Make new offensive spells a priority.

[Seventh]

I may not like it but I can understand the need to bringing down the Savant curses. That said, adding new, effective elemental damage spells has just gone from "a good idea" to "necessary" in my opinion, especially for non-cold spells. My suggestions:

-Every element should have at least one damaging spell with a base cap higher than 20, since the extra caster levels are now the primary benefit of the Savant PrE's. These should most likely be single target, but perhaps one of the weaker Savant choices (Air or Fire) could receive a high-level AoE spell with a CL 22-25 cap.

-Speaking of higher levels, more 6th-9th level elemental damage spells are needed across all 4 elements, and some of the existing less-than-useful spells should be buffed. Acid Fog should be improved and the issue with hitting more than 4 targets with Chain Lightning should be looked at.

-The nerf to the acid spells should be given a second look and at least partially rolled back. Acid Rain was too good but the nerf was perhaps too severe considering the difficulties with getting ticks of that spell to land, Melf's was too useful for it's low level but it could use a few extra ticks of damage considering how far the nerf went, and nerfing cloudkill was just silly.

-Fire seriously needs to get some more spells like Burning Blood that benefit from the PrE but deal more than one type of elemental damage. It just misses out on too much content otherwise.

I think the Savants could use a few other minor changes (something resembling an elemental form, small bonuses to offensive DC's, a lower cooldown on what's left of the curses) but new spells take priority over all of that. I would be willing to see the update pushed back to see new spells added to it.

Thoughts? Additions? Suggestions?

[altrocks]

I may not like it but I can understand the need to bringing down the Savant curses. That said, adding new, effective elemental damage spells has just gone from "a good idea" to "necessary" in my opinion, especially for non-cold spells. My suggestions:

-Every element should have at least one damaging spell with a base cap higher than 20, since the extra caster levels are now the primary benefit of the Savant PrE's. These should most likely be single target, but perhaps one of the weaker Savant choices (Air or Fire) could receive a high-level AoE spell with a CL 22-25 cap.

-Speaking of higher levels, more 6th-9th level elemental damage spells are needed across all 4 elements, and some of the existing less-than-useful spells should be buffed. Acid Fog should be improved and the issue with hitting more than 4 targets with Chain Lightning should be looked at.

-The nerf to the acid spells should be given a second look and at least partially rolled back. Acid Rain was too good but the nerf was perhaps too severe considering the difficulties with getting ticks of that spell to land, Melf's was too useful for it's low level but it could use a few extra ticks of damage considering how far the nerf went, and nerfing cloudkill was just silly.

-Fire seriously needs to get some more spells like Burning Blood that benefit from the PrE but deal more than one type of elemental damage. It just misses out on too much content otherwise.

I think the Savants could use a few other minor changes (something resembling an elemental form, small bonuses to offensive DC's, a lower cooldown on what's left of the curses) but new spells take priority over all of that. I would be willing to see the update pushed back to see new spells added to it.

Thoughts? Additions? Suggestions?

Totally agree with the need for new spells of higher level. Might I add that Call Lightning Storm should be put in as a selectable spell since Air Savant has no AoE DOT at all. Polar Ray and Meteor Swarm are the only truly high level damage spells currently available for sorcs, especially since necro spells are the domain of PM's and cooldowns on instakill spells are now insane, even for a sorc. With the epic changes, even if you can theoretically instakill an mob, you're going to need some major necro DC to land it reliably, especially since you can't just spam-cast like sorcs often do with Mass Hold or other high DC required spells. Acid has some very nice spell choices, but since they've all been nerfed into uselessness over the last 2 Lam changes, there's really no point in taking them, is there?

So yeah, agreed, /signed and +1 to you.

[shagath]

Well put. / Signed and +1

[Truga]

While at it, add some new divine spells. Will also benefit the soon™ to be released druid!

[Zerkul]

In my humble opinion there should be at least one "good" spell that doesn't allow reflex save per each line of element.

[ProdigalGuru]

It was my sincerest hope that the spell pass would add a plethora of new spells, giving each of the elements comparable versions.

Sadly, that will not be the case upon release.

SLAs and Special abilities and elemental forms are all just fluff. It's the spells themselves that matter.

I agree wholeheartedly with the OP.

[bryanmeerkat]

In my humble opinion there should be at least one "good" spell that doesn't allow reflex save per each line of element.

I dont think i can agree with that . Theres no point giving every element exactly the same spell but it in a different color .
Each element should have bonus and weakness , not just a green bolt of 5d6 for acid and a red bolt of 5d6 for fire

[Aesop]

add in the Orb Spells at the very least.

Orb of Force
sound
fire
acid
lightning
ice

those are some fun spells... of course their biggest benefit in PnP is that they are not affected by SR and well here that is irrelevant

still would like them in some form

Aesop

[lppmor]

I believe the idea of not giving all elements the same damage potential is intentional, thus making each specialization stronger at different areas.

For example, there are many strong single target cold spells in the game, so one choosing water savant would become even stronger against single targets. In the same way, fire savants specialize in fire, which has many AoE spells. Earth savants are more defensive, with stronger flesh to stone, stoneskin and a new hold. And so on. You can't hope, for instance, choosing earth savant and having the strongest single target damage at the same time. Giving all elements the same offensive possibilities would make all this relation useless.

However, that being said, I agree that the way the savant bonuses are applied to each element is not well balanced. Some spells benefit much more from increased caster level than others. Some don't even get any benefit. Maybe just adding a raw percent bonus to damage to the chosen element instead of increasing casters levels would be a better choice.

[richieelias27]

add in the Orb Spells at the very least.

Orb of Force
sound
fire
acid
lightning
ice

those are some fun spells... of course their biggest benefit in PnP is that they are not affected by SR and well here that is irrelevant

still would like them in some form

Aesop

You also don't have to do a ranged touch attack to hit in DDO, so probably balances itself out.

@lppmor: Yes the different damage potentials for different elements are probably intentional. After all Fire/Cold has a greater amount of creatures who are resistant/immune than Lit/Acid. The real problem is the incredible gaps in spell selection for each element. Fire has at least 1 fire based spell for each level except 5 & 6. Cold has at least one for every level except 7 & 9. Lit has nothing in 4, 7, 8 & 9 (Level 6 is as high as you go for Lit). Acid has nothing in 7, 8, and 9 (And nothing in 5 if you don't count Cloudkill for which emp and max do not function, and I think does not affect undead or deathwarded creatures. Unsure on that.) so nothing there above 6 either.

[Torc]

I may not like it but I can understand the need to bringing down the Savant curses. That said, adding new, effective elemental damage spells has just gone from "a good idea" to "necessary" in my opinion, especially for non-cold spells. My suggestions:

-Every element should have at least one damaging spell with a base cap higher than 20, since the extra caster levels are now the primary benefit of the Savant PrE's. These should most likely be single target, but perhaps one of the weaker Savant choices (Air or Fire) could receive a high-level AoE spell with a CL 22-25 cap.

-Speaking of higher levels, more 6th-9th level elemental damage spells are needed across all 4 elements, and some of the existing less-than-useful spells should be buffed. Acid Fog should be improved and the issue with hitting more than 4 targets with Chain Lightning should be looked at.

-The nerf to the acid spells should be given a second look and at least partially rolled back. Acid Rain was too good but the nerf was perhaps too severe considering the difficulties with getting ticks of that spell to land, Melf's was too useful for it's low level but it could use a few extra ticks of damage considering how far the nerf went, and nerfing cloudkill was just silly.

-Fire seriously needs to get some more spells like Burning Blood that benefit from the PrE but deal more than one type of elemental damage. It just misses out on too much content otherwise.

I think the Savants could use a few other minor changes (something resembling an elemental form, small bonuses to offensive DC's, a lower cooldown on what's left of the curses) but new spells take priority over all of that. I would be willing to see the update pushed back to see new spells added to it.

Thoughts? Additions? Suggestions?

New elemental damage spells have rapidly become a priority as the design of the savant has unfolded. While we won’t be able to get them in for update 9, we’re aiming for our next patch. I can’t release details yet but we will be hopefully addresses issues that are making some savants less than equal in some situations. Raids/Boss encounters being a particular point of interest.

About some of the recent changes and issues…

The removal of stacking from Savant elemental curses: Raid dps testing had problems with the curses at 75% power. Balance problems.

We have an obligation to try to keep our classes balanced and maintain a certain difficulty in our boss and raid boss encounters. The stacking curse couldn’t really support those goals. As for the current situation we feel that savants can burn very bright right now in the DPS sphere, or opt for a medium to low DPS cycle at superior SP ratio depending on the situation. We like the fact it’s a choice as suppose to, “hell we just kill yonder dragon cause we’re OP”. We are following the folks crunching the numbers right now with much interest.

Acid Savant & Spells: Not where we want them yet….

1. Melf’s acid arrow: had to be nerfed because it was a PRE, and more or less we are sticking with the philosophy level 2 spells really should only be so good. Don’t worry, scorching ray is getting grandfathered in since it was nudged out of PRE land, But as you outgrow level 1 spells, level 2 spells get outgrown too, at least as far as damage is concerned.

2. Acid Rain: was unfortunately propped to Lammania with bugs. First time its numbers were completely out of wack, then it was missing ticks. This spell should now be finally fixed and giving you 4 ticks, admittedly the first with a reflex save. This spell is intended to be a hybrid between wall of fire and delayed blast fire ball. It should do more damage an any instant AOE on average except maybe tying with meteor swarm but at superior mana ratio, and does about half the damage of a wall of fire but twice as fast. I suggest giving it one more spin, particularly since it doesn’t exclude use of other persistent AOEs.

3. Burning Blood: This spell isn’t where we want it to be either, and it’s currently on hold in a diminished state. We’ve had difficulties with it because so many monsters share it and some wacky things would happen with it. Fire and forget DOTs are dangerous. We’ll improve it soon, we just need to be sure about the monster problem so we’re being cautious. Naturally, we are aiming to effect fire savants with this change as well.

4. Acid Fog: While we appreciate the players need for speed, acid fog has a great spell point damage/ratio because of its length and got a no-save armor class debuff added to it. Because it stacks with firewall/incendiary cloud or ice storm we’re not likely to be increasing the damage on this effect. We are very leery of persistent AOE saturation because it makes content trivial when the damage reaches a certain point.

5. But really we need some new elemental damage spells: We’re working on that. Spells like Polar Ray as mentioned in this thread are in our focus right now as their lack of a save and high yield (which punch resistances) make for very reliable delivery.

PRE Cool down adjustments: PRE-spells that take meta magics are very powerful in our design philosophy because they are dirt cheap, and have always had cool downs as an off set, and in theory are meant to be fired in a cycle (all three! 1,2,3). Echoes of power has some influence on this but let’s just say we felt they needed a tune down in general given the cost reductions in other parts of the spell system. Savants got three damage based meta magic enabled spells. We feel that’s very significant tool, and if you don’t you may be one of those people who eats our game for breakfast anyway…

Finger of Death and other death effects not taking Enhancements/Set Bonuses: This is a bug. We’re looking into it.

[Trillea]

New elemental damage spells have rapidly become a priority as the design of the savant has unfolded. While we won’t be able to get them in for update 9, we’re aiming for our next patch. I can’t release details yet but we will be hopefully addresses issues that are making some savants less than equal in some situations. Raids/Boss encounters being a particular point of interest.

About some of the recent changes and issues…

The removal of stacking from Savant elemental curses: Raid dps testing had problems with the curses at 75% power. Balance problems.

We have an obligation to try to keep our classes balanced and maintain a certain difficulty in our boss and raid boss encounters. The stacking curse couldn’t really support those goals. As for the current situation we feel that savants can burn very bright right now in the DPS sphere, or opt for a medium to low DPS cycle at superior SP ratio depending on the situation. We like the fact it’s a choice as suppose to, “hell we just kill yonder dragon cause we’re OP”. We are following the folks crunching the numbers right now with much interest.

Acid Savant & Spells: Not where we want them yet….

1. Melf’s acid arrow: had to be nerfed because it was a PRE, and more or less we are sticking with the philosophy level 2 spells really should only be so good. Don’t worry, scorching ray is getting grandfathered in since it was nudged out of PRE land, But as you outgrow level 1 spells, level 2 spells get outgrown too, at least as far as damage is concerned.

2. Acid Rain: was unfortunately propped to Lammania with bugs. First time its numbers were completely out of wack, then it was missing ticks. This spell should now be finally fixed and giving you 4 ticks, admittedly the first with a reflex save. This spell is intended to be a hybrid between wall of fire and delayed blast fire ball. It should do more damage an any instant AOE on average except maybe tying with meteor swarm but at superior mana ratio, and does about half the damage of a wall of fire but twice as fast. I suggest giving it one more spin, particularly since it doesn’t exclude use of other persistent AOEs.

3. Burning Blood: This spell isn’t where we want it to be either, and it’s currently on hold in a diminished state. We’ve had difficulties with it because so many monsters share it and some wacky things would happen with it. Fire and forget DOTs are dangerous. We’ll improve it soon, we just need to be sure about the monster problem so we’re being cautious. Naturally, we are aiming to effect fire savants with this change as well.

4. Acid Fog: While we appreciate the players need for speed, acid fog has a great spell point damage/ratio because of its length and got a no-save armor class debuff added to it. Because it stacks with firewall/incendiary cloud or ice storm we’re not likely to be increasing the damage on this effect. We are very leery of persistent AOE saturation because it makes content trivial when the damage reaches a certain point.

5. But really we need some new elemental damage spells: We’re working on that. Spells like Polar Ray as mentioned in this thread are in our focus right now as their lack of a save and high yield (which punch resistances) make for very reliable delivery.

PRE Cool down adjustments: PRE-spells that take meta magics are very powerful in our design philosophy because they are dirt cheap, and have always had cool downs as an off set, and in theory are meant to be fired in a cycle (all three! 1,2,3). Echoes of power has some influence on this but let’s just say we felt they needed a tune down in general given the cost reductions in other parts of the spell system. Savants got three damage based meta magic enabled spells. We feel that’s very significant tool, and if you don’t you may be one of those people who eats our game for breakfast anyway…

Finger of Death and other death effects not taking Enhancements/Set Bonuses: This is a bug. We’re looking into it.

Thank you for at least addressing some of the concerns here. I ask that you reconsider the whole non-stacking of the curses. 5 may have been OP, but 1 at 15% is not enough. Can we split the difference, and either have 3 that stack to 45% or a 1-shot that gives 40% vulnerability? The DPS that this PrE should have is not there in the current iteration.

If you disagree with me, could you tell me how much damage you would expect a mana dump to do on a single target? Right now it is just below 60,000 damage for a sorc, and I think this is too low.

[Bodic]

yeah a response makes me happier

now to spells their is the proper solution.
-elemental substatution though this is actually an Archmages talent give it to the sorc PrE's so they can sub their element into any spell

[Trillea]

yeah a response make me happier

now to spells their is the proper solution.
-elemental substatution though this is actually an Archmages talent give it to the sorc PrE's so they can sub their element into any spell

I am all for powerful sorcs, but this would break DDO.

/not signed

[Junts]

New elemental damage spells have rapidly become a priority as the design of the savant has unfolded. While we won’t be able to get them in for update 9, we’re aiming for our next patch. I can’t release details yet but we will be hopefully addresses issues that are making some savants less than equal in some situations. Raids/Boss encounters being a particular point of interest.

About some of the recent changes and issues…

The removal of stacking from Savant elemental curses: Raid dps testing had problems with the curses at 75% power. Balance problems.

We have an obligation to try to keep our classes balanced and maintain a certain difficulty in our boss and raid boss encounters. The stacking curse couldn’t really support those goals. As for the current situation we feel that savants can burn very bright right now in the DPS sphere, or opt for a medium to low DPS cycle at superior SP ratio depending on the situation. We like the fact it’s a choice as suppose to, “hell we just kill yonder dragon cause we’re OP”. We are following the folks crunching the numbers right now with much interest.

Acid Savant & Spells: Not where we want them yet….

1. Melf’s acid arrow: had to be nerfed because it was a PRE, and more or less we are sticking with the philosophy level 2 spells really should only be so good. Don’t worry, scorching ray is getting grandfathered in since it was nudged out of PRE land, But as you outgrow level 1 spells, level 2 spells get outgrown too, at least as far as damage is concerned.

2. Acid Rain: was unfortunately propped to Lammania with bugs. First time its numbers were completely out of wack, then it was missing ticks. This spell should now be finally fixed and giving you 4 ticks, admittedly the first with a reflex save. This spell is intended to be a hybrid between wall of fire and delayed blast fire ball. It should do more damage an any instant AOE on average except maybe tying with meteor swarm but at superior mana ratio, and does about half the damage of a wall of fire but twice as fast. I suggest giving it one more spin, particularly since it doesn’t exclude use of other persistent AOEs.

3. Burning Blood: This spell isn’t where we want it to be either, and it’s currently on hold in a diminished state. We’ve had difficulties with it because so many monsters share it and some wacky things would happen with it. Fire and forget DOTs are dangerous. We’ll improve it soon, we just need to be sure about the monster problem so we’re being cautious. Naturally, we are aiming to effect fire savants with this change as well.

4. Acid Fog: While we appreciate the players need for speed, acid fog has a great spell point damage/ratio because of its length and got a no-save armor class debuff added to it. Because it stacks with firewall/incendiary cloud or ice storm we’re not likely to be increasing the damage on this effect. We are very leery of persistent AOE saturation because it makes content trivial when the damage reaches a certain point.

5. But really we need some new elemental damage spells: We’re working on that. Spells like Polar Ray as mentioned in this thread are in our focus right now as their lack of a save and high yield (which punch resistances) make for very reliable delivery.

PRE Cool down adjustments: PRE-spells that take meta magics are very powerful in our design philosophy because they are dirt cheap, and have always had cool downs as an off set, and in theory are meant to be fired in a cycle (all three! 1,2,3). Echoes of power has some influence on this but let’s just say we felt they needed a tune down in general given the cost reductions in other parts of the spell system. Savants got three damage based meta magic enabled spells. We feel that’s very significant tool, and if you don’t you may be one of those people who eats our game for breakfast anyway…

Finger of Death and other death effects not taking Enhancements/Set Bonuses: This is a bug. We’re looking into it.

I love this but one comment: I think it is optimistic to really expect us to be able to reliably rotate the SLAs. I have problems accomodating them all on my hotbar along with all the new spells that are suddenl yrelevant to my sorceror (who suddenly has 7-8 damage spells to cast instead of primarily wall of fire, polar ray, and the occaisional delayed blast FB), that even as a player who plays with over 60 one-press hotkeys, I am hard-pressed to accomodate all of these abilities in a playable arrangement. I imagine i will figure it out as time goes on, but I think you would be better off with a shorter, shared cooldown between the SLAs so that you choose the one who's effect is appropriate instead of rotating all 3 for tremendous, nearly-free damage dealing. Since in nearly all cases these abilities each do fairly different things (taking electric for example, shocking grasp does bad damage but is their only reflex-less spell, whereas lightning bolt does potentially serious damage and electric loop is well uhm ehhhhh), I think you would get a better result with that model than one that expects us to routinely use all three SLAs in conjuction with other spells. I want more relevant spells as much as the next guy, but there comes a point where it's not feasible to have them all hotkeyed in a location where they can be regularly accessed during combat, especially with all the buffs and other things that must be hotkeyed in quick reach in order to play an arcane efficiently (including things like spell-dage clickies which are quite short and necessary to refresh with great frequency).

I've been playing with an electric+cold setup and my main problem was not the build's performance but finding a way to accomodate having 15 different attack abilities that i had to be able to use at any time during active combat. Stopping and moving the mouse over a hotbar is not a viable option outside of stand and fire raidboss fights, which are a very small amount of the game.

[Scraap]

2. Acid Rain: was unfortunately propped to Lammania with bugs. First time its numbers were completely out of wack, then it was missing ticks. This spell should now be finally fixed and giving you 4 ticks, admittedly the first with a reflex save. This spell is intended to be a hybrid between wall of fire and delayed blast fire ball. It should do more damage an any instant AOE on average except maybe tying with meteor swarm but at superior mana ratio, and does about half the damage of a wall of fire but twice as fast. I suggest giving it one more spin, particularly since it doesn’t exclude use of other persistent AOEs.

+

We are very leery of persistent AOE saturation because it makes content trivial when the damage reaches a certain point.

Most of the rest of the post makes a great deal of sense, however, could you elaborate on the design calls for Acid Rain a bit?

It seems very counter-intuative to turn an aoe targeted dot spell into a fixed location acid bath on top of setting a ratio of higher bursting damage over a shorter period of time vs it's contemporaries, given the nature of the rest of the spells for the acid line, and the above part 2, which would seem to indicate you would want to favor lower damage longer lingering spells, (so an inverse of the current relation to WoF, since that encourages the killing spike damage to come from elsewhere).

Was the unique functionality exhibited by the spell as it exists on Live unsalvageable?

[Junts]

+


Most of the rest of the post makes a great deal of sense, however, could you elaborate on the design calls for Acid Rain a bit?

It seems very counter-intuative to turn an aoe targeted dot spell into a fixed location acid bath on top of setting a ratio of higher bursting damage over a shorter period of time vs it's contemporaries, given the nature of the rest of the spells for the acid line, and the above part 2, which would seem to indicate you would want to favor lower damage longer lingering spells, (so an inverse of the current relation to WoF, since that encourages the killing spike damage to come from elsewhere).

Was the unique functionality exhibited by the spell as it exists on Live unsalvageable?

The problem with long-lasting, lower damage is that you are free to apply them once and then go do a lot of other things and still be doing reasonable damage.

Acid rain as designed is an aoe that does its damage over time but a fairly short one and consequently requires careful micromanagement of the mobs to get the most out of the spell, because its damage is very strong. the problem with full strength burning blood and melf-s acid arrow was that you cuoild apply both and have multiple minutes to do other things, be they the cold dot and polar rays or cc mobs or heal the wf tank and still do significant damage in the process.

[GotSomeQuestions]

Torc, thank you for the detailed and sensible response. It's nice to see that the developers are taking a long term view, and it's a refreshing change from the various back and forth extremes that many posters had fallen into. I look forward to seeing further spell development and balancing in your ongoing efforts to bring us the best game you can (and personally, I think it just keeps getting better). I have only two comments.

First, I would like to echo what Junts said, and build on it. There's only so many spells and abilities we can have at our fingertips. Aside from pure raidboss spell cycling, where I actually can (kinda sorta) approximate an ideal spell sequence, I have a hard time casting spells with any real speed.

While it might technically be "the best" to cycle quickly through my SLAs and also throw down Solid Fog to drop reflex saves and an Irresistible Dance on that enemy caster and maybe a Mass Hold or Disco Ball for some extra crowd control and Haste just ran out again and a thousand other things, I can't pretend that I can manage those at anything near optimal speed. And honestly, if twitch reflexes are necessary to be the best, then I'll pass.

I like excitement and thrills, and DDO's fast paced combat works well, but I have my limits. If that means I won't run some epics, that's fine with me. I appreciate it when my best option is to take a bit more time to cast the right spells at the right targets, rather than pressing keys as fast as I can. But there are people who really want to see a performance increase when they speed up their play, so I don't want to take that away from them. I just hope there's a balance point that lets everyone have fun.

The removal of stacking from Savant elemental curses: Raid dps testing had problems with the curses at 75% power. Balance problems.

Second, I agree with this change. Getting basically double damage versus *only* raid bosses presents intractable balance problems, and was probably better than we even realized. However, now this is an effect that, while still somewhat nice against bosses, we can't use very well elsewhere. I would like to suggest an alternative way to improve the curses: make them affect an area, instead of a single target. That way, we can get a small damage boost against multiple trash enemies, rather than having to take extra time for a 15% boost on the occasional single enemy (especially given the casting limits I discussed above). This would really make the Curse worth leading off with at the beginning of a fight, and an exciting ability to have.

[talyor]

PRE Cool down adjustments: PRE-spells that take meta magics are very powerful in our design philosophy because they are dirt cheap, and have always had cool downs as an off set, and in theory are meant to be fired in a cycle (all three! 1,2,3). Echoes of power has some influence on this but let’s just say we felt they needed a tune down in general given the cost reductions in other parts of the spell system. Savants got three damage based meta magic enabled spells. We feel that’s very significant tool, and if you don’t you may be one of those people who eats our game for breakfast anyway…

.

then why were arcane blast and bolt changed as they are not affected by Metas?

[Alcamez]

We like the fact it’s a choice as suppose to, “hell we just kill yonder dragon cause we’re OP”. We are following the folks crunching the numbers right now with much interest.

Torc I have a new Signature thank you