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

[Balvix]

Melees do have more effective CC: see DL (Dragon Lords). That's why arcane caster does not a raid spot or role in those raids. Back then when shroud first started in 2009 arcane casters were tasked with haste, rage, blur and greater heroism; now even that is not needed so they have no use in those push raids. They didn't create a spell called energy immunity to make arcane casters with those buffs. They are more willing to take bards LOL because at least they have buffs like songs that cannot be removed via debuffs.

I do not think the caster DPS is competitive. Please re-check your math. Do you call average 500->~2000 damage a spell with 10k-40k spell critical damage competitive to a melee crit damage of 500,000 to 800,000 and average 4 attacks of 3000->10000 damage in the same time frame? You must be joking. They are not even in the same ball park figure.

The cool down of the dragonlord stun is way longer than a casters hold or dancing ball etc, not only that, its directional. Give me a break. Caster dps IS competitive, unless you want to simply ignore the instakills. Those should count as dps as damage to be able to kill the monster via melee was done as a caster, so the same amount of monster hp was taken. People are simply mad that their spell dps vs bosses and non instakillable mobs isn't the same as a melee on those mobs.

 

[OG DM]

Revert about 50-70% of the R7+ nerf ONLY.

Then look at it again ~3 months later.

I don't want to see another "adjustment" that cuts entire playstyles in half across all levels and difficulty settings because of a previous screw up in very narrow character level + difficulty setting portion of the game.

You'll know you did this right when no one else provides any feedback afterward save for the few people who play that setting at those levels.

 

[Balvix]

What game are you playing? 'Cause it's not DDO. Take 10 nukers with a tank and healer into R1 VOD and do the same with 10 melee. Melee will finish the raid in a fraction of the time.

Mainly due to survivability. Casters have a tendency to be squishy, whereas melees build to take a hit because they know that if they are going to be able to kill anything they will have to be close enough to it to take a hit or 2. People seem to be ignoring the actual differences between the classes in favor of a binary 1 to 1 comparison which will never be truly comparable. Melees were in a bad place for YEARS, while casters shined, I don't think that casters need to be nerfed for melees to do well, but I do think that casters were outperforming for a very long time and people got used to it, now that things have been dialed back a little, people no longer feel godlike and it makes them unhappy. There's a great quote I believe applies here, "when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression".

 

[Balvix]

Revert about 50-70% of the R7+ nerf ONLY.

Then look at it again ~3 months later.

I don't want to see another "adjustment" that cuts entire playstyles in half across all levels and difficulty settings because of a previous screw up in very narrow character level + difficulty setting portion of the game.

You'll know you did this right when no one else provides any feedback afterward save for the few people who play that setting at those levels.

I would be ok with this, the 50% anyways. I don't want people to quit over losing their ubertoons and feeling like they have to run something they dislike just to be competitive. However, I really don't want to go back to the days where casters made melee absolutely useless besides hp sponges to take the hits meant for casters.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

I do not think the caster DPS is competitive. Please re-check your math. Do you call average 500->~2000 damage a spell with 10k-40k spell critical damage competitive to a melee crit damage of 500,000 to 800,000 and average 4 attacks of 3000->10000 damage in the same time frame? You must be joking. They are not even in the same ball park figure.

These numbers hurt my brain... Are you comparing a heroic level caster to a capped adrenaline barb?

A good dps caster should be hitting 10k minimum non-crit for filler spells and 100k crits for ruins/etc.
A good dps melee will be hitting roughly the same 10k/100k without adrenaline.

 

[mikarddo]

Nah, sorry, when you can instakill or cc then instakill 90% of mobs then you are most definitely not irrelevant. Just because you aren't the highest boss dps in the group doesn't make you useless. I still stand by my original post. I don't care if melees are killing things quickly, they aren't killing at instakill speed most of the time. Raids are a different animal, as a caster, you can still instakill a ton of mobs, but you have to actually deal with sp management. I have no problem with this, when im on a caster life, I simply don't salvo nonstop due to shrine constraints. There is no point that I'm missing, I'm simply saying its wrong.

I strongly disagree. If you are in R10 with a couple of strong AoE melee dps they often kill 6-10 mobs in the time I can cast 2 spells - and they probably even killed several mobs I could not insta kill at all!

Its not about casting non-stop or not. Its about even casting before the mobs are dead (or just a few reapers / champs / bosses remain that you cannot insta kill).

If you have not seen dps melee that can often run ahead alone and wipe out groups of mobs in R10 (not always, but very often) then your experience differs from mine which can explain why we have different viewpoints.

 

[SpartanKiller13]

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

I mean both melee and casters are somewhere in the ~double damage via crits area

70% crit chance with +80% crit damage = 2.26 average multiplier

17-20/x5 (+3 on 19-20) = 2.1 average multiplier
15-20/x5 (+2 on 19-20) = 2.4 average multiplier

For the record, these cost 3-5 feats (IC, OC, Patience - which costs AS, Knight's Training etc, Precision). And are usually the defining requirement of a split (like T5 DL or FB, or needing Holy Sword on a Pally). Also dictate ED choices (like T5 Fury is a lot worse as SWF).

I think the biggest difference is active attacks; where Pluck, Hunt's End, or Quick Cutter can be a huge repeatable source of DPS, many caster strike just aren't that. Strike a Chord or the T5 Magus strikes are the only ones I've seen that seem reasonable, and they're not part of popular trees for most casters.

We dont want the R7 nerf undone. We want it applied to martial dps too. Mobs already die to fast for the game to be fun with a good group in R10.
For quests I dont think anything else should be done for now. But do that already and lets evaluate in 3-6 months.

Raids are a tougher nut to crack.
- New raids need mobs that insta kill well but are a real pain to dps. Having the only mobs that insta kill also be easy to dps does not help casters.
- New raids need mobs that CC well but we are true pain to kill, kite or offtank.
- New raids need an accessible shrine (help everyone but help casters that run oom more)

Further, I would suggest upping the cooldown time on action boosts from 30s to 45s. Martial dps have so bloody many boosts that they are almost always up in quests and action boosts do so little for casters.

R7+ nerf across the board! Whooo!

Haha have you run like ToN on LN on a DC caster? Wow it feels great lol. Not so much at higher difficulties though, but esp when the raid was new and we were all on alts...

3. The initial tick of a DoT doesn't do damage. You have to wait 2 seconds. Some DoTs allow you to apply several stacks to maximize the damage. But each time you stack you're nullifying a tick of damage. There's also the UI issue of seeing how long your DoT has remaining so you can refresh it before losing multiple built-up stacks at once. DDO's UI for buffs/debuffs and targeting multiple mobs leaves much to be desired.

4. DoTs don't do enough damage fast enough. They were introduced many years ago as a mana-efficient way of doing damage against bosses. Mana management simply isn't a thing anymore between all of the shrines, cost reductions and mana gain clickies available. The only time mana is constrained is in high reaper raids which take a much longer time to complete compared to quests because there are no shrines and you will exhaust your mana regain clickies. They're a solution that no longer has a problem outside of niche content.

Having the initial application also proc the damage would go a long ways towards making caster DoT's more viable.

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.

Maybe for like newer raids, but last year when I was last playing Sorc I could solo LVoD fairly alright; survivability was the issue for me, I died to 2nd orthons a few times using Draconic mantle, and succeeded with US T5 (took 30 mins instead of 15 though lmao). SP wasn't an issue, even with just ERoSS at the time.

Not trying to flex, I'm not a great caster and that raid isn't super hard; but with a bit of management (or use of Primal mantle) you can stretch your SP a lot further.

 

[droid327]

where Pluck, Hunt's End, or Quick Cutter can be a huge repeatable source of DPS, many caster strike just aren't that. Strike a Chord or the T5 Magus strikes are the only ones I've seen that seem reasonable, and they're not part of popular trees for most casters.

Its kinda ironic that they nerfed Dbreath for casters, then shortly after buffed QC for melee to pretty much the same level of efficacy and ubiquity

 

[Monkey_Archer]

Maybe for like newer raids, but last year when I was last playing Sorc I could solo LVoD fairly alright; survivability was the issue for me, I died to 2nd orthons a few times using Draconic mantle, and succeeded with US T5 (took 30 mins instead of 15 though lmao). SP wasn't an issue, even with just ERoSS at the time.

Not trying to flex, I'm not a great caster and that raid isn't super hard; but with a bit of management (or use of Primal mantle) you can stretch your SP a lot further.

I've been playing dps caster for a while now in all the new raids on R1. I think the only time I drank pots was to help recover a lag wipe.

For those struggling with spell point management, here's a breakdown of what I guess could be called 'best practices' for bringing a nuker to raids:

1) Endgame casters should have close to 5k base spell points + 3k from spell storing rings/bable for 8k total (or ~10k on a sorc)

2) Stack all the efficient metamagic abilities for maximise heighten and quicken. These metas should be essentially free to turn on and leave on for all spells. Empower and Intensify should be toggled depending on the spell/SLA and how much you can afford to make these efficient as well.

3) Take as much reduced spell cost as you can get. ie Power store item, Draconic cores, etc..

4) Stack as much reduced cooldown abilities as possible. ie 10% shadowdancer, 10% draconic, and 5-10% filigree. This part is usually overlooked, but being able to cast your more efficient heavy hitting spells more often also helps save spell points over time.

5) For reaper raids, use the Reaper's Efficiency boost. -45% spell cost is HUGE, and essentially lets your spell points last 50% longer. You wont notice the missing 45 profane spell power, and you can even slot 25 permanently in gear.

Do all the above and you should be able to cast a full dps rotation nonstop for at least 3 minutes, (or 5 minutes on reaper), which is generally enough to finish the boss phase of any raid up to r1.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

Again, why are we even talking about the R7+ nerfs in relation to raids?

Very few folks run R7+ raids, and those that do are unlikely to be melee because a soul stone does zero DPS.

It's entirely arguable that casters already enjoy a more beneficial time in high R raids than melee. Because melee die a lot.

Meanwhile, ranged toons look on at these same arguements in different threads time and again*, and laugh up their sleeves.

If you want to be competitive in the toughest content in this game right now, best bin your wands and your chibs all, and go get yourself a couple of Uzi's. That's where the real action is folks.

Now, could someone please cue the Beegees, Staying Alive? I don't got the techie skills.







* And yes, the irony is I'm doing it too.

 

[LurkingVeteran]

Easiest fix: They should make everyone, or at least ranged, use the caster reaper curve in R7+. People complain that R10 is too easy anyway.

Reason: I think the fundamental problem is that they added the caster reaper penalty just before adding +% damage on martial abilities. This was an effective +30% martial DPS on top of a -30% caster DPS R10 change. They also improved several melee AoE substantially, and gave ranged their own AoE, chipping away at the AoE niche of casters.

The other problem - large variance in caster DPS:
Martial CC (while higher CD) can also reach high DCs much more easily via trances. Meanwhile all caster DCs are balanced around them having IKs, which means that unless you can build a high DC your caster is going to be very annoying to play. I think this is silly. DPS spells should have inherent +5 or +10 DC compared to death effects, otherwise caster DCs are going to be impossible to balance. As it is now you need all of good DCs, pierce any immunity (or using secondary element) and fully kitted out spell power and crit gear, on top of the spell points/efficiency.

I don't think the difference in DPS is enornomous now for fully geared out characters in top builds, but casters need to go all out to even be within the same ballpark and not every build has the gear, spell point pool or efficiency for this. On a ranged you don't have to worry about this. You stack your AF, trance etc on a first lifer Inq, and it's going to be maybe 70% as effective as a good ranged character. For a caster the variance is much greater, being maybe 20-70% as effective depending on gear and build. If you reduced the importance of DCs for DPS spells, I think you could reduce this variance for very little downside.

 

[erethizon1]

Ideally the variance between the highest DPS build and the lowest DPS build would be much smaller. Since no one wants nerfs, that means making weaker builds much stronger. Perhaps front loading spell power and melee/ranged power so that earlier points do a lot more than later points could help. Also, the idea behind spells was that you have limited use (spell points) and so do much greater burst damage each time you cast a spell. That is no longer true so either spells need to be made way stronger (so that someone using a chunk of spell points is doing significantly more damage than someone using an infinite use ability that costs nothing) or spells need to cost way, way, way fewer spell points. Essentially, if casters are not going to do obscene damage when casting their strongest spells (like melee do when using their best abilities) then casters need to be able to cast their best spells an unlimited number of times even in the longest raids.

While I personally prefer to cast fewer spells and have them do more damage, people both don't like running out of spell power and non-casters don't like it when casters are able to do way more damage than them in the same period of time, so greatly reducing the number of spell points each spell uses (even when all metamagics are on) seems like the most basic of starting points so, at the very least, they can continue casting their most powerful magic non-stop (since they are still weaker than other classes when doing that so there is no need to hamper them with limited spell points).

 

[GrizzlyOso]

Again, why are we even talking about the R7+ nerfs in relation to raids?

Very few folks run R7+ raids, and those that do are unlikely to be melee because a soul stone does zero DPS.

It's entirely arguable that casters already enjoy a more beneficial time in high R raids than melee. Because melee die a lot.

Meanwhile, ranged toons look on at these same arguements in different threads time and again*, and laugh up their sleeves.

If you want to be competitive in the toughest content in this game right now, best bin your wands and your chibs all, and go get yourself a couple of Uzi's. That's where the real action is folks.

Now, could someone please cue the Beegees, Staying Alive? I don't got the techie skills.







* And yes, the irony is I'm doing it too.

Because the thread is about end game and a lot of people run r10 quests at end game, jack jarvis.

 

[Synalon]

To be fair about DOTs: ages ago, they released Eladar's Electric Surge and Niac's Biting Cold, and these spells did indeed become a solid option for DPSing quest and raid bosses. Perhaps, if they were beefed up, they could become so again.

Since no one wants nerfs,

Who says no-one wants nerfs

 

[SpartanKiller13]

Its kinda ironic that they nerfed Dbreath for casters, then shortly after buffed QC for melee to pretty much the same level of efficacy and ubiquity

Yeah, esp given both worked super well as AoE pack cleaners

That said, QC is a little worse at pack clearing and a little better at boss DPS. It's def an outlier, and def makes it hard to pick anything else.

Really, that's what I hate about the current ED balance - choices where there's a clear pick. There's a lot less of tradeoffs, less "well this is better for quests vs that for raids" etc like just take QC and profit as a melee, use FS/Magister strikes as a caster, Pluck + HE as ranged, etc etc. Other stuff is like for niche usage (Drifting Lotus for cc, SD stuff for debuff, Consecration for party buff, etc)...

 

[Wizard]

Really, that's what I hate about the current ED balance - choices where there's a clear pick. There's a lot less of tradeoffs, less "well this is better for quests vs that for raids" etc like just take QC and profit as a melee, use FS/Magister strikes as a caster,

Hmm but FS is only sonic, so for bards and maybe air savants going sonic as main. Magister epic strike is only for cold and negative. That was the advantage of the once functional dragonbreath: you could make it almost any element.

Are there no good epic strikes for fire, lighting, acid/poison, light/alignment, arcane/untyped ?

 

[mikarddo]

Who says no-one wants nerfs

I certainly want nerfs much more than buffs for the good of the game. Claiming noone wants nerfs is hillarious when many posters are asking for just that

 

[Abramax]

1) the high reaper spell nerf removed?

Absolutly, it will also help builds with imbue scaling with spell power

2) better quest/raid design?

Better design for characters :
(it s harder to get DC with casters compared to everything with DCs in the game)
- spells (new spells ? rework ? updates ? new mechanics with natural spell crit chance and spell crit damage for each spells ?)
- Epic Feats (hellball ? Ruin ? G Ruin ? Master of ?) / "Master of" feats should be merged with epic destiny feats 'epic spell power' AND gaining SLAs for all correspponding spells
- Heroic Feats ( spell focus =+1dc / greater spell focus=+1dc) when tactical feats are +2/+4/+6/+8 for a total of +20 DC
- epic strikes (additionnal damage/effects based on caster levels ?) (RIP Dragon Breath)
- Enhancements / Epic destinies
- Equipement (spell crit damage multiplier ?) all weapons or spell lore items should have a native % bonus to spell critical damage.

3) something else?

A dev listening to the community
Casters are behind for years now

 

[Tyrande]

The cool down of the dragonlord stun is way longer than a casters hold or dancing ball etc, not only that, its directional. Give me a break. Caster dps IS competitive, unless you want to simply ignore the instakills. Those should count as dps as damage to be able to kill the monster via melee was done as a caster, so the same amount of monster hp was taken. People are simply mad that their spell dps vs bosses and non instakillable mobs isn't the same as a melee on those mobs.

Sure, then make all non-boss instant killable, e.g. the earth elemental and fire elementals in TON , then we can talk. In raids there are still *a-lot* and I meant *a-lot* non instant killable on anything that's not legendary normal. Those non-instant killable monsters can each take up half the mana bar if exclusively solo them. Would it take half of the HP of the well gear'd tanking Dragonlord? I seriously doubt it.

And let me not get to the Amrath Defiler of the Just raid. I don't think anything is instant killable in that raid on reaper.

 

[Tyrande]

Mainly due to survivability. Casters have a tendency to be squishy, whereas melees build to take a hit because they know that if they are going to be able to kill anything they will have to be close enough to it to take a hit or 2. People seem to be ignoring the actual differences between the classes in favor of a binary 1 to 1 comparison which will never be truly comparable. Melees were in a bad place for YEARS, while casters shined, I don't think that casters need to be nerfed for melees to do well, but I do think that casters were outperforming for a very long time and people got used to it, now that things have been dialed back a little, people no longer feel godlike and it makes them unhappy. There's a great quote I believe applies here, "when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression".

Did you remember the time when casters were in a very bad place 10 years ago? They were tasked with Haste and GH, and just mass hold for the melees that DPS the mobs. Did you remember that period before the DOTS and level 9 damage spells were created? Casters was in a very bad spot for a few years bad when Shroud was new; no epic levels, and level 16-20 was the end game. Non of the so called epic dungeons monsters were instant killable, and everything was death warded at start.... very bad time. And of course, we have now: subpar damage. It's not god-like that we're asking, we just ask that we have a spot or role on a raid that's more than R1... not just get outright rejected... and of course, not so squishy.... In D&D, casters are definitely not like this as we have in DDO. DDO has deviated so much from D&D and it has made playing casters unfun; and let me not mention about the lag. Its mega un-fun on top of that. At least in lag melees can usually tank them no problem; but casters, dead without moving.

Also, let's not forget other casters like warlocks, favored souls. Warlocks some of them are build to just pew-pew, and their pew-pew damage is just pathetic. Their instant kills are also bad if they build for pew-pew or ES. There were like at least 5 nerfs on warlock and two nerfs on favored souls. Previously they had infinite wings, now they are just 5. The Angel of Vengeance core nerfed from caster levels. If one is built for being in the Beacon tree, they can't even solo R1 dungeons for leveling up. That's pathetic! For a melee, no such problems except maybe pure tanks.