Wizards Next Expansion

Discussion in 'Casters' started by kizant, Jun 16, 2019.

  1. Brohg Augur

    Problem with Splash is that you have to load 12 of them to have a casting rotation. Can't do that, since only 4 exist, 5 with your level 115 request (and then you're running Underfoot spells versus level 115 enemies) There's the abandoned Maelstrom line, which was neat but under powered, that can jump in as a pseudo member of the Splash Team. So, you mix the Splashes with Beam? Not like you can run a Beam line up on its own since for Beam to have a full time rotation you'd need 6 and there's just 1 since it has a timer category! So, mix in also Self-combustion? There's no rotation of that spell line available either, another timer category. Do we wizards like our Pillar targeted-AE nukes? Can only use one of those due to shared timers, plus there's no leeway on target count on them - limit four, it only beats an Ethereal for base damage if you have all four hits. Luckily there's two more spell lines to fill in with, the Rains (can only use one of those, again - timer category), and the point blank Wheel which carries the fun distinction of being the only wizard AE not constrained to a maximum number of targets.

    Wheel
    Rain
    Pillar
    Selfie
    Beam
    Maelstrom
    some number of Splashes, up to 5 if the line gets another senior member in the 115 set.

    …11 out of 13 spell gems, decimating the wizard's ability to nuke a single target effectively
    …with 4 different targeting mechanics
    …variable hit limits and hit requirements
    …to maybe out perform single target blasting. MAYBE.

    And oh-by-the-by, there's the "wrinkle" regarding target-type restriction on Improved Familiar. Our drake doesn't focus AEs, so better hope you're grouped with a bard or you need at least another two targets per nuke on most of these lines (and some spells don't accommodate additional targets) to so much as theoretically break even versus more plain single target no-look blasting.

    Wizard AEing is a mess.
    Pirlo and FubarEQ like this.
  2. Drogba Augur

    The casting decisions both in preparation and in the heat of a battle have more variety to them when using ae's. as you try to determine if the mobs are grouped well enough for x spell, while trying not to stop chain casting, i find that a lot of fun.

    It would be nice if we got more pay-out for the effort put into the use of AE's dps-wise, though.
  3. Mookus Augur

    Wizards next expansion.... need to gain serious ground with regard to dps.

    I'd like to offer up one of my biggest gripes again as a simple way to bring wizards up. Raise our innate spell crit rate. Put it on imp familiar, do yet another AA, but we need to crit more.

    We have spent way more AA for crit rate. Our crit AAs were the majority of what wizards got in terms of AA while other classes got all their other stuff. Then one day someone said... hey lets give better innate crit AA to everyone else and only charge them pennies on the dollar wizards had to pay.

    Wizards are like Jeckyl and Hyde, we crit or we don't. If we crit all of our other crit boosters take effect. Then when we don't ... we do like 10% of what it'd be otherwise. We are wizards we should crit the most not the least. I feel like the way we are now... either we have our Crit chance 'discs' available or our nukes plain suck.
  4. BadPallyGuildLeader Augur

    Leveled my wizard that was my main 15 years ago recently to 110....underwhelmed by sustained and burst DPS. Unsubbed now. I'm sure this thread will fix everything. Thanks in advance :)
  5. kizant Augur

    I hate the splash line of spells. Especially Brimstone since the targeting is extra stupid. I'm guessing they were just trying to come up with cool uses for target ring based spells but it's a terrible idea for DPS.

    Another option that I wouldn't mind is going back to the old days where a 3 pillar lineup was viable. We just need a magic pillar and the DPS for hitting 4 targets to be similar to hitting 5 targets with the best splash. Which at level 115 I don't see why that should be a problem. And of course changing the spell timers so they aren't linked... Then adjust the re-use times so we can chain cast all 3 if we wanted to. Leave beam and wheel alone in this case and we can use them when it makes sense. Rains can be mostly ignored unless the crit cap goes up but all the old crazy AE spells would then be useless.
    Pirlo and Brohg like this.
  6. Renotaki Elder

    At least both Wheel and Beam can easily outpace single target options on high volume pulls. I do have at least one problem with each of our other AE options though. I'm also not the biggest fan of target ring AEs. Personally, i don't think either pillars or rains are really worth spell slots right now, especially over just Stormjolt + braid or whatever else. The potential power gain is almost nonexistent even if you do run into a situation where they might be worth something. At least Pillars are non-reflectable, so that's cool i guess?

    On the crit chance subject, there is a silver-lining. Mages, Enchanters, Druids, Clerics, Shamans, and Necros do still have a higher passive crit rate, but the disparity was at it's largest in COTF. 41% for Wiz vs 57% for other classes not counting DON progression's extra 1%. Wizards still maintain 2% passive crit chance from legacy code attached to us, which is why it's 2% higher than what Fury of Magic lists. Every level increase from then until now, wizards have gained 6% crit chance in TDS then 5% crit chance in ROS while the other classes have not received any more. That brings us to where we are today, at 52% crit chance vs every else's 57%. Next expansion is a level increase, so I think we can reasonably assume we are getting another 5% -6% crit chance. I don't think the devs are ignorant of the crit disparity at least. I think they just want to slow roll us to catch up. Perhaps it's out of fear that class balance would be out of wack if they gave us ~16% crit chance right after COTF. At least, this is my optimistic hope.
  7. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    @Mookus and Renotaki

    The dev previously in charge of AAs didn't care in the slightest that Wizards were behind in crit chance. His position was that it isn't the raw amount of crit chance or crit damage that is important, but the overall damage being done. As in, it doesn't matter how you arrive at the destination, only that you arrive in the first place.

    While this is true to an extent, (it IS overall damage that matters most), what he failed to understand is that a large majority of the class do care about the way we arrive at that damage. I've never met a Wizard that didn't care about getting the biggest nukes/crits. What attracted me, (and I think most other Wizards), to the class in the first place was the "Big Crit / Nuke."

    Ice Comet doing 1,000+ base damage back in the day was a point of pride. When crits were added in Luclin it became a thing for Wizards to put their biggest crit in their /inspect message and compare with each other. It's what they did. What even interested me in delving into the mechanics of EQ in the first place was trying to figure out what the maximum possible critical hit was.


    It's the same in principle as Bards running faster than every other class, or Rogues having the best invisibility, or Mages having the best pets etc. It's part of the Bard class's *identity* to be the fastest, if suddenly Druids got a runspeed spell faster than Bards they'd be *pissed*. If suddenly Enchanters got an invis level 4 rogues would be *pissed*. If suddenly Shamans' pets could tank/dps better than Mage pets, Mages would be *pissed*. You can't mess with a classes' identity without seriously pissing them off.

    While I can't speak for the current AA dev, he does play EQ and I feel he understands this concept of class identity far more than the previous one and has slowly been working on it. Hopefully that trend will continue and we'll continue to see crit chance increases until we at least reach parity. I wouldn't expect them to get much higher since they don't want anyone to reach 100% passive, but I don't think trying to reach parity is out of the question.
    Pirlo and Renotaki like this.
  8. Brohg Augur

    lol @ base crit rate doesn't matter. tell THAT to the ongoing debacle of Necromancer epic item
  9. kizant Augur

    Necros care because it effects their sustained DPS. That's the one thing they expect to be the kings of right? Any single item that has a significant impact on that would be something worth fighting over for them. The fact that it happens to be around base crit I don't think is the important part.

    What's our equivalent? Total parse? Burn parse? Max Hit? If it were max hit then I'd think we'd want to focus on crit damage modifiers or something to increase base damage/effectiveness. The base crit rate isn't important for max hit.

    If it's total parse, then sure, we'd need a pretty big bump to base crit rate if we want to compete with the sustained DPS of a necro/mage/druid/zerker, etc. But I don't know if that should be our main focus at this point in the game. Granted, there's definitely room for increases. Even if we got another 3 to 5% it wouldn't be enough for us to overtake those other classes. So, if they want to upgrade that, then sure it would be cool. But I wouldn't focus on it too much and I also wouldn't expect to have the highest base crit or even equal to the others.

    If we want to focus on the burn parse or at least parses from the short time frame to some midpoint between a short and long fight. Then we need to focus on suggestions related to burst abilities or owning that 4 minute time frame that's centered around arcane fury/fury of the gods. So, adding more counters to FD makes sense like was suggested earlier. That's also why I wanted to extend the time of twincast. To try and lengthen our initial burn period by a little bit.
    Sancus likes this.
  10. Beimeith Lord of the Game


    That's not really what I'm talking about. The issue with the Necro epic is that 1) it was more than intended (it's supposed to be 10%, not 18%) 2) it never degrades meaning it's lasted as a useful item long past what they intended, and 3) simply removing it with no other changes will significantly alter the class.


    What I am talking about is that the approach of some devs towards balance is to primarily look at the end result rather than the details. If increasing crit rate by X percent results in an average dps increase of Y percent, but increasing some other modifier by Z results in an average dps increase of Y percent, to the dev the result is the same. For players this isn't always the case such as with wizards who define themselves by crits and want to crit more as opposed to some other increase.
    Pirlo likes this.
  11. Jimbob/Silvarfox Elder

    Something else needed for us wizards. Faster recovery after deaths on raids. It can be a horrible struggle trying to get back any mana what so ever as a wizard when we die on a raid. Our harvest spells aas etc bp clicky etc all of it barely dents a 300k mana pool.
    Wizard dps is falling behind. But a wizard with no mana does 0 dps. We need something more to help us recover more efficently. Im not saying every death we have something like expedient recovery. But maybe a harvest type spell that gives us 30% of our mana pool back. Just enough to get back in the alliance rotation while throwing out gambit etc and recovering. Maybe im wrong. But im pretty sure im not the only wizzy that hates trying to recover from a death.
    Endaar likes this.
  12. kizant Augur

    It would be nice if they could at least make the timers for the harvest AA and both spells reset upon death.
    Endaar and Pirlo like this.
  13. Jimbob/Silvarfox Elder

    I agree. I would accept that. Death happens 30 seconds after harvest. Its tradition!
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  14. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    They really just need to remove the mana cost on the AA nukes. The entire purpose of them being mana free was to allow for them to be a baseline amount of DPS similar to autoattack, and for that to work they can't have a mana cost.
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  15. Renotaki Elder

    Yeah, my comment was just about a trend i noticed, and trying to make an informed guess about what the expansion would bring crit wise. Many wizards care a lot about the crit rate disparity on a matter of principle. It was originally a wizard's identity back in the day when the class monopolized spell crits entirely.

    My definition of the wizard class identity definitely revolves around our burn and AE potential. When i first started the game, I was attracted to the class definition of "dealing massive amounts of damage as rapidly as possible". I like the idea of wizard burns being scary and wizard AE burns being *particularly* scary as long as you have a highly capable tank who can pull a ton of mobs for you at once and live.

    I'm almost positive wizards win in the caster category for best AE burns, especially due to our fury burns. Between the two good AEs mages have, i'm not entirely sure if they have better sustained or not on high volume pulls so <citation needed>, i guess. On paper, I'm not totally sure either way because of the re-usability of mage beam and the solid base damage of their PB AE. I'd like to see wizard AEs be brought up a notch, simply because in most cases it seems like our AE potential is only about as good as the tank who's able to bring them all to you and riposting burning/Aeing them all down with you in many cases. I'm not sure how many people agree with me on the stance of making wizard AEs top tier, but I'm at a bare minimum I'd be happy with seeing some of the issues with our AEs be addressed.

    In the burn category too, I think it would be great to see wizard power be at the top for anywhere up to four minutes (that's the line that seems to be drawn due to burn timers). As long as those two categories are wizard's playing field i don't think I'd have any issues with things like mages winning on sustained, necros winning on single target boss sustained, melee also winning or being equal to wizard sustained etc.

    All of this is of course with the thought in mind that wizard raid sustained stays where it's at. I think most of us can agree you can't be just burst and done anymore, especially with where raid event times are at in current EQ. Things don't get resolved in a minute or two anymore for the most part (although still about possible on GMM 1). This is all just what I wish though, who knows if messing with wizards is even on the list of things for the new expansion or if it's just gonna be a lot of copy/ paste upgrades.
    Travestii and kizant like this.
  16. kizant Augur

    Ideally, I think they should remove the mana cost on AA nukes. But considering that the change was done recently and TBL increased mana pools by a lot I don't think they'd actually make that change. Plus without ADPS they don't really account for that much DPS in the first place. Maybe 15k or so without ADPS. I'm sure most melee would be doing double or triple that with ease with just auto attack.

    So, if they do decide to make our AA nukes the equivalent of a melee DPS's free auto attack they obviously need to make some serious changes. But really I think all we can do is provide information and let them decide on the direction.
  17. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    Well, the impetus behind the AA nuke mana cost changes and other mana changes was that at the time mana didn't really matter and their whole goal was to make mana matter again. The problem with this was that the *reason* mana didn't matter was NOT because costs were too low but because regen values were set to game breaking levels on a handle of abilities such as the bard and enchanter spells.

    They didn't need to start inflating mana costs, all they needed to do was reign in the out of control regen. Of course, they did BOTH, and thus we arrive at the current problem where mana regen is a problem once again.
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  18. Brohg Augur

    This is Bloodlust, 7 tick duration with 12 minute cool down.
    Ranger version is Imbued Ferocity, 8 ticks / 8 minutes.
    Bards' Flurry of Notes is 6 ticks / 12 minutes.
    Warriors' Rage of Rallos Zek is 2 ticks / 20 minutes.

    I'm torn on this. Force proc AAs are powerful burn abilities (much more so for the 3 fighter classes that also have caster type crit AA than for warrior, but whatever), and having powerful burn abilities is sweet. But one more button to fire up with all the other burns once per encounter doesn't feel interesting. If the goal is to have a hotter burn at that one time per encounter then more ranks of existing AA gets that done. What's cool about burns and DPS play in general is coordinating effects and timing with ADPS and encounter pacing to lay down the most total damage while killing crucial bits as hard as possible.

    I hope that if wizards get another button to use, it's something that doesn't run profitably with the existing "kitchen sink" style line up, so that we have something to play with outside it.

    I felt challenged, in typing that up, to brainstorm what such an ability might be. A "softer" activated boost to twincast rate wouldn't stack with Improved Twincast, so that could be a thing. Boosts to crit rate are kinda all over the place, so that's not a great avenue. Adding a proc to nukes would stack so that's no good; boosts to crit size stack, so they're out, too; we only last year(ish) moved away from double damage-adds AA (what's now Fury of the Gods). A mana preservation effect wouldn't stack with the cost increasers of Frenzied Burnout, but saving mana isn't a damage disc; the effect would have to be doing something else, also. Ooo, how about a substantial +dmg focus that only worked on spells with mana cost *under* Ethereals? So running it wouldn't make sense when trying to take advantage of the other biggest multipliers by dropping bombs, but raise the performance of "sustainey" nuking to above just continuing to cast those same spells while it's on.

    Honestly, wizards are in a class balance / metagame position right now where "all of the above" might be appropriate. Un-nerfing Wildmagic & Dissident & Fusion, force-proc AA for hotter burn, *and* some new sustainey funs.
  19. ~Mills~ Augur

    EDIT: quotes got all jacked up but there was multiple "competing with necros" "four minutes of burn" "bursting and then dropping off isn't ok anymore".

    I don't want to distract from your thread but ideally classes should still have trade-offs. You can't say or think necros should keep sustained on one hand and then propose at lot of this stuff or want to do what some broken classes do with the other which contradicts that entirely. This trade-off concept has seemingly gone out the window with how most dps classes, and even some non dps classes, operate. You guys should absolutely be bursting with your peers and are not. However these beliefs that you should be burning for 4 minutes, or not fall off drastically after a burn because its an outdated idea, all while maintaining the sustained you have gained doesn't mesh up with having another class held to only a sustained ideal that you just hang around with anyway. Sustained used to mean going on after everyone else puttered out. Now no one putters out in the group or raid game really unless they die.

    Wizards should absolutely be dropping bombs and keeping pace with other dps classes burst so I hope you guys get your changes there. But the madness that some other classes carry out to extreme time periods and ideas proposed to keep pace with them there should not happen and I hope the devs see the difference. Those classes that are bursting for 2 million dps while also holding 500,000 out to absurd time periods should absolutely be reeled in and not used as a model for their bursting peers to be tuned around, unless they take that stance for everyone. You can't say necromancers should keep sustained but then lobby for massive burn increases, burning for 4 minutes all while keeping the sustained you have already making that so 99% of the game is something other than this new sustained definition that keeps changing as people see fit.
  20. Travestii Elder


    Tradition? It's hard coded, I'm sure.