Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[CoasterHops]

At least the Wizards who have worked to be decent Palemasters will have the Past lives for decent spell penetration when they all TR to sorcs.

From what I can see Death Casting Wizards = Fail as of update.
Evocation focused Sorcs also speccing in Enchantement, either using Draconic and twisting to Majister or the reverse using Majister and twisting to Draconic are going to be the big winners, cylce Crushing Despair, Mass Hold Monster, AOE Massive damage and WIN. With a **** load more SP and Boss DPS to boot. Seems to me there really isn't much reason to play wizards soon, theres only so many times where throwing a Mind Fog/Dancing Ball or Crushing Despair/Mass Hold can be fun, ohh wait then I can wail as my method of killing once every few minutes once my DCs are back to respectable.

Whatever happened to giving mobs some AI, where are the enemy Casters in Hard and Elite Epic that have the Spell Mass Deathward as one of their cycles, implement them, put the onus on the death dealing caster in the party to ensure that the enemy Mass Deathward caster is taken out asap, or suffer the consequences. Reward good, intuitive play instead of nerfing the Classes that use death effects. If some of this stuff go live there will be only one Arcane casting class to play and that is Sorceror, the funny thing they are already leaps and bounds ahead of Melee in DPS so yeah maybe Sorcerors are just as much of an issue as Palemasters and Evo Focused FVS but hey lets let them rip through content and penalise the others.

[EllisDee37]

This is terrible for my 18/2 first life wizard, effectively doubling his FoD cooldown from 8 to 15 seconds. He will be much less useful in normal shroud part 1 now. Was that intended?

I vote no on changing single-target death spells. The mass death spells, sure, fine, whatever. For some reason my FoD lands at a far higher % than wail does despite both having the same dc anyway so I generally don't bother with wail much.

(Typically, if I can FoD mobs at around 50% success, a wail will kill 2 out of 10.)

[butcheredspirit]

So is implosion considered a magical death effect?

It does not effect living incorporeal or gaseous creatures.
It does affect unliving creatures with physical bodies.

The spell simply causes corporeal bodies to physically implode in on themselves.

If implosion is nerfed by haunting, does haunting apply after the full duration of the spell?
I would hate to start getting debuffed after a single tick.
Implosion already seems balanced around it's 1 minute cooldown, and hard cap on the number of creatures killed.

What about dismissal, banishment and silver flame exorcism - do these cause haunting?
Does turning undead cause haunting?

If only some classes get enhancements to reduce the haunting penalty, who is really getting nerfed here?

[Violith]

When a death spell successfully kills one or more targets, the caster acquires a debuff called "Haunting" for each target killed, for a short period of time.

We're still working out details, but right now, Haunting is a stacking debuff that lasts 15 seconds and applies a -2 penalty to Death Magic save DC's. It decrements by 1 stack whenever the timer runs out.

We may consider a small buff on Hard/Elite/Epic Hard/Epic Elite difficulties to Saves vs. Death Magic for players and monsters at full or very high health, as well as a penalty at very low health, but at much smaller numbers than we were considering previously, when that was considered as a standalone system prior to the implementation of Hard to Kill.

This system essentially would create a "soft cooldown" that is triggered primarily by mass death effects, but still lets a caster Finger of Death a creature or two in fights. It has no effect unless you succeed, so weaker casters aren't harmed by it, and in emergencies even if your Haunted stack is high, Power Word: Kill can still strike down an enemy. (Its effectiveness is not reduced because it doesn't have a saving throw.)

Since your cooldowns wouldn't be longer than they are now, it would be up to you whether you wanted to chain death effects together, debuff opponents with spells like Energy Drain or work with a character with Improved Sunder to overcome the Haunting, or save your Wail for strategic moments when it will have the biggest effect.

We're still working out the details on this, and will then send it on to the engineers. Let us know what you think! Suggestions for improvement are welcome.

since your going to be increasing saving throws of the monsters, how about making it -1dc per stack of haunting. or make it so that the first monster killed isnt counted towards the stacks of haunting (so fod wouldnt be effected), the mobs having a higher save would already be abit of a penalty to us players, not all of us have large dc's)

[RobbinB]

When a death spell successfully kills one or more targets, the caster acquires a debuff called "Haunting" for each target killed, for a short period of time.

The 15 seconds is too long. Finger of death has an 8 second cooldown meaning we cant even cast finger each time its off cooldown and stay free of hauntings. Single target fingers are not the issue here. 6 sec debuff would work fine its a long delay for those that like to masskill large numbers but doesn't penalize the spot killer.

No, you could still cast finger. It would just mean that you would do so with a dc penalty, which would build up the more times you cast it quickly. After clearing a room, you might find it better to use a different strategy for the next room, or go get a drink, or whatever. But it doesn't stop you from using your death spells.

[Carpone]

First, it's refreshing to see that when hot issue such as this rears it's head, the dev-team has the resources to focus and respond.

Second, it is a step in the right direction, although as presented it requires a reduction in both the amount of the penalty and the duration of the debuff.

Third, there is an issue that needs to be addressed: the myth that most PM's or necro-focused AM's can sweep through epic content and lay low virtually all of the content, with little challenge. This is simply not true, and really only applies to the top percentile of necro-focused arcanes.

Quite frankly, if a player has invested enough lives into an arcane to have +9 spell pen (3 x wizard and 3 x favoured soul past lives), the maximum possible intelligence (i.e. completionist) and farmed out the best possible gear (+4 intelligence tome, tier 3 alchemicals...) then they had better be dominating content, for two reasons.

First, it is consistent with the lore that comprises the foundation of the game - that at the highest levels, spell casters are indeed the most powerful.

Second, if there is no tangible benefit to investing countless hours TR'ing and raiding and farming gear, then where is the underlying motivation to continue?

This needs to be framed in the dev design room.

[WurmBurned]

I like the general idea and it wouldn’t punish high DC casters nearly to the extent that the combat overhaul punishes high AC. Higher DCs still mean that you can cope with the debuff better.

However, I feel that either the duration or size of the penalty should be reduced. What’s currently proposed would be especially problematic for Implosion and still too harsh for other spells as well. A hard cap on the debuff also seems warranted.

If this must impact heroic levels, I would like to see it relegated to epic elite and heroic elite.

[Scraap]

Whatever happened to giving mobs some AI, where are the enemy Casters in Hard and Elite Epic that have the Spell Mass Deathward as one of their cycles, implement them, put the onus on the death dealing caster in the party to ensure that the enemy Mass Deathward caster is taken out asap, or suffer the consequences.

Funny thing is, they not only do that now on normal in the new stuff, but if there's necromancers, they even raise dead mobs as undeads (including themselves). Apparently, that's not enough.

[Grace_ana]

Eladrin, why is it seemingly not an option to fix the epic hard and elite quests so that the AI is more challenging? These solutions are of the sort that will end up causing more problems than they fix, and then six months from now you guys have to ditch it in favor of something like...improved AI.

[mrtweakin]

The change sounds reasonable compared with Hard to Kill. Please keep it in epics though, even epic normal. This simply has no business in Heroic levels.

[danotmano1998]

Eladrin, why is it seemingly not an option to fix the epic hard and elite quests so that the AI is more challenging? .

It wouldn't even take better AI, to be honest.

Balanced encounters would do it. A couple of undead mages, some fighting types, an archer in the back.. Maybe a miniboss or two sprikled in here and there..

You know.. Something that would require teamwork and some strategy?

[DeafeningWhisper]

It wouldn't even take better AI, to be honest.

Balanced encounters would do it. A couple of undead mages, some fighting types, an archer in the back.. Maybe a miniboss or two sprikled in here and there..

You know.. Something that would require teamwork and some strategy?

Heck just have a certain number of mobs spawn with deathward, some in hard elite and more in elite epic.

Per encounter of course.

[RabidMarsupial]

The mechanic design seems solid, but the numbers should be balanced. Remember, it's not the absolute number you're dealing with, it's the derivative in kills/time.

I would actually encourage a shorter cooldown for the deeper penalties such as:
-1 through -5 recover at 1/15 seconds
-6 to -10 recover at 1/10 seconds
-11 to -15 recover at 1/5 seconds
-16 to -20 recover at 1/2 seconds, and the cap is -20.

This would allow better casters to actually kill faster, particularly on scrawny mobs. Without this tiered recovery, all casters capable of killing will kill 1/15 seconds on average. That seems a bit artificial.

Alternatively, you could allow non-deathspell kills made by the party to decrease the haunting level. That way, casters in groups are much better than solo casters.

[Ganolyn]

Penalizing them everytime they use an insta-kill spell does seem a little harsh. Perhaps the haunting could be based on the number of mobs killed at once or the number of insta-kills thrown in a certain amount of time instead:


Haunting occurs if (just off the top of my head) five or more mobs are killed at once with a single spell. Any less than that and there is no penalty because they are expending SP at a much greater rate (like a nuker would).

or

Haunting occurs if the caster uses, say, three insta-kill spells within thirty seconds. This would make them break up their spell use, but still allow them to insta-nuke over a decent amount of time (kind of like Manyshot for casters).

[voodoogroves]

Almost your entire list has severe limits already. Smiting and such don't work over 1khp, the rest require either a build up of some resource, or special circumstances, or have long enough cooldowns that you aren't likely to instakill a mob more than once every 15 seconds anyway. The exception is terror, which is brokenly overpowered and a nerf to it is likely incoming.

True, but these are important. I'm less concerned about repeating the same event (assassinate -> assassinate) but more how "any" chains together.

(a) If Manslayer or my assassin's vorpal finishes folks off, are my assassinate DCs now going through the roof?
(b) If I have one of those vogue monk 1 or 2 / rogue 18 splits and I'm using Tharaak Wraps, will their proc'ing affect my assassinate and vice versa?
(c) Can I, as a wizard, decide to spec more TTS / prismatics (not traditional death effects) with no harm to my DCs, or will a "death" by those increment my haunted counter?
(d) If I'm a WF FVS (say) swinging a Terror using Improved Crit, did my DCs just increase for implosion?
(e) If I'm a caster wearing an epic cloak of night (Nightmare guard) will it's proc increase my DCs?

etc.


In a vacuum, they may be fine. Taken together, that's the clarity I'm looking for.

[Rizzia]

I am torn, I kinda like this comprimise, but it kinda makes wail a no brainer to NOT slot in, sure it can be used to prevent a wipe, but then if you do, your single targets wont be able to land on anything anythime soon (except PWK).

Some suggestions since Im awake (I regret some of my suggestions in the other thread as I was in a zombie like state^^)

Make it only effect mass death spells, so the tactical use of FoD, the lower divinie dc destruction, phantasmal killer (2 saves?) etc are all still available but curb the supposed clearing of dungeons in minutes (never seen it myself but others keep saying it so it must be true!)

OR

How about PM/AM line, Feats, ED bits that increase DCs only affect single (focused) target death effects. This to me kinda makes sense anyhows, because a spell (heightened to max level) focused on killing 1 target SHOULD have a higher DC than an uncapped aoe.

[kzeast]

So if I understand this is what you want Turbine.

2 casters in a group. One has spent a 'little' time acquiring 3x wiz/fvs past lives, +4 tome, max DC gear. The other is a first life caster with a little gear.

At the end of the quest you want them to have the same number of kills? One because they would be constantly gimped by the haunted debuff and the other because they only kill half they mobs they try to because of their lower DC.

Wonderful. Simply wonderful.

[aurum1]

Hate the idea -

1) This is 'kinder' to low DC casters? How?
A low DC and a high DC caster decide to run coal chamber.
They both gather 20 mobs and cast wail. Luckily for the low DC guy he kills 19 mobs and one saves.
As usual the high DC caster gets 19 of the mobs.

They both go to cast FoD on the last guy....which one lands it and which one is plastered into mush? All this system does in make uber casters lame for 2 minutes at a time and the average caster gimped if he tries to use wail.

2) What is the point of this? People go scroll farming at least as often with sorcs as with PMs. Both have methods of sustained fast mob slaughter. Will casters at least get a +20 heart of wood to swap over to sorc?

3) Why include this in any normal difficulty content at all? Instakills > DPS if and only if mob HPs are high. In normal difficulty a couple delayed blast fireballs or acid storms or big blast damage spells of your choice are just as effective at clearing huge groups of mobs.

[Carpone]

How many more hoops do insta-kill casters have to jump through?

We already have Spell Resistance.
We already have high save mobs.
We already have red named mobs.
We already have Death Ward casting mobs (Drow Priestess in MOTU).
We already have mob types that aren't affected by Necromancy insta-kills (undead).

Increase SR or saves on mobs based on dungeon difficulty. Why is that so hard? We don't need yet another game mechanic like Haunt.

[TDSCBloody]

I like Eladrin's solution. it goes in the right direction...