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

[Lavek]

how about we delete all the casters from ddo and just leave melees in game so there would be no problems

then someone would go whine why that little rogue outkills his big esos barb


and the circle would just continue, there will always be race/class/spell/skill whiners and there will always be people who can go with the flow of the game and have fun with it...

[irivan]

how about we delete all the casters from ddo and just leave melees in game so there would be no problems

then someone would go whine why that little rogue outkills his big esos barb


and the circle would just continue, there will always be race/class/spell/skill whiners and there will always be people who can go with the flow of the game and have fun with it...

agreed, so why change it? See when the epic ward and all of the garbage was around i was not one of the whiners, complaining about it, just made it work for me, so i guess in the end i am more anti complaining than anything else as long as you are not losing your limbs.

But none the less, they dont really have a point, this is just all about who services who, and nothing else.

[phum]

Actually, no it is not. Not at all, and there have been some changes to things, such as AP, prestige's, but the core rule set does work off of 3.5 with a fare share of home brew and 4.0 added things here and there.

But make no mistake this is Dungeons and Dragons, they are just converting it to real time instead of using a turn based system.

That is why i am still here. Nice try but fail.

Real time, eh? This your first mmo? (Sry for trolling you, I'll take that back^^)

Just curious, do you also abhor the first 10 lvls of dnd? Imo they are very well balanced.

[Kriogen]

...
My version = Casters on Epic and other difficulties so long as they have the appropriate abilities should be able to target and kill any monster, even mini bosses (although not easily, but then again it was never that easy because a lot of them death ward themselves and their allies any way.) to me the gamble of diving into the middle of a group of epic sand mephits and taking the chance i would get multiple sunbursts and be instantly destroyed is fun and worth the gamble, tonight, i was killed in epic wizard king in the opening hall trying that with the knolls and hounds on the middle right, just as i landed i got tripped, comet falled, searing lighted, and beat on all at the same time, it was horrible, but it was fun, the melees came to my rescue, and the healer healed me.
...

My version.

1. With great power comes great weakness. Pale Master is (at this point) good design. Not talking about details, but idea is correct. Again, idea, not details. Powerful on one side, but has a great weak spot, light hurts.

2. Devs made a bigger mistake with Golems that they did with Khopesh. Golem is suppose to be primary anti caster weapon. Golem is suppose to be immune vs magic. They made golems just 'resistant' vs magic. This is wrong. Very wrong.

3. They made 'Disintegrate'. Totaly game breaking. Why?
Fighter must folow standard rules: pierce, blunt, slash, silver, adamanat, etc. Disintegrate is 'untyped' and breaks this rules. This is unbalancing. The same goes with 'light' and blade barrier. Does BB follow that slash/pierce/adamant/etc rules?

So instead of "this monster is very anti caster type by holy PnP rules, send in barbarians' we get "oh, np, i'll just activate lasers and set phasor on kill".

As far as I know, in PnP there are monsters, encounters, that are very anti-melee and/or very anti-caster. But in DDO devs want it to make things very 'balanced' so removed, nerfed this type of monsters, encounters. By balancing they are making game less balancing.

It's not that FOD or near infinite pew pew is making casters uber. It's the fact that devs removed (for the sake of balance, everyone is useful in all situations) that "strong in one area, but weak in another". And not WoW like, only one can tank, only one can DPS and only one can heal. Things like Golem (anti magic weapon), disintegrate/untyped damage, not following rules.

Create an encounter where you have a old school Golem (50 DR/adamant) and a 1000 DR/- Super Lich in the same room and 'untyped' damage spells do not work. Meteor is just blunt/magic and not 'transmuting', blade is slash/magic and not transmuting.

[grgurius]

IMO Finger of Death, Destruction and Power Word Kill are about right in power in Epics. All are spells you'll seriously consider loading, but none of them are game-wrecking.

Wail and Circle of Death are just ridiculous (and Implosion, although it's much harder to get a useful DC on). Even with a lower DC - 42 feels like you've turned god mode on.

My suggestion - up the SP cost on the three OP spells to 100 SP, and up the cooldown to 90 seconds (60 on a Sorc). They'd still be among the best spells in the game, but you couldn't just spam them ridiculous amounts like you can now. It beggars belief that all-caster groups can finish Into the Deep (a medium-difficulty epic that's pretty long) in well under 10 minutes.

This looks like a reasonable suggestion to fix the current situation. Maybe not those exact numbers, but increasing cooldowns and/or SP cost wont have that much influence on the wide range of players like lowering DC or increasing saves would.

Now, two more things i find funny in this and some similar discussions.

First one is the argument that casters have more options now, they are not mass hold bots anymore. Then you mention something like cooldown increase and people start crying. What will wizards do now if they cant spam wails anymore. Ironic, isn't it.

Second one is the "new players" argument. Excuse me, but if you are poorly built and under geared, what the hell are you doing in epics. And don't give me that multiple past lives rubbish, they are not needed, you only need some gear and you are already dominating epics.

In the end, i see 2 sides of the discussion here: people who are tired of god mode, and people who don't want their easy button removed.

[Truga]

I just wanted to say...

[grodon9999]

Just remove the HP limit on vorpals. Problem solved.

Next . . .

[BurningDownTheHouse]

Just remove the HP limit on vorpals. Problem solved.

Next . . .

Oh yey!
Back to the good old vorpal-fest days.
While we're at it, lets make zero con kill again...

[Aaxeyu]

But then if that was true it wouldn't be DnD and i would not be playing it.

Why wouldn't it be dnd?

[Soleran]

Oh yey!
Back to the good old vorpal-fest days.
While we're at it, lets make zero con kill again...

As opposed to the 1 PM zerging and wailing elite amraths and the like, yeah vorpals were way out of line.

[redoubt]

Actually, I can. It just becomes more likely to happen if I throw a crushing despair first. Throwing both crushing despair and wail takes around 2 seconds, if I want to throw circle of death before wail then make it 3 seconds. Or it could be less, I always run with quicken on so it's with max cast speed anyway.

In the eDA I ran, everyone would basically just stand in the middle, hit wail once when mobs spawned and bam, everything in the middle was dead in under two seconds of them spawning. Finger of death on the archers and casters that don't come to middle.

Debuffing only becomes necessary with low DC, with high DC it merely helps. The only mobs in the game I will always debuff before using instakills are desert gnolls, I've seen the bastards save multiple fods even after several energy drains and crushing despair.

So yeah, where are these melees that can clear a full wave in eDA in under 5 seconds including all the archers and casters in addition to the mobs that teleport/run to middle?

Your post makes me think you've never actually run with a good instakiller. Heck, if you take more than one caster to eDA then the quest has even more waiting than normally. They should do something to that quest, it's not fun to spend 95% of the time there just waiting for the next spawn :/

You could be completely right. The casters I run with tend to be enchanters. Mostly I run eChrono and ev6 with some Fens and other randoms for variety. The only one I run with people I don't know is eChrono and I have seen a few insta kills in there, but I've yet to see a caster dominate in that quest.

I admit I don't have a great breadth of epic experience, so maybe using eChrono is a bad example? Though I had heard it was the hard one...

[redoubt]

restricting SP pot usage buy timer or usage (or reducing the supply or something .

Oh ****! If SP pot usage is what is making people think casters are overpowered then take the pots off the DDO store!!!

I pray that is not the reason... I don't pretend my characters have unlimited mana by buying pots. This could totally be the reason some of use don't see them as overpowered (i.e. limited mana) and others think they are over powered (i.e. willing to spend cash on pots to have unlimited mana.)

Any caster, arcane or divine, with unliminted mana IS overpowered.

Is this what is driving this debate? I know when I do slayers and have lots of shrines available my caster is WAY more powerful than when I'm in a quest with limited mana....

[grodon9999]

Oh yey!
Back to the good old vorpal-fest days.
While we're at it, lets make zero con kill again...

So what? It's absolutely ******** that the mobs have this many HP to begin with.

Raising/removing the HP limit on Vorpals is the cleanest way of making melees more useful against trash.

[Beld]

Oh ****! If SP pot usage is what is making people think casters are overpowered then take the pots off the DDO store!!!

I pray that is not the reason... I don't pretend my characters have unlimited mana by buying pots. This could totally be the reason some of use don't see them as overpowered (i.e. limited mana) and others think they are over powered (i.e. willing to spend cash on pots to have unlimited mana.)

Any caster, arcane or divine, with unliminted mana IS overpowered.

Is this what is driving this debate? I know when I do slayers and have lots of shrines available my caster is WAY more powerful than when I'm in a quest with limited mana....

There is some middle ground between 'god mode' and 'hold bot' but, asking for a nerf because YOU don't like to play one way that someone else might LIKE to play doesn't make sense to me, but that is just my 2cp

[redoubt]

Oh yey!
Back to the good old vorpal-fest days.
While we're at it, lets make zero con kill again...

Yes lets... and have banish and smiting and disruption work again...

Maybe its just a plot by turbine to remove all instakill from the game.

First they pull all the melee weapon insta kill out and get people to shout that arcane instakill is overpowered. Then they remove arcane instakill and poof! No more instakill anyway... go buy more pots from the store since your quest are all longer now!

PROFIT!

[BurningDownTheHouse]

So what? It's absolutely ******** that the mobs have this many HP to begin with.

They have much less HP than what they used to have...

Raising/removing the HP limit on Vorpals is the cleanest way of making melees more useful against trash.

I don't know about you, but my melees are still useful. More useful than they used to be in fact, because the mobs HP was halved.

In any event making one weapon effect trump all others is not wise. ******** even.

[BurningDownTheHouse]

Yes lets... and have banish and smiting and disruption work again...

Maybe its just a plot by turbine to remove all instakill from the game.

First they pull all the melee weapon insta kill out and get people to shout that arcane instakill is overpowered. Then they remove arcane instakill and poof! No more instakill anyway... go buy more pots from the store since your quest are all longer now!

PROFIT!

Umm, vorpals, banishers and smiters used to not work at all in epics. Now they do.
I don't know about you, but from my experience it takes 6 melees a shorter time to do an epic quest now, not longer.

[voodoogroves]

Just remove the HP limit on vorpals. Problem solved.

Next . . .

I'm good with this too.

It IS trash.

[voodoogroves]

Oh and if the vorpal HP cap goes away, it needs to stop doing bane damage.

[Sweyn]

Developers in case you were not aware it is tough to get a 45+ dc on your instakills unless you are a palemaster or have wizard/sorcerer past lives on your favored soul or cleric. I guess I am a little selfish in asking this from the standpoint of the vast majority of players have not even heard of past lives or have the capacity to get a +45 dc on their pale master/fvs/cleric, but for those of us that run in those groups it sucks runnning with people that can get a +45 dc on instakills. I would recommend that you figure out a method for allowing pale masters to have their fun but allowing the rest of us to also have our fun. The signal that you are sending is leave the game or roll up a palemaster or have multiple sorc past lives for your FVS or cleric. Honestly I am not joking. This is not a very good signal to send for the end game, because most people will just leave.

Why is it every "Nerf this" thread i see is from Norg?