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

[Ape_Man]

As far as DC's go, first of all - I don't think that a caster should easily lock down EE level 28 content...almost ever. To me, the only type that should be able to do that is a fully maxed out caster who gave up everything for their enchant DC. I'm not just talking triple completionist, I'm talking +7 tome, all the stats available through feats, destiny, trees, enhancements, gear, potions, etc. (Cue in revision for magister as a DC destiny here - but that's off topic). That guy should hit 90% of the mobs. Everyone else, some happy middle ground. Personally, I'm for stopping with the solo play mentality and returning the game back to being a group activity. If under *THESE* circumstances soloists find themselves succeeding, then that's truly an achievement - right now, it's practically expected.

Sorry, but if crowd control isn't both possible and required the "group play" mechanic will remain dead.

Mobs need to be dangerous enough to paste the melees. What I'd like to see is PRR half as effective in Reaper.

CCing needs to be feasible enough that we don't rely on no-save nonsense and cheesy tactics like perching.

Until that happens the best group in the game is 6 barbarians.

I'm "that guy" except my magister's focus is in necro and not enchant, I don't think I should be able to hold anything but "brutes" should not have strong will saves.

[Vanhooger]

I play my sorc pretty much as my main nowadays, and I can't really complain about my DC's in TOEE as I can about my DPS. The amount of spellpoints I have for the damage I do isn't enough given the amount of HP and resistances the bosses have.

Casters need more spell damage - spells like energy burst and dragon breath need their DC formula revised - even with a low 70's evo DC, those two spells are like mid 60's for me.

As far as DC's go, first of all - I don't think that a caster should easily lock down EE level 28 content...almost ever. To me, the only type that should be able to do that is a fully maxed out caster who gave up everything for their enchant DC. I'm not just talking triple completionist, I'm talking +7 tome, all the stats available through feats, destiny, trees, enhancements, gear, potions, etc. (Cue in revision for magister as a DC destiny here - but that's off topic). That guy should hit 90% of the mobs. Everyone else, some happy middle ground. Personally, I'm for stopping with the solo play mentality and returning the game back to being a group activity. If under *THESE* circumstances soloists find themselves succeeding, then that's truly an achievement - right now, it's practically expected.

Well I suppose in this thread we are talking about the state of DC casting in the new content.

[Abcchef]

I play my sorc pretty much as my main nowadays, and I can't really complain about my DC's in TOEE as I can about my DPS. The amount of spellpoints I have for the damage I do isn't enough given the amount of HP and resistances the bosses have.

Casters need more spell damage - spells like energy burst and dragon breath need their DC formula revised - even with a low 70's evo DC, those two spells are like mid 60's for me.

As far as DC's go, first of all - I don't think that a caster should easily lock down EE level 28 content...almost ever. To me, the only type that should be able to do that is a fully maxed out caster who gave up everything for their enchant DC. I'm not just talking triple completionist, I'm talking +7 tome, all the stats available through feats, destiny, trees, enhancements, gear, potions, etc. (Cue in revision for magister as a DC destiny here - but that's off topic). That guy should hit 90% of the mobs. Everyone else, some happy middle ground. Personally, I'm for stopping with the solo play mentality and returning the game back to being a group activity. If under *THESE* circumstances soloists find themselves succeeding, then that's truly an achievement - right now, it's practically expected.

Right now an 85 enchant dc is borderline useless, and as far as I can tell the max sustained on a spellsinger at least is 86.

[Cetus]

Right now an 85 enchant dc is borderline useless, and as far as I can tell the max sustained on a spellsinger at least is 86.

If thats the case, then plug that scenario into my post and you'll have my position.

In other words, if thats the calculated max and it's borderline useless - then obviously theres a problem. But - triviliazing content with 1 button no fail mass holds isn't the answer either. Either extreme is a bad thing, in my view.

[Cetus]

Sorry, but if crowd control isn't both possible and required the "group play" mechanic will remain dead.

Mobs need to be dangerous enough to paste the melees. What I'd like to see is PRR half as effective in Reaper.

CCing needs to be feasible enough that we don't rely on no-save nonsense and cheesy tactics like perching.

Until that happens the best group in the game is 6 barbarians.

I'm "that guy" except my magister's focus is in necro and not enchant, I don't think I should be able to hold anything but "brutes" should not have strong will saves.

I'm not sure what you're responding to, we pretty much agreed there. Crowd control should absolutely be possible - I just think that a near 100% lockdown should only be possible through radical investment. I'm painting with a broad brush here, of course if its a group of "brutes" you probably should 100% lock them down, since you're targetting a weak save.

[Vanhooger]

I'm not sure what you're responding to, we pretty much agreed there. Crowd control should absolutely be possible - I just think that a near 100% lockdown should only be possible through radical investment. I'm painting with a broad brush here, of course if its a group of "brutes" you probably should 100% lock them down, since you're targetting a weak save.

I think we (at least me) want DC to work, not op. But as it is now no spell land no matter if you have max cha max tome max pl etc.

[Portalcat]

As far as DC's go, first of all - I don't think that a caster should easily lock down EE level 28 content...almost ever. To me, the only type that should be able to do that is a fully maxed out caster who gave up everything for their enchant DC. I'm not just talking triple completionist, I'm talking +7 tome, all the stats available through feats, destiny, trees, enhancements, gear, potions, etc. (Cue in revision for magister as a DC destiny here - but that's off topic). That guy should hit 90% of the mobs. Everyone else, some happy middle ground. Personally, I'm for stopping with the solo play mentality and returning the game back to being a group activity. If under *THESE* circumstances soloists find themselves succeeding, then that's truly an achievement - right now, it's practically expected.

It's not really that simple given that different classes can achieve different max DCs and different mobs are strong/weak against different save types.

As a practical matter, if a caster with a high enough enchant DC to lock down some mobs that are strong against will saves, it will lock down most or all mobs that are weak or middling will saves. That's kind of the point of having mobs with weak will saves.



As a general rule, if you can't hit most things, why bother DC casting at all? It eats a lot of spell points, the spells have relatively long cooldowns, and meanwhile the alternative of just doing damage to mobs also kills them in X number of seconds and eventually thins the crowd. CC or instakills need to be more efficient in some way than whacking things with sticks in order to justify their heavy costs.






Now, it's okay to say that a given mob type should have a fort save or a will save that is impractically high to beat, on the assumption that the player will need to use a different tactic. Most dedicated DC casters are not designed to be complete one-trick ponies. A PM takes Necro first and then has competent but not extreme Enchant DCs too.

However, when you buff all mobs' will saves by 2 dozen and all mobs fort saves by 1 dozen, then have a bunch of mobs with high base fort saves, what's left?

[Lonnbeimnech]

Except that the saves of the mobs are not that high in today's game. The problem is that casters are about 30 DC behind swashbuckler and vanguard...

[Cetus]

It's not really that simple given that different classes can achieve different max DCs and different mobs are strong/weak against different save types.

As a practical matter, if a caster with a high enough enchant DC to lock down some mobs that are strong against will saves, it will lock down most or all mobs that are weak or middling will saves. That's kind of the point of having mobs with weak will saves.



Now, it's okay to say that a given mob type should have a fort save or a will save that is impractically high to beat, on the assumption that the player will need to use a different tactic. Most dedicated DC casters are not designed to be complete one-trick ponies. A PM takes Necro first and then has competent but not extreme Enchant DCs too.

However, when you buff all mobs' will saves by 2 dozen and all mobs fort saves by 1 dozen, then have a bunch of mobs with high base fort saves....

Yea, these are all fair points.

To step away from DC's for a moment - the thing that absolutely needs to improve at least for sorcs and wizards is a much better spell damage/spell point ratio. Against current bosses, it's just not anywhere near efficient - unless you're in shiradi.

[Vargouille]

Tentatively, amongst other balance changes, we're planning to:

1. Remove the general +4 bonus to saving throws from the Shavarath Environmental Effect (affecting all player characters and monsters in Shavarath).
2. Remove Epic Resilience from Update 27 quests. We still want to revisit this in a more thorough fashion (ideally along with some other factors, such as Epic Ward and related things), but this should make a big difference for Update 27.

This reduces "healthy" monster saves by -10, compared to the most recent Lamannia. The Shavarath Environmental Effects still give player and monsters characters +4 to Will saves vs. Fear and +4 to Will Saves vs. Enchantment (as well as Attack and Skill bonuses), keeping some of the flavor and gameplay differences present in Shavarath. This doesn't cover every change, and there are likely to be some changes to saving throws for some individual monster types as well. (We're likely to make sure that each monster has at least one sufficiently "low" save that moderately built characters should be able to target that save on that monster very effectively.)

We're still exploring options for Spell Resistance, which is potentially "causing problems" for DC casters as much as saving throws, since about 75% of monster types in Update 27 have some kind of Spell Resistance. On Epic Elite, most Update 27 monster types have Spell Resistance between 40->45. To some extent this is the nature of the lore and content, but we still want players to feel like they can contribute here with their characters. It may very well come down to simply lowering Spell Resistances for some groups of Monster Types in ways that aren't necessarily "normal" for those monster types, but we want to explore options before committing to that route. Ideas still welcome. (Some demonstrative but crazier ideas that are less likely to come to pass: Limited, temporary and/or consumable items that increase Spell Penetration; environmental effects that reduce Spell Penetration "on-hit", potentially for spells and/or physical attacks, etc. Most such ideas are probably either just bad design or not feasible due to tech issues, but we'd like to at least consider some such ideas.)

[Vanhooger]

Tentatively, amongst other balance changes, we're planning to:

1. Remove the general +4 bonus to saving throws from the Shavarath Environmental Effect (affecting all player characters and monsters in Shavarath).
2. Remove Epic Resilience from Update 27 quests. We still want to revisit this in a more thorough fashion (ideally along with some other factors, such as Epic Ward and related things), but this should make a big difference for Update 27.

This reduces "healthy" monster saves by -10, compared to the most recent Lamannia. The Shavarath Environmental Effects still give player and monsters characters +4 to Will saves vs. Fear and +4 to Will Saves vs. Enchantment (as well as Attack and Skill bonuses), keeping some of the flavor and gameplay differences present in Shavarath. This doesn't cover every change, and there are likely to be some changes to saving throws for some individual monster types as well. (We're likely to make sure that each monster has at least one sufficiently "low" save that moderately built characters should be able to target that save on that monster very effectively.)

We're still exploring options for Spell Resistance, which is potentially "causing problems" for DC casters as much as saving throws, since about 75% of monster types in Update 27 have some kind of Spell Resistance. On Epic Elite, most Update 27 monster types have Spell Resistance between 40->45. To some extent this is the nature of the lore and content, but we still want players to feel like they can contribute here with their characters. It may very well come down to simply lowering Spell Resistances for some groups of Monster Types in ways that aren't necessarily "normal" for those monster types, but we want to explore options before committing to that route. Ideas still welcome. (Some demonstrative but crazier ideas that are less likely to come to pass: Limited, temporary and/or consumable items that increase Spell Penetration; environmental effects that reduce Spell Penetration "on-hit", potentially for spells and/or physical attacks, etc. Most such ideas are probably either just bad design or not feasible due to tech issues, but we'd like to at least consider some such ideas.)

Really appreciate you're effort. Thanks.

[Hobgoblin]

Tentatively, amongst other balance changes, we're planning to:

1. Remove the general +4 bonus to saving throws from the Shavarath Environmental Effect (affecting all player characters and monsters in Shavarath).
2. Remove Epic Resilience from Update 27 quests. We still want to revisit this in a more thorough fashion (ideally along with some other factors, such as Epic Ward and related things), but this should make a big difference for Update 27.

This reduces "healthy" monster saves by -10, compared to the most recent Lamannia. The Shavarath Environmental Effects still give player and monsters characters +4 to Will saves vs. Fear and +4 to Will Saves vs. Enchantment (as well as Attack and Skill bonuses), keeping some of the flavor and gameplay differences present in Shavarath. This doesn't cover every change, and there are likely to be some changes to saving throws for some individual monster types as well. (We're likely to make sure that each monster has at least one sufficiently "low" save that moderately built characters should be able to target that save on that monster very effectively.)

We're still exploring options for Spell Resistance, which is potentially "causing problems" for DC casters as much as saving throws, since about 75% of monster types in Update 27 have some kind of Spell Resistance. On Epic Elite, most Update 27 monster types have Spell Resistance between 40->45. To some extent this is the nature of the lore and content, but we still want players to feel like they can contribute here with their characters. It may very well come down to simply lowering Spell Resistances for some groups of Monster Types in ways that aren't necessarily "normal" for those monster types, but we want to explore options before committing to that route. Ideas still welcome. (Some demonstrative but crazier ideas that are less likely to come to pass: Limited, temporary and/or consumable items that increase Spell Penetration; environmental effects that reduce Spell Penetration "on-hit", potentially for spells and/or physical attacks, etc. Most such ideas are probably either just bad design or not feasible due to tech issues, but we'd like to at least consider some such ideas.)

wow!

not sure if that is enough, but it sure is a step that way.

thanks for listening!

[Ape_Man]

Tentatively, amongst other balance changes, we're planning to:

1. Remove the general +4 bonus to saving throws from the Shavarath Environmental Effect (affecting all player characters and monsters in Shavarath).
2. Remove Epic Resilience from Update 27 quests. We still want to revisit this in a more thorough fashion (ideally along with some other factors, such as Epic Ward and related things), but this should make a big difference for Update 27.

This reduces "healthy" monster saves by -10, compared to the most recent Lamannia. The Shavarath Environmental Effects still give player and monsters characters +4 to Will saves vs. Fear and +4 to Will Saves vs. Enchantment (as well as Attack and Skill bonuses), keeping some of the flavor and gameplay differences present in Shavarath. This doesn't cover every change, and there are likely to be some changes to saving throws for some individual monster types as well. (We're likely to make sure that each monster has at least one sufficiently "low" save that moderately built characters should be able to target that save on that monster very effectively.)

We're still exploring options for Spell Resistance, which is potentially "causing problems" for DC casters as much as saving throws, since about 75% of monster types in Update 27 have some kind of Spell Resistance. On Epic Elite, most Update 27 monster types have Spell Resistance between 40->45. To some extent this is the nature of the lore and content, but we still want players to feel like they can contribute here with their characters. It may very well come down to simply lowering Spell Resistances for some groups of Monster Types in ways that aren't necessarily "normal" for those monster types, but we want to explore options before committing to that route. Ideas still welcome. (Some demonstrative but crazier ideas that are less likely to come to pass: Limited, temporary and/or consumable items that increase Spell Penetration; environmental effects that reduce Spell Penetration "on-hit", potentially for spells and/or physical attacks, etc. Most such ideas are probably either just bad design or not feasible due to tech issues, but we'd like to at least consider some such ideas.)

Looking forward to testing the snot out of this, thank you.

[Abcchef]

Thanks for the update, as far as spell pen it has been a non issue for me but I have the benefit of pastlives.

[kain741]

We're still exploring options for Spell Resistance, which is potentially "causing problems" for DC casters as much as saving throws, since about 75% of monster types in Update 27 have some kind of Spell Resistance. On Epic Elite, most Update 27 monster types have Spell Resistance between 40->45. To some extent this is the nature of the lore and content, but we still want players to feel like they can contribute here with their characters.

For EE I don't think 40-45 spell pen is unreasonable. It is well behind drow spell resistance and is very achievable. It may be painful for a first lifer, but EE should be a challenge and should present some difficulties for a first lifer. For those with 9 spell pen from past lives this is a very comfortable number to get to and will not be the deciding factor on whether their spells work...but rather the saves will drive it. Now the question is will the -10 to saves make casting viable...

[Ape_Man]

For EE I don't think 40-45 spell pen is unreasonable.

Me neither.

[FranOhmsford]

I play my sorc pretty much as my main nowadays, and I can't really complain about my DC's in TOEE as I can about my DPS. The amount of spellpoints I have for the damage I do isn't enough given the amount of HP and resistances the bosses have.

Casters need more spell damage - spells like energy burst and dragon breath need their DC formula revised - even with a low 70's evo DC, those two spells are like mid 60's for me.

As far as DC's go, first of all - I don't think that a caster should easily lock down EE level 28 content...almost ever. To me, the only type that should be able to do that is a fully maxed out caster who gave up everything for their enchant DC. I'm not just talking triple completionist, I'm talking +7 tome, all the stats available through feats, destiny, trees, enhancements, gear, potions, etc. (Cue in revision for magister as a DC destiny here - but that's off topic). That guy should hit 90% of the mobs. Everyone else, some happy middle ground. Personally, I'm for stopping with the solo play mentality and returning the game back to being a group activity. If under *THESE* circumstances soloists find themselves succeeding, then that's truly an achievement - right now, it's practically expected.

So...Please tell me what a caster who's only got a 50% 1/2 chance at Instakilling or CCing a mob and every mob has so much hp that Spell DPS is utterly unviable is supposed to do in a group other than buff the melees and pike?

The reason we've hit this point where so many people can solo everything is because no-one wants to have to Pike in Groups!

When Wizards/Sorcs were CC Bots do you remember the complaints?
When Clerics/FvSs were Healers only do you remember the complaints?
When the Assassin wouldn't get the traps because he was an Assassin do you remember the complaints?

I DO!

Everyone wants to be able to do some DPS! Everyone wants to be able to compete! {Yes compete - Do you not recall all the Kill Counters?}, Only a very small number of people are happy to Pike!

Most of all Everyone wants to be seen to be doing something in a Party! To be contributing more than a Heal or getting that one trap in a 45 minute quest!

There's still people out there who build Tanks to TANK! Even with the hatred shown to them in DDO for the past 5-6 Years and going! Because the Tank was the one non-DPS build where you could be seen by everyone to be contributing!
But other people didn't like that so they built DPS characters that could steal the aggro off the tank no matter how good he/she was! They deliberately stole that aggro! So only the very best Tanks were capable and everyone else simply gave up trying to build one!

The Devs have given us what we wanted - They've given us a game where DPS is King! And Self-Healing is Queen!


The Problem we have now is that Requirements to do any of that other stuff - Tanking, CCing, Instakilling etc. have got so high that only Pure DPS is viable!

Mob Saves have to come down!

Think of it like the Trap pass where the Devs rebalanced every trap in the game so as to have quests of Lvl 16 and up actually have DCs that mattered! - Durk's Got a Secret Trap lost about 10 pts of DC, Cabal For One went down by even more!
But we got DCs in Epic levels that actually made getting good trap skills meaningful again!

We need that doing with Mob Saves!
Reduce them everywhere!
Work out what the maximum DC a Player can hit is at each level and balance all Classes with Instakills or CC to be able to hit that max DC with work - Some classes may not be able to hit that max DC at early levels but will catch up at later levels.
Then the Devs can properly balance new content and gear each update rather than having this constant Buff/Nerf cycle!


P.S. If the Devs are relying on a full group with a Fighter to take down the mobs saves by 3 and a Bard to take the mobs saves down by 3 and a FvS to take the mobs saves down by 3 BEFORE the Wizard should cast his Disco Ball/Wail then they're doing it wrong!
There's 14 Classes in DDO now and HUNDREDS of Builds! There's absolutely no guarantee that a Group will consist of the right Builds to do that!

[FranOhmsford]

Tentatively, amongst other balance changes, we're planning to:

1. Remove the general +4 bonus to saving throws from the Shavarath Environmental Effect (affecting all player characters and monsters in Shavarath).
2. Remove Epic Resilience from Update 27 quests. We still want to revisit this in a more thorough fashion (ideally along with some other factors, such as Epic Ward and related things), but this should make a big difference for Update 27.

This reduces "healthy" monster saves by -10, compared to the most recent Lamannia. The Shavarath Environmental Effects still give player and monsters characters +4 to Will saves vs. Fear and +4 to Will Saves vs. Enchantment (as well as Attack and Skill bonuses), keeping some of the flavor and gameplay differences present in Shavarath. This doesn't cover every change, and there are likely to be some changes to saving throws for some individual monster types as well. (We're likely to make sure that each monster has at least one sufficiently "low" save that moderately built characters should be able to target that save on that monster very effectively.)

We're still exploring options for Spell Resistance, which is potentially "causing problems" for DC casters as much as saving throws, since about 75% of monster types in Update 27 have some kind of Spell Resistance. On Epic Elite, most Update 27 monster types have Spell Resistance between 40->45. To some extent this is the nature of the lore and content, but we still want players to feel like they can contribute here with their characters. It may very well come down to simply lowering Spell Resistances for some groups of Monster Types in ways that aren't necessarily "normal" for those monster types, but we want to explore options before committing to that route. Ideas still welcome. (Some demonstrative but crazier ideas that are less likely to come to pass: Limited, temporary and/or consumable items that increase Spell Penetration; environmental effects that reduce Spell Penetration "on-hit", potentially for spells and/or physical attacks, etc. Most such ideas are probably either just bad design or not feasible due to tech issues, but we'd like to at least consider some such ideas.)

Excuse me but can someone please give us the breakdown on how to get guaranteed 46 Spell Pen on a 1st Life Lvl 28?

[BankCoffer]

Excuse me but can someone please give us the breakdown on how to get guaranteed 46 Spell Pen on a 1st Life Lvl 28?

I would, but then you would call it an exploit or some such.

[Portalcat]

Tentatively, amongst other balance changes, we're planning to:

1. Remove the general +4 bonus to saving throws from the Shavarath Environmental Effect (affecting all player characters and monsters in Shavarath).
2. Remove Epic Resilience from Update 27 quests. We still want to revisit this in a more thorough fashion (ideally along with some other factors, such as Epic Ward and related things), but this should make a big difference for Update 27.

This reduces "healthy" monster saves by -10, compared to the most recent Lamannia. The Shavarath Environmental Effects still give player and monsters characters +4 to Will saves vs. Fear and +4 to Will Saves vs. Enchantment (as well as Attack and Skill bonuses), keeping some of the flavor and gameplay differences present in Shavarath. This doesn't cover every change, and there are likely to be some changes to saving throws for some individual monster types as well. (We're likely to make sure that each monster has at least one sufficiently "low" save that moderately built characters should be able to target that save on that monster very effectively.)

We're still exploring options for Spell Resistance, which is potentially "causing problems" for DC casters as much as saving throws, since about 75% of monster types in Update 27 have some kind of Spell Resistance. On Epic Elite, most Update 27 monster types have Spell Resistance between 40->45. To some extent this is the nature of the lore and content, but we still want players to feel like they can contribute here with their characters. It may very well come down to simply lowering Spell Resistances for some groups of Monster Types in ways that aren't necessarily "normal" for those monster types, but we want to explore options before committing to that route. Ideas still welcome. (Some demonstrative but crazier ideas that are less likely to come to pass: Limited, temporary and/or consumable items that increase Spell Penetration; environmental effects that reduce Spell Penetration "on-hit", potentially for spells and/or physical attacks, etc. Most such ideas are probably either just bad design or not feasible due to tech issues, but we'd like to at least consider some such ideas.)

Thank-you. I'm really looking forward to the next Lamannia build now.




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.

Spell resistance in the 40-45 range would be pretty readily beatable without substantial changes. Spell resistance in the mid 50s takes some DC tradeoffs.


With respect to spell penetration - one problem is that there are relatively few items which offer spell penetration bonuses, and those that do largely conflict with existing slots which are required to slot key items. I've been running with an EE Belt of the Seven Ideals for a couple years now. Spell Pen +7 is available on Thunderforged, but you have to go with 2 one-handers and lose out on the +1 exceptional DC from a two-hander. The spell penetration +6 cloak in the new raid offers an answer at the cost of using up a slot for a single meaningful effect; if I go that route, I'm probably dropping my GS item at this point. Much better would be if spell penetration were on the revised version of the +12 INT belt; literally anything >3 would be a big help, but 6 would sure be nice.

Honestly though? It would be really nice if a good chunk of Spell Penetration was available as a tier on the upcoming Epic Greensteel items when you guys do Epic Vale which doesn't conflict with DC-related stuff, like it does on Thunderforged.