by my calculations, current endgame casters will recieve 5 or less DCs overall which is really sucky
most casters are still gona use iod augs which are +8 *+2 over normal)(
sacred DC is now +3 (+1)
quality SFM is still 2
insightful SFM is still 3
and you cant just slot in the +11 or +7 equipment/insightful bonus to 1 school for 2 reasons:
1. there arent enough items at modern endgame with these effects. majority of items are spell focus mastery rather than school specific. this means you only get the benefit of existing gearsets (as layed out above) because its not worth gearing for the garbage items with 1 school worth of DCs
2. needing the +11 in one school is almost impossible, but if you need multiple schools, you are just screwed. there arent enough good items with 1 school, let alone enough for 2. you made gearing harder for those who want max DCs because not enough items have the stat effects.
my suggestion: if you truely want DCs to scale better, make all the DC bonuses on the same track as combat mastery/stunning/veritgo/sunder. this would make having the current SFM stuff a lot better, while still having a big benefit for running singular typed schools
right now this feels like a bandaid fix that doesnt fix the problem. please fix the problem
I agree that having most of the DC boost linked with school specific gear isn't the right way to go.
We have dragonlord roar that stuns pretty much everything and only needs +stun DC - very simple to gear for too.
But for DC casters, say a Wizard, you need necro, illusion, enchant, conjuration as a minimum, and there is still use for transmutation (flesh to stone) and abjuration (banishment). There are too many school types needed to work with gearing which is already too complicated over many channels.
Another suggestion, if you are still keen to have spellcasters focus on a school, why not split the difference between gear and feats? Currently the spell focus feats are paltry - 3 DC for 3 feats is not great return.
Why not make spell focus mastery (all schools) gear like +9 instead of +7, insightful all school +5, quality all schools +3 etc. That would see all schools get a reasonable bump. And then you could boost the value of the spell school specific focus mastery feats to bring in the specialisation.
My suggestion for school specific feats would be something along the lines of:
Spell Focus (all schools same effect): +1 DC, +1DC every 10 levels (so 2 at 20, 3 at 30, 4 at 40). This gives some scaling to the feat into legendary.
Greater spell focus feat (all schools same effect): for that school, a minimum chance to succeed of 25% or 50% or something, irrespective of the mobs saves. This doesn't give no fail, and even at 50% would still be irritating when mobs save, but it means that hybrids or undergeared chars would at least some some success in that particular school.
Epic spell focus - something unique for each school to give flavor. Some examples (haven't thought it through too much yet, but just to give some ideas):
Evocation: each evoc spell cast gets an additional 1d4 damage per caster level of that spells element, and/or cause enemies to suffer -5mrr
Necromancy: when you kill an enemy with a necro spell it causes a no-fail short duration fear in place effect for nearby enemies and/or boosts your necro DC by 1 (stacks 3 times, duration 20 secs) to simulate the panic/fear amongst the pack of enemies.
Conjuration: boosts all summons (more PRR/ MP/ HPs etc), and causes your conjuration spells that do not summon monsters (such as web and trap the soul) to actually spawn a limited duration powerful summon on a cooldown. Eg when you cast web, it spawns a powerful spider (similar in power to werewolf or dino) that lasts 1 min, 2 min cooldown or something.
Abjuration: your dispel magic spells remove all spell resistance (no fail) and cause -10MRR debuff.
etc
