Lamannia Update 66 Preview 2 - Epic Destiny Refresh

[Soulcial]

Here's a few things you missed:

1) Chain Cure became actually useful, finally
2) Fatesinger buffs are pretty big (1d6+1 > 1d6+3, doubled = 189% buff to the caster epic strike, +2 crit range for the melee/ranged)
3) Machro strike buffed
4) Runearms for non-int Machro builds
5) EA epic moment became awesome
6) Turn Undead buffs for endgame
7) HP buffs to a bunch of ED's
8) Shadowdancer got buffed a bunch (but still not great lol)
9) Fury got another no-save knockdown
10) Ranged toons got a ton of AoE, at the cost of some single-target (I have no clue how accurate, but Monkey_Archer estimated -7% DPS above)
11) US gets to use both single-target and AoE shield throw
12) Draconic Mantle stacks w/Magma now
13) GMoF moderate buffs (Drifting Lotus +18% damage, Orchid Blossom +59% damage)
14) EA has up to -10 PRR/MRR debuff now, which is like +3-6% party DPS or something depending on Shadows stacks.

Magus strike brought well up to par (maybe past par?), and maybe Fey Lights got buffed considering it was a CC ability and now I guess it does damage? Drifting Lotus was already pretty good for AoE damage, and it got +18% more damage on top. It's IMO the best melee epic strike for questing, although fairly limiting in usage lol.

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Edit: they're also looking at buffing ranged single-target damage to make up for the loss from Hunt's End. So Ranged is maybe sorta just getting buffed AoE at ~minimal cost? Will be a lot of math, spreadsheets, and building to figure out the end result

Some of this is redundant an the rest falls under 8) other stuff ?

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

I don't doubt your testing, but this potential debuff disparity alone is enough to make up that 20% discrepancy. Debuff stacking speed also matters. My point is that the only valid in-game test would be to use 0 debuffs for both builds since its not possible to debuff equally.

The conceivable scenario is that you are testing 2 different builds played by 2 different players. Debuffs, player skill, luck, gear, mythic/reaper bonuses, etc... could all play a role that I can't possibly know.

In that case I propose a "Cetus fighting style" line of feats. Its just like THF except with no strikethrough, stat modifier or melee power. Instead you gain 80% triple-strike with a 50% stat modifier penalty, which can also quadra-strike at 50% the rate of your standard doublestrike
Alternatively, maybe just allow THF cosmetics to affect TWF builds?

Be good to give THF some distinctive love...

Maybe an extra crit multi, or a boost to tactics at 1/2 heroic levels.

I'm not sure what, TBH, but I'd like to see it as something other than a raw damage boost.

 

[Eoin-1]

Here's a few things you missed:

2) Fatesinger buffs are pretty big (1d6+1 > 1d6+3, doubled = 189% buff to the caster epic strike, +2 crit range for the melee/ranged)

For my bard, it took Strike a Chord from about 1,500/4,200 to 6,400/12,600 (includes the doubling from Master of the Acoustics). I have around 80% critical for sonic. Nice bump for a strike ment to weave between your rotation and triple the damage of Echos of Discord. I'm not really built for DPS, so someone could get those numbers a little higher.

Thinking of Echos of Discord, could that get the same bump to 1d6+3?

 

[Shear-buckler]

Be good to give THF some distinctive love...

Maybe an extra crit multi, or a boost to tactics at 1/2 heroic levels.

I'm not sure what, TBH, but I'd like to see it as something other than a raw damage boost.

Yeah, give THF something distinctive like a chance to hit multiple targets. Or maybe change active attacks to add multiplicative damage so that they scale better with THF than any other style.

Oh wait...

 

[Ying]

This is hilariously wrong.

This thread needed comedic relief. He delivered.

 

[Lazuli]

Ice casters that can bypass immunity basically. So Druid or Sorc as rest it will be a buff for when it work, ice is also quite resisted in the game.

Yes, the cold part of the Magus only works well for bypass casters. The negative does not work well even for wizard. The concept is very cool thematically, but it is a specialized concept and designed for people who have an elemental style bypass (for the weak wizard bypass it doesn't really work).

The problem with casters in this game is that the devs prioritize specialization above all else, and only design for specialists. The EDs are all designed for specialists, starting with the mantle, and continuing through all the other options. Even options superficially aimed at non-bypass casters, like coalescent, are a joke (15 points of bypass when enemies are eating thousands of points of damage? 15? For the love of god, if they're not going to make it useful, put something else instead).

The gear, likewise, designed so that you can only equip one or two spellpowers/crit at full, which benefits casters with bypass, who stack every available damage source for their offensive element, while casters without bypasses cannot to do that.

Epic feats are also guilty, to a lesser extent, but also because they all promote excessive specialization, from damage to DC. Sure the devs felt super generous in giving us all the spell focus of one school in one feat, but it doesn't feel that way when you have spells from six different schools. In pnp, generally the difference in DC between a specialized school and the others schools is 10-15%. In DDO, it can mean the difference between a barely functioning school or a fully functional one. Differences between schools, devs, must be kept within the d20 variance. And a bit of the same thing happens with damage feats, while bypass casters stack each one there for their element, non-bypass casters don't have that luxury and the differences grow.

But this has been pointed out for years, and the devs have turned a blind eye. At the beginning of this pass I was a little hopeful that they would address this, because Tonquin seems more open to seeing these types of discrepancies than other devs to me. But nah. Given what we have seen, they will continue down the same path of only designing for casters with bypass and then nerfing all casters equally.

If they want to keep the bypass casters at bay without nerfing the others, they only have to do one very simple thing: not put so many stackable bonuses of the same element. It's simple, these casters stand out so much because they can stack many bonuses to the same element. Design so that non-bypass casters have options for multiple elements, and create for a particular element only a reasonable number of stackable bonuses. Problem solved!

 

[Lotoc]

(15 points of bypass when enemies are eating thousands of points of damage? 15? For the love of god, if they're not going to make it useful, put something else instead).

for reference this is actually scaled by spellpower because enemy flat resistance is applied before your spellpower scaling and other percentile increases, this is why mobs with like 30 fire resist will reduce an imbue that typically does thousands of damage by such a huge margin.
If you've got 1500 spellpower removing 15 resist will actually increase the damage by 240 before accounting for things like MRR/PRR, Vulnerability, crits and etc.

However, this is resistance, an entirely different stat from the absorb/vulnerability vector that immunities are on and it doesn't seem that resistance ignore can actually damage enemies as if they had negative resist. Resistance is entirely flat and at endgame incredibly rare relative to just % absorb, Immunity and healing which bypass negates entirely.

 

[Lazuli]

for reference this is actually scaled by spellpower because enemy flat resistance is applied before your spellpower scaling and other percentile increases, this is why mobs with like 30 fire resist will reduce an imbue that typically does thousands of damage by such a huge margin.
If you've got 1500 spellpower removing 15 resist will actually increase the damage by 240 before accounting for things like MRR/PRR, Vulnerability, crits and etc.

However, this is resistance, an entirely different stat from the absorb/vulnerability vector that immunities are on and it doesn't seem that resistance ignore can actually damage enemies as if they had negative resist. Resistance is entirely flat and at endgame incredibly rare relative to just % absorb, Immunity and healing which bypass negates entirely.

Well, the fact is that in game this does practically nothing. Absorption and immunity are everywhere, resistances are hardly noticeable, and even then, having or not having colascent doesn't make much difference.

If the EDs don't give things that really serve for the epic game, what's the point? It's like dragonscales, which gives 1 PRR per destiny point invested, up to a staggering 3 PRR per 3 destiny points. Oh really? 3 PRR for three destiny points? I thought they were EDs designed for epics, not for Korthos.

 

[Ptalon]

People just can't resist bragging about their 1st life toons in nerf threads.

Ah! Yes. Let's design a game where first life. no Reaper point characters cannot complete content!
That kind of game will be great!

But that does seem to be the goal here doesn't it.

I'm not talking about doing R10s.
I'm talking about doing Legendary Raids on Normal, and R1s for 6-man quests. Because you have to do reaper to get reaper points.

And while you do not have to do raids, everyone should be able to do so.

Any mind-set about balancing the game for those running R10s is dead wrong! At least if it affects first lifers at all.

Then there are people like me.
Somewhere in-between.

I enjoy two-manning R1-4 quests and Legendary normal/hard raids.

Very upset that I cannot complete some raids on Normal. Because someone decided I don't work hard enough at playing a game to get to have fun running all of the content. Well, I have a few cuss words for you.

The one thing that prevents weaker characters from completing dungeons is dying!
And you want to take away something that adds survivability.

Perhaps you see so many supermen that you are desperate to handicap them in some way.
Fine, go find some Kryptonite that doesn't affect the rest of us.

I've already given ideas many times over the years.
A lot of these problems, you did to yourselves.

Un-nerf Golems for example.
Increase (bypassable) DR.
Who the hell thought it was a good idea to allow Fire Caster etc. to be able to fight fire with fire?!

You have over and over again weakens your monsters. In several cases just so some go can push a single button over and over again.

And now you think you need to weaken all of us because some people are too powerful.

Why now? Oh, yeah, that's right... to pretend to give us more power with a level cap increase.


Signed Ptalon
Formerly Talon Moonshadow. Go find your old forums, I've been here a long time and posted a ton of great advice. I've been a supporter of the Devs in most things.
But I'm I&%%T&*&

 

[Lazuli]

One thing I forgot to say yesterday, Tonquin, is that now core 4 shiradi has nothing for xbow users, its bonuses are for bow and ranger, nothing more. Can you add something more universal here for ranged style?

If not, the only benefit that an xbow user will receive from this core is the basic RP.

 

[Lazuli]

Another thing I don't understand is the design philosophy of shadowdancer. You've called it a hybrid ED, but it's really only hybrid in the sense that it gives options for casters and for weapon users, but these options are mutually exclusive, so it's not really hybrid.

Toons who use this ED tend to be full weapon users (the ED doesn't even support evocation for many true hybrids) or full casters looking for weird at tier 5. It is not a real hybrid ED, it really should not be considered as such, and I do not understand why it is given that treatment in terms of hp and spell points.

As long as the spellpower/MP and RP are not affected, I suppose it doesn't matter, but it really isn't a true hybrid ED which supports hybrid toons well, since the weapon and caster options are exclusive.

 

[mikarddo]

Are you specifically measuring raid DPS? Because for questing I haven't seen TWF > THF, but maybe I haven't seen enough optimized shifters lol. For raiding oh yeah.

Also at least some of the TWF builds I've seen are using Adrenaline as well? I certainly did on my Rogue life, that and Drifting Lotus (for questing). SD's strike sucks for DPS, at least as far as I could tell. LH Dryad solo from Kaladynn used Adrenaline on a wraps shifter as well (as did that 4.9s DPS Kobold test). I don't play TWF though so I could be entirely off.

Adrenaline nerf only reduces THF damage by 12% if you're not doing anything for the other 8s lol; and with 12s duration you can still frontload it either for two fast knockdowns or first two BM's at 6s. It's ~24% of my Wolf's DPS when just auto-attacking, although that's obviously a build not loaded for Adrenaline (so losing 12% thereof is like a 3.0% DPS loss). It's still a nerf for sure, and will be annoying to get used to, but it's pretty far from a 12% nerf. Will be a bigger hit on my Barb, but not the end of the world lol.

They're planning on buffing ranged DPS to help with the loss from Hunt's End (see AoE thread, link here) which seems like an overall win.

Ice A casters going Magus T5 for raiding are getting buffed for single-target, at least as far as my math shows (I'm estimating Moonlance to be like +50% DPS over current DBreath, assuming you can get their SR to 0 and you're using no other spells - which are both large assumptions, link here).

B Casters yeet lol. Aside from people using Fatesinger I guess?

You certainly have a point wrt. raiding vs. questing. Yes, I meant for raids.

Wrt Adrenaline for THF. I specifically did write that it was 12.5% at most, but in practice less. So we fully agree.
Wrt Adrenaline for TWF. Certainly, some or maybe most will be using that. But it matters much less for TWF and thus I listed it as a tiny nerf (rather than no nerf).

It is true that under certain, pretty large assumptions, cold casters may actually have gotten a buff. I am not certainly I belive those assumptions are filled often enough to warrent calling it an actual buff though.

Ranged dps. I will believe it when I see it. The reduction from HE+SS to new HE is pretty large and most importantly is a pretty good part of a bow users total damage so the improvements will have to be substantial - not just raising a few other special attacks by 25%. Heck, maybe it wont even be enough if they buff all other special attacks by 100% to break even.

 

[Lazuli]

It is true that under certain, pretty large assumptions, cold casters may actually have gotten a buff. I am not certainly I belive those assumptions are filled often enough to warrent calling it an actual buff though.

I don't think the cold casters have received a buff. The increased damage of the strike is only if enemies have 0SR, it seems to me to be a very important and quite limiting "if", and even more so in raids, which is the scenario they are defending. The SLA of tier 5 has a big cooldown. Time stop is what it was, it is for casters who want to increase the group's dps at the expense of their own (not taking a more offensive tier 5). And although it is good, it is limited in its use, like every epic moment it has a gigantic cooldown and lasts very little. 5 min cooldown for 10 sec duration. It is the best epic time for caster currently (the draconic is poor and the primal does not reach the height), but its use is restricted.

I don't see it, honestly. If Moonlace had its damage increased without conditions, yes, but that "0 SR" seems to me to make it much less useful than people think.

 

[Oliphant]

I wish stuff currently slated to go away is made into a choice, then the idea this is all about choices would be valid for everyone. Not saying those choices don't get toned down, like for example, you could get a choice to go with classic EA mantle but just toned down. Get a choice for classic HE but maybe they cap it or something. Keep all the stuff they built in the previews and just add back in the old choices with like sane amount of tone-down.

 

[mikarddo]

Super high HP target (north of 5-6 million HP or so): TWF 62 seconds vs THF 90 seconds (2/3).

Thank you for presenting the data and methology in such detail, it is appreciated.

Is the test NPC the giants in the challenge quest? Just in case I or some guildies want to compare builds / kill times to your numbers knowing the target will be helpful.

 

[Lotoc]

Just a brief thing on the 0 SR
Only Demons, Devils and denizens of the underdark (drow, duergar etc.) really have spell resist in a quantifiable value. Golems and Wisps have basically unlimited spell resistance.
Everything else will basically always be taking the boosted damage and demon/devil etc. raid bosses typically have around the 50-60 ballpark on SR on reaper

 

[jwukane]

Your argument: There is non-equal access to debuffs between the TWF and THF fighting styles, favoring TWF in relatively artificial solo DPS test environments, which would disappear in real raid environment.

Testing methods:

The most optimized full-tilt versions of each build and fighting style were used and compared head on. If one was able to take advantage of something the other couldn't, then that was the perk of the build/style and was allowed.

TWF:
Weapons: Dino warhammer + Pestle
Builds: half orc Pure barb, 18/1/1 fighter and 15/5 Pally/tempest
Destiny: action hero + orcish rage

THF
Weapons used: dino greataxe and dino falchion
Builds: Half orc Pure barb, 18/1/1 Fighter
Destiny: Unbridled and action hero for both weapons

Debuff differences:

- Vulnerability in the case of using action hero (common to both the falchion THF'ing tests and all of the TWF'ing tests, this was not present on the unbridled test - which ironically produced a faster score on barbarian lol).

- Cursed Maelstrom on Pestle - not sure what procced or how often, I did not keep an eye out for whether this debuff was present.

- Dust was present on both in the form of melthorn

- Ooze was not deliberately used on either build (may have been procced by cursed maelstrom).

- Filigree sets were the same (I think that's true, I can double check with the person who I tested with - my THF'ing tests did not have shattered device).

- Bring Darkness was used on the THF'er and not on the TWF'er (I think the other tester did not take this, I can double check and update this later).

_____________________________________________________________________________

1. The THF'er tests we did had bring darkness as the potential debuff advantage. Filigrees were all maximum melee power, no shattered device.

2. The TWF'er tests had vulnerability as an "advantage" against the THF'ing tests that used unbridled (which ironically scored better).

3. The TWF'er tests had cursed maelstrom, I do not know how impactful this is/was. At worst, it procced ooze, conferring advantage to TWF.

4. The TWF'er may have potentially had shattered device over the THF'er. This I can double check.

Any other debuffs that are raid derived and not included consistently in this list would benefit the TWF'er as well.


With all of this testing and using the TWF'ing and THF'ing best times (not averages, using averages would favor TWF further, as THF times were much wider, given extreme reliance on successful adrenaline attacks - which are prone to missed dice rolls, missed swings due to moving target, or resisted crits), the results show that THF does 2/3 the damage of TWF.

Burst HP target best times: TWF 16 seconds vs THF 24 seconds (2/3)
Super high HP target (north of 5-6 million HP or so): TWF 62 seconds vs THF 90 seconds (2/3).
______________________________________________________________________________

There is absolutely no conceivable scenario here that supports your assertion that there's only a "10% difference in raids". After the dozens of hours of collective experience testing these fighting styles, the impression is that TWF is far ahead on single target damage.

I did my best to give THF every possible advantage and even fished for the best beatdown times to use in the calculations. So this 30-40% conclusion is extremely conservative.

THF single target damage is comparative dog doo-doo. That's the sophisticated conclusion.

P.S. - regarding your strikethrough comment. Trash mobs go as quickly as they come. Trash is trash. You can take away strikethrough tomorrow and I wouldn't bat an eye and they would all die just as fast. I don't care.

...well, I care if it's Orthons in VOD or the small abishai minions in the end of chrono. That's about it. You can use strikethrough as a real argument when the game creates encounters that support the use of strikethrough. RIght now, the vast majority of end-game raiding does not. On higher skulls? Yea, I don't want to be in the middle of more than 1 or 2 enemies anyway, because then I'm just dead. So attempting to use strikethrough in that situation is suicide.

As a bonus: If you really want the capability to hit multiple targets, dance of death is your solution. It's pretty awesome.

I'm making up the boss HP total because it doesn't matter. Say. 240k HP. THF 240k/24 = 10k dps. TWF 240k/16 = 15k dps. So would suggest TWF is actually 50% more dps (15k/10k = 1.5x more). The 62 vs 90 is approximately the same.

I do think that's pretty extreme.

I personally play neither of those melee styles and I like it a lot. With that being said , I would just like all styles to be liked a lot. Not just subjectively but objectively because they are all equally CLOSE ENOUGH so that any option is pretty solid. I just recently started playing again and am having lots of fun. I want whatever gets the most people, to have the most fun, so that there are more people to play with.

 

[Elves United]

Another thing I don't understand is the design philosophy of shadowdancer. You've called it a hybrid ED, but it's really only hybrid in the sense that it gives options for casters and for weapon users, but these options are mutually exclusive, so it's not really hybrid.

Toons who use this ED tend to be full weapon users (the ED doesn't even support evocation for many true hybrids) or full casters looking for weird at tier 5. It is not a real hybrid ED, it really should not be considered as such, and I do not understand why it is given that treatment in terms of hp and spell points.

As long as the spellpower/MP and RP are not affected, I suppose it doesn't matter, but it really isn't a true hybrid ED which supports hybrid toons well, since the weapon and caster options are exclusive.

Shadowdancer is a dual destiny ( not hybrid ) designed for illusionist casters and assassins. And their abilities do not mesh. It does a decent enough job supporting both up to Tier 3. But Tier 4 is a desert for casters. And Tier 5 has nothing of value for assassins. ( I tested Unholy feeding. I wouldn't take that as a Tier 1 ability )

 

[Lazuli]

Shadowdancer is a dual destiny ( not hybrid ) designed for illusionist casters and assassins. And their abilities do not mesh. It does a decent enough job supporting both up to Tier 3. But Tier 4 is a desert for casters. And Tier 5 has nothing of value for assassins. ( I tested Unholy feeding. I wouldn't take that as a Tier 1 ability )

I agree.

I don't see the mantle for casters either, and the strike... well, before I didn't like it for casters, but now I don't like any of them, so it doesn't matter lol

Anyway, my comment was because someone in his OP has classified it as a hybrid ED, but as you said, it is more of a dual ED than a hybrid.

 

[Rosze]

Yes, the cold part of the Magus only works well for bypass casters. The negative does not work well even for wizard. The concept is very cool thematically, but it is a specialized concept and designed for people who have an elemental style bypass (for the weak wizard bypass it doesn't really work).

The problem with casters in this game is that the devs prioritize specialization above all else, and only design for specialists. The EDs are all designed for specialists, starting with the mantle, and continuing through all the other options. Even options superficially aimed at non-bypass casters, like coalescent, are a joke (15 points of bypass when enemies are eating thousands of points of damage? 15? For the love of god, if they're not going to make it useful, put something else instead).

The gear, likewise, designed so that you can only equip one or two spellpowers/crit at full, which benefits casters with bypass, who stack every available damage source for their offensive element, while casters without bypasses cannot to do that.

Epic feats are also guilty, to a lesser extent, but also because they all promote excessive specialization, from damage to DC. Sure the devs felt super generous in giving us all the spell focus of one school in one feat, but it doesn't feel that way when you have spells from six different schools. In pnp, generally the difference in DC between a specialized school and the others schools is 10-15%. In DDO, it can mean the difference between a barely functioning school or a fully functional one. Differences between schools, devs, must be kept within the d20 variance. And a bit of the same thing happens with damage feats, while bypass casters stack each one there for their element, non-bypass casters don't have that luxury and the differences grow.

But this has been pointed out for years, and the devs have turned a blind eye. At the beginning of this pass I was a little hopeful that they would address this, because Tonquin seems more open to seeing these types of discrepancies than other devs to me. But nah. Given what we have seen, they will continue down the same path of only designing for casters with bypass and then nerfing all casters equally.

If they want to keep the bypass casters at bay without nerfing the others, they only have to do one very simple thing: not put so many stackable bonuses of the same element. It's simple, these casters stand out so much because they can stack many bonuses to the same element. Design so that non-bypass casters have options for multiple elements, and create for a particular element only a reasonable number of stackable bonuses. Problem solved!

Stacking the bonuses is what makes gear teris fun though. I’ve spend hours browsing wiki doing tables trying to make everything fit and that’s fun. I know people that coded an automated thing for their builds. So removing it might not be the answer. Balancing around it and allowing most elements reach the same heights if you push seems fair. Balance should be based on easily reached spell power and not the theoretical max toon.

Think what casters probably need is bypass overhaul. Nerf the current ones and give the rest some. You could simply make it a stacking debuff. Could be 50-75-100% mean that you don’t have to build around it but if you do you will probably do more damage. You could even add a minor buff at a higher stack but that might push the scales too far the other side. You don’t really even have to nerf the current ones but the game makes you focus on one element really and punishing builds that don’t get bypass just makes those not fun.