just saying - i 5 box enchanters, and have one as a main on the pvp server, this patch has undone so much of my work, and what for.
Maybe I missed something. We lost the crystals... what else did we lose? I had no problem soloing a gribble the other morning. On another note, Meg is still a pretty lady, she just got older.
Your after pic should be of a beat up victim. They broke chromatic haze silku, or they nerfed it without actually fixing the broken parts.
Daybreak first attempt at providing actual, active aDPS to caster turned out to be too strong in an expension that screw over melee... Wich not only means that chrom haze got nerfed , but also means further attempt at adding caster aDPS to chanter/druid is unlikely, casters will remains mostly self-sufficient ( compared to melee), and that will als cause issues...
The proc can still fail to crit up to 30% of the time. Given they reduced the % to proc (NOT talking about cheez), the constant failing makes it pretty bad. Yes, the patch said they increased it to 8%. This was not a 'real' increase compared to when it could proc off Twincast, Flare, and almost any detrimental spell (with a mana cost), etc. Now it's completely limited to DDs and only the initial one that cost you mana. They need to fix the broken proc part for it to be worthwhile. If they do that, the ability would be nice and I think most people would be satisfied. Also, since the patch, the net result appears to only be around ~10% decrease in caster DPS and they still beat melee on just about every parse, like before the patch. I need some more parses from raids but it's looking like it's around that number. That is exactly what I said would happen too! So, now stuff dies slower and melee just die more because of it. Win-win for everyone, right? Yeah, the 'sploit needed to be fixed but it did just about nothing in terms of helping melee as many class-enviests were hoping. Sorry, I think that is hilarious since they were the main driving force behind the whole thing. Again, I'll say, yes, the Banestrike cheez proccing should have been fixed. All the other changes were completely un-needed but as usual, they over nerf. Why? Because they probably don't understand the ability in context (like most of the melee DPS who complained) and think that these changes were appropriate. Already lots of posts on crystals. Again, most of the changes went too far. All they needed to do was increase the mana cost to be more than the return (duh). The heal crystals... I'm not really a fan but the 5 minute re-use has made them completely worthless. That AA should honestly be refunded IMO. A 9k heal every 5 minutes is worthless (and remember these still cost a substantial amount of mana to cast as well).
Devs have stated in the past year or so that they would like to rein in caster aDPS, so that was kind of a bummer. The way I see Chromatic Haze is that I can use it once every 10 minutes, and it's only good for one nuke per group member. If it works, great. If it doesn't put up the big numbers I'm hoping for...oh well. I was never one to abuse crystals, but if my enchanter was my main I probably would have taken more advantage of them. 5 minute reuse timer kind of sucks. They should cost at least as much to cast as they return for you later; that only makes sense.
I parsed this the day the patch went live. The proc only crits about 30pct of the time. It still only procs at 5pct not 8pct. And yeah the change to only working on nukes for a class that rarely gets to chain nuke is . Melee DPS didn't actually change. Most melee gear their toons up to be tanks. It used to be there was no trade off, now there is. The game changed and they want to still live it up as it was during the 13 years of Meleequest. They can't have their cake and eat it to, like casters they must make the decision between doing DPS or being a tank version of their(input melee class name here.) I don't know anyone that even noticed the exploit to azure crystal. To nerf sanguine crystal in the same way is pathetic.
Eh, I realize chromatic haze was changed. But you know what? The first time I saw someone doing that whole banestrike thing? I knew it was coming. Why on earth they don't just fix the exploit and see what happens from there I'll never know. Make banestrike go off even if it's on a pet, give them a timer for even trying it. boom fixed.
They also are trying to give enchanters an active role in ADPS. Because the damage difference between the enchanter chain nuking when able and not is minimal over the course of the raid (2-3 min burn raids not included). Hence Gift of Haze was created. Really, every raid enchanter I've talked to does something else while raiding. Be it leading the raid (hats off to you), reading, or playing other games. Excel spreadsheet logic. Azure crystal gained something like 2k mana return for 500 mana cost every rank. They just copied the formula for this last rank and didn't bother looking into the bug reports in beta.
Let me provide what is perhaps a bit of a different perspective here. Think about pvp. If you're on a pvp server, sometimes things matter more than they do on blue. You get dotted a lot more on a pvp server than you do on a blue server, and you're usually not going to be grouped with an actual healer for it. Mercs die pretty fast, and I've had necro dots one tick me from 80% health or even higher sometimes to just dead. Rogues get 2 separate dots, and a good rogue can use those to take you from full health to 60% health pretty fast even if they aren't using their main discs. That class can one shot most people. SK's get dots that work fairly well, now shaman get a dot or two that work fairly well in pvp, and druids have a decent dot or two as well. The server is already skewed towards these classes. Sanguine mind crystal gave people that played enchanters a better, more reasonable chance. If you don't believe me, then go to zek and live there for a month. Odds are you'll believe me. Try not just to escape the fights, but to survive in them, or even sometimes to win them. You'll be surprised how much you'll suddenly think sanguine mind crystal was completely necessary. I kind of like having the server be able to support some people that legitimately play enchanters. You know, for raiding purposes. I'm not trying to say that other classes in pvp are all completely balanced, and that everything else is fair there, but this is a huge hit to that class on a pvp server for absolutely no reason. Sanguine mind crystal was nerfed for no reason at all, but changes the game for me personally a lot. If I'm wrong, then enlighten me. Find me 3 posts before this last improvement of the azure mind crystal (the one that made it give back more than it cost to cast) in which people legitimately complained about the sanguine mind crystals (pro tip, these are the ones that heal people, and do not give back mana). I'm not an eq forum librarian, but I've never heard of anyone complaining about them before this azure mind crystal situation. You know, they could also fix it so that pvp was disabled on instances in zek. That'd help a bit.
While I respect that some folks in the extreme minority love EQ Pvp, attempting to balance *any* ability for all players around the Pvp game is not a good idea in any way, shape or form, ever. If we (live) think we have class balance issues now, good lord at throwing in Pvp scenarios into the mix.
I'm glad you're able to demonstrate a knee jerk reaction, but try reading what I wrote, and thinking about it. Did you find anyone before the azure exploit that thought sanguine mind crystals was ever overpowered? No, you didn't. What I'm asking for is reasonable. Who are you talking to here? You posted this after I posted, if it's in response to me, then it doesn't really make sense as I was talking about something else. Even out of the other posts, I don't think anyone is asking to bring chromatic haze back where it was before the patch, but it was heavily nerfed beyond fixing the issue. I'd say people have some reasonable ground to talk about that.
"You know nothing" I gear for dps, as do most rogues, and for sure our dps have dived in TDS on raid mobs. I believe this to be primarily due to a big hike in raid boss AC. When coupled with high enchanter sustained it really was the case that encs could be outdpsing pure melee dps on long events and given them a good run for their money doing 150k+ dps on CotF burns - a combination of having no mana issues with a high proc rate on haze (and I'm not talking about cheating it). Post changes this isn't the case, but enc still aren't weak dps by any stretch - they have merit and value, but aren't competing with the melee dps so much. No I didn't really want this fix as vs caster dps they weren't OP, just vs melee. Personally I wanted the AC nerf reversed.
These posts always end up with someone bringing up something which they think is unfair, and other people trying to bash that with other things that they think are unfair. Generally I don't think that's reasonable as it ends up creating a scenario that is similar to crabs in a bucket. Props to Brogett for bringing up an issue in a way that wasn't meant to attack other classes as a whole. (edit, could have been a bit kinder to porky, heh.) I wouldn't have an issue with the suggested ac change.
I'm going to have to disagree... No matter how much melee gear for DPS, there's no hope of them being competitive with caster sustained in TDS (and burst to a lesser extent, though I personally don't have much experience with "burst" fights in TDS). To add to that, they're faced with severe penalties that make survivability difficult on TDS raids, making it beneficial to gear towards more tanky stats (dead DPS is no DPS). I think Brogett's assessment is fairly spot on; the huge AC on TDS raid mobs has a very large detrimental impact on melee DPS. That really needs to change (along with the AE changes and some TDS raid mechanics) before determining what more needs to be done. But it's kind of hard to pretend that TDS hasn't put melee DPS in a bad spot.
