Hard to Kill --> Haunting

[arkonas]

i really love this change coming from an arcane. im not going to whine like other players. this is a real good compromise

[Lormyr]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the feedback on the haunted idea.

We've evaluated the Haunted mechanic to be too complex to introduce at this time. As mentioned by several posters in this thread, it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Wail of the Banshee
SP Cost: 50
Cooldown: 60 seconds (50 for Sorcerers)
You emit a terrible scream, creating a deadly area around yourself for 6 seconds. Every 2 seconds, two nearby enemies must make a fortitude save or die. On a successful fortitude save, the target takes 1 to 4 negative levels. You are free to perform other actions while Wail of the Banshee is active.
D&D Dice: Slays multiple living enemies or deals 1d4 negative levels if they save.

We're planning on continuing to monitor the effectiveness of instant death effects (and necromancy in general) and will continue to make changes as necessary. (Especially when the enhancements revamp appears. It's possible that the "Haunted" concept, instead of being a debuff, will reappear as a positive effect for characters that invest in the Pale Master tree.)

This is considerably more acceptable than either of the previous two solutions. I do have two points of concern, however. The first is the untargetable nature of the spell, and how this can lead to wasted tics/uses as many have pointed out. The second is the cooldown. Being it is arcane, which should be more virulent all around than divine, I think a full minute is slightly excessive. I would prefer to see the cooldown changed to 40 or 45 seconds.

Thanks for listening to us though. Now, if we could only convince you to go do something about those completely rediculous AC changes, we'd all be happy campers. Well, except Shade. If he had things his way we'd all be barbarians though, so probly not the best voice to listen to anyhow .

[Qezuzu]

Why are you insisting on this?

The spell costs more in terms of mana as well as the investment you need to make as a spell caster. I'll admit you don't see many casters who splash more than 2 levels, but you need at least 17 levels on a wiz to get wail. It's a higher level spell, it should be the pinnacle of necromantic spell casting! But it's not. It will still be outshone by lower level spells.

I think they reverted the change since the new paid class, druid, is getting FoD and they don't want to have people ****ed off they bought the class (for those that need to) and have a terribad DC or the original "can only kill stuff at less than half health" debacle.

So I have to basically wait to kill mobs (like implosion) AND it's cooldown is increased..... really... REALLY!

I'm glad haunting is dead (for now) but come on, Wail is supposed to be powerful.

The spell in the PHB doesn't have a cap, nor does it have a 60 second cooldown or anything....and it's instant.

Just leave it alone, buff melees, add in some way for AI to cast different spells, or something.... but leave a functionally useful spell alone....

So now you can kill up to 6 enemies max with a wail? Fabulous.

At least you're not murdering my DCs with this change. Thanks for only slapping me in the face instead of socking me right in the baby maker... I guess.

If you honestly thought Wail was not going to be nerfed at some point in the future, you don't understand how and why MMO's are managed as they are. Balancing is necessary. Having grossly unbalanced features in the game loses money. Unbalanced games are less fun.

Be grateful that they fixed this relatively surgically, and didn't just nuke the whole Necromancy school (let alone other abilities like Assassinate).

Why spread the kills out over time, why not just kill 6 right away? I like the "everything near me falls over dead" thing, over 6 seconds it just not going to feel the same.

Ever played a Divine? Ever cast Implosion? It's a fun spell, and rather powerful. The "cast then enter combat" feature makes it even better. Implosion has a rather long cooldown, but it's still considered one of the best spells in a Divine's list.

I don't like how it's pretty much just a more powerful version of Implosion. That's, what, four effects in the game that are Implosion? Implosion itself, Wail, Shadowdancer Consume, and I think Grandmaster of Flowers has one.

Wail should be just that - mass instakill. What's next? Mass hold hits two mobs every two seconds? Enthrall?

This just went on the to do list. Awesome.

No, because those abilities weren't unbalanced. There was a statement in the earlier pages of this thread, saying to the effect of "what's next, healers getting 'heal-sick'?"

They're not going to nerf things that don't need it. And if you didn't think Wail was stupidly powerful, you weren't playing the same game.

So now we either have to solo very slowly waiting for haunting to wear off.

Or group with only casters and wail on rotation.

Not sure how this helps melees get in groups.

Or just take melees. Some of the Epic Destiny abilities are pretty **** powerful. I personally can't wait to use Shadowdancer on my Rogue.

I can see a potential problem with applying this over time. Lets imagine a scenario.

Caster Wails a bunch of mobs. Mob 1 dies, Mob 2 (cleric) has a lucky roll and saves and immediately casts Deathward. Mobs 3, 4, 5, 6 are now immune and you have basically just used Wail of the Banshee to kill a single mob.

Except no mob AI has reactionary casting. They just have rotations, or choose spells at random. If they're going to cast DW, they'll do it on sight. Finger/stone them.

Now it's not longer an instakill spell.

Implosion is considered an instakill spell. So would this version of Wail. The mob has full HP, and is then dead. That's instakill.

You mentioned FoD... now you can FoD faster than you can wail. It'll cost you more mana, but you can do it quicker. 8 second cool down on finger = 48 seconds to kill 6 mobs if you're mashing the button so you hit it the instant it goes off timer (as I'm sure I'm not the only one who does that) meaning in that 1 minute cooldown (for a wizard) you're able to finger 7 mobs.

Finger seven mobs in a minute, at an SP and effort cost far greater than a single wail that kills "only"six.

Keyword is cost.

Meh..

I can't believe Eladrin actaully thinks this is a nerf.

They are BUFFING Wail..

The limitation of wail wasn't the "20 targets", enemies never pack that closely together so you could never get more then a few anyways.

The fact you can now move with wail going like implosions an IMPROVEMENT.

I mean look at any speedrun record for epics, they are always filled with favor souls, which usually match if not outkill the arcanes despite likely having to heal a lot more.. Theres an obviouis reason for that:
Implosion is the most devastating spell in the game, not wail.

Beign able to move, especially with wings to target and kill 5/6 enemies of your choice is a lot more powerful then 1 untargetable blast. Add on top fvs high DCs and -2 to enemies saves and you have an incredible combination.

Please at least put in the buff against death spells to epic elite, else it's gona be a repeat of this:
http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...&postcount=144

And why is this bad?

Because if you did the same quests in a group with mostly melee, the completion times would be 4-10x longer. It's completely unbalanced against other classes who lack these insanely powerful features, even when they are supported by said classes which they need either way.

Notice how the only completions that even have melee along are the ones that have the toughest red named? Theres an obvious reason for that. and its not fun to play a melee when the only thing you get to actually contribute on is the end boss.

For some reason, the only thing I can think of while reading your posts is this song. My apologies.

[Grosbeak07]

You, Eladrin, are a genious and a hero.

I'm sure he is adding TP to your account right now...

[Sarnind]

Fail

[Elaril]

For some reason, the only thing I can think of while reading your posts is this song. My apologies.

This is what I think of.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Limit 6 man partys to 1 healer and 12 man partys to 2.....

At the rate divine casters are being nerfed in the expansion, any raid that requires more than 2 "healers" may no longer be runnable anyway.

[Qezuzu]

The more I think about it, the more that I think that neither HTK or Haunting are seriously under consideration by the developers. The whole situation reeks of a bait and switch. Give us one proposition that they know we'll hate because we hated it the first time, follow that up with a proposition that seems better at first glance, but is in fact much worse.

I'd expect their next move will be "after reviewing and considering player feedback on HTK and Haunting, we have decided to just nerf Wail instead." They will then be hailed as geniouses and heroes by the forum community.

When what you say affects your profit, a little psychology isn't bad.

Just be glad they don't use psychology like certain other games do.

[DemonMage]

Hi everyone!
We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

Any chance of just getting this changed to a hard target cap instead? Implosion can frequently just do nothing at all even when you're surrounded by mobs, so unless that's fixed this is an even more significant change than it first appears.

[Khthonic]

At some point this thread became melee vs. casters. But really the melee just want buffs, they don't want casters debuffed. If the Haunting went through as proposed, it would have effected everyone in the game.

I can't count the times when I've saved melee by a well placed finger of death, or a party by a well timed wail/circle of death (like in elite amrath to thin the heard). If I was rendered incapable of doing these things, there would be a lot more deaths and party wipes all around.

End-game is separate from "the rest of the game" for a reason. Any sufficiently geared and well played character can breeze through 95% of the content. End game is eservants, eda, echrono, evon, esands, hard/elite/epic raids, elite amrath. Thats how a game evolves. Don't complain because Lords of Dust is easy, it was made easy for anyone. Don't complain because the rest of the game is easy, thats how MMO's evolve. As people gain experience, gear, and so forth, the earlier part of any MMO becomes a cakewalk. Ever heard of a "twink"? It happens in every game, and its not a big deal.

As it stands melee are highly useful and solid participants in the above mentioned end game content. No casters are "blowing' through that content on a regular basis on their own. If there are some, its the extreme minority of players. Even with 44 Necro and Enchant DC I wouldn't even bother trying to solo any of those quests, except Elite New Invasion, but even then I invised through most of the quest.

As for the rest, any sufficiently geared melee can blow through the same content a caster can, even if it takes a bit longer. Melee have infinite sustained DPS, whereas a caster is limited to their pool of SP. And a good melee will be competitive if not have more kills than a good PM in many quests.

I'm all for melee getting vorpals and disruptors how they want them. I'm happy to see the rogue assasinating casters I would have FoD'ed.

[sephiroth1084]

Meh..

I can't believe Eladrin actaully thinks this is a nerf.

They are BUFFING Wail..

The limitation of wail wasn't the "20 targets", enemies never pack that closely together so you could never get more then a few anyways.

The fact you can now move with wail going like implosions an IMPROVEMENT.

If you spent less time nuking and more time using intakills, you'd know that this is absolutely not true.

How can you possibly view Wail going from being able to kill say conservatively 5 monsters twice per minute (10 monsters), almost instantly, to killing up to 6 monsters once per minutes where you have to continue both evading the critturs and staying close to them for 6 seconds while the spell does its work as being an improvement?

Old Wail: Run through a few rooms, gathering up all of the monsters, staying ahead of them and out of reach until you decide to Wail. Then buttonhook, jump over them and cast Quickened Wail, killing as many as 20 creatures at once. Repeat 30 seconds later. Disregard orange/red/purple named, constructs and undead in the area, as you'll get to them soon.

New Wail: Activate Wail upon entering a room, and beeline for the monsters. Hop around waiting for Wail to kill your enemies, while staying withing range. Possibly watch as Wail hits the same death-immune target 3 times, and only kills 3 of the 6 monsters you have around you.

I mean look at any speedrun record for epics, they are always filled with favor souls, which usually match if not outkill the arcanes despite likely having to heal a lot more.. Theres an obviouis reason for that:
Implosion is the most devastating spell in the game, not wail.

Beign able to move, especially with wings to target and kill 5/6 enemies of your choice is a lot more powerful then 1 untargetable blast. Add on top fvs high DCs and -2 to enemies saves and you have an incredible combination.

Fairly certain favored soul speed runs work due to their being able to avoid monsters with wings and using Blade Barrier, which is more effective than Implosion for killing big groups of enemies, and also for moving quickly through a dungeon.

Implosion: Have to be within range of the stuff you are killing, which means you can't move too far ahead of the enemies you are bypassing, and only kills 5 enemies per minute, if you're lucky.

Blade Barrier: Drop them behind you while you run and wing your way through the quest, dealing damage to everything following you, and eventually killing stuff without you having to be anywhere near them. Kills as many enemies as you like per minute.

Please at least put in the buff against death spells to epic elite, else it's gona be a repeat of this:
http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...&postcount=144

How is citing some achievements by one of the most solid guilds, comprised of some of the best players in the game an example of what should or should not be done about Epic quests? What does that have to do with insta-kills? Yeah, a few of those guys were likely throwing off absolutely maxed DC instakills, but I'd imagine that they did what little killing they had to with Blade Barrier as much as Wail, and more than Implosion (could be wrong, since I wasn't there watching them), but their speed records are largely due to not killing any more than they had to. Invisibility and RUN.

[alexp80]

Sorry but 10 kills is too many. 6 is good. I think a lot of the people complaining about implosion being bad havnt used it enough. In spread out situations it was better than wail anyway. Although admittedly that was with wings so you could shoot ur self over to be in the tick area more easily.

I like ur ideas though. Just 10 is waaaaay to many. 6 is spot on IMO.

N

it's not 10 kills

it's 10 attempt.
considering implosion experience, many attempts will be wasted on immune targets (really more target are immune to wail than implosion)

Wail should be the BEST spell available for a palemaster, it's final ability. 6 attempts simply is not for 50 sp once a minute it's not

[GermanicusMaximus]

Great!

Now undo the AC system, and things start to look better.

Actually, I was thinking the same about

- Maximize and Empower meta nerfage
- the entire spell power system
- clickie nerfage

[Dandonk]

Actually, I was thinking the same about

- Maximize and Empower meta nerfage
- the entire spell power system
- clickie nerfage

One thing at a time

[Hikup]

Joy. Arcane implosion targeting the same 2 immune mobs, regardless of what's available for 6 seconds. How about at least making it so it will only target eligible mobs?
Wait that's a lot more than copy/paste and I'm sure if you were able, implosion would work like that anyways.
At least it isn't haunted but I wish it was HtK : /

[kzeast]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for the feedback on the haunted idea.

We've evaluated the Haunted mechanic to be too complex to introduce at this time. As mentioned by several posters in this thread, it's really Wail of the Banshee that is the source of the balance problems that we seek to address, and it's more logical to constrain changes to the spell.

We're planning on removing the death protection from non-boss creatures in Epic difficulty and changing Wail of the Banshee from being a spell that instantaneously kills up to 20 enemies for 10 sp more than Finger of Death, to a kill-over-time model similar to, but still better than, the Clr/FvS spell Implosion.

No one likes nerfs, but I would like to thank you for listening to the feedback on hard to kill and haunted. This is a vastly superior solution.

[Shade]

The achievements of some of the best players in the game are NOT a representation of how the majority plays.

No.

But any old 28-point palemaster does exactly the same effect just at a slower speed in the vast majority of epics. I purposely avoid inviting them because they trivilize the game, its not fun.

And I'm not the only one who wants a challenge. Not by a long shot.

[Vordax]

...., many attempts will be wasted on immune targets (really more target are immune to wail than implosion)

We need an answer to this, are implosions quirks going to apply, is it going try to kill the same mob over and over, event though it is immune? We need to know how the 2 are chosen.

[alexp80]

Joy. Arcane implosion targeting the same 2 immune mobs, regardless of what's available for 6 seconds. How about at least making it so it will only target eligible mobs?
Wait that's a lot more than copy/paste and I'm sure if you were able, implosion would work like that anyways.
At least it isn't haunted but I wish it was HtK : /

as more as I think about, the best solution is simply to leave the spell as is and hard cap the kills to 8-10 (the KILLS not the SAVING THROWS)

[alexp80]

Meh..

I can't believe Eladrin actaully thinks this is a nerf.

They are BUFFING Wail..

The limitation of wail wasn't the "20 targets", enemies never pack that closely together so you could never get more then a few anyways.

The fact you can now move with wail going like implosions an IMPROVEMENT.

I mean look at any speedrun record for epics, they are always filled with favor souls, which usually match if not outkill the arcanes despite likely having to heal a lot more.. Theres an obviouis reason for that:
Implosion is the most devastating spell in the game, not wail.

Beign able to move, especially with wings to target and kill 5/6 enemies of your choice is a lot more powerful then 1 untargetable blast. Add on top fvs high DCs and -2 to enemies saves and you have an incredible combination.

Please at least put in the buff against death spells to epic elite, else it's gona be a repeat of this:
http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...&postcount=144

And why is this bad?

Because if you did the same quests in a group with mostly melee, the completion times would be 4-10x longer. It's completely unbalanced against other classes who lack these insanely powerful features, even when they are supported by said classes which they need either way.

Notice how the only completions that even have melee along are the ones that have the toughest red named? Theres an obvious reason for that. and its not fun to play a melee when the only thing you get to actually contribute on is the end boss.

me barb

me kill things with big other things

duh

EDIT:

Really, Shade, learn to play. If you are not able to contribute with a full geared barb after years of play, you should try something different