Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[Vordax]

The mechanic design seems solid, but the numbers should be balanced. Remember, it's not the absolute number you're dealing with, it's the derivative in kills/time.

I would actually encourage a shorter cooldown for the deeper penalties such as:
-1 through -5 recover at 1/15 seconds
-6 to -10 recover at 1/10 seconds
-11 to -15 recover at 1/5 seconds
-16 to -20 recover at 1/2 seconds, and the cap is -20.

This would allow better casters to actually kill faster, particularly on scrawny mobs. Without this tiered recovery, all casters capable of killing will kill 1/15 seconds on average. That seems a bit artificial.

Alternatively, you could allow non-deathspell kills made by the party to decrease the haunting level. That way, casters in groups are much better than solo casters.

This is like putting a dress on a pig. The original idea is bad. The idea that DC's get worse over time just doesn't work well. There is still no reason under this system to stay a PM, but lots of reasons to TR to sorc. As a sorc, wail once a minute, and DPS the rest. Your DC's will be very similar to PM after a few minutes into a quest.

[Snarglefrump]

When a death spell successfully kills one or more targets, the caster acquires a debuff called "Haunting" for each target killed, for a short period of time.

We're still working out details, but right now, Haunting is a stacking debuff that lasts 15 seconds and applies a -2 penalty to Death Magic save DC's. It decrements by 1 stack whenever the timer runs out.

Under those rules, after the first room of mobs, most necros will be exactly equal on average.

For example, suppose I run into a dungeon with 10 mobs per room and 30 seconds between rooms. Further suppose the mobs have a +19 Fort save, and my toon is an necro with 40 DC. In the first room, I Wail and kill all 10 mobs. The debuff drops my DC to 20. By the time we reach the second room, it's back up to 24.

Now suppose I bring a toon with a 30 DC. In the first room, I Wail and kill 50% of the mobs on average. The debuff drops my DC to 20. By the time we reach the second room, it's back up to 24.

Basically, the debuff acts as a limit on the sustained kills/minute that the necro can achieve using Wail - regardless of their starting DCs. It seems like a more powerful necro should be able to achieve a higher sustained kill rate.

How about either a sqrt(num_stacks) penalty or a decrementing the stack count by sqrt(num_stacks) each time the timer runs out or something like that?

[Standal]

Single target death spells already have the balance of a cooldown to limit burst spamming and a reasonably high spell point cost to prevent instakilling every mob. IMO they don't need to be changed.

Instead of a stacking debuff that lasts for 150 seconds, I recommend the following:
A) Eliminate the current cooldown on mass death spells.
B) Successful mass death spells debuff your DC on that spell by 50%.
C) Debuff regenerates by 2 every 5 seconds.
D) Any time a particular mass death spell is cast the debuff resets to 50%.

This mechanic allows casters to spam Wail as much as they want, but puts a significant penalty on spamming. Higher DC casters are able to cast more frequently, but must still wait or risk a substantial number of mobs surviving and still resetting the debuff. Low DC casters regenerate to their base DC faster.

[EllisDee37]

Finger of death has an 8 second cooldown meaning we cant even cast finger each time its off cooldown and stay free of hauntings.

No, you could still cast finger. It would just mean that you would do so with a dc penalty, which would build up the more times you cast it quickly. After clearing a room, you might find it better to use a different strategy for the next room, or go get a drink, or whatever. But it doesn't stop you from using your death spells.

You didn't understand what he said. For clarity, what he said was "Finger of death has an 8 second cooldown meaning we cant even cast finger each time its off cooldown and stay free of hauntings."

His point is that FoD got an effective cooldown increase for high-dc casters. (Low dc casters fail enough that their cooldown probably won't change much.) Meaning that your reply was in no way related to what you quoted. Just an FYI.

[Tiamas]

This idea is more than a +1, its awesome, I really like it. It allows to use your instantkills but you have to use them more tactically instead of a mass bombardment. You still can take out enemy casters to help your party in almost every encounter but you can't take down each encounter alone. This really encourages teamplay without removing the tactical use of instant kills. And if theres a critical situation you can still have your big moment and wail a complete encounter, but after that you have to gather your strength again (some kind of magical exhaustion after such a powerfull spell is "realistic" to me). So you can either do quests fast with a group, or still solo it, but way slower because you have to wait until the debuff is gone.



Things that need some more work:

• You wanted to make epic hard and elite harder, ok, so why all difficulties now? Consistency didn't matter before at all, you might wanna be more consistent with your inconsistencies ^^
• The power of the debuff. First of all you should scale it with the difficulty. In addition, either make the debuff less powerfull (assuming-2 DC for 15s for epic elite) or add a hard cap (8-10 stacks)
• The whole thing would open up some item effects that remove the debuff. Rare exclusive items with very few usages (1-3) to remove all your current stacks. (Probably only 1 or 2 items in the game or you could clean urself all the time, but something like that on eardweller would be cool for example)

However you will work out the details, the general idea is great!

[Scraap]

How many more hoops do insta-kill casters have to jump through?

We already have Spell Resistance.
We already have high save mobs.
We already have red named mobs.
We already have Death Ward casting mobs (Drow Priestess in MOTU).
We already have mob types that aren't affected by Necromancy insta-kills (undead).

The only thing I can honestly think they're looking to address via the systems team is older content, because the quest team already solved the issue for the new stuff. Didn't even have to flood the underdark with beholders (which actually surprised the heck out of me) to do it, either.

[Vordax]

However you will work out the details, the general idea is great!

I really can't understand why people can think this idea is great, the idea is incredibly bad. (I guess from a melee perspective it allows them to possibly up their kill count)

[robdrew]

We want to let you use Wail when you need it, but use some other spells as well. Extremely well geared UberCasters can "play through" the debuff.

Currently we're planning on having it on all of the instant death spells. In theory, single target spells like Finger of Death generally won't build your stack too high since the debuff will be more than half over by the time it's off cooldown, it's AOE effects that will give you a major modifier that will stick around for a while.


It's very hard to catch up to "press 3 to kill everything in the room". (Which we actually gave melees in the Grandmaster of Flowers tree, with a much longer cooldown than Wail.)


Currently we're thinking of having it in both Heroic and Epic content for consistency.


Does it have to be a theater release or are the straight-to-video ones fair game too?


The intent is for the super-successful ones to be able to shine by:
1) Being successful the first cast.
2) Having a much better chance at being successful on a subsequent casts than the less well geared characters.


Yes, there'll be a bit of fiddling to do.


Correct.


-20 for 15 seconds, -18 for 15 seconds, -16 for 15 seconds, and so on.


I disagree - if you fail to kill something, then with a long cooldown you simply cannot try again. With a debuff, you can try again, and then you can choose whether or not you want to cast the spell on another target or wait for the debuff to drop. It's much more lenient than a lengthened cooldown.

There are other possibilities for the future as well. One of the recent ideas in the pit is that when we revamp the enhancements, have a few things that improve with your Haunt level. An ability that grants a bonus to Negative Energy Spell Power based on it, or that consumes souls for some effect? That's got to go into the Pale Master tree.

Wont PM's just be casting Circle of Death then Wail? If thats the case nothing has changed except your making wail unstoppable.

[Angelus_dead]

We're still working out the details on this, and will then send it on to the engineers. Let us know what you think! Suggestions for improvement are welcome.

A few tweaks for Haunting:

• Haunting is not triggered by an effect which had no saving throw (PWK).
• Haunting is not triggered if the victim was "weak", meaning that creature's saving throw or hp was already very low. Basically if a creature would fail the death save on a 2 or so, it doesn't resist enough to debuff Haunting on the caster.

Note that the second suggestion essentially introduces an order independency. The Haunting rules announced above mean that if you Finger a low-Fortitude debuffed monster first, you'll have a DC debuff making it unlikely you can kill a powerful healthy enemy. But if the suggestion is added in, then killing a weak creature doesn't increment the penalty and you can still defeat the strong one afterwards. Basically, players aren't assessed the cost if they weren't gaining much by it.

(A different way to achieve the same goal would be to give players a new icon to manually lower the DC of their next death spell, which also prevents it from adding Haunting)

[voodoogroves]

How many more hoops do insta-kill casters have to jump through?

We already have Spell Resistance.
We already have high save mobs.
We already have red named mobs.
We already have Death Ward casting mobs (Drow Priestess in MOTU).
We already have mob types that aren't affected by Necromancy insta-kills (undead).

Increase SR or saves on mobs based on dungeon difficulty. Why is that so hard? We don't need yet another game mechanic like Haunt.

Bonus to fort saves versus magic.

Or, randomly spawn some mobs with immunity, with a higher chance on higher difficulties.

[Masadique]

Turbine,
Please stick to your guns and don't get cowed out of this nerf.

This nerf does not prevent anyone from playing with their insta kills. It simply slows them down, and will allow for more of a group feel to the game since all content won't be trivialized by a caster.

I do disagree with the 1-20 changes, simply because I am greedy and hate leveling so I prefer to let a caster do it, but it may be a change I get used to and end up liking.

Sincerely,
V

[RabidKoala]

Note: didn't read entire thread, only about half of it. If this has already been brought up I apologize.



Does this effect Arcane archer slaying arrows? Because those constitute as a FoD spell for cool-downs. If it does I don't think it should. AA's aren't so powerful that they need a nerf such a that. Especially seeing as they don't have all that much options to do.

[Vordax]

Turbine,
Please stick to your guns and don't get cowed out of this nerf.

This nerf does not prevent anyone from playing with their insta kills. It simply slows them down, and will allow for more of a group feel to the game since all content won't be trivialized by a caster.

I do disagree with the 1-20 changes, simply because I am greedy and hate leveling so I prefer to let a caster do it, but it may be a change I get used to and end up liking.

Sincerely,
V

The change proposed is only going to shift the type of caster trivializing things. Instead of a PM it will be a sorc.

[funifulv]

If this really does get implemented, I have to ask why it would only be applied to magical kill effects? If you have a properly geared rogue, he will clear more mobs with instant kills than a wizard would. Isn't that the same effect they are trying to prevent? I would think that if any instant kill reduces your chance to instant kill again, it would be applied to all instant kills, not just magic based instant kills.

If there really are that many people complaining about arcanes instant killing everything, I am curious to see what they will say when everyone stops playing arcanes altogether and a party waits for hours on end for CC, I know I wouldn't play my arcane if he couldn't do sufficient DPS because they changed the spell damage or instant kill anything because of changes in the expansion.

On a side note, I think it was rather rude of turbine to announce the pre-release of the expansion with no details, then announce huge changes like this after the fact and after they already have your money from pre-ordering. I don't think I would have ordered the expansion if I would have known they would make changes like these.

[Tiamas]

I really can't understand why people can think this idea is great, the idea is incredibly bad. (I guess from a melee perspective it allows them to possibly up their kill count)

Read the first part of my post, there are my reasons. Instantkills are incredible powerfull, and I accept that there should be some changes for highend content. On a 10k HP mob there is nothing as fast as instant kill, and thats fine, but you shouldnt be able to spam it like there is no tomorrow. Melees have feats that we call tactical feats because they are really nice and help the party, its the same with instant kills. What would you say if stunning blow would trigger with 80% on each hit and work with cleave?

Btw, i got one melee, which is tank style, if the group has some real dps toons im at the lower end of the kill list anyways, no matter what changes there are for casters, i will always be down there, and thats fine. And i got one PM and working on a fvs with instant kills, and still this is a great idea. (Though the numbers need some work + live testing^^)

[Masadique]

The change proposed is only going to shift the type of caster trivializing things. Instead of a PM it will be a sorc.

I'm ok with that. Sorcs feel like they augment a group instead of ignoring them. Things have health bars, fighters and sorcs bring them down, sorc in big chunks admittedly, together. Insta kills just made everyone else feel worthless. Why did I hurt that monster when he was going to do 100% anyway?

That is the main difference for me. One does a damage number which speeds up the process of killing, the other skips combat and goes to the looting phase.

Up with the sorcs!

V

[Thrudh]

This seems terribly steep. Even the best geared, best twinked pale master wizard would not be able to "push through" this level of debuffing.

Still, with more reasonable numbers, and some kind of ceiling on the debuff, I truly believe that this is the way to meet your goals and the community's concerns.



When you guys get cornered between your own design goals and the needs and desires of the community, the product you and your team manage to come up with is almost always a stroke of genius. Great work!!

I agree... it's a good solution, but too harsh... put a ceiling on it, and maybe -1 per mob instead of -2.

[Grosbeak07]

On a side note, I think it was rather rude of turbine to announce the pre-release of the expansion with no details, then announce huge changes like this after the fact and after they already have your money from pre-ordering. I don't think I would have ordered the expansion if I would have known they would make changes like these.

You get these changes free of charge! They are not part of the expansion, they are just going in at the same time.

Semantics I know, but to me the Expansion is FR & Druids.

[Vordax]

I'm ok with that. Sorcs feel like they augment a group instead of ignoring them. Things have health bars, fighters and sorcs bring them down, sorc in big chunks admittedly, together. Insta kills just made everyone else feel worthless. Why did I hurt that monster when he was going to do 100% anyway?

That is the main difference for me. One does a damage number which speeds up the process of killing, the other skips combat and goes to the looting phase.

Up with the sorcs!

V

Then why don't they just remove PM's from the game, why waste effort coding something they don't want to actually have in the game?

[Thrudh]

He will be much less useful in normal shroud part 1 now. Was that intended?

Use different spells... We handled shroud part 1 at levels 14-16 with no PrEs, no wail, no circle of death... It's not that hard.

I vote no on changing single-target death spells. The mass death spells, sure, fine, whatever.

I'll agree with that though... single target install-kill is not a problem... mass death spells, yes... needs to be fixed.