If claw no longer refreshes harvest for a wizard, how much will that decrease wizard sustained DPS over like 10-15 min timeframes?
Enchanter unity rune I am going to take a wild guess, and say the up coming changes are due to enchanters tanking named in PoW due the ability to force argro with a pet ( this only highlights the not very clever way it was coded to try and avoid pet tanking) The result of this is to turn one of our best spells, even before the recent raise in power into an spell with the very real risk of pulling argro on newly engaged mobs, but no defense until recast is up, short of mezing or bluring said mob (again ruining argro for even longer time) This is especially a risk in raids with many adds. if the unmentioned problem with our rune is that the amount is to high by all that is holy and/or unholy just lower said amount, until you are happy.
Imma quote from the thread I'm assuming started all of this from here https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...sive-nerfs-inc-melee-tanks-berserkers.210605/ (the reply is on page 8 or 9) as some one pointed out (dandin i think?) they just buffed up our runes why would they nerf them. I would state lets wait until we know more info from the Devs, or the changes go live on test before anything else happens.
I will tell you I was told rest and claw changes would "probably not" go live with the May update. Rune changes "probably" would. I suggested just taking the runes back down from their current level as an option, and it wasn't really met with much enthusiasm. The point of view is that they are meant to protect us, but not indefinitely. Using them to do our job, crowd control, was never intended. This, along with the new raid ( at least on paper ), really has me at a loss on this class.
Filatal did you mention removing agro from the runes? Instead of making us wait 12 seconds? Even if there is a code issue they could always add a hate reduction mod
The shortsightedness of the devs again rears its ugly head. There is no way to see all ways an ability or change will be used, but this was blatantly obvious. So they again screwed something up and instead of dealing with the real problem they nerf runes instead. It's like the devs have no intelligent problem solving skills at all.
Indeed, nerfing a class that already suffers from not enough CC needs in game now shows great diplo skills above everything else. So we found a way to still be useful and fun, shocking this cannot be.
There should be nothing wrong with an Enchanter stepping in and taking hits for a minute since they are unlikely to hold aggro for too long with anyone beating on the target, but to change a class because of the idiotic design of one zone is unforgivable.
There are a lot of things being bounced around on beta, agro reduction was being looked at ( from what I can tell ) before we even got access. I do agree we have to see what actually hits live.
I think the impact of the claw nerf, if it goes live, would be very significant for wiz sustained raid dps. As one specific example, last night my guild killed Xulous Prime in a 10 min fight, where my wiz burned on the boss the whole time. I did about 50k dps over the whole fight, probably at or near the top for my raid (didn't have a good parse on everyone else). Except when twincast was running, claw was always the first priority spell on my multibind key, in hopes to trigger harvest refresh or twincast. I was able to use 3 harvests during the 10 min fight because of claw refresh; I could only use 1 without claw refresh (forceful rejuv was not up) Each harvest gives me +26% mana pool, so claw refresh was worth +52% base mana pool in that fight. I burned through my whole 85k mana pool, including the extra 52%, by the time the boss died. There are other sources of mana regen, but they don't amount to that much during a 10 min fight, compared to +52% base mana pool from claw refreshing harvest. Mana pool pretty much equates to total damage, since I am already pacing myself to not run out of mana. In a 10 min fight, I am prioritizing Claw, avoiding Ethereal Weave, and only using 1 ethereal in my standard weave, when twincast is not up, in order to be more mana efficient. I often get too low and shift to an even more efficient weave with no ethereals, waiting for a claw refresh. Maybe my guild doesn't kill stuff as fast as more advanced guilds, but it seems rare for our raids to be really short burst fights. I feel like wizards are nicely balanced already with claw working as it does. I can aspire to top the parse in our typical raids as against the necros and mages, but sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. Seems about right for a wiz. I can ignore mana to burst in short fights, but need to cut way down on using our best spells in order to sustain even with claw working as it does now. It sounds like no fun at all to just run out of mana about 6-8 min into the raid fight, and sit there doing nothing. Or to have to do nothing but chain your most efficient spells in any raid that lasts 10 min or more. I vote "hell no" on the claw change.
I wouldn't still be playing if I didn't enjoy the class even with the nerfs, but it's also a matter of fairness. I don't know why, but I get aggro when the epic procs, and no particularly increased aggro when casting Phantasmal Unity. Then again the only time I'm casting it repeatedly is when I already have aggro and used up the other tricks, but I don't think that counts. I went to the first SoE FanFaire that was held in Las Vegas in what, 2008? I went to a developers round table to ask about some enchanter issues at that time. One guy got up and said something about enchanters to a developer a who went off on a jag saying that enchanters were over-powered (this before the relatively recent changes that have given us a boost towards balance with other classes again), and he knew because he'd played an enchanter and exploited the hell out of it. Then the jerk that got up started agreeing with him and between them they trashed the class. I got up and left when it became clear that people felt that enough had been said about the class and the round-table was moving on to more important things. That's the biggest piece of evidence. Our cc: abilities have been continually eroded with more of the pulling, mem-wipe, banish type spells and abilities handed out to other classes. Since Secrets of Faydwer I've been told in groups by SK's and Palladins, "Don't mez, riposte will kill them." Mage beams, Berserkers, etc, with massive pulls, or even multiple pulls when we don't even have an AoE over the mid forties. Ironically, Grav Flux was nerfed because people were using it to bounce up to and over walls in a couple of zones, but now...now we have Rocket Boots to do the same thing. Fewer and fewer raid or group encounters that can be cc:d with mez or stun, let alone charm. Illusions that we used to cast for people are bottled, or clickies that you have to buy or play a card game that has little to do with the ability to play EQ, with a few occasional quests. We are not a "pet class" although we were originally designed to be the mega-pet class with charm as a viable method of cc and providing tanking (real tanking) by a pet, at least temporarily. When was the last time your pet tanked a mob when a tank when down? We have been given a pet that dual-wields, but has one weapon, and must be equipped to reach its basic potential, as do our charmed pets the last I heard. Use a druid style pet that quads? As I understand it quads are nerfed on our charm; which is the only hypothesis for now as to why my druid guild mate squeezes more dps out of his boar in PoWar than mine other than I can buff his with any haste. Mage summoned pets come equipped, and so on. We have to buy or farm weapons, we can't even get a spell for a crummy, no stat stackable weapon for our animations. It doesn't cast spells, etc, just stands around looking stupid unless you buy a One good AoE on a raid or in current level groups will blow Gimpy Ginzu away. The only pets that are worse are the summoned SK and druid pets. Oh right, I almost forgot that. druid gets summoned pets too. So where's the rationale for our lower dps? Our charm includes our haste, but also an approximate 38% drop in dps leaving the mob doing about 62% of its original damage. Keeping it short, a 41 druid gets a 70% pet haste (Savage Spirit), with an increase in agility of 40 and 12 AC. We can use Wonderous Rapidity on a charmed pet so we're still even on that score, and the buff won't drop when charm does. So there's another possible nerf that was overlooked, apparently with no real concern since it's mentioned on the forums but it also makes dropping the buffs when the charm breaks rationale rather ridiculous. Our epic Speed of the Shissar: Increase ATK by 66%, AGI, by 40, AC by 12. Do those numbers look familiar? It does appear that on a snake, at least, that there is a similar drop with the druid pet for an 86 heroic druid. Level 100 necros get a spell that can nuke a mob into a pet that can be slowed, charmed or mez'd with an undead slow, charm or mez. MAG 60 - Ancient Burnout Blaze, Inc STR by 80, ATK by 80%, AC by 22 which later tops out at 85% although their highest charm for elementals is 65. Beastlords, one of the three "pet classes" can't charm. Druids can charm with comparable results but aren't pet classes either, but they have the advantage of snare, healing, dots and debuffs that we have nothing to compare to. Yeah, I can box a wizard, or a druid to snare, but that's not really the point. The rationale for decreased Enc dps has been that we can charm pets, any type of mob that's not immune, etc,. and there's a LOT that are immune now. Complain about charm and someone will inevitably say, "You just haven't got the RIGHT pet." Which means that there's a pet that SoE thinks is right for us, but you are going to have figure it out, equip it and then get it to where you need it. It's rarely worth it to a raid to have a mob charmed. The only exception I can think of right off is Heart of Fear's Memories of the Faceless where the infected thralls can be charmed and used to dps mobs that will kill both of them. The rest are likely to die to current mellee and caster dps faster than we can cast charm. Top raid equipped my spell damage is similar to a mage without the pet dps. So where's my pet dps? Let's look at a few aa that the other casters have. Where's our Diminutive Companion AA? I'm still carrying a clicky for that, which doesn't work on charmed pets. Remember when we could cast NDT, etc, on the charmed pet so people knew it was charmed? We can't even shrink or cast illusions on our mercs to shrink them. Druids, shaman buff illusions work on pets and mercs...so why not? \ What about an effective pet fade AA? There's the Summon.. but that doesn't work when the pet is the object of something's attention. Not very efficient. Or how about an AA or clickie summoned animation? How many of the other classes get those? Or swarm pets that actually do some damage, or any summoned pet that does some decent damage without a billion buffs, including those great dps increasing shaman spells? Even the non-caster groups with tons of dps get weapon spell procs and swarm pets that out do ours. Ever seen the damage parse for one of those little sword pets that wizards can aa cast? Where's our aoe slow or cripple? Shamans have both, and we have single, and an AA slow that hasn't been upgraded in many expansions. Great when you have four mobs mez'd and are trying to work your way through them with that single slow, waiting on the refresh. Heard anyone complaining about low mana lately? I had a guy log in and say, Hey, remember me? I used to beg you for buffs, and now we don't even need them..." Yeah, I noticed, thanks for mentioning it. Mana draw is a joke compared to harvest. Or how about the AA that mages and necros got that allow them to carry only one reagent to summon pets? Try offering a level 100 necro some bone chips and see how long they laugh. Yet here we are still buying and carrying stacks of tiny daggers around. Any reason that you can think of that they have that and we don't? Even very basic things as simple as we are still buying tiny daggers suggests that no one really cares about parity for the enchanter class at SoE.
AE cripple, in the class tab iir... You bring up many good points for us to share in your frustration. Little things that we keep hoping will one day come to pass, add up to a bigger problem when you lay it all out like that. Adjust, adapt, thrive no matter what they give, take away, or neglect. When will it not be enough to satisfy our desire to keep playing?
Wizard Claw nerf would be big. I oppose it. This would greatly alter my play style for the worse, and would put my dps in the crapper while doing so. If I was casting in efficiency mode... it would be joke time. Right now I burn as hard as possible, so I can harvest as soon as possible. Then and only then am I gunning for claw refreshes (which aren't common) to my harvest. This playstyle is rather fun compared to what I have endured playing my wizard the past 14+ years. If the possibility of a refreshed harvest went away, we would be reduced to casting efficient spells which honestly weren't designed to keep our dps respectable. It's a huge nerf is all im saying and no one is saying as much yet that im seeing.
Well, Tower of Rot is live on Test and the changes aren't. But I also haven't seen Test patched since last month.
Elidroth said that Aristo would release a list of changes and their reasoning, but I haven't seen it yet.
His exact words were "Aristo should be preparing a full statement of changes this week along with our reasons for the changes." Just so no one accuses me of pulling that "fixed" c r a p, here's the link; https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/ability-changes.210600/#post-3086154 There was no time set for when we'd see this statement or if we'd even get to see it before everything was pushed to Live and the damage done. I suspect, though I hope I'm wrong, that we won't see anything until after it's too late for us to do anyth.... who am I kidding? We couldn't have done anything about it anyway.
I am predicting we will get a list sometime between now and when patch notes for the changes are pushed.
I've been asking myself that ever since OOW, watching enchanters disappear. I can't remember any more how many times I found myself alone in a guild over the years because the others changed mains or just walked away from the game entirely. Look at the Magelo profiles of enchanters on your home servers. On ours, Emarr, there are 54 level 100 enchanters listed. Of those, close to half are retired, bots or alts...even in the top ten there are retired, inactive, bots and people that only raid. Every class seems to go through a cycle that brings them full circle back to giving them enough power to play to bring them back to being an integral part of the game balance except for the enchanter class (although I'd say rogues and maybe even bards come in close behind us). The real question is whether or not this situation is deliberate or not. I think it's deliberate. No one gets upset or does something about it if we say, for instance, "The shamans have aoe slow and and aoe cripple, why don't we?" Why don't we have an aoe root for that matter? But let us get an aa such as the mind crystal where you could actually regain a little mana similar to sacrificing the eye thing for more mana, we get a nerf immediately because someone complains. One aa is over-powered? Wow...well how about the ones that are out of date or way under-powered for current content? Where is that in beta? Where is that in developer discussions? For something to not end up on the table means that there is a decision not to do so.
I think filatal does a great job communicating with us and the people making these changes, and asking for things.
