Damage on shadowblade spells

Wini

Wini

Well-known member
Let's check out the SLAs on the Feydark Illusionist tree:

Shadowblade - 1d6+2 (tier 2 spell)
Fan of shadowblades - 1d6+2 (tier 4 spell)
Ring of shadowblades - 1d6+2 (tier 5 spell)

These spells do awful damage on epics. No surprises there, I mean, compared with epic strikes:

Nightmare lance - 1d6+6

That is intended, I guess, since epic strikes should be stronger than regular tree ones. In the other hand, you buffed archmage to these values:

Arcane bolt - 1d6+2 (tier 3)
Arcane blast - 1d6+4 ---> this is tier 5 spell like Ring of shadowblades. Shouldn't every SLA scale according to his tier?

Please, consider buffing Fan and Ring of shadowblade spells, since they feel terrible to use in epic/legendary content.
 
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droid327

droid327

Well-known member
They should scale based on FI cores like Stormsinger does, so they can grow appropriately from 1-20

1d6+2 is simply unviable. Especially since there really isn't a properly developed force caster class with high level force spells, so shadow blades have to be cover low and high level rotations
 
Ooblagato

Ooblagato

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They really just need to get rid of max caster levels on them. If it weren't for that they'd feel great in epics.
 
Smokewolf

Smokewolf

Well-known member
When Reapers use Horrid Wilting it tends to 1-shot players, even on a successful save. Which has me thinking that Reapers don't abide by any of the max caster limitations.
 
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peng

Well-known member
What *is* the max caster level on the various shadowblade spells? I can't seem to find it listed anywhere in game, in the wiki, or in the compendium.
 
Ooblagato

Ooblagato

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I think it's 20, goes up to 30 with the feat (plus a small bit from various max caster level boosts). Considering optimized builds can get 45~50 on dragon breath and such, 20 or 30 feels pretty weak.
 
Xgya

Xgya

Well-known member
droid327 said:
They should scale based on FI cores like Stormsinger does, so they can grow appropriately from 1-20

1d6+2 is simply unviable. Especially since there really isn't a properly developed force caster class with high level force spells, so shadow blades have to be cover low and high level rotations
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Technically, a high level Force Wizard could be casting Meteor Swarm, though Druids recently got Thorn Lance, both of which are about on par for pure force spell power damage, with Arcane Tempest following shortly behind.

Still, I like your idea a lot.

Then again, the best scaling any Heroic spell-like has is 1d6+5, and it's Negative, an element notorious for resistances, and immunities, and only one of the tree's abilities, which only hits once, unlike Blade Barrier. The reason Stormsinger can scale so high is because it's a chance-based proc, not a certain thing.

By the end of a character's heroic career, the low end of their SLAs are generally left behind, and even the best they have available eventually peters out. I think that's meant to be the case. If Sorcerers remove Burning Hands and Scorch from their rotation by the time they reach level 20, why should we expect Feydark to keep using similarly-placed abilities in THEIR tree?
 
droid327

droid327

Well-known member
Xgya said:
If Sorcerers remove Burning Hands and Scorch from their rotation by the time they reach level 20, why should we expect Feydark to keep using similarly-placed abilities in THEIR tree?
Click to expand...

Because fire sorcs have better spells to move onto after their slas fall off. You can either add a bunch of new, redundant force spells to unlock as you level, or you can just scale up the existing ones to cover the whole range. The latter seems simpler, is all. Especially since "sla gets free meta" kinda stops mattering at the point where you would stop using slas, where spell points are not a bottleneck anymore
 
ChaoticNecromancer

ChaoticNecromancer

Well-known member
People keep mentioning end game, but DDO is not an mmo where the game starts at the end game. You will gonna reincarnate a lot. If a d6+5/cl fan of shadowblades will be worthless at legendary r10 gameplay, is irrelevant. For a first timer, for someone reincarnating, this spell should be viable to level up.

Xgya said:
why should we expect Feydark to keep using similarly-placed abilities in THEIR tree?
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Because they have fireball SLA and can ignore immunities with their capstones.

The point in this thread is not to make shadowblades SLA > Meteor swarm.

Is to make it as good as arcane blast. Another "non epic" SLA that gets outclassed in end game.
 
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EvilDragon

Well-known member
I wrote a suggestion before that each Feydark core should increase 1 base damage of the spells. (except for the first core, and capstone is +2)
So, If you take all cores, it will be 1d6+8
 
Xgya

Xgya

Well-known member
EvilDragon said:
I wrote a suggestion before that each Feydark core should increase 1 base damage of the spells. (except for the first core, and capstone is +2)
So, If you take all cores, it will be 1d6+8
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They're nerfing Dragon Breath with Gaping Maw, a level 26 Epic Strike, to 1d6+8.
These should at most scale as high as other Heroic abilities do.

ChaoticNecromancer said:
Is to make it as good as arcane blast. Another "non epic" SLA that gets outclassed in end game.
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I'd argue that the blade barrier is already as good as arcane blast.
Used properly, the barrier will definitely hit more than once, and a bigger amount of enemies too. It warrants having a lower base damage than other abilities of a similar tier - then again, it has a humongous cooldown to penalize that fact.
Personal suggestion would be halving the current cooldown instead, make you able to sustain two of those barriers at once would be a big deal without necessarily throwing bigger numbers at it. It'd still be a very long cooldown for a damaging ability, but it'd make it far more manageable.
 
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