Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[Boneshank]

First off, I am definitely in the large camp of players insisting that this 'Haunting' effect will only apply to Epic Hard/Elite, and nowhere else! Leave the rest of the game alone...

I do have a suggestion, though:

Why not have the Haunting DC-penalty be based directly off the caster's current DC?
Let's say, CurrentDC / 10 + 1, with a timer ticking off in 15-second cycles.
Each cycle of the timer could restore, say, 2 DC to the floating DC number.
A floating DC of 40 to 49 would result in a penalty of 5.
A floating DC of 30 to 39 would result in a penalty of 4.
Have the absolute minimum be DC 30 where you see any penalty at all, and have the lowest possible floating DC be 26 (DC 30 - 4 penalty). If anyone manages to kill a single monster on epic anything with a DC of 30, I say congratulate them and move on.

For example, if a caster has a Necromancy DC of 45, and successfully hits with an insta-kill spell, their Necro DC drops by 5 (45 / 10 + 1), to DC 40, for 15 seconds.
Now, if in that 15 seconds, the caster successfully hits with another insta-kill spell @ DC 40, an additional penalty of 5 is applied (40 / 5 + 1), dropping the caster's DC to 35, and the timer resets to 15 seconds again.
Now the caster lets 40 seconds elapse without landing another insta-kill spell, allowing the 15-second timer to cycle twice, restoring 4 DC to the floating Necromancy DC, leaving it at DC 39.
The caster successfully lands another insta-kill, and the DC drops again, leaving the DC at 35 again.
Etc etc.

The 15-second timer would obviously continue to cycle until your original ceiling DC is restored, given enough time.
A weaker caster who allows at least 30 seconds to a minute elapse between insta-kills would see little to no penalty at all.
Some stronger casters would be able to run with a floating DC a little lower than maximum, and allow their DC to restore to full potential during the lulls.
But it would at least slow down the spamming -- successful spamming, anyway.

Just a thought.

[fco-karatekid]

Harms Circle of Death and Wail, without unfairily harming Finger/Destruction/Implosion.

Gives a scalar penalty so thatthose who are max geared with a ton of past lives can reasonably work with it without unfairly punishing those that are not full max on their DC's.


I like it.

My only suggestion are:
to make the debuff -1 Death effect DC for each stack,
remove the idea of increasing monster saves at all,
Make the Timer 10 seconds per kill and/or make sure it goes away on rest at a shrine.

With that in mind, I see this as a fairly balance debuff.


Edit: Good point raised above. Please only implement this on Epic Hard and Epic Elite.

Try this calculus while you guys are thinking... Boltdragon's on everything but Elites/Epics with a reasonable hard cap; Your original proposal with no hard cap on E/E's. Allows lowerl level players some forgiveness, makes the E/E's have to think before spamming (WARNING: I admit I have NOT thought this idea through).

[GermanicusMaximus]

Just thinking out loud here, about some existing raids:

ToD - As a caster I usually get orthon duty. After the 2nd or 3rd Orthon my DC would start to get unreilable.

LoB - end fight, a PM can take out a few mobs, then no longer can reliably kill mobs.

Shroud - a PM can clear one portal probably before being unable to continue.

So a party leader has the option of taking additional casters and have them alternate kills here, or not take any casters and just go all melee and maybe pick up a bard for haste.

Well, the party leader has options, which is always a good thing. Flexible party construction is a strength of DDO that should be preserved and enhanced.

A couple of additional slots for casters (i.e. a more balanced party makeup) would seem like a good thing.

Of course, in Shroud part 1 the divine casters should be multi-tasking by keeping the melee healed as well as helping to clear portals.

[Thrudh]

Its because of whiners like you that this stupid mechanic is being added. Its not slow down a little. Its slow down a lot. If I kill 10 mobs, I have to wait 2.5 minutes before my DC is back to normal.

Meanwhile you can kill with your OTHER spells.

In my prior post I mentioned Cabal, I was pretty much fingering/pking every time the timer was off, under this system I would need to stop and wait 30 seconds every 2 casts to clear the haunting, a level 15 caster with a -4 DC will be not be very effective. Of course the sorc just kills it all with one fireball.

You have fireball too... You're a freaking wizard with a ton of spell slots.

Wailing every single room was stupid. Save wail for tactical nuke situations, use other spells the rest of the time, maybe even let the melees kill something now and then...

[Thrudh]

ToD - As a caster I usually get orthon duty. After the 2nd or 3rd Orthon my DC would start to get unreilable.

LoB - end fight, a PM can take out a few mobs, then no longer can reliably kill mobs.

Shroud - a PM can clear one portal probably before being unable to continue.

Use OTHER spells... Flesh to stone orthans, kill the trogs in Shroud with something besides wail... Do you not remember handling portal duty as a wizard at level 16 with no PrEs?

Seriously, you powergamers should have no problems adapting, but you're always the ones who scream the most.

[Carpone]

Nerfing DC does not just nerf Instant Kill Spells: Horrid Wilting (Necro), Command Undead (Necro), Control Undead (Necro), Negative energy burst (Necro), Create Undead (Necro).

Unintended consequences and complexity of implementation are two huge reasons why Haunt should not be implemented. If Turbine is going to spend the effort, create tech to increase Spell Resistance and/or saves in harder difficulty dungeons.

[LeLoric]

Seriously, you powergamers should have no problems adapting, but you're always the ones who scream the most.

Whoa trigger watch who you label powergamers. You think top geared people are gonna worry about how they do tod and shroud anymore?

[Schwarzie]

You have fireball too... You're a freaking wizard with a ton of spell slots.

And comparatively limited spellpoints. I tried killing stuff with direct damage spells in the epic Part of the Crystal Cove event when it was up the last time. My SP didnt last long...

[Jitty]

It's a step in the right direction from hard to kill for sure. I think overall this isn't necessary as there are already plenty of ingame tools to deal with death spells. But you seem to think it necessary to nerf death spells. If that is true take the following into consideration.
I think the penalty is a bit steep. I'd like to see the negitive be per successful death spell cast rather than per mob killed. This would preserve the usfullness of implosion/destruction
Also, I don't see the harm in lowing the cool down for wail and cod if you are implementing a stacking penalty for casting it.

So it could look like:
COD, -2 DC penalty
wail, -2 DC penalty (now -4)
FOD, -2 DC penalty (now -6)

COD and FOD should now be off cooldown and wail should be about 2 seconds away but you have a -6 to DCs. Uber geared casters may be able to keep killing which is the payoff for aquireing lots of gear/tomes. At this point, its unlikly to be the best option to use necro spells but is still an option.

Please also consider lowering the cooldown for imposion.

[LeLoric]

Unintended consequences and complexity of implementation are two huge reasons why Haunt should not be implemented. If Turbine is going to spend the effort, create tech to increase Spell Resistance and/or saves in harder difficulty dungeons.

Not that I disagree with you but the example you quoted is not what I see as an issue from readin eladrin's post. There are ways to distinguish death effects already they are the ones blocked by deathblock and those should be the ones affected including things from outside of necromacy spells like pk and implosion and doesn't necessarily affect all necro spells like bestow curse and necrotic ray.

[DeafeningWhisper]

Use OTHER spells... Flesh to stone orthans, kill the trogs in Shroud with something besides wail... Do you not remember handling portal duty as a wizard at level 16 with no PrEs?

Seriously, you powergamers should have no problems adapting, but you're always the ones who scream the most.

Hard to Kill was added to stop insta-kills from trivializing Epics, now Haunting is been added so insta-kill can't trivialize epics while leaving a little wiggle room no problem, the problem is when they add it to trivial content = heroic lvls.

They fixed a hard epic/elite epic issue by changing the whole lvling experience on a PM.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Since you agree that having a long cooldowns unfairly harm weaker casters the most, can you comment on why the cooldown on implode is 60 seconds, while the cooldowns on wail and circle of death are 30 seconds? Divine casters are typically weaker at the instakills than wizards, due to the lack of extra feats, or enhancements to improve their DCs, yet they have one fourth the AOE instakill capacity. Would you consider reducing this timer to 30 seconds to bring it more in line with wail?

Seems reasonable to me. Most arcanes laugh at me when I tell them that Implosion has a 1 minute cool down. Given the incredibly limited offensive toolset offered to divine casters (as opposed to arcane casters), a cool down which is twice as long does not seem reasonable. Of course, Implosion ticks away for a very limited time killing one mob at a time. A divine caster could only dream of rounding up 20 mobs and imploding them all at once.

[gravestones]

How many more hoops do insta-kill casters have to jump through?

We already have Spell Resistance.
We already have high save mobs.
We already have red named mobs.
We already have Death Ward casting mobs (Drow Priestess in MOTU).
We already have mob types that aren't affected by Necromancy insta-kills (undead).

Increase SR or saves on mobs based on dungeon difficulty. Why is that so hard? We don't need yet another game mechanic like Haunt.

Eladrin, please consider, or reconsider, this.

Adding another mechanic, particularly at a juncture that is already introducing a number of changes that have not been fully tested, is inviting unneeded strain on the game as well as the player base.

Are insta-kills truly "breaking the game" to such an extent that something like "hard to kill" or stacking debuffs are warranted?

Is the exsiting game architecture incapable of properly addressing the concerns that have given rise to these proposed changes?

Is the current trend towards balancing melee with arcanes so myopic that is ignores the fundamentals underlying the entire genre (namely that at the highest levels, arcanes should in fact, vastly surpass melee capabilities)?

Is this nerf perhaps aimed at a small minority of the game (i.e. multi-tr'd, ultimately geared necro-specced arcanes) rather than the majority (who cannot, in fact, roll-over content in such a tertiary manner)?

[KillEveryone]

Meanwhile you can kill with your OTHER spells.



You have fireball too... You're a freaking wizard with a ton of spell slots.

Wailing every single room was stupid. Save wail for tactical nuke situations, use other spells the rest of the time, maybe even let the melees kill something now and then...

I'm going to start by saying I have no problems with the haunting concept but it needs to be done well.

I still feel it would be more DnD like if I could be effective with dispel/greater and disjunction and strip off mob buffs but it seems mobs are not going to buff. I would love to see them toss out a lot more stuff like FoM or resists. Divines almost always cast deathward, even if there is one right next to it also casting it when one could be casting FoM and other divine buffs.

I don't have a problem with some stuff being difficult as long as it isn't stupid. I don't have too much problem with saves as long as it doesn't force me to build other stuff one way because I would much rather tackle the same problem in different ways because I find that fun.

And then there are other classes like assassin for example, seriously, to think that it is DnD like for a rogue to have to beat down a mob to 50% before they can assassinate it is just dumb. I would like to be able to sneak in, using my move silently and hide skills, and try to slit the mobs throat without being detected.

I also dislike immunities and really didn't like the "hard to kill" concept even though I also don't mind playing a CC on my wiz but I saw my rogue loosing her assassinate ability in some of the hardest content that I'd like to play when she gets geared out.

What I dislike is having a option taken away. It limits how I tackle a quest. It limits how I'm going to build my character. If I have all options open, I can have much more fun because I am the one that gets to decide how I'm going to handle the trash mobs.

I would rather have the option to wail this set of mobs, hold this other set, finger that one and disco this other group here. "Hard to kill" would force me to either blast the mobs down to 50% then wail or just CC.

It also limits other aspects of how I play. I toss a mass hold, one or two make their saves so I'll finger, PWK, Otto's irresistable, or single target hold. My option, my choice. I may even feel like tossing a fireball in its face, but it is a option among other options, not a forced option.

This thing you people say that I have the option to use other spells is BS, yes I do have other spells but it is still BS.

It is BS because the "hard to kill" mechanic is for the hardest content that I've geared out my character to be able to be effective in, but can't use it's main focus until the mobs hit 50% HP. It is BS because it still restricts the use of certain spells and take away the full pallet of options that I would much rather prefer.

I don't like my options taken away. That is not fun.

[Masadique]

Is the current trend towards balancing melee with arcanes so myopic that is ignores the fundamentals underlying the entire genre (namely that at the highest levels, arcanes should in fact, vastly surpass melee capabilities)?

This only applies to PnP where you are constantly leveling and it is much slower than this game. In DDO, as with most MMOs, the game is said to really start when you hit cap. Most people stay at cap, and leveling is just something they have to do. Thus the game should be balanced for the parts where people actually play the most.

Since we are on the subject of DnD, you guys do realize that every edition since 3.0 has moved away from save or die because they completely ruined gameplay? The more you know.

V

[lordstranho]

I liked the idea, but want to give a suggestion, not apply the debuff on mobs lower than CR20 or need to roll 20 to save.

[Thrudh]

It is BS because the "hard to kill" mechanic is for the hardest content that I've geared out my character to be able to be effective in, but can't use it's main focus until the mobs hit 50% HP. It is BS because it still restricts the use of certain spells and take away the full pallet of options that I would much rather prefer.

I don't like my options taken away. That is not fun.

FYI, read the OP again... They're getting rid of the 50% hp thing.

[Angelus_dead]

We're still working out the details on this, and will then send it on to the engineers. Let us know what you think! Suggestions for improvement are welcome.

The Haunting penalty is a very reasonable mechanic for some effect... but I don't recommend it as an add-on for existing instakill spells.

Instead I suggest going back to your idea of putting an HTK buff on some monsters you want hard to kill, but change what kind of protection it gives. When those creatures failed a death save they wouldn't die, but instead take a lot of damage (about 50% of their hp total) and are briefly stunned. That defense is in some ways similar to the original HTK version, in that an instakill will only kill things that were damaged to under 50% hp. But the important difference is that it retains the ordinary function of an instakill spell, which is something you cast on a full-hp target as a rapid way to prevent it from attacking someone.

[KillEveryone]

FYI, read the OP again... They're getting rid of the 50% hp thing.

FYI, read the first line in the post you quoted.

I'm still using it as a reference because it is very much a bad idea and I don't want to see bad ideas.

You are on that "use other spells" bandwagon but you don't seem realize how much suckage that actually is especially when it is more like being forced instead of encouraged.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Will clerics now have a 'all healed out' aura? -10% healing for every person healed? Those mass heals, way too powerful.

My cleric would be willing to accept the concensus melee view on this. If they inexplicably voted "Yes", it would make for some interesting questing.

Would we track Harm separately or roll it into the general "Heal" category? I'd hate for the PMs who benefit from my cleric tossing Harm on them to feel left out....