Update 66 Preview 1 - Epic Destiny Refresh
- Thread starter Tonquin
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Lazuli
Well-known member
Which caster can't use the current DB? My casters disagree with you. This will harm more to tier B casters than tier A+ casters.
And it's not just the nerf to CL, it's the combined nerf to CL and damage. DB will do less damage than spells.
Aye, this will not harm the targets with the best heroic spells all that much - but it will hurt the 2nd rate casters very badly. I likely wont change much for my top epic/legendary caster build but I am considering scrapping my alt caster build as it will be badly hurt from this change.
Anything without an immunity strip was at a disadvantage due to dragon breath (and draconic) heavily favoring classes with them that can brainlessly monoelement.
Sonic based bards and warlocks couldn't properly utilize dragon breath and it took until stormsinger (which uses lightning breath effectively) for most of the playerbase to deem bards good casters.
Clerics and Favored Souls would have preferred to use a light epic strike if there was one actually worth using.
For Wizards negative isn't really a consistent element to build around and the only good epic strike option for force was orchid blossom.
I know you like to complain ceaselessy about how much stronger melee is but the thing is melee's strength at the moment is little to do with epic strikes, ALL the epic strikes are TERRIBLE for two weapon fighting which is the best style for dps and yet twf is the best style for dps by a huge margin.
Overall for a build's effective health, for consistent dps what you need is actually consistent damage and demanding all your power budget be loaded into a single ability is a large reason your damage per second ends up awful.
Sonic based bards and warlocks couldn't properly utilize dragon breath and it took until stormsinger (which uses lightning breath effectively) for most of the playerbase to deem bards good casters.
Clerics and Favored Souls would have preferred to use a light epic strike if there was one actually worth using.
For Wizards negative isn't really a consistent element to build around and the only good epic strike option for force was orchid blossom.
I know you like to complain ceaselessy about how much stronger melee is but the thing is melee's strength at the moment is little to do with epic strikes, ALL the epic strikes are TERRIBLE for two weapon fighting which is the best style for dps and yet twf is the best style for dps by a huge margin.
Overall for a build's effective health, for consistent dps what you need is actually consistent damage and demanding all your power budget be loaded into a single ability is a large reason your damage per second ends up awful.
Lazuli
Well-known member
My wizard does not use negative in the DB, most wizards are not using negative in either mantle or DB. No wizard looking for efficiency uses negative, neg has too many immunities. That doesn't mean that the DB is useless.
The same can be said with warlock, I have made enough sonic warlock lives, and the DB does good service on them, even if they are not specialized in the element at the level of a sorc. In fact, for the warlock this is a disaster, the Eldritch blast is for sustained damage, all the burst blasts that the warlock has come from epic options, and taking one away from them is going to make them miserable.
I repeat, this nerf does more damage to wizards and warlocs than to sorc and druids. If they want to nerf A+ casters, do it by touching only them and not the rest of the casters.
Yes, you said it, melees are strong for many more things than epic strikes. My point has never been to nerf melees or not introduce improvements where necessary (to all this, it's not that I never play melees xd). My point is that nerf casters when their dps are not in a dominant position right now is unfair and unnecessary. And making that nerf on top of it affecting casters who don't have strong dps (unlike melees and A+ casters) is a design flaw.
so 105 pages now. Wondering whether Tonq & Crew have heard how horrible what theyre doing to casters is? One can only hope they can find a way to NOT make epic strikes heroic level limited and leave DB & EA alone. That said, arcane casters need more protection if you're going to do this:
MRR +1 per level, MRR cap raised 2 per level regardless of armor type. DR 1 per epic level. 2x MRR gains from items.
scale protection spells of every type to level & that means Stoneskin and more become more effective but only if applied to casters. Cores should add magic or spell damage DR, scaling with cores 1/3/5/7/9 for TOTAL of 25 DR vs Magic Damage. How about Prismatic Wall? Protection that takes 7 spells to take down. Something. Maybe Wall of Ice or Wall of Water to stop or slow mobs giving you a better chance to heal? So many ways to balance such a drastic change if you MUST go forward with it.
MRR +1 per level, MRR cap raised 2 per level regardless of armor type. DR 1 per epic level. 2x MRR gains from items.
scale protection spells of every type to level & that means Stoneskin and more become more effective but only if applied to casters. Cores should add magic or spell damage DR, scaling with cores 1/3/5/7/9 for TOTAL of 25 DR vs Magic Damage. How about Prismatic Wall? Protection that takes 7 spells to take down. Something. Maybe Wall of Ice or Wall of Water to stop or slow mobs giving you a better chance to heal? So many ways to balance such a drastic change if you MUST go forward with it.
Absolutely, there are tons of things they could do that would make the nerfing of 'epic' spells / SLAs down to sub-heroic damage levels 'ok' (though still illogical). Maybe give them a large (e.g. +Epic Level) boost to DCs and spell penetration.
Battlefield control options like solid walls would be a very welcome addition. Ditto tactical teleportation... if they're still determined to not let players bypass all those 'fun' jumping puzzles then make it offensive... spell to teleport targeted enemy to you (e.g. great for those annoying unreachable archers). Or swap places with targeted ally (which might let ONE player skip a jumping puzzle, at the cost of another having to do it twice).
Add spells requiring 'concentration'... i.e. can't attack or cast other spells, but maintains hold/charm/immunity removal/group buff/whatever so long as you do.
Sanctuary type spell which prevents attacks on target unless they attack or attacker makes a save... basically protect dedicated healers from aggro, or cast it on Tank1 when you want the boss to switch to Tank2.
Mirror image, simulacrum, and illusion school spells in general, could be added.
SO many different things not involving MOAR DAMAGE that could be added to casters to make them more useful.
DeathTitan
Well-known member
So a tier 4 dragon breath epic strike in draconic incarnation will have the same damage of a simple delayed blast fireball spell.
Both are capped at level 20 so by reading the wiki the damage is exactly the following:
deals 1d6+7 points of fire damage per caster level up to a maximum damage of 20d6+140 at caster level 20 to all targets around it.
Because I already know that delayed blast fireball deals nothing at R10 difficulty then I expect dragon breath to become useless.
Let's read Tsunami spell description:
Call forth a wave of water, knocking enemies down and dealing 1d6+9 Cold damage and 1d6+9 Bludgeoning damage per caster level, halved on successful Fortitude save.
Ok, from my experience at R10 difficulty, Tsunami spell maybe removes the 30% of an R10 trash mob, it has the same caster level of Dragon breath, and draconic incarnation Dragon breath will deal only 40% of the damage dealt by Tsunami.
With this new super-nerfed dragon breath I wounder why I should keep draconic incarnation destiny...
Let's see another spell:
Cone of cold creates an area of extreme cold, originating at your hand and extending outward in a large cone. It drains heat, dealing 1d6+5 points of cold damage per caster level. Maximum damage 15d6+75 at caster level 15. A successful Reflex save reduces the damage by half.
Please add cone of cold to Druid spell list, otherwise I will be struggling to do any AOE damage with my druid...
And remove the casters damage nerf you applied for difficulties from R7 to R10 because I doubt I will ever be able to kill any mobs at R10 difficulty.
If you really want to cripple epic strikes like that, wait that the level cap is increased to 34 before this huge nerf.
Reduce Zero Degree Comet magus of the eclipse sla cooldown because 18 seconds is too much.
Reduce dragon breath cooldown to 6 seconds like Moon Lance sla: is Moon Lance level capped at 20 like dragon breath? Moon Lance has a stunning/helpless like ability, dragon breath not.
If you REALLY want to nerf dragon breath that way, transform it into a simple SLA like Greatest Shout in fatesinger destiny instead of it being an epic strike: after this nerf it will not be an EPIC strike anymore, it will be mostly a NOOB strike.
Both are capped at level 20 so by reading the wiki the damage is exactly the following:
deals 1d6+7 points of fire damage per caster level up to a maximum damage of 20d6+140 at caster level 20 to all targets around it.
Because I already know that delayed blast fireball deals nothing at R10 difficulty then I expect dragon breath to become useless.
Let's read Tsunami spell description:
Call forth a wave of water, knocking enemies down and dealing 1d6+9 Cold damage and 1d6+9 Bludgeoning damage per caster level, halved on successful Fortitude save.
Ok, from my experience at R10 difficulty, Tsunami spell maybe removes the 30% of an R10 trash mob, it has the same caster level of Dragon breath, and draconic incarnation Dragon breath will deal only 40% of the damage dealt by Tsunami.
With this new super-nerfed dragon breath I wounder why I should keep draconic incarnation destiny...
Let's see another spell:
Cone of cold creates an area of extreme cold, originating at your hand and extending outward in a large cone. It drains heat, dealing 1d6+5 points of cold damage per caster level. Maximum damage 15d6+75 at caster level 15. A successful Reflex save reduces the damage by half.
Please add cone of cold to Druid spell list, otherwise I will be struggling to do any AOE damage with my druid...
And remove the casters damage nerf you applied for difficulties from R7 to R10 because I doubt I will ever be able to kill any mobs at R10 difficulty.
If you really want to cripple epic strikes like that, wait that the level cap is increased to 34 before this huge nerf.
Reduce Zero Degree Comet magus of the eclipse sla cooldown because 18 seconds is too much.
Reduce dragon breath cooldown to 6 seconds like Moon Lance sla: is Moon Lance level capped at 20 like dragon breath? Moon Lance has a stunning/helpless like ability, dragon breath not.
If you REALLY want to nerf dragon breath that way, transform it into a simple SLA like Greatest Shout in fatesinger destiny instead of it being an epic strike: after this nerf it will not be an EPIC strike anymore, it will be mostly a NOOB strike.
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Frantik
Well-known member
Sorry for late reply... what I think Magus needs is cold/negative short-duration debuff. It could be an elegant approach to add temp immunity strip for both these damage types to the 3rd core ability (Nullmagic Aura, duration 20 secs, CD 2 mins) and to the epic moment.
Lazuli
Well-known member
The problem is that in DDO damage has an oversized usefulness. Anything else has become very devalued nowadays. SSG has done everything possible to turn instantkill into a niche play, there are too many mobs immune to them (champs, DW, deathblock, minibosses, bosses) and SSG has also been limiting how many targets these spells affected. A couple of years ago they limited circle of death to four targets (previously it affected everyone within its radius) although its cooldown is longer than damage spells, and passed it off as a clarification of their tooltip, which was quite insulting to players.
Utility spells also have very little real use in DDO, and the few that exist have been distributed to all classes through equipment and EDs. If we don't even have a real DD. No, DD at the entrance of the quest and only at the entrance of a quest is not a good adaptation of DD. The old neverwinter game, which is from the last century, had a better adaptation, and we are talking about a game that is more than a quarter of a century old.
In DDO, as soon as we talk about CC or utility we have to talk about minimal, watered-down things. Immediately, if not, the magic-haters begin to cry "op op op." For God's sake, recently there was a "nerf hold monster" topic
Damage is the only thing that works universally in DDO. The only. You can’t finish a single quest without damage. Look how the raids are designed. All based around bosses with millions of hps. In a raid, having many castes is a detriment, that is well known. The more you increase the difficulty of the raid, the fewer casters the raid must have to have a chance of success. High skulls raids are all weapon users, with a caster dedicated to trash and one or two healers. 80% of the raid will be weapon users. It's like that.
DDO favors damage. You can have a very good caster in CC and instankills, but if you want to quest solo when you don't have a group you need damage. As long as the DDO philosophy does not change, and other things begin to be given more importance, damage spells will continue to be the most valuable.
Please use more up to date numbers.
Additionally stop acting like dragon breath is the only ability in the 'epic strike' system. Every other spell epic strike has been 1d6+6 single target at best for the last 2 years and suddenly this is only a problem if dragon breath is that bad? Well, still BETTER than every other epic strike has been for the last 2 years.
Now for the record, I agree caster single target sustained DPS is relatively too low but that's the cost of all your power budget being loaded into AOE and long cooldown nukes.
Nobody asks for damage over times to be good, or when damage over times are good and get nerfed nobody cares.
Mechanically you can not build a balanced, healthy sustained dps caster for raids with the paradigm of also being able to oneshot trash in a single spell, with the systems DDO currently has sustained spell dps could only be put together in a healthy way through ramp time, damage over times and high interval lower value damage.
Nobody takes energy vortex despite it being like 250% of the damage of gaping maw/energy burst because nobody cares about sustained damage on a caster.
Nobody takes Improved Arcane Pulse or Arcane Pulse even despite the fact that damage per cast time it'll end up higher damage than most of the spells you do throw out.
Rend the Soul is an incredibly powerful single target damage over time spell (when stuff isn't immune) do people use it? On Rudus maybe.
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Lazuli
Well-known member
And we've been saying for years that the other strikes are horrible lol Instead of improving the bad ones, what they do is ruin the only good one. Brilliant.
Rosze
Active member
Well that is very DDO style. You could even keep it the same an give it a longer cool down. Big numbers are part of the fun. Who doesn’t love doing 100k damage sure you realise it was just a frog but still
Lazuli
Well-known member
By the way, no one takes energy vortex because the last thing you want with a fragile caster is to stay in the middle of the mobs (or next to the boss) so they can caster puree you. That, and its targeting is atrocious and loses a lot of ticks, so in the end the damage isn't that good.
Many of us use dots like arcane pulse or rend the soul. But its dps is not competitive and is definitely not enough for raids. If you say that Sorcs don't catch rend the soul, then yes, but it's a negative spell, man. Sorcs are elemental casters, nothing in their trees improves them negative.
Who says we haven't asked for improving dots? It was the devs who left the dots aside when they made the spell pass, and we have been asked several times to update them. Neither dots nor spells like incendiary cloud have been improved. So they are in the state they are in. Niacs and eladar are sooo poor.
How many things that are not true are said to defend nerfs to other people.
DeathTitan
Well-known member
At R10 difficulty, if you don't kill an enemy in 12 seconds you are dead:
The problem is that the developers nerfed R7 to R10 casters dps because dragon breath was able to deal enough damage to remove 60% of enemies life before the nerft.
Now the dps nerf will stay and dragon breath will still be nerfed.
Also you are comparing single target epic strikes with dragon breath: single targets epic strikes can be cast at safe distance while dragon breath is cast at a dangerous distance at high reaper difficulty, it's also a cone attack meaning that it's not as good as a delayed blast fireball with a big area of effect or acid rain.
Also dragon breath still has a huge 12 seconds cooldown compared to a 2 seconds cooldown of "Strike a Chord (Epic Strike)" in fatesinger tree which is a single target epic strike and I don't know if "Strike a Chord" is capped at level 20 like dragon breath.
Dragon breath has been already nerfed in the past by capping its level at 20, also Tsunami spell has been capped at 20.
I mean, Dragon Breath is an "EPIC strike", it should be stronger than standard spells: instead with this nerf it will be weaker than regular spells because its 12 seconds cooldown is huge compared to standard spells and can't be reduced with past lives or other abilities.
Do I have to mention Primal Avatar sla? Let's read the description:
Sky: Thunder Snow: SP: 20 CD: 20 Sends forth a wide wave of freezing hail before you with a narrow blast of lightning at its center directly in front of the caster. The hail deals 1d6+4 cold damage per character level. The bolt of lightning strikes for 1d6+4 per character level.
Now try it in game, do you see a WIDE WAVE of freezing hail? I cast it close to an enemy, I didn't deal any cold damage and it's cast a bolt of lightning that hits only 1 target: maybe if I'm at touch range then I deal the additional cold damage, but for sure it's not the WIDE WAVE mentioned in the description. I expect it to be a cold cone like dragon breath or Tsunami if I read the description correctly.
Now I mentioned only a few issues of the epic destiny strikes and slas, why the developers don't fix those? they are all years old issues and now they are demonstrating that they know ZERO this game, otherwise they have to explain me why they hell they don't fix those aged issues.
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DeathTitan
Well-known member
if the developers want to improve epic destinies they could start to fix energy vortex.
The last time I tested it I had to be at a mob touch range when I cast it, otherwise it bugs.
If I try to cast it far from the enemies and then I go near an enemy, it deals no damage: I remember the old energy vortex working with a large area of effect around the caster, but now it's bugged since they revamped the epic destinies and I don't know why they don't fix it.
Developers only nerf stuff and almost never fix common issues...
Please someone test it now and let me know if they fixed this scenario: I expect energy vortex to cover an area of effect that has the range of Dragon Breath.
BiggerTrolls
Well-known member
Thank you for being a breath of accuracy. Many of the differing opinions are began with the supposition, "they shouldn't be able to..." It's gross, and not an accurate explanation. How many of the boo bad nerf dragon breath it's overperforming crowd asses the mastery level nonsense?
I have built more than 6 arcane pulse builds, and spent far far to many lives frustrated with myself for ignoring the reality of force based casters. That theme of build exemplifies the issue. The way SLAs, force spell power, and casting damage works does not allow for substandard builds to enter into a workable dps space. None of the proposed fixes address the problems mechanically inherent with how max caster levels, immunities, and competition in the damage space exist. We don't need to bring up the costly, time and build crushing, DC requirements to enter into anything like a functioning state, because frankly the boo dragon breath crowd don't value any of that challenge as ANYTHING.
"They shouldn't be able to do that, it's not fair."
Ptalon
Well-known member
Nerfs: the Never Ending Story.
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