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

[Tyrande]

I'm all for making nukers more viable in R10s. The R7-R10 nerf was a bandaid that was never removed after U66 addressed overperforming epic strikes.

Let's be real though: Devs are not going to balance the game around soloing R10s. Also, this isn't 2010 when it comes to mana management. Every caster has access to 9 clicks of ROSS/Bauble. You can slot an augment for 10% mana reduction, which is on top of 10% from epic levels, mana reduction to metamagics from past lives, class enhancements and destiny enhancements. And then there are rest shrines. So let's avoid that strawman because it does nothing to advance the conversation.

You know what's funny, Ying? I have one of those casters, I think it was a FvS in a R1 skellies raid at level 34. She ran out of mana having those clickies of ROSS. Do I chalk it up to incompetent DPS melees or bad quest/raid design since there is only one shrine and no shrines in the end fight?

 

[Lominal]

You misunderstand. Those LFMs are not because ranged does more damage. It's because high skull raid design has extreme prejudice against melee. Being a melee in just about every high skull raid is miserable. It comes down to "don't get hit or you instantly die". And bosses have unfriendly melee mechanics like a dragon flipping, a marilith or hydra tail swipe, orthons cleaving, Rudus obliterating anyone in range (good luck jumping with lag), etc.

Running between corners in skele, running to platforms for the roars, having to stand on the souls in Hunt, Stopping the fire dot spread in ToN. It's not purely the damage, but melee have to stop dps and move around to do mechanics, ranged can do mechanics while moving.

Casters are just ranged dps with lower dps, higher (<3s) burst and higher cc. The reason caster have never been meta in raids is because you dont need more than 1 person doing cc in raids if at all, so why bring a dps toon that barely does dps.

In reapers, the current meta has so much dps that the time to kill packs with helpless vs without doesnt matter enough to make the caster cc worth it, meaning that melee cc is perfectly fine since you'll mostly use it when you have a more dangerous pull

 

[Tyrande]

Running between corners in skele, running to platforms for the roars, having to stand on the souls in Hunt, Stopping the fire dot spread in ToN. It's not purely the damage, but melee have to stop dps and move around to do mechanics, ranged can do mechanics while moving.

Ranged does not have an advantage in skellies unless you're talking about the dark secret skulls that spawned. The corner skeletons are basically deflecting all your ranged attacks until you get closer and gives full damage until you step on the same platform as them.

 

[Ying]

It used to be that r10, and (long) before that Elite, rewarded a balanced party with several roles fulfilled. Now, character dps is so high that players in other roles are not especially useful. The enemies die too quickly to require tanks, healers or cc most of the time. So what I'm getting at is that the effectiveness of dps dominates the meta to an extent that it had not in the past, reducing playstyle variation and the need for strategy. Dps is too high, basically, and it means that for me, the game is less fun than when a strong party could be meaningfully challenged in quest content.

My probably vain hope is that low server populations encouraged this sort of design. Now that we have better-populated servers, maybe the devs will be at greater liberty to design for balanced parties. But we'll see about that.

So you want a "balanced party", or the holy trinity of tank-heals-damage as it's known in similar online games.

Every reaper XP group has a healer of some sorts, whether that's EA Mass Cure, Primal Avatar Reborn in Fire, or someone with conventional healer class levels like Cleric or FvS. How much healing needed is personal calculus on collectively how smart the group plays. R10 VOD was completed in 55 minutes a couple of months ago where the "dedicated healer" had 2 levels of FvS, because if anyone besides the tank took damage they were one-shot. If a group is being careless, even a conventional healer with 20 levels of Cleric/FvS can't keep people from dying.

As for tanks (or tankability), you're not accounting for how often people die in reaper content without a dedicated tank. You can brute force any R10 quest in the game regardless of group composition if you have enough patience and resources for it. Most people don't like dying multiple times because being a soulstone is not engaging gameplay. I don't know what level of content you play at, but a tank is always welcome and appreciated in R10 quests I run. But it's not required, and that's ok.

 

[droid327]

Teh_troll just thinks Bows are cooler than dual crossbows. And...he is not wrong. I wish I could switch my ranged guy back to bow, but I am just too gimpy to give up all that free power.

How about we just make Inquisitive's imbue, crit bonus, and active attacks work for bows too? LOL

 

[Ying]

Ranged does not have an advantage in skellies unless you're talking about the dark secret skulls that spawned. The corner skeletons are basically deflecting all your ranged attacks until you get closer and gives full damage until you step on the same platform as them.

It's not that ranged have an advantage, it's that melee are disadvantaged in raids. It's more tolerable in low skull raids.

 

[Lominal]

It's not that ranged have an advantage, it's that melee are disadvantaged in raids. It's more tolerable in low skull raids.

Melee cant tank the roar/fire above ~ r4 without sacrificing dps. Ranged can chill in a corner and keep hitting the dino. Most raids have a similar story where melee have to stop dps to do mechanics while ranged dont

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

It's not that ranged have an advantage, it's that melee are disadvantaged in raids. It's more tolerable in low skull raids.

So ranged have an advantage by not being disadvantaged.

 

[kmoustakas]

Nothing can ever be done until someone joins the dev team that can actually play the game for real. As long as they rely on bad strimmers or shills or cormyrian knights for information (or their own limited and often blurred experience) nothing ever good will come from their attempts to balance they game.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

You misunderstand. Those LFMs are not because ranged does more damage. It's because high skull raid design has extreme prejudice against melee. Being a melee in just about every high skull raid is miserable. It comes down to "don't get hit or you instantly die". And bosses have unfriendly melee mechanics like a dragon flipping, a marilith or hydra tail swipe, orthons cleaving, Rudus obliterating anyone in range (good luck jumping with lag), etc.

I understand what you mean, but my response was intended within the framing set by the OP and the argument that casters are not relevant in R10, and R3+ raids. I'm pointing out that within that framing, they're clearly not alone in that regard when it comes to the raiding part at least, and the only play style that is relevant, is currently ranged.

Which seems odd to me, but I don't believe balancing the game around R10 and/or push raids is a good idea anyway.

So yeah there's probably quite a lot I don't understand!

 

[katanauser]

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?

r7+ spell damage nerf is the dev's decision. It's needed because they can't allow lazy programming without it. By lazy I mean finding a nerf that has actual basis in DDO rule/history of the game. It's "I can't find a valid nerf for this (insert player's inventive power move here) so lets do this..." Nothing more. Often all devs have time to do is band-aid a prob. Or a perceived problem like "TOO POWERFUL".

 

[Tyrande]

It's not that ranged have an advantage, it's that melee are disadvantaged in raids. It's more tolerable in low skull raids.

In the same raid, ranged has the disadvantage when fighting Vecna. hands can slap your character even from far-far away.

The last quest in the Vecna chain also has dino. There was no perking point and the dino roar, I think the closer you get; the less sonic damage you take.

Similar mechanics in the Dryad and Demigod raid. Ranged does not have the advantage against the gigantic bear. The further away during the roar, the more damage your character gets. As for dancing, everybody dances. The boss is unhittable when dancing is occurring.

 

[Fizban]

I have no idea what the OP is talkng about. I play a wizard at end game and run on R10 frequently with major impact. My crowd control and DC casting is very effective. Aditionally, while I'm not a sorcerer or an elite melee damage dealer my lightning and force spells provide damage in the 10k to 40k range. I'm happy with that for my wizard being a rounded caster.

 

[Tyrande]

I have no idea what the OP is talkng about. I play a wizard at end game and run on R10 frequently with major impact. My crowd control and DC casting is very effective. Aditionally, while I'm not a sorcerer or an elite melee damage dealer my lightning and force spells provide damage in the 10k to 40k range. I'm happy with that for my wizard being a rounded caster.

I think the OP and you are talking about different things. Sure, for individual R10 quests arcane casters like your wizard is fine. I even brought my first life L34, low reaper points (< 20), no gear wizard into a R10 quest group and its fine. NOTE: he did run out of mana fighting 2 doom reapers, one plague reaper and one Despair reaper (got to hate them!) and that's just 4 monsters!

I also find a lot of fast runners, NOTE: monks, tabaxis, eladrin with wings, barbarians, dragonlords just skipping the monsters and try to get to the end boss by sprinting. This is causing lag because those monster spawns try to react to them and they block the dungeon paths, slaughtering those characters behind who didn't sprint faster than them. This is also causing server wide like Shadowdale high memory usage, high CPU usage (for their AI) and lag.

I think the OP is specifically talking about R10 raids; and the raid leaders intentionally saying that arcane casters are not needed in group because of low or no DPS, and CC is unnecessary b/c Dragonlords or other roles can do it better.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

Ah, I see the lag has died down enough that we're back to the old "Nerf ranged, buff caster" threads... Nice!

Thoughts:
1) Caster dps is not that far behind. A good melee build will solo yegora in 40-50 seconds. My current (not fully optimised) caster can do so in about 70 seconds with a large debuff disadvantage (ie no darkness, no shattered device, no ooze, dust>ash). Fix the R7+ nerf and casters only really need better access to debuffs IMO.
2) Obviously ranged is overpowered atm, we all know this. I'm starting to lean towards the problem being shiradi burst, rather than inquis now though. I'd like to see an epic destiny tree adapted/created to help bows better. Shiradi over-favors the extra attack/doubleshot styles, so it would be nice to have another ranged tree alternative.
3) R10 questing has been far to easy for many years. The "Nooo dont nerf me" crowd needs a pat on the head. *pat pat* That said, the solution should actually be higher difficulties, not nerfing everything to pull the rug out from the newer players.

 

[Alpha Tester]

Even if you are one of the best wizards of the game (or the very best) and very usefull in R10 you will never have DPS to kill most raid bosses without hundreds of mana pots. Or the R10 boss. Cleric and favored soul have the same problems.

And you are happy with it and play with whatever you want because you have the power, skill and knowledge to do so. 12 wizards would finish a raid but one would be a tank, other melee, all on necro self-healing and would take a lot of time and probably lots of mana pots.
This is why all classes and quests should be playable. Wiz and sorc should be nukers and D&D roles should be respected (ok, I love that the sorc is a nuker and the wiz is a DC caster, this was a great adaptation). Many classes are great to lvl and bad at endgame and the other way around. Even most archetypes are in a niche so small that don't make sense for even 2% of the players, races fall in the same problem: some people only get to make the life and get the triple completionist but are way boring and don't bring anything new to the game. What do we have now at level 34 spreading the endgame numbers with a huge amount of xp without giving players a new spell or something, even the old ED gave us more flexibility and not this boring system that you must level every toon more 14 times in epic and legendary.

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Other things: no more 2%, no more "there is a small -medium -big" chance that this will happen. How much in a D20 dice? DDO already thew away some mechanics like rogue being useful for traps and having no sneak in reaper. DDO should be more and more D&D and not less and less D&D.

 

[Br4d]

DPS and elemental stripping as a caster only niche

Remove the nerfs from R7+ arcane damage. Remove immunity stripping from everybody but Sorcerors.

 

[Teh_Troll]

How about we just make Inquisitive's imbue, crit bonus, and active attacks work for bows too? LOL

Firing two longbows at a time literally makes as much sense as firing two crossbows at the same time.

I think you may have stumbled on the solution for casters . . . . allow them to fire two spells at the same time like inquisitive. Makes just as much sense.

 

[Teh_Troll]

It's not that ranged have an advantage, it's that melee are disadvantaged in raids. It's more tolerable in low skull raids.

That is a distinction without a difference.

 

[Nokowi]

Starting Idea: Epic feat at next added (max) level where you get (1/4 or 1/3 or 1/2) the SP you spent back after killing a mob. This only affects cap play and still presents the danger that you run out mid-battle.

Another suggestion would be that if R10 is going to be difficult other styles need to be brought to the level of casters in R10 content.

Scaling was always a poor design choice as opposed to creating actual difficulty.