Can melee get some self-healing love before 400 Silver Flame favor?

[Carpone]

Can melee get some self-healing love before 400 Silver Flame favor?

Any chance DDO will see Cure Critical Potions soon? CSW pots just don't cut it once you hit Giant Hold.

Also, would be nice to see heal amp options on lower level gear. It's painful to wait until Levik's Bracers or Dragontouched for healing amp.

[Monkey-Boy]

The secret lies in a new NPC named Kargon who will sell you the bestamist hams ever.

[Ilindith]

http://mikesrpgcenter.com/nwn/items/potionofheal.gif
"Heal (11) Single Use
Sold by general merchants in chapters one and two, by special merchants in chapters one through three, and by holy merchants in chapters two through four."

Neverwinter had those, would be nice to have the same thing in DDO. (Heal spell equivalent potion)

[Raithe]

Can melee get some self-healing love before 400 Silver Flame favor?

Any chance DDO will see Cure Critical Potions soon? CSW pots just don't cut it once you hit Giant Hold.

Also, would be nice to see heal amp options on lower level gear. It's painful to wait until Levik's Bracers or Dragontouched for healing amp.

My "melee" (kensei with rogue splash for 38 UMD) uses heal scrolls, cure crit wands, and cure serious potions. He has 454 hit points. Even with all those healing options, he does not have the survivability of my 380 hp ranger or anywhere near the survivability of my 280 hp bard.

Cure crit potions or other healing item additions will not really change how the game plays out. Melee is, for some unknown reason, the most prone-to-damage method of playing the game (while having a relatively high AC and sticking to melee combat was usually the best way to avoid heavy damage in old-style D&D, at least against man-sized opponents).

Bottom line, you basically need to choose between a melee character for specific raid situations (and I have no idea if that is even very efficient, seems like a self-healing FvS would work in just about everyone of those), or a survivable general questing character. Increased healing amp item options seem like a particularly bad idea, as that would be available to all classes and would most likely just increase the numbers of damage and healing across the board, putting fighters and barbs even further behind.

[Setin_Myways]

I have been hoping they would put in some sort of 'Potion enhancement line' like the many wand/scroll ap lines available to many classes. I am not sure folks would fit it in their build, but i think it would be nice if a melee that has no hope of getting a decent umd score had another option to 'drink their way' to self sufficiency.

[Claransa]

Do silver flame pots really need the negative effects?

[voodoogroves]

I have been hoping they would put in some sort of 'Potion enhancement line' like the many wand/scroll ap lines available to many classes. I am not sure folks would fit it in their build, but i think it would be nice if a melee that has no hope of getting a decent umd score had another option to 'drink their way' to self sufficiency.

This would be nifty for people with no innate abilities.

[sweez]

Do silver flame pots really need the negative effects?

You do know bluebars can drink them as well?

[Zyerz]

You cant say ALL melee have problems... Barbs and Fighters really... But Rangers, Pallies, Rouges, Bards, Artis, Monks, and the ocassional melee FVS are all proficient at self healing.... :D

[Thrudh]

A few ideas.

Get some AC (it's okay to pull out a shield if you're surrounded - Armor Boost and Improved Uncanny Dodge can be useful)
Get some DR (the barbarian DR boost is pretty effective in the early-mid levels).
Get some healing amp
Don't fight too much stuff at once
Use the terrain to your advantage. Use a doorway, run back around a corner. Fight with your back to a wall.
Paralyzing weapons
Constantly move. Keep one big ogre between you and the other ogres so they can't hit you (even easier if the one big ogre is paralyzed)
Displacement clickables from the Shroud if you're a TR.
Run away if necessary. Barbarians are naturally fast, and they have sprint boost.

[Claransa]

You do know bluebars can drink them as well?

I figure they all use heal scrolls with wand and scroll mastery.

[Tobril]

Agree with the OP.


I never really got why we don’t have cure critical potions.

The spell is 4th level, so therefore OK by 3/3.5 rules for potions.


It would also be nice if higher caster-level potions were available.

[Carpone]

I never really got why we don’t have cure critical potions.

The spell is 4th level, so therefore OK by 3/3.5 rules for potions.
Exactly.

Also, the caster level of the potion affects the healing. CSW potions sold by vendors is CL 5, while those obtained via collectibles I believe are CL 10. CSW can benefit up to CL 15. CCW potions could benefit up to CL 20. Would be nice if Cannith crafting permitted the creation of higher CL potions and/or CCW potions.

[WruntJunior]

Something I've heard and liked was lesser silver flame pots as they are now being offered for 150 silver flame favor, as that's easy enough to get....with the slight twist of improved lesser silver flame pots at 400 that have no penalty. I don't think there should be many options beyond these (though cure crit potions would definitely be nice, even if only from a guild vendor), as powerful self-healing such as this is a very potentially unbalancing force...and not just for melees.

[DeathsApprentice]

Agree with the OP.


I never really got why we don’t have cure critical potions.

The spell is 4th level, so therefore OK by 3/3.5 rules for potions.


It would also be nice if higher caster-level potions were available.

Actually, in 3.0 you're only allowed to make potions of spells up to level 3. Wands go up to lvl 5 and scrolls, rods and wonderous go up to 9.

Not that this really matters for DDO.

Edit: There is a prestige class called Master brewer that allows the creating of potions with up to lvl 9 spells. Turbine should get one of those in House C.

[goodspeed]

I don't think the problem is really self healing. As stated with a splash you can wand whip or even scroll heal. With a race you can whip heal scrolls at 15. (We'll just leave barbs and rage outa all that. way to much flamage there)

The real problem is that a heavy armor jacked up ac melee like a fighter or even a barbarian takes pretty much the same dmg as that skinny pale dude in a bathrobe across the way.

The only difference is the dude in the bathrobe can shoot arrows or bolts or cast stuff, or stealth up and assassinate. The dude with the broadsword is trading blow for blow with really only stunning fist/blow to stop it. (Lets face it trip sucks in epic)

Make armor mean something and then you don't even need every class to have a scroll of heal potion on the hotbar. Hell if it keeps going why even have any kind of heal class. With melee as they are being a sponge no one wants to heal em. If pots made mass, would you even really need more then 1 in any raid? Would you even need one in a group? Cause and effect. It plays a part on both ends.

[redspecter23]

Cure critical potions already exist in the DDO store, so it's not a matter of them being unbalanced or that the devs don't want us to have them. They just don't want us to have them without paying real world cash each time we get hurt. It's a slap in the face in my opinion that they are not available for plat purchase or favor reward.

[Tobril]

Actually, in 3.0 you're only allowed to make potions of spells up to level 3. Wands go up to lvl 5 and scrolls, rods and wonderous go up to 9.

Not that this really matters for DDO.

Edit: There is a prestige class called Master brewer that allows the creating of potions with up to lvl 9 spells. Turbine should get one of those in House C.


Looked it up, potions 3, wands 4.

Oops.

[licho]

The problem is that with current state of casters its easy to get impression that you can get great self healing without giving up anything important.
While there could be a tradeoff between raw power and self healing. So selling heal pots may be too much, but crue criticals is a very resonable requast, the same as some heal over time hams/potions or more love to vampirism/bodyfeeding/lifeshield items.

[taurean430]

Cure Critical pots appear to be available to be purchased in the DDO Store.

It's about high time that they are also available via vendors. I'd definitely get behind that.

[HungarianRhapsody]

I think it would make sense to move Silver Flame potions to 150 favor and straight up Heal potions (BtC at an appropriate price in plat) available at 400 Silver Flame favor.

Cure Critical potions at vendors would also go a decent way toward helping out the poor folks who don't heal themselves with their own blue bar.

Both of those changes would also go a long way toward providing a big plat sink for DDO that it could really use in addition to the AH 30%, Cure Serious pots and Haste pots that are pretty much the only plat sinks in existence now.

[hit_fido]

Any chance DDO will see Cure Critical Potions soon? CSW pots just don't cut it once you hit Giant Hold.

CCW per the wiki heals for "4d6+8 plus 1 per caster level", or a max of 52 hp at CL 20.

Tasty Ham heals for 50 hp as a "timed release" over 60 seconds and can be used at level 1. With minor adjustments that is the solution I'd prefer to see:

- either: sell them at vendors.
- or: make them drop in stacks for end rewards as often as mnemonic pots drop.
- or: both of the above.

Kargon's Tasty Hams should change to a similar timed release mechanism - healing 100hp over 60 seconds. They should nix the do-nothing-for-12-seconds effect and instead make it impossible to drink a mnemonic pot for some period of time after consumption, maybe 5 minutes, maybe less. Again, sell at vendors and/or greatly increase frequency of appearance in chest and end rewards.

The timed release mechanic is different and interesting enough to be preferable over just adding bigger and bigger pots, IMO. Creates a different way to think about self healing when you don't get the entire pop all at once.

[Phidius]

1. Fix AC so that it's just as useful for level 20 as it is for level 5.
2. Sell Critical pots in the game if they're going to be sold in the store.
3. Cannith Crafting for higher caster level pots, BtA.
4. Silver Flame 150 favor for Lesser Heal pots.
5. Fix Tenser's so that with these better healing/reconstructing options, I would actually be tempted to give up casting for meleeing.

I can get behind any of these. I don't really think #5 will fly, but I had to try :D

[ReaperAlexEU]

http://mikesrpgcenter.com/nwn/items/potionofheal.gif
"heal (11) single use
sold by general merchants in chapters one and two, by special merchants in chapters one through three, and by holy merchants in chapters two through four."

neverwinter had those, would be nice to have the same thing in ddo. (heal spell equivalent potion)

#meeeeeeemorieeeeeees#

[Munkenmo]

A few ideas.

Get some AC (it's okay to pull out a shield if you're surrounded - Armor Boost and Improved Uncanny Dodge can be useful)
Get some DR (the barbarian DR boost is pretty effective in the early-mid levels).
Get some healing amp
Don't fight too much stuff at once
Use the terrain to your advantage. Use a doorway, run back around a corner. Fight with your back to a wall.
Paralyzing weapons
Constantly move. Keep one big ogre between you and the other ogres so they can't hit you (even easier if the one big ogre is paralyzed)
Displacement clickables from the Shroud if you're a TR.
Run away if necessary. Barbarians are naturally fast, and they have sprint boost.


please let me know what healing amp gear i can acquire for my level 6-15 half orc barb.

I'm only aware of the ship buff

[My2Cents]

I think Fighting classes should wear Armor (Capital A) than means something.

It should be DIFFICULT to get hit in full plat and helm (and shield).

The bigger armors and helms and shields ought to be solid and substantial.

That would help a great deal.

Imagine a guy in Full Battle Mail, Helm and Broadsword in melee with the guy in purple robes. Sure, the guy in purple robes has much more freedom of movement, can dodge and evade, and cast his magic from a distance, but up close, in combat? Like tapping on a tank...

[Brian_of_Oz]

You can always roll a half elf melee toon. Put a few points into wisdom and take the cleric dilettante. You can wand whip and scroll heal yourself until your hearts content. Not to mention, it is very useful to res a cleric in a pinch too. Also, having a few points in wisdom will give you an extra point into your will save, which melee are lacking in also.

I know several people that said it was enjoyable to run a h-elf barb up to 20, and personally, I have a lvl 20 h-elf fighter that I really like.

[NaturalHazard]

Can melee get some self-healing love before 400 Silver Flame favor?

Any chance DDO will see Cure Critical Potions soon? CSW pots just don't cut it once you hit Giant Hold.

Also, would be nice to see heal amp options on lower level gear. It's painful to wait until Levik's Bracers or Dragontouched for healing amp.

Can melee get some self healing love before 400 favour silver flame pots? Yes Rangers and Paladins can heal off their blue bars after level 4 and can use cure wands, rogues can often umd wands at least at lower levels, scrolls higher up. Monks, light monks can do some self healing and some dark monks can get enough heal amp to get more out of csw pots.

Barbarians and Fighters? hmmm most likely not, unless they can get enough umd for wands and scrolls, some do especially some fighters ive run accross and they got it before they got their 400 sf favour. And if the party is not full many dont mind the fighter or barb using a hireling... I know hirelings have their limmits but some of the most skillful hireling users ive seen have been people who play a lot of fighters and barbarians.,. then theres those who expect the other party members to be *their* personal hirelings.

[EllisDee37]

Only add more self-healing options to barbs and fighters if you also raise paladin and ranger dps to be on the same footing as barbs and fighters.

[butcheredspirit]

Rangers and paladin's could put at least 1, or hopefully 3 ranks into healing spell increase.
Superior ardor makes a huge difference, but I very seldom ever see it used by paladins or rangers.

Fighter's and barbs can take a level of a class that gives UMD as a class skill.
Get some charisma, charisma skills items etc, and can defiantly use heal scrolls.
Take cleric dilettante and use heal scrolls, with only a small margin of error.

Fighters and barbs may not want to go half-elf, then again many sorcs may not want to go warforged.
There are several options classes have for healing, it's about weather you want to incorporate into your build or not.

[Jaid314]

with minimal investment in AC (typically low-to-no dex, not farming dodge items, no PrE bonuses, etc) i have found that while you may not get enough AC to keep stuff missing you constantly, getting enough AC on a melee that some monsters will miss you some of the time (thus reducing the damage you take) is *easy* and takes very little investment up until around level 16-17. with a little more investment, i wouldn't be surprised at all if i could manage to make that last longer.

perhaps the problem is not that melee is incapable of reducing incoming damage (and therefore needing large amounts of healing). rather, it seems likely that the problem is that melees are not choosing the options that lead to the desired result.

now, i'll grant you, epics are another matter entirely. but really, if you want a survivable melee character at higher levels, well... make one. it's not impossible. it's certainly substantially easier than it used to be, what with recent gear added to the game, better defensive PrEs, and new feats introduced. instead of focusing on DPS, DPS, and DPS, with a side of HP, maybe consider putting AC and saves somewhere on your priority list at all (because so far as i can tell, for a lot of people it never even makes it to the bottom of the list, let alone anywhere near the top).

now, certainly there is a place for a healing option between CSW potions and silver flame potions. but if you watch a pale master, something along the lines of 30 HP healed every couple of seconds is what their aura is giving, probably (with the occasional crit for more). and often, even when i'm spamming my SLAs constantly, that's *more* than enough.

that's about the equivalent of 1 CSW potion per second. which, ime, would not keep most melees alive.

[Viciouspika]

I like the idea of increasing the strength of healing pots though AP enhancements similiar to the wand/scroll bonuses. The lesser silver flame pots would be nice also.

One thing I would like is if the hp con-op gs items gave permanent hp instead of temporary. I would be nice to see hp going up while shield blocking. Blue bars use this ability all the time to restore their limiting factor, their SP bar. I just think that melees should be able to use that to increase their limiting factor, their HP bar.

But why would you want to make melees more self-sufficient. When the update comes, everyone will be playing a druid.

[sirgog]

I think the best option would be to change Healing Amp to give a '+X per spell' effect instead of a '+X% per spell' effect.

Cure Serious pots would become relevant if you got 25hp from the potion and 60hp from healing amp effects.

This would have endgame implications, but if healing amp isn't nerfed in some way in the expansion it will become totally silly anyway.

[underlordone]

I have always belive that heal kits should give u some hp besides just to get some one up wile there down. We have hit a point in game where the heal skill should be used more. Healing kits should be able to heal you wile your still standing but only give the hp based off your healing skill.

[Raithe]

with minimal investment in AC (typically low-to-no dex, not farming dodge items, no PrE bonuses, etc) i have found that while you may not get enough AC to keep stuff missing you constantly, getting enough AC on a melee that some monsters will miss you some of the time (thus reducing the damage you take) is *easy* and takes very little investment up until around level 16-17. with a little more investment, i wouldn't be surprised at all if i could manage to make that last longer.


There is no doubt that AC is useful up to and possibly including level 14-15. Can you continue to use it past then? Yes, you can. You are not being efficient if you do so, however.

The math and timing simply works out that way. Lots of characters can turtle up to take basically only grazing hits and less (with DR). It would be more economical, however, to complete quests faster using DPS, healing, and concealment (blur/displacement). The problem is that turtling and moderately high DPS are at odds with each other. AC gear requires a lack of DPS gear.

On top of that, ranged in the game are now also moderate to high DPS, can avoid enemy strikes much more easily, and can begin attacking sooner.



perhaps the problem is not that melee is incapable of reducing incoming damage (and therefore needing large amounts of healing). rather, it seems likely that the problem is that melees are not choosing the options that lead to the desired result.


Indeed they aren't choosing reduction of damage over DPS, because in typical groups that don't involve a lot of very new players, melee are barely contributing any damage, while possibly taking more damage than they get to dish out, due to AoEs.



now, i'll grant you, epics are another matter entirely. but really, if you want a survivable melee character at higher levels, well... make one. it's not impossible. it's certainly substantially easier than it used to be, what with recent gear added to the game, better defensive PrEs, and new feats introduced. instead of focusing on DPS, DPS, and DPS, with a side of HP, maybe consider putting AC and saves somewhere on your priority list at all (because so far as i can tell, for a lot of people it never even makes it to the bottom of the list, let alone anywhere near the top).


My estimation is that most characters are built for HP first, then DPS, then saves. That is unfortunate, because the order of importance in my estimation is saves > DPS > HP. AC is not on my list for post-level-15, as I already mentioned.



now, certainly there is a place for a healing option between CSW potions and silver flame potions. but if you watch a pale master, something along the lines of 30 HP healed every couple of seconds is what their aura is giving, probably (with the occasional crit for more). and often, even when i'm spamming my SLAs constantly, that's *more* than enough.

that's about the equivalent of 1 CSW potion per second. which, ime, would not keep most melees alive.


Pale masters are not getting hit with melee attacks as much, they generally are wearing gear (Robe of Shadow, Conc. Opposition GS) that heals them, and can cast spells that heal in a single large burst. The aura works while the pale master is doing something else, as well. I don't think many melee would be complaining much if they could actually attack while a stack of pots gave them 27 hit points every 2 seconds.

[Ungood]

Can melee get some self-healing love before 400 Silver Flame favor?

Any chance DDO will see Cure Critical Potions soon? CSW pots just don't cut it once you hit Giant Hold.

Also, would be nice to see heal amp options on lower level gear. It's painful to wait until Levik's Bracers or Dragontouched for healing amp.

I agree that something needs to be done.

While it s apparent, just by the varying posts in this thread, we can see that the means and method of what may solve the issue vary from player to player, nothing changes the fact that there is a sever gap in in this aspect of the game.

If that solution is Cure Critical Pots, then that is what it is, if that solution is additional heal amp gear, then perhaps that is where the answer lies.

However, something should be done, something more then what we have already.

I think stronger pots may be a great place to start, in that vein cure critical would be the next logical step up, I can see no reason why they should not exist and it would still leave SF pots as the most time to cost effective way to Pot-heal.

[oweieie]

My estimation is that most characters are built for HP first, then DPS, then saves. That is unfortunate, because the order of importance in my estimation is saves > DPS > HP. AC is not on my list for post-level-15, as I already mentioned.

You rarely make saves, and when you do, no matter how good they are, you can still fail on a 1. HP on the other hand get used constantly. Most characters get made for DPS then HP then saves, and there is a reason for that.

Anyway, DDO has a very effective healing option, it's called NPCs. Now, granted you need to leave them in safe spots and summon them as needed or they'll jump in traps or run in front of a bunch of mobs and not heal themselves, but if you can work around the bad AI it's cheap and it's effective and it will get you through the renown grinding to the silver flame pots.

At low levels invulnerability or other DR works well, life shield works well, vampirism works well and AC works well and if you can combine them you won't need more healing than an occasional cure serious pot. For barbarians just being a total beast and killing everything in the room before they hit you can also work pretty well, at least for TRs, right up through to 20 if you avoid some of the new quests where elite means the mobs are a ridiculous CR28.

[Thrudh]

please let me know what healing amp gear i can acquire for my level 6-15 half orc barb.

I'm only aware of the ship buff

Roll up a half-elf or human barb instead.

It's just one of many choices in that list.

There are plenty of ways to mitigate damage or heal damage for a fighter/barb.

My fighter is halfling for the healing dragonmarks.

[Thrudh]

Only add more self-healing options to barbs and fighters if you also raise paladin and ranger dps to be on the same footing as barbs and fighters.

This.

[Thrudh]

perhaps the problem is not that melee is incapable of reducing incoming damage (and therefore needing large amounts of healing). rather, it seems likely that the problem is that melees are not choosing the options that lead to the desired result.

And this. I took a barbarian through 1-20 a few months ago... Soloed and short-manned plenty... Didn't wait for a healer, didn't use hirelings. Stun and Trip and smart play made it plenty possible. CSW potions were just fine for out-of-combat healing up until I got silver flame potions.


now, i'll grant you, epics are another matter entirely. but really, if you want a survivable melee character at higher levels, well... make one. it's not impossible. it's certainly substantially easier than it used to be, what with recent gear added to the game, better defensive PrEs, and new feats introduced. instead of focusing on DPS, DPS, and DPS, with a side of HP, maybe consider putting AC and saves somewhere on your priority list at all (because so far as i can tell, for a lot of people it never even makes it to the bottom of the list, let alone anywhere near the top).

Exactly... It's all about trade-offs. I took Stunning Blow and Improved Trip instead of the three THF feats. Lost some DPS, gained a lot of survivability.

I think melees are exactly right. You CAN build to be self-sufficient without asking for an easy button magic potion from the devs.

Casters are broken though... And instead of fixing casters, it looks like we're all clamouring to make melees just as broken.

[shores11]

I think it would make sense to move Silver Flame potions to 150 favor and straight up Heal potions (BtC at an appropriate price in plat) available at 400 Silver Flame favor.

Cure Critical potions at vendors would also go a decent way toward helping out the poor folks who don't heal themselves with their own blue bar.

Both of those changes would also go a long way toward providing a big plat sink for DDO that it could really use in addition to the AH 30%, Cure Serious pots and Haste pots that are pretty much the only plat sinks in existence now.

It makes sense because it is what you want. Does anyone here see the continued direction of posts like this and/or the implementation of things like this taking DDO a D&D based game further away from a party based game?

[HungarianRhapsody]

It makes sense because it is what you want. Does anyone here see the continued direction of posts like this and/or the implementation of things like this taking DDO a D&D based game further away from a party based game?

I actually thought it would make sense because we were soon going to be adding additional Epic levels from 21 through 25, so it might be a good idea to add some additional self-healing options that would scale at least a tiny bit toward that new content

The only thing that adding more non-blue-bar self healing options would do is allow Fighters, Barbarians and Dark Monks to keep themselves afloat a bit better. Cure Critical pots aren't going to suddenly open up vast new areas of content to the folks that don't have a blue bar the way that Clerics, FvS, Wizards, Sorcerers, Artis, Bards, Light Monks, UMD Rogues, Torc wearing Paladins and Rangers and soon Druids have.

This is not a slippery slope toward a dystopian future that will leave Gary spinning in his grave. This is just a needed change that will bring a little flexibility to the classes that can't refill their entire red bars with a single button push or benefit from a constant inflow of HP that keeps their red bar from dropping in the first place.

[Monkey-Boy]

. . . but if healing amp isn't nerfed in some way in the expansion it will become totally silly anyway.

You think it'll finally hit home how awesomely over-powered multiplicative healing-amp really is?

[Monkey-Boy]

Casters are broken though... And instead of fixing casters, it looks like we're all clamouring to make melees just as broken.

And hopefully we won't double-down on a broken part of the game.

[bloodnose13]

maybe cure potions should scale their effect to lvl of user, or maybe lvl and heal skill value, driking 20+ potions to get hp back is a reason why cure potions are not realy used after first few lvls. its too costly and takes too long

[playa_eric]

OK!...first off, anyone that is whining for full heal ability on barbs/ftrs with little to NO sacrifice need to go join shades cult following or just be better players...i find it hilarious that in a game like DDO which is INTENDED to force you to group is being won over slowly and surely by the "I have to have it all without any loss in ANYTHING" people. Turbine...shut them up please with a simple..if you don't like how your class is, roll a dif class.

btw...cure crit pots aren't over the top..remove silver flame pots please (and yes i have lots of non-selfsufficient raid dps toons).

careful now baddy trolls...if you retaliate too badly it'll be a locked thread and mission accomplished.

[Monkey-Boy]

maybe cure potions should scale their effect to lvl of user, or maybe lvl and heal skill value, driking 20+ potions to get hp back is a reason why cure potions are not realy used after first few lvls. its too costly and takes too long

The OP is right though about CSW pots not cutting it at somepoint, I don't think something a little stronger would break the game.

[Pape_27]

A nice round-a-bout way to help melee become more self sufficient would be to change the way an already existing in game object works, the Topaz of the 12.
http://ddowiki.com/page/Topaz_of_the_Twelve

Right now, its exclusive and provides a single heal clickie and is destroyed upon use (i think - never actually bought one). The cost is 50 planar shards.

I think a change to something like this would be very beneficial:

Topaz of the Twelve (Tier 1) 50 Planar shards
BTC, Exclusive
5 Heal/Rest

-or-

Topaz of the Twelve (Tier 2) 100 Planar shards
BTC, Exclusive
10 Heal/Rest
Recharges 5/Day
The tier 2 seems to be an unpopular idea, as many feel the recharge ability is op. Im cool with that - its was just a thought :) if anyone was wondering, the idea was for the implementation of just one, not both.


Its a powerful object, but not overtly so. It would not be an easy (or an overtly hard grind) to get access to one. It allows the melee to be self sufficient when needed, but restrictive enough to not be game changing.

Thoughts?

[playa_eric]

A nice round-a-bout way to help melee become more self sufficient would be to change the way an already existing in game object works, the Topaz of the 12.
http://ddowiki.com/page/Topaz_of_the_Twelve

Right now, its exclusive and provides a single heal clickie and is destroyed upon use (i think - never actually bought one). The cost is 50 planar shards.

I think a change to something like this would be very beneficial:

Topaz of the Twelve (Tier 1) 50 Planar shards
BTC, Exclusive
5 Heal/Rest

-or-

Topaz of the Twelve (Tier 2) 100 Planar shards
BTC, Exclusive
10 Heal/Rest
Recharges 5/Day


Its a powerful object, but not overtly so. It allows the melee to be self sufficient when needed, but restrictive enough to not be game changing.

Thoughts?

I think this is a good idea to a degree...what turbine should do if they EVER take the route of providing something like this...is make it more epic then obtaining dual ecb's before the whiner scroll give away or the bag bug.

by this...I mean maybe 5000 planar shards...so its something that when you get those 10 heals + 5/rest recharge...it's not something everyone has and you had to dedicate the better part of a month farming the subterrain nonstop.

absolotely anything less than this would be ******** to introduce to ddo...as it stands, the only challenge the game HONESTLY holds is crafting and it's just a giant money/timer investment...it isn't even hard.

[Thrudh]

A nice round-a-bout way to help melee become more self sufficient would be to change the way an already existing in game object works, the Topaz of the 12.
http://ddowiki.com/page/Topaz_of_the_Twelve

Right now, its exclusive and provides a single heal clickie and is destroyed upon use (i think - never actually bought one). The cost is 50 planar shards.

I think a change to something like this would be very beneficial:

Topaz of the Twelve (Tier 1) 50 Planar shards
BTC, Exclusive
5 Heal/Rest

-or-

Topaz of the Twelve (Tier 2) 100 Planar shards
BTC, Exclusive
10 Heal/Rest
Recharges 5/Day


Its a powerful object, but not overtly so. It would not be an easy (or an overtly hard grind) to get access to one. It allows the melee to be self sufficient when needed, but restrictive enough to not be game changing.

Thoughts?

Majorly over-shadows dragonmark healing.

How about it still crumbles away but has 5 or 10 charges... Then it could be used for occasional emergency healing, but not something you would use all the time... 10 heals/day that recharges is pretty powerful.

[voodoogroves]

Majorly over-shadows dragonmark healing.

How about it still crumbles away but has 5 or 10 charges... Then it could be used for occasional emergency healing, but not something you would use all the time... 10 heals/day that recharges is pretty powerful.

10 charges, 5 recharge a day is pretty over the top.

A few charges before consumed is ok. Do they stack? If they stack, keep them 1 per, but drop their cost. If they don't stack, add charges.



Alternatively, new item from the turn in, trinket-like (uses a slot) with a heal clickie ... 3 charges, 1 recharge per rest. Opportunity cost on this one is that it takes an equipment slot. This still provides benefit to the real self-healers, while giving a bit of an option to the non-healers who built less well-rounded toons but still want to solo.

[Pape_27]

Majorly over-shadows dragonmark healing.

How about it still crumbles away but has 5 or 10 charges... Then it could be used for occasional emergency healing, but not something you would use all the time... 10 heals/day that recharges is pretty powerful.

I would have no problem if it crumbles into dust after ten uses. The op was just a suggestion for a possible solution.

I mean if you wanted a stable topaz, make it cost 250 planar shards for five heals. Or put seals in HoX that can only be obtained by raiding elite difficulty so it can be upgraded to a permanent item.

Just a random thought I had regarding it when i turned my shards for yet another collectible bag.

[bigolbear]

something no one has mentioned yet.

in ddo hitpoints are always maximised, ie a fighter gets 10+ con mod per lvl rather than D10 + con mod.

Now when it comes to cleric spells they too are effectively ~maximised (+50% from item, +40% from enhancements) before aplication of metamagics.

This is all the carful balance that was the original ddo design which was all about allowing meles to swing at a satisfying speed and casters to fire off more spells, but they forgot about potions.

Id there fore propose that the simplest way to give meles some kinda self healing is to make the same principle apply to potions.

ie a cure light becomes 9 points.
a cure mod becomes 21 points.
a cure serious becomes 39 points.
a cure crit (make available for plat) becomes 42 points.

These numbers realy arent outrageous.

For what its worth I also think that the coments people have made about armour needing to be valid at all lvls and the danger of multiplicative heal amp are important.

All this being said im curently enjoying running my horc barb with a self healy option, a vampiric cleaver (vampirism and body feeder) + cure serious pots. It wont hold up to serious combat but its enough to let me run around explorers and normal quests, when combined with tactical play and tactics feats.

[Emili]

OK!...first off, anyone that is whining for full heal ability on barbs/ftrs with little to NO sacrifice need to go join shades cult following or just be better players...i find it hilarious that in a game like DDO which is INTENDED to force you to group is being won over slowly and surely by the "I have to have it all without any loss in ANYTHING" people. Turbine...shut them up please with a simple..if you don't like how your class is, roll a dif class.

btw...cure crit pots aren't over the top..remove silver flame pots please (and yes i have lots of non-selfsufficient raid dps toons).

careful now baddy trolls...if you retaliate too badly it'll be a locked thread and mission accomplished.

What is funny about that comment... are the classes which are swane towards perking healing actually increase in grouping value in other areas while pursuit of increased healing.

i.e. a divine casters actually increase other output via increasing thier healing outputs - life magic healing/negative, potency, etc ... spell singers via scroll mastery increase utility... Pale Master increases necro damage along with thier negative healing. Synergies be what is scope... nearly all blue bar gain other things by increasing thier healing prowess - that's a fact. Then in group they bring in greater value.

... Are mostly melee sorts which give up more to heal themselves an' in group thier self healing tends of lesser value as someone else is normally doing most the healing, They gave up that extra Ummff in ac/damage/dr/tactic for such - their healing come into play in group when in dire need and not during strong points in quests - due the cuts they made they may have slight less DC for that stun or less DPS on that boss...

Be not very hard to figure out really... and why Raithe finds this as such


My "melee" (kensei with rogue splash for 38 UMD) uses heal scrolls, cure crit wands, and cure serious potions. He has 454 hit points. Even with all those healing options, he does not have the survivability of my 380 hp ranger or anywhere near the survivability of my 280 hp bard.


A kensei or barb - the non-blue bar for instance - tend to trade top end group dynamic perks for some solo survivability while something like a FvS increase both thier solo and group performance in doing so.


It makes sense because it is what you want. Does anyone here see the continued direction of posts like this and/or the implementation of things like this taking DDO a D&D based game further away from a party based game?

Is sad most the group dynamic has gone astray in game already... has been gone for years. Outside of some end-game raids it's been that way for quite some time.

What be also true in game atm is grouping dynamic has changed so much in many ways... is often cheaper in resource to solo the quest than to build a pug group... but a group of well versed and known players cheaper still.

[shores11]

The only thing that adding more non-blue-bar self healing options would do is allow Fighters, Barbarians and Dark Monks to keep themselves afloat a bit better. Cure Critical pots aren't going to suddenly open up vast new areas of content to the folks that don't have a blue bar the way that Clerics, FvS, Wizards, Sorcerers, Artis, Bards, Light Monks, UMD Rogues, Torc wearing Paladins and Rangers and soon Druids have.

This is not a slippery slope toward a dystopian future that will leave Gary spinning in his grave. This is just a needed change that will bring a little flexibility to the classes that can't refill their entire red bars with a single button push or benefit from a constant inflow of HP that keeps their red bar from dropping in the first place.

I know that you are not naive enough to believe that is all that would happen. Those melee classes per D&D and currently DDO play do have the ability to be healed on a large scale via a healer. This is a slippery slope no ifs, ands or buts about it that even the Kundarak Deleving Boots will not be able to help with.

[MRMechMan]

It's such a slap in the face that cure critical wounds pots aren't available ingame.

[Monkey-Boy]

something no one has mentioned yet.

in ddo hitpoints are always maximised, ie a fighter gets 10+ con mod per lvl rather than D10 + con mod.

Now when it comes to cleric spells they too are effectively ~maximised (+50% from item, +40% from enhancements) before aplication of metamagics.

This is all the carful balance that was the original ddo design which was all about allowing meles to swing at a satisfying speed and casters to fire off more spells, but they forgot about potions.

Id there fore propose that the simplest way to give meles some kinda self healing is to make the same principle apply to potions.

ie a cure light becomes 9 points.
a cure mod becomes 21 points.
a cure serious becomes 39 points.
a cure crit (make available for plat) becomes 42 points.

These numbers realy arent outrageous.

For what its worth I also think that the coments people have made about armour needing to be valid at all lvls and the danger of multiplicative heal amp are important.

All this being said im curently enjoying running my horc barb with a self healy option, a vampiric cleaver (vampirism and body feeder) + cure serious pots. It wont hold up to serious combat but its enough to let me run around explorers and normal quests, when combined with tactical play and tactics feats.


That would be great, every good idea actually.

[HungarianRhapsody]

It's such a slap in the face that cure critical wounds pots aren't available ingame.

But you can buy them from the DDO store, so Turbine obviously doesn't think that having them in the game is overpowered - just that having them at vendors isn't yet desirable for some reason.

[HungarianRhapsody]

I know that you are not naive enough to believe that is all that would happen. Those melee classes per D&D and currently DDO play do have the ability to be healed on a large scale via a healer. This is a slippery slope no ifs, ands or buts about it that even the Kundarak Deleving Boots will not be able to help with.

They have the ability to be healed on a large scale from another character, but there are times when that other character is busy or unavailable for some other reason - often because you don't happen to have that character class in the party with you.

Not every party has to be 1 divine, 1 arcane, 1 rogue and 3 generic melee characters.

It's not a slippery slope since it doesn't do anything to the characters that actually do all of the soloing in DDO currently. All it does is make short manning and splitting up inside a quest a little less painful for the characters that don't solo well currently.

[QNecron]

Would love to see CCW pots that can be bought for plat as well as Heal Elixirs that have the same drop rate as Greater/Major Mnemonic Pots.

Would also love to see lower end items with 5-10% Healing Amp or so on them, as of right now there just aren't any. Any items OUTSIDE of the raid mentality would be nice.

Nicked Large Shield
+2 Enhancement
+1 Resistance Saving Throws
+5% Healing Amp

Congratulations! I just bought the Sharn Syndicate adventure pack! :D

Bracers of the Claw
+Vulkoor's Might
+2 CON
+Moderate Fortification
+10% Healing Amp

Yay, now I would wear the regular version of these!

[Thrudh]

It's such a slap in the face that cure critical wounds pots aren't available ingame.

Have you ever been slapped in the face?

[Thrudh]

something no one has mentioned yet.

in ddo hitpoints are always maximised, ie a fighter gets 10+ con mod per lvl rather than D10 + con mod.

Now when it comes to cleric spells they too are effectively ~maximised (+50% from item, +40% from enhancements) before aplication of metamagics.

This is all the carful balance that was the original ddo design which was all about allowing meles to swing at a satisfying speed and casters to fire off more spells, but they forgot about potions.

Id there fore propose that the simplest way to give meles some kinda self healing is to make the same principle apply to potions.

ie a cure light becomes 9 points.
a cure mod becomes 21 points.
a cure serious becomes 39 points.
a cure crit (make available for plat) becomes 42 points.

These numbers realy arent outrageous.

For what its worth I also think that the coments people have made about armour needing to be valid at all lvls and the danger of multiplicative heal amp are important.

All this being said im curently enjoying running my horc barb with a self healy option, a vampiric cleaver (vampirism and body feeder) + cure serious pots. It wont hold up to serious combat but its enough to let me run around explorers and normal quests, when combined with tactical play and tactics feats.

I think this is a good idea too... cure crit is kind of pointless if it's only 3 points more than cure serious though.

[bruener]

That's what I'm reading. You are melee. You shouldn't be able to heal yourself like a cleric or fvs could. We don't need more easy buttons. What is needed is better builds and skill I guess. Or strap a hireling to your back and go(which I consider an easy button). I've ran many elite quests with good grps without healers. Too many barbs out there zerging all over the place, agroing everything, taking massive damage and whining about heals. Take some time and build a better toon and learn another skill besides swinging that big sword of yours. I don't think you should be able to neglect survivabilty and focus on pure dps then be able to drink "heal pots" and keep going. Undermines the balance of the game. There are pros and cons to every class. They are there for a reason.

[Thrudh]

Would love to see CCW pots that can be bought for plat as well as Heal Elixirs that have the same drop rate as Greater/Major Mnemonic Pots.

I'd be fine with that too... I don't like that unlimited silver flame pots can be bought. A heal elixir that is rare as a SP pot is fine with me...


Would also love to see lower end items with 5-10% Healing Amp or so on them, as of right now there just aren't any. Any items OUTSIDE of the raid mentality would be nice.

Nicked Large Shield
+2 Enhancement
+1 Resistance Saving Throws
+5% Healing Amp

Congratulations! I just bought the Sharn Syndicate adventure pack! :D

Bracers of the Claw
+Vulkoor's Might
+2 CON
+Moderate Fortification
+10% Healing Amp

Yay, now I would wear the regular version of these!

Good ideas.

[Emili]

Would love to see CCW pots that can be bought for plat as well as Heal Elixirs that have the same drop rate as Greater/Major Mnemonic Pots.

Would also love to see lower end items with 5-10% Healing Amp or so on them, as of right now there just aren't any. Any items OUTSIDE of the raid mentality would be nice.

Nicked Large Shield
+2 Enhancement
+1 Resistance Saving Throws
+5% Healing Amp

Congratulations! I just bought the Sharn Syndicate adventure pack! :D

Bracers of the Claw
+Vulkoor's Might
+2 CON
+Moderate Fortification
+10% Healing Amp

Yay, now I would wear the regular version of these!

Amp items tend to be high level just due the nature of thier stacking power in game... even 5% goes far when combined. i.e. my arty hits many a amp tank for 600+ off a single scroll ... hit's herself for 400+.

Low levels you do not see much need for healing power the mob just do not run ya down like an out of control lorry

[WruntJunior]

Have you ever been slapped in the face?

Is it possible to make it to adulthood without being slapped in the face? I certainly got slapped multiple times by multiple people throughout my years so far...most of the time deserved. :P

That said, no cure crit pots hurts more than a slap in the face. Getting slapped in the face stings only for a minute. No cure crit pots can be deadly. Dying hurts me more than getting slapped. :P

[Emili]

That's what I'm reading. You are melee. You shouldn't be able to heal yourself like a cleric or fvs could. We don't need more easy buttons. What is needed is better builds and skill I guess. Or strap a hireling to your back and go(which I consider an easy button). I've ran many elite quests with good grps without healers. Too many barbs out there zerging all over the place, agroing everything, taking massive damage and whining about heals. Take some time and build a better toon and learn another skill besides swinging that big sword of yours. I don't think you should be able to neglect survivabilty and focus on pure dps then be able to drink "heal pots" and keep going. Undermines the balance of the game. There are pros and cons to every class. They are there for a reason.

Can always add reflex saves to DOTS if ya want... get rid of superior lore items, etc... if ya want "balance and Cons" ;) Some classes have no cons what so ever actually, is funny you argue of balance yet is quite ironic. Can ya think of a "Con" on a class such be wizard or Sorc? A Cleric? A FvS? I most certainly can't... on a cleric/fvs/pm I can solo most quests alone quicker than the pug can get to the quest's door. ;)

Personally am curious to see how the devs devise class balance in the up comming enhancement changes.

[redspecter23]

Would love to see CCW pots that can be bought for plat as well as Heal Elixirs that have the same drop rate as Greater/Major Mnemonic Pots.



While not the absolute best solution, this has to be the simplest solution that solves most issues currently without breaking anything wide open. Give all players access to cure crit pots for plat and have heal pots drop at the same rate as sp pots from chests and rewards.

I think in the bigger picture, changes on the combat level need to be made and viable AC has to become a possibility even at epic levels. A more defined striker/tank relationship with regards to gear and enhancement could help. Paladins and fighters have had their tank roles more defined through gear and PRE's lately, but striker type toons like barbarians and rogues just don't have their appropriate defences in place yet.

It's somewhat ironic that currently the best self healers are also the toons most capable of avoiding damage through kiting and ranged combat. Those with the least self healing are forced into melee (extreme danger range). It's a double whammy that becomes hard to overcome for melee toons, especially since AC as a form of damage mitigation is useless in epics currently. Apply stiffer penalties to toons that attempt to kite or ranged attack from a safe distance through mob abilities targetting the weak points of those toons. Crippling, chains, earthgrab, hold and trip are all abilities that can cripple ranged toons if used properly. The problem is that those same abilites also cripple melee to a much higher degree currently as they don't have a few seconds to save before they are assaulted. Decently geared melee toons should be saving trip attempts 80%+. Amazingly geared casters should be failing trip attempts at least 50% of the time.

[Varashad]

That's what I'm reading. You are melee. You shouldn't be able to heal yourself like a cleric or fvs could. We don't need more easy buttons. What is needed is better builds and skill I guess. Or strap a hireling to your back and go(which I consider an easy button). I've ran many elite quests with good grps without healers. Too many barbs out there zerging all over the place, agroing everything, taking massive damage and whining about heals. Take some time and build a better toon and learn another skill besides swinging that big sword of yours. I don't think you should be able to neglect survivabilty and focus on pure dps then be able to drink "heal pots" and keep going. Undermines the balance of the game. There are pros and cons to every class. They are there for a reason.

Ahhh good points sir. I agree with you, there is no reason for melees to be able to heal themselves at a significant rate with just potions. I guess we'll have to invest in armor class for eight months to get enough to not take damage, wield shields with shield mastery, and spend an hour and a half in every quest because we can't kill monsters fast enough, and thus force the cleric and favored soul to spend tons of time healing us.

And while we're at it, lets get rid of that pesky pale master enhancement, and those silly repair spells. After all, wizards make things explode, they shouldn't be able to survive without the healing provided by a cleric or favored soul.

And you know what, I think that we should probably tone down the dps of divine casters. I nominate that blade barrier now do 1d6 damage up to level 5 instead of 15, and have a duration of ten seconds. They don't need that over powered divine punishment either, and you know, that DR 10/metal that FvS get is just so over powered! It makes Barbarian DR utterly worthless. Lets get rid of that.

Come to think of it, lets nerf blue bar hp to be capped at say, 380 for wizards/sorcerers/bards and 450 for clerics/favored souls, since it makes no sense for any blue bar to have both self healing or massive damage, and lots of hp.

/sarcasm off

Cure Critical Wound pots would add all of 4.5-6.5 hp per swig depending on your healing amplification. It would not break the game, it would not effect how melees play, it would make it take less time to heal between fights, and make soloing easier for melee toons. As it currently stands, Fighters and Barbarians are the weakest classes in the game. A level 14 sorcerer with a 75% damage clicky and DoTs will out damage a max geared melee toon. They will also survive longer due to heal scrolls and displacement and stone skin which they can cast repeatedly. There is no harm in adding CCW pots.

[WruntJunior]

As it currently stands, Fighters and Barbarians are the weakest classes in the game

People don't even remember Rangers when they're talking about the one thing Rangers currently do best (not being as good as any other class). :(

[Varashad]

People don't even remember Rangers when they're talking about the one thing Rangers currently do best (not being as good as any other class). :(

I would not call Rangers weak, but I would call them under utilized. They can heal themselves, buff themselves, get ranged and two weapon fighting feats free, and decent bonuses versus their favored enemies. Are they stronger than other classes? No. But they're not weak.

[licho]

Can always add reflex saves to DOTS if ya want... get rid of superior lore items, etc... if ya want "balance and Cons" ;) Some classes have no cons what so ever actually, is funny you argue of balance yet is quite ironic. Can ya think of a "Con" on a class such be wizard or Sorc? A Cleric? A FvS? I most certainly can't...

Personally am curious to see how the devs devise class balance in the up comming enhancement changes.


Of course the casters (especially WF arcanes) pay for their power.
Do nor forget about the limits of blue bar.
Casters do not have unlimited dps as the melees.
We just need more monsters with infinite HP to make that matter.
;-)

[redspecter23]

Of course the casters (especially WF arcanes) pay for their power.
Do nor forget about the limits of blue bar.
Casters do not have unlimited dps as the melees.
We just need more monsters with infinite HP to make that matter.
;-)

It's sort of a sticky situation when it comes to the blue bar argument. Any time a caster can clear everything they need to without running out of SP, then the blue bar was a non issue. They essentially had "unlimited SP" as they got everything done that needed to be done with what they had. Saying that "casters have limited resources" is a flawed argument in that case. The logical solution is to make mobs with enough HP that casters have to conserve (possibly by turning off max/emp or sticking to SLAs) or simply run out. They did this with Abbot on elite and the screaming was intense. People saying casters are useless in there, etc. or that massive pot consumption was mandatory. What's a dev to do? They just can't win. Up until recently, maximize and empower were "auto on" most times, simply because any decent caster could make it from one shrine to the next while doing so. Why bother turning them off if conservation of SP is a non issue. My thought is that maybe the devs don't want max/emp to be "auto on", but their attempts at persuading casters to use more SP efficient varieties of the spells isn't working as well as they'd hoped.

[Ungood]

CCW per the wiki heals for "4d6+8 plus 1 per caster level", or a max of 52 hp at CL 20.

When you break it down:

You have a few options: Not many, but a few.

Favor Pots:


Silver Flame Pots: 400 Plat, heals for 250 HP (1.6 Plat Per HP - 84HP/Second)
Silver Flame Pots: 200 Plat Heals for 100 HP (2 Plat Per HP - 34 HP/Second)

Note: The 30 Seconds of negative side effects are not calculated into the healing speed.

Guild vendor:


Cure Light: 4.5 Plat, heals 6.5 HP average (1d6 +2 +1) (7 Gold/HP - 1.5 HP/Sec)
Cure Moderate: 29 Plat, heals 14 HP average (2d6 +4 +3) (2 Plat/Hp - 4.6 HP/Sec)
Cure Serious: 73 Plat, Heals 18.5 HP average (3d8 +5) (3.9 Plat/HP - 6.1 HP/Sec)

Note: No combat action can be taken while drinking a Potion, the 3 seconds timer prevents any actions from being taken beyond moving and slows down movement rate while drinking, just like casting a spell.

To give an idea of what it would take to heal 800 HP once would cost you:


1,280 Plat in SF Pots, and take 4 Pots, which would require 10 seconds of constant chugging @ 3 seconds a pot
1,600 Plat in Lesser SF and take 8 Pots, which would require 24 seconds of constant chugging @ 3 seconds a pot.




553 Plat in Clw Pots, and take 123 pots which would require 6 minutes of constant chugging @ 3 seconds a pot.
1,657 Plat in Cmw Pots, and take 58 pots, which would require 3 Minutes of constant chugging @ 3 seconds a pot
3,156 Plat in Csw Pots, and take 44 pots, which would require 2.2 Minutes of constant chugging @ 3 seconds a pot.

Looking at this, there really should be something in the game between the Cure Serious Wounds Pot and the Silver Flame Pots.

Cure Critical Wounds: (http://ddowiki.com/page/Cure_Critical_Wounds) 4d6 + 8 + 1 Per Level., If you used a 8th level Pot that would make an item that healed for: 30 Points on Average, or 10 HP/Second. (a Nice step up from CSW Pots)

Looking at the compounding costs method in place already in regards to the existing posts, this Pot most likely would cost around 150 Plat each, for a cost of 5 Plat/Hp, about the right step up from a CSW pot in price as well, so it would fit into the game world in this manner.

Heal Spell: (http://ddowiki.com/page/Heal_%28spell%29) Restores 10 HP per Caster Level, max Level 15th, so, a Pot made at caster Level 8 (80 HP) would also be welcome as an interim to the SF posts that exist now.

This would be really good reward for one of the House favors that is currently lacking, making this bad boy sold at 400 Plat each, netting a 5/HP ratio - 27/HP Sec, Providing the same price ratio of the most expensive Cure Pot in the open market, because it lacks any drawbacks.

The advantage of the SF pots of course would be cost and speed, netting a cost of 1.6 Plat Per HP at a recovery of 83 HP per second, which would still make it the best healing mechanic in the game.

They should also lower the Favor required to get the lower pot imho.

The compounding price alone to recover HP via pots is prohibitively expensive to anyone that does not have a completely disposable income, so plat sink and market would be the balance point for their worth vs their benefit.

Tasty Hams (http://ddowiki.com/page/Tasty_Ham) and Kargons tasty Hams (http://ddowiki.com/page/Kargon%27s_Tasty_Ham) :

I would love it if they, perhaps added a butcher who sells these in Ataxia's Haven, it would be a much enjoyed and welcome addition to the game in my humble opinion as well.

I will admit Standing around in XC for Ham Farming gets old quick.

[Emili]

Of course the casters (especially WF arcanes) pay for their power.
Do nor forget about the limits of blue bar.
Casters do not have unlimited dps as the melees.
We just need more monsters with infinite HP to make that matter.
;-)
Is your WF caster's DPS suffering cause of a few ap in effective recons?
Do you run out of blue bar before the quest end or the next shrine?
Lost your Torc an' con op or ran out of that stack of 1000 sp pots?

Only place mega HP mob exists be the raid boss and some named in epics...

But all told... DDO be meta-gamed, what does one expect when the content run a thousand times over? ... as I stated there are no real "Cons" on blue-bar'd caster types... Ya under-geared or under designed for the quest? Take care of that you'll get there... I'll guarentee be a tad harder to do so on a pure melee.

[Emili]

I will admit Standing around in XC for Ham Farming gets old quick.

Lmao... ya know shhhh, don' tell anyone but I used to love run into those things just to see what may cast next. ;)

[Ungood]

A nice round-a-bout way to help melee become more self sufficient would be to change the way an already existing in game object works, the Topaz of the 12.
http://ddowiki.com/page/Topaz_of_the_Twelve

Right now, its exclusive and provides a single heal clickie and is destroyed upon use (i think - never actually bought one). The cost is 50 planar shards.

I think a change to something like this would be very beneficial:

Topaz of the Twelve (Tier 1) 50 Planar shards
BTC, Exclusive
5 Heal/Rest

-or-

Topaz of the Twelve (Tier 2) 100 Planar shards
BTC, Exclusive
10 Heal/Rest
Recharges 5/Day


Its a powerful object, but not overtly so. It would not be an easy (or an overtly hard grind) to get access to one. It allows the melee to be self sufficient when needed, but restrictive enough to not be game changing.

Thoughts?

I totally forgot about this. This is brilliant to bring up.

I would get behind this and enjoy it, I believe I never got this was the fact that it was 50 for 1, making it all but worthless.

Good call and great idea! Kudos!

Just saw the Recharge.. Not so much there. While I would love to see more done, That would be overboard.

[WruntJunior]

I would not call Rangers weak, but I would call them under utilized. They can heal themselves, buff themselves, get ranged and two weapon fighting feats free, and decent bonuses versus their favored enemies. Are they stronger than other classes? No. But they're not weak.

Rangers (and to a lesser extent Paladins, though they still have an awesome niche as tanks) are the class I'm most afraid of hurting by introducing powerful self-healing for fighters and barbarians...the only real significant benefit of being a Ranger over a Fighter isn't the buffs, it isn't the bow....it's the ability to heal yourself cheaply and easily. Such boosts to Fighters and Barbarians (who are already quite powerful) would mostly invalidate the Ranger class.

[WruntJunior]

A nice round-a-bout way to help melee become more self sufficient would be to change the way an already existing in game object works, the Topaz of the 12.
http://ddowiki.com/page/Topaz_of_the_Twelve

Right now, its exclusive and provides a single heal clickie and is destroyed upon use (i think - never actually bought one). The cost is 50 planar shards.

I think a change to something like this would be very beneficial:

Topaz of the Twelve (Tier 1) 50 Planar shards
BTC, Exclusive
5 Heal/Rest

-or-

Topaz of the Twelve (Tier 2) 100 Planar shards
BTC, Exclusive
10 Heal/Rest
Recharges 5/Day


Its a powerful object, but not overtly so. It would not be an easy (or an overtly hard grind) to get access to one. It allows the melee to be self sufficient when needed, but restrictive enough to not be game changing.

Thoughts?

This is a great idea...but rather than a permanent clickie, it should give the benefit of, say, 10 heals for the first one, 20 for the second without recharging (but still being exclusive). Would make me spend planar shards on something OTHER than bags. :D I would say that's weaker than silver flame pots...but a very useful bonus in addition to (and prior to) getting them.

[Monkey-Boy]

Tasty Hams (http://ddowiki.com/page/Tasty_Ham) and Kargons tasty Hams (http://ddowiki.com/page/Kargon%27s_Tasty_Ham) :

I would love it if they, perhaps added a butcher who sells these in Ataxia's Haven, it would be a much enjoyed and welcome addition to the game in my humble opinion as well.

I will admit Standing around in XC for Ham Farming gets old quick.


Ham is the solution to many of life's problems.

More ham = more fun.

[Emili]

Rangers (and to a lesser extent Paladins, though they still have an awesome niche as tanks) are the class I'm most afraid of hurting by introducing powerful self-healing for fighters and barbarians...the only real significant benefit of being a Ranger over a Fighter isn't the buffs, it isn't the bow....it's the ability to heal yourself cheaply and easily. Such boosts to Fighters and Barbarians (who are already quite powerful) would mostly invalidate the Ranger class.

Which be why I bring up are changes comming down the line with the enhancement system... Rangers utility are very good and while they could use a dps boostin' they tend to suffice in eliminating things.

What's funny be am most likely to go farm something on my blue bars then I am on my non... my rangers are actually higher on list when comes to such. Pally (a class could stand some real lovin') not so... Typically Wiz, then Arty then Cleric then FvS then the bards and rangers I use that order.

Unless am Leveling, Raiding or seeking favour my non blue bar melee rarely come out.

[Jaid314]

There is no doubt that AC is useful up to and possibly including level 14-15. Can you continue to use it past then? Yes, you can. You are not being efficient if you do so, however.

The math and timing simply works out that way. Lots of characters can turtle up to take basically only grazing hits and less (with DR). It would be more economical, however, to complete quests faster using DPS, healing, and concealment (blur/displacement). The problem is that turtling and moderately high DPS are at odds with each other. AC gear requires a lack of DPS gear.

On top of that, ranged in the game are now also moderate to high DPS, can avoid enemy strikes much more easily, and can begin attacking sooner.



Indeed they aren't choosing reduction of damage over DPS, because in typical groups that don't involve a lot of very new players, melee are barely contributing any damage, while possibly taking more damage than they get to dish out, due to AoEs.



My estimation is that most characters are built for HP first, then DPS, then saves. That is unfortunate, because the order of importance in my estimation is saves > DPS > HP. AC is not on my list for post-level-15, as I already mentioned.



Pale masters are not getting hit with melee attacks as much, they generally are wearing gear (Robe of Shadow, Conc. Opposition GS) that heals them, and can cast spells that heal in a single large burst. The aura works while the pale master is doing something else, as well. I don't think many melee would be complaining much if they could actually attack while a stack of pots gave them 27 hit points every 2 seconds.

so in other words... you choose options that lead to little or no damage mitigation in exchange for greater damage-dealing potential, and are angry that you don't have much damage mitigation.

i already told you, i've made it work with dump-statted dex, no monk splashes, and no crazy gear, up to level 16. i'm not talking about every kensei splashing 2 levels of monk, farming icy raiments, and getting every last AC bonus in the game. i'm talking about an 8 (base) dex THF kensei fighter wearing full plate getting missed at least some of the time in vale of twilight (and not just the 5% from 1s). which, coincidentally, is about the time it becomes reasonable to be able to get silver flame potions (that being the time when my fighter has picked up his. no abbot runs required, and not even an elite ghost of perdition - iirc, i've done it on normal and that's it). this is on a first life, too.

i haven't really made any sacrifices for AC. i have chosen to pick up improved trip (but i don't use the combat expertise prereq, i use power attack), and stunning blow, to provide some CC options as well. fortunately, these also add to offensive potential, and are not bringing my DPS down. i've actually considered picking up the shield mastery feats so that i could potentially switch to sword-and-board (but haven't yet - i'm using mauls, so there really isn't an awful lot of synergy).

if i was to actually invest in AC, or, say, have a decent dex, i could make my AC matter for even longer. if i spent some time farming a bit of AC gear, i might even get enough to make trash start missing me more often in amrath. if i threw in a PrE change to a defensive one, i'm pretty sure i could make it happen easily.

but the key here is... if you choose to have poor mitigation in order to improve your output, then you have no business complaining that you have poor mitigation. there are options available to improve your mitigation. if you choose not to take them, well, sucks to be you, but then again... you made your bed, now you get to sleep in it.

[redspecter23]

so in other words... you choose options that lead to little or no damage mitigation in exchange for greater damage-dealing potential, and are angry that you don't have much damage mitigation.

i already told you, i've made it work with dump-statted dex, no monk splashes, and no crazy gear, up to level 16. i'm not talking about every kensei splashing 2 levels of monk, farming icy raiments, and getting every last AC bonus in the game. i'm talking about an 8 (base) dex THF kensei fighter wearing full plate getting missed at least some of the time in vale of twilight (and not just the 5% from 1s). which, coincidentally, is about the time it becomes reasonable to be able to get silver flame potions (that being the time when my fighter has picked up his. no abbot runs required, and not even an elite ghost of perdition - iirc, i've done it on normal and that's it). this is on a first life, too.

i haven't really made any sacrifices for AC. i have chosen to pick up improved trip (but i don't use the combat expertise prereq, i use power attack), and stunning blow, to provide some CC options as well. fortunately, these also add to offensive potential, and are not bringing my DPS down. i've actually considered picking up the shield mastery feats so that i could potentially switch to sword-and-board (but haven't yet - i'm using mauls, so there really isn't an awful lot of synergy).

if i was to actually invest in AC, or, say, have a decent dex, i could make my AC matter for even longer. if i spent some time farming a bit of AC gear, i might even get enough to make trash start missing me more often in amrath. if i threw in a PrE change to a defensive one, i'm pretty sure i could make it happen easily.

but the key here is... if you choose to have poor mitigation in order to improve your output, then you have no business complaining that you have poor mitigation. there are options available to improve your mitigation. if you choose not to take them, well, sucks to be you, but then again... you made your bed, now you get to sleep in it.

I think the main issue isn't whether a melee builds for damage mitigation or not, it's that ranged/caster types don't have to put much effort at all into damage mitigation as it's built into the way they fight things, at range. These same casters are also the best at self healing in case anything ever does go wrong, all while putting no investment into AC whatsoever.

So while a melee can certainly build for self sufficiency, a caster simply doesn't have to bother outside of a displacement, rage and go approach, shoring up any damage mitigation inadequacies with massive burst healing that many melee are incapable of getting without, again, much more investment than a caster/divine.

What I'm getting out of this thread isn't that melee are incapable of building for defences, but rather that casters are so far ahead both offensively and defensively while also producing this damage at safe range, that melee feel they need a boost. Whether that balance is achieved through a melee sufficiency boost or a nerf to casters is where the real question lies.

[Jaid314]

I think the main issue isn't whether a melee builds for damage mitigation or not, it's that ranged/caster types don't have to put much effort at all into damage mitigation as it's built into the way they fight things, at range. These same casters are also the best at self healing in case anything ever does go wrong, all while putting no investment into AC whatsoever.

how do you figure those casters never put anything into it? how about a d4 hit die and the only good save a wizard or sorcerer gets is largely not needed because buffs take care of it. how about having to actually decide whether it's worthwhile to make an attack or not (or to use only a much less effective SLA) because the SP spent may or may not be needed elsewhere? (and yes, this *is* a concern for ungeared casters). how about divines that have very poor selection in offensive spells for 10-11 levels, and then basically only have two good ones for the rest of their playing time? how about the fact that without a good casting stat, your DCs are going to suck royally and you'll be completely ineffective?

casters do have weaknesses. the good ones build to cover those weaknesses. this is why you will see bad casters with 100 HP at level 20, and good casters with 400+ HP at level 20, for example, or why you will sometimes run with a caster and think "wow, that went so smoothly" while at other times you spend half the quest carting someone's soulstone to the shrine (or, if you're in a less charitable mood, to the nearest convenient lava pit).

perhaps it's time to see some melee builds that are designed to cover the weaknesses of melees a little more. more UMD for heal scrolls, more AC/DR to mitigate damage, more healing amp to get more from incoming healing, more defensive play styles (like having and USING sap/trip, or at the very least not aggroing everything on the map at the same time and disrupting other people's hypnotised/fascinated mobs en masse, or bringing mobs that are aggroed on you *into* the persistent CC effects that are already on the field instead of insisting on running off to fight them in the middle of that deadly spinning blade trap, etc).

[Cetus]

I think the main issue isn't whether a melee builds for damage mitigation or not, it's that ranged/caster types don't have to put much effort at all into damage mitigation as it's built into the way they fight things, at range. These same casters are also the best at self healing in case anything ever does go wrong, all while putting no investment into AC whatsoever.

So while a melee can certainly build for self sufficiency, a caster simply doesn't have to bother outside of a displacement, rage and go approach, shoring up any damage mitigation inadequacies with massive burst healing that many melee are incapable of getting without, again, much more investment than a caster/divine.

What I'm getting out of this thread isn't that melee are incapable of building for defences, but rather that casters are so far ahead both offensively and defensively while also producing this damage at safe range, that melee feel they need a boost. Whether that balance is achieved through a melee sufficiency boost or a nerf to casters is where the real question lies.

Well thats really the core of the issue between melees and casters- casters receive their self healing potential at no expense to..well- anything.

A melee isn't exactly supposed to be self sufficient right off the bat. I think that a melee character should have the potential to acquire self-healing capabilities if they are willing to incorporate these capabilities into their character through gear, past lives, and ability score re-distributions.

The best case scenario TODAY for a melee, is to be able to take out a heal scroll and use it. As you know karlo, I've went through an entire tr grind fest, meticulously planned out my build points in order to fit in UMD as a skill each level and to have as high of a charisma as possible; as well as planned out all the gear I'd need to hit that scroll as fast and as efficiently as I can. Even incorporating 2 more arti past lives closes that gap even further to the point where a pure fighter can have a 37 UMD with no gear swaps,(that is, duel wielding an epic flameward with a heal scroll- which is 1 click to put that scroll in your hand).

Even still, a 37 umd with no extra gear swap isn't 100%. Furthermore, when you are 100% you cannot guarantee a scroll success because of concentration checks. In the end, you are STILL sacrificing SOMETHING in order to pull off that scroll. Once i hit the cha 6 skills and spyglass, my 46 umd gets me anywehre i need it to. But, once you account for gear swap lag too...then your'e efficiency decreases as well.

But...being able to self heal with heal scrolls with high healing amp is responsible for pretty fantastic survivability for a pure fighter (as opposed to having non at all), however i wish there was a quicken scroll feat that we can acquire that would give us a much more solid outcome for the work that was put in to acquire the capability in the first place.

I don't want freebees, I want potential possibilities if i put the work in for it. And I wish the same went for casters, after all, i don't see casters being anymore entitled to self healing than melees are. Self healing entitlement should purely be a divine phenomenon.

[redspecter23]

how do you figure those casters never put anything into it? how about a d4 hit die and the only good save a wizard or sorcerer gets is largely not needed because buffs take care of it. how about having to actually decide whether it's worthwhile to make an attack or not (or to use only a much less effective SLA) because the SP spent may or may not be needed elsewhere? (and yes, this *is* a concern for ungeared casters). how about divines that have very poor selection in offensive spells for 10-11 levels, and then basically only have two good ones for the rest of their playing time? how about the fact that without a good casting stat, your DCs are going to suck royally and you'll be completely ineffective?

casters do have weaknesses. the good ones build to cover those weaknesses. this is why you will see bad casters with 100 HP at level 20, and good casters with 400+ HP at level 20, for example, or why you will sometimes run with a caster and think "wow, that went so smoothly" while at other times you spend half the quest carting someone's soulstone to the shrine (or, if you're in a less charitable mood, to the nearest convenient lava pit).

perhaps it's time to see some melee builds that are designed to cover the weaknesses of melees a little more. more UMD for heal scrolls, more AC/DR to mitigate damage, more healing amp to get more from incoming healing, more defensive play styles (like having and USING sap/trip, or at the very least not aggroing everything on the map at the same time and disrupting other people's hypnotised/fascinated mobs en masse, or bringing mobs that are aggroed on you *into* the persistent CC effects that are already on the field instead of insisting on running off to fight them in the middle of that deadly spinning blade trap, etc).

I was talking mostly about endgame. For leveling purposes, where AC as a damage mitigation technique can work, the divide between caster and melee is not as large. When you shift gears into epic, where mob HP and damage go up and AC is useless, then going toe to toe with a mob and having no AoE choices and minimal self burst healing is a very inefficient way to deal with trash. It is at this point where the divide between casters and melee becomes so huge that it's borderline broken (depending on how you view class roles of course).

Yes casters have weaknesses and so do melee. You suggest a caster with 100 hp at endgame. You could also run into a melee with 250 hp at endgame. Neither is equipped well enough for endgame content at the highest level. In order to compare, you have to take equally skilled/built/geared toons. That's where the difference between caster and melee becomes clear. Casters can perform AoE attacks, from range and have burst self healing. That to me is the triple threat package that causes them to be more powerful than equivalent melee. No melee can gain even a remote percentage as much AoE that a caster can. By definition, that melee has to be in "danger range" by being close up and the burst self healing, while doable on a melee comes at a cost of more easily failed concentration check with a scroll or a timer on a pot. While casters also suffer these penalties, they are suffered at range, where the penalty is not so severe.

So my conclusion is to shake up the "triple threat" package. Either take some of the advantages away from casters, or add some to melee. Casters should be adequate at all things, great at some, and masters of few, rather than masters of all 3, vastly eclipsing the potential of any melee that is equally skilled/built/geared.

[Cetus]

how do you figure those casters never put anything into it? how about a d4 hit die and the only good save a wizard or sorcerer gets is largely not needed because buffs take care of it. how about having to actually decide whether it's worthwhile to make an attack or not (or to use only a much less effective SLA) because the SP spent may or may not be needed elsewhere? (and yes, this *is* a concern for ungeared casters). how about divines that have very poor selection in offensive spells for 10-11 levels, and then basically only have two good ones for the rest of their playing time? how about the fact that without a good casting stat, your DCs are going to suck royally and you'll be completely ineffective?

casters do have weaknesses. the good ones build to cover those weaknesses. this is why you will see bad casters with 100 HP at level 20, and good casters with 400+ HP at level 20, for example, or why you will sometimes run with a caster and think "wow, that went so smoothly" while at other times you spend half the quest carting someone's soulstone to the shrine (or, if you're in a less charitable mood, to the nearest convenient lava pit).

perhaps it's time to see some melee builds that are designed to cover the weaknesses of melees a little more. more UMD for heal scrolls, more AC/DR to mitigate damage, more healing amp to get more from incoming healing, more defensive play styles (like having and USING sap/trip, or at the very least not aggroing everything on the map at the same time and disrupting other people's hypnotised/fascinated mobs en masse, or bringing mobs that are aggroed on you *into* the persistent CC effects that are already on the field instead of insisting on running off to fight them in the middle of that deadly spinning blade trap, etc).

Seriously? How about insightful reflexes to give wizards the highest potential reflex save a character can acquire? Much less effective SLA's, have you played a capped sorc and seen the amount of damage they can do? Their casting speeds if they chose to go warforged to recon themselves INSTANTANEOUSLY? How about the arsenal of spell point potions that are available in this game to replenish this so-called "limitation" a casters blue bar imposes on them? Now you go on to say that divines are weak for the first 10-11 levels....when the content is so trivial and insignificant at that level that noone cares about class balance there. What exactly are these "2" spells divines use for the 'rest of their playing time" ? Holy aura, blade barrier, destruction, slay living, divine punishment, implosion, mass heal, symbol of death, energy drain...they have myriad of spells at their desposal, not to mention leaps of faith for elite movement on a fvd soul and extra aura perks (-2 spell pen +30% bb damage anyone?) or aura burst heals of a cleric to completely obliterate undead and effectively heal party members?

Come on now...using a caster who doesn't have the appropriate stat as evidence for the need to invest something into a good caster? We're not comparing players that just downloaded the game for the first time. take equally skilled players on a melee or a caster and see how effortlessly a casters efficiency comes to them with respect to a melee.

[HungarianRhapsody]

My WF Pale Master is going to hit 400 Silver Flame favor when he does Litany tomorrow. I'm glad that I'll finally be able to heal myself when I solo without having to rely on a hireling.

[Emili]

My WF Pale Master is going to hit 400 Silver Flame favor when he does Litany tomorrow. I'm glad that I'll finally be able to heal myself when I solo without having to rely on a hireling.

lmao :D


how do you figure those casters never put anything into it? how about a d4 hit die and the only good save a wizard or sorcerer gets is largely not needed because buffs take care of it. how about having to actually decide whether it's worthwhile to make an attack or not (or to use only a much less effective SLA) because the SP spent may or may not be needed elsewhere? (and yes, this *is* a concern for ungeared casters). how about divines that have very poor selection in offensive spells for 10-11 levels, and then basically only have two good ones for the rest of their playing time? how about the fact that without a good casting stat, your DCs are going to suck royally and you'll be completely ineffective?

casters do have weaknesses. the good ones build to cover those weaknesses. this is why you will see bad casters with 100 HP at level 20, and good casters with 400+ HP at level 20, for example, or why you will sometimes run with a caster and think "wow, that went so smoothly" while at other times you spend half the quest carting someone's soulstone to the shrine (or, if you're in a less charitable mood, to the nearest convenient lava pit).

perhaps it's time to see some melee builds that are designed to cover the weaknesses of melees a little more. more UMD for heal scrolls, more AC/DR to mitigate damage, more healing amp to get more from incoming healing, more defensive play styles (like having and USING sap/trip, or at the very least not aggroing everything on the map at the same time and disrupting other people's hypnotised/fascinated mobs en masse, or bringing mobs that are aggroed on you *into* the persistent CC effects that are already on the field instead of insisting on running off to fight them in the middle of that deadly spinning blade trap, etc).

:eek:

Bleedin' can't be serious, are you? Is like you're comparing some newbie to some vet...

Here ya go... Str Dex Con Int Wis Cha

Now build build me a Wizard, a cleric and a some melee ... stat them for Max casting, Max DC, Max DPS then toss on the additives... Gear them for end game too, adding Survivability, Utilities and so on...

You're going to find the melee is running thin sooner and getting far less return while attempting to fit it all in. You're going to find the melee build is getting far more complex and tight to meet it's goals.

Caster's are basically two stat characters and make up a significant survivability with just spells off the bat then add gearing? ...

Every WELL KNOWN Caster BUILD thread on design scopes shows how to gear up and make them near indestructable with adequate utility and NO loss of Prime Purpose AND maintain Max'd DPS/DC output. This is why these classes Solo so well, quests, raids and yes even epics.

[Jaid314]

WF casters pay by being a WF. and yes, it is a cost. humans, half-elves, and drow will all have better DCs, and yes it does matter. they pay a feat (quicken) to be able to heal themselves in the middle of a fight conveniently, as well as a spell slot which is valuable on a wizard and extremely painful on a sorcerer. pale master's "instant" burst heal is not very instant, even with quicken turned on. it also has a nasty tendency to mistarget somehow, and requires that you have yourself selected. insightful reflexes is also a feat cost paid to cover their weaknesses. how many melees do you know that spend a feat on skill focus: UMD while they're gearing up? for that matter, how many of them still need it once they're done gearing up, because on a wizard, that feat basically needs to stay there forever or they go right back to where they used to be, with bad reflex saves (and no, wizards don't have more feats than they know what to do with, even with their 5 bonus feats. sorcerers of course have no option equivalent to insightful reflexes, nor do clerics or favored souls).

WF sorcerers are further penalized by a lack of charisma, which makes it even harder to land spells. to some extent, you can compensate by not using spells that have DCs. of course, this puts to rest the argument that all casters are good at everything, or SHOULD, if people were paying attention.

those crazy, awesome casters running through epic content with DC 44 wail of the banshee and dropping 2k damage on a polar ray? they're not the normal experience for a caster. likewise, those favored souls who can run around dropping mobs left and right with slay living and destruction and implosion? also not the standard.

a first-life, ungeared caster can expect to have DCs around mid 30s, maybe a bit more. wail of the banshee will work on maybe one epic enemy most of the time, at which point they will be surrounded by 3-6 others who all want to kill them. they will likely have to debuff enemies for their spells to work. and that's if they're a wizard. if they're a sorcerer, they'll have even less DC and have to hope they don't face an enemy with evasion or high resistances, because they can't just switch on the fly and most of the "always works" options have a somewhat poor damage ability (disintegrate can be good on a target with bad fort, but most of the time for a low-DC sorc that isn't going to do much good). that same first-life, ungeared caster will probably have 300 HP or so, quite possibly less, as well.

if you want to compare to those crazy casters that have stupid-high save DCs and 600 HP and massive self-healing, compare them to the equivalent melees, like people who have multiple epic items slotted and a bunch of raid loot. if you want to compare to undergeared, first-life melees that can have problems getting semi-decent gear together to pull off a reasonable amount of self-healing via UMD or heal amp/potions, well... compare to the first-life, undergeared caster as well. it's only fair.

and the first-life caster with bad gear is probably not even the master of one thing, let alone three. the ones you see where people get them up and running and extremely effective quickly tend to be ones that have a bunch of gear sitting in the bank just waiting for them to get to the right level. feed a melee a couple of lit 2 weapons and a greensteel accessory, plus a bunch of awesome BTA raid loot and tomes, and they'll be pretty effective too.

casters have a very impressive top end. but if you think that means they just waltz through end-game content easily without any gear or without carefully building to cover their weaknesses, you're wrong. in contrast, very few melees make choices designed to cover their weaknesses. as a result, they still have their weaknesses way out there in the open, waiting for a mob to take advantage of it. this is undoubtedly why when you see a melee that solos a difficult quest or raid, the questions tend to come in, like "what's your AC" or "how much healing amp do you have", etc. everybody already knows how casters do it, because all the good casters are doing it as a matter of course; they farm gear to boost their HP, they farm gear to raise their casting stats, etc. you do it differently on a melee, but the main difference is that melees often don't bother doing it at all.

i don't see an awful lot of people coming in here complaining about how their self-sufficient melees are in dire need of help. i see a lot of people coming in here and complaining that their "sacrifice-everything-for-DPS" melees are in dire need of help. nobody has stepped in and said "zomg, melee rangers need more healing" or "my hunter of the dead paladin needs something other than silver flame potions at end game" or even "my rogue isn't able to stay alive with just UMD'd scrolls". instead, it's all the people with *no* investment in survival who are having problems at surviving. such is the result of having a completely open character creation process; you can make awesome choices, but you can also make bad ones. but when you make a bad choice, the solution is not to demand that the world changes to make it into a good choice. rather, perhaps you might consider your options, and try to make a better choice next time.

[WruntJunior]

I was talking mostly about endgame. For leveling purposes, where AC as a damage mitigation technique can work, the divide between caster and melee is not as large. When you shift gears into epic, where mob HP and damage go up and AC is useless, then going toe to toe with a mob and having no AoE choices and minimal self burst healing is a very inefficient way to deal with trash. It is at this point where the divide between casters and melee becomes so huge that it's borderline broken (depending on how you view class roles of course).

Yes casters have weaknesses and so do melee. You suggest a caster with 100 hp at endgame. You could also run into a melee with 250 hp at endgame. Neither is equipped well enough for endgame content at the highest level. In order to compare, you have to take equally skilled/built/geared toons. That's where the difference between caster and melee becomes clear. Casters can perform AoE attacks, from range and have burst self healing. That to me is the triple threat package that causes them to be more powerful than equivalent melee. No melee can gain even a remote percentage as much AoE that a caster can. By definition, that melee has to be in "danger range" by being close up and the burst self healing, while doable on a melee comes at a cost of more easily failed concentration check with a scroll or a timer on a pot. While casters also suffer these penalties, they are suffered at range, where the penalty is not so severe.

So my conclusion is to shake up the "triple threat" package. Either take some of the advantages away from casters, or add some to melee. Casters should be adequate at all things, great at some, and masters of few, rather than masters of all 3, vastly eclipsing the potential of any melee that is equally skilled/built/geared.

Making a caster good enough for anything short of epics/end-game raiding is ridiculously easy. With some basic gear, you can even make a very powerful wizard with low-40 dcs for necro and enchant with ~30 spell pen, which blows through most epics and raids. Pretending that casters aren't powerful is a fruitless exercise.

Also, it's not hard to make a caster with good HP. My wizard is only level 18, and she sits at 465 hp in lich form. Breaking 400 is something any half-decent caster should be able to do.

That said, I don't think casters are way overpowered like some people do...I think that melees need the capability to do more damage, and that if between the enhancement pass and the expansion this is made possible, melees should be rather balanced: a sorc blowing all its mana quickly should be able to keep aggro for that span, but we shouldn't see casters holding aggro with just 2 DoTs (unless the melees are horrible). Beyond that, melees should have some better tactical feats, but I'm hoping we'll see some of that in June. Giving the main two dps classes significant self-healing will, I fear, add significant risk to unbalancing the classes permanently.

I do think there should be a few healing options between cure serious pots and silver flame pots...but they should be carefully designed.

[Emili]

Making a caster good enough for anything short of epics/end-game raiding is ridiculously easy. With some basic gear, you can even make a very powerful wizard with low-40 dcs for necro and enchant with ~30 spell pen, which blows through most epics and raids. Pretending that casters aren't powerful is a fruitless exercise.

Also, it's not hard to make a caster with good HP. My wizard is only level 18, and she sits at 465 hp in lich form. Breaking 400 is something any half-decent caster should be able to do.

That said, I don't think casters are way overpowered like some people do...I think that melees need the capability to do more damage, and that if between the enhancement pass and the expansion this is made possible, melees should be rather balanced: a sorc blowing all its mana quickly should be able to keep aggro for that span, but we shouldn't see casters holding aggro with just 2 DoTs (unless the melees are horrible). Beyond that, melees should have some better tactical feats, but I'm hoping we'll see some of that in June. Giving the main two dps classes significant self-healing will, I fear, add significant risk to unbalancing the classes permanently.

I do think there should be a few healing options between cure serious pots and silver flame pots...but they should be carefully designed.

First life caster is easy to gear and easily make marks as you state... fact that I have more epic gear on mine attest to the fact as she got played alone (not in group) most the time... probably 90%?

My First life Elf PM had a necro DC of 43 and 467? HP, Yes Inciteful reflexes but what have ya, the reflex save was 40+ ... by comparison a first life barb or fighter getting into low 30's buffed are happy... Con Op and HP GS go well together and Hmmm and umd items, shroud crafted cha skills come with SP plus Con Op if ya wanted, Golden cartouch Int, Epic Spyglass exceptional Int ... outside seven finger gloves an interesting synergy going on. btw... my Wiz had dumpstated Cha and a umd in the mid 30's with no feating. ;)

Funny the poster above your's listed "Quicken" as a Con, It's as much of an Offensive feat as it is used for healing - I would not build a wizard or divine without it as you may chain spell-casts much quicker, dropping BB, implosions, insta-kills and nuking the hell out of things uninterupted while healing between rendering concentration checks useful for nothing but scrolling... while ya kite. On a sorc I could understand although I know plenty end-game sorc swear by having even quicker spell use by it... a melee to save a sec might take quickdraw for their boosts/swaps but all it serves.

I meantioned I am anticipating the enhancement changed comming up.

[QNecron]

instead, it's all the people with *no* investment in survival who are having problems at surviving. such is the result of having a completely open character creation process; you can make awesome choices, but you can also make bad ones. but when you make a bad choice, the solution is not to demand that the world changes to make it into a good choice. rather, perhaps you might consider your options, and try to make a better choice next time.


Just in case you missed it.

Help!!! I am a lvl 12 Fighter / 2 Barbarian sword and board Stalwart Defender! I currently have the following to keep me alive, but it isn't enough for Hard+ quests (don't do Epic so yeah...)

- 30+ CSW Pots on me at all times
- 55 AC (can go up to 66 AC)
- Expertise (factored in above)
- Shield Mastery
- Dodge/Mobility feats (factored in above in the "up to")
- 60+ HP from enhancements/feats (Total of 484 HP atm)
- 5% Healing Amp from past life Paladin
- 10% Healing Amp from Fleshmaker's Brigandine
- 10% Healing Amp from Shrine
- 20% Healing Amp for being "Hooman"
- 21 DR while blocking with Tower Shield
- 4/- DR just standing
- Dusk Heart (10% Blur)
- Minos Legens
- True Neutral for Stability

Level 12-14 quests on elite still result in being hit 1 in ~10 times and the damage done will be in excess of 20, this is with shield up blocking after I taunt. On bosses it drops to 1 in ~5 times and they do about the same damage while I'm blocking.

I try to maintain DPS with the following, but lets face it I won't be topping any meters:

- Cleave + Great Cleave
- Weapon Focus
- Weapon Specialization
- Imp Critical

What I try to bring to the group since I cannot self-sustain:

- Paralyzing Weapon
- Cursepewing Weapon (will have Imp Cursespewing from Watcher's Blade once I get 16)
- Sirocco (Blind + Knockdown)
- Greater Parrying
- Xoriat Madness: Mania (make em dance!) on one armor
- Xoriat Madness: Delirium (miss meh!) on another
- Stunning Blow (DC 22 atm)
- Imp Trip (DC 26 atm)
- Imp Sunder (DC 26 atm)

To put it bluntly I made all my choices for survival so I could "tank" and what is available just isn't enough since DDO seems to loath melee classes (Dungeon Alert, Massive To-Hit, No Heal Elixirs, etc).

[EllisDee37]

Help!!! I am a lvl 12 Fighter / 2 Barbarian sword and board Stalwart Defender! I currently have the following to keep me alive, but it isn't enough for Hard+ quests (don't do Epic so yeah...)You're not supposed to be self-sufficient. If you want a self-healing melee, go ranger or paladin.

The ugly truth is that self-sufficiency in the form of self-healing is a tradeoff. You must sacrifice dps for it unless you have silver flame pots. (Which shouldn't even exist, really.)

If we want to add self-sufficiency to fighters and barbs, we need to bring the dps of rangers and paladins up to their level as well.

[redspecter23]

You're not supposed to be self-sufficient. If you want a self-healing melee, go ranger or paladin.

The ugly truth is that self-sufficiency in the form of self-healing is a tradeoff. You must sacrifice dps for it unless you have silver flame pots. (Which shouldn't even exist, really.)

If we want to add self-sufficiency to fighters and barbs, we need to bring the dps of rangers and paladins up to their level as well.

By that logic, since casters and divines have great self healing, can we nerf their damage output to that of a paladin or ranger? While melee have to give up something for survivability, why are casters and divines not subject to this limitation while at the same time being able to deal massive AoE damage at range?

On a serious note, I do agree that paladins and rangers should be better at self healing than fighters/barbs, but fighters and barbs should have more options than they do currently. They certainly don't have to be great at it, but something better than a cure serious pot, but not quite as good as a silver flame pot shouldn't be too much to ask.

[EllisDee37]

By that logic, since casters and divines have great self healing, can we nerf their damage output to that of a paladin or ranger? While melee have to give up something for survivability, why are casters and divines not subject to this limitation while at the same time being able to deal massive AoE damage at range?I agree that casters and divines are overpowered compared to melee.


On a serious note, I do agree that paladins and rangers should be better at self healing than fighters/barbs, but fighters and barbs should have more options than they do currently. They certainly don't have to be great at it, but something better than a cure serious pot, but not quite as good as a silver flame pot shouldn't be too much to ask.I agree that there's a reasonable middle-ground. Cure critical wounds pots would suffice, IMO.

[Cetus]

WF casters pay by being a WF. and yes, it is a cost. humans, half-elves, and drow will all have better DCs, and yes it does matter. A loss of 1 point to your DC's is not enough to make a melee catch up to a casters power. they pay a feat (quicken) to be able to heal themselves in the middle of a fight conveniently, And by this rationale, melee PAY the feat to get power attackas well as a spell slot which is valuable on a wizard and extremely painful on a sorcerer So, you're calling picking up a spell to heal yourself painful? lol- read my earlier post about what it took for me to get a heal scroll off on a pure fighter and then return to me with your revised perspective on what is painful. pale master's "instant" burst heal is not very instant, even with quicken turned onNot very instant...except you are constantly maxed out on hp because of your auras and are immune to everything underneath the sun. it also has a nasty tendency to mistarget somehow, and requires that you have yourself selected. insightful reflexes is also a feat cost paid to cover their weaknessesAnother feat argument...ok melee's spend feats on pally past lives, three weapon foci and 2 weapon spec feats if a fighter, cleave...is it clear yet?. how many melees do you know that spend a feat on skill focus: UMD while they're gearing up? for that matter, how many of them still need it once they're done gearing up, because on a wizard, that feat basically needs to stay there forever or they go right back to where they used to be, with bad reflex saveshuh? You're relating the need to have skill focus UMD on a melee to having insightful reflexes on a wizard? (and no, wizards don't have more feats than they know what to do with, even with their 5 bonus feats. sorcerers of course have no option equivalent to insightful reflexes, nor do clerics or favored souls). Lol, except the MAIN STAT on a cleric and a fvd soul both impact their will saves automatically, and their fort saves are great if you invest into con as a secondary stat, also a no brainer. Favored souls have amazing saves across the board. Anyway, this section here is now comparing wizards to other casters, funny how I don't see melees here anymore.

WF sorcerers are further penalized by a lack of charisma, which makes it even harder to land spells. to some extent, you can compensate by not using spells that have DCs. of course, this puts to rest the argument that all casters are good at everything, or SHOULD, if people were paying attention.You should pay attention to certain things that make a super high DC unnecessary. Ever use crushing despair? How about symbol of death? maybe some enervations or bestow curses and all of a sudden a mid 30's dc is all you need to manipulate a ton of mobs.

those crazy, awesome casters running through epic content with DC 44 wail of the banshee and dropping 2k damage on a polar ray? they're not the normal experience for a caster. likewise, those favored souls who can run around dropping mobs left and right with slay living and destruction and implosion? also not the standard.Who cares if it isn't the standard, as long as you are staying consistent in your comparison, the argument stays the same. Your super powerful 44 dc wail casters (I have one by the way, yes with epic gear and currently getting triple wiz/ triple fvd soul, triple cleric, and triple barb past lives pumped into him) versus my completionist fighter with triple monk,barb,fighter already pumped in him, +4 strength tome and every piece of melee gear in the entire game, and my completionist fighter feels much less powerful than my caster or any of my guildie caster counterparts.

a first-life, ungeared caster can expect to have DCs around mid 30s, maybe a bit more. wail of the banshee will work on maybe one epic enemy most of the time, at which point they will be surrounded by 3-6 others who all want to kill them. they will likely have to debuff enemies for their spells to work. and that's if they're a wizard. if they're a sorcerer, they'll have even less DC and have to hope they don't face an enemy with evasion or high resistances, because they can't just switch on the fly and most of the "always works" options have a somewhat poor damage ability (disintegrate can be good on a target with bad fort, but most of the time for a low-DC sorc that isn't going to do much good). that same first-life, ungeared caster will probably have 300 HP or so, quite possibly less, as well.This is completely false. A freshly made warforged wiz with no tod rings and simple yugo favor can already ahve a 39-40 dc with over 500 hp with a simple shroud item in lich form. A sorc can cast many spells that don't have saves, such as DOTS (forgot about those?) frost lance if Ice, scorching ray if fire, cast symbols of death and crushing despair for webs to land and ice storm em to death. Very easy.

if you want to compare to those crazy casters that have stupid-high save DCs and 600 HP and massive self-healing, compare them to the equivalent melees, like people who have multiple epic items slotted and a bunch of raid loot. if you want to compare to undergeared, first-life melees that can have problems getting semi-decent gear together to pull off a reasonable amount of self-healing via UMD or heal amp/potions, well... compare to the first-life, undergeared caster as well. it's only fair.I'm talking from personal experience, I have the most geared completionist fighter I can create in this game, and I am extremely effective with him, going off the standards in this game for melee today. My first life wizzy was destroying stuff at lightspeed in comparison. Same player, radically different investments (1st lifer versus a 19th lifer), and a radically more powerful position with the first lifer.

and the first-life caster with bad gear is probably not even the master of one thing, let alone three. the ones you see where people get them up and running and extremely effective quickly tend to be ones that have a bunch of gear sitting in the bank just waiting for them to get to the right level. feed a melee a couple of lit 2 weapons and a greensteel accessory, plus a bunch of awesome BTA raid loot and tomes, and they'll be pretty effective too.Of course they are masters of all three things, you cast at a distance to begin with- thats a CASTER. You self heal with a simple spell you pick up, and all of your offensive capabilities are uncompromised in the process

casters have a very impressive top end. but if you think that means they just waltz through end-game content easily without any gear or without carefully building to cover their weaknesses, you're wrongReally, are we wrong? Of course they waltz through most epic content when compared to how melee have to do it. You can clean out the entire echrono instance with a single caster, easily.. in contrast, very few melees make choices designed to cover their weaknesses. as a result, they still have their weaknesses way out there in the open, waiting for a mob to take advantage of it. this is undoubtedly why when you see a melee that solos a difficult quest or raid, the questions tend to come in, like "what's your AC" Except end game content is unfriendly to ac. Even if you can get the ac needed to get missed all the time, think of the MASSIVE dps penalties you take. A scale of compromise radically different from what we ever have to see when playing a casteror "how much healing amp do you have", etc. everybody already knows how casters do it, because all the good casters are doing it as a matter of course; they farm gear to boost their HP, they farm gear to raise their casting stats, etc. you do it differently on a melee, but the main difference is that melees often don't bother doing it at all.

i don't see an awful lot of people coming in here complaining about how their self-sufficient melees are in dire need of help. I am. My fighter pops scrolls for 260 a pop with a single gear swap, and full stacks of silver flame pots if in a pinch- and its great, but the capacity to do so involved a HUGE amount of investment and even still I can get interrupted and need to gear swap to get 100% no fail umd.i see a lot of people coming in here and complaining that their "sacrifice-everything-for-DPS" melees are in dire need of help. nobody has stepped in and said "zomg, melee rangers need more healing" or "my hunter of the dead paladin needs something other than silver flame potions at end game" or even "my rogue isn't able to stay alive with just UMD'd scrolls". instead, it's all the people with *no* investment in survival who are having problems at surviving. such is the result of having a completely open character creation process; you can make awesome choices, but you can also make bad ones. but when you make a bad choice, the solution is not to demand that the world changes to make it into a good choice. rather, perhaps you might consider your options, and try to make a better choice next time.

Comments in red

[Drekisen]

Didn't read the thread, just the OP so I am not sure what I missed......I don't play a melee just a PM Wizard......but I totally am in agreement with this.

/signed

It is completely ridiculous how much melees are left with no significant or even adequate form of damage mitigation and self healing without having to go to extremes to get it.

[Ungood]

Didn't read the thread, just the OP so I am not sure what I missed......I don't play a melee just a PM Wizard......but I totally am in agreement with this.

/signed

It is completely ridiculous how much melees are left with no significant or even adequate form of damage mitigation and self healing without having to go to extremes to get it.

I have to agree with this, when people who don't even play the class can see how bad it really is, that should be a sign something is wrong here.

Something needs to be done. I would like to see more steps in the pots, and others items being made more available.

[Gremmlynn]

Rangers (and to a lesser extent Paladins, though they still have an awesome niche as tanks) are the class I'm most afraid of hurting by introducing powerful self-healing for fighters and barbarians...the only real significant benefit of being a Ranger over a Fighter isn't the buffs, it isn't the bow....it's the ability to heal yourself cheaply and easily. Such boosts to Fighters and Barbarians (who are already quite powerful) would mostly invalidate the Ranger class.Because rangers and paladins with their rather poor self healing and poor damage aren't already being hurt by the casters with their good to great self healing and great damage, not to mention better buffs and auto-kills, already?

This is where the problem lies. For some classes this is a group game where they have to rely on others to make up for their deficiencies, for others it's a group game where self sufficiency is a trade off they make and for others it's a group game if they feel like grouping, but relying on the others just to provide company and speed things along as they are truly self sufficient.

IMO, the only workable solution is for everybody to be made truly self sufficient. Because while arcanes might be willing to play despite losing their good to great self healing, divines will be few and far between if they are relegated to the status of healers/support characters. That said, either a new role would have to be made for rangers and paladins or those classes are likely to be relegated to flavor status while fighters and barbarians will pretty much be tank and DPS.

[Cetus]

Another solution that would be more consistent with the lore, rather than just giving barbarians a heal spell, would be to make the damage mitigating proporties of barbarians and fighters such that theyd need less healing as a whole.

Give barbarians a bit more of a significant dr bonus than the crappy 7 they get. Let fighters get benefit from wearing heavy armor that is DR based. Give us some past lives, gear, and enhancement lines to build on that so in the end, when one does all the work, they are taking wayyy less damage than they do now.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

The ugly truth is that self-sufficiency in the form of self-healing is a tradeoff.

That's why I want the "Heal" skill to be able to be applied to oneself, too.

[Carpone]

Wow, so many people are missing the point with this thread. This is not about ranger/paladin vs. fighter/monk/barbarian. Every character can self heal adequately with Silver Flame potions, which pretty much requires level 20 (or close enough to it). I'm simply asking for some self-healing love before Silver Flame potions while characters are leveling up:

1. Introduce more healing amp items at lower levels. Aside from monk splashes, the first healing amp item is Levik's Bracers (ML 13). Dragontouched is ML16. Melee should have healing amp options before those levels. Warforged melee are doubly screwed since there's no Repair Amp.

2. Increasing the caster level of CSW potions and/or introducing CCW potions is beneficial, especially when paired with the above itemization options. Going from CL5 to CL15 on a CSW potion with 200% healing amp would net +20 HP per potion. That's significant!

Some of the suggestions in this thread are just silly:

AC is meaningless to barbarians. Barbarians also do plenty of self-inflicted damage via Vicious and Supreme Cleave, and typically have the higher HP pools.

I shouldn't have to splash a class for UMD in order to have reasonable self healing. Half-Elf Cleric dilettante gets grouped in here too.

Run away more? Sure, let me go sniff the flowers while arcanes and divines complete the quest for me.

[bloodnose13]

its very easy to search forum for all the posts screaming about melees not useing potions and expecting healing, well if you look at all potions that are available in game (below SF 400 ones) they are too weak, it takes 20+ potions each time to get char with decent hp back up to full, thats an easy math how fast those stacks of pots are gone and they are not exactly cheap, its like asking caster to drink sp pots, diffrence is in numbers, so makeing cure pots heal too much, would be bad, but makeing them cure just enough to lower the pot use per one healing.

thats why i think that makeing potions to scale up with char lvls, lvls+heal skill, or any combination of those would help a lot, if the cure potions just got good enough to make them usefull enough that they could be used more often, THEN healer class players can start expecting players to carry pots to ease the burden of keeping party alive by healers.

two more things i think could be combined with this,
first potion bags, such bag could have a button to switch it to the "toolbar mode", bag basialy would become a toolbar that allows to use potions from inside it, such bag would be limited to 10 stacks of diffrent or same potions.

second SF heal potions COULD get those debuffs either shortened or removed at a price of longer cooldown. but im not sure about this one, just a thought.

[Thrudh]

2. Increasing the caster level of CSW potions and/or introducing CCW potions is beneficial, especially when paired with the above itemization options. Going from CL5 to CL15 on a CSW potion with 200% healing amp would net +20 HP per potion. That's significant!

I'm okay with adding in CCW potions


Some of the suggestions in this thread are just silly:

AC is meaningless to barbarians. Barbarians also do plenty of self-inflicted damage via Vicious and Supreme Cleave, and typically have the higher HP pools.

I shouldn't have to splash a class for UMD in order to have reasonable self healing. Half-Elf Cleric dilettante gets grouped in here too.

Run away more? Sure, let me go sniff the flowers while arcanes and divines complete the quest for me.

AC is not meaningless to barbarians in the early-mid levels. It's not that hard to dismiss rage and pull out a shield. Improved Uncanny Dodge is quite powerful at those levels. Certainly a better choice than dying.

You absolutely should have to splash a class for UMD, or give up a feat or two, or be half-elf or human for healing amp or cleric dilly. Character builds are all about trade-offs. You should NOT get to build for max-****** DPS and expect to be able to heal yourself as well. Make a choice.

If you have an arcane or divine in the group, you don't need to run away. But if you're soloing as a barbarian with limited self-healing, running away is something a good player will do. Running back around that corner that's only 20 feet away gets you out of line-of-sight of the casters, and the melee monsters usually come around that corner one at a time where you can easily dispatch them.

Or you can come here and cry that you need more self-healing because standing in a room surrounded by mobs isn't working for you.

[justagame]

Wow, so many people are missing the point with this thread. This is not about ranger/paladin vs. fighter/monk/barbarian. Every character can self heal adequately with Silver Flame potions, which pretty much requires level 20 (or close enough to it). I'm simply asking for some self-healing love before Silver Flame potions while characters are leveling up:

1. Introduce more healing amp items at lower levels. Aside from monk splashes, the first healing amp item is Levik's Bracers (ML 13). Dragontouched is ML16. Melee should have healing amp options before those levels. Warforged melee are doubly screwed since there's no Repair Amp.

2. Increasing the caster level of CSW potions and/or introducing CCW potions is beneficial, especially when paired with the above itemization options. Going from CL5 to CL15 on a CSW potion with 200% healing amp would net +20 HP per potion. That's significant!

Some of the suggestions in this thread are just silly:

AC is meaningless to barbarians. Barbarians also do plenty of self-inflicted damage via Vicious and Supreme Cleave, and typically have the higher HP pools.

I shouldn't have to splash a class for UMD in order to have reasonable self healing. Half-Elf Cleric dilettante gets grouped in here too.

Run away more? Sure, let me go sniff the flowers while arcanes and divines complete the quest for me.

I don't think they are missing the point, they are disagreeing.

Tradeoffs are good for the game. Wanting tradeoffs is not silly. Why is it so surprising, or wrong that characters with healing abilities, or those who have given up things to invest in healing abilities, be able to, um, heal themselves?

You say you don't want to have to invest in UMD (or Cleric dilly) to be able to self heal. Presumably, you want to max out on your other (melee) abilities. Well, that is part of the point that folks are making. If you can simply go to a vendor and buy a great big stack of a potions that easily duplicates what other classes take hits in melee dps for, or what other characters had to invest feats, skills, enhancements, or all of the above in, why should anyone else do those things?

You want to ignore all of those options, and build purely for dps? Sure, have at it. But it's unrealistic (and unfair) to expect access to similar levels of self-healing.

Let's turn this around. Say someone has invested in umd, including skill focus: umd, ability points in CHA, item boosts, etc. Or, they have invested in halfling dragonmark feats and enhancements, or some other means of self-healing. Should they get the same melee damage output as someone who maxxed Strength, and has all 3 THF feats, PA and IC? Because hey, I'd love to be able to do that kind of damage, but without having to max STR, or take those feats. I'd love to get the strength bonus of a half-orc, but without having to give up human improved healing amp.

You want CSW potions, which have no minumum level, to be at caster level 15? Just so I get this straight, a paladin or ranger, who is giving up dps to have self-healing ability, can start using CL5 CSW wands at level 5, not level 1. And you want potions, usable by anyone at any level, to have triple the caster level? Wow. And you think other people are being silly? BTW, I'd be ok with CCW potions, but maybe at a higher ML.

The last point about arcanes and divines completing the quest for you is a bit puzzling, as the lack of huge heal potions or something similar is more relevant when solo-ing, but much less relevant when in a group.

Now, as many have pointed out, defensive and damage-mitigating abilities of melees is outdated, and a bit gimped. Just like there was a spell pass, there needs to be a pass on these things too. I genuinely believe that will help. However, there needs to be a re-thinking about melee builds just as well.

For a long time, the build philosophy was "dps at ANY cost". If you didn't max out every drop of dps, you were gimp. AC was a useless investment. 2, 4, or 6 AP in healing AMP? Not if it cost you ANY dps enhancements. Anything in the game could be dps-ed down quickly, while healers kept the gang up. More dps meant less healing required.

The game has changed somewhat. Mobs hit harder. They crit more. You crit less. They debuff more. People run more elite, for BB, and much less normal farming. In short, a party that is all dps and nothing else will have a tougher run of it these days. Naturally, that translates to solo-ing. As a melee solo-ing, if you can't self-heal, you need to be able to mitigate damage through DR, AC, trip/stun, or curse/paralyze your way through, and be careful about how much aggro you pull at one time.

[licho]

The mistake many does is that they compare Rangers and Barbarians, and argue which has self healing, and how much sacrifise for that, while Rangers/Paladins are considered the worse designed classes in game (the weakest). And while you can compare barbarian and fighter all day long on forum, as soon as you log on into game there will be comparison between caster and no-caster. And in actual game casters have great self healing with instakill, CC, utylity, boss dps, often blast. And whatever you think about casters being OP - nobody cares - so far there is no signal from Devs about any tune down in near future. So its better to accept the post u9 state of the game and think how to bring no caster to the caster levels - even if that means "make melee as broken as casters " for you.

[Monkey-Boy]

. . . So its better to accept the post u9 state of the game and think how to bring no caster to the caster levels - even if that means "make melee as broken as casters " for you.

You don't fix a game by doubling-down on unbalanced class design.

That said . . . I don't see how some stronger healing pots would break anything.

[Thrudh]

So its better to accept the post u9 state of the game and think how to bring no caster to the caster levels - even if that means "make melee as broken as casters " for you.

You are probably correct, but it really makes me sad to think the only solution is to make melee as broken as casters.

[karpedieme]

To be fair i think the 2 SIlver Flame types of potions should be of different tiers in Favor reward.

Big Boy SIlver Flame pots = 400 favor.

Lesser Silver Flame pots = I Dunno 150-200 favor.

The trade-off you will need to slot Helaing amp items and Dump stat items along the leveling up to not go helpless.

It is expensive to level up melees without masive ressources and hirelings. if you going pure barb / fighter etc and dont have evasion especially on BB streaks

Would seem to me as a proper workaround to the issue.

[Emili]

I've not suggested anything as this is all really a grey area...




Didn't read the thread, just the OP so I am not sure what I missed......I don't play a melee just a PM Wizard......but I totally am in agreement with this.

/signed

It is completely ridiculous how much melees are left with no significant or even adequate form of damage mitigation and self healing without having to go to extremes to get it.

I have to agree with this, when people who don't even play the class can see how bad it really is, that should be a sign something is wrong here.

Something needs to be done. I would like to see more steps in the pots, and others items being made more available.

This is ABSOLUTELY true...

i.e. The typical divine usually complains 'bout the undergeared melee sucking up thier SP... very rarely do ya hear them complain 'bout an undergeared caster as with those becomes an entirely different play-style ... A bad or undergeared caster may sit back CC some buff some add utility and still contribute some damage or whatnot while remaining pretty darn safe in a group... but as you see a melee no matter what HAS TO BE AMONG THE THICK OF THINGS to actually do anything. Is not unusual to see the poor first time barb running in circles screaming HJEAL ME! more often than a first time arcane/divine by far. ;) From years of playing healers I know this is fact ...

Costs of healing ... 1 Healscroll = 2.5 csw pots in costs... however!

The base healing compared is 110 vs ((3-24) *3)

The only dynamic which affects Pots be healing amp... but compare to the scroll can get up to 75% off a casting type character such as Arty, Bard, Cleric, FvS ... on the front end.

A melee who invest in UMD per say casting a scroll even garners 234hp from a scroll at 213% amp ... a divine hitting the same melee with scroll yields 411 easily...

... but it is something like the pure Barb has major issues here ... he is stuck constantly at 51,12hp at most at 213% amp. (2,5 that - what a scroll costs be 127.8) <- same cost for half the healing and more than twice the time to use. ;)

What is also very very true in this game ... are melee fight an' squirm to garner 5% to 10% of anything. Every +1 mod, every +1 weapon, every +1 damage every +1 AC, DR, ... the list is long be always a question of trade-off... like in enhancements 1ap buys +1, 2 more ap buys +1, 3 more AP buys +1...

... by contrast casters play with an entirely different system multipling compounded pecentages of far larger numbers... i.e. MAX * EMP * potency * Lifemagic IV * etc...

Melee pay greater costs in general due the bits pieces which make up melee are generally far weaker in contrast... and they have near the same budget, be AP, Feat or slot.

When you look at this at face value you understand ... melee are a costly class in general.

Long ago ... when people asked me what class they should start off with my answer has always been - a divine or arcane - reason being they were always the least costly, easiest to adapt to rule changes and never "flavour for the mod" because they're always useful.


Summary: However back to my - I've not suggested anything as this is all really a grey area...

The largest reason WHY you'd most likely see the melee heavily infringe on the mitigation aspect of the game without the grind to get there is it's a sink. The melee are a sink for mana, they are a sink for PP, they are a sink for grouping... and they bring in actual real money to turbine.

[In_Like_Flynn]

The secret lies in a new NPC named Kargon who will sell you the bestamist hams ever.I am wagging my tail.

[Jaid314]

The mistake many does is that they compare Rangers and Barbarians, and argue which has self healing, and how much sacrifise for that, while Rangers/Paladins are considered the worse designed classes in game (the weakest). And while you can compare barbarian and fighter all day long on forum, as soon as you log on into game there will be comparison between caster and no-caster. And in actual game casters have great self healing with instakill, CC, utylity, boss dps, often blast. And whatever you think about casters being OP - nobody cares - so far there is no signal from Devs about any tune down in near future. So its better to accept the post u9 state of the game and think how to bring no caster to the caster levels - even if that means "make melee as broken as casters " for you.

rangers and paladins are considered the worst classes because *drum roll* .... they are not pure DPS, they actually have survivability built-in.

in other words, they are terrible when taken in the context of "DPS at the expense of everything else". in the context of "can melee get some self-healing love" or looking for damage mitigation, they are much better. the problem is not that paladins and rangers are bad. it's that people are so obsessed with a pure focus on DPS DPS DPS that they ignore every other consideration.

you have options, RIGHT NOW, to improve survivability and get better self-healing. nobody is taking them. *that* is the problem. the problem is not that they don't exist, because they do in fact exist and anyone choosing them is relentlessly mocked for being gimped and useless.

are people making use of options like (lesser) vampiric weapons of bodyfeeding, or life shield armors, which can be crafted now? are they choosing to have some AC? (note: if you deliberately aggro everything in sight, then just stand there and take the beating, you are doing it wrong. AC works just fine, you just need to learn how to move better so that your melee can have the aggro of a dozen mobs and only be getting hit by 2 of them). are they choosing to boost their saves? are they choosing to make sure they have the right defensive buffs? do they invest in UMD so that they can get those buffs as well as the better self-healing they're screaming for while ignoring the options that grant it? are they trying to get heal amp? do they search for guard effects and weapon effects that CC their enemies? do they look for the various sources of small amounts of steady healing, like eating jerky or using regrowth?

it probably sounds pretty small, some of these things. believe me, they work. i've got an acrobat rogue that i'm leveling up. he has terrible AC. something like 30 at level 15, occasionally buffed to as much as 35. he has poor threat reduction (frankly, i'm not sure he has *any* other than the occasional use of bluff) and routinely uses cleave on groups of enemies, so i do pull aggro fairly often. there is a massive difference between using my bloody staff of the shadow (lesser vampirism and bodyfeeder) or using any other weapon in terms of how many potions i need to drink. if i was a fairly standard build, say, using a weapon that actually crits more than 10% of the time after improved critical, or for that matter using weapons that hit more often (ie using TWF style), i'm sure it would be substantially better.

the simple fact is, the game has changed. once upon a time, WoP rangers with dual rapiers was the most amazing thing out there. that stopped being the case, and people stopped building those types of characters. once upon a time, casters at end game were good for buffing and crowd control and not much else. that changed, and now people build them for instakills or nuking. once upon a time, melee builds that had a blind obsession with DPS, DPS, and more DPS were a really good idea. now, not so much. it's time to rethink some builds instead of continuing to try to push on blindly.

throw a single ranger level into the mix and you get cure moderate wands, which are cheaper than potions and run on a separate timer, as well as the ability to slip cure moderate scrolls in the middle as well, which are also cheaper than potions and on yet another timer. splash a couple of rogue levels and you get wand and scroll mastery plus UMD. splash paladin instead of ranger and you get better healing, plus potentially you get substantially better saves if you take a 2 level splash, as well as lay on hands. one of the biggest benefits to melee is that you can splash a few levels or even have a deep splash or a full-on 3-way split and still be effective. use that to your advantage, and splash in some self-healing and better damage mitigation.

there's all kinds of things you can do with melee builds. people are choosing not to do them. so long as people continue to choose not to have better survivability, they will continue to suffer the drawbacks of that choice. apparently this may come as a shock to many of you (based on how much people are upset that their pure DPS at the expense of everything else builds are having problems), but... one of those drawbacks is that you don't have very good survivability.

[HungarianRhapsody]

rangers and paladins are considered the worst classes because *drum roll* .... they are not pure DPS, they actually have survivability built-in.

I've seen a lot of people say this. They're wrong.

Rangers and Paladins do not have survivability built-in. They have small amounts of healing built-in.

Some Rangers and Paladins with exceptional gear can turn that small amount of healing *into* survivability, but that's a very different thing than actually having survivability built-in.

[Monkey-Boy]

I've seen a lot of people say this. They're wrong.

Rangers and Paladins do not have survivability built-in. They have small amounts of healing built-in.

Some Rangers and Paladins with exceptional gear can turn that small amount of healing *into* survivability, but that's a very different thing than actually having survivability built-in.

What's your definition of survivable?

200-300 point quickened CSW adds a hell of a lot to survivability in my opinion.

[justagame]

I've seen a lot of people say this. They're wrong.

Rangers and Paladins do not have survivability built-in. They have small amounts of healing built-in.

Some Rangers and Paladins with exceptional gear can turn that small amount of healing *into* survivability, but that's a very different thing than actually having survivability built-in.

They're not wrong. The healing abilities of Rangers and Paladins don't need exceptional gear, just the appropriate build choices. I think you might be splitting hairs a bit. After all, if this desire for better melee healing ability isn't for survivability, then what is it for? I don't see how it's "very different" in this context.

I have a first life Ranger with empower heal, 2 ranks into human healing amp, and 1 or 2 ranks in devotion, and concentration skill taken (skills are plentiful on a ranger). Only gear that affects healing is a superior ardor IV clicky (common), and a magi weapon for initial buffing sp. Nothing at all fancy there.

Could I swap out the empower heal feat for an additional melee feat? Sure. Could I put the AP into other things? Sure. Could I dump CSW and CMW for other spells? Sure. But I can heal fairly well for a bit without having to gear swap, I've found it to be well worth it. And yes, it makes me more survivable.

[Emili]

throw a single ranger level into the mix and you get cure moderate wands, which are cheaper than potions and run on a separate timer, as well as the ability to slip cure moderate scrolls in the middle as well, which are also cheaper than potions and on yet another timer. splash a couple of rogue levels and you get wand and scroll mastery plus UMD. splash paladin instead of ranger and you get better healing, plus potentially you get substantially better saves if you take a 2 level splash, as well as lay on hands. one of the biggest benefits to melee is that you can splash a few levels or even have a deep splash or a full-on 3-way split and still be effective. use that to your advantage, and splash in some self-healing and better damage mitigation.


Yes a ranger may use a wand or pot.... But

The best healing on a Ranger or Pally by far for that matter be an cheap superior ardor clickie and coupled with some ap in healing enhancements ... they can cast 200+ cure spells for 12sp out of an 600sp blue bar rather easily. That's 50 cast ... toss on a GS Con OP +6 wis 45HP item and ya recharge just as well.

The hard thing about Rangers and Pallys in DPS are... they've just terrible "to-hit" and stuck with damage perks to just "FE" or "Evil" is not easy to get beyond that either, although manyshot is good dps factor along with AA for burst... though Arty is king of ranged output...

Still ... from a barb's perspective a healing splash requires dismissing rage which is not only it's real dps but also a drop of 1/3rd of it's hp, it's dr and it's will save at the very same time many perks of a barb be totally connected with staying raged.

Are always disadvantages however coming back to your quotes for umd or splashing is not all splashed up what you think it be... for trade one to one what ine aquires may diminish the goal you seek. i.e. suppose you were going after useful tactical DC's in epics - mark 50+ DC per say, or SD lines or DOS deep rooted splash can come into play happering such. What about things like capstones and tier III PrC's ... see be a fine line... and all lines in DDO should be eventually useful and not just fluff. That should be the goal.

Funny thing i'll mention... eChaosBades aside from being a top DPS contender in gtwf be decent at helping along in pulling and stabilizing hp back....

[Jaid314]

non-splashes have their place too. it is a different place from splashes.

in a raid or group where you have someone throwing heals all over the place (which is not all that uncommon), there is little difference in ability to survive between a paladin or ranger and a barbarian. this is essentially the entire basis of the argument for the paladin being supposedly gimped.

it's not as if those builds are completely useless or anything. they're simply useful in different situations. if you want to build for pure DPS and be dependent on someone else for healing to a large extent, you can do that. the trade-off is that you're dependent on someone else for healing.

(also, anyone who thinks that paladin and ranger spells and class features don't add to survivability, completely separate from the ability to self-heal, are fooling themselves. perhaps you should try asking the babarian who's been held if he thinks the ranger with FoM has better survivability, or if after being greater commanded they think the paladin's protection from evil spell helps at all. or try asking if he thinks that ridiculous huge save bonus the paladin enjoys or the ranger's evasion, or the resist energy spells that both enjoy, are helpful)

[Raithe]

I've seen a lot of people say this. They're wrong.

They are wrong, but I don't think you gave the reason why. They are wrong because:

1) Rangers and paladins (he said rangers and barbs, btw, you may not have noticed) are not widely considered the worst classes. Maybe in particular metagamer circles they are, but those are some pretty bad metagamers. Usually its just some stereotype from a different game that is feeding the misanalysis.

For instance, I generally breathe a sigh of relief if the party that I am running challenges with is made mostly of rangers, paladins, clerics, fvs, artificers, monks, sorcs, wizards, and bards. The challenges have done a good job of extracting the facade of ultra-high DPS that linear quests will exacerbate.

2) Rangers with the arcane archer PrE have probably close to the highest burst DPS of any class in the game, especially if their foes are all in a line. Calling rangers not "pure" DPS is based on arbitrary metrics of time and the environment.

Fighters and barbs, and non-assassin rogues are the ones that I feel have been largely shafted by the most recent game design changes. I have yet to read an explanation from anyone since Update 9 that has made me feel even slightly better about their plight.

[badbob117]

Wow, so many people are missing the point with this thread. This is not about ranger/paladin vs. fighter/monk/barbarian. Every character can self heal adequately with Silver Flame potions, which pretty much requires level 20 (or close enough to it). I'm simply asking for some self-healing love before Silver Flame potions while characters are leveling up:

1. Introduce more healing amp items at lower levels. Aside from monk splashes, the first healing amp item is Levik's Bracers (ML 13). Dragontouched is ML16. Melee should have healing amp options before those levels. Warforged melee are doubly screwed since there's no Repair Amp.

2. Increasing the caster level of CSW potions and/or introducing CCW potions is beneficial, especially when paired with the above itemization options. Going from CL5 to CL15 on a CSW potion with 200% healing amp would net +20 HP per potion. That's significant!

Some of the suggestions in this thread are just silly:

AC is meaningless to barbarians. Barbarians also do plenty of self-inflicted damage via Vicious and Supreme Cleave, and typically have the higher HP pools.

I shouldn't have to splash a class for UMD in order to have reasonable self healing. Half-Elf Cleric dilettante gets grouped in here too.

Run away more? Sure, let me go sniff the flowers while arcanes and divines complete the quest for me.


I'm down for adding some CCW pots. I am all for it. I always make my presence felt in these threads. There have been plenty of them and will be plenty more i am sure. Some suggested cannith crafted or challenge rewards CCW potions. some have suggested favor or collectible turn in rewards in the past. All are good suggestions.

Would be nice if they added them to the first tier of silver flame favor and made em min level 5. The first tier is pretty useless for most players.. get a discount on healers spells in taverns or something like that? Yay!

I also like the idea of more healing amp items added at a lower level. also more fleshmaker items in different slots. Maybe even add it to crafting on rings and jewlery! Would def make leveling melee's a tad more fun.

The CCW are already in store and have been for awhile. I am and have always been against having things in store that are not available in game . Turbine said ages ago that almost all items in store would be accessible to the public in game. This was a Huge concern when they first added the store. Over 3 years later and those pots are still not able to get looted from chests or bought from vendors. It is time they stand by their word and add em.

Good suggestions you have. Not really to game breaking at all considering most melee's are just burdens to divines nowadays. I know all about the over powered crazyness of divines. I have two of em. Most melee's are literally a waste of my sp. My arcane friends and my divine friends are so overpowered that melee is literally for flavor now. The whole argument of balance was shot out the window ages ago when they let casters get this outta hand,. Balance and sacrifices are not even part of a mediocre built casters vocabulary. Melee and specialists have taken a back seat now. we just tag along for the easy completion and hope to steal some casters kill..

No one wants a nerf so we may as well just embrace some kinda bonus perk with some new added ways of healing to classes that have fallen behind in the past few years. There are three alternatives to this whole crazy argument. 1. Nerf casters. 2. Buff melee with some healing perks and dps, 3.Do nothing and leave the classes so unbalanced that it gives a black eye to the game and its origin of D&D.

[HungarianRhapsody]

They're not wrong. The healing abilities of Rangers and Paladins don't need exceptional gear, just the appropriate build choices. I think you might be splitting hairs a bit. After all, if this desire for better melee healing ability isn't for survivability, then what is it for? I don't see how it's "very different" in this context.

I have a first life Ranger with empower heal, 2 ranks into human healing amp, and 1 or 2 ranks in devotion, and concentration skill taken (skills are plentiful on a ranger). Only gear that affects healing is a superior ardor IV clicky (common), and a magi weapon for initial buffing sp. Nothing at all fancy there.

Could I swap out the empower heal feat for an additional melee feat? Sure. Could I put the AP into other things? Sure. Could I dump CSW and CMW for other spells? Sure. But I can heal fairly well for a bit without having to gear swap, I've found it to be well worth it. And yes, it makes me more survivable.

You can heal well enough to keep yourself alive until you run out of spell points. Rangers and Paladins have a tiny pool of spell points. Even with an Archmagi item, you're not going to keep yourself alive without a nanny through an entire serious quest (and certainly not through anything Epic) unless you have a Torc or Concordant Opposition (or both) AND a fair amount of high powered

How many spell points does your Ranger have?
How many Empower Healing'd Cure Serious can you fire off with that many spell points (after spending spell points on appropriate buffs at the start of the quest)?

I wasn't talking about an Ardor clicky/Potency IV item and healing amp. I was talking about the exact same hard to acquire damage mitigation gear that a Fighter or Barbarian needs to avoid damage in the first place so that you don't burn through all of your spell points before you make it past your 4th encounter in the quest.

[Raithe]

How many Empower Healing'd Cure Serious can you fire off with that many spell points (after spending spell points on appropriate buffs at the start of the quest)?


Empower healing is not efficient for rangers or paladins. It costs 10 sp per cast (maybe 8 with an item), and heals for 50% more. Cure serious wounds costs only 12 sp since update 9, and cure moderate only costs 8. Using a superior ardor iv clicky is how it is done, and no metamagics are involved.

My ranger has 562 spell points and normally heals himself and maybe a few others throughout an entire quest, epics included.

[justagame]

You can heal well enough to keep yourself alive until you run out of spell points. Rangers and Paladins have a tiny pool of spell points. Even with an Archmagi item, you're not going to keep yourself alive without a nanny through an entire serious quest (and certainly not through anything Epic) unless you have a Torc or Concordant Opposition (or both) AND a fair amount of high powered

How many spell points does your Ranger have?
How many Empower Healing'd Cure Serious can you fire off with that many spell points (after spending spell points on appropriate buffs at the start of the quest)?

I wasn't talking about an Ardor clicky/Potency IV item and healing amp. I was talking about the exact same hard to acquire damage mitigation gear that a Fighter or Barbarian needs to avoid damage in the first place so that you don't burn through all of your spell points before you make it past your 4th encounter in the quest.

I keep both my ranger and paladin alive on MANY serious high end quests, without a dedicated healer.

So wait, now your complaint not that melees have no access to self-healing, but that they do, just not as much SP as caster classes? Really? Is that the problem here? That melees can't self heal to the same degree that a healing class can?

While we're at it, I'd like a potion that lets my pure wisdom-based cleric swing a greataxe with the damage of someone with 50 STR, power attack, IC, weapon spec, and the whole THF chain, without giving up any of my healing or spellcasting power.

[justagame]

Empower healing is not efficient for rangers or paladins. It costs 10 sp per cast (maybe 8 with an item), and heals for 50% more. Cure serious wounds costs only 12 sp since update 9, and cure moderate only costs 8. Using a superior ardor iv clicky is how it is done, and no metamagics are involved.

My ranger has 562 spell points and normally heals himself and maybe a few others throughout an entire quest, epics included.

Agreed, but sometimes you need a quick burst heal. I have 2 CSW on my hotbar, one non-meta-ed that's efficient, when I have the time for multiple castings, and another with the meta, for when I'm in a pinch. (Actually thinking about swapping for maximize instead -- less efficient, but more of an "oh no!" button if I'm in real trouble.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Empower healing is not efficient for rangers or paladins. It costs 10 sp per cast (maybe 8 with an item), and heals for 50% more. Cure serious wounds costs only 12 sp since update 9, and cure moderate only costs 8. Using a superior ardor iv clicky is how it is done, and no metamagics are involved.

My ranger has 562 spell points and normally heals himself and maybe a few others throughout an entire quest, epics included.

It's not spell point efficient. It is time efficient.

Empower Healing or Maximize aren't for when you're outside of combat and have the luxury of time. They're for when you're in the thick of combat and need an emergency heal in order to avoid dying.

When you're outside of combat, you can chug Cure Serious pots/wands. If you have decent healing amp, you'll get back up to full in a less-than-completely-ridiculous amount of time that is merely annoying and expensive rather than crippling.

[NaturalHazard]

You can heal well enough to keep yourself alive until you run out of spell points. Rangers and Paladins have a tiny pool of spell points. Even with an Archmagi item, you're not going to keep yourself alive without a nanny through an entire serious quest (and certainly not through anything Epic) unless you have a Torc or Concordant Opposition (or both) AND a fair amount of high powered

How many spell points does your Ranger have?
How many Empower Healing'd Cure Serious can you fire off with that many spell points (after spending spell points on appropriate buffs at the start of the quest)?

I wasn't talking about an Ardor clicky/Potency IV item and healing amp. I was talking about the exact same hard to acquire damage mitigation gear that a Fighter or Barbarian needs to avoid damage in the first place so that you don't burn through all of your spell points before you make it past your 4th encounter in the quest.

My ranger run through sins normal/hard/elite solo without ever having to use a shrine, its called a torc. I have about 600-700 sp, this is without a shroud SP item. Before I got the torc I was still able to complete the quest solo just sometimes I might of had to clear out the shrine. Same with a lot of other quests. Torc just made it *easy* ie I didn't have to even look at my SP when I got it.

Ive kept a party going on the final boss fight in epic DA on my ranger when the cleric healer dced, by the time he came back the boss was nearly dead. this was with my piddly sp pool. Sheild blocking and high healing amp on the tank was amazing though, but if I had followed the don't bother with any healing its a waste route that would of been a wipe and a frustrating one as well as we where on the final boss to wipe because of a dc would of been........... its also kept me going in byoh epic small problem and last stand, I know not the most difficult of epics but oh well. Its nice to have in a jam though and totally worth it imho for the cost, some ap and maybe 1 feat, 2 if you really want to invest in it. Its also kept me going while been last man on harry in part 4/5 of shroud.

Its kept me alive numerous times while ive been tanking suulo in TOD and VOD when the party had their hands full or my healer was dced or dead. But you know I shouldnt waste those APs and that feat on healing I should just concentrate on dps...... might as well roll up a barbarian or fighter then, oh go for AC? then I should roll up a monk or a SD fighter.

[licho]

Just to point out the problem with rangers:
- Few meanigful spells (especially at tier 3 and 4)
- Main class feature is hard to use (FE) has bad split ( to many categories, most of them useless) and changing FE is a bigger pain than respecing spells and no mechanic around FE.
- There is no point in staying pure
- After lv 11 no meaningful class features.

Rangers are just poor and bad designed, so it gives impression that giving some self heal to other no casters is like making ranger useless. No, rangers are already useless, denying no blue bar melees self healing is just creating a illusion that rangers have advantages.

[Raithe]

It's not spell point efficient. It is time efficient.

Empower Healing or Maximize aren't for when you're outside of combat and have the luxury of time. They're for when you're in the thick of combat and need an emergency heal in order to avoid dying.

When you're outside of combat, you can chug Cure Serious pots/wands. If you have decent healing amp, you'll get back up to full in a less-than-completely-ridiculous amount of time that is merely annoying and expensive rather than crippling.

Hmmm. I have to disagree.

Quicken is the metamagic that is useful for ensuring recovery in combat. Empower healing and maximize are for spell point efficiency. I guess to some people time is just that important, but to me the extra 3-5 seconds it takes to cast a spell again is not much of an issue. I wouldn't even take maximize/empower feats for damage on a caster if they didn't wind up saving spell points. I would even actually prefer lower sustainable DPS that ultimately does more damage over a longer period of time.

As for rangers, paladins, and melee in general, I consider wand charges interlaced with pot usage to be the method of healing during combat. They are not interruptable and when done in rapid succession can generally overcome incoming damage.

That said, I also generally consider an engagement that requires the use of pots or wands to be a failure. If I can't make it through a particular encounter without needing to self-heal in the middle of it, next time I'll be doing things different...

[Jay203]

i think healing and repair kits need to do more than just getting incap ppl up
they need to heal x-amount of hp depending on your heal/repair skill
at the moment, they're even worse loot than general gems... =_=

[sephiroth1084]

You cant say ALL melee have problems... Barbs and Fighters really... But Rangers, Pallies, Rouges, Bards, Artis, Monks, and the ocassional melee FVS are all proficient at self healing.... :D
Uh...actually:


Rangers - poor healing unless you invest significantly in it (read: feats like Maximize or Empower Healing, with Quicken as an important optional, AP in Devotion and Ardor pots or a Devotion item). Using a wand is just like using a potion, except it's slower and requires swapping weapons.
Paladins - same as rangers, but with a few Lay On Hands and maybe Unyielding Sovereignty for emergencies. Note that paladins are more feat-starved than rangers.
Monks - gain a small boost to potion usage with Healing Amp (rather expensive AP-wise), and gain an out of combat self-healing ability that takes half a minute+ to heal you up. Wholeness of Body is good, but not excellent, and doesn't replace the need for in-combat healing. Additionally: light monks gain a Vampirism effect on their attacks with Healing Curse, which can be rather significant.
Rogues and flesh y artificers - have access to solid healing via UMD, but that requires some significant investment of build points, feats, and/or gear in order to accomplish, and typically doesn't come into play until late in a character's life.

Putting healing amp +10% and +20% on some lower level gear (probably as the only effect on the items) would help a bit.

Allowing us to purchase CCW pots, or purchase or craft CSW pots with a CL of 15 would help.
Granting Lesser Silver Flame pots at 150 SF favor would make sense and would help.

Giving rangers and paladins bonus feats or some significant bonuses to their cure spells would help them a bit.

[Raithe]

Just to point out the problem with rangers:
- Few meanigful spells (especially at tier 3 and 4)


Freedom of Movement, Cure Serious Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, Cure Light Wounds, Energy Resistance, Energy Protection, Ram's Might, Jump (if not for the ranger him/herself, for party members)



- Main class feature is hard to use (FE) has bad split ( to many categories, most of them useless) and changing FE is a bigger pain than respecing spells and no mechanic around FE.


Take Undead and Evil Outsider and you have half the enemies in the game covered. Take any two of giant, construct, and elf (drow) and you have half the other half covered.



- There is no point in staying pure


Just like all the other classes except maybe wizard.



- After lv 11 no meaningful class features.


More spell points, level 4 spells, more favored enemies, longer duration on buffs, higher caster level for cure spells.



Rangers are just poor and bad designed, so it gives impression that giving some self heal to other no casters is like making ranger useless. No, rangers are already useless, denying no blue bar melees self healing is just creating a illusion that rangers have advantages.


No one was promoting rangers as a mechanism by which to deny non-blue-bar classes healing. They were being used to demonstrate that those classes do indeed need some help (though personally I think it should come in damage mitigation techniques over the same-ol overpowered healing garbage).

Confused much?

[NaturalHazard]

Uh...actually:


Rangers - poor healing unless you invest significantly in it (read: feats like Maximize or Empower Healing, with Quicken as an important optional, AP in Devotion and Ardor pots or a Devotion item). Using a wand is just like using a potion, except it's slower and requires swapping weapons.
Paladins - same as rangers, but with a few Lay On Hands and maybe Unyielding Sovereignty for emergencies. Note that paladins are more feat-starved than rangers.
Monks - gain a small boost to potion usage with Healing Amp (rather expensive AP-wise), and gain an out of combat self-healing ability that takes half a minute+ to heal you up. Wholeness of Body is good, but not excellent, and doesn't replace the need for in-combat healing. Additionally: light monks gain a Vampirism effect on their attacks with Healing Curse, which can be rather significant.
Rogues and flesh y artificers - have access to solid healing via UMD, but that requires some significant investment of build points, feats, and/or gear in order to accomplish, and typically doesn't come into play until late in a character's life.

Putting healing amp +10% and +20% on some lower level gear (probably as the only effect on the items) would help a bit.

Allowing us to purchase CCW pots, or purchase or craft CSW pots with a CL of 15 would help.
Granting Lesser Silver Flame pots at 150 SF favor would make sense and would help.

Giving rangers and paladins bonus feats or some significant bonuses to their cure spells would help them a bit.

Not bad ideas, i like the level 15 CSW and lesser silver flame pots *and* the bonus feats or bonuses to ranger and paladin cures.

Divines and most arcanes can self heal and do tremendous dps. I dont understand the divines who complain about *needy* melees then froth at the mouth at silver flame pots and any suggestion for the melee classes to have a little more options for self healing.

[brucelee82]

Just buy some tasty hams NOM NOM NOM

but seriously those things can heal you quite a bit. I just looted some that heal 100 hp from a lvl 11 quest.

[Rydin_Dirtay]

- After lv 11 no meaningful class features.

Yes, Ranger is somewhat front-loaded, but, I disagree on the 'no meaningful features' thing:

a) At level 14 they get CSW which, with Healing Amp and a metamagic, provides Rangers with very nice self healing.
and,
b) all of this will change with the enhancement pass. Or so it would appear.

I used to include FOM in item a) but since the FOM nerf I value it less. But CSW and FOM were why 15 Ranger/xxxx builds were not only viable, but actually quite nice.

[bartosy]

Agree with the OP.


I never really got why we don’t have cure critical potions.

The spell is 4th level, so therefore OK by 3/3.5 rules for potions.


It would also be nice if higher caster-level potions were available.

isn't it quite obvious ?

it's a well known fact that only people who invest heavily into either vip or buy the crappy necropacks + catacombs deserve to be worthy enough to have a valid mean of healing.

healing on a barb is a great thing with cure serious pots..

1. cure serious pot
2. frenzy
3. greater frenzy
4. cleave

2,3,4,1,1,1,1,4,1,1,4,4,1,1,1,1,4,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, 1,4,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,3,4,1,1,1,1,1,

[Hutoth]

Would be nice if Cannith crafting permitted the creation of higher CL potions and/or CCW potions.

Wasn't planning on posting yet, still reading the thread, but this is a great idea +1

[Ungood]

I've not suggested anything as this is all really a grey area...



This is ABSOLUTELY true...

i.e. The typical divine usually complains 'bout the undergeared melee sucking up thier SP... very rarely do ya hear them complain 'bout an undergeared caster as with those becomes an entirely different play-style ...

This brought me back to when I first started playing and wanted to make an AC melee build, after reading a few guides and talking with the vets I knew, I got the traditional "Don't even bother kid"

[noinfo]

Just to point out the problem with rangers:
- Few meanigful spells (especially at tier 3 and 4)
- Main class feature is hard to use (FE) has bad split ( to many categories, most of them useless) and changing FE is a bigger pain than respecing spells and no mechanic around FE.
- There is no point in staying pure
- After lv 11 no meaningful class features.

Rangers are just poor and bad designed, so it gives impression that giving some self heal to other no casters is like making ranger useless. No, rangers are already useless, denying no blue bar melees self healing is just creating a illusion that rangers have advantages.

Actually the ranger class is fine, it is the current set of DDO enhancements and PRE that are not. Fix that and the self healing becomes a very valid concern in ballance.

[Emili]

Yes, Ranger is somewhat front-loaded, but, I disagree on the 'no meaningful features' thing:

a) At level 14 they get CSW which, with Healing Amp and a metamagic, provides Rangers with very nice self healing.
and,
b) all of this will change with the enhancement pass. Or so it would appear.

I used to include FOM in item a) but since the FOM nerf I value it less. But CSW and FOM were why 15 Ranger/xxxx builds were not only viable, but actually quite nice.

I kept a eLoB tank alive from a ranger with no meta-magic feats what-so-ever just ardor and a few ap in devotion thru two rains of blades after divine casters died... Go figure ... what hit's my ranger for 200+ well hits a full amp'd tank for 400+ ;)

My rangers are feated for DPS is all, well plus toughness/PrE but is it. Ranger's heal fine, as do pallys ... you do not NEED meta's or feating make it survivable either. Nothing more than some AP and some clickies. That's it the combination of amp does the rest, be icing on the cake.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

the problem is not that paladins and rangers are bad. it's that people are so obsessed with a pure focus on DPS DPS DPS that they ignore every other consideration

LOL, I agree ! ;)


Just to point out the problem with rangers:
- Few meanigful spells (especially at tier 3 and 4)

This is currently my greatest complaint.

Especially that they get their spells so late.

Plus, that the summoned monsters don't have much survivability at all. I just won't summon them anymore, because they're dead in seconds.


Take Undead and Evil Outsider and you have half the enemies in the game covered. Take any two of giant, construct, and elf (drow) and you have half the other half covered.


My current plan looks like this :

Take "monstrous humanoids" until you are around level 10 or so.

Then swap that at Fred's for another one, evil outsiders, for example.

Uneads are imho an almost natural choice to me.

[Ungood]

My rangers are feated for DPS is all, well plus toughness/PrE but is it. Ranger's heal fine, as do pallys ... you do not NEED meta's or feating make it survivable either. Nothing more than some AP and some clickies. That's it the combination of amp does the rest, be icing on the cake.

U9 Spell pass changed the whole way Meta's affect the game, and when and how they are good. Still you will find people who are following guides or advice from Pre-U9.

[sephiroth1084]

I kept a eLoB tank alive from a ranger with no meta-magic feats what-so-ever just ardor and a few ap in devotion thru two rains of blades after divine casters died... Go figure ... what hit's my ranger for 200+ well hits a full amp'd tank for 400+ ;)

My rangers are feated for DPS is all, well plus toughness/PrE but is it. Ranger's heal fine, as do pallys ... you do not NEED meta's or feating make it survivable either. Nothing more than some AP and some clickies. That's it the combination of amp does the rest, be icing on the cake.


How are you getting 200+ on CSW without metamagics? My paladin hits himself for 180-220ish with 2 ranks of Devotion, Superior Ardor IV, +55% healing amp, and Maximize on. With full healing amp that would probably be around 300, but how are you seeing 200 and 400 without metas?

My ranger tosses no-meta'ed CSW with some Devotion and Ardor for something like 80 points on a good roll.

[Ungood]

How are you getting 200+ on CSW without metamagics? My paladin hits himself for 180-220ish with 2 ranks of Devotion, Superior Ardor IV, +55% healing amp, and Maximize on. With full healing amp that would probably be around 300, but how are you seeing 200 and 400 without metas?

My ranger tosses no-meta'ed CSW with some Devotion and Ardor for something like 80 points on a good roll.


what hit's my ranger for 200+ well hits a full amp'd tank for 400+ ;)

I would like to point out to you that Emili never said that their CSW healed for 200+ HP, only that what heals them for 200+ will heal a Full Amped Tank for 400+.

[sephiroth1084]

[/COLOR]

I would like to point out to you that Emili never said that their CSW healed for 200+ HP, only that what heals them for 200+ will heal a Full Amped Tank for 400+.
The implication was that she had been healing a tank through the rain of blades in LoB using her spells. That might not be the case, but that's how I read her post.

[voodoogroves]

I've said it before, I'll say it again.

I'm ok with a few more LIMITED consumable options, but not at the expense of the pally/rangers out there (who are taking a lower DPS option for better defenses and innate healing).

[Ungood]

The implication was that she had been healing a tank through the rain of blades in LoB using her spells. That might not be the case, but that's how I read her post.

Emili did not imply they healed a tank though LoB raid of blades, they said outright they did that.

They did not say that their CSW healed for 200+ HP which was what you were questioning and making assumptions about.

[sephiroth1084]

I kept a eLoB tank alive from a ranger with no meta-magic feats what-so-ever just ardor and a few ap in devotion thru two rains of blades after divine casters died... Go figure ... what hit's my ranger for 200+ well hits a full amp'd tank for 400+ ;)




Emili did not imply they healed a tank though LoB raid of blades, they said outright they did that.

They did not say that their CSW healed for 200+ HP which was what you were questioning and making assumptions about.
No? Then what does the above quote mean? Or imply? She says that she kept a LoB tank alive, and says she has no meta's, which could mean she is using scrolls, except she then says she has Ardor running and a few ranks in Devotion.

Since the ranger's best cure spell is CSW, the implication is that she was healing using that spell, and that it was hitting for 200-400.

And my reply you responded to wasn't saying that she implied that she had kept the tank alive, it was saying that she implied that she had done so with 400-point CSW. How do you read her statement?

I don't doubt Emili was able to keep the tank up--she's a good player, with strong toons, and knows her stuff--I just don't see how she was getting such powerful CSW without any metamagics.

[sephiroth1084]

I've said it before, I'll say it again.

I'm ok with a few more LIMITED consumable options, but not at the expense of the pally/rangers out there (who are taking a lower DPS option for better defenses and innate healing).
I think we need both better consumables and improvements built into paladin and ranger healing, whether that's through cheap, more effective enhancements, bonus feats, or some other method.

[Chai]

Melee who dont build in healing options CHOOSE not to do so - there are quite a few options that can be used in this game. Yeah, it sucks for barbarians especially because we like to keep that rage running throughout the entire quest, but usually this means getting a hireling or inviting a healer into the group.

If youre a barbarian AND you filled the group AND theres no healer in the group, youll be the one most hard pressed to keep yourself healed.

Putting too many healing options into the game will undermine reasons to be ranger and paladin. Youre making a DPS sacrifice for what again? Nothing if everyone else can self heal as good or better than you can.

[Chai]

And my reply you responded to wasn't saying that she implied that she had kept the tank alive, it was saying that she implied that she had done so with 400-point CSW. How do you read her statement?

I don't doubt Emili was able to keep the tank up--she's a good player, with strong toons, and knows her stuff--I just don't see how she was getting such powerful CSW without any metamagics.

With one of the TOD belt clickies running, I can hit 200 point CSWs on myself with no heal amp - first life undergeared ranger w/ improved heal. If this ranger had no metas, but all of the devotion enhancements, and the TOD belt clicky or equivilent running, and the tank had decent amp (which most tanks should) I could see it happening. A human tank having amp of 30 + 30 + 10 + 20 + 10 + 15 for instance....would have to be really stars aligned though.

[Gremmlynn]

My current plan looks like this :

Take "monstrous humanoids" until you are around level 10 or so.

Then swap that at Fred's for another one, evil outsiders, for example.

Uneads are imho an almost natural choice to me.Monstrous humanoids? That's sahuagin, gargoyles, medusa, wildmen and minotaurs. I would think giants would be a better choice with as many ogres and trolls we face. While minotaurs can be annoying, but the rest are either pretty easy or really rare.

For myself, I go with undead, giants, elementals, evil outsiders and constructs on a full ranger (in that order) and drop elementals, giants and constructs (in that order) if going multi-class (I wouldn't bother with less than 6 levels). Saves having to necessarily swap out a feat (maybe swap undead for constructs for house C stuff at/near cap) and pretty much gives you what is useful as it becomes useful. Also gives you extra damage on the normally crit immune stuff with the full list.

[sephiroth1084]

With one of the TOD belt clickies running, I can hit 200 point CSWs on myself with no heal amp - first life undergeared ranger w/ improved heal. If this ranger had no metas, but all of the devotion enhancements, and the TOD belt clicky or equivilent running, and the tank had decent amp (which most tanks should) I could see it happening. A human tank having amp of 30 + 30 + 10 + 20 + 10 + 15 for instance....would have to be really stars aligned though.
What's Improved Heal?

Again, how?

CSW is 3d8+15, max of 39.
Superior Ardor is 75%, so that's 68.25 with no amp, Devotion enhancements or feats.
With Maximize, Devo II and 55% healing amp that would be 253.89 max, so I'm failing to see how a low amp, no feat character is breaking 200.

[Ungood]

CSW is 3d8+15, max of 39.

39 Max from a CSW pot? Wow, that's... Lame.

Well back to the OP, Yah. we need better for between that and SF pots.

[sephiroth1084]

39 Max from a CSW pot? Wow, that's... Lame.

Well back to the OP, Yah. we need better for between that and SF pots.
No, that's from a ranger or paladin casting it. I think a CSW pot without healing amp tops out at 29 actually, as I believe they are CL 5.

And way to gloss over the point of my posts in response to yours.

Anyway, yes, there needs to be something that exists between CSW pots and Lesser Silver Flame pots, which, themselves, should be dropped down to 150 SF favor.

[TheDjinnFor]

A few ideas.

Get some AC (it's okay to pull out a shield if you're surrounded - Armor Boost and Improved Uncanny Dodge can be useful)
Get some DR (the barbarian DR boost is pretty effective in the early-mid levels).
Get some healing amp
Don't fight too much stuff at once
Use the terrain to your advantage. Use a doorway, run back around a corner. Fight with your back to a wall.
Paralyzing weapons
Constantly move. Keep one big ogre between you and the other ogres so they can't hit you (even easier if the one big ogre is paralyzed)
Displacement clickables from the Shroud if you're a TR.
Run away if necessary. Barbarians are naturally fast, and they have sprint boost.



Attaining relevant AC past level 12 is a lost cause except on dedicated AC builds. The two extra DR available from barbarian enhancements also does not contribute much at all to survivability, although it isn't bad.

Heal amp is good, but not easy to find for general questing. Finger Necklace, Levik's Bracers, and Dragontouched Armor all require multiple runs of high level quests.

Fighting multiple things at once simply is not an option in some cases. I'm thinking Genesis Point or Sins of Attrition in particular here.

Paralyzers only work for so long, after which monsters are easily capable of making saves against it. In addition, they aren't easy to craft, which means you have to rely on the loot gods mostly, and often it is faster and more safe to use a powerful DPS weapon like a Lit 2 to take them down.

Moving lowers your damage output, meaning it gives the enemy more time to hit you. It is not always an option against many enemy types.

Running away doesn't solve the problem, as you haven't yet killed the enemy. Running away just delays the inevitable.

[MRMechMan]

I've been having connection problems so have been playing a bit of NWN, and definitely enjoy how melee are quite powerful and viable...AC actually matters, self healing is fine on my shiney new assassin/monk...if anything melee feel more powerful than casters and AC is worth building for...100% opposite of DDO and quite refreshing.

They should add heal kits to ddo...real heal kits. Make a heal check, heal d20+modifier.

Heal whatever you roll. Or whatever you roll/2. Something.

Endgame could probably get like 23rank+15item+4gh+2luck=44 modifier pretty easily...50 pushing it if you wanted. Have heal kits up to +5 or +10 or whever...so someone specced for it heals quite a bit, particularly wis based divines, monks, etc.

d20+(50-60) hp. Make it modifyable by healing amp, but 60-70+ healing X 2-3x healing amp sounds a bit too powerful. Perhaps put a somewhat lengthy cooldown on the ability (10s? 15s?) or make it take an animation like bluff/intim etc does. But if someone is heal skill specced they deserve to be able to have the ability be useful IMO...certainly not the way it is now.

I guess making +heal items scarce/unique like UMD items isn't really an option as they are already out there.

Heal is an absolutely WORTHLESS skill the way they have implemented into DDO. Make it worthwhile and make healers kits decent at the same time. AND help soften the issue of melee not being able to heal well before SF pots.

Sorry barbs, probably can't really use them while raging... "arrrg I'm sooo angry! ah wait, just let me patch that up, there we go, all bet-arrrggg I'm still so angry but now not so low on hp rawr!"

[EllisDee37]

39 Max from a CSW pot? Wow, that's... Lame.

No, that's from a ranger or paladin casting it.Not hardly. My level 15 paladin self-casts cure moderate wounds for just over 80. I look forward to next level when he finally gets CSW, which typically are half again as strong, so around 120. He has no metamagics, though I intend to take empower healing spell at 18. He also uses no clickies; just a crafted superior devotion IV trinket of melee alacrity.

(2 rogue splash delays his first level 4 spell to 16.)

[sephiroth1084]

Not hardly. My level 15 paladin self-casts cure moderate wounds for just over 80. I look forward to next level when he finally gets CSW, which typically are half again as strong, so around 120. He has no metamagics, though I intend to take empower healing spell at 18. He also uses no clickies; just a crafted superior devotion IV trinket of melee alacrity.

(2 rogue splash delays his first level 4 spell to 16.)
Uh, I wasn't making numbers up. That's how the spell works.
Superior Devotion is +50%. 2d8+10 maxes out at 26. Increase that by 50% and you have 39.
That means you probably have some healing amp and possibly a couple ranks in Paladin Devotion in order to get CMW up to 80 points of healing.

As for CSW being 50% more potent, you're moving from 2d8+10 to 3d8+15, which is basically an additional fifty percent on average.

[Jaid314]

Attaining relevant AC past level 12 is a lost cause except on dedicated AC builds.

not true. you might not have enough AC to ignore *every* mob in a dungeon without investing a bit. but getting enough AC to get hit less often by some of the mobs in the dungeon is not hard at all. i've done it with at least a couple of characters that completely dump-statted dex and were not designed to be AC builds at all.

[Uma-Quixote]

I'm on a bit of a time constraint and haven't been through every post on this thread, so apologies if this has already been mentioned.

What about decent regen items?
Ages ago I was drunk and looking to make a second Greensteel item for my Kensai.... Greater Regeneration! that looks cool....off to the altar....

When I woke up, I realised how utterly useless it is...you regen 8 hp's a minute....8.....count them...1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8......rubbish.......my girl is no con build but even she is a whisker shy of 700hp....regening such a paltry amount doesn't really cut it.

So creating the ability to craft/obtain a decent regen item might be an idea...doesn't have to be an incredible quantity, just a bit more than 8 hp a minute, say 1 per second, ...make it the chain end reward for something difficult, make it epic only, make it only usable by blue-bar-less melees, but it would help a bit.

[EllisDee37]

So creating the ability to craft/obtain a decent regen item might be an idea...doesn't have to be an incredible quantity, just a bit more than 8 hp a minute, say 1 per second, ...make it the chain end reward for something difficult, make it epic only, make it only usable by blue-bar-less melees, but it would help a bit.
I think I'd like the idea of that more than the reality. It would be cool (and not particularly overpowered) on a high healing-amp build to get 2 or even 3 hp per second, but I think having a green +# scrolling off of me every second while questing would get irritating.

But again, absolutely do not exclude pallies and rangers from any of the self-healing love. The entire point of them (excepting arcane archers) is to sacrifice dps for self-healing. To give any self-healing to barbs or fighters that isn't also given to pallies and rangers completely misses the point of why you'd play pallies and (tempest) rangers in the first place.

Whatever self-healing barbs and fighters get should be a tradeoff in terms of sacrificing dps, and still not be as powerful as the self-healing of pallies and rangers.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Monstrous humanoids? That's sahuagin, gargoyles, medusa, wildmen and minotaurs. I would think giants would be a better choice with as many ogres and trolls we face. While minotaurs can be annoying, but the rest are either pretty easy or really rare.

Yes, but try to look it from a low-level toon's perspective : You are encountering far, far, far, far far more monstrous humanoids throughout the lower levels than giants and constructs alone !

Of course, Goblinoids would be an even better choice for low-level toons/characters ...

Edit : Ah, and of course Giants. Who decided that Ogres and Trolls were actually "Giants" ???

Because judging from the sheer body shape, they do NOT look like Giants at all ! They much rather look like Goblinoids !

And I think/fear that this is a mistake many Newbies who are unfamiliar with the system can do !

Who dares to think that Giants can be THAT small ???




Heal is an absolutely WORTHLESS skill the way they have implemented into DDO. Make it worthwhile and make healers kits decent at the same time. AND help soften the issue of melee not being able to heal well before SF pots.

That's what I say, too.

The Heal skill is really not very useful. Therefore I just don't put many points into it.

[krackythehoodedone]

Having read a bit of this thread my thoughts are.

Rangers are actually quite effective healers and i often act as an emergency Cleric . Obviously you need to take the Enhancements and Empower Heal and maybe Quicken.

You could try Vampiric Weapons or Lifeshield weapons. I have a pair of Epic Chaosblades that i hardly ever use but you get a reasonable ammount of healing back.

Or maybe a change could be made to regeneration. Atm it is woefully slow and of no use. Speed it up by a factor of ten and upgrade the Epic Greatclub with it and you have a half decent Weapon.

Just as an aside the Demonic Shield on the E Cav and E Braces of Demon Consort. Has anyone actually noticed this effect go off ? I have both and ive still never seen it Proc.

Oh and Epic Hammer of Life has 3 clickies of Mass Heal.

[Krell]

Can melee get some self-healing love before 400 Silver Flame favor?

Any chance DDO will see Cure Critical Potions soon? CSW pots just don't cut it once you hit Giant Hold.

Also, would be nice to see heal amp options on lower level gear. It's painful to wait until Levik's Bracers or Dragontouched for healing amp.

Add heal potions to crafting and increase the player economy. Add major heal pots with prayer beads as an ingredient and let the slaughter of Kobolds begin.

[Ungood]

No, that's from a ranger or paladin casting it. I think a CSW pot without healing amp tops out at 29 actually, as I believe they are CL 5.

And way to gloss over the point of my posts in response to yours.

You wrong me sire, I am not trying to gloss over anything, I reviewed what I had said, and what you responded with, after careful consideration I realized that if I repeated myself it would avail me naught, nor profit you, so I opted to return to the OP, and get back on topic.


Anyway, yes, there needs to be something that exists between CSW pots and Lesser Silver Flame pots, which, themselves, should be dropped down to 150 SF favor.

Something, needs to be done. Agreed. More pots, Store Bought Hams, that item from Sub having multiple charges.

Perhaps even all of the above.

[Carpone]

Having read a bit of this thread my thoughts are.

Rangers are actually quite effective healers and i often act as an emergency Cleric . Obviously you need to take the Enhancements and Empower Heal and maybe Quicken.

You could try Vampiric Weapons or Lifeshield weapons. I have a pair of Epic Chaosblades that i hardly ever use but you get a reasonable ammount of healing back.

Or maybe a change could be made to regeneration. Atm it is woefully slow and of no use. Speed it up by a factor of ten and upgrade the Epic Greatclub with it and you have a half decent Weapon.

Just as an aside the Demonic Shield on the E Cav and E Braces of Demon Consort. Has anyone actually noticed this effect go off ? I have both and ive still never seen it Proc.

Oh and Epic Hammer of Life has 3 clickies of Mass Heal.

Emphasis mine. Self-healing at level 20 is not the issue. Self-healing while leveling up is the focus of the thread.

[sephiroth1084]

I'm on a bit of a time constraint and haven't been through every post on this thread, so apologies if this has already been mentioned.

What about decent regen items?
Ages ago I was drunk and looking to make a second Greensteel item for my Kensai.... Greater Regeneration! that looks cool....off to the altar....

When I woke up, I realised how utterly useless it is...you regen 8 hp's a minute....8.....count them...1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8......rubbish.......my girl is no con build but even she is a whisker shy of 700hp....regening such a paltry amount doesn't really cut it.

So creating the ability to craft/obtain a decent regen item might be an idea...doesn't have to be an incredible quantity, just a bit more than 8 hp a minute, say 1 per second, ...make it the chain end reward for something difficult, make it epic only, make it only usable by blue-bar-less melees, but it would help a bit.
1 HP/second still isn't going to make a real impact. That's 700 seconds, or 11 and a half minutes to heal up to full from 0, or 60 HP a minute. You heal a lot more than that with CSW pots. At 100% healing amp this would start to be useful at 120 HP/min, but then you're probably just benefiting monks and some half-elves (and Hunters of the Dead if there are any), and many monks already have better healing than that between Curse of Healing and things like Vampiric Stonedust Wraps.

Making Vampirism (not Lesser) more prevalent, particularly by introducing an item or two that grants Vampirism to your melee attacks without itself being a weapon would help quite a lot. Melees are typically swinging around 100 times a minute, so that's around 150 damage on average with under 50% healing amp, I think about 200 with over 50%, and about 300/min at 100%.

We could use CCW pots that are purchasable at a higher than standard CL to fill in the gap between CSW pots and Lesser Silver Flame pots, and perhaps more prevalent Tasty Hams.

[Morosy]

I would like to point out to you that Emili never said that their CSW healed for 200+ HP, only that what heals them for 200+ will heal a Full Amped Tank for 400+.

Oh? So what did she mean when she said Ranger's easily heal for over 200 with no metamagics in her post before that one?

[Morosy]

they can cast 200+ cure spells for 12sp out of an 600sp blue bar rather easily. That's 50 cast ... toss on a GS Con OP +6 wis 45HP item and ya recharge just as well.





I kept a eLoB tank alive from a ranger with no meta-magic feats what-so-ever just ardor and a few ap in devotion thru two rains of blades after divine casters died... Go figure ... what hit's my ranger for 200+ well hits a full amp'd tank for 400+ ;)



I'm not sure why but I don't really see how this is. The max CSW with Superior Ardor and Ranger Devotion IV is worth about 83 points on the highest roll. To get that over 200 would take 30% from human, 10%/20%/30% items and a healing amp ship buff. So that covers the 200+ going to yourself, but then you're saying there's actually enough other sources of healing amp besides human enhancements, 10/20/30 items and a ship buff to hit a tank for 400+ (and there is, just not stuff that's going to be on an elob tank, like jidz tetka bonus and HotD bonus).

[Jaid314]

I'm on a bit of a time constraint and haven't been through every post on this thread, so apologies if this has already been mentioned.

What about decent regen items?
Ages ago I was drunk and looking to make a second Greensteel item for my Kensai.... Greater Regeneration! that looks cool....off to the altar....

When I woke up, I realised how utterly useless it is...you regen 8 hp's a minute....8.....count them...1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8......rubbish.......my girl is no con build but even she is a whisker shy of 700hp....regening such a paltry amount doesn't really cut it.

So creating the ability to craft/obtain a decent regen item might be an idea...doesn't have to be an incredible quantity, just a bit more than 8 hp a minute, say 1 per second, ...make it the chain end reward for something difficult, make it epic only, make it only usable by blue-bar-less melees, but it would help a bit.

there are better regen items.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Regrowth is found on a cloak from titan awakes. hardly anyone runs the raid, but it is worth some healing, and you'd be surprised how much those small healing amounts add up as well.

there's also http://ddowiki.com/page/Eat_Jerky which is found on the pouch of jerky, obtained from the DQ raid.

[simo0208]

Get healing amp

Play a half-elf cleric or favored soul diletante

Those are both very easy options.

[Ungood]

Oh? So what did she mean when she said Ranger's easily heal for over 200 with no metamagics in her post before that one?

You are quoting a different post then the one I was addressing, beyond pointing out that mistake on your part I don't see anything further to say, so, lets return to the actual topic.
;)

[Carpone]

Get healing amp
Thanks for actually reading the thread.


Play a half-elf cleric or favored soul diletante
No. They're too ugly.

[Ungood]

Thanks for actually reading the thread.

I feel your pain.

Anyway, yah , Hams, Better Pots, maybe those trinkets from the Sub, all good things to work with, we need more stuff being put out.

[EllisDee37]

1 HP/second still isn't going to make a real impact. That's 700 seconds, or 11 and a half minutes to heal up to full from 0, or 60 HP a minute. You heal a lot more than that with CSW pots. At 100% healing amp this would start to be useful at 120 HP/min, but then you're probably just benefiting monks and some half-elves (and Hunters of the Dead if there are any), and many monks already have better healing than that between Curse of Healing and things like Vampiric Stonedust Wraps.At cap definitely not, but any paladin would do well to go Hunter for leveling. 10% healing amp per tier, ghost touch on all weapons at tier 1 and immunity from level drain at tier 2; that's some quality benefit for a melee while leveling.

You also essentially get 5 free lesser restore (tier 1) or restoration (tier 2) per rest, which is actually useful but not nearly as much as the healing amp and level drain stuff.

[sephiroth1084]

At cap definitely not, but any paladin would do well to go Hunter for leveling. 10% healing amp per tier, ghost touch on all weapons at tier 1 and immunity from level drain at tier 2; that's some quality benefit for a melee while leveling.

You also essentially get 5 free lesser restore (tier 1) or restoration (tier 2) per rest, which is actually useful but not nearly as much as the healing amp and level drain stuff.
While I agree with your analysis, I disagree with the possible conclusion it draws, that one should go HotD in sub-20 content. It should be a bonus, not semi-mandatory for a leveling paladin to have enough healing to get by. This may become less of an issue with the new enhancement system, but I'm not dismissing it, and that still doesn't help barbarians, fighters, rangers, fleshy living wizards, or 2/3 of paladins.

[fodder-cannon]

The Heal skill is really not very useful. Therefore I just don't put many points into it.

I do believe that the Heal skill is for the rest shrine the better your skill the more hp you get back when you rest. If you were to put enough points into the heal ability you should just be able to rest and get a large portion of you hp's back if not all.

NB: It is also used for the use heal kits.
It might be worth looking into self heal kits, kits that you can use on yourself. Kits that don't expend after one use.

[voodoogroves]

I do believe that the Heal skill is for the rest shrine the better your skill the more hp you get back when you rest. If you were to put enough points into the heal ability you should just be able to rest and get a large portion of you hp's back if not all.

NB: It is also used for the use heal kits.
It might be worth looking into self heal kits, kits that you can use on yourself. Kits that don't expend after one use.
Or if they do, they heal like you've used a rest shrine (though you don't get back your clickies).

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Heal Kits are also almost worthless to me, because what I encounter is this :

- char isn't dead
- char is dead

But Heal Kits are made for the in-between.

[voodoogroves]

Heal Kits are also almost worthless to me, because what I encounter is this :

- char isn't dead
- char is dead

But Heal Kits are made for the in-between.

Yeah but I think there are two sort of problem areas here.

(1) In combat healing

Some people are playing classes a rung or two down the melee DPS ladder for self healing and survival capabilities. Others are investing build points, playing splashes in gear, UMD, dilettante, etc. All of those take away from their big DPS numbers.

There's no reason for a full-on DPS toon to just buy some easy to acquire consumable and heal mid-combat as well as those who invested actual constrained character resources to do so ... and to expect that is pretty nuts.

SF favor, farming items, etc. represent a more significant constrained opportunity cost. I like the planar shard idea/direction because it's farmable, but also limiting.

(2) Out of combat healing

Shrines are a great way to pace getting back constrained resources. However, it would be nice if you could pause in between fights and had a few different ways to fill back up that weren't as boring as drinking however many pots. Heal & repair skill / kits would be kinda nice in that it would use something that is generally currently useless. This would allow a soloing melee to pace themselves, even if they invested no actual character capabilities in resiliency, and still progress.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Okay, I do see the point in parts now, but it still didn't convince me much.

I won't dvertise saying "don't give points to healing ! because people actually benefirt from it.

However, I still don't see the Heal Skill as being strong enough or interesting enough for me putting many points into it.

It's like ... being weak. Too weak for my personal opinion.

It's like ... giving you pure banana ice cream instead of pure vanilla ice cream.
But is tasty, indeed, but not very ... original ... or great ...

[Ungood]

Personally I hate the heal skill in this game, it should be static, and gained every level, so when we as players sit at a rest shrine, we recover all our HP and SP at the same time.

The Heal Skill just seemed like a great massive waste of skill points targeted to classes that are typically strapped for Skill Points to start with.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

and gained every level, so when we as players sit at a rest shrine, we recover all our HP and SP at the same time.

That would be a good idea, imho.

It should be auomatically increased each level, or each second level.

Like ... "Heal", "better heal", "inreased heal" etc. each one given automatically out to chars each level (or second level) they level up. And each time adding a plus of health points to be healed while doing a "shrine-rest".

This would mean it would scale with the toon's/char's level, then.

[laurawilder]

Lets give healers the ability to fight as well as a kensei as well. Lets dumb down the game further so that all classes can do everything equal and all great. Lets drop GS items from bunnie butts in korthos wilderness.

Cmon people if you are not healing well enough try a different build, class or team play. Also maybe try different tactics. Asking devs to give out more candy is just lack of effort and waters down the game another notch. I mean really if a pure fighter gets better healing even pots at all levels then why play a pal, ranger or cleric and sacrifice less melee?

Maybe we should have wizards cast heal spells as its not fair a wf wiz can healhimself but not a human, is that your next desire to change?

[EllisDee37]

One of the reasons heal is such a useless skill is because the mechanic (appears to be) scaled for D&D, not DDO. 10 hp is not much of a window when you have 800 hp. Meaning, lose 799, you're fine. Lose 805 you're unconscious. Lose 810 you're dead. What are the odds of actually landing in that teeny tiny window?

What if the unconscious range were a % of your max hp? Say, 10%? Our hypothetical 800 hp melee then would go unconscious at 0 but not die until -80. Then there might be use for the heal skill that isn't guaranteed done better by the scrotty aid clickie in korthos island. heh.

I don't know how this would impact the game; could be a terrible idea for all I know. Just spitballing ways to try and improve a clearly useless (in its current form) game mechanic.

[NaturalHazard]

Lets give healers the ability to fight as well as a kensei as well. Lets dumb down the game further so that all classes can do everything equal and all great. Lets drop GS items from bunnie butts in korthos wilderness.

Cmon people if you are not healing well enough try a different build, class or team play. Also maybe try different tactics. Asking devs to give out more candy is just lack of effort and waters down the game another notch. I mean really if a pure fighter gets better healing even pots at all levels then why play a pal, ranger or cleric and sacrifice less melee?

Maybe we should have wizards cast heal spells as its not fair a wf wiz can healhimself but not a human, is that your next desire to change?

lol a lot of the *healers* i know dont need no kensai in order to complete a quest, blade barrier, implosion, destruction and divine punishment kill much better and faster than most kensai's can.

And non-warforged wizards can heal themselves theres this prestige called pale master............. wizards also get a lot of skill points with the high intelligence it is possible for fleshy archmages to scroll heal with the right gear.

[Thrudh]

While I agree with your analysis, I disagree with the possible conclusion it draws, that one should go HotD in sub-20 content. It should be a bonus, not semi-mandatory for a leveling paladin to have enough healing to get by. This may become less of an issue with the new enhancement system, but I'm not dismissing it, and that still doesn't help barbarians, fighters, rangers, fleshy living wizards, or 2/3 of paladins.

It IS just a bonus. It's not mandatory for a leveling paladin to go HotD "to have enough healing to get by". Paladins have enough healing to get by without taking HotD.

A CHOICE to have some extra heal amp (and other goodies) is to go HotD.

You think all barbarians, fighters, rangers, fleshy living wizards, and the other 2/3 of paladins should get the healing amp from HotD for free?

Aren't some of the people in this thread who always complain that the game is too easy? Weren't you complaining about them nerfing one of the new epic quests?

I hate to say it, but some of you guys need to learn how to play. I took a barbarian from 1-20 not that long ago, and levels 1-16 were no big deal. Of course, I didn't zerg through dungeons like I did with my wizard... If we had no healer, I played smart. I used Stunning Blow, and Improved Trip... I used the terrain to my advantage.

And by 17 I had silver flame favor. And then I could power through anything... But I still didn't use silver flame potions that much...

I'm perfectly fine with them adding CCW potions... Or getting rid of the rolls when using potions and just giving us the max each time. Those are good ideas...

I'm also good with them making it even easier for paladins and rangers to self-heal.

But I'm totally against making it even easier (other than adding CCW potions) for pure barbarians and pure fighters to self-heal. If they want max DPS, then they don't get very good self-healing.

[EllisDee37]

lol a lot of the *healers* i know dont need no kensai in order to complete a quest, blade barrier, implosion, destruction and divine punishment kill much better and faster than most kensai's can.

And non-warforged wizards can heal themselves theres this prestige called pale master............. wizards also get a lot of skill points with the high intelligence it is possible for fleshy archmages to scroll heal with the right gear.

I think the larger point is that if you sacrifice self-healing in order to maximize dps, you shoudn't then complain that you can't self-heal very well.

[Thrudh]

Some people are playing classes a rung or two down the melee DPS ladder for self healing and survival capabilities. Others are investing build points, playing splashes in gear, UMD, dilettante, etc. All of those take away from their big DPS numbers.

There's no reason for a full-on DPS toon to just buy some easy to acquire consumable and heal mid-combat as well as those who invested actual constrained character resources to do so ... and to expect that is pretty nuts.

Exactly. "Pretty nuts" describes it perfectly.

You want self-healing? Build for self-healing.

[Thrudh]

One of the reasons heal is such a useless skill is because the mechanic (appears to be) scaled for D&D, not DDO. 10 hp is not much of a window when you have 800 hp. Meaning, lose 799, you're fine. Lose 805 you're unconscious. Lose 810 you're dead. What are the odds of actually landing in that teeny tiny window?

What if the unconscious range were a % of your max hp? Say, 10%? Our hypothetical 800 hp melee then would go unconscious at 0 but not die until -80. Then there might be use for the heal skill that isn't guaranteed done better by the scrotty aid clickie in korthos island. heh.

I don't know how this would impact the game; could be a terrible idea for all I know. Just spitballing ways to try and improve a clearly useless (in its current form) game mechanic.

That's a very good idea... I like the 10% range for unconscious

[Monkey-Boy]

So does anyone have an issue with this . . .

- Change the randomness of potions so they always heal at the max value.
- Add in CCW pots.
- Sell Kargon's Tasty Hams from a vendor for big "out of battle" heals.
- have the Lesser SF pots available at a lower than 400 SF favor point.

I don't think any of that would break anything.

[licho]

One of the reasons heal is such a useless skill is because the mechanic (appears to be) scaled for D&D, not DDO. 10 hp is not much of a window when you have 800 hp. Meaning, lose 799, you're fine. Lose 805 you're unconscious. Lose 810 you're dead. What are the odds of actually landing in that teeny tiny window?

What if the unconscious range were a % of your max hp? Say, 10%? Our hypothetical 800 hp melee then would go unconscious at 0 but not die until -80. Then there might be use for the heal skill that isn't guaranteed done better by the scrotty aid clickie in korthos island. heh.

I don't know how this would impact the game; could be a terrible idea for all I know. Just spitballing ways to try and improve a clearly useless (in its current form) game mechanic.

Problem i see (srry):
If we pick 10% it may land at 80hp, now imagine someone is soloing with this 800hp barb, and then lands at -79... thats 79 ticks to wait. Somehow screw.
However i see the spot for:
Diehard - giving something like +1hp of margin per level and 2hp/tick regeneration - just to make diehard somehow useful.

And as for heal/repair skill i just like to see it working as cure mid fight, so 1d20+skill hp per trie.


So does anyone have an issue with this . . .
- Add in CCW pots.
- Sell Kargon's Tasty Hams from a vendor for big "out of battle" heals.
- have the Lesser SF pots available at a lower than 400 SF favor point.
I don't think any of that would break anything.

This are some safe pick, nothing of this is more broken than SF pots.

[Monkey-Boy]

Problem i see (srry):
If we pick 10% it may land at 80hp, now imagine someone is soloing with this 800hp barb, and then lands at -79... thats 79 ticks to wait. .

it's better than dying.

I like this "dead at -10%" idea but it's strong, should it require maybe the Diehard feat?

[Thrudh]

So does anyone have an issue with this . . .

- Change the randomness of potions so they always heal at the max value.
- Add in CCW pots.
- Sell Kargon's Tasty Hams from a vendor for big "out of battle" heals.
- have the Lesser SF pots available at a lower than 400 SF favor point.

I don't think any of that would break anything.

I'm okay with all those... Except maybe for the SF pots... how much do those heal, and do they have the same -10 penalties?

[NaturalHazard]

I think the larger point is that if you sacrifice self-healing in order to maximize dps, you shoudn't then complain that you can't self-heal very well.

what about those who can do very very high dps and can self heal very well? I suppose for those sp is the limmiting factor somewhat.

[Thrudh]

it's better than dying.

I like this "dead at -10%" idea but it's strong, should it require maybe the Diehard feat?

I like the idea of requring the diehard feat. Nice buff for rangers, and fighters can afford the feat if they want it.

[Uma-Quixote]

I chipped in a while ago concerning re-gen items. (which seemed to be pooh-poohed..fair enough).

One of the few benefits of a re-gen item is that it does basically give you the die-hard feat for free.
On those very rare occasions when you do fall into that zero to minus 10 window, you always start re-gening....big, hairy, deal....

but...if the window was zero to 80...hmmmm better.

[Thrudh]

what about those who can do very very high dps and can self heal very well? I suppose for those sp is the limmiting factor somewhat.

Casters are broken. Let's not use them as a design template for melee.

[NaturalHazard]

Casters are broken. Let's not use them as a design template for melee.

well its a quandry I dont want them to be nerfed but I dont like melee feeling like poor step children either. But thats a topic for another thread, I would like them to maybe design content where melee would feel more useful and maybe the short commings of spellcasters might be more exposed.

I liked the more moderate suggestions for improvements to melee self healing that gave balancing benifits for all the melee classes.

[Monkey-Boy]

I'm okay with all those... Except maybe for the SF pots... how much do those heal, and do they have the same -10 penalties?

They heal for 100 base, have the -10 Stats but no movement penalty.

[Monkey-Boy]

well its a quandry I dont want them to be nerfed but I dont like melee feeling like poor step children either. But thats a topic for another thread, I would like them to maybe design content where melee would feel more useful and maybe the short commings of spellcasters might be more exposed.

I liked the more moderate suggestions for improvements to melee self healing that gave balancing benifits for all the melee classes.

You don't fix a broken system by doubling-down on what's broken.

[Thrudh]

So does anyone have an issue with this . . .

- Change the randomness of potions so they always heal at the max value.
- Add in CCW pots.
- Sell Kargon's Tasty Hams from a vendor for big "out of battle" heals.
- have the Lesser SF pots available at a lower than 400 SF favor point.

I don't think any of that would break anything.

Also though, if we add these in, we need to give paladins and rangers something to make their self-healing spells more powerful as well. Maybe super cheap devotion enhancements in the new enhancement trees.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

That's a very good idea... I like the 10% range for unconscious

There's games out there which do it : Use a percentage rather than a hard-wired number ...

[Monkey-Boy]

Also though, if we add these in, we need to give paladins and rangers something to make their self-healing spells more powerful as well. Maybe super cheap devotion enhancements in the new enhancement trees.

Cheap Devotion lines would be nice, but really NOTHING more is needed.

Ranger splashes very synergisticly with rogue so getting Heal-scroll UMD should also happen, pallies can get this as well since they should be putting points in CHR. Between blue-bar and scrolls Ranger and Pally are fine, you lose arguably NOTHING building for self-healing on both these classes other than a meta-magic feat.

Rangers and pallies both need love, hopefully we'll see in in the ENH pass, but not regarding self-healing.

[EllisDee37]

Agreed.

Pallies are so enhancement-starved (and feat-starved, and stat-starved, and skill-starved; gah!) that I wouldn't hate seeing their devotion line go to 1 point per tier instead of 1/2/3/4, but that's not particularly fair to rangers. Rangers have precious little to spend AP on, though, so it probably wouldn't matter if you made their devotion line completely free. heh.

22 AP on devotion and human healing amp is fine on a ranger but quite rough on a paladin. There is no equivalence between them. (Says the guy with a self-healing melee of both flavors.)

[Emili]

I'm not sure why but I don't really see how this is. The max CSW with Superior Ardor and Ranger Devotion IV is worth about 83 points on the highest roll. To get that over 200 would take 30% from human, 10%/20%/30% items and a healing amp ship buff. So that covers the 200+ going to yourself, but then you're saying there's actually enough other sources of healing amp besides human enhancements, 10/20/30 items and a ship buff to hit a tank for 400+ (and there is, just not stuff that's going to be on an elob tank, like jidz tetka bonus and HotD bonus).
Ya, exageration on my part... Ranger does do 200 per but may have been an off-tank at the time surprised me as did more. All the same it was adequate to hold up a tank... Are some fella's on khyber with multi-pl just tend blow my mind as how healable they are.



Lets give healers the ability to fight as well as a kensei as well. Lets dumb down the game further so that all classes can do everything equal and all great. Lets drop GS items from bunnie butts in korthos wilderness.

Cmon people if you are not healing well enough try a different build, class or team play. Also maybe try different tactics. Asking devs to give out more candy is just lack of effort and waters down the game another notch. I mean really if a pure fighter gets better healing even pots at all levels then why play a pal, ranger or cleric and sacrifice less melee?

Maybe we should have wizards cast heal spells as its not fair a wf wiz can healhimself but not a human, is that your next desire to change?

In high circles you'd be surprised ... mind or not and moreso skill an class build/mix, but when people like Nick repeatedly say things like Ranger and Pally DPS suck sooo badly - he hated those lives - while he be clicking (on a melee FvS) zurge clearing up a dungeon quicker with an eSoS than most kensei or barbs ... you have to wonder where balance really went.

btw... many high-end fleshy PM's are nearly indestructable with the gearing in game...


Agreed.

Pallies are so enhancement-starved (and feat-starved, and stat-starved, and skill-starved; gah!) that I wouldn't hate seeing their devotion line go to 1 point per tier instead of 1/2/3/4, but that's not particularly fair to rangers. Rangers have precious little to spend AP on, though, so it probably wouldn't matter if you made their devotion line completely free. heh.

22 AP on devotion and human healing amp is fine on a ranger but quite rough on a paladin. There is no equivalence between them. (Says the guy with a self-healing melee of both flavors.)

Both classes could stand for cheaper devotion lines... even the ranger could pull off some extra perks, I only have 1ap in sprint boost for instance and a few other places where be nice to grab something. Scope of rangers and Pally's however - as I said earlier in thread - is it is so bleedin hard getting thier "to-hit" up to par.

[Ungood]

Lets see. Suggested so far:


CCW Pots, sold in Vendors and Guild Vendors. Sounds good.
Hams and Tasty Hams, sold in Vendors (maybe select vendors)
Boosting Up Regen Items to Proc Faster (Say around 1/3sec for normal, 1/sec for Greater)
Full HP/SP restore at Shrines.
Token Items from the Sub that cast Heal (Multi-Charge Use: 10 Tokens Per Charge)
Lower the Favor required for the First Tier of SF Pot from 400 to say 200

All of these have been great ideas in this thread. It is evident that something is needed, and all these would help a vast diversity of classes and build.

I would like to see the following added in as well:


Lower Level Heal Amp Items, and Heal Amp Pots (Like Ardor for the recipient of a curative spell)

Honestly, with all the nerfs and changes, people still play rangers and pallies, and lets be real here, that is not going to change because they put an extra curative pot in the vendors.

[Carpone]

Lower the Favor required for the First Tier of SF Pot from 400 to say 200

Not a fan, at least in terms of addressing self-healing while leveling. Silver Flame potions are gear intensive. 99% of characters don't have 11+ in all stats while leveling. Typically that only happens at level 20, and only after a lot of planning and epic gear slotting.

[Ungood]

Not a fan, at least in terms of addressing self-healing while leveling. Silver Flame potions are gear intensive. 99% of characters don't have 11+ in all stats while leveling. Typically that only happens at level 20, and only after a lot of planning and epic gear slotting.

noted.. they should fix the weaker SF pot to say -5 in all stats as opposed to -10

[EllisDee37]

Disagree on the silver flame pots. They should remain as-is, with no lower tier version.

Again, silver flame pots allow a melee who sacrificed everything in the name of max dps to self-heal effectively. That should not be possible.

[sephiroth1084]

Not a fan, at least in terms of addressing self-healing while leveling. Silver Flame potions are gear intensive. 99% of characters don't have 11+ in all stats while leveling. Typically that only happens at level 20, and only after a lot of planning and epic gear slotting.
That isn't an argument to not lower the favor needed for the Lesser SF pots. Players can change gear, get tomes, or build their characters to make use of the the things earlier in the game. Those who want to use them can do that.

Disagree on the silver flame pots. They should remain as-is, with no lower tier version.

Again, silver flame pots allow a melee who sacrificed everything in the name of max dps to self-heal effectively. That should not be possible.
You can't use them very effectively if you haven't invested a bit in your dump stats. This is even more true early in the game before characters have access to exceptional stats and +3 tomes. It's always seemed rather unreasonable to me that Lesser SF pots and regular SF pots come at 400 favor, which is almost every SF quest on elite. Yes, the lesser pots have some purpose even when you have access to the regular version, but not much. Certainly not enough to make them worth 400 favor.

[redspecter23]

Disagree on the silver flame pots. They should remain as-is, with no lower tier version.

Again, silver flame pots allow a melee who sacrificed everything in the name of max dps to self-heal effectively. That should not be possible.

Whether or not that "should" be possible is quite subjective. In a MMO variation of pnp where WF casters can self heal while dealing max dps (more than any melee) and sorcerers can UMD heal scrolls (which by the same logic should also not be possible), why is melee so different that they aren't allowed power in an area where they don't typically have it in pnp versions? Basically, if casters can have amazing dps and self healing, what is the logical reason why melee can't have great self healing that also comes with a penalty that casters don't have to deal with when they use their self healing?

[EllisDee37]

Whether or not that "should" be possible is quite subjective. In a MMO variation of pnp where WF casters can self heal while dealing max dps (more than any melee) and sorcerers can UMD heal scrolls (which by the same logic should also not be possible), why is melee so different that they aren't allowed power in an area where they don't typically have it in pnp versions? Basically, if casters can have amazing dps and self healing, what is the logical reason why melee can't have great self healing that also comes with a penalty that casters don't have to deal with when they use their self healing?Again, I agree that casters are OP compared to melee.

Again, there are whole melee classes devoted to the concept of sacrificing some dps for self-healing potential. To give self-healing options to the max-dps build goes counter to the entire concept of what making a build in DDO should be all about: tradeoffs.

[sephiroth1084]

Again, I agree that casters are OP compared to melee.

Again, there are whole melee classes devoted to the concept of sacrificing some dps for self-healing potential. To give self-healing options to the max-dps build goes counter to the entire concept of what making a build in DDO should be all about: tradeoffs.
Except that with DDO's focus on DPS and relative downplay of a moderate amount of survivability in most content (particularly since moderate to poor melee DPS + self-healing is rarely sufficient for soloing tough quests) means that the sacrifice doesn't pay off.

Honestly, I'd like to see better consumable healing options made available and for the self-healers (paladins and rangers) to have their abilities improved a bit, so that they are still ahead of the barbarians chugging pots, or at least those pots without big penalties, without having to sacrifice DPS so heavily.

[DrakHar]

Would love to see CCW pots that can be bought for plat as well as Heal Elixirs that have the same drop rate as Greater/Major Mnemonic Pots.

Would also love to see lower end items with 5-10% Healing Amp or so on them, as of right now there just aren't any. Any items OUTSIDE of the raid mentality would be nice.

Nicked Large Shield
+2 Enhancement
+1 Resistance Saving Throws
+5% Healing Amp

Congratulations! I just bought the Sharn Syndicate adventure pack! :D

Bracers of the Claw
+Vulkoor's Might
+2 CON
+Moderate Fortification
+10% Healing Amp

Yay, now I would wear the regular version of these!

Nice idea, but the healing amp goes on the gloves of the claw, not the bracers. But I wear the claw set often anyhow... wit hthe 10% I'd not take em off except to fight incorporeal stuff until epic :D

[EllisDee37]

Honestly, I'd like to see better consumable healing options made available and for the self-healers (paladins and rangers) to have their abilities improved a bit, so that they are still ahead of the barbarians chugging pots, or at least those pots without big penalties, without having to sacrifice DPS so heavily.As it stands right now, pallies and rangers can achieve very good self-healing, not moderate.

[Jaid314]

Whether or not that "should" be possible is quite subjective. In a MMO variation of pnp where WF casters can self heal while dealing max dps (more than any melee) and sorcerers can UMD heal scrolls (which by the same logic should also not be possible), why is melee so different that they aren't allowed power in an area where they don't typically have it in pnp versions? Basically, if casters can have amazing dps and self healing, what is the logical reason why melee can't have great self healing that also comes with a penalty that casters don't have to deal with when they use their self healing?

funny story, pure DPS melees *do* have an option for self-healing roughly equivalent to that of at least fleshy sorcerers, which provides a benefit which it's hard for casters to get typically.

it's called splashing levels of rogue (or bard, or artificer) and getting full ranks in UMD. hurts for a caster like hell, and 9 times out of 10 provides significant benefits for a melee in addition to the ranks in UMD (like adding some sneak attack damage and evasion). in some cases, it may even *improve* DPS to do so. and it provides access to most of the same buffs and such that casters get.

if fleshy sorcerers are so far beyond your method of healing as to be incomprehensible, you're doing something wrong. you should be able to get 12 more ranks in UMD than a typical sorcerer, which makes it ridiculous that you'd be throwing a fit over this supposed advantage that they get. that fleshy sorcerer with effective healing made build choices that lead to it. they made use of some synergy with their class, for sure, but as i pointed out, it's not like 2 rogue levels is bad news for your fighter (or even your barbarian).

[Thrudh]

noted.. they should fix the weaker SF pot to say -5 in all stats as opposed to -10

Absolutely not.

Even the lesser silver flame potions are way too powerful.

Just play better instead of asking for 100 hp heal pots.

[Thrudh]

Whether or not that "should" be possible is quite subjective. In a MMO variation of pnp where WF casters can self heal while dealing max dps (more than any melee) and sorcerers can UMD heal scrolls (which by the same logic should also not be possible), why is melee so different that they aren't allowed power in an area where they don't typically have it in pnp versions? Basically, if casters can have amazing dps and self healing, what is the logical reason why melee can't have great self healing that also comes with a penalty that casters don't have to deal with when they use their self healing?

(1) Casters are broken. Breaking melee is not a good solution
(2) There are no ranger and paladin equivalent in the casters.

What are you people prepared to give rangers and paladins if you give easy free self-healing to barbs and fighters?

200 silver flame favor pots that heal 100 each (140 or so with minimal heal amp) that only do -5 to stats is insane... Super EASY free self-healing... Barbarians don't even have to break rage to drink pots.

Seriously, freaking learn how to play your barbarians and fighters, splash something, take a different race, get displacement clickables, use a hireling, JOIN A GROUP.

Don't run into the middle of a room, get your butt kicked, and come here crying for better healing potions....

I'm fine with something that can only be used out-of-combat, but silver flame potions are way too powerful IN-combat already... We don't need to make them easier to get and more powerful.

[BlackSteel]

SF favor is fairly trivial to get now with the BB bonus 'IF' you have the content. And if you happen to skip alot of the necro for whatever reason, you can easily get 400 favor in 3-4 hours on a capped character. Thats hardly any investment at all, and can be done by the time you hit lvl 16 w/o issue.

The only real caveat is needing several packs to achieve this. Tough titty.

I will admit that I never understood why the lesser silver flame pots were the same favor as the big boy ones. I could get behind changing those to 150 favor.

playing a melee isnt that hard. and 24/7 babysitting or emergency healing isnt needed if you play smart.

options:
1) get a party, n play any difficulty
2) grab a hireling and solo normal or hard if you're on a first life toon, very very easy to hit cap w/o doing any difficult content at all. (vale + IQ)
3) if you're a geared melee TR, go solo elite. very few quests require a nannybot with a brain

stepping on the toes of classes or builds that sacrificed to get meaningful selfhealing is simply a selfish endeavor. there ARE other options already, anything further and you might as well remove a multitude of builds, classes, and any melee w/o a rogue icon who pumped UMD

[Thrudh]

Except that with DDO's focus on DPS and relative downplay of a moderate amount of survivability in most content (particularly since moderate to poor melee DPS + self-healing is rarely sufficient for soloing tough quests) means that the sacrifice doesn't pay off.

What do you mean by "most content"? You talking end-game or the entire game?

Because the trade-off is very beneficial in the 1-19 game.

[Thrudh]

stepping on the toes of classes or builds that sacrificed to get meaningful selfhealing is simply a selfish endeavor. there ARE other options already, anything further and you might as well remove a multitude of builds, classes, and any melee w/o a rogue icon who pumped UMD

Exactly... My ranger/wizard disappeared because ALL the good low-level wizard spells are now available in clickable form... There was a time when being able to self-cast haste, rage, displacement, blur, shield, jump, invisibility was useful. Now all those effects can be gotten from long-lasting clickables or even as permanent effects on items.

Absolutely no reason for the iconic D&D fighter/wizard anymore because you can just go max DPS and STILL self-cast all those good low-level wizard buffs.

Now you want to get rid of all the healing dragonmarked, UMD splashed, half-elf dilly, ranger/paladin healing specced characters.

If easy healing is available in potion form, there will be absolutely no reason to build any of those characters... Instead, we'll all just go max DPS, because we'll be able to get that AND all the self-healing we want AND all the spell buffs we want.

You guys don't understand that monty haul destroys a game. One of DDO's great strengths is the character builds... You guys just keep pushing towards max DPS, max DPS, max DPS as being the only choice.

Stop it.

[BlackSteel]

Except that with DDO's focus on DPS and relative downplay of a moderate amount of survivability in most content (particularly since moderate to poor melee DPS + self-healing is rarely sufficient for soloing tough quests) means that the sacrifice doesn't pay off.



just curious

do you doubt a first lifer could solo to cap on primarily normal difficulty on a melee with a hireling? If they avoid a few packs I dont doubt it at all. Avoid amrath & House C, and the occasional other quest.

A TR should know their capabilities and be able to manage higher difficulties.

My first two TR's were both melee lives, and I made it a point and badge of honor to do those w/o purchasing a single consumable. (granted I had other things like DQ bracers, leviks shield, & con OP; along with the quickest method to level up being farming the beejezus out of normal)

[MrWizard]

A few ideas.

Get some AC (it's okay to pull out a shield if you're surrounded - Armor Boost and Improved Uncanny Dodge can be useful)
Get some DR (the barbarian DR boost is pretty effective in the early-mid levels).
Get some healing amp
Don't fight too much stuff at once
Use the terrain to your advantage. Use a doorway, run back around a corner. Fight with your back to a wall.
Paralyzing weapons
Constantly move. Keep one big ogre between you and the other ogres so they can't hit you (even easier if the one big ogre is paralyzed)
Displacement clickables from the Shroud if you're a TR.
Run away if necessary. Barbarians are naturally fast, and they have sprint boost.


would add
-use trip, everyone has it as a free feat.

+1 nice post

[Thrudh]

I did a barbarian TR not too long ago, and I think I used a hireling 4 times... I always took the first 5 when I put a LFM up, even for elite content. Some people would drop if we didn't have a cleric... I didn't care... Never waited for one.

Now, I was twinked out... haste and displacement and nightshield clickables. But I also used Stunning Blow, and Improved Trip to good effect (Yes, I spent points to get a 13 INT, and I wasted a feat on Combat Expertise to get Improved Trip - Those were MY trade-offs).

I had very few problems.

It's not that hard to take a melee through the 1-19 game, even without a healer, or 100 point heal pots that you all think you need.

[Thrudh]

would add
-use trip, everyone has it as a free feat.

+1 nice post

Yeah I should have added both trip and stunning blow to that list.

[Gremmlynn]

would add
-use trip, everyone has it as a free feat.

+1 nice postTrip, while situationally very useful especially when facing self healers, has a 15 second cooldown that keeps it from having more than a minor effect when dealing with multiple opponents.

[redspecter23]

Trip, while situationally very useful especially when facing self healers, has a 15 second cooldown that keeps it from having more than a minor effect when dealing with multiple opponents.

I think the point is, trip is what melees have and they have to use the options they have even if they aren't the greatest options in the world. Do I think trip could have an 8 second cooldown and still be balanced? Sure, but unfortunately it's 15... and only hits one mob. So melee are at a massive CC disadvantage versus casters, but the point is, use the resources you have to mitigate incoming damage even if they aren't as shiny fantastic as the ones casters get.

[Jaid314]

Trip, while situationally very useful especially when facing self healers, has a 15 second cooldown that keeps it from having more than a minor effect when dealing with multiple opponents.

it is one of many tools. you may not be able to trip 10 mobs, but you can (for example) trip one, sap one, and fight a third. if they all wear off too soon, then instead of standing there getting beaten senseless you can fall back for a few seconds while waiting for the next cooldown to end.

[sephiroth1084]

As it stands right now, pallies and rangers can achieve very good self-healing, not moderate.
No, they can't. They can get good self-healing with feat investment, some gear and some AP. I think that would be fine if it weren't for the fact that these characters (particularly paladins) are strapped for feats (and AP, though that may change soon), and that you cannot have both a focus on DPS and self-healing on a paladin, and have a hard time doing that on a ranger. If paladins were top-tier DPS when focused, I would be okay with the trade-off, but they aren't. So they go from 2nd or even 3rd tier DPS to 3rd or 4th tier DPS, in order to pick up healing. That's not a reasonable trade-off, and is even less reasonable when a top-tier DPS can get somewhat comparable healing that drops them to 2nd tier DPS when they are using the healing, but otherwise doesn't affect them.

What do you mean by "most content"? You talking end-game or the entire game?

Because the trade-off is very beneficial in the 1-19 game.
Well, there are a fair number of quests that are tough on hard, and many that are rather difficult on elite, for anyone not dramatically over-geared for the content, and a fair number that are difficult on elite in any case. The relationship these have to the ability to heal yourself comes in around level 12 or 13 when you start getting enough HP, and monsters and traps start hitting hard enough for CSW pots to not really cut it all the time.

The paladin/ranger trade-off isn't too big a deal until you get to content where DPS matters a bit: elite Vale (barely), Amrath, IQ, DD, Cannith. Those are all going to be run before you're lvl 20 probably, and likely on hard or elite, but the monsters you fight have well over 1,000 HP, so dropping DPS is an issue. I don't think it's gamebreakingly so, but it can be rough. That investing in self-healing also requires a fair amount of equipment (without good SP items like Wiz VI-->Archmagi, Greensteel HP, Conc-Opp, or Torc, your SP pool isn't going to see you very far while you're dropping 35-70 SP per cast).

just curious

do you doubt a first lifer could solo to cap on primarily normal difficulty on a melee with a hireling? If they avoid a few packs I dont doubt it at all. Avoid amrath & House C, and the occasional other quest.


A TR should know their capabilities and be able to manage higher difficulties.
No, but then we're getting into a broader discussion regarding what should be reasonably expected of people, and how to balance DPS, healing and other abilities. Personally, I don't solo much, but I do have a self-healing equipped paladin with AC with whom I run tough content, and the poor DPS is noticeable. More importantly, the poor DPS moving from a damage-focused build (TWF, ITWF, GTWF) to a healing-focused build (Maximize, Quicken) is a rather noticeable drop in general efficacy, even while using some pretty good 2-handers. I essentially gave up somewhere around 50% of my DPS to gain self-healing that is somewhat replicable with Silver Flame pots. I think that SF pots have an important place in the game, so I don't begrudge them (too much), but the healing options are scant and not well adjusted.



My first two TR's were both melee lives, and I made it a point and badge of honor to do those w/o purchasing a single consumable. (granted I had other things like DQ bracers, leviks shield, & con OP; along with the quickest method to level up being farming the beejezus out of normal)
And I have admitted elsewhere that I am not a top-tier barbarian player, in large part due to my inability to replicate that feat. I'm sure the gear had a lot to do with it, but I've no doubt that skill played as big a part, or bigger. That said, farming normal, and in particular (I assume) farming normal quests that aren't too punishing doesn't stand as proof to me that the leveling of healing available to non-casters is reasonable at present.

[Emili]

SF favor is fairly trivial to get now with the BB bonus 'IF' you have the content. And if you happen to skip alot of the necro for whatever reason, you can easily get 400 favor in 3-4 hours on a capped character. Thats hardly any investment at all, and can be done by the time you hit lvl 16 w/o issue.

The only real caveat is needing several packs to achieve this. Tough titty.

I will admit that I never understood why the lesser silver flame pots were the same favor as the big boy ones. I could get behind changing those to 150 favor.

playing a melee isnt that hard. and 24/7 babysitting or emergency healing isnt needed if you play smart.

options:
1) get a party, n play any difficulty
2) grab a hireling and solo normal or hard if you're on a first life toon, very very easy to hit cap w/o doing any difficult content at all. (vale + IQ)
3) if you're a geared melee TR, go solo elite. very few quests require a nannybot with a brain

stepping on the toes of classes or builds that sacrificed to get meaningful selfhealing is simply a selfish endeavor. there ARE other options already, anything further and you might as well remove a multitude of builds, classes, and any melee w/o a rogue icon who pumped UMD

The differences between a lesser SF pot and a full SF stand clear... one heals for less but does not kill your dps, defenses and movement as badly while under the penalty time for it's use.

[Gremmlynn]

it is one of many tools. you may not be able to trip 10 mobs, but you can (for example) trip one, sap one, and fight a third. if they all wear off too soon, then instead of standing there getting beaten senseless you can fall back for a few seconds while waiting for the next cooldown to end.Many tools? Your joking right? One of the biggest problems I see with this game for melee play is the miniscule amount of tactical tools that aren't based on gear. More, on demand, tools would go a long way to making melee both more survivable and more interesting to play as long as they keep them situational rather than one size fits all solutions to every fight. Maybe even add in some combinations like sunder + (new)bleed = (new)attack debuff, sunder + trip = hamstring, etc.

[Jaid314]

Many tools? Your joking right? One of the biggest problems I see with this game for melee play is the miniscule amount of tactical tools that aren't based on gear. More, on demand, tools would go a long way to making melee both more survivable and more interesting to play as long as they keep them situational rather than one size fits all solutions to every fight. Maybe even add in some combinations like sunder + (new)bleed = (new)attack debuff, sunder + trip = hamstring, etc.

*shrug* it's a tool for increasing survival. there's nothing wrong with using equipment for the same purpose, not every tool has to be a build choice.

that said, many of the build options available don't get taken or used, for the most part. when was the last time you say someone sap an enemy so they could kill off a different one without dealing with both?

[Mjesko]

Can melee get some self-healing love before 400 Silver Flame favor?

Any chance DDO will see Cure Critical Potions soon? CSW pots just don't cut it once you hit Giant Hold.

Also, would be nice to see heal amp options on lower level gear. It's painful to wait until Levik's Bracers or Dragontouched for healing amp.

I think another option would be a new enhancement line:
- It should be a race enhancement line
- Second Wind can be used 5 times per rest
- Second Wind I restores (Heal skill) x 2 HP or (Repair skill) x 2 HP
- Second Wind II restores (Heal skill) x 3 HP or (Repair skill) x 3 HP
- Second Wind III restores (Heal skill) x 4 HP or (Repair skill) x 4 HP
- The Halfling dragonmark feat increases the Heal skill by (level) points and can be selected only once
- The Human dragonmark feat increases the Repair skill by (level) points and can be selected only once

[Thrudh]

Trip, while situationally very useful especially when facing self healers, has a 15 second cooldown that keeps it from having more than a minor effect when dealing with multiple opponents.

That's why I got Improved Trip... Not only do you get a +4 DC, but the cooldown is only 10 seconds.

And tripping one, and stunning another, even when facing multiple opponents, is very useful... Especially if you're using a choke point.

[Thrudh]

No, but then we're getting into a broader discussion regarding what should be reasonably expected of people, and how to balance DPS, healing and other abilities. Personally, I don't solo much, but I do have a self-healing equipped paladin with AC with whom I run tough content, and the poor DPS is noticeable. More importantly, the poor DPS moving from a damage-focused build (TWF, ITWF, GTWF) to a healing-focused build (Maximize, Quicken) is a rather noticeable drop in general efficacy, even while using some pretty good 2-handers. I essentially gave up somewhere around 50% of my DPS to gain self-healing that is somewhat replicable with Silver Flame pots. I think that SF pots have an important place in the game, so I don't begrudge them (too much), but the healing options are scant and not well adjusted.

So let's get into that discussion. My AC dragonmarked fighter has given up a lot of DPS as well. It is noticable at end-game (although DPS is fine in 1-18 game). What's a better way to balance that?

I don't understand your solution. You think better cure pots will fix this, so we can all just go back to max DPS builds?

I think rangers and paladins should get some love so their self-healing doesn't cost so much in feats and enhancements, and that fighters and barbarians should get LESS in-combat self-healing (but I'm okay with more out-of-combat healing).

[Ungood]

Anyone but me find it painfully humorous to listen to people complain about needing to give up DPS in favor of self sufficiency and then say they don't want to see more healing options added because it would allow them to build a better DPS toon.

Anyway, yah. I agree with Blacksteel.

Makes no sense to have 2 pots at the same favor level, The higher SF pot pretty much invalidates the lesser one.

If they made the lesser one -5 to all stats and at 200 favor, that would make it viable to purchase at lower levels, and then when they went up to 400 favor, the bigger pots become a better choice.

[Monkey-Boy]

Makes no sense to have 2 pots at the same favor level, The higher SF pot pretty much invalidates the lesser one.

Not true, the lesser ones don't inhibit your movement.

[Thrudh]

Anyone but me find it painfully humorous to listen to people complain about needing to give up DPS in favor of self sufficiency and then say they don't want to see more healing options added because it would allow them to build a better DPS toon.

Yeah, this game would be so much better if the only choice to make when building a character was maxing out DPS. :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Oh wait, only one choice means no choice.


If they made the lesser one -5 to all stats and at 200 favor, that would make it viable to purchase at lower levels, and then when they went up to 400 favor, the bigger pots become a better choice.

-5 to stats is nothing for unlimited healing with no slowdown. (the bigger pots slow you down for 30 seconds). With enough healing amp, many people prefer the lesser pots.

Also, the -10 to stats was put in to keep casters from using them. -5 to stats may not be enough deterrant. Let's give ALL characters unlimited no concentration check healing. Hurray!

[NaturalHazard]

maybe *gasp!!!* give paladins and rangers a little more dps? fix the pally enhancements, the casting time/animations, give rangers a little something?

[Ungood]

Not true, the lesser ones don't inhibit your movement.

Having used them both, the only division is in Movement speed, not attack speed, so mid fight or out of combat, their is no difference between the pots, beyond the lesser one being a waste of money and time.

Thus the only time the lesser one would have a use is if you were running away. However, if you carry both of them, you run a risk since the negs stack if you drink one of each and they look the same on the hot bar, you could drop yourself to -20 in all stats, with one minor mishap.

Added, just for point:

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z166/Ungood_Images/DDO/ScreenShot00676.jpg

You will see that I got two applications of the negative side effects from the pots, this quickly crippled my rogue, as he does not have a high enough wisdom to handle a -20 to that stat.

With that in mind, -5 for a lesser pot, even say a -8 just to keep things a little fun (so you can't totally tank a stat and use them), and say at 200 favor, would not a bad thing. I am not clingy to it, but it would be a decent step.

Personally I never understood the lesser pots requiring the same favor and having almost the same negs myself to be honest, like I said, only time they might be worth it, is if I was running away. In and out of combat, the SF healing pots, are still a better option.

[Impaqt]

Effective self healing for non UMD/divine capable classes has always been an issue in DDO.

While I dont necessarily see the harm in letting melees solo tough content via drinking a bunch of healing pots, I assume the dilema lies there somewhere for turbine.

The negative effects of the Silver Flame pots, Combined with the exceeding high favor requirement makes them unattractive and a poor choice for many players. It would make sense if the "smaller" potion was offered at 150 favor and the better one at 400 if turbine insists on the 400 tier for Silver flame. and the Negative effect was reduced or flat out eliminated.

They already stack smaller that regular pots so carrying around hundreds of Silver flame pots is not practical for most players.

This is something I think turbine really needs to address for the upcoming expansion.

[maha0201]

maybe *gasp!!!* give paladins and rangers a little more dps? fix the pally enhancements, the casting time/animations, give rangers a little something?

@pally
Put divine sacrifice on hot bar, put your exulted smites on hot bar, use divine power, use divine might, use zeal not nuff dps ? Roll sorc then.

@ranger
Cast rams might, have good favorite enemy spend some AP on more dmg and to hit vs them. Use many shot here and there to get some nasty burst dps.

Oh yeah 2 feats recommended @ both classes: maximize and quicken. ( preferably human, tho helf could do the job )

[orakio]

@pally
Put divine sacrifice on hot bar, put your exulted smites on hot bar, use divine power, use divine might, use zeal not nuff dps ? Roll sorc then.

@ranger
Cast rams might, have good favorite enemy spend some AP on more dmg and to hit vs them. Use many shot here and there to get some nasty burst dps.

Oh yeah 2 feats recommended @ both classes: maximize and quicken. ( preferably human, tho helf could do the job )

Really... you think that a paladin can do even close to say fighter/barbarian dps on anything but a kotc build against evil outsiders? Even utilizing all of those things it doesn't come close due to hit/str differences and crit profiles on standard attacks. Non-kotc paladin dps is notoriously bad for a reason. The point a lot of people are trying to make is that if you buff fighter/barb healing options to be equivalent to paladin healing then you would also need to adjust paladin dps to fighter/barb levels.

I am not saying that paladins and rangers can't kill things, but outside of a very specific group of enemies with specific builds paladin dps is very bad. Things like an animation/stat requirement fix on divine might and enhancement cost overview would go a long way for the class.

[sephiroth1084]

So let's get into that discussion. My AC dragonmarked fighter has given up a lot of DPS as well. It is noticable at end-game (although DPS is fine in 1-18 game). What's a better way to balance that?

I don't understand your solution. You think better cure pots will fix this, so we can all just go back to max DPS builds?
What is the "a lot of DPS" that you've given up for healing? Was it done for healing, or for AC? What method of healing do you use? UMD? Halfling Dragonmarks? Whatever your point is, it isn't very clear.


I think rangers and paladins should get some love so their self-healing doesn't cost so much in feats and enhancements, and that fighters and barbarians should get LESS in-combat self-healing (but I'm okay with more out-of-combat healing).
And that's largely what I've been saying--that the sacrifice paladins and rangers make needs to be less, that their healing needs to be a bit stronger. I don't expect them to be top tier DPS, but if their healing is worse than using consumables, and if they have to give up a significant amount of DPS in order to get that level of healing, then there is a problem.

@pally
Put divine sacrifice on hot bar, put your exulted smites on hot bar, use divine power, use divine might, use zeal not nuff dps ? Roll sorc then.

@ranger
Cast rams might, have good favorite enemy spend some AP on more dmg and to hit vs them. Use many shot here and there to get some nasty burst dps.

Oh yeah 2 feats recommended @ both classes: maximize and quicken. ( preferably human, tho helf could do the job )
Nice job trolling. Very useful comments here. Move along.

[Jaid314]

And that's largely what I've been saying--that the sacrifice paladins and rangers make needs to be less, that their healing needs to be a bit stronger. I don't expect them to be top tier DPS, but if their healing is worse than using consumables, and if they have to give up a significant amount of DPS in order to get that level of healing, then there is a problem.

not sure what you've done to your ranger, but mine heals considerably better than consumables. i generally am able to hit myself for 70+ HP with no metamagics and an ardor clicky. haven't tested on a paladin, but i bet they'd do better than consumables as well.

unless you're talking about the silver flame potions, which as several have already pointed out are somewhat ridiculous.

personally, i favor a revamp that makes melee more valuable as DPS (including the melee that self-heal) and adding changes that make arcane DPS a little less impressive (ideally, sorcerers would remain a bit more DPS - right now they're higher DPS with basically just the DoTs and SLAs if they build for it - than melees when really burning SP (ie spamming spells like polar ray, black dragon bolt, keeping more than just the 2 dots up by using burning blood, etc, instead of casting 2 spells every 10 seconds and then mixing in whatever dirt-cheap SLA is off timer) like crazy, wizards/FvS/clerics would be a bit below but lack the sustained DPS that sorcerers get from damage SLAs and larger SP bars, and sustainable DPS would be made important).

[Thrudh]

What is the "a lot of DPS" that you've given up for healing? Was it done for healing, or for AC? What method of healing do you use? UMD? Halfling Dragonmarks? Whatever your point is, it isn't very clear.

I probably lost more DPS due to building for AC... but I did spend 4 feats on dragonmarks and maximize, and 6 APs as well.

If we get potions that heal as much as my dragonmarks, I will immediately TR into a half-elf and take 4 toughness feats, or maybe a few +intimidate feats.

Just like every other AC tank out there.

:(

[svinja]

I probably lost more DPS due to building for AC... but I did spend 4 feats on dragonmarks and maximize, and 6 APs as well.

If we get potions that heal as much as my dragonmarks, I will immediately TR into a half-elf and take 4 toughness feats, or maybe a few +intimidate feats.

Just like every other AC tank out there.

:(

Your healing while tanking is probably close to paladin CSW healing (on a paladin who is built for strong CSW, so 2 feats+enhancements+gear). I have a self-healing paladin, and CSW costs nearly 100 SP in CE mode, on my ~650 SP pool (pretty high for a paladin). Of course, I would be significantly ahead when not tanking (but when not tanking, heal scrolls can be used instead).

If there was no combat expertise penalty, I would actually be pretty happy with my paladin's self-healing. But the way it is, even on my epic geared self-healing build paladin, I am not too happy with having used 2 feats on it.

Anyway, I have to say that it is not impossible to get good self-healing in some way on virtually any class except probably a Warforged Barbarian. You just need to make a serious attempt (like Thrudh has done, or myself :D). 11 points in UMD, a cartouche, and 10% HA ship buff, not getting SF favor, not investing anything in healing on a paladin/ranger and expecting to be able to self-heal just by the virtue of having CSW in the spellbook, these are not serious attempts.

It is entirely possible to play without powerful self-healing at any level. Not having it doesn't make you a gimp in any way, it is just very convenient to have. So if you want it, plan for it and do what is necessary to obtain it. :D

[Gremmlynn]

That's why I got Improved Trip... Not only do you get a +4 DC, but the cooldown is only 10 seconds.

And tripping one, and stunning another, even when facing multiple opponents, is very useful... Especially if you're using a choke point.Not generally worth the cost IMO. Good feat for a character that is going to take CE anyway, but poor for characters that aren't.

[QNecron]

Not generally worth the cost IMO. Good feat for a character that is going to take CE anyway, but poor for characters that aren't.

Imp Trip, caster casts while falling over or on the ground then slides 1000ft away from you. Then to add insult to injury they must have 40+ balance as I've seen some pop back up in a matter of 1 to 2 seconds, or just stay standing up (looking at you Arcane Skeletons in the Sands).

:(

So far my best friend has been Stunning Blow + Enhancements + high STR mod + Cursespewing.