Warning: Master of the Wilds useless

[Peter_Principle]

I tested the caster level grant of this feat. I ran through every castable spell and SLA that I have on an action bar. If you don't know, when you cast a spell the combat dialogue box will indicate at what level the spell is currently being cast at. I did so in Water Elemental stance with Elder of Winter active and wearing legendary Hruit's Influcence with the Necklace of the Azure Sea worn. And, of course, the initial test was when I still had Master of the Wilds as a feat.

Generally, my epic spells were cast at level 44, my cold spells were cast at level 34, lightning and untyped at 30, healing at 27, fire at 24. Slas cast at the same level as their spellbook counterpart.

I then swapped out Master of the Wild for Burst of Glacial Wrath.

With everything else the same except having BOGW instead of MotW, I saw zero difference in any of my spell caster levels. Epics 44, cold 34, lightning/splinter/salt/Word 30, healing 27 and fire 24. Slas same as prepared spells.

So I would say MotW is probably a waste of a feat. Unless perhaps in the future there is an item out there somewhere that adds a bunch of caster levels for a druid, it doesn't appear to actually have any effect on your caster levels.

[Ultinoob]

The combat log is not correct. Some say it just does not take into account max caster levels. I say it is even worse for druids.

Also master of the wilds gives 10 max caster levels to some spells. some of these spells allready have max caster level of 20. and since divine augmentation does not work for druids for most spells it is really hard to use those extra max caster levels.

I suggest you use salt ray. It should have a max caster level of 10 as base. If you have 10 epic levels this would get it to 15. with summer season it would be 18. With master of the wilds this would be 28.

Go do a test where you test the damage of the spell before and after taking master of the wilds.

Also your combat log said 34 for cold spells. Let's do a breakdown:
Tsunami max caster level 20
Ice flowers max caster level 15

+3 for ice form +3 for winter seasons +5 for epic levels totalling 31 for tsunami and 26 for ice flowers. and that is acutally your max caster level. if dragonborn add 2.

Your caster level is 31+1 from hruits totalling 32.
even if you are dragonborn you max caster level is 33. So i am postulating the combat log is wrong.

[Peter_Principle]

Keep in mind this is DDO we're talking about here. It could also be that the combat log is accurate and the various items and enhancements don't give the caster level bonuses they say they should. This might mean the number is right and the text is wrong (e.g. damage from the recent spell pass), or the number is wrong and the text is what it should be. Or it could be any type of combination of log errors and number/text errors.

An interesting side note, if I swap from Water/Winter to Fire/Summer, fire and water spell numbers essentially swap places, just 1 less/1 more from my Hruit's Sea necklace. So my fire spells show 33 in the combat log and my water spells show 25.

There's also funny stuff going on with spell point cost and metas. You can turn on empower for Tsunami but it doesn't affect spell range. You can turn on Quicken via Quicken Icon, and then turn on Quicken via right-click, and it adds twice to BOGW. It also adds different numbers depending on if you turn it on via right-click on BOGW icon or via the Quicken Icon.

This is on a human character, btw, so no CLs from the racial tree...ostensibly.

[voxson5]

Can also test the damage averages of each scenario, which is a pain the in the ass because we've never really been given tools to do this quickly or easily on live servers (thanks devs...)

A quick way for elemental spells may be to use resist energy, as the element should be tied into mcl increases for your augmented element (eg cold) - just check the time the buff lasts when you cast it.

This way isn't perfect though because sometimes (and I mean fairly often) the code isn't checked or tested properly and things that should stack don't, and this can vary across spells that should all be augmented equally.

[ned_ellis]

Wanted to bump this discussion as it is indeed a bit confusing!

Master of the Wilds, as I understand, is as follows :

Produce Flame goes from CL15 to CL25 (dmg step every 1CL) CL32/MaxCL30
Creeping Cold goes from CL18 to CL28 (dmg step every 3CL) CL32/MaxCL30
Call Lightning goes from CL15 to CL25 (dmg step every 1CL) CL28/MaxCL27
Salt Ray goes from CL10 to CL20 (dmg step every 1CL) CL28/MaxCL27
Word of Balance goes from CL20 to CL30 (dmg step every 1CL) CL25/MaxCL25

So a pure druid (lvl30) would be base CL25. Add to that for the appropriate spells :
+1cl for season
+1cl/+1max cl for capstone
+1cl/+1max cl for T5
+3cl/+3max cl from elemental form (only fire or cold)
+1cl Hruits (only fire or cold)

which I deduce would bring us to the levels in bold above unless I'm mistaken?
If this is correct, the Master of Wilds feat gives us a (currently) unreachable CL for WOB whilst for all the other spells - within the appropriate Elemental form and Season - we have a higher potential than the feat allows for.
In general, I would still take it - do I deserve to have rotten vegetables thrown at me?!

[Marcb81]

Wanted to bump this discussion as it is indeed a bit confusing!

Master of the Wilds, as I understand, is as follows :

Produce Flame goes from CL15 to CL25 (dmg step every 1CL) CL32/MaxCL30
Creeping Cold goes from CL18 to CL28 (dmg step every 3CL) CL32/MaxCL30
Call Lightning goes from CL15 to CL25 (dmg step every 1CL) CL28/MaxCL27
Salt Ray goes from CL10 to CL20 (dmg step every 1CL) CL28/MaxCL27
Word of Balance goes from CL20 to CL30 (dmg step every 1CL) CL25/MaxCL25

So a pure druid (lvl30) would be base CL25. Add to that for the appropriate spells :
+1cl for season
+1cl/+1max cl for capstone
+1cl/+1max cl for T5
+3cl/+3max cl from elemental form (only fire or cold)
+1cl Hruits (only fire or cold)

which I deduce would bring us to the levels in bold above unless I'm mistaken?
If this is correct, the Master of Wilds feat gives us a (currently) unreachable CL for WOB whilst for all the other spells - within the appropriate Elemental form and Season - we have a higher potential than the feat allows for.
In general, I would still take it - do I deserve to have rotten vegetables thrown at me?!

95% of the time, these are not the spells you want to cast at 30. Tsunami and Ice Flowers are the two Druid spells you will cast the most if your goal is damage. ED SLAs and primal avatar spells have no max caster level. At end game you are too busy casting dragons breath, possibly burst of glacial wrath and greater ruin to want to worry about master of wilds.

[SocratesBastardSon]

95% of the time, these are not the spells you want to cast at 30. Tsunami and Ice Flowers are the two Druid spells you will cast the most if your goal is damage. ED SLAs and primal avatar spells have no max caster level. At end game you are too busy casting dragons breath, possibly burst of glacial wrath and greater ruin to want to worry about master of wilds.

I just ran two Druid cold caster lives up to cap, and agree that those spells, with one exception, were like low level gear - replaced with better stuff. The exception was Heightened Salt Ray. It hit hard, but I used it mostly for the rarely saved against Stun effect. If there was a champ or Reaper, especially if engaged with a melee, I would use it against them. But Master of Wilds doesn't help with DCs, only damage dice. I tried it both ways, with and without MoW and while I like the increase in damage which would one shot trash at low Reaper levels with MoW, it wasn't worth an Epic Feat IMO.

Tsunami and Ice Flowers are your bread and butter spells. I also used Burst of Glacial Wrath. Other spells I used situationally included Heightened Word of Balance(reapers), Sun Burst (Undead) and Ice Storm for the CC, a short term slow effect to break up the inevitable zerg charges. I focused increasing Force SP (the second most important spell power for cold casters), so Ruin/GRuin is a great choice too, particularly if your main destiny is Draconic. None of the spells I used, then, benefited from MoW, except Salt Ray.

Anyway, all of that to make the case that MoW is not needed, especially when BoGW is far more useful for cold Evokers at levels 24+.

[nobodynobody1426]

95% of the time, these are not the spells you want to cast at 30. Tsunami and Ice Flowers are the two Druid spells you will cast the most if your goal is damage. ED SLAs and primal avatar spells have no max caster level. At end game you are too busy casting dragons breath, possibly burst of glacial wrath and greater ruin to want to worry about master of wilds.

Almost ... Ice Flowers kinda sucks due to it's DC being low as everything else is evocation. Running a Cold druid right now and while Tsunami is amazing, it's the only cold spell worth casting, call lightning storms ends up being more useful. Of those listed spells, Salt Ray and Word of Balance are absolutely amazing. Salt ray does 9.5 damage per CL at a stupid long range, fort save (no evasion), makes things helpless and we druid gets two of them on separate CD's. Word of Balance is the stupidly strong single target nuke with no save, no SR, no resist, cheap and Druid gets two of them with separate CD's.

[ned_ellis]

Would the above consensus change if one was a fire elemental and not cold? (despite the mantle being immensely superior)

[Peter_Principle]

I'd like to see someone get a solid set of data points for damage from the MotW spells then take MotW and compare the data before and after. Just to see if there is indeed a difference or if, as I suspect, this feat does nothing.

I might do this on my next come-up.