U55 Preview 1: The Level Cap Increase

[Lamassut]

Of course they are Legendary levelling will never be a one and done thing so the persistent Legendary xp will be persistent (until you Legendary TR) I think that much is clear if you read between the lines. The question is not if but when. Im guessing 2 levels per expansion - lvl36 seems like a good spot - 2 years for an expansion so probably 2026?

no, if it has become clear to me that their intention is to add more reincarnations, unfortunately. But that didn't stop me from feeling chills. There are already too many reincarnations. Honestly, what is going to add more to the game, if not more difference with newer or less developed characters, when the difference is already abysmal?

I strongly oppose the idea because I think it is detrimental to the game, and to the retention of new players. There are other ways to keep veterans entertained than adding endless reincarnations.

The idea of reincarnation was originally good, but by now it has been overused.

[Lamassut]

People might be more excited if it didnt cost 210000/310 = 677 named items to level up an alternate sentient weapon which is 1.5K R10 runs with the current drop rates

yes, having several sentient weapons is crazy grinding, let alone how you commit the madness of having alts.

[Lamassut]

Feel like I'm the exception actually looking forward to the weapon specialisation feats and the options they'll enable.
Like for paladins and fighters to be able to switch between THF and TWF depending on how much aoe is needed, being able to get the two weapon fighting feats effectively on a non ranger strength based build without having to invest into the dex requirement. The fact that SWF and THF have been exclusive feat lines until now to prevent the two interacting for hand and a half weapons and now we just outright have access to both at once. (Really need dev confirmation of whether the ability mod for SWTHF will add together or just use the highest of the two, as of right now SWF with a waraxe reaches 2.1 mod to damage and thf with a waraxe reaches 1.6, if the increases were to stack that'd be a 2.6 mod for hand and a half weapons)

until you realize that all your enhancements only enhance one weapon style, and that your damage, even with the new feat, in the new style is not enough. Believe me, I would like to love the idea of changing my style, because I like varied characters and monotony bores me. But I don't see it as practical, even if leveling an alternative sentient weapon wasn't such an endless grind.

Also the elemental form feat is pretty good for cold druids using PA spells seeing as it just outright gives +3 cl to thundersnow and storm catcher, +6 to storm of vengeance, +3 to each lightning spell. Also should help out primal avatar as an option for sorcs as it kinda negates the CL penalty to alternate elements for being in a form.

no, for sorcerers the feat is unusable. Using it on an opposing element is useless, it doesn't offer enough dps. Using it on an alternative non-opposition element would be acceptable, but for that the sorcerer would have to invest in a second elemental tree, losing defense or DC/Control bonuses. Honestly, for a sorcerer is much more profitable another spellpower feat, which at least adds critical damage to his main element. Primal ED offers nothing useful to the sorcerer as a primary ED, only as a secondary ED.

For druids, as I said before, the feat is more useful, but if they want it to be useful for druids, it should empower light (word of balance) and healing spells-- empowering electricity by itself is not enough.

My main gripe really is that clearly the intent with these feats is to make generalizing more appealing (especially the elemental forms feat which I see as largely a precursor to plans to tone down immunity bypasses), but nothing is being done to address Warlocks that do not really have the option to use alternative damage types and have to burn a heart simply to change their pact. Maybe this is being addressed in the future with the warlock themed ED we've got no planned info on, but for now and until we see that warlocks will be struggling immensely with how restrictive the game currently is.
Would honestly like to see a legendary feat for warlocks that's something along the lines of a toggle that converts pact damage to untyped damage with your regular dice for dealing with immunities (using your regular pact's crit and spellpower), drawback to untyped damage being that it wouldn't benefit damagewise from reducing enemy mrr which warlocks are of course providers of.

Warlocks and Wizards are always the ones to be forgotten when the devs design spell damage options. It's like those classes should be all DC, like the devs forget that bosses are only vulnerable to damage, that there are a lot of champions that can't be instantkilled.

[Saekee]

You seem to have a completely opposite takeaway from most of the feedback that is complaining that the legendary feats are only offering build diversity instead of more raw power (which really isn't needed)

raise level cap, give characters more power then allow them at higher level to steamroll even more easily every quest in the former cap. This is all utterly pointless.

A level cap increase cannot come with any more power. It busts up everything. They could instead use legendary xp of some kind to earn complementary perks to bolster the other aspects of the game, such as sentient xp and the various forms of reincarnation. This breaks everything. By the time DDO gets to level 40, it will be plainly visible. Until now, you guys can get excited by all the new toys.

This whole thing is unimaginative powercreep that recycles former progressions and just adds more.

[Lotoc]

until you realize that all your enhancements only enhance one weapon style, and that your damage, even with the new feat, in the new style is not enough. Believe me, I would like to love the idea of changing my style, because I like varied characters and monotony bores me. But I don't see it as practical, even if leveling an alternative sentient weapon wasn't such an endless grind.

That's really not the norm, the majority of enhancement trees for melee serve multiple weapon styles effectively.
Barbarians who are notoriously 2h orientated only really have strikethrough that is tailored to 2hf only in their trees.
Kensai has nothing that specifies a specific combat style.
Kotc is pretty much viable for every combat style
Assassin and vistani are both swf and twf (and low hanging vistani is a go to for every melee dps of every style)
Eldritch Knight is effective with pretty much every combat style
Vile chemist works with swf, twf and 2hf
And that's just off the top of my head

The only trees really locked to a single specific style are Nature's protector/warrior, Henshin, Thief acrobat, Tempest, Swashbuckler and Shintao
Vanguards and battle engineer may be primarily a Shield fighting and SWF tree respectively but both see use of THF and are going to gain direct power from being able to use two handed specialty.

[Lamassut]

raise level cap, give characters more power then allow them at higher level to steamroll even more easily every quest in the former cap. This is all utterly pointless.

A level cap increase cannot come with any more power. It busts up everything. They could instead use legendary xp of some kind to earn complementary perks to bolster the other aspects of the game, such as sentient xp and the various forms of reincarnation. This breaks everything. By the time DDO gets to level 40, it will be plainly visible. Until now, you guys can get excited by all the new toys.

This whole thing is unimaginative powercreep that recycles former progressions and just adds more.

I agree, but it is clear that at this point there is no turning back... the devs have not listened when they could have, now, at the gates of xpack, they are even less likely to listen to us.

I wish they had left the static cap and found new ways of lateral progression, preferably many of them cosmetic and bragging rights (yes, that works too, look how people spend in the hardcore league). But I'm guessing they can't do it because of the way they design loot, although I still find that options are lacking at the moment, they already seemed to have hit a ceiling in designing new items.

[Lamassut]

That's really not the norm, the majority of enhancement trees for melee serve multiple weapon styles effectively.
Barbarians who are notoriously 2h orientated only really have strikethrough that is tailored to 2hf only in their trees.
Kensai has nothing that specifies a specific combat style.
Kotc is pretty much viable for every combat style
Assassin and vistani are both swf and twf (and low hanging vistani is a go to for every melee dps of every style)
Eldritch Knight is effective with pretty much every combat style
Vile chemist works with swf, twf and 2hf
And that's just off the top of my head

The only trees really locked to a single specific style are Nature's protector/warrior, Henshin, Thief acrobat, Tempest, Swashbuckler and Shintao
Vanguards and battle engineer may be primarily a Shield fighting and SWF tree respectively but both see use of THF and are going to gain direct power from being able to use two handed specialty.

try it, and you will see that its efficiency is much lower than you think.

[ned_ellis]

I dont see a reason for this honestly.

I do see a reason for this.

[ned_ellis]

raise level cap, give characters more power then allow them at higher level to steamroll even more easily every quest in the former cap. This is all utterly pointless.

A level cap increase cannot come with any more power. It busts up everything. They could instead use legendary xp of some kind to earn complementary perks to bolster the other aspects of the game, such as sentient xp and the various forms of reincarnation. This breaks everything. By the time DDO gets to level 40, it will be plainly visible. Until now, you guys can get excited by all the new toys.

This whole thing is unimaginative powercreep that recycles former progressions and just adds more.

Most likely true but as Lammasut says it's too late and the best we can do is try and steer them a little.

Having said that, the general plans outlined are a little dissappointing but with the plus of not really ruining or invalidating everything that came before - it seems it is simply a progression of what we have in epic with a future LTR pastlife benefit on the horizon. Meh....but could have been much worse! I was hoping for 'prestige class' type development but it seems they want to introduce flexibility in a place where everybody is trying to eek out every drop of linearity.

Of course it will all only be valid when we get to 40 and they have created enough content, systems, absurd crafting systems etc. to find the 'balance' we had before...so when I'm retired and have enough time to actually bother with any of them!

[Drosan]

Will banked SAGA experience be usable to level to 31 or 32 ?

[DRAXnekro]

I've been reading the whole discusion and must agree with some ppl about few things.
First of all we're geting 2 more lvls out of 10 that we will eventualy get someday whan the cap will be 40, so anything that will be added with just those 2 lvls can't be extremly powerfull. It should be usefull but not OP and give some good opening for future higher lvl feats and cores.
Secondly most if not all characters that are viable to play on higher difficulty are specialized in one or two things and it is because the game is designed like that. Mobs on high reaper have lot of health, saves and damage and characters must focus on dps, doing CC with high enough DC or being enough sturdy to let others do their work while taking blows they cant stand. To achieve this we have to pick specific enhancements, feats and destinies. I'm guesing the difficulty will keep increasing with the new higher content so this wont change and we will need further progress in our specializations.
Thirdly the idea with saving legendary experience between reincarnations, untill we get and use it to legendary reincarnate someday is great. Having this added to epic experience and reincarnations will be even better.
Fourthly since we are geting more destiny points consider alowing us using at least four destinies. If not now let it be unlocked at some higher lvl or at some point we might end up having more points that things to spend them on.

Now a bit of details and ideas I hve so far.
The weapon specialty feats aren't atractive for most of players since we are specialized. When we create a melee character we have an idea about what will it do and how will be fighting. We pick one from the styles that suits us the most and we think it will be the best for that character and we get all the feats, enhancements, special attacks, destinies, sentiente weapon filled with filigree that will work with our choosen style. Suddenly giving us a second fighting style is not a good idea since it won't be as effective as our first choice and most ppl just won't use it. The only exception with those feats is bastard/dwarven axe users since they could benefit from two styles at once (SWF+Shields or SWF+THF).
Instead we could get feats that will add some portion of different styles to our main style.
Something like "Your fighting style is perfect but still can be improved with other styles.
Improved by THF - gain 60% strikethrough and 25% more damage from ability score
Improved by SWF - gain 10% attack speed bonus and 2 melee power
Improved by TWF - gain 20% doublestrike and 10 prr
Improved by Shield mastery - gain 20 prr and 10 mrr
Those values could be different and this could be the first feat from a whole chain of feats resulting with basic fighting style having full benefits from other fighting style (eg. TWF improved by THF would get 140% strikethrough and 75% more damage from ability).

Wild Force feels like it benefits more to wolf form that to bear. With perfect natural fighting it will bring wolf to 25% bonus to hp while bear gets only movement speed (and 5% AC bonus from perfect if you're using shields since nature protector encourages to use shields with bear). How about give bear at least 10% attack and movement speed bonus from wolf?

Legendary point blank shot. Well I'm not a fan of reducing attack speed because it makes the fighting less smooth. Why not just give the bonus dmg when you shoot someone in the point blank range and increase the range by 10m.

Spell Speciality feats. First of all it shouldn't be called like that. It's cool for DC casters to catch up a bit with some other spells (most likely necro/ench) but guesing this +3 bonus wont make those spells land w/o bonuses from enhancement trees, items and destinies we have for our main school. Changing it to something like "Your X school spells will now use your other highest school bonus to DC". This would result in two things. First - casters would have two spell schools with same bonuses to DC. Second - more damage options for casters since with this they wouldn't need to pick scion feat with the DC bonus they need but the damage bonus they want.

Elemental Form Specialty. Again it gives bonuses to something most players dont use. A fire sorc definetly won't be using cold spells and most likely acid and ele spells neither because all his enhancements, feats and destinies are focused on fire, nothing els and those +3 caster levels wont change it.

The new T4 cores mostly should be changed. Cores should be general in the bonuses they give or at least focused on something the destiny provide itself.

Draconic Heritage II - spell point cost reduction is ok as all the previous cores gives this bonus. The eshew materials part is realy meh. How much special components do you need? Since this is destinie is extremly focused on a single elemental damage we could get some immunity striping. Maybe not 100% but at least 50%?

Hear my Voice Friend - unique, seems realy good, but fatesinger have a lot of melee and ranged oriented bonuses while this is just for casters. It would be nice T5 but not a core.

Nightwind - Nice bonus to spell penetration but the destinie provide same DC bonuses like other caster destinies and no enchancement school bonus so I'm not sure it should anly be here. The 5% chance of freezing should be given to all negative and cold spells not only the zone variants since I'm not a fan of small % chances to anything you cant spam.

Sunder Evil - Sounds solid but this should be more general and less conected with feats. Maybe if this triggers on vorpal as well as on imp. suder would do the trick. Just like the Fatesinger core this feels like a T5 ability more than a core

Exalted Angel (unnamed) - realy not sure we need damage on escape skill but maybe 1d3+3 healing per caster lvl to every ally you fly throu and a buff to next spell you cast to deal aditional 1d6+3 light damage per caster level and 1d6+3 fire damage per caster level to single target

Last Hope - not heal but temporary hit points, let it trigger on droping below 50% and it actualy might be good enough but it's another core feeling more like a T5.

Bring Peace - actualy sounds like a core, maybe just give some on hit bonus Ki and double the bonuses if you have the discipline feat, just like in previous GoF cores.

Unstoppable - definetly NO to the 20% chance part. Lower the bonuses to 10% damage reduction and 10 fort save but make it llast for the duration of action boost.

Cut to the Soul - dodge bypass is ok. Fort bypass is too low. Same with helpless bonus to damage, 10% should be enought. Maybe add on vorpal effect that will make a mob considered hepless for 3 sec w/o stoping him from moving and attacking. Would be great if itcould affect bosses.

Be the Whirlwind - this is somethig I was amazed when read it but the more I thought about it the less I like it. It seems completly OP, focused just around few feats noone have atm and shouldn't be a core but a T5 ability. It should be an upgrade to adrenaline/quick cutter and additionaly trigger on imp. trip and whilwind attack.

Regrowth - this doesnt sound like a primal avatar at all. What I would like to see is "Any Protection from Energy spell now also give 15% absorption to that element and 15% crit damage bonus"

Fey Countenance - I'm not a fan of fascinate but maybe change it to confusion and add a few seconds of blind so you could bring a bit of chaos on command.

The post got bigger than I expected, sorry for that, but had alot of thoughts to share.

[elvesunited]

==== Initial Impressions on new feats =====

Weapon Speciality - Great if you are one of those melee rare builds that can use more than one combat style at a time. Head scratchingly impractical for every other melee. All the heroic enhancements, other feats, filigrees, gear are picked to support one combat style negating any advantage of switching fighting styles might have.

Spell Speciality - Very useful if you have the epic feat.

Elemental Form Speciality - Possibly strong for druid casters as they use a variety of spell types, sorcerors though tend to be pretty single type with their immunity bypass abilities.

Wild Force - Great for Wolves who would eat Little Red Riding Hood's other grandma for more hp. But Bears who went 31 levels without +10% move speed probably aren't going to get excited about it now.

Legendary Point Blank Shot - For heavy duty trash and bosses a +5% damage, -10% proc damage/effects. For lower hp trash it's better to kill them quickly then hit them harder. I don't think it's worth the hassle of managing the toggle.

Enhanced Elemental Dice - This is a level 31 feat! Can't even spring for +2 damage dice?


==== Initial Impressions on new core destiny abilities =====

Primal Avatar: Utterly impractical. Burning all your spell points is generally poor strategy and given the temporary spell points you can get with this destiny actually really hard to do unless you purposely borked your build to have lackluster spell points.

Dreadnought: The 20% chance with an action boost just rips this. As its not reliable it's value is next to nil.

Draconic Heritage: Yawn. An additional 5% spell cost reduction is not nothing. But it's not going to wake you up.

Divine Crusader: Do characters really use Improved Sunder? It's always struck me as impractical as the only things worth using sunder against are likely to make their saves against it. This seems like an improvement ( if the new divine effect does not have a save ) but I don't know if it warrants a spot on the hot bar.

Shadowdancer: Every little bit helps I guess but emphasis here on little.

Grandmaster: The MRR cap alone puts raises this up. But the rest? Is wholeness and meditation even used in epics?

Exalted Angel: Charging through enemies is a good way to kill yourself. So limited practical usage.

Fatesinger: Useful, but in the you were standing in the way of my attack and got accidentally healed sort of way.

Magus: +7 spell penetration is the gem here. As monster diff increases spell pen casters will need to find new sources of penetration.

Unyielding Sentinel: Assuming you've got the spellpower and healing amp to make it work, quite useful.

Fury of the Wild: Nice if you've got improved trip or whirlwind which few do. But Improved Trip can be gotten from Fury so this might improve its popularity bigly.

Shiradi Champion: Overpowered. Pin has a cooldown of 15 seconds. So an archer could use archer focus. Pin his target so it can't get him, fascinate everyone else and then proceed to methodically wipe out a large group of trash without getting touched. This of course depends on range. Too short of range and it quickly goes from overpowered to useless.

[Frezar14]

Is there any xp redistribution with new level cap? Will it still take the same amount of xp to get to epic (3.9 million on 3rd lifer) and now legendary? I thought I read somewhere a while back it was being looked into.

[Tilomere]

With the level cap at 32 will that change the reaper xp you earn at 30 and over quests?

Oops, then I guess only change is that base RXp is based on base quest level.

[SpardaX]

Tomes of Epic Learning will now deactivate at 30, and base RXp is based on base quest level.

If you're trying to say that having the Tome deactivate will lower RXp, it's already been said by a couple of people that Tomes don't boost RXp.

If you're not trying to say that, then as far as I can tell you've just said 2 unrelated things and I'm not sure what point you're aiming for with them.

[Saekee]

Most likely true but as Lammasut says it's too late and the best we can do is try and steer them a little.

Having said that, the general plans outlined are a little dissappointing but with the plus of not really ruining or invalidating everything that came before - it seems it is simply a progression of what we have in epic with a future LTR pastlife benefit on the horizon. Meh....but could have been much worse! I was hoping for 'prestige class' type development but it seems they want to introduce flexibility in a place where everybody is trying to eek out every drop of linearity.

Of course it will all only be valid when we get to 40 and they have created enough content, systems, absurd crafting systems etc. to find the 'balance' we had before...so when I'm retired and have enough time to actually bother with any of them!

I agree, but it is clear that at this point there is no turning back... the devs have not listened when they could have, now, at the gates of xpack, they are even less likely to listen to us.

I wish they had left the static cap and found new ways of lateral progression, preferably many of them cosmetic and bragging rights (yes, that works too, look how people spend in the hardcore league). But I'm guessing they can't do it because of the way they design loot, although I still find that options are lacking at the moment, they already seemed to have hit a ceiling in designing new items.

I agree with your sentiments but have seen this so many times here it is so irritating. A whole stealth community first pleaded, then posted data, then even went to war and never got a single dev posting in any of the threads. There is some kind of autocratic culture in place for this to be so. The reaper trees seemed like minor power creep and BAM did that blow up after a year. Already teams are doing R10 at cap and I was once racing to keep up with a FvS annihalating R8. Giving them more power will not appease some whales; it will bored them and trivialize content further.

There are so many clever things that could be done. This is not it. I won’t do it. The hamster here is stepping out of the wheel that anyway had greatly slown down for me as I will not let something dictate my behavior.

[SocratesBastardSon]

A change of topic and proposal/wish/stupid idea:

I remember back when I played p&p D&D where you might encounter demigods and heroes with impossible class and level combinations. Now that true Legendary is coming to a DDO-loaded computer near you, it got me thinking about those days.

Is it fair to view Legendary as equivalent to D&D's demigod/hero level of power? If so, one way I imagine translating those ideas into DDO's system would be to allow us to further advance in our heroic enhancements by being granted more APs. For instance, what if each Legendary rank awarded a Destiny Point AND a heroic Action Point? Or each Legendary level rather than each rank granted 1 AP to keep it less impactful.

It would be fun if they relaxed some of the heroic restrictions, like allowing a player to take t5 enhancements in two trees or two capstones (the latter is probably too much). If tying an AP award to rank/level increases is too aggressive, how about a Legendary feat that grants that kind of exception, that unlocks a second t5 or capstone, or that limits the player to one t5 enhancement in a second tree? If relaxing those restrictions is too much, how about just the ability (whether autogranted in Legendary, a feat, a Destiny core, etc.) to put more points into heroic class and/or racial trees while keeping the other restrictions in place?

[choco1212]

Why would it mean that? It provides the same 80% offhand strike as GTWF and has that feat as an antirequisite.

the feat states +80% offhand strike, add the +20% base=100%, or am i reading it wrong

[Artos_Fabril]

Why would it mean that?

Because GTWF doesn't provide 80% offhand strike. It provides 60%. I'm assuming this epic feat will actually only provide 60% also, and the 80% written in the OP was just an oopsie of someone trying to state the full effect of TWF without remembering how TWF actually goes.

the feat states +80% offhand strike, add the +20% base=100%, or am i reading it wrong

Might I direct your attention to:

These four feats grant bonuses that resemble the Greater version of their heroic feat line. Each feat requires having the Greater version of one of the other three weapon style combat lines, essentially allowing those who have taken feats in one fighting style to gain the effects of the full 3-feat-chain of a different fighting style.

[VinoeWhines]

Weapon Specialty Feats:

Choose to upgrade your Weapon Specialty Feat and choose another Weapon Specialty inherent bonus from another style.(*Weapon Specialty inherent bonus)

• Legendary Single Weapon Fighting: Your Single-Weapon Fighting bonus is increased to a +40% Combat Style bonus to attack speed and 2 additional Melee Power.
  
• Legendary Two Handed Fighting: Increases the Strikethrough chance by an additional 40% and gives 4x ability modifier damage scaling with two handed weapons and 2 additional Melee Power.
  
• Legendary Two Weapon Fighting: Reduces the to-hit penalty to main hand and offhand to zero (-0/-0 )when using two weapons at the same time. Increases the chance to proc an off-hand attack by 20%, bringing the total chance to 100%.
  
• Legendary Range Expertise: Gain Doubleshot equal to your Weapon Ability Attack Modifier Score.
  
• Legendary Toughness: +120 maximum hit points. This can be taken multiple times.
  
• Legendary Point Blank Shot: Toggle: With ranged weapons, your attacks cause -10% slower attack and movement of enemy and deal 15% more damage. On Vorpal Blinds enemy with no save for 10 seconds.
  
• Legendary Specialty Attack: Your specialty Attacks reduce their cooldowns by 15% (Trip, Improved Trip, Assassinate, Sap, Cleave, Greater Cleave, Improved Feint, Whirlwind Attack)
  
  

*Weapon Specialty inherent bonus. Choose one from:

• Single Weapon Fighting bonus: Gain +20% Legendary Combat Style bonus to attack speed and an additional 5 Melee Power.
• Two Handed Fighting bonus: Gain 2.5x Ability modifier damage scaling with weapons and an additional 5 Melee Power.
• Two Weapon Fighting bonus: increases the chance to proc 20% doublestrike.
• Range Weapon Fighting bonus: Gain Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot as Feats (Prereq: Dex 19, Base Attack Bonus +11).