Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[legendlore]

How? Can you qualify this?

You don't even get Wail 'til late in the game, not everyone even sees Wail. The chances of them running with a selfish PM for more than one quest, who manages to time all their Wails well enough to spoil the game for them, are pretty slim, I'd wager.
--
Really, some of the hyperbole around how PMs are destroying the game is just laughably poor.

Nothing to laugh about, it is rather sad in fact. It's a great game and it deserves to be so for every player regardless of choice of class.

The class imbalances starts out long before Wail, I'd say it's really notice able at attaining Firewall (some say Fireball) and the gap only widens from there. It's good that they're taking a look at instant death but that really is only part of the problem.

As for new players not liking imbalance, well log into the game and look at what class(es) that are most played, continue to do so when you log in. I think most will have similar data collected from this. Casters are massively more popular than other classes is my conclusion at least. Now look at the release notes and forums, casters also receive a massive amount of developer attention (likely due to being popular already). A new player entering the game will pretty quickly pick up that this is a game dominated by casters.

Now I don't have all the numbers and data but I'm pretty sure Turbine does and the fact that they're trying to do something about the class imbalance indicates that it's likely a revenue loss for them.

[Jasparion]

People are saying all that ever seems to happen is nerfs. So now is the chance, Devs, buff the Bard !

Yes, lets see some Bard lovin'. Imagine the day when someone is asked their Pre and they say "Virtuoso" and everyone in the group says "Oh cool".

Is there a level 6 aoe insta-death spell they could be given? Im sure that would get the kids playing them

[Auran82]

1 to heal
1 to CC
1 to... ?
Hmmm
3 to watch him do his thing and report back to the Forums?

I think the term used now is 'Bukake Barbarian'

[Braegan]

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.)

Thank you and the Dev team for listening to the player base on this one and trying to find a middle ground. While this is a kick down a few pegs it's more attempting to balance without completely crippling casters. As others have posted it would be nice if Pale Masters (The Masters of Necromancy) would receive some more benefit then perhaps AM or Sorcs when casting Wail. Perhaps the 3 kills per tick or an increased duration to reflect that they are the masters of this school of magic would be nice. By all means keep it lower then it was before but it is one thing that makes PM's shine, let them shine just a tad brighter then a Sorc or AM when they dabble in the arts the masters have perfected.

[noinfo]

Im a PM in sarlona (parasthesia) while im not the top geared PM on server ( not even close!! Only 44 dc necro and 43 enchant! ) but I do my job right, I don’t kill every mob, I don’t wail everything, and I don’t solo everything ( there are some things I can do I wont lie, but no im not “Godlike” I play many EDA’s on my PM not focusing on wail, but rather on CC and kill the caster/fire elemental. Even more, on EDA, one of my friend (45-46 dcs necro) focus on killing everything couldn’t match a top geared barbarian (esos/devils ruin/wearing the red ( the epic dragon scale armor and helmet +4 tomes etc)

The only time a barb is going to come close to a caster in there is at the start with orange names and if they sup cleave the bats and scrops before they are wailed. If there is only 1 caster he should be sitting close to 100 kills. I have both barb and casters and the difference in there between a well played barb and a well played casters is significant. The difference is that I enjoy both and really dont care who has the most at the end of the day, my non full dps toons though suffer

[Dawnsfire]

1 to heal
1 to CC
1 to... ?
Hmmm
3 to watch him do his thing and report back to the Forums?

1 Buffbot for the Axer package
1 WC Bard for songs

1 still unaccounted for. . .

[Cetus]

A part of me still wants to have exceptionally powerful abilities that we can use in important situations.

What about making wail come in tiers, much like trap the soul?

Say, the first tier effect would be of the type outlined in eladrins suggestion. 1 minute cooldown maximum of 6 kills throughout a 6 second implosion like duration.

the second tier would be like the live wail, except slap on a 5 minute cooldown and only activatable after, say, 10 successful uses of the tier 1 type wail.

Give it a different name- allow it to follow the epic moment style of activation- x number of uses of less powerful abilities in order to activate a much less frequently used, more powerful, ability.

the point is- I like having to look forward to using a more powerful ability when the need arises.

In the end- we'd have a nerfed wail throughout our time in a quest, but when we need to- we can build toward that instantly gratifying signature palemaster move.

[Cadveen]

Better nerf for sure, but at this point I think extending the cool down is the best option since I don't think we need two implosions.

2 implosions? Can the new wail instantly kill anything beyond fleshies? It can kill undead and constructs now? That would be awesome otherwise it is not better than implosion on the high end dc level. It is maybe better for mediocre level dc casters. Beyond that they did increase the cost of wail by 30 seconds. It is now the same cooldown as implosion.

Another note...if they are nerfing this please reevaluate the level four spell list. It has some of the best spells alot of which are necromancy based and you can't fit them all. Please at least move curse to level 3 like the divines have. Since they are making the spells in the divine and arcane do the same affects.

[paraplegic]

The only time a barb is going to come close to a caster in there is at the start with orange names and if they sup cleave the bats and scrops before they are wailed. If there is only 1 caster he should be sitting close to 100 kills. I have both barb and casters and the difference in there between a well played barb and a well played casters is significant. The difference is that I enjoy both and really dont care who has the most at the end of the day, my non full dps toons though suffer

top geared barbarian?

[Faent]

As others have posted it would be nice if Pale Masters (The Masters of Necromancy) would receive some more benefit then perhaps AM or Sorcs when casting Wail. Perhaps the 3 kills per tick or an increased duration to reflect that they are the masters of this school of magic would be nice. By all means keep it lower then it was before but it is one thing that makes PM's shine, let them shine just a tad brighter then a Sorc or AM when they dabble in the arts the masters have perfected.

It seems to me that Pale Masters have enough toys and tricks as it is. How about first revisiting the Archmage's SLA options, almost all of which are worthless? Give Archmages a reason to pick up some high-level Necromancy SLA's (then they can teach the Pale Master a lesson or two about how to use their necromantic arts). =)

Currently, the optimal set up for an Archmage is Conjuration II and Enchantment I, and doing anything else is so insanely weak by comparison that the only reason to deviate is for flavor.

Archmages are constantly being forgotten in this thread. There is not a *single* Necromancy spell a PM can, qua PM, toss better than an Archmage. Pale Masters get some "Necromantic" tricks in their Enhancement lines, but the wizard spell list should function no differently for an Archmage than a Pale Master.

[sephiroth1084]

It seems to me that Pale Masters have enough toys and tricks as it is. How about first revisiting the Archmage's SLA options, almost all of which are worthless? Give Archmages a reason to pick up some high-level Necromancy SLA's (then they can teach the Pale Master a lesson or two about how to use their necromantic arts). =)

Currently, the optimal set up for an Archmage is Conjuration II and Enchantment I, and doing anything else is so insanely weak by comparison that the only reason to deviate is for flavor.

Archmages are constantly being forgotten in this thread. There is not a *single* Necromancy spell a PM can, qua PM, toss better than an Archmage. Pale Masters get some "Necromantic" tricks in their Enhancement lines, but the wizard spell list should function no differently for an Archmage than a Pale Master.

I disagree.

Death Aura (and Lesser) clearly are PM exclusives. That's fine.
Negative Energy damage enhancement via PM can be seen as an exclusive carrying-over of divine bonuses, or it can become an inherent part of the class. If the latter, PMs should have bigger bonuses than can be purchased via AP, which would mean they would need a buff.
PMs and AMs use all the rest of their necromancy spells in the same way, except that AMs get a cheap Enervation if they want it, which is a significant tool, if a bit expensive.

They both need more to differentiate them, though PMs should definitely be better at using Necromancy spells--AMs can dual-spec, or not bother with Necromancy at all, and they gain some unique abilities (the SLAs), in addition to quite a bit more SP. That's fine.

My preference for AMs would be for their SLAs to get revised on the whole, with some better options getting thrown in where needed (including some new spells added to the game to fill in the gaps in Abjuration, Illusion and Transmutations spells, and to a lesser degree Conjuration spells), and for the higher tiers of the SLAs to not require the lower ones. I'd prefer AMs to get a few more options at each level to serve as alternatives to the SLAs, and count as prerequisites for the next tier's SLAs.

For example, instead of picking an SLA at rank X, they could take:
Reach Spell: Extends the range at which you may land spells with a range of "Touch."
or
Energy Substitution: This grants an activated ability that allows you to change the elemental type of all of your fire, cold, electric, or acid spells to the element of your choice for 30 seconds. This would have a longish cooldown (maybe 2 minutes), and would consume some SP.

Perhaps they would be available at each level with ranks I-V. The idea would be to offer other options besides the SLAs, and to make the higher tier SLAs a bit more attractive by removing the requirement to spend AP and max spell points on junky abilities you don't want.

[maddmatt70]

In fact I am in a Pug right now on my first life stalwart tank, level 18 group, we just did Jeets, it was a complete nightmare, I was hoping that the wizard that joined had wail, so that he could clear out all of that garbage, no we had to wade through it because he was a low necro dc archmage and he also did not know how to use mass hold.

You see you are dependent on wail and if not that mass hold to complete quests when there are so many spells and ways to complete a quest. You talk about having to wade through the quest because you did not have the access to one spell or maybe two hmm you want to tell me that is not messed up. They need to nerf wail and the other mass instakills and then buff up other spells and ways of completing quest to make up the difference.

That my friend is your average TR'd wizard, there are not many, in fact only a handful of competent Necromancers out there. In fact I would be hard pressed to think of 20. I know it is less than 1%. Just because you run with good portion of what is available does not make you an expert on the real reality out there, and what is actually fun, and who it is fun for.

So are you going to tell me next about your average fighter or rogue. They are all mediocre we just do not see how bad the melee are often.

Your grouping experiences are so isolated, near guild only(sure you let pugs in like me or whatever, but never without the majority of the group being Prophets) that you should disqualify yourself from this conversation, as should Shade - And I am not comparing you to him either because he is far more extreme than you in this scenario, he wont even let people in his groups that he does not know or that don't come with severe known competence or extreme confidence.

You do not know me that well. I pug all the time when I level I pug especially since clean is not playing. When I run raids I often pug 10 spots. When I do epics I will often pug 5 spots and run one of my bards.

[DeafeningWhisper]

1 Buffbot for the Axer package
1 WC Bard for songs

1 still unaccounted for. . .

Deadly weapons? Wait that was when Deadly doubled based damage only nvm...

[Faent]

The only time a barb is going to come close to a caster in there is at the start with orange names and if they sup cleave the bats and scrops before they are wailed. If there is only 1 caster he should be sitting close to 100 kills. I have both barb and casters and the difference in there between a well played barb and a well played casters is significant. The difference is that I enjoy both and really dont care who has the most at the end of the day, my non full dps toons though suffer

You're describing the kill-count of an arcane playing at the top of his game in highly competent party and focusing about as hard as he can on dominating the killcount and pretty much ignoring providing any solid assistance to the melees. (The highly competent party is pretty much a requirement in order to avoid pot drinkage.)

I ran eDA the other day, and three folks in the group lead the killcount by a wide margin, which looked like this (I'm the Archmage):

WF 44 Necro / 38 Illusion DC Archmage: 81
FvS 36 Destruction/35 Implosion DC Evoker: 45
HORC ESOS ECLAW EABISHAI 18/2 BRB/FTR: 29

I provided no Mass Holds (well, maybe two on straggling devils) for the melees. I did, however, bring a Warchanter who was assigned to keep melees at max DPS. I provided solid CC absent Mass Hold, and then spent the entire run doing everything in my power to dominate the killcount, including gleefully poaching kills from melees that had mobs down to 5%. I would have definitely hit 100 kills if the Evoker hadn't been constantly Imploding and Destructing and tossing BB's.

It was near maximally-selfish, SP intensive play. Very few necromages play like this regularly, and it's far easier and smarter to just give your melees some fancy Mass Holds and go a little bit lighter on the attempt to totally own the killcount. And poaching kills is just silly.

The change to Wail is going to significantly affect my killcount (I'm going to determine roughly by how much in future testing runs). But remember, this quest is the playground of an arcane. And I was doing everything I could (saving providing Discos/Webs) to be the worst team player possible. I don't think, after the change to Wail, that the barbarian is going to be too far behind the maximally selfish arcane dominating arcane heaven. A little? Probably. But remember, it's arcane heaven. Almost everything is guaranteed to hit your Symbol, stand still in your Cloudkill, and wait patiently for you to Circle/Wail it.

[GermanicusMaximus]

No.

But any old 28-point palemaster does exactly the same effect just at a slower speed in the vast majority of epics. I purposely avoid inviting them because they trivilize the game, its not fun.

And I'm not the only one who wants a challenge. Not by a long shot.

Isn't it great that DDO lets you decide who you want to run with? You don't have to wait for the expansion to roll out to get exactly the play style you are looking for. Grats!

[Krell]

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.)

So 6-8 kills per minute depending on when the tic starts. I hope it is 8 considering FoD is potentially 7.5 kills a minute, is a level 7 spell, and is more targetable than this implosion type mechanic. If so, it is close to having a 2nd FoD for kills with a lower spell cost which I think would be comparable in value for a spell 2 levels higher.

Overall it comes down to a hard cap with a substantial timer increase and a built in feature to help the lesser equipped (level drain).

I still think a Sorc that put an equivalent amount of time into TRs and gear will be able to clear one room after another via AoEs more consistently than a PM with this change, since the gap was fairly small to start with. Overall though, this solution is far better than either of the previous solutions.

[Ungood]

Well the only enjoyable part of this entire discussion was seeing Mad Floyd admit that casters were totally broken, and they have no idea how to fix them.

At least, the Dev's came out and admitted what we all knew all along.

[GermanicusMaximus]

I can not even believe anyone could argue that a one button mass death spell is a good thing.

Seeing is believing. This thread runs well over a 1,000 posts now, chock full of people who think a mass death spell is a great thing. As it turns out, reading what other people write can be helpful.

[PopeJual]

Well the only enjoyable part of this entire discussion was seeing Mad Floyd admit that casters were totally broken, and they have no idea how to fix them.

At least, the Dev's came out and admitted what we all knew all along.

They've made the difference in power between casters and melee less than it is in 3.5 pen and paper at least. It's not enough, but it's a start.

From level 5 on...
What core classes are the best at crowd control in P&P? Cleric/Druid/Wizard/Sorc
What core classes are best at dealing with single powerful threats in P&P? Cleric/Druid/Wizard/Sorc
What core classes are the best at damage avoidance in P&P? Cleric/Druid/Wizard/Sorc
What core classes are the best at melee fighting in P&P? Druid/Wizard/Sorc

[pjw]

...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
...
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
..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
...

This is certainly a step in the right direction, but my enthusiasm is tempered by the knowledge that it probably looks good because it is so much better than the previous options.

There are several problems I see with this approach:

1. It lacks caution.

Specifically, the game is not broken at the moment, but many people seem to feel it is unbalanced and that wail needs a nerf. This change includes three substantial nerfs:

- 60 second cool down (double current, which effectively means half the kills or slower playng)
- max 6-8 targets (which will reduce kills as well)
- no longer insta-kill

I would argue that U14 should contain only one of these changes. If it goes well, and needs to be nerfed more, then put the next change in U14.1 or U15 (after debate).

Much of this current update is massive change all at once. This is most certainly a change that can be delayed and staged.

2. Implosion mechanics are broken

I love implosion. Best effect in game, and it's fun for me to heal *and* kill at the same time.

The problem is that it sucks at targeting. It seems to target un-implodable enemies on a regular basis, and for whatever reason gets stuck on some enemies.

I really don't want the same mechanic for wail. Every tick should check all nearby enemies for ones that are susceptible to the spell, and only include those in the potential target list.

3. It does not take into account the total CR/HD of the enemies

I don't object to the concept of a cap, but if I wail a flock of 20 bats, I think it is reasonable to expect them all to die. If I wail a group of 20 epic elite NPCs then I agree it is unreasonable to expect them all to die.

It really should be based on total CR, relative to caster level, NOT total bodies.