Based on what the developers have said recently, this should be expected. The thing that surprises me most is that they plan to act quickly. So the patch after 12b is likely. Which means just in time for the holidays!
I was also surprised to see him call it a nerf. They must be tired, because "adjustments" is a better word to use. LOL!
At first I had thought that, but then he went on to say that he thinks most players want damage and heals to be effective, contrasted that idea to buffs and debuffs, and called it a nerf.
I hate to say this, but in some content, my DevOP makes it much easier than my DC. The issue I have is that the group finder will sometimes see my OP as a tank when I am in burning, I mean healing spec.
What I am talking about is PUG groups for some of the epic dungeons. For instance, eToS final fight with the High Priestess is much faster on my Burnadin than my DC. My OP is about 500 GS lower than my DC, but they have similar boon completion. The DPS from BG and HW are still very significant in some content, especially if you have some weak DPS classes due to PUG.
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clericalistMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 595Arc User
edited September 2017
Ideally I would really wish they made healing an important role, and that the cleric was the strongest healer, which does not mean that others cannot be healers. However for this to happen they need to completely aware of the following realities of the game:
- Lifesteal makes healing irrelevant, this single game feature makes all the other healing game design obsolete for probably 95% of the content. - Even when there is healing, the cleric is NOT the strongest healer. I have seen templocks getting higher healing scores than me, this happened in both Svabard and Fangbreaker. I even checked their stats, they did not have higher power, I was playing Virtuous path, with a full Tiamat set, 30 wisdom and they still outhealed me. That single SW feat can produce a healer that can beat anything you could possibly throw at them to compete. - Even if lifesteal was removed, I still cannot see healing being that relevant for high end teams. The tank will shrug of all damage done to them, the rest will melt all enemies down in seconds to ever worry about needing healing - This is repeating what I already said but it needs to be in the list, the developers are not aware of whats going on in the game. Pre mod 3 healing was probably more important than anything that came after, but even then the must have item was the High Prophet set, and the guides even then would mostly talk about how to increase damage of the party, not how to be a better healer.
I don't think anyone realistically expects them to ever change the fundamental game design, this is never going to happen and the developers accepting this can make them offer real practical changes. Perhaps a solution is to make monster dpsers out of monster healers just like they make monster healers out of monster dpsers, which seems completly fair to me, why have it the one way but not the other way? Remove one of the many irrelevant cleric feats and replace it with one that takes overhealing (which is easy to get) and coverts it into damage instead, that way clerics can compete to win paingiver and a lot of the healing features of the cleric are made relevant.
Another thing that they can do which is even simpler, is to change the class description of the cleric in the character creation screen, remove all mention of playing a healer role and make it very clear what the cleric is going to do in the game. They can do the same for the other classes, provide a very clear warning that the GWF is the one to pick for damage, the rest you pick for immersion reasons. And I am being dead serious here, not telling people upfront what the class really is about amounts to false advertising, there are many people that would have purchased things in the game with real money before getting to level 70 and being aware how things really are.
I think one issue is the healer role means either a DevOP or a DC. I expect that due to current design, they cannot consider a SW a healer, since their healing powers are feat based, not paragon based.
I think a simple way to "cure" the DO-AC conundrum is make their powers only stack when you are in a Q group of 6 or more.
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
Don't forget that with Chaos magic, cw's can make for some pretty potent self healers as well. While a DC may not always when heals on the chart. They are in fact a different type of heal, especially with the faithful capstone which can be very clutch.
The Healer role remain a challenging issue for the game. You cannot heal people that are one shot. If the attacks are not one shots deaths then you are competing with lifesteal or will be out performed by OP or SW heals.
The initial answer to this logic would be to make the role of damage mitigator more important to counteract one shot deaths but then to perma the damage mitigation you should need super high ilvl which means the build would be useless at lower ilvls which is where it would be most needed.
Maybe an option would be to make a mitigator role where you had enough overlap with encounters that you could mitigate the incoming damage reliably and as your ilvl/recovery grew you could free up one or two encounter slots for other activities?
Challenge here is now you need to compete with tanks as mitigators (KV/OP Bubble) to be viable. Perhaps then having a tank doing mitigation means at lower ilvl you could free up encounters for other activities and coordinate/time the mitigations with your tank CD.
All of this makes party formation for lower ilvls very difficult and you still hit the issue at high ilvls that you won't need two mitigators and a buff/debuff/dps role will be preferable.
The real story here is that the roles have become very crowded. There are people with OP healadons that can't see light of day past lifesteal + DC in party (who can provide a bit of heal with a lot of buff). If the dev's go forward with a nerf to dc buff/debuffs, I would argue that the intention is to make space for a buff/debuff focused class (bard). Another nerf to buff/debuffs as a whole would hurt everyone but especially CW (MOF). They've really hurt the game in terms of class roles, with the buffs to Lightning they made GWF a much more potent AOE class when it should be a single target. TR should be the single target king. Without a CC requirement in groups there are many classes with homeless feats and skills and I'm not clear where the battlefront for the devs is. Each discussion has a different path of reducing power creep, changing party meta, class reworks, etc. It just seems chaotic
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jeffsliderMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 112Arc User
I agree with @putzboy78 & @clericalist. My two cents about this topic is I don't even fully believe some of the people who are devs 100% fully play the game at all. We need to remember here on the whole, most people consider clerics for their buffs/debuffs to help a party conquer things better. So I saw their comments about the whole 'pure healer' thing and was just shaking my head. Clerics, currently, even if people are pure virtuous or pure faithful for either heals of time/clutch heals, are still not even remotely close to the best healers in game. Healadins and the temp warlocks top pure DC healers by far as it comes down to quickness to get off the heals. Temps, as long as they are attacking, heals 24/7 and healadins, can probably afk and still outheal a DC at this point lol. DC's heals seem to be a bit slower than the two and besides that, so many other factors with heals/self heals so I believe on the whole, if there's really going to be a nerf to the DC in this negative way, it makes the classes close to useless and the thing about 'metas' is that people will find another meta. I can right now think of different combos in game others and myself use besides two dc's. They'll need to rework a lot of the heals period for this idea to even work.
Overall I'm just truly disappointed at the thought process here. After such a long time, Both DC paths are finally viable currently how they are right now and brings a lot of fun and versatility and to bring a nerf that's not even remotely needed, is ridiculous. I love switching a lot between the two, can solo DC on either, can help another DC/Mof CW/SW debuffer as well and that's another point I feel is missed. DC's are used in parties for buffs/debuffs, not heals as some devs like to label. DC's bring more than heals, DC's and the other classes I called are among best debuffers in game. And to even bring up more, they're talking about two dc's so much with how it's a meta in group play, why not say anything when groups run with two tanks then? Confused about that a lot. Not saying people can't change things in games, it's more like if you change, do proper research to do/go through with these changes. The last thing putz said about the game just hits everything correct, it's like to me there's no very clear cut and organized overall deep planning here. It's like the thinking is like one sided/half the picture and not properly thinking about the whole & bigger picture.
It doesn't matter who is the best healer class: all classes have access to lifesteal and, if the party brings an external healer, that class must contribute meaningfully in another area (buff/debuff or dps).
Right now players want two DCs in their party because of strong paragon-exclusive damage buffs.
If the devs want to kill the 2 DC meta, I think one of the better ways to do it would be to move our strongest paragon-exclusive damage buffs (Anointed Army's powershare, Terrifying Insight, and Battle Fervor) elsewhere in the power tree, preferably to another at-will/daily. This would keep both DO and AC viable, but give no reason to take more than 1 cleric.
The problem is that there us so much synergy between 2 DCs that it will be hard to remove it all without a major rework that would likely gut the class.
Not paragon specific per se:
-Weapons of Light stacks from 2 DCs -2 DCs can maintain both empowered forms of Break the Spirit and Forgemaster's Flames -Anointed Army (any daily works) Spam and Hastening Light makes it easy for another DC to maintain 100% on HG and procs Shepherd
Paragon Specific - Terrifying Insight - Blessing of Battle and feat - Anointed Army
It seems likely that whatever ia planned won't be based on what the game play currently is and yet they obviously don't have the resources to rework all content to reduce boss and mob HP and damage, rework lifesteal without breaking solo play and whatever other fallout may come.
If they remove 1 DC from the party but leave the other viable, it just frees up the spot for another class that offers buffs/debuffs.
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
you can already make an argument that a good MOF is in the neighborhood of taking that DC slot. It wouldn't take much to tip the scale (especially if you don't have OP in party feeding the AC power share). Although I don't think that fixes what the devs really want which is to have 3 DPS in party which would require strengthening the DPS potential for DPS builds and weaking buff/debuff across the board.
As I've stated before the real goal should be closer to tank, healer, control, aoe dps and single target dps. That would give the party variety of class/roles but you need the content to encourage that meta
ppl look only at tong. not all like this edemo meta is one DC. where did the other go? T1/2 skirmish meta is 0 DC. FBI is one DC
Tong 2 DC is cause it takes hours to finish it (14-15k) maybe Bts and FF bug adds to it but u need those tons of stat just to do damage and survive in the new dungeon.
they should put role for dungeons. (even that it too complicated as is) healer: +5% AP, +10% heals, -10% damage tank: +10% stamina +10% threat, - 10% damage DPS: +10% damage, +10% speed, -10% AP, -30% out heals.
if party decide to go with 2 DC. one need to play DPS or not be usefull
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
there is no meta that doesn't include dc, even if you take a DO, it will out perform bringing additional dps.
They need to think more detailed on roles, there should be a difference between aoe dps and single target, ranged and melee, and noone talks about the need to make the game use a controller role. They make 3 DPS roles required, everyone will want 3 gwfs
I think that instead of fiddling back and forth with DC, the devs could:
1) Give some love to SWs and TRs. These two classes seem to be left on the shelf the most.
2) Change the queue system so that would recognize paragon paths (e.g. let Temptlocks take the healer slot) and expand on that.
I second that. SW and TR need some PvE love. It seems the developers are stuck on splitting powers between PvP and PvE. They want the TR powers to work the same in both PvP and PvE. They need to get over it already and balance them independently. TR will never reach its PvE potential until they do this.
The Q system has to recognize paragon paths for the Paladin to be able to be Tank or Heals, since their paragon choice determines this for them. I think you meant recognize the feat trees.
I still feel the better option is to have the AC and DO powers not work together in a single group. Make it so you have to have a Q group of 6 or more for the powers to synergize. To me, it sounded as though the developer did not like the way the DO was reworked last time. So I am expecting the heavier nerf on the DO.
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
still won't matter unless they make TR and SW overpowered. As long as GWF has lightning and can shred both AOE and single targets more efficently and is cc immune. TR and SW will remain second class citizens for the role of DPS. No cc role in party limits the options for how to play your TR and the lack of need for healing limits the roles on your SW.
And with loadouts, anyone can adjust their role once they enter.
I think its more likely you see a nerf to AC than DO, they are battling stat stacking via bonding but the issue remains there is no diminishing return on stats. As long as OP/AC combo's are putting DPS over 200K power, this will be getting attention.
Honestly the new queue system is kind of a fix. They are providing you an incentive to play outside the meta, you can decide if the incentive justifies it. 20 seals and 6k AD while not a huge amount, it is something to consider.
The issue is that DCs are not a popular class to play but all teams want two.
The change won't force DCs to play healer anymore than they currently do but if you remove one from the party it frees a space for a different buff class.
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
without the threat of dc nerf you will probably find more people coming to the DC class. Noone wants to change to change classes when there is a cloud of nerfom hanging over it, atleast to the degree the devs have already called it out.
Without major overhauls you either end up with everyone wanting OP, GF, MOF, DC, GWF parties or OP, MOF, GWF, SW, DC parties (assuming 2xDC is removed). That still leaves no room for HR, TR. GF will still have a home but I think OP will be preferred for the extra survive-ability.
I dont understand why they would nerf a DC when it comes to buffs/debuffs tbh. How hard can it be to force people to make rainbow parties for dungs? Allow just ONE cleric in the group? (except the trials) I mean... yeah.
One cannot know how they are going to do away with the 2 dc meta, while keeping both DO and AC equally viable and not erasing the synergies between them and also without nerfing the buff/debuff qualities of both down into the ground which would be nonsensical since it´s the only meaningful contribution of a dc to the party in PVE as things are now. Just prohibiting 2 dc´s in a party for the latest content (fbi onwards...for the rest it´s of little consequence anyways) would be possible but it didn´t sound like they´re planning that and that would be a clunky and problematic solution, too.
Not long ago they gave us the DO buff/debuff build option because players were complaining DO wasn´t viable and they were all playing the same build. Not that this added some awesome level of variety...it really didn´t. But some little variety is still better than no variety, right? Unfortunately they created the 2 dc meta this way. Which now has to be nerfed away. Who could have foreseen that new content with trillions of hitpoints would induce players to take the time and gather 2 kinds of dc for their parties? Well, maybe a dev with an actual plan but such a one was sorely missing. The reason we got a second viable buff/debuff option for the dc (creating the 2 dc thing) was that the game as it is seems to offer little room for a dc to make another meaningful contribution...like dedicated healing or mitigation. I wouldn´t mind at all if that changed but it would require major changes to the game. And if there´s literally only one meaningful thing the dc can contribute to a party without having any actual choices (like cw) they´d better be the best at doing that. And well, all running around with the same powerful build still beats having the choice between two HAMSTER ones - doing the same thing just in a slightly different way.
The good thing about the dev post was that he mentioned that the game isn´t in a good place and this prevents more exciting dungeon design and more varied and interesting party roles. And I´d be very excited if they actually made major changes that would make gameplay (and future dungeon design) more varied and interesting. That would be awesome!
It guess it would be a difficult mammoth project but totally worth it since it would improve the very foundation of the whole game. I wouldn´t know why players would hate it if they got 1 or 2 more barebones campaigns that don´t introduce 10 different kinds of repetitive and depressing nonsense to be done for weeks and instead would get balanced classes, more diverse class roles, build options, better/different dungeon design...And if they managed to do this in a player-friendly way and without outlandishly bad communication with players...awesome:) It´s just that past experience in general and the posts in particular don´t exactly inspire much hope on that...quite the contrary. So what I read in the post was: we hate the current 2 dc meta and are going to kill it rather sooner than later with the nerf-bat applying just as much thought in the process as we did when we created it in the first place. Well, my dc will still be extremely good-looking in his pink skirt so he will have one asset left:D Until they are maybe in some far away future making big adjustments to the game that will make dc healing or mitigation useful again. Or maybe not. Of course I hope I´m being totally unfair and wrong:) We cannot know what is planned since the dev just announced a nerf without giving any specifics-.-
I think the developers have been making changes to see if they could do enough without a major nerf. I may have some of my details sketchy as I have only recently come back to the game. So I am playing catch up. But here are the changes that I think are related:
HG cooldown (45 seconds) AA power share decreased from 50% to 33% Base power for power share changed to not include buffs like bonding, legendary pet or insignia buffs Defense debuffs limited with hard cap and severe diminishing returns Bonding stones decreased at rank 12 from 95% to 55%, with max set at 65%
What they overlooked was that damage to monsters is impacted in two ways. Debuff their defense or increase the damage to them. They did not change the way damage increase buffs work. So the DC became the winner due to our damage increase buffs.
IMHO the issue is that damage increase buffs typically are multiplicative and this problem is not specific to DC, it is system wide. Since these buffs are multiplicative, there are no diminishing returns in using them.
Change the damage buffs to be additive in a single "damage mulitplier" layer. This would be a much better solution IMHO. As it would solve the problem in the system itself with undiminished returns for damage buffs.
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
To be fair the meta was multiple DCs before the DO rework. We were just spamming AA instead and watching power jump through the roof.
Anyway someone should go back to the DC rework thread and pull out the posts where people warned of the AC+DO meta just by reading the preview notes. Because of course the dev responsible had no way of knowing, as Asterdahl claims.
(I'll be honest. I discounted it then because I underestimated people's willingness to wait so long to find 2 DCs.)
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
Well i think the willingness to wait for 2 DCs is a reflection of how challenging the content is. BTW you don't need 2 dcs, i did an OP, MOF Ren, SS CW, templock, right DC run the other day. It was slow but we finished. Last boss being the challenge without the burst damage for the souls.
I've done T9G as sole DC, though not without OP and GF. The Souls van be a problem with a less optimized group, but that fight is just too unforgiving for bad Ping, lapse of attention. Half the time I don't have the laughter audio. I've run with players who couldn't see Acererak at all. It reminds me of early MSVA and the invisible manticores or CN and the invisible death spheres. They are over designing for what the players, the clients and their own servers can handle.
While I find that group you list better than 2DC, it is still essentially 4 Supports. Loadouts being one of the great successes of the current game era... But 4 supports aren't what the devs want or what the playerbase can easily provide.
I am very uneasy as to what is being planned. All of the classes I played in the early game, CW, GWF, DC and TR have all had major changes but only the DC remains as fun as before. I don't want to see that class get messed up as well.
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
I made a super-whiny post in the Random Q's thread yesterday (top of page 33), asking if this is a nerf to synergy or us as individual dcs, and got this in response.
I was referring to nerfing the 2 DC meta, I apologize for the lack of clarity. We don't have any intent to nerf DC generally. I spoke about how in the long run we'd like to make damage dealers focus more on dealing damage, and healers more on healing and generally everyone less on buffing and rebuffing, so depending on your feelings, those adjustments could be seen as a nerf, but those are longer term goals.
The more near term goal of ensuring that players don't want to bring 2 DCs to a 5 man (at least in the sense that it wouldn't actually be faster than bringing another class) won't be directed at making devoted cleric generally worse in any way. There's plenty of speculation that whatever adjustments are made will make one of the paragon paths "unplayable," but obviously, this is something we'll try to avoid when making adjustments.
If they can reduce the effectiveness of buffing without making Support characters worthless AND without making dungeons unbeatable, more power to them. Right now, the Devs' standard response to issues that players raise on the Preview changes is a 'We may have to look into that in the future' response. As any long term player knows, Cryptic's track record of timely fixes is not inspiring. So if they break one of my favorite classes (DC), I should just wait for the inevitable fix... except I have a Mod Zero era TR as well and where is that rebalance?
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
@usernamefatigue I saw that responde and it felt like a knife in my guts My main is DC, I still can't decide which character to prepare for plan B (DC death) HR or GWF.
@usernamefatigue I saw that responde and it felt like a knife in my guts My main is DC, I still can't decide which character to prepare for plan B (DC death) HR or GWF.
Same..Ive been playing only DC since mod3 (had TR since beta but left it behind once I got my DC), and never made any alt class, I have nothing at all but a DC. So even though Im takin a break from the game atm, just waiting to see how the changes gonna look like, if they completely destroy DC then Im pretty sure I will just delete my account :P
Comments
I was also surprised to see him call it a nerf. They must be tired, because "adjustments" is a better word to use. LOL!
You can interpret it as "lol he forgot Templocks and Healadins are a thing" or "DC buffs will not be fully eliminated".
So, yeah.
What I am talking about is PUG groups for some of the epic dungeons. For instance, eToS final fight with the High Priestess is much faster on my Burnadin than my DC. My OP is about 500 GS lower than my DC, but they have similar boon completion. The DPS from BG and HW are still very significant in some content, especially if you have some weak DPS classes due to PUG.
- Lifesteal makes healing irrelevant, this single game feature makes all the other healing game design obsolete for probably 95% of the content.
- Even when there is healing, the cleric is NOT the strongest healer. I have seen templocks getting higher healing scores than me, this happened in both Svabard and Fangbreaker. I even checked their stats, they did not have higher power, I was playing Virtuous path, with a full Tiamat set, 30 wisdom and they still outhealed me. That single SW feat can produce a healer that can beat anything you could possibly throw at them to compete.
- Even if lifesteal was removed, I still cannot see healing being that relevant for high end teams. The tank will shrug of all damage done to them, the rest will melt all enemies down in seconds to ever worry about needing healing
- This is repeating what I already said but it needs to be in the list, the developers are not aware of whats going on in the game. Pre mod 3 healing was probably more important than anything that came after, but even then the must have item was the High Prophet set, and the guides even then would mostly talk about how to increase damage of the party, not how to be a better healer.
I don't think anyone realistically expects them to ever change the fundamental game design, this is never going to happen and the developers accepting this can make them offer real practical changes. Perhaps a solution is to make monster dpsers out of monster healers just like they make monster healers out of monster dpsers, which seems completly fair to me, why have it the one way but not the other way? Remove one of the many irrelevant cleric feats and replace it with one that takes overhealing (which is easy to get) and coverts it into damage instead, that way clerics can compete to win paingiver and a lot of the healing features of the cleric are made relevant.
Another thing that they can do which is even simpler, is to change the class description of the cleric in the character creation screen, remove all mention of playing a healer role and make it very clear what the cleric is going to do in the game. They can do the same for the other classes, provide a very clear warning that the GWF is the one to pick for damage, the rest you pick for immersion reasons. And I am being dead serious here, not telling people upfront what the class really is about amounts to false advertising, there are many people that would have purchased things in the game with real money before getting to level 70 and being aware how things really are.
I think a simple way to "cure" the DO-AC conundrum is make their powers only stack when you are in a Q group of 6 or more.
The Healer role remain a challenging issue for the game. You cannot heal people that are one shot. If the attacks are not one shots deaths then you are competing with lifesteal or will be out performed by OP or SW heals.
The initial answer to this logic would be to make the role of damage mitigator more important to counteract one shot deaths but then to perma the damage mitigation you should need super high ilvl which means the build would be useless at lower ilvls which is where it would be most needed.
Maybe an option would be to make a mitigator role where you had enough overlap with encounters that you could mitigate the incoming damage reliably and as your ilvl/recovery grew you could free up one or two encounter slots for other activities?
Challenge here is now you need to compete with tanks as mitigators (KV/OP Bubble) to be viable. Perhaps then having a tank doing mitigation means at lower ilvl you could free up encounters for other activities and coordinate/time the mitigations with your tank CD.
All of this makes party formation for lower ilvls very difficult and you still hit the issue at high ilvls that you won't need two mitigators and a buff/debuff/dps role will be preferable.
The real story here is that the roles have become very crowded. There are people with OP healadons that can't see light of day past lifesteal + DC in party (who can provide a bit of heal with a lot of buff). If the dev's go forward with a nerf to dc buff/debuffs, I would argue that the intention is to make space for a buff/debuff focused class (bard). Another nerf to buff/debuffs as a whole would hurt everyone but especially CW (MOF). They've really hurt the game in terms of class roles, with the buffs to Lightning they made GWF a much more potent AOE class when it should be a single target. TR should be the single target king. Without a CC requirement in groups there are many classes with homeless feats and skills and I'm not clear where the battlefront for the devs is. Each discussion has a different path of reducing power creep, changing party meta, class reworks, etc. It just seems chaotic
Overall I'm just truly disappointed at the thought process here. After such a long time, Both DC paths are finally viable currently how they are right now and brings a lot of fun and versatility and to bring a nerf that's not even remotely needed, is ridiculous. I love switching a lot between the two, can solo DC on either, can help another DC/Mof CW/SW debuffer as well and that's another point I feel is missed. DC's are used in parties for buffs/debuffs, not heals as some devs like to label. DC's bring more than heals, DC's and the other classes I called are among best debuffers in game. And to even bring up more, they're talking about two dc's so much with how it's a meta in group play, why not say anything when groups run with two tanks then? Confused about that a lot. Not saying people can't change things in games, it's more like if you change, do proper research to do/go through with these changes. The last thing putz said about the game just hits everything correct, it's like to me there's no very clear cut and organized overall deep planning here. It's like the thinking is like one sided/half the picture and not properly thinking about the whole & bigger picture.
Right now players want two DCs in their party because of strong paragon-exclusive damage buffs.
If the devs want to kill the 2 DC meta, I think one of the better ways to do it would be to move our strongest paragon-exclusive damage buffs (Anointed Army's powershare, Terrifying Insight, and Battle Fervor) elsewhere in the power tree, preferably to another at-will/daily. This would keep both DO and AC viable, but give no reason to take more than 1 cleric.
Not paragon specific per se:
-Weapons of Light stacks from 2 DCs
-2 DCs can maintain both empowered forms of Break the Spirit and Forgemaster's Flames
-Anointed Army (any daily works) Spam and Hastening Light makes it easy for another DC to maintain 100% on HG and procs Shepherd
Paragon Specific
- Terrifying Insight
- Blessing of Battle and feat
- Anointed Army
It seems likely that whatever ia planned won't be based on what the game play currently is and yet they obviously don't have the resources to rework all content to reduce boss and mob HP and damage, rework lifesteal without breaking solo play and whatever other fallout may come.
If they remove 1 DC from the party but leave the other viable, it just frees up the spot for another class that offers buffs/debuffs.
As I've stated before the real goal should be closer to tank, healer, control, aoe dps and single target dps. That would give the party variety of class/roles but you need the content to encourage that meta
edemo meta is one DC. where did the other go?
T1/2 skirmish meta is 0 DC.
FBI is one DC
Tong 2 DC is cause it takes hours to finish it (14-15k)
maybe Bts and FF bug adds to it but u need those tons of stat just to do damage and survive in the new dungeon.
they should put role for dungeons. (even that it too complicated as is)
healer: +5% AP, +10% heals, -10% damage
tank: +10% stamina +10% threat, - 10% damage
DPS: +10% damage, +10% speed, -10% AP, -30% out heals.
if party decide to go with 2 DC. one need to play DPS or not be usefull
They need to think more detailed on roles, there should be a difference between aoe dps and single target, ranged and melee, and noone talks about the need to make the game use a controller role. They make 3 DPS roles required, everyone will want 3 gwfs
1) Give some love to SWs and TRs. These two classes seem to be left on the shelf the most.
2) Change the queue system so that would recognize paragon paths (e.g. let Temptlocks take the healer slot) and expand on that.
The Q system has to recognize paragon paths for the Paladin to be able to be Tank or Heals, since their paragon choice determines this for them. I think you meant recognize the feat trees.
I still feel the better option is to have the AC and DO powers not work together in a single group. Make it so you have to have a Q group of 6 or more for the powers to synergize. To me, it sounded as though the developer did not like the way the DO was reworked last time. So I am expecting the heavier nerf on the DO.
And with loadouts, anyone can adjust their role once they enter.
I think its more likely you see a nerf to AC than DO, they are battling stat stacking via bonding but the issue remains there is no diminishing return on stats. As long as OP/AC combo's are putting DPS over 200K power, this will be getting attention.
Honestly the new queue system is kind of a fix. They are providing you an incentive to play outside the meta, you can decide if the incentive justifies it. 20 seals and 6k AD while not a huge amount, it is something to consider.
The change won't force DCs to play healer anymore than they currently do but if you remove one from the party it frees a space for a different buff class.
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
Without major overhauls you either end up with everyone wanting OP, GF, MOF, DC, GWF parties or OP, MOF, GWF, SW, DC parties (assuming 2xDC is removed). That still leaves no room for HR, TR. GF will still have a home but I think OP will be preferred for the extra survive-ability.
How hard can it be to force people to make rainbow parties for dungs? Allow just ONE cleric in the group? (except the trials)
I mean... yeah.
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Not long ago they gave us the DO buff/debuff build option because players were complaining DO wasn´t viable and they were all playing the same build. Not that this added some awesome level of variety...it really didn´t. But some little variety is still better than no variety, right? Unfortunately they created the 2 dc meta this way. Which now has to be nerfed away. Who could have foreseen that new content with trillions of hitpoints would induce players to take the time and gather 2 kinds of dc for their parties? Well, maybe a dev with an actual plan but such a one was sorely missing. The reason we got a second viable buff/debuff option for the dc (creating the 2 dc thing) was that the game as it is seems to offer little room for a dc to make another meaningful contribution...like dedicated healing or mitigation.
I wouldn´t mind at all if that changed but it would require major changes to the game. And if there´s literally only one meaningful thing the dc can contribute to a party without having any actual choices (like cw) they´d better be the best at doing that. And well, all running around with the same powerful build still beats having the choice between two HAMSTER ones - doing the same thing just in a slightly different way.
The good thing about the dev post was that he mentioned that the game isn´t in a good place and this prevents more exciting dungeon design and more varied and interesting party roles.
And I´d be very excited if they actually made major changes that would make gameplay (and future dungeon design) more varied and interesting. That would be awesome!
It guess it would be a difficult mammoth project but totally worth it since it would improve the very foundation of the whole game. I wouldn´t know why players would hate it if they got 1 or 2 more barebones campaigns that don´t introduce 10 different kinds of repetitive and depressing nonsense to be done for weeks and instead would get balanced classes, more diverse class roles, build options, better/different dungeon design...And if they managed to do this in a player-friendly way and without outlandishly bad communication with players...awesome:)
It´s just that past experience in general and the posts in particular don´t exactly inspire much hope on that...quite the contrary.
So what I read in the post was: we hate the current 2 dc meta and are going to kill it rather sooner than later with the nerf-bat applying just as much thought in the process as we did when we created it in the first place.
Well, my dc will still be extremely good-looking in his pink skirt so he will have one asset left:D Until they are maybe in some far away future making big adjustments to the game that will make dc healing or mitigation useful again. Or maybe not.
Of course I hope I´m being totally unfair and wrong:)
We cannot know what is planned since the dev just announced a nerf without giving any specifics-.-
HG cooldown (45 seconds)
AA power share decreased from 50% to 33%
Base power for power share changed to not include buffs like bonding, legendary pet or insignia buffs
Defense debuffs limited with hard cap and severe diminishing returns
Bonding stones decreased at rank 12 from 95% to 55%, with max set at 65%
What they overlooked was that damage to monsters is impacted in two ways. Debuff their defense or increase the damage to them. They did not change the way damage increase buffs work. So the DC became the winner due to our damage increase buffs.
IMHO the issue is that damage increase buffs typically are multiplicative and this problem is not specific to DC, it is system wide. Since these buffs are multiplicative, there are no diminishing returns in using them.
Change the damage buffs to be additive in a single "damage mulitplier" layer. This would be a much better solution IMHO. As it would solve the problem in the system itself with undiminished returns for damage buffs.
Anyway someone should go back to the DC rework thread and pull out the posts where people warned of the AC+DO meta just by reading the preview notes. Because of course the dev responsible had no way of knowing, as Asterdahl claims.
(I'll be honest. I discounted it then because I underestimated people's willingness to wait so long to find 2 DCs.)
While I find that group you list better than 2DC, it is still essentially 4 Supports. Loadouts being one of the great successes of the current game era... But 4 supports aren't what the devs want or what the playerbase can easily provide.
I am very uneasy as to what is being planned. All of the classes I played in the early game, CW, GWF, DC and TR have all had major changes but only the DC remains as fun as before. I don't want to see that class get messed up as well.
I saw that responde and it felt like a knife in my guts
My main is DC, I still can't decide which character to prepare for plan B (DC death) HR or GWF.
So even though Im takin a break from the game atm, just waiting to see how the changes gonna look like, if they completely destroy DC then Im pretty sure I will just delete my account :P
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