Yes, I remember those calls. 99.999999673% of them were made by raiders. You want to screw around with your game, go ahead as it is none of my business. Just stop screwing around with my game. There is no urgency for changing these mobs. They should remain as they are for perpetuity. As a matter of fact there should be more of them. Lets turn this expansion into another PoR and have all of Tier 4 nothing but two group mobs. But a few years from now, when you start looking for replacements for your guild and can't find any, just remember it was a raider idea to totally honk off the ultimate source of replacements and drive them from the game.
Thanks Much appreciated JChan Would it be possible for campfires and standards to be added to the clickthrough list ? (I can't think of any situation where either needs to be targeted)
Nice 99.9999999673% unfounded attempt to blame somebody who had nothing to do with your issues. Carry on.
its a fact raiders and some groupers have asked for more difficult group content. And while 2 group mobs = more difficult, I don't think its what either group had in mind when asking for more difficulty especially since these mobs just drop regular gear. Had these dropped items like overhaste, circle clicks, illusions etc, or t4 gear it might have made more sense. As it stands it really sucks for a few classes who need the drops just to fill in their t3 slots (not that there's much difference from t2, but that's another discussion for later) 2 pieces of t3 and 1-2 armor pieces don't make these attractive enough to bother with. Somehow Glorig, the easiest 2 group mob, that I've 3 boxed half a dozen times now, got the best loot, monster summon ear, circle click. Can you imagine the outcry if his loot was on Undefeated Blade lol. It would be 10x this.
Have you actually seen how many people are playing in tier 3 zones? because most of the time these zones do not even have enough people in them to fill 2 groups. After the initial rush through the new content the numbers in these zones greatly decreased. There have been a couple times i've seen upwards of 30 people in these zones but most of the times (morning, afternoon, and night) i'm only seeing less than 2 groups in these zones And technically speaking in the strictest sense of the word saying these should have raid loot is a correct assessment since 2 groups can only be achieved by *forming a raid* That being said I would much rather see these mobs be tuned down than dropping better gear, it was merely an alternative to increase the out of whack risk vs. reward on these. I like challenging content and tend to complete most things in the group game but cmon.. the undefeated blade spawns high hp adds that cant be mezzed, rooted, or snared. Even if you don't use mercs, all the factors of this mob combine into something very potent that would wreck a group geared tank..even 2 group geared tanks working together for that matter.
4% will not do a darn thing to tackle how far wizards are ahead in sustained dps ... they would need to decrease damage as well by a good amount ... but then that would decrease our burn dps mostly. If they want to target sustained dps, flag the Ethereals to not consume Gift of Mana procs. (If they can not do this directly, they can do it indirectly by making the base spell cost 1 mana, adding an effect which does the damage and then an autocast which deducts the mana from our mana pool ... similar to how Ethereal Weave currently works.) When using PD or AD (aas that increase our crit chance and crit damage) we already can not use Gift of Mana procs, so this change will not effect PD/AD burns but everything else ... including Iotr and glyph burns. This makes Ethereals less fit for sustained damaged since 1 in 5 would be no longer mana free. If that does not address the problem, then simply increase mana cost and damage in equal proportion ... that leads to hotter, but shorter, burns that would force us to move to the mid tear nukes more quickly (and remember we couldn't farm those mid tear nukes for GoM procs)
One thing at a time. Let's see how the 4% (or whatever % it turns out to be) AND the increase recast timer on EW affects us...then tweak us some more. Let's not kill a mosquito with a shotgun, as the old saying goes. (But I really really REALLY like the idea of one day returning to the old days of incredible short term DPS via Ethereals at extreme mana cost...make them like their DoD ancestors)
Currently, the DPM of EI III is (35428/4325) = 8.19. The change on test changes the DPM to (35428/4498) = 7.88. A decrease in efficiency of about 3.8%. Obviously the DPS stays the same since neither the cast time nor the damage has changed. The rate at which mana is consumed is increased by 4%, which means the time in which we can sustain an ethereal twist is decreased by about, again 3.8%. That means if we could do an ethereal twist for 180 seconds, we would now be able to do the same for 173 seconds. The 4% mana change, by itself, will do next to nothing to put us where we need to be in order for other classes to be competitive with us again. They would need to decrease the damage done by ethereals, by a good margin, to put us in the right place. Sure that would effect our sustained ... but it would also effect our burst. What we need is a solution to effect just our sustained. The change I suggested above would be a good start ... and I think, would probably still leave us ahead. In addition to what I suggested above, an increase in mana cost of ethereals by 25% (5406 for EI III) and Damage by 12.5% (39856) ( would decrease Ethereals efficiency by about 10%, decrease the time by which we can sustain an ethereal twist by about 20% (180 seconds -> 144 seconds) and INCREASE our dps over that time (but over all, less damage done by about 10%). Burn hotter for shorter amount of time while doing less damage since efficiency decreased. How would I adapt to this? Twist claw, gosiks and hoarfrost ... hope for a twincast proc, harvest refresh (which requires us to stop dpsing for 12 seconds if we are not interrupted) or Arcane fusion proc. Try to build up mana again for another small burn. Currently, with PD running, I have been able to keep up an ethereal twist for about 30 casts with no harvesting. The change in mana cost would make this about 24 casts. If we are unwilling to make a change that makes us .. honestly .. competitive, we will have to suffer through stagnation in the next release. And I don't look forward to that ...
Sanctuis, the developers and wizards already know what increasing the mana of those spells accomplish. Having a long verbose post about the obvious mana cost changes doesn't give your opinion of where the Wizard class stands any stronger support. You also seem to be ignoring the Ethereal Weave change.
Maybe the devs do, maybe they do not ... if they did, then why did we get broken? Some wizards do, yes absolutely, others maybe not ... and of how many that understand where we stand are also willing to make honest suggestions? What I have done is describe changes to the degree I think are necessary in order to put us somewhere close to where others are (and to give non-wizards some info that perhaps they are unaware of). I could be wrong, of course, but I do know that, lacking other changes, then the 4% mana increase will not address our sustained damage to the degree it needs to be. Feel free to lynch me, but it is just my opinion. The change to it is rather small imo as well. EW refreshes with claw procs and Forceful Rejuv uses, so the change of 24 to 36 seconds is not too big of a deal. The additional cost of the Aquittal is also not a big change either. Our primary problem is not this one spell ... it is our ethereals.
1. They have already identified another problem that was contributing to all caster dps, not just wizards, MUCH more than anything that was changed in this patch. I guess it will be addressed in the next patch if it's too late for this one. 2. You seem to be very eager to get your own class nerfed more before even seeing the effect of this nerf. Your 'honest suggestions' may be 'honest mistakes' too. Wait till you actually see the end results of this nerf and an incoming buffix on EM. If after that you still think that you are doing too much dps... then maybe you are playing wrong class.
Could be, yup. If we don't make ourselves competitive again we will suffer a stagnation during the next release .. and I am not eager for that.
What is the source for this comment? This is the first that I have heard of an issue with all casters.
Allow the two group nameds to drop augs. Then they can drop loot you cannot get from other named. Maybe allow them to drop xorbb powersource or an oath of marr. Then it may become more desirable to get two groups together.
Close Axx, but wrong. Right class, wrong AA. EM is only a boost of 6% over the druid version. 6% is not why we are curb stomping parses right now. However it is a reason why our burst is nice right now, it should not be touched. The real culprit unfortunately to which I have communicated to the Devs is Illusions of Grandeur. It's basically an extension of our 2nd Spire and causing us to 'burn' for 3+ minutes. In beta, that was a self only AA. Then it got changed to group. Either it needs to A) Return to self only , so enchanters who cried for DPS don't get #### hurt. B) Duration reduced to 30 seconds, so the other casters don't get #### hurt. Changing Ethereals will end up hurting our burst, somehow , someway, they will get nerfed to hurt our burst. Then WE will get #### hurt.
Well no. To limit your burning would be to increase mana costs. There isn't really another necessary change right now. If anything you decrease IoG to 1 minute and see. Not that I am saying more mana increases are necessary, but the problem ( like everyone knew) is YOUR sustained. So nerfing a caster wide DPS ability is silly. Until SOE feels all casters need a tune down.
In addition to what pieman says, nerfing illusions reduces enchanter desirability. That would not be good. Better off with class only fixes.
The Undefeated Blade is most certainly doable by twelve people. Our group had my enchanter and my wife's mage, two healer mercs out. The other group had a shadowknight, mage, real player cleric, two healer mercs, and a rogue merc that was put on passive most of the time. Yes, the two mages were overkill. We did have a ridiculous amount of healing, because he was throwing out his dd, dot, or whatever every couple of seconds rather than every 30 seconds like one spoiler site mentioned. I didn't even realize this was one of the newly added mobs, as the loot was nothing special. I won the caster 2hb and it's barely an upgrade over the t2 one. I won't say it was an easy win, but if we had two full groups of real players (note "real", not powerleveled to 100th with less than 1k aa that so much of this expansion is designed for) it would have trivialized the encounter.
