Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[Little'n'Often]

Personally, I still can't see why a simple increase in SR on harder epic difficulties wouldn't have the same effect of forcing a different style of play on the majority of players

This should have been solved with DC's and spell resistance, simple as that.

Well said!

[Udalric]

Woot! Just when I thought it was impossible, I find myself actually agreeing with you. Sorta.

Divines would be greatly assisted by

1) An amped up cometfall, including gear that boosted its damage
2) A powerful AoE that didn't involve kiting. Given the melee propensity to ignore blade barriers rather than use them, an AoE that could just be cast on where they opt to stand (assuming they opt to stand together at all) would be useful.

As for the others....

2. Quicker cast on symbols.

Find Quicken feat. Drag to hotbar. Click. Done!

3. Longer duration on greater command.

Cast Cometfall. Get CC and damage. Two for the price of one.

4. A second higher level version of the alignment spells like holy smite with greater effects.

Base lower level spells essentially worthless at level. Higher level spells will likely be worthless at level as well. Plus, I'm busy throwing heals. If I need to start consulting the Monster Manual to determine what alignment spells to cast, I'll likely look up and see an ocean of soul stones where the rest of the party used to be.

5. Much improved casting time and damage of the fire spells like Firestorm.

Firestorm is so worthless I'm not sure it can be made viable.

6. Continued improvement of summon spells

Would only be useful if I could summon a stack of major mana pots

-First at all divines should get enhancement line for untyped/bludgeon/force dmg/ - this is a must
- add AoE persistent dmg spells like Storm of Vengeance and Earthquake , i have no idea why only Druid gets them ;(
- AoV tier 3 Pre with light dmg SLA for Fvs and similiar light SLA for Cleric Exorcist Pre (both pres are based on silver flame so light dmg is a must.)
- caster focused divine Epic destiny

[Feralthyrtiaq]

Completely Lolthing Stupid....
and I HATE playing my caster most days to the the "HARD TO TARGET" buff mobs get...

Why didn't you consider making use of the Abjuration School?

Dispel Magic, Greater Dispel, Mordenkainen's Disjunction to Remove the Death Ward Epic Mobs either come with out the gate or get cast on themselves by a nearby mob cleric.

There are so many other ways available within the D&D lore to address this issue.

The Developers are taking the easy lazy way out instead of doing a smart D&D themed fix.

Wail of the Banshee was an awesome D&D Lore inspired spell and yall are cutting the Lolthing-Kuhnuts off of it.

Yall had some great ideas in the past with the short-term debuff mobs got on some spell saves like Hypnotism.

You could have done so much more to balance this spell with just a tiny bit of work.

But that's what humans do these days....no fight or flight left in ya...just roll over, go belly up and compromise like a bunch of nancys.

[v.p.]

Meh..

I can't believe Eladrin actaully thinks this is a nerf.

They are BUFFING Wail..

sorry but you've lost the track man. PMs do not have FVS-like debuff and they do not have wings, meanwhile their self-healing capabilities a way more limited than FVS ones.

[anto_capone]

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.)

Getting better. That cool down is too long though imo. Still not sure how I feel about it.

[Avidus]

Thank you, you helped me make my point, the truth is that there are not very many non damage spells in the game any more that are worth the paper they are written on. As a Wizard you are limited in your choices, Mass Damage AOE's, Dots, Holds, and Death Magic.

They all but destroyed Charms long ago, and they have never made any real use out of illusions period(shadow magic would be awesome, and many other illusions could be used as a mesmerize your target kind of thing, Phantasmal Monsters etc) But they don't have them, your choices are be an Arch Mage and rely on the SLA's or Be Necromancer that cant effectively raise the dead (their main power in PnP) and use Death magic.....

So i agree that they should buff the other spells.

However, I say give people reasons to use them, not by nerfing other spells, but by incentivizing them to use others.

And you may be right about pugging more often than I think you do, its just in all of the times I have been around you, you are usually accompanied by multiple guildies, or people from other high caliber guilds, rarely do you join a pug. A handful of times you have joined my groups on your bard as a healer and did a fantastic job, but that is not the point, you are virtually always grouped with end game players.

Now if you have been pugging then you know as well as I do that the average player of this game is a learner, and it will be a long time, if ever they come full circle about their abilities, and what their characters should be doing.

Tonight I pugged another run in the manufactury on my first life tank, this time we had two wizards, neither one of them could produce the DC to insta kill single WF, nor did they have the DC to knock the lock on a door...one said "*** 20+33 doesnt get it". Get it? He was level 19 with a 33 DC, even with the cap stone that is just one more.

That is your average Wizard in this game, and most of the guys I am running with are 2+ lifers.

A lot of people talk smack about having big time DC's on the forums and even in groups, but my experience is that they cant walk the walk, and the reality is that when it comes time to perform, they cant. And that is exactly why folks like Shade only runs with people he knows

The straight truth is that the end game is occupied by the top players, most people if they have a sense they cant do it, don't apply, and run slayers to make their levels because they are afraid of being called out. I dont blame them, there is way to much of that **** in this game.

There is a huge myth out there and you are purporting it, that Insta Kills are Overpowered. I will say it like this. Possibly - in the hands of Necro spec'd Arcane with a 45+ DC, how many have that? I can think of three on Khyber, who legitimately posses that, and there might be a handful more. then are some who are42-44, and most of the good casters are around 41, and while they can insta kill choice mobs, they cant do it with enough consistency to warrant having their primary weapon taken away from them. Worse most of the level 20 characters some even with more than 1 life, who haven't learned a lot about the game are running around with 38-39, these are the ones who will boast that all they need to do is shoot off an energy drain and follow up with an FOD,.....actually maybe two energy drains, and they know it, and these are the ones who run out of mana 5 minutes into the quest and unless they are dropping pots like crazy are no longer even useful. And there is no way in hell that quests and player abilities should be balanced around pot usage.

So lets just make this clear, Wail of the Banshee is not overpowered in 99.99999% of the player bases hands. And it is perfectly acceptable for there to be an upper echelon of players who have worked hard to achieve this scope that should be able to keep it that way. And if the Devs still insist on banishing us into the nether regions, then give legitimate undead powers, and abilities to raise the undead. Meaning that if I drop a mob, I want him to come back, with full hp, dam etc, but with that classic undead bump.

As it sits right now, you are asking to turn the rest of us into your personal hold/buff bots, and I am not going to accept it, and neither is the vast majority of the player base.

Very well said. This has mostly been my experience as well.

As far as wail goes, I think this newest iteration still needs some tweaking. Making it so similar to implosion just feels cheap and lazy. Mainly it not being instant is my biggest complaint, that and 1 minute is a Long time in game.

Another concern is the implosion mechanic. It is 'always' getting 'stuck' on things. The spell has a mind of its own, 'oh you cant beat this mobs spell resistance, well all of your ticks are going to hit it' or 'hey look a shroud portal, that's the perferct target for all of the ticks'.

[Habreno]

If I were you Wizards I'd be quite glad I got a rather okay version of the spell now since there's many many many routes that could have been taken with this nerf and they chose a rather harmless one.

2 kills every 2 seconds greatly beats Implosion-and even if you get "hung up" on one target you have 2 effects every 2 seconds so you still get 1 tick on something else. If Implosion gets "hung up" its not going to move off and you get nothing.

Total of 6 kills vs 5 on Implosion is still better. You do your kills in 6s while Implosion takes 10s, which is mostly better (there are cases where one would rather the extended timer on Implosion but they are few and far between) and you also get the negative levels on saves which Implosion does not get.


Overall, it's a very minor nerf that seriously reins in the power balance. You should not, regardless of character expertise, be able to gather 20+ mobs and just use one button. No matter what class, no matter what investment.


This is a nerf, but a very minor one that EVERYONE benefits from. High DC wizards get the benefit of still getting a decent bit of kills off one spell. Low DC wizards get 6 negged mobs which then fail their saves vs the CC that's up.


The game does not revolve around wizards, or for that matter any one class. Encouraging some sembalance of caster balance is necessary. Arcanes still beat Divines in the instakill department. They still drastically beat Divines in the CC department. Yet both classes are casters. And Arcanes beat Divines when it comes to DPS by many times over (though Divine DPS is in a much different form which is rarely resisted, though we're seeing even this come into play with the newer content with light damage resist, Blade Barrier Ward, and other things which lessen the difference here) and that's three categories. You then get your WF which give up *one* DC point at most to have good self-healing or you get your PM's which also have decent self healing (if they had Harm they'd be OP, though) and you now leave the Divine with only one thing it does better than an arcane with their blue bar. Heal.

I'd have to say an Arcane has it fairly good right now in the status of the game. I don't think you should complain of a nerf to Wail until you lose one of the 4 or 5 advantages you get on Divines. Probably should wait until you lose 2 of them.

[SirValentine]

I'm thinking it might just be that they are unable to set a restriction on the number of kills for the current wail, so they have to change it to be a mechanic similar implosion.

That can't be right. If it was only 1 monster per tick, I'd believe it, but they are saying it hits 2 monsters per tick for 4 ticks. They could make that 8 monsters per tick for 1 tick for the same amount affected and no lingering mess.

This kill-over-time for Wiz is effectively a nerf to divines, by taking away one of the few tactical insta-killing advantages they had over Wiz, since (at least without Sorc past lives piled up) Wiz have higher DCs.

I think limiting it, to 8 or however many mobs, and giving it a longer cooldown, are both reasonable nerfs. But making it kill-over-time doesn't address any current problem, will still result in mobs mysteriously dying as melees run up to them, and devalues Implosion.

[alexp80]

Here you go - here's a first life PM to pick apart - it's mine

http://my.ddo.com/character/khyber/terebinthis/

I hate you. Demon consort bracers on first life. It took me over 80 completions to get them

[SirValentine]

-First at all divines should get enhancement line for untyped/bludgeon/force dmg/ - this is a must
- add AoE persistent dmg spells like Storm of Vengeance and Earthquake , i have no idea why only Druid gets them ;(

I could handle both of those.

- AoV tier 3 Pre with light dmg SLA for Fvs and similiar light SLA for Cleric Exorcist Pre (both pres are based on silver flame so light dmg is a must.)

I think Exorcist should be more Banishment/Abjuration based, thematically, and in mechanics, should focus on upping DCs/spell-pen, etc., so that FvS are more the DPS casters while Clerics are more the DC casters, similar to the Wiz/Sorc distinction.

I have more detailed suggestions for Exorcist, and some for other divine PrEs, here:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=357962

- caster focused divine Epic destiny

Either that, or unnerf Magister so it can give +Wis and +divine-caster-levels, instead of only +Int/+Cha and +arcane-caster-levels.

Right now, Magister is chock-full of stuff I want, but is missing those 2 critical pieces. Meanwhile, the divine one, whatever it's called, has those 2 pieces, but NOTHING else useful to a DC-based caster, instead just all sorts of weird healing and light-DPS stuff.

Please, have some mercy on divine casters!

[Ebonta]

If I were you Wizards I'd be quite glad I got a rather okay version of the spell now since there's many many many routes that could have been taken with this nerf and they chose a rather harmless one.

2 kills every 2 seconds greatly beats Implosion-and even if you get "hung up" on one target you have 2 effects every 2 seconds so you still get 1 tick on something else. If Implosion gets "hung up" its not going to move off and you get nothing.

Total of 6 kills vs 5 on Implosion is still better. You do your kills in 6s while Implosion takes 10s, which is mostly better (there are cases where one would rather the extended timer on Implosion but they are few and far between) and you also get the negative levels on saves which Implosion does not get.

I'm quite thankful that they haven't completely destroyed one my favorite spells. But you keep insisting that Implosion is so much worse than Wail, and it's really not. Wail get's one more kill than Implosion, kills more mobs per tick, and gives 1d4 negative levels on a save. On the other hand, Implosion hits mobs that Wail can't even affect (all undead, for instance). Also, how do you know that Wail isn't going to get "hung up" on one mob? If it does, and if it hits that one mob over and over, you've lost three kills, or 3d4 negative levels. In that situation Implosion could actually be better than Wail.

Overall, it's a very minor nerf that seriously reins in the power balance. You should not, regardless of character expertise, be able to gather 20+ mobs and just use one button. No matter what class, no matter what investment.

Mostly agree. One can't expect a class to just faceroll the game and not get nerfed.

This is a nerf, but a very minor one that EVERYONE benefits from. High DC wizards get the benefit of still getting a decent bit of kills off one spell. Low DC wizards get 6 negged mobs which then fail their saves vs the CC that's up.

I will disagree here. Not everyone benefits, not even close. High DC Wizard's that have built their toon for Necromancy DC's are getting kicked in the teeth with this change. High DC Wizard's currently can get many more kills than with this version. But our Wizard's will adapt I suppose. We'll just have to throw down some AoE's instead. I will concede that Wail needs a nerf, but I think that they should either cap the kills and leave the cooldown alone, or increase the cooldown and leave the hard cap in place. I would lean more to the first option.

The game does not revolve around wizards, or for that matter any one class. Encouraging some sembalance of caster balance is necessary. Arcanes still beat Divines in the instakill department. They still drastically beat Divines in the CC department. Yet both classes are casters. And Arcanes beat Divines when it comes to DPS by many times over (though Divine DPS is in a much different form which is rarely resisted, though we're seeing even this come into play with the newer content with light damage resist, Blade Barrier Ward, and other things which lessen the difference here) and that's three categories. You then get your WF which give up *one* DC point at most to have good self-healing or you get your PM's which also have decent self healing (if they had Harm they'd be OP, though) and you now leave the Divine with only one thing it does better than an arcane with their blue bar. Heal.

No, the game does not revolve solely around Wizards. Class balance is necessary, and arcanes do beat divines in instakills. But you're comparing apples to oranges here. Arcanes traditionally fill up the roles of nuker, instakiller, or crowd control. Divines typically fill the healer role, but they can also fill in with crowd control, some nukes, some less powerful instakills, and less effective crowd control. They fill two different roles in a balanced party. I don't think that divines should be anywhere near the crowd control, instakill, or nuking capabilities of an arcane, and I love playing my Favored Soul.

I'd have to say an Arcane has it fairly good right now in the status of the game. I don't think you should complain of a nerf to Wail until you lose one of the 4 or 5 advantages you get on Divines. Probably should wait until you lose 2 of them.

Both have it fairly good. Also, people will always complain about a nerf .

[Habreno]

Either that, or unnerf Magister so it can give +Wis and +divine-caster-levels, instead of only +Int/+Cha and +arcane-caster-levels.

Right now, Magister is chock-full of stuff I want, but is missing those 2 critical pieces. Meanwhile, the divine one, whatever it's called, has those 2 pieces, but NOTHING else useful to a DC-based caster, instead just all sorts of weird healing and light-DPS stuff.

Please, have some mercy on divine casters!

This I utterly have to agree with. For those of you complaining about it, we have to go through 4 other ED's to simply get to Magister, while Arcanes can just start there. Now, I think there should be a link between Exalted Angel and Magister as they are rather linked in topic, but as a cross-sphere transfer it still requires 4th rank in Exalted Angel (however a bit more palatable journey) which we will need anyway. In all reality, it's a tough topic to discuss.

[Boneshank]

If I were you Wizards I'd be quite glad I got a rather okay version of the spell now since there's many many many routes that could have been taken with this nerf and they chose a rather harmless one.

Indeed. It could have been much much worse.

2 kills every 2 seconds greatly beats Implosion-and even if you get "hung up" on one target you have 2 effects every 2 seconds so you still get 1 tick on something else. If Implosion gets "hung up" its not going to move off and you get nothing.

Total of 6 kills vs 5 on Implosion is still better. You do your kills in 6s while Implosion takes 10s, which is mostly better (there are cases where one would rather the extended timer on Implosion but they are few and far between) and you also get the negative levels on saves which Implosion does not get.

Except for the minor detail of Implosion working on undead & constructs, which of course Wail does not, I guess you could say that this incarnation of Wail is better. I'd still have rather had everything about the spell stay the same, with just a hard kill cap of 6/7/8 coded into it.

Overall, it's a very minor nerf that seriously reins in the power balance. You should not, regardless of character expertise, be able to gather 20+ mobs and just use one button. No matter what class, no matter what investment.

Agreed. I don't think anyone looking honestly at this could say otherwise. Again, the hard kill cap coded into the spell would solve this issue.

This is a nerf, but a very minor one that EVERYONE benefits from. High DC wizards get the benefit of still getting a decent bit of kills off one spell. Low DC wizards get 6 negged mobs which then fail their saves vs the CC that's up.

Great point. And beneficial to the whole party's tactics & spells, not just the caster's.

The game does not revolve around wizards, or for that matter any one class. Encouraging some sembalance of caster balance is necessary. Arcanes still beat Divines in the instakill department. They still drastically beat Divines in the CC department. Yet both classes are casters. And Arcanes beat Divines when it comes to DPS by many times over (though Divine DPS is in a much different form which is rarely resisted, though we're seeing even this come into play with the newer content with light damage resist, Blade Barrier Ward, and other things which lessen the difference here) and that's three categories. You then get your WF which give up *one* DC point at most to have good self-healing or you get your PM's which also have decent self healing (if they had Harm they'd be OP, though) and you now leave the Divine with only one thing it does better than an arcane with their blue bar. Heal.

I'd have to say an Arcane has it fairly good right now in the status of the game. I don't think you should complain of a nerf to Wail until you lose one of the 4 or 5 advantages you get on Divines. Probably should wait until you lose 2 of them.

Let's not pretend though, that divine casters do not have other advantages & benefits that arcanes do not see, at least as easily...
- Proficiencies & bonuses in specific martial weapons, via enhancement lines.
- Divine Power/Favor making the use of those weapons in almost all content entirely viable.
- Armor usage without spell failure.
- Amplified (items/enhancements) self-healing.
- Wings
- Healing Auras (for the non-PMs)
and let's not forget an intangible advantage...
- Easy acceptance into virtually any group/raid due to the unending call for healers!

So both ends of the casting tug-of-war have their pros/cons, but it's not exactly one sided.

[aerosole]

Low DC wizards get 6 negged mobs which then fail their saves vs the CC that's up.

Actually, if the targeting is done right, low dc casters will get 2-3 instakills with wail since the negs will debuff mobs enough to kill them during the next proc.

Newbie wizards will get more reliable kills when the spell is used in a small group of mobs, and might appreciate the new wail a little slightly more than multi TRs.

I'd have to say an Arcane has it fairly good right now in the status of the game. I don't think you should complain of a nerf to Wail until you lose one of the 4 or 5 advantages you get on Divines. Probably should wait until you lose 2 of them.

It depends on your perspective. Totally unrelated to death magic, but arcanes have it bad in the raid dept. In many raids (evon6, VoD, LoB etc), a caster mostly just contributes to the raid by casting cloudkill and kiting. Divines at least get a less boring role healing the tank and it is a role that is... appreciated. GJ healing is frequently heard. No one ever says, GJ on that cloudkill.

Perhaps this is the reason many casters felt this nerf is unwarranted... instakills has been a caster's niche for too long.

[alexp80]

If I were you Wizards I'd be quite glad I got a rather okay version of the spell now since there's many many many routes that could have been taken with this nerf and they chose a rather harmless one.

2 kills every 2 seconds greatly beats Implosion-and even if you get "hung up" on one target you have 2 effects every 2 seconds so you still get 1 tick on something else. If Implosion gets "hung up" its not going to move off and you get nothing.

Total of 6 kills vs 5 on Implosion is still better. You do your kills in 6s while Implosion takes 10s, which is mostly better (there are cases where one would rather the extended timer on Implosion but they are few and far between) and you also get the negative levels on saves which Implosion does not get.


So before making absumptions, do the maths over it, cause will the wizzies are still unbeatable when it comes to cc, they are same power or less in other fields of competence and they really should be the best over death spells.


Overall, it's a very minor nerf that seriously reins in the power balance. You should not, regardless of character expertise, be able to gather 20+ mobs and just use one button. No matter what class, no matter what investment.


This is a nerf, but a very minor one that EVERYONE benefits from. High DC wizards get the benefit of still getting a decent bit of kills off one spell. Low DC wizards get 6 negged mobs which then fail their saves vs the CC that's up.


The game does not revolve around wizards, or for that matter any one class. Encouraging some sembalance of caster balance is necessary. Arcanes still beat Divines in the instakill department. They still drastically beat Divines in the CC department. Yet both classes are casters. And Arcanes beat Divines when it comes to DPS by many times over (though Divine DPS is in a much different form which is rarely resisted, though we're seeing even this come into play with the newer content with light damage resist, Blade Barrier Ward, and other things which lessen the difference here) and that's three categories. You then get your WF which give up *one* DC point at most to have good self-healing or you get your PM's which also have decent self healing (if they had Harm they'd be OP, though) and you now leave the Divine with only one thing it does better than an arcane with their blue bar. Heal.

I'd have to say an Arcane has it fairly good right now in the status of the game. I don't think you should complain of a nerf to Wail until you lose one of the 4 or 5 advantages you get on Divines. Probably should wait until you lose 2 of them.

On instakill aspect, fvs will be slightly better than pm (and it's absurd)

Premise: I'm talking of TOP toons, with the right build and the necessary past lifes

PM:
Wail: up to 6 kills/min, will waste LOT of ticks on the large list of immune creatures
Fod: 1kill/8sec
Cod: up to 4 kills/30sec DOUBLE SAVE
Phantasmal killer: impossible to slot (4° lvl slots are starved), double save, secondary scholl (low dc)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
FVS
Implosion: up to 5 kills/min, lower chance of wasted ticks, effects almost anything
Destruction: 1 kill/5sec
Slay living: 1 kill/8 sec - low range

---------------------
assuming slay living as fod (low range is little issue usually) and that more or less implosion and wail will be the same, we have to compare cod with destruction

cod is 1 kill/7.5 sec with DOUBLE save, and targets must be gathered
destrucion is 1 kill/5 sec, (50% more, with single save, but more sp expensive)

put on the table that fvs have the BEST AOE of the game (blade barrier), really better healing skills that works with healing amp, a powerful dot and 30% sp more.

The ONLY field where PM will still be the best is crowd control

[Habreno]

No, the game does not revolve solely around Wizards. Class balance is necessary, and arcanes do beat divines in instakills. But you're comparing apples to oranges here. Arcanes traditionally fill up the roles of nuker, instakiller, or crowd control. Divines typically fill the healer role, but they can also fill in with crowd control, some nukes, some less powerful instakills, and less effective crowd control. They fill two different roles in a balanced party. I don't think that divines should be anywhere near the crowd control, instakill, or nuking capabilities of an arcane, and I love playing my Favored Soul.

That's the problem. Divines get pigenholed into being healers. DIVINES ARE NOT HEALERS, WE ARE CASTERS OF A DIFFERENT BREED.

Wail is still relatively well-off. Yes, while it cannot affect undead or constructs and Implosion can, it does have more targets and gives negative levels on a save. All you get on a saved Implosion is, IIRC, 3d5+91 damage (best approximation but probably not accurate) which is relatively minor compared to the wanted effect (instakill for effectively several thousand damage) and that damage also does not get affected by any spell boosts.

[Megahurtz]

But making it kill-over-time doesn't address any current problem, will still result in mobs mysteriously dying as melees run up to them, and devalues Implosion.

QFT

I'd suggest that the kill-over-time effect will actually be more annoying for melee classes than the current instakill. With this change, and with FvS and clerics casting Implosion, that's a 100% increase in the chance of the mob you've just stunned, tripped, saped or beaten to within an inch of its life getting mysteriously killed during any 6 second period.

Maybe we could all just stand around for 6-10 seconds at the beginning of any encounter until all the wails and implosions have gone off? Yeah, that sounds like fun...

You're looking to double the cooldown and hard cap the number of kills already. It seems to me that you're making a third, totally unnecessary change out of laziness (i.e. being able to re-use the implosion mechanic in code as it already has a kill limit). If you have to nerf our fun and dramatically increase the time we'll all spend in any given epic then, please, "fix" just the issues you're claiming to address.

And if you can't do that properly before releasing the bugfest in a couple of weeks then delay the change until you CAN.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Sum of the Thread is this:

Casters Get a Buff, Melee Get Nerfed, and Turbine's Modus Operendi remains as it always has.

Same old same old.

Wail gets an increased cool down, a hard cap on kills, and is reduced from instantanous to an over time effect, and your analysis is "Casters Get a Buff, Melee Get Nerfed".

Its nice to see that the quality of your game analysis is at least consistent.

[Habreno]

On instakill aspect, fvs will be slightly better than pm (and it's absurd)

Premise: I'm talking of TOP toons, with the right build and the necessary past lifes

PM:
Wail: up to 6 kills/min, will waste LOT of ticks on the large list of immune creatures
Fod: 1kill/8sec
Cod: up to 4 kills/30sec DOUBLE SAVE
Phantasmal killer: impossible to slot (4° lvl slots are starved), double save, secondary scholl (low dc)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
FVS
Implosion: up to 5 kills/min, lower chance of wasted ticks, effects almost anything
Destruction: 1 kill/8sec
Slay living: 1 kill/8 sec - low range

---------------------
assuming slay living as fod (low range is little issue usually) and that more or less implosion and wail will be the same, we have to compare cod with destruction

cod is 1 kill/7.5 sec with DOUBLE save, and targets must be gathered
destrucion is 1 kill/5 sec, (50% more, with single save, but more sp expensive)

put on the table that fvs have the BEST AOE of the game (blade barrier), really better healing skills that works with healing amp, a powerful dot and 30% sp more.

The ONLY field where PM will still be the best is crowd control

Fixed your cooldown in Red.

BB is not the best AoE. It's just drastically different from other AoEs.

Plus you also are assuming Wail gets hung up much more than Implosion does, which is patently false.

Implosion gets hung up on instakill-immune targets, and IIRC living spells. There are also normal enemies tagged as not being implodable as well, but they are not common.

Wail gets hung up on Undead, Constructs, and instakill-immune targets. I don't know about living spells though. In most quests where it's going to be used, you're going to be against mobs it can effect (in other words, undead aren't often found in mass groups with stuff you can Wail, likewise with Constructs) and not ones it will often get hung up on. Only main problem I can see is Waves 1 and 2 in EDA vs the scorpions and such-the Devils are orange named and thus immune to instakills, nothing else then is, so you can get hung up there-but Implosion gets hung up there too.


So you get 6 kills/minute vs 5 kills/minute.
1 kill every 8 seconds with Destruction vs 1 kill every 8 seconds with Finger of Death is even.

Circle of Death is an AoE instakill of 4 mobs, Double save, cooldown of 30s. About 1 kill every 7.5s.
Slay living is a single-target instakill with a cooldown of 8s.


I don't see how Divines have the upper hand, especially seeing as the one save on Circle of Death can be easily negated through other spells. And this isnt even factoring in Phantasmal Killer, which tips the scales severely to Arcanes.

[alexp80]

That's the problem. Divines get pigenholed into being healers. DIVINES ARE NOT HEALERS, WE ARE CASTERS OF A DIFFERENT BREED.

Wail is still relatively well-off. Yes, while it cannot affect undead or constructs and Implosion can, it does have more targets and gives negative levels on a save. All you get on a saved Implosion is, IIRC, 3d5+91 damage (best approximation but probably not accurate) which is relatively minor compared to the wanted effect (instakill for effectively several thousand damage) and that damage also does not get affected by any spell boosts.

As stated before, fvs are really strong enough as is slightly better in the instakill department than PM as shown with math. They are far far away from the healbot state (and that's good)