ups and downs, but greataxe still buts the cake

[steelblueskies]

just tr'ed the wizard.

on the upside , yes , definitively tr'ing doesn't wipe exp, level, anything relating to crafting skill progress. that settles the assumption that it seems noone on the player side actually tested( naughty us trusting a release note item).

on the downside, still waiting for thoon for teh exp to get back to 20(and pick up some new spells while leveling so i can actually work with em a bit. as a result i found the acid chest in heyton's rest flooded, founf that by the time i could drain 50 charges from any eternal wand another fully drained wand would be recharged again. also noted that even with a lack of proficiency in greataxe, at least so far into level 2 (inventory popout says i have a -4 tohit hah) the greataxe is both simpler and faster then direct spellcasting. its approximately as fast as the eternal wands, and with the bane greataxe reward from the collaborator, even with a -4 tohit its still faster then the wands as well.

maybe if i took maximize and/or empower at character (re)creation that would change. of course then my sp pool would allow for about 4 shots at these levels.

congratulations, your marvelous plan failed. pure casting as a leveling method still blows by comparison to greataxing one's way(and especially if one master touches and greataxes which i did not as yet) and i do not expect this to change for a few levels- like until level 5 when i can toss on a full abishai set and carnifex until done with delera's thanks to the phasing mobs and poorer aoe dps, resorting to wands for ghostlies. ugh. nevermind, i think i'll skip that. and may whatever merciful gods may be show favor on the poor newbie souls who roll a caster without veteran status, an a non tr, with no twink gear.

go ahead and do it on lam. then you go ahead and respond which is faster and/or easier. bonus points for those brave enough to try it untwinked over here from level 1.


TLDR: spellchanges to make starting an arcane don't make it remotely competitive with greataxing, but other spell changes are probably going to make it even more painful through some additional levels, if not right up to gianthold.also someone screwed around with quest maps even as distant as korthos. and broke some bits.

[Cartheron]

Funny thing, when I was TRing my wiz last time I picked up a greataxe (I thought that Ill use it, as everyone claims it is necessary). Never used that. Niacs, shocking grasp (depending on enemy) is enough to kill everything in low lev quests. Just wear your +1 spellcaster level on lev 1 spells robe/docent, appropriate damage ench pots and go destroy everything. It worked when Niacs and shocking grasp were 10sp/cast, now when they cost 4sp/cast it will be sooo much easier.

[lppmor]

I tried a sorcerer too. I noticed at low levels you can use spells and you sp pool is enough to not have to swing a great axe. Kobolds die with 1-2 rays so you can pretty much only use spells the entire quests. You can see the changes working nicely at such levels, since you don't need metamagic.

However, after some point mobs start to have so much hp that you can't kill them in reasonable time only with basic spells. At this time you have to turn on your Maximize/Empower, but doing this spoils completely all the changes made to spell costs.. So you have to get your good old great axe again.

IMO, the only way to allow casters to play as true caster the entire game is changing metamagic so that it does not turn your cheap 6 sp spells into 46 sp monsters just to add +150% damage.

[steelblueskies]

which doesn't change the inevitable facts. damage improvement potions vs simply swinging an axe- which do you think is both cheaper and easier?

pretty sure the pendulum on cost falls on the side of the axe, especially if one has decent twink gear, and even more importantly once dungeon scaling no longer comes into play, and/or on hard/elite.

don't have a guildship with full +2 shrines and resistance buffs, but add that in on top of spearbane and furors hide and you are indestructible in korthos village, and axe swingings way ahead.

add in the new monster is blocked junket to the force lines so now they fail to cast when mobs run towards you around the other side of an object. that range as available in places like kobold assault demonstrates ray misses well, and even bolt misfires..

its still a balance vs ai problem. the mobs will come to you. you either stand and deliver cheaply, or plan to nuke at cost. there's a strong disparity, and adding potion enhancements is a nuisance factor added on top of a cost factor.

furthermore i can just imagine the joys to come once one hits delera's. on a fresh faced newbie wizard, untwinked.


tldr : potions not available in en masse to newbies just starting out. also requires foreknowledge in spell selection, and usage. making the class easier on new players, by modifying spellcasting, is a failure.
+5 event niacs ray wand still worst option from list of eternal wands at these levels, barring +1-4 of same. wands cheaper then direct cast, and operate as cl:3 even on a level 1. if they suck comparatively then, at level direct casting of same sucks worse. greataxe wins. spellpass fails to meet one of stated intents.

not to mention the newbies this was intended to ease things for won't have 'em. and probably won't even know what master's touch is. and if the easiest cheapest and most true advice to the new caster is grab a greataxe, both then and now.. guess what, it's still king of the hill.

on the upside they'll have sp left when they find a shaman has climbed a sheer wall and they don't yet have returning weaponry.

[voodoogroves]

I know the idea was to balance that, but I'm ok with it still being out of balance.

The D&D I played a wizard or sorc starts with very very few spells. It's back to the crossbow once those are tapped out. In DDO world, that crossbow just looks like a greataxe.

[steelblueskies]

I tried a sorcerer too. I noticed at low levels you can use spells and you sp pool is enough to not have to swing a great axe. Kobolds die with 1-2 rays so you can pretty much only use spells the entire quests. You can see the changes working nicely at such levels, since you don't need metamagic.

However, after some point mobs start to have so much hp that you can't kill them in reasonable time only with basic spells. At this time you have to turn on your Maximize/Empower, but doing this spoils completely all the changes made to spell costs.. So you have to get your good old great axe again.

IMO, the only way to allow casters to play as true caster the entire game is changing metamagic so that it does not turn your cheap 6 sp spells into 46 sp monsters just to add +150% damage.

you said kobolds.
1.point me to a kobold in korthos.(i imagine once you start seeing them a supercharged electric loop with appropriate enhancements might just be the best nuke, but by then you might already have access to eternal burning hands[brimstone verge], or snowball swarm[winter's wrath] and nothin' says cheap like aoe and no sp. of course by this point a twinked wizard would also likely have a carnifex suddenly available, and shortly the abishai set at which point melee'ing again takes the cake, add in a tier3 trinket(probably stalwart or the one with 20% blur at level 4 i can't think of the name of atm) and well..)

2. you said sorceror. you have more sp then a wizard of the same level with equal feat selections. how would you manage with say, half what you had to work with? still thinking the nuke methods as viable?

3. maximize and empower both by the time you are killing kobolds. this falls back to the potion problem. but you said sorceror, which seems to be the happy side of the spellpass because they are getting something, thus lessening the blow. it might work over there, but it's never worked on this side of the fence quite as well. then again we get more feats overall. have to focus more on efficiency. not fun, but "get it done", which comes from accounting from party behaviour, and composition, mobs and difficulty, costs in sp, time,reward.

[Thuriaz]

I think the other thing we are missing is, this is an MMO, as a caster your job isn't so much (even as a damage dealer) at low levels to wipe the tides of enemies, it's to hit that one...really...dangerous enemy who just held the fighter, threw up a cloud, and is about to cast something very nasty. The party relies on you to stop that opposing caster. Are the stakes low enough that you can fail in early levels and the team still make it through? Generally yes, but not without possibly the rogue biting the dust, or the healer having to burn through more SP to keep people standing.

From a solo point of view, I'm a firm believer that while anything can be soloed with good gear at level on normal, there is no reason ANYTHING, even the early level stuff, should be soloable at level (meaning a level 1 quest before modifiers) on elite. As for what constitutes good gear, at level 1 - and even a bit after - generally the stuff your finding in Korthos is pretty good as end rewards go. I still remember the biggest shock I had coming out of korthos as a fresh faced new wizard. It wasn't the ramp up in difficulty, it was how worthless end reward loot was.

The casters job swings between "Heavy Artillery" and "Utility Knife" for Sorcs it has always been a little more of the first than the second, and it's always started from day one, keeping a backup weapon on hand (or even using a staff as a backup weapon) isn't a terribly game breaking bad idea. In D&D you kept something on hand as a "just in case" generally, DDO isn't that much different except in the highest levels what you keep on hand is probably an SP potion instead of a weapon.

However, as a caster at the upper levels I'd think Echos of Power gives you one thing to make things easier, an emergency spell. You may use expeditious retreat as that emergency spell, or jump, possibly blur (if not already blurred), or web. That is there to keep you alive and viable because in a couple more seconds once your safe you can toss out some kind of damage spell to help the team, and after level 6 Sorc or Wiz you'll have access to (if built for it) a free spell you can max, height, and/or empower. More than enough to make you viable at that level.

However, yes, as far as soloing goes it's rough for a wiz or sorc to solo anything at the lowest levels relying on only spells, since the game never proposed to make it easy to do that, I don't see the problem.

[Cartheron]

Seriously, it is easy to solo everything since lev 1 using only spells. You said that using axe is easier and require less preparation - 1. using greataxe at every level is easier and requires less preparation. 2. Let me know if you will manage to solo Kobolds new ringleader elite at lev 4 using your greataxe. End boss will eat you alive, probably 1-shot you, while using spells it is safe and fast.

There is virtually nothing in harbor that cannot be soloed using niacs, shocking grasp + appropriate damage clickies. Marketplace is a bit harder, but you can easily hit lev 5 before that, and fireball will solve all problems in marketplace

Lowering spell cost just made it trivial - you no longer have to know quest well to be able to solo it with spells only.

[lppmor]

There is virtually nothing in harbor that cannot be soloed using niacs, shocking grasp + appropriate damage clickies. Marketplace is a bit harder, but you can easily hit lev 5 before that, and fireball will solve all problems in marketplace

Lowering spell cost just made it trivial - you no longer have to know quest well to be able to solo it with spells only.

Agree.

From my experience in Lamannia, at low levels you can use your new cheap spells to solo without the need to swing your axe too much. At high levels you can also use your spell-like abilities to the same effect (both wizard and sorcerer now have very cheap SLAs).

My only concern is with mid levels (maybe around 6 to 12), when you don't have good SLAs yet and at the same time can't kill enough without using metamagic. At this point I just prefer to buff myself and use a greataxe. I won't discuss if having to use a greataxe as a caster is good or bad, but IMO this will only really change after a metamagic pass.

[steelblueskies]

don't have to know it to solo it? have fun prepping only cold spells and buffs and running into skeletons . i checked, even casual in level 1 quests, they're still immune to cold(at least from a limited subset of the cold spells in any event).
kobolds new ringleader- mm. let's see, at level- i'm assuming you mean normal then. warforged and i can drag along a moderate fort ring that's bta with no ml. so thats crit immunity which makes his ragestomp dangerous.
i can also drag along that carnifex and my choice of tier3 cove trinkets. so i can prep with earthen guard from stalwart, then pick either 20% permablur with extras at lvl 4(which is 10% better then dusk heart btw) or damage and seeker and hit and shocking blow before i can use charged gauntlets.

do i want to gamble on using my full sp pool to repair and return if i get triple hit but have a good chance for a single swing to kill him on shocking blow proc? or up odds on whittling longer with the blur? maybe just keep stalwart and let the minor kobolds wail to try and keep earthen guard procs ahead of potential damage. would have to check how that stoneskin dr adds up. wonder how a lower level ratkiller might affect this workup.

but i have twinking gear.

and getting through as a green little pure caster didn't actually improve. which was a stated intent. thus the point and problem if it's not even remotely competitive with melee. hell in the time echoes of power fills 12 sp from 0 an eternal wand should have popped off 20 recharges. probably the single most useful starting off as a caster change right there. and every squishy fresh off the crashed boat has an option for an eternal wand( or a flaming greataxe). . . hmm.

[efreet5]

This is all news to me. People don't just use invisibility at early levels and kill only the boss monster???

[steelblueskies]

This is all news to me. People don't just use invisibility at early levels and kill only the boss monster???

no, not in a world where a consistent 1% exp bonus amounts to about 16k experience experience total by level 20 on a first life. that would mean repeatedly skipping 10% or more. the math says thats bad.

[shagath]

I finally gave latest lamannia client a try and it first time works for me. Made a wizard to try out low level casting and spells. I picked empower to boost spells for "boss fights" but noticed that you rather cast 3 spells(now that they are cheap) than one with empower(which already made me feat swap empower to mental toughness for more spammage).

I ended up preparing both acid spray and burning hands and rotating them. Sp pool is enought to spam this combination in every fight. Not as a effective as usual twink axe + masters touch but with first life low level weapons, I found spray/burning-spam to be effective enough to be a viable option. I was actually playing korthos nuker.

So far spell changes looks great and spell costs make it breeze but metamagics are just too expensive to be worth using at that low level if you plan to nuke your way through.

EDIT: As a note. I usually pick maximize feat at level 1 and go with masters touch + twinked greatsword. Maximize because if I want to cast something at some point, I like it being effective(single shot boss kills etc). Now I tried to nuke my whole way through and maximize is just too expensive for that, that's why went with empower. Still too costly. After you've nuked your way without metas, you don't have enough sp to empower last fight.

Oh and btw eternal firewand rocks now. It recharges very fast and combustion on it makes it a solid korthos weapon.

[voodoogroves]

This is all news to me. People don't just use invisibility at early levels and kill only the boss monster???

There are some fights you can't avoid, for those greataxe until you can gather everyone up for the big Acid Blast/Ball whatever.

[Cartheron]

don't have to know it to solo it? have fun prepping only cold spells and buffs and running into skeletons . i checked, even casual in level 1 quests, they're still immune to cold(at least from a limited subset of the cold spells in any event).
kobolds new ringleader- mm. let's see, at level- i'm assuming you mean normal then. warforged and i can drag along a moderate fort ring that's bta with no ml. so thats crit immunity which makes his ragestomp dangerous.
i can also drag along that carnifex and my choice of tier3 cove trinkets. so i can prep with earthen guard from stalwart, then pick either 20% permablur with extras at lvl 4(which is 10% better then dusk heart btw) or damage and seeker and hit and shocking blow before i can use charged gauntlets.

do i want to gamble on using my full sp pool to repair and return if i get triple hit but have a good chance for a single swing to kill him on shocking blow proc? or up odds on whittling longer with the blur? maybe just keep stalwart and let the minor kobolds wail to try and keep earthen guard procs ahead of potential damage. would have to check how that stoneskin dr adds up. wonder how a lower level ratkiller might affect this workup.

but i have twinking gear.

and getting through as a green little pure caster didn't actually improve. which was a stated intent. thus the point and problem if it's not even remotely competitive with melee. hell in the time echoes of power fills 12 sp from 0 an eternal wand should have popped off 20 recharges. probably the single most useful starting off as a caster change right there. and every squishy fresh off the crashed boat has an option for an eternal wand( or a flaming greataxe). . . hmm.

I specificaly wrote solo everything with niacs and shocking grasp. Guess what, shocking grasp is working on everything niacs is not in low levels.

And I wrote ELITE kobolds at lev 4. This boss will kill you with 1 tripple attack without crits. And with about 200hp and meaningful AC he is rather hard to 1 hit kill with shocking blow. I used this as example because when I was doing tests on Niacs before TRing my wiz Ive done this q on elite with fresh out of boat drow sorc - I gave him freeze pots, but forgot to give him cure pots. Ive soloed this without using a shrine. No way I could survive that on untwinked char using greataxe.

Korthos and harbor quests on normal are so easy that ability to do them with greataxe or with spells is irrelevant, you can breeze through them with twink gear and ship buffs on 18dex 18 wis wizard. If you want to check which one is better, do it in some at least moderately challenging situation.

And btw, invisibilty, run to the boss, nuke the boss, recall, repeat is best possible xp/min ratio achievable, because you will usualy get 7% bonus for not killing stuff and kobolds for example can be run on elite in less than 2 minutes with that method. Beat that xp flow

[steelblueskies]

I specificaly wrote solo everything with niacs and shocking grasp. Guess what, shocking grasp is working on everything niacs is not in low levels.

And I wrote ELITE kobolds at lev 4. This boss will kill you with 1 tripple attack without crits. And with about 200hp and meaningful AC he is rather hard to 1 hit kill with shocking blow. I used this as example because when I was doing tests on Niacs before TRing my wiz Ive done this q on elite with fresh out of boat drow sorc - I gave him freeze pots, but forgot to give him cure pots. Ive soloed this without using a shrine. No way I could survive that on untwinked char using greataxe.

Korthos and harbor quests on normal are so easy that ability to do them with greataxe or with spells is irrelevant, you can breeze through them with twink gear and ship buffs on 18dex 18 wis wizard. If you want to check which one is better, do it in some at least moderately challenging situation.

And btw, invisibilty, run to the boss, nuke the boss, recall, repeat is best possible xp/min ratio achievable, because you will usualy get 7% bonus for not killing stuff and kobolds for example can be run on elite in less than 2 minutes with that method. Beat that xp flow

how to melee solo any mobs that chase persistently.

equip weapon, and tape down attack button on mouse. now aggro mobs and begin running backwards, ie away from mobs while facing them swinging constantly, in a circle. you have gotten the hang of it when you see consistent miss, glancing blow, and hit messages.

for mobs that pause or rage like ogres, when they stop, put three times swing range worth of distance between you and them kite at range for a period ranging from 5-20 seconds depending on mob, color(red v orange), and difficulty, and then allow range to close using above kite method until swings result in misses hits and glancings. on mob raging again or stopping repeat distancing procedure on down.

200hp on a 20 with a keen weapon like carnifex is 1.5-2 hits. as successive strikes of that sort are not likely, kiting is important. slow movement as from casting in standard cast range used to lead to deaths when i did exactly what you describe, i agree. then i learned that circle strafing to his backside causes one miss, leaving only two chance hits, and that ranging on those rages which he pauses to pump up for like all ogres, and waiting out the duration of the rage effect, is even better.
takes a bit of practice much like twitch attacking for thf melee's, but works wonders, even on packs. much harder in confined spaces like hallways.
but this is beside the point. it can be done many ways, and the two perspectives here are very different.
you theorize a situation as doable while ignoring the biggest advantage we players have- foreknowledge. even more then gear, this trivializes much of the content.
the newbie we hypothesize is probably not going to survive a solo attempt at that particular nasty without foreknowledge in any event(on any difficulty, we are talking walks in alone, first time ever, any toon, and no research done- these exist in droves lately). we can presume they will have attempted the specific quest twice already to completion, probably with a party, and therefore they may still be oblivious to his health and/or damage output/behaviour(as multiple attackers on lower difficulty result in one dead ogre very fast), although he might have seen a party member die, so that creates a middle ground. now that starter greataxe with fire damage probably didn't get picked up by this type, and likely its a 28 point build that is at best one of the premade setups. it's likely he's wandering around with the wand, the staff, or a longsword because it sounded neat. he will probably try to nuke it to death with whatever he has on hand. the spray/hand/touch range spells on such a build will lead to death, too close and it impairs movement while casting, and while casting you can't be blocking for the dr, however small. wanding, will deal too little damage while impairing movement too much for him to be able to get out of dodgbe, even assuming he knows how. it increases encounter time and the odds of getting caught in wand/cast slowmo at just the wrong moment.
if we presume he has the wherewithal to have notice some of the rays and bolts have extra super range, and has them loaded, AND has sp left, he may do alright comparative to a 2 handed weapon .
if he runs out and has to rely on echoes to regen him enough sp to nuke further his survival odds also drop due to increased encounter time.
and unmaximized no potion unempowered nonpotency spells of level 3 and below are going to take a bit to kill 200hp as well. as their output at that level in that state with no enhancement is comparative to the starter weaponry.

but it all gets terribly hard to model when we add that many variables.

try using irestone inlet hard at level (4 normal, 5 hard) so shrine use is restricted again. run the solo test case through your head again. cc was godlike in there, when at level soloing. it's no longer extendable, so what now? you also have respawning patrol mobs. same problems different scenery. biggest dangers become respawns while kiting, caster damage/command, and trips. the melee kite works on the last, but ups risk on the first, and has mixed results on the second. the nuke works great on the second, and gives increased risk on the first, and mixed on the third.(ray spell enlarged range, means nuking from out of awareness range is plausible, unfortunately that means standing in the place patrols respawn, and if inside awareness range the possibility of being flanked, and more then just the dogs trip in there.)

gets messy to look at. which is why i note practicum. best bet is electric loop. the stun and aoe effect on that is still wonderful.

meh. guess the tldr would be something like: it can be done either way, but one works better and is more accessible as an easy way for the majority of cases we can examine. with quite a few near ties. the changes may have made a given approach *more* viable, but have not made them as viable overall, due to multiple inherent drawbacks. people like machineguns, but precision bolt action fire is usually more efficient given equal munitions. and you are still more likely to survive a gunshot then being hacked bodily with an axe/sword/etc.

this sadly carries over into how it is in early game.

meh losing my own thread. here. will edit later. need rest.

[Artagon]

Funny, I've been leveling a sorc on live, and I have yet to have to swing a weapon, and I am lvl 7 on him, he's still wearing korthos gear, because I haven't gotten around to twinking him yet.