Nerf this

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-XXX-
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Re: Nerf this

Post by -XXX- » Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:48 pm

Making the EDK useless won't help much. This is more of a game of minor tweaks than anything, so let's not get carried away here.

As much as I absolutely hate all of the nerf propositions made in this thread so far, I'm willing to admit that the EDK could probably be de-plugged from the Conju (Necro) focus line of feats and still be good.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by Astral » Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:57 pm

-XXX- wrote:
Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:48 pm
Making the EDK useless won't help much. This is more of a game of minor tweaks than anything, so let's not get carried away here.

As much as I absolutely hate all of the nerf propositions made in this thread so far, I'm willing to admit that the EDK could probably be de-plugged from the Conju (Necro) focus line of feats and still be good.
Would it make it more vulnerable to mord+wof combo? Would it lower it's insane damage? would it lower it's ab by about... 3 or something? If so, then it's a start. But it would also mean it becomes even more of a "pick this feat no matter what" cause right now people who dont focus necro/conjure hesitate a bit before picking that feat. So it's a nerf but over all we'll see more EDKs on every possible caster and it would become a terrible meme at that point.
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Re: Nerf this

Post by Disciprine Come From Within » Thu Apr 11, 2019 8:06 pm

I don't think anyone is helped if we make EDK useless. I think some of the suggestions also do a lot of harm to the classes that are the most vulnerable using it. The KISS method would be best. Make it easier to remove if you are a magic user, probably weighed towards Epic Spell Focus Abjuration. Either remove the haste or keep the movement speed down so escape is easier, and either tone down the durability, or tone down the damage. If the durability was toned down, I would suggest raising the AC, and reducing the 35% damage immunity. It's AC is pathetically low as it is.

Tweaks towards damage would be as simple as removing the weaponmaster like traits it uses with it's claws (battleaxe). 16-20x3 is a bit much with it's damage capabilities. But it should not be both. Too much nerfing and the feat can be made worthless too easily. Keep it fair, keep it with counters in mind for magic, and keep it as a summon you can actually plan against without the "universal constant."

As to the question about Necro/Conjuration bonuses to the summon, it gets:

+1 to all skills the summon has ranks in
+1 hit die worth of hit points (meaning, as if the creature was 1 level above in terms of HP, both adding base class HP and CON modifier).
+1 AB
+1 Damage
+1 AC
+1 Universal Saves.

So it's +3 to all of that. It's actually not that big a deal usually. But combined with Epic Summon progression AND the fact it's base stats are really good, and it becomes an issue.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by Dr. B » Thu Apr 11, 2019 8:07 pm

Weighing in here. Holy Sword's dispel property should definitely be nerfed. Dispel on hit on every hit on a 55 AB is way overtuned. The Paladin's long wind-up time isn't a good argument for keeping it: other classes and builds besides paladins have a long wind-up time, but none of them are capable of something as powerful as that.

I think the solution to EDK is simply to tone down the dragon's damage modestly.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by Astral » Fri Apr 12, 2019 7:00 am

Dr. B wrote:
Thu Apr 11, 2019 8:07 pm
Weighing in here. Holy Sword's dispel property should definitely be nerfed. Dispel on hit on every hit on a 55 AB is way overtuned. The Paladin's long wind-up time isn't a good argument for keeping it: other classes and builds besides paladins have a long wind-up time, but none of them are capable of something as powerful as that.
Even if you hit on every attack with that 55 ab there's a bigger chance you just straight up kill your target before the dispel on-hit actually dispelling /anything at all/ when fighting against mundanes. The wind-up time is a pretty good argument cause only paladins, divine-bards and battle clerics have this long of wind-up times and all 3 of them are equally devastating in pvp if you give them that free time to wind-up and that's their drawback - dont give them free 4-5 rounds to do that.
Dr. B wrote:
Thu Apr 11, 2019 8:07 pm
I think the solution to EDK is simply to tone down the dragon's damage modestly.
We were toying with suggestion to somehow limit it's use to make it more situational and costly to use on the strategic aspect cause it's a 1 feat investment press to win botton. Nerfing it's damage may impact PvE more than necessary. But, ultimately your idea is likely what will happen eventually, I guess.
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Re: Nerf this

Post by Alantar » Fri Apr 12, 2019 8:40 am

I know balance can't be built around "poor builds", but pure casters with no "dip tricks" (UMD, disc, etc.) will suffer a lot if the EDK is nerfed again (back in the days it cast a mord instead of a gbreach).

Another builds will be well, even with a worse version of the EDK, but if I had to nerf if, I'd do it in a way that depends from the character class or levels.

Is this the time to give a little perk to 28 wizards/sorcerers?

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Re: Nerf this

Post by AnselHoenheim » Fri Apr 12, 2019 8:49 am

The problem with the EDK, along with its high damage, high pool of HP, high amount of attacks, and high speed, it's also the capability of being impossible to turn the dragon down because of his SR, you have to cast Mordenkaiser first on the dragon and then pray to RNGjesus for a good Word of Faith roll to disabling him entirely...

So my counter-idea for EDK are two options for the nerfing:

- Remove his perma-haste, and fear aura, entirely from the dragon, so the mage / caster has to be forced to properly haste the dragon along dealing with the battle, so anyone with some strategy can outrun the dragon to try to hit the caster.

- The other option is to tone down the natural spell resistance from the dragon or remove it completely, so it can be easier to remove it, it will allow melee characters and non casters with UMD with some preparation to be able to remove a dragon if they use a mord scroll beforehand.

I admit that removing his damage/crits and his high pool of health could instead turn the feat useless in terms of PvE, when it's already toned down and not very useful if you compare it will gate spells or elemental summons

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Re: Nerf this

Post by LIonGraphiK » Fri Apr 12, 2019 3:29 pm

I agree with a lot of what people have been saying, however...

A lot of people would have spent a lot of time devoted to making such builds and many players, personal friends that I know, have left the community entirely because of consistent changes to classes. I know that a lot of people would just shrug this off, it's their loss after all? My point is, that if nerfs are to be made, we have to be very careful to ensure that classes aren't made redundant. We also don't want anybody to leave or feel insecure that if they spend weeks/months building a class, it isn't going to be nerfed all of a sudden... I can also imagine that the balance in this community is being monitored and that these things take time to implement.

Can we not just trust and let the Arelith team do their job? I'm sure that the feedback from us is helpful. However, nerfing one thing means possibly having to do a lot of work to re-balance other things. Nerfing EDK /could/ mean fine-tuning a lot of other classes, to make sure that the average caster doesn't feel completely useless. Having fun roleplay and being decent in combat go hand-in-hand for a majority of players, for this I am certain. The developers are doing their best to make sure that everyone is happy and they can only do so much. There will always be people that are disappointed and sadly, that is just how the world works.
by Irongron » 08 Dec 2018 20:41
I do not mind people easily being able to escape PvP situations where they are clearly outmatched.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by Astral » Fri Apr 12, 2019 5:18 pm

LIonGraphiK wrote:
Fri Apr 12, 2019 3:29 pm
I agree with a lot of what people have been saying, however...

A lot of people would have spent a lot of time devoted to making such builds and many players, personal friends that I know, have left the community entirely because of consistent changes to classes. I know that a lot of people would just shrug this off, it's their loss after all? My point is, that if nerfs are to be made, we have to be very careful to ensure that classes aren't made redundant. We also don't want anybody to leave or feel insecure that if they spend weeks/months building a class, it isn't going to be nerfed all of a sudden... I can also imagine that the balance in this community is being monitored and that these things take time to implement.

Can we not just trust and let the Arelith team do their job? I'm sure that the feedback from us is helpful. However, nerfing one thing means possibly having to do a lot of work to re-balance other things. Nerfing EDK /could/ mean fine-tuning a lot of other classes, to make sure that the average caster doesn't feel completely useless. Having fun roleplay and being decent in combat go hand-in-hand for a majority of players, for this I am certain. The developers are doing their best to make sure that everyone is happy and they can only do so much. There will always be people that are disappointed and sadly, that is just how the world works.
There's never one perfect balance in a game except in Starcraft 1. I believe Irongron said in the past that he welcomes any code contributor who is willing to devote their time to polish mechanics and strive for balance in the idealistic meaning of it. This server is in constant change and I'm sorry to say but that's something players should adjust to and never build a character with the thought of "there, I got my perfect concept and build ready to go and I dont need to worry about it ever being changed" because it will be changed sooner or later. And change is good for the server and a part of why it remained the most active and vivid server during nearly a decade of NWN being in sort of hibernation until EE. Saying that there will always be people disappointed and that's how the world works so we should just leave things as they are, is how you lose ALL your players eventually, not just those who are unable to adapt.

Obviously every buff/nerf idealistically is done with the intention of keeping all the effected classes/build relevant. Some times in the aftermath it turns out as more successful, sometimes less successful. But trying is important and I truly appreciate and thank anyone who is willing to spend their precious time coding balance tweaks when they could RP instead.
Last edited by Astral on Fri Apr 12, 2019 5:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Nerf this

Post by Rook » Fri Apr 12, 2019 5:19 pm

In an environment where decent builds commonly want to have 30-35+ saves or more, I find it kind of concerning, that people want to remove (as I've read before) EDK as a feat/spell.

What are you left with afterwards? DC spells are pretty much nullified by that save-rich environment and a lot of builds straight up gain immunity to IGMS through GSF:Abjuration.

So, yeah. Maybe we'd do well to look at those factors as well, rather than looking at EDK in a vacuum.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by Shadowy Reality » Fri Apr 12, 2019 5:39 pm

Rook wrote:
Fri Apr 12, 2019 5:19 pm
In an environment where decent builds commonly want to have 30-35+ saves or more, I find it kind of concerning, that people want to remove (as I've read before) EDK as a feat/spell.

What are you left with afterwards? DC spells are pretty much nullified by that save-rich environment and a lot of builds straight up gain immunity to IGMS through GSF:Abjuration.

So, yeah. Maybe we'd do well to look at those factors as well, rather than looking at EDK in a vacuum.
I have been saying this in all the recent balance threads. At the high end, optimized and well geared builds are impossible to target when it comes to saves, you are just fishing for 1s, maybe 2s, which is not a real plan. Some Schools being worse than others.

Mages basically have a few really good utility spells, such as the no-SR AoEs, IGMS and the epic feats, that's about it. besides that they are entirely support classes.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by Amnesy » Fri Apr 12, 2019 6:19 pm

For Paladin Holy Sword I would suggest to apply % chance (as with spellsword) based on the target aligment:
Target is good: 10 % or none.
Target is Neutral: 33%.
Target is Evil: 100% - you are against a paladin.


For EDK, I like the spell, but I have issues with 2 things:
1) it's just a feat, and like every caster has it.
2) There is no RP behind it. It's like pokemon.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by Tarkus the dog » Fri Apr 12, 2019 6:42 pm

Rook wrote:
Fri Apr 12, 2019 5:19 pm
In an environment where decent builds commonly want to have 30-35+ saves or more, I find it kind of concerning, that people want to remove (as I've read before) EDK as a feat/spell.

What are you left with afterwards? DC spells are pretty much nullified by that save-rich environment and a lot of builds straight up gain immunity to IGMS through GSF:Abjuration.

So, yeah. Maybe we'd do well to look at those factors as well, rather than looking at EDK in a vacuum.
Not asking for it to be removed. I think it's damage should be dropped, for starters.

The issue is that an EDK at level 21 beats a fully geared fighter of the equal level ( if not higher, even ).

Also, please stop arguing that casters can't do anything without an EDK because that is absolutely not true. Casters reigned back in the day when EDK was vanilla, they still can and they don't need a summon to do their work for them. Not everyone runs around with 30-35+ saves like you are saying. People with good gear do, sure, but even they can roll low enough and be instantly killed, immobilized or otherwise rendered useless in a fight. Not everyone has good gear, In fact, I could make a solid bet that only a 15% of all current level 30 characters have this kind of gear. This is in fact the problem, that alongside the ability to remove someone from a PvP with a single spell, you also have the EDK.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that it is often ignored that some of the builds can pump up their certain save up to 40, for example, but their other saves might suffer. Barbarians are an excellent example of this -- Their reflex and will is absolutely trash, even with uni saves. Rogues are an another example. Great reflex, alright fortitude if you gear it proper, and absolutely ridiculous will save -- One hold spell while clarity is down is all it takes to take the rogue out of the fight. Also, not to mention spells like banshee's veil and weird can wipe out entire parties of enemies if they aren't ready for it. It's entirely absurd to claim that without an EDK a mage can do very little when you consider all of these things.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by yellowcateyes » Fri Apr 12, 2019 6:52 pm

Amnesy wrote:
Fri Apr 12, 2019 6:19 pm
For Paladin Holy Sword I would suggest to apply % chance (as with spellsword) based on the target aligment:
Target is good: 10 % or none.
Target is Neutral: 33%.
Target is Evil: 100% - you are against a paladin.
Couple quick comments to help guide the feedback.

One, Spellsword Magic imbue was modified to be an on-hit breach. It's no longer a % chance. Second, as a general matter, I'm opposed to mechanics that encourage the selection of a certain alignment to avoid class-based abilities.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by DirtyDeity » Fri Apr 12, 2019 7:03 pm

Astral wrote:
Fri Apr 12, 2019 7:00 am
Dr. B wrote:
Thu Apr 11, 2019 8:07 pm
Weighing in here. Holy Sword's dispel property should definitely be nerfed. Dispel on hit on every hit on a 55 AB is way overtuned. The Paladin's long wind-up time isn't a good argument for keeping it: other classes and builds besides paladins have a long wind-up time, but none of them are capable of something as powerful as that.
Even if you hit on every attack with that 55 ab there's a bigger chance you just straight up kill your target before the dispel on-hit actually dispelling /anything at all/ when fighting against mundanes. The wind-up time is a pretty good argument cause only paladins, divine-bards and battle clerics have this long of wind-up times and all 3 of them are equally devastating in pvp if you give them that free time to wind-up and that's their drawback - dont give them free 4-5 rounds to do that.
Just fact check that. A paladin with Abjuration focuses has a 15% chance to dispel a mundane character on hit. 24+d20 VS 42.

This 15% is rolled seperately on every buff that this person has. So if we're going on statistics alone (and nwn is usually much less forgiving than that), within 5 attacks this person will have 9 buffs on him. Within 5 more he will have 3, and beyond the 2nd round, he's probably going to have none. Let alone if t his is not a mundane character, he's just going to get wiped clean.

Keep in mind that most of these buffs are critical buffs in a fight, like concealment, haste, str/dex/cha/wis, etc. These are buffs that when lost, make you get hit more. a LOT more.

The only way to fight a paladin head on is to be have so ludicrously high AC that he can barely hit you, and pray that when he does he doesn't get good rolls on his dispel.

You are NOT going to kill someone in 5 hits. And by that time more than half of his buffs are going to be gone. Test this, because asserting that you barely dispell anything at all on mundane is plain out false, unless you DON'T take abjuration focus on your paladin, in which case you've put their strongest ability in the dumpster.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by Rook » Fri Apr 12, 2019 7:10 pm

Tarkus the dog wrote:
Fri Apr 12, 2019 6:42 pm
Rook wrote:
Fri Apr 12, 2019 5:19 pm
In an environment where decent builds commonly want to have 30-35+ saves or more, I find it kind of concerning, that people want to remove (as I've read before) EDK as a feat/spell.

What are you left with afterwards? DC spells are pretty much nullified by that save-rich environment and a lot of builds straight up gain immunity to IGMS through GSF:Abjuration.

So, yeah. Maybe we'd do well to look at those factors as well, rather than looking at EDK in a vacuum.
Not asking for it to be removed. I think it's damage should be dropped, for starters.

The issue is that an EDK at level 21 beats a fully geared fighter of the equal level ( if not higher, even ).

Also, please stop arguing that casters can't do anything without an EDK because that is absolutely not true. Casters reigned back in the day when EDK was vanilla, they still can and they don't need a summon to do their work for them. Not everyone runs around with 30-35+ saves like you are saying. People with good gear do, sure, but even they can roll low enough and be instantly killed, immobilized or otherwise rendered useless in a fight. Not everyone has good gear, In fact, I could make a solid bet that only a 15% of all current level 30 characters have this kind of gear. This is in fact the problem, that alongside the ability to remove someone from a PvP with a single spell, you also have the EDK.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that it is often ignored that some of the builds can pump up their certain save up to 40, for example, but their other saves might suffer. Barbarians are an excellent example of this -- Their reflex and will is absolutely trash, even with uni saves. Rogues are an another example. Great reflex, alright fortitude if you gear it proper, and absolutely ridiculous will save -- One hold spell while clarity is down is all it takes to take the rogue out of the fight. Also, not to mention spells like banshee's veil and weird can wipe out entire parties of enemies if they aren't ready for it. It's entirely absurd to claim that without an EDK a mage can do very little when you consider all of these things.
Either certain builds who straight up get their saves high, before gear even becomes a major consideration or as you pointed out, gear. What do you want to balance around? Available equipment or what some people choose not to wear?

Which seems to be a recurring theme. People who either don't know how to deal with summons or "friend of a friend" stories being brought into consideration when speaking about nerfs like that.

Those OHKO spells you mention are more meme than anything and best compared to Knockdown, which is available to almost any melee build and equally spells death for a caster.

That said, adjusting its damage is one thing, but there have been completely inane suggestions in this thread that go well beyond that.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by yellowcateyes » Fri Apr 12, 2019 7:14 pm

DirtyDeity wrote:
Fri Apr 12, 2019 7:03 pm
Just fact check that. A paladin with Abjuration focuses has a 15% chance to dispel a mundane character on hit. 24+d20 VS 42.
yellowcateyes wrote:
Wed Apr 10, 2019 7:25 pm
Holy Sword was unintentionally nerfed several months back when Mord did a responsible coder thing and unified all the dispel-effect tabulations into a single function. It now follows the same bonus scaling as other dispel effects (+1 each for Spell Focus: Abjuration and Greater Spell Focus: Abjuration).
It would be 22 + d20 now.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by DirtyDeity » Fri Apr 12, 2019 9:21 pm

yellowcateyes wrote:
Fri Apr 12, 2019 7:14 pm
DirtyDeity wrote:
Fri Apr 12, 2019 7:03 pm
Just fact check that. A paladin with Abjuration focuses has a 15% chance to dispel a mundane character on hit. 24+d20 VS 42.
yellowcateyes wrote:
Wed Apr 10, 2019 7:25 pm
Holy Sword was unintentionally nerfed several months back when Mord did a responsible coder thing and unified all the dispel-effect tabulations into a single function. It now follows the same bonus scaling as other dispel effects (+1 each for Spell Focus: Abjuration and Greater Spell Focus: Abjuration).
It would be 22 + d20 now.
Is it? I recall greater dispelling having a max caster level of 22, +1 for sf and gsf abju, and then +2 for epic. If I am wrong, I stand corrected, but from fighting paladins on the PGCC, it really doesn't feel like a 5% chance if I lost all my buffs in 2 rounds.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by DirtyDeity » Fri Apr 12, 2019 9:24 pm

This is from the wiki: Holy Sword: Not restricted. The On-Hit Dispel effect is now capped at CL 20. If the caster has Abjuration Foci, the Dispel check improves by +2 per focus feat.

If it was changed, then the wiki is outdated. Would love confirmation on this.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by yellowcateyes » Fri Apr 12, 2019 9:28 pm

It's 20 + 1 per feat, as mentioned twice prior here.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by RedGiant » Fri Apr 12, 2019 10:47 pm

Do the math on holy sword. Seriously. You will then see what effect it has (or doesnt have) on a dedicated caster. Right now it is balanced to the point of art...especially when one considers the end game. (Here it would be helpful to stop cherry picking bad examples, such as notoriously dispellable builds, comparing dispel effects only at 20th lvl, etc.)

As for EDK etc...I swear people will not be happy until casters simply have no possibility of winning a PvP encounter. Shadow Reality addressed the points here succinctly. This is a 1/day burst summons with multuple counters available in the game.
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Re: Nerf this

Post by Tarkus the dog » Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:14 am

Those OHKO spells you mention are more meme than anything and best compared to Knockdown, which is available to almost any melee build and equally spells death for a caster.
I don't think knockdown is comparable to a spell that can wipe out an entire party, especially since how easy it is to get discipline. When I say 'can', I don't refer to a 5% sort of situation. I've seen it happen, weird/banshee's are no 'meme' spells. It's almost 100 guarantee that in a group someone won't have mind immunity/death immunity spells on them, the larger the group gets the larger this chance is -- and thus the mage's potential for killing multiple targets. My point, in general, is that mages have an entire arsenal to choose from when fighting the enemy. I don't want to get into listing every spell in the game, but come on. Just using the simplest Time stop, hell ball + gruin + IGMS tactic kills a good 90% of all the characters in the game.
As for EDK etc...I swear people will not be happy until casters simply have no possibility of winning a PvP encounter. Shadow Reality addressed the points here succinctly. This is a 1/day burst summons with multuple counters available in the game.
Alright then. Let's try something new -- Let's give every single caster mob, or half of all the caster NPCs in the game EDK that they can use on demand. Since there exist multiple counters available, this shouldn't be much of an issue for an average party to deal with.

@yellowcateyes

Make this happen?

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Re: Nerf this

Post by xanrael » Sat Apr 13, 2019 1:09 am

Tarkus the dog wrote:
Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:14 am
Alright then. Let's try something new -- Let's give every single caster mob, or half of all the caster NPCs in the game EDK that they can use on demand. Since there exist multiple counters available, this shouldn't be much of an issue for an average party to deal with.
I'm just picturing that taken to its logical conclusion. "Mundane" mobs are using WoF and Greater Restoration scrolls and True Strike items. When you zone in you see nearby mobs start spamming wands and potions in preparation.

It would spike the difficulty to have mobs at competent player strength regardless of class, especially considering the number that spawn.

My personal stance is the EDK should lose its Haste, True Seeing, and Freedom. We removed it from Kensais, PDKs, and Dragonshapers and I don't really see why a summon as beefy as EDK needs it. Generally any class that summons them can give at least 2 of the 3 if not all 3 effects, but they then would have to choose to do so and it could be removed. Honestly I'd probably shift Improved Knockdown to Called Shot so it doesn't fully shut someone down that gets unlucky in a round.

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Re: Nerf this

Post by Shadowy Reality » Sat Apr 13, 2019 1:41 am

Tarkus the dog wrote:
Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:14 am
My point, in general, is that mages have an entire arsenal to choose from when fighting the enemy. I don't want to get into listing every spell in the game, but come on. Just using the simplest Time stop, hell ball + gruin + IGMS tactic kills a good 90% of all the characters in the game.
The example you gave is one of the few things that actually works reliably, it requires Evocation focus, which is actually one of the best Schools for mages to take. The Evo combo is specially good because there are no saves involved.

Shall we actually look at numbers and facts, since those are usually waved about by those arguing for nerfs?
I had a look at some builds in the Discord build dump, here are their saves:

Monk/Rogue: 21/18/27 (+14 from Uni Saves + Spellcraft)
Fighter/Bg/Rogue: 24/13/16 (+22 from Uni Saves + Spellcraft + Cha)
Cleric/Bard: 19/20/10 (+18 from Uni Saves + Spellcraft)
Rogue/Fighter: 17/10/24 (+14 from Uni Saves + Spellcraft)
Wizard/Bard: 14/18/13 (+18 from Uni Saves + Spellcraft)
Fighter/WM/Rogue: 18/11/17 (+14 from Uni Saves + Spellcraf) the high saves version gets 41 fort, 38 reflex, and 34 will vs spells
Druid: 17/11/17 (+18 from Uni Saves + Spellcraft)

Notice that these do not include other bonus, such as Dex/Con/Wis mods, or protection from alignment, or racial bonus. Do the math, and look how many of these actually stand a good chance of failing a DC 40 spell. You will soon realize that there are not that many in that list that fail saves, even if you target their weak save. Now consider that there is also a layer of immunities that can had, there is not much a mage can do.

When people say mages have all the tools to deal with everything, they are wrong. They have all the tools to deal with non-optimized non-prepared people. When you consider the optimized scenario for everyone they becomes quite lackluster. Currently, what keeps mages afloat is the Evo Combo, EDK, IGMS, and the no-SR AoEs. There is nothing else.

I dont mind that the EDK is toned down or taken away, it is a pocket WM on steroids. But you have to make them useable, currently the odds are stacked against them.

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Tarkus the dog
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Re: Nerf this

Post by Tarkus the dog » Sat Apr 13, 2019 3:39 am

35/26/21 is what STR/CON/UNI, spellcrafting discipline weaponmaster gets, hard 5% gear ( this is with spellcrafting). I wager three to maybe four active weaponmasters have this kind of gear at the moment, the rest something along the lines of 36/20/16.

34/21/19 is what you roughly get on a paladin/blackguard if your gear is STR/CON/CHA, spellcrafting discipline, again, hard 5% gear. You can take it an extra notch and get rune gear, raising your saves to somewhere around 40/26/25. Again, spellcrafting included, and if you go bard and raise your spellcrafting to 35ish. I actually seriously doubt there is a paladin/bg build with CON/STR/CHA/UNI, discipline + bard dip but do please correct me if I'm wrong.

Clerics get around 35/21/36 without uni saves (sc included), bump all those stats by 10 with uni saves, so basically 34/20/35 + 11 from spellcrafting if my math isn't entirely off the grid here. Pretty solid, actually, a pretty minimal chance to fail a fort/will spell. Still a rough 30% chance, with all the hard 5% gear, to fail one of the bigby spells, and if an evocation druid gets off a couple of meteor swarms next to you you are pretty much dead -- but let's ignore that for a moment.

One thing I do agree with you is that by buffing dex/wis you do get an increase of +2-3. I'm going to stop here though and not go through any of the builds because the point I am trying to make is the following:


1. It's not correct for you to assume that most builds can get 14-18 uni/sp from their late game gear. Not everyone's end gear has both UNI and SC in it. Some characters will prefer other skills, like ms/hide for rogues, concentration for clerics, taunt for paladins, perform for bards, etc. -- In fact, a good bard build must have perform in its gear. Example: DEX, CON, UNI, discipline, ms, hide rogue -- and this is if the enchanter owes you big time a very, very limited amount of players have the patience for making this kind of gear in the first place.

2. Even with this gear you have a decent chance of making use of your DC spells when targeting the lowest save. A rogue with UNI gear is going to eventually die to an implosion spell. Even in that scenario where the rogue has a good chance of resisting the spell the rogue should probably consider using the spell mantle scroll.

3. And the last point which I think is the crucial one: A good 15%, and that is with me being too generous, of all active level 30 characters have hard 5%/rune gear, allowing them to, most of the time, slot uni saves. Some builds do simply have so much saves only rolling 1 affects them , I am not ignoring this. You still have your damage spells on top of that.

Having good saves doesn't make you immune against spells. I think I should know this pretty well considering I spent a good time playing my roughly 41/30/29 (only uni) weaponmaster ( with artefacts ), and I'd still fail DC checks. Yes, you absolutely have the tools to deal even with the champion of torm paladin dip character with high enough saves for two characters. There are two things a mage cannot deal with, and this is still arguable: 1. A monk with SR feats, 2. SR wild surge

Also, another thing I forgot to mention, I think -- I really have no issue fighting mages or EDK. Honestly, I think I'm one of the biggest assholes when it comes to PvP versus mages. I'm the guy who pesters the wand crafter to spend a 10k on a dismissal wand, and then use it mid-RP 'just to be sure' ( I actually haven't done this but I feel like it's something I would do if I really, really wanted to win a PvP scenario). My focus is directed towards the general state of the server, and the first few things that come to mind are the three things I mentioned (EDK, holy sword, druids) as well as vampires, but they are a story for another topic.

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