U80 Preview 1 - DC Boost Initiative

[Frantik]

Imagine this... your party, bruised and battered, approaches the lair of the Necromancer. You are a hero, a renowned fighter, defender of justice and light. But you are tired, getting to the bosses' lair has been challenging, the enemy cruel and deadly. You are beginning to tire, and your blows keep missing the enemy, their reflexes and defences often proving a match for your best attacks. Your party pushes forward towards the final battle, and your hand begins to push the stone door open with some trepidation. The battle will be difficult, the Necromancer's guard a supreme challenge, and doubt washes over you as you know that your stamina will deplete, too fast, and fear grips you that your attacks will fail, and your part in the final fight will be one full of regret, inadequacy and frustration.

Welcome to a casters life.

 

[Striga]

moving spell DCs to a formula that increases more sharply will help higher-level items feel stronger than lower-level ones, which is something we really would like to enforce.

Sure, I get it, you want to sell newer content and force players to regrind everything. You're basically admitting that you are intentionally speeding up the power creep, the vicious circle of stronger gear > stronger mobs > rinse repeat.

Maybe revisit the Update 50 release notes and reread your reasons for stat squish...

 

[l_remmie]

The biggest problem with spell DC's is the floor NOT the ceiling.
There need to be increases in the enhancement trees and focus feats and particularly in epic destinies to lessen the epic-legendary gap.

Only raising the ceiling just future proves the whales for the next expansion or 2.

Raise the floor a lot.
Remove extra channels. Which you can because you raised the floor a lot.
Combine spellschools for some equipment like evo+conj and enchant+illusion.

Remove/combine universal artifact crit chance and grant a 1% crit chance for every 2 epic/legendary levels to compensate.

 

[Lazuli]

We can definitely adjust character build options to help DC casters achieve workable DCs, but this work has a bunch of overall important facets that should still be done. Here are a few reasons as to why we're focusing on itemization adjustments for this patch, in no particular order:

1: As other people have brought up in this thread, right now, itemization disproportionately rewards certain types of DC scaling abilities. The comparison to Stunning and Sunder DCs is a pretty good angle to view this change through - an item which gives bonuses to both spell DCs and Sunder DCs will give much more Sunder DCs, even though both Sunder and spell DCs both target enemy saving throws as the bar to clear. Closing that gap is important to us, and it makes sense to adjust itemization to do so.

I agree that there is a very big difference between martial and caster equipment, but let's not lose sight of the fact that what is needed is to achieve a similar result with a similar effort.

Individual Spell DC is not the same as individual DC tactics. Martials do not usually need more than one particular type of tactic, and those who may want it, such as fighters, have many bonus feats and feats that increase their tactics (two feats give them a +10 to *all* tactics. A caster for two feats receives a +2 to *one* school).

Yes, I think the difference between caster and martial equipment should be reduced, but don't forget that the needs are different in each style. Also don't forget that casters have more channels for DC than melees. Why don't you merge sacred dc into equipment value, for example? If you want equality, it would be enough for the casters to dedicate one or two enchantements to DC, like martials do. Because this doesn't happen with casters. We dedicate a very important portion of our gear only to DC, and with your proposed changes we will need to dedicate even more space (space we don't have).

2: Right now, all-school DC bonuses are actually higher in some circumstances to single-school DCs, which is the opposite of what the relationship between those two scalars should be. We would like items to give a larger bonus to a narrower set of improvements, and a smaller bonus to a wider set of improvements.

But what is needed is that you eliminate the school spell DC on the gear: before adding equipment, the DC difference between schools is already 12-16 points. We don't need to increase it even more. And I repeat, the spells are not like the CC of the martials, which works on everything. Our spells work on limited enemy ranges due to immunities. We need a variety of schools to affect different enemies and different saves.

The caster gear is completely saturated with so much separation in schools and elements. Please create a caster in the cap, and equip it with a complete set. You will see how it is a nightmare and much more difficult than equipping a martial. The thing is that we have to equip about 6 times more effects than a martial. It's impossible. And with this change, they will be making the situation worse.

You're trying to fix a roof when what's wrong is the foundation. And the only thing adding weight to the roof can do is collapse the house sooner.

3: The scalars for spell DCs are too granular as-is to provide meaningful progression as players level throughout the game. Through all of the current flow from 30-40, a standard single-school spell DC item will start at +6 DCs and then increase to +7 DCs, so you won't actually be scaling appropriately versus the content - that's only a net gain of +1 DCs for 10 whole levels of questing. Right now our monsters scale up relatively linearly through certain blocks of content, and the saving throws of monsters do increase every time we make a higher quest level. Itemization should also be scaling upwards as it increases in min level/ilevel, otherwise you won't be able to improve your equipment loadout effectively as you increase in character level. Other item affixes that are less granular are able to scale upwards appropriately, and moving spell DCs to a formula that increases more sharply will help higher-level items feel stronger than lower-level ones, which is something we really would like to enforce.

And wouldn't it be more logical then to change the enemies so that they don't scale as quickly instead of increasing the power creep in the equipment? This change in the scalar makes only the latest level equipment competitive. It's crazy. You are further increasing the difference with the martials. You can have a martial equipped with a mix of sharn and IoD and be competitive. Currently that's not really true for casters, but it's just that you're now going to completely kill all previous gear on every level up. Do you really want to do that? It goes against everything you told us to justify the stat squish.


Spell DC has three problems that are not being solved in this update::

1- Due to so many channels and so much division by schools, equipping a caster is a nightmare. A complete nightmare because there is not enough room. This also happens for spell damage due to splitting with elements, creating a truly infernal caster tetris. I'm not lying to you if I tell you that this is the worst problem that casters have now, especially generalists, for whom you haven't designed in years. There is a big consensus that wizards are, if not the worst class in the game, then among the two worst. Guess why. You are killing the generalists.

2-Saves are increasing too quickly in new content. But you can't solve this by increasing the power creep. Make mobs scale slower. It's the logical thing.

3-Players with less developed characters does not reach DC even in elite/r1. This is a double problem:

• 3.1- Excessive dependence on sentience to have a competitive DC. We get like 15-18 DC points out of sentience. Someone without this is automatically out of the game even on r1-elite. This does not happen with martials, the sentience of martials is not dedicated to DC, but to dps. If they don't have a sentient weapon+artifact they do less damage, but it is enough for elite/r1 and they are not useless on those difficulties. A caster without DC is useless, and the new/casual ones do not reach that DC. Read Sturmbb and how he is frustrated because his new caster is useless on elite when with similar equipment his martials are not.
• 3.2. Many DC channels are not easy to find/get. Insightful, quality, sacred DC are not exactly easy to find and equip, because in addition to finding them, you have to fit them in a very very bloated tetris. And let's not even mention the channels that require a grind that the new ones cannot afford: reaper bonus, raid filigrees, raid augments sets that are essential nowadays if you want to use the new gear (I repeat: the casters only have 2-3 free solar slots. Spell DC needs to go in a raid augment set.) etc.

Please fix the problems that are really suffocating the casters. Right now, with the proposed changes and I see:

• The overall spell DC has not increased. I have lost the value of gh augments which is the same as spell mastery has gained. Zero profit.
• You have made the DC of the level 30 items that I have equipped useless, such as the elders that carry 90% of the casters. Why, why, why?
• The caster gear has gained in complexity when it is exactly the opposite of what it needed. Why?
• You haven't solved anything for the new/casuals who don't even reach DC in elite.

Do you want to equate caster gear with martial gear? Put the complexity of the caster gear at the same level. Right now we have like 6 times more stats than them. Maybe more. It is NOT logical.

 

[Aristis]

I clearly remember a time when playing a caster still felt like being the party’s emergency button. When needed, they could end an entire fight within seconds if the group got into trouble, but doing so would consume a large portion of their mana. The rest of the time, you relied on crowd control and instakills to conserve resources.

The different spell schools all had fairly similar DCs, usually only separated by a few points due to talents and perhaps a single item. The Staff of the Petitioner is a good relic of that era.

When I came back, casters seemed to have effectively infinite mana thanks to all the SLAs, and suddenly you were expected to hyper-specialize in a single school, most obviously Evocation in the vast majority of cases. Now there are spell rotations, and it feels like you're just watching cooldown timers instead of thinking about the actual purpose of each spell. It simply doesn't feel as smart or tactical as it did back then.

Of course, that becomes frustrating in group play. And that's probably one of the reasons the nerfs happened. It's not a good gameplay experience when players constantly throw Meteors and other spells at isolated archers sitting at 20% HP on the edge of the battlefield while the melee characters are already on their way to finish them off.

Instead, the focus should be on preserving the solo capabilities of casters while making them more group-friendly again. Why aren't there more meaningful crowd-control SLAs for mana efficiency? Why can metamagics be applied to SLAs, and why are metamagics so weak compared to what casters had in the past? An extra 150 Spell Power when you already have 1,000 Spell Power? 8% Crowd Control Duration in R10 - seriously? Why is Moment of Clarity a Tier 5 enhancement instead of a Tier 4 enhancement in Harper Agent? And why aren't there more caster-oriented boosts like that?

There are probably plenty of possible solutions if we take a closer look at what made casters feel unique back then and try to rediscover that original design philosophy. One thing I am fairly certain of, however, is that item-based DCs designed to push even further hyper-specialization are not the answer.

 

[Lazuli]

@Tonquin. Because an imagen is worth more than 100 words, right now in my server:

Highest school (138):

Lowest schools (119):

19 points difference. Do you want to widen the difference even more? Is that really good design?

 

[Phaedra]

@Tonquin. Because an imagen is worth more than 100 words, right now in my server:

Highest school (138):

Lowest schools (119):

19 points difference. Do you want to widen the difference even more? Is that really good design?

I mean, you could use the school specific boost to bring up the lower one instead of trying to push your most specialized school even higher. To any reasonable person that must be the intended purpose. Whether or not it hits the mark is the issue.

 

[Lazuli]

I mean, you could use the school specific boost to bring up the lower one instead of trying to push your most specialized school even higher. To any reasonable person that must be the intended purpose. Whether or not it hits the mark is the issue.

There isn't room for that.

And no, it's not the purpose, because the purpose of raising the DC is because the mobs are increasing saves too quickly in the new content, and we can't keep up with the current gear.

Even though my wizard is a completionist with extraordinarily good equipment, don't think I have too much DC with my main school. The saves are that high.

The logical thing is not to put the increase in the DC specific to the school, that doesn't solve anything. The logical thing is to make the mobs not scale so quickly.

And for the love of God, they have to stop hyperspecializing everything. They have completely forgotten the generalists. When the hell are they going to also design a little bit for the generalist casters? When? Will you devs please stop trying to kill wizards and other generalists?

And what the hell, do marcials have to equip stats to be able to affect various types of monsters? Not, right? Then why do they ask the casters to equip for 5-6 types of school dc and various elements? Hey?

 

[justin credible]

I agree that there is a very big difference between martial and caster equipment, but let's not lose sight of the fact that what is needed is to achieve a similar result with a similar effort.

Individual Spell DC is not the same as individual DC tactics. Martials do not usually need more than one particular type of tactic, and those who may want it, such as fighters, have many bonus feats and feats that increase their tactics (two feats give them a +10 to *all* tactics. A caster for two feats receives a +2 to *one* school).

I'll add to this, that martials can take +6 to stun from T1 grandmaster, and then another +3 to all tactics in legenary dreadnaught, and they stack
but if a caster wants to take +3 to illusion from magister, they are locked out of +3 to illusion from shiradi champion and shadowdancer

we could allow these to stack, and we could use a little "if you have (spell focus illusion), double this bonus" type stuff, that is all over the martial trees

 

[voenixa121]

@Tonquin. Because an imagen is worth more than 100 words, right now in my server:

Highest school (138):

Lowest schools (119):

19 points difference. Do you want to widen the difference even more? Is that really good design?

I can just barely get 120 DC on one school and that is with channel power which sucks to use. There are several necromancy spells to use not just the one. I just don't think this is the real problem here.

 

[woq]

People keep bringing up tactics users, but tactics isn't a nobrainer land either; they too rely on either past lives, good gear, snapshotting before trance, etc despite the higher amounts of base/higher access in destinies and the existence of trances. Fighters and dragon lords being the exception.

Imagine being a hybrid trying to land anything that rolls vs enemy save in endgame <.<

 

[Lazuli]

I'll add to this, that martials can take +6 to stun from T1 grandmaster, and then another +3 to all tactics in legenary dreadnaught, and they stack
but if a caster wants to take +3 to illusion from magister, they are locked out of +3 to illusion from shiradi champion and shadowdancer

we could allow these to stack, and we could use a little "if you have (spell focus illusion), double this bonus" type stuff, that is all over the martial trees

No, if the problem there is not that they do not stack, but that the casters have very few increases to general DC, almost everything is specialized DC, while that is not the case with martials.

The only thing that saved the casters is that the difference in DC in the gear was not very big between the general and the individual, which could make you ignore the individual. Now the devs want to do what they have already done with the spell damaga, where potency items and general spell lore items are so far removed from the individual, that they perform pathetically.

It can't be that with casters there is this extreme division of stats, while for martials everything is simple. It can't be. The system breaks at some point.

But has any dev tried to build and play a caster in the cap to understand what we are saying?

 

[Lazuli]

I can just barely get 120 DC on one school and that is with channel power which sucks to use. There are several necromancy spells to use not just the one. I just don't think this is the real problem here.

Read my long post replying to Tonquin, where I have made a real effort to explain the problems that both maximized and non-maximized casters have.

The casters are so bad right now that we all have problems. Because what is the foundation of the gear and the design philosophy of the casters is wrong.

 

[Lazuli]

People keep bringing up tactics users, but tactics isn't a nobrainer land either; they too rely on either past lives, good gear, snapshotting before trance, etc despite the higher amounts of base/higher access in destinies and the existence of trances. Fighters and dragon lords being the exception.

Imagine being a hybrid trying to land anything that rolls vs enemy save in endgame <.<

Hybrid problem, as I have said something like 50 times in this topic: sentience and lack of slots to equip everything.

Sentience is a BIG culprit. when the casters have to dedicate all their sentience to DC, getting about 16-18 points from here, and the martials are dedicating all of it to dps, also getting a good chunk of dps from here... how do you want a hybrid to compete, if there are no filigree sets that give them both spell DC and weapon stats? They can't, period.

Lack of slots is another. If the casters are going mad trying to fit all the spell DC stats (and damage, but hybrids don't usually need much spell damage) into the equipment, how the hell do you want a hybrid to be able to do it while also fitting the stats they need for the weapon?

The problem of hybrids is 90%, a BIG 90%, gear. That's it. The state of the equipment, which is awful bloated, and makes you hyperspecialize in everything.

But of course, if the devs make it difficult for the casters to obtain the spell DC, the hybrid, who will always be behind because he needs to disperse his stats, can directly throw in the towel.


What Tactics have are two things:

* Martials who receive large increases in tactics, which makes them have a much higher DC than casters. Dragonlords can reach 150 DC, which casters cannot. People see this and believe that all martials have DC values just like monks, fighters and very few other privileged people, but no, it is not true. Most martials don't have more DC than casters, only they get it with less gear and feat effort (no marcial invest 5 DC heroics feats and 4 epic DC feats like my wizard. It's a BIG investment for the return, woq).

* But what all martials do have is that they do not need to equip DC in 6-7 items. The complexity of caster equipment is absurd, woq, it's absurd. It is unsustainable that they continue trying to complicate it even more.

 

[Phaedra]

And no, it's not the purpose, because the purpose of raising the DC is because the mobs are increasing saves too quickly in the new content, and we can't keep up with the current team.

Then the logical thing to do is rein in the rate of increase of saves.

Martials are ahead right now because of bad game design (bloated HP pools, especially on raid bosses, blanket immunities on trash mobs for seemingly no reason, and the caster damage nerf in high R making competitive DPS that doesn't run out of gas absolutely necessary to completing difficult raid content)

But you've made much hay about how a martial only needs one tactic, and none about how a martial only gets one effective tactic, while casters need several school DCs, but in return they get a wide array of tools to deal with any situation. Martials don't get a different stun that targets Will DCs to use against high-fort mobs. If a mob is immune to their one tactic, they don't have another to throw at it, and most of them don't get a tool to lower the mob save on whatever DC (usually Fort, which is often highest) their only tactic targets

 

[justin credible]

Then the logical thing to do is rein in the rate of increase of saves.

Martials are ahead right now because of bad game design (bloated HP pools, especially on raid bosses, blanket immunities on trash mobs for seemingly no reason, and the caster damage nerf in high R making competitive DPS that doesn't run out of gas absolutely necessary to completing difficult raid content)

But you've made much hay about how a martial only needs one tactic, and none about how a martial only gets one effective tactic, while casters need several school DCs, but in return they get a wide array of tools to deal with any situation. Martials don't get a different stun that targets Will DCs to use against high-fort mobs. If a mob is immune to their one tactic, they don't have another to throw at it, and most of them don't get a tool to lower the mob save on whatever DC (usually Fort, which is often highest) their only tactic targets

if stunning blow fails you use trip, and then legendary dreadnaught makes it so tripped mobs count as stunned.
dragon lord gets sunder soul which is a will save aoe instakill
barbarians get visage of terror will save vs intim score
monks get jade strike which is a will save against stun
acrobat gets sweeping strikes, aoe trip against str save

 

[Lazuli]

Then the logical thing to do is rein in the rate of increase of saves.

Martials are ahead right now because of bad game design (bloated HP pools, especially on raid bosses, blanket immunities on trash mobs for seemingly no reason, and the caster damage nerf in high R making competitive DPS that doesn't run out of gas absolutely necessary to completing difficult raid content)

But you've made much hay about how a martial only needs one tactic, and none about how a martial only gets one effective tactic, while casters need several school DCs, but in return they get a wide array of tools to deal with any situation. Martials don't get a different stun that targets Will DCs to use against high-fort mobs. If a mob is immune to their one tactic, they don't have another to throw at it, and most of them don't get a tool to lower the mob save on whatever DC (usually Fort, which is often highest) their only tactic targets

No, you forget that caster spells work on a very limited range of enemies, which martial skills don't.

Dragon roar? It works on everything, even incorporals and constructs, oh the absurdity. Cower from other sources, such as shadar-kai? Idem. Etc.

But that's not the case with spells. Hold monster mass: there are many, many immunities to mind-affecting spells. Well, you have to look for alternatives that are not mind-affecting. You need other schools because all enchantment spells work like this. All enchantments are mind-affecting. It's like the devs have no idea how D&D works, for god's sake.

Be careful, I have never said that martials not privileged in tactis do not need help, because having the same DC as casters they have the same problems as us in reaching the appropriate threshold of functioning.

But what cannot be is this division into schools and elements of the casters that make it unsustainable to equip a caster. It just can't be. And obviously the solution does not involve increasing the martial equipment complexity which is not small currently. The solution is to simplify the caster equipment by stopping dividing everything over and over and over and over again.

They introduced critical damage a few years ago cheerfully without thinking about the impact of introducing it PER ELEMENT once again. And now again. But how many slots do they think the casters have?

Yes, and what you say about bad design is true, but it is no less true that the casters now have a gear bloat that is also awful design.

 

[Wizard]

People keep bringing up tactics users, but tactics isn't a nobrainer land either; they too rely on either past lives, good gear, snapshotting before trance, etc despite the higher amounts of base/higher access in destinies and the existence of trances. Fighters and dragon lords being the exception.

Imagine being a hybrid trying to land anything that rolls vs enemy save in endgame <.<

Indeed, not only casters have the DC problems.

I think Dragonlord is the only balanced class for DCs, actually.

If you're new and you don't have any good gear, get 20 DL levels and go all in for DC with feats, enhancements, trance, epic destinies. Then you can land DCs. Once you get more gear you can start removing some of the DC stuff in favor of more damage.

If you can't land any DC, even in lower difficulties, that's just not fun. So give the other classes a lot more DC options too please.

 

[mikarddo]

We can definitely adjust character build options to help DC casters achieve workable DCs, but this work has a bunch of overall important facets that should still be done. Here are a few reasons as to why we're focusing on itemization adjustments for this patch, in no particular order:
...

Dear Tonquin,

I appreciate the time and effort to put casters into a workable shape.

Please - with whatever setup you are working with - check by equipping a character with appropriate gear (both top end gear and regular gear) that they can reach the desired results.

Keep in mind that the caster very much needs
a) strong spell DC in more than just 1 or 2 types (a sorc needs at least 5 different types) AND
b) spell pen AND
c) spell power+crit chance+crit damage usually in more than one element AND
d) all the regular effects.
A fully decked (gear, past lives, augments, curses etc) caster should be able to reach *no-fail* DC in 4-5 schools + *no fail* spell pen + * very high* spell power, crit chance and crit damage in 2 schools atleast in order to have any chance of being competitive.

Please - make sure you can actually fit in the effects needed rather than just look at the numbers individually. Making all of those effects fit at the same time is a major part of the problem - not just the individual numbers.

 

[Tonquin]

Here's the thing, scaling of spell DCs throughout epics and legendary, in parallel with monsters, cannot be addressed by gear, or gear only.

We agree with you! However, in the interest of making steady progress, sometimes we break out complex problems into smaller component parts. We have a lot of reasons to want to adjust gear scaling for spell DC bonuses, and it makes sense to do them now for a lot of reasons. The incremental approach also helps us converge on a game state that's closer to where we want, instead of taking big swings and waiting for the dust to settle.

Now, don't get me wrong, sometimes things need a big shakeup. But in this particular case, the incremental approach is the way to go