Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[Sarnind]

Any news?

[oradafu]

If the Haunting is added to the game and applied to the Heroic levels, I hope that there's some way to prevent the Haunting from happening when players are trying to catch up on favor. It's bad enough that if any level 20 character goes into Walk the Butcher's Path can get harried by DA, but to add this on top also... Ugh!

Can we have something that takes maybe the CR of the mob vs the character level into account when applying the Haunting?

Additionally, I agree with some others about unintelligent mobs shouldn't be applying the Haunting at all. I've never been haunted by a roach, ant, spider or rat that I've killed. *What's the sound I hear in the walls*

So... if we had HtK, terror and tharack wraps would also be nerfed techically, but with haunting, a melee could spin in circles all day with those?

/ranton

(and yes, bring back vorpal. but whenever a melee kills someone with a vorpal/terror/wraps, make them take a -2 to hit for 6 seconds for every mob killed. so they can also sit on there hands. Apparently some people haven't seen a cleaving barb with terror clean through a quest before) /rant off

Well, Supreme Cleave has already been nerfed with a 3 second cooldown. And Barbarians still take damage from it...with slower self-healing than blue bars...unless something major changed in the Fury of the Wild...then again everyone with epic destinies would have access to that ability if they wanted to use that destiny in epic levels...but that still levels 20 levels of no self-healing outside of a cure pot here and there.

[dubyprime]

Eh, I was too sleepy when I wrote that.. I'll write something else later.

[emptysands]

Palemasters most powerful ability is the death aura... An archmage can achieve nearly the same necro DC as a palemaster. The only reason I changed from archmage to palemaster was for the extra CON, and the self-healing aura (which is HUGE)

Actually the aura is only part of bit. Gear is what makes PMs strong - torc, DQ bracers, Boon of undead, Lich form proc, shield mastery.

Aura by itself is not going to help you solo clear the market in eChrono.

I think you'll also find that most /easy level/ geared PMs will not be solo-ing or zerging the harder Epics like CoF.

I don't think it is fair to complain that a PM is overpower for content when it's likely everyone in the quest is overpowered for that particularly content and they are likely running it to gear a friend or alt.

[Forzah]

That is NOT why wail needs to be nerfed. WoPs were not nerfed in order to make arcanes feel better about themselves. Barbarian critical rage was not taken away to make other classes feel better about themselves. Some abilities ARE intrinsically overpowered.

You need to realize that the devs are not doing this JUST to make the melees happy, otherwise you will be unable to reasonably discuss the change with them.

That's pretty much what I've tried to say all the time. Thanks Trudh.

For the others who don't understand it yet:
If you don't want overpowered abilities to be toned down, you are myopic and not looking at what's good for the game. Multiplayer games thrive when there is balance between classes. If you don't care about balance, you are playing the wrong game; you're better off playing single player games. In a multiplayer game you can't expect the top build to always stay the best. Abilities and classes are constantly modified to find balance. The player has to adapt to these changes and come up with new cool ideas.

[Rizzia]

or another alternative, just give us 2 different epic elite modes, one with instas allowed one without. (no difference in xp/loot totally optional) Player choice then. If thats not good enough then some people really do just have a chip on their shoulders.

[krogyy]

i actually think haunting is a brilliant concept.

maybe the numbers need to be tweaked a bit but it will make the game better in many ways.

to the devs, bravo!

[slimkj]

When a level 25 max geared Magister Pale Master can't successfully cast 3 Wails in a row in Kobold Assault on Normal, something is seriously wrong.

Heh, I hadn't even thought about that. If this easy-way-out change must be implemented, this needs to be rectified. Given a L25 melee could run through there swinging a fish and still be killing everything it looked at funny.

[Rodasch]

If Haunting or HTK go live like this, I won't be just TRing my pale masters, I'll be cancelling my VIP status and likely charging back my pre-purchase of the expansion. I'll also cease spending any money whatsoever on any turbine products, not just DDO.

This would be the biggest of several straws breaking this camel's back. There is absolutely no need to make this many sweeping and drastic changes away from any semblance of Dungeons and Dragons rules, expansion or no. The solutions sought by these changes can be found without making up these obtuse and complex extraneous mechanics to tack on (and later have to deal with balancing other stuff that these mechanics will have unforseen effects on, balance wise).

I also fail to see how adding this "haunting" mechanic will not actually result in more lag, more bugs, less successful grouping, less available players, and all-together weaker "team-play". Coupled with the changes to AC, the change to displacement, the change to "spell power" system, the complete gutting of the eardweller, the changes to poison/disease, and several other changes all hitting at once, you will drive off all of the remaining divine players, and a large chunk of the arcane players, relegating DDO to a glut of now stagnant melees who cannot get their ideal groups to fill since there's no longer anyone to heal or buff them or speed up the quests. People will get tired of 2 hour completions on quests that used to take 10-30 minutes with a well rounded team.

[Rodasch]

In a multiplayer game you can't expect the top build to always stay the best. Abilities and classes are constantly modified to find balance. The player has to adapt to these changes and come up with new cool ideas.

The mindset that "balance" in a co-op game should equate to equality at the lowest common denominator is absurd.

Balance is found by setting encounters to play up to everyone's strengths and to target everyone's weaknesses in ways that require others to shore their gaps...thus promoting teamwork. NOT by manufacturing artificial weaknesses where a strength exists so that you can be lazy in design of environment and encounters and still placate the people who's weaknesses you've been shining the huge spotlight on for ages by suddenly being able to say "see, those guys who were strong where you were not are also weak now too, be happy".

[GreatOwl]

I still find Haunting an interesting concept.
However, it's penalty should only apply to Epic Hard/Elite and should come down considerably (let's face it, who in their right mind would use a Wail on less than 4 mobs? Even Uber 46DC guy would find himself with a nearly unworkable 38 DC after only one Wail ... let's not even talk about Average Joe).

[OsOscarius]

I'm a bit split on the issue. On one hand my main is a PM wizzy, and I'd hate him to be nerfed too much. On the other hand insta kills are sort of overpowered when it comes to trash clearing.

At first I was completely against this, but I could see it work with some tweaks.

Keep it out of heroic levels
Really really do. I can see you changing it for the hardest parts of the games (epics and beyond), but leveling and favor and raids below epic? Please keep it out from that. On that level other classes can still dps things at a reasonable pace (not instant, but pretty close to) and AoE spells tear things up.
It isn't as big of a problem there.

Maybe consider leaving it out in epic-casual and possibly epic-normal. These aren't really made up to be challenging content atm.

A hardcap is probably needed
10 stacks is probably enough. A -20 to the DC is crippling for most. The best of the best can probably boost their DC's for a short amount of time to play at those penalties to finger casters, but others will have to pass on death spells completely. Also, 150 seconds (2:30) of lowered DCs is enough of a penalty for one well placed wail.
It will probably be more if you want to throw the odd finger at -2/-4/-6.

A shorting of the timer MIGHT be needed
This really depends on the hardcap and how long you want people to get that penalty for doing something they've built for ().
I think taking 1,5-3 minutes to wipe the penalty completely is enough. More than that and there's little reason to go PM. Much less than that and it will not be noticeable.

Finally:
Let us wipe those haunting charges when we rest, pretty please.

[Forzah]

The mindset that "balance" in a co-op game should equate to equality at the lowest common denominator is absurd.

Balance is found by setting encounters to play up to everyone's strengths and to target everyone's weaknesses in ways that require others to shore their gaps...thus promoting teamwork. NOT by manufacturing artificial weaknesses where a strength exists so that you can be lazy in design of environment and encounters and still placate the people who's weaknesses you've been shining the huge spotlight on for ages by suddenly being able to say "see, those guys who were strong where you were not are also weak now too, be happy".

Not when an ability is fundamentally unbalanced; then the ability should be changed, not the encounters. It's plain and simple for me. Always tackle problems at their root, don't make elaborate changes to hide a fundamental problem.

The simplest solution would probably be this: remove instakills altogether and replace it with negative energy damage spells (including some nice AoE). Give pale masters bonusses to these negative energy spells, and have necro DC's work on them. Makes for a nice selfhealing caster build that has great versatility in damage spells and in crowd controlling.

[rincemeister]

Not when an ability is fundamentally unbalanced; then the ability should be changed, not the encounters. It's plain and simple for me. Always tackle problems at their root, don't make elaborate changes to hide a fundamental problem.

The simplest solution would probably be this: remove instakills altogether and replace it with negative energy damage spells (including some nice AoE). Give pale masters bonusses to these negative energy spells, and have necro DC's work on them. Makes for a nice selfhealing caster build that has great versatility in damage spells and in crowd controlling.

I agree fix the root of the problem. The problem isn't insta-kill, the problem is HP bloat, as was pointed out by an earlier poster. It is the fact that "trash" mobs (notice we are talking about trash here) have had their hp's so ridiculously bloated in high end content that makes the insta-kill appear powerful. I expect most people would be fine with insta kills working on creatures with 100 hp's without restriction most would probably be fine with an insta-kill at 500 hp or 1000hp. Insta kill only becomes unbalanced when the effective dps is massively above that of any other spell or ability. That situation currently only occurs in Epic level content where the method of making it harder was largely predicated on ridiculously inflated hit points.

The solution therefore should not be poorly targeted nerfs, but rather the removal of hp bloat as a means of defining difficult content.

[KillEveryone]

Not when an ability is fundamentally unbalanced; then the ability should be changed, not the encounters. It's plain and simple for me. Always tackle problems at their root, don't make elaborate changes to hide a fundamental problem.

The simplest solution would probably be this: remove instakills altogether and replace it with negative energy damage spells (including some nice AoE). Give pale masters bonusses to these negative energy spells, and have necro DC's work on them. Makes for a nice selfhealing caster build that has great versatility in damage spells and in crowd controlling.

Removing instakills isn't the solution and they are not the problem.

The encounters should be changed to be less predictable. This would effect the whole game and provide the challenge that others want because they wouldn't be able to just go in and use the same tactics each and every time.

If the mobs were improved in various aspects, it would challenge all players because they would not know what to expect from mobs.

If we have played long enough...a year I would say is about long enough, other experiences may vary...we pretty much know what they are going to do and we play according to that.

We know they will stand in our AOE. We know they will sacrifice themselves to try and hit us and we play to that.

Nerfing any kind of death spell isn't going to fix that problem. Nerfing death spells won't add any kind of challenge to other players. Nerfing death spells won't actually fix anything because that isn't the real problem.

Mobs have nothing for gear or buffs to stop anything that we are throwing at them so it appears that we are overpowered. Put some gear on them that stops our stuff(we need to be able to disjunction it like they can do ours,) have them buff to mitigate a lot of the damage we put out(we need to be able to dispel it,) have them not follow us into our AOE or have them spread out when they see a fireball incoming, and you'll see it isn't the death spells that are the problem.

The fundamental problem isn't death spells because a sorcerer will still be able to round up all the mobs and nuke them in the same manner that a palemaster will round up mobs and wail them.

Nerfing death spells doesn't fix the real problem, just shifts the tactic to a different class.

Mass hold is easy button because mobs don't FoM. Nuking is easy button because mobs don't resist. Commanding is easy button because mobs don't protect from evil(or whatever evil version they would use.) Every spell in the game is easy button because mobs don't do anything to mitigate any of that and they happily help us kill themselves with our spells.

[parvo]

I don't understand why this has to be another complicated system. Just increase the mana cost for death spells. Solved. Sure, a character with a lot of mana potions could slam through a few quests, but not indefenitely.

[Pewf]

It shouldn't exist outside of epic hard and epic elite.
A hard cap is really needed on haunting.

Implosion/Circle of Death shouldn't count towards haunting, at all. The long cool down (For implosion) and the fixed mob cap is enough balance.

Thanks, every thing else not stated above is a-okay! Love the concept.

[slimkj]

Not when an ability is fundamentally unbalanced; then the ability should be changed, not the encounters. It's plain and simple for me. Always tackle problems at their root, don't make elaborate changes to hide a fundamental problem.

The simplest solution would probably be this: remove instakills altogether and replace it with negative energy damage spells (including some nice AoE). Give pale masters bonusses to these negative energy spells, and have necro DC's work on them. Makes for a nice selfhealing caster build that has great versatility in damage spells and in crowd controlling.

It is only unbalanced because of lack of creativity/time in the content, not because of it's innate ability. Vorpal was exactly the same. The problem was not vorpal, the problem was inflating mob HP to insane numbers to give an illusion of challenge and time taken to complete. So people chose vorpal over DPS because they like the shortest path and inane, static mob beatdowns are not fun.

That is the problem at its root, not what you describe. Constrained system design lacking creativity is at fault here, not instakills. Probably because of the player-led and marketing-supported demands for high content outturn, I would guess.

[GermanicusMaximus]

That's pretty much what I've tried to say all the time. Thanks Trudh.

For the others who don't understand it yet:
If you don't want overpowered abilities to be toned down, you are myopic and not looking at what's good for the game. Multiplayer games thrive when there is balance between classes. If you don't care about balance, you are playing the wrong game; you're better off playing single player games.

Sorry, but what you are describing is a children's game. In a game targeted to an adult demographic, classes which require additional skill to play are more powerful than classes which require minimal skill to play. In an MMO, unless you are into role playing (a niche group in DDO), there is no rationale for playing a more difficult class if it nets you no additional power.

This certainly does point to the central issue that is confronting the designers of this game. What really is the target demographic for DDO going forward?

From an economic perspective, they would like to appeal to everyone. From a practical perspective, its becoming quite apparent that they are having difficulty constructing a game that can appeal to everyone.

People who play melee toons (Auto-attack or click/hold mouse button) expect to be as powerful as casters. People who play casters rightfully expect to be more powerful than someone who just does auto-attack or click/hold mouse button.

(For the purposes of this discussion, I'll simply ignore the auto-attack|click/hold mouse button players who expect casters to be nothing but healbots and buffbots. They are so far out on the fringe of reality that they simply aren't relevant. However, thats not to say they are a rarity. They are actually fairly pervasive in this game.)

In the past few updates, the game designers finally started to give casters a level of power which was appropriate for the difficulty associated with playing those classes.

It took a while for some of the old time auto-attack|click/hold mouse button players to actually realize this. When they did, too many opted to simply complain, rather than step up the quality of their play. In reality, these are the players who do not care about the overall good of the game. They care simply about themselves.

Looking at the expansion, the game designers have done a full 180 degree shift in direction. Casters are in full nerf mode. Auto-attack|click/hold mouse button "need love". Whether this remains true when the expansion hits the live servers is yet to be determined.

I've had 2 fun years in this game, and I'd prefer to have more, but in reality I have plenty of entertainment options open to me. The same is true for the majority of people playing this game.

The people who work at Turbine are the ones where really have something at stake in getting this right. I suspect that no matter what they do, they are going to end up losing a substantial portion of their current player base. My advice to them is simple: make sure the players you retain are still capable of playing the game without the players you are about to lose. It should be quite obvious to everyone reading this who we can/can't afford to lose.

[redspecter23]

I like haunting mostly, but what I really like is the hint that haunting as a limiting factor could also act as a buff of some sort. You could key a necro damage modifier off of a higher haunting value. The higher your haunting value, the more damage you deal with spells like necrotic bolt or SLA's so you could get a see-saw effect of swapping from instakill to dps then back again as your hanut levels out once more.

For some encounters, you might be encouraged to rack up a high haunt before engaging a boss to maximize your dps.

A high haunt value could trigger a fear aura effect like the mummy fear that locks down mobs.

Maybe even trigger an epic moment off of a certain haunt threshold for some massive finishing move.

There is plenty of potential here for turning a limiting factor into an alternate route to victory.