Greater Ruin

[kingcamaro]

Suggestion: Greater Ruin gains +1 DC per 3 paragon levels.

It's been a while since Greater Ruin has seen an update (2/19/2005 from what I can find).

In that time we have seen Hells released, paragon levels, item stats increase from +12 to +16 and paragon feats.

Since then, the typical caster has seen an increase of 7DC on their spells (+2 from double demi, +2 from item stats, +1 from paragon stats, +2 from paragon spell focus). This is excluding power creep in stats from BUR and XR subraces.


Thoughts, ideas, criticism?

[drunkenboastor]

DC boost for Touch of Vecna too?

I am in agreement that Greater Ruin needs a bit of updating. I have not taken Greater Ruin on any caster besides Pale Master in the last long while. Back when the level cap was 60, I took Greater Ruin on almost all of my caster builds.

[FunkySwerve]

We will probably wind up scaling most or all abilities with PL, eventually, so we will likely do this. Not sure we will go full +6 though, on Ruin. Info about where it was pre-PL as compared to those spells would be helpful in making this happen sooner rather than later. Feel free to call out other overlooked abilities that don't presently scale, as well.

Tx,
Funky

[simpetar]

Aug 12, 2020 20:28:55 GMT FunkySwerve said:

Info about where it was pre-PL as compared to those spells would be helpful in making this happen sooner rather than later.

GRuin DC was set in the pre-randomization, pre-abyss era. The peak DC a caster could reach with a generic lvl 9 spell (plode, for example) with a x2 demi BUR caster was 58 (19 base + 31 mod including x2 demi and arti + 8 LSF). Compared to that, today we have:
+2 from gear (16 bonus instead of 12)
+2 from PSF
+1 from PL stats
+1 from XR races
so increase of 6 DC over PLs is quite tame. I did not even include the juicy buffs from DC egos that were not available back then, or new sort of temporary bonuses from Stolen Lifeforce.

Likewise, the last time when GRuin got any update was when Disintegrate was introduced - immunity to that spell was added to the list of requirement to resist the instakill. I suppose it was to keep the theme going of GRuin as the "oh crap" button. Since then, many new ways to instakill problematic targets have been added, some generic (like PWK in abyss or numerous banishable monsters) and some niche (Pesticide, Defoliate, Silence, you name it...), but none of these had any effect on GRuin. Maybe it deserves an update in this department as well, at the very least monsters vulnerable to Dismissal / Banishment / Unname can be also destroyed by GRuin, regardless of their other immunities.

You could easily make the argument, that with the diminished player base, it is harder to cover every and each sort of instakill in a group, that GRuin does. Truth is, it is still quite expensive and there is little return of the investment, when it has to compete with spells of similar (or higher) DC that can be spammed, as opposed to 2-3 GRuin casts per rest.