In the past, before a raid event started, I would summon the two minion clickies we have and at some point during non burn click them out to use. I will be honest, I did not look at how much damage it was doing, I just thought to myself "Hey it is free damage, why not". So the other day before raids I looked at the actual clickie item. The rank 2 115 minion does 14k damage per cast for 30 seconds. I used it on a dummy for giggles, and it casted 8 times at 14k for a total of 112k damage (slightly below since it is actually 13970 or something but whatever). While I am not asking this to do three million over 30 seconds, I will admit that 112k is embarrassingly pathetic in today's current game. And I do not know the exact cast time of it, but I know there is one and in the amount of time I clicked both minion wands I could have casted a Spear or Volley or even Chaotic and do a ridiculous amount more damage. So I propose for next expansion one of the following two changes, or both if need be- 1. Make the cast time insta cast, or 0.1 second cast or whatever the game allows. At least this can be a one time click during GCD that adds a little bit of damage. 2. Increase the damage per cast, or how long it is up. I would equate it to doing damage that a solo magician can do with spear during burn conditions (synergy, spire, heart, etc). Keep the 30 seconds and have it do 100k per cast, make it 60 seconds at 50k every tick, just something better than 14k per. As of now, I cannot see any reason why anyone would summon the clickie in it's current form. Remove cast time, increase damage... give us a reason to want to cast it once per raid event.
I have used these spells several times, since they came out :-D. I believe it is a “filler”, not meant to be used. We have a few good good dps spells, and quite a few that we never use. I would assume this is by design, to create the experience that we are choosing the core spells.
A couple overarching issues contribute to these being really lacklustre. Spell Development The way spell development is conducted in EverQuest, most abilities are increased by a set percentage each expansion. In ToV/RoS, most spells increased 21%. Cumulatively since the line's introduction in VoA, the Servant Slay spell has had its damage increased 174%. Comparatively, Spear's base damage has increased 144%. Prior to ToV, Servant Slay had increased 66%, versus 81% for Spear (Servant Slay increased 65% RoS -> ToV). At face value, you'd think that this would keep the relative value of Spear and Servant Slay close to constant. However, Servant Slay is not modified by anything. Assuming casting rates stayed the same, it will do exactly 174% more damage than it did in VoA. That's completely untrue for Spear. Think of all that's been added to augment spells since then. Illusions of Grandeur didn't even exist in VoA. Heart of Flames, Black Wolf, Fierce Eye, etc. all get their crit damage/focus % increased each expansion. Synergies/Chromatic Haze were added, Restless Focus (the 10% aug) was added, 25% Focus AAs were added, etc. That's not to mention all of the procs you benefit from by casting Spear that do not augment casting these clicky pets in any way. I didn't play in VoA, but if you go back and read old Mage Tower threads you can see people being impressed by ~90k burns. Compare that to now - every DPS class can burst for well over 1 mil and sustain more than half a million. We're doing 15-20+ times what we did in VoA, and that's because of multiplicative % increases to a wide range of abilities. Unfortunately, many of these unmodifiable or situational spells have really fallen by the wayside. It's something we have to worry about for RS pets each expansion, but there isn't enough development time to also focus on all of these minor lines. It's sad how relatively poor many of these situational/niche/supplementary spell lines have become (and a number started out quite bad to begin with). I would much rather cut out spells and make the remaining ones matter. GCD/Lag Secondly, the GCD is one of the most interesting aspects of spell casting in EverQuest because it provides 1.5 seconds to use items or AAs that otherwise would not be worth casting. There are a lot of clickies whose damage is really low compared to our spells, but cumulatively these allowed players who maximized their GCD usage to squeeze out a little bit of extra damage. Unfortunately, raid lag makes using many of these actively detrimental. A 1s cast time AA or item is going to slow down your spell casting, even though it shouldn't. This even applies to things like Force of Elements - a lot of people see a DPS increase when they stop trying to use it. This is one of the many ways in which lag makes actively playing/pushing DPS a lot less interesting and enjoyable. Conclusion For these particular spells, making them instant cast would at least combat the lag issue, though instant cast items/spells can still slow down your spell casting. They should also see a damage increase beyond what occurred in ToV. Not everything has to be an insane "I win" damage button, but having additional spells/items for people who min/max that provide some benefit is good for class design and producing interesting gameplay. I know it's an issue of resources, but I really wish there was more spell development time allocated to this. Apparently copy/pasting a level cap worth of spells is time consuming, so I don't think there's a good argument for allocating resources to continue these lines without also making them have some point in existing. And then there's the lag
