Hello everyone, i will share my feedback on the experience from paladin gameplay on preview.
First I would like to say, I did read all the post of other ppl in this thread and I need to say the overall feedback doesn’t look good. A lot did complain about the hard nerf on all stats from paladin and the boring gameplay that will follow up on it.
On the other side the devs are telling us we will get over it when we have more experience on the changes and have taken a deeper thought on the changes.
Well the thing is how should I take any proper testing on the new changes, if there are so many bugs?
I did copy my char (Paladin IL15k) from live to preview and made a fast respec on all of my stats and went to the next group of mobs in dread ring. I killed one minor minion in the group and instantly died. My first thought was, well it seems I did something totally wrong and ported to PE and made a totally overhaul of this poor paladin. Change all the enchantments, power and boons, did focus on full def, crit resist and awareness. For a reason I didn’t changed any of my current gear on my toon. Went back to dread ring, engaging the first group of mobz I could find.
I got one shot again and again and again ………..
I was so frustrated after a few fights, that I switched off and let it slowly drip into me:THE PALLY I KNOW IS ALL GONE :’C
But I didn’t feel good about it and I took a look on the official forum from NWO and found this feedback and other post about one shot after a few minutes into the fight. So I got the feeling again “this sux a$$” and I should look for a new game but did a last look into the bug section and found an awesome post from @isaintify1 that a bugged out companion is able to one shot me every 30 sec.
So I went back to preview and kicked that dmn chicken out of my companion roster and finally I could survive a fight in dread ring.
That was just one of the many other bugs I could find in a few days of testing on preview.
Another thing are the character stats on the paladin and even on all other chars, they don’t make any sense to me. Why do I have a base stat of 8 charisma as a Paladin? Because I am the ugliest HAMSTER in Faerûn?
All of the stats doesn’t fit to a tank build or even work, also radiant strike isn’t working or something is wrong with the tooltip, because I couldn’t see any different in numbers after I hit an enemy. The aoe effect of it is really small now.
Then a lot of the tooltips did tell me about my stamina and a gain for it but where do I see my stamina? The left blue line is telling me “guard 100/100” is this my stamina or where is it? So how do I tank with my shield now? Stamina = hitpoint on shield or Stamina = total hitpoint pool?
The divinity gain in solo content feels slow and it seems u get forced to team play even if u only want to grind some boon points. This after all isn’t a bad thing but u doesn’t want to waste time finding someone, who is doing the same quest as you are doing.
I gonna wait for some patches on preview, so I can give a proper feedback about paladin and the game play.
Post edited by hagbard#9047 on
1
Options
gormenghast1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 88Arc User
edited March 2019
After having easily burned through the solo campaign with my TR, I am slowly crawling through it with my BiS geared pally. The most important choice I've mad so far is to unbind the Tab key so to avoid using alltogether the completely worthless class mechanic to keep divinity for the wet noodle encounters.
The whole experience is excruciatingly painful and completely opposite of what is considered "fun". Looking at the divinity bar refill is entertaining like watching the grass grow. Thankfully my 19k OP is the companion of a proud Yojimbo, which is doing the lion share of damage dealing and tanking. I cannot fathom what a low geared OP has to endure to complete in solo play any content after the utter destruction of the class.
I can't agree more with anyone supporting the idea that the 30% damage decrease for an already low DPS class as the OP is utter nonsense. The gameplay for any class has become more boring because of the long CD pauses; the paladin gets the worst of every world with its cumbersome and slow divinity mechanic, its mediocre encounters summed to its 30% nonsensical nerf to damage and a class mechanic that is best to be avoided alltogether. I have not played any other tank class on preview yet but I sincerely hope that they fare better with the general dynamic of their classes.
I can understand that, during internal testing, anyone using the paladin has used a maxed out toon geared with free BiS enchants, top tier equip, any companion available and so on in order to run a dungeon with a test group. The "OP experience" for that tester ends there, which is not the case for a player that has to invest time and money to improve and gear up a character in order to run all the content. I wonder who, in a sane state of mind, would chose to limp through the whole game with an handicapped class while anyone chosing a DPS class could do it in a less boring and speedy way. Expect to have a serious drought of tanks in the future, if the situation is the same for GFs and GW...barians as it is for the OP.
I am trying to sit here and figure out where to start. There is just so much wrong with the justicar as it currently sits, and knowing from experience that what I say will fall on deaf developer ears.
First, I am saying this from over 20 years of MMO experience. I started playing Everquest in 1998, and have not stopped playing MMO's since (in fact longer, as I really started in MUD's years earlier but now I am dating myself.) I don't say this to toot my own horn, just to explain that I have seen pretty much everything in MMO's over the years, and have seen what you are currently do fail.
The issues here are not just about the powers, feats, and stats all seeming to work against each other, or having to choose to pigeonhole yourself into a damage sink to the sheer exclusion of anything else. It is the core design principle of the new class that is a failure. You have made a class which is a combination of early EQ hit a button every 30s or so to manage super finite resources and the original attempt of Blizzard to make a paladin tank. Both have been shown by history to be failures. You have made a class with little to no player engagement which performs poorly in survivability, has threat issues, or if you take powers to handle threat has less survivability and no offense. You have made a class which boils down to this: not fun to play.
The problem with your model is that in solo play its painful. plain and simple. which means levelling and casual play with them will decrease... which leads to less tanks and therefore less groups being filled in queue and longer queue times. So less fun for everyone.
Sadly, you have already committed to this model, and nothing said here by anyone about the poor class design will have any impact at all. We are all stuck with your bad decisions until we find something else to play, which is what will happen.
Hello! Thank you for taking the time to come onto the forum and provide your feedback. I assure you it is not falling on deaf ears, and I am genuinely appreciative of your time.
The thing you describe having a problem with—the pace of power usage, is actually the thing we could most easily change, so I wouldn't say we are "already committed to this model." We'd like everyone to have a chance to play around with the changes for more than just a week before making any drastic changes but nothing is off the table.
NW has the feel that Character Statistics don't really impact the overall performance of a Class. NW is more about Item Level, Companions, Mounts and all the Runestone/Enhancements Added. Who cares about CON, when you can just add it by other means. NW needs to try and make Statistics mean something. Less Items that give Awareness, Defense, HP, Deflect, etc and more that provide Stat Increases.
Maybe even adapt new concepts like Dodge, Physical Resistance, Magical Resistance. And get away from excessive amounts of numbers aka 250000 HPs. Why not 1000 HPs something more realistic. And not sure why AC doesn't matter. Goes to show neither does STATS. Thank God my Guild isn't THACO!
@asterdahl Haven't seen a response recently so I hope the negativity on the forums has not dissuaded you from returning to communicate with those of us that are trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I wanted to repost a suggestion/request in case it got lost in the mix:
I have a request for relentless avenger. Can we get an added effect of increased threat to enemies around the target? Feel free to reduce the damage to 600 to compensate. I wouldn't reduce it further since it would just be threat to the enemies around the target and not damage to the enemies like Templar's Wrath. This would give us a cooldown based aoe threat generator (Vow of Enmity just puts us at the top). It would work out well in the Trash rotation as something to help us build threat and as its on a cooldown it allows us to look at other divinity costing powers that are not Templar's Wrath.
With this change, a sample trash build could be to switch out Templar's Wrath with Bane so I can Bane from a distance for initial damage, Relentless Avenger to close the gap and build aoe threat. I could then use Relentless Avenger on cooldown to keep up threat and mix Bane with Oath Strike and Sacred Weapon as described. The goal should be more build combinations, not less.
I have one fairly big complaint over the new Paladin paragons...
In every game I have ever played, Paladins were paladins because they could do healing and tanking - this is still true... however, the absolutely most iconic ability of every Paladin was simple: Lay on Hands. No matter how you specced, what paths you picked, etc, ALL Paladins could LoH. It is so iconic, that, to me (and probably several others), the character can NOT possibly be a Paladin if they cannot LoH.
Yet, that is exactly what you have chosen to do? To take the most identifying staple of being a Paladin, and put it solely within the Healer side of the class... Sorry, but, that makes the Paladin nothing more than a Fighter who happened to pick up a few tricks from the Cleric. 18 Fighter/2 Cleric is not a Paladin. Paladins have Lay on Hands. They didn't just learn how to heal, they are gifted, blessed, imbued by their deities to do certain things that Clerics cannot do, or even attempt to do, and the epitome of that is LoH.
Our lack of a true dps spec makes soloing slower than all other classes. Having a 25% damage penalty (assuming Divine Justice) when soloing is not fair when we don't have a true dps spec to change to.
Please consider removing the 30% damage reduction in Justicar for the following reasons: 1. Unlike Fighter and Barbarian, we do not have a DPS spec we can change to when soloing/questing making questing that much slower 2. As a tank it appears that the new methodology is for me to choose gear with defensive stats, which by itself will lower my gear, even if I have the same ilvl as a dps player 3. It is counter intuitive to spec as a healer (Oathkeeper doesn't have the 30% damage reduction) to deal damage better 3a. If we do want a true heal spec I have to keep swapping powers between heal and dps depending on my role or buy a third loadout which I shouldn't have to do.
Or, change it to only be 30% reduction when in a party. At least then we are not penalized when we solo.
With that said, to those of you that think our only options now are to Smite and then block until we can Smite again, please see my previous post with build options for Justicar tanking and the following for soloing. This build allowed me to efficiently solo in Twister Caverns and the first expedition at a fast pace with little down time. I am 17k ilvl but I assume this would work for lower ilvls.
Step 1 - Change your loadout to OATHKEEPER. The 30% damage penalty immediately goes away, you still have the same tools as Justicar for dps with lower costs on your primary dps tools and much better divinity regen... if only we had those options as Justicar.
Build: At wills - Valorous Strike (haven't tested Divine Fulmination yet) / Radiant Strike Encounter - Circle of Power or Sacred Weapon (see Feats), Bane, Smite Daily - Radiant Charge, Divine Judgement Class Feature - Divine Justice, Composure Feat - Divine Weapon (in case you want to mix is Sacred Weapon for more Magnitude and Divinity Regen), Keeper's Wrath (lowers cost of Bane and Smite), Guarded Prayers (to improve mid fight Divinity regen), Radiant Banner (I am not 80 yet, but the alternative is for healing) [Neither of the options in the first Feat slot matter] Companions - choose offensive companion skills (will vary based on your companions)
Rotation - Open with Bane from a distance, drop Circle of Power, swap between Bane and Smite as the mobs get to you (choose smartly based on the number and spread of enemies; you shouldn't need to spam to be able to kill everything). If anything actually survives long enough to reach you then Valorous Strike or Smite to finish them off. Alternative is same rotation but replace Circle of Power with Sacred Weapon if you want more mobility or damage. Throw in Channel Divinity while your companion finishes off the last mob and you should be mostly ready for the next pack.
Not sure the regen rates of Circle of Power vs Divine Weapon so once we learn that, that may influence the decision. They have the same cooldown but Circle of Power has a longer duration.
My $0.02 on new Pally (as a person who also plays GF):
It feels like slow GF. Damage is actually adequate for bits but you have to only slot one power that spends divinity b/c anything else is a waste of time. Blocking just feels passive compared to the GF where you can still attack. At least before you had a minor heal and protection. Tab power is not impactful enough for cost. If it were free it would be okay.
I would not willingly take this as my main as it stands right now. Fortunately I have other options.
Reduces damage dealt by 30% and increases threat generation.
I assumed the wording was a slight grammatical error and that the intent was that damage "taken" by the Justicar Paladin would be reduced by 30%. Should this be taken as written and that this Path of paladin is under a permanent damage dealing debuff?
Should the intent of the mechanic be to decrease the damage taken by the Justicar Paladin, the mechanic does not appear to be working as written. Ignoring all other forms of damage reduction from all other sources, a scalar multiplier of -30% would result in a minimum drop of 30%. The changes to incoming damage values I am seeing are significantly less than this 30% minimum.
Ahh, I was a little confused when you first mentioned this, but I'm not in the office so I couldn't check to see if something was wrong. "Reduces damage dealt" is not a typo or grammatical error, it means you deal less damage. Since all tanks have a passive that reads like this, I spoke a little in the fighter thread already to someone asking about it, I'll post that exact discussion here.
In regards to the 30% reduction in damage: damage magnitudes on all roles are balanced the same way; however, we obviously don't want it to be the case that when you queue up as a tank that you're out damaging a similarly geared DPS. And because you share some of your powers with the DPS fighter, we need to make sure that there's an adjustment there to compensate.
That being said, we know it can be a little bit stressful from a psychological perspective to see that damage adjustment spelled out in a passive power. We may consider lowering the base magnitudes of all tank powers and removing that adjustment based on feedback.
In the past, there were plenty of passive things like this going on in the background, but they weren't exposed. We've decided to expose them now, but I recognize that they can feel bizarre, so please keep providing feedback and we may adjust the way this sort of information is presented. Paladin doesn't have the issue of having a DPS spec that shares the same base class, but the healers are not meant to receive the same damage reduction either, as they generally need to choose between using resources to deal damage and heal, whereas tanks are naturally dealing damage to perform their role.
Hi asterdahl, where I understand your 30% damage reduction there are some issues with it. 1) our weapon damage are already lowered to compensate for it 2) our weapons power and stats are already lowered for it 3) strength and intelligence (physical and magical) does not give us a damage bonus
So now you are “double dipping” basically no % damage modifier and decrease in damage from weapons and NOW also the 30% damage reduction. If you are putting the 30% damage reduction would you not then put the other factors in line with the dps?
Is smite meant to have an 80’ range? (It’s awesome, but seems odd.)
Vow of Enmity is a great concept, but I find the execution problematic. You cannot target it effectively to know how many enemies are going to be affected by the “enemies near the target” portion of the damage and added effect. I would much rather see it apply as a more traditional AoE power, even if that means loosing some of the direct damage it deals, as the main strength of the power is the threat anyway for group play.
Vow of Enmity has a fairly large area of effect, so there's no harm in using it point black—as if it were a "traditional AoE power." But keep playing with it, and let me know how you feel. There is currently an issue on preview with Vow of Enmity, as well as all other powers that indicate that they place you at the top of the threat list. In reality they put you close to but not at the top, which made these powers feel pretty terrible.
We managed to get a fix in this evening and it should be in this Friday's build.
I just wanted to note, that the user in that YouTube video is actually on the DPS paragon path, Dreadnought. They are also making heavy use of a bug with ITF that gives the player orders of magnitude more AP than intended, in order to spam dailies back-to-back.
I assure you that Dreadnought will not be able to run Shores of Tuern anywhere near this fast once Module 16 is live, or even in the coming weeks. There are also definitely issues with Dreadnought being too durable, that I will also be addressing in the coming weeks.
Thank you for your reply. Our main concerns are to play a class that won't be considered an underdog in its roles when compared with outperforming ones and to enjoy it while doing it. With its HP layers and control powers (Burning Light's interruptions, Templar's stun and even Relentless avenger knockback to get an opening before the rest of the group), OP's main source of aggro generation was through aggressive gameplay and making use of its 500% bonus aggro generation. It has Always been a fun class to play and able to differentiate itself from the GF on its role, especially on large pulls. Throwing yourself into the fray like a holy brawler and and getting your game in a Bud Spencer way has always been fun and rewarding.
As you said, the intention was to maintain the flavour of the class in this general overhaul. Sadly the OP feels to have lost his holy fervour and strives to get the attention from those enemies that raged against him as till mod 15, being obliged to use timed taunts before cowering behind his shield for the most part of a fight. Divinity is a concern while it should represent a benefit; I suppose that nobody would feel worse if all those divinity empowered powers could just have a cooldown and be done with them that way. Using Divine Call in justice tree gave a nice DPS boost, lowered cooldowns sensibly and generally gave a nice feel of divine empowerment when handled correctly; the new divinity seems only to reward putting a rock on the block key, which doesn't feel satisfying at all.
I know that mod 16's changes are a lot to handle for the dev team for the sheer mass of new stuff, but consider that every aspect of the game becomes irrelevant if one's own character is not fun to play. Hopefully the time to tweak stuff to avoid this is still enough before Undermountain goes live.
Thank you for taking the time to clarify your feelings and provide your feedback.
I don't get the sense that when I tank on Justicar that I have to "cower behind my shield." In most cases, the healer has been able to keep me topped off, even if I go without blocking for long periods. I generally only need to use my shield for the start of a very large pull, or strategically timed against attacks I couldn't avoid, or big attacks in boss fights.
That being said, it's going to depend a lot on how comfortable you are with the new paradigms, how comfortable your healer is, and how much mitigation your character has. (And of course, if there is any broken scaling, or any broken enemies, that can completely skew things as well.) Right now we're trying to dial in on enemy damage in group content, and how survivable tanks should be. You have a lot of freedom to devote your stats to defensive stats, so we need to be careful. If we were to make tanks significantly more survivable than other classes, before they stack mitigation, then we'll create a problem where tanks can survive attacks orders of magnitude larger than other classes, which complicates enemy design and PvP.
That being said, I understand and wholeheartedly agree with your point. I certainly want Paladin to be a fun class to play, and I think you still very much can rush into the battle head first and survive and keep the enemy's attention. (That being said, threat is a little unforgiving right now, this week's build will see a buff to threat for tanks.)
I know the divinity mechanic keeps coming up, and I want you to know that I am listening. That being said, I would like to gather more feedback over the next few weeks before doing anything drastic. How have you been setting up your bars? Do you usually take more than one divinity spender? Divinity ultimately gives you more flexibility than a strict cool down, and mechanics that restore divinity more quickly, are like powers that lower your encounter cooldown.
With a divinity based power, you can choose to use it a few times in rapid succession, or treat it like it had a cooldown, only using your powers off the top of your bar. If I were to suddenly remove divinity, powers like Smite would have a 30 second cooldown, or see a serious reduction in magnitude to receive a shorter cooldown. If you're using all of your divinity at the start of the fight, you can certainly make that choice, but you can also not do that.
Also, you will often only want to take 1 divinity spender, then your other two powers can be used as they come off of cooldown and you aren't splitting your divinity between two spells. There are certainly cases where two spenders is appropriate, but I'd advise against ever taking 3 at the same time (on Justicar.)
Thanks for the feedback! I'll look into this, it is not intended that you cannot block the initial application of paralyze. Though, as you have correctly guessed, if you are successfully hit with paralysis, it is intended that the individual stuns can still affect you while blocking.
If I'm not mistaken partial paralysis is one of the grievous control effects introduced with tomb of annihilation which purposely disregard immunity (dodge, block, unstoppable, etc...).
Another example is the avatar of orcus's push and stun power which also is part of another set of grievous control effects. These all have red zones but disregard dodging out of the red zone and send you back in if you don't move after the dodge animation finishes but before the attack happens. The most common example within this group is the area stun attack that all kinds of golems use, immunity works for them but not dodge.
I've encountered several NPC's in Undermountain which use partial paralysis. I'm getting really tired of this effect and I'd be glad to see it finally respecting dodge and block.
Fixing all other grievous control effects would great too.
Powers like paralysis allow us to punish you for making a mistake without just outright killing you. Ultimately, it's not supposed to be fun when you get paralyzed. But hopefully effects like paralysis allow the opportunity for fun when you succeed in avoiding them, because the stakes are higher.
That being said, let me address a few things about unavoidable control effects: first, there are unavoidable control effects. Most of the control effects that are intentionally unavoidable are in boss fights. These are unavoidable, because the mechanics can be trivialized by dodge rolling, since most dodges have pretty huge immunity windows. (Not to mention, blocking classes don't need to time anything at all for big mechanics like Acererak's tilt, or Orcus's wings.)
Outside of boss fights, generally—it's intended that control effects can mostly be avoided. With something like paralysis, which is an applied control effect, the initial application is what will need to be blocked, so you won't be able to raise your shield to block the individual stuns that happen if you become paralyzed, but you'll be able to, for instance, block the Enervoraptor's breath attack to prevent paralysis. I apologize that this wasn't the case already on preview.
That being said, there is one exception that will remain unblockable, and those are gaze style attacks. For gaze attacks, you'll still need to turn away to avoid the application.
Hello! English is not my native language so I apologize if there are any mistakes.
I've been playing neverwinter for 4 years as a paladin and I have to say that at the beginning the changes were a shock, but these days I got used to the mechanics of divinity (playing almost always as justicar) and I'm really enjoying it. As a justicar I can easily do in solo kessel in 7 min, tuern in 5 min and lostmouth in 14.
The problems come when i play in a group because it seems that we just can not do enough aggro (especially on mobs), I did a lot of CN and I used all the skills that increase the aggro but in the end the dps player or pets like the Yeti always took it.
Unfortunately I find that the paladin oathkeeper at the moment is almost unusable because the recharge of divinty with the tab is definitely too slow, and I end up using only divine touch hoping to do a critical hit.
So as justicar:
- when playing in group it is difficult to keep the aggro of mobs. I think the cause is that templar's wrath is too expensive and can be used a few times, and it seems that vow only works on the affected mob. And you know: without aggro no divinity, and no divinty no party.
- aggroing bosses is easier, due to the effect of vow. But they do not hit you often enough so divinity always at zero and you are forced to stay a long time with the shield raised. If the bosses were full of mobs like those of Tales of Old there would be no problem to accumulate divinity (provided you keep the aggro) but now as now bosses like Tal’gath or orcus are boring to tank.
- if there are pet like the yeti it is impossible to have the aggro even to the bosses
- the shield provided by the TAB is inconvenient because it does not protect so much, it never happens that the party has cone behind the tank and it is extremely expensive. It ends up not being used.
- the animation of radiant charge is beautiful!!! But it is very long and you can not protect your self. It happens to come killed while trying to use it.
- in general it would be possible to lower the cost of the divinity and perhaps also the power of encounters (to balance) so as to be able to use them repeatedly and increasing the "action" style of the game.
- in the end: recharge of divinity out of the fight is too slow, it would be good if we were sure to have the aggro of next mob group, but it's not that easy.
Thanks for taking the time to play on preview, and to come onto the forums and provide your feedback, even if it wasn't in your native language. Your English was perfectly clear by the way!
To answer some of your points: we're buffing threat generation some this week, and fixing an issue with Vow of Enmity and Divine Challenger not actually placing you at the top of the list, please give it a try after the changes this Friday, and let me know if its easier to hold threat, or still a challenge.
On the topic of divinity, I've addressed this a bit already, but playing a healer with a divinity bar is a very new and different style of gameplay for Neverwinter, you need to manage your resources. That being said, from most of our internal playtests, we've found that healing is actually far too strong right now, our healers almost never run out of divinity in dungeon runs, and have a lot of free time to DPS.
That being said, we're not looking to make major nerfs to it, but we are looking at the difficulty of group content, and how much white noise damage is happening to the tank, we feel we need to put a little more pressure on the healers. Particularly once tanks are much more confident keeping aggro, and no stray enemies running around, we're worried about it being too easy.
@asterdahl Myself and 2 other players paladins grouped up to test last night... 2 of us were not experiencing these one shots (in fact I leveled to 80 never having less than 75% health in any fight, the third was getting one shot on nearly every single mob in every zone while testing.
For those of us not getting one shot the mob damage cycles looked like: enemy hits for 5k, enemy hits for 5k, enemy hits for 10 to 40k
For our teammate getting one shot the mob damage cycle looked like this: enemy hits for 5k, enemy hits for 5k, enemy hits for 600k to 1.5m
Our stats point allocations were nearly identical, so to test we did the following:
Set all our feats to be identical: same result, player three experienced the same damage cycle
Set all our boons to be identical: same result, player three experienced the same damage cycle
Player three cleared all companion power slots: player 3 no longer experiencing one shots from every mob, and damage cycle looks like the players not experiencing crazy high burst from the mobs. We ended up having to stop there, so did not narrow down which companion slotted power might be the factor involved, I hope this helps.
LOL wow really something not working correctly????? NO WAY wow. OP are broken period, currently NOTHING can be done in their current state to correct the grievous and ludicrous nerfs implemented in this mod
I know that I'm not a normal "player" being one of those multi class whales with seven 18k+ characters in live right now. However, I greatly enjoy this game, and I am still super excited about all the changes so far. Speaking as a software engineer I can tell you that any effort this large there will be bugs and balance issues to work through, and it doesn't help when you are building on an already extensive code base. From the point of view of mechanics and game play, the best we can do as players is to provide constructive feedback on what we think is wrong, and what is working, but at the end of the day these are changes that have been mapped out and worked on for months, so we cannot reasonably expect to see major changes to mechanics at this point. When it comes to bugs it is in our best interests to give as detailed information as possible so that the designers and developers can recreate the bug... trust me this can make the difference between spending 10 minutes finding and fixing a bug, and a bug never getting fixed.
As such can we please keep the sarcasm and critical remarks to a minimum in these forums, and stick to constructive feedback and detailed as possible bug scenarios so that the designers and devs can focus on the task at hand: providing us, the customer with the best experience possible.
I apologize to everyone for not making this a paladin post
Thank You
Off-topic or not, I genuinely appreciate the sentiment. I will still be making some legitimate mechanical changes based on feedback, but the point can never be repeated too much that clear feedback and information about any bugs encountered goes a long way.
I have played a tank paladin from mod 6, 122 days worth. I loved being able to help others through content and PUGed a lot of RIQs in my time.
I understand the need for change and all, I have almost finished the new campaign solo and have enjoyed the new system.
Then I tried group content. I find myself in this strange feast or famine state where in order to maintain agro I have used my divinity and need to shield. Mobs either just swamp me making my shield mostly useless or ignore me and leave me no way to recover divinity.
I have taken as many ways as possible to compensate; feats and boons that provide defense, HP, stating. I pay attention to positioning, always have, tho this is my first tank in an MMO I am by no means new to the concept.
The paladin is suppose to be the healing tank now, but to try that would remove the use of a very needed encounter.
I may be the only player crazy enough to try the feat "Tied to the Earth". Tho an extra way to avoid a possible group wipe CC is nice, it really only works solo. In a group I am unable to reposition in combat with that hefty a speed decrease, and positioning is everything to a tank. In case anyone is under the wrong idea, it only slows you when BO is active. I think, as I really lag behind even with speed buffs to help compensate out of combat but you see the speed decrease when BO is active.
The big glowing shield that takes half my divinity, I have renamed that the "Cone of Suck" as it, well takes half my divinity and stays right there even when the fight moves. I guess if I do not have to react to the situation in a way the requires me to move I am gold.
Red zones are now maddening. I am slow, with BO I crawl, there is almost no way to get out of the zone. Add all the newish attacks that bypass shields and I am at a loss of what to do.
I have gone from the guy that said, "bring the character you want, we will make do", to baggage.
Do not assume that I am calling for a stop to all this change, I welcome it. However, all I get out of group content is frustration and disappointment. If I provide no net gain to a group I will not take a space. Maybe I will solo grind for a time, as I am in a great guild with a lot of friends, but with the feeling that I now lack a role I will probably not stay or play for the long term.
I will hold out hope that some of our concerns here will be looked at. Some tweaks or adjustments may change things. Cryptic, you have a bad reputation of late to push out bugged and unworkable content and I am not expecting much.
Good luck, and good gaming.
Thanks for taking the time to play on preview and send your feedback! I know that some people here have the general feeling that no changes will be forthcoming, and that everything you see is going to live as is, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
Especially when it comes to things like, feeling like its impossible to hold aggro, or like divinity management is too strong in AoE situations and too punishing in situations where you lose aggro or only have one target—these are the kinds of things I'm focusing my attention on in the next few weeks, so, please bear with us, we won't ship with Justicar feeling like dead weight.
Confirms my assessment: Whoever is designing tank is designing for group play only. Their concept leaves the tank as completely dependent on DPS, with damage revolving solely around keeping aggro but without a real ability to control.
Get rid of the 30% damage decrease. Increase the generation of divinity and increase at-will damage without killing encounter damage. There is nothing wrong with a well built, high level tank out damaging a much lower DPS. There is nothing wrong with a tank not needing a DPS when they are high enough level- ir's how a tank completes campaigns, because for a lot of us, grouping is only for queues.
Thank you for the feedback! In case it wasn't clear, I am working on the designs for all of the tanks (though I only just took over the Sentinel Barbarian work) and I have not been focusing entirely on designing them for group play. It is fairly standard for a tank to deal less damage than a DPS.
After all, even in a solo setting, the tank has more survivability than the DPS, so there has to be some trade off. Sometimes in you'll see a tanking stance that can be toggled on or off (that reduces outgoing damage, but increases threat and mitigation), or you'll just see the base damage values lower than on DPS classes.
In the end, we may move to something like a base damage adjustment, or that passive may also feature some base mitigation, but as we haven't yet finalized the position of the dials, it was much more straightforward to simply give a cut across the board. A 30% reduction is certainly non-trivial, but it's not enough that you need to "solely" rely on other players for DPS. Justicar is more than capable of soloing. And in group content, I'm certain you can still out DPS an under geared DPS player.
I like quite a few things about MOD 16 on preview. I have been playing Neverwinter for several years and have experience with every class but I mainly like to play support roles on Paladins and Clerics. The changes to Random queues, ad refinement, the crafting overhaul and Acquisitions Incorporated are what finally drove me to stop playing a few months ago. I am sure there are several people out there that really enjoy that content and who are willing to accept the bugs and inconvenience. I respect and salute you all for your determination. I am not here to throw shade I am here to provide feedback. I came back in anticipation of MOD 16. Take this into consideration while reading what follows.
The new content is beautiful. There is great attention to detail and the areas feel huge and populated with tons of interesting enemies and npcs. The changes to companions are interesting, the additions of new gear and items are great and shake things up a bit. The level cap increase was needed and appreciated. The idea of balancing classes is honorable given that a part of the community asked for it. I respect the Developers for undertaking such an enormous and difficult task. I really hope they can pull things together to make MOD 16 one of the best ever. I wish them luck, I really do. I love this game and miss playing it with my guildmates and friends. It is in this light that I am going to try to provide some constructive feedback, first as a Paladin and later as a Cleric.
Speaking as a long time Paladin: Tanking on preview is the most frustrating thing I have ever experienced in an MMO, and I have played tank classes on several. NOT FUN. Even at over 20k IL I get one shot with my shield up. Not to mention that the shield bug is still in the game, so often even if you are pushing the button to raise your shield there is a HUGE delay before it actually raises or maybe it just won't raise at all. Any server lag exacerbates the situation even with a beast of a pc and a 200mb connection with low ping.
If I have 270k HP and my shield up HOW AM I BEING ONE SHOT? Do I need to stack even more HP? What if I'm not in a level 20 Guild with an HP boon? Even then I would only have 302k HP in my situation. Top this off with bosses that totally ignore the shield mechanic all together and stun, trap, root, or poison the tank followed immediately by a power attack that can not be shielded against or blocked and you create a frustrating experience that is not only not fun, but causes the entire party to die repeatedly.
Thanks for taking the time to check out the changes on preview, I'm really happy to hear that news of Module 16 got you excited enough to return to the game and check out the changes. I hope you won't let the issues you ran into color your thoughts too much, because much of what you described are absolutely bugs we are working very hard to fix.
Particularly on the topic of getting 1 shot as an IL 20k. That shouldn't be happening outside of something like a failed boss ultimately mechanic. There are a number of level scaling issues, as well as enemies with outlier damage values, and a number of companion passive powers that are mistakenly buffing enemies by orders of magnitude. We've already identified quite a few of these, and some will be fixed this week, others will be fixed in the weeks to come. In the meantime, if you run into any more similar issues, please check out the unexpected death thread in the main preview forum and tell us how you died unexpectedly, so you can help us track down the issue.
I hope you continue to try out the changes and keep sending us your feedback, I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to do so. With everyone's help identifying bugs like the ones you ran into, I'm confident we can nail them down over the next few weeks.
Also, if you can PM me some screenshots of the weapon pivot issue you are talking about with female characters, I'd be happy to pass it along to the character team!
I agree with oremonger about using Circle of Protection as the AoE for Divine Shield, at least if it’s going to remain 80% use of Divinity.
Looking at the current triangle it looks like the sides that go away from the shield are close to, if not the same as the radius for CoP already, but because it only exists in the triangle (not a cone it has 3 flat sides) it is only about 1/4 of the area, which means it’s useless for protecting either the Paladin or the party. The Paladin either drops the shield and then moves out of it to keep it relatively free of enemies so the other PCs are protected, or the Paladin stays in it and the other PCs are forced out because it literally fills with enemies and only the OP is protected.
A final comment, in the flash and splat environment of party play the vfx for the shield’s area is basically impossible to track while also tracking enemies, so again a circle centred on the shield part of the vfx would make it easier for players of all skill levels to track the effect.
Thanks for the feedback—since feedback on this power is so prevalent, I wanted to address a few things about it. First, I know that right now people are really not liking the power, I think there are plenty of good opportunities to use it, but maybe not enough for a primary mechanic, so I may make some adjustments.
With that said, at least in the meantime, I'd like to make some recommendations about how to use it, and address the edges. First of all, the VFX originally did not feature a distinct back to their effect, which looked much better. (Basically, the ground FX were a gradient chevron instead of a three sided triangle.) Ultimately, some internal feedback about confused positioning resulted in the FX getting changed temporarily, and I have not reverted them back, they don't perfectly match the area of effect either. It's fairly forgiving, and you can pretty much be standing anywhere immediately behind the shield and take reduced damage.
However—I think it only gets a bit confusing when you start talking about hypothetically fitting the tank inside the shield with the party, while the tank is actively tanking the boss, or enemies and trying not to cleave the party.
It's definitely not meant for that, and it's an either-or situation. This isn't a pre mod16 Hallowed Ground, where you're supposed to be able to generate a massive area for rangers to stand far away and shoot, and tanks, and melee DPS to all stand inside and benefit from. It's just a reduction to damage taken, so in the average situation where the tank has aggro, the rest of the party shouldn't need its effects.
That being said, there are practical times to use this to give others a benefit, including times where you might want the whole party to benefit, such as before unavoidable group wide damage, like Cry of the Atropal. In those cases, the tank is not actively tanking enemies at the time, so they can safely drop it and the group can easily position behind the shield. In reality, at that point I would expect a Sanctuary, Astral Shield or Hallowed Ground to be dropped inside the Palisade as well.
Finally, it Palisade can also be put to good use by a Paladin off tank in a 10 man, by throwing it up in front of the main tank.
Hopefully this has been a little food for thought on uses for Divine Palisade. Know that I do hear the feedback, and I do understand it. I also would like to hear more feedback after threat gets some buffs, and people get more comfortable holding enemies more still than they are likely currently able to.
I see a lot of vague comments made here by the sole dev responsible for both developing and seemingly also for community management. "Some zones/areas/maps/instances are not yet balanced to accommodate the class changes."
Well, what exactly are we testing then? Cause my super tank (super meaning something very weak, like a newborn chicken) was just insta killed in one of the portals in Castle Never. You know the 5 portals, where the mobs are so weak on Live you 1shot them before they even reach you. Ye,s those killed my 18k Justicar. Awesome! So, what are we testing @asterdahl ? We cant properly test anything if we dont know where to test, where are things wai?
I'll tell you what you're testing. You're testing to see how much you can push this bs build before people start screaming and name calling and mods would have to step in and delete posts/ban folks. You know how sometimes a company would advertise an open position and even call candidates over for interviews only to never follow thru with any of them.. That company is simply fishing to see whats in the water. That's what you at Cryptic are doing, you're testing to see how much you can get away with. Well, we'll see about that.
Hi Emilemo, I understand your frustration, but to be clear—I never suggested that anyone not test anything because it was not working as intended. I have just tried to make it clear that what many are experiencing; such as being unexpectedly one shot in Castle Never, or by a spider in Undermountain, those are bugs.
These bugs come from various sources, one of the most egregious was related to the chicken companion buffing enemies for instance. Tracking bugs like this down is one of our primary reasons for running a preview server.
That doesn't mean we want you to stop testing, or stop providing feedback. I just ask that you take your experiences on the preview server with a grain of salt, and realize that if I say "we're not aiming to make things significantly harder," and then you get one shot, that you probably ran into a bug.
I'm not upset with anyone when they take the time out of their day to come here and provide in-depth feedback around their experiences that involved getting one shotted. It's already a lot to ask to come to the forums and type up your feedback, so I understand not everyone has time to read the other posts, and find out about various issues. And that's okay.
But if I can at least help people to understand that they're experiencing bugs, and not that Module 16 is being designed to one shot people. Or better yet, if I can help warn a few people about the issues before they run into them, or before they form their thoughts around balance as if the bugs were intentional—I think that saves everyone some time and grief.
That said, I really would like to personally apologize on behalf of the team for the egregious bugs that are killing people outright unexpectedly or making it impossible or difficult to test some content for feedback. We would very much like to have gone to preview without any of those issues. Neverwinter has been around for a while now, and there are a lot of moving pieces—and we've changed a lot of them. We truly appreciate all of your help.
The third set has us choosing between Enhanced Radiant Charge and Bound to the Land. If I have all the threat like I'm supposed to and use Radiant Charge (this is the one I choose), I take all the mobs with me. This is the equivalent of the CW push that most of us hate so much. My party was not amused. Bound to the Land is a non-starter, 25% movement decrease? Paladins have enough trouble keeping up with their party in a dungeon. I could always make up for it with Dark enchantments...oh wait guess not. Yeah not picking that feat. Nice graphics on the Radiant Charge daily though.Not feeling the love here.
Bound to the Land does not reduces your movement speed permanently. It only reduces while you are under effect of Binding Oath.
Yes but binding oath lasts 12 seconds which can and will bleed over into non-combat time. I went and tested it. It's still a negative.
I'll be looking at feats in general pretty extensively, and many may get cut and replaced, but if this one stays—I'll make sure the effect gets cleared when you exit combat.
OK here my feedback....Nothing is working and everything is wrong. that cover it????, I am the customer and I am extremely dissatisfied with not only the Development of this mod but also the direction the game is headed in.
Thanks for continuing to provide your feedback Gunk. I understand you are not satisfied with the changes, but I would ask you to remember that you are playing on the preview server. We don't advertise the preview server as a final product, and you cannot buy anything on the preview server.
If you're averse to encountering bugs or broken things, you may want to steer clear. That said, if you'd like to help identify any issues and report them, we do genuinely appreciate it. Playing on preview is absolutely a favor to us, and we appreciate all of your help.
Sacred Shield is a level 40 feat that affects a level 72 power. This makes no sense. No character should reasonably be asked to select a feat designed to improve a specific power that they have not yet acquired, never mind one that is 32 levels away in an 80 level scale.
Further, while I am not opposed to the existence of feats that improve specific powers, I do not think that any pairing of feats should include two feats each designed to improve a single power. Such choices exist for the Paladin at multiple steps, and while my early power choices matched up with some of these feats, there was a point where I had neither power slotted, making for a completely worthless feat slot for me.
This seems to fly in the face of the idea that every build should be more-or-less equally viable. Either those powers are not as good as the others and need a feat to bring them up to speed or they are as good and these feats make them better, meaning that any Paladin that doesn't use these powers is handicapping themselves.
I will say that the feat example you point out is absolutely a bug, and will be fixed. I will be taking another pass at feats, so do expect some noteworthy changes.
That being said, regardless of what changes come to feats—I will say, that every build is not meant to be viable. At least in the sense that any random combination of powers slotted into your bar is not necessarily meant to be viable. Some powers synergies better than others, but even beyond that, there are simply cases where some powers are entirely wrong for the job.
For instance, a Justicar build with three divinity spenders is not really a good idea, and not meant to be viable. An Oathkeeper build with Banishment, Cleansing Touch, and Burning Light is not going to be able to heal very well, etc.
The current design philosophy behind feats that directly affect powers, is that they allow you to incorporate a power you might otherwise not incorporate into your main rotation for a certain task, or provide some interesting synergy that wasn't there with the base powers, as powers at their core don't link together.
That being said, I am absolutely hearing the feedback that some people don't like this system, and would prefer just raw, across the board bonuses to things. I am not saying that we are going to go any particular direction at this moment, we're still continuing to collect your feedback.
Ultimately, I'd like to move forward with feats that can change your moment to moment gameplay, by making you think about or use your powers in a different way. However, breaking some people out of the feeling that they have to take a power if they've feated it—even if it's the wrong tool for the job they're currently doing, is quite difficult.
Just know that if we were to switch to feats that simply gave you an across the board bonus, or more global effects—those wouldn't really change your gameplay, and ultimately the content would still be balanced around having those feats, so it wouldn't necessarily be that the feats made you significantly stronger.
When I transferred a character over, they had several old quests return to the mission tracker.
Things like "Locate a flyer" or "Accept Retrieval Operations" from Acquisitions Inc or some Tyranny of Dragons stuff that the original character had long since completed and that were not in their mission journal when they transferred.
And not sure if a bug or not, but the Undermountain Cuirass that my Paladin was given had the "Barovian Hunter" bonus attached, giving him a 5% damage bonus in Barovia.
Why would Undermountain gear give a character bonus damage in Barovia?
Thanks for the reports! Would you mind reposting these reports in the relevant bug threads, or general if no thread exists on the specific topic? I know it's a pain, but it will help make sure the right developers see your post!
@asterdahl Haven't seen a response recently so I hope the negativity on the forums has not dissuaded you from returning to communicate with those of us that are trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I wanted to repost a suggestion/request in case it got lost in the mix:
I have a request for relentless avenger. Can we get an added effect of increased threat to enemies around the target? Feel free to reduce the damage to 600 to compensate. I wouldn't reduce it further since it would just be threat to the enemies around the target and not damage to the enemies like Templar's Wrath. This would give us a cooldown based aoe threat generator (Vow of Enmity just puts us at the top). It would work out well in the Trash rotation as something to help us build threat and as its on a cooldown it allows us to look at other divinity costing powers that are not Templar's Wrath.
With this change, a sample trash build could be to switch out Templar's Wrath with Bane so I can Bane from a distance for initial damage, Relentless Avenger to close the gap and build aoe threat. I could then use Relentless Avenger on cooldown to keep up threat and mix Bane with Oath Strike and Sacred Weapon as described. The goal should be more build combinations, not less.
I'm still here, I promise! (I have been busy dragging Barbarian out of the gutter the last few days, and also trying to get some fixes in for the week 2 build.) I apologize that I haven't had time to post since Tuesday night.
On the topic of Relentless Avenger: I appreciate your thoughts and feedback. At the moment, the next thing on my agenda for Paladin is to do another pass on feats, and I would definitely like to focus on providing more potential build options for different scenarios, so something like that might be possible.
I have one fairly big complaint over the new Paladin paragons...
In every game I have ever played, Paladins were paladins because they could do healing and tanking - this is still true... however, the absolutely most iconic ability of every Paladin was simple: Lay on Hands. No matter how you specced, what paths you picked, etc, ALL Paladins could LoH. It is so iconic, that, to me (and probably several others), the character can NOT possibly be a Paladin if they cannot LoH.
Yet, that is exactly what you have chosen to do? To take the most identifying staple of being a Paladin, and put it solely within the Healer side of the class... Sorry, but, that makes the Paladin nothing more than a Fighter who happened to pick up a few tricks from the Cleric. 18 Fighter/2 Cleric is not a Paladin. Paladins have Lay on Hands. They didn't just learn how to heal, they are gifted, blessed, imbued by their deities to do certain things that Clerics cannot do, or even attempt to do, and the epitome of that is LoH.
Without it, it isn't a Paladin.
Thanks for taking the time to check out the changes on preview, and write up your thoughts. I certainly appreciate them. For me, I've also played a lot of games with Paladins, and played just as many where a Lay on Hands style power does not make an appearance.
That being said, I understand that to you, Lay on Hands has a symbolic significance. I also understand that Lay on Hands is a significant component of the Paladin's base kit in D&D. Powers in Neverwinter obviously are inspired by the source material, but rebuilt to work in the context of an MMO. Lay on Hands as it is in Neverwinter, is much more powerful than the version of Lay on Hands Paladins have access to in pen and paper D&D.
In terms of a basic healing power, both Paladin paragon paths do have access to Divine Touch. At a conceptual level, if you're just looking for the ability to heal as a Justicar, you do have that option.
Are you mostly frustrated with not having access to the spell of that name, or were you specifically frustrated not having access to the effect of the current Lay on Hands as a tank?
Hi asterdahl, where I understand your 30% damage reduction there are some issues with it. 1) our weapon damage are already lowered to compensate for it 2) our weapons power and stats are already lowered for it
Actually, these two points are not correct. In Module 16, all weapon damage is the same across all classes, except rogues, due to dual wielding.
After all, even in a solo setting, the tank has more survivability than the DPS, so there has to be some trade off. Sometimes in you'll see a tanking stance that can be toggled on or off (that reduces outgoing damage, but increases threat and mitigation), or you'll just see the base damage values lower than on DPS classes
In a solo setting, survivability is rarely the primary concern. In a solo setting, against even-level mobs with appropriate gear, time to kill, efficiency in dealing with mob groups, are far more relevant--would you not agree? OP does not have a DPS paragon path. What is your reasoning that there is not already a trade-off in that tanks will be slotting defensive enchants and spend a significant time shielding to regain resources?
After all, even in a solo setting, the tank has more survivability than the DPS, so there has to be some trade off. Sometimes in you'll see a tanking stance that can be toggled on or off (that reduces outgoing damage, but increases threat and mitigation), or you'll just see the base damage values lower than on DPS classes
In a solo setting, survivability is rarely the primary concern. In a solo setting, against even-level mobs with appropriate gear, time to kill, efficiency in dealing with mob groups, are far more relevant--would you not agree? OP does not have a DPS paragon path. What is your reasoning that there is not already a trade-off in that tanks will be slotting defensive enchants and spend a significant time shielding to regain resources?
< This..
I fully understand the reasoning that tank takes more damge do less damage it is a no brainer. However that is aleady built in the game.
Hp the same for classes, ac removed, enounters for dps classes do more damage, being tanky = get more defence in items, enchants and stats using defence mechanics that prevents doing damage etc etc.
If you want to be more tanky the very fondation of the game makes you do less damage it is built in the core of the game mechanics.
Now adding a 30% damage reduction on top of that is not the same as saying we want to see tanks do less damage its ADDING to an already existing condition
Now when tanks block (absorbing damage) the other avoid the damage with dodge, sprint etc it does not mean tanks can handle more mobs on the contrary it means having MORE dps + being able to avoid damage makes you take LESS damage and killing the mobs faster.
What you do would MABY be true if all damage was unavoidable which is NOT the case.
So the question remains - What are the reason behind this 30% damage reduction as the reason stated is void in reality ??
Comments
First I would like to say, I did read all the post of other ppl in this thread and I need to say the overall feedback doesn’t look good. A lot did complain about the hard nerf on all stats from paladin and the boring gameplay that will follow up on it.
On the other side the devs are telling us we will get over it when we have more experience on the changes and have taken a deeper thought on the changes.
Well the thing is how should I take any proper testing on the new changes, if there are so many bugs?
I did copy my char (Paladin IL15k) from live to preview and made a fast respec on all of my stats and went to the next group of mobs in dread ring. I killed one minor minion in the group and instantly died. My first thought was, well it seems I did something totally wrong and ported to PE and made a totally overhaul of this poor paladin. Change all the enchantments, power and boons, did focus on full def, crit resist and awareness. For a reason I didn’t changed any of my current gear on my toon. Went back to dread ring, engaging the first group of mobz I could find.
I got one shot again and again and again ………..
I was so frustrated after a few fights, that I switched off and let it slowly drip into me:THE PALLY I KNOW IS ALL GONE :’C
But I didn’t feel good about it and I took a look on the official forum from NWO and found this feedback and other post about one shot after a few minutes into the fight. So I got the feeling again “this sux a$$” and I should look for a new game but did a last look into the bug section and found an awesome post from @isaintify1 that a bugged out companion is able to one shot me every 30 sec.
So I went back to preview and kicked that dmn chicken out of my companion roster and finally I could survive a fight in dread ring.
That was just one of the many other bugs I could find in a few days of testing on preview.
Another thing are the character stats on the paladin and even on all other chars, they don’t make any sense to me. Why do I have a base stat of 8 charisma as a Paladin? Because I am the ugliest HAMSTER in Faerûn?
All of the stats doesn’t fit to a tank build or even work, also radiant strike isn’t working or something is wrong with the tooltip, because I couldn’t see any different in numbers after I hit an enemy. The aoe effect of it is really small now.
Then a lot of the tooltips did tell me about my stamina and a gain for it but where do I see my stamina? The left blue line is telling me “guard 100/100” is this my stamina or where is it?
So how do I tank with my shield now? Stamina = hitpoint on shield or Stamina = total hitpoint pool?
The divinity gain in solo content feels slow and it seems u get forced to team play even if u only want to grind some boon points. This after all isn’t a bad thing but u doesn’t want to waste time finding someone, who is doing the same quest as you are doing.
I gonna wait for some patches on preview, so I can give a proper feedback about paladin and the game play.
The whole experience is excruciatingly painful and completely opposite of what is considered "fun". Looking at the divinity bar refill is entertaining like watching the grass grow. Thankfully my 19k OP is the companion of a proud Yojimbo, which is doing the lion share of damage dealing and tanking. I cannot fathom what a low geared OP has to endure to complete in solo play any content after the utter destruction of the class.
I can't agree more with anyone supporting the idea that the 30% damage decrease for an already low DPS class as the OP is utter nonsense. The gameplay for any class has become more boring because of the long CD pauses; the paladin gets the worst of every world with its cumbersome and slow divinity mechanic, its mediocre encounters summed to its 30% nonsensical nerf to damage and a class mechanic that is best to be avoided alltogether. I have not played any other tank class on preview yet but I sincerely hope that they fare better with the general dynamic of their classes.
I can understand that, during internal testing, anyone using the paladin has used a maxed out toon geared with free BiS enchants, top tier equip, any companion available and so on in order to run a dungeon with a test group. The "OP experience" for that tester ends there, which is not the case for a player that has to invest time and money to improve and gear up a character in order to run all the content. I wonder who, in a sane state of mind, would chose to limp through the whole game with an handicapped class while anyone chosing a DPS class could do it in a less boring and speedy way. Expect to have a serious drought of tanks in the future, if the situation is the same for GFs and GW...barians as it is for the OP.
Companions, Mounts and all the Runestone/Enhancements Added. Who cares about CON, when you can just add it by other means. NW needs to try and make Statistics mean something. Less Items that give Awareness, Defense, HP, Deflect, etc
and more that provide Stat Increases.
Maybe even adapt new concepts like Dodge, Physical Resistance, Magical Resistance. And get away from excessive amounts of
numbers aka 250000 HPs. Why not 1000 HPs something more realistic. And not sure why AC doesn't matter.
Goes to show neither does STATS. Thank God my Guild isn't THACO!
I wanted to repost a suggestion/request in case it got lost in the mix:
I have a request for relentless avenger. Can we get an added effect of increased threat to enemies around the target? Feel free to reduce the damage to 600 to compensate. I wouldn't reduce it further since it would just be threat to the enemies around the target and not damage to the enemies like Templar's Wrath. This would give us a cooldown based aoe threat generator (Vow of Enmity just puts us at the top). It would work out well in the Trash rotation as something to help us build threat and as its on a cooldown it allows us to look at other divinity costing powers that are not Templar's Wrath.
With this change, a sample trash build could be to switch out Templar's Wrath with Bane so I can Bane from a distance for initial damage, Relentless Avenger to close the gap and build aoe threat. I could then use Relentless Avenger on cooldown to keep up threat and mix Bane with Oath Strike and Sacred Weapon as described. The goal should be more build combinations, not less.
In every game I have ever played, Paladins were paladins because they could do healing and tanking - this is still true... however, the absolutely most iconic ability of every Paladin was simple: Lay on Hands. No matter how you specced, what paths you picked, etc, ALL Paladins could LoH. It is so iconic, that, to me (and probably several others), the character can NOT possibly be a Paladin if they cannot LoH.
Yet, that is exactly what you have chosen to do? To take the most identifying staple of being a Paladin, and put it solely within the Healer side of the class... Sorry, but, that makes the Paladin nothing more than a Fighter who happened to pick up a few tricks from the Cleric. 18 Fighter/2 Cleric is not a Paladin. Paladins have Lay on Hands. They didn't just learn how to heal, they are gifted, blessed, imbued by their deities to do certain things that Clerics cannot do, or even attempt to do, and the epitome of that is LoH.
Without it, it isn't a Paladin.
Please consider removing the 30% damage reduction in Justicar for the following reasons:
1. Unlike Fighter and Barbarian, we do not have a DPS spec we can change to when soloing/questing making questing that much slower
2. As a tank it appears that the new methodology is for me to choose gear with defensive stats, which by itself will lower my gear, even if I have the same ilvl as a dps player
3. It is counter intuitive to spec as a healer (Oathkeeper doesn't have the 30% damage reduction) to deal damage better
3a. If we do want a true heal spec I have to keep swapping powers between heal and dps depending on my role or buy a third loadout which I shouldn't have to do.
Or, change it to only be 30% reduction when in a party. At least then we are not penalized when we solo.
With that said, to those of you that think our only options now are to Smite and then block until we can Smite again, please see my previous post with build options for Justicar tanking and the following for soloing. This build allowed me to efficiently solo in Twister Caverns and the first expedition at a fast pace with little down time. I am 17k ilvl but I assume this would work for lower ilvls.
Step 1 - Change your loadout to OATHKEEPER.
The 30% damage penalty immediately goes away, you still have the same tools as Justicar for dps with lower costs on your primary dps tools and much better divinity regen... if only we had those options as Justicar.
Build:
At wills - Valorous Strike (haven't tested Divine Fulmination yet) / Radiant Strike
Encounter - Circle of Power or Sacred Weapon (see Feats), Bane, Smite
Daily - Radiant Charge, Divine Judgement
Class Feature - Divine Justice, Composure
Feat - Divine Weapon (in case you want to mix is Sacred Weapon for more Magnitude and Divinity Regen), Keeper's Wrath (lowers cost of Bane and Smite), Guarded Prayers (to improve mid fight Divinity regen), Radiant Banner (I am not 80 yet, but the alternative is for healing) [Neither of the options in the first Feat slot matter]
Companions - choose offensive companion skills (will vary based on your companions)
Rotation - Open with Bane from a distance, drop Circle of Power, swap between Bane and Smite as the mobs get to you (choose smartly based on the number and spread of enemies; you shouldn't need to spam to be able to kill everything). If anything actually survives long enough to reach you then Valorous Strike or Smite to finish them off. Alternative is same rotation but replace Circle of Power with Sacred Weapon if you want more mobility or damage. Throw in Channel Divinity while your companion finishes off the last mob and you should be mostly ready for the next pack.
Not sure the regen rates of Circle of Power vs Divine Weapon so once we learn that, that may influence the decision. They have the same cooldown but Circle of Power has a longer duration.
It feels like slow GF. Damage is actually adequate for bits but you have to only slot one power that spends divinity b/c anything else is a waste of time. Blocking just feels passive compared to the GF where you can still attack. At least before you had a minor heal and protection. Tab power is not impactful enough for cost. If it were free it would be okay.
I would not willingly take this as my main as it stands right now. Fortunately I have other options.
1) our weapon damage are already lowered to compensate for it
2) our weapons power and stats are already lowered for it
3) strength and intelligence (physical and magical) does not give us a damage bonus
So now you are “double dipping” basically no % damage modifier and decrease in damage from weapons and NOW also the 30% damage reduction. If you are putting the 30% damage reduction would you not then put the other factors in line with the dps?
We managed to get a fix in this evening and it should be in this Friday's build.
I don't get the sense that when I tank on Justicar that I have to "cower behind my shield." In most cases, the healer has been able to keep me topped off, even if I go without blocking for long periods. I generally only need to use my shield for the start of a very large pull, or strategically timed against attacks I couldn't avoid, or big attacks in boss fights.
That being said, it's going to depend a lot on how comfortable you are with the new paradigms, how comfortable your healer is, and how much mitigation your character has. (And of course, if there is any broken scaling, or any broken enemies, that can completely skew things as well.) Right now we're trying to dial in on enemy damage in group content, and how survivable tanks should be. You have a lot of freedom to devote your stats to defensive stats, so we need to be careful. If we were to make tanks significantly more survivable than other classes, before they stack mitigation, then we'll create a problem where tanks can survive attacks orders of magnitude larger than other classes, which complicates enemy design and PvP.
That being said, I understand and wholeheartedly agree with your point. I certainly want Paladin to be a fun class to play, and I think you still very much can rush into the battle head first and survive and keep the enemy's attention. (That being said, threat is a little unforgiving right now, this week's build will see a buff to threat for tanks.)
I know the divinity mechanic keeps coming up, and I want you to know that I am listening. That being said, I would like to gather more feedback over the next few weeks before doing anything drastic. How have you been setting up your bars? Do you usually take more than one divinity spender? Divinity ultimately gives you more flexibility than a strict cool down, and mechanics that restore divinity more quickly, are like powers that lower your encounter cooldown.
With a divinity based power, you can choose to use it a few times in rapid succession, or treat it like it had a cooldown, only using your powers off the top of your bar. If I were to suddenly remove divinity, powers like Smite would have a 30 second cooldown, or see a serious reduction in magnitude to receive a shorter cooldown. If you're using all of your divinity at the start of the fight, you can certainly make that choice, but you can also not do that.
Also, you will often only want to take 1 divinity spender, then your other two powers can be used as they come off of cooldown and you aren't splitting your divinity between two spells. There are certainly cases where two spenders is appropriate, but I'd advise against ever taking 3 at the same time (on Justicar.)
That being said, let me address a few things about unavoidable control effects: first, there are unavoidable control effects. Most of the control effects that are intentionally unavoidable are in boss fights. These are unavoidable, because the mechanics can be trivialized by dodge rolling, since most dodges have pretty huge immunity windows. (Not to mention, blocking classes don't need to time anything at all for big mechanics like Acererak's tilt, or Orcus's wings.)
Outside of boss fights, generally—it's intended that control effects can mostly be avoided. With something like paralysis, which is an applied control effect, the initial application is what will need to be blocked, so you won't be able to raise your shield to block the individual stuns that happen if you become paralyzed, but you'll be able to, for instance, block the Enervoraptor's breath attack to prevent paralysis. I apologize that this wasn't the case already on preview.
That being said, there is one exception that will remain unblockable, and those are gaze style attacks. For gaze attacks, you'll still need to turn away to avoid the application.
To answer some of your points: we're buffing threat generation some this week, and fixing an issue with Vow of Enmity and Divine Challenger not actually placing you at the top of the list, please give it a try after the changes this Friday, and let me know if its easier to hold threat, or still a challenge.
On the topic of divinity, I've addressed this a bit already, but playing a healer with a divinity bar is a very new and different style of gameplay for Neverwinter, you need to manage your resources. That being said, from most of our internal playtests, we've found that healing is actually far too strong right now, our healers almost never run out of divinity in dungeon runs, and have a lot of free time to DPS.
That being said, we're not looking to make major nerfs to it, but we are looking at the difficulty of group content, and how much white noise damage is happening to the tank, we feel we need to put a little more pressure on the healers. Particularly once tanks are much more confident keeping aggro, and no stray enemies running around, we're worried about it being too easy.
Off-topic or not, I genuinely appreciate the sentiment. I will still be making some legitimate mechanical changes based on feedback, but the point can never be repeated too much that clear feedback and information about any bugs encountered goes a long way.
Especially when it comes to things like, feeling like its impossible to hold aggro, or like divinity management is too strong in AoE situations and too punishing in situations where you lose aggro or only have one target—these are the kinds of things I'm focusing my attention on in the next few weeks, so, please bear with us, we won't ship with Justicar feeling like dead weight.
After all, even in a solo setting, the tank has more survivability than the DPS, so there has to be some trade off. Sometimes in you'll see a tanking stance that can be toggled on or off (that reduces outgoing damage, but increases threat and mitigation), or you'll just see the base damage values lower than on DPS classes.
In the end, we may move to something like a base damage adjustment, or that passive may also feature some base mitigation, but as we haven't yet finalized the position of the dials, it was much more straightforward to simply give a cut across the board. A 30% reduction is certainly non-trivial, but it's not enough that you need to "solely" rely on other players for DPS. Justicar is more than capable of soloing. And in group content, I'm certain you can still out DPS an under geared DPS player.
Particularly on the topic of getting 1 shot as an IL 20k. That shouldn't be happening outside of something like a failed boss ultimately mechanic. There are a number of level scaling issues, as well as enemies with outlier damage values, and a number of companion passive powers that are mistakenly buffing enemies by orders of magnitude. We've already identified quite a few of these, and some will be fixed this week, others will be fixed in the weeks to come. In the meantime, if you run into any more similar issues, please check out the unexpected death thread in the main preview forum and tell us how you died unexpectedly, so you can help us track down the issue.
I hope you continue to try out the changes and keep sending us your feedback, I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to do so. With everyone's help identifying bugs like the ones you ran into, I'm confident we can nail them down over the next few weeks.
Also, if you can PM me some screenshots of the weapon pivot issue you are talking about with female characters, I'd be happy to pass it along to the character team!
With that said, at least in the meantime, I'd like to make some recommendations about how to use it, and address the edges. First of all, the VFX originally did not feature a distinct back to their effect, which looked much better. (Basically, the ground FX were a gradient chevron instead of a three sided triangle.) Ultimately, some internal feedback about confused positioning resulted in the FX getting changed temporarily, and I have not reverted them back, they don't perfectly match the area of effect either. It's fairly forgiving, and you can pretty much be standing anywhere immediately behind the shield and take reduced damage.
However—I think it only gets a bit confusing when you start talking about hypothetically fitting the tank inside the shield with the party, while the tank is actively tanking the boss, or enemies and trying not to cleave the party.
It's definitely not meant for that, and it's an either-or situation. This isn't a pre mod16 Hallowed Ground, where you're supposed to be able to generate a massive area for rangers to stand far away and shoot, and tanks, and melee DPS to all stand inside and benefit from. It's just a reduction to damage taken, so in the average situation where the tank has aggro, the rest of the party shouldn't need its effects.
That being said, there are practical times to use this to give others a benefit, including times where you might want the whole party to benefit, such as before unavoidable group wide damage, like Cry of the Atropal. In those cases, the tank is not actively tanking enemies at the time, so they can safely drop it and the group can easily position behind the shield. In reality, at that point I would expect a Sanctuary, Astral Shield or Hallowed Ground to be dropped inside the Palisade as well.
Finally, it Palisade can also be put to good use by a Paladin off tank in a 10 man, by throwing it up in front of the main tank.
Hopefully this has been a little food for thought on uses for Divine Palisade. Know that I do hear the feedback, and I do understand it. I also would like to hear more feedback after threat gets some buffs, and people get more comfortable holding enemies more still than they are likely currently able to.
but I can't stop laughing and seeing my paladin in it
These bugs come from various sources, one of the most egregious was related to the chicken companion buffing enemies for instance. Tracking bugs like this down is one of our primary reasons for running a preview server.
That doesn't mean we want you to stop testing, or stop providing feedback. I just ask that you take your experiences on the preview server with a grain of salt, and realize that if I say "we're not aiming to make things significantly harder," and then you get one shot, that you probably ran into a bug.
I'm not upset with anyone when they take the time out of their day to come here and provide in-depth feedback around their experiences that involved getting one shotted. It's already a lot to ask to come to the forums and type up your feedback, so I understand not everyone has time to read the other posts, and find out about various issues. And that's okay.
But if I can at least help people to understand that they're experiencing bugs, and not that Module 16 is being designed to one shot people. Or better yet, if I can help warn a few people about the issues before they run into them, or before they form their thoughts around balance as if the bugs were intentional—I think that saves everyone some time and grief.
That said, I really would like to personally apologize on behalf of the team for the egregious bugs that are killing people outright unexpectedly or making it impossible or difficult to test some content for feedback. We would very much like to have gone to preview without any of those issues. Neverwinter has been around for a while now, and there are a lot of moving pieces—and we've changed a lot of them. We truly appreciate all of your help.
I'll be looking at feats in general pretty extensively, and many may get cut and replaced, but if this one stays—I'll make sure the effect gets cleared when you exit combat.
If you're averse to encountering bugs or broken things, you may want to steer clear. That said, if you'd like to help identify any issues and report them, we do genuinely appreciate it. Playing on preview is absolutely a favor to us, and we appreciate all of your help.
That being said, regardless of what changes come to feats—I will say, that every build is not meant to be viable. At least in the sense that any random combination of powers slotted into your bar is not necessarily meant to be viable. Some powers synergies better than others, but even beyond that, there are simply cases where some powers are entirely wrong for the job.
For instance, a Justicar build with three divinity spenders is not really a good idea, and not meant to be viable. An Oathkeeper build with Banishment, Cleansing Touch, and Burning Light is not going to be able to heal very well, etc.
The current design philosophy behind feats that directly affect powers, is that they allow you to incorporate a power you might otherwise not incorporate into your main rotation for a certain task, or provide some interesting synergy that wasn't there with the base powers, as powers at their core don't link together.
That being said, I am absolutely hearing the feedback that some people don't like this system, and would prefer just raw, across the board bonuses to things. I am not saying that we are going to go any particular direction at this moment, we're still continuing to collect your feedback.
Ultimately, I'd like to move forward with feats that can change your moment to moment gameplay, by making you think about or use your powers in a different way. However, breaking some people out of the feeling that they have to take a power if they've feated it—even if it's the wrong tool for the job they're currently doing, is quite difficult.
Just know that if we were to switch to feats that simply gave you an across the board bonus, or more global effects—those wouldn't really change your gameplay, and ultimately the content would still be balanced around having those feats, so it wouldn't necessarily be that the feats made you significantly stronger.
On the topic of Relentless Avenger: I appreciate your thoughts and feedback. At the moment, the next thing on my agenda for Paladin is to do another pass on feats, and I would definitely like to focus on providing more potential build options for different scenarios, so something like that might be possible.
That being said, I understand that to you, Lay on Hands has a symbolic significance. I also understand that Lay on Hands is a significant component of the Paladin's base kit in D&D. Powers in Neverwinter obviously are inspired by the source material, but rebuilt to work in the context of an MMO. Lay on Hands as it is in Neverwinter, is much more powerful than the version of Lay on Hands Paladins have access to in pen and paper D&D.
In terms of a basic healing power, both Paladin paragon paths do have access to Divine Touch. At a conceptual level, if you're just looking for the ability to heal as a Justicar, you do have that option.
Are you mostly frustrated with not having access to the spell of that name, or were you specifically frustrated not having access to the effect of the current Lay on Hands as a tank?
I fully understand the reasoning that tank takes more damge do less damage it is a no brainer.
However that is aleady built in the game.
Hp the same for classes, ac removed, enounters for dps classes do more damage, being tanky = get more defence in items, enchants and stats using defence mechanics that prevents doing damage etc etc.
If you want to be more tanky the very fondation of the game makes you do less damage it is built in the core of the game mechanics.
Now adding a 30% damage reduction on top of that is not the same as saying we want to see tanks do less damage its ADDING to an already existing condition
Now when tanks block (absorbing damage) the other avoid the damage with dodge, sprint etc it does not mean tanks can handle more mobs on the contrary it means having MORE dps + being able to avoid damage makes you take LESS damage and killing the mobs faster.
What you do would MABY be true if all damage was unavoidable which is NOT the case.
So the question remains - What are the reason behind this 30% damage reduction as the reason stated is void in reality ??