I don't get it?(umd)

[Trunx]

What battlecleric takes GSF abjur

Covered the ab buffs, covered imp invis, shield of faith is on the breach list, etc etc etc.
Keep it as is, then. Hell, I even covered everyone being near impossible to dispel a couple posts up. I've always found the wind-up time to be the biggest barrier to the entire server being full of battleclerics, myself. And, you know, having to roleplay the whole priest thing.

All that said, they lose the incredibly narrow (and effective) focus that your average WM has.
But I wouldn't play with the CL thing, myself. Mundanes need it to function, if everyone had it, dispels would need changed, and then we're back where we were.

Battleclerics that know what they're doing. It's the best spell school for an optimal one. You get a massive leg up against other battleclerics and battlebards and immunity to IGMs. And you don't need ESF:Evo for Hellball/Gruin anymore.

The fact that you can dispel them and force them to go through the wind-up time every single time you do it is what keeps them balanced. Remove that and let them keep their spells forever after casting them once and they're the dominant class on the server overnight. Losing Haste and six other necessary buffs is crippling in a fight, especially when they can be removed again just when they're up. That's why a properly played battlecleric needs to take good advantage of their GSanc if they're against a competent player with a good build.

[One Two Three Five]

Yes, cool, you win.
Anyway.
On your idea, Scholar Midnight, it'd be fairer? to multiclassed casters, who can barely dispel the mundanes as is but can relatively? easily dispelled themselves, but some sort of buff to abjuration foci might be needed so that people are dispellable period.

Whiiiiiiich then messes with the '30 caster level' mundanes.
Buffs to get epic abjuration to land more often would be good-ish in that scenario but disproportionately wreck people that aren't level 30.

[yellowcateyes]

The problem with blanket changes is that they affect both the classes that need help and the classes that don't. One of the few weaknesses of battleclerics and battle bards was that they could be dispelled.

At CL 30 to resist dispels, a fully warded battlecleric would be nigh-invincible.

If the aim is to make paladin-heavy builds, rangers, and gishes viable, it'd be better to design buffs to aid the specific setups that need fixing.

[Shadowy Reality]

I still don't understand why mundanes need to be basically immune to dispel and classes that actually rely on buffs don't.

When a mundane dispels half of the battleclerics buffs with a Mords the cleric has nothing left. If the mundane could be dispelled it's ability to fight would be barely hindered.

[Liareth]

I still don't understand why mundanes need to be basically immune to dispel and classes that actually rely on buffs don't.

When a mundane dispels half of the battleclerics buffs with a Mords the cleric has nothing left. If the mundane could be dispelled it's ability to fight would be barely hindered.

It's not something that makes sense from a thematic perspective, but it does seem to be a key part of the server's balance system.

[SwampFoot]

Currently the melee focused builds are at the front of battles. This feels right. It's where they are supposed to be. Any major changes made has the ability to reverse the rolls in ridiculous ways. I'd hate to see Mages suddenly become the front-line defense of a war party while the Barbarians hang out at the back with the cleric.

If you want crazy dispel ability, build for it. If you build a character with sub-optimal areas built right in, expect sub-optimal results.

[susitsu]

It is true that battle-clerics take abjuration. The best battle-cleric Ive ever been around had ESF abjuration.

On a different note, I'm very eh on the topic of arguing that it's balanced that you can't dispel a god damn damn weapon master.

Arelith already makes them strong enough.

[Shadowy Reality]

I still don't understand why mundanes need to be basically immune to dispel and classes that actually rely on buffs don't.

When a mundane dispels half of the battleclerics buffs with a Mords the cleric has nothing left. If the mundane could be dispelled it's ability to fight would be barely hindered.

It's not something that makes sense from a thematic perspective, but it does seem to be a key part of the server's balance system.

Everyone seems to argue that way, I was asking to see if anyone would clarify as to why. What would actually happen if clerics kept their spells, what would happen if mundanes could be dispelled? Throw me a scenario that shows the mundane losing just about everytime.

[Trunx]

I still don't understand why mundanes need to be basically immune to dispel and classes that actually rely on buffs don't.

When a mundane dispels half of the battleclerics buffs with a Mords the cleric has nothing left. If the mundane could be dispelled it's ability to fight would be barely hindered.

It's not something that makes sense from a thematic perspective, but it does seem to be a key part of the server's balance system.

Everyone seems to argue that way, I was asking to see if anyone would clarify as to why. What would actually happen if clerics kept their spells, what would happen if mundanes could be dispelled? Throw me a scenario that shows the mundane losing just about everytime.

They lose every time because while buffed, battle-casters have better AB, better damage, and better AC than most every mundane build. If you can't get rid of any of those buffs, then you will lose.

And if you kept casters where they are and let mundanes be dispelled, it's bad because on Arelith people rely on magic for everything. Losing your Haste, II, bull's strength, clarity, death ward, mage armor, barkskin, see invis etc., at the same time will mean you're dead against an opponent that has those. You'll lose ~10 AC and 2-3 AB/damage, an attack per round, speed, immunities, concealment, ability to see invis people... that means you can't fight anymore against anything that was remotely competitive with you while you had your buffs.

[yellowcateyes]

The 20/7/3 WM is the poster child mundane in these discussions, but it's good to remember that changes to mundane CL affects more than the bog standard optimale build. Think of the lowly yeoman rogue who relies on clarity potions and the occasional freedom wand to avoid dying to a stiff wind. Think of the quarterstaff specialist who juggles multiple classes and dual wield feats, with few opportunities to up her saving throws.

Be careful about taking aim at 'mundanes' when what you're really complaining about are specific, optimized melee builds. It's more than whether one build edges out the other in high-level pvp. It's whether a whole category of character concepts can be viable in everyday adventuring.

[susitsu]

As someone currently maining a rogue, they need a lot more than a resistance to dispelling. Mages are already dead the instant you're in range regardless.

[MissEvelyn]

What about a change where everybody has a caster level equal to their total level? (for spell resistance and dispels) Would that put everybody on equal footing and makes things more fair?

That is fairer, yes. Those that dip for UMD have their CL 30. Casters that dip for Disc have their CL lowered. That was assimetric. At least there is a chance this way, which is better than nothing.

Or a system where CL scales based on your skill points in UMD. There would AT LEAST be some kind of training required, then. Right now, it just doesn't make sense that non-magic classes are way better at buffing up than caster classes are.
Let UMD 'levels' stack with any caster levels you have. To a cap of 30, of course.

Also, I agree that melees are the ones who need to be at the front to take the heavy blow. But whatever happened to mages being the ones buffing the frontline? Isn't it a bit ridiculous (not a bit, A LOT) that wands and potions are better buffers than spellcasters are. Completely immersion-breaking, if you ask me.

We could delve this thread into suggesting a new path that gets to cast tons of buffs, and not so many offensive spells -- or takes a fat penalty to damage. But let's leave that for later

[Cortex]

Increasing the requirement for using UMD properly won't fix the situation, it will just impose an inconvenience to existing builds. Lower levels and yet to be made characters will just put the according amount required in UMD, just like tumble.

[susitsu]

They're not better at "buffing up." Just at not being dispelled of buffs from wands, scrolls (?), and potions.

[Lorkas]

But whatever happened to mages being the ones buffing the frontline? Isn't it a bit ridiculous (not a bit, A LOT) that wands and potions are better buffers than spellcasters are.

Casters definitely still have value over scrolls and wands in most cases. Duration is way better (there's so much more you can do with 6 minutes of invisibility, for example, when it's cast by a level 30 caster extended than there is when it's cast from a wand and lasts 18 or 42 seconds depending on whether invis or i.invis) and actual spell effects are better (+5 barkskin vs +3 from potion or +4 from wand, +5 from magic vestment vs. +1 that doesn't stack, etc).

There are only a few cases where being an actual spellcaster doesn't matter at all to the spell effects: Word of Faith, the Breach line of spells, Time Stop, G.Resto, and a few others.

[-XXX-]

We're really far from balance here. The issue is not only the undispellable wards that mundanes can get, but also rediculously high saves attainable thanks to gear and spellcraft dumps (even without any investment in CoT/Pal/Bg lvls).

Purely from PvP perspective, this is really detrimental, because if you drop a max DC wail/implosion/disabling spell on a melee character, you'd expect their survival to be a coin toss at best (assuming PvP balance would be a thing - newsflash: it's not!), because if they make the save, they usually just win. Instead, they can easily reach saves that ~surpass~ the DC of the spell without any real downsides. (yes, you can trivially get your character's saves HIGHER than is the max attainable DC value of a dedicated caster build) To add insult to injury, they also have access to wards that change their survivability rate from 95% (1s happen) to 100%.

From PvE perspective, high saves are actually quite irrelevant in most cases. Spellcaster mobs often tend to spam low~ish DC kill/disable spells in a bulk, "fishing" for 1s. Just try to walk around Dis without death ward/shadow shield and you'll see what I'm talking about. That being said, wards from potions and scrolls are mandatory if you want to go explore some dungeons (as not always there is a friendly neighbourhood ward-o-matic cleric or mage available), but if they are undispellable what's the point of giving mobs dispel powers?



Long story short, WM builds are currently the monster of the week. IMO mainly because of the two aforementioned reasons they are not only easy to play, but are virtually handed over both PvP and PvE viability. My proposed solution would be to reduce their saves to oblivion and have potion/scroll wards be trivially dispellable by anything that says "dispel". If your build allows you to continuously grind a dungeon in order to reach lvl 30 whithin a RL week, that same character should not be also a PvP powerhouse. Hawk.

[susitsu]

1. Saves are a large factor in why evo arcane casters are on top.

2. Tbh mob dispelling is the most expensive and sickening mechanic on this server that when soloing, causes me to literally turn and walk out in stealth because it's just not financially worth it to buff up, move to the next spawn, and automatically get hit with three mord's in a row.

The dispel spam design during leveling is something I'd rather see removed. Making gold is hard enough for rogues, especially since the appraise nerf.

3. Not a week, a month. Mostly CJ. He's addicted to grinding weapon masters or something, IDFK. Kids got demons

[-XXX-]

1. Saves are a large factor in why evo arcane casters are on top.

Well, mostly because of IGMS spam. You can make a viable WM build that takes bard lvls instead of rogue, investing in greater Abju focus in the process. They'll end up with a slightly lower dps, but will be virutally immune to most spell-related win conditions.

Just the idea that something like this is possible (not only that but viable too) strikes me as a glaring flaw when it comes to the concept of PvP ballance.

2. Tbh mob dispelling is the most expensive and sickening mechanic on this server that when soloing, causes me to literally turn and walk out in stealth because it's just not financially worth it to buff up, move to the next spawn, and automatically get hit with three mord's in a row.

Yeah, but... IMO you're not really supposed to be able to effortlessly solo level appropriate dungeons. When met with the mentioned issue, there's always the option of looking for a ward-o-matic caster partner who'd help you power through. This leads to PC interaction which breeds RP. Mord spamming mobs sound pretty much "working as intended" to me tbh.

[gilescorey]

Yeah, but... IMO you're not really supposed to be able to effortlessly solo level appropriate dungeons.

You mean like how mages can do?

[-XXX-]

Yeah, but... IMO you're not really supposed to be able to effortlessly solo level appropriate dungeons.

You mean like how mages can do?

I would hardly call running through the entire dungeon Gsancted straight towards the boss, then timestop+igms spamming the spawn to death "soloing".

[gilescorey]

That isn't what I meant. A mage with greater conjuration focus has, while probably the most dull, one of the easiest times levelling up by themselves next to warlocks. The same concept extends for clerics, and people with mummy dust + necro foci.

[yellowcateyes]

I would hardly call running through the entire dungeon Gsancted straight towards the boss, then timestop+igms spamming the spawn to death "soloing".

Are you unfamiliar with how mages solo dungeons?

[susitsu]

You literally don't even need conjuration focus to solo with an elder elemental, either. I do it on my arcane necromancers until I get mummy dust.

Mages have undeniably the best kit on the server.

On a side note, yes, undead are so bad it's better to use an elemental until you get vampires.

Who are also unquestionably better than mummies.

Balance.

[-XXX-]

Are you unfamiliar with how mages solo dungeons?

Yes, please explain it to me.


Seriously though, summons can melt fairly easily in some higher lvl dungeons, so if your're soloing someplace with a lvl 25+ mage simply by using an elemental summon, you're not really soloing a lvl appropriate dungeon, are you?

[Shadowy Reality]

You literally don't even need conjuration focus to solo with an elder elemental, either. I do it on my arcane necromancers until I get mummy dust.

Mages have undeniably the best kit on the server.

I am yet to see this. My previous character was a WM Kensai and now I have a Wizard. The wizard has been, across all levels far harder and slower to level than the WM. WM builds just tear through spawns at an incredible speed.

How many times have I been dispelled on the first spawn only to have to turn back in shame and try again. The WM doesn't even need buffs.

1. Saves are a large factor in why evo arcane casters are on top.

Evocation focus is a lie. You're not going to do anything to most builds, they are making the reflex and thanks to evasion lose no HP at all.

Saves don't work on Arelith, they are incredibly high. Mage's tools are IGMS, Timestop and Epic Spells. Two of which can be countered.