Tyrande
Well-known member
What's wrong with taking hits? That's what melees are meant to do. Right now, casters don't even have a spot on a raid.
What's the best way to make arcane casters relevant at end game again?
- Thread starter torkz
- Start date
Tyrande
Well-known member
nope. capped level 34 caster. Why are there no casters posting game play hits showing consistent crits 100,000 damage in videos and such in 2025?
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Because they all swapped to inquisitive builds or they're a DC caster so they can insta-kill all the rest of the quest but then can't complete at the boss
Tyrande
Well-known member
Yup, a lot of pews-pews nowadays. Yeah, tough choice for a caster. You can build one that's good in DCs but bad to mediocre in damage, or you build for damage but bad to mediocre in DCs. Melees like DL got them easy. High DCs, high defense, high damage and high tankage. If they're pure, they have uber DCs for instant kills too. No drawbacks, no negative. Barbarians have high damage and good DCs for IK too, just not high tankage.Because they all swapped to inquisitive builds or they're a DC caster so they can insta-kill all the rest of the quest but then can't complete at the boss
And you know what's bad for lag and dungeon ethics? Often those fast sprinters run ahead and don't kill any monsters and leave the monsters looking around for them causing extreme lag for the entire server; and those monsters killing those other squishier party members that didn't sprint as fast as them. They just want to run to the end boss and kill that end boss as fast as possible...
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Synalon
Choose another soldier
Another support-type role that's now mainly gone is debuffing. Rolling back some of the boss immunities, and removing regeneration of certain kinds of stat damage (not all), could make it worthwhile having an arcane to debuff again.
We have debuffs now, of course, but they overwhelmingly make the boss take more damage. So their function is to enhance dps. And they are not mainly the purview of arcanes. All well and good, but having spells to reduce the bosses' dps would be great.
What are now static effects could be changed to scale with caster level. Bestow Curse? Waves of Exhaustion? Crushing Despair? Ray of Enfeeblement's MCL could be removed...? I remember casting all of these on bosses (oh and Symbol of Weakness) long ago. But now bosses are either simply immune, or the static effect is too negligible to notice.
We have debuffs now, of course, but they overwhelmingly make the boss take more damage. So their function is to enhance dps. And they are not mainly the purview of arcanes. All well and good, but having spells to reduce the bosses' dps would be great.
What are now static effects could be changed to scale with caster level. Bestow Curse? Waves of Exhaustion? Crushing Despair? Ray of Enfeeblement's MCL could be removed...? I remember casting all of these on bosses (oh and Symbol of Weakness) long ago. But now bosses are either simply immune, or the static effect is too negligible to notice.
Anurakh
Little Nixie
Or they recover too quickly to matter.
It doesn't seem like there's a single person on this dev team who understands casters. We're doomed.
SpartanKiller13
Why do I have 522 ddo build files
Maybe Energy Vortex for the elemental options, for bosses at least? I haven't used it enough to have a non-theoretical opinion. Storm Catcher is ok, but mostly because it has no max range lol.
Watching Light Pillar go for 1d8+8 right next to Moon Lance hitting 1d12+16 doesn't feel balanced to me lmao.
To be clear I think Magus strikes are in a decent spot, requiring the T5 and being limited. I'd also prefer variety and interesting choices between strikes. But when one of the choices is twice the DPS of another choice, it doesn't really feel like much of a choice.
When they have relevant debuffs it can be worth considering (SD strike for -5 PRR/MRR for 5 minutes? Nice!) but balancing that is difficult. Maybe a very short duration debuff that's a bunch stronger? But still, you'd only want to bring like one or two casters to apply said debuffs, alongside your ranged DPS party (ranged to avoid raid mechanics) plus enough melees/tanks to get past whatever anti-ranged mechanics a raid has.
Speaking as someone who has a DC caster alt parked for raiding, let's *not* do that. The raids that I bring that toon for (like Dryad or LVoD or THTH) there are plenty of mobs to instakill, and plenty of other raiders are like "wow I can't hit anything during this phase it's already dead when I get there" which is neato - but there's really only place for one DC caster and it sorta invalidates entire raid phases when applicable.
Would those mobs cost half the HP bar of a DPS Dragonlord? Lmao for sure, have you seen a bad PUG LVoD on like R1? Dead people everywhere, vs one PK SLA for 5 SP to kill a mob (and a nice neat disco ball for the squishies to hide in). What about a THTH run? Forgewraiths add up very fast, and aren't a great option to kill once grouped unless you can get the whole group.
But whenever there's a raid that most stuff is instakillable, it mostly becomes "boss is a HP bag + mechanics, rest of the raid is solved by the DC caster" which takes out so much of the variety of a raid. And then you end up with TON boss, which I think we all agree is a dubious design choice. Wooooow, more HP = more interesting, right? Right?
I prefer when there's some mobs instakillable and some that can be DC cast on effectively (like FoM, where IK's are great for dretches and cc works well on Vrocks - but on LN FoM runs it's party vs boss while you kill literally everything else - which takes so much mechanically out of the raid).
Anurakh
Little Nixie
Those arguments don't hold water. Trash that can be IKed by a caster is usually killed in one or two hits by a weapon user, who is also useful on bosses. Now you're saying that THTH grotesquely favors casters? Don't make me laugh. More weapon users than casters are still needed in that raid for the bloated boss. And that raid is one of the exceptions where a caster is useful; in most raids, a caster is just for show.
What's needed is to drastically change raid design so that it doesn't focus solely on bosses that favor weapon users. New bosses designed to favor magic are also needed. Why not? It's time to stop favoring only weapon users.
What's needed is to drastically change raid design so that it doesn't focus solely on bosses that favor weapon users. New bosses designed to favor magic are also needed. Why not? It's time to stop favoring only weapon users.
Tyrande
Well-known member
You know why? Because the devs want the people who took the EA epic destiny tree to heal, not to fight or DPS. :confused:
Most characters who took the EA tree are favored souls, clerics and maybe Eladrin Chaosmancers, wild mage sorcerers.
Oddly characters who took the Magus tree are characters that are cold based. Cold based Druids (a meta) or cold sorcerers, and maybe cold warlocks. Oddly, wizards mostly take the Draconic Incarnation tree along with sorcerers.
Debuffs? Certainly. I don't think any developers remaining on the DDO team understand debuffs. Remember all the spells listed by people above? Who casts Wave of Exhaustion nowadays? Who casts ray of enfeeblement or poison nowadays? Even those Dispel, Greater Dispel, Mordenkainen's Disjunction, nobody casts those spells as they don't work beyond the dispel of Spell Wards. I don't see anybody use those for raids besides the Caught in the Web one. Severlin who coded the warlock Soul Eater tree maybe understanding debuffs as the debuffs in that warlock tree is useful still now. But he's the big studio head and executive producer now. Is he still coding? Warlock has gone through 5 waves of nerfs... personally I think the nerfs are too much over to the other side.
Not only they don't understand debuffs; nobody on the dev team understands conjuration and summons. They need to seriously buff summoning spells, feats and summon control to make these spells useful, including the Magus one. Now, most of time I heard from raid leaders is to not bring them. :confused:
And of course nobody uses Epic Hell Ball, and Epic Spirit Blades. Why? Because those spells don't have the DPS or CC value, and they have very low damage and slow. Most druids and some cold casters take Burst of Glacial Ice. Why? Because it has a utility to at least CC when dancing balls does not apply. e.g. undead.
Where is Eladrin and Tonquin when we need them, eh?
THTH is from the Sharn expansion and that's 6 years old already. Heroic VOD is like the package that came with Shroud (2009?) older and was revamped 5 years ago with LVOD. Dryad came with the Feywild expansion which is 5 years old. These are old "better" designed raids.
The newer raids after those: Skellies, FoM, TON and who knows what boss in Chill of Ravenloft? But later raids have mechanics that majorly disadvantage casters and favors weapon users; the bosses are all meat bags with TON boss having what 75 million HP, the Grand Wizard 25 million HP... *sighs* Can't they design challenging bosses without being meat bags?!?
In Den of Vipers the casters have at least a role. But the same thing can be said for weapon users. Casters can IK thrash monsters. So can weapon users kill these in 1 to 3 swings of the weapon: or 1 to 3 shots of the ranged weapon. I don't see CC or debuffing needed for a DC caster; nor a DPS caster needed/required for damage.
Sure, I have seen bad PUGs LVOD R1. But a bad dragonlord can still hit and kill things. A bad caster in LVOD on R1? It's useless. That bad caster can't even make dancing balls or IK work and for a warlock; there are no dancing balls unless they play Fey; the tentacles spell the warlocks cast disappears too quickly to be useful for LVOD R1.
No, see 2 paragraphs above. I think it's not more interesting Because we have so much weapon users DPS. I hate to say this, but if the devs nerf everyone's DPS down to the arcane caster's level; then there's no need for meat bag bosses like TON.
Do people still run LN unless its lagging like crazy during US EDT/EST primetime 7:30pm->11:30pm on the new 64 bits servers? I think not.
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Jack Jarvis Esquire
Well-known member
Gee, do they really? I must have been sleeping these past years running them (even I can't pike that good!
). Wow, thanks for pointing that out! 
R10 quests are doable on any play style with a decent group. And if it's R10 solo that is the issue, well zero sympathy there I'm afraid.
And what has that got to do with high R raids which is what folks are also complaining about, in terms of boss beating, and which very few play, even, gosh, melee (and which, incidentally, was the point of my post on the subject, in case you roll a 1 on comprehension again)?
TLDR: How does pointing out folks run R10 quests have anything to do with forming a reply to my post?
Jack Jarvis Esquire
Well-known member
I agree with you up to a point (maybe I'm going senile
). It's not all weapon users that are the problem. The framing of these posts turn this into a melee Vs casters argument. It should really be ranged weapons Vs others to start with.Fixing casters won't fix the ranged advantage.
Anurakh
Little Nixie
Weapon users aren't the problem in raids, neither melee nor ranged. It's the raid design that's failing. And frankly, there is still more advantage for melees than for casters in raids.I agree with you up to a point (maybe I'm going senile
Fixing casters won't fix the ranged advantage.
Weapon users aren't the problem in R10 quests either, but rather the difference in effectiveness between weapon users and casters. So, either nerf all weapon users, or un-nerf casters. Simple.
Alpha Tester
Well-known member
Long time ago when they nerfed the ravenloft belt of spellpower they made a decision to nerf casters at endgame and the playerbase let them do it. But there is no need to nerf what is working to make another class work, all classes and all races should work, it's simple as that. Dwarf tree is an example: it should been updated 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago, 5 days ago, now and tomorrow.
Then we let them raise the cap to 34 selling back part of the power they took from the players with the excuse that they would update easier lots of chains from heroic to legendary. They didn't even added a single new spell from heroic to epics to legendary. And the bare minimum they should make was to RESPECT D&D party roles. RESPECT the knowledge of the playerbase, some with over 40 years of D&D alone, not even AD&D. Most players don't feel the huge XP amount from 30-34 now but those who stays in DDO will later and this change didn't added more fun to DDO and sprays more the playerbase at endgame. Even the new EDs didn't gave more flexibility to our builds, it locked a lot of things with the same excuse as the ravenloft belt: "if every caster use it the item shouldn't be in DDO" -> But this is a lie. Every caster used the item because it WORKED. The company shouldn't spend time nerfing what works, should spend time / manpower in the things that doesn't work. This is how they make a better balance game for all styles of gameplay. No more rogues sneaking trough a quests for a while, they kiled a way to play DDO with a simple rule change that can be changed back at anytime.
It was a design problem. A bad solution that they blamed an 19 year old designer that LAUGHED of the work of the olders DDO designers from the past as if the 19 year old kid knew more than all of them and now DDO pay the price for this bad design. Even the "silver longbow" got nerfed 15 years after the creation and it was never a game breaker item, it was only a bad design choice. Don't remember where is the video of the designer laughing about the others but these others where the ones that made DDO being the only MMO with personality that is not a WOW copycat.
Then we let them raise the cap to 34 selling back part of the power they took from the players with the excuse that they would update easier lots of chains from heroic to legendary. They didn't even added a single new spell from heroic to epics to legendary. And the bare minimum they should make was to RESPECT D&D party roles. RESPECT the knowledge of the playerbase, some with over 40 years of D&D alone, not even AD&D. Most players don't feel the huge XP amount from 30-34 now but those who stays in DDO will later and this change didn't added more fun to DDO and sprays more the playerbase at endgame. Even the new EDs didn't gave more flexibility to our builds, it locked a lot of things with the same excuse as the ravenloft belt: "if every caster use it the item shouldn't be in DDO" -> But this is a lie. Every caster used the item because it WORKED. The company shouldn't spend time nerfing what works, should spend time / manpower in the things that doesn't work. This is how they make a better balance game for all styles of gameplay. No more rogues sneaking trough a quests for a while, they kiled a way to play DDO with a simple rule change that can be changed back at anytime.
It was a design problem. A bad solution that they blamed an 19 year old designer that LAUGHED of the work of the olders DDO designers from the past as if the 19 year old kid knew more than all of them and now DDO pay the price for this bad design. Even the "silver longbow" got nerfed 15 years after the creation and it was never a game breaker item, it was only a bad design choice. Don't remember where is the video of the designer laughing about the others but these others where the ones that made DDO being the only MMO with personality that is not a WOW copycat.
LurkingVeteran
Well-known member
The belt was silly as you could get way too much spell power in heroics where melee have like 30MP.
Casters started struggling after the reaper spell scaling change and martial abilities getting +% damage.
Casters started struggling after the reaper spell scaling change and martial abilities getting +% damage.
LurkingVeteran
Well-known member
Everyone hated the DoTs as they were implemented. They were made to be super clunky w/ long wind up (long CD and have to stack 3) so they were only useful for bosses. At the same time they were DoTs, so ideal for kiting. I don't think it's fun for anyone to add another button for a "boss kite" spell with long windup. People want to use their flashy DPS rotations.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.
Who says no-one wants nerfs
The epic mantles are a much better solution to this problem (mana efficient single-target DPS). If they want to improve this aspect further via the DoTs, they should make them more fire and forget like the mantles.
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Alpha Tester
Well-known member
This mentality is the problem.
It's an PVE game, not an PVP game. In a PVE game if the company nerfs a class all the players loose. It's easier to nerf players playing reaper than to bring something new to reaper. It's easier to nerf players at lvl 30 to sell the power back on the road to 40 than to create a new spell.
It's is simple: There is no need to break what is working, they must fix things that are not working. There is a difference in it. If all players use something is because it works. Take ED changes: before the change a first lifer could have some seconds alive facing a doom, after the change they couldn't because "everyone was using it so we must cutt off".
DDO is not barbarian against sorcerer, it's the players vs the game. 24 four classes should work because we pay for it, even if 2 or 4 are the meta. Should never be: only a few of the classes works. Clerics and Favored Souls had this problem for over a decade without solution until the cleric pass. And the list goes on and one.
It's an PVE game, not an PVP game. In a PVE game if the company nerfs a class all the players loose. It's easier to nerf players playing reaper than to bring something new to reaper. It's easier to nerf players at lvl 30 to sell the power back on the road to 40 than to create a new spell.
It's is simple: There is no need to break what is working, they must fix things that are not working. There is a difference in it. If all players use something is because it works. Take ED changes: before the change a first lifer could have some seconds alive facing a doom, after the change they couldn't because "everyone was using it so we must cutt off".
DDO is not barbarian against sorcerer, it's the players vs the game. 24 four classes should work because we pay for it, even if 2 or 4 are the meta. Should never be: only a few of the classes works. Clerics and Favored Souls had this problem for over a decade without solution until the cleric pass. And the list goes on and one.
Bobbryan2
Well-known member
And that is why Karliath has 75m hit points.
Synalon
Choose another soldier
I...did not have that perception. The DoTs seemed popular to me on release. And I had them always memorised for a long long time.
Certainly they would require some tweaking, like a shorter cool down, as you say, and beefed up damage dice. Being useful for bosses is the point - boss dps is an area in which arcanes are presently lacking.