Wow 2 in one day and the shit storm shall continue....

Found on the motherfuckups as: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/446138-Armor-Up-Developer-Diary-2#post...

Sev's genius continues....

Greetings,

To give insight to player about the changes involved with our Armor Up changes, Paladin buffs, and other balance changes we are writing a series of developer diaries to explain upcoming changes we have planned for the game.

In the last developer diary we discussed Physical Resistance Rating, Magical Resistance Rating, Melee Power, Ranged Power, and the mitigation that our heavier armors and shields will now provide. If you haven't read through it you can check it out here:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...eloper-Diary-1


With this post we go into more depth about:
~ Using Melee Power to scale epic characters.
~ Melee in epic and Master's Blitz.
~ Changes to Two Handed Weapon feats.
~ Changes to Shield feats.


Melee Power, Epic Levels, and Epic Destinies
Before we talk about Paladins, their potential changes, and how they scale with Melee Power we wanted to talk about epic levels and Epic Destinies. This discussion will explain how Melee Power is distributed into the epic levels and throughout the Epic Destinies.

Currently on live an Epic Destiny power called Master's Blitz largely props up melee characters. Outside of some Druid builds that combine animal form with a convoluted combination of feats, enhancements and gear, most DPS heavy melee builds rely on Master's Blitz. To make things worse, there has been a great deal of player feedback indicating that Master's Blitz is also really annoying to use, to maintain, and to group with.

As we move forward with the armor revamp, we are examining the effect of Master's Blitz on Epic play. Although we like the new armor systems and how they interact thus far, the whole design and interaction with Master’s Blitz is problematic. We don't want to nerf melees in epic content. Instead we want to redistribute some of that damage into the Epic levels and the cores of melee Epic Destinies while at the same time making Master's Blitz more fun.


To summarize:

~ We hate the mechanic of spamming tactical powers 50 times to activate the power. Since the code doesn’t even require you to hit anything, this step is annoying and rather useless. We want to eliminate it.

~ We don’t like the group mechanic where melee has to try to convince other characters to not kill minions so they can build charges. We are discussing a system where this builds as the character hits opponents.

~ We don’t like that +250% damage is stacked into one tier 5 ability. Not only is this a poor leveling experience, but it overshadows the other melee oriented epic destinies.

We want to move some of this damage into the epic levels and core abilities so melee characters gradually build damage as you level them.

~ We want some other melee epic destinies to offer competitive DPS.

~ The dodge bonus goes against heavy armor, and adding a 50% dodge bonus that caps at the dodge cap is not only less than ideal, but it is too limited for characters wearing heavy armor.

~ We want to reduce the group scaling of hit points of bosses. This will reduce the hit points of bosses when you group, particularly on epic.

To be clear, we don’t want to nerf melee. The only reason we are talking about reducing the damage of Master's Blitz is because we want to roll that damage into the epic levels and the cores of the melee oriented Epic Destinies.

The plan is to convert the damage bonus of Master's Blitz to 250 Melee Power and to roll some of that 250 Melee Power into the epic levels and core abilities. Epic levels will provide 90 Melee Power, Epic Destiny innate abilities will provide 60 Melee Power, and Master's Blitz will provide 100 Melee Power when it builds up a full head of steam.


Here are our current changes for Master's Blitz and epic play for melee.

~ Master’s Blitz will be a multi-selector. You can choose the Dodge version which caps as it does today, or you can choose a version that adds 30 PRR and MRR as it builds up charges.

~ The requirement of spamming tactical abilities 50 times to activate the ability is removed.

~ When activated the ability builds as you hit enemies. You do not have to be the character who lands the killing blow. The rate that you build charges will be tweaked so it will build up at a decent rate.

~ Each epic level (including level 20) will now provide a passive bonus of 10 Melee Power. This means that at level 28 characters will have an additional 90 Melee Power.

~ Legendary Dreadnaught will gain Melee Power in its innate abilities. Shrug Off Punishment, Action Hero, Unstoppable, Action Boost – Unmovable, Action Boost – Thick Skinned, and Combat Brute will each provide a passive and cumulative 10 Melee Power. This will provide an additional 60 Melee Power to characters when they complete the Epic Destiny.

Master's Blitz will now build up to 100 Melee Power through charges.

Note that with the Melee Power in epic levels, the melee power in the innate abilities, and Master's Blitz the character can build up to 250 Melee Power. That will provide a multiplier of 3.5 to weapon damage and effects that scale with Melee Power.

~ Shadowdancer also gains damage from its innate abilities. Shadow Training 1 through V and Shadow Mastery will each provide a passive and cumulative 10 Melee Power. This means Shadowdancer will gain 90 Melee Power from levels and 60 from innate abilities to keep it competitive.

~ Unyielding Sentinel also gains damage from its innate abilities. Vigor of Battle, Unbreakable, Stand Against the Tide, Stalwart Guardian, Heed No Pain, and Steadfast all give you a 20% bonus to melee damage. This means Unyielding Sentinel will gain 90 Melee Power from levels and 60 from innate abilities to keep it competitive.

~ Primal Avatar also gains damage from its innate abilities. Strength of Spirit, Magic of Nature, Primal Travel, Mighty Amoung Spirits, Eternal Return, and Walk With Spirits will each provide a passive and cumulative 10 Melee Power. This means Primal Avatar will gain 90 Melee Power from levels and 60 from innate abilities to keep it competitive.

~ Fury of the Wild also gains damage from its innate abilities. Adrenaline, Brawn, Adrenaline II, Brawn II, Adrenaline III, and Adrenaline Overload will each provide a passive and cumulative 10 Melee Power. This means Fury of the Wild will gain 90 Melee Power from levels and 60 from innate abilities to keep it competitive.

~ Grandmaster of Flowers also gains damage from its innate abilities. Inner Focus, Centered Mind, Wholeness of Spirit, The Abiding Path, Ubiquity, and Balance in All Things will each provide a passive and cumulative 10 Melee Power. This means Grandmaster of Flowers will gain 90 Melee Power from levels and 60 from innate abilities to keep it competitive.

~ Divine Crusader also gains damage from its innate abilities. Just Cause, Aura of Purification, Extraordinary Virtue, No Remorse, Sword of Justice, and Zeal of the Righteousness will each provide a passive and cumulative 10 Melee Power. This means Divine Crusader will gain 90 Melee Power from levels and 60 from innate abilities to keep it competitive.

As we test these changes we can tweak individual Epic Destinies by changing the Melee Power provided by their innate abilities. If any particular Epic Destiny is doing too much melee damage we can dial back the Melee Power in the innates of that destiny.

What does this do for long term scaling? It means that we can change static abilities such as the Light damage that Paladins use to scale with Melee Power and increase substantially into the epic levels. As an example, the Knight of the Chalice ability Divine Light is fine in the earlier heroic levels but it is outscaled in the later levels.

By making it scale with 200% Melee Power an epic character with even the base 150 Melee Power from levels and innate abilities will see an increase from 18d6 to an equivalent of 44d6 damage.

This gives us long term tools to balance abilities.

Melee Power, Two Handed Fighting feats, and Shield Feats
To help further balance the system, some basic feats are being changed to add Melee Power as a passive bonus.

Two Handed Fighting adds 10 Melee Power while wielding a two handed weapon.
Improved Two Handed Fighting adds an additional 5 Melee Power while wielding a two handed weapon.
Greater Two Handed Fighting adds an additional 5 Melee Power while wielding a two handed weapon.

Shield Mastery adds 10 Melee Power while wielding a shield.
Improved Shield Mastery adds an additional 5 Melee Power while wielding a shield.
Improved Shield Bash adds an additional 5 Melee Power while wielding a shield.

In the next developer diary we will be talking about some of the Paladin improvements, including Knight of the Chalice changes, the redesign of Vorpal Weapon, and the increase in the duration of Zeal.

Sev~ 

I do approve of the reduction of the 50 tactical feats for blitz but the rest I will have to think about for awhile... Is it just me or is this change making it so being in anything but LD is just not going to be what you want now? Good lord...

What a fucking mashup this is leading to be...

Looks like Cletus and his fellow Whiners are getting oil, fucking squeaky wheels.

I really like these new changes. Too bad new players will have no fucking clue of whats going on once they hit level 20.

Sasha wrote on Jul 28^th, 2014 at 10:32pm:


How can they fuck it up?  Its levels and destiny only. (currently no gear or enhancements really)  They will just see larger numbers.  Its not rocket science.

Flav wrote on Jul 29^th, 2014 at 3:03am:


Giving melees 2.5x their present damage for being level 28 and having 6 cores unlocked in any destiny (+150 melee power) seems a very unreasonable way to do this.

I'm guessing these absurd introductory numbers are meant to be haggled down and are only being presented so that the eventual, agreed upon numbers seem reasonable. Or the idea is that everything needs to come up close to the level of Master's Blitz with a full stack. Either way, all of this will be majorly adjusted, I'm sure.

FM wrote on Jul 29^th, 2014 at 3:20am:


Dude dont be fucking stupid.  Turbine doesn't haggle down.  Nor should we want them to.  If they wanted those numbers lower they'd have low balled us, until we complained enough that they raised them slightly...

Flav wrote on Jul 29^th, 2014 at 11:26am:

Didnt they nerf it 3 times?

Barkabout wrote on Jul 29^th, 2014 at 12:40pm:


I remember the exchange of posts (was it Steelstar?)- the devs actually believed they had raised them and made them attractive again.
And despite overwhelmingly criticism from the player base, as well as many constructive suggestions, they displayed the usual tin ear, and the much of the challenge content sits now largely ignored and unused.

They should monitor what is played, and tweak XP and loot semi-regularly to try and make old content replayed occasionally. 
I know it would play havoc with the TR train dudes, but it should be about mixing things up a little.

Flav wrote on Jul 29^th, 2014 at 3:03am:

What the heck are you people thinking ?
Ya new "dev" that has no damn clue how basic things work, boom let's buff all melees to Blitz level.
Because the game is not a joke already. Noone needs a group, shit gets roflstomped duo/solo/shortman, fotm or not , Blitz/monkcher or not.

ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE ? Is this shitty players lobby or what ?

Ya, sorry for the cussing man. But it's really like that famous Star Trek double facepalm meme picture when I read those changes/"fixes".
Sometimes I don't have energy to discuss it anymore.

Melee power is retarded idea.
Why do they feel urge to copy every MMO on planet, instead of having something unique?
Sure, new people coming from other games will have easier time understanding, but having no fucking ratings everywhere with a fucking fuctions to calculate damage dealt, damage taken, saves, criticals, health, XP and shit like this is the only thing that makes DDO unique.
Lose that, and there is no reason to play game that is exactly as other MMOs but looking uglier and with more lag, and turbine.

I dont want ddo to be like every other mmo, they are going in that direction.

They really aren't, granted melee power isn't exactly standard 3.5, you need to look at DDO like a homebrew campaign where the DM is a bit special and is attempting to throw everyone a bone at a time without upsetting each flavor of the month snow-flake build.

The issue is simple; melee power is a decent concept. It could work, the problem is they most likely won't make it work. Everyone on the mother forums is bitching about how it will nerf Blitz, it won't. You have to have an Int score of about -4 and a reading comprehension skill of -10 to think it will absolutely destroy Blitz. All they are attempting to do is make the other destinies viable and worth running in, and frankly I don't blame them.

TL;DR - For fucks sake, stop crying like bitches. I want to be a Wood Woad that hits for a good 100,000 damage on a crit you selfish pricks.