Upcoming "Major Balance Pass" ideas

[Krishna Devi]

Interested to hear suggestions from the community regarding the upcoming balance pass ...

Some ideas to get us started:

1) Either remove the r7-r10 caster dps nerf, or apply it universally to both martial and caster, or at least reduce its severity
2) Slightly nerf the current meta martial dps (repeater, inquisitive, etc) by perhaps 5%
3) Significantly increase the most underperforming martial styles (bow, melee staff, etc) by perhaps 25%
4) Modestly increase caster dps overall by around 10% ...
4a: ... perhaps by adjusting the myth/reap bonuses on items to +1mp/+1rp/+3usp & +3mp/+3rp/+9usp
4b: ... and/or by adjusting the auto-granted epic/legendary feats to +6mp/+6rp/+12usp
5) Improve the underperforming caster dps spells, especially those that are ineffectual at endgame
6) Improve sustained caster single-target dps options; eldritch blast & enervating blast, arcane pulse, arcane bolt, niac's biting cold, eladar's electric surge, divine punishment, reverberate, creeping cold, enveloping swarm, etc thereby providing casters with meaningful raid boss dps options
7) Resolve difficult caster gearing issues with the addition of some multi-tier augments: spell DC, spell lore, arcane/divine augmentation, etc

 

[Krishna Devi]

In general I'd like to see less distance between the meta martials and the underperforming martials, and between the meta martials and casters.

I'd like an overall balanced game that doesn't swing wildly boosting and nerfing. But rather provides a more or less even playing field for the broadest variety of builds possible; hopefully even breathing life into cool iconic styles like the stealth-assassinate builds, the archers (bow), and even the summoners.

I welcome any and all ideas from the player base how a more balanced DDO might be achieved.

 

[voenixa121]

In general I'd like to see less distance between the meta martials and the underperforming martials, and between the meta martials and casters.

I'd like an overall balanced game that doesn't swing wildly boosting and nerfing. But rather provides a more or less even playing field for the broadest variety of builds possible; hopefully even breathing life into cool iconic styles like the stealth-assassinate builds, the archers (bow), and even the summoners.

I welcome any and all ideas from the player base how a more balanced DDO might be achieved.

It won't be achieved by +-5% changes in numbers. There are fundamental systemic problems that have accumulated over many years that have to be solved instead of just be piled on again. The current balance problems are merely a symptom of that and it won't be solved by simple number crunching.
And don't take this wrong, but I doubt you or any of us players would even notice a 5-10% change to anything.

 

[Willow]

Make all the underperforming classes fun again! Nerf the few classes that are doing good down to the rest and none of it will be fun.

 

[Krishna Devi]

I think balance is fun; more build variety, flavor, and creativity - I really enjoy seeing unique and interesting builds.

Using dps as an example: Currently our guild raids have 6-7 repeaters, most commonly 15arti/4fgtr/1barb. And 1 or 2 of the 14pally/4arti/2fgtr inquisitives. Peeps choose the same race, same feats, similar gear, same enhancement trees, same filigree, and same destiny trees; because that's what is incentivized by the dps metric.

Personally I'd prefer a more balanced overall DDO landscape. But if the community is happy, then I'll concede to whatever is the majority choice. It's just my personal preference to see a wide variety of races, classes, styles, etc perform within a similar range - not that we excessively incentivize a very small number of builds.

 

[EinarMal]

I think your numbers are too low.

1. Leave crossbows/shuriken/swf/twf alone; there has to be some target, might as well make that the top benchmark
2. Equalize the reaper penalty, want to make the game harder, give the caster penalty to all DPS
3. Boost bow, staff, thf, gxbow etc.. by ~25% agree
4. Boost top-performing casters Sorc/Druid/Alchemist ~25% (this is still below top ranged, swf, twf)
5. Boost next group like Stormsinger/Wizard/Warlock ~35%
6. FVS/Cleric/Artificer (Caster) need like 50% boost; they are awful

What will actually happen idk.

I hope they just boost single-target damage spells on NOT DOTs, DOTs suck in my opinion, they take too long to build up, and yeah, they might work for raids eventually, but they are not good for questing.

 

[Shmuel]

Id like to see a situation where all classes have a unique and equally valuable role.

I imagine melee as more tanky and front line, casters as doing most of the aoe damage and supporting melee with crowd control, healers healing and ranged as doing the best single target dps.

I would have minor nerfs for ranged and melee cc effects, big boosts for others, and increase the difficulty of reaper.

My suggestions:

1. Melee in general: Increase tankiness of all melee, with small boosts to prr/mrr for fighters/barbs/palladin and big boosts in AC and dodge/max dodge for monks, melee rangers, and rogues. Reduce dcs of melee aoe effects to noticeably lower than caster dcs.

2. Reduce or eliminate aoe ranged attacks, or at least drastically reduce their damage and leave them to cc or armor destruction type effects. Leave dps for ranged as mainly single target.
Arcane trickster can be in this category too.

3. Double the attack speed of longbows and shortbows.

Revert manyshot to its old version and allow 10k stars to work with bows with zen archery again, on a separate cool down timer from manyshot.

Allow swashbuckling with shortbows.

4. Eliminate max caster level on all spells starting at level 30.

Also double the value of spellpower items.

Starting at level 20, allow wizards to use their highest spellpower value for all spell types, or at least allow them to select 3-4 types that all use that highest value.

5. Increase bard (specifically bard ) cc dcs by a minimum of 10-15 in Legendary levels.

Double the bonuses of all bard buffs in Legendary levels.

6. Double damage of warlock eldritch blasts in Legendary.

7. In reaper, cut the benefits of all reaper point enhancements in half to reduce the gap between people who have many thousands of hours of playtime and those who do not and between people's mains/alts.

Keep the dps penalty in reaper, but make it the same amount for melee/ranged and casters.

Double the self healing penalty in reaper.

 

[Krishna Devi]

I think your numbers are too low.

1. Leave crossbows/shuriken/swf/twf alone; there has to be some target, might as well make that the top benchmark
2. Equalize the reaper penalty, want to make the game harder, give the caster penalty to all DPS
3. Boost bow, staff, thf, gxbow etc.. by ~25% agree
4. Boost top-performing casters Sorc/Druid/Alchemist ~25% (this is still below top ranged, swf, twf)
5. Boost next group like Stormsinger/Wizard/Warlock ~35%
6. FVS/Cleric/Artificer (Caster) need like 50% boost; they are awful

What will actually happen idk.

I hope they just boost single-target damage spells on NOT DOTs, DOTs suck in my opinion, they take too long to build up, and yeah, they might work for raids eventually, but they are not good for questing.

Thank you EinarMal, as always I appreciate your feedback, thoughts, etc.

 

[Krishna Devi]

Id like to see a situation where all classes have a unique and equally valuable role.

I imagine melee as more tanky and front line, casters as doing most of the aoe damage and supporting melee with crowd control, healers healing and ranged as doing the best single target dps.

I would have minor nerfs for ranged and melee cc effects, big boosts for others, and increase the difficulty of reaper.

My suggestions:

1. Melee in general: Increase tankiness of all melee, with small boosts to prr/mrr for fighters/barbs/palladin and big boosts in AC and dodge/max dodge for monks, melee rangers, and rogues. Reduce dcs of melee aoe effects to noticeably lower than caster dcs.

2. Reduce or eliminate aoe ranged attacks, or at least drastically reduce their damage and leave them to cc or armor destruction type effects. Leave dps for ranged as mainly single target.
Arcane trickster can be in this category too.

3. Double the attack speed of longbows and shortbows.

Revert manyshot to its old version and allow 10k stars to work with bows with zen archery again, on a separate cool down timer from manyshot.

Allow swashbuckling with shortbows.

4. Eliminate max caster level on all spells starting at level 30.

Also double the value of spellpower items.

Starting at level 20, allow wizards to use their highest spellpower value for all spell types, or at least allow them to select 3-4 types that all use that highest value.

5. Increase bard (specifically bard ) cc dcs by a minimum of 10-15 in Legendary levels.

Double the bonuses of all bard buffs in Legendary levels.

6. Double damage of warlock eldritch blasts in Legendary.

7. In reaper, cut the benefits of all reaper point enhancements in half to reduce the gap between people who have many thousands of hours of playtime and those who do not and between people's mains/alts.

Keep the dps penalty in reaper, but make it the same amount for melee/ranged and casters.

Double the self healing penalty in reaper.

Hey Shmuel I haven't seen you post for a while.

Some great ideas here, thank you. Nice contribution.

I especially like (1) and (2) and "Id like to see a situation where all classes have a unique and equally valuable role."

 

[Shear-buckler]

Double the self healing penalty in reaper.

Why? That would just delete even more builds.
Reduce ALL healing in reaper.

 

[Ptalon]

Here's an idea: don't do it.

 

[Aaumini]

For raids specifically, buff relevant dots damage and max stacks. Add substantial on-damage procs can adjust proc rate based on number of stacks.

Add sp-regen item effects and enhancements and destiny to allow casters to switch from PA/evergreen.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

Interested to hear suggestions from the community regarding the upcoming balance pass ...

Some ideas to get us started:

1) Either remove the r7-r10 caster dps nerf, or apply it universally to both martial and caster, or at least reduce its severity
2) Slightly nerf the current meta martial dps (repeater, inquisitive, etc) by perhaps 5%
3) Significantly increase the most underperforming martial styles (bow, melee staff, etc) by perhaps 25%
4) Modestly increase caster dps overall by around 10% ...
4a: ... perhaps by adjusting the myth/reap bonuses on items to +1mp/+1rp/+3usp & +3mp/+3rp/+9usp
4b: ... and/or by adjusting the auto-granted epic/legendary feats to +6mp/+6rp/+12usp
5) Improve the underperforming caster dps spells, especially those that are ineffectual at endgame
6) Improve sustained caster single-target dps options; eldritch blast & enervating blast, arcane pulse, arcane bolt, niac's biting cold, eladar's electric surge, divine punishment, reverberate, creeping cold, enveloping swarm, etc thereby providing casters with meaningful raid boss dps options
7) Resolve difficult caster gearing issues with the addition of some multi-tier augments: spell DC, spell lore, arcane/divine augmentation, etc

Think you're maybe going to be disappointed if you're expecting all that. Guess we'll see though.

Also, whilst I get the caster Vs everyone mentality, there really does need to be a distinction between ranged and melee IMO.

Ranged are currently on top by some distance. And I agree the low floor inquisitive x-bows need scrutiny.

Melee though, maybe outside of Dragonlord, are at a distinct disadvantage in high R by not being able to avoid incoming damage. The new feats may help there, but avoidance>>mitigation every time.

That needs factored into any balance review IMO.

So comparing martial with caster is as misguided as comparing melee with non melee.

As an exclusively ranged player for some years now, because it's ano brainer, I need to see something worthwhile to entice me back to melee.

That's not to decry the need for caster improvements, I just think we need to be careful as all martial is not the same, not by a long shot ('Scuse pun!).

 

[Shmuel]

Why? That would just delete even more builds.
Reduce ALL healing in reaper.

I was thinking to give a role to a dedicated healer especially in high reaper.

 

[Shear-buckler]

I was thinking to give a role to a dedicated healer especially in high reaper.

Yeah but it is not self healing, that is already heavily penalized, that is holding the healing role back. It is the non-self healing that is so strong that there is no point in specializing in it. Healing should have the same penalty that damage has.

 

[Shmuel]

Yeah but it is not self healing, that is already heavily penalized, that is holding the healing role back. It is the non-self healing that is so strong that there is no point in specializing in it. Healing should have the same penalty that damage has.

That's a fair point.

 

[Smokewolf]

Interested to hear suggestions from the community regarding the upcoming balance pass ...

Some ideas to get us started:

1) Either remove the r7-r10 caster dps nerf, or apply it universally to both martial and caster, or at least reduce its severity
2) Slightly nerf the current meta martial dps (repeater, inquisitive, etc) by perhaps 5%
3) Significantly increase the most underperforming martial styles (bow, melee staff, etc) by perhaps 25%
4) Modestly increase caster dps overall by around 10% ...
4a: ... perhaps by adjusting the myth/reap bonuses on items to +1mp/+1rp/+3usp & +3mp/+3rp/+9usp
4b: ... and/or by adjusting the auto-granted epic/legendary feats to +6mp/+6rp/+12usp
5) Improve the underperforming caster dps spells, especially those that are ineffectual at endgame
6) Improve sustained caster single-target dps options; eldritch blast & enervating blast, arcane pulse, arcane bolt, niac's biting cold, eladar's electric surge, divine punishment, reverberate, creeping cold, enveloping swarm, etc thereby providing casters with meaningful raid boss dps options
7) Resolve difficult caster gearing issues with the addition of some multi-tier augments: spell DC, spell lore, arcane/divine augmentation, etc

Sadly, history has proven that the Dev's will just ignore all this and do what ever they feel will boost their short-term monetization opportunities.

 

[Chacka]

Regarding casters: if there is room for more DPS and more "power" for casters in general, I would suggest that all spells use the character level instead of the caster level (the class level), with no maximum caster level in general. Just make sure, of course, that caster-level-increasing effects don't make certain spells too powerful – and be stingy with such effects (as stingy as you currently are with maximum-caster-level-increasing effects).

And this should be the general rule in DDO: any ability you get (spells, feats, enhancements etc.) should scale with your character level and not with your class level – maybe with a cap where it makes sense.

In the end, this is easier to understand, more consistent, and it makes a lot more multiclass builds playable.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

Melee though, maybe outside of Dragonlord, are at a distinct disadvantage in high R by not being able to avoid incoming damage. The new feats may help there, but avoidance>>mitigation every time.

That needs factored into any balance review IMO.

The main balance issue between melee and ranged is not specifically avoidance vs mitigation. Its that ranged can continue 100% dps-uptime while avoiding damage at the same time. Some very good melee players have become expert tumblers that can easily avoid almost as much damage as ranged players, the issue is they have to stop doing damage to do so... not to mention raid mechanics that force melee players to sit around doing 0 damage 1/3 of the time... or the part where ranged parties can delete entire groups of mobs before melee even get in range...

To me, all of these issues are entirely solved by just giving melee a small but noticeable (10-20% on paper) dps advantage, and let player skill decide the difference. However, SSG seems intent on this sort of MOBA-style balance where ranged are the risky damage dealers that are supposed to get "jumped". Which, in theory could be a decent way to balance the game, they would just need to do a LOT of work on monster AI to start targeting down ranged players better.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

The main balance issue between melee and ranged is not specifically avoidance vs mitigation. Its that ranged can continue 100% dps-uptime while avoiding damage at the same time. Some very good melee players have become expert tumblers that can easily avoid almost as much damage as ranged players, the issue is they have to stop doing damage to do so... not to mention raid mechanics that force melee players to sit around doing 0 damage 1/3 of the time... or the part where ranged parties can delete entire groups of mobs before melee even get in range...

To me, all of these issues are entirely solved by just giving melee a small but noticeable (10-20% on paper) dps advantage, and let player skill decide the difference. However, SSG seems intent on this sort of MOBA-style balance where ranged are the risky damage dealers that are supposed to get "jumped". Which, in theory could be a decent way to balance the game, they would just need to do a LOT of work on monster AI to start targeting down ranged players better.

Yeah, some few can, but even then it's not as as safe as that enjoyed by all ranged in comparison. Ranged can tumble too remember. It's not melee exclusive.

I do agree though that damage application at range is an advantage - partly because your avoidance uptime is 100%.

I think your solution is OK too in general principle.