U62 Preview 1 Weapon W Scalar Revamp

[saekee]

fyi if anyone hasn’t tried it yet…play an assassin before they get assassinate—levels—1-11 (short for ‘glass cannon without the cannon’) so I would like to emphasize the point the math wizzies here are making about lowbie weapon scaling and melee needs

 

[YeeboF]

With this pass we are standardizing weapons across the entire game to follow a new W scale. This affects all named weapons and shields, with exceptions listed below. Basically items will now scale their [W] modifier starting at level 10 and steadily increase until level cap instead of doing big jumps at certain thresholds like they do now.

Exceptions:

Like all of DDO, blanket rules of balance are closer to guidelines. In this case, although changing every single item programmatically was on the table, we opted for a more individual approach so we could keep a close eye on things that deserve a little more care.

To that end, here are the exceptions to this overhaul and some rules to help guide understanding of the process:

• Items that are level split - aka have Normal/Hard/Elite versions, remain as-is.
• Very old legacy items with sufficient creative nostalgia or effort required to obtain them (such as heroic Greensteel) remain as-is.
• Specialty scripted quest items (such as the Earthcarver Shard) remain as-is.
• Old event items that have been retired with remain as-is
• Crafted items that gain minimum levels when they are upgraded (such as Alchemical) will have their dice set to the highest minimum level they could obtain.
• Note that this does not affect things that boost W score on weapons, such as Vorpal or the Deadly Weapons spell. We are changing the base W on the weapon itself, and not adjusting any W-boosting gear or effects. If a weapon is level 30, it will be 5W, and casting Deadly Weapons will make it 6W as expected.

Our big goal with this is to provide a way for our items to scale upwards as the level cap continues to increase, and fix some of the dead zones concentrated around high heroics and early epics where gear advancement isn't as meaningful. We also want to smooth out our curve - right now, weapons kind of flounder around then zoom all the way up to 5W without warning. We hope this new scalar allows you to enjoy using more level-appropriate weapons, and we hope that the sizeable boost in [W] for items in some of those previously-strangely-scaled level ranges give much needed love to old favorites.

Fun fact, this means the Epic Sword of Shadow is actually getting stronger. Before it was level 20 and 2.5W - under this new scalar, level 20 means 3W.

Level	W Scalar		Level	W Scalar		Level	W Scalar
1-10	1.0W
11	1.2W		21	3.2W		31	5.2W
12	1.4W		22	3.4W		32	5.4W
13	1.6W		23	3.6W		33	5.6W
14	1.8W		24	3.8W		34	5.8W
15	2.0W		25	4.0W		35	6.0W
16	2.2W		26	4.2W		36	6.2W
17	2.4W		27	4.4W		37	6.4W
18	2.6W		28	4.6W		38	6.6W
19	2.8W		29	4.8W		39	6.8W
20	3.0W		30	5.0W		40	7.0W

The main issue I have is that this is such a huge nerf to Barovian weapons, and level 10 weapons in general. It is nice that by level 15 you will get up to 2W, it always felt odd to me that that this didn't happen until 20. But from 10-11 this is a big nerf, and it feels squarely targeted at RL gear.

Another issue I have with it is that with such fine scale breakpoints 11-20, the number of weapons we will need to collect to keep our DPS where is should be will be enormous. This will also make crafted weapons far and away the best choice through most of heroics, since they can be automatically scaled to each of these increments. In particular, it will be well worth your time to hunt down a bunch of adamantine randgen weapons with red slots to use as blanks. At any given damage breakpoint, odds are that will outperform any (certainly nearly any) named item in the game.

I am not sure if that is intentional or not, but most players don't have a decent crafter to be able to take advantage of the system. I do and have a screaming crap ton of mats and shards of various levels stockpiled, so I will be fine. But the crafting system in DDO is not a heck of a lot of fun to get going in, and I don't want top have to start doing that every HC season.

 

[QuantumFX]

2. This does look nice, but honestly, without the ability to move sentient gems in full for free from one weapon to the next, I personally wont be changing from my lev 20 Borderlands Weapon until I get to my lev 31 weapon (both of which have sentients). I don't see the point to pick up anything and use it in between without this function.

I don't know if you're actually angry about this or just being sarcastic.

 

[Lazuli]

I don't know if you're actually angry about this or just being sarcastic.

I don't think he's angry or sarcastic. It is a fact. Sentient weapons give a significant increase in melee or ranged power. There is no possibility for us to use other weapons to level up epics considering that the cost of removing the filigree and the gem is high. And I don't think many people are going to farm sentient xp for various weapons only for epic level ups. It's not that new weapons are needed for an epic life either, level 22-29 weapons are little used now, and will be little used after the change.

I imagine they will be used by those who do not have a weapon with sentience, and little else.

 

[Leo_of _Sarlona]

With this pass we are standardizing weapons across the entire game to follow a new W scale. This affects all named weapons and shields, with exceptions listed below. Basically items will now scale their [W] modifier starting at level 10 and steadily increase until level cap instead of doing big jumps at certain thresholds like they do now.

Exceptions:

Like all of DDO, blanket rules of balance are closer to guidelines. In this case, although changing every single item programmatically was on the table, we opted for a more individual approach so we could keep a close eye on things that deserve a little more care.

To that end, here are the exceptions to this overhaul and some rules to help guide understanding of the process:

• Items that are level split - aka have Normal/Hard/Elite versions, remain as-is.
• Very old legacy items with sufficient creative nostalgia or effort required to obtain them (such as heroic Greensteel) remain as-is.
• Specialty scripted quest items (such as the Earthcarver Shard) remain as-is.
• Old event items that have been retired with remain as-is
• Crafted items that gain minimum levels when they are upgraded (such as Alchemical) will have their dice set to the highest minimum level they could obtain.
• Note that this does not affect things that boost W score on weapons, such as Vorpal or the Deadly Weapons spell. We are changing the base W on the weapon itself, and not adjusting any W-boosting gear or effects. If a weapon is level 30, it will be 5W, and casting Deadly Weapons will make it 6W as expected.

Our big goal with this is to provide a way for our items to scale upwards as the level cap continues to increase, and fix some of the dead zones concentrated around high heroics and early epics where gear advancement isn't as meaningful. We also want to smooth out our curve - right now, weapons kind of flounder around then zoom all the way up to 5W without warning. We hope this new scalar allows you to enjoy using more level-appropriate weapons, and we hope that the sizeable boost in [W] for items in some of those previously-strangely-scaled level ranges give much needed love to old favorites.

Fun fact, this means the Epic Sword of Shadow is actually getting stronger. Before it was level 20 and 2.5W - under this new scalar, level 20 means 3W.

Level	W Scalar		Level	W Scalar		Level	W Scalar
1-10	1.0W
11	1.2W		21	3.2W		31	5.2W
12	1.4W		22	3.4W		32	5.4W
13	1.6W		23	3.6W		33	5.6W
14	1.8W		24	3.8W		34	5.8W
15	2.0W		25	4.0W		35	6.0W
16	2.2W		26	4.2W		36	6.2W
17	2.4W		27	4.4W		37	6.4W
18	2.6W		28	4.6W		38	6.6W
19	2.8W		29	4.8W		39	6.8W
20	3.0W		30	5.0W		40	7.0W

Torc,

I have been thinking about this for sometime, not so happy about the Chaosbow I just pulled and used for a week before TR is getting a nerf and Fetters also getting a downgrade and haven't even used them yet.

So with LVL 40 cap in mind and those raid items being so valueable to some of us for the hard work put in, can we get a modifier to LVL for all items in game. I don't care if it's a new slot, a colorless augment or another special filigree slot like a spark or something. But give us all a way to take a Chaosbow and make it LVL32, then as Level Cap goes up all the way to LVL40, give us those augments/filigrees. All Legendary gear and maybe epic gear get's it's W increased to the augment/filigree you slot in. BAM my lvl 28 Chaosbow that took me more than a year to get can be made relevant no matter the lvl cap.

My gear sets can all get an upgrade and become relevant. Would IOD sets and crafting still work at LVL40? Now they could! Since you are doing a pass now to the W and making it more global I would think the code to do this could be factored in now to your plans. ESOS used at LVL40? Maybe with little work to touch old gear or weapons.

Just an idea I have been think about for months...

 

[QuantumFX]

I don't think he's angry or sarcastic.

 

[Dragnilar]

Torc,

I have been thinking about this for sometime, not so happy about the Chaosbow I just pulled and used for a week before TR is getting a nerf and Fetters also getting a downgrade and haven't even used them yet.

So with LVL 40 cap in mind and those raid items being so valueable to some of us for the hard work put in, can we get a modifier to LVL for all items in game. I don't care if it's a new slot, a colorless augment or another special filigree slot like a spark or something. But give us all a way to take a Chaosbow and make it LVL32, then as Level Cap goes up all the way to LVL40, give us those augments/filigrees. All Legendary gear and maybe epic gear get's it's W increased to the augment/filigree you slot in. BAM my lvl 28 Chaosbow that took me more than a year to get can be made relevant no matter the lvl cap.

My gear sets can all get an upgrade and become relevant. Would IOD sets and crafting still work at LVL40? Now they could! Since you are doing a pass now to the W and making it more global I would think the code to do this could be factored in now to your plans. ESOS used at LVL40? Maybe with little work to touch old gear or weapons.

Just an idea I have been think about for months...

I'd love this since it would be a good way to preserve certain weapons like Blackrazor, Divinity/Sanctity, etc as still useful for end game builds.

 

[Tesrali (sam-u-r-eye)]

Torc,

I have been thinking about this for sometime, not so happy about the Chaosbow I just pulled and used for a week before TR is getting a nerf and Fetters also getting a downgrade and haven't even used them yet.

So with LVL 40 cap in mind and those raid items being so valueable to some of us for the hard work put in, can we get a modifier to LVL for all items in game. I don't care if it's a new slot, a colorless augment or another special filigree slot like a spark or something. But give us all a way to take a Chaosbow and make it LVL32, then as Level Cap goes up all the way to LVL40, give us those augments/filigrees. All Legendary gear and maybe epic gear get's it's W increased to the augment/filigree you slot in. BAM my lvl 28 Chaosbow that took me more than a year to get can be made relevant no matter the lvl cap.

My gear sets can all get an upgrade and become relevant. Would IOD sets and crafting still work at LVL40? Now they could! Since you are doing a pass now to the W and making it more global I would think the code to do this could be factored in now to your plans. ESOS used at LVL40? Maybe with little work to touch old gear or weapons.

Just an idea I have been think about for months...

It is a bit depressing to think how new raid gear will probably be chaos bow, just again.

Damage-centric weapons just leave no design space---best in slot is too simple.

 

[Shear-buckler]

fyi if anyone hasn’t tried it yet…play an assassin before they get assassinate—levels—1-11 (short for ‘glass cannon without the cannon’) so I would like to emphasize the point the math wizzies here are making about lowbie weapon scaling and melee needs

That's not an issue with weapon stats.

 

[The Blonde]

I've been saying for ages that they need to give sentient jewels their own gear slots independent of weapons as it ties out our hands in a bunch of way.

This is an absolutely required change. And a very high priority one in my opinion.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

This is an absolutely required change. And a very high priority one in my opinion.

Whilst I agree it should be changed, I can't see it happening.

My biggest revenue sink in the game is, aside from occasionally buying boxes, is sentient toolkits. If that purchase pattern applies to others too, then SSG would take a significant monetisation hit if they made this change.

 

[Ying]

My biggest revenue sink in the game is, aside from occasionally buying boxes, is sentient toolkits. If that purchase pattern applies to others too, then SSG would take a significant monetisation hit if they made this change.

A weapon-independent sentient gem doesn't invalidate toolkits. Just like now, you use toolkits when you change builds -- going from nuker to healer to ranged to melee, etc.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

A weapon-independent sentient gem doesn't invalidate toolkits. Just like now, you use toolkits when you change builds -- going from nuker to healer to ranged to melee, etc.

Yeah, but it does lessen requirements when you're only changing sentience between weapons though. THF to TWF etc. Right now you'd need 11 kits to do that, which, bye en large wouldn't be needed if you can just switch over a fully loaded jewel (with maybe a couple of filigree switches)...

I've generally farmed enough SXP to have different jewels fitted out for the sort of changes you cite anyway, so that's actually a bit less of an issue for me personally, YMMV though of course, and I still spend a fair chunk on kits.

 

[nobodynobody1426]

People getting upset over incredibly small values. W only gets multiplied by the weapons base dice and our damage bonus overwhelmingly dominates the damage roll. Most of the "nerf" instances are like 2 damage, something that low ends up a rounding error.

 

[YeeboF]

People getting upset over incredibly small values. W only gets multiplied by the weapons base dice and our damage bonus overwhelmingly dominates the damage roll. Most of the "nerf" instances are like 2 damage, something that low ends up a rounding error.

That's actually a good point. Even the Barovian nerf that is annoying as hell to me is 1-2 to 1-5 points of damage per swing (1-3 or 1-4 is typical) with most weapons.

That said, that's also the base damage that feeds into a crit, and at level 10 you are probably running with only about a 24-28 in your damage stat. So it's much more noticable than a half die of damage would be at higher levels.

 

[FVSHasBeenEvenMoreGutted]

guys stop complaining, we can now use the epic 3bc greatclub!

 

[xaktakorf]

I've been saying for ages that they need to give sentient jewels their own gear slots independent of weapons as it ties out our hands in a bunch of way.

This! So much this!
I do not have a problem that filigrees are bound in the Jewel, that's ok'ish. But when you want to move a sentient Jewel from one weapon to the next, as things are now, things get silly.
I have more less given up on using sentient weapons due to this very issue.

 

[The Blonde]

@Torc

~~~ Exhaustive Bug List ~~~

Things went much better than expected. I checked almost every weapon and shield in the game.
I did not check: Cormyrian weapons, Flameblade/Thornblade/Shadowblade, Keeper of the Crimson Covenant.

Things that should have gotten the new formula but didn't:

1) Randomgen weapons & shields

2) Cannith-Crafted weapons & shields

3) 99% of all Handwraps (please be extra careful not to forget any; easy ones to miss may include Platinum Knuckles, Unstable Handwraps, Grave Wrappings, and all Sora-Katra combos)

4) The Fall of Truth weapons & shield

5) Reaver's Fate weapons & shield

6) Aegis of Flame & Blood's Bellows

7) Ascension Chamber (Black Abbot) weapons

8) Necropolis "Shield Frame" shields

9) Necropolis "Tome of Untold Legends" weapons

10) (Heroic) Alchemical Buckler/Small Shield/Large Shield/Tower Shield (they should be 3[W] like the weapons but aren't)

11) Mindsunder weapons & shield

12) Collars in general, but most noteably the 3 named sets - if you choose to leave them as is (which would be reasonable), please give 2[W] to heroic Thrall of the Fire Temple, to match the others.

Other things that went wrong:

13) Dethek Runestone went from 5[W] to 5.2[W] at ML26, whereas it should be 4.2[W].

14) Harbinger of Madness weapons (both from chain reward and the quests themselves) got 2[W] at ML14, whereas they should be 1.8[W].

15) ALL heroic Sands weapons (from wilderness, quests, and raid) are still 1.5[W], when they should be 1[W] (for non-raid ones) and 1.4[W] (for raid ones). The heroic Sands shields were correctly changed and are now 1[W].

16) All versions of Thunder-Forged weapons should be 4.6[W], but the ML24 ones I checked were 3.9[W] weirdly enough.

General comments:

A) Legendary raid weapons got screwed over, hard. I think you need to address this.

B) Heroic ToEE weapons went from 1.5[W] to 1[W], and it's a hard pill to swallow, especially since there's many other sub-ML10 weapons with 1.5[W] multipliers.

C) Good riddance to Barovian weapons. I won't miss them one bit (they're still not fully fixed BTW, they should have a +4 Enhancement bonus instead of their current +5).

D) Orbs didn't change at all, and that's OK in my book.

E) Please make the ML20 & ML24 Night Revels weapons accept Sentience. No argument can be made in 2023 as to why they don't. Would be a nice small thing to do for Night Revels 2023, considering it's unlikely you'll make any other changes to this year's event.

Good work! I hope you don't rest on your laurels (now that you've accomplished your financial goal of being able to include weapons in future legendary packs/expansions). Enhancement Bonus formula needs to be normalized, and Loaded Dice at ML29+ are still an ugly design choice. Thanks for your efforts.

 

[Baahb3]

I don't think he's angry or sarcastic. It is a fact. Sentient weapons give a significant increase in melee or ranged power. There is no possibility for us to use other weapons to level up epics considering that the cost of removing the filigree and the gem is high. And I don't think many people are going to farm sentient xp for various weapons only for epic level ups. It's not that new weapons are needed for an epic life either, level 22-29 weapons are little used now, and will be little used after the change.

I imagine they will be used by those who do not have a weapon with sentience, and little else.

I cannot claim this as my own but this was brought up as an excellent boon to VIP subscriptions. Give VIPs one Sentient swap, up to current max of filigrees a week. No carry overs. Even one a month would be nice.

 

[AbyssalMage]

If the [W] scaled with YOUR character level, then I could see a point. But otherwise... I don't get it.

Why would you suggest an easy fix? I mean someone somewhere would complain that the rusted sword in Korthos could be used at level 30 if they developers took your easy suggestion.