On that Q&A Epic Strikes Question - Epic Strikes are poorly balanced, A third level spell isn't particularly epic.
- Thread starter Lotoc
- Start date
well as far as a more immediate suggestion, please do not put a d6+6 per CL MCL 20 epic strike in Macrotech and honestly for the short term just remove the MCL from epic strikes in general
They're epic strikes, effectively ending their scaling before you even get them is just kinda botched implementation.
The same can be said for the spells deeper in the trees like Holy Fireball and Moon's Shadow (honestly I'd go with making those spells the epic strikes of their trees if we were looking for comparative balance vs dragon breath.) They have a maximum caster level of 20 too and you get them at level 30? As the level cap gets higher on the way to the eventual 40 these issues are only going to get worse.
At level 40 baseline Dragon Breath will be at caster level 50 and other "epic spells", holy fireball, carrion swarm etc. will be caster level 30.
I do not begrudge Dragon Breath for being strong, I begrudge it for being what caster damage is balanced around and having no reasonable competitor while not representing 3 elements that got nerfed alongside everything else in r7+.
They're epic strikes, effectively ending their scaling before you even get them is just kinda botched implementation.
The same can be said for the spells deeper in the trees like Holy Fireball and Moon's Shadow (honestly I'd go with making those spells the epic strikes of their trees if we were looking for comparative balance vs dragon breath.) They have a maximum caster level of 20 too and you get them at level 30? As the level cap gets higher on the way to the eventual 40 these issues are only going to get worse.
At level 40 baseline Dragon Breath will be at caster level 50 and other "epic spells", holy fireball, carrion swarm etc. will be caster level 30.
I do not begrudge Dragon Breath for being strong, I begrudge it for being what caster damage is balanced around and having no reasonable competitor while not representing 3 elements that got nerfed alongside everything else in r7+.
Nah, it's just like Hellball/Spirit Blades + Shiradi
You limit epic spells to relevant divine/arcane level 5-ish power, so that healers have a more valuable healing role to fulfill so they heal, and dps casters can retain their distinction from healers, and base classes mean more than raw stats.
Otherwise we would all play FvS and rotate Hellball/Spirit lades/3 ED spells like thorns+zone+holy fireball/ED Strike, and have full Epic level dps, and also amazing defenses and full healing, which we wouldn't use due to having epic DPS and just let all the melee die.
Or alternatively we all play sorcs with PA self-healing equal to a divine. Epic spells are epic in that you get access to abilities you don't have. Classes are already balanced on having enough of their abilities contain that they already have. Cocoon, for example, has never been substantially different than Cure Critical of a healer, but was the most used epic ability in the game because it gave access to a level 5 cleric spell.
Energy burst for a decade was worse than meteor (all damage with save, fewer on-spell hit procs, no bypass on everyone, longer cooldown, pb AoE so unsafe to use) and also was considered epic before, it just had to be available to others who weren't sorcs.
It diminishes base classes and balance to whoever just has the highest base stats if everyone just chains the same lvl 10 spells out. Then you just need the largest blue bar and fastest casting. Which is why both FvS (epic dps spells added to spell book) and Sorc (all lvl 9 + some lvl 8 spells made epic dps spells plus epic healing in EDs), followed by all casters were nerfed already.
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Is there even a point in taking into account cooldowns if the damage is so low fitting them in amongst the cooldowns of your spells is a dps loss?
This is the damage scaling of THIRD LEVEL spells for single target.
Do you seriously think sun pillar is fine? Do you think nightmare lance is fine? You're just being a contrarian aren't you? If you were playing a fey warlock you LOSE dps casting chords because the damage is so low you lose time that'd be better spent blasting, so what pray tell do you use as an epic strike as a fey warlock?
Action economy is even more important than cooldowns and Epic Strikes have an additional weight when it comes to action economy because they share cooldowns - why would you spend the cast time for an Epic Strike that is outdone by your regular spell pool?
There is a really simple fix to that. Roll back reaper nerfs, roll back some spell book power.
?
What?
What does that have to do with anything? How did those nerfs at all impact the balance between these pathetic single target spells that are undertuned and actually good ones?
News flash, they weren't worth casting before the nerfs either.
This is not a recent thing, this is a thing since update 50 and the ED revamp.
You are baffling.
droid327
Well-known member
I dont think so - without a shared CD, most people's EDs would just devolve into "what three strikes work best together"?, and that'd probably boil down to the same 2-3 combos, like Adrenaline + Lotus Blossom for unarmed builds. That's bad for build diversity, and its bad for gameplay diversity because it promotes button-mashing as optimal by giving everyone 3 more optimal buttons to mash.
Rather, as others have said, we just need to look at Epic Strike scaling and tune them so that every one is worth their CD for the builds that are aligned with them - single target nuke spells should be much faster than AOEs, for example, and Consecrate should probably be 12s uptime/10s cd. Also, make sure that the builds they're intended for are ones people will actually play...looking at you, Primal Avatar with your multi-element caster focus, and Magus and PA with summons. Also also, make sure they actually work like they're supposed to, Fatesinger...
gravisrs
From DDO EU servers
1. Some ED has different CD - so why not to start with optimising them. Decrease CD on weakest strikes.
2. Remove internal cooldowns on ED procs when the chance is not 100%. This is just bad statistical design. In most cases it discriminates strikethrough mostly.
3. Re-introduce things from old ED's? You can recycle some ideas and code for ED balancing.
2. Remove internal cooldowns on ED procs when the chance is not 100%. This is just bad statistical design. In most cases it discriminates strikethrough mostly.
3. Re-introduce things from old ED's? You can recycle some ideas and code for ED balancing.
PaleFox
Well-known member
Could they use work, yes.
Are some in a better state then the first post calculation suggest they are, again yes.
For instance, the cooldown of strike a chord is 2 secs, has a super fast animation and can easily be squeezed in your normal routine as a bard.
And is the best in slot for a sonic based caster.
Does it have the same damage output as a dragon breath.... don't think so no.
But I don't think that will be the devs baseline.
tsotate
Well-known member
The funny thing is that it had a niche at the release of the new EDs, when it was single-target, but its knockdown worked on everything. Then the devs "fixed" it to be basically useless.
As opposed to now, with people just spamming the same epic strike off of CD and ignoring the weaker strikes altogether, right? There's SOOO much build diversity especially with all melees not spamming Adrens/Lotus and casters not spamming Dragon breath/Carrion swarm. SO MUCH!
Most of the good epic strikes require T4 upgrades to get proper and full functionality, that's where the opportunity cost would already balances it out considering no one even spends EDPs on secondary strikes on live (with exception to SD strike b/c you know why).
All epic strikes should not be equal in terms of raw power and functionality, otherwise every ED becomes a clone of one another. Therefore, removing shared cooldown will promote the use of other strikes and provide wider pool of options.
Having said that some of the Epic strikes are truly godawful, especially in the casters department. Those need to be buffed according to Lotoc's suggestion.
"Sonic based caster" includes feylock, and like I said the fatesinger epic strike does less dps than just blasting - the only way to justify it on a feylock is if you aren't blasting but are an auralock instead.
Keep in mind though even before stormsinger your average spellsinger built nuker just used blue dragon breath cause you built elec for horn of thunder anyway.
Though really
I didn't want to bring up interclass balance because the primary issue with epic strikes I feel is that they're best compared directly but if you really want to nitpick and include how classes contribute to the value of epic strikes sorc and alchemist have more bonus caster levels than they do maximum caster level bonuses which skews them even further towards dragon breath, because for other epic strikes those bonus CLs give no value.
When I've brought up interstrike balance before people have fecklessly commented "my sorc gets CL 60 on dragon breath so your complaints are dumb and invalid" not even realizing that it reinforces my point further.
Class balance itself is bad enough; sorcs, druids and alchs are dominant as far as casters are concerned before even factoring epic destinies but then on top of that they get the strongest epic strike, they get more caster levels that ONLY FUNCTION with the strongest epic strike and don't even work on their actual class spells.
And then the best option for a sonic caster epic strike is fatesinger?
The best option for a light caster epic strike is sun pillar?
The best option for a force epic strike is orchid blossom?
Why does the abysmal balance between classes themselves have to get multiplied by epic destiny balance?
And of course here's the question about the upcoming ED macrotech, it's clearly arti themed and artis are lightning based as far as being a caster
Odds are It'll be a lightning epic strike that'll be outclassed by dragon breath and caster artis will only use the tree for runearm bonuses and their own flavor of Very Very Vocal
Shiradi was gameplay balanced before the ED remake. The small procs scaled up with both ranged and spell power, so became meaningful if you sacrificed DCs for damage.
But that doesn't sell XP/Power, since you can avoid gathering PLs, so it was unbalanced on purpose with the ED pass to be useless.
Same with SD strike, which also had a small proc which scaled up with both ranged/melee power and spell power, so became meaningful if you sacrificed DCs for damage and sacrificed Shiradi hutns end burst.
Same with Fatesinger Chord Strikes, w hich also had a small proc which scaled up with both ranged/melee power and spell power, so became meaningful if you sacrificed DCs for damage and sacrificed Shiradi/FoTW burst.
All three abilities had relatively balanced gameplay, and all three were intentionally unbalanced on purpose to be useless, presumable to fuel the economic engine of buying power to effectively use Draconic/Hunts End/FOTW.
You guys aren't looking deep enough. X is unbalanced compared to Y is trivial, anyone can see that, but it isn't actionable. X is unbalanced compared to Y because of Z which can be addressed by A is what is needed. For example:
Epic strikes are unabalanced, see above thread for X and Y due to the need to economically balance the game to maintain revenue. Users equal to or exceeding average $43 a month revenue in the last fiscal year are identified as not needing economic balancing, and as such may select alternative epic strikes which are balanced based on game play, with the additional revenue boost from users seeking to maintain $43 a month average revenue covering the additional cost of maintaining and developing such abilities.
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Tilo please don't talk about economics when everyone knows what you've paid for.