Please Nerf Water Savant

[Duncani_Daho]

Face it Mo, turbs vision of DDO is easily zerging to 20 in a couple of weeks. I heard Jerry say it on DDOcast. "DDO is about winning, not losing". Most of the players want fast, easy progression. The only way to maintain challenging progression is to adjust our rules. Eventually turb will surpass our ability to do that with a reasonable rule set, and some great guilds and communities will be lost. Sucks, but might as well enjoy the ride while we can. DDO is not forever.

Yeah, I agree with ya Parvo, and it sucks. We can't announce major rule changes every Update and expect to keep the guild together. People get angry with it and I don't blame them. Sorc savants (not just water) will make every quest levels 7-14 an absolute joke-- and be kill joys for everyone in the party. That's a pretty big swath of content to spoil.

When people like me voice concern about the game getting too easy, it done from the heart and with DDO's best interest in mind. The proliferation of easy-buttons will kill the challenge in the game, and when the challenge is gone, players will leave. NOT JUST PD PLAYERS. The coolest character abilities in the universe will not keep players coming back unless they NEED to use those abilities to overcome challenges in the game.

Take away the challenge and you kill the game.

[karnokvolrath]

Yeah, I agree with ya Parvo, and it sucks. We can't announce major rule changes every Update and expect to keep the guild together. People get angry with it and I don't blame them.

I dont agree with this at all, the spirt of permadeath sould shine though to you real gamers that love it....heres an idea, just ban all pre's. Perm was around b4 pres, i dont see why it cant be that way still.

[Trillea]

Take away the challenge and you kill the game.

While I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, you are going about it the wrong way. Instead of nerfing the player abilities, they need to make the game itself harder.

Raise monster HP/saves.
Increase intelligence level of monster AI.
Monsters should attack as fastand often as we do, and their ranged animations should be at least as quick (looking at you, giants..).
Expand enemy caster spell lists.
More dispelling enemy casters.
Give beholders the abilities and penalties that they are supposed to have (They should be able to float a lot higher than they do, and the antimagic cone is supposed to suppress enchantments on equipment/weapons/armor)
Make enemy bards that use fascinate/suggestion just like we do.

I could keep going but that would derail this further.

My point is that nerfs in this case are NOT the answer. Sorcerers now have a small fraction of the power they *should* have. Don't take this away.

[Chai]

Face it Mo, turbs vision of DDO is easily zerging to 20 in a couple of weeks. I heard Jerry say it on DDOcast. "DDO is about winning, not losing". Most of the players want fast, easy progression. The only way to maintain challenging progression is to adjust our rules. Eventually turb will surpass our ability to do that with a reasonable rule set, and some great guilds and communities will be lost. Sucks, but might as well enjoy the ride while we can. DDO is not forever.

Yeap, you are bantering the table top spirit, but you play an MMO. The reality check here in MMOs is you cant keep the majority of players wanting to come back to the game if they cant win. Its a business decision.

In the high end game, water savant is not as overpowered, though it does deliver alot of DPS, especially as a raid nuker.

[Chai]

While I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, you are going about it the wrong way. Instead of nerfing the player abilities, they need to make the game itself harder.

Raise monster HP/saves.
Increase intelligence level of monster AI.
Monsters should attack as fastand often as we do, and their ranged animations should be at least as quick (looking at you, giants..).
Expand enemy caster spell lists.
More dispelling enemy casters.
Give beholders the abilities and penalties that they are supposed to have (They should be able to float a lot higher than they do, and the antimagic cone is supposed to suppress enchantments on equipment/weapons/armor)
Make enemy bards that use fascinate/suggestion just like we do.

I could keep going but that would derail this further.

My point is that nerfs in this case are NOT the answer. Sorcerers now have a small fraction of the power they *should* have. Don't take this away.

Yeap exactly. The AI in this game can be strangled with a cordless phone. Nerfing players toons isnt the answer. Making the game tough enough where the only way to add challenge is not a matter of adding hp and adding immunities is the answer. When that kobold shaman uses their water savant pre to nail your level 4 toon with a 175 point niacs, then jumps begind a barricade right afterwards, we're in business. The zergers will be the ones complaining then, heh.

[Ngha]

The AI in this game can be strangled with a cordless phone.

I lol'd

[twix]

Yeap exactly. The AI in this game can be strangled with a cordless phone. Nerfing players toons isnt the answer. Making the game tough enough where the only way to add challenge is not a matter of adding hp and adding immunities is the answer. When that kobold shaman uses their water savant pre to nail your level 4 toon with a 175 point niacs, then jumps begind a barricade right afterwards, we're in business. The zergers will be the ones complaining then, heh.

yeah thats what we need 175 pt niacs being shot against lvl 4-5 characters ... yeah that makes it more challenging..
/sarcasm off

This would one shot just about everyone IF not everyone.. dont think it would be just zergers complaining..i like a challenge but not an impossibility ..if kobold shamans in ww did this much damage it would mean at least one death per encounter since even if you one shot the shaman they still manage that one niacs 9 times out of ten..death count does not = challenge..

[Crazyfruit]

If you really feel strongly about this, just stop grouping with them, instead of saying to nerf stuff other people are enjoying. Think water savant is bad for people wanting a permadeath challenge? Take a look at Earth.

Level 6: Potentially big damage area of effect SLA, though not as much as Niacs & a save for half. At the level you get it it's pretty overpowered if you use it on bunches of monsters. Echoes of Power'll let you use it non stop even when you have no SP left.

(For comparison: Water's is a long distance with a save or nothing, and Air's puts you in danger forcing your character to touch the monster. Fire is the same as Earth, but resisted by many types of monsters.)

Level 12: Basically an unsaveable power word kill for 90+% of monsters at level if you have empower+maximize & use it at range or run away. Same deal with Echoes.

Level 18: 300 to 1000 area of effect damage every few seconds via SLA w/ Emp+Max. But most importantly, Earthgrab. It works midair, making a rock island under things. It works through walls. It works through floors. It works on orange name bosses. It works on (some) red name bosses. It's got a save most monsters are weak to... and the cooldown is roughly as long as it lasts, letting you keep things permastunned. About 500 damage over time and a bonus 50% to all damage dealt to them too! On the plus side, most permadeath characters wouldn't make it anywhere near this level unless they were sorcerers or grouped with them.

I no longer group with sorcerers past level 5.
Both when playing permadeath, and playing the "real game".
However, I'm not going to say to nerf them.

Lots of non-permadeath people I've met have been having lots of fun with the new savants or grouped with them. I'm just not one of them

[parvo]

While I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, you are going about it the wrong way. Instead of nerfing the player abilities, they need to make the game itself harder.

Raise monster HP/saves.
Increase intelligence level of monster AI.
Monsters should attack as fastand often as we do, and their ranged animations should be at least as quick (looking at you, giants..).
Expand enemy caster spell lists.
More dispelling enemy casters.
Give beholders the abilities and penalties that they are supposed to have (They should be able to float a lot higher than they do, and the antimagic cone is supposed to suppress enchantments on equipment/weapons/armor)
Make enemy bards that use fascinate/suggestion just like we do.

I could keep going but that would derail this further.

My point is that nerfs in this case are NOT the answer. Sorcerers now have a small fraction of the power they *should* have. Don't take this away.

This wouldn't work well. Well built sorc savants are so far above the crowd that you couldn't make a decent challenge for them without making it super difficult for others. Level six characters should not have 300 save-or-die casts per shrine. It's silly.

[Dispel]

Air Savant has better SLA than Water Savant.

[parvo]

yeah thats what we need 175 pt niacs being shot against lvl 4-5 characters ... yeah that makes it more challenging..
/sarcasm off

This would one shot just about everyone IF not everyone.. dont think it would be just zergers complaining..i like a challenge but not an impossibility ..if kobold shamans in ww did this much damage it would mean at least one death per encounter since even if you one shot the shaman they still manage that one niacs 9 times out of ten..death count does not = challenge..

Shaman in the harbor right now can one-shot many level four characters we put up against them. Thier Lightning Bolts and Niac's are pretty high damage. It's not a matter of spell damage. It's a matter of AI.

[voodoogroves]

This wouldn't work well. Well built sorc savants are so far above the crowd that you couldn't make a decent challenge for them without making it super difficult for others. Level six characters should not have 300 save-or-die casts per shrine. It's silly.

The problem you're really exposing is that Sorcs get there with little to no gear. A fighter at 10-ish (lower if it has a race or other ML) needs to wait for a vorpal to have that infinite killing potential ... and in PD that's not gonna happen but the Sorc can near guarantee to hit that more reliably.

So, maybe one way to look at it is how can you level THAT? Put a ML on when characters can take metamagic feats maybe?

[Crazyfruit]

Shaman in the harbor right now can one-shot many level four characters we put up against them. Thier Lightning Bolts and Niac's are pretty high damage. It's not a matter of spell damage. It's a matter of AI.

What he said. My last permadeath character got held & one hit by a Niacs hopping down that big hole in Waterworks 3

[Trillea]

Put a ML on when characters can take metamagic feats maybe?

The problem here is if you do this, then you are back to the situation we had before where casters will be going for master's touch and the greataxe off the boat, and the whole spell pass would have been for naught.

Without a complete overhaul of the early game, there are no easy solutions to this problem.

I still stand by my statements that the root of 95% of the problems in DDO stem from the fact that the base attack bonus increases instead of decreasing with progressive attacks.

[Xenostrata]

If it will make you feel better, know that I also favor nerfing Half-orc Fighters. Level 4 toons were just never meant to start with a 24 strength. And level 12 toons who run in level 12 quests weren't meant to have a 40 strength either.

Nerfing has been part of the game from the beginning, and anything overpowered is a candidate. Remember the nerf to batman builds in the form of evasion only for light armor? Here's one for ya: remember the nerf to Holy Smite? I was there and it was lame lame lame.

Maybe Niacs that do 400 points of damage at level 6 SHOULD be part of DDO. But who could argue that it should only cost 2 spell points? Never a reason NOT to spam that button. And this is fun for others in the party? "Your skills are not needed here, just pike and collect your pay check."

This is in a PD thread because PD is what I play 99.9% of the time. In my guild, we don't ever use shrines and even with the restrictions, sorc savants are proving to be a kill joy. I doubt the Devs will ever read this thread-- it's directed to the PD community at large.

+1 for the well-reasoned response.

I do, however, maintain that it would be much more fair for you to simply limit savants in your guild, rather than make a broad statement that sounds like you are requesting that Turbine nerf it for everyone, regardless of your intentions.

I also maintain the same argument I make (or at least think loudly to myself) when a non-PD "easy button" thread pops up - it doesn't matter at all whether a fighter gets 24 strength at level 6, what matters much more in terms of whether or not the character will do well is how it is played. You already have rules in place that make a 24 strength level 6 toon incredibly rare.

Why not, as part of guild rules, make it impossible to have either/both of empower and maximize before a certain level. The sense I get from PD play is that it is focused almost entirely on resource conservation, so I strongly doubt many PD casters were walking around with both emp/max on all the time before SLAs came out, and probably took those sp-eating feats later in the game. That way, you (as a group) don't have people spamming such high damage spells for low cost.

[twix]

Shaman in the harbor right now can one-shot many level four characters we put up against them. Thier Lightning Bolts and Niac's are pretty high damage. It's not a matter of spell damage. It's a matter of AI.

so if the enemys jumped behind things and made players chase them this would be better ai ? what exactly is better ai to you ? as far as im concerned kobolds are about the most annoying things to fight to begin with ..they jump back and forth ,run away ,run around corners.etc,etc, and if they already have high damage spells that one shot your lvl 4 characters what would raising the damage do for you ? Not really directed at you but more directed at the original post i quoted..which apparently you must not of read..because i never said it was about spell damage.

Actually i kinda said the opposite.... i really think that if you are already dieing to kobolds in one shot now ...why do you want it to be more difficult? im seriously curious..

If a water savant is making your questing too easy,which seems to be all you pders gripe, why not add another rule onto the many you already have..maybe only certain casts of slas a shrine? sure it would be the honor system but so are a lot of your other rules...im just not sure what having better ai would do to make you feel challenged..it seems you already are if there isnt a water savant in your party.

just kinda confused as to what the problem is ? do you pders have capped toons who have never died? maybe you do but i doubt it so it seems to me that just maybe there is still a chalenge somewhere? or you guys would all be capped ...no?

[Trillea]

so if the enemys jumped behind things and made players chase them this would be better ai ?

Yes, it would.

To clarify.. AI is all about keeping the monsters alive longer and having them effectively attack the players. Monsters that charge straight toward you down a long hallway are stupid. Not just stupid but brainless. They should wait around corners and set up ambushes. They should run just far enough to be able to hit you at range, fire, and run back around corners. Melee monsters that are caught in the open should take cover and alert their friends.

Monsters should not just stand there and die, nor should the melee monsters charge 200 yards down a hallway or across a field because you plunked them with an arrow.

[voodoogroves]

The problem here is if you do this, then you are back to the situation we had before where casters will be going for master's touch and the greataxe off the boat, and the whole spell pass would have been for naught.

:-0

I was talking a PD rule, not a base DDO rule. PD groups can adjust their own rules to account for that, while the rest of us can twink to our heart's content.

PS. I still swing a greataxe on lowbies.

[lugoman]

Maximize and Empower, with the SLA on Niacs, is way over powered. Please nerf this. Don't have any idea what the Devs had in mind for the savants, but they are nukers gone wild. TWO spell points, seriously?

I run mainly epics and end game content and about 80% of the mobs make their save against my inherent niac's cold ray.

[Chai]

If it will make you feel better, know that I also favor nerfing Half-orc Fighters. Level 4 toons were just never meant to start with a 24 strength. And level 12 toons who run in level 12 quests weren't meant to have a 40 strength either.

In PnP this is true, but not in DDO. Alot of the stuff we play in DDO is balanced around what the forumites have dubbed "full ****** DPS" toons, which stick every point possible into strength.

Nerfing has been part of the game from the beginning, and anything overpowered is a candidate. Remember the nerf to batman builds in the form of evasion only for light armor? Here's one for ya: remember the nerf to Holy Smite? I was there and it was lame lame lame.

Evasion in light armor is D&D rule as written. Why they coded it into this game to begin with to work in heavier armor is beyond me. It wasnt a nerf, it was correcting a bug.

Maybe Niacs that do 400 points of damage at level 6 SHOULD be part of DDO. But who could argue that it should only cost 2 spell points? Never a reason NOT to spam that button. And this is fun for others in the party? "Your skills are not needed here, just pike and collect your pay check."

In PnP its zero cost, as it is a spell like ability. They made the cost low to emulate that.

Sorc were like that even before the spell pass. We could to the entirety of the necro 2 chain, one firewall per room.

This is in a PD thread because PD is what I play 99.9% of the time. In my guild, we don't ever use shrines and even with the restrictions, sorc savants are proving to be a kill joy. I doubt the Devs will ever read this thread-- it's directed to the PD community at large.

In the later levels SLAs are still good but they arent overkill. Its the earlier levels where they are overkill. This stuff is already boring enough for experienced players anyhow that its darn near a moot point. One shot a kobold for 2 sp? One shot them with a great ax for free. We been doing that for years now.

I do see what the real issue is however.

The real issue here in PD is that if you start making rules about what feats people can and cannot take, or disallowing classes completely, you may be a guild of one. Exclusion of character abilities is less fun. PDers dont mind restrictions but when you start telling them how they can play their toons it becomes a big deal. The adjustmenmt needs to be made somewhere else.

The solution is to start playing content at level and ignoring the fact that elite = +2 levels, and stop the one rule over = OK because its not an xp penalty. Now instead of having level 6+ sorcs in waterworks, they are in gwylans and tear of dhakan.

The one class that would have the onus on itself to improve greatly would be rogues. Healers got a decrease in SP cost for cure spells so they would likely be fine. Fighters and barbarians can handle it. I was landing most of my CC on my 12 wizard in elite GH walkup quests.