As I understand, most people no longer use rains in their weaves. Con: - not affected by the mods from most sources - crit cap (40 %) - hit self Pro: Cool concept Traditional spell, part of the narrative So I speculate that a design desicion for DB devs wrt expansion would be what to do with rains. A: drop them B: change the mechanichs, but keep the overall design C: keep the name or some inspiratipns/ideas, but make a new game component. My take: A - noooooh. We have had rains for so long. B - maybe. I am not knowledgeable enough to make good fixes. The risk is that we push something else out of the weave. C - ideas: increase the cooldown to say 15-25 sec, make it a 4 hit DD-bolt every x seconds, modified by all normal DD and bolt stuff, make an AA-line (say 10 x 100 AA), each giving 10% that it will not hit self, make a parallel line, so that it will stear around mezzed targets, make a parallel line that will make it spawn secondary minor bolts (lower level versions). Basically make rans a cascade of bolts, and make it so that with AA, those bolts hits relevant targets. It would make the AA lines for say magic bolts relevant.
I use rains all the time - whenever they wont break mez. They are the best damage to mana ratio, and decent dps when you consider damage to cast time (not best, but everything cant be best). They also count as 3/4 hits for the quiescent gambit counter (4/4 if there are 2 mobs) which is really useful. I only avoid it in burns cause I dont want it using up my burn buff counters. (IDK, none of this might matter to mages - I play wiz) To make it better they could increase the max hits. Right now it hits 1 mob 3 times but if there are 2 or more mobs you only get a total of 4 hits max. I always thought that was overly limited. Its only barely better as an aoe than on single target! Thats dumb.
The easy fix to me is just raising the cap from 40% to something more reasonable. I like the low mana/gambit use of it and right now it is still good DPS if you have zero ADPS. But once you add just black wolf it starts falling a bit too far behind for me. Something like 50% would be much more interesting. Not enough that I'd use it all the time but enough that having black wolf + enc 3rd spire wouldn't make me regret casting it.
They're still awesome when solo/moloing. IE, as others have said, when don't have much ADPS, especially if can hit 2 mobs. If you're not using them as a mag when solo/molo, then you're losing out - (and probably one of the ones complaining about running OOM too quickly). Definitely don't get rid of them... So, they still have a very nice niche, but unfortunately, they're pretty much obsolete for raids now, because once start adding much ADPS for crit chance, then ya, they start to fall way behind. Increasing to 58% (natural base) crit chance, would greatly improve their usability, without being too OP'd though...
2 spell lines that are only usable when solo/molo but you have zero adps and are not using any of your own burn abilities. This is even worse than the alliance spells....
At this point enough changes have been made that reviving Rains is a fairly complicated topic. I'm still pretty pissed off about the nerf, but I'll try not to focus on that too much in this post. Also this is all from the perspective of Mages, though others (Wizards, Druids) do have rain spells too. First, some of the main features of rains, some of which Iblis mentioned: They're AEs - Obviously rains are AE type spells, though their damage doesn't scale that much, given you max out your damage with two mobs. The limit on number of waves makes them not ideal for real AE situations (where you're killing a bunch of mobs), but they were somewhat unique in that they were AE spells that were required to maximize single target DPS. This "feature" contributes pretty significantly to their other unique properties They come in waves - This has a few interesting ramifications. First, it means that for ~7s after your first rain lands, you have essentially committed to AEing. Many a mage died on a raid encounter to adds spawning some time after they cast a rain spell. This added both a level of dependency on tanks and some skill in managing rains and aggro to reduce the chance of death. Coming in waves also made certain ADPS abilities add multiple times, since each wave gained the benefit. This included SPA 303, Spell Damage, SPA 286 (though they often had limits so they wouldn't boost rains), among others. The main affect was that, along with their cast/recast time, spell damage was at least a little bit useful for mages. Not affected by quite a few ADPS abilities - This was a bit of a weird property. The main impact was that Heart of Flames, Elemental Union, etc didn't have any affect on rains, which was strange for a class whose main DPS discs used SPA 124. I personally don't see a huge justification for this, especially since it isn't a code issue. This also had the byproduct of making critical chance/damage mods more important for rains than for other spells. Very mana efficient - Rains are undoubtedly still incredibly mana efficient, especially without ADPS. I know certain people (*cough*) felt the damage to mana ratios were too high, but efficient spells were a means to sustaining DPS which other classes achieved via different methods. The end result were spells that were very strong in multiple ways, but had high risks associated with them. Death was a real possibility, and a huge part of what separated poor mages from good mages and good mages from exceptional mages was the ability to maximize damage via rains without dying. This certainly caused headaches for those in lower tier guilds with bad tanks or that relied heavily on CC (and I'm sure there were some raid leaders that went ballistic b/c some mage broke mez for the 47th time). It created a situation in which our spells were even more situational and our rotations were even more variable than they are now, but it also brought a higher level (IMO) to the class. That said, we're now almost two years from them being gutted, and enough has been changed that, if they were made relevant again, some aspects probably need to be changed or considered: Crit damage changes - The 7/22/15 patch that nerfed rains also allowed critical damage modifiers to stack, which had not been possible before. Because rains scale quite well with such modifiers, it would have substantially increased their burst potential, more than other spells. Based on the crit cap and how the short-lived Heavy Rain AA (TBM beta - increased rain mana cost in return for increased twincast chance, meaning it wouldn't boost them during burns while twincast was on), it doesn't seem like the developers intend for them to be exceptional burst tools. Boosting the crit chance cap without removing it probably addresses this issue. Counter-based procs - Multiple single counter focus procs have been added since rains were first introduced. By this I mainly am referring to Conjurer's Synergy, Chromatic Haze (activated and gift), and Beguiler's Synergy. Flames of Power would count too if it actually affected rains. Rains only receive the benefit from these on the first wave, which means you're losing DPS by using up these procs with rains. This creates an annoying situation in which, to maximize damage, you have to constantly stare at your songs window (or listen to GINA) and try to react fast enough to change the order of your spell casts so that rains don't eat the proc. Even then, since the waves last 7 seconds, there's a very good chance a future proc will be consumed completely outside of your control. The easiest option is probably to add a sort of blocker that prevents rains from consuming those kinds of procs, but the best option would be to allow the proc to focus all 3/4 rain waves. Mana regen changes - Mages have much better mana regen than we did at the end of VoA when our first rain was introduced (well, with RoF), and we also have much better mana regen than late-TDS/TBM when mana was a big issue. Between monster summoning/reclaiming (which is broken) Chaotic Fire (the mana return and its efficiency) we don't have a huge need for super efficient rains that also do strong damage. That's not to say we don't run out of mana currently, but the rate at which we do is fairly reasonable, and we have tools to recover it (though doing so can take time). Addition of Chaotic - With the addition of Chaotic Fire, we have enough spells to create a sustained rotation of all level 105 spells (if using Storm), all of which are not completely terrible. There are still quite a few lineups, especially for burst, which include the 100 Spear, but we don't have to have completely crappy spells like bolt in our rotation anymore. Adding 2 rains that are viable creates a conundrum in that we now have too many viable spells to fit into a rotation. It isn't a terrible problem to have, but it would likely breed an excessive number of different spell rotations that are situationally top dps. IMO the variability in our lineups was borderline excessive before rains were crit capped; changing out specific spells at specific crit chance points is both annoying and creates an unnecessary amount of obscurity. Flames of Power (and SPA 124) - With the addition of Chaotic, we've further committed ourselves to SPA 124 type modifiers, which don't boost rains. This both obscures what is actually top DPS and it just generally seems poor design to add numerous modifiers to a class that can't be used by 3 of the 4 or 5 spells in a lineup. Ultimately, I'm not sure what the best course of action is. The logical choice would be to make them a stronger sustained option, but we really don't need more variance in our spell lineups. Our damage is situational enough as it is. The logical solution to that would be to alter them so that they don't cause issues, meaning they won't break mez, get you summoned and killed, or kill you. However, doing so removes the risk vs reward concept that's integral to rains. Had different design choices been made, I'd unquestionably be strongly in favor of mitigating the nerf to rains. To be fair, Dzarn did try to do that with the Heavy Rain AA, but it did far too little in terms of damage and the rain nerf and how badly (at least IMO) it was handled was still very fresh in the minds of Mages. However, we underwent quite a few changes with EoK that brought the class in a different direction, and fitting rains back into the class' toolkit in a way that improves the experience of playing a mage (especially via reviving that risk vs reward) is significantly more difficult now.
I'm actually not a huge fan of the chaotic. Its a required nuke in all combos, but the lowest damage one.
No jokes, the brief and violent life story of Heavy Rains AA ought to be required reading for anyone interacting with developers. A cautionary tale. A ghost story slasher flick to frighten would-be keyboard crusaders.
Great write-up, Sancus. Let me just add that, considering the way the rain nerf was implemented and communicated, the heavy rain AA (which did NOT stack with innate twincast chance, so the first level of the heavy rain AA was absolutely meaningless as it had a lower twincast chance as innate twincast at that time, was viewed by many mages (including me) more as a way to "rub it in" than any kind of "relief" to the nerf. Accordingly flak-heavy was the feedback devs got - the fact that the AA was cancelled without any replacement though struck many mages on the wrong chord again, though.
They added the crit cap because rains were doing more DPS than they intended on raids. Same reason SHM rain heals got crit caps.
Pretty sure they made an actual movie about it sir. Moral of the story: don't show it to the Laker girls
Meh, I enjoyed the challenge of rains... but, also had a raid leader that recognized their benefit (with up to 5 good mages per raid) and told tanks to step up their agro game, instead of throttling mages. Personally I'd like to see them viable again, and worth the risk vs reward. I prefer choices. Let me choose if I want take the risk, for an additional 15k DPS possible... Right now, there's no reason to choose.
Fransisco you're unfairly judging chaotic... It's actually higher DPS than 100 spear, and arguably even higher than 105 spear depending on the situation, ADPS, it's proc(s), whether burning or not, and the damage output from RS pets vs whatever target you're on. You can't judge it just by its base damage, its much more complicated than that. Combine that with it's (arguably, I know) the best mana regaining ability we've EVER received at one time due to its consistent reset of harvest, and it's an awesome spell. -while I liked the monster/reclaim thing, it's still a bummer because have to kill (or pocket, but I prefer to keep fully super buffed pet pocketed) current pet to do it.
Magicians cast Gather Magnitude on EOK raid events? Goodness gracious... I think the only times I ever casted that spell on a raid was (a) after a death and (b) on Kor Sha. But we are talking only casting it one time, not multiple times. Too long of a cast time to get me excited about it. Between mod rods, paragon, horn clickie, and enchanter things... at least for me, mana is never an issue. Except Kor Sha...
Yep, there it is. This is exactly what should be cautioned against. This is why magicians don't have another +sustained damage AA and instead have nothing. Thanks for stepping up with the How Not To Be, Igniz. Good lesson for the class.
I agree that the spell does awesome things, but its a trap. Kinda of like how mages lost a spell gem when twincast came out. A mage must always use chaotic in any spell line up now. Plus the randomness of what it can do kinda takes some of the feel/fun away. Oh, I'm twincasting now? Its not the best time for that, but ok.... There is less strategy, just push the button and hope you win a bit more.
