Crowd Control/Heroic Surge Feedback

[Borror0]

How do I balance spellcasters such that, over the course of an adventure, both the caster and his party get a chance to have fun?

Often, the solution is to make party member work in conjunction to each player's contribution adds up to the other group members'.

If a spell allows to completely overcome a challenge with one cast, it means that the other players have not had the chance to contribute which is not particularly fun. An example of such a spell would be instant-death spells like Wail of the Banshee: when it works, it bypasses all effort made to damage it by your other party members. That does not mean it's a bad spell. It's actually lots of fun for the caster but, like you said, the spell has "to suck frequently in order to make the game more fun for everyone else."

Likewise, CC spells may or may not trivialize the contribution made by your party members: if the spell lasts very long, it's just like a save or die spell because you can ignore the target and just run away after tossing it. In order to allow your other party members to contribute, spells have to not last too long so that, if they failed to be killed, they'll come back later therefore preventing the CC spell to overcome challenges on its own.

A great example of good such spells are holds: they have a very short duration but are very powerful because of how it powers up melee characters in your group.

The fact that we can have a debate about whether a CC nerf would even be noticeable to most players should tell you that CC is not on the same level.

Take any buff that lasts one minute per level and ask yourself whether it would be a meaningful nerf to set the maximum duration at fifteen minutes. The answer would be no, it would not make a difference in most cases because there are very few situations that call for the full twenty minutes (or forty, if extended) that it can last. Yet, those buffs are not underpowered. It's just that the duration is excessively long compared to what is often needed.

The same logic is applied to the CC durations: some spells have a maximum duration so long that there is no normal gameplay situation that will result in reaching the full duration; therefore, few players would ever notice if the duration was reduced. It's not because the spell was too weak.

[Zenako]

The same logic is applied to the CC durations: some spells have a maximum duration so long that there is no normal gameplay situation that will result in reaching the full duration; therefore, few players would ever notice if the duration was reduced. It's not because the spell was too weak.

This right there is where the disconnect is happening. For you and players who play with similar styles as it appears you do, that is probably completely true. HOWEVER, that same statement is far from true for other styles of play. For them, spells like Domination do run there natural course. Everyone has a bias on how they perceive the game is "normally" played. It is all but unavoidable. What is harder to do is to step back and consider the alternatives.

With CC'd mobs being DA neutral, it allowed some quests to be handled or managed in certain ways instead of straight DPS beatdowns. That will no longer be possible next week without extensive additional spell casting (mainly Energy Drain, curse, things lke that in order to reduce the mobs save chance to only on a 20 or so.)

( Fascinate is a seperate mechanic and as such, with the Toggle OFF of HS, will actually serve to make normal Arcane CC all but pointless in comparison. NOTHING will come close to Fascinate now.)

With mobs saving out of CC so fast, any attempt to use CC to get past them, will just result in piles of mobs being aggroed and forcing battles with multiple groups of mobs at once. (It may just be my impression, but it seems that the tether on many mobs has gotten longer as the pathing AI has improved.)

CC in a number of quests has already been rendered significantly moot by the introduction of doors that can only be opened/passed when all the mobs in an area are KILLED. The same thing that affects potential CC completion of quests, also affects anyone attempting to Stealth quests, when mechanics like that are introduced. Again forcing players into a single solution.

Junts is right, CC used to be very powerful, but back then we were facing a whole different set of "end game" mobs back then. Normal off this plane fleshy types by and large, as opposed to demons and devils from other planes. It did require certain builds and foci to be "reliable" and back then, at those lower levels, there were a lot fewer spells slots to fill so if you were prepped for CC, it came at the expense of being able to prep other spells. (At end game now, with so many spell slots, you can generally fit almost anything you want for a given quest, with no compromise needed.)

It was also simply true that the difference between the best and worst type builds and gear outs for casters, was still not that far apart. As the level cap increases, the size of that gap keeps growing, so that now at 20, someone with gear and good knowledge can have DC's that are 10 or more higher than another caster. IF the "Good" caster has a 50/50 chance, the "normal" caster has only a 5% chance of landing a spell. If they move the target so the normal caster has a 50/50, the good caster has only a 5% chance of failure. (When the difference was in the 4 or 5 DC range, it was feasible to make things where good casters landed 60% and normal casters were 40%. Much more manageable to design around. (This is much like the AC inflation issue, with the concerns about ToHit and AC issues as the games reaches high end game status.)

If you are running with "normal" casters, then even on non-immune mobs, CC is not an auto win, since they do not land the spells reliably. To keep it "fun" and challenging for highly skilled players, who build highly effective toons, means that those same quests will be unwinnable slaughter fests for any "normal" players who attempt them.

Mad seemed to agree that a good chunk of the motivation / driver for these changes was feedback from the "normal" players who could not handle or understand how things were working. Players who had not either attempted to get ways to mitigate adverse CC, or understood what it really involved. Since there had been a long standing gripe fest about Dog/mob Trips and Air Elementals and they share some gameplay simularities with Spell Driven CC effects, the developers clearly thought finding a one size fits all issues solution would / could be elegant.

However, we have seen how those intentions ended up turning out...not that well recieved by the knowledgeable vets. (for a variety of reasons ranging from self interest to concern about game intergrity)

[Borror0]

For them, spells like Domination do run there natural course.

I already told you that Dominate is not a spell I consider to have an excessively long duration for its effect.

Would you really make the same argument if restricted to defend the current live duration of Fascinate, (Mass) Suggestion or Flesh to Stone?

It did require certain builds and foci to be "reliable" and back then

No.

All that you needed in Module 4.1 was Wall of Fire and either of Finger of Death with Web or Mass Suggestion with PK. Disco Ball was a neat addition, too.
All that you needed in Module 5 was Wall of Fire, Maximize and Empower. Oh, and Cone of Cold for fire immune mobs.

If you are running with "normal" casters, then even on non-immune mobs, CC is not an auto win, since they do not land the spells reliably.

Zenako, I have honestly no idea of what you think my point is but I am certain you misunderstood it since the ability of caster to land spells reliably in the current game is no, literally, no importance to my argument. I could go on to explain what my point is, but I'd just be repeating myself. Could you point out to me the passage that gave you the impression the current saves were relevant to my point?

Mad seemed to agree that a good chunk of the motivation / driver for these changes was feedback from the "normal" players who could not handle or understand how things were working. Players who had not either attempted to get ways to mitigate adverse CC, or understood what it really involved.

I don't think remember him saying anything about the part I put in bold. Got a quote?

[Zenako]

Proably inferring a bit from this one for example. The part you bolded was my take on why those players would be having issues. D&D/DDO is complex (when compared to some other games) and if you make limited or no attempts to learn the rules, you will more than likely get frustrated at times.

http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...&postcount=583

and other times the developers have cited the motivations for changes being driven by exit info.

As for spells being reliable, my comments were directed more specifically to CC, not spells like Walls of Fire, which I consider killing spells. (I suppose you could use a WoF for Aggro and then run around until you got tired and view that as CC, but that is not really what any of us mean by CC...) Back then, unless you could land CC spells more often than not, most players considered it a waste of time and spell points. Since back then the mob HP were not as inflated and killing them with spells was an option. (perhaps not a great one, but an option).

As for Dominate, I mentioned that spell since it has a fixed duration with no saves. One can often end up with the same durations effectively on spells with saves if the mobs fail to roll any good d20's. That is why most testing on Lamannia was done with fixed duration CC spells to try and highlight the differences. For some spells that already have recurring saves with short intervals, the changes (if any) will be hard to measure without a lot of testing. Especially without known baselines to work off of in many cases.

In many of the examples, I was using the generic you, not the You = Borror0. Reread them in that light. Replace the "you" with "someone". I can see where you might get confused since I did start the post with a reference to You and your play experience and perspective and did not make it clear that once past that intro paragraph the comments were generic not player specific.

[Mjesko]

I think that's the beginning of the problem rather than the end of it. CC in DDO is generally binary--you make the enemy suck or you don't. An enemy that sucks is not an exciting challenge. Because CC that is effective will end up removing exciting challenges, it frequently must be ineffective in order to make the challenges exciting for everyone else.

So here's my alternate question, to replace "how do I balance CC such that, when it is cast, it won't make the encounter easy":
How do I balance spellcasters such that, over the course of an adventure, both the caster and his party get a chance to have fun?

The first solution would be a better quest design. If a quest would have different monsters in most encounters spell casting would be much more balanced. For example if an encounter has two humans and two undead 50 % of the encounter would be immune to cc, but on the other 50 % cc could work great.

The second solution, as i already said in this thread, would be to remove the scaling of the durations of all spells and use always a duration, that is based on a level 10 caster. This would make spells of high level characters less overpowered and would improve the spells of low level characters.

The third solution would be to remove rest shrines and to give players the ability to regenerate hp and sp. A player could regenerate 1 % of his hp or sp every 6 seconds if he does not hit a monster or cast a spell. This would reduce the need for healers in the party and it would be no problem if the spells have short durations or do not inflict high damage.

[Favis]

You don't need to reduce -every- duration. Man, have you ever seen someone here say hold lasted too long?

Its cool you can do that to ritual, which is a very easy quest. The problem is that, say, lets take a hard quest. Like Sins of Attrition. If Mass suggest landed there, it would be, by far, the best way to do the quest. You would run through it, spam mass suggestion and charm 1/2 of eahc pack and just run on past it. Orthons have pretty bad will saves as a whole. So instead of fighting what are supposed to be very, very difficult melee mobs, you would charm them all for a really long time and not have to ever actually deal with their damage or fight them. If mass suggest worked in there, it would be stupid good.

Because of that, those mobs magically have massive will saves and charm/hold resistance. Imagine for a minute if mass suggestion only lasted, tops, 20-30 seconds. It'd still be good (it might have to last even less, as the only mass charm spell), but there comes a point in shortening its duration where it goes from trivializing the quest to simply good even if it works regularly, which in turn lets them lower the will save and make stuff like hold person actually viable. Right now, its not. Not only is mass hold overly hard to land with a fairly short duration, it is a lot worse of an effect than many aoe spells with identical saves (mass suggest, otto's sphere). If these spells are closer in effectiveness (instead of mass suggestion clearly trumping everything, and otto's clearly trumping when you have to kill the mobs yourself), then the will save can be lowered without the danger of making the quest a joke. As long as one of these spells is so overwhelmingly good, well .. they have to balance it for the most overwhelming of them.

I think what happend when they nerfed hold person (long ago) is a good illustration of what I don't what to happen again.

I would like to have a balance between the spells so you get variation like Junts are agrumenting for above. At the same time I would like to have the possiblity for people to keep a diffrent play stile if they like. I also would like to get more option to specilize in CC as a caster.

if after analyz it's shown that Mass suggest/charm is the reason behind the high will saves of the monsters lowing the base of Mass suggest to 30 might be a good action. How every then I would like them to at the same time add enhancment so that that the people that are dedicated user of Mass suggest/charm could continue to play in the same way.
If that is the most fun things for them to do let them pay 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 ap to get a much higher lenght of Mass sugestion.
The description right now
"Casts Suggestion on multiple enemies. The actions of affected enemies are influenced by you, allowing you to suggest that they fight as your allies for 6 seconds per caster level. A successful Will save negates this effect"
http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Spell:Mass_Suggestion
could be changed to:
Casts Suggestion on multiple enemies. The actions of affected enemies are influenced by you, allowing you to suggest that they fight as your allies for 10 seconds + 1 seconds per caster level. A successful Will save negates this effect.
The enhancment would be some thing like:
Improved Charm IV
Available to Bard/Sorcerer/Wizard class level 10
Grant a additional length to you suggestion with 1 seconds per caster level, bringing the total increase to 4 secounds per caster level. Also adding a additional leght to you charm with ...
The number might not be the best but my point is that you should be able to "pay action points" to keep the lenght.
This could bee transfered to other ablities.
Combined with lowering will saves and a balance beteen the CC spells that would be the life for a all round caster more fun and a CC oriented caster would be overall stronger in CC then before but weaker in other areas (as he would have less actionpoints for them).


I'm happy that they didn't release HS as that shows that they are listning to the player base.

[redoubt]

I still say don't mess with spell durations and saves.

1. drop the blanket immunities (bosses the possible exception.)

2. teach the mobs to do what we do. I'm not talking about spam casting something just in case. If the mob caster sees an ally with a given ailment then that caster mob decides if it is more important to assist the ally or to continue with offensive casting.
2a. Cast remove curse on a cursed ally
2b. Cast break enchantment or GH on a stoned ally
2c. Cast restoration on a stat/level drained ally.
2d. etc

3. remove the stat and level regen that was added at the end of the summer.

Bottom line: Make the game smarter not dummer. Make us be better prepared and play smarter, not an easy button.

[Favis]

The first solution would be a better quest design. If a quest would have different monsters in most encounters spell casting would be much more balanced. For example if an encounter has two humans and two undead 50 % of the encounter would be immune to cc, but on the other 50 % cc could work great.

That's a intresting suggestion

[shadosatblackphoenix]

So, let me get this straight here.

The theoritical ability to run in Sins of Attrition and charm half the mobs would "trivialise" the encounter.

However, a pair Tempests or monks with dual vorpals currently can go in, and before a wizard has the time to even cast mass charm (without quicken i guess) or dancing sphere, everything is dead, permanently (Death is a CC with a pretty long durations in most quests =P), regardless of difficulty settings. But hey, thats okay

And if said melees have greensteel weapons, or soon stuff from Epic VoN, they won't even need vorpal to do it on elite. And they won't run out of SP doing it halfway to the next shrine. And it will never fail because of DCs, either.

Ok, got it. Thats the same as the "nerf" to the pale master necrotic touch before it even came out. Wiping entire encounters in Shavarath in 0.5 seconds is okay, -as long as its done by melees-.

[Borror0]

As for spells being reliable, my comments were directed more specifically to CC, not spells like Walls of Fire, which I consider killing spells.

I know but my point was that it was not hard being a good spellcaster in those times.

In the pre-Module 4 time period, all that you needed to be a good spellcaster was Haste, Solid Fog (which were often instead casted of scrolls, since they were affordable and lasted seven minutes anyway), CK (see Solid Fog), Hypnotic Pattern and Web. That was, by far, the most effective manner to play a spellcater and nearly everyone had those spells but maybe a few sorcerers. Firewall scrolls helped, but were not necessary.

In post-Module 4.0 times, the same spells were kept but Disco Ball and Finger of death became new favorites.

In post-Module 4.1, the previous favorites were nerfed to an acceptable power level by dropping their duration under a point where the spell didn't last the whole dungeon. This prevented us from casting lingering spells and then just pull all the mobs into it, making those spells less spell point efficient than they were. They also removed several scrolls, like Blade Barrier, Wall of Fire, CK and Dimension Door. To make up for that, they also gave us an increase to spell points which helped make up for the nerf. Instead, we just used Charm Monster, Mass Suggestion and Disco Ball (or PK, Finger of Death and Firewall) and zerged through.

In Module 5, CC was useless because of undeads (except for Web) but Wall of Fire killed everything anyway.

You didn't need to spec for it or anything difficult like that. You just needed to use the overpowered spells of the time (which many, funnily enough, have no been nerfed as of today - I wonder if that would have to do anything the the great number of immunities at end game!).

Back then, unless you could land CC spells more often than not, most players considered it a waste of time and spell points. Since back then the mob HP were not as inflated and killing them with spells was an option. (perhaps not a great one, but an option).

You must have been playing with the horrible spellcasters and don't put me in the powergamer category on that one, I was leading a casual guild back in those days. Nearly all PUGs on Tharashk (and then Thelanis) heavily used CC. Yes, sometimes the mobs were then killed by melees but, like you said, it was because of how low their HP was (or, in the case of PotP, because we had to pass by twice). However, CC was used and incredibly common because it was THAT powerful.

Need an example? Think of your average Gianthold Tor back in the days: Flesh to Stone and Disco Ball.

As for Dominate, I mentioned that spell since it has a fixed duration with no saves.

I'm still not sure what you point is or was.

The first solution would be a better quest design. If a quest would have different monsters in most encounters spell casting would be much more balanced. For example if an encounter has two humans and two undead 50 % of the encounter would be immune to cc, but on the other 50 % cc could work great.

The problem with that is that I can just Mass Suggestion the humans and then use a Wall of Fire or two on the undeads. Done.

Additionally, I can still use Flesh to Stone on half to mobs to halt their respawns (if they are respawns) so the encounter has become 50% easier than intended.

Limiting Mass Suggestion and other CC spells to affecting half the dungeon still means that I have overpowered spells that can affect half the dungeon. Sure, you can try to reduce the percentage further like a quarter of the dungeon but it's not suddenly as simple you made it be in your post. The question then becomes, "What percentage of mobs do I have to make immune so that CC is desirable but not overpowered?" But then, the answer might be that it's impossible.

The third solution would be to remove rest shrines and to give players the ability to regenerate hp and sp.

No. Just no.

[shadosatblackphoenix]

The problem with that is that I can just Mass Suggestion the humans and then use a Wall of Fire or two on the undeads. Done.

You can, sure. A few times. Except now you spent nearly 100 sp on an encounter that a monk (who regenerates ki, very, very quickly) could have destroyed in just a little longer, at no risk (remember: even at low level content where mass suggestion works, and even if you have greater spell penetration, all spell pen enhancements, you're a drow with an int tome with spell penetration gears and greater enchantment focus gear, if you're at the quest's level, mass suggestion will not come even close to working 100% of the time. And thats with a character that is 100% focused to it, in quests where mobs have nothing specific against CC).

The caster however, is now down 3-5% (a bit less if a sorcerer, admitedly, but then you come in the territory that they don't have enough feat to get everything required to pull this off reliably) of their spell points (unless they have an epic spell storing ring or something).

So they can do what you mentionned, a few times, if they're willing to sit a bunch of encounters out later (remember your "but mobs that don't move aren't fun!". Casters without SP aren't fun either. Thats why the only things viable to do are high duration spells, like Firewall, Disco Ball, Energy Drain or Flesh to Stone)

Edit: oh, and for the infinite respawn "stopping". Seems fair to me, don't you think? Infinite respawn vs not so infinite SP. The arcane caster can use part of their limited ressources to limit the respawn. The only other alternative? Sit it out. Fun! Especially if the mobs are immune to fire. You can't exactly keep Cone of Cold or whatever going on forever.

[smatt]

...and instances where Long CC and Fascinate were Paramount to success should be added to the game.

This is my point.

But your point misses the point.... You see there's a big difference between...... "Hey, this is how you should do it" And "Hey this is how you should do it, AND it'll even fit into your development budget"

So few people ever include such a thing as a limited development budget into their thinking around how this game is designed. Lots of things sound a like a geat idea till you consider how much they will cost.....

[lathreborn]

This is an extremely bad idea, a giant leap in the wrong direction.

There are many CC wizards & bards that will be left out in the cold with this change.

I have a level 16 spellsinger that, with the advent of 'heroic surge', might just be scrapped. she was build and designed as a CC bard. if i can't get my spells/songs to land, why bother playing her at all? have two characters that will be nerfed if this goes live, caster and bard. and if the casters/bards are unable to keep the mobs in some sort of cc, then whats the point of having a caster/bard in party? buffs? i might as well delete my caster now and free up a character slot....


before you ask, no i havent tried it myself, but from what im seeing here it doesnt look good for the caster types.

[carlston]

Do the mobs get Heroic Surges too? I had one occur while being tripped/overrun by the Maralith in The Demons Den. It had a short duration (5 to 10 seconds) and it freed me from the effects of overrun (which in this case was not a big issue, her melee attacks are not to be feared unlike her big sisters it appears.)

Not sure why this is being introduced and what systemic problem is supposed to address however.

I am sure just like mobs get unlimited mana, casting on the move, never missing ray spells....yeah they will have heroic surge probley every other second...

Just a bad idea all in all. Notice they just don't stop mobs from greater commanding us for like 5-6 minutes, this reeks of forced Pvp.

[SimVerg]

(and if you think people aren't doing OOB with fascinate and devious bonuses, well, you haven't been running epic OOB. You get out of devious from the mobs you have to kill with the 3 required named, but you can fascinate the entire rest of the quest, and people do).

The scorpions are immune to fascinate!

[Junts]

The scorpions are immune to fascinate!

But too slow to keep up and don't do any of the really dangerous things (like dispel, web or shoot arrows to interrupt levers), so they don't even matter!

[Zenako]

Regarding the scorpions in OOB

But too slow to keep up and don't do any of the really dangerous things (like dispel, web or shoot arrows to interrupt levers), so they don't even matter!

But heres the point. For you and other highly skilled / knowledgeable players, they might not matter. But I have seen players get trapped and blocked in by combinations of drow and scorpions. Players looking for the right way to go. (This is most especially true in the first room, once past that it is pretty much a one way street....) Or when waiting at a door for others to catch up, if they had run past a few mobs, those mobs catch them at the doors, and now that have mobs behind them and mobs ahead of them. (I have run OOB a lot of times, and no I am not getting caught by things like this, but I have seen them at times in the past.)

Vermin are immune to pretty much all CC, Fascinate included, it is the same thing that makes that portion of the vale with all the spiders so much harder for some builds/players to even attempt taking on.

If you are able to CC the drow, and focus on the scorpions, it becomes a lot more manageable for some groups. (Not all...sadly...)

The point being, mobs are threats, bigger threats to some players than others due to game knowledge, gear and skill. It is disingenious to dismiss mobs as not being threats, just because they are not a threat to you.

[SimVerg]

Regarding the scorpions in OOB



But heres the point. For you and other highly skilled / knowledgeable players, they might not matter. But I have seen players get trapped and blocked in by combinations of drow and scorpions. Players looking for the right way to go. (This is most especially true in the first room, once past that it is pretty much a one way street....) Or when waiting at a door for others to catch up, if they had run past a few mobs, those mobs catch them at the doors, and now that have mobs behind them and mobs ahead of them. (I have run OOB a lot of times, and no I am not getting caught by things like this, but I have seen them at times in the past.)

Vermin are immune to pretty much all CC, Fascinate included, it is the same thing that makes that portion of the vale with all the spiders so much harder for some builds/players to even attempt taking on.

If you are able to CC the drow, and focus on the scorpions, it becomes a lot more manageable for some groups. (Not all...sadly...)

The point being, mobs are threats, bigger threats to some players than others due to game knowledge, gear and skill. It is disingenious to dismiss mobs as not being threats, just because they are not a threat to you.

I don't think anyone running epic OOB with a serious expectation of a completion has been threatened by the scorpions.

[Zenako]

I don't think anyone running epic OOB with a serious expectation of a completion has been threatened by the scorpions.

Granted, been there, done that, but I was looking at it from a more global perspective, and did not notice the specific citation to EPIC in the source comment.

Just part of my attempt to keep a broader perspective on how these changes will impact players at all challenge levels, and change quest dynamics notably. For example ran Madstone last night with my level 13 bard. With occasional Disco's or Mass Suggestions, was able to turn fights (like the opening battlefield), into something a lot more manageable for the hireling cleric to keep up with. It will also change how you have to approach the Seer protections, where you have enemy archers and casters on unreachable ledges. Can it be done (any good ranged attacker can grab the collective aggro and rely on STUPID AI that will keep shooting at them instead even if their LoS is blocked - is that really any better?), yah, but all you have done is remove one option.

[SimVerg]

Granted, been there, done that, but I was looking at it from a more global perspective, and did not notice the specific citation to EPIC in the source comment.

Just part of my attempt to keep a broader perspective on how these changes will impact players at all challenge levels, and change quest dynamics notably. For example ran Madstone last night with my level 13 bard. With occasional Disco's or Mass Suggestions, was able to turn fights (like the opening battlefield), into something a lot more manageable for the hireling cleric to keep up with. It will also change how you have to approach two of the Seer protections, where you have enemy archers and casters on unreachable ledges. Can it be done (any good ranged attacker can grab the collective aggro and rely on STUPID AI that will keep shooting at them instead even if their LoS is blocked - is that really any better?), yah, but all you have done is remove one option.

Monsters breaking cc in 3.5, 2.5 or 1 minute and requiring 2 spells to reapply will destroy your strategy in a 3 minute protect? Yeah, the elite numbers are at the edge of what is reasonable, but come on.