Tested new Icestorm and Critical Mod

[Thorzian]

i would love to use cloud kill if it scaled to level and hit things not immune to acid damage.

The rule of them being immune to poison makes them immune to the acid damage is just stupid we need more competitive spells so that everything isn't firewall, a spell pass needs to be done on dot and instant spells to make more of them worth using and make them much less sp inefficient

agreed, the ck argument was more of one vs aoe instants instead of listing it as a reliable method of soloing. dot is nowhere near as prominent in ddo as it should be. they ruined spells like prismatic spray/ray and then didnt even include prismatic wall/sphere. we need those spells and others like them in ddo.

[Thorzian]

Oh you mean like when i kill in 3 seconds with single aoe spells and waste 110mana and with icestorm i waste around 50mana and 14 seconds to achieve the same result? Yeah man that makes so much more sense :O

Half the sp!. those extra 11 seconds seem well worth it to me when the mana runs low. kite till orange/ drop DOT. repeat. and you say you have to bring things down to MY level.. sheesh.

[sirdanile]

i would love to use cloud kill if it scaled to level and hit things not immune to acid damage.

The rule of them being immune to poison makes them immune to the acid damage is just stupid we need more competitive spells so that everything isn't firewall, a spell pass needs to be done on dot and instant spells to make more of them worth using and make them much less sp inefficient

This.

Oh and OP: I am sorry, I couldn't understand your posts, poorly formatted and hard to read due to grammar issues.

Others: I do see how this could hurt direct damage spell users, but I also always hated that anyway, there are way more efficient ways of killing.

[sephiroth1084]

Wow, lots of stupidity going around in this thread.

Okay, let's say you have a 10% chance to crit with a spell against 10 mobs. A crit will kill a mob outright, while a non-crit will likely require two more casts.

Currently, you may have to cast your spell 3 times in order to kill any of the group, and if any make their save, then it's more likely 4 or 5 casts.

In the new system, you're very likely to be killing one member of the group with each cast. Now, you can ***** and moan about how you don't care about mobs, but in reality, the fewer monsters trying to attack you, the better. The fewer monsters you're trying to kill, the greater the chance you don't miss one or two with your AoE because they were too far away, the greater the chance a few don't manage to hit you while they're all chasing and swinging at you while you're running and jumping around, and the greater the chance that the fight ends faster, on average, because you've managed to weaken some and kill others while your party members/hireling/summon clean up the rest.

I would gladly trade the ability for a non-persistent AoE to do much more damage to at least one monster each cast than to go half a dungeon without seeing a crit. Anyone who went crit-fishing with firewalls knows that your 18% chance feels a lot more like 5% most of the time.

For AoE's that's another story, since while crit-fishing was inefficient and rather dull most of the time, it was one of the only ways to contribute damage in a really meaningful way in some content (epic DQ 2 comes to mind). Still, I can live with my firewalls killing stuff faster on average and for less SP than they previously did.

If you look at things like this in a vacuum, you lose most of the equation and your impressions are naturally skewed. Quit crying about something you clearly haven't fully considered.

[sirgog]

This is a nerf, and a significant one to what is probably the weakest class in the game (the sorceror).

At endgame it's not too important - you lose the ability to fish for Firewall crits, but that was only really used in one raid (epic DQ2) and wasn't too important there. Phase 1 of that raid may take slightly longer now.

But while levelling - crit nukes really mattered. Landing a crit fireball in Tear of Dhakaan, or a crit DBF in Running with the Devils would kill an entire room (often killing even foes that made their saves). Normal fireballs might sometimes one-shot weaker foes, but usually mobs would survive and require a second fireball. Sometimes, they'd heal enough between the first and second blast that they needed three. Using 1 fireball instead of 2-3 in 18% of rooms made a big difference to the soloing Sorc while levelling.

With the old mechanics, I soloed Running with the Devils at-level 10 times in 2 hours, with one death and two mana potion usages. (The toon in question was partially Shroud/VoD geared, but with only a tier 2 Greensteel item). Under the new mechanics I'm not sure I could repeat that at all.

[Legendary_Agent]

This is a nerf, and a significant one to what is probably the weakest class in the game (the sorceror).

At endgame it's not too important - you lose the ability to fish for Firewall crits, but that was only really used in one raid (epic DQ2) and wasn't too important there. Phase 1 of that raid may take slightly longer now.

But while levelling - crit nukes really mattered. Landing a crit fireball in Tear of Dhakaan, or a crit DBF in Running with the Devils would kill an entire room (often killing even foes that made their saves). Normal fireballs might sometimes one-shot weaker foes, but usually mobs would survive and require a second fireball. Sometimes, they'd heal enough between the first and second blast that they needed three. Using 1 fireball instead of 2-3 in 18% of rooms made a big difference to the soloing Sorc while levelling.

With the old mechanics, I soloed Running with the Devils at-level 10 times in 2 hours, with one death and two mana potion usages. (The toon in question was partially Shroud/VoD geared, but with only a tier 2 Greensteel item). Under the new mechanics I'm not sure I could repeat that at all.

Ah good times, i always went to solo running with the devils on normal with my sorcerer level 20 ofc... it was hard but it was possible without mana pots, the critical chance helped me alot there, in lammania update 8 i couldnt even dream of reaching the first shrine without running out of mana, i will try it again tomorrow and see if it maintains but according to my calculations it certainly will.

[Harncw]

it's a shame when someone has a good point and yet a terrible method of communicating it...

[Gulnar13]

In short... why you should use firewall, when you can mass hold/wail?
It's not like in epics that firewall damage matter THAT much. It's not like you can out damage a melee. You should be focusing on crowd control. And if you're not in epic, then wail is a much better alternative.
Also, i disagree with sirgog. A leveling caster till vale is a god that has descended upon mortals to bestow them with the blessing of the holy firewall, killing everything that moves. It's one of the most reliable class to solo things with, and even to party with.

Side question: why do you run running with devils? Isn't better to run rainbow, sice it drops the more valuable twigs, with a shadow walk for improved visibility?

[Legendary_Agent]

In short... why you should use firewall, when you can mass hold/wail?
It's not like in epics that firewall damage matter THAT much. It's not like you can out damage a melee. You should be focusing on crowd control. And if you're not in epic, then wail is a much better alternative.
Also, i disagree with sirgog. A leveling caster till vale is a god that has descended upon mortals to bestow them with the blessing of the holy firewall, killing everything that moves. It's one of the most reliable class to solo things with, and even to party with.

Side question: why do you run running with devils? Isn't better to run rainbow, sice it drops the more valuable twigs, with a shadow walk for improved visibility?

running with the devils is alot faster and sometimes i just did it so i could check up how effective my builds would be, i never tried soloing rainbow and i doubt i wouldnt run out of mana before reaching the first shrine, unless i would run like a mad man.

[kernal42]

running with the devils is alot faster and sometimes i just did it so i could check up how effective my builds would be, i never tried soloing rainbow and i doubt i wouldnt run out of mana before reaching the first shrine, unless i would run like a mad man.

Rainbow is pretty easy to solo on an arcane in about 10 minutes. I'm sure it can be done faster, but I haven't pushed my times lower. Interestingly, I always thought Running would be the annoying one, so I never bothered trying. I'll have to give it a go.

Cheers,
Kernal

[Legendary_Agent]

Rainbow is pretty easy to solo on an arcane in about 10 minutes. I'm sure it can be done faster, but I haven't pushed my times lower. Interestingly, I always thought Running would be the annoying one, so I never bothered trying. I'll have to give it a go.

Cheers,
Kernal

xd, nah its easy just dont count on deathspells and ull be fine.

[SardaofChaos]

I like how the fact that you can't fish for crits anymore comes up every couple of posts. It's like you people think you have the right to a guaranteed crit and now you'll never be able to do that quest 5 levels below you because all your spells do 0 damage on anything but a crit.

[Arayos]

My only comment is this:

You don't build a caster because they'll have a 9% or 18% chance to crit, while expecting that crit to come on every hit, anymore than you would build a melee expecting an 19-20, or even 17-20, crit to proc on every hit. The crit is not a part of the spell design, and should NOT be factored in as a vital element of your build, besides doing your best to maximize the chances of getting that crit.

If you have a 9% chance to crit... currently, that means 9% of your casts will be crits. With the change, this will mean that 9% of each separate instance of damage, per tick per mob, will be a crit. If you have 10 mobs in your AoE, currently this means that 9 out of 10 spells will do crit damage to none of them, and 1 of 10 will do crit damage to them all. With the changes, statistically, one of them should be getting critted nearly every time with the cast... if one or more of them dies in the process, be glad you have one less mob to worry about. It's still a total critical chance on 9% of your ticks of damage... unless you were skewing these probabilities previously via critfishing. In which case, you were sacrificing more of your damage ticks in order to get the higher-damage crits out faster.

Either way... if your build is reliant on crits to be successful, in early game, mid game, or epics... reroll. Because that means you've built solely on luck rather than skill.

Me... I drop a firewall, drop a couple more parallel to it to create a nice, multi-tick damage zone, and get to kiting. If the mobs are fire immune, I'll drop some cloudkills, kite them a bit, and wail, or just skip straight to wail. If it's epic, or the mobs are acid resistant/immune, I'll usually drop a cloudkill anyway for the concealment, then toss on my Dreamspitter and start throwing mass hold, hypno, irresistable dance, or lay down mind fog and dancing ball/web... or just step back and save my mana for things I can hurt while umding heal scrolls to hellp keep the tanks up and save the healer's mana as they beat on the mobs I can't affect. I don't critfish, and while a crit is nice, I don't count on it. I don't even carry a lore item ATM, though that's more a matter of not having a Skiver or Greenblade for the Arcane Lore and not wanting to swap out items every time I want to throw a different element at a boss.

Have decent DPS, have good CC abilities, and remember that crits are just a lucky bonus to the spells, rather than a given. Don't look at the change as taking something away, because it's not. They aren't changing your crit percentages. Instead of getting 1 lucky roll out of 10, you're now just looking at 10 lucky rolls out of 100. 1/10 = 10/100, according to basic math. In my case, I just look at it as this: I'll need to find something else to fill my cooldown between Polar Rays, since I won't be firing Ice Storm each cast against Harry, Suulo, or other pit fiends. I'll still be kiting mobs through firewalls, with a chance of them dropping faster because of the chance for crit each tick. And I'll still be attempting to Mass Hold things with my 36 DC saves(I need to up those, but that's an ongoing project) rather than spend twice as much mana for a single instant damage AoE that's not going to produce nearly as much damage in the long run.

If you'd rather build your toon based on luck, and rely on the crits that you can't reliably produce, then have at it.

</end rant>

[Scraap]

My only comment is this:

You don't build a caster because they'll have a 9% or 18% chance to crit, while expecting that crit to come on every hit, anymore than you would build a melee expecting an 19-20, or even 17-20, crit to proc on every hit. The crit is not a part of the spell design, and should NOT be factored in as a vital element of your build, besides doing your best to maximize the chances of getting that crit.

If you have a 9% chance to crit... currently, that means 9% of your casts will be crits. With the change, this will mean that 9% of each separate instance of damage, per tick per mob, will be a crit. If you have 10 mobs in your AoE, currently this means that 9 out of 10 spells will do crit damage to none of them, and 1 of 10 will do crit damage to them all. With the changes, statistically, one of them should be getting critted nearly every time with the cast... if one or more of them dies in the process, be glad you have one less mob to worry about. It's still a total critical chance on 9% of your ticks of damage... unless you were skewing these probabilities previously via critfishing. In which case, you were sacrificing more of your damage ticks in order to get the higher-damage crits out faster.

Either way... if your build is reliant on crits to be successful, in early game, mid game, or epics... reroll. Because that means you've built solely on luck rather than skill.

Me... I drop a firewall, drop a couple more parallel to it to create a nice, multi-tick damage zone, and get to kiting. If the mobs are fire immune, I'll drop some cloudkills, kite them a bit, and wail, or just skip straight to wail. If it's epic, or the mobs are acid resistant/immune, I'll usually drop a cloudkill anyway for the concealment, then toss on my Dreamspitter and start throwing mass hold, hypno, irresistable dance, or lay down mind fog and dancing ball/web... or just step back and save my mana for things I can hurt while umding heal scrolls to hellp keep the tanks up and save the healer's mana as they beat on the mobs I can't affect. I don't critfish, and while a crit is nice, I don't count on it. I don't even carry a lore item ATM, though that's more a matter of not having a Skiver or Greenblade for the Arcane Lore and not wanting to swap out items every time I want to throw a different element at a boss.

Have decent DPS, have good CC abilities, and remember that crits are just a lucky bonus to the spells, rather than a given. Don't look at the change as taking something away, because it's not. They aren't changing your crit percentages. Instead of getting 1 lucky roll out of 10, you're now just looking at 10 lucky rolls out of 100. 1/10 = 10/100, according to basic math. In my case, I just look at it as this: I'll need to find something else to fill my cooldown between Polar Rays, since I won't be firing Ice Storm each cast against Harry, Suulo, or other pit fiends. I'll still be kiting mobs through firewalls, with a chance of them dropping faster because of the chance for crit each tick. And I'll still be attempting to Mass Hold things with my 36 DC saves(I need to up those, but that's an ongoing project) rather than spend twice as much mana for a single instant damage AoE that's not going to produce nearly as much damage in the long run.

If you'd rather build your toon based on luck, and rely on the crits that you can't reliably produce, then have at it.

</end rant>

By and large agreed, actually.

My only true misgiving at present is the resultant relative worth of single-burst (with saves for half, note) vs lingering aoes (without), and how this reinforces by proxy just how much of an sp waste those happen to be most of the time, hence both the anecdote, and the proposal for heavier crits for single burst (with the result that it would be more likely to kill the critted one, but leave the rest just scarred a bit) since they are looking at that subsystem at present. Call it a nudge of opportunity.

[sirgog]

My only comment is this:

You don't build a caster because they'll have a 9% or 18% chance to crit, while expecting that crit to come on every hit, anymore than you would build a melee expecting an 19-20, or even 17-20, crit to proc on every hit. The crit is not a part of the spell design, and should NOT be factored in as a vital element of your build, besides doing your best to maximize the chances of getting that crit.

If you have a 9% chance to crit... currently, that means 9% of your casts will be crits. With the change, this will mean that 9% of each separate instance of damage, per tick per mob, will be a crit. If you have 10 mobs in your AoE, currently this means that 9 out of 10 spells will do crit damage to none of them, and 1 of 10 will do crit damage to them all. With the changes, statistically, one of them should be getting critted nearly every time with the cast... if one or more of them dies in the process, be glad you have one less mob to worry about. It's still a total critical chance on 9% of your ticks of damage... unless you were skewing these probabilities previously via critfishing. In which case, you were sacrificing more of your damage ticks in order to get the higher-damage crits out faster.

Either way... if your build is reliant on crits to be successful, in early game, mid game, or epics... reroll. Because that means you've built solely on luck rather than skill.

Me... I drop a firewall, drop a couple more parallel to it to create a nice, multi-tick damage zone, and get to kiting. If the mobs are fire immune, I'll drop some cloudkills, kite them a bit, and wail, or just skip straight to wail. If it's epic, or the mobs are acid resistant/immune, I'll usually drop a cloudkill anyway for the concealment, then toss on my Dreamspitter and start throwing mass hold, hypno, irresistable dance, or lay down mind fog and dancing ball/web... or just step back and save my mana for things I can hurt while umding heal scrolls to hellp keep the tanks up and save the healer's mana as they beat on the mobs I can't affect. I don't critfish, and while a crit is nice, I don't count on it. I don't even carry a lore item ATM, though that's more a matter of not having a Skiver or Greenblade for the Arcane Lore and not wanting to swap out items every time I want to throw a different element at a boss.

Have decent DPS, have good CC abilities, and remember that crits are just a lucky bonus to the spells, rather than a given. Don't look at the change as taking something away, because it's not. They aren't changing your crit percentages. Instead of getting 1 lucky roll out of 10, you're now just looking at 10 lucky rolls out of 100. 1/10 = 10/100, according to basic math. In my case, I just look at it as this: I'll need to find something else to fill my cooldown between Polar Rays, since I won't be firing Ice Storm each cast against Harry, Suulo, or other pit fiends. I'll still be kiting mobs through firewalls, with a chance of them dropping faster because of the chance for crit each tick. And I'll still be attempting to Mass Hold things with my 36 DC saves(I need to up those, but that's an ongoing project) rather than spend twice as much mana for a single instant damage AoE that's not going to produce nearly as much damage in the long run.

If you'd rather build your toon based on luck, and rely on the crits that you can't reliably produce, then have at it.

</end rant>

The same thing has been posted several times on this thread already. It was wrong then, it remains wrong now.

Throw a DBF into a room in a mid-high level quest with 12 mobs pre-nerf, and one of two things happens - it's a crit (all 12 mobs are dead) or it's a non-crit (all 12 mobs are scratched and at ~20% if they failed their save or ~60% if they made it). If it's a crit - nothing more to do here. If a non-crit, throw another one to two DBFs. To keep the numbers easier, let's assume you throw two more unless the second one crits. 18% chance to use 80SP, ~15% chance to use 160, 67% to use 240. Average mana usage: ~200.

Post nerf - you ALWAYS need 2-3 DBFs to clean up that room of mobs. We'll assume 3 again - 240 mana.

More variance in a combat hurts the side that is more likely to win (us). That's why people would rather put a 100% fortification, 0 AC tank on Horoth rather than a 0% fort 77 AC tank, even though the latter will take barely half the melee damage the 0AC one does.


The worst thing is that this nerf really only hits Sorcerors (the nuking/CC hybrid class). Wizards have such good CC that by and large they just don't care about nuking.

[Scraap]

More variance in a combat hurts the side that is more likely to win (us). That's why people would rather put a 100% fortification, 0 AC tank on Horoth rather than a 0% fort 77 AC tank, even though the latter will take barely half the melee damage the 0AC one does.

I suppose in the end, that's where the difference of opinion lies. How we define variance.

I at least, look at the % of mobs hit in a swarm for crits and dead as incoming damage reduced by that % vs the current sp and time saved, which would take more sp or pots to resolve as a wounded mob hits just as hard as a fully healthy one.

The problem I see with the single-busts though, is that even with a crit, and do correct me if this is incorrect, but I could swear I've seen saves there as well, which reduces that to just over normal damage for those mobs, leaving them alive and fighting back, which makes the first scenario invalid due to higher variance in outcome possibilities (crit, saved crit, normal damage, saved damage, with only the first of the 4 outcomes being beneficial for single-bursts).

At least I think that's where the two schools of thought on how that needs improving are coming from, roughly, anyway.

[Tobril]

Try kill devils in elite Amrath in less than 5 casts, good luck with that. Or just go back to casual, then crit rate wont matter.

While not releated to critical mechanics, a single mass suggestion works quite nicely to kill large groups of (even elite) amrath monsters.

[sirgog]

I suppose in the end, that's where the difference of opinion lies. How we define variance.

I at least, look at the % of mobs hit in a swarm for crits and dead as incoming damage reduced by that % vs the current sp and time saved, which would take more sp or pots to resolve as a wounded mob hits just as hard as a fully healthy one.

The problem I see with the single-busts though, is that even with a crit, and do correct me if this is incorrect, but I could swear I've seen saves there as well, which reduces that to just over normal damage for those mobs, leaving them alive and fighting back, which makes the first scenario invalid due to higher variance in outcome possibilities (crit, saved crit, normal damage, saved damage, with only the first of the 4 outcomes being beneficial for single-bursts).

At least I think that's where the two schools of thought on how that needs improving are coming from, roughly, anyway.

For quite significant sections of the pre-endgame game, players can select level-appropriate quests where, solo on Normal difficulty, mob HP is about 1.2 times the damage a 'single-shot' nuke does on a failed save. This is true of the Desert, Gianthold (hp there are a little lower sometimes), Orchard, Vale, IQ and DD quests. (Amrath has slightly higher mob HP and the Refuge has extraordinarily high mob HP).

This assumes you are specced to the max in fire/ice, use the best enhancement bonuses available (generally a Superior Inferno 4 clicky from 4-17, plus a Superior Combustion 7 scepter from 13-17, and then the Singed Belt or Eardweller from 18-20, or equivalents for other elements)

When you add the best Lore items available, this makes non-crit nukes almost (but not quite) save-or-die spells, but 275% crit nukes are just instant death, except against the toughest mobs.

[Cartheron]

While not releated to critical mechanics, a single mass suggestion works quite nicely to kill large groups of (even elite) amrath monsters.

Right, and I love this spell...But in Bastion of Power for example its not working very good, you know

The point is, that the very sp intensive method of killing things (direct aoe nuking) was made even more sp intensive, I get it that most of you dont care, but hey, you cannot deny it happened

[sephiroth1084]

It's been a while since I've leveled a caster, but at lvl 8 now on my TR'ed wizard, I'm generally pretty happy if I can fireball a room, kill 2 or 3 mobs and mop up the remaining ones with some melee or cheaper blasting (free MM from past life, or a wand). I know that in most cases I'd much rather deal with fewer monsters after a single cast most of the time than the occasional room clear, despite the incredible satisfaction that comes with clearing a whole room with one cast.