Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[deahamlet]

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.

You forget fighting one melee per mob so that you get the kill rather than all work together to bring enemies down faster and make it easier on the healer.

Also running through traps to ruin the trappers fun and cost some more sp from the healer.

Or insisting on high difficulties when the group isn't capable because who cares about the resources of the blue bars. We can do it!

I have met maybe two melees smart enough to stand in firewall, kite through bb, etc. the rest would rather die and have died than work with the aoe. Half the time they fight stuff out of cc than move one step over so the enemy is dancing and stops hitting them.

I suggest melee start thinking long and hard about their part of the teamwork equation. Because I started soloing my wizard and arti and FvS not because I could, but because it was less stressful, less annoying and gave me fewer headaches.
No melees to raise half the map and kill none of it and throw in a dungeon alert as a poor untasted toon tries to chase after them. No melees refusing to use the aoe or cc and wasting my sp dying because heaven forbid anyone or anything else touches "their enemy". No more joining to do traps for the bonus and have to deal with already triggered traps that I cannot time anymore or heaven forbid disable and so lose the bonus xp... and staring at a soul stone in the middle of the trap and feeling sorry for the cleric.
No more zero fort and zero defense melees that cannot survive between two heals.
No more whining about buffs or hjeal me from across the map when they couldn't sit still to get the buffs with everyone else.

That's why I went back to solo or über tr groups who are self-reliant 100%. Not because it's easier, but because it's less annoying.

I have met a few people who actually cooperate and when they say teamwork, they mean from both sides. Most are nothing like that, they want others to support their play and fun but never the other way.

[Boneshank]

<snip>
I suggest melee start thinking long and hard about their part of the teamwork equation. Because I started soloing my wizard and arti and FvS not because I could, but because it was less stressful, less annoying and gave me fewer headaches.
<snip>
I have met a few people who actually cooperate and when they say teamwork, they mean from both sides. Most are nothing like that, they want others to support their play and fun but never the other way.

I feel exactly the same way. It's a rare moment when you see PUGs cooperating & utilizing synergy, truly.
My wife & I have contemplated opening up LFMs for puggers to join us, but then we both usually groan at the prospect & just go ahead & duo the quest/raid/whatever.

[Cadveen]

You forget fighting one melee per mob so that you get the kill rather than all work together to bring enemies down faster and make it easier on the healer.

Ah yes and the fact that melee seem to not even build teams among themselves. It seems intelligence is indeed a dump stat.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Please, have some mercy on divine casters!

As it stands, the best hope for divine casters is to learn to love being a healbot, or TR into a WF sorc.

Mass migration from divine casters to sorcs should provide for some interesting play experience for melee toons

[undeadted]

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

Sadly, this is probably the best suggestion in the entire thread. But to be fair, it would be hard to beat something that awesome.

How exactly do the dev's quantify the issue with wail? Do they count the number of foaming at the mouth caster haters in the forums? I have never experienced the kind of caster hate in the game that I see on the forums. Can someone please tell me why melee enthusiasts have such strong opinions on the fate of casters, because I am beginning to care less and less about their welfare.

This nerf is still bad juju. Two of my lives were as a FVS and implosion has some very irritating targeting issues, but they would be far worse with wail as it only affects living targets. I can't wait to have my wail go up in smoke trying to kill an undead rat 6 times in a row or on a mechanical dog.

And two big changes at once? When I troubleshoot 3d renders I only change one thing at a time, and start with the simplest solutions first, working my way up. A longer cooldown is more than enough to achieve change. It makes sense that a more powerful spell would have longer cooldowns, but changing the fundamental mechanics of the spell is asking for problems.

If they want to destroy this spell than at least change the name. This will no longer be wail of the banshee.

[Ungood]

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.

While I am enjoying seeing the vast number of post that do not even take into consideration that a mob can even make their save and only counting mobs they can kill outright, which lets you know the mentality and over-powered nature of the people who are even discussing this, think about it!.

Before, if they passed the save they took some laughable amount of damage to a mob that had thousands of hit points. Now they get level drained. That is a massive boon to the spell effect in to casters that do not have uberz-awsomesauce DC's. It sets up any mob that made their save to be FoD shortly thereafter, so now it's Die To Wail or Die to the very next spell.

If you have not realized that the level drain effect is a buff, you obviously have not played a Pale Master, or you solo too much and do not realize that Wail now is a great set up spell to duo with a Divine that follows with Implosion.

[GermanicusMaximus]

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

Yes, being one of the "hjealer" classes is at best a mixed blessing. Party slots are easy to obtain, but that is primarily because not many people want the responsibility

Lets face it, most DDO players are not about the party, they are all about doing their own thing. The party is simply a convenient environment in which to do it.

Melee are there just for the free heals and buffs. Aside from the rare people who build quality tanks, melee are just running around having fun.

Arcanes at least enhance the party through buffs before they run off to have fun.

Only divines are expected to devote a substantial amount of their game time to enabling the play of other people.

The campaign by melee players to nerf casters has at least removed the last vestige of the illusion that this is a collaborative game. Its quite clear now that we are playing Every Man for Himself.

Anyone who thinks divines should have substantially less offensive capabilities because they get to play the "hjealer" is kidding himself. Divines' offensive capability are inherently limited due to the fact that they spend so much time tossing heals. Giving them a second rate set of offensive casting capabilities on top of that is just a short sighted detriment to the long term health of the game.

[fco-karatekid]

Sadly, this is probably the best suggestion in the entire thread. But to be fair, it would be hard to beat something that awesome.

How exactly do the dev's quantify the issue with wail? Do they count the number of foaming at the mouth caster haters in the forums? I have never experienced the kind of caster hate in the game that I see on the forums. Can someone please tell me why melee enthusiasts have such strong opinions on the fate of casters, because I am beginning to care less and less about their welfare.

This nerf is still bad juju. Two of my lives were as a FVS and implosion has some very irritating targeting issues, but they would be far worse with wail as it only affects living targets. I can't wait to have my wail go up in smoke trying to kill an undead rat 6 times in a row or on a mechanical dog.

And two big changes at once? When I troubleshoot 3d renders I only change one thing at a time, and start with the simplest solutions first, working my way up. A longer cooldown is more than enough to achieve change. It makes sense that a more powerful spell would have longer cooldowns, but changing the fundamental mechanics of the spell is asking for problems.

If they want to destroy this spell than at least change the name. This will no longer be wail of the banshee.

I was serious about the sound effect through the 6 seconds.

NOT serious about the Jim Carrey thing

[Boneshank]

How exactly do the dev's quantify the issue with wail? Do they count the number of foaming at the mouth caster haters in the forums? I have never experienced the kind of caster hate in the game that I see on the forums. Can someone please tell me why melee enthusiasts have such strong opinions on the fate of casters, because I am beginning to care less and less about their welfare.

This nerf is still bad juju. Two of my lives were as a FVS and implosion has some very irritating targeting issues, but they would be far worse with wail as it only affects living targets. I can't wait to have my wail go up in smoke trying to kill an undead rat 6 times in a row or on a mechanical dog.

And two big changes at once? When I troubleshoot 3d renders I only change one thing at a time, and start with the simplest solutions first, working my way up. A longer cooldown is more than enough to achieve change. It makes sense that a more powerful spell would have longer cooldowns, but changing the fundamental mechanics of the spell is asking for problems.

Stop making sense. You'll find no refuge in this place.

[fco-karatekid]

...
Only divines are expected to devote a substantial amount of their game time to enabling the play of other people....
Anyone who thinks divines should have substantially less offensive capabilities because they get to play the "hjealer" is kidding himself. Divines' offensive capability are inherently limited due to the fact that they spend so much time tossing heals. Giving them a second rate set of offensive casting capabilities on top of that is just a short sighted detriment to the long term health of the game.

Or a fifth rate sonic spell or two... don't forget the bards here. I created my recent Bard SOLELY for those times when I wanted to buff people and add value... But let's not kid ourselves, even the Divines get SOMETHING that brings the pain in a useful manner.

I agree, however, that divines will take a worse ribbing if the party wipes than a bard ever would... that IS a lot of responsibility.

[DrDetroit]

The idea behind the need for a change to Wail is that it and Wizards/Sorcs are overpowered. That there needs to be a balance between the classes. When looking at the individual classes:

Class A has a pointy stick
Class B points at you and says, "Die."

There is simply no way to balance that. The second character is just more powerful.

The reality is that Wizards/Sorcs are not overpowered. The problem with Wizards/Sorcs is that the implementation of cool downs allows them to do too much in too short of at time.

Right now a Wizard can cast Wail, PWK, Energy Drain, Mass Hold and Dominate over the course of a few seconds. Those are all L9 spells. Then throw on FoD, CoD, Trap the Soul, BDB, Polar Ray, Chain Lightning, Flesh to Stone, etc. and the Arcane has simply rained a massive amount of death down in a very short amount of time.

This is the root cause of the imbalance. Arcanes can cast too many powerful spells in too short of a time. A balance between the classes would be achieved by implementing cool downs for high level spells versus individual spells. This would be along the lines of how casting spells requires an Arcane to rest, they are physically drained after casting a spell and need time to recover. Thereby, casting a high level spell should require an amount of time to recover before casting another high level spell.

I recommend modifying cool downs so that casting a L6 and above spell puts all L6 and above spells on cool down. The cool down would scale based on the level of the spell cast and limited bsaed upon the spell level, ie lower level spells recover faster than higher level.

The cool down would be 4 seconds per level starting with level 6 spells. Then L7 spells would be 8 seconds, L8 would be 12 seconds and L9 would be 16 seconds. This would be the limit for each level of spell cast. The cool down would be shorter for Sorcs.

This means that when you cast a L9 spell, L6 spells are then on a cool down for 4 seconds, L7s are 8 seconds, L8s are 12 seconds and L9s are 16 seconds. Casting a L6 spell would only put L7, L8 and L9 spells onto a 4 second cool down. A L7 spell would be L6s onto a 4 second cool down and L7s, L8s and L9s would be on an 8 second cool down.

This would greatly slow down the usage of ultra powerful spells because of how they determine what you can cast next. Not being able to drop CoD, Wail and Finger out in 3 seconds would add the balance to the game. Having a 1 minute Wail cool down would not.

[GermanicusMaximus]

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.

[shrug] If melee toons sign off on it, my divine caster would be willing to see mass heal removed from the game.

Not sure whether your issue here is with the melee classes or the divine classes. If it is with the divine classes, I'm not sure why. If it is with the melee classes, I'd prefer that you leave divine classes out of the food fight.

EDIT: Ignore what I said here. This actually makes sense to me now. See below.

[slimkj]

Yah, it seems you did, well a quick heads up, there is a whole lot more changes in this "expansion" then the ever so super precious wail spell, you might want to go read those release notes again.

You mean the bit where burst DPS was lowered and maintaining near current DPS required more gear slots and more intensive inventory micromanagement and swapping?

[slimkj]

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.

I've been playing a long time and I don't think casters are overrepresented at this point in time and they certainly don't seem overrepresented in pugs.

I also don't think the solution to this perceived imbalance is a caster nerf (I prefer a melee buff + increasing content complexity).

I've many casters, have had for a long time, and I've preferred playing melee of late. My wizards have been idling at 20 doing little. I honestly don't think the game is that hard whichever you play.

(The "laughably poor" bit wasn't directed at you btw, hence the -- before that last line. It was a general statement about some comments in the thread and other threads)

[deahamlet]

If a wizard spams all those spells in one or two rooms, what's he doing the rest of the quest or raid? Piking? There's a reason people run, gather half the map and then spam some stuff. Limited sp. oh you say torc? Friends have had 120 runs of dq without one. You say store pots? Am I made of money? I waste sp pots on my divine, my arcanes kind of have to make do without cause raids are eating up my pots with bad play, no cooperation and bad raid group makeup. Because everyone and their momma thinks you can do echrono and evon with just any group of random classes.

[Qezuzu]

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.

Ah yes and the fact that melee seem to not even build teams among themselves. It seems intelligence is indeed a dump stat.

You're not serious, are you? You're actually thinking that people who play melees are simply worse players?

This thread is silly.

[Boneshank]

[shrug] If melee toons sign off on it, my divine caster would be willing to see mass heal removed from the game.

Not sure whether your issue here is with the melee classes or the divine classes. If it is with the divine classes, I'm not sure why. If it is with the melee classes, I'd prefer that you leave divine classes out of the food fight.

I honestly don't have an issue with any classes, at all. I enjoy playing each & even sometimes enjoy playing with others playing each class!
I'm simply poking fun at the stances some people are taking, and twisting 'great ideas' around to demonstrate how close to crazy they shift when applied elsewhere in the game.

[alexp80]

This means that when you cast a L9 spell, L6 spells are then on a cool down for 4 seconds, L7s are 8 seconds, L8s are 12 seconds and L9s are 16 seconds. Casting a L6 spell would only put L7, L8 and L9 spells onto a 4 second cool down. A L7 spell would be L6s onto a 4 second cool down and L7s, L8s and L9s would be on an 8 second cool down.

This would greatly slow down the usage of ultra powerful spells because of how they determine what you can cast next. Not being able to drop CoD, Wail and Finger out in 3 seconds would add the balance to the game. Having a 1 minute Wail cool down would not.

Queen Lailat charges.

Mass heal

"more hjealz!"

"cooldown"

*ding*ding*ding*

reform

[alexp80]

You're not serious, are you? You're actually thinking that people who play melees are simply worse players?

This thread is silly.

The big mass? Yes. The others are not whining about casters.
Never had to pray for a melee drinking a **** remove curse pot?

I do more epics with my monk then my wiz or fvs, for instance. And I expect ANY divine to put his weight on killing, any wizard to bring death and any sorc to nuke the hell out of the battlefield.
While they're doing so, I use my full set of skills to do my part, I actually BUFF casters with align of heavens, I stun, I instakill with palm and void IV, I do my dps. And I enjoy this

[GermanicusMaximus]

+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 ;-)

I'm actually starting to warm up to this idea. I only need single target heal to keep myself healed. Mass heal just ties up a spell slot, and if I click it accidently burns some of my limited spell points. Mass cures are even worse, because my cleric can't even free up that spell slot for something that benefits my personal DPS.

Remove mass heal from the game! Remove mass cures from the game! Can I get an amen?

Crikey, there's all those crappy rez spells too (3 of them), and mass DW and Magic Circle Against Evil! I can't rez myself when I am dead, and I only need single target DW and Protection from Evil.

Is it possible for my cleric to get a reduced AP cost version of Radiant Servant so that my aura only ticks on me?

Given that I am about to be nerfed because I am "overpowered", I think I just figured out my recovery plan for my personal DPS. Only self-healing, self buffing and personal DPS matter. I can play like a melee now, except, well, better.

Adaptability. Change. These are good things!