Changes Focused on Boosting Game Performance

[Hawkwier]

Thank you so much! Good to hear that you don't touch Assassinate. TWF Dagger-Assassin (pure Rogue ofc) is my choice in this game and in Shadow Dancer ED is a pretty survivable solo reaper toon with huge DPS.
I just hope that the changes to Doublestrike on main hand and offhand will be balanced and deliver what you expect in terms of performance. However, I am still sceptical. When I play in even small party today, it gets hard for me to do precise sneak attacks and assassination (on moving battle scene, not on still end boss) as I am always like 0.5-1s behind due to the lag. As I often don't hit due to this lag I wonder where the lag comes from. Can't be my DS procs, as I am not hitting.
Generally, from my game experience I feel it is not reasonable and justified to blame and penalyze the melee doublestrike builds for the lag.

It's not fair to penalize ANYONE for the lag.

Not gonna stop em though.

[Xgya]

DPS is one style, one that is definitely supposed to be prominent for archer characters, but "dead" is no CC in a game-style sense, especially as it's all about having no crowd, instead of controlling it.

Another style, which usually works even faster and smoother is to get some people, use your Para-arrows to lock as many enemies as possible, and let your teammates dismantle them without a worry, while keeping the vengeance reapers and other prominent, but CCable stuff in check.

Right. Either you're DPS, or you're CC. Any archer that pretends to deal damage while attempting to do the other, or attempts to CC while keeping top notch damage will be mediocre at both - at best.

IPS as a channel for para-arrows is neat.
IPS from a damage perspective and talking about getting bonuses from helplessness is not.

I don't dislike a para-arrow archer in the group myself, but I won't expect them to be there to make things dead better than their dagger-chucking partner.
The extra soft CC and (generally), the extra fort bypass from bird attacks is a welcome group buff.

If your argument is that your build doesn't care about DPS because it's using IPS for another purpose, then you're justified in thinking so - it does. But you brought arguments about DPS using IPS forward, and that's what I was refuting.

[Pandjed]

Thank you so much! Good to hear that you don't touch Assassinate. TWF Dagger-Assassin (pure Rogue ofc) is my choice in this game and in Shadow Dancer ED is a pretty survivable solo reaper toon with huge DPS.
I just hope that the changes to Doublestrike on main hand and offhand will be balanced and deliver what you expect in terms of performance. However, I am still sceptical. When I play in even small party today, it gets hard for me to do precise sneak attacks and assassination (on moving battle scene, not on still end boss) as I am always like 0.5-1s behind due to the lag. As I often don't hit due to this lag I wonder where the lag comes from. Can't be my DS procs, as I am not hitting.

Sadly, this is just one source of lag. It's one, that's easy to replicate and a constant problem, which intensifies whenever people decide to throw their all against mobs at once (be it in the same instance or others; which makes weekend evenings especially prone, where people find time to play a bunch of raids and R8-10), but nonetheless, it won't magically fix everything. Maybe not even that much without work at some other sources.

It's, however, a source of lag that will result in a different gameplay and therefore affect all coming content and mechanics as well, so better earlier than later, if it's inevitable.

Generally, from my game experience I feel it is not reasonable and justified to blame and penalyze the melee doublestrike builds for the lag.

From a damage perspective, it doesn't affect melee doublestrike more. The other procs are more problematic, but my suggestion is to be patient until the ED-pass mentioned in the producer letter comes, as most of the procs are in EDs anyway.

For me, I think doublestrike is a kind of dark magic, that results in the character doing more hits than the attack animation conveys. Or that they secretly put saw teeth on their weapons.
As long as everything going forward is designed around the new mechanic, I'm more than willing to see it just as a change.

Right. Either you're DPS, or you're CC. Any archer that pretends to deal damage while attempting to do the other, or attempts to CC while keeping top notch damage will be mediocre at both - at best.

IPS as a channel for para-arrows is neat.
IPS from a damage perspective and talking about getting bonuses from helplessness is not.

I don't dislike a para-arrow archer in the group myself, but I won't expect them to be there to make things dead better than their dagger-chucking partner.
The extra soft CC and (generally), the extra fort bypass from bird attacks is a welcome group buff.

If your argument is that your build doesn't care about DPS because it's using IPS for another purpose, then you're justified in thinking so - it does. But you brought arguments about DPS using IPS forward, and that's what I was refuting.

Great we have several agreements here.


I think where we actually see things different is, that I think, that IPS (with some player skill) results to more damage overall and it's a fair trade-off, while you see things from the angle of focusing damage to drop things faster, which relieves some of the pressure, which makes IPS almost penalizing (though then you can just use the feat-slot otherwise).

Maybe the problem lies, in how easy IPS makes leveling in heroics, while it loses much of it during epics and therefore, for the convenience of now, many players feel "betrayed" that they took IPS in the first place and now have to feat-swap it? If this is the case, maybe adding some additional passive effect that actually conveys precision (like +10% armor pen when in AF) may be a way to make it feel less worthless for the "drop fast"-crowd?
Not that I expect that, still a fun thought.

Nonetheless, to use IPS properly, it needs some understanding of its performance and experience, and a lot of its usability comes and goes with it. Then the question remains, if it's worth the feat or not (rangers need to suck it up a bit, but nobody forces them to use it at least). As it doesn't have any direct synergy with any item, enhancement, or class I can think of (as in: When you're in IPS, then-), it's at least a choice without consequence.

[FengXian]

So you're saying, that the moment you get a line-AoE you stand around, doing nothing to create your own "good opportunities" to build up Archer Focus? When I'm IPSing, I'm in constant movement, making even small steps to find out the borders of the enemy hit boxes to get 3-5 in my Paralyzing Arrows, which results in 240-500% I do more, plus helpless damage against each of them (30-60%).
Also, the AA elemental toggles benefit from spell power, not ranged power.

Just curious, what difficulties are we talking about here; also, solo or group play?

I have used IPS for well over 10 years, and there are a bunch of issues you're (willingly or not) ignoring here.

0) I'd expect you'd at least know para arrows don't make mobs helpless.

1) IPS is horribly annoying on non-short races. Hard to hit those hitboxes when they are close to you, and generally the ones close to you are actually the ones you want to hit the most.

2) You will be hitting 3-5 enemies if they are CC'd, otherwise you'll be hitting 2-3 except in some rare "long narrow corridor" situations, because of how mobs then to cluster (or just spawn) in a roughly round shape instead of a long line.

3) Nothing special about adjusting your movement in order to align as many mobs as possible, we are giving this for granted, we know how IPS works.

4) Even if for some reason you are playing an elemental damage focused archer, RP is still incredibly important.

5) You lose far more than 20% by switching to IPS because it's fairly easy to keep at least some stacks of AF up (at the very least with aimed shot, although now AF stacking is getting nerfed hard). You also get 10 RP from Improved AF while in AF I believe.

6) If you're grouping, it's likely that someone with ACTUAL AOE will be dealing with those groups much, much, much more efficiently and effectively, and you better stick to picking out champions and other priority targets.

[Xgya]

Great we have several agreements here.

I think where we actually see things different is, that I think, that IPS (with some player skill) results to more damage overall and it's a fair trade-off, while you see things from the angle of focusing damage to drop things faster, which relieves some of the pressure, which makes IPS almost penalizing (though then you can just use the feat-slot otherwise).

Maybe the problem lies, in how easy IPS makes leveling in heroics, while it loses much of it during epics and therefore, for the convenience of now, many players feel "betrayed" that they took IPS in the first place and now have to feat-swap it? If this is the case, maybe adding some additional passive effect that actually conveys precision (like +10% armor pen when in AF) may be a way to make it feel less worthless for the "drop fast"-crowd?
Not that I expect that, still a fun thought.

The feat slot argument makes sense until you realize it's a class' high level class feature. High enough that someone with that ability as a class feature must display the class icon related to it no matter what other choices they might make.
The only thing Rangers can do about not liking the ability is not use it. They don't get anything for not using it, nor can they simply ask Fred to give them something they'd actually use.
It used to be part of any other Archer's (or thrower, Inqui...) feat list, and stopped making the cut nowadays. Everyone else got to choose another feat. What did Rangers get?

Nonetheless, to use IPS properly, it needs some understanding of its performance and experience, and a lot of its usability comes and goes with it. Then the question remains, if it's worth the feat or not (rangers need to suck it up a bit, but nobody forces them to use it at least). As it doesn't have any direct synergy with any item, enhancement, or class I can think of (as in: When you're in IPS, then-), it's at least a choice without consequence.

The proper use of IPS is to make it carry over non-damaging effects, or damaging effects that don't scale off weapon damage.
Anything else, and you're making life harder on yourself in all but the most favorable of circumstances.
You can certainly use it if your goal is to shoot Paralyzing arrows - or elemental damage and lucky vorpals in heroics - but if your party role is being DPS, you're doing every member a disfavor by staying in IPS.

[Zoveride]

So you're saying, that the moment you get a line-AoE you stand around, doing nothing to create your own "good opportunities" to build up Archer Focus? When I'm IPSing, I'm in constant movement, making even small steps to find out the borders of the enemy hit boxes to get 3-5 in my Paralyzing Arrows, which results in 240-500% I do more, plus helpless damage against each of them (30-60%).
Also, the AA elemental toggles benefit from spell power, not ranged power.

I have to admit, you did a decent job at avoiding my point :P
However, this doesn't change that the damage loss is much more than 20% when switching from AF to IPS, sorry.
Please explain/show your math here. It sounds like you are saying you get 240-500% damage bonus out of hitting 3-5 targets, which is beyond generous, more like 2-3 unless in a narrow hallway, ideal scenario, but I would like to give you to benefit of the doubt, perhaps you are the superior skilled archer who can reliably clump 5 monsters that normally form a circle, into a line. No doubt, you have superior skills.
Now with that out of the way, assuming your best and hitting 5 targets, how exactly is that 500% damage? Even as you like to discount AF and ignore that you get any ranged power from it, let's just use your math at -20%.
Hitting 5 targets (at the high end) would net you at best (400%) and again that's completely ignoring AF ranged power.
Please explain/show your math and also why AF ranged power is not important in this game as an archer.
Also, helpless damage? You are vastly superior to me obviously, since I have no way of getting helpless damage from paralyzing, is this para arrow from some other class tree that grants helpless? I'm confused.

I don't understand your point about AA elemental toggles, by using say a corrosive arrow, are you saying that it allows you to maintain your 15 stacks of AF while swapping to IPS?

Please enlighten me as I apparently have been playing archer wrong.

1) +500% damage bonus by using IPS
2) Helpless damage from paralyzing arrows
3) AA Elemental imbues allowing AF stacks to remain while swapping to IPS
4) Reliably hitting 3-5 targets in every mob

Where do you get this level of unlimited power from? (Having the right attitude?)


It's about attitude. You said yourselves, the devs know about the problem, they're trying to fix it, and it won't get any better by actingt like a whine-ball, that blames everyone else, instead of just suck up what's going on, adapt, and get the fun out of it.

This is your opinion sadly, I don't see how calling people whine-balls improves the situation, but whatever makes you feel better I guess??? You may feel inclined to defend SSG at any/every point, but I don't see how telling people to stop asking for a fix is destructive. YMMV


I think, this is a big problem. Because each playstyle has its designated range of classes/trees. I mean, wouldn't it be strange, when melees would ask to become ranged nukers, because they don't want to cast spells or hold a ranged weapon? Why should bows get another treatment there?

How is this in any way related to what I said? I think you failed to understand my point. I will try to explain it better. People want a functional playstyle with their preferred weapon. This does not mean shooting fireball spell arrows. This does not mean shooting arrows that are 5 alchemist vials. Functional and meaningful playstyle does NOT mean overpowered. It simply means that any player can choose a class and contribute in a meaningful way. Perhaps you interpret meaningful as a ranged nuker, does not make it true. Meaningful means that you contribute and not just be dead weight. This does not simply imply AOE.This has nothing to do with all styles being the same as each other. I'm sorry you misunderstood that. Hopefully I have done a better job explaining it this time.


Oh god, this sounds like hardcore fans, that expect that a franchise they don't own and only pay money to partake in it, listen to their ideas and critizise every single step of its progression, despite neither being holder of the IP nor involved in its progress. I mean, having Lamannia is an absolute luxury, being able to address the devs directly, talking to them, that's more than any of us deserve. Because we're neither sponsors, nor developers, nor even actual test-players. We don't purchase DDO, we pay for some QoL stuff in it and to play more of it.
Of course, it's us that keep the cash flow, but each of us only does a fraction, and acting all mighty and demanding, when it's supposed to be respectful and asking, is just plain wrong. I don't put all of my time into the game, I just play when I have off and while I'm not content with every decision, I'm also understanding, that it's not my game, and I'm only partaking in it.

Really? You sound over the top dramatic here. My quote was literally, "I feel that as a community we should not settle for mediocrity but instead push for progress/innovation."

So, not settling for mediocrity is hardcore fan? Look,I don't know how you run and live your life, but apparently it's mediocre unless you are a truly hardcore person?? How does this sound? (besides cringey and ridiculous)
I don't think you should go around with this chip on your shoulder. You sound like a fan of SSG who will defend them to the end no matter what and are getting offended for them, but please, tone it down please. Everyone has a right to their opinion. Please don't try to silence others.
Lammania is an "absolute luxury"? LOL, for who? You mean the company right?
You are right, we are not actual test-players...wait...you mean we are not actual PAID test-players, but as a player base we most certainly are test-players for this game.

Comments in green

[IBCrabin]

Sadly, this is just one source of lag. It's one, that's easy to replicate and a constant problem, which intensifies whenever people decide to throw their all against mobs at once (be it in the same instance or others; which makes weekend evenings especially prone, where people find time to play a bunch of raids and R8-10), but nonetheless, it won't magically fix everything. Maybe not even that much without work at some other sources.

It's, however, a source of lag that will result in a different gameplay and therefore affect all coming content and mechanics as well, so better earlier than later, if it's inevitable.



From a damage perspective, it doesn't affect melee doublestrike more. The other procs are more problematic, but my suggestion is to be patient until the ED-pass mentioned in the producer letter comes, as most of the procs are in EDs anyway.

For me, I think doublestrike is a kind of dark magic, that results in the character doing more hits than the attack animation conveys. Or that they secretly put saw teeth on their weapons.
As long as everything going forward is designed around the new mechanic, I'm more than willing to see it just as a change.





Great we have several agreements here.


I think where we actually see things different is, that I think, that IPS (with some player skill) results to more damage overall and it's a fair trade-off, while you see things from the angle of focusing damage to drop things faster, which relieves some of the pressure, which makes IPS almost penalizing (though then you can just use the feat-slot otherwise).

Maybe the problem lies, in how easy IPS makes leveling in heroics, while it loses much of it during epics and therefore, for the convenience of now, many players feel "betrayed" that they took IPS in the first place and now have to feat-swap it? If this is the case, maybe adding some additional passive effect that actually conveys precision (like +10% armor pen when in AF) may be a way to make it feel less worthless for the "drop fast"-crowd?
Not that I expect that, still a fun thought.

Nonetheless, to use IPS properly, it needs some understanding of its performance and experience, and a lot of its usability comes and goes with it. Then the question remains, if it's worth the feat or not (rangers need to suck it up a bit, but nobody forces them to use it at least). As it doesn't have any direct synergy with any item, enhancement, or class I can think of (as in: When you're in IPS, then-), it's at least a choice without consequence.

Epic Destinies has existed since Update 14. We are coming up to Update 49. The procs in them haven't change much over the years. For the most part, the playstyles people are so accustom to and enjoy playing existed since Update 19 when they did an enhancement overhaul. Whatever they did in the last 5 to 6 years has cause this accumulation of lag.

[barecm]

Comments in green

I am going to guess that the 500% is total damage to all vs single target, but that won't change as long as you are hitting all 5. Not a good way to put it, but the premise is there. I would argue that you are losing 50% (or more) proc chances on abilities that happen via on-hit (such as AA imbues) on crit (like AA on-critical elemental damage or weapons that have on-critical damage), or anything that procs via vorpals. It is fairly common to get close to or over 100% doubleshot, so it will be pretty standard to lose at least 50% of those chances. You lose 66% on hits that would have been 3, so on and so forth. For procs that have a DC attached, like paralyze, fear, smite, banish imbues, it is similar as you lose the extra chances to fail a DC.

[FeldtGrace]

One thing's for sure, this pass will definitely reduce lag by reducing the number of players. Players like me whose builds rely on non-damage procs will be leaving the game in droves.

Before this pass, my monkcher AA had ~60% chance locking down mobs at 3-4 arrows per shot (average 220% doubleshot) between nerve venom, paralyze bow, and perfect pinnacle trip. Coupled with pin, otto's, crippling and legshot nothing could touch me. This enabled me to use imbues other than paralyze and still be effective in CC.

Goodbye DDO! It's been a fun 10 years, but it's time to move on.

[SierraSilverfox]

Who's providing the helplessness? Para-arrows sure don't.
If someone is giving you helpless damage bonus, then the paralysis effect becomes moot in the first place, and you're no longer moving around since Archer's Focus is easily enabled.

IPS is useful in content you're running past. Making Swiss cheese out of a whole pack of mobs in heroics is fun, and losing 20% of your DPS matters little when the first or second arrow took them out with or without the penalty.
As soon as you hit epics, taking out targets faster is almost always preferable to slightly damaging multiple. The best crowd control effect you can apply is "dead", and it works on everything.

The best damage dealing comes from Deepwood Sniper, because weapon-based damage beats the output of elemental arrows and shoots past it pretty quickly. Which means that Ranged Power, a multiplier to weapon-based damage, becomes that much more precious.
It also means that losing 20% of that weapon damage is that much more impactful.

Elemental Arrows just don't scale well enough past heroics to be worth mentioning.
The damage per hit at level 30 is less than a first level Sorcerer or Druid spell's - that they stopped using 24 levels ago.

not accounting for critical damage, elemental arrow makes up about 33-40% of my base arrow damage per individual shot, IPS is worth sacrificing a bit of ranged power if i can pull a hunt's end sniper shot and hit 6-7 things. Bonus helpless dmg is nice when you have someone in your party spamming CC on stuff for you, and i've taken as many as 6 trash mobs down with one hit using IPS, and i've also one shot two reapers on R8 with IPS thanks to hunt's end+sniper shot. it's all about playstyle, the biggest thing i'll miss from this change is the nerve venom and fun non damage procs from double rainbow that always make me smile, like exploding barrels of ham. Elemental arrows is nice, because take into consideration your comparison of it being less than a first level sorc/druid spell. it hits every single shot, 100% of the time, as a complete -bonus- damage, which means you essentially get that spell added onto your arrows already existing damage. Could it use some boosts to make it scale even better? definitely. Is extra damage that costs nothing worthless? no. DWS definitely contributes higher DPS, and i focus on that side, and just add some extra bonus damage in addition to that and it works out pretty well, both in raids, and in quests.

[elvesunited]

I'm taking the devs at their word. They wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't a serious lag issue. They don't actively search for grief for no reason. And of course there are other lag issues and I will roll my eyes at the first person to complain that they still encountered lag after this update. And I also realize that there are limits to what can be done given the restraints. ( they cannot allow multiple chances for a proc to activate nor can they increase the chance of a proc happening )

That said what bugs is that for the non-damage procs is the lack of trying. If you can't increase the chance of a proc then increase its power instead if it happens on a multi-hit. It won't handle all those who are being nerfed by these changes ( the CC Thrower for example ) but it may have lessened the pain. And you only needed to do the heavy hitters.

Proc has an effect that allows a DC save? +2 DC per extra hit
Proc has a no-save effect like nerve venom or tendon slice? Increase duration for each extra hit.
Proc increases a stack like Archer focus? Increase the stack by a number based on # of hits

[kanordog]

Thank you so much! Good to hear that you don't touch Assassinate.

You won't doublestrike...

[Hawkwier]

...what bugs is that for the non-damage procs is the lack of trying...

This.

It's blatant obvious there was little effort put into planning or understanding the consequences of their chosen approach. In addition there has been little evidence of consideration or mitigation of those consequences even when repeatedly pointed out across a myriad of arising issues.

Given the scale and scope of effects here, that to my mind is unforgivable.

[barecm]

I'm taking the devs at their word. They wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't a serious lag issue. They don't actively search for grief for no reason.

Have you met SSG lately? There is a money grab at the end of this rainbow... And what is everyone going to say once the update is completed, you go into a raid and see the same lag?

[LurkingVeteran]

Have you met SSG lately? There is a money grab at the end of this rainbow... And what is everyone going to say once the update is completed, you go into a raid and see the same lag?

Let's not be paranoid. It's more likely just a lack of resources to assess wide-ranging changes in a very complex game. I don't think there is any grand conspiracy. However, they could do a better job of involving players earlier so we don't end up in these situations where we get something with a lot of problems that they don't have time to fix. Presumably because they have already spent their alloted dev time (the less charitable interpretation is that they don't want to lose face by admitting there are problems).

I don't see why they can't just ask players what they want and involve the forums much much earlier (and not just the handful of people in the player's council). If they had done that, they might have realized that many of the extensive system changes they have made over the last few years, while well-intentioned and steps in the right direction, had much simpler solutions that wouldn't have generated as much drama.

[Mindos]

Im waiting for the lag excuse after the restart:

1. Servers haven't warmed up fully yet.
2. Servers need time to cache content
3. Everyone's still downloading the patch, give it more time.
4. Our internal numbers dont show lag, no you can't see these numbers ever.
5. Our focus group didn't report any problems, so you must be wrong.
and on and on and on and on...

[LurkingVeteran]

Im waiting for the lag excuse after the restart:

1. Servers haven't warmed up fully yet.
2. Servers need time to cache content
3. Everyone's still downloading the patch, give it more time.
4. Our internal numbers dont show lag, no you can't see these numbers ever.
5. Our focus group didn't report any problems, so you must be wrong.
and on and on and on and on...

FWIW, back when in the day when the lag was much less, the damage numbers didn't lag either. When I got back N years later, both the damage number and general server lag was pretty bad. This is just correlation not causation though. Regardless, making damage numbers not lag would be a huge improvement in superficial responsiveness of the game. I just wish there was also a way to pack all damage types into one number so combat doesn't look like a scrolling Star Wars intro. We have the combat log for such details.

[DjangoKeys]

So, kudos to the devs for actually making it much, much worse. It’s so bad they had to take the servers down again.

[Mr-TenPercent]

My monkcher and artificer, who were already among, if not the worst, end game toons I had, got nerfed. And my monkcher is much less fun to play. So much for making ranged builds besides deepwood viable. Hopefully, I'll find a way to polish this turd of an update. Are there any plans to fix 10,000 stars to work with bows again or should I send that toon to the abyss?

[Jbo335]

You won't doublestrike...

Like the dev said, it is not related to doublestrike and it still works as before = you can kill two targets with one assassinate.