Why are Rogues better Spellcasters than actual Spellcasters?

[Malekithe]

Better CC and damage with.....Spells, why?

Why can melee and ranged multiclass as they wish, mixing, matching, theorycrafting, exploring all the depth and nuance of character design in DDO, but casters must single class level 20 or be even more pathetic than they already are, spells fail, no damage. Unless of course you shoehorn in 4 levels of wild mage or arcane trickster. Yes, that was what excited me most about arcane trickster, the ability to get mixed magics from three levels and 12 ap... Only to see spellcasters in general made obsolete entirely. Why can't spellcasting characters multiclass effectively like every other role?

Why does spell damage drop so precipitously from elite to r1 and melee/ranged damage barely change? Is there a rationale, a logical reason for this, some fantasy physics that says magic is less impactful in more dire situations? Can you name one fantasy milieu, genre, online game, MMO, or tabletop rpg where magic functions arbitrarily LESS in harder content? Or does the wizard risk damnation and swing the tide of battle with a single well-placed spell?

Or rather does this illogical nonsense stem from the veteran DDO players that the devs serve, who got bullied by casters on the tabletop? Who being socially awkward nerds in their youth sought to play out their fantasies being some sword wielding musclebound hero only to find that a few sessions later the wizard and cleric in the group made them insignificant. And here now in an online version of that same game, we see those same gamers getting revenge on those wizards and clerics that aggravated their insecurities. Or is it simply that the whining of the whack-a-moling pew pew'ers is so much louder because there are so many more of them?

 

[Hakoist]

Maybe a new archtype that have DC scaling with a skill (spellcraft for wiz and alc) next year

The current DC system is too big that they can’t abandon entirely. The DC item progression should scale higher..

Let the low life caster able to pass the DC requirement 120DC is pretty hard to attain…

 

[torkz]

Better CC and damage with.....Spells, why?

Why can melee and ranged multiclass as they wish, mixing, matching, theorycrafting, exploring all the depth and nuance of character design in DDO, but casters must single class level 20 or be even more pathetic than they already are, spells fail, no damage. Unless of course you shoehorn in 4 levels of wild mage or arcane trickster. Yes, that was what excited me most about arcane trickster, the ability to get mixed magics from three levels and 12 ap... Only to see spellcasters in general made obsolete entirely. Why can't spellcasting characters multiclass effectively like every other role?

Why does spell damage drop so precipitously from elite to r1 and melee/ranged damage barely change? Is there a rationale, a logical reason for this, some fantasy physics that says magic is less impactful in more dire situations? Can you name one fantasy milieu, genre, online game, MMO, or tabletop rpg where magic functions arbitrarily LESS in harder content? Or does the wizard risk damnation and swing the tide of battle with a single well-placed spell?

Or rather does this illogical nonsense stem from the veteran DDO players that the devs serve, who got bullied by casters on the tabletop? Who being socially awkward nerds in their youth sought to play out their fantasies being some sword wielding musclebound hero only to find that a few sessions later the wizard and cleric in the group made them insignificant. And here now in an online version of that same game, we see those same gamers getting revenge on those wizards and clerics that aggravated their insecurities. Or is it simply that the whining of the whack-a-moling pew pew'ers is so much louder because there are so many more of them?

As a veteran DDO player who loves casters (and always played wizards in tabletop D&D), I was enjoying your rant until the last paragraph...*** is that all about, haha.

 

[Quartis]

arcane trickster is better in single target dmg which is a rogue thing, it is magic rogue afterall. And it is the new shiny thing. DDO is very slow in upgrading old things, when they do at all.

One shouldn't multiclass spellcaster because of mainly 3 reasons:
caster level is for each class its own thing, so by multiclassing your spells become weaker. unlike Base Attack Bonus (BAB)
You lose higher lvl spells, in DDo lower spellLvL spells are much weaker than higher lvl spells (example acid blast vs acid well). They have worser dmg per caster lvl and are often limited by max caster level lower than 20. (which makes mixed magic very bad)
^^ or you delay getting this higher spells which makes you weaker during leveling.
Caster capstones are good and you dont get any as multi class caster.

Lesser reasons
Another problem is that caster powerUp stats are far to seperated/specialised there is fire, light, chaos, cold, flesh heal, robot heal and many more spell powers crit-bonus, school DCs. You would need 2 caster classes that synergy at all in these.
casting is slow and you already have many spells to cast, that other class spells would not fit so good on your already filled hot-bars.
One could get some healing as dmg caster but that is kind of defeated by the almost free accesable heals in epic.
You lose spell points (blue bar), each level in the same class give more spell points as previous levels, Therefore 10 Druid & 10 Cleric has less spell points than 20 lvl Cleric/Druid.

R7+ is where magic is nerfed down "by balancing" compared to weapons, not R1.

 

[Ungermax]

Or is it simply that the whining of the whack-a-moling pew pew'ers is so much louder because there are so many more of them?

I let my crossbow do the talking

 

[Konsumer]

Maybe a new archtype that have DC scaling with a skill (spellcraft for wiz and alc) next year

The current DC system is too big that they can’t abandon entirely. The DC item progression should scale higher..

Let the low life caster able to pass the DC requirement 120DC is pretty hard to attain…

It's not just DCs that are a major problem. Spell resistance and spell pen are insurmountable mountains too. What good is a high spell DC when your spell pen can't overcome the SR?

 

[Teh_Troll]

I sense much potential in this thread.

 

[Kimbere]

SSG have been victims of DDO's unnecessary, increasing complexity for years.


They can't release updates without something in it nearly always being broken or bugged.

They can't or won't fix long-standing bugs because they either don't know how or they know it will take too much dev time.

They spend a lot of time creating and releasing virtually useless items.

They can't even play their own game well at a high level.

Etc., etc.


You can't balance what you don't understand.

 

[EinarMal]

I don't mind Arcane Trickster being decent, at least we didn't get another absolutely useless archetype that no one plays.

I am also a vet who loves casters, so not sure what is up with that last paragraph might reconsider that one.

We will see what happens from now until the new expansion. If they don't re-work casters at all in that time, I am going to be pretty disappointed at that point.

 

[Drachmor]

Or rather does this illogical nonsense stem from the veteran DDO players that the devs serve, who got bullied by casters on the tabletop? Who being socially awkward nerds in their youth sought to play out their fantasies being some sword wielding musclebound hero only to find that a few sessions later the wizard and cleric in the group made them insignificant. And here now in an online version of that same game, we see those same gamers getting revenge on those wizards and clerics that aggravated their insecurities. Or is it simply that the whining of the whack-a-moling pew pew'ers is so much louder because there are so many more of them?

What are you on about XD

 

[Teh_Troll]

I don't mind Arcane Trickster being decent, at least we didn't get another absolutely useless archetype that no one plays.

I am also a vet who loves casters, so not sure what is up with that last paragraph might reconsider that one.

We will see what happens from now until the new expansion. If they don't re-work casters at all in that time, I am going to be pretty disappointed at that point.

Decent is fine, but should it out-nuke sorcs?

 

[EinarMal]

Decent is fine, but should it out-nuke sorcs?

I mean, at least it has pros/cons. It is definitely better for a single target, but worse for AOE. It also has pretty limited CC, assuming you are ignoring DCs and just maxing single-target DPS. You can choose a stolen spell CC, but you have to give up other good options, and they have long cooldowns.

I think they are pretty well balanced, they are really good at single target, mediocre at best AOE, relatively limited healing options, and limited CC options.

I've considered switching, but honestly, I like having healing/cc/dps, so I prefer Druid/Stormsinger. I still think they are more versatile, even if the single-target DPS is worse.

That is coming from someone with triple comp, gear etc, so that I can hit DCs needed to work at cap. If you are not in that situation, I would be very likely to switch to Trickster.

 

[Wizard]

Why does spell damage drop so precipitously from elite to r1 and melee/ranged damage barely change? Is there a rationale, a logical reason for this, some fantasy physics that says magic is less impactful in more dire situations? Can you name one fantasy milieu, genre, online game, MMO, or tabletop rpg where magic functions

Indeed, I can't think of any MMO or RPG where casters except healers are not wanted at all in high end content and get weaker than other classes at high level. In most RPGs spell damage is just as useful as martial (depending on situation) and in the very few where this isn't the case, mages are still crucial for success due to their buffs, debuffs, crowdcontrol.

Yet in DDO raids casters are not even wanted /optimal for difficulties as low as hard (!). And underperform in terms of damage in quests too.

Balance has been off for YEARS.

Trickster shows that base damage of spells is too low (the vast majority of their damage comes from ambush) and spell DCs are too hard to attain which is why trickster uses DD skill.

Or is it simply that the whining of the whack-a-moling pew pew'ers is so much louder because there are so many more of them?

I don't understand the "us" VS "them" attitude.

DDO is a purely PVE game, wouldn't you want everyone to be able perform well to contribute to the party's / raids success? And doesn't almost everyone play all different archetypes at least occassionally?

Caster DPS being imposible and gearing / DCs too hard deprives many players of the variety of playing caster archetypes more often than for a quick TR.

 

[saekee]

For Trickster—I think the devs hadn’t calculated upon players leveraging the mechanic tree and simply holding an xbow for more sneak dice.

DCs are tough in general I guess. I have my assassinate on my rogue at 130 in reaper with Tensers going every 2 minutes or so. Then you run into a deathblocked champ etc and ofc you are a melee. Trickster really seems to lend itself to keep distant and pop em. It doesn’t need CC anyway when other players are contributing too—biggest weak spot seems to be defenses.

The spellpower nerf hurts in high reaper.

I don’t know what the solution is.

 

[Diaari]

It's SSG's bad habit. The best class/race/item/etc tends to be whatever they released most recently. They rarely stop to go back and improve the other classes/races/items to meet the new quality bar.

 

[Wizard]

The best class/race/item/etc tends to be whatever they released most recently.

Not really, there is also Dark Apostate/Acolyte of the Skin/Dragon Disciple etc.

And it's not about class / race ... but about a whole archetype with 9 possible caster classes (out of 15 classes) being too weak.

 

[DDO Noob]

Just do what many of us do and play either ranged or melee and pretend spellcasters don't exist to have fun. There's still heaps of builds that fit these 2 categories.

 

[Wizard]

That's not a solution.

What if someone's favorite archetype is caster and always has been, in any RPG?

Just quit?

Just quit would cost SSG a lot more money by lost sales, than the money it would take to upgrade casters.

 

[DDO Noob]

That's not a solution.

What if someone's favorite archetype is caster and always has been, in any RPG?

Just quit?

Just quit would cost SSG a lot more money by lost sales, than the money it would take to upgrade casters.

I didn't say it was a good solution. There's plenty of us that can get by without playing a dedicated spellcaster and explore other builds to have fun. I do feel sorry for those that want to play mid-high reaper with a decent spellcaster build in a competitive way and hope like others that there can be some fixes. But frankly I can't see SSG doing anything about it, so I'll just enjoy the builds that are playable.

 

[IcyLokidottir]

I am beginning to doubt some of these people have ever played a caster to be fair