It's D and D

That's just what happens

It is a fundamental problem with the ruleset

I'd say it's even deeper

Historically, the spear was a more heavily utilized weapon than the sword. And Alexander's long spears allowed them to dominate the Hellenistic world.

Before that Chariots dominated---due to their speed advantage---and the fact that they could bring an overwhelming asymmetry of force bearing on single points in the enemy line.

Mongol horse archers were a reincarnation of the strategic advantage of the chariot, without the disadvantage of a two man team and a heavy cart.

The advancement of gunpowder weapons reduced the efficacy of melee combat. You do still see bayonets (i.e., spears) but that has more to do with trenches and the way ranged interact with fortifications.

++++++++++

So if we draw a historical example the only way to mitigate a geometric advantage of range or AOE is to create sufficient geometric fortifications for the enemy.

You would need to give mobs in DDO real magical shields, trench-style cover, and better range---then create funnel points for player melee to become more useful.

But ask yourself as a player....

Do you really enjoy quests like Thornwright?
Do you really enjoy chokepoints?

Or would you rather feel like an AOE god?

If I had to make a guess, I'd say in the early years it was to sell mana pots and after that, the devs are such shitty player that they're not good enough to play anything but casters or ranged so everything else falls under the radar till some jackass on the forum shouts OP and they roll out another batch of melee nerfs.

ManyCookies wrote on May 28^th, 2022 at 10:48pm:


LIES! Go look at ddoaudit.com and you'll see the 5 most popular classes are: Pally, Fighter, Rogue, Ranger and then Warlock. The myth that everyone is playing a caster and spoiling my fun boohoo are pushed on the mother board by shitty players pushing flavour templates.

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At anything below cap first toon to the mob is gonna kill it - has fuck all to do with build.

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Then git gud. Solid melee players can and do lead the kill count at cap.

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Right. So when you kill something all that spell power lets you kill it 11 times over! YAY! Useful!! Not.

WonderfulFoppyBint wrote on May 29^th, 2022 at 5:31am:


What ... the ... f ... does this have to do with a video game?!? 

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Should have just ended that statement right there. With the exception of raids, R10s are too easy period. One solid player can drag a bunch of pugs through pretty much any R10 if they try and contribute.

P51 fucked things up royally. I can see the argument to make low reaper easier to let folks catch up. R10 should have been made much, much harder.

If a tool like another sock is soloing r8s spamming 6sp fireballs, Houston, we have a problem 

Rubbinns wrote on May 29^th, 2022 at 10:57am:



A thing I'd like to see is serious buffs to cleaves. Or AOEs that function better in general for melee. Like dire charge for all melees as a core in LD rather than tying it to an epic strike.

Give epic defensive fighting 10% movement speed. Then give haste (only the casted spell, not the pot) a stacking 10% movement speed for people in epic defensive fighting. Melee need free compensation to gap close. Fucking casters get wings from EA and that shit needs a 1min cooldown IMO. Only melee should have access to constant gap closing.

Reapers need to be reworked so that if they are being ranged they can turtle up and gain a large bonus to missile deflection and MRR. (Talking like 95%.) The way to remove it being to enter their range. Fear reapers are not accomplishing their target goal of pressuring ranged toons.

Reapers in general could be harder, spawn less, with a lot more types.

WonderfulFoppyBint wrote on May 29^th, 2022 at 11:09am:

Those are some cool ideas.

As a druid nuker, I don't really worry about reapers (except for a fear stuck in a wall). Doom, despair, vengy - if they're in a pack they're going to get glacial'd, then tsumami'd, then breath and mopped up with ice flowers.

If you tweak reaper properties, that would be cool - give them crazy high MRR, I love your idea of having some require you to be in hand to hand range - they could do so much more with them.

ALL melee should be way faster than casters. They need it to close on a pack before MOBS get nuked for orbit, they need it for survivability - it should be a given, not a build decision (ala spring attack).

More CC would be helpful too

Not that any of this is new. Players have been making reasonable suggestions like these for years - either they fall on deaf ears or they get drowned out by people who don't know the mechanics/balance well enough...

WonderfulFoppyBint wrote on May 29^th, 2022 at 11:09am:

I always wanted Warforged reapers.  Or some hybrid of them, reapers warforge rape babie spawn.  Or at least reapers with armor and helmets.  Helmethead reaper.  Its hard close up, deadly ranged...

Rubbinns wrote on May 29^th, 2022 at 10:57am:


Well in tabletop, casters were balanced around limited spells and only being able to cast 1 spell per 6 seconds. Fighters can full attack up to 4 times per round with a 2H weapon, or 5 times if hasted, and they arent subjected to resource limitations.

In DDO SP is rarely an issue and you can spam 1 spell per 1 second which is 6 times faster than in tabletop, while everyone else can't attack 6 times faster so it skews towards casters.

Anyway, my point was more about the design decision to make casters so ridiculously powerful. For example, when they decided to give casters tons of spellpower scaling all the way from level 1-20, why did they not decide to give melee/ranged a decent amount of melee/ranged power as well so that they would scale their damage from 1-20?

Weapons barely gain in power as you go up in level unlike the way spells do. Going from a 10d6 to 15d6 spell is 50% more damage, not even counting extra spellpower from gear. Going from a ML 10 weapon to a ML 15 weapon gives you a +1 enhancement bonus and 2d6 of weapon proc damage, which doesn't even scale with melee/ranged power.

It's just silly when I press two hotkeys to delete a pack of mobs while everyone else has to stand there and fight like a normal person. Melee/ranged barely get to do anything. Sometimes I just run past a stray mob just to give them something to do.

ManyCookies wrote on May 30^th, 2022 at 2:28am:

didnt haste make your character age faster?  Or am i thinking of some homebrew shit we played?

somenewnoob wrote on May 30^th, 2022 at 8:51am:

You can't just fucking generalize people like that here... some of us may be cum guzzling instead of slurping. I am nothing if not efficient

Everything is epeen. And everyone loves  a good weiner battle. Dicks out for Harambe.