Quest for the developer regarding DC casters in EE content.

[Basura_Grande]

Devs,

In your mind how often should a Finger of Death land for a PM who has the highest DC possible for the level and equipment available? Assuming no prepping like ED or enervation.

In percentage:

-Against a low-fort mob?
-Against an average mob?
-Against a brute like an ogre?

I'm just curious what your thoughts are on this.

[Andoris]

While the question is an interesting one (and I agree that saves are a bit too high atm)... I am curious in another.

Devs,

In your mind what is the percentage of mobs in a quest/raid that should be red or purple named?

It doesn't matter if we can land spells if all the mobs are immune to anything that a PM can do (looking at you DoJ).

[Cordovan]

Devs,

In your mind how often should a Finger of Death land for a PM who has the highest DC possible for the level and equipment available? Assuming no prepping like ED or enervation.

In percentage:

-Against a low-fort mob?
-Against an average mob?
-Against a brute like an ogre?

I'm just curious what your thoughts are on this.

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

[cnynridr2]

Answers a question with a question! Awesome!

[Grailhawk]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

Low save 95%
Avg save 65% (so debuffing by 6 gets you to 95%)
High save 45% (so debuffing by 10 gets you to 95%)

IMO Necromancy should not be the most effective caster school for killing everything in a quest (Evocation should be that IMO), It should be the most effective at killing high priority targets fast, and it should be very effective neutralizing (read making harmless) a target.

Probably going to upset people with that opinion but what ever.

I do agree that when 100% of mobs in a quest/raid are red name that's just silly stupid.

[Andoris]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

Sure, I'll play.

The difference between a fully maxed out, everything including the kitchen sink (except for silly things like Cookies, House D pots, and strapping a bard to your backside) and a reasonable (still multiple PLs, but not completionist/epic completionist and lots of gear, but not everything) is about 2-4 points or better put 10-20% effectiveness.

So that in mind, on EE end-game content something like this makes sense to me:

-Against a low-fort mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=95%

-Against an average mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=75-85%

-Against a brute like an ogre? -- Maxed out caster=50-60% | Reasonable caster=30-40%

This allows debuff's to allow the "Reasonable caster" to hit average mobs with near certainty and Maxed out casters can hit brutes with (a lot) of debuffs. Ideally, this encourages everyone to use other tactics on the brutes (but you can "brute force it" if needed :) ) and gives "Reasonable" casters something to push for with regards to "Average" mobs.

As a Maxed out PM (no silly stuff) is around a 80 Necro DC, your EE end game mobs should be around the following Fort Saves:

-low-fort mob? = 55 or less
-average mob? = 58-62 fort save
-a brute like an ogre? = 66-70 fort save

Also, can we get rid of the silly +6 to spell saves if mobs are at 100% health mechanic? All it does it cause us to throw a un-meta'd AoE first at mobs -- pretty silly and annoying imo.

[Andoris]

Low save 95%
Avg save 65% (so debuffing by 6 gets you to 95%)
High save 45% (so debuffing by 10 gets you to 95%)

IMO Necromancy should not be the most effective caster school for killing everything in a quest (Evocation should be that IMO), It should be the most effective at killing high priority targets fast, and it should be very effective neutralizing (read making harmless) a target.

Probably going to upset people with that opinion but what ever.

I do agree that when 100% of mobs in a quest/raid are red name that's just silly stupid.

Agreed Necro vs Evo. However, for Evocation to be best at killing we would need a bit more damage out of those spells (mob hp is too high and many spells are caster level capped). Even with Sense Weakness twisted in and held mobs, Necro is killing faster than Evocation.

That wasn't always the case btw.. there was good balance in U19, where Hold+Energy Burst > Necro

On your numbers, remember that the OP mentioned a Max DC build. I think your percentages are a bit high for everyone except the handful of us that are fully maxxed on our DC caster. A reasonable build (not completionist, doesn't have the 4th twist slot, and might be missing 1 or 2 pieces of raid gear) will clock in at 2-4 DC lower.

Having them fail over half the time on a "average' mob will be frustrating in the extreme. Putting them at a level where they can fire off a Enervation and then land with a fair amount of reliability is fairer, and gives them something to work for (they can max out and save the need to cast Enervation :) )

[Thar]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

I look at it like this... I build for the highest possible reflex for evasion and still fail. so those casting against me must have the highest dc's. my caster should be able to do the same in whatever school i max dc's in.

granter by max i mean everything and requiring a lot of work for feats, stats, items etc.

[Impaqt]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

Since we're dealing with the old antiquated D20 save system on Spell Saves still, I must say that a person who invests in the absolute max of everything in order to get the highest DC possible should have a 95% Success rate.

If they dont, then the system would be horribly broken for the average player who doesnt come close to maxing everything.

[Grailhawk]

On your numbers, remember that the OP mentioned a Max DC build. I think your percentages are a bit high for everyone except the handful of us that are fully maxxed on our DC caster. A reasonable build (not completionist, doesn't have the 4th twist slot, and might be missing 1 or 2 pieces of raid gear) will clock in at 2-4 DC lower.

I'm ok with this for Necromancy, I do think some other schools should have an easier time letting a wizard work up to necro god hood.

If say Enchantment was the easiest school to get things to land on and Evocation was next on the list with Necro being the hardest to make work, you would have an interesting progression on arcane casters.

Enchantment has a lot of easier to land make the mob suck effects.
Evocation has a lot of raw damage kill the mob effects (I agree a spell pass is need to bring damage up things are out of balance right now).
Necromancy has both killing and making a mob suck effects.

[FestusHood]

If we are talking about upcoming legendary quests? I would say that an absolutely maxed out caster should hit about 90% on low fort mobs without debuffing. Average mobs should probably be around 60%. High fort mobs should be about 20-25% without debuffing.

Similar percentages for all the different schools. For people saying that if the saves are that high than average casters won't be able to do it, i say yes. Isn't that the idea? Or does legendary content on elite now mean "for the average player".

[Kamode_Corebasher]

Sure, I'll play.

The difference between a fully maxed out, everything including the kitchen sink (except for silly things like Cookies, House D pots, and strapping a bard to your backside) and a reasonable (still multiple PLs, but not completionist/epic completionist and lots of gear, but not everything) is about 2-4 points or better put 10-20% effectiveness.

So that in mind, on EE end-game content something like this makes sense to me:

-Against a low-fort mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=95%

-Against an average mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=75-85%

-Against a brute like an ogre? -- Maxed out caster=50-60% | Reasonable caster=30-40%

This allows debuff's to allow the "Reasonable caster" to hit average mobs with near certainty and Maxed out casters can hit brutes with (a lot) of debuffs. Ideally, this encourages everyone to use other tactics on the brutes (but you can "brute force it" if needed :) ) and gives "Reasonable" casters something to push for with regards to "Average" mobs.

As a Maxed out PM (no silly stuff) is around a 80 Necro DC, your EE end game mobs should be around the following Fort Saves:

-low-fort mob? = 55 or less
-average mob? = 58-62 fort save
-a brute like an ogre? = 66-70 fort save

Also, can we get rid of the silly +6 to spell saves if mobs are at 100% health mechanic? All it does it cause us to throw a un-meta'd AoE first at mobs -- pretty silly and annoying imo.

Adding a column for an average caster (approximating a second lifer with decent gear):
-Against a low-fort mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=95% | average caster=95%
-Against an average mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=75-85% | average caster=50-65%
-Against a brute like an ogre? -- Maxed out caster=50-60% | Reasonable caster=30-40% | average caster=10-20%

^ makes Mortal Fear seem reasonable, doesn't it.?

Also, I think the +6 to spell saves if mobs are at 100% health is good.

Also Also, if wanting to add a little balance, mob AI could be improved to have them utilize tactics that could help negate insta-kill game mechanics...is that something you devs are looking at?

[Andoris]

I'm ok with this for Necromancy, I do think some other schools should have an easier time letting a wizard work up to necro god hood.

If say Enchantment was the easiest school to get things to land on and Evocation was next on the list with Necro being the hardest to make work, you would have an interesting progression on arcane casters.

Enchantment has a lot of easier to land make the mob suck effects.
Evocation has a lot of raw damage kill the mob effects (I agree a spell pass is need to bring damage up things are out of balance right now).
Necromancy has both killing and making a mob suck effects.


I really like this approach. If this is the direction the devs would take it would help out players new(er) to DC casting, allowing them to be useful in end game EE's (using Enchantment / Evo) while getting the PLs and gear needed to be amazing with Necro.

Dev's make it so /signed

[Andoris]

Also, I think the +6 to spell saves if mobs are at 100% health is good.



I am curious to your reasoning on this comment. Why is giving mobs +6 to saves at 100% a good thing?

[Marshal_Lannes]

One cannot base DC on a max build necromancer. If you require +7 tomes, completionist, epic litany etc just to get your spells to work then that should be put in the class description. "Enjoy heroic questing, your spells will not work in epic quests unless you are in the top 1% of players"

All DCs should be based on what is attainable by the majority of players in a couple months of play. DCs for melee class instakills, QP for monks and assassinate for rogues should get a hidden bonus to compensate for casters being able to achieve higher DCs. Maybe give those an innate +5 bonus. Instakills need to come back to the game to balance out the massive DPS the power 6 classes are doing.

[Andoris]

One cannot base DC on a max build necromancer. If you require +7 tomes, completionist, epic litany etc just to get your spells to work then that should be put in the class description. "Enjoy heroic questing, your spells will not work in epic quests unless you are in the top 1% of players"

All DCs should be based on what is attainable by the majority of players in a couple months of play. DCs for melee class instakills, QP for monks and assassinate for rogues should get a hidden bonus to compensate for casters being able to achieve higher DCs. Maybe give those an innate +5 bonus. Instakills need to come back to the game to balance out the massive DPS the power 6 classes are doing.

This is in regards to EE End Game (currently 30+ content). To land a insta-kill on a medium to high fort mob should require debuffing and/or max builds.

The difference between a max build and a second life, +4 tome, with non-raid gear is only ~5-6 points of DC (and only 3-4 for non-necro spells, due to synergy between death aura and Epic Diadem).

A second life toon can throw an SLA Enervation and reduce mob saves by and average of 5 points making up the difference between the max DC caster and the Second lifer with no raid gear.

For a second lifer (and really the maxxed out builds too) they should be using other tactics on high-fort save mobs (holds, web, OID, etc); or be prepared for some serious debuffing.

[Blastyswa]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

Assuming a more or less maxed out character on EE difficulty, I would expect the percentages to look something like:

Low Fort Mob: 90-95%
Average Mob: 60-80%
High Fort Mob: 30-40%

Insta-killing is such a powerful ability, doing with one click what takes a typical build several seconds to do, and the ability to do it fairly quickly with multiple kill spells and the AoE ones, that I don't think it should be an incredibly reliable method of killing. For example, in the newer quests when approaching a mass of abishai with circle of death I would expect my spell to kill half or less of them. If one was a champion and I casted enervate on it first, I would expect him to most likely die. Necromancy casters should not, in my view, be a class for pulling red alert aggro and then tapping wail and circle of death for everything around you to die. It should be a class for hitting champs with debuffs+instakills for a high chance of death, or casting AoE to thin out a crowd. Epic Elite should be scaled based on the maxed out DC casters, and Legendary mode when released should be almost as difficult as the current saves are. (Also let it be noted that my DC casters don't suffer extremely themselves when casting in the new content. The saves are quite higher than the usual, but using Shadows Upon You or Enervate+Power Drain can still let a maxed out DC caster cast just fine).

[Atremus]

Sure, I'll play.

The difference between a fully maxed out, everything including the kitchen sink (except for silly things like Cookies, House D pots, and strapping a bard to your backside) and a reasonable (still multiple PLs, but not completionist/epic completionist and lots of gear, but not everything) is about 2-4 points or better put 10-20% effectiveness.

So that in mind, on EE end-game content something like this makes sense to me:

-Against a low-fort mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=95%

-Against an average mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=75-85%

-Against a brute like an ogre? -- Maxed out caster=50-60% | Reasonable caster=30-40%

This allows debuff's to allow the "Reasonable caster" to hit average mobs with near certainty and Maxed out casters can hit brutes with (a lot) of debuffs. Ideally, this encourages everyone to use other tactics on the brutes (but you can "brute force it" if needed :) ) and gives "Reasonable" casters something to push for with regards to "Average" mobs.

As a Maxed out PM (no silly stuff) is around a 80 Necro DC, your EE end game mobs should be around the following Fort Saves:

-low-fort mob? = 55 or less
-average mob? = 58-62 fort save
-a brute like an ogre? = 66-70 fort save

Also, can we get rid of the silly +6 to spell saves if mobs are at 100% health mechanic? All it does it cause us to throw a un-meta'd AoE first at mobs -- pretty silly and annoying imo.

/signed to all of this.

[Kamode_Corebasher]

I am curious to your reasoning on this comment. Why is giving mobs +6 to saves at 100% a good thing?

mobs with a +6 to saves at 100% slows the player of the uber necromancer down just a tad, allowing other party members a chance to play or have a role that helps in some small way. While not a great solution, it does help slow down the super-zerging that DDO has become.

[noinfo]

Low save 95%
Avg save 65% (so debuffing by 6 gets you to 95%)
High save 45% (so debuffing by 10 gets you to 95%)

IMO Necromancy should not be the most effective caster school for killing everything in a quest (Evocation should be that IMO), It should be the most effective at killing high priority targets fast, and it should be very effective neutralizing (read making harmless) a target.

Probably going to upset people with that opinion but what ever.

I do agree that when 100% of mobs in a quest/raid are red name that's just silly stupid.

If necro spells were spamable I would agree but they are not. With current cool downs I expect that I should be able to land a FOD reliably on a TRASH mob.

And I will point out that DPS is the only thing effective vs Named mobs. Really Necro should be the king of trash killing. Not Evo which gets to be king of Boss and Trash at the moment

[noinfo]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

I like to think of this in terms of gear available to the character as well as build.

I think a maxed out character should be able to kill high fort mobs pretty easily.

Necro ones have basically 3 spells to do this FOD even its cooldown is not that fast, wail of the banshee and COD (not counting spells rotated from other areas)

Wail was nerfed to have a substantial cool down, and affect 6 targets over a period of time. COD got a buff to instakill targets so they get 2 saves but can kill 4? I think in a hit. A fully maxed out necro spec should expect to be able to kill most high fort mobs without debuffs, the debuffs should be there for exceptional mobs or if it is NOT your primary area or you are ungeared.

[Atremus]

mobs with a +6 to saves at 100% slows the player of the uber necromancer down just a tad, allowing other party members a chance to play or have a role that helps in some small way. While not a great solution, it does help slow down the super-zerging that DDO has become.

It does not slow down a player, Sunburst, sound burst, 1 tiny spell and then cast FoD/Destruction. It's a horrible mechanic.

Red Named trash - now that slows down a caster. Not that I am advocating for more un-named trash that's immune to everything.

[Grailhawk]

If necro spells were spamable I would agree but they are not. With current cool downs I expect that I should be able to land a FOD reliably on a TRASH mob.

Please quantify reliably?

[noinfo]

I'm ok with this for Necromancy, I do think some other schools should have an easier time letting a wizard work up to necro god hood.

If say Enchantment was the easiest school to get things to land on and Evocation was next on the list with Necro being the hardest to make work, you would have an interesting progression on arcane casters.

Enchantment has a lot of easier to land make the mob suck effects.
Evocation has a lot of raw damage kill the mob effects (I agree a spell pass is need to bring damage up things are out of balance right now).
Necromancy has both killing and making a mob suck effects.

Necro Godhood?

Still possible in heroic, in epic end game not even close I am afraid.

[noinfo]

Please quantify reliably?

Sure, if I am maxed gear with max investment then against a trash mobs my FOD should be landing 95% of times. 1 mob per 8 seconds there, Wail 6 targets over 1 min. And I will point out that these have pretty much 0 effect on Orange named which is an issue and red.

[Grailhawk]

Sure, if I am maxed gear with max investment then against a trash mobs my FOD should be landing 95% of times. 1 mob per 8 seconds there, Wail 6 targets over 1 min. And I will point out that these have pretty much 0 effect on Orange named which is an issue and red.

no prep?

[noinfo]

It does not slow down a player, Sunburst, sound burst, 1 tiny spell and then cast FoD/Destruction. It's a horrible mechanic.

Red Named trash - now that slows down a caster. Not that I am advocating for more un-named trash that's immune to everything.

Inflated saves certainly do slow down a player. Unless chugging pots each costs spell points and they add up. Oranged named are almost as bad. BTW 1 tiny spell will drop the epic ward by 2 not all 6.

[Andoris]

mobs with a +6 to saves at 100% slows the player of the uber necromancer down just a tad, allowing other party members a chance to play or have a role that helps in some small way. While not a great solution, it does help slow down the super-zerging that DDO has become.

Not really.. an un-meta'd DBF hits most of the room and keeps things going (wasted time is fractions of a second).

Even so, with the silly damage coming out of melee's these days I kill faster on my melee than I can on my Pale Master. Even with Finger, Wail, CoD, PK, and PK:Kill, cooldowns make you slower than top end melee builds in the current game.

[noinfo]

no prep?

Why should you primary school need prep when you are completely maxed out? isn't 8 seconds to kill it enough?

Prepping a single target just to be able to land a killing spell if your primary school once every 8 seconds?

Prep should be for secondary schools or for those still gearling/building. If I am running primary necro, I expect that to nail those other mobs with my enchant, I might need despite being max geared to have to use hypno and maybe mind fog, but if I am having to throw debuffs, my melee and warlocks and shiradi will have multiple mobs dead in that time and may incidentally kill the mob I am prepping in the mean time caught in the AOE of doom.

I would be fine with having to debuff orange named to be able to instakill it, yet we cant even do that. They are just immune.

Even with a high chance of a maxed out build landing spells, they will not run the kill count or whatever and that's fine if in addition they are able to provide versatility and utility with CC, however with end game gear remember that many of the things arcanes had been relied upon to provide are not needed anymore either so a lot of that versatility has been proxy nerfed.

[noinfo]

Not really.. an un-meta'd DBF hits most of the room and keeps things going (wasted time is fractions of a second).

Even so, with the silly damage coming out of melee's these days I kill faster on my melee than I can on my Pale Master. Even with Finger, Wail, CoD, PK, and PK:Kill, cooldowns make you slower than top end melee builds in the current game.

And that would be even if they landed all the time, and despite what a lot of people say that just doesn't happen.

[noinfo]

Since we're dealing with the old antiquated D20 save system on Spell Saves still, I must say that a person who invests in the absolute max of everything in order to get the highest DC possible should have a 95% Success rate.

If they dont, then the system would be horribly broken for the average player who doesnt come close to maxing everything.

This

They have already balanced killing power with CD of spells.

[Grailhawk]

Why should you primary school need prep when you are completely maxed out? isn't 8 seconds to kill it enough?

Prepping a single target just to be able to land a killing spell if your primary school once every 8 seconds?

Prep should be for secondary schools or for those still gearling/building. If I am running primary necro, I expect that to nail those other mobs with my enchant, I might need despite being max geared to have to use hypno and maybe mind fog, but if I am having to throw debuffs, my melee and warlocks and shiradi will have multiple mobs dead in that time and may incidentally kill the mob I am prepping in the mean time caught in the AOE of doom.

I would be fine with having to debuff orange named to be able to instakill it, yet we cant even do that. They are just immune.

Even with a high chance of a maxed out build landing spells, they will not run the kill count or whatever and that's fine if in addition they are able to provide versatility and utility with CC, however with end game gear remember that many of the things arcanes had been relied upon to provide are not needed anymore either so a lot of that versatility has been proxy nerfed.

Instakill is by it nature too strong for that kind of success rate in challenging content, doesn't matter if its your primary focus or not. You are wrong on this at a fundamental level.

If you want to talk about that kind of success rate you would need to raise the cooldown timers by a factor of 3 all round at least, or you could reduce the range of all spells to be touch attacks, but given the spells current range, cost, and cooldown theres no way to justify 95% success rate in content that is supposed to be a challenge.

IMO my original post has conservative numbers others have posted more liberal numbers but those are defend-able, yours are a joke and clear sign that the only thing you want to see is wizards be overpowered.

The argument that wizards (or any necro) don't have good boss DPS is not justification for making them overpowered vs trash it is justification for boosting there boss damage.

[noinfo]

Instakill is by it nature too strong for that kind of success rate in challenging content, doesn't matter if its your primary focus or not. You are wrong on this at a fundamental level.

If you want to talk about that kind of success rate you would need to raise the cooldown timers by a factor of 3 all round at least, or you could reduce the range of all spells to be touch attacks, but given the spells current range, cost, and cooldown theres no way to justify 95% success rate in content that is supposed to be a challenge.

IMO my original post has conservative numbers others have posted more liberal numbers but those are defend-able, yours are a joke and clear sign that the only thing you want to see is wizards be overpowered.

The argument that wizards (or any necro) don't have good boss DPS is not justification for making them overpowered vs trash it is justification for boosting there boss damage.

That you disagree does not make it wrong at all.

With that amount of CD my other toons melee and warlock and whatever will have decimated not just that one mob, its that simple. random statements of factor of 3 simply has no justification and within that 8 seconds, the mob is 100% dead and so are many others. You would have some basis of an argument if it affected oranged names but it doesn't.

My argument being a joke and wanting them to be OP has no standing. DC casting is basically dead because of the unfounded fear that necro casters will rule the game. They are very strong in heroic but at end game, I still have one at cap that I don't bother using any more and my main has TR'd. I have over a dozen of end game alts and I would see no threat to any of them if my wiz landed a kill spell every 8 seconds.

I am not sure what sort of character you are playing that can't decimate mobs in that time frame, but the reality is that in the time you are doing your perceived needed debuffs for your main school, others have done you a favour and killed them for you while killing their own. And if its not your main school, then don't even bother trying to debuff because its just a waste of spell points.

Debuffs should be for off schools or those gearing building, until it happens I will just keep playing dps, and that is all we will really continue to see at high end.

[Grailhawk]

DC casting is basically dead because of the unfounded fear that necro casters will rule the game.

DC casting is dead because devs are using red named trash mobs to counter mortal fear. It has very little to do with fear of necro rule.

In content where trash is not red named necro casting is doing fine.

[noinfo]

DC casting is dead because devs are using red named trash mobs to counter mortal fear. It has very little to do with fear of necro rule.

In content where trash is not red named necro casting is doing fine.

No, that was just the last straw in even a raid not being run on EE

DC died long before that

[Basura_Grande]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

Considering how the game is now . . . where I can run into gaggles of mobs on a melee and just cleave/DOD until they all die, I believe this is reasonable

-Against a low-fort mob? 95% - they should only save on a 20
-Against an average mob? 75% - Enervation + finger should get them.
-Against a brute like an ogre?50% - should require eneveration and an Energy drain to reliably kill - this is 100 SP a kill. And their will saves should suck.

What we absolutely should not have under any circumstance are mobs like the renders in EE Demon Assault who have saves 10+ above the highest possible necro DC.

As the current game is now maxed out casters cannot compete with melees for kills even in content when their DCs are no-fail. Raising the saves into the stratosphere doesn't affect melees at all.

[Basura_Grande]

No, that was just the last straw in even a raid not being run on EE

DC died long before that

Wrong. it went dormant when GH came out, got better for a while, but once melees got buffed to the gills it killed it again.

[noinfo]

Wrong. it went dormant when GH came out, got better for a while, but once melees got buffed to the gills it killed it again.

No it got a slight revival, wasn't the buffing of melee, that was the complete end of it, it was the complete uselessness of it in amaranth and even TOEE with the sheer number of mobs and their various immunities on spawn. even before then it had been gradually dying.

I would like to see it come back, but am not holding my breath. The fact that devs have manual stat control now means its possible. but so far nothing I have seen supports me being game to try this.

[Silverleafeon]

Since the developers are very likely count obscure, rare, difficult, and at the expense of extras for the top DC, I strongly oppose anything less than over 100% no fail type success rate for certain DCs.

Of course, the Devs could make some moves towards standardizations, such as the often mentioned by me increasing ED levels to 10 (providing more consistent use of the right side +6 ability scores).

Things such as +2 ghostly, +2 quality, +4 insight, +12 ability are gear intensive (my main is still grinding for this ideal).

Real Money such as DDO store potions should not be taken lightly.

Taking Epic Wisdom in place of Ruin might increase DCs at the expense of having a Raid Red Name finisher spell.

Ect...


The entire thing is wrapped around considering players can choose weak DC spells to cast, but the bonuses to different school vary much too wide and some classes have very poor spell selection choices (Favored Soul for example).

[noinfo]

Since the developers are very likely count obscure, rare, difficult, and at the expense of extras for the top DC, I strongly oppose anything less than 100% success rate for typical DCs.

Of course, the Devs could make some moves towards standardizations, such as the often mentioned by me increasing ED levels to 10 (providing more consistent use of the right side +6 ability scores).

Things such as +2 ghostly, +2 quality, +4 insight, +12 ability are gear intensive (my main is still grinding for this ideal).

Real Money such as DDO store potions should not be taken lightly.

Ect...

And this is part of the overall issue, if the best DC based classes have to completely max out and then debuff, what of those who are not as good class wise? more debuffing or just forget it?

No, casters are gated by CD already. 95% with max for almost everything is fine in primary.

[Grailhawk]

And this is part of the overall issue, if the best DC based classes have to completely max out and then debuff, what of those who are not as good class wise? more debuffing or just forget it?

No, casters are gated by CD already. 95% with max for almost everything is fine in primary.

This is why other schools that are less powerful (aka don't kill instantly) should be easier to land by a good margin, and why DPS raw damage spells need to scale better. Necro casting should be the hardest caster to build.

[Faltout]

Low-fort mob: 95% for maxed caster | 95% for good caster | 70% for average caster
average mob: 85% for maxed caster (95% with simple debuf) | 60% for a good caster (95% with debuffing) | 30% for average caster (can do with debufs, but should focus elsewhere)
brute: 20% for maxed caster (can do with debufs, but brutes are not meant to be instakilled) | 5% for good caster (can achieve something better with debufs) | 5% for average caster (don't even try)

If trash mobs are pushovers, then why do they exist at all? Not to drain your resources right? There are better ways to do that. If you make the trash mobs too weak then to provide challenge you get to apply excessive use of orange and red named.

Also: max DC that requires excessive grind should not be that far ahead of normal DC such that a good caster is 10 DC points less than a maxxed out one and an average caster is 20 points less. Since saves still have the d20 system, you can't balance content with similar characters spreading their DCs out of range.

Brutes should be handled by the CC casters. Target their will save.

[Silverleafeon]

And this is part of the overall issue, if the best DC based classes have to completely max out and then debuff, what of those who are not as good class wise? more debuffing or just forget it?


Hence the HUGE debate Varg encountered with his rather interesting double feat for increase spell crit damage proposal.

There is far too much compromise involved in gaining the highest level of DCs already in a primary school, his proposal which had merit simply gated even more of us in the net.

My Earthquake DCs are in the 60s typically on my main, sure someone might claim 82 DC (saw somewhere awhile), but already the Devs variation for a main toons strong school is getting too wide.

Then take the typical secondary school, losing ED twists -3, weapon -6, schools -3 = already a gap of 60% which is enough to despair.
Its not without reason Finger of Death (wizard favorite) is considered a trap for Druids.

[noinfo]

Low-fort mob: 95% for maxed caster | 95% for good caster | 70% for average caster
average mob: 85% for maxed caster (95% with simple debuf) | 60% for a good caster (95% with debuffing) | 30% for average caster (can do with debufs, but should focus elsewhere)
brute: 20% for maxed caster (can do with debufs, but brutes are not meant to be instakilled) | 5% for good caster (can achieve something better with debufs) | 5% for average caster (don't even try)

If trash mobs are pushovers, then why do they exist at all? Not to drain your resources right? There are better ways to do that. If you make the trash mobs too weak then to provide challenge you get to apply excessive use of orange and red named.

Also: max DC that requires excessive grind should not be that far ahead of normal DC such that a good caster is 10 DC points less than a maxxed out one and an average caster is 20 points less. Since saves still have the d20 system, you can't balance content with similar characters spreading their DCs out of range.

Brutes should be handled by the CC casters. Target their will save.

Trash mobs already drain your resources, every time a wiz casts a spell right? It uses spell points.

Brutes not meaning to be instakilled? ok lets have some mobs that can't be damaged by dps then. I don't think that would go over too well.

If this was on other types it would be along the lines of you can only damage a mob in melee that has been tripped.
or Sundered or some other thing and then becomes immune again.

Brutes should not be easy to kill but a maxed geared character should be killing them 95% of the time. For a spell that uses spell points and has 8 seconds cool down between uses that is pretty fair.


*** And that is not to mention the number of champions that spawn anyway with death ward on them.

[Zakharov]

Not just Necro but all schools of magic, all abilities, all feats, everything that requires a save should encourage targeting opponents weak saves instead of just spamming the same ability on everything all the time. Against EE max level opponents I would put the success rates at:

Highly specialized character, maxed out in one ability/school/etc, max possible past lives & gear:

vs opponents weak save: 95%
vs opponents med save: 50%
vs opponents high save: 5%

Specialized character, optimized for one ability/school/etc, some past lives with good gear:

vs opponents weak save: 70% ish
vs opponents med save: 25% ish
vs opponents high save: 5%

Specialized character, optimized for one ability/school/etc, first life with average gear:

vs opponents weak save: 45% ish
vs opponents med save: 5%
vs opponents high save: 5%


Some people will probably think I'm crazy, but this is suppose to be the hardest content on EE - first lifers should find it almost impossible to succeed and enemies with high saves should actually have very high saves. Your reward for maxing your character should be virtually guaranteed success against weak saves only - med or high saves should never hit 95% on EE. I would actually use this as a rule for all levels of "Elite" but maybe we can have that with "Reaper"?

[Grailhawk]

Trash mobs already drain your resources, every time a wiz casts a spell right? It uses spell points.

Brutes not meaning to be instakilled? ok lets have some mobs that can't be damaged by dps then. I don't think that would go over too well.

If this was on other types it would be along the lines of you can only damage a mob in melee that has been tripped.
or Sundered or some other thing and then becomes immune again.

Brutes should not be easy to kill but a maxed geared character should be killing them 95% of the time. For a spell that uses spell points and has 8 seconds cool down between uses that is pretty fair.


*** And that is not to mention the number of champions that spawn anyway with death ward on them.

This just highlights your logical fail in relations to instant kill effects, if you thing instakill immunity is equivalent to damage immunity you are either letting your personal bias lead you astray or do not understand the nuance of the topic well enough to make meaningful suggestions.

[Faltout]

Trash mobs already drain your resources, every time a wiz casts a spell right? It uses spell points.
Yes it does, and is a valid challenge in a FEW quests, not all.


Brutes not meaning to be instakilled? ok lets have some mobs that can't be damaged by dps then. I don't think that would go over too well.
False comparison. There are so many elements to consider when comparing insta-kill casters to melees/ranged/nukers... Everyone pays an opportunity cost (or should pay a cost, some classes get a free pass), everyone has his weaknesses, everyone has his strengths.


Brutes should not be easy to kill but a maxed geared character should be killing them 95% of the time. For a spell that uses spell points and has 8 seconds cool down between uses that is pretty fair.
No, NO character should be able to kill everything easily. Be them melee,ranged,caster. NO CHARACTER should be able to. No matter what. Otherwise, the game becomes too easy (if all classes can do that) or a class becomes dominant for certain content.

And don't start mentioning the rare champ with a deathward or the even rarer orange/red named monster (which should be rare and not the norm in certain quests). The game is MUCH larger than that.

[SirValentine]

Sure, I'll play.

The difference between a fully maxed out, everything including the kitchen sink (except for silly things like Cookies, House D pots, and strapping a bard to your backside) and a reasonable (still multiple PLs, but not completionist/epic completionist and lots of gear, but not everything) is about 2-4 points or better put 10-20% effectiveness.

So that in mind, on EE end-game content something like this makes sense to me:

-Against a low-fort mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=95%

-Against an average mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=75-85%

-Against a brute like an ogre? -- Maxed out caster=50-60% | Reasonable caster=30-40%

This allows debuff's to allow the "Reasonable caster" to hit average mobs with near certainty and Maxed out casters can hit brutes with (a lot) of debuffs. Ideally, this encourages everyone to use other tactics on the brutes (but you can "brute force it" if needed :) ) and gives "Reasonable" casters something to push for with regards to "Average" mobs.

As a Maxed out PM (no silly stuff) is around a 80 Necro DC, your EE end game mobs should be around the following Fort Saves:

-low-fort mob? = 55 or less
-average mob? = 58-62 fort save
-a brute like an ogre? = 66-70 fort save

Also, can we get rid of the silly +6 to spell saves if mobs are at 100% health mechanic? All it does it cause us to throw a un-meta'd AoE first at mobs -- pretty silly and annoying imo.

+1 & /signed, fully in agreement with Andoris here.

[Torkzed]

I believe that a max-geared necro caster should be successful 90-95% of the time. As long as we have the d20 system, the best DC casters must get to this level so that second best can still be semi-viable in top content. (The argument that the second-tier caster should stick to hard is not the answer...there are plenty of second tier melee that can still contribute to group success in EE. The same opportunity should be there for DC casters.)

Posters with a bias towards melee or ranged dps talk about how a necro caster should not be able to insta-kill everything, but the reality is that a max-geared melee already kills trash faster (on-average) than a max-geared necro caster in the highest EE content these days. And when the melee run into orange and red names or champs with DW, it is just a speed bump. Contrast this with the experience of necro casters, where those same foes are 10-foot walls that must be scaled slowly with significant expenditure of time and resources.

It does not take a lot of intricate analysis to figure out how bad necro casters are compared to melee right now. At the top end, DDO players play what works best, and if you look at the demographics in the high end raids for the last year or two, there can be little debate that DC casters are suboptimal. Heck, even some of the best wizard players in the game play melee now because it is obvious that to do otherwise is to be a second class performer (aside from a few niche uses that wizards might fill in some content).

Yes, wizards dominated in certain eras of the game's history, but they have taken their lumps for several years now. The caster pass cannot come fast enough. Fix DC casting now!

[noinfo]

Yes it does, and is a valid challenge in a FEW quests, not all.


False comparison. There are so many elements to consider when comparing insta-kill casters to melees/ranged/nukers... Everyone pays an opportunity cost (or should pay a cost, some classes get a free pass), everyone has his weaknesses, everyone has his strengths.


No, NO character should be able to kill everything easily. Be them melee,ranged,caster. NO CHARACTER should be able to. No matter what. Otherwise, the game becomes too easy (if all classes can do that) or a class becomes dominant for certain content.

And don't start mentioning the rare champ with a deathward or the even rarer orange/red named monster (which should be rare and not the norm in certain quests). The game is MUCH larger than that.

Rare champ with death ward really? I am starting to wonder at if you play an arcane DC caster.

Sorry seeing double standards here, you clearly say that its too easy if all classes can, so its ok for some but not for others?

and that every class has strengths and weaknesses, what are the strengths of DC casters?

While I am at it how is your DC caster peforming at the moment, what are his/her specialties? Cause I know I am not seeing many non shiradi at the moment.

I find it extremely funny how people react to the innate fear of necro wizards dominating play, how their ability to instakill a fort based mob is going to steam roll ee high end epics, because we all know that those big groups spawning some with DB immune champions (and DB is a very common buff) are going to stand and wait for you to kill them every 8 seconds or try for a few every 60 seconds without you mixing up your spells during that time for other effects.

It is very easy for people to come and express their opinions in here and that is a good thing, but I would love to here of peoples actual experience in DC casting and I am not talking about a 1 or 2 life run through but it being their main roll of their character and experience.

I have had 2 arcane wizards built around max DC from when I first started playing, I have seen wizards going from being buff bots to when they were extremely powerful after epic ward was modified (even then they were not gods like some would have you believe and I had the precious 43 necro I think it was at the time max)

My main had remained a DC caster through the declining years of DC casting in the vain hope that it would return as a strong option, I had hope for a while now he is happy as a warlock who occasionally throws down some DC based spells, that will kill the weak if nothing else.
My other wizard (not a completionist but very well geared) contributes little in high end ee and I did try different specialities.

So by all means share with me the experiences you have that support you continued assertations that DC casting and effective Necro based spells on powerful fort based monsters are OP, and how necro or DC based casters are going to dominate the game if this were to occur.

[noinfo]

This just highlights your logical fail in relations to instant kill effects, if you thing instakill immunity is equivalent to damage immunity you are either letting your personal bias lead you astray or do not understand the nuance of the topic well enough to make meaningful suggestions.

I could go on that you fail to understand how these trash mobs are killed extremely fast at level 28 even ignoring mortal fear, I know to kill those mobs on my melee I do have to worry about position to maximise dps and minimise damage and to ensure I can heal inbetween opportunities.


You keep going on about my personal bias. Quite simply its not there, I have enough other toons to play to worry about it. DC is dead, your proposed changes won't help it, I know you don't want to hear it but its true. As for whether I understand the topic well enough, While I have only one completionist, I have at least one of every class (except now arti which I TR due to it being just too painful) at cap. I tend to rotate through them as I feel like playing them, I have a pretty good idea of how each of them presents.

But please enlighten me on how your end game DC arcane is currently playing and has changed over the years. Are you still playing it? how is it going in Amarath and TOEE? (yes I know people can kill and hold dretches and abashai now)
How do you feel your DC caster is contribuiting to the completion of an EE high end quest? (am not talking about the raid)

These are serious questions and I am not trying to say for a minute that you don't have a DC caster or that anyone else in the thread does not have one or that I have better insight into what they are able to do over anyone else that plays them.
What I would like to see is what people who play them are saying or experiencing as opposed to those who are voicing an opinion without much in the way of experience in those areas.

[noinfo]

I believe that a max-geared necro caster should be successful 90-95% of the time. As long as we have the d20 system, the best DC casters must get to this level so that second best can still be semi-viable in top content. (The argument that the second-tier caster should stick to hard is not the answer...there are plenty of second tier melee that can still contribute to group success in EE. The same opportunity should be there for DC casters.)

Posters with a bias towards melee or ranged dps talk about how a necro caster should not be able to insta-kill everything, but the reality is that a max-geared melee already kills trash faster (on-average) than a max-geared necro caster in the highest EE content these days. And when the melee run into orange and red names or champs with DW, it is just a speed bump. Contrast this with the experience of necro casters, where those same foes are 10-foot walls that must be scaled slowly with significant expenditure of time and resources.

It does not take a lot of intricate analysis to figure out how bad necro casters are compared to melee right now. At the top end, DDO players play what works best, and if you look at the demographics in the high end raids for the last year or two, there can be little debate that DC casters are suboptimal. Heck, even some of the best wizard players in the game play melee now because it is obvious that to do otherwise is to be a second class performer (aside from a few niche uses that wizards might fill in some content).

Yes, wizards dominated in certain eras of the game's history, but they have taken their lumps for several years now. The caster pass cannot come fast enough. Fix DC casting now!

Unfortunately its not even top end raids, its pretty much all top end EE content. I have come across only 1 DC based wizard while running high end EE content, it was an enchanter and the only time I saw and real success was with abashai,

[Kompera_Oberon]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?
When the system itself is broken that becomes an almost meaningless question.

You have a tough balancing act to perform. Saving throw DC, Spell Resistance roll, spell cool down time, debuffing steps available to 'prep' the monster for the DC spell, total mana pool weighed against distance between shrines, etc. Getting it right will not be easy.

The best possible solution will allow a player who has invested in DC spell casting to have a decent success rating, while not relegating whose who do not specialize their characters to completely ignoring all DC spells because they are completely useless. And that means a bit of a departure from the 3.5 system of Spell Resistance and Saving Throw. DDO characters have access to much higher stats and a lot more flexibility via gear, Enhancements, and Epic Destinies than the typical D&D character. This changes things, and the fact of that change forces other changes in order to avoid breaking the 3.5 system.

There is no possibly way, as I see it, to tweak the numbers in the current system of Spells Resistance and Saving Throw DC such that a specialized character does not have an almost 100% chance of success while also providing a non-specialized character a chance above ~15%. On the flip side, if the specialized character has a low chance, say ~50%, then the non-specialized character will have no chance at all. A successful system needs to fall somewhere in between.

[Arlathen]

I am curious to your reasoning on this comment. Why is giving mobs +6 to saves at 100% a good thing?

Because it means your not instantly nuking everything in sight before any other player in the party gets a chance to participate.

I do remember when Necro PMs had it too good, before various changes had to be introduced including the Wail nerf.

[Arlathen]

Devs,

In your mind how often should a Finger of Death land for a PM who has the highest DC possible for the level and equipment available? Assuming no prepping like ED or enervation.

In percentage:

-Against a low-fort mob?
-Against an average mob?
-Against a brute like an ogre?

I'm just curious what your thoughts are on this.

For a first life caster?

- Low-fort mob - 80%
- Average mob - 50%
- Brute mob - 30%

For a reasonably built, some PLs and decently geared caster?

- Low-fort mob - 95%
- Average mob - 65%
- Brute mob - 45%

Maxed out, Geared, Completionist-everything caster?

- Low-fort mob - 95%
- Average mob - 80%
- Brute mob - 60%

However, my answer is based on the fact that caster's shouldn't be one trick ponies - they should be using different spells targeting different saves depending on the mob there facing, not just mindlessly trying to kill everything instantly with the same 3-4 spells.

What's the point of a game where you can walk into in an EE and one-button kill everything? Isn't everyone screaming the game is too easy already?

[Robai]

Sadly the current design of mobs is poor: all mobs die fast since low hp, and the ones that have more hp has DW (or are red/purple named).
This is boring. There is no strategy, I mean there is no point to debuff mobs so that you could instakill them.

It would be interesting to see instakillable mobs having 100K+ hp in this game, especially some trash mobs.
Even CC doesn't really matter, in places where your CC works you don't need it at all since there everything die fast anyway, and in places where you'd like some CC mobs have DW or are red/purple named, or your CC is too low.

[Forzah]

-Against a low-fort mob? 0%
-Against an average mob? 0%
-Against a brute like an ogre? 0%

Remove insta-kills from the game and introduce mechanics that are less cheesy. You're never going to find a balance between classes if you allow certain classes to instantly kill enemies. Attacking mobs together should be worthwhile.

[Faltout]

Rare champ with death ward really? I am starting to wonder at if you play an arcane DC caster.
Yes, the champ is rare, compared to all the other trash present. And yes, my last life was a wizard necro, my current life is a bard spellsinger enchanter. Also have played a rogue mechanic/assassin with champs. I know there are deathwarded champs, I'm saying they are rare.


and that every class has strengths and weaknesses, what are the strengths of DC casters?
the strengths of casters generally are that they are far from the battle (opposite to melees), have AOE targetting (opposite to rangers, shuricannons, etc.), have easily maintained defences (displacement, dodge), can decide which monster is more dangerous and go for it (opposite to melees that discover that by taking serious hits).
The strengths of DC casters compared to nuker DC casters are that DC casting has greater effects that nuking. Nuking can lower mobs' HP a bit or a lot. enchant can render a mob helpless, necro can render the mob dead.


While I am at it how is your DC caster peforming at the moment, what are his/her specialties? Cause I know I am not seeing many non shiradi at the moment.
My necro wizard had a DC of 62 for death spells and 65 for fear (due to draconic). I had some trouble hitting the saves in EE gianthold, but was manageable with debufs. The magister debuf to fort, the enervation SLA, the fear spell that lowered their saves while targeting their will save. Some took more debuffing and Madstone was a nightmare (with all mobs being brutes and some immune to fear), but I felt my caster was performing fine. I did not go for all the mobs. I targeted casters (low fort) mostly and left the brutes for the party to handle.
EE stormhorns was about the same, although saves of gnolls were lower. EE underdark, I was in god mode. spell pen checks were mostly successes and drow would fail the save too often. I compared EE madstone (which I was having trouble with) to EH and I did not like that on EH I was able to kill anything. Overall, fun experience. That's why I decided for my next life to be a DC bard

My enchant spellsigner bard is rocking right now. Saves are again 62 for disco ball and 65 for mass hold SLA. Wail is around... high 40s? My spellsinger trivializes EE Stormhorns (Lines of Supply, Breaking the Ranks, WGU end fight) and can CC anything not undead in EE necro. Of course he understands that caster monsters are very likely to have high will saves. So, he only targets non-casters for crushing despair and mass hold. For casters, I reserve song of capering and siren's song and I lead with that without wasting sp on spells. For constructs and undead I can only use fascinate, so I let the group fight some undead/constructs and I drag the rest out of the way to fascinate. When group is done with the previous fight, they can engage the fascinated mobs. Works well in EE Vol, EE fleshmakers, EE inferno, not so well in EE GoP because in the only difficult fight (spectres), the spectres have will saves higher than 112 + 1d20.

So, that about me, how about you? Do YOU play a DC caster? Or do you wait for them to enter god mode and can solo anything so you can get around to playing them? Because any DC caster with DCs higher than mine (I admit they are not that high, I don't have high tomes, or TF gear, or +12 stat gear, or yugo/store/deneith pots), should be finding that he is very useful in most quests (I despise DoJ as well and think it's terrible design).


I find it extremely funny how people react to the innate fear of necro wizards dominating play, how their ability to instakill a fort based mob is going to steam roll ee high end epics, because we all know that those big groups spawning some with DB immune champions (and DB is a very common buff) are going to stand and wait for you to kill them every 8 seconds or try for a few every 60 seconds without you mixing up your spells during that time for other effects.
Oh, you mean those 8 seconds you will be dancing around kiting them? Or the 60 seconds for that matter? Why, what are the mobs going to do to you in those 8 seconds? Nothing. As for melees, I'm also against them dominating play. I'm all for further nerfs to melees (current nerfs did nothing really) and for serious nerfing to some ranged builds that can kite mobs around, can hit multiple mobs (due to IPS) and can kill them fast.
And I guess we get called "caster-lovers" when we advocate for those nerfs.
I'm also for cleric turn undead to become useful, against turn undead becoming too useful. For builds having non-DPS, non-selfheal, non-mitigation abilities that make for unique play, against every build having DPS, selfheal, mitigation like we have now.


It is very easy for people to come and express their opinions in here and that is a good thing, but I would love to here of peoples actual experience in DC casting and I am not talking about a 1 or 2 life run through but it being their main roll of their character and experience.
So, 1 or 2 life runs not enough? Great, I didn't know my main going for completionist should be a caster full time to actually play a caster. The builds I played and am still playing are not some trash builds that will TR at 20 because things get tough after that. I give them the best I got and will try to beat any challenge. Oh, and each life does not take a week. It takes about 3 or 4 months for me. So, I have been a DC caster for 9 months now.

[slarden]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

At end game I think no-fail spell pen checks should be possible for a first-lifer with maxed out gear, feats, etc.

For DC I think party-friendly things like cc should be much easier to land than death spells which trumps all dps when working. Earthquake is currently much easier to land than enchantment-based cc so there needs to be more ways to boost enchantment DC in the game.

Death spells should only work effectively on weaker enemies and low-fort enemies like casters.

The biggest DC balance issue at end game right now is magister augmentation. This gives builds that have good synergies with augmentation an effective DC boost of 10 (by debuffing enemy saves by 10) which is basically just casters that focus on one school with enough AOE ticks to weaken enemies. This is mostly just evokers + palemaster + conj sorcs that can take advantage of this. The other balance issue is past lifes. Evocation and Conjuration provide up to +3 from past lifes. The third issue is feat requirements. Builds requiring spell penetration will often have to give up DC feats because non-wizard enchanters and necromancers (bard, favored soul, warlock, cleric, etc.) don't have enough feat slots for everything. Wizards don't have this issue due to bonus feats.

The fourth issue is debuff mechanics - solid fog gives an automatic -5 to reflex save while mind fog has a saving throw for -10 so the effectiveness of mind fog depends on how effective enchantment saves are in the first place.

This is the reason my druid can easily get an effective DC in the 90s (100 with solid fog) while my spellsinger is significantly behind despite spellsinger having some of the best DC boosts of any enhacement tree. If my druid drops ice storm and earthquake that is a lot of evocation ticks that have a chance to proc evocation augmentation. If my spellsinger drops mind fog and disco ball that isn't enough ticks to effectively proc enchantment augmentation. Enchanters will have a difficult time to getting to 80 without gimping the build.

So the "what % do you want" question is hard to answer because there is huge disparities in what saves various casters can overcome based largely on the luck of synergies with passive debuffs, past lifes, gear (only wis and int builds have spooky stat bonuses available for example) and also the reality of the # of feats that can be selected for builds requiring spell penetration.

[Faltout]

If my spellsinger drops mind fog and disco ball that isn't enough ticks to effectively proc enchantment augmentation.
Crushing despair. low sp cost, fast casting, wide radius, weaken will effect, -2 saves on failed save.
That said, while my spellsinger could probably achieve higher DCs from those magister debufs, I always run in fatesinger due to more songs and longer song duration (which complements my purpose as a buffer). And Siren's Song.

(Would also be great if the last core of fatesinger actually provided that advertised +2 to spell effective level so we can get some more DCs out of it)

[IronClan]

Instakill is by it nature too strong for that kind of success rate in challenging content, doesn't matter if its your primary focus or not. You are wrong on this at a fundamental level.

If you want to talk about that kind of success rate you would need to raise the cooldown timers by a factor of 3 all round at least, or you could reduce the range of all spells to be touch attacks, but given the spells current range, cost, and cooldown theres no way to justify 95% success rate in content that is supposed to be a challenge.

IMO my original post has conservative numbers others have posted more liberal numbers but those are defend-able, yours are a joke and clear sign that the only thing you want to see is wizards be overpowered.

The argument that wizards (or any necro) don't have good boss DPS is not justification for making them overpowered vs trash it is justification for boosting there boss damage.

You are in every balance discussion making a systematic attempt to level DDO with a bulldozer and make things theoretically mathematically balanced.

You do realize that your vision for DDO would have everything be an endless flat field of sameness right? Choking down a tasteless gruel of balance is not my idea of fun.

You want to level the mountains no matter how high you have to climb to get to the top. Making the climb pointless! Right now an ungeared first life Paladin or Barb or Swash are "easy" straight forward builds that require no intensive gearing effort to be solid contributors... you're saying that the cost of being able to kill something outright (which is burst damage really) should get 3 times longer cool downs than current? Let alone that they are already probably 2 to 4 times lower contribution to a party in the current game?

Lets just use 1 mob in 8 seconds 95% success rate as the example (then every couple rooms you can Wail 6 mobs and CoD 0 to 4 mobs (it's a clunky spell) every other encounters, 3 or 4 times a Quest you can PWK, and if the mobs have bad saves in trivial content where it's not important anyway or your Necro DC is worsened because you cast an Illusion (Diadem effect, if not using a Death Aura for Automatic +2 necro) you might also Illusion some of them to death with PK... How long does a TWF without stacked boosts take to kill 1 7000hp mob? 2 seconds? We know it's less than 1 second if they have all their boosts going (over 8000 dps). so lets just say they lose half there DPS when not facing bruntsmash for the sake of argument. I see repeater builds killing mobs in a couple seconds, THF's getting a kill or two on almost every cleave, even a Vanguard can kill 1 mob inside of 4 or 5 seconds. Is this not ALREADY balanced with the above 95% success rate? We haven't even mentioned the finite pool of SP that none of the other classes have to contend with. A fail equals usually a loss of 50 ish Spell points with heighten.

TWF 2 seconds per trash kill = 4 times more potential to kill than FoD with no heavy investment, easy button no creativity needed in building
THF = probably just as good as TWF when AOE is factored in
SWF probably just as good at TWF when AOE is factored in
S&B 2 times more potential for kills than FoD.

Now obviously we've not factored in the longer cool down area effecting inta kills and obviously that's where your argument path will lay, and obviously 8 seconds per kill is not what a PM is going to average (because of the harder to quantify other insta kills). But as a basic exercise it points out the factors, such as the need for strictly focused "all in" builds, gear, and massive past life investment, and Spell point resource usage, and then the fact that it plain doesn't work in the last couple packs and raids, and it never will work against Orange and Red named mobs... All of these add up...

Your contention that as 95% success FoD at pinacle gearing is "over powered" is complete Forum version of DDO nonesense, it's completely theoretical and completely pulled out of thin air. 3 times longer cool downs? Please mr. cold hard mathematical balance: show us the math you used to de-duce that?

[sirgog]

A character wearing the gear level the content is designed for (i.e. using mostly gear that is sourced from at-level Epic Hard content):

Finger vs. 'Trash' Human Caster: 80% without Heighten or debuffs, 95% with

Finger vs. 'Trash' Brute mob (ogre, etc): 5% without debuffs, readily raised to 50% with a small amount of debuffs and Heighten

Finger vs. mobs that are intended to be legitimately difficult but that aren't orange named: 5% without debuffs, 5% with moderate debuffing, but able to be raised to 50-95% with extensive debuffing (which may not be tactically sound)


A character that outgears the content should be able to dominate it and get these numbers higher.

[AzureDragonas]

For orange names there is 1 issue they must have dw or something like this, from all spells you mentioned there is 1 power word kill which have no save at all.
210 seconds (Wiz), 180 seconds (Sor)

Also you cna find scrolls so any class can cast and if minibosses had no dw it would be even worse when someone with UMD and scroll could kill monster any time

[Ellihor]

to OP: That depends on how fast can you kill mobs without instakill. For example in the current EE they are killed in 3 seconds so instakill should work 95% on low fort and average, high fort should be about 75%

[noinfo]

Yes, the champ is rare, compared to all the other trash present. And yes, my last life was a wizard necro, my current life is a bard spellsinger enchanter. Also have played a rogue mechanic/assassin with champs. I know there are deathwarded champs, I'm saying they are rare.
.

Up to recently my main was a Wizard PM and that was still when U29 came out. and has been primarily since 2007 I also still have a PM not a completionist.

My experience is that those champs are not rare at all.




the strengths of casters generally are that they are far from the battle (opposite to melees), have AOE targetting (opposite to rangers, shuricannons, etc.), have easily maintained defences (displacement, dodge), can decide which monster is more dangerous and go for it (opposite to melees that discover that by taking serious hits).
The strengths of DC casters compared to nuker DC casters are that DC casting has greater effects that nuking. Nuking can lower mobs' HP a bit or a lot. enchant can render a mob helpless, necro can render the mob dead.
.

AOE targeting on a necro? wail is not ranged and COD is 2 saves not particularly useful.
secondary spell abilitys usually need further debuffing again.

easily maintained defences at level 28 of displacement? did you miss the shroud?
Dodge really?

Melee taking hits to work out which mobs hit hard? (the only possible part of this is the champion, the others are not rocket science, and that champion is probably Death blocked anyway
Nukers are usually running in shiradi for procs which involves nerve venom. in some cases that free cc is better than what can be offered by DC casters. enchant at end game is not what you think it is. necro worse.




My necro wizard had a DC of 62 for death spells and 65 for fear (due to draconic). I had some trouble hitting the saves in EE gianthold, but was manageable with debufs. The magister debuf to fort, the enervation SLA, the fear spell that lowered their saves while targeting their will save. Some took more debuffing and Madstone was a nightmare (with all mobs being brutes and some immune to fear), but I felt my caster was performing fine. I did not go for all the mobs. I targeted casters (low fort) mostly and left the brutes for the party to handle.
EE stormhorns was about the same, although saves of gnolls were lower. EE underdark, I was in god mode. spell pen checks were mostly successes and drow would fail the save too often. I compared EE madstone (which I was having trouble with) to EH and I did not like that on EH I was able to kill anything. Overall, fun experience. That's why I decided for my next life to be a DC bard

.

Is that your end game DC? 62 or is that the levelling DC at what level?
Stormhorns about the only thing you have mentioned toward top end EE, in which you did what? kill a few gnolls? I am betting by the time you were in giant hold you were close to being at the mercy of your party, by the time you were in Stormhorns and beyond, well at least you say you were having fun.

If your having to debuff mobs around giant hold they are going to be dead from your team before you finish unless they are extremely weak.




My enchant spellsigner bard is rocking right now. Saves are again 62 for disco ball and 65 for mass hold SLA. Wail is around... high 40s? My spellsinger trivializes EE Stormhorns (Lines of Supply, Breaking the Ranks, WGU end fight) and can CC anything not undead in EE necro. Of course he understands that caster monsters are very likely to have high will saves. So, he only targets non-casters for crushing despair and mass hold. For casters, I reserve song of capering and siren's song and I lead with that without wasting sp on spells. For constructs and undead I can only use fascinate, so I let the group fight some undead/constructs and I drag the rest out of the way to fascinate. When group is done with the previous fight, they can engage the fascinated mobs. Works well in EE Vol, EE fleshmakers, EE inferno, not so well in EE GoP because in the only difficult fight (spectres), the spectres have will saves higher than 112 + 1d20.

.

I am surprised you are landing discos on anything, probably ok vs mobs in those storm horns, though tbh the dcs look a bit low. Let me know how they go on mobs that are not dretches or abashai in Amarath.

You might as well forget that you have wail.

While bard songs are not as op as everyone on forums likes to make people believe, I am not surprised they are working. Not sure there is a lot for you to CC in EE necro that is not undead or construct or caster, but that's ok, the group can deal with them right?






So, that about me, how about you? Do YOU play a DC caster? Or do you wait for them to enter god mode and can solo anything so you can get around to playing them? Because any DC caster with DCs higher than mine (I admit they are not that high, I don't have high tomes, or TF gear, or +12 stat gear, or yugo/store/deneith pots), should be finding that he is very useful in most quests (I despise DoJ as well and think it's terrible design).
.

I think most who build a DC caster with the aim of making them a DC caster will have higher DC that the ones you posted, but then you have not really made any comment on any high level quests (apart from necro on your bard)

here is my experience with mid 70's at the time (I could now make him completely maxed with both the +12 stat item, spooky int bonus and either shadow scale or +4 int armour, pots and whatever else)

Stormhorns CC ok in most places with debuffing, necro borderline
Necro 4 web, sunburst is about it, you can finger some of the non dead trash and some mobs but too few of them, death to undeath is nice but 1 spell and cycle.
Amarath quests and beyond were a joke, the only thing you could do to a reaver is blind it and sleet storm it, multiple debuffs were useless, web is useless they are fire based. Necro will stop nothing except abashai and dretches probably most times.

It is not just the raid its the point of your spells are not going to land vs most mob types.

I am glad you think you are contributing and the groups I run with hardly notice if my spells are not landing or if I have had to resort to second string one. Its pretty obvious you have not done a lot at high end EE




Oh, you mean those 8 seconds you will be dancing around kiting them? Or the 60 seconds for that matter? Why, what are the mobs going to do to you in those 8 seconds? Nothing.
.

You mean when you have to move within range for wail (though lets face it you know its not going to land) then get tagged by that champion that has TS and deathblock? Or as you get caught up in a confined space as your cc didn't hold, or those dozens of mobs in TOEE with fom or champ death wards again that you can pick off one or 2 then get eaten by the rest?



As for melees, I'm also against them dominating play. I'm all for further nerfs to melees (current nerfs did nothing really) and for serious nerfing to some ranged builds that can kite mobs around, can hit multiple mobs (due to IPS) and can kill them fast.
And I guess we get called "caster-lovers" when we advocate for those nerfs.
I'm also for cleric turn undead to become useful, against turn undead becoming too useful. For builds having non-DPS, non-selfheal, non-mitigation abilities that make for unique play, against every build having DPS, selfheal, mitigation like we have now.


So, 1 or 2 life runs not enough? Great, I didn't know my main going for completionist should be a caster full time to actually play a caster. The builds I played and am still playing are not some trash builds that will TR at 20 because things get tough after that. I give them the best I got and will try to beat any challenge. Oh, and each life does not take a week. It takes about 3 or 4 months for me. So, I have been a DC caster for 9 months now.


You were a DC necro caster for 3-4 months, so that would be what? 2 months to 20, then 1-2 months to 28? so maybe a few weeks at most toward actual top end EE, then you repeated the process on a bard. I am not criticizing your play style, but guess what? you haven't played them much at end game, so no, I don't think you do have much of a feel for it as an end game DC caster, and I know there are going to be others that have more of a feel for casters than I do too that may very well disagree with my take on things too, but at least I can see from your post where your disconnect is.

[IronClan]

Lets get objective here, I see a lot of arbitrary percentages thrown around. Grailhawk loves math more than I do so hopefully he'll have some numbers he wants to throw out there.

Assumptions:
7000hp mobs
Melee's doing 3.5 to 5k DPS killing most mobs in 2 seconds or less
lets assume max DC caster with all the bells and whistles in content where mobs only save on a 20
We're not casting PK because the content isn't quite easy enough to land it's double save reliably without it taking away your no fail necro (Diadem, Archmage in Illusion instead of Necro etc.)
Some mobs are missed by AOE or roll a 20

Finger of Death: every 8 seconds 95% chance to kill 7000hp mob divided by 8 secs = 875dps

Wail: every 60 seconds 95% to kill lets call it 5 Mobs on average or 35,000hp equivelent divided by 60 = 583dps

Circle: clunky spell but lets call it 3 kills per cast average (in practice it will be less), 30 second CD = 700dps Really starting to stack up now *cough*

PWK: every 210 seconds (so about 3 or 4 casts per quest) can be used on orange named reliably (and probably the thing you should save it for) if used on trash = 33dps

So um... 2191dps on trash, rubbish on Oranges (except the 2 or 3 you PWK) and Red DPS is trivial to the point of insignificance.

So how often does it need to fail if it's already this poor in no fail content?

[Lycurgus]

For a maxed out caster in their primary school against a mob’s weak save, we should be seeing a 95% success rate without debuffing.

What I’d really like to see is a way to boost off schools to encourage smarter play targeting weak saves. Remove arcane bolt and arcane blast from the AM tree and add a second line of slas to tier 3, with tiers 4 and 5 providing boosts to the dc of a secondary school. Remove the nullmagic line from the magister destiny and add a separate line of slas to tier 3, with tiers 4 and 5 providing boosts to the dc of a tertiary school.

[Marshal_Lannes]

Lets get objective here, I see a lot of arbitrary percentages thrown around. Grailhawk loves math more than I do so hopefully he'll have some numbers he wants to throw out there.

Assumptions:
7000hp mobs
Melee's doing 3.5 to 5k DPS killing most mobs in 2 seconds or less
lets assume max DC caster with all the bells and whistles in content where mobs only save on a 20
We're not casting PK because the content isn't quite easy enough to land it's double save reliably without it taking away your no fail necro (Diadem, Archmage in Illusion instead of Necro etc.)
Some mobs are missed by AOE or roll a 20

Finger of Death: every 8 seconds 95% chance to kill 7000hp mob divided by 8 secs = 875dps

Wail: every 60 seconds 95% to kill lets call it 5 Mobs on average or 35,000hp equivelent divided by 60 = 583dps

Circle: clunky spell but lets call it 3 kills per cast average (in practice it will be less), 30 second CD = 700dps Really starting to stack up now *cough*

PWK: every 210 seconds (so about 3 or 4 casts per quest) can be used on orange named reliably (and probably the thing you should save it for) if used on trash = 33dps

So um... 2191dps on trash, rubbish on Oranges (except the 2 or 3 you PWK) and Red DPS is trivial to the point of insignificance.

So how often does it need to fail if it's already this poor in no fail content?

This. A drop the mike moment for the thread. This mathematically proves how OP melee are even if wizard spells actually worked. Any arguements that 'oh you should have to debuff mobs' is moot. Why should I have debuff mobs? Wizard dps is already subpar without a debuff cost/time. Could you add in DPS calculations with SP cost including debuffs and the time it takes to cast those as well Iron?

[Knobull]

I find this disucssion rather disturbing and diagnostic of the problems we see with server populations these days. All this focus on the edge case of palemasters in EE content. That is a tiny fraction of the game. Why not focus on the game that most of us play? Why not look at the game that new players see? It this kind of focus an implicit statement that the game is not expected to last much longer?

I refer the devs and staff to this question:

Does anybody play wizards anymore?
If so, how does one build an effective non-palemaster, non-epic wizard? One that can actually land spells. I miss classic wiz magic in DDO and was wondering if there is any way to make them work anymore?https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/466541-Does-anybody-play-wizards-anymore

The game should not be based on such extreme cases. I feel as though I am probably urinating into the wind here, but I feel obliged to post this thought regardless.

[Knobull]

So I propose a better question:
How often should conjuration or evocation spells land for a mid-level (13-16), first life non-palemaster pure wizard with no twink gear (first account, first character, non-VIP) with an average sub-optimal newbie build in heroic hard quests?

Proposed answer:
More than 50% would be nice.

This should be your "yardstick", and work from there. Building the current game around the most extreme cases is a pretty bad idea in my opinion and has directly led to many of the problems of the buff-nerf cycle we have been seeing lately.

[Grailhawk]

I'm kind of astonished this needs to be said but the difference between instakills and DPS is in the delivery you must make yourself vulnerable to deliver DPS you can safely deliver an instakill with the press of a button and the mob that you just kill never know you were there. If Melee could oneshot mobs reliably maybe that comparison would make sense but as the game stands right now it does not and hopefully never does.

Caster melee dps differences need to be addressed they are completely out of balance at this stage in the game but you don't do that with instakill effects you do it by scaling spell damage up to where it needs to be.

[Faltout]

snip
You say a lot of things that are irrelevant to the question of the thread. I mentioned examples because you were trying to invalidate our (mine and other posters') proposals for the percentages saying "We don't play DC casters". I play my DC casters in content where they have a 60% success rate. It doesn't matter which content, or at what level. All that matters is I'm having a ~60% success rate without debufs. And I say that with this success rate, my character rocks in this content (means I'm having tons of fun and yes I feel like majorly contributing). When I enter content where my character has 95% success rate (EH madstone), it's pretty boring. When I enter content where I can't do anything, that's frustrating.

So, if saves are extremely high in some quests where they shouldn't be, they should be lowered (that's the point of this thread, right?). If saves are low in some quests where they shouldn't be, they should be raised.

[Silverleafeon]

Level 18 Caster depending upon necro in Vale wilderness must plan carefully to make full use of available shrines.

Level 18 Paladin depending upon blade in Vale wilderness can wander at will.

[Grailhawk]

You say a lot of things that are irrelevant to the question of the thread. I mentioned examples because you were trying to invalidate our (mine and other posters') proposals for the percentages saying "We don't play DC casters". I play my DC casters in content where they have a 60% success rate. It doesn't matter which content, or at what level. All that matters is I'm having a ~60% success rate without debufs. And I say that with this success rate, my character rocks in this content (means I'm having tons of fun and yes I feel like majorly contributing). When I enter content where my character has 95% success rate (EH madstone), it's pretty boring. When I enter content where I can't do anything, that's frustrating.

So, if saves are extremely high in some quests where they shouldn't be, they should be lowered (that's the point of this thread, right?). If saves are low in some quests where they shouldn't be, they should be raised.

This is dead on if you have 95% success rate in all content vs all mobs there is not challenge what so ever.

[Torkzed]

I'm kind of astonished this needs to be said but the difference between instakills and DPS is in the delivery you must make yourself vulnerable to deliver DPS you can safely deliver an instakill with the press of a button and the mob that you just kill never know you were there. If Melee could oneshot mobs reliably maybe that comparison would make sense but as the game stands right now it does not and hopefully never does.



Oh please...the "but..but...melee have to be close and casters dont..." argument is so old.

Modern melee characters (barbarians and paladins) survive quite nicely in the thick of the melee due to the effectiveness of self-healing and PRR. A caster is arguably less survivable than melee because their PRR is lower.When they do take a hit, and it will happen eventually, the DC caster is far more likely to get one-shot.

And even if this wasn't true, it doesn't pertain to the power of ranged dps characters, which is also higher than most DC casters these days. (And with IPS, ranged can affect multiple targets simultaneously quite often in the hands of a good player.)

[Grailhawk]

Oh please...the "but..but...melee have to be close and casters dont..." argument is so old.

Modern melee characters (barbarians and paladins) survive quite nicely in the thick of the melee due to the effectiveness of self-healing and PRR. A caster is arguably less survivable than melee because their PRR is lower.When they do take a hit, and it will happen eventually, the DC caster is far more likely to get one-shot.

And even if this wasn't true, it doesn't pertain to the power of ranged dps characters, which is also higher than most DC casters these days. (And with IPS, ranged can affect multiple targets simultaneously quite often in the hands of a good player.)

If melee could one shot the in challenging content mobs your counter might have merit but since they cant, even then melee would still face more challenge because they have to run into the pack of mobs giving the mob you are bout to oneshots friends a chance to swing at you.

This is not a melee vs caster topic even, this is about challenging content vs trivial content 95% success on all content is not challenging at all in any way. Only a biased power hungry player or a moron cant see that.

[Duskofdead]

Since we're dealing with the old antiquated D20 save system on Spell Saves still, I must say that a person who invests in the absolute max of everything in order to get the highest DC possible should have a 95% Success rate.

If they dont, then the system would be horribly broken for the average player who doesnt come close to maxing everything.

This for sure.

It's far better for max-powergamers to complain the game is too easy than to turn arcane or DC casting into something you can't remotely do without all relevant optimal past life combinations, top-end gear and consumables to be effective. And right now the game feels far too weighted towards the latter for DC casters.

And, while we're basically on the topic... the reflex saves in general, and the number of mobs that have improved evasion, are a bit ridiculous for how many direct damage spells hit a reflex save. Easily two thirds of the spellbook is useless even on heighten and such, quite early in the game. Well before epic content.

[Torkzed]

If melee could one shot the in challenging content mobs your counter might have merit but since they cant, even then melee would still face more challenge because they have to run into the pack of mobs giving the mob you are bout to oneshots friends a chance to swing at you.

For most trash, the melee are going to burn through the mob in a few seconds or less. More or less the same as instant kill.

In the current game, the two main questions for any character are (1) how much DPS can you generate, and (2) how survivable are you in the environment you are in while generating that DPS.

In both parameters, melee beat out necro casters in the current game. Ironclan did a good job of relating instakill to DPS on the offensive side, and I stand by my claim that even being in the middle of the melee, paladins and barbarians are more survivable than a typical necro caster. High quality self-healing through destiny twists and easily obtained PRR work well in concert.



This is not a melee vs caster topic even, this is about challenging content vs trivial content 95% success on all content is not challenging at all in any way. Only a biased power hungry player or a moron cant see that.

It may not be a melee vs caster topic, but the comparison is extremely relevant to a discussion of the "right" answer to the question of how often instakill should land.

If a melee weapon only "hit" the target 60% of the time, I could see a rationale for spells scoring a "hit" at a similar rate. But lets get real...even a weak melee character is going to hit darn near 95% of the time.

And to forestall the obvious retort "spell effects are more powerful than a weapon hit, so they should hit less often", let me note that this simply brings us back to the question of average DPS. Ironclan has already demonstrated average DPS favors the melee weapon.

[Grailhawk]

For most trash, the melee are going to burn through the mob in a few seconds or less. More or less the same as instant kill.

In the current game, the two main questions for any character are (1) how much DPS can you generate, and (2) how survivable are you in the environment you are in while generating that DPS.

In both parameters, melee beat out necro casters in the current game. Ironclan did a good job of relating instakill to DPS on the offensive side, and I stand by my claim that even being in the middle of the melee, paladins and barbarians are more survivable than a typical necro caster. High quality self-healing through destiny twists and easily obtained PRR work well in concert.




It may not be a melee vs caster topic, but the comparison is extremely relevant to a discussion of the "right" answer to the question of how often instakill should land.

If a melee weapon only "hit" the target 60% of the time, I could see a rationale for spells scoring a "hit" at a similar rate. But lets get real...even a weak melee character is going to hit darn near 95% of the time.

And to forestall the obvious retort "spell effects are more powerful than a weapon hit, so they should hit less often", let me note that this simply brings us back to the question of average DPS. Ironclan has already demonstrated average DPS favors the melee weapon.

So you just want an easy button, got it.

[Duskofdead]

If a melee weapon only "hit" the target 60% of the time, I could see a rationale for spells scoring a "hit" at a similar rate. But lets get real...even a weak melee character is going to hit darn near 95% of the time.

I've said exactly the same thing many times when my friends and I discuss the problem with casters right now.

If melee threw 100% of their feats, enhancement and stat points basically more or less towards their to-hit, at the cost of survivability or versatility or well roundedness, and still missed 50% of the time or more, people would say melee were totally nonviable. Oh, throw into that a non-recharging "stamina bar" on melee swings that once gone, you can't swing anymore until you rest.

I feel absolutely 0 freedom to do any customization or creative building with casters. I have to throw absolutely everything at DC's to perform at a level that any warlock covers their mouth and sniggers about.

[Marshal_Lannes]

I'm kind of astonished this needs to be said but the difference between instakills and DPS is in the delivery you must make yourself vulnerable to deliver DPS you can safely deliver an instakill with the press of a button and the mob that you just kill never know you were there. If Melee could oneshot mobs reliably maybe that comparison would make sense but as the game stands right now it does not and hopefully never does.

Caster melee dps differences need to be addressed they are completely out of balance at this stage in the game but you don't do that with instakill effects you do it by scaling spell damage up to where it needs to be.

The mike has been dropped. You have said nothing that disputes the MATH which Iron provided. Melee are extremely OP, casters with no fail instakills will still be weaker than current god mode melee's but at least it is a start.

[Torkzed]

So you just want an easy button, got it.

ROFL. When I want an easy button, I play paladin. (...or barbarian, depending on my mood)


(To be fair, if I want an easy button in heroic, I also have the option of Warlock, but that is not really based on the DC casting ability.)

[Wipey]

Less bamboo comrades.

There are like 20 people on the server still with DC casters.
Melee and other "physical dps" builds smash content without breaking a sweat in fraction of time, stuff that those "uber 75 DCs" casters struggle with.
Stupid deathward, epic ward, champions everywhere.
90 fort reavers or 90 reflex archers or Toee bosses. You don't even have spellpoints to even get through half of some quests, nevermind quest bosses.

You come to a raid or higher EE quests, everybody is ****ing blitzer for last three years.
No videos, no achievements on casters, dead build sections.

Roll a fresh melee in LD, slap some comm gear, armour and t1 TF weapon on and the character will be more effective than pimped out uber wizard with 674 past lives and top gear.
As you might see from my posts I am not against any archetype or "role" ( I still have fvs, wiz, assassin, pally ), just reacting to some of the bias and completely untrue info in these kind of threads.

Should get rid of epic ward and deathward, up max cl of many spells, get rid of stupid 90 fort reavers or 90 reflex archers and 350k minibosses.

And someone please make a vid of 62 necro caster rocking EE Stormhorns lol.

[Qhualor]

The mike has been dropped. You have said nothing that disputes the MATH which Iron provided. Melee are extremely OP, casters with no fail instakills will still be weaker than current god mode melee's but at least it is a start.

You mean the assumption part he says melees doing 3.5 to 5k dps killing mobs in 2 secs? It doesn't take a math genius to dispute those numbers. He has to be assuming ducks in a row on 1 mob twinked out because otherwise, it's one hell of an assumption.

[Kamode_Corebasher]

When the system itself is broken that becomes an almost meaningless question.

You have a tough balancing act to perform. Saving throw DC, Spell Resistance roll, spell cool down time, debuffing steps available to 'prep' the monster for the DC spell, total mana pool weighed against distance between shrines, etc. Getting it right will not be easy.

The best possible solution will allow a player who has invested in DC spell casting to have a decent success rating, while not relegating whose who do not specialize their characters to completely ignoring all DC spells because they are completely useless. And that means a bit of a departure from the 3.5 system of Spell Resistance and Saving Throw. DDO characters have access to much higher stats and a lot more flexibility via gear, Enhancements, and Epic Destinies than the typical D&D character. This changes things, and the fact of that change forces other changes in order to avoid breaking the 3.5 system.

There is no possibly way, as I see it, to tweak the numbers in the current system of Spells Resistance and Saving Throw DC such that a specialized character does not have an almost 100% chance of success while also providing a non-specialized character a chance above ~15%. On the flip side, if the specialized character has a low chance, say ~50%, then the non-specialized character will have no chance at all. A successful system needs to fall somewhere in between.

I agree with this.... with stats way surpassing d&d 3.5 gods, our online action based ddo needs to adjust.

[Torkzed]

Obviously this is not proof of the poor state of necro casting, but it is interesting that if you Google "DDO EE Breaking The Ranks Solo", you find 10-15 videos on the first couple of pages and exactly *zero* of them are showing the feat being done by a necro DC caster. You can find multiple examples of Paladins, Barbarians, Shiradi casters, and Warlocks. Also shown are Druid, Bard, and a Rogue. (I didn't watch the Rogue...if that guy was an assassin and not a mechanic, he must be really good. Well, to be fair, they are all good.)

[Duskofdead]

I agree with this.... with stats way surpassing d&d 3.5 gods, our online action based ddo needs to adjust.

That's what kills me whenever anyone defends anything in DDO with "but that's how it works in pnp."

The min-max powercreeped reality of DDO is so far away from a pnp experience that surgically excusing only a few things that don't work correctly because they are still bound to old pnp limitations in a game with mobs that have 50k health and 90 saves is pretty laughable.

[Kamode_Corebasher]

At end game I think no-fail spell pen checks should be possible for a first-lifer with maxed out gear, feats, etc.

For DC I think party-friendly things like cc should be much easier to land than death spells which trumps all dps when working. Earthquake is currently much easier to land than enchantment-based cc so there needs to be more ways to boost enchantment DC in the game.

Death spells should only work effectively on weaker enemies and low-fort enemies like casters.

The biggest DC balance issue at end game right now is magister augmentation. This gives builds that have good synergies with augmentation an effective DC boost of 10 (by debuffing enemy saves by 10) which is basically just casters that focus on one school with enough AOE ticks to weaken enemies. This is mostly just evokers + palemaster + conj sorcs that can take advantage of this. The other balance issue is past lifes. Evocation and Conjuration provide up to +3 from past lifes. The third issue is feat requirements. Builds requiring spell penetration will often have to give up DC feats because non-wizard enchanters and necromancers (bard, favored soul, warlock, cleric, etc.) don't have enough feat slots for everything. Wizards don't have this issue due to bonus feats.

The fourth issue is debuff mechanics - solid fog gives an automatic -5 to reflex save while mind fog has a saving throw for -10 so the effectiveness of mind fog depends on how effective enchantment saves are in the first place.

This is the reason my druid can easily get an effective DC in the 90s (100 with solid fog) while my spellsinger is significantly behind despite spellsinger having some of the best DC boosts of any enhacement tree. If my druid drops ice storm and earthquake that is a lot of evocation ticks that have a chance to proc evocation augmentation. If my spellsinger drops mind fog and disco ball that isn't enough ticks to effectively proc enchantment augmentation. Enchanters will have a difficult time to getting to 80 without gimping the build.

So the "what % do you want" question is hard to answer because there is huge disparities in what saves various casters can overcome based largely on the luck of synergies with passive debuffs, past lifes, gear (only wis and int builds have spooky stat bonuses available for example) and also the reality of the # of feats that can be selected for builds requiring spell penetration.

all great points

[Nestroy]

Necro is a noob trap. You shouldn't be building for it or using it even if the spells are free and are no-fail.

There are quite some noob traps out there atm. Let´s check...

Arty - dead from lv. 20 beyond, at least in EE content.
Druid - as with other DC casters doing fine in older content. Except for wolf exploiter or in a tree exploiter build completely senseless in high end EE. As soon as the wolf bug is done, Druid is dead - perhaps the reason the bug is allowed to persist.
Cleri, Fav - dead for obvious reasons. Most of the better spells either stop working (BB) or stop working reliable in EE. DC? Fav is ok in most EH. Stops being useful in EE. Cleric most of the time struggles in EH. Turn Undead usable in EN only, even if correctly specced?
Sorc, Wiz - either mana sponge or DC. Making them work means major investments only to find them loose out in high end endgame.
Monk - for splash only currently. Whoever plays a monk able to survive and prosper in high end EE gets my sincerest congratulations.
Warlock - so far still a good choice in EE too. Looses out on high end EE like ToEE. Will further loose on the top builds with the cap 30 and Legendary. For a class as new and p2p as the Lock an interesting move, especially since they got nerfed in DPS. Already sold enough locks?
Fighter - well... Needs the pass. Urgently!

Bottom Line: 9 classes sub par for high end EE and up and comming end game. Only Bard, Barb, Pally, Ranger and Rog over the top performer classes. Will even further get thinned out when the cap reaches 30 and there will be Legendary. So basically 9 out of 14 classes newbie traps - or for the dedicated few exactly knowing what to do only.

[Marshal_Lannes]

So you just want an easy button, got it.

You mean the power 6 of paladin, barbarian, ranger, rogue, warlock, bard button?

[Portalcat]

As someone who plays a maxed DC caster, these are the 2 right answers in this thread:



Sure, I'll play.

The difference between a fully maxed out, everything including the kitchen sink (except for silly things like Cookies, House D pots, and strapping a bard to your backside) and a reasonable (still multiple PLs, but not completionist/epic completionist and lots of gear, but not everything) is about 2-4 points or better put 10-20% effectiveness.

So that in mind, on EE end-game content something like this makes sense to me:

-Against a low-fort mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=95%

-Against an average mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=75-85%

-Against a brute like an ogre? -- Maxed out caster=50-60% | Reasonable caster=30-40%

This allows debuff's to allow the "Reasonable caster" to hit average mobs with near certainty and Maxed out casters can hit brutes with (a lot) of debuffs. Ideally, this encourages everyone to use other tactics on the brutes (but you can "brute force it" if needed :) ) and gives "Reasonable" casters something to push for with regards to "Average" mobs.

As a Maxed out PM (no silly stuff) is around a 80 Necro DC, your EE end game mobs should be around the following Fort Saves:

-low-fort mob? = 55 or less
-average mob? = 58-62 fort save
-a brute like an ogre? = 66-70 fort save

Also, can we get rid of the silly +6 to spell saves if mobs are at 100% health mechanic? All it does it cause us to throw a un-meta'd AoE first at mobs -- pretty silly and annoying imo.


Lets get objective here, I see a lot of arbitrary percentages thrown around. Grailhawk loves math more than I do so hopefully he'll have some numbers he wants to throw out there.

Assumptions:
7000hp mobs
Melee's doing 3.5 to 5k DPS killing most mobs in 2 seconds or less
lets assume max DC caster with all the bells and whistles in content where mobs only save on a 20
We're not casting PK because the content isn't quite easy enough to land it's double save reliably without it taking away your no fail necro (Diadem, Archmage in Illusion instead of Necro etc.)
Some mobs are missed by AOE or roll a 20

Finger of Death: every 8 seconds 95% chance to kill 7000hp mob divided by 8 secs = 875dps

Wail: every 60 seconds 95% to kill lets call it 5 Mobs on average or 35,000hp equivelent divided by 60 = 583dps

Circle: clunky spell but lets call it 3 kills per cast average (in practice it will be less), 30 second CD = 700dps Really starting to stack up now *cough*

PWK: every 210 seconds (so about 3 or 4 casts per quest) can be used on orange named reliably (and probably the thing you should save it for) if used on trash = 33dps

So um... 2191dps on trash, rubbish on Oranges (except the 2 or 3 you PWK) and Red DPS is trivial to the point of insignificance.

So how often does it need to fail if it's already this poor in no fail content?


The thing to understand about necromancy spells is that they have long cooldowns and high SP costs. When they miss, it's devastating to your strategy.

The other thing to understand is that PMs are not quite 1-trick ponies either - they normally have sizeable enchantment DCs and Mass Hold Monster + Energy Burst or Dragon Breath is worth quite a bit if used on groups of mobs. Enchantment spells are something you generally can do for the group when your necromancy are on cooldown - holding mobs is a big deal.



What you get is a very spiky build. It's solid when it lands spells and goes to useless quickly if that's much in doubt.

It also suffers by comparison if mobs become easy to mow down faster than their necromancy spells can make a noticeable contribution. For much of the post-U19 world, a PM was an odds on favorite to topkill in a typical EE quest - but that edge has eroded away because the build has gotten incremental DC gains over the same period that other builds have gotten transformative reworks.

[Faltout]

You mean the power 6 of paladin, barbarian, ranger, rogue, warlock, bard button?
Oh, ok. So make all classes into easy button and you get left with an easy-button game. And to compensate you make newest content more difficult, more annoying, more boring.
Let's just repeat the mistake of those class passes again and again.

[Andoris]

Because it means your not instantly nuking everything in sight before any other player in the party gets a chance to participate.

So, you would prefer if I waiting until the melee's spent some time beating it down, and then using FoD at the last minute.. cool, got it. :)

All kidding aside; it doesn't even accomplish your goal. It is trivial for me to throw a DBF or necrotic ray and really doesn't add any additional time. It is just another SP sink and mostly pointless.



I do remember when Necro PMs had it too good, before various changes had to be introduced including the Wail nerf.

Right.. that was about 4 years ago. Prior to MotU PM's were too powerful, I wholeheartedly agree with that. Since that point there have been points when they were good, and points (like now) where they are worthless. But even when they were good, they were not the best or really even a "top tier" build.

Saying that because they were too good 4+ years ago, that it is okay that they should be worthless now (which they are) and forever in the future, seems pretty silly.

How about if the +6 to saves on undamaged mobs did just apply to spells, but to all DC effects? Many melee builds can get their DC's much higher than a Wizard can dream of, and they have the advantage of already being good at delivering damage (which a wizard is not).

Why shouldn't the +6 apply across the board? Versus only affecting arguably one of the weakest play styles in DDO atm.

[Duskofdead]

Oh, ok. So make all classes into easy button and you get left with an easy-button game. And to compensate you make newest content more difficult, more annoying, more boring.
Let's just repeat the mistake of those class passes again and again.

So you go play first-life DC casters voluntarily for challenge and the different/interesting experience.

Right?

[Faltout]

So you go play first-life DC casters voluntarily for challenge and the different/interesting experience.

Right?
I don't play first lifers because my toons have progressed since then. However, I will not choose a class based on current power. Proof is that I chose to play a spellsinger bard instead of swashbuckler which is the new cool thing. Of course I won't go instead make a similar build without the gear and lives I have now (+4 spell pen from wizard only as far as past lives go), but I did not first ground out the best gear or the best PL combination before making him.

As for different/interesting experience, you are right. I try every life I do to play differently. And that there are still things to do besides DPS/killing is interesting.

[Torkzed]

Oh, ok. So make all classes into easy button and you get left with an easy-button game. And to compensate you make newest content more difficult, more annoying, more boring.
Let's just repeat the mistake of those class passes again and again.

The difficulty state of the game is a completely separate issue from class balance. (And I am not talking about class balance in a PVP sense; I am talking about all classes having roughly equal opportunities to contribute to a group at a high level.)

The point is not to make the DC casters more powerful than the current OP melee classes. The point is to make them equally powerful.

If there are six OP classes, there are really only six classes. The others will fade away into obsolescence, except for new players and a few diehard flavor players.

But if DDO pulls up DC casters to the *same* level as the top melee classes, it is not adding power creep. You can only play one character at a time. All it does is add some diversity to the ways one can crush content.

(Note in case it is not clear: I'm being sarcastic about crushing content above...I'm just as worried about the game being too easy now as others are. I just don't see that issue as being relevant to this thread.)

[icekinslayer]

There are quite some noob traps out there atm. Let´s check...

Arty - dead from lv. 20 beyond, at least in EE content.
Druid - as with other DC casters doing fine in older content. Except for wolf exploiter or in a tree exploiter build completely senseless in high end EE. As soon as the wolf bug is done, Druid is dead - perhaps the reason the bug is allowed to persist.
Cleri, Fav - dead for obvious reasons. Most of the better spells either stop working (BB) or stop working reliable in EE. DC? Fav is ok in most EH. Stops being useful in EE. Cleric most of the time struggles in EH. Turn Undead usable in EN only, even if correctly specced?
Sorc, Wiz - either mana sponge or DC. Making them work means major investments only to find them loose out in high end endgame.
Monk - for splash only currently. Whoever plays a monk able to survive and prosper in high end EE gets my sincerest congratulations.
Warlock - so far still a good choice in EE too. Looses out on high end EE like ToEE. Will further loose on the top builds with the cap 30 and Legendary. For a class as new and p2p as the Lock an interesting move, especially since they got nerfed in DPS. Already sold enough locks?
Fighter - well... Needs the pass. Urgently!

Bottom Line: 9 classes sub par for high end EE and up and comming end game. Only Bard, Barb, Pally, Ranger and Rog over the top performer classes. Will even further get thinned out when the cap reaches 30 and there will be Legendary. So basically 9 out of 14 classes newbie traps - or for the dedicated few exactly knowing what to do only.


This is total bs unless you think soloing EE should be the norm. I've completed plenty of EE's with a [party]. Why does every class have to be able to solo EE in order to be [viable]. No body should be able to solo EE, that's stupid and is leading to the demise of the grouping scene and the game itself.

[elkorm]

Sure, I'll play.

The difference between a fully maxed out, everything including the kitchen sink (except for silly things like Cookies, House D pots, and strapping a bard to your backside) and a reasonable (still multiple PLs, but not completionist/epic completionist and lots of gear, but not everything) is about 2-4 points or better put 10-20% effectiveness.

So that in mind, on EE end-game content something like this makes sense to me:

-Against a low-fort mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=95%

-Against an average mob? -- Maxed out caster=95% | Reasonable caster=75-85%

-Against a brute like an ogre? -- Maxed out caster=50-60% | Reasonable caster=30-40%

This allows debuff's to allow the "Reasonable caster" to hit average mobs with near certainty and Maxed out casters can hit brutes with (a lot) of debuffs. Ideally, this encourages everyone to use other tactics on the brutes (but you can "brute force it" if needed :) ) and gives "Reasonable" casters something to push for with regards to "Average" mobs.

As a Maxed out PM (no silly stuff) is around a 80 Necro DC, your EE end game mobs should be around the following Fort Saves:

-low-fort mob? = 55 or less
-average mob? = 58-62 fort save
-a brute like an ogre? = 66-70 fort save

Also, can we get rid of the silly +6 to spell saves if mobs are at 100% health mechanic? All it does it cause us to throw a un-meta'd AoE first at mobs -- pretty silly and annoying imo.

Always my hero
Elk

[Marshal_Lannes]

This is total bs unless you think soloing EE should be the norm. I've completed plenty of EE's with a [party]. Why does every class have to be able to solo EE in order to be [viable]. No body should be able to solo EE, that's stupid and is leading to the demise of the grouping scene and the game itself.

It is not about soloing EE, it is about feeling useful. Anyone can tag along with any build in EE content and watch the Paladin Tempest crush all content while you follow along and pick up mysterious remnants. I like to play wizards and clerics and the balance of power is so off putting you wonder what your point even is in a party. I don't think anyone here is even asking to lead the kill, we just want to be relevant. The game is boring when a couple classes kill everything and everyone else is along for the ride to watch their 'awesomeness'.

And why do melee have so many AOE attacks? Melee have more effective AOE effects than casters do! This is completely contrary to AD&D.

[Arlathen]

So, you would prefer if I waiting until the melee's spent some time beating it down, and then using FoD at the last minute.. cool, got it. :)

All kidding aside; it doesn't even accomplish your goal. It is trivial for me to throw a DBF or necrotic ray and really doesn't add any additional time. It is just another SP sink and mostly pointless.

Right.. that was about 4 years ago. Prior to MotU PM's were too powerful, I wholeheartedly agree with that. Since that point there have been points when they were good, and points (like now) where they are worthless. But even when they were good, they were not the best or really even a "top tier" build.

Saying that because they were too good 4+ years ago, that it is okay that they should be worthless now (which they are) and forever in the future, seems pretty silly.

How about if the +6 to saves on undamaged mobs did just apply to spells, but to all DC effects? Many melee builds can get their DC's much higher than a Wizard can dream of, and they have the advantage of already being good at delivering damage (which a wizard is not).

Why shouldn't the +6 apply across the board? Versus only affecting arguably one of the weakest play styles in DDO atm.

I'm sorry Ash, but I just don't agree with you. Your also taking my comments hugely out of content "Saying that because they were too good 4+ years ago, that it is okay that they should be worthless now (which they are) and forever in the future, seems pretty silly". I never said anything of the kind, and my response to the OP in terms of percentage successful casts achievable reflects my thoughts on the matter, including the fact that casters just shouldn't rely only on a set of 3-4 spells targeting a single save type. There's lessons to be remembered from the Past with overpowered Instant-kill casters so whatever tools Turbine use to limit that power doesn't really matter to me, whether its the current upfront +6 to saves or some other set of mechanics or casting DC limitations.

If there's anything that needs addressing for Casters, right now, it's Direct Damage. Casters need to be able to kill mobs with Damage spells in an efficient manner that lies somewhere between outright Shiradi Spam and One-button Kills. Since the game is heading towards more and more Red named EE trash that's going to be immune to your easy-button stuff, I'd start jumping on that bandwagon sharpish.

[Duskofdead]

It is not about soloing EE, it is about feeling useful. Anyone can tag along with any build in EE content and watch the Paladin Tempest crush all content while you follow along and pick up mysterious remnants. I like to play wizards and clerics and the balance of power is so off putting you wonder what your point even is in a party. I don't think anyone here is even asking to lead the kill, we just want to be relevant. The game is boring when a couple classes kill everything and everyone else is along for the ride to watch their 'awesomeness'.

And why do melee have so many AOE attacks? Melee have more effective AOE effects than casters do! This is completely contrary to AD&D.

Because when what you are describing was the venue of casters and not melees, everyone said melees were nonviable. Now that melees do what casters used to do, casters are just weak guys in cloth armor and low HP and are unnecessary.

This is what abandoning the concept of roles leads to. If everyone does the same thing, only one guy will do it best. There's no way for all classes to be just as good if they are all competing at doing exactly the same thing.

[Enoach]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

The flip question is interesting. But maybe I think the discussion needs to be a bit broader.

First I'm old school and when I think of DCs I don't just think in terms of Schools (Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy and Transmutation) but I also think in terms of Saves - Fortitude, Reflex and Will.

The problem is not that any one school or type of save should be "the one that rules them all" its the fact that in the upper Epics the saves of mobs on all three leaves very little for DC caster. Maybe the best way to describe this is that as Player Characters we expect Paladin's to have all their saves high and so close that DC casting is difficult if possible at all. What we have with the current system is much like making all the trash mobs paladins.

Now I'm probably not going to be popular with many on my breakdown but it is how I feel DC casting should be when at the highest level.

With a caster currently at 28 - Decked out with DC gear (+6) and rocking a caster attribute of 80 so that their Primary School is 70+ before short term buff

without Debuff
If it is the mobs weakest save they should have 80%
If it is the mobs strongest save they should have 60%

[b]With Debuff/b]
That percentage should raise between 10% and 20%

However, if the weakest save is a non-primary school the caster needs to adjust the spells they are using vs the save.

Now for my DC caster grip. Debuffs don't last long enough on Epics period. You want to balance DC casting without favoring Combat Feats, then let Debuff last as long as they should without the insane recovery rate that was implemented. If your worried about Weapon Debuff becoming too powerful add a DC to them, or add a limited use clickie for the Effect.

Some other ideas that could also be in place to avoid attribute Bloat on Mobs is to instead of raising their Attributes add Save bonuses and not just to Fortitude, reflex and will. But to Specific Schools. IE Elves and Dwarves should be darn near impossible to use Enchantment against.

Nothing is much funnier to me then realizing that there are some Epic Rats that are Wiser (Will Save) then many Clerics/Monks that I've run with.

[KoobTheProud]

One cannot base DC on a max build necromancer. If you require +7 tomes, completionist, epic litany etc just to get your spells to work then that should be put in the class description. "Enjoy heroic questing, your spells will not work in epic quests unless you are in the top 1% of players"

All DCs should be based on what is attainable by the majority of players in a couple months of play. DCs for melee class instakills, QP for monks and assassinate for rogues should get a hidden bonus to compensate for casters being able to achieve higher DCs. Maybe give those an innate +5 bonus. Instakills need to come back to the game to balance out the massive DPS the power 6 classes are doing.

This is the right answer. Completionists win DDO. Designing any part of the game to cater to them is a dead end.

It's possible the game's time has passed anyway but if it is designed to cater to the top 1% it certainly has passed.

For long time players who vehemently disagree with my sentiment I'll just point out that re-rolling and playing a challenging game with first life toons without uber twinked gear is more than possible, it's what about 90% of the players do on a daily basis.

[Ganak]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?


I'd say truly break down what is considered high/medium/low in terms of DC's. You don't want to shut out newer casters and give them a 10% chance at a FoD, while the upper echelon is 95%.

Maybe a scaling system similar to AC and PRR but on the mob side?

[Faltout]

The difficulty state of the game is a completely separate issue from class balance. (And I am not talking about class balance in a PVP sense; I am talking about all classes having roughly equal opportunities to contribute to a group at a high level.)
You are forgetting the player vs monsters thing. Let's exaggerate and say each class can insta-kill everything around (like the dev power). If each class can do the same, then while each one may contribute the same to the quest (1 will run left, other will run right, they're bound to get some kills), this game is very boring.
Likewise, if noone can do such things as insta-kill monsters left and right and each monster takes careful planning to beat, but one class can't do anything at all to most monsters in the quest (let's exaggerate and say that those monsters are hasted golems from EE fleshmaker's that hit for 700 so only one type of player can actually do something in that quest), then that class is not having fun.

So, you need both. Players to be balanced against content and THEN players be balanced against each other (the second one meaning each one can contribute, not each one do same amount of DPS). Why do they need to be in that order? Because content can't be balanced around players. Devs tried to do that with champions and it was a failure. 95% of content is already set in stone and can't be fiddled with. This means the player powers need to be balanced around content.

To make it clear, I mean that buffed classes need to come down to early content power levels (nerfed hard), newest content needs to come down to nerfed power levels and then classes come up or down to match the new balance.
If not, then effectively DDO consists only of 3-4 packs and the rest of the content is easybutton fluff.

[Ellihor]

Lets get objective here, I see a lot of arbitrary percentages thrown around. Grailhawk loves math more than I do so hopefully he'll have some numbers he wants to throw out there.

Assumptions:
7000hp mobs
Melee's doing 3.5 to 5k DPS killing most mobs in 2 seconds or less
lets assume max DC caster with all the bells and whistles in content where mobs only save on a 20
We're not casting PK because the content isn't quite easy enough to land it's double save reliably without it taking away your no fail necro (Diadem, Archmage in Illusion instead of Necro etc.)
Some mobs are missed by AOE or roll a 20

Finger of Death: every 8 seconds 95% chance to kill 7000hp mob divided by 8 secs = 875dps

Wail: every 60 seconds 95% to kill lets call it 5 Mobs on average or 35,000hp equivelent divided by 60 = 583dps

Circle: clunky spell but lets call it 3 kills per cast average (in practice it will be less), 30 second CD = 700dps Really starting to stack up now *cough*

PWK: every 210 seconds (so about 3 or 4 casts per quest) can be used on orange named reliably (and probably the thing you should save it for) if used on trash = 33dps

So um... 2191dps on trash, rubbish on Oranges (except the 2 or 3 you PWK) and Red DPS is trivial to the point of insignificance.

So how often does it need to fail if it's already this poor in no fail content?

This is hard to measure because we don't know what's the damage per second we are doing on non-caster chars and warlocks. We know they're doing some thousands on one target, but when it comes to AoE things get hard to calc. My guess is that cleaving arround in a quest like demon assault on a barb or bursting on a warlock you are doing well over 10k damage per second ON THE AREA.

Let's think: trash there has what soloing? Assume 10k. Warlock blasts them to nothing in about 5 secs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgrSW0z6JSY/, thanks vincino for video. Notice that he is not using evards, so it should be even faster. So I'll assume 4 seconds to clear if he used evards. Unfortunally I don't have a warlock to record a video myseld at the moment). Each wave has about 8 mobs. Assume 80k hp in 4 secs. Were looking to 20k damage pre second on the area. You would have to roll back wail to u13 animation, and it would have to work like 60-70% with top DC to be competitive.

[Nadion]

The central problem is that stat inflation long ago passed the point at which the d20 system breaks down. The DC spread between maxxed out, very strong, and strong casters is two wide to accommodate within such a small range.

It is time to accept that we need a new formula for determining whether spells land that allows a wider range of DCs to be at least somewhat effective, whilst preventing maxxed out toons from shooting clear into the unstoppable range.

I think something like % change to land = DC / (2*Save) + 0.01 * (DC - Save) would be appropriate. Essentially take the ratio of the Caster DC and Mob save, and then adjust in by 1% times the difference between the DC and Save.

For example, a PM with trying to FoD a mob with a 60 fort save would have the following chances of success

40DC -> 13.3%
45DC -> 22.5%%
50DC -> 31.7%%
55DC ->40.8%
60DC ->50%
65DC -> 59.1%%
70DC -> 68.3%
75DC ->77.5%
80DC ->86.7%

This would lower the DC for a weaker player to contribute to a group, whilst the diminishing returns at the high end would make it harder to become unstoppable at the high end.

I think this would be a win for everyone. Mid tier characters would be able to participate in groups without being a total waste of a slot, whilst top tier characters could find a serious challenge in the game instead of walking all over everything. Facing real danger and having to play smart is actually more fun over time than zerging everything mindlessly. It could also encourage more spell diversity as targeting weak saves becomes more important instead of piling everything into a single school to overwhelm a single type of save.

[KoobTheProud]

What would be wrong about just scaling content to really challenge a 1st lifer in every way possible and letting the deep TR toons deal with making the game fun despite being extremely OP?

That seems better than balancing the game to challenge the deep TR toons and having 1st lifers never able to land a spell at end game.

The endless TR game just blows chunks. Who wants to speed through content at breakneck speed over and over and over again just to keep up with the people who don't mind doing that? Is that really what we as a community want new players to see as the only realistic path to endgame?

[Torkzed]

You are forgetting the player vs monsters thing. Let's exaggerate and say each class can insta-kill everything around (like the dev power). If each class can do the same, then while each one may contribute the same to the quest (1 will run left, other will run right, they're bound to get some kills), this game is very boring.
Likewise, if noone can do such things as insta-kill monsters left and right and each monster takes careful planning to beat, but one class can't do anything at all to most monsters in the quest (let's exaggerate and say that those monsters are hasted golems from EE fleshmaker's that hit for 700 so only one type of player can actually do something in that quest), then that class is not having fun.

So, you need both. Players to be balanced against content and THEN players be balanced against each other (the second one meaning each one can contribute, not each one do same amount of DPS). Why do they need to be in that order? Because content can't be balanced around players. Devs tried to do that with champions and it was a failure. 95% of content is already set in stone and can't be fiddled with. This means the player powers need to be balanced around content.

To make it clear, I mean that buffed classes need to come down to early content power levels (nerfed hard), newest content needs to come down to nerfed power levels and then classes come up or down to match the new balance.
If not, then effectively DDO consists only of 3-4 packs and the rest of the content is easybutton fluff.

I agree with more or less everything you say above. The one place I think my statements differ is that you say at the end "that buffed classes need to come down to early content power levels (nerfed hard)". I have to say you are braver than I...I was arguing for equality, but I would not have suggested on the forums that anyone needs to be nerfed. Thus my rationale for DC casters needing a buff.

However, your suggestion is indeed another path to equality of the classes. :)

[Wulverine]

What would be wrong about just scaling content to really challenge a 1st lifer in every way possible and letting the deep TR toons deal with making the game fun despite being extremely OP?

That seems better than balancing the game to challenge the deep TR toons and having 1st lifers never able to land a spell at end game.

Simple. "Deep TR Toons" as you put it and first lifers should not be playing the same content. Simplest solution.

[KoobTheProud]

Simple. "Deep TR Toons" as you put it and first lifers should not be playing the same content. Simplest solution.

That's not a simple solution in an environment in which limited resources go to developing and supporting new content.

Segregating your population into two exclusive play groups is a guaranteed loser in that situation because the older players feel under-served and new players bug out as soon as they realize they have no realistic path to end game.

The tag on Completionist says "You win DDO." The devs need to honor that tag and what it implies and serve the people who don't have 60 hours a week to play the game. It's the only move that is likely to be economically viable in the long run.

The TR treadmill was put in to address a long period in which very little new content was made available. That period appears to be over now. It's time to move the game forward by taking people off the TR treadmill and putting them back into an RPG MMO.

[Qhualor]

That's not a simple solution in an environment in which limited resources go to developing and supporting new content.

Segregating your population into two exclusive play groups is a guaranteed loser in that situation because the older players feel under-served and new players bug out as soon as they realize they have no realistic path to end game.

right now the population off all variety of skill level is running the same difficulty. elite should be designed for the "deep TR" characters and hard for those more comfortable with the basics of the game while normal for those first lifer new players that should be learning how to play. I don't know about you, but it seems pretty obvious to me that there has been a lot of problems trying to balance classes, content and loot for one difficulty setting across all skill levels. I don't think its made the game any better.

[noinfo]

Yes, the champ is rare, compared to all the other trash present. And yes, my last life was a wizard necro, my current life is a bard spellsinger enchanter. Also have played a rogue mechanic/assassin with champs. I know there are deathwarded champs, I'm saying they are rare.


the strengths of casters generally are that they are far from the battle (opposite to melees), have AOE targetting (opposite to rangers, shuricannons, etc.), have easily maintained defences (displacement, dodge), can decide which monster is more dangerous and go for it (opposite to melees that discover that by taking serious hits).
The strengths of DC casters compared to nuker DC casters are that DC casting has greater effects that nuking. Nuking can lower mobs' HP a bit or a lot. enchant can render a mob helpless, necro can render the mob dead.


My necro wizard had a DC of 62 for death spells and 65 for fear (due to draconic). I had some trouble hitting the saves in EE gianthold, but was manageable with debufs. The magister debuf to fort, the enervation SLA, the fear spell that lowered their saves while targeting their will save. Some took more debuffing and Madstone was a nightmare (with all mobs being brutes and some immune to fear), but I felt my caster was performing fine. I did not go for all the mobs. I targeted casters (low fort) mostly and left the brutes for the party to handle.
EE stormhorns was about the same, although saves of gnolls were lower. EE underdark, I was in god mode. spell pen checks were mostly successes and drow would fail the save too often. I compared EE madstone (which I was having trouble with) to EH and I did not like that on EH I was able to kill anything. Overall, fun experience. That's why I decided for my next life to be a DC bard

My enchant spellsigner bard is rocking right now. Saves are again 62 for disco ball and 65 for mass hold SLA. Wail is around... high 40s? My spellsinger trivializes EE Stormhorns (Lines of Supply, Breaking the Ranks, WGU end fight) and can CC anything not undead in EE necro. Of course he understands that caster monsters are very likely to have high will saves. So, he only targets non-casters for crushing despair and mass hold. For casters, I reserve song of capering and siren's song and I lead with that without wasting sp on spells. For constructs and undead I can only use fascinate, so I let the group fight some undead/constructs and I drag the rest out of the way to fascinate. When group is done with the previous fight, they can engage the fascinated mobs. Works well in EE Vol, EE fleshmakers, EE inferno, not so well in EE GoP because in the only difficult fight (spectres), the spectres have will saves higher than 112 + 1d20.

So, that about me, how about you? Do YOU play a DC caster? Or do you wait for them to enter god mode and can solo anything so you can get around to playing them? Because any DC caster with DCs higher than mine (I admit they are not that high, I don't have high tomes, or TF gear, or +12 stat gear, or yugo/store/deneith pots), should be finding that he is very useful in most quests (I despise DoJ as well and think it's terrible design).


Oh, you mean those 8 seconds you will be dancing around kiting them? Or the 60 seconds for that matter? Why, what are the mobs going to do to you in those 8 seconds? Nothing. As for melees, I'm also against them dominating play. I'm all for further nerfs to melees (current nerfs did nothing really) and for serious nerfing to some ranged builds that can kite mobs around, can hit multiple mobs (due to IPS) and can kill them fast.
And I guess we get called "caster-lovers" when we advocate for those nerfs.
I'm also for cleric turn undead to become useful, against turn undead becoming too useful. For builds having non-DPS, non-selfheal, non-mitigation abilities that make for unique play, against every build having DPS, selfheal, mitigation like we have now.


So, 1 or 2 life runs not enough? Great, I didn't know my main going for completionist should be a caster full time to actually play a caster. The builds I played and am still playing are not some trash builds that will TR at 20 because things get tough after that. I give them the best I got and will try to beat any challenge. Oh, and each life does not take a week. It takes about 3 or 4 months for me. So, I have been a DC caster for 9 months now.


This is dead on if you have 95% success rate in all content vs all mobs there is not challenge what so ever.

So now you are saying that they are going to have 95% in all of their schools? Not sure how this would happen, otherwise this is a very misleading statement given the substantial difference between primary and secondary areas let alone others.

From a 8 second per Kill EE, this is not dominating play, you would then expect that you secondary schools then actually become useful again giving you far greater flexibility and variation of playstyle.

[SirValentine]

What I’d really like to see is a way to boost off schools to encourage smarter play targeting weak saves.


Exactly. It's not smart for us to target a "weak" save that's, say, 10 points lower, if our DC in the other spell is 15 points lower. (Example only; pick numbers to taste.)

[SirValentine]

I'm kind of astonished this needs to be said but the difference between instakills and DPS is in the delivery you must make yourself vulnerable to deliver DPS you can safely deliver an instakill with the press of a button and the mob that you just kill never know you were there.


Some instakills are touch-ranged.

[KoobTheProud]

right now the population off all variety of skill level is running the same difficulty. elite should be designed for the "deep TR" characters and hard for those more comfortable with the basics of the game while normal for those first lifer new players that should be learning how to play. I don't know about you, but it seems pretty obvious to me that there has been a lot of problems trying to balance classes, content and loot for one difficulty setting across all skill levels. I don't think its made the game any better.

I don't have a problem with Epic Elite being for one group and everything else being for everybody else.

I have a problem with "We're bored with Epic Elite, please make something more challenging for us!"

That's a problem because if a person is bored at Epic Elite they have many options to become unbored, starting with putting their Epic Completionist toons on the bench and playing something else. The Devs need to be concentrating on building up the playbase not on catering to the elites who have been playing for years. The game can't survive off of the elites, it needs a steady stream of new players and that's where the new content creation should be aimed for the most part.

[SirValentine]

The min-max powercreeped reality of DDO is so far away from a pnp experience that surgically excusing only a few things that don't work correctly because they are still bound to old pnp limitations in a game with mobs that have 50k health and 90 saves is pretty laughable.

They don't work correctly because the game has strayed too far from p&p. Them breaking one part of it isn't a good reason to break more. It's a reason to un-break it.

[noinfo]

You say a lot of things that are irrelevant to the question of the thread. I mentioned examples because you were trying to invalidate our (mine and other posters') proposals for the percentages saying "We don't play DC casters". I play my DC casters in content where they have a 60% success rate. It doesn't matter which content, or at what level. All that matters is I'm having a ~60% success rate without debufs. And I say that with this success rate, my character rocks in this content (means I'm having tons of fun and yes I feel like majorly contributing). When I enter content where my character has 95% success rate (EH madstone), it's pretty boring. When I enter content where I can't do anything, that's frustrating.

So, if saves are extremely high in some quests where they shouldn't be, they should be lowered (that's the point of this thread, right?). If saves are low in some quests where they shouldn't be, they should be raised.

So now you talk about going into EH content where you are hitting 95% of the time, the mobs are probably being ripped apart from the others in the party that that probably has more to do with that challenge than anything your 8 second per kill is having on the run.

Feel free to believe that your contributions are up there. 60% kill rate without debuffs in a decent party will mean those mobs are likely to be killed by other memebers in that time. otherwise on average its going to on average up that time from 8 seconds to 11 seconds to kill a mob. I won't say its a waste of a party slot but really your not even making up for the scaling you are causing.

You are not going to dominate in necro. Far better to have the DC so that in the primary you can hit a 1 kill every 8 seconds and then contribute via debuffs in a secondary area.

The numbers being thrown around show clearly how far behind a DC necro is on killing power in ideal situations let alone now. Deny it all you want the numbers are there, and what is worse right now, your secondary schools mean almost nothing because if you are having to debuff in your primary, not only do you have less time for casting in your secondary or others but you are not going to be able to maintain spell points or even with debuffs be able to make any difference.

Your DC spell singer bard, how is that wail working out for him? The only debuff that will help him there is when the mobs roll a 1.

I am sorry if you feel that I am targeting you because your character has not the greatest DC or that you have spent a couple of months passing through on a completionist journey but yes I do not want to have to play with decisions made based on feedback from those just passing through without significant experience playing that type of character, that is also contradictory to the numbers clearly being shown.

[SirValentine]

For much of the post-U19 world, a PM was an odds on favorite to topkill in a typical EE quest

Which, really, was OK. Because when they were god-mode against trash, they were like helpless little baby kittens against those 400K HP red-named bosses. Whereas the physical DPS types shone versus those HP-bloated bosses.

Since then, physical DPS has gone up drastically. A DC caster's DC-casting has only improved slightly, and their backup DPS is so far out of the running as to be completely pointless.

[IronClan]

If melee could one shot the in challenging content mobs your counter might have merit but since they cant, even then melee would still face more challenge because they have to run into the pack of mobs giving the mob you are bout to oneshots friends a chance to swing at you.

This is not a melee vs caster topic even, this is about challenging content vs trivial content 95% success on all content is not challenging at all in any way. Only a biased power hungry player or a moron cant see that.

Hmmm I'm 100% sure you know about Mortal Fear and helpless so I'm not sure why you're pretending melee's can't one shot stuff. Lets do some more math: Rogue 4, Sense Weakness, and Boosting in LD... = one shot. (I know I just let a broken build out of the bag but whatever the MF nerf talks are already long past "it's going to happen" stages) In fact a TWF that is boosting is liable to be so close to one shotting stuff (10,000dps) or killing mobs in 1 second that who cares about MF. still even if it's 2 seconds? Are we really going to make a distinction?

Yes melees have to close the gap and also are in harms way more often, which is why I didn't say we need to buff that awesome 2100 dps higher... it is however fine if DC casters can reach nearly no fail if their DPS is that low... unless of course we would rather reduce their cooldowns? OR we could increase the effectiveness of Insta kills (like make Wail last twice as long) and THEN we could make prepping mobs with Debuffs a thing. Melees are however a lot tougher and usually also faster and ofc as you surely know they use no resources and don't lose 50 SP when the thing you targeted gets dropped faster than the casting animation goes off.

There's also the matter of the single mindedness of purpose needed to make a no fail DC caster... there's no such thing as a flexible DC caster you are either specced for something or your DC's suck and you're useless at it.

[Nestroy]

This is total bs unless you think soloing EE should be the norm. I've completed plenty of EE's with a [party]. Why does every class have to be able to solo EE in order to be [viable]. No body should be able to solo EE, that's stupid and is leading to the demise of the grouping scene and the game itself.

I knew this argument would come. Just to make this clear - I would love to see the party play alive again. Alas, on a larger scale (lucky you having a party) this just will not happen. But what good if just a few classes (or builds) rock EE and all else depend on a party to carry them through? Now multiply this with Legendary.

I am sure casters (and namely DC casters) will get the pendulum swing in a near future. Then they again will be able to rock EE. That´s the way DDO is working currently.

[Basura_Grande]

You mean the assumption part he says melees doing 3.5 to 5k dps killing mobs in 2 secs? It doesn't take a math genius to dispute those numbers. He has to be assuming ducks in a row on 1 mob twinked out because otherwise, it's one hell of an assumption.

Melees who aren't doing at least this much damage at level 28 are terrible and aren't even worth discussing.

[Basura_Grande]

maybe a scaling system similar to ac and prr but on the mob side?

hell no!

[Portalcat]

The central problem is that stat inflation long ago passed the point at which the d20 system breaks down. The DC spread between maxxed out, very strong, and strong casters is two wide to accommodate within such a small range.

It is time to accept that we need a new formula for determining whether spells land that allows a wider range of DCs to be at least somewhat effective, whilst preventing maxxed out toons from shooting clear into the unstoppable range.

I think something like % change to land = DC / (2*Save) + 0.01 * (DC - Save) would be appropriate. Essentially take the ratio of the Caster DC and Mob save, and then adjust in by 1% times the difference between the DC and Save.

For example, a PM with trying to FoD a mob with a 60 fort save would have the following chances of success

40DC -> 13.3%
45DC -> 22.5%%
50DC -> 31.7%%
55DC ->40.8%
60DC ->50%
65DC -> 59.1%%
70DC -> 68.3%
75DC ->77.5%
80DC ->86.7%

This would lower the DC for a weaker player to contribute to a group, whilst the diminishing returns at the high end would make it harder to become unstoppable at the high end.

I think this would be a win for everyone. Mid tier characters would be able to participate in groups without being a total waste of a slot, whilst top tier characters could find a serious challenge in the game instead of walking all over everything. Facing real danger and having to play smart is actually more fun over time than zerging everything mindlessly. It could also encourage more spell diversity as targeting weak saves becomes more important instead of piling everything into a single school to overwhelm a single type of save.


This is an insane nerf to a build we're talking about because it's fallen behind. You're increasing the fail rate on a 60 fort mob by 3-4x for any currently viable PM build.


Again, for a PM to be viable at all, necro spells have to be "no-fail" (95%) on most mobs to be useful because of the massive cooldowns. FoD is single target and you get 1 every 8 seconds. Circle of Death can hit max 4 targets, and has to beat 2 saves so your one every 30 seconds is often questionable. Wail of the Banshee is potent but it still only hits 6 mobs max and has 1-min cooldown. All of these are sp-intensive spells cast with metamagics.

Given this, mobs have to be "no-fail" or close to it after no more than 1 ennervation + 1 energy drain if it's supposed to be possible to instakill the mob at all, and if it's not, the will save needs to be manageable. Anything else and the squishy PM isn't doing much and is running itself out of spell points quickly.




There's probably a formula that can be written, but it needs to be a more generous formula than currently exists, not less. Or at least, something that maintains the top end possibilities while smoothing the drop-off for a few points of DC might do wonders for allowing DC builds to account for more DPS and survivability.

Alternatively, more necro spells can be added to fill out the arsenal, more tools can be given to manage SP, and/or more options to give up a point of DC here or there to add substantial DPS could be offered.

[etotheipi]

For a second lifer (and really the maxxed out builds too) they should be using other tactics on high-fort save mobs (holds, web, OID, etc); or be prepared for some serious debuffing.

That's adorably stupid. A maxxed DC caster with 3x WIZ, 3x FvS, 3x CLR, 1x BRD, 3X SOR, Heroic Completionist and Epic Completionist should be reduced to webbing and dancing mobs or else seriously debuff them? While melees faceroll everything with none of the required investment? Andoris, you are no longer a source of good ideas.

[etotheipi]

Less bamboo comrades.

There are like 20 people on the server still with DC casters.
Melee and other "physical dps" builds smash content without breaking a sweat in fraction of time, stuff that those "uber 75 DCs" casters struggle with.
Stupid deathward, epic ward, champions everywhere.
90 fort reavers or 90 reflex archers or Toee bosses. You don't even have spellpoints to even get through half of some quests, nevermind quest bosses.

You come to a raid or higher EE quests, everybody is ****ing blitzer for last three years.
No videos, no achievements on casters, dead build sections.

Roll a fresh melee in LD, slap some comm gear, armour and t1 TF weapon on and the character will be more effective than pimped out uber wizard with 674 past lives and top gear.
As you might see from my posts I am not against any archetype or "role" ( I still have fvs, wiz, assassin, pally ), just reacting to some of the bias and completely untrue info in these kind of threads.

Should get rid of epic ward and deathward, up max cl of many spells, get rid of stupid 90 fort reavers or 90 reflex archers and 350k minibosses.

And someone please make a vid of 62 necro caster rocking EE Stormhorns lol.

Yep. DC casters are dead. But give the melees a stamina bar and you'll just watch them wine and moan endlessly.

[Aletys]

I'm kind of astonished this needs to be said but the difference between instakills and DPS is in the delivery you must make yourself vulnerable to deliver DPS you can safely deliver an instakill with the press of a button and the mob that you just kill never know you were there. If Melee could oneshot mobs reliably maybe that comparison would make sense but as the game stands right now it does not and hopefully never does.

Caster melee dps differences need to be addressed they are completely out of balance at this stage in the game but you don't do that with instakill effects you do it by scaling spell damage up to where it needs to be.

I'm not sure what content you are playing but it's clearly not the same as what a lot of the rest of us are playing. Been in ToEE with a caster? There's no way to cast without making yourself vulnerable, at least not without piking at the entrance. Every intersection, every door, has mobs coming at you from multiple directions. You enter the quest & you're quickly surrounded. CC doesn't work on EE in there, nor in the new Amarath & Gambit quests, & you are constantly being swarmed. You complain that casters should not be able to insta-kill because they're not at risk, but that simply isn't true.

And, frankly, the melees go "whack, whack, whack", & the stuff is dead before I can get the second spell off. That looks pretty close to an insta-kill to me. And that assumes that I didn't get wiped by the trash.

Apparently, melees are allowed quick kills but casters are not.

Further, my spell points are very finite. A melee's weapon can keep going the whole quest or raid, without needing to buy pots from the store to keep going. It doesn't cost you actual cash to be able to keep contributing to the end of the quest.

[Nadion]

This is an insane nerf to a build we're talking about because it's fallen behind. You're increasing the fail rate on a 60 fort mob by 3-4x for any currently viable PM build.


Again, for a PM to be viable at all, necro spells have to be "no-fail" (95%) on most mobs to be useful because of the massive cooldowns. FoD is single target and you get 1 every 8 seconds. Circle of Death can hit max 6 targets, and has to beat 2 saves so your one every 30 seconds is often questionable. Wail of the Banshee is potent but it still only hits 4 mobs max and has 1-min cooldown. All of these are sp-intensive spells cast with metamagics.

Given this, mobs have to be "no-fail" or close to it after no more than 1 ennervation + 1 energy drain if it's supposed to be possible to instakill the mob at all, and if it's not, the will save needs to be manageable. Anything else and the squishy PM isn't doing much and is running itself out of spell points quickly.




There's probably a formula that can be written, but it needs to be a more generous formula than currently exists, not less. Or at least, something that maintains the top end possibilities while smoothing the drop-off for a few points of DC might do wonders for allowing DC builds to account for more DPS and survivability.

Alternatively, more necro spells can be added to fill out the arsenal, more tools can be given to manage SP, and/or more options to give up a point of DC here or there to add substantial DPS could be offered.


IMHO no fail DC casting against a mobs strong save should be unobtainable in Legendary Elite (fyi my main is a DC Wizard). Against a strong save I would like the best DC casters to top out at 80-85%, 85%-90% with reasonable debuffing. Wheres the fun, challenge, strategy, or need for teamwork in otherwise? Just do your 20 past lives and be God - no further thought required. Legendary Elite content should be balanced so that even top tier deep TR characters (all characters, not just casters) need to party up to realistically hope to complete it. Inevitably there will be the 0.1% ultra elite who can solo, but it should be too much hassle to be worth it and/or rely on a build being particularly well suited to the specific quest. Soloists and less capable toons can do norm and hard. Being able to dominate EE/LE should not be seen as an entitlement.

There probably is a better formula that the one I suggested - but the straight up d20 system clearly isn't cutting it anymore and we need something that works over a larger range of DC/Saving throw values without rendering far too many characters either useless or unstoppable.

I definitely do agree that the spellbook should be expanded. Particularly I would like conjuration to become viable and necro to have so more useful options that aren't instakills.

[Kompera_Oberon]

This is total bs unless you think soloing EE should be the norm. I've completed plenty of EE's with a [party]. Why does every class have to be able to solo EE in order to be [viable]. No body should be able to solo EE, that's stupid and is leading to the demise of the grouping scene and the game itself.

It is not about soloing EE, it is about feeling useful. Anyone can tag along with any build in EE content and watch the Paladin Tempest crush all content while you follow along and pick up mysterious remnants. I like to play wizards and clerics and the balance of power is so off putting you wonder what your point even is in a party. I don't think anyone here is even asking to lead the kill, we just want to be relevant. The game is boring when a couple classes kill everything and everyone else is along for the ride to watch their 'awesomeness'.

This is it exactly. No one wants to compare their character to another character and find that even with a similar amount of play time invested that they are vastly different in simple terms of effectiveness. The level of effectiveness is not relevant, it could be EN or EH or EE or any other label representing some bar of performance, the important thing is a sense of balance and equity.

My pure Cleric is able to run EH fine, if slowly, and after a couple EPLs I can even run the lower level EEs when I'm at cap. But to get to this point I have had to build it as much towards melee specialization as is possible.

But when I group with a Barbarian or a Paladin for a EH dungeon I'm pretty much just along for the ride. Other classes also apply here, Barbs and Paladins just happen to be fairly common in my experience. They do almost all of the killing, and I need far more healing than they do. Frequently I won't need to throw a single healing spell their way, but I will need healing in any fight with a Champion or a large number of monsters or a boss. They don't need me there for heals, or for DPS. So I'm a buff stick at best, and perhaps someone to chat with while they faceroll the dungeon because we've run together a few times and know each others names.



They don't work correctly because the game has strayed too far from p&p. Them breaking one part of it isn't a good reason to break more. It's a reason to un-break it.

The chance to unbreak the relationship to PnP D&D left the building a very long time ago and is never coming back. The genie has been let out of the bottle, it cannot be forced back in. Pandora's box has already been opened. The milk has been spilled, no crying now. Etc., etc. The only way to make a workable system is to further diverge from PnP D&D mechanics which simply do not scale into the DDO environment.

[Duskofdead]

They don't work correctly because the game has strayed too far from p&p. Them breaking one part of it isn't a good reason to break more. It's a reason to un-break it.

You are welcome to attempt to sell to this min-max obsessed community the notion that their to-hit should drop by 50% or so across the board, and their damage should drop 70% or so across the board, and their hit points should drop about 60% across the board.

You wouldn't get an argument from me but you'll get arguments plenty.

[Qhualor]

Melees who aren't doing at least this much damage at level 28 are terrible and aren't even worth discussing.

It was grossly exaggerated that melees are killing mobs in 2 seconds. That means no point in playing anything else and they need a 75% dps nerf if that was the case. Quests would be over in 3/4 less time than they already are. On EN I could buy it, but not EE.

[slarden]

They don't work correctly because the game has strayed too far from p&p. Them breaking one part of it isn't a good reason to break more. It's a reason to un-break it.

The problem with D20 in MMOs is it lends itself so much to min/maxing since all that matters is the range of 19 #s from the 95% success rate to the failure rate and in some cases - like DC casting you might only case about the 9 #s from the 95% success rate to the 50% success rate because once you dip below 50% it becomes too mana-intensive to consider.

With DCs in the 80s having only 9 #s that matter is problematic because it leads to the choice of max DC or dump DC. It also means if enemy saves rise quick DC is ineffective entirely. This happened with eGH for some builds and it happened with eAmarath for some builds.

When past lifes make up 5 of those 9 #s that matter (3 sorc lifes, completionist, past life wizard) and top raid gear makes up another 4 (visions of precision, gauntlets of the arcane soldier and epic deific diadem), it becomes way too hard to balance the game with D20.

So yeah, it's tough to see DDO stray from the D20 game mechanics, but I can't argue with the reason why.

It may be beneficial to change DC mechanics to stray from D20. The same with turn undead for that matter which should use the same mechanism as DC casting - whatever that is.

[slarden]

It was grossly exaggerated that melees are killing mobs in 2 seconds. That means no point in playing anything else and they need a 75% dps nerf if that was the case. Quests would be over in 3/4 less time than they already are. On EN I could buy it, but not EE.

Agreed I don't think melees are better at killing mobs than casters, it's just that most casters are resource constrained and can't use their best DPS spells without running out of sp or have to conserve spell points in general and have to lower dps to conserve spell points for the end fight.

I am to the point where I have to turn metamagic off on most of my non-SLAs. I still have a meta'd version for when I do have enough sp, but usually rely on meta'd slas and unmetas non-SLAs for dps so I don't run out of sp.

[Faltout]

So now you talk about going into EH content where you are hitting 95% of the time, the mobs are probably being ripped apart from the others in the party that that probably has more to do with that challenge than anything your 8 second per kill is having on the run.
I was solo in that EH so noone was killing anything. You're still missing the point though: I'm not comparing myself to other classes in that example, but myself against content. When content is too easy for MY character, it gets boring. If I was a max DC build and went into EE and did the same thing I did on EH, nothing would change. I would still have a 95% success rate AND I would be on the highest difficulty so no saying "This is boring, let's try a harder diff".


Feel free to believe that your contributions are up there. 60% kill rate without debuffs in a decent party will mean those mobs are likely to be killed by other memebers in that time.
Obviously I choose the targets I want to kill. I don't just hit TAB and whatever I select gets fingered. There's lots of types of trash. For example, when I see 3 giants charging towards the party, I'll start with an enervation and FoD on the berserker before he gets to the melee dude. That will leave the melee with 1 berserker and 1 caster. While melee will be hitting the berserker, I'll FoD the caster as well so melee will have less incoming damage.
So, basically I used debufs (enervation lowers HP so they lose a +2 to saves, also lowers saves by 1d4 * 2) including maybe a fear spell to lower saves more and then FoD a brute. Then I targetted the caster that I know has weak fort and FoD without debufs. If it's wasn't just 3 but it was 10 berserkers charging at the melee, nothing I can do about that, I'll let melee and CCers handle it. I may throw some damage spells to help speed up the process, but not wasting sp on that. I may as well look out for a caster lurking ahead so I can FoD that instead.
The above is TOTALLY ok to happen in a party and it's challenging and fun. It's not like I have nothing to do and it's not like I would be able to complete the content even if party went afk at the entrance. Neither of those is fun.


Your DC spell singer bard, how is that wail working out for him? The only debuff that will help him there is when the mobs roll a 1.
You would be wrong. Just last night in EE Tor:
I'm where we need to throw 2 levers for the gates to the end fight to open. While I see 2 others beating up 2 berserkers, I ignore them and decide to go straight for the lever. I throw sonic blasts on every giant I see aggroing them on me. I don't worry because I have displacement/dodge/ghostly running and a heal on quicken. So I throw the lever dodging a hit from a berserker and go to the door I know opened and casters are gonna come out of there. I stop in a spot and throw a disco ball (giants have FoM in Tor). As expected, the berserkers stop at the disco ball but casters save from it easily. Instead of running around and using song of capering I throw 2 crushing despairs (1 to weaken will for the second one to work) and then activate wail. 1 caster falls dead from first round, another one gets drained. 2nd round just drains 2 casters, 3rd round kills 2 casters. So, I'm left with 1 out of 4 casters and berserkers dancing. I hit Shout and Greater Shout and the remaining caster dies. At this point, the people beating on the 2 berserkers finally find where I am and start beating on the dancing berserkers. I leave them at it and move through the now opened doors to get the chest on the other side.

I don't believe those 3 casters that died all rolled a 1.

[Silverleafeon]

The central problem is that stat inflation long ago passed the point at which the d20 system breaks down. The DC spread between maxxed out, very strong, and strong casters is two wide to accommodate within such a small range.

It is time to accept that we need a new formula for determining whether spells land that allows a wider range of DCs to be at least somewhat effective, whilst preventing maxxed out toons from shooting clear into the unstoppable range.

I think something like % change to land = DC / (2*Save) + 0.01 * (DC - Save) would be appropriate. Essentially take the ratio of the Caster DC and Mob save, and then adjust in by 1% times the difference between the DC and Save.

For example, a PM with trying to FoD a mob with a 60 fort save would have the following chances of success

40DC -> 13.3%
45DC -> 22.5%%
50DC -> 31.7%%
55DC ->40.8%
60DC ->50%
65DC -> 59.1%%
70DC -> 68.3%
75DC ->77.5%
80DC ->86.7%

This would lower the DC for a weaker player to contribute to a group, whilst the diminishing returns at the high end would make it harder to become unstoppable at the high end.

I think this would be a win for everyone. Mid tier characters would be able to participate in groups without being a total waste of a slot, whilst top tier characters could find a serious challenge in the game instead of walking all over everything. Facing real danger and having to play smart is actually more fun over time than zerging everything mindlessly. It could also encourage more spell diversity as targeting weak saves becomes more important instead of piling everything into a single school to overwhelm a single type of save.

I agree with you that save or die spells which include a lot more than necro might need to be analyzed for a new system such as the AC system.
{I am not saying this is the correct path, but it is a path that should be considered.}

HOWEVER, if this path is taken, the cost of spells cast MUST be reduced by half or more, because spell point usage ratio vs epic monsters ratio is already terribly out of wack.

[Silverleafeon]

Agreed I don't think melees are better at killing mobs than casters, it's just that most casters are resource constrained and can't use their best DPS spells without running out of sp or have to conserve spell points in general and have to lower dps to conserve spell points for the end fight.

I am to the point where I have to turn metamagic off on most of my non-SLAs. I still have a meta'd version for when I do have enough sp, but usually rely on meta'd slas and unmetas non-SLAs for dps so I don't run out of sp.

Yes, we really need an Epic Meta(s) that does not cost sp.
It so sad we have to turn off all our metas for everything but SLAs.

Energy Burst is popular because it is inexpensive for what it does (even if you don't have int/cha scores).


New epic feat ~ gained every level ~ Epic Mana efficeiency ~ all spells and metamagics cost -3% less (stacks with everything)
At level 30, its a 30% discount.

[Nestroy]

Yes, we really need an Epic Meta(s) that does not cost sp.
It so sad we have to turn off all our metas for everything but SLAs.

Energy Burst is popular because it is inexpensive for what it does (even if you don't have int/cha scores).


New epic feat ~ gained every level ~ Epic Mana efficeiency ~ all spells and metamagics cost -3% less (stacks with everything)
At level 30, its a 30% discount.

Ever taken a look on Harper ;). I would suggest some more enhancement trees like the harper, e.g. Cormyrian Wizard or Cormyrian Strategist. The wiz tree (can be purchased or with enough purple dragon favor) contains more of the SP cost saving enhancements we already find in trees like Archwizard. They could go a long way in tier 5 to even make empower or enlarge free of costs. The Cormyrian Strategist on the other hand would greatly anhance the DC side of things, for melees as well as wizzies or archers. The cost of opportunity is the AP costs spent.

[Silverleafeon]

Ever taken a look on Harper ;). I would suggest some more enhancement trees like the harper, e.g. Cormyrian Wizard or Cormyrian Strategist. The wiz tree (can be purchased or with enough purple dragon favor) contains more of the SP cost saving enhancements we already find in trees like Archwizard. They could go a long way in tier 5 to even make empower or enlarge free of costs. The Cormyrian Strategist on the other hand would greatly anhance the DC side of things, for melees as well as wizzies or archers. The cost of opportunity is the AP costs spent.

nice thoughts

[Demsac]

And someone please make a vid of 62 necro caster rocking EE Stormhorns lol.

No one gots time for a 5 hour video of a quest. That's how long it took 2 years ago with 68 necro dc to do EE WGU...plus a lot of re-entries.

Eh and dcs wasn't even a problem back then, those **** pillars took over an hour to kill.

[davmuzl]

Low save 95%
Avg save 65% (so debuffing by 6 gets you to 95%)
High save 45% (so debuffing by 10 gets you to 95%)

IMO Necromancy should not be the most effective caster school for killing everything in a quest (Evocation should be that IMO), It should be the most effective at killing high priority targets fast, and it should be very effective neutralizing (read making harmless) a target.

Probably going to upset people with that opinion but what ever.

I do agree that when 100% of mobs in a quest/raid are red name that's just silly stupid.

I think you underestimate the power of instant kills. With the percentages you gave there we would be in a situation similar to pre motu, when PMs where simply op.
In a way it's quite sad that instant killing is a part of the game. It means that it's way harder to balance DC casting than it would be if all DC casters could do was CC. Necromancy basically comes down to- can I kill everything instantly or not?- if I can it's great. If I can it's great. If not I might aswell not play the character.
I think what the Devs apparently want to do (make selecting the correct spell more relevant than stacking 1 kind of DC) is a good thing. The problem is that this doesn't really work in practice, because the mechanics to buff those spell schools are still in place. As a result DC casting still requires a major investment in terms of stat distribution, feats, enhancement/ED points and gear and then the DCs only work against specific mobs with low saves against the spells the character is specced for.

1. I would like to see more powerful spells, that can't be spammed in the same way that SLAs are used today(I think the storm of vengance SLA is really great because it has a big cooldown, but you can still use the actual spell in between).
2. There is a chance to differentiate caster playstyles in a way where sorcerers are able to spec for 1 school while the wizards strength would be to choose the spell that fits the situation (or the other way round or completly different).
3. There is a lot of potential to create different styles of PMs. Some may focus on debuffing, some may focus on draining power from their enemies and some may focus on having multiple minions, to actually deal damage and keep enemies away from them. Instant killing can be part of this, but should not be the standard way to get through quests.

I might give a rundown of what I think would be healthy in terms of percentages at which spells should land if I find enough time. The chance has to vary dramatically depending on the level of the quest, the difficulty and the investment the character has made.

[Andoris]

It was grossly exaggerated that melees are killing mobs in 2 seconds. That means no point in playing anything else and they need a 75% dps nerf if that was the case. Quests would be over in 3/4 less time than they already are. On EN I could buy it, but not EE.

It is not "grossly exaggerated" Trash, even in lvl 30 EEs simply evaporates in front of a well built melee these days. If you are not seeing it, that means that you are not seeing well built/played melee's. Doing 5k+ dps unboosted and 8-10k+ boosted is not that hard these days on a melee.

Just because you don't see it in your play group, doesn't mean that it is not happening.

[Andoris]

I agree with you that save or die spells which include a lot more than necro might need to be analyzed for a new system such as the AC system.
{I am not saying this is the correct path, but it is a path that should be considered.}

HOWEVER, if this path is taken, the cost of spells cast MUST be reduced by half or more, because spell point usage ratio vs epic monsters ratio is already terribly out of wack.

Moving DC casting to anything even closely resembling the AC system will put the final nail in the coffin for DC casters in a very permanent way.

I am not saying the D20 system is great, but it is better than any other ideas I have seen. Due to the all or nothing nature of spells, there needs to be a way to (nearly) guarantee that they will land. That might be through targeting weak saves, debuffs, gear, lives, or ideally a combination of all of the above.

Putting spells on a "diminishing returns" curve where you can never get to that (near) guarantee will be the final irreversible death kell for the play-style.

[Duskofdead]

Moving DC casting to anything even closely resembling the AC system will put the final nail in the coffin for DC casters in a very permanent way.

I am not saying the D20 system is great, but it is better than any other ideas I have seen. Due to the all or nothing nature of spells, there needs to be a way to (nearly) guarantee that they will land. That might be through targeting weak saves, debuffs, gear, lives, or ideally a combination of all of the above.

Putting spells on a "diminishing returns" curve where you can never get to that (near) guarantee will be the final irreversible death kell for the play-style.

I am not sure where the panicky hand-wringing comes from anyway that "ooh, no, even with all the systems restricting them and how poorly performing and rarely seen any casters other than warlocks are, we must be very careful to stop them from being too strong!" comes from. Least of all in a present reality where you watch a pack of melees fly at mobs and cut them down almost instantly in waves. Even if casting were back to its glory days in this environment, how the heck would anyone even notice a difference? It wouldn't break melees and it wouldn't break the game and it wouldn't make casters broken OP. It would honestly just slot them into the current natural flow of the game.

Argh, I just killed 8 mobs in 4 seconds and then watched a PM finger of death ONE THING! OVERPOWERED!

Really?

[Andoris]

I am not sure where the panicky hand-wringing comes from anyway that "ooh, no, even with all the systems restricting them and how poorly performing and rarely seen any casters other than warlocks are, we must be very careful to stop them from being too strong!" comes from. Least of all in a present reality where you watch a pack of melees fly at mobs and cut them down almost instantly in waves. Even if casting were back to its glory days in this environment, how the heck would anyone even notice a difference? It wouldn't break melees and it wouldn't break the game and it wouldn't make casters broken OP. It would honestly just slot them into the current natural flow of the game.

Argh, I just killed 8 mobs in 4 seconds and then watched a PM finger of death ONE THING! OVERPOWERED!

Really?

Not sure why you quoted my text.. but in case it is not clear -- I completely agree with you.

Anyone that thinks DC casters are anything but extremely weak (at End game in EE's; which is what this thread is about); has not seen what a well played/built melee can do.

Heck prior to the last couple updates I could at least splash some melee dps into my wizard to have something to do. Now with the need to break spell resistance I really can't even do that anymore (and still call myself a DC caster at least).

[Duskofdead]

Not sure why you quoted my text.. but in case it is not clear -- I completely agree with you.


I was commenting on the same mindset your post was responding to. Yes, I knew we were in agreement.

[Qhualor]

It is not "grossly exaggerated" Trash, even in lvl 30 EEs simply evaporates in front of a well built melee these days. If you are not seeing it, that means that you are not seeing well built/played melee's. Doing 5k+ dps unboosted and 8-10k+ boosted is not that hard these days on a melee.

Just because you don't see it in your play group, doesn't mean that it is not happening.

it is grossly exaggerated. melees are not taking mobs down in 2 seconds. if its happening than it must be super secret that Ironclan just spilled the beans. note, that im not disputing the damage numbers, just the consistency that melees are doing that kind of damage in 2 seconds time.

I don't see it in any play group like my former guild groups and pugs.

[Silverleafeon]

Moving DC casting to anything even closely resembling the AC system will put the final nail in the coffin for DC casters in a very permanent way.

I am not saying the D20 system is great, but it is better than any other ideas I have seen. Due to the all or nothing nature of spells, there needs to be a way to (nearly) guarantee that they will land. That might be through targeting weak saves, debuffs, gear, lives, or ideally a combination of all of the above.

Putting spells on a "diminishing returns" curve where you can never get to that (near) guarantee will be the final irreversible death kell for the play-style.

I am very inclined to agree with you.
The sp costs and the cooldowns involved do greatly limit these type of spells.
Save or Die has always been a difficult point for DMs to deal with.
Should a new system like this be incorporated, much adaptation would be required, including less intense monsters.
These could very well unbalance melee power even further.

[Nestroy]

it is grossly exaggerated. melees are not taking mobs down in 2 seconds. if its happening than it must be super secret that Ironclan just spilled the beans. note, that im not disputing the damage numbers, just the consistency that melees are doing that kind of damage in 2 seconds time.

I don't see it in any play group like my former guild groups and pugs.

I do see 15k damage output from melees. Blitz and crit procs can do. Burst damage, not sustained. I already saw sustained 3k with bursts of much more from melees, and yes, 2-3 seconds to mow down 6k meatbaggies seems possible. I would question: "Which EE quest?" - certainly not GH, and I severely doubt ToEE. Quests like eSpies or eVON3? Why not.

[redoubt]

Low save 95%
Avg save 65% (so debuffing by 6 gets you to 95%)
High save 45% (so debuffing by 10 gets you to 95%)

IMO Necromancy should not be the most effective caster school for killing everything in a quest (Evocation should be that IMO), It should be the most effective at killing high priority targets fast, and it should be very effective neutralizing (read making harmless) a target.

Probably going to upset people with that opinion but what ever.

I do agree that when 100% of mobs in a quest/raid are red name that's just silly stupid.

I think these are pretty good numbers and I like that it is taking debuffing into consideration. I might even suggest lowering it a little. Something like
low save: 80%
avg save: 60%
high save: 40%
This is EE at level. This is an overall ability to insta-kill 60% of the mobs on the first try.

Next, get rid of the bonus to save based on health. A mob at half health is not the one you want to apply instakill or CC on. The whole point of the DC abilities is to alter the fight at the beginning. As the mobs get down under 50% all the melee have massive boosts to damage and those mobs become easy. Pushing DC casters into waiting until a mob is half health negates their main purpose.

Part 3: As Grail said, necromancy should probably not be number 1. Look at the other spell schools and find ways to boost them. As an example:
-- evocation: 1.3 casting stat modifier
-- enchantment: 1.5 casting stat modifier
-- conjuration: .... etc
The downside to this one is that it may become too easy to be very good at (for example) necro and enchantment and thus we have another no weakness build.

As an alternative, go through the enhancements and destinies and increases the bonuses to the various spell schools, leaving necro (because it is the most powerful) as the baseline. Adjust the others to make using different spell schools more attractive.

[Silverleafeon]

I am very inclined to agree with you.
The sp costs and the cooldowns involved do greatly limit these type of spells.
Save or Die has always been a difficult point for DMs to deal with.
Should a new system like this be incorporated, much adaptation would be required, including less intense monsters.
These could very well unbalance melee power even further.

I guess the resulting melee nerf from such a system change such as d20 dc casting becoming AC style would create way to much future rage to merit the philosophy therein....

[davmuzl]

A character wearing the gear level the content is designed for (i.e. using mostly gear that is sourced from at-level Epic Hard content):

Finger vs. 'Trash' Human Caster: 80% without Heighten or debuffs, 95% with

Finger vs. 'Trash' Brute mob (ogre, etc): 5% without debuffs, readily raised to 50% with a small amount of debuffs and Heighten

Finger vs. mobs that are intended to be legitimately difficult but that aren't orange named: 5% without debuffs, 5% with moderate debuffing, but able to be raised to 50-95% with extensive debuffing (which may not be tactically sound)


A character that outgears the content should be able to dominate it and get these numbers higher.

Sounds like something I would come up with.
A few side notes:
If the most dangerous enemies are "weak" caster or rogue enemies with weak fort saves, FoD would be a very easy way to get rid of those.
DCs depend on more than being a caster and having gear in DDO.
Debuffing should imo not be a matter of "I just throw energy drain on the enemies that I can't instant kill with a 95% chance".
Even a barbarian who is only built for dealing as much damage as possible is probably going to be helpful to the group in the sense that he is going to stand between enemies and is going to absorb some damage. Stuff like CC spells should be quite easier to use, so all casters can be useful to the group apart from instant killing stuff.

Could be that this is just my subjective perception, but it feels like players used to have more control over fights than they do in the new quest. There are a lot of spells like dancing balls, consecration, etc. that work very well when the enemy runs into them. When enemies just stand still or run away and then start attacking from range it is a lot harder to deal with them, because AoE effects don't work. Casters are affected more by this than most other characters, because they rely on AoE to be spell point efficient. This is most notable in the thunderholme raids.

[AbyssalMage]

IMO Necromancy should not be the most effective caster school for killing everything in a quest (Evocation should be that IMO), It should be the most effective at killing high priority targets fast, and it should be very effective neutralizing (read making harmless) a target.
Hmmm...
So if we reduced the inflated HP's of NPC's, then Evocation would be stronger (or increased the Damage of spells).
If Charm style spells lasted longer in EE content, then Enchantment would be stronger.
Illusion needs more "offensive" based spells to make it stronger.
So yes, I could see a solution that would make other schools, other than Necromancy, becoming more powerful. I wonder if the Developers can see it too?


Probably going to upset people with that opinion but what ever.
I'm just upset that people (developers and players) use a single solution to solve all problems.


I do agree that when 100% of mobs in a quest/raid are red name that's just silly stupid.
Yup :)

[AbyssalMage]

it is grossly exaggerated. melees are not taking mobs down in 2 seconds. if its happening than it must be super secret that Ironclan just spilled the beans. note, that im not disputing the damage numbers, just the consistency that melees are doing that kind of damage in 2 seconds time.

I don't see it in any play group like my former guild groups and pugs.
I agree that i don't see a singular melee taking down EE, at level NPC's, so I agree that that statement is (most likely) grossly exaggerated.

I do see 2 to 3 melee's take down at level NPC's (non-named) down in 2 seconds though. This is my only explanation on what he was stating.

On second thought, before the nerf (U28.1), yes, I saw this. Usually solo though (through video postings), to keep Blitz and NPC's grouped together to provide maximum damage. I can think of a few Bard and Barbarian builds who eliminated packs of NPC's on EE in seconds so it was possible.

[Grailhawk]

The mike has been dropped. You have said nothing that disputes the MATH which Iron provided. Melee are extremely OP, casters with no fail instakills will still be weaker than current god mode melee's but at least it is a start.

Comparing instakills to DPS is like comparing buying a Stake Dinner to buying a House you can grind it down to numbers but its pointless.

[Aletys]

it is grossly exaggerated. melees are not taking mobs down in 2 seconds. if its happening than it must be super secret that Ironclan just spilled the beans. note, that im not disputing the damage numbers, just the consistency that melees are doing that kind of damage in 2 seconds time.

I don't see it in any play group like my former guild groups and pugs.

Actually, I see it alot. Not everyone, of course, but it's quite common in some of the EE pugs I join on Khyber. There definitely a lot of well geared, well built melees out there that just go through the trash as if it was butter.

And, many (not saying most, but many) can stand in the blades in an EE Demon Assault and don't need heals from me to to survive it, so they're not nearly in as much risk as some folks have made out. I can't even get close to the blades on my casters.

[IronClan]

Hell I agree that "most" melee's aren't doing the numbers I threw out there, I am fighting forum DDO sometimes one needs to USE Forum DDO to Fight Forum DDO.

[Basura_Grande]

it is grossly exaggerated. melees are not taking mobs down in 2 seconds. if its happening than it must be super secret that Ironclan just spilled the beans. note, that im not disputing the damage numbers, just the consistency that melees are doing that kind of damage in 2 seconds time.

I don't see it in any play group like my former guild groups and pugs.

Play with better people and you will see it.

[IronClan]

I am very inclined to agree with you.
The sp costs and the cooldowns involved do greatly limit these type of spells.
Save or Die has always been a difficult point for DMs to deal with.
Should a new system like this be incorporated, much adaptation would be required, including less intense monsters.
These could very well unbalance melee power even further.

I agree the diminishing returns curve is a terrible addition to DDO in every case, Even with the limited success case of PRR, AC was a dismal failure and to hit as well also a failure...

These systems just turn an easy to understand mechanic into a "have to look it up and cross reference it" obfuscation. the minimize min maxing and thus the main reason to seek gear... I am not going to go to great effort to add 0.01% more to hit or miss chance... by adding +8 AC or +5 to hit... in the present system I am adding almost NOTHING. "good enough" systems do not belong in games that are purposed to value character progression and refinement through levels, choices and gear... adding 0.02% is simply not compelling game play IMO.

I am posting this opinion because I feel like more people speaking up about the player proposed nerf to Improve critical was needed, and I wish I had fought that back when it was Grailhawk and a couple like minded forum players talking among themselves..

Little did I know that the Dev's were listening to Forum DDO theorycrafting and the lack of people opposing them made the change seem "palatable" because those threads didn't have people pushing back... IMO no one really thought that nerfing an old feat like Improved critical was really something the Dev's would do (at least I didn't), so fighting against it didn't seem necessary. Then it was too late.

I wont repeat that mistake again as long as I'm here, that was a very poor change that actually nerfed a few Races more than it created any sort of balance.

Lowering Melee Power would have been a far more nuanced change, Nerfing the things THEY ADDED would have made a lot of sense.

[Grailhawk]

I am posting this opinion because I feel like more people speaking up about the player proposed nerf to Improve critical was needed, and I wish I had fought that back when it was Grailhawk and a couple like minded forum players talking among themselves.

I doubt you can find me calling for a change to Improved Critical feat, I did call for a nerf to crit profiles it had gotten out of hand but what I wanted to see was crit multipliers brought down to 19-20 +1 instead of a change to crit threat.

Don't get me wrong I do support what they did I just would have done it different.

[Lanhelin]

Devs,

In your mind how often should a Finger of Death land for a PM who has the highest DC possible for the level and equipment available? Assuming no prepping like ED or enervation.

In percentage:

-Against a low-fort mob?
-Against an average mob?
-Against a brute like an ogre?

I'm just curious what your thoughts are on this.

Highest DC? - Should always land. But nowadays mobs still save. I dunno why but they do. I play DC casters too, and it really is quite disappointing. Probably going straight dps would be the better choice - but then, what is it that DDO makes different to other MMOs? Nothing. And then besides lifetime-abo and long playing fans, there is no incentive to play DDO when it's just all about damage and nothing else.

DDO used to be *the* other MMO where - thanks to achievement related rewarded quests - instead of xp/kill quests there were different ways to complete them. This seems to be gone now. DDO always was a niche game and should focus on this niche - otherwise it will perish.

[Qhualor]

I agree that i don't see a singular melee taking down EE, at level NPC's, so I agree that that statement is (most likely) grossly exaggerated.

I do see 2 to 3 melee's take down at level NPC's (non-named) down in 2 seconds though. This is my only explanation on what he was stating.

this is closer to the truth from what I do see.


On second thought, before the nerf (U28.1), yes, I saw this. Usually solo though (through video postings), to keep Blitz and NPC's grouped together to provide maximum damage. I can think of a few Bard and Barbarian builds who eliminated packs of NPC's on EE in seconds so it was possible.

this is what I am seeing with posters in this thread. Ironclan did not get specific. he just said



Assumptions:
7000hp mobs
Melee's doing 3.5 to 5k DPS killing most mobs in 2 seconds or less

not every melee is a Swashbuckler or using Blitz or using broken wolf builds. this is the kind of information that is constantly being spread that is far from the truth and why DDO has so many problems. you cant have a reasonable discussion on the balance of DC casters vs melees if people are going to use generalizations and not be better informed with what actually goes on in the game.

[Deadlock]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

If you're fully maxed out, and I mean optimum ED, maximum relevant past lives, best possible gear, stats maxed out and all feats selected:

Low fort: 95% (fail only on a 1, succeed on a 2)
Average fort: 95% (fail only on a 1, succeed on a 2)
High fort: 90% (fail on a 1,2 succeed on a 3 - but with an option to debuff the mob to return to 95% success)

Given the requirement to be fully optimised, you lose 5% success for every DC point below this optimised number.

You guys must have a table of "max" DC's for every pure class as it progresses from 1 to 30, right? A DC curve that you could share maybe? Something that gets updated with each change in the game mechanics, so for example, it's now been adjusted with +1 DC from the "spooky" Night Revels augment?

EDIT: To be clear - 95% should only possible with Spell Focus, Greater Spell Focus and past lives from low levels so people don't have 95% straight off the bat but can work up to that.

[Duskofdead]

DDO used to be *the* other MMO where - thanks to achievement related rewarded quests - instead of xp/kill quests there were different ways to complete them. This seems to be gone now. DDO always was a niche game and should focus on this niche - otherwise it will perish.

It has never ceased to amaze me how much seemingly NO mmo dev out there can grasp this. If we wanted a cheaper, buggier, less fleshed out WOW... why would any of us not just be playing WOW? No MMO dev seems to understand this. They change and change and become more like WOW (or, very often, were WOW clones right from launch-- usually after hyping how they were "different") and this leads to nothing but the slow and painful free to play depopulation death cycle. It may take years but show me a WOW clone that has boomed as a WOW clone.

The dominant mindset in the dev world seems to be "WOW was the most successful, so it gives players what they want the most." Instead of "WOW completely saturated the market for a specific style of gameplay, and anyone looking to sign up in a new MMO probably doesn't want exactly the same thing."

[SirValentine]

The chance to unbreak the relationship to PnP D&D left the building a very long time ago and is never coming back. The genie has been let out of the bottle, it cannot be forced back in. Pandora's box has already been opened. The milk has been spilled, no crying now. Etc., etc. The only way to make a workable system is to further diverge from PnP D&D mechanics which simply do not scale into the DDO environment.

I don't agree that it's impossible to fix, and strongly disagree that further divergence would be an improvement.



Moving DC casting to anything even closely resembling the AC system will put the final nail in the coffin for DC casters in a very permanent way.


Not just to their effectiveness, but for people's desire to play.

I came to DDO, not because it was some generic MMO, but precisely because it was D&D.

The trend away from D&D has made me unhappy. If they decide to destroy one of the few remaining D&D parts of DDO, the one that's been most relevant to my characters, that will be the final nail in the coffin of me playing DDO at all.

Maybe I should have spoken up more back in 2012 when they destroyed the AC/to-hit system. But I didn't play AC tanks, or even melees much, so though I spoke up a bit, it wasn't perhaps as much as it could & should have been.

You only get to play the "Do this and I quit!" card once, but there you have it. Destroy DC casting with a copy of that abomination of an AC/to-hit system, and I quit.

[Duskofdead]

Not just to their effectiveness, but for people's desire to play.

I came to DDO, not because it was some generic MMO, but precisely because it was D&D.

The trend away from D&D has made me unhappy. If they decide to destroy one of the few remaining D&D parts of DDO, the one that's been most relevant to my characters, that will be the final nail in the coffin of me playing DDO at all.

On this you and I are in perfect agreement.

I'm not a sitting-at-the-top-shelf player. I have taken multiple breaks from the game. I've never achieved completionist. None of my characters are done with their heroic TR plans, let alone ITR/ETR. I don't have a maxed built, maxed geared toon sitting at 28. I may never.

The thing that pulls me back time and again is that you can continue to experience this game on a wide variety of not just classes, but class mixes, roles, strengths, etc.

Homogenize all of that to "everyone is a super fast Diablo 3 damage dealer, class choice is really just flavor" kills that for me. It kills my desire to play other classes from scratch, to finish my past lives, etc.

Bring roles back, that'd be a start. This "one man can, and in fact, SHOULD, and it's GOOD that they can, do everything" mentality is, in my MMO experiences, utterly unique to DDO. DDO attracted a hardcore crowd of people who loved power-minmaxing but despised grouping, and despised losing anything by not grouping (i.e. non-damage related xp boosts like trapping, etc.) and in bits and pieces, this crowd got listened to way too much by the devs over the years. Now everyone regards it as "normal" that a build can do absolutely everything and does not in any way directly rely on other people in the party to make up any shortfalls.

If Turbine just finds a way to put every class into exactly the same effective damage output goalposts, that's not going to fix DDO. Not even close. I get tired of reading thread after thread where people seem to blithely believe that's really all the devs need to work on.

[Basura_Grande]

You only get to play the "Do this and I quit!" card once, but there you have it. Destroy DC casting with a copy of that abomination of an AC/to-hit system, and I quit.

I quit playing caster at least, then again casters aren't worth playing now

[SirValentine]

You guys must have a table of "max" DC's for every pure class as it progresses from 1 to 30, right? A DC curve that you could share maybe? Something that gets updated with each change in the game mechanics, so for example, it's now been adjusted with +1 DC from the "spooky" Night Revels augment?


You really think they do?

[IronClan]

I doubt you can find me calling for a change to Improved Critical feat, I did call for a nerf to crit profiles it had gotten out of hand but what I wanted to see was crit multipliers brought down to 19-20 +1 instead of a change to crit threat.

Don't get me wrong I do support what they did I just would have done it different.

Ugh, that would have been WORSE! Here's the thing: I've played plenty of 19-20 crit builds (FB Barb most recently and also Dwarves before they added all these opportunities to increase crit range) a 19-20X10 Barbarian swinging Adaxus' or Riftmaker sounds like it might be amazeballs... but for me at least it plays like flipping a coin... you're waiting for that 10% crit chance and forever feeling like you either do good DPS when you crit a couple times, or not when you go a longer streak without critting.

In other words 19-20 crits aren't as much fun.

This by extension is why wider crit range melee's feel fun to me, there' a dynamic range to them, you might get a 15-18 crit for a 1000 points and then a 19-20 one doesn't feel so few and far between.

It's about how DDO actually plays and is fun or not. Your theory based conclusions might be good balanced math but they are terrible gameplay.

[Deadlock]

You really think they do?

Wouldn't you? :)

Mine would be a series per spell school and "primary" class, at least A3 and probably laminated and pinned to a wall. :)

Because here's the thing. For all the talk we've all had over the years about DC casting - it's not some incomprehensible conundrum.

[Silverleafeon]

You really think they do?


Wouldn't you? :)

Mine would be a series per spell school and "primary" class, at least A3 and probably laminated and pinned to a wall. :)

Because here's the thing. For all the talk we've all had over the years about DC casting - it's not some incomprehensible conundrum.

Of course they do, all three of us know that already.

[Grailhawk]

Ugh, that would have been WORSE! Here's the thing: I've played plenty of 19-20 crit builds (FB Barb most recently and also Dwarves before they added all these opportunities to increase crit range) a 19-20X10 Barbarian swinging Adaxus' or Riftmaker sounds like it might be amazeballs... but for me at least it plays like flipping a coin... you're waiting for that 10% crit chance and forever feeling like you either do good DPS when you crit a couple times, or not when you go a longer streak without critting.

In other words 19-20 crits aren't as much fun.

This by extension is why wider crit range melee's feel fun to me, there' a dynamic range to them, you might get a 15-18 crit for a 1000 points and then a 19-20 one doesn't feel so few and far between.

It's about how DDO actually plays and is fun or not. Your theory based conclusions might be good balanced math but they are terrible gameplay.

I do understand the difference.

I guess I should say that I might still think crit profies are out of hand all we have really lost is 5% crit chance to most builds thats on the high side about 25% damage (0.05 * 500%). IMO crit multipliers are still an issue and going to need to be addressed next but lets see how this plays out.

Here's the thing its really clear to me based on what we have "debated" about that you like the game easier then I do its very likely we wont find common ground when it comes to nerfs and player power I want players weak to content I don't like going into an EE quest solo and being 100% sure I will succeed with out dying. I would rather only have about a 20% chance solo and 75% chance in a group regardless of how good the players in the group are.

[slarden]

I agree with you that save or die spells which include a lot more than necro might need to be analyzed for a new system such as the AC system.
{I am not saying this is the correct path, but it is a path that should be considered.}

HOWEVER, if this path is taken, the cost of spells cast MUST be reduced by half or more, because spell point usage ratio vs epic monsters ratio is already terribly out of wack.

The AC system has problems of its own, but D20 is a very bad model for DC when past life feats and incremental benefits from the latest raid gear accounts for half the numbers.

Something like lowering saves in general for enemies and then giving them 4D10 instead of 1D20 so there is more of a bell curve and the extras like past lifes and raid gear provide benefits, but not 50% due to the bell curve.

[Deadlock]

D20 is a very bad model for DC when past life feats and incremental benefits from the latest raid gear accounts for half the numbers.

Please elaborate.

[Enoach]

Wouldn't you? :)

Mine would be a series per spell school and "primary" class, at least A3 and probably laminated and pinned to a wall. :)

Because here's the thing. For all the talk we've all had over the years about DC casting - it's not some incomprehensible conundrum.

See this is something I think they would have as well.

Based on what is the base line - First Life average gear, no tomes and what is Multiple relevant lives and max attainable.

I think the problem really stems from the fact that at Epic Levels the "equalizer" of DCs - Debuffs were hurt by the recovery time applied to epics. I really think that this and Attribute bloat that causes mobs to not have a weak save (All are paladins) is where Turbine needs to focus to fix DC casting.

[IronClan]

not every melee is a Swashbuckler or using Blitz or using broken wolf builds. this is the kind of information that is constantly being spread that is far from the truth and why DDO has so many problems. you cant have a reasonable discussion on the balance of DC casters vs melees if people are going to use generalizations and not be better informed with what actually goes on in the game.

Believe it or not I completely agree with you. However we're comparing two edge cases: maxed out PM's who have all the gear and all the past lives, and discussing what a reasonable fail rate is for them in top content, compered with maxed out melee's exploiting boosts (as least) Draconic Reinvig in the off hand and possibly but not necessarily Mortal Fear + helpless boosts (sense weakness is 30% Rogue 4 is 30% and boosting melee in LD is 50% so what happens when a boosting melee with MF gets a MF proc? (doesn't even need 4 rogue but i wont go into that, it's just that some clown is sure to try and one up me if I don't mention it) 110% of a mobs HP is an insta kill. Still you don't even need MF... You can do (in edge case builds) 8000dps to red names, just as you can hit 95% insta kill with an edge case PM.... however obviously this does not include the most recent content (ToEE and up basically) which is why people are asking for DC casting to be addressed and thus this discussion.

Again these are two edge cases being compared to each other due to the natural flow of this discussion, used as examples because they're easier to talk about. You're correct to point out that not everyone is on that edge, not even most are. But that's not what we're trying to discuss.

DC casting is even WORSE for non edge cases... I find very few people doing it at all that aren't exploiting some user friendly synergy or beneficial save type + great spell (Earthquake reflex + Evocation for example).

[IronClan]

I do understand the difference.

I guess I should say that I might still think crit profies are out of hand all we have really lost is 5% crit chance to most builds thats on the high side about 25% damage (0.05 * 500%). IMO crit multipliers are still an issue and going to need to be addressed next but lets see how this plays out.

Here's the thing its really clear to me based on what we have "debated" about that you like the game easier then I do its very likely we wont find common ground when it comes to nerfs and player power I want players weak to content I don't like going into an EE quest solo and being 100% sure I will succeed with out dying. I would rather only have about a 20% chance solo and 75% chance in a group regardless of how good the players in the group are.

There are lots of ways to make the game harder:

lower melee power this is across the board and doesn't nerf one race or build direction more than another, as a side benefit it also levels the playing field more between buffed classes (that have more melee power so more can be taken away) and unbuffed ones that haven't yet gotten MP opportunities (and less can be given to them when they do).

This IMO is where they should have nerfed. the Improved crit nerf was poorly thought out impacted certain build directions and races far more than others. Someone using DC, Holy Sword and various weapons lost as much as 15% crit range. Melee now feels pretty meh to me unless you're playing a high attack speed build. This would not have been the case with a melee power drop. IMO they mostly nerfed it because you and others influenced them and not enough people took those posts seriously enough to speak out against them, giving the Dev's the false impression that they were less rage worthy.

I want combat to remain dynamic and have "range" I enjoy melee combat when it is MORE organic and less binary. The changes you support make it more binary and less dynamic, making the game more meh is not something the Dev's should be listening to.

I have spoken out enough about difficulty (pro harder) that you characterizing me as wanting an easier game is not a tenable argument I think anyone who reads these boards even people who don't like me or my posting style can see through that red herring. I used to have a SIG that read "did you try a lower difficulty?". My skills are adequate for EE presently, nothing remotely uber about me, yet I am supportive of harder modes because I like to have aspirations and goals. I have been outspoken for either Reaper mode or making EE harder (which IMO they are doing ToEE now with the accidental buffs that they've talked about being a side effect of removing the old monster scaling is freakin HARD (for me anyway))

Yes we have fundamentally differing views: I care about how fun the game is, you care about the math being elegant.

[slarden]

Please elaborate.

There is only a relevant range of 18 #s when you roll a D20 1 is an automatic fail and 20 is an automatic success.

On my Druid

Past Life Sorc x 3: 3
Past Life Wizard: 1
Completionist: 1
Visions of Precision: 1
Gauntlets of the Arcane Soldier: 1
Epic Deific Diadem: 2

9 DC from past lifes and end game raid gear. It's really hard to balance around that on a D20 when it's half the relevant #s rolled on a D20.

[Grailhawk]

There are lots of ways to make the game harder:

lower melee power this is across the board and doesn't nerf one race or build direction more than another, as a side benefit it also levels the playing field more between buffed classes (that have more melee power so more can be taken away) and unbuffed ones that haven't yet gotten MP opportunities (and less can be given to them when they do).

This IMO is where they should have nerfed. the Improved crit nerf was poorly thought out impacted certain build directions and races far more than others. Someone using DC, Holy Sword and various weapons lost as much as 15% crit range. Melee now feels pretty meh to me unless you're playing a high attack speed build. This would not have been the case with a melee power drop. IMO they mostly nerfed it because you and others influenced them and not enough people took those posts seriously enough to speak out against them, giving the Dev's the false impression that they were less rage worthy.

I want combat to remain dynamic and have "range" I enjoy melee combat when it is MORE organic and less binary. The changes you support make it more binary and less dynamic, making the game more meh is not something the Dev's should be listening to.

I have spoken out enough about difficulty (pro harder) that you characterizing me as wanting an easier game is not a tenable argument I think anyone who reads these boards even people who don't like me or my posting style can see through that red herring. I used to have a SIG that read "did you try a lower difficulty?". My skills are adequate for EE presently, nothing remotely uber about me, yet I am supportive of harder modes because I like to have aspirations and goals. I have been outspoken for either Reaper mode or making EE harder (which IMO they are doing ToEE now with the accidental buffs that they've talked about being a side effect of removing the old monster scaling is freakin HARD (for me anyway))

Yes we have fundamentally differing views: I care about how fun the game is, you care about the math being elegant.

The math and game can be fun at the same time.

Did you think the game was a bore before they added holy sword and swashbuckler in and the best crit profile was a 15-20/x3? Crit profiles have gone up so much in the last ~year that a base Khopesh is garbage that really should say all there is to say about crit profile and how out of control it got.

[Deadlock]

There is only a relevant range of 18 #s when you roll a D20 1 is an automatic fail and 20 is an automatic success.

On my Druid

Past Life Sorc x 3: 3
Past Life Wizard: 1
Completionist: 1
Visions of Precision: 1
Gauntlets of the Arcane Soldier: 1
Epic Deific Diadem: 2

9 DC from past lifes and end game raid gear. It's really hard to balance around that on a D20 when it's half the relevant #s rolled on a D20.

The D20 is rolled on the difference. The contribution those 9 points make is relative to your overall DC and the mob's saves. They don't provide a 50% contribution.

That would be like me saying that because my INT contributes +39 to my DC's that I've got a 95% success rate. If only that was the case :)

[slarden]

The D20 is rolled on the difference. The contribution those 9 points make is relative to your overall DC and the mob's saves. They don't provide a 50% contribution.

That would be like me saying that because my INT contributes +39 to my DC's that I've got a 95% success rate. If only that was the case :)

There are only 18 possible values on a D20. Those 9 #s absolutely account for half of the relevant #s. If DC is on D20 and balanced against someone with everything - yeah that's going basically mean you can't be a DC caster without everything or close to it - and that's assuming the devs are able to make DC casting work even for the person with everything. With a bell curve 9 DC might only be a 15-20% point swing (or less depending on the curve) instead of a 45% swing. With the way the game is now DC casting can't really be balanced between a true grinder and someone that plays a fair amount, but doesn't have all the past lifes and raid gear. There are just too many DC that come from past lifes and raid gear for an end game character.

[Raithe]

If DC is on D20 and balanced against someone with everything - yeah that's going basically mean you can't be a DC caster without everything or close to it...

That isn't how DC casting in DDO has worked, ever,... let alone since they added a bunch of debuffs to certain spells like hypnotism, et al. For instakilling there was always Enervation before FoD or Slay Living or Destruction. Later there was Symbol of Death. You could use scrolls most of the time, just not against mobs with SR. Level drain continues to work in EE content now, you have a few seconds before they regain all their lost levels back.

A completely new character could enervate, cast Bestow Curse (will save), enervate again, and be at a relative DC somewhere around 14 points higher than he was if he didn't do any debuffing (2d4 * 2 + 4). It would just take him longer, which is OK for a new player running through content with other new players who are all getting their bearings.

The primary difference between exceptionally geared casters and exceptionally geared melee is that the melee can't be next to every mob that is next to the group. Other players will have a chance to be a part of the group if it's just a melee going around killing mobs, he'll have to travel between them. There have been times (quests) in DDO where a heavily-geared Pale Master can make everything dead before anyone else has a chance to get to it. I have seen it happen, and the Pale Master that is being accurately "role-played" as an evil genius will prioritize kills based on which mobs are closest to a melee character.

It not only happens, but used to happen often. The only reason we aren't seeing it more now is because of the players that remain (we've lost a third of our playerbase since the beginning of the bard superswash fiasco). The only players that currently think DDO is worth their time are typically melee. There's a reason why many of the caster players I used to know are not around any longer. They got bored.

Instakill via long-range ability was the absolute worst game mechanic ever installed in DDO. Worse than even Shiradi or 10-second purple-name kills via Treeform or Unbridled Fury. But hey, all those go right in hand with the Warlock (a caster) standing still demolishing Demon Assault on Epic Elite.

Epic Elite... more like Epic Boredom.

[slarden]

A completely new character could enervate, cast Bestow Curse (will save), enervate again, and be at a relative DC somewhere around 14 points higher than he was if he didn't do any debuffing (2d4 * 2 + 4). It would just take him longer, which is OK for a new player running through content with other new players who are all getting their bearings.

Most are wise enough to choose a better option than being a subpar DC caster which is... well almost anything is better than that.

[Marshal_Lannes]

.

A completely new character could enervate, cast Bestow Curse (will save), enervate again, and be at a relative DC somewhere around 14 points higher than he was if he didn't do any debuffing (2d4 * 2 + 4). It would just take him longer, which is OK for a new player running through content with other new players who are all getting their bearings.

Instakill via long-range ability was the absolute worst game mechanic ever installed in DDO.

What game are you playing that someone has the time to cast 4 spells to get one kill? If a new caster has to cast enervate, bestow curse, enervate then FoD, he is literally never going to kill anything before the melee wrecking train mows thru everything in front of him. Not to mention the caster would be out of SPs after a few encounters.

And instakill is hardly the worst thing. Giving melee characters top DPS, top AOE DPS, self healing and top tier damage mitigation was the worst thing that happened to the game. I don't know how you ever come back from that monty haul load except by heavily nerfing melee characters.

[Ogiontheblack]

I agree with there being to many red and purple names. The only other thing I think should change is the mana or sp pots in an end quest with 3040 sp I run out with in 5 minutes and become almost useless unless I have wands and a healer. It would be nice if we could buy in game sp pots with pp. then the ratio at least to me is fine the way it is.


Like always Stay Safe and have fun
The Dark One

[Deadlock]

There are only 18 possible values on a D20. Those 9 #s absolutely account for half of the relevant #s. If DC is on D20 and balanced against someone with everything - yeah that's going basically mean you can't be a DC caster without everything or close to it - and that's assuming the devs are able to make DC casting work even for the person with everything. With a bell curve 9 DC might only be a 15-20% point swing (or less depending on the curve) instead of a 45% swing. With the way the game is now DC casting can't really be balanced between a true grinder and someone that plays a fair amount, but doesn't have all the past lifes and raid gear. There are just too many DC that come from past lifes and raid gear for an end game character.

I don't think that anyone is saying that mob saves should be balanced around an absolutely maxed out DC. But to be clear, an absolutely maxed out DC should have a 95% chance in EE.

I can calculate the maximum DC achievable from level 1 to 28 for say Necromancy. I can see the individual elements that contribute towards that maximum. I can decide what's "reasonable to expect" e.g. Magister from level 20 onwards, what's "desirable and achievable with effort" e.g. Thunderforged Tier 2 from level 26 onwards and what's "unreasonable to expect but achievable" e.g. 80 INT. I can set a bar that I consider realistic which will require some effort to achieve and decide what multiple of 5% chance of success I expect that to to provide.

A full-blown min-max build with optimum gear will be able to get above that chance of success. Others will be able to use boosts e.g. Moment of Clarity of Spellsurge to achieve this for short periods of time. Others who are below this bar will find it increasingly difficult to achieve this target chance of success on EE and perhaps their build would be better suited to EH.

If I can run those numbers then I'm sure that Turbine already have those numbers. The bigger concern/nagging suspicion is that despite the hand-crafted nature of what we have that there's some arithmetic progression based on creature CR that automatically sets their saves that gets out of whack when you scale it up into high level quests on EE.

[rehakp]

As a Maxed out PM (no silly stuff) is around a 80 Necro DC, ....

Can you please post some breakdown here because my calculations ends around DC 70+ and that means A.) I must be missing ALOT stuffs or B.) you are wrong somwhere. I could still pull of about 75 with all stars aligned (bard, crazy min-max gear setup, cookies, +7 tome, all twists with +int
) but i just cant see DC 80 and you even say "no silly stuff" and must throw all silly stuff i know to get there.

[Therrias]

Devs,

In your mind how often should a Finger of Death land for a PM who has the highest DC possible for the level and equipment available? Assuming no prepping like ED or enervation.

In percentage:

-Against a low-fort mob?
-Against an average mob?
-Against a brute like an ogre?

I'm just curious what your thoughts are on this.

A maxed out DC caster should land 95% against all EE trash mobs...and that's still not really a viable character concept. A maxed out melee or ranged DPS character will kill WAY more than 1 mob per 8 seconds (FoD cooldown) without wasting 50 spellpoints on each one to do it.

[SirValentine]

Can you please post some breakdown here because my calculations ends around DC 70+ and that means A.) I must be missing ALOT stuffs or B.) you are wrong somwhere. I could still pull of about 75 with all stars aligned (bard, crazy min-max gear setup, cookies, +7 tome, all twists with +int
) but i just cant see DC 80 and you even say "no silly stuff" and must throw all silly stuff i know to get there.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/405017-Pale-Master-Guide (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/405017-Pale-Master-Guide)

[Eth]

Not being able to land mediocre DCs (as in: not my main school) on a weak save is why I stopped playing my DC caster.
Knowing the weak save of a mob and using the appropriate spell is what makes casters fun for me.

[Vanhooger]

Since warlock any caster that rely only on his blue bar became irrilievant.

[HernandoCortez]

Much has been said but I'm still waiting for a developer answer.

[slarden]

Since warlock any caster that rely only on his blue bar became irrilievant.

Not really just warlock, you can include anything there that can do continual dps: barbarian, paladin, ranger, etc.

There are many good choices, DC casters is rarely among those choices except for specific roles.

[walkin_dude]

All DCs should be based on what is attainable by the majority of players in a couple months of play.

I agree with this to an extent, but the hardest content in the game should be targeted at the best toons in the game. That leaves plenty of room for the newer players who are a few months in.

[FestusHood]

Not being able to land mediocre DCs (as in: not my main school) on a weak save is why I stopped playing my DC caster.
Knowing the weak save of a mob and using the appropriate spell is what makes casters fun for me.

I have an idea regarding this. What if they reworked spell focus feats. Make them so that specific school feats gave +2 to the dc, but then new generic focus feats could be added which gave +1 to all spell dc's. The generic and specific feats would not stack with each other. This way casters could choose to be highly focused or well rounded more easily. It would also give an advantage to wizards as they have more feats and could take more of these.

Generic spell focus items could also be improved. Still not as high as the specific ones, but closer.

[Jiirix]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

I think for a MMO the new AC formula is better suited that the old D20 difficulty checks. For me the "spell does nothing", the "spell does sometimes work" and the "the spell is overpowered" situations are too close together. Having a DC of 60, 70 or 80 are worlds apart from each other.

Since the new AC formula a melee or ranged toon with a bit of investment into “to hit” has no problem hitting with most of the attacks performed. Weaker and stronger melee and ranged toon do not scale by their chance to hit the mob, but my by the damage dealt, the attack speed, the chance to critical hit, the chance to bypass fortification and how many mobs can be hit with one attack. DC spellcasting on the other hand often is “all or nothing”, even the pure damage spells when mobs with evasion or immunities are around.

I would like to see all NON-DEATH spells to hit most of the time like others attacks do, the differences between weak and strong casters should be the spell duration, spell damage dealt, cooldowns, maximum number of mobs effected, blast radius, spell point costs and perhaps spell resistance. A higher DC should still be worth something (like a higher to hit is) but not so much like it does now.
Death spells now are bit tricky but I think it could be made less “all or nothing” (the negative level of wail and the damage on a failed finger are a step in the right direction). For a caster with maxxed out necro DC a finger of death could work like this:

- Against a low-fort mob? 90 % dead, 5 % half hitpoints as damage, 5 % a quarter of the hitpoints as damage. One cast one kill most of the time, some low fort mobs are lucky b*strards

- Against an average mob? 80 % dead, 10% half hitpoints as damage, 10 % a quarter of the hitpoints as damage. One cast one kill for a maxxed caster still, but a bit more mobs are lucky

- Against a brute like an ogre? 33-50 % dead, 25-33% half hitpoints as damage, 25-33% a quarter of the hitpoints as damage. You are targeting their high save DOH! You will need an average of two to three casts to kill a mob.

[Silverleafeon]

I have an idea regarding this. What if they reworked spell focus feats. Make them so that specific school feats gave +2 to the dc, but then new generic focus feats could be added which gave +1 to all spell dc's. The generic and specific feats would not stack with each other. This way casters could choose to be highly focused or well rounded more easily. It would also give an advantage to wizards as they have more feats and could take more of these.

Generic spell focus items could also be improved. Still not as high as the specific ones, but closer.


Perhaps Create an Epic Destiny Feat:

Secondary School Focus: Gain +3 spell focus to a chosen School.
Requirement: Must have Epic Spell Focus in another School already.

[slarden]

Perhaps Create an Epic Destiny Feat:

Secondary School Focus: Gain +3 spell focus to a chosen School.
Requirement: Must have Epic Spell Focus in another School already.

Speaking of epic spell focus, it's ridiculous that it only adds 1 so it's effectively worse than past life wizard and completionist as a choice. Epic Spell Focus should be +3 in my opinion to reward people that invested 3 feat slots. Epic feats should be better than past life feats not - worse.

[Atremus]

Speaking of epic spell focus, it's ridiculous that it only adds 1 so it's effectively worse than past life wizard and completionist as a choice. Epic Spell Focus should be +3 in my opinion to reward people that invested 3 feat slots. Epic feats should be better than past life feats not - worse.

Yes to this. For an epic feat, it is a joke

[Raithe]

And instakill is hardly the worst thing. Giving melee characters top DPS, top AOE DPS, self healing and top tier damage mitigation was the worst thing that happened to the game. I don't know how you ever come back from that monty haul load except by heavily nerfing melee characters.

That's what you don't get, because you are just upset about your one little character. I have 17 characters, some melee, some caster, some ranged. I can tell you that even though my melee do quite a bit of damage when standing NEXT to a mob, in my content they rarely do the most DPS. DPS stands for damage per second. It is based on time, and you don't get to pick which seconds you are going to include.

Since you seem unfamiliar, let me give you some background, some context. There didn't use to be epic content. There only used to be elite difficulty. Back then elite was regularly completely zerged by groups - as in they never stopped running. They would bunch mobs up, someone would cast a wail-in-motion, and the mobs would die by the dozens while the zergers kept running. The important thing to understand is that trash mobs were meaningless. The only impediment to completion was how fast the group could run. Bringing a melee along was done out of pity.

If you don't think that same scenario could happen now in Epic Elite content, you would be wrong. The only reason why it doesn't is because we've lost a lot of vets. But take a look at the Warlock video posted in this very thread. Three warlocks could most definitely zerg just about any content this game has.

If you want to join the teeny, tiny crowd, build one of those.

[slarden]

That's what you don't get, because you are just upset about your one little character. I have 17 characters, some melee, some caster, some ranged. I can tell you that even though my melee do quite a bit of damage when standing NEXT to a mob, in my content they rarely do the most DPS. DPS stands for damage per second. It is based on time, and you don't get to pick which seconds you are going to include.

Since you seem unfamiliar, let me give you some background, some context. There didn't use to be epic content. There only used to be elite difficulty. Back then elite was regularly completely zerged by groups - as in they never stopped running. They would bunch mobs up, someone would cast a wail-in-motion, and the mobs would die by the dozens while the zergers kept running. The important thing to understand is that trash mobs were meaningless. The only impediment to completion was how fast the group could run. Bringing a melee along was done out of pity.

If you don't think that same scenario could happen now in Epic Elite content, you would be wrong. The only reason why it doesn't is because we've lost a lot of vets. But take a look at the Warlock video posted in this very thread. Three warlocks could most definitely zerg just about any content this game has.

If you want to join the teeny, tiny crowd, build one of those.

He gets it and his point was valid and spot-on.

Casters have always had top burst dps, but over the course of a full quest a melee is not behind on dps because the big dps options have cooldowns. There are plenty of videos of melees/ranged zerging and crushing quests/raids solo. Melee burst dps is closer to caster burst dps than it's ever been as far back as I can remember. Warlocks aren't doing anything that can't be done by a coordinated group of 3 characters.

The reasons casters have fallen so far behind is because monster stats are not aligned with player stats and as the game progressed caster spell points and damage hasn't kept up with enemy hp bloat. for warlocks that problem does not exist to the same extent because while you still have to watch your sp usage, there are free dps abilities that can be used at will.

I do agree that caster buffs need to be done carefully and in small doses as it would be easy to over-correct.

[Nestroy]

He gets it and his point was valid and spot-on.

Casters have always had top burst dps, but over the course of a full quest a melee is not behind on dps because the big dps options have cooldowns. There are plenty of videos of melees/ranged zerging and crushing quests/raids solo. Melee burst dps is closer to caster burst dps than it's ever been as far back as I can remember. Warlocks aren't doing anything that can't be done by a coordinated group of 3 characters.

The reasons casters have fallen so far behind is because monster stats are not aligned with player stats and as the game progressed caster spell points and damage hasn't kept up with enemy hp bloat. for warlocks that problem does not exist to the same extent because while you still have to watch your sp usage, there are free dps abilities that can be used at will.

I do agree that caster buffs need to be done carefully and in small doses as it would be easy to over-correct.

The main problem of casters is that their DPS output basically stops at lv. 20 with only a few EDs and enhancements altering this. And that many of their heroic blasters get killed by arbitrary game mechanics, e.g. BB not working in epics, all mobs gettignn DW, bosses immmune to all but raw DPS... Casters scaling beyond lv. 25 (their current maximum) would go a long way. Where melees really start to do damage (lv. 25+, mainly due to a few feats and much better equipment), casters all the sudden face a stop.

[slarden]

The main problem of casters is that their DPS output basically stops at lv. 20 with only a few EDs and enhancements altering this. And that many of their heroic blasters get killed by arbitrary game mechanics, e.g. BB not working in epics, all mobs gettignn DW, bosses immmune to all but raw DPS... Casters scaling beyond lv. 25 (their current maximum) would go a long way. Where melees really start to do damage (lv. 25+, mainly due to a few feats and much better equipment), casters all the sudden face a stop.

Many of the heroic spells are decent in epic, including blade barrier especially when charged up with scourge, empyrean magic, etc. and counting procs from lantern ring, resonation, etc. - but the cost of maximize and empower is excessive for the benefit it provides compared to heroic levels. 225% of base damage is a large percentage of total damage at level 18, but much less of the total percentage at 28. Basically, maximize/empower don't scale, but the costs remains the same. There should also be an epic version of maximize empower by level 30 and that is missing entirely.

Blade barrier costs 35 spell points and lets say you have 600 spellpower so it's doing 700% of base damage. Now if you maximize/empower you are paying 75 spell points for 925% base damage. At level 18 the maximize/empower will double your damage so the cost kind of makes sense there. It's hard to avoid running out of spell points in many quests if you use maximize/empower on non-slas.

[Raithe]

There are plenty of videos of melees/ranged zerging and crushing quests/raids solo.

No one should care about solo. I'll agree that its easier to build a strong Paladin-Tempest solo option right now than a strong DC caster solo-er. Heck, I'll even admit I don't really think that DC casting is viable solo in Epic Elite.

This conversation should only be about groups. In groups, the most damage to the game is done when a caster takes over the entire quest. The fact that your Tempest got 90% of the kills doesn't mean the same thing, because it's more than likely that the other 5 melee in the group actually did more total damage (cause there are 5 of them), you just have the attack speed and crit range to get more kills (i.e. the kill count is meaningless).

What needs to be preserved here is individual contribution in groups. I'll also guarantee that bringing your best DPS melee into a crowd of veteran Pale Masters will make your contribution limited to about 10 seconds on the boss. No exaggeration.

[Basura_Grande]

This conversation should only be about groups. In groups, the most damage to the game is done when a caster takes over the entire quest. The fact that your Tempest got 90% of the kills doesn't mean the same thing, because it's more than likely that the other 5 melee in the group actually did more total damage (cause there are 5 of them), you just have the attack speed and crit range to get more kills (i.e. the kill count is meaningless).

This hasn't been true in months, maybe over year.

Next time Lamania's up we can put out money where our mouths are and do some EE WGUs and compare kill count.

[Chai]

People continue to attempt to balance the equation using DPS as the benchmark. This is why balance will not occur. Early feedback in DDO took away the ability to balance casters against melee by allowing them to move just as fast when casting a spell, jump while casting, without any sort of trade off whatsoever, and this resulted in caster -vs- melee power in this game flip flopping many times where in some eras casters were OP and in some melee were OP, but balance hasn't occurred. It can all be summed up in one category which most if not all people commenting on balance have summarily ignored in favor of comparing DPS instead. That category is opportunity cost. Once this is understood, balance can occur between melee and casters in DDO to a degree most would be satisfied with using the term balance to describe the situation. Until then, not going to happen.

[Basura_Grande]

People continue to attempt to balance the equation using DPS as the benchmark. This is why balance will not occur. Early feedback in DDO took away the ability to balance casters against melee by allowing them to move just as fast when casting a spell, jump while casting, without any sort of trade off whatsoever, and this resulted in caster -vs- melee power in this game flip flopping many times where in some eras casters were OP and in some melee were OP, but balance hasn't occurred. It can all be summed up in one category which most if not all people commenting on balance have summarily ignored in favor of comparing DPS instead. That category is opportunity cost. Once this is understood, balance can occur between melee and casters in DDO to a degree most would be satisfied with using the term balance to describe the situation. Until then, not going to happen.

I'm sorry, but this post makes no sense.

[Raithe]

...in some eras casters were OP and in some melee were OP, but balance hasn't occurred.

I'll agree that balance hasn't ever been a "problem" for DDO, but the part that is wrong is that melee have ever been relatively on the top of the doggy pile.

1) Early GH Monkchers and Shroud-Subterrane era rangers might have had something on casters, but that's about it.
2) The current speed records for solo quest completion are typically achieved with some form of Shiradi caster. They are the most consistently easy, and thus get the better draws from which to pull a best time.
3) I'll re-iterate, a caster in a group of high-DPS melee is under no handicap, and if they cast enough web and enchantment could be considered a significant DPS-booster. The inverse is NOT true. A lone mediocre-DPS melee in a crowd of veteran DC casters is not going to be doing anything at all.

[Spoonwelder]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?
I am going to take a different tack on this. I envision my necro based sun-elf PM - max Int, geared for DCs, AP/ED/Twists all focussed on maxing DCs vs more than survivability when the choice is required (ie. no 2 pally splash for saves and easy MRR/PRR additions) - not using a shield, not in heavy armor.....

In EE (other difficulties don't really matter in the discussion of a max DC caster) my ability to kill something should be directly proportional to how fast I can die.

If as a melee I can stand toe-to-toe with EE mobs for a long while (with 1k+HP/PRR/MRR/AC/Displacement(or blur),In a cloud and standing on consecrated ground) and have no fear of dying then it should take me a while to kill something.

As a DC caster (ie. twists and ED selections made to maximize my DCs which also reduces vastly my choices for mitigating damage or adding self healing) I can take maybe 2-3 shots on EE before I am dead....nominal sub1kHP/PRR/MRR/AC but I do have displacement and some dodge and moderate self healing)......then I should be able to kill mobs fairly quickly - one maybe two casts.

It is about being playable in the content. In the current content there are so many mobs that, even if the DCs worked, you couldn't just traipse through enervating/FOD/COD/Wailing away....not while also doing a Benny hill hop routine and self healing every other cast....add in the numerous orange named and deathwarded mobs and you then have to blast your way out of trouble sucking up valuable SP.

So a Max DC caster should be very high percentage (80%plus) chance to land in all content - the hand cuffs are in the form of cooldowns on top of self preservation. I would even conjecture you could change FOD to be touch based like Dance or increase it's cooldown a titch to offset the high probability.

Remember - most content - trash is just a hurdle - most max ability melees can take a 10hp mobs in a few seconds anyway. So having the caster be similar in ability isn't game breaking. When we get to the boss - where the fights get harder - the DC caster is usually relegated to trash management (if there is some in the end fight) or doing relatively nominal damage with dots and direct damage via spells.

[Marshal_Lannes]

That's what you don't get, because you are just upset about your one little character. .

Then please tell me what I don't get about casters. What is my cleric or wizard best at? I am not speaking about warlocks, they are a new class and any new class is going to have increased powers. Warlock is part of the power 6 of barbarian, paladin, bard, ranger, rogue and warlock that are by far the best choices if you want to contribute to a group.

DPS - melee are better
AOE DPS - melee are better
Survivability - melee are better
Healing - melee are better
Instakills - melee are better (if they can kill something in less than the 8 secs it takes to cool off FoD, which doesn't even land most of the time, they are instakilling better)
CC - maybe it is a wash?

Palemaster self healing is pitiful compared to what Paladins and Barbarians can get. Throwing forms of ghostly and displacement on many items have negated the defensive advantage of having the displacement spell. Melee enhancement trees are more powerful than epic destiny trees. The wizard trees are expensive and pretty much useless in anything beyond epic normal content. 2 AP for a reduced cost in maximize when mobs like cultists have thousands and thousands of HPs?

Playing a caster is just an exercise in frustration which is completely against the AD&D universes where a caster started out weak and ended up powerful.

[SirValentine]

Speaking of epic spell focus, it's ridiculous that it only adds 1 so it's effectively worse than past life wizard and completionist as a choice. Epic Spell Focus should be +3 in my opinion to reward people that invested 3 feat slots. Epic feats should be better than past life feats not - worse.

Are you saying it's a crappy noob-trap feat?

Considering how widely it's actually taken, I have a hard time seeing that it's under-powered. If it really sucked, people wouldn't take it; there are lots of other feat choices.

I suspect that are quite a few feats, including Epic feats, that are pretty much never taken, except maybe by some new player who didn't know better.

[Kompera_Oberon]

I don't agree that it's impossible to fix, and strongly disagree that further divergence would be an improvement.
Ok, then let's discuss specifics.

How do you propose to shrink the gap between low, middle ground, and high stats? The gap between low, middle, and high end gear? The gap between no past lives and many past lives? You cannot simply remove these things from the game at this point, and they don't work within the PnP D&D system. So if you can't remove them, fixing the DC system requires a further divergence from a system which was never intended to scale up to the levels DDO has already implemented into their core design.

Because in PnP D&D a low INT Wizard might have a 18 stat and a high INT Wizard might have a 26 stat. That's a difference of 4 DC between low and high. More, it's the difference between adding 4 to your DC and adding 8 to your DC in the system where DC = 10 + the level of the spell + your bonus for the relevant ability. Even on the high end that 8 points isn't the major part of your DC total, your base was 10 and the top spell level was 9 (ish, there were a few ways to raise it).

In DDO a low INT Wizard might have a 30 INT, a high INT Wizard might have a 60 INT. That's a difference of 15 DC between low and high. It makes the contribution to DC from stats, on even the low end, higher than the major part of your spell DC. That kind of scaling up simply does not work within the system. Your base is still 10, your top spell level 9 (ish, there are many ways to raise it), but you are now adding between 15 and 30 from stats alone.

And this is without considering Feats, Enhancements, itemization, and Epic Destinies. Feats, with the significant exception of Past Life Feats, match D&D since they were imported almost without change. But PLF, Enhancements, itemization, and Epic Destinies all can contribute significantly to DC, adding another ~3-5 points each for another ~9-20 DC contribution.

With this kind of inflation it's easy to see how the system is broken and cannot be fixed without a further divergence from the PnP D&D rules.

[slarden]

Are you saying it's a crappy noob-trap feat?

Considering how widely it's actually taken, I have a hard time seeing that it's under-powered. If it really sucked, people wouldn't take it; there are lots of other feat choices.

I suspect that are quite a few feats, including Epic feats, that are pretty much never taken, except maybe by some new player who didn't know better.

Is it widely taken? Turbine would have the data to prove or disprove that.

[Enderoc]

Palemasters are geared towards melee...
if you have not noticed.

[blerkington]

Ok, then let's discuss specifics.

How do you propose to shrink the gap between low, middle ground, and high stats? The gap between low, middle, and high end gear? The gap between no past lives and many past lives? You cannot simply remove these things from the game at this point, and they don't work within the PnP D&D system. So if you can't remove them, fixing the DC system requires a further divergence from a system which was never intended to scale up to the levels DDO has already implemented into their core design.

Because in PnP D&D a low INT Wizard might have a 18 stat and a high INT Wizard might have a 26 stat. That's a difference of 4 DC between low and high. More, it's the difference between adding 4 to your DC and adding 8 to your DC in the system where DC = 10 + the level of the spell + your bonus for the relevant ability. Even on the high end that 8 points isn't the major part of your DC total, your base was 10 and the top spell level was 9 (ish, there were a few ways to raise it).

In DDO a low INT Wizard might have a 30 INT, a high INT Wizard might have a 60 INT. That's a difference of 15 DC between low and high. It makes the contribution to DC from stats, on even the low end, higher than the major part of your spell DC. That kind of scaling up simply does not work within the system. Your base is still 10, your top spell level 9 (ish, there are many ways to raise it), but you are now adding between 15 and 30 from stats alone.

And this is without considering Feats, Enhancements, itemization, and Epic Destinies. Feats, with the significant exception of Past Life Feats, match D&D since they were imported almost without change. But PLF, Enhancements, itemization, and Epic Destinies all can contribute significantly to DC, adding another ~3-5 points each for another ~9-20 DC contribution.

With this kind of inflation it's easy to see how the system is broken and cannot be fixed without a further divergence from the PnP D&D rules.

Hi,

This is oversimplified. What they really need to look at here is at managing the difference between an attainable (reasonably well geared and built) wizard and a maxed-out one. And that can still be done with a system where the random component gives a variation of 20.

If you're choosing not to wear an INT item, don't take INT boosting enhancements, don't use an appropriate ED, etc, then maybe your spells shouldn't be landing, especially in content which is meant to be hard. I don't really care at all that wizards with 30 or even 60 INT can't DC cast in endgame EE content, and I'd be surprised if many other people did too.

As long as saves are not made unreasonable, and casters have a steady way to raise their DCs in line with mob saves, the difference between a badly made caster and a very good one is not relevant. What is far more an issue are the differences in DCs between primary, secondary and other spell schools, and efficiency of damage per SP for casters.

Thanks.

[SirValentine]

Is it widely taken? Turbine would have the data to prove or disprove that.

One quick sample shows that 2 out of 4 builds in some people's signatures take it.

[Kompera_Oberon]

Hi,

This is oversimplified. What they really need to look at here is at managing the difference between an attainable (reasonably well geared and built) wizard and a maxed-out one. And that can still be done with a system where the random component gives a variation of 20.

No, it's not oversimplified. And no, once inflation hits as hard as it has in DDO, a variation of a d20 is no longer a working mechanic.

Let me use examples, since my explanation above obviously didn't manage to convey this to you. Keep in mind that this is D&D we're talking about, where the 20th level Wizard with an 18 INT can cast Finger of Death 5 times in a day, and the 20th level Wizard with a 26 INT can cast it 6 times in a day.

Let's say that in D&D the Wizard with the low end INT has a 30% chance to land a spell. He can expect to land ~2 of the 5 Finger of Death spells he gets in a day.

The Wizard with the 26 INT then has a 50% chance to land his spells. He can expect to land 3 of the 6 Finger of Death spells he gets in a day.

Do you see how the difference, while making a distinction between the characters, still is not that huge?

Now do the same thing in DDO (and remember that this ignores boosts to DC from Enhancements, itemization, Epic Destinies, and past life feats, which will only further separate the low example case from the high example case.):

Let's say that the Wizard with the 30 INT has a 5% chance to land a spell.

The Wizard with the 60 INT then has an 80% chance to land a spell.

Do you see how inflation has caused the simple difference between the low and high examples in DDO to be radically different than the same example in D&D?

I could go into the expected number of FoD spells landed for a hypothetical blue bar value, but I hope that what I've already described conveys the impact of inflation on the system itself well enough for that to be unnecessary.

[Nestroy]

Many of the heroic spells are decent in epic, including blade barrier especially when charged up with scourge, empyrean magic, etc. and counting procs from lantern ring, resonation, etc. - but the cost of maximize and empower is excessive for the benefit it provides compared to heroic levels. 225% of base damage is a large percentage of total damage at level 18, but much less of the total percentage at 28. Basically, maximize/empower don't scale, but the costs remains the same. There should also be an epic version of maximize empower by level 30 and that is missing entirely.

Blade barrier costs 35 spell points and lets say you have 600 spellpower so it's doing 700% of base damage. Now if you maximize/empower you are paying 75 spell points for 925% base damage. At level 18 the maximize/empower will double your damage so the cost kind of makes sense there. It's hard to avoid running out of spell points in many quests if you use maximize/empower on non-slas.

I never said they stop to work all together all the sudden. What casters do, tho, contrary to melees: They get diminuishing returns on attaining power levels. Lets say, a melee starts on lv. 20 with a power of 100 and a caster does as well. Let´s say, for sake of argument, that EDs are not yet available. At about lv. 25 they both have reached the max level of ED. A caster now has a power of 200 and a melee of about 300. EDs bring much to the table, but much more for melees than for casters, currently. On lv. 28 the melee is a fine power 400 and the caster is a paltry power 250. Because the melee mainly due to better gear (some of lv. up and feats) gains more in proportion than the caster.

Casters are in the devs doghouse, take it any way you want. When epics were introduced, casters were power 100 on lv. 20 and melees were power 50. Then we saw many passes and melees nowadays are power 150 and casters still 100 at lv. 20. Add EDs and all else and you know why it is unforgivingly harder to make a caster work in endgame currently than it is to make a melee work.

[Eth]

Are you saying it's a crappy noob-trap feat?

Considering how widely it's actually taken, I have a hard time seeing that it's under-powered. If it really sucked, people wouldn't take it; there are lots of other feat choices.

I suspect that are quite a few feats, including Epic feats, that are pretty much never taken, except maybe by some new player who didn't know better.

I never took it on any DC caster. Half a DC to everything is usually better than half a DC more to one specific school.
It should be better than +1 only, IMO (look at epic spell pen).

[fredericko]

Since we're dealing with the old antiquated D20 save system on Spell Saves still, I must say that a person who invests in the absolute max of everything in order to get the highest DC possible should have a 95% Success rate.

If they dont, then the system would be horribly broken for the average player who doesnt come close to maxing everything.

This.

[Andoris]

Oftentimes we'd prefer to flip those questions around and ask you: What would your expectations be in terms of percentages against those conditions?

So, you got the communities thoughts on this over the last few days. Any chance we can get a view into what the dev team is thinking?

[slarden]

One quick sample shows that 2 out of 4 builds in some people's signatures take it.

lol well if you are referring to my builds that is only because I don't need spell penetration on a druid evoker or a warlock conjurer/evoker. Also because with past life benefits I don't need shield mastery or improved shield mastery on my warlock. On feat starved builds like a previous warlock with enchantment focus I didn't take - same with my bard.

If I did need spell pen or more prr - epic spell focus is the first thing to go - and in my warlock thread that is exactly what I show in alt builds for people wanting to use shields for more PRR.

It's an epic feat, it shouldn't be worse than past life wizard and there should be some reward for taking all 3 feats.

[Basura_Grande]

So, you got the communities thoughts on this over the last few days. Any chance we can get a view into what the dev team is thinking?

This please.

I'm especially curios why we'd get quests with 90 Fort saves when the highest sustainable insta-kill DC isn't even 80.

[Chai]

This please.

I'm especially curios why we'd get quests with 90 Fort saves when the highest sustainable insta-kill DC isn't even 80.

Plethora of "game is too easy" feedback + debuff expectations? /shrug

It would be good to know what the benchmarks are and how those were derived. It helps when providing feedback that something needs to be adjusted and to what degree.

[Lanhelin]

Though this thread mainly is about instakill and damage DC casters, I want to add some thoughts about the "other" builds, that still exist, are played and also are affected by this issue, but much heavier.

One big problem probably is, that Turbine cannot distribute mob stats like they want but have to do it according to D&D rules. They must not put every mob stat to, say, 100 on EE to make saves more likely to happen or simply change what stat affects which save, if they do so they'd get in trouble with WoC. They must leave mob stats and relations as the rules say, but to increase difficulty they have to work with buffs/debuffs instead. This is the reason for Epic Ward (EW) and Epic Resilience (ER). The plain fact that both exist in nearly all eh and ee content is the main hint, that enemy stats alone do not suffice to offer a challenging difficulty. But instead of fine-tuning these are just general buffs that affect all builds regardless of what gameplay style they are build for. And DC casters suffer the most.

btw. the DC issue also affects other things like disabling traps. E.g. in harbour quests at level on Elite even a maxed disable device and search first life 18 Int character won't be able to find all the trap boxes or disable them - to be successful even on low level one already needs items that buff these skills, like the troubleshooter set from korthos. More experienced players maybe do not think about it anymore and already have minute seeing and disabling items available for every level. The ones who suffer the most, are new players: first they get killed by a trap, they reroll a trapper, then the trap box gets destroyed because of the lack of items that are still needed even for at level masters of disabling. This is the real difficult thing to figure out for new players in DDO. And spell DC barriers cannot be bypassed by just equiping a few items, that's the more difficult issue.

While EW and ER makes it harder for damage DC casters (Necromancy/Evocation) to land their spells, other DC casters like Enchanters are nearly completely useless in eh and ee content and reduced to only a few spells that even do no damage at all. While it makes kind of sense to me, that a mob at full health get's a morale-buff to saves against damage, it should get a pride-debuff to saves against cc spells, that gives a -6 to will saves at full health and becomes reduced to -4 between 75 and 100%, -2 between 50 and 75% till 0 at 50% HP or lower - the reverse way ER currently works. To simulate the "last will" to survive under any circumstances.

Also the durations of charms should not be reduced to 1/8 or 1/16 of their normal duration, because for enchanter builds a charmed enemy is the #1 source of damage. And it's not the 50% or lower HP mob at the end of a fight, but it's the 100% HP mob at the beginning. When I see a group of mobs from a distance, I want to charm one of them to start the fight, I want to cc the others and let my charmed minion, my hireling, my pet and my summon kill them - I do not want to fail with all my charm spells and just heal myself and my companions and wait for the hireling to gently reduce the mob's HP to 50% or below to be able to land the first cc spell, that still does no damage itself but only supports damage from other sources.

CC DC casters are forced to look for a party or use dmg hirelings and summons to complete quests successfully. When playing in a party charms most of the time and on any difficulty aren't very welcome anyway (and the bug that charmed animals cannot be released manually still exists!) because they work different to thralls and make mobs invulnerable to friendly fire. So in a party Enchanters already forego one of their two central build elements and use other cc spells only like dancings/holdings. But due to the DC issue and the mob buffs on eh and ee, they also have to forego this central element when soloing or teaming - even if they maxed their dcs, spell pen or whatever else is necessary, because the effort in building and optimizing the character becomes nearly nullified by circumstances that cannot be influenced by players.

I point on this because DDO is the only MMO I know of, where mechanics like long lasting charms are allowed and a valid and viable part of character building and progress. E.g. when ESO was released I was very curious about how the devs would implement the school of Illusion, which probably is the most powerful one in ES universe, only to find out that they completely left it out. So disappointing.

I mostly play Enchanter builds and I'm aware that in the current situation all these toons won't be able to beat eh/ee content without a party - but not because the were weak or not optimized or have low DCs, no, it's because of general buffs/debuffs that don't care about major build differences and gameplay preferences.

But it should be revamped and it also should be kept in mind that players who decide to build a DC caster actually love the gameplay style to defeat mobs from a distance and not in close range.

Throwing and failing a DC spell on eh and ee is like what one of the gameplay hints on loading screens say: If you want to grab the attention of mobs, fire an arrow to a wall. This will make some noise and the mobs in range get curious about it and move in this direction. DC builds on eh and ee seem to mostly be "noisemaker" builds only.

[Silverleafeon]

This.

Well said.

[blerkington]

No, it's not oversimplified. And no, once inflation hits as hard as it has in DDO, a variation of a d20 is no longer a working mechanic.

Let me use examples, since my explanation above obviously didn't manage to convey this to you. Keep in mind that this is D&D we're talking about, where the 20th level Wizard with an 18 INT can cast Finger of Death 5 times in a day, and the 20th level Wizard with a 26 INT can cast it 6 times in a day.

Let's say that in D&D the Wizard with the low end INT has a 30% chance to land a spell. He can expect to land ~2 of the 5 Finger of Death spells he gets in a day.

The Wizard with the 26 INT then has a 50% chance to land his spells. He can expect to land 3 of the 6 Finger of Death spells he gets in a day.

Do you see how the difference, while making a distinction between the characters, still is not that huge?

Now do the same thing in DDO (and remember that this ignores boosts to DC from Enhancements, itemization, Epic Destinies, and past life feats, which will only further separate the low example case from the high example case.):

Let's say that the Wizard with the 30 INT has a 5% chance to land a spell.

The Wizard with the 60 INT then has an 80% chance to land a spell.

Do you see how inflation has caused the simple difference between the low and high examples in DDO to be radically different than the same example in D&D?

I could go into the expected number of FoD spells landed for a hypothetical blue bar value, but I hope that what I've already described conveys the impact of inflation on the system itself well enough for that to be unnecessary.

Hi,

You're just repeating yourself without taking into account the issues in my last post of content difficulty and good build vs bad build. The fact that you can identify two builds with a difference of more than 19 in their DCs is meaningless in itself. All that says is that there are some particularly terrible builds who should not expect to be doing well in the hardest content the game has to offer.

This thread is about caster performance in EE (and mainly endgame) content. You will notice that very few people are complaining about how wizards perform in EH or EN epic content, or in heroic content. That is because mob saves and HPs are within acceptable ranges for casters to be effective in that content. To take this a step further, well-built wizards can also do quite well currently in most EE content when levelling; the main problem is in endgame quests and raids.

EE is intended to be difficult, so landing spells which incapacitate or kill enemies should not be trivial. Wlzards with low DCs should expect to fail when casting. Just like a poorly built and geared melee should expect to have problems dishing out enough damage to kill things at a reasonable pace and surviving enemies' attacks. Would you argue that this melee, with a main stat of 30 who hasn't selected appropriate gear, feats, enhancements and ED should be effective in EE too?

Like I said in my last post, it really does not matter at all that a 30 INT wizard who has not invested in the appropriate enhancements, EDs and gear cannot land DC spells in EE. What does matter is how effective characters properly built for purpose can be in this content. And you will find that the DC range between a well-built and geared wizard and a fully maxed out one is a lot smaller than you think. If you don't believe me, go back through this thread and take a look at the examples other posters have provided.

Thanks.

[blerkington]

So, you got the communities thoughts on this over the last few days. Any chance we can get a view into what the dev team is thinking?

Hi,

I'd like to see this too.

Turning the question around seems kind of cynical if it's not followed up with some developer input.

Thanks.

[elkorm]

Is it widely taken? Turbine would have the data to prove or disprove that.

Buh for what it counts, I never take it :)
Elk

[elkorm]

This please.

I'm especially curios why we'd get quests with 90 Fort saves when the highest sustainable insta-kill DC isn't even 80.

I am sorry, but the highest very sustainable is 81. 82 if you use a store/remn pot.
That's what I have on my caster.
Elk

EDIT: not saying it's easy to get to, only that you have the numbers wrong.

[Duskofdead]

I am sorry, but the highest very sustainable is 81. 82 if you use a store/remn pot.
That's what I have on my caster.
Elk

Sustainable kinda rules out pots that rely on rareish drops or dropping money on TP.

[elkorm]

Sustainable kinda rules out pots that rely on rareish drops or dropping money on TP.

only pot I use to get to 81 is a yugo pot.
Elk

Edit: and honestly, if you are only looking to be a one trick pony, you can get your necro up to 82, 83 with a store/remn pot. You end up **** in everything else tho, due to having no free slots (well you could get the evo cloak from DoJ and still have decent evo, like 74).

[Marshal_Lannes]

EE is intended to be difficult, so landing spells which incapacitate or kill enemies should not be trivial. Wlzards with low DCs should expect to fail when casting. Just like a poorly built and geared melee should expect to have problems dishing out enough damage to kill things at a reasonable pace and surviving enemies' attacks. Would you argue that this melee, with a main stat of 30 who hasn't selected appropriate gear, feats, enhancements and ED should be effective in EE too?
.

But the melee are effective that is the point. You say landing spells which incapacitate or kill enemies should not be trivial. This is the only way casters can kill enemies, so yes, it is rather trivial in that it is their main form of attack. Why should my main form of attack be expected to fail? You might have an argument if melee could only attack one enemy and casters could effect many, but this is not the case. Melee can spam cleave, great cleave, momentum swing, lay waste and whatever other cleave attacks they get from their actual class. These AOE attacks effect many mobs and often carry a knock down effect as well giving a form of CC if the mob hasn't died in the 3 or 4 seconds it took to spam the cleave chain. So a melee can spam 5 cleave attacks and start the chain over all before a wizards 8 second FoD has cooled down. That FoD which may have killed one mob. And that FoD should have a chance to fail? What? Really?!

And I wish some DC casters would stop bragging about 80 DCs. Congrats, you won DDO. For the vast majority of the rest of the players in the game this is completely unrealistic.

[elkorm]

[QUOTE=
And I wish some DC casters would stop bragging about 80 DCs. Congrats, you won DDO. For the vast majority of the rest of the players in the game this is completely unrealistic.[/QUOTE]

I never said it was easy to get to, quite the opposite. But the OP said max possible was not even 80 and that is not true.
Elk

[Ellihor]

It is not "grossly exaggerated" Trash, even in lvl 30 EEs simply evaporates in front of a well built melee these days. If you are not seeing it, that means that you are not seeing well built/played melee's. Doing 5k+ dps unboosted and 8-10k+ boosted is not that hard these days on a melee.

Just because you don't see it in your play group, doesn't mean that it is not happening.

Andoris is right. While it's not single target DPS, but area DPS, he not only is right but undersold his point. Mlees are doing a lot more than 10k AoE DPS, warlocks are about 20k, and rogues/throwers are between mlee and warlocks. If you can't see you don't know what you are talking about. Go to youtube and eat the red pill, then come back. And please, stop talking about old EEs. Anything released before Epic necro 4 doesn't matter.

[Ellihor]

Next, get rid of the bonus to save based on health. A mob at half health is not the one you want to apply instakill or CC on. The whole point of the DC abilities is to alter the fight at the beginning. As the mobs get down under 50% all the melee have massive boosts to damage and those mobs become easy. Pushing DC casters into waiting until a mob is half health negates their main purpose.

Please. This save bonus of epic mobs bsed on hp was a terrible idea.

[blerkington]

But the melee are effective that is the point. You say landing spells which incapacitate or kill enemies should not be trivial. This is the only way casters can kill enemies, so yes, it is rather trivial in that it is their main form of attack. Why should my main form of attack be expected to fail? You might have an argument if melee could only attack one enemy and casters could effect many, but this is not the case. Melee can spam cleave, great cleave, momentum swing, lay waste and whatever other cleave attacks they get from their actual class. These AOE attacks effect many mobs and often carry a knock down effect as well giving a form of CC if the mob hasn't died in the 3 or 4 seconds it took to spam the cleave chain. So a melee can spam 5 cleave attacks and start the chain over all before a wizards 8 second FoD has cooled down. That FoD which may have killed one mob. And that FoD should have a chance to fail? What? Really?!

And I wish some DC casters would stop bragging about 80 DCs. Congrats, you won DDO. For the vast majority of the rest of the players in the game this is completely unrealistic.

Hi,

I haven't said anything about whether I think the power balance between melee and casters is off. Just that if you don't have a well-built caster, you shouldn't be expecting to do well in endgame content on the hardest setting.

Comparing how an average or worse caster does against a very strong melee is not useful. Weak melees do poorly in EE content too, so what we should be looking at is how similarly well built and geared characters can perform. An equivalent effort should yield an equivalent result.

So far, I've just been saying that the other poster, who seems to think that the DC system is broken because very badly built wizards cannot instakill in EE endgame content, is wrong. I really don't know what he or she thinks he or she is proving by arguing that it is somehow a problem that 30 INT wizards are behind when it comes to effectiveness. But it certainly isn't that there is a problem with the DC system.

I think toning down the saving throws of mobs in endgame EE content and giving casters more efficient spells for doing damage would go a long way towards solving the problems they have in endgame content. The rest of the game is more or less working for them, and I say that as someone who plays a DC caster when not on my ranger.

Thanks.

[elkorm]

Can you please post some breakdown here because my calculations ends around DC 70+ and that means A.) I must be missing ALOT stuffs or B.) you are wrong somwhere. I could still pull of about 75 with all stars aligned (bard, crazy min-max gear setup, cookies, +7 tome, all twists with +int
) but i just cant see DC 80 and you even say "no silly stuff" and must throw all silly stuff i know to get there.

I'll break down mine, I guess Andoris one will be more or less the same as I have always looked up on him for inspiration :)

INT 86 for +38 (20 base, +7 lvl ups, +7 tome, +2 compl, +3 epic feats, +2 drow tree, +8 PM tree, +2 AM tree, +1 harper tree, +6 ED, +4 Twists, +12 item, +2 shrine, +1 ex, +3 ins, +2 profane, +2 spooky, +2 yugo)

10 base
+38 int
+6 stick
+2 quality from orb
+1 TF robe
+2 necro aug
+2 deific

+1 wiz PL
+1 SF necro
+1 GSF necro
+9 heighten

+3 magister necro specialist
+1 AM
+2 PM

currently going crazy cos I can't find the last +1 to get to 80 which shows on the tooltip
http://i.imgur.com/lxzTWup.jpg

[Kompera_Oberon]

You're just repeating yourself without taking into account the issues in my last post of content difficulty and good build vs bad build. The fact that you can identify two builds with a difference of more than 19 in their DCs is meaningless in itself.
No, what I'm identifying is the inherent flaw in the system itself. You claimed that the range of a d20 was fine for DDO, and I pointed out, yes again and with detailed examples but it appeared that my first post hadn't gotten the point through clearly enough, that the inflation in DDO broke that mechanic beyond repair. It cannot be fixed, it will never work in DDO. No matter what Turbine does, no matter how they tweak monster saves, unless they depart from the D&D system of DC = 10 + spell level + stat bonus they will never manage to make a balanced system. And then players will always be posting threads like this one wondering why things are so screwed up.


Like I said in my last post, it really does not matter at all that a 30 INT wizard who has not invested in the appropriate enhancements, EDs and gear cannot land DC spells in EE.
See now you're just ignoring my examples. I pointed out specifically that I was ignoring itemization (gear), Enhancements, EDs, and Past Life Feats. That means that those things can be exactly equal for the low stat character and the high stat character, and the range of difference between them, 16, still almost completely spans a d20. Ignore the word stat if that what you're getting hung up over. The difference between the DCs of two characters can easily be 16 or more, and this doesn't work with a mechanic which uses only a d20 for the success/failure spread.

Please keep in mind that this isn't a thread about soloing EE content. And as such it should not assume a top notch build, top notch gear, multiple past lives, etc. So the difference between the absolute best and the person who should be able to expect to contribute, not dominate, not face roll, but land some spells and contribute in a group in EE content is a lot larger than you are allowing for.

[Basura_Grande]

I am sorry, but the highest very sustainable is 81. 82 if you use a store/remn pot.
That's what I have on my caster.
Elk

EDIT: not saying it's easy to get to, only that you have the numbers wrong.
Can you break that down?

[Ellihor]

currently going crazy cos I can't find the last +1 to get to 80 which shows on the tooltip


Guild Ship Buff

[Cordovan]

At the moment people are quite busy getting Update 29 ready for Lamannia, but in general our thinking is we would like for DC casting to be enjoyable. The challenge is to find ways to incorporate the top players' desire to dramatically increase their ability to instantly kill enemies in Epic Elite content with very little chance of failure while also preserving group dynamic and challenge across the breadth of character level and difficulty. We have heard from those of you who feel you having an un-fun experience with this kind of build while attempting to conquer said content. We have been paying close attention to this thread this week, and would love to see further discussion. When we have changes relevant to the issue, we'll let you know.

[elkorm]

Guild Ship Buff

RIGHT!

can get to 81 necro -only sacrificing a lot- equipping the devils set and upping INT to 88.

Again thanks, it was gnawing on my mind!

Elk

[Spekdah_NZ]

Even if you have top necro DC, I don't think we should have a 90%+ success rate for mobs with high fort saves. Maybe 80%+ with debuffing first. The d20 system had the different save types for a reason, there was usually one weak save.

That gave you an easy path with the right spell, or a slog with the wrong spells.

And there should be mobs with unattainable DC, they were designed that way in the first place, its called find another spell/tactic.

I would rather save checks be done over mobs and making sure those options are there rather than making sure my PM can finger everything with some arbitrary DC number.

[SirValentine]

lol well if you are referring to my builds that is only because I don't need spell penetration on a druid evoker or a warlock conjurer/evoker. Also because with past life benefits I don't need shield mastery or improved shield mastery on my warlock. On feat starved builds like a previous warlock with enchantment focus I didn't take - same with my bard.

If I did need spell pen or more prr - epic spell focus is the first thing to go - and in my warlock thread that is exactly what I show in alt builds for people wanting to use shields for more PRR.


No disagreement with any of that; rather that's my point: it's useful for some builds, but it's not a must-have. To me, that's a sign it's balance is pretty good.



It's an epic feat, it shouldn't be worse than past life wizard and there should be some reward for taking all 3 feats.


Epic Skill Focus: Swim, is also an Epic feat. That doesn't mean it's something everyone should want to take.

And there is a reward for taking all 3: they stack up to +3 to your DC.

Again, no disagreement that it's not an amazing must-have feat. My opinion is that's OK.

I would view it as a problem if it were a **** feat nobody took, or potentially if it were an uber must-have that every related build took.

[SirValentine]

At the moment people are quite busy getting Update 29 ready for Lamannia, but in general our thinking is we would like for DC casting to be enjoyable. The challenge is to find ways to incorporate the top players' desire to dramatically increase their ability to instantly kill enemies in Epic Elite content with very little chance of failure while also preserving group dynamic and challenge across the breadth of character level and difficulty. We have heard from those of you who feel you having an un-fun experience with this kind of build while attempting to conquer said content. We have been paying close attention to this thread this week, and would love to see further discussion. When we have changes relevant to the issue, we'll let you know.

Bear in mind that maxed-out-everything characters don't spring fully-formed from the brow of Zeus. It'd be nice if it's also enjoyable, not frustrating, for a player on the journey progressing towards that state, but not already there.

[Cordovan]

I would mention that we do have several new ways to up your DC coming in Update 29 as well, so we're looking forward to folks checking that out on Lamannia.

[blerkington]

No, what I'm identifying is the inherent flaw in the system itself. You claimed that the range of a d20 was fine for DDO, and I pointed out, yes again and with detailed examples but it appeared that my first post hadn't gotten the point through clearly enough, that the inflation in DDO broke that mechanic beyond repair. It cannot be fixed, it will never work in DDO. No matter what Turbine does, no matter how they tweak monster saves, unless they depart from the D&D system of DC = 10 + spell level + stat bonus they will never manage to make a balanced system. And then players will always be posting threads like this one wondering why things are so screwed up.


See now you're just ignoring my examples. I pointed out specifically that I was ignoring itemization (gear), Enhancements, EDs, and Past Life Feats. That means that those things can be exactly equal for the low stat character and the high stat character, and the range of difference between them, 16, still almost completely spans a d20. Ignore the word stat if that what you're getting hung up over. The difference between the DCs of two characters can easily be 16 or more, and this doesn't work with a mechanic which uses only a d20 for the success/failure spread.

Please keep in mind that this isn't a thread about soloing EE content. And as such it should not assume a top notch build, top notch gear, multiple past lives, etc. So the difference between the absolute best and the person who should be able to expect to contribute, not dominate, not face roll, but land some spells and contribute in a group in EE content is a lot larger than you are allowing for.

Hi,

So, are you seriously trying to claim that mob saves in EE content should cater for wizards with a score as low as 30 in their main casting stat? And that if they don't it's a problem with the DC system? That is just ridiculous.

Your examples make no sense, because the worst case you've identified is not a realistic build for someone who wants to play endgame content on EE. It's meant to be hard for characters which are built and geared well. It's not the right setting for little Johnny Korthos who just got off the boat, used a stone to get to 20, but has no gear and no idea how to build his wizard.

This is the point which you keep on ignoring in your responses; if you build a terrible character (and 30 INT is absolutely terrible for someone playing a DC wizard in endgame content on EE; my ranger's INT is higher than that) you should not expect to do well in the hardest content. Your problem is that you are confusing the significance of the total range (which is irrelevant) with the relevant range for this discussion.

As long as the difference between a DC which is good (from a decent build with good gear) and the best attainable DC does not become too great for content at a the relevant range, the current system does work, so long as mob saves are also put at an appropriate level. An example where the d20 system is not working well is with saving throws, but that is because of abilities which allow very large bonuses from double dipping, such as divine grace. That has been partly addressed by the change to paladin splashes, but it's not completely solved.

Anyway, no-one is arguing that the total spread in the game is not well over 20. That is true, but so peripheral to the main point here as to be trivial. The spread is considerably less than 20 for people who are actually trying to build and gear decent characters. As I've said already, look at some of the earlier posts in this thread if you want actual breakdowns for DCs, and comparions of the difference between good and great casters.

Thanks.

[Silverleafeon]

I would mention that we do have several new ways to up your DC coming in Update 29 as well, so we're looking forward to folks checking that out on Lamannia.

Interesting...

[Marshal_Lannes]

If we concede that the main method of attack for a Pale Master is FoD, then shouldn't it always land (except on a 1)? Should not a caster always be able to rely upon his chosen method of attack? Perhaps set a minimum of say 50 or somewhere in the 50s so that the ability cannot be exploited, but any Pale Master with a DC over somewhere in the 50s always hits with FoD unless they roll a 1. Getting one kill with your main attack every 8 seconds certainly doesn't seem overpowering. Perhaps illusionists should get this ability with phatasmal killer as well.

I would also look into extending the AOE effect of circle of death and wail of the banshee. Now these DCs could be set higher to reach since they would be more powerful and something for lesser geared necromancers to aspire to. Top Necromancers could use these spells at their higher DC level to kill more mobs. Both could be set up to 8 mobs. I don't think doubling their effectiveness is overbalancing considering that they have a high spell cost and they really aren't effecting more mobs than melee are when they are running thru a cleave chain.

[davmuzl]

Should not a caster always be able to rely upon his chosen method of attack?

Sounds reasonable. I choose basically the most op thing imaginable, which is to instantly kill something and then insist that it has to work all the time...