Nerf Spell DCs instead of boosting mob saves in reaper!

[Tilomere]

del

[Mandelia]

You want shiradi and fury-shotters? Because that's how you get shiradi and fury-shotters.

In heroics that would be just silly.

[SirValentine]

Should it really be easier to trip a mob in reaper 5 than in elite simply because you have a reaper tree adding a bunch of tactics bonuses?

Some of us spoke out against the power creep in the Reaper trees. They didn't listen. Instead, we get this weird situation where Reaper is vastly easier than Elite, after you've done a decades-long grind.

[JOTMON]

Should it really be easier to trip a mob in reaper 5 than in elite simply because you have a reaper tree adding a bunch of tactics bonuses? How about CCing a full group of mobs with tentacles? Should it really be easier to CC a full group of mobs on reaper than elite?

so you want to make the game about kiting shiradi and fury-shotters and less about tactics, teamwork, niche builds...
Nerfing DC's and tactics just pushes players away from actual focussed builds..


Reaper trees gives players a grind to give players more tools and rewards to face higher level skulls..

[HastyPudding]

Absolutely not! The very last thing I would want is more people running around in shiradi because they're too lazy to build proper spellcasters.

[KomradKillMachine]

Lol, Tilo, what made you chone?
Nobody was liking your fake builds anymore? :D

[Enoach]

I'm going to say no. Boosting saves in mobs is the better approach and reducing time between save checks.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

There is no difference. Why discuss this.
Boosting saves is easier.

ALSO

Tentacles has NO SAVE.
Only a spell pen check.

If mobs are indeed getting a str or balance check then 1 skill/stat point (minus con) could be added per skull.

[noinfo]

Just like you reduced damage instead of increasing HP, nerf all player used DCs instead of boosting mob saves. This would include spell/tactics/etc.

Some spells/tactics don't target mob saves, and instead are strength or ability checks, and should suffer reduced ability to land on enemy mobs to be on a more even footing. Namely warlock tentacles, but also trip attacks like lay waste.

So spell dcs finally get useful again for the first time in years and here we go. When running Reaper 10 its a lot of fun to see my disco balls last 6 seconds or so. And not to mention all the mobs that now exist with immunities to stuff. As for tactics particulary on melee, have you seen what a trash mob does to a melee? They need boosting not nerfing.

[Chai]

All this "nerf x" and "nerf y" posts do, is cause the players to shift the goal posts of their builds to things which arent nerfed.

[Mr_Helmet]

. Namely warlock tentacles,

LOLz - let's make warlocks more powerful, that's what this game needs!

[mraz]

tilo, man, i didnt expect this from you... as an expirienced builder you should know how hard (read: how many PLs, gear and sacrifice due to defense) is to make DC caster to work well in high lvl content.

[goodspeed]

ya that makes sense. Oh you grinded out those 9 lives to get that extra dc huh? Well i right there baby ahahahahah.

Cant imagine that wouldn't spawn another "Wildfire" over there at the corporate building lol.

[Renvar]

Just like you reduced damage instead of increasing HP, nerf all player used DCs instead of boosting mob saves. This would include spell/tactics/etc.

Some spells/tactics don't target mob saves, and instead are strength or ability checks, and should suffer reduced ability to land on enemy mobs to be on a more even footing. Namely warlock tentacles, but also trip attacks like lay waste.

False. Mob stats should be scaled as skulls go up the same way that saves go up and so on. Nerfing players is a bad idea.

[Chai]

If you bump stats up mob to-hit, AC, and their tactical and DC casting use on players goes up. They affected player damage instead of mob HP to leave systems in place like vorpal or PW:stun. This is the same principle. Lowering all player DCs instead of boosting saves so that all systems are equally effected, and the ones unaffected don't become dominant, without affecting anything else.

The more they nerf for this kind of reason, the more people will gravitate to the fewer and fewer builds that still do work at the top end. When EE first happened for instance, there were a few builds that had it much easier than the rest, and those began to inflate in numbers. Anyone remember con based FVS? It became the standard farming tool for ~5 updates or so before some other builds began to gain relevance and changes in the enhancement trees front loaded the power curve.

[slarden]

The problem with this approach for DC casting is that as you lower the DCs by some percentage it narrows the advantage the top builds have over weaker builds. A build with a 100 DC vs a 90 DC has a 10 DC difference which is a 50% better chance to land a spell against an enemy with an 85 save for example (plus the D20). If you cut that by 80% you now have 20 vs 18 so that advantage is only a 10% better chance to land a spell.

DC is one of the best working mechanics in this game and unless the devs are unable to adjust enemy DCs I see no need to change.

[slarden]

You don't lower it by a %, you lower it by the amount mob saves get boosted. If mob saves would get +10, instead lower all DCs by 10. There is no effect on most DC casting, except on those outlier spells/abilities that target something other than saves, like a strength check.

A Pale Master, for example, wouldn't notice a single change in their necromancy spells, which are all fortitude saves. Their web spell however, wouldn't be boosted to more easily hold stronger mobs by the reaper tree. Ah thanks for the clarification. Then it would really make no difference vs how it is now - whatever is easiest for the devs.

[Eth]

Funny how many people either not read or understand the request. This is not asking for a nerf to anything, unless they made save bonuses different from what we assume currently in reaper.

I don't think it would change that much.
Abilities with difficulty checks against stats instead of saves have always been strong, although they are even stronger in reaper now in comparision.
And tactical abilities DCs can be higher than mob saves even in reaper 10 anyways.

Much coding for little effect (I wonder how the game would handle a negative DC, which would be possible with such a change).

[slarden]

Funny how many people either not read or understand the request. This is not asking for a nerf to anything, unless they made save bonuses different from what we assume currently in reaper.

I don't think it would change that much.
Abilities with difficulty checks against stats instead of saves have always been strong, although they are even stronger in reaper now in comparision.
And tactical abilities DCs can be higher than mob saves even in reaper 10 anyways.

Much coding for little effect (I wonder how the game would handle a negative DC, which would be possible with such a change). The confusion to me was the analogies that it would work like DPS/HP in reaper, but after further review it would work differently.

[Wizza]

Funny how many people either not read or understand the request. This is not asking for a nerf to anything, unless they made save bonuses different from what we assume currently in reaper.

I don't think it would change that much.
Abilities with difficulty checks against stats instead of saves have always been strong, although they are even stronger in reaper now in comparision.
And tactical abilities DCs can be higher than mob saves even in reaper 10 anyways.

Much coding for little effect (I wonder how the game would handle a negative DC, which would be possible with such a change).

On a side note, quite sure the only nerf needed is for the instakills. But I also couldn't care less if they did or not.

[JOTMON]

On a side note, quite sure the only nerf needed is for the instakills. But I also couldn't care less if they did or not.

meh, DC casters actually have to build DC's to be effective and many of the mobs are warded from death effects.

The real disappointment is the Shiradi spammers.. no DC's required, just spam low cost spells and sla's for quantity over quality for big crit damage.
Monchers and shuriken chuckers... Fury should break monk stance... Monks are all about zen and calm.. Raging should be anti-monk and break monk stance.

Tanks.. cant tank..
Mob damage is over the top and Tanks don't have worthwhile reaper tree benefits .. +1PRR/ +1 melee power.. is pathetic...
Defensive and offensive damage in Reaper tree's should be a serious % increase giving them 50% to 100% defensive/damage boosts.. yes.. % based... to benefit the heavily invested.
This way Reaper Tanks can mitigate the Reaper damage, and Reaper Melee can do Reaper effective damage when they are heavily invested in their tree's.
Instead of the +1MP/PRR.. give them 10% increase per tier up the Reaper Tree's. and a sweet capstone % increase..

[Skunkhunt42]

This thread is approved by the 2017 DDO Trolls Council.

[Vanhooger]

meh, DC casters actually have to build DC's to be effective and many of the mobs are warded from death effects.

The real disappointment is the Shiradi spammers.. no DC's required, just spam low cost spells and sla's for quantity over quality for big crit damage.
Monchers and shuriken chuckers... Fury should break monk stance... Monks are all about zen and calm.. Raging should be anti-monk and break monk stance.

Tanks.. cant tank..
Mob damage is over the top and Tanks don't have worthwhile reaper tree benefits .. +1PRR/ +1 melee power.. is pathetic...
Defensive and offensive damage in Reaper tree's should be a serious % increase giving them 50% to 100% defensive/damage boosts.. yes.. % based... to benefit the heavily invested.
This way Reaper Tanks can mitigate the Reaper damage, and Reaper Melee can do Reaper effective damage when they are heavily invested in their tree's.
Instead of the +1MP/PRR.. give them 10% increase per tier up the Reaper Tree's. and a sweet capstone % increase..

I honestly think instakill is OP atm. Running r10 content and the instakiller gets 10 times the kill of anyone else removing the threats even before they can get near you, and shiradi are really bad in high skull imho.
A proper tank is fine in R10 even without any reaper tree.

[Renvar]

You don't lower it by a %, you lower it by the amount mob saves get boosted. If mob saves would get +10, instead lower all DCs by 10. There is no effect on most DC casting, except on those outlier spells/abilities that target something other than saves, like a strength check.

A Pale Master, for example, wouldn't notice a single change in their necromancy spells, which are all fortitude saves. Their web spell however, wouldn't be boosted to more easily hold stronger mobs by the reaper tree.

Meh. There are inefficiencies with any change you make. The players will find the sweet spots. You aren't eliminating them. You are just moving them to a different set of spells/abilities/builds. It's taking 6 chairs aligned like this:
h h
h h
h h
and turning them all around 180 degrees and thinking it will give you more seating capacity. You still have the same number of seats. Just different ones in the front row.

[PsychoBlonde]

Should it really be easier to trip a mob in reaper 5 than in elite simply because you have a reaper tree adding a bunch of tactics bonuses? How about CCing a full group of mobs with tentacles? Should it really be easier to CC a full group of mobs on reaper than elite?

Needing a lower base number because you ground out a metric ton of Reaper xp to compensate != "easier". In fact, I'm pretty sure the correct description for this kind of time and effort invested is "harder".

Some spells don't have any saving throws *at all*. Let's give them all a reflex saving throw!

[PsychoBlonde]

One change that I WOULD like to see is for damage that doesn't scale with melee/ranged/spellpower (like +3d6 sonic on your weapon) to not scale in Reaper. These bonuses are hilariously useless in Reaper, they do zero damage most of the time even BEFORE mob resists. If it doesn't scale *up*, it shouldn't scale *down*.

This would also allow for some more interesting tactics because people could seek out those non-scaling buffs and make use of them.

[Wizza]

meh, DC casters actually have to build DC's to be effective and many of the mobs are warded from death effects.

The real disappointment is the Shiradi spammers.. no DC's required, just spam low cost spells and sla's for quantity over quality for big crit damage.
Monchers and shuriken chuckers... Fury should break monk stance... Monks are all about zen and calm.. Raging should be anti-monk and break monk stance.

Tanks.. cant tank..
Mob damage is over the top and Tanks don't have worthwhile reaper tree benefits .. +1PRR/ +1 melee power.. is pathetic...
Defensive and offensive damage in Reaper tree's should be a serious % increase giving them 50% to 100% defensive/damage boosts.. yes.. % based... to benefit the heavily invested.
This way Reaper Tanks can mitigate the Reaper damage, and Reaper Melee can do Reaper effective damage when they are heavily invested in their tree's.
Instead of the +1MP/PRR.. give them 10% increase per tier up the Reaper Tree's. and a sweet capstone % increase..

You are overestimating both the time needed to get working DCs, and the number of mobs with Deathward. Think about it this way: our damage output is nerfed, but instakill are as efficient as they are in Elite. They are, literally, the only spells who are not affected by the Reaper debuffs.

Either way, I don't care and don't really wanna get into a debate. Just my personal opinion about Instakills.

[Skunkhunt42]

One change that I WOULD like to see is for damage that doesn't scale with melee/ranged/spellpower (like +3d6 sonic on your weapon) to not scale in Reaper. These bonuses are hilariously useless in Reaper, they do zero damage most of the time even BEFORE mob resists. If it doesn't scale *up*, it shouldn't scale *down*.

This would also allow for some more interesting tactics because people could seek out those non-scaling buffs and make use of them.

A lot of melee bonuses do 0 damage in raper. You should be playing a ranged toon or a borelock.

[Mr_Helmet]

This thread is approved by the 2017 DDO Trolls Council.

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