Asheras wrote on Sep 6
th, 2017 at 8:51am:
A) Tilo is using an Appeal to Authority fallacy as well as an Appeal to the masses fallacy to try to add weight to his opinion that reaper is tougher on melees than casters or ranged. I don't get why people keep going to this well. Just state your opinion. You don't need 4 out of 5 dentists prefer Crest Whitening and, also, Warlocks in Reaper.
Side Note: It is funny that one of the players he says quit posts within a few hours telling him how wrong he is. Nothing like pretending like you have inside knowledge of these "master builders" only to find out you are Jon Snow (You know nothing)
B) All the people who then pop in and say: Melees are fine. I enjoy my melee on R1. (Duh. R1 is no harder than Elite. Easier with 10 or more reaper AP. You better be able to handle R1. If you can't definitely don't blame the build). Or say: My melee can contribute on R3/R4. No one is saying that melees can't contribute or are completely useless (well some idiots hyperbolate, but welcome to the internet). The issue is that melees can't contribute at the same level as ranged or casters. Completions take longer, require more resources, have more risk. They are sub-optimal. Now, sub-optimal is not the end of the world. Not everything can be optimal, per the definition. And if you don't care about getting the best of the best XP/min or soloing, it really doesn't matter. The forum population is so overwhelmingly metagamers that the worst thing they can conceive of is their build suddenly becoming "sub optimal". Like someone is going to follow them around in-game ringing the Cersei "Shame, Shame, Shame" bell.
C) All that said, there is truth to the issue that melee characters are more heavily impacted by the methods used to create challenge in Reaper:
1) Reapers - Most reapers hit like trucks in melee range. None have a ranged physical damage attack. Their to-hit is thru the roof, meaning your AC means jack and shit. They bypass fort. Only 1 casts spells. (whose favorite spell, MM, is easy for casters to counter with a 1st level spell. Not so much for melees) The debuffs they issue - Massive attack speed debuffs, moderate movement speed debuffs and healing debuffs all impact melee characters more than casters. (also, reapers are incorporeal. Guess how many spells or eldritch blasts care about that. None? Correct.)
2) Champions - Most Champions can hit you 95% of the time. They hit for double damage. They bypass fort. Since 80% of mobs do primarily melee attacks, guess what, most champions do too. Meaning they are much more punishing on characters in melee range than not. Also, their powers are often very ANTI DPS. Ridiculous PRR, or self healing to full, or attack speed debuffs. None of which affects an insta-killer. This is why vorpals rule for melees right now. Because Vorpal fishing is your only way to kill some champs. Sure you can use CC, but name for me all the melee AoE CC. Or CC on a timer shorter than 15 seconds. Compare that to a caster with 5-6 spells/SLA on their hot bar. Web, Tentacles, mass hold, etc. Or even a ranged with a bow and paralyzing arrows or a paralyzing repeater xbow. Champions are way more punishing on melees.
3) Self healing debuff - outside of one or two, melees have a harder time getting a decent UMD. Their trees often don't have wand and scroll mastery in them. They take more hits (see above) so need more healing. They don't have temp HP options, for the most part. Definitely more limiting for melees.
4) Damage dampening - given their limited CC and very limited Insta-kill, melees rely solely on DPS to kill things. Thus, a dampener on 50-90% of damage is a huge problem for them. Especially when they can't take more than a few hits from a champ or reaper. The DC changes are not nearly as severe. (i'm not saying they should be. Just that the dampening is excessive).
Every single challenge tactic is more punitive to melees than casters or ranged. Hence, the meta for optimal has moved to caster and ranged builds. Specifically ones that perform best in early-mid heroics. Warlocks and Artificers.
A set of solutions would, imo, start with re-doing the self-healing debuff curve, the damage dampening curve, and to buff the Dread Adversary tree while nerfing, slightly, the Thaumaturge tree (just take out the direct DC Boosts). Change the cool downs on stunning blow and trip. They are single target, ffs.
From there, I would look at HP and PRR boosts for melee classes and melee trees, along with PRR and MRR from Heavy and Medium Armor and increase the ASF, increase the casting time, and decrease the ranged RoF for characters in Heavy Armor. Imo, fixing the Armor Up issue that everyone was wearing Heavy Armor should have been done this way vs. pulling the MRR boost from heavy armor, etc. and basically just nerfing heavy armor for all.
All of this. Especially the bold.
I screamed blue murder about this issue when it happened and everyone said I should: learn to DDO/be a baws/ur build iz gimp/DIAF.
I guess maybe it wasn't such an unreasonable complaint after all
As of right now, probably the *best* way to contribute as a "melee" is playing a Swash-bard, with Coup de Grace for Instakills and Fascinate for CC. Mass Suggestion to set all the trash at each others' throats.
UMD is a class skill, using the class's highest pre-requisite stat. High run speed.
Splash 2 Rogue for traps and get Evasion early. There is practically no compromise in doing so.
This, combined with Self-heals, charms, High reflex saves, and Defensive buffs make a pencil-neck Drow bard wearing nothing but leather pants and a smile more viable in melee than a 280 lb. Horc Kensei in 90 lbs of steel full plate.
Zehnpai wrote on Sep 6
th, 2017 at 9:21am:
Reapers also have jack squat for spell resist and saves so they're easy for casters to CC. If you're above R3, you should be in a party. That goes for pretty much any build.
Some freak aberrations can solo R5+ and that's fine because they are horribly inefficient and slow so who cares. It's like Wizza and Rys doing R10's at level cap. They are not exactly swimming in reaper points and their completion times are horrendous.
The heart of the problem is that DC wizards/warlocks can carry bads to victory (and need to carry because they do fuck all for damage to bosses) and bad ranged can stay alive while bad melee are fucked.
The bold is the whole issue in a nutshell.
Although I'd argue that "bad" is highly subjective.
Part of the problem is that Reaper has SO MANY broken issues that you can reasonably argue in any direction on it, and be at least partially correct.
Bad players, bad builds, bad gearing, bad scaling, bad design choices from years ago not being updated, bad class balance, bad spawn systems, bad power curves (mob and player)...
There's plenty of "bad" to go around, in Reaper.
Which is a problem, since the whole player population has been railroaded into playing it, whether they wanted to or not.
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Reaper And Players Who Quit. (Read 10747 times)
