U82 Preview 1 - Monster DR Rework

[Greywolf]

As far as I know, there's no way at all for a bow or crossbow user to bypass slashing.

For Longbow it is super easy to bypass slash/bludgeon with 6AP in Arcane Archer, Morphic Arrows secondary imbue.

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

And you still will have more dps than casters, that's how bad nukers are atm.

My fire sorc is taking a big hit from this balance pass, but my warlocks and wizard are making out ok.

As for my other builds...

I have quite a few casual martial raiding alts and they all only have 1 sentient weapon - mostly undying age weapons except for my tanks.

The short-term solution may be to swap over to viktranium weapons on my casual raiding alts which gives me 2 dr breakers + 2 from augments with one being deconstructer for adamantine.

But part of the issue is that dr breaking has been such a nothing burger I don't even know what I need or all the raids on our schedule. I'll have to do some research and put something together as a reference for myself and others I raid with.

I know I need bludgeoning for threats and of course silver/cold iron/good for any demons and devils.

Much like casters have a tier 3 multi-selector in every tree for school DC, martial trees need a multi-selector in T3 of martial trees with 3 choices - 1 alignment / 1 metal type / 1 damage type (slashing, etc.).

It would also be great if we had a way to get weapon augments with multiple dr breaking types like the old guild augments, e.g., silver+good devil's bane or whatever that old guild augment was called.

This is not the end of the world, but it's difficult regearing one or two alts, but with this release I have to rethink almost every build.

One option is to punt and turn a bunch of casual raiding alts into ranger archers and melee monks because they made out well with this balance pass and they have the best built-in support for dr breaking.

 

[Lordpiglet]

Enemies have immunities and some enemies get healed by certain types of spells. As an example, my palemaster that invests 2 feats and 1 AP to bypass negative energy immunity still gets massive damage reduction against enemies with deathward which is also super prevalent in the game.

I also ran into a construct in the illithid chain that never took damage even when I used the bypass ability.

In the past 10 years this has only been an issue for casters. The new feats help, but don't totally solve the issue.

The elemental damage of a weapon / imbues area already been subject to immunities and the ability to heal enemies based on that damage type.

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

The elemental damage of a weapon / imbues area already been subject to immunities and the ability to heal enemies based on that damage type.

This is true, but at least on my martial builds this aspect has been insignificant.

 

[Kimbere]

Exactly this. It's Bloom->Oak|Sireth->SOS and that's it for Staff. Others are more than 20% behind and lack slots to bypass enough material DR. As a sub-cap staff, Sireth works because you can use GMOF for bypass, but that's too gimpy for at-cap.

While I agree with your overall point, to pick nits, that's not the most optimal quarterstaff progression for leveling.

For example, weapons with superior crit profiles like Bloom require a decent bit of melee power, +dmg, +crit dmg, +W bonuses, and additional +crit range/multi modifiers to scale their additional crit damage enough to surpass weapons with comparable base stats but better proc dice.

In the low to mid heroics, you typically don't have enough stats to make something like Bloom better than an essence crafted quarterstaff with double aug slots filled with Xd6 dmg rubies.

For example, here's the quarterstaff list calculated using the melee stats my toon has at level 7 with nearly all of the possible PLs. Note that Bloom's average damage per hit isn't all that great compared to other options in that level range and it sits near the bottom of the rankings.

However, if I change the melee stats and feats to something a level 15 toon might have and add in the crit range bonus for swords to plowshares, the rankings change quite a bit and Bloom jumps to the top.

 

[SpartanKiller13]

Either A) DR is meaningless (like on live) or B) DR has an noticeable impact. 50% is kind of a lot, but it's already down to 25% for most stuff.

And like most of these threads are people wanting it to return to being meaningless so they can continue to completely ignore it lol (swapping to a reflavored clone weapon once per content qualifies as ignoring it IMO).

It's like Fortification on enemies or something - what do you mean, I don't land crits 100% of the time? Illegal! And somehow we make build tradeoffs and load gear, enhancements, etc to get past it.

It's not like this is dropping in a vacuum; we're getting uncapped doublestrike, boosted basic attacks, and even Lock In for THF. Etc etc.

It's gonna be fine XD and if you need *only* top stats just roll a Monk like all the others. The guilds/people who are gonna block you from raids for not linking your Harry Beater are probably not the fun ones to raid with anyway XD

 

[Abax11]

For Longbow it is super easy to bypass slash/bludgeon with 6AP in Arcane Archer, Morphic Arrows secondary imbue.

Is an option if you play ranger, but F if you play Dark hunter and let's be honest, AA really need a rework for a ranged toon

My fire sorc is taking a big hit from this balance pass, but my warlocks and wizard are making out ok.

As for my other builds...

I have quite a few casual martial raiding alts and they all only have 1 sentient weapon - mostly undying age weapons except for my tanks.

The short-term solution may be to swap over to viktranium weapons on my casual raiding alts which gives me 2 dr breakers + 2 from augments with one being deconstructer for adamantine.

But part of the issue is that dr breaking has been such a nothing burger I don't even know what I need or all the raids on our schedule. I'll have to do some research and put something together as a reference for myself and others I raid with.

I know I need bludgeoning for threats and of course silver/cold iron/good for any demons and devils.

Much like casters have a tier 3 multi-selector in every tree for school DC, martial trees need a multi-selector in T3 of martial trees with 3 choices - 1 alignment / 1 metal type / 1 damage type (slashing, etc.).

It would also be great if we had a way to get weapon augments with multiple dr breaking types like the old guild augments, e.g., silver+good devil's bane or whatever that old guild augment was called.

This is not the end of the world, but it's difficult regearing one or two alts, but with this release I have to rethink almost every build.

One option is to punt and turn a bunch of casual raiding alts into ranger archers and melee monks because they made out well with this balance pass and they have the best built-in support for dr breaking.

I actually agree with that, and tbf at least 2 of my 3 toons will be nerfed at some point (fire sorc with prob a buff on single target but still suboptimal on that matter with a nerfed aoe, longbow dark hunter which i'll need to test live but prob nerfed due to DRs and a pally i don't play too much). I like the idea of DRs don't be a joke but having feasible ways to bypass them, like trees or some flexibility on gear, not on feat which most builds are starved.
Also think this need more visibility in game, otherwise considering how high are % will be a pain for new players or even veterans starting new toons

 

[Lotoc]

Exactly this. It's Bloom->Oak|Sireth->SOS and that's it for Staff. Others are more than 20% behind and lack slots to bypass enough material DR. As a sub-cap staff, Sireth works because you can use GMOF for bypass, but that's too gimpy for at-cap.

To be honest they could absolutely offer "spears" and "glaives" as piercing and slashing quarterstaves in expansion weapon suites, especially the ones with raid tier upgrades.

 

[rabidfox]

Several of the weapons (that are normally just bludgeon) in the upcoming raid have piercing on them. So these DR changes may open up SSG weapon design space to offer different perks and side-grades with variations on them. At the time of the raid preview, the piecing just seemed meh, but with the DR changes, those weapons get more interesting.

 

[f1b041b3]

And like most of these threads are people wanting it to return to being meaningless so they can continue to completely ignore it lol (swapping to a reflavored clone weapon once per content qualifies as ignoring it IMO).

It's like Fortification on enemies or something - what do you mean, I don't land crits 100% of the time? Illegal! And somehow we make build tradeoffs and load gear, enhancements, etc to get past it.

You know, I'm still waiting for an answer as to why martials are expected to eat massive mob damage mitigation without complaint, but casters should be able to completely ignore resistances and always make their spell penetration checks. Maybe stripping should be limited to half damage and spell resistance applied to all damaging spells as a type of "spell fortification"? "What do you mean? I don't land spell crits a 100% of the time? Illegal!"

It's not like this is dropping in a vacuum; we're getting uncapped doublestrike, boosted basic attacks, and even Lock In for THF. Etc etc.

Sure, uncapped doublestrike is nice (I'd argue that this isn't truly a "buff" as it should've never had a ceiling in the first place) but it doesn't kick in for most before 30. It's also not going to come close to offsetting the dps loss in quests where significant effort is spent while failing to break dr, and those are the times it's going to matter the most. Boosting damage on third and fourth attacks is going to add little as it's easy to reset the attack chain performing any number of actions; also, the lower your attack speed and the more specials you use, the more likely you are to miss/override the bonus damage. I don't use two handers so Lock In does nothing for me.

Several of the weapons (that are normally just bludgeon) in the upcoming raid have piercing on them. So these DR changes may open up SSG weapon design space to offer different perks and side-grades with variations on them. At the time of the raid preview, the piecing just seemed meh, but with the DR changes, those weapons get more interesting.

I'm a bit dubious. Three of those are pieces of Yeenoghu's flail, so the piercing damage could just be a consequence of flavor, and the wand is a caster stick. All four are suboptimal weapons nobody uses.

 

[Greywolf]

Is an option if you play ranger, but F if you play Dark hunter and let's be honest, AA really need a rework for a ranged toon

I agree about AA T4/5 abilities needing some help. The low hanging fruit is pretty awesome though. And you can get AA on Darkhunter, or any other class, if you make it an Elf.

 

[Ilvati]

As I've started thinking about builds basically here's what I think will shake out if this goes live:

Of B/P/S B>>S > P. Today, virtually all ranged are P and the vast majority of martials are S.

1. Since ranged can use the RL quiver for B when its necessary they'll swap it in v. quiver of alc.
2. Bow will be popular both from the buffs and DR breaking (morphic line of secondary imbue toggles).
3. HW monks be super popular (with both B and S with vorpal strikes in epic) - monk also provides some nice other DR breaking. (And benefit from uncapped DS signifcantly)
4. Fighter with feats to burn on I/C S and B using knights training -- this may be a few level (4?) splash in other builds. Possibily keen weapons may fill this role too for knights training

If SSG wants to make new build available they'll implement items (like RL quiver or the new weapons Rabid points out) that make new "meta" builds attractive for B/P/S purposes. Or new enhancements like morphic arrow but for more weapons (selling us a new universal tree perhpas?)

I guess if this is how the meta gets shaken up so be it ... but its still a design decision I don't support to have unavoidable DR delegimitze an entire playstyle. Literally we just spent years dealing with casters on this and finally implemented a solution to permit all damage type. Have yet to hear SSG explain the reason for the DR changes here yet we've heard the "why" from them on many other design decisions. Not understanding the "why" is frustrating and annoying.

 

[Greywolf]

I guess if this is how the meta gets shaken up so be it ... but its still a design decision I don't support to have unavoidable DR delegimitze an entire playstyle.

I agree, the DR changes seem heavy handed. As it stands today, DR is mostly ignorable outside of certain bosses. With this change, you would have to integrate bypassing every possible DR into your build. The ranged changes they have proposed seem to indicate they want to make more options viable, say bard, alchemist, vistani throwers instead of just monk shuriken. And then this DR change just funnels everyone into Ranger Longbow to access the secondary imbues. Same goes for Melee, everyone will play something like Shintao Monk in GMoF Destiny for all of the DR breaking features.

 

[Draknowin]

Can I suggest at least making it so that weapons with the '+ extra B/P/S damage on hit/crit' count as that damage type for DR breaking? Like the Epic Cutting Currency from 'Another Man's Treasure', which is a BSword that also deals 5d6 Bludgeoning on hit.

 

[SpartanKiller13]

You know, I'm still waiting for an answer as to why martials are expected to eat massive mob damage mitigation without complaint, but casters should be able to completely ignore resistances and always make their spell penetration checks. Maybe stripping should be limited to half damage and spell resistance applied to all damaging spells as a type of "spell fortification"? "What do you mean? I don't land spell crits a 100% of the time? Illegal!"

Without complaint? I feel like you might have missed ~19 pages of this thread!

I mean for years I've been asking for elemental immunity to be converted to absorb and immunity strippers to reduce absorb instead, but that's ok XD

I'm ok with losing 25% of my damage sometimes because I'm expecting to gain a bunch of damage most of the time lol. If it was "every mob has 25% DR that always applies to you" sure that'd suck, but plenty often I'm going to be getting past their DR and then I get +30% DPS from Reaper Boost + Action Hero or whatever before even making build adjustments. Getting like 120% standing DS with 60% boosts available is gonna be a huge step up. Oh, and getting an extra 8ish AP on the way is also pretty great.

They're also looking at adding more sources of Morale DS - so potentially +20-25% DS for most builds - which is at worst +10% DPS if you were already capped.

Also I love playing THF which is also getting buffed lol, like getting an extra 100+ MP for champs/bossing/whatever is pretty nice. But this will also be great for animal builds (DS Cores, boost, Natural Fighting), Monk (Shadow Double??!? and wraps), Bards (Warchanter Aura stonks, SB boost), Tempest (Thousand Cuts), etc etc.

Sure, uncapped doublestrike is nice (I'd argue that this isn't truly a "buff" as it should've never had a ceiling in the first place) but it doesn't kick in for most before 30. It's also not going to come close to offsetting the dps loss in quests where significant effort is spent while failing to break dr, and those are the times it's going to matter the most. Boosting damage on third and fourth attacks is going to add little as it's easy to reset the attack chain performing any number of actions; also, the lower your attack speed and the more specials you use, the more likely you are to miss/override the bonus damage. I don't use two handers so Lock In does nothing for me.

Idk, it's called "Double"strike lol. Pretty sure Doubleshot should have capped at 100% XD

Also plenty of builds can get past 100% before 30, especially when boosting! Any build can run VKF C3/T4 for 30%, 15% PL, 22% PotF, 30% Reaper Boost which gets you to 97% at level 15 lol. 10% from whatever class enhancements and 15% ED's and you're getting +12% boss DPS at lvl 23 without much effort.

And like before 20 you can just swap weapons lol, no sentient arguments and your PL stats will carry you just fine. And if you're talking 20-29 it's sprint boosts + Quick Cutter anyway, your 10-slot ESoS could be a greatclub as long as it grants melee power.

If you don't use THF it matters even less! What are you worried about for leveling? Chains will clear just fine, and Quick Cutter at 75% will kill everything without any problems either.

For certain you can break your attack chain - but if you're worried about maximizing your DPS you'll work around it, and if you're not worried about maximizing your DPS than -25% from DR sometimes is fine.

 

[f1b041b3]

I guess if this is how the meta gets shaken up so be it ... but its still a design decision I don't support to have unavoidable DR delegimitze an entire playstyle. Literally we just spent years dealing with casters on this and finally implemented a solution to permit all damage type. Have yet to hear SSG explain the reason for the DR changes here yet we've heard the "why" from them on many other design decisions. Not understanding the "why" is frustrating and annoying.

I have multiple theories but none of them fit perfectly. Low dps players will be helped at endgame while the higher your dps, the more you'll suffer, and the highest burst damage dps'ers will likely suffer the most. That'll probably be seen as a positive by the devs as they understand the upper limits of martials far less than those of casters. But then why apply it at every level and difficulty? Then you have the change to doublestrike, which will alleviate that penalty *somewhat* at cap. I also doubt that they would have made the ds change without the change to dr, which makes it feel like the devs are paying off part of a credit card with another. And of course all of this will probably shave some time off of store pots and sell more shards for rerolls, because who wants to bother with aggravating dr-filled quests.

Without complaint? I feel like you might have missed ~19 pages of this thread!

Yes, I've read them all, and within those pages are casters that were furious over an extra 2% damage reduction in r8 but totally dismissive over a 50% reduction on martials everywhere there's a mob possessing a trace of dr. Also, nobody said they want dr to be meaningless, but any significant amount that isn't bane-typed leads to pointless micromanagement that ruins builds and the viability of interesting weapons.

Idk, it's called "Double"strike lol. Pretty sure Doubleshot should have capped at 100% XD

Nothing should cap. Not doublestrike, not mrr, not strikethrough... nothing. There should always be a benefit if one goes to the effort of getting more of it, especially given how difficult it is to pull loot nowadays. Even if they gave only 2 melee power for every point of doublestrike past 100, it would've been something for our efforts. Also, it's called a 'fire' elemental. It shouldn't take any damage from fire, ever.

For certain you can break your attack chain - but if you're worried about maximizing your DPS you'll work around it, and if you're not worried about maximizing your DPS than -25% from DR sometimes is fine.

25-50% damage absorption is fine if you can't manage your attack chain with mechanical precision around a multitude of special attacks? Is that your contention? Okay.

 

[f1b041b3]

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!

Counterproposal: DR mechanics remain the same on sub-reaper modes. At reaper difficultly, all mob dr becomes bane-typed absorption at 5% * skulls. If we absolutely must have sizable damage absorption, and this seems to be your intent, then this at least ensures that every martial is impacted equally apart from the odd energy weapon user.

 

[Bjond]

Several of the weapons (that are normally just bludgeon) in the upcoming raid have piercing on them. So these DR changes may open up SSG weapon design space to offer different perks and side-grades with variations on them.

Nice catch on the damage types for new weapons. I think you found the "reason" for the DR change. BUT ..

The weapons are L35 and raid only. The changes are L1->forever. What about the rest of the game?

The majority of the game does not raid. What about the rest of the players?

I still foresee a DDO crawling with fist monks for melee unless they do something to balance other styles like adding quivers with Blunt or Slash or Pierce at L1. More likely they'd "balance" vorpal strikes by removing it -- works, but more in the sense that we'd all hang together instead of separately:

 

[Raedier]

Hot take, carrying a CC keen/metalline weapon would solve most of the issues with this patch, now they just need to add sentient to cannith crafting.

 

[Bjond]

Hot take, carrying a CC keen/metalline weapon would solve most of the issues with this patch, now they just need to add sentient to cannith crafting.

I think you missed the part about material DR not being that big a deal. The fuss is over blunt/slash/pierce.