Nerf PMs and Implosion or just make mobs save better against that

[Alavatar]

This thread reminds of the ones from 2007 when Gianthold was released. Then, people complained that casters were over-powered because of Finger of Death; casters insta-killed everything.

You know what Turbine did? They listened to the people crying and added Deathblock type effects in upper level quests.

For the record, I do not see what Matt and several others are stating. I think it is ridiculous to think the average caster has TR'd at least once (I am just finishing my TR and I am vowing to never do it again because it is so boring) from Wizard for the Wizard Past-Life active feat. I also don't do the easy epic quests like the House D, House J, or the VoN pre-quests; I mostly stick to ERed Fens, EChrono, EDQ2, and EVoN6.

I just don't see it. I don't believe this is as frequent as several people are stating.

[KoboldKiller]

Increasing the DC's on Epic content could be a viable option to this situation.

Epic afterall should be harder.

However as has been pointed out Turbine has gone a different direction in order to make money and stay alive. This in turn has changed the focus of how they create the game and the type of player that is being attracted.

I consider myself more of a casual gamer now as far as playing time goes. I actually deleted my entire stable of alts once with the intention of quitting including all of their gear. I do not have the time nor the desire to powergrind epic gear, raid gear and cannith crafting thus I believe I fall within Turbine's intended market now. As such I understand what your issue is from both sides.

The simple fact is this game is NOT going to be a challenge for the powergamer any longer and that is something I think those players are going to have to accept. Calling for nerfs because a minority of players finds the game too easy is not the answer nor should it be. Turbine has to make the game fun for it's majority and that's just good business. This will of course eventually run off some players who no longer find it fun or challenging.

This is now the reality of the game like it or not. The game will be and has to be designed for the average player as that's the largest market.

[redoubt]

My caster, when they had a 39 DC, /snip

Round up 12 mobs, Wail, 6-8 drop dead. That's 20000 hitpoints gone. You can do it once per 30 seconds.

.

Are you saying you can hit with 50% success rate on EPIC (eChrono?) without debuffing first on a caster with a 39DC?

How long can you do this before running out of mana?

[kitsune_ko]

I am really starting to get a bit annoyed with all the "Melees are just butt-hurt they are not king anymore" replies becasue this is not true. I have yet to see one post declaring/suggesting that casters should be downgraded to buff-bot status with no DPS ability at all. There is a considerable difference between being sore that you are not king of the pile anymore, and in being sore because the one thing you char can/is designed to do, someone can do it so much better to the point that a "one trick pony" melee is useless.

I participated in a 8 caster, 3 melee/other and 1 healer shroud run about a month ago. Was honestly not sure how it was going to go but was willing to give it a try anyways. Ended up being the quickest shroud run I have ever spectated (I would say participated in, if I actually was able to contribute anything). Harry went down both times I would say in easily around a minute. The only problem was that the caster-types were doing so much damage each that his aggro was swinging all over the place for that one minute.

With DOTs and improved enhancement lines casters can far surpass melee in DPS ability; and while ranged to boot.

And melee classes are a one trick pony. They do DPS and thats it. A barb cannot respec into a CC when their DPS is not needed, How many groups would take a Paladin that recpeced to be a healbot? Or a ranger that respeced to be a buffbot?

This is what everyone with a melee build is upset about. We have exactly one thing our classes were designed to do, and now caster classes can blow this one thing out of the water effortlessly, now adding superior DPS ability on top of their superior abilities to self-buff, Mass CC, Mass AoE, Mass insta-kill and the ability to self-heal.

When a caster-type can do anything any other class can do, but do it better then that dedicatedclass can; how can anyone not say something is broken?

This is what everyone with a ranger, rogue, paladin, fighter, and barbarian is complaining about. Not that we are no longer king, but now so completely irrelevant in that the one thing these classes were designed to offer, another class can do it so much better, on top of everything else they can already do, that why would your bring these other classes instead?

I think this is a serious problem, and needs more attention then "Oh, well just dont run with casters then". This is supposed to be a group effort game, not being broken into DDO:PM and DDO:Everyone else.

[redoubt]

I am really starting to get a bit annoyed with all the "Melees are just butt-hurt they are not king anymore" replies becasue this is not true. I have yet to see one post declaring/suggesting that casters should be downgraded to buff-bot status with no DPS ability at all. There is a considerable difference between being sore that you are not king of the pile anymore, and in being sore because the one thing you char can/is designed to do, someone can do it so much better to the point that a "one trick pony" melee is useless.

I participated in a 8 caster, 3 melee/other and 1 healer shroud run about a month ago. Was honestly not sure how it was going to go but was willing to give it a try anyways. Ended up being the quickest shroud run I have ever spectated (I would say participated in, if I actually was able to contribute anything). Harry went down both times I would say in easily around a minute. The only problem was that the caster-types were doing so much damage each that his aggro was swinging all over the place for that one minute.

With DOTs and improved enhancement lines casters can far surpass melee in DPS ability; and while ranged to boot.

And melee classes are a one trick pony. They do DPS and thats it. A barb cannot respec into a CC when their DPS is not needed, How many groups would take a Paladin that recpeced to be a healbot? Or a ranger that respeced to be a buffbot?

This is what everyone with a melee build is upset about. We have exactly one thing our classes were designed to do, and now caster classes can blow this one thing out of the water effortlessly, now adding superior DPS ability on top of their superior abilities to self-buff, Mass CC, Mass AoE, Mass insta-kill and the ability to self-heal.

When a caster-type can do anything any other class can do, but do it better then that dedicatedclass can; how can anyone not say something is broken?

This is what everyone with a ranger, rogue, paladin, fighter, and barbarian is complaining about. Not that we are no longer king, but now so completely irrelevant in that the one thing these classes were designed to offer, another class can do it so much better, on top of everything else they can already do, that why would your bring these other classes instead?

I think this is a serious problem, and needs more attention then "Oh, well just dont run with casters then". This is supposed to be a group effort game, not being broken into DDO:PM and DDO:Everyone else.

Again, I ask about mana.

For example, while leveling, my ranger runs LOTD over and over. A few lessor restore pots and a few charges of a repair serious wand is all that is needed. Runs complete in 7 minutes.

My Wizard (with one wiz past life) runs the quest in 12-14 minutes and is out of mana after fighting the named dude in the middle of the quest. I tend to bring a hireling cleric with DVs.

In the first half of the quest the wizard is faster and more god-like... then I'm out of mana and the ranger just keeps on going and completes faster.

So... If we removed spell point potions from the store, would casters still seem so overpowered?

[Alavatar]

This is what everyone with a ranger, rogue, paladin, fighter, and barbarian is complaining about. Not that we are no longer king, but now so completely irrelevant in that the one thing these classes were designed to offer, another class can do it so much better, on top of everything else they can already do, that why would your bring these other classes instead?

I am not complaining.

Please don't make blanket statements.

[grodon9999]

So... If we removed spell point potions from the store, would casters still seem so overpowered?

Self-healing is what makes casters over-powered, not the DDO store.

[KoboldKiller]

I am really starting to get a bit annoyed with all the "Melees are just butt-hurt they are not king anymore" replies becasue this is not true. I have yet to see one post declaring/suggesting that casters should be downgraded to buff-bot status with no DPS ability at all. There is a considerable difference between being sore that you are not king of the pile anymore, and in being sore because the one thing you char can/is designed to do, someone can do it so much better to the point that a "one trick pony" melee is useless.

I participated in a 8 caster, 3 melee/other and 1 healer shroud run about a month ago. Was honestly not sure how it was going to go but was willing to give it a try anyways. Ended up being the quickest shroud run I have ever spectated (I would say participated in, if I actually was able to contribute anything). Harry went down both times I would say in easily around a minute. The only problem was that the caster-types were doing so much damage each that his aggro was swinging all over the place for that one minute.

With DOTs and improved enhancement lines casters can far surpass melee in DPS ability; and while ranged to boot.

And melee classes are a one trick pony. They do DPS and thats it. A barb cannot respec into a CC when their DPS is not needed, How many groups would take a Paladin that recpeced to be a healbot? Or a ranger that respeced to be a buffbot?

This is what everyone with a melee build is upset about. We have exactly one thing our classes were designed to do, and now caster classes can blow this one thing out of the water effortlessly, now adding superior DPS ability on top of their superior abilities to self-buff, Mass CC, Mass AoE, Mass insta-kill and the ability to self-heal.

When a caster-type can do anything any other class can do, but do it better then that dedicatedclass can; how can anyone not say something is broken?

This is what everyone with a ranger, rogue, paladin, fighter, and barbarian is complaining about. Not that we are no longer king, but now so completely irrelevant in that the one thing these classes were designed to offer, another class can do it so much better, on top of everything else they can already do, that why would your bring these other classes instead?

I think this is a serious problem, and needs more attention then "Oh, well just dont run with casters then". This is supposed to be a group effort game, not being broken into DDO:PM and DDO:Everyone else.

Sorry but this whole post comes across as exactly what you claimed it wasn't. It's a melee whining that they aren't the top of the heap at DPS. Where is it that melees are being excluded from ANYTHING? I haven't seen ONE single LFM that excluded melees with the exception of Ghosts of Perdition and that one has always been a caster heavy request.

[KoboldKiller]

Self-healing is what makes casters over-powered, not the DDO store.

My Paladin and self heal is he overpowered?

My Ranger can self heal is he overpowered?

[Chai]

Self-healing is what makes casters over-powered, not the DDO store.

Ive been harping on this one for years in as many "casters are overpowered because of this new thing" threads I can get my hands on.

Casters being able to blast mobs into oblivion is what they are designed to do. The balance in regular D&D, not to mention most other MMOs, is the fact that they are glass cannons and cannot heal themselves effectively. We would not see casters soloing all these epics with the ease that they do if they could not self heal. Only the top twitch players would be able to accomplish this, and it would be a worthy accomplishment indeed. As it stands now, any average player can now roll up a caster and they have the best offensive power AND equivilent defensive power any divine has rolled up into one toon. They can wade right in and destroy, and even lower than average reflexes can manage to get to the heal button before their HP (which isnt too far behind melee HP) reaches zero.

The overpowering of casters did not occur with any of the recent updates. It occurred when they were given the ability to reach high HP totals, as well as self heal on the same level a divine can self heal at.

[Viisari]

My Paladin and self heal is he overpowered?

My Ranger can self heal is he overpowered?

Divines can self-heal too, they're obviously overpowered because of this!

[Viisari]

Ive been harping onthis one for years in as many "casters are overpowered because of this new thing" threads I can get my hands on.

Casters being able to blast mobs into oblivion is what they are designed to do. The balance in regular D&D, not to mention most other MMOs, is the fact that they are glass cannons and cannot heal themselves effectively. We would not see casters soloing all these epics with the ease that they do if they could not self heal. Only the top twitch players would be able to accomplish this, and it would be a worthy accomplishment indeed. As it stands now, any average player can now roll up a caster and they have the best offensive power AND equivilent defensive power any divine has rolled up into one toon. They can wade right in and destroy, and even lower than avcerage reflexes can manage to get to the heal button before their HP (which isnt too far behind melee HP) reaches zero.

My caster uses heal scrolls for healing when soloing epics, so even if reconstruct and negative energy healing are removed, nothing will change as long as there is umd. And I don't think anyone wants to mess with that

So no, quickened reconstruct or necroaura aren't the issue, though I guess they're not making it smaller either.

[Chai]

My Paladin and self heal is he overpowered?

My Ranger can self heal is he overpowered?

Apples to oranges comparison.

Your paladin or ranger doesnt insta kill 10 out of the 12 mobs pulled into a group. They also dont have the same level of healing power as a FvS or cleric they can apply on themselves. They dont spell crit for 5k. Theres nothing right now your paladin or ranger does that an arcane cant do better - not DPS, and not self healing.

The balance of arcane casters in D&D and most MMOs is that their offense is second to no one but their defenses are paltry. Right now in DDo, their offense IS second to no one, but they have the healing power equivilent of a cleric or FvS to keep themselves alive. This here is the imbalance, and not the offensive capabilities they bring to the table.

[Chai]

My caster uses heal scrolls for healing when soloing epics, so even if reconstruct and negative energy healing are removed, nothing will change as long as there is umd. And I don't think anyone wants to mess with that

So no, quickened reconstruct or necroaura aren't the issue, though I guess they're not making it smaller either.

Heal scrolling is no where near the same as reconstruct or full on negative energy spells. It has a cool down and hits for a limited amount where reconstruct and the repair line can keep being toggled when in trouble, as can neg energy spells for pale master. This would be like saying a cleric doesnt even need their cures or heal, they have heal scrolls. LOL.

There are no quickened heal scrolls - so trying to pop one under duress means swapping an item out and making a UMD check under fire. If you get hit the concentration DC is 10 + damage taken -vs- your concentration ranks taken + item mod + con mod + feats + enhancements.

Quickened reconstruct on a warforged sorc = immortal until SP runs out. Reaction time would have to be insanely bad, or the toon knocled down, in order to get killed on a warforged caster. The other possibility is the damage is dealt so fast that the toon goes from full HP to no HP in a fraction of a second.

I know pale masters and warforged sorcs who TANK the shadows in TOD part 2 elite. Try doing this with some heal scrolls as your only line of healing, heh.

Heal scrolling is also something people have to work for and gear for. Its not something inherant in the class. An archmage with 11 ranks of UMD would really have to work for self healing - oh wait no they dont - roll up a warforged.

[Raithe]

The overpowering of casters did not occur with any of the recent updates. It occurred when they were given the ability to reach high HP totals, as well as self heal on the same level a divine can self heal at.

Part of the complaint in the OP was against Favored Souls with past lives. What are we suggesting here, that Favored Souls not be able to self-heal?

Talk about major nerfs to the game. That one is the doozy.

There are very few things that can be accomplished by a Pale Master that couldn't be accomplished equally well with blade barrier, implosion, destruction, and divine punishment. Plus most favored souls could probably easily obtain enough charisma and UMD to use enervate scrolls on top of their Energy Drain.

Removal of mana potions from the store would be a completely valid tactic for increasing customer base (while it may actually decrease revenue). The other option would be to simply give them a substantial cooldown (of hours, not minutes).

The largest problem, however, is that most healing and DPS spells cost much less than when the quests were designed. This sabotages all the developer testing of those quests, and gives divines, bards, and self-healing warforged a larger sp pool to use for instakill. A self-healing caster should have to choose between sustaining his own life and snuffing out others.

[Emili]

Waste of dev time. You can easily solve this yourself by not running with those type of characters.

How many sets of red dragon scale armour does Matt have now? Is it still five or are we up to six or seven yet? How many Tr'd characters is he up to? Plus all the other epic gear like the eMarlith and two eChaos Blades on his pally... what DDO world would you place such in? What level of player skill/level would you place him among? How does he not run with "high-end" epic power-gammer tr'd caster characters when he is running three, five, six or twelve plus epics a night?

Funny thing is if I take a well played non-epic fighter into group with the epicly geared power-gammer Tr'd barbs, pallys and fighters there is not much of a significant difference... it will still add some contribution among a group of them.

[Viisari]

Heal scrolling is no where near the same as reconstruct or full on negative energy spells. It has a cool down and hits for a limited amount where reconstruct and the repair line can keep being toggled when in trouble, as can neg energy spells for pale master. This would be like saying a cleric doesnt even need their cures or heal, they have heal scrolls. LOL.

Heal scrolling is also something people have to work for and gear for. Its not something inherant in the class. An archmage with 11 ranks of UMD would really have to work for self healing - oh wait no they dont - roll up a warforged.

Yes, that was kinda the whole point. I was doing just fine soloing epic content with 60-75% success chance in heal scrolls. Removing the ability to self heal from arcanes will change nothing.

And that success rate is not very hard to get with some decent gear, it only becomes gear intensive when you shoot for no fail scrolls.

Heh, you seem to have misunderstood my post, whatever.

The one thing it would indeed change is the ability to tank while self-healing, but not much else. But I wasn't saying that I tank on my caster, was I now?

[voodoogroves]

Even in PNP a common CoDzilla strategy may be "buff like mad, wade into melee, heal myself and raise the party after the fight".

...

Changes made to HP in general, PVE HP and damage ratios, metamagics, whatever are big and systemic. Flipping big broad switches doesn't make it more or less "pure D&D" and they carry with it hellish unforeseen down-stream balance impacts.

But in PNP what does the DM do? One type of DM may start banning items, abilities, feats, skills, PRCs, whatever. Another may craft challenges that stress the limits of one type of player and reward the others. The epics we have now are just higher CR normal quests, epic ward or no. We're 20th level and capped, right? Challenge us with more than a circus tent or protecting some drow elder.

I'd rather see Turbine take the role of a DM challenging the player and not changing the rules. New content.
- Give me a boss fight with some serious antimagic components in the nature of the environment or the boss itself. Or both ...
- Give me a boss who is a neutral halfling so those holy-silver-banes don't work on him ...
- Give me another boss like Arach's Knight (heals from elemental, construct). Give me more content like that. Put him in a room with trash that can be killed w/ elemental stuff but make us have to keep him out of the AoEs ...
- Give me a boss that comes and goes and thus can shake dots ... but that can be contained by melee or ranged attacks ...
- Give me a boss that has all the gear a player has, and the related immunties ...
- Explore the planes and their environmental effects ...
- Move us out of contact with our divine power sources ...

I dare say the folks who want to step into epics aren't going to tear them up any more than they can tear up Amrath. We're talking about people who've gathered their epic gear, favor rewards, past lives right? Not the first life fresh to 20 w/ a tier 2 greensteel and some dragontouched armor, right?




Instead of changing things so that multi-past-life epic-geared PM can't breeze through Bargain of Blood, I'd rather have new content that was a level above that.

[Chai]

Part of the complaint in the OP was against Favored Souls with past lives. What are we suggesting here, that Favored Souls not be able to self-heal?

Talk about major nerfs to the game. That one is the doozy.

There are very few things that can be accomplished by a Pale Master that couldn't be accomplished equally well with blade barrier, implosion, destruction, and divine punishment. Plus most favored souls could probably easily obtain enough charisma and UMD to use enervate scrolls on top of their Energy Drain.

Removal of mana potions from the store would be a completely valid tactic for increasing customer base (while it may actually decrease revenue). The other option would be to simply give them a substantial cooldown (of hours, not minutes).

The largest problem, however, is that most healing and DPS spells cost much less than when the quests were designed. This sabotages all the developer testing of those quests, and gives divines, bards, and self-healing warforged a larger sp pool to use for instakill. A self-healing caster should have to choose between sustaining his own life and snuffing out others.

Yeap, right now fvS are where firewall casters used to be. With 2 spells that cannot be countered, they can kill anything given enough time to do so. This is a completely different issue than arcane, who SHOULD be able to blast and insta kill like they do, but should not also have the self healing capability of a cleric or FvS. In that case, its one or two spells that are OP, and not the entire class.

How do you nerf DP and blade barrier without making them useless?

Even a 10 minute mana pot cooldown would be huge. How many quests could a player who does not conserve mana in beat efficiently by drinking one mana pot per 10 minutes? healers would not be able to pot their way through elite TOD or some harder epics if all hell broke loose.

The people who farmed their gear wouldnt care however...as a torq + conc op + spell storing ring + bauble having caster would be hard pressed to play poorly enough to have to drink pots in current epics.

[Viisari]

Instead of changing things so that multi-past-life epic-geared PM can't breeze through Bargain of Blood, I'd rather have new content that was a level above that.

But it doesn't make money as much, so not going to happen

Or maybe I'm just pessimistic...