Lammania Preview 3: Blightcaster

[misterski]

Again, the epic versions of Flame Blade clearly do not function as intended. This is the bug. The "make it scale by character level instead of caster level" was just a proposed solution. They can solve it whichever way they wish.

Why would say they're not functioning as intended? All class spells have the same CL limitation imposed by the limited CLs available in epic+. Flame blade isn't in a unique situation here.

Divine Augmentation adds +2 to CL for divine spells and Season's Herald has up to +3 CL available for spells in the appropriate season. There may be other CL boosts available, those are just the ones I know off the top of my head.

[Ordinary]

The "Thorn Blade" spell description is half Thorn and half Flame Blade. The second section needs to be updated to match that for a Thron blade.

[Ordinary]

The "Stormrage" spell has contradictory duration times in the header and the description text. One says 18 seconds, the other 12.

[SpardaX]

Hi spardaX, I believe your quote describes a different situation from what we have on the live servers. It describes reduced effectiveness for things like Stat damage and Negative levels. They do not have reduced effectiveness in high reaper. They are completely ineffective. The same goes for displacement and incorporeality, even though it's a bit off topic with Blightcaster druids.

In my opinion, the problem is that these mechanics do not work in reaper and need adjustment on that front. Until then, stat damage, concealment and incorporeality are useless to me.

The point that I was trying to make with my quote, is that "They do not have reduced effectiveness in high reaper. They are completely ineffective." and "Until then, stat damage, concealment and incorporeality are useless to me.", going off the original sentiment (what my quote was addressing), it shouldn't matter. Sure, you can say that those things are "useless to you", that's subjective, your choice, and I can't really refute that. But IF we assume the game isn't balanced around reaper, then I think it's wrong to say those things need to be changed, or that they should not be included in the game. Because in the game the devs originally claimed they were balancing things around (Elite being the top), those things still all work quite effectively.

I don't think reaper can BE a challenge difficulty, IF all the things that can be used to make the game easier worked in reaper. Like, I just made a character on live that has 100% concealment. It rocks. In R10 it doesn't work. Because R10 is R10. It's not meant to be easy. There's no easy way to "adjust" that to work in R10. It either works or it doesn't.

There's no easy way to "adjust" stat damage that can cause an enemy to be functionally permanently CCed. It either works and makes that enemy functionally dead. Or it doesn't work. And making it work in reaper, would make reaper easier, and that's counter to what reaper is meant to be. So it shouldn't work. Input whatever other "This doesn't work in R10 so it needs to be adjusted" and the same argument can be made. No it doesn't, because if it was adjusted, then R10 wouldn't be R10 anymore. Making that adjustment would be to water it down.

And I've seen the response that "Yea stat damage will eventually make an enemy functionally dead, but my Finger of Death (or whatever, insert your favorite spell or ability here) makes them actually dead, so if anything, the Instant Kill spells deserve a nerf or stat damage deserves a buff!" But spells need DCs. I can't make a first life character that's going to consistently instant kill R10 enemies. That's just not a thing. I CAN make a first life character, give it TWF and dual wield a couple of [1 Con damage Rapier of 1d6 critical Con damage], and just go to town. That's the difference. Having a character that has DC based spells that work in R10 is a challenge. Having a character that does stat damage is not a challenge.

If your response to these abilities failing to work in reaper is, "then they're useless to me", then yea I guess they would be. Just like Wisdom is usually useless to my Sorcerer. And that's fine. But "do not work in reaper and (therefore) need adjustment (so they DO work in reaper)" simply is not a thing I would reasonably expect to happen. Because that would defeat the purpose of reaper.

[SpardaX]

No problems with the difficulty, but mobs in reaper are essentially immune to stat damage. Also due to true sight it's impossible to sneak. This makes some strategies and builds inviable or useless. It's like if playing a necromancer, meet with all mobs in reaper with death ward.

Since reaper is the endgame content, these immunities discourage many kinds of builds, narrowing the possibilities.

I would posit, that level 32 EE raids are endgame content, and anything above that is a personal choice to take on an additional challenge, with the knowledge that you're going to have a bad time due to such things as additional immunities and true sight and other. Knowing you're going to face that, is certainly a reason to plan your build accordingly. But choosing to avoid reaper (or to stick to low reaper) so as to not purposefully limit and hinder yourself is also a valid choice.

[Firebreed]

Why would say they're not functioning as intended?

The values on each version of the item say that.

All class spells have the same CL limitation imposed by the limited CLs available in epic+. Flame blade isn't in a unique situation here.

You keep bringing this up as if it's some "gotcha" when I've already stated that I don't even disagree with it; meanwhile you refuse to consider that a) Flame Blade is very unique in what it does among other spells that scale off CL, and b) this isn't about whether Flame Blade should scale off CL or not, but rather about the values on each version of Flame Blade and the timeframe at which each version becomes available.

Divine Augmentation adds +2 to CL for divine spells and Season's Herald has up to +3 CL available for spells in the appropriate season. There may be other CL boosts available, those are just the ones I know off the top of my head.

I can't test this since Lamannia went down, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if neither of these boosts actually affected Flame Blade.
But even if they do, then the spell is even more bugged, as you'd be able to acquire the epic version (ML20) of the weapon at level 15.

All in all, we disagree, and I'd appreciate it if you could just let go and let the devs decide on how to resolve the issues I raised, as I do not wish to argue with you further.

[Grace_ana]

I'm late to the convo here (been sick and busy), but question - why does the blightcaster tree replace the nature's protector tree instead of the season's herald tree? It would seem like one caster tree should replace the other, especially since so much of season's herald is not particularly useful with blightcaster.

[Firebreed]

I'm late to the convo here (been sick and busy), but question - why does the blightcaster tree replace the nature's protector tree instead of the season's herald tree? It would seem like one caster tree should replace the other, especially since so much of season's herald is not particularly useful with blightcaster.

Good question.

[Scrag]

Good question.

Because if you are poisoning, burning, decomposing, or otherwise aciding things up, you really arent protecting things so much as doing vengeance of a sort... and there is a season for every vengeance.

My thoughts.

[newmart]

I would posit, that level 32 EE raids are endgame content, and anything above that is a personal choice to take on an additional challenge, with the knowledge that you're going to have a bad time due to such things as additional immunities and true sight and other. Knowing you're going to face that, is certainly a reason to plan your build accordingly. But choosing to avoid reaper (or to stick to low reaper) so as to not purposefully limit and hinder yourself is also a valid choice.

A good example is the immunity bypass. Otherwise, Sorcer would be useless in many quests and even in Lv 32 EE raid bosses. They created this mechanism to allow the sorcer build to become viable in any situation.

At moment builds aiming to drain lvs, do stat dmg, entirely furtive builds, charm builds, pet/summon builds (If there is a legendary feat solely to pets, should be a viable thing), along with many spells and effects such as Displacement are completely useless in Epic content, EE included and even worse in reaper.

Note that, in my opinion, a rogue should be able to sneak an entire quest, just killing the bosses. Its his gameplay, as a necromancer will instakill the quest or a cleric will turn all undead with no problem doing as fast as he. No issues in blocking this possibility in some, like 25% of the quests putting exigencies like "kill all mobs in the room to proceed". But today 90% of the quests are impossible to just pass unnoticed.

It is understandable why they don't want a rogue finishing quests in 3 minutes and ignoring all mobs but he should be allowed to do this at least 50% of the time, and in reaper, he is basically never allowed. Even some sneaky quests, like Blokade Buster, the reapers true sight makes it impossible. In the same way, charmers are severely crippled in Epics, with duration reduced to 6 seconds no matter what, tunning down their utility a lot. Most parties even hate if a mod is charmed since there are so many rooms where killing all to advance is a must.

Better saves, improved perception range of the mobs can all be challlenges to talented players, but impossibility is not.

[Ereshkigal]

A good example is the immunity bypass. Otherwise, Sorcer would be useless in many quests and even in Lv 32 EE raid bosses. They created this mechanism to allow the sorcer build to become viable in any situation.

At moment builds aiming to drain lvs, do stat dmg, entirely furtive builds, charm builds, pet/summon builds (If there is a legendary feat solely to pets, should be a viable thing), along with many spells and effects such as Displacement are completely useless in Epic content, EE included and even worse in reaper.

Note that, in my opinion, a rogue should be able to sneak an entire quest, just killing the bosses. Its his gameplay, as a necromancer will instakill the quest or a cleric will turn all undead with no problem doing as fast as he. No issues in blocking this possibility in some, like 25% of the quests putting exigencies like "kill all mobs in the room to proceed". But today 90% of the quests are impossible to just pass unnoticed.

It is understandable why they don't want a rogue finishing quests in 3 minutes and ignoring all mobs but he should be allowed to do this at least 50% of the time, and in reaper, he is basically never allowed. Even some sneaky quests, like Blokade Buster, the reapers true sight makes it impossible. In the same way, charmers are severely crippled in Epics, with duration reduced to 6 seconds no matter what, tunning down their utility a lot. Most parties even hate if a mod is charmed since there are so many rooms where killing all to advance is a must.

Better saves, improved perception range of the mobs can all be challlenges to talented players, but impossibility is not.

TOEE is decent for being able to not have kill many of the mobs. particularly the elemental nodes using some invisibility scrolls. I haven't tried the actual stealthing of anything for over a decade though. I've gotten the Discreet bonus to XP without even trying to do anything other than complete the run as fast as possible. Next life I may try to see if I can get Insidious Cunning just for kicks though.

[homepage9]

The wild shape: hive master will give you Improve evasion, but "lost" your evasion(get from hive keeper)

So now if you reflax success, you suffer half damage, if you reflax failed, you also suffer half damage.

Wah.