Suggested changes to Divine Punishment (and possibly other dots)

[Xenostrata]

I'd like to preface this post with the fact that until reasonably recently, my ONLY serious toon was a capped drow air savant, and I LOVE playing casters.

Single target DoTs, as they are now, are severely overpowered. Think about it. As a caster, I can cast a spell that hits for the same damage as all my other spells 8 times, for exactly the same sp cost. They are the single highest DPS a caster can pump out while simultaneously being the most SP efficient spells available. Casters were always meant to be the highest DPS classes in the game. If they weren't, there would be no purpose in bringing along more than one per raid/group to serve as a buff/hold dispenser (sound familiar?). However, their DPS isn't meant to be sustainable. It's meant to be something that, if you go max dps on something, you run out fairly quickly. DoTs have made it so that we don't run out when in "Max deeps" mode, which is screwing up game balance because we can afford to out dps EVERYONE and we can keep doing it for minutes at a time.

The solution, in my honest/humble (which does the h stand for? meh.) opinion, is to decrease the damage of DoTs significantly while keeping the best available sp efficiency. I'm not a game developer, so I can't give exactly how, but I would reduce it so that a cast of a DoT does about 2-4 times as much as a normal spell does instead of 8, but extend the duration by about 1.5. The result would be an extremely SP efficient spell for contributing dps during long fights without blowing everything else completely out of the water.

Too prevent a return to the horrors that were pre-u9 caster social mechanics, I would then give the casters a ridiculously high damage, high sp single target and/or aoe spell(s) (talking something in the order of 2-3 times as powerful as the average polar ray, which in my experience hits for around 450). This would be something to cast when you don't care about sp efficiency, you just need to do as much dps as possible. This spell would be superb for dealing with trash or playing with agro mechanics, but would not enable the caster to maintain their DPS for long enough to lead to significant imbalancing at the long boss fights.

My final suggestion would be to balance for casters who dump their casting stat (mostly relevant to fvs). Make the difference in SP more noticable between classes and when a casting stat is dumped. Non-wis based fvs would already be losing the benefits of the new Überspell, since it would be save-based, however, the difference between dumping your casting stat and maximizing it should NOT be a few hundred sp. With my suggestions, sp conservation will be a lot more serious, and the player skill involved won't matter at all considering how pretty much everyone can manage similar endgame sp count. Instead of having each point of the stat cost 29 sp at level 20, make it closer to 60-70. Also, FvS and Sorcs should be getting a significant boost in sp over Clerics and Wizards. In the FvS/Cleric case, with the new importance of having high sp, having a split casting stat will become incredibly hard to manage, and so should be balanced with that in mind (especially since FvS are generally more inclined flavor/RP wise as offensive casters). For Wizards/Sorcerers, the new expensive spells will be DC based, which means that the Sorcerer (the class that should be the best nuker) will be getting a penalty to dps due to their lower DCs. Being able to cast the spell significantly more times should counteract this when compounded with a faster cast rate. I was thinking a good adjustment (again, not sure of the numbers exactly - I'm no dev) would be to change the average difference between wizards and sorceres from 700-800 (around 2100 to 2800) to closer to 1500 (around 2000 to 3500). Even with these changes, a rich enough wizard/cleric (plat ot RL money) will be able to outcast a fvs/sorc with those freaking annoying potions (HATE these. As someone who likes to collect things, I just have a stack of these gathering dust that I'm too scared to use in case I need them more later.)

TL;DR:
Nerf DoTs from being 8x normal spell damage to around 2-4x, and extend their duration to make them good sp efficient choices for long fights.
Give all types of caster new high level spells that do huge amounts of dps (2-3x your average polar ray) for higher sp costs, to reinforce a casters role of best non-sustainable dps. Should make fighting normal/epic trash with straight damage spells (which is STILL not done, usually wail/hold beatdown) more sp effective.
Increase the effect one's casting stat has on SP to help with balancing SP conservation mechanics, and increase the SP gap between the spontaneous casters and their counterparts to help balance out disadvantages (because dumping the sp stat will hurt more, clerics have an advantage over fvs; because the new top dps spells are save based, wizards have an advantage over sorcs; because fvs and sorcs should be doing more damage with these new spells, they get to cast them more often).

Sorry for the long post, and I hope the TL;DR covers everything (though shouldn't it be TL,DR? The grammar nerd inside me says that the semicolon doesn't belong).

[Xaxx]

I like casters a lot. Still, imo, the casters are too strong. They can self-heal, self-buff and DPS. It is just not right that one class can do everything in MMO game. I could also ask, why cannot a fighter self-heal and self-buff himself? No need to answer.

In MMO every class should have their own role. At the moment, the casters are simply the best choice if you start a new character because they can do everything themselves.

I don't like the idea of buffing other classes because that would simply make the game equally easy for every class. I want the game to be equally difficult and challenging for all. That's what we want: challenging and teamplay focused game, right?

Don't worry. Diablo 3 is soon here, there you can pwn hundreds of mobs alone without anyone's help and that is the game meant for exactly that. In addition, Diablo 3 is not MMO. See the difference here?

How long ago was it half orc barb was going to ruin the game.... oh wait.. nothing. Go back further it was dwarves, further it was drow... I can keep on going back for the new thing is ruining the game multiple times over virtually every mod.

Oh and if you wanna self heal... GET SOME UMD...or I dunno be a halfling... wow so hard... get some vampirism weapons.... wow.

So casters are simply the best choice right? Really??... Shall I go start taking pictures of pug raids and average raids and see how many casters are in them? Shall I go start taking screen shots of raids that have one or two casters in them and then caster removed from the list.... I dont see... even months after 9.9... groups taking 1 barb maybe 2 and then removing barb/fighter/pally/monk/rogue from their lfg list with only 6 players and going, sorry guys only 2 meles the rest is for casters. Call me crazy but I simply dont see that ANYWHERE... you know where I have seen that... puggin.. 98% of the time... over the last 5 years.... and oh yeah I still see it today.. 98% of the time.

Now the day that I start seeing multiple raids or quests in general where people take 1 token mele and the rest casters.. thats they day... THE ONLY DAY.. that people should then come and moan about casters... and the moan should only be to equal things out.. not bring mele back to sorry theres only room for 2 healers and 1 caster and of course the bard to buff us. OH and you better haste us at all times or your out.

Yes I run with guildies and friends alot... I also pug. For anyone that says that pugging doesnt matter, or it doesnt matter how puggers make groups.... umm... you do realize that for every guild or closed group run theres atleast as many or more pug groups run... and most of those pug groups still operate under *mele good caster ok* mentality.

I know the devs seem to be on a kick of listening to the people who winge the most right now about things being to easy or this is unfair, so I can understand that some people see this as the time of well if we moan and complain enough maybe they'll give into us. The start in on casters whats to stop people from starting to moan about strength modifiers being unfair and that it should be changed from +1 to hit and +1 damage every two str to how about every 6. That would bring barbs back down to earth wouldnt it? You wish to discuss that along with dot changes?

Oh and if casters are so op and the only thing to make.... go into harbor and look around.. go to mid level quests.. look around.. go to the lfms... look around... go to the who list and yeah you got it. Call me crazy but I dont think you see half the list as casters, where if they were so crazily op as you OMG NERFZ ZE COSTARS DEY IS SO OMGZ!!!!!!!! people seem to be, why isnt a much larger percentage of the pop on the caster band wagon.

Now the day this rolls around... I'll be right there... but you dont see people going HOLY **** LOOK AT THE AMOUNT OF MELES... THEY'RE SO OP... THEY MUST BE NERFED. Though by your arguments this could have been done for the last 5 years non stop. So..... really?

Yes mele dps is so overpowred.. how about we add reflex saves to every hit ontop of ac.. since you seem to want saves on all spells ontop of mana comitments. I mean how about the stamina bar.. that would be great to... that way you'd have something to manage along with casters... and you could have stamina pots.. only sold in ddo store or drop one at a time once in a while. Then casters could say shut up and drink the stam pots so you can continue hitting the boss... I dont care if your out of stam. Then come to the forums moaning about that barb just chugging stam pots, and how stam pots need to be nerfed or taken out of the game or have a 3 minuite timer on them and how double str damage for two handed is so op and need to be removed. Lets flip the script man, that sounds enormously fun doesnt it? Oh it doesnt... wow what a surprise.

So go get us alot of screen shots of groups that are full of casters ONLY TAKING MORE CASTERS... go get us some proof that casters are so overpowered that no one wants to play meles any more. Show me something to back up your arguments.. I mean all you have to do is log on and look around to see mine.... NEXT (sorry i'm expecting another one of these posts by the 5 OR 6 PEOPLE that just wish to keep posting them 15 times a day soon, figured I might as well call for it to get it goin).