Spell Pass Preview - Chaaannggeee!

[tinyelvis]

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Decent Nuker sorcs hardly used Firewall outside of undead quests anyway, except in conjunction with Discoball at endgame, or on the odd regenerating boss like Taeron Rimond or the Shroud lieutenants. Quicker to throw a DBF/Chain Lightning or two to wipe out a room, then run run run until dungeon alert, then repeat the process.
..............................................

Agreed. Have been trying to point this out to people for a long time. It honestly looks like some developers have been following me around in the game and decided,

"Hey this guy is blowing the **** out of stuff and having a blast....I almost never see him throw a wall of fire. Let's encourage this style of play and make this sort of thing easily obtainable by the masses. We'll have to nerf the **** out of wall of fire or they will never give up their crack and poor slow method of killing off mobs no matter the fun they miss out on though."

I can't hardly say a bad word about any of those changes. I will have more fun at all levels of play in the future.

[Seventh]

I never thought I'd see the day where the forums would whine about something even more than the U5 twf thing, but here we are. The instadeath cooldowns might sting, but other than that I see nothing but good news. Casting nothing but one spell throughout a quest sucks, and that applies just as much to FW while leveling as it does to Mass Hold spam in Epics. Glad to see em both knocked down a peg.

Casters have more options now. A bigger role in Epics. Good things.

And the ToD kiting/aggro grabbing thing makes me lol a little. As has been been pointed out, plenty of other spells to take its place, and that's really just a concern for those who still want to kite in ToD for whatever strange reason- we have better things to do in there now. Burst DPS ftw.

Just let the bard do it, he gets glitterdust.

[voodoogroves]

I never thought I'd see the day where the forums would whine about something even more than the U5 twf thing, but here we are. The instadeath cooldowns might sting, but other than that I see nothing but good news. Casting nothing but one spell throughout a quest sucks, and that applies just as much to FW while leveling as it does to Mass Hold spam in Epics. Glad to see em both knocked down a peg.

Casters have more options now. A bigger role in Epics. Good things.

And the ToD kiting/aggro grabbing thing makes me lol a little. As has been been pointed out, plenty of other spells to take its place, and that's really just a concern for those who still want to kite in ToD for whatever strange reason- we have better things to do in there now. Burst DPS ftw.

Just let the bard do it, he gets glitterdust.

My worry is exactly NOT that Seventh. My worry is that with the reduction in CC, instakill and AoE spells plus the reduced cost and increased performance of direct damage spells casters will not have more options ... other than which element to spec (force, negative, fire, cold, etc.) and spam those.

Bringing Wall of Fire in line? Good. Making other things work in epic, good. As it is though, the cool-down on wail/finger/others, the increase in epic saves, etc. means people are going to be hyper specialized.


Burst DPS is exactly the worry. Wizards will be able to be AM and spec force or PM and spec negative, sorcs the traditional elemental energies ... and instead of options it'll just be cycling through the various rays and burst DPS spells because the others (CC, instakill, etc.) are simply not worth it.

That's my fear right there.


Oh yeah, plus doing whatever random buffing people who don't have pots or clickies need.

[sephiroth1084]

Overall most chances sound decent except one:
Nerfing extend as a feat.

I can see why you'd want to reduce the duration of say wall of fire and other persistant AOEs. But directly nerfing extend by having it simply not function is not a fun way to do it. The idea of the spell pass is to make more spells viable and balanced right? That can be done without nerfing feats like this.

Simply drop wall of fires duration to 15 seconds, and have extend apply. Thus extended = 30 second, as desired. Should not disable the feat simply because the spell is powerful and needs a lower duration.
Or perhaps something in between would be better: 20 second duration, 40 extended.

I agree, and had the same thoughts about Enlarge. Players were already unhappy about Ice Storm's duration being unaffected by Extend, so the devs answer by making more spells unaffected? Then, with Enlarge already being more of a novelty than anything else to most players, they choose to remove its functionality for an entire category of spells? Really poor decisions in my opinion.

As for firewall...you're increasing the cost, lowering the duration, lowering the damage, giving it a save for the one part of its effect that totally separates it from other DoT AoE spells while also improving all of the other nuking spells we have with some combination of better SP cost, more damage or additional effects? I admit that firewall may still be worth using, but it's difficult to imagine how it would be. Can't say I'm a fan of this whole package, though I agree that firewall needed some nerfing. Tacking on the raised cost in addition to everything else just seems...mean.

[Auran82]

As for firewall...you're increasing the cost, lowering the duration, lowering the damage, giving it a save for the one part of its effect that totally separates it from other DoT AoE spells while also improving all of the other nuking spells we have with some combination of better SP cost, more damage or additional effects? I admit that firewall may still be worth using, but it's difficult to imagine how it would be. Can't say I'm a fan of this whole package, though I agree that firewall needed some nerfing. Tacking on the raised cost in addition to everything else just seems...mean.

I think firewall will still be useful in choke points where the rest of the party will be meleeing in the walls space, I agree with others here though, about the only time I kite anything through wall of fire lately is farming scorps at the start of Oob for scrolls, my cleric and FvS can do this fine with BB so I doubt the addition of a save will affect my sorc doing this too much. Most other times I cast WoF is because things are imobilised (danced, held etc) or are in a place where the fighting will be happening in the wall.

[Thar]

I don't understand the making extend unusable? It's already almost useless for buffs. Why remove it for persistant spells? change the cost if you need to mess with extend, but it still should be used.

That being said with all the changes, everyone should get a few free shards to be able to change feats for free. Almost every other MMO that made major changes made some manner of free one time changes to the population.

I'm not saying a lessor rest but free feat change should be appropriate.

[Blank_Zero]

I have only one thing to say about this:

Now all these caster-types understand how TWF melees felt in U5.

[Rodasch]

Cool! So my question regarding this is, when are melee's gonna get a "Second Wind" effect that kicks in when things have gotten hurty and the HP's are low? Yeah, I know, I know, "there's heal pots and clerics for HP", right? Well, there's also SP pots and Divine Vitality for SP.

maybe the same time that those sp pots are as easily available from vendors in endless supply as the heal/repair potions are? I don't know, but if you want to compare the two resource pools based on refillability, at least do so fairly.

[luvirini]

Long comments below each section:

Hey folks! As you’ve probably have already heard we have a major spell pass coming down the pipe. The full details will be released soon but we figured we’d cover some general cases and some the reasoning for the changes ahead of the Lamannia preview. Today we’ll look at the changes coming to spell cost ratios, CC spells, death effects, and spell points… here we go!

SPELL COST TO EFFECT RATIOS CHANGES:

For years now the cost of all spells have been strictly driven by this formula:

Base Spell cost = 5 SP + (spell level X 5).

IE: a level 1 spell is 10 sp, while a level 9 spell is 50 sp, and so forth.

While we got by with this, it didn’t exactly always make for the most diverse spell choices for those people who crunched the numbers to determine what to use. When you looked at the math, folks get very attached to certain spells, namely “wall of fire” for very logical reasons. This is a shame considering the art/dev resources devoted to the creation of so many other spells also floating in the system.

I agree on the limited choises you have currently if you want to be usefull and the low power of some spells compared to their level is a prime reason, not really the spell point formula. The spell point formula is actually good in that you know what the spells costs based on it's level and do not have to do the number chrunching on it. So a much better solution would have been to actually change more spells to be usefull instead of changes to costs.

On another note, it has become a noticeable point that arcane casters are a rather difficult class to get into. The Classic 3.5 D&D concept of starting weak then gain cosmic power. While loyal to our roots we felt that perhaps the current learning curve is a bit too harsh, and we’re looking at making it an easier class role to enter for new players.

So we’re mixing things up! The spell pass was mostly focused on “damage” spells, but does extends into debuffs and other areas to a degree. We’re changing the costs and what spells do and we’ve changed far too much for me to cover it in just this post but I’m going to give you a list of examples to give you an idea of where we’re going…

Actually the base change you are making with the changed costs makes things hader, not easier for new players.

Let’s take some main stream spells with a few “less popular” spells and see what you think….

Old way:

1. Burning Hands ( 10 SP)
2. Melf’s Acid Arrow ( 15 SP)
3. Scorching Ray ( 15 SP)
4. Lightning Bolt ( 20 SP)
5. Wall of fire ( 25 SP)
6. Delayed blast fire ball (40 sp)
7. Incendiary cloud: ( 45 SP)
8. Polar Ray (45 SP)

Now let’s change that too…

1. Burning Hands (down to 4 SP – other stats unchanged)

2. Melf’s Acid Arrow (down to 6 SP – Damage updated to 2d4 + 1 per caster level, duration locked to 12 seconds, now has double range, can no longer be enlarged or extended, ray targeting has been improved)

3. Scorching Ray (down to 6 SP – now has double range, can no longer be enlarged, ray targeting has been improved.)

4. Lightning Bolt (down to 12 SP – now has double range and 50% change to hit each target twice (back stroke!) – targets get an additional save against the back stroke). Can no longer be enlarged.

5. Wall of fire ( up to 35 SP – targets now get a reflex save when they first enter the effect, but no saves against the flames if they remain in the wall. Now only does an additional 2d6 against undead instead of double. Duration is now locked to 30 seconds regardless of level. Can no longer be extended)

6. Delayed blast fire ball: (25 SP/12 sp for trap version): trap cool down increased to 15 seconds, 10 seconds for sorcerers

7. Incendiary cloud (Cost remains 45 SP – Now does 2d4 + 1 per caster level in fire damage, no save. Duration locked to 30 seconds. Blind effect (previously no save) now has a reflex save. Can no longer be extended)


8. Polar Ray (Cost down to 15 SP, range doubled, can no longer be enlarged, ray targeting has been improved.)

Burning hands is still not really going to be worth it, as cone type spells are so annoying to cast with enemies running past you instead of running to you. -> A useless spell will still remain useless.

Acid arrow gets a a pretty harsh nerf, the only usefull levels 2 attack spell at higher levels currently. I guess I will have to switch to some other second level spell instead as the total damage it does will be way low compared to before and you would have to keep casting it. -> Make a usefull spell useless.

Scorching Ray will become fairly usable at levels 3-4 and slightly usable at 7-8 at that cost. ->A fairly useless spell becomes usable for few levels.

Lightning bolt might become usefull in certain special situations at the lower cost, but still in most cases either single target spells of blasts will be better. -> A useless spell remains so.

Wall of fire nerf is going to hurt anyone fire specced a lot and basically again make spellusers fairly useless for total damage at more levels. Wall of fire helps currently at levels 7-12 or so before this change, before spellcaters again fall behind in the total damage dealt as they will run out of spellpoints. ->one usefull spell becomes way less usefull.

Delayed blast fire ball would be usefull after the change if so many mobs were not fire immune and 25+maximise would not drain the 2000-3000 sp you have so fast. Still likely not worth using due to the blanket fire immunities. ->One montly useless spell remains so.

Incendiary cloud gets a slight nerf, but as it was mostly useless before.. ->one useless spell remains so.

Polar Ray.. oh my.. something actually increasing the power of casters in this change.. I am overly surprised. At 15 spellpoints this will become even more a general spell to cast by default.. ->one very usefull spell become way better.

So there is a lot going on here, and this is only a fraction of the changes going in to the spell pass. Essentially the cost of spells are being weighted now much more on their performance, method of engagement and the number of targets they effect rather than the old level-based formula.


• Low level spells that cap early (like burning hands) got discounted greatly.

• Drop and kite AOE dots such as wall of fire are now being treated as a more expensive/powerful attack form as we feel they really should be compared to other damage spells.

• Instant AOE spells got discounted some, to make them more appealing compared to waiting on kiting monsters through aoe dots.

• Single target damage and bolts are getting much cheaper, single target dots are getting cheaper and getting their effectiveness boosted.

• “Trap” type spells got really cheap to hopefully make them with consideration given the prep time they take, but had their cool downs increased to make them not a strict replacement for other in combat AOEs.

If the overall nerf is as bad as above example, casters will again have to mostly become support, where before at certain levels they have been able to give nice damage output. Oh well.. I guess it it time to TR to noncaster.

WHAT ABOUT CC?

Yeah okie, we mucked around with CC a little, and it goes into debuffs some… Here are a few high lights.

• Largely CC costs remained the same

• HD/HP caps we’re removed from most effects (yeah, I guess I should talk about death effects now, but oh, sleep works now!)

• Many debuffs had their cost reduced, and some had carrier debuffs added to them that temporarily reduced will saves regardless if the target saved against the original debuff.

Examples:

Crushing Depair: Cost reduced to 20 SP, now applies a weakn will effect for 15 seconds regardless of saving throw from original effect (will -5).

Touch of Idocy: Cost reduced to 5 SP, Now also weaks foes will save for -5 for 15 seconds regardless of save.

The notion is saving many of our under used debuffs and allow casters to punch harder targets/hit more reliably and get longer effect out of effects with quick re-occurring saves. That’s is if their willing to use a spell slot, and the spell points.


Full details to come, moving on for now…

The will save reduction will help, if it also works in places like epics, at below that a CC specced caster is allready able to CC most anything. ofcourse changes like that will allow non-CC specialists to do CC at need if they know how. That is however not very beginer friendly.

DEATH EFFECTS:

Chaaanngggeeee….

• Costs remained the same.

• We’re pulling the death wards off epic and many pieces of content that had death proof monsters. There have been adjustments to “vorpal” weapons and the like that made us more comfortable with this change. Eladrin posted on these elsewhere if you’re looking for the sneak preview of that…

• Death spells had their cool downs increased, just a little on single target spells, a bit on AOEs. Single target spells are typically on a 8 second cool down, 6 seconds for sorcerers while AOE death effects are typically 30/25 respectively.

This longer cooldown really makes certain spells like wail of banshee likely useless except as special purpose spells. -> atleast one currently usefull spell becomes mostly useless.

• Death spell on save damage was increased, so a blue hexagon won’t be a total waste of spell points, yet there will be more agro. We realize this and currently approve. Attempting to death a monster is a hate-able offense.

• There are some old death spells that got a new look and now their back in town:


Circle of Death: Now effects all targets regardless of Hit dice; Has been updated as follows:

Rains dark energy into an area. Living Creatures are subject to a death effect; getting a reflex save and then a fortitute save to avoid death. Targets who succeed against the reflex save suffer no ill effect, but creatures who success against the fortitute save will still lose 1d4 energy levels.

This might make the spell usefull, except for the long cooldown. ->one useless spell remains so.

Power word: Kill!

Upper hit point cap removed except in PVP. Kills, no save, but spell resistance applies.
240 second cool down for wizards, 210 second cool down for sorcerors

Could be usefull except for that cooldown making it totally useless. ->one useless spell remains so.

SPELL POINT REGEN – Echoes of Power:

We’ll be introducing a limited form of spell point regen for players who have “magical training” (as in the feat). This is to avoid a true “out of gas” situation for our casters. The concept is that when a caster drops below a certain spell point threshold a spell point regen effect known as “echoes of power” applies itself until the caster reaches that threshold again. The goal is to allow low level players continue to cast level 1 spells at a diminished rate when their “out of gas” while high level players will be able to continue to use their PRE-s with the meta magics they normally require for high level play.

Currently in testing… these values are examples mind you…

• Echoes of power will appear when a player drops below 12 SP.
• Echoes of power will allow the player to regenerate at a rate of 4 SP every 6 seconds.
• Echoes of power will remove itself once a player reaches 12 SP or greater.

Could be nice at lower levels.. no use at higher

ETERNAL WANDS:

Not going to go into details here yet but eternals wands got a pass that increased their recharge regeneration rate and added desirable caster mutations.

Much more to come. That’s all for now folks, but be sure to participate in the Lamannia preview once it’s available to try out the changes!

-Torc
DDO Game Systems

[/QUOTE]

Overall that is a pretty big nerf on casters. Currently casters are actually usefull to have in a party at levels 7+, first for damage then buffs when their damage output falls behind melee. With these changes they are still usefull for buffs and certain special situations, but now the total damage output will be lower than melee at all levels.

The cooldown timer nerf on death spells makes them basically useless as a spell you cannot use when needed is a wasted spell slot.

The end result is that the number of usefull spells got further reduced from what it was before, so only CC seems to a usefull role anymore after these changes.

Basically what I wonder is why all this need to nerf casters? I mean they are currently mostly allready way less powerfull than any melee class in most situations. A actual increase in their power would have been more in line with keeping balance.. but oh well.. I hope casters will still be allowed into parties after this.

[protokon]

Regardless of my take on these changes, +1 to Torc for posting these changes in advance (even if they aren't the exact changes that will ultimately happen).

[Philibusta]

Fitting pic, but..shouldn't they be brandishing a Hodge Podge Of Various Counterintuitive Dual Wielded Weapons Because Wizard Staves Only, Generally, Have One Desirable Attribute On Them Instead Of Torches?

ftfy :d

Maybe I should have been clearer? I meant wizard staffs. Not quarterstaffs. You know...the hand-carved ones from old PnP, which were usually pretty cool, like the Staff of the Magi or the Staff of Power?...Not the gimpy worthless staffs wizards get in DDO.

[SardaofChaos]

If these changes are going to be as huge as it seems, I wonder if they're going to give all of the characters with a significant amount of wiz/sorc levels a free btc lesser heart of wood so people can spec out of firewall mode.

I like what I'm seeing, especially the part about not being absolutely useless if you run out of sp but don't have/want to down a pot.

[Quarterling]

OK, Noxious Embers was straining the point.

However, it seems to me that anyone with a level 20 character who really wanted an ornamental dagger has one by now.

Some people have much, much more than one.

I am remaining neutral on this whole ordeal and will not be making any decisions until I get to test it out for myself on Lam.

[Jaid314]

Burning hands is still not really going to be worth it, as cone type spells are so annoying to cast with enemies running past you instead of running to you. -> A useless spell will still remain useless.

Acid arrow gets a a pretty harsh nerf, the only usefull levels 2 attack spell at higher levels currently. I guess I will have to switch to some other second level spell instead as the total damage it does will be way low compared to before and you would have to keep casting it. -> Make a usefull spell useless.

Scorching Ray will become fairly usable at levels 3-4 and slightly usable at 7-8 at that cost. ->A fairly useless spell becomes usable for few levels.

Lightning bolt might become usefull in certain special situations at the lower cost, but still in most cases either single target spells of blasts will be better. -> A useless spell remains so.

Wall of fire nerf is going to hurt anyone fire specced a lot and basically again make spellusers fairly useless for total damage at more levels. Wall of fire helps currently at levels 7-12 or so before this change, before spellcaters again fall behind in the total damage dealt as they will run out of spellpoints. ->one usefull spell becomes way less usefull.

Delayed blast fire ball would be usefull after the change if so many mobs were not fire immune and 25+maximise would not drain the 2000-3000 sp you have so fast. Still likely not worth using due to the blanket fire immunities. ->One montly useless spell remains so.

Incendiary cloud gets a slight nerf, but as it was mostly useless before.. ->one useless spell remains so.

Polar Ray.. oh my.. something actually increasing the power of casters in this change.. I am overly surprised. At 15 spellpoints this will become even more a general spell to cast by default.. ->one very usefull spell become way better.

you need to pay closer attention. and also, the fact that you think scorching ray sucks is mind-boggling.

- acid arrow deals more total damage, not less. 2d4+1/level every tick.

- scorching ray deals usually around 400 damage for me, no save, on appropriate targets. the only reason i don't use it more is that there are too many fire-immune enemies in the late game.

- wall of fire nerf will probably not be a big deal. it doesn't particularly cost all that much more, and the reflex save is likely not going to make much of a difference, since most things have pathetic reflex saves anyways.

- incendiary cloud just got the same buff as acid arrow, and is in fact pretty much the same as old wall of fire, only not extendable. it is in fact substantially better. still probably not the most amazing spell out there, but definitely better.

- polar ray did just get cheaper, but so did a lot of other spells. and ultimately, it's not that much cheaper either... the main costs now are going to be metamagics.

[Zirun]

This new thing, it is bad, doooooooooooOOOOOOOOOooooooo000000000000ooooOOOOOO OOm, etc.

I like these changes. Well, in principle, since we can't play them yet obviously.

It'll be nice to be able to roll up a caster and actually cast right from level 1. Being basically forced to pick up a poking stick to smash things' faces in with at low levels as a Wizard is, well, kind of dumb.

It'll be nice to actually be able to use spells that aren't specific buffs, debuffs, instant kills, and Wall of Fire to get through a quest as an arcane. Wall of Fire is such a boring spell, anyways. I look forward to using spells that aren't Wall of Fire in the Sorc I'll be rolling up as soon as the update hits! I can use spells I loved as a kid like Melf's Acid Arrow, Magic Missile, and Lightning Bolt without thinking "Well, that was a good waste of time. Now, back to the quest at hand!" and subsequently casting Wall of Fire.

SP regen when extremely low on SP? Love it. Changes absolutely nothing for people with endless resources at their fingertips, but makes low-level and new-player casting so much better.

It's also always seemed kind of weird to me that metamagics just flat-out make spells stronger. A Polar Ray with 3472834 metamagics buffing it is not only stronger, but more efficient than one without metamagics? Seriously? Whatever happened to the idea of opportunity costs associated with metamagics? As I recall from my limited time reading about them and using them in Neverwinter Nights, you had to use a higher-level spell slot if you wanted to use a metamagic with a spell. You actually had to choose between a more powerful version of a weaker spell or a more powerful spell. With the changes to spell costs and presumably no change to metamagics, it's going to be more like how it is in NWN (and, I assume, in D&D as well, having never played D&D myself) and I think that's far better than pretty much all metamagics being mandatory and a complete no-brainer when it comes to using them. Really, when was the last time somebody posted an arcane build without Maximize and Empower and wasn't told outright by basically everyone that those two metamagics should always be in your feat list?

If only DDO had Chromatic Orb, then my life would be complete. Loved that spell in Baldur's Gate II.

I for one welcome our new Arcane nuker overlords. My only worry is that the balance might shift a little too far towards damage spells, but we'll have to wait and see about that...

[clkpacker]

Torc,

Since you are opening the lines of communication with players on this, could you give some examples of how the "Spell Pass" will affect Divine spells..

Thanks in advance.

Seconded.

Also, are there plans in place to work on the frankly sad number of divine spells in the game, especially versus arcane? Taking out spells common to both classes, arcanes have 142 and divines have only half that--76 (assuming my math is correct at this late hour). I feel like I have absolutely no options on my divines. I do hope you go through the arcane and divine spells differently, as the play styles of the classes do differ.

Also: if Implosion Aura's cooldown was among those doubled, I'm gonna be one sad little cleric. Implosion's cooldown already feels far too long for what the spell actually does.

[Jaid314]

If only DDO had Chromatic Orb, then my life would be complete. Loved that spell in Baldur's Gate II.

chromatic orb is quite likely one of the most incredibly broken spells in AD&D (the rules set for baldur's gate series).

at higher levels, it goes something like:

fail save: you die.
make save: you're stunned for 3d4 rounds and all someone needs to kill you is a single regular melee attack.

and it was a level one spell. it was so absurdly broken it boggles the mind that someone ever wrote that and thought it was reasonable, and it boggles the mind even further that someone else looked at that, thought it was reasonable, and approved it for publication.

[Malithar45]

Basically what I wonder is why all this need to nerf casters? I mean they are currently mostly allready way less powerfull than any melee class in most situations. A actual increase in their power would have been more in line with keeping balance.. but oh well.. I hope casters will still be allowed into parties after this.

DoooOOOOOOOooooooOOOOOOmmmmmmm.

Wonder how long this'll all go on for. So much rage on the forums now, can't even keep up. Curious how long it'll take people to relearn how to play and use different tactics and spells once these changes take place too.

It'll be interesting regardless. +1 on the changes devs.

[Seventh]

My worry is exactly NOT that Seventh. My worry is that with the reduction in CC, instakill and AoE spells plus the reduced cost and increased performance of direct damage spells casters will not have more options ... other than which element to spec (force, negative, fire, cold, etc.) and spam those.

Bringing Wall of Fire in line? Good. Making other things work in epic, good. As it is though, the cool-down on wail/finger/others, the increase in epic saves, etc. means people are going to be hyper specialized.


Burst DPS is exactly the worry. Wizards will be able to be AM and spec force or PM and spec negative, sorcs the traditional elemental energies ... and instead of options it'll just be cycling through the various rays and burst DPS spells because the others (CC, instakill, etc.) are simply not worth it.

That's my fear right there.


Oh yeah, plus doing whatever random buffing people who don't have pots or clickies need.

Fair points. Simply going from "everyone spec for mass hold" to "everyone pick an element and max that" wouldn't really be progress (that would just turn casters into ranged DPS that doesn't suck) that said, I don't think the CC situation is that severe. I will /sign on the instakill cooldown being too much, especially the hilarious 4 min one on PWK, but overall CC stays effective, I just think that casters will have to be better geared before they start on epics and that wizards in general will hold an edge in CC over sorcs, which is just fine.

Pale masters will have no problems landing instakills in epics, and I think that the cooldown durations could be lowered with enough protest from players. If not, we'd have a real reason to be displeased. Non necro wizzies should be able to land em consistently too, especially if the drop a Circle of Death beforehand (using it as an AoE Enervate). And TtS could work well in combination with those new debuff penalties. Sorcs will struggle with these in epics, but that comes with the class.

Enchantment AMs will land Holds all over and be loved for it, other wizzies will do all right (another use for Circle of Death! That spell will be big just for the debuff, it killing stuff is just icing on the cake), sorcs will haver a harder time but if they can catch 2 or 3 mobs per cast it's worthwhile just because of the bonus damage *they'll* get. If they can't, they will learn to love Irresistible Dance.

This update is definitely fixing to make each of the classes have a specific strength, CC vs. DPS, but both will be effective.

[Seventh]

chromatic orb is quite likely one of the most incredibly broken spells in AD&D (the rules set for baldur's gate series).

at higher levels, it goes something like:

fail save: you die.
make save: you're stunned for 3d4 rounds and all someone needs to kill you is a single regular melee attack.

and it was a level one spell. it was so absurdly broken it boggles the mind that someone ever wrote that and thought it was reasonable, and it boggles the mind even further that someone else looked at that, thought it was reasonable, and approved it for publication.

In BGII you could one-shot the ancient dragon boss enemies using chromatic orb and a saving throw debuff together in a lesser sequencer. Good times but yes, I'd rather not see it in DDO.