In todays video i discuss the basics of runes, and the importance of using them in solo, group and raids. I also discuss the importance of the recent Enchanter Change Like/comment/Subscribe for more content!
I really appreciate the effort to show the use of the runes and how the recent nerf impacted the class. I liked the part that you pointed out that tanking in Shard's Landing is largely a matter of raid equipment, not runes. I do some tanking there with a boxed alt and occasionally other group members and mercs. Even at that the names can take me down fairly quickly, and I still get clobbered regularly doing the dailies in Valley of Lunanyn and tend to switch to the tank merc there rather than the wizard which will kill mobs in Shard's Landing fast enough for the runes to shield me. The mobs and encounters that can be rune-tanked tend to be unevenly distributed if level alone is considered. I agree that there is the choice of using runes or doing DPS. Chromatic Percussion is a good choice even though it is not our highest damage spell, on raids I use that one in the line-up, and I switch back to the class shield from RoF which procs healing. However I think there are some flaws that should be addressed in terms of putting the nerf on the Phantasmal Unity and related runes into perspective. It seems to be somewhat counter-productive though when conflating them with Umbral Runes (Level 96 Rk I,. 37931 to Rk III absorb damage 43834 with the Obscuring Umbra effect. The Obscuring Umbra effect decreases hate when the rune wears off (Decrease hate Rk. I 2271 to Rk. III 2404) which with the current content mobs is usually not many hits, the advantage (or disadvantage) to a group is the aggro reduction. That's why your tank is losing aggro at the beginning. You should have hit him/her with Terrifying Rune or Umbral Auspice (see below). In my opinion the Umbral Rune is better for a raid where your group is not supposed to be taking damage than a group with a tank that has to get aggro and keep it. I will do an occasional MGB of Umbral rune before a raid encounter begins, but have warned the tanks to block it. That's the reason that we have Umbral Auspice and Terrifying Rune for tanks. The problem there is that they last under 3 minutes, but are good for that initial round of hits. I keep them on a spell set that allows me to swap quickly if needed, but I don't usually keep those up except where there are likely to be aggro-fade situations. The Umbral works find for tanks that do not want to get on the hit list but start out with helping attract the aggro from the raid or group. If they get hit their aggro will drop below that of the main tank or ramp tank (neither of whom should have Umbral Rune). You lost the aggro on Breeze because you rebuffed her with Umbral, which also increased your position on the hate list. You can use the self-only Mastermind rune instead of Phantasmal Unity to avoid the Polyiridescent Rune effect and the aggro reduction effects. A little off the topic, you can get the tank merc to assist and attack a mob using the animation. The merc will go after whatever you tell the pet to attack. The roles should be set appropriately, and you would have better results if you're concerned about aggro use "Call Assist" on the merc instead of "Automatic Assist" or Aggressive. That can induce a good deal of aggro, but it can also keep the mob from doing significant damage reducing the needed healing and aggro on healers. If you want to develop aggro, use stun. If you're bringing in other runes for protection and "tanking" you forgot the other damage defenses, AA Eldrich Rune, Veil of Mindshadow, Glyph Spray (spell absorption rune), Mind Over Matter, as well as the pets, Phantasmal, Doppelganger and Illusory Ally. Those are "get away" pets, or pets that generate a huge amount of aggro which allows dps to get the mob down. They do not provide any dps (I watched my Phantasmal pet hit a mob for 89 points). There's also Beguiler's Banishment line. Color Shock if the mob is stunnable. Some, if not all, of those would be used in a situation where you're dealing with a higher level named or boss mob as a "tank." That's something else the "nerf" didn't take into effect, that even with those other lines of defense, that self-only rune is still our major line of defense. It will allow you to take a couple of rounds of wild rampage on a raid, survive some aggro from buffing a downed tank. etc. The problem is that the refresh on those is much longer than the self-cast rune and can only be used once in a fight. The few times I've been stuck with Judicator or other named I burned through all of those and some of the AA Glyphs. Sure, you can stand there and cast the group rune which will get you aggro, but if you get hit you lose the aggro to some extent which is why it's effective for holding the aggro just long enough for another dps to take over. If you're group rune-casting then there's the chance of aggro-bounce. You don't with the Phantasmal Unity self-rune which procs a stun. Casting anything with aggro should wait until the tank has the aggro. The old school rule of waiting for tanks to get the aggro before starting to cast is one that is too often ignored today by all classes. Beyond tash, which does no damage and does not generate anywhere near the aggro it used to, nothing but no-damage/aggro debuffs should be cast on incoming. What we need to be looking at in terms of the rune is current content. Although not everyone raids, the non-raiders still get the same types of buffs that the raiders although somewhat scaled down according to rank which was SoE's approach to balancing the difference. Let's look at the group version of the Doomscale Horde. That's a "beginning" group mission which requires some CC. Here are the stats for the group Sarenth. I don't do the math well, but I am sure someone else can make it more comprehensive. I think the basic comparison is more effective than attempting to show tanking a few mobs. Note, this is definitely a group mob Kill Deathmaster Sarenth 0/1 (Ethernere Tainted West Karana) Deathmaster Sarenth casts "Massive Strike" and "Blazing Rain", and buffs itself with "Reflective Skin". Massive Strike: Directional 35', (0) 1: Knockback (12) and Toss Up (8) 2: Decrease Hitpoints by 37590 Blazing Rain: AE 50', Fire (-940) 1: Decrease Hitpoints by 31200 per tick (4 ticks) Reflective Skin: Self 0', Unresistable (0) 1: Increase Chance to Reflect Spell by 50% The combined damage absorption of the Phantasmal Unity rune is 145,178 points. That's 3.7 hits from the knockback, 2 ticks (12 seconds) of Blazing Rain, 62400 If you get knocked back to the Sentinel, 100,000 DT. Spell guards, Glyph Spray, Shield of Fate, are not taken into consideration there, and they do reduce the damage taken considerably, but when they're down all you have left is the self-rune, unless you've memorized them to keep your group covered (which you should in a raid). Since the nerf I've died more than five times waiting that extra six seconds for refresh. That's time taken away from the raid and/or group to rez or call me, buff me and get me back into action. Let's compare it to The Judicator (the mob that seems to have set people off on a rampage about Enchanter tanking). Let's compare that to the Judicator: It has ~37 million hitpoints; hits for a max ~20,000; AE rampages; and casts a directional (sides) AE knockback every 20-60 seconds. It also has an aura called "Weakened Defenses" which negates defensive abilities. Spell Icon Weakened Defenses Share Description 1: Negate Chance to block Effect 2: Negate Chance to Dodge Effect 3: Negate Chance to Parry Effect Notice that the damage is no where near the damage that the primary group mob in the lowest of the current group Level 1 tasks does. It does not reflect back any dd or dot that you are casting. The debuff is primarily melee. That's 7 hits at max dmg. It knockbacks with no damage to speak of, which moves a melee out of the hit box location, but doesn't particularly effect a caster beyond interrupting a spell. Interruptions do not seem to have been taken into consideration with the longer recast time either). The Judicator is about the 37 million hit points that require a great deal of dps. We do not have that. We can hold the line while others are massively dpsing, but it is not the same thing at tanking. Also, while we do not do the dps of a wizard we can easily out-aggro wizards and necros if we use a line-up of three nukes and our two dots, and chain cast. Which is not a good idea unless I want to tank a raid mob for about ten seconds.
I am not sure it matters at this point. We don't seem to be getting any feedback or even response from the devs/community liaison. That alone has me more irritated than the nerf itself.
It varies from rune to rune since most runes have hate mods to them to make them no hate or even negative hate (as unity is now IIR from patch notes) Generaly though they are treated like heals with something like a 2 or 3x hate multiplier. Dandin, i must question the video as you left out quite a few things. Most importantly (that i feel) are; the change is cast time, from ~2.5 with spell haste to 0.5; and the fact that we have other rune spells IE mastermind, xoloc (~lv 96 single target). I personaly also found it VERY hard to see which buffs you had on and which were dropping at any given point. I do applaud your proactivness in creating a video trying to showcase the injustice done, though i would recommended that you work on your speaking habits as you called sloth breeze quite a few times and studdered quite a bit. Try making a script? we are enchanters we can make stuff run according to a predertmined script 90 % of the time.
Unity is definitely not negative hate right now. Maybe it's supposed to be? But it isn't. Try it with a tank merc and watch how often you end up fading because he can't get it back off you and you can't cast for 12 seconds.
Phantasmal Unity: - Mana Cost changed from '3385' to '3860' - Casting Time changed from '3' to '0.5' - Recast Time changed from '1.5' to '12' - Hate Override changed from '0' to '5000' Phantasmal Unity Rk. II: - Mana Cost changed from '3521' to '4015' - Casting Time changed from '3' to '0.5' - Recast Time changed from '1.5' to '12' - Hate Override changed from '0' to '5000' Phantasmal Unity Rk. III: - Mana Cost changed from '3662' to '4176' - Casting Time changed from '3' to '0.5' - Recast Time changed from '1.5' to '12' - Hate Override changed from '0' to '5000' I belive that 'Hate override' meens the amount of hate generated. While both my face and my EXP bar agree with you numbers are numbers, unless its bugged and they reversed the sign. Which would explain a lot.
Yeah, I don't know what the deal is but I know for a fact if I cast Phantasmal Unity Rk II even with the tank at 100 and me at 1 on the aggro meter, the mob will come right at me. So something is still fishy there.
Random is correct on the point about rune agro being calculated at a rather extreme level. Old school runes were enough to rip agro straight off a tank. Today, with their increased agro generation abilities, a tank can hold agro while I am casting Rune of Xolok, but if it is a typical tank and spank and that tank goes down, I will usually be next on the list. A couple of corrections. Hate Override: 5000 is not negative hate. It overrides the normal amount of hate with a fixed number. While we can see from casting Rune of Xolok that runes can produce a large amount of hate, to my knowledge we have never seen exactly how it is figured. It is definitely more than a normal heal. But, it is also fairly wonky. Many of us noticed before the agro bar that sometimes Unity put us at the top of the list and sometimes mobs barely noticed it. The agro bar just confirmed that. I honestly have never been able to pin down exactly what it was and I won't ever be able to with the new Hate Override. Still, it is a fairly decent amount of hate, but not extreme the way Unity could sometimes be. Off the top of my head, SK AE agro is around the high 6k mark and warriors have several agro abilities that generate in the 7k to 10k range. You can pull agro with Unity without a doubt, especially from a tank merc that doesn't use all of the warrior arsenal and then doesn't always use them at the correct time ( they love to use the Roar line, which I believe is like 2500 hate + hate over time, so if you recast right after it grabs the mob, you are going to be tanking for a few ticks ). Umbral Rune, however, is a Hate Override of -1. It does not give the enchanter any agro at all. Umbral Auspice has a Hate Mod of -500 ( not override, but it modifies the normal hate downwards ). It also would be extremely difficult to pull agro with Auspice. As for the change, not sure what else you want said about it. It isn't going to change. We had some fairly weak runes that got a huge bump up, then a slight tone down. I am not sure how you call the mana increase and the slight change in absorption a nerf as we only had the increased version for 4 weeks. It is called tuning. The recast, I am not overly happy about, but it is there. But the part I am not happy about is what it does on raids where we need to be stunning large groups of mobs. In the group game, it is much more beneficial to have the increased absorption and faster cast than it is to have the recast. I have yet to encounter a mob that can break through my runes in 12 seconds. And when it eventually does break through, it is pretty much a guarantee that I'm going to get the cast off at .5 seconds. Lastly. Stop MGB'ing Umbral Rune. It isn't MGB'able and our group runes haven't been in some time.
Warriors used to say that a point of damage is approximately a point of aggro. Obviously, that's changed tremendously with AAs such as Spell Casting Subtlety; otherwise, 5,000 would be a drop in the bucket. They also believed that runes are double aggro, so a 1,000hp rune would yield 2,000 points of aggro. Of course, like heals, runes produce AE aggro. Clerics say their heals usually produce no aggro, and that only random chance causes a heal to actually generate aggro. I don't parse seriously, and I don't do well-controlled testing, so the above is just rumors and speculation.
