flightlessavian
commented
1 year ago Agreed wholeheartedly.
Ash is one of those people - I remember explaining to people back in that Ascendant crypt event that I have to do advance scouting (on Ash) as she still has active Negative Energy Protection, doesn't have many of them, we can't rest at-will, and basically it's all the difference between an encounter with the variety of shadow/large shadow/shadow fiend being Yet Another Encounter and being a TPK.
This came up in another thread, but there seems to be this requirement to rush through dungeons at maximum speed, which I have also witnessed and have actually stopped running dungeons with certain players because of an unwillingness to slow down. This need to rush is entirely understandable, however.
Dispels are excessively common from both mobs and traps. Even if a spell has a long duration, you're still going to lose it, especially since every mob on the server is higher level than the character, giving an increased chance of their dispel being successful against you. Many traps even include Mordenkainen's Disjunction, which doesn't even roll to dispel some of the most important buffs available (stoneskins, spell mantles, visages, mage armor, etc).
The spells do not actually have a long duration. This makes them worthless at lower levels or as clickies/trinkets (especially coupled with how easily they are dispelled) and exceptionally unreliable as your levels increase. Given the general difficulty of the server, which seems geared towards this idea that players will travel through dungeons while fully buffed, lacking those buffs can easily be a death sentence for characters. I understand it's meant to be a challenging server, but a server should also encourage player retention, which Thay clearly struggles with.
This is most egregious during DM events. I have been to so many events where the DM can't even get a description or comment out because people want to fight while fully buffed and not wait for the DM to type anything, so they just charge in, smash things up, and move on. This mentality also seems to have affected DMs a lot, too, as many events seem primarily focused on just the combat rather than the lore, story or exploration that they might want to offer.
I suggest that spell durations be modified to approximately double, or even triple, their current minute-values (except for the rounds/level spells, which should remain the same, with a few exceptions, such as Amplify). This would allow players to slow down, focus more on the roleplay, event and exploration, and less on taking full advantage of their buffs before they run out. It would also possibly be a means of allowing economic adjustments; inevitably, some spells would become more popular as trinket/clicky buffs, but with longer duration buffs, fewer of them would be needed, which means they could be made more expensive. Additionally, longer duration spells means that less gold is ultimately needed in an "immediate" fashion, allowing the gold caps to remain relatively low.
/ramble