Some balance thoughts

[woq]

My (sort of low effort changes) dream balance patch:

Nerf section:
- Apply R7+ caster pens to all damage instead of just caster damage. Remove caster damage nerf. Instead, apply a damage nerf that applies to all damage equal to the caster nerf on R9+.
- Helpless Damage is now 80% as effective on R10.

Inquisitive:
- Shoot First RP scaling on dot from 200% to 150% and damage % from 40% to 25%.
- Drop the Imbue scaling of the inquisitor from 200% to 150% RP scaling.
- Remove the extra Doubleshot granted by the No Holds Barred enhancement.

Vistani Knife Fighting:
Capstone now grants MP only if you're wearing a Dagger or Kukri.

Fury of the Wild:
- Drop Quick Cutter MP scaling on the dot from 200% to 150%.
Why: It's just (a little bit) too good at the moment. It shouldn't be easy aoe cleanup AND best singletarget, regardless of utility, at tier 1 of epic strikes with no further upgrades needed.

Dragon Lord:
- Draconic Commander (DL T5) now costs 2 AP instead of 1.

Buff section:
Primal Avatar:
- No longer has intensify spell point cost reduction in T5. Instead has Primal Pulse: Arcane Pulse now applies a secondary pulse of damage based on your Primal Avatar affinities (multiselector - not two at once). This scales with the appropriate spellpower. 1 edp cost. [grants spell casters a way to do consistent low-sp cost damage in raids, and gives primal avatar t5 some help]

Shadowdancer:
- Just a Taste now also makes Spirit Blades and Shadowblades do 1d6 untyped damage per Sneak Dice, scaling with higher of 100% Force Spellpower. This stacks with Dark Imbuement and Paranoia.
- Unholy Feeding now also grants you +20% stacking sneaking speed as long as the Temporary HP last.

Warlock:
General buff:
- Eldritch Blast animation no longer locks you in that animation for quite as long. It's a much slower playstyle than most others in this game and going from blasting to casting or casting to blasting is cumbersome, especially in lategame.
Soul Eater:
- Devour the Soul cooldown reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.
Tainted Scholar:
- 5th core now also grants +5% to Spell Critical Strike chance.
Enlightened Spirit:
- Spirit Blast and Eldritch Burst now also hit nearby enemies with your weapon as a cleave would.
- No longer gets Displacement as SLA in T5. Instead of that enhancement, gets +20% Competence HP and +10% Determination bonus to AC while Eldritch Aura is active. 1 AP cost.
- The capstone, Instead of 20% Competence HP, now grants +20% to all Alignment and Light type absorptions.
Acolyte of the Skin:
- During Fiendish Transformation, your demon short range blast is also a melee attack and your eldritch blasts gain 1d6 fire damage per imbue dice.
---------------
Dragon Disciple:
- 2nd core now grants the Quicken feat (Or quicken is added to their list of class feats)
- 5th Core Way of the Mighty Dragon now makes all Lesser and regular Draconic Bursts also inflict 2% elemental vulnerability of their elemental type, up to a maximum of 20%.

Arcane Archer:
Needs a full redo on the stuff that are very underpowered like the Action Boost, Moonbow, Runebow in this tree. Oh well. Nobody likes rangers, bows and definitely not elves anyway. But..
- Their Imbue now scales off 75% SP and 25% RP. At tier 5 Elemental Arrows, this is increased to 90% SP and 30% RP.
- Opening Volley now grants +15% ranged attack speed for 6 seconds.
- Action Boost now has a multiselector for an action boost that grants +2/+4/+6 imbue dice.
- Moonbow and Runebow now do something that follows the rule of cool that their names inspire instead of their current disappointing properties.

Bard:
I actually think bards are good and cool. However... Warchanter and Swashbuckler capstones have passives like +1 dmg or +1 imbue, compared to other classes with +20 mp, +20 doubleshot, +amazing ability, +cool stuff, etc. Meanwhile...
Warchanter:
You scream, to little effect, on a long cooldown. +1 imbue. Come on. HEEEEEEEEEEEEELP
Swashbuckler:
Poor Swash: +1 damage and evasion, which can be gained from SD destiny or good splash classes. Come on. Bruh. HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP

For bards a big problem is that they have no trance or haste boost either while having REALLY expensive Warchanter tree, so going pure and not splashing while trying to hit things is very, very costly for them.

High effort dream would be a Reaper rework to give us more and more interesting and more dangerous reapers and/or high reapers. I don't really care about high reaper raids as much (they're already hard) as high reaper quests being more difficult for a full party of players. Currently, I'm sorry to say, they are not.

Have a nice day.

 

[woq]

Chains were the 'win' build before dragonlord + quick cutter provided an alternative. Its true they aren't entirely necessary to delete r10 anymore, but I'd include them in the list if we're discussing QC/DL nerfs. At least with the DL+QC meta we have more class+race options for roughly the same effect.

I see. I only did similar things with Leveler + Quick or Leveler + WWA + Falconry. A 2h barb/bear gets by just fine without Roar/Visage, but it is not quite as effortless. In group play? Just fine. Problem is mobs tend to die before you get to press your buttons if there's any well built damage dealers and/or controllers around.

I feel like Consecration / Dire Charge as ways to cause helplessness are almost dead on melee. Caster sourced helplessness, throw the boom, roar, falconry, etc are simply superior as non-epic strikes when epic strikes are necessary-to-mandatory in doing relevant damage on non-razorclaws/monks ./ 14-15 paladins.

Quick Cutter, Adrenaline and Drifting Lotus are simply better. Consecration is for tanks, healers, supports and other cuties. Dire Charge is for ... I don't think Dire Charge is for anyone. Should be deleted and replaced with something else. That type of charge mechanic should not be repeated, they just don't work well in DDO when they have a 1 in 6 chance to send you to the stratosphere or the highway or back in time or whatever.

None of the above is scalpelwork, however.

 

[Guntango]

without bug abuse

I haven't heard of that enhancement. I have run R10 DoV, tho.

 

[woq]

I haven't heard of that enhancement. I have run R10 DoV, tho.

I could have left that part out. But there have been ways to do way higher damage than intended in the past and I decided to include that as a caveat in advance.

Did not imply that in the current R10 DoV completions any bugs were abused, though you responding to that part in particular when I'm talking about a hypothetical world after a 33% dmg reduction in addition to a damage nerf to current top performing builds for that particular content makes me question it now.

I simply do not know if it would be possible or not, and I will likely never know because I do not think they'd implement a change like the one I proposed.

 

[Jasparius]

The problem with great threads like this is, Devs and Producers hate being told what to do so will ignore all the good ideas and come up with stuff on their own which invariably isnt as good because not only are the good ideas taken, they havent spent the time theorycrafting their ideas and certainly havent spent the time testing them.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

I see. I only did similar things with Leveler + Quick or Leveler + WWA + Falconry. A 2h barb/bear gets by just fine without Roar/Visage, but it is not quite as effortless. In group play? Just fine. Problem is mobs tend to die before you get to press your buttons if there's any well built damage dealers and/or controllers around.

I feel like Consecration / Dire Charge as ways to cause helplessness are almost dead on melee. Caster sourced helplessness, throw the boom, roar, falconry, etc are simply superior as non-epic strikes when epic strikes are necessary-to-mandatory in doing relevant damage on non-razorclaws/monks ./ 14-15 paladins.

Quick Cutter, Adrenaline and Drifting Lotus are simply better. Consecration is for tanks, healers, supports and other cuties. Dire Charge is for ... I don't think Dire Charge is for anyone. Should be deleted and replaced with something else. That type of charge mechanic should not be repeated, they just don't work well in DDO when they have a 1 in 6 chance to send you to the stratosphere or the highway or back in time or whatever.

None of the above is scalpelwork, however.

Sure, there's many ways to skin a kobold so-to-speak... Its all just the 3 button combo: 1 AOE cc + 1 OP AOE ability (QC or chains) + follow up whirlwind/cleaves to finish. The real issue is that mobs just don't have the hp to survive it.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

The problem with great threads like this is, Devs and Producers hate being told what to do so will ignore all the good ideas and come up with stuff on their own which invariably isnt as good because not only are the good ideas taken, they havent spent the time theorycrafting their ideas and certainly havent spent the time testing them.

Hypothetically there no reason why they couldn't participate, debate, or even just ask probing questions.

'What problem does that change address? Why do you think that specific change will fix this problem? Could you foresee any additional issues arising from that change? Are there any effective alternatives to that change?' etc...

I don't think any of us idea people are married to our specific points. I certainly won't sue for plagiarism... besides, SSG probably owns the rights to copy any ideas expressed on their forums due to some small print or something anyway...

 

[Guntango]

Did not imply that in the current R10 DoV completions any bugs were abused.

LULZ

 

[woq]

LULZ

?? "after my theoretical proposed dream update". Dmg requirement would be much higher than it was when you guys completed.

 

[Mindos]

Hypothetically there no reason why they couldn't participate, debate, or even just ask probing questions.

'What problem does that change address? Why do you think that specific change will fix this problem? Could you foresee any additional issues arising from that change? Are there any effective alternatives to that change?' etc...

It's like pulling teeth to get people to answer my questions sometimes. Everything is a secret and the nerf fear pervades all discussions. It's understandable, but also frustrating. Do we want a better game overall? Do we want less bizarre nerfs from orbit or more direct trims and outlier snipping? On the other side of the coin, there are many people playing DDO that have an emotional attachment to their toon's success. Which is a good thing from a game desirability standpoint and marketing/money draw. But not so good when they gatekeep esoteric game information to protect their alternate selves from loss.

Not to mention the vitriol and mockery that merely asking questions gets thrown at you. "Why don't you know this?" and "OMG! See? They don't play the game!" kind of attacks derail almost all knowledge exchanges. DDO is a complex beast and sometimes it's very much more simpler just to get data from actual gameplay experts (YOU! - the players) instead of raw number compilations. Also, you never know when someone's just watching you play!

I think the best feedback is when players tell devs what they think the fallout will be from proposed changes. Such as this will gut these builds, AND HERE IS WHY, etc. But you gotta dig through a lot of rough to get to those diamonds.

 

[Jasparius]

It's like pulling teeth to get people to answer my questions sometimes. Everything is a secret and the nerf fear pervades all discussions. It's understandable, but also frustrating. Do we want a better game overall? Do we want less bizarre nerfs from orbit or more direct trims and outlier snipping? On the other side of the coin, there are many people playing DDO that have an emotional attachment to their toon's success. Which is a good thing from a game desirability standpoint and marketing/money draw. But not so good when they gatekeep esoteric game information to protect their alternate selves from loss.

Not to mention the vitriol and mockery that merely asking questions gets thrown at you. "Why don't you know this?" and "OMG! See? They don't play the game!" kind of attacks derail almost all knowledge exchanges. DDO is a complex beast and sometimes it's very much more simpler just to get data from actual gameplay experts (YOU! - the players) instead of raw number compilations. Also, you never know when someone's just watching you play!

I think the best feedback is when players tell devs what they think the fallout will be from proposed changes. Such as this will gut these builds, AND HERE IS WHY, etc. But you gotta dig through a lot of rough to get to those diamonds.

And 95% of the suggestions are ignored anyway. Possibly more than 95%.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

It's like pulling teeth to get people to answer my questions sometimes. Everything is a secret and the nerf fear pervades all discussions. It's understandable, but also frustrating. Do we want a better game overall? Do we want less bizarre nerfs from orbit or more direct trims and outlier snipping? On the other side of the coin, there are many people playing DDO that have an emotional attachment to their toon's success. Which is a good thing from a game desirability standpoint and marketing/money draw. But not so good when they gatekeep esoteric game information to protect their alternate selves from loss.

The only real secrets that people dance around are direct exploits, and SSG has been explicit that discussion of those topics is not allowed on the forums. The whole 'hiding builds' concept doesn't really work. There are plenty of very knowledgeable players that figure this stuff out independently and talk about it openly as if its old news. I suppose it can be hard to find though if you don't live on the forums, private discord channels, or high level guilds... On the other hand, there are many that will openly share and/or help improve builds when asked.

Not to mention the vitriol and mockery that merely asking questions gets thrown at you. "Why don't you know this?" and "OMG! See? They don't play the game!" kind of attacks derail almost all knowledge exchanges. DDO is a complex beast and sometimes it's very much more simpler just to get data from actual gameplay experts (YOU! - the players) instead of raw number compilations. Also, you never know when someone's just watching you play!

If you ask an ignorant question, you will be mocked once, and you will get an answer, and you will no longer be ignorant.
If you act on ignorance, you will remain ignorant, and be mocked endlessly.
This is the internet after all...

I think the best feedback is when players tell devs what they think the fallout will be from proposed changes. Such as this will gut these builds, AND HERE IS WHY, etc. But you gotta dig through a lot of rough to get to those diamonds.

I think the issue with SSG's handling of feedback is that they don't ask for it until the last minute when they have already made all the design decisions and coded half of it. They then get bombarded by a 50+ page thread of everything and the kitchen sink and end up ignoring everything past page 5 because its too late to change anyway. If instead, for example, a dev were to show up in a thread such as this during downtime between major updates, they could get 10 times as much useful feedback with 1/10th the effort.

 

[mikarddo]

I never said everyone should be able to. There is a big difference between being able to contribute in R10 and being able to solo it. I agree with the build targeted nerfs, but r7+ damage reduction is ridiculous.

Being able to contribute in R10 because martial dps has a much easier time than magic dps is indeed rediculous.

Pretending otherwise even more so.

 

[ChickenMobile]

Good ideas here M8

You are right about bard. Adding a trance or have more incentive to the top of swashbuckler or warchanter would be fantastic.

Also after playing 2 dragon disciple builds, have to say there is probably way more they can do to improve it.

• Enhancement in core that makes weapon implement (important for hybrids)
• Quick draw as free feat or add to dragon arts
• Add better feats for dragon arts in general
• Double damage of breaths in epics not just temporary clicky (it is severely weaker than sorc DMG, even doubled. Math it if you don't believe me) - OR/AND -
• More caster levels not just cap increases

Eldritch knight was done right (imo). Disciple could've been better.

 

[Buddha5440]

The whole idea of "balance", especially in a game derived from D&D, is faulty. What most are suggesting for 'balance' basically comes down to 'I want to be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want, with whichever class I choose...and I don't want anyone else to be able to it better than me.'

Balance would mean that each class HAS and PLAYS a ROLE (this is supposedly a mmoRPg). Having universal trees that outperform most (if not all) class trees is just absurd. If you want balance; make it so class choice actually matters; ie. not EVERY class should be able to self-heal, nor buff those around them, nor be just as good against all types of enemy, nor disable traps, etc. ... (that is what multi-classing is for (and they should be sub-par to pure class)).

The simple fact that 1 (or maybe 2) universal trees have become the go to goes to show how broken things are. NOBODY should ever feel their only good option is to get their T5 enhancements from a universal tree. That should only be thought of for niche, flavor, or RP builds.


I await your hate.

Happy gaming all and remember...IT'S JUST A FREAKIN GAME!!!

 

[Teh_Troll]

Chains were the 'win' build before dragonlord + quick cutter provided an alternative. Its true they aren't entirely necessary to delete r10 anymore, but I'd include them in the list if we're discussing QC/DL nerfs. At least with the DL+QC meta we have more class+race options for roughly the same effect.

Chains are fine, the fact that you have to look like an emo degenerate from the 2010s makes up for any power gains.

 

[Teh_Troll]

... I don't think Dire Charge is for anyone. Should be deleted and replaced with something else. That type of charge mechanic should not be repeated, they just don't work well in DDO when they have a 1 in 6 chance to send you to the stratosphere or the highway or back in time or whatever.

What could save Dire Charge is to NOT make in an Epic strike. It can be useful, but 9 times out of 10 it's not worth using to put adrenaline or quick cutter on timer.

 

[Ying]

Did not imply that in the current R10 DoV completions any bugs were abused

Oh they were, before they got fixed in U73.1. But the recent adjustments also made R10 DOV realistic to complete.