as a reference point - the DC on my (for Virturoso) entrhall at level 16 is in the low 80's - it only fails to hit those out of range and those immune.
as a reference point - the DC on my (for Virturoso) entrhall at level 16 is in the low 80's - it only fails to hit those out of range and those immune.
But thats only 1/2 side of a silver piece. Considering how long it takes to set up, and considering all the cooperation required by a party of adventurers in order to best utilize the fascinate ability, I think the higher DCs AND duration are very much warranted.
Fascinate is also a fantastic solo tool... which follows the concept Mad was promoting, of making the game more "accessible" to smaller groups or solo play.
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"set up"? Jesus dude, its far, far easier to use than most caster based crowd control. You run towards the mobs, hit the fascinate button, do a half circle, and they all get hit as they targetted you with visual aggro.
If you can't time fascinate, its time to play a new game.
I think Boro is missing my point.
I think this is what is being said - please correct If I mis-state
Boro thinks DC on fascinate (and other similar songs) and duration are too powerful
Boro thinks that the virturoso build that comes standard with the game is built to fail
It is commented on that not many play the virturoso due to spellsingers and warchanters bringing more to the group.
I think that virturoso builds are fine and do not need to be altered.
Turbine could fix both issues pretaining to this by reducing the effectiveness on DC for Spellsingers and Warchanters by, lets say, +perform/2 instead of +perform for the virutroso.
This would effectively not make me a failure in Boro's eyes, give all virturoso a bit of respect, adjust the DC on the more powerful, desired bard sub classes to correct their overpoweredness.
You're right about comments about build/path efficacy, but I think you are missing Ponza's point. Your response is an argument for Turbine to discontinue the PrE rather than fix its gameplay mechanics.
The Virtuoso is fully advertised by Turbine to be the master of song-based CC. Ponza and **all builds within that PrE** rely on their songs as a characteristic of their profession; it is integral to not just Turbine's pre-made path [which has that unfortunate 10 con ] or Ponza's specific build, but the existence of the whole PrE. Songs may currently be powerful with no sacrifice to a Warchanter, but Ponza is reminding us that we can rebalance songs so that Virts who DO sacrifice can benefit from effective fascinate. There are other non-CC ways to play a Warchanter, Sorcerer, or Wizard; but there really is no other way to play a Virt.
I think Ponza is right: if it makes sense to nerf songs, don't overlook the role of Virts. If Bard fascinate DCs and durations are cut, Turbine should give Virt's a little sumthin' sumthin' for their dedication -- if not bonuses to DC and longer fascinates, than at least a free enhancement respec and a couple free feat swaps.
In fact, if Turbine cut the power of fascinate for all bards and gave Virt II and III those kinds of boosts that this forum is calling "situationally overpowered", Turbine would arguably take a nice step towards making Virtuosos relevant. Unless the songs still wouldn't be worth it, at which point we'd have good evidence to say that fascinates are simply not as OP as recent posts would suggest.
EDIT: Hehe, Ponza beat me to the response.
Last edited by gavagai; 01-28-2010 at 01:57 PM.
Your bard cannot contribute to the party anymore if they nerf Fascinate, is what you are saying. I get it. The problem is with your build, not with reducing the duration of Fascinate. No. It's not that Warchanter or Spellsingers are too powerful; they compare just well to other builds from other classes in terms of power. No only that, they even compare to a well built bard that has picked Virtuoso instead of Warchanter or Spellsinger!
The problem is that your build uses S&B, bastard swords, Cleave and Great Cleave. The problem is that your build has low DCs, poor melee DPS and nothing else to make up for those sacrifices. The problem is that your bard has made all those build decisions that are so inferior to other ones.
The reduced Fascinate duration would not be a problem for any well built Virtuoso, which Ponza69's build is not.
I disagree. Virtuoso could use a great deal of lovin', right now, because the PrE is noticeably weaker then the other two bard PrE.
Last edited by Borror0; 01-28-2010 at 02:04 PM.
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you need to review the build again - it doesnt start with a low char - with items I am at 28 or 30 at lvl16
Sorry. I meant low spell DCs because you don't have Heighten, Spell Focus:Enhancement, Spellsinger and have lower Cha than a dedicated CC bard. I probably wrote low Cha because, usually, the mistake is due to having low Cha rather than forgetting the must have feats.
I should probably have mentioned the reduced ability to pass SR, to be fair.
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You need to understand how to speak Borror0 first.
28 or 30 CHA is a LOW CHA in those worlds. That is because the stock builds are not crafted with any sort of min/maxing employed. Most hand crafted bards start with MAX CHA (it plays such a role in so many abilities and skills it really cries out for it) UNLESS it is a focused Warchanter Melee build in which case a lot lower CHA can work almost as well. A Drow Spellsinger (often starts with a 20 CHA) then expects to add a +2 Tome, +6 Item and 4 or 5 points of Enhancements and up to 5 points of LEVEL ups for a 37 to 38 CHA. That can be a huge DC difference in landing spells.
However doing so will also limit your flexibility on how many points you have to put in other stats. No one build can be the best at everything. What significance players put on various aspects of play varies a lot with their playstyle and the groups they run with. For many players, they cannot stand to just be good at things, they have to excel at them or it is pointless to spend effort trying. Many of those builds are also very codependant on their teammates to survive however.
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dang tough crowd in here - I thought it was pretty good for a 28 pt build and a +1 tome that dropped in Invaders!
Anyways - not sure what we are talking about anymore so carry on
I think people are missing the point of this line of discussion from Borr and I, which isn't that CC is overpowered and needs to be nerfed.
It's that crowd control spells are often one of the two following things in any given situation. Often, the same spell alternates between them depending on what quest you're in.
A: Spell is completely useless and not worth spending SP on due to outright immunities, vastly increased saving throws vs that specific effect, or other gameplay mechanic designed to nerf said spell into oblivion
B: Spell is incredibly effective and spamming it trivializes content.
Spells like flesh to stone, fascinate and otto's dancing sphere all function this way. When they are not hindered by artificial quest mechanics and your dc is adequate to land them more than 20% of the time, they are absolutely phenomenal. Leaving statue fields of respawns you don't have to kill, fascinating mobs with no fail chance for 5 min and leaving them in the dust, dancing huge packs of mobs stuck in the orb with a mind fog for a minute at a time unable to act, etc. Since this stuff does trivialize content, mobs are given immunities to them. They are either great or terrible and almost never anything in between.
What DDO needs are more CC effects like web, where I throw it quite regularly and it works great, but there is no quest or situation in which you think, or the party says 'ok we'll spam web here and win'. In order to get to that state, the outlying benefits of the other CC methods need to be toned back so that they aren't super duper ******** effective when they work. Then turbine is free to lift the blanket immunities and massive resistance bonuses against those spells, and they will be more universally useful without being overpowered.
Most of the people defending CC in this thread are not cutting edge players. They're players with CC focused builds who's CC builds are utterly dominating in less challenging content like the Vale and Inspired Quarter, where their CC is at near or full effect and more or less wins the quests without any sort of effort at all. Those same characters are frequently incredibly ineffective in Amrath and Epic content, becuase they specialize in something that would trivialize those encounters if allowed to work .. so its not allowed to work.
No its not bad when compared to most players in the game, but by the standards some are judging it by, those standards developed by those who play a lot and build a lot and have the gear and plat to fund a lot, it is lower than most of them would achieve by that point.
What this also points out, is that the way the game plays for someone with crafted and geared up toons running elite/epic quests, is a whole world different from someone playing a new toon with only what they are getting from drops (since they have no other resource sugar daddies to twink them) and running normal or hard quests at level perhaps. In those normal quests, the Save DC are on a par with normal builds, but will be inadequate on ELITE settings with mobs saving way too often.
When someone proclaims a build gimped, that is often due to indicating that it will not be up to performing whatever role they perceive your build / character doing, when running the content they want to run. I used to play a lot with a Brother in Law and he built characters he had fun playing (ie the whole point of this or any game). We could duo a lot of quests. Often easily on Normal, with challenge on Hard and sometimes not so well on Elite. When we would join up with groups, we would see how we compared. When he started comparing his characters to others, he was not as happy, and felt like he was not pulling his weight. (He eventually stopped playing and went to that other game...grrrr). His problem was not with finding fun with the game, but that when he spent time comparing how he liked to play and what got it done for him, and how others were doing it that doubt arose. SO play the way you like to play, be effective in the groups you are in and running with, and do not worry about how others, with different mindsets choose to enjoy the game they play.
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I agree. A reduced fascinate would be fine for a Virt built like a Warchanter, just like a reduced "irresistable dance" would be fine for a Spellsinger built like a warchanter. It still begs the question why you would WANT a Virtuoso or a Spellsinger when the game design clearly favors the warchanter.
The answer to the question "why should we have excessively long CC" is clear in the case of the Virt: you made the PrE to provide extraordinary CC at the expense of better DPS and more mana/better casting DCs, and these players spent the AP for that CC. Unless they give Virts other offensive and defensive songs -- stat draining, HP draining, performance boosting, whatever -- I think they should have good CC.
For other casting CC classes there's less reason for excessively long CC, since they offer many benefits other than CC. But in my (limited) experience the reasons for long CC are (a) it is efficient, and (b) since it is efficient, it allows you to have fun with SP. For those CC lovers, shorter duration is like a tax on SP. It kills CC's efficiency, which means more SP burn, which means less fun and more stress. For maybe 60% of battles, the creatures are dead before the CC wears off; but in the 40% of challenging encounters where you need it, short durations would introduce resource drain or idle time for casters.
I agree with your earlier posts saying the game would be more fun when people are engaged, and excessive CC can detract from the excitement of combat. And I agree casters in particular should have a steeper learning curve for effective high level play. But idleness or excessive resource consumption IS a cost for most players. If the spell changes weren't already made, I'd say give casters more efficient ways to influence the battlefield without making SP conservation more tedious before trying convince them that durations are excessive. Ways that didn't start: "L2P" or "reroll."
Last edited by gavagai; 01-28-2010 at 03:04 PM.
'good cc' is not 'I press a button and without fail 20 mobs stand totally still and dont count on dungeon alert for 5 minutes, which is 1/3 the duration of this entire quest and so they wont be able to catch up ever'. Fascinate would be totally balanced if it kept the same dc and lasted 1/6th as long. Or if it could actually fail sometimes.
There's nothing about either of those that would maek it not worth using. But when a bard fascinates 30 mobs at once and you skip them all, it is retardedly strong and anyone who can't appreciate that is just afraid they can't do the quest in question without it.
Excuse me, where did I say I didnt know HOW to fascinate? You REALLY need to get your nose out of the clouds and listen to people who disagree with you. You talk to people like you are RIGHT and waaaay down below you everybody is wrong.
I was trying not to mention that the type of people you run with seldom ALLOW a bard to do that "fascinate timing" you think you talk so maturely about.
Last edited by LeslieWest_GuitarGod; 01-28-2010 at 03:08 PM.
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Actually the type of people i run with recognize that there is no need for them to adjust their play as long as the bard is competent enough to type 'fasc' when we engage the mob pack so we can skip it and move on to zerging.
I think its possible you confused the people you run with and the people I run with. Heck, the people I run with know that the second you hear the fascinate jingle start, you sprint towards the bard and then take off running cause we don't have to waste our time on these mobs anymore