Development Team Letter - CLASS BALANCING

Dear Heroes of Dracania,

first of all, we wanted to say thank you for the sheer amount of replies and feedback we’ve received for our first Development Team Letter. To see that this new format is so well received and to get so much valuable feedback is really great for us!
As you know, we’ve promised quite some changes in this letter and would like to shed some light on one of these topics in a more specific manner.
This time we will provide more information about the planned class rebalancing. We hope to receive even more feedback, opinions, and suggestions than before.
As stated in our last letter, we want to add more diversity and value to all four classes in order to bring them all up to the same level of power and fun. That being said, we will add talents and powers to all four of them to help everyone to stand out in the group.
Let us give you a brief overview of the topics we want to discuss today:
- Changes to Skills
- Changes to Wisdom and Talents
- Improvements for Minions
- New: Group XP and Group Level
- New: Group Aura Buffs
- New: Group Skill Talents

Changes to Skills
This is – by far – the most sensitive topic for the game. Therefore we want to ensure to not destabilize or negate any builds which you have created.
We’ve analyzed – primarily based on your feedback – how all skills and talents behave, in terms of power level, costs, cooldowns, but also in regards to communication.
It’s not our goal to ”equalize“ all four classes in a way that is doesn’t matter anymore, which class you play, that’s why we decided not to put all skills on a plate and force them into a „one size fits all“-framework for all classes. We carefully considered and weighed up all skills against each other to identify good combinations, useful synergies and also values that are too low compared other skills or classes.
This means that we will redo quite some of the skill descriptions, to ensure that the given quality of language and information is equal for all classes, and consider spicing up some talents or replacing them completely IF the given bonus can be either combined with another talent or added to the skill completely. This is especially true for the few talents which are also affecting members of your group, but we will talk about this topic further below.
Discrepancies in cooldowns for equal skills and talents that are focused on a very short amount of time or a very, very specific case in combat are also under discussion currently. We want you to put your talent points into useful additions and not compromises.
As soon as these changes are done, you can easily put together an equal or even more efficient character build and explore some new possibilities when it comes to group play.

Changes to Wisdom and Talents
There are several issues that you have raised in the forums and on social media that we wanted to cater in when it comes to a rework of wisdom and the respective talents.
In general, we still believe in the idea of having additional talents that can improve your gameplay in a positive way, so we will not change this system entirely.
We will rather improve both the diversity of talents that are currently available and the way wisdom is earned in the game. This means that we will increase the number of wisdom levels, respectively the number of points that can be applied to talents and on the same side vastly improve how you will receive wisdom.
This can be done with generally improved loot, special events that will enable you to gather a vast amount of wisdom in a specific time frame or even with buffs that you can use to find even more wisdom. This means that we want to tie wisdom more to the actual gameplay part of DSO, which will help further improve this whole topic.
On the other side, we will increase the number of available talents by adding completely new talents in general and some unique talents for each class. Please see a mockup of our game design department below. Please note that this mockup is a work-in-progress-shot and is neither showing final categories (with the placeholder icons), values or was touched by our art department. We’re pretty sure they will do a better job in the end.


Improvements for summoned companions
As all of you know, there are quite some discussions going on regarding the creatures that can be summoned by Spellweaver, Ranger and especially Steam Mechanici. And you also know that we applied some changes to the turrets of our Steam Mechanicus players. Changes like these are always crucial and not easy, but we’re confident to further move into this direction in order to provide one system that works equally good for all classes that are included.
Therefore we will adjust the way the power of your minions is scaling. Currently, it follows the same progression as the monsters you fight with. Of course, they are affected by certain parameters, such as essences, but we felt that the system is not providing the level of control to that is needed.
To be a bit more precise, the actual values of the summoner – your character – will be used as a source for the scaling of your minions, once the update is released.
Especially Steam Mechanici, who are currently not interested in critical hits, will see way more usage in e.g. runes that grant critical hit chance or damage.

New: Group XP and Group Level
As promised earlier, we’re working on ways to vastly improve group play, but with keeping in mind that all four classes should be represented on an equal level. With these requirements in mind, we came up with the Group XP system.
With a future release, you will be able to collect experience points as usual, but also group experience points that you will only receive if you’re in a group of at least two people.

New: Group Aura Buff
In order to make use of your gathered group XP, we will add a completely new tab to the skill window: The Group Talents. Within this system, you can enhance two different things: the way you directly improve the group’s strength and additional talents that will affect certain skills in order to provide group bonuses.

Let’s start with the Aura Buffs. Each player will get an Aura that is active all the time. By spending group talent points, you can improve 3 different talents that will contribute to the group.
We will give an example below, but please keep in mind that this is still work-in-progress and far from being the final value or even category.
Let’s say you play in a group of 3 that consists of a Ranger, a Steam Mechanicus and a Dragonknight. The Dragonknight invested some group talent points in his group resistance ability, which adds a neat fire resistance to all characters in range. The Steam Mechanicus invested in the same kind of talent, but it’s all about lightning in this case. The Ranger, however, invested talent points in helping the entire group with increased attack speed.
It’s up to you to define in which buffs you invest points, but as it is not possible to maximize all talents completely, the idea of having a well-mixed group that goes into different directions is yet again a very important one.

New: Group Skill Talents
Next to the group aura, each player will get the possibility to invest group talent points to improve certain effects on skills that will affect the entire group (in range).
This means that talents that are currently applying group benefits, such as the Neutralizer talent of the Tesla Turret, will be merged with the actual skill and always provide group effects. The respective group talents will then improve the power of this effect with each step.
But, as you know, not all classes have the same amount of group effects or such effects at all. That’s why we will add new effects to certain skills of all classes to ensure that all classes are equal in this regard. We’re currently planning to add such effects to 4 skills per class, but we also consider adding more with this release or in the future.
As an example, when a Dragonknight casts a Banner of War, it will also grant bonuses to all group members that stand their ground within the fire of the banner.

We look forward to your feedback and want to say thank you for your great support!

Thank you!

Your Drakensang Online Team

 

This is very vague so i can only assume things, the summoned minions update seems like it can be either a huge buff or a huge nerf to steam mechanicus so i can't say anything there.

Group buffs and unique talents for each class seem to be about rewarding class diversity in a party, which is a good thing but it can also be just running away from the problem of class imbalance. With near perfect balance, people wouldn't care what dmg class is in a party as long as there is 1 tank. Unique class buffs allow for more class imbalance, so even weak classes would be included just for the unique bonuses they bring. Of course people would still want to have multiple of the op class because there is 4 classes and 5 party members.

Hope this update is good.

 

We've been asking for support style skills forever as a way to encourage diversity and grouping. There is no reason why an "ideal" group should be one uber-tank and 4 mech. This is a step in the right direction.

You forgot your mockup.
Fixed.

It took you long enough! I've been yelling for two years that it is poor design that a damage dealer mech can ignore two whole offensive stats (crit and crit damage) and be better off for it. That would be like a DK who could ignore resistance... it makes no sense.
Better late than never, I guess.

 

There are many skills that are under used and considered useless by players. I will give my opinion about these skills later.

Can we have more descriptions of these effects to give feedback?
I don't have the slightest idea what you are projecting here for individual categories.

However, here is what I think how the wisdom points should work:

First 55 wisdom points should be bound to the level (this is how it currently works), so as the players level they can earn a maximum of wisdom points equal to their level. Total wisdom points that can be gained could be 200. This means after the first 55, the next 145 can only be gained by level 55 players.

However, these can also only be unlocked by completing quests of increasing difficulty.
First quest to unlock wisdom points 56-70
Next quest to unlock wisdom points 71-100
and three more quests 101-130, 131-160, 161-200.

The wisdom points can be spent as follows:
100 points on attack - increasing 1% each to a maximum of 100% additional base attack
100 points on two handed weapons - increasing 0.8% each to a maximum of 80% additional weapon damage.
100 points on one handed weapons - increasing 0.5% each on additional weapon damage + 0.5% block rate to a maximum of 50% additional weapon damage and block rate increase.
100 points on defense - each point increasing 1.5% base health, 0.25% armor, 0.25% resistances and 0.01 block strength

This is a great change. As we make our characters strong, the minions should get stronger as well. I think this is already happening for Steam Mecanicus. However, it would be quite helpful to have the crit rate and crit damage applied to minions. Specially when doing PvE dungeon crawling. However, since minions doing crit damage could be quite powerful in PvP situations, I recommend that you give an ability for all classes to reduce received damage from minions by up to 80% as they invest in this talent. Of course, needless to say that this should be in addition to block and armor/resist reduction.

I think in order to give feedback we need more details on the talents and how the points will be used.

 

I read on facebook that DSO received over "500" replies to the request for information, so it will be interesting to see what these changes will be and how they will be implemented.

It was also stated there that this rework won't be a nerf. I can only cross my fingers and hope that statement is true.

Some of us have been begging for years now to improve diversity in our characters, how wisdom points are gained, and to improve the diversity in grouping.

Some info on how these changes might affect pvp would be nice also.

I do appreciate the fact that you guys are asking for our feedback, but experience has taught me that our feedback is more often than not ignored. I suspect that is why you received so few emails.

However, if the dev's are serious this time, more information will be needed on these potential updates. DSO has a habit of being entirely too vague when it comes to sharing information.

Edit to add my thoughts:

Here are my thoughts on fixing/balancing the pve part of DSO.

Number one thing to do is to merge the 3 low population servers before they are gone.

PVE is actually easy to fix.

Reward should equal the time and effort. The game is already too easy to reach end level, so don’t make it easier, just consider how much time and effort we put in and make sure that we receive something for that time and effort. No more pointless grinding.

For wisdom, one point per level. No need for special events or whatever else, all you have to do it just link the wisdom to player level and call it a day. Stop trying to over complicate things.

Take the low level sets for an example. If someone actually gets the set, it is worthless as they have already leveled up past it. Anyone can go from level 1 to 55 in around 40 days. The low levels sets are not needed if you outgrow them in a matter of hours.

Once players reach end game, there needs to be a diversity of sets that actually help the player. Currently all four classes can use Q7 and only the spellweavers have the option of using Q4.

It should not be that complicated to make multiple good sets. Take a few minutes and make some more. Some event sets worth owning and using would be nice also.

Next, you should add more quests, especially for those of us that only farm the pw. Give us something to do besides farm materi frags and gold. Long quests are nice, but make sure the reward is worth the effort. Not just more pointless grinding just for the sake of it.

For Gnob, stop using it as a slot machine. Let him sell everything like he used to. We work hard for our draken, allow us to use it.

For draken, as you guys add more and more things that we have to buy, there needs to be an increase in the rate we get. This is just commonsense.

Gold needs to be increased in the pw. As end gamers are forced to craft over and over and over, there needs to be a balance.

Event bag. This is such a no brainer that how you guys ignore it is beyond me. Most events require us to hold onto 4, 6 or more items and because of crafting we have limited space as it is. Stop procrastinating and give us the bag already.
Fixing events is like everything else. The reward should match the time and effort.

Do not make it easier, just reward us properly. If players are doing higher tiers, they should not be punished by getting less drops of gear. That is beyond ridiculous.

The game doesn’t have to be all about pointless grinding, nor does it have to be too easy. There can be a balance if someone would simply put just a little bit of thought into it.

The main thing that you guys should be doing is encouraging people to play.

Whatever you think of adding, first put yourself in the position of the player and just ask yourself is it worth the time and effort for us to do it? No more maps that we only play on for 3 days. No more month long events with no rewards. No more worthless sets that are only good for melt.

I honestly don’t know what to suggest for pvp since DSO has gone so far out of their way to break it. Whatever you guys decide to do to fix it, in no way should it nerf the pve side of the game.

Personally I hope that you fix it so that those of us that used to enjoy pvp would be encouraged to play it again.

 

What will be the effect on pvp groups?
How about guild tree bonuses? that can be set by guild master or bufs for 2 hours or more, that can be earn in events and can be activated when there is full activity in guild?
How about guild wars, guild hall and many other stuff that can grow comunity and keep players in game.
How about that PvP we pay for? how many players have invested real money in game, gems, refiners, inventory to kill Arachna or Heredur?

How about to give something players that pay for this game, that need PvP, bosses that drop augment cores, better guild functions, better events, event bag for all those zillion types of essences and bufs and entrances, how about them? how much do you think will wait for you to do your job?

I dont think that making things easier for kids will help this game, D3 is ded now, they have bring easy content for kids and now is ded, so you BP want the same?
Agathon is ded, grimag is on the way...
I dont want this game to be a exclusive PvE game and you are going in that direction and i dont like that.

There are so many things to be done in this game so many suggestion in creative corner area and they start with the last one, - only lazy or people that dont like to read wiky and forum about the game can complain about the fact that cant farm on PW and you already made changes for them, upgrade the WB , give them the low rank unique, block the group so that we cant kick them and so many other stuff.Now you want to make them join groups just for that bonuses? how many of you dev s play the game?
You know what happen on local groups all of them try to trick others that they have damage and hope that group can carry them, this is the reality not your fancy words on meetings.
You know what you do now?you give them power for free hoping that this will make them to farm more for that knowledge but you are wrong so wrong.

This game for me is all about my guild my friends and PvP, for me the PvE section is like money in life, you make them to use them as a tool to achieve other purpose, to make money cant be a purpose in life because with them you just buy tools that will help you achieve your purpose so PvE is just our way to get gear to be better in arena.
If you focus on PvE you will ruin the game.

In my opinion you should focus on guilds, because there are many players with lack of information that can get that info in the most easiest way from guild and that can make a more enjoyable game play, you should focus on PvP because that is our goal that is our joy to smash a human opponent not zillion times world bosses.

Is more necessary to make a bot cleaning to get your players trust before you make all those changes.

''We are applying on Thursday a hotfix for Release 200 in order to fix scaling dungeons, Parallel World and daily deals issues.'''
Why you waist your time making all those difficulties for normal maps if you dont change the uniques first? is there anyone farming there now? you waist time for nothing.

Is not the time for this all re balancing stuff,this should be made somewhere in the summer 2018 not now, there are more important things to do now,pvp is a mess, event drop is a mess, guilds have not changed, we use third party softwares and site's to communicate and exchange information's.
Start listen the forum the comunity ....

 

This "class balancing" smells like a new R155.

Since day 1 this game has been a "one size fits all" class type.
If i'm wrong then prove it (which should be very easy for you)...how much of a difference is there between all class's in terms of damage, health, armor and resistances, almost none...the only difference is skills/abilities.

As for the rest i wont pronounce myself due to the lack of community effort, nowadays very few members have an active voice and/or fair judgement to his peer, so taking the feedback of only a few members and decide the future of the few thousands left in this game is wrong and might be even fatal for BP...haven't you learn anything from past mistakes or the Asian market.

A new R155 will demise this great game and with it BP will shut it down.
The voices from the US servers have complaint for at least 2 years of its low population and now Balor server has joined them and management has done what? nothing...will you shut them down too, like the asian servers?

F2P - will only lose their effort and time
P2P - will lose their money and time
dev team - will probably lose their job

Ask yourself -who has the most to lose- we the players or you the dev team?!
Be wise and mindful of your decision towards the future of this game, it may be your last!

 

First of all, thank you for actually informing the community about your plans.

By the way, you should use your Youtube channel more, as watching videos is, for many people, much more comfortable than reading forums. Explaining plans and new features directly with visual demonstration and spoken word is the way to go, imho. Last video there is a 8 months old live stream...​

@ Improvements for Minions

If this makes my wolves withstand more beating, thank you.
​

@ Group XP and Group Level

Great. More support for group play.
​

@ Group Aura Buffs & Group Skill Talents

Yes! My suggestions below the last letter actually made it to your table. My idea was a bit different as it included additional "support" skills and a secondary skill bar necessary for those, but your solution seems cool.
Passive aura buffs making the party stick together + active skill effects, both giving each party member more dimensions in which they can be helpful.
​

Speaking of groups and such, I like Demon's idea of guild halls. If it is supposed to be a place where all guild members can meet and hang around, it'd be a great thing. Not necessary, but nice anyway. As of now guild members are just abstract names on a list, unless you actually form a group of up to 5. The feeling of having a place like a guild hq of some sorts, maybe with a Kobold like stash or so... would be nice. It'd feel like having a home. Modern MMOs work with that concept a lot.
Guilds in general need a lot of attention. Guild members activity tracker, improved 'guild news' message system etc.

There's a lot of areas that can and probably should be improved, like different bags for different kinds of things, bigger invetory as it just overflows even when fully unlocked, random quests that might help overcome the mindless grind by giving players more of a sense of purpose, etc. A lot more great ideas have been mentioned in the posts above this one.

 

I only have one thing to say, i have put alot of money and time into this game and building my mech, and ive enjoyed it. But if you make critical hit and damage important then im done and my money will be put into another game. Only the richest players can afford to create a mech with high crit because it requires onyx gems which are not cheap and dont come easily at all from farming. I'm not starting over again with rebuilding like what happened after the desert was added. So please give us warning ahead of time so i can make plans to say goodbye and leave this game.

 

Please tell you haven't been throwing away your onyxes? I haven't bought a single onyx and i've now accumulated quite a few just in case turrets are changed to crit.

Edit: I like the group effect ideas. And adding crit effects for mech turrets is probably overdue.

 

The smart players called this almost a year ago.

When will people on the forums simple learn to take everything that guys like Trakilaki, Novadude, and myself (and a handful of others) as gospel truth and realize that we know what we are talking about. Any Steam Mech who threw away/sold onyxes because they were not useful at the moment have zero forsight and deserve to be in this position if the devs do finally make this change. Like Nova pointed out, one or two weapon gem holders in your locker could have protected you against this. I've never bought a single onyx on my DK and I have a Royal (old style) and sacred (new style), and a handful of radiants. I can understand not working on a weapon adornment with % CRotI, or a helmet with % CR, but to throw out onyxes which take very little gold to combine, store, and maintain is just asking to get blindsided by future rebalancing/changes.

 

As a long term MMORPG player whose been around many other MMOs, this actually appeals to me very much. the biggest problem on DSO has been the lack of multiplayer, and wayyy too much incentive to solo farm, as its purely more effective and the only MMO with a "solo dungeon leaderboard"

seeing DSO become more diverse, add complexity and increase group play to the point where you'd have to be either extremely antisocial or stupid not to play in teams anymore --- would make me love DSO once again.

the group talent system, wisdom, all these ideas although need smoothing out a bit which of course is going on among the devs - looks amazing. but i cant say for sure hpw great it will be due to how limited info we have yet, which is understandable because its probably still in the alpha phase.

though one thing that piqued my interest... whats with the "luck" talents?
getting some real bad vibes from that one lol

 

D3 died for its own reasons. BP can't afford to focus on one specific age group, as it's an MMO and to keep it alive, they need a very expansive playerbase. so yeah, BP should cater to all ages, races, genders, species even including your kitchen sink if it can play DSO.

this is an MMORPG not a MOBA.
MOBA is Multiplayer Online Battle Arena
MMORPG is Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game

reality is, and it always will be that DSO is a PvE game, the PvP aspect of the game is an additional feature for players to enjoy a competitive environment and find some pleasure/satisfaction in how much stronger they have become through lots of farming and gearing up.

if you want a PvP focused game, MMO is not for you. but I do also agree that PvP needs some working on, which they are promising us in 2018. antagonizing them wont do anyone any good.

first of all, dont bother inviting any random player without the intention of carrying them. if you dont like carrying, then stick to your friends only.

now let me state something very important, "noobs" need a fighting chance in this game, you were once a noob too, everyone was. making it slightly easier for those noobs to gear up and be strong enough to run with you, is part of what an MMO is about.

helping each other, making friends, etc. with recent changes, I've liked being able to carry a newbie team in lower tier dungeons and getting them uniques. heck i even take undergeared players to infernal with me to help them out. the more stronger players we help create on a server, the easier everyone's lives get with finding or making teams.

now with this change, it gives them even more of a fighting chance, making carrying not seem like the most self sacrificial act possible.

in most other MMOs, its simply better to take a noob with you to dungeons than to leave an empty slot. and thats something that DSO needs. a healthy amount of new player income keeps a game alive, why?
because end level players quit the game, after you finish everything and get bored, most people leave. and what is left? newbies to fend for themselves.

with such a skewed perception of what this gameis supposed to be, I honestly dont think what you have in mind for DSO is what it needs to be.

for the longest time, DSO has been an online game only for bragging purposes to other players online instead of actually playing together.

DSO team has already stated that 2018 they will be focusing on PvP massively. so nothing we can do but be patient, antagonizing will only make it worse and affect the motivation.

^ as stated above, 2018 year of PvP
their curent focus is PvE, which is much more important.

pvp is enjoyed by end level or late mid level players, which btw is a minority in comparison to the mid level and newbies. majority of the game is made of PvE players.
a good example is how you can wait for an hour or two to get a 5v5 or 6v6 match but go to anywhere especally Cardhun and look at the team list.

point proven.





-- P.S. --
also I'd like to point out the fact that you specifically keep mentioning every little feature or addition to the game is worthless and makes it lag, which you are wrong on. bad client optimization is what leads to player sided lag and poorly maintained servers is what leads to server sided lag. nothing more, nothing less.

dso can be a 10mb miniclip game and still lag as much with horrible optimization or they could be a 50gb game that doesnt lag at all without any form of lag or frame-drops -- with proper optimization.

 

Some things off the top of my head would be...

-HP shown for mobs/bosses or both. please please PLEASE

-Smash skill for DK also needs tweaking, I would like the entire hitbox of it to be solid 200% or 240% with wisdom talent selected, I've noticed there are 3 hitboxes for it or more...the 240% damage hitbox is extremely narrow and while playing my DK quite often enough does not hit straight on the enemy I'm attacking...its really annoying.


-Certain unique attributes on items and sets to be disabled in pvp, some give far to much advantage its ******* irritating. Cough heralds fireball spam for SW COUGH

 

I generally like what you're saying - I support more group play and such -, but at this particular point I'm quoting, imo there needs to be something done about how gearing up works in groups. I know, you guys will hate me, but I don't think the way it works now, is perfectly alright:

A noob can just join any pro group if they agree, which is fine. Why not. But this way the noob can just go infernal1 or 2 with them and with enough drakens or materi frags, he can simply buy tier 4 or 5 super amazing weapon, or if lucky he doesn't even have to spend drakens, and heck he can even die right at the start of the boss fight and wait till the others kill the boss, get revived at the end, and this is how gearing up works these days.
The idea of helping each other is of course perfectly fine and desirable in an MMO environment, but what I have just described is a little bit over the top.

To give you an example of what's quite alright imho, is the way I got my hands on the q4 bow. It's tier 3.
We were a group of 2, I and my friend, both pretty much same power level. We have never attempted to kill Bearach on any harder difficulty than Painful. Now we went crazy and came at him on Fatal. We died quite a few times, but as you know, everything is easier the smaller the group is - Bearach didn't make so much mess. Of course, as expected, no unique drop, so I went ahead and bougt the bow for materi frags.
What's good about this, is that nobody carried us through the dungeon. It was a fair victory and it felt good! If someone asks me "Hey where'd u get that bow?" I can proudly reply "I fought hard for it and though it's purchased (not dropped), I earned it."

Can anyone who let themselves be carried through a dungeon by op payers, say they deserved their super duper equipment?
I know, it's a matter of choice. I chose to go the hard way. But it's also a fair way. And I don't see why the fair play people should be in a disadvantage in comparison to the ones who have a op party fighting for their new gear.​

 

fireball cost reduction could use a bit of a nerf, not infinite but perhaps down to maybe 15 mana with reductions considered. I am SW myself. but disabling is a horrible idea, its the only one hit kill skill for SW, whereas every other class except SM have multiple kill skills.

as a DK yourself, you know your jump alone can kill players if it crits. the only class with a one hit kill jump with a relatively large AoE hitbox.

in all honesty, I'm simply not seeing the imbalance of PvP people talk about, unless you're a SM.
each class seems to have their own quirks and downfalls.

-rangers while their EA has limited usage, has eagle which for an end level player is a one hit kill skill, and is a homing skill -- which in some conditions you cant even see.
2 stun breaks, 2 location changing skills, 2 stuns, 1 movement speed increase skill which also refills concentration
for those players that still use PS its also a one hit kill skill at end or near end level craft

-dragonknights, have 2 skills that kick up their armor and resilience to max, dragonhide removes control effects and gives immunity for 8 seconds. nearly all your skills can one hit kill, including smash, mighty swing, crit charge, crit jump
2 stuns, 1 stun break but with 8 secs immunity and maxed defenses, 2 location changing skills, 1 movement speed increasing skill which also regens an amount of rage

-spellweaver, have 2 one hit kill skills: fireball, as geared and/or crafted spellweaver only is it a one hit kill skill. destruction is number 2, which more often than not is going to cause caster death than the enemy, due to long cast time and inability to cancel, also due to the very risky straight line aiming. sigris ice missile even for an end level SW is not a one hit kill skill, maybe against an undergeared player with no pvp talents and about 18k hp
2 freezes, 1 stun (herald meteor which im not sure anyone uses in pvp), 2 stun breaks, 1 location changing skill unless used with perfect timing with mind control then it becomes 2 or 3 with spam, no movement speed increase skill

-steam mech, have rather limited knnowledge on this class as i havent played sm in a while now. their jump could use a buff, due to how slow and predictable it is. an sm with at least 20-22k base dmg in pvp can potentially one hit or two hit most other players and with their immense attack speed its not always easy to deal with them. adding their zoning capabilities with turrets and much tactical advantage.
only rework I can think of for SM is making their jump faster.



once you take all these into consideration you see no one class is more privileged than the other.

1h tank DKs though is something else entirely, 1h damage tank is a monstrosity in any pvp mode, lots of damage reductions, blocking and battle frenzy hp regen needs to be removed.

actually, all hp regen skills should be removed in pvp

I understand the leeching aspect, and there's a very simple workaround to that. for bosses, a player must do at least 3% damage to get loot. as for everything else, carrying is just that really.

you see, this is the reality, getting t5 uniques doesnt make a player strong, its only the very beginning. prior to crafting a great legendary item and transferring the stats onto it, even a fully t5 geared player will be doing absolutely horrible damage.

with that in mind, I have absolutely no problem with helping a newbie get their uniques they still need to craft, which takes months and months of farming, and a ton of resources.

so consider it as not being carried all the way to pro status, but instead given them the tools to start working on getting there, and giving them a fighting chance to solo farm low level dungeons for crafting material


oh and also, to be truly strong you need glyphs, lots and LOTS of glyphs - which again, takes a good long while to acquire. and big gems, and runes: also lots of time.

what you chose to do is respectable and admirable in its own way but you yourself know it wasnt efficient. while it's everyone's choice to play as wish, in literally every MMO you see to get geared up and get better items you need help of stronger players. yes you can alternatively play with weaker or same level players but the end result is a much more painful, inefficient and durated process. as you bought a bearach bow of t3, you will later on realize that you need to do lots of upgrades on it, which require a lot of farming. and while you're at that level of the game, the game is very well also progressing at its own pace as well.


getting carried once in a while is nothing to be ashamed of, becauses in reality you know someday you will be helping someone the same way you were helped yourself. and you know another thing? once you get all your uniques, and then craft them and you're at the same level as the people that helped you, now you can actually help them farm for other things too. because you and them chances are, are still farming for materi, etc, to buy more uniques in hopes of gold line base or for leaderboard, etc.

and if you were helped by a player who has well and truly finished the game, including craft, all gold base values - then thats also fine really. you still have the option to pass it on to the newer generation of players.


this is what an MMO is. challenges are fun, true but helping and being helped is an important part of it too.

its only hard to comprehend or feels negative purely due to the fact that to this day, DSO has never given its players a true MMORPG experience. lots of players that join DSO expecting such, have quit and moved on to the other games.


and also, weaker players still contribute in a team and im not kidding.
sm can stun, armor break, give immunities with tesla.
ranger can stun, armor break and slow
a dk if 1h can still tank mobs and with difficulty but still possible to tank a few of the bosses up to infernal 1
a sw can slow, armor break, stun, taunt, all things i like having in my runs

not to mention, all classes can do one very important thing: revive others, the fact that they spend andermant to contribute is something that motivates me to help them more often.


one of the main incentives I've had over the duration of my stay on DSO to get stronger was to reach a level where I can help, inspire and guide the newer generation. which I'm very happy to be able to do finally

I wouldn't say its very optional to be honest. for infernal 1, to be able to farm properly without help of stronger players, you need around 15k base damage, 65 or 70% crit rate (which go down in inf of course) and an upwards of about 250% crit damage.

of course you can do infernal 1 without anything on your player too, but thatll take a couple hours lol.

getting the right unique itself is of course very valuable, but you know whats 10 times more valuable? a crafted legendary.

any sensible player will use a crafted legendary item over an uncrafted unique.
until I was able to craft my t5 herald staff for example, I used my t3 legendary staff which wasnt perfect yet. had i used the unique item instead, it wouldve been much longer before i got to where i am now. as it made me lose a LOT of damage and such.

same can be said of literally every other item in the game.

so who is stronger? a fully crafted legendary geared player with all t1 items or a fully t5 unique geared player?

the legendary player will be IMMENSELY stronger.
same reason why I had kept my mortis ring in storage for months, pretty much every unique i am using now, have sat in my storage for at least a month or so.

oh and you mentioned cores... farming for cores takes a LONG time. no one will carry a player for the hundreds of pristines they need, and honestly more often than not all players buy pristines with materi than farming them in infernal. it is simply much faster. not saying this is good idea, but even a player farming painful maps for 1hr with materi glasses, will be able to buy more pristines than they wouldve been able to farm in that 1hr in infernal.

as for elemental cores, everyone and anyone knows you farm painful for these cores. once again, much faster, less resource consumption.

truth be told, it was quite recently that I did 140x direct to painful medusa for dark cores. which was around 30k materi for all that.
since medusa came out, on day 2 i got my tier5 medusa amulet, and it was only a couple days ago that I finally started using it after I transferred my legendary necklace onto it.

option was, either spend many days in fatal, inf, inf2 farming for 350 cores OR i could do painful directs for 2-3 days on occasion and get the cores needed.

 

You're right actually. First step out of many...

Edit:
Although, the additional effort you mention that the player needs to put in it, is something on a way to the very top - I'd say it's somewhat optional. Glyphs, crafting and such. The unique itself is extremely valuable, isn't it? Getting the right unique of a high tier is crucial, unless you are ok with crafting higher tiers from tier1.
Also getting into a op group earns you easy cores and other (high tier) equipment...

 

I honestly don't agree with this. Not everyone have to think about what could happen in a year or two just for the sake of beeing "wise".
I haven't thrown away onyxes but I have melted toons of crit gear equipment, I haven't farmed any crit unique and which was my mistake? That I haven't infinite space in my inventory nor a crystal ball to see the future?
With this approach I wouldn't have crafted half of my gear because things could change (it's not just the crit for turrets but also for the ASPD aspect) and this wouldn't be fair for anyone; what would you do if they tell that "to increase the diversity of the builds" they will REMOVE the crit DMG from half of your skills?
It's not so far from the possible future: SM don't use crit and used to use sets & build different from other classes and this is good (look @ the gwenfara's banner which is the most wanted banner for dwarfs and a bit useless for anyone else), why not improve this even further and give ALSO the other classes the chance to have "critless build" with skills that use the ASPD multiplier instead of the crit ones?

From my POV the best solution to give the dwarfs ALSO the chance to use crit would be simply to REWORK ONLY the TESLA.
Leave the MachineGun turrets as they are (with ASPD multiplier and the proximity buff/debuff that we saw in the test server so dwarfs has to stay closer the turrets to deal the same dmg as before and place the turrets more strategically) AND rework only the tesla.
Give Tesla a LOWER multiplier (100% should be good enough) but give then the crit chance and the ability to stack em.
Dwarfs will have to chose the build they wanna use: teslas with crit chance/dmg OR MG turrrets with ASPD and DMG, also hybrids will be avaiable (keep in mind that sustaining 8 turrets it's very complicated and needs to have specifique equipments).

This way noone will be hurted too much.
Everyone will have a "small" debuff of dwarfs (because the proximity buff/debuff on turrets will slightly lower SM DPS in boss fights), will give dwarfs the chance to use crits (but NOT force em to use em) and noone will feel ripped for having wasted resources in ASPD gear nor deleted crit rate stuff.

No, everyone agreed that it was getting BORING because EVERYTHING WAS TOO EASY, anyone was living waiting for the next update just to have something fresh to play with because everything was archivable within few weeks of gameplay.
That is a game that had a 1time pay fee and that was a "good strategy" infact once they've sold the copy of the game they banked the income, for DSO it is exactly the opposite, you have to give the players new challenges to not leave the game once they completed their current build or completed any content of the game.
It's normal that not everyone will be able to access the end game contents, that's exactly the purpose!

Never seen something like this, all the ones that come to my mind had the opposit behaviour, some of them simply had contents undoable if not all the members of the party were strong enough; most of them also had restriction on the Combat value/gear value so you couldn't access a dungeon/specific mod if your equipment wasn't good enough and I DEFINATELY LIKED THIS (so we will give a meaning to that stupid CV and we won't see newbies askin to be carried here and there).

The fact that any class can 1shot the others doesn't seem "balanced", the fact that a fresh lvl 55 can be paired with a full crafted/full royals player (and you got no chance just because of its better equipment/moneey invested) doesn't seem fair as well, the fact that classes have no "natural counter" but there's a class that can rule em all (1h dk) doesn't seem fair, chain cc doesn't seem fair as well, should I go on?
I tell you another interesting thing: there are several games (B&S is the one that comes immediatly to my mind) in which they have both the PvP systems, one with the "open gear" system (in which you use the PvE gear) and the other in which the equipment is "normalised" (so everyone in the match have basically the same stats) and guess which is the mode that is BY FAR the most played?
But this will be the last time I will speak about PvP because this is not the point of this letter (they clearly stated PvP will be looked later).

About the other aspects I cannot give specific feedback since informations are very vague (and we already saw how pointless is to talk about thing aren't released yet *points @ the leadboards*) but I think it will be very funny to see thing like singularity that will resetthe coouldowns for everyone in its range or adrenaline that will refresh resource for everyone (DK is definatly the easiest to guess which will be the group buffs he will give *AoE HP regen over the group banner effect *).
This will make erything a lot easier and will push new mod very fast in the game (I expect this group buff will bring very soon infernal 3 and 4 on the table for the sake of the ones scared to rebuild their toons too frequently ).

Same speech for the new wisdom system (that isn't something very new, I always though it would have become like the paragon levels).

 

[QUOTE="DSO Production Team, post: 678769, member: 192548... Therefore we want to ensure to not destabilize or negate any builds which you have created...[/QUOTE]
Problem is you have already nerfed most 1h builds to being almost unplayable. While overall this looks very promising ultimately the same situation will exist after it is implemented. That is to say play the promoted cookie cutter builds or take a back seat.

Some thought needs to go into fixing gear for 1 handers to compliment this new system to really make it work.

Luck be with ye,
Mikey,
Tegan

 

Can't wait for these to come !