Please Reconsider the Meteor Swarm Cooldown Nerf

[Tuxedoman96]

you can't really expect a specific answer to such a general question. i can give a general answer though... in an in-depth analysis of all, or as close as we can come to all, relevant game systems and design features, when something is or is not balanced, it will manifest in some empirical form, and becomes a data point. it doesn't need an arbitrary numerical representation. if confront any foe is doing more damage per second than any other destiny active attack, we don't need to first define how much damage per second it should be doing, then subtract that number from the current amount, and make an adjustment with such precise mathematical clarity.

However, with that example, we have to look at whether the extra damage for confront any foe is justified. CAF uses up charges, so it has another limiting factor in addition to a cooldown (albeit an admittedly short one). And those are just a couple aspects that we're looking at. We could look at its former ability to hit multiple targets and do a triple cleave and other aspects to get a better grasp on its utility. However, there isn't anything inherently negative about an ability doing more damage than other abilities because of these other considerations. It helps not to look at the abilities in a vacuum.

it seems counter intuitive to put it that way, because it's all just math, after all. but i stand by that statement. there is no valid reason to place the onus of such deliberate, highly detail focused scrutiny, on the player-base.

I'm not saying that the player base must do this. I'm merely pointing out the unlikelihood of effectively balancing classes and abilities without having the whole picture.

you know it isn't balanced because it's being built around, not because the equation reveals an exact amount of additional damage beyond what other similar abilities are outputting.

Really? It isn't balanced because it's being built around? If that was the case then summoning builds must be overpowered because there are people that build around it. What about flame blade or the shadow blade? And who are we looking at that builds around these overperforming abilities anyways? How likely is average person to recognize or utilize the true "brokenness" of an ability? There could be any number of reasons that a person builds a toon around an ability. Effectiveness, flavor, challenge, ease of use, etc., such that it shouldn't be immediately obvious that that particular ability is overperforming.

it seems like you want to suggest all balance changes need to first conform to some 'standard' that is being deviated from. and that to do so, without first defining with numerical precision, would be impossible. or at least a mistake. but i don't think that it's necessary or prudent to wait for that level of detail.

I do think that there should be a standard. However, for the second part of your statement, this numerical precision, I'm actually stating the opposite, because there are certain aspects of a class that can't be compared quantitatively. That's why I asked how much the ability to heal is worth. What about the ability to do damage from a distance? However, the numbers are still important. I was pointing out the problem with your thought experiment because it seemed to rely only on anecdotal evidence. When we aren't taking into account fair representations of the classes and abilities then how do you expect to balance them?

adding a 2 second cooldown to CaF was a good start. but it was still being used to cancel attack animations in the attack chain, to provide higher dps where it wasn't intended. even without the exact numbers in front of us, we the players could still see it was preforming, in a way which was never intended, beyond the scope of its purported purpose.

Again, you're talking about abilities that are being used in ways that weren't intended, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about abilities that are used as they were designed to be used. The continuous use of bugged examples makes me wonder if you think that abilities and classes cannot be imbalanced without being bugged in some way. Look at warlock or inquisitive when they first came out. Can you honestly say that they were balanced on arrival, or that if they weren't, that it was the result of a bug?

enhancing the experience. right, on it's own, that figure of speech does have a certain culinary ring to it. maybe i should have said... modify the playstyle to add a layer of enjoyment and provide quality to the class through meaningful choices intended to give players a broader spectrum when making decisions which influence the way they build their characters. but joseph heller taught me about prose being too prolix. i think i'll stick with enhances the experience, as its a bit more succinct. as to the question, how to determine when to tune down a specific ability: this is where exhaustive playtesting becomes more and more relevant. if turn undead were capable of providing an unbalanced advantage, at any point in the leveling process, it would demonstrate itself, and eventually work to the meta. meaning, the playerbase, at large, would adopt turn based builds and prioritize turning as a preference. if that happened, i would look closely at how other insta-kill effects were implemented... maybe cap max turn at the same level as wail, or circle of death. but that hasn't happened because turn is still such a niche ability, and its most useful feature, using turn attempts to fuel CaF, was recently nerfed.

Fair enough.

representing builds fairly, and watching 2 players run those builds, aren't the same thing. if you state that monks are in a terrible position, i can either ignore you, or attempt to refute your statement with my own evidence. because you have merely stated an opinion. the data you are asking about isn't derived from your play experiences, or mine. but rather, from the amalgam of all player experience, over the course of a meta cycle. which is why, again, exhaustive playtesting is very important. one person, playing monk poorly, doesn't indicate anything other than that they play monk poorly.

The data I'm asking about is from comparing numbers and seeing what all is involved in retrieving said numbers. A truly fair representation of a build would be showing what effects and values you can get in the absence of gear (since a lot of items benefit more than one class and we're looking at the classes individually). Gear should have its own balancing metric. By your line of reasoning, if most players decide that the monk is in a bad position then it must be in a bad position because that is the amalgamation of the player experience. This, however, doesn't account for the possibility that many of those players might not be playing monk even close to its true potential.

27 concurrent raid completions of the latest raid, all by different players, all on some ranged monk bow using hybrid build, means nerf monk, nerf manyshot, nerf ips and then nerf monk again for good measure.

And that's how we get blanket nerfs. It might be one attack for the monk or one aspect of ranged that is overperforming. To nerf all these things without pinpointing the issue doesn't really aid the cause of balance because you end up hurting builds that weren't overperforming in the process. Take the inquisitive. Now I'm not gonna say that a blanket nerf to ranged was unwarranted, but I will say that if I saw nothing but inquisitives running around then I wonder what is more likely: that inquisitive alone needed a nerf or that all ranged needed to be docked. Again, not saying that we didn't need to reduce ranged damage, but with all of those data points pointing towards one particular build it wouldn't be immediately obvious to me that the ranged style in general was overperforming. Even if you were joking about the monk nerfs, I find the humor to be in poor taste because it demonstrates a hammer-smashing approach to changes that I think is not terribly efficient.

this is important enough to quote a second time. the point of reference is determined on live. lama is where we get a small showcase for upcoming changes which take this point of reference, and we glimpse how the meta may shift, as the dev's attempt to balance for the future, since obviously balancing for the past is impossible and would be in poor taste. the live servers are collecting the data used to establish this reference point, in real time, minute by minute, even as i'm typing this. it isn't substantial in the same way as a fixed integer. it's a flow. an ebb and a tide. poetry again... i know, i know. but really, DDO plays, in part, like a poem, rather than a mathematical formula. there's music in it, not just in dryad and the demigod, but in everything from the banker who refuses to give us the bank ui until it's auto-closed on us once, to the piece of newspaper which keeps floating around the same parts of the harbor, over and over.

Your poetic descriptions are superfluous. My point isn't that we need to have it exactly the same. In fact, if you read what I typed the past few posts I was pointing out the immense difficulty in doing so without stripping meaning and uniqueness from the game. My point is that when someone says that the tide is too high (using your analogy) but they didn't bother to stand up... then I can't take such comments seriously. Is it still true for that person? As much as an opinion can be I suppose, but if the devs are looking to see how high the tide should be for a standing person then my complaints as a sitting person doesn't really provide meaningful information, does it?

well, not to put to a fine a point on it, but... the standard is obviously enjoyment. if it isn't enjoyable, why is it even in the game? there isn't really an adequate method of establishing 'enjoyment' and expressing it mathematically. if the additional cooldown recently added to meteor swarm impedes the ability of the player using it from deriving any enjoyment or satisfaction by that use, something is certainly wrong. but i don't think one whinge thread is enough to relay that information, or signifies that a walk-back on the extra cooldown is required. it is, however, a good starting point for further investigation. it may turn out that enough players feel similarly to the OP. then, perhaps, a different solution to the problem will present itself.

Enjoyment may be a factor in balance or QoL changes, but it isn't the only aspect. I very much enjoy my CC casters. That doesn't mean that I can complete quests with CC alone. Although, perhaps there is a more illustrative example. Suppose most people really liked pressing one button to break through encounters. Pressing that one button to not deal with monsters is enjoyable for them. Can we still say that this leads to a healthy game? Additionally, as you've previously stated, you cannot quantify enjoyment. I'd go even further and say that some classes will inherently be more enjoyable than others. It is unlikely, for example, for the devs to change how the barbarian compares to the other classes wrt performance such that I will be more inclined to play them. That's my playstyle. I enjoy the classes I play precisely because of what they can do conceptually and not because they are more effective than others. I understand that not everyone is of a similar mind, but I'm saying this to illustrate a point. My enjoyment of a class, or yours, or anyone else's, is not completely indicative of the class's performance.

but, of course, this is just pretense for disregarding any opinion you disagree with. if two people tell you what you wish never to hear, you say that the data doesn't convey anything. then label it inconsequential. all data is meaningful, its only in a specific context that it becomes relevant/irrelevant. if you say monks are in a terrible place, and i say CaF is overpreforming and needs to be adjusted... the data doesn't convey anything with regard to what you are looking for. but that doesn't make it inconsequential, right?

Not at all. I'll take contrasting opinions when they are relevant to the discussion. If I'm trying to discuss whether or not a class is overperforming, I'm going to look at empirical evidence that shows this. I'm going to look at what people are doing that allows them to overperform or (if they are not doing it) what is making them underperform. The enjoyment of said class is a secondary issue. In the example I gave above, it could be the case that despite not really enjoying barbarian empirical evidence shows that it is overperforming compared to other classes, because those are two different aspects.

obviously i should post my data in a different thread, because it isn't relevant to your beg for better monk... but if CaF really is over-tuned, it shouldn't be considered inconsequential to anything other than your own little monk-is-bad pity party.

Not begging for anything actually. I gave monk as an example because it has a low floor and a high ceiling. I also gave examples of warlock and sorc, but I could just as easily give any other class. The point was to demonstrate more than sheer numerical superiority goes into balance considerations, and it seems you and I already agree on this. And also, I suppose CaF might be over-tuned, but if I didn't know why and in what way then how would I know it simply isn't because I'm not using it right? Going even further, how would I know if a particular change actually addresses the issue?

what i am looking for? why, nothing short of the best and most awesome'ist player experience possible, from on of the greatest and most amazing'ist of all the MMO's i've ever played... naturally. why, are you looking for something else?

I'm asking this in regards to your thought experiment. When conducting an experiment, we should look at what we want to observe. The "most awesome'ist player experience" is a great ideal to have but isn't experimentally derived data.

do you really support the notion that any one class should not be able to complete a quest in relatively the same time-frame as any other class? sounds like class prejudice. not saying you're classist... but it sorta' sounds like a classist remark. should female characters also be forced to conform to your standards? maybe have less carrying capacity? better cooking and cleaning skills, but lower strength and endurance? ;-)

I'm saying that there should be benefits and drawbacks. If the drawback happens to be completion time but I get benefits that justify that then so be it. Really nice ad hominem by the way, but I sincerely doubt that it adds to the discussion any.

[ggmarquez]

However, with that example, we have to look at whether the extra damage for confront any foe is justified. CAF uses up charges, so it has another limiting factor in addition to a cooldown (albeit an admittedly short one). And those are just a couple aspects that we're looking at. We could look at its former ability to hit multiple targets and do a triple cleave and other aspects to get a better grasp on its utility. However, there isn't anything inherently negative about an ability doing more damage than other abilities because of these other considerations. It helps not to look at the abilities in a vacuum.

i'm actually unaware of any vacuum in which i could view our class and ED abilities. is there some third party software or something? i'm unfamiliar with using outside resources, mostly i just play. at any rate, i was referring to pre-nerf CaF, where the lack of any cooldown allowed it to hit faster than any standard attack animation. which is why they added the 2 second cooldown to begin with. because you could just pop turn of the tide and then ignore the entire attack-chain sequence by spamming CaF. which resulted in a significant dps increase, at least until you ran out of charges. but because it ignored standard attack animations, it was bypassing the built in safe-guards which limit number of attacks per second. so no bueno.

I'm not saying that the player base must do this. I'm merely pointing out the unlikelihood of effectively balancing classes and abilities without having the whole picture.

oh indeed, it would very difficult to achieve any semblance of balance without the bigger picture. which is why it's left to "them" and not to "us". but, of course, this facilitates an almost adversarial relationship between devs and players and perpetuates the "us vs them" trope. tricky tricky.

Really? It isn't balanced because it's being built around? If that was the case then summoning builds must be overpowered because there are people that build around it. What about flame blade or the shadow blade? And who are we looking at that builds around these overperforming abilities anyways? How likely is average person to recognize or utilize the true "brokenness" of an ability? There could be any number of reasons that a person builds a toon around an ability. Effectiveness, flavor, challenge, ease of use, etc., such that it shouldn't be immediately obvious that that particular ability is overperforming.

summoning builds are actually a great example. yes, people try to build them. once. then they come here, or elsewhere, and complain that such a build can't function in the current landscape of the game, realize it won't result in anything actionable, and TR out of the build. it may be possible that some aspects of summoning builds are actually overpreforming. but if that is the case, there isn't a whisper of it anywhere, and all evidence is to the contrary.

which is exactly what i mean by 'build around' balance. CaF was worth building around, because it was broken. summoner builds are also broken, but in the opposite direction. they aren't worth building around. it doesn't take more than a cursory search to determine that this is both true, and the reasons behind that truth.

I do think that there should be a standard. However, for the second part of your statement, this numerical precision, I'm actually stating the opposite, because there are certain aspects of a class that can't be compared quantitatively. That's why I asked how much the ability to heal is worth. What about the ability to do damage from a distance? However, the numbers are still important. I was pointing out the problem with your thought experiment because it seemed to rely only on anecdotal evidence. When we aren't taking into account fair representations of the classes and abilities then how do you expect to balance them?

well, there isn't a realistic way to determine a fair representation of any class or build. in chess, a computer can calculate the move with the highest probability of leading to an advantage. DDO doesn't have a deep blue. or a stock fish. what we have are players, some willing to bug report, some willing to rant on the forums, some only willing to share in private on their guild's discord, and some who won't do any or all of that. so our information arsenal, so to speak, must needs come from the playerbase itself. i've never seen a perfectly played monk. though i've seen many monks who looked to be played very very well. but every single one of them may have mistimed their finishers, failed to but debuffs into a red-named rotation, forgot to utilize a handy quick-swap etc. etc. the point being, we approximate fair representation of class and build, based on out human abilities, rather than trusting a predefined 'zero sum game' extrapolation from artificial intelligence or similar source material.

Again, you're talking about abilities that are being used in ways that weren't intended, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about abilities that are used as they were designed to be used. The continuous use of bugged examples makes me wonder if you think that abilities and classes cannot be imbalanced without being bugged in some way. Look at warlock or inquisitive when they first came out. Can you honestly say that they were balanced on arrival, or that if they weren't, that it was the result of a bug?

i haven't actually read through the terms of service, at least in its entirety. but from what i've been able to gather, almost everything players do in-game, other than spending money, could be construed as a violation of ToS, in some form, or another. that is a silly thing to say, but it reflects the attitude i've chosen to adopt. basically, i have no idea what is, or isn't, meant to be used, one way, or another. i may have picked examples of bugs rather than abilities i believe to be working as intended, for my examples, yes. but that's only because its harder to come up with a solid example of something that is actually working properly, and use it contextually here. like, jump capping at 40. this is to be expected, as it has been this way for such a long time, no one would think twice about it... until the moment they discover a certain race/gender combo can get higher/lower max jump. if lower, they would bug report, flame the forums until it was fixed. if higher, they may just sit on that info until they can figure out how to 'build around' it. because having a higher jump than what is normally allowed, may have unknown advantages making it worth 'building around'. i suppose we could have that same discussion without bringing bugs into it, just by reflecting upon the fact that even with a modest jump score, it's already still too easy to find safe spots and perches in a large percentage of total quest content. fair. but i have no idea how i would go about interpreting that kind of data, since i don't know how much of that is against ToS or the dev's intention.

The data I'm asking about is from comparing numbers and seeing what all is involved in retrieving said numbers. A truly fair representation of a build would be showing what effects and values you can get in the absence of gear (since a lot of items benefit more than one class and we're looking at the classes individually). Gear should have its own balancing metric. By your line of reasoning, if most players decide that the monk is in a bad position then it must be in a bad position because that is the amalgamation of the player experience. This, however, doesn't account for the possibility that many of those players might not be playing monk even close to its true potential.

which is true, and it's fair to point out. however, i would find it hard to believe, going by just the limited number of "good" monk players i've personally known, that most players would decide this. in the unlikely event that most players did decide that monks are in a rut, i would examine why it was posited in such a way, and if i concluded that literally none of the players playing monk were actually utilizing the class to its full potential, i would have no choice but to conclude that the class was designed poorly. and that it would need an overhaul in order to justify continuing to offer access to the class for real life coppers.

And that's how we get blanket nerfs. It might be one attack for the monk or one aspect of ranged that is overperforming. To nerf all these things without pinpointing the issue doesn't really aid the cause of balance because you end up hurting builds that weren't overperforming in the process. Take the inquisitive. Now I'm not gonna say that a blanket nerf to ranged was unwarranted, but I will say that if I saw nothing but inquisitives running around then I wonder what is more likely: that inquisitive alone needed a nerf or that all ranged needed to be docked. Again, not saying that we didn't need to reduce ranged damage, but with all of those data points pointing towards one particular build it wouldn't be immediately obvious to me that the ranged style in general was overperforming. Even if you were joking about the monk nerfs, I find the humor to be in poor taste because it demonstrates a hammer-smashing approach to changes that I think is not terribly efficient.

i didn't mean i agree with how they handled monk nerfs, or any nerfs in particular. i only meant it was humorous to consider how monkcher was forced out of the limelight, only to be replaced by the next thing, and then the next, ad nauseam. buff/nerf cycles keep the meta moving. otherwise we wouldn't have the range of diversity which is a hallmark of D&D. it's true that it often feels like putting balance behind "balance", where offering overprefomance for straight cash can kill the buzz... but without some turn-around, all classes and builds would be left in a static power relationship, the "hierarchy of classes" focused on keeping everything where it is, without a chance to bring anything up from the bottom, or move the top builds down so others can have a chance to shine. this obviously muddies the definition of balance, and also leaves a bad feeling in my mouth when using the term in such a way. but if you start with all 15 classes being not-very balanced at all, and every so often offer an update which attempts to bring a little more balance than before, eventually players will come to recognize that every update, every patch, offers a healthier, more fair and workable game space, for everyone. at least ideally.

Your poetic descriptions are superfluous.

yes. and may i put that in my sig? thank you

My point isn't that we need to have it exactly the same. In fact, if you read what I typed the past few posts I was pointing out the immense difficulty in doing so without stripping meaning and uniqueness from the game. My point is that when someone says that the tide is too high (using your analogy) but they didn't bother to stand up... then I can't take such comments seriously. Is it still true for that person? As much as an opinion can be I suppose, but if the devs are looking to see how high the tide should be for a standing person then my complaints as a sitting person doesn't really provide meaningful information, does it?

quite right. but even those with a height disadvantage may play DDO and shouldn't necessarily be ignored. the water may come up to my chest, but my friend in a wheel-chair would be drowning if he tried to stand beside me. my opinions aren't right, and his wrong, just because i can breath easier with my height.

Enjoyment may be a factor in balance or QoL changes, but it isn't the only aspect. I very much enjoy my CC casters. That doesn't mean that I can complete quests with CC alone. Although, perhaps there is a more illustrative example. Suppose most people really liked pressing one button to break through encounters. Pressing that one button to not deal with monsters is enjoyable for them. Can we still say that this leads to a healthy game? Additionally, as you've previously stated, you cannot quantify enjoyment. I'd go even further and say that some classes will inherently be more enjoyable than others. It is unlikely, for example, for the devs to change how the barbarian compares to the other classes wrt performance such that I will be more inclined to play them. That's my playstyle. I enjoy the classes I play precisely because of what they can do conceptually and not because they are more effective than others. I understand that not everyone is of a similar mind, but I'm saying this to illustrate a point. My enjoyment of a class, or yours, or anyone else's, is not completely indicative of the class's performance.

but you know, it isn't just fire sorcs who can press one button to complete a quest. if that really is a source of satisfaction for some, they actually have ample opportunities to build for that level of play. but, what i meant by enjoyment, wasn't so much that every ability and action necessarily needs be enjoyable for everyone. merely, if it works the way it was designed, that it should be enjoyable to those who use it. that seems a small distinction, allow me to expound by analogy: you are a baker. purveyor of delicious baked goods. in the first instance, you attempt to force every patron to eat chocolate-chip cookies, because you believe that chocolate-chip cookies will be enjoyable. obviously this will fail. in the second instance, you attempt to make chocolate-chip cookies, which when consumed by those who have selected them, will be enjoyable. this may not always succeed, but you'll do much better business.

Not at all. I'll take contrasting opinions when they are relevant to the discussion. If I'm trying to discuss whether or not a class is overperforming, I'm going to look at empirical evidence that shows this. I'm going to look at what people are doing that allows them to overperform or (if they are not doing it) what is making them underperform. The enjoyment of said class is a secondary issue. In the example I gave above, it could be the case that despite not really enjoying barbarian empirical evidence shows that it is overperforming compared to other classes, because those are two different aspects.

yes, this seems very logical. i put myself through an abundance of alchemist bombadier builds, even though it was overpreforming, because i wanted to experience it. eventually i came to enjoy it less than other builds, precisely because it was OP, and i felt like i didn't have to work at it, to make it work. indeed, i understand the idea all too well. but then, i had stopped playing alchemist precisely because i no longer enjoyed it, and moved on to some melee builds. now that alchemist has been through it's first baby nerf, i might try it again, just to see how enjoyable it has become. (though i'll probably still complain about how strong it is)

Not begging for anything actually. I gave monk as an example because it has a low floor and a high ceiling. I also gave examples of warlock and sorc, but I could just as easily give any other class. The point was to demonstrate more than sheer numerical superiority goes into balance considerations, and it seems you and I already agree on this. And also, I suppose CaF might be over-tuned, but if I didn't know why and in what way then how would I know it simply isn't because I'm not using it right? Going even further, how would I know if a particular change actually addresses the issue?

oh, yeah i didn't mean you were actually begging on behalf of monks. i should have said hypothetical beg thread. apologies.

how would anyone known anything about any ability? by using it. playtesting. exhaustive playtesting. if you find that CaF, boulders might, momentum swing, and celestial mandate, all behave in the same way... that is, a cleave-like ability which overwrites your normal attack animations, hits multiple targets, and has a +w component, but only CaF has no cooldown.... you know that it will always do more dps, not just to a group, but even a raid boss. because no cooldown + ignores normal attack animations is a recipe for very very delicious cookies indeed.

I'm asking this in regards to your thought experiment. When conducting an experiment, we should look at what we want to observe. The "most awesome'ist player experience" is a great ideal to have but isn't experimentally derived data.

i mean, i know DDO can feel like a never ending social experiment. but at the end of the day, it's still just a game. all data is meaningful, we just have to find where to put it, in order to find its relevance. hard data and raw facts are great. thoughts an opinions aren't all that bad either. not really. but its the poetry of DDO i'm interested in. even if it's got a lot of numbers strewn about it.

I'm saying that there should be benefits and drawbacks. If the drawback happens to be completion time but I get benefits that justify that then so be it. Really nice ad hominem by the way, but I sincerely doubt that it adds to the discussion any.

levity adds to all manner of meaningful discourse. i'm not trying to win any internet points. you can have them all.

[Tuxedoman96]

i'm actually unaware of any vacuum in which i could view our class and ED abilities. is there some third party software or something? i'm unfamiliar with using outside resources, mostly i just play. at any rate, i was referring to pre-nerf CaF, where the lack of any cooldown allowed it to hit faster than any standard attack animation. which is why they added the 2 second cooldown to begin with. because you could just pop turn of the tide and then ignore the entire attack-chain sequence by spamming CaF. which resulted in a significant dps increase, at least until you ran out of charges. but because it ignored standard attack animations, it was bypassing the built in safe-guards which limit number of attacks per second. so no bueno.

What I meant was that just doing a numerical comparison on damage doesn't provide all of the necessary details that would indicate whether or not something needs to be changed. Let's say that there was an ability that did 5 times the damage of any other ability in the game. Now let's say that you could only use this ability once per rest. If we were just looking at the damage than it would appear as if we should reduce the damage of the ability, without factoring in the fact that you can only use that ability once per rest and therefore can't spam it.

oh indeed, it would very difficult to achieve any semblance of balance without the bigger picture. which is why it's left to "them" and not to "us". but, of course, this facilitates an almost adversarial relationship between devs and players and perpetuates the "us vs them" trope. tricky tricky.

Well, it's less about any sort of "us vs them" and more that it's more reliable and effective to discuss and provide feedback on whether something should or shouldn't be changed when we are looking at it from more than one angle.

summoning builds are actually a great example. yes, people try to build them. once. then they come here, or elsewhere, and complain that such a build can't function in the current landscape of the game, realize it won't result in anything actionable, and TR out of the build. it may be possible that some aspects of summoning builds are actually overpreforming. but if that is the case, there isn't a whisper of it anywhere, and all evidence is to the contrary.

What I was pointing out was that you can still build around such a concept. In fact, you could build around such a concept and be decent in other areas. Will you have the best build in the game? Probably not, but I think it's better to not set hasty generalizations like merely "building around" something as a benchmark for determining that something needs to change. If I saw most people building around summons, then perhaps that's grounds for investigation, but the mere act of building around summons should not be concerning or indicative of some broken mechanic.

which is exactly what i mean by 'build around' balance. CaF was worth building around, because it was broken. summoner builds are also broken, but in the opposite direction. they aren't worth building around. it doesn't take more than a cursory search to determine that this is both true, and the reasons behind that truth.

Whether or not something is worth building around really depends on the person.

well, there isn't a realistic way to determine a fair representation of any class or build. in chess, a computer can calculate the move with the highest probability of leading to an advantage. DDO doesn't have a deep blue. or a stock fish. what we have are players, some willing to bug report, some willing to rant on the forums, some only willing to share in private on their guild's discord, and some who won't do any or all of that. so our information arsenal, so to speak, must needs come from the playerbase itself. i've never seen a perfectly played monk. though i've seen many monks who looked to be played very very well. but every single one of them may have mistimed their finishers, failed to but debuffs into a red-named rotation, forgot to utilize a handy quick-swap etc. etc. the point being, we approximate fair representation of class and build, based on out human abilities, rather than trusting a predefined 'zero sum game' extrapolation from artificial intelligence or similar source material.

Certainly, we are looking at the human application of these abilities. That's why we should look at players that play that class (if we are going to use monk as an example) often and see what it is that is being done to great effect. If even some of the best monk players are outperformed in every aspect by the other classes then that leads me to think that monks should be reviewed. I would not use the average of player experiences to discuss balance changes, because, quite honestly, the average might be a far cry from the potential of the class, especially when that potential is largely attributed to skill rather than gearing. I am of the mind that balance should measure potential vs potential whereas QoL should measure the average experience vs average experience.

i haven't actually read through the terms of service, at least in its entirety. but from what i've been able to gather, almost everything players do in-game, other than spending money, could be construed as a violation of ToS, in some form, or another. that is a silly thing to say, but it reflects the attitude i've chosen to adopt. basically, i have no idea what is, or isn't, meant to be used, one way, or another. i may have picked examples of bugs rather than abilities i believe to be working as intended, for my examples, yes. but that's only because its harder to come up with a solid example of something that is actually working properly, and use it contextually here. like, jump capping at 40. this is to be expected, as it has been this way for such a long time, no one would think twice about it... until the moment they discover a certain race/gender combo can get higher/lower max jump. if lower, they would bug report, flame the forums until it was fixed. if higher, they may just sit on that info until they can figure out how to 'build around' it. because having a higher jump than what is normally allowed, may have unknown advantages making it worth 'building around'. i suppose we could have that same discussion without bringing bugs into it, just by reflecting upon the fact that even with a modest jump score, it's already still too easy to find safe spots and perches in a large percentage of total quest content. fair. but i have no idea how i would go about interpreting that kind of data, since i don't know how much of that is against ToS or the dev's intention.

I will concede that most aspects of the game are murky. However, some addition to the game are so much more powerful than their contemporaries that it's hard to see it as anything but deliberate. It's hard to say that inquisitve was anything close to balanced when it came out. The devs obviously had the data that would've shown that that ranged style would be much more powerful than the other ranged styles. They have a lot more information on hand then we do, especially because they also have their agendas, which for the most part, we can only speculate about. Most of the players pointed out how much more powerful inquisitive would be compared to the other ranged styles, which means that just the information we were given was enough to predict a clear difference in performance. And of course, the devs are human, just like us, so there is always the benefit of the doubt. However, when you have to nerf every aspect of that ranged style, it makes me wonder how big of a "mistake" (if the players want to call it that) one person has to make before the other person has to wonder if it isn't intentional.

which is true, and it's fair to point out. however, i would find it hard to believe, going by just the limited number of "good" monk players i've personally known, that most players would decide this. in the unlikely event that most players did decide that monks are in a rut, i would examine why it was posited in such a way, and if i concluded that literally none of the players playing monk were actually utilizing the class to its full potential, i would have no choice but to conclude that the class was designed poorly. and that it would need an overhaul in order to justify continuing to offer access to the class for real life coppers.

True, but such a change would be better left as a QoL change rather than a balance one. As I've said above, balance changes should address potential vs potential, because it is the players' skill that brings out said potential. The QoL changes would just make it so that most players have an easier time utilizing a decent amount of that potential, and I'm all for QoL changes. What I mean is that if the monk would need to be overhauled because of general handling difficulty, then the ideal scenario would be to make changes such that the ceiling remains at the same height but the floor is raised by an amount deemed appropriate.

i didn't mean i agree with how they handled monk nerfs, or any nerfs in particular. i only meant it was humorous to consider how monkcher was forced out of the limelight, only to be replaced by the next thing, and then the next, ad nauseam. buff/nerf cycles keep the meta moving. otherwise we wouldn't have the range of diversity which is a hallmark of D&D. it's true that it often feels like putting balance behind "balance", where offering overprefomance for straight cash can kill the buzz... but without some turn-around, all classes and builds would be left in a static power relationship, the "hierarchy of classes" focused on keeping everything where it is, without a chance to bring anything up from the bottom, or move the top builds down so others can have a chance to shine. this obviously muddies the definition of balance, and also leaves a bad feeling in my mouth when using the term in such a way.

Well yes, we are talking about relative rankings here, and I agree that the META should not go unchallenged and unchanged, but there is a difference between having builds/classes that are so much better than the alternatives that everyone is using them and having builds/classes that are better than the alternatives to a degree that while some players are using them as the META, the majority of the players can still play what they enjoy without feeling that they offer very little to the party if they aren't pandering to that META.

but if you start with all 15 classes being not-very balanced at all, and every so often offer an update which attempts to bring a little more balance than before, eventually players will come to recognize that every update, every patch, offers a healthier, more fair and workable game space, for everyone. at least ideally.

That only really works if the changes you make to the classes (and the addition of new classes) don't make them exceedingly more powerful than the others. Otherwise all you've really done is changed the position on the totem without bringing the power levels (for lack of a better term) closer to each other. I dabble in idealism myself, because as a giant purple man once said "reality is often disappointing".

yes. and may i put that in my sig? thank you

Seems like you already have.

quite right. but even those with a height disadvantage may play DDO and shouldn't necessarily be ignored. the water may come up to my chest, but my friend in a wheel-chair would be drowning if he tried to stand beside me. my opinions aren't right, and his wrong, just because i can breath easier with my height.

I'm not saying they should be ignored, nor am I saying that anyone's opinions are wrong. What I'm saying is that the complaints of the person in the wheelchair (to address your addition to my analogy) is best considered with a different question in mind. If I ask "how are the people handling the height of the waves" then the person in the wheelchair would serve as a data point. In fact, I am wholly in support of accessibility features for the game (we could always use more), as I know that there are real-life complications that make it difficult for some people to play the game.

but you know, it isn't just fire sorcs who can press one button to complete a quest. if that really is a source of satisfaction for some, they actually have ample opportunities to build for that level of play. but, what i meant by enjoyment, wasn't so much that every ability and action necessarily needs be enjoyable for everyone. merely, if it works the way it was designed, that it should be enjoyable to those who use it. that seems a small distinction, allow me to expound by analogy: you are a baker. purveyor of delicious baked goods. in the first instance, you attempt to force every patron to eat chocolate-chip cookies, because you believe that chocolate-chip cookies will be enjoyable. obviously this will fail. in the second instance, you attempt to make chocolate-chip cookies, which when consumed by those who have selected them, will be enjoyable. this may not always succeed, but you'll do much better business.

Right. That's why we have different classes. Using your analogy, the classes are like the cookies. There will obviously be classes/cookies that I will prefer over others. Regardless of how well a baker makes oatmeal raisin cookies, I'm not more likely to eat one, although I may eat one to shake things up a bit.

oh, yeah i didn't mean you were actually begging on behalf of monks. i should have said hypothetical beg thread. apologies.

Well, my contention had more to do with the lack of relevance of that comment, funnily enough. I mean, does talking about CaF have any bearing on a hypothetical beg thread for monks? Probably not, although one can't deny that monks might be using that ability. CaF would still have relevance to balance though, and definitely to the Divine Crusader destiny. However, I think it is best to use the microscope approach. Start large, with the whole picture, looking at how close the ideal performance of the classes measure up to each other, and narrow down to abilities and aspects that make certain classes outliers. Also, we should see how classes would act without such abilities. if the class would still be overpowered without CaF, that doesn't mean that CaF shouldn't be adjusted, but it does mean that the problem is likely rooted deeper than just an epic ability.

how would anyone known anything about any ability? by using it. playtesting. exhaustive playtesting. if you find that CaF, boulders might, momentum swing, and celestial mandate, all behave in the same way... that is, a cleave-like ability which overwrites your normal attack animations, hits multiple targets, and has a +w component, but only CaF has no cooldown.... you know that it will always do more dps, not just to a group, but even a raid boss. because no cooldown + ignores normal attack animations is a recipe for very very delicious cookies indeed.

Depends on the other aspects of those other abilities and how they interact with each other. If each one has a short cooldown and they add things other than +[W], like crit range/multi, etc., then an in-depth analysis and comparison would have to be done, and I'd be less inclined to say definitively that CaF is superior. Though I will concede that the lack of a cooldown for CaF makes me lean initially to the idea that that ability is superior. Good thing we don't always go with our gut feeling, right?

i mean, i know DDO can feel like a never ending social experiment. but at the end of the day, it's still just a game.

Anything can be a social experiment if you try hard enough

all data is meaningful, we just have to find where to put it, in order to find its relevance. hard data and raw facts are great. thoughts an opinions aren't all that bad either. not really.

All data is meaningful, and at the same time meaningless, because at the end of the day, it is the observer who assigns significance to the data. The reason relevance is important is because without it, it becomes much harder to see the connections between the discreet pieces of data and information that manifest. I say this as a person who peruses the internet for random knowledge that is often not relevant for daily activity.

but its the poetry of DDO i'm interested in. even if it's got a lot of numbers strewn about it.

The scientific pursuit, much like the pursuit of poetic expression, has its own form of beauty.

levity adds to all manner of meaningful discourse. i'm not trying to win any internet points. you can have them all.

But what do I buy with these points?

[Tilomere]

Instead of quantifying inputs, you can just look at resulting XP/sec. One stat to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.

If "whatevers" really is valuable, it will be reflected in the xp report.

[ggmarquez]

What I meant was that just doing a numerical comparison on damage doesn't provide all of the necessary details that would indicate whether or not something needs to be changed. Let's say that there was an ability that did 5 times the damage of any other ability in the game. Now let's say that you could only use this ability once per rest. If we were just looking at the damage than it would appear as if we should reduce the damage of the ability, without factoring in the fact that you can only use that ability once per rest and therefore can't spam it.

right. but then we would need to evaluate the interactions between the ability with 5x damage, and other boosts, from enhancement trees, feats and ED's to determine if there was the potential for abuse. like, adrenaline + melee power action boost + prowess + whatever else, and the result is the ability to kill mamma hound without charming the puppies in hox with nothing more than a single, once per rest ability, abused to one-shot a raid boss. which is exactly what happened with adrenaline, and why they changed hox that first time, after ED's came out.

What I was pointing out was that you can still build around such a concept. In fact, you could build around such a concept and be decent in other areas. Will you have the best build in the game? Probably not, but I think it's better to not set hasty generalizations like merely "building around" something as a benchmark for determining that something needs to change. If I saw most people building around summons, then perhaps that's grounds for investigation, but the mere act of building around summons should not be concerning or indicative of some broken mechanic.

yes, you 'can' build around silly things... like jump. i've seen it done. someone went through the trouble of building a max jump character, even knowing it was useless. then there's that famous max swim build... but that only serves as an illustration of how heavy-handed the game itself is, when penalizing characters for being built around any of the myriad features and abilities which have no tangible benefits inside of quests.

Whether or not something is worth building around really depends on the person.

snake blood. i don't think i really need to explain this one, but nobody builds around snake blood. it's a feat. we all know it, some people even take it, usually for role-play purposes. but nobody builds around it. it doesn't depend on the person. at least, not entirely.

I will concede that most aspects of the game are murky. However, some addition to the game are so much more powerful than their contemporaries that it's hard to see it as anything but deliberate. It's hard to say that inquisitve was anything close to balanced when it came out. The devs obviously had the data that would've shown that that ranged style would be much more powerful than the other ranged styles. They have a lot more information on hand then we do, especially because they also have their agendas, which for the most part, we can only speculate about. Most of the players pointed out how much more powerful inquisitive would be compared to the other ranged styles, which means that just the information we were given was enough to predict a clear difference in performance. And of course, the devs are human, just like us, so there is always the benefit of the doubt. However, when you have to nerf every aspect of that ranged style, it makes me wonder how big of a "mistake" (if the players want to call it that) one person has to make before the other person has to wonder if it isn't intentional.

i don't think they nerfed 'every aspect' of inquisitive. draw distance was left alone... infinite still, i presume. reload animations and attack speed scaling with bab untouched. movement speed while kiting was also unchanged. i could go on...

yes, inquisitive was powerful, and became pretty popular. and they reigned it in, and now it's less powerful and less popular. but i still use the inquisitive tree, run some lives and alts as inquisitive, and i still see inqui's around. so whatever changes they made seem to have worked toward a level of 'balance' perhaps already achieved. at least for now.

Well yes, we are talking about relative rankings here, and I agree that the META should not go unchallenged and unchanged, but there is a difference between having builds/classes that are so much better than the alternatives that everyone is using them and having builds/classes that are better than the alternatives to a degree that while some players are using them as the META, the majority of the players can still play what they enjoy without feeling that they offer very little to the party if they aren't pandering to that META.

right. inquisitive was just a single data point, on a long line of similar points, which draw an arrow. the arrow points forward, toward the newest class or universal tree, and indicates a trend. warlock, alchemist, horizon walker and whatever else to come down the pipe-line... it's all going to be a continuation of this trend. money moves the meta. because if warm feelings and a sense of pride in work well-done could keep a business running, we would all be living in the lap of luxury already.

That only really works if the changes you make to the classes (and the addition of new classes) don't make them exceedingly more powerful than the others. Otherwise all you've really done is changed the position on the totem without bringing the power levels (for lack of a better term) closer to each other. I dabble in idealism myself, because as a giant purple man once said "reality is often disappointing".

yes, perhaps. but it looks like the design goal is to re-establish 'balance' within the class's that already exist, determine if anything needs adjustment, then release the new thing at a level ahead of everything else, no only to drive sales, but to shake up the meta. then repeat the process with every new class or design feature, creating meta cycles which stimulate sales and invigorate the current game climate.

whether this is good or bad is for each player themselves to decide.

I'm not saying they should be ignored, nor am I saying that anyone's opinions are wrong. What I'm saying is that the complaints of the person in the wheelchair (to address your addition to my analogy) is best considered with a different question in mind. If I ask "how are the people handling the height of the waves" then the person in the wheelchair would serve as a data point. In fact, I am wholly in support of accessibility features for the game (we could always use more), as I know that there are real-life complications that make it difficult for some people to play the game.

this is really the crux of almost every argument involving balance. a very long time ago, in a very different game, i played with a man who had lost a hand, and two finger on the other. he was a good fella' and had a wonderful disposition, even-keeled with a fine sense of humor. a joy to play with, at all times. but his physical stature put him at a disadvantage when it came to game-play. i wouldn't have traded all my experience and time spent with that particular person, even for the best player or the highest rated, despite it being a highly competitive pvp game.

when someone button mashes, or uses a single ability to overcome all in-game challenges... it could be for physical reasons. or any number of reasons beyond our comprehension or their control. so it's hard for me to criticize anyone who plays a certain way, and it's equally difficult to justify using the sort of language i've often encounter here, when requesting changes to certain play-styles. being insensitive is uncool.

but you know... that friend of mine did more with 3 fingers than i ever would have believed. and he didn't complain about his disadvantage. he played as well as he could, and made everyone around him aware that he loved it. both the game, and the challenge it represented, especially with his handicap.

i don't think we need to see the game brought down, to the benefit of a few who otherwise would have a harder time. but i also don't think we should ignore the fact that not every one will have the ability or opportunity to fully utilize any class or feature to its maximum potential.

Right. That's why we have different classes. Using your analogy, the classes are like the cookies. There will obviously be classes/cookies that I will prefer over others. Regardless of how well a baker makes oatmeal raisin cookies, I'm not more likely to eat one, although I may eat one to shake things up a bit.

just so. i would go even further and suggest that every feature inside of the game is a cookie. if any part of the game experience leaves a bad flavor in the mouth or mind of the player, the baker needs to know. it's hard to bake a better cookie without that level of feedback.

Depends on the other aspects of those other abilities and how they interact with each other. If each one has a short cooldown and they add things other than +[W], like crit range/multi, etc., then an in-depth analysis and comparison would have to be done, and I'd be less inclined to say definitively that CaF is superior. Though I will concede that the lack of a cooldown for CaF makes me lean initially to the idea that that ability is superior. Good thing we don't always go with our gut feeling, right?

yes, well... gut feeling works well when theory-crafting. play-testing doesn't let your gut get away with very much. when something is working better than it should, you know. because you've already been using it, and learned to abuse it, even if that wasn't your initial intent.

All data is meaningful, and at the same time meaningless, because at the end of the day, it is the observer who assigns significance to the data. The reason relevance is important is because without it, it becomes much harder to see the connections between the discreet pieces of data and information that manifest. I say this as a person who peruses the internet for random knowledge that is often not relevant for daily activity.

right. i was replying to those remarks, in that manner, because you seemed so willing to dismiss what you considered irrelevant. relevance is difficult to determine, and it would be a shame to throw away a large portion of accumulated data, only to discover, at a later time, that it wasn't so irrelevant after all.

But what do I buy with these points?

you know, i'm not really sure, myself. some people really care about those things though, for some reason. like, they check in which foursquare and it really matters to them how many 'likes' they get on their facebook page. :shrugs:

[ggmarquez]

Instead of quantifying inputs, you can just look at resulting XP/sec. One stat to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.

If "whatevers" really is valuable, it will be reflected in the xp report.

but what if i'm running 6 accounts in an end game raid, using exploit builds? the xp report will probably show a relatively longer completion time, since i'm soloing. but at the same time, i'm using features in a way that they were not designed to be used.

[Tuxedoman96]

right. but then we would need to evaluate the interactions between the ability with 5x damage, and other boosts, from enhancement trees, feats and ED's to determine if there was the potential for abuse. like, adrenaline + melee power action boost + prowess + whatever else, and the result is the ability to kill mamma hound without charming the puppies in hox with nothing more than a single, once per rest ability, abused to one-shot a raid boss. which is exactly what happened with adrenaline, and why they changed hox that first time, after ED's came out.

That's what I said before. That's what I meant by not looking at the abilities in a vacuum.

yes, you 'can' build around silly things... like jump. i've seen it done. someone went through the trouble of building a max jump character, even knowing it was useless. then there's that famous max swim build... but that only serves as an illustration of how heavy-handed the game itself is, when penalizing characters for being built around any of the myriad features and abilities which have no tangible benefits inside of quests.

Not sure what your point is here. I was simply stating that your initial definition of an overpowered ability/build was too general to really distinguish between those that are OP and those that aren't.

snake blood. i don't think i really need to explain this one, but nobody builds around snake blood. it's a feat.

That's a misleading example, because you are looking at one particular feat rather than a concept. Of course no one is going to build around Snake Blood because there's simply not enough other aspects that are related to it to build a concept around. With the building around summons example I gave, you're not just taking one summon spells; you are acquiring a myriad of summoning abilities and feats and enhancements and items to improve upon that idea. Power Attack is a good example of a feat you can build around precisely because there are so many abilities that are related to it. You have at least 2 stacking enhancements for increasing the damage of the feat, one enhancement that adds damage to ranged that increases with bonuses to PA, and an epic enhancement that increases your weapon dice multiplier when you have PA activated. Now is this OP? Can't really say for sure, but I can say that there would probably be more people building around Snake Blood if there were other abilities that were connected to it.

we all know it, some people even take it, usually for role-play purposes.

People building around a concept for flavor doesn't actual refute my point.

but nobody builds around it. it doesn't depend on the person. at least, not entirely.

I never said that it depends entirely on the person, but you can't deny that the whims of the player plays a part in what they design, and that's what I was getting at.

i don't think they nerfed 'every aspect' of inquisitive. draw distance was left alone... infinite still, i presume. reload animations and attack speed scaling with bab untouched. movement speed while kiting was also unchanged. i could go on...

You're right. May I then amend my statement to several key aspects of the combat style? They nerfed the number of dice (damage), they nerfed the ranged power scaling (damage), they nerfed the benefit from doubleshot (RoF), and they nerfed IPS (which hit the other ranged styles). Having to nerf more than one factor of the ranged style makes me doubt that the tree was pushed out with the intention of balance or even "slightly better" in mind. It's also not like they couldn't have known that that ranged style would be vastly superior to the other ranged styles. They not only had the math pointed out by the players, they had the lamannia preview for player playtesting, and more importantly, they have their own internal testing to show how inquisitive would fare. That said, I do wish that they kept the lamannia servers up more often for play-testing, but I understand from a financial point of view why they don't.

yes, inquisitive was powerful, and became pretty popular. and they reigned it in, and now it's less powerful and less popular. but i still use the inquisitive tree, run some lives and alts as inquisitive, and i still see inqui's around. so whatever changes they made seem to have worked toward a level of 'balance' perhaps already achieved. at least for now.

You're not getting my point. I'm saying that the tree didn't have to be so much more powerful than the alternatives, and furthermore, that so many nerfs shouldn't have happened at once, or at the very least the tree should have been introduced in such a way that so many nerfs wouldn't have needed to be made all at once. I'm saying this as a guy that didn't play inquisitive when it first came out by the way. The problem is a matter of principle. How is anyone to know that the classes are being balanced appropriately if they are immediately recognized as overpowered when they are put on the shelves and then several different parts of it are nerfed all at once? And keep in mind, when I'm talking about overpowered, I'm not talking about merely "better than everything else"; I'm talking about "so much better than everything else that you'd only be playing any 'competing' alternative for flavor" (competing here referring to the styles that fall under the same umbrella, so I wouldn't compare inquisitive to THF for example).

right. inquisitive was just a single data point, on a long line of similar points, which draw an arrow. the arrow points forward, toward the newest class or universal tree, and indicates a trend. warlock, alchemist, horizon walker and whatever else to come down the pipe-line... it's all going to be a continuation of this trend. money moves the meta. because if warm feelings and a sense of pride in work well-done could keep a business running, we would all be living in the lap of luxury already.

yes, perhaps. but it looks like the design goal is to re-establish 'balance' within the class's that already exist, determine if anything needs adjustment, then release the new thing at a level ahead of everything else, no only to drive sales, but to shake up the meta. then repeat the process with every new class or design feature, creating meta cycles which stimulate sales and invigorate the current game climate.

whether this is good or bad is for each player themselves to decide.

You say that as if there aren't any people that would purchase such things for the sake of having a different playstyle to explore. Also, I know that money moves the meta. That much is apparent. But the meta should (and does) exist for the power-gamers, and those players would gravitate to the new meta even if the next best thing is only marginally better, because it'll still be the most effective. There's no reason why players that just want to contribute to the party should feel the need to hop onto the meta to be useful. That only breeds ill sentiment in said players. There's no way that sending out an OP class/tree wasn't going to annoy the players that want to contribute in their group, and there's no way that nerfing so many aspects of said class/tree at once wasn't going to aggravate anyone who was using it for fun or profit (or both). And then there are those who are annoyed by the whole process because it looks dubious and underhanded.

this is really the crux of almost every argument involving balance. a very long time ago, in a very different game, i played with a man who had lost a hand, and two finger on the other. he was a good fella' and had a wonderful disposition, even-keeled with a fine sense of humor. a joy to play with, at all times. but his physical stature put him at a disadvantage when it came to game-play. i wouldn't have traded all my experience and time spent with that particular person, even for the best player or the highest rated, despite it being a highly competitive pvp game.

when someone button mashes, or uses a single ability to overcome all in-game challenges... it could be for physical reasons. or any number of reasons beyond our comprehension or their control. so it's hard for me to criticize anyone who plays a certain way, and it's equally difficult to justify using the sort of language i've often encounter here, when requesting changes to certain play-styles. being insensitive is uncool.

The forums could always stand to be a little more civil.

but you know... that friend of mine did more with 3 fingers than i ever would have believed. and he didn't complain about his disadvantage. he played as well as he could, and made everyone around him aware that he loved it. both the game, and the challenge it represented, especially with his handicap.

i don't think we need to see the game brought down, to the benefit of a few who otherwise would have a harder time. but i also don't think we should ignore the fact that not every one will have the ability or opportunity to fully utilize any class or feature to its maximum potential.

That's the whole purpose of QoL fixes and accessibility changes I would think.

just so. i would go even further and suggest that every feature inside of the game is a cookie. if any part of the game experience leaves a bad flavor in the mouth or mind of the player, the baker needs to know. it's hard to bake a better cookie without that level of feedback.

I think the communication on both sides needs to be improved. I've read other players mention that the devs here are much better than in other mmos, and I don't dispute that, but "better" is not the same as "good".

yes, well... gut feeling works well when theory-crafting. play-testing doesn't let your gut get away with very much. when something is working better than it should, you know. because you've already been using it, and learned to abuse it, even if that wasn't your initial intent.

Theory-crafting works fine when you have a lot of information. At the very least, if you can see that something is overpowered in the theory-crafting stages then it will very likely be overpowered in play-testing. I usually reserve judgement for determining that something is underwhelming though, as we usually aren't told what is supposed to work with what (although in that case the true power comes from the combination of abilities rather than the individual abilities themselves).

right. i was replying to those remarks, in that manner, because you seemed so willing to dismiss what you considered irrelevant. relevance is difficult to determine, and it would be a shame to throw away a large portion of accumulated data, only to discover, at a later time, that it wasn't so irrelevant after all.

It's not that I'm "dismissive" of that information so much as it is that I think that such information would be better addressed with a different question and under different parameters. Deciding that data is irrelevant to a certain question or topic is not the same as deciding that data is irrelevant to all questions and topics. It's also not the same as throwing it out. I experiment in the game all the time, often acquiring information that wasn't necessarily related to what I was originally testing out (that's how I found out that extending a spell extends the duration of "Feigned Health", for example). That still doesn't make the information I collected relevant to my initial question. I believe you are equating relevance to importance when they are not the same thing.

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

Every time I post on this forum I am reminded of why I rarely post on this forum, there are always those people who feel the need to respond with unsolicited "advice" (snark) in order to attempt to make themselves look better by putting down others.

I completely agree - every time I post to these forums I feel like I get hazed for having an opinion which is opposite everyone else's 'how dare I post it.' Someone actually said as a reaction to one of my posts they'd be embarrassed to me me in real life because of something I posted here. Talk about anti-social. I often have to psych myself up to participate here on these forums. I still do because I love DDO and feel protective of it. But I have to be honest, the way the community spits bile and ire, it makes me feel as if I'd be better off not.

I agree with you by the way, the nerf to the cool down of MS was not warranted. People don't realize that even with very high DCs in legendary Reaper content just about all the mobs make their reflex saving throws and take 0 damage from lower level spells. So the lvl 8 and 9 spells are the only effective ones - MS particularly because the bludgeon effect is not subject to a save, so it does dmg regardless when mobs save vs the fire and take 0 dmg. But you NEED to spam spells quickly to do any DPS at all, and most of the mobs in the newer RL/SHARN/FW content save anyway and have improved evasion.

I suspect, on a blackboard somewhere at SSG there is, written in white chalk, 'ABN: Always Be Nerfing.'
and Glengarry Glen Ross is playing on autoloop on a VHS player in a conference room there because 'Coffee is for Nerfers'

[Tebaco]

Dear SSG

Fire sorcs have already had 2 nerfs again recently, the belt and the Max Level, please reconsider the cooldown nerf. It's not so much the DPS loss, it's the fact that it's completely messed with the spell rotation. If you want to spam DPS, you could go Meteor Swarm, Delayed Blast Fireball, Fireball, maybe Scorch depending on how fast you can spam keys, then back to Meteor Swarm, etc. Now there's still a good 2 seconds on MS and there are no other viable fire spells to put into the rotation without SLAs which will cost you 9 APs. Pretty please reconsider, it's painful having to twiddle your thumbs in between spell rotations. I accept having to do that on my wizzy's neg spells but this really shouldn't be a thing on a DPS caster

I have same feeling like you. And my solution for this is just stop playing game.
I tried it after the first nerf. It was playable but significant nerf. I used lot of more spell points. But after next patch when meteor swarm cooldown was nerfed it become unplayable. I checked spell list what add or change but there is no room for changes. Class fire sorc is broken now. And i am off the game. Good luck and have fun all.

[Lafshmaf]

I completely agree - every time I post to these forums I feel like I get hazed for having an opinion which is opposite everyone else's 'how dare I post it.' Someone actually said as a reaction to one of my posts they'd be embarrassed to me me in real life because of something I posted here. Talk about anti-social. I often have to psych myself up to participate here on these forums. I still do because I love DDO and feel protective of it. But I have to be honest, the way the community spits bile and ire, it makes me feel as if I'd be better off not.

I agree with you by the way, the nerf to the cool down of MS was not warranted. People don't realize that even with very high DCs in legendary Reaper content just about all the mobs make their reflex saving throws and take 0 damage from lower level spells. So the lvl 8 and 9 spells are the only effective ones - MS particularly because the bludgeon effect is not subject to a save, so it does dmg regardless when mobs save vs the fire and take 0 dmg. But you NEED to spam spells quickly to do any DPS at all, and most of the mobs in the newer RL/SHARN/FW content save anyway and have improved evasion.

I suspect, on a blackboard somewhere at SSG there is, written in white chalk, 'ABN: Always Be Nerfing.'
and Glengarry Glen Ross is playing on autoloop on a VHS player in a conference room there because 'Coffee is for Nerfers'

You are posting in a public forum which is frequented by all kinds of people with differing opinions. If you are looking for universal agreement or praise, ask, I don't know, your mother maybe? Also, I suspect you are an adult, so at some point in your life you possibly should have learned how to face adversity.

[Nimdeadlee]

You are posting in a public forum which is frequented by all kinds of people with differing opinions. If you are looking for universal agreement or praise, ask, I don't know, your mother maybe? Also, I suspect you are an adult, so at some point in your life you possibly should have learned how to face adversity.

Is it too much to expect rational, logical arguments in discourse rather than belligerent ad hominems? You know, like adults should have learnt at some point in their life.

I guess so.

[Lafshmaf]

Is it too much to expect rational, logical arguments in discourse rather than belligerent ad hominems? You know, like adults should have learnt at some point in their life.

I guess so.

and tarnish the purpose of this account? Nah.

You are wrong though, while confrontational, there is no ad hominem here. If you understood what that really means, you would see it. But I write it out for you more clearly.

a) poster complains people are not compliant with his opinions and voice just that => argument: it is not reasonable to expect everyone to comply with your opinion, it is completely normal for a diverse audience to differ from yours.
b) parents are - not always - but very often, very supportive and will support your opinion
c) a very important aspect of growing up is understanding the world is not compliant to your wishes and your opinions are not always going unchallenged. It can be expected of an adult to have learned that lesson, otherwise he can be considered immature still.

now go and learn more about those cool discussion related terms you can bring up on the internet. kthanxbye.