Equating Combat Stats: AKA: Why exactly doesn't caster scale as strongly as Physical builds?

[mikarddo]

Applying R7 to everone, you'd see a massive negative reaction. Such that it would be hilarious to see the comments on forums that drop after the fact. Not that the Dev's would do this mind you, as odds are the DDO store would see signifigant losses.

Still thought, it would be nice to see everyone playing with the same handicap I deal with as a DC caster.

Its the right thing to do and playing the scare game should not prevent it.

They did it to casters and have kept in on for a long time. They can do it to martial dps too.

These days it would not even even playing field fully due to the increases in martial dps

 

[Smokewolf]

Its the right thing to do and playing the scare game should not prevent it.

They did it to casters and have kept in on for a long time. They can do it to martial dps too.

These days it would not even even playing field fully due to the increases in martial dps

We will see.

 

[woq]

We will see.

Anything that lowers the performance of anything will receive negative response unless it's blatant cheating... and sometimes even then.

Perhaps those of us who want the game to be more challenging to a group of individuals in regular questing should simply move on as the minority to step aside. Facing challenge in this game is not popular.

 

[Smokewolf]

Anything that lowers the performance of anything will receive negative response unless it's blatant cheating... and sometimes even then.

Perhaps those of us who want the game to be more challenging to a group of individuals in regular questing should simply move on as the minority to step aside. Facing challenge in this game is not popular.

Casters like myself are tired of chasing the Meta, only to have the changed to actively work against us.

 

[Underflow]

Anything that lowers the performance of anything will receive negative response unless it's blatant cheating... and sometimes even then.

Perhaps those of us who want the game to be more challenging to a group of individuals in regular questing should simply move on as the minority to step aside. Facing challenge in this game is not popular.

For the life of me, I cannot understand where the belief that the 'majority' of the userbase is playing R7 and above comes from.

Check the LFMs, check the groups, check everything, and you'll find that dedicated guilds (small, about 20 users tops), rare power players, or opportunists running Pugs are the vast, vast minority.

The most common group difficulty I see is R1. The second most common is Elite. The third is R4.

R7-R10 seems nearly as rare as people that run Normal, which is a tiny niche of players. I can't see closed groups and I can't see guild raids, but I'd be surprised if more than 1% of the playerbase runs R10 content.

I understand people want challenges, and I don't begrudge them for that, but if anything they should be begging for nerfs, as if you are running R7+, you want more challenge.

Why is there talk about wanting an R11, when simply making R10 harder is fine enough? Is it because they're worried about losing RXP?

 

[woq]

For the life of me, I cannot understand where the belief that the 'majority' of the userbase is playing R7 and above comes from.

Check the LFMs, check the groups, check everything, and you'll find that dedicated guilds (small, about 20 users tops), rare power players, or opportunists running Pugs are the vast, vast minority.

The most common group difficulty I see is R1. The second most common is Elite. The third is R4.

R7-R10 seems nearly as rare as people that run Normal, which is a tiny niche of players. I can't see closed groups and I can't see guild raids, but I'd be surprised if more than 1% of the playerbase runs R10 content.

I understand people want challenges, and I don't begrudge them for that, but if anything they should be begging for nerfs, as if you are running R7+, you want more challenge.

Why is there talk about wanting an R11, when simply making R10 harder is fine enough? Is it because they're worried about losing RXP?

I don't think anyone believes that majority is on R7+.

I'd prefer R10 being harder, and yes. It's about losing RXP (or the rate of acquisition of it) and bragging rights. It's not quite as easy to brag about it if you can't do it.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

I agree removing MCL entirely makes sense. The R7+ nerf was sufficient to address caster op IMO, and only targeted high R quests. MCL hits everyone at all difficulties and artificially represses natural toon level progression. It should go.

 

[Brac]

You seem confused people keep talking about R7+ and raids but those are the only places that casters are underpowered compared to martial. In leveling content all competent casters can clear the room before the fighter gets a swing off.

You must be a new player that has not seen how the pendulum swings. Casters were nerfed because people complained when an alchemist would go in and basically solo high level content just using multi-vile. An arguement can be made that casters were nerfed to hard but let’s not pretend there wasn’t a reason they were nerfed.

To answer your question on why they don’t scale as well, run some heroic quests at level 14-19 as a melee with a couple of decent casters in your group, Let me know how many kills you get? Then let me know if that’s how you expect the whole game to be. If it was like that, why would anyone play anything but a caster?

 

[Xgya]

There's something fundamentally wrong with the base damage scaling differences that can't be solved without some major rework.

The scaling sources *almost* equate to one another, and yet, when it comes to single target damage, and even 3-target damage when it comes to 2hf, spellcasters fall behind. Fast.
Spellcasters are supposed to trade higher gearing restrictions for greater burst potential.
Which, to be fair, they currently at least partially do, in that the first second of combat (without the Reaper penalty), a spellcaster casts their strongest spell, and, for that singular second, their DPS is a decent notch above the nearby fighter's.

The problem is, no single fight outside of low-skull heroics is short enough for that burst to be a meaningful part of the fight.
As soon as a fight lasts longer than a full caster's rotation, their DPS is already somewhere in the gutter - they already had to resort to worse and worse spells as they waited for the better ones to come back.

Now, we can't exactly make the fights that much shorter everywhere either, that'd just make casters OP.
You COULD always make this a resource race, where casters run out of mana to get there, so they can't do that every fight. But this would be part of the major rework, and it'd be a huge hit to any poor undergeared toon.

The solution would either need to change the base damage everywhere, change how metas affect spells so their benefits don't become a smaller part of a caster's damage as they get better, or give casters something that ramps their damage as the fight drags on, so the DPS on the first rotation would start where it currently is, but end up a bit higher, favoring the longer fights DDO seems to throw at people, at least so long as you have the mana to sustain it.
That last bit SHOULD be the role of stacking DoTs, but the ones we have.. aren't doing it.

Personal suggestion would be terribly long CD spells that automatically reset to a small timer when a fight starts.
So, huge burst DPS spells that work only once per fight, and some time after the fighters have already started doing their thing.
Alternatively, "execution"-style spells, that only do full (extreme levels of) damage on severely damaged enemies.

 

[Quartis]

The dmg sources dont equate. More multipliers are stronger because they multiply each other. if one has three times double dmg that is 2x2x2=8 times dmg. This type of calculation is most likely used by this game as it explains this extrem jumping dmg numbers for not maxed out legend weapon user players.
Weapons have crits, super crits at 19-20 rolls, more hits a second, activ skills that improve critFaktors and add another Faktor, various on hit effects (from slow, stun, thousands of dmg, to insta kill).
doubleStrike x crit x dmg x activeFaktor x meleePower

spells have
dmg x crit x spell power

Worser dmg caster classes also have a heavy nerf to defense values and HP.

I like this suggestion to add spellcaster stat mod to dmg, although it is not much. That would be 20 to 60 dmg per spellcast (depneds how good equiped the hero is). Make it double when you hold a 2Hand weapon.

 

[Lotoc]

various on hit effects (from slow, stun, thousands of dmg, to insta kill).

the thing is when spells have on hit effects, (like dripping with magma, sounding or radiant glory, alchemical elements or mantles) they pretty much all get the effect of relevant spellpowers and spell crit, this alongside magic missiles is actually what got dripping with magma nerfed to a 1 second ICD a while ago when legendary red dragon armor was introduced.

 

[Lotoc]

Thinking more on matters of caster level
It could make sense to change the spellpower action boosts to 1/2/3 caster level/max caster level and blast dice for the duration.
Also perhaps a legendary feat for Empower/Intensify to give 1 cl/mcl/blast dice each and maximize 2 cl/mcl/blast dice.

 

[Smokewolf]

the thing is when spells have on hit effects, (like dripping with magma, sounding or radiant glory, alchemical elements or mantles) they pretty much all get the effect of relevant spellpowers and spell crit, this alongside magic missiles is actually what got dripping with magma nerfed to a 1 second ICD a while ago when legendary red dragon armor was introduced.

But your confusing spells with spell-effects, with that statement.

 

[Underflow]

You seem confused people keep talking about R7+ and raids but those are the only places that casters are underpowered compared to martial. In leveling content all competent casters can clear the room before the fighter gets a swing off.

You must be a new player that has not seen how the pendulum swings. Casters were nerfed because people complained when an alchemist would go in and basically solo high level content just using multi-vile. An arguement can be made that casters were nerfed to hard but let’s not pretend there wasn’t a reason they were nerfed.

To answer your question on why they don’t scale as well, run some heroic quests at level 14-19 as a melee with a couple of decent casters in your group, Let me know how many kills you get? Then let me know if that’s how you expect the whole game to be. If it was like that, why would anyone play anything but a caster?

Heroic casters are (usually) perfectly fine.

This isn't about them.

The issue I have is that a good number of the less well-performing casters immediately eat crap and cease being relevant the moment they hit epics. By all means you can call me a new player, but that doesn't make it true. It just means my take is garbage, but I will stand by my garbage takes.

Most casters suck until levels 5-6, then are great until levels 24ish, then fall off in late epics. I'm asking for damage consistency to ensure that they have a smoother levelling curve.

A minimal flat damage increase that scales based on casting stat would add at most 5-10 base damage early, which while still a lot, would mean very little compared to the 100+ caster stats available late.

An example is me running a non-sorcerer optimized build in low epics. I was seeing 4-5k crits with my biggest spell with all the metamagics on. It had a 6 second cooldown.

My point is that other casters require assistance as the numbers pass did jack to help non-sorcerers, non-alchemists.

At the same level, my random Alch 12/Dark Apostate 6/Rogue 2 imbue build inquisitive autoattack crits do 1.5k base damage in sharn gear. My big Inquisitive crits do somewhere around 2.5. It can do this until the sun burns out, because I have 1.2k sp and conjuring 1000 shots costs 10 sp.

I get that it's all opinion, but I never enjoy taking a caster life up above 20, even Alchemists or Sorcerers.

 

[GrizzlyOso]

Heroic casters are (usually) perfectly fine.

This isn't about them.

The issue I have is that a good number of the less well-performing casters immediately eat crap and cease being relevant the moment they hit epics. By all means you can call me a new player, but that doesn't make it true. It just means my take is garbage, but I will stand by my garbage takes.

Most casters suck until levels 5-6, then are great until levels 24ish, then fall off in late epics. I'm asking for damage consistency to ensure that they have a smoother levelling curve.

A minimal flat damage increase that scales based on casting stat would add at most 5-10 base damage early, which while still a lot, would mean very little compared to the 100+ caster stats available late.

An example is me running a non-sorcerer optimized build in low epics. I was seeing 4-5k crits with my biggest spell with all the metamagics on. It had a 6 second cooldown.

My point is that other casters require assistance as the numbers pass did jack to help non-sorcerers, non-alchemists.

At the same level, my random Alch 12/Dark Apostate 6/Rogue 2 imbue build inquisitive autoattack crits do 1.5k base damage in sharn gear. My big Inquisitive crits do somewhere around 2.5. It can do this until the sun burns out, because I have 1.2k sp and conjuring 1000 shots costs 10 sp.

I get that it's all opinion, but I never enjoy taking a caster life up above 20, even Alchemists or Sorcerers.

The point here is really inquisitive is broken. Everyone is except for the devs seems to know that.

 

[Brac]

Disingenuous. Your “asking for consistency “ is you asking for casters to replace martial as the top dps at every level of the game. There are good threads arguing that casters need buffs and that the R7 nerfs hit too hard, this isn’t one of them. It is just another person asking the devs to change the game so their favorite class/build is the most powerful. I have a solution for your problem. Don’t play epics. Just keep TRing and run heroic casters. You will always be the most powerful guy in the group with the most kills. Won’t that be fun!

 

[John3000]

...

BEST DPS - DC Casters/Nukers
(a fireball, lightning bolt, or glob of ACID should do WAY more than some dude swinging a 2hander)

2nd Best - Melee
2H stuff/exotic, martial 2handers, 1hander exotic, 1hander martial, simple

3rd Best
Ranged
Great Xbow, Heavy XBOW, Light XBOW, Heavy Repeater/Light Repeater, Bow/Shortbow, Shuris, Hammers/Knives/Darts

The meta used to be Nukers > Ranged > Melee ....

Sorcs could pretty much solo steamroll through content, no need for melees except the occasional chewtoy tank for a high hp redname. Encounters were pretty much blast > pew pew > blast > pew pew > swing through empty air, because all mobs would be clear before any melees could engage with anything..

An old 2024 R10 solo Sorc video (and this was AFTER it got nerfed) :

A tier list that strimtom made 4 years ago :

src: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF3Cn9HVDLk

--
Metas change, it's no big deal... Ranged still have higher single burst dps than melees. And there are still many DC and Nuke R10 solo viable builds, so play what you find enjoyable because the "Keeping up with the Joneses" game will only lead you to frustration.

Here's a recent (sept 2025) R10 solo DC casting and negative nuking wizard build for you (with no need for melees) :

https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/r10-solo-capable-dc-casting-and-negative-nuking-wizard-build-guide.22521/#post-308595

complete with R10 solo gameplay showing DC and nuking are still R10 viable :

The OP states :
"With this write-up, I want to show that a DC caster, despite their high barrier to entry, can be both accessible to those without heaps of past lives and unattainably rare equipment, and viable for r10 soloing. I do not have any reaper gear, use no Myth Drannor equipment, and I have no beneficial curses."

Cheers

 

[azrael4h]

Anything that lowers the performance of anything will receive negative response unless it's blatant cheating... and sometimes even then.

Yep. Or just changes the meta so that a preferred style is no longer "top dog". See when the initial Epic and caster changes came out around MotU (IIRC), with the removal of the blanket Epic Ward (among other stuff like spell power changes). Before then, Melee allowed in End Game content (Epics and Raids) were Barbarians and Fighters and maybe Monks (I remember not having issues on a Monk). Clerics healed only, Wizards Mass Hold and kept Haste, Rage, and Displacement up on the melees, and could be largely replaced with a Bard for CC and buffs. Rangers were often not allowed in groups at all (I basically blackmailed a group on my Cleric to allow a guildy in on her Ranger during a HoX run, and put the raid leader on my blacklist afterwards) Paladins only for stuff like Shroud where they had guaranteed DR breakers, Sorcerers not allowed at all because they rarely had the Enchantment DCs. FvS were often skipped over because FvS players had a reputation for not taking healing spells. Because nothing else worked; caster DPS was far behind melees, ranged DPS was laughably bad and aggro screwy. Most other spells you built for in normal play like Wail or Implosion just didn't work at all, and definitely was a waste in the boss fights.

When those changes went through I remember seeing so much complaining from predominantly Barbarian/Fighter players that I still to this day distrust those players in PUGs unless I recognize their names.

Again then as now, an arcane could blast through regular content largely unimpeded once you knew how to play and had some gear. Endgame stuff though they were restricted, especially Epics where they were useless outside of Enchantment Wizard/Buffer niche. Basically all that's happened is that devs have taken DDO back to the pre-MotU era where casters are mostly only useful for CC and healing and even then you have other options nowadays (Dragonlord halitosis) so that they don't even get that niche to themselves.

And if the devs made changes to get them in line damage wise with melee/inqui (whether nerfs to the melee/inqui, even if it's R7 only, or buffs to the casters) you'd hear screaming to no end about how they've ruined the game and no one will ever play a fighter or barbarian anymore and then the devs will probably walk it back until we're back to square one again.

 

[Wizard]

And if the devs made changes to get them in line damage wise with melee/inqui (whether nerfs to the melee/inqui, even if it's R7 only, or buffs to the casters) you'd hear screaming to no end about how they've ruined the game and no one will ever play a fighter or barbarian anymore and then the devs will probably walk it back until we're back to square one again.

I really dislike this "us VS. them" attitude. Some people love the melee playstyle, some ranged, some casters. And many like all and switch playstyles regularily.

Why not make all archetypes good and playable in all game modes, raids AND quests? (like it is in almost every other MMO btw...)

Don't force people towards classes/ playstyle because the others don't work.

 

[azrael4h]

I really dislike this "us VS. them" attitude. Some people love the melee playstyle, some ranged, some casters. And many like all and switch playstyles regularily.

Why not make all archetypes good and playable in all game modes, raids AND quests? (like it is in almost every other MMO btw...)

Don't force people towards classes/ playstyle because the others don't work.

Agreed. It's not a competition here.

But, D&D has never been particularly well balanced except for the abomination that was 4E. And it was terrible, with no actual classes or flavor beyond the superficial.