What's the best way to make arcane casters relevant at end game again?

[torkz]

Recent discussions on the higher reaper spell dps and the necessary roles in raids has made me start thinking again about the sad state of arcane casters in the current end game.

To frame the discussion, I would define end game as R10 quests and R3+ raids. Right now, arcane are unnecessary at best in R10 quests. There are limited uses for them in raids (sometimes they can help, but often other classes can handle the same tasks while offering something extra to the raid).

Note that an excellent player is always useful...but just because an excellent player is useful on an arcane doesn't mean the same player would not have even more value on a different character.

So...do we need

1) the high reaper spell nerf removed?
2) better quest/raid design?
3) something else?

I wish I had the answer, but I just know the game is worse for not having a role for arcane at cap...

 

[DBZ]

DPS and elemental stripping as a caster only niche

 

[healertank]

IF they took out the spell dmg nerf for r7+ that would be a start... there is no reason they need it even. But also there is no reason you can't use arcane casters in any raid and still be fine. Not every build has to be the ultimate 1000% meta build to do r+ raids. Not sure why you seem to think they can't do enough dmg to be useful?

 

[Tyrande]

I agree that the spell damage nerf for R7+ is unnecessary at this point.

A doom reaper at R10 has around ~76,000 hit points. Mana required to do spell damage to DPS down that doom reaper? I estimated around 10 (on one caster or multiple casters combined) castings of the highest damage spells like lightning strike or meteor or epic ruin on a crit, which is around 1000 -> 2000 spell points, which would mean 1/3 to 1/2 of an average caster's mana bar. This is unfair compared to no resource usage on a melee.

 

[Blerkington]

My melee spends action boosts, dodge clickies not to mention HP killing stuff when running content on high skulls.

Seeing the no resources spent argument trotted out in such obvious bad faith with no mention of the tremendous advantage casters have in being able to kill stuff safely at range is flat out laughable. And SP management is hardly an issue in the game anymore outside soloing raids.

That being said, I do think casters could use some help in higher skulls. Either by reverting the damage nerf or through a proxy buff from a similar nerf being applied to melee and ranged builds.

 

[DBZ]

Have you heard of inquisitors

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

There is also a middle ground of lowering the curve of the caster nerf vs. removing it entirely.

Caster's have a nice in the game, it's just not dps in R10s or raids.

 

[Guntango]

There is also a middle ground of lowering the curve of the caster nerf vs. removing it entirely.

Caster's have a nice in the game, it's just not dps in R10s or raids.

There should be a spot for every class in every raid. That reaper nerf needs to be eliminated as a starting point.

 

[Eoin-1]

A new Elemenative universal tree that lets you dual wield wands that shot [spell]bolts of whatever color you want. Maybe add a couple AOE [spell]bolts abilities to the tree that drop your preferred color from the sky.

Of course the [spell]bolts are copied code from crossbow bolts, so they take the physical attack damage path instead of the nerfed magic path.

 

[waysider]

One path might be to cut way down on blanket legendary wards and immunities and red-name immunities. Mobs can have big SR and saves and AC if shattermantles and debuffs also scale into big numbers.

I remember the ancient days when it was hard to hit Malicia in Epic Carnival until somebody had sundered her armor. Sobrien in Vulkoor Spiral was another example of this, an orange-named boss that was more than a speed bump when that quest was new, but could be slowed and held if the DCs were there.

So I guess you could slot this as a "better design" answer.

 

[Blerkington]

Have you heard of inquisitors

Tough but fair. Unfortunately there's no rhyme nor reason to SSG's balancing decisions.

 

[Tyrande]

My melee spends action boosts, dodge clickies not to mention HP killing stuff when running content on high skulls.

Doesn't action boost regenerate with Dusk Charge? Until DDO Developers put mana potions in the in-game vendors or if mana regenerates when standing still, I will still call mana usage a resource usage. I don't call action boost a resource until the regeneration is removed.

Dodge clickies I will agree with. However, I recall that tumbling with also give 95% dodge cap, isn't it? Also, tumble charges also regenerate, which is an uber capability compared to no regeneration on mana.

Seeing the no resources spent argument trotted out in such obvious bad faith with no mention of the tremendous advantage casters have in being able to kill stuff safely at range is flat out laughable. And SP management is hardly an issue in the game anymore outside soloing raids.

I don't know why melee players always mention about the attacking monsters safely at range is an advantage. There are reapers that can teleport to you and there are monsters that can teleport to you too. I don't call being at ranged an advantage. They'll kill your character whether you are at range or not. There are also ranged monsters that can hurt very badly on R10.

That being said, I do think casters could use some help in higher skulls. Either by reverting the damage nerf or through a proxy buff from a similar nerf being applied to melee and ranged builds.

/agree.

Ranged characters like inquisitive, horizon walkers, builds like 15x/4arti/1x using dual xbows, repeaters are also hitting these monsters at range, and they have no heavy damage penalties compared to casters.

 

[droid327]

My melee spends action boosts, dodge clickies not to mention HP killing stuff when running content on high skulls.

Seeing the no resources spent argument trotted out in such obvious bad faith with no mention of the tremendous advantage casters have in being able to kill stuff safely at range is flat out laughable. And SP management is hardly an issue in the game anymore outside soloing raids.

That being said, I do think casters could use some help in higher skulls. Either by reverting the damage nerf or through a proxy buff from a similar nerf being applied to melee and ranged builds.

Consuming boosts is different. Your consumption takes you from 100% to 120% or whatever, but you're still very viable in "free mode". Casters in "free mode" do zero dps.

You can try to make a mathematical argument that they aren't actually limited by their sp pool, but you can't say that action boosts are the same thing.

 

[Raedier]

There should be a spot for every class in every raid. That reaper nerf needs to be eliminated as a starting point.

Remove the reaper nerf would not be enough to justify a DPS caster over a ranged dps.

 

[torkz]

One path might be to cut way down on blanket legendary wards and immunities and red-name immunities. Mobs can have big SR and saves and AC if shattermantles and debuffs also scale into big numbers.

I remember the ancient days when it was hard to hit Malicia in Epic Carnival until somebody had sundered her armor. Sobrien in Vulkoor Spiral was another example of this, an orange-named boss that was more than a speed bump when that quest was new, but could be slowed and held if the DCs were there.

So I guess you could slot this as a "better design" answer.

I'm intrigued by this comment. I wonder if we could get an epic feat or epic strike that eliminated some types of legendary wards/immunities? It could have a cooldown to limit the spamming, but it would allow an arcane to work on the "mid-level" trash, if not the bosses...

To use the Den of Vipers raid as an example, the gold strike in T5 draconic was an incredibly useful thing an arcane caster could do to the orange named Nagas...until they "fixed" it to make casters unable to do anything useful but instakill the lowest trash and throw a few heals. (And to be honest, if you just need some instakills, why not bring a cleric that can do the instakills and heal effectively? why waste a slot on an arcane at all?) If there was a way that arcanes could build up to a solution...epic strike to eliminate wards briefly, then instakill or CC...maybe they could be relevant again.

And again, I am not talking about R1 leveling (or even R4 leveling) here...I am talking R10 quests or high skull push raiding. I don't think the folks who say they don't understand why I think the dps is not useful have compared the dps of a fully geared inquisitive (or even barbarian) to the DPS of a fully geared sorc or druid...they are in different classes. I have a guildy (before the transfers) who did solo R10s on a wizard...so it is possible...but his completion times were generally at least three times as long as other guildies doing the same R10 solo on an actual DPS build.

 

[Guntango]

Remove the reaper nerf would not be enough to justify a DPS caster over a ranged dps.

You don’t need absolute wins to move the needle. Right now, dps casters are completely useless at end game. Reduce the disparity to a 10-15% delta and enough people will accept a modest dps loss to have more fun. Blowing **** up is infinitely more fun than pew-pewing and misfiring half the time.

 

[droid327]

So...do we need

1) the high reaper spell nerf removed?
2) better quest/raid design?
3) something else?

I think the biggest dichotomy between martial and caster is crits. Crit damage can more than double some martials' total dps, and it's a relatively small investment of an enhancement and a feat or two, plus some fort bypass that usually comes on your martial set gear anyway. Whereas caster crit is a smaller overall contribution requiring a larger overall investment

The other dichotomy is multi classing. Martials can pick and choose the best of two or three classes with little tradeoff, since there's rarely much special value in higher class levels and nothing is scaled to class level (paladin being the main exception). Casters are far more penalized for dropping class levels because of spell scaling, and there's little of value in early levels of other caster classes to make up for it.

The r7 nerf is just a specific case, not a factor in overall class balance, but that can be addressed too since martial dps can rival caster dps now head to head.

So I'd say boost caster crit, probably by making crit damage bonuses larger so they could achieve similar total multipliers to martial (~20-35% x3-5).

Then we'd need to front load caster progression a little more, so the value wasn't so much in top level spell selection. Scatter some new enhancements through caster trees that were meaningful boosts to total caster dps, akin to what things like trance does for martial, to make the tradeoff of caster splashing more relevant. Maybe something like an actual caster trance that added a fraction of your main stat mod to the damage dice per level. 1/(9+spell level) would help make lower level spells more relevant in those splash builds too.

 

[Blerkington]

Consuming boosts is different. Your consumption takes you from 100% to 120% or whatever, but you're still very viable in "free mode". Casters in "free mode" do zero dps.

You can try to make a mathematical argument that they aren't actually limited by their sp pool, but you can't say that action boosts are the same thing.

I didn't say they were the same. What I said was melees also use resources. Nice straw man though, well done.

I can't remember the last time I saw a caster run out of SP doing high skull stuff at cap. I'm sure it happens soloing or short manning certain quests on r10 and push raiding, but very rarely outside that to good players on well geared characters.

So in my view anyway characters running around with 6k or more SP along with abilities, gear and shrines to replenish them aren't really limited in any meaningful sense except in edge cases like push raiding.

Like I said before, I think an adjustment should be made. It would actually make more sense to me if a damage nerf applied to all builds that did damage at range but since that won't happen and since caster epic strikes were gutted, reverting the caster damage nerf would be my first choice.

 

[Guntango]

I think the biggest dichotomy between martial and caster is crits. Crit damage can more than double some martials' total dps, and it's a relatively small investment of an enhancement and a feat or two, plus some fort bypass that usually comes on your martial set gear anyway. Whereas caster crit is a smaller overall contribution requiring a larger overall investment

The other dichotomy is multi classing. Martials can pick and choose the best of two or three classes with little tradeoff, since there's rarely much special value in higher class levels and nothing is scaled to class level (paladin being the main exception). Casters are far more penalized for dropping class levels because of spell scaling, and there's little of value in early levels of other caster classes to make up for it.

The r7 nerf is just a specific case, not a factor in overall class balance, but that can be addressed too since martial dps can rival caster dps now head to head.

So I'd say boost caster crit, probably by making crit damage bonuses larger so they could achieve similar total multipliers to martial (~20-35% x3-5).

Then we'd need to scatter some new enhancements through caster trees that were meaningful boosts to total caster dps, akin to what things like trance does for martial, to make the tradeoff of caster splashing more relevant. Maybe something like an actual caster trance that added a fraction of your main stat mod to the damage dice per level. 1/(9+spell level) would help make lower level spells more relevant in those splash builds too.

Since you’re liberally waving your power creep wand at spell crits to make those more equitable with physical attack crits, you’d probably also want to reduce how spell power is out of control as compared to melee power? Just cut that in half or a third, or so?

 

[droid327]

I didn't say they were the same. What I said was melees also use resources. Nice straw man though, well done.

Ok then, melee uses resources, but that's an irrelevant, non sequitur observation for this discussion if you weren't trying to say that means we shouldn't still give casters more relative power because they're fully consumption based