TR - Master Infiltrator/Executioner Lv70 - Lostmauth Set SW - Hellbringer/Fury Lv70 - Black Ice Set DC - Divine Oracle/Faithful Lv70 - Imperial Set GWF - Swordmaster/Destroyer Lv70 - Lostmauth Set GF - Swordmaster/Conqueror Lv70 - Lostmauth Set CW - Spellstorm Mage/Renegade Lv70 - Black Ice Set HR - Stormwarden/Trapper Lv70 - Lostmauth Set OP - Oath of Devotion/Justice Lv70 - Black Ice Set SW - Soulbinder/Fury Lv70 - Black Ice Set CW - Master of Flame/Renegade Lv70 - Black Ice Set OP - Oath of Protection/Justice Lv70 - Black Ice Set DC- Anointed Champion/Righteous Lv70 - Imperial Set HR - Pathfinder/Trapper Lv70 - Lostmauth Set
In this I'm not concerned.
After further testing, while still too severe, the OP nerfs are acceptable. The Divine Protector power needs to be set to 10 seconds, not 6 but other than that, most of the changes are fine.
The OP nerfs in a PvE sense are foolishness epitomized. There was little wrong with it, without the Haste spam it would only be specifically spec'd OPs that could keep the Bubble 100% uptime, this makes them basically useless for anything else so there's nothing to worry about.
My main is a Dragonborn Pally with a single guild-boon and a gearscore of 2.6k. I can keep the bubble up 98.5% of the time (that 1.5% is me being bounced about and the shield failing while I’m prone/controlled/flying through the air). I’ve topped out the damage in epic dungeons and in eDemo. Not all the time, but often enough that it’s a concern.
I’d rather have seen a removal of the damage mitigation than such a large cut to duration, but it’s silly to suggest it wasn’t broken in its current state.
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The OP nerfs in a PvE sense are foolishness epitomized. There was little wrong with it, without the Haste spam it would only be specifically spec'd OPs that could keep the Bubble 100% uptime, this makes them basically useless for anything else so there's nothing to worry about.
My main is a Dragonborn Pally with a single guild-boon and a gearscore of 2.6k. I can keep the bubble up 98.5% of the time (that 1.5% is me being bounced about and the shield failing while I’m prone/controlled/flying through the air). I’ve topped out the damage in epic dungeons and in eDemo. Not all the time, but often enough that it’s a concern.
I’d rather have seen a removal of the damage mitigation than such a large cut to duration, but it’s silly to suggest it wasn’t broken in its current state.
I wonder, how can you do top damage with pally?
Svatá Prdelka game - Human/real life - ??? OP 18k+ Devotion/Justice - Light
I must have typed and retyped this post a dozen times to get it to be something the devs might read, and consider. I've finally given up gift wrapping it and decided to instead point out the obvious. What is broken about pally was not their bubble duration, it was their damage mitigation. A permabubble could use binding oath before it expired, making them immune to damage. Bubble eats too much damage. They would have been fine if binding oath started cool down at the end of the move instead of the beginning(like dreadtheft), and tweaked the damage make paladins still take 50% of the damage, instead of 20. Move that 20 onto the characters it protects. Now a pally using a 20 second bubble in pve doesn't destroy the parties need to dodge. A 20 second bubble in pvp no longer amounts to a team of immortals.
I have done this a few times with my pally, it is usually in a group of lower item level players. The damage is mainly generated from absorbing all their damage and the mob damage and reflecting damage with the right enchant and companions.
As Sundance suggested, there are a few ways that a Pally can top the DPS chart: * The Skirmish/Dungeon has a lot of hard-hitting mobs. * A Skirmish/Dungeon (usually skirmish) have one or more bosses that dish out massive damage * The rest of the group have terribad Defence scores (therefore they pass more damage on to you) * Monsters not dying quickly (if they live longer, they dish out more damage).
Any one of those will result in a good score for a Pally because (as Sundance suggested) we’re soaking up the damage from the entire group and then pulsing it back out. Add in the ability to get/keep aggro and the use of items that reflect a raw percentage of damage you take (like the briartwine enchantment and blacksmith companion). Doing a set amount of damage, like avalanche, isn’t as helpful as reflecting back a percentage of the crazy-pants damage you’ll be taking. It mostly comes down to proper use of binding – making sure it’s on when those big spikes come in, and making sure you’re somewhere useful when it goes off.
This is most obvious is in Lostmouth, as you’ve got two areas where there are silly-huge damage spikes. The least obvious is eToS. The bosses aren’t dishing out all that much damage, they should go down quick and with good DR the mobs aren’t hurting too bad either. No idea why it was happening on eDemo – there are enough silly-high item-level DPS there that I wouldn’t have thought it would happen as often as it seems to.
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I’m really, really looking forward to the changes. I really like Neverwinter over all, but this is going to address a lot of the issues. I’m looking forward to healers that get to heal (rather than haste), tanks that will need to tank, DPS that will need to worry about positioning, buffers that need to utilise a range of options and a range of powers on my pally skill-tree that are currently totally irrelevant to the game.
Unfortunately, while this may fix the difficulty deficit and add some excitement back into the game – the rewards are really sub-par (and way worse than the gear you’ll get from Underdark content). They should bring back the old system wherein the dungeon armour is the same as the seal-brought armour, only with different set bonuses. (Although let’s not go back to drops that people boot each other over).
the dungeons really aren't fun. they're just a tedious means to an end. Maybe if strategy/gambit was an actual thing in this game.
I’d argue they used to be fun, and the pally-bubble is a big reason they went from engaging to boring. And, since everyone currently relies on bubble, groups are now utterly incapable of devising any actual strategy to address the challenges.
Ironically, I think the dungeons were more fun when they were longer (and had hidden objectives/areas). The small, boring race-tracks they have now struggle to recreate the epic feeling of a hour(s)-long dungeon delve.
I have stopped playing simply due to the fact the game is too easy and high geared characters are pointless in PvE. … A T2 should not be a 20min speed run, it is meant to be end game difficulty and thus be a challenge for a well geared group of 5.
And there’s the issue that Cryptic/PW are having to struggle with. There’s crying that there’s no good, hard PVE content – but a nerf to the classes that are trivialising the experience leads to crying and recrimination (often from the same people).
i have to disagree about the bubble and fun. the dungeons were absolutely unplayable before the bubble. miserable grind became a tolerable miserable grind.
Well, me personally, at 3.4k item level, i almost never run with a pally anyway and still steam roll content carrying pugs who are often under geared, as a temp lock, with lol set only accounting for inbetween 4-10 percent of my overall damage. I would go even further to say that at 2.5k item level and a proper build with correct stats to match, pally was not needed. The fact is most if not all of you people complaining need to Learn to play period.
Whoever said guardian fighter needs even more buffs, has to be clueless, or has just never ran with a proper guardian fighter in both pve and pvp. Sure pallys can make you invulnerable and be able to just stand there mashing buttons, but a proper guardian fighter can make you kill adds so fast that they dont even have a chance to attack or one rotate EVERY class regardless of item level in pvp, throw in a ring of ambush and you have the ultimate in both pve and pvp.
It's not the people who are above 25k who I'm worried about. it's people trying to get their gear. the largest part of this population is not the well geared people in well funded guilds. it's people who are just trying to struggle thru this game.
It's not the people who are above 25k who I'm worried about. it's people trying to get their gear. the largest part of this population is not the well geared people in well funded guilds. it's people who are just trying to struggle thru this game.
I'd agree with you, except Underdark really has undermined the entire experience. The dusk armor and drow armor have rendered the dungeons utterly optional.
First the drow gear is as-good or better than the Elven gear, and it's basically given out to people just for showing up. Joining in on a few HEs/Skirmishes takes zero effort (and frankly, bubble is not only unnecessary, but also largely unwelcome for those events). Sure, you're capped at 400 a week, but it's just a matter of waiting it out. Then there's the dusk gear which you can buy with real money and/or AD. I have so many sets of dusk boots that I can't even give them away. Seriously, it's "Welcome to level 70, here are your boots of 'never need to be replaced'".
I do like that Underdark helps streamline that gap between fresh level 70 and 2500+ gear-score... But they've gutted the need to ever run a dungeon for gear again. Now the only reason you'd run it is for salvage or a lucky artifact drop.
EDIT: Just to be clear here - what I'm saying is that we need better rewards in the epic dungeons to make them worth the hassle that they'll now be. The need to be above and beyond the drow/dusk sets, as people will be seeking those before starting the T1 dungeons if they want a good chance at survival.
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i have to disagree about the bubble and fun. the dungeons were absolutely unplayable before the bubble. miserable grind became a tolerable miserable grind.
I don’t want to derail the conversation too far, but I really, really miss the pre-Elemental Evil epic dungeons. I loved the length – that it was a mission to complete one. I loved the secret bosses and areas you could uncover (I’m bitterly disappointed that the hidden gelatinous cube area of eToS was removed). I even miss being wiped by a boss because our party needed to change how were were dealing with its threat. And a dungeon SHOULD take a while to burn through – if you don’t want a time consuming experience, that’s what the skirmishes were for.
But remember that there was something else those dungeons had: Incentive. Specific armour pieces would only drop in specific dungeons – which meant that we weren’t just zipping through one single dungeon over and over and over again. (eToS – I’m looking at you) And there were different sets. So maybe you had a T2 piece, but now you wanted a different version to get a different stat/set-bonus. So you’d go back to that dungeon, even if you had those T2 boots. And you couldn’t just BUY the ultimate armour. You could buy ‘almost’ armour, but if you wanted the good stuff you had to run the dungeon. It had to drop.
And therein lies the real issue. They want to crank up the difficulty? They want to make it a drama to complete? Well then you need to have a solid reason for that challenge and a consistent, desirable reward waiting at the end of it. As I said before, the dungeon sets are out classed buy the Underdark sets, so people running these will be mostly after salvage – and because this is crazy land, T1 gear salvages for as much as T2 gear. Who exactly will bother running any T2 if you can get the same reward in a quarter of the time from a T1 skirmish? A 1/100 chance at an artefact is fine, but there needs to be much, much more if you want to get people running T2s without a bubble.
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Not to mention that all of the new story content (Underdark,Maze Engine) is for level 60 characters as with the weekend events. It seems the only reason the lvl cap was raised to 70 is to give a viable reason for IL increase to get more Zen sales for those that want the 'highest' now....
@theslotharmy The T2's need to be a struggle for new players to get their gear like they used to be, as it stands now 3 geared players and 1 new lvl70 (just meeting T2 IL) can run a T2 in about 30 mins with 0 deaths. this was 4 weeks ago that me and some others did it so now it is probable even faster.
I can only hope that at some point in the future the devs realise that if they improve the player gaming experience they will improve the funds coming into the game. As it stands now it seems their approach is get new players in, hope they spend a bit of money and then not care whether they stay or leave.
My problem personally with all these nerfs is mostly the people still working toward there characters like me. More or less the 4k dude that killed lostmauth in 30 secs will probably just take 30 secs more... its no biggy. But for us well the changes will make it bad, it will mean less and less people will want us in the dungeons. So all we will have left will be farming DHE for rings and such...
Also T2 dungeons, honestly we most likely do them for either the salvage or mostly the guild coffer as it need purples... So yes i want them to be speed run and not long hard to achieve dungeons.
If the difficulty is buffed as some said the rewards need to be buffed... If it take 45m instead of 20, give me 3-4 purples in that chest at the end... not just 1.
daburneq: "I will admit I have spent to (sic) much money on this game. Being which, most have gone into the refinement of the items and lock boxes. "
> Me too. Unlike you, I am an old, but casual, player. I have spent more than $500 (real money) on the game in addition to VIP... maybe I have more dollars than sense. However, due to my casual status, I have not read the forums here or elsewhere except when I was stuck on content, often to my later regret (for example, I wasted real cash on respecs for builds that I built inefficiently the first time). I ran a HR, TR, DC and an OP up to level 70. I had the most fun with a dev OP, where I traded off DPS for survivability. I play almost only PVE and have enjoyed supporting other classes in my guild and in random groups.
All that said, this is the first experience I've had with a game like this. I therefore haven't seen a game developer "take away" something that I paid for with cash. It's very disheartening. I sympathize with the developers who are selecting a least worst solution to a problem, but this is definitely pushing me away from the game. I also sympathize with players who had a new unbalanced class thrust upon them and who've been waiting for a fix (sounds as if this is more true with the PC players who get content sooner).
My choices: I can always move to play another class if the OP becomes too unattractive, but because so much of the gear is character- and class-bound, the reinvestment (time or real money) required to have a viable level 70 character again is very unappealing. And while these changes are supposedly only preliminary, I can tell you I am already unwilling to invest any more time or money on my OP character when facing this level of uncertainty. After reading about this issue today, I logged in to my console to play and then just decided to log back out. I'm not sure I'll play again.
And that's the real problem Cryptic have - they appear to not recognise that making the game both uncertain and unattractive means players are either loathe to pay or uninspired to play (or both).
Always taking the quick & easy route to problem fixing, with little regard to how it impacts players investment-to-date, has a terrible impact on player confidence.
Experienced players know that any & all investment in their character is subject to being nullified through poor "balancing" choices made by the developers.
This game has the building blocks to be fantastic but is held back by a poor combination of problems. Cryptic need to have a long, hard look at the following areas:
Balancing content so it rewards all players from 2k to 4k Balancing classes so they all have equal value & utility Addressing skill bugs - a 6-12 month wait is not acceptable Separating PvP & PvE skill definitions rather than relying purely on 'tenacity'. Truly addressing the input = reward structure for the economy.
At the moment it is far more profitable to run 4 characters for 90 mins each than it is to run 1 for 6 hours. Having a combination of various currencies that are not linked doesn't help either - and why should non-$$ players suffer with a punishing AD-Zen exchange rate just because your cash purchases are down? It's not the players fault!
Edit: I would like to say that I do believe the devs made the pally/haste changes in good faith but this actually only makes it more disturbing as it implies they have no real understanding of how the game actually plays out.
This particular nerf only affects lower geared players as the 3-4k players go with Tac-GF & Righteous Buff DC instead. By taking away the bubble but not checking or ensuring that they still provide adequate protection for ultra-squishy 2k-2.5k players means the OP has been totally invalidated as a class - it now has no place in the game.
Please Do Not Feed The Trolls
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Running T2 today: My pala (3k) and my wife's sw (3k) run ETOS alone, doesnt matter, who is with us. We often run to help smaller Players to get AD and T2 equip.
Running T2 in the future: My pala with 3k will be absolutely useless.... so all the time I spent is wasted - and all the small Players, that need help.... well, they might be lucky if the find a Group of 4 3k Players...
Useless is an overstatement... You should be able to tank and Buff... You just won't be able to keep running five man content with just two people.
Casual Gamers
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
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A telling point there - you say two people. That's because the other 3 are below the 'respectable' limit of 2.7k so they don't even count. Therein lies the real problem.
T2's will only be run by 3k+ farming teams now, people below that will gear up via dusk/drow, truly leaving the Elven gear in the trash can.
Please Do Not Feed The Trolls
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
i think it's time to giver neverwinter a break it's now overpriced on the market to the point where things are more than 23000 zen and the game play is nerfed and the characters are nerfed and even the ad exchange is nerfed limits are going crazy i spend alot of money for good stuff but if this presists i am going to riot and say we just need to nerf it from xbox for not being a good game
not to also mention the constant lag,disconnects and if there is more than one group fighting it freezes i mean come on who wants to pay $200 for zen exchange it and still can't afford a weapon or armor enchant on the hut change the cap so people that do pay money can get some good stuff and also make it easier for people that don't pay to earn it in dungeons and grinds. The players may set the currency in game but yall set the limits end of story and plus i am tired of seeing 5 gold ponies for over 1million because of people buying diamonds from koreans do something or loose your customers
Paladins will have to shift powers to controlling aggro, like any tank in any mmo ever. It's a welcome change, but the root of the opposition comes from players who do not understand that they need to position themselves. As a DPS role, your job is to stay out of harms way and control your threat generation. The tank will take as much threat as they can, but it is your responsibility to not allow adds to gain combat advantage against you. Combat advantage is what results in the one hit kill, and if you don't understand why that is you need to review the combat system. Combat advantage damage can even kill a GF with max DR. It's all about positioning.
Lostmauth set has been known to not be working as intended. The possibility of a nerf has been discussed for months, albeit in the PC forums. Cryptic does need to do a much better job at keeping Xbox players in the discussion, but until then I suggest you monitor the PC forums. It does not make the set useless, it will still be better than any other set for many builds, but Spellstorm CWs and GWFs will no longer gain 20-40% of overall dps from it. Most other classes/builds will not notice a difference.
Haste Clerics are the bane of my existence as a Protector path Guardian Fighter. Usually they sacrifice too much healing for haste, and cannot keep anyone alive through heals. Hopefully the cap on the ridiculous amount of action point gain will help to reduce this problem. We'll have to see how it plays out, but with more Clerics who actually heal you may notice more GF tanks playing again.
As for the GF "buff", it won't apply to PVP. We get a buff in animation speed to several at will powers. Guardians don't kill with At-Wills in PVP. We kill with encounter powers. Want to stop us? Stack more deflection.
Overall all classes will need to adjust to this. Keep in mind a full Class Re-balance is in the works, and it is desperately needed. Hopefully we will see Paladins who control aggro (or heal! Healadins are ridiculously good at straight heals, better than most DCs I've run with), Clerics that haste AND heal, Guardian Fighters that run as tanks and not just as support DPS with Paladins. Further different classes will need to start stacking different defense stats than just lifesteal, with healers we won't need it as much and quite honestly deflection is extremely overlooked by most DPS classes. Classes will need to start working together, group composition will matter just a little more.
However in practice I've been beating dungeons with IL 2600+ groups of 5DPS just like the mod 5 days. Content isn't all that difficult, it won't make a meaningful change as long as you don't stand in stupid. Hopefully we can add some tier 3 dungeons with harder difficulty (Maybe IL 2700 required?) and better rewards. Gear progression in MMO's often means that old "dungeon" content is often rendered obsolete after a year or two. It's not the worst thing in the world as long as those dungeons are still there for fun. Strongholds even offers the perfect vehicle to keep them relevant with daily quests. But we do need new, more challenging content to earn better gear in. End game should always be moving forward, or we end up with power creep and no challenge, like it was at the end of mod 5, like it is quickly becoming again.
The OP nerfs in a PvE sense are foolishness epitomized. There was little wrong with it, without the Haste spam it would only be specifically spec'd OPs that could keep the Bubble 100% uptime, this makes them basically useless for anything else so there's nothing to worry about.
My main is a Dragonborn Pally with a single guild-boon and a gearscore of 2.6k. I can keep the bubble up 98.5% of the time (that 1.5% is me being bounced about and the shield failing while I’m prone/controlled/flying through the air). I’ve topped out the damage in epic dungeons and in eDemo. Not all the time, but often enough that it’s a concern.
I’d rather have seen a removal of the damage mitigation than such a large cut to duration, but it’s silly to suggest it wasn’t broken in its current state.
I wonder, how can you do top damage with pally?
as I recall there are some Guardian fighter buffs that click very well with the pally boosting their damage wayyy up there.
Paladins will have to shift powers to controlling aggro, like any tank in any mmo ever. It's a welcome change, but the root of the opposition comes from players who do not understand that they need to position themselves. As a DPS role, your job is to stay out of harms way and control your threat generation. The tank will take as much threat as they can, but it is your responsibility to not allow adds to gain combat advantage against you. Combat advantage is what results in the one hit kill, and if you don't understand why that is you need to review the combat system. Combat advantage damage can even kill a GF with max DR. It's all about positioning.
Lostmauth set has been known to not be working as intended. The possibility of a nerf has been discussed for months, albeit in the PC forums. Cryptic does need to do a much better job at keeping Xbox players in the discussion, but until then I suggest you monitor the PC forums. It does not make the set useless, it will still be better than any other set for many builds, but Spellstorm CWs and GWFs will no longer gain 20-40% of overall dps from it. Most other classes/builds will not notice a difference.
Haste Clerics are the bane of my existence as a Protector path Guardian Fighter. Usually they sacrifice too much healing for haste, and cannot keep anyone alive through heals. Hopefully the cap on the ridiculous amount of action point gain will help to reduce this problem. We'll have to see how it plays out, but with more Clerics who actually heal you may notice more GF tanks playing again.
As for the GF "buff", it won't apply to PVP. We get a buff in animation speed to several at will powers. Guardians don't kill with At-Wills in PVP. We kill with encounter powers. Want to stop us? Stack more deflection.
Overall all classes will need to adjust to this. Keep in mind a full Class Re-balance is in the works, and it is desperately needed. Hopefully we will see Paladins who control aggro (or heal! Healadins are ridiculously good at straight heals, better than most DCs I've run with), Clerics that haste AND heal, Guardian Fighters that run as tanks and not just as support DPS with Paladins. Further different classes will need to start stacking different defense stats than just lifesteal, with healers we won't need it as much and quite honestly deflection is extremely overlooked by most DPS classes. Classes will need to start working together, group composition will matter just a little more.
However in practice I've been beating dungeons with IL 2600+ groups of 5DPS just like the mod 5 days. Content isn't all that difficult, it won't make a meaningful change as long as you don't stand in stupid. Hopefully we can add some tier 3 dungeons with harder difficulty (Maybe IL 2700 required?) and better rewards. Gear progression in MMO's often means that old "dungeon" content is often rendered obsolete after a year or two. It's not the worst thing in the world as long as those dungeons are still there for fun. Strongholds even offers the perfect vehicle to keep them relevant with daily quests. But we do need new, more challenging content to earn better gear in. End game should always be moving forward, or we end up with power creep and no challenge, like it was at the end of mod 5, like it is quickly becoming again.
Good post, Fluffy. I'm likely to point a few guild-mates here.
Casual Gamers
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
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I've been complaining about this change since I find out, you can't just take the classes and threw them out of the window, ppl will be mad, and for good reason. Yeah, the Pally needed some balance, but it's been since mod 6 and everyone with an OP has invested a ton of resources to build their character the way they want, what they're making isn't 'balance', what they are making is HAMSTER the Oath of Protection, and everyone saying its alright it's coz either they've never played a pally or they've never invested some time with their OPs.
The pally has limited threat generation, or maybe it's bugged (I wouldn't be surprised). E.g. I usually run eDemo with Aura of Radiance to generate more threat, and it works just fine most of the times, but whenever there's a high enough DPS or a GF actually tries to steal aggro from me, I end up chasing Demogorgon all over the place, and neither binding oath nor divine call are generating enough aggro to make Demogorgon follow you again, and if you have the 'brilliant' idea of using Vow of enmity then you will have 2/3 encounters for the rest of the phase, and if you lose aggro again, 2 encounters won't be enough to regain it.
If they were making a real balance they would've adressed this stuff, but no, and they also nerfed Echoes of Light and Heroism, so PvP will be a nightmare to try as an Oath of Protection OP. True, we have some Auras and some buffs in the Paragon trees, but we bring absolutely anything to any group in a better way than a GF, none in their right minds will prefer to run with a Pally than with a Guardian Fighter.
I have a 3k HR (if not I would've quit the game with this 'balance' shxt) and at 3k nobody really needs the bubble, sometimes you don't even need a healer, but the nerf will shxt on the ppl that look for group in PE, and are around 2k IL, which are most of this game's players. The Protector pally and the Virtuous cleric didn't make the dungeons trivial, it was Cryptic with the awful and TRIVIAL rewards, also the millions of surplus equipment and AD being asked on a daily basis (mod 7) that makes us run the same dungeons a 1000 times just looking for some shxtty purple rings and some salvage.
@manyvengeance I'm with you. I think the pally is going to not be a tank so much as a tankish healer.. I think the dc is going to be irrelevant but will still be required for dungeons that arent premade, so you'll end up with people STILL quitting dungeons because no pally.
Honestly T2s won't even be worth it anymore. I hate running those, or should i say THAT one, cause the only decent one is spider. The boss is a sponge at the end and take forever and all you get from the dungeon is one or 2 purple item. No refinement, no rare drops (at least never happened to me)
At that point if the dungeons become much harder than they already are, or longer i should say, then for surplus equipement i think more and more people will start using tradebars... wich cost zens... wich cost... oooohh i got it now why they do that :P
Comments
SW - Hellbringer/Fury Lv70 - Black Ice Set
DC - Divine Oracle/Faithful Lv70 - Imperial Set
GWF - Swordmaster/Destroyer Lv70 - Lostmauth Set
GF - Swordmaster/Conqueror Lv70 - Lostmauth Set
CW - Spellstorm Mage/Renegade Lv70 - Black Ice Set
HR - Stormwarden/Trapper Lv70 - Lostmauth Set
OP - Oath of Devotion/Justice Lv70 - Black Ice Set
SW - Soulbinder/Fury Lv70 - Black Ice Set
CW - Master of Flame/Renegade Lv70 - Black Ice Set
OP - Oath of Protection/Justice Lv70 - Black Ice Set
DC- Anointed Champion/Righteous Lv70 - Imperial Set
HR - Pathfinder/Trapper Lv70 - Lostmauth Set
In this I'm not concerned.
After further testing, while still too severe, the OP nerfs are acceptable. The Divine Protector power needs to be set to 10 seconds, not 6 but other than that, most of the changes are fine.
You can see my full thoughts here:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1214507/oathbound-paladin-devoted-cleric-changes/p12
They are a WIP themselves.
I can keep the bubble up 98.5% of the time (that 1.5% is me being bounced about and the shield failing while I’m prone/controlled/flying through the air).
I’ve topped out the damage in epic dungeons and in eDemo. Not all the time, but often enough that it’s a concern.
I’d rather have seen a removal of the damage mitigation than such a large cut to duration, but it’s silly to suggest it wasn’t broken in its current state.
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game - Human/real life - ???
OP 18k+ Devotion/Justice - Light
OP - Sunshine: 16000 IL
Casual Dailies
* The Skirmish/Dungeon has a lot of hard-hitting mobs.
* A Skirmish/Dungeon (usually skirmish) have one or more bosses that dish out massive damage
* The rest of the group have terribad Defence scores (therefore they pass more damage on to you)
* Monsters not dying quickly (if they live longer, they dish out more damage).
Any one of those will result in a good score for a Pally because (as Sundance suggested) we’re soaking up the damage from the entire group and then pulsing it back out.
Add in the ability to get/keep aggro and the use of items that reflect a raw percentage of damage you take (like the briartwine enchantment and blacksmith companion). Doing a set amount of damage, like avalanche, isn’t as helpful as reflecting back a percentage of the crazy-pants damage you’ll be taking.
It mostly comes down to proper use of binding – making sure it’s on when those big spikes come in, and making sure you’re somewhere useful when it goes off.
This is most obvious is in Lostmouth, as you’ve got two areas where there are silly-huge damage spikes.
The least obvious is eToS. The bosses aren’t dishing out all that much damage, they should go down quick and with good DR the mobs aren’t hurting too bad either.
No idea why it was happening on eDemo – there are enough silly-high item-level DPS there that I wouldn’t have thought it would happen as often as it seems to.
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First the drow gear is as-good or better than the Elven gear, and it's basically given out to people just for showing up. Joining in on a few HEs/Skirmishes takes zero effort (and frankly, bubble is not only unnecessary, but also largely unwelcome for those events). Sure, you're capped at 400 a week, but it's just a matter of waiting it out.
Then there's the dusk gear which you can buy with real money and/or AD. I have so many sets of dusk boots that I can't even give them away. Seriously, it's "Welcome to level 70, here are your boots of 'never need to be replaced'".
I do like that Underdark helps streamline that gap between fresh level 70 and 2500+ gear-score... But they've gutted the need to ever run a dungeon for gear again. Now the only reason you'd run it is for salvage or a lucky artifact drop.
EDIT: Just to be clear here - what I'm saying is that we need better rewards in the epic dungeons to make them worth the hassle that they'll now be. The need to be above and beyond the drow/dusk sets, as people will be seeking those before starting the T1 dungeons if they want a good chance at survival.
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And a dungeon SHOULD take a while to burn through – if you don’t want a time consuming experience, that’s what the skirmishes were for.
But remember that there was something else those dungeons had: Incentive.
Specific armour pieces would only drop in specific dungeons – which meant that we weren’t just zipping through one single dungeon over and over and over again. (eToS – I’m looking at you)
And there were different sets. So maybe you had a T2 piece, but now you wanted a different version to get a different stat/set-bonus. So you’d go back to that dungeon, even if you had those T2 boots.
And you couldn’t just BUY the ultimate armour. You could buy ‘almost’ armour, but if you wanted the good stuff you had to run the dungeon. It had to drop.
And therein lies the real issue. They want to crank up the difficulty? They want to make it a drama to complete? Well then you need to have a solid reason for that challenge and a consistent, desirable reward waiting at the end of it.
As I said before, the dungeon sets are out classed buy the Underdark sets, so people running these will be mostly after salvage – and because this is crazy land, T1 gear salvages for as much as T2 gear. Who exactly will bother running any T2 if you can get the same reward in a quarter of the time from a T1 skirmish?
A 1/100 chance at an artefact is fine, but there needs to be much, much more if you want to get people running T2s without a bubble.
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It seems the only reason the lvl cap was raised to 70 is to give a viable reason for IL increase to get more Zen sales for those that want the 'highest' now....
@theslotharmy The T2's need to be a struggle for new players to get their gear like they used to be, as it stands now 3 geared players and 1 new lvl70 (just meeting T2 IL) can run a T2 in about 30 mins with 0 deaths. this was 4 weeks ago that me and some others did it so now it is probable even faster.
I can only hope that at some point in the future the devs realise that if they improve the player gaming experience they will improve the funds coming into the game. As it stands now it seems their approach is get new players in, hope they spend a bit of money and then not care whether they stay or leave.
I am neither here nor there, for I am NevrCene
NevrCene: TRMelisandre: SW
Brienne: GWF
Guild : Mystic Dawn (GH20)
Also T2 dungeons, honestly we most likely do them for either the salvage or mostly the guild coffer as it need purples... So yes i want them to be speed run and not long hard to achieve dungeons.
If the difficulty is buffed as some said the rewards need to be buffed... If it take 45m instead of 20, give me 3-4 purples in that chest at the end... not just 1.
> Me too. Unlike you, I am an old, but casual, player. I have spent more than $500 (real money) on the game in addition to VIP... maybe I have more dollars than sense. However, due to my casual status, I have not read the forums here or elsewhere except when I was stuck on content, often to my later regret (for example, I wasted real cash on respecs for builds that I built inefficiently the first time). I ran a HR, TR, DC and an OP up to level 70. I had the most fun with a dev OP, where I traded off DPS for survivability. I play almost only PVE and have enjoyed supporting other classes in my guild and in random groups.
All that said, this is the first experience I've had with a game like this. I therefore haven't seen a game developer "take away" something that I paid for with cash. It's very disheartening. I sympathize with the developers who are selecting a least worst solution to a problem, but this is definitely pushing me away from the game. I also sympathize with players who had a new unbalanced class thrust upon them and who've been waiting for a fix (sounds as if this is more true with the PC players who get content sooner).
My choices: I can always move to play another class if the OP becomes too unattractive, but because so much of the gear is character- and class-bound, the reinvestment (time or real money) required to have a viable level 70 character again is very unappealing. And while these changes are supposedly only preliminary, I can tell you I am already unwilling to invest any more time or money on my OP character when facing this level of uncertainty. After reading about this issue today, I logged in to my console to play and then just decided to log back out. I'm not sure I'll play again.
Always taking the quick & easy route to problem fixing, with little regard to how it impacts players investment-to-date, has a terrible impact on player confidence.
Experienced players know that any & all investment in their character is subject to being nullified through poor "balancing" choices made by the developers.
This game has the building blocks to be fantastic but is held back by a poor combination of problems. Cryptic need to have a long, hard look at the following areas:
Balancing content so it rewards all players from 2k to 4k
Balancing classes so they all have equal value & utility
Addressing skill bugs - a 6-12 month wait is not acceptable
Separating PvP & PvE skill definitions rather than relying purely on 'tenacity'.
Truly addressing the input = reward structure for the economy.
At the moment it is far more profitable to run 4 characters for 90 mins each than it is to run 1 for 6 hours. Having a combination of various currencies that are not linked doesn't help either - and why should non-$$ players suffer with a punishing AD-Zen exchange rate just because your cash purchases are down? It's not the players fault!
Edit: I would like to say that I do believe the devs made the pally/haste changes in good faith but this actually only makes it more disturbing as it implies they have no real understanding of how the game actually plays out.
This particular nerf only affects lower geared players as the 3-4k players go with Tac-GF & Righteous Buff DC instead. By taking away the bubble but not checking or ensuring that they still provide adequate protection for ultra-squishy 2k-2.5k players means the OP has been totally invalidated as a class - it now has no place in the game.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
My pala (3k) and my wife's sw (3k) run ETOS alone, doesnt matter, who is with us. We often run to help smaller Players to get AD and T2 equip.
Running T2 in the future: My pala with 3k will be absolutely useless.... so all the time I spent is wasted - and all the small Players, that need help.... well, they might be lucky if the find a Group of 4 3k Players...
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T2's will only be run by 3k+ farming teams now, people below that will gear up via dusk/drow, truly leaving the Elven gear in the trash can.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
Paladins will have to shift powers to controlling aggro, like any tank in any mmo ever. It's a welcome change, but the root of the opposition comes from players who do not understand that they need to position themselves. As a DPS role, your job is to stay out of harms way and control your threat generation. The tank will take as much threat as they can, but it is your responsibility to not allow adds to gain combat advantage against you. Combat advantage is what results in the one hit kill, and if you don't understand why that is you need to review the combat system. Combat advantage damage can even kill a GF with max DR. It's all about positioning.
Lostmauth set has been known to not be working as intended. The possibility of a nerf has been discussed for months, albeit in the PC forums. Cryptic does need to do a much better job at keeping Xbox players in the discussion, but until then I suggest you monitor the PC forums. It does not make the set useless, it will still be better than any other set for many builds, but Spellstorm CWs and GWFs will no longer gain 20-40% of overall dps from it. Most other classes/builds will not notice a difference.
Haste Clerics are the bane of my existence as a Protector path Guardian Fighter. Usually they sacrifice too much healing for haste, and cannot keep anyone alive through heals. Hopefully the cap on the ridiculous amount of action point gain will help to reduce this problem. We'll have to see how it plays out, but with more Clerics who actually heal you may notice more GF tanks playing again.
As for the GF "buff", it won't apply to PVP. We get a buff in animation speed to several at will powers. Guardians don't kill with At-Wills in PVP. We kill with encounter powers. Want to stop us? Stack more deflection.
Overall all classes will need to adjust to this. Keep in mind a full Class Re-balance is in the works, and it is desperately needed. Hopefully we will see Paladins who control aggro (or heal! Healadins are ridiculously good at straight heals, better than most DCs I've run with), Clerics that haste AND heal, Guardian Fighters that run as tanks and not just as support DPS with Paladins. Further different classes will need to start stacking different defense stats than just lifesteal, with healers we won't need it as much and quite honestly deflection is extremely overlooked by most DPS classes. Classes will need to start working together, group composition will matter just a little more.
However in practice I've been beating dungeons with IL 2600+ groups of 5DPS just like the mod 5 days. Content isn't all that difficult, it won't make a meaningful change as long as you don't stand in stupid. Hopefully we can add some tier 3 dungeons with harder difficulty (Maybe IL 2700 required?) and better rewards. Gear progression in MMO's often means that old "dungeon" content is often rendered obsolete after a year or two. It's not the worst thing in the world as long as those dungeons are still there for fun. Strongholds even offers the perfect vehicle to keep them relevant with daily quests. But we do need new, more challenging content to earn better gear in. End game should always be moving forward, or we end up with power creep and no challenge, like it was at the end of mod 5, like it is quickly becoming again.
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The pally has limited threat generation, or maybe it's bugged (I wouldn't be surprised). E.g. I usually run eDemo with Aura of Radiance to generate more threat, and it works just fine most of the times, but whenever there's a high enough DPS or a GF actually tries to steal aggro from me, I end up chasing Demogorgon all over the place, and neither binding oath nor divine call are generating enough aggro to make Demogorgon follow you again, and if you have the 'brilliant' idea of using Vow of enmity then you will have 2/3 encounters for the rest of the phase, and if you lose aggro again, 2 encounters won't be enough to regain it.
If they were making a real balance they would've adressed this stuff, but no, and they also nerfed Echoes of Light and Heroism, so PvP will be a nightmare to try as an Oath of Protection OP. True, we have some Auras and some buffs in the Paragon trees, but we bring absolutely anything to any group in a better way than a GF, none in their right minds will prefer to run with a Pally than with a Guardian Fighter.
I have a 3k HR (if not I would've quit the game with this 'balance' shxt) and at 3k nobody really needs the bubble, sometimes you don't even need a healer, but the nerf will shxt on the ppl that look for group in PE, and are around 2k IL, which are most of this game's players. The Protector pally and the Virtuous cleric didn't make the dungeons trivial, it was Cryptic with the awful and TRIVIAL rewards, also the millions of surplus equipment and AD being asked on a daily basis (mod 7) that makes us run the same dungeons a 1000 times just looking for some shxtty purple rings and some salvage.
no balance just broken.
At that point if the dungeons become much harder than they already are, or longer i should say, then for surplus equipement i think more and more people will start using tradebars... wich cost zens... wich cost... oooohh i got it now why they do that :P