Crowd Control/Heroic Surge Feedback

[Turial]

....
Stoneskin should be permanent duration since it's ablative, you cant extend it's duration thats true because it's supposed to be permanent. It should be permanent like pact. Until it's protection is gone.....

You can't currently extend stoneskin because of a bug where you could not refresh the protection of stoneskin with an unextened spell when you had an extended version of it running but with low durability left. This change made clickies and wands of stoneskin better than they were previously.

[Borror0]

You can't currently extend stoneskin because of a bug where you could not refresh the protection of stoneskin with an unextened spell when you had an extended version of it running but with low durability left. This change made clickies and wands of stoneskin better than they were previously.

The reason that Stoneskin can't be extended is that, most of the time, the effect will be depleted before a non-extended Stoneskin is over. The devs decided to not let it be extended, to make it more convenient for us. Likewise, instant-death spells can't me Empowered or Maximized because only rarely would you want Maximize or Empower to affect those..

[Cyr]

Chiming in here to say that we *are* listening - or at least trying to (some of the posts in this thread make it somewhat difficult :-)).

This is a complex game and we're well aware that despite our best intentions, there can be undesirable ramifications. That's why we have Lamannia and start threads asking for feedback.

Thanks to all of you who tested the changes and reported their findings. I can say right now that this feature will not go live in the next update.

Having said that, I'd love to engage (and perhaps challenge) you on some of the concerns listed in this thread at some point in the near future.

Thanks for caring.

Good news here's to hoping it never goes live.

That said Floyd the Turbine company line of complaining about the harshness of negative feedback is not very helpful to you getting quality feedback. If people are afraid that their feedback will not be listened to if they post how they truly feel about something in game then all potential feedback is slanted towards the positive. PM me for some personal viewpoints I have gotten from people about certain changes and what they ended up posting or why they didn't if you are interested.

If even worse you ignore too harsh of negative feedback then in addition to skewing the nature of the feedback you receive itself you also throw out data points on the negative. Since there has been zero indication anywhere in Turbine's development history of likewise ignoring the other extreme (glowing mindless praise which may even show complete misunderstanding of basic game rules/dynamics) that would give the developers an unbalanced (and unrealistic) view of how people feel about game features.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

If you look at history, even excellent franchises like Star Wars Galaxies and Diablo, the community will take nerfs to a single spell or weapon or event. But as soon as you attempt to nerf a game-wide PLAYSTYLE, you run the risk of losing the COMMUNITY.

Ask Diablo players what happened on nerf.. err... patch 1.10.

Lesson: Never mess with a playstyle, unless you've got a pretty damned good plan B you can enact within 24 hours.

[Ponza69]

I am pretty new to the game but in the last couple of months have really been enjoying getting my characters above 10th level. I am F2P but have purchased a lot of content and overall i am very entertained by DDO.

This suggestion on implementing Heroic Surge will not become reality this time around so I am probrbaly late to comment. But if this problem is brought up again and modifications CC are introduced then I would ask the developers to please review the Path of the Virturoso. (thanks Mad Floyd for updating the community)

When I created my bard (1st character) I did not know a thing abotu DDO. I just read the descriptions that informed me what the different classes and paths would/could do. I believe the virturoso is listed as good solo ability and master of crowd crontrol. I liked this - coming from many years playing EQ1 (where the bard ruled) I thought I would give it a shot based on that experience.

I really didn't trust myself with doing my own build so I followed the standard path in the program. I had to re-do my enhancements around level 12 after doing research on Entrall and Music of the dead/makers as I did not understand the pre-requisites for getting these). During this research I ran into a number of negative threads about virturosos and how worthless they are. I really didnt believe them as playing in a small group of friends and family the buffs, heals, and CC allowed more than enough satisfaction with the class and my abilities.

Moving on into the world of PUGs my experience has been pretty good with the occasional "why the heck did you roll a virt" and the "you should re-roll a spell-singer/warchanter". I try to make the best out of any situations but in my experiences as a duo/trio'er moving into a full group the way one plays their character is always changing based on the enviroment around you.

When doing quests, slayers, rares at level or close to level the entrall, music of the makers/dead are darn good songs. I can solo pretty good - but takes a long time to drop monsters. When I duo or trio with other dps classes that will work with me/enthrall (music of the X) then things are still chanlenging but are also doable and very fun. Lots of compliments go around for how the tatics fit the need. When I am in a full group I rarely (almost never) activate these songs. There is just not enough time to get them off to be of any value as well as most do not know what the little notes over the heads of the enemy mean. I would be more valuable in the support staff buffing / healing / occasion dps.

The point I am trying to make here is there are a number of bards, wizards, sorc, clerics, etc commenting on this thread and that is good. But there is really no one character class that could be impacted by this proposed change more than the virturoso. When compared to the spell singer and warchanter maybe some of the comments I received where true (well maybe not true at the time but maybe forsehadowing of things to come if something like this was to be implemented).

I hope they take into account the balancing that occurs with in classes and sub-classes too. If they do not then I hope they take the entire prestige class away to prevent people from starting a class after experience is gained the realization that they are really only half a character. I would much rather have mana % cost savings on spells or stone skin chant than a nerfed fascinate as a prestige enhancement. (just talking bards with that comment there)

Thanks for reading - my selfish plug

[MadFloyd]

Hey all,

I'm hoping that we can engage in a healthy, fun debate in this thread. I have no doubt that it will prove enlightening for me; hopefully you'll find it useful as well. I encourage everyone to share their opinions, but please do so in a respectful manner. You're going to passionately disagree with some of things I (or others) present here - and that's expected and totally fine - but being disrespectful will just bring an end to the dialog.

Let me also state that I'm going to adopt the stance that most of you are more versed than I when it comes to high level player tactics and many of the nuances of character builds. I don't intend to challenge you in this regard.

As you’re all aware, we’ve taken steps to make the game more accessible. Part of this effort included making the game more solo and small-party friendly and the dungeon scaling system has been very successful in this regard. That said, while this system reduces CC duration (on player characters) when appropriate, CC can still be a problem when the debuff is immediately re-cast on the character. Player still ends up being held for a long time, feels helpless and dies. Fun? Obviously subjective, but for many, not really. We could get into a huge debate over the whole ‘DDO is a party based game’, but that would be a huge tangent and derail the point of this thread, so I’m going to ask that we avoid this. I’d prefer that we try to focus on the motivations behind Heroic Surge with the goal of addressing the issues while preserving the gameplay depth that makes DDO so special.

So this alone was the original goal of the feature. I’m going to quote someone who posted early in this thread wondering why we just didn’t to this:
1) Don't allow debuff effects (spells, trip, knockdown etc.) to be reapplied until the current timer has expired.
2) Allow, say, three seconds of immunity before an effect can be reapplied

The above is certainly pretty close to what I had in mind. It didn’t get implemented this way, however. It mutated somewhat, trying to also address the situation where CC was at odds with certain dungeon mechanics (preventing monster respawns etc) and all cc durations were revisted resulting in many being shortened, some getting reoccuring saves etc. As far as the original motivation, I don’t think this system was at all successful (and posts here pretty much confirm it).

So here we are – back to the drawing board so to speak. I hope this sheds some light on things and gets the conversation flowing. Let me ask this first: what would be your argument for excessively long CC durations? One could take the approach that CC has done it’s job if it lasts the length of time it takes to kill a mob (or two). Is it the (prohibitive) spell point cost to re-cast?

[Borror0]

2) Allow, say, three seconds of immunity before an effect can be reapplied

Out of curiosity, how long was the immunity for mobs and players?

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Hey all,

I'm hoping that we can engage in a healthy, fun debate in this thread. I have no doubt that it will prove enlightening for me; hopefully you'll find it useful as well. I encourage everyone to share their opinions, but please do so in a respectful manner. You're going to passionately disagree with some of things I (or others) present here - and that's expected and totally fine - but being disrespectful will just bring an end to the dialog.

Let me also state that I'm going to adopt the stance that most of you are more versed than I when it comes to high level player tactics and many of the nuances of character builds. I don't intend to challenge you in this regard.

As you’re all aware, we’ve taken steps to make the game more accessible. Part of this effort included making the game more solo and small-party friendly and the dungeon scaling system has been very successful in this regard. That said, while this system reduces CC duration (on player characters) when appropriate, CC can still be a problem when the debuff is immediately re-cast on the character. Player still ends up being held for a long time, feels helpless and dies. Fun? Obviously subjective, but for many, not really. We could get into a huge debate over the whole ‘DDO is a party based game’, but that would be a huge tangent and derail the point of this thread, so I’m going to ask that we avoid this. I’d prefer that we try to focus on the motivations behind Heroic Surge with the goal of addressing the issues while preserving the gameplay depth that makes DDO so special.

So this alone was the original goal of the feature. I’m going to quote someone who posted early in this thread wondering why we just didn’t to this:
1) Don't allow debuff effects (spells, trip, knockdown etc.) to be reapplied until the current timer has expired.
2) Allow, say, three seconds of immunity before an effect can be reapplied

The above is certainly pretty close to what I had in mind. It didn’t get implemented this way, however. It mutated somewhat, trying to also address the situation where CC was at odds with certain dungeon mechanics (preventing monster respawns etc) and all cc durations were revisted resulting in many being shortened, some getting reoccuring saves etc. As far as the original motivation, I don’t think this system was at all successful (and posts here pretty much confirm it).

So here we are – back to the drawing board so to speak. I hope this sheds some light on things and gets the conversation flowing. Let me ask this first: what would be your argument for excessively long CC durations? One could take the approach that CC has done it’s job if it lasts the length of time it takes to kill a mob (or two). Is it the (prohibitive) spell point cost to re-cast?

The problem Madfloyd is the break from decades of D&D protocol. A simple review of the D20 descriptions of spells would be a great start. Never forget this is SUPPOSED to be a game built around established rules. That is why I bought this game, and why I still play. THAT is what makes DDO stand out from all the other MMOs.

The second issue is changing the playstyle for CC users. Imagine what nerfing CC would do to a Spell singer or Virtuoso, who really ONLY has CC as a matter of survival and contribution to this game. From the Bard community the overwhelming request is to ADD CC functionability, not take away functionability.

There must be a better way to deal with the monsters' CC without affecting the players CC.

Lastly I'd like to thank you for COMING to the entire paying and nonpaying DDO community and asking us. THAT fact alone, should put a smile on many of our faces, whether we agree or disagree in any conversation piece.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Hey Mad, first off thanks for engaging in this discussion and for the background.

I for one understand the CC change as it impacts players. Its a bit of an easy button in some ways, but I get it. The temporary immunity is also WAY overdue.

The above is certainly pretty close to what I had in mind. It didn’t get implemented this way, however. It mutated somewhat, trying to also address the situation where CC was at odds with certain dungeon mechanics (preventing monster respawns etc) and all cc durations were revisted resulting in many being shortened, some getting reoccuring saves etc. As far as the original motivation, I don’t think this system was at all successful (and posts here pretty much confirm it).

Go back to that original plan, it made sense. It was trying to use it to deal with other unrelated goals that created your problem.

So here we are – back to the drawing board so to speak. I hope this sheds some light on things and gets the conversation flowing. Let me ask this first: what would be your argument for excessively long CC durations? One could take the approach that CC has done it’s job if it lasts the length of time it takes to kill a mob (or two). Is it the (prohibitive) spell point cost to re-cast?

The reason these spells are permanent in PnP is because one option is SUPPOSED to be leaving those statues standing there and bypassing the mob. Read the DMG, you get full xp (sometimes bonus xp) for bypassing mobs in such a way as they are eliminated as a threat.

This option can be a lot of fun (I love leaving stone gardens) and this is particularily important for those solo runs you seem to want to promote. This can also be the correct strategic decision. For example in dust your options are:
1) Melees carefully kill non spidies
2) Finger non spidies
3) Stone spidies, or even everything, let Melees finish off non spidies as caster continues statumaking
4) Stone spidies, finger and melee non spidies

#1 doesn't work, spidies will die
#2 is effective for clerics/fvs/sorcs/wiz, everyone else is BORED stiff for 99% of the quest, many melee just AFK until the end fights
#3 & #4 require that longer duration CC, and both create fun play that involves the entire group

See how 3 of those 4 options work well, and your selection of method is a strategic choice that will play different and will work differently in different groups? That's great! Now if CC becomes too short term, that will leave us back with only #2, melees sleep, casters clear. Is that fun?

Your problem is that you shortcutted the programming logic for those respawns. Spawn need simply be "when guy 1 dies or xx seconds passes" or, if you really want to be complex "or when guy 1 has been permanently incapacitated"

When you talk about fun factor, giving us options is fun, forcing a single path to conclusion is text book bad DMing. Read that warning in the DMG about not punishing your players from devating from the path YOU thought they would take and not doing it YOUR way.

[Borror0]

The problem Madfloyd is the break from decades of D&D protocol. A simple review of the D20 descriptions of spells would be a great start.

If you're saying that reducing the duration is moving away from D&D, DDO currently does not use the 3.5 D&D durations for CC spells because they are just overpowered.

If you played your wizard or your bard pre-Module 4.1, Leslie, you will remember that Solid Fog once lasted 1 minute per caster level. That's just ridiculously too long and it kills the need for Extend because, really, how often do you need a 40 minutes long Solid Fog?

If you're saying that Heroic Surge's temporary immunity is what bothers you, that's a fine point but how else would you go at addressing the problem that MadFloyd was trying to solve? Unless you can find an alternative solution, D&D fidelity is a weak argument, in this case, considering how little of a modification it is. Once in-game, you'll probably completely forget it's there.

The second issue is changing the playstyle for CC users. Imagine what nerfing CC would do to a Spell singer or Virtuoso, who really ONLY has CC as a matter of survival and contribution to this game. From the Bard community the overwhelming request is to ADD CC functionability, not take away functionability.

I agree that CC needs more love but, what does it take away?

Like Junts described earlier on, there is a very small sample of spells that would be affected by this and those spells are already incredibly powerful on their own or overpowered when they break the one minute bar: Facinate, Flesh to Stone, Suggestion, etc. If anything, decreasing those spells' duration is a good balancing act. It might even be used as a leverage to persuade them stop using that many immunities in the future.

With that said, I don't know why the design team felt it was Heroic Surge's role to put an hard cap on CC duration. It would sound more logical, to me, to correct those spells' (or ability, in the case of Fascinate) duration themselves rather than apply a global change that feels artificial.

[Pharaun78]

Firstly MacFloyd, good job on engaging the community in this fashion. Lots and lots of kudos.

Building on Leslie's comment about using the existing DnD ruleset to come up with a solution:

1.) New Lvl 8 Arcane spell - Mind Blank: Subject is immune to mental/emotional magic and scrying.
2.) Alter existing - Break Enchantment: Frees subjects from ENCHANTMENTS, alterations, curses, and petrification.
3.) Alter existing - Protection from Chaos/Evil/Good/Law: +2 to AC and saves, COUNTER MIND CONTROL, hedge out elementals and outsiders.

Finally, create potions/wands/clickies of these ... Similar to poison/disease/blindness, you'll learn soon enough to stock up on some of these for adventuring purposes ... Perhaps also some items/armor containing 'Mind Blank'

my 2cents

[Aashrym]

Out of curiosity, how long was the immunity for mobs and players?

Not sure how random, but reapplying to mobs the immunity seemed random when I was hitting them.

[Borror0]

Finally, create potions/wands/clickies of these ... Similar to poison/disease/blindness, you'll learn soon enough to stock up on some of these for adventuring purposes ... Perhaps also some items/armor containing 'Mind Blank'

Making players immune to CC is poor game design. It make the gameplay very homogeneous and therefore boring. It's because we are immune to so many things that we have boring boss fights such as Shroud part 5.

Not sure how random, but reapplying to mobs the immunity seemed random when I was hitting them.

The release notes said it was random, too. I was asking for the duration range.

[Pharaun78]

Making players immune to CC is poor game design ...

I'd agree with this, if it's permanent and can't be countered. So drop the 'Mind Blank' item idea. But potions/spells can be dispelled ... the duration of the immunities adjusted to be pretty short ... now if only those cleric/arcane beasties would dispel some more ...

[Junts]

Hey all,

I'm hoping that we can engage in a healthy, fun debate in this thread. I have no doubt that it will prove enlightening for me; hopefully you'll find it useful as well. I encourage everyone to share their opinions, but please do so in a respectful manner. You're going to passionately disagree with some of things I (or others) present here - and that's expected and totally fine - but being disrespectful will just bring an end to the dialog.

Let me also state that I'm going to adopt the stance that most of you are more versed than I when it comes to high level player tactics and many of the nuances of character builds. I don't intend to challenge you in this regard.

As you’re all aware, we’ve taken steps to make the game more accessible. Part of this effort included making the game more solo and small-party friendly and the dungeon scaling system has been very successful in this regard. That said, while this system reduces CC duration (on player characters) when appropriate, CC can still be a problem when the debuff is immediately re-cast on the character. Player still ends up being held for a long time, feels helpless and dies. Fun? Obviously subjective, but for many, not really. We could get into a huge debate over the whole ‘DDO is a party based game’, but that would be a huge tangent and derail the point of this thread, so I’m going to ask that we avoid this. I’d prefer that we try to focus on the motivations behind Heroic Surge with the goal of addressing the issues while preserving the gameplay depth that makes DDO so special.

So this alone was the original goal of the feature. I’m going to quote someone who posted early in this thread wondering why we just didn’t to this:
1) Don't allow debuff effects (spells, trip, knockdown etc.) to be reapplied until the current timer has expired.
2) Allow, say, three seconds of immunity before an effect can be reapplied

The above is certainly pretty close to what I had in mind. It didn’t get implemented this way, however. It mutated somewhat, trying to also address the situation where CC was at odds with certain dungeon mechanics (preventing monster respawns etc) and all cc durations were revisted resulting in many being shortened, some getting reoccuring saves etc. As far as the original motivation, I don’t think this system was at all successful (and posts here pretty much confirm it).

So here we are – back to the drawing board so to speak. I hope this sheds some light on things and gets the conversation flowing. Let me ask this first: what would be your argument for excessively long CC durations? One could take the approach that CC has done it’s job if it lasts the length of time it takes to kill a mob (or two). Is it the (prohibitive) spell point cost to re-cast?

I like this post. Here are some thoughts from the endgame focused player.

1: If there isn't -some- use in preventing respawns, say, why would I ever cast a flesh to stone, a spell that has an identical saving throw to an instant death spell? It is a spell that has been, for years now, almost universally used for 2 purposes:

1: very very low save, death-warded mobs (primarily gianthold tor, where people spam flesh through it as the mobs can't be instant killed)

2: Avoidance of mobs that are actually designed to create extra challenge through dying, or the rare situation where killing the mobs does not prevent their damage. Some examples:

a: the frequent tower orthon example, which was fixed because it was deemed too strong
b: enervate+flesh to stone was the only way to beat Prey on the Hunter for a long time until it was tweaked to be easier. Killing the giants didn't prevent their damage on the dragon, as they just respawned. Flesh does/did
c: Its a common tactic in Tomb of the Blighted, where killing the wimpy zombies releases very powerful skeleton mages.

But if I can't use flesh to stone for those situations, why would I ever cast it? Transmutation spells are rare, necromancy spells aren't, so my necromancy spell dcs are likely to be higher, for the same sp costs and spell penetration. It isn't strictly the sp cost to recast directly so much that if the spell isn't providing some kind of significant benefit beyond the mob's death, its simply less effective than alternatives. Area CC has a different problem, which is that mob saves are so high that when you are specced heavily for it, you still rarely get enough avoided damage out of it. I prevent more party damage in, say, an elite Bastion of Power or Sins of Attrition by spending the spell points on two displacements on party members than I do by casting any one specific crowd control spell (except, possibly, web, and only then because I have a great web dc and the mobs have particularly poor reflex saves). So why would I carry otto's sphere? It has a long cast time, its laggy, it won't actually prevent that much damage or control the mobs (they save out too fast), and I can just displace the group for a lot less effort. The way quest design has been done for some time really marginalizes the benefits of crowd control because anything with repeated saves is extremely likely to not work for more than 6 seconds, and controlling 2 mobs for 6 seconds is not worth 60 spell points.

This applies to other forms of crowd control as well. They are primarily useful for preventing several mobs from dealing damage at once or preventing damage for a long time. For other purposes, more directly offensive spells are more bang for your buck. I appreciate some players like the idea of CC as a theme, but I'm of the mindset that the spells should be an equally viable endgame playstyle, not just a quirk or a toy.

Since there's frequently 50-100 mobs to our 1, its rare that the monsters are in the same position players are regarding things like holds, stuck, hit hit dead being a big deal .. all the monsters on which doing that kind of thing might be quest-breaking are immune (as they're red or purple named).

With that said, you guys have been designing quests for a while in which the most commonly used crowd control of the previous set of content is somehow nerfed, usually forcing people to find a new set to use. For another example, Otto's Dancing Sphere was incredibly potent in the Shroud/Vale content, and the next two releases featured many mobs (in Hound of Xoriat, Prey on the Hunter and Stealer of Souls) withoutright immunities to the effect, forcing us to look for other means of CC. The only form of CC I have never seen nerfed is Web, which is why Web is talked about as such a popular and widely advised CC mechanism. Web is not particularly powerful, but you guys never, ever make stuff immune to it, so its one of the few cc spells that are always helpful. The issue of mobs having to make ability checks vs your dc (which are much harder than saving throws) makes web last a decent bit and consequently worth casting.

But the main problem goes back to the situation where without extensive mob downtime or a large amount of mobs controlled for a small cost (both of which can make situations incredibly easier), its simply rarely effective to spend your time ccing the mobs instead of using a more direct form of attack. If you shorten cc durations too much without going back and removing many of these massive resistances and immunities that are designed to keep things from being abusable (such as the recognition that giants have bad will saves, therefore, dancing sphere will be too dominant and we must make these giants immune to it), you'll just wipe out the reason most players ever cast these spells in higher end content. As it is, they are quite rare and limited to just a few spells for a few purposes (web = aoe control, fts = respawn control, otto's irresistable = short term very dangerous mob control). Most cc spells are so heavily penalized in one way or another in the endgame to simply not be better choices than competing tactics.

I think you guys may overestimate the need for heroic surge in terms of player experience as well. In practice, if you are soloing and affected by mob CC like a hold, it is really very rare that you are given the opportunity to be affected by it a second time. Air Elemental knockdown is an exception because air elementals do incredibly poor damage for monsters of their CR, and are capable of sending you flying around a room on your back for 5 minutes at a time. They can do that, but they also can't kill you in those 5 minutes. Anything else that can CC you for more than 10-15 seconds, solo, has probably killed you. When soloing as a lowbie in areas where hold person is spammed by hobgoblin clerics, you may survive being hit by a hold person, but if you fail the first 6 second save out, you will pretty much never live to the second unless that cleric is the last mob aggroed no you. If it is, its incredibly unlikely it would kill you even if you failed 4-5 saves in a row.

Players are only very rarely controlled for very long periods by mob crowd control. Most of the really inconvenient ones that aren't air elementals were addressed by changing/adding durations (the permanence of feeblemind, for example, was a huge inconvenience). The widely complained about knock-down wolves generally can only keep you on your back like that if there are multiple, and generally will need a few mobs to help kill you unless you are very, very squishy or were almost dead. It is frustrating, but its not actually that common and its almost always over in 5-8 seconds anyway.

Any game based on a d20 roll system is going to have these situations; when the mobs spam their attacks as often as they do and always have a 5% success rate, those effects are simply going to work. Being outright immune to them is often extremely powerful. I can't really tell you how much easier its been soloing on my true reincarnated caster than it was the first time leveling him, because this time he has the kundarak delving boots. Immune to hold person and earthgrab? Immune to one of the only low-mid level effects capable of killing you regardless of how well you play. That's why the item is raid loot, though: it really is tremendously powerful, because in the course of clearing aquest with many hobgoblin casters (say, tear of dhakaan), a group of players will easily make 40-50 saving throws vs hold person. The mob AI on DDO is pretty smart, and it is very, very fast to spam a spell when it finds that spell works. In fact, its often faster than players at that. The incredible delay between mob actions is pretty much the only thing that keeps that under control.

You can't change failing your save on a 1, and you really don't want to; you'd have to rebalance almost the entire game. People will give negative feedback about getting held and killed in 2 second to the autocrit, or their barb held, failing 3 saves and dying to the single archer's autocrits, but the reality tends to be that situation is the only real threat to them in the entire quest if they are well geared. Its such a big threat and such a differnece that when I hit level 9 as a TR and put my kundaraks on, I thought "i should go do BAM and get a gorget, but I can live without heavy fort for 2 more levels because the only time I was being critically hit was when I got held anyway .. moderate fort will be fine until I can get my minos out of the cache at 11'. I appreciate that less geared players have some other threats, but rolling poorly vs autocrit-causing attacks is the single largest threat to characters on DDO until level 9/11, when they are still harmful but no longer near-instant death due to the automatic criticals being negated by heavy fortification. Players will always give bad feedback about situations where they feel helpless and die, but with quests designed as they are, those situations also account for a huge majority of player deaths. Most quests would be way, way too easy without that possibility. Its certainly the only thing that kills experienced players in that level range. What scares people? Hobgob casters and earth elementals. And maybe wolves if they have a bad strength stat for the trip. That's it.

Air ele knockdown is probably alone now that you have altered spell durations as a player CC problem. I think every single person who has ever posted about them has made it clear that the dynamics of air elementals are simply not fun, frustrating and unwelcome regardless of what you do with them. I appreciate that the air elementals add a quest element that no othe rmob does (unwillingly moving the player around), but I think it simply needs to be accepted by now that this needs to be a mode with a cooldown, something that's already implemented in the tornado form of djinni. No one complains about djinni air elemental form because it ends in 30 seconds and you can go back to killing the monster. In fact, djinni are -invincible- when in the tornado form! They're actually worse than air elementals for that 30 seconds! But no one's bothered by that because you can avoid them or survive or get healed or what have you until it wears off. With air elementals, you have ranged damage or you're helpless, and most classes here do pretty terrible ranged damage. Its its own cup of tea and doesn't require a separate system. It requires you guys to give in and change the monster mechanics. Make air elementals only able to stay in tornado form 50% of the time, and in return give them much more damaging elemental and melee attacks when they are not in tornado form. Right now, air elementals are bumper cars that knock you around and take 10 minutes to kill you alone. They have almost no damage. They are purely there to make you lay down and let other mobs hurt you, or throw you off cliffs or in lava. Their graphic for not being a tornado even exists (we've seen it when we hit them with flesh to stone from prismatic ray) and its cool. Give them some harder-core lightning spells when they aren't in that form that will seriously hurt people, and my guess is that every complaint about air elementals will end tomorrow.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

If you're saying that reducing the duration is moving away from D&D, DDO currently does not use the 3.5 D&D durations for CC spells because they are just overpowered.

It will never be EXACT, because this is a computer interpretation. However, as long as you stay CLOSE, it will satisfy the masses. All of us that have played pen & paper know full well this game never was a carbon copy. But that doesnt give the right to the devs to say "screw the rules, we can do ANYTHING WE WANT because this game isnt based on the rules." In fact this game IS based on the rules.

If you played your wizard or your bard pre-Module 4.1, Leslie, you will remember that Solid Fog once lasted 1 minute per caster level. That's just ridiculously too long and it kills the need for Extend because, really, how often do you need a 40 minutes long Solid Fog?

My drow wizard was my 2nd toon ever, spent hundreds of hours in gianthold soloing content... just like all the other hardcore casters in those days. PART OF the challenge of doing this was using the metamagics to your advantage. Just because you COULD use extend on solid fog doesnt mean you did. Knowing WHAT to use, WHEN, and on what monster, and how to stack your CC is in essence the magic of the art. Taking away the challenge of learning HOW to wisely and effectively becoming a crowd control specialist is eliminating a playstyle. Crowd Control is an integral piece of Dungeons & Dragons. Simple as that.

If you're saying that Heroic Surge's temporary immunity is what bothers you, that's a fine point

Heroic Surge is black/white denial. It breaks CC. It was the wrong way to "fix" air ellies. No if/and/buts.

I agree that CC needs more love but, what does it take away?

Nothing. I've heard people exclaim CC is "gimped" for YEARS. Spellsingers are GIMP. Wizards or sorcs that spec for CC are GIMP. Immunities make it gimp. Its gimp from level 1-20. Take a trip to wizzy or bard forums to hear all the cc is gimp chatter. Play the game. We have heard these claims for YEARS.

ALL OF A SUDDEN, now CC is suddenly "overpowered." That is the joke of the new decade. Enough said about that.

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Ok borror0, those are my opinions. I will not be answering your replies to my opinions, because I will not waste 5 pages or more to tell you why I feel this way. These are my opinions and have a nice day.

[Junts]

It will never be EXACT, because this is a computer interpretation. However, as long as you stay CLOSE, it will satisfy the masses. All of us that have played pen & paper know full well this game never was a carbon copy. But that doesnt give the right to the devs to say "screw the rules, we can do ANYTHING WE WANT because this game isnt based on the rules." In fact this game IS based on the rules.



My drow wizard was my 2nd toon ever, spent hundreds of hours in gianthold soloing content... just like all the other hardcore casters in those days. PART OF the challenge of doing this was using the metamagics to your advantage. Just because you COULD use extend on solid fog doesnt mean you did. Knowing WHAT to use, WHEN, and on what monster, and how to stack your CC is in essence the magic of the art. Taking away the challenge of learning HOW to wisely and effectively becoming a crowd control specialist is eliminating a playstyle. Crowd Control is an integral piece of Dungeons & Dragons. Simple as that.



Heroic Surge is black/white denial. It breaks CC. It was the wrong way to "fix" air ellies. No if/and/buts.



Nothing. I've heard people exclaim CC is "gimped" for YEARS. Spellsingers are GIMP. Wizards or sorcs that spec for CC are GIMP. Immunities make it gimp. Its gimp from level 1-20. Take a trip to wizzy or bard forums to hear all the cc is gimp chatter. Play the game. We have heard these claims for YEARS.

ALL OF A SUDDEN, now CC is suddenly "overpowered." That is the joke of the new decade. Enough said about that.

---
Ok borror0, those are my opinions. I will not be answering your replies to my opinions, because I will not waste 5 pages or more to tell you why I feel this way. These are my opinions and have a nice day.

Your immaturity is remarkable.

[sephiroth1084]

Firstly, as everyone else has said, thank you MadFloyd for engaging in this sort of debate for which many of us yearn!

3.) Alter existing - Protection from Chaos/Evil/Good/Law: +2 to AC and saves, COUNTER MIND CONTROL, hedge out elementals and outsiders.

Prot from evil does currently prevent mind control vs. vampires and mindflayers as intended.

Mind-blank would just create a new wave of things we ignore as players, which is not good for the game overall.

This option can be a lot of fun (I love leaving stone gardens) and this is particularily important for those solo runs you seem to want to promote. This can also be the correct strategic decision. For example in dust your options are:
1) Melees carefully kill non spidies
2) Finger non spidies
3) Stone spidies, or even everything, let Melees finish off non spidies as caster continues statumaking
4) Stone spidies, finger and melee non spidies

#1 doesn't work, spidies will die
#2 is effective for clerics/fvs/sorcs/wiz, everyone else is BORED stiff for 99% of the quest, many melee just AFK until the end fights
#3 & #4 require that longer duration CC, and both create fun play that involves the entire group

See how 3 of those 4 options work well, and your selection of method is a strategic choice that will play different and will work differently in different groups? That's great! Now if CC becomes too short term, that will leave us back with only #2, melees sleep, casters clear. Is that fun?

Your problem is that you shortcutted the programming logic for those respawns. Spawn need simply be "when guy 1 dies or xx seconds passes" or, if you really want to be complex "or when guy 1 has been permanently incapacitated"

When you talk about fun factor, giving us options is fun, forcing a single path to conclusion is text book bad DMing. Read that warning in the DMG about not punishing your players from devating from the path YOU thought they would take and not doing it YOUR way.

On the matter of stoning...Flesh to Stone represents one of our ways to solve an encounter without necessarily killing the monsters. It also permits us to remove certain monsters from fights when we don't want to be killing them. The spell already has a once per minute save, which should be sufficient. If players are complaining about getting stoned for too long, then grant them a +2 bonus on each subsequent save. It is an inconvenience at times, and may not be fun for everyone, but this game should still be about challenging players, not coddling children who can't handle losing on occasion.

[Borror0]

If there isn't -some- use in preventing respawns, say, why would I ever cast a flesh to stone, a spell that has an identical saving throw to an instant death spell?

That's a good point.

My solution to that is to 1) nerf Death Ward and 2) make Death Ward more prevalent.

Here is my suggestion for a new Death Ward:

Death Ward:
Grants a +2 untyped bonus to saves against death spells for every four caster levels up to a total of +10 at level 20. Additionally, the enchanted target does not automatically fail his save on a natural 1 but is threated like a normal roll.

By doing this, the save of monsters (and players) against death spells is much higher than its saves against other less powerful Fortitude-based spells which restores some balance among spells. At the same time, it allows players to still use their death spells rather than being forced to resort to other spells because the mobs are immune.

On the player side, Death Ward is no longer a an "easy button" that blocks all spells with a simple cast. Players can still achieve immunity to death spell but they have to work for it by increasing their saves high enough to succeed on a roll of 1. It's good to allow players to be immune to death spells because "you're unlucky, you rolled a 1 and died - sorry bud" isn't outstandingly fun.

The negative energy and energy drain part have been removed because 1) they are not flavorful and 2) it would have made the description a little too complex for my tastes.

If you shorten cc durations too much without going back and removing many of these massive resistances and immunities that are designed to keep things from being abusable (such as the recognition that giants have bad will saves, therefore, dancing sphere will be too dominant and we must make these giants immune to it), you'll just wipe out the reason most players ever cast these spells in higher end content.

QFT

Over the years, Turbine has repeatedly nerfed all strategies through immunities or other tweaks to mobs instead of rebalancing the spell. I highly encourage them to rebalance the spells however lot of older content was balanced under the assumption that those spells were overpowered. As a result, some of the older quests will become much harder and/or more simplistic as the number of options in those quests will have gone down.

It's not a good reason to oppose the rebalancing, per se, but it's something that might result in increasing the work load associated with the change...

I think you guys may overestimate the need for heroic surge in terms of player experience as well.

I think you underestimate it. If I remember, your first character was a paladin. After that, you probably knew enough about the game and had enough twink gear to overcome most of the stuff thrown your way. And, you probably grouped a lot considering it was in the pre-Module 9 era.

The problem is that, while dungeon scaling does affect things such as HP, DPS and CC duration, it does not reduce the number of mobs in the quest. While three casters spamming CC on six players is not a big deal, three casters spamming CC on one player is far more problematic. Especially if that player is new, with one of those horrible pre-made builds and terribad gear.

If it's Hold Person, you're dead either way so it's no big deal. If it's Soundburst or Trip, though, you can stay stuck for a while and that's annoying.

I think every single person who has ever posted about them has made it clear that the dynamics of air elementals are simply not fun, frustrating and unwelcome regardless of what you do with them. I appreciate that the air elementals add a quest element that no othe rmob does (unwillingly moving the player around), but I think it simply needs to be accepted by now that this needs to be a mode with a cooldown, something that's already implemented in the tornado form of djinni.

QFT

[Junts]

Regarding my experiences with saving throws, Borr, its not that I dont think those abilities are widespread; rather, its my experience that having them land on you almost always causes you to die, and that those situations where one mob is repeatedly ccing you without actually killing you are pretty rare .. mostly limited to kobold shamen spamming scare, to be entirely honest. Most mob cc is pretty deadly if it hits you in my experience.