Nerf PMs and Implosion or just make mobs save better against that

[voodoogroves]

1- full reversion including slots.
2- general removal of metas past certain spell-levels
3- targeted removal of metas on problematic spells on a case-by-case basis. (The original notion, though with all this talk of mass heals, dunno... maybe that is just as problematic as mass deaths.)

"Full reversion to PNP" is misleading. What does "full" mean? Just SRD + ECS ... but without the polymorph school and real summons, right (because we don't have those)?

Full reversion but maybe with the kinds of rules and such from the Complete books (Deepwood Sniper, Acrobat, etc. are flavor from those). Great, that nets us Divine Metamagic - and I'd love to persist Divine Power on my cleric just like in PNP.


It's truly not as simple as those four words suggest.

[Raithe]

It does dominate in the high end non-Epic content, and has for a while now, and NO ONE has had any problems with it.

Please don't speak for other people. Savant and instakill domination of non-Epic content is why I'm involved in these debates. From personal experience I also believe that there is a very large segment of new customers that are becoming disenchanted with gameplay due to savant abilities, which often trump even instakill in non-Epic content.

Take a couple of sorcs into Stealer of Souls who have both savant DPS and instakill. Any other class you take will feel inferior.

[voodoogroves]

Just going to add one other thought here, because folks are getting kinda scattered.

We're talking about the capabilities of what a somewhat power-gamery person can do in DDO. 45 ish DC on instakill is non-trivial.

There's talk of "making it more like PNP" which is great in an abject directional sense with no meat ... because if you've played D&D 3.5 with the same intense optimization focus the balance is far, far worse in favor of full casters.

Now I know when folks say "revert to PNP" they are first only talking about parts of the system and secondarily making far-reaching statments based on some personal assumptions about the content, what works, etc. Maybe that achieves what they want, maybe not. We're talking the play-to-win mindset here, not the play-what-I-want-for-flavor crowd, because those are fine anywhere. We're talking about "I go first, because I always do, cast all of my spells in a single round and obliterate the challenge before anyone else in the party can act".

"Make it like PNP" may be some sort of banner phrase, but from the PNP games I've played for years ruling on those concepts is time consuming and non-trivial. Do we really think a complete system change for magic is the right answer?


======================================
If there's only one problem to solve or one kind of challenge at the end game, the power gamers are going to gravitate towards that one thing.

- We can nerf it, and move the line. Then something else becomes "best" ... because something always is and the power gamers find it.
- Or we can have multiple and varied challenges. One model could excel at one, another could excel at the 2nd.

[Junts]

Please don't speak for other people. Savant and instakill domination of non-Epic content is why I'm involved in these debates. From personal experience I also believe that there is a very large segment of new customers that are becoming disenchanted with gameplay due to savant abilities, which often trump even instakill in non-Epic content.

Take a couple of sorcs into Stealer of Souls who have both savant DPS and instakill. Any other class you take will feel inferior.

I did a whole tr with a savant recently and while it was certainly powerful, it wasn't any more powerful than the rest of us (nor was it significantly more powerful than sorcerors in general were when you just WOFd everything). Its certainly plausible to me that savants are more distortedly powerful at lower equipment levels.

I think one thing that seems to be a problem with caster damage is that it is extremely independent of equipment caliber. There are things that benefit you (upgrading to 12% crit if available, eardweller situationally, etc), but their increases are relatively small and not all that significant. A fresh 20 sorc with superior freeze and shock 5 pots and major ice/elec lore items and the right enhancements is a lot closer to my near-perfectly-equipped sorc with the same spells and enhancements than a fresh 20 dps is to one of my outstandingly geared ones.

That means that as character quality drops, casters become more and more powerful compared to everyone else at killing.

For casters, getting more equipment is about endurance (more sp) and survivability (hp, self-healing, etc), and almost never about damage.

My recent upgrade to the epic cloak of the zephyr's 12% crit chance was more about being able to nuke with the staff of the petitioner in hand (for better mass hold and instakill dcs, and more importantly the sp cost reduction!) than it was about at 3% higher chance for electric crits. It is neat when a single chainlightning crits on all 4 jumps, but what really matters is mass holding better before I nuke and gaining 400-500 sp per shrine from the 10% reduction.

[Scraap]

"Full reversion to PNP" is misleading. What does "full" mean? Just SRD + ECS ... but without the polymorph school and real summons, right (because we don't have those)?

Full reversion but maybe with the kinds of rules and such from the Complete books (Deepwood Sniper, Acrobat, etc. are flavor from those). Great, that nets us Divine Metamagic - and I'd love to persist Divine Power on my cleric just like in PNP.


It's truly not as simple as those four words suggest.

Largely full reversion (which again, I'm not really advocating) meant pure raw srd, taking splatbooks into account, but noting that, again, the original spells were not designed with them in mind, so stepping further back if they prove to be problematic for balance purposes. (And, again, someone would have to make a rock solid case that every single level 6+ spell was OP before I seriously considered in any way agreeing on option 1.)

Since lialat was brought up, the failure rate from rolling a 1 when she hit's x6 ends up looking like

as a best-case scenario.

Largely, though when I made that particular observation, I'd had what I consider breaking game design intention in mind though: Run up to red alert, with 15+ mobs on you, and mashing the big red button. That ups the failure probability quite a bit higher under those situations where the game it's-self is screaming at you that "you shouldn't be doing this". In that reguard, it was a bit of a request that if something *must* be nerfed, let it be done in a recognizable manner.

[Junts]

Largely full reversion (which again, I'm not really advocating) meant pure raw srd, taking splatbooks into account, but noting that, again, the original spells were not designed with them in mind, so stepping further back if they prove to be problematic for balance purposes. (And, again, someone would have to make a rock solid case that every single level 6+ spell was OP before I seriously considered in any way agreeing on option 1.)

Since lialat was brought up, the failure rate from rolling a 1 when she hit's x6 ends up looking like

as a best-case scenario.

Largely, though when I made that particular observation, I'd had what I consider breaking game design intention in mind though: Run up to red alert, with 15+ mobs on you, and mashing the big red button. That ups the failure probability quite a bit higher under those situations where the game it's-self is screaming at you that "you shouldn't be doing this".

You do not automatically fail concentration or UMD checks when you roll a 1 on DDO. In fact, 1s don't produce automatic failure on any skill check. Even traps, etc can be done on a 1 if your skill is high enough.

There are no critical failures on skill checks because DDO also does not have any critical successes.

[Lissyl]

<snip>...with the same intense optimization focus.

And the real problem continues (and will continue) to raise its' ugly head.

[Scraap]

You do not automatically fail concentration or UMD checks when you roll a 1 on DDO.

Interesting. I'll have to run a few quests tonight with quicken off. Been looking for an extra feat-slot.

[Khurse]

My monk can't one shot any in hard or epic 17-20 lvl uses robes

monks stunning fist is useless in epic.

Monks trip abilty is worst then normal trip.

Got lowest crits in game.

low hp class.


a wizard can one shot, mass hold self heal tank and do good melee damage and tank and crit very well many feats
to use and tweek. + pm = win

What's your point?

My monk's stunning fist works,his void strike IV works,his quivering palm works (though certainly not at 100%)
when he was light all his Jade stuff and Kukando worked as well.

If you want the stuff to work for a monk, build for DC's.

[Junts]

Interesting. I'll have to run a few quests tonight with quicken off. Been looking for an extra feat-slot.

If you're not a sorceror, what you'll find is that the main benefit of quicken is how quickly your animations happen. You'll die with nonquickened heals as a fvs/cleric/wizard not because you lose concentration but because the spell actually takes a second or two to happen instead of occuring instantly.

Some of that can be adjusted to, but not entirely. Like a sorceror using heal scrolls (my sorc can basically only fail heal scrolls due to big chunk damage), you'll have to manuever away from monsters slightly to heal yourself because of the risk of being hit twice before your spell completes and dying.

Many warforged sorcerors either don't take quicken or only use it in situations with very large amounts of high elemental or uber-physical (velah-esque 100+s) damage, because their casting animations are so fast that they can heal themselves without even making a concentration check even in the thick of melee mobs. In fact, you can sit a wf sorc in velah's melee and heal yourself if you time it properly without quicken because of the animation speed.

However, no one else will ever be able to do that because they cast too slowly without quicken.

[Scraap]

If you're not a sorceror, what you'll find is that the main benefit of quicken is how quickly your animations happen. You'll die with nonquickened heals as a fvs/cleric/wizard not because you lose concentration but because the spell actually takes a second or two to happen instead of occuring instantly.

Some of that can be adjusted to, but not entirely. Like a sorceror using heal scrolls (my sorc can basically only fail heal scrolls due to big chunk damage), you'll have to manuever away from monsters slightly to heal yourself because of the risk of being hit twice before your spell completes and dying.

Many warforged sorcerors either don't take quicken or only use it in situations with very large amounts of high elemental or uber-physical (velah-esque 100+s) damage, because their casting animations are so fast that they can heal themselves without even making a concentration check even in the thick of melee mobs. In fact, you can sit a wf sorc in velah's melee and heal yourself if you time it properly without quicken because of the animation speed.

However, no one else will ever be able to do that because they cast too slowly without quicken.

Probably assumed (and you know what they say about that one, so that's definitely on me. Hey the forums is edumacational today ) the 1's due to not bothering to grab a concentration item. Also slightly modified the quoted chart-post for further clarity.

[voodoogroves]

but noting that, again, the original spells were not designed with them in mind

This is an assumption on your part that I believe is incorrect.

Debating this is likely fruitless, as I'm not going to google to find the threads I know about nor share anything I may have in email that is likely NDA'd. We can agree to disagree.


... but let's go forward ...

So a reversion. What else are we going to change?
- DDO has no "casting on the defensive" option
- DDO's inflated HP also means there is more inbound damage, making base concentration checks more difficult
- DDO has no off-the-shelf metamagic rods as does the SRD (which every power gaming caster uses in the low levels)
- Mob HP are scaled up (by an enormous factor), so lack of cheap metamagics to amp the damage and ability to put out that much damage would make casters irrelevant. 3 scorching rays yo, and with no metamagics! Then you have to shrine ... did that put a dent in that 1000 HP beast? Will HP be adjusted for monsters? Keep in mind that it isn't uncommon for 5th-9th level optimized wizards to simply kill bosses in a single round in PNP, just with the SRD.
- Sorcerers and wizards prepare metamagics differently ... will a sorc who wants to apply a mm have their time to cast increased to a full-round as per PNP?
- Will sorcs/etc. get the ability to make potions so they can pour them in the melee's bodies?
- How are you going to handle attrition / resources? More shrines? 6 spells a rest for your sorc!


"Full reversion" is a completely different system. Completely. Easy to say, but you're really underestimating the work and other down-stream ramifications.



I'd rather have new content that challenges different styles than a complete change to the magic system.

[Raithe]

That means that as character quality drops, casters become more and more powerful compared to everyone else at killing.

So what you are saying is that an undergeared sorceror (who you "test drove" through a TR, as opposed to the rest of us that have been playing sorcs for half a decade or more), doesn't feel overpowered when compared to "higher quality" characters. But if you were to compare "lower quality" characters across the board, the sorc might come out on top?

Give me a break. It's like you are trying to admit that sorcerors dominate non-epic content without actually admitting it.

[Junts]

Probably assumed (and you know what they say about that one, so that's definitely on me. Hey the forums is edumacational today ) the 1's due to not bothering to grab a concentration item. Also slightly modified the quoted chart-post for further clarity.

Concentration dcs can quickly become too high to reliably make. The dc is 10 + spell level being cast + damage taken (using, essentially, the single highest damage number from the combat log in the last 2 seconds).

If you have a good source of dr (for example, stoneskin) its possible to attain the 70ish concentration required to not fail a check due to lailat or most epic monster melee. You can deduce the amount of damage you essentially have 'quicken' protection against by subtracting 15 (for heal/recon) or 17 (mass cure crit) from your concentration score. A 70 concentration is proof against every attack dealing 55 or less damage (since the minimum roll is a your 70 + 1) for the purposes of lv 6 spells.

Since most epic monsters deal 45-65 damage per melee swing, if you're using something like stoneskin you can quickly become safe against it.

However, stuff that does very large damage number (aoe spells, stuff like bloodplate or velah, or even individual mobs that hit extremely hard like earth elementals in Small Problem or green devils in Chronoscope) can often put you at risk for or even completely guarantee concentration loss.

Practice can enable you to learn when you can cast 'around' a check. Specifically, there is both a timing that will cause you to make a concentration check -after- the spell has happened (if you take damage -after- the animation of the spell's effect begins to occur, as opposed to the hand gestures or projectile), which cannot make the spell fail (since its already happening), in addition to simply learning the timing that will enable you to avoid making the check.

On the other hand, if you cast too soon after taking damage, you will make a concentration check based on that last damage even if it happened before you attempted to cast your spell.

Learning these timings (which depend a bit on your latency but are mostly server side), specifically how long damage 'counts' on you for forcing a concentration check, is key to playing without quicken.

[Viisari]

And the real problem continues (and will continue) to raise its' ugly head.

What problem? Optimizing characters and gearing them up is what's fun for me in this game.

And really now, do you seriously expect that people wouldn't optimize in an MMORPG?

[Viisari]

That means that as character quality drops, casters become more and more powerful compared to everyone else at killing.

Meh, after running epics with some of the best melees on Thelanis I have to say that when speaking about ~max gear everything on melees and casters, casters will still reign supreme in most content.

That is, even at top character and player quality, casters are still clearly superior to anyone. Arcanes>Divines>Everyone else.

But oh well, I'm growing tired of these discussion so whatever. Balance is borked and has been for a long time and I guess that's that.

[maddmatt70]

Ummm... mind you is only shroud on norm but Harry was dead in part five in under seventeen seconds (I know so because I looked at my buff bar on DF when someone mentions seemed slow but much easier than many other runs)... We'll we did take some time in part four and I think mainly because people were just fiddlin' round some. In fact come part five likewise, but gestate since we were not really interested in speed records or such we were slack.

Consider that these are only average divines, a mix of a couple more tweaked, plenty average and maybe a few yet to be geared up... 150.000/17 = 8823,5/10 (i'll place 10 even though cleric and a few primarily cast heals on occasions along with placement of light nuking combined spell/melee dps output yields) = 882,35.

Now let's consider the average bab 20 classes sport between 400 to 650 dps (according to the forum number crunchers pre-u9) so if we take the mean of 525 dps (since we're looking at an average grouping) we would need (150.000/525)/17 = 16,8 full BaB melee to actually duplicate this. In such I have to conclude that somewhere around 10 average divines = 16,8 average 20 BaB melee builds in terms of dps. Mind you the divine are borrowing blue bar in damage spells to compensate their melee - however that is exactly what we do with a barb ... we use blue bar so he may keep meleeing.

Actual scope of things are simply put... mana is power, blue bar is versitility, it's dps, it's utility, it's suvivability all in one to be used as you see fit in using - flexibility in scope.

Fyi emili just did a shroud speed record attempt last night with 10 FVS, 1 monk, and 1 ice sorc in 11 minutes. As time goes on people will figure it out and you will see more and more FVS and wizards being levelled up and run at cap. The parties will eventually be comprised of mostly wizards, sorcs, and FVS.

[Junts]

So what you are saying is that an undergeared sorceror (who you "test drove" through a TR, as opposed to the rest of us that have been playing sorcs for half a decade or more), doesn't feel overpowered when compared to "higher quality" characters. But if you were to compare "lower quality" characters across the board, the sorc might come out on top?

Give me a break. It's like you are trying to admit that sorcerors dominate non-epic content without actually admitting it.

No, I think you completely misread that.

I did a tr with someone else's sorceror: All of us were extremely well equipped and overpowered the content. The sorceror did not overpower the content any more than my bard, the monk, or the palemaster. Killcounts were generally pretty even and quests were effortless.

However, because more of our damage/effectiveness was dependent on our greensteel gear and other such things, I imagine that in a lower-powered context that the casters are indeed much more powerful than the melees are.

My sorceror hasn'd tred in some time (he's been a capped 36 for about a year) and is extremely well equipped. I have no doubt that, should I do more lives in the future, he will be brokenly overpowered leveling up. He has pretty much every single caster item in the game, and I'm extremely good at playing him. That is to be expected of a tr in that context.

[maddmatt70]

I did a whole tr with a savant recently and while it was certainly powerful, it wasn't any more powerful than the rest of us (nor was it significantly more powerful than sorcerors in general were when you just WOFd everything). Its certainly plausible to me that savants are more distortedly powerful at lower equipment levels.

I think one thing that seems to be a problem with caster damage is that it is extremely independent of equipment caliber. There are things that benefit you (upgrading to 12% crit if available, eardweller situationally, etc), but their increases are relatively small and not all that significant. A fresh 20 sorc with superior freeze and shock 5 pots and major ice/elec lore items and the right enhancements is a lot closer to my near-perfectly-equipped sorc with the same spells and enhancements than a fresh 20 dps is to one of my outstandingly geared ones.

That means that as character quality drops, casters become more and more powerful compared to everyone else at killing.

For casters, getting more equipment is about endurance (more sp) and survivability (hp, self-healing, etc), and almost never about damage.

My recent upgrade to the epic cloak of the zephyr's 12% crit chance was more about being able to nuke with the staff of the petitioner in hand (for better mass hold and instakill dcs, and more importantly the sp cost reduction!) than it was about at 3% higher chance for electric crits. It is neat when a single chainlightning crits on all 4 jumps, but what really matters is mass holding better before I nuke and gaining 400-500 sp per shrine from the 10% reduction.

You are so right it is much much easier to get an arcane/divine up to close to the maximum potential of the class from a dps perspective. Melee takes alot more work to get close to the maximum potential.

[Junts]

Meh, after running epics with some of the best melees on Thelanis I have to say that when speaking about ~max gear everything on melees and casters, casters will still reign supreme in most content.

That is, even at top character and player quality, casters are still clearly superior to anyone. Arcanes>Divines>Everyone else.

But oh well, I'm growing tired of these discussion so whatever. Balance is borked and has been for a long time and I guess that's that.

This is certainly the case for trash mobs, but depending on the mobs in question it may or may not be true for bosses, especially raid bosses.

And, depending on the content, it isn't necessarily faster to run multiple casters vs running 1-2 with strong melee support. In some content it is, and in some content the mixed group is stronger.

But the content is sickeningly easy for both.