I'm no more a fan of thoroughly arbitrary negative changes than you are. My objection is rhetorical, not ideological. Complaints have to be tailored in scope and kind to the offense, or they're not taken seriously. For instance, I'm 100% on board with pressing for Sirene_fippy's proposed change to having the mana not deduct if the AA fails & resets. Also hauling back the faux level on it, so that if it's costed as a spell it benefits from cost reductions intended for spells (that's actually a way huger wizard issue, but appropriate to bring up again here).
They don't listen regardless, it's more of a vent than anything. And I have 3 wiz alts who no longer use the abilities I spent a good deal of time earning, so the frustration bleeds over.
No offense Roxxanna, as I have always felt you are an intelligent and respectable member of these forums... But isn't the issue not the 600 mana cost but the fact your guild only rolls with 35? TBM raids were designed for 54 players. Taking less generally means you have to either (a) have top end talent and skill in game, (b) gear to overcome the raid demands, (c) pristine group composition to cover all bases, or (d) all of the above. While the mid tier does have talented and quality players, they also have lackadaisical players just along for the ride. Which for a 35 man raid isn't going to cut it. I believe once the raids start fielding 54 players then the realization that a 600 mana cost becomes irrelevant mostly for a rez...
At the mid to lower tier, sometimes going from 35 to 54 actually makes you worse. Quality players are harder and harder to recruit. You end up with several more lackadaisical players that not only require being carried, but also tend to do stupid things and miss emotes. It's a game of subtraction by addition. Better to have a small core of mostly good players.
Yeah.. unfortunately, my guild fielded 54 (including boxes) for the first time in months one night last week. Most nights, we don't even get close to that. We have about 3-4 clerics on each night and we use our rez AA quite a bit. I'm very happy for those of you in higher raiding guilds that can field sufficient numbers to make this irrelevant, but please stop a moment and realize you are the minority and try not to be so judgmental of those of us for whom this nerf is not irrelevant or so quick to dismiss our concern as petty whining.
Sometimes, yes. If a mob gets loose (generally due to a tank death), it's not uncommon for our clerics to get eaten next. Pallies / shaman / or whoever can, get us back up. We hope our mod rod / QM / VP are available, but if we've already used them, then our sole job is to start getting others up that may have died while we were down. I've been doing this a very long time. I've watched my guild go from one that is extremely strong, to one that struggles due to dwindling numbers. We make do, when we can, with what we have. Sometimes that means trying to figure out alternate ways to win something in non-traditional ways because we just don't have the numbers or correct classes anymore to follow the traditional path. Fights that may take you or other higher end guilds a relatively short time to win will often take us much longer because we lack the dps. Longer fights mean we, as healers, have to make efficient use of our mana, using mod rods / QM / VP on a regular basis instead of just when we notice we are getting low. For that reason, those may not be available after a rez. My point is that your experience / opinion gives you a viewpoint that is not necessarily applicable to all of us. I shouldn't have to defend my viewpoint or provide statistical data for you to accept it as valid for me (even if it's not valid for you). I've been playing EQ for 16 years, most of that time as a cleric. Is this change class breaking? Definitely not. Is it an annoyance that makes no sense that I shouldn't have to deal with? Yes.
Your misunderstanding my point, it's not the mana cost, it's the fact that it costs any mana at all. Most of the time we do well, our small raid force is indeed made up of hand picked, high talent players. But there are times when a mana draining blob gets parked on top of me right after a set of adds steamrolls me and all my mana returns are down. When this happens, I switch to Rez duty so I can be useful. This negates that. And I hate standing around not being able to do anything.
Agreed, but with one high number guild vacuuming up all the raiders, it's not gonna change anytime soon. Maybe after a server merge.
This nerf is stupid. Any guild who could kill mob x before patch probably still can. All this really does is slow things down. If they really wanted to stop zerging, then they would have increased the recast timer on rez in general.
I would still like for DBG to weigh in on why they felt this change was necessary. If there is a valid reason, so be it. However, right now, it just seems like a random change for no good reason.
If the mana cost on AA rez is intentional. Then, put together with the AE dps nerf on melee, and heal proc nerf on pally, I would guess the next expansion (if we going to get one) will mainly have raid events that have a kill timer, a lot of adds, and emotes to kill players fast. So, with the nerf, the raid force cannot AE kill the adds, the clerics are unable to battle rez fast, and the pally cannot hold off the NPC with heal proc to allow the raid force to stabilize to regain footing. This would not slow down the top 5 guilds at all, but for the guilds that are just holding on, this is going to be rough going.
Something else I forgot to mention is that the 406 actual mana cost of the Rez AA combined with our combat mana regen (mine is 417 with Yaulp AA and permanent effect buffs only - no chanter stuff) should allow us to use the Rez AA somewhat consistently even from a Rez Sickness/OOM state assuming there is no mana drain in effect and our combat mana regen is high enough. The cast time of the Rez AA is around 3 seconds and its recast is 7 seconds (it's actually 9 or 10 but the timer begins at the moment it is cast so 7 is left after subtracting the cast time). This should give a cleric enough time to regen mana between Rez AA casts to use it almost continuously, especially when you add in the time it takes to find, target, and drag corpses (if necessary). You do need to have at least the 600 mana base to cast it initially, which might take 2 ticks, but after that first Rez AA cast and the delay involved with casting and waiting for the recast, future casts will be available more quickly. This is also assuming that the mana isn't spent on anything else -- though clerics who have no mana and no mana recovery tools usually spend their time either rezzing, using AA heals and balances, or waiting until they have enough mana to cast something, so all this does is reduce the ability to regen mana for heals and buffs when using the Rez AA to rez continuously (and this is only if all mana recovery tools are down or unavailable) but it does not stop the rezzing completely when using the AA (not without mana drain at least) unless the cleric has too low combat mana regen or does not want to use the mana for rezzing. Clerics can also use the Staff of Forbidden Rites item (instant cast time, 30 sec recast) and Call of the Herald AA (5 sec cast time, 5 min recast) to get people up in between uses of the Rez AA and even Epic 1.0 (though the 10 sec cast time is awful and I would just wait to regen enough for the Rez AA unless I really needed to get 3 people up quickly in no/low mana situations). I have not seen the rez stick mentioned much in this thread but even before this change, I always had one on me because it's instant cast and allowed me to rez 2 people quickly (without waiting for the 7 sec recast of Rez AA). It's possible that some clerics are in guilds with players who will not accept 90% rezzes under any condition, though, which would not make it an option. I have been in guilds like that and it sucks, because the last thing players who want to win an event should be concerned about in near-wipe but winnable situations is a 6% exp difference on a combat rez. I know not all guilds have a decent number of druids and shamans (and paladins), but when you do and exclude them from helping out with combat rezzes because 90% isn't good enough, it hurts healer efficiency as a whole because the burden of combat rezzing (at least when 1 group or more is down) is placed entirely on clerics, who could be doing so many other things besides that. I am trying to remain positive and hope that this is part of something bigger, like adding more functionality to the Rez AA in the future. Some people think it was to stop zerg rezzing but it really doesn't do that in most situations -- it just slows (slightly) the amount of time it takes for two classes to rez using one ability (Rez AA) immediately after death and stops the use of that ability completely only under specific conditions (severe mana drain that strips mana faster than we can recover it to use the ability).
This is needlessly confrontational besides being straight up false. I can't imagine what you hope to gain by insulting imaginary
Im with the clerics if you guys are gonna make it cost mana you BETTER remove the rezz sickness ^_^ /wink wink
AA rez costing mana is irrelevant *when everything is going fantastic*(tm). However it is extremely relevant when you are barely hanging on and trying to save an event by the skin of your teeth, when it is the correct decision to banner in and start clicking bodies like a mad man. i think the top level guilds deal with this situation considerably less frequently than your average raiding guild, and i could understand why some of you might think it an inane complaint, but quite frankly- you are wrong and short sighted.
I still do not buy into the idea that AA rez nerf was just for slowing down zergs. If so, it would have been easier to adjust the AA timer and nerf other methods of rez. There had to be more to it. Secondly, what's the point of new group gear in the expansion when it's easier to go gank old raid targets with smaller numbers. Those raids your are just getting by on will be steamrolled with 5 levels and AA.
We'll likely never know the reason. Likely it is nothing more than the aa dev doesn't like things that don't have a cost, so now there's a cost.
