For the incoming wizard pass: Homogenisation of short term buff timers

[Garix]

Been playing a wizard for the first time in a while over the last few days and in doing so am reminded of one of the things that just plain bugs me.

The difference in time for a variety of short term buffs.

For example (all are unextended timings)

Death Aura - 1:36
Displace/Haste 2:24
Feather Fall - 2:48
Rage - 3:24

Any chance we could get things standardised? While I'd prefer everything to have the same duration as Rage (not going to happen but I can wish), I'd settle for everything have the same duration as Death Aura (hopefully not going to happen).

So how about we split the difference and just make all short term buffs have the same timer as Haste/Displace (or feather fall if your feeling a little more generous)?

Cheers

[Nimdeadlee]

Sorry, I'd much rather have them as they are now. I re-apply them just before they're about to expire. Having different timings makes them more spread out allowing me to cast other spells in the interim.

[SpartanKiller13]

Sorry, I'd much rather have them as they are now. I re-apply them just before they're about to expire. Having different timings makes them more spread out allowing me to cast other spells in the interim.

I'm the opposite. I like seeing the timer coming up and finding a spot to recast all my buffs.

[Xanthrawl]

/signed.

I almost always re-cast them all together when the shortest buff is about to expire (Death Aura.) This is a bit of a waste in SP/efficiency, but it ensures I don't miss re-applying them when they expire. Most buffs are 1 min/caster level. I don't really understand the purpose of the shorter buffs not having a similar standardized duration, like 6 seconds/caster level, or the like.

[GramercyRiff]

This is a good idea. The 6 seconds/level thing is a holdover from the pnp where a round is 6 seconds. There are no rounds in this game. Just make all short buffs the same duration. It makes more sense for DDO.

[zehnvhex]

Buffs should ideally only exist in one of two states:

A) Fire and forget buffs that last (sort of) indefinitely

or

B) Short term buffs with long cooldowns for burst activity.

"So Zehnpai, how would you deal with something like displacement or death aura or haste?"

Simple really.

1 - Defensive buffs should be a toggle that, while activated, reserves X amount of your spell points. You can have a variety of these active. So having just displacement active might reserve 7% of your spell points. Activating feather fall would reserve another 1%.

2 - Offensive buffs should drain spell points slowly while activated. For every, say, 30 seconds that haste is active you lose 5 spell points. If you run out of spell points, these abilities toggle off. Abilities like this already exist in DDO so the precedence is already there.

These two methods ensure that casting buffs have a cost but remove the busy work from the equation.

"But Zehnpai, what about that epic moment where I cast death aura at the last second?"

Just stop.

"But Zehnpai, what about targeted buffs?"

Any buff you can cast on someone else should be party wide in the first place and just leave it at that. Haste is now group haste. Feel free to have a self only haste that only drains like, 5sp per 30 seconds but mass haste that drains 10 sp per 30. Or whatever.

"But Zehnpai, what about short term buffs that can be spent like stoneskin or ablative armor?"

These fall more under the category of heals which have their own rules. It's a slippery slope at this point though. That's why it's considered bad game design to attach a short term buff you want to a spell where the primary effect is something you don't necessarily need.

For example, reconstruct having a haste component is really bad design. Fortunately it's mitigated by haste being otherwise readily available. If the haste on reconstruct was the only source of haste in the game, it would be very, very awful game design.

"But Zehnpai, what was that about short term buffs with long cooldowns?"

Certainly. These are powerful buffs that would be vastly less interesting if they were nerfed to be balanced long term effects. Things like Radiant Forcefield immediately come to mind. DDO doesn't have many of these truth be told. We have mostly long term buffs (Shield, Blur, etc...) and obnoxious buffs (Displacement, haste, etc...).

Anyways. Things like forcefield are okay to have. There's that "10k temp hp" one from the US ED as well. Things like that are fun and a welcome addition to the game.

"So how do you feel about Action Boosts or things like KTA or similar effects?"

They are poor design. If it's not too powerful to have up pretty much all the time, it should be up all the time. KTA for example should simply be a toggle that reserves 10% of your spellpoints and be done with it.

Action Boosts are just a bandaid for the fact that DDO doesn't have stamina. Realistically we'd all start with, say, 100 stamina (some enhancements would increase that amount) and you drain stamina while any given action boost is toggled on.

It's effectively the same concept, it's just the DDO way is clunky and inefficient.

"Is there any excuse for a short duration spammable buff?"

Only if it's tied to an ability you'd want to spam anyways. For example, having an attack that you use on cooldown that grants you +10% damage on your next attack is fine. However, having a self buff that you cast that grants you +10% damage on your next attack is not. Having a self buff that gives you 10% extra damage for 2 minutes on a 10 second C/D is not okay.

It's a fine line I grant you that, but it's an important one. Quick Strike, for example, the TA ability that grants double-strike would feel less like a fun part of combat flow and more like a chore to keep up if it wasn't also an attack.

"Wait...didn't you just say short term buffs were bad when attached to abilities?"

Again, the important aspect is that you'd want to use the ability -anyways-. I'm going to use a [3W] attack whenever I can anyways. I may not always need a heal so attaching a haste buff to it is bad design.

Another example of bad design is some of the monk finishing moves where you'll see them just sit there swinging at the air in order to setup/proc the finisher. Finishing moves should have been set up to be usable whenever, but doing the 'correct' setup reduces their cost for example.

"What about the GCD? Economy of actions?"

Every 2~5 minutes? Puh-lease.

"So what about debuffs? Should things like slow, charm person, etc...last forever? Or be long cooldowns? How does that work?"

Sorry, my pizza is ready. I'll get back to you on that.

"Stop trying to ruin DDO by making it easier. It's already easy enough. BLAH BLAH I REMEMBER DOING SHROUD AND LIT2 GS"

No seriously...pizza.

[Vorachtin]

Buffs are fine

things that need looked at:

-Archmage needs a bump, its fine if necro spec can get better DC at necro but right now you /have/ to be in archlich necro spec for highest across the board DCs. Archmage should be competitive.
-EK is weak and could use some love for wiz and sorc doesnt scale into epic levels needs updating with things like melee power etc
-Necro SLAs are weak, Archmage isnt a ton better but reasonable.
-Animate ally is cool in theory but the rot dmg should be removed make the zombie shroud last until death immune to positive healing only healed by negative etc

These are some of the more important aspects that should be looked at imo rather than some folks cant manage buff timers ;p

[caberonia]

Buffs are fine



Ignoring that 99% of them are useless due to gear being superior and them not stacking with gear? Or are completely outdated using old systems that no longer scale or are generally ineffective with new systems that have been brought in? then sure buffs are fine.If we're just discussing the duration then ya.. duration of buffs are fine.

I'll agree with the rest of your post.

[caberonia]

Ignoring that 99% of them are useless due to gear being superior and them not stacking with gear? Or are completely outdated using old systems that no longer scale or are generally ineffective with new systems that have been brought in? then sure buffs are fine.If we're just discussing the duration then ya.. duration of buffs are fine.

I'll agree with the rest of your post. I will add to that list later when time permits

I'll add my issues via links to old posts to save myself time and prevent others from having to read diatribes they don't want to. For more clarity on my thoughts of the wizard pass and magic in general see the following posts
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/491427-The-State-of-Wizardry?p=6038435&highlight=#post6038435
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/466087-When-doing-the-caster-class-balancing?p=5698473&highlight=#post5698473

Also those whole threads are a good starting point for any Dev who cares to get some feedback on Casters and magic in DDO.

[Enguebert]

What I really want to see in DDO is the possibility to create "chain buff"

When you learn spell, you also have slots to create one chain buff : an action with 3, 4, ...slots
You can place different spells there (with the restriction : must be casted on caster /maybe on a friend)

When you use this action, all the spells are casted

This may be either unlocked by a feat, a tree enhancement or granted when you have x level in a spellcaster class

[HungarianRhapsody]

More than anything else, I'd like to see "give +x to the max level for this spell" actually work all the time. That would take care of a lot of problems (not all of the problems) that Wizards currently have.

Just getting the "all necromancy spells have +x max casting level" and "Death Aura/Lesser Death Aura have +x max casting level" working correctly would be a really nice boost for Pale Masters and would fix most of that short term buff timer problem for Wizards.

[grausherra]

That's why it's considered bad game design to attach a short term buff you want to a spell where the primary effect is something you don't necessarily need.

For example, reconstruct having a haste component is really bad design. Fortunately it's mitigated by haste being otherwise readily available. If the haste on reconstruct was the only source of haste in the game, it would be very, very awful game design.


Considered bad design, by who exactly? Did you graduate the University of Pheonix with an MMO design PhD? You sound like one of the old-school Fires of Heaven forum dwellers from the Everquest days.

Deciding that Haste effects in a game are only allowed when accompanied by a heal isn't bad design, its a completely arbitrary game rule with no inherent 'badness'. Its like saying having gear bonuses stack/not stack is 'awful design', which really depends on how the game was designed.

[SpartanKiller13]

Considered bad design, by who exactly? Did you graduate the University of Pheonix with an MMO design PhD? You sound like one of the old-school Fires of Heaven forum dwellers from the Everquest days.

Deciding that Haste effects in a game are only allowed when accompanied by a heal isn't bad design, its a completely arbitrary game rule with no inherent 'badness'. Its like saying having gear bonuses stack/not stack is 'awful design', which really depends on how the game was designed.

Lol does anyone have one of those degrees? Do they exist?

I agree with Zehnvhex. While it's nice as a one-stop buff mid-combat especially with the Reconstruct SLA's, there's inherent waste guaranteed with using it just for the Haste portion equally with wasting said Haste portion using it out-of-combat. I'd rather a cheaper/better Reconstruct + some sort of Haste boost (cough cough Armor of Speed cough cough) vs the current implementation.

It would be like Water Breathing giving you +2 temp HP when you cast it. Like cool, but now you're wasting random temps when you swim and randomly bubbling yourself before combat for the temps.

Or if Holy Sword also gave you a Stoneskin effect. It's an amazing spell, but recasting it for more hp would feel super awkward even if it would be a direct buff over the current implementation.

[SpartanKiller13]

What I really want to see in DDO is the possibility to create "chain buff"

When you learn spell, you also have slots to create one chain buff : an action with 3, 4, ...slots
You can place different spells there (with the restriction : must be casted on caster /maybe on a friend)

When you use this action, all the spells are casted

This may be either unlocked by a feat, a tree enhancement or granted when you have x level in a spellcaster class

So uh you can set up hotbars with hotkeys attached to each button, and use a program like AutoHotkey (https://www.autohotkey.com/) to easily write macros to chain cast buffs. Devs have said they're ok with macros that perform actions that a human could, so you could fairly easily write one to hit Alt-1, Alt-2, Alt-3 etc with just one button press. Even better, you can set up different ones for different people - like a macro for buffing a melee buddy vs one for buffing a caster vs one for buffing yourself. Or a raid buff macro that hits F1 > casts buffs > F2 > casts buffs etc instead of doing it all yourself.

Spend like 5 minutes with AHK and you'll be amazed at the results you can pull off.

[grausherra]

L
I agree with Zehnvhex. While it's nice as a one-stop buff mid-combat especially with the Reconstruct SLA's, there's inherent waste guaranteed with using it just for the Haste portion equally with wasting said Haste portion using it out-of-combat.

Yes but it could easily be costed at the price that removes any waste. There is an enormous difference between something that is inherently a 'bad design' and something that doesn't fit into DDO well.

No game mechanic is badly designed because a single implementation of it used as an example is not correctly costed.

[zehnvhex]

You sound like one of the old-school Fires of Heaven forum dwellers from the Everquest days.

Well this is awkward. I was in FoH.

Anyways...

You don't need a game design degree to do, y'know, game design. In fact most game designers don't have one. Go figure. All you really need to do is follow trends. If DDO is the only game you play in isolation you might not know what's going on out there.

However, very few modern games have you refreshing your buffs every 45 seconds. It's just obnoxious gameplay. Most use either a reserve system or just an always on system for long term buffs. You then have what basically amount to DDO epic moments for everything else.

It's really not that hard to fathom.

You don't really need an MMO degree from Berkeley to see that.

[boredGamer]

However, very few modern games have you refreshing your buffs every 45 seconds. It's just obnoxious gameplay. Most use either a reserve system or just an always on system for long term buffs. You then have what basically amount to DDO epic moments for everything else.


Except most other games out there are incredibly boring gameplay wise. I'm not arguing the buff situation is what makes DDO gameplay good, but I'm not sure following trends to other games is necessarily good.

One man's obnoxious gameplay is another man's DDO. I for one enjoy the super mario / FPS / RPG / D+D quality of this MMO. Some people hate the Pit. Well, they're wrong.

[Connman]

...AutoHotkey....

Directions unclear, keyboard caught fire.

I just want to see new updated buffs and spells. Like Haste and Displacement in one spell.

[EllisDee37]

Except most other games out there are incredibly boring gameplay wise. I'm not arguing the buff situation is what makes DDO gameplay good, but I'm not sure following trends to other games is necessarily good.

One man's obnoxious gameplay is another man's DDO. I for one enjoy the super mario / FPS / RPG / D+D quality of this MMO. Some people hate the Pit. Well, they're wrong.I love the super mario / FPS / RPG / D+D quality of DDO, and The Pit is one of my favorite quests, along with Crucible.

Refreshing buffs every 45 or 60 seconds is just plain bad game design. It's practically an inarguable truth, but of course leave it to DDO forum posters to argue it for an entire page.

If you want DDO-specific evidence of this truth, look no further than the last spell they updated: Zeal. It used to be 24 seconds + 6 seconds per caster level, and then it was changed to 1 minute per caster level because short term buffs are just bad design. (I believe the nomenclature they used was "not fun.")

[LightBear]

They are homogeny when you take the casting level into consideration.

[MistaMagic]

Buffs what are buffs?, I'm a Wizard not your buff bot. The days of being in a shroud run where everyone wanted Displacement and resists are Loooooonnnnngggggg gone

[EllisDee37]

Buffs what are buffs?, I'm a Wizard not your buff bot. The days of being in a shroud run where everyone wanted Displacement and resists are Loooooonnnnngggggg goneI don't know about the other posters, but I'm talking about self buffs.

[SpartanKiller13]

I don't know about the other posters, but I'm talking about self buffs.

I agree. The only buffs I have for consistent use on other people are long-term anyway (like Blur). I'll use Feather Fall, but you rarely need more than one cast of that even with it's gimpy duration.

Sometimes I even like the really short AoE buffs - I use Prayer to bestow AoE temps on my Pally/Warlock, it's super visible and when it runs out I get a pop-up notice that it would be nice to give more AoE temps. Although the buff itself is terrible, everyone likes temps (and you have to be in aura range for Prayer to hit so you get my Con x2 + Cha).