Divinity, with no way to recover divinity between encounters, that's a lot of painful waiting.
Divine Shield, the vfx for the cone is very hard to see, and the positioning seems to be somewhat random. In that you may turn to face whatever enemy hit you last and then appear, which messes things up.
In play I find myself avoiding powers that use Divinity just so that I can keep using Divine Shield, and even then I'm having trouble keeping enough Divinity to use it reliably, particularly because of the lack of means of accelerating recovery of Divinity between encounters.
Feats Valorous Judgement Sacred Shield - this is in the wrong spot as you don't get access to Shielding Strike until level 72, making it a dead feat for starting characters. In fact giving a Stamina Regain effect to Radiant Strike it would help a power that is very lack luster in effect outside its existing utility as a gap closer.
Divine Reciprocation Absolute Shield These 2 don't offer a valid choice, if you are a tank you take Shield, heals you want to take Reciprocation.
Enhanced Radiant Charge Bound to the Land A buff to an encounter power, which is great for Tanks, or a buff to a daily power.... as a tank this isn't much of a choice
Towering Light Vigilant Defender This is the first pair that feels like a meaningful choice. However Towering Light probably should be "above 50%" because using a single power will drop it below 75%.
Aura of Protection - duration of the effect should be longer given it needs a daily to trigger
Aura of Wrath - duration of the effect should be longer given it needs a daily to trigger
Aura of Valor - duration of the effect should be longer given it needs a daily to trigger
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
17k+ OP on live server. Leveled up to 80 and hit 20k IL on preview. Tried doing quite a few things from low levels to new content.
I am going to start with an overall feeling of how OP are now: GUTTED.
But moving into the specifics.
Divinity: This goes down way too fast and regenerates way to slowly. I can't count the times I was questing or running a dungeon and just went a few fights without it or just had to wait for it to come back to do anything meaningful. This is NOT fun. For prot, if things die quick in a group I don't get enough divinity back, and have to rely on my 18+ second CD Vow to pull aggro. And sometimes even THAT is not up. It doesn't feel as bad with Devo, but I still found myself standing there a lot waiting for things to happen with only my At-Wills to keep me company. This is bad because I end up not being able to cast anything, or not using skills because I need to save for taunt. Speaking of which...
Taunt: They are either on a long CD, or cost divinity. Which means I have to sacrifice other skills which will help survival or DPS for it. This does not make the game more engaging. It just makes me not use skills in case I have to taunt again, or find myself without a way to taunt the current mobs or the next group of mobs. See Divinity above. Again, I find myself just waiting for things to happen instead of actually pressing buttons. Oath Strike is good for bosses, but that is about it. The rest of the content it is no good.
At-Wills: This has been rehashed so much I don't even think I need to point out what is wrong with them. The damage is abysmal. Considering I need to use encounters to actually do damage, and need to block to get divinity back to use half of the encounters, or wait 18 seconds for the encounters to come off of cooldown, this is unacceptable. My encounters and divinity are already competing for taunt and defense and DPS. So half the fights end up being just blocking waiting for enough divinity or a CD to pop to actually kill mobs. There is no real benefit to At-Will. I can't use them while blocking, nor is there any real reason to pick one over the other. Having nothing else to do makes them feel so boring that you might as well just delete all the melee ones and have one melee for Prot. At-Wills for the Devo actually feel a bit more thought out, but they are all so weak to the point that they still feel pretty useless.
Encounters: Touched on this already in the previous parts of my feedback, but I have a bit more to add. These are held back too much. From what I have read this is intentional and tied in part with Divinity as to why I am disliking my OP. We lost a lot of choices. Debuff enemies, buff DPS (devo), temp HP generators, 25% group defense (prot), single target damage self-buff, self/teammate shield, some really good AE's and small area cleanse. These have all been removed or nerfed so strongly that it almost feels like it doesn't really matter what I pick. No matter what you choose, you end up standing around waiting to use them again while mobs just keep hitting your shield... slowly getting you divinity back (seeing a pattern/problem so far?)
Feats: I was hoping that this mod would make all original 3 trees viable. They destroyed all 3 trees and with it some of the more fun passive skills the class had. It used to be that there was enough diversity that you could take a feat or two for skills you don't always use. But only having 5 feats at any given time makes it so that picking a feat which only impacts a specific encounter/daily/at-will crippling. You are basically not getting any use out of the feats unless you run a very specific way. Some seem like utter nonsense and phoned in by people who have no idea how the game works: divine benefactor guts a daily, bound to the land slows mobility in a game where you have to avoid red all the time, and sacred shield only works if you take a specific encounter AND specific At-Will, limiting the rest of your choices. Besides these all making no sense, it absolutely ruins the diversity. On top of that we have lost ALL the benefits we used to have from the passives from the prior feat trees.
Class Features: I do not feel as if these have enough impact to even consider. These all seem lazily thought out. It almost feels like no one really cared about them and did 4 cookie cutter buffs triggered on dailies just to round the numbers up. We lost a lot of good ideas for auras. We could have kept our prior ones with just a few tweaks. You don't want us spamming dailies, but apparently you don't want OP's using half their class features either. I don't always just blow my daily the moment it pops up. Any time I am not using my daily is time I am not taking advantage of half my class features, which only work for 10 seconds after the daily is used. That's a hell of a lot of time not actually taking advantage of half of my class feature.
Block: I really dislike the "HP" feel of this. Id be much more happy with a flat damage cut from blocked attacks, which then have to go through my regular defense after this. I much preferred block without diminishing returns. It currently works opposed to the Divinity mechanic as prot. The more you block the more divinity you get, the less you use it the less you get divinity back. Its not fun management, especially when you run out of it.
Dailies: Not much to say. I feel as if this was a chance to make more meaningful dailies. Shield of Faith feels extremely nerfed in particular. Overall they aren't bad; but overall I can't use them as often either, which feels like a loss no matter what.
Divine Pallisade: Absolute waste of space skill. See problems with Divinity and Encounters above. I have not found one instance where I felt this was a better use of my divinity over something else. It costs too much, provides to small, too static, to short lived buff, to be of any real benefit.
All the things that made the class stand out and unique are gone. This is not where I wanted to see my character, whom I poured thousands of hours into, ending up.
Just a single point here... why do you want to make the pally mortal? Its like the scene in Jurassic Park, you were so busy trying to figure out how to do it but did not stop to think IF you should do it.
The Paladin is the anointed and blessed knight of the gods. They are the manifestation of the will of their god. Were mod 15 paladins immortal? Pretty much, yes. So what? I mean why is that wrong? Mechanic wise the pally gives up so much to be that indestructible pillar.
Now, they are limping. bleeding out, crying out for a healer. I mean... its pathetic.
The "does 30% less damage"; if this was already applied on live, I initially thought it'd be fine...
But now that defensive stats would be the priority for paladins instead, the "does 30% less damage" seems redundant and would probably make solo game play painfully slow, in theory.
Then that's just sad because paladins in live are never (hardly ever) within the DPS competition among similarly geared anyway, even with all that stacked HP for power-gain, and power stacks, with companion's power stacks, with 85~98% defences ignored.
> @"pitmonster#5684" said: > Just a single point here... why do you want to make the pally mortal? Its like the scene in Jurassic Park, you were so busy trying to figure out how to do it but did not stop to think IF you should do it. > > The Paladin is the anointed and blessed knight of the gods. They are the manifestation of the will of their god. Were mod 15 paladins immortal? Pretty much, yes. So what? I mean why is that wrong? Mechanic wise the pally gives up so much to be that indestructible pillar. > > Now, they are limping. bleeding out, crying out for a healer. I mean... its pathetic.
Combat (Self)] Battle Wight deals 968947 Physical Damage to you with Melee Attack
In kessel. This seems a bit off to me my Wizard takes less damage doing solo kessel than my paladin doing team. and a battle wight doing nearly 1 million damage seems odd
Powrie deals 223954 (268472) Physical Damage to you with Melee Attack.
That is a massive 1 hit in SHARANDAR. This has to be wrong. And i tested it on my wizard and cleric neither cam close to that hit from a powrie. Is paladin tank now weaker than cleric healer and wizard
I had a similar experience: Pally. first set of mobs Kessells. just letting mobs hit me [21:53] [Combat (Self)] Battle Wight deals 708728 (757765) Physical Damage to you with Melee Attack. [21:56] [Combat (Self)] Wight Commander deals 2413169 (2579972) Necrotic Damage to you with Soul Harvest.
Same thing happened on my Fighter. Yet I take in my Ranger (no armor enchant) and I tried over and over to see if I could get her hit with a one-shot. Never happened. My ranger is higher in stats, but most the hits my 2 tanks took weren't that large either.
Might be due requiring some time getting used to it or not. Building divinity on Justicar seems slower than for the Oathkeeper. As an Oathkeeper you can cast circle of protection, take the feat that reduces smite's divinity cost, tab and you have a pretty stand-forward divinity that lasts longer. Which, for PVE DPS is much better and faster than the Justicar trying to solo or do the PVE content.
For Justicar, even though divinity seems to build nicely when you block, it feels a bit weird to be like a porkpine that might end up building deflect so you can keep divinity charged for either a smite (and in dungeon to cast vow or other divinity consuming encounters to keep aggro). Wouldn't be better to give the Justicar either a way to build up divinity at a steady pace like the Oathkeeper as well?
I mean, I can keep the shield up and take no damage but it gets a bit 'GF' like to do a dungeon with shield up so I can wait divinity to charge and the time the proper time to use the powers without risking getting a blow that might interrupt the ability. Isn't there any feat or alike it can be done to help in that regard? Because as a Justicar, divinity regenerating faster only if it's 75% above feels like what I'm expected to do is SMITE-block-SMITE-block (Edit: using Divine challenger aura) and so to keep divinity and damage distribution balanced. I mean, even if I was to spend divinity only in Templar's Wrath to keep aggro (since vow's cd is big), it pains a bit the fact Paladin's encounters have a big cooldown and no way to reduce it like before.
Furthermore, wouldn't be better that Relentess Avenger affected more than one target and created aggro as well? Or Binding Oath did allowed for some divinity restoration instead stamina? (Edit: Maybe your God is proud to see you defend your companions and gives a little blessing.)
As I said, once one gets used to new rotations and playstyle things will hopefully be normal again but so far, it feels like Oathkeeper is benefitting more from the divinity (Edit: and useful feats) because in a dungeon, with the aggro you get to build up divinity, you pretty much have to be careful when to use divinity consuming powers.
(Edit: Last but not least, can't Shielding Strike keep the barrier it would create. About the auras, any way/hope to get something aura of wisdom back or make Paladin auras not so about using your dailies to get an actual benefit? I mean, an aura should theorically be something always active and not requiring a condition to take place. I did notice the compusure aura for the Justicar but still feels forced to have to use one aura just for it rather than buff/protect my allies)
Thanks for the feedback, I just wanted to address divinity a bit, because it's a common topic. Spells like smite are very powerful, they have a high damage magnitude because they're balanced around the large amount of divinity they consume. For example, if it takes 20 seconds to regenerate the divinity for smite, that spell deals damage like its roughly a 20 second encounter power.
So while you might feel like divinity is slow, if divinity regeneration were sped up, the damage on those encounters would have to be reduced to compensate. That being said, I urge you to give it some time—justicar paladins can get back their divinity pretty quickly, especially in group content. In fact, in group content it may actually be too strong.
I know there are a lot of people saying that paladin can't tank now, or can't survive—and I want to repeat that there are a number of zones and enemies in the game right now that are doing exceptionally high damage and that this is not intended. There are a few players who are starting to get used to things, and can tell you that in areas where things are not broken, they have no problem surviving, or even dealing solid damage while tanking group content. So please give it a bit more time, get used to how the class plays now, and also check back over the coming weeks as things change.
Feedback: 1. Thematically, you've changed my OP from a magical tank into what feels like a plain jane... Guardian Fighter.
2. I've lost CoP, which visually looks impressive and works very well in groups, and gained not a lot.
3. The directional shield power, looks cool, but is not going to work in most dungeon situations, where you have to keep moving. A stationary character is usually dead. Try using that shield on the hill in FBI...
4. Going to try some more power combinations, but my survivability appears to be way down. Both my HR and DC had a much better time of it against the same mobs.
Thanks for the feedback! In regards to divine palisade, since it's something that consumes divinity, you can opt not to use it in highly mobile situations. That being said, the area of effect is fairly large, so you can throw it down and side step in and out or around the back of the area as needed. There was a YouTube video uploaded by another user where you can see the spell being put to good use. We'll definitely consider making adjustments though, based on how everyone feels about it.
On the topic of paladin against your CLR and RGR, let me know if you are still feeling that way as you get more used to things. I look forward to hearing more.
Not sure if this was posted yet, but after I chose my feats, two of them still say OR between them and the game thinks I still have powers to spend. The Character icon on the top bar is glowing and the Powers tab is blinking.
hi, I have put a lot of time into my toons farming out boons; I play as a op and dc... I play these classes because I enjoy them.. what if after mod 16 drops, I do not like them anymore... dose this mean i'll have to go back and start grinding out boons, or buy them, on another class; that I like? The changes that are being made to the game are BIG... will you be compensating us in any way for this? e.g. giving us a full unlock token (for each maxed out character we have on our account) to create a new toon of a different class?.... Or, Just a thought, there could be a feature that would unlock boons, and all, account wide, after complete that content on 1 or 2 toons... this would allow people to try new classes if they do not like the ones they have (being stuck with) and put a lot of money/time into... has this been thought about or is something like this in the works? thank you for your time..
If you played Paladin because you liked tanking, it's still going to be a completely viable option. If you played Paladin to be a healer, it's going to be a completely viable option. If you played Paladin because you liked having 3 hit point bars, and being nigh on immortal—well, that's not going to be the case anymore—but no class will be in that position either.
Have you been trying the changes out on preview or are you feeling that you want to change classes exclusively because of what you're reading? I urge you to try the changes out over the next few weeks, and continue to listen to feedback over that time. There's going to be a lot of initial shock to changes of this magnitude, but at its core—Paladin is still Paladin, a divine knight who uses a mace or sword and shield, and wields divine magic both offensively and for healing. I hope you give the changes a chance over the coming weeks.
Combat (Self)] Battle Wight deals 968947 Physical Damage to you with Melee Attack
In kessel. This seems a bit off to me my Wizard takes less damage doing solo kessel than my paladin doing team. and a battle wight doing nearly 1 million damage seems odd
Powrie deals 223954 (268472) Physical Damage to you with Melee Attack.
That is a massive 1 hit in SHARANDAR. This has to be wrong. And i tested it on my wizard and cleric neither cam close to that hit from a powrie. Is paladin tank now weaker than cleric healer and wizard
Thanks for the report! There are problems with level scaling and certain enemies in a variety of zones, reports like this are invaluable for tracking those problems down. It is not intended that you would take damage of this magnitude from a red cap, nor that you would be taking orders of magnitude more damage from attacks on your Paladin.
Finding and fixing these outliers is our highest priority.
[..]At-will damage has been lowered for all classes across the board. We are targeting that at-wills represent roughly 1/5th of your damage in an optimal scenario and all straight DPS powers, without taking into account feats or class mechanics. (Encounter powers also represent 1/5th each, or 3/5ths total, and dailies represent the final 1/5th.) [..]
and soloed esot in 13 mins. Top graphic shows damage of the tank op over the whole skirmish. And bottom graphic shows whole damage garakas took, including companion damage.
At wills damage was less than 5% of total damage through the whole skirmish. In boss fight already including companion damage it was less than 2%. One of the reason was, that is was better to shield the hits to build up divinity and use smite than using at wills andrunning out of his attacks. At will damage is so low that is not really "worth" the risk and the clicks to use them at all. Especially since you may even lower your outgoing damage by taking a hit you had better shielded and gained divinity.
It does not feel good that it is often better to shield an AOE attack to build up divinity than to just step out of the attack. Additionally it is often better to let as many enemies as possible alive until the fight ends, just to gain faster divinity, which is bad.
When enemies are attacking slowly and you drained all your divinity, fights are going stale really fast. It ends up that the op is left with doing pathetic dmg with at wills and taking care to shield every attack that is fired on him just to build up Smites. Other options are on cooldown like no divinity encounters / dailies and tab is not useable either. The no divinity encounters compared to smite are not doing much damage either, thus even when the no divinity encounters are off cooldown it does not make the fight less of a stale.
Tab is most often a mistake to use, since the op looses the option to aggro and damage with smite.
Companion damage is around 5-20x higher than the damage from the at wills. Divinity generation out of combat is horrible slow. The op has to wait long enough before the next fight just to not start without divinity.
Hello! Thanks for the feedback and detailed breakdown of your experience. While I know a lot of people are posting in this thread, very upset that they were defeated in an area like Sharandar, please take a look at logs like this—Paladin was able to solo scaled content intended for a group. Please keep in mind that if you're getting crushed, there are likely bugs making things too hard. On the other hand, there are a few things that may be too easy as well! With that out of the way...
To be clear, the 1/5th values I quoted are in normative play with all DPS focused powers, and that is without taking class mechanics into account. Due to the way Justicar's Charge works, if you're mostly blocking to regain divinity, you're not going to be using a lot of at-wills. Particularly when trying to solo content meant for a group, that's going to be the case a lot of the time.
In tanking most content with a group, I end up with a more balanced log and a lot more at-will damage. That being said, the reality is that the effect of divinity regain on blocking might actually be too strong. On the flip side, as you describe, it can feel too slow and weak when fighting against a single, slow attacking enemy. We're going to continue making adjustments in the coming weeks, because I definitely don't want to encourage leaving enemies alive just to serve as divinity batteries.
I ran Castle Never last night and although we were successful, there were parts that were ridiculous (in a bad way) both from a mechanics standpoint and as a Paladin. I tried a bunch of different powers in CN as well as solo so I would like to provide some high level feedback rather than going power by power as others have (I only did that with the Feats). Sorry for the length
Castle Never specific: When killing the zombies that are trying to get to the orb before the second boss I felt completely useless. Since they were not attacking me I quickly ran out of Divinity so I was left with weak at wills or encounters with long cooldowns. I assume the rest of the group was in a similar situation as that part took us way too long. The orb exploded probably 6 or 7 times. I hope this is a bug and those zombies are not scaled correctly.
Overall Paladin feedback (not specific to CN): Soloing - consider removing the 30% damage reduction when we solo or increase the 5% damage we get with Divine Justice. I completely understand you don't want a tank in a group to do as much damage as a DPS with the same gear, but that reduction makes solo play slower and we don't have a DPS path to swap to like every other class does.
Divinity - not sure how I feel about this. One of the main reasons I play Neverwinter is because I don't want to manage a mana pool. I like the D&D model of at-will, encounter, daily powers that are managed by cooldowns. I really don't like that you moved away from this model and gave us a mana pool. And considering how crippled we are without divinity, you really need to increase the divinity regeneration rate, both in and out of combat, or give us divinity potions. Finally, with everything else we already have to pay attention to as the tank (watching for enemies that are not attacking me, moving out of red, repositioning the boss, having to know all of the mechanics, etc) you now have us managing a mana pool. I am sure it is too late, but please consider removing Divinity, at least for Justicar.
Threat - wow, not sure where to start. The encounters you gave us to generate threat on paper are fine, TW, VoE, Smite+DC (referred to as SDC). Use those in combination with Oath Strike and we should be good. In reality, that was not the case. TW and SDC both cost divinity so if you died and are revived mid fight you have nothing. Even if you didn't die, once you are out of divinity (600 cost Divine Pallisde + 300 TW) you are left with the choice between Oath Strike to keep agro or Block to regain divinity. VoE is good aoe snap agro but has a very long cooldown and since you are out of divinity you can't followup with anything other than Oath Strike to try and stay at the top, except you need to block to regain divinity and as soon as anyone else takes threat (our CW was constantly pulling threat from me) while you are blocking, you basically sit there and wait for VoE to come off cooldown. I appreciate that we now have to make decisions and think about when we use skills, but it is now way too easy to become a tank without the ability to tank.
More to come as I play more on preview.
Thank you for taking the time to send your feedback, I greatly appreciate it! I understand that you're not a fan of managing divinity. (I've tanked in a lot of MMOs as well, and there are quite a few that do feature tanks with resource management—but that's neither here nor there.) I hope you'll continue to play around with it and send in your feedback. As I've mentioned to another poster, damage and effectiveness of those encounters which cost divinity is balanced around the default, in combat refresh rate of your divinity. So, if it takes 20 seconds to regenerate the divinity for smite, its balanced as if it were a 20 second cool down power on another class. (Roughly.) So, when you toss things on top of that, that allow you to regenerate divinity more quickly, you're just shaving off time on the cool down essentially.
The big difference of course, is that if you take two spenders, you're double dipping into the divinity pool. So in reality, as a tank, you want to avoid taking more than one spender. Now, there are still valid reasons for taking two, particularly if you want to run without VoE, I often run TW, Smite and Relentless Avenger when in groups that are giving me a hard time with threat, using Smite+ Divine Challenger when I lose threat to a single target focused DPS, or on a priority target. If I don't need it though, I usually swap Smite out for Sacred Weapon when dealing with trash pulls.
That said, it sounds like you were getting the hang of it and still losing threat a lot. We're definitely going to be fine tuning those threat numbers over the coming week, as this is a big change, and we need to see where everyone is at in terms of holding aggro. We're not looking to suddenly make it very difficult to hold threat, so there's a good chance there will be a buff if things trend towards aggro being an issue for most groups.
Thank you so much for destroying the game and character I've been playing for 3 years. I will be expecting a refund for all the time and money I have put into this game!!!!
HAYDEN
Hi Hayden, I'm very sorry to hear that you feel so negatively about the changes to Paladin. Can you go into any details about what you didn't like about the changes—or what elements of the old Paladin you are upset about losing?
I understand that blocking is using the shift key. That is a block mechanic, but is it the only one?
Is it also blocking when we deflect an attack in regards to generating Divinity? Or must we use the shift key for all blocking?
Currently, my Paladin was specced for the live server. With the changes on test, there will need to be extensive rebalancing of stats. As HP are not as important as Defense. Armor Penetration does not need to be stacked as high, etc.
If Deflection also causes a blocked attack, then it will be important for Divinity gain. Or do Fighters and Paladins dodge when they Deflect?
How much damage is mitigated for a Deflection?
Currently on Test, my Paladin has woefully low defense. After the 16k of AP that the mobs have, it only leaves 1500, which is 3% damage mitigation. As I largely ignored Defense in preference to HP on the Live server.
On Test, I need a lot more Defense to properly mitigate damage. Defense offers augmenting returns, rather than diminishing returns. It is much better to mitigate damage than to have HP and take more damage. Mitigating damage makes healing much more effective. Understanding this HUGE change to tanks is what many people seem to misunderstand. Paladins no longer do more damage due to large HP pools. Paladins do not get the insane temp HP and shields anymore. While Paladins double their HP pool when using the shift block mechanic, your damage mitigation impacts how much damage you take, making Defense more important than HP. HP are no longer king for Paladins.
Deflect does not count as a block, it counts as a deflect. Unless a mechanic states that it takes effect on deflect, it will not trigger on deflect. So for instance, Justicar's Charge only affects blocking (with a shield.)
Has anyone found a way to make the Stamina and Divinity bars less transparent out of combat so it matches what it looks like in combat?
It is currently not possible to do this. That being said, we are planning to make sure the bars are visible whenever their are not full, even outside of combat, so that should help.
@asterdahl. I'll give more feedback on the paladin in a later post but I wanted to ask a question. Why does Divine Fulmination (the peak Oathkeeper at-will) have a longer cast time (1.46s) and does less damage than Smite (our shared encounter)? The animation for it is a little ridiculous. It looks like I'm fishing for folks up in Lonelywood rather than sending foes screaming into the Abyss. If its meant to simply be used at range vice close in, would you consider giving it bane's old animation of the double slash? That last was a minor issue but the casting time for Divine Fulmination really needs to be looked at, especially if the damage isn't significantly greater than our other at-wills for Oathkeeper. My two coppers. More feedback to follow and thanks for the responses to other poster's questions. It makes this transition a bit easier.
I'm confused at your initial question. Smite does significantly more damage than Divine Fulmination because it is an encounter power and costs significant divinity. Divine Fulmination is something you can use to deal damage at a range, even when are out of divinity, or more likely, conserving it to use healing spells in group play. That's the role of divine fulmination.
It is a very strong at-will, in terms of damage dealt—because of how slow it is. I urge you to give it a try in group play, it is mostly meant to ensure that Oathkeeper is not at a disadvantage in fights where its best for the healer to stay at a range. That being said, it certainly may be best to use valorous strike in solo play, since you can more easily move between strikes.
Apologies for the confusion on the question. I'm aware of the difference in damage level. I'm just concerned about the cast time of an at-will being longer than an encounter power (even with the encounter's drain on divinity). I was hoping it could be adjusted for a slightly faster cast time. I used it when I first unlocked it in Undermountain and quickly determined that would only be useful in group play like you mentioned. Switched and stayed with Valorous to finish out the Mod. Now that solo play is done, group play is next on my list. More feedback on that to follow. Thanks for the replay.
Happy to reply! I look forward to hearing how you feel about it in group play, thanks! (I also find it quite useful in PvP.)
I guess the issue I have with it is, having enemies run through the shield... and it being a rooted direction-restricted shield..
Was just thinking it'd be interesting/less of a delicate process if......
a) Divine barrier (TAB) comes with physical collision against enemies, but not players.
Might add more flavour if this was a toggle option with or without a condition -------- and/or -------- b) Divine barrier shield is aligned and bound to user's view facing / camera, moves with player...
Also might add flavour/play-style if it was a toggle option as either a bound-to-user mobile shield or stationary shield.. -------- -------- (a) i) Stationary Divine barrier shield with physical collision against enemies, except players; but doesn't last as long as absorption shield where there's no physical collision OR the number of enemies it'll collide with decreases over time OR limited number of collisions allowed and it stops -------- (b) i) Bound-to-user mobile shield with no physical collision = less of a delicate & rigid process -------- (a+b) i) Bound shield with physical collision against enemies that moves with user; could be used as a bulldozer? Push enemies but depletes shield in terms of duration or size maybe? Could be used as the party approaches a narrow opening to the next area with enemies near the opening.. or within a tunnel-like space..
(a+b) ii) Bound shield to user's view facing / camera with physical collision against enemies... could be used to cage-in the party from enemies using 2 tanks fighters/paladins? and move in that manner, front paladin/fighter.. rear paladin/fighter walking backwards with guard up... against poison gas or enemies within a foggy environment -------- -------- Seems like it'd be fun to have some wiggle room for potentially strategic customisation here
We're definitely considering adjustments to Divine Palisade, however, I would like to clarify that you're taking reduced damage if you stand anywhere behind it, regardless of the source of the damage. So you don't need to worry if an enemy scoots around you. (Your party also takes reduced damage here, not practical for normal combat, but during a boss fight, it can be a great mitigation tool for unavoidable damage, or as an off tank in trials.)
Ok, but then I'd be abandoning this safe shield zone whenever re-positioning is required, and I won't have enough to erect another soon enough due to slow out-of-combat divinity regeneration (even with composure) in combination with the high cost for the shield.
10 secs after the 1st shield before a 2nd shield is possible (w/o divinity returns from blocking, with [composure] active)
With temp HP & shield HP removed, the shield has to be used often.... I'd have just enough for a 2nd shield after the 1st one times out, but the 3rd one would be too long of a delay. With the current intervals of enemies, I'd have to either wait, or charge in with block to get my divinity up, or a mixture of blocking & attacking during the 2nd shield; not fluid, slow, dreary.
Tank feels restricted/bottleneck-ed/sluggish right now; as though it's been made "challenging", but done in a thread-a-needle sort of..... annoying manner. The healer paragon's more fluid than the tank paragon, as it has been in live as well.
If shield has to be static, how about a divinity refund by absorbing the shield? According to the duration it had left.. +60 divinity per unused second
Would then only need 3 unused secs to erect the 2nd shield at the next horde like 1'~2' away from the initial horde, then blocking for some divinity returns from the 2nd group, absorb shield again, move on to the next group. Adds some fluidity/flexibility..... also, allows re-positioning of shield, reduce divinity loss/wastage, mobile tank.
GWF , Paladins, and TR are not the only ones they messed up. Just because they have their own idea of what powers "we" would use does not mean it's the ones each individual likes to use. Splitting the best feats into 2 mediocre paths making both paths not viable is just wrong. As an HR I used a variety of powers that are now useless : Aspect of the Pack, Longstrider, Barkskin etc.
Hello I'm an HR and i just want to say a few things about Mod16.
First off the they destroyed my companions, which no longer do what they use to do(archons) and i had spent real money upgrading them which now seems wasted. Now I'm being forced to buy every companion under the virtual sun, just to have the ne "Power Bonuses" in the new companion system. Not to mention the new best in slot companions are skyrocketing on auction inside live server, making me and others not be able to afford them. Forcing us to be below average when the Mod hits live.
Secondly I feel they took the best feats for my class and split them up between 2 paths making each path mediocre versus having both paths be viable and good.
I understand about them not wanting us to use our encounter powers as "at-will" but even the at-wills don't do enough damage to compensate for having to wait 17-20 seconds to actually do some damage or consistently buff the party.
The following powers are useless now:
Longstrider = no longer buffs, it only does a small bit of damage and nothing else.
Aspect of the Pack = no longer puts me and my allies in combat advantage(in pen and paper D&D the ranger had this option).
Now all it does is give combat advantage bonus. Not realizing that to achieve combat advantage ingame is extremely difficult due to the fact that as dps we need to move around so much to avoid dying from area of effects, not to mention every other player moves erratically as well making it nearly impossible to attain combat advantage. Only during a boss fight that does not require the tank to move would this be a possibility for us to have. Plus combat advantage state is so delicate that the slightest movement too far to the left or right from opposing sides makes it stop working. Plz bring back the real Aspect of the Pack. This hurts!
Barkskin = no longer gives a defense or damage reduction like it use to, and now only heals. But the worst part is that it was set to Warden path in stead of being a shared power among both paths.(we need help to quest now that there is no life steal).
Boar's Hide(this is a useless power and no one used or ever will use this) is a waste of space in a power tray.
Favorite HR powers are what WE use not what YOU think we need! And this was just to name a few powers.
Thirdly making all the companion gear only be enchantable by runestones forces me to buy runestones that have skyrocketed in price on Auction and will continue to rise. Making honest folk not be able to afford the basic stuff we need like new companions due to the previous ones we used now useless. Maybe make a trader that would let us exchange our enchants for same rank runesstones? As we spent real money and time upgrading our enchantments, for years, you can understand why losing all this would make us sad and depressed.
Further more, changing the mount insignia powers makes us who spent real money on several mounts from both the ZEN store and Auction , be forced to pay more money or astral diamonds on new mounts and new insignias which are FAR from cheap. This is just plain rude.
Last but not least, taking away the Human "Extra Feat" racial , changing what each attribute gives for each class(Dex use to give damage bonus for HR and now its Strength) without offering a free race rerol is just rude. You are telling me i have to pay for a race reroll because the only reason i was a human was for the extra feat, and now its gone...is a fair thing to do? By the way, Human has had "Extra Feat" as a racial in all versions of D&D since the dawn of freaking time!
Hello! Thank you for taking the time to send us your feedback. Would you mind directing the feedback about Ranger to the ranger thread, and the feedback about races to the general thread so that it can get to the right people? I know it might seem annoying to have to post in a specific thread—but we have a lot of feedback to sort through, so it really helps!
Found a flaw with the Oathkeeper's "Sanctuary" daily which may not be a bug per se, but it is certainly a severe oversight. While channelling Sanctuary you are still vulnerable to control effects, but unable to move out of the way or react without cancelling the daily. This means the daily can fail instantly due to partial paralysis, or you can be pushed away from your team due to mobs' roar effects. If the daily is cancelled early you still lose all your AP.
I think there are a couple of reasonable solutions to this; add control immunity while channeling it, or make it drain AP over its duration, so you can voluntarily end it early, or if you do get interrupted you didn't lose all your AP for nothing.
On a related note, block doesn't protect you from partial paralysis anymore, which is extremely problematic in TONG.
General impressions so far, I second the many comments about divinity generation feeling very slow, at-wills being virually pointless, and that many of our class features are basically worthless. Composure is a must just because divnity management is so critical, apart from that none of them really grab my attention since we don't use dailies so often anymore.
I love the new "Divine Shelter" power, this is basically how I wanted absolution to work for devotion, and while I wasn't a fan of the revamped Bane at first, it has grown on me as I progressed through the Undermountain campaign.
So far I have used Oathkeeper almost exclusively since I found Justicar to be borderline unplayable, it suffers from low damage and glacially slow divinity gain, yet even using absolution I get oneshot through block by random trash mobs.
Thanks for the feedback! I'll look into making adjustments to Sanctuary, as you say it can be extremely frustrating to get stunned while using it.
In regards to paralyze and block—are you referring to being able to block the individual tics or block the initial application of the effect?
It's ridiculous. in solo content, my pet makes 10 times my damage. in practice I spend the time with shield raised to wait for the companion to kill the mobs ... very funny .... Also, two encounter (useless) powers are enough to finish divinity which then is recharged very slowly....
felt much quicker the damage spikes were still there but not so high as with justicar below [Combat (Self)] Critical Hit! Green Dragonfang deals 4527742 (6475473) Poison Damage to you with Aimed Shot. [Combat (Self)] Assassin Drake deals 377864 (485691) Acid Damage to you with Spit. [Combat (Self)] Garakas deals 8333031 (11021929) Fire Damage to you with Dancing Flames. [Combat (Self)] Garakas deals 14517295 (19999176) Fire Damage to you with Fire Breath.
it's not about scaling since damage from same type of enemy has huge deviation and also I am getting one shotted even in the new area.
it's not about build because it happens regardless powers, path or build.
Maybe calculations with high defense or deflection.
Look also into enemies critical hits seem so overpowered.
I have encounter these damage spikes in shores of tuern, omu, undermountain, barovia, lair of lostmauth.
It's unplayable this way so unable to make any safe conclusions.
Many thank @asterdahl for taking the time to respond to so many threads, i know you guys are busy but the engagement compared to previous releases is refreshing and appreciated. That said, i have a serious question. Youve replied to a lot of bug report/ survivabilty issues presumably because they are not as intended and can be fixed. However there is a huge number of comments on here about how truly boring it is to play an OP tank on preview, which i cant see that youve commented on. Can i assume this is because the playability is working as intended and no amount of feedback on here will result in any changes? Please remember this is a game, i play for enjoyment in my leasure time and have spent £1000's on (in the same way ive previously spent large sums of money on sports club membership when i was younger). Currently i can assure you i wont be getting one shotted on my OP tank in the new mod, because i wont be playing it. I already have enough chores in my life without you turning my hobby into another one.
After some more time spent all over the preview Swordcoast my feelings continue to be mixed. Removing the temp HP is huge - temp health is the only way a paladin tanks on live right now. Removing that aims to make Paladin tanking more active via frequent use of the new block, Absolution, Tab, etc.. I get it and I can get with it however there are a few problems with the above mentioned abilities. The new block, aside from being virtually the same between Paladins, GF and Sentinells is kinda OK. Absolution however is not even a shadow of its former self ( cooldown too long and 20% dmg reduction is laughable, Id rather slot DT and have an aoe heal instead ). The new Tab mechanic, Divine P... Im at a loss for words here really. Neverwinter as a game is still able to retain me and so many others as players because of its awesome action combat system. Fights are dynamic and involve lots of movement... and you guys give us a stationary, 10% dmg reduction ability which costs half divinity bar! Really?! Shall we politely ask the Frost Giants on Fangbreaker hills to please stand on the other side of the pallisade while our ranged DPS do their jobs? Honestly Im avoiding Tab like the plague on preview right now.
Overall with some adjustments to passives(auras), encounters and dailies I can see this new game of yours (because it is a new game) actually working. But and its a big but, how will you make sure my tank holds aggro? Aggro mechanics on Live are being easily overwritten by high dps and we most often see a boss facing away from the tank and going for the damage dealer. If the same happens in next module Paladin tanks will be left, literally with their ducks* in their hands, depleted of divinity, unable to regain any because nothing attacks them and ultimately completely useless... This is a legit concern, we all know how the game works so Im asking can you make it work another way? Or are you just going to drop a broken class on Live and spend the next year fixing it via patching? I dont want to spend my time and money on a class which simply wont work.
*that goes only for male paladin tanks
Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.
Many thank @asterdahl for taking the time to respond to so many threads, i know you guys are busy but the engagement compared to previous releases is refreshing and appreciated.
That said, i have a serious question. Youve replied to a lot of bug report/ survivabilty issues presumably because they are not as intended and can be fixed. However there is a huge number of comments on here about how truly boring it is to play an OP tank on preview, which i cant see that youve commented on. Can i assume this is because the playability is working as intended and no amount of feedback on here will result in any changes?
Please remember this is a game, i play for enjoyment in my leasure time and have spent £1000's on (in the same way ive previously spent large sums of money on sports club membership when i was younger).
Currently i can assure you i wont be getting one shotted on my OP tank in the new mod, because i wont be playing it. I already have enough chores in my life without you turning my hobby into another one.
Hello! Thanks for taking the time to post, I'm sorry to hear that you're having a boring time playing Justicar on preview. I do believe I have responded to various questions and concerns about divinity, blocking and other mechanics as well, not just bugs related to scaling and damage.
If you click on my username, you can go back and view various posts I've made, but if you have any specific thoughts or questions, I'd be happy to respond to things you don't think I've addressed. We have slowed things down, but obviously we did not set out to make the game boring to play, so we will absolutely be making adjustments based on all of your continued feedback. Currently, I've been tanking a lot as Justicar in dungeons, and been having fun, and felt like it is still very active.
That being said, I do like to have a bit more time to focus on what is going on with the enemies as I tank, so I don't mind that I'm not literally pressing my encounters and dailies nonstop. But of course, your mileage may vary based on personal preference. That said, we're all ears (or I suppose, I should say, all eyes in this case), nothing is set in stone—so please don't hold anything back when it comes to sending us your feedback.
That being said, I do like to have a bit more time to focus on what is going on with the enemies as I tank, so I don't mind that I'm not literally pressing my encounters and dailies nonstop. But of course, your mileage may vary based on personal preference. That said, we're all ears (or I suppose, I should say, all eyes in this case), nothing is set in stone—so please don't hold anything back when it comes to sending us your feedback.
The new mechanics are confounding. Here is why I do not like it. To me tanking should be about managing the fight. You have made it all about managing Divinity. On top of that you have narrowed choice. Choice of powers, passives, feats and tools. I am sure you can find terabytes of anecdotal information indicating that removing choice has a corollary with finding a new vendor. Doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past come to mind.
In the end, a business decision has been made. In relative short order we will discover if it was a good one or a bad one.
Comments
Divine Shield, the vfx for the cone is very hard to see, and the positioning seems to be somewhat random. In that you may turn to face whatever enemy hit you last and then appear, which messes things up.
In play I find myself avoiding powers that use Divinity just so that I can keep using Divine Shield, and even then I'm having trouble keeping enough Divinity to use it reliably, particularly because of the lack of means of accelerating recovery of Divinity between encounters.
Feats
Valorous Judgement
Sacred Shield - this is in the wrong spot as you don't get access to Shielding Strike until level 72, making it a dead feat for starting characters. In fact giving a Stamina Regain effect to Radiant Strike it would help a power that is very lack luster in effect outside its existing utility as a gap closer.
Divine Reciprocation
Absolute Shield
These 2 don't offer a valid choice, if you are a tank you take Shield, heals you want to take Reciprocation.
Enhanced Radiant Charge
Bound to the Land
A buff to an encounter power, which is great for Tanks, or a buff to a daily power.... as a tank this isn't much of a choice
Towering Light
Vigilant Defender
This is the first pair that feels like a meaningful choice. However Towering Light probably should be "above 50%" because using a single power will drop it below 75%.
Aura of Protection - duration of the effect should be longer given it needs a daily to trigger
Aura of Wrath - duration of the effect should be longer given it needs a daily to trigger
Aura of Valor - duration of the effect should be longer given it needs a daily to trigger
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
OK.
17k+ OP on live server. Leveled up to 80 and hit 20k IL on preview. Tried doing quite a few things from low levels to new content.
I am going to start with an overall feeling of how OP are now: GUTTED.
But moving into the specifics.
Divinity: This goes down way too fast and regenerates way to slowly. I can't count the times I was questing or running a dungeon and just went a few fights without it or just had to wait for it to come back to do anything meaningful. This is NOT fun. For prot, if things die quick in a group I don't get enough divinity back, and have to rely on my 18+ second CD Vow to pull aggro. And sometimes even THAT is not up. It doesn't feel as bad with Devo, but I still found myself standing there a lot waiting for things to happen with only my At-Wills to keep me company. This is bad because I end up not being able to cast anything, or not using skills because I need to save for taunt. Speaking of which...
Taunt: They are either on a long CD, or cost divinity. Which means I have to sacrifice other skills which will help survival or DPS for it. This does not make the game more engaging. It just makes me not use skills in case I have to taunt again, or find myself without a way to taunt the current mobs or the next group of mobs. See Divinity above. Again, I find myself just waiting for things to happen instead of actually pressing buttons. Oath Strike is good for bosses, but that is about it. The rest of the content it is no good.
At-Wills: This has been rehashed so much I don't even think I need to point out what is wrong with them. The damage is abysmal. Considering I need to use encounters to actually do damage, and need to block to get divinity back to use half of the encounters, or wait 18 seconds for the encounters to come off of cooldown, this is unacceptable. My encounters and divinity are already competing for taunt and defense and DPS. So half the fights end up being just blocking waiting for enough divinity or a CD to pop to actually kill mobs. There is no real benefit to At-Will. I can't use them while blocking, nor is there any real reason to pick one over the other. Having nothing else to do makes them feel so boring that you might as well just delete all the melee ones and have one melee for Prot. At-Wills for the Devo actually feel a bit more thought out, but they are all so weak to the point that they still feel pretty useless.
Encounters: Touched on this already in the previous parts of my feedback, but I have a bit more to add. These are held back too much. From what I have read this is intentional and tied in part with Divinity as to why I am disliking my OP. We lost a lot of choices. Debuff enemies, buff DPS (devo), temp HP generators, 25% group defense (prot), single target damage self-buff, self/teammate shield, some really good AE's and small area cleanse. These have all been removed or nerfed so strongly that it almost feels like it doesn't really matter what I pick. No matter what you choose, you end up standing around waiting to use them again while mobs just keep hitting your shield... slowly getting you divinity back (seeing a pattern/problem so far?)
Feats: I was hoping that this mod would make all original 3 trees viable. They destroyed all 3 trees and with it some of the more fun passive skills the class had. It used to be that there was enough diversity that you could take a feat or two for skills you don't always use. But only having 5 feats at any given time makes it so that picking a feat which only impacts a specific encounter/daily/at-will crippling. You are basically not getting any use out of the feats unless you run a very specific way. Some seem like utter nonsense and phoned in by people who have no idea how the game works: divine benefactor guts a daily, bound to the land slows mobility in a game where you have to avoid red all the time, and sacred shield only works if you take a specific encounter AND specific At-Will, limiting the rest of your choices. Besides these all making no sense, it absolutely ruins the diversity. On top of that we have lost ALL the benefits we used to have from the passives from the prior feat trees.
Class Features: I do not feel as if these have enough impact to even consider. These all seem lazily thought out. It almost feels like no one really cared about them and did 4 cookie cutter buffs triggered on dailies just to round the numbers up. We lost a lot of good ideas for auras. We could have kept our prior ones with just a few tweaks. You don't want us spamming dailies, but apparently you don't want OP's using half their class features either. I don't always just blow my daily the moment it pops up. Any time I am not using my daily is time I am not taking advantage of half my class features, which only work for 10 seconds after the daily is used. That's a hell of a lot of time not actually taking advantage of half of my class feature.
Block: I really dislike the "HP" feel of this. Id be much more happy with a flat damage cut from blocked attacks, which then have to go through my regular defense after this. I much preferred block without diminishing returns. It currently works opposed to the Divinity mechanic as prot. The more you block the more divinity you get, the less you use it the less you get divinity back. Its not fun management, especially when you run out of it.
Dailies: Not much to say. I feel as if this was a chance to make more meaningful dailies. Shield of Faith feels extremely nerfed in particular. Overall they aren't bad; but overall I can't use them as often either, which feels like a loss no matter what.
Divine Pallisade: Absolute waste of space skill. See problems with Divinity and Encounters above. I have not found one instance where I felt this was a better use of my divinity over something else. It costs too much, provides to small, too static, to short lived buff, to be of any real benefit.
All the things that made the class stand out and unique are gone. This is not where I wanted to see my character, whom I poured thousands of hours into, ending up.
Hence the word GUTTED.
[Combat (Self)] Controlled Blue Slaad deals 297788 (967168) Physical Damage to you with Melee Attack.
Have 31948 Defense, 22432 Deflect. Tested with open attacks, no shield.
The Paladin is the anointed and blessed knight of the gods. They are the manifestation of the will of their god. Were mod 15 paladins immortal? Pretty much, yes. So what? I mean why is that wrong? Mechanic wise the pally gives up so much to be that indestructible pillar.
Now, they are limping. bleeding out, crying out for a healer. I mean... its pathetic.
But now that defensive stats would be the priority for paladins instead, the "does 30% less damage" seems redundant and would probably make solo game play painfully slow, in theory.
Then that's just sad because paladins in live are never (hardly ever) within the DPS competition among similarly geared anyway, even with all that stacked HP for power-gain, and power stacks, with companion's power stacks, with 85~98% defences ignored.
> Just a single point here... why do you want to make the pally mortal? Its like the scene in Jurassic Park, you were so busy trying to figure out how to do it but did not stop to think IF you should do it.
>
> The Paladin is the anointed and blessed knight of the gods. They are the manifestation of the will of their god. Were mod 15 paladins immortal? Pretty much, yes. So what? I mean why is that wrong? Mechanic wise the pally gives up so much to be that indestructible pillar.
>
> Now, they are limping. bleeding out, crying out for a healer. I mean... its pathetic.
^ this!
Pally. first set of mobs Kessells. just letting mobs hit me
[21:53] [Combat (Self)] Battle Wight deals 708728 (757765) Physical Damage to you with Melee Attack.
[21:56] [Combat (Self)] Wight Commander deals 2413169 (2579972) Necrotic Damage to you with
Soul Harvest.
Same thing happened on my Fighter. Yet I take in my Ranger (no armor enchant) and I tried over and over to see if I could get her hit with a one-shot. Never happened. My ranger is higher in stats, but most the hits my 2 tanks took weren't that large either.
So while you might feel like divinity is slow, if divinity regeneration were sped up, the damage on those encounters would have to be reduced to compensate. That being said, I urge you to give it some time—justicar paladins can get back their divinity pretty quickly, especially in group content. In fact, in group content it may actually be too strong.
I know there are a lot of people saying that paladin can't tank now, or can't survive—and I want to repeat that there are a number of zones and enemies in the game right now that are doing exceptionally high damage and that this is not intended. There are a few players who are starting to get used to things, and can tell you that in areas where things are not broken, they have no problem surviving, or even dealing solid damage while tanking group content. So please give it a bit more time, get used to how the class plays now, and also check back over the coming weeks as things change.
Everything you see on preview is not final.
On the topic of paladin against your CLR and RGR, let me know if you are still feeling that way as you get more used to things. I look forward to hearing more.
Have you been trying the changes out on preview or are you feeling that you want to change classes exclusively because of what you're reading? I urge you to try the changes out over the next few weeks, and continue to listen to feedback over that time. There's going to be a lot of initial shock to changes of this magnitude, but at its core—Paladin is still Paladin, a divine knight who uses a mace or sword and shield, and wields divine magic both offensively and for healing. I hope you give the changes a chance over the coming weeks.
Thanks for the report! There are problems with level scaling and certain enemies in a variety of zones, reports like this are invaluable for tracking those problems down. It is not intended that you would take damage of this magnitude from a red cap, nor that you would be taking orders of magnitude more damage from attacks on your Paladin.
Finding and fixing these outliers is our highest priority.
To be clear, the 1/5th values I quoted are in normative play with all DPS focused powers, and that is without taking class mechanics into account. Due to the way Justicar's Charge works, if you're mostly blocking to regain divinity, you're not going to be using a lot of at-wills. Particularly when trying to solo content meant for a group, that's going to be the case a lot of the time.
In tanking most content with a group, I end up with a more balanced log and a lot more at-will damage. That being said, the reality is that the effect of divinity regain on blocking might actually be too strong. On the flip side, as you describe, it can feel too slow and weak when fighting against a single, slow attacking enemy. We're going to continue making adjustments in the coming weeks, because I definitely don't want to encourage leaving enemies alive just to serve as divinity batteries.
The big difference of course, is that if you take two spenders, you're double dipping into the divinity pool. So in reality, as a tank, you want to avoid taking more than one spender. Now, there are still valid reasons for taking two, particularly if you want to run without VoE, I often run TW, Smite and Relentless Avenger when in groups that are giving me a hard time with threat, using Smite+ Divine Challenger when I lose threat to a single target focused DPS, or on a priority target. If I don't need it though, I usually swap Smite out for Sacred Weapon when dealing with trash pulls.
That said, it sounds like you were getting the hang of it and still losing threat a lot. We're definitely going to be fine tuning those threat numbers over the coming week, as this is a big change, and we need to see where everyone is at in terms of holding aggro. We're not looking to suddenly make it very difficult to hold threat, so there's a good chance there will be a buff if things trend towards aggro being an issue for most groups.
Hi Hayden, I'm very sorry to hear that you feel so negatively about the changes to Paladin. Can you go into any details about what you didn't like about the changes—or what elements of the old Paladin you are upset about losing?
Deflect does not count as a block, it counts as a deflect. Unless a mechanic states that it takes effect on deflect, it will not trigger on deflect. So for instance, Justicar's Charge only affects blocking (with a shield.)
10 secs after the 1st shield before a 2nd shield is possible (w/o divinity returns from blocking, with [composure] active)
With temp HP & shield HP removed, the shield has to be used often.... I'd have just enough for a 2nd shield after the 1st one times out, but the 3rd one would be too long of a delay. With the current intervals of enemies, I'd have to either wait, or charge in with block to get my divinity up, or a mixture of blocking & attacking during the 2nd shield; not fluid, slow, dreary.
Tank feels restricted/bottleneck-ed/sluggish right now; as though it's been made "challenging", but done in a thread-a-needle sort of..... annoying manner. The healer paragon's more fluid than the tank paragon, as it has been in live as well.
If shield has to be static, how about a divinity refund by absorbing the shield? According to the duration it had left.. +60 divinity per unused second
Would then only need 3 unused secs to erect the 2nd shield at the next horde like 1'~2' away from the initial horde, then blocking for some divinity returns from the 2nd group, absorb shield again, move on to the next group. Adds some fluidity/flexibility..... also, allows re-positioning of shield, reduce divinity loss/wastage, mobile tank.
In regards to paralyze and block—are you referring to being able to block the individual tics or block the initial application of the effect?
Also, two encounter (useless) powers are enough to finish divinity which then is recharged very slowly....
felt much quicker
the damage spikes were still there but not so high as with justicar below
[Combat (Self)] Critical Hit! Green Dragonfang deals 4527742 (6475473) Poison Damage to you with Aimed Shot.
[Combat (Self)] Assassin Drake deals 377864 (485691) Acid Damage to you with Spit.
[Combat (Self)] Garakas deals 8333031 (11021929) Fire Damage to you with Dancing Flames.
[Combat (Self)] Garakas deals 14517295 (19999176) Fire Damage to you with Fire Breath.
it's not about scaling since damage from same type of enemy has huge deviation and also I am getting one shotted even in the new area.
it's not about build because it happens regardless powers, path or build.
Maybe calculations with high defense or deflection.
Look also into enemies critical hits seem so overpowered.
I have encounter these damage spikes in shores of tuern, omu, undermountain, barovia, lair of lostmauth.
It's unplayable this way so unable to make any safe conclusions.
That said, i have a serious question. Youve replied to a lot of bug report/ survivabilty issues presumably because they are not as intended and can be fixed. However there is a huge number of comments on here about how truly boring it is to play an OP tank on preview, which i cant see that youve commented on. Can i assume this is because the playability is working as intended and no amount of feedback on here will result in any changes?
Please remember this is a game, i play for enjoyment in my leasure time and have spent £1000's on (in the same way ive previously spent large sums of money on sports club membership when i was younger).
Currently i can assure you i wont be getting one shotted on my OP tank in the new mod, because i wont be playing it. I already have enough chores in my life without you turning my hobby into another one.
Removing the temp HP is huge - temp health is the only way a paladin tanks on live right now. Removing that aims to make Paladin tanking more active via frequent use of the new block, Absolution, Tab, etc.. I get it and I can get with it however there are a few problems with the above mentioned abilities. The new block, aside from being virtually the same between Paladins, GF and Sentinells is kinda OK. Absolution however is not even a shadow of its former self ( cooldown too long and 20% dmg reduction is laughable, Id rather slot DT and have an aoe heal instead ). The new Tab mechanic, Divine P... Im at a loss for words here really. Neverwinter as a game is still able to retain me and so many others as players because of its awesome action combat system. Fights are dynamic and involve lots of movement... and you guys give us a stationary, 10% dmg reduction ability which costs half divinity bar! Really?! Shall we politely ask the Frost Giants on Fangbreaker hills to please stand on the other side of the pallisade while our ranged DPS do their jobs? Honestly Im avoiding Tab like the plague on preview right now.
Overall with some adjustments to passives(auras), encounters and dailies I can see this new game of yours (because it is a new game) actually working. But and its a big but, how will you make sure my tank holds aggro? Aggro mechanics on Live are being easily overwritten by high dps and we most often see a boss facing away from the tank and going for the damage dealer. If the same happens in next module Paladin tanks will be left, literally with their ducks* in their hands, depleted of divinity, unable to regain any because nothing attacks them and ultimately completely useless... This is a legit concern, we all know how the game works so Im asking can you make it work another way? Or are you just going to drop a broken class on Live and spend the next year fixing it via patching? I dont want to spend my time and money on a class which simply wont work.
*that goes only for male paladin tanks
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.
If you click on my username, you can go back and view various posts I've made, but if you have any specific thoughts or questions, I'd be happy to respond to things you don't think I've addressed. We have slowed things down, but obviously we did not set out to make the game boring to play, so we will absolutely be making adjustments based on all of your continued feedback. Currently, I've been tanking a lot as Justicar in dungeons, and been having fun, and felt like it is still very active.
That being said, I do like to have a bit more time to focus on what is going on with the enemies as I tank, so I don't mind that I'm not literally pressing my encounters and dailies nonstop. But of course, your mileage may vary based on personal preference. That said, we're all ears (or I suppose, I should say, all eyes in this case), nothing is set in stone—so please don't hold anything back when it comes to sending us your feedback.
In the end, a business decision has been made. In relative short order we will discover if it was a good one or a bad one.