Against the new cleric turning

[MonadRebelion]

Are you basing off of CR? There may also be a turning bonus to HD which does not increase HP but provides a bonus to HD for turning purposes only. Never got DEV clarification on that.

Yeah I'm basing that on CR, which is sketchy, but given the unknowns and the fact it seems to generally work it seems like a justified way to estimate. I'd be interested to know about any outliers.

[Tlorrd]

+1[

That would be fine. Give the Death Domain something else. :P

Also, if this is going in T5 of the RS Tree... then perhaps move the Aura to the 4th Core?

So going on this premise ...

Turn Undead changes to DC will be welcome and we could place Mighty Turning into Tier 5 ... move Healing Aura to tier 4 (my other solution to that is move it to Core 1 of radiant servant and have it increase in healing and reduced proc time on each core of radiant servant, but that's another discussion).

Death Domain could boost TU DC or damage or both and spells like Halt Undead, Control Undead, and Death to Undeath could be SLAs ... or something of that sort, maybe even Slay Living.

[Grace_ana]

I think the idea that turning is working in high levels mostly has to do with the raid. I haven't crunched the numbers in a few years, but from what I remember turning was basically useless against stuff with around 60hd. This meant it was effective against undead kobolds (I think they were 55HD) in EE 3bc, but nothing higher. I haven't run RSO (I'm taking a DDO break atm), but I saw some video of reaper RSO and if I remember correctly the skeletons only had 49 HD, so they were in range surprisingly.

EE 3bc is fairly high level, taking into consideration the claims and assumptions made so far by people. A lot of people claim it's no good even in higher heroics, which is obviously not true. EE 3bc is around level 27 IIRC. It can also be used in the new raid. So turning IS working through most of the content. The problem is severalfold:

1. Epic ward on mobs is just silly. You can't say "we want TU to be effective at all levels" and then go "oh hey, but we will make it so you can't turn mobs."

2. Turning gear needs a huge boost. It's lagged behind forever.

3. The hit dice threshold needs to go.

4. TU needs more boosts along the way to bring it up to par. Making Mighty Turning an autogrant in heroics and then offering an epic feat that boosts Mighty Turning would probably do it, in conjunction with the rest.

Those that say it is useless are wrong. While they may not be able to effectively TU in epics, if some can than it can obviously be done.

[MonadRebelion]

For clerics that don't specialize in TU it's a buff, because TU gains some value rather than no value. For clerics that do specialize in TU it's a buff because you get a better DC (and the other benefits of death domain). Yes, you're forced to make a choice where various options are attractive, but that's the essence of good character building. There is absolutely no way that your character becomes worse than it is now, it is therefore decidedly not a "nerf."

Options:
1. Get a more powerful DC to your TU and keep it's instakill
2. Give up TU instakill to get other neat stuff.

No one is worse off. Not getting every bonus from every option doesn't mean you were nerfed.

I'm not sure what to make of this. All you need to "specialize" in TU now is 3 cleric pl, about 7 maybe 10 ap for radiant servant and some easy to get gear that boosts turning. You could go all out and be a sun elf, but even without doing that you'll be able to instakill virtually every undead in heroics. From that perspective TU is massively nerfed for most content on every cleric without the death domain.

[alceste007]

For clerics that don't specialize in TU it's a buff, because TU gains some value rather than no value. For clerics that do specialize in TU it's a buff because you get a better DC (and the other benefits of death domain). Yes, you're forced to make a choice where various options are attractive, but that's the essence of good character building. There is absolutely no way that your character becomes worse than it is now, it is therefore decidedly not a "nerf."

Options:
1. Get a more powerful DC to your TU and keep its instakill
2. Give up TU instakill to get other neat stuff.

No one is worse off. Not getting every bonus from every option doesn't mean you were nerfed.

This simply can not be stated enough. No one is worse off. You have an option to continue to use the existing turn undead with a better save. You will also have options not to in favor of other abilities. I am in favor of more options. Options are why I like DDO.

[zehnvhex]

It is interesting to read about people saying Turn Undead is highly effective in high difficulty end game content. For almost all of the game's life the overwhelming feedback has been that "Turn Undead is broken and useless" outside of lower level content. When did this change? Is this just about turning high hit point skeletons in the new raid?

With the advent of reaper (and the new raid), insta-kills in general have become far more of a lucrative and worthwhile endeavor. Prior to reaper mode instakills across the board were a waste of resources. That is to say, why bother with Wail of the Banshee when Energy Burst accomplishes the same thing on a far shorter cooldown, works against everything and has no target limit?

That's why builds like triple PK have become so popular. When mobs have EHP of 100k+ thanks to the reaper model, IK's become insanely efficient in both terms of sp cost and time cost.

I suggest you take a look at the shenanigans we're getting away with when it comes to DC casting these days. For example, charm used to be a largely useless spell. Now it's one of the most broken overpowered spells in the game.

[MonadRebelion]

EE 3bc is fairly high level, taking into consideration the claims and assumptions made so far by people. A lot of people claim it's no good even in higher heroics, which is obviously not true. EE 3bc is around level 27 IIRC. It can also be used in the new raid. So turning IS working through most of the content. The problem is severalfold:

1. Epic ward on mobs is just silly. You can't say "we want TU to be effective at all levels" and then go "oh hey, but we will make it so you can't turn mobs."

2. Turning gear needs a huge boost. It's lagged behind forever.

3. The hit dice threshold needs to go.

4. TU needs more boosts along the way to bring it up to par. Making Mighty Turning an autogrant in heroics and then offering an epic feat that boosts Mighty Turning would probably do it, in conjunction with the rest.

Those that say it is useless are wrong. While they may not be able to effectively TU in epics, if some can than it can obviously be done.

Right. If you want to run a cleric sun elf with the tod set, you can turn 2 kobolds at a time in ee 3bc. Since most clerics don't want to do that they are going to just implode and undeath to death since it is a much better investment boosting evocation and necro dc's that work everywhere.

So turning isn't useless in all epics. It's useless in some. A serious problem in epics is that the investment you put into it doesn't pay off much in comparison to other stuff, so you're better off forgetting about it. It's a great investment in heroics to be sure.

[Tlorrd]

With the advent of reaper (and the new raid), insta-kills in general have become far more of a lucrative and worthwhile endeavor. Prior to reaper mode instakills across the board were a waste of resources. That is to say, why bother with Wail of the Banshee when Energy Burst accomplishes the same thing on a far shorter cooldown, works against everything and has no target limit?

That's why builds like triple PK have become so popular. When mobs have EHP of 100k+ thanks to the reaper model, IK's become insanely efficient in both terms of sp cost and time cost.

I suggest you take a look at the shenanigans we're getting away with when it comes to DC casting these days. For example, charm used to be a largely useless spell. Now it's one of the most broken overpowered spells in the game.

every dog has its day in the sun ... charm used to be good, then was useless ... now its good it again ... it will cycle through ... like everything else in this game.

[zehnvhex]

This simply can not be stated enough. No one is worse off. You have an option to continue to use the existing turn undead with a better save. You will also have options not to in favor of other abilities. I am in favor of more options. Options are why I like DDO.

Except it's not really an option is the point.

Here's a few problems with the proposed changes:

Any domain other then death and war are garbage or questionable at best. Most of them grants spells as SLA's that are useless in epics. I mean chain lightning without the increased spell levels, accompanying crit bonuses, etc...etc...is just...why would you ever cast that? Ever? What's the point in being able to use turn undead on elementals if you can't destroy them? And so on and so forth.

You could make a point for EarthQuake as an SLA. The HP one you'd think is nice, but cleric makes for a bad homer splash and HP is not the issue for those types of builds typically.

So either you go death for TU, war if you're a melee cleric, ~~~~maybe~~~~ EarthQuake if you absolutely hate being a druid for some reason aaaaaand that's about it. Unless domains come hand in hand with a general spell pass making non-shiradi sploit DPS casting not terrible...

It ends up being not so much as an 'omg nerf!' so much as a '...oh boy?' response I think. I'm severely underwhelmed by the changes. They could have just removed the HD limitation on TU, made necro/conj (whatever) increase your DC and saved themselves a bunch of work.

[MonadRebelion]

The other alternative that I see would be to make the instakill back in radiant servant enhancement tree and move it up to tier 5 or something.

To me this seems like the right approach thematically. It would be nice to hear from devs the reasoning for why they think the best approach to fixing turning is to put it in the death domain.

To me the radiant servant should be turned into a "doing cool things with turns" tree. No cleric needs help keeping up with heals as much as the radiant servant tree currently suggests.

[zehnvhex]

every dog has its day in the sun ... charm used to be good, then was useless ... now its good it again ... it will cycle through ... like everything else in this game.

I know. I just hope someone at SSG has a handle on this sort of thing. I know Cordo does mostly community stuff so I'm not going to hold him to the fire for not realizing what kind of shenanigans we're up to. But I look at that list of domains again and I have to wonder who thought any of that stuff was any good.

[Tlorrd]

Except it's not really an option is the point.

Here's a few problems with the proposed changes:

Any domain other then death and war are garbage. Most of them grants spells as SLA's that are useless in epics. I mean chain lightning without the increased spell levels, accompanying crit bonuses, etc...etc...is just...why would you ever cast that? Ever? What's the point in being able to use turn undead on elementals if you can't destroy them? And so on and so forth.

So either you go death for TU or war if you're a melee cleric aaaaaand that's it. Unless domains come hand in hand with a general spell pass making non-shiradi sploit DPS casting not terrible...

It ends up being not so much as an 'omg nerf!' so much as a '...oh boy?' response I think. I'm severely underwhelmed by the changes. They could have just removed the HD limitation on TU, made necro/conj (whatever) increase your DC and saved themselves a bunch of work.

Knowledge is not to shabby for DC based casters ... +10 spell pen (possibly more if Divine ED levels count) and +3 DCs ... with a 45 sec cooldown implosion ... could be pretty sweet.

[Seikojin]

It is interesting to read about people saying Turn Undead is highly effective in high difficulty end game content. For almost all of the game's life the overwhelming feedback has been that "Turn Undead is broken and useless" outside of lower level content. When did this change? Is this just about turning high hit point skeletons in the new raid?

What I have seen from turning so far is, much like necro wiz dc, you have to spec for it specifically for it to matter in the high end. By spec, I mean multiple lives, max main stat, tomes, gear, feat picks, enhancements, potions, other buffs, and ship buffs. These make it no-fail destroy/kill. I think the majority of players never get to that mark. So it becomes a all or nothing choice.

I think making it #of undead = cha modifier would be fine, and then cap it on cr of mob instead of hit points or hit dice. For the destroy. Can't destroy, stun. Cant stun, fear. Can't fear, weakness/bane.

I think the cc aspect of turning has more utility than using damage.

I can only imagine it damaging necro players for a while.

[Niminae]

It is interesting to read about people saying Turn Undead is highly effective in high difficulty end game content. For almost all of the game's life the overwhelming feedback has been that "Turn Undead is broken and useless" outside of lower level content. When did this change? Is this just about turning high hit point skeletons in the new raid?

On Normal in RtSO Clerics can turn. I've never run the raid above that difficulty and with a Cleric so I can't speak to that circumstance.

I like the proposals overall. I'd like to see the destroy potential remain for Clerics who aren't in the Destruction Domain, since that is a core aspect of the D&D ability and it should not be discarded. If it is a hard thing to achieve outside of that Domain I have no objection, but it should remain a possibility in order to more closely align with 3.5 D&D.

It has to be tough to balance insta-kills. Currently the methods include high mana costs (rare), long cool downs (PW:Kill, Implosion, etc.), limited uses (Turn Undead), and high DCs and/or immunities (Running on Elite). Champions are immune to a lot of insta-kills via Death Ward, so that is a way that higher difficulty levels just organically limit things like the Turn Undead insta-kill. Allowing Turn Undead to retain the destroy option seems like it would not be overpowered on Normal play (and are the Devs really worried that a Cleric might have an easy time of it on Normal difficulty in an Undead focused quest? That is where they are supposed to be strong!), and would be twice limited in Elite play (via extra CR as well as more death warded Champions) and so would not be overpowered there either.

The discussion of the Domains sounded really interesting. It looked to me as though it really opens up build options and multi-classing potential, which seems like a good thing. I like the party buff portion of the Domains, that retains a lot of class utility.

There was no discussion of Divine Enhancement changes, why? These are needed even if Domains are implemented. Implementing a new system will not magically make an existing and broken system suddenly less broken.

[Tlorrd]

another way I would have gone with TU would be to have it have enhancements in the radiant servant tree ...

Like

One line that was for buffs and/or debuffs (+to saves/PRR/MRR/spell resistance and/or debuffs to mob saves/PRR/MRR/spell resistance)
One line for TU against undead, elementals, and outsiders

[zehnvhex]

Knowledge is not to shabby for DC based casters ... +10 spell pen (possibly more if Divine ED levels count) and +3 DCs ... with a 45 sec cooldown implosion ... could be pretty sweet.

That would be great if TU still was an IK. As it stands you give up the ability to IK undead for the ability to...IK undead. You're basically a crappy wizard at that point. I mean it lets you hit the spell pen 'soft cap' earlier I suppose so you can be a ghetto wizard but if what you want to do is DC casting, a wizard is still going to be superior.

As it stands a big problem with a lot of the SLA's and so forth is 'how does this fit?' Chain missiles as an SLA is great until you wonder what you're going to do while you wait for it to cycle. What makes zombie shiradi work is you're never waiting. So you just end up being a weaker version.

Or like the animal domain. "Omg 800 hp!" Well by the time you get to content where that much extra HP would matter over traditional tanks, you're reaching the point where pure cleric would make an awful tank. Homer builds are hardly dominating the tanking meta and I doubt this would change much.

I mean time will tell. I could end up being very wrong.

[Thar]

Turn Undead as a base ability right now only blows up undead if you reach twice the limit of hit dice as the undead, and it's currently impossible to hit that mark in DDO from about level 15 onwards. The major problem with Turn Undead that the cleric changes are trying to fix is that Turn Undead drastically falls off in Epics, even with Mighty Turning. Players are only barely able to maybe Turn some things (if anything), and that's with half of the actual requirements of Turn Undead as it stands today.

It's not impossible but very past life, build, chr and gear dependent. if you have everything possible you can turn undead in epics. I've seen people do it in RSO. Does it gimp other aspects of the character? yes. is it something any normal player can do, not without a ton of work.

[Thar]

It is interesting to read about people saying Turn Undead is highly effective in high difficulty end game content. For almost all of the game's life the overwhelming feedback has been that "Turn Undead is broken and useless" outside of lower level content. When did this change? Is this just about turning high hit point skeletons in the new raid?

I have seen it done. I know it's possible. Can I do it on my lvl 30 cleric. No. It's not something you can do without ALL the pieces to make it work and that's not how something that's a core class feature should work.

I do applaud changing it, but perhaps look to keep some insta kill undead with uber turning ability at 2x hd or something that makes sense with the change perhaps add epic lvl to the calc. Players are obviously skeptical as they can insta kill some things today but in the future as we know damage alone won't do that as we know that new content hp's just go up and up...

[Powerhungry]

Some are saying Tu can be (somewhat) useful in LN RSO. What about LH or LE or reaper?
DC based casters can achieve viable DCs on those difficulties.
A cleric should be able to achieve viable success at those difficulties with what is considered a paramount ability. A cleric that can't turn TU is just a FvS.
Have these same individual that found success on LN RSO step into Temple of the Deathwyrm on different difficulty settings and report the success of TU.

[zehnvhex]

Some are saying Tu can be

It's important not to get sidetracked.

The crux of the anti-'this idea' movement is not that TU is fine as is. It isn't.

The problem is that they're nerfing Turn Undead ~unless~ you go a specific domain. You'll almost never be in a situation where you'd want to use it as a damage spell. There simply aren't enough undead bosses in the game.

What I imagine most of us would like to see is Turn Undead made good baseline (provided you spec into it of course) and make the death domain something else.

I mean something as simple as removing the restrictions currently on TU and making it work like HtH from Fiend Warlock would be good enough. Destroys Undead and on a fail save, stuns them for 8 seconds. Boom, done!

Then you could make death domain something like on successful TU, refunds TU charge.