Something seems off post U59

[Dvinesword]

Crits were pretty much unheard of before now, and it was R10. At about 300% you didn't need to worry about any champs fort bypass, but crits seem to be way more common now which might explain why people feel like they're taking more damage.

So we were doing Isle of Dread on R10 tonight and we were seeing the crit and extra damage issue. On a couple of the quests we dropped down to R8 and the drop incoming damage and crits seems to be much greater than a 2 skull decrease would warrant. I would be interested in the results if you replicated your last test but at R8 instead of R10.

 

[ForeverZero]

So we were doing Isle of Dread on R10 tonight and we were seeing the crit and extra damage issue. On a couple of the quests we dropped down to R8 and the drop incoming damage and crits seems to be much greater than a 2 skull decrease would warrant. I would be interested in the results if you replicated your last test but at R8 instead of R10.

As i stated before too. Test which champs are bypassing fort if possible too. Only 4 champions total can bypass fort. If its all champions or just enemies in general. We'll need to test them overall. I'm not tanky enough to do anything like this.

So @Zuldar is about the only one we can use for it. Or anyone else with similar stats. I'm a dps scrub so deeps only. :(

If possible can you test the following:

1. Use normal mobs to see if its just champions

-if these crit, which i doubt. This could be why significantly more damage is percieved as its taken not by champions. But by everything now? This seems unlikely. But worth a look into imo.-

2. Is it only beast mark, archeron. Infernal pact or mark of chaos with fort bypass thats able to crit you.

-Hopefully its just these that can crit. Potentially just a problem with how much fort bypass is being applied. It seems to be stripping the fort not just bypassing some. Maybe somehow u59 gave enemies keen like someone else mentioned where its just a complete stripping of fort? Who knows.-

3. Check non fort bypass compliant champions to see if its all champions bypassing fort or just the intended ones.

-same as first point. If these can crit too thats a big problem and could be a massive contribution as to why we feel like so much extra damage being taken.-

4. Can tests be done on multiple difficulties. Elite, r1 3, 5, 7 8, 10? Or whatever difficulties you feel nessessary?

-To see if its a problem reaper scaling particularly-

 

[J1NG]

Note that the following tests was not done over the weekend or shortly after the announcement that Dungeon Alert was being (had been) altered - which would have caught any discrepencies more noticeably. (Some of) It was performed after the most recent "update/patch" of U59.1, and thus any issues players may have noticed (in U59) "may" not be in this update at all during some testing. Only the Memoirs R4 run was done shortly after, and that will be analysed further later on due to needing more time to check each one compared to just the average damage or anything like that.

As always, tests are done without Champions (and not against Bosses either) and always done against the basic enemy in Reaper/Elite only where there is a known damage/attack level I can return to easily to compare with on Elite.

Keen/Impact granted to enemies: Unlikely
It does not appear to be a Keen effect being provided to enemies that results in crits that produce higher amounts of damage.

Tested in (Legendary) Sharn Welcome Reaper 1 through 5 (not tested other difficulties yet) and I have allowed my characters to be hit hundreds of times with zero crits happening (Only 178% Fortification on hand), against the rogue type (Enforcer) and the fighter type (Thug). Had it been a Keen effect (crit on natural 20 ignoring any fortification), I should have seen it once at least during the hundreds of hits during testing. So Keen/Impact effect being applied to enemies should be safely ruled out as having been given to enemies.

This was repeated in The Butchers Path and Red Alerting the Dungeon, if Keen was provided on Dungeon Alert, one of the Kobolds will have eventually dealt some damage. None ever did. So given R1-R5 A Sharn Welcome (Legendary) did not exhibit any Fortification Bypass, and neither was it observed with Dungeon Alert Red for normal enemies, we can (for now) assume that Keen/Impact was not the modifier that was adjusted over.

:: edit ::
In theory, this should potentially also mean that Fortification bypass was not a thing either, as I did not have much time to play in above R4 after the release of U59. Else I myself would not have noticed irregularities during the lower Reaper runs as well.

(Hidden) Dodge Bypass: Unlikely
Prelimary tests of a 95% Dodge toon suggests that the amount of hits through Dodge against normal enemies in Reaper has not been adjusted, it remains (approximately) 5% chance to hit, although RNG will make hits occur in irregular intervals as expected. Tested in R1 through R10 in a variety of quests.

Also, not everyone has builds that can stay at high % Dodge for extended periods of time. So a change to this one defence should not be a noticeable change for many when not everyone uses Dodge. So this being adjusted doesn't appear likely.

Increased Player Received Damage: Unlikely
Comparing X amount of successful hits and damage produced in November 2022 Memoirs R4 and just after U59, the average approximate damage works out in the same ballpark as each other, although due to the nature of the toon I was testing and recording this on, the sample size is unfortunately not very large; 20-30 hits. However, all other data is the same (same PRR, stats, etc), so whatever is the cause of the observation by players that their characters were being hit harder or dying more, it does not appear to be from the damage amount that was thrown out per hit.

---

:: Edit ::
Please note, that the above were done with a mixture of quick and dirty tests and some with more lengthy recorded videos where I can make manual slow calculations. So whilst they should be accurate, there can easily be instances where I miss a crucial detail out and the information provided is wrong. If so, I do apologise for that.
:: /Edit ::

I will continue to test the following a little later on; (Enemy, more) Consistent Attacks (to attack animation), (pity timer? on) Enemy Attack frequency (getting through player defences), unusual crit numbers and more when I have time. But the three above should be able to be safely ruled out as something that plagued players.

J1NG

 

[Zuldar]

Ok I did some more testing in R6 Frame Work since it offers a relatively controlled testing environment and being the newest update was the most likely to have something wrong with it. It wasn't the most thorough testing but none of the non-champ mobs seemed to be able to crit me with about 500% fort while a beast mark panther was able to crit me as you would expect.

I then went in with 217% fort to see if that made a difference against normal mobs and again no crits.

Then I went in one more time with 167% to test non tank levels of fort and again did not see any crits against non-champs.

Barring more testing, I'm prepared to chalk this up to confirmation bias and assume I was just hit by one of the champs with fort bypass. If there is something wrong I don't think this is it.

 

[ForeverZero]

Ok I did some more testing in R6 Frame Work since it offers a relatively controlled testing environment and being the newest update was the most likely to have something wrong with it. It wasn't the most thorough testing but none of the non-champ mobs seemed to be able to crit me with about 500% fort while a beast mark panther was able to crit me as you would expect.

I then went in with 217% fort to see if that made a difference against normal mobs and again no crits.

Then I went in one more time with 167% to test non tank levels of fort and again did not see any crits against non-champs.

Barring more testing, I'm prepared to chalk this up to confirmation bias and assume I was just hit by one of the champs with fort bypass. If there is something wrong I don't think this is it.

Thank you for the tests.

Even still 500% fort being bypassed is no laughing matter. I'm fine with it if it was announced but this seems like its been either ninja'd in or something. Which i don't wish to believe, though it has precedent, so i cant say anything against the notion. Or maybe something else just made champs with fort bypass, bypass more fort than i think should be realistically possible. If tanks have to tank some trash there's some scary wombo combo potential in there. I remember pre u59 getting critted occasionally i mean rarely, but nothing like now. It seems the champs with fort bypass will need to take priority it seems. I was in the non tank ranges of fort i thibk like 178 or something? I forget.

 

[Batman]

@J1NG Thank you for the testing! As always, very thorough.

Everyone else. I think we should focus our testing on trying to reproduce that ~500% Fort critical hit. Exactly how, under what conditions (quest difficulty), what mob was attacking, what type of character we were using and so forth. Multiple players should try and attempt this and hopefully confirm their findings.

 

[J1NG]

The following is speculative theory on what the issue is likely not to be through information gleamed and experienced in game post and pre U59.

Attack Modifier for enemies increased: Unlikely (Speculation from logic)
Whilst we had all experienced an increase of difficulty, had this been the case, Dodge toons (of which I have a few) would never have exerpienced a difficulty increase at all, since an increased Attack modifier would still need to breach the Dodge avoidance levels first. And of course, the Dodge appears to work as before (not accounting for RNG dropping continuous attacks that made that 5% roll to hit you first). So this is unlikely given these factors.

Player Defence not applied properly when altered "in" quest/raid: "Possible" (Speculation during test observation)
Currently this is purely speculation, however, during one such test that I was performing, I switched from Precision to Defensive Fighting mid test (whilst being attacked) and noticed an unusual amount of attacks that were consistently successful immediately after (against 45% Dodge and 205+AC, the only effective defences left in R5 difficulty). This could be RNG, or it could be a change that was made that causes a wrong calculation of defences once there was a switch of some kind that alters defence values. This will be retested later on for verification if the total defensive values do not appear to match what is expected.

A potential sub issue of this that was observed, is that in U59.1 (did not check this in U59 due to the family medical emergency taking over) that it "appeared" that the Reaper clickies (Saves, PRR, etc) appeared to add fine, but when it ran out (20s was up) it "appeared" that the values that I was taking afterwards "seemed" to be a higher value than expected (not consistent with values before initial activation). Again, this will be tested later on as well when I have more time.

Wrong effects being applied: "Possible" (Speculation from player experience and difficulty finding source)
Currently, from what I have read from players and what I have experienced myself, the issues appears to be more gradual and less noticed - but there else we would not feel something is off. This means that logically, it shouldn't be something with wide ranging implications in impact such as Fortification bypass (that's not from a Champion with Fortificiation bypass capability), or increased damage, as these are easily observable and noticed. It would likely need to be something else less obvious, something like enemies gaining Doublestrike, but not the current doublestrike, but the older version where they get an actual second hit; and since that would not be much different from their normal hit, it would just register as a normal hit and sneak past normal observation when trying to look for irregularities. After all, double the total amount is easy to see, especially through the combat log, but if it's just "another attack" and you got swipped down by it, then we'd just be confused as to why we got taken down so easily compared to before.

Hopefully more time later today to start further testing.

J1NG

 

[ForeverZero]

The following is speculative theory on what the issue is likely not to be through information gleamed and experienced in game post and pre U59.

Attack Modifier for enemies increased: Unlikely (Speculation from logic)
Whilst we had all experienced an increase of difficulty, had this been the case, Dodge toons (of which I have a few) would never have exerpienced a difficulty increase at all, since an increased Attack modifier would still need to breach the Dodge avoidance levels first. And of course, the Dodge appears to work as before (not accounting for RNG dropping continuous attacks that made that 5% roll to hit you first). So this is unlikely given these factors.

Player Defence not applied properly when altered "in" quest/raid: "Possible" (Speculation during test observation)
Currently this is purely speculation, however, during one such test that I was performing, I switched from Precision to Defensive Fighting mid test (whilst being attacked) and noticed an unusual amount of attacks that were consistently successful immediately after (against 45% Dodge and 205+AC, the only effective defences left in R5 difficulty). This could be RNG, or it could be a change that was made that causes a wrong calculation of defences once there was a switch of some kind that alters defence values. This will be retested later on for verification if the total defensive values do not appear to match what is expected.

A potential sub issue of this that was observed, is that in U59.1 (did not check this in U59 due to the family medical emergency taking over) that it "appeared" that the Reaper clickies (Saves, PRR, etc) appeared to add fine, but when it ran out (20s was up) it "appeared" that the values that I was taking afterwards "seemed" to be a higher value than expected (not consistent with values before initial activation). Again, this will be tested later on as well when I have more time.

Wrong effects being applied: "Possible" (Speculation from player experience and difficulty finding source)
Currently, from what I have read from players and what I have experienced myself, the issues appears to be more gradual and less noticed - but there else we would not feel something is off. This means that logically, it shouldn't be something with wide ranging implications in impact such as Fortification bypass (that's not from a Champion with Fortificiation bypass capability), or increased damage, as these are easily observable and noticed. It would likely need to be something else less obvious, something like enemies gaining Doublestrike, but not the current doublestrike, but the older version where they get an actual second hit; and since that would not be much different from their normal hit, it would just register as a normal hit and sneak past normal observation when trying to look for irregularities. After all, double the total amount is easy to see, especially through the combat log, but if it's just "another attack" and you got swipped down by it, then we'd just be confused as to why we got taken down so easily compared to before.

Hopefully more time later today to start further testing.

J1NG

Thanks for the tests as always.

The point about player defense not being applied properly after altered in quest could potentially be massive. I hope it isn't to everything buffs be damned.

1. The reaper momentos - for me at least I've only used dps focused ones this may not apply to me specifically. Doublestrike specifically at least till 30. This might also be a point of testing to see if dps side of things are applying correctly as well. I don't think most established players aside from maybe tanks would use those particular momentos. Maybe first lifers or low tr toons with limited access to prr, saves ect?

Reason for bringing this up is it seems its mostly the crowd -and this is just speculation- seem to be more of the mid reaper crowd in general so they likely aren't using the defense bonuses as much. Though this should still be tested for brevity.

2. This is speculation and i believe it was mentioned before, were some stats potentially implimented unintentionally? Though it's hard to test potential hidden stats. I have no inkling as to how one would test these hidden stats added to enemy stat blocks, such as seeker to make enemy crits more potent.

Grasping at straws and thinking up anything i could to test the more out of normalcy issues that could be a problem cause our findings.

3. Did the changes free up server hardware and allow enemies to be more consistent in general with aiming their attacks? This could also be in line with how people seem to notice their chars are taking more hits than expected and seems like more in general. Maybe enemy ai is more free to calculate these trajectories? This could in theory be reasoning as to why some of these posts could be prevelant?

I believe someone already mentioned that maybe enemy archers potentially getting unintended buff since change to how ranged weapon arcs were altered.

This could also be interpretted as how we -as players and our mental link to our toons- could percieve the "hey it seems we're taking more damage." It's not a direct enemy buff, no extra hidden stats, but it would at least translate to the off feeling many of us have seen and taken note of.


3A. If the above is possible. Could it be that, all enemies could be considered ranged in regards to certain calculations, but their animation is just different and range diatance? If chaging the way arcing works for ranged have unintended consequences to melees if their formulas were considered ranged weapons as well?

Point 3A is strictly food for thought. As i doubt we have any way to feaasibly test and check if melee enemies attacks are considered ranged. Though it does technecally fill the seat of not exactly a numbers change, seemingly "hidden" element.

 

[Dogbreath68]

Indeed I've been told by some of my buddies raid tanks getting pegged in raids with 400+ fort.

We ran r10 IoD Our tank is a very reliable one and I look for him when I can. He actually died, more than once. That is something we are not used to seeing from him. 8k hp, he is a beast, at least we know now something is amok at the Circle K.

 

[Batman]

 

[Gandalf]

Here's what I noticed last night. Running experimental builds, so several build types starting at lvl 7, then enough low-lvl quests to get to 8. On my thrower, consistently, after slotting a 2d6 electric augment in my Borderlands shuri, the mobs either took normal 2d6 elec damage per the log, or they took no elect damage at all. This was with groups of the exact same mob type. Was not unequiping - and I couldn't find a pattern to which mob was displaying elec dmg & which was not. The pattern I am seeing from our posts is augment and/or equipment effects wonking out ...

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

I died twice last night.

So I'm really not seeing any difference at all. ?

 

[Zuldar]

Here's what I noticed last night. Running experimental builds, so several build types starting at lvl 7, then enough low-lvl quests to get to 8. On my thrower, consistently, after slotting a 2d6 electric augment in my Borderlands shuri, the mobs either took normal 2d6 elec damage per the log, or they took no elect damage at all. This was with groups of the exact same mob type. Was not unequiping - and I couldn't find a pattern to which mob was displaying elec dmg & which was not. The pattern I am seeing from our posts is augment and/or equipment effects wonking out ...

Were they grazing hits? Those would do some of the base damage but not any extras like the electric.

 

[Grimscore_Riffstorm]

This seems perfectly within reason to me, and it's less anecdotal if you consider the U59 notes.

It's anecdotal, but everything people are talking about here seems to be related to defensive stats not applying correctly since U59. Maybe this is related to the "lag" fix changes done by Codog where some cases have been missed. He was soliciting feedback on this on Lamannia before this went live which did pick up some values not being correct when visually displayed to the user.

It may be displaying correctly to us but be using the incorrect values in the background.

From the U59 notes: https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-59-release-notes

Performance Work


We have fundamentally changed how bonuses are calculated behind the scenes to be using a more performant algorithm to reduce lag in the game. This change impacts:

• Feat bonuses
• Enhancement bonuses
• Epic destiny bonuses
• Past life bonuses
• Toggled bonuses
• Temporarily granted Feats
• Armor Class bonuses
• Blocking Armor Class bonuses
• Attack bonuses
• Damage bonuses
• Savings throw bonuses

 

[ForeverZero]

Someone mentioned before but this isn't really a complaint just something that seems odd with reapers to. TR'd and reapers seem to have more hp. Its not really an issue just "feels" like theyre taking longer to beat down. There seems to be some validity to that at least to me

Note: i dont run heroics much but i dont recall reapers seeming like such hp sponges. At least this early. Normally it feels like this round sharn. Im currently lvl 10.

Any other feed back?

 

[Xgya]

Someone mentioned before but this isn't really a complaint just something that seems odd with reapers to. TR'd and reapers seem to have more hp. Its not really an issue just "feels" like theyre taking longer to beat down. There seems to be some validity to that at least to me

Note: i dont run heroics much but i dont recall reapers seeming like such hp sponges. At least this early. Normally it feels like this round sharn. Im currently lvl 10.

Any other feed back?

I've been having similar opinions.
I mostly do heroics, and my clearing speed has dropped significantly.
I can't say exactly if it's just a feeling or anything more, but everything does seem tougher too.
I noticed that I was taking a beating far faster than noticing the enemies no longer were, but after doing a few quest chains, there's obviously something happening.

 

[ForeverZero]

I've been having similar opinions.
I mostly do heroics, and my clearing speed has dropped significantly.
I can't say exactly if it's just a feeling or anything more, but everything does seem tougher too.
I noticed that I was taking a beating far faster than noticing the enemies no longer were, but after doing a few quest chains, there's obviously something happening.

Normal enemies dont seem any different to me personally. But again i don't run heroics too much these days. So no real experience to back it. Also im just doing a test build. But past lives really do make most things a cake walk. Maybe when i go back to my normal build i may notice something. But as a test build i have nothing to reliably gauge for consistency.

 

[Zvdegor]

I've been having similar opinions.
I mostly do heroics, and my clearing speed has dropped significantly.
I can't say exactly if it's just a feeling or anything more, but everything does seem tougher too.
I noticed that I was taking a beating far faster than noticing the enemies no longer were, but after doing a few quest chains, there's obviously something happening.

Ive noticed that vengance reapers do a new kind of stunning/daze effect. They were never able to stun me before but for 2 weeks now it is happenning to me.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

Got blapped for 13k crit by an archer in r10 Kill Ten Rats the other day. I had 250% fortification.

I don't think it was a champ. Didn't say so in the log. Can't be sure though.

But in any event I don't see how many could survive a 13k crit like that, so wai or not, it doesn't seem right to me from a simple gameplay perspective?

 

[Redtalktree]

Got blapped for 13k crit by an archer in r10 Kill Ten Rats the other day. I had 250% fortification.

I don't think it was a champ. Didn't say so in the log. Can't be sure though.

But in any event I don't see how many could survive a 13k crit like that, so wai or not, it doesn't seem right to me from a simple gameplay perspective?

Think that a normal for R10, like on HC7 when dog appear and wipe ya, R10 is a supposed to be a challenge