Melee Survivability Changes - Some First Steps

[lyrecono]

- One of the reasons we are considering this change is to address the community's concern that melee are not able to compete in more difficult content with their spellcasting and ranged-using friends. If there is a larger belief that this is not the case, we'd love to hear that.

It is the case but i doubt enough melees are left to pitch in.

So, it doesn't stack with Paladin/Fighter/Druid tank stance HP, but DOES stack with Paragon Body from Renegade Mastermaker and Strength of Vitality from Unyielding Sentinel?

What type of bonus is Dwarf "Child of the Mountain" hp bonus? It doesn't say.
it has always stacked with all the other stances (i did fighter and bear druid, it also stacked with the US 20% hp
How does the range reduction thing work with artificer admixtures, which have a REALLY screwy range on them?

So, basically Renegade Mastermaker Arti just became the exclusive God Tank Build and Paladin/Fighter/Druid are not tanks any more because ANY melee can more than match them with a free toggle and NOT LOSE ANY DAMAGE IN THE PROCESS. Oh, and they can benefit from rage while the actual tank trees, who give up SUBSTANTIAL dps for it, cannot (apart from druid).

This seems like a really weird direction to go and NOT well thought out at ALL. It makes high DPS melee builds into gods who don't have to give up anything for survivability, and tanks (except Renegade Mastermaker) even more completely pointless.

I mean, seriously, you say you want this to be situational, but on most melee builds I see absolutely NO reason to EVER turn this off.

If you want to make this *situational* for melee, it'd need to have further restrictions like:

You can't use tactical abilities while it's on (no stunning fist, trip, stunning blow, dire charge, shield charge, etc.)
You get -2 to critical multiplier (to a minimum of x2)
You generate 75% extra threat
You cannot make sneak attacks
Exclusive with Power Attack and Precision

And make the HP STACK WITH EVERYTHING, not a COMPETENCE bonus.

That way, it's a way for a non-tank melee to become tanky if needed (but they lose a ton of DPS potential), and it's actually a bonus for REAL tanks when they need it, but it doesn't leave your DPS completely untouched!

I'd also suggest making it give you HEAL AMP equal to the HP bonus, so 10+10 for each fighting feat, up to 50. That'll make it so that it's easier to heal you up when you're boosted. Huge wads of HP aren't worth much if they can't be filled.

I agree with the heal amp part.
The thing is, now, non tank dps melees can't take a decent hit, without deep sacrifices. compare that with heroics, where your barbarian could tank trash without problems (sure, some bosses were always a pain like ETK), on reaper a barb should be able to take a few arrows or a melee hit from a trash mob. or be as capable of avoiding enemy AoE like a ranged character, since we can't, this is a nice buff.
i do hope they add shield feats to the list (and maybe add a epic shield feat to complement the heroic ones, "Perfect shield mastery", fixing the ED enh so epic tr-ing doesn't alow you to pick those without the shield feats).

[Shadow_Jumper]

Will this be coming out with an increase in reaper difficulties? Because it will be needed.

[LouiseLykke]

Paladin Defensive Stance HP buff bonus will be changed to competency which it appears it always was, but the text was incorrect

so your adding a new bonus to hp that will overwrite the pally compentency bonus making that stance irrelevant or will it stack with this??? same with fighters?

More hp to melee is a good idea as then you may not be one hit in reaper. again not a total fix as now you would still be dead in two hits. an overall change to all defense (AC, dodge cap, etc) is needed to scale appropriately for epics.

Pally is now sacred and does stack with aasemar wich is competense, however ftr defensive stance is competence and does not stack as far as i know, running aasemar with pally stance, i loose 300 hp when the stance bugs out

[PsychoBlonde]

Checked the wiki, sacred defender stance is a scared bonus, so paladin tanks should still benefit. Fighter and Druid stances are indeed competence bonuses though so this presumably won't stack.

It literally says in Torc's post that Sacred Defender is already a competence bonus, and they're changing it to be properly labeled.

[PsychoBlonde]

I
i do hope they add shield feats to the list (and maybe add a epic shield feat to complement the heroic ones, "Perfect shield mastery", fixing the ED enh so epic tr-ing doesn't alow you to pick those without the shield feats).

We should absolutely get Greater Shield Mastery and Perfect Shield Mastery and have that whole chain added to the list.

[cave_diver]

So since i can't spot heal others with anything that can be meta'd, I can see LFM's saying melees need to be assimar only to heal others lol.


This is a joke, reaper was meant to be played as is, dungeons should be designed for elite, and systems should not be put in place to make reaper easier.

If people are having issues completing, they will still have issues completing. A bad toon with 1000hps is better then a bad toon with 3000hp's...res scrolls don't cost spell points

[Yamani]

So since i can't spot heal others with anything that can be meta'd, I can see LFM's saying melees need to be assimar only to heal others lol.


This is a joke, reaper was meant to be played as is, dungeons should be designed for elite, and systems should not be put in place to make reaper easier.

If people are having issues completing, they will still have issues completing. A bad toon with 1000hps is better then a bad toon with 3000hp's...res scrolls don't cost spell points

The real joke is all the forumnite melee's claiming they heal. I guarantee most don't heal in the middle of combat and if they do they back out of the fight to do it anyways.

[lyrecono]

I feel ya. I understood that. My concern was about how healers and casters are going to get heals when the melees selfishly turn on "barbarian mode." I already don't heal myself on my melee---I heal my friends and they heal me. That's what reaper is: teamwork!

This melee buff is covered in anti-teamwork. Bad pasta.

If I use this I'm going to get the old' madstone boots out for 20% alacrity. The clerics can just worship my melee dps machine.

Hidden effect: Madstone Reaction

I used to love those boots (fighter and paly stance makes you immune to the madstone affect)
****ed me of to no end that the epic version was so useless for melees, compared to the heroic ones.
As for heals, there are other methods. Just buy or use Assimar and lay on hands.

So many questions. It's alarming that we could be so close to these changes with a whole bunch of important questions apparently not being considered.

1. Are the people who voiced this concern representative of the community as a whole?
impossible, the community is diverse, plenty of players that never reached epics exist and have no care about this buff.

2. What do you mean by 'not able to compete' in a cooperative game where characters have different roles?
lets assume you made a dps based melee, got all the gear, past lives and learned how to play it, then you notice how you die all the time while other, non melees, with similarly powerfull gear and experience trounce content and only take you with them so you can spend 20 min auto attacking a boss while they take turns scroll healing you, i have seen you on the forums before, have you never seen all the threads where people voiced their concerns about reaper mode and melees?

3. Do you recognise a difference between how DPS and instakill casters perform at different difficulty levels?
I assume he should, do you recognize that a caster gains enough from their reaper trees to keep doing their instakills and cc while a dps focused melee never regains the dps he looses in reaper mode, regardless of the amount of reaper points?

4. Are all ranged builds equally 'able to compete'?
In a way, yes, due to the fact that they can mitigate incoming damage by being further from the enemy then a melee player would have to be.

5. Why does your preferred solution involve adding yet more character power instead of making other changes?
Do you remember the debacle years ago? that led to the development of prr and mrr?, apparently, this is an easier fix then toning down all the quests since MotU.

6. Does this mean reaper is now the default instead of a challenge difficulty, since there have been few if any requests for changes below reaper?
I doubt we will see first lifers massively joining R10's.

7. What will this mean for difficulty in the game?
nothing relly, but now more players can use a wider variety of builds.

8. Are you trying to address a problem that doesn't actually exist?
See question 2

All snark aside, please don't repeat the company's recent mistakes with respect to balancing difficulty in the game. It's a colossal waste of time and energy to keep going around in circles like this. I'm sure the people who spend time on this could be doing something else instead that is better for the game.

Thanks.

It's a bit late, we should have all been massively sending complaints when reaper mode was introduced.
I rather had more/better made content but reality said otherwise.
It's the result of listening to the wrong feedback i guess. then again, hindsight is 20/20.

So for those who want to play a melee based warlock, what's the call? Aura is a blast shape that's supposedly not going to function with this stance.

Can you finally add Hideous Blow to the game? Make it a 'blast shape' that imbues your weapon with your EB die and effects? Pretty please. Perhaps even add this as a multiselector to Enlightened Spirit and provide actual cleaves similar to Knight of the Chalice if you take the Hideous Blow route?

Wait until lama is up and go test it.

[axel15810]

It literally says in Torc's post that Sacred Defender is already a competence bonus, and they're changing it to be properly labeled.

Gotcha, I missed that. That clears things up.

[mikarddo]

1) Well build and developed melee are doing very well in the groups and raids I am in.
2) The best thing about reaper mode is that healing others is the norm as that promotes some teamwork. Removing that is an outright awful idea.

In short - your proposed does not have any merit in my book.

[Captain_Wizbang]

We should absolutely get Greater Shield Mastery and Perfect Shield Mastery and have that whole chain added to the list.

[Kaboom2112]

[*][*]All spell or spell like abilities that are effected by metamagics have their ranged reduced to touch range (think shocking grasp)

This CANNOT go live affecting hjeals/cures.

[cave_diver]

Hey Torx,


Any chance this /DR will change to barbs can be changed to affect monks as well, 10/epic to 10%? Monks need love...they are in a bad space at the moment

[Kaboom2112]

Monks need love...they are in a bad space at the moment

Only when played by alcoholics . . .

[vyvy3369]

...Players who have trouble in reaper, and get one shot in r4+ will probably at most see 500-750 HP increase. However the players who are already doing fine in r7-10 will be getting thousands of HP from this insanity.

the current 1800-2000 HP light dps players at cap will see increases of roughly 1000 HP
the current defensive melee who hit 3000-3500 HP will see increases upwards of 1500 to even get close to 2000
end game tanks could legitimately see HP increases of 3000-4000 HP, and I imagine after this that most will be at or near 10k HP.
...

I don't think the math works that way. % HP increases stack additively. To borrow one of your examples:
Current defensive melee who hit 3500 HP - let's say that's 20% stance, 30% LGS, 20% US to get there, meaning ~2058 "base" HP. They'll gain 30% of 2058, or 617. Or let's say you assume something like 18% LGS instead of 30%, they'd gain 664. Which is awesome, but nowhere near 1500 or 2000 more.

This does give a comparatively bigger boost to those who didn't already have a defensive stance though. Most of the DPS melee I see run around with 1200-1500, and I would guess this will end up giving them similar increases to the tanks who actually focused on HP.

Edit: to give my thoughts on these changes, I'm really looking forward to it. Melee does very good DPS, and I love it, but it's very frustrating at times. Mostly that you have to be at that much greater risk of dying in order to be effective, especially with super long death timers. Speaking of which, less HP and shorter death timers if this is active could be a good compromise.

[Fezz1k]

Only when played by alcoholics . . .

Nah, I do alright.

[Ultramaetche1]

- One of the reasons we are considering this change is to address the community's concern that melee are not able to compete in more difficult content with their spellcasting and ranged-using friends. If there is a larger belief that this is not the case, we'd love to hear that.

It is not the case. It's more a case of balance.

1) A monk with robes will be pushing around 200 PRR alongside shadow veil for 25% incorporeal miss chance, and 45% or higher dodge. The avoidance available to a monk makes them very powerful in most content. Especially if you consider the panic heal option of an Aasimar monk with healing hands. They have the jade strike line with 3 different attacks that cause helplessness on separate cooldowns. Stunning fist only has a 6 second cooldown compared to stunning blow, and has a higher DC as it includes 1/2 character level, whereas stunning blow does not.

2) A barbarian has reasonable survival between the combination of a number of factors. Large HP pool means they can take a hit or 2, medium armor means they can push higher PRR and MRR than a monk. They have the improved uncanny dodge clicky for 50% dodge in a pinch. "I like pain" is a reliable source of many hundreds of temp HP, as well as "blood tribute". They have the no-save ear smash to temporarily take out the largest threat.

3) Rogues, typically wearing light armour usually max out their dodge somewhere between 25% - 35% with uncanny for 50% in a pinch. Vistani variants have mist stalker available for a PRR/MRR/Dodge/MaxDodge panic button. Unless you go a max DEX acrobat your battlefield CC is limited to basically a dire charge at lvl 29. Other than that they don't have much to control the flow of battle.

4) Paladins have Sacred defense which grants them a large amount of PRR and MRR, and lay on hands in a panic situation, a strictly inferior healing hands as it scales off Paladin level where healing hands is off Character level, right there is a 33% comparative loss in effectiveness. The number of hands is less than an Aasimar's healing hands, plus, barring some ED abilities, they do not regenerate. Paladins also tend towards medium or heavy armour meaning dodge is typically quite low. They have no access to a clicky dodge, or incorporeal miss chance so unless you build up AC you WILL be hit often. They only have Stunning Blow (assuming you take it), trip and dire charge, meaning controlling the battlefield is an issue as most mobs remain free to act.

5) Rangers typically wear light armour, they have respectable dodge somewhere around 25% - 30% they don't have a panic clicky of any sort. No large panic heal, no dodge clicky, no prr/mrr clicky. They have no CC other than Stunning Blow, Trip and dire charge.

6) Fighters... oh fighters. They SHOULD be the king of battlefield control as far as melee are concerned, yet they have nothing to control with. Stunning Blow has a long cool down and a low DC and can not be used on undead or constructs and is single target. Trip and Improved trip are single target and don't work on incorporeal enemies. The enhancements they have are blah at best. Where a barbarian can click a button to get temp HP with blood tribute, a fighter can... drink a potion to get +50 healing amp. Amplification which does them no good because they have no way to actually heal themselves mid combat. Should they go with medium or heavy armour they have low dodge, meaning more hits connect, and if they go light, then they sacrifice PRR and MRR. They don't have a panic heal like a paladin, nor a dodge clicky like a barbarian.

All in all it isn't a case of melee being unable to compete with ranged and spell casters. It's more so a case that if you want to compete, your options are limited due to the current meta of the game being a combination of:
A) avoiding attacks altogether (ie: monk with its dodge, incorp, AC)
B) controlling the situation to reduce the number of incoming attacks (ie: monk with its jade strikes, stunning fist, kukan-do, barbarian ear smash, dire charge, trip)
C) reacting to damage you do take and being able to either heal or mitigate it (ie: Barbarian's I like pain and blood tribute, Aasimar's healing hands, improved uncanny dodge, mist stalker v, spinning staff wall, etc.)

A blanket "give all melee (up to) +50% HP" does nothing to address any of the 3 points above. All it does is give veteran players a safety cushion, and newer players 1 or 2 extra hits before they die as they currently already are.

[Fezz1k]

Just in case it isn't clear, to be explicit about it: This change would have no impact on self-healing.

That's the thing reaper mode purposely nerfed, though. If this change is meant for EE, fair enough, but then you're not talking about most people. If it's meant for reaper, one of the biggest penalties to playing in reaper mode is meant to encourage cross spot healing, so this seems contrary to that.

If you're trying to encourage full groups, fair enough as well, as they might have a dedicated healer and another ranged character to heal them, but as someone who often short mans rather than having full groups or playing solo, this will discourage the behavior that reaper mode was meant to encourage. I understand the intent, but it's a bit of an odd choice to me - spot heals from melee are really helpful and don't seem like they're an overpowered tool that needs to be negated (because yes, melee will run with this toggled on).

[Kaboom2112]

The real joke is all the forumnite melee's claiming they heal. I guarantee most don't heal in the middle of combat and if they do they back out of the fight to do it anyways.

I am one of those melees who does, because I'm a good player. We shouldn't listen to the bad players, that's how you get ideas like what's presented in this thread.

[Fallout47]

Only when played by alcoholics . . .

There goes any challenge this game had left.

Speaking of alcoholics, that's what comes to mind when I watch this company try to 'balance' the game. It's akin to watching an alcoholic going between episodes of sobriety and full out benders. This is beyond exasperating.