Give Enchanters Critical Affliction 11-27 (or: The Fix to Enchanters That Reduces Balance Headaches)

Maybe if raids were not focused on dps checks... this would not be an issue.

Maybe if people would spend a few hours out of the month to parse on combat dummies, try new line ups, burn rotations, compare notes with others of their class, make and relentlessly press their proper mash key, get the progression and other minor trinkets (artisan's prize, shawl) to boost their dps and character's overall development and not be lazy scrubs expecting to get damn near maximum dps via simply being level 110 with high aa count like every other person serious about raiding and playing this game to the full extent, crying about dps checks wouldn't be an issue.

...Sorry, blacked out there for a sec. Anyways, yeah chanters need a little love, no idea how to implement from my perspective, and more cc requiring events in group and raid game.

how do you like a reply ?

Are you guys saying that you can only discuss the DPS of a class if it's a DPS class? What's the argument exactly? Nobody is suggesting they start doing top 5 DPS.

dont worry, DBG will sell you back your power with the next expansion ..

In the old days playing a chanter main was interesting:
-if you were skilled you were a soloing force, and checks and balances were well thought out with your dots breaking mez. I always felt that charmed pets being a bit weaker (not necessarily the OoW reduction that was done) and dots being stronger would have been a good thing. I also felt nukes were too slow casting especially for the damage given but would have taken faster cast with less damage as an option, since that option would be situationally more useful.

-In the group game it went up and down. Post LDoN it didn't seem CC was needed all that much, even in PuG play. I retired my enchanters and haven't played one post 75 so maybe that changed, although it doesn't sound like it. Direct DPS in a group without using charm was generally very poor so it kind of depended if the group really appreciated the rest of the toolkit or just liked playing with you no matter your class.

-raids are a funny thing because part of the playerbase is all about that, but some classes don't shine in that environment unless an event is scripted to let them... which then causes complaints.

As far as current endgame, I can only ask questions:

-Does the OP's dot crit ramp up radically overpower the class in various situations? (solo/group/raid)
-How are the mechanics of chanter nukes today? (cast fast enough with enough efficiency to justify?)

-Have they introduced raid auras yet? (i.e., a spell line an enchanter can only cast while in a raid. To me this is the most obvious way to address the raiding deficient/boring classes --give them a carrot that only works when raiding. Then the solo/group game isn't unbalanced by the change).

Phone's ringing dude.

Gotwar:

If you are indeed serious about this please take the time to incorporate the abilities/clicks that can increase your crit rate under a burn. Do the (hard) maths and figure out where you'd really stand. IoG increases your crit rate by how much? Spice by how much? Bard stuffs increases your crit rate by how much?

Once you do this and present it here.........you'll have a better understanding with respect to how much of an increase you really want in crit rate. I'd advise you to be very careful since at a certain point there are definitely diminishing returns. Need proof? A necro innate crit rate is clearly higher than an enchanter. During raids, we actually do not fully benefit from ADPS crit rate mods since we are sometimes already critting 100% of the time. If your passive crit rate gets too high you'll actually see reductions in the base dmg of your DoTs.

I'll give an example of not considering the entire picture and looking to the future: For years the necro class fought to keep his/her 2.5 since it increased our crit rate. Of course we loved us some dmg!! But...over time...the class was given a bit more passive crit rate AA and chanters/bards/rangers were given more powerful ADPS. We are now to the point where we sometimes don't even use our 2.5 and are STILL not fully able to utilize crit rate ADPS. So be careful with your wishes. Make sure to challenge your conclusions Try to keep a happy balance between your group/solo/raid game. If you focus solely on the present you might not be seeing the future potential changes as clearly as possible. Learn from our mistakes (you can even laugh at us if u wish

I'll back you up on one thing. If you had identical passive crit rates with a shammy.....it would make a Devs job a bit easier once the initial adjustment to your DoTs is made. Streamlining this area could potentially save lots of Dev work in the long run.

Enjoy rebuying AA you already grinded next expansion and your class robe being a 2 second reduction on Mind Storm!

of course there is reason to talk about it, enchanter is NOT a dps class, never should they be competing for top 10 when there are classes that have a role as dps and only dps, yet cant compete.

and 2004/2005 was the golden era, sorry you missed out on it.

subs dropped drastically after 2004/2005.

Lol what? 04 gave us one of the worst expansions in EQ history. And you wonder why people started to quit? Hilarious.

god wasnt the worst expansion, ask anyone on tlp how much they enjoyed gates of discord.

if it was the worse expansion noone would have cried that it was about to be bundled with oow at release, it might have been buggy when it was first released, but that doesnt mean it wasnt a great expansion.

go do some reading, brush up on eq history, then come back and post.

GoD was trash and I really don't care what tlp players think. Unless you were playing it when it was live your opinion doesn't mean anything. Did you start playing during GoD or something? I can understand some nostalgia if that's your first time playing. But the game had steadily gone down hill since the high point of SoV and really didn't start to get good again till TSS. Regardless, none of that has anything to do with modern EQ.

Being there when GoD was new, so many angry players. TLP GoD has become somewhat beloved. Let's leave it at that. Similar to my comments in this thread about how it was enchantering back in the day there is probably minimal relevance to what the OP wanted to talk about which is raid tuning of the enchanter's role in the modern endgame, unless the goal is to make it as it was.

Is the OP on track that enchanter's basically have nothing to do in current endgame raiding? Not quite what they said, as they honed in on DPS being low --but the conversation that has been on topic seems to suggest that their is some support for that idea

We are currently in the gutter both group and raid. I am well aware of the design space present at 55% base crit. This is a better solution than arguing about the base damages on our DoTs for the next 5 years.

You're not wrong. A major source of power/enjoyment for the class is almost entirely irrelevant right now. As bad as that feels, I'm not convinced making it more useful is the right solution, as it would require either tuning up mobs to insane difficulties or hammering tank classes into the ground. Maybe there's another way to go about it, I'm not a very good designer

The complaint is two-fold, though only one is really highlighted in the OP. First, not competing with other "Utility/ADPS/DPS" classes feels bad. There's really no reason that, giving today's current "meta," Enchanters shouldn't be sitting next to classes that perform similar functions in raids. I feel I gave pretty strong evidence for why these three classes specifically should be near each other on a parse.

Second, the lack of interactivity in the Enchanter kit was exacerbated by the Mind Tempest recast nerf. While removing the recast is the "easy" way to go about fixing it, as was pointed out by others in this thread, there could be other ways to make raiding on an Enchanter "feel" better. Basically it comes down to having meaningful choices that leads to feeling engaged with your character. Clicking three buttons at the beginning of an event and then tapping my "F" key to fire a single multi-bind for the rest of it and getting 90% effectiveness is pretty lame.

Overall, it feels pretty bad to raid/group on an Enchanter right now.

I ... I don't even know where to begin pointing out all the things wrong with this post. Thanks for the bump!

I hope daybreak reads this thread, although the lack of a dev response leaves me... well.. sad. Enchanters got nerfed pretty bad, and since my main toon is an enchanter I'm pretty frustrated about it. I think I'm actually looking for a new main character to play. In any situation where I'm unable to use crowd control, I feel pretty useless. Also, I think OP is spot on when he said that enchanters can do more dps than clerics, and absolutely no one else.

I think Enchanters should be closer to their peers, the other INT casters, in terms of dps. Even if they were a step or two below necromancers, magicians, and wizards, it would be a huge improvement considering what Enchanters are capable of right now.

evening out crits (and other stuff) across classes so that base spells (also base weapons. as a production move, the shift would eventually reach things like how knight & monk weapons are used so differently) are more comparable would be real nice from a "meta" gaming perspective. It does have a way of robbing EverQuest, a bit, of its … texture, though.

For me, it is simple. You don't nerf a class heavily unless it has become flavor of the month where everyone is making that class. It doesn't matter if your math is right or not. I am personally going to speak the only language that dev understands. I canceled my 3 month renewal 2 months ago, and I will let it expire. Hopefully they will lay off the dev that thinks spending limited resources on constant class rebalancing is the right way to go.

No you can't have my stuff. I may be back eventually, but the lack of loyalty from the EQ Devs has burned away any loyalty I have to the game.

Nope. Build the game that meets your current player base, instead of telling the current player base they have to improve to continue to have success in the game. Raiding currently only caters to the elite, so is it any surprise that people are leaving?