U48.4 Preview 1: Balance Changes: Spells

[janave]

I'm really reluctant to jack up spell numbers even beyond the arcane ones. The rule was simple: D6+spell level for pure AoE damage ones. Single target got 1.5x more and some other considerations were taken. The SL9 ones like Acid Well were outliers on longer CDs.

Multi-vial is the Alchemist Meteor. Why should their regular SL5-6 spells severely outdamage SL6 Chain Lightning at D6+6. It's also the highest AoE Air Savants can cast. Water Savants max out with Otilukes at D6+6. Even Fire Savants DBF is only D6+7. Should Alchemist Poison Breath at SL5 out damage Sorc Cone of Cold at SL5? I'm genuinely curious?

Some divine ones listed here are already really strong on paper. Flamestrike doing 2D6+6 (part Force) is extremely good. Firestorm doing D6+8 is also better than anything Sorc has on SL8, and then they additionally get Mass Inflict Critical at D6+13. Maybe this is their compensation for not having Meteor, maybe it makes sense, but it shouldn't be the new normal. Currently Sorc has to burn 2/3 SL9 slots to even compete with a FvS just casting SL5-8 spells.

If all casters are suddenly too weak without massive buffs, just boost epic spell power / crit mult or meta magics.

Dont worry, by the time the new meta is out, they will identify the divine spells were overcalced, and then nerf Sorcerer again for good measure. It is always bestest to just nerf the class you dont like in your sandbox.

[LurkingVeteran]

Those two spells have some major issues.

Firestorm casts on you, and with a delay. That is the flame spell that you see the druids in Barovia drop on themselves all the time.. normally after they die due to the delay from when cast before it goes off. it is supposed to be ranged spell, but it doesnt work right.

Flame strike also has a large delay from cast to effect, which makes it fairly annoying to use and much less effective than it is on paper

I don't dispute that they are wonky, I mentioned it in a previous post (side note: Fire Storm doesn't actually cast on you if you do it properly). But you don't compensate for a poor spell implementation by jacking up damage. That will just force people to play with un-fun spells. It's pretty much going to herd these builds into the (helpless) CC -> nuke routine to get off their wonky big-dice spells. This is already very popular due to the helpless damage increase alone. I expect we'll see a lot of divines pick up No Mercy from Falconry now.

To be clear, I don't think Fire Storms D6+8 is crazy, but it's better than anything Sorc has except Meteor / Acid Well. Flame Strike was more questionable but it's capped at MCL15 so it's only substantially better than Wiz/Sorc for a few levels. It starts to get problematic when you factor in the +15 MCL boost on Flame Strike / Fire Storm in AoV. Same for the CD on Druid Ice Flowers. This seems like it will make them surpass Wizard and give even Fire Sorc's a run for their money. I'm just curious if this is intended, or if I'm missing something.

[LurkingVeteran]

Word of Balance appears to be as advertised. Rest of tests posted here:

Thanks. So does that mean it hits for 2x (D6+13) on twice-off alignments? It's single target if I recall? If so that's probably fine. With the WoB SLA, Druid single target burst is going to be situationally excellent.

It's hard to quantify their AoE since as others noted they will have to string together off-element Firestorm / Flamestrike and/or Sunburst to get a full rotation, but it's likely somewhere between Wizard and Sorc.

With the updated numbers from in-game, I don't think any of it seems OP anymore, but it places some divine builds somewhere between Wizard and Sorc, and that might be a tad high. This is largely due to AoV +15 MCL, Ice Flowers for druid, and the Mass Inflict having higher than expected damage dice (not sure why, are these limited in some way I don't recall?)

[majster67]

In my opinion it is excellent to enhance clerics, artificier druids, flavored soul. But I find it ridiculous that the so called nuker class should have the same damage in pajamas, without self healing, half the hit points etc.
Will you give the sorcerers a d8, heavy armor and infinite spell point and self heal?
In my server I know 1-3 sorcerers who can profitably play high reaper. 5 alchemists. but a dozen paladins, warriors, rogues, various inquisitor combos and a large number of throwers.
Zero warlock. 2 wizards dc.
But there is an important difference: to be good casters absolutely need to have the top of the top of past life reaper trees maxxed unlike other build classes that require much less investment.
Honestly I can't understand the space for a sorcerer, an alchemist (maybe because he can heal? But isn't it a thousand times better then a fws, a cleric, a druid who will do the same damage now and die much less?) or a warlock to high reaper.

It remains as casters, just the wizard instantkiller or cc.
I don't know the wizard nuker because he does not exist except in the mind of someone who does not know the game well or who remained stuck in the time of force based wizards.
You tube is full of videos of paladins, melee, even some very good bard, several alchemists who soloing quests in r8-10.
but ..... is it the norm? NO!
So why a paladin (very good player with 2 million lives) did alone Killing Time I have to nerf all the paladins ?.
Personally I find it absurd.

Monk from stars to rags.artificier , warlock ,warforged, alchemist idem and so on.

I attract you, spend money, change the rules.

At least there was a design to allow the most different styles of play to have fun .. but I'm not convinced for nothing.

Hey man but we (SSG)can't orient the game for those players who only do r6 and up.
My answer: right!
But then I have to play a game for 13 years (paying) to be on par with a new player who with 2 lives and 600 hp join a LFG R8 / 10 and then cries because he has few kills, comes to the forum and whines that the wizard or the alchemist or sorcerer must be nerfed?

SSG have you solved the unclean lag? NO
Have you solved dozens and dozens of bugs? no
have you solved the chopping problem? no

Do you have any idea of ??the damage a melee or thrower produces while I wait 6/9 seconds to cast a nerfed level 9 spell?
I am convinced not.
If after a year you feel you have to nerf the alchemist by 60%, there are only a few possibilities:
1) you HAVE sell a new hyperpumped toy on purpose not caring about the balance
2) you have done something just to sell it not understanding that it was made with feet.
Opening a forum to discuss (pretend to discuss) and declare that in any case a decision has already been made is a joke.
I am too old not to know that this post of mine is just a waste of time but I am no longer stupid enough not to understand that I will not give you a cent anymore.

Amen!
But you use logic. That's a mistake, because they can't do that. They mainly rely on the money from the players, who despite their complaints still pay, and on the whims of Selervin's wet dreams

[SpartanKiller13]

all elemental casters are getting approx 25-18% damage reduction depending on their sp just from the belt change before the artificer and sorc nerfs. Alcemist nerfs were up to 40% total reduction. yes a +20 heart should be provided or refund of the TP.

I mean you get like a month to TR out, which is functionally equivalent to +20'ing your build right? And you get a PL to boot! Get a Bard life in while SWF is good

I'm really reluctant to jack up spell numbers even beyond the arcane ones. The rule was simple: D6+spell level for pure AoE damage ones. Single target got 1.5x more and some other considerations were taken. The SL9 ones like Acid Well were outliers on longer CDs.

Multi-vial is the Alchemist Meteor. Why should their regular SL5-6 spells severely outdamage SL6 Chain Lightning at D6+6. It's also the highest AoE Air Savants can cast. Water Savants max out with Otilukes at D6+6. Even Fire Savants DBF is only D6+7. Should Alchemist Poison Breath at SL5 out damage Sorc Cone of Cold at SL5? I'm genuinely curious?

Some divine ones listed here are already really strong on paper. Flamestrike doing 2D6+6 (part Force) is extremely good. Firestorm doing D6+8 is also better than anything Sorc has on SL8, and then they additionally get Mass Inflict Critical at D6+13. Maybe this is their compensation for not having Meteor, maybe it makes sense, but it shouldn't be the new normal. Currently Sorc has to burn 2/3 SL9 slots to even compete with a FvS just casting SL5-8 spells.

Well, my thought process:

As an Ice Sorc, when Iceberg is on CD do you just sit around? Nah, you cast other spells! Acid Well, Meteor Swarm, Frost Lance, Otilukes, Cone of Cold, etc. I'm not an Ice Sorc, so I might be entirely wrong, but that's what I imagine vs one spell every 9 seconds lol (as a Wizard when blast-casting I'd use Meteor Swarm > Acid Well > PM Stuff > Frost Lance etc).

As an Alchemist when you're trying to output damage and Multivial is on CD (9 seconds now), what do you do? Throw some heals, maybe stance-swap to set up a fresh spike, maybe re-apply CC (I'm assuming you either started with CC or this is for boss DPS)? If you're adventurous, spike Green and throw a Frog? Your non-Multivial DPS options are all low-damage debuffs (Voltaic Burst, Caustic Overload, Melt Armor, or Elemental Combination to stack Vulnerability if nobody else is) plus SLA's (Draconic stuff which everyone can have & Elemental Obliteration which is only worth mentioning because it's cheap). Sure, those debuff spells are d6+3/4 which isn't terrible but they're spread across the spellpower spectrum which costs you a bunch of efficiency as well.

I'll freely admit I'm not a legendary Alchemist so maybe there's some secret to squeeze more DPS out in an efficient manner; but from my limited experience most of what I do between Multivials is not meaningful damage.

If you added like 3 Alchemist damage spells I'd be totally fine with all of their damage spells being competitive like D6+6 or whatever; but there just currently aren't that many high-level Alchemist spells (and they get less spell levels = less slots = less cooldowns).

The best damage spell you can pick up at Alch 15 is Gold Breath dealing 2d4+4 = 9 avg, which is beaten by an Arcane grabbing Otiluke's at level 11/12 for d6+6 = 9.5 avg. And that's the highest-level damage option available, no more pickups at 17/18 etc vs Arcane's hilariously strong L9's.

I'd much prefer adding more spell options to Alchemist, but that's a lot of dev time/effort from a variety of departments (art, animations, balance, etc) vs buffing the existing stuff which is a lot easier. Gold Breath should be at least competitive with DBF (and IMO it should be better, given you get it 2 levels later and it's Alchemist's "capstone" damage spell). Currently it's equivalent to a level 5.5 Arcane spell.

As far as the "rule" of D6+Spell Level? That's pretty unbalanced when Alchemist only gets 6 Spell Levels, no? Unless Multivial gets to be too strong that way. Oh wait...

[EnragedBears]

I can buy into the need to nerf meteor swarm and multivial, but there's a couple of places you (the devs) are losing me.


2) I really don't enjoy playing DPS casters is in raids. The lack of shrines in raid fights, many of which are lengthy, really make that SP bar a valuable resource. I just don't find much fun from having to manage that blue bar relative to dps cause when its out i'm either chugging SP pots or doing terrible dps. These changes only exacerbate this problem, particularly the 40 spell point SLA multivial. This changes puts it out of reach of casting via echoes of power even with endless faith. This is a larger problem in general when it comes to balance, but these changes will likely exacerbate this issue for me. keep the multivial SLA no higher than 30 spell points so its still an option with echoes of power and come up with longer term solutions for DPS casters in long raid fights

I have played 8 life from lvl 1-30 as a pure Alch and agree that in quest content Alch are OP - a DPS nerf are OK.

What pjstechie suggest that the SP cost of "multivial SLA no higher than 30 spell points so its still an option with echoes of power" - is very fair.

Master of Spellvials will never be taken if the removal of multivial are not replace be another spell. Could be Turn to Frog or Flashbang for better CC for Alch.

/Nizzo on Orien

[Stravix]

I have played 8 life from lvl 1-30 as a pure Alch and agree that in quest content Alch are OP - a DPS nerf are OK.

What pjstechie suggest that the SP cost of "multivial SLA no higher than 30 spell points so its still an option with echoes of power" - is very fair.

Master of Spellvials will never be taken if the removal of multivial are not replace be another spell. Could be Turn to Frog or Flashbang for better CC for Alch.

/Nizzo on Orien

To be fair, which other "master of" feat has had the best spell a class has, even without that feat, in it?

That's like master of fire giving +10 to the MCL of meteor swarm. It kinda defeats the point of the feat.

[blarhblarhblarh]

Will they give back our money and ddo points paid for ravenloft WITH ALL OF ITS ITEMS? or just push it to forgotten bug land while people buy the unfinished feywild?

Will they do something to balance players that used otto boxes? lag issues? chat issues? major and minor bugs? broken animations that even amateurs would fix in a couple days? an working client without third part programs? a preset options for windows 10 users?a linux instalation? option to buy stuff via steam?


Or they will only give us this lame excuse / lie that they are doing it because every sorcerer can solo r10??? just ********. Did a r10 tempest last night, killed 3 mobs, the TANK was the toon with more kills (33) because he can also instakill and self-heal as a wizard. Name one mmo whose tank can do all of this. But now name one MMO that nerf party ROLES created by D&D 50 years ago, this one is ddo nerfing nukers and glass cannons. In some games they deal 5 times the damage of other classes, here ddo´s staff don´t like bow rangers so they screw it, don´t like nukers so they nerf it and it´s so anti D&D that many players even forget this is DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS online. Any doubt can be dismissed looking for the 3.5 core rulebook. Sorc will have the same dps than the druid them will it be able to heal itself or turn to a wolf only because developers forgot party roles?


If not ddo is simple doing a bad move against the things that actually work in the game and this will be the last purge in ddo. No player will trust the company to spend money in it after this. There are ways to nerf without touching an item and ALL player base are against touching a ravenloft item. So hear the players call while there are some of us left, because we can´t even open a ticket because the system is broken and when we can open the ticket no one is there to answer.

[Stravix]

Will they give back our money and ddo points paid for ravenloft WITH ALL OF ITS ITEMS? or just push it to forgotten bug land while people buy the unfinished feywild?

Will they do something to balance players that used otto boxes? lag issues? chat issues? major and minor bugs? broken animations that even amateurs would fix in a couple days? an working client without third part programs? a preset options for windows 10 users?a linux instalation? option to buy stuff via steam?


Or they will only give us this lame excuse / lie that they are doing it because every sorcerer can solo r10??? just ********. Did a r10 tempest last night, killed 3 mobs, the TANK was the toon with more kills (33) because he can also instakill and self-heal as a wizard. Name one mmo whose tank can do all of this. But now name one MMO that nerf party ROLES created by D&D 50 years ago, this one is ddo nerfing nukers and glass cannons. In some games they deal 5 times the damage of other classes, here ddo´s staff don´t like bow rangers so they screw it, don´t like nukers so they nerf it and it´s so anti D&D that many players even forget this is DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS online. Any doubt can be dismissed looking for the 3.5 core rulebook. Sorc will have the same dps than the druid them will it be able to heal itself or turn to a wolf only because developers forgot party roles?


If not ddo is simple doing a bad move against the things that actually work in the game and this will be the last purge in ddo. No player will trust the company to spend money in it after this. There are ways to nerf without touching an item and ALL player base are against touching a ravenloft item. So hear the players call while there are some of us left, because we can´t even open a ticket because the system is broken and when we can open the ticket no one is there to answer.

Sweet Khyber, is this a joke, or are you legit about this?

Ravenloft is four years old at this point. If 3 items from the entire list of items from that 12+ quest expansion being changed gets you this riled up, to the point where you want a refund on a purchase made 4 years ago, then you are truly deserving of the name "Karen."

Also, all of the players saying the belt nerf, that SSG has stated multiple times that they wanted to remove, is completely justified clearly don't exist. Clearly ALL playerbase wants this change to not go though, and I am simply part of the fake playerbase.

[janave]

Well, my thought process:

As an Ice Sorc, when Iceberg is on CD do you just sit around? Nah, you cast other spells! Acid Well, Meteor Swarm, Frost Lance, Otilukes, Cone of Cold, etc. I'm not an Ice Sorc, so I might be entirely wrong, but that's what I imagine vs one spell every 9 seconds lol

Yeah, not really.


Air and Ice dont really use meta stacked L9s, those spells are usually reserved for champs, reapers, bosses. 100+ points / cast / target is really not efficient. You know probably that opposite elements get significant debuffs and using the capstone form stance also debuffs each other element, so your spell point to damage ratio is going way down.

Only Fire could spamcast L9, and generally the reason why it was lightyears ahead way before the actual mathematical supremacy. Meteor being a multi hit spell also gives you the debuff component in 1 action, while Air and Ice being single target single hit, needs actual debuffing spells tossed in ( more time, more spell points).

Water would use Cone of Cold and Freezing Ball for clearing, and mostly Polar Ray for single target DPS.

Air is already quite a bit worse off again, no Polar Ray, and less synergy boosting Glacial Wrath.


This is why the 1st Sorcerer nerf upset the 2 players / server playing non-fire Savants, we lost 2 MCL on the entire rotation, not just on Meteor...


Devs dont playtest every build, and only gather feedback from players who play Fire,.... that is where we are now.


Sorcerer is the only class with 4+1 competing DPS trees, little to no synergy, maximum bias

[Matuse]

Mass Inflict having higher than expected damage dice (not sure why, are these limited in some way I don't recall?)

Well, it doesn't work at all against undead, constructs, and any living enemies that get death ward. That's a pretty giant chunk of target selection.

[Iriale]

Disclaimer

Everything seen on the preview server, Lamannia, is not final and is subject to change or removal before live release.

This is the BALANCE CHANGES: SPELLS portion of the release notes.

Preface
Nukers are fairly strong right now overall, but we've identified two particular outliers: Alchemists and Fire Sorcerers. There are several factors involved in why they're ahead of others, but one of the largest factors in both are their top-end spells. Multivial and Meteor Swarm are significantly ahead of their fellow top-end-nuker spells, largely due to good damage dice, below-average cooldowns, and significant boosts to caster levels. As a result, we've brought those spells down to be much closer to Acid Well, Iceberg, and Thunderstroke - and met in the middle on cooldowns, buffing those three spells in the process. While this won't solve all disparities between nukers and other kinds of characters, we believe this brings them a little closer together, makes other kinds of wizards and sorcerers a little more viable, and makes partying with these nukers less one-sided.


Alchemist, Sorcerer, and Wizard Spells

• Iceberg's cooldown has been reduced to 6 seconds for Sorcerers, 9 seconds for Wizards.
• Thunderstroke's cooldown has been reduced to 6 seconds for Sorcerers, 9 seconds for Wizards.
• Acid Well's cooldown has been reduced to 6 seconds for Sorcerers, 9 seconds for Wizards.
• Meteor Swarm's cooldown has been raised to 6 seconds for Sorcerers, 9 seconds for Wizards.
• Multivial's cooldown has been raised to 9 seconds.
• Multivial's damage dice has changed to 1d4+3 (Element) per caster level per projectile.
• Master of Spellvials no longer applies to Multivial.
• Multivial spells now cost 40 SP for both the core spell and the Bombardier SLA versions.
• Fixed Multivial's tooltip to show the correct Max Caster Level (20).
• Meteor Swarm's Max Caster Level has been reduced from 30 to 20 to match Iceberg, Thunderstroke, Acid Well, and Multivial.

I repeat, and why is rend the soul not improved? It's already worse than these spells (it works on fewer targets, currently the game penalizes dots over big nukers) and this update is going to take a huge hit on a class that already has low dps (wizard).

[LurkingVeteran]

I repeat, and why is rend the soul not improved? It's already worse than these spells (it works on fewer targets, currently the game penalizes dots over big nukers) and this update is going to take a huge hit on a class that already has low dps (wizard).

Good point. However, there are several discrepancies between the patch notes and what's actually on Lama, so it might already be in. It makes no sense not to lower the CD of that also.

[Stravix]

I repeat, and why is rend the soul not improved? It's already worse than these spells (it works on fewer targets, currently the game penalizes dots over big nukers) and this update is going to take a huge hit on a class that already has low dps (wizard).

This seems to be mostly a divine spell pass, similar to the old arcane spell pass. They said the dot spell pass would come later, and even though this update took too long (seriously, how long ago was the arcane pass?) it means that DoT spells rework is (hopefully) next.

let's just hope they can turn that one around faster than this one.

[Iriale]

This seems to be mostly a divine spell pass, similar to the old arcane spell pass. They said the dot spell pass would come later, and even though this update took too long (seriously, how long ago was the arcane pass?) it means that DoT spells rework is (hopefully) next.

let's just hope they can turn that one around faster than this one.

Rend the Soul is a spell that has been introduced very recently. Why bother to create something useless? It doesn't make sense, it's wasted work. When it came out, many of us protested and Lynnabel said if we would have preferred it to be a big nuke instead of a dot. Of course we prefer it, these devs hate dots and make them useless. It would be different if these devs didn't have such a skewed design, but as they design ...

No no no. If you have time to craft all these nerfs, you have time to upgrade this 9th-level spell and make it usable.

[LurkingVeteran]

Rend the Soul is a spell that has been introduced very recently. Why bother to create something useless? It doesn't make sense, it's wasted work. When it came out, many of us protested and Lynnabel said if we would have preferred it to be a big nuke instead of a dot. Of course we prefer it, these devs hate dots and make them useless. It would be different if these devs didn't have such a skewed design, but as they design ...

No no no. If you have time to craft all these nerfs, you have time to upgrade this 9th-level spell and make it usable.

Changing the spell is one thing, but it should at the very least get the reduced CD that the other Arcane SL9 damage spells got. They could also condense the DoT to 6 seconds instead of 10, as I doubt it stacks with itself.

[Stravix]

Rend the Soul is a spell that has been introduced very recently. Why bother to create something useless? It doesn't make sense, it's wasted work. When it came out, many of us protested and Lynnabel said if we would have preferred it to be a big nuke instead of a dot. Of course we prefer it, these devs hate dots and make them useless. It would be different if these devs didn't have such a skewed design, but as they design ...

No no no. If you have time to craft all these nerfs, you have time to upgrade this 9th-level spell and make it usable.

Craft all of these nerfs? Literally 2 spells got nerfed, and a bunch got buffed. Look, I agree that DoTs should be in a better spot, as they should be the kings of single target sustained damage. But making up false equivalencies isn't going to help your cause.

[LurkingVeteran]

I'll also point out that several BANE damage spells like Word of Balance and Destruction got buffed to reasonable damage now (the horror!). For the longest time SSG has refused to buff Disintegrate because it's BANE damage, and that is somehow OP. Just to recap, Destruction now does D6+10=13.5 bane damage on a failed fortitude save. Disintegrate does 2D3+6=10 bane damage on a successful fort save and nothing on a failed save. I think Word of Balance now does Iceberg level of bane damage on alignments two steps from True Neutral, or half Iceberg on most creatures.

These might be slightly overtuned, but it's time to buff the iconic spell Disintegrate to useful levels at least. I suggest at least D6+12 since it's 0 on save and polar ray does D6+12 cold with no save.

[Iriale]

I'll also point out that several BANE damage spells like Word of Balance and Destruction got buffed to reasonable damage now (the horror!). For the longest time SSG has refused to buff Disintegrate because it's BANE damage, and that is somehow OP. Just to recap, Destruction now does D6+10=13.5 bane damage on a failed fortitude save. Disintegrate does 2D3+6=10 bane damage on a successful fort save and nothing on a failed save. I think Word of Balance now does Iceberg level of bane damage on alignments two steps from True Neutral, or half Iceberg on most creatures.

I'm not exactly asking for these to be nerfed, but it's high time to buff the iconic spell Disintegrate to useful levels.

SSG doesn't have a clear design direction, so it changes a lot over time. Disintegrate is not worth using, but I doubt that devs are even aware of that.

[Stravix]

I'll also point out that several BANE damage spells like Word of Balance and Destruction got buffed to reasonable damage now (the horror!). For the longest time SSG has refused to buff Disintegrate because it's BANE damage, and that is somehow OP. Just to recap, Destruction now does D6+10=13.5 bane damage on a failed fortitude save. Disintegrate does 2D3+6=10 bane damage on a successful fort save and nothing on a failed save. I think Word of Balance now does Iceberg level of bane damage on alignments two steps from True Neutral, or half Iceberg on most creatures.

I'm not exactly asking for these to be nerfed, but it's time to buff the iconic spell Disintegrate to useful levels.

/signed

When I saw Word on there, I will admit I was surprised, given the precedent they gave earlier, hopefully that can be on the next preview, as it wouldn't be that hard to change, I imagine.