Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[Armus]

-20 for 15 seconds, -18 for 15 seconds, -16 for 15 seconds, and so on.


I disagree - if you fail to kill something, then with a long cooldown you simply cannot try again. With a debuff, you can try again, and then you can choose whether or not you want to cast the spell on another target or wait for the debuff to drop. It's much more lenient than a lengthened cooldown.

So the debuff does act like a seperate event per mob. A good wail however will knock a pm out for about a minute. There still needs to be a hard cap.

I walk into a room of 10 mobs, wail and kill 8. On normal even this would drop my dc to a 30 and I wouldn't be able to FoD effectively for 60 seconds - at a dc of 38. Seems a bit harsh though I like the principal. The timer needs to be reduced to 10 seconds or less per tickoff.

[Vordax]

Isn't epic difficulty being advertised as being "for the best of the best"?

This is not true after the update, epic now just refers to quests for level 20 and over. Epic casual and epic normal are expected to be able to be ran solo or by undergeared players so that they can get to level 25. Best of the best would be for epic-elite only.

[darkrune]

We want to let you use Wail when you need it, but use some other spells as well. Extremely well geared UberCasters can "play through" the debuff.

even well geared PM's still get a huge huge disadvantage after a single wail at -2 per kill stacking... 60--> 40--> 42--> 44--> 46...--> 60 = 150 seconds at less than ideal. Assuming that you toss another then it is 60--> 40--> 42--> 44--> 24--> 60 in like 10 minutes for only 2 spells. going to be a lot of useless PM's out there in raids still... perhaps you can lower it to -1 per kill and install a hard cap even around -10 or 15 if you really must.

Currently we're planning on having it on all of the instant death spells. In theory, single target spells like Finger of Death generally won't build your stack too high since the debuff will be more than half over by the time it's off cooldown, it's AOE effects that will give you a major modifier that will stick around for a while.

fine with this if change above happens... -1 and hard cap.

It's very hard to catch up to "press 3 to kill everything in the room". (Which we actually gave melees in the Grandmaster of Flowers tree, with a much longer cooldown than Wail.)

So if you dont want us to kill everything then why did you add wiz/sorc in the game if you look at core D&D rules you know mages get more Bad Arse as they get to higher levels and especially epics... they sacrifice early levels where melee rules to rule at end game. You have built in the necessity for the melees by creating mini bosses and bosses (orange, red and purple names) that there is no "easy" way a single caster can kill without resources and/or a great build.

Currently we're thinking of having it in both Heroic and Epic content for consistency.

Please only install this in Epics specifically hard and elite as originally planned... dont ruin all content for our PMs.

The intent is for the super-successful ones to be able to shine by:
1) Being successful the first cast.
2) Having a much better chance at being successful on a subsequent casts than the less well geared characters.

Only works if there is a hard cap.

-20 for 15 seconds, -18 for 15 seconds, -16 for 15 seconds, and so on.

see first point about 60--> 40--> 42--> 44--> 24... ten minute wait--> 60

perhaps hard cap and shorter timer -1 for 10 seconds that way a wail only lasts about a minute versus three.

I disagree - if you fail to kill something, then with a long cooldown you simply cannot try again. With a debuff, you can try again, and then you can choose whether or not you want to cast the spell on another target or wait for the debuff to drop. It's much more lenient than a lengthened cooldown.

The debuff if not capped is WORSE than a long cooldown as there is no way that it will land until you have allowed it to reboot.

There are other possibilities for the future as well. One of the recent ideas in the pit is that when we revamp the enhancements, have a few things that improve with your Haunt level. An ability that grants a bonus to Negative Energy Spell Power based on it, or that consumes souls for some effect? That's got to go into the Pale Master tree.

I love the compromise but there is still a LOT of work/thoughts that need to be changed to make this viable. (read hard cap, -1 vs -2, decreased time)

[Malshier]

So I'm guessing that you don't use Eladar's to DoT bosses on a ice savant while niac's is on timer? Yeah, that would be completely silly. I'm not saying they should go melee or some other clear weakness, a PM can do just find CCing or nuking, it's not some grave weakness.

I was going to reply in a serious way to your post, but I LOl'd at your word choice given the subject of the thread

[DeafeningWhisper]

Currently we're thinking of having it in both Heroic and Epic content for consistency.

And here you where doing so well... You realize that now Haunting is a bigger nerf then Hard to Kill right? Insta-kills are gone from useless in epics quests but only on hard/elite to severely harder to use in all content.

Just have it apply to the same things Hard to Kill, hard epic and elite epic please.

[Hokiewa]

Isn't epic difficulty being advertised as being "for the best of the best"? What would a "caster with low to middling DC's" be doing there, I wonder? And yet, this silly feature turns even the best caster into a low to middling DC wreck. 2 minutes is an eternity, and basically precipitates a need to find a hobby alongside playing DDO.

As someone said, there is this false notion that arcanes are so uber that they can solo any epic quest. Truth is that this is the case with a very small fraction of players (at least on Sarlona). Yet you want to balance things by punishing players who have slaved away at perfecting their casters for months.

Pretty valid. It's even more counter-intuitive to players with low to middling DCs running Epic Normal. They should tweak it slightly for Epic Hard/Elite but in Normal content with average casters it's a severe punishment as the original "Hard to Kill" had no affect on epic normal.

Odd.

[danotmano1998]

Currently we're thinking of having it in both Heroic and Epic content for consistency.

Jebediah's jumped up fargin christmas!!

So now my wiz can not only be marginally viable in Epic Hard and Elites, but in every quest?

Thanks.

I'm practically speechless. Ok, well maybe not, but what I want to write I can't post.
*sigh*

At least if this was relegated to epic hard/elite I could just avoid those on that class. Now I'm going to be TR'ing into a sorc who can actually use their prestige class to kill things WITHOUT being penalized.

[irivan]

We want to let you use Wail when you need it, but use some other spells as well. Extremely well geared UberCasters can "play through" the debuff.

Currently we're planning on having it on all of the instant death spells. In theory, single target spells like Finger of Death generally won't build your stack too high since the debuff will be more than half over by the time it's off cooldown, it's AOE effects that will give you a major modifier that will stick around for a while.


It's very hard to catch up to "press 3 to kill everything in the room". (Which we actually gave melees in the Grandmaster of Flowers tree, with a much longer cooldown than Wail.)


Currently we're thinking of having it in both Heroic and Epic content for consistency.


Does it have to be a theater release or are the straight-to-video ones fair game too?


The intent is for the super-successful ones to be able to shine by:
1) Being successful the first cast.
2) Having a much better chance at being successful on a subsequent casts than the less well geared characters.


Yes, there'll be a bit of fiddling to do.


Correct.


-20 for 15 seconds, -18 for 15 seconds, -16 for 15 seconds, and so on.


I disagree - if you fail to kill something, then with a long cooldown you simply cannot try again. With a debuff, you can try again, and then you can choose whether or not you want to cast the spell on another target or wait for the debuff to drop. It's much more lenient than a lengthened cooldown.

There are other possibilities for the future as well. One of the recent ideas in the pit is that when we revamp the enhancements, have a few things that improve with your Haunt level. An ability that grants a bonus to Negative Energy Spell Power based on it, or that consumes souls for some effect? That's got to go into the Pale Master tree.

Eladrin you really are opening up a can of worms with all of this. Not only are you essentially punishing an entire class in the game, but you are essentially encouraging people to swap out to Sorcerer.

My question: Will sorcerers who can spam a few Chain Lightnings for thousands of points of damage in a very short period of time, and kill 20, 30, 40 monsters in a row, will they suffer haunting as well?

Justification: Since this is happening to Wizards because, melee's feel like they cannot contribute, what happens when Wizard players feel that way, then swap to Sorc, and then Melee's still feel that way? Will we blast them with haunting to? Because if you are not going to hit them with this debuff then it is unfair. After all Mass death is, Mass death.

So if you are going to implement this, then I suggest you do it for anyone who successfully kills X number of mobs, in X time. Or you will have accomplished nothing.

My suggestion: Apply a simple metric with a hard cap, and then apply it to any character that manages to kill any host of monsters within a set time frame, this way you aren't just busting one class, the hard cap should be no more than -10, per stack, and the timer should be 10 seconds.

Summary: I really do feel like all of this is punishment for being successful. When Pale Master first launched, for a very long time, I was one of the very few who endorsed it and played, came up with gear combinations to make it work, and demonstrated its success to a large audience on Khyber. This was when it was still so loaded with bugs that no one wanted to play it. Over time as it got improved more people came along. Now it is a staple, and the reason that many people even play the game. I understand your need to balance the class vs the content, but balancing DnD classes vs other DnD classes takes away from the fantasy of the setting. Was Elminster balanced vs. Drzzt? I understand the game needs to be fun for Melee characters as well to make your business plan work, but lets be real here, most of the Characters that are really capable of the kind of dungeon destruction that some of the top players are capable of is a small percentile matter. So in reality you are not just punishing a class, but you are punishing a very small group of players in the base.

Thank you for your time.

[VorpalKnight]

We're still working out details, but right now, Haunting is a stacking debuff that lasts 15 seconds and applies a -2 penalty to Death Magic save DC's. It decrements by 1 stack whenever the timer runs out.

This seems pretty balanced, if it was -1 dc it will just go back to how we run epics now with them killing everything, -1 is not enough detriment, they want Mass Death spells to not be a "O ****" spell, but they also don't want them to be used always when the cooldown is up, making intelligent use of them important.

Making Yellow named mobs only be instant killed when they reach a certain % of hp could go well with this too.

The idea of diminishing returns for mass death spells so that they wouldn't be spammed, leaving melees with almost nothing to do and death spells having their own separate save was nothing new, I was speaking about it years ago. To be honest that would be the common sense approach, especially death having their own separate save that is not based on fort, that would not leave fortitude so bloated so that assassinate, quivering palm and especially tactical feats would land more reliably.

[Stormdum]

What is the ETA on Haunting being testable on Lama? I'd like to go in and try these changes myself so that I may provide accounts of my first hand experience rather than speculative rant and banter.

[andepans]

Haunting neither accomplishes the goal of making melees useful nor making it difficult for high-DC casters to steamroll epic content. All Haunting does is slow the steamroller down. The players' solution to Haunting will be to get a second steamroller or to AFK after clearing each stationary, tidy group of mobs featured in pretty much every epic quest.

Haunting leaves melees rather useless. Rooms will still be cleared by pressing "3." That's why I prefer the original Hard to Kill style mechanic. I apologize if someone has already posted a similar sentiment, I admit I have not read all 400 pages of commentary on the U14 patch notes.

[dwelsh99]

I like it... if

1) Physical death (not magic) is unaffected (vorpals, monks, assassins)
2) The amount of the haunting is not based on the number of kills, but rather on the HP of the kills (such as -1 DC & 1 sec per 1,000 hp or so, just as an example). This way killing a bunch of rats doesn't haunt someone quite as much
3) There is a cool animation to go with it, I recommend something like this:

(or maybe use miniature spectre/wraith models circling the head.)

this is good stuff...

#2 makes sense - the more life I drain the more it takes out of me

[eris2323]

Jebediah's jumped up fargin christmas!!

So now my wiz can not only be marginally viable in Epic Hard and Elites, but in every quest?

Thanks.

I'm practically speechless. Ok, well maybe not, but what I want to write I can't post.
*sigh*

At least if this was relegated to epic hard/elite I could just avoid those on that class. Now I'm going to be TR'ing into a sorc who can actually use their prestige class to kill things WITHOUT being penalized.

Totally agree. Even worse than before; so most will TR.... and some will choose druid, of course. A new pay-class.

Turbine still wins and makes money.

Bad form.

[Ertay]

Im not a dev but I can't see it being necromancy dc's as you say as it hurts non death spells and doesn't catch all death spells. I would geuss its anything capable of instantly killing a mob that can be blocked by deathblock now. Hopefull just spells Id hate to see monks/rogues punished here.

Interesting point btw, how about giving us something to do with the necro dcs we have outside of instantkilling stuff then? A fear sla comes to mind, that would give us both a reason to get spell pen and provide something thematically appropriate for the different forms even (zombie would fear a single mob in melee range, vampire could charm, wraith would.. curse maybe, lich would get aoe fear). This all of course under the assumption that fear would be reworked to have mobs just cower in place instead of crawling around, though without the double damage mass hold gets to keep an incentive to go enchant/archmage.

[voodoogroves]

Totally agree. Even worse than before; so most will TR.... and some will choose druid, of course. A new pay-class.

Turbine still wins and makes money.

Bad form.

I'm kicking myself for not having TR'd my wizard already, but I do have 4 freaking leveling TRs right now.

Er. Hold the phone. I just capped my arti ... that means only 3 TRs currently underway. Time to move the wizzy?

[Scraap]

Jebediah's jumped up fargin christmas!!

So now my wiz can not only be marginally viable in Epic Hard and Elites, but in every quest?

Thanks.

I'm practically speechless. Ok, well maybe not, but what I want to write I can't post.
*sigh*

At least if this was relegated to epic hard/elite I could just avoid those on that class. Now I'm going to be TR'ing into a sorc who can actually use their prestige class to kill things WITHOUT being penalized.

If you dislike the mechanic, argue against the mechanic. Don't give them an out that punishes the rest of us that like to push ourselves.

[Jasparion]

Please, please don't do this. The one silver lining from the original change was "oh well, I only have to deal with this in epic hard/elite."

Now, you're ruining ALL content for instakills.

Maximised and Empowered blasting spells are instakills on Normal. For Hard, you may need an Acid Rain/Wall of Fire/Ice Storm as well.

This change doesnt stop you mass killing stuff, it just slows you down a little.

[Malshier]

And to think I just used a stone on my wizzy to speed past his 3rd life. If I had known, it could have been a sorc life. Or FvS. Or anything but wizard.

[GwenJynx]

I would like to see Haunting implemented as a buff on monsters.
Something like Haunting X: Killing this monster with death magic leaves a haunting reminder in the casters mind.

This would mean it could be used in different ways. Only giving it to certain monsters to begin with, such as not giving it to mass trash monsters like bats.

Also by making it Haunting X you can dial in the right debuff to give at certain levels. In heroic make it Haunting 1 giving a -1 debuff for however many seconds. Then in epics you can make it a mix of Haunting 1 and 2 depending on the difficulty.

I just like the idea of giving it more options so the balance of it can be adjusted at different levels.

[DeafeningWhisper]

Haunting leaves melees rather useless.

If you're a melee PM yes, otherwise I don't see how this affects melees.

Oh and it was never about making melees useful but limit the amount of insta-kills.

Hard to Kill made SORCS more useful not melees, not by a long shot.