I've been reading on these forums that the game is too easy and we need reaper 11, but one little bump on two spells makes everyone run around screaming. Not sure what to think about it.
I think the problem is that some of those spells present real problems for players who aren't pretty far on the past life treadmill, don't have optimized builds, and don't have stashes full of named loot. The reason why the change made spells like frost lance so powerful is that it made it capable of bypassing significantly higher cold resistance values. And, on paper, that's fine for enemies to get too, since it means that they can actually pose a threat to hardened characters. But the way the scaling works means that a mob with a caster level of 20 is now doing a base of 10d8+80 cold damage to a target before any modifiers... three times.
Now, I might be able to soak 125 cold damage (fort save for half) three times on the main I have with a bunch of past lives, festival cold resistance cosmetics, and ready at level gear at the point where I start hitting enemies with caster level 20 and things level off as MCL gets hit. Now, I don't remember exactly how caster level scales for mobs in DDO, and I wasn't able to find it quickly on the wiki, but I'm guessing that it's based on CR which keeps pace with or exceeds player level. If you factor in higher difficulties where mobs get spellpower bonuses or even champions who can scale that even more, suddenly you're hitting for what could be upwards of 200 base damage in heroics three times in rapid succession without a chance to heal.
If players had the same HP as monsters, this would be trivial, just like how adding this doesn't suddenly turn fire/cold savant into win buttons for building a character. But they do not. My main can tank this and be fine. My alts? Some of them will do fine, some will not. A newbie on a first life who doesn't know what they're doing with their build and doesn't have guild buffs, piles of gear, and a bunch of past lives to help with durability? Well, let's just say I'm not optimistic about the chances, even with resist energy and protection from energy.
