U82 Preview 1 - Monster DR Rework

[drjoans]

Howdy all! With Update 82, we're changing how Monster DR functions. Rather than each monster having its own DR value, failing to break DR will now reduce your weapon damage by 50%. This means that if you're fighting a monster that used to have DR 10/good, and you don't have a Good aligned weapon, rather than subtracting 10 damage from your weapon attack, your attack will now do 50% less damage.

Player DR is unchanged and will function how it does currently.

Note: This change has horribly broken the raid The Hound of Xoriat as Xyzzy uses DR to prevent player-sourced damage - this will be fixed for an upcoming preview!

RIP to anyone that actually mainhands a piercing melee weapon. Guess now your obligated to have more than one sentient weapon at endgame :/

 

[Wrensel]

This is making me think... I wouldn't be surprised if Damage Reduction bypass effects will end up on Generation 4 Filigree...

Another thought, Two-Handed Fighting (and Bear) should probably have a reduced penalty for lacking the proper bypass, granted in the Two-Handed Fighting feats (or Natural Fighting feats). This helps reflect their capacity to have the big heavy hits that used to clear older Damage Reduction by a wider margin.

 

[Helswrath]

this and a lot of the changes on the enhancement trees just sound like they're going to feel bad.

 

[Synalon]

This is a great change. However I do think it should come with decoupling sentient gems from weapons. Even so, bringing back some mob defenses and the importance of DR breakers is good

 

[Darksteel]

Howdy all! With Update 82, we're changing how Monster DR functions. Rather than each monster having its own DR value, failing to break DR will now reduce your weapon damage by 50%. This means that if you're fighting a monster that used to have DR 10/good, and you don't have a Good aligned weapon, rather than subtracting 10 damage from your weapon attack, your attack will now do 50% less damage.

Player DR is unchanged and will function how it does currently.

Note: This change has horribly broken the raid The Hound of Xoriat as Xyzzy uses DR to prevent player-sourced damage - this will be fixed for an upcoming preview!

We are back to "Link your DR weapon" era before getting into raids, and we cannot carry 100+ weapons, swapping 1000 times in a raid. I understand you joined recently to the team so you may not know this used to happen and reject players, this is a horrible change - please remove the code, dump this idea and move on. Thank you.

 

[Phaedra]

50% damage reduction period.

Is this what we're doing to try to make casters relevant?

 

[Ying]

This seems guaranteed to force a decoupling of sentience from individual weapons at some point down the road. Short term pain for long term gain?

I wouldn't hold my breath.

This change I'm very skeptical of. This seems like it's going to open a gigantic can of worms around balance issues. I'll need to seriously think about this one.

What balance issues are you referring to?

I understand you joined recently to the team so you may not know

I believe Tonquin first joined the team in Aug 2016.

 

[in4theride75]

What balance issues are you referring to?

Sentient weapon choice vs DR bypass. Certain weapons are significantly stronger than others but don't necessarily have the stats to bypass certain monster's DR. Currently that's just a flat -damage but if you're doing 100k+ DPS with a 1k DR that's insignificant. but at -30k DPS that's significant.
It's possible to end up in a situation where a melee TWF could need 6+ weapons with sentient gems maxed on each. The more thinking is having to analyze every endgame boss's DR to determine how many weapons that would be.

 

[Torm]

Melee is getting double nerfed with the DR flag changes making weapon damage be 50% effective while in reaper mode.

 

[Elfishski]

The good solution to go with this would be to make the sentient gem a separate slot on the character so you could swap weapons (or sentient gems)... can leave the slot on the weapon so if you equip a weapon with a sentient gem it uses that, if you don't have a gem then it uses the one on the character. Now you can benefit from swaps but don't have to, or make it easy to swap in the character slot, though I'd expect that to require a sentient toolkit as this would have to be a big moneymaker in the current status quo...

 

[ShawnVW]

ranged can change. you can get rl quiver for blud and certain weapons have different things on them to change their damage type

Not to mention that you can change the damage type just by swapping ammo.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

I love this change, but its going to be brutal while players adapt to it.

 

[PersonMan]

Is this what we're doing to try to make casters relevant?

If they turn it up to full immunity / heal by

 

[Cult of the Ocelot]

Interesting. Just sounds like type-based PRR.

I hope to see some similar benefit for players in the future (10 DR means nothing when I get hit for 1k+).

It also sounds like a lead-up to something else. I hope. This is going to make having an all-rounder weapon extremely difficult.

 

[Ying]

I love this change, but its going to be brutal while players adapt to it.

It's going to take weeks, if not longer, to wrap our collective brains around these changes. The scope is a bit overwhelming, and staggering.

 

[Hobgoblin]

I believe Tonquin first joined the team in Aug 2016.

and they were playing in 2009 iirc

 

[woq]

It's going to take weeks, if not longer, to wrap our collective brains around these changes. The scope is a bit overwhelming, and staggering.

I love that. We now have bunch of stuff to figure out. You might see more exciting and varied party/raid compositions.

 

[Ying]

I love that. We now have bunch of stuff to figure out. You might see more exciting and varied party/raid compositions.

I'm all for changing the meta. It's been stale for 2+ years, and my lack of playtime reflects that.

 

[Voxy]

Good changes

 

[rabidfox]

Any chance you make the inspect window tell me the DR type of a mob so I don't have scroll the combat log or wiki/monster manual to figure things out?