Worst of the Worst Spells

[Moltier]

Some suggestion about a few weak spells:

All Summon spells: could use an enchantment line to summon lesser/.../greater monsters (animals for rangers).
Or maybe allow more summoned but different lvl monsters. 1-1 for conjuration focus. Or both.

Lightning spells: no high lvl version. A short time stun effect enchantment would be nice.

Acid spells: attack/dmg/AC/maybe DR debuff with a new enchantment line could make it more usefull.

Horrid Wilting: In BG it was a party friendly spell. In DDO almost every spell is party friendly. The dmg is too low.

Mind fog: As Aesop mentioned before, a refreshing save in the fog

Flame arrow: Converting this to elemetal arrow, and choose from a list (like elemetal resist), plus changing it to a short time buff (like haste).

Tensor's Transformation: Make the stats stackable, and it will be okay, or at least not completly useless.

Grease: Heighten. I want my teammates fall!

Create Undead: Should be free for pale masters. But at least remove the material component.

Slow: Mobs outrun it. Bosses immune (not even a few negative stat on them :/ ). Later against higher lvl mobs Hold spells comes to my mind.

Power word Kill (and the rest): Maximize and Empower should work with it.

Incendiary Cloud: Wall of fire is better for less mana.

Teleport spells: More location please.

Symbols: too long cooldown

False life: why is it capped at lvl10?

Hold Animal: Once in every year when a ranger land a spell on something, the animal get a new will saves every 3 sec? How about no will save at all, but last only 6-12 sec long?

Spike Growth: Not even a zombie will fail a reflex save vs a ranger spell.

[pjw]

I could go further into the complexities, but you get the idea: the individual spells are less important than the whole system behind them.

Almost completely agree with the post, but:

1. Ranged damage being less than melee seems fine to me; there is less risk. Also seems 'realistic' whatever that means.

2. Yeah, nerf pots & then allow SP to regenerate. Or make pots cost 600GP, but have a cooldown. See below.

3. Sustained DPS - regeneration of SP would go a long way to covering this.


One way to look at the problem is that the DPS of melee types is powered by their red bar -- when it's empty, their DPS is gone. For casters it's the blue bar.

There are lots of really easy ways to refill the red bar (you can buy pots, scrolls and wands from vendors, at least). The ways to refill the blue bar are quite limited (or at least vastly more expensive, and not available from the vendor).

The unfortunate thing here is that in theory a caster should have more DPS than a melee, but should burn out. At the higher levels they barely get to the DPS of a barbarian (polar ray hits hard but not as often). And still they run out of steam. Archmage may help, but what about quintessential nukers: sorcerers?

This is compounded by immunities on red bosses. Not only can casters not DPS them, they cant slow, hold, kill etc etc. In PnP days it used to be that the melees were the delivery mechanism for the nukes.

Which leads me to wonder if a moderately clean break from PnP might be warranted: let SP regenerate, perhaps at 2%-10%/minute (don't bother with an enhancement line, because everyone will take them and it's better just to pick a uniform value). Perhaps let SP regen at a faster/slower rate as the bar gets more full.

[pjw]

1. Add my vote to the clamour against HP/HD based spells -- either change the limit, get rid of the limit, or make it a soft limit that results in a save if the creature is over the limit.

2. Metamagic should be applicable on a per-spell (quickbar) basis (just ignore the cooldowns and let me cast extendeed haste but not resists etc. Probably don't need to extend resists, always extend haste, prayer etc.

3. Contagion (fun but too slow)

4. Fear - rather than running away, perhaps surrender and offer to leave?

5. Trap The Soul; at least get rid of the gem requirement. Then it might be a useful 'kill' spell.

6. Teleport. Consider adding 'Teleport Marker' spell to give players the ability to set up to 10 places that they can teleport to. Allow this to be used with both types of teleport. Allow it to work within quest instances (but the markers clear when the instance resets). Some places would be resistant to being marked, but in general shrines should be markable. ATM Teleport is solely useful as a time-saver.

7. Immunitites; these make some spells less than useful. I can understand why I can't FOD a red boss, but Slow? Especially with Waves no longer slowing them. As per another thread, perhaps review all immunities -- whay can't 'Slow' work? As part of this process to consider what can be modified: eg. FOD -> Stun, or -10 to con (stackable) or similar; in fact any insta-kill on a red boss should doing stat damage does not seem so bad.

8. Please consider adding "Wall Of Enegry" (much like "Resist Energy") so we can have elements other than "Wall of Fire".

[Archer001]

- Trap the Soul
- Expense and usefulness aside the fact that the dragon shard gems are thrown/transported to the trapped monster is silly at best, have them sent to the caster's soul bag or inventory instead. Are they consumed for failed castings? If so they shouldn't be, they act as a focus then a material component not a straight out material component.

[Wizzly_Bear]

- Trap the Soul
- Expense and usefulness aside the fact that the dragon shard gems are thrown/transported to the trapped monster is silly at best, have them sent to the caster's soul bag or inventory instead. Are they consumed for failed castings? If so they shouldn't be, they act as a focus then a material component not a straight out material component.

It does use them up on failed castings. It also has its use (addy ritual for items).

[Zadkiele]

Symbol of - Stunning works, Persuasion works, The rest don't do much good. Especially with the long cooldowns.
Symbol of death is noticably the worst one... 150hp limit? SO um... kobolds?

And the bats in VoD, fantastic for protecting the melee's during the second bat swarm. Fire damage? what fire damage - all the bats went *poof*.

Zad

[Wizzly_Bear]

5. Trap The Soul; at least get rid of the gem requirement. Then it might be a useful 'kill' spell.

It already is as it targets a generally weak save (will) rather than a generally strong save (fortitude), and its used for crafting.

[Geonis]

Seek Eternal Rest
1
1
Never cast it. I'm sure you know that even with the improvements to turning, it's still just.... not used.

I agree with pretty much everything you said except this.

It is obvious you have not played with turning since the change and addition of Radiant Servant.

I was able to solo Deleras (with hireling for switch and nothing else), using turning almost exclusively.

[Strakeln]

make khyber shards drop more?

Jesus H. Christ! NO!

Eliminate those goddamn things!

[Strakeln]

- Flame Arrow
- Effectiveness: 1
- Utterly useless. A caster might as well be using an eternal wand of finger of fire or something like that, not bows and arrows.

Who said that a caster should be using that spell, unless it's to make arrows for someone else?

I use scrolls or wands of flame arrow all the time... on my rogue, on my bard, on my ranger. I keep a wand on my caster in case someone runs out of ammo.

[Xeca]

To find the best and worst spells all you have to do is look at your own databases. For arcane all you have to do is pull all the spells every sorc has. This alone would give you a fairly good idea what the useful spells are. Yes there are several spells a typical sorc just can't fit in at certain levels but generally they fall in the utility category.

I have 2 lvl 20 sorcs (plus several at different levels) all have basically the same spells, and very cookie cutter like most sorcs. I have 2 lvl 20 monks with completely different powers, play styles. I have 2 lvl 20 FVS that play completely different even with slighting different spells. And we wont go in to the many combos the rest of my lvl 20 melees get in to and how they all play differently.

My point is, we need either new or to improve the other elemental spells to put them in line with fire/ice. This is so in your face common sense it makes my head hurt. Also I would go so far to suggest breaking apart the current enhancement lines, while also lowering the costs. This way we could focus say 100% current in Ice and reach 50% in another element we choose like Lightning. It would erase the status-quo of 99% of all caster being fire/ice.

I love my sorcs, one was created Feb 2006 and still played to this day. But one of DDO's greatest attributes is the many ways you can create a toon. Yet this doesn't apply to casters in the current game state. However, we have been saying this for years and nothing has been done to improve it. When some of the newer lightning/acid spells were added a few years ago I started leveling another sorc to see if that line was viable, he is still sitting at lvl 16 to this day.

DDO has grown far from PnP in game mechanics and play style. There is no reason why you have to stick with the exact spells from the PnP. Magic is one of the most important aspects of D&D yet it is one of the most boring to play in DDO (I mean this in the manner that when you invite a lvl 20 caster to your group, there is a standard expectation of what spells that caster better have). And again I speak from exp as I have 30+ toons on two different accounts having at least one lvl 20 of every class.

I love DDO but there are two areas that have needed some love for a very long time: magic and high-end content.

[Kaldais]

Make

Minor| Globes of Invulnerbility into an aura type of spells.

Add
Minor|Major Spell Mentle, monsters have it.. we don't.

Protection from Spells is another good and easy spell to add.
+8 save versus spells.

[fuzzy1guy]

re:symbol of death

And the bats in VoD, fantastic for protecting the melee's during the second bat swarm. Fire damage? what fire damage - all the bats went *poof*.

Zad

Symbol of stunning, finger of death, wail, cloudkill, acidblast, chain lightning, ball lightning, cone of cold, and bladebarrier already do a perfect job on the bats in vod.

Why waste a slot for a spell you will use in one place. Ever.

Maybe a wizard can swap it in for that battle. But a sorc would be stupid to pay to swap that in for one fight that really isn't a big enough problem to need a specialized solution.

[sephiroth1084]

Jesus H. Christ! NO!

Eliminate those goddamn things!

Haha, seconded! As it is, I can't use the Loot All button because I don't want more of those in my inventory.

[Angelus_dead]

2. Metamagic should be applicable on a per-spell (quickbar) basis (just ignore the cooldowns and let me cast extendeed haste but not resists etc. Probably don't need to extend resists, always extend haste, prayer etc.

Yes, and this will actually help make individual spells more useful. Presently there are spells that don't get cast as much as they could because you'd need to take the time to turn off excessive metamagics to get the price down. For example, Extend is mostly useful on buffs, but probably a waste on debuffs.

[iamsamoth0]

This person is after my heart!

my OPINION...
~SNIP~
Hypnotic Pattern - OMG GET IT OFF MY SCREEN! Far too visually distracting for the players. Good way to get booted out of a party.

I have mentioned this before, here....http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...5&postcount=47
as well someone else mentioned the casting time is atrocious.

[Chaosprism]

Friendly hypnotic patterns should be VERY translucent so you barely notice it's there, enemy ones though, go for it, blow me away psychadelic like man!

Base Durations on pretty much all non-damaging persistant spells should be upped now that lingering spells die with the caster.





I always wanted Camouflage and Mass camouflage to do what they describe rather than just what the rules say.

Sure +X to hide is fine, but they should ALSO reduce the spot radius for enemies that dont have true seeing or some non-visual way to see. You should be able to get closer to them without them seeing you moving or not.

Shadow walk and invisibility/mass invisibility should also reduce visibility distances.

for ALL these spells the spot range for enemies should be reduced regardless of whether you're actively hiding or not.

[GlorkTheInvader]

Seek Eternal Rest can actually be useful if you're a Radiant Servant, especially around Wiz-King. Earlier this week I farmed it on my (then-13, now 14) Radiant Servant and found it quite easy to clear out a room of guys by merely turning.

That said, it is an extremely narrow range of use. The only reason it's useful is specifically because Radiant Servants annihilate undead rather than making them run / cower / bury their head in the sand / whatever the flavor of the month is. Turning still needs to become much more viable in general, and/or the benefit of Seek Eternal Rest needs to be significantly upped.

[Chaosprism]

I'd like to see FEAR like effects have a tiered effect based on how bad their roll was compared to the DC of the spell.

Vs FEAR if you MAKE your save you're shaken for the duration.

If you fail it badly you are PARALYSED by fear for some duration which fades to simple terror (normal fear). Otherwise normal fleeing terror takes hold for the duration which fades to shaken.

[MrFestive]

Like others, I'll applaud the Dev's recent approach to game changes. Update 7 sounds great and more importantly, it really sounds like the Devs are moving in the right direction for the game as a whole.

One general spell suggestion -- make spells select the target area/creature at the point that the spell actually goes off, rather than when the spell is cast. A previous poster mentioned the issues with targets running past the area of a Slow spell. The problem with that spell is that the center point of the area of effect is selected when the cast is started -- if the target has moved beyond the range of effect by the time the animation has completed, the spell is a waste. The other spell I can think of that suffers from the same problem is Flame Strike. I never used it on my Cleric because it took so long to cast and then actually animate the effect that I often missed unless everyone was immobile or locked in combat.

A major issue with all damaging spells that has been brought up already is that the damage hasn't been scaled with the hit point increases of the mobs. I was running Sins last night on Normal and it was probably taking about 3-4 maximized Chain Lightnings to take out a few Orthons, more if I never crit. That's in the vicinity of 150 - 200 spell points, which is way too high of a percentage of overall spell points. The problem gets to be rediculous if you run on Hard or Elite, much less Epic. Several options to fix this exist -- decrease spell cost, increase damage, increase spell points, provide spell point regen over time (probably the best suggestion), etc... It's fine if it takes 3-4 casts to kill a small group of mobs, but not if it's going to eat up 10% of your total capabilities.

There seems to be a trend towards at will abilities as well -- necrotic touch/ray, FvS searing light, rumored Archmage abilities -- these are good, but still need work. I have necrotic touch and ray -- it does fairly reliable damage (although all undead are healed by it and a fair number of opponents are immune to it), but it doesn't do enough. 20d6 sounds like a lot, but it's what, 70 damage on average? To top it off, it has a cooldown and a saving throw for half damage (which everyone passes). Toss on some kind of potency item and you can get it up a bit, but it'll still take you 10+ casts to take down a single target.

Status effects applied as a consolation prize for a failed save are a good balance as well -- instakill often become useless and do nothing. Status effects or just straight additional damage on a failed save would be great.