Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[slimkj]

Not when an ability is fundamentally unbalanced; then the ability should be changed, not the encounters. It's plain and simple for me. Always tackle problems at their root, don't make elaborate changes to hide a fundamental problem.

The simplest solution would probably be this: remove instakills altogether and replace it with negative energy damage spells (including some nice AoE). Give pale masters bonusses to these negative energy spells, and have necro DC's work on them. Makes for a nice selfhealing caster build that has great versatility in damage spells and in crowd controlling.

It is only unbalanced because of lack of creativity/time in the content, not because of it's innate ability. Vorpal was exactly the same. The problem was not vorpal, the problem was inflating mob HP to insane numbers to give an illusion of challenge and time taken to complete. So people chose vorpal over DPS because they like the shortest path and inane, static mob beatdowns are not fun.

That is the problem at its root, not what you describe. Constrained system design lacking creativity is at fault here, not instakills. Probably because of the player-led and marketing-supported demands for high content outturn, I would guess.

[camgib]

It is only unbalanced because of lack of creativity/time in the content, not because of it's innate ability. Vorpal was exactly the same. The problem was not vorpal, the problem was inflating mob HP to insane numbers to give an illusion of challenge and time taken to complete. So people chose vorpal over DPS because they like the shortest path and inane, static mob beatdowns are not fun.

That is the problem at its root, not what you describe. Constrained system design lacking creativity is at fault here, not instakills. Probably because of the player-led and marketing-supported demands for high content outturn, I would guess.

I get the feeling that the devs are reaching for the easy button here to make for a more balanced game experience. Wouldn't a better solution be to design the encounter around the abilities of the expected participants rather than nerf one of the participants based on the perceived imbalance that a poor design created? Why not raise the saves on hard and elite epic level mobs to a point at which instant death spells would be difficult to achieve without debuffing the mobs first? Require arcanes to expend more spell points per wail so that their pool shrinks and they NEED the other characters to complete rather than forcing them to sit in a quest, waiting for their timers to clear. While this might be unfair to lesser geared characters, what are they doing trying to run content for which they are unprepared anyway?

With this mechanic I'll be farming the epics the same as always, just getting a cup of coffee between wails as I wait for the timer. This doesn't seem like an effective way to balance the quest to me.

[Zio_Kose]

Can we have new wizzy PL? will give +10 DC because +1 is ridiculous and useless with this new system...

[CaptainPurge]

Can we have new wizzy PL? will give +10 DC because +1 is ridiculous and useless with this new system...

No. You must grind triple Wiz PL and any experience pots and hearts of wood that make it so.

[Udalric]

Dear turbine

New complicated mechanic is costly and time consuming also could generate many bugs .
If you want to fix instakill issue do it through balancing particular spell. Wail of banshee is main concern here so add cap (5/6 etc) to it and lenghten cooldown to 60 sec . Simple easy solutions are always most effective. If you really have *SO* much time and money to spare better finish out Pre.

[HatsuharuZ]

I dislike the proposed "haunting" debuff.

Why not just increase the cooldowns on AoE death spells? Casters have plenty of other spells they can use between casts of death spells. And while you're at it, give casters a "harried" penalty to DCs and concentration checks during a red alert.

[irivan]

I dislike the proposed "haunting" debuff.

Why not just increase the cooldowns on AoE death spells? Casters have plenty of other spells they can use between casts of death spells. And while you're at it, give casters a "harried" penalty to DCs and concentration checks during a red alert.

They really need to just back off, and do nothing at all at this point. Just dont mess with it.

If they want to make the game more difficult for casters they should just bump mob saving throws by a few points and call it a day. Use more Orange Named bosses if they think that will help.


But anything else is going to put them in a bad way.

[HatsuharuZ]

They really need to just back off, and do nothing at all at this point. Just dont mess with it.

If they want to make the game more difficult for casters they should just bump mob saving throws by a few points and call it a day. Use more Orange Named bosses if they think that will help.


But anything else is going to put them in a bad way.

There are no easy answers, here. However, Wail of the Banshee *is* a powerful spell, and it should have an equally potent cooldown time. This "haunting" debuff is essentially penalizing casters for using their spells. Sure, they could use more orange names, but that would take alot of work. Manipulating the cooldown times of powerful spells is the simplest method of doing this.

Now, I think of a number of ways to nerf casters:

1) Reduce the number of spell points casters can achieve

2) Remove all items that improve spell DCs.

3) Take out insta-kill spells from the game


However, all of these can cause lots of grief. In fact, if the developers do ANYTHING to lower the effectiveness of spellcasters, there will be grief. The trick is to find the solution to the problem that causes the least amount of grief. By only changing a few spells, the amount of grief will be minimal. Increased cooldowns for the mass insta-kill spells is probably the best way, imo.

[jandhaer]

Ill sign this when melees have an endurance bar or something similiar working as a debuff that decreases STR and RATE OF ATTACK as they run out of juice.

*** Im A Melee Im carrying this club the size of a medium tree and I can swing it at maximum speed at maximum strength FOREVER and I never ever ever get tired or slow down even the tiniest bit *** /sarcasm off

[Drona]

EPIC FAIL Turbine. Gratz!!

I play a barb as well, and this change is ridiculous.