First off, this is just a post to throw around ideas and see if anything useful comes out. Feel free to chime in with your own ones.
Second, if you can't easily see a way to change the spell, it's probably not worth doing.
Third, some of these ideas will be terrible. That's fine, as long as the terrible ones don't get implemented. Just because
I (or anyone else) think an idea is great doesn't mean it actually is.
1) Speed up Wail of the Banshee. There's over 3 seconds of NOTHING that happens after you cast it, and it doesn't really serve any purpose. Considering you can instantly create a cone of flames or ice as soon as the spell is cast, I find it hard to believe that a sound wave would take so much time to appear.
I'm not even joking about the delay, either. I can cast Wail on a group of enemies, and then have my next spell (half a round later, with casting time on top of that) interrupted by someone who explodes into mist half a second later. IGMS has the same problem - if you cast it right after wail, you'll end up wasting a large number of missiles on people who are literally waiting to die.
Just double the speed (or halve the delay, if that's how it's coded) of the animation and sound effects (I know that was a fix that was implemented in one mod, but I don't know how they did it), or instantly summon the ghostly banshee thing rather than having the glowy particle shot that indicates a travelling spell (more like a summon creature spell than a burst-spell) - as long as it finishes before the next spell in the list is cast, that's good enough.
2) Try and fix the Mobile AoE bug. I know this one is hard and annoying, but even if you have to change what battletide/dirge/etc actually do then that'd be an improvement, as long as they're not ending prematurely. I don't know if this mod has been applied to the server (if we do, it doesn't completely fix the issue), but it claims to be a solution:
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Scripts.Detail&id=2229If you're going to change the spells instead, here's my suggestion:
Try and make them caster-only buffs and current-target-only penalties, depending on the spell (no AoE to walk out of = no more bug). So if you cast Dirge, the guy you're fighting will lose stats every round until you stop attacking him, and Battletide will boost your ab/damage and decrease the ab/damage of whoever you are currently hitting. This would also fix issues with things like BT breaking invis/sanctuary if a mob enters the AoE, allowing you to use them without making it impossible to then hide/run away should you need to.
3) I don't think Flame Lash is doing distance checks properly - it seems to let you cast it from further away than the actual range of the spell - you see the spell being cast, see the flames come out...and then nothing. No damage, no DR, no saves, just an enemy standing there completely unaffected.
4) Some of the cone-type spells trigger the caster's own defenses: I see my Cone of Cold hitting my Spell Mantle all the time (I know this also applies to things like Burning Hands, Prismatic Spray, etc) - is it possible to simply exclude the caster from the list of allowable targets, or possibly move the cone slightly further out so it doesn't include you in the area? It's annoying that I have to sacrifice my own protection just to use a spell which should otherwise be no threat to me (things like Neg Burst I can understand hitting you, but when the flames are literally coming FROM your hands, they should not be able to burn you), and it makes me even more hesitant to actually use some of those spells, in case they backfire (prismatic spray in particular. It's too random for me to use anyway, but the thought that it might insta-kill the caster is just nasty).
I had more, but this is getting long, and I can't really remember them. I'll tack them on if they come back to me.
Author