Spell Pass Preview - Chaaannggeee!

[HOLYCRAPLUCIFER]

I truly hate what turbine is doing in the pen and paper for one WoF never had a reflex save and i get it you want us to break our boundries in spell choosing but still *** this nerf is seriously changing casters and well even tho the curve was tough it insures that casters arent just screwing around.... all this caster nerfing is a joke why not go after the way over powered arcane rangers instead of the casters! i mean seriously you guys are making me want to quit cause you are shooting your self in the foot

[Requiro]

I truly hate what turbine is doing in the pen and paper for one WoF never had a reflex save and i get it you want us to break our boundries in spell choosing but still *** this nerf is seriously changing casters and well even tho the curve was tough it insures that casters arent just screwing around.... all this caster nerfing is a joke why not go after the way over powered arcane rangers instead of the casters! i mean seriously you guys are making me want to quit cause you are shooting your self in the foot

One less "easy button"(*) in the game = more balance overall

(*) - "easy button" = wall of fire right now

[DasLurch]

I keep having guildies try to talk me off the "ledge" aboutt hese changes. I guess my real questions are the following...

1. Will the boost to single blast damage spells outweigh the loss to persistant AOE damage spells? The way I see this working, the change costs the caster far more mana. 2-3 fireballs is FAR more SP than 1 firewall that gets cast now. Lowwering the base cost of these spells is nice, but how many casters run around throwing damage spells now that are NOT empowered and maximized? Those meta's will end up costing the caster far more SP than is the norm now because they are casting spells more often.

2. Will Sorcerers, Favored Souls, and Bards get a complete and FREE spell reset? If I have to pay to reset my spells, I just won't play these classes anymore until I get a heart in a chest. I'm not paying to make them viable if I'm not the one that broke them.

3. It seems to me that casters are getting forced into a new playstyle. While I can live with this, I'm not entirely thrilled until I understand what it all means. Holds will work better for wizards, but not for Sorcs? Certain elemental spells will be awesome for soome Sorcs, but not for Wizzie's? We casters now NEED to debuff in order to make spells land? I'm hoping that maybe I'm reading more into this than is there, or maybe that when more information comes out it will clarify things in a more solid and easy to understand way. 3 posts about something this big is just not enough feedback to keep many of us from screaming DOOOOM! Really someone needs to just put it all out there or atleast say WHEN more is coming. Saying more will be revealed soon is just plain old stupid and mean.

[Elucidus]

I do have to agree that sorcerers, bards, and favored souls should get one free exchange of spells.

[Wraithkin]

pen and paper

Pen and paper used spell slots, not spell points. Both friendly units and hostile units take damage while running through both instant and persistent AoE effects. What you are used to using is not pen and paper. Casters have been overpowered for far too long. I'm sure good casters will adapt and bad casters will die. Hopefully this finally eliminates an arcane being able to solo epic quests.

[BitkaCK2]

So after reading 600+ posts I learned a new spell:

Wall of Posts - 10d10 psi dmg/page (wis. save negates 1/2, int save negates 1/2) - failed saves also incite an impending sense of DOOOOOooooooooMMMM resulting in knee-jerk rage posting coupled with a paralysis of the ability to handle change.

Thankfully I made my saving throws.

However:
a) Once I got my poor l'il sorc alt to level 8 I was so excited turn learn how to use WoF (aka proper targeting and jumping like a 'jackrabbit on crack'*). Then I read this and shelved her until change happens.
b) Was very glad I picked up a heart of wood at 50% off and banked it.
c) Had an inexplicable desire to listen to Bob Marley's Burnin' and Looting.

TTFN,
bitkaCK2

*"Jackrabbit on crack" phrase courtesy of Aspenor's Sorceror's Hanbook thread.

[voodoogroves]

I do have to agree that sorcerers, bards, and favored souls should get one free exchange of spells.

What about wizards who LR'd at some point and don't get spells as they level and only get the obscure ones they can find on scrolls?

[Requiro]

Pen and paper used spell slots, not spell points. Both friendly units and hostile units take damage while running through both instant and persistent AoE effects. What you are used to using is not pen and paper. Casters have been overpowered for far too long. I'm sure good casters will adapt and bad casters will die. Hopefully this finally eliminates an arcane being able to solo epic quests.

I miss spell slots ...

That was the worst part of the DDO, when I start playing

....


/Offtop on

I wonder what happens if they made this when they design DDO:
- Sorc, FvS get Spell Points
- Wizards, Cleric get Spell Slot
- Bards, Rangers and Paladin get mix (some Spell Points and Spell Slot)

- And the hardcore to made this balance


.....

...


Ehh... Nvm...

/offtop off

To OP: Caster with that changes will be almost the same like before And we will quick adapts for new power And do solo again

[knightgf]

Here are some sample changes to the divine side of things…

Contagion: Cost reduced to 8 SP. Diseases provided by this spell that do ability damage now do it at a rate of X stat damage every 30 seconds instead of 60 seconds. Slimy Doom now does 6d6 acid damage every 6 seconds. As before two saves apply, one against damage, if successful save again to end the effect.

One thing that I MUST, MUST emphasize...if you are going to be changing contagion, you better enable heighten to work for this spell, otherwise nobody will use it even with the SP reduction. That was the reason I never used it in the first place: If you can't heighten a spell with a save, it definitely won't be any good at end-game, especially if it is fortitude.

Oh, and I do have one more question now that we are talking about spells and since update 9 is coming soon(TM):

Will certain casters be able to modify a quarterstaff using crafting so that they can store casts of a spell inside it?

[PopeJual]

Pen and paper used spell slots, not spell points. Both friendly units and hostile units take damage while running through both instant and persistent AoE effects. What you are used to using is not pen and paper. Casters have been overpowered for far too long. I'm sure good casters will adapt and bad casters will die. Hopefully this finally eliminates an arcane being able to solo epic quests.

When Rangers, Clerics and FvS can solo epic quests, why should Arcane casters not be able to solo epic quests?

[bobbryan2]

When Rangers, Clerics and FvS can solo epic quests, why should Arcane casters not be able to solo epic quests?

And what's with the preoccupation that epic quests 'must' have full parties. That was one of the lamest parts of sooo many hp. Sure you 'could' do it with just a melee and cleric... but it took soooo long.

[Seventh]

I keep having guildies try to talk me off the "ledge" aboutt hese changes. I guess my real questions are the following...

1. Will the boost to single blast damage spells outweigh the loss to persistant AOE damage spells? The way I see this working, the change costs the caster far more mana. 2-3 fireballs is FAR more SP than 1 firewall that gets cast now. Lowwering the base cost of these spells is nice, but how many casters run around throwing damage spells now that are NOT empowered and maximized? Those meta's will end up costing the caster far more SP than is the norm now because they are casting spells more often.

2. Will Sorcerers, Favored Souls, and Bards get a complete and FREE spell reset? If I have to pay to reset my spells, I just won't play these classes anymore until I get a heart in a chest. I'm not paying to make them viable if I'm not the one that broke them.

3. It seems to me that casters are getting forced into a new playstyle. While I can live with this, I'm not entirely thrilled until I understand what it all means. Holds will work better for wizards, but not for Sorcs? Certain elemental spells will be awesome for soome Sorcs, but not for Wizzie's? We casters now NEED to debuff in order to make spells land? I'm hoping that maybe I'm reading more into this than is there, or maybe that when more information comes out it will clarify things in a more solid and easy to understand way. 3 posts about something this big is just not enough feedback to keep many of us from screaming DOOOOM! Really someone needs to just put it all out there or atleast say WHEN more is coming. Saying more will be revealed soon is just plain old stupid and mean.

1) As it stands, yes on the boost overcoming the loss on DoT's- for Savants (and by a lot) thanks to damage increases. I don't really know about wizards, but I imagine they don't get off as well spell damage wise. This might be on purpose if Turbine is trying to emphasize the whole "Wizzies are better at CC than damage and Vice Versa with Sorcs" thing, but I can't really speculate on the intents of the devs.
As for metas, I recall Eladrin mentioning that they were unhappy with how metas scaled and that they were going to work on it- but who knows when that's going to happen.

2) I doubt it but it's possible- at the very least, peeps on the llama server are getting hearts to test the changes, but that has no real bearing on whether or not the live servers will see free spell swaps.

3) This update completely changes how casters work and we're not even privy to all the changes yet. We won't really know just how class roles will be redefined until we get to test all this out, but it seems that Sorcs will be blasters with spectacular burst DPS and some CC on the side, and wizards will be primarily CC/instakills depending on how you spec, although with respectable if not super impressive burst DPS available. Wizzies should not need to debuff to get their specialty spells off (Enchantment Archmages will get their holds off fine; same with Pale Masters and their instakills, for example) but will most likely want to do so for spells they're not super specced for; sorcs will need to debuff for sure (With the exception of the SLA hold abilities some Savant lines get). Debuffs in general will be more useful (Circle of Death will simultaneously be a useful AoE instakill and an AoE Enervate, other debuffs will grant save penalties on successful enemy saves to make catching them with the second cast easier). The bread and butter of sorcs will be elemental and force/untyped spells; we only have the details on a few spells, but it seems melfs and chain lightning will be big and Polar Ray will be king. Again, this is all speculation at this point.

[Feithlin]

The changes are made so it's easier for wizards at lower levels? I hope this is a joke. The main reason ppl use a lot firewall while leveling is because it was a very efficient spell for its sp cost. Reducing the sp cost of single target damaging spells won't be enough. Low and middle level questing on a new player wizard will be a lot more difficult than before. It will probably not be an issue for older players, they will just find new ways to do things, but certainly not for newbies.
From what I see, the best course seems enchantment now.

As an afterthought, I think I spoke too quickly. The nerf isn't that big at mid levels. 35 sp instead of 25 sp means you will need a bit more attention when using it, but doesn't make it useless. The duration was 10 sec. + 1 sec. / caster level. So the basic version would last longer for lower levels. The basic strategy will still work if the wiz keeps a look at his sp pool. This won't be easier for newer players, but will be a good learning.
Overall, I'm pleased to see new strategies coming up. This is always good, even if human nature hates change (and this, even if he gets bored of things not changing ).
I suppose we will need to test it to get a clearer idea of all the implications.

[Auran82]

1. Will the boost to single blast damage spells outweigh the loss to persistant AOE damage spells? The way I see this working, the change costs the caster far more mana. 2-3 fireballs is FAR more SP than 1 firewall that gets cast now. Lowwering the base cost of these spells is nice, but how many casters run around throwing damage spells now that are NOT empowered and maximized? Those meta's will end up costing the caster far more SP than is the norm now because they are casting spells more often.

I suspect that the maxamise and empower costs may be left as is, because it means that oneshot damage spells are at their most efficient (damage per mana wise) without them applied. This means that the player is left to make a choice depending on the situation whether it is worth losing some of that efficiency for a boost to their DPS.

Heighten is another story though, as it makes no sense to use a heightened fireball over a DBF, not sure what will happen there, but I assume it will be something like 2sp per level heightened and the enhancements to reduce the cost will possibly be removed (or allowed to stay and essentially make heighten free)

Extend by the looks of it is being made to basically only work on buffs which I am still on the fence about.

In some ways it will be more fun to be able to choose between Max+emp+DBF for a single big hit or rotating between a couple of non-metamagic improved damage spells for more damage, the same amount of mana, but taking a couple of seconds longer to do.

Hell, having a situation where you actually consider turning off metamagics would be nice, I know there are very few situations since the change to metamagic costs I have actually turned them off on my sorc.

[voodoogroves]

DBF isn't stopped by Globes (or related) Of Invulnerability.


The trick to metamagic is now, many people leave a core set on all the time. That's awesome.


Having more times when you want it on or off is nifty in theory, but only if in practice they also change the metamagic activation animation and action-time. You can't make changes mid-fight easily.

[Theolin]

I do not understand why there are so many folks who think mefl's is going to be soooo great

* Melf’s Acid Arrow (down to 6 SP – Damage updated to 2d4 + 1 per caster level, duration locked to 12 seconds

so at level 20 thats ... umm 22-28 damage per sec on 1 target + metas .... um well if a melee is beating on it it WILL be DEAD in 1-2 seconds ... because they are doing at least 200 DPS if there any good at lvl 20 and I'm doing ...wait lets calculate a max ... um +50% for enhancements, +100 max + 50% empower + 75% acid clickie ... (22-28)*(0.5+1+0.5+0.75)=(22-28)*2.75=60-77 with it ... umm yea thats worthwhile yes thats per second but how many mobs last more than 2 seconds if a melee is beating on it as well???? please tell me. oh and if I happen to crit ... well thats 3x more if I have that maxed ...

ok ok .. lets do level 6 melee doing lets see if he has charged gauntlets(not hard to get) + a holy pure goodx ~ 100 dps give or take ... wizard if he has max/empower/clickie/enhancement(you wont at level 5 but lets pretend)... 2.75*(7-13)= 22-39DPS (hint hint ... this is pathetic) ... oh wait hmm my wizard does more with an weapon & those charged gauntlets ... which am I going to use ... tough choice there ... um I know I want to do less damage yea thats it

So to me with simple numbers .. I get wizard with sword is better than wizard with melfs.

now you might say that a "new" person lets choose lvl 6 won't have all that stuff so that's not fair so lets just compare a wiz with 2H weapon with the spell no metas .. just casting 25% enhancement
melfs=10-18 dps
weapon 2-12 +( 10 str & bulls a +2 weapon & a 1d6 extra damage) = 7-22/per swing which at level 6 is about 1.1-1.2 swings per second
not to far off but even so which one makes more sense to use?

now lets do a dungeon say butchers path ~ 200 enemies & 2 shrines
thats about 67 per shrine
so 67*6sps = 603 SPs ... um wait a lvl 6 wizard has how many ... oops ran out meanwhile if I was swinging a weapon .. well I don't run out

[Artagon]

I do not understand why there are so many folks who think mefl's is going to be soooo great

* Melf’s Acid Arrow (down to 6 SP – Damage updated to 2d4 + 1 per caster level, duration locked to 12 seconds

so at level 20 thats ... umm 22-28 damage per sec on 1 target + metas .... um well if a melee is beating on it it WILL be DEAD in 1-2 seconds ... because they are doing at least 200 DPS if there any good at lvl 20 and I'm doing ...wait lets calculate a max ... um +50% for enhancements, +100 max + 50% empower + 75% acid clickie ... (22-28)*(0.5+1+0.5+0.75)=(22-28)*2.75=60-77 with it ... umm yea thats worthwhile yes thats per second but how many mobs last more than 2 seconds if a melee is beating on it as well???? please tell me. oh and if I happen to crit ... well thats 3x more if I have that maxed ...

ok ok .. lets do level 6 melee doing lets see if he has charged gauntlets(not hard to get) + a holy pure goodx ~ 100 dps give or take ... wizard if he has max/empower/clickie/enhancement(you wont at level 5 but lets pretend)... 2.75*(7-13)= 22-39DPS (hint hint ... this is pathetic) ... oh wait hmm my wizard does more with an weapon & those charged gauntlets ... which am I going to use ... tough choice there ... um I know I want to do less damage yea thats it

So to me with simple numbers .. I get wizard with sword is better than wizard with melfs.

now you might say that a "new" person lets choose lvl 6 won't have all that stuff so that's not fair so lets just compare a wiz with 2H weapon with the spell no metas .. just casting 25% enhancement
melfs=10-18 dps
weapon 2-12 +( 10 str & bulls a +2 weapon & a 1d6 extra damage) = 7-22/per swing which at level 6 is about 1.1-1.2 swings per second
not to far off but even so which one makes more sense to use?

now lets do a dungeon say butchers path ~ 200 enemies & 2 shrines
thats about 67 per shrine
so 67*6sps = 603 SPs ... um wait a lvl 6 wizard has how many ... oops ran out meanwhile if I was swinging a weapon .. well I don't run out

It's effectively a 6 mana single target firewall... that you can get at lvl 3-4... you don't get it? how about the fact that you can stack it with a firewall or cloudkill to double up that dmg? Gosh, I don't know WHY people are excited about melfs being changed to reflect the reality of mob hp!

[parvo]

Torc,
Is anything being done about faulty AoE spell targetting? What I'm talking about is spells like sleep and slow. They have an area affect that centers around where a mob was when you start the cast. By the time the spell lands, often times the mobs have moved completely out of the area. (It's always seemed odd to me that somehow hypno works perfectly fine though, landing where the target is, so maybe it's an easy fix.) I think Fireball is the same way as sleep and slow. Tends to miss a lot like the old missile weapons did. Target is faster than the missile speed.

Granted, I haven't used sleep or slow in many a moon, but the described issue is why.

[Feithlin]

I do not understand why there are so many folks who think mefl's is going to be soooo great

2d4 + 1/caster level = 25 average / sec. for 12 sec.
25 x (1 + 0.5 empower + 1.0 maximize) x (1.0 + 0.5 potency + 0.5 enhancements) = 125 / sec.
or (0.75 potency) 140 with clicky/pot.
18% crit for x3 adds 45 on average (I'm only using x2 because I add it to average normal damage) or 50 with clicky/pot.
Total: 170 or 190 / sec., 2,040 or 2,280 over 12 sec.

Sorry, but this is huge for only 6 sp base (granted, it's 46 sp with empower/maximize), as you just need to drop it then hide/run away. Of course, if you drop it on a mob who will die in 2 sec., this is just a bad use of the spell: why cast anything? Haste and keep your sp.
Furthermore, Melph's Arrow has no save, no SR check. This is a very good option for archers and so on. A better option than WoF now.

You can use it the economic way too. Without metas, average damage is 50 + 18 from crits = 68 x 12 sec. = 816 damage for 6 sp. Not bad, really. Sure, many SLA will be better, but the main point of Melph's Arrow is that you can hide/run while waiting for it to do its work.

[fiera]

Wall of Fire is not overpowered. All of the other damage spells are underpowered.

An arcane caster needs to keep up with melee DPS. Mobs hit points are severely inflated to keep up with melee DPS, but spells were never enhanced to maintain the balance.

As it stands, damage over time and save or die are the only effective ways for casters to deal with mobs and their high hit points. A typical caster's life cycle runs greataxe->Wall of Fire->save or die. By reducing the effectiveness of Wall of Fire you've simply extended the period in which a caster's best DPS is a greataxe.

-IMHO

I have personally not ever used a greataxe on my caster...and i've been fine...you can solo most low level content with a pocket healer using your wands and spells...(wands for level 1 only) because the shrines are spaces that you should really have enough sp to make it if your doing your job correctly...as for in a party...greataxe no...haste melees makes melees happy melees kill things...you don't take unneeded damage and this also makes the healers happy...so fw is gimped a little bit oh well...since its mostly used for undead anyway..who don't have reflex saves this should be fine. You can still run through delera's in 8 mins with your fw...you just might have to cast a couple extra since its no longer doing double damage. anyway i just thought i'd point out that a greataxe doesn't do more damage then say a scorching ray if your built properly. oh and since this will cost less you can cast it more how about that ...i foresee less greataxe wielding casters who think they are fighters but really just die alot.