Spell Pass Preview - Chaaannggeee!

[Gulnar13]

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 find quite amusing by someone who has in his sign "ignorance is strenght" a pro-melee post. And not only a pro-melee one, but a "pro-Shade-style" melee one. Not that i have something against Shade, but his playstyle is emulated by many barbarians, who think that the cleric mana bar is part of their red bar.
Also, in pnp wizards are MORE over powered than in DDO. Many spells that we have in pnp here lacks, like the whole wish/miracle line, the various dweomers that emulate clerical spells, and so on.

[Theolin]

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.

Exactly my point ... 190/sec < bad melee at lvl 20 ... If you run with competent melees it a worthless spell most trash fights domt last but 5 ish seconds, yea if they give you time to stack up a few aoes and you get off 1 spell / second then you can do what they do but its mostly a waste of sps to try, I have found single target spells just not worth it reguardless of sp cost when your in a group mostly because of how fast they die by the time you target the one that the melees won't swing at till last your spell still won't kill it they will, this has little to do with spells and much to do with the fact that a level 4 char can weild a holy iceyburst weapon in each hand and do an incredible amount of damage comparitively, since that was a choice in power creep that was made you can balance them in 1 of 3 ways, bring the top down, bottom up, or both.

Yes I agree that what they have done is better for single targets ... its just that even so it only brings you up to 2/3 of a melee at best so you are still going to do aoes because you dp(whatever) is greater and it contributes more because even weak aoe at 10 damage to 10 targets is better than 100 to 1 reguardless of sp cost due to how long fights last,

Boss fights are different of course there you just roll through what ever your best dps spells are for the longest timer you have for the best one even so how often can an arcane pull agro from a melee, if both are geared about the same?

[Cartheron]

Water savant will get 1500 single target dps in update 9. Check spell casters forums. Single target dps of casters now skyrocketed, what I mostly fear about this update is that there will be no reason to even bring melee into a raid (little exagaration, but if you can dish out 140 000 damage to raid boss before you will run out of sp, then you need only 4 of you to kill every single raid boss out there, maybe 5 to be safe). And you can still do your usual CC, instakill or whatever you like, all this while being very tough and hard to kill, with reliable self healing (squishy arcanes are squishy because of their choices, not because they have to be squishy).

About melf arrow itself - it is 190 dps by itself, stacking with everything you will cast at the target during its duration. For 46sp. It is extreme.

I agree, casting single target spells on trash is usually waste of sp, but calling single target spells a waste of sp because they are not good against trash is a bit weird - they are not ment to be good against trash, they are ment to be boss killers.

What arcanes lacked for a very long time in DDO was ability to dish meaningful dps against raid bosses. They were always able to completly dominate every trash mob in every quest, even with blanket immunities (this only required a bit more work). Now they will be still be able to do that AND to dish meaningful damage against raid boss (especialy with event daggers/noxious embers). We will see how it will work in the end, and I hope melee dps will still have some reason to exist

[Requiro]

As an afterthought, I think I spoke too quickly. (...)
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.

And this is creative way of thinking

(...)

Burning hands/Melf’s Acid Arrow – meh really once im past lvl 6 i never use these spells they don’t do enough damage to make it worthwhile and you need to be in range of melee to cast hands which means your dead as soon as something swings for you. If you cast Melfs it’s a waste of sp as a decent melee will take the HP off quicker than you can cast it.

With new power, and free enlarge you can cast it way before the melee get to the target. At least half of the HP will gone when melee start swinging.
(...)
Polar ray – Not too bothered would be better if the cooldown was reduced a bit to compensate for the enlarge not working. Hope you don’t touch the other cold spells.

Strange that you don't use one of the best damaging spell in the game ...

(...)
Spell point regen – looking at this it seems quite good until you realise all the low level spells that cap early and are of little use later cost up to 12 sp while the ones you actually need to cast in later quests i.e. firewall/polar ray cost more than 12 sp makes this a useless feature after lvl 10…. Unless you allow feats/enhancements that will increase the regen limit i..e enhancement line to increase limit by 20sp each time up to 100 sp ????

You forgot about SL-a. And you want WoW here? No. Just no. 12 SP cap is maximum what should be consider. 10 is better.

Comments in yellow

One more think: Spells that can't be enlarge are already enlarge. See the description. That mean you get enlarge for free.

[joneb1999]

Please note these are just questions and hypothesis upon which I would like to read your thoughts.

1. Could there be a danger of some metas becoming white elephants after this update?
2. Would it be fairer to allow metas to work like fast use skills that you can turn on and off to suit for each spell as you cast so it can become part of the skill of spellcasting to select the best metas for what you want the spell to do at whatever cost.
3. Under the new update would it work better if the cost of the meta more regarded the cost of the spell? For instance a maximise on a 6 sp spell would cost 2x spell cost instead of 25sp making using it on such a spell worhtwhile; with a limit of 20sp to make wall of fire a little less expensive since it has been nerfed otherwise?

[Symar-FangofLloth]

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).

I haven't read every post, but I've been trying to keep up with the thread. I don't think anybody who's discussed the SP regen has taken note of the above.

[Darkrok]

Boss fights are different of course there you just roll through what ever your best dps spells are for the longest timer you have for the best one even so how often can an arcane pull agro from a melee, if both are geared about the same?

You would never use a dot for trash unless the trash was going to be alive for the entire dot. If it is, it's cheap dps.

You have to remember that there's an opportunity cost to melee damage. It's the opposite of set it and forget it. In order to do a certain amount of melee dps, the melee must stay there the entire time. With the dot's in the game - melf's, wall of fire, various clouds, ice storm, etc - arcanes have many ways to 'set it and forget it'. They could be doing 150'ish dps here, 400 total dps with their wall of fire (to several enemies), another 150'ish there, and then also casting nukes for additional dps. Their total damage output will be higher if they have the time to apply their attacks to more than one enemy and might even be higher if they can only apply it to a single enemy.

[Requiro]

I haven't read every post, but I've been trying to keep up with the thread. I don't think anybody who's discussed the SP regen has taken note of the above.

Yes we notice. Thats why Bards, Rangers and Paladins don't get their SP regen...

[Cyr]

Some basic issues with this spell pass.

* Speciality rules being applied all over the place. These are the 'this spell is not effected by X'. This gets away from a consistent ruleset, degrades the utility of whatever is being restricted, and is 100% not needed.

* DoT effects as a whole are becoming MORE powerful yet the utility of the most commonly used one is being drastically reduced. This screams that whoever is doing this system does not have clear goals in mind. New Melf's + Incendiary Cloud >> old firewall for damage per second. I'm still waiting to see if the other iconic acid spells got a rework...

* Death Effects are becoming more powerful per hit, but less useful over the course of an adventure. This degrades the utility of having a necromancy spec in many ways (requiring dedicated feats and a PrE).

* Generalists are much more powerful then before. This by itself does not equal a bad thing. It does however show a lack of understanding about how systems interact allowing for the DoT stacking to be effective as well as something like a water savant with very high force and acid damage also for maximized dps.

* Artwork being under utilized seemed to be the main justification for a massive rework for both the developers and the players. This is perhaps the worst explanation for a change of this type that I have seen (and that says a lot considering some of the highly dubious claims made in the past for other things).

* Power Word Kill is just not thought out. Orange named bosses are 100% trivial due to this single addition. This forces certain encounter designs to use red names when they might otherwise not have to be used...which is a bad thing as the red name carries alot of other rules attached to it.

* Metamagics do not scale based upon spell cost. This basically invalidates the entire effort. Players may love throwing lightning bolts at 5th level for cheap, but when they grab heighten for their webs at high levels and find out that that same lightning bolt now has a distorted cost they will stop using it again. Of course that could have been solved by having spells capable of being hotbarred with a choice of metas being applied, but you don't release something major like this without the proper tools in game for it already or being released at the same time.

* Helpless effects (considered as part of the spell pass here) are being changed to be a strict nerf to certain builds and strategies while being a strict buff to others. This creates big winner and losers. Weapon based dps is a loser here while rogues and arcanes are the winners. As good players know that rogues and arcanes are in current game incredibly valued in epics (and arcanes being highly used to solo epics) there was little reason for this distorted buff/nerf.

* Major buffs to certain spells will make certain mob encounters dramatically and disproportionently more dangerous then before. This would be along the lines of unintended consequences...the single change made to metoer swarm dramatically changed the dynamic kobold in a manner that apparently was not properly tested...it's just not believable that when a single change was made and it was not evaluated fully that a list of changes this massive will have had a full vetting.

[Angelus_dead]

* Artwork being under utilized seemed to be the main justification for a massive rework for both the developers and the players.

Lol wut.

[voodoogroves]

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.

This was mentioned, though in my mind this is hardly the "main justification".

[PopeJual]

* Power Word Kill is just not thought out. Orange named bosses are 100% trivial due to this single addition. This forces certain encounter designs to use red names when they might otherwise not have to be used...which is a bad thing as the red name carries alot of other rules attached to it.

I agree with some of what you wrote and I disagree with some of what you wrote, but I did want to jump in on the Power Word Kill thing.

Orange bosses are already trivial. Power Word Kill won't make them any more trivial and I'll be surprised if many people even take PWK after U9 because of the 4 minute cooldown. Sure, it can kill any single creature (if you make your Spell Resistance check), but killing 1 critter every 4 minutes is not going to win you any prizes. The 4 minute cooldown makes it not worth a slot as far as I can see.

Wail of the Banshee's new cooldown is bad enough, but a 4 minute cooldown means once or twice per shrine. Not impressed.

[Angelus_dead]

Orange bosses are already trivial. Power Word Kill won't make them any more trivial

Yep, if PWK can kill it then Drain + Finger can too, and without using up additional spell slots or a lengthy cooldown schedule.

Hypothetically the dungeon builders could create minibosses with super-high Fortitude and extra-large hitpoints, so PWK is a major advantage. But that hasn't been the case so far.

Honestly I'd still look for more ways for PWK to be worth a spell slot, such as following the D&D example and giving Power Word spells a benefit of faster casting and being usable while unable to move normally. Suppose you could still use it while Webbed or Earthgrabbed... that'd be a bit of a niche.

[Elucidus]

I am loving the changes. Especially firewall. This isn't WoW and there shouldn't be one end all be all spell.

I can't wait to see these and the other changes in action.

LOL, Just realized some yutz neg rep'd me for my simple comments. Go to town, I don't care. Makes me love the changes even more.


Seriously though, Firewall is not getting that big of a nerf and it is much needed. So get over yourself and learn how to play the game the way it was meant to be played.

[voodoogroves]

Yep, if PWK can kill it then Drain + Finger can too, and without using up additional spell slots or a lengthy cooldown schedule.

Hypothetically the dungeon builders could create minibosses with super-high Fortitude and extra-large hitpoints, so PWK is a major advantage. But that hasn't been the case so far.

Could; not there yet. Spell Pen an issue.

[Letrii]

Yep, if PWK can kill it then Drain + Finger can too, and without using up additional spell slots or a lengthy cooldown schedule.

Hypothetically the dungeon builders could create minibosses with super-high Fortitude and extra-large hitpoints, so PWK is a major advantage. But that hasn't been the case so far.

Don't give them ideas.

[Angelus_dead]

Has to be 999 hit points or your 4 minute timer just did 1000 points of damage ;-)

This is spells we're talking about, not Vorpals.

[voodoogroves]

This is spells we're talking about, not Vorpals.

Yeah I corrected this already (and beat the edit timer)

[dunklezhan]

* Metamagics do not scale based upon spell cost. This basically invalidates the entire effort. Players may love throwing lightning bolts at 5th level for cheap, but when they grab heighten for their webs at high levels and find out that that same lightning bolt now has a distorted cost they will stop using it again. Of course that could have been solved by having spells capable of being hotbarred with a choice of metas being applied, but you don't release something major like this without the proper tools in game for it already or being released at the same time.

Emphasis mine for disagreement purposes!

OK - you're right that turning metas on will distort costs (noting that your SLA costs will be unaffected if you have them). But they'll still be cheaper overall (Wall of Fire notwithstanding) than they are now. So you still benefit from the changes. Not by much, I know, but still cheaper. And that means more nukage.

I don't disagree that it would be nice to see what you suggest, but I do disagree that it 'invalidates the entire effort'.

[EKKM]

This is the part that I find funny.
Everyone cries that they want less easy buttons.
Then everyone cries when their easy buttons are taken away.

Which is it? Do you want easy buttons or not? Because WoB on a practically non-existent cooldown is an easy button.
And we all know it.

You know this board isn't you and one other poster with a 200 logins right? It is possible that those that decry easy bottons are different than the posters complaining about the FW nerf.

oh don't get me started on how you roll dice since 2d6 is not the same as 2-12 damage.

Only the notation on the description is 2-12, they do roll 2d6 (or 2d3+6).


I'm thinking more about this and think it is probably good for the game overall. Arcanes should be useful for more functions in end game content now and will hav e more option levelling up. Of course, we'll have to see if it works in application.