Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[Autolycus]

So 5 monsters, sorry I made a mistake.

Wail is a 9th level spell. Each enemy gets a save against Wail. Wail has to roll SR.
Max achievable spell pen for a wizard is only +1 above a FVS I believe.
Implosion can effect a wider range of monsters. Not that it matters.

True, however wizards can get much better DCs. Also, there are divines other than FVS.

For the third time I will say it. Implosion is by far more fairly balanced than Wail or circle of death.
I have never disagreed with this point.

My point was If AoE instakill is the problem, address AoE instakills, not all Instakills.

Agreed to your last statement. However, I'm confused. How are you are suggesting that AoE instakills should be addressed? Are you suggesting that Implosion should be changed or not? Are you suggesting that all AoEs should be treated the same? If so, I'll happily take a no cap limit and 30 second cooldown on Implosion.

[Violith]

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.

We may consider a small buff on Hard/Elite/Epic Hard/Epic Elite difficulties to Saves vs. Death Magic for players and monsters at full or very high health, as well as a penalty at very low health, but at much smaller numbers than we were considering previously, when that was considered as a standalone system prior to the implementation of Hard to Kill.

This system essentially would create a "soft cooldown" that is triggered primarily by mass death effects, but still lets a caster Finger of Death a creature or two in fights. It has no effect unless you succeed, so weaker casters aren't harmed by it, and in emergencies even if your Haunted stack is high, Power Word: Kill can still strike down an enemy. (Its effectiveness is not reduced because it doesn't have a saving throw.)

so, while I dont think that this design is all that bad when compared to htk, let me get this straight, your giving the mobs an additional bonus to fortitude against death magic that effects all necromancy spells based on the creatures health, and in addition to that, you giving a debuff to casters who kill with Mass death effects, (so atm only circle of death, wail of the banshee, and undeath to death, and implosion)?,

so people phantasmal killer (illusion), finger of death (necro), and power word kill (necro), slay living (necro), destruction(necro) without getting the haunting, but once they use a mass death effect they get haunting and all necromancy spells are effected (apart from power word kill) is that correct? (Ie implosion dc wont be effected since it isnt necromancy, although it'd still give haunting debuff)

so, whats the big issue? aoe's death magic becomes more of a panic button instead of the normal spell used, casters use abit more sp, but overall they are uneffected if they stick with single target death effects.

[LeLoric]

Im kinda mixed on my feelings about haunting.

It's certainly better than Hard to Kill that was an instantaneous no for me so we are moving in the right direction.

Initially I thought this could be ok with some shorter durations but I am finding it less and less palatable the more I ponder it.

It's biggest shortcomings:

1. It punishes better geared players. I dislike this aspect the most. I don't want a system that regresses the outliers to a mean. Those people spent a lot of work and effort and sometimes sacrificed much more than other players in terms of build decisions and shouldn't be punished for that.

2. It detracts too much from the single target kill spells. These spells are not the issue. 8 second cooldown on FoD is not at a faster rate than most melee can kill stuff, playing around with shadowdancer a lot recently confirms this in that if I mark something its generally dead before the mark goes away unless i get cc'd or the like. This same thing really hurts outlier builds like that illusion archmage who is really only marginally viable because they get dual pk spells which don't play well together. Divine casters get hurt here too with their dual single target kills.

3. What to do with the time inbetween kill spells? I have been trying to draw up some plans for my wizard around the haunting changes and I kept coming back to a point of say maybe pale master with draconic for nuking or even magister but with evocation line but then you just feel like why not just go full evocation which leads to why not just be a sorc. In case you aren't aware a sorc can kill things as fast or faster than pale masters right now has more spell points to last longer and is better for nuking bosses. This could possibly be worked around with some better non death necromancy spells but necrotic ray is just not enough. Horrid wilting needs a significant way to buff its odd (dehydration) dmg type. Fear type effects are horrid cc they need to be more of the despair type from mummies than the run around like an idiiot cc effects.

4. Less versatility in spell changes. When the initial spell pass was made I found it cool that previously worthless spells now were useable. Circle of death was one of my favorite changes. If haunting goes through it's generally worthless again. If you lead with anything you don't kill is probably going to gain as much as they lose form the neg level. Might as well jsut cast wail and with the debuff lasting longer than the cooldown theres very little reason to use circle of death anymore.

5. Magister necromancy, why bother. You negate the usefulness of both the lower cooldowns and fort save debuff that comes with being a necromancy magister. You have to have all three tiers of each of these to get full tiers in higher enhancements. So one fourth of my destiny ap are now sitting in worthless prereqs.

6. Instakills are only a tool for casters. As I stated before sorcs can often clear a room as fast or faster than a high dc wizard. You restrict necromancy or instakill stuff they just grab another tool out of the box and use that. This in no way makes it better for melees. Keep in mind pale masters where soloing epic content when non of their instakills worked in there.

Other solutions are more simple and less confusing and have less nasty side effects or unintended consequences.

My personal choices for fixing the perceived *instakill* imbalance.

Additional saves versus death magic, not a full fort save increase as we don't want to hurt other things based off fort saves like stunning etc.

Multiple target kill spells capped. Wail and cod should have capped targets. Undeath to death already has a 4 target cap why not have cod and wail do the same.

Probably much harder to do the code for but I would like to have multitarget instakill spells have a reducing dc per mob. Say the first it hits is full dc, 2nd mob -2 dc, 3rd mob -4 dc, and so on. This kinda accomplishes the same thing you have with haunting but without penalizing the better built/geared players more than the newer player.

More quest design against it. Epic chains of flame is not an easy quest to run around and kill everything on sight in. Neither is epic von3, or epic von 4. Certain parts in other quests are not very friendly with instakills either for a multitude of reasons like spamming aoe deathward, or orange nameds or more undead/golems etc.. Even the newer content had some cool deterrents to instakills in the necromacer resurrecting and soul spawning in the raid.

[Scraap]

Not really. I have a PM, Second life in fact, and I am wholly apathetic about this change to be honest.

In fact, when they did the spell pass which pretty much took my evocation spec WF AM out back and brutalized it, without even buying me a drink in the process, from the opening nerf to FW to the subsequent nerf to evocation SLA's I was infuriated beyond words, several months later when I could bring myself to play a caster again, I TRed into a PM. Well, the second life up taught me something, and that was not to focus too much on thing, and play out a bit on my spells.

So, If you use a dozen spells constantly and all that jazz, you should not even feel the effects of this change, if you are a one trick pony caster like I used to be with FW, this change will crush you.

With that, the truth is, it's All in the player, and I'll say that again, it's All in the Player.

Well, that's just it. For myself, I've a 4th life 18/2 PM forged specced for necro and a minor in enchantment alongside maximize (and considering bumping one into conjuration). There's not a whole lot they can hit me with that that toon can't adapt to push comes to shove, though it does take a little bit longer every now and then.

That doesn't mean the mechanic as proposed is any less bad for your average player that's less used to adapting on the fly, and it really doesn't do much to motivate folks to focus on pursuing a school that's boosted by the PRE beyond the minimum required to get it. Not when the difference between a 2nd lifer with a capstone and an 18/2 1st lifer is 2 DC and 4 SR, and that's erased on your first sucessful landing. (Seriously, 2 lives for an extra 15 seconds you can use finger for doesn't sound a bit unreasonable? If anything, I'm actively advocating against my own interests here.)

[DeafeningWhisper]

so, while I dont think that this design is all that bad when compared to htk, let me get this straight, your giving the mobs an additional bonus to fortitude against death magic that effects all necromancy spells based on the creatures health, and in addition to that, you giving a debuff to casters who kill with Mass death effects, (so atm only circle of death, wail of the banshee, and undeath to death, and implosion)?,

so people phantasmal killer (illusion), finger of death (necro), and power word kill (necro), slay living (necro), destruction(necro) without getting the haunting, but once they use a mass death effect they get haunting and all necromancy spells are effected (apart from power word kill) is that correct? (Ie implosion dc wont be effected since it isnt necromancy, although it'd still give haunting debuff)

so, whats the big issue? aoe's death magic becomes more of a panic button instead of the normal spell used, casters use abit more sp, but overall they are uneffected if they stick with single target death effects.

Affects all death effects as far as we know (assassinate, vorpal, banishing, disruption...), single target spells as well as mass ones and it would be implemented at all levels of gameplay from lvl 1 to lvl 25 and at all difficulties.

[Violith]

Affects all death effects as far as we know (assassinate, vorpal, banishing, disruption...), single target spells as well as mass ones and it would be implemented at all levels of gameplay from lvl 1 to lvl 25 and at all difficulties.

In the Hard to Kill thread, there was a suggestion to use a system similar to the change we made to Saves vs. Poison. We considered this internally - giving players and monsters a bonus to Saves vs. Death Magic* (but not physical death effects like Assassinate) if they were at high health, and a penalty if they were low on health (on death's door!) This would not have included the "don't fail saves on a natural 1". Monsters on different difficulty settings would have had different save bonuses.
.[/I]

according to that, it was only against magic, thus monks quivering palm, tod, rogue assassinate, and the ed's wouldnt be effected (well rogue consume might be), although weapons maybe, vorpals and such are already limited by 1k health limit atm. and that it was only for heroic hard/elite and epic hard/elite. so not all difficulties, and

[Faent]

(Ie implosion dc wont be effected since it isnt necromancy, although it'd still give haunting debuff)

No. If you toss an Implosion and it kills five mobs, your DC's on all death magic (including Destruction) will look like this over time:

Seconds..................DC Penalty

000......Implosion..... -10
015........................ -8
030........................ -6
045........................ -4
060........................ -2
075........................ 0

Your Implosion is on a 60 second cooldown, so if you toss it when it comes off timer, it will suffer a -2 DC Penalty. If you wait 75 seconds before tossing the second Implosion (remember, we're assuming your Implosion killed five mobs), you'll toss it at the ordinary DC.

If you toss a Destruction 44 seconds after tossing your "five kill" Implosion, your Destruction will suffer a -6 Penalty to its DC.

Wail and Circle can kill more than five mobs. I don't know what a geared-to-the-hilt multi-TR'ed divine is doing with Implosion in epic content, but I expect it's easily four to five kills per Implode. So the above is reasonable. On a four kill Implode, you'd look like this:

Seconds..................DC Penalty

000......Implosion..... -8
015........................ -6
030........................ -4
045........................ -2
060........................ 0

This means you can toss Destruction at no penalty a full minute after you Implode.

Remember that Wail can easily wipe out 10 mobs. A Wail that wipes out ten mobs completely nerfs an arcanes ability to use any Death Magic at all, including Finger, PK, Circle or Wail for between ninety seconds and two minutes. Here's how the ten-kill Wail nerfs an arcane:

Seconds......................DC Penalty

000.....Wail......... -20
015.................... -18
030.................... -16
045.................... -14
060.................... -12
075.................... -10
090.................... -8
105.................... -6
120.................... -4
135.................... -2
150.....................

So assuming a 44 Necro Arcane Wails 10 mobs, they'll have a DC of 40 on any death spell they try to cast 120 to 134 seconds after they Wailed. Their DC will be a pathetic 34 on any attempted death spell (such as Finger) from 75 to 89 seconds after they made the mistake of tossing a Wail.

[Thrudh]

I was actually thinking you were being heavily short-sighted, and then I saw this gem. It's already implemented in eChrono, and wizards do CC there! Even the maxed DC necromancers, since they can only wail the casters/archers, which they do. There is teamwork, and everyone is happy.

Well, I don't totally agree with the devs idea here, but I think this is what they are shooting for... Insta-death a few mobs, CC and DPS everywhere else... teamwork, everyone is happy... Just like eChrono and the House D epics.

[Quetzacoala]

Brilliant solution!

[Faent]

according to that, it was only against magic, thus monks quivering palm, tod, rogue assassinate, and the ed's wouldnt be effected (well rogue consume might be), although weapons maybe, vorpals and such are already limited by 1k health limit atm. and that it was only for heroic hard/elite and epic hard/elite. so not all difficulties, and

The proposed Haunting is proposed for all difficulties. Hard to Kill was proposed for Epic Hard and Epic Elite. Hanting is proposed to affect every single difficulty. Haunting has zero effect on weapons, monks abilities, and rogues abilities.

[LeLoric]

so, while I dont think that this design is all that bad when compared to htk, let me get this straight, your giving the mobs an additional bonus to fortitude against death magic that effects all necromancy spells based on the creatures health, and in addition to that, you giving a debuff to casters who kill with Mass death effects, (so atm only circle of death, wail of the banshee, and undeath to death, and implosion)?,

so people phantasmal killer (illusion), finger of death (necro), and power word kill (necro), slay living (necro), destruction(necro) without getting the haunting, but once they use a mass death effect they get haunting and all necromancy spells are effected (apart from power word kill) is that correct? (Ie implosion dc wont be effected since it isnt necromancy, although it'd still give haunting debuff)

so, whats the big issue? aoe's death magic becomes more of a panic button instead of the normal spell used, casters use abit more sp, but overall they are uneffected if they stick with single target death effects.

All spells that cause death preventable by deathblock are being affected here. That's what death magic is not necromancy. Necromancy is a school of magic that includes death magic spells but also many non death magic spells.

This effects PK, Implosion, banishment, power word kill(not really as no save but it's going to cause a debuff.)

It does not affect Trap the soul as it doesn't involve killing the mob.

[MrkGrismer]

I was thinkink that the formula should be something more like:

((Total CR killed)/(CL + Current Haunt Level))*.5

That would make the penatly self-capping such that as the haunt level increases each additional kill the caster manages to get will cause a smaller penalty.

In addition the haunt level should charge up a button so when the haunt level reaches the caster level a 'finishing move' becomes available that, if unleashed creates a 'Deathblossom Wraith' in the caster's image that attack enemies of the caster.

This would give the caster reason to keep trying instead of just 'laying off' the death spells until the haunt goes away.

Edit: oh and haunt level should go down be one every six seconds.

[Hokiewa]

The proposed Haunting is proposed for all difficulties. Hard to Kill was proposed for Epic Hard and Epic Elite. Hanting is proposed to affect every single difficulty. Haunting has zero effect on weapons, monks abilities, and rogues abilities.

Some people can't grasp this.

[MrWindupBird]

Agreed, believe it or not. The whole issue stems from 'challenge' being introduced by an unreasonable amount of hitpoints for mobs. Otherwise, no one would really *care* if it takes an extra second or three.

This is an excellent point. The real value of instakills is that HP bloat is irrelevant to them: instead of caring about that, you care about SR and fort saves. That's the tradeoff to using instakills, going from caring about HP of your target to caring about its SR and fort save. The value of instakills comes from the overweighting of HP relative to saves and SR, when mobs are statt'ed.
I think a big part of the problem is unacknowledged thus far, and stems from the fact that high-fort-save mobs == super-high-HP mobs in DDO. That tasty caster in the back that a good melee could stunning blow and absolutely tear apart in a few seconds? A good caster will finger it before that can happen, as well they should.

The thing is, and this is IMPORTANT imo, is that there really aren't many mobs which are difficult to instakill and fairly fast to melee down. There is a near perfect inverse correlation between ease-of-fingering and mob hp. Epic drow pose the single exception to this rule, due to SR (I do not think it's a coincidence that people like to run VoN3 on their melees). What this means: caster enters a room, wails it. What is left (and remember, there are quite a few things left if we're talking serious content. This has been covered before, but 44 DC!=everything dies) is high-fort-save trash. Which equals high-hp melee types, really. So, this is problematic: what survives a good caster goes to the melee, but it is precisely those mobs that are inefficient and cumbersome to DPS down that survive the wail. Melee like seeing health bars go down fast: everyone likes to beat on the tiefling caster, but no one really enjoys the attrition that is beating on eChains sergeant gnolls. That is not the type of synergy you want. What would be far better would be if there were big nasty bags of HP which could be efficiently instakilled, and also if there were nasty and dangerous mobs without too much HP, but with very high saves/SR. Everyone gets to have their fun, everyone is useful, and there's non-competing niches of specialization. And I think that reinforces the melee-caster conflict, such as it is. Part of the concern now stems from the fact that melee feel like they take too long to kill enemies in relation to casters, but this perception is vastly skewed by the bias of what they actually get to beat on.

For a long time, there was a frankly lazy and uninspired tendency in DDO to increase challenge/difficulty solely through HP bloat. In this process, at first casters were marginalized, due to SP constraints, and then melee were marginalized, due to DoTs for rednames being SP-efficient-enough and instakills for high-HP trash. But the fix really isnt that hard, and doesn't require an obnoxious game mechanic which unnecessarily screws casters (and offensive divines). Just be more thoughtful with how encounters are designed. As an example, the initial U11 (I think?) rampup to eVelah was... pretty silly. Just a big boring bundle of HP and fortification. Absolutely no one enjoyed the raid in that incarnation. And then the HP were scaled back down, and eggs were added: a dangerous mechanic which could be used to the advantage of an intelligent group. This was a good change. I for one started to enjoy eV6 again. I would love to see more of the latter change. I think an easy initial step would be to step away from the Hp--fortsave linkage, and create more creatures with definite strengths and weaknesses. Nerfing instakills entirely (that is what this is.. being an instakill focussed toon simply will not be viable) is a bad idea. Creating situations where instakills are valuable against some enemies but not so much for others is a good idea. The thing is, melee should be efficient where instakills are not, and that is currently very rarely the case.

[Braegan]

I only read the first 20 some odd pages...but yeah no. Terrible idea. To punish a class/PRE for doing what it excels in doing is a terrible cop-out. Apply this concept to any other class/PRE and it's easily seen how foolish a band-aid fix it is. A barb loses 20 str anytime he cleaves and kills, etc.

[Nines9]

Additional saves versus death magic, not a full fort save increase as we don't want to hurt other things based off fort saves like stunning etc.

Really the only way to go without messing things up too badly. +5 Ehard/+10 Eelite, play with the numbers.

Multiple target kill spells capped. Wail and cod should have capped targets. Undeath to death already has a 4 target cap why not have cod and wail do the same.

Pretty sure they already do. CoD is 4, as it seems undeath to death is exactly the same spell, just for undead. Wail I think is 24, which should probably be lowered (go into a low lvl quest, gather a ton of mobs, wail, you won't hit more then 24 in combat log).

Probably much harder to do the code for but I would like to have multitarget instakill spells have a reducing dc per mob. Say the first it hits is full dc, 2nd mob -2 dc, 3rd mob -4 dc, and so on. This kinda accomplishes the same thing you have with haunting but without penalizing the better built/geared players more than the newer player.

It'll likely do more harm then good. It'd be very complicated to do, and adding a high level of complication just raises the potential for bugs by a large margin, plus it seems like they want more of an "easy button" solution.

More quest design against it. Epic chains of flame is not an easy quest to run around and kill everything on sight in. Neither is epic von3, or epic von 4. Certain parts in other quests are not very friendly with instakills either for a multitude of reasons like spamming aoe deathward, or orange nameds or more undead/golems etc.. Even the newer content had some cool deterrents to instakills in the necromacer resurrecting and soul spawning in the raid.

Agreed, but again more work then just slapping a ward or some "haunting solution" that can be just coded as a simple class.

[Scraap]

Agreed, but again more work then just slapping a ward or some "haunting solution" that can be just coded as a simple class.

On that note, the enhancement pass has been put off 3 times now in order to take the time to do it right. Does this type of thing deserve less diligence in regards to side-effects (course, I say the same about the armor pass)?

[Faent]

I think a big part of the problem is unacknowledged thus far, and stems from the fact that high-fort-save mobs == super-high-HP mobs in DDO. That tasty caster in the back that a good melee could stunning blow and absolutely tear apart in a few seconds? A good caster will finger it before that can happen, as well they should.

/snip

Very nice. I agree with everything you just said.

[GreatOwl]

I just don't get it. Why punish the larger population for something the uber elite does? I don't get that reasoning.

This.

I can't believe the devs really believe the VAST MAJORITY of casters out there are uber 42-45 necro DC guys. I refuse to believe they are tricked into believing that the forum posters are a representative sample of the the game population. I want to believe they are a group of smart people!

I admit, when I first read this proposal I thought it was a step in the right direction and I was intrigued. However, Haunting not only seems way way to harsh of a penalty, but by applying to heroic levels as well as epic completely cripples ALL arcanes, not just the (very few) uber ones who in today's live trivialize content.

At first, with Hard to Kill, the idea seemed to be "we want to make sure harder content is really gonna be a group effort." Personally, I agree 100% with this. EPIC HARD/ELITE should be dedicated to when I take a few friends, I play a little slowly and consciously, I employ more refined group tactics, and in general want to be challenged more. THE REST OF THE CONTENT should on the other hand allow me to solo/grab a hireling/shortman/play a little more recklessly (depending on level/difficulty setting) so that when I don't feel like taking a challenge, or don't have time for one, I can still get in game and have fun.

The above should be true for EVERY CLASS. And it is ... today. But with Haunting, your average necro caster (with his/hers 39-41 DC) won't be able to solo ANY content and will seriously be crippled (and cripple the group as well) in shortman situations. Even on CASUAL!

I have one more level to go till my wizard is back at cap; if Haunting will apply to more than epic hard/elite I have no questions that, instead of TR him into a wizard as I had planned, I will just TR him into a sorc and be done with it.

[Thrudh]

Implosion has a cap on how many mobs can be killed with it. If Wail is the "problem", just cap how many mobs can be killed with 1 cast, and up the timer slightly.

Say... let Wail kill up to 6 mobs, increase timer to 40 secs.

Yep, I'd be fine with that...

With more and more reflection, I'm thinking Haunting is a bad idea.

But the people that think wail is just fine as it is are crazy... Something needs to limit it.

Just like WoPs got nerfed for good reason... Just like perches where the mobs can't hit you keep getting removed for good reason... When something lets you kill with zero danger, it's too powerful...

Wail is too much of an easy button... Or maybe I should say, Wail combined with warforged/palemaster self-healing is too much of an easy button.

Zero skill. You (and I) kill too easy... I accepted the WoP nerf. I accept some kind of Wail nerf.

I'm now AGAINST the Haunting and Hard-to-kill because they affect single target insta-kill like FoD and that's not a problem.

But I am for some kind of wail nerf.