@noworries#8859 Since it seems that you wont budge regarding WoB and CB change, even tho the loss of dmg % is as high as @tremeliques#2035 explained in the comment above on this page can you do just one thing for us PvE TRs?
Remove the Action Points block from Lurker's Assault. I wont ask for damage % increase higher than 30% for it, even tho its highly needed but at least remove the AP block it has. Not sure why it is still there in the first place, all the powers that may have been problematic in combination with it are gone(nerfed). If it would be a problem for PvP you can keep AP block for PvP areas but in PvE it would mean a lot if it would be removed.
Well i don't know what to say, coming back from an small break, (thx to my louzy internet provider) to read this mess...
But @noworries#8859 it couldn't be that Cryp can bring this life, your developer @balanced#2849 and maybe his team (i don't know) made this changes (nerfes) and than he left (or being fired who knows).
And also left you alone with this mess and how to handle it.
And if i am allowed to say so:
You and your team for class balancing have 0 absolutely 0 chances anymore "against" the players testing constantly stuff on the preview server. And this is (for me) understandable, you have simply not the time to test each group synergy, paragon pathes, mounts, mount powers, companions and so on (the whole package)... But these people i mentioned, take their time to test stuff out, being it to test the most viable party stuff or to see if there is an gamebreaking bug.
Once more, you should work together with the community and not again against them (in this case my favourite class the TR).
If even Foss said, that the Tr should have the highest Single Target Dps Output...he should have, but all i have heard in the Tr discord this weekend was.....Doomsday.
And this is my next point of view...
If we would invite an new player in our guild, and he would ask me "Is the Tr worth to play?"
I have to say, i reached an point to answer...
"No really not"
And not because of the gameplay, or the investment you have to do, to become "competitive" to other dps classes...it is more again and again these constantly ups and downs with the Tr.
I am playing also my Tr since open beta, but this time i don't know if i can stand anymore these feeling to be a more than an viable dps only class for a few weeks, or even one Module and then i have to wait again 6 or 7 Modules (and the possible changes) to be viable again, but with the feeling..
The lack of communication from the devs has been dissapointing. Why even have a forum like this is an open discussion? There is 16 pages of mostly negative feedback with 1 post from the dev team. That's not good customer service.
If I moved changes into prod with the vast majority of the feedback being negative I would lose my job.
Conducted an test on preview shard with an equally geared TR. I was executioner, he was scoundrel. He beat me on every boss fight by significant margins. He did not have to time anything, he just button mashed when anything was up and focused on keeping bleeds up with his at wills. I focused on my rotations and maximizing SoD.
Looks like TR design is heading to the same mechanics as GWFs.
Conducted an test on preview shard with an equally geared TR. I was executioner, he was scoundrel. He beat me on every boss fight by significant margins. He did not have to time anything, he just button mashed when anything was up and focused on keeping bleeds up with his at wills. I focused on my rotations and maximizing SoD.
Looks like TR design is heading to the same mechanics as GWFs.
> @miche80 said: > Conducted an test on preview shard with an equally geared TR. I was executioner, he was scoundrel. He beat me on every boss fight by significant margins. He did not have to time anything, he just button mashed when anything was up and focused on keeping bleeds up with his at wills. I focused on my rotations and maximizing SoD. > > > > Looks like TR design is heading to the same mechanics as GWFs. > > You with feytouch?
> @miche80 said: > Conducted an test on preview shard with an equally geared TR. I was executioner, he was scoundrel. He beat me on every boss fight by significant margins. He did not have to time anything, he just button mashed when anything was up and focused on keeping bleeds up with his at wills. I focused on my rotations and maximizing SoD. > > > > Looks like TR design is heading to the same mechanics as GWFs. > > You with feytouch?
Car Dev: This car has too many tires so we are going to reduce it by 2 Driver: That will make tires out of balance. Car Dev: Next we found out that there are too many lights. So we will reduce to 1. Driver: ..... Car Dev:...and switch them. Back light to the front and front light to the back. Driver: That makes no sense. Do you even drive a car? Car Dev: Nope, my favorite mode of transportation is a bicycle. Driver: That explains a lot.
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
A new week, a new Monday.
Since it's exactly a month next week since this thread started, I would like to say Thank you!
Thank you for the weekly Fane, I don't have enough disappointments in real life, so several weekly +1 rings provide that missing feeling for me.
Thank you for the class changes, now I can expiriance TR as Support TR, Healer TR, Tank TR, Cheerleader TR. Indeed we were DPSing for far too long, about a mod out of 10 is enough.
Thanks for the level 15+ skirmish next mod, if it was a dungeon no TR could have done it, now we still can. Ok, with help, maybe.
Thanks for the free time I get next mod, it is time to expiriance more disappointment in real life. Maybe some more RL dailies, same grind but at least I hear they drop currency there.
So fellow TRs, stay positive, and be grateful, it could have been worse, we could have been nerfed to lower than DC.. oh, wait..
confirmed info: 200k gloaming cuts in pvp on tank class, but you pve players just keep asking for more. So it's again situation when pve 'balance' will ruin gameplay for pvp guys. What you gonna do about it?
I wager anyone looking for PVP in an MMO be looking at Guild Wars 2 (or 1) where the game and classes are designed around PVP. Until MMOs can make bosses that have AI matching the human's capability for abstract thinking, PVE and PVP must be separately designed. Because your enemies in PVP play a lot different than your enemies in PVE.
Dark Age of Camelot is another MMO great at PVP. However, it makes me fall asleep in PVE. Because the mechanics, skills, even content, encounter, map design (arena design in GW 1/2) were implemented as tools geared towards good and enjoyable PVP gameplay. Skills that allow you to outsmart other people. And thus really pointless and uninteresting skills in terms of fighting in PVE enemies that have negative IQ.
Games pretty much fall apart if they try to do both equally. Until they manage to balance the intelligence of players and mobs both, that is. and Maybe you can let players control "PVE" bosses. (Can you imagine how scary that would be?)
Maybe you can let players control "PVE" bosses. (Can you imagine how scary that would be?)
Haaa, back in the Neverwinter Nights days, when I was DM, with my invisible DM avatar, jumping into any PNJ/monster/boss to incarnate it, waving, stalking, scaring and putting my little roleplayers communauty into extremely difficult fights or roleplay situations that are coming out of the blue.... If i'm correct, Lineage had had also a bunch of DM, UO saw some epic lord british events (and french Dofus servers in the mid 2000 had also seen some DM/MJ actions). Was a funny era to play (m)moRPg. It's really sad mmorpgs nowdays don't go for some DM to really enliven their world (even if that's never hiting a large part of the players), making some content out of the eventually boring same scripted quests/events, known by heart dungeons, and very predictible AI.
And because it is the TR thread : I upvote for the return of stealing in player character's pocket for the TR, cutting the purses and grabing the gold. Want to be more a thief than a rogue : We are already hated, let's go further !
I think the problem with CWs is that it's a Controller/Striker. Controlling/debuffs are way less important than buffs at the state of the game. As opposed to the Scourge Warlock who is Striker/Leader, and because their "Leader" skills are well done, the SW is very welcome.
Granted, I don't know 4E that well, but I'm familiar with 3/3.5E, and from that point of view Neverwinter Online focuses too much into niche specializations/subclasses of 4E classes. In 3E (and most likely 4E) Paladins did have auras and Clerics have similar spells... But Clerics were versatile.. they pre-buffed as well as provide even single target buffs during the battle and not just auras. Deciding whether to cast shields (both single targeted shields and party targeted shields) against an element, multiple elements, demons, shadowy, etc. etc. Pre-buffing, yes, does exist and is important, but it's too overshadowed by current in-combat mechanics. Or, who knows, why not a "ranged aura" where there's like a donut hole in the middle, where a Paladin provides its normal "close-ranged aura." That's not to say that Auras and the like should be taken away. I would simply add more options
Because being driven into a niche affects not just the individual player but the party composition, and by affecting party composition the aforementioned individual has now affected the gameplay and fun of the other party members who are individual players.
---
Relatively off topic, but NWO right now is in a different situation of "unbalanced" than what is typical. We currently don't have OP classes. We have very few well done classes, and the rest are underpowered. Thus, the idea of a "nerf" to any class in NWO is the method of balancing. Hell, the competitive classes should be prepared for them to have their classes nerfed to the underpowered boringness of the ones who are not up to par. I've posted in the GWF thread mainly praising how their class in mod15 is being treated with understanding of the class playstyle. And that it would be real nice to see every class, not just the TR.
Of course, eventually every class will inevitably be driven into the dirt. For balancing purposes.
I think the devs will be modifying the game to the point where all classes will have one support role and one DPS role or two support roles. This will allow us to play more than one specific build with our characters. For to long all I have heard from the TR and GWF community is, we only have one build DPS.
My guess is by mod 16 we will have 3 support roles and the damage role. The support roles will be Tank, healer and buffer. My guess is that the buffer role will be able to provide the highest % of buffs for group while the healer and tank roles will be adjusted downward for buffing. This means less buffs from Templocks, DC, GF and OPs. This would mean HR, TR and CW would get an adjustment to our buffing roles to make us stronger or the adjustment to the healer/tank classes would be so significant that you have to bring along a buffing role or two buffers to get through content.
That is my guess as the devs seem inclined to remove the double anything meta. This would mean no stacking of tanks or DCs, etc unless the 2nd role is that of a DPS. We will have to wait and see how this all plays out.
I play all three of the current roles and honestly, my favorite role that I play does not even exist it is the buffing role and I do this on my CW regularly. I really hope the devs make buffing a role and continue to adjust the game so that healers heal and tanks tank with both offering some buffs but not to the same degree as the buffing role that exist in my mind, lol...
I am just going to wait it out and see how it unfolds as I do have all classes and it is not that hard for me to simply move enchantments over to the class that makes the most sense come the next mod.
I tell what the it is going to be: kill 1 class after the other! So it will be a 3 class game: GWF, OP and DC...
Everything else will be done like SW and CW as DPS classes and GF as Tank... but they can compare this with some buff/debuff build... what I think it’s great, because I personally take GWFs only in my group when I can’t find someone else...
But for the TR you don’t have such a tree, we only got that DPS trees... and I don’t want a buff/debuff tree or something like it... it would feel so wrong... TR are assassins and this should be it
I see power looping has to be erased but not in that way...
Increase the cool down of itc, do a ap block Or let when daily overwrite the other...
Make every feat tree of the TR interesting is great but without killing the executioner feats... I like it the most and it will be unplayable in mod 15
And now i finally reached endgame status (17556 in R12 guild) it’s done for me...
Split pvp from pve section to avoid more crying for nerfs on whatever class
And to add I don’t want to play a other class or so, I don’t want a token to change class, I want a TR that’s competitive with other dps classes and that for every TR not just: the high geared, end game, Rank 20 guild TRs!!
For every TR!
This game cost me to much time and money so you can ruin it for everyone except the GWF and OP!!!
Started patching Neverwinter after half a year of hiatus, saw the "Neverwinter Class Balance" announcement, including rogue, got excited, clicked on and eventually got lead to this thread. Guess I'll see people around in about another 6 months.. Hah!
I have a 17.5k tr and its really the only class I enjoy playing. I have been thru all the "sorry no tr" days and honestly the only reason I stayed was because I had some friends that would still bring me on runs. Between mod 12 amd now they have all quit. I have been fine as a 17.5k tr but after mod15 its looks like im gonna revisit the ol days all over again. So back then i was 2-3k ish (before ilvl changes) Which changed to around 13k after changes. So basically the grind for the past year to get from 13k to 17.5 was for nothing because thats about how viable I will be after mod15... a 13k tr
I wonder if I can get a refund for all the money I spent this year because im done if these changes go live in console.
Maybe you can let players control "PVE" bosses. (Can you imagine how scary that would be?)
Haaa, back in the Neverwinter Nights days, when I was DM, with my invisible DM avatar, jumping into any PNJ/monster/boss to incarnate it, waving, stalking, scaring and putting my little roleplayers communauty into extremely difficult fights or roleplay situations that are coming out of the blue.... If i'm correct, Lineage had had also a bunch of DM, UO saw some epic lord british events (and french Dofus servers in the mid 2000 had also seen some DM/MJ actions). Was a funny era to play (m)moRPg. It's really sad mmorpgs nowdays don't go for some DM to really enliven their world (even if that's never hiting a large part of the players), making some content out of the eventually boring same scripted quests/events, known by heart dungeons, and very predictible AI.
And because it is the TR thread : I upvote for the return of stealing in player character's pocket for the TR, cutting the purses and grabing the gold. Want to be more a thief than a rogue : We are already hated, let's go further !
FIRST THAT WAS ME YOU WERE QUOTING.
Secondly, I definitely got the idea from other games. I actually wasn't thinkin about NWN, but from my years of playing on persistent worlds I know exactly what you mean. Too bad playing with a party through a dungeon never worked out. Too clunky I guess. The idea actually came from some recent e-sports game with 3 players playing the protagonists, while the 4th would be controlling the "boss" (it was an action/FPS-ey game, though, with obviously hugely different pacing).
Basically what I was trying to relate is that in PVP you have to think outside of the box (the more surprising you can be, the better). Because other people are doing the same thing. A lot more psychology involved. There is variation in every single PVP encounter, because PVP fights are not between two stat data-sets. Fighting in PVP is about awareness + intelligence + creatively cunning.
In PVE, there is little variation. Why? Because every single PVE monsters has a negative IQ and they are scripted to always do the same thing. All your tools that help fighting another human's psychology have zero significance and distinctness against the PVE mob.
> Not my first post on this, But we all would like to know if your seriously takeing well thought out suggestions into account. Having a very hard time doing my daily/weekly grinds (17k+). Looking very hard to get out now, even today no one asks for a TR for anything, that should be your thermometer and the health of the TR, nerf us and let me be on my way.
>
> TR are one of the best dps in the game as of mod 14. For me as there is a problem with balancing PvP and PvE it will be nice to split them.
> As there are loadouts mechanism implemented, just make PvP and PvE loadouts separately, then balance both without making compromise between PvP and PvE.
>
> They already have modifiers in certain powers/feats that make big changes in PVP. I don't know why they don't work on those a bit.
>
> I don't think Devs understand the class (well, the TR and the DC. For better or worse the HR and the CW are not changing much status quo). The GWF notes show that, at least this time, there is understanding of its gameplay, mechanics, and most importantly what is enjoyable about the class. So that they can carefully work around said theme or themes, handling the "enjoyable" aspects of the class very tenderly while roughing it up with other parts.
>
> CW base mechanics are changing. Since mod 12 CW went from Thaum to Opp and with mod 15 we are now going to the Renegade feat path. CW is the worst DPS in the game and nothing is changing come mode 15.
>
> A friend tested out the TR and the damage does drop from the mod 14 bugs and glitches that exist for TR. The cool down adjustments should not happen as it is impacting all TR builds. I hope the devs modify the cool downs a bit to make encounters come back faster for the TR as these minor changes will help quite a bit. There are a few other things but I rarely play TR but friends that have been testing it out said what they see in mod 15, hopefully the devs will come back and make further adjustments in mod 16 to improve the class further.
>
> What I like about the mod 15 changes is the devs seem to be making long term builds for TR, DC, etc... but as I stated in DC and CW threads, the lack of proper up front communication about the long term goal has really hurt mod 15 class balancing.
The game is it beta mode anymore, it's too late for huge changes.
Like any marriage you cant just change who you are to be something worse or the person you are with won't be happy.
Like any relationship, what you do to attract someone is what you must maintain to keep them.
That said changing all the core stuff that made our tr's work 5 years later is a great way to make us feel cheated on and find someone more loyal to us. Someone that will listen to us and hear us. Someone that understands who we are and what we want.
We played this game because tr had the things we wanted.
Dont ruin the relationship.
So far all you said was," mmm.how about we move to venus" but we are still on earth. Move to venus (i.e. current mod 15 changes) and you can blast off without us.
Since my CW has reached end game, every mod other than 14 I have had to make some pretty big changes to even make the character worth using in end game. So I don't feel for any other character at this point.
Also you are thinking narrowly right now with the TR. DPS, DPS and DPS and OMG I'm top DPS in mod 14 devs please don't touch the TR.
I'm sorry but even with the CW changes that I dislike, I agree things need to be adjusted and I still don't like them but I do see a long term vision there and hopefully they can make it happen to improve the CW. I see the same thing with the TR but you have to give it time.
My gripe with mod 15 is the lack of communication and even what they did communicate it was after the fact and did not really mention that these changes are for the long term looking ahead into mod 16 or 17, etc...
My thing is even with all of these changes I have a gut feeling down the road the devs may have to do a full revamp to the game, because even with all of these updates the game still has still has to many other issues.
I agree with what you say in general, and I understand the long run. But these specific notes on this thread are too drastic. I would personally be okay with something more gradual and iterative. You can get a lot of long term feedback on that. These changes right here actually make people not want to play TR. Devs can't get feedback when no players are providing data and statistics to them. Especially considering that the chill, non-ridiculously-elitist-like-us, casual players will stay playing TR. Which then results in skewed, biased results, leading to patch notes that yet again do not understand the TR as played in a serious manner.
The difference between the TR is not that the TR is changing mechanics. The difference is that the only competitive paragon and feat tree got nerfed. Now it is non-competitive. On one hand, it is true (and I am glad) that they have brought up the other two trees (Saboteur, Scoundrel). But the problem is that their "balancing" is looking like all 3 feat trees will be equally competitive as the "nerfed" Mod 15 MI executioner. And by equally competitive I mean equally non-competitive as according to the patch notes.
See, you still have a choice. An alternative. You are limited in selection and creativity in mod15, yes, but you can at least switch to Renegade and be welcome to groups XD. TR doesn't have a competitive alternative, unfortunately, unless they buff Saboteur and/or Scoundrel to the point where they are stronger than the nerfed Exec. If Saboteur or Scoundrel end up party-invite viable, then I would have barely any problem with the TR.
I actually have a Opp/Thaum and a Ren/Thaum right now. The only reason I'm non-Thaum is that I want to not just do DPS but hybrid it up with other tools. There are Thaum builds, it's just that a lot of "purists" (which most guide writers are) find that Thaum is too selfish for a party.
And Forgotten Realms Wizards (and DnD in general) have many schools where DPS tends to be the minority. They are robe-wearers that draw on Mystra's Weave. There's Abjuration, aka deflection/protection spells. Conjurers, who conjure conjurable conjurees. I have no idea what the "Divine school" is, as an arcane spell school. It's before my time /hipster. Now, you got Evocation, which I believe is closest to the iconic DPS, spell-slinging robe-wearer. But an Evoker would be primarily Striker, so I suppose you could say that the Control Wizard uses lots of Evocation spells for his secondary role as Striker.
But where is the controlling? Probably in the Enchantment, Illusionist, Transmutation schools. Honestly the Control Wizard is more like Controller|Striker rather than Controller/Striker.
Pull out a Player Handbook (4e, I believe), and you can see how Wizards and Spell Schools work out in PnP.
@noworries#8859 I’d like to sum up, in a constructive, non snarky way, the frustration our community has had regarding the mod 15 changes.
1) Communication. This is the single biggest problem when it comes to these changes. You asked for feedback, responded once, and never addressed any of the concerns brought up by the testers regarding the changes. There was no discussion, or even clarification as to what your goals were with the class, and how your changes would help to reach those goals. I mean, besides, “power looping is something we want to get away from”. That brings me to item 2:
2) Confusion regarding power looping. Power looping is not any self power buff. Power looping revolves around the way Whirlwind of Blades calculates its power boost. While under the WWoB buff it does not function like Courage Breaker or Impossible to Catch (with the Press the Advantage feat). It does not simply calculate the amount of power you should have and add it. It takes all the power you have, buffs included, and instantly doubles them while under its effect duration.
This makes it very powerful as it effectively doubles the extra power buffs from CB and ITC. Here is an example I expertly copied (and edited) from one of Treme’s comments (Thanks Treme!):
Let’s say the TR player has 250k power thanks to the power share from his team mates. He then uses whirlwind hitting 5 enemies, doubling it, and ending up with 500k.
This by itself is already worth (40k+ 500k)/(40k+250k)= 86% damage increase.
Now, following that up, the TR uses courage breaker, increasing power once again, but this time, it's additive. So it adds 25% of the existing power. But it falls under the still active whirlwind buff doubling it. In other words, WWoB effectively makes CB give 50% more power, bringing the TR up to 750k power.
Now to finish it off, the TR uses impossible to catch, triggering its 10% additive power increasing feat (Press the Advantage) that also falls under the WWoB effect, giving us 75k * 2 = 150k more power.
So the TR ends up with 900k power, just from the standard powershare and 2 additive power boosts while under the multiplicative effect of Whirlwind of blades. This essentially multiplied our original power by a total of 3.6 times, increasing our damage by 3.24 times, or in other words being worth a 224% buff.
It should be noted that using this particular combination was, in part, how we have been able to compete with the damage output from other DPS classes. Replacing it with a 40% damage buff is wholly inadequate. In addition, you removed all the additive power buffs we had, which weren’t even the problem. You seem to be calling ALL power self buffs “power looping”. Either you are confused as to what power looping is, or are wanting to get rid of all self power buffs altogether. Either way, even though this was pointed out numerous times on the official feedback thread, it was never addressed by anyone. See #1 above.
3) Aura of Courage and Smoke Bomb. This was clearly over performing and everyone knew that this interaction was going to be fixed at some point. This interaction alone amounted to 25%+ of our total DPS in an endgame dungeon. The real confusion here was regarding the nerfs to smoke bomb. It seemed that the Smoke Bomb nerf was an attempt to correct the over performance of smoke bomb. But, the over performance was due to a buggy interaction with another non-TR power. You then fixed the interaction, but left the further nerf (30% reduction in damage) in place.
To give you an idea, we went from Aura of Courage proccing a whopping 33 times each time we used smoke bomb, to 1 time on the first hit. That is a nerf for SB that is pushing a million damage each time we use it. Many feel that getting rid of this specific interaction alone, brings our DPS down to a more manageable level that is in line with other DPS classes such as GWF, GF, and HR. It should be noted that we also didn’t object to ending this buggy interaction. The further nerf to smoke bomb seemed a bit overkill, but we were willing to live with it.
4) Our Meat and Potatoes. By eliminating our self power buffs (not to mention the AOC and SB interaction) without properly compensating our damage in some other way, you have handed us a severe nerf to our ability to do damage. Here is the last post by Treme (edited by me) on the official feedback thread in the forum, describing the problem more specifically:
In comparing all the feat changes, the best feat combination on mod 15 for single target is around 25%+ weaker and on AoE is around 25%+ stronger than the best feat combination in mod 14.
In comparing all dailies we lost around 50% damage buff from Whirlwind of Blades and it lasts two fewer seconds. We lost about a 13% damage buff from CB and it lasts two fewer seconds (this % for CB is while not under the effects of WoB).
In comparing the best daily combination on AoE (mod 14) we would use WoB and CB adding to a total of 172% worth of damage buffs via added power, while on mod 15 we will have to use WoB and Lurkers Assault giving us a total 82% damage buff, meaning a loss of 90%. This is not including the loss of recovery from artificers persuasion, and not accounting for the fact that LA will block our AP gain, making it impossible to keep both dailies up at the same time.
In comparing the best daily combination on Single Target (mod 14 and 15), we would use CB and LA. In mod 14, there would be a damage increase of 56%, while on mod 15, it will be an increase of 40.4%. Again, this does not take into account our loss of recovery, nor the fact that CB will be a debuff increasing the damage that your team will be able to do to the target. Regarding the debuff, however, unless you are running with two other dps classes, it will be worse since it buffs everyone's dmg on said target by about 8%.
Of course there are a few things that are really hard to put in numbers, things as the damage increase we will get from gloaming cut, the damage increase from Blade Flurry, the damage loss from the decrease of Smoke Bomb. And, the fact that we lost a bunch of recovery as well will affect us severely by increasing cooldowns which leads to less encounters powers and more at-wills powers, meaning that we will have less dailies which means less damage buffs.
So quick recap:
Single Target: We lost 30%-40% from AoC SB fix, from Dailies we lost 13%, from feats we lost 25%, we gained from gloaming cut and lost from the lack of recovery, with the total loss of 90% worth of damage buffs. In other words, we will be doing around half the damage in mod 15 than we are doing in mod 14, if not less, to single targets.
Aoe: We lost 30%-40% from AoC SB fix, from Dailies we lost 90%, from feats we gained around 25%, we gained a bit from gloaming cut and blade furry, lost a bit from SB nerf, and lost a lot from the lack of recovery, with the total loss of around around 100% worth of buffs here. As you can see, we will be doing around half the damage we are doing now. The thing with AoE is that the lack of recovery is missed here much more. For comparison we barely use at wills in Mod 14 AoE, but in the next mod, that will not be the case which will drop our damage here even more, making us do less than half of we are doing in mod 14. Maybe as little as ⅓ of what we have been doing.
For all of these predictions a few Combat Logs were used, mostly for % of where our damage comes from, at endgame.
5) Can you address the multiple reductions in the AP gain of various powers on preview, please?
6) Suggestions: Firstly, let me say that the goal you once had, to make the TR the best single target DPS, has clearly changed. However, that doesn’t seem to have been replaced by any clear purpose. Or, perhaps you do, but did not communicate that to us. Please SEE #1. Since we don’t know, our suggestions come with the assumption that you want to remove some of the unintended uses of several of our powers and include a moderate nerf to the class, as a whole, while increasing the viability of the other feat paths.
The changes made to the Sabo and Scoundrel tree are, for the most part, good changes. Also, most of the individual changes and nerfs to various powers we are okay with. We don’t like them, because we feel that fixing the buggy interaction between AoC and SB was probably enough. But, we can live with them.
The big problem is with the self power buff nerfs. If you plan on getting rid of them altogether, than you need to compensate the amount of damage we are losing via power and recovery. If you were to remove the AP gain block on Lurker’s Assault, that would allow us to perhaps keep our damage high enough to be seen as useful by other classes, without so totally killing our damage the way it is right now. Also, getting rid of the power buffs is enough. There is no need to shorten the buff time for WWoB or CB. That is excessive.
In addition, without the additional recovery we got from artificer’s persuasion in conjunction with the power buffs, our cooldowns are prohibitively long. Consider adjusting them to be on par with other DPS class’ cooldowns on similarly powerful encounters.
Most of all, communicate. If you did communicate more, you would find many TRs willing to help improve the class in the direction you want to go. The lack of communication, combined with “Balanced” sudden departure, combined with these rather draconian nerfs, leaves the TR community feeling marginalized and ignored. That leads to a lot of anger and frustration for a lot of your customers. And, it is really unnecessary. If you are a dev, and you did read this all the way to the end, thank you!
Lilia Drakon - PVE Executioner TR She Looked Lvl 18
> Not my first post on this, But we all would like to know if your seriously takeing well thought out suggestions into account. Having a very hard time doing my daily/weekly grinds (17k+). Looking very hard to get out now, even today no one asks for a TR for anything, that should be your thermometer and the health of the TR, nerf us and let me be on my way.
>
> TR are one of the best dps in the game as of mod 14. For me as there is a problem with balancing PvP and PvE it will be nice to split them.
> As there are loadouts mechanism implemented, just make PvP and PvE loadouts separately, then balance both without making compromise between PvP and PvE.
>
> They already have modifiers in certain powers/feats that make big changes in PVP. I don't know why they don't work on those a bit.
>
> I don't think Devs understand the class (well, the TR and the DC. For better or worse the HR and the CW are not changing much status quo). The GWF notes show that, at least this time, there is understanding of its gameplay, mechanics, and most importantly what is enjoyable about the class. So that they can carefully work around said theme or themes, handling the "enjoyable" aspects of the class very tenderly while roughing it up with other parts.
>
> CW base mechanics are changing. Since mod 12 CW went from Thaum to Opp and with mod 15 we are now going to the Renegade feat path. CW is the worst DPS in the game and nothing is changing come mode 15.
>
> A friend tested out the TR and the damage does drop from the mod 14 bugs and glitches that exist for TR. The cool down adjustments should not happen as it is impacting all TR builds. I hope the devs modify the cool downs a bit to make encounters come back faster for the TR as these minor changes will help quite a bit. There are a few other things but I rarely play TR but friends that have been testing it out said what they see in mod 15, hopefully the devs will come back and make further adjustments in mod 16 to improve the class further.
>
> What I like about the mod 15 changes is the devs seem to be making long term builds for TR, DC, etc... but as I stated in DC and CW threads, the lack of proper up front communication about the long term goal has really hurt mod 15 class balancing.
The game is it beta mode anymore, it's too late for huge changes.
Like any marriage you cant just change who you are to be something worse or the person you are with won't be happy.
Like any relationship, what you do to attract someone is what you must maintain to keep them.
That said changing all the core stuff that made our tr's work 5 years later is a great way to make us feel cheated on and find someone more loyal to us. Someone that will listen to us and hear us. Someone that understands who we are and what we want.
We played this game because tr had the things we wanted.
Dont ruin the relationship.
So far all you said was," mmm.how about we move to venus" but we are still on earth. Move to venus (i.e. current mod 15 changes) and you can blast off without us.
Since my CW has reached end game, every mod other than 14 I have had to make some pretty big changes to even make the character worth using in end game. So I don't feel for any other character at this point.
Also you are thinking narrowly right now with the TR. DPS, DPS and DPS and OMG I'm top DPS in mod 14 devs please don't touch the TR.
I'm sorry but even with the CW changes that I dislike, I agree things need to be adjusted and I still don't like them but I do see a long term vision there and hopefully they can make it happen to improve the CW. I see the same thing with the TR but you have to give it time.
My gripe with mod 15 is the lack of communication and even what they did communicate it was after the fact and did not really mention that these changes are for the long term looking ahead into mod 16 or 17, etc...
My thing is even with all of these changes I have a gut feeling down the road the devs may have to do a full revamp to the game, because even with all of these updates the game still has still has to many other issues.
I agree with what you say in general, and I understand the long run. But these specific notes on this thread are too drastic. I would personally be okay with something more gradual and iterative. You can get a lot of long term feedback on that. These changes right here actually make people not want to play TR. Devs can't get feedback when no players are providing data and statistics to them. Especially considering that the chill, non-ridiculously-elitist-like-us, casual players will stay playing TR. Which then results in skewed, biased results, leading to patch notes that yet again do not understand the TR as played in a serious manner.
The difference between the TR is not that the TR is changing mechanics. The difference is that the only competitive paragon and feat tree got nerfed. Now it is non-competitive. On one hand, it is true (and I am glad) that they have brought up the other two trees (Saboteur, Scoundrel). But the problem is that their "balancing" is looking like all 3 feat trees will be equally competitive as the "nerfed" Mod 15 MI executioner. And by equally competitive I mean equally non-competitive as according to the patch notes.
See, you still have a choice. An alternative. You are limited in selection and creativity in mod15, yes, but you can at least switch to Renegade and be welcome to groups XD. TR doesn't have a competitive alternative, unfortunately, unless they buff Saboteur and/or Scoundrel to the point where they are stronger than the nerfed Exec. If Saboteur or Scoundrel end up party-invite viable, then I would have barely any problem with the TR.
I actually have a Opp/Thaum and a Ren/Thaum right now. The only reason I'm non-Thaum is that I want to not just do DPS but hybrid it up with other tools. There are Thaum builds, it's just that a lot of "purists" (which most guide writers are) find that Thaum is too selfish for a party.
And Forgotten Realms Wizards (and DnD in general) have many schools where DPS tends to be the minority. They are robe-wearers that draw on Mystra's Weave. There's Abjuration, aka deflection/protection spells. Conjurers, who conjure conjurable conjurees. I have no idea what the "Divine school" is, as an arcane spell school. It's before my time /hipster. Now, you got Evocation, which I believe is closest to the iconic DPS, spell-slinging robe-wearer. But an Evoker would be primarily Striker, so I suppose you could say that the Control Wizard uses lots of Evocation spells for his secondary role as Striker.
But where is the controlling? Probably in the Enchantment, Illusionist, Transmutation schools. Honestly the Control Wizard is more like Controller|Striker rather than Controller/Striker.
Pull out a Player Handbook (4e, I believe), and you can see how Wizards and Spell Schools work out in PnP.
Why does everyone go back to 4e. Not longer after 5e one dev here stated that NWO will start to move towards using more of what is available in 5e and phaseout the 4e rule that is in the game that are no longer used by D&D.
As for TR, this is simply the stepping stone to what is coming in mod 16. Mod 16 may bring about your 2nd role for qing into content and mod 17 may bring about balancing out your 2nd role and 18 will flush out any needed updates to the dps and the 2nd role that TR can play. That is my best guess as changes like the devs have plan take time and resources to implement.
I pretty sure what we all see on test is what we will get come mod 15. I don't think there is enough time to implement further changes at this point.
Why does everyone go back to 4e. Not longer after 5e one dev here stated that NWO will start to move towards using more of what is available in 5e and phaseout the 4e rule that is in the game that are no longer used by D&D.
(1) Because there is no 5e Neverwinter Campaign book, (2) the players aren't the ones who are naming the paragon paths and character classes after specific 4e subclasses, build options, paragon paths, etc, (3) You do realize that spell schools come all they way from AD&D, right? (4) Nobody cares about anything past 3.5E/Pathfinder, if they do they're playing another game and,
(5e) still uses the same original eight schools of spells for Wizard specialties that have existed since the beginning of time (1989), with the addition of uhh 6 others. http://dnd5e.wikia.com/wiki/Wizard#Arcane_Tradition
Wow, after 30 years they have phased out..... nothing. They did add a few. So more like... phasing... in.
Kinda sad you don't even know your own class. Or game, for that matter.
As for TR, this is simply the stepping stone to what is coming in mod 16. Mod 16 may bring about your 2nd role for qing into content and mod 17 may bring about balancing out your 2nd role and 18 will flush out any needed updates to the dps and the 2nd role that TR can play. That is my best guess as changes like the devs have plan take time and resources to implement.
Do they pay you to advertise? Because all you're doing is guaranteeing something that is not guarantee-able. The only thing ever guaranteed is a game release date of "soon." So either you're trying to placate with the rhetoric of the modern politician, or you've developed Cryptic into some sort of cult of personality, that they can do no wrong.
That's stupid. Even I'm not predicting things will go worse or better. Given that Mod15 isn't live yet, there's always the odd possibility of rethinking things within the next month.
That's why we're providing feedback instead of holding hands, full of hope.
0
demonmongerMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,350Arc User
> @doublerainbow#8002 said: > The lack of communication from the devs has been dissapointing. Why even have a forum like this is an open discussion? There is 16 pages of mostly negative feedback with 1 post from the dev team. That's not good customer service. > > If I moved changes into prod with the vast majority of the feedback being negative I would lose my job.
We have a forum so we can post our best builds and tactics and get nerfed.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I hate paying taxes! Why must I pay thousands of dollars in taxes when everything I buy is taxed anyways!
Give to any class 500k power and let tr alone since 500k power is normal in tr book. OR is more than 500k power?;
No no, lets give TR an AoE at will, and double the attack speed while in stealth, without stealth depletion. + Highest self buffs in the game, because that is the base line in Mamalion book? Oh and Lashing blade... 3 targets and half the CD please..
Damage for TRs went down from where they were in M14. This is called out many times in this thread as a reason that different powers should get buffed up. However, generally it isn't also acknowledged that TRs had sky high damage in M14 and that isn't where any class should be at.
100 million damage in a single hit vs a boss is not where the gameplay is meant to be. As such, some dynamics were lessened to bring TRs into a more realistic place for outgoing damage.
Smoke Bomb didn't have its damage reduced because of the AoC bug, that was a bug and as such it was fixed. The damage was reduced because it was a power primarily intended to control targets, not to also be one of the highest damaging powers in the TR arsenal and as such be used in almost all situations.
Balance doesn't just mean reducing/increasing the stats on a power. Sometimes synergies need to be changed or removed all together, and other times functionality needs to be significantly changed to open up other options in a class. We need to be able to make those kinds of changes, when necessary, or we can't get the game into a good place with classes/content.
This week I did add a base power to the TR class that is giving all At-Wills, Encounters, and Dailies a 5% damage multiplier boost. Overall a lot of the feedback in the thread is that the 3 feat trees are actually close to one another now, but that damage may be on the low side. Because of this we went with a universal damage increase for M15 instead of boosting something that may have pulled the feat trees further apart again.
so it seems they are trying to push the tr out of the game if you ask me
Yeah. Unless they realize that (unfortunately) a single competitive build is more important than intra-class balance (not inter-party balance). For all intents and purposes I see Exec nerfed to a degree, and THEN they balance by giving the other trees some love, each feat tree on par...
Except, it's not love. Because all that is going on means there isn't an alternative anymore. And honestly, not every TR wants to play MI Exec. We're unconsciously forced to, for parties tend to choose the better option.
I completely do understand the frustration of nerf/buff rearrangement of the CW. In mod14 the TR were able to be competitive, but very limited in build in order to be competitive. And invited.
The difference between the mod15 changes for CW and those for TR is that (it seems like) the TR don't have a replacement of that build. Granted, not sure what you're talking about, because Thaum, Opp, and Rene have been build options forever. All you're saying is that Thaum is an issue. That's nice, but Wizards are only damage focused depending on how the specialize through all the schools, and also must choose spells to memorize per day, with the ability to choose the same spell in multiple spellbook "slots" so you can cast it multiple times.
If you ever played Neverwinter Nights 1/2 and its expansions and member-created modules (or Icewind Dale 2.. or Temple of Elemental Evil), you'd see that is how you build a wizard in 3e. Same for playing the 2nd edition AD&D games: Baldur's Gate 1/Talesoftheswordcoast expansion/2/ToB expansion, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale 1...
The funny thing is that Baldur's Gate 1 is close but not that close to the first DnD games. The first ones were actually from 1988, the "Gold Box" games, which started with Pool of Radiance. (And I hope you realize that is Forgotten Realms). Another Gold Box Engine game was from 1990, was AD&D aka 2e "Champions of Krynn" (And I hope you realize that is Dragonlance). Actually it was a trilogy.. "Death Knights of Krynn" and "The Dark Queen of Krynn."
As of now, the Control Wizard plays MUCH more like the pen and paper Sorcerer. Sorcerers (well, at least from what I remember in 3e), don't have to prepare a spellbook. Yet Sorcerers have to permanently choose which spells they learn, whereas a Wizard can draw from anything they've managed to learn and scribble in their spellbook during a PnP session.
What I see when analyzing CW mechanics, skillsets, etc. Is that the "Spell Mastery" slot is somewhat similar in specializing in a spell that represents a spell school, somewhat.
Some wizards, occassionally known as generalists, are less inclined to specialize in the various schools of magic... These wizards tend to fall into a number of sub-categories, which are listed below.
Control wizard
Favoring battle from as great of a distance as reasonable, control wizards prefer spells that hinder or restrict their enemies rather than those that are particularly deadly... Many of the spells used by control wizards are from the conjuration or enchantment schools, though not all.[15]
War wizard
War wizards, not to be confused with the well known War Wizards of Cormyr, are those non-specialized wizards who prefer power to delicacy. War wizards prefer to use spells that deal damage in large amounts. Many of their spells hail from the evocation school, though others are from the conjuration or transmutation schools...[15]
¿Comprende? "War wizards" bias towards Evocation (see "Thayan Evokers"). "Control Wizards" bias towards CC, usually from Conjuration and Enchantment, while as they are generalists they can pick and choose Control-oriented spells from any school.
In fact, you should be happy that you even have a damage dealing tree. Because what a Control Wizard built PnP decides to do a secondary, it may be Evocation but it could also be: Abjuration, Divination, Necromancy, Illusion, or Transmutation.
And before you retort that this is fake or some HAMSTER, if you look at the citations you'll see that [15] is from the 4e Player Handbook. Oddly from the main Player Handbook, and not from a Forgotten Realms campaign setting book. *shrug*
Anyways, Cryptic was kinda smart here. They intended to have the Control Wizard be primarily a CC class, with their "secondary" being a DPSer. Sadly (or happily, depending on the person), CC isn't that useful, and Cryptic gave Control Wizards more DeePS to balance that out.
Because if they were faithful, Control Wizards would be almost all focused on "the conjuration or enchantment schools," with the minority "though not all." Instead of focusing on two specific schools, the NWO (and 4e) is a lot more lax about that. The "Control Wizard" here actually takes most of its control spells from the evocation (elementalist spells). That's why the CW's spells don't ONLY do DPS, there's control and debuffs involved as well as buffing since controlling really isn't a thing endgame. It's also why the NWO Control Wizard controls through evocation spells. Because elementalist spells, on paper, lets you both control via the elements and attack via the elements. So by making the Control Wizard use Evocation as his source of Control, you've also given him secondary striking capability via throwing in some of the Evoker's straight damage spells.
ANYWAYS, if 5e phases that out, that's not about phasing out 4e, it's about phasing out a specific mechanic that is 30 years tradition. They'd be phasing out something not just significant, but enjoyable and interesting (how to build a Wizard is AD&D-3e-3.5e-4e, etc.).
Comments
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Since it seems that you wont budge regarding WoB and CB change, even tho the loss of dmg % is as high as @tremeliques#2035 explained in the comment above on this page can you do just one thing for us PvE TRs?
Remove the Action Points block from Lurker's Assault. I wont ask for damage % increase higher than 30% for it, even tho its highly needed but at least remove the AP block it has.
Not sure why it is still there in the first place, all the powers that may have been problematic in combination with it are gone(nerfed). If it would be a problem for PvP you can keep AP block for PvP areas but in PvE it would mean a lot if it would be removed.
But @noworries#8859 it couldn't be that Cryp can bring this life, your developer @balanced#2849 and maybe his team (i don't know) made this changes (nerfes) and than he left (or being fired who knows).
And also left you alone with this mess and how to handle it.
And if i am allowed to say so:
You and your team for class balancing have 0 absolutely 0 chances anymore "against" the players testing constantly stuff on the preview server.
And this is (for me) understandable, you have simply not the time to test each group synergy, paragon pathes, mounts, mount powers, companions and so on (the whole package)...
But these people i mentioned, take their time to test stuff out, being it to test the most viable party stuff or to see if there is an gamebreaking bug.
Once more, you should work together with the community and not again against them (in this case my favourite class the TR).
If even Foss said, that the Tr should have the highest Single Target Dps Output...he should have, but all i have heard in the Tr discord this weekend was.....Doomsday.
And this is my next point of view...
If we would invite an new player in our guild, and he would ask me "Is the Tr worth to play?"
I have to say, i reached an point to answer...
"No really not"
And not because of the gameplay, or the investment you have to do, to become "competitive" to other dps classes...it is more again and again these constantly ups and downs with the Tr.
I am playing also my Tr since open beta, but this time i don't know if i can stand anymore these feeling to be a more than an viable dps only class for a few weeks, or even one Module and then i have to wait again 6 or 7 Modules (and the possible changes) to be viable again, but with the feeling..
"Oh boy, they will nerf me again on next Mod..."
If I moved changes into prod with the vast majority of the feedback being negative I would lose my job.
Looks like TR design is heading to the same mechanics as GWFs.
> Conducted an test on preview shard with an equally geared TR. I was executioner, he was scoundrel. He beat me on every boss fight by significant margins. He did not have to time anything, he just button mashed when anything was up and focused on keeping bleeds up with his at wills. I focused on my rotations and maximizing SoD.
>
>
>
> Looks like TR design is heading to the same mechanics as GWFs.
>
> You with feytouch?
> @miche80 said:
> Conducted an test on preview shard with an equally geared TR. I was executioner, he was scoundrel. He beat me on every boss fight by significant margins. He did not have to time anything, he just button mashed when anything was up and focused on keeping bleeds up with his at wills. I focused on my rotations and maximizing SoD.
>
>
>
> Looks like TR design is heading to the same mechanics as GWFs.
>
> You with feytouch?
Yes
Car Dev: This car has too many tires so we are going to reduce it by 2
Driver: That will make tires out of balance.
Car Dev: Next we found out that there are too many lights. So we will reduce to 1.
Driver: .....
Car Dev:...and switch them. Back light to the front and front light to the back.
Driver: That makes no sense. Do you even drive a car?
Car Dev: Nope, my favorite mode of transportation is a bicycle.
Driver: That explains a lot.
¨˜ˆ”°¹~•-.„¸ρℓαуιиg иєνєяωιитєя ѕιи¢є 2015¸„.-•~¹°”ˆ˜¨
https://www.tamingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/tree-swing-project-management-large.png
Since it's exactly a month next week since this thread started, I would like to say Thank you!
Thank you for the weekly Fane, I don't have enough disappointments in real life, so several weekly +1 rings provide that missing feeling for me.
Thank you for the class changes, now I can expiriance TR as Support TR, Healer TR, Tank TR, Cheerleader TR. Indeed we were DPSing for far too long, about a mod out of 10 is enough.
Thanks for the level 15+ skirmish next mod, if it was a dungeon no TR could have done it, now we still can. Ok, with help, maybe.
Thanks for the free time I get next mod, it is time to expiriance more disappointment in real life. Maybe some more RL dailies, same grind but at least I hear they drop currency there.
So fellow TRs, stay positive, and be grateful, it could have been worse, we could have been nerfed to lower than DC.. oh, wait..
Dark Age of Camelot is another MMO great at PVP. However, it makes me fall asleep in PVE. Because the mechanics, skills, even content, encounter, map design (arena design in GW 1/2) were implemented as tools geared towards good and enjoyable PVP gameplay. Skills that allow you to outsmart other people. And thus really pointless and uninteresting skills in terms of fighting in PVE enemies that have negative IQ.
Games pretty much fall apart if they try to do both equally. Until they manage to balance the intelligence of players and mobs both, that is. and Maybe you can let players control "PVE" bosses. (Can you imagine how scary that would be?)
It's really sad mmorpgs nowdays don't go for some DM to really enliven their world (even if that's never hiting a large part of the players), making some content out of the eventually boring same scripted quests/events, known by heart dungeons, and very predictible AI.
And because it is the TR thread : I upvote for the return of stealing in player character's pocket for the TR, cutting the purses and grabing the gold. Want to be more a thief than a rogue : We are already hated, let's go further !
My guess is by mod 16 we will have 3 support roles and the damage role. The support roles will be Tank, healer and buffer. My guess is that the buffer role will be able to provide the highest % of buffs for group while the healer and tank roles will be adjusted downward for buffing. This means less buffs from Templocks, DC, GF and OPs. This would mean HR, TR and CW would get an adjustment to our buffing roles to make us stronger or the adjustment to the healer/tank classes would be so significant that you have to bring along a buffing role or two buffers to get through content.
That is my guess as the devs seem inclined to remove the double anything meta. This would mean no stacking of tanks or DCs, etc unless the 2nd role is that of a DPS. We will have to wait and see how this all plays out.
I play all three of the current roles and honestly, my favorite role that I play does not even exist it is the buffing role and I do this on my CW regularly. I really hope the devs make buffing a role and continue to adjust the game so that healers heal and tanks tank with both offering some buffs but not to the same degree as the buffing role that exist in my mind, lol...
I am just going to wait it out and see how it unfolds as I do have all classes and it is not that hard for me to simply move enchantments over to the class that makes the most sense come the next mod.
Everything else will be done like SW and CW as DPS classes and GF as Tank... but they can compare this with some buff/debuff build... what I think it’s great, because I personally take GWFs only in my group when I can’t find someone else...
But for the TR you don’t have such a tree, we only got that DPS trees... and I don’t want a buff/debuff tree or something like it... it would feel so wrong... TR are assassins and this should be it
I see power looping has to be erased but not in that way...
Increase the cool down of itc, do a ap block Or let when daily overwrite the other...
Make every feat tree of the TR interesting is great but without killing the executioner feats...
I like it the most and it will be unplayable in mod 15
And now i finally reached endgame status (17556 in R12 guild) it’s done for me...
Split pvp from pve section to avoid more crying for nerfs on whatever class
And to add I don’t want to play a other class or so, I don’t want a token to change class,
I want a TR that’s competitive with other dps classes and that for every TR not just: the high geared, end game, Rank 20 guild TRs!!
For every TR!
This game cost me to much time and money so you can ruin it for everyone except the GWF and OP!!!
Don’t let us down...
Thx for reading.
Guess I'll see people around in about another 6 months.. Hah!
Between mod 12 amd now they have all quit. I have been fine as a 17.5k tr but after mod15 its looks like im gonna revisit the ol days all over again. So back then i was 2-3k ish (before ilvl changes)
Which changed to around 13k after changes. So basically the grind for the past year to get from 13k to 17.5 was for nothing because thats about how viable I will be after mod15... a 13k tr
I wonder if I can get a refund for all the money I spent this year because im done if these changes go live in console.
Secondly, I definitely got the idea from other games. I actually wasn't thinkin about NWN, but from my years of playing on persistent worlds I know exactly what you mean. Too bad playing with a party through a dungeon never worked out. Too clunky I guess. The idea actually came from some recent e-sports game with 3 players playing the protagonists, while the 4th would be controlling the "boss" (it was an action/FPS-ey game, though, with obviously hugely different pacing).
Basically what I was trying to relate is that in PVP you have to think outside of the box (the more surprising you can be, the better). Because other people are doing the same thing. A lot more psychology involved. There is variation in every single PVP encounter, because PVP fights are not between two stat data-sets. Fighting in PVP is about awareness + intelligence + creatively cunning.
In PVE, there is little variation. Why? Because every single PVE monsters has a negative IQ and they are scripted to always do the same thing. All your tools that help fighting another human's psychology have zero significance and distinctness against the PVE mob.
The difference between the TR is not that the TR is changing mechanics. The difference is that the only competitive paragon and feat tree got nerfed. Now it is non-competitive. On one hand, it is true (and I am glad) that they have brought up the other two trees (Saboteur, Scoundrel). But the problem is that their "balancing" is looking like all 3 feat trees will be equally competitive as the "nerfed" Mod 15 MI executioner. And by equally competitive I mean equally non-competitive as according to the patch notes.
See, you still have a choice. An alternative. You are limited in selection and creativity in mod15, yes, but you can at least switch to Renegade and be welcome to groups XD. TR doesn't have a competitive alternative, unfortunately, unless they buff Saboteur and/or Scoundrel to the point where they are stronger than the nerfed Exec. If Saboteur or Scoundrel end up party-invite viable, then I would have barely any problem with the TR.
I actually have a Opp/Thaum and a Ren/Thaum right now. The only reason I'm non-Thaum is that I want to not just do DPS but hybrid it up with other tools. There are Thaum builds, it's just that a lot of "purists" (which most guide writers are) find that Thaum is too selfish for a party.
And Forgotten Realms Wizards (and DnD in general) have many schools where DPS tends to be the minority. They are robe-wearers that draw on Mystra's Weave. There's Abjuration, aka deflection/protection spells. Conjurers, who conjure conjurable conjurees. I have no idea what the "Divine school" is, as an arcane spell school. It's before my time /hipster. Now, you got Evocation, which I believe is closest to the iconic DPS, spell-slinging robe-wearer. But an Evoker would be primarily Striker, so I suppose you could say that the Control Wizard uses lots of Evocation spells for his secondary role as Striker.
But where is the controlling? Probably in the Enchantment, Illusionist, Transmutation schools. Honestly the Control Wizard is more like Controller|Striker rather than Controller/Striker.
Pull out a Player Handbook (4e, I believe), and you can see how Wizards and Spell Schools work out in PnP.
1) Communication. This is the single biggest problem when it comes to these changes. You asked for feedback, responded once, and never addressed any of the concerns brought up by the testers regarding the changes. There was no discussion, or even clarification as to what your goals were with the class, and how your changes would help to reach those goals. I mean, besides, “power looping is something we want to get away from”. That brings me to item 2:
2) Confusion regarding power looping. Power looping is not any self power buff. Power looping revolves around the way Whirlwind of Blades calculates its power boost. While under the WWoB buff it does not function like Courage Breaker or Impossible to Catch (with the Press the Advantage feat). It does not simply calculate the amount of power you should have and add it. It takes all the power you have, buffs included, and instantly doubles them while under its effect duration.
This makes it very powerful as it effectively doubles the extra power buffs from CB and ITC. Here is an example I expertly copied (and edited) from one of Treme’s comments (Thanks Treme!):
Let’s say the TR player has 250k power thanks to the power share from his team mates. He then uses whirlwind hitting 5 enemies, doubling it, and ending up with 500k.
This by itself is already worth (40k+ 500k)/(40k+250k)= 86% damage increase.
Now, following that up, the TR uses courage breaker, increasing power once again, but this time, it's additive. So it adds 25% of the existing power. But it falls under the still active whirlwind buff doubling it. In other words, WWoB effectively makes CB give 50% more power, bringing the TR up to 750k power.
Now to finish it off, the TR uses impossible to catch, triggering its 10% additive power increasing feat (Press the Advantage) that also falls under the WWoB effect, giving us 75k * 2 = 150k more power.
So the TR ends up with 900k power, just from the standard powershare and 2 additive power boosts while under the multiplicative effect of Whirlwind of blades. This essentially multiplied our original power by a total of 3.6 times, increasing our damage by 3.24 times, or in other words being worth a 224% buff.
It should be noted that using this particular combination was, in part, how we have been able to compete with the damage output from other DPS classes. Replacing it with a 40% damage buff is wholly inadequate. In addition, you removed all the additive power buffs we had, which weren’t even the problem. You seem to be calling ALL power self buffs “power looping”. Either you are confused as to what power looping is, or are wanting to get rid of all self power buffs altogether. Either way, even though this was pointed out numerous times on the official feedback thread, it was never addressed by anyone. See #1 above.
3) Aura of Courage and Smoke Bomb. This was clearly over performing and everyone knew that this interaction was going to be fixed at some point. This interaction alone amounted to 25%+ of our total DPS in an endgame dungeon. The real confusion here was regarding the nerfs to smoke bomb. It seemed that the Smoke Bomb nerf was an attempt to correct the over performance of smoke bomb. But, the over performance was due to a buggy interaction with another non-TR power. You then fixed the interaction, but left the further nerf (30% reduction in damage) in place.
To give you an idea, we went from Aura of Courage proccing a whopping 33 times each time we used smoke bomb, to 1 time on the first hit. That is a nerf for SB that is pushing a million damage each time we use it. Many feel that getting rid of this specific interaction alone, brings our DPS down to a more manageable level that is in line with other DPS classes such as GWF, GF, and HR. It should be noted that we also didn’t object to ending this buggy interaction. The further nerf to smoke bomb seemed a bit overkill, but we were willing to live with it.
4) Our Meat and Potatoes. By eliminating our self power buffs (not to mention the AOC and SB interaction) without properly compensating our damage in some other way, you have handed us a severe nerf to our ability to do damage. Here is the last post by Treme (edited by me) on the official feedback thread in the forum, describing the problem more specifically:
In comparing all the feat changes, the best feat combination on mod 15 for single target is around 25%+ weaker and on AoE is around 25%+ stronger than the best feat combination in mod 14.
In comparing all dailies we lost around 50% damage buff from Whirlwind of Blades and it lasts two fewer seconds. We lost about a 13% damage buff from CB and it lasts two fewer seconds (this % for CB is while not under the effects of WoB).
In comparing the best daily combination on AoE (mod 14) we would use WoB and CB adding to a total of 172% worth of damage buffs via added power, while on mod 15 we will have to use WoB and Lurkers Assault giving us a total 82% damage buff, meaning a loss of 90%. This is not including the loss of recovery from artificers persuasion, and not accounting for the fact that LA will block our AP gain, making it impossible to keep both dailies up at the same time.
In comparing the best daily combination on Single Target (mod 14 and 15), we would use CB and LA. In mod 14, there would be a damage increase of 56%, while on mod 15, it will be an increase of 40.4%. Again, this does not take into account our loss of recovery, nor the fact that CB will be a debuff increasing the damage that your team will be able to do to the target. Regarding the debuff, however, unless you are running with two other dps classes, it will be worse since it buffs everyone's dmg on said target by about 8%.
Of course there are a few things that are really hard to put in numbers, things as the damage increase we will get from gloaming cut, the damage increase from Blade Flurry, the damage loss from the decrease of Smoke Bomb. And, the fact that we lost a bunch of recovery as well will affect us severely by increasing cooldowns which leads to less encounters powers and more at-wills powers, meaning that we will have less dailies which means less damage buffs.
So quick recap:
Single Target: We lost 30%-40% from AoC SB fix, from Dailies we lost 13%, from feats we lost 25%, we gained from gloaming cut and lost from the lack of recovery, with the total loss of 90% worth of damage buffs. In other words, we will be doing around half the damage in mod 15 than we are doing in mod 14, if not less, to single targets.
Aoe: We lost 30%-40% from AoC SB fix, from Dailies we lost 90%, from feats we gained around 25%, we gained a bit from gloaming cut and blade furry, lost a bit from SB nerf, and lost a lot from the lack of recovery, with the total loss of around around 100% worth of buffs here. As you can see, we will be doing around half the damage we are doing now. The thing with AoE is that the lack of recovery is missed here much more. For comparison we barely use at wills in Mod 14 AoE, but in the next mod, that will not be the case which will drop our damage here even more, making us do less than half of we are doing in mod 14. Maybe as little as ⅓ of what we have been doing.
For all of these predictions a few Combat Logs were used, mostly for % of where our damage comes from, at endgame.
5) Can you address the multiple reductions in the AP gain of various powers on preview, please?
6) Suggestions: Firstly, let me say that the goal you once had, to make the TR the best single target DPS, has clearly changed. However, that doesn’t seem to have been replaced by any clear purpose. Or, perhaps you do, but did not communicate that to us. Please SEE #1. Since we don’t know, our suggestions come with the assumption that you want to remove some of the unintended uses of several of our powers and include a moderate nerf to the class, as a whole, while increasing the viability of the other feat paths.
The changes made to the Sabo and Scoundrel tree are, for the most part, good changes. Also, most of the individual changes and nerfs to various powers we are okay with. We don’t like them, because we feel that fixing the buggy interaction between AoC and SB was probably enough. But, we can live with them.
The big problem is with the self power buff nerfs. If you plan on getting rid of them altogether, than you need to compensate the amount of damage we are losing via power and recovery. If you were to remove the AP gain block on Lurker’s Assault, that would allow us to perhaps keep our damage high enough to be seen as useful by other classes, without so totally killing our damage the way it is right now. Also, getting rid of the power buffs is enough. There is no need to shorten the buff time for WWoB or CB. That is excessive.
In addition, without the additional recovery we got from artificer’s persuasion in conjunction with the power buffs, our cooldowns are prohibitively long. Consider adjusting them to be on par with other DPS class’ cooldowns on similarly powerful encounters.
Most of all, communicate. If you did communicate more, you would find many TRs willing to help improve the class in the direction you want to go. The lack of communication, combined with “Balanced” sudden departure, combined with these rather draconian nerfs, leaves the TR community feeling marginalized and ignored. That leads to a lot of anger and frustration for a lot of your customers. And, it is really unnecessary. If you are a dev, and you did read this all the way to the end, thank you!
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Why does everyone go back to 4e. Not longer after 5e one dev here stated that NWO will start to move towards using more of what is available in 5e and phaseout the 4e rule that is in the game that are no longer used by D&D.
As for TR, this is simply the stepping stone to what is coming in mod 16. Mod 16 may bring about your 2nd role for qing into content and mod 17 may bring about balancing out your 2nd role and 18 will flush out any needed updates to the dps and the 2nd role that TR can play. That is my best guess as changes like the devs have plan take time and resources to implement.
I pretty sure what we all see on test is what we will get come mod 15. I don't think there is enough time to implement further changes at this point.
She Looked Lvl 18
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(5e) still uses the same original eight schools of spells for Wizard specialties that have existed since the beginning of time (1989), with the addition of uhh 6 others. http://dnd5e.wikia.com/wiki/Wizard#Arcane_Tradition
And..
Schools in 2nd Edition
Abjuration
Conjuration
Divination
Enchantment
Evocation
Illusion
Necromancy
Transmutation
Wow, after 30 years they have phased out..... nothing. They did add a few. So more like... phasing... in.
Kinda sad you don't even know your own class. Or game, for that matter. Do they pay you to advertise? Because all you're doing is guaranteeing something that is not guarantee-able. The only thing ever guaranteed is a game release date of "soon." So either you're trying to placate with the rhetoric of the modern politician, or you've developed Cryptic into some sort of cult of personality, that they can do no wrong.
That's stupid. Even I'm not predicting things will go worse or better. Given that Mod15 isn't live yet, there's always the odd possibility of rethinking things within the next month.
That's why we're providing feedback instead of holding hands, full of hope.
> The lack of communication from the devs has been dissapointing. Why even have a forum like this is an open discussion? There is 16 pages of mostly negative feedback with 1 post from the dev team. That's not good customer service.
>
> If I moved changes into prod with the vast majority of the feedback being negative I would lose my job.
We have a forum so we can post our best builds and tactics and get nerfed.
Oh and Lashing blade... 3 targets and half the CD please..
100 million damage in a single hit vs a boss is not where the gameplay is meant to be. As such, some dynamics were lessened to bring TRs into a more realistic place for outgoing damage.
Smoke Bomb didn't have its damage reduced because of the AoC bug, that was a bug and as such it was fixed. The damage was reduced because it was a power primarily intended to control targets, not to also be one of the highest damaging powers in the TR arsenal and as such be used in almost all situations.
Balance doesn't just mean reducing/increasing the stats on a power. Sometimes synergies need to be changed or removed all together, and other times functionality needs to be significantly changed to open up other options in a class. We need to be able to make those kinds of changes, when necessary, or we can't get the game into a good place with classes/content.
This week I did add a base power to the TR class that is giving all At-Wills, Encounters, and Dailies a 5% damage multiplier boost. Overall a lot of the feedback in the thread is that the 3 feat trees are actually close to one another now, but that damage may be on the low side. Because of this we went with a universal damage increase for M15 instead of boosting something that may have pulled the feat trees further apart again.
Except, it's not love. Because all that is going on means there isn't an alternative anymore. And honestly, not every TR wants to play MI Exec. We're unconsciously forced to, for parties tend to choose the better option.
I completely do understand the frustration of nerf/buff rearrangement of the CW. In mod14 the TR were able to be competitive, but very limited in build in order to be competitive. And invited.
The difference between the mod15 changes for CW and those for TR is that (it seems like) the TR don't have a replacement of that build. Granted, not sure what you're talking about, because Thaum, Opp, and Rene have been build options forever. All you're saying is that Thaum is an issue. That's nice, but Wizards are only damage focused depending on how the specialize through all the schools, and also must choose spells to memorize per day, with the ability to choose the same spell in multiple spellbook "slots" so you can cast it multiple times.
If you ever played Neverwinter Nights 1/2 and its expansions and member-created modules (or Icewind Dale 2.. or Temple of Elemental Evil), you'd see that is how you build a wizard in 3e. Same for playing the 2nd edition AD&D games: Baldur's Gate 1/Talesoftheswordcoast expansion/2/ToB expansion, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale 1...
The funny thing is that Baldur's Gate 1 is close but not that close to the first DnD games. The first ones were actually from 1988, the "Gold Box" games, which started with Pool of Radiance. (And I hope you realize that is Forgotten Realms). Another Gold Box Engine game was from 1990, was AD&D aka 2e "Champions of Krynn" (And I hope you realize that is Dragonlance). Actually it was a trilogy.. "Death Knights of Krynn" and "The Dark Queen of Krynn."
As of now, the Control Wizard plays MUCH more like the pen and paper Sorcerer. Sorcerers (well, at least from what I remember in 3e), don't have to prepare a spellbook. Yet Sorcerers have to permanently choose which spells they learn, whereas a Wizard can draw from anything they've managed to learn and scribble in their spellbook during a PnP session.
What I see when analyzing CW mechanics, skillsets, etc. Is that the "Spell Mastery" slot is somewhat similar in specializing in a spell that represents a spell school, somewhat.
But since the class is named the "Control Wizard," its design AND name derives from one of two "generalist"* 4e build option. See http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Wizard#Wizard_generalist_traditions:
Some wizards, occassionally known as generalists, are less inclined to specialize in the various schools of magic... These wizards tend to fall into a number of sub-categories, which are listed below.
Control wizard
Favoring battle from as great of a distance as reasonable, control wizards prefer spells that hinder or restrict their enemies rather than those that are particularly deadly... Many of the spells used by control wizards are from the conjuration or enchantment schools, though not all.[15]
War wizard
War wizards, not to be confused with the well known War Wizards of Cormyr, are those non-specialized wizards who prefer power to delicacy. War wizards prefer to use spells that deal damage in large amounts. Many of their spells hail from the evocation school, though others are from the conjuration or transmutation schools...[15]
¿Comprende? "War wizards" bias towards Evocation (see "Thayan Evokers"). "Control Wizards" bias towards CC, usually from Conjuration and Enchantment, while as they are generalists they can pick and choose Control-oriented spells from any school.
In fact, you should be happy that you even have a damage dealing tree. Because what a Control Wizard built PnP decides to do a secondary, it may be Evocation but it could also be: Abjuration, Divination, Necromancy, Illusion, or Transmutation.
And before you retort that this is fake or some HAMSTER, if you look at the citations you'll see that [15] is from the 4e Player Handbook. Oddly from the main Player Handbook, and not from a Forgotten Realms campaign setting book. *shrug*
Anyways, Cryptic was kinda smart here. They intended to have the Control Wizard be primarily a CC class, with their "secondary" being a DPSer. Sadly (or happily, depending on the person), CC isn't that useful, and Cryptic gave Control Wizards more DeePS to balance that out.
Because if they were faithful, Control Wizards would be almost all focused on "the conjuration or enchantment schools," with the minority "though not all." Instead of focusing on two specific schools, the NWO (and 4e) is a lot more lax about that. The "Control Wizard" here actually takes most of its control spells from the evocation (elementalist spells). That's why the CW's spells don't ONLY do DPS, there's control and debuffs involved as well as buffing since controlling really isn't a thing endgame. It's also why the NWO Control Wizard controls through evocation spells. Because elementalist spells, on paper, lets you both control via the elements and attack via the elements. So by making the Control Wizard use Evocation as his source of Control, you've also given him secondary striking capability via throwing in some of the Evoker's straight damage spells.
ANYWAYS, if 5e phases that out, that's not about phasing out 4e, it's about phasing out a specific mechanic that is 30 years tradition. They'd be phasing out something not just significant, but enjoyable and interesting (how to build a Wizard is AD&D-3e-3.5e-4e, etc.).