Melee DPS is dead:long live casters!

[Boromirs]

Yeh so finally come to the realization that playing a melee DPS is utterly pointless... Honestly I think thhe only time a melee is even needed in this game anymore is toward the absolute high end like epic blades ...and its a tank. Lol good game turbine seeya on the flipside.

[Dwarfo]

cya later!

[Niv-mizzet]

I bet we'll see this or that give a little within the next year or so.

All things change, and all things happen again. The revival of the melees will come eventually, and I'll be staring at 9-open-spot raid lfm's that I can't join because they "already have a good caster."

[Iaga]

Ummm, you're in the wrong thread OP.

What you're looking for is the exact same thread you posted a little under 2 weeks ago.

I surrender ...

[Sirgleno]

Ummm, you're in the wrong thread OP.

What you're looking for is the exact same thread you posted a little under 2 weeks ago.

I surrender ...

Win!

[Shadow7375]

Ummm, you're in the wrong thread OP.

What you're looking for is the exact same thread you posted a little under 2 weeks ago.

I surrender ...

rofl ... good catch !

[Schwarzie]

The Blue Bar is endless? Major Mnemonics cost roughly 1000x each of what a Silver Flame Potion costs what a Melee needs to basically solo anything.

I wont go into store bought potions (which btw was the single worst thing turbine ever did to this game) which are basically pay to win.

And if you think Arcane Castgers are overpowered just go into Amrath Elite where the mobs laugh about your Archmage-Wizard if you "only" bring a DC of 44 to the table and therefore ignore him while he spends half his manabar to bring one mob down. Or reconciles himself to be the buff and webbot like he was it before the spellpass and the Arcane PREs...

I cant really judge any "opness" of sorcerers since i never played one, but i say definitely no to "opnes" of Cleric or Wizard.
Favoured Souls on the other hand are another matter. The combination of a Searing Light capstone with Avenger PRE, summonable free DPS dot on my shoulder and a Light dot (how nice that this works so excellently with my PRE...) on top of Bladebarriers combined with a huge manapool made my FVS easyly to my most powerful character, despite his severe lack of decent Endgame Equipment.

If a class needs an balacing adjustment its definitely the Fvs.

[McFlay]

And if you think Arcane Castgers are overpowered just go into Amrath Elite where the mobs laugh about your Archmage-Wizard if you "only" bring a DC of 44 to the table and therefore ignore him while he spends half his manabar to bring one mob down. Or reconciles himself to be the buff and webbot like he was it before the spellpass and the Arcane PREs...

If the point you are trying to make is a caster without the proper build/gear is a total failure in some content, the same is true for all builds. I'm guessing the character would fall somewhere along the line of

1. Fail build. Made some poor choices of feats, enhancements, stat allocation at create, or a combo of factors.
2. Some kind of hybrid build that has other strengths and weaknesses then a pure build, might not be a fail build but not playable the same way as a pure.
3. Undergeared

Try bringing a melee build into the same quest without enough to hit bonus to hit anything consistently. Youll be totally useless.

[deahamlet]

I am not going to go into whether or not wizard or FvS or whatever need balancing.
I've played RPGs with X spells/day from each level and I want to make something clear... arcanes still won the game on dmg with AOE alone. And those games didn't have DOTs. In those games you setup a party of 4... but to be honest half the time I made 2 arcanes, 1 divine/melee (paladin) and another melee or a buff bot (bard for example). Always far better than 3 melee + 1 divine. Everything went down faster, and I didn't exactly run out of spells allowed all the time.

Arcanes are meant to be insane damage, insane power of the mind. Think if magic ever existed, what the heck would a sword do against a fireball? Maybe the sneaky rogue could kill an arcane in their sleep but that's about it.

I always thought that self-healing PM was the be-all and end-all of solo-ing. I love the instadeath spells, I seriously sigh if I hear gripes about how melee doesn't get to kill (hey, I target casters and people behind the first wave, that's enough kindness out of me). But then I put my PM in one of the challenges and realized that I'm not going to be very good if the enemy is immune to insta-death AND to most elemental damage.

Enter my FvS... she waltzes in there with her mana bar and her blade barriers and does 1000 times better. Also does better than my artificer who has the same SP that FvS has at 14, but arti has it at 20 with all sorts of gear!
FvS are very powerful. At least alone. In raids, I'll get to dot and heal. I think I'd be rather angry if they took the DOT spell away since we get such nothingness for damage spells on divines.

Again though, so many advantages to being melee... I lost count. Far far more survivable at low level. Easier to level. Easier to get into any raid.

Raise you sword up. Now try blocking a fireball.

[FengXian]

Again though, so many advantages to being melee... I lost count. Far far more survivable at low level. Easier to level. Easier to get into any raid.

Easier to level? Don't spread misinformation please. And about raids, it's been already discussed that the good party leaders won't make any distinction (i.e. won't limit caster slots to 2). There are also plenty of eChrono or elite Shroud caster-only runs.

The Blue Bar is endless? Major Mnemonics cost roughly 1000x each of what a Silver Flame Potion costs what a Melee needs to basically solo anything.

I wont go into store bought potions (which btw was the single worst thing turbine ever did to this game) which are basically pay to win.

And if you think Arcane Castgers are overpowered just go into Amrath Elite where the mobs laugh about your Archmage-Wizard if you "only" bring a DC of 44 to the table and therefore ignore him while he spends half his manabar to bring one mob down. Or reconciles himself to be the buff and webbot like he was it before the spellpass and the Arcane PREs...

Elite Amrath? You can crushing despair + mass charm/symbol of persuasion, you can max+emp ice storm and turtle up in a shield etc, etc.

Which is also why the Blue Bar IS endless. NOT because of store pots, because you can shield block on some mobs (you decide which ones and how many, archers do fine but you can endure a couple of epic melees too) and recharge ALL of your mana. With torc+con opp. It never was about store pots.

[Schwarzie]

Elite Amrath? You can crushing despair + mass charm/symbol of persuasion, you can max+emp ice storm and turtle up in a shield etc, etc.

Saving Throw: Will save negates. What about DC43 Willsaves dont land there at all have you not understood? [Disclaimer: before any nitpickers point it out: yes ofc course there is the occasianal mob that is hold, charmed or whatever. But its a fair minority of hte mobs affected by one spell]

And turtling up with a torc.. yes what about the earlyer argument casters dont need any decent equipment? Besides the Madstone Boots the Torc is among the rarest piece of Raidloot you can get. And Max empowered Ice Storm istn that much of damage. Even with Eardweller. Once again you are looking at mixing a DC based wizard with a nuking sorc. A Archmage has not a single free Enhancementpoint to put into dmg lines. He lives completely from his DCs.

With torc+con opp. It never was about store pots.

And suddenly we speak about a geared caster... Please, at least stay consistent.

1. Fail build. Made some poor choices of feats, enhancements, stat allocation at create, or a combo of factors.
2. Some kind of hybrid build that has other strengths and weaknesses then a pure build, might not be a fail build but not playable the same way as a pure.
3. Undergeared

My Wizards name is Magier, you can easyly look it up on MyDDO. His Damage output or utility in amrath is basically nonexistant. None of my melees have the same problem.

Try bringing a melee build into the same quest without enough to hit bonus to hit anything consistently. Youll be totally useless.

Str8 without Str Item on a Barbarian that refuses to rage? Dont get me wrong, Melees need tons of Gear, but to hit is easyer to come by then a decent damage output.

Much of the whining i see in this Thread seems to come from Melee pure players who never played a Caster and which never seemed to recognize the problems casters once had to get into pug Raids since they were only usable as buffbots.
But the biggest retardation i read here is that it is always spoken as "casters" as if there werent 4 different kinds each with own issues. Many posts here even read as if there was a caster class in DDO with hte survivability of a PM, the damage output of a sorc and on top of that it throws Bladebarriers while using wings and is surrounded in a self healing aura.

Please, get real.

[Arctigis]

Which is also why the Blue Bar IS endless. NOT because of store pots, because you can shield block on some mobs (you decide which ones and how many, archers do fine but you can endure a couple of epic melees too) and recharge ALL of your mana. With torc+con opp. It never was about store pots.

So you're against the soloists really then? Recharging mana by turtling in a group doesn't tend to go down
very well.

I don't mind admitting that I (almost) exclusively solo. The U9 changes revamped the game massively for me as it
opened up quests and areas which I'd previously struggled with (e.g. Elite Amrath, Epics). If this is nerfed
then I'll probably not play any more. Like it or not, part of the resurgence of DDO has been Turbine's TLC
towards people who like to solo (given the changes in the game to enable this you'd be mad to try and
refute it).

The investment in obtaining a Torc and con-opp is not insignificant (you're generally looking at 20th reward lists
for the Torc unless you're lucky).

DoTs. I don't know about others but I generally only use these on red/purple named end bosses. I wouldn't
object to a fort save for half. It's disingenuous IMO to cast these as game breakers though as it takes
time to ramp up and is the only practical way a caster can contribute sustained DPS on a higher level raid boss.

Insta-kill. Tricky. The gulf between average, first life characters and epic, multi-tr characters is huge - beyond the
scope of a D20 system IMO. In fact, you can apply this observation to a lot of the complaints about OP casters
- the problem being the content itself.

We all seem to be missing the point that better AI would solve some of these problems (e.g. deathward, bless,
pathing out of AOE etc.). With meta-gaming knowledge mobs just become sacks of HP that need to be removed
before you can complete this quests. This is where casters, with their superior tools to do this on an industrial
scale, look overpowered.

They need to improve the AI to make mobs actually dangerous and give melee more options rather than nerf
casters.

[TheLegendOfAra]

Casters tanking? Sure it's possible, it's been done before as well, but nine times out of ten, in a raid a real TANK is tanking the boss, not some caster with a shield. Why? Because real tank builds do it better. Sure they may not be able to self heal as well as a WF caster, or PM, but that's what the healer is for.

Also, I rarely see raids that have more than 2-3 arcane casters/2Divine; the rest of the group is generally melee. As for the whole "Nothing but caster" raids someone mentioned, sure, they exist, but so do "all ranger" raids. your argument is invalid.

Point being, caster's should not be nerfed, and melee should just be happy with there place in the party.

Hell, my main is a 28pnt first life Ranger AA(undergeared AA at that!) and in most quest/raids I have most kills. Should my AA be nerfed because I get more kills than the melee? No thank you.

[FengXian]

Casters tanking? Sure it's possible, it's been done before as well, but nine times out of ten, in a raid a real TANK is tanking the boss, not some caster with a shield. Why? Because real tank builds do it better. Sure they may not be able to self heal as well as a WF caster, or PM, but that's what the healer is for.

Also, I rarely see raids that have more than 2-3 arcane casters/2Divine; the rest of the group is generally melee. As for the whole "Nothing but caster" raids someone mentioned, sure, they exist, but so do "all ranger" raids. your argument is invalid.

Point being, caster's should not be nerfed, and melee should just be happy with there place in the party.

Hell, my main is a 28pnt first life Ranger AA(undergeared AA at that!) and in most quest/raids I have most kills. Should my AA be nerfed because I get more kills than the melee? No thank you.

No, all caster raids are something I see EVERY DAY on Cannith at least. All ranger raids? I think I've seen just one 2 years ago, maybe.

Caster tanking is done regularly in eChrono, and often enough in ToD and LoB. Judging a toon by kills, now that's a valid meter...please...

[Schwarzie]

No, all caster raids are something I see EVERY DAY on Cannith at least. All ranger raids? I think I've seen just one 2 years ago, maybe.

Caster tanking is done regularly in eChrono, and often enough in ToD and LoB. Judging a toon by kills, now that's a valid meter...please...

I call that BULL.S.H.I.T. While "All caster Raids" happen they are far from common. As are all Barbarian Raids, all Ranger Raids, all $whatever Raids.

And in over 200Tods i have never seen that a caster tanks either Sully or Horroth.

The Claims here are becoming rather ludicrous by now...

[justagame]

Haven't we all had enough hyperbole and exaggerations for one topic? Folks, when people exaggerate or make outrageous claims, or make claims based on extreme examples, they don't help their case.

Asking for nerfs based on extreme examples (i.e., all XXX runs, short-manned runs of extremely well-equipped and experienced players), is generally a BAD idea, because it shows little thought about how it affects "joe typical payer."

Asking for nerfs based on solo ability, while trying to deny fundamental aspects of core class abilities, is also generally a bad precedent. For example, I point to the numerous claims that it's self-healing that's at issue. No offense meant, but duh. Does it really shock people, that someone who has invested in self-healing, or defenses, has greater survivability in solo situations? Really? That someone with UMD to scroll themselves, or spells that heal themselves, can solo better and more quickly than someone who can't? To try to cut those builds down via nerfs is to deny reality. If you're expecting the single-minded melee dps build with no av, defenses, DR, umd, or anything else that mitigates damage, to be able to solo and keep themselves alive in an extremely harmful environment, that's just unrealistic.

Now, as I and others have pointed out in numerous posts across numerous threads, yes, melee abilities, namely defenses, need to scale a bit better at endgame. But simply calling for nerfs, and doing it across the board the way a few people are doing, smacks of envy, and is irresponsible. For example, this comparison of trash and boss damage. (i.e., pretending that arcane and divine casters should rightfully have no way to damage a boss meaningfully, except by swinging a weapon, is constucting a straw man definition of 'balance.') Some people seem to want a dull, one-dimensional game.

A caster tanked a boss? Hooray! A divine caster tanked LOB? Great! I applaud creative strategy, and the ability to build characters that can fill non-standard roles. It doesn't change the fact that most tanking is done by traditional melee tanks.

Oh, and one more thing -- pretending that "the sheer number of threads" is proof that there's a problem doesn't make it so. For one, it's the same few people, posting over and over and over again, making the same points again and again, and digging their heels in. Secondly, the forum population is a tiny fraction of the DDO world. And lastly, might does not make right. If that were so, I would use the countless number of threads stating as FACT the prediction that the spell pass would KILL ARCANE CASTERS, as proof that they must be dead. Naturally, they were wrong. Numerous? Yes. Passionate? Indeed. But wrong nonetheless.

[FengXian]

The replies to those arguments, justagame, are already in the other threads (and in this one too). I think I have repeated myself enough now.

It' not about soloists, not about wrong impression from seeing exceptionally skilled players, and not about envy (lol). You can have great self healing, tanking ability, dps, CC/instakills (or both) on the same toon, w/o uber rare gear, great player skills or tons of past lives. No exaggeration.

[FengXian]

Yes, yes I agree casters do need some gear to work.

If you don't have at least some good items with potency, lore, spell focus, spell penetration, magi and such you won't go far. But we're not talking about epic RoSS here, we're actually not even talking about epic stuff at all. You can become very effective as a caster with just raid gear.

And we're not talking 3-men ToDs here.

That is the problem. If in order to be uber you actually needed to focus a lot on the toon acquiring lots of rare gear, player experience etc., so if it only was about people who can 3 men or solo ToD etc., it would be ok. But it's NOT just about those people.

As Ryumajin said (and he has a dedicated caster toon, nothing like my scroll farmer) a caster can have all that stuff even w/o great skill nor many past lives. Heck you can do it on 1st life and if you grab a PL: wizard (also one of the most effective ones btw) it gets way better. SOME gear, you do need. Nothing special tho.

Now try building a 1st/2nd life melee. Give him some gear. Like GS weapon + item, minos, a couple CC epics, mabar cloak maybe, tharne's, madstone, the usual stuff. Give it to an average player. I bet that even with SF pots he won't be able to solo any epic, nor to farm epic scrolls. Prolly not even on a monk.

And it's not about soloing, since even in a party the melee needs to rely on someone else, unless great player skill, experience and gear. For example, I can do pretty well in eADQ1 on my monk. But I need to chug pots (=resources) even if I healed thru meditation outside fights I'll end needing quite a few pots during fights. But it's not just that, I need to pay a lot of attention, either when kiting or stunning, and I still wouldn't be able to solo many parts of the quest in a reasonable time.
Now on a caster it's a JOKE. The hardest part is prolly sitting in shield block and refilling mana vs a couple of trogs. And you don't need to 3 men ToD in order to have an easy time in adq1.

-------------------------------------------

I don't understand why people don't use their time looking for a reasonable solution to this problem instead of denying it. It's there, the gap, it's huge, admit it. Try to make it go away without breaking the game for anyone.

[Emili]

Ummm... No. Stop posting the same threads over and over.

Get on the game take your character and go solo something. Outside of raids ya don't need anyone else ... on any class.

[Failedlegend]

Yeh so finally come to the realization that playing a melee DPS is utterly pointless... Honestly I think thhe only time a melee is even needed in this game anymore is toward the absolute high end like epic blades ...and its a tank. Lol good game turbine seeya on the flipside.

DOOOOoooOOOOOMMMMMM!!!111!!!1!!!!