Firstly, it looks like a poor solution to a problem that may not be there any more. The original problem seems to have been that 'hold' makes epic too easy. This was probably because it was about the most effective CC spell available to casters once you take away death spell. But with all the other changes going into epic, there will be a lot of other options available to casters.

My reasons for mightily disliking this change are:

1. It's a poor solution for a (possible) non-problem with 'hold' spells.

2. 'held' monsters are *paralyzed*. They can not move. I should be able to poke their eyes out, cut their throat and hamstring them. I should be able to give them a coup-de-grace. Instead, I currently have to beat them down with auto-crits; this seems like an acceptable compromise for the way DDO operates. With the new change, I have to beat them down with boosted DPS. This sucks.

3. OK, it's minor, but there is something very satisfying about seeing a bunch of auto-crit results flying up the screen. As a caster it's one of the few times I see weapon crits (certainly the most satisfying).

3. Unlike 'wail', 'mass-hold' is a party-pleaser; with 'wail' I just cast-and-kill. With 'hold', I cast, and everyone gets to kill. It's more family friendly. And fun.

4. Many of the death spells were removed from epic because they would have made them too easy. Now they are back with (waaaay too long) timeouts. 'hold' could be viewed (in terms of efficacy) as a poor death spell: cast it, and within a short time, most things that failed a save will probably be dead. Why not just give it a long cool-down like the death effects?


To rectify this, my suggestions are:

1. differentiate 'stunned' from 'held'. They seem to me to be very different things.

2. keep auto-crit for 'held' monsters

3. put a 30 second cooldown on 'mass hold' (it's currently 7 or 8 seconds); with 8 second cooldowns you can cast then wait 8 seconds and get any stragglers. With a 30 second cooldown and the 2-second save cycle, they will all have made their saves by the time the 30 seconds is up (or be dead).

4. keep the current cooldown on single-target 'hold'

5. Put 'paralyzed' (via paralyzer weapons) in a category that is better than 'stunned', but not as good as 'held'. While I dislike the fact that 'paralyzed' != 'held', I do understand why it should be the case given the way the world worked back when 'paralyzed' == 'held'.

6. Make 'Extend' double the time between possible saves.

7. Make Extend work on 'hold' (and *any* spell with a duration, FWIW).

I can see that some of the massive collection of changes in update 9 need to be done together: death spells & vorpals, for example are closely related.

But I urge going slowly where possible; take an iterative approach working on small differences. The 'hold' spells are a good place to start.