If killing off mage beams means all these other silly Nanny State suggestions never see the light of day, than maybe it is a small price to pay. My mage is not my bread and butter character, so if the beams get nerfed than he just gets played in a normal group doing normal group things, which is 75% of the time anyway. The consensus of people who play mages as a main character probably is the important player input, as it should be. Quite a few mages have gone on record as saying that nerfing beams down to the same target ability as wizards is OK with them. Beams are not central to their game play. Its people who have alt mages that might take more offence, but I could be wrong. No one likes nerfs. Nerfs mean something ran away from the developers that shouldn't have and its the players who pay the price for it. Players and developers really just need to work harder at meeting each other half way.
This conversation is still going on? people just don't stop do they lol, guess they don't have a very busy holiday this year. Killing off beams is not the solution and there is a much deeper underlying problem that will continue on no matter what happens to beams. I really am surprised only a small handful of people have the foresight to see that.
Anytime i've made a post on this topic over the months i've always said it wasn't a solution and wizard beams should have their target cap removed (and the blind recourse) The difference for different solutions i'd wager is simply because we have pretty much a totally different dev team now than we did back then, but nerfing mage beams with a target cap is not the answer to a longterm problem and as such wizard beams should also be unnerfed.
It doesn't matter how deep the problem runs. What people care about is how the solution is going to effect them. SoE knows what is broken but it is going to be a challenge to find a fix that won't anger a bunch of players or cost a bunch of money and time to implement. If it were up to me, I would punish the abusers and leave it be otherwise as far as skill sets and spells go, but that requires manpower and money to do. Same goes with testing every angle where an ability could be abused in a proactive manner and then avoid putting a potential negative situation live in the game. Again, requires money and manpower. Otherwise, the conversation is not going to end until a change goes live and people know for sure that it is not going to effect them in some punitive way. With this issue, bottom line is they can anger some small subset of mages by nerfing beams and prevent a bunch (but not all) of zone disruption or they can believe they will end all zone disruption by eliminating any kind of swarming/kiting etc and anger a vastly larger amount of people with a very broad nerf. Feel free to continue on that no one gets it, however. As for the Holidays, not everyone is enamored with the whole stressful hustle and bustle BS.
Had to look that up . If they cast this, they won't need the DS ... Druid's farm Greys the same way - with PBAE earthquake type spells. Toughest part is wedging yourself against a wall so all the push doesn't interrupt the long'ish cast. Broiling Blast Rk. II Description 1: Decrease Hitpoints by 9201 Details Raw Spell Data, Lucy Spell ViewMana: 2400 Skill: EvocationCasting Time: 4 Recast Time:12Fizzle Time: 1.5 Resist: FireLocation: Any Time of Day: AnyAE Range: 25 Fizzle Adj: 116Deletable: No Interruptable: YesTimer ID: 2 Target Type: PB AE
This thread is still going? Geeze guys give it a rest... I think you broke the bones INSIDE the Dead Horse! Look. they said they where going to address the issue, let them! Summoning never made it live /yay EQ community, But yelling and disputing "I need this spell to do this," isn't solving anything.
I think people are still going on about it because its still in their minds, and worried that it may still be put in at some point because Elidroth said this.
Don't forget to unnerf Ranger Beams at the same time that you mention Wizard beams. This so called "class warfare" that they try to supress with such zeal - is a direct result of devs tinkering with the mechanics to begin with. No - Wizards and Rangers will not simply forget the "solution" that was imposed on their classes. And (any) customers want/demand a consistent product. No one really care that there were dev team changes, that's SOE's internal business. But externally, we customers want to see the same things applied to all classes, or none at all. It gets no simpler than that, and doesn't take an MBA to figure out. The only solution that will ever go down without a lot of blowback, is to unnerf the Wizards and Rangers beaming abilities and then create a special instanced zone (or 2) that's easily repeatable. Where Wizzies, Rangers, Mages etc can be directed to go - so that they don't lag out or disrupt regular zones while beaming. -Rat Customer empowerment philosophy 101: If you run a fast food window and you get my order wrong, I do not "pull up and park" while you fix it. Pulling up is not for my benefit, it for yours. You'll fix my order quicker, and be more likely to get it right the next time, if I sit right there and cost you business while I wait out your mistake. Getting it wrong has a price.
While I like your philosophy with the fast food example....let me give a piece of advice. Don't tick off the people making your food. Especially those who dont make squat and don't care much about their job.
Cleric's got Shining Bastion. Unlimited procs, a direct proc heal, procs on all level mobs and a mitigation buff. Druid's Reptile and Paladin Ward of Tunare lines were originally similar to Shining Bastion (minus the mitigation buff). When it was realized these were used to mass kill green cons, they were nerfed and given a limited number of procs. The proc was changed from a direct heal to a heal+HoT which cannot exceptional heal. The proc rate decreases by 5% each level below your level is (completely stopping proc at -20 levels). So! I demand that if wizard/ranger beams are hit unlimited to facilitate mass killing, paladin WoT and Druid Reptile be unneeded so that it is fair relative to cleric's new buff.
It's unlikely that sitting at a window is going to cost any business, and far, far less likely even that the employees (and probably even the managers) would care if it did. So basically you're just inconveniencing the customers behind you because it makes you feel good to exact imaginary revenge over a simple mistake. I'm sure the guy with a 30 minute lunch was happy to sacrifice 5 minutes of it in the name of justice. But as to the topic at hand; having different classes with different skills is inherently inconsistent. Target limits are just another spell detail, like mana cost, cast time, damage, etc.. There's no reason for that particular detail to be identical across all similar spells/abilities. You just see something you want, and you're juggling the logic to try to justify it. That kind of suggests that zone disruption is not the only issue people have with beaming. I'd comment further, but I don't want to violate forum rules.
Perhaps I need to explain more simply... My post is based on history, not emotion. When this disruption problem "came up" with Wizard and Rangers, the solution was nerfing. Now that this exact same problem has come up again - the solution requires "appeasement". Classes (and the customers that play them) remember exactly what they were told when they got hit. We're talking as much about predictable human nature as "game mechanics" here. My suggestion to un-nerf a couple classes, and provide an instanced zone where they could go at it, is the only win, win, win situation I see here. Do anything else and some class(s) won't be real happy. -Rat And FYI: There is nothing at a typical fast food window that can't be assembled and thrown out the window in about 30 seconds tops - if motivated to do so. The tactic of staying at the window plays on their "corporate fear" that long lines will cause people to drive by and go elsewhere. Perception "becomes" their reality - thus the "please pull up" policy was born. To quote Darth Vader: "Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them". It works - there is no slow down - trust me on this. <EG>
I could be wrong, but I thought I remember during the RoF beta, that it was brought up that the new mage beam had no target limit. Dont remember the dev's replying to it though. If not beta, i know it was brought up really shortly after the initial release of the expansion. My point being though, is that they knew about this spell. For whatever reason they let it go. It is really SoE's own fault for waiting sooo long to do something about it. Just wanted to mention that as it seems in a lot of threads on the issue, folks seem to be under the impression that the dev's just now found out about this.
I see the original test update as more of a means to push players into newer content, not so much as nerf a number of classes in one fell swoop. In the end, its a horrible idea. If it was a means to address swarming, HS, beaming, etc, it seems the content devs are just trying to do something the code devs really should address.
Not buying it. If all you wanted was consistency, then nerfing mage beams should be just as palatable. You just see an opportunity to gain some power, even if you won't admit that to yourself. There's no win/win. You might make mages, wizards, and rangers happy, but in doing so you further anger all the classes that don't have any such abilities. No mage beams have ever had target limits. They've been around for many years, and I'm sure the devs were well aware of it. They were just never a problem prior to the huge damage increase they got in RoF.
