Couple things, 200k damage over 1 minute, that is what SK dichotomic crits for, is 3k dps on a crit, 1k on a non crit, so it really is not that big of a boost, wish it were more, I'll settle for what it is. And it certainly wont make any difference on a raid mob. Gift of mana is a proc and goes off way more than once every 15 minutes. I think you were thinking of marr's gift. As for dps, you have to look at the whole, not just one ability. I fully understand you don't like the spell, and thus you are trying to find any situation that makes it look bad, honestly, I don't care. I just want others to be able to see that there are positives to this spell that some paladins don't want to talk about. I personally like the stun component because with that + flash + deflection on some group named you have ~36 seconds of invulnerability now, thus reducing the risk to the group paladin by a ton, or when it hits the fan and you need that time.
Group named should never be vulnerable to stun. The fact that they are is likely an oversight and will likely be fixed via flags to make them function correctly. This reminds me of when the conv 2 boss could be chain stunned because of flagging. Don't take an oversight and make it a selling point for a spell. When the named get their flags fixed what will we be left with?
even without the named stunning it has many attributes that make it a good spell. Maybe not one you want on your spell bar all the time, but it defiantly has a place. Great group heal Cast-able on the run Great agro Great stun Its more of a oh crap kind of spell than a cast all the time spell. It is more for the grouper than the raider.
First off, just because -you- feel that group named should never be vulnerable to stun, doesn't make it true. New people in charge, new thoughts. While I do agree with you that is it likely an oversight, until it gets changed - or a dev states unequivocally that it's a mistake - you can't know that it isn't intended. For that matter, even if it's not a named, it still stuns higher than other pally stuns, which does have value. Second, as for 'what is left' - it's instant. Instant has a lot of power, especially when you are not raid geared, and thus have less leeway for errors. People sometimes forget - wanting more from something doesn't mean that the original is not worthwhile. I'd love more instant heals. I'd love more instant aggro. I'd love more instant stuns. We got a mishmash of all three that does have a place, even if yes, it could be better... but that's true of almost any ability.
This has zero place on a Paladin's spell bar period. The mana, 8314 per cast / 1 min recast timer should tell you that, you have better options for Agro, heals and stuns already at your fingers, this all in one insta cast is lazy. When you need agro why do you need to cast a stun, heal, agro combo?? you waste so much mana for un needed spell components to be used. You could use the stun or the 15K hate AA that's usable every 6 seconds. Why eat a spell gem that's locked out for 1 min at a time when you have comparable spells AA that are much cheaper on Mana and faster reuse. You know its an oversite, lets not pretend Paladins suddenly got tossed a bone to be more desired with that spell. That's like expecting Shield of dreams to not have its stats nerfed.
I cant believe so many Paladins are crying over this. Look at what we did get this expansion. Hallowed Lodestar, and Hastened beacon of righteousness. We can actually AE aggro and manage AE at a decent pace in group or raid content. Shield Flash (12 second mini version of Deflection), and more boosts to our healing, I agree, I don't see much use to this new stun on the raid level, its just not valuable enough to have in my line-up but, SO WHAT! We have raids that are loaded with undead. Paladins have never been in a better spot then they are now. Quit crying about a mediocre spell and what other classes got and you didn't. Paladins have it good, better then they ever have. Oh and lets not forget, "Vanquish the fallen" Nuke, 400k nuke. Now we can actually score a killing blow and proc "Blessing of the faithful", on raids. Divine Aura has been improved so now when using a Divine hammer for ramp, a Heal over time feature has been added, so now when you proc DA or use DA, you automatically recieve a 7500 heal over time, with the chance to crit, per tick. for 4 ticks...THAT IS HUGE! We got all kinds of love this expansion. get over the fact we got a crappy spell.
Sojero, there is so much nonsense in every bit of what youre saying about this spell. The recast and mana usage prevent the word great from ever being applied to any of those components of the spell. It is not a great group heal, as several people have noted, you would get FAR more use out of loading wave, and casting it almost 4x over that 1 minute cooldown. It is indeed castable on the run, but good luck trying to kite a mob while casting 1 stun on it every minute for the low low cost of nearly 9k mana. Rather they just hadn't nerfed FOD so it could still be instant cast. Great agro - if I waste a spell slot on it I could indeed gain a little bit of snap agro. But I would produce far more agro over the 1 minute cooldown by using one of the regular stuns. Linden, I fail to see how any of this has a bearing on the paladin Dichotomic spell. I am as happy as anyone about the things we did gain, and feel it was long overdue to be relevant as anything but a splash heal bot again. However, take a moment or two to talk to people of most of the other classes, they are tickled pink by how good their dichotomic spells are. Theirs take the premise of what each class is meant to be and ADD to it, to further define their classes. The paladin one in its current configuration is not worth the spell slot. I can understand how it must be difficult to create these spells to further define each class, but they really missed the mark on the paladin one. If the mana cost and recast delay were cut in half I feel like it would be something that could be somewhat useful, but that mana drain would still make it rather prohibitive. I loved the idea someone had to change the paladin Dichotomic to a group rune that would trigger a decent single heal when it faded on a player. Talk about a viable use for a spell slot!
Yeah, I was thinking of Marr's gift in my post. My mistake. But that use of GoM to team with the use of this spell is still a pretty weak argument. The GoMs are random. When you need a heal, you need a heal. The same stands for agro. A paladin can't cast a different spell and hope to get a GoM before he casts this spell. Also, if you do get a GoM and then cast the Dichotomic for agro just to use the GoM benefit, then you have the lockout for 60 seconds. I bet the SKs would complain if their Dichotomic spell was adjusted... drop the damage component down to say.. 0 on raid bosses and 15k on trash mobs, adjusted the heal down to 15k while keeping the mana cost to 8k and keeping the 1 min reuse timer. I would even give the spell a benefit of 15k to group heal and you could keep the instant cast so you could cast it on the run. ----------------- Linden - Yes, paladins are in a good spot with this expansion when discussing undead targets in raids. However, having a respectable amount of undead should be standard in every expansion. SoE / Daybreak has been doing a much better job of this in recent expansions by giving us some bosses or event trash (Tita's Ghost / Cryochamber) tagged as undead. But don't let a few AA carrots fool you into thinking other classes didn't get their upgrades and benefits too. Had there been additional spells added into this expansion, I may not be so vocal in regards to the Dichotomic. Unfortunately, this is the primary spell and shouldn't be excused because we got a few new AA lines. No class should say.. well.. I got a new AA line.. I don't need to have a good / usable spell. -------------- No one can know for sure what Daybreaks future plans are with the Dichotomic lines, but what may end up happening is the Dichotomic spell could be a 1 and done for TBM expansion only. Those classes who got a good spell will continue to see the use of their spell in the future. These things do happen, most of the time it is with class specific gear done for a certain expansion. Think of certain things like the necro 2.0, OOM BPs, bard RoF class spec weapon with slow click. While other classes get benefits which are good at the time, some benefits do not scale well and then become worthless after a couple expansions. I will certain be giving the finger to all those people saying the spell is useful because of the stun cap at 110 when the next expansion gets released and lvl cap raises to 110. And every other class will still have a spell to benefit their dps, some of which will be seeing compounded benefits improving their dichotomic spell usefulness while the paladin is relagated to an expensive mana suck which no one will use to generate hate or group heal.
Was my idea, but the thought would be to not have the heal trigger on a timer fade, but rather stack like a DI to be triggered when the persons hps went below a certain %. Sure, you could even put a short timer if not consumed, but I wouldn't want the trigger to be based on x time like a promised heal.
Fellow Paladins, Have to agree that at best it has situational use. As far as recast time and spell usage, it reminds me a lot of the fast casting self heal line that is rarely used if at all(think grief is newest form). You just won't maintain a spell slot for it which I don't for the grief line. There are too many quicker use lines that do not hold a spell gem hostage. No offense intended, but I would not even notice as it is not even worth a second look unless redone. Rykard
The spell is junk. Anyone that says otherwise doesn't understand how to play a paladin, period. There is no situation you wouldn't be better off using that spell slot on something else. The 60 second reuse makes it worthless as a stun, as aggro, as a heal. It is the same issue as was with rejuvenating strikes line. In the context of what it does, casting it is useful/cool, but the cost (spell slot, and dead spell slot due to recast) makes it pointless. If this was an aa it would be really nice. As a spell it is worthless. It would need to be dropped to 24 second recast to at least be arguably worth dropping something else for it.
Oh, and FoD is instant cast and can be cast on the run. I don't get why someone posted it was nerfed in that regard.
If it was an AA and not a spell I'd use it =) It's just really really hard to fit this on my spellbar otherwise
There was a roughly 1-2 week period where it wasn't instant cast, since the expansion release (it got fixed in one of the last two patches). I can't pin it down more closely than that because it was noticeable but not a end-of-the-world kind of thing.
Explain to me why an instant heal is bad, and who care about the mana cost in this situation. There are no other spells (other than Grief) filling this use, unless you don't care about the casting time which is then a totally different situation. You miss something in the class if you don't find some spell sets for it.
What I think would be really cool. Is a dicotomic spell that works exactly the same way, only as an AE with a cure effect. That would rock and be more in line with the paladin class. Imo
Well... for starters, it depends on why you like the instant heal. Include in your next post why or the situation in which you want or expect to use that 8k mana instant group heal (for less then 30k hps?) with a 60 second recast. Keep in mind, we already have the Hand of Piety AA and that other disc which gives us a group heal recource if we are currently attacking (or able to hit/atk our target). The fact is, no casts are instant. The true fact is, if you want to get deeper, all casts include your reaction time and any combination of micro-second delays due to the internals & externals of the game. With this unspoken reality, the majority of paladins can improve or get better results in casting time if they rework their UI, spell bar, and the way in which they cast their spells (change from point and click to a hotkey set-up). ---------- If you like the fact it's instant because you can cast it on the run. Then the question again would be why... for the agro or the heal. To this I reply... use your AAs instead if you want the heal. If you are running around, chances are you're not within range of your group so the group heal from the spell is wasted. Running near your group and hitting Hand of Piety will be much much better then this spell due to the enduring heal component. If you need to do this more then once, chances are your raid isn't set up correctly or in the early stages of wiping. No one in their right mind will be assigned to be; or pick up; a kite and also be looked at to heal (or spot heal) their group. Don't try to make this a situational thing and claim you want to be prepared. If you want want or need to heal yourself during a kite, then use LoH (or its cousin AA) instead. Again, much better then using 8k mana for a weak heal (if only healing yourself). That gives you 2 AA to be used to heal yourself in any situation where you are running. Both of these AAs are much much better suited for this due to the enduring heal component and a larger heal total. If you want to gain more agro while running using the stun, i guess the spell could be considered. However, 99% of single mob kites which I have seen have not been broken by others pulling agro from the kiter by non-direct agro means. Kites are broken by damage/agro on the wrong mob, or when the kiter makes a mistake and dies. If a large multi-mob kite is being done by proximity, then yes, agro can change to a kite healer, but at the same time, this spell isn't going to fix that because you would need an AE agro effect and not a single target with a 60 sec recast spell.
Why? Because instant means either being cast while running or to be sure it's not getting interrupted (which is good for emergency situations). It's also simply because it's a fast cast ability, I don't get why having other abilities with a 10 min recast should exclude using this one, the need for such abilities can and do happen more often than each 10 min. Even with the perfect UI and good key for multibinding (something you ommited and provide much better results once used correctly) there is still a need to reduce even further the cast time of an ability. I'm assuming everyone is playing correctly in all my replies obviously. Fact it's instant avoid interruptions and will be strictly better than something with a 0,1 sec cast time for that reason (given they provide the same effect obv). I don't know what content you're doing but having to heal multiple times come up quite often in my raids or groups which means that yes, Hand of Piety is better at doing the job, but when it's down (and 10 min is long), I want other ways to do that. You seem to think the only time someone has to cast something while running is when they kite: wrong, there are many occasions where you simply have to place a mob somewhere and will need the heal while doing so. You're not expected to do the healing when assigned to do special tasks for your raid, but you're also expected to survive while doing so and this spell helps. The fact it can heal others is a bonus, you can't reasonably expect to heal a group reliably with this spell nor did I imply in my previous post it was a good idea to do so, dunno why you come up with this and then explain that it's wrong to use it this way, I don't deny that. This is situational and yes, you can prepare for it, depending of the event you're doing. Unless you're using 1 spell set everytime, which is bad, you will find a use for it in one of them, each corresponding to a special situation. This is what I wrote previously on this thread, never did I claim it was a "must have" spell. I want more than 3 ways to get life back instantly, this is on top of having other non instant ways to heal myself/others in some situations that are definitely worth a spell set of their own. This is one of the use for the spell but I absolutely didn't have this in mind for my previous comments. Kiting doesn't happen that often. Anyway, yes this spell can be made better (like 24 sec recast as suggested above) to make it in all of your spell sets, though again, that's not at all what I claimed. My point is this spell has some uses, that come up often enough to make it in some spell sets. It would require changes to make it in line with the other dichotomic of most of the other classes, which are quite awesome spells. Saying that this spell should be deleted means you (general you) have no idea what you're talking about.
My last post wasn't ment to be an attack on you. I wrote it in a way because you said you wanted someone to explain to you why an instant heal was bad. I put in examples of how I thought an instant-cast group heal with an agro-stun could be used (ways in which you omitted at the time). I listed the ways in which I thought a paladin would have a need in areas in which our current abilities are lacking. ---- Now I feel you are trying to attack me instead of providing good solid examples when you would or do use this spell. I could be wrong, and I do admit it in these forums when I am. With that being said, when you quote stuff of mine, or anyone, you should not take small one-line snipes and then toss it around out of context. That's what politicians do (in that case, If i'm debating this spell use with a Trump supporter; let me know and I will stop wasting my time). Lets start with this... you need to re-read the thread cause I never said it should be deleted. I am not a supporter of the spell in its current form and think it needs to be re-done for a number of reasons which include mana cost, re-cast timer, lack of dps, general usefulness, and poor scaling in future expansions. I made a post stating some of those reasons, and when several others felt the same way, I then followed it up with ways in which they could add or adjust this spell to make it a useful or unique ability for the paladins. And after that, I defended my claims in additional posts. I didn't want to leave my original post without examples or suggestions and drift away. And no, its not generally me, it's everyone except you, a guy saying his 'group playing pal friend' and another SK. Several of the most well respected paladins in EQ have agreed with the lack of usefulness of this spell. Those paladins also made the same points in Beta long before my post in this forum. -- When I wrote the paragraph about the true cast time; "With this unspoken reality, the majority of paladins can improve or get better results in casting time if they rework their UI, spell bar, and the way in which they cast their spells (change from point and click to a hotkey set-up)." I'm not saying there is a perfect way. I'm saying there is a delay with everything and with every way things can be done. I'm saying that because I feel the longest delays faced are not from the 0.3 or the 0.1 cast times; but rather from each players reaction times. Daybreak could make all of our heal spells instant and some paladins will still fail at healing because they don't want to make a change in the methods they use. I didn't say multibinding... sorry, but I thought it was screamingly obvious that multibinding would be considered as a part of -the way in which they cast their spells-. ----- I never said anyone would expect to heal a group reliably with this spell. I was trying to think of an -emergency- type of situation where a paladin would need an insta cast group-heal and when the 8k mana cost would be an exceptable trade-off. Thank you for finally providing one example of when you would want to use this spell because it's unique insta-cast quality (which was your reason for using this spell a couple posts back). I personally wouldn't rely on this spell or find it used enough to hold in the spell bar for the reason which you stated - needing a heal while placing a mob-; I guess I don't know what content you are doing which needs a lot of mobs placed correctly and the placement of the mob takes a lot of attention/movement/healing so the option of a grief-type heal isn't viable due to its' limitations or in which you want a secondary healing option. Please expand on this a bit more and provide examples of raids or group content because I would like to know in advance so I can prepare my spell bar with the Dichotomic stun.
