Enough with the insta kills in epics?

[Talon_Moonshadow]

I should be able to insta-kill every single Bugbear, Hobgoblin and Troll in the game.

Come back to me and complain when we have some real Epic monsters to fight. Monsters that should have defenses against common spells....just like we do.

But hopefully, our wise DMs will still give us hordes of minions for us to blast out of existance too.




(on a side note, the complaints about arcanes insta-killing non-named Epic monsters would carry more weight, if people didn't routinely do everything they can to run through epics and avoid fighting any of them to begin with.)

[voodoogroves]

And, I honestly think Grodon9999 hit the mark.

Let's not change epics at all, ever again. New and better content.

[altrocks]

IMO:

reason for that is people either don't know about arcanes or don't trust pug arcanes to not suck horribly. An arcane that sucks is much more noticeable than a melee that sucks, so it could be avoided.

Most non-pugs I'd wager are either filled with all casters or melees are only in the party because the guildy or friend doesn't have a good caster toon off timer for said quest or it requires the presence of the melee for loot.

Most of my groups are run till the end by casters. then we swap to melees so our useful toons don't get on timer.
(note: before U9 I only had very neglected casters for the solo purpose of farming epics either solo or taking a turn doing CC, because unlike melees post U9, Pre U9 casters were a good idea to have in the party. Now it makes little sense in 95% of the game to play the melee toons I spent so much time gearing and playing)

I don't buy that completely. I've seen a few people who think the old way, but not many. Truth is that melee classes still outnumber arcane and divine ones. People still enjoy playing them and they still work just as well as pre-U9. With few exceptions, every group I put witches no shortage of melee joining. Casters are becoming very common too because they're good now,but just buff/hold bots. Divine are still hard to find though. FvS are too busy solo'ing the entire game and clerics are just not popular to play it seems. I think people will just play what they want to play for whatever reason. For power gamers that means dumping that 6 or 9 times TR barbarian for a 6 or 9 times TR savant. For others it means adjusting play style and group composition to keep playing the toon they already like.

[Burradin]

It is better now, but would be even better without the insta kills; see my above post.

In your opinion, In my caster opinion, now is fine. And since I don't haste people continuously, it makes me run EPICS. I dot play buff bots.

[steelblueskies]

Epics should be balanced for elite players however. The very definition of epic demands it. Raids should also be balanced for elite players.

Even though his experience is with elite players, doesn't mean an elite player is required for his statement to be true either. My gimpy necro Sorc will make a barbarian feel pretty useless in any epic quest too up until the point that we get to the boss and the barbarian can't hold aggro from me so I end up kiting it which just so happens to make everybodies lives easier and the barbarian feels useless again.

Think you Are confused. Definition of epic in respect to d&d was already adressed. It is defined in that context and the srd rules as above level 20, not uber leet superhard massive epeen contest between supervillians and superheroes, with or without lots of explosions and an orchestral soundtrack.

Now if you were to go and discuss the purely contrived by turbine artificial difficulty construct of elite(as in casual/solo, normal, hard, elite) then sure tune elite for elite players.

Or maybe it's all turbines fault for sending mixed signals. Or blizzards for making your thoughtline common. Can't be d&d in itself as it's spelled out the other way around compared to what you stated.

[Viisari]

Make up your mind, are they running to kill stuff that gets fingered or are they staying behind killing stuff that didn't get insta-killed?

Way to confuse two different messages and take them out of context. Running after mobs was specific for eDA, and some have given up with that, because most of the time do that, they might get a stun in and then notice the mob just got fingered. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? Let me tell you, it's annoying as hell.

If it's the second, what exactly is wrong with killing the stuff that didn't die to the wail to free up the caster to go wail something else? How is that "useless"? It's not, it's called teamwork. It's the exact same role the caster used to fill for you, keep the stuff that is still alive from killing you while you kill away.

Again, you miss the point.

It doesn't take a lot of brain cells to "know their job" when that job consisted of autoattacking permaheld, permastoned, or perma-stunned monsters for autocrit. If you are going to argue it did, it makes your whole second and third paragraph hilarious. What does take some "knowing" now is figuring out how to work when the arcane isnt' your haste-and-hold bot to give you all the kill count, and now they'd rather be contributing kills directly since they can...and guess what, it's how they've played for the past 10 or so levels before epic too. If the arcane getting 2 times or more kills than you bothers you that much, I'm sorry, but that's no different than it's been since the level casters get 4th level spells (or earlier for some).

Go try sands epics and get back to me.

My sorc is not uber geared compared to someone decked out in epic gear no, but he still does just fine in every epic I've run him in so far as well as in elite content in amrath and pretty much anywhere else I want to go. You make the mistake of thinking you can MyDDO my gear and know my worth, which is fine, but misguided. Considering that every piece of gear I have is earned through either soloing or PuGging, and this is my first life and my sorc is my first toon here, I think he's doing pretty well. Maybe you disagree, and that's your right.

Your gear isn't bad, but it's not good either. And while MyDDO doesn't tell the whole story, it gives a pretty good general idea (when up to date, and yours seems to be). For example, it seems you have only ran House D and House P epics on your sorc, so you don't have a very good general idea about epics in general. I've completed every single epic quest (including the obscure stuff like spies in the house, which btw doesn't even drop a full token, the **** place should give two full tokens to be worth it >_<) in the game, so I do have a pretty good general idea.

As for "well played" you haven't a clue how well I play unless you play with me or talk to someone who has. You can't judge by my "posts here" how well I play with any accuracy. There isn't a correlation. All you can do is hurl baseless ad-hominem attacks based on your annoyance with my opinion differing from yours on a matter you apparently feel so passionate about. I've not had any complaints about my skill, survivability, or dps. I typically lead killcounts even among the casters (when I bother checking kill-counts) or come in second to another sorc. If you want to assail my "skill" sight unseen, feel free to make a fool out of yourself publicly in so doing. I don't need to defend myself any further.

Your comments here and character log from myddo are enough for me to make pretty good assesment, not perfect, but enough to give me an idea on what kind of a player you might be, which is sufficient. You've only completed the easiest epic quests in the game. Before they were a holdfest, now they're a wailfest, I still have to press only one button and receive my bacon.

When you're ready to discuss this rather than just make personal attacks and derogatory assumptions with no facts to back them up, I'll be here. until then...

I'm offensive against everyone equally (actually more so to people I know, ha!) so don't feel special. And that aside, you still managed to miss the whole point. You've only run the easy epics and probably with not-so-good players so I can forgive you, but let me spell it out for you again:

THERE IS NO REASON TO TAKE A MELEE IN (almost) ANY QUEST IF YOU CAN TAKE A CASTER WHO IS NOT CLUELESS IN HIS PLACE.

There? See that? Now give me A REASON to take a melee, because if you want the best possible party, there IS NO REASON. Ideal party make-up would be something like 2x fvs, 2x wizard 2x sorc. No melees because they would simply underperform in almost anything a caster can do, heck, a tukaw build was tanking Turigulon once (a very well geared one though) because the melee couldn't get the aggro off him due to SLA's (he was shield blocking, so no melee dps from him), true, the melees there probably weren't geared with all the possible stuff (they weren't gimps, so that theory is out), but that's not the point (actually it is a part of the point but not relevant in this example, because a capped sorc with some gear can grab aggro from most melees).

There's this one person I know, who less than 2 months ago didn't have a caster and had never played one afaik. She's got some decent gear on her new wizard now, not anywhere near what Forzah here for example has, yet she can blast through any epic content she has played a few times to the degree that this thread was created (after a run in last stand afaik).

There is no balance between casters and melees in this game, and if you don't think this is true, then you don't know casters or this game well at all. Period.

<edit> And stop giving me that **** that you'd need to be uber or something for all this. Start running epics daily instead of once every other week, start running other epics than phiarlan and deneith ones, learn to play, and you WILL SEE there is a huge imbalance between casters and melees, because THAT IS EXACTLY what happened to me.

[slimkj]

There? See that? Now give me A REASON to take a melee, because if you want the best possible party, there IS NO REASON.

Because most efficient doesn't always = most fun, for all people. I don't disagree with some of the comments about caster power, but this is just silly. You are only looking at the game through your own viewpoint, and not considering the many other players, and the many other influences on how they seek to form their groups. People don't just play this to win fastest. You might, I do a lot of the time, but not everyone.

[Viisari]

Because most efficient doesn't always = most fun, for all people. I don't disagree with some of the comments about caster power, but this is just silly. You are only looking at the game through your own viewpoint, and not considering the many other players, and the many other influences on how they seek to form their groups. People don't just play this to win fastest. You might, I do a lot of the time, but not everyone.

This is true, and I'm not saying I won't run with melees anymore, because I do, many of my friends play melees (myself included and I don't gather optimal parties except if we're going for max speedruns or something). But the point is to show that melees are so much behind casters that from a pure efficiency viewpoint they're completely pointless, and when discussing balance, I think this is very relevant.

Oh and the funfactor is pretty relevant too here, since melees loose their fun just by running with someone who has a passable necro DC. Find a good necro archmage or palemaster and you'll see how much fun it is to go beat mobs only to see them die when you've just chewed half their hp away by yourself. With one caster like this, you might get a few kills when his spells are on cooldown, but if there happens to be two or more of them you might aswell pike in the corner. It's not fun at all, it makes you feel useless.

[Timmeke123456]

I'd say roll a necro caster & gear him up

[Rodasch]

Way to confuse two different messages and take them out of context. Running after mobs was specific for eDA, and some have given up with that, because most of the time do that, they might get a stun in and then notice the mob just got fingered. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? Let me tell you, it's annoying as hell.



Again, you miss the point.



Go try sands epics and get back to me.



Your gear isn't bad, but it's not good either. And while MyDDO doesn't tell the whole story, it gives a pretty good general idea (when up to date, and yours seems to be). For example, it seems you have only ran House D and House P epics on your sorc, so you don't have a very good general idea about epics in general. I've completed every single epic quest (including the obscure stuff like spies in the house, which btw doesn't even drop a full token, the **** place should give two full tokens to be worth it >_<) in the game, so I do have a pretty good general idea.



Your comments here and character log from myddo are enough for me to make pretty good assesment, not perfect, but enough to give me an idea on what kind of a player you might be, which is sufficient. You've only completed the easiest epic quests in the game. Before they were a holdfest, now they're a wailfest, I still have to press only one button and receive my bacon.



I'm offensive against everyone equally (actually more so to people I know, ha!) so don't feel special. And that aside, you still managed to miss the whole point. You've only run the easy epics and probably with not-so-good players so I can forgive you, but let me spell it out for you again:

THERE IS NO REASON TO TAKE A MELEE IN (almost) ANY QUEST IF YOU CAN TAKE A CASTER WHO IS NOT CLUELESS IN HIS PLACE.

There? See that? Now give me A REASON to take a melee, because if you want the best possible party, there IS NO REASON. Ideal party make-up would be something like 2x fvs, 2x wizard 2x sorc. No melees because they would simply underperform in almost anything a caster can do, heck, a tukaw build was tanking Turigulon once (a very well geared one though) because the melee couldn't get the aggro off him due to SLA's (he was shield blocking, so no melee dps from him), true, the melees there probably weren't geared with all the possible stuff (they weren't gimps, so that theory is out), but that's not the point (actually it is a part of the point but not relevant in this example, because a capped sorc with some gear can grab aggro from most melees).

There's this one person I know, who less than 2 months ago didn't have a caster and had never played one afaik. She's got some decent gear on her new wizard now, not anywhere near what Forzah here for example has, yet she can blast through any epic content she has played a few times to the degree that this thread was created (after a run in last stand afaik).

There is no balance between casters and melees in this game, and if you don't think this is true, then you don't know casters or this game well at all. Period.

<edit> And stop giving me that **** that you'd need to be uber or something for all this. Start running epics daily instead of once every other week, start running other epics than phiarlan and deneith ones, learn to play, and you WILL SEE there is a huge imbalance between casters and melees, because THAT IS EXACTLY what happened to me.

That quest long only shows the epics I completed, not the ones I farmed without completion. I solo farm eADQ, eWizKing for scrolls/seals, etc. I also ran a couple eChrono but it was with a poor group and we didn't do so well. I was the last one to die every time however, but Bloodplate's room can be a mess when 11 other people are dead around you and you're trying to solo Bloodplate, rez clerics, heal yourself, and deal with armorers and other adds too...but I obviously don't know how to play since I don't farm epics daily and actually prefer to play other parts of the game with other characters (I have 11 characters on Ghallanda and several on other servers) rather than grind the epic nightmare every hour I'm on DDO. I've also completed eDQ several times but that doesnt' count because eDQ is almost easier than elite DQ.

Just because DDO isn't a third job for me doesn't mean you're a better player than me. I have played in enough epics to know how they work and how my caster works in them, and I've also played with people in epics who are fantastic players of all classes. I have sufficient play experience to make an assessment and posit an opinion.

You are unhappy because you can't outperform an arcane in epics. Other than pre u9 epics, when did you ever outperform a caster of equivalent skill and gear to you? I'll bet you can count the places on one hand. Pre-epics, casters lead killcounts too, and instakill stuff melees are running up to hit....how do you play the other 19 levels that you can't play epic at when you TR? Do you solo so you can get kills?

The problem here is that you think epic should be a different game entirely from the other 20 levels of casual through elite play, where suddenly all the rules are different...and that's how it was before u9...and that's why casters learned to solo epics, because we got tired of just being hold/haste bots for melees so we honed our skills...now that we've been given more tools to kill faster and compete with groups, melees really get left in the dust because honestly they were always left in the dust...the only time they weren't was when we locked it all down and stood back letting you beat them up for us to save spell points so we could make it to the next shrine.

What you need to focus on is how to improve melee, not complaining about and trying to call for nerfs on casters. How can melees feel more useful? What could be the reasons to bring them instead of all caster/fvs as you suggested?

Personally, I still see reasons to bring melees, and the fact that you don't means it will be virtually impossible to explain those reasons to you because you've already closed your eyes to any possibility but "what gets this done the fastest is obviously the only way to do it, everything else is useless"

If all you think matters is how fast you can finish and only the people with the highest kill counts should be there, then you really don't have any idea what teamwork is or how groups work other than being 6 individuals all competing towards a common goal to see who gets there first...

It must be sad and stressful for you every time you log into this game, man. I feel bad for you.

Maybe I have you figured all wrong though. I hope so, for your sake.

[Viisari]

*snip*

Heh, I AM the arcane, so yes, you do have it very, very wrong.

Here, let me help you: http://my.ddo.com/character/thelanis/haedo/

Also yeah, if you mean eDQ2, it really doesn't count. Now go try to complete eDQ1 or eCoF.

If all you think matters is how fast you can finish and only the people with the highest kill counts should be there, then you really don't have any idea what teamwork is or how groups work other than being 6 individuals all competing towards a common goal to see who gets there first...

It's not about the kill count, it's about general usefulness, and kill count is a good clue about that in a party with just 6 people. Also your comments show that you're in fact the one who does not know of teamwork, but rather thinks he does. If a common goal is running eDQ1 as fast as possible for example, then you'll take 6 players who are capable of soloing one of the six glyphs, and I highly doubt there are any melees in the list that can do it. I don't call beating some monsters with other people "teamwork", teamwork is when you apply strategies and tactics with your team to complete a quest in an efficient fashion.

And if you acknowledge that casters are, and have indeed always for as long as I remember been, vastly superior to any melee, why don't you acknowledge that there is a problem with the game? If you do, what are we even arguing about?

[pHo3nix]

There? See that? Now give me A REASON to take a melee, because if you want the best possible party, there IS NO REASON. Ideal party make-up would be something like 2x fvs, 2x wizard 2x sorc. No melees because they would simply underperform in almost anything a caster can do, heck, a tukaw build was tanking Turigulon once (a very well geared one though) because the melee couldn't get the aggro off him due to SLA's (he was shield blocking, so no melee dps from him), true, the melees there probably weren't geared with all the possible stuff (they weren't gimps, so that theory is out), but that's not the point (actually it is a part of the point but not relevant in this example, because a capped sorc with some gear can grab aggro from most melees).

Yes, every decent sorc is able to get aggro but
a) He has to be able to handle it, and this could be a little problem for many sorcs out there
b) If he is the designated tank he must keep the aggro during the fight, and this could cause sp issue. If you play with people willing to chug 50 sp pots per run then there is no problem, but most of us consider sp limited to our blue bar + sp restoration items + torc and conc opposition, no DDO store involved

So yes, in a world where every caster got infinite sp they are really overpowered, but considering that most casters are limited by how many $$ they want to spend on a game i think they are fine. ( yes, i know you find a lot of sp pots in game too, but if you start drinking 10+ per run i don't think they would last long, even if you got 500+ of them )

[Viisari]

Yes, every decent sorc is able to get aggro but
a) He has to be able to handle it, and this could be a little problem for many sorcs out there
b) If he is the designated tank he must keep the aggro during the fight, and this could cause sp issue. If you play with people willing to chug 50 sp pots per run then there is no problem, but most of us consider sp limited to our blue bar + sp restoration items + torc and conc opposition, no DDO store involved

So yes, in a world where every caster got infinite sp they are really overpowered, but considering that most casters are limited by how many $$ they want to spend on a game i think they are fine. ( yes, i know you find a lot of sp pots in game too, but if you start drinking 10+ per run i don't think they would last long, even if you got 500+ of them )

You don't need potions for this, you do need a torc and conc op though, prererably two conc ops. And on a wf sorc getting sufficient hp is rather easy, except for maybe Horoth.

Understand that I *NEVER* drink potions or encourage anyone else to drink them either, unless the **** has hit the fan badly and we still want to complete.

And even if this was true, there wouldn't be a reason to take more than one melee who's only job is to keep aggro from the boss so casters can nuke in peace.

[pHo3nix]

You don't need potions for this, you do need a torc and conc op though, prererably two conc ops. And on a wf sorc getting sufficient hp is rather easy, except for maybe Horoth.

Not all sorcs are wf, and torc+conc opp are enough if the fight doesn't last too long, and you have to be a little conservative on your sp anyway

Oh, and from what i know 2 conc opposition are not WAI, you should get benefit only from 1, so expect this to be fixed

[Viisari]

Not all sorcs are wf, and torc+conc opp are enough if the fight doesn't last too long, and you have to be a little conservative on your sp anyway

If you give a good sorc around 20secs to gather aggro, he can then keep it (unless someone specificly tries to take it) using just dot spells and SLA's, very sp efficient. And no, not all sorcs are wf, but then again, if they're not wf they probably don't want to tank. Palemasters are also good for this job, especially if there are other palemasters in the group so they can keep each other healed.

I'm speaking about conc op item + conc op weapon, 2 weapons + item probably works too, but anyway, it's been like this for a long time, and might even be WAI. Item + item don't stack though.

[steelblueskies]

Forum join date sep 2009. 105 posts and disabled rep. Feedback on lam forum about changes before they went live:0.

Kinda brings to mind thoughts on "to vote or not to vote" and "I care enough, just not enough to say something until they come for me".

You may be right in everything you say. But saying it after the fact makes you wrong in a very fundamental way, I think.

This is the point where you claim it shouldn't be your job, too busy, play to have fun not address game design, or point to another forum account that posted when the epic and spellpass stuff was starting on lam.
Of course I could be mistaken, and you like almost all the others trying to broil arcanes(and to a lesser degree divines) could somehow simultaneously been dealing with real life emergencies and unable to so much as read through the proposed changes and comment.

Thin veils boys.

[pHo3nix]

If you give a good sorc around 20secs to gather aggro, he can then keep it (unless someone specificly tries to take it) using just dot spells and SLA's, very sp efficient. And no, not all sorcs are wf, but then again, if they're not wf they probably don't want to tank. Palemasters are also good for this job, especially if there are other palemasters in the group so they can keep eachother healed.

Yes, a good sorc can gather aggro from melees in that way, but not necessarily from other casters, and a squishy caster taking aggro from a big bad boss is a dead caster So it's more efficient to let the sorc tank while 2-3-4 melees beat on the back of the boss without getting the aggro, isn't it?
Melees are not useless, they just are no more the core of the game

[Viisari]

Forum join date sep 2009. 105 posts and disabled rep. Feedback on lam forum about changes before they went live:0.

Cute.

Kinda brings to mind thoughts on "to vote or not to vote" and "I care enough, just not enough to say something until they come for me".

You may be right in everything you say. But saying it after the fact makes you wrong in a very fundamental way, I think.

From what I've gathered in my time playing, by the time a new build hits Lamannia it's pretty much locked for release and only very minor changes will be made. Plus, you'd have to run several epic quests and raids with full parties on Lamannia to get a good enough general idea about the game balance there before you could comment on it fully, good luck getting those groups with enough competent players.

And I'm not here to fix the problems or tell you I have solutions, I'm here merely to point out that THERE IS A PROBLEM, but seems like some people simply do not want to see it, or are too ignorant to see it. Understand, that I'm in a direct position to benefit from this imbalance, because I have an archmage with necro dc 44, could get it up to 45 if I wanted to eat my banked +4 int tome, so no, I'm certainly not posting in this thread because some melee is taking my kills, I'm posting in this thread because there is an imbalance and I'd like to see some fix to it.

But as I said before, I don't really care enough to shed tears over it, because in the end, I benefit from it. I'm here only to point out the imbalance, not to fix it. Because to be honest, I don't even know how it could even be fixed, it's roots are deep in the D&D 3.5 edition, where a high level wizard is the king of the universe.

<edit> Also, heh, the rep system is broken, and even if it wasn't, I'm not interested in all the e-peen competitions it brings here.

Yes, a good sorc can gather aggro from melees in that way, but not necessarily from other casters, and a squishy caster taking aggro from a big bad boss is a dead caster So it's more efficient to let the sorc tank while 2-3-4 melees beat on the back of the boss without getting the aggro, isn't it?
Melees are not useless, they just are no more the core of the game

If given 20 seconds to gather aggro, I very much doubt any caster can grab aggro from a sorcerer anymore unless they dump their whole SP-pool on the boss right away, which they shouldn't be doing. It's just like a good rogue will get aggro from anyone if he doesn't have any aggro management enhancements or items, but why would he want that?

So no, there is no such problem unless you have dumb people in the party, and sufficiently dumb people can mess up any run regardless of the classes there.

[Forzah]

Yesterday we did edq2 with only 3 or 4 melee in a 12 man group, and it went faster than ever. Unfortunately I had to drop for the evon6, but I guess that went alright as well. And those are just bossfights, lol, no insta kills. It kinda hurts to see that melees are completely unneeded in any epic raid, regardless how good they are geared. (For a change, I went on my caster as well:P)

[BrightAsh]

Forum join date sep 2009. 105 posts and disabled rep. Feedback on lam forum about changes before they went live:0.

This made me smile... in sadness . Join date doesnt say it all (says nothing actually). Play with one of Viis's toons sometime and then rejudge... you'll be proven very wrong and you might even feel kinda silly for stating what you did