To extend or not to extend....

[Noobian]

Personally I would go with extend while leveling a Sorc and swap it out sometime around 10-12 lvl. Buffs are pretty short before then. At cap I would definitely keep it on a PM, Bard or melee Fvs, consider it on a Cleric that buffs a lot and swap it on a caster Fvs, AM or sorc savant.

It really is a personal choice. If you find yourself buffing people a lot consider keeping it.

Ugh...nothing like getting pigeon holed again. Wizards/Bards...buffbots? I know I know...feat starved...I get it, but the pigeon holing...is gettin' old.

This is not aimed at you specifically Dawn, simply what I am beginning to see. Wizards are now the buffbots for the Raid parties their only saving grace is the forgotten Bard.

[Gunga]

i'd Take Quicken, Op, Just To Chose From Your List Of Alternates.

1 Percenter!

[Enoach]

That is the question.

Currently a lvl 20 water savant with the following feats:

Empower, toughness, extend, max, sf evocation, heighten, spell pen, grtr spell pen.

Considering the following as alternatives to extend and wanted to solicit some feedback:

Quicken for nuking fun
Force of personality (will saves already north of 30 though)
Another spell focus feat
Past life cleric (my 1st tr)

Thoughts?

Seeing that you are an Water Savant and not knowing what else you are spec'd for (acid/lightning/force/repair) as an alternate I can only give you these thoughts

1. Keep your damage enhancing feats: Maximize, Empower, SF: Evocation, Heighten
2. Examine your Spell List and see exactly what spells and spell level you are carrying that require Spell Penetration. Make a hard the hard choice as you may discover that Greater Spell Penetration can be replaced with a Greater Spell focus Item (suchas Dragon Touch Robes)
3. Quicken - Good feat for decreasing casting time and uninteruptable except by death/trip/disabled. However, its most common use is for Healing/Repair. You did not list your Race so I do not know if this is a factor. As a Sorcerer your casting times are already the fastest in game.
4. Force of Personality - Good Feat for increasing your Will Save. Again without knowing Race, but knowing your Saves are already north of 30, I don't know if you are already benefiting from any immunities that the mostly Enchantments based spells contain. Potentially this could put you north of 40 or even in the 50s range. Are you having trouble with will saves? Could Protection from Evil maybe fill in this gap?
5. SF: Something Else - Again not knowing your spell list another school would be hard to recommend - Such as making Webs just a little stronger (Conjuration) or Finger of Death/Wail a little more potentant (Necromancy)
6. Cleric Past Life - Benefit being 5 Cure casts that benefit from Maximize/Empower. No SP cost, can be used to help others/or self healing.

In short... Where do you feel the weakest? Is there a Feat that will fix the weakness?

The Extend Debate will be ongoing for awhile. There will be those who feel it is a Must and those that feel that its take it or leave it and others who will see it as a waste.

Why is there such differences on this debate? Its due to the changes that occured at U9. Damage based spells no longer benefit from Extend. This than leaves only buffs and some Enchantments that benefit.

If you are unsure if Extend is a benefit to your spell list, take the time to list out your spells. I recommend this as it does two things 1) shows you how many spells you carry that can be extended 2) shows you how long they last unextended vs extended.

Spells that last 1 minute per caster level have a diminishing return the higher the caster level. Few quests truely require 40 minutes for a buff. In fact there are more quests where the risk of being dispelled or disjunctioned occures than the need for 40 minutes buffs.

Spells that have smaller durations gain the most. These spells include Rage, Haste, Displacement, Holy Aura as well as several Self Only buffs.

A good way to judge if Extend is benefiting you or not is to keep track of how many times you needed to cast the spell between rest/completion. Truely be honest with yourself on how much time the buff was wasted (ie not actively engaged in activity that was needed to complete the quest) I state this as I have been in parties where only 1 minute of a Haste was actually used, 2+ minutes was wasted standing around. Thats an extreame example but depending on your group(s) you may see interesting trends. Again this is a judgement call on your part.

To those who have taken shots at Shade... Unless you have actually quested with him hold your comments. At least when I'm in his groups as Arcane or Divine I don't get told to "Do your Role - Hjeal me, buff me, stand in that corner". I get to actually play my character.

[furbyoats]

To those who have taken shots at Shade... Unless you have actually quested with him hold your comments. At least when I'm in his groups as Arcane or Divine I don't get told to "Do your Role - Hjeal me, buff me, stand in that corner". I get to actually play my character.

Your nuts not to take extend.

I read all this nonsense in the forums, but on khyber 99% of sorcs still have it. the 1% that dont get declined from my groups.

Why?

DDO is a group game. You dont join a group as a sorc and refuse to buff.

If you do buff - which you will.. Extend saves you a lot of SP and more importantly time. More time to cast other stuff and your allies needing to ask for buffs less often is what lets you have more "fun"

I believe the gauntlet was thrown before the comments.

Stating that a player will get declined for not having extend because it's not as "fun". Perhaps if a different approach were taken on the original comment, then the feedback may flow in a different direction.

The attitude of "I know best" is no stranger to said poster. Frankly, what do you expect the response to be?

[Faent]

Your nuts not to take extend. I read all this nonsense in the forums, but on khyber 99% of sorcs still have it. the 1% that dont get declined from my groups. Why? DDO is a group game. You dont join a group as a sorc and refuse to buff. If you do buff - which you will.. Extend saves you a lot of SP and more importantly time. More time to cast other stuff and your allies needing to ask for buffs less often is what lets you have more "fun"

Hehe. Shade's barbarians would be begging for you Extended Haste/Rage/Displace. =)

[Dawnsfire]

Ugh...nothing like getting pigeon holed again. Wizards/Bards...buffbots? I know I know...feat starved...I get it, but the pigeon holing...is gettin' old.

This is not aimed at you specifically Dawn, simply what I am beginning to see. Wizards are now the buffbots for the Raid parties their only saving grace is the forgotten Bard.

There is no need for Wizards to be 'Buffbots'. Yes it is nice that they have room for extend and can provide certain buffs but they have (in general) the best DC's in the game. A decent Wizard can tear trash apart with Necro and CC spells because of the School Specs and Spell Pen they can afford. On bosses they can toss the same dots as the Sorcs can. They just have to be a bit more careful with sp.

Bards are kinda in a sad place though. Bard CC is lackluster so they are pigeonholed into healing and buffing. At least the melee based Warchanters can dish some respectable DPS to break up the monotony

[soulaeon]

Force of Personality - Good Feat for increasing your Will Save. Again without knowing Race, but knowing your Saves are already north of 30, I don't know if you are already benefiting from any immunities that the mostly Enchantments based spells contain. Potentially this could put you north of 40 or even in the 50s range. Are you having trouble with will saves? Could Protection from Evil maybe fill in this gap?

He could pick a Half Elf, and take the Paladin Dilletante feat. This would cover will saves and more. He could include his race for us.

I can comment on the Extend thing, because I'm on his server. What he said was ridiculous.

[azrael4h]

Better players that can handle more then just piking/dying are the ones that don't require extended buffs. The ones that do require extended buffs are always poor players.

I did the math when Extend was first nerfed; my Cleric would have gotten more sp/shrine by dumping extend and taking Mental Toughness. So for sp efficiency, extend is rather poor. Unless you are hitting every single buff in the divine or arcane spell book every time you shrine, and keeping every short-term buff up constantly on everyone. In which case, it's a matter of poor play-style rather than an issue with sp efficiency; you'd be more efficient by insta-killing or nuking or crowd-controlling those mobs, rather than buffing to the nines and hoping the gimp melees can survive long enough for the heals to hit them.

Extend is good for leveling, and little else on a Sorc. A Wizard can argue otherwise; they have more than 7-8 feats that they're trying to fit 10 into, and it does benefit Death Aura for PM healing.

[goodspeed]

without extend haste is 2 min. lil, more or less by seconds I forget. That's it. Rage **** on it. And displacement? lol you gettn blur. But even with displacement it's still a lil over 2 minutes for the raids. Basically your screwing yourself for 2 spells. One of which you don't even use. Unless you like to wade in there and swing those 1 handers around.

So screw yourself, or take something that's gonna make you better. Make your spells better, make you cast better. And if it takes long enough for you to run dry hasting, id suggest getting better melee. If in a dungeon they're survival depends on displacement, I think they had better go to the ah cause they screwed up somewhere.

[wez]

im currently playing a wf wiz and i swaped extend for quicken after u9
mainly for epics where quicken is needed,otherwise in alot of situations i coudn't get a spell off with over 50 concentration

[ayspam]

Your nuts not to take extend.

the 1% that dont get declined from my groups.

Never gotten declined from your group, and I DO NOT have extend.

To the OP.

You ll get into 99% of groups without extend, the remaining 1% including Shades groups you ll not get into.

[ayspam]

Better players that can handle more then just healing/buffing are the ones that have extend. The ones that dont are almots always poor players.

So not having extend makes one a worse player? Thats funny Axer

Smart players understand the SP savings and fact buffs make a huge difference and simply aren't easy or often even possible to maintain without it.

Not such a big deal to rethrow a haste, rage, displace with the amount of SP we have. On the other hand, maybe you dont want to ask for it every 2 minutes. Also, what do you care about what others do with their spell points?

in green

[Shade]

Never gotten declined from your group, and I DO NOT have extend.

Think the only time ya joined my group was for the VoD speedrun and a couple dragons, and due to the nature of the raids and fact we had a pure bard with it and otherwise very strong group, it was inconsequential. I'll be sure to decline ya next time you sign up tho your secret is out ! =) That was also in like U7/8 tho, a time I believe you possibly had extend since it was a far better feat then.

To be serious tho, I only decline players i dont know without extend due to the fact the quality of pug casters is sadly not very good, so if I can at least get some decent buffs out of them, thats great. If they haven't got it, they could be bringing nothing to the table at all.

And yea you have an excuse, completionist is a pretty nice feat compared to extend. The rest of **** most ppl take in it's place I dunno.

Maintaning continuous buffs at 2minutes is far too difficult for most players, and still very difficult for even very skilled ones. Also quite epending on the quest - impossible for certain ones - even the best at times.

Example: VoN6epic pug:
With some groups bases aren't always quite super fast and perfect.. So they take a little over 2 minutes in some runs. In almots all runs I do, there is not a caster on each base. Haste/Displacement runs out on that base, things can go bad.

There are hundreds more possible scenarios where non extend buffs just aren't ideal. Can you get by without em? Sure. Do I care too? No, I expect key members of my groups to bring key functionality that their class can to the table. I certianly take every reasonable feat to help out my parties as best I can on every class I play, which has always included a sorcerer too.

Sorcerer feats are tight, but replacing your 1 worst feat with extend will never break your character. The standard setup of any good sorc includes really only 3 mandatory feats - well 4 with savant: max, emp, heighten, and 1 focus. That leaves you 3 to play with on most sorcs, and 4 on a human - more then enough to fit it.

And so far it's only been maybe 2 guys out of hundreds. Both immature players that weren't worth my time anyways as it turned out. The vast majority of casters on khyber do have it. So to try and claim "bad players" take it is offensive to khybers community in general.

Team players take it. People who buff a lot and want to save SP take it. People without the ability to accurately keep track of multiple 2 minute timers take it. People I ask to swap in the feat cuz id otherwise decline them take it.

[Shade]

in green

Not such a big deal to rethrow a haste, rage, displace with the amount of SP we have. On the other hand, maybe you dont want to ask for it every 2 minutes. Also, what do you care about what others do with their spell points?

What you have to understand is that whats "not such a big deal" for yourself, is FAR BEYOND the capability of your average caster.

For you as a player who has obviously put a huge amount of play time into your character, it probably seems trivial.. For most others, it just requires a level of concentration that they simply dont have.

I've played the game for 5+ years often as a melee, always leading my own groups and taking along thousands of casters by now.

I can count the few that are able to keep track of 2minute buffs and recast them without delay and without question on my ten fingers. They are very few and far between.

Personally I don't mind asking every 2 minutes.. But at some point I think people get tired of hearing me constantly say the same thing and it gets annoying. I think I annoy people enough with my usual banter that yea, Id like to cut down on my requests as much as possible. The less I have to ask, the smoother I find everything goes.

What do I care?

I care about winning.
I care about leading my groups well.
I care about ensuring all my runs are smooth and effecient enough that no one is forced to drink sp pots.
I care about players knowing that when they join my LFM - they can set certain expectations of me, and I will deliver and maintain thoses qualities they come to expect.
Most of all:
I care about players having fun and enjoying my runs. For players who absolutely don't buff or hate to buff - it really saves everyone some aggrevation to just not take them along in the first place as our playstyles won't meld.

So for quests that are difficult enough to require certain buffs, yea I'll make requests for certain buffs to be maintained.

But for 99% of quests for casters, that list is limited to just rage and haste. What they do above and beyond that isn't a big concern.

For tough quests like epic devils assault ill request displacement - but rarely for myself.. Generally I ask for the casters to keep it up on themselves and the healers, as they are far more likely to get taken out.

So not having extend makes one a worse player? Thats funny Axer

Not what I said.
It was just a personal observation that many (not all) of the best casters, even sorcs do have the feat.

[Nick_RC]

Your nuts not to take extend.

I read all this nonsense in the forums, but on khyber 99% of sorcs still have it. the 1% that dont get declined from my groups.

Why?

DDO is a group game. You dont join a group as a sorc and refuse to buff.

If you do buff - which you will.. Extend saves you a lot of SP and more importantly time. More time to cast other stuff and your allies needing to ask for buffs less often is what lets you have more "fun"

I dont think any of the sorcs in revenants have extend. I think it is a useless feat now on a sorc. Im seeing more and more sorcs without it and I approve. Whether im receiving the hastes or giving them 2 min will do fine.

N

[soulaeon]

Is Shade Axer? That explains it. He didnt want me in a group when I was a wizard because I didnt have Extend.
Now, to be fair, Shade only wants Extend for the poor melee who cant buff themselves, or at least that was the only reason I was given. Because, he said only "bad wizards" dont have Extend due to the buffing. So, Shade thinks only good casters are buffers and nothing else. Go easy on him guys.

[ayspam]

What you have to understand is that whats "not such a big deal" for yourself, is FAR BEYOND the capability of your average caster.

That may be so, but maybe they arnt experienced yet, hopefully they ll get there.

For you as a player who has obviously put a huge amount of play time into your character, it probably seems trivial.. For most others, it just requires a level of concentration that they simply dont have.

I've played the game for 5+ years often as a melee, always leading my own groups and taking along thousands of casters by now.

I can count the few that are able to keep track of 2minute buffs and recast them without delay and without question on my ten fingers. They are very few and far between.

My view on this is the following: Lets take a ToD elite p3 for example when I m on caster. The expectations: clear trash, keep clouds up on the 2 bosses, help scroll heal whoever needs it. I do not keep track of how much is left of your haste or rage or whatever, but I m happy to renew it if asked. I m busy in there, I like it that way. Of course I could just take reconstruct and heal the sulu tank, but thats not challenging for me.

Personally I don't mind asking every 2 minutes.. But at some point I think people get tired of hearing me constantly say the same thing and it gets annoying. I think I annoy people enough with my usual banter that yea, Id like to cut down on my requests as much as possible. The less I have to ask, the smoother I find everything goes.

I dont mind rehasting or anything, but as I already said, if you need something you need to ask because I dont keep track of it, I m busy doing my part in a quest.

What do I care?

I care about winning.
I care about leading my groups well.
I care about ensuring all my runs are smooth and effecient enough that no one is forced to drink sp pots.
I care about players knowing that when they join my LFM - they can set certain expectations of me, and I will deliver and maintain thoses qualities they come to expect.
Most of all:
I care about players having fun and enjoying my runs. For players who absolutely don't buff or hate to buff - it really saves everyone some aggrevation to just not take them along in the first place as our playstyles won't meld.

You should join more of our runs, no need to lead, win is granted, run will be smooth, fast, and efficient, but if for nothing else, a challenge for yourself. Also we dont mind chugging a pot here or there, after all what are they there for?

So for quests that are difficult enough to require certain buffs, yea I'll make requests for certain buffs to be maintained.

But for 99% of quests for casters, that list is limited to just rage and haste. What they do above and beyond that isn't a big concern.

For tough quests like epic devils assault ill request displacement - but rarely for myself.. Generally I ask for the casters to keep it up on themselves and the healers, as they are far more likely to get taken out.

Again you should join some of our runs, we always have space since most of the time we re shortmanning it and dualboxing our other accounts.

Again in green

[JasonJi72]

Now, I may not be an uber vet or anything, but I'll throw my 2 coppers in anyway.

The problem with rage / haste isn't necessarily the 2 min duration, it is getting everyone together every 2 minutes. It has been said that if you can't get through a fight in 2 min you are broken. I agree, but with a 4 min buff you can get through several fights without even worrying about the short term buffs. That and it more closely coincides with a song duration.

However, I have noticed a pattern among many wizards and sorcerers now. Haste is no longer a priority to them. If they carry it, you will seldom see them cast it. If you actually see it cast on the group in a fight, there is a 70% chance that it was done by a melee with a clickie. When a mage does bless you with haste/rage (don't bother asking for displacement), please give them the mana pot you were saving for the cleric; for they have truly gone above and beyond the norm.

Some sarcasm... some truth... Yeah, I know... bad apples and all, but there are so many nowadays.

Extend is still useful, especially while leveling. If you need the feat space, by all means swap it out later on. I try to carry it on my casters, but sometimes I just can't fit it in.

[SpearKicker]

Usually I play monks, have some experience with divines, but almost zero experience playing arcanes (just tred my cleric in a wizard yesterday...). So, my experience is mainly as a melee. I think extend is not necessary nowadays (my favored soul dont have it, and dont have to rebuff between shrines, except for some short buffs).

Anyway, extend or no extend, please haste your parties! It really makes a big diference for the melees. Yes there are pots, but its really bad to have to drink one every 30 seconds (and big fights tend to take more than that).

[Vilhelm_der_Toller]

Great discussion so far even if it has wandered a bit from the OP. I've seen the opinions for the advantages of quicken and extend for the enjoyment of melees and casters. What about ranged specialist.

Specifically AA and their "Pew. Pew. Pew" all over the place. I know some find it annoying but if they clean up after themselves by taking out the mobs it should be OK. I would think the Manyshot feat would be satisfaction enough but would Quicken or Extend improve their group interactions as well?