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Swapping Recovery and Life-Steal on Enchants
preechr
Member Posts: 488 Arc User
I brought this idea up in a thread about increasing the viability of CC builds, as I think it would help, but I believe this simple change would solve MANY balancing issues in the game at a very high level, so I'd like to throw it out as Feedback and get yelled at for it
Maximum Damage Output should come at a cost to defense, so life-steal should be reconsidered as an offensive stat rather than a defensive one so players have to choose one or the other
Likewise, reconsidering recovery as a defensive stat instead of an offensive one would force a choice between tankiness and DPS via faster CDs on powers
Why?
There just are no trade-offs to building high DPS on any class (other than some just won't DPS as much as others)
Any class can build to maximize their damage dealt and still be rugged enough to take a ton of damage while life-stealing enough to make a healer unnecessary
In the simplest terms, traditional party composition expects that the tank draws aggro from the rest of the party so the damage dealers can kill the mobs that are slowed down or rooted by the control builds with the healer keeping everyone from dying
In modern day Neverwinter, the combination of cleric(s) and bonding runes provides everyone with God-like power and everything melts before mobs have a chance to figure out who is supposed to be the squishy one, so devs are introducing more and more "challenging mechanics" designed to slow the party down and making more and more mobs immune to CC
The playerbase response to this, commonly called "the meta," is a party comprised of a single 15-16K GWF with 4 Supports, which insures the "challenging mechanics" are trivialized and the melting will continue ad nauseum, with many of Neverwinter's over-abundance of Damage Dealers sharing the hind teat
Likewise, in our DPS based society, there is no place for characters built around CC or DoTs
Building for Maximum Damage Output should be a choice with a cost, and swapping recovery for life-steal on enchants would make all classes choose between being glass cannons or tempering their damage with some extra surviveablity
This would open a huge hole to be filled by team-mates that could control mobs and potentially slow down fights a little so DoTs could make a difference... and if DoTs could interrupt they could be considered another form of crowd control
Allowing other roles to be viable would take some concessions from the devs as well... the current trend toward CC Immunity for mobs and even bosses should be reconsidered: Let them roll on it, and give Bosses higher saving throws
Just handing out immunity like candy is basically saying "We don't want you guys to play like that," and you can't say that and then get away with complaining about "power-creep"
The only realistic option for most classes right now is pure damage because the game seems designed to make that the only solution for every problem
Now I will add a reference table so you guys can compare what we have now with what I am proposing
Please especially look at the changes to the 3 stat enchantments, as I think this swap would actually make them more valuable than the select 2 stat enchants that dominate BiS
Maximum Damage Output should come at a cost to defense, so life-steal should be reconsidered as an offensive stat rather than a defensive one so players have to choose one or the other
Likewise, reconsidering recovery as a defensive stat instead of an offensive one would force a choice between tankiness and DPS via faster CDs on powers
Why?
There just are no trade-offs to building high DPS on any class (other than some just won't DPS as much as others)
Any class can build to maximize their damage dealt and still be rugged enough to take a ton of damage while life-stealing enough to make a healer unnecessary
In the simplest terms, traditional party composition expects that the tank draws aggro from the rest of the party so the damage dealers can kill the mobs that are slowed down or rooted by the control builds with the healer keeping everyone from dying
In modern day Neverwinter, the combination of cleric(s) and bonding runes provides everyone with God-like power and everything melts before mobs have a chance to figure out who is supposed to be the squishy one, so devs are introducing more and more "challenging mechanics" designed to slow the party down and making more and more mobs immune to CC
The playerbase response to this, commonly called "the meta," is a party comprised of a single 15-16K GWF with 4 Supports, which insures the "challenging mechanics" are trivialized and the melting will continue ad nauseum, with many of Neverwinter's over-abundance of Damage Dealers sharing the hind teat
Likewise, in our DPS based society, there is no place for characters built around CC or DoTs
Building for Maximum Damage Output should be a choice with a cost, and swapping recovery for life-steal on enchants would make all classes choose between being glass cannons or tempering their damage with some extra surviveablity
This would open a huge hole to be filled by team-mates that could control mobs and potentially slow down fights a little so DoTs could make a difference... and if DoTs could interrupt they could be considered another form of crowd control
Allowing other roles to be viable would take some concessions from the devs as well... the current trend toward CC Immunity for mobs and even bosses should be reconsidered: Let them roll on it, and give Bosses higher saving throws
Just handing out immunity like candy is basically saying "We don't want you guys to play like that," and you can't say that and then get away with complaining about "power-creep"
The only realistic option for most classes right now is pure damage because the game seems designed to make that the only solution for every problem
Now I will add a reference table so you guys can compare what we have now with what I am proposing
Please especially look at the changes to the 3 stat enchantments, as I think this swap would actually make them more valuable than the select 2 stat enchants that dominate BiS
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Nerfing lifesteal one way or another without reworking the damage done by all NPC's wouldn't fix anything, it would only make the game unplayable.
What enchants are you currently using in which slots?
Allmost all my offensive slots are silvery for recovery. I also have one or two darks for arpen. Ma whole defensive setup is a mixture of azures and radiant. Your idea would completely destroy tactician build. Especially now, when bondings will be nerfed and reaching DR cap will be way more difficult.
I'm not a Cryptic developer, so I'm not as affected by claims that everyone will leave the game and nobody here pays my salary in any way... This is just a discussion of one possible way to get to the place the devs have already indicated they want to go with the game intended to demonstrate that we (players) can be helpful in getting the job done rather than guinea pigs in an experiment
So first, this has nothing to do with the bonding nerf... that's happening, and if they make modifications to it later to accommodate player concerns, that will be its own thing we have to deal with
Second, there are currently some big holes in the distribution of stats among the enchants we have... you could call the problem missing enchants really
In your case, the enchant that seems like it should be there but isn't would be a 2 stat enchant featuring Defense and Life-Steal, which after the swap would give 420 Defense and 420 Recovery... You weren't very specific on the enchants you use now, but since it sounds like you are only using single stat enchants, replacing your defensive enchants with these missing enchants would give 4200 each (before whatever companion's gift you have now kicks in) which would probably still fall short of the stats you have from the enchants you run now, but not near enough to say the sky is falling
Tactician is an edge case, as would be any tank build that needed defense and recovery, but could you make it work? Would there be other benefits to your class and the teams you run with?
What's your INT modifier now? Are there other sources of recovery you could get? I've seen you saying you were having a hard time getting into T9G, so would some Primal Armor help (or even possibly cover the gaps completely?) Nobody said anything about nerfing lifesteal... In fact, what I think (and hope) this would accomplish for how teams function was, I believe, pretty clearly stated
I get that any proposed changes will be poorly received by players that prefer to play the game as Superman, but if people can't see that the devs are working toward limiting that ability for the sake of the health of the game then I'm not sure anything anyone could say could convince them to participate in a discussion about how to get there without making the game unplayable, as you say
When devs talk about "power-creep" and try to fix it by nerfing a few class abilities, that makes me feel like the nerf-hammer will keep falling until its much harder for anyone to get through the new, "more-challenging" content designed to test us, and I do not agree that this methodology is healthy or appropriate
I believe the root of the problem with this "power-creep" is actually that the game has allowed every class to be Superman to some degree, with no real weaknesses other than a little less DPS or a little less (or no) ability to drastically increase the dps of their party
I think we got here because the game has taken away the need for healing, CC, DoTs or any other playstyle than face-melting dps, and in fact, much of the new content is designed to make other playstyles ineffective and thus irrelevant
If the devs continue to design content that forces TRs, HRs, CWs, GWFs and SWs all to try to be the same thing, we will never have balance
If classes and content have no weaknesses that can't be overcome by just more dps, we will never have balance
You say one enchantment will give recovery and defense, so basically you are narrowing whole build to one viable enchantment. That's not good if you ask me.
I overall symphatize with your point of view to do something with DPS stats. I always felt like building any dps class in this game is pretty staightforward and it goes the same way: get your arpen, get your crit, fill everything else with power.
What I won't agree making recovery a defensive stat, since it will ruin support classes. Recovery also gives AP Gain and let me tell you that GF rely heavily on AP to keep our Fighters Recovery 24/7.
Your idea would make Tactician dead, since we don't have literally any other viable offensive stat to get then recovery and we don't need any other stat (maybe except arpen for aggro) cause we're not damage dealers.
Yes there's still Protector path which is pretty good for tanking but it's only for tanking and nothing else. It's a very selfish path that makes us tank monsters but gives our party no buffs.
Please mind that Tactician is not an edge case. Your change would make it not useful in endgame content where buffs are heavily needed. Therefore GF wouldn't be a choice for TONG and maybe for MSP/FBI (propably less). Your proposed changes would narrow tank choice only to OP for endgame content.
You wanted to bring more variety to DPS classes and yet, you steal variety from support classes. That's why I don't find it a good idea.
When I say "edge case" I mean one of the few class builds that would lose their core viability, not that tactician builds are uncommon or unnecessary
Its good to be an edge case! If this idea were seriously considered, any edge case issues would have to be dealt with as exceptions and accommodated
So how could they accommodate tacticians? Well, its already a bit silly that you have to stack a non-class attribute (INT) to get the extra recharge speed, but INT is generally where %1 recharge speed increases come from, so making changes here would be going away from uniformity, which seems to be a thing the current devs are striving for, so let's look elsewhere
Heroic Feats generally contain the options to increase attribute modifiers, but GFs have some pretty strong feat offerings across the board (the ones tacticians don't need are still pretty valuable for protectors or conquerors) and though most GFs could probably afford to lose Pin Down, you would have to take points away from something else to get it, so let's move on again
Ok here we go... You are already probably taking 5/5 in Fight On, which lowers your encounter cooldowns by 10%... maybe that could be modified to 20% at 5/5, but that's pretty powerful... Don't tacticians usually put 5 in Protector? Is Plate Agility valuable for any GF build? Maybe that could be changed to something that gives bonus recovery while guarding, similar to other row 1 feats that speed things up when using tab (actually all other classes except SW get a feat like that or a direct CD mod from using their tab ability) which would actually make GF feats more uniform, give back recovery and AP gain to tacticians, and even improve protectors
Would that work? Do you think swapping +5 deflect for extra recovery while guarding would negatively affect anyone? The intent here was never to "steal" or "destroy" anything... ESPECIALLY from support classes
I'm simply trying to get ahead of the 8 Ball here and offer an alternative big fix that would stop what people are mislabeling "power-creep" and put things back in line somewhat