Remove insta-kills, yes or no?

[DeafeningWhisper]

There seems to be quite a bit of people that thnk they trivialize content, oddly enough these people have no problem with a sorc "nuking it from orbit" because it's "dps".

For a while all I could think is "so if they can steal-kill a mob or 2 in between sorc nukes on their melees it's fine, but If I get a few kills with a wail it's wrong?" and just dismissed their ideas.

But let assume they are not simply refering to the best of best casters, which if we are to believe the forums, out-number noobs, newbs, under-geared, average casters and melees 10 to 1 thous ALL casters need to be nerfed to the ground.

Well except bards, their main role to many is "melee buff-bots" they are the "good casters" unlike the evil PMs out to beat their kill count! *insert dramatic music*

So how can we fix this? Could we make it so insta-kills just do buckets of negative energy damage instead? Or will the naysayers be happy only when caster are equal in dps to melees? Do the people who want sever nerfs to caster REALLY want DDO to turn into Gauntlet?

What would you give casters to replace their insta-kills, without making them useless? Oh, and buff-bot hold/bot is not an accepted role after heavy hand nerfs, it can be part of the casters' role but not the only role reserved to them.

[Zerkul]

There seems to be quite a bit of people that thnk they trivialize content, oddly enough these people have no problem with a sorc "nuking it from orbit" because it's "dps".

For a while all I could think is "so if they can steal-kill a mob or 2 in between sorc nukes on their melees it's fine, but If I get a few kills with a wail it's wrong?" and just dismissed their ideas.

But let assume they are not simply refering to the best of best casters, which if we are to believe the forums, out-number noobs, newbs, under-geared, average casters and melees 10 to 1 thous ALL casters need to be nerfed to the ground.

Well except bards, their main role to many is "melee buff-bots" they are the "good casters" unlike the evil PMs out to beat their kill count! *insert dramatic music*

So how can we fix this? Could we make it so insta-kills just do buckets of negative energy damage instead? Or will the naysayers be happy only when caster are equal in dps to melees? Do the people who want sever nerfs to caster REALLY want DDO to turn into Gauntlet?

What would you give casters to replace their insta-kills, without making them useless? Oh, and buff-bot hold/bot is not an accepted role after heavy hand nerfs, it can be part of the casters' role but not the only role reserved to them.

While i understand that Instant Kills can be frustrating for melees, i cannot think of a D&D game without them.

[Qzipoun]

The fact that this is even a question is scary...

Let's turn instakills into the new vorpal, that will fix the issue! /sarcasm

[Enoach]

What is interesting is that the Insta-Kill spells from D&D were intended to make casters more difficult to deal with. The Limiting factor being the Number of Spells they could cast/speed of casting.

I don't feel changing insta-death spells from Able to Kill a Healthy Mob, to a 1/2 beaten to a pulp mob is a good idea at all. But I also don't believe that Vorpal/Banish/Smite/Disruption should only work on the last 1000 HP (Even though they did supplement it with 100 bonus Damage that even works on creatures normally immune to its effect)

They initially tried to fix the insta-death being over used by increasing its cooldown - while a bit over board in my opinion it does force me to look to other options while cooldown is ticking away.

Instant Death Should Stay in the game and it shouldn't require creatures getting beat to a pulp to work.

[Missing_Minds]

i cannot think of a D&D game without them.

That is the exact reason I gave 4.0 the "finger" of death.

[donblas]

There seems to be quite a bit of people that thnk they trivialize content, oddly enough these people have no problem with a sorc "nuking it from orbit" because it's "dps".

For a while all I could think is "so if they can steal-kill a mob or 2 in between sorc nukes on their melees it's fine, but If I get a few kills with a wail it's wrong?" and just dismissed their ideas.

But let assume they are not simply refering to the best of best casters, which if we are to believe the forums, out-number noobs, newbs, under-geared, average casters and melees 10 to 1 thous ALL casters need to be nerfed to the ground.

Well except bards, their main role to many is "melee buff-bots" they are the "good casters" unlike the evil PMs out to beat their kill count! *insert dramatic music*

So how can we fix this? Could we make it so insta-kills just do buckets of negative energy damage instead? Or will the naysayers be happy only when caster are equal in dps to melees? Do the people who want sever nerfs to caster REALLY want DDO to turn into Gauntlet?

What would you give casters to replace their insta-kills, without making them useless? Oh, and buff-bot hold/bot is not an accepted role after heavy hand nerfs, it can be part of the casters' role but not the only role reserved to them.

Patronising post is patronising.

However I like instakill spells - a lot. They are fun. I loved the description of Phantasmal Killer especially.

They were especially fun in PnP because you have to be careful when to use them due to the highly limited number you got.

[DeafeningWhisper]

Patronising post is patronising.

However I like instakill spells - a lot. They are fun. I loved the description of Phantasmal Killer especially.

They were especially fun in PnP because you have to be careful when to use them due to the highly limited number you got.

Dang it, I was going for funny...

Personally I love FoD, if just for the animation, the finger of God parts the Heavens, decents to Earth to crush the enemy like a bug.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

If I had my way, there would be a floating cap on many abilities, tied to character level. That way, no matter how much you grind, the Devs can still control how challenging content will be for level appropriate characters.


a second part of this is variety of monsters inside quests.
trash that can be blown away with ease, and more elite forces that cannot....so players can have fun blasting away hordes of minions but still have a challenge in the same dungeons.


Also monsters should have (dispellable) buffs. Not blanket immunities. (as a general rule)

They see us coming, they cast Deathward.
We dispel death ward and insta kill.

Elite forces have Deathblock items.
(we cast Mordenkainen's and insta kill. ) (yeah.... I wish...)

[Phidius]

There's nothing wrong with insta-kills. There is, however, something terribly wrong with a system that bloats mob HP up to the point where people get so bored with beating on them that they prefer insta-kills.

I love my melee-caster because there's something very therapeutic and satisfying with going toe-to-toe with a mob of mobs, but after a point it just gets tiresome.

[donblas]

Dang it, I was going for funny...

Personally I love FoD, if just for the animation, the finger of God parts the Heavens, decents to Earth to crush the enemy like a bug.

Maybe it should be Foot of Death, like in Monty Python credits

Especially with the sound effect.

[donblas]

NVM - double post somehow

[EndingDoe]

@ DeafeningWhisper

Depends. Had some free time, so here are my thoughts for you

Having played a FvS for two lives and now levelling a mage life, I'm starting to see them as an easy button, since all it takes is one click and the mob is gone. Multiple, sometimes, but it will eventually succeed. Yeah, I know what mages used to be before the change, but blasting away the opposition with one button press is just cheap. Nothing smart in it, and it pis5ed me off too when the mobs did it to me. Thankfully we have deathward and most of the mobs don't. And that's part of the problem.

What would you give casters to replace their insta-kills, without making them useless?

In my opinion, this stems from two related problems brought up several times before:
#1. Infinite melee damage, and
#2. Mobs lack of protection/player overprotection.

Point #1: When you got a mix of infinite and finite resources, it makes sense to utilize the infinite ones first and resorting to the finite ones only when you have to. My current life is an archmage, so I spam webs. They're cheap and effective. I don't spam maxed/emped/heightened fireballs, since I wouldn't last half-way through the dungeon. In fact, with the inflated mob health, I'd be happy to take down two epic-level mobs with direct-fire spells before running dry.

It's the same thing with a mix of melee and casters: you don't use casters unless you have to, since melee can swing infinitely. The solution to this would be to either remove mana-bar, which obviously isn't going to happen, or by adding a stamina-bar. With both mana and stamina on equal footing, letting melee do the dirty work isn't going to be the de facto standard anymore, but would raise a problem of what to do when everyone is dry.

An easy fix would be an increased cap to the "echoes of power", such as 5-15% of total mana/stamina. A little bit of resource juggling is bound to make things more interesting, when freshly pulled mobs start pounding on a weary party. Something would have to be done about unlimited potion chugging too, but they solved this in WoW by letting a player chug a 'mana' pot only once every three mins or once per encounter.

Point #2: Players have it, mobs don't have it. Used to, but that didn't work either. Adding a special protection until 50% health only marginalizes insta-kill spells. While better, it still doesn't really address the power gap between mobs and players. Every player is still going to carry deathward/-block and the mobs is still going away at 50%, which means that the mob health has to stay inflated.

I think both mobs and players should play with the same rules and the rule is that either everyone is immune or no one is. There isn't going to be immunity to poison or disease anymore, so might as well make deathward the same +10 to saves and let every last enemy wizzie buy a fresh bottle of lubricant. Having Wail of Banshee, haste, and rage in their arsenal and the brains to use these would level things even more. Likewise, enemy clerics should start casting deathward a lot more often, particularly when in large, bunched up groups.

Draw your conclusion from these. Getting insta-killed still isn't my idea of fun, so I'm leaning on just removing insta-kills altogether. Then again, my final life is going to be a FvS with paladin dilly and all +saves items, so I'll be on the winning side either way

[irivan]

@ DeafeningWhisper

Depends. Had some free time, so here are my thoughts for you

Having played a FvS for two lives and now levelling a mage life, I'm starting to see them as an easy button, since all it takes is one click and the mob is gone. Multiple, sometimes, but it will eventually succeed. Yeah, I know what mages used to be before the change, but blasting away the opposition with one button press is just cheap. Nothing smart in it, and it pis5ed me off too when the mobs did it to me. Thankfully we have deathward and most of the mobs don't. And that's part of the problem.


In my opinion, this stems from two related problems brought up several times before:
#1. Infinite melee damage, and
#2. Mobs lack of protection/player overprotection.

Point #1: When you got a mix of infinite and finite resources, it makes sense to utilize the infinite ones first and resorting to the finite ones only when you have to. My current life is an archmage, so I spam webs. They're cheap and effective. I don't spam maxed/emped/heightened fireballs, since I wouldn't last half-way through the dungeon. In fact, with the inflated mob health, I'd be happy to take down two epic-level mobs with direct-fire spells before running dry.

It's the same thing with a mix of melee and casters: you don't use casters unless you have to, since melee can swing infinitely. The solution to this would be to either remove mana-bar, which obviously isn't going to happen, or by adding a stamina-bar. With both mana and stamina on equal footing, letting melee do the dirty work isn't going to be the de facto standard anymore, but would raise a problem of what to do when everyone is dry.

An easy fix would be an increased cap to the "echoes of power", such as 5-15% of total mana/stamina. A little bit of resource juggling is bound to make things more interesting, when freshly pulled mobs start pounding on a weary party. Something would have to be done about unlimited potion chugging too, but they solved this in WoW by letting a player chug a 'mana' pot only once every three mins or once per encounter.

Point #2: Players have it, mobs don't have it. Used to, but that didn't work either. Adding a special protection until 50% health only marginalizes insta-kill spells. While better, it still doesn't really address the power gap between mobs and players. Every player is still going to carry deathward/-block and the mobs is still going away at 50%, which means that the mob health has to stay inflated.

I think both mobs and players should play with the same rules and the rule is that either everyone is immune or no one is. There isn't going to be immunity to poison or disease anymore, so might as well make deathward the same +10 to saves and let every last enemy wizzie buy a fresh bottle of lubricant. Having Wail of Banshee, haste, and rage in their arsenal and the brains to use these would level things even more. Likewise, enemy clerics should start casting deathward a lot more often, particularly when in large, bunched up groups.

Draw your conclusion from these. Getting insta-killed still isn't my idea of fun, so I'm leaning on just removing insta-kills altogether. Then again, my final life is going to be a FvS with paladin dilly and all +saves items, so I'll be on the winning side either way

Yep, not going to happen