AoV Intense Faith question

[co4nd]

If you run with heighten spell, which increase the spell to the maximum you can cast, what does intense faith do?

Can you run intense faith instead of heighten or vice versa, though Intense faith only amps the spell 3 levels at max

Am I understanding this correctly?

[AtomicMew]

If you run with heighten spell, which increase the spell to the maximum you can cast, what does intense faith do?

Can you run intense faith instead of heighten or vice versa, though Intense faith only amps the spell 3 levels at max

Am I understanding this correctly?

They do different things. There are two "levels" in play. There is the caster level and the spell level. The caster level determines spell penetration and damage dice (e.g., on fireball, 1d6 per caster level). The main source of caster level is class level. E.g., if you are a level 10 wizard, you will cast fireball at caster level 10 (as a base).

The spell level, which heighten changes, only goes up to level 9 (in most cases) and is innate for each spell. Heighten changes the spell level to the maximum you are able to cast at (for a particular class). The main effect of increased spell level is that it increases difficulty class (DC), which makes your spells harder to resist.

I'm not sure if heighten does anything else in DDO (such as bypassing globe of invulnerability). But those situations almost never occur, so it's not important.

[cru121]

If you run with heighten spell, which increase the spell to the maximum you can cast, what does intense faith do?

Can you run intense faith instead of heighten or vice versa, though Intense faith only amps the spell 3 levels at max

Am I understanding this correctly?

No.

A level 5 wizard casts a fireball at caster level 5, dealing 5d6 damage.
A level 5 wizard who also takes FVS levels and grabs 3 ranks of Intense Faith casts Fireball at caster level 8, dealing 8d6 damage.

Against a level 5 wizard's fireball, monsters roll a reflex save versus the difficulty class of the spell, 10 + 3 (spell level) + int mod (+other bonuses).
For the same wizard with heighten spell on, the DC is the same, because heighten treats the fireball to be the highest level spell that the character can cast, which is 3, so the math is the same, 10 + 3 + int mod.
If the wiz had Intense Faith but no heighten, the DC is still 10 + 3+ int mod.

IF the wiz had both Intense Faith and Heighten: In theory, Intense Faith should have no impact on DC. However, in reality (but I have not tested this recently), Heighten Spell works a bit weirdly. Because your Fire, Force, Light, and Physical spells have +3 CL, for these spells, Heighten will actually increase your DC by 1 (because CL 8 for a wizard is enough to cast lvl 4 spells). The wiki has a nicer description of this phenomenon, http://ddowiki.com/page/Heighten_Spell.

[co4nd]

Thanks, I got it now, I had actually reset AoV and ditched Intense faith and I saw my damage drop. reset again and got it back.