Illusion DC vs other DCs

[Cadveen]

Why are there a disproportionate amount of ways to boost illusion DCs over other DCs? Will there ever be necro past life dc opportunities? It would be optimal if the deep gnome could choose between necro or illusion.

Add a drow priest iconic that specializes in necromancy. They look like the drow from forgotten realms. You already have the models and they look way better than Eberon version.

Past life gives you +1 necro DC and +2 saves to poison.

[droid327]

Counterpoint...Necro has the only decent school-specific Enhancement tree

[SpittingCobra]

What happened to Enchantment DC?? :(

[Aelonwy]

What happened to Enchantment DC?? :(

The enchantment school is singled-out for EXTREME PREJUDICE in Reaper, no way they'll support it in any way further when they're doing everything in their power to diminish it. I'm only half-joking.

[SpittingCobra]

This game should NOT revolve around reaper.

[LurkingVeteran]

This game should NOT revolve around reaper.

That train left the station long ago.

I agree with Aelonwy that having specific schools go from good to bad just because they can be abused is bad design. The biggest culprit is actually not reaper but Epic Ward though, which neuters charms specifically at L20+ for legacy reasons. It's not good design to have balance shift that much just by going from heroic to epic quests. You get to have fun with Dominate Monster for all of three levels until it's hamstrung by Epic Ward. If charms need an extra nerf above other spells, either reduce the duration across the board, or put it in the Reaper debuff, but having it nerfed that hard just by going from L19 to 20 quests makes no sense. It's especially offensive as charms are among the most powerful spells in regular D&D, so having them neutered in DDO probably puts off some new players. Just hard cap the maximum number of monsters you can have charmed/dominated to something like 3/1 instead.

[janave]

This game should NOT revolve around reaper.

I don't mind if reaper is a primary concern, but ever since that game mode, we have nerfs feel like performance sports regulations at the Olympics -vs- balancing for fun in an online video game.

[LurkingVeteran]

Why are there a disproportionate amount of ways to boost illusion DCs over other DCs? Will there ever be necro past life dc opportunities? It would be optimal if the deep gnome could choose between necro or illusion.

Add a drow priest iconic that specializes in necromancy. They look like the drow from forgotten realms. You already have the models and they look way better than Eberon version.

Past life gives you +1 necro DC and +2 saves to poison.

Because DDO illusion spells are much worse than necro spells. Weird (Wail for Illusion) isn't in the game, and PK has two saves and is useless against both Death and Fear Immunes. To compensate for that, it's easier to reach no-fail PK DCs now. Illusion also a bit of extra useful CC in color spray. I don't count Hypnotic Pattern as very useful due to its annoying graphics and break-on-damage.

[kanordog]

I don't mind if reaper is a primary concern, but ever since that game mode, we have nerfs feel like performance sports regulations at the Olympics -vs- balancing for fun in an online video game.


Some people wanted "challenge" which makes a video game e-sport. DDO is not an MMO any longer -it does not support alt play or build variety*- but an achievement based PvE e-sport. No PvP or Team vs Team play but whos got the more past lives (had to be typed in bio or forum sig) or who has the hardest to achieve cosmetics.**

Of course an e-sport will be regulated.





* You can play alts and suboptimal builds but every reward in the game is based on quest difficulty: loot drop chance, XP, favour, favor-to-access content, HCL leaderboards and rewards etc.
** See threads asking for more options to display e-peen on characters.

[Cadveen]

Counterpoint...Necro has the only decent school-specific Enhancement tree

There is an illusion enhancement line and the gnome is basically an enhancement line.

[Theolin]

Why are there a disproportionate amount of ways to boost illusion DCs over other DCs? Will there ever be necro past life dc opportunities? It would be optimal if the deep gnome could choose between necro or illusion.

Add a drow priest iconic that specializes in necromancy. They look like the drow from forgotten realms. You already have the models and they look way better than Eberon version.

Past life gives you +1 necro DC and +2 saves to poison.

FeyDark???? sales???

[droid327]

That train left the station long ago.




Maybe, but that doesnt mean its not still worthwhile or proper to fight against it. Its still a conversation that should be had, so dont be defeatist and not even have it.

Reaper should not be the balance point for the entire game. No one should have an entitlement to a certain number of skulls, or to Reaper at all. Reaper enhancements (ie reaper HP, mostly) should not become assumed or de facto required for content.

Reaper is a group challenge mode that's entirely play-at-your-own-risk. There's no promise you can do it. If you can, great...if not, then find (better) friends or drop down to Elite, which is the highest mode that any viable build should be entitled to achieve.

[droid327]

There is an illusion enhancement line and the gnome is basically an enhancement line.

I said "decent" tree. FI isnt anywhere near PM in terms of building a caster around it :)

Gnome is a few +DCs but a racial tree is hardly the same as a class or universal tree.

[LurkingVeteran]

Maybe, but that doesnt mean its not still worthwhile or proper to fight against it. Its still a conversation that should be had, so dont be defeatist and not even have it.

Reaper should not be the balance point for the entire game. No one should have an entitlement to a certain number of skulls, or to Reaper at all. Reaper enhancements (ie reaper HP, mostly) should not become assumed or de facto required for content.

Reaper is a group challenge mode that's entirely play-at-your-own-risk. There's no promise you can do it. If you can, great...if not, then find (better) friends or drop down to Elite, which is the highest mode that any viable build should be entitled to achieve.

I agree that it's a conversation to be had, and I think the current situation is a bit silly, but saying that balance in reaper doesn't matter when 75% of the PUGs are running reaper is completely out of touch with reality. If 75% of the quests being run are in reaper, then reaper contributes 75% to people's priorities when it comes to balance. It's as simple as that. Anything else is excuses.

If they didn't want everybody running reaper, perhaps they shouldn't have handed out so much power creep, including the reaper trees themselves (which heavily bias people towards reaper). I would rather have seen that they expanded on the champion system than break quest immersion with nonsensical reapers, but here we are. Maybe they should just merge reaper mode back into an Epic Plus difficulty with champions instead and officially make it the new standard it is, instead of pretending it's an unsupported experiment.

[slarden]

Because DDO illusion spells are much worse than necro spells. Weird (Wail for Illusion) isn't in the game, and PK has two saves and is useless against both Death and Fear Immunes. To compensate for that, it's easier to reach no-fail PK DCs now. Illusion also a bit of extra useful CC in color spray. I don't count Hypnotic Pattern as very useful due to its annoying graphics and break-on-damage.

This is the major reason the higher illusion DC potential makes sense - along with the small # of useful illusion DC spells. Even with the higher DC potential and a brand new tree illusionist builds are extremely scarce. The tree is mainly used for charisma to hit/damage and the cheap cc for other caster types.

Some of the extra DC available in feydark illusionist requires burning more feats - wizards have plenty, but still it's hard to fit it all in. The capstone for feydark illusionist should include a higher damage dps spell.

[Chai]

Maybe, but that doesnt mean its not still worthwhile or proper to fight against it. Its still a conversation that should be had, so dont be defeatist and not even have it.

Reaper should not be the balance point for the entire game. No one should have an entitlement to a certain number of skulls, or to Reaper at all. Reaper enhancements (ie reaper HP, mostly) should not become assumed or de facto required for content.

that being the case then most of the DPS trees need a minimum 30% nerf, with some needing a 70% nerf.


Reaper is a group challenge mode that's entirely play-at-your-own-risk. There's no promise you can do it. If you can, great...if not, then find (better) friends or drop down to Elite, which is the highest mode that any viable build should be entitled to achieve.

thats the (semi) accepted narrative, which was used to shoe horn another progression system into the game to incentivize more purchases of faster progression.

The reality however is its not about finding better skilled friends. Its about finding more well farmed friends. This is no longer gated on skill and hasnt been for quite some time. Its gated based on time consumption.

[Chai]

I don't mind if reaper is a primary concern, but ever since that game mode, we have nerfs feel like performance sports regulations at the Olympics -vs- balancing for fun in an online video game.

-due to every reward or reward chance being scaled on what difficulty can be completed - a gimmick which incentives people to become more powerful more quickly which means paying into the system to do so.

This is in large part what we were concerned about. Now that the game is fully dependent on this revenue generation scheme, skill gets replaced with time consumption as a metric for success. Players do not graduate to the next highest setting based on their quality of play, but based on the amount of time spent farming the previous tier.

[droid327]

that being the case then most of the DPS trees need a minimum 30% nerf, with some needing a 70% nerf.


I mean...meh? If its part of a holistic recalibration of difficulty, then that's not actually a nerf. But yeah, its not a controversial statement to say that power creep with DPS has really rocketed up the last couple years.


I agree that it's a conversation to be had, and I think the current situation is a bit silly, but saying that balance in reaper doesn't matter when 75% of the PUGs are running reaper is completely out of touch with reality. If 75% of the quests being run are in reaper, then reaper contributes 75% to people's priorities when it comes to balance. It's as simple as that. Anything else is excuses.

If they didn't want everybody running reaper, perhaps they shouldn't have handed out so much power creep, including the reaper trees themselves (which heavily bias people towards reaper). I would rather have seen that they expanded on the champion system than break quest immersion with nonsensical reapers, but here we are. Maybe they should just merge reaper mode back into an Epic Plus difficulty with champions instead and officially make it the new standard it is, instead of pretending it's an unsupported experiment.

No one said it wasnt. The argument was it shouldnt. And its kind of a chicken and egg situation...the reason most people run Reaper right now is because the game is balanced to make that the optimum. So using that as the justification for making Reaper the balance point is circular logic. If they change game design to stop preferentially favoring Reaper, then players will start gravitating away from it again.

I dont think we need an Epic Plus difficulty, because we already have two or three difficulties (Casual, Normal, Hard) that are marginalized. Simpler to just recalibrate so that Elite is where Elite needs to be, Hard is where Hard should be, etc., and then rebalance XP and rewards accordingly so players can maintain the same rate of progression.

Then for Reaper, just remove the extra XP (Reaper should just be the same as Elite, + RXP) and Reaper HP outside of Reaper so its entirely self-contained (as it always was supposed to be), and scale the difficulty up from the new realigned Elite so that R1 is enough to keep a group's attention and R10 is pretty much impossible for all but the most insane.

That way Elite is the path of least resistance for leveling/soloing - which opens up optimal progression to builds that are excessively penalized in Reaper - and Reaper is just for those who want to farm RXP and have a group-challenging difficulty setting.

[Aelonwy]

This game should NOT revolve around reaper.

I wasn't saying I supported it, I was saying this is how it is and I don't think its likely to change any time soon. I had forgot the prejudice against the school of Enchantment began with Epic Ward. The biggest issue is there are too many players that label anything other than the beat down playstyle as cheese. So when everything else is disallowed or disadvantaged only MOAR DPS is approved. And again Chai is right that leads to farm X till you are this tall, then farm Y till this tall, etc.

Reaper is obviously a progression system and the whole "challenge setting" story is such a thin veil its the preferred costume for bachelor parties. Far, far too many incentives to take part in that progression, let's list them shall we?


Reaper exclusive cosmetics (the only incentive I was okay with)
More XP, thus faster leveling in the regular character progression systems
Higher chance of named loot
Possible buffs to named loot
More chance at Mysterious Remnants for more named stuff and advantages
Gradual buffs in and out of Reaper mode via Reaper trees
Better/more opportunity to group because players gravitate to ALL the advantages above


Sure looks to me like they made every effort to make Reaper the preferred playstyle. And now - because Reaper has more champions than elite, even an EVENT benefits from playing Reaper for more chance at regular champions becoming EVENT champions.

It is what it is but doesn't mean I have to like it.

Back on topic, Illusion in DDO has so few useful spells (so few spells period) might as well have what little works work well.