Spellsinger Mass Hold SLA - 5 questions

[Shmuel]

I have not been able to play to test anything since the spellsinger changes. I looked a little at forums, but I'm lazy. Can anyone answer any of these questions for me about the mass hold SLA?

1. What level spell is it considered to be (for DC purposes)?
2. Is Heighten effective with it if you are in an arcane destiny or if you are not?
3. Does quicken work to lower its casting time?
4. Does everything that stacks with a normal enchantment spell work with this SLA for its DC?
5. anything else i should be aware of in terms of bugs, features, or etc?

[cru121]

1. 6th.
2. No.
3. Yes.
4. It should.
5. I cannot recall anything being mentioned on the forums.

[slarden]

I have not been able to play to test anything since the spellsinger changes. I looked a little at forums, but I'm lazy. Can anyone answer any of these questions for me about the mass hold SLA?

1. What level spell is it considered to be (for DC purposes)?
2. Is Heighten effective with it if you are in an arcane destiny or if you are not?
3. Does quicken work to lower its casting time?
4. Does everything that stacks with a normal enchantment spell work with this SLA for its DC?
5. anything else i should be aware of in terms of bugs, features, or etc?

In theory mass hold is a 6th level spell. Heighten is an available metamagic interestingly enough, but I am not sure if it's bugged and treated as a 9th level spell with heighten or heighten showing up as an available metamagic is bugged.

I also don't know if you splash 5 levels of bard whether Mass Hold is treated as 6th level or a 2nd level spell because that is your max bard level.

Since #s aren't displayed it would take alot of testing to confirm things.

So here are my answers to your questions

1) Uncertain - it would take significant testing with different builds to verify.
2) In theory heighten shouldn't raise the level of the spell because it's already 6. Destiny doesn't matter
3) Quicken does work - I confirmed this
4) I believe so. My DC is 68 which is no-fail against most enemies. My mass hold seems just as effective as my dancing ball which is heightened.
5) This isn't related to mass hold but I found song of capering to be a fairly useless song. Even with a 105 perform it rarely worked against orange name enemies where otto's irresistable dance worked against everything but drow due to not taking any spell pen feats. I originally thought it would save some sp, but it never worked.

[Shmuel]

Thanks for the info!

Kicking around 3 possible build ideas right now and this info helps me in figuring them, since I cant get on for another week.

Take it easy

[Wizza]

Thanks for the info!

Kicking around 3 possible build ideas right now and this info helps me in figuring them, since I cant get on for another week.

Take it easy

Keep in mind that that Hold is on a 20 seconds cooldown IIRC. It's a pretty darn long time, and if you happen to cast it at a wrong time (you know, like when you cast it and mob runs behind you giving the "You are not facing the enemy" message) then you are SOL for another 20 seconds.

[slarden]

Keep in mind that that Hold is on a 20 seconds cooldown IIRC. It's a pretty darn long time, and if you happen to cast it at a wrong time (you know, like when you cast it and mob runs behind you giving the "You are not facing the enemy" message) then you are SOL for another 20 seconds.

My experience playing a bard caster is that the cooldown is not really an issue. You do have to be in the right position when using mass hold but as long as at least one enemy is in front of you it will also work on those behind you. I guess another way of saying it is that the error rate will be extremely low on this with even a tiny amount of experience playing the spell.

I've toggled back and forth a bit between horn of thunder and mass hold for my SLA and I really think Mass Hold is the better choice if you have a high enchantment DC anyhow. If you were going to focus mainly on U21 raiding and HH obviously Horn of Thunder is the better choice.

At the same time you really don't need mass Hold for cc: - the dancing sphere is enough. However, in the right hands Mass Hold should result in more overall damage to enemies from the party than horn of Thunder while giving a really fast situational cc option.