy armor. That's not the case? (I wouldn't actually know since I've never reached those heights.)

[Brandall]

I get that monk is OP but why not balance up rather than nerf a workable build?
Look there are no less than 11 bugs with the LD tree and unchanged?
How about instances dropping blitz?
No fixes for any of that?
Numerous effects on gear not working?
No fix

But go ahead and address something that works

Maybe it works too well, but it certainly ain't broken

I get that balance is important as it effects everyone's game experience, but the game is full of defunct and broken mechanics that have been so for YEARS that also effect our experience. I don't have a problem with nerfs per se but fix the broken #&$-# that keeps us from playing the things that are out there

[SerPounce]

Just on that point, I was under the impression that there was a PRR cap of 100 on cloth, 200 on light armor, none on medium/heavy armor. That's not the case? (I wouldn't actually know since I've never reached those heights.)

You're thinking of MRR. There's no cap for PRR regardless of armor type, but MRR caps at 50/100 for cloth/light.

[Steelstar]

Hey! Thanks for the enthusiastic responses so far. To respond to a couple of things:

What are you balancing too?
All melee doing same dps?

Definitely not! One of the things we're trying to do in this pass is to evaluate where builds are when on an even footing, to find outliers (both high and low), evaluate why they're outliers, and bring those in as necessary. The result is that there will still be outliers due to gear, build choices, buffs, and other things disproportionately benefiting builds, but if the range between highest and an "average" build is 4,000 DPS, that's overall a better situation (both for the average player and for our ability to balance other things) than a range of 8,000 DPS between the highest and lowest. (those numbers are examples and not actual numbers). We're not aiming for every class to do the same DPS. Different classes and builds should have differences, and DPS should be among them. We are aiming for more of a healthy range, which will have some outliers - but maybe not outliers that are double-digit percentages ahead of the #2 outlier, let alone everything else.

THFing at level 30 needs some love still, is it possible for Aborea to give 40 MP if a THFing weapon is equipped?

As we said in the OP, we're hoping to look at Two Handed Fighting a little closer sometime after U38. (Might be in the U39 cycle, might be a bit later). As was the case with this DPS test, we had a number of assumptions - We want to figure out if we're correct by gathering and analyzing data before moving forward.

How were your tests on ninjas? I assume that they did ok but mainly due to the melee power from henshin.

Ninja Spy builds vary due to the diverse nature of how the tree can be used, but one of the Ninja Spy builds was close to the top in our tests (below Handwraps, above things that aren't Monks). With these changes, that build now sits right around where the top non-Monk builds currently do.

Steelstar:

You have now pretty massively nerfed throwers for 3 or 4 consecutive updates:

-Changes to 10k
-Removal of ALL Arcane Archer abilities
-Removal of Vistani MP power applying to shuriken (NO ONE RUNS A KNIFE THROWER WHY ARE YOU STILL PRETENDING THIS IS A THING?)
-Adding MP to all Epic destinies, BUT NOT RP while simultaneously removing weapon versatility for shurikens as stated above.

Please understand there are only 2 viable Epic Destinies for a thrower (Fury or Legendary Dreadnought). If you added RP as well as MP throwers (and other ranged builds) might actually someday experience some build diversity.

I understand that SSG has for a long time now been very clearly biased toward crossbows being supreme ranged DPS at the expense of bows and shurikens (and all other thrown weapons but those have always been totally non-viable choices, and remain so). With more buffs coming to Arties, and newest round of nerfs to shuriken throwers, we will back to shuriken being closer to crossbow builds, but bows and all other thrown weapons remaining at best, a situational use case, and at worst, a niche or remain totally unused.

Please add more robust ranged DPS tests into your process. I'd be happy to help if you want it.

You're not wrong about a lot of this. Ranged is an odd ecosystem, especially when you factor in that a few specific builds (Arcane Archers, Monk Shuriken builds) are far and away more effective (at bows and thrown weapons respectively) than any other build that uses those weapons can possibly hope to be. It keeps us from being able to do things to effectively raise the overall viability of those weapon types, because while the large pool of ineffective builds would turn out good with those kinds of changes, the small number of already very good builds would get boosted into "Insanely Overpowered" territory.

We did gather Ranged DPS data as part of this pass, though not as extensively as we could have if we were focusing specifically on the Ranged ecosystem. This pass wasn't meant to sort out the overall Ranged ecosystem, though I would be interested in doing a similar pass sometime.

Seconded emphatically.

A lot ED's are super interesting but do not have DC's or DPS scale properly to actually ever be used for anything.

This is a horrible shame, making 50-75% of the ED's in this game basically an abandoned/orphaned game system. WHICH IS INSANE.

Again, you're not wrong here either. There are problems in quite a few EDs, ones we'd love to solve when we're not trying to round out the remainder of the Third Class Trees.

As for the survivability of the monk compared to other classes - yup less PRR/MRR (although if you're in earth stance that's much less of an issue) but as well as pretty high dodge, reasonably high ac (depending on build) you can also easily get 25% incorporeality, as well as arguably 2nd best saves in the game after paladin, improved evasion, built in spell resistance that stacks and decent self healing that doesn't rely on spell points.

From the sounds of it the overall single target DPS from monk/handwraps will still be as high or a little higher than other builds just not as massively higher than it was before.

Yes, it was nice for my monk to shine for a change but the level of melee power that was available in enhancements was a little on the high side.

Having said that the devs still need to have a look at melee vs ranged.

Correct on all points.

Will we also be seeing other fixes to Vistani in U38 such as:

Double Daggers
- Single Dagger: When fighting single weapon style with a dagger: +20 Melee Power
(?Bug?: Does not work when wielding ANYTHING in off-hand, including orbs.)



Blessed Blades: Requires dagger. Melee attack. +5(W) damage, plus one stack of Blood of Vengeance. Your equipped daggers gain a +10 Enhancement bonus for 10 seconds. They also gain Silver, Good, and Ghost Touch. 10 second cooldown.
(Bug? Does not apply "They also gain Silver, Good, and Ghost Touch" either on hit or passively.)



Vendetta: Activate to gain a unique +1 Critical Threat Range and +1 to Critical damage multiplier to your equipped daggers or throwing knife.
(Bug? Vendetta overwrites Blessed Blades +10 Enhancement bonus for 10 seconds)
(Bug? Blessed Blades overwrites Vendetta unique +1 Critical Threat Range and +1 to Critical damage multiplier to your equipped daggers or throwing knife)

These are high on my list, and if they don't make it for u38 proper, we'll target addressing them with 38p1.

Keep in mind that it seems that most the portals in the game kill blitz. If you're testing with max blitz, either fix the portals or shorten the timer to start another blitz.

We have a new fix for this in the queue once more, needs to be verified by QA.

Hello Steelstar,

Could you advise whether moving counts as turning or pivoting towards an enemy. IE, my twf toon is in the middle of a mob, I keep turning to face my next foe yet still in the same spot would that be moving? Thank you for any clarifications.

RevCo

Easiest way to tell are the animations - Moving attack animations are usually very different from the standing ones. I believe pivoting (without any forward/backward movement at all) counts as standing, not moving.

Seriously? What do you guys have against Clerics, that the Divine Crusader tree doesn't grant as many spell points as the other Divine Trees and they don't get to be as good at base combat as rogues and bards? I get that an increase of +1 MP is better than no increase at all, but the DDO Cleric lags way behind its PnP origins far more than other classes already. In PnP, Clerics were reasonable with Spells AND in Combat AND had undead powers and healing. In DDO you have to choose between in order to be good at one (far more limiting on the classes base abilities than other classes' choices). Now the "Cleric" destiny gets a +1 boost as opposed to a +6 boost, keeping them mediocre at best in combat if you want to be able to use the undead/healing abilities well.

Divine Crusader is a good tree for Melees. Maybe not quite as good as Legendary Dreadnought, but it doesn't need that much help for melees to be decent in it.
Fatesinger is not a great tree for Melees. Definitely not as good as Divine Crusader. Melees in Fatesinger could use the help.

Also, what do you mean, "helped us identify a bug"?! Did you not previously know of this, despite this and TWF's horrific mobile attack range being one of the main reasons (at least for me, I assume for others too since it's a very well-known problem) to not play one? This fighting style still to this day (it has been like this since I started playing) essentially cannot hit a moving enemy while the player is also moving, unless the player is quite literally knocking against the collision bounds of the monster.

In any case, this alone is an *awesome* change.

In this case, "helped us identify a bug" specifically means "in the course of digging into these DPS numbers, we found the very specific location where Moving TWF attacks were making a bad calculation with regards to Doublestrike Chance, Offhand Strike Chance, and Offhand Doublestrike Chance." This bugfix does not have any relation to attack range/distance.

I get that monk is OP but why not balance up rather than nerf a workable build?

Our content is balanced much closer to the type of numbers most builds are doing, not the type of numbers a few outliers are doing. (Yes, there's a wide variety of content balanced at a wide variety of numbers - none of it is balanced toward what Monks are capable of outputting right now.)

If staff monks are so badass, why am I the only one I ever see in groups? We should be hip deep in staff monks. We aren't. Something is wrong with your testing.

NO ONE PLAYS A HENSHIN MYSTIC QUARTERSTAFF BUILD. There is no way that a melee build that is substantially better than all other non-monk 2HF builds would have no presence on the server.

It would not be the first time that an objectively strong build went largely unnoticed on the player side of things. Probably not the last time, either. Popularity/Population of a particular build is not an especially strong indicator of that build's power; there are so many other factors involved.

It's almost certainly the case that particular 2HF builds with specific gear get DPS above what HM ran in our tests. Our tests were specifically done in a way where we could get a baseline for where the builds themselves sit, without specific gear altering that data. Now that we've got that data, we're better able to look at how big an impact those other factors are on different kinds of builds.