Am I the only one who feels the paladins got another shaft with this spell? I know it's early, and I only have the first of the 6 ranks available. However, the spell basics are a large agro 6 second stun with a large group heal. I don't know much about other classes other then whats listed on EQresources, but other classes received a very nice boost to their dps by direct damage spells, pet damage, or a bonus for a hit count; warriors picked up a 40% mitagation / +25% to hps, SKs picked up a lifetap with similar agro, but with 45k damage and 120% of that damage returned into hps. I do not know how these spells work with the focuses, AAs, or mods of different classes. I'm sure they vary, but likely these will end up being very valuable to all dps classes and worth holding on their spell bar. Now, I don't want to make large comparisons atm due to the differences in reuse time and mana/endo usage per use. However, to me, to set a stun with a group heal and then put on a 60 second reuse is hardly worth the spell slot. (Comparison of rk2 of normal vs rk4 of Dichotomic) The Dichotomic is listed to stun to lvl 110 for 6 sec (FoDS lvl 108 for 4sec) Force of the Darken Sea agro = 8676 Dichotomic = 10165 Wave of Grief = 8795 Dichotomic = 16239 It should also be noted the mana cost is more then double; along with the recast time of 60sec. Now the big kicker imo comes with the pairing of the spells; As a stun, the usefulness is limited due to the mana cost, recast delay, and stun immune mobs. With those factors in mind, I can't use it against a raid boss or most other mini-type mobs (havent tested but very doubtful). Yes, the agro is nice, but if this is being used to pull initial agro; then how valuable is the very large group heal? If I want to use this to gain agro, then I don't likely need the heal when I cast, but need that heal sometime after I have casted when the mob starts hitting me. We have other options which are better suited for initial agro which cost far less mana. To me, this puts the usefulness of the spell down to a fast casting group heal ability at the expense of more then double the mana and adding in the risk of recast. Or the very few times when a paladin needs to capture agro on a loose mob and the group can benefit from a heal. This spell appears to be instant trash.
Is this spell focusable now, in Beta it didn't appear to be. Less aggro then a crush less heal then Wave and the stun never worked in Beta. So lolshaft
I can say its not in my spell line up. I think someone would have to post something really good to get most to load this spell into any viable spell set. We already have the components of this at our disposal in different forms. This long recast make it not desired. Then again they didn't ask us if it was worth while and pushed it on the class. I tagged it as not working Day 1 of Beta and they didn't do anything about it until the last week to even get it to function. They had the Stun set up to lvl.
Sadly, unless we see a subtle manipulation in our abilities to kill undead, IE: Vanquish the Fallen, we will never see a impactful boost to our DPS. It just won't happen. We have too many methods to heal, and if needed cure as well. In the world of EQ development having healing and DPS abilities is bad, very very bad. The amount of self healing we can generate is enough for them to rationalize "if they can can kill and heal themselves that way to over powering".
This spell in its current configuration is terrible. Over the minute reuse, I could cast other stuns and have a much greater net gain in agro. I could load the group heal and cast it 3 times, almost a 4th for vastly more healing. The stun has no duration right now, so forget any damage mitigation. All this can be yours for the low cost of giving up one of your valuable spell gems and 8500 mana per cast once a minute!
It is pointless, I am utterly and totally disappointed. I could have come up with at a minimum 10 different ideas that could have been useful. It isn't even about complaining... this spell on paper and in practice makes absolutely no sense. It would have been better as a spell version of act of valor
The good: It's insta-cast. It stuns up to level 110 its focusable. It doesn't lock any stun or heal spells when cast. The bad: for 8314 its more than double the cost of wave of grief, which heals for more. Its more than 80 times the cost our 105 stun! This isn't any different than the cost of most other classes dichotomic spell, but if you factor in other classes mana regeneration abilities over ours, and the recent increase to the mana cost of Disruptive Persecution, it makes it hard to justify putting it in your spell bar. It has a minute re-cast. It could be argued all classes get the same lock out, but looking at the reward for having a(nother) spell gem being locked it doesn't seem worth it. It's not as transferable to raids as almost every other class. We lose one of the abilities of the spell (stun) as soon as you move to the raid -stage. One of the only classes (and the only tank class) that can be said of. It adds 0 to dps. Heals are great but they don't stop mobs hitting you. Not that I imagine DB will look at this again, but even if they did I don't think they would add any amount of DPS to it. Even increasing the size of the heal or the length of the stun it still seems like a spell with little use. Suggestions for improvements? Add a group version of Protective Proclamation, that doesn't kill vie (please) Add a rune to the group. Heals when the rune disperses Add a proc to the group, that hits your foe with blinding light, reducing accuracy for x tics. Add a large reverse damage shield to your group. Cures your group (akin to a mini-spash) All heals cast by your group are twin cast for the next.x seconds. I'm not suggesting all are added
i could see them maybe adding an autocast on the paladin say 7 charges of twincasting stuns /crush ONLY for added burst aggro + some more dmg when ur tanking inform of dubble crush dmg
Don't want to let this thread die since i really think it should be addressed. These spells were one of the defining factors of this expansion and the paladin one is completely useless. The stun is useless. The group heal is useless because of the long cooldown and the massive mana cost and same goes for the aggro generation and combining all of those together in no way mitigates the uselessness of it because those 3 things are generally not things you want to do all together. My idea would be to put steel, preservation and possible stance buffs all cast by one spell. could have a long cooldown and a huge mana cost and would still be useful. for some it will free up spell slots and for others it will allow them to use useful spells that they otherwise wouldn't cast.
In beta, Mage's single class only AA was so bad they did delete it. Nothing ever replaced it. Be careful what you wish for. A bad spell can always be fixed or improved.
It's been added to https://dgcissuetracker.com/browse/EQ-566 Let's get this up voted so the devs can't ignore it more than they already are.
The post you linked is only on spell progression (unless I missed something). The main issue at heart is the paladin spell is worthless. No one needs the stun or the group heal, its worthless. Oh.. have I said its worthless? The 2 components should not be put together and are pretty much worthless due to the recast delay and mana cost. The only way to keep this spell would be to remove some limits and/or modify the ability. One way would be to remove the limits on the stun to effect raid boss mobs. Think about it... tank goes down; paladin can cast the spell and the boss stops atk for 6 seconds while another tank gets control. Increase the reuse limit to say.. 2 mins and have the bosses limited to only 1 stun every 2 mins. Overpowered? no, but still useful. Another way would be to change the healing from a group heal to a new thing... like a stored heal. When you cast the spell, everyone in group gets a buff which will trigger a large heal if the person gets below a certain % (30%?). This would be similar to the way DI works, but since paladins do not get DI, it could be the paladins ugly cousin. Overpowered? no, but still useful.
It would not exactly be a bad thing in any way if they deleted this piece of garbage and pretended it never existed. Problem is apparently one person thought this was the most absolute awesome thing Paladins should have...the person didn't listen to the class in BETA and shoved it out the door anyway. This spell is in no way a class must have or class defining. We already had every aspect of this spell in other forms, combining a stun, agro and heal was a waste and not beneficial to the class in any way unless you want to waste mana and a spell gem.
I know a few non-raiding Paladins who absolutely love the spell. They see it as an instant cast emergency button. That works on more than a few named, even. (Since, currently, not all named are labeled as stun immune, and a decent number are 110 it seems.) It's true - most of the raiding Pallies I know don't see a use for it, but well... not everything has to be raid-useful. If you are group geared, maybe the extra emergency button IS very useful.
You are right, not everything has to be raid useful. However, take a look at all of the other dichotomic spells and compare their usefulness to the paladins dichotomic. Is there any one which can not be used on a raid boss? Everyone whoever played this game knows the paladin dps has always been next to worst in game. So when an expansion is released with a very limited spell amount; with the focus being centered around just 1 spell per class; you end up getting every class take a step forward while we stand still... again. Have your friend look into it a bit more and study the spell mana cost, reuse timer, and the totals to agro /heals (and the limits with the heal)... and then compare those statistics to what we already have at our disposal. You like the instant cast for the group heal? what about Aurora spell.... or Hand of piety? You like it for the large agro? Why not use the Stun AA for agro? You like it for the increased stun limits to stop taking damage when a regular stun won't land? Well.. you got me there, I guess that will make it useful for 1/10th of the time on .1% of mobs we fight. (6 sec stun for 60 sec lockout = 1/10th)
To put some perspective from another viewpoint to this. This spell has its place in both group and raid game. It is great agro for raid adds on raids crush --> AA FoD --> Dichotomic. This also keeps healing your group in case there was a AE during that time, so you can agro and heal As to being used on the raid boss, there is nothing different than this, heal + agro than the SK one, and the SK one is heal capped, its more agro and oh crap In group game where you really dont need a group heal spell you can use it as your oh crap spell and cast any time you get Gift of Mana. You can also cast it sooner than 1 min if an emergency with forceful rejuvination, which gives a decent reason for that AA, especially if the healer has died, and you use that and grief line, then FR then both again. As to the pally DPS comment, this a a great expac for pally dps, tons of undead and pallies just got an amazing AA undead nuke! The heal part also has a 300 range so it can heal group members that are out of range of the other pally group heals, and is cast-able on the run. I wont say there are not issues with the Dichotomic spells, but the Pally one is not as bad as some people are making it out to be. Is it game breakingly strong, no, but it does have its place and usefulness.
We have other options for a 3rd agro spell which do not cost 8.3k mana and can be used more often. Yes, the heals can heal your group if there was an AE during those 5 seconds it took you to cast crush --> AA FoD --> Dichotomic. But again, it there was not, then you just dropped 8.3k mana for agro in which you could have gotten cheaply by using an AA (or by an agro spell instead of dicto loaded). I guess you didn't notice the SK spell has a damage factor to it. If you consider the usefulness of the heals to be equal (which I don't), then the 6 sec stun is the trade-off for the DD component on the SKs. Oh, but wait, the SK nuke can be used against a raid boss (or any target). What? Have you not noticed the numerous complaints from paladins regarding the lack of mana regen and now you want to sacrifice our Mana gift AA... which has a 15min? reuse timer in order to cast this spell just a couple times? Seriously? Now we have to trade off an ability in order to pay for the use of our spell? Sure... FR will let you cast it sooner then 1 min. But if I, or my group, needs that much healing, i'm going to look into using bursts / splash or our other options like Aurora, Hand of Piety, or the tome which gives us the group heal after a slash atk (i forget the name atm). And I will save ~12k mana by not casting Dicto twice and casting something else (not to mention the spell slot). And I will have aurora available for a 3rd cast much much sooner then the 3rd Dicto. Your point about using FR to recast the Dicto spell line actually supports my point even more about classes getting a step up with dps with their Dicto spell. Now, since you brought in the FR use... on a quick burn, the SKs can now use their dicto for 2 large nukes. The same would likely imply for all other classes if they time the use of their dicto with FR correctly. Resulting in all other classes being able to take 2 steps forward in DPS while we sit back and say... we can stun the trash for 2 extra seconds.Put us in coach! The comment was made to compare the Dicto spell lines... not with the other factors of AA which were gained by the paladin class. Sure, we got an Undead nuke, but do you not think other classes got improvement to their dps via AA also? If you want to bring in the Undead nuke into the conversation, I think it's pretty unimpressive in damage when factoring reuse timer, undead only limit, and total damage. What happens to this AA in the next expansion when Daybreak forgets to put in undead mobs.... cause you know that's coming. With less content per expansion, we are sure to see less undead then normal in future expansions. Very niche. This would imply the group healer would be dead; or afk; while the paladin is kiting.. or tanking at a range greater then 220? but not more then 300. If this is what a paladin is supposed to bank on happening during an event to validate the use of a spell gem... well... then... you got me.
It's completely to ask for this spell to be removed since, while it could get improvements (faster recast and a better heal generated) it's far from useless, a lot of you seems to underestimate the power of an insta cast heal spell (and what aurora? it's not instant, hand of piety is 10 min recast, can't really be compared). Considering some, in previous topics, were still using Impose for honor and other craps like that, it's amusing to say the spell slot are too limited for this spell. It for sure won't be a staple and is weak compared to the other dichotomic spells some other classes got, but it's far far from useless. I don't see much reason to have more dps either. While it wouldn't hurt of course, we have more than correct burn abilities so it's not really something we're in desperate need. More ways to survival abilities though are always welcome.
