Spell Penetration: How Much Is Really Needed?

[Line-dog]

While making a lap around the Orchard with my guild last night I finally hit level 13 with my Sorc Smoking Gun. So I tell the guys I'll run outside get my level and BRB. When I get back in I have some great fun with my new spell Flesh to Stone. However, when we get to the Masterwork Flesh Golems things change. I could _not_ get through their SR. I have the Spell Pen. feat, Spell Pen. II ENH, and the necklace with Spell Pen VI + Taint of Evil (Smoking is Neutral). From the combat log, my best and last attempt was a 18 (+18) and that failed to get past his SR! Give me a break. They got energy resistance out the ying yang and Shield up for immunity to MM. I was relegated to casting Haste and heightened Glitterdusts. I was going to swap Symbol of Fear for Disintegrate once I had the Dancing Ball and a potency VI item.

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SIDE NOTE:
BTW, I could not figure out how my combat log was showing +18 to my Spell Penetration. Shouldn't that be:
+13 Level 13
+2 SP feat
+2 SP II ENH
+2 Item Necklace and Sceptre don't stack
+19

I figure either my alignment got switched away from True Neutral during creation and I didn't notice and the taint of evil is dinging me for a level. Or, since i leveled and went into combat I wasn't getting credit for my new level with regard to spell pen. Or (less likely), I failed to switch in either of my Spll Pen. items due to game lag ignoring my keystroke. But that would mean I get +1 for rabbit gloves and I don't think that is likely. I'll have to verify this next time I can log in.

[Kraldor]

Golems are supposed to be immune to all spell-resistance susceptible spells (mouthful, eh?). Instead of implementing this in DDO, all golems just have insanely high SR scores that can't be beaten. It's just a waste of SP to try to get any of those spells to work.

Also, if you had a negative level from the taint of evil, you would see a red exclamation point in the top right of your screen.

[skraus1]

Try disentegrate. Golems are the sole reason I carry it on my sorcs.

[sirgog]

Treat Golems as though they have an SR of 100 - totally unpassable.

To answer your general question about spell penetration - I would suggest that a 'nuker' build take minimal if any penetration, and a CC-based sorc should absolutely max out their penetration (2 feats, 3 enhancements, yeah I know it costs a lot but in Mod 6 you need it).

If you are a nuker that dabbles in crowd control, I would advise 1 Spell Pen feat and the first 2 enhancements.

[Mad_Bombardier]

Max Bonus for Spell Penetration is: 16 (caster level) + 4 (SP and GrSP feats) + 3 (ImpSP3) + 3 (GrSP item) = +26.
Anything +22 or better at L16 is pretty good.

[Line-dog]

Golems are supposed to be immune to all spell-resistance susceptible spells (mouthful, eh?). Instead of implementing this in DDO, all golems just have insanely high SR scores that can't be beaten. It's just a waste of SP to try to get any of those spells to work.

Treat Golems as though they have an SR of 100 - totally unpassable.

OK. Well that is reassuring. Among those monsters that have SR, Golems are an exception, and not ones to judge my ability to bypass SR from.

Also, if you had a negative level from the taint of evil, you would see a red exclamation point in the top right of your screen.

Good point: I would have noticed a red excalmation point a long time ago.

Try disentegrate. Golems are the sole reason I carry it on my sorcs.

I love to nuke. But there are two reasons I haven't already gotten disintegrate: 1) I don't have a level VI item to increase the spell's damage; 2) I have watched people use Symbol of Fear in ways that made certain quests (or some rooms in PoP) far less frustrating. And SoF has been a great OH S#!~ button. Like Flesh to Stone, I sometimes think of SoF as an I Win button. My plan was to trade out SoF for disintegrate about the time I could pick up the disco ball.

To help answer the question "How Much Is Really Needed?", I will start posting the SRs of creatures I run across . Unless, of course, it violates one of the site rules

[MrCow]

Some SR numbers if ya want them. Anything denoted in ?? is something you can't penetrate the SR of.

Name					CR	Difficulty	SR
Guardian of Shan-To-Kor			14	Elite		15-17
Fiend-Blood Scorpion			12	Normal		15-19
Flesh Render				12	Normal		16
Fiend-Blood Scorpion			14	Hard		16-22
Ice Flenser				14	Normal		18
Fire Reaver				14	Normal		18
Flesh Render				14	Hard		19
Fiend-Blood Bat				11	Normal		19
Fiend-Blood Troll			16	Normal		20
Ice Flenser				16	Hard		21
Fire Reaver				16	Hard		21
Warforged Titan				20	Normal		21
Fiend-Blood Gnoll			16	Normal		21
Zelnath					15	Normal		22
Flesh Render				17	Elite		22
Kar-Thul Diviner			16	Normal		22-27
Fiend-Blood Lion			15	Normal		23
Fiend-Blood Troglodyte Ranger		15	Normal		23-24
Fiend-Blood Troglodyte Theurge		16	Normal		23-24
Ice Flenser				19	Elite		24
Fire Reaver				19	Elite		24
Fiend-Blood Troglodyte Warmaster	16	Normal		24
Bezekira				16	Normal		24
Jarilith				13	Normal		25
Crimson Foot Herald			15	Normal		25
Crimson Foot Shepherd			15	Normal		25
Ulzarian				20	Elite		27
Ancient Flayer				15	Normal		27
Kasi Nokhba				18	Normal		27-29
Bearded Devil				15	Normal		27-29
Zakya Rahshasa				20	Elite		28
Rakshasa Thaumaturge			14	Normal		28
Agorthony				18	Normal		28-29
Lykomedes				17	Normal		29
Queen Lailat				22	Normal		29
Fiend-Blood Troglodyte Ranger		22	Elite		29-30
Bralani Sorcerer			19	Hard		29-32
Ghaele					16	Normal		30
Fiend-Blood Troglodyte Warmaster	23	Elite		30+
Kar-Thul Diviner			23	Elite		30-32
Queen Lailat				28	Elite		30-33
Ghaele					19	Hard		32-34
Arcane Ooze				9	Normal		??
Iron Golem				13	Normal		??
Iron Golem				20	Elite		??
Iron Golem				16	Hard		??
Marguerite Dryden (Hard Version)	5	Normal		??

[Line-dog]

Some SR numbers if ya want them. ...

HA! MrCow, that is Beautiful.

[Pellegro]

Yes Cow, bookmarked this thread for that chart.

Great project you did there. Thanks for sharing.

[winsom]

Nice chart. One more reason that DDO needs the Practiced Spellcaster feat. Multiclassed casters, like my 12 bard/rogue 4 are having some trouble landing spells on The Vale yard trash. It gets signifcantly harder inside of dungeons.

[Mad_Bombardier]

Nice chart. One more reason that DDO needs the Practiced Spellcaster feat. Multiclassed casters, like my 12 bard/rogue 4 are having some trouble landing spells on The Vale yard trash. It gets signifcantly harder inside of dungeons.

Agreed and agreed.

[Trugaard]

Nice chart. One more reason that DDO needs the Practiced Spellcaster feat. Multiclassed casters, like my 12 bard/rogue 4 are having some trouble landing spells on The Vale yard trash. It gets signifcantly harder inside of dungeons.

Don't you think that a duel or multi-classed caster should suffer some sort of penalty? You are already probably a capable rogue and buff master. I think a character that is solely devoted to one class deserves a leg up.

By the way, at level 13 your spell pen should be better than 18. On my 15 cleric I have 23 spell pen and I breeze through the vale and or the orchard (save those dumb golems)

[lostinjapan]

That is a beautiful post MrCow.

[Arnya]

I had SP of +18, results were mediocre (50-60% bypassing SR)

I now have 15 sorc levels, 3 levels of SP enhancements and a SP7 item for total of +20

I find this is a lot more effective without sacraficing a feat

[Oreg]

Just an update. I respecced to grtr spell pen finally so I am at 24 and I do not see a huge difference between 22 and 24 so I'd say you are safe with 22 - very good shape with 24. (The only really noticeable difference i saw was Ghaels)

16 level
2 spell pen
2 grtr spell pen
2 spell pen enhancements
2 spell pen 7 on armor
___
24

[winsom]

Don't you think that a duel or multi-classed caster should suffer some sort of penalty? You are already probably a capable rogue and buff master. I think a character that is solely devoted to one class deserves a leg up.)

They already have a "leg up". Multi-classed casters would have to spend a feat on Practiced Spell-caster if they want their caster level to be similar to a single-classed character of the same level. Practiced Spell-caster adds up to +3 caster levels to the maximum total character level.

My drow bard/rogue does not have too many optional choices in her feats-build and the way I want to play her:

Kyonna has Weapon Finesse otherwise her ranged attacks would be the only "worthwhile" form of combat, and I don't often consider ranged attacks too worthwhile (in 95% of builds). DDO is a damage-dealing game. If she could not contribute somewhat-worthwhile damage, or land debuffing melee-attacks, then she'd be a very dead-weight teammate, despite her other party-helpful abilities. Her damage is fairly low as it is with STR 12 +1 dam, bard buffs +2dam, plus weapon damage dice plus 2d6+4 sneak attack.

Skill Focus: Use Magic Device, Nimble Fingers, Empower Healing. These are her core-build feats. Since she isn't a tank, isn't a damage-dealer, and isn't a Cleric or Wizard/Sorc, she needs to be good at the other things she does. She used to have Extend Spell feat but at caster level 12 that seems more optional now. Respec'ed to Luck of Heroes +1 all saves to increase survivability against spells & brutal traps.

Spell Focus: Enchantment to help out her non-optimized Charisma (30) spell-casting and to qualify for Spell-Singer benefits.

I'd have to make very significant sacrifices to my build to add Practiced Spell-Caster and/or Spell Penetration. I like this character because I have tough choices to make in the build. I try to do a few things very well, but in doing so, I can't have the stats and feats that a more dedicated rogue or bard can have. That is nearly-perfect game balance in my opinion. Perhaps at 18th I can re-spec feats and add both Spell Penetration, but she would still be 4 caster levels behind other pure-casters and that weakness would show up a lot in Mod 6-like adventures.

As far as spell-penetration goes, I decided its just not very practical to have on this character. She can only do so much in some areas and still be good at a few other roles. Fortunately I can rely on her Fascination song to place all Spell Resistant monsters into a stupor -- now if I could just convince some more frantic nukers and meleers of that tactic...Many would rather burn through SPs and HPs (and Heal scrolls) at an alarming rate.

[Uska]

Don't you think that a duel or multi-classed caster should suffer some sort of penalty? You are already probably a capable rogue and buff master. I think a character that is solely devoted to one class deserves a leg up.

By the way, at level 13 your spell pen should be better than 18. On my 15 cleric I have 23 spell pen and I breeze through the vale and or the orchard (save those dumb golems)

You would still have a leg up it would cost him a feat you could use elsewhere.