Caster pass... When, devs?

[EinarMal]

This is stupid. Redesigning casters by stacking multiple types of DoTs from Lamordia raid gear is probably not what SSG had in mind when they added these - they probably just wanted to make DWM accessible to more types than fire.

If it only scales with metas and not spell power, the entire thing also seems suspiciously bugged. I also don't get how you arrive at 20k DPS with only metas. Unless they changed DWM, it's 500 damage at full stacks, x3 for metas, x3 for crit - that would be <5k DPS. To get +20k DPS you would need four+ elements?

Claiming that casters are fine by building around this is silly. It's like the ki-bolt builds. Yes you can do this at great sacrifice, but it doesn't fix casters generally.

I agree I was just bored, so I tried playing around with gear layouts. It is highly unlikely I would ever farm all of this.

 

[LurkingVeteran]

I agree I was just bored, so I tried playing around with gear layouts. It is highly unlikely I would ever farm all of this.

It was not directed at you specifically, I found your post interesting, it was just a comment on the entire argument of "yay casters fixed(*)" with a big asterisk.

 

[Fhrek]

It was not directed at you specifically, I found your post interesting, it was just a comment on the entire argument of "yay casters fixed(*)" with a big asterisk.

I just ignored at first because sounded like some kind of troll talking out his posterior to gaslighting and derail the thread. I was glad by @EinarMal showing how gearing for it is an uttereffort to gain half the damage output of a half hand me down Repeater build.

 

[Guntango]

I agree I was just bored, so I tried playing around with gear layouts. It is highly unlikely I would ever farm all of this.

Farming it actually sounds like fun. I like when a great build comes together; I’m just not sure I’d be on this great build very long.

 

[Jasparius]

Claiming that casters are fine by building around this is silly. It's like the ki-bolt builds. Yes a narrow subset of builds can do this at great sacrifice, but it doesn't fix casters generally.

And it also means as soon as new ranged and melee gear comes out casters are behind again.

Balancing builds through gear is lazy and stupid. And saying a build is fine if you are decked out in the latest raid gear then it absolutely is not fine. Particularly when you are also relying on 4 or 5 year old gear sets as well.

People who have zero clue what they are talking unfortunately seem to be the ones SSG are most likely to listen to. Because they are like-minded.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

The 5 stages of grief played out in full
1) Denial - No! Casters are useless and do no damage.
2) Anger - No! Liar! Its not true.
3) Bargaining - Well you cant gear for it can you? err well maybe if I...
4) Depression - Sigh that's a huge grind...
5) Acceptance - Fine, casters can do damage but its stupid and I hate it!

 

[Mnemor]

I see you're still resorting to sophistry, Monkey_Archer. Unfortunately for you, trying to be funny doesn't make you right.

 

[Wizard]

I agree, some very specific gear worn by very specific specs doesn't cut it for caster balance.

Archetypes (melee/ranged/caster) should be roughly balanced at ALL gear levels, otherwise most people won't play them and they will get rejected from raids. Caster dps floor is so low, that some raid leaders will reject them even for hard (!) difficulty (let alone R1)...

 

[Guntango]

The 5 stages of grief played out in full
1) Denial - No! Casters are useless and do no damage.
2) Anger - No! Liar! Its not true.
3) Bargaining - Well you cant gear for it can you? err well maybe if I...
4) Depression - Sigh that's a huge grind...
5) Acceptance - Fine, casters can do damage but its stupid and I hate it!

On fire lately.

 

[Guntango]

I see you're still resorting to sophistry, Monkey_Archer. Unfortunately for you, trying to be funny doesn't make you right.

But, it’s funny because he’s so right. Making me want to build a caster. The gear set doesn’t sound any worse than a meta dps toon.

 

[Jasparius]

The 5 stages of grief played out in full
1) Denial - No! Casters are useless and do no damage.
2) Anger - No! Liar! Its not true.
3) Bargaining - Well you cant gear for it can you? err well maybe if I...
4) Depression - Sigh that's a huge grind...
5) Acceptance - Fine, casters can do damage but its stupid and I hate it!

Who accepts that casters as a whole do damage and are fine?

There are 9 classes with caster builds, 2 of them with specific builds and very specific gear are good but not great.

Seems to me youre stuck at stage 1.

 

[Bjond]

But, it’s funny because he’s so right. Making me want to build a caster. The gear set doesn’t sound any worse than a meta dps toon.

You should do it. I don't think you'll like it (my impression is that you're a melee guy), but it's fun to play a caster now and then even with their drawbacks.

The biggest issue I have with them, though, is that it's so hard to multi-class them to get all the features you want into a character, particularly survive alongside their primary casterish abilities.

IMHO, multiclass on physicals works because BAB stacks and it doesn't work for casters because CL does not stack. Casters would be a whole lot more fun (for me) to build if CL stacked like BAB.

 

[EinarMal]

The 5 stages of grief played out in full
1) Denial - No! Casters are useless and do no damage.
2) Anger - No! Liar! Its not true.
3) Bargaining - Well you cant gear for it can you? err well maybe if I...
4) Depression - Sigh that's a huge grind...
5) Acceptance - Fine, casters can do damage but its stupid and I hate it!

Yea not really, dots have a lot of issues, and so does weapon swapping or using something like Call Lightning Storm. You also need at least one immunity strip, so it only works for some builds.

It is likely a lot better on paper than it would actually be unless all you do is solo.

You will still be lower than ranged builds, and there is still the R10 penalty.

I would not recommend it given the level of effort.

 

[woq]

If you wanted to try to do this without gouging your eyes out with laggy weapon swaps, you really want Call Lightning Storm. Which means you have two realistic choices: Half-Elf Sorc/WM or Cold Druid/Blightcaster. Certainly not a fix or a caster pass, as you really have limited options if you wanted to max out this idea.

1. Two maxed-out jewels
2. Lamordia Weapon 1 - Revel + Lightning Lash + Alchemical Acid,
3. Lamordia Weapon 2 - Revel + Bitter Frostbite OR Lingering Acid Burn
4. Lamordia Weapon 3 - Revel + Rippling Energy
5. Clank OR Wither (Blightcaster) - Rupturing Echo OR Grip of Venom, Ash

Now getting gear for all of this is tough; you need Force, Cold, Lightning, Alignment, Sonic (maybe), Acid (maybe), Poison (maybe). I doubt it is possible to max them all out; you would start with your main spell elements and fit in what you can.

I would get two mantles, Draconic and Primal. Cold Druid doesn't have sonic spells, which is a problem.

We want to cast Call Lightning Storm:
Swap:
2. Lamordia Weapon 1 - Revel + Lightning Lash + Alchemical Acid,
3. Lamordia Weapon 3 - Revel + Rippling Energy
Mantle = Draconic

You could also swap in items (Lightning/Force Lore + Critical Damage etc.)

Call Lightning Storm

Mantle = Primal
Swap:
4. Clank OR Wither (Blightcaster) - Rupturing Echo, Ash
3. Lamordia Weapon 2 - Revel + Bitter Frostbite OR Lingering Acid Burn

Procs:
Revel
Lightning Lash
Alchemical Acid
Rippling Energy
Draconic Mantle
Primal Mantle
Rupturing Echo or Grip of Venom
Bitter Frostbite or Lingering Acid Burn

The exact swaps are going to differ between Druid (Primary spell DPS is Cold/Force), Sorc (Cold/Lightning), Blightcaster (Acid/Force). You also lack a 2nd LGS debuff, without more swaps.

I personally would not mess with Dripping from Red Dragon armor. There are a lot of fire immunes and things that heal from fire, and you don't want to have to swap that out. You also cannot fit all these elements in anyway.

Cold Druid cannot easily proc the sonic portion of Primal mantle (assuming you would not go Fatesinger), so you do lose some DPS with that option compared to Blightcaster/Wildmage/Sorcerer. It does have some other advantages.

There might be cases where you would be better off using Ooze somehow in your swaps versus an additional dot.

Immunities are still an issue; most viable options can only strip one element, so many of these procs might be negated at various times. You could also be healing mobs in various cases.

Oh yes, I think it's awful and I Call Lightning Storm was the main "viable" path I could see as well. None of my posts are intended as a defense of caster damage situation and should not be taken as such.

My comments were only to emphasize on what you actually need and how the mechanism works. Gearing it is a nightmare, but not as impossible as was portrayed earlier. That said, I certainly won't make caster sets like this even if I find the idea interesting. It's simply too much for something that is still worse than what I can do on other build archetypes.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

Yea not really, dots have a lot of issues, and so does weapon swapping or using something like Call Lightning Storm. You also need at least one immunity strip, so it only works for some builds.

It is likely a lot better on paper than it would actually be unless all you do is solo.

You will still be lower than ranged builds, and there is still the R10 penalty.

I would not recommend it given the level of effort.

Obviously there's going to be a hierarchy with casters. Wizards are not druids, just like greatswords are not handwraps, and bows are not repeaters. Sorcs, druids, bards and alchemists are all excellent damage dealers. Clerics, Fvs and Wizards not so much, but they have other things going for them and can still manage a decent dps floor now. From a balance perspective, I don't think those 3 should even be competing with the top stars aligned repeater burst dps anyway. Its a silly standard to measure anything by.
The only real issue with DWM Dots is that projectile speed can interefere with the 1 second internal cooldown for some rotations, but I account for that.

And to respond to others implying that I claimed casters are "fixed", I did no such thing. There is still a very long list of things I would like to see changed such as:
1)Fix the "you are not facing your target" latency/server sync bug. (ie remove the server side facing check so spells stop misfiring.)
2)Remove/Equalise the r7+ nerf
3)Boost the MCL of all heroic spells to 20 and rework/remove the "Master of x" feats
4)Rework Archmage and Master of knowledge to work with the current speed that DDO is played at. (ie spamming bad SLAs for 1 minute+ just to stack enough crit to start dealing real damage in a short arcane supremacy window is ridiculous and only viable if you are trying to solo raids)
5) Remove/Deprecate the level 24 topaz spell focus augments that eat up way to many augment slots with the new sun/moon system
6) Add the missing 6% artifact crit chance to new gear and/or sun slot so we can finally abandon red fens gear...
7) Arcane/Divine spell book pass

The only thing I no longer have on that list is buff caster damage, because we just got that part.

 

[Vox]

5) Remove/Deprecate the level 24 topaz spell focus augments that eat up way to many augment slots with the new sun/moon system

Nah, the DC checks are way too high to loose them. If anything we should have +3 & +4 options of them instead.

 

[woq]

Obviously there's going to be a hierarchy with casters. Wizards are not druids, just like greatswords are not handwraps, and bows are not repeaters. Sorcs, druids, bards and alchemists are all excellent damage dealers. Clerics, Fvs and Wizards not so much, but they have other things going for them and can still manage a decent dps floor now. From a balance perspective, I don't think those 3 should even be competing with the top stars aligned repeater burst dps anyway. Its a silly standard to measure anything by.
The only real issue with DWM Dots is that projectile speed can interefere with the 1 second internal cooldown for some rotations, but I account for that.

And to respond to others implying that I claimed casters are "fixed", I did no such thing. There is still a very long list of things I would like to see changed such as:
1)Fix the "you are not facing your target" latency/server sync bug. (ie remove the server side facing check so spells stop misfiring.)
2)Remove/Equalise the r7+ nerf
3)Boost the MCL of all heroic spells to 20 and rework/remove the "Master of x" feats
4)Rework Archmage and Master of knowledge to work with the current speed that DDO is played at. (ie spamming bad SLAs for 1 minute+ just to stack enough crit to start dealing real damage in a short arcane supremacy window is ridiculous and only viable if you are trying to solo raids)
5) Remove/Deprecate the level 24 topaz spell focus augments that eat up way to many augment slots with the new sun/moon system
6) Add the missing 6% artifact crit chance to new gear and/or sun slot so we can finally abandon red fens gear...
7) Arcane/Divine spell book pass

The only thing I no longer have on that list is buff caster damage, because we just got that part.

I agree with everything except the final sentence.

Hell, if the dots are as good as they potentially might be on paper they should be reconsidered and rebalanced to not be that strong when the caster pass comes. It's an absolutely terrible way to start scaling and balancing the game around.

Worse, we will have to wait a year for people to grind it out and play around with it and then find all the bugs and exploits to see how the dust settles and skew the optics on how they perform further.

 

[woq]

The biggest issue I have with them, though, is that it's so hard to multi-class them to get all the features you want into a character, particularly survive alongside their primary casterish abilities.

IMHO, multiclass on physicals works because BAB stacks and it doesn't work for casters because CL does not stack. Casters would be a whole lot more fun (for me) to build if CL stacked like BAB.

Oh how fantastic it could be to have split build CL access not locked to Chaosmancer tree... Oh well.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

Nah, the DC checks are way too high to loose them. If anything we should have +3 & +4 options of them instead.

I really don't care if its a DC gain or loss. A 7 spell school augment tax is way too much if Steelstar want us to fully convert to the sun/moon system.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

I agree with everything except the final sentence.

Hell, if the dots are as good as they potentially might be on paper they should be reconsidered and rebalanced to not be that strong when the caster pass comes. It's an absolutely terrible way to start scaling and balancing the game around.

Worse, we will have to wait a year for people to grind it out and play around with it and then find all the bugs and exploits to see how the dust settles and skew the optics on how they perform further.

This was my initial reaction to exploring the DOT topic, but on further thought, its actually a very well thought out caster buff that addresses many of the main concerns of caster players.
1) It raises the dps floor, and therefore brings the gap between the bottom tier cleric/wizard much closer to the top tier druid/sorc
2) Its entirely unreliant on DCs, therefore buffing players with fewer past lives/etc...
3) It offers untyped/force/sonic damage, therefore reducing the need for elemental bypass
4) The bottom tier casters actually have more available bonuses to sonic/force/other element crit than the top tier sorcs/druids single element specialists, so it disproportion buffs them to a greater degree

Its not what I would have done, but its not bad.

EDIT: side note... all martial dps is massively buffed by the melee/ranged power available by sentient weapons, and would be trash without it. This also equalises that reliance on good weapons to do good dps.