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.
Casual Gamers
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories. "In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
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.
Casual Gamers
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories. "In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
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.
Casual Gamers
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories. "In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
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.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories. "In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
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.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories. "In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
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
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.
Oath strike forces the target to attack you. Vow seemed okay to me - but I haven't used it much outside boss battles.
I'm betting that after a respec they'll be the most sought after. Healing, bonus damage and damage mitigation.
Casual Gamers
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories. "In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
Oath Strike really works? And it's only until the third strike, I have never used it, tbh, but Binding Oath also forces enemies to attack the pally, and everyone knows that ain't true, lol. And I keep saying the same, Pally's aggro is fkd up, and if they were really balancing the class, they should've adressed the existing problems with the encounters, e.g. Relentless avenger targeting allies, Divine touch being underpowered, Binding oath not generating aggro, Smite multi-casting annoying sound, Bane's inconsistency at use.
This game is getting worse with each new mod, and it ain't because pallys or GoH clerics, back in mod 5 you were actually rewarded for completing dungeons, you could get armor that you could post in AH not some poor bound to Account salvage, you could get your AD by Leadership and then focus on having fun or trying to complete one dungeon after work and before going to sleep, but with mod 6 everything became more of a grind, you have to do 24 repeatable quests in each of the 4 different areas and you won't even get to 70 if you do all of them, everything became bound to Account and bound to Character on Pickup (I have pulled 4 Eyes of Lathander on Dread ring and I can't even sell them) and unbound because they introduced a brand new runic bag, the introduction of injuries and VIP's immunity to them at the same time and don't even get me started with the wards fiasco.
Now, in the name of 'balance' they start nerfing classes for the game to be 'challenging' again, and they don't even bother in fixing the bugs affecting those classes. Oh! But when a bug benefits the players like Shores, the Dragonflight and now the Lostmauth set, they know how to fix them!
The upcoming nerf was definitely needed. I mean come on one Artifact set clearly out shining the rest? Literally having God mode on at all times having no risk of dying and no need to dodge...
Now, I believe they should've balanced the classes before they did this and fixed the bugs you're going to have useless classes now. And classes that are too strong outdoing the rest, GWF need their damaged tuned (not to mod 5 levels), SW are bugged I mean a 2.5k item level doing more damage than 4k other classes? Buff CWs damage or buff control or something.
CWs are now crippled they will be dealing subpar damage (below a DPS GF and Cleric), CC is useless this mod, and sure they can buff but no where near as much a GF or DC. OPs aren't very formidable tanks vs a GF who can handle threat a lot better and eat up everyone's damage by 50%.
CWs will be irrelevant honestly, and OPs will be at end game as well.
And I agree with you guys about dungeons and skirmishes giving <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> rewards I'm played this game last year where bosses dropped BoE equipment that could sell from anywhere between 50-700k. Man those were the days.
I think it’s worth noting that this is not really an OP nerf – I mean, obviously we’re getting nerfed in the face, but just about every class will need to respec at least a little for the new world, and some will be looking at big overhauls. Clerics will need to run buff or heal, rather than DPS. GF will need to tank rather than DPS. All DPS classes will need to give consideration to health, defense and deflect, along abilities that will allow them to dodge - since they can't just stand there and rattle off their rotation anymore.
Casual Gamers
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories. "In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
This game is getting worse with each new mod, and it ain't because pallys or GoH clerics, back in mod 5 you were actually rewarded for completing dungeons, you could get armor that you could post in AH not some poor bound to Account salvage, you could get your AD by Leadership and then focus on having fun or trying to complete one dungeon after work and before going to sleep, but with mod 6 everything became more of a grind, everything became bound to Account and bound to Character on Pickup (I have pulled 4 Eyes of Lathander on Dread ring and I can't even sell them) and don't even get me started with the wards fiasco.
Now, in the name of 'balance' they start nerfing classes for the game to be 'challenging' again, and they don't even bother in fixing the bugs affecting those classes. Oh! But when a bug benefits the players like Shores, the Dragonflight and now the Lostmauth set, they know how to fix them!
I think you nail it all there lol. I mean sure they probably wanted to stop that boot and loot thing, but they could definately give the players there own drop but unbound, like the horn at the moment. Its the only item that is worth getting so people wanna run lostmauth all the time. But with the nerf, will it be worth as much? Not sure... lol. I wish they would introduce all kinds of cool armors, unique in look, so players could sell them on the AH, if not for the stats at least for the transmutes?
Right now dungeons are just a grindfest to get your salvage for double ad to refine and thats it... You get a few ADs as well for running them but that ends there. Unless you do lostmauth and hope for a horn. I got 2 so far in over 100 runs, so the drop rate ain't horrible but its not crazy good either. Got one necklace and a few belts(but belts sold for like 20k)
If dungeons become challenging and take 45min to complete and still just give salvagable, not even sure ill do them anymore...
Current way the game is designed, dungeons are made to be speed runs.
And yeah for the "bugs fixes" indeed... when its against us, who cares right? But when its against them(or they wallet i should say) thats like FIX ASAP.
Bugs we are still waiting on a fix? Horde reclamation resets, throne infiltration, classes as you said and so on. Heard throne should be fixed with mod9... so if its true at least its that but still...
As for eyes of lathander, i keep running those dread ring quest, never got one... i have best gauntlet and all, your lucky to have got some... altough i don't even know if i would use it or not personally. But yeah this is one item that should be unbounded.
And finally for the wards... yeah, this one still feel like an open wound for me, i don't think ill ever forgive them for that.
What bother me the most in this game is everytime i finally get to a point to enjoy something, they change it.
For exemple :
1) Just got 60, wanted to run the well of dragon and do tiamat, next mod drop, zone locked again, tiamat became almost "unplayable" (even to this day, ran it once tonight for fun and had a few friends running it in different instance for same results)
2) Finally get leadership up to a decent level, start making AD, bam... they kill it.
3) Finally get my character to good IS, up those artifacts and equipement, but now they are nerfing the lostmauth set.. Altough they will offer a trade, i mean i don't even know what to change it for? I followed a pre-made built. Im bad when it comes to stats and all
4) Finally opening lockboxes more, get some Tradebars, keep them for the futur "lower cost" only to have them change there mind last sec. Altough the ones they gave me for free did covered the tradebars i had at that moment at 200 a piece, its all the ones i won't be able to get AFTER.
5) The removal of campaign dungeons, some even before i could experience them once... even tough they are actually part of the story...
Im sure i could find other exemples... I probably have catch up now, and will be able to follow content as it release, but all these times i was thinking "finally ill be able to do that" only to end up being tell nop sorry this won't work anymore.
Now im sure there is some positive changes to the game, and yes i will recognize this. For exemple the whole concept of "event" in the day time frame i hated that, run skirmishes when the "event" was on to get diamond, it was really a bad concept. I had to tell friends at some point "sorry dude ill come play later on cod, cause the event is coming and i need the diamonds" And there is certainly others, but the negative ones always feel "in your face" more...
And lately , all the good things they put in the game, like getting rings for salvaging out of Demonic HE to give better chances at making diamonds are often counter balanced by something else like the market skyrocketing... So its easier to make diamonds, cool, everything cost so much more to a point its like the positive change get buried in a counter negative...
To sum it up in a shorter version, i think the main problem comes from the love/hate relationship some of us have with this game and the devs. When a new mod drop, we should simply be happy. New content, that is COOL right!!? Yes it is, not only new expension story/quest/dungeons but cool mount stables system and all, thats awesome at first glance. But then they have to somewhat inject negativity in it to counter balance the positive. We get worried about the changes, we feel the game won't be the same... So instead of following the path of "They give us cool free content, we are happy, we want to thank them by investing some resonable money in the game" (that is for a normal free to play guy like me) But instead of that... take underdark for exemple. Content itself not bad at all, not stellar either, but decent enough for adding some hours of fun in the game. But then i cursed so much over trying to get that throne infiltration achievement because its poorly glitched, combine with the wards scandal, at that point i didn't felt like giving them a dime, and actually encouraged a boycott, said to people do not give them any money til they give us back the wards, and fix throne.
Now with new mod, we still don't have the wards back(guess our wallets didn't speak loud enough) and on top of that all sorts of nerfs/changes are coming that make us worried. So instead of getting joyfull for new content, we are worried of the upcoming changes. Thats NOT cool !!! The problem is there.
I love Neverwinter, i truly do, i have not put over 55 days of playtime in this game for nothing. I never got invested in a game politics/developements as much as this one beside maybe gears of war, my favourite franchise in term of online gaming. But when i feel the devs keep doing what they do, it tarnish my love for it... Its like if they would give me 2 candies. One is very good, the other i really don't like it. But to get to the good one, i need to eat the bad one first.
Well in the end that wasn't so much of a "short version", sorry guys i am just not able to do very short post... its not in my nature lol.
I agree with a lot of what you've said. I think a lot of the problem is they seem unable to take a holistic view when they introduce, well, pretty much anything.
E.g: introduce the ubertank - Paladin - & give it the ability to offer almost total damage immunity for an entire party - without regard for what it'd do to the Guardian Fighter class. Then kill the new class by virtually removing that ability a couple of months later.
Nerf earning & trading ability on the premise of 'AD = Game Time' but limit all AD from runs to just x2, regardless of your Game Time.
Give CC encounters to nearly all classes then increase npc CC Resist (to 100% on bosses) which almost nullifies the Control Wizard class.
Recognise that the GWF is underpowered (due to a previous nerf) & counter this by making it by far the most powerful class in the game - meaning parties only want GWF & SW for dps.
The lack of ability to consider the impact that a single change can have across all classes & how they form as groups to tackle end game content is a serious flaw in their ability to deliver a rewarding experience.
If players haven't rolled the current favorite class already, they spend the next 6 months being unwelcome in parties & if they create one, they spend several months getting it geared only to be nerfed on the next update, making a new class the new 'uber' & totally invalidating a players investment. E.g. how many 2.8k+ Oathbound Paladins do you see that have the word "bubble" in their character name? loads. I.e. they were created around that skill set, bought/earned their way to a good IL and have it taken away a little while later.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't class envy as I play 6 classes. This is frustration at seeing investments nullified every few months.*
Edit: *And the ability to play whichever class I feel like and it having a place and purpose 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
@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.
no balance just broken.
@thefiresidecat I come from the perspective of someone at pretty much endgame, playing with optimized groups on PC. DC will definitely still have a place, both in premades and in pug groups and here is a reason why:
1) In pug groups, an AC DC can spam AA and keep everyone alive. AA is LITERALLY like bubble in that it makes you immune to everything when spammed. Post elol set nerf (since I play on PC, haste+elol set has been nerfed) I was able to duo every single T2 with a dc, both of us wearing mod 5 sets with 40k HP, because of the ability of the DC to make the party immune to everything. The only fight that was a little challenging was the last fight in etos, because the dots from spiders would consume the AA spheres slightly faster than the rate at which the DC puts them up. Anointed Army is the new Divine Protector.
2) In premades, a buffer DC drastically increases your clear speed, trivializing all content.
As for immunity, nobody needs it, the game is really easy and rather than complaining about the lack of immunity, you should adapt to the change and learn to dodge red.
Comments
* 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.
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories.
"In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
JOIN US.
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.
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories.
"In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
JOIN US.
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.
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories.
"In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
JOIN US.
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...
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories.
"In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
JOIN US.
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.
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories.
"In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
JOIN US.
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
Vow seemed okay to me - but I haven't used it much outside boss battles. I'm betting that after a respec they'll be the most sought after. Healing, bonus damage and damage mitigation.
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories.
"In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
JOIN US.
This game is getting worse with each new mod, and it ain't because pallys or GoH clerics, back in mod 5 you were actually rewarded for completing dungeons, you could get armor that you could post in AH not some poor bound to Account salvage, you could get your AD by Leadership and then focus on having fun or trying to complete one dungeon after work and before going to sleep, but with mod 6 everything became more of a grind, you have to do 24 repeatable quests in each of the 4 different areas and you won't even get to 70 if you do all of them, everything became bound to Account and bound to Character on Pickup (I have pulled 4 Eyes of Lathander on Dread ring and I can't even sell them) and unbound because they introduced a brand new runic bag, the introduction of injuries and VIP's immunity to them at the same time and don't even get me started with the wards fiasco.
Now, in the name of 'balance' they start nerfing classes for the game to be 'challenging' again, and they don't even bother in fixing the bugs affecting those classes. Oh! But when a bug benefits the players like Shores, the Dragonflight and now the Lostmauth set, they know how to fix them!
Now, I believe they should've balanced the classes before they did this and fixed the bugs you're going to have useless classes now. And classes that are too strong outdoing the rest, GWF need their damaged tuned (not to mod 5 levels), SW are bugged I mean a 2.5k item level doing more damage than 4k other classes? Buff CWs damage or buff control or something.
CWs are now crippled they will be dealing subpar damage (below a DPS GF and Cleric), CC is useless this mod, and sure they can buff but no where near as much a GF or DC. OPs aren't very formidable tanks vs a GF who can handle threat a lot better and eat up everyone's damage by 50%.
CWs will be irrelevant honestly, and OPs will be at end game as well.
And I agree with you guys about dungeons and skirmishes giving <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> rewards I'm played this game last year where bosses dropped BoE equipment that could sell from anywhere between 50-700k. Man those were the days.
Alts:
Saxy Healz Paladin (Oathkeeper) [Xbox and PC]
Saxon Ranger (Warden)
Yuri Wizard (Thaumaturge)
Member of the guild: Legacy (Xbox) and Strawberry Yakuza (PC)
Clerics will need to run buff or heal, rather than DPS. GF will need to tank rather than DPS. All DPS classes will need to give consideration to health, defense and deflect, along abilities that will allow them to dodge - since they can't just stand there and rattle off their rotation anymore.
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories.
"In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
JOIN US.
Right now dungeons are just a grindfest to get your salvage for double ad to refine and thats it... You get a few ADs as well for running them but that ends there. Unless you do lostmauth and hope for a horn. I got 2 so far in over 100 runs, so the drop rate ain't horrible but its not crazy good either. Got one necklace and a few belts(but belts sold for like 20k)
If dungeons become challenging and take 45min to complete and still just give salvagable, not even sure ill do them anymore...
Current way the game is designed, dungeons are made to be speed runs.
And yeah for the "bugs fixes" indeed... when its against us, who cares right? But when its against them(or they wallet i should say) thats like FIX ASAP.
Bugs we are still waiting on a fix? Horde reclamation resets, throne infiltration, classes as you said and so on. Heard throne should be fixed with mod9... so if its true at least its that but still...
As for eyes of lathander, i keep running those dread ring quest, never got one... i have best gauntlet and all, your lucky to have got some... altough i don't even know if i would use it or not personally. But yeah this is one item that should be unbounded.
And finally for the wards... yeah, this one still feel like an open wound for me, i don't think ill ever forgive them for that.
What bother me the most in this game is everytime i finally get to a point to enjoy something, they change it.
For exemple :
1) Just got 60, wanted to run the well of dragon and do tiamat, next mod drop, zone locked again, tiamat became almost "unplayable" (even to this day, ran it once tonight for fun and had a few friends running it in different instance for same results)
2) Finally get leadership up to a decent level, start making AD, bam... they kill it.
3) Finally get my character to good IS, up those artifacts and equipement, but now they are nerfing the lostmauth set.. Altough they will offer a trade, i mean i don't even know what to change it for? I followed a pre-made built. Im bad when it comes to stats and all
4) Finally opening lockboxes more, get some Tradebars, keep them for the futur "lower cost" only to have them change there mind last sec. Altough the ones they gave me for free did covered the tradebars i had at that moment at 200 a piece, its all the ones i won't be able to get AFTER.
5) The removal of campaign dungeons, some even before i could experience them once... even tough they are actually part of the story...
Im sure i could find other exemples... I probably have catch up now, and will be able to follow content as it release, but all these times i was thinking "finally ill be able to do that" only to end up being tell nop sorry this won't work anymore.
Now im sure there is some positive changes to the game, and yes i will recognize this. For exemple the whole concept of "event" in the day time frame i hated that, run skirmishes when the "event" was on to get diamond, it was really a bad concept. I had to tell friends at some point "sorry dude ill come play later on cod, cause the event is coming and i need the diamonds" And there is certainly others, but the negative ones always feel "in your face" more...
And lately , all the good things they put in the game, like getting rings for salvaging out of Demonic HE to give better chances at making diamonds are often counter balanced by something else like the market skyrocketing... So its easier to make diamonds, cool, everything cost so much more to a point its like the positive change get buried in a counter negative...
Anyway thats how i feel...
Now with new mod, we still don't have the wards back(guess our wallets didn't speak loud enough) and on top of that all sorts of nerfs/changes are coming that make us worried. So instead of getting joyfull for new content, we are worried of the upcoming changes. Thats NOT cool !!! The problem is there.
I love Neverwinter, i truly do, i have not put over 55 days of playtime in this game for nothing. I never got invested in a game politics/developements as much as this one beside maybe gears of war, my favourite franchise in term of online gaming. But when i feel the devs keep doing what they do, it tarnish my love for it... Its like if they would give me 2 candies. One is very good, the other i really don't like it. But to get to the good one, i need to eat the bad one first.
Well in the end that wasn't so much of a "short version", sorry guys i am just not able to do very short post... its not in my nature lol.
E.g:
introduce the ubertank - Paladin - & give it the ability to offer almost total damage immunity for an entire party - without regard for what it'd do to the Guardian Fighter class. Then kill the new class by virtually removing that ability a couple of months later.
Nerf earning & trading ability on the premise of 'AD = Game Time' but limit all AD from runs to just x2, regardless of your Game Time.
Give CC encounters to nearly all classes then increase npc CC Resist (to 100% on bosses) which almost nullifies the Control Wizard class.
Recognise that the GWF is underpowered (due to a previous nerf) & counter this by making it by far the most powerful class in the game - meaning parties only want GWF & SW for dps.
The lack of ability to consider the impact that a single change can have across all classes & how they form as groups to tackle end game content is a serious flaw in their ability to deliver a rewarding experience.
If players haven't rolled the current favorite class already, they spend the next 6 months being unwelcome in parties & if they create one, they spend several months getting it geared only to be nerfed on the next update, making a new class the new 'uber' & totally invalidating a players investment. E.g. how many 2.8k+ Oathbound Paladins do you see that have the word "bubble" in their character name? loads. I.e. they were created around that skill set, bought/earned their way to a good IL and have it taken away a little while later.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't class envy as I play 6 classes. This is frustration at seeing investments nullified every few months.*
Edit: *And the ability to play whichever class I feel like and it having a place and purpose 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
1) In pug groups, an AC DC can spam AA and keep everyone alive. AA is LITERALLY like bubble in that it makes you immune to everything when spammed. Post elol set nerf (since I play on PC, haste+elol set has been nerfed) I was able to duo every single T2 with a dc, both of us wearing mod 5 sets with 40k HP, because of the ability of the DC to make the party immune to everything. The only fight that was a little challenging was the last fight in etos, because the dots from spiders would consume the AA spheres slightly faster than the rate at which the DC puts them up. Anointed Army is the new Divine Protector.
2) In premades, a buffer DC drastically increases your clear speed, trivializing all content.
As for immunity, nobody needs it, the game is really easy and rather than complaining about the lack of immunity, you should adapt to the change and learn to dodge red.