Casters on Epic Raids

[Roo Stercogburn]

Many of you have been in this situation. You go on an epic raid to Tuscaran Glacier, Galladoria, Caer Sidi, or some other epic level zone. There are several groups of you and you're all along for the hunt and the drops.

You play a caster.

And, to all intents and purposes, you can't help - the exceptions being casters that provide support functions to their groups such as pbt, power regen or healing or some buffs etc.

The resist rate on high level mobs is to the point where your chances of actually assisting the hunt with any worthwhile damage is close to zero.

As peeps pretty much already know, DAoC is heavily biased towards tank classes for most aspects of the game now.

I only play caster or support toons, no tanks. My preference is caster pet classes.

I'm wondering what people think could be done to address this. Mythic are actually aware of this issue, though it remains to be seen if something will be done about it. Shortly, Focus Damage Shields will not work on high level mobs so the only reliable type of caster damage to epic level beasties will be gone as well.

Part of the problem lies in the amount of power usage it takes for a damage spell. Tanks can slap away for hours at a mob and even when they run out of end, they can at least keep thwacking away. Casters cannot do this. Once your power pool hits zero you are sitting down and also below 50% power you regen *very* slowly. MCL and Raging Power alleviate this somewhat but I tend to find even with MCL and Serenity stacked on top with a power regen buff I spend a lot of time oop on raids just for the pleasure of doing that 5 points of damage once in every 10 casts.

So what are the options?

1) Lower resists on epic beasties against magic. Certain of them are deliberately magic immune and this should not be changed obviously.

or

2) Channeling ability. Bit like an assist for casters. Have it so that casters have a skill that can be used in PvE to stack their magic on top of each other. Have a 'director' and a window that pops up to show all the casters that are channeling to him/her and have the director focus their combined abilities at the mob. The type of spell that can be cast is whatever is in the char's bag of tricks so for a runie it would be a nuke with a resist penalty and damage bonus to the mob for every caster assisting him. Again the caster that is acting as the director has the danger of getting the agro. I'd make it so that if the director dies, there is feedback that damages all the casters that are channeling.

or

3) For every cast of the same spell against a beastie within a certain amount of time the beastie has less chance of resisting and your damage output gradually is increased, but not above your cap of course and on epic beasties not even close to approaching this. If you switch spells or take any other action you're back to the start again.

or?

Just some thoughts.

 

[Ardrias_Mid]

Channeling be sweet, make it work in RvR too
5 runies in a group doing focused spears of Doom!1!11!1, causing 5k dmg to everyone in the area.

Seriously tho, channeling is cool

 

[old.linnet]

Originally posted by Roo Stercogburn
Regarding casters on epic PvE raids: its completely untrue about the utility of casters on these raids. Yes, casters may not hit the epic boss mob itself with any reliability but since there are no boss mobs without hordes of guards and so forth, casters are essential for clearing these efficiently.

Been on a few more epic raids since you wrote this?

I think there was some notion that they are tweaking the resist rates on epic mobs in 1.65? I know it was mentioned in a few of the feedbacks to the TL reports.

A big part of the problem is that even the utility that we have can't easily be brought into play, by which I mean that debuffs should be a lot easier to land than they currently are. Other than that ... yes, it sucks to use up a whole power bar without even being able to hit anything ;/ I'd happily take an option like quickcast which used twice the normal power but effectively made the spell higher level for purposes of hit rate.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Yep on lead-in mobs you can help.

Against the mains you do zero nada zip.

Casters are good for the journey to and from the mobs. And thats really it.

On the dragon raids we've done casters tend to hang around waiting for the guard pop or just trying to hit the dragon with their staves.

My point of this posts refers to the main event themselves, nothing else.

Sorry if I didn't make this clear.

 

[Tomppo]

I've been on Galladoria raids and the only spell that works is gtaoe, no use casting other spells. It's very boring to use the same spell over and over again for 6-10 hours ... something must be done.

 

[old.job]

Very true, I've totally respecced in Enchantments, the 10+ dmg add is very popular and my uber pet is a lark in RVR (though I haven't done much).

Mythic should not nerf focus shield, but put it where it belongs in enchantment spec, then focus pulling would require an unusually specced Chanter like me, but it would stop everyone doing it because you would still need PB's for dmg.

 

[)nick(]

GTAE is indeed the only spell which works. Even that is terribly boring as you can only cast it every 6 seconds. I like the idea of channeling but I'd say make it like guard works now whereby you can select a person in your group and 'channel' him. This way you could make a nice chain of casters.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

I like the channeling idea because it introduces new tactics and ways of doing things while at the same time giving casters the sense that they are contributing to taking out the Big Bads at the end of a dungeon. Its not really an original idea, its been around for years in various RPGs and stories. The main problem is that it would introduce a new game mechanic, rather than simply altering the intrinsic resist level of mobs. Because of this, I can't see Mythic doing it, but it would be a really nice touch if something like this were introduced.

Its probably something for another game, but I'd like to see a magic system where you could have building blocks as more casters are added into a channeling matrix. Each caster gives an ability and a director can then juggle them to produce a variety of effects. For instance, you have an SM contribute a lifetap, a runie contribute a damage add, a bonedancer contribute a body debuff and you produce a spell which has qualities of these 3 spells when it is fired at the target. The more people contributing to each type of spell, the more powerful that particular component of the result is when its fired off. That would be an awesome magic system which would give you something a bit special for epic level hunts because you'd be able to cook up different mixes of spells to combine based on who was going on the hunt.

 

[Cyradix]

The channeling idea sounds really familiar. What books have you been reading?

 

[Ardrias_Mid]

He mostly reads scripts for 70's pornos I heard. :|

 

[the_smurflord]

The epic dungeons are really designed for realm-wide attempts, not a few group drop hunting sessions and the resists are appropriate to this. We all know that the resistance and to hit code is dependant on the number of people attacking a mob.

On a 30 man drop hunting session to Caer Sidi with my lvl 50 ice wiz, I was resisted about 80% of the time with my PBAE and hit for 10-20 damage when I did get a hit in. This is pretty much useless on a raid like this, and just spent my time keeping all the tanks buffed.

On a 100 man raid to reach the end of Caer Sidi and take on Apocalypse, I was only resisted about 20-30% of the time, and was hitting for 100-200 damage, and was making a significant controbution to the effort to bring down the mobs.

The dungeon is what it is designed to be. If people want to use it in other ways, expect to find problems.

 

[old.linnet]

Originally posted by the_smurflord
The epic dungeons are really designed for realm-wide attempts, not a few group drop hunting sessions and the resists are appropriate to this. We all know that the resistance and to hit code is dependant on the number of people attacking a mob.

But tanks can still hit stuff ok even in small group raids. So. There is an inequity there. It seems fair to ask for ways to be more effective in those circumstances.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Smurf, not asking for Boss mobs to be made vulnerable to individual casters, just looking for a way when there are large teams attempting to take them down that those that currently cannot affect them (ie casters) are given a chance to contribute.

I've done a lot of TG and other epic level raids. I've never done anything close to the damage you say you have done, even allowing for pbae to have a higher base damage than a ranged spell and haven't noticed any difference with the number of people on the raid.

I'm usually out of power after each mob we attack and have had little to no effect on it, regardless of how many people are on the hunt. Actually, I'm usually out of power long before the mob is dead and spend most of the fight regenerating power. When it gets to boss mobs, I tend to just have to sit it out, keep an eye for guard spawns and so forth depending on where the hunt is.

As has been said - casters needed for guards, getting to Boss mob and some support functions, but for casters that can only deal damage and have no support functions there is very little to do once you get to the final encounter.

 

[Zebolt]

Originally posted by Tomppo
I've been on Galladoria raids and the only spell that works is gtaoe, no use casting other spells. It's very boring to use the same spell over and over again for 6-10 hours ... something must be done.

You think it's fun using the same style over and over again for 6-10 hours?

I agree tho that something should be done for casters. I as a full dark runie have times when I did 100+ on the dragon, 200+ on prince etc etc. But like once per raid and it doesn't help squat. Don't know how to do it, but some of the ideas posted here sounds to be a good start to work from for the mythic guys.

 

[dimerian]

dmg-add + staff-bashing

 

[rynnor]

How bout making all dd type spells have a minimum damage equal to their level - wont make much difference in normal pve or rvr but would actually be usefull v epics?

Just a thought.

 

[boni_ofdavoid]

As a void mage, im probably the most wanted class on epic raids to galla. I have no complaints, though theres little point playing a pb mage in galla...

This is all down to some lvl 65+ mob resists bug/feature, which I believe mythic are at least thinking about fixing.

 

[old.Ramas]

You missed the 1.65 option...

4) Reduce typical rvr resists by 2%, and then nerf cabalists some more.

As the game stands right now you could simply turn off total resists and the game woudl be closer to balance.

The high level of epic mobs would reduce caster damage on them to close to tank levels, and in RvR casters would remain useless due to sky high resistance %s.

I'm sure something will eventually done, but until then - ho hum.