New Ice Storm... wow!

[Junts]

Truth is, the spell is not supposed to be doing that extra damage. As Recared mentions here, the tooltip information does not match the amount of damage being done; the spell is not functioning as intended. It's doing about twice the intended amount of damage. Don't worry, we'll be keeping it persistent as it currently is, but we'll be fixing the damage accordingly.

I'd be interested in hearing how people will feel about the spell's viability once the damage is reduced. We still want it to be a competitive option when compared to Wall of Fire.

The spell will be useful because it deals in damage types that are much harder/impossible to resist.

The spell won't be as universal as wall of fire for a variety of reasons. For leveling purposes (near-solely), the double-damage to undead factor of wall of fire is very important. AoE spells like wall happen to work the very best against some of the otherwise most-annoying monsters found in the leveling range past wall's availability (example: shadow crypt and its associated tombs).

For higher level play, it is pretty rare to find a perch and throw a firewall and let stuff bake in it. Standing still with aggro, no matter how good your healing or mitigation effects are, is a really good way to die quickly. Ice Storm has the advantage of a much larger area, which is good when moving around. However, wall has the advantage of "deals damage to enemies crossing over the wall". An experienced caster player can bring monsters back and forth through a wall of fire much more frequently than once every 2 seconds, which is a big part of the efficacy of wall of fire and its damage to mana ratio. I will find a way to get ice storm on my sorceror, but it will be the spell I use when wall doesn't work, and I cannot imagine to the moment a situation in which wall of fire presently does full damage that I would prefer an ice storm instead (unless ice storm itself is getting some kind of damage bonus).

However, there are tons of situations in which wall of fire would be breaking the game if monsters weren't immune. So the question remains whether ice storm, dealing much less damage but working on all those things (especially many raid bosses) will be a very good spell. My guess is that it will be. It won't be as ubiquitous, but with the present design of casters on DDO, it's nearly impossible for it to be: if a spell was as good as wall of fire but simply not fire, the game would break quickly because the only reason content works from levels 16-20 is fire immunity. If there was a lightning-elemental wall of fire, I'd never cast another damaging spell unless I was bored. So Ice Storm can't be that good. I think it'll take several months of play before we know if the present version does, or does not, provide a solid alternative for situations where wall of fire doesn't work.

[knockcocker]

Tried it on live today. I found it did reasonable damage (~170 ice and bludgeon). The biggest problem was
actually getting it to hit anything. I found mobs easily wandered out of the area of effect.
If they reduce the damage from this it will be return to the 'useless' category as CoC will do more damage

[Junts]

Tried it on live today. I found it did reasonable damage (~170 ice and bludgeon). The biggest problem was
actually getting it to hit anything. I found mobs easily wandered out of the area of effect.
If they reduce the damage from this it will be return to the 'useless' category as CoC will do more damage

Its an AoE: its not competing with cone, its competing with acid fog and incendiary cloud, both of which do dramaticall yless damage (and that, itself, is problematic, because those are much higher level spells).

[knockcocker]

Its an AoE: its not competing with cone, its competing with acid fog and incendiary cloud, both of which do dramaticall yless damage (and that, itself, is problematic, because those are much higher level spells).

Not if they reduce the damage such that a single CoC will do more than Ice Storm. That was my point. DOT is
only efficient if the D part is significant. You can't assume that all your 'ticks' will hit.

[Junts]

Not if they reduce the damage such that a single CoC will do more than Ice Storm. That was my point. DOT is
only efficient if the D part is significant. You can't assume that all your 'ticks' will hit.

By that logic, we'd never cast wall of fire because 130 damgae for its cost is incredibly insignificant compared to the damage output of a delayed-blast fireball or meteor swarm.

[knockcocker]

By that logic, we'd never cast wall of fire because 130 damgae for its cost is incredibly insignificant compared to the damage output of a delayed-blast fireball or meteor swarm.

In extremis, sure. My concerns were qualified by the fact that it seems very hard (on live) to get it to hit
anything. The AOE _should_ be greater but in practice this seemed not to be the case at all.
I haven't tested on Lamannia.

If it hits as infrequently as it does now (on live) but they reduce the damage then it will not be on par with WoF.
Which seems to have been the intent.

[bradleyforrest]

Truth is, the spell is not supposed to be doing that extra damage. As Recared mentions here, the tooltip information does not match the amount of damage being done; the spell is not functioning as intended. It's doing about twice the intended amount of damage. Don't worry, we'll be keeping it persistent as it currently is, but we'll be fixing the damage accordingly.

I'd be interested in hearing how people will feel about the spell's viability once the damage is reduced. We still want it to be a competitive option when compared to Wall of Fire.

If you're going to neuter the damage like this and reduce its usefulness dramatically, you'd better make it so that Extend Spells works on it. As it stands, the damage it deals makes sense with the fact that you can't Extend it.

Leave it as is, and give us similar spells in the other elemental options and casters will be able to contribute meaningful DPS.

[Cyr]

I'd be interested in hearing how people will feel about the spell's viability once the damage is reduced. We still want it to be a competitive option when compared to Wall of Fire.

It will not be. It will be used when mobs do not take fire damage and that is about it. Better then before because the spell will get cast a decent amount, but if you want it to be competitive with firewall the 1/2 damage reduction is not going to cut it.

Pros Firewall:

1) 2 * Damage Versus Undead. This means that against non-immune undead this spell always will be the spell of choice.
2) Pass through damage. This aspect of firewall drastically increases it's damage per second and sp ratios. Experienced casters love this aspect of firewall as it allows kiting while doing damage in a meaningful fashion. This also provides huge benefits versus creatures that spawn/phase in... as it hits them everytime they appear. Huge plus versus scorpions, shadows, and the many mobs in game that spawn after you have time to set up for them.
3) Damage per SP ratio. Firewall has a superior damage per SP ratio.
4) Damager per second ratio. Firewall has a superior damage per second ratio.
5) Duration is longer on firewall.

Pros Ice Storm:

1) Bludgeoning Damage is superior to fire damage as it works against a wider variety of mobs.
2) Cold Damage works against many mobs that are immune to fire.
3) Area of Effect is bigger for ice storm.
4) In theory there is some slow effect, but I'm not positive that works atm.

So there you have my analysis of a lower damage ice storm. It will have it's uses when 1 and 2 matter, otherwise firewall flat out wins.

Really ice storm has a major disadvantage to firewall in how it applies damage and even with equal damage per tick ratios fire wall would still win except against immune mobs or those with very high fire resistance. This is because of the pass through/appear damage aspect of firewall which is far superior to a slightly bigger AoE that ice storm has.

[bradleyforrest]

So there you have my analysis of a lower damage ice storm. It will have it's uses when 1 and 2 matter, otherwise firewall flat out wins.

This. There's very little reason to cast a persistent damage spell that can't be extended that deals 2d3+6 & 3d3+9 when you can cast a spell that you can extend that deals 2d3 + 26.

<edit>
WoF tick:
2d3+26 ~ 29
Ice Storm tick:
2d3+6 + 3d3+9 ~ 22

Realistic casting for each
WoF: 29 * (1.4 + .5) * (2 + .5) = 137
Ice Storm: 22 * (1.4 + .5) * (2 + .5) = 104

So, not only will Ice Storm be dealing less damage against non-Fire immune mobs, but it also deals that damage for half the duration of WoF. In other words, Ice Storm will have less than 1/2 the SP efficiency of WoF. This doesn't even address the fact that the gulf widens dramatically when WoF is used on non-immune undead.

TL;DR
Ice Storm is good the way it currently is, but too weak if you remove the scaled damage. Perhaps a compromise of +1 /2CL would bring it more in line with the devs' intent without weakening the spell too much.

[Burninator]

I posted what Ice Storm was actually doing back on page 3.

In short it was gaining 1 damage to Ice and 1 damage to Bludgeon per caster level. Wall of Fire gets 1 damage per caster level so Ice Storm was getting twice the scaling.

So why not give it the same scaling as Wall of Fire because fixed damage spells (Incendiary Cloud, Acid Fog etc) are a joke.

ie 1 Ice damage per TWO caster levels
+ 1 Bludgeon damage per TWO caster levels

That gives it the exact same 1 per caster level as Wall of Fire.

If you are going to spend time and effort on this spell, then change it once and make it useful then spend the rest of your "spell development time" on fixing the rest rather than having a second and third pass and making Ice Storm work.

All the current fixed damage (persistent) spells are bad, we ALL know that so please lets not bother with spending time on making a new unscaling persistent AoE spell. Surely it's plainly obvious that any spell that doesn't scale is either overpowered at low levels or useless at high levels.

I'm sure Ice Storm will be awesome at level 7 (or 8 for Sorcs) when we get it, but we don't stay 7 forever and end up at 20. Since we don't get anything new at high levels it has to scale to remain useful.

[karnokvolrath]

I demand a screenshot of it killing a golem.

Im calling shanaigins on the whole operation......golem killer...riiight.

SCREENSHOT OR IT DIDNT (doesnt) HAPPEN!!!

[Asketes]

I'd be interested in hearing how people will feel about the spell's viability once the damage is reduced. We still want it to be a competitive option when compared to Wall of Fire.

I know quite a few people who've been dying to make a real build that's viable and specced for electric.


thoughts?

[Burninator]

I'd be interested in hearing how people will feel about the spell's viability once the damage is reduced. We still want it to be a competitive option when compared to Wall of Fire.

You don't even need to test it to know that without some sort of damage per caster level scaling present it will not be competitive. If you really want it to be competitive with Wall of Fire then give it Wall of Fire scaling, it's not that difficult. One damage per caster level.

At level 7 I can have Maximize, Empower and a superior freeze clicky along with a Major Ice Lore weapon and the first few tiers of Fire/Ice line enhancements. From 7 to 20 at most I can gain a couple of extra enhancements to boost damage.

You CANNOT balance Ice Storm to be useful at 7 and 20 without caster level scaling. It's either stupidly overpowered at 7 and ok at 20 or ok at 7 and useless at 20.

[moorewr]

Truth is, the spell is not supposed to be doing that extra damage. As Recared mentions here, the tooltip information does not match the amount of damage being done; the spell is not functioning as intended. It's doing about twice the intended amount of damage. Don't worry, we'll be keeping it persistent as it currently is, but we'll be fixing the damage accordingly.

I'd be interested in hearing how people will feel about the spell's viability once the damage is reduced. We still want it to be a competitive option when compared to Wall of Fire.

Hmm. With a base of 2d6+level for Wall of Fire v. 2d6+3d6 for Ice Storm.. that's and average of 27 for WF v. 16.5 for Ice Storm per tick before all enhancements.

If it generates significant total damage it will still be used against fire-immune mobs. I know from comparing live to Lamannia that I often wish I had it available.. any arcane trying to contribute to DPS in an Amrath quest can agree I think.

Anyone try ice storming their way through the end fight of New Invasion?


EDIT: yes, extend needs to be fixed along with the damage.

[shagath]

I know quite a few people who've been dying to make a real build that's viable and specced for electric.


thoughts?

Yes!

[Requiro]

All the current fixed damage (persistent) spells are bad, we ALL know that so please lets not bother with spending time on making a new unscaling persistent AoE spell. Surely it's plainly obvious that any spell that doesn't scale is either overpowered at low levels or useless at high levels.

This.

And post good help for you Turbine in sugestion forum.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=287106

Just copy my ideas and everyone will be happy. Less work for all your team, more fun for us.

[TheIvanovFamily]

You don't even need to test it to know that without some sort of damage per caster level scaling present it will not be competitive. If you really want it to be competitive with Wall of Fire then give it Wall of Fire scaling, it's not that difficult. One damage per caster level.

At level 7 I can have Maximize, Empower and a superior freeze clicky along with a Major Ice Lore weapon and the first few tiers of Fire/Ice line enhancements. From 7 to 20 at most I can gain a couple of extra enhancements to boost damage.

You CANNOT balance Ice Storm to be useful at 7 and 20 without caster level scaling. It's either stupidly overpowered at 7 and ok at 20 or ok at 7 and useless at 20.

This.

[Requiro]

One damage per caster level.

Which one damage +1/level? Cold or Bludgeoning? Or both? If both that spell will be ridicules overpowered. And if one damage it will be more powerfull then Wall of Fire.

The best option is made damage similar to Wall of Fire.

In my proposal it is +1/4 level to cold and +1/5level to Bludgeoning, Duration: 5sec + 1/level. Allow to be extended and voila!.

Little more damage then WoF on level 7, same at level 14-15 and little less damage on level 20 comparing with WoF.

[Burninator]

Which one damage +1/level? Cold or Bludgeoning? Or both?

See my post 90.

The implementation on lama (5 days ago anyway) was 1 damage per caster level to BOTH Ice and Bludgeon which is double Wall of Fire.

Drop it back to 1 damage per two caster levels for Ice and Bludgeon (so +10 ice and +10 bludgeon at 20) and you end up with the same scaling as WoF and hopefully a spell that is still useful at 20.

Even with the version on lama as it was, I didn't find it killing mobs in the Vale any quicker than WoF (except the devil area being immune to fire) since you can get more than 1 tick per 2 seconds out of WoF while you cannot with Ice Storm. So stacking and kiting with WoF would be faster but less SP efficient while Ice Storm would be slower but more efficient.

I would disagree strongly with your 1/4 and 1/5 scaling suggestion since while it may look ok on paper to you, how they operate in game changes the spreadsheet values significantly.

[Junts]

Give the cold damage and the cold damage only a +1 per 2 caster levels scaling; the main probelm suffered by acid fog is that, objectively, the first X damage of most elements isn't dealt (resistance) and only a small percentage of its damgae escapes resistances. The cold damage needs to scale, and the bludgeoning damage is the part that might be overpowered. A 1 per 2 scaling effect would create nearly the same average damage between the two, and resistance would affect them equally (but high resistance may still nullify the cold part entirely). If you think thisi s too overpowered (and it might be), bring the 3d6 base back to 2d6: 2d6 +10 is still better tahn 3d6, just by less.

As long as it does less damage and can't be kited through like wall, ice storm won't break the game or replace firewall where it works, but the niche of 'where firewall doesn't work' is huge and dangerous: after gianthold/orchard, fire immunity was used pretty liberally to balance arcane caster overpoweredness.