Update 66 Preview 1 - Epic Destiny Refresh

[Falkor]

Begone! Foul agent of reason!

There shall be no discussion of slightly decreasing the top options and raising the others up! That's foolhardy!

We must destroy everything and reduce it to the dumbest, lowest common denominator! No ability shall be left behind!

Nuke it all!

 

[Mindos]

It seems that this is just totally pointless, it will just increase the numbers shown on screen.

The "balance" isn't about between classes or trees. It's about players versus monsters. Level going up, damage going up, monster hitpoints going up, etc. Take away some DC now, we get it back when we increase in level, effective difference is zero. The illusion of change or progress. We march to level 40, but realistically we will do the same relative damage in the same time with the same ratio of instakills, etc.

The devs are balancing backwards from level 40 but they're doing it right now before we get there. They are like evil time travellers.

 

[Soulcial]

@Tonquin as ever the devil's advocate/ optimist, I would like to make a simple request that I think would really greatly help the perception of these changes as well as future changes.

Can you please take a little bit of extra time to explain why changes are being made? What you are attempting to do? I understand that both A) you have your reasoning and B) whenever you make Any changes, people tend to respond with anything from"great," to "ok, fine" to "why are you actively trying to destroy the game?????" and I think that with a little bit of explanation of the goal, you might find a little bit less of the latter and a little bit more of the middle road of constructive criticism. I was a bartender for 10 years in a very densely populated tourist area . One universal truth I learned is that if you set and define expectations, it greatly increases customer experience and perception. At the end of the day, we are customers. Some will always be more pleasant and reasonable than others.

I'm not saying sit down and respond to every single comment and criticism, as this might further encourage those doom sayers to be louder and further harm conversation, but rather pre emptively explain changes and goals in your notes. You must have relatively clear objectives and justifications. We'd love to hear them!

 

[Rull]

Changes to All Trees​

All Epic Destiny Trees have received the following:

• A pass over their individual icons for readability and iconography - this includes several new icons and edits to existing ones to provide a cleaner and more cohesive within-tree look.
• All Mantle ability icons now have a color-coded border around their Icon for maximum readability on a hotbar or within a tree.
• All Strike ability icons now have a color-coded border around their Icon for maximum readability on a hotbar or within a tree.
• All abilities that upgrade a Mantle or a Strike now have an appropriate border that matches the border of what they're upgrading for maximum visual clarity.
• Trees have been reordered and rearranged to support more clear Prereq lines in cases where ability upgrades are required - for example, an ability that says "Your Destiny Mantle gains this specific bonus" is now in a line with that Mantle and has arrows to properly convey its relationship.
• A ton of tooltips have been rewritten, reworded, color coded, and simplified or expanded depending on their needs.

You'll notice this section is almost all about how the trees are presented - and it's something that we hope really makes a difference. But now, onwards to the funky stuff!

I personally care less about getting the numbers right, than that I do about small game design deterioration like adding the dependency between Wild Weapons and Wilder Weapons in the Fury of the Wild tree.
The previous situation was an interesting one, where you have to strike a balance between getting 9% doublestrike for 6 points, or just the 6% doublestrike for 3 points, or none. It made you think 'how badly do I really want doublestrike?'
With the arrow added, this is dumbed down to "do I want 9% doublestrike for 6 points, yes or no?". If a player does not even want that, they sure as hell aren't going to get 3% for 3 points.

 

[Soulcial]

The UI changes to make it clear what abilities are Mantles/Strikes/Moments and which modify Mantles/Strikes are all great improvements.

Unfortunately, I'm less impressed with the actual changes to effects. Since the changeover from the old ED system I've tried out different combinations of all the trees and established some clear favorites; DI Energy Vortex, PA Carrion Swarm, and EA Angelic Soul are all near the top of the list. I'm guessing that means they are popular with others too and thus SSG has data showing they are used more than other options... presumably leading to this 'nuke it from orbit' approach to 'balance'.

A better way of balancing things is to make more of the OTHER options viable. Decrease the best options slightly if you must, but reducing all of the 'Epic' abilities down to levels at or below 'Heroic' turns them into just clutter for the action bars. There are some decent improvements here and there in the list of changes (e.g. temp HP on kill for Shadowdancers), but NOTHING which made me sit up and say... 'oh, I can make a good solid build with that'.

Side note: For the handful of people with anti-feather fall 'issues'... maybe have a gameplay setting that swaps the default behavior; so by default they'd fall normally, but they could switch to feather fall at any time (assuming they have an active FF effect) by blocking.

feather fall is literally as simple as hold block while falling. I just don't understand why people choose that hill to die on. There could not have been a simpler solution.

 

[Ying]

Exalted Angel: There's still no compelling reason to go T4 or T5 in this tree if your primary role is healer. Chain Heal, even if the targeting was fixed, isn't relevant when healer classes already have a litany of healing options at their disposal. As a healer, I'm just going to go T5 Unyeilding Sentinel because a pile of permanent and temporary hitpoints is a more compelling reason because it increases my chance of survival when things go pear shaped.

Things that could be added to EA to make it more appealing to the devoted healer:

* Make the cast speed of Mass Heal instant, like Mass Cure spells. No one takes Mass Heal because it's too damn slow to cast. Apply the same logic to Admixtures. There's a reason that Alchemist Apothecary healers aren't a thing: Admixtures suck to heal with because they can be interrupted (Quicken Spell doesn't apply) and they are sloooooow to reach their destination.

* Provide beneficial temporary protections to people that you heal: Alignment absorption/resistances, temporary hitpoints/spellpoints, increased HAMP -- you get the idea. Dare I say: Add Force absorption for a single target (tank). There's a hint of this in Angelic Soul (T3) with +5 AC, PRR, MRR. Extend that further.

 

[Meat-Head]

Suggestions:

1. Undo the higher R7+ reaper penalty on spells since you are changing dragon breath. Melee already dominates R10 DPS.
2. Shiradi change the chance for spells to match ranged at 15%, literally no casters use this now its too low.

Exactly this.

 

[ACJ97F]

We're almost sure that EG7's only using DDO as an IRS "Asset Loss" credit at this point.
"Hey, they drove away another 42% of the playerbase, fill out a Form 8949 Schedule D".

 

[choco1212]

I can see why they made a change to Weird Tier 5 Shadow Dancer to be removed from the spell book, as it was being expoited, so they have decided to punish everyone with its 60 second cooldown(good luck trying to change their minds, they are upset), as an SLA. Some caster nukers do a LOT more damage than others, but they tend to see casters as a singular entity when nerfing, poor Warlocks, Wizards and Stormsingers. Melee are definetely NOT the highest dps in the game, melee's cannot 1 shot an R10 Doom, Ruin casters can, by using the games mechanic (LAG) Fix the lag, fix the Ruin!! What amazes me it that the game owners are always trying to find a way to make the game, that we pay for, much less enjoyable to play. I get that they need to find a balance, but please be mindful, not all casters are too powerful, yet ALL got the nerf to R7+ quests, and now the Dragon Breathe nerf, not all range toons are OP(most will get one shotted, so glass cannon material), not all melee have 500+ melee power. Regarding upsetting the healing community on here, well done! thats a first, i am impressed.

 

[Meat-Head]

Exalted Angel: There's still no compelling reason to go T4 or T5 in this tree if your primary role is healer. Chain Heal, even if the targeting was fixed, isn't relevant when healer classes already have a litany of healing options at their disposal. As a healer, I'm just going to go T5 Unyeilding Sentinel because a pile of permanent and temporary hitpoints is a more compelling reason because it increases my chance of survival when things go pear shaped.

Things that could be added to EA to make it more appealing to the devoted healer:

* Make the cast speed of Mass Heal instant, like Mass Cure spells. No one takes Mass Heal because it's too damn slow to cast. Apply the same logic to Admixtures. There's a reason that Alchemist Apothecary healers aren't a thing: Admixtures suck to heal with because they can be interrupted (Quicken Spell doesn't apply) and they are sloooooow to reach their destination.

* Provide beneficial temporary protections to people that you heal: Alignment absorption/resistances, temporary hitpoints/spellpoints, increased HAMP -- you get the idea. Dare I say: Add Force absorption for a single target (tank). There's a hint of this in Angelic Soul (T3) with +5 AC, PRR, MRR. Extend that further.

Yes.

 

[mikarddo]

I can see why they made a change to Weird Tier 5 Shadow Dancer to be removed from the spell book, as it was being expoited, so they have decided to punish everyone with its 60 second cooldown(good luck trying to change their minds, they are upset), as an SLA. Some caster nukers do a LOT more damge than others, but they tend to see casters as a singular entity when nerfing, poor Warlocks, Wizards and Stormsingers. Melee are definetely NOT the highest dps in the game, melee's cannot 1 shot an R10 Doom, Ruin casters can, by using the games mechanic (LAG) Fix the lag, fix the Ruin!! What amazes me it that the game owners are always trying to find a way to make the game, that we pay for, much less enjoyable to play. I get that they need to find a balance, but please be mindful, not all casters are too powerful, yet ALL got the nerf to R7+ quests, and now the Dragon Breathe nerf, not all range toons are OP(most will get one shotted, so glass cannon material), not all melee have 500+ melee power. Regarding upsetting the healing community on here, well done! thats a first, i am impressed.

Two questions.

When you speak of "exploit" wrt Weird do actually mean exploit or just that people lowered the recast time by 40%? If there was an actual exploit I do understand why you cannot elaborate.

You then claim that casters can one-shot Dooms on R10. I know I have not been able to do so with well above 1000 spell power and 100+ crit damage mult with GRuin on my sorc. Is that also some trick / exploit or do you actually believe that casters can simply single shot R10 dooms all the time through regular means with GRuin?

 

[DBZ]

If the problems ruins remove them not this thats a fix

 

[Dergex]

If this refreshes on every kill, as it seems to state, then I disagree. Sure, 6 temp HP per SA die is not a lot, but if you are continuously taking damage then those temp HP are effectively being multiplied by the number of kills you make.

I could agree with you on this, but as it is Rogue has issues getting kills in higher end content compared to casters and other characters with very easy to use instant death effects. Assassinate can be useful, but comparing it to the AoE Death that some characters get things can be less than consistent.

If they allowed the temp HP to stack to a certain degree, added on hit temp health, or made it so that on kill effects happened whenever anyone in the group got a kill that would be much more consistent and a much nicer benefit.

I've been saying that On Kill effects should happen for everyone whenever a kill happens for a long time.

 

[Ying]

Casters don't one-shot Dooms on R10. Maybe pre-stat squish that happened.

Changing Weird to an SLA is great, because it allows non-casters to use it which has been asked for in the past (h/t to Viamel's Rogue Trickster). However, Weird not benefiting from casting cooldown reduction is lame. And yes, there's an undocumented (and unintentional) feature with Weird that will go away with this change.

 

[choco1212]

Two questions.

When you speak of "exploit" wrt Weird do actually mean exploit or just that people lowered the recast time by 40%? If there was an actual exploit I do understand why you cannot elaborate.

You then claim that casters can one-shot Dooms on R10. I know I have not been able to do so with well above 1000 spell power and 100+ crit damage mult with GRuin on my sorc. Is that also some trick / exploit or do you actually believe that casters can simply single shot R10 dooms all the time through regular means with GRuin?

I am not willing to elaborate, but as all things not intended in DDO 1% know of them, the other 99% pay for it when it comes to light

 

[mikarddo]

Casters don't one-shot Dooms on R10. Maybe pre-stat squish that happened.

Changing Weird to an SLA is great, because it allows non-casters to use it which has been asked for in the past (h/t to Viamel's Rogue Trickster). However, Weird not benefiting from casting cooldowns is lame. And yes, there's an undocumented (and unintentional) feature with Weird that will go away with this change.

Thank you. Now, if they would change things so all SLA benefitted from casting time cooldown that would go a long way towards making some of these changes less unreasonable.

 

[Elminster]

Devs,

This entire Epic Destiny "Refresh" seems to be one giant nerf-fest. It really does.

But, I forgive you.

Mainly, because I found this cosmetic thing yesterday:

 

[Ying]

Unpopular Opinion: Removing the auto-heal aura from Exalted Angel mantle that requires zero interactivity by a player is a step in the right direction.

 

[Lazuli]

Thank you. Now, if they would change things so all SLA benefitted from casting time cooldown that would go a long way towards making some of these changes less unreasonable.

All they have to do is add the spell to the lists it rightfully belongs to, leaving the SLA on the shadowdancer.

 

[choco1212]

Casters don't one-shot Dooms on R10. Maybe pre-stat squish that happened.

Changing Weird to an SLA is great, because it allows non-casters to use it which has been asked for in the past (h/t to Viamel's Rogue Trickster). However, Weird not benefiting from casting cooldown reduction is lame. And yes, there's an undocumented (and unintentional) feature with Weird that will go away with this change.

Yeah, they do, i did it last life, repeatedly, again not intentional