Caster update to get rid of insta kills

[Lynnabel]

Ooh, now I don’t know who to believe.

The fun part about speculation like this is that everyone can believe whatever they want and we can't actually dissuade them :P

[nokowi]

The fun part about speculation like this is that everyone can believe whatever they want and we can't actually dissuade them :P

Fun for you, not for us.

The history of 180 degree design changes is big enough to make nearly any speculation somewhat plausible, and its not hard to find contradictory dev statements within a short time frame.

Remember when the game wasn't going to be designed around reaper?

[redoubt]

That's fine.

It's the holds that are more value in a group.

Hopefully they'll also deal with the reaper charming.

Nah.

How many people would still play DC casters if they could only use the hold spell in reaper?

[Razor_Wit]

I heard the same rumor. But also that to compensate for the change they will be giving casters bonuses to doublestrike while equipping scepters.

[Memnir]

[janave]

It would more than enough to give them proper casting time and cooldown, no other nerf needed, never was in fact.

It is the debug_mode=1 levels of instant kill cooldowns that break the game.

Single target ones => 20s
AoE and Aura ones => 120s

Sorcs 20% off.

Increase casting time +1500ms.

This is closer in sync with other instant kills in the game.

Binary death ward should changed into % deflection, new gear option, bypass that deflection.
Other one: Casting time reduction 30-60-90%.

/goodgame


I need a designer job

[MaeveTuohy]

Nah.

How many people would still play DC casters if they could only use the hold spell in reaper?

Isn't that the point of rejuvenating dps casting?

[redoubt]

Isn't that the point of rejuvenating dps casting?

No. Fixing DPS casting has nothing to do with DC casting.

[redoubt]

It would more than enough to give them proper casting time and cooldown, no other nerf needed, never was in fact.

It is the debug_mode=1 levels of instant kill cooldowns that break the game.

Single target ones => 20s
AoE and Aura ones => 120s

Sorcs 20% off.

Increase casting time +1500ms.

This is closer in sync with other instant kills in the game.

IF DC casters had melee DPS, then sure, but that is the opposite of the design. DC casters are really only good at spells with DCs. Their dps is bad. Putting a long cool down on them would remove them from the game. Besides, even melee instakills are on quicker cooldowns than 20s.

Binary death ward should changed into % deflection, new gear option, bypass that deflection.
Other one: Casting time reduction 30-60-90%.

Like:
Spell Penetration
Deathward
Immunities...

DPS casters need help. DC casters are in a pretty good place. I don't understand why people want to screw up one of the few things not broken.

[LurkingVeteran]

Clearly insta-kills don't mesh well with their difficulty-through-hitpoints approach.

The problem with the original attempt at balancing them through cooldown, is that they have given builds access to up to 7 different insta-kill cooldowns by now.

There is no good way to balance this. I'll note that in D&D 5.0, insta-kill spells were converted to high single-target damage. That could solve a lot of caster DC/DPS balancing problems in DDO also, but I'm not sure they would dare. It would certainly be preferable to a blanket immunity though.

[Jetrule]

If this is under consideration I am sure wiser heads will prevail. What dps casters need is dps spells doing better dps not insta kills doing dps. Mostly through heroics dps casters are fine. My fav heroic racial life has been as a dps/cc casting spell singer. It is in epics reaper and mid+ reapers in higher heroics that the dps casting falls apart. tone down the reaper nerf on spell damage a bit and juice a few feats and epic destiny abilities and dps casting is back.

Epic spell power should add 50+ spell power. H3ll ball, ruin, spirit knives, arcane pulse, draconic energy aura, tsunami, meteor strike from crusader, ea's damge sla's and grtr ruin could all use a damage increase and/or a cooldown decrease.

A few high level spells could use some love. Meteor swarm and fire storm should be buffed significantly. For a maxed out fire caster with 900+ fire spell power and great evo dcs fire storm should be as attractive as implosion. Right now fire storm is worse than flame strike.. And meteor swarm is worse dps than delayed blast fireball for some reason.

[Odysseus2011]

Remember when the game wasn't going to be designed around reaper?

Those were the days. But then again we all knew right then and there that it was a bold faced lie. Even if they truly didn’t want to balance around reaper we knew it would ultimately happen.

[glmfw1]

No. Fixing DPS casting has nothing to do with DC casting.

Monster saves for half damage in a lot of spells
Unless the spell did zero damage in the first place, that's not "nothing".
As DPS casting therefore requires good DCs to be fully effective (unless you are only using no-save spells), it's possible that the fixes that come in for DPS casting may also have a knock on positive effect for DC casters. If DC casters are currently in a good place, but will end up in a better place due to other changes, there might be something in the works that impacts instakills (and other spells) in such a way that they are technically nerfed (leading to the rumour, denied by Lynnabel, that started this thread) while also being buffed by other changes, with a net result of actually remaining in the same place.

[blerkington]

The fun part about speculation like this is that everyone can believe whatever they want and we can't actually dissuade them :P

A better approach to communication on SSG's part would do a lot to improve this state of affairs. And by a lot, I mean A LOT.

I would very much like to trust and respect the development team, and believe what they tell us. Unfortunately there is a long track record of sudden changes of direction, inexplicably odd decisions, mistakes when posting about game mechanics, problems with change proposals that were called in advance but never acknowledged or fixed after implementation, attempts to fob us off when we try to engage with you, obfuscation, ignoring beneficial feedback, refusal to discuss topics, and at times what even appears to be outright dishonesty.

So maybe instead of poking at the community with comments like this, you could be part of the solution instead? You might be very surprised at how much more positive these conversations would get if the company made a better effort to engage with us rather than approaching these interactions as an exercise in wrangling a population of criminals.

Thanks.

[redoubt]

Monster saves for half damage in a lot of spells
Unless the spell did zero damage in the first place, that's not "nothing".
As DPS casting therefore requires good DCs to be fully effective (unless you are only using no-save spells), it's possible that the fixes that come in for DPS casting may also have a knock on positive effect for DC casters. If DC casters are currently in a good place, but will end up in a better place due to other changes, there might be something in the works that impacts instakills (and other spells) in such a way that they are technically nerfed (leading to the rumour, denied by Lynnabel, that started this thread) while also being buffed by other changes, with a net result of actually remaining in the same place.

DPS spells are generally evocation. CC and Instakill are not. Fixing one without buffing the other is simple.

Savant trees:

+1 max caster level in all the cores (not just +1 caster level. The max needs to go up.)
T1 intensity at rank 3 add +1 evocation DCs (called fluidity in water etc)
T1 one with the inferno add +1 CL at rank 3
T2 pierce fire resistance add +1 MCL at rank 3
T3 move fire guard here and spell pen up to T4
T4 change spell pen to 3 ranks +1 CL/+1MCL/+1 Evo DC
T5 evocation focus make 3 ranks at 1 ap each

SLAs (edit: or put firewall and delayed blast fireball as SLAs in Draconic incarnation at cores 2&4)
Put scorch at T2
fireball at T3
firewall at T4
Delayed Blast fireball at T5

Epic levels (proportional to number of sorc level/20)
+1 CL & MCL

Draconic Incarnation
+1 CL & MCL per core. (Not just CL and also in last core.)
T2 add another block of Dragon heritage
T3 change piercing spellcraft to 3 ranks +1 CL/+1MCL/+1 Evo DC
T6 add crit multiplier

Overall, this would go a long way toward fixing the issue of heroic spells not keeping up. Raising the MCL of these spells will greatly help them scale into epics. By putting a lot into savant and draconic it makes dps the domain of sorcerers. Wizards won't get the massive boosts to DPS and will remain poor at dealing direct damage. The SLAs might become to powerful too early in heroics as I wrote them out, but having more SLAs in epic is important (some additional balancing on this issue is likely needed.)

[Renvar]

This reminds me of a thread from a week or two ago "So I heard this in party chat last night....<insert random absurd improbable DDO concept>. Devs, please comment on this to confirm or deny."

Here's a great suggestion: If you don't hear it from an SSG employee on the forums, Discord, a livestream, DDO's Facebook/Twitter, or on a PodCast where a Dev is actually talking: then it isn't anything to get worked up about. The "rumor" is probably someone trolling you.

[glmfw1]

A better approach to communication on SSG's part would do a lot to improve this state of affairs. And by a lot, I mean A LOT.

I would very much like to trust and respect the development team, and believe what they tell us. Unfortunately there is a long track record of sudden changes of direction, inexplicably odd decisions, mistakes when posting about game mechanics, problems with change proposals that were called in advance but never acknowledged or fixed after implementation, attempts to fob us off when we try to engage with you, obfuscation, ignoring beneficial feedback, refusal to discuss topics, and at times what even appears to be outright dishonesty.

Even an extra 5-10 minutes spent proofing release notes before issuing them, to ensure that they are formatted well and written in non-ambiguous language, would go a long way to ensuring the communications that we do get are received well. 39.2 was a particularly good example of bad formatting, with Barbarian DR appearing to be related to Epic Defensive Fighting, while the ambiguous wording "It is now possible to get Mythic versions of several items in Return to White Plume Mountain" left itself open to questions from people who didn't know the background to that issue.

[glmfw1]

DPS spells are generally evocation. CC and Instakill are not. Fixing one without buffing the other is simple.

It all depends on whether the changes that they are planning are evocation specific or whether they are planning general changes (after all, not all spells that cause damage are evocations, so evo specific changes may not solve all the issues). If there are ever plans for new spells to be added (it might happen), making evo specific changes to solve DPS issues now would lead to Transmutation, Necromancy, Abjuration and Conjuration damage spells needing to be adjusted in advance to avoid being under-powered, but doing so could make them too powerful even with no investment.

[cave_diver]

Nah.

How many people would still play DC casters if they could only use the hold spell in reaper?

When cap was 20 for a time being all mobs were epic deathwarded in epics, casters became relegated to making Christmas trees out of mobs and dance parties...it was extremely boring and i stopped playing my caster.

[BoBoDaClown]

The old epic blanket dw was bad as it destroyed the Insta playstyle.

Perhaps random dw in dungeons would help, say 25% of mobs. Means Insta casters could still smash most of a dungeon but not all of it.