I just finished reading a few of the posts from mods about the recent spate of postings/protest from the Illy community and I am appalled. Over and over I see them claiming that just because devs never post does not mean they don't read. So tell me, if you were to talk to person working for a company of which you were a custoemer about an issue with their product and they simply stared back at you not responding, would you consider that to be satisfactory just because you knew that at least they were listening? Give me a break. Frankly I don't care any more. I've cancelled my account (which including eq1 I've had for almost 10 years) due to just this sort of BS and ivory tower mentality and I only wish I hadn't been paying quarterly. This kind of trite response is just what alienates people and forces them away from this game. If you mods can spend this much time playing forumNazi then you can certainly also find a way to get devs to respond to the legitimate and ongoing concerns this sommunity has been trying to get resolved. Unless of course losing customers is of no concern to anyone at SOE anymore, which I am starting to believe is the case.
I do see responses to the overall issues that I 'think' Illys are having. I don't play one, but I think some of your main issues have been addressed pretty well. Just not in this particular thread. Hardly anyone gets regular dev communication in their class forum though, and usually when it occurs it is only after a lot of player feedback has been read and the devs are ready to start implementing some ideas. These are some things I've gleaned off reading dev posts in general over the last month or two... Currently many Illy buffs dont' matter so much because they are given on stats that everyone has capped -- but it sounds like getting a stat over the cap come velious time is going to give some additional bonus. For example having 125% double attack might mean something like 100% double attack and 8% flurry. Crowd control isn't useful enough anymore -- they just posted that beginning with content after vellious they were going to take a serious look at making crowd control valuable again. maybe you aren't happy to hear 'after velious' but at least it's feedback. I'm sure there are other gripes, but those are two of the biggest ones and they have been addressed.
Actually I think all chanter have given up on crowd control becoming balanced and implemented for anything other than soloing novelty (and even then it's only useful if ur levelling too fast to gear up tbh) - useful CC has been a 'maybe oneday' 'we're looking into it' for the lifetime of EQ2. Big issues are, A third of the illy's spellbook is pointless (crowd control) or even actively harmful to game play dynamics e.g. memwipes teleports etc. If your raid is low on chanters, coercer manaflow is 12 times better than illusionist. precisely 12 times better. manaflow is the tool to address power problems raidwide. there are so many single target buffs that with people regularly dying in harder encounters, there is a huge drain on your time to play your character, you're constantly rebuffing other peoples characters. Many buffs are wasted due to caps. Lots of time co-ordinating who even needs what buff. timewarp is suposed to be the class defining ability for SF. It totally sucks in everyway. It is another single target buff that has to be co-ordinated and applied every 30+ seconds, the dps it adds is pathetic for the amount of hassle in using it with immunities, and a useful 5 second window that is so small that server lag and encounter scripts etc waste most of them. I suspect timewarp probably lowers dps, due to abilities being held back for these tiny 5second windows that are mostly wasted/stunned/stifled/kb'ed/spike abilities missed/server lagged/ported/too busy to use/not noticed. Even using it on my own illy in the rotation, for best timing control, I'm lucky get 2 spells into the window with illy cast times (not that Illy's have good spike abilities and prism chaos our best dps ability doesn't get double triggers properly), it's just FUBAR. illy personal dps is much worse than coercer, and their utility especially in power is much worse also, especially considering illy's traditionally have troubs and coercers don't. The gearflation means that the chanter balance advantage of fast cast speeds are meaningless now, coupled with proc's becoming less useful it really hurt the personal contribution.
100% aggree snowline. In the past you need mob control. But now? In the beginning of the T9 you needed the mezz in cella. But now two good healers manage the last mob without mezz. A part from that, I think it's a wit to publlish an addon, with only one zone, where you need mob control. The illy have 3 mezzes which are useless. And many other classes have mezzes, too. They ban the mezzes from the quickbar, because they aren't required. Other mob control spells aren't required, too. I use stuns a little but not often, because it's not neccesary. The healers heal without any problems, if I use stuns or not. I use the stiffle spells only, because they have a high damage output. I don't use the spell Anoyrisma for the mc effect. I use it sometimes, if I don't have another spell up. But everyone who plays an illy knows, that this occures very rare Aggroreset is never used, because since t6 is no sense in aggroreset. The tanks have no aggroproblems and even if the mob switches, its often to late I find the spell (because I use it so less ) So I think mc isn't required today. And if SOE don't want mc, they should give the illy an alternative. This problem occures in t7, too. So they give the illy more damage. This is an alternative. But now the damage of the illy isn't so fine. It's not required for an illy to make more damage than a wizard, but especially in the last 3 month the damage ranking of the illy drops down. Now a dirge or a troubadour makes as much damage as the illy. This never occures in the last 5 years! And I think it's wrong, because the dirge and trouba buffs and debuffs higher and he wears a heavier armor. So why must he make more damage, too??? I think it's inbalanced. Appropos inbalance. In the past the coercer was inbalanced to the illy and SOE revamps him to adjust the inbalance. This is ok. But today it's inbalanced, too. Because I can top a coercer only if I have a troub and have the tempobuff. And even than, it's a very difficulty task, which often fails. And the coercer has only the dirge, but the dirge don't buff as good as the troub for mages. Another point is the pet. It's nice to have a pet, but why must the pet die in every AE? In the past the staff of the barrier hinder it. I understand that the buff of the staff was inbalanced and I asked myself, when will it be fixed. But now, the pet nearly dies as much as without the staff. So why don't you give the pet an AE-Immunity? Then the pet and the archivements for the pet have a sense. It's sensless to equip for a pet and skill the pet, if it dies in nealry every AE. So think about the future of the illy and make responsible changes. If you don't want mob control, cancel the spells, give the illy new ones and other tasks for the raid and the group. The mana reg for the group shouldn't be the task of the illy only. Especially when the coercer can manareg for his and other groups in the raid in the same way cu Kostarsus P.S. Apology my worse english, but I'm from germany and I think the german forums aren't read anymore.
snowline wrote: You missed a part about gear consolidation. Every mage gets spell casting speed. there are very few items with good spell reuse and if it has spell reuse? Every other mage wants it too. There's no good gear difference for us vs other mages.
You've never truly needed CC in this game, ever. It had some purpose very early on when everywhere was heroic but its never been needed.
