U27: The Sudden End of All Endgame DC Casting in DDO?

[Blackheartox]

We should nerf barbarians/mechs/warlocks etc etc to get on par with Casters, not viceversa. People complain that casters might be Overpowered, I have bad news: we have already 3-4 classes OP that don't even have the problem of Spell points' conservation.

I agree with this, but to many people wont do the same, so this wont sadly ever happen

[Rys]

Wishful thinking I guess.

[Wizza]

Wishful thinking I guess.

Yes, yes it is

[Tebaco]

We also have threads keep popping up all over the place talking about how turbine always hates dc casters and has been systematically destroying them and making it so that they are not effective at all let alone wanted and that this raid is just a continuation of a theme. Somehow everyone seems to have forgotten that the dc caster was the mvp of the last raid. No build should be better than everyone else in everything.

We are talking about content in Shavarath which historically was a pain to dc cast due to inflated saves, spell resistance and select immunities and environmental buffs to the mobs... the last time we were here dc casters often contributed by casting haste rage displace and tossing some webs. It is now filled with good outsiders which historically are a pain to cast due to inflated saves, spell resistance and selected immunities. With those two factors combined it should be really hard to cast. Like a fully min maxed caster should have mobs save 50% of the time on ee level of hard.

It's a couple quests and a raid that thematically are very hostile for dc casters (just like heroic). It does have an item or 2 that is very want / must have for dc casters (also just like heroic).

The good news for all the wizards finding that they suddenly having a very hard time on ee in there is that we aren't in heroic so with a simple enhancement swap to evocation archmage and a swap of your destiny to shiradi you're about 90% as effective as any other shiradi caster, which is more than enough to farm out the gear you want because aside from the saves the content is super easy.

If you aren't optimized for content fix it instead of hollering over a billion threads.
Or just run a lower difficulty

Roflmao.. U have to be kiddin with us. Do you think we play this game for loot or what? If we do, we make blind drunk barbarbar like you probably..
No absolutely not, we play it for fun. And only fun come with:
1.) challange
2.) balance
3.) build versatility (that doesnt mean hack and slash kids builds.. but options with many spells and aditionaly you offten pay your life for your mistakes.. thats caster build..)

All thouse isnt silly pew pew build..

And more about it, if doenst work your spells (in min/max option, game is broken and that doesnt mean that player gonna swap something, but that devs fix it.. becouse if dont, players leave.

[Cetus]

For as much as we talk about soloing, etc, etc. It's melees that can solo the game because PRR/MRR/high weapon DPS is all this game is about at the moment.

A cc wizard can't solo their way through difficult EE content - they will run out of sp. When you talk about things being 90% effective, this is where I get confused. The last time I checked PRR is 100% effective. MRR is 100% effective. Mortal Fear is 100% effective against everything but red names.

People are breezing through EE content with melee/ranged toons - not with cc casting.

The game is becoming too much hack and slash lately where you just march through dungeons with high prr/mrr crushing everything in your path with weapon dps.

Once upon a time a group of melees would go into epic devil assault and get crushed in 20 seconds without cc. Now they get upset if cc is used because they want all the mobs on them to maximize their cleave and great cleave. This is the problem - not cc wizards getting 95% effective DCs against most enemies.

Maybe your issue is with wizards then, because I use my sorc more than my barb for EE TOEE's and feel fantastically effective - its just that the spell damage/spellpoint ratio sucks.

[maddong]

It is mission accomplished in that no one is screaming for nerfs of monkchers or shiradi casters anymore....

Instead of brining things up to that level they surpassed it. Which brings up the point that we should have had more targeted nerfs in the first place. Now we are just in a cycle of buffing certain classes -> buffing monsters -> buffing the classes that previously didn't need buffing -> original overpowered class needs to be buffed.

Monkchers are now not worth playing. The downtime isn't worth the damage bonus when you can just play a repeater. Let's buff monkchers (I'm kidding).

[svinja]

For as much as we talk about soloing, etc, etc. It's melees that can solo the game because PRR/MRR/high weapon DPS is all this game is about at the moment.

A cc wizard can't solo their way through difficult EE content - they will run out of sp. When you talk about things being 90% effective, this is where I get confused. The last time I checked PRR is 100% effective. MRR is 100% effective. Mortal Fear is 100% effective against everything but red names.

People are breezing through EE content with melee/ranged toons - not with cc casting.

The game is becoming too much hack and slash lately where you just march through dungeons with high prr/mrr crushing everything in your path with weapon dps.

Once upon a time a group of melees would go into epic devil assault and get crushed in 20 seconds without cc. Now they get upset if cc is used because they want all the mobs on them to maximize their cleave and great cleave. This is the problem - not cc wizards getting 95% effective DCs against most enemies.

To say it in a different way, a few years ago, unless you CCed the mobs, they would crush you in seconds. Today, unless the mobs CC you, you crush them in seconds.

[slarden]

Maybe your issue is with wizards then, because I use my sorc more than my barb for EE TOEE's and feel fantastically effective - its just that the spell damage/spellpoint ratio sucks.

Yeah spell point pool is the main issue. Requiring alot of debuffs, etc. makes that problem much worse.

In general what I was saying is the game is becoming solely hack and slash. Get high PRR, MRR, defensive clickies and max out dps. That is basically all that matters in the game. Sorcs fall into that category as well, but as you said spell point pools can still be an issue.

Making DCs /spell penetration ridiculous only serves to kill build diversity which is why I applaud the dev's approach for U27.

[razzertothemax3]

What's the "destiny spell pen selector"?



Hang on - Does it have to be Draconic?

What about Clerics/Souls?

Piercing Spellcraft is a Tier 3 Twist as is Echoes so that's basically every ED maxed and your Twist slots taken up for Spell Pen and 1 Int?

It's almost update 27 and you still need to be told how destinys work? Lol it all makes sense now.

[General_Gronker]

based on the CR of the monster

Which would be fine, except that historically (and that includes up until now), the various developers working on this game have never understood how CRs are actually supposed to work, or how creatures are supposed to be designed. So before using that as your foundation, you need to go through and learn how to properly lay that foundation.

Right now, "based on the CR of the monster" just means "all screwed up because the CRs are all screwed up."

[Cetus]

Yeah spell point pool is the main issue. Requiring alot of debuffs, etc. makes that problem much worse.

In general what I was saying is the game is becoming solely hack and slash. Get high PRR, MRR, defensive clickies and max out dps. That is basically all that matters in the game. Sorcs fall into that category as well, but as you said spell point pools can still be an issue.

Making DCs /spell penetration ridiculous only serves to kill build diversity which is why I applaud the dev's approach for U27.

Yea, these are fair points - I can get behind this generally, I'm just trying to be careful condemning these things because they're also sources of challenge - and I really don't want this game any easier than it already is.

[Tilomere]

del

[Portalcat]

Heh, this thread seems familiar, like I've seen it every single patch for the last few years.

I've seen people post threads like this and be completely wrong many times. I've seen a lot of threads which claimed that DC casting is too hard but the real issue was that their build was half a dozen or more DCs below optimal, or that it was too hard because someone has the strange expectation is that anything short of ROFLstomping mobs without even debuffing them is "too hard".

What I've not seen is a bunch of players with min-maxed endgame builds line up to all say that they can't land anything whatsoever and then been able to easily replicate the problem on my own maxed DC caster. This time that happened, and I'm breathing a huge sigh of relief that the feedback was listened to and the saves are getting revised downward.

[Wizza]

Heh, this thread seems familiar, like I've seen it every single patch for the last few years.

I wonder why.

[Angelic-council]

I hope if/when we get reaper mode that those melees need us casters to cc for them. I'm kinda hoping reaper mode makes us have to make balanced parties of heals/cc/ranged/melee. But I doubt it. Wishful thinking I guess.

Yeah... So many good ideas out there.. Sigh.

[Kompera_Oberon]

So, would it be acceptable for all that a maxed DC caster will be able to single-shot kill a non-boss non-guardian mob? I find that I'm able to use single spell spells to slay guardian mobs fairly frequently.

This is a lot more mana efficient than casting Destruction. If it works.

I use Destruction to try to kill a mob immediately. If it fails, i get zero DPS. The Dc of opponents is closely tied to this.

[Vargouille]

The spell resistance I was running into on enemies was somewhere in the 50s - with failed checks using my unchanged build from live with a spell pen of 42 and rolls as high as 10-ish.

Please let us know exactly which monsters this is occurring on.

Only Lantern Archons in the Update 27 Lamannia builds are intended to have a Spell Resistance higher than 50 (Lantern Archons have extremely high spell resistance as a monster feature).

There are a handful of monster types higher than 45, as well, but it's a minority, mostly bosses such as Erinyes, Mariliths, etc. If it was any other monster besides a Lantern Archon we'd want to investigate that.

Not all characters need to be equally viable in all content. Sometimes ranged can shine, sometimes a trapper can be best. This homoginization of content is not what I want. I think it leads to bland, choices and teamwork don't matter kind of gameplay.

Everything the same is bad. On that we can agree.

However, it is not fun (the definition of what we're seeking!) for your favorite character, of the appropriate level and build (aka: reasonable class & feat choices, gear, etc.), to feel completely unviable.

• Equally viable in all cases vs. all monsters tends to be boring and not fun. Being equally viable against everything isn't really the subject being discussed here, as far as I can tell.
• Your character feeling useless in an entire quest is beyond boring and decidedly unfun (and a worse offense, if we had to pick between them, though we shouldn't have to).

We failed to properly balance monster saving throws for the first two Lamannia builds, which was at the least not ideal. We're addressing it. The timing was not great and we hope to do better in the future. That said, we're more focused on making sure Update 27 ends up fun, and this is part of why Lamannia exists - because we don't get everything right the first time and (gasp!) make mistakes. Yay for Lamannia working as intended!

The real benefits from past lives is the versatility they offer. You can't squeeze in every spell focus and greater spell focus but you can fit in 2 feats for completionist and pl wiz. If you are running content where a fully maxed out spell pen specced first lifer is just barely passing the check on a 1 you just freed up three twists and a destiny point that you can use elsewhere.

And here is my point... why shouldn't it. You've ground out an exponentially larger amount of xp to get to 28 than the other guy.

Disclaimer: This is getting deeply theoretical and more of a discussion of goals vs. what is necessarily in DDO right at this moment (and subjective, subject to change, etc.)

There are some good points here. There are some details that could be quibbled with, but if a primary difference between a completionist and a first life character is that the first life character has a more narrow focus, yet is still moderately close in effectiveness, for that particular focus, that doesn't seem like the worst thing. (For instance, if a completionist caster might branch out into different twists or damage spells outside of DC casting, which will certainly strengthen the character, but not necessarily blow away a first life character

[JOTMON]

Roflmao.. U have to be kiddin with us. Do you think we play this game for loot or what? If we do, we make blind drunk barbarbar like you probably..
No absolutely not, we play it for fun. And only fun come with:
1.) challange
2.) balance
3.) build versatility (that doesnt mean hack and slash kids builds.. but options with many spells and aditionaly you offten pay your life for your mistakes.. thats caster build..)

All thouse isnt silly pew pew build..

And more about it, if doenst work your spells (in min/max option, game is broken and that doesnt mean that player gonna swap something, but that devs fix it.. becouse if dont, players leave.

Now that is silly.. Fun.. for the first 2 times its fun..
after that its Shinies... Lootz... Treasure....

Ultimately, we want stuff that gives me something.. whether its something that gives me better offence/defence, survive longer, cast more, clickies, storage space,.. whatever.. even vanity items that just look good...

1.) challenge = better loot.. otherwise it is one and done for challenge.. repeatability requires incentive to grind.. loot is the best incentive at endgame.. XP is pretty good for levelling.. hence quests/raid like shroud and Von..

2.) balance = DDO should not really be "balancing the classes, rather the classes should all bring something unique to the party.. versatility should be desired..
Rogues should suck agaist undead mobs, clerics should rock against undead , Paladins great against undead and Demons and some general evil.. meh against the rest.., Barbarians.. burst DPS.. poor sustainability.., Fighters.. good general damage gainst everything and tactics.. the middle of the road sustained dps..,monks should not be able to rage.. they are all about centered and serentity and shtyff... raging should break monk stance.. Ranger buffs like barkskin should stack with gear not be trumped by it..

3.) build versatility = DDO is all over versatility.. choices within the build and the ability to multi-class..
We even have in game stuff that lets me make different choices in my build that I can offset with gear... things like "keen" means I potentially can save a feat on a melee... dex to damage, Int to damage, cha to damage..

[Portalcat]

Please let us know exactly which monsters this is occurring on.

Only Lantern Archons in the Update 27 Lamannia builds are intended to have a Spell Resistance higher than 50 (Lantern Archons have extremely high spell resistance as a monster feature).

There are a handful of monster types higher than 45, as well, but it's a minority, mostly bosses such as Erinyes, Mariliths, etc. If it was any other monster besides a Lantern Archon we'd want to investigate that.

It was nearly every mob type I tried. I think tieflings were an exception. I didn't really spend enough time looking on it to tell the difference between, say, dretches and orthons.

It's a bit hard to tell exactly what the spell resistance was on given mob types since its only displays onscreen on a failure (e.g. 42 + X in the dice icon), and the combat chat log moves a mile a minute while you're still fighting things.

Here's another post saying like 51 seemed like the number to hit in the first Lamannia build.


Tangential - the next time you guys take a look at what's displayed on the character sheet, numbers for spell penetration and DCs to schools would be nice to add. It's easy enough to look up DCs to schools by hovering over spells, but there's not a good way to quickly check one's spell penetration without failing on some rolls.

[Ape_Man]

Tangential - the next time you guys take a look at what's displayed on the character sheet, numbers for spell penetration and DCs to schools would be nice to add. It's easy enough to look up DCs to schools by hovering over spells, but there's not a good way to quickly check one's spell penetration without failing on some rolls.

You don't need to fail a spell pen check to see the number, the die shows up when ever you make an attempt pass or fail.