Enough with the insta kills in epics?

[Forzah]

There are some serious concerns with endgame play in my view. I have a barbarian with full epic gear, but can hardly contribute in epic quests because of the instant kills. Casters and assassin rogues kill trash mobs so fast, that I only have a chance of landing two or three hits before the mob goes down. It is kinda depressing that regular melee can only contribute when there are red or orange named mobs. This was less of an issue before the change in epics, and I feel we should (partially) revert back to that system.

Previously it was the case that any class had a contribution during the greater part of a quest. The largest part of epic quests consists of killing trashmobs. Arcanes had the task of controlling the crowd properly. Melees beat down the mobs that posed the biggest threat. Divines focussed on healing (and some dps). Boss fights were mainly a melee thing, where the arcanes focussed on debuffing the boss and the divines on healing. Every class had a thankful task.

With the addition of instant kills in epics I feel that the balance has tipped too much towards arcanes (and to some extent, assassins). Once arcanes get the relevant spell DC's, they can simply kill everything in one or two shots. They get a major part of the fun in clearing the trashmobs, while melee hope to get a shot at killing some mobs. Then there's the assassin rogue, that can kill 2-3 epic trash mobs with the push of a button. Other melee can only contribute well when the mobs can't be insta killed. For divines, I think the changes have led to a bit more fun.

Still, as the majority of all classes consists of melees, I think the game has to partially revert to what it was like before the change. Reintroduce deathblock on all epic mobs, so that mobs can still be energy drained, but no longer instantly killed. The decrease in mob hit-points and increase in saves was an alright choice. The addition of DoT spells for casters, that allowed them to do solid dps on raid bosses, was a good change as well. But the removal of the epic ward has made epic quests way too easy for casters and simply boring for (non-rogue) melee characters.

Do you share this view? If yes, what changes would you propose? If no, why do you think the game is good as is now?

Feel free to discuss.



(Yes, this is a bit late; at first I didn't find it very problematic, but now it's getting to me)

[slimkj]

The fact you can instakill in Epic does seem odd to me. Although immunities and beatdowns are dull in their own way. Being able to one shot whole groups hardly seems epic, does it. As usual though, I'd prefer to see an improvement in the AI to a reintroduction of immunities.

How about a few more divine opponents added that cast Mass DW but not all mobs all the time? Or add some more constructs/undead. Somewhere between the two would be about right, with death spells being neither functionally useless nor stupidly effective.

[Fundamental]

Go try a couple Epic Devil Assault with rogues and casters then re-write your post. lol.

I don't think you'll have any problem's killing mobs in there, or to say it otherwise the monsters will have no problem killing you.

lol

[Forzah]

Go try a couple Epic Devil Assault with rogues and casters then re-write your post. lol.

I don't think you'll have any problem's killing mobs in there, or to say it otherwise the monsters will have no problem killing you.

lol

Well, except maybe for the bossfights, I don't see why they couldn't pull it off. Don't overestimate the difficulty of EDA. It is trivial with good casters.

Arcane contribution was reduced to haste, rage and mass hold.
Thats 3 spells out of, how many we got, 150, 200?
lol

With the current changes in the game, you can more or less reliably cast damage spells as well. I don't think it's that limited anymore as before.



Now don't get me wrong, I don't want to revert everything back. It's merely reintroduction of epic ward. For the rest, compared to before, it is still more fun for casters because damage spells matter. How can you call a quest epic, if you can kill everything with a single shot?

[Zerkul]

Go try a couple Epic Devil Assault with rogues and casters then re-write your post. lol.

I don't think you'll have any problem's killing mobs in there, or to say it otherwise the monsters will have no problem killing you.

lol

I'll answer you with a quote.

Devil assault epic, A tribe called zerg + ryumajin, 6/21/11, 30 min

Ah anyway if your melees feels underpowered then you probably didn't build/equip them the right way. To be honest i still give a challenge to most of the casters in yummy killing contests with my ubbah melee and it's fun.

[Viisari]

Go try a couple Epic Devil Assault with rogues and casters then re-write your post. lol.

I don't think you'll have any problem's killing mobs in there, or to say it otherwise the monsters will have no problem killing you.

lol

Really now? Forzah has a barb with pretty much all the gear you can have, yet my wizard (though he's also geared to the max) will have around 10 times more kills than he does while also doing some buffing and all the cc. When the caster is good, all the melee has to do is beat the boss and maybe some oranges, otherwise he can go sit in the corner. How is that balanced?

<edit> A good way to deal with this imo would be adding more divines to quests that cast deathward randomly, nothing annoys me more in epic quests now than a divine mob casting deatward on everything, and with epic mob caster levels you're not going to dispell them. Take soloing ehcrono first fight for example. As a caster your priority is to take down the divine there ASAP or it'll start spamming deathward on everything. Sure you can still take them down, but now it takes a little more than wail of the banshee, a circle of death and maybe a fod or two.

[nolaureltree000]

Heh, I have a caster with 44 necro dc, there are exactly two places in the game that don't turn into a complete joke because of it, though if you take a party that's made of purely casters even those places will be a joke. The only problem here though is finding casters that are good enough.

i think that this is a big issue that people are overlooking. it is not easy to get these high DCs. they run with an arcane with several TRs that can mow through content and without the context of first life toons that arent well geared, the conclusion becomes that casters are OP. it isnt indicative of casters being OP per say, its more indicative of TRs being OP.

[Truga]

Maybe I should change the OP; I nowhere said that I want the old system (mass hold, kill) to come back. But I do want every class to be able to contribute significantly when killing epic trash, not just arcanes/assassins. And well.. maybe you like piking, but I certainly want to contribute something...

I don't like current epics much either, but why is this apparently a problem only in epic? I don't see people whining about insta-kills in non-epic content. And even in non-epic content, I still make my minio... err party work for their loot.

[Alternative]

This would be a valid issue if you were seeing epic LFMs that don't take barbs, or only allow one barb and arcanes/rogues for the rest of the party. This is not the case, so there's no need to rebalance anything. Casters are now more fun to play, while barbs got even more boring, that's your problem. Roll yourself a PM and stop trying to spoil the fun for others.

[Astraghal]

Roll yourself a PM and stop trying to spoil the fun for others.

Got a chuckle out of this one. Casters are going to get nerfed. Melee's are going to become more powerful. Just give it some more time.

Edit - Oops double post

[vittordevittor]

This would be a valid issue if you were seeing epic LFMs that don't take barbs, or only allow one barb and arcanes/rogues for the rest of the party. This is not the case, so there's no need to rebalance anything. Casters are now more fun to play, while barbs got even more boring, that's your problem. Roll yourself a PM and stop trying to spoil the fun for others.

Stop trying to nerf people out.

[Vellrad]

Previously it was the case that any class had a contribution during the greater part of a quest

Arcane contribution was reduced to haste, rage and mass hold.
Thats 3 spells out of, how many we got, 150, 200?

[mournbladereigns]

Arcane contribution was reduced to haste, rage and mass hold.
Thats 3 spells out of, how many we got, 150, 200?

Assuming you had the Mass Hold DC, otherwise your contribution was to be declined.

[dingal]

Arcane contribution was reduced to haste, rage and mass hold.
Thats 3 spells out of, how many we got, 150, 200?

Here are some of the spells I used regularly in Epics so to say Epic only consisted of 3 spells is a little oversimplified. If those are the only 3 you used you weren't doing a very good job.

I'm not trying to call you out but simply illustrate the fact that casters had more to do before than everyone wants to believe.

1. Mass Hold
2. Firewal
3. Symbol of Persuasion
4. Flesh to Stone
5. Web
6. Energy Drain
7. Enervation
8. Cloudkill
9. Ice Storm

Then of course buffs

1. Displace
2. Blur
3. Haste
4. Rage
5. Resist
6. Protection from Elements
7. Shield
8. Protection from Evil
9. Fire Shield
10. Lesser Death Aura
11. Death Aura
12. etc

I actually think casters had a LOT more to do then than melee has to do now. I could but didn't like to run epics without a caster pre-u9 due to CC being a really critical part of nearly any efficient run.

I am starting to prefer the change actually.

What I'd like to see is higher fort saves and higher spell resistance (not drow level SR but maybe SR32 similar to Chrono devils. This would be a heavier tax on casters doing instakills and require TR's to be optimal. This would thus even the playing field a bit.