Classes that can remove elemental immunities

[Ambitious]

Fully aware, that this post will provoke answers like "mimimi if you think that's so overpowered, then play one of those classes", I want to put the following question up for debate. Maybe Jerry will be so kind as to reply here as well?

"Why should casters (or any classes) be able to overcome elemental immunities?"

Granted, I did not play DDO when those classes got that ability, so I don't know the reasoning behind it, but I find it not only not necessary, but insanely overpowered. Being able to overcome imminities results in the following:


1) You only need to spec for a single element and can go all out for that, resulting in even higher dps by combining appropriate sets

2) Carefree easy life by just spamming 2 or 3 spells until everything is dead


Ironically sorcerer (+7 caster level, +3 max caster level), druid (+6 caster level, +6 max caster level), alchemist (+7 caster level, +2 max caster level to every element) who get a lot of extra caster level and max caster level, are exactly those who can ignore elemental immunities. Does that make sense? I think not.

If some casters have that ability, shouldn't all casters get it? Or at the very least only those, who do not get a metric ton of extra caster levels? But then again, why have elemental immunity in the first place, if everyone is able to overcome it?

If a caster, say a sorcerer, specializes in an element, then that sorcerer used to need to get a 2nd element, so that it can kill highly resistant or immune mobs. That is certainly not a problem. On my fvs, I manage to have force, positive, fire and light spellpower and lore, all in the range of 1000-1200 spellpower in reaper and ~50% crit chance give or take. That is necessary, because an aweful lot of mobs are immune to fire and/or highly resistant to light damage.

If you can swap to a different element with minimal effort, then why not do it?

Let's just compare druid and favored soul, who is actually in a good place right now regarding strength:

Trait	Druid	Favored Soul
Hitdice	d8	d8
Armor Type	Medium	Medium
Caster Level Bonus	6	3
Max Caster Level Bonus	6	3
Can heal themselves and others	Yes	Yes
Can remove elemental resistances and immunities?	Yes	No
Got Caster Level reduced reduceed by 6 in U56	No	Yes
Got Max Caster Level reduced by 12 in U56	No	Yes

The caster level nerv for Favored Soul was absolutely needed btw. Guess what? So is removing the ability to remove immunities. Unless ofc, there is something I am not aware of.


Your turn...

[KoobTheProud]

Rock > Scissors > Paper > Rock is a wonderful time honored system for producing balance.

DDO instead is ROCK.

[Peter_Principle]

"Why should casters (or any classes) be able to overcome elemental immunities?"

You can't kill monsters if they're immune to your attacks.

You can't complete quests if you can't kill monsters.

DDO doesn't have a robust population.

DDO doesn't have a robust LFM interface.

A DDO player can't rely on the presence of another player to paper the rock monster their scissors role can't handle.

Granted, I did not play DDO when those classes got that ability, so I don't know the reasoning behind i

Casters used to be nigh-on useless. Immunity bypass in the sorcerer capstone was a first attempt to fix that.

[LurkingVeteran]

You can't kill monsters if they're immune to your attacks.
...

Casters used to be nigh-on useless. Immunity bypass in the sorcerer capstone was a first attempt to fix that.

To add to that, DDO and D&D 3.5 has a lot of immune mobs at higher levels, which was not a good design decision from a game play perspective. Especially since they never implemented the elemental substitution meta from D&D to get around it.

Sorcs were the hardest hit due to limited spell selection and -3/-9 caster level penalties for other elements. My first play-through as sorc, I had to abandon some quests just because I simply could not damage certain mobs. This was not fun. Power creep is also an issue where you are heavily incentivized to hyper-specialize, although this has become a bit better with recent item / feat design.

DDO therefore attempted to correct this bad design by giving blanket immunity removal, starting with sorcs. I personally think there could have been some more nuance in how that was handled. Reducing monster immunities to mostly x% resist (where >70% is very rare) would have corrected the fundamental issue to begin with. Implementing elemental substitution meta-magic would have been another (although it is almost better than immunity removal if you know how to use it).

Finally, your table is a bit misleading as FvS has plenty of light/alignment/force spells and SLAs, but it is true that FvS were maybe nerfed a bit harshly recently. By the way, +caster level is irrelevant without matching +MCL, so the sorc trees are much worse than they look on paper. If not for the immunity removal, they are some of the weaker caster trees.

[YUTANG75]

You can't kill monsters if they're immune to your attacks.

You can't complete quests if you can't kill monsters.

DDO doesn't have a robust population.

DDO doesn't have a robust LFM interface.

A DDO player can't rely on the presence of another player to paper the rock monster their scissors role can't handle.



Casters used to be nigh-on useless. Immunity bypass in the sorcerer capstone was a first attempt to fix that.

Skeletons are immune to cold and appear in low levels where a cold sorcerer is unable to damage it with cold spells. But this isn't too much of an issue because other spells and damage methods exist which can hurt them.
If you're not prepared a melee can be walled by oozes and rust monsters destroying their weapons or DR reducing their damage; spellcasters can also struggle with golems which are only very resistant to spells; and I think everyone has struggled with beholders at some point.
In DDO preparation is key, sometimes you'll find a mob/quest you can't handle well, but a bit of planning/ tweaking your setup can go a long way.

Please ponder this question. When was the last time you saw a post from a low level new-player spell caster asking how to beat X quest because the mephits/elementals/skeletons are immune to the player's chosen damage type?


"Casters used to be nigh-on useless. Immunity bypass in the sorcerer capstone was a first attempt to fix that." Now casters are very good, perhaps it is time to reconsider.

[Peter_Principle]

If you're not prepared a melee can be walled by oozes and rust monsters destroying their weapons or DR reducing their damage;

As long as you can do something to prepare, and prepare adequately, then it's not an issue. If a wizard could just pick up an adamantine scepter and bypass Iron Golem spell damage DR like a fighter or barbarian can just grab a blueshine sword off the AH or a ferrocrystal sword from Feywild, then my original point 1 does not apply.

but a bit of planning/ tweaking your setup can go a long way.

As long as that's an option, then it's not an issue. When it's not an option, then it is.

Please ponder this question. When was the last time you saw a post from a low level new-player spell caster asking how to beat X quest because the mephits/elementals/skeletons are immune to the player's chosen damage type?

They're not running R4+, but something like Hard or Normal. Low level heroic quests are very easy. New players may be more likely to be forming into parties since they're being shunted into the default server. New players are less likely to be aware of forum resources like here or r/ddo. I'm not sure what point you're going for here that's relevant.

Now casters are very good,

Not all casters, unfortunately.

perhaps it is time to reconsider.

Perhaps something might need to be changed for some casters, but you can't remove immunity bypass etc per above. It's probably more important for dev time to be spent fixing the melee issue, honestly.

[Xgya]

Imagine, if you will, damage in a vacuum. No resistances, but no weaknesses.
There should be a barometer for damage at that level.
In order for all classes to work similarly in all contexts, that barometer should be similar for them.

Unfortunately, because of the D&D context, some monsters are immune or have resistances to elements. This means that we can't use the barometer for all classes unless they can all get ways to do the damage the spreadsheet says they should be doing.
That's where immunity bypass comes in.

The spreadsheets for weaponry work because resistance bypass for weapons is downright common. It doesn't even cost AP. At lower levels, it's a single gear swap.

If the immunity bypass came the same way for Fighters as it did Sorcerers, it would remove a lot of their uniqueness, but it might be balanced.
"Switch out X piece of gear that lowers your damage a bit less than 5%" (let's face it, that's what a weapon swap generally is) ", but now you can hit the thing for around the damage the spreadsheet says you should".

[yfernbottom]

Almost nothing is immune to light damage, and very few mobs are immune to acid. Should all the casters stupid enough to focus on other elements just reroll? Why do we even let people specialize in cold or poison damage? Oh yeah, right.... it's because at higher levels they can negate that weakness by getting immunity bypass.


Further, I don't even even play casters much, and I still think nerfing them any further is a terrible idea. My highest pure caster is a 23ish FS, and my second highest is a level 14 fire sorcerer. I abandoned both of them because they are incredibly annoying to play compared to a well build melee or martial range character (martial ranged particularly). Even if a mob isn't immune to your element outright, your damage will be half or zero if they make their saving throw. On a caster your damage is either high, crappy or zero. On a martial character (ranged or melee) it's either high or pretty good. I know which I prefer.

But sure, make casters so crappy they may as well delete them from the game. Sounds like a great idea . . .

Plus, on top of that, I know for a **** fact that if the devs ever fold and completely gut casters like the butthurt nutbirds are pushing for, martial ranged will be next. Then probably 2HF melee after that . . .

[droid327]

Sorc and Druid need immunity strip because they're actively penalized for using other elements

Everyone else does not. They can simply use another element for mobs that are immune to their primary.

If anything needs to change, its changing more fully-typed spellpower bonuses to 50% typed/50% universal so that its easier to support off-element casting while still maintaining a preferred element

[connan_add]

You guys are not taking into consideration the fact that when you can bypass immunities and just focus onto just 1 spell power, that you still have use of many other spells for defense, or other things like open lock invisibility... if I don't have the immunities bypass and need all 4 elements that leaves me much less to work with, not to mention eating up a lot of valuable spell bar space and the need to switch between on the fly and never getting caught on the wrong spell bar at a crucial moment, and having to memorize it all... there's a lot more to it than just the ability to bypass the immunities... Not to mention as for game balance wise, say a wizard nuker, you don't get any immunity bypass, you don't get the spell cool down reduction, and increased spell points as a sorcerer. you don't get the higher max caster lvl spells as the Druid or the self-healing, unless you go pale master and use negative, which can be worthless in high reaper R10's and give you less healing amp for the group healer to keep you alive, seems to me an arch mage nuker is in a pretty bad place balance wise.

[Wahnsinnig]

All this is pure stupidity from the developers over many years.

Several years ago they decided that allowing player characters full protection from something was bad, and since then they have worked to remove immunities as they find them and have time to do it. I think the first nerf was protection from X potions / spell back when cap was 12.

Yet they keep adding monsters that are 100% immune to something. Because of that they had to give elemental DPS casters the ability to strip immunities from monsters so they could actually do some damage against those monsters. Which makes the 100% immunity irrelevant.

What they should have done was to remove 100% immunity from monsters the same way they have been removing it from players.

[Diracorvus]

It shouldn't reduce elemental absorption by a full 100%, that's just way too much. There needs to be a middle ground.
Fire elementals should never take full damage from a fireball and golems should never take full damage from poison. Part of what makes DDO different from other MMOs are these kind of tactical details. They shouldn't just be completely nullified by spending 1 AP.

[Eantarus]

I would go the opposite direction and say that its blanket immunities which need to go. Its really stupid how many mobs have total immunity to specific elements.

Take the skeletons at the end of Lords of Dust. They are skeletons, a type of undead typically weak to fire - but when my wizard casts Incendiary Cloud, all I see are clouds of "Immune" hanging over their heads.

[droid327]

You guys are not taking into consideration the fact that when you can bypass immunities and just focus onto just 1 spell power, that you still have use of many other spells for defense, or other things like open lock invisibility... if I don't have the immunities bypass and need all 4 elements that leaves me much less to work with

Almost like the flexibility of Wizard is meant to be an advantage over Sorc lol

But when you only need 5 buttons anyway for every fight in the game, that flexibility isnt as important

[ned_ellis]

Almost like the flexibility of Wizard is meant to be an advantage over Sorc lol

But when you only need 5 buttons anyway for every fight in the game, that flexibility isnt as important

This is kind of it; blanket immunity removal is a videogame shortcut...at best.
Get rid of it.
Signed,
an 80+% caster player

[Valerianus]

i think immunity removals are fine. they are fine and useful for specialized builds and also thematic.

about wiz versatility over sorc, more spell slots, full spell array for granted, as it should be, and if you want the nuker the answer is archmage force damage, universally good, so max versatility for wizard as it should be, the problem is that archmage is ****, this is the issue that should be solved imho.

about using the same couple of spells over and over, those with higher max caster level cap, you are forced to.

about discussing about % damage, % resistance and stuff instead of immunity strip, it can only harm the game imho. why dealing with damage penalty against trash mobs if you can cc and instakill if your build has easy access to them, so nothing really changes, if not, it's a pain, but the real issue is that such a system will only result in specialized builds to be kicked out of raids, should the boss have some resistance\immunity that cannot be bypassed.

just my 2 cents.

[DaviMOC]

When I used to play neverwinter nights I liked to play alot of pale master.
It was really fun to insta kill stuff and do necrotic damage. Said that, midle to end game alot of stuff had death imunities, necrotic imunities or super high saves.

To deal with it Dealan Red Tiger my loyal barbarian hireling and my minions were always ready to lend me a hand.
Maybe its time to solve that side of the equation and make summons, pets and hirelings more useful? So maybe we could get rid of this abomination called imunity removal .

Sorccers are supposed to be nuke bombs but with a big limitation that is low flexibility, if they can do the same thing all the time and win there is something missing there.
Making one element to just work in any situation is part of why archamages are in a bad spot. Whats great about doing exotic damage and having 1001 tools if a fireabal will solve any problem?

Rock paper scissors is a great design, you just need to make it work .

[Wizard1406]

When I used to play neverwinter nights I liked to play alot of pale master.
It was really fun to insta kill stuff and do necrotic damage. Said that, midle to end game alot of stuff had death imunities, necrotic imunities or super high saves.

To deal with it Dealan Red Tiger my loyal barbarian hireling and my minions were always ready to lend me a hand.
Maybe its time to solve that side of the equation and make summons, pets and hirelings more useful? So maybe we could get rid of this abomination called imunity removal .

Yep. D&D is a party based game, where party members (can be AI hirelings) and summons make up for weaknesses.

DDO is one of the only D&D computer games where you'll be solo a lot of the time because often no one will join your party and because hirelings (outside of pocket healing/rezzing) are useless as are pets and summons.

So as long as it stays that way, immunity break should stay. In fact some casters could use more of it ... palemaster breaking construct negative immunity instead of just undead. etc.

[Tyrande]

Same can be argued for the Acolyte of the Skin warlock archetype coming up in update 58. Its a hellfire based warlock and that hellish fire should bypass normal fire and should strip fire immunity.

How about Abyss warlock? I do not believe they have a good second element either and their non-negative damage is half or less.

[EinarMal]

Skeletons are immune to cold and appear in low levels where a cold sorcerer is unable to damage it with cold spells. But this isn't too much of an issue because other spells and damage methods exist which can hurt them.
If you're not prepared a melee can be walled by oozes and rust monsters destroying their weapons or DR reducing their damage; spellcasters can also struggle with golems which are only very resistant to spells; and I think everyone has struggled with beholders at some point.
In DDO preparation is key, sometimes you'll find a mob/quest you can't handle well, but a bit of planning/ tweaking your setup can go a long way.

Please ponder this question. When was the last time you saw a post from a low level new-player spell caster asking how to beat X quest because the mephits/elementals/skeletons are immune to the player's chosen damage type?


"Casters used to be nigh-on useless. Immunity bypass in the sorcerer capstone was a first attempt to fix that." Now casters are very good, perhaps it is time to reconsider.

In Heroics immunity bypass is not needed. People tend to run R1-R4, and other element damage works well enough for most. Outside of niche Artificer caster or something that only has on element.

Where it matters most is end game, and R4+, a large part of damage comes from Draconic mantle, Draconic Breath, and Ruin Intensified, plus your main DPS spell.

Let's say you use Fire on a Wizard as your Draconic element. You lose your mantle damage and extra Ruin damage, Draconic Breath, Meteor Swarm (partial), and Delayed Blast Fireball. It is a huge loss of damage, that matters a lot at end game in R4+ content. Sure you can use instant killing, but that doesn't work on boss mobs, deathward, some targets. There will definitely be some quests that you will not be able to solo or contribute much on.

The absolute worst is mobs that heal from damage, you can't turn that off for Ruin Intensified so those spells become out of the rotation as well. Plus you have to turn off your mantle.