Tweak to Shadowblades Scaling

[droid327]

I really wanted Feydark to be a viable Force caster tree...I think that'd open up a lot of fun builds and bring Force up to snuff with other elements. But that's just not going to happen with damage die of 1d6+2. That's not competitive damage, especially when Force doesnt benefit from -MRR debuffs in Epic like every other element does, and Force casting is less well-supported by gear, class trees, EDs, etc.

But I also understand that its a universal tree available from early levels, and you cant have mid- or endgame level damage die on spells available at L3 or 4

I think a way to solve that would be to bake in some die scaling in the rest of the tree, so that with proper level-appropriate investment, FI SLAs stay viable throughout the leveling process. This is an issue that's going to come up for any future universal tree with offensive SLAs, too, so might as well solve the problem now.

I think the Core 4-5-6 should each add another +1 damage per caster level, somewhat analogous to how EK scales its Spellsword die up. Then Fan should give +1 to Blade at Rank 3, and Ring should give +2 to Fan and Blade at Rank 3. That'd put the progression pretty close to the other elements in the Arcane spellbook as you level through Heroic, while keeping them appropriately gated by level and investment....at 20, giving you a Blade at 1d6+8, Fan at 1d6+7, and Ring at 1d6+5.

That's still nowhere near L9 Arcane spells in terms of damage die, but that puts it comparable to, say, Polar Ray at 1d6+8 for a single-target, and DBF at 1d6+7 for an AOE, which both scale to 20 caster levels like FI SLAs too. I think that seems about appropriate for someone who's fully invested (T5+capstone) in the FI tree, and would complement a lot of other class trees to make coherent force-based builds

[Aelonwy]

I don't always agree with you but that is actually very well thought through and articulated.

[droid327]

I don't always agree with you but that is actually very well thought through and articulated.

Broken clocks and monkeys with typewriters I guess :D

[Marshal_Lannes]

I think this is a good suggestion. Not OP and opens up some interesting force-focused casting. As it stands now I honestly can't recall anyone putting 40 points into this tree. Which is a shame. Why have this whole tree if people only use it for GCS?

[cru121]

This would be nice.

[yfernbottom]

It's pretty much the same way EK scales, as you point out, and the way that law dice scale. They can be quite nice, but you need a big investment to get there. Makes sense to me.

[Stravix]

I can't find anything to really argue about on this. That's rare for me.

/signed

[LurkingVeteran]

I wasn't happy with the Illusionist concept and it's a bit weird + predictable that we are now down to balancing it by buffing force nukes. At this point I don't mind though. At least AMs/Sorcs would get access to some decent SLAs until their trees are reworked.

Some DDs are at least a nice complement to a PK caster who need some way to deal with all Fear and Death immune mobs. Just a shame actual illusionists pretty much have to be gnome with T4 AM.

[LightBear]

Yeah, would be nice to see some scaling in the force slas of that tree.

[Chacka_DDO]

I assume the developers don't want force damage spells in general on par with element damage spells (fire acid cold electric) because force damage works on most targets with no reduction and therefore I'm afraid the relatively low damage is intended.
I think it would be better to have ALL spells with the same damage capacity and instead more monster types who are more resistant especially to force or light damage.

A general change for spell casting should be that we have NO maximum caster level for no spell anymore and of course and to emphasize that explicitly, the spells should then be balanced in a way that they are NOT overpowered at any character level.

And then maybe we also have magic missile and other force spells with meaningful damage and as a real option for a DPS caster (and not only to proc Shiradi or so).
Force spells could still do less damage than other spells when the developers think that is needed to balance their universality but the damage should be at least high enough to make them a real choice, which is currently not the case.
By the way, Arcane Tempest is already very good, if not too good and I don't have the feeling an actually good force spell is any "game-breaking"

[Firebreed]

I support this thread.

[droid327]

I assume the developers don't want force damage spells in general on par with element damage spells (fire acid cold electric) because force damage works on most targets with no reduction and therefore I'm afraid the relatively low damage is intended.
I think it would be better to have ALL spells with the same damage capacity and instead more monster types who are more resistant especially to force or light damage.



I suspect that is the case, yes. However, if you nerf force base die because its not reduced against any mob...then, in effect, its just reduced against every mob

I dont think Force needs to just become another mundane energy type. I like that its universal, but I dont think it needs to be nerfed. Like I mentioned above, its universality actually becomes a penalty, not a perk, when you can debuff MRR, since Force ignores it, both positive and negative. Plus, mob resistance is at most a minor nuisance for most elemental casters (few mobs have percentile reduction, and they're far between; flat reduction is easy to simply overwhelm), and immunities are an endangered species with so many ways for pure casters to circumvent them.

Force casting is already limited by spell selection, and the opportunity cost of having to spend feats for Ruin/Gruin/Pulse in Epic. I think that's enough to warrant the lack of resistance while maintaining competitive damage die.



A general change for spell casting should be that we have NO maximum caster level for no spell anymore and of course and to emphasize that explicitly, the spells should then be balanced in a way that they are NOT overpowered at any character level.


I dont know how you'd accomplish that, mathematically, in a straightforward way, which is why I had to concoct the somewhat byzantine system there to gate advancement of the spells. Power in DDO is not linear, so you cant have a simple linear function based on character level or caster level. You'd have to have some kind of logarithmic function, and (aside from being completely divorced from D&D) that would have its own issues of opacity to players, especially those who arent fluent and comfortable with math gaming :)

[Chacka_DDO]

I suspect that is the case, yes. However, if you nerf force base die because its not reduced against any mob...then, in effect, its just reduced against every mob

I dont think Force needs to just become another mundane energy type. I like that its universal, but I dont think it needs to be nerfed. Like I mentioned above, its universality actually becomes a penalty, not a perk, when you can debuff MRR, since Force ignores it, both positive and negative. Plus, mob resistance is at most a minor nuisance for most elemental casters (few mobs have percentile reduction, and they're far between; flat reduction is easy to simply overwhelm), and immunities are an endangered species with so many ways for pure casters to circumvent them.

Force casting is already limited by spell selection, and the opportunity cost of having to spend feats for Ruin/Gruin/Pulse in Epic. I think that's enough to warrant the lack of resistance while maintaining competitive damage die.

The point is if they want to balance the universality on all monster types they have to reduce the damage on all monster types so that the damage in average is then the same, this is what the word balance means (out of my understanding)
You can do it, but I would more like to have force damage just as a different damage type and the player has to know on which monster it is good to use force damage and on which not.
But if you don't have that and force damage is on almost all monster types 100% working (with some very rare exceptions) then I'm afraid that the developers do it exactly right to give force spells on average less damage than other spells.




I dont know how you'd accomplish that, mathematically, in a straightforward way, which is why I had to concoct the somewhat byzantine system there to gate advancement of the spells. Power in DDO is not linear, so you cant have a simple linear function based on character level or caster level. You'd have to have some kind of logarithmic function, and (aside from being completely divorced from D&D) that would have its own issues of opacity to players, especially those who arent fluent and comfortable with math gaming :)

I think I know what you mean but what you ignore is that you can change "power in DDO" so that you can make spells scaling linear and my point is that I think you should do that. :)

The point is relatively simple if your spells stop to scale at level 20 (most spells do) or even worse at level 5 or 10 then these spells are either "useless" at level 30 or they are too strong at level 20 (the fact that the spell power on items scale up to level 30 lessens that problem)

It would be much easier to balance monsters and it is also much easier to understand for players if the spells scale with character level 1-30 and then basically the spell power on items don't need to scale as we had it with the old spell power items (if you ask me the current spell power that scales with the character level via the minimum level on the item is more a kind of a band-aid for not good balanced/scaling spells)

[Artos_Fabril]

A general change for spell casting should be that we have NO maximum caster level for no spell anymore and of course and to emphasize that explicitly, the spells should then be balanced in a way that they are NOT overpowered at any character level.

And then maybe we also have magic missile and other force spells with meaningful damage and as a real option for a DPS caster (and not only to proc Shiradi or so).
What would a no-MCL magic missiles look like? 13 missiles at CL 25?

[MasterDragonan]

Since we are on this subject, I think Energy Criticals (Epic Past Life Feat) should also benefit force spells.

[Chacka_DDO]

What would a no-MCL magic missiles look like? 13 missiles at CL 25?

This is of course the question, to cause not too much server load I would suggest you get only 3-5 missiles and each missile get stronger the higher your character level is.
In my opinion, all spells should scale with the character level (also buffs) but of course, each spell has to be balanced in a way that the spell is not too strong (or too weak) after that change.
But when the developers do that they have to work out each spell anyway (just my assumption) and it should not be rocket science to do it in a reasonable way. :)
And some spells make currently almost completely no sense and need a change like the spells that cannot work when the monster CR is way too high (dispels should be irresistible like they basically are irresistible when a monster cast it on a player due to the high monster caster CR)

[Chacka_DDO]

Since we are on this subject, I think Energy Criticals (Epic Past Life Feat) should also benefit force spells.

I would also like to see in the Draconic Incarnation Epic Destiny more dragon choices, I think there actually for all damage forms different dragons in Dungeons & Dragons therefore we could also have dragon forms for light damage, sonic damage, and also force damage.
Especially sonic would be nice so that Draconic Incarnation is a choice for Spell Singer bards :)