U82 Preview 1 - Monster DR Rework

[Hephaestas]

Cool...cool... so obviously the devs are going to revitalize Warforged's Adamantine DR to mimic this, right? Surely this isn't just a one-sided mob-facing change only? It's cool to see DR be "important" again, but this just seems like PRR with extra steps (the extra steps are departing from DR in the first place to go the PRR route and now we're back at DR)

 

[The Narc2]

Narc, we don't care about your opinions based on so many years of false equivalences, willful contrarian arguments, and incessant harping about hard core and the like. You are literally the only person advocating for these changes, and for what? monetization????? Seriously? There are a million other ways they could monetize this game and bring bling, and they don't. I cannot fathom your reasoning, and believe you hate the player base far more than the devs.

The proposed changes are flat out, bad. For everyone. Even the dev's noticed enough to tone down their %'s. This means they agree with the majority who are pointing out the changes are bad. And are adjusting.

Making the DR resistances increase with reaper levels is smart, skillful, and an elegant solution which does bring additional challenge for all players, wherever they may land in terms of game skill and experience.

Good point this should make hardcore even better, and add to separating the average joe from the elite.

I get that you are indicating that you don’t care about my opinions and I am sure you realize that “I”dont care if you care or not, in fact i find it hilarious that you make your statement as “we” to attempt to instigate a gang piling, save it because i wont care anout that either.

Using “hate“ is a powerful word, and you should use it cautiously as that is an emotional term and i can ensure i neither hate the players not the devs, completely emotionally unattached to either. But you suggesting that i hate one more than the other and you having a differing opinion than mine could suggest that you hate the devs more than the players, I dont think hating the devs is an appropriate behavior. I support the devs in their changes and you should probably go thru the threads to see that i am not the only one, you lessen your opinion with such false statements.

 

[Greywolf]

This change seems like it will be a big proxy buff to the DR breaking abilities in Shintao and Arcane Archer trees.

 

[Falkor]

I can't even make sense of that word salad and arm-chair psychology. Let's just agree to disagree and move on.

 

[nobodynobody1426]

That may be better than their current plan but it does not address the source of the problem, just this symptom.

It also ignores the entire point of DR and how DR is supposed to function strategically.

DR is supposed to be about skewing defenses in a pokemon type like system of enemies being strong against some attacks, weak to others, normal for some, and a smattering of immunities and super weaknesses.

Just like how polemon have grass and fire and ghost, DnD 3.x based systems have three physical types, bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing, plus elemental types, fire, cold, electric, acid, sonic, and base energies, positive and negative, and DDO added alignment energies, lawful, good, evil, chaotic.

These are essentially pokemon types. The point of DR was to be a way to add type resistance, and every attack had a specific type. Players are supposed to learn what types to attack with.

However, DR used flat values instead of percentages for more than just how easy the math is. It made it so attacks of different levels of power would have different chances of how much damage could be done, as well as i teracting with leveling up from normal to demi-gods.

...

This change is about incorporating 5e rules into DDO, which is based on 3.5e. In 3.5e DR acted as a flat reduction in damage if you didn't have specific types like magic / blunt / good / etc, it was a barrier players had to overcome to deal damage to a monster. In 5e this was changed to damage resistance, where a monster took half damage from specific sources or if certain conditions were not met. They are radically different systems and not interchangable.

The problems here is that the SSG developers are trying to convert DDO's 3.5e system into the 5e system without redoing all the 3.5e DR that already exists. This is terrible and introduces all the insane issues like many monsters having DR /- and therefor having an unbreakable 50% global damage reduction. It also introduces the issues of base weapon types (PBS) being non-interchangeable and unfairly penalizing entire playstyles and classes. Most everyone is going to lose their sentient gems the moment they switch from slashing to blunt, or piercing to slashing and so forth.

 

[Wisefreelancer]

I am not 100% sold on 25% being appropriate for blugeoning/slashing/piercing. I would also just get rid of the complicated "if this DR is higher than that then 50%, but otherway round is 25%". Just make the highest DR that's not broken apply in all cases. The value of the DR/x is now moot so let it be moot for simplicity.

But I do think this is broadly a good change in terms of direction. DR breaking should be meaningful. Let is be meaningful again.

Except for the blugeoning/slashing/piercing, all other DR breaking is relatively easy to acquire if you want it. Several destiny abilities, feats, augments, weapon enhancements, enhancement trees - there's loads of ways to get it. There's a little bit of over-reaction in this thread.

Scaling the % by difficulty seems right. I'd be much more aggressive than most are suggestions 10% N / 15% H / 25% E / 50% R1+ seems right (and half values for blugeoning/slashing/piercing). People want Reaper to be harder and more tactical. This seems like an elegant way to do it.

 

[The Narc2]

I can't even make sense of that word salad and arm-chair psychology. Let's just agree to disagree and move on.

Perfect, that was simple. Next time avoid trying to attack my character and just go straight to this reaponse. This way you can avoid the in between that does not look well on you, its not becoming.

 

[l_remmie]

Ranged will need accessible ways to blunt and slash dmg.

 

[Greywolf]

Ranged will need accessible ways to blunt and slash dmg.

The new Bow / AA ranged meta has arrived.

 

[The Narc2]

I am not 100% sold on 25% being appropriate for blugeoning/slashing/piercing. I would also just get rid of the complicated "if this DR is higher than that then 50%, but otherway round is 25%". Just make the highest DR that's not broken apply in all cases. The value of the DR/x is now moot so let it be moot for simplicity.

But I do think this is broadly a good change in terms of direction. DR breaking should be meaningful. Let is be meaningful again.

Except for the blugeoning/slashing/piercing, all other DR breaking is relatively easy to acquire if you want it. Several destiny abilities, feats, augments, weapon enhancements, enhancement trees - there's loads of ways to get it. There's a little bit of over-reaction in this thread.

Scaling the % by difficulty seems right. I'd be much more aggressive than most are suggestions 10% N / 15% H / 25% E / 50% R1+ seems right (and half values for blugeoning/slashing/piercing). People want Reaper to be harder and more tactical. This seems like an elegant way to do it.

I am not fully against some sort of scaling as this could promote different type of players to enjoy the game i would suggest something kore like this;

Normal - 5% cap just enough to teach casuals which mobs have DR

Hard - 25% cap a step up to encourage newer players to take on the challenge

Elite - exactly as has been suggested by the devs with the update

Reaper - Add 3% per skull

 

[axel15810]

Devs, here's a proposal.

I am somewhat lukewarm on this change. It will bring the game back more to how things were in the 2010 era. DR breaking will now be mandatory if it's a 50% reduction. I think I am ok with that, it'll freshen up the game atleast.

There's 1 giant issue though.

The information to actually determine what DR monsters have is not in the game anywhere.

There should be some way in game to discover this, the game is far too reliant on the wiki in this way. How about giving some lines of dialog to public area NPCs that hint at what DR monsters have? Like for example, in the Vale an NPC could say "Our greatest scholars say Arraetrikos has a distaste for those good of heart who wield weapons crafted of silver!" I'm sure a writer could put it more elegantly than that, but this information needs to be discoverable in game if it's going to be this important to the gameplay.

 

[Lordpiglet]

Howdy all! Thanks for your feedback so far and for trying things out on Lamannia!

You all are right that changing weapon types is much harder than finding augments or a friendly artificer for things like Good or Adamantine, and that monsters with dr/- are getting a huge boost to their defenses. So, for Preview 2, we're thinking that monsters with Bludgeon, Piercing, Slashing, or Bane (the internal name for dr/-) DR will only have a 25% reduction to damage taken, rather than the full 50%.

This is going to be hard to explain succinctly, but as a note, if a monster has both b/p/s/bane DR and another kind of DR, and the b/p/s/bane DR is higher in original magnitude, it will take 25% less even if you are also not breaking the other DR. For example, a Clay Golem with DR/Bludgeon 10 and DR/Adamantine 1, if you use a regular ol steel dagger, you'll only do 25% less damage because that bludgeon DR is higher than the adamantine DR in original magnitude. If it had DR/Bludgeon 1 and DR/Adamantine 10, you'd do 50% less for not breaking Adamantine, since the Adamantine is higher. If you were using an Adamantine dagger, you'd do 25% less, because now the only DR that applies is Bludgeoning. If you switched to a steel mace, you'd do 50% less, because of the Adamantine DR.

Of course, all of this is still subject to change, so please keep the feedback coming! Thank you!

My issues:

• You just went through this and finally fixed it for casters so that they can pierce elemental immunities.
• For melee, most don't have a way to strip elemental immunities, so if the mob is immune or resistant to a given element, I already jsut have to deal with that.
• This is extra punishing to TWF players (outside of monks) since each weapon has to bypass DR on it's own, that doubles the number of weapons I need. My inquisitive can bypass everything but Lawful, Chaotic, Evil and Slashing on their current setup and I can easily just use another slaughtering shot as a swap at the cost of one weapon and that will bypass everything but Slashing. Meanwhile my TWF now needs a Blunt with mineral weapon set, and piercing / mineral set. that's 4 extra inventory slots at cap, and extra level 20 set and any additional sets points. In addition, there are no piercing weapons that benefit from Knights Training. So while only having IC slash means that war hammers are slightly behind in damage, then I'm at a bigger loss for piercing damage. I'm also going to need to grind ingredients for weapons now.
• There are no piecing weapon options for no staff using THF.

If you're going to change it to a blank percentage off, then frankly, they should have more then one DR. They can have DR/Blunt or DR/Adamantine but not both. If you're going to continue to use mixed dr's then ways to bypass those mixed dr's need to be more common and easier to acquire then they currently are.

 

[Tharminator]

Even 25% is going to be extremely punitive for newer players, which is still most of DDO's player base. This is a negative play experience in the making, and needs to be strongly reconsidered. If implemented with 25% blanket DR, it will drive players away and it will cause issues with raiding.

The obvious solution is to scale DR with reaper difficulty.

Normal / Hard starts at 5% ... Elite / R1 is 10% ... scale DR to over 50% for reaper 10, giving the extra difficulty players have long yearned for.

This will avoid 'link your harry-beater' hatred for pug raiding, b/c LH will still be accessible for new players.

Dr already is scaled in reaper with overall dps reduction...

 

[Rull]

Sentience ruined the fun in encountering different enemies.

There used to be a time where against an Elemental you'd use a banishing khopesh of outsider bane. Now you always keep your sentience weapon equipped no matter what.

Sentence also ruined the fun of getting a new weapon from a raid. You used to think "I can see this being best in situation X". Depending on how likely X was you'd be moderately or very happy with the pull. Now it's boolean: is it better than your current weapons? if not, might as well not play the raid.

So I don't know what your goals are with enemy DR.

Don't get me wrong, I know what your goals are with this *change* (to simplify it and deal with the % vs flat values problem), but imagine for a moment DR didn't exist at all: what would your goals be by introducing it to the game?

 

[Lordpiglet]

New players have virtually zero chance of ever understanding and keeping up with all the non-obvious, arbitrarily overly complex minutiae in this game. Nevermind all the bugged things that the game leads you to believe are working as stated.

Hell, I've played for 12+ years and can't even keep track of all of it. I still periodically learn about new (to me) quirks or bugs. Even worse, I am occasionally reminded by a random forum post or browsing the wiki of something I knew at one point, but had forgotten.

This game needs a massive does of the KISS principle applied to the underlying mechanics and systems, but instead, they're constantly being made more complex.

Oddly enough, they're actually simplying it for casters

 

[Tyrande]

Can I inquire why this was needed? Because this is a pretty huge nerf to all physical damage types for most of the player base. There will be some builds, tanks mostly, that will benefit from this, but those are very few from what I can tell.

I was here for the entire tab of weapons for DR breaking times. It was not that fun. In low to mid heroics, this change will be annoying but manageable to deal with. But after level 20, where sentience comes into play....

If I had to wager a guess, you wanted a new tool in your box to make fights harder, i.e. whenever you want something to be more difficult, but you are not sure how, you will just give that mob DR/- to effectively increase its hit points. That way you can say, "see, we did not inflate hit point totals". It will be like evasion, where every spider, wolf and peacock has it, it seems.

And the change to B/P/S to 25% still sucks for Bow/XBow users. There is no way to not take the 25% hit for Slashing DR. And very few options for Bludgeoning.

I think I can answer your question.

To see the answer, you need to go back to your groups and ask yourselves:

Why are you not inviting casters into your R6->R10 high reaper quests and raids.

Caster spells can bypass all those DRs or DR/- with no problems. With this update, caster spell damage is being buff'd.
I think this mechanism encourage that you bring casters into the (raid/quest) party.

 

[Jaspar]

I think 25% is far more sensible than 50%, but mobs with 2 types of DR meaning it may be 50%, 25% or 0% depending on your weapon just feels needlessly complex.

A flat 25% that needs to have all DR removed makes more sense but you are going to kill off the last remaining new players the game has because they will simply not have access to the required gear - nor even be aware that such gear is required.

I do like the idea of variable DR based on difficulty. Something simple like 10% for N/H/E and 20% for R1+ feels like a manageable amount.

Also, does anyone know if the damage reduction applies at the end of the damage calculation or somewhere during it?
So if my base damage is 100 and I hit for 1,000 do I start at 75 and then multipliers kick in? Or do I do 750?

One other thing which was mentioned in amongst all of the posts - this is going to kill summons/hires/pets. They really do all need to be given Metalline and Aligned on their weapons.

Also, is there a way for players to know which mob types have which types of DR? Its going to get very messy and annoying in PUGs I suspect. At a time when the game has never been more solo-focussed.

 

[The Blonde]

Of course, all of this is still subject to change, so please keep the feedback coming! Thank you!

Hey!

Please give Sentient Jewels their own item slot and unlink them from weapons.

Thanks!

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

Howdy all! Thanks for your feedback so far and for trying things out on Lamannia!

You all are right that changing weapon types is much harder than finding augments or a friendly artificer for things like Good or Adamantine, and that monsters with dr/- are getting a huge boost to their defenses. So, for Preview 2, we're thinking that monsters with Bludgeon, Piercing, Slashing, or Bane (the internal name for dr/-) DR will only have a 25% reduction to damage taken, rather than the full 50%.

This is going to be hard to explain succinctly, but as a note, if a monster has both b/p/s/bane DR and another kind of DR, and the b/p/s/bane DR is higher in original magnitude, it will take 25% less even if you are also not breaking the other DR. For example, a Clay Golem with DR/Bludgeon 10 and DR/Adamantine 1, if you use a regular ol steel dagger, you'll only do 25% less damage because that bludgeon DR is higher than the adamantine DR in original magnitude. If it had DR/Bludgeon 1 and DR/Adamantine 10, you'd do 50% less for not breaking Adamantine, since the Adamantine is higher. If you were using an Adamantine dagger, you'd do 25% less, because now the only DR that applies is Bludgeoning. If you switched to a steel mace, you'd do 50% less, because of the Adamantine DR.

Of course, all of this is still subject to change, so please keep the feedback coming! Thank you!

Thanks for reading all our feedback and for this change.

Much like casters have a tier 3 multi-selector for DC school, all martial destinies should have a tier 3 selector for DR damage bypass which would include things like lawful, cold iron, slashing, etc.

 

[rabidfox]

Please give Sentient Jewels their own item slot and unlink them from weapons.

I wonder if they could give sentient slots to cosmetic weapons and remove them from the weapons themselves. Just on the concept of it being an already exisiting "gear" slot (and how they made cosmetic clickies for the DoV raid).