Class balance survey?

[Six_Gun]

I found this old thread that basically asked for forum user feedback in regard to class imbalance and power.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/439018-Player-Character-Balance?highlight=survey

Is this survey the reason we now have such terrible class balance and class based dungeon scaling? Did the Devs seriously place peoples opinions about class balance above what their own internal numbers were showing? It's no wonder this game is in the state it's in if this is how major decision making and priorities are handled at Turbine. The only thing this survey actually accomplished is proving that most people like playing melee classes and filled out the survey with the goal of buffing their favorite class.

[jalont]

I found this old thread that basically asked for forum user feedback in regard to class imbalance and power.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/439018-Player-Character-Balance?highlight=survey

Is this survey the reason we now have such terrible class balance and class based dungeon scaling? Did the Devs seriously place peoples opinions about class balance above what their own internal numbers were showing? It's no wonder this game is in the state it's in if this is how major decision making and priorities are handled at Turbine. The only thing this survey actually accomplished is proving that most people like playing melee classes and filled out the survey with the goal of buffing their favorite class.

DDO has always had balance problems. If anything, I'd say balance is better now than ever before, though there does need to be some nerfs to classes. I'd advise to pull the rhetoric back. You clearly don't know what you're talking about.

[Six_Gun]

DDO has always had balance problems. If anything, I'd say balance is better now than ever before, though there does need to be some nerfs to classes. I'd advise to pull the rhetoric back. You clearly don't know what you're talking about.

I know that there are really only a handful of classes that excel in end game. So if balancing classes simply meant making a few classes useful and other classes useless, then mission accomplished. Besides, I don't really give the opinion of a sycophant much weight, you're probably one of the people that filled out that survey so your Barbarian would have the best self healing in game.

[jalont]

I know that there are really only a handful of classes that excel in end game. So if balancing classes simply meant making a few classes useful and other classes useless, then mission accomplished. Besides, I don't really give the opinion of a sycophant much weight, you're probably one of the people that filled out that survey so your Barbarian would have the best self healing in game.

All classes are currently viable in endgame. At DDO's height, only casters were "viable" because they had the best DPS, survivability, and the only classes to have self healing. What should have happened was arcanes being nerfed. Instead, we're on an endless cycle of buffing.

As for giving people much weight, I'd advise going to the other forum. You're not going to get much attention here, ****ooing reality away. There's a place for that already.

[vms4ever]

Please, can't we all just get along?

Dungeons & Dragons has never had anything approaching class balance. A game based on D&D isn't going to have the class balance that a game like, for instance, guild wars 2 has. This is reflected in that Dungeons & Dragons is a cooperative game, the players working together versus the environment. Because DDO is based on Dungeons & Dragons the classes aren't balanced. In recent years, and especially with epic destinies, there have deviations from AD&D that have reduced the imbalance between classes. In my opinion, this has happened not as a result of a goal to balance the classes but as a side effect of making it more possible to solo and to make certain classes less fragile (in high level content).

To have truly balanced classes would, in my opinion, require losing any but superficial resemblance to D&D.

[jalont]

Please, can't we all just get along?

Dungeons & Dragons has never had anything approaching class balance. A game based on D&D isn't going to have the class balance that a game like, for instance, guild wars 2 has. This is reflected in that Dungeons & Dragons is a cooperative game, the players working together versus the environment. Because DDO is based on Dungeons & Dragons the classes aren't balanced. In recent years, and especially with epic destinies, there have deviations from AD&D that have reduced the imbalance between classes. In my opinion, this has happened not as a result of a goal to balance the classes but as a side effect of making it more possible to solo and to make certain classes less fragile (in high level content).

To have truly balanced classes would, in my opinion, require losing any but superficial resemblance to D&D.

Okay, but if you have a bunch of subpar classes, what's the point of even having them in the game? This is an MMO, after all, and very few MMO players are going to consciously decide to gimp themselves.

[Grailhawk]

I found this old thread that basically asked for forum user feedback in regard to class imbalance and power.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/439018-Player-Character-Balance?highlight=survey

Is this survey the reason we now have such terrible class balance and class based dungeon scaling? Did the Devs seriously place peoples opinions about class balance above what their own internal numbers were showing? It's no wonder this game is in the state it's in if this is how major decision making and priorities are handled at Turbine. The only thing this survey actually accomplished is proving that most people like playing melee classes and filled out the survey with the goal of buffing their favorite class.

Class based scaling existed long before that survey.

There are some flaws with that survey, monks were seen as OP when they really weren't (though a monk splash was), but the general conclusion that caster were much better then melee was correct. Back then casters dominated heroics with do to much better AOE damage, and then did much better in Epic content do to being ranged. Instakills were also a factor in this as the best caster palyers could get those spells to land at a reasonable rate leaving melee to clean up there left overs only.

The pendulum may have swung into melees favor now but casters can do a lot better now then a lot of melee were doing back then.

[vms4ever]

Okay, but if you have a bunch of subpar classes, what's the point of even having them in the game? This is an MMO, after all, and very few MMO players are going to consciously decide to gimp themselves.

oh, wow. subpar classes? I can't think of any subpar classes (except possibly Bard, but that's probably a problem with my understanding of the proper role of the Bard class). Different classes have different roles, different levels of ability for dealing damage, healing, crowd control, or damage avoidance (trapping). Some are not as effective as others when soloing. I would say that any of the DDO classes can be effective in the hands of a player who understands the class and plays the character appropriately.

I am very aware that I am not sufficiently talented to play all classes effectively (some would say that I am not able to play any class effectively). But there is no DDO class that I would point to and say that it is useless.

[Enoach]

I found this old thread that basically asked for forum user feedback in regard to class imbalance and power.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/439018-Player-Character-Balance?highlight=survey

Is this survey the reason we now have such terrible class balance and class based dungeon scaling? Did the Devs seriously place peoples opinions about class balance above what their own internal numbers were showing? It's no wonder this game is in the state it's in if this is how major decision making and priorities are handled at Turbine. The only thing this survey actually accomplished is proving that most people like playing melee classes and filled out the survey with the goal of buffing their favorite class.

The results of the survey was to give Turbine a priority list in doing adjustments to the classes after the Enhancement Pass (The move to the current enhancement system). Sure it had the potential of bias by players. What it didn't do was tell Turbine what needed to be done, it just gave them an order to make adjustments.

The state of the game is where it is based on decisions made by Turbine. Very little of that is a result of this survey.

Class scaling occurred when Turbine implemented scaling which was long before this survey. That is part of the problem with the scaling based on class. Class adjustments don't take into consideration changes that have occurred with that class.

One thing to keep in mind is that it is an unfair assessment to compare revamped/new classes (Paladin, Rogue, Ranger, Fighter, Barbarian, and Warlock) vs still to be revamped classes (Sorcerer, Wizard, Monk, Druid, Favored Soul, Cleric and Artificer) especially when it comes to balance.

[Amundir]

And remember, that's the only survey they are allowed to do. Once they did it, and make the changes, they are forever forbidden from doing it again. That's just physics.

[Blastyswa]

Okay, but if you have a bunch of subpar classes, what's the point of even having them in the game? This is an MMO, after all, and very few MMO players are going to consciously decide to gimp themselves.

What classes would you call subpar at the moment? I can't actually think of any that aren't completely capable in all content at the moment, pure or multiclassed. I can certainly think of ways to make any build or any class subpar, but played properly I can't think of any that aren't good.

Keep in mind though that I'm referring specifically to classes, not to builds like Furyshotters, Trees, Shiradi's, Wolves, or Mechanics. It's my opinion that the problem is more those builds needing nerfs than certain classes needing buffs.

[PermaBanned]

Okay, but if you have a bunch of subpar classes, what's the point of even having them in the game? This is an MMO, after all, and very few MMO players are going to consciously decide to gimp themselves.Thank you for perfectly encapsulating the line of thinking that's ****ed up our game ^^

In D&D "class balance" ~ (as near as I can tell) "making sure all classes can bring something unique to contribute to the group's fun & success."

In DDO that sort of "balance" only worked when cooperative play ("Friends don't let friends play solo") was the focus. It wasn't until the emphasis on soloability wormed it's way off the forums and into Design Goals that this issue of "class balance" became "everything must have ~the same DPS & Survivability, 'else it's either OP garbage or subpar garbage."

[nokowi]

What classes would you call subpar at the moment? I can't actually think of any that aren't completely capable in all content at the moment, pure or multiclassed. I can certainly think of ways to make any build or any class subpar, but played properly I can't think of any that aren't good.

Keep in mind though that I'm referring specifically to classes, not to builds like Furyshotters, Trees, Shiradi's, Wolves, or Mechanics. It's my opinion that the problem is more those builds needing nerfs than certain classes needing buffs.

Funny, since we started with something like 2 builds needing nerfs prior to the class pass.

Looks like its time for another round of buffs devs...

[jalont]

Thank you for perfectly encapsulating the line of thinking that's ****ed up our game ^^

In D&D "class balance" ~ (as near as I can tell) "making sure all classes can bring something unique to contribute to the group's fun & success."

In DDO that sort of "balance" only worked when cooperative play ("Friends don't let friends play solo") was the focus. It wasn't until the emphasis on soloability wormed it's way off the forums and into Design Goals that this issue of "class balance" became "everything must have ~the same DPS & Survivability, 'else it's either OP garbage or subpar garbage."

You have it backwards. If I had my way, we would have seen nerfs, keeping player balance and gaming balance intact, and keeping grouping alive. I am the last person to blame for power creep and lack of challenge in this game. There used to be an issue: casters had the best dps, the best survivability, and the only classes capable of self healing. In this world, what "role" did a melee play? What needed to happen was casters needed to be nerfed.

Instead, what we got is a never-ending round of buffs, completely breaking the game.

[PermaBanned]

You have it backwards. If I had my way, we would have seen nerfs, keeping player balance and gaming balance intact, and keeping grouping alive. I am the last person to blame for power creep and lack of challenge in this game. There used to be an issue: casters had the best dps, the best survivability, and the only classes capable of self healing. In this world, what "role" did a melee play? What needed to happen was casters needed to be nerfed.

Instead, what we got is a never-ending round of buffs, completely breaking the game.

Which - near as I can tell - means we agree the chosen solution was the wrong one. I think we may have different opinions on/about the initial "problem," but that hardly matters at this stage... yeah?

[Oliphant]

Sorcs are kind of a sad shadow of their former glory at the moment

[BoBoDaClown]

After this survey I felt that there is no point giving feedback.

I said:

"Characters should have to make tradeoffs.

At the moment this isn't happening; some classes are able to have top notch dps and defense.

Additionally, game-play needs to make a wider variety of game styles effective; i.e. making tanks useful sometimes would be great."


(I found my comment in the archive here: https://www.ddo.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-439018.html?)


Only time I know my comments were taken on board by a Dev, because they agreed with me. They quoted me in their survey findings. My quote is in the Dev summary below. Yet since that date, they have made super defence/offence bard/pallies/barbs/warlocks...

I have pasted their 'findings' below. I can't remember which dev communicated this to us, but this is how they responded to their thread, and makes for interesting reading two years on:

We’ve read the forum posts and tallied the surveys, and want to echo back what we’ve heard from you guys along with some of our thoughts on some specific points. There’s definitely even more feedback we’ve got notes on than just the stuff we’re listing here, but this highlights the most common and passionate feedback.

A compilation of some main points we’ve gathered from your feedback
The presumption is that most comments are about Epic Elite, as explicitly mentioned by many players.

For most characters, it’s hard to stay alive unless you avoid damage entirely.
• Melee monsters hit very hard. This pushes towards playing ranged characters to avoid monster melee damage.
• The most dangerous ranged enemies tend to be casters using spells that can be avoided with Reflex saving throws, which makes Evasion the best way to mitigate ranged damage.
What’s going on with monsters?
• Damage per hit from melee monsters is very high, even if you are building to mitigate it.
o It may be OK to hit this hard against robe-wearing arcane casters, but characters should be able to greatly reduce this damage with medium or heavy armor, appropriate feats, enhancements, destiny choices, and other itemization.
• Some other statistics may need looking at for Monsters, including hit points, saving throws, and the DCs of monster abilities.

On Balance Changes
There’s a wide variety of general opinions, including everything from “buff everything”, “nerf everything”, to “balance nothing”, “have a vision at Turbine and do the right thing!”, each of these repeated by multiple people. The best course probably involves some elements of all of these comments, both buffing and nerfing, possibly including nerfing monsters.
Many players have urged caution with any changes, specifically to minimize collateral damage. As an example, if changes are made to nerf monkcher Furyshotters, don’t break monks, rangers, other Fury of the Wild characters, and all ranged characters at the same time. Favor the scalpel over the sledgehammer.

Some quotes:
• “Characters should have to make tradeoffs. At the moment this isn't happening; some classes are able to have top notch dps and defense.”LOL
• “DDO's greatest differentiating strength is the depth and robustness of character creation and development. The current situation effectively renders that moot, leaving DDO without a competitive advantage.”
• “This is a fantasy game, I log on to feel awesome.”
• “I'd like to see balance change once, to something good enough that most players are satisfied with it, and then stay that way for the duration. That would be perfect. But, you know... many small corrections as the need arises might be good enough.”
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/StayVsBalance.png


On Diversity
A few seemed concerned that balance meant making everything the same. That’s not the goal, and the diversity of different build options represents one of the greatest strengths of DDO. The major reason we would want to balance anything would be to make more builds feel viable and fun to play, even in the most difficult quests.
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/PersonalVsPower.png

On Synergy
Many players noted that “overpowered” builds combine amazing synergies that may or may not have been intended. There are occasional combinations that produce unanticipated results, but generally speaking we aim to provide some synergies in character building. It’s OK for certain combos to be more than the sum of their parts, as long as there are lots of different synergies that don’t end up too far apart from each other in terms of fun and viability.

Survival & Defense
We’re thinking about the possibility of making some changes to how armor and shields work, with the goal of making medium and heavy armor more viable forms of defense in epic content. These discussions are at the most preliminary stages, but we’re aware there are issues here.

Multiclassing (ignoring Enhancements)
This could be another entire discussion. But many players thought it was crazy that multiclassing wasn’t the forefront of the discussion, so let’s talk about it.

We like being D&D. We are unlikely to significantly alter or remove core feats or abilities from classes or races.

Evasion is probably the biggest single draw for taking 2 Rogue or Monk levels. However, we may think about how common Reflex saving throws are vs. other saving throws, and other no-save effects that feel fair for monsters and players both. This would be a long-reaching goal, and would need to be made in concert with other changes, such as making sure that players aren’t simply dying, if Evasion was the only thing keeping most characters alive.

Multiclassing and Enhancement Trees
The enhancement pass in Update 19 certainly affected multiclassing. As a matter of learning from history, here’s some reasons why, which we were mostly aware of at the time:
• Frontloading and Minimizing changes to characters: Many popular & powerful abilities are “front-loaded”; they are on low tiers in the enhancement trees. This was very consciously done so that most characters could still get most of what they desired without much hassle. We knew this would incentivize multiclassing, but decided that was an acceptable cost. Even with this, during the enhancement pass there was a great deal of outcry. This is something we could make incremental changes to affect, but each change would probably make some subset of players upset, and we’re in no hurry to revamp everything and move everything around. (Giant tangential discussion for another time or place: “Class” enhancement trees aren’t a simple solution to this.)
• Number of enhancement trees: A major part of the original design (intended to present choice as well as help balance multiclass builds vs. pure builds) was the limit of 3 enhancement trees. Yes, you could still make a Henshin Mystic + Thief Acrobat, but you’d have to make meaningful choices and give things up to get them. Multiclassing is still clearly an increase in power (you get the “best” 3 trees out of 6-9, instead of just 3), but not as much as it is with 6 class trees. Essentially, we changed this due to feedback at the time, knowing it would help lead to the rise of multiclass characters. This is one of those places where we had a vision but it simply wasn’t accepted by the community at-large (which is not to place the blame on anyone.) We try to strike a balance between design considerations and the desires of the people who play our game, so we changed this to 6 class trees.
• Class Level Requirements: The U18 Enhancements largely required 6/12/18 class levels to get “the good stuff”. Both internally amongst the design team and publicly amongst the players, during the Enhancement pass a great variety of class level restrictions were proposed for the 5-tier trees we have now. These included some very strong calls for 1/3/6/12/28 (similar to the old system), all the way down to not requiring any class levels at all (essentially just requiring access to the tree). I’ll take personal responsibility for fighting for the 1/2/3/4/5 system we have today, which was for the goal of meaningful choices along with interesting possible builds. Instead of nearly every build being 20 or 18/2 or maybe 12/6/2, there’s a much wider variety of builds that players consider and actually take. Along with the third Core enhancement requiring level 6, there’s at least some real reasons to want anywhere from 1-6 class levels at least. And there are definitely some builds that splash 2/3/4 levels for specific enhancements and synergies. While these synergies do provide extra power, they also provide a much wider array of possible choices while still being choices (compared to only requiring 1 level of a class to access the entire tree). There’s still some debate that perhaps 1/2/3/4/5 is too generous, but this isn’t something we’d change lightly.

Frequency and Speed of Changes
In the forums, many players agreed that if something was going to be changed, it should be changed right away. However, there were some interesting notes, such as: “sometimes it takes a long long time before the synergy of certain things gets ‘popular’ and then is perceived as ‘overpowered’. Many months sometimes. Just because people discover a synergy straight away doesn't mean it should automatically be nerfed.” Also, the survey responses suggested that we should try to avoid any kind of immediate kneejerk reactions.

https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/HowSoon.png

As a contemporary note: When something is nerfed for Divine Crusader on Lamannia, or between Lamannia and live launch of the patch, this is sometimes an example of this in action. With our efforts to try to get features in front of players on Lamannia sooner, you are likely to see more changes, including ‘nerfs’. (It’s difficult for designers to even think of changes as nerfs, for a feature that has never been live. Internally here at Turbine, a design may change many times before players even seen it, the power level going up and down all the time.)

What’s specific items do players consider overpowered?
Major caveat: Anything considered overpowered by some is also loved by others. We’re aware of this. Anything on this list is also NOT automatically going to be nerfed or changed in any particular way, but these are things we may take a closer look at. There’s quite a few other possibilities we might look at, but these were near the top of the list for discussions.
• Ranged Fury of the Wild
• Monks using 10K Stars and manyshot (monkchers)
• Bladeforged Reconstruct

Survey
We always appreciate the passionate and detailed feedback you guys provide us, both as forum posts and as survey results. We’re still trying to improve how we construct surveys in the future, including adding N/A options. It was not our intent to only include information from players who were extremely knowledgeable with all classes and epic destines; we could have pointed out that it was fine to leave some answers blank (which many people did).

Here’s an overview of some of the survey results. Reminder that higher values indicate more power.
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/CombatStylePowerAverages.png
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/ClassPowerAverages.png
https://www.ddo.com/sites/default/files/EpicDestinyPowerAverages.png


Thanks for the great feedback! We’ll be reading along and looking for your ideas and opinions.

[SirValentine]

I found this old thread that basically asked for forum user feedback in regard to class imbalance and power.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/439018-Player-Character-Balance?highlight=survey

Is this survey the reason we now have such terrible class balance and class based dungeon scaling? Did the Devs seriously place peoples opinions about class balance above what their own internal numbers were showing?


It has nothing to do with dungeon scaling.

It is the reason devs have gone crazy with over-buffing enhancements.

However, it was a mostly (not 100%) accurate depiction of class balance at the time it was taken.

[BigErkyKid]

...stuff on the balance survey...

Yes, I agree that there is not much incentive to provide feedback.

The devs are aware of the existing "aberrations" (trees, wolfsploit, new golden shirred). Some of them even got explicit mentions in the thread. They were also aware of the power of kiting (ranged attacks mostly being reflex based, with a lot of kiters having evasion). Interestingly they didn't even mention group play and synergies.

However, what did we see? Heavy handed buffing that has been swinging the pendulum ever since:

- First swing: massive boost to heavy armor and melee damage. Old raids and every quest gets trivialized on a proper melee.

- Second swing: warlock. Everything in the game can be done on a warlock, which is a class that spits in the face of regular casters.

- Third swing: quests still mostly trivial on melees, but raid damage gets boosted to the old levels in which, and I quote a dev,


Melee monsters hit very hard. This pushes towards playing ranged characters to avoid monster melee damage.

Sure you can still play a melee, but you can obtain similar DPS on ranged toons without the hassle.

- Fourth swing: mob saves get lowered in high end raids. Now maxxed casters can hold / dance everything, and in 2/3 of the raids, instakills become again arguably the best trash killer.

And all that in the course of ~2 years. So everyone can draw their own conclusions.

[PermaBanned]

And all that in the course of ~2 years. So everyone can draw their own conclusions.Rereading that post survey commentary just reminds me of how glad I am to not be a Dev on this (or any other) game. The amount of conflicting comments, advice & requests must be an absolute beeootch to sort out when trying please all the conflicting opinion givers. Hell, just trying to please Me, Erky & Fran simultaniously looks dauntingly difficult - and then extend that to all the other players? Yikes.

Thanx for reporting the commentary. It's actually served to remind me just how decent of a job they have been doing with the game - flaws, features that make people who aren't me happy, and all.


(That's not me handing out forgiveness for all the unD&Difying they've done to the game, but what the heck - this is DDO, not D&D... right?)

[hale99]

Sorcs are kind of a sad shadow of their former glory at the moment

My main who is a sorc would take great offence to that comment. I have and really see no issues with sorcs.

[ZhenBuYaoShi]

Sorcs are kind of a sad shadow of their former glory at the moment

Right now, I'm in the middle of doing eTRing with a Sorc. When I'm level 29 I have 609 visible spellpower, from items, gear and enhancements, 100 base spellpower, 75 empower spellpower, 150 maximize spellpower, and 75 intensify spellpower, I have an enhancement tree full of maximum caster level boosting effects, I have Master of Earth for another 10 levels of raising the maximum caster level, and with ALL of this, and a DC of 77, I can't get my base damage on my main spell that I use, Acid Blast, to get past about 1700 dmg; never seen a crit go past 5,000dmg, unless they are weak against acid, and things are still saving way too often; it's ridiculous. Exactly what more am I supposed to do to pump up my sorc, because I can't see it. I realize I could be in a better epic destiny, but I'm trying to eTR, so I need to fill up my Martial sphere presently; you can't always be in the destiny you want to be in; that's just part of the game, period.

Basically, things tend to go like this in epics, I spit out an acid ball; it hits. Does it's decent damage, then my fricken SLA goes on a summer vacation, while all of the weapon users kill everything, and the spell comes back around, but everything is dead, even the red/orange name is dead. The sword fighters and Xbow users have splattered them all over the place. And, what do you see them doing when they're dead, they're itching their light wounds as an afterdeath reflex where my acid barely sizzled their skin.

If I want to kill a mob in EE, or Legendary quests, I have to spend like 200 spellpoints; it's ridiculous; I leave it up to the physical fighters to do most of the killing. Or, I can try to just use SLAs, and only spend about 30 spellpower, but it takes like 30 seconds to kill the **** mob, because of the long ass cooldowns on SLAs, plus I have to kite like a .....

Sorcerers are fairly JACKED at the moment compared to what others are able to do to get their way through content. Seems that about the only points that a Sorcs are useful at the moment are to buff in the beginning, at shrines, and to unload everything they got on the boss at the end. Okay, okay, so I web things often, and then some JA in the party burns it down with some fire effect of theirs.

So, as you can imagine, solo play is slow and dangerous. I find that I do best in full plate armor in Earth elemental form with a caster shield, but after level 26, gotta give up the shield for the LGS CHA weapon. With this much PRR, and my lower end Sorcerer hp, I find that I have survivability. And, of course, you can't forget how important cocoon is to be twisted in at all times. That is one thing that surprises me, not very many Sorcs in full plate. It's so easy to splash some Eldritch Knight, maybe a point or two in Arcane Alacrity, that is if you play an elf/half-elf or drow, otherwise you might need to do something else to fix ASF if you must play a WF, or a human like get twilight on something.

So, anyway, Sorcs, not so happy; I agree 250% with the original post.

[Baktiotha]

How do you define balance?

It may seem like a trite question, but it is at the heart of all the forum discussions about balance.

Unless you know what balance *is* you cannot actually talk about whether there is balance in DDO or not.

Here are some things that balance *is not*.

Balance is not a near equal number of people playing each character class. The choice of character class is highly individualized, balance is not judged based on how many players are choosing one class or the other.

Balance is not near equal damage or armor class or PRR or MRR or hit points or spell points. Balance is not homogenization or blurring of classes so that they all look and play the same.

Balance is not multiclass characters being as prolific or popular or capable as pure class characters. Multiclass offers perks, pure class offers perks -- players make the choice when they elect to stay pure or to go multiclass.

All that balance *is* comes down to one simple metric -- can the character class successfully advance from L1 to L30 and, along the way, participate in without handicapping the party all of the game's quests and raids? The game is balanced if the answer to that question is "Yes."

Balance has nothing to do with comparison of power among different classes or among different builds. Balance has purely to do with the ability to complete the game successfully.

Balance has nothing to do with *you* being able to complete the game successfully on every character. Some players are simply better than others. Some are suited to a particular play style. Some are more capable of dealing with challenge. The different classes and build options are intended to create that variety of challenge so that each person finds a path to success.

Some paths are intentionally easier. Some are intentionally more difficult. That is part of balance as well -- the goal of a game developer is to challenge every player according to their ability. And to that end different capabilities in different characters allows players to migrate to the build that allows them to find success.

There is a lot of talk on the forums about how certain classes simply cannot succeed in legendary content. Yet, I see every character class and every racial choice represented when I run a legendary raid. Either somebody forgot to tell those players that their characters cannot run legendary content or those players have figured out how to succeed when the talking heads on the forums said that success was not possible.

Now, are there some classes and some builds that are just easy button? Sure. Are there too many? Maybe. Should all of the classes and build options fit that mold? No.

Balance is not making everything equal except in one thing, and one thing only. Balance is, when played by the person capable of using the build to its fullest, each build can reach and succeed in end game. Can every build do that when played by the right player? Yes.

That is the goal of balance.

[Baktiotha]

I can't get my base damage on my main spell that I use, Acid Blast, to get past about 1700 dmg; never seen a crit go past 5,000dmg, unless they are weak against acid, and things are still saving way too often; it's ridiculous.

Funny, but I'm doing about 300-500 base damage and seldom see a critical more than 2500 and I'm having zero issues in any quest. To the contrary, I am often running around pretty much oblivious to mobs and bosses and watching them drop in just a few seconds from the various combined assaults.

How is it that we see the game in such different terms? Because I agree, 1700 base and 5000 critical is ridiculous. I don't think anyone ought to complain about those numbers.

[Six_Gun]

How do you define balance?

It may seem like a trite question, but it is at the heart of all the forum discussions about balance.

Unless you know what balance *is* you cannot actually talk about whether there is balance in DDO or not.

Here are some things that balance *is not*.

Balance is not a near equal number of people playing each character class. The choice of character class is highly individualized, balance is not judged based on how many players are choosing one class or the other.

Balance is not near equal damage or armor class or PRR or MRR or hit points or spell points. Balance is not homogenization or blurring of classes so that they all look and play the same.

Balance is not multiclass characters being as prolific or popular or capable as pure class characters. Multiclass offers perks, pure class offers perks -- players make the choice when they elect to stay pure or to go multiclass.

All that balance *is* comes down to one simple metric -- can the character class successfully advance from L1 to L30 and, along the way, participate in without handicapping the party all of the game's quests and raids? The game is balanced if the answer to that question is "Yes."

Balance has nothing to do with comparison of power among different classes or among different builds. Balance has purely to do with the ability to complete the game successfully.

Balance has nothing to do with *you* being able to complete the game successfully on every character. Some players are simply better than others. Some are suited to a particular play style. Some are more capable of dealing with challenge. The different classes and build options are intended to create that variety of challenge so that each person finds a path to success.

Some paths are intentionally easier. Some are intentionally more difficult. That is part of balance as well -- the goal of a game developer is to challenge every player according to their ability. And to that end different capabilities in different characters allows players to migrate to the build that allows them to find success.

There is a lot of talk on the forums about how certain classes simply cannot succeed in legendary content. Yet, I see every character class and every racial choice represented when I run a legendary raid. Either somebody forgot to tell those players that their characters cannot run legendary content or those players have figured out how to succeed when the talking heads on the forums said that success was not possible.

Now, are there some classes and some builds that are just easy button? Sure. Are there too many? Maybe. Should all of the classes and build options fit that mold? No.

Balance is not making everything equal except in one thing, and one thing only. Balance is, when played by the person capable of using the build to its fullest, each build can reach and succeed in end game. Can every build do that when played by the right player? Yes.

That is the goal of balance.


A lot of words to basically say nothing.

Congratulations. It's because of advice like yours that the Devs have done what they've done.

Take pride in knowing that the dwindling game population is the end result.

[PermaBanned]

A lot of words to basically say nothing.

Congratulations. It's because of advice like yours that the Devs have done what they've done.

Take pride in knowing that the dwindling game population is the end result.

Oh now, don't go giving away all the credit... I'm sure sparkling personalities have also made their contribution to the dwindling community ^^

[PermaBanned]

How do you define balance?
I'm generally happy accepting Mirriam Webster's definition(s) of the word.

When it comes to DDO, I define as follows:

"Balance is something unattainable on the forums because what balances the game in some folks opinions unbalances it in others."

Or in other words:
"A compromise is where nobody walks away happy."
Going by that last "definition," I'd say they've got the game perfectly balanced ATM ;)

[Baktiotha]

It's because of advice like yours that the Devs have done what they've done.

I can assure you that not a single developer has ever made a decision based on what I posted.

But, you should read up on game balance. There is a lot of material available online.

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_(game_design)) starts with this: In game design, balance is the concept and the practice of tuning a game's rules, usually with the goal of preventing any of its component systems from being ineffective or otherwise undesirable when compared to their peers. An unbalanced system represents wasted development resources at the very least, and at worst can undermine the game's entire ruleset by making important roles or tasks impossible to perform.

Sirlin (http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-1-definitions) puts it this way: A multiplayer game is balanced if a reasonably large number of options available to the player are viable--especially, but not limited to, during high-level play by expert players.

Techopedia (https://www.techopedia.com/definition/27041/game-balance) observes: Game balance is a video game design concept where the strengths of a character or a particular strategy are offset by a proportional drawback in another area to prevent domination of one character or gaming approach.

Now, if you study these and similar articles on game design there are a few things that will stand out. Among them are that "winning" needs to be possible to people of all abilities and that a "winning" build/strategy/play must be possible and obvious to even the weakest player. You'll also note that the problem in this is to challenge people with higher levels of ability. The solution set is to introduce build/strategy/play options that create higher levels of challenge while still enabling people to "win."

DDO does these things. There are easy buttons (Warlock, Rogue Mechanic, Bard Swashbuckler, Paladin), not quite as easy buttons (Wizard Pale Master, Barbarian, Fighter, Ranger/Elf Arcane Archer, Artificer), some a bit harder buttons (Sorcerer, Cleric, Favored Soul, Ranger Tempest), and some downright harder buttons (Rogue Thief-Acrobat, Rogue Assassin, Druid, Monk). Yet none of them are so hard that there won't be some people writing to say how one or more of these belongs in a different grouping.

Balance is about *not* giving in to the demands that every character class and every build be among the best. Balance is about *not* giving in to one play style. (The developers do a reasonable job of this, just check the forums to see how people react when 12 players soloing a raid and counting on brute force and self healing to win isn't the optimal solution -- LE TS, I'm looking at you! :D)

But what most forum readers want "balance" to mean is "my character is uber too." That isn't what balance is about. To the contrary, in DDO the characters are not much different from one another and what makes one uber and the other not is the player behind the character -- not the other way around.

[nokowi]

Funny, but I'm doing about 300-500 base damage and seldom see a critical more than 2500 and I'm having zero issues in any quest. To the contrary, I am often running around pretty much oblivious to mobs and bosses and watching them drop in just a few seconds from the various combined assaults.

How is it that we see the game in such different terms? Because I agree, 1700 base and 5000 critical is ridiculous. I don't think anyone ought to complain about those numbers.

And yet you have been blissfully unaware of elite content in every other thread...

If there is elite content you don't run, then you shouldn't be telling others that there experiences are incorrect with regard to elite content. Elite mobs do not drop in a few seconds from your 300-500 damage. It's most likely the other players doing all the work, and you simply being unaware of the game.

[BoBoDaClown]

Techopedia (https://www.techopedia.com/definition/27041/game-balance) observes: Game balance is a video game design concept where the strengths of a character or a particular strategy are offset by a proportional drawback in another area to prevent domination of one character or gaming approach.




This is where DDO falls short.

When I responded to that survey, I wanted to see balance where 'classes' would have strengths and weaknesses. Now some classes/builds have varying degrees of strengths with no real weaknesses.

[Robbenklopper]

I found this old thread that basically asked for forum user feedback in regard to class imbalance and power.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/439018-Player-Character-Balance?highlight=survey

Is this survey the reason we now have such terrible class balance and class based dungeon scaling? Did the Devs seriously place peoples opinions about class balance above what their own internal numbers were showing? It's no wonder this game is in the state it's in if this is how major decision making and priorities are handled at Turbine. The only thing this survey actually accomplished is proving that most people like playing melee classes and filled out the survey with the goal of buffing their favorite class.

Old bait, new fishing pole. Don´t get tired on it guys!

[Baktiotha]

It's most likely the other players doing all the work, and you simply being unaware of the game.

I am sure that is it. It probably isn't multiple small damage numbers from several simultaneous attacks (light/acid/evil) all going off at the same time with any 5 second period registering ~1600 damage. Still, only about half the sorcerer at 1700/2 seconds if he is spamming Acid Blast.

Then again, I don't have to worry about spell points.

Of course, that assumes the sorcerer is using spell points and not relying only on Acid Blast from his Earth Savant. In that case the sorcerer is tossing the blast every 6 seconds. (Note how the poster complains about the SLA going on Summer Vacation.)

That means while he's dawdling waiting on his SLA to recharge and *not* spending spell points on max, empowered, intensified Acid Blast I'm chucking away with 2 second auras, 5 second Eldritch Bursts and 5 second Spirit Blasts while also TWF in the middle of combat. I think I'm probably doing *more* DPS even though the largest numbers I see rolling across the screen are (w/o criticals) in the 300-500 range.

I guess I'll just keep being unaware of how the game works. :)

[Iriale]

I am sure that is it. It probably isn't multiple small damage numbers from several simultaneous attacks (light/acid/evil) all going off at the same time with any 5 second period registering ~1600 damage. Still, only about half the sorcerer at 1700/2 seconds if he is spamming Acid Blast.

Then again, I don't have to worry about spell points.

Of course, that assumes the sorcerer is using spell points and not relying only on Acid Blast from his Earth Savant. In that case the sorcerer is tossing the blast every 6 seconds. (Note how the poster complains about the SLA going on Summer Vacation.)

That means while he's dawdling waiting on his SLA to recharge and *not* spending spell points on max, empowered, intensified Acid Blast I'm chucking away with 2 second auras, 5 second Eldritch Bursts and 5 second Spirit Blasts while also TWF in the middle of combat. I think I'm probably doing *more* DPS even though the largest numbers I see rolling across the screen are (w/o criticals) in the 300-500 range.

I guess I'll just keep being unaware of how the game works. :)
Eldritch Bursts? Spirit Blasts? Those are warlock thinks, not sorcerer things. If u need splash other class for your dps, well, the class is broken. And TWF? Seriously? If I want play a melee, I build for a melee. I want play a caster as a caster, not as a melee. Your points are ridiculous.

But this is not a sorcerer problem. It is a magic system problem in the epic play. The spell scaling in epics and the spell point cost in epics (with all metamagic on) is broken as hell. NPCs in epics are bloated with hps, a stupid number of hps. We need a spell revision (and a metamagic cost reduction!!!!) but heh, devs don't have time for it. So, all magical classes struggle when blasting. In epics, you depend a lot in epic SLAs, epic SLAs that are the same for all classes (so, homogenization of game!) I have the same problem with druid, wizard, fvs, cleric… warlocks are the pampered children, of course. Free dps without any spell point cost… and yes that is too broken as hell!

The magic situation is better since the update with spellpower enhancements in epic, this is true. It's not as bad as before. But that update didn't touch the real problem. Only was a mere bandage. We should not have the strong dependence that we have in epic SLAs that are the same for all classes. It's obvious. The class spells should have the most importance, because class spells are the authentic difference between caster classes.

[Baktiotha]

Eldritch Bursts? Spirit Blasts? Those are warlock thinks, not sorcerer things. If u need splash other class for your dps, well, the class is broken. And TWF? Seriously? If I want play a melee, I build for a melee. I want play a caster as a caster, not as a melee. Your points are ridiculous.

Of course they are warlock things and not sorcerer things. I play a melee focused warlock. You'll understand that I am not playing *your* character, so what you will do isn't required of me. I happen to want to play a caster as a melee and the game rewards me for doing that. I certainly would not tell you that you had to do that.

On the other hand, when someone makes assumptions about how other players must be carrying a build it shows that they are not working with a full set of information. I never said I was playing a sorcerer. I just commented on damage numbers.

And, that is the point of my observations -- people have trouble understanding they do not *need* big numbers and 1700 base damage is not under powered.


But this is not a sorcerer problem. It is a magic system problem in the epic play. The spell scaling in epics and the spell point cost in epics (with all metamagic on) is broken as hell. NPCs in epics are bloated with hps, a stupid number of hps. We need a spell revision (and a metamagic cost reduction!!!!) but heh, devs don't have time for it. So, all magical classes struggle when blasting. In epics, you depend a lot in epic SLAs, epic SLAs that are the same for all classes (so, homogenization of game!) I have the same problem with druid, wizard, fvs, cleric… warlocks are the pampered children, of course. Free dps without any spell point cost… and yes that is too broken as hell!

Well, if you take the time to read the previous postings you'll see that the complaint is about a class SLA from sorcerer earth savant. Acid Blast tops out at 10d3+30 damage for 6 spell points on a 6 second cooldown. That is an average of 50 damage. Now, if you'll do a bit of math you'll see that 1700 damage means 3400 spell power. Take away 150 for maximize, 75 for empower, 75 for intensify and that means 3100 spell power. Rather than complaining the poster should understand that he's pushing the upper limits.


The magic situation is better since the update with spellpower enhancements in epic, this is true. It's not as bad as before. But that update didn't touch the real problem. Only was a mere bandage. We should not have the strong dependence that we have in epic SLAs that are the same for all classes. It's obvious. The class spells should have the most importance, because class spells are the authentic difference between caster classes.

The problem is in the mindset. Casters want to be able to cast spells without any limitations. In D&D it is a set number of spells per day. In DDO it is spell points. Instead of wasting those blasting everything (and drawing aggro and making the quest more difficult on the melee and ranged DPS party members in the ensuing "run like a chicken with its head cut off" chase scene) casters can learn to be smarter with their choices.

As for the poster who wrote about Acid Blast, he might try taking the metamagic feat Quicken to cut his spell casting time from 6 seconds to ~3 seconds. He might note that Acid Arrow is also an SLA available to him that a) has no saving throw and b) has no spell resistance and c) does 15 damage/2 seconds for 12 seconds (70 total damage on average) and that the same spell power of 3400 applied to Acid Arrow would do 2380 damage. On a 5 second cooldown (~2.5 seconds with Quicken) it will stack roughly 3 times before the first application wears off. Oh, and as an SLA it is 4 spell points. On a class that is carrying >2000 spell points that is 500 castings of the spell or ~1250 seconds (almost 21 minutes) of continuously casting Melf's. Cast in cycle Acid Blast and Acid Arrow take ~6 seconds at a cost of 10 spell points. That's >200 castings and about 8 minutes of continuous spell casting.

Poster's problem is *not* damage numbers and it is *not* lack of spell points. Poster's problem is in perception and in wanting to be the one that registers the kill credit (see the comments about long cooldown and melees). But, as a class there is *no* power problem with sorcerers.

[nokowi]

Of course they are warlock things and not sorcerer things. I play a melee focused warlock. You'll understand that I am not playing *your* character, so what you will do isn't required of me. I happen to want to play a caster as a melee and the game rewards me for doing that. I certainly would not tell you that you had to do that.


Thank you for clearing stating you know nothing about sorcerer and rejected someone else's comments based on
1. knowing little about elite
2. knowing little about sorcerer

You know nothing about the SP needed for a sorcerer, and you just looked at damage numbers without this context, so you can't add any value to this thread.

The comments were about sorcerer and perceived problems related to that class, not how well your Warlock works.

[Baktiotha]

The comments were about sorcerer and perceived problems related to that class, not how well your Warlock works.

Of course the comments were about *perceived* problems. There is a difference between *perceived* and *actual*.

I deal with the *actual* in other parts of the post when I observe the level caps of the spell (ie, that's as much as there is, there isn't any more) and the relative spell power needed to push that to the damage the poster indicated.

The poster does indeed have a *perception* problem. But not an *actual* problem.

Note that maximum caster level is not increased by Heighten with respect to capping damage. So maximum damage is still 10d3+30 with or without Heighten. Heighten only raises maximum caster level for purposes of saving throws. The spell does 50 damage on average with or without Heighten. It does maximum damage of 60 with or without Heighten. That means spell power must be 1700/50=34, or 3400. Taking that base spell power can be calculated as 100 and max/empower/intensify is 300 that means the sorcerer is sitting on ~3000 spell power (assuming acid power). That's a holy boat load Batman.

There isn't an *actual* problem. There is just a *perceived* problem. But the perception is wrong.

[Baktiotha]

Let's go into that spell power piece a bit more.

AFAIK spell powers over 1000 are pretty rare so to get an effective 3000 spell power means that you need something that scales the spell power upwards. A 1000 spell power hitting at 200% would be an effective 2000 spell power.

To get 50 damage to scale up to 1700 damage means that the player either has to scale up the base damage (the 50) or scale up the multiplier (spell power). Any combination works. If the 50 damage can be doubled to 100 then the multiplier can be halved to 17. Remember that 1 of the multiplier is always present and 3 come from max/empower/intensify. So if base 50 the multiplier needs to be 30 (3000 spell power) and if base 100 the multiplier needs to be 13 (1300 spell power).

But the math is always the same -- base damage * multiplier.

In the case of the poster Master of Earth jumps maximum caster level from 10 to 20 giving 20d3+60 base damage or 100 damage on average. Poster states they have 609 spell power plus 300 more from max/empower/intensify. That makes the multiplier ~10. But, they are getting 1700 base damage when the math says they should be getting 1000. It means their actual spell power is higher *or* some other effect is pushing base damage by another 70%.

In either case, the problem is perception and not reality.

[nokowi]

Let's go into that spell power piece a bit more.

AFAIK spell powers over 1000 are pretty rare so to get an effective 3000 spell power means that you need something that scales the spell power upwards. A 1000 spell power hitting at 200% would be an effective 2000 spell power.

To get 50 damage to scale up to 1700 damage means that the player either has to scale up the base damage (the 50) or scale up the multiplier (spell power). Any combination works. If the 50 damage can be doubled to 100 then the multiplier can be halved to 17. Remember that 1 of the multiplier is always present and 3 come from max/empower/intensify. So if base 50 the multiplier needs to be 30 (3000 spell power) and if base 100 the multiplier needs to be 13 (1300 spell power).

But the math is always the same -- base damage * multiplier.

In the case of the poster Master of Earth jumps maximum caster level from 10 to 20 giving 20d3+60 base damage or 100 damage on average. Poster states they have 609 spell power plus 300 more from max/empower/intensify. That makes the multiplier ~10. But, they are getting 1700 base damage when the math says they should be getting 1000. It means their actual spell power is higher *or* some other effect is pushing base damage by another 70%.

In either case, the problem is perception and not reality.

How about if you speak about your experiences playing sorcerer on elite content when rejecting someones statements about playing sorcerer on elite.

Telling us about your Warlock (unlimited SP) while telling someone playing sorcerer has a problem for expecting unlimited SP (something they never said) does nothing to advance the thread.

You can't have a concept of reality if you haven't played the sorcerer class on the top content.

[ZhenBuYaoShi]

Of course they are warlock things and not sorcerer things. I play a melee focused warlock. You'll understand that I am not playing *your* character, so what you will do isn't required of me. I happen to want to play a caster as a melee and the game rewards me for doing that. I certainly would not tell you that you had to do that.

On the other hand, when someone makes assumptions about how other players must be carrying a build it shows that they are not working with a full set of information. I never said I was playing a sorcerer. I just commented on damage numbers.

And, that is the point of my observations -- people have trouble understanding they do not *need* big numbers and 1700 base damage is not under powered.



Well, if you take the time to read the previous postings you'll see that the complaint is about a class SLA from sorcerer earth savant. Acid Blast tops out at 10d3+30 damage for 6 spell points on a 6 second cooldown. That is an average of 50 damage. Now, if you'll do a bit of math you'll see that 1700 damage means 3400 spell power. Take away 150 for maximize, 75 for empower, 75 for intensify and that means 3100 spell power. Rather than complaining the poster should understand that he's pushing the upper limits.



The problem is in the mindset. Casters want to be able to cast spells without any limitations. In D&D it is a set number of spells per day. In DDO it is spell points. Instead of wasting those blasting everything (and drawing aggro and making the quest more difficult on the melee and ranged DPS party members in the ensuing "run like a chicken with its head cut off" chase scene) casters can learn to be smarter with their choices.

As for the poster who wrote about Acid Blast, he might try taking the metamagic feat Quicken to cut his spell casting time from 6 seconds to ~3 seconds. He might note that Acid Arrow is also an SLA available to him that a) has no saving throw and b) has no spell resistance and c) does 15 damage/2 seconds for 12 seconds (70 total damage on average) and that the same spell power of 3400 applied to Acid Arrow would do 2380 damage. On a 5 second cooldown (~2.5 seconds with Quicken) it will stack roughly 3 times before the first application wears off. Oh, and as an SLA it is 4 spell points. On a class that is carrying >2000 spell points that is 500 castings of the spell or ~1250 seconds (almost 21 minutes) of continuously casting Melf's. Cast in cycle Acid Blast and Acid Arrow take ~6 seconds at a cost of 10 spell points. That's >200 castings and about 8 minutes of continuous spell casting.

Poster's problem is *not* damage numbers and it is *not* lack of spell points. Poster's problem is in perception and in wanting to be the one that registers the kill credit (see the comments about long cooldown and melees). But, as a class there is *no* power problem with sorcerers.

Casters run on spell points. I can't just run around spitting acid balls at things on my normal cooldown, because that costs about 60 spell points per ball. My SLA acid balls on the other hand cost 6 spell points. Quicken is just one more cost addition that I DON'T need to add on, because my concentration is just fine, and I don't have enough feats for it. Also, you clearly have no idea how to calculate spell damage, because I made a posting about calculating damage on Melf's Acid Arrow, and the reason was because the damage it does is ****. It ticks for 150dmg per tick for 6 ticks; that's not even 1000dmg.

Once again, I CANNOT TAKE DOWN MOBS WITH MY SPELLS WITHOUT WASTING AND EXORBITANT AMOUNT OF SPELL POINTS AND IT'S RIDICULOUS. For the amount of spell points that I use, with the amount of spell boosting powers that I have invested in, which is basically every single feat possible to boost my acid spells, I should be getting a MUCH bigger output of damage. NO, don't tell me what I want. I do NOT want to be able to one shot everything without bounds, that's just stupid. But, for a CASTER, whose damage is based on a LIMITED RESOURCE, and not a never ending swinging or firing mechanism, I should definitely be able to take EE, and Legendary mobs down by at least a 1/3 to 1/2 with my base dmg. And, if I crit, nearly kill them. We're talking about individual mobs in dungeons filled with them. Also, once again, it takes approximately 60 spell points to lob off normal Acid Blasts; yes, I do use them, as a caster that does get attacked, you simply cannot just use SLAs all the time; you must actually defend yourself. I typically don't tend to blast until the physical fighters have started, because I'm not stupid, and I don't want 6 mobs coming straight for me; however, there are mobs that simply agro to your character whether you hit them or not. These are the ones that I typically have to use my normal spells on Black Dragon Bolt, Acid Blast (normal), and Acid Rain. If I can web the 2 or 3 that come after me and hit them with all of that, I can usually kill them, but look at what it takes just to kill 2 to 3 mobs. I have to cast Web, there goes 40 spell points, then I have to cast BDB 2-3 times so about 100 spell points, I have to Acid Blast them for 60 spell points, and finally I have to Acid Rain them for another 40 spell points. So, just to kill a couple of mobs, I have to use 240 spell points out of my approximate 4000 spell points; so, I've just used 5.5% of my magic just to kill 2-3 mobs, and not get clobbered by them. That's just stupid, and I refused to do it anymore often than I am forced to do it. So, yes, I do stick to my SLAs during normal combat, because spell power isn't limitless, it isn't even close to limitless.

I don't know what mobs you are fighting in EE and Legendary quests, but 1700dmg doesn't hardly do .... to them; when I crit, then I actually see a decent chunk come off, but too bad I'm only criting 26% of the time. You obviously don't play EE or Legendary, or you wouldn't be talking about how swings of 200-300dmg would take something down in 3 seconds, because that's just bs when I'm not seeing my 1700dmg hardly taking a nibble out of them. Don't tell me what I know to be true from experience, and other players have already attested to it, too. You simply want to be contrary to the idea the Sorcs are not doing so hot, but that's the truth. Sorcs are not doing so hot in epics. Soloing anything but normal difficulty takes a lot of time, and soloing EE or Legendary just plain isn't advised unless you want the strong likelihood of dying quite quickly.

So, if your point is to say that Sorcs are fine for normal difficulty dungeons, then you're totally correct, Sorcs are completely fine for normal difficulty dungeons, but beyond that, and you start to run into problems, either with spell power, or difficult high hp mobs.

*PUFFFT*, Acid Arrow,OMG, so worthless, you so don't have a clue what Sorcs dmg is like, or even what spells to use, right now, or what it is capable of; you have nothing, but rhetoric, and lame theoretical rhetoric at that! Go play an epic Sorc, see how hard it is to get the gear to first of all GET to 609 spellpower, then see how "easy" content is on those difficulty settings you think I shouldn't be complaining about; see exactly how those mobs go "hey! Did you just hit me with something?!" and you're like, "uhhh, no?". Then, see how much spell power it takes to kill those mobs that you just ****ed off.

[nokowi]

Dear devs,

You have really ruined this game by mixing players who know nearly nothing about the game with those who do.

It prevents those of us with valid concerns on elite content from even being able to have a discussion.

-Noko

[ZhenBuYaoShi]

Let's go into that spell power piece a bit more.

AFAIK spell powers over 1000 are pretty rare so to get an effective 3000 spell power means that you need something that scales the spell power upwards. A 1000 spell power hitting at 200% would be an effective 2000 spell power.

To get 50 damage to scale up to 1700 damage means that the player either has to scale up the base damage (the 50) or scale up the multiplier (spell power). Any combination works. If the 50 damage can be doubled to 100 then the multiplier can be halved to 17. Remember that 1 of the multiplier is always present and 3 come from max/empower/intensify. So if base 50 the multiplier needs to be 30 (3000 spell power) and if base 100 the multiplier needs to be 13 (1300 spell power).

But the math is always the same -- base damage * multiplier.

In the case of the poster Master of Earth jumps maximum caster level from 10 to 20 giving 20d3+60 base damage or 100 damage on average. Poster states they have 609 spell power plus 300 more from max/empower/intensify. That makes the multiplier ~10. But, they are getting 1700 base damage when the math says they should be getting 1000. It means their actual spell power is higher *or* some other effect is pushing base damage by another 70%.

In either case, the problem is perception and not reality.

When I am level 30, I cast Acid Blasts at caster level 35.

Acid Blast damage is calculated by the following formula: ((Total Spellpower +100)/100)(Average Spell Damage)

Average spell damage for Acid Blast at level 35 is as follows: (35*3) = 105 + (35*2) = 175 average spell damage.

Substituting in my toon's values, I get: ((909 +100)/100)(175) = (10.09)(175) = 1765 average acid blast damage for my level 30 Sorc.

YOU'RE TRIPPING! Just stop talking, because you're not going to nullify my experience, or my opinion!

[Chai]

A small amount of data mining is needed to take feedback on balance into consideration. Heres what we did in an older MMO over 10 years ago where they allowed some players to organize the feedback

1. posted two threads for every class
.....a. endgame thread
.....b leveling thread

2. created a script to datamine what people were playing and where (this would later on turn into a front end player profile on their account)

3. wait a few weeks

4. close all threads, collect feedback

5. aggregate feedback based on who was playing what, and where

Since the game was more raid oriented at end game we found in most cases people had one main and that's what they played most of the time at endgame. Each class ended up with a similar amount of representatives who were qualified to provide endgame feedback for that class. We also found some pretty disturbing patterns. Some folks who had never rolled a specific class had highest post counts in threads for that class. We sent out emails to the extreme examples to find out if they were playing on different accounts, and none of them were.

After sorting through all of this, focus groups similar to the players council here were put together, but it was done on a class basis. We were surprised at how little noise ended up in those official discussion threads, when:
1. everyone was pre-qualified to provide feedback on that specific class
2. it was easier to monitor those specific threads and shut down on purpose derailment closer to its flash point

As a side note, since a lot of the trolling and noise was left to reside on the main boards while the official class discussions happened, many (not all, but many) people who were found to be not qualified to provide endgame feedback for any classes started to clean up their acts as to how they provided feedback in the future, as they wanted to be chosen later on when the conversations continued, to participate in discussions which would initiate real game changes, rather than be relegated again back to the regular forums.

As a side-side note (heh) this also exposed some sock puppet accounts on the main boards, because there were times when our script found that the account had no characters on it. Some of those accounts were within the top 10 post counts in those non-official feedback threads.

[Marshal_Lannes]

Is this survey the reason we now have such terrible class balance and class based dungeon scaling? Did the Devs seriously place peoples opinions about class balance above what their own internal numbers were showing? It's no wonder this game is in the state it's in if this is how major decision making and priorities are handled at Turbine. The only thing this survey actually accomplished is proving that most people like playing melee classes and filled out the survey with the goal of buffing their favorite class.

But we don't have terrible class balance. All of the revamped classes are pretty well balanced. Warlocks and Mechanics are TR Past Life neutralizers that bridge the gap between those with lots of past lives and those who don't have them. The other redone classes are all pretty equal. I think the Devs have done a great job balancing classes.

[Baktiotha]

When I am level 30, I cast Acid Blasts at caster level 35.

Acid Blast damage is calculated by the following formula: ((Total Spellpower +100)/100)(Average Spell Damage)

Average spell damage for Acid Blast at level 35 is as follows: (35*3) = 105 + (35*2) = 175 average spell damage.

Substituting in my toon's values, I get: ((909 +100)/100)(175) = (10.09)(175) = 1765 average acid blast damage for my level 30 Sorc.

It may be that Acid Blast is doing damage at L35. But, SLAs are supposed to conform to the spell equivalents. Acid Blast caps at L10 as 10d3+30. Master of Earth raises that cap by 10 to 20d3+60, average 100. If you are 15 caster levels above that you have something else boosting your caster level. This is exactly what I've said.

Earth Savant provides up to +4 maximum caster level. Twist Draconic Incarnation (Dragon Spell Knowledge) for another +3. ToD set is +2. Magister can give another +3 at t5 but that cannot be twisted. That is *still* less than you state you have.

What I am saying is that no matter how slice it you are at the top of the damage that you should expect from the SLA. At 6 spell points and a Quickened casting time of 3-4 seconds that is a huge amount of damage.

It does not matter to me if I change your opinion. What is important to me is for others reading the thread to understand that 1700 base damage is well above normal. Instead of complaining players with that amount of base damage should be grateful.

And, when taken in context (Melf's/Blast used cyclically) the base damage is running better than 1000 per second on a character that need never be in melee range of its opponent. And, the sorcerer can keep that damage pace up for at least 8 minutes of constantly spamming spells (that is on 2000 spell points, half or less what a sorcerer is actually going to have at L30).

[Baktiotha]

Casters run on spell points. I can't just run around spitting acid balls at things on my normal cooldown, because that costs about 60 spell points per ball. My SLA acid balls on the other hand cost 6 spell points. Quicken is just one more cost addition that I DON'T need to add on, because my concentration is just fine, and I don't have enough feats for it.

First off, SLAs are what people use and not their "spellbook" spells. SLAs don't pay anything extra for metamagics. So a Quickened SLA is the same 6 spell points as a normal SLA.

Second, you don't run Quicken to avoid concentration checks, that is just a bonus. You run Quicken to cast faster. The description says ~twice as fast but in testing it on Acid Blast it seems to reduce the cooldown to ~3.5 seconds.

Third, Melf's SLA is 15 damage at cap. With maximum caster level raised to 35 it is 40 damage. At 909 spell power it is 436 per tick, times 5 ticks is 2180 damage in 12 seconds.

Fourth, at your current rate with Acid Blast (without Quicken) you are doing 3400 damage in the same 12 seconds. 2180/3400=.64 -- you are giving up 64% more damage by refusing to cast Melf's.

Fifth, Melf's stacks and casts faster -- in that first 12 seconds of combat you can get in 3 Melf's and 2 Acid Blasts gaining an effective 4 more ticks of Melf's for 4*436=1744 *more* damage.

Sixth, by ignoring Melf's you actually give up over 160% more damage.

Now, those are *your* numbers that you provided in this thread. If you are not getting those numbers then you are not running the metamagics you should be running.

If you don't have the feats to carry Quicken that is your fault for making a suboptimal build choice. But, the problem is *not* with the character class.

Add Quicken to your metamagics and you nearly double your damage output.

[nokowi]

It does not matter to me if I change your opinion. What is important to me is for others reading the thread to understand that 1700 base damage is well above normal. Instead of complaining players with that amount of base damage should be grateful.


I thought you said your poorly built warlock could match this top end sorcerers DPS, while having unlimited resources (no SP).

Were you wrong then or are you wrong now? (pick one)

What exactly should a sorcerer be grateful for?

[Baktiotha]

I thought you said your poorly built warlock could match this top end sorcerers DPS, while having unlimited resources (no SP).

No, what I said was that my warlock is nearly matching the sorcerer who isn't using all of his resources. If the sorcerer *were* using all of his resources (Quicken, Melf's in addition to Blast) my warlock wouldn't be close -- at least not until he gets to L30 and gets to add all of his goodies. :)

The problem is that the poster isn't running the top end sorcerer as if it were top end. The poster is handicapping the sorcerer by not making more optimal choices. The poster can choose to do that. But if they make that choice they really do not deserve to complain about the damage they are doing.

And, you'll also note that my warlock must be in the thick of things so is always at risk whereas the sorcerer need never be in the thick of it so need never be at risk. That is an important consideration that is easy to overlook.

Edit: Oh, and running for 8+ minutes without needing to replenish spell points means that the sorcerer might as well have no spell point restrictions. Even Legendary Shroud has a shrine before each part.

[nokowi]

No, what I said was that my warlock is nearly matching the sorcerer who isn't using all of his resources. If the sorcerer *were* using all of his resources (Quicken, Melf's in addition to Blast) my warlock wouldn't be close -- at least not until he gets to L30 and gets to add all of his goodies. :)

The problem is that the poster isn't running the top end sorcerer as if it were top end. The poster is handicapping the sorcerer by not making more optimal choices. The poster can choose to do that. But if they make that choice they really do not deserve to complain about the damage they are doing.

And, you'll also note that my warlock must be in the thick of things so is always at risk whereas the sorcerer need never be in the thick of it so need never be at risk. That is an important consideration that is easy to overlook.

Edit: Oh, and running for 8+ minutes without needing to replenish spell points means that the sorcerer might as well have no spell point restrictions. Even Legendary Shroud has a shrine before each part.

I will assign a value to your advice equal to your experience on a sorcerer in LE content.

[Baktiotha]

While this is threatening to take the thread off topic I will make one more observation about the Earth Savant sorcerer -- what feats are players taking that they cannot fit in Quicken?

Neither Acid Blast nor Melf's are affected by spell resistance. That means no need for Spell Penetration feats. Only Acid Blast allows a saving throw so DC improvement from Spell Focus: Conjuration makes some sense. That is 2 feats.

Non-human characters still have 5 additional feats to select in heroic levels, humans have 6. Maximize, Empower, Heighten -- those are 3 feats. There are still 2 or 3 other feats to choose.

It is hard to accept a point of view that says there is no room for Quicken.

[Chai]

While this is threatening to take the thread off topic I will make one more observation about the Earth Savant sorcerer -- what feats are players taking that they cannot fit in Quicken?

Neither Acid Blast nor Melf's are affected by spell resistance. That means no need for Spell Penetration feats. Only Acid Blast allows a saving throw so DC improvement from Spell Focus: Conjuration makes some sense. That is 2 feats.

Non-human characters still have 5 additional feats to select in heroic levels, humans have 6. Maximize, Empower, Heighten -- those are 3 feats. There are still 2 or 3 other feats to choose.

It is hard to accept a point of view that says there is no room for Quicken.

Spell pen can be used to CC, as will saves are low enough where even a sorc can CC ok in higher end content. This also causes more DPS for the sorc, and less damage dealt to the sorc, as mobs under CC don't hit back. It does use mana however, further tapping the weakness of sorc DPS - limited by mana points.

The error made on sorcs is their DPS is not higher enough to account for the limitation a mana pool imposes. This is due in large part to the high number of calls for class -v- class balance, combined with a high rate of HP inflation. While a warlock can spam lower DPS endlessly, a sorc, or any other class that relies on mana for offense, cannot. Mana classes should be in another tier of DPS entirely to be balanced correctly due to this limitation. The majority of those calling for class -v- class balance over the years likely would not allow this however. The challenge in playing a mana class is not doing high DPS, its mastering efficiency.

Most MMos who use class -v- class balance nowdays do not use mana pools for any class, casters included. They balance using cooldowns. Powerful abilities simply have longer cooldowns, making the player decide if they want to use it now, or wait for a more opportune time to use it, knowing it will be on cooldown a longer time than their shorter cooldown "at will" less damaging abilities will be. It almost reminds me of one of those early 90s arcade games where the player has three buttons. The one they can spam endlessly for small damage, the one they can hit every 10 seconds or so for moderate damage, and they one they take minutes to build to full power, but hitting it clears everything on the board.

[Iriale]

First off, SLAs are what people use and not their "spellbook" spells. SLAs don't pay anything extra for metamagics. So a Quickened SLA is the same 6 spell points as a normal SLA.

Second, you don't run Quicken to avoid concentration checks, that is just a bonus. You run Quicken to cast faster. The description says ~twice as fast but in testing it on Acid Blast it seems to reduce the cooldown to ~3.5 seconds.

Third, Melf's SLA is 15 damage at cap. With maximum caster level raised to 35 it is 40 damage. At 909 spell power it is 436 per tick, times 5 ticks is 2180 damage in 12 seconds.

Fourth, at your current rate with Acid Blast (without Quicken) you are doing 3400 damage in the same 12 seconds. 2180/3400=.64 -- you are giving up 64% more damage by refusing to cast Melf's.

Fifth, Melf's stacks and casts faster -- in that first 12 seconds of combat you can get in 3 Melf's and 2 Acid Blasts gaining an effective 4 more ticks of Melf's for 4*436=1744 *more* damage.

Sixth, by ignoring Melf's you actually give up over 160% more damage.

Now, those are *your* numbers that you provided in this thread. If you are not getting those numbers then you are not running the metamagics you should be running.

If you don't have the feats to carry Quicken that is your fault for making a suboptimal build choice. But, the problem is *not* with the character class.

Add Quicken to your metamagics and you nearly double your damage output.
wow, seriously you know nothing about casters. Quicken doesn't reduce cooldown. Quicken speeds the casting, the animation. Aside the spells with low casting animations (as disco balls and clouds), the main utility of quicken is cannot be interrupted (very important on EE and LE) True, Quicken is essential in the epic elite play, but not because reduce the cooldown of SLAs. Quicken doesn’t reduce cooldowns!

Please, don't talk if you don’t know.


Of course they are warlock things and not sorcerer things. I play a melee focused warlock. You'll understand that I am not playing *your* character, so what you will do isn't required of me. I happen to want to play a caster as a melee and the game rewards me for doing that. I certainly would not tell you that you had to do that.

On the other hand, when someone makes assumptions about how other players must be carrying a build it shows that they are not working with a full set of information. I never said I was playing a sorcerer. I just commented on damage numbers.

And, that is the point of my observations -- people have trouble understanding they do not *need* big numbers and 1700 base damage is not under powered.
Irrelevant. you can't compare a class with unlimited free dps with a class who has a limited casting based in a spell point pool. If you don't have many casting, you need do more dps for a balance point. It's obvious.

The problem now is that we don't have a spell point efficiency on epics and that we depend a lot on SLAS, when the spells should be the real artillery of each class.



The problem is in the mindset. Casters want to be able to cast spells without any limitations. In D&D it is a set number of spells per day. In DDO it is spell points. Instead of wasting those blasting everything (and drawing aggro and making the quest more difficult on the melee and ranged DPS party members in the ensuing "run like a chicken with its head cut off" chase scene) casters can learn to be smarter with their choices.

Poster's problem is *not* damage numbers and it is *not* lack of spell points. Poster's problem is in perception and in wanting to be the one that registers the kill credit (see the comments about long cooldown and melees). But, as a class there is *no* power problem with sorcerers.
LOL, complain about casters wanting unlimited casting (false, we want spell point efficiency on epics, it's different) when you are playing a caster class with unlimited dps is ludicrous. And say that this is because in pnp caster have limited resources by day when in pnp warlocks are a class with incantations equivalent to 4th levels spells (not with 9th level spells!), low but infinite dps (not high dps!) and moderate hps (not virtually unkillable as in ddo!) is even more ridiculous. If you want a ddo closer to pnp, first ask for nerfs to warlocks and cocoon.



As for the poster who wrote about Acid Blast, he might try taking the metamagic feat Quicken to cut his spell casting time from 6 seconds to ~3 seconds. He might note that Acid Arrow is also an SLA available to him that a) has no saving throw and b) has no spell resistance and c) does 15 damage/2 seconds for 12 seconds (70 total damage on average) and that the same spell power of 3400 applied to Acid Arrow would do 2380 damage. On a 5 second cooldown (~2.5 seconds with Quicken) it will stack roughly 3 times before the first application wears off. Oh, and as an SLA it is 4 spell points. On a class that is carrying >2000 spell points that is 500 castings of the spell or ~1250 seconds (almost 21 minutes) of continuously casting Melf's. Cast in cycle Acid Blast and Acid Arrow take ~6 seconds at a cost of 10 spell points. That's >200 castings and about 8 minutes of continuous spell casting.

it is amazing how you can say so many things wrong in so little space

[Iriale]

Spell pen can be used to CC, as will saves are low enough where even a sorc can CC ok in higher end content. This also causes more DPS for the sorc, and less damage dealt to the sorc, as mobs under CC don't hit back. It does use mana however, further tapping the weakness of sorc DPS - limited by mana points.

The error made on sorcs is their DPS is not higher enough to account for the limitation a mana pool imposes. This is due in large part to the high number of calls for class -v- class balance, combined with a high rate of HP inflation. While a warlock can spam lower DPS endlessly, a sorc, or any other class that relies on mana for offense, cannot. Mana classes should be in another tier of DPS entirely to be balanced correctly due to this limitation. The majority of those calling for class -v- class balance over the years likely would not allow this however. The challenge in playing a mana class is not doing high DPS, its mastering efficiency.
True.

[Wizza]

As for the poster who wrote about Acid Blast, he might try taking the metamagic feat Quicken to cut his spell casting time from 6 seconds to ~3 seconds. He might note that Acid Arrow is also an SLA available to him that a) has no saving throw and b) has no spell resistance and c) does 15 damage/2 seconds for 12 seconds (70 total damage on average) and that the same spell power of 3400 applied to Acid Arrow would do 2380 damage. On a 5 second cooldown (~2.5 seconds with Quicken) it will stack roughly 3 times before the first application wears off. Oh, and as an SLA it is 4 spell points. On a class that is carrying >2000 spell points that is 500 castings of the spell or ~1250 seconds (almost 21 minutes) of continuously casting Melf's. Cast in cycle Acid Blast and Acid Arrow take ~6 seconds at a cost of 10 spell points. That's >200 castings and about 8 minutes of continuous spell casting.


What did I just read

[ZhenBuYaoShi]

First off, SLAs are what people use and not their "spellbook" spells. SLAs don't pay anything extra for metamagics. So a Quickened SLA is the same 6 spell points as a normal SLA.

Second, you don't run Quicken to avoid concentration checks, that is just a bonus. You run Quicken to cast faster. The description says ~twice as fast but in testing it on Acid Blast it seems to reduce the cooldown to ~3.5 seconds.

Third, Melf's SLA is 15 damage at cap. With maximum caster level raised to 35 it is 40 damage. At 909 spell power it is 436 per tick, times 5 ticks is 2180 damage in 12 seconds.

Fourth, at your current rate with Acid Blast (without Quicken) you are doing 3400 damage in the same 12 seconds. 2180/3400=.64 -- you are giving up 64% more damage by refusing to cast Melf's.

Fifth, Melf's stacks and casts faster -- in that first 12 seconds of combat you can get in 3 Melf's and 2 Acid Blasts gaining an effective 4 more ticks of Melf's for 4*436=1744 *more* damage.

Sixth, by ignoring Melf's you actually give up over 160% more damage.

Now, those are *your* numbers that you provided in this thread. If you are not getting those numbers then you are not running the metamagics you should be running.

If you don't have the feats to carry Quicken that is your fault for making a suboptimal build choice. But, the problem is *not* with the character class.

Add Quicken to your metamagics and you nearly double your damage output.

I told you that at level 30, my acid arrow tick for 150dmg for 6 ticks.

I told you that there was an entire thread dedicated to how to calculate Melf's Acid Arrow around this very character, and it doesn't come out to anything near your ridiculous number.

Quicken will NOT double my damage output. Quicken does NOT lower your spell cooldowns by 50%; you don't know what you're talking about on ANY OF YOUR TALKING POINTS.

Do you not see all of these people supporting my notion that there is a major problem between damage output, and spell point cost. You're a theoretical talker about a class that is talking to an actually class USER who's been using Sorcs since he first joined the game in 2009. Back then, Melf's Acid Arrow actually was useful, and did some real damage.

Anyway, I'm sure this thread is sick of our back and forth on this topic at this time, so any further random nonsense you want to spout off about how I should take quicken to do things it doesn't do, or to use spells to do damage amounts that they DO NOT DO in actual practice, will just keep going to show that you have never weakened my argument, nor changed my experience. I'm done with this lame discourse between the two of us, as you obviously have nothing relevant or constructive to say about my issue.

[Baktiotha]

anyone reading up on sorcerers and trying to develop a build concept using the information on the DDO Wiki is going to be deceived because what occurs in the game does not really match how things are described?

You are telling me that when the Wiki talks about cutting casting time in half it isn't meaning that I can cast the spell twice as often it means that my animation is twice as fast, which has almost no impact on spell casting for things that are nearly instantaneous or on the travel time of the spell from caster to target. You are telling me that spell casters are stuck with choosing either absurdly long cooldown times or exceptionally expensive spell point costs reducing them to support roles in L30+ content or exhausting their spell point supply after a very limited number of encounters. You are telling me that every experienced player knows this as well as the DDO developers. And, you are telling me rather than making changes to keep spell casters fully functional in L30+ content development time is spent elsewhere compelling spell casters to horde spell points until penultimate moments.

Is that what you are telling me?

[Wizza]

anyone reading up on sorcerers and trying to develop a build concept using the information on the DDO Wiki is going to be deceived because what occurs in the game does not really match how things are described?

You are telling me that when the Wiki talks about cutting casting time in half it isn't meaning that I can cast the spell twice as often it means that my animation is twice as fast, which has almost no impact on spell casting for things that are nearly instantaneous or on the travel time of the spell from caster to target. You are telling me that spell casters are stuck with choosing either absurdly long cooldown times or exceptionally expensive spell point costs reducing them to support roles in L30+ content or exhausting their spell point supply after a very limited number of encounters. You are telling me that every experienced player knows this as well as the DDO developers. And, you are telling me rather than making changes to keep spell casters fully functional in L30+ content development time is spent elsewhere compelling spell casters to horde spell points until penultimate moments.

Is that what you are telling me?

We are just telling you that you never played a caster and should not talk about them. You are wrong about every single thing that you said about them and should at least try to understand and/or read the wiki/other sources of information before having an opinion.

Oh and ps: casting time =/= cooldown reduction

[PermaBanned]

anyone reading up on sorcerers and trying to develop a build concept using the information on the DDO Wiki is going to be deceived because what occurs in the game does not really match how things are described?

You are telling me that when the Wiki talks about cutting casting time in half it isn't meaning that I can cast the spell twice as often it means that my animation is twice as fast, which has almost no impact on spell casting for things that are nearly instantaneous or on the travel time of the spell from caster to target. You are telling me that spell casters are stuck with choosing either absurdly long cooldown times or exceptionally expensive spell point costs reducing them to support roles in L30+ content or exhausting their spell point supply after a very limited number of encounters. You are telling me that every experienced player knows this as well as the DDO developers. And, you are telling me rather than making changes to keep spell casters fully functional in L30+ content development time is spent elsewhere compelling spell casters to horde spell points until penultimate moments.

Is that what you are telling me?
What they're telling you is you misunderstood the wiki's info. As noted in the reply above, casting time isn't the same as cool down time. Just take a caster you have and cast a disco ball or mass heal - with and without quicken - and you'll see what it does/doesn't do. The physical movements (casting time) are faster, the cool down is the same.

As for those already short animations, yes Quicken also speeds them up (some folks initially complained the Warlocks Eldritch Wave had no animation because of this ;)) just not noticeably in most cases. What it does do for those (actually all) spells is eliminate the need for Concentration checks (except when using Scrolls).

That's what they're telling you.

[Baktiotha]

We are just telling you that you never played a caster and should not talk about them.

Oh, I know that's what some people are trying to say, but you should read my comments more closely. I've tried this same approach in several threads now with the same, predictable, responses from a few posters. But, in the end, you'll see that there is a point being made.

In this case it is about how easy it is to misunderstand what is in the Wiki and to not get the full sense of what a person posts when they list out their complaints. For anyone except a dedicated arcane player the points being made are lost. and incoherent. *Most* players look at a damage value of 1700 and a crit value 3 times that amount and wonder what the fuss is about. They try to puzzle out why the poster is complaining without seeing all of what is underneath. Then they look at a "gimp" warlock and wonder how anyone could be complaining.

The poster knows that he has a large investment in the character. The other players of arcane casters know that. But the message is lost on the everyday reader of the forum who coesn't see what the issue is.

Instead they consult the Wiki and they maybe understand casting animation or they maybe think "I can't cast for 4 seconds so my casting time is 4 seconds." They read the Wiki on maximum caster level and see that two DoTs are singled out as capping at L20 but Melf's isn't so they wonder how is it that Melf's doesn't get 35 levels like Acid Blast and, if it does, why isn't it doing (5+35)*10.09 damage per tick.

Then they look at their own sorcerers and think, "I've got 2k spell points already at L14. I'm going to have over 5k by L30. Surely I can spam spells and never run out of spell points."

Meanwhile you are busy telling me I don't know anything while I'm trying to get you to tell everyone why it is that you have an issue with sorcerer and think it is out of balance.

Since you all know so much and I'm such an idiot, it works best that way. Not only do I get to interject what I *do* know but I get you all to correct all of my errors so that there is no confusion about what the real issue is.

I thought a couple of you had caught on and I realize that some of you never will. So I'll just keep being wrong about everything while getting you experts to clarify every essential point in thses discussions. ;)

[HuneyMunster]

No, what I said was that my warlock is nearly matching the sorcerer who isn't using all of his resources. If the sorcerer *were* using all of his resources (Quicken, Melf's in addition to Blast) my warlock wouldn't be close -- at least not until he gets to L30 and gets to add all of his goodies. :)


Melfs? A spell that does max 2d4+10 100% spell power and cost extra with metas such as quicken, maximise etc is nothing compared to Consume 2d10 125% spell power that cost 0 spell points and can also be improved by metas at no cost as well as enhancements. It can also be stacked up to 3 times. Maybe if you said Niacs Biting Cold or Eldars Electric Surge you may have a point. But, these spell become more expensive with more meta feats used.

Earth Savant can increase Melfs by 4 max casters level to bring it to 2d4+12 but requires 31 action points. It can then be increased by another 1 caster level after spending 41 points in Earth with "0" benefit.
Consume can also be increased by another 6d10 compared to another 2 to Melfs.

Also, unlike a Warlock improving Consume doesn't cause caster level penalties to other spells. Add the fact that a Sorcerers spells cost 10% more to use if the wish to use the capstone Savant form for 1 caster and max level to spells in that school but with a penalty of -3 caster and max caster level to all other elements. The Sorcerers spell pool soon evaporates especially when adding in epic spells such as Hellball, Ruin and Greater Ruin.

For me the biggest overhaul needed for Sorcerers is a 3rd tree (excluding the additional savant forms) as well as changes to the SLA's and the penalties uncured by them. I can't think of any other class that gets penalized by spending points in any an enhancement like Sorcerers do.

[nokowi]

O
I thought a couple of you had caught on and I realize that some of you never will. So I'll just keep being wrong about everything while getting you experts to clarify every essential point in thses discussions. ;)

You have us all fooled by repeatedly posting things that make no sense, asking everyone else how stuff works, and then telling us you were right all along despite major misunderstandings in all of your posts. :p

[Baktiotha]

You have us all fooled by repeatedly posting things that make no sense, asking everyone else how stuff works, and then telling us you were right all along despite major misunderstandings in all of your posts. :p

This isn't the place for a long discussion but you will go back to the thread on barbarians, then to the one on enhancements, then move on to the one on character equivalency, next on warlocks INT v CHA, finally this thread. There is a common thread which is two or three of you have all the answers and are happy to tell everyone that you have all the answers. There's no sense arguing that with any of you since no matter what is posted the same group will still have all the answers -- even if it is just to restate what someone else said in a different way.

Example from this thread, I noted that damage is base damage times multiplier. That was corrected for me by someone who gave us base damage times multiplier. I was wrong, they were right. It is completely amazing.

So instead of fighting the experts I just try to use ferret out of them what it is that we really need to know.

In this sorcerer example there is some information that is important -- that the poster is dealing (he asserts at least) 35 dice of damage at ~900 spell power. I start this conversation off by noting that Acid Blast is 10d3+10 so at 1700 damage that is a huge amount of spell power. That, of course, is wrong (sort of) but it isn't intuitive why it is wrong. So, since nobody reacts to that, I note that spell power isn't usually more than 1000 so there has to be something up with caster levels. Poster then fills in the detail, that he's counting 35 caster levels.

From that I can point out that 35 caster levels is not a simple thing to achieve since Master of Earth is only worth 10, that 10 is max caster level to start with, that this is now just 20 max caster levels, that other factors have to be there for 15 more levels including epic destiny choices, twists, ToD sets, etc. I do point out that even with that it would appear that poster should fall short of 35 and we don't have the fill in information on how he is actually getting there -- but I note that he's pushing his max caster level perhaps as far as it can be.

So now we see that heavily invested, having farmed gear, having spent time really developing this sorcerer, the poor sot is possibly being out done by some gimp easy button build.

I do that to establish the baseline for where the conversation is at because unlike the barbarian discussion this poster isn't asking for the moon and stars -- he just wants to be on par with the easy button.

Which brings me to the next part -- and the post just above yours -- the acid spells are not the whole story. So it looks like there is an imbalance but should we really accept that there is? Or, do we need to look closer at epic destiny choices and address poster's observation that they are engaging in epic reincarnations (something I mentioned about my own main character who is/was running in a less than ideal destiny while rebuilding 6 million karma). We should examine whether there is an imbalance or whether the choice of destinies creates a temporary condition that the player needs to simply accept as the price to be paid while earning 6 million XP (which, BTW, takes the character to just less than L28 meaning at L29/30 there's no excuse for running in a suboptimal destiny).

I'm not going to answer those things because I know that some other smart person is going to do it for us. Now, Consume....

[Baktiotha]

Melfs? A spell that does max 2d4+10 100% spell power and cost extra with metas such as quicken, maximise etc is nothing compared to Consume 2d10 125% spell power that cost 0 spell points and can also be improved by metas at no cost as well as enhancements. It can also be stacked up to 3 times. Maybe if you said Niacs Biting Cold or Eldars Electric Surge you may have a point. But, these spell become more expensive with more meta feats used.

At t4 Earth Savant's get Melf's Acid Arrow as a spell like ability. As with all SLAs metamagics do not alter the spell point cost. This SLA costs 4 spell points to use and like Melf's does 2d4 plus 1 per 2 caster levels. Now, because people aren't going to play anymore, let's clarify the damage Melf's is doing.

At caster level 35 that is 17 additional damage (35/2=17.5). So base damage is 22. At 900 spell power that is 220 damage per tick. Per the spell description Melf's does this damage every 2 seconds for 12 seconds.

This is how it *should* work. In any case, the SLA is 4 spell points and you have to have it if you have the Acid Blast SLA.

(For a fun exercise in trying to make sense of the Wiki on maximum caster level, go there and check out the entry for acid arrow.)

[Wizza]

Oh, I know that's what some people are trying to say, but you should read my comments more closely. I've tried this same approach in several threads now with the same, predictable, responses from a few posters. But, in the end, you'll see that there is a point being made.

In this case it is about how easy it is to misunderstand what is in the Wiki and to not get the full sense of what a person posts when they list out their complaints. For anyone except a dedicated arcane player the points being made are lost. and incoherent. *Most* players look at a damage value of 1700 and a crit value 3 times that amount and wonder what the fuss is about. They try to puzzle out why the poster is complaining without seeing all of what is underneath. Then they look at a "gimp" warlock and wonder how anyone could be complaining.

The poster knows that he has a large investment in the character. The other players of arcane casters know that. But the message is lost on the everyday reader of the forum who coesn't see what the issue is.

Instead they consult the Wiki and they maybe understand casting animation or they maybe think "I can't cast for 4 seconds so my casting time is 4 seconds." They read the Wiki on maximum caster level and see that two DoTs are singled out as capping at L20 but Melf's isn't so they wonder how is it that Melf's doesn't get 35 levels like Acid Blast and, if it does, why isn't it doing (5+35)*10.09 damage per tick.

Then they look at their own sorcerers and think, "I've got 2k spell points already at L14. I'm going to have over 5k by L30. Surely I can spam spells and never run out of spell points."

Meanwhile you are busy telling me I don't know anything while I'm trying to get you to tell everyone why it is that you have an issue with sorcerer and think it is out of balance.

Since you all know so much and I'm such an idiot, it works best that way. Not only do I get to interject what I *do* know but I get you all to correct all of my errors so that there is no confusion about what the real issue is.

I thought a couple of you had caught on and I realize that some of you never will. So I'll just keep being wrong about everything while getting you experts to clarify every essential point in thses discussions. ;)

I do not care how you approached other people in the other threads. You seem to have a problem with understanding English. I'm not a native English speaker and wiki seems perfect clear to me. If wiki isn't to you, then you can search other sources of information. Melf's Acid Arrow is not singled out as capping because that is exactly the same description in game but anyone can understand that it is, in fact, capped at 20.

And if you knew something about caster, you would know that casting spellbook spells at CL35 is almost impossible.

That being said, have fun spreading wrong informations and bye.

[Iriale]

Oh, I know that's what some people are trying to say, but you should read my comments more closely. I've tried this same approach in several threads now with the same, predictable, responses from a few posters. But, in the end, you'll see that there is a point being made.

In this case it is about how easy it is to misunderstand what is in the Wiki and to not get the full sense of what a person posts when they list out their complaints. For anyone except a dedicated arcane player the points being made are lost. and incoherent. *Most* players look at a damage value of 1700 and a crit value 3 times that amount and wonder what the fuss is about. They try to puzzle out why the poster is complaining without seeing all of what is underneath. Then they look at a "gimp" warlock and wonder how anyone could be complaining.

The poster knows that he has a large investment in the character. The other players of arcane casters know that. But the message is lost on the everyday reader of the forum who coesn't see what the issue is.

Instead they consult the Wiki and they maybe understand casting animation or they maybe think "I can't cast for 4 seconds so my casting time is 4 seconds." They read the Wiki on maximum caster level and see that two DoTs are singled out as capping at L20 but Melf's isn't so they wonder how is it that Melf's doesn't get 35 levels like Acid Blast and, if it does, why isn't it doing (5+35)*10.09 damage per tick.

Then they look at their own sorcerers and think, "I've got 2k spell points already at L14. I'm going to have over 5k by L30. Surely I can spam spells and never run out of spell points."

Meanwhile you are busy telling me I don't know anything while I'm trying to get you to tell everyone why it is that you have an issue with sorcerer and think it is out of balance.

Since you all know so much and I'm such an idiot, it works best that way. Not only do I get to interject what I *do* know but I get you all to correct all of my errors so that there is no confusion about what the real issue is.

I thought a couple of you had caught on and I realize that some of you never will. So I'll just keep being wrong about everything while getting you experts to clarify every essential point in thses discussions. ;)
You can't give advice in something that you don't have experience. You are saying so many things wrong that you've lost all credibility. If you want to talk about an issue, you should have at least some idea about the topic. Go, play a sorcerer or other caster class (not a warlock) and then, when you know his strengths and weaknesses, you will talk. But only fools try to give advice about an issue in which they have zero experience and knowledge.

Relax, man. You can't give advice about casters, because you don't have experience on the subject. Give advice in topics that you master, as warlock, but let to caster's players talk about casters. Listen and learn from them, if you don't want adquire practical experience playing casters. But you are not currently qualified to give advice about casters.

[Iriale]

I do not care how you approached other people in the other threads. You seem to have a problem with understanding English. I'm not a native English speaker and wiki seems perfect clear to me. If wiki isn't to you, then you can search other sources of information. Melf's Acid Arrow is not singled out as capping because that is exactly the same description in game but anyone can understand that it is, in fact, capped at 20.

And if you knew something about caster, you would know that casting spellbook spells at CL35 is almost impossible.

That being said, have fun spreading wrong informations and bye.
hey his English is a lot better than mine. The problem is that he doesn't have experience playing casters. What amazes me is why he feels the need to enlighten people about a topic he has no experience.

[Ulfo]

Give advice in topics that you master, as warlock

At Faust He Don't Succeed too... sorry - at Warlock. 8)

[nokowi]

This isn't the place for a long discussion but you will go back to the thread on barbarians, then to the one on enhancements, then move on to the one on character equivalency, next on warlocks INT v CHA, finally this thread. There is a common thread which is two or three of you have all the answers and are happy to tell everyone that you have all the answers. There's no sense arguing that with any of you since no matter what is posted the same group will still have all the answers -- even if it is just to restate what someone else said in a different way.


Nice false representation.

I specifically mentioned my lack of barbarian experience, and tried to limit my comments to things I understood.
You will notice I didn't tell more experienced barbarian players that they didn't know how to play the game.
You will notice I have said nothing about sorcerer, other than how ridiculously wrong your posts have been.

You could contribute to these threads in a positive instead of negative manner if you could limit yourself to things you understand, respect those with many many times more experience and game knowledge than you, and recognize what you yourself actually know and don't know.

As it stands, you are making quite the name for yourself on the forums.

[Baktiotha]

I do not care how you approached other people in the other threads. You seem to have a problem with understanding English. I'm not a native English speaker and wiki seems perfect clear to me. If wiki isn't to you, then you can search other sources of information. Melf's Acid Arrow is not singled out as capping because that is exactly the same description in game but anyone can understand that it is, in fact, capped at 20.

And if you knew something about caster, you would know that casting spellbook spells at CL35 is almost impossible.

That being said, have fun spreading wrong informations and bye.

These are my points aren't they?

Melf's does benefit from increased caster level. I just left the game testing it on a L15 sorceress and when cast as an SLA it casts at L18. The 3 levels of increase are due to the Earth Savant. If it caps at L20 then it should be noted in the Wiki on maximum caster level but it is not. Instead the spell description says maximum 2d4+10. Compare that to other spell descriptions. It is not that clear whatsoever.

Now look at the maximum caster level listing for acid arrow on that Wiki page and note that it shows *5* for maximum caster level. A person reading can easily be confused about the meanings. I spent 30 years playing table-top miniatures using rules written by an Englishman, written in English, and not at all clear to Americans, Australians, Englishmen, or Europeans. I know quite a bit, actually, about reading and comprehension and the challenges of writing in a way that is clear to all readers.

I'll reiterate a point I made in other threads -- communication is the responsibility of the sender and not the receiver. If there is confusion it is necessary to note that and to correct the Wiki so that confusion is unlikely.

Let's take it to end game considerations. Readers will assume that sorcerers have >5k spell points and an array of SLAs that are costing nearly nothing to cast. They will also assume that sorcerers have a variety of spell point regeneration tools so that low cost spells do not cause a real drain on the total spell point pool.

How do you expect to elicit sympathy for a position that sorcerers are not currently balanced with other classes when readers are going to have those starting assumptions? You can do it by telling them that they are stupid and that they don't know anything but that does not earn you their support. You can just tell them to stay out of the discussion but that does not earn their support either.

What is your objective in noting that there is a (perceived at least) imbalance? Is it just to complain? Or, do you want developers to comprehend and to have other players pushing along with you to have the issue redressed?

I don't like playing casters much at all. It isn't my preferred way of playing DDO. I would rather see development efforts spent in improving melee and ranged characters than in seeing it spent on casters of any sort. I (and other melee/ranged oriented players) will be advocating for development time to be spent on my issues -- not yours.

Unless, that is, you can show why your issue is bigger and more problematic for DDO than my issues.

The post said Acid Blast does N damage, whine. The counter is, "So what? You have so many other tools available, stop whining."

Read the responses again. Even those who want sorcerers to get attention are posting "that's not all we do." How do you expect to garner understanding and sympathy for your point of view?

"Well, we CC." Then stop whining and CC.

"Well, we cast other epic damage spells." So does everyone, stop whining and cast them. (See previous threads on Ruin/GRuin regarding warlocks, for example.)

"Don't say that about sorcerers being weak to *my* sorcerer." See, even your own kind are challenging you. Maybe you just chose a gimp enhancement line.

So there are 1 or 2 places in game where you are not uber fantastic. So what? That does not make for imbalance. And the group of "expert" posters are not helping to make the point -- if anything they are suggesting that maybe the first poster should be doing things differently.

You cannot get readers to feel sympathetic to what is important to you unless you cause them to see the problem from your perspective.

And that means I blunder along challenging your points of view and trying to make you demonstrate that your perspectives are valid.

[Baktiotha]

And if you knew something about caster, you would know that casting spellbook spells at CL35 is almost impossible.

Yet the whole group of "experts" had nothing to say when the poster wrote that he was casting his Acid Blast SLA at CL35.

How about reading the Wiki on maximum caster level and telling us which of those it is possible with. Or, how about explaining how it is that the previous poster is reaching that 35 maximum caster level.

Because you are asserting it is "almost impossible" which mirrors my earlier observation that pushing much past 30 is difficult on its own.

Or, just tell me again about how I don't know anything.

[Baktiotha]

Nice false representation.

I specifically mentioned my lack of barbarian experience, and tried to limit my comments to things I understood.
You will notice I didn't tell more experienced barbarian players that they didn't know how to play the game.
You will notice I have said nothing about sorcerer, other than how ridiculously wrong your posts have been.

What makes you think anything I write is about you or that I care what you do when you post? I post specifically to generate responses from the "experts" because we have so many of them on the forums and they have such disdain for anyone other than themselves. So let them be the ones who are always "right."

Meantime, I'll just note the conversations I've been in and that I've consistently employed the same approach to getting those "experts" to give readers that information.

[Baktiotha]

Relax, man. You can't give advice about casters, because you don't have experience on the subject. Give advice in topics that you master, as warlock, but let to caster's players talk about casters. Listen and learn from them, if you don't want adquire practical experience playing casters. But you are not currently qualified to give advice about casters.

I have 6 past lives as arcane casters (3 each as sorcerer and wizard) on my main character. I have a secondary character that is designated to be an arcane caster in his final incarnation whose current past lives are actually in Favored Soul because it helps arcane casters. I run a variety of multiclass characters that have heavy splashes of arcane classes because of the synergies that are there. Don't make the mistake of thinking I have no experience.

Sometimes "expert" information isn't actually expert. Sometimes people do things a certain way because they have never done them differently or considered any alternative. In DDO there are often entire groups of players running characters and character classes a specific way simply because they listened to the "expert" and followed their formula.

Those "expert" opinions frame the game for everyone else. I believe it is good to challenge the "expert" and to cause them to defend their point of view.

One of my favorite topics is DC casting and why? So much complaining about DC casting when there are viable alternatives and so many ways to cast damage without saving throws or spell resistance. But, that is a digression.

If the "expert" is really expert they will do more than just respond with, "You are stupid."

[PermaBanned]

I have 6 past lives as arcane casters (3 each as sorcerer and wizard) on my main character.And in those 6 lifetimes you never noticed "the wiki was wrong" and Quicken did in fact not reduce cooldowns by half (or for that matter any)?

Posting bad info and then arguing to defend/justify your bad info just so folks can correct you is assinine. If you have a question, just ask it. The results will be much better - though admittedly less entertaining - than this circus of misinformation you're hosting.

[RumbIe]

Balance is never going to fully happen unless they turn the game into 3-4 classes that all have different names but essentially the same stuff (high HP, high DPS, high survivabilty and self healing) , get rid if the others and call it a game.

Here's the the issue. This is either a solo game or an MMORPG game. Everyone wants it to be both in theory but not in practice.

To have "balance" truly in an MMORPG you would have individual classes filling a role and doing that role very well, while doing others OK and yet others poorly. Working as a team though and running quests in parties. We used to have that a long time ago where you wanted a rogue in a party, a tank to draw aggro, a dps toon to pew pew and a healer with some filler or support or someone to beef up one of those tiers. By the way before I draw the ire of all I know the life of the rogue is not just to lock pick and that of the cleric is not just to heal. It was a game-wide mentality though that came to pass.

To have "balance" in a solo game (I'm thinking like the old Xbox versions of DnD, etc) you would have a few options available, but each in theory should be able to get through the game by themselves if they find the right gear and level the right stats/spells/enhancements/skills.

Apart from some raids what does our game sound like now?

We used to have it the other way. Then balances shifted a bit and one or two character types could handle multiple roles by themselves and other classes could only handle single roles well while doing most others poorly. I.e. the poor cleric who was relegated to a heal bot. Because it only healed well and had little to no other role some people stopped playing them and questing slowed as there was a perception by many at the time that a cleric was needed. However all along if people were a little more self sufficient with themselves to begin with and with the tools already in the game and the cleric had a little more oomph things would have been fine. That;'s all they needed to change. But instead to make questing easier in the days of no healers the devs made adjustments.

So then the balance shifted more to help make others more self sufficient. Self healing became easier. More classes got beefed up DPS. More HP. A few classes rose to the top and more people flocked to them. Then people got bored and while TR-ing complained that the other classes were no good. So they bumped them up and it happened all over again.

We all screamed we wanted more variety so they added more classes, races, enhancement trees, Epic Destinies, etc. then we all screamed one race was OP and we wanted more balance, but what we really wanted was the class we liked to play to have more power and more self reliability.

In reality no one wants balance. People want to have a single class and race to play that can do everything just as well as every other class and race, but to have it have a different name, different skins, different enhancement names, different spell names, etc, but to all do exactly the same things. That's variety and that's balance.

How to fix it? Rip out some of the self sufficient dynamics and create reliability on other groups of classes (Not single classes) but also not absolute reliability such that a single class or group of classes serves no other purpose. Make it so these "required" classes have a place to add value not just in what support they bring to a group, but in some DPS too. Make it so the other classes can support themselves a little so not to make the other class hold them up, but not so much that the other class becomes obsolete. Make it so they are required to handle anything above Normal and Casual in both Heroic and Elite. (Maybe Hard can be done, but with other synergies and uber gear)

But this will never happen because we all want to run through HE and EE solo by ourselves as fast as possible over and over again and when we get bored of that and try something else we don;t understand why we can't do it.

[Baktiotha]

And in those 6 lifetimes you never noticed "the wiki was wrong" and Quicken did in fact not reduce cooldowns by half (or for that matter any)?

It was not important to me so why should I have bothered? It is important now because the premise is that sorcerer is unbalanced because a) damage isn't large enough and/or b) casting time is too long (that is, time between spells). Both of those deserve to be challenged and not simply accepted on face value.

[Baktiotha]

Balance is never going to fully happen unless they turn the game into 3-4 classes that all have different names but essentially the same stuff (high HP, high DPS, high survivabilty and self healing) , get rid if the others and call it a game.

This is not balance.

Balance is having dozens of possibilities with all of them able to succeed at highest levels of difficulty when run by players with the top skill sets. It is understood and accepted that imbalance will exist in players with lesser abilities.

From a game design standpoint the players with lesser abilities are appeased by giving them easy buttons. That leads people to complain about imbalance but the understanding is that the game will always be unbalanced for weaker players and so there isn't a particular need to adjust the game in that case.

What makes the sorcerer conversation interesting to me is that sorcerer was, at one time, one of the easy buttons. Is it genuinely unbalanced in the hands of elite caliber players or is it just seen as unbalanced because it is no longer one of the easy button choices?

[RumbIe]

Whether it's 3-4 classes or 14-16 classes giving "variety" it is not what everyone means by balance. Yes. Balance is defined that all should be able to do the same equally well. You can balance a beam on a pyramid in two ways. You can put equal weight on each side (Though maybe spread out) or you can lump it all in them middle. Everyone is talking about the latter and screaming about variety and new classes, enhancements, etc in another.

If you picture each class as an individual weight on the beam and the beam having one end be DPS and the other be survivability you could balance a game by placing each weight somewhere unique on the beam and requiring people to work together. You'd achieve balance that way and require some interaction.

What everyone seems to want is all the classes lumped in the middle so they can solo the hardest content with any class. Or maybe not all in the middle but at both extremes at the same time. So what you have is a single player game. So what's the point of having different classes or races if they all can do the same thing? This became apparent when ED's were introduced. Which I loved at the time by the way as I appreciated the ability to solo easier and be more self sufficient. I contributed to the madness just like the rest.

That's why you have meta gaming where people flock to the flavor of the update for power. This is all fine. I'm just commenting. It happens in every game too so it's not unique to DDO. Name one where it doesn't? I mean I enjoy playing now and I enjoyed when classes were "required" (or thought required) to play a quest. Neither has balance. People are only complaining because the character they want to play isn't as powerful as the one the other person plays or the other toon they rolled up before.

What people are essentially asking for is to just have one class and race, but no one will objectively look at it that way because they also want it to be different. So they want it to be all the same but look completely different. So have your race skins and class names, and skill names, and attack graphics all look different but essentially all do the same. So the background coding is just replicated for each but a different label. There is variety and balance. Yay.

[Baktiotha]

Posting bad info and then arguing to defend/justify your bad info just so folks can correct you is assinine. If you have a question, just ask it. The results will be much better - though admittedly less entertaining - than this circus of misinformation you're hosting.

Do you think everyday readers are gathering their information from the circus of misinformation or are they gathering it from the corrected responses?

What happens when there is no corrected response?

Let's revisit the caster level 35 for Acid Blast. Please read again the challenge/question regarding that assertion and the walk up to base damage value that my posts used. Then look at the conclusions drawn (ie, heavily invested in enhancements, destinies and gear). Now look at the difficulty reaching a caster level of 35 (not to mention more recent posts discussing how improbable that is) and answer what is it we are supposed to do when there is no corrected response? Whose information are we supposed to accept then?

If everyday readers cannot see the errors in what I post or choose to accept those rather than the corrections that is an unintended consequence. What they are doing, I hope, is looking for the responses from the "experts" and (in some cases) identifying with the misunderstandings as those represent their points of view up until that point.

Do you think I'm the first person to read the Wiki and think, "Why doesn't it work like that in the game? Is the Wiki wrong?" Or, do you think I'm the first person to read "casting time" and think "time between casting a spell and casting it again (cooldown)?" Do you think I'm the first person to measure time from the moment my character begins to cast until he is able to cast again and noticed that the effect of Quicken is to reduce that time, but not by half rather than from the end of casting until I'm able to cast again? Or do you think I'm the only one who takes a swag at timing rather than videoing the game and measuring precisely?

These are all things that everyday players of the game will see happening and they'll take their understandings -- right or wrong -- and assume that it describes the game. So when they see something that mimics their experience presented in a thread they look for confirmation of their understanding. And if they read instead something different what will they do? Will they conclude that everyone must be wrong or will they have aha moments.

I spent some time in education and my observation is that very limited learning occurs when people are right about things (after all, if you are right what is there for you to learn). Learning occurs when they are wrong and the right thing is demonstrated to them.

I find it an effective tool to present people with the wrong thing in order for them to present me with the right thing. That is particularly true in group discussions.

[Baktiotha]

Whether it's 3-4 classes or 14-16 classes giving "variety" it is not what everyone means by balance. Yes. Balance is defined that all should be able to do the same equally well. You can balance a beam on a pyramid in two ways. You can put equal weight on each side (Though maybe spread out) or you can lump it all in them middle. Everyone is talking about the latter and screaming about variety and new classes, enhancements, etc in another.

If you picture each class as an individual weight on the beam and the beam having one end be DPS and the other be survivability you could balance a game by placing each weight somewhere unique on the beam and requiring people to work together. You'd achieve balance that way and require some interaction.

What everyone seems to want is all the classes lumped in the middle so they can solo the hardest content with any class. Or maybe not all in the middle but at both extremes at the same time. So what you have is a single player game. So what's the point of having different classes or races if they all can do the same thing? This became apparent when ED's were introduced. Which I loved at the time by the way as I appreciated the ability to solo easier and be more self sufficient. I contributed to the madness just like the rest.

That's why you have meta gaming where people flock to the flavor of the update for power. This is all fine. I'm just commenting. It happens in every game too so it's not unique to DDO. Name one where it doesn't? I mean I enjoy playing now and I enjoyed when classes were "required" (or thought required) to play a quest. Neither has balance. People are only complaining because the character they want to play isn't as powerful as the one the other person plays or the other toon they rolled up before.

What people are essentially asking for is to just have one class and race, but no one will objectively look at it that way because they also want it to be different. So they want it to be all the same but look completely different. So have your race skins and class names, and skill names, and attack graphics all look different but essentially all do the same. So the background coding is just replicated for each but a different label. There is variety and balance. Yay.

So, should you and I jump on the "balance" bandwagon or should we stand for what balance is actually supposed to be?

Me, I'm fine with people screaming for all the weight in the middle -- as long as the developers don't give that to them.

I'm not alright with the developers giving in to that, or to them leading the charge in that direction.

[RumbIe]

So, should you and I jump on the "balance" bandwagon or should we stand for what balance is actually supposed to be?

Me, I'm fine with people screaming for all the weight in the middle -- as long as the developers don't give that to them.

I'm not alright with the developers giving in to that, or to them leading the charge in that direction.

Here I thought we were arguing. Turns out we are, but not against each other :)

Totally agree. I mean I like playing post EDs, though I did get bored and have been on leave from the game a few months now, but I'm sure I'll be back in a bit. Just need a break . Not sure if it's the monotonous power creep in every class that is happening or working towards or just playing too long and too much continuously and burning out. I'd prefer it to not continue in this direction of making all the exact same, but I'll still play in any case I'm sure.

I'd prefer a push towards some type of team concept that makes it a MMO, but i recognize it can't alienate those who prefer solo. In short you can't please everyone, but it has gotten a little out of hand lately with "balance"

[Wizza]

These are my points aren't they?

snip

Ok :) Have fun!