U62 Preview 1 Weapon W Scalar Revamp

[kemton]

Can somebody check what fully upgraded Sireth or some other citw weapon W is?

 

[jwel]

But, they can just manually set higher +W on any weapons (current or future) they want under the current system.

I don't see the point of a global progression system when:
a) many of these breakpoints will see little or no use (22-~27)
b) it may nerf many items in heroics, intentionally or not
c) at the high end, it may not be enough to overcome dino crafting with their next waves of weapons for several level increases, because the difference between 5.2 and 5.4 or 5.6 is not a lot (3.8% and 7.6% in relative terms). Manually setting e.g. 6W could, at their discretion, be a better idea.

Basically they're removing their ability to fine tune balance under the assumption this curve will solve everything. Does it?

The actual solution is to make weapon effects suck less. At minimum they should scale with melee power and crit to retain a shred of usefulness. The issue just is that outside of a very few effects weapon effects are just meaningless at cap. What's an extra 6d6 (21) when I'm hitting for over a k noncrit? Even scaling with melee power and crit they are still far less useful than prr reduction or vulnerability stacking but they might actually get considered if you already have a stacker in your party.

 

[Loathesome Dung Eater]

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.

If you could Actually LINK the Ws in the dice to the Imposed level by augments, this would be an incredible solution.

Weapons would still have a minimum level attached, so it would avoid ending up with lv 1s running around with Dinobones, but you could make low level weaponry slightly more relevant while you seek a replacement.

And it would allow you to retain sentiences, as you could simply remove/replace/destroy the augment in question.

 

[Tilomere]

Can somebody check what fully upgraded Sireth or some other citw weapon W is?

This is not the staff you were looking for. /wave

 

[Tilomere]

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

Did rapid slash update not fix the leveling?

 

[saekee]

Did rapid slash update not fix the leveling?

hey Tilo, yes and no. The best thing about it is that you can do it from stealth and it does not break stealth. It hits a group of mobs, like a cleave, which is nice, but it makes a mess of the flow of single target DPS attack chain. I have not reincarnated my toon since it was updated, but you make a good point as always.

 

[Phaaze]

What are the odds that weapons +1 to +15 get scaled in a similar fashon?

Like min level/2 or something

 

[Darksteel]

Any word from Torc regarding Legendary W scaling after 6 pages of feedback? Looks like this is set in stone and going live as-is.

 

[Zaszgul]

hopefully they've got something to come, this is what their "smooth" progression looks like, with no progression until 11 and expanding the full W with loaded dice.

 

[Shear-buckler]

hopefully they've got something to come, this is what their "smooth" progression looks like, with no progression until 11 and expanding the full W with loaded dice.

That seems good. It keeps 'weapon damage' consistent factor of total damage.

 

[YeeboF]

hopefully they've got something to come, this is what their "smooth" progression looks like, with no progression until 11 and expanding the full W with loaded dice.

I really dislike that there is no progression at all until 11. I am playing through those levels now, and on a third+ life you will spend a good amount of time there unless you run pots and zerg. Very nice weapons are available at level 2, you can craft yourself a hell of a weapon at 4, and it feels like you have almost no progression at all until level ten after that. The only thing that changes is that at level 8 elemental dice go from 2d6 to 3d6. At least you can look forward to a big bump at level ten.

Now even that will get pushed out even further. Depending on how you look at it, you will now need to get to either level 12 or level 14 to get to where you now are at ten.

With this revamp, they had the opportunity to fix what I feel like is a minor design flaw in the low level game. You know, the one that deteremines whether new players stick around or not. Instead, they decided to make it slightly worse.

And the only design reason I can see for them making that decision is they wanted to deemphasize Barovian weapons. At higher levels this system looks great, a minor buff that melee probably needed. However, making the low level game that already felt off even more problematic instead of fixing it, just to keep an expansion you have given away from being too valuable, seems like a really ass backwards design strategy to me.

 

[YeeboF]

Looks like this is set in stone and going live as-is.

Pretty much if past experience is any guide.

 

[Br4d]

hm, heroic sword of shadows nerfed. Ah well.

HSOS should be better by comparison from 10 to 20. All the Barovian weapons are going from 1.5W to 1.0W. That's where the nerf is.

 

[Tumideon]

Overall I like it, but I do wish that other things were in scope of being scaled (maybe they are and I didn't read it or it's not announced). Elemental dice on weapons and in particular bane damage and other situational DR breakers/mob beaters dont factor much into damage.

Pretty much there doesnt seem to be a reason to give up on expanded crit/mult weapons during the leveling process

 

[Nimueh]

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

Raid weapons are still going to maintain their additional [w] over standard weapons as they should considering they are harder to get correct?

 

[Alcides]

I think weapons dice, weapon, armor and shield enhancement bonuses should just scale with character level. If farmed an piece of older gear that had good stats such as mythic 4, reaper 3, you just trashed the hundreds of hours that I spend farming that piece of gear that I find useful and relevant to this day. Notable examples would be Divinity for a Paladin. I was planning on stashing reaper fragments until level 40 anyway, so I didn't have to waste countless hours on the gear grind until we hit that in the next 8-9 years.

 

[Darksteel]

I was planning on stashing reaper fragments until level 40 anyway, so I didn't have to waste countless hours on the gear grind until we hit that in the next 8-9 years.

Level 40 is not the "permanent" level cap. I envisage levels going up to 80 by 2050.

 

[Aaabbbcccddd]

I like the change overal, but if we are at it, can we also straighten the growth of enchantment boni on weapons? It always irritates me to see a level 26 weapon with a +7 bonus and a level 29 weapon with a +15 bonus or a + 5 bonus on a level 10 weapon and a level 18 weapon with +5 bonus. just make it +1 for every two level, exept maybe some raid stuff.

 

[Blunt Hackett]

While this makes sense to me for late game, this is a low blow to heroic melee. Imbue builds probably won't be as affected, but this is a serious nerf to the rest of melee, especially at level 10 with Ravenloft weapons. It almost feels like U62 is purposefully making Ravenloft less desirable.

The biggest concern is some people will be in the middle of early heroic and be frustrated by the nerf enough to just quit playing. Level 15+ is already a bit sluggish with xp, making 14 and below take longer is a really bad idea. You'll lose customers.

 

[Mesmerin]

While this makes sense to me for late game, this is a low blow to heroic melee. Imbue builds probably won't be as affected, but this is a serious nerf to the rest of melee, especially at level 10 with Ravenloft weapons. It almost feels like U62 is purposefully making Ravenloft less desirable.

The biggest concern is some people will be in the middle of early heroic and be frustrated by the nerf enough to just quit playing. Level 15+ is already a bit sluggish with xp, making 14 and below take longer is a really bad idea. You'll lose customers.

15+ is sluggish with XP?????? Not sure if playing same game. Theres more than enough XP in heroics, unless your skipping a load?