So a discussion is taking place yet again in the caster forums about why the wizard still performs poorly in dps, and why the devs have not addressed this. I would go even further and ask what role does the wizard even have? It does not do sustained dps, its not the king of short burn dps anymore either. It cannot tank, heal, or over lvl 120 stun, snare, mez, offer good adps to groups. The wizard is not the only class with evac or ports, and does mediocre dps and is squishy. The wizard has no pets, wizard AE is nerfed, no effective mana burn, all of the unique things the wizard had now exists on other classes. Quoting the movie office space "what exactly you say you do here hmm?" I would argue the wizard needs a role or delete it...I main one fyi.
And please dont say re roll another main, how about you go re roll your main and re do all your collections, achievements, progression aas, raid gear, augments, earring quest, trade skills, artisans prize, alaris tear...list goes on and on. I also put up decent numbers, but any well played class that can dps can blow the wizards doors off in just about any event. So to the devs whose general efforts i appreciate to keep everquest going....what does the wizard do? and what should it be great at.
At least redoing all that might give you something to do in EQ for 10 months out of the 12 between Expansions?
No argument there my fellow player, its just funny to me how people shift coding blame to the player and say "well roll X class then". No give the wizard a role in eq is all I am saying. For the record I do well in my guild for dps, but I am a rarity among the class in general and we require alot of adps support to "keep up" with average dpsers and i fear during the next "melee expansion" its going to he bad for the wizard class.
I retired mine to the baz least i can TL my other char's around. Loved playing my ranger too much. They really need to upgrade there nukes wizards are dps only sad when very few people play them anymore and for good reason. Hopefully one day they will get some loving.
I created a magican and wizard alt and it's kind of shocking to me. It's like the cleric vs. shaman/druid utility/DPS issue only unlike the cleric the wizard doesn't do its main (only?) job better far more easily and is totally dependant on adps from others. I may be off there since I'm brand new and barely know the class, of course. I'm not saying nerf other classes, but I was surprised.
Would not take much to "fix" the class, they probably know that. The issue is more of what do we want the class to do because other casters have rendered this one obsolete in every way possible, speaking from skill vs skill comparisons.
For the Wizard class to be stagnant for so long, it's completely unsurprising to me that more and more players are choosing to avoid it. Wizards need a HUGE boost next expansion. Devs, please make it so.
It is kind of sad that the perfect raid now certainly contains zero wizards. It does seem easy to fix too. I don't understand why it needs to wait for an expansion? Increase their spell damage x amount - just patch it
I dont disagree, I think it is more complicated than that. The devs know the system far better than we the player on how the systems work to calculate damage. I think they do not know what direction or what purpose the wizard should have since there are other classes that already fill its shoes quite well.
Back in the days, wizards were one of the most abusive classes with their mana-burn and quad-kiting. If wizards will get a simple boost in dps someone will find new ways to abuse it. I think what needs to be done - better and more of inter-class synergies. Say, something like wizard-class specific improvements. For example - make Mana-repetition and/or Twincast auras from enchanter having a very outsized effect on wizards, or mages' synergy would quadruple and twincast and critical (instead of just doubling) next wizard's fire nuke. Druids' debuffs should magify wizards' nukes far more than other classes'. Etc. This would make wizards very welcome to groups both on raids and in group game. And at the same time would not be overly enticing for wizard-only abuses. Such inter-class synergies would answer the question what wizards do.
A lot of people just recognize that it's like having a boulder on the road. It's not going to move, so you might as well just around rather than expecting it to move.
One problem that has gone on for years is rather then boosting your short burn they keep adding duration. Rather than 30 or 60s of great you guys keep getting just ok but for 2-4 minutes duration instead. Or rather than improvements in power you just see more counters. Lots say they want undisputed burst but then others chime in that they don't want to have 90s of glory every 15 to 20 minutes. Last year in beta multiple ideas were floated to boost your burn one of which was boosting Arcane Fury to like a 100% mod but reducing its duration. I would say 50% said that would be huge and 50% were like get out of here we don't want that. So on top of the class not always agreeing on what they want you then add in Aristo basically not listening at all. Everyone scoffed at his last minute 50% nuke boost across the board when it should have just been wizards. Turns out that on its own wouldn't have been enough but he only catapulted mages and others farther ahead for no reason.
Wizards suffer the same fundamental design problem that berserkers and rogues do. Too one-dimensional. If it's not at the top of the damage chart, it's considered useless. Might be okay for raids since roles are rather one-dimensional. But in this day and age you really want to bring more to a group than that, especially since wizards are also not as easy to box as rogues and berserkers.
The wizard casts spells that do damage to mobs. They can also port groups and snare and translocate people
The base damage increase last year was good for Wizards and solved about half the problem. I've posted about it before and in the beta section. Now what they need to do is address burns and address why our class falls behind others every year when given the standard increases. I've got some PMs about that second issue too. I don't think it's that difficult to solve. And yeah they did create a new problem by giving direct damage increases to everyone. It turned out exactly like we said it would. Although, a few less informed individuals thought it wouldn't be an issue and somehow melee would be on top again. Regardless, hopefully the devs learned not to repeat that mistake again. And sure it would be nice if Wizards did get some new ability to make them useful outside of DPS but in general Mages are always going to be better at more things than Wizards. Our class is kinda one dimensional. It's just a huge problem when we fail at even the one dimension imo. I also know it's annoying and not what people want to hear.. but for the past 3 years you should have been playing a Mage. Will we go a 4th year where that's the case? Probably.
Is there a class other than (hilariously) Mages that doesn't have a method of Snaring or Rooting? And Ports have nowhere near the value they had back in the early 2000s, neither are particularly "value adds"
Shared this in another wizard thread but a lot of that is 100% self inflicted from those in the past. I know it was 10 or 12 years ago but there were multiple betas where the devs said we aren't giving much in dps this time. Lets hear your ideas for utility or improvements to other stuff. Like improving your roots, ae roots, stuns, snares, self cures, niche stuff the class might have had, other utility or adps the class had improved. Cast times, recast times, bad non dps spell being improved on, impact fof adps improved, etc. And many people flat out said don't bother giving us any of that or actually fought to remove stuff that was already in. We want dps or would rather have nothing at all and thats exactly what ended up happening. And nothing has really changed all that much since then its just those that did participate got more ranks of the stuff that came from back then and the dps stuff. The devs likely never have time to do this again since they can't even get just dps right. But even today if a dev was like lets give you guys a 6 mob ae root on 30s recast, a self purify on a 2 minute timer, lets give you a 15-25% debuff for poison or corruption or disease, or whatever besides dps. And most would still say get out we don't want or need any of that or explain away how its useless.
Thanks for the input, snares other classes do it waaay better. As for ports my druid ports me around XD. Point is the wizard has no purpose no direction and the one dimensional "thing" it should do other casters do it waaay better to. Anything the wizard can do another class can do it better skill removed ofc.
For the record my statements are based on both group content, cov-tol raid observations this year. I have taken my wizard to the pinnacle of what it can be and I have cleared TOL vanquisher.
