Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[Ape_Man]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the feedback on the haunted idea.

We've evaluated the Haunted mechanic to be too complex to introduce at this time. As mentioned by several posters in this thread, it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

We're planning on continuing to monitor the effectiveness of instant death effects (and necromancy in general) and will continue to make changes as necessary. (Especially when the enhancements revamp appears. It's possible that the "Haunted" concept, instead of being a debuff, will reappear as a positive effect for characters that invest in the Pale Master tree.)

I can live with this.

And thank you for nerfing the one spell causing the issue instead of an entire school of magic. It's a much better approach.

[Boneshank]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the feedback on the haunted idea.

We've evaluated the Haunted mechanic to be too complex to introduce at this time. As mentioned by several posters in this thread, it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

We're planning on continuing to monitor the effectiveness of instant death effects (and necromancy in general) and will continue to make changes as necessary. (Especially when the enhancements revamp appears. It's possible that the "Haunted" concept, instead of being a debuff, will reappear as a positive effect for characters that invest in the Pale Master tree.)

I'd accept that.

[DeafeningWhisper]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the feedback on the haunted idea.

We've evaluated the Haunted mechanic to be too complex to introduce at this time. As mentioned by several posters in this thread, it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

We're planning on continuing to monitor the effectiveness of instant death effects (and necromancy in general) and will continue to make changes as necessary. (Especially when the enhancements revamp appears. It's possible that the "Haunted" concept, instead of being a debuff, will reappear as a positive effect for characters that invest in the Pale Master tree.)

A thing of beauty, it limits the mass insta-kill of Wail while helping single target kills, 3 thumbs up!

[Meretrix]

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

Horrible idea, its a scream, should be instant. Just increase the cooldown. We dont need 2 of the same spell...

[Alavatar]

I'd accept that.
Except your math isn't quite correct. You wouldn't kill 20 enemies with this, you'd kill 6 (or 8, depending on if it's instantaneous to start).

His initial estimate of 20 killed enemies was with regards to saying (paraphrasing) "Instead of killing 20 enemies for 10 SP more than FoD as it is on live, we're limiting it to 2 killed every 2 seconds for 6 seconds."

[alexp80]

1. AoE. 1-target instant kills are not causing any issues.
2. non-boss combat. Its obvious, but AoE instant kills don't work on puzzles. Or bosses. Or bosses which require puzzles to kill (think Titan).

or orange named

or undead

or golems

or anyone buffed with deathward

or very high spell resistance mobs

or very high for save mobs

Turbine, if you are going to "fix" a problem, it helps to first define the problem clearly. I don't think Haunting, as described by Eladrin, fixes the problem I typed above.

To truly fix the actual problem, without making Pale Masters useless, there needs to be better "tech" added to the game.

1. Any such "fix" should apply only to AoE instant-kill spells (not abilities, skills, feats), and not single target instant-kill spells (or abilities, skills, feats).
2. It should never result in turning off the spell/making the spell useless, nor should it put a difficult pre-req in place in order to use the spell.

Example: the current version of Haunting requires lots of "regular" damage to "prep" the monsters for AoE instant kill, and it affects single target spells. This is bad.

Proposed solution:
1. Haunting only affects AoE instant kill spells.

2. Haunting does not prevent AoE instant death spells from working. Instead, it makes them work differently. While Haunting is present, AoE instant death spells deal damage instead of instantly killing. Damage should be very significant, and could be affected by DC of the caster. i.e. the higher DC you have, the more damage your converted-aoe-instant-kill-spell does. This rewards players who max their DCs.

3. Scale when Haunting drops, instead of hard-coding it to 50% health.

If the monster is "trash":
- Epic Casual: no Haunting
- Epic Normal: drops at 90% health
- Epic Hard: drops at 80% health
- Epic Elite: drops at 70% health

If the monster is "named/orange":
- Epic Casual: drops at 95% health
- Epic Normal: drops at 80% health
- Epic Hard: drops at 70% health
- Epic Elite: drops at 60% health


Final result:
- Monsters with Haunting will take massive damage from AoE instant-kill spells, but can still be instant-killed from single-target instant kill spells, or from any character abilities, feats, enhancements.
- Haunting drops off at different health levels, depending on monster type (trash vs named/orange), and depending on Epic difficulty.

Pale masters are not sorc.
I'm not interested at all dealing damage, this is necessary mostly for bosses, but i don't want to be a negative energie nuker.

All or nothing, it's the way of the wizard.
It's hard work, gather equip, choose gear carefully, play smart beceause you can't solo even the simplier content with blind instakill even with 46 dc (max possible atm - I got 45)

To all the new players:

EPICS ARE NOT "LORD OF DUST"

that is easier than any amrath or refuge quest elite.

Epics are adq1, cof, eDeep, eDA, VoN3-4.

This is the level of challenge that I expect and you can count on your hands the number of ppl that soloed them, and just once for the personal challenge, not because it's "the routine"

[stainer]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the feedback on the haunted idea.

We've evaluated the Haunted mechanic to be too complex to introduce at this time. As mentioned by several posters in this thread, it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

We're planning on continuing to monitor the effectiveness of instant death effects (and necromancy in general) and will continue to make changes as necessary. (Especially when the enhancements revamp appears. It's possible that the "Haunted" concept, instead of being a debuff, will reappear as a positive effect for characters that invest in the Pale Master tree.)

Why are you insisting on this?

[Boneshank]

His initial estimate of 20 killed enemies was with regards to saying (paraphrasing) "Instead of killing 20 enemies for 10 SP more than FoD as it is on live, we're limiting it to 2 killed every 2 seconds for 6 seconds."

Yeah I saw that I'd misread it as soon as I posted.

[smatt]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the feedback on the haunted idea.

We've evaluated the Haunted mechanic to be too complex to introduce at this time. As mentioned by several posters in this thread, it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

We're planning on continuing to monitor the effectiveness of instant death effects (and necromancy in general) and will continue to make changes as necessary. (Especially when the enhancements revamp appears. It's possible that the "Haunted" concept, instead of being a debuff, will reappear as a positive effect for characters that invest in the Pale Master tree.)

Much better idea.... Simple is good , addressing the true issue of the one spell that's really causing many(certainly not all) of the balance issues. This whole haunting system seemed to be a drag on resources....

[danotmano1998]

it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

This is so far the best solution I've heard from you guys yet on this delicate issue. While I still think the best solution would be for you guys to make the enemy encounters/saves correct, this is the least devastating "fix" you've put out.
Thanks for your considerations.

[Tid12]

Like it. Capped and increased CD, how I and many others suggested it.

Nice job.

[Alavatar]

Why are you insisting on this?

My best guess points to Management saying "do something".

[legendlore]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the feedback on the haunted idea.

We've evaluated the Haunted mechanic to be too complex to introduce at this time. As mentioned by several posters in this thread, it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

We're planning on continuing to monitor the effectiveness of instant death effects (and necromancy in general) and will continue to make changes as necessary. (Especially when the enhancements revamp appears. It's possible that the "Haunted" concept, instead of being a debuff, will reappear as a positive effect for characters that invest in the Pale Master tree.)

While it's nice that you listen to players, balance in this game will never be achieved that way when so many players have invested in a particular class. Wizard (and casters in general) is by far the most popular class in the game from what I've seen on all the servers I've played on and there's a reason for that.

With this change isn't it time to take a look at other abilities as well, like vorpal weapons? They effectively already have a hard to kill effect built in their mechanic.

If instant death effects are usable in epic perhaps it's time to take another look at epic ward and charms.

Pale masters aren't the only class in the game, even though it certainly seems like it on the forums, developer support and in game who list.

[Faent]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the feedback on the haunted idea.

We've evaluated the Haunted mechanic to be too complex to introduce at this time. As mentioned by several posters in this thread, it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

We're planning on continuing to monitor the effectiveness of instant death effects (and necromancy in general) and will continue to make changes as necessary. (Especially when the enhancements revamp appears. It's possible that the "Haunted" concept, instead of being a debuff, will reappear as a positive effect for characters that invest in the Pale Master tree.)

Wonderful news. Thank you so much!

[Khimberlhyte]

Fernando: How do we nerf Wail and get them to like it?

Eladrin: First, we come up with two outrageous ideas that nerf all casters and suck the fun out of the game for many of them. We mention the first one mid-week to widespread rejection from the forums. Then, we acknowledge their rejection of the first awful idea, and announce the second, even worse idea on a Friday afternoon. That will allow the nerdrage to fester for an entire weekend, while we deliberately stay away from the forums. By Monday morning, they'll be so relieved when we announce that we're only nerfing wail that they'll be thanking us.

Fernando: That plan of yours is nothing but pure, unmitigated evil. You weren't joking when you made that statement on the forums about being capricious and mean. I love it. Make it so.

[Scraap]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the feedback on the haunted idea.

We've evaluated the Haunted mechanic to be too complex to introduce at this time. As mentioned by several posters in this thread, it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

We're planning on continuing to monitor the effectiveness of instant death effects (and necromancy in general) and will continue to make changes as necessary. (Especially when the enhancements revamp appears. It's possible that the "Haunted" concept, instead of being a debuff, will reappear as a positive effect for characters that invest in the Pale Master tree.)

Well, you're targeting the right paradigm now, since the root issue (to you, whether we agree or not is academic, I suppose) seems to be a lack of danger in killing things surrounding you vs straight melee methods.

Still, throw in raw nuke damage, and the comparison falls a bit flat.

Hows about deals 1d4 negs to everything around and has a chance to slay 2-3 a tick (save negates)? At least then you'll have a consistent effect, not unlike saving for half on a nuke.

[DeafeningWhisper]

Fernando: How do we nerf Wail and get them to like it?

Eladrin: First, we come up with two outrageous ideas that nerf all casters and suck the fun out of the game for many of them. We mention the first one mid-week to widespread rejection from the forums. Then, we acknowledge their rejection of the first awful idea, and announce the second, even worse idea on a Friday afternoon. That will allow the nerdrage to fester for an entire weekend, while we deliberately stay away from the forums. By Monday morning, they'll be so relieved when we announce that we're only nerfing wail that they'll be thanking us.

Fernando: That plan of yours is nothing but pure, unmitigated evil. You weren't joking when you made that statement on the forums about being capricious and mean. I love it. Make it so.

LOL, is it wrong if I like the Wail nerf even more if this is true?

[Faent]

Fernando: How do we nerf Wail and get them to like it?

Everyone who is playing an endgame necromage has expected some kind of nerf to Wail for a long, long time. We just wanted a reasonable one. This one is perfectly reasonable.

[Vordax]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the feedback on the haunted idea.

We've evaluated the Haunted mechanic to be too complex to introduce at this time. As mentioned by several posters in this thread, it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

We're planning on continuing to monitor the effectiveness of instant death effects (and necromancy in general) and will continue to make changes as necessary. (Especially when the enhancements revamp appears. It's possible that the "Haunted" concept, instead of being a debuff, will reappear as a positive effect for characters that invest in the Pale Master tree.)

Why spread the kills out over time, why not just kill 6 right away? I like the "everything near me falls over dead" thing, over 6 seconds it just not going to feel the same.

[Cetus]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the feedback on the haunted idea.

We've evaluated the Haunted mechanic to be too complex to introduce at this time. As mentioned by several posters in this thread, it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

We're planning on continuing to monitor the effectiveness of instant death effects (and necromancy in general) and will continue to make changes as necessary. (Especially when the enhancements revamp appears. It's possible that the "Haunted" concept, instead of being a debuff, will reappear as a positive effect for characters that invest in the Pale Master tree.)

ALthough I got used to the instant gratification of wail, I guess I can live with that