Multi-Patch/Update Preview: Reaper Difficulty Changes and Tweaks

[Cocomajobo]

Greetings,

I wanted to go over some changes to Reaper difficulty that are deployed on the test server, and some changes which are coming up soon. We hope players can look at the changes.

First, I want to discuss our goals for the changes:
~ High level Reaper should not take as long to kill bosses and special enemies with high hit point pools, though we want to retain difficulty. We don’t want Reaper easier, but we do want killing bosses to be a bit faster.
~ We want to make it a bit harder to keep everything locked down with CC.
~ Reaper levels 1-2 should be a bit harder as compared to Elite.
~ We want to shake up the meta a bit.

Here are the changes on test:


1. Creatures in high skull Reaper have a lesser amount of damage resistance than they do now. Not only does the damage resistance ramp up more slowly, but resistance to ranged and magic is further reduced to match melee resistance. Currently the damage resistance for melee is actually lower (more favorable to the player) than for ranged and magic, so in the new system the reduction for melee, ranged, and magic will all be equal with ranged and magic catching up to melee damage.

The new formula has the reduction slightly higher for melee (although still more favorable for magic and ranged) on Reaper 1 and 2, the same for Reaper 3, and more favorable to the player as it ramps up beyond that. As an example, the multiplier at Reaper 10 for melee will change from 0.091 to 0.154 and for ranged and magic will change from a 0.076 multiplier to a 0.154 multiplier.

This will make taking down creatures with large hit point pools less of a slog at higher Reaper skulls. To be clear, the decrease to damage resistance scales with Reaper level – at lower Reaper levels the change to damage won’t be as noticeable.

2. The base damage multiplier for hitting helpless creatures will be lowered from a 1.5 multiplier to a 1.25 multiplier. Helplessness will provide less damage increase.

3. It will be slightly harder to keep creatures locked down. First, Reaper creatures will have an additional +4 to their saving throws versus spells. In addition, the formula for reducing the duration of crowd control will be tweaked so crowd control duration reductions ramps up more quickly by about 25% at Reaper 10. As an example, an unmodified caster level 20 Mass Hold would be reduced on live to 12 seconds in duration on Reaper 10; the same spell would be reduced to 9.6 seconds. The minimum duration of 6 seconds still applies as it does on live.

4. Tank threat will be increased dramatically. Tank defensive stances, threat increases in Unyielding Sentinel, and scaling threat itemization effects have had their values tripled from what they are currently. Note that this is a larger increase for Unyielding Sentinel than previously noted. Our goal is that Tanks should be able to hold threat by delivering damage to enemies when things are immune to Intimidate, assuming the tank has these increases and DPS is smart about burst damage.

5. Monster spell penetration rolls are increased on live by a randomized number between 1 and (Reaper Level x 3). This would be increased to a randomized number between 1 and (Reaper Level x 4). This does not affect the player's ability to penetrate monster spell penetration; only attacks on players from monsters.

6. Incorporeality will be reduced in Reaper by the same amount as Blur and Displacement.

7. Dodge will have, across all difficulties, an absolute cap of 95%.

8. Charmed creatures will no longer gain the Reaper monster damage bonus. This was always a bug. The damage they do, however, would not be reduced in Reaper as players are.

9. Reaper toughness is buffed. They will take longer to kill – to both compensate for the damage increase and to fix the problem that level scaling was not providing enough hit point scaling for them.

10. New Reapers will appear, one at all levels and some only in Reaper level 6 and higher. Expect some new mechanics.

11. Hit Points given out by the Reaper trees will have an upper limit based on your character level.

Character Level 1-5: 50 hit points
Character Level 6-10: 100 hit points
Character Level 11-15: 200 hit points
Character Level 16-20: 400 hit points
Character Level 21-25: 800 hit points
Character Level 26+: No limit

12. The appearance of Lost Souls will scale with party size and Reaper skulls. There will be fewer appearing for smaller parties and on lower Reaper levels.

13. Reaper dungeons now use the same over and under level XP penalties as normal dungeons. Characters cannot enter a Reaper dungeon if they are too high level as compared to the dungeon; in the Heroic levels this limit is more than 4 levels above the base challenge rating of the dungeon, and in Epic levels this limit is more than 6 levels as it is on live. As always, Epic characters cannot enter Heroic dungeons.



Sev~

[lyrecono]

Greetings,

I wanted to go over some changes to Reaper difficulty that are deployed on the test server, and some changes which are coming up soon. We hope players can look at the changes.

First, I want to discuss our goals for the changes:
~ High level Reaper should not take as long to kill bosses and special enemies with high hit point pools, though we want to retain difficulty. We don’t want Reaper easier, but we do want killing bosses to be a bit faster.
~ We want to make it a bit harder to keep everything locked down with CC.
~ Reaper levels 1-2 should be a bit harder as compared to Elite.
~ We want to shake up the meta a bit.

Here are the changes on test:


1. Creatures in high skull Reaper have a lesser amount of damage resistance than they do now. Not only does the damage resistance ramp up more slowly, but resistance to ranged and magic is further reduced to match melee resistance. Currently the damage resistance for melee is actually lower (more favorable to the player) than for ranged and magic, so in the new system the reduction for melee, ranged, and magic will all be equal with ranged and magic catching up to melee damage.

The new formula has the reduction slightly higher for melee (although still more favorable for magic and ranged) on Reaper 1 and 2, the same for Reaper 3, and more favorable to the player as it ramps up beyond that. As an example, the multiplier at Reaper 10 for melee will change from 0.091 to 0.154 and for ranged and magic will change from a 0.076 multiplier to a 0.154 multiplier.

This will make taking down creatures with large hit point pools less of a slog at higher Reaper skulls. To be clear, the decrease to damage resistance scales with Reaper level – at lower Reaper levels the change to damage won’t be as noticeable.
this is the entire issue, no on will care, dps type melees have usually rarely any other option but to dps (and die due to high a mob dps output) while casting classes and ranged have other means of killing them, safely, from a distance. A caster can simply point and click, boom, instakill spell, save or die (or in some cases not even a save)

2. The base damage multiplier for hitting helpless creatures will be lowered from a 1.5 multiplier to a 1.25 multiplier. Helplessness will provide less damage increase.
So even less reason to take a melee and just instakill them after cc-ing, thanks i guess

3. It will be slightly harder to keep creatures locked down. First, Reaper creatures will have an additional +4 to their saving throws versus spells. In addition, the formula for reducing the duration of crowd control will be tweaked so crowd control duration reductions ramps up more quickly by about 25% at Reaper 10. As an example, an unmodified caster level 20 Mass Hold would be reduced on live to 12 seconds in duration on Reaper 10; the same spell would be reduced to 9.6 seconds. The minimum duration of 6 seconds still applies as it does on live.

As an example, at Reaper 5 each saving throw a monster makes is increased by a randomized number between 1 and 15 on live, it would be 1 and 20 going forward.
so, cc, mass instakill, got it, no time to dps, just instakill, good for teamwork.....

4. Tank threat will be increased dramatically. Tank defensive stances, threat increases in Unyielding Sentinel, and scaling threat itemization effects have had their values tripled from what they are currently. Note that this is a larger increase for Unyielding Sentinel than previously noted. Our goal is that Tanks should be able to hold threat by delivering damage to enemies when things are immune to Intimidate, assuming the tank has these increases and DPS is smart about burst damage.
So with dps nearly being reduced to nigh zero in reaper, due to having your entire build dedicated to defence and hp, what tank dps is getting multiplied?

5. Monster spell penetration rolls are increased on live by a randomized number between 1 and (Reaper Level x 3). This would be increased to a randomized number between 1 and (Reaper Level x 4). This does not affect the player's ability to penetrate monster spell penetration; only attacks on players from monsters.
who's using sr these days?


6. Incorporeality will be reduced in Reaper by the same amount as Blur and Displacement.

7. Dodge will have, across all difficulties, an absolute cap of 95%.

8. Charmed creatures will no longer gain the Reaper monster damage bonus. This was always a bug. The damage they do, however, would not be reduced in Reaper as players are.

9. Reaper toughness is buffed. They will take longer to kill – to both compensate for the damage increase and to fix the problem that level scaling was not providing enough hit point scaling for them.
who is damaging mobs in reaper? who was asking for this? and who cares, instakills with spells is where it's at. only bosses will be affected.

10. New Reapers will appear, one at all levels and some only in Reaper level 6 and higher. Expect some new mechanics.

11. Hit Points given out by the Reaper trees will have an upper limit based on your character level.

Character Level 1-5: 50 hit points
Character Level 6-10: 100 hit points
Character Level 11-15: 200 hit points
Character Level 16-20: 400 hit points
Character Level 21-25: 800 hit points
Character Level 26+: No limit

so, screw over the people that need to get close to function, while classes that can stay away safely to do their job aren't affected, sounds balanced to me, melee is over preforming in high reaper and should be nerfed.....ohhh, wait a minute!

12. The appearance of Lost Souls will scale with party size and Reaper skulls. There will be fewer appearing for smaller parties and on lower Reaper levels.
those forced to solo often, due to low population thank you from the bottom of our hearts

13. Reaper dungeons now use the same over and under level XP penalties as normal dungeons. Characters cannot enter a Reaper dungeon if they are too high level as compared to the dungeon; in the Heroic levels this limit is more than 4 levels above the base challenge rating of the dungeon, and in Epic levels this limit is more than 6 levels as it is on live. As always, Epic characters cannot enter Heroic dungeons.



Sev~

uhhhmmmm, thanks i guess.

[cru121]

8. Charmed creatures will no longer gain the Reaper monster damage bonus. This was always a bug. The damage they do, however, would not be reduced in Reaper as players are.

Does this mean that you can now re-enable reaper difficulty for Hound of Xoriat, heroic and legendary?

[Vorachtin]

7. Dodge will have, across all difficulties, an absolute cap of 95%.

This is silly, why not just nerf meld? that 15 seconds of 100% dodge every 2 minutes is way op i guess?

Edit - an even better move, without nerfing meld/dodge , is simply move it to Tier 4, tier 3 is a little low and easy to twist in. As a tier 4 it would be a pretty extreme cost and not everyone or as many will grab ito

Those handful of TA rogues that can get to 100% with uncanny dodge are not worth adjusting around, they already sacrifice dps to get there so it's a fair tradeoff and let's be honest there is probably less than 5 across all the servers playing those builds.

[PsychoBlonde]

uhhhmmmm, thanks i guess.

You can't insta-kill reapers with spells or any other effect, they're immune, so, yes, buffing the HP of Reapers will make them a lot nastier. I hope this buff is focused toward the epic end of things, reapers are already pretty nasty at low levels.

I look forward to seeing the new reapers.

[lyrecono]

You can't insta-kill reapers with spells or any other effect, they're immune, so, yes, buffing the HP of Reapers will make them a lot nastier. I hope this buff is focused toward the epic end of things, reapers are already pretty nasty at low levels.

I look forward to seeing the new reapers.

since when? hurl worked fine last week

[Wipey]

~ We want to shake up the meta a bit.

How would you describe current 10 skulls meta ? Do you analyze quest times/party compositions data ?

[Ladywolf]

Greetings,

First, Reaper creatures will have an additional +4 to their saving throws versus spells. In addition, the formula for reducing the duration of crowd control will be tweaked so crowd control duration reductions ramps up more quickly by about 25% at Reaper 10. As an example, an unmodified caster level 20 Mass Hold would be reduced on live to 12 seconds in duration on Reaper 10; the same spell would be reduced to 9.6 seconds. The minimum duration of 6 seconds still applies as it does on live.

As an example, at Reaper 5 each saving throw a monster makes is increased by a randomized number between 1 and 15 on live, it would be 1 and 20 going forward.


Sev~

So +4 saving throws (the nerf) is only to crowd control done by spells? Curious what the thought process behind only targeting spellcaster cc was?

[CSQ]

10. New Reapers will appear, one at all levels and some only in Reaper level 6 and higher. Expect some new mechanics.

Cool, long as they don't do damage through walls while aggroing through doors.

[JOTMON]

Greetings,

I wanted to go over some changes to Reaper difficulty that are deployed on the test server, and some changes which are coming up soon. We hope players can look at the changes.

First, I want to discuss our goals for the changes:
~ High level Reaper should not take as long to kill bosses and special enemies with high hit point pools, though we want to retain difficulty. We don’t want Reaper easier, but we do want killing bosses to be a bit faster.
~ We want to make it a bit harder to keep everything locked down with CC.
~ Reaper levels 1-2 should be a bit harder as compared to Elite.
~ We want to shake up the meta a bit.

Here are the changes on test:


1. Creatures in high skull Reaper have a lesser amount of damage resistance than they do now. Not only does the damage resistance ramp up more slowly, but resistance to ranged and magic is further reduced to match melee resistance. Currently the damage resistance for melee is actually lower (more favorable to the player) than for ranged and magic, so in the new system the reduction for melee, ranged, and magic will all be equal with ranged and magic catching up to melee damage.

The new formula has the reduction slightly higher for melee (although still more favorable for magic and ranged) on Reaper 1 and 2, the same for Reaper 3, and more favorable to the player as it ramps up beyond that. As an example, the multiplier at Reaper 10 for melee will change from 0.091 to 0.154 and for ranged and magic will change from a 0.076 multiplier to a 0.154 multiplier.

This will make taking down creatures with large hit point pools less of a slog at higher Reaper skulls. To be clear, the decrease to damage resistance scales with Reaper level – at lower Reaper levels the change to damage won’t be as noticeable.

2. The base damage multiplier for hitting helpless creatures will be lowered from a 1.5 multiplier to a 1.25 multiplier. Helplessness will provide less damage increase.

3. It will be slightly harder to keep creatures locked down. First, Reaper creatures will have an additional +4 to their saving throws versus spells. In addition, the formula for reducing the duration of crowd control will be tweaked so crowd control duration reductions ramps up more quickly by about 25% at Reaper 10. As an example, an unmodified caster level 20 Mass Hold would be reduced on live to 12 seconds in duration on Reaper 10; the same spell would be reduced to 9.6 seconds. The minimum duration of 6 seconds still applies as it does on live.

As an example, at Reaper 5 each saving throw a monster makes is increased by a randomized number between 1 and 15 on live, it would be 1 and 20 going forward.

4. Tank threat will be increased dramatically. Tank defensive stances, threat increases in Unyielding Sentinel, and scaling threat itemization effects have had their values tripled from what they are currently. Note that this is a larger increase for Unyielding Sentinel than previously noted. Our goal is that Tanks should be able to hold threat by delivering damage to enemies when things are immune to Intimidate, assuming the tank has these increases and DPS is smart about burst damage.

5. Monster spell penetration rolls are increased on live by a randomized number between 1 and (Reaper Level x 3). This would be increased to a randomized number between 1 and (Reaper Level x 4). This does not affect the player's ability to penetrate monster spell penetration; only attacks on players from monsters.

6. Incorporeality will be reduced in Reaper by the same amount as Blur and Displacement.

7. Dodge will have, across all difficulties, an absolute cap of 95%.

8. Charmed creatures will no longer gain the Reaper monster damage bonus. This was always a bug. The damage they do, however, would not be reduced in Reaper as players are.

9. Reaper toughness is buffed. They will take longer to kill – to both compensate for the damage increase and to fix the problem that level scaling was not providing enough hit point scaling for them.

10. New Reapers will appear, one at all levels and some only in Reaper level 6 and higher. Expect some new mechanics.

11. Hit Points given out by the Reaper trees will have an upper limit based on your character level.

Character Level 1-5: 50 hit points
Character Level 6-10: 100 hit points
Character Level 11-15: 200 hit points
Character Level 16-20: 400 hit points
Character Level 21-25: 800 hit points
Character Level 26+: No limit

12. The appearance of Lost Souls will scale with party size and Reaper skulls. There will be fewer appearing for smaller parties and on lower Reaper levels.

13. Reaper dungeons now use the same over and under level XP penalties as normal dungeons. Characters cannot enter a Reaper dungeon if they are too high level as compared to the dungeon; in the Heroic levels this limit is more than 4 levels above the base challenge rating of the dungeon, and in Epic levels this limit is more than 6 levels as it is on live. As always, Epic characters cannot enter Heroic dungeons.



Sev~

I am seeing a pattern here... screw melee and light armored/non-armored melees.


1. Melee is the one that needs support in reaper, equalizing magic and ranged doesn't help the melee value.

2. Hampers melee effectiveness.

3. making CC less effective has a negative impact for melee since melee have to chase moving mobs, which casters and ranged don't care if mobs are moving or not.

4. Good for tanks, the reduced damage output of melees will help tanks too..

5. Harsh, but whatever.. spell resistance on players is worthless anyway.
~Monster spell penetration roll is usually 1d20 + CR~ CR 70+ mob= player screwed.. with this change.. player more screwed and spell resistance more worthless.

6. screws the defenses of light and non-armored players like monks.. especially melees.. more BS. but whatever..

7. Screwing over dodge and dodge based toons.. bad for the light and non-armored melee that rely on these types of defenses and no impact on heavies since they cant reach that number anyway,..

8. so charmed mobs now become equivalent to the worthless melee hirelings with a 6 second duration.. I am guessing the timer isn't being changed to increase durations..

9. No comment, guess will have to see what the impact is when it is live...

10. did you fix fear reapers that are not accessible and/or not line of sight to not tick damage or are players still screwed when a reaper spawns on another level that is halfway through the quest to get to..
~Expect some new mechanics~.. og new mechanics.. hope these have been thoroughly vetted and we dont get screwed with more bugged or otherwise broken reaper mechanics.

11. Couldn't come up with a cleaner transition/level mechanic .. a mathematical one based on character level.. like the 4/8 per point Reaper HP/30*character level instead of jump points every 5 levels...
The tiering per 5 levels is disproportionate.

12. This is dumb, smaller parties are expending more resources to compensate for not having a larger group.
Would rather see fewer Lost souls in general but be accessible to every party member like treasure bags, this way the greedy/accidental grabbers don't screw the players that need the souls without overly rewarding party members with poor mana resource planning.

13. This is also still moronic you are screwing players over in being able to run over level content that can be run on elite.
Take Von5 for instance.. on reaper a level 29/30 player is straight up locked out, and there is with no consideration to the skull factoring. but can be run on elite with no issues...
.. other than basically removing challenge factor making it a no challenge overpowered uber player smash fest.
Instead.. change the mechanic to add skull difficulty to the calculation for lockout and penalties.. higher skulls is more difficult and allows higher level players to at least be able to play with a challenge and run these raids and quests.



Guess we will see how it plays out when it goes live..
from my initial reaction.. I see lots of fail here.. a general screw over for non-heavy armored melees(the ones in the most precarious state in reaper atm) and no biggie for ranged/casters since they are not toe-to-toe anyway, and a little tank love.

[lyrecono]

the old saying, exploit early, exploit often comes to mind.

those that had reaper wings when stradh came out (and now might have passed a 100 to a 120 reaper points are in the clear, they can abuse the reaper system during tr-ing (r1, overlevel) for the bonus exp and rest easily, while latecomers are screwed.

[silinteresting]

just wanted to say there are some nice changes here and new reapers are great.
will make it slightly harder for myself as i mostly solo but that is good.

thankyou.

your friend sil

[Thar]

3. It will be slightly harder to keep creatures locked down. First, Reaper creatures will have an additional +4 to their saving throws versus spells. In addition, the formula for reducing the duration of crowd control will be tweaked so crowd control duration reductions ramps up more quickly by about 25% at Reaper 10. As an example, an unmodified caster level 20 Mass Hold would be reduced on live to 12 seconds in duration on Reaper 10; the same spell would be reduced to 9.6 seconds. The minimum duration of 6 seconds still applies as it does on live.

so what is the comparison to the DC's available to normal (non completionist) casters? Necro DC's were not obtainable with ravenloft gear in sharn for most casters. This should make that worse?

[mons]

since when? hurl worked fine last week

You saying you hurled a reaper last week?

[droid327]

As always, Epic characters cannot enter Heroic dungeons.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Heroic characters can’t enter any Epic quests. Epic characters cannot enter Heroic Reaper quests.

Even if if you are level 20 epic and want to do level 19 reaper.

[SirValentine]

13. Reaper dungeons now use the same over and under level XP penalties as normal dungeons.

Can you please explain in more detail what this means? It's very unclear.

[TitusOvid]

- The main function for melees in higher reaper is kill mobs that can't be insta-killed. And it is best done, if you are able to make the mobs helpless and have some decent defenses (either PRR or Dodge). Instead of widening the tactics for melees, this will make that one working tactic harder. This is even less incentive to play melee. Is it possible to go into details of why oyu tghink this needs to be done?

- Randomized numbers ... You are kidding right? Why not have a consistent formular and make it comprehensible/traceable? This game has so much hidden numbers and calcualtions it is practically a black box.

- Buffing reapers is fine. They are a joke compared to most champions. New reapers as in types of reapers? Please fix the recent mechanics before you introduce new ones.

-

I am seeing a pattern here... screw melee and light armored/non-armored melees.
12. This is dumb, smaller parties are expending more resources to compensate for not having a larger group.
Would rather see fewer Lost souls in general but be accessible to every party member like treasure bags, this way the greedy/accidental grabbers don't screw the players that need the souls without overly rewarding party members with poor mana resource planning.

Cheers,
Titus.

[J1NG]

7. Dodge will have, across all difficulties, an absolute cap of 95%.

This is a terrible approach to the issue of Dodge and highlights how little the Devs actually understand their own designs and game and how badly they come up with solutions that don't really solve the problem well.

1. Light Melee as you put it, which has trouble reaching 200+ PRR (to surive two hits) often rely on Dodge to entirely mitigate melee attacks "TEMPORARILY".
2. DDO has an ever increasing number of enemies that ignore the Dodge defense ENTIRELY. No 1-10% per skull level, no 50%, no 75% ignore, no. You have 100% TOTAL (doesn't matter if you have 101% Dodge, 150% or 9001% Dodge, the enemy who ignores it will ignore it all).
3. The best Dodger in the game belongs to me: Jedinja and Sightblur. 90s 100% constant Dodge or ~3 1/2 minutes worth of 100% Dodge if I need to go all the way in the fight for that long being untouched. So I am your best tester and yoru best source of information regarding Dodge usage. (Also had Ki Shout to swap between two toons that was built like this before the Devs busted Ki Shout for no good reason. And believe me, it was for NO GOOD REASON.)

4. 95% Dodge? Why 95% Dodge? Why not 99% Dodge? Do you even know what the difference between them is? I'll tell you. Nothing. Only 100% gives you immunity that is TEMPORARY only (Whilst the Dodge remains at 100% or more at the moment).

5. So you want to stop players like me being able to achieve 100% Dodge to ingore melee attacks. That's fine, don't cap it though. Why? Because by capping it, you still fail to understand why capping Dodge is bad.
A. Only Light Melee can achieve this Dodge level for lengthy periods of time, and they lose out on heavy dps in the process and usually many other things at the same time, including vital defences.
B. Even with 99% Dodge, 27% Incorp, 55% Displace and 5% Ignore Melee, do you know what happens when the enemy makes all those rolls? You die because you get hit. That's right. Outright die. Now you want to reduce the number down to 95%? Are you kidding me? And make no mistake, over the last 3 years, I've seen this happen enough times when I was testing over that time to make sure it still happens FREQUENTLY, and I assure you, it DOES. So anything less than 100% is bad.

6. The BETTER solution. Leave Dodge to remain uncapped. BUT:
A. Give more enemies Dodge bypass, including by Elite + Reaper Skull levels. OR, reduce player Dodge by base amount (1-10 per skull level) (this does the same effect largely).
B. If players like me have toons that have enough Dodge normally but don't anymore with the new Dodge bypass, WE (the players) now have a hard decision(s) to make:
C. Do we use ANOTHER Dodge clickie (and because of that, lose out on extended Dodge, or risk not having Dodge for another battle later/sooner?) and increase our Dodge enough so now we are still 100% Dodge (or above) and ignore all melee attacks right now? Or attempt to save it for later? Again, this gives tough CHOICE to the players. Players can spend more time waiting (for Dodge to come back) or actually going and playing.
D. Subsequently, the 100% TOTAL Dodge bypass is completely silly (and I have personally never liked it). Especially on Champions (and Bosses). A better solution, especially if you go with this solution, is that Champions now have 75% or 80% Dodge Bypass. This means that anyone with 50% standing Dodge (like I do), and attempts to use Meld (+100% Dodge, to a total ot 150%), will still have 25% Chance to being hit by those with this buff (Because 150% Dodge, - 75% = 75% functional Dodge, so 25% to still be hit). To which we (the Player) have a choice: If we have another source of Dodge, do we use it to save the party and run into the swarm of enemies? Do we use it to clobber the Champion in safety and then sneak save the party? Or leave it for later because I see more enemies coming? Choices, which are deprived of players if you change Dodge to cap at 95%. Because then Dodge is pointless beyond 50% (or 45% if players want to go that way) at all times at that point because it is worthless to attempt to get more Dodge out of it to make it useful (no die in one hit). Make DODGE COUNT, force players into deciding to using MORE sources of temporary Dodge to remain invincible temporarily.

For those wondering: Jedinja is:
Monk 6, Rogue 8, Fighter 6
50% Standing Dodge
~120 PRR
~35% MRR
With the following sources of Temp Dodge: Meld into Darkness, Improved Uncanny Dodge, Primal Travel, and Mist Stalker V.

A better version was designed that also included Elaborate Parry, but needed Racial Completionist (and have 2 minutes of uninterrupted 100% Dodge and ~6 minutes of non-stop 100% Dodge) and I wasn't bothered to get it for a tiny bit more improvement. But again, the whole point is: To achieve this 100% Dodge rate, you sacrifice in so many areas, your PRR can never be anywhere near as high as others. Even for 95% Dodge (cap). And you are often at the mercy of spells because your MRR is worst of all (and again, the Devs decided lately to throw so many enemies in that just uses abilities and spells that ignore stuff like Evasion or Saves and just do a straight MRR check instead. NOT COOL.) And your DPS is also much lower as a result.

Again, my suggestion leaves Dodge as viable alternative to using PRR/AC/HP etc, but forces players to find more sources of Temporary Dodge to make up the new deficit of Dodge introduced by my suggestion(s), and use them if they want to remain untouchable, but now at a reduced amount of time (since the used Temporary Dodge will now be on Timer).

I hope the Devs see reason and the logic of the information posted here. That 95% Dodge is worthless otherwise for those who rely on it.

J1NG

[Alcides]

1. Currently the damage resistance for melee is actually lower (more favorable to the player) than for ranged and magic, so in the new system the reduction for melee, ranged, and magic will all be equal with ranged and magic catching up to melee damage.

2. The base damage multiplier for hitting helpless creatures will be lowered from a 1.5 multiplier to a 1.25 multiplier. Helplessness will provide less damage increase.

This will drastically reduce melee DPS participation of high end reaper content. If you make the ranged DPS equal to melee DPS the natural conclusion is to exclude melee from Reaper premades.

3. It will be slightly harder to keep creatures locked down.
...
As an example, at Reaper 5 each saving throw a monster makes is increased by a randomized number between 1 and 15 on live, it would be 1 and 20 going forward.

What is the exact calculation per reaper skull so that the community can plan accordingly for this change?

4. Tank threat will be increased dramatically. Tank defensive stances, threat increases in Unyielding Sentinel, and scaling threat itemization effects have had their values tripled from what they are currently.

This is an okay change, I think there are still some mobs that completely ignore threat such as twig blights in Ravenloft.

5. Monster spell penetration rolls are increased on live by a randomized number between 1 and (Reaper Level x 3). This would be increased to a randomized number between 1 and (Reaper Level x 4). This does not affect the player's ability to penetrate monster spell penetration; only attacks on players from monsters.

Is the check d20 + CR + RANDOM(1 .. Skulls * 4)?

9. Reaper toughness is buffed. They will take longer to kill – to both compensate for the damage increase and to fix the problem that level scaling was not providing enough hit point scaling for them.

Please clarify, charmed mobs in Reaper will take longer to kill or all mobs in reaper will take longer to kill?

10. New Reapers will appear, one at all levels and some only in Reaper level 6 and higher. Expect some new mechanics.

Could you elaborate on the new types, and a brief description of that each new type does so the community can plan accordingly for this?