The Big UMD Change Thread

[RedGiant]

Well, it's about time I wade in here.

I will work reaaallly hard to be mature here (knowing by saying this I have failed already), because, lets face it, the shoe is finally on the other foot for the git guhd melee crowd.

In short, I agree with almost everything said by godhand-.

The very fact that there was a proven way to negate most if not all summons, and that it was so well-heeled people were almost required to build for it, is the very definition of a balance problem. So too was knockdown, which anyone with sense would recognize was the new "Sap" of feats. Again, the fact that 97% of wizards (nay, even all characters) had to build in 3 lvls of bard + esf discipline all because of one general feat is similarly the very definition of a balance problem.

I won't wax too philosophical here, but this is really just the tip of the iceberg on broken things in NWN in general. I won't go into the history of it, but NWN itself made a lot of sense in vanilla for 20 lvls. You could do increasingly broken things at 30 and the game was downright broken at lvl 40, with entire classes being able to invalidate one another.

Some talk here that a few weeks ago, Arelith had reached some golden age of balance. It had not. Arelith had done amazing things to balance a server for lvl 30 play, but this was really just moving the same chairs around in a room. One thing fixed broke three others. This is evidenced by how we chase our tails going right down the list of classes, where now we are literally at the point where the discussion is on nerfing...bards. Anyone who has played the game for ten years, just think about that for a moment.

A lot of these arguments fail to take into consideration stuff that just happens, despite spreadsheets. Like on your amazing supposedly ultra-dominant new wizard, getting double critted by a weapon master and dying in the first round...because....everything godhand- said, but was mocked for. This happens.

There are a lot of broken things still. Wizards seem to be the new meta, and the new spells seem to help, but building had progressed to the point on Arelith that almost any spell that required a save was nigh unto useless. This wasn't healthy.

I don't know where this all ends. I think a lot of things are still broken (see above, especially the ability to run your saves up). As you can tell, I'm not too upset by splitting the utility of the UMD skill, which was outrageously good in the NWN economy. I mean heck, it takes maxing three skills to reliably open a stupid box in this game, yet for 15 points, you could have u-n-l-i-m-i-t-e-d powah.

So, to sum things up...

Big fan of the adjustments and now looking forward to playing another (Wild Mage) to 30.

[Aniel]

It wasn't a balance problem. The reason you needed UMD is the same reason you need AC or AB. Taking it away just makes melees worse. It's just a nerf to melees. It isn't a balance problem.

Wizards, clerics and druids are the meta because UMD is gone. That balance problem only exists because it was artificially created.

Maybe everyone caring about AB is also problematic. If AC is gutted would that make people feel less incentivized to build about AB?

My hot take anyways is that balance hasn't been this bad since the infamous monk buff. I'd argue that this is way worse than the monk buff even because at least the monk buff was a single class that not a ton of people were interested in. This is a buff to all wizards, clerics and druids, some of the most popular classes. You're going to see and feel this far more than monks.

Class diversity seems to be at an all time low.

[Hexgoblin]

People seem to be doing this thing again where they proclaim that the ability to use a 9th circle scroll is equal in power to casting a 9th circle spell. That's completely ignoring how caster level works, the benefit of using these spells hasted when casted by yourself, and the huge disparity in DC for spells where such is relevant.

Using a Mordenkainen's Disjunction scroll is NOT as effective as casting the spell. Using a Time Stop scroll is NOT as effectice as casting the spell, given the caster can actually harm someone who's above 50% HP when using it.

Mundanes using UMD were never remotely comparable to mages in terms of spellcasting. They never had the same tools as mages. They had similar tools, in a much, much more limited capacity. In terms of overall balance, mages were already stronger than non-divine mundanes in 8/10 circumstances before this change, with classes like Weapon Masters pretty much only retaining their validity by offering a high dungeon clear speed.

I am primarily a caster player myself, with near every variation of wizard, sorcerer, cleric, warlock or druid capped at some or multiple points during 11 years of playing on Arelith. Casters have always had more soloability, more variations in their toolkit, and more ways to instantly end a fight. Yes, melee is a constant uptime, resourceless source of damage. One that a caster replicates through DR-hefty summons that can be bandaged from a comfortable distance. When it actually comes to a serious encounter, the mage dipping into his actual spellbook is a whole lot more decisive than a warrior employing his trusty pal the left mouse button.

I'm not saying that UMD has to be restored. I'm not saying that summons need to be nerfed. Not wanting mundanes to visually replicate the use of high-end spells via scrolls for the sake of thematics is FINE. That is a reasonable stance to have. But at that point, stick to the argument of thematics. Don't try to mechanically justify the absence of mundane tools, by uplifting builds like 24 barbarian/6 fighter which hasn't been relevant since the removal of pre-nerf kensais, as some new and innovative godsend. That's misinformation. It didn't receive anything that'd make it more relevant now than it was last week. It couldn't compete with mages last week, and it won't do so now. Gimping the competition doesn't uplift you, when you and the competition face the same obstacle. What would be required is an alternative feature that fills the toolkit gap left by UMD. Not means to partially cope with the absence of the latter via eschewing the UMD dip class from your character sheet, without actually addressing the aforementioned obstacle. The reason the dip was there in the first place.

I trust that these alternatives will arrive, in due time. It's not the end of the world. That alternative doesn't have to be the literal ability to access spells either. But it needs to be functionally similar, or otherwise a means to bypass the effects of certain spells via temporary immunity features, or more mechanics along the vein of the current -pray -- which is a whole different can of worms.

[godhand-]

There are a lot of broken things still. Wizards seem to be the new meta, and the new spells seem to help, but building had progressed to the point on Arelith that almost any spell that required a save was nigh unto useless. This wasn't healthy.

Having played a caster, and watching all my L9 spells with 44DC bounce off a characters back without sweating because the melee oppositions saves were above 40 is a testament to this statement.

[Hexgoblin]

There are a lot of broken things still. Wizards seem to be the new meta, and the new spells seem to help, but building had progressed to the point on Arelith that almost any spell that required a save was nigh unto useless. This wasn't healthy.

Having played a caster, and watching all my L9 spells with 44DC bounce off a characters back without sweating because the melee oppositions saves were above 40 is a testament to this statement.

Not to throw the mage handbook at you, but a key element of playing a spellcaster is identifying your opposition. If you see opponent using Divine Might/Shield, then they've Divine Grace or Dark Blessing perks to their saves, meaning that you'll need to rely on fixed damage spells in most circumstances. If a person in armor registers as having high charisma when examined, this is often a safe assumption. They'll be the only melee variations with saves that high, and only the fortitude save will generally hit those numbers.

Wizards, especially if gearing around the +7 zoo buffs of the epic transmutation focus have immensely high saves versus spells additionally, between liberal use of unisave gear and their spellcraft score. Far, far higher than your average mundane. So that's something to bear in mind against them. Sorcerers often have very poor saves, unless dipping into paladin or blackguard, at which they skyrocket.

Most warriors you run into will have fortitude vs spells in the 20-30s IF geared for fortitude. Which is often the only save they gear towards, without high-end runes or 5% gear. Their other two saves will both score below 20, again excluded the outliers of far and beyond 5% gearing. They'll often rely entirely on Clarity and Freedom of Movement to cover saves they flat out don't have.

Barbarians and clerics have abysmal reflex.

Advice, prepare a few max IGMS, Time Stop and Cloudkill to enable fixed damage alongside summons, and then coverage for 2-3 different saving throws on circles below 9th via evocation, enchantment, illusion or necromancy focuses. That should reduce your encounters with the example issue considerably.

[Diegovog]

I like the changes. Giving knockdown a cooldown will allow some spellcasters to open up their builds. However, I dislike the unbalance that comes with it, so I hope something addresses this issue in the future.

But most importantly, I have always been against low UMD scrolls. Just thinking about all the trouble a wizard has to go through. Most learn draconic for arcane notation and understanding magic deeper. Then they have to actually advance to level 17 to be able to learn and cast the most difficult and complex spells ever made that 99% of the arcane community never will be able to, only to have a dumb warrior, who has never shown the slightest interest to magic to be able to activate the scroll in a single round just because, well dumped points 16 into UMD (-1 charisma lolz). That has always been so cringy for me.
UMD on things such as scrolls and wands is much more of a pen and paper thing, when you are with your group and you come across an unkown artifact or ancient scroll and you attempt to activate it. Not for hoarding uber spells like TIME STOP and using mid-combat at will.

Finally, I don't think a server should be balanced around melees being able to scroll cast time stop, mord, wof, etc. There has to be a better way.

I'm curious as to how the dev team will address the balance problems, but don't lose motivation

[NauVaseline]

I really think that most of this was incredibly unnecessary, it would've been much easier and much less painful for everyone involved to just raise the UMD requirements for high level scrolls to require a greater investment.

[dallion43]

First of all, thank you old, current and future Devs and DMs for your hard, constant, work. I know most of this tread feels like I felt when I was younger when after 32 non stop hours of work fixing a server and putting a 100 people company back to work my boss snapped at me for having to pay me overtime. I almost one-two'd him on the spot..
We are appreciate your hard work. All of us, I dare to say.
Just a lot of players on Arelith are playing nwn for more then ten years, wed to it, and care for Arelith, the last home ground that hosts all of us. This isn't a case when a good game got a cheat cash shop, well lets find another one. This is why the reactions seem...heated.

A balance is something a game ,any game, must have. It has nothing to do with Get-Guders(lol) or PRs. It affects the game as a whole, all of it players. The one that has the final say on changes has to have deep Mechanical game knowledge and ability to distance himself from the decision, or rely on More the one person that has it. Like any development in games.
Otherwise stuff like the Monk update will be far too frequent. Unfortunately it did feel like a simple Ponzy-scheme to fight server gold inflation or/and resembled the ranger class from the Noob comic situation. This wasn't good for the server nor it reputation.

Please don't forget that lvling a PC takes RL months. Gearing it takes even more. The players that wed to Arelith will curse and go and make another PC. Re-gear. Damn, most of my PCs ended this way on Arelith, etc, after a nerf.
Yeah, stubborn ones will not remake, but they are the respected minority that still needs us, the majority, to shine. This is just human nature.
But the newer players will move on and leave. You saw examples on the forums, etc. They are not wed to Nwn/Arelith, they never had the chance to. And, yes we do need them because the nwn population is always dwindling, slowly but surely.

And no, relevel does not answer the problem in at least, more then half of the cases. (90% imho).


I dare not *teach* Arelith heads, it isn't my place nor the will, the above is just an imho, that hopefully will add a little to the well being of Arelith in the long run. I do love it and the people that constantly make an effort to keep it.


P.C I apologize for the *oftopic* and no actual mechanical input. There was enough of it already, and the general idea you got already. I can provide details if needed.
I will just mention one thing. Did you really introduce a no save stunlock? Or the spell behaves this way on testing server only?
If you want to point at Clarity please just don't, it is ok. I already made a build to use it...

[TimeAdept]

In my humble opinion;

Trash loot items as stated above somewhere are only trash because there are better options more freely available, once those better options are removed the "trash" is no longer trash. That Rod of Wilting is pretty damn cool.

I'm also very happy that UMD dump characters can no longer pull a 9th lvl spell from their back pocket, leave the big magic to those classes qualified to use it. I know that a lot of people fervently hate this, but there are other options. I am by no means an expert on character builds but if a super popular build path suddenly becomes unviable in the eyes of those that are up to date with build meta, the previously "unviable" build paths are now probably perfectly fine.

I agree with this sentiment too. There is no issue with "trash loot". You don't just get the best gear from one run. The idea that the horrid rod is a bad spell is kind of silly also. It is one of the best PvE aoe spells. Magic damage, massive area and you can get big numbers on it (20d8 magic - 25d8 for a caster). A low level with this rod could clear a room with one click.

I'm more annoyed at the weight. 1.0. Need to be stack-able and lighter.

That rod will do 20d8 (so average 80) damage with a DC 19 fortitude save (that everyone will make, so 40 dmg), it is not clearing any room in one click except dungeons far below the CR of where you will find this wand.

It is worth precisely the gold it will be sold to a vendor for. It is the definition of a junk loot item. It is not useful in any way shape or form. Offensive magic on items is almost never useful, due to the abysmally low saves Bioware coded into them - the lowest possible.

[godhand-]

. Just thinking about all the trouble a wizard has to go through. Most learn draconic for arcane notation and understanding magic deeper. Then they have to actually advance to level 17 to be able to learn and cast the most difficult and complex spells ever made that 99% of the arcane community never will be able to, only to have a dumb warrior, who has never shown the slightest interest to magic to be able to activate the scroll in a single round just because, well dumped points 16 into UMD (-1 charisma lolz). That has always been so cringy for me.

This i entirely agree with, its supposed to take year after year of study to become a wizard this powerful. 15 UMD doesn't represent on a scoresheet the skill required to imitate that....
I also think, thematically, Lore is better suited to the ability to the use scrolls: It takes a certain level of lore to identify what scroll it is you're even looking at, then even further to understand how this scroll translates to the verbal and somatic components of a spell.

Conversely, i must entirely agree that the loregate of 80 is preposterous.

As a solution, what about a combined UMD and lore of 80?
This is much more attainable without being ridiculously absurd to achieved/gated to what is essentially only fulled geared wizards, and it also reflects the ability of a character to both interpret the minutiae of a scroll and then replicate it through practiced lore/umd.
You can still access scrolls, but you will need to invest significantly (albeit not as significantly as 80 lore).

This could in theory restore alot of the "balance" people are after with the loss of access to scrolls by still providing them, with a more realistic explanation of how they can use them.

Feel free to criticise my solution, but
A: I've provided one
B: I haven't just whinged and said "UNDO IT, ROLLBACK"
C: It meets in the middle halfway of the current and previous solution

Edits* to fix up where i lost train of thought mid sentence and left as it was.

[NauVaseline]

B: I haven't just whinged and said "UNDO IT, ROLLBACK"

i'll criticize your choice of vernacular

[Ork]

Scrolls cost an investiture of gold and XP to denote that all the work is front-loaded. People reading scrolls don't have to have access to that level of latent magic, they're "borrowing" the crafter's. How on earth are we still equating scrolls with magic mastery? The scroll reader doesn't have to understand the somatic, verbal and component cost to use it — that has already been provided by the scroll scribe and it's just magic paper ready to use. It shouldn't or wouldn't take a genius to figure it out. Read words, use. YMMV. The same for a wand. Point towards desired target and read the command word. Hopefully you didn't mistake one for another.

This is our setting. I don't really get where you all had the impression it was something different.

[Aodh Lazuli]

I think your point is a false equivalency. Sure, your best friends in life are the ones who tell you that red isn't your color or the person you are dating is a leech when that's not exactly what you want to hear. This isn't that though. If I were developing things for a server currently, and had a balance team to help me with it, I expect the relationship to be "here's my idea, tell me how to break it so I can make the necessary tweaks".

Apologies for not making myself clear enough, then.

I was referring to work, leadership, the creative process, responsibility, and the ability to listen to criticism. The fact you somehow managed to reduce this to facile trash about "red not being your colour" is frankly Snuggle a Bugbear offensive and displays an interesting attitude from you to engaging in dialogue with differing opinions.
_____________

I will illustrate my point with a slightly facetious example.

Let us imagine a scenario in which someonehas comissioned a submarine, and they hire a submarine engineer to assist technically and ensure the design will be functional... This is what a balance team is meant to do - ensure the game operates in a balanced (read; functional) manner. Sometimes, this involves saying "no."

Project lead: "I have this concept for a submarine."

Engineer: "But Project lead, this submarine is made entirely out of ham."

Project lead: "Yes, that is the concept."

Engineer: "But ham is not a good material to make submarines from. This submarine will be a deathtrap."

Project lead: "Well. Tell me how to do it.. This is what I hired you for - To make my creative vision a functional reality."

Engineer: *Goes to the drawing board and creates blueprints a functional submarine made from tried and tested submarine components, then adds a cosmetic covering of ham, before presenting this to the Project lead*

Project lead: "But this is no longer a submarine that is made of ham. This is a normal submarine wearing a ham coat!"

Engineer: "Yes, that is because a ham submarine is a terrible idea which will get people killed. I have drawn up the closest thing I could manage, drawing on my years of experience and specialist knowledge to make this functional, yet also looking like your original concept."

Project lead: "You are fired. I will proceed without your specialist knowledge."

And then, the ham submarine has an abnormally long construction process and sinks on its maiden voyage, killing all on board.

[Miskol]

its supposed to take year after year of study to become a wizard this powerful. 15 UMD doesn't represent on a scoresheet the skill required to imitate that....

I would disagree with this point. In lore? Yes, a wizard would take decade upon decade to learn their craft. In terms of Arelith? I estimate around two or three months for someone playing several times a week, or approximately 2 to 3 years in-game time to reach level 30. Arelith is not pen and paper DnD and power scaling should not be based around what a level 30 wizard in pen and paper can achieve. I would argue that casters with GSF: Conjuration already have a far easier time levelling up compared to their mundane counterparts.

[Diegovog]

It shouldn't or wouldn't take a genius to figure it out. Read words, use. YMMV
This is our setting. I don't really get where you all had the impression it was something different.

Read words, use. YMMV + gesture = 9th circle spell mages at level 1
This is our setting. I don't really get where you all had the impression it was something different.

[Adam Antium]

Please stop trolling and actually speak like adults (everybody, not just the guy above me) so that this topic doesn't get locked, behaving poorly will definitely not make the staff consider changing anything, nor make other players like you at all, it will only hurt you and this discussion.

[Adam Antium]

Double post, ahoy!

From a thread in the Kudos subforum:

Keep Your Pufferfish of steel!

This update is something which was needed for a long while to remove the shoehoning and build-it-this way meta.
Not everything has to be Balanced as long it is Fun and RP-generating!

Edit:
Love those auto-corrections, Pufferfish is such a great word

Where does the "not everything has to be balanced" come from, on the most numbers-heavy video game most of us likely play? I'm just genuinely curious, this is the most baffling statement I've ever seen on a video game, much less one that is directly based on D&D, a very anal and balance-concerned game.

For an explanation of why people care about balance, you don't play a single-player game. You play a game that is at least mildly competitive and is supposed to have conflict both in the form of dialogue/plots and combat/fighting, with many other people. Balance is there for a reason. Do you... Do you disagree with that?

[Wrips]

This i entirely agree with, its supposed to take year after year of study to become a wizard this powerful. 15 UMD doesn't represent on a scoresheet the skill required to imitate that....

Having 15 UMD doesn't mean you can imitate a wizard, 15 UMD means you can operate devices created by wizards. Devices created by wizards to replicate some of their powers but with far less magnitude. Note that a character has no relation with the intrincasies of magic encased in a wand or a scroll - it was a wizard that did all the process to create the scroll or wand - they just need to know how to unleash the magic in it.

Look, you don't need to take years after years of study to operate a personal computer but the engineers that created it's components had to.

[Ork]

It shouldn't or wouldn't take a genius to figure it out. Read words, use. YMMV
This is our setting. I don't really get where you all had the impression it was something different.

Read words, use. YMMV + gesture = 9th circle spell mages at level 1
This is our setting. I don't really get where you all had the impression it was something different.

If we're going to split hairs, but if you examine the setting you'll recognize that your wrong. Magic items do not make someone a mage.

[ImWithThisGuy]

Heya.

Chiming in to say that I am one of many that love the UMD changes. I cannot begin to say how grueling it is for every single PvP to include the following, in multiples of sometimes ten or more:

-WoF (Not even used as a means of removing summons, roughly 90%+ of the time I have seen this scroll used, it was for the blind.) Largely the most meta scroll in my opinion; The first time you are hit by a WoF in a fight its not so bad. That said, Many fights are ended immediately by opening combat with this scroll, and when someone has a steady supply, it can be crippling against someone who doesn't. Even if they have ways to remove it, being blinded puts one out of position, and makes them spend time removing it while Flatfooted.

-Timestop. Typically a powerful finisher in most fights, it gets both disgisting and unbelievably annoying when there are half a dozen or more people fighting and EVERY single one uses a timestop throughout the fight. I've seen this happen many times. Ironically, with the changes it has had I would say its actually the lightest offender in my book.

-Mordenkeinens Disjunction. This scrolled spell has caused a great deal of grief for non-casters. In many cases, this will strip you of nearly all your dependant buffs, and lower spell resist by a hefty ammount. This paired with WoF can end some fights then and there. Best case scenario, you spend 2-5 rounds applying new wards, which is precious time lost. Worst; you die to a massive wail/implosion DC.

While wizards are buffed by proxy with these changes, these three scrolls in particular are infamous for being 100% necisarry in PvP. I would argue players aren't really responsible enough to carry around 23 WoF scrolls to use as they see fit, only to end up using them all on a single person becaude they refuse to lose a single PvP. This is only worse when people plan to use multiples of these simultinously in group PvP.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

There are a lot of broken things still. Wizards seem to be the new meta, and the new spells seem to help, but building had progressed to the point on Arelith that almost any spell that required a save was nigh unto useless. This wasn't healthy.

Having played a caster, and watching all my L9 spells with 44DC bounce off a characters back without sweating because the melee oppositions saves were above 40 is a testament to this statement.

Not to throw the mage handbook at you, but a key element of playing a spellcaster is identifying your opposition. If you see opponent using Divine Might/Shield, then they've Divine Grace or Dark Blessing perks to their saves, meaning that you'll need to rely on fixed damage spells in most circumstances. If a person in armor registers as having high charisma when examined, this is often a safe assumption. They'll be the only melee variations with saves that high, and only the fortitude save will generally hit those numbers.

Wizards, especially if gearing around the +7 zoo buffs of the epic transmutation focus have immensely high saves versus spells additionally, between liberal use of unisave gear and their spellcraft score. Far, far higher than your average mundane. So that's something to bear in mind against them. Sorcerers often have very poor saves, unless dipping into paladin or blackguard, at which they skyrocket.

Most warriors you run into will have fortitude vs spells in the 20-30s IF geared for fortitude. Which is often the only save they gear towards, without high-end runes or 5% gear. Their other two saves will both score below 20, again excluded the outliers of far and beyond 5% gearing. They'll often rely entirely on Clarity and Freedom of Movement to cover saves they flat out don't have.

Barbarians and clerics have abysmal reflex.

Advice, prepare a few max IGMS, Time Stop and Cloudkill to enable fixed damage alongside summons, and then coverage for 2-3 different saving throws on circles below 9th via evocation, enchantment, illusion or necromancy focuses. That should reduce your encounters with the example issue considerably.

Except all martisl builds approved by build community achieves those kind of waves via equipment/feats/etc. And the build community likes it that way because people of the more competitive stream of pvp arnt a huge fan of save or die.

Stackable plus 1 saves, adding spellcraft and disicipline to equipment help add to this scene of of all top tier pvp being mostly immune to save or die things be it spells or knockdowns. A build with any glaring weakness has been considered a poor build.

[Peppermint]

There seems to be this notion that the "git gud" illuminati are out to stop caster dominance and conquer Arelith with all of their mundane builds. Or something.

That is, of course, piffle and nonsense.

I can't speak for every experienced player, but most of the players from the former balance team are coincidentally playing casters or divine builds. There's no "anti-caster" bias among any of them. Nor are their criticisms based in emotion. Of all the players on the server, they're affected least. Not only are their characters already in strong positions, but they know better than anyone how to adapt to a new meta should they need to.

It really disappoints me when players break arguments down to an "us vs. them" mentality, where anyone on the other side must surely have some emotionally-driven or nefarious agenda.

Bear in mind that many of the more experienced players here have poured countless hours in development trying to make Arelith better, whether that be as contributors or active advisers. They're not leveraging their mechanics knowledge in some bid to rule the server. Rather, they're trying to educate the server's management so that it's run in a fashion that's sane and reasonable.

The only person that stands to benefit is you.

[Adam Antium]

Spells that rely on saves were a mistake to begin with, wizards were already king but that is not where their strength lied.

You have timestop, IGMS, cloudkill (CON damage you can't resist with a save), acid fog (75% slow with no save), and incendiary cloud (blindness with no save) just for starters. Epic spells (hellball = saveless KD), too. Banishment and disjunction (to deal with summons or dispelling literally anything), too. There are almost situations where a wizard is not able to obliterate any single opponent 1v1, and they can have all of these spells prepared at once because most of them are different spell levels and can be organized into a spellbook (using metamagics to help organize if you really need).

Wizards and sorcerers already had the capability to simply pick a person and send them to the shadow realm.

Now you even have Avascular Mass (deal 1/2 the target's hp, saveless, up to 300 damage, at a range, and is given to the same class that has timestop and haste as their bread and butter.... Seems fair!), and Iceberg, and nobody can dispel your summons either except another epic caster - no, this isn't fun for anybody else, because if a mage who knows what they're doing decides to kick my teeth in, there is literally exactly zero I can do about it. Even if you say "but you can knock them down," they have discipline normally, and can self-hellball to knock me down, haste (if they aren't already), timestop, and start laying down the cloud spells - all of which have components like 75% movement reduction or blindness which are not negated at all or not negated fully (in cloudkill's case) by a successful save. And IGMS or avascular mass, which simply do gobs of saveless damage.

Nobody can survive all of this unless you are fortunate enough to either be fighting a wizard who still thinks they should use spells that are nullified by saves and doesn't prepare acid fog + incendiary cloud, or they are either silly or unfortunate enough to let you stand right next to them before pvp starts so you can get a free IKD in. Assuming they don't have discipline, and assuming you then have the DPS to end them before they can get back up and self-target hellball, that is.

Lastly, if you are unhappy that your save-or-die spells were bouncing off of people, you're literally saying you want players to fall prey to you casting a single spell and killing them. At least more often than they currently might (which is probably "not that often.")

That sounds rather un-fun to me.

[Anomandaris]

Just curious from peoples' experience, if you had to estimate, how much pvp happens 1v1 as a % of total pvp?

[Durvayas]

Just curious from peoples' experience, if you had to estimate, how much pvp happens 1v1 as a % of total pvp?

I'd say about half.

You have duels, you have bickering and stabbings in the hub. You have arrests in cordor. You have muggings. You have assassination attempts, you have paladins running into grinding necromancers with their undead out, the list goes on.

You will PvP solo a lot more often than you will do it in groups.