Do Stormsingers get access to the sonic cantrip or just the electric one?
U82 Lamannia Preview 1 - Cantrips
- Thread starter Torc
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From the table posted looked like just electric.
wolfdy
Active member
The sonic and light ones you deal the same dmg as the other cantrips, no reason to reduce their dice inst its mentioned they arent suposed to be impactful on endgame, where a decision like having a less resistiable spell deal less dmg is actualy important, noone's playing bards and clerics for their spell dmg atm
Suggestions:
(1) make the mental toughness line add +1 so: 1d6+1, 1d6+2, 1d6+3. This will keep your nomenclature consistent for other spells.
(2) Keep all cantrips at 1d6, there is no reason to make some 40% stronger then others.
(3) Just give all classes access to these at level 1, people will use the ones they want and care about.
(4) Give these full 100% scaling. As soon as you get ~150 spell power (lvl 7?) its better to cast a no meta-magiced 1d6+3 spell then one of these cantrips with meta-magics
(1) make the mental toughness line add +1 so: 1d6+1, 1d6+2, 1d6+3. This will keep your nomenclature consistent for other spells.
(2) Keep all cantrips at 1d6, there is no reason to make some 40% stronger then others.
(3) Just give all classes access to these at level 1, people will use the ones they want and care about.
(4) Give these full 100% scaling. As soon as you get ~150 spell power (lvl 7?) its better to cast a no meta-magiced 1d6+3 spell then one of these cantrips with meta-magics
rabidfox
The People's Champion
I made a build on lam that did nothing but spam cantrip spells. VS bosses, it did almost the same damage as my warlock (just under its DPS by a few %). It would beat my warlock at 100% scaling and that would be extra sad.
I hate to say it.. but thats more on the warlock then then the cantrips..
I like math, lets try it!
Lets assume you can spam 1d6+6 spells at cap with no meta-magics for almost no SP (the sp reduction change). Lets assume you have 900 spell power, full meta-magics, full mental toughness lines and cantips do 100% scaling. Spell crit damage doesn't mater for this comparison because its the same. Im not very familiar with warlock blasting but a glance at the wiki tells me you can get ~ 24 blast dice and ~26 pact dice, with 170% scaling.
Spell: 1d6+6 = base of 9.5 * CL of 28 = 266 base damage. -> 266 * 10 = 2,660 per spell.
Cantrip: 1d6+3 = base of 6.5 * CL of 28 = 182 base damage -> 182 * 13 = 2,260 per cantrip.
Blast: 1d8*24+1d6*26 = 199 base damage. 900sp * 1.7= 1,530sp. 199 * 16.3 = 3,243 per blast. blasts can hit 3 every 2 seconds so, total dmg/sec is 4,865.
what's interesting is that warlock blast damage is equivalent of casting a un-metaed 1d6+14 spell every second.
rabidfox
The People's Champion
My cantrip build had 5 FvS for +3 CL/MCL to them. 14 trickster to get ambush damage and sneak dice. 1 sorc to get a fire based cantrip to pair up with master of fire. It's wasn't designed to be a fair test, it was just me wanting to see if I could make a cheese meme setup compete with a single button press as an attack. A large chunk of damage also comes from non-blast/non-cast sources- multiple dripping/alch procs & mantle procs & master of feat, so the visable gaps shrink when the raw difference between blast vs cantrips is only a certain % of overall damage occuring.
And yeah, warlock's state of damage is entirely a warlock issue. But I also assume many other casters have the same single target vs bosses issue when compared to martial builds; just not something I tested myself.
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So resource management is thing for heroic levels and is very important to new players. I really like the sp return for cantrips. The fact that it has to hit a valid target is pretty keen.
I was gonna talk about a few problems and conflicts with metamagic feat enhancements if this was implemented for standard spells and how you would have to alter them to do something different, but no.
Sparks of Magic is waaay better than Echoes of Power. No more 14 sp cap is huge and it doesn't require you run out of sp before it does anything!
Why so many ppl keep thinking that warlock needs a cantrip is pretty baffling. Eldritch Blast is like the super sayan god of cantrips.
I was gonna talk about a few problems and conflicts with metamagic feat enhancements if this was implemented for standard spells and how you would have to alter them to do something different, but no.
Sparks of Magic is waaay better than Echoes of Power. No more 14 sp cap is huge and it doesn't require you run out of sp before it does anything!
Why so many ppl keep thinking that warlock needs a cantrip is pretty baffling. Eldritch Blast is like the super sayan god of cantrips.
Unless there's some technical reason to remove elemental bolts, I'd say what's the harm in letting them stay, other than looking like competition to cantrips?
At level 3 let's say you have 80 spellpower and Maximize feat. Metamagic is a bit expensive to use at that point, so keep that always on for the cantrip only.
Maximized Cantrip: 1d6 x 3 x 2.35 = 24.7 avg
Maximized+Empowered Cantrip: 1d6 x 3 x 2.91 = 30.55 avg
Maximized+Mental Toughness Cantrip: 1d8 x 3 x 2.35 = 31.73 avg
vs
standard Elemental Bolt: 1d6+2 x 3 x 1.8 = 29.7 avg
Endfight time and turn maximize on, Elemental Bolt goes to 46.2 avg
Elemental Bolts do however have a longer cooldown (4.5 seconds/3 seconds). They could probably act as cantrips if their cooldown was reduced to the proposed cantrip cooldown. The feat bonuses would then target these spells instead and new such spells would need to be added for the remaining damage types.
Despite stepping on Warlock toes a little, I'd call for cantrips to be toggles to be used for caster autoattacking instead.
The feats improving cantrips will not make the cantrips good, but I guess it's a bonus for anyone already taking the feats regardless. I've personally not been in situations where my builds would ever need to consider them however, and I can't see myself adding them in just to improve very weak spells by 1 average damage per level. Casters are quite feat starved
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Does the addition of these cantrips change existing "cantrip wands"? Some of them even share a spell name with cantrips already.
Eternal wands exist for
Finger of Fire
Ray of Frost
Acid Splash
Spark of Light
Cure Minor Wounds
which are all definitively in "weaker than level 1 spells" category (as well as weaker than the proposed cantrips).
There are also some other low level spell eternal wands, like Magic Missile, Nimbus of Light and Disrupt Undead, with Temple of Elemental Evil offering eternal wands for each of the Elemental Bolts, and the Legendary versions would actually gain a boost with the max caster level increase if their spells are adjusted.
Wands must be held in main hand so they're not ideal equipment for anyone in epic levels as is and so I'd suggest making wands optionally wieldable in offhand, and the act of casting a spell on an offhand wand to become a new autogranted feat akin to Attack (but not a toggle).
And be compatible with Single Weapon Fighting/Swashbuckling. Do you think this would step on toes of Rune Arms though?
Of course wands are still a bit obsolete for damage due to spellpower scaling issues (as in, they don't, and they probably should).
vryxnr
Well-known member
My only question is... what is a DDO meter? update 40 officially changed the range of Intimidate to 30 meters and I've not seen any update changing that since... and if we assume the average human character in DDO is 6 feet tall, that would normally translate to 1.8288 meters, but lets round up to 2 meters for simplicity. Well, intimidate definitely does NOT have a 30 meter range. Are the 30 meter cantrips the range of intimidate, or are they approximately 15 human characters laying in a line head to foot? ... aka: what is the length of a DDO meter?
Torc, while the intent is probably good, this is a disaster for nuke casters. I played one for 15 years and you all pretty much forced me to stop because no group wants them and you all destroyed any chance of keeping up with MCL and DB nerfs.
Damage is too low, ST damage was not great and melees outperform on everything. You’re now nerfing literally the best spells that make soloing survivable and bringing in cantrips that will be low damage in comparison to anything. This makes things MORE of a slog rather than less. There is no incentive to ever go back to caster. You made AT better at casting with skill based DC’s and the classes that actually cast exclusively can’t compare to their damage or DC output. I come back to “the devs just hate casters” and whether true or not it certainly comes across that way. Instead of nerfing as a knee jerk why not just make them better? Cantrips are not going to do anything outside of low levels. They will quickly be cast aside and of almost no use at endgame content. This is a chihuahua nipping at the heels of the terrasque. I mean okay, no spell points but it’s not going to do much and it’s going to get debuffed to the point of uselessness in reaper. It’s just not worth clogging bars up with these. If you really want DC’s good, or damage to be better, add a skill based enhancement. For instance, for every 10 points of spellcraft, your elemental spells gain an additional die of damage and your DC increases by 1. Perform for sonic, etc… then the new items that have skill affixes become more useful and the points you spend on skills becomes more meaningful. Melees get dc’s from intim which is a skill… AT From disable device…Why can’t casters?? You could even require a feat to access it: “Skilled Caster.” The you pick the skill. How is that any worse than giving unending HP via strength of arms? You only enhanced tanks and melees. When do casters get some massive enhancement to make them worth playing? This, as it is, will not change raid groups or high skulls. Nobody is going to say, oh yeah, now we need a caster. They’ll just stack ranged and melees in the group instead with near unlimited HP pools and now enhanced bow damage. Artis are getting crushed into oblivion without EF and so you’re going to just encourage more melee two weapon builds and bow builds and casters are still on the outside of groups looking in. Please consider un-nerfing and making casters just as viable. This will not do it. My sense of humor tells me you are all maybe “can-TRIPPIN” on something in the MA water if you think casters are better off after nerfing the biggest damage spells they have. Please undo the “damage” to casters.
Damage is too low, ST damage was not great and melees outperform on everything. You’re now nerfing literally the best spells that make soloing survivable and bringing in cantrips that will be low damage in comparison to anything. This makes things MORE of a slog rather than less. There is no incentive to ever go back to caster. You made AT better at casting with skill based DC’s and the classes that actually cast exclusively can’t compare to their damage or DC output. I come back to “the devs just hate casters” and whether true or not it certainly comes across that way. Instead of nerfing as a knee jerk why not just make them better? Cantrips are not going to do anything outside of low levels. They will quickly be cast aside and of almost no use at endgame content. This is a chihuahua nipping at the heels of the terrasque. I mean okay, no spell points but it’s not going to do much and it’s going to get debuffed to the point of uselessness in reaper. It’s just not worth clogging bars up with these. If you really want DC’s good, or damage to be better, add a skill based enhancement. For instance, for every 10 points of spellcraft, your elemental spells gain an additional die of damage and your DC increases by 1. Perform for sonic, etc… then the new items that have skill affixes become more useful and the points you spend on skills becomes more meaningful. Melees get dc’s from intim which is a skill… AT From disable device…Why can’t casters?? You could even require a feat to access it: “Skilled Caster.” The you pick the skill. How is that any worse than giving unending HP via strength of arms? You only enhanced tanks and melees. When do casters get some massive enhancement to make them worth playing? This, as it is, will not change raid groups or high skulls. Nobody is going to say, oh yeah, now we need a caster. They’ll just stack ranged and melees in the group instead with near unlimited HP pools and now enhanced bow damage. Artis are getting crushed into oblivion without EF and so you’re going to just encourage more melee two weapon builds and bow builds and casters are still on the outside of groups looking in. Please consider un-nerfing and making casters just as viable. This will not do it. My sense of humor tells me you are all maybe “can-TRIPPIN” on something in the MA water if you think casters are better off after nerfing the biggest damage spells they have. Please undo the “damage” to casters.
somenewnoob
Well-known member
Will cantrip proc arcane warrior?
The problem here is that certain classes like cleric are typically hard stuck with using Primal because of leaning on hirelings to solo. And the significant lack of elemental damage access. And frankly the elemental domains could use a level 1 grant of the associated cantrip with this pass.
rabidfox
The People's Champion
They get the same +1 CL/MCL that all spells get off epic/legendary knowledge feats while leveling past heroics.
Smokewolf
Frequently banned member.
The concept of MCL is asinine. You don't see Martials running around with hard caps to their DPS based on their level, so why should this be applied to casters? (Discrimination)
rabidfox
The People's Champion
MCL is needed as there's scaling issues as things are weird on the backend. So lets look at 2 examples:
Cantrip - scales off character level (makes for some multiclass fun)
Any class spell - scales off class level
On first glance, they seem like they'd be the same. But on the backend, character levels included heroic & epic/legendary levels. So with no max caster level at level 36 they'd be casting as:
Cantip is 36 (character level) + 16 (from +1 CL from every other level from epic/legendary knowledge) for total of 52 levels.
Any class spell is 20 (class levels) + 16 (from +1 CL from every other level from epic/legendary knowledge) for total of 36 levels.
Without MCLs, certain racial, ED abilities, universal tree ablities, and cantrips would be 44% stronger than class spells. Could they rebuild the entire backend? Maybe, but the current MCL20 aspect is done to prevent the current code from causing some stuff from going out of control. The way character level vs class level works is why magic fang broke a while back when the level cap went up (and they added MCL20 to it as a fix).
Should cantrips scale off of character level at all?
Why would the cantrips grow stronger if the actual spells don't?
I understand that it's nice for multiclassing, but it feels off to me that a single level splash in a caster class gets nearly full cantrip efficiency for a martial character.
They could find a way to make cantrips scale based on cantrip-casting class levels only via an autogranted feat (Cantrip Lore, as unfortunately Arcane/Divine Lore don't match the classes that are getting cantrips). These could even grant the cantrip die increases now tied to Mental Toughness line of feats, once you have X amount of them (6 and 12?).
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