The End of Spellcasting!

[PopeJual]

One of the other fun things is that each kill on Implosion will drop your DC, so the last kill(s) on Implosion are much less likely to land than the first.

The first of the two biggest things that bother me about this change are that it will hit both Heroic N/H/E and Epic N as well as the Epic H/E that Hard to Kill would have hit - you can't use more than 1 or 2 Wails even in Kobold Assault with your level 25 Magister Pale Master/Necro Archmage no matter what his DC is. There is no difference between trash that could have been killed with a single non-meta'd Fireball vs. HP-bloated Elite Epic trash that would have taken 30 seconds each to beat down in melee.

The second of the two bigest things that bother me about this change is that it puts a hard cap of 1 kill per 15 seconds on your character *no matter what their DC is* after the first few kills. If your DC is 39 (which is seriously undergeared even for a newly capped Pale Master), you can kill a couple of critters, but then you're DC is down to so far that you can only kill 1 per 15 seconds. If your DC is 51 (something that currently isn't even possible on live), you can kill 6 extra critters at the start of the quest, but then you're at exactly the same point as the severely undergeared DC 39 caster. No matter how high you get your DCs, you simply can't get any more kills per minute out of your death spells than the brand new player who has essentially no gear at all.


One other thought on this change - the biggest fear for the future that I have is that the end of effective instakill AoEs will mean even bigger HP bloat because Turbine will no longer have to worry about "balancing" enemy HP for instakill vs. nuking spells vs. melee. They can feed free to increase "challenge" by simply blowing up enemy trash HP even higher because they seem to think that "more tedious" = "more challenge".

The OP said,

Not just against it, they are against the fact of any change to casters in general and to kill spells specifically!

...and that's simply not true. The large majority of people who think that this is a terrible change do agree that casters in general need to be toned down a bit and that AoE kill spells are currently a problem that Turbine needs to deal with. We just think that both Hard to Kill and Haunting are terrible ways to deal with that problem because there are many *good* ways to deal with this problem that don't involve simply beating down an entire category of spells just to deal with the one spell that makes melee players feel like cheerleaders instead of participants.

At this point, I'd rather see Turbine simply remove Wail from the game rather than put either of their ill considered "solutions" into action since that's the spell that everyone seems to reserve most of their hate for.

Edit: I just looked at the dev tracker and it appears that Eladrin has decided to go with the "remove Wail" option instead of Haunting. At this point, I'm so relieved that they're not going to go with the two terrible "solutions" that I'm just going to say Thank You and be done.
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...73#post4515673

[PopeJual]

More like 60%.

If a 45 DC PM kills 10 mobs with wail, he's at a -20 to necro DCs and won't get back to his full DC for at least 40 seconds. Basically all of his necro spells will be useless for at least 30-36 seconds.

A PM can memorize 5 level 9 spells, 5 level 8 spells, and 5 level 7 spells. At least 2 spells in each level will be necromancy spells.

After casting wail, the usefulness of all necromantic spells are shot, so now the PM only has access to 60% of his memorized spells for the next 40 seconds, not 95%.

Wouldn't 10 enemies be 150 seconds? Where is 40 coming from? Did Eladrin suggest changing the cooldown/regeneration on DCs to 4 seconds per tick?

[muffinlad]

Did they indicate they were lessening the number of mobs as well? It seems that will make a difference.

IMHO, haunting is one of the silliest game mechanics I have ever seen introduced, ever.

muffinnecro

[Blackmoors]

It seems that Haunting mechanic will not go through and instead Wail spell will get changed. I dont have any problems with that since IMO wail was the biggest unbalancing issue when it came to death spells. That said, Im curious to see what will be the DC required to land spells (specially hard/elite Epics) since there will be a major boost in our part with epic destinies. As said in the OP, im giving the benefit of the doubt to the Devs and will patiently wait to see how the Update unfolds!

[Nephilia]

It seems that Haunting mechanic will not go through and instead Wail spell will get changed. I dont have any problems with that since IMO wail was the biggest unbalancing issue when it came to death spells. That said, Im curious to see what will be the DC required to land spells (specially hard/elite Epics) since there will be a major boost in our part with epic destinies. As said in the OP, im giving the benefit of the doubt to the Devs and will patiently wait to see how the Update unfolds!

Get ready to rock, blackmoor!
Kaetta is growning up :P
See ya in new epic contents
(And i wish to finally craft my alchemical shield for benedictha too with epic cas and epic norm LoB -_-)

[Syllph]

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.)

change.

[Feralthyrtiaq]

Some common sense to found in OP. Very refreshing.

Too many "camps" or "schools of thought" or what have you crossing each other like Venn Diagrams some contadictory. If you differentiate the class of the player or loot drop rates it can get quite messy....But considering JUST casters.


1. The games too easy, want more challenge.

2. Insta-kill spells blast through content. It's AWESOME.

3. Insta-kill spells blast through content. It's Over-Powered.

4. The games too hard, want less challenge.

[akiraproject24]

Was gonna complain..invested a total of 9 lives on my PM to get him top of his game and then it gets changed, but I realized....with 11 other toons, Ill just figure out the next OP class build and TR again..we shall see