TOPIC: Last Second Changes Made - Sorry! FINAL Contact Sheets

The problem you are going to see removing bonus from the second puck is asking Rangers and Monks to accept a loss of 30+ damage per turn.

That doesn't seem like something they will be willing to take lightly

NightGod wrote:

Adam Guay wrote: I think one of the issues with VTD is you actually get to hear someone call out their crits and damage totals...and going down the alphabetical list you can see the barbarian go first...if it kills the monster in o e hit everyone else keeps their actions.

One thing our DMs were doing in VTD was to start the next combat where the previous one left out. Helped balance out the number of turns everyone got. It's worth asking the DM to do.

This is super smart way of doing it.

Lequinian wrote:

Philip Goodman wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Endgame wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: also it's worth remembering that Jeff said he wants Wizards to be top DPS. Why are you looking at ways to nerf Wizard damage when it's Jeff's design intent for them to outdamage Monks and Rangers?

Because the better solution may be to nerf monk and ranger damage than to create a large gulf between wizard, monk, and ranger vs everyone else.

I'm 100% in favor of changing Monk & Ranger character cards so the the bonus melee damage is only applied to one slider instead of both. They would still have a slight advantage in that if one slider misses, the other still gets the bonus. If that isn't changed, every token that increases melee damage just widens the gap between Monk & Ranger and the other melee classes,because they potentially get double the bonus from each.

I was planning on starting a discussion about this in another thread, but was thinking about refraining until this wizard stuff was sorted out.

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: Rangers and Monks can average 140+ damage per round each without crit...

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In short, there has to be a better design change than a heavy-handed nerf to removing the 2nd puck bonus damage from dual sliders. It would reduce the output of UR+ monks by 30%-40%, which puts them behind every 2-handed build. If all my 2nd puck does is add 7-10 damage on average then why am I bothering to perform the hardest sliding mechanic?

Lots of good insight here, but I dropped some for space reasons.

I think there's a difference between VTD and Sliding TD. In the second, there's a degree of dexterity involved for dual wielders that balances some of it out. So some of this is reaction to VTD numbers?

When I've read about the no bonus on 2nd puck I always thought of it that the monk would get the damage on whichever puck they want (after seeing the results - the one that hit, the crit, etc). Does that alleviate some of the concern?

Not for me.

I slide last and almost never crit. Certainly never a double crit that some claim is possible. The crits I randomly get in VTD feel strange to me.

We have yet to have a physical TD since they released the Monk legendary -- monks have not had a chance to play with their new toy in physical space yet, so discussion around the expanded crit range to 19 is speculation at this point.

Going to make a new thread to duck the incoming swings from people telling me to take this discussion elsewhere.

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: The problem you are going to see removing bonus from the second puck is asking Rangers and Monks to accept a loss of 30+ damage per turn.

That doesn't seem like something they will be willing to take lightly

At least with Rangers, I've come around to thinking the problem is that it's too easy to hit, not that the hits do too much damage. The swings are supposed to be erratic, but with the +hit numbers we can reach, it's possible to reach a situation where you almost have to try to miss.

I'd argue that the Ranger double-slide needs some sort of penalty to hit, but I have no idea what could possibly balance it across multiple difficulties.

Wade Schwendemann (Dr. Uid) wrote: Ok, serious question here.

How does discussing hypothetical damage outputs on classes where powers aren't defined and class cards are about to be re-done actually help anything?

Why does damage output of one class vs. another matter at all? If you want to be the best damage dealer there is, play Monk (or soon, Wizard). It is a team game. If I'm playing Paladin, I know that my guarding the wizards often means we don't get attacked, leaving them to channel HP into spells.

If we kill the monster in 1 or 2 rounds, we all participated. Are there bragging rights in some parties that we just don't have in mine? That seems kind of annoying honestly.

If someone is overgeared for their difficulty level and doesn't tone it down, that would take a LOT of the fun out of it for me.

I guess people (this is not aimed at any one person) just like the debate?

Anyhow /rant

Maybe it's different at Epic level, but in my experience I can't recall the last time any of us sliders even cared what the casters were casting, let alone how much damage they were doing. They could be off playing canasta with the DM for all we care.

Allen John wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: The problem you are going to see removing bonus from the second puck is asking Rangers and Monks to accept a loss of 30+ damage per turn.

That doesn't seem like something they will be willing to take lightly

At least with Rangers, I've come around to thinking the problem is that it's too easy to hit, not that the hits do too much damage. The swings are supposed to be erratic, but with the +hit numbers we can reach, it's possible to reach a situation where you almost have to try to miss.

I'd argue that the Ranger double-slide needs some sort of penalty to hit, but I have no idea what could possibly balance it across multiple difficulties.

Wade Schwendemann (Dr. Uid) wrote: Ok, serious question here.

How does discussing hypothetical damage outputs on classes where powers aren't defined and class cards are about to be re-done actually help anything?

Why does damage output of one class vs. another matter at all? If you want to be the best damage dealer there is, play Monk (or soon, Wizard). It is a team game. If I'm playing Paladin, I know that my guarding the wizards often means we don't get attacked, leaving them to channel HP into spells.

If we kill the monster in 1 or 2 rounds, we all participated. Are there bragging rights in some parties that we just don't have in mine? That seems kind of annoying honestly.

If someone is overgeared for their difficulty level and doesn't tone it down, that would take a LOT of the fun out of it for me.

I guess people (this is not aimed at any one person) just like the debate?

Anyhow /rant

Maybe it's different at Epic level, but in my experience I can't recall the last time any of us sliders even cared what the casters were casting, let alone how much damage they were doing. They could be off playing canasta with the DM for all we care.

As a caster, I feel the same about the melee

Mike Steele wrote:

Dave wrote:

NightGod wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

OrionW wrote:
...snip...

Until we see that actual Wizard cards and the more detailed rules for the Legendary I am hesitant to comment, but with that said I have a question:

Should we be comparing a 1/game fighter combo that may or may not crit with a Wizard who can reset to full power with either an item (Gem of Last Hope) or a Cleric ability and do it again?

The analysis that two Wizards can do 500 damage in one round to two monsters (assuming the existence of a 40 point non-slide AoE spell) relied on:
1. Both Wizards exhausting a 1/game Ring of Spell Storing.
2. Both Wizard exhausting a 1/game cast of the theoretical 40 point non-slide AoE spell.

So both combos are 1/game.

The Fighter combo, after this, loses very little, they can keep doing this all day long and go down to 70% hit 20% crit on the HF (except for the new rooms where they can reslide 1/room for better values), and 70% hit, 10% crit, 10% triple crit on the DF.

The Wizards, on the other hand are now at 1 HP, don't have a way to cast 2 spells in a round, and need a to either start getting Restore Spell or Crown of Expertise to do a less effective burst with only 1 spell cast a second time. They also need to be burning ~$30 consumables that require a standard action to apply, or they need now full coordination from cleric and or druid classes as well to recharge their HP.

The Wizard Combos are definitely not once per game, like the Fighter example that you give, because the Wizards can do double spell casting and full MEC (assuming healing between rooms) at the start of every combat room via Cabal Bonus plus double spells for a second round in the Boss room via Ring of Spell Storing. Damage in the first round would range from 668 using best spells to 405 using only 0 level spells with Cabal Bonus. In Infernal Redoubt, the Wizards would be able to kill all monsters before the Final Room in the first round, and the two Final Room Boss monsters in 2 rounds (with plenty of damage left over). The Wizards don't even need healing after the first round in the final room to kill the two Boss monsters, they can do it without any additional 2nd round MEC damage. No healing within rooms is required for the Wizards to kill every monster in earlier rooms in one round and the Boss monsters in two rounds.

The Wizard 40 point area attack spell (given Jeff's statement that spell damages are doubling) isn't once per game like the Fighter ability. The Wizard can also cast it via Ring of Spell Storing and Crown of Expertise, getting three castings per game. I'm not counting Cleric Restore Spell on this or Cleric Restore Power for the Fighter, to make it an even comparison.

The Wizard is also not limited to just one round of double-spell casting from the Ring of Spell Storing, they can also double-spell cast once per room via the Cabal Set (3-4 additional double-castings per game).
==============================================
Detailed Analysis:
The two round estimate based on the 110 HP level, and the Cleric healing after round one. Removing the Cleric healing after round one reduces the two round total from 1116 to 960, which is still enough to kill both Boss Monsters

Cast Lightning Storm (Elf Wizard Fireball) for 40 points, add 35 bonus spell damage, channel MEC for 109 points, for 184 damage.
Cast via Ring of Spell Storing Lightning Storm (Elf Wizard Fireball) for 40 points and 35 bonus spell damage for 75 points of damage.
Combining those two, each Wizard can do 259 points of damage in the first turn. With both Wizards, you're looking at 518 points of damage in just the first round of combat, and that doesn't require the Wizard Class Relic or Legendary, just the MEC. 160 points of that would be damage to all monsters while 358 damage is pool damage. Adding in the 160 damage to the second monster gets it to 668 damage in round one.

First round after Wizards cast, Cleric casts Full heal from Relic on one Wizard plus Cure Serious Wounds as instant action on the other Wizard (24 +25 healing bonus). One Wizards are back to 109 HP, the other to 50 HP.

Second Round: Wizard casts Lightning Storm via Crown of Expertise for 184 damage (40 plus 35 bonus damage plus 109 MEC damage) and Ray of Shock FA via Cabal Set Bonus for 71 damage (36 plus 35 bonus damage) for 255 damage total.
Elf Wizard casts Ray of Shock for 121 damage (36 plus 35 bonus damage plus 50 MEC damage) plus Fireball via Cabal Set Bonus & Crown of Expertise for 75 damage (40 plus 35 bonus damage) for a total of 196 damage.
Adding in no bonus damage for a 2nd monster because it's already dead, the Wizards do an additional 451 damage in round 2. That is a total of 1119 damage in the two rounds, only 160 of which is due to damage to a second monster. If it were a room with just a single monster, the total damage would still be 959 in two rounds.

Further, even without any healing after the first round (which would subtract the 159 MEC 2nd Round damage), the two Wizards could kill both Boss Monsters with 960 damage (it only takes 900 on Nightmare to kill both)
===============================================
To further address the one shot wonder comment, even in a room with only casting 0 Level lesser spells, the first round using Cabal (since Ring of Spell Storing was saved for the major combat) could look like this:

Wizard casts Fire Dart for 156 damage (12 plus 35 bonus damage plus 109 MEC damage) and Fire Dart FA via Cabal Set Bonus for 47 damage (12 plus 35 bonus damage) for 203 damage total.
Elf Wizard casts Shocking Grasp for 156 damage (12 plus 35 bonus damage plus 109 MEC damage) plus Shocking Grasp FA via Cabal Set Bonus for 47 damage (12 plus 35 bonus damage) for a total of 203 damage.
The Wizards combined do 403 damage, which is twice as much as needed to kill the Room 2 Snake Fiend on Nightmare Mode, and enough to kill the Fire Fiend in Room 5.

Summary: The Wizards could do between 405 in the 4th best room and 668 in the best room in the first round of every combat room in the Dungeon, partly because of the doubling of spell damage but primarily from being able to use MEC on every single spell. In Infernal Redoubt, the Wizards without any damage from any other party members would be able to kill the Room 2 and 5 monsters in one round and the two Final Boss Monsters in two rounds. This does assuming healing in-between rooms, but between the Cleric, Druid and Paladin there is easily enough group healing to do that even without using consumables.

Please post a build with 110 HP and 35 spell bonus, that equips all the spell feee action items or spell restoring items your scenario requires.

Please indicate if your analysis requires the use of bardsong and at what level.

Please indicate if this build has room for 3 treasure iouns and a treasure charm.

I'm definitely interested in this, too. I'm far from a BIS wizard, but even the "Hypotehtical max" character someone made a day or so ago to show what maxed out wizard HP could look like was 91HP and 29 Spell Damage (if you included the new 10hp stone and 7th tooth), didn't include RoSS or the new epic, no key of healing, no shirt of linked healing, involved multiple volunteer tokens and only had room for CoA for TEs. And don't get me started on the saves.

And, now that MEC is always 1:1 , that character it outdated since losing spell damage for HP no longer makes sense.

I think I've got it, but you need to dump the Cabal Set and the Charm of Spell Swapping. With a little finagling I can get to 109 hp with 36 spell damage

Head - Crown of Expertise
Eyes - Lenses of Focus
Left Ear - Earcuff of Inspiration
Right Ear - Earcuff of Orbits
Neck - Ashenne's Arch-Mage Medallion
Armor - Aron's Sunhide Robe
Wrists - Charm Bracelets
Hands - Blessed Tempest Gloves
Mainhand - Drake's +5 Staff of Focus
Missile Weapon - Thor's +5 Returning Hammer of Smiting
Back - Cloak of the Elm
Left Ring - Relsa's Ring of Supreme Focus
Right Ring - Ring of Spell Storing
Third Ring - Ring of Greater Focus
Waist - Arcane Belt
Shirt - Shirt of Focus
Boots - Boots of the Four Winds
Legs - Kilt of Dungeonbane (Con)
Shin - Flameguard Greaves
Bead - Master Ale Drinker's Bead
Charm 1 - Charm of Avarice
Charm 2 - Charm of Awakened Synergy (assume entire party has it)
Charm 3 - Charm of Glory
Charm 4 - Greater Garnet Charm
Charm 5 - Garnet Charm

Ioun 1 - Gold Nugget
Ioun 2 - Silver Nugget
Ioun 3 - Platinum Nugget
Ioun 4 - Banshee Prism
Ioun 5 - Elfstone Shard
Ioun 6 - Charming Cabochon
Ioun 7 - Garnet Cube (or Elfstone Shard)
Specials (that impact stats)
Semi-Lich Skull & 7 individual teeth
Rod of Seven Parts Complete
Gregor's Tome of Focus
Totem Paint Crushed Ruby
Elixir of Vitality

The app (without 2021 tokens) tells me I'm at 88hp and 32 damage
I get 4 more damage from Earcuff of Inspiration to take damage to 36
I get the following additional hp
+1 for using the app (not included in total)
+10 for Elfstone Shard
+10 for Master Ale Drinker's Bead since I'm on an odd constitution number
That should get me to 109. I could throw in a Yew Runestone if I had more and go to 110hp

Edwin, if you swap in the Cabal set, how much damage bonus and/or HP do you lose? I can redo my analysis based on that. I want it to be accurate. Thanks!

I can play with it, but putting the Cabal set back in creates a lot of downstream impacts. You lost the Charm Bracelet, so you have to put Arcane Earcuff in to keep the charms, but then you lose Ioun Stones, which are essential to hp. Honestly, I'm thinking 90hp and 31-32 spell damage is more doable.

Dave wrote: I can play with it, but putting the Cabal set back in creates a lot of downstream impacts. You lost the Charm Bracelet, so you have to put Arcane Earcuff in to keep the charms, but then you lose Ioun Stones, which are essential to hp. Honestly, I'm thinking 90hp and 31-32 spell damage is more doable.

It's worse than that. You also lose another Charm to the Charm of the Cabal.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Dave wrote: I can play with it, but putting the Cabal set back in creates a lot of downstream impacts. You lost the Charm Bracelet, so you have to put Arcane Earcuff in to keep the charms, but then you lose Ioun Stones, which are essential to hp. Honestly, I'm thinking 90hp and 31-32 spell damage is more doable.

It's worse than that. You also lose another Charm to the Charm of the Cabal, and your hands slot from Blessed Tempest Gloves into non-damage gloves.

Gain is + damage bracers so that doesn’t hurt as much as the charm. Does the charm of the cabal even work anymore?

I would support an Arch-Mage power that is done in coaching which says
"This necklace may count as one item toward the Cabal set"

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Dave wrote: I can play with it, but putting the Cabal set back in creates a lot of downstream impacts. You lost the Charm Bracelet, so you have to put Arcane Earcuff in to keep the charms, but then you lose Ioun Stones, which are essential to hp. Honestly, I'm thinking 90hp and 31-32 spell damage is more doable.

It's worse than that. You also lose another Charm to the Charm of the Cabal.

That was part of the downstream impacts I was thinking of. Personally, I'd swap out Arcane Belt for Orion's Belt, take another 2 damage loss, but add back the 2 IS slots and the additional charm slot I need. I, personally would put CoSS back in and lose a garnet charm taking another hp hit. But I still think I'd end up around 90 hp. I'd have to look at it. also, doubtful I'd use the crushed ruby totem every run, so maybe I am only in the high 80s. I'd also consider losing Lenses of Focus for Psyferre's, but might still end up around 30 damage. I get at least one back from Cabal. Too bad more people don't have Cabal. If the two wizards used it, then we'd only need 1 other between Cleric, Druid and Bard and we'd get +2 on the bracelets.

Allen John wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: The problem you are going to see removing bonus from the second puck is asking Rangers and Monks to accept a loss of 30+ damage per turn.

That doesn't seem like something they will be willing to take lightly

At least with Rangers, I've come around to thinking the problem is that it's too easy to hit, not that the hits do too much damage. The swings are supposed to be erratic, but with the +hit numbers we can reach, it's possible to reach a situation where you almost have to try to miss.

I'd argue that the Ranger double-slide needs some sort of penalty to hit, but I have no idea what could possibly balance it across multiple difficulties.

Wade Schwendemann (Dr. Uid) wrote: Ok, serious question here.

How does discussing hypothetical damage outputs on classes where powers aren't defined and class cards are about to be re-done actually help anything?

Why does damage output of one class vs. another matter at all? If you want to be the best damage dealer there is, play Monk (or soon, Wizard). It is a team game. If I'm playing Paladin, I know that my guarding the wizards often means we don't get attacked, leaving them to channel HP into spells.

If we kill the monster in 1 or 2 rounds, we all participated. Are there bragging rights in some parties that we just don't have in mine? That seems kind of annoying honestly.

If someone is overgeared for their difficulty level and doesn't tone it down, that would take a LOT of the fun out of it for me.

I guess people (this is not aimed at any one person) just like the debate?

Anyhow /rant

Maybe it's different at Epic level, but in my experience I can't recall the last time any of us sliders even cared what the casters were casting, let alone how much damage they were doing. They could be off playing canasta with the DM for all we care.

“Apply STR/2 bonus to hit to each slider, apply STR bonus to damage to each slider”
Scales perfectly as tokens do.

Anthony Barnstable wrote:

Allen John wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: The problem you are going to see removing bonus from the second puck is asking Rangers and Monks to accept a loss of 30+ damage per turn.

That doesn't seem like something they will be willing to take lightly

At least with Rangers, I've come around to thinking the problem is that it's too easy to hit, not that the hits do too much damage. The swings are supposed to be erratic, but with the +hit numbers we can reach, it's possible to reach a situation where you almost have to try to miss.

I'd argue that the Ranger double-slide needs some sort of penalty to hit, but I have no idea what could possibly balance it across multiple difficulties.

Wade Schwendemann (Dr. Uid) wrote: Ok, serious question here.

How does discussing hypothetical damage outputs on classes where powers aren't defined and class cards are about to be re-done actually help anything?

Why does damage output of one class vs. another matter at all? If you want to be the best damage dealer there is, play Monk (or soon, Wizard). It is a team game. If I'm playing Paladin, I know that my guarding the wizards often means we don't get attacked, leaving them to channel HP into spells.

If we kill the monster in 1 or 2 rounds, we all participated. Are there bragging rights in some parties that we just don't have in mine? That seems kind of annoying honestly.

If someone is overgeared for their difficulty level and doesn't tone it down, that would take a LOT of the fun out of it for me.

I guess people (this is not aimed at any one person) just like the debate?

Anyhow /rant

Maybe it's different at Epic level, but in my experience I can't recall the last time any of us sliders even cared what the casters were casting, let alone how much damage they were doing. They could be off playing canasta with the DM for all we care.

“Apply STR/2 bonus to hit to each slider, apply STR bonus to damage to each slider”
Scales perfectly as tokens do.

Harder to calculate in the dungeon though.

The following suggestion changes nothing with the core rules, but just adjusts the monk. Perhaps it doesn’t go far enough, but it’s also less disruptive.

2nd ed DnD has a penalty for using 2 weapons. Maybe Adapt it to TD?

For monk, this is pretty easy to do without disrupting the new player experience.

2 weapon style - -2 to hit for sliding 2 pucks

Change base monk str to 9, or even 7.

Add rule: fists of steel. Monk gains +4 hit and +2 damage when using empty pucks.

Eventually it makes sense to swap from fists to weapons, but it would take a serious chunk out of monk base +hit (it’s -5 hit / -3 damage from where we are now)

This moves the BIS monk build in my phone from +23 hit to +18, which may have a real impact on damage due to misses.