Scaling in general

[Mylon]

What the heck is up with scaling? Lately when doing quests I'll see a trap in advance. Sure, whatever. I cast resist energy relevant to the trap, which gives me 84 points of damage resistance versus that trap (guess what level I am? :) ). Sure, that should keep me alive. I time my run through the trap. I fail (thanks to lag, one usually has to run in half a second before the trap finishes, so the server sees you run through while the trap is off), sure no big deal, I'm protected, right? I fail the save. Yeah, I'm a cleric, that's expected. I get hit twice by the same trap. This is the first ***? I can understand making the trap come from both sides so it hits for sure, fine. Sure, whatever. Anyway... The trap ends up hitting me for about 150 damage. That's enough to override my protection and kill me in the same go. Geez! And this is a level 7 or level 8 quest?

I remember traps being this hard right when DDOU came out, and then it was scaled down, (perhaps not enough, but it was managable) but now traps seem to cause some massive damage once again. And what's worse, many rogues are unable to find/disable them. The only solution? Time perfectly or die. No ifs, ands, or buts, even if you have protection spells. Traps are supposed to keep out mooks, not heroes!

Other scaling issues... Why do monsters seem to get like 200hp at around CRs 7-10? Simple stuff like skeletons seem to have oodles of HP, despite not having con scores.

I dunno... The game just seems really difficult all over again except for totally twinked characters.

[Arctigis]

Which quest?
Which diff?

I've found scaling makes a huge difference, with incoming damage, debuff durations etc. for me+hireling
being approx. halved in most cases.

Take a hireling in there and let them eat the trap. The log should (at least it did, haven't checked since the
patches) tell you what scaling is being applied when the hireling takes damage.

For a lvl7-8 quest trap hitting you for ~150, it sounds like you are on elite difficulty which I think has no scaling.

[vainangel]

Traps used to be a joke. They hurt now, like they were supposed to.
Since you cannot jump over it or disable it, you might try a lesser diff and wait for a PUG! Same goes for the exploding containers. They used to do 2pts of damage, 15 or more if you were unlucky. Now exploding containers can kill you at level...

[Mylon]

Its not just elite, I've tried several different quests with a group of 6 people on normal and in a level 8 quest I'll see CR 11 skeletons with oodles of HP (these aren't the threat, I don't have time to even peek at the CRs of the casters). I regularly get hit for 40-50 points of damage from spells, like the casters have all of their spells empowered (and are rolling at least 10d6). Again, on a level 8 quest versus non-bosses. I mean, you say traps are supposed to hurt, but what if they require an absolutely twinked out trapmonkey to disable them (in other words, not always available), or in some cases have no panel at all?

Like I said about the 150 point trap, that totally raped me as a caster with a protection spell up. And I think that might have only been on hard difficulty.

I tried several different quests with this group and we didn't finish any of them. Between groups of 2 priests sync-casting flamestrike for 40 points of damage each (20 of which is unresistable) and still getting two castings off, targeting themselves, while three melee people try to beat them down. Just those two casters with their melee support caused us to wipe. And that group was pulled standing at the entrance to a cave in that long outdoorsy House P quest (Gwynlyn's Stand?).

Sure, the group probably had something to do with it, but it seems the only way for me to survive any of these quests for the first minute is to have resist energy or protection from energy from at least 3 different energies. Trying to put those buffs on the whole party would mean I wouldn't have SP to do anything else. And Protection only 4x what a single resist does (at level 7), so protection looks so much weaker when it comes to the non-boss portion of dungeons.

As for traps... They're supposed to be laughable. In the DMG, traps only go up to CR 10, because they're meant for level 20s (I mean, one of the CR10 traps uses a caster level 17th spell), and do on average 1d6 damage per CR. On top of this the disable device check is, roughly, CR + 25. This means they are laughable. This is made up by the fact that there are many of them (endurance), and have monsters to back them up.

The game gives everyone max+20 HP instead of the standard rolling, which is fine, but then it ups the damage (with insane traps) and casters with empowered spells and oodles of HP, which can also nuke themselves with no fear of taking damage from their own AoEs. This in turn dilutes the power of healers which not only have to struggle to do their job mid-battle (at least healing spells aren't touch range) but don't nearly get enough spell points to do their job. With maxed health and extra damage, healing should be maximized as well for free, or the damage toned down.

[vainangel]

Protection form energys vanishes fast.
Resist Energy is MUCH better!

Your CON and your DEX will play a role in your survival more than you might think. Unless you are wearing heavy armor then DEX is not helping anyway...
If you have no Spell Resistance or a horrible will save, spells will be your bane.
If you are not wearing items that increase your saves KNOWING you do not make those saves...then go buy one.
I suggest looking over the WIKI to know what spells do what and what the saves are and compare those to your toon.

Without knowing details this is what i have to offer. Traps and spells are survivable if you are built decent and have pretty common gear dropped in most of the F2P market quests you have most of what you need there.

[Mylon]

Let me provide a few details... I'm a level 7 cleric (good base will save), crappy 10 con (which I regret now, but I'm already level 7). I wear heavy armor, so I have a good AC. Melee mobs don't worry me all that much (except ones which trip/KD, which lasts waaaaay too long considering everything else has been sped up). I have a +2 resistance item to boost my saves and I have a belt that provides +1 unnamed bonus to reflex. So 76 HP total and when I get hit by a 40 point flamestrike it hurts. When I get hit with a 50 point lightning bolt, it really hurts.

I'll definitely have to look into an SR item. I have about 31 AC (I'm not quite sure how, with +2 full plate and a +2 shield) so melee doesn't bother me much at all, but for casters to be that evil.. I mean, there's a reason casting spells draws attacks of opportunity in PnP.

[vainangel]

If you are on cannith or khyber message worth on either server and I will help you out. If not, try to find someone who can drop some items/plat on you. However I will suggest a reroll if you only have 10 con as a cleric. Look in the cleric section for examples of builds. It will help you alot. It helped me define the type of toon I liked to play and they can survive with the best of them!

[Mylon]

I tend to be more of a casual player. Telling me to reroll at level 7 might as well be telling me to go play a different game altogether! I just don't have the heart to repeat content like that. Especially not when it's essentially twinking out my character to compensate for stupidly hard challenges.

I do play on Khyber (as Rayelle) if you wanna chat with me in game.

I also forgot to mention, I have the healer enhancements (6% chance to crit, +30% healing) and an item of superior devotion (further +40%) and I still tend to run out of SP trying to keep a group alive. It's only in quests like the aforementioned Gwynlyn's stand where there seems to be a good number of shrines, if the individual encounters can be survived.

I think we did game quite a bit together a couple days ago, Worth.

[Quikster]

Seriously. 10 con is going to make you really squishy. It doesnt take near as long to level back to 7 as it did the first time.

I think most dungeons are a lot easier now, so I think you are running into PUGitis. You certainly dont need a fully spec'd trap monkey to get the traps you are referring to, you only need one level of rog and the proper gear and buffs.

For the sake of enjoying the game later (when you may be required to heal while taking a hundred points of damage) I would highly suggest you get a higher con by any means b4 moving much further.

[vainangel]

You will do as you want, just suggesting. I will tell you my first toon had only 10 con... he was not able to run the shroud...
Reroll will save you much pain. I will help gear up your toon to lessen the blow!
We are just tryin to help you enjoy the game long term. Anyone want to chime in?