No, the devs do not need to reinvent the wizard..just a small adjustment

I am concerned that non-specific comparisons of wizards to magicians and necromancers could lead nerfs to those classes in the name of "class balance." (I do not think this is anyone's intent but comparisons may backfire).

Let's narrow the discussion to specific adjustments to buff wizards.

As the OP of this thread this discussion is intended for wizards only, not any other class and I have no interest in any "nerfs" to any class.

Having said that I would like my class to be relevant next expansion, we are decent this expansion but we will be last place next expac. Will be irritated if I have to re roll a main that I have worked very hard at because a dps class cannot dps.

As i stated originally this is meant as a wizard only discussion with brain storms from the games top wizards on how to keep our class competitive because we wont be next expansion.

I still call for a tiny adjustment thats all we need, rather it be casting speed, crit rate, aa adjustments, base damage increases. Any of them will keep the wizard true to its description and purpose.

I believe your original post is fair for the most part but alludes to nerfs ("balancing OP classes").

The discussion has lately trended toward non-constructive comparisons which can be derailing and considered "nerf calls."

Having a Level 120 (non-raid) Wizard myself, I support a buff. I'd rather see constructive, specific adjustments than broad, non-constructive comparisons. Win-win for all.

Maybe I'm just ignorant or dumb (Probably column A and column B) but can't this just be resolved by bumping up the base damage of wizzy spells?

Not a dumb statement even the 5% extra we got this expansion made us alot more competitive than before. Realistically thats all that would need to happen.

Seems like a simple solution to me. Heck bump it up 8% I wanna see wizzies as the glass cannons they've always been meant to be. And for the record I don't play a wizzy.

If you read the rules closely I follow them just fine

Flat base damage increase would be yummy. Gimme 10% more and we're set.

There were two problems. One could be addressed by simply increasing base damage but the other requires a modification to a burn focused ability of some kind. They attempted to fix part one by increasing the damage of all direct damage spells of every class. While it helped wizards it created more problems than it solved by making the current class balance situation worse than it's been in.. I can't even remember when it's been this bad.

The second burn problem still needs to be addressed and even if they wanted to increase our base damage again to the point where it fixed that problem. It would undoubtedly create a new problem by making our total/long term damage too high. And that's assuming they don't just increase all direct damage spell again furthering the current issues we have.

An example of what is likely allowed: [Bug Report]: "Servant of Ro is overtuned because X, Y, and Z"

An example of what is likely not allowed: "Magicians need to be nerf because they are overpowered."

EverQuest is no longer a PvP-focused game so any emphasis on some sort of zero-sum trade-off is nil.

I have a 120 Wizard so I commiserate with this thread. I just don't want to see my necromancer and magician nerfed in the process.

Why do you say this? Are you interested in making the game better or is everything you post from a completely self centered perspective? Even people who main necros and mages have pointed out to the devs that they went too far.

Again, this is not a zero-sum debate. EQ is not PvP-focused.

If you have an issue with necromancers and magicians, highlight what ability or spell you think is bugged.

Preferably, we ought to highlight areas of adjustment and improvement to make wizards better.

One thing that would be really cool is if we could have permanent burn, at the cost of highly increased mana cost. So realistically you can't burn all the time, but you can burn whenever you feel its apropriate, and then retract into sustained/mana gain mode.

edit: spelling

Yeah I'm pretty dumb and don't wanna go into the rabbit hole of numerical intricacies. I just wanna see wizzies go boom boom.

Class balance has nothing to do with PvP so not sure why you're bringing that up.

We've been discussing these issues for over half a year now. Wizards needed their base damage increased but they increased everyone's. That gave big increases to classes that didn't need them like mages. The devs acknowledged that they wanted to make more specific changes but it's all they had time for. I think it's pretty well understood by devs and players paying attention that less than ideal changes were made.

The issue with DoT classes, recently, has more to do with the copy/paste nature of abilities and spells. Combine that with a new AA dev that may not fully understand why some things were originally done and things get out of whack pretty fast. Aristo actually did nerf DoTs after the initial upgrades during beta in an attempt to minimize this problem but it's hard to combat the continued overly strong increases to the enhance decay lines for all classes that have it.

This issue is also directly related to the percent modifiers thread from the other day. Certain SPAs impact some classes fare more than others. Whether it's 124 or 461, etc and unless they're far more careful, rework things at a fundamental level, or just stop giving out increases entirely and find other SPAs to use these problems are just going to get worse... And sure maybe some people aren't as aware but when your top caster type player can basically double the total damage of your top melee dps in a night of raiding... I feel like most people will agree there's an issue. But then I don't know how to factor PvP into this discussion. Maybe that makes it a good thing? I don't know.

That could/would result in a higher sustained than what devs may want wizards at IMHO.

So why not just add another wiz only AA with 8% SPA 294 and 130% SPA 170?
(Disclaimer: percentages chosen arbitrarily)

My point is that there are no zero-sum dynamics with no PvP considerations. In order to buff wizards, you don't have to nerf mages or necros (at least broadly). I play Planetside 2 where zero-sum balancing for faction and class power is of incredible importance since they define game outcomes. We don't have the same level of concerns here. The advantages granted in weapons and vehicles to take territory and kill players (game-ending outcomes) doesn't quite have the same significance as topping parsers. Ideally, on EQ, we can aim for "complete balance" (however defined) but I see more a major boost required for wizards.

We may also disagree on the how to approach the base line or water mark. I believe wizards should receive positive adjustments without overly negative adjustments to other classes. I may be wrong but I am under the impression that you want to balance around a specific locus of power. If you are concerned about trivializing content (due to everyone being "good"), that should factor towards the difficulty of content itself (the "high water mark").

I get that you disagree with specific design decisions (which can be addressed by constructive, solutions-based dialogue) but we shouldn't penalize players (mages, necros, other classes) who have no bone - or are oblivious to - this "class balancing" debate. Taken the wrong way; today's threads about wizards being underpowered (which I agree with) will become tomorrow's threads about why mages were "nerfed into the ground." The drive to address one constituency's concerns of so-called "incompetence" will betray "incompetence" for another constituency. And, since nearly all players play multiple classes, we can already chalk it up to a PR disaster.

I just want all classes to be worth playing and if you're not a tank or healer and there's nothing to mez you should be able to contribute significantly with either DPS or ADPS or both. And that contribution should be basically the same or at least in the same ballpark as everyone else. Sure, maybe your zerker/rogue/wiz is slightly more often the class that's 5% to 10% ahead and maybe if you do a lot of ADPS your personal DPS is behind by 5% to 10% compared to the average more often than not. But the margin is never so large to give you a reason to main change or for a raid to fail because they didn't stack a particular class.

Right now, if you're struggling to beat current raids, then you should be stacking necros and mages and giving them the ADPS they need. Having too many melee groups is a waste of time and the only reason wizards make any sense is that they don't cause as much lag when compared to mages and millions of swarm pets. Plus wizards are ahead of melee when it comes to AE damage. But if your raid avoids AEing because it's too difficult to manage and you have little lag then there's really no benefit to having a wizard on raids at all. The same can be said for some melee classes as well and it'll be interesting to see where zerkers end up after recent changes.

All that said, if you have 2 or 3 classes that are far far ahead of everyone else then it may make perfect sense to nerf them instead of buffing everyone else. Especially if it can be done quicker and cheaper. And especially if making everyone as strong as the strongest class will trivialize all content. Which is really only a concern for raids because group content in EQ is already trivial. Every class in the game could be 1/2 as strong as it is now and it changes nothing for doing group content. There's plenty of slack to worth with to help balance out the higher end game to keep all classes worthwhile. This whole idea that nerfs are always bad is ridiculous when all we're talking about is a tuning process to make sure every class is good.

It is a little disheartening when your at max effort getting every drop you can with respect to the raid, and certain classes do 2x your dps.

Not calling for nerfs or adjustments to them, I want the wizard to have a shot to run with them. Its only fair