I'd say that Waves of Exhaustion/Fatigue and Ray of Exhaustion all end up on the don't-bother-even-scribing-on-a-Wizard category after update 7.
They don't do anything worth mentioning to bosses and trash dies way to quickly to be worth throwing these on.
You might as well upgrade wands a huge amount in their DC, caster level, variety and give us a crafting ability to give them more power.
So maybe I could buy a wand of web (with caster level 3), place it in alter with some collectables, and boom, transform it into a wand of web with a higher caster level. Then I could continue to heighten it's power with more ingredients if I wanted to spend the time.
Of course, you may also want to add a recipe where the heightened wand recharges over time :]
I'd like to see wands having more use now that we have the ability to fire them using the attack button. Definitely, give the enhancement line much more upgrade power. Wand heighten is useless now.
Also, why not make burning hands/acid spray/shocking grasp/chill touch do continuous damage as long as the caster continues holding down the button? It'd kinda be like a sp burning flame thrower. Might be kinda cool having something like that.
And Acid Rain/burning blood would be awesome if they did the same DoT damage as Wall of Fire.
And where are the high level electric spells that my epic ironweave robe is powering?
And while I'm writing, just add the Curse song to bards and let them have a damage over time effect/spell of some sort.
Overall, mobs' hp are just so high, you really have to scale up the damage of spells or let them have lingering effects. Call me crazy, I dunno.
Last edited by Henrieta; 09-13-2010 at 11:58 AM.
Henrieta, Fastfeet
One more comment...
I FREAKIN HATE THE HEZROU! HATE HATE HATE HATE!
Ok yeah... they are mildly useful summons. Best we get anyway... And can survive sometimes... and do put out a tiny bit of damage... and provide a target for enemies...
But dammit now i can't see what is going on anymore!!!! And they make far too much noise.. Every 5 seconds.
And in some partys with 2-4 of these tards teleporting around. In a fairly narrow hallway or tunnel. It's easier to just stop and go afk. (brb phone!)
I won't be doing much useful anyway since i can't see whats going on.
And for the few players i know will summon the damm thing every single time... anywhere... i won't group with them.
No matter how good the player.
Best solution i can think of... Reduce the monster size to 1/4th to 1/6th of its current size. AND take away its teleport ability for player summoned versions. Little tiny hezrou tanks! And with no teleport they'll stop ending up in the walls.
Personally as far as summons. I like the bezekira. It's small. See-thru. Stays out of the way pretty good.
And trips things now and they. But they are far too squishy for even at level content when you first get the spell. Can be boosted for 1-2 levels worth of use with displacement/blur/stoneskin/resists. But even that is obsolete pretty quickly.
Alternate solution to the hezrou... Get rid of them. Let us summon greater bezekira's as you see running around the devil battlefield. That would be a fairly useful 'ok' level 9 summon. Those guys trip (me) very well. And they're see-thru. Most important feature.
To make it once per shrine would be equivalent to making the potion also give you a non-expiring debuff which makes you immune to further Mnemonic Enhancer potions, which is the mechanic used by the Death Pact spell.
However, one per 5 minutes is probably better for gameplay: it allows the potions to retain more of their value. (Although we want to avoid encouraging players who get in over their heads to drink a pot, fight for 30 sec, then run away and wait 4:30 before using another pot to fight a little more. The goal should be that when a group fails that hard, they go back to the tavern and come in fresh.)
Last edited by Angelus_dead; 09-13-2010 at 05:30 AM.
Tensers Transformation 1/2
The spell that I wish I did not hate is Tenser's. There are many things that melee classes have been given in DDO to improve there combat effectiveness beyond just BAB. Transferring Tensers word per word, rather than 'in spirit' of what the spell was meant to accomplish, has left it a watered down shell of itself.
If I am blowing a potion 6th lvl sp cost, I want that spell to have a kick.
Wall of Fire 2/2 (too powerful)
WoF also has been mistranslated into an overpowered monster. The fact that it overshadows any real direct damage dps is just wrong. Making more bosses resistant to fire does not fix the issue it just marginalizes other fire effects. Metamagic should cost double or triple on AoE, damage over time, spells.
Single target, Direct Damage spells in general 2/3
DD can be great against one target but on that one target you could empty half your mana pool. Unless you live off mana pots for every quest, there are just better ways to damage things.
Last edited by Roziel_Longblade; 09-16-2010 at 05:41 AM.
Go check out the Archmage hints and rumors thread. Eladrin said that they're doing pretty much exactly this with the Archmage.
One of the enhancements is lose 25 spell points from your pool's maximum and get the ability to cast grease for 1 SP. I imagine that they'll have something similar for force missiles or at least magic missiles.
- Power Word: <whatever>
- Effectiveness: 1
- Nope. Does not work at all.
- Flame Arrow
- Effectiveness: 1
- Why should I not use eternal wands?
- Sleet Storm
- Effectiveness: 1
- Hate it when a friend or a foe casts it. Does not help foes to survive or friends to kill any faster.
- Acid Rain
- Effectiveness: 1
- Mobs hp are too high for the damage this spell deals. I tried using this but it really helps nobody.
- Burning Blood
- Effectiveness: 1
- See Acid Rain.
- Fire Trap
- Effectiveness: 1
- See Acid Rain.
- Acid Fog
- Effectiveness: 1
- See Acid Rain.
- Incendiary Cloud
- Effectiveness: 1
- See Acid Rain.
- Chill Touch
- Effectiveness: 2
- Why should I use this? Why not ice or fire rays? Why not magic missile? There are just too many low level damage spells that are better than this. And no need to walk near the mob.
- Ghoul Touch
- Effectiveness: 1
- Not useful compared on any useful crowd control spell (like Hypnotism or Charm). In addition, the weak caster must go near the enemy.
- Shout & Greater Shout
- Effectiveness: 3
- Ok, they deal damage but they are nothing compared to Scorching Ray, Force Missiles, Wall of Fire, Frost Lance... Too many other good damage dealers than these two.
- Trap the Soul
- Effectiveness: 2
- I actually had this spell in my quick bar but ended up using FoD all the time.
- Horrid Wilting
- Effectiveness: 2
- See Acid Rain. Only a slightly better damage but mobs you battle against on this level has also much more hp.
- Mordenkainen's Disjunction
- Effectiveness: 2
- Why nobody else listed this? Where am I even supposed to use this except break my friends equipment? There are so much other dispels and debuffs I simply cannot find use for this.
In general, and upon reflection (and feel free to correct me if I'm totally off base) but: I can't recall ever seeing a ray spell hit more than one target (edit: along it's line). That might give those a slight boost above single-target spells utility-wise.
Last edited by Scraap; 09-19-2010 at 05:05 PM.
How about 75% of the spells?
Stone to Flesh.
I have never cast this spell. At first I memorized it thinking it would be necessary, but its not. Once I removed it I never thought about using it again.
Flesh to Stone needs to be upgraded to make Stone to Flesh useful. It should either be permanent or last 1 minute per caster level with no saves.
Nice necro, but it is sometimes important to remind Devs old plans.
Accualy Flesh to Stone is usefull, but fast fall behind charm types of spells so it is not commonly seen now (except ToD).
Stone to Flesh is bleh! After they changed Stone effect from 15 min to 20 seconds multisave it is realy no use to ever use this spell. I understand that for Xorian cipher on normal 15 minutes Stoning can be annoying (I got that myself), but I thing it could have duration like 1 minute (with single save (or save every 10-12 seconds)) to make those fleshrenders maces usefull.
Doubt this will happen given that the devs just recently (half a year ago?) changed F2S from permanent with a fresh save once per minute to the way the spell functions now.
Flesh to Stone is excellent in quite a lot of content. In Tor, it is the primary means of dealing with the giants that are immune to charms, paralysis and death spells. In Let Sleeping Dust Lie it serves to remove the spiders from fights where they might otherwise get themselves killed. In epics, it works wonderfully against enemy casters, Tharask hounds and beholders, among others.
The biggest problems with the spell, honestly, are that there aren't really any other Transmutation spells worth spending Spell Focus on and it targets what is generally the stronger save among many dangerous opponents (also, I feel like endgame caster Fort saves are higher than endgame tanky monster Will saves, so even against the weaker save on a particular foe, the DC may need to be higher) and is therefore in direct competition with Enchantment spells that have 2-5 spells worth spending a Spell Focus on (Mass Hold, Dancing Sphere, Mass Suggestion/Charm, Symbol of Persuasion and Fascinate; maybe even regular Otto's). Still, it's worth using if you can get your DC up.
Stone to Flesh comes on scrolls. No reason to ever prepare the spell unless you happen to be in a quest where F2S is likely (there aren't many) and you don't have scrolls on you.
Useful links: A Guide to Using a Gamepad w/ DDO / All Caster Shroud, Hard Shroud, VoD, ToD Einhander, Elochka, Ferrumrym, Ferrumdermis, Ferrumshot, Ferrumblood, Ferrumender, Ferrumshadow, Ferrumschtik All proud officers of The Loreseekers. Except Bruucelee, he's a Sentinel!
damage spells in general need to scale a bit more. At level 12 or so, cone of cold, etc. is still nice, but after you get to, say, level 17, your damage spell start to become pretty useless. I remember my first ToD at 17, where i was dismayed to find that perhaps my most powerful direct damage spell (polar ray) took out only a small sliver of a hellhound's hp. I suggest adding more damage scaling for damage spells in general, or maybe introduce a feat that increases spell cost and damage more. A wizard should not be limited to CC by mass hold/web.
also power word: kill= facepalm
What about create undead? It's the worst spell in the game!
Prismatic Spray- one of the best animations in the game, yet doesn't actually do much to most mobs. I sometimes cast it for fun, but never in a serious situation.
Also disappointed in Mordenkainen's Disjunction. It seems like something that ought to be helpful in Epics or for debuffing big bosses, but it doesn't seem to do much in most cases.