Energy Substitution

[Bogenbroom]

What are some damaging persistent spells that are not affected by Empower, Maximize, and Potency?

Only one I can think of, Cloudkill. All other are effected AFAIK.

I am not sure that I would completely agree that WoF is overpowered. Maybe slightly, but not dramatically. There are *significant* issues with many if not most of the arcane damage spells in the game, making WoF just about the the only effective weapon casters have for purposes of damage. Cloudkill is the only other arcane spell that even comes close to be effective.

My opinion is the real void for casters is DoT spells. There are only 2 in game. 1) Melf's is mediocre, at best, and 2) Burning Blood, is pathetic. If anything is ever done to nerf WoF, DoT spells *need* to be addressed to compensate.

A couple of restrictions on persistent AoE spells that might be reasonable would be to take HP damage from only 1 at a time, and to "improve" the over-lay avoidance, so as to make it much harder to blanket an area with walls. Do something like make it so a caster can only maintain 1 WoF at a time or some such.

As has been pointed out, the issue with all AoE isn't the damage that it deals, but the failure of AI to retreat from it. However, without WoF, a caster falls significantly behind every other class in the game, except, maybe, bard.

[Pyromaniac]

Anyway, I highly suspect an issue like this is delaying any implementation of teh Savant PrEs for Srocerers.

And causing the delay for all the other PrEs? They're just in no rush to work on PrEs, its pretty low on the priority list it seems.

[Geonis]

What are some damaging persistent spells that are not affected by Empower, Maximize, and Potency?

Flaming Sphere, Cloudkill, Incendiary Cloud, Death Aura spells, Melf's Acid Arrow, Acid Rain, Burning Blood, Fire Shield.......

You know, pretty much all of them.

[Pyromaniac]

Flaming Sphere, Cloudkill, Incendiary Cloud, Death Aura spells, Melf's Acid Arrow, Acid Rain, Burning Blood, Fire Shield.......

You know, pretty much all of them.

And most players don't cast any of them for DPS purposes as a result....

[Geonis]

And most players don't cast any of them for DPS purposes as a result....

Yeah, somebody said that a little bit ago...oh yeah, that was me. You know kind of the point I was making.

[Tyrande]

How about Blade Barrier? It is untyped damage and no way to resist against it except with monsters may be having an extra good reflex save in combination good DR or monsters start casting "Break Enchantment".

Wouldn't Blade Barrier be more over powered in this case?

Divine Casters can improve Blade Barrier right now with good wisdom scores. Arcane casters cannot improve firewalls with energy substitution yet.

[Tyrande]

[...]

Atm casters are in supperior position to any other class, except in amrath[ and this is going away too with TRing]
Why give them even more power?

They are not superior. In fact, any high end raid only takes 1 or 2 arcane casters to party. Why? Because it is perceived as a non-DPS class; more in line as a healing or buffing role, which is boring to play. The control role is not boring, but not every nuker at heart wants to play that role.

Why give them more power? Because not everyone of them is going to TR. With just the basic no TR 32 points, its still pretty weak and undesirable (read: not fun) to play one. Give them more power like energy substitution would let them become more of a DPS type class, especially sorcerers with the Savant PrE.

[Mister_Peace]

They could just swap the colors, it can look horrible as long as it happens. Someone must be pretty talented at it, as we've seen multiple colors of the same thing for pit fiends.

Horoth yes. Sulu and Judge are horned devils IIRC.

[Newtons_Apple]

So the other night me and a guildy were discussing what would be nice to provide more uses of the acid/lightning line of wiz/sorc enhancements.

I made the comment that the energy substitution line would do this without having to add new spells.

Now I can see the issue that making a metamagic that would prompt a drop down to be interesting to code for the game, I came up with the idea to make it when choosing you decide what energy to specialize in. So if I wanted to spec lightning I could take the feat and choose Energy Substitution (Lightning), then when ever I activate the feat it would swap damage to lightning based. When the spell was not on the spells would function normally.

In pnp I remember that the cost was equivalent to extend. I dont see this costing 10 extra spell points and not being considered OP... However I can see this being approximately the cost of empower or maximize as this would allow a lot of freedom for casters and a little more viability.

This:

This has been brought up before, but if I recall correctly, the 'balance experts' claimed it would be game-breaking and/or increase the 'blanket immunities' of many high-level monsters. I'd personally like to see it from an options and flavor standpoint, but it would be extremely difficult to keep it from being overly powerful.

So instead of Wall of Fire, we'd have Wall of Acid, Cold, Elec, or even Sonic. In a funny way, Wall of Sonic might be the most powerful, as few mobs have immunties to Sonic.

So yes, it would be overpowered.

[Pyromaniac]

So yes, it would be overpowered.

When 1 arcane is the max per end game raid group, melee is overpowered. Balance is what I call it.

[Rakian_Knight]

Easy way to fix Wall of Fire, and to cause other spells to be used more also-

Wall of Fire "+Caster Level" damage portion is no longer affected by Empower/Maximize/Potency/Enhancements, and at the same time allow other persistent spells to be affected by Empower/Maximize/Potency/Enhancements.

The reason WoF is easy button right now, is because of the min level to cast it, and because it is one of the few persistent spells affected by Empower/Maximize/Potency/Enhancements.

Or simply increase the cooldown time. Have to wait 30 seconds before casting the next one so at level 20 the most a wizard could cast is 2 extended before they would fade away. This is one of the things that makes Wall of fire different from most of the AoE's short casting time and nearly no cooldown.

[Mister_Peace]

Wiz and sorc don't get +40% for sonic.

[Tyrande]

Or simply increase the cooldown time. Have to wait 30 seconds before casting the next one so at level 20 the most a wizard could cast is 2 extended before they would fade away. This is one of the things that makes Wall of fire different from most of the AoE's short casting time and nearly no cooldown.

/no

Imagine in any of the epic quests; you lay down two firewalls, the 3rd one would cause the 1st one to fade away. Imagine those epic monsters dying slower (kitting through) and hitting the melees more and causing more cleric spell points.

Arcane casters ARE SUPPOSED TO cause huge amounts of area of effect damage. Its their destiny. It is D&D. Why play an arcane caster when you have almost non-existent crowd control at the beginning, weak in the mid levels and almost 2 seconds crowd control at epic level 20 quests and low damage compared to other classes?

Firewall is bread and butter right now. If you take that away; arcane casters are going to the lowest in dealing damage, a little more than just non-melee bards. Expect to see 1 monk, 3 melees and 1 bard and 1 healer in party in ALL non-raid quests.

[Tyrande]

This:

So instead of Wall of Fire, we'd have Wall of Acid, Cold, Elec, or even Sonic. In a funny way, Wall of Sonic might be the most powerful, as few mobs have immunties to Sonic.

So yes, it would be overpowered.

Wizards and Sorcerers do not have enhancements and critical improving enhancements for sonic. So, it is going to be a lot less damage with Wall of Sonic. So, no, it is not over powered.

Also, I don't understand why monsters couldn't cast mass protection from elements? Overpowering solved.

[tanzer]

Hopefully someday they'll fix Wall of Fire to be balanced among the mage spells, and at that time Energy Substitution can be reconsidered for inclusion.

why dont they just fix the other spells to not be so gimp? if you dropped firewall down to the dps of say.. acid fog....there goes arcanes.. would delete mine on the spot

[Jay203]

What are some damaging persistent spells that are not affected by Empower, Maximize, and Potency?

Cloud Kill

[Jay203]

Flaming Sphere, Cloudkill, Incendiary Cloud, Death Aura spells, Melf's Acid Arrow, Acid Rain, Burning Blood, Fire Shield.......

You know, pretty much all of them.

i believe all worked with metamagic except for flaming sphere and cloud kill
kind of iffy on death aura since i've yet to find a stupid scroll for it
unless of course, they changed everything again

[Rakian_Knight]

/no

Imagine in any of the epic quests; you lay down two firewalls, the 3rd one would cause the 1st one to fade away. Imagine those epic monsters dying slower (kitting through) and hitting the melees more and causing more cleric spell points.

Arcane casters ARE SUPPOSED TO cause huge amounts of area of effect damage. Its their destiny. It is D&D. Why play an arcane caster when you have almost non-existent crowd control at the beginning, weak in the mid levels and almost 2 seconds crowd control at epic level 20 quests and low damage compared to other classes?

Firewall is bread and butter right now. If you take that away; arcane casters are going to the lowest in dealing damage, a little more than just non-melee bards. Expect to see 1 monk, 3 melees and 1 bard and 1 healer in party in ALL non-raid quests.

1) Don't do epic so can't agree or disagree with it.

2) What? Arcane CAN but aren't limited to be solely AoE damage. Not in pnp and not in DDO. Their are so many other options in both for sucessful wizards/sorcerers (Enchanters, Necromancers are two that made it in DDO but in pnp the list goes on and on).

3) Firewall may be your bread and butter but mine is Finger of Death and Trap the Soul.

[shagath]

When 1 arcane is the max per end game raid group, melee is overpowered. Balance is what I call it.

There's usually only 1-2 casters because they are already as powerful as all melee combined so no need for more.

Also, I don't understand why monsters couldn't cast mass protection from elements? Overpowering solved.

I'd like to see how mass prot would help against 1k dmg/tick.

Btw, on topic. Yeah, energy substitution would rock but not as a meta. There will be PrE out just for that someday.

Firewall isn't overpowered, it's just overused.

[sephiroth1084]

This conversation is like a bad rash that just won't go away. Until the mechanics for enemy AI or firewall itself are changed, a few things will remain true:

Firewall is overpowered in general. In the content where it functions efficiently (nearly everything outside of raids, the Vale (part of it) and Amrath) casters are more adept at soloing quests, simply dominating content, than nearly any other class. I can solo most epic quests more easily with my caster than with any melee, entirely on the back of firewall.

Part of this is due to AI, part is due to simply having no other spell that is as effective as firewall, and part is due to the mechanics of firewall on its own. It is clearly something the devs have been concerned with, as every raid boss except the DQ is immune to firewall (is it a coincidence that the Abbot is immune to lvl 4 and lower spells?). The game has bent and warped around the spell's presence.

Yes, other spells will kill stuff faster, but nothing compares to the sheer efficiency of the spell. Sure, you can get through lower level content faster using fireball, but you'll likely run out of SP long before you reach a shrine, as it is just too difficult to gather up enough monsters and to kill them all with one fireball for it to compare--fireball can shoot off in an unintended direction, cares about the size of the room, whether the target(s) is(are) moving, how you've aimed it, how far apart everything is....the list is long--whereas firewall doesn't care much about any of that.

The reason casters aren't taken in larger numbers into raids is that most of the important stuff is immune to the casters' best tools, which means that they're not very effective. Some of this is obviously a matter of game balance, as the quests might be too easy otherwise, or are at least perceived that way by the devs.

Adding Energy Substitution in the current game environment would only serve to unbalance a few spells dramatically, and would likely lead to either nerfing of those spells, or more monster immunities--we'd end up with 3 updates worth of golems, all healing from fire and acid, gaining haste with electricity, and being immune to cold and sonic damage.

The overarching issue is that the devs have never figured out an effective way of dealing with troublesome abilities, especially those from casters such as instant death spells and high-damage, persistent AoEs, so they just keep stacking immunities onto monsters, trying to keep us challenged without nerfing the spells and abilities we have directly. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be something the devs are working on in any significant fashion. Yes, Eladrin has commented in the semi-recent past, that they are exploring ways to alleviate the immunities problem in a few specific cases, but I've seen no further mention of this, no indication it's ever going to arrive, and no back and forth with the playerbase over the options the devs are entertaining.