Melee Survivability Changes - Some First Steps

[kelavas]

I am not a very big heavy type player into dungeons and dragons online world. Most people know me as a tank on Argonnessen. I USED to be a 14 cleric 5 paladin 1 wizard. After noticing these changes you are highly scaling health with the content that has already been done. The only issue with this being. You are not giving a chance to scale tank health. We all know they are able to hit 6,000 hit points in the correct sequence + format to reach that amount of hit points. Adding 40% to the drawboard would make their health increase a bunch but very challenging to get because they have to remove a bunch of feats.

1> Why are tanks ruled out of the melee buffing?

You are giving options for hit point buffing to melee classes but not tanks. Why are they ruled out of this? They have to change 5 feats just to gain a beneficial effect. And it could be life changing. Oh great, you rule out tanking because they already hit 6,000 hit points, why not bother making it possible for 10,000 hit points. I've already seen 11,593spell points, what's the worse that could happen?
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NEXT? MAKE INTIMIDATE HARDER TO ACHIEVE FOR TANKS? MAKE IT LESS USEFUL?

2> This can be both beneficial and game breaking.

Here me out on this... Unless you take most constitution and hit point buffers this is beneficial. Most people are familiar with a player known as, 'Symbiiont' he is known for his DPS mechanics and his old tanking picture from the Vault. You are basically increasing the hit point count mechanics on some of the strong players such as Symbiiont. This is giving an open-end wide option of being able to solo R10 on a few quests. Symbiiont was able to hit R7 solo with 2,200 hit points. If you take 2,200 and add 50% to that. You are opening the hit point count to 3,300 hit points making it more possible to solo R10 - which can be game breaking because your goal with Reaper is to make people work together, have more groups, and smarter layouts. This monk was able to two man Curse of Strahd on Legendary Hard, and able to solo R7 Grim and Barett. Is this what you want, to buff up hit points? If I had a vote. This is GAME BREAKING!

3> Is Competency and Competence the same parent or different?

You are basically stating that Sacred Defense will be Competency, but is that labeled under the same category of Competence and can you gain benefits from Sacred Defense if you have 50% competence?

4> Where is all the caster buffing.
So you give melee(s) 50% to hit points as an option. Where are the caster(s) gaining 50% bonus spell points as an option but having longer cooldown(s). You are basically ruling out that caster's are a weak class. In general, it is hard to solo as a caster, and not to mention. Helter Skelter ran R10 Curse of Strahd without any caster(s) EXCEPT healer(s) and buff support with slight dps, but not much. Where are the Wizards or Sorcerer(s)? Not in there, because they blew through too much SP and not enough comparable DPS to melee. Please understand you are basically ruling out caster(s) entirely.

5> End of the straw.
If this happens, I would some of the playerbase to quit. Making server(s) even more dead. You've heard of the opinions from the players in the thread. It is a 50/50. If you add this option. You are expecting some of the playerbase to just leave. Yet, you haven't even solved the merging of server(s).

PLEASE THINK BEFORE ADDING!

[Kalaxia]

Thanks for the feedback so far, we'll have to ponder it. A few things:

- This is not meant to be on during situations when a spellcasting melee would be casting spells on other players. So if you need to heal other players, you shouldn't be using this. If you are spot healing or buffing, this isn't for you.

The whole point of the reaper nerf to self healing is to promote teamwork, and getting more people to actually help heal each other (which is needed.)

Your limitation here, is just going to further ruin that, and make even more players in the group who can't help each other. You should be promoting more teamwork like this, instead of turning more players into hermits who only care about themselves. Simply exclude healing spells from the range limitation, and strictly make it so that the stance only nerfs OFFENSIVE spells and ranged attacks.

I think the stance giving HP is a poor choice, but I think your Barbarian change is excellent. What you should be doing, is making your new epic stance give THAT %-based DR, instead of health. Full-time melee builds should be taking less damage per hit.

Why not just use that new barbarian DR system in the new stance instead? You basically solved your problem in theory, but you're not making proper use of it where it should be.

Another problem is the lingering AC system, which is quite honestly terrible. I know it's a staple in D&D, but it works poorly in game.. and might be skewing defense analysis results, especially depending on which difficulty level.

[Jetrule]

This stance along with barb damage reduction is a pure second pass and buff for barbarians. They come out seriously defensively juiced in epics after this. To the point that a Barb tank is perhaps conceivable as a best choice tank, and a barb dps gets off tank status. Long live the tribe! Monk and rogue seems to me to benefit from the stance next most with fighter and pali being not far behind in that they perhaps wont spend 3 ap in the defender tree and pick up +6 con or something else instead. Druid melee, arti melee, and bard melee are all hybrid casters to some degree. much of it is healing. Divine or pale master melees are in the same boat just have more reason to splash 6+ fighter imo abandon blue bar healing party mates and run with a aura and blue bar heal only self and those nearby with aoe healing.

So the stance is a pure buff for any melee while soloing and something that will make you chase others around to heal them in parties if you are a healer melee. I would suggest making the range reduction to spells exclude positive energy, repair and negative energy. Or at the very least positive energy spells.

Also why arent shield mastery feats included?

[droid327]

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

Hmm...hows this work with Artificer Infusions? Seems like it might actually be a buff if it makes it automatically fire off at zero range

[Sam-u-r-eye]

I can't say how soon we'll be presenting reaper changes, (yet), but we see the desire for spicing it up a bit as more and more players have mastered the content.

-T

Huzzah!



BTW I run with Helter on r10 and their melee get one shot. You should come along to confirm the need for this buff. xD You need to be aware that this buff will allow most UBERMELEE to facetank r10 bosses with a healer. There's a concern here that this is too much of a buff for the current meta and that the buff should be delayed for the release of spicy stuff. Ranged have a cheesy advantage and I think your design post is spot on. I'm willing to try out the touch spell stuff on Lamma but I really feel like it hits melee disproportionately. Either way I'm happy to see the endgame meta change. People will like that, even though they've got their firearms out atm.

There's too much negativity being directed at you, but that's just going to be the case since you've opened a can of worms. I mean we have to open this worm jar though. It's needed. You're doing a great job. Keep going!

Looking forward to trying the change out, but I'm not guaranteeing I won't be super critical. In the mean time have a deadpool. We're all looking forward to the new raid. Don't give us too many puzzles... lol <3 <3 <3

[Skavenaps]

- This stacks with other HP sources that are not Competence typed. So while you can still run a defensive stance like Stalwarts for AC/PRR etc, you don't get both HP bonuses, just the highest.

-T

Please, reconsidere this. You are nerfing the melee here. My melee wolf toon, split 3 levels of fighter with the sole reason to run the 20%. Now, this 3 levels become useless and now i need to commit to some extra limitations because reasons for the new stance.

I find outrageous that this stances doenst stack but aassimar one does. Whats the reason? Because is the new race and sales must be keep high? What im supposed to do now? TR again to change race and rebuild my lvls split?

[Sam-u-r-eye]

Please, reconsidere this. You are nerfing the melee here. My melee wolf toon, split 3 levels of fighter with the sole reason to run the 20%. Now, this 3 levels become useless and now i need to commit to some extra limitations because reasons for the new stance.

I find outrageous that this stances doenst stack but aassimar one does. Whats the reason? Because is the new race and sales must be keep high? What im supposed to do now? TR again to change race and rebuild my lvls split?

Asamir is bladeforged all over again. P2W for real lol. Healing hands need a nerf. A longer cast time would be good?

I mean we've poked enough hornet's nests today though. Everyone has their AR-15 out.

[Morroiel]

Asamir is bladeforged all over again. P2W for real lol. Healing hands need a nerf. A longer cast time would be good?

I mean we've poked enough hornet's nests today though. Everyone has their AR-15 out.

Everything they do is designed around getting cash from the customers pocket into their pockets.

This is the most ill-suited design change I've ever seen proposed by any professional gaming developer in the history of my gaming career.

There are other ways to address / change the endgame meta than doing this, which will cut challenging content down to exactly 3-5 quests/raids.

[korgzz_bloodaxe]

I like the concept but the values need tweaking. Make it the poor man's version of stalwart defender stance. Maybe 5% HP per feat up to a maximum of 25% with all the existing drawbacks. That way Fighter/Paladin keep their current stances but some of the paper melee dps get a useful situational buff. It shouldn't be something that is turned on 24x7.

I like that there is nothing that increases melee dps as I feel we are in a reasonably good place at the moment, except for maybe a SMALL buff for paladins.

[janave]

Please reconsider the way you handle hitpoints bonuses to be dice based, and your problem is solved, it was on day 0 if you followed the formula more closely.

Starting with Toughness maybe:

Toughness feat current: Increases your hit points by +3 at first level, and 1 additional hit point for each additional level.

(new) Toughness feat: Increases your hit points by your Calculated Hitpoints Die at first level, and 1/4 of your CHD or 1 hit point for each additional level.

5 Fighter 3 Monk 3 Rogue

Levels 11:
5 x 10
3 x 8
3 x 6

Math floor 92 / 11 => 8

8 CHD, Take toughness for 8 + 2 per level hitpoints.

>>>Pure barb CHD 12

12 + 3 hp per level

>>>Pure Rogue

6 + 1 hp per level (+3 hp to current per feat)

>>>Pure Sorcerer

4 + 1 hp per level (+1 hp to current version per feat)


Heroic durability is a good next target. ( grant 4-5 times Calculated Hitpoints Die (CHD) )
Improved Heroic Durability. (grant an additional CHD at every 5 levels ) hmm h maybe - Ignore the heroic limitation and change to char level?

[mikarddo]

We still very much need a dev reply to the two things many top end players, which I am not, bring up:
1) Is the nerf to healing others really intented?
2) How does the fact that R7+ groups and R3+ raids actively _want_ a majority of melee dps as posted by the very people that run these things fit with the claim that melee are underrepresented in high end reaper?

I see several dev replies but none that answer these exact two questions which seem to be at the very core of the issue posted.

[GeoffWatson]

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

In Reaper, everyone (including melees) is expected to heal others, since self-healing is nerfed so much.

[J1NG]

I don't know exactly what is wrong with dodge, but haven't you noticed that the amount of attacks you dodge seems to be lower than it should be? And the higher your dodge gets the more the disparity becomes noticeable.

I'm afraid that "notice" can be very subjective in middle of battle. So I tend to work on more actual results. I hope you don't mind that.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes it seems to work just fine, but not always.

Why not always? Have you guaranteed that Dodge has been activated before your test?

As testing I have raised my dodge to up to nearly 350%

My own tests show that 100% dodge is full safety for in range melee that are against enemies that do not have any special Dodge bypass (the three types of Champions: Law, Archeron, and Beast Mark)

and gone to mobs that I am fairly confident have no dodge bypass, and even if they did they would need over 250% bypass at that, and was killed by attacks that are all dodge block-able whilst my dodge rating was >/=100%.

Dodge does not block THF swings which gets glancing blows that will proc on even 100%+ Dodge players. You can see this in PvP. I am unsure if any monsters gets something similar to this. Otherwise, 100% Dodge or more you are basically untouchable.

If you are dying for no reason, either your Dodge hasn't hit 100% (the most used Dodge clickie that most will be using and familiar with is Meld into Darkness, which is notorious for not triggering properly), or because you're using in excess Dodge, 350% according to your reports, there may be a rollover point, I haven't tested that. But 100% to 150% I have tested and it does basically dodge attacks. Or, a third option, is that a Champion with DoT damage launched an AoE spell abilitiy nearby and the Champion Damage buff/DoT splashed onto you (No Evasion or Save protects against this, it's a flaw with the buff and how it interacts with spells). Nothing wrong with dodge otherwise.

I have also run that test several times over the past couple of years on different difficulties and in different quests.
Do I know what is wrong with it? No. Is something wrong with it? I would say absolutely.

I constantly do tests on various subjects all the time. And quite often Dodge has come up as a subject. Especially over the last 2 years where I have basically been testing it for that entire time virtually and have become quite adept at spotting enemies and places where Dodge would help but I could still be taken out. More often than not, I roll a capped toon with 100% dodge from Korthos through to Ravenloft, Red Alerting where I can to test the Dodge capabilities and at no point do I ever suffer an attack that I can't see why it hit me.

So trust me when I say that Dodge is working fine. But the clicky like Meld into Darkness (and Primal Travel), both have issues with granting Dodge. In fact, both have identical issues, both need to complete the actual ENTIRE animation scripted for them before the Dodge will trigger, and during that animation you do NOT have the bonus Dodge at all and can still die. So for Meld, you need to let the animation tumble back and wait for the Action Boost symbol to fire before you can do anything else. If you do anything else or got interrupted, more likely than not, it will not fire. For Primal Travel, you only get the Dodge buff at the end of the THIRD tumble backwards. And again, interrupting it at any point, even by moving around (but not by mouse looking around) you will break the animation and not get the Dodge bonus, and of course DURING the animation you won't have that bonus yet either. So if you happen to be dying during those times, then that is normal behaviour.

Unless there is an internal limiter that caps the amount of dodge you can actually benefit from no matter how high it lets your dodge go. and even if a natural 20 ignored dodge I still don't think that would account. Even if dodge caps at 100% and dodge bypass starts from 100% dodge no matter how high it goes, things still don't add up. But I haven't done any in depth testing, only enough to know its not working as advertised.

I could go test the higher dodge numbers I guess and see if they have any rollover point, but until I get confirmation from you that none of the above applied to your own tests, I'll have to reserve judgement on the matter, with the detailed testing I have, I will need to assume something along of the bypass methods was what took you down for now.

J1NG

[Rull]

Cool, I like this direction.

Some initial words of advice:
I don't think it's wise to link this to offensive feats. It is too artificial and will cause problems, if not now then in the future.
For instance, it makes no sense that a bastard sword wielding tank with shield mastery and improved shield mastery would be LESS survivable than a more offensively specced build using TWF, SWF or THF (and this is just an example, don't just add shield mastery to the list).
Just keep it at a flat 50% bonus with the restrictions as specified.

I think it's a mistake to not let this stack with defender stance. Keep the balance within melees as-is.
Keep in mind it's already a nerf, non-defenders get a 50% HP increase while the HP of defenders compared to their current HP only increases by 41% (170%/120%)

How will the change to touch range alter AoE effects? Can I still run around dropping firewalls and blade barriers (at my feet)?

Do allow for ranged buffing and healing, just limit offensive spells to touch. Look at what classifies as an offensive spell for breaking invis and reuse that classifier. For balance this may be suboptimal but grouping still has to be fun. And yes, I do see the issue of a non-caster non-melee healbot using this stance and becoming unkillable, but I think that's the lesser evil which could be fixed another way later.

[Enguebert]

1) The change to Barbarian DR is great. It is an iconic class feature ...that was completely useless. Now by replacing flat numbers by % make it again useful
You should apply this to ALL DR. That means DR from other classes, from Gear ...but also for mob DR (so having the right weapon will be useful again)

You should look at all feat/class abilities. If they are completely useless in Epic, they need a revamp, even if that means changing it from DD rules
Janave posted a good example of a feat that need to be reviewed: Toughness (5 posts above)

2) The main problem that melee have is that they don't have access to the best defence : not being close to mobs. HP is an help just because most heavy attacks are either mob melee attack or mob special attack you can't dodge because you are too close
If you want to give more HP to melee, change feats like Toughness, create some Epic feat attractive for melee or put some %bonus in melee tree (Hey , defensive stance is attractive, why not add some other enhancement in Tier 3/Tier4/Tier5)

3) I don't see the shield line in your description. This is one important line of feat for some melee builds. I hope you will either add them to the list or they will have a special improvement, otherwise you will simply destroy this build

4) This epic feat should stack with Defensive Stance (otherwise those enhancement will be nerfed)


PS : PRR was designed to be the defense for melee. The problem is that non-melee can also reach decent PRR, and the additional PRR that melee can have is not signifiant. Why not have in Reaper's Tree Core 5 & 6, or Tier 4 and Tier 5 have big bonus in one style (Melee/Range/Spell (DC or damage) and big malus in one other style (Example : +100 PR,+10% HP but spellcasting reduced to Touch)

[GramercyRiff]

As a solo only player I obviously like and would enjoy more HP. Definitely. Bring it on. Also glad to read that AoE will still work if centered on the caster.

I also get where others are coming from with the touch range heal deal. What about all spells EXCEPT heals are touch range? Taking away that teamwork aspect just isn't a good idea. That takes awareness and skill to pull off. You're monitoring all these melee clicks, your positioning, other things, etc, while also making sure the healer remains standing? Gotta respect that dedication and multi-tasking.

Also I'm in the camp that shield mastery needs to be a part of this. We want greater and perfect shield mastery too.

edit: I didn't like your Druid when it was first previewed Torc. By the time it was done and went live though, your Druid is one of my favorite things about this game. I'll see how this shakes out.

[J1NG]

Don't get me wrong, sometimes it seems to work just fine, but not always. As testing I have raised my dodge to up to nearly 350%.

Just performed a test in PvP with a toon at 350% Dodge and just like 100% Dodge, the attacker was unable to land a single attack on me.

For fun, I had both attacking each other, One at 350% Dodge and the other at 100% Dodge and with no Dodge bypass on both toons, it looks like two level 1 toons swinging away at each other and missing all the time (except much faster of course).

J1NG

[Wizza]

"Lmao" is the only thing I could think of when I read the OP.

[Elfishski]

I would also vote against this change on the face of it:

1. People are already crushing high skulls reaper, do we really need more buffs for the sake of buffs rather than even as "progression"?

2. This is designed, explicitly, to allow melee DPS to solo high skulls reaper (either actually solo or in the kind of uncoordinated party that's 6 people solo'ing). It even explicitly encourages that solo uncaring play by reducing the ability of melees to support party members. An extra thousand HP isn't something you "toggle on and off" option during any content that you aren't steamrolling, it's always on.
Remember: abilities should not be designed with reaper difficulty in mind.

3. As has been has pointed out, high skulls reaper at the moment is dominated by melee DPS in conjunction with healers and excellent CC (and tanks for raids).

4. As per (3) very skilled melee players don't need any kind of buff relative to other playstyles, but as per (2) being able to take a couple more hits won't help less skilled melee players.

5. Adding a bunch of character power that trivializes content (anything except the newer R10 raids pretty much, to the top players) then trying to add back in challenge with new "spice" is the wrong way to do it. Add the new spice first, otherwise you're stuck with a boring dead game with only a couple of "relevant" quests for months in between. Just like it was in the years leading up to reaper.


My suggestion is to change as many abilities as possible that at the moment that add static HP and make them add multiple of hit dice instead. E.g. instead of +4/+8 HP for reaper points they could be +0.5/+1 HD. Many other bonuses likewise (like epic HP). (HD being the average across all heroic levels, don't forget to round at the end of the calculation).

This would create the desired greater difference between what should be lower HP classes and what should be higher HP classes in a much more natural way and help in that goal of balance going forward.

[lyrecono]

Just performed a test in PvP with a toon at 350% Dodge and just like 100% Dodge, the attacker was unable to land a single attack on me.

For fun, I had both attacking each other, One at 350% Dodge and the other at 100% Dodge and with no Dodge bypass on both toons, it looks like two level 1 toons swinging away at each other and missing all the time (except much faster of course).

J1NG

Uhm, what type of weapon were you using? 2hf/ bastard sword What were your ac and attack bonuses? Any foul play in the form of blur, displacement, etc.
This is not much info to work on.