Yet another Mod 16 post

amaranthos20

So I am fully aware that there are already boatloads of posts on this topic. If this were any other normal game or forum, I'd simply post there instead of creating a new to avoid repeats.

However. In this case, I actually want to see everyone create as much uproar on this as possible so...here goes Mod 16 rant number five million. Pay attention, Cryptic.

I'm an old guard player, played from the very beginning till around mod 7. Wasn't able to play again until 14. Coming back in 14 wasn't too bad...as in, the game was both still recognizable as well as still playable. Some of my fondest memories are with my old guild tearing through this game together. I still quote some of the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> they said to people today.

Wasn't able to play again after 14 until now. And...holy hell. NW is now officially both unrecognizable AND unplayable. I had every single class to the *old* cap of 70, geared well enough to solo all of the current content at the time. I wasn't one of those Uber whales that can solo Tiamat with their eyes closed, but playing was engaging and fun and I knew where to go if I wanted a challenge.

My favorite class was the old CW, had a Thaum MoF and I loved it even though it wasn't top dps. I loved the ebb and flow of the skill rotations, I loved the dance of managing cooldowns perfectly to the second for max output and uptime, and I loved each individual skill and passive and how they integrated. There was a wonderful music to it, and I could get lost for hours just watching my CW dance it's beautifully intricate waltz of destruction.

So earlier today I finally had time to hop back on, and like I said earlier...holy hell. What the blazes is a "magnitude"? How am I supposed to know what a "50 magnitude heal" or a "1500 magnitude damage" does? I mean, I remembered the skills from before (the ones that still exist and didn't get cut completely...why the hell is steal time only in the lightning paragon path now, for example) and could kinda sorta compare based off that...but <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> sakes!

Not one single one of all the toons I have at 70 are even remotely playable now. I'm not even talking about on-level content either, I'm talking about five levels down...sometimes more.

GWF used to be able to do some pretty crazy stuff solo, stuff most of the other classes wouldn't rush to try, and now a group of three on-level mobs from any given zone can whip it's butt and I'm lucky to take two of the three out before I go down.

GF had half it's skills stripped away and the half that remain aren't even tank skills. I don't much care for the new block mechanic, what good is tanking hits from the boss when my actual real job of running all the adds in circles is impossible? Partially due to the total rework and stripping, partially due to the next abomination: the OP.

So now apparently the OP is one of the more playable classes remaining. Smite is just stupid, I can somehow kill the training dummies in PE with zero work on the class or gear (I was gone, remember, so I couldn't have gotten anything done) with just smite, let alone the other skills. Before OP *could* dps but the tank and heals it offered (and aggro steal!!! Hence my previous issues, with the GF being totally pointless!) usually outweighed the need for a dps OP. Usually.

HR is so broken I can't even clear trash mobs without dying now. It's even more fragile than before, does FAR less dps, had half it's skills either reworked or deleted, and worse yet, it's clunkier and less mobile. Zero reason to play what could and should still be one of the most fun classes in the game due to the dual melee / range stances.

SW...is, annoyingly, not that badly off compared to the rest, along with the OP. I hated the class before, but it seems the devs love it, because of anything it works better now than I remember. Again, I have not been around to update gear or anything, so it's not like I can blame myself for messing up my build. SW heals just fine, dps's just fine, retained it's good mobility, and if anything has MORE utility than before. Just why...why buff the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> out of the most annoying, stupidest class in the game and horribly break the rest? I can't even begin to understand.

TR was always kinda meh for anything other than PvP and certain bosses in my book, but that's probably just personal preference. However what's unmistakably NOT just personal preference, is that TR is now pretty much in the same boat as HR: can't kill, can't run, just dies. Useless.

DC I haven't even had the willpower to give a serious testing yet, but from the half-hearted stuff I managed to bring myself to do before vomiting and passing out in disgust, once again it seems like OP wins out. It SEEMED less heal oriented and more dps / debuff oriented, so with the OP doing all the above and then some 10x better, why bother? Still have to do more testing though to be sure, if I can make myself do it.

Why take away paragon path / trees? Why bring it down to just a handful of "you may have either this one or this one" choices? Where's the character and build customization now? I mean, before, there were still only a few possible builds for each class that were worth bothering with, and some had just one, but still, we the players had that choice, to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> it up or do it right, or to mix n match and try some unholy hybrid that probably wouldn't work, if we wanted to.

I just...why the he would you mess with something as important as core stats this late? You're on mod SIXTEEN, for gods sake; you do that kind of rework...along with whatever the hell this "magnitude" bull is...by like mod 8 at the latest, then you leave the core stuff the hell alone and change other things around it if you have to, in order to get the desired changes to the game that you want. You can't just wake up Tuesday morning, and decide to turn a game that's already been around for almost a decade now, on it's head because you have a change in staff.

As bad as the last balancer was, as much as we all griped at him...if this is the god damn alternative, you should hire him back tomorrow.

wylonus

dont forget, we all became cookie cutter clones now, being unique got strip away.

hustin1

wylonus said:

dont forget, we all became cookie cutter clones now, being unique got strip away.

All the more because we can't chase any stat but power any more -- for all other stats we smash right up against a cap. When all stats are at the cap we lose all control over how effective they are. It's asinine.

jmiller84

Not sure what you're doing with your HR and TR, but they're plenty capable of dealing serious damage. Same with GWF. How well geared are you on those toons?

dionchi

I think the biggest problem (at least for me) is content a player used to do sufficiently well in prior to a change, sometimes winds up being much more difficult (or even easier) following a game modification...

I just wish Cryptic would quit HAMSTER -ing with existing content - and limit their alterations to newly released content.

The same thing happened following the Mod 6 release, all of my characters who previously did well or held their own in Sharandar and the Dread Ring were suddenly getting killed with one hit from their opponents, so I had to upgrade armor and enhancements go even be able to play the game at the same level with the same proficiency as I was able to before.

I would have been fine with having to grind for better gear and enhancements to be able to progress into the new Elemental Evil content, especially since players were often able to pick up better gear simply by playing the new content... but having our current gear scaled back AND having the opponents we used to hold our own against made more powerful - that was just a low blow as far as I was concerned.

I think the same kind of thing happened with the implementation of Mod 16, player stats and abilities were scaled back, many opponents were made more powerful and proficient and not just in the newly introduced areas but game wide in all areas.

Thankfully TPB's seemed to be willing to scale back some of those changes maybe to be gradually and selectively reintroduced at a later time, instead of all at once, but my point is it happened before so no one should be too shocked that it happen again -

It is what it is, welcome to Neverwinter.