Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[Ebonta]

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.

Divines are pigeonholed into healing because they have the best heals. Yes, they're casters, but one who just DPSes and doesn't heal the group at all is fairly worthless. Likewise, a healer that only heals and doesn't cast offensively or DPS when possible isn't that good.

While Wail is still alright, it feels like a "meh" version of Implosion in my opinion.

Think Implosion is 20d6 or 20d3+60. Not sure, haven't looked in a while.

[alexp80]

Fixed your cooldown in Red.

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

I checked cooldowns on wiki, should be fixed

and combined with the innate mobility of fvs, is the best (better than other A grade similar spells, acid rain, ice storm, firewall)

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

not agree, same limitations, lesser available targets, more loss.

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.

I really prefer slay living, lot more flexible and 1 save only benefit is huge. Try to cod a bunch of epic archers (eChrono for example) even in a otto ball they often negates with a 45 dc

And this isnt even factoring in Phantasmal Killer, which tips the scales severely to Arcanes.

And this is why noone slots that spell, that has -3/-5 dc than fod (costing the same) has a double save on will and fort and with epic bump to necro dc will be even less effective.

dc 40 is not enough to give it any value, wearing epic illusionist is a bad choiche (compare to alternatives like epic mabar)

[Boneshank]

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

Also a problem: Arcanes get pigeonholed into being CCers. ARCANES ARE NOT CCers, WE ARE CASTERS OF A DIFFERENT BREED.
Works both ways.

[knockcocker]

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.)

Have you seen 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'?

What about caster level/3 'Angels of Death' are spawned which zoom around melting mob's faces? This keeps
the longer cooldown, restricts the power to CL/3 deaths and would look totally freakin awesome (IMO of course!)

[Cadveen]

Fixed your cooldown in Red.

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

Actually roll up a human favored soul with max wisdom and not the lame warforged two handed weapon melee thingy and you will change your mind. Blade barriers are awesome. During my lives as a favored soul, I dominated kill count. Triangle of perfectly placed efficacied blade barriers is 6 hits per circle around. Utilize this tactic while using slay living, destruction and implosion and you will change your mind. Also, blade barriers hit everything. They even hit wraiths and ghosts. NOTE: I do not think blade barriers should be nerfed in any way, but to say it is not the best aoe is almost laughable. The efficiency of a blade barrier triangle is next to none.

MELEES: Lets talk working as a team. Instead of you wanting casters to hold stuff so you can hit it, why don't you kite stuff through the divines blade barriers. Why don't you come into dungeons and be kiters? They won't have to waste heal spells on you. Oh because thats not fun, and oh you have other tools at your disposal. Hmm just curious.

[knockcocker]

MELEES: Lets talk working as a team. Instead of you wanting casters to hold stuff so you can hit it, why don't you kite stuff through the divines blade barriers. Why don't you come into dungeons and be kiters? They won't have to waste heal spells on you. Oh because thats not fun, and oh you have other tools at your disposal. Hmm just curious.

Just get rid of the kill count. Seriously.

[MrkGrismer]

Divines get higher dc's, specially with sorc past lives and aura of menace, as well as higher spell pen with the abishai set.

Wail wont even come close to implosion, which is sad given that wizards should be able to insta kill more than divines.

First part: Seems like you mean TR'd Favored Souls, not divines.

Second part: Why?

[fco-karatekid]

Or Enervate/Energy Drain while Wail is tic'ing.

Bard running fascinate could help guarantee groups of mobs stay near the Wailer.

I kinda like this guaranteed level drain as well.

Can we ensure the sound effects are updated wo there's a sound effect for the duration of the countdown? Like the guy on Dumb and Dumber with the "most annoying sound in the world"... that'd be perfect

[tinyelvis]

That's the problem. Divines get pigenholed into being healers. ............

Sounds like a personal problem to me. Taking a quote from Boogie Nights, "That's a YP not an MP."

Fact is, you cant be a healer and an uber offensive divine. Its one or the other. I have played with some great divine offensive casters. They never felt the urge to heal (except themselves), and were top rate killers ranking up among the PM's in kill count. As a sorcerer, I can't keep up with a divine focused on being an uber insta killer.

End game questing there are few if any uber players who are not self sufficient. I personally know of none. Divines in my parties are expected to carry their offensive load. Because otherwise they just sit around. As for the offensive minded divines, It's hard to argue with a guy who has the majority of the kills and tells the whining party member, "IF you can out kill me, I will heal you."

[Dragavon]

Why not make Wail cost more, instead of nerfing it to uselessness?

I dont know if this will be possible programming wise, but here is what I suggest:

When you cast Wail the game should check how many mobs you hit and simply multiply the spellpoint cost with the number of mobs you hit. So you could gather a group of 20 mobs and kill them all, but then one spell would cost you 50X20 spellpoints.

[Cadveen]

Why not make Wail cost more, instead of nerfing it to uselessness?

I dont know if this will be possible programming wise, but here is what I suggest:

When you cast Wail the game should check how many mobs you hit and simply multiply the spellpoint cost with the number of mobs you hit. So you could gather a group of 20 mobs and kill them all, but then one spell would cost you 50X20 spellpoints.

No offense but that is foxtrot romeo! 1000 spell points for one spell? Mystra aid us.

[Dragavon]

No offense but that is foxtrot romeo! 1000 spell points for one spell? Mystra aid us.

It would be your choice when to use it. I see that in an MMO environment it is too powerful as it is on live, yet I do not think nerfing is the way to go.

With escalating spellpoint costs like that they could even boost it, and it would be used situationally, not spammed like now.

They could for example make it ignore spell resistance AND have it give negative levels to mobs that save. Yet the cost to cast it on large groups would make it prohibitively expensive to use often.

[Boneshank]

It would be your choice when to use it. I see that in an MMO environment it is too powerful as it is on live, yet I do not think nerfing is the way to go.

With escalating spellpoint costs like that they could even boost it, and it would be used situationally, not spammed like now.

They could for example make it ignore spell resistance AND have it give negative levels to mobs that save. Yet the cost to cast it on large groups would make it prohibitively expensive to use often.

YES! And while they're at it, they should definitely revisit the SP cost of Mass Heal, since it's so powerful (I mean, bringing as many as 12 near-death creatures as legendary as your average raid group back to full health has to be OP, right?). Maybe a straight-across cost of SP per total HP healed in group. But hey, I don't want to NERF the spell or anything, so they could use the HP totals pre-amplification/metamagics, just to keep it in check, and make it situational, and not spam-worthy.

[v.p.]

YES! And while they're at it, they should definitely revisit the SP cost of Mass Heal, since it's so powerful (I mean, bringing as many as 12 near-death creatures as legendary as your average raid group back to full health has to be OP, right?). Maybe a straight-across cost of SP per total HP healed in group. But hey, I don't want to NERF the spell or anything, so they could use the HP totals pre-amplification/metamagics, just to keep it in check, and make it situational, and not spam-worthy.

+1. nerf all mass healing/cure spells. they are too OP, indeed. 100 Sp base cost for mass heal. cap on 20. cooldown 30 sec. single target healing/cure buff instead. JFF ;-)

[bigolbear]

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.)

Thankyou for listening. this seems perfect to me. Have to say you guys scared the heck outa me with these proposals initialy, blanket imunities and so on.

For a 'normal' caster with non super DC's this version of wail is actualy more useful than the old one was. I approve.

[Cadveen]

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.

I now see where the issue lies and this issue is the root of all problems within the game. Experienced gamers.There is an elite group of players that maximize their classes' abilities. This comes from years of playing this game. When pale masters first came out many people said they were garbage and most played archmages. Now everyone knows the might of a palemaster. The same is true for a decked out favored soul, but the issue is the actual true power of this class hasn't hit the mainstream yet. When I was sweeping dungeons with my favored soul, I could hear the grumblings, and many were asking how I was able to achieve that level of killing power. My repeater rogue's damage output, well thats another story don't want him nerfed too. So now the issue is this, the developers will continue to tweak the game to make it harder for the ELITE GAMERS who have played the game since the start. This will exponentially continue to make the game almost unplayable for mediocre players. Me and my dungeon runner partner bring players into elites while we are leveling and epics at cap, and we watch people die over and over and contribute little if anything at all. I waste more money raising people than on anything else in the game. So, many will say why raise them. We complete the quests on our own anyways; this is if they are alive or dead. The fact is that until they get up to my level of playing, there will continue to be grumblings and cries for nerfs. Most of which are people on these forums. Even though most of the comments comes from the "wizard lobby" I wish the OP melees on my server will give some of their tips to the melee on these forums that seem to not be able to contribute to quests. Unfortantely, the only non casters in my guild are the best Archers on the server that I play. One of which gives builds freely to any who ask him and he mentors them into building their characters to achieve the affects that he has. Why can't the melee community do this?

To the devs: Continue to try to gimp me (experienced the joy of the game since beta) and you will make this game impossible for new unskilled and undergeared players to even play the game. The oozes in harbor take half your life away with one hit. I can solo those dungeons with one eternal wand, but I have heard grumblings of those oozes wiping entire parties. How many people initially used 20 plus pots to heal LOB raids, but now through experience and trial and error this has been greatly reduced to almost none. I know make it tougher so for these experienced players so that new underskilled and undergeard players will have to use 100 pots for a completion. Continue to punish experience and achievement and your players will only be the elite and experiened which is the root of your problem.

[Thrudh]

The problem is they nerfed all the things that made Melee worth it's salt for TRASH mobs. I still do not understand who's complaining about TRASH MOBS in the first place..

Wail and other mass AOE spells is why we call them "trash" mobs in the first place.

I like it better when getting to the boss takes some tactics and/or real teamwork too.

I want to enjoy the entire adventure, not just the boss fight.

IF I grind out the gear and spend the MONEY, and time to do it, then I better be able to play my char as intended.

Welcome to MMOs. Things change.

[Argila]

Wail and other mass AOE spells is why we call them "trash" mobs in the first place.

I like it better when getting to the boss takes some tactics and/or real teamwork too.

I want to enjoy the entire adventure, not just the boss fight.

Poor melees that are not having fun because the bad powerfull arcanes are killing all their mobs

[Cadveen]

Wail and other mass AOE spells is why we call them "trash" mobs in the first place.

I like it better when getting to the boss takes some tactics and/or real teamwork too.

I want to enjoy the entire adventure, not just the boss fight.

Welcome to MMOs. Things change.

I played before wail was implemented into the game and the mobs before the boss were still referred to as "trash."
From your many posts, I know that you most likely play a melee as your main, and you probably ignore blade barriers and other aoes and fight things off in corners. Most melees seem to do this. Going out on a limb and assuming, but your idea of teamwork is for everyone to support the war fighter: the melee. This same concept plagues the military. Infantry do not appreciate the hard work and long hours of the support branches such as air support. They down on them and do not realize what it takes to aid them with close air support. In reality, if there was no care for innocent lives there would be no need for infantry or a ground force at all. As I previously posted, melees can kite things through blade barriers as well, or they can continue to be one sided war-fighters that cry for team work, but only want one-sided support. Sooner or later the support will rise-up and start not caring for those innocent lives. All those years of wasted firewalls, (Hey guys I have a firewall back here, umm if you want to use it..guess not ;( ..winking frowney face..ultimate sadness) One example of this is the (hired help) you melees support line building their dc's to epic levels to ensure their spells are no longer wasted.

[bigolbear]

Going off on a tangent:

Ok so now that wail is brought into line (still a good spell in my opinion, but not the one spell to rule them all) - and it now resembles the function, if not the method of the pen and paper version - ie it is a spell that is held back for emergencies, when the caster is surrounded and in trouble.

I think its time to address some of the other schools of magic.

Although I personaly dislike the concept of 'hard to kill' and blanket imunities there is some factors that should be looked at, namely the thought process behind the idea.

1.CHARM SPELLS in EPIC content.
Unless this has changed in the latest pass (Ive limited my self to forum work on the beta to keep a clear veiw and concentrate on theory mechanics changes rather than get bogged down in play testing) charm spells break very quickly in epics.(for balance reasons)

The 'hard to kill' mechanic actualy has some merrit here, if you were to remove the auto charm breaking of epic mobs but instead apply a penalty to further charms for every mob currently charmed you would see a validity to keeping a select number of mobs charmed but without the wory of 'charmies' and the DM runing out of pink d4's

2. OFFENSIVE ILLUSION SPELLS.
Curently the game lacks these (other than PK). Im sure theres a good technical/balance reason not to include such fundamental spells as silent image, halucinatory terrain and audible glamour - these spells have been around since 1'st edition for goodness sake. I have to say that if the issue is balance rather than technical then The 'hard to' thought process may again be applicable. That is any mob attempting a save vs an illusion will gain a bonus for each currently effected ally - same should go for players.

3. ABJURATION, SUNDER AND BLANKET IMUNITIES.
We all hate blanket imunities, devs hate em, players hate em. What we dont have a problem with however is buffs. But the thing is Buffs are - or rather should be dispellable(in my opinion this includes ship buffs on players). In the future rather than grant a blanket imunity it would be much better to grant a buff.(raid bosses are a viable exception.. muble muble i suppose.)

Most classes should have ways of removing or or temporarily disabling enemy buffs, like wise many of these ablities are ones that enemies also use which will reduce the issue devs are having with players being imune to most effects other than raw damage.
1. sunder from a mele (surpress a random buff (12 seconds))
2. improved sunder (remove a random buff, surpress all(12 seconds))
3. dispell magic/greater dispell/mordenkinens. These spells need to be addressed because due to the elevated CR's of monsters in DDO players have little to no chance to dispel the enemy but the enemey will almost always dispell a player. Changeing them to a savingthrow vs DC mechanic would solve the issue.
4. a paladin/blackguard buff spell to dispell enemies on strike.
5. occult slayer - dispell on strike ability
6. assassin poison to remove buffs and casting ability.
7. arcane archer anti magic arrows.
8. a weapon property that causes a low DC dispell magic on each strike.