Turbine dissolved and re-formed as Sucking Shit Games(SSG). It's the exact same leadership staff but fewer employees and somehow even fewer fucks given. Turbine is dead, and Asheron's Called was killed with extreme prejudice. We can expect a similarly lackluster send off to DDO.

Warlocks are at the top of the DPS chain but, really, it's not like its that important. Most old builds are now sub-par, but if all you care about is having the highest DPS yopu should go play Dragon Ball Z or some shit. You can still play whatever you like, no one cares.

There's a new difficulty level called Reaper that is interesting. Community is pretty split by it, but it does add some additional challenge.

There was a MASSIVE ban-wave recently and the community as a whole may never recover, but the game soldiers on.

noamineo wrote on May 4^th, 2018 at 11:53am:


Who was banned and why?  Where can I read some more about this?

If you want to get back into the game, Ravenloft is fun content.  Good raids.  Good loot.   The challenge level of it is actually less than some of the content that directly preceded it.
 
If your old guild is inactive, then find a new one that can help you get up to speed on the systems changes.   

Warlocks are overpowered in heroics and make great trash clearers in epics, but lack strong single target boss DPS.  They are nearly unkillable, though, so it's just a matter of time to kill the bosses, really. 

Other classes/builds that perform well include handwrap monks, Shuriken throwers, xbow rogues, other DC casters (Wizard and Cleric are decent). 

But you can play almost anything these days and have fun with it.  The new vistani knife tree and some new dagger named weapons make for some fun assassin or knife builds.   

Population has dropped over the years.  The recent banning cleared out maybe 20-30 players each on 3 servers (G-Land, Sarlona, and Orien or Cannith, I think).  The others were mostly unaffected.

The bigger impact in getting groups together has been the ability to solo most anything non-raid in the game at the highest level of quest XP for years, the expansion to level 30, the addition of 10 reaper difficulties, and the class, epic, iconic and racial past life reincarnation system's growth.  That stretches the player base out dramatically in every direction.      

I still enjoy the combat system and the quests, though.  I'm probably in the minority around this place, though.   

Symbiont wrote on May 4^th, 2018 at 2:19pm:


The same reality where only 20 people lost toons

noamineo wrote on May 4^th, 2018 at 11:53am:


Better?

warlock dps is stupid high in heroics, between wave, cone, consume/stricken, and tentacles, there is nothing it can't dps down in elite quests. Wave by itself is around 800 avg damage per activation ( before crits ) using 300 radiance and 230 pact spellpower ( that is level 15 btw ). throw in the rest of the dps abilities in the rotation and it's 3k+ on average every 5 seconds, with most of that being aoe and only one of those abilities costs spell points.

old wave math i did back when racials were announced.

assuming at least 20+ AP in TS and 30+ AP in SE

using 302 radiance spellpower @ lv 15 [pact powers 231] ( higher post ravenloft gear as are crit chances too )

wave applies metas, 225 + 302 = 527 light power meta'd
wave scales 1.5 spell power, 527x1.5= 790 light spell power on wave hits. 719 pact spell power on wave hits

not even going to count 60 power from 20% crit multi in TS cores, and not including tainted boost for 25 spell power. tainted and crit multiplier gives another 85 spell power on average if you wished to math it.

spellpower multiplier
(790 + 100) / 100 = 8.9 multiplier for light power damage on wave
(719 + 100) / 100 = 8.19 multiplier for pact damage on wave

wave base dice
4d6 light =12 avg dmg. 12x8.9= 106 avg wave light damage
11d4 pact =22 avg dmg 22x8.19=  180 avg wave pact damage
106+180 = 286

three waves = 286x3= 858 avg damage per wave activation


post RL gear and criting make this even more insane.


cone math for the curious:


cone is 4d6 light dice, 10d4 pact dice but scales with only 130% power and doesn't meta.
(note how pact damage is almost double the base damage for non-ES/aura/burst builds)
130% (cone) of 302 = 392.6 radiance power
130% (cone) of 231 = 300.3 pact power
(392.6 + 100) / 100 = 4.926 radiance multiplier x 4d6 avg of 12, 12x4.926= 59.112 avg light damage per cone
(300.3 + 100) / 100 = 4.003 pact damage multipler x10d4 avg of 20, 20x4.003 = 80.06 avg pact damage per cone
59.112+80.06= 139.172 total damage per cone tick.

rotation of wave/cone/cone/cone is 859+ (139 x3) 417, 1,276 avg damage every 6 seconds per rotation

Plenty of classes and builds are better DPS than warlock.  Almost every single one of those better-than-warlock builds requires  significantly more focus, effort and skill than a warlock to achieve, which immediately rules out a vast majority of the remaining DDO players.  Thus, the perception is that warlock is OP'd while in reality, it is middle of the road at best. 

People like easy buttons and warlock is DDO's biggest easy button.  Sadly, way too many people conflate easy with power these days.

GimpyPaw wrote on May 6^th, 2018 at 12:05pm:

This, the damage is mediocre but with all the other op shit they got the class is good even in high skulls.

Groo The Wanderer wrote on May 4^th, 2018 at 5:37pm:


Something I see way too often so I want to address this:

-Never- splash rogue for trapping unless

1 - You are in a static group with people AND
2 - Nobody else wants to do trapping

3 - OR if you clear at the rate of a snail anyways such that speed/efficiency doesn't matter dick to you

Trapping is only efficient if while you're fucking about with the traps, someone else is pushing on in the dungeon.

Otherwise it's better XP/min for most dungeons to just ignore traps.  There's a grand total of maybe 10 non-shit quests in the game where there are enough traps on the way and the xp bonus it represents is good enough to warrant bothering.

I see so many shitty builds made even shittier by people who hamfist in trapping.  That's a huge gear/skillpoint/ability investment for something that is moderately useful in like 1/3rd of the quests in the game at best and will only really 'reward' you on less than 1/15th.

If you love trapping and want to do it because it's fun, then by all means.  But never recommend it to someone as a way to make their character better because it doesn't.

Trapping is a trap.

Zehnpai wrote on May 8^th, 2018 at 2:45pm:

No

Every time you search, take a drink. Every time you disarm a trap, take a drink.

Makes Tomb of the Shadow Knight the last quest you recall entering.

Makes DDO awesome again.

Zehnpai wrote on May 8^th, 2018 at 2:26pm:

many things out dps a warlock, but in heroics where hp thresholds are low, it is a killing machine. they have the highest skill floor of any class while still retaining a caster skill ceiling through the various spells they have.

a lv 15 sorc easily does more than 3k every 6 seconds with a full rotation. it's just that it costs spell points, sometimes elemental damage is resisted or out right ignored, and people have a hard time figuring out what spell to cast against the type of mob, or evasion if your dc is low.

an average lv 15 warlock's dps is around 3k single target every 6 seconds. 800 was a flat number for wave without crits factored in. lv 15 warlock should be critting 20s for light/force, and 30s for pact. the bulk of that dps comes in the first 4 seconds from wave, consume, stricken, and tentacles ( about 2.5k of the damage ). that is enough to kill most trash at that level thru free dps, at medium range, while kiting. very few non-bosses go above 2-3k hp at that level.

the warlock advantage is that almost nothing is resistant or immune to light or force damage, wave and cone cannot be evaded ( the pact damage can only if sonic ), base eldritch dice cannot be saved against at all, and it costs 0 spell points for large majority of its dps abilities. easily winning any battle of attrition.