Sonic Blast Change

[Karthunk]

Sonic blast is now properly single target (note: it will still continue to hit breakables in an AOE)

This change is absolutely horrible for bards.

This spell is also incredible useful for low level sorcs just trying to to get through the early levels.

PLEASE do not do this change to sonic blast.

[Valerianus]

seconded

100% agree

[Stoner81]

You have just completely and utterly destroyed Bards! *slow golf clap*

ON WHAT FREAKING PLANET IS THIS A GOOD IDEA!!!! UTTERLY MORONIC!!!!

Stoner81.

[Arkat]

nm

[jetster11]

This change is absolutely horrible for bards.

This spell is also incredible useful for low level sorcs just trying to to get through the early levels.

PLEASE do not do this change to sonic blast.

Yes, do not do this sonic blast is critical to so many early level casters to survive. And bards particularly where the entire class is built around the sonic theme.

This spell has been around and this way since the inception of this game. If recent changes in bard SLAs and Hit Dice for all spells have resulted in making sonic blast an outlier for damage. Change the Hit Dice per level not the AOE effect to balance the spell damage.

[GeneralDiomedes]

Thanks melee complainers I guess?

Quite the drastic move. I can’t even imagine taking this utterly useless spell now.

[Xgya]

Thanks melee complainers I guess?

Quite the drastic move. I can’t even imagine taking this utterly useless spell now.

It still breaks boxes.
It just stops doing anything else.

Change the spell's name to Box-B-Gone. Because that's what the spell will be used for, and ALL it'll be used for.

[LjasonL]

Just keep the aoe and lower the damage dice. Its been an aoe spell since It was added to the game and it was perfectly fine in the past.

[kmoustakas]

This change is absolutely horrible for bards.

This spell is also incredible useful for low level sorcs just trying to to get through the early levels.

PLEASE do not do this change to sonic blast.

"properly"?

Sometimes I wonder if us and the devs are talking about the same game.

[cdbd3rd]

A "sound" effect is supposed to be a single target spell??

That makes no sense at all.


Looks like my Bard hirelings are gonna get retired.

[Yamani]

"properly"?

Sometimes I wonder if us and the devs are talking about the same game.

Actually, no you're not. You're talking about DDO, they are referring to DnD.

[Mithrielwielder]

This is the only attack spell for heroic bards. The class would be relegated to multiboxing buffers. If your main is a bard, this could be a reason to stop playing altogether.

[Zeleron]

This is the only attack spell for heroic bards. The class would be relegated to multiboxing buffers. If your main is a bard, this could be a reason to stop playing altogether.

Hate the be the bearer of bad news, but you might want to check out the stormsinger tree.

[marinersfan]

This is the only attack spell for heroic bards. The class would be relegated to multiboxing buffers. If your main is a bard, this could be a reason to stop playing altogether.

My main is a bard I'm optimizing to run bard racials, trying to knock out some hamster wheel, which for me is like 3 lives per year.

My best alt is a bard that I'm working to get to cap for raiding.

I am considering, at very least, a long break. Maybe stormsinger will be fun, but bard as I've come to enjoy is getting killed. It sucks to see a year+ of effort probably get negated and I don't feel great about finding a new build to run. I don't want to farm new gear or refocus on getting new epic past lives to replace ones I won't use anymore (energy crit).

More single target spell DPS will probably feel more like an SLA druid. I suspect ranged/stormsinger will be most common build. Probably inquisitive or arty bard. Line 'em up and ips to get as many lightning procs as possible. Maybe there will be a melee build, but generally speaking bard is pretty squishy for that, at least at endgame.

[WNxDaCraw]

"properly"?

Sometimes I wonder if us and the devs are talking about the same game.

they are not. some Wales complain and they see that its popular so...wham! nerf hammer.

I could swear the promised that they would not change the main game due to info gathered from Hard Core??? looks like they are lying lier's who lie.

[Hashrabal]

PLEASE do not do this change to sonic blast.

Given the tact devs showed in recent times about nerfing things (with nuclear weapons and from orbit to make SURE nobody plays whatever they dislike anymore...), like for example how they nerfed shiradi casters out of existance, they should just refrain from changing ANY spell right now (or for that basically anything balance wise...), but this is an especially egregious misstep.

If devs continue with that pointless nerf path, I want a dev to publicly state what the intended method of playing a caster at levels 1 to 7 in R1 is. Because it clearly cannot be to play as a caster, when they continually remove the only tools we have to play in a caster role. Can you get a caster to 7 as a melee or pew pew-sitive or something and then start playing your real role? Sure you can. Is that the intended effect of these nerfs? Are casters not allowed to be played as casters for around 1/3th of the heroic experience? It's not like I am not used to it by now..

If so, why is that their vision of the game? Why do they seem so buthurt by the idea of casters actually able to cast their way through low level quests? It's not like that spell is used for anything (but breaking boxes maybe, but fireball does that fine too...) in later levels... so why the hate towards it?

We have a game that still hangs on transitions, that still has broken dispel mechanics, that still has broken stealth mechanics, that still has ladders that barely work. We still have immunity bypasses that are cancer to use. And we have to deal with all this bs every day. We deal, because yeah, fixing an old game is hard. But then it turns out that the devs priority really is to make low level casters even more miserable? What reasonable argument can the devs provide, that does not amount to lying about "it was never intended to be AoE", which is a cheap distraction from not having to talk about the real reasons for the nerf?

The devs crusade against casters just seems more ridiculous from month to month. First the Shiradi nerfs, then stomping FvS into the dirt and now they go for bards of all classes.... classy. Kick one of the weaker classes while they are down, eh?

I for one will stop investing $$$ into this game, as long as we have to deal with devs gone mad like this. I can only suggest everyone to follow suite. They will not learn if we do not vote with our wallets.

[Jerevth]

Blast would indicate this was AOE...
I don't think it was intended to be single target, ever.
The spell is far from being a game breaker since it can only temporarily daze a target (And I've seen them recover in one second rather than the wiki listed two to six seconds.)
Undead ignore it and the damage is paltry at higher levels.

Why on earth make this merely a Sonic Bolt?

[GeneralDiomedes]

Blast would indicate this was AOE...
I don't think it was intended to be single target, ever.
The spell is far from being a game breaker since it can only temporarily daze a target (And I've seen them recover in one second rather than the wiki listed two to six seconds.)
Undead ignore it and the damage is paltry at higher levels.

Why on earth make this merely a Sonic Bolt?

Well the original D&D spell was apparently a single target.

https://dndtools.org/spells/spell-co...c-blast--4192/

It appears the change was made so that the level 1 SLAs for Stormsinger are comparative in power between Sonic Blast and Niacs, otherwise everyone would go sonic.

However, the AOE damage was THE reason to take this spell, and it turned Spellsingers into a real caster at early levels. It's kind of like taking Cleave away from the Barb trees.

I hope they have something planned to fill the gap - how about make Soundburst a Spellsinger SLA?

[Lamassut]

Well the original D&D spell was apparently a single target.

https://dndtools.org/spells/spell-co...c-blast--4192/

It appears the change was made so that the level 1 SLAs for Stormsinger are comparative in power between Sonic Blast and Niacs, otherwise everyone would go sonic.

However, the AOE damage was THE reason to take this spell, and it turned Spellsingers into a real caster at early levels. It's kind of like taking Cleave away from the Barb trees.

I hope they have something planned to fill the gap - how about make Soundburst a Spellsinger SLA?

What does the initial intention matter? It matters what has been throughout the history of the game. It matters that this game does not have the same type of fighting as the pnp game. At low levels, in pnp sleep or color spray ends a fight, here they are useless (sleep) or of low utility (color spray), in pnp you have a couple of fights of multiple enemies at levels 1-3, here there are continuous fights with hordes of enemies

The spell hasn't given any problems so far. If they want, they can revert the changes to hit dice damage. If the problem is the new archetype, fix the archetype, don't change something that affects all classes.

If we are going to change this spell just to be identical to pnp in a fight environment that doesn't look like pnp, they should change sleep or color spray at the same time. Why have so many spells been hijacked after payment items? Black tentacles, confusion, greater color spray, weird: should be on the wiz/sorc list, not kidnapped in other classes, races, EDs, universal trees... Silence, earthquake, planar weapons... why aren't they on the general cleric/fvs list?

This game has too many pnp changes to justify that argument.

[Jerevth]

Well the original D&D spell was apparently a single target.

https://dndtools.org/spells/spell-co...c-blast--4192/

It appears the change was made so that the level 1 SLAs for Stormsinger are comparative in power between Sonic Blast and Niacs, otherwise everyone would go sonic.

However, the AOE damage was THE reason to take this spell, and it turned Spellsingers into a real caster at early levels. It's kind of like taking Cleave away from the Barb trees.

I hope they have something planned to fill the gap - how about make Soundburst a Spellsinger SLA?

Thanks. (I wasn't able to log in and read the actual spell before the maintenance shut-down.)

None-the-less, sonic blast worked fine, as it was, for years, until they rolled out a new Precious and suddenly "it isn't WAI/must change for the Precious".
They could have coded and hung a Sonic Bolt SLA on the Precious and carried on, but someone had the knee jerk reaction to make sweeping changes when a small change to the new thing would have sufficed.
It's flawed logic; Look how fast these tires stop the car! Oh no, the tires will stop the car too fast! We're making the brakes on all the cars softer so the new tires don't stop the car too fast.
Now only the people with the new tires stop before the red light.
Just fix the darn tires!

Inquisitive was "WAI, no need to adjust" until it was suddenly no longer working fine. The solution? Nerf IPS. Now most people plug in inquisitive for the most advantageous builds and the rest seem to be flavor builds or bows.
This is the same thought process.