Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[slimkj]

Again if Eladrin is doing this to "in an attempt to promote teamwork between casters and the rest of the party" then his basic premise for this this is faulty. If people are not working in a group now it's not like they are going to with this change.

The funny thing is that there are already mechanics in the game which, when used properly in a group with classes and their differing strengths, increase effectiveness through teamplay but I rarely see people use them in PUGs, which is where I presume the problem they want to address is found.

So agreed, I think this particular motive is pointless.

[DeafeningWhisper]

Sorry i just think time could be spend elsewhere on other things than yet another clogged up caster nerf. that wont do much in the end anyway.

Nah, priorities:

1. Limiting arcanes, they don't play well with others, or so the legend goes...
2. Limit barbs, their Ftr cousins don't like their Supreme Cleave, even if no thread was posted anywhere to that effect.
3. Limit Divines, any divine that aspires to more then healing doesn't heal at all, it is a well known fact*.
4. Adding more pets, they bring money, are easier to code then bug fixes, win = kinda win I guess.
5. New content! No way to go wrong here actually.

And then if there is time left (which there never is): fix the crippling lag, the diconnect issues with wilderness, make it so grouping is not harder then solo, bug fixes, old epics and so on.

* For the purpose of this post "fact" refairs to half truths and misconceptions.

[Ape_Man]

This is all too complicated....

Just give mobs a +d10 roll at spawn to saves..... There done...

Screws people who uses stunning fist/blow as much as casters. That's not the objective of this nerf.

[DeafeningWhisper]

Screws people who uses stunning fist/blow as much as casters. That's not the objective of this nerf.

The objective is to "promote teamwork", not doing that either.

Just give part of every mob encounter deathward on Epic hard/elite, more in elite then hanrd and be done with it.

[Thrudh]

If there were more mobs in more of the high level content that gave a good insta kill casters trouble I don't think this thread would exist.

Whats a max dps caster build anyhow, the gear set up EVERY caster uses? It must be nice when the ai is so stupid you can just endlessly kite **** if you can't outright insta kill it. Meanwhile if your a tard dps build on a melee you end up with crappy saves and a useless level of ac, you know, one of those builds that makes all the healers complain about being healers and having to keep idiots alive.

I love people like you that makes it an us vs them argument. Its not about melee players vs caster players, because the fact of the matter is nobody signed a contract to play all melees or all casters. People can TR a toon at any time, or simply make a new one. Most vets can level a first lifer in a fairly short amount of time, its not like having a capped pm is a special achievement.

I don't care if I'm playing on a melee and a pm wails a group of mobs and the one I had half beaten to death happens to drop. That's not a balance concern to me. What is a balance concern is when as a melee, you have to run up and pound on an epic mob for 20-30 seconds to kill it, meanwhile a caster can run by and insta kill 4 of them with one click. I mean, I'd be ok with that if the caster had some serious drawback filling some other role in the party, but they don't. On a single character you can insta kill groups, drop aoes and kite **** through them if you cant insta kill it, cc if need be, and self heal. Then to top it off turbine adds dots into the game so if you happen to be doing a quest with some big beefy boss mobs its not even like you stop and think man, I was probably the most useful guy in this group for every mob other then this boss mob shows up and now I'm a second tier character like all the melees were for the rest of the quest...nope, you just drop out your dots and dps.

Even then, I'd be ok with casters doing EVERYTHING if it was more limited. I don't know how many times I have been running in groups, and get into a situation where I'm beating on a mob, trip or stun it, have it 3/4 of the way dead, its the last mob in sight, and a caster insta kills it. If this game ran off the old x casts per level system you would NEVER see that happen, unless the caster wanted to get added to peoples list of idiots not to group with.

If turbine wants to let casters be such versatile, powerful characters in comparison to the roles that melees are capable of performing, then maybe its time turbine takes a serious look at sp costs of spells. It wouldn't be nearly as bad watching a caster instakill a group of guys...then instakill another group of guys, then heal himself up, then instakill another group of guys, if you actually hit a point where you said oh **** I'm out of sp, maybe I shouldn't have been instakilling all those half dead kobolds the melees had tripped and stunned. Maybe I've just been spoiled and got used to running with people who know the game well, have decent gear, and even in epics don't need sp pots, or even all the shrines in most quests for that matter, but it seems like these last few months that I've been playing, the only time I've seen sp be an issue(with the exception of clueless players who somehow manage to burn through an entire blue bar 3 minutes into a quest) is on raid bosses.

Maybe it would be a better solution to increase sp cost of insta kills in higher difficulty content. All dps spells essentially become more expensive as you have to cast more spells per kill, yet insta kills don't scale at all. That way insta kills would still be totally uber, but insta killing anything that moves in more difficult content would be as poor a playstyle as the melees who pick bad targets. Well that is unless you had an endless supply of sp pots, in which case it would require melee groupies passing some to you, tons of pp, or a credit card(which I'm sure turbine has no objection to).

Great post.

It's not that casters "Steal our kills"... I don't mind it when a PM clears a room and the next room, and the next room... Makes the quest go easier.

But I can tell they are overpowered... I play one myself. I have no weakness (except light spells which are rare).

They need to either have more weak spots to balance their power, or they need to have their power limited (not reduced in effectiveness, but limited how many times they can use it, either through a timer or SP cost).

SP really does not seem to be limiting factor as much anymore either in most quests. That's another problem. Casters are supposed to be more powerful than melee, but limited by how many times they can cast a spell. SP management used to be an integral part of playing a caster... Not as much anymore.

[voodoogroves]

Just give part of every mob encounter deathward on Epic hard/elite, more in elite then hanrd and be done with it.

Deathblock, FOM, Pro Evil/Good, True Seeing, happy pants, elemental resists, moderate / heavy fort

- % chance of each on spawn
- greater chance higher level
- greater chance hard / elite
- alter chance for each based on monster "type" (oozes, vermin, etc. versus equipment-wearing humanoids, blah blah blah)

[rtgr10]

Great post.

It's not that casters "Steal our kills"... I don't mind it when a PM clears a room and the next room, and the next room... Makes the quest go easier.

But I can tell they are overpowered... I play one myself. I have no weakness (except light spells which are rare).

They need to either have more weak spots to balance their power, or they need to have their power limited (not reduced in effectiveness, but limited how many times they can use it, either through a timer or SP cost).

SP really does not seem to be limiting factor as much anymore either in most quests. That's another problem. Casters are supposed to be more powerful than melee, but limited by how many times they can cast a spell. SP management used to be an integral part of playing a caster... Not as much anymore.

I like the idea. Put Wail of Banshee at PM prestige class with limit. The rest of the spells are limited by sp/cooldown.

[voodoogroves]

Great post.

It's not that casters "Steal our kills"... I don't mind it when a PM clears a room and the next room, and the next room... Makes the quest go easier.

But I can tell they are overpowered... I play one myself. I have no weakness (except light spells which are rare).

... and a mix of this.

More trips, stuns, knockdowns, light attacks, etc. Give melees an AP line or inherent boosts to defenses against trips / stuns / etc. Give it to melee PREs for caster classes as well (so DA would get it, but AoV would not; etc.)

Include some at-range ones too, so that dancy casters still have a worry.

[Scraap]

At this point, I think I'm just going to suggest that if it takes till the enhancement pass to balance this stuff out, implement this stuff then, if at all.

Y'know, when you should be reviewing every quest anyway in light of all the alterations every single character at every single level will be dealing with and keeping the challenge appropriate for the new power-levels.

(Yes, I know. Maintenance on old stuff sucks. Do it anyway.)

[Faent]

Take 12 casters with you, go into Elite Shroud, and prepare to laugh at how easy it is compared to a "balanced" party. Ever do a "DOT eChrono?" It's again a joke compared to a "balanced" party.

I've done one PUG DOT Elite Shroud and one PUG DOT eChrono. Both experiences were awful. Myself and two others had to pot and go several rounds on Harry to finish him off in Shroud Part IV. I will never join one of those groups again. They were both totally unorganized messes in which nobody knew what to do and thought that "caster = easy button". Both those raids are easy for a solid group of whatever, however.

[Boneshank]

the more i read this thread and think about it, the more i'm convinced that the absolute best way to fix things is also a very easy one: get rid of the kill count.

Al the whining originates from people being silly, all about me me me, and over emphasizing kill count. I play both casters and melees (as i firmly believe the majority of people do really) and can't understand this "me against you" mentality. I want my casters to be fun just as much as i want my melees to be fun.

When i play my caster i like to buff my party and cc (to make the quest faster and smoother) and i like killing (to make the quest faster and smoother!). As long as i have fun (by mixing and matching buffing/ccing/killing) and my objective is reached (a fast and smooth completion) why should i care if i had the most kills?
Same is true when i play a melee and, while i wish they had a bit more tactical options at their disposal, mindlessly bashing a sword is not all they can do. I like to trip, stun, improve sunder just as much as i like seeing little skulls on my screen because they all help meeting my objective (you guessed it: A fast and smooth completion!)

so why should i care if i have most kills? Why should i care if i gave the last blow? (btw, i used to play a game where the kill was attributed to whoever dealt the most dmg not who had the last hit. If kills were to have any game importance, they did in that game, than that's the way to do it!) just can the kill count and most of the cries for balancing will end.

As for the few who are so geared, so powerful, with so many pls and trivialize content ... So let them, who cares. The other 97% of us play and will always play a different game anyway.

qft.

[Thrudh]

At this point, I think I'm just going to suggest that if it takes till the enhancement pass to balance this stuff out, implement this stuff then, if at all.

Y'know, when you should be reviewing every quest anyway in light of all the alterations every single character at every single level will be dealing with and keeping the challenge appropriate for the new power-levels.

I agree that they should probably put this change on the shelf until after the Expansion Pack and review again later.

[Scraap]

I've done one PUG DOT Elite Shroud and one PUG DOT eChrono. Both experiences were awful. Myself and two others had to pot and go several rounds on Harry to finish him off in Shroud Part IV. I will never join one of those groups again. They were both totally unorganized messes in which nobody knew what to do and thought that "caster = easy button". Both those raids are easy for a solid group of whatever, however.

Same. Last time I ended up having to rely on dotting down harry, it took me 15 pots. Shoulda just accepted the wipe instead of getting my stubborn up. Particularly if this is the type of backlash to suspect.

[Silex_Molior]

I know this is gonna sound obvious, but I want to state the problem so that Turbine can clearly see it and understand it.

Problem: The ability to chain-cast AoE instant-kill spells trivializes non-boss combat in most content.

Read it a few times. There are some key things in there.

1. AoE. 1-target instant kills are not causing any issues.
2. non-boss combat. Its obvious, but AoE instant kills don't work on puzzles. Or bosses. Or bosses which require puzzles to kill (think Titan).

Turbine, if you are going to "fix" a problem, it helps to first define the problem clearly. I don't think Haunting, as described by Eladrin, fixes the problem I typed above.

To truly fix the actual problem, without making Pale Masters useless, there needs to be better "tech" added to the game.

1. Any such "fix" should apply only to AoE instant-kill spells (not abilities, skills, feats), and not single target instant-kill spells (or abilities, skills, feats).
2. It should never result in turning off the spell/making the spell useless, nor should it put a difficult pre-req in place in order to use the spell.

Example: the current version of Haunting requires lots of "regular" damage to "prep" the monsters for AoE instant kill, and it affects single target spells. This is bad.

Proposed solution:
1. Haunting only affects AoE instant kill spells.

2. Haunting does not prevent AoE instant death spells from working. Instead, it makes them work differently. While Haunting is present, AoE instant death spells deal damage instead of instantly killing. Damage should be very significant, and could be affected by DC of the caster. i.e. the higher DC you have, the more damage your converted-aoe-instant-kill-spell does. This rewards players who max their DCs.

3. Scale when Haunting drops, instead of hard-coding it to 50% health.

If the monster is "trash":
- Epic Casual: no Haunting
- Epic Normal: drops at 90% health
- Epic Hard: drops at 80% health
- Epic Elite: drops at 70% health

If the monster is "named/orange":
- Epic Casual: drops at 95% health
- Epic Normal: drops at 80% health
- Epic Hard: drops at 70% health
- Epic Elite: drops at 60% health


Final result:
- Monsters with Haunting will take massive damage from AoE instant-kill spells, but can still be instant-killed from single-target instant kill spells, or from any character abilities, feats, enhancements.
- Haunting drops off at different health levels, depending on monster type (trash vs named/orange), and depending on Epic difficulty.

[alexp80]

You don't understand how stuns work? Hey, that's odd, fortitude save. We are just like you friend, You can keep calling me subpar. You can keep saying melee have to learn how to work with casters, but you clearly have never tried to work with melee. I can get to that caster faster than most people can click their first of three buttons, monk air dash and movement speed.

So, if I have the caster stunned, why do you still need to insta kill it? Because it is the easier kill for you? So you HAVE to waste mana on someone who's already dead, sorry but I can stun every 6 seconds and they will land so that caster is dead after the first stun, simply because those are the ones your FoD land on?

V

If you go to stun a caster, in most cases, you had choosen the worst target.

1) i don't waste time stunning a caster, I got quivering palm for this.
2) it's easy for monk to get a stun dc FAR BETTER than any pm (I'm not max wis, no fighter pl and I got 48 DC) so it's better to target high fort mobs that are hardest for the caster

[Boneshank]

Deathblock, FOM, Pro Evil/Good, True Seeing, happy pants, elemental resists, moderate / heavy fort

- % chance of each on spawn
- greater chance higher level
- greater chance hard / elite
- alter chance for each based on monster "type" (oozes, vermin, etc. versus equipment-wearing humanoids, blah blah blah)

I remember coding almost these exact same things into the OnSpawn scripts for mobs in NWN/2.
It was easy, powerful, and very effective. Every mob spawned, using that script, was always different than the other mobs in its group. Parameters could set height, equipment, ability scores, everything.
And it worked; You never knew exactly what to expect on/from individual mobs when fighting a given group of gnolls/undead/devils/etc.

But I'm just an amateur programmer, so what do I know...

[Alavatar]

I agree that they should probably put this change on the shelf until after the Expansion Pack and review again later.

And learn from their mistake to not make such impacting changes last minute; allow time for review and feedback from the community.

[Eladrin]

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.)

[Faent]

I can get to that caster faster than most people can click their first of three buttons, monk air dash and movement speed. So, if I have the caster stunned, why do you still need to insta kill it? Because it is the easier kill for you? So you HAVE to waste mana on someone who's already dead, sorry but I can stun every 6 seconds and they will land so that caster is dead after the first stun, simply because those are the ones your FoD land on?

Well, in my original example, I noted that part of the reason melees were getting upset is that they are running to a caster that dies just as they arrive at it, and then they repeat this process, which is frustrating. (And yes, my Finger is faster than your Run + Leap + Stun.) But at least in your case, if you had it stunned already I'd still Finger it to train you to play smarter. =)

If you go to stun a caster, in most cases, you had choosen the worst target.

[Alavatar]

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.)

Thanks for listening to the community!

Just for clarification, can you clarify at what "tics" targets will be made? i.e. at 0, 2, 4, 6?