Anyone have new patch notes?

[Gryzx]

Why buff priests instead of debuff mobs?

You can count the number of raid areas on 1 hand atm, it's not like it would be any harder to retune the encounters if they wanted.

The problem I can see if you do buff priests is now there is an even bigger gap between priests heals and druids/shamans, and like it or not as new encounters come they will get balanced around the buffed priest, which means now you need even more priests because shamans/druids don't keep up anymore.

[dak]

I'd like to see the holy tree give priests more LOW MANA COST, LONG DURATION targetable buffs rather then better healing ability.

As you get higher in the tree priests start taking on the additional role of the EQ shaman.

Instead of Holy Fire give them Holy Strength which lets you give your target +Str and Agi in tune with what divine spirit gives to Spirit (35ish).

Instead of Divine Fury give a plus to all resists buff maxing out at like +20-30.

Instead of Holy Nova give something like Holy Fervor which gives the target a 15% increase in Attack Speed and a little bit of ATK rating,

I also feel that priests should have cure poison/curse as a talent tree option but i'm sure many will disagree.

Hell, i'd like them even to redo shadow and make it an EQ enchanter-like crowd control set instead of a ghetto mage supplement. Slow mob attack speed (make channeled so not as overpowering as in EQ), give them sleep (mez) again. They should also have the option at the end of the shadow tree to make mind control non-channeled instead simply making the charmed mob a pet.

I've always thought it funny how they feel it needed to offer talent improvements on almost every spell priests get but mind control gets nothing.

[Qhue]

This is why the Everquest model of near-inifinite combat healing needs to be moved away from.

Honestly before the creation of Everquest did anyone who played traditional role playing games (computer or pen&paper) expect the "healer" class to dedicate themselves in battle to continually tossing healing spells at one person to keep them alive?

In paper games healing spells were used after a fight when a cleric could efficiently toss heals on people in the party without having to worry about getting attacked. The problem with D&D for a couple of decades was that any cleric who didnt just memorize healing spells was pretty much an idiot, something that they fixed with 3rd edition when they allowed clerics to burn up a spell slot and cast a healing spell instead.

In computer games like Wizardry or Bard's Tale you had melee types getting hit who were in the "front row" but it wasn't as if only one person was ever getting smacked. In more tactical games like the Gold Box series or Baldur's Gate you had whole groups of people moving around and having to avoid the enemy / deal with getting hit in combat.

Along comes Everquest where tactical movement is a total joke and where we have a game mechanic built around Capcom-like Boss Mobs who stupidly focus all their attacks on one target and hence healing that one target becomes the focal point of any activity.

Why arent there "boss encounters" in MC where you have 40 mobs who swarm and attack the 40 players? Its like the only concept of a challenging encounter has to be 40 vs. 1 gang tactics.

[Nakilos]

The random abilities which hit random targets is one of the good ideas used. Take Gehennas, the bulk of his damage comes from Shadow Bolts, the MT takes pretty little damage if they never get bolted (which almost never happens). I find that fight fairly fun, but still pretty easy because even with deaths you can just beat him to death pretty fast.

But the fact remains, if mobs didn't do enough damage to put the major hurting down on 1 person, which is why there is the dependancy on mass heals constantly, fights would be highly trivial. Damage is bounced around but never enough to really kill anyone.

I mean honestly games like Baldur's Gate are really easy, and you can't really compare those games to MMO's. They are intentionally designed with 1 person in mind, and also that the player characters are always proportionally more powerful than the npcs, and certain tactics are incredibly powerful and make the games pretty easy. In that way, any of the BG-esque games I've played just end up like playing Final Fantasy 6 and beyond - eventually you are just so much ass beat, nothing can hope to compare.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Why arent there "boss encounters" in MC where you have 40 mobs who swarm and attack the 40 players?

Don't get me wrong, I agree they need more diverse encounter strategies (I've got dozens written up. Fucking group dynamics course is a waste of my friday nights...) and multi-mob ones are pretty interesting.

You just have to design them to avoid allowing for gimpability (warrior AE tuant rotation, mage spam, end of encounter!) without making them immune to half our abilities.

I think the only boss fight I ever truly enjoyed doing was the BoT boss encounters. Maybe because I was a wizard at the time and suddenly I had more to do then "nuke - nuke - concussion - concusssion - nuke - nuke - concussion - afk to go to Wendy's - ask for loot"

[Remfin]

The problem I can see if you do buff priests is now there is an even bigger gap between priests heals and druids/shamans, and like it or not as new encounters come they will get balanced around the buffed priest, which means now you need even more priests because shamans/druids don't keep up anymore.

How would increasing priest healing make the gap "even bigger"? You may want to run the math - shamans are BETTER healers than priests right now. They just don't focus on int and spi gear like Priests do, but that's their problem. If the large heals ever become truely viable, druids will be better too (their flash heal is a little lacking except for healing mages, cause if you're healing an AE mage you don't care about mana it will be over before you have a problem)

Hell, Paladins come close. They don't have exact equals to anyone but Holy Light with Blessing is very very nice all around

And all these classes can wear more kinds of armor, many of the blues/purples custom-designed with stats a lot better for casting than you can get as a cloth user (which is pretty damn stupid)

The only advantage priests have is Prayer of Healing, which has limited uses, and requires your entire group to be hurt to be effective (since Shaman bouncing heal will hit anyone in raid, the people don't even have to be in your group, so you can use it more often)

[Zehn - Vhex]

Paladins are actually better in most cases. It's just most are retards and spec/gear for tanking.

[Elgonn]

Originally posted by Qhue
In more tactical games like the Gold Box series or Baldur's Gate you had whole groups of people moving around and having to avoid the enemy / deal with getting hit in combat.

This will hands down be my biggest issue with DDO. D&D is ALL about tactical mobility. The movies don't portray mobility well at all but we'll see.

Walls, Terrains, Webs, Grease, Fog, Flying, Dimension Door, Teleport..

Hell the entire reason why a group wants an arcane caster (if your playing efficient).

I would love any MMO of any kind to be able to do something like this. But the closest I've seen so far a certain FPS games with bots that can work in teamwork. Even then barely.

I have no hope for this anytime soon.