You know the game is not balanced properly when...

[Postumus]

Wrong. Challenge without reward is fun for a week until it is beat to satisfaction, then back to the drawing board. Reward = content longevity in the presence of challenge.

If your "challenges" only take you a week or less to master, you could stand to up the degree of difficulty of your challenges.

[Angelic-council]

Just because people don't know how to play Magister doesn't mean it needs a revamp. There are very few magisters, including myself who has over 72 Necro DC. We know how to use its passive abilities wisely. Don't compare divine using exalted angel to wizards using magister, those two are absolutely different. First of all, divine casters are nothing compared to arcane casters. 2ndy, Magister is spell manipulation destiny. It adds unique passives to chosen school: caster/max caster level, dispel, save reduction. It might sound underwhelming, because draconic + shiradis are easy to play and very straight forward = dps, burst damage.

Heh... if I login into my wizard magister now and compete with any OP builds out there, I'll win. So giving magister more power is always welcome

[Thar]

Re: Sorcerer

Well, if you really only wanted to be able to focus in a single element and get fewer SLAs.

I've most often heard players say Sorcerers have 2.5 trees. Which is to say there's a good chance they'll get another tree someday, but are probably lower priority than than a few other classes who definitely have only two trees, any way you count it.

The low level sla's aren't what you need or want so it's really only 2 trees... agree with op.

that being said, yes it's a lower priority than many other classes. ranger, druid, arty, fvs are in much more need of some love.

[Thar]

Just because people don't know how to play Magister doesn't mean it needs a revamp. There are very few magisters, including myself who has over 72 Necro DC. We know how to use its passive abilities wisely. Don't compare divine using exalted angel to wizards using magister, those two are absolutely different. First of all, divine casters are nothing compared to arcane casters. 2ndy, Magister is spell manipulation destiny. It adds unique passives to chosen school: caster/max caster level, dispel, save reduction. It might sound underwhelming, because draconic + shiradis are easy to play and very straight forward = dps, burst damage.

Heh... if I login into my wizard magister now and compete with any OP builds out there, I'll win. So giving magister more power is always welcome

Magister was good when the spell costs were 1 sp making it some built in spells/sla's. The change to "real" spell costs really hurt the option.

Shiradi isn't what it once was due the obsene amount of hp mobs have and that melee destroy most everything before you get the third magic missle wave off...

[maddong]

~ The base values for armor are a little too high. When we changed the formula to 100/(100 + Rating) we changed most of the sources, but didn't change the base armor values from 45/30/15. This will be rectified in the next update when they are changed to 30/20/10.

~ Holy Sword is over-performing. This is also my fault. My math did not take into account that Improved Critical is not working like the pen and paper version and is instead doubling the entire critical range. Varg (and some of the more math oriented players) discussed this, but by the time I could get hard numbers on the issue and figure out why my math was wrong it was really late in the update's cycle. Unfortunately critical threat range and multipliers really can't be dialed back without removing them entirely, and at the time there was a lot of forum concern that the Paladin changes still wouldn't be enough. So rather than pulling it at the last minute I let the changes go through. This is MY fault.

~ For Barbarians the Ravager heal is probably too strong and the overall extra damage is probably too good for TWF barbarians. We are seeing some impressive numbers from builds using TWF to take advantage of all the barbarian damage bonuses. This is my fault as well because, to be honest, I let myself be talked by the community into some over-buffing.

~ Swashbuckler does not seem to be overperforming in our tests. The DPS is strong, but it is mostly single target and it is in a good place for us. We understand that Coup de Grace has a high DC. Using Perform as a DC has been a bard thing for a while and even though it makes the DC very high it seems fine since it is single target, has a 15 second cooldown, and requires the enemy to be helpless. Yes, we know its easy to compare to Assassinate, but we want Rogues to have their own advantages and not just copy the Bard enhancements. We are watching Coup de Grace for potential issues, of course, but we think it will be fine.

Sev~

I think swashbuckler was the original sin.

Paladin had to be uber buffed to compete with a self displacing healing uber bard.

We started to dial things back slightly on the buffing on barbarians and have turned them way down on rogues.

[caberonia]

(We are fairly happy with the performance of casters.)

Sev~

For now.. lets see how they perform in your new Harder difficulty content that is actually balanced for the FOTM revamped classes along with the overdone armor up changes. That's what you seem to be ignoring.

Everything is hunky dory for all the classes below the power of PALLY/BARd/BARB since outside of champs there has been very little content done to compensate for the new character power introduced by these revamps. Champs are a perfect example though.. PRR/MRR being the ONLY viable defense against them all. (which btw champs are still harder in heroics than they are in EPICS due to the difference in player tools @ level, of course if you have tons of ETRs for extra PRR they aren't as bad.. but expecting people to ETR to run heroic content is beyond silly)


In the future New content is going to be harder.. and those who fall below the base line set by the power of these classes are NOT going to perform well. Casters are likely going to run out of SP attempting to deal with the mass HP Meatbags you make in order to slow down the Upper tier of DPS. As well as be killed in one or 2 hits due to the mass damage required to slow down the upper tier of defense. (I'll leave out the entire discussion of the MAJORITY of spells and caster tools being completely unusable in epics. And many Buffs and debuffs are completely useless in heroics due to Items and design decisions. )

And that's just casters.. lets not ignore monks who are melee that HAS to wear pajamas. 80% dodge rate doesn't mean much if one shot can kill you.

That's the entire problem with any discussion of "balance". Most people are still discussing balance of current content.. not the content that has been ramped up to provide challenge for the new baseline OP classes.

You want to reduce instakills? Gotta give them high enough saves against bards.. what does that do to any other class who have save based abilities???
Want to have them hit hard enough to challenge High PRR paladins? Gotta make them hit hard enough that ignoring 75% of damage still hurts. What does that do to pajama wearers?
Want to slow down high DPS builds? Gotta give mobs enough HP so they can take the damage. What does that to do the SP bar of casters??
ETC
ETC
etc

You've increased the baseline of power so much that any attempt to provide challenge for that baseline is going to cause anything less to be deemed not viable for that content. (to be fair by "you" i mean the ddo dev team as a whole over the years.. not everything has been you personally)

From an MMO perspective I think you're in a bad spot. From a DnD perspective I think your campaign is broken.

[etotheipi]

Just because people don't know how to play Magister doesn't mean it needs a revamp. There are very few magisters, including myself who has over 72 Necro DC. We know how to use its passive abilities wisely. Don't compare divine using exalted angel to wizards using magister, those two are absolutely different. First of all, divine casters are nothing compared to arcane casters. 2ndy, Magister is spell manipulation destiny. It adds unique passives to chosen school: caster/max caster level, dispel, save reduction. It might sound underwhelming, because draconic + shiradis are easy to play and very straight forward = dps, burst damage.

Heh... if I login into my wizard magister now and compete with any OP builds out there, I'll win. So giving magister more power is always welcome

Go solo EE A Break in the Ice in Magister. Go solo EE What Goes Up in Magister. If you try to do this, you will quickly realize just how pathetically gimped you really are. I understand that you can perform alright in content where others are picking up your boatload of slack. Melees have no problems handling ANY quest content solo. Your wizard in Magister doesn't look gimped only because you're riding on other people's coattails. The argument that wizards are doing fine because they can be carried by others is ridiculous. Please stop making it.

[Ancient]

While I have played many holy trinity games (tank/healer/DPS) and while many are fun, we don't want to move this game in that direction. Although they can promote teamwork, we feel that the price of waiting as a DPS for an hour to find a healer or a tank is far more of a detriment to this game than the benefits of requiring those roles in normal content.

Our plan to encourage teamwork is to make the XP rewards encourage teamwork, make the death penalty character specific, and make new content hard enough on hard and elite that friends are welcome.

Sev~

Amazing!

And I agree that casters are in a good spot for the most part.

[Oxarhamar]

Most of EE quests gives low XP/min, even with sagas it wont be better than getting 1mil/hour by zerging fast high XP quests.

The advantage to the method is Saga XP.

With all the sagas flagged up a player can ETR & immediately jump to ~lvl 23.

Besides running XP/Min becomes increasingly boring with each repeat, Flagging up the Sagas on EE is much more fun.

[etotheipi]

Amazing! And I agree that casters are in a good spot for the most part.

Do you have a caster? And by caster, I don't mean a Heavy Armor wearing, zero-DC, gimp-DPS, Shiradi missile-spamming turtle-tank. Melees destroy mobs far faster than your NovaSoul could ever hope to do. Your build is incredibly weak when it comes to trash DPS. It is incredibly weak when it comes to boss DPS. It is just weak all around. What you can do is what any Shiradi caster can do, and that's slowly cut through EE content without needing to be carried by melees, who would, of course, cut through all that same content about five times faster than your Shiradi build. Where is your information coming from? Do you have a caster that isn't relegated to gimped Shiradi missile-spam?

[slarden]

Wrong. Challenge without reward is fun for a week until it is beat to satisfaction, then back to the drawing board. Reward = content longevity in the presence of challenge.

I agree it should be rewarded, but Turbine should know by know if the rewards adds significantly to player power the vicious circle of "It's too easy" followed by "I want more rewards" will continue.

The only way to solve the problem is to do what every other game does - have very diminishing returns for the highest level and most difficult content so that those rewards don't make it easy to crush the content required to get the item. Otherwise people have to accept "I won" I got more power than is required to beat the content.

[luvirini]

Go solo EE A Break in the Ice in Magister. If you try to do this, you will quickly realize just how pathetically gimped you really are.

I did this and my paladin did not feel all that gimped!!!

[etotheipi]

I did this and my paladin did not feel all that gimped!!!

Correct. A Paladin in Magister performs better than a caster in Magister! The Paladin can handle the content. The caster cannot (absent being a low-DPS gimped Shiradi missile spammer.)

[Cetus]

If your "challenges" only take you a week or less to master, you could stand to up the degree of difficulty of your challenges.

How does this make any sense? I'm not the one developing the content. Try to remember the last raid where it took more than a week to beat on EE? I'm thinking titan...

[Chai]

How does this make any sense? I'm not the one developing the content. Try to remember the last raid where it took more than a week to beat on EE? I'm thinking titan...

TOD. Everything after that era was a guzzlefest to victory.

TOD elite first fight was one of the toughest parts of the game in that era.

Shroud was no joke when it first came out either. VOD had mana pot buy ins for group spots for the first 6 months or so.

[Andoris]

Do you have a caster? And by caster, I don't mean a Heavy Armor wearing, zero-DC, gimp-DPS, Shiradi missile-spamming turtle-tank. Melees destroy mobs far faster than your NovaSoul could ever hope to do. Your build is incredibly weak when it comes to trash DPS. It is incredibly weak when it comes to boss DPS. It is just weak all around. What you can do is what any Shiradi caster can do, and that's slowly cut through EE content without needing to be carried by melees, who would, of course, cut through all that same content about five times faster than your Shiradi build. Where is your information coming from? Do you have a caster that isn't relegated to gimped Shiradi missile-spam?

Eto, I am starting to wonder what if any caster you are playing. As I said before, I challenge any melee dps out there and I am fairly certain that I will out kill them by a decent margin.

Top Barb builds are pushing a little over ~5K dps when they are boosted which is amazing. However, with EE trash mob clocking in over 10k that still means they take a couple of seconds to remove them from the board.

However, my caster can cycle between Wail (54 sec cooldown; 6 mobs), CoD (27 sec cooldown; 4 targets), FoD (7 sec cooldown; 1 target), Consume (2 min cooldown; 5 targets); Mass Hold + Energy Burst/BDF/Hellball (when soloing EE WGU.. everything you mass hold dies to a Energy Burst.. with a full party you will need EB+DBF and maybe Hell ball).. when all of that is on cool down you still have mass hold + ~3k melee dps (on helpless mobs ~2k if not helpless). If you don't bother with Melee you can cycle in Dragon Breath when Energy Burst is on timer. With insta-kills alone I am killing 44 mobs every 2 min (or 1 mob every ~2.5 sec) and that doesn't even count the mass carnage that I can do with Mass Hold + Evocation spells (which is where a majority of my death counts really come from) that in a high mob density quest is another 30-40 mobs every 2 minutes. Meaning that if there was a quest with high enough mob densities (which there isn't) I could be killing a mob every second or so.. and that doesn't even take into consideration my Melee DPS.

The closest any quest gets to that mob density is Breaking the Ranks.. looking at the latest speed run (Set by a [shiradi] caster) that quest is 159 mobs in 7:25 or about 1 mob every ~2.5 sec or so.. which is the same speed as Insta-kills alone, not counting Hold + Evocation or Melee DPS. That shows that as a Wizard I can pretty much kill mobs at will (and I do). Worried about orange named with tens of thousands of HP.. that melee might be beating on it for 8-12 sec.. as a PM it is as simple as PW: Stun + Energy Drain + Enervation (maybe) + Ruin ... I can do that all at range as I am running up and not even break stride.

A well played and built PM only takes their finger off the run key when they hit a red/purple name.. then if they are pure.. your right, they have an issue. They can either wait for the rest of the party to catch up and let them actually do something, or dump their blue bar on it (bad idea.. blue bar is better used for killing trash). If you are a DC-Melee build you can swap over to melee mode and push out ~1.9k-2k dps and melee it down. Sure it is low dps compared to the fully decked out Barb, but that dps is better by far than the what the average pugger is running with and more than enough considering how quickly you ran through the rest of the quest.

Yes, to get a PM to the level I described above takes a lot more work than it does to get a Pally or Barb to that level .. but that is okay. Some classes take more effort than others, the point is Casters are fine.. no they are not and "easy button" class.. but imo that is a good thing. You don't see speed runs with casters due to red-named dps.

If you are playing a DC caster and melee's are out killing you then the issue is with you or your toon.. not casters or DC casters in general.

Casters are fine and well balanced, any change to boost their power would be silly.


P.S. Sev and the Dev team, be very very careful with the DC's needed for ToEE.. while casters are fine now, it wouldn't take much of a mis-calculation on Mob Saves to make them near worthless. Please be very careful there.

[Cetus]

TOD. Everything after that era was a guzzlefest to victory.

TOD elite first fight was one of the toughest parts of the game in that era.

Shroud was no joke when it first came out either. VOD had mana pot buy ins for group spots for the first 6 months or so.

Uhh, I think we had Elite TOD done pretty quickly with an AC tank. Don't remember if it was first week though.

Shroud...you might be right - I just remember wiping endlessly, don't remember how long it took.

[Ancient]

Correct. A Paladin in Magister performs better than a caster in Magister! The Paladin can handle the content. The caster cannot (absent being a low-DPS gimped Shiradi missile spammer.)

Shiradi missile spammers can handle the content in magister... please do go on...

[SealedInSong]

I just want to say it makes me feel great about still being part of this game and community seeing your activity and direct responses to player discussion. Right on!

[davmuzl]

I think swashbuckler was the original sin.

Paladin had to be uber buffed to compete with a self displacing healing uber bard.

We started to dial things back slightly on the buffing on barbarians and have turned them way down on rogues.

Wrong swashbuckler was buffed when we had monkchers and shiradis were dominating the endgame... you see where that's going.