U80 Preview 2 - DC Boost Initiative

[Smokewolf]

You don't need a toolkit to remove an augment if you don't need that augment back.
Jut leave them in the item until you get an augment you want to slot over it, and let it destroy the existing augment.

That will go over great for all those raid bound and rare augments for sure.

 

[Bjond]

That will go over great for all those raid bound and rare augments for sure.

Jeweler's Kits are 995p per 10. So, what I do is trash/overstomp any augment that sells for <= 99p OR those that have a superabundance in my bank (more than I can use on all current chars).

I don't waste kits on feather-fall augments, for instance.

 

[Dom]

Jeweler's Kits are 995p per 10.

Dreams are free, but a weekly code to give away 5-10 jeweler's kits after this pass has update goes live would be a nice gesture from SSG.

 

[Smokewolf]

Dreams are free, but a weekly code to give away 5-10 jeweler's kits after this pass has update goes live would be a nice gesture from SSG.

Dream on.

 

[sabo-cat]

why do we have combat mastery +12 but can't have spell focus mastery +12? Mob saves are the same for both scenarios.

 

[Phaedra]

That will go over great for all those raid bound and rare augments for sure.

Sure, but in the context of removing GH augments, rare and raid drops are not being removed.

There are enough real issues to address we don't need to make up ones that don't exist

 

[Jaspar]

why do we have combat mastery +12 but can't have spell focus mastery +12? Mob saves are the same for both scenarios.

Because they are pretending to care. Just look at their responses in this thread.

"Yes, what you are saying is true and the changes we are implementing are nowhere near enough, but now for our next trick, AUGMENTS OF EQUIPMENT !!!"

Yet again SSG are dedicating an amount of time to fixing a problem and just doing nothing. While ignoring the elephant in the room - AT and using DD for DC and being literally 50 DC ahead. And their fix is going to get people to spend a bunch of money updating augments which simply didnt need to be updated.

All of the changes they are making should have been done through level progressions, feats, enhancements and epic destinies.

The lack of self awareness and unmitigated greed is just so incredibly impressive.

 

[l_remmie]

What is wrong with this reasoning. It doesn't matter if the values given by the gear are small or large, or if most of the DC comes from the gear. What matters is that most of the DC should be easily accessible.

Let's see if I can make you understand it. What's wrong is that most of the DC is fixed on channels that are difficult to get to. That's what breaks the system.

That those channels are not a must for DDO. There was a time when DDO worked without sentience, without reaper shards, without curses, without bonuses like insightful, quality, profane, sacred, exceptional, artifact. Which is a ridiculous number of channels and most of them are HARD to get and fit into the Tetris gear.

That what is breaking the system is not the d20. It's the desire these devs have to complicate everything into a hundred thousand channels and then make most of those channels difficult to obtain.

We veterans are already saturated, well imagine the average player or the casual player. It cannot be that the path is all the time: more complexity, more channels, more, more, more, and on top of that, more difficult to obtain.

This is a non sense. It isn't the d20. It's the gear. Gear design. The philosophy of equipment design and equipment grinding.

But does anyone see it as even half normal that 18 points of DC are blocked in a grind as long as sentience and on top of that with sparks that are difficult to obtain? Please! That only within of this channel there are already 3 levels of complexity. The grind length, sparks and raid filigrees. And this is just one channel of I don't know how many that exist.

Does anyone see it as normal that to equip something as basic as DC we have at least ten channels for it, plus the bonus equipment divided into schools? And with most of them difficult to obtain? And now they also want to divide insightful and quality in schools? But do you really see it logical? This doesn't happen in any game I've been in. We are talking only about the DC, and then the spell damage is the same thing.

The problem is that the gear has reached levels of absurdity. So flat and simple. Absurdity.

It isn't the d20. It is that there are like 25 DC points (not a few, exactly!) locked behind incredibly long/complicated/pure luck grinds! That is what is breaking the system.

Damn, if the gear gave most of the DC in a more direct way AS IT WAS IN THE PAST IN DDO we wouldn't have these problems. Yes, we haven't always had this super complex stupidity of equipment in DDO. DDO doesn't need ten channels just for the Spell DC. It doesn't need them. And it certainly doesn't need most of those channels to be difficult to obtain.

The difference with past lives is 7 points at most. But the difference with the gear is like 25 points of hard.to-obtain stats. For the love of god, devs, YOU CAN'T DO THIS.

And let's see, if we put in a d100 system now, how long do you think it will be before they break the system again because they continue to put more and more complexity into the system, and always in ways that are difficult to obtain? How long? What did they want to do until this update? Add another channel, the legendary one. What are they doing now? Focus on the division of schools. But does anyone believe this is sustainable in the long term?

No. That there is no need to change the system. What is needed is to change the gear design philosophy. This philosophy is not sustainable. It isn't. Nor with d20, neither with d100, nor with a d1000. It is not sustainable.

I agree,
We just have a disconnect with framing the problem. I think the DC issues are a very serious threat to game longevity. And i think SSG agrees because they worked around them for the ATr and are now finally acknowledging and working on the problem.

Fixing "the wheels" is the least they can do and probably the most important and impactful right now. You hit the nail on the head with the number of channels and accessability issues.
And they should go after the feats and trees next. Then we'll have this car driving along to lvl40.

In the abstract though, i think partly rebuilding this car and using a different brand of wheels could make a smoother ride that could go much further than lvl40.
This ofcourse would take a ton of more time and money. And we all know EG7 does not invest in DDO.

 

[Jaspar]

I agree,
We just have a disconnect with framing the problem. I think the DC issues are a very serious threat to game longevity. And i think SSG agrees because they worked around them for the ATr and are now finally acknowledging and working on the problem.

Except they arent. If they were serious they would be lowering AT DC and actually boosting caster DC and having a decision on whether melee DC should get help - given DC casters are basically useless without their DCs but melees can do just fine without capped DCs.

And still no mention of the R7+ nerf for casters?

None of this is really happening. Its just a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

You can only guess how senior the producer is who is overseeing this. We certainly know how much they dont like casters.

 

[Yamani]

Since the Line changes at level 30 gear. Might as well change Feywild, Ravenloft, and sharn gear from legendary to epic.

 

[Mnemor]

Since the Line changes at level 30 gear. Might as well change Feywild, Ravenloft, and sharn gear from legendary to epic.

What change could this entail, beyond the name?

 

[Yamani]

What change could this entail, beyond the name?

They could change all the gear to level 30 so it takes part of the DC changes. Or the name on these changes from legendary to epic and people come to accept gear from 5+ years ago doesnt hold up anymore.

 

[Finngon]

This proposal actually moves them much closer to tactical DC boosts, so 100% agree with you there. Spell DCs and Tactical DCs are both aimed at monster saves, so they need to be much closer together in magnitude.

I mean... No, not really.

In the addressed post it was stated that a lvl 34 spell focus mastery items would increase from 5/3/2 to 8/4/2, with single schools being +12/6/3.
...Combat Mastery goes to +12/6/3 at lvl 34, while Vertigo goes to +17 (and theoratically 8/4 for insightful/quality if they were a thing).

I would still also look into increasing the amount Spell Focus feats give. I don't know how much +1 per feat will cut it these days.

 

[The Being]

Here's a thought experiment for devs:
What are the chances of building a character that's capable of contributing while playing with others in Legendary Elite (or more realistically due to community expectations, R1) content if the total amount of grinding for gear you are allowed is 3 completions of each quest in the game?

How do you see the chances of it depending on the type of character you are building?
Is it easier with martial, ranged or spellcaster?
CC, Instakill, pure damage?
I hope devs look at and adjust balance between build types based on this type of grind comparison.

3 completions of every quest in game is a lot of grind already to be honest, though veterans would know that some quests are not worth running for their loot at all. Epic level quests could still use a good once-over of their loot power levels to offer a greater chance of characters finding their "minimum expected loot".

---

Not landing a spell? Feels bad.
Looting an upgrade but character not actually gaining effectiveness? Intolerable.

If the floor for DCs is too low to make sure gear upgrades are actual upgrades, guaranteed sources of DC must be brought up and so devs should probably adjust feats, enhancements and destinies to make sure this intolerable situation arises as little as possible. I'm not convinced the proposed changes will be enough for that in legendary content on R1.

If necessary, ditch the pure d20 roll. Attack rolls and AC did away with it for good reason in the past.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

Here's a thought experiment for devs:
What are the chances of building a character that's capable of contributing while playing with others in Legendary Elite (or more realistically due to community expectations, R1) content if the total amount of grinding for gear you are allowed is 3 completions of each quest in the game?

How do you see the chances of it depending on the type of character you are building?
Is it easier with martial, ranged or spellcaster?
CC, Instakill, pure damage?
I hope devs look at and adjust balance between build types based on this type of grind comparison.

3 completions of every quest in game is a lot of grind already to be honest, though veterans would know that some quests are not worth running for their loot at all. Epic level quests could still use a good once-over of their loot power levels to offer a greater chance of characters finding their "minimum expected loot".

---

Not landing a spell? Feels bad.
Looting an upgrade but character not actually gaining effectiveness? Intolerable.

If the floor for DCs is too low to make sure gear upgrades are actual upgrades, guaranteed sources of DC must be brought up and so devs should probably adjust feats, enhancements and destinies to make sure this intolerable situation arises as little as possible. I'm not convinced the proposed changes will be enough for that in legendary content on R1.

If necessary, ditch the pure d20 roll. Attack rolls and AC did away with it for good reason in the past.

I'll take a crack at it...

There are 204 legendary quests in game according to the wiki, so that would be 614 quest completions in roughly 100 hours assuming 10 minutes per quest.
The chance to get gear from legendary quests, assuming elite+ is roughly 20% (33% chance of any loot, but most tables are diluted with augments,etc...)

This gives you roughly 120 random items scattered across all legendary packs. So with <10 items per pack its very unlikey to have a functioning set for any arbitrarily chosen character, and nearly impossible to get a functioning sun/moon set. This would also average ~0% chance of finding any rare loot.

Lets assume you keep 20 pieces of gear and feed the rest, that's roughly 33k sentient xp, or enough for 5 slots. Its very unlikely you find the proper filigrees, but lets assume you can trade/auction for at least the non-rare ones.

Now what are the chances a character such as this is successful and can contribute (after freeloading for the first 614 quests to get this gear of course).

I'd put ranged at about 60%, You really only need a decent weapon and some decent damage gear. We're going to be missing a lot of filigree and artifact/profane bonuses, but you should be able to manage a character with ~50% of the damage output other players might have.

Melee I'd put around 20%. Contributing with melee also means surviving, and they have a higher gear requirement for damage than ranged does. Its not impossible though, and if we assume a high enough level of skilled player perhaps 30-40% instead.

Nukers would be around 5%, You have virtually no chance of getting the LGS/Dread/Lamordia crit gear and will have non-functioning DCs. But some caster classes (like trickster) can get away with this.

DC caster would obviously be 0-0.1%. I suppose its possible in theory to randomly get all the exact sets/augments to reach a basic DC floor where only 5 filigrees would be enough.

 

[Phaedra]

DC caster would obviously be 0-0.1%. I suppose its possible in theory to randomly get all the exact sets/augments to reach a basic DC floor where only 5 filigrees would be enough.

Wouldn't a DC caster by 5% effective, that being the chance for mobs to roll a 1?

Also I think you're overestimating the survivability of a ranged character without decent threat reduction if they're able to hit 60% damage output.

Also also, the DC caster will probably have better lootgen DC gear than their named drops, and if it's enchantment and necromancy, they can likely squeeze out another 15-30% effectiveness.

You don't need to be hitting 140 DCs to be effective in R1, it just feels bad seeing those blue hexagons.

 

[Wizard]

[...]

Now what are the chances a character such as this is successful and can contribute (after freeloading for the first 614 quests to get this gear of course).

I'd put ranged at about 60%, You really only need a decent weapon and some decent damage gear. We're going to be missing a lot of filigree and artifact/profane bonuses, but you should be able to manage a character with ~50% of the damage output other players might have.

Melee I'd put around 20%. Contributing with melee also means surviving, and they have a higher gear requirement for damage than ranged does. Its not impossible though, and if we assume a high enough level of skilled player perhaps 30-40% instead.

Nukers would be around 5%, You have virtually no chance of getting the LGS/Dread/Lamordia crit gear and will have non-functioning DCs. But some caster classes (like trickster) can get away with this.

DC caster would obviously be 0-0.1%. I suppose its possible in theory to randomly get all the exact sets/augments to reach a basic DC floor where only 5 filigrees would be enough.

Big balance issue here, after so many quests, all specs should be at like 60% effectiveness.

Melee I'd say would higher than 20% too if you have someone tanking or crowdcontrolling. But Nuker and DC caster is just hopeless without an insane grind.

 

[EinarMal]

Wouldn't a DC caster by 5% effective, that being the chance for mobs to roll a 1?

Also I think you're overestimating the survivability of a ranged character without decent threat reduction if they're able to hit 60% damage output.

Also also, the DC caster will probably have better lootgen DC gear than their named drops, and if it's enchantment and necromancy, they can likely squeeze out another 15-30% effectiveness.

You don't need to be hitting 140 DCs to be effective in R1, it just feels bad seeing those blue hexagons.

Threat reduction on ranged is by far the easiest. All three ED trees you need have it. You can also kill mobs a mile away.

If you are only landing spells 15% of the time, which is questionable in Lamordia, you are basically useless in any slightly capable group.

I mean basically, the answer is if you are in this situation, play Trickster, or build a tanky healer.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

You don't need to be hitting 140 DCs to be effective in R1, it just feels bad seeing those blue hexagons.

Correct, target DCs for just contributing on Elite/R1 would be around 110+ if a certain failure rate of ~50% is acceptable, 120+ DC otherwise. (Depending upon your definition of "contribute")

Given the constraints of the thought experiment this is basically impossible... You will likely be missing:
8 tome, 8 past lives, 2 reaper, 4 artifact, 1 insightful, 4 profane, 2 festive, 2 exceptional, 2 reaper helm, 2 curse, 3 quality, 2 alchemical = -40 to your main stat
and also missing:
1 wizard past life, 3 school past life, 2 quality, 4 profane, 3 sacred, 2 exceptional, 2 reaper, 1 curse, 1 reaper ring, ~6 filigree = -25 to DCs

Which would barely get you to around 100 DC in a single school, depending on the build, and around 75-90 in other schools, which is only going to be partially effective on the easiest (ravenloft) legendary content on elite. This is assuming you min/max everything else possible.

The chance that you somehow pick up the missing 10-20 DCs from random reaper helm drops, curses, etc... is non-zero I suppose, hence the 0.1% chance I give it.

 

[EinarMal]

Correct, target DCs for just contributing on Elite/R1 would be around 110+ if a certain failure rate of ~50% is acceptable, 120+ DC otherwise. (Depending upon your definition of "contribute")

Given the constraints of the thought experiment this is basically impossible... You will likely be missing:
8 tome, 8 past lives, 2 reaper, 4 artifact, 1 insightful, 4 profane, 2 festive, 2 exceptional, 2 reaper helm, 2 curse, 3 quality, 2 alchemical = -40 to your main stat
and also missing:
1 wizard past life, 3 school past life, 2 quality, 4 profane, 3 sacred, 2 exceptional, 2 reaper, 1 curse, 1 reaper ring, ~6 filigree = -25 to DCs

Which would barely get you to around 100 DC in a single school, depending on the build, and around 75-90 in other schools, which is only going to be partially effective on the easiest (ravenloft) legendary content on elite. This is assuming you min/max everything else possible.

The chance that you somehow pick up the missing 10-20 DCs from random reaper helm drops, curses, etc... is non-zero I suppose, hence the 0.1% chance I give it.

You can kind of simulate this even on a well-developed character. I typically just use L15 sharn stuff to cap, minus swapping out a weapon at 20.
DCs are going to be around ~100 or so with that sort of setup.

Running R1 Lamordia, you would basically do nothing to the mobs. Essentially the same sort of issue if you just leave on your heroic leveling gear and try to run later content.

Its still not really the same as you have way more hit points from Reaper points. But you are not effective at much of anything.