Nuker caster damage per second is too low at endgame, prove me wrong.

[Raedier]

Comparitively speaking, dps casters are too weak at endgame.

Martial dps builds, mainly ranged builds but also some melee builds have such easy access to high dps options that there is now being discriminated against dps casters even on difficulty settings as low as Legendary Hard.

The insane burst that shiradi epic moment provides on repeater/shuriken/inquitisive builds blows even melee DPS builds out of the water, combined with the new AOE ranged attacks this is making old content completely obsolete (even on low life/gear builds) while those same players with relatively low power from gear/past lives would struggle immensely playing a DPS caster on those same difficulties.

This is not coming from a whiny caster player either, i have tried it all, several alts geared up at endgame as caster/melee/inquis/whatever and pretty much every decent player i talk to in game agrees that: DPS casters are too weak ~ TR into shadarkai/monk/barb/Dlord or inquis/shuri/repeater or suffer at endgame, that seems to be the general consensus (and it has been for a long time)

Long story short : mob hp went up drastically, mob saves went up drastically, martial dps went up drastically, magic spell damage and DC's went up.... a tiny bit?

Almost all the values for DC's are still exactly the same as in the sharn era, apart from basic stat increases like wisdom +15/insightful +7.
Major spellpower increases are locked behind rare loot (myth drannor rings)
And the only feats/items that were brought out that were supposed to be helping DPS casters were brought out non functional and broken:
- Minion of the eldritch, broken dark gift feat.
- Arcane actions, worse then a regular crit damage feat.
- Channel power ~ inducing Carpal tunnel syndrome.
- The DoT effects on the DoV weapons being overwritten by other dots and doing nothing.

It seems every time something is brought out that gets my hopes up for a power increase to DPS casters specifically, it is broken, non functional and unusable.

But meanwhile t5 shiradi is still giving a bugged additional 19-20 critical multiplier that it shouldn't be giving and repeaters get to benefit from patience without losing any attacks per second.

I do think there are still ways to be useful as a DPS caster, in low difficulty raiding and high skull questing but the ceiling has become so high that the OP martial builds are just wanted in groups and the probability for a caster to get declined in favor of martial dps (specifically ranged dps) is getting bigger and bigger.

Now the question remains: should there even be aim for balance or is casters being terrible at endgame all simply by design since they are so strong at leveling?

Casters do make very good leveling toons, they used to make great endgame toons aswell until a few loud forumites (was it the poll guy Elminster?)
Started crying on the forums about how casters needed to get nerfed.
Don't get me wrong, casters may have been too strong at the time but the hamhanded caster nerfs coupled with constant buffing to martial dps on top of incredible mob hp bloat and saves increase has now led to an even worse imbalance, melees were always welcome in raids, aswell was ranged.
No one was insanely overpowered, casters were strong for their niche but they did not dominate the entire meta game *cough ranged dps cough*

The forum has been plentiful with suggestions on how to stabilise the balance, i hope something is done so everyone can have fun raiding/questing at endgame without getting excluded anymore from simply having chosen the wrong class.

 

[Sarpado Man]

Comparitively speaking, dps casters are too weak at endgame.

Martial dps builds, mainly ranged builds but also some melee builds have such easy access to high dps options that there is now being discriminated against dps casters even on difficulty settings as low as Legendary Hard.

The insane burst that shiradi epic moment provides on repeater/shuriken/inquitisive builds blows even melee DPS builds out of the water, combined with the new AOE ranged attacks this is making old content completely obsolete (even on low life/gear builds) while those same players with relatively low power from gear/past lives would struggle immensely playing a DPS caster on those same difficulties.

This is not coming from a whiny caster player either, i have tried it all, several alts geared up at endgame as caster/melee/inquis/whatever and pretty much every decent player i talk to in game agrees that: DPS casters are too weak ~ TR into shadarkai/monk/barb/Dlord or inquis/shuri/repeater or suffer at endgame, that seems to be the general consensus (and it has been for a long time)

Long story short : mob hp went up drastically, mob saves went up drastically, martial dps went up drastically, magic spell damage and DC's went up.... a tiny bit?

Almost all the values for DC's are still exactly the same as in the sharn era, apart from basic stat increases like wisdom +15/insightful +7.
Major spellpower increases are locked behind rare loot (myth drannor rings)
And the only feats/items that were brought out that were supposed to be helping DPS casters were brought out non functional and broken:
- Minion of the eldritch, broken dark gift feat.
- Arcane actions, worse then a regular crit damage feat.
- Channel power ~ inducing Carpal tunnel syndrome.
- The DoT effects on the DoV weapons being overwritten by other dots and doing nothing.

It seems every time something is brought out that gets my hopes up for a power increase to DPS casters specifically, it is broken, non functional and unusable.

But meanwhile t5 shiradi is still giving a bugged additional 19-20 critical multiplier that it shouldn't be giving and repeaters get to benefit from patience without losing any attacks per second.

I do think there are still ways to be useful as a DPS caster, in low difficulty raiding and high skull questing but the ceiling has become so high that the OP martial builds are just wanted in groups and the probability for a caster to get declined in favor of martial dps (specifically ranged dps) is getting bigger and bigger.

Now the question remains: should there even be aim for balance or is casters being terrible at endgame all simply by design since they are so strong at leveling?

Casters do make very good leveling toons, they used to make great endgame toons aswell until a few loud forumites (was it the poll guy Elminster?)
Started crying on the forums about how casters needed to get nerfed.
Don't get me wrong, casters may have been too strong at the time but the hamhanded caster nerfs coupled with constant buffing to martial dps on top of incredible mob hp bloat and saves increase has now led to an even worse imbalance, melees were always welcome in raids, aswell was ranged.
No one was insanely overpowered, casters were strong for their niche but they did not dominate the entire meta game *cough ranged dps cough*

The forum has been plentiful with suggestions on how to stabilise the balance, i hope something is done so everyone can have fun raiding/questing at endgame without getting excluded anymore from simply having chosen the wrong class.

I don't agree. If I only wanted to do DPS, I wouldn't play this game; I'd just go play WoW.

The fact is that builds for tanking, DPS, or healing aren't usually what you really want, what you enjoy and find fun. Trying to get the most out of them will only frustrate you because you won't be playing something you want. It's better to create a unique character that you enjoy and have fun with than to trade all your fun for something that will only do a couple of extra points of damage and won't make you happy.

And I think that's the best feature of the game, that it gives us the possibility to create many different constructions... In my personal opinion, it's better, more fun, and even more realistic because, as it happens, we're not all the same.

I've been trying out other new games like Genshin Impact. I've played WoW for years, where the main focus is on DPS, and I keep coming back to this one for that reason. In WoW, they're all the same, a copy and paste. The same goes for Genshin: if you don't have the exact gear, you can't get through. And it's not fun. So I don't recommend it.

 

[Raedier]

I don't agree. If I only wanted to do DPS, I wouldn't play this game; I'd just go play WoW.

Who said anything about only wanting to do DPS?

The fact is that builds for tanking, DPS, or healing aren't usually what you really want, what you enjoy and find fun. Trying to get the most out of them will only frustrate you because you won't be playing something you want. It's better to create a unique character that you enjoy and have fun with than to trade all your fun for something that will only do a couple of extra points of damage and won't make you happy.

You've missed the point entirely, since the advent of the new raids the focus on DPS is getting larger and larger, limiting builds to speccing fully into DPS and only that.

And I think that's the best feature of the game, that it gives us the possibility to create many different constructions... In my personal opinion, it's better, more fun, and even more realistic because, as it happens, we're not all the same.

Except that the opposite of what you are describing here is exactly what is happening in DDO, causing more and more people to chase and specialise into DPS, driving creative builds away more and more.... because of the disparity towards "low DPS builds" and requirements to complete newer content quests/raids AKA "mob hp bloat"

I've been trying out other new games like Genshin Impact. I've played WoW for years, where the main focus is on DPS, and I keep coming back to this one for that reason. In WoW, they're all the same, a copy and paste. The same goes for Genshin: if you don't have the exact gear, you can't get through. And it's not fun. So I don't recommend it.

Except that the whole point of DDO nowadays is DPS, that's the whole point of my post.
You my friend are advocating against the very thing that you like to see in the game, diversity and creative builds, a better game balance would mean more of that, not less.

 

[Sarpado Man]

Who said anything about only wanting to do DPS?



You've missed the point entirely, since the advent of the new raids the focus on DPS is getting larger and larger, limiting builds to speccing fully into DPS and only that.



Except that the opposite of what you are describing here is exactly what is happening in DDO, causing more and more people to chase and specialise into DPS, driving creative builds away more and more.... because of the disparity towards "low DPS builds" and requirements to complete newer content quests/raids AKA "mob hp bloat"

Except that the whole point of DDO nowadays is DPS, that's the whole point of my post.
You my friend are advocating against the very thing that you like to see in the game, diversity and creative builds, a better game balance would mean more of that, not less.

Yes, you're definitely in the wrong game. If I wanted to play raids and do a lot of DPS, I'd play WoW. In that game, you level a DPS character, like a mage or a warlock. There's only one set per version, one build, so you can't make a mistake, and when you get the set, you'll do insane DPS. The same goes for playing Genshin Impact: you get a Mavuika, Xilonen, Citali, and Bennet, and you'll deal six million damage with ridiculously large numbers. That way, you don't need to think about anything; you do the same thing as everyone else, and that's it. Besides, why do you want to play with other people like that? That's why you play Genshin, where you can play alone and that's it.

And it's not true that people want to play that way; that's why they come to play with other, different people. Only you want to play that way.

If it were that way no one would play a Faydark illusionist. There are many specialist classes and character types that don't deal damage, aren't tanks, or healers. And learning to play with these people is better than playing alone.

 

[Lazuli]

Yes, you're definitely in the wrong game. If I wanted to play raids and do a lot of DPS, I'd play WoW. In that game, you level a DPS character, like a mage or a warlock. There's only one set per version, one build, so you can't make a mistake, and when you get the set, you'll do insane DPS. The same goes for playing Genshin Impact: you get a Mavuika, Xilonen, Citali, and Bennet, and you'll deal six million damage with ridiculously large numbers. That way, you don't need to think about anything; you do the same thing as everyone else, and that's it. Besides, why do you want to play with other people like that? That's why you play Genshin, where you can play alone and that's it.

And it's not true that people want to play that way; that's why they come to play with other, different people. Only you want to play that way.

If it were that way no one would play a Faydark illusionist. There are many specialist classes and character types that don't deal damage, aren't tanks, or healers. And learning to play with these people is better than playing alone.

But you haven't read anything!

People don't want to play only DPS. That's why we're asking for a different raid design that isn't focused solely on bosses immune to all non-damage effects and with insane HP!

What we're asking for is exactly what you're saying: more diversity in the raids. Have you played any modern raids? Because if you had, you'd understand there's no room for anything other than DPS.

Incidentally, DPS casters are so far behind weapons that they also need improvements. That would increase the number of viable builds. You'd have to be blind not to see how casters have largely disappeared from the end game.

 

[Sarpado Man]

But you haven't read anything!

People don't want to play only DPS. That's why we're asking for a different raid design that isn't focused solely on bosses immune to all non-damage effects and with insane HP!

What we're asking for is exactly what you're saying: more diversity in the raids. Have you played any modern raids? Because if you had, you'd understand there's no room for anything other than DPS.

Incidentally, DPS casters are so far behind weapons that they also need improvements. That would increase the number of viable builds. You'd have to be blind not to see how casters have largely disappeared from the end game.

Because they're not made for DPS. They're supports. What you're asking for is to pair a DPS with a support or specialist.

Forgive me, but it seems to me your idea is to change what others do instead of changing yourself to a place where everyone does what you think is best.

The game is good, the characters are different, and the challenge is for you to get used to and learn to play with different classes.

And I've played almost the entire game and never encountered anything with too high a HP. What did happen to me was that I ran out of mana or SP, something I changed by learning to play with others. I changed, improving myself, not the game.

Watch my videos and you'll see that at first I ran out of mana, I didn't have the right spells, I lost, I got killed, and many other things. But I learned, I improved, I didn't stop being a mage, I learned to use the mage, I became a mage 17 warlock 3, I learned to use the blast, the aura, and now not only can I never run out of mana because I can use the blast but I can also summon monsters, I can heal, I can do many things that I couldn't before, I even do more dps and resist more, with exactly the same character.


I couldn't do a level 7 mission before.

Now I play on reaper 10.

Druids, rogues, mages, artificers, alchemists, and illusionists are support classes. That doesn't mean they can't do damage or that they're defenseless, but when you look at the number of support spells a mage has versus the number of DPS spells, you should deduce that DPS isn't their primary role. And the druid caster isn't DPS, he's a healer/support. Logically, they have other talent trees to play different varieties of tanks and DPS, but that's to provide more functionality to another type of character, such as a multiclass.

I don't include clerics because they're the best healers, along with Favored Souls or Dark Apostates.

Simply put, if you want to do DPS, play another class like a warlock, a ranger, or, as you mentioned, a melee character.

 

[Lazuli]

Because they're not made for DPS. They're supports. What you're asking for is to pair a DPS with a support or specialist.

Forgive me, but it seems to me your idea is to change what others do instead of changing yourself to a place where everyone does what you think is best.

The game is good, the characters are different, and the challenge is for you to get used to and learn to play with different classes.

And I've played almost the entire game and never encountered anything with too high a HP. What did happen to me was that I ran out of mana or SP, something I changed by learning to play with others. I changed, improving myself, not the game.

This kind of lack of understanding is beyond me. When you read other people's posts and understand what they're asking for, we'll talk.

Jesus, who said anything about changing what others do, when all we're asking for is different raid design so CC and IKs have a role there, and a DPS boost for casters so the gap isn't so large? Why the hell should the rest of the archetypes change the way they do anything? You may agree with casters currently being pushed out of raids as useless, and that the ideal in a raid group is a tank, a healer, and a ten-weapon DPS, but the rest of us aren't. Casters should have a role in raids and be able to contribute usefully. I repeat, have you played modern raids? CC has no role there!!!! There are barely any mobs for IK, and the ones that are there die in one hit from a weapon. Casters need to be given a role.

So read the posts before posting something that has nothing to do with what we're discussing.

And if you think a caster should always have 0 DPS, then you're not playing the modern game, so...

 

[DBZ]

In order to farm gear you need to be able to solo a purple change that or the build is useless no gear whats the point

Every build thats not a hyper specialized tank should be able to solo a purple efficiently cough warlocks cough

 

[Cesaro - Tandy]

Dev's should try somethings, they can make mistake but something must be done...

Options:
* Change epic mastery of element feat to give +1 or 2 Max spell caster level or/and increase max caster level of all spells of that element to the max lvl of ur max lvl spell, 9 for sorc, 6 for alche/arti, etc.
* Reduce reaper penaulty
* Sorc SLA's are trash... fireball should be lvl 6 like art lvl 6 SLA that kills everything with metamagics
* Actually, there's a lot of tree's, caster and non caster are needing some rework

 

[Lazuli]

Dev's should try somethings, they can make mistake but something must be done...

Options:
* Change epic mastery of element feat to give +1 or 2 Max spell caster level or/and increase max caster level of all spells of that element to the max lvl of ur max lvl spell, 9 for sorc, 6 for alche/arti, etc.
* Reduce reaper penaulty
* Sorc SLA's are trash... fireball should be lvl 6 like art lvl 6 SLA that kills everything with metamagics
* Actually, there's a lot of tree's, caster and non caster are needing some rework

Yup. Although I don't quite understand your MCL proposal. All that's needed is to add more MCL to epics. There are several places where it could be added. We don't want to overdo it by adding a lot of MCL, as we don't want things to become op, but a bit more MCL would be helpful since the casters are quite far behind.

Items that increase caster level should also provide MCL.

Many epic strike casters need help too.

A generalist caster mantle for wizards and specific spells for constructs! Or a true immunity bypass, one or the other.

Spells stolen from lists should be added to the lists where they rightfully belong. Time Stop, Balefur Polymorth, Black Tentacles, Confusion, Weird, and Scillating Pattern are wizard/Sorc spells in every edition of D&D, and they have code for them, so don't excuse the fact that it's too difficult to create new spells. They already have the code. The same could be said for other lists that have had spells stolen from them like cleric/fvs and bard.

 

[Teh_Troll]

Reading this thread makes me 100% sure people mom's took Tylenol while pregnant.

 

[Raedier]

Simply put, if you want to do DPS, play another class like a warlock, a ranger, or, as you mentioned, a melee character.

First off, after this reply, i really can't take you seriously anymore.
Secondly, you continue to reply but come with topics completely unrelated to any of my posts, it's as you're not actually reading, before you type, are you?
Third, please learn how the game works before telling others they are playing the wrong game.
Lastly, i must thank you for sharing a video that so clearly illustrates the difference in effectiveness between a caster and martial DPS, i made a video of my alt with 71 past lives running R10 Framework especially for you, he's on a less then optimal build for running r10s right now cuz i wanted to try something different and have some fun experimenting, nevertheless got it done.
And this isn't even close to what triple comp meta dps builds can put out, take a look cuz u might learn something buddy

 

[Ooblagato]

I think essentially getting rid of max caster levels would mostly bring things into balance. Aside from limiting the usefulness of a caster's strongest abilities, it's an unintuitive concept that only serves to double down on limiting cool lower level spells which have worse scaling to begin with.