oh 75% off locks btw lul

Fuck dat.. im not tring all my toons again...haha

Asheras wrote on Dec 1^st, 2017 at 10:05am:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/491895-Ravenloft-Expansion-Preview-3

Isn't armour class supposed to do the same thing ?
Why another variable to even further complicate already hodgepodge system.

Oh and they are really taking bitching of shitty melees how casters and ranged are so much better seriously ? Lol.

meh. The older I get and the more other games I play the more I realize rebalancing and nerfing is totally fine, and frankly should be happening all the time, so players get used to it. Better to keep more content and items compelling than to protect people who found an overperforming build and never want to let it go.

If I still played a lot of DDO, I probably would start trying more non-throwing builds based on these changes, which is probably, long term, good for this game.

Wipe wrote on Dec 1^st, 2017 at 10:34am:


Because MY NEW SYSTEM IS BESTEST NEW SYSTEM!!!

Asheras wrote on Dec 1^st, 2017 at 10:44am:


Peasant.  Shows how much you know. 

First of all, none of the players understand anything about anything and all the players are peasants, therefore if the idea comes from a peasant player, it can't NOT be crap.

Second, your "solution" would require examining, understanding, and modifying extant systems, and everyone knows everything old is crap.  Why learn how something works when you can add a bullet point to your resume?

Hurray 75% off Warlocks!

Wipe wrote on Dec 1^st, 2017 at 10:34am:

It's because the SSG devs have a severe lack of in-game knowledge.  They don't know how to play their own game at a high level and as a consequence, have no idea how to properly balance builds, nor what really should be balanced.  On top of that, they don't know their own, old code well enough to properly fix it even if they did know how builds really worked.  All they're left with is slapping more bandaid fixes like this on top of the mountain of bandaids that's already leaking pus.

All they know how to do anymore is add power creep for power creep's sake and put in new, copy/paste grinds for grind's sake to keep people on the treadmill.

It's like they're intentionally trying to drive away the rest of the meta gamers so that the only players left will be the casual, complacent sheep and fanbois who say thank you while happily slurping up whatever crap SSG is serving them because they don't know any better.

armor class would nerf melee and ranged together. Missile deflections perfectly hits warlocks and ranged characters.

Only problem is that it also nerfs bow characters and non shuri throwers which frankly need a buff vs Xbow and Shuriken

harharharhar wrote on Dec 1^st, 2017 at 11:18am:

That's the thing.  The devs don't know how to play their own game well enough to understand what really needs to be balanced or nerfed.   They keep tweaking the wrong things because they listen to a small group of very vocal, mediocre players who don't know how to play the game at a high level either.

I've been running melee builds for the last few months while getting PLs just for a change of pace from shuricannons and warlocks.  My current build does noticeably higher single target DPS than a shuricannon (outside of unbridled burns).  It makes the shuricannon's kill rate feel kind of slow in a lot of missions.

Shuris still win at burst DPS due to fury and in missions with lots of mobs in long, straight hallways, but outside of that, I think good melee builds are stronger overall.   Even with their increased fire rate, the poor crit profiles and low base dmg of shurikens make it hard to complete with melee builds running high base dmg weapons with 14-20x4/5/6 crit profiles, >40% attack speed, >60% doublestrike, and nearly 200 melee power.  I'm getting 5k+ crits with high frequency on my melee build.  The only thing it lacks is a consistent source of AE damage.

It's funny, SSG keeps nerfing warlocks because because of the whiners on the mobos, but in regards to DPS/killing speed over the course of extended gameplay, it's DC casters > melee > shuricannons > warlocks~xbows~shiradis etc.

Melee builds have two main problems right now, at least at end-game. 
1) The one-shot death design in high-skull reaper is overly punitive towards mediocre melee builds.  It is possible to roll a melee build that can survive in high skull reaper, but the build choices to accomplish that are extremely limited and require more skill to run properly than the average DDO player has.  Ranged builds are obviously not affected nearly as much by the one-shot death design since they don't have to stand within melee range to function.
2) The best DPS melee builds have limited options for AE damage.  That limitation has become much more noticeable given the design theme of all the new, high-end content has gravitated towards requiring you to clear large hordes of trash mobs rather than tougher, smaller groups of mobs.  That's the big advantage warlocks and ranged builds have.  While they do less single-target DPS overall, they can easily hit multiple mobs at once.  There's a reason Dance of Death is considered a must-have skill on a ranger melee DPS build.

SSG could fix a lot of the balance problems if they would provide more options for melee builds to avoid one shot deaths and give them better AE skills. 

there must have been massive changes or you run with newbs because no one was out killing xbows or proper throwers 6 months when I was last playing regularly. DC casters obviously were top notch and hanging with the ranged characters, but they were not ahead and on bosses they could basically fuck off and no one would notice.

Metal-Beast wrote on Dec 1^st, 2017 at 2:05pm:



Nah.. been doing this for months.. on & off. I had a weekend where I was running around in Reapers solo.. didn't matter which skull, 1, 2, 3, or 4... every fucking room was a mass mob that makes tactics nothing more then attack, and slow retreat.. or lob and run, come back lob & run.. etc... with 3-6 godamn reaper wraiths every room.

When you've got multiple stacks of slow on your ass.. things get interesting real fucking fast. 

harharharhar wrote on Dec 1^st, 2017 at 2:01pm:

Or maybe you were the one running with newbs.   See how that works? 

Let's assume that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to shuricannons and stop playing that stupid game.  My previous posts on the topic should be enough evidence to support the assumption.  Additionally, shuricannons are my favorite build type and play style to run so if anything, I'm biased towards them, not against them.

IPS is the biggest factor that makes shuricannons appear stronger than melee.  A good shuricannon will often kill a couple mobs in a horde before melee even get in melee range but there's a big difference between "out killing" and "doing more raw DPS".  In particular, if you think xbow builds were more raw DPS than top-tier melee, you're way off base.

I assure you there are melee builds that bring just as much, if not more, DPS to the table than shuricannons do outside of that 30s of glory every 5 minutes known as Unbridled Fury.  I've run with a couple of players who just roflstomp things on a melee build.  I do think there are far fewer highly skilled melee players than there are shuricannons these days.  I think that tends to skew the perception of power in favor of the shuricannons. 

Good players are rare in DDO.  Good shuricannons, moreso.  Top-tier melee DPS players are near unicorn level rarity, but they do exist and you'll know when you actually see one.

I suspect part of the issue is that until we had reaper, trash mobs had low enough hit points that there was little practical difference in hitting/critting for 2k (shuri) vs 6k+ (melee).  Either one generally equals a dead mob in EE.  In reaper, that doesn't necessarily hold true and thus, the difference in raw DPS becomes easier to see.