Does Caster DPS Gear Matter Without Focus Effects?

Classes have never been balanced and have different pro/cons each expansion. Not sure why anyone would expect them to go back and attempt to rebalance them, if anything the purist crowd would want things exactly how they were.

For as much crap as EQ players like to give WoW as being a baby game. Only worrying about your parse aspect as 100% infected this game.

The real big picture is that in 9 months most of the population will be gone so this is kind of weird to plan for. That's 9 months of playing the long game that might not be there.

Population doesn't die till at least LDoN.

What, other than mezzes, does your chanter need his mana for? Mezzes cost next to nothing. Even if he does spend most of his mana he really only needs enough to recast charm. He can med while you pull. You probably just cleared out the one big pack and it's down to single/double pulls now and he won't need to mez anything for awhile. And why isn't his charmed pet tanking, that thing will barely need heals, even with a 5 pull.

Sounds to me like both these mages need to find better people to play with.

Uh? What... How does mana pool not matter? Imagine you're a lvl 50 mage. Lava bolt cast 238 mana to cast.

3,000 mana pool = cast 12 nukes
4,000 mana pool = cast 16 nukes

I don't understand your logic at all. With more mana you can cast more nukes. Even in POP era, you can't regen mana faster than you can cast nukes, so if you're burning through mana on a raid mob or whatever, mana pool helps just as much as mana regen.

"With no focus effects until Luclin, will caster gear even make much of a difference?"

It changes the profile of what you seek. Pegasus Feather Cloak still provides float, Journeyman Boots still provide SoW. Stein of Moggok still provides huge amount of INT, Testament of Vanear still provides huge amount of WIS. Fishbone Earring still lets you breathe under water...

Some items like weight reduction bags will still be popular early on.

It does depress the desirability of some items like the Serpentine Bracer. I mean it is a good item to have even w/o the focus effect, just not nearly as nice.

There's also a few good weapons I like to have. I usually kill Webclaw Murkwave<sp?> to get the Water Crystal Staff for my magic tossers. There's better things to have, its just that it processes Shallow Breath from level 1 and is magic so you can kill Wisps. Nothing quite like an Enchanter smacking rats and having Shallow Breath kicks in from level 1. I can't remember the level you have to be to take down Webclaw, I think it is fairly advanced as the Water Crystal staff is only phase one of a multi item quest.

Even with all the pet nerfs, a naked mage can easily solo to 50 in classic. How many melee classes can do that? How many melee classes can do that easily when geared? Yes, the focus items are nice in classic, but mainly because they sell really well to those who think they need them, and thus earn lots of krono for farmers.

Bottom line TLE are supposed to be as close to original release as the code allows.

Focus items are out of era and do not fit the concept or intention of the server.

In a raid setting having more mana for more total casts per fight is definitely great if you have the chance to med to full before each encounter. But in most group content you are still going to be throwing out the same amount of nukes overall based on how much mana regen your group has since FT isn't mana pool % based. It's pretty much just good for a bonus buffer if something goes really wrong and you need to be able to burn multiple mobs back to back rather than a steady stream. If i was a caster that had no intention of raiding I would honestly just gear for AC/HP as that'll probably make you feel much stronger in group content, you'll still have plenty of mana pool to kill stuff.

On topic though, I'm definitely in the camp that finds the lack of focus effects to make playing a caster much less appealing. They are still extremely strong no doubt, but it doesn't give you the same sense of character progression making your mana pool go from 2000 to 2100 like a melee getting a weapon upgrade or a new haste item.

Weather we're talking group or raid matters alot here. He did mention group.

In a group, the only time it's going to matter if you have 3000 or 4000 mana is if something goes wrong, and you need extra heals/nukes in a short period. In a typical group scenario. 90% of the time, weather you have 500 or 5000 max mana won't matter. Which is why it's kind of silly to spend tons of krono for groupers to get more mana.

Obviously raiding changes all of this with longer fights, and people wanting to parse.

From launch through Velious you'll probably be burning through your entire mana pool on a lot of raid targets, so increasing your mana pool will provide a damage benefit. There are clickies that can also help with damage/mana, like Shield of the Primal Mind and the Mana Robe. Pet focus items provide a minor boost for pet classes. You also start getting mana regen on items in Velious. Aside from that, with all the AoEs it's useful to have resists and hp since you can't always avoid them, although those can be hard to really stack in the early eras.

You'll probably also want to get your epic at some point, which is going to require some items off raid targets for most classes.

Overall, yeah, melee do have a lot more room to grow through gear than casters, but there is a noticeable difference between a geared caster and a fresh 50/60 all else being equal.

I wasn't aware, they removed all foci till Velious ? No more ID II from SolB or IH III from the Hole ?

I still don't buy this argument. Let's assume that you're a mage in classic, lvl 50 and you're casting Lava Bolt (238 mana). Let's assume you have 20 mana regen per tick w/ clarity sitting.

Each mob you're probably nuking twice, in a normal group that doesn't have chanter charm pet.

- 476 mana per fight spent nuking

Typical fight will last maybe 30 seconds? You're probably sitting for 4 ticks of that (tick is 6 seconds), so you regen 20x4= 80 mana per fight. Let's say there's 3 ticks (20 sec roughly) between pulls b/c you have a decent puller, that's another 60 mana. So from start of Mob 1 to the start of Mob 2, you've spent 476 mana, and regen'd 140 mana, net -336 mana.

I don't understand how you can possibly think that your mana pool doesn't matter. If you have 3,000 max mana, you're basically OOM after 9 mobs. If you're only nuking once per mob, you're OOM after 18 mobs at this pace. Then the group has to stop after 18 mobs for you to med, or you don't contribute DPS which slows the rate of killing down.

If you had 4,000 max mana, you go OOM after 12 mobs with 2 nukes per fight, and 24 mobs with 1 nuke per fight. Please explain how this doesn't matter.

Even if my math is wrong, it's a fact that there's 0% chance that you will regen mana faster than you can spend it on nukes if you're a mage or wizard in classic, which means you have to specifically try to lower your DPS to keep your mana up. Higher mana will mean you can nuke more aggressively for longer, or keep pace for a longer period of time without needing med breaks, which makes your group kill faster.

Now, I wouldn't advocate spending a bunch of krono for mana gear because the impact is going to be marginal at best (I.E. in my above scenario 1,000 extra mana will make you last 3 mobs longer, which isn't a huge deal), but it DOES matter.

If we're talking exp groups here, you're not killing 12 mobs, you're killing potentially hundreds of mobs. Ultimately, your dps becomes equivalent to the mana efficiency of your nukes and your mana regen per tick. Having more mana doesn't increase either of those. That said, having more mana means you can stockpile more mana during extended downtime, like if someone goes afk or if you're waiting on pulls (and you will be waiting on pulls a lot if you're leveling in a mainstream zone like lguk at launch). And realistically, yes, casters do have to med through fights occasionally if you're pulling non-stop.

Of course, you're probably not going to be raid geared and routinely exping until Luclin when you're grinding AAs, and by then you can mount in most exp zones, can fairly easily cap mana regen from gear, have access to better mana regen buffs, have access to AAs and focus effects, all of which help make mana much less of an issue.

Caster gear still matters even without focus effects. Yes, you can level to 50 as a caster with your starter robe and *dagger but gear makes it easier.

Selo launch proved gear means nothing at least through all of luclin.

Focus effects don't make or break casters. Focus effects do, however, make the gameplay loop a lot more enjoyable and rewarding for casters.

What enchanter mezzes mobs? These kids got jokes.

lol

Yes. You will have a higher mana pool so you can do more sustained damage and higher AC, HP and resists so you can withstand AOEs and other incoming damage better.