Buff Savants!

[Trillea]

OK, now that this has been released and is live, it is time for me to post this.

Every other prestige enhancement (except deepwood sniper) makes the prestige enhancement-taker the best at whatever they do:

Fighters)
Kensai: no better DCs or STR for a fighter, awesome synergy with FB
Defender: no better defensive PrE ingame (DoS comes close)

Paladins)
DoS: Second only to fighters' Defender class for S&B
KotC: Kills evil outsiders faster than pretty much anything else out there
HotD: Best healing amp PrE, great benefits against undead

Wizards)
Archmage: Great versatility (wizards' earmark), choose a type of spell and be great at it
Pale Master: Undisputed master of negative energy and necromancy spells.

Clerics)
Radiant Servant: Best healer out there with free AoE heals and cheaper healing metamagics.

Rogues)
Mechanic: Best with traps (although whether you NEED to be best is up for debate, they are the best nevertheless)
Assassin: Every swing has a chance to severely damage if not kill outright any non-rednamed or above enemy
Thief-acrobat: You stay on your feet and wield quarterstaffs like noone else.

Rangers)
Tempest: Masters of TWF, no other way to get 100% offhand procs
Arcane archer: Masters of the bow, undisputed
DWS: incomplete, needs buffed

Barbarian)
FB: Arguably the highest DPS ingame, especially when well-splashed or crossclassed.

This brings us to the classes that have had no PrE before this update, FvS and Sorc

FvS)
AoV: Best with light spells and alignment-based spells, ***GET STACKING DEBUFFS TO THEIR PRIMARY ELEMENTS***, get free DPS in their primary element (shoulder cannon)

Sorc)
Savant: This is where you dropped the ball Devs. This should have been to sorcs what Frenzied Berzerker is to Barb, or Kensai is to fighter. It should have raised our DPS to levels never-before seen in DDO. But in its current state, it is barely better DPS than a geared-out melee, and is not sustainable DPS anywhere NEAR a good melee. A complete mana dump in 1 minute is approx 60,000 damage according to calculations. This is not anywhere NEAR enough - approximately 1kdps, and then spent after 1 min. If a sorceror with the most spell points available ingame chooses to unload their entire spell bar on a single target, they should be doing 6-digit damage in total at the very least. I agree that the curses stacking up to 5 times was excessive. But you guys, in typical fashion, overreacted. You made the curses not stack at all. This is COMPLETELY unacceptable.

Since spell points are finite, make them count for what they do. In a Savant's case, this is damage - and at a steep cost too. Taking a 9 caster level hit to your opposing element is a steep cost; you should get a corresponding boost in power to offset this.

Let's look at the only other PrE with a cost nearly as steep: Pale Master and the complete loss of divine healing AND repair. They get this offset by having an entire new line of spells heal them - negative energy, while having extra bonuses to their primary stats AND direct bonuses to spell DCs at the same time. What do savants get? A non-stacking curse and a 6 caster-level bonus (no DC bonus) to their primary element. This is not enough to offset their costs. Devs, this should have been a sorc's chance to show the other class what damage is, and instead of a blaze of glory it is a pitiful reflection of a decent class that could have been. Please give us our stacking curses back, to a maximum of 3 curses.

[KatanaEin]

Yeah, our Sorcs are getting a bum wrap. We need more power! Power to the Sorcs!

[DevHead]

There are 5,000 other threads complaining about this. Just don't take the PrE.

[Trillea]

There are 5,000 other threads complaining about this. Just don't take the PrE.

That's not an acceptable choice. This is supposed to be the damage-based PrE, but it completely fails.

[DevHead]

That's not an acceptable choice. This is supposed to be the damage-based PrE, but it completely fails.

I dunno, I've been reading posts that some people think that the new Savants are actually OP.

It doesn't completely fail. You're more hyperbolic than Al Gore.

[Jaid314]

I dunno, I've been reading posts that some people think that the new Savants are actually OP.

It doesn't completely fail. You're more hyperbolic than Al Gore.

at level 13, savant *is* completely OP. so is every other caster in the game, with or without PrE, provided they are being played by someone reasonably competent... at level 13.

fast forward to level 20... not so much.

[BurningDownTheHouse]

/singed

[Dunklerlindwurm]

I dunno, I've been reading posts that some people think that the new Savants are actually OP.

It doesn't completely fail. You're more hyperbolic than Al Gore.

This

[BurningDownTheHouse]

This

No, this:

at level 13, savant *is* completely OP. so is every other caster in the game, with or without PrE, provided they are being played by someone reasonably competent... at level 13.

fast forward to level 20... not so much.

[fyrst.grok]

Wizards)
Archmage: Great versatility (wizards' earmark), choose a type of spell and be adequate at it.. At best..

There fixed it for you

[Myrdinn]

I disagree, the savant prestige is nice.

Was actually able to dump all my mana on harry for fast and high dmg.

Polar ray does about 900 normal and 2000-2400 crit. which is quite nice number, also help all the other caster casting polar ray with the 15% boost clicky, went from yellow number to purple.

Part 5, my mana went out at the same time as harry, and we had an 11 person group with 2 wiz and a sorc(me) and no bard. So DPS was decent, but long way from perfect.

My dmg ratio was pretty high while rolling between the niac biting cold (150-170 per tick, polar ray 900-1000, otiluke for 700-800, frost lance for 200-600). btw, Im basically ice and and force (for the untyped and bludgeoned dmg)

Could have even use the Ice Storm but didn't in case it produce more lag which was high yesterday due to lot of people trying the new update.

Not using fire spell, I say is not that bad. And also, the prestige is not the problem, now the problem is to play with the spell so each savant line could become interesting.
I find Air and fire lacking (fire mostly for all the amrath fire immunity)

In short, /not signed

[Kriogen]

1. Base cost of elemental spell should be 1 SP. For example all fire based spells cost 1 SP if you are Fire savant. You are Master of Fire, so fire is cheap for you. Base cost, not metas.

2. Replace that higher caster level for specific spell (that is bugged anyway) with a simple extra damage bonus (and penalty for opposed element). Just add extra damage enhancement.

3. Anytime you get a critical with <elemental> spell (fire savant cast fire spell, etc) it adds extra perk:
- Fire : burning with shaken. Nice little DoT with handy debuff.
- Water : slow like effect. Like what that White dragon likes to do in Tor.
- Air : some sort of stun like effect
- Earth : something that is inline with acid/earth

4. All SLAs have 5 sec cooldown.

5. Just replace 3 SLAs with 1 single (savant unique) SLA that scales with savant/sorc levels. Why complicate things with 3? You'd have just 1 SLA to manage and as it would be unique, you'd have easier time balancing it (no need to 'balance' original blue-bar spell). Easier for devs (easier to balance, control) and easier of player (less buttons to push, manage cooldowns, what we do WoW now?)

[ayspam]

If you look at it from a different perspective it aint so bad, this is why.

1., enter quest
2., wait wherever with the melees
3., let the PM clear the quest
4., go in to clean up the boss fight
5., all the more time to pike
6., loot/win

yay

All I gotta say is savant is rubbish, I ve never felt so useless in quests on a sorc for the past 5 years that I m playing them.

Here's my take. I went cold savant to try it out. Have all the cold spells except otiluke, cant fit that in. Maxxed out all enchancments for cold, took a few in force to try out horrid wilting.

I am going to list 3 scenarios where I m using Ayspam as the example, so an extreme well geared character.

So for example for me as a sorc to take down a group of mobs (in epic) would take me at least 5 if not more casts (of whatever) to kill them all. Sure i got lots of SP I could do that for a while.

How does this compare to say me on a PM, who just presses a button every 30 seconds and melts anything thats closeby?

Or me on a FvS who kites the mobs thru 1 maybe 2 blade barriers

Lets see, it cost me the sorc using this scenario web(45), icestorm(53), snowball(5), cone(67), otilukes (not sure i ll say 67 like cone) cone again (67) lets imagine I get really lucky and get crits and actually manage to kill the 5 epic mobs (I wont) with this combo of 6 spells.
sp invested 304.

Lets try this on me as a FvS

Blade barrier, lets say 1 doesnt do the job, drop another, that will do it.
sp invested 200sp

Now me as a PM

circle of death, wail, maybe a finger if 1 gets lucky and saves
sp invested 145sp

See where I m getting at?

Luckily +5 hearts are available to anyone.

I d like a +20 heart for Ayspam, cos I m surely not gonna bother playing a gimped character.

[ayspam]

I disagree, the savant prestige is nice.

Was actually able to dump all my mana on harry for fast and high dmg.

Polar ray does about 900 normal and 2000-2400 crit. which is quite nice number, also help all the other caster casting polar ray with the 15% boost clicky, went from yellow number to purple.

Part 5, my mana went out at the same time as harry, and we had an 11 person group with 2 wiz and a sorc(me) and no bard. So DPS was decent, but long way from perfect.

My dmg ratio was pretty high while rolling between the niac biting cold (150-170 per tick, polar ray 900-1000, otiluke for 700-800, frost lance for 200-600). btw, Im basically ice and and force (for the untyped and bludgeoned dmg)

Could have even use the Ice Storm but didn't in case it produce more lag which was high yesterday due to lot of people trying the new update.

If you enjoy chilling and just poking about in the other areas of the quest, and only want to focus on one bossfight then I understand.

[Myrdinn]

not only this one, also tried new invasion elite, and that was fun, dmg was nice.

PWK the wind elemental, then ice storm for all the construct orthon, devil, fire ele. use some snowball or frost lance or polar to make good measure.

Didn't tried the epic quest yet, since I am human and this build doesn't have self healing.

But overall, I just say that we can do dmg and sustain it for a while, compared to before. Only spell I was using in fire was fw and meteor, so I replaced the meteor by PWK. A shame there is no meteor like in water :P

Can still Wail, just not as efficient as a PM. And dont get me wrong, I have played a lot of caster, including, PM (a full one and a 12/8monk one), Archmage, post U9 sorc, Air Savant, Ice Savant. So I know exactly what the difference between the different prestige are.

This prestige is just one way to have good DPS in a selected line (which water is the best in my opinion right now, since we have spell with no save).

And btw, wail is not an automatic win, even more in epic and above 20 quest. We even get a 30 second timer now... WS and PM will use about the same amount of mana to kill the same amount of mob. Just that one will use symbol of death coupled with wail and finish the remaining with either DPS with spell or PM Necrotic Bolt/Blast while sustaining their Aura.

I will just say this, there is different way to play a caster and this Update just enable me to do it DPS way, which I find refreshing, caster was all about fw and now it can just use AOE or DD spell

Only thing I gotta say is we still suck at dealing with portal in shroud, if we have no force spell :P

[Junts]

If you enjoy chilling and just poking about in the other areas of the quest, and only want to focus on one bossfight then I understand.

Spec into something with aoe capability in your spell selection instead then.

I had no problems killing really tremendous amounts of things at a really high rate of speed because I chose my savant type, my 2nd element and every spell to facililate doing so - including keeping my enchant dc high enough that I can reliably hold most trash to get the 50% damage bonus against it, and carrying otto's dancing sphere and solid fog for more general reflex-nerfing to enable my spells to deal full damage as often as possible.

Stuff melts if you build for it, dude. 1 and 2 shot kills melts.

Otiluke's freezing sphere, which now does 20d6 base damage (up to 25d6 with your set!) is a pretty important part of having aoe nuking capability. I found a way to carry both chainlightning for my element -and- otilukes, though admittedly I'm not using otilukes that often because my ball lightning is also 20d5. Ball lightning and chain lightning with SLA support and the occaisional otilukes (when I want 3 aoe blasts) or polar ray (on a single target) were enough to kill very large quantities of stuff.

In some cases, the 46 or so dc pale master was able to outkill me by a slightly higher rate (chrono as an example, because he could deal with the orange named devils much more efficiently than I). In others, I was dramatically more effective, particularly quests where many mobs have good fort saves and little else (claw, into the deep, etc).

I didn't run a wide enough selection of epics yesterday to say which is more universally effective, or to find enough situations where the difference was really prohibitive to one or the other (though I had a far easier time killing stuff in claw than he did), but I imagine we'll find them.

Considering I also did so much dps that I was pulling raid bosses doing nothing but rolling the two dots + SLAs, I'd be willing to accept pale masters being somewhat superior at killing trash in a higher percentrae of quests, particularly given how small the dropoff was from him to me in most cases. The mobs I had the hardest time with were orange named mobs, since their HP have not scaled. In many situations I was forced to rely on edrain+finger or edrain+edrain+finger as an answer to those monsters (like soloing orange devils in chrono as we ran around 2-manning about 100 kills in 20 minutes or so).

[Myrdinn]

Anyway, in brief, we do more dmg in our selected area, which is way more than before, so Im not gonna whine on that, I now have fun playing my sorc

[varusso]

Well I would love to comment on this either way with anything other than rumor or speculation, but that would require being able to actually spec into the PRE past tier 1-- which I cant do without swapping a feat. Which I cant do without farming or buying the lvl 20 shard, so ... yeah....

[DevHead]

Wow, I got MASSIVELY neg rep'd for that. It seems a$$hats abound.

EDIT: AND it continues! Keep neg rep'ing me....I wanna see how low this goes. It's not like in the space of 12 hours I got neg rep'd over 100 points or something...

[Memnir]

Now granted, my Sorc is only lvl 12, so I have no experience at that level of play - but I am digging the PrE and I think the only thing that needs to change about Savants is the curse.

Either it needs to remain as it is, without stacking, but have the cooldown reduced by a third to one half.

Or, it could keep the cooldown - but have it stack twice only.


But all in all, I am more in favor of the PrE then not. I do think the penalties to the opposed element are too severe - but I can live with that if there is a bit more bolstering to the curse aspect.