Test Update 07/15/15

It's closer to 58% than 59%, at the moment.

Parse time 1504 seconds:

Hits 8816

Critical Hits 5112

Base critical chance = 57.985%

The implication of the changes to rain critical hit chance, and critical damage modifiers stacking (I actually like them stacking, just don't like the current implementation and how it affects certain classes), and how they affect Mage dps, makes my head hurt. I want to make sure I did the math right, and took into account almost every possible situation (I like to be thorough so people can't say I'm leaving something out intentionally), but this change, if it goes live, hurts the magician class an exponential amount more than it's currently helping any class to my knowledge.

I would really appreciate more communication from the developers about this, and maybe help them realize some of the implications for the game that they might not have seen, or help them better see things from our perspective. If the developers need math to see how this adversely affects us, I'd be glad to post it this weekend when I have more time (so far, though, doing the math shows this as a large net loss in burn and sustain).

I agree. I'm having a rather hard time understanding the intent behind and the need for this. Are Mages specifically being targeted? (seems pretty certain as we're known to be the only class that majorly relies on rains) Is there some other motivation? Plus, it really did just came out of NOWHERE! This is a major change to just randomly spring on us in some test patch notes. I would think should have been discussed beforehand. TALK TO US!!!

Granted this does affect me perhaps slightly less than other Mages since being on Zek I can't use the rains on raids anyway, so Mages have already been relegated to a lower space on the parse here. But this still affects my group play... plus it just seems shady.

Crippling.

Since almost everything about rains scales with crit, my first pass is:
~14% reduction in expected damage with no mods going for Mage rains.
~44% reduction in expected damage during First Spire-only period of a solo burn.
~44% reduction in expected damage during a full “wasteful” burn, comparing optimal short burst stacking live vs test.
~56% reduction in expected damage during IoG+Auspice/Other full-crit period of a sustained aDPS weave.
~38% reduction in expected damage during IoG-only period of a sustained aDPS weave.
~54% reduction in expected damage during Black Wolf+Auspice/Other full-crit period of a sustained aDPS weave.
~38% reduction in expected damage during Black Wolf-only period of a sustained aDPS weave.

Doesn't compare them to what'll replace them, just what happens to the spells themselves.

The switch from rains to spears will have a snowballing effect on mages due to the increased mana consumption. Doubt the Frenzied Burnout changes will cover this at all, seems like a red herring tossed in to cover the rain nerf in the eventual patch notes, since it’s a longer, more detailed line and comes first.

Druid rain nerf will probably look similar to this, maybe a little worse since Druids can keep a self crit mod going longer than mages, so the No-mod period isn’t really a thing for them. Guess Druids were getting too uppity, needed a good nerf. At least they don't use two rains.

Wizzy rain nerf will probably not feel the impacts as much as the mage at any level. If they also got more passive overcrit, they might actually get a buff at the no-mods level.

Shaman Spiritual Surge goes down too.
~8% reduction in expected healing with no mods
~21% reduction in expected healing with Reckless Renewal from a bard
~25% reduction in expected healing during Auspice
~14% reduction in expected healing during Fierce Eye
~29% reduction in expected healing during Auspice+Fierce Eye

Not good for melee on the AE heavy events. More impactful to the mid-tier I’m sure, where getting overlapping AE heals going is harder. A single AE user will have more trouble impacting the melee pile.

The removal of Deep Sleep proccing isn’t great either, we got the quickening for the stasis AA line explicitly after asking for it just for the purpose of Deep Sleep proccing. It was directly talked about with Elidroth as an enhancement to our proccing tool. That's the reason it was only working for Stasis and not Nightmare Stasis.

I am a little curious why we get a massive set of nerfs sandwiched into the attempt at opening development space and a half-way filter update? The more expected balance update would’ve been melee boosts, or some retuning with regard to the melee-hate mechanics in raids and excessive heroic strikethrough in group zones.

Even some bugfixes/AE retunes, like how Arx 4’s Lucia fires Energy of the Citadel every 10 seconds at 100% health, or continues spin-beaming while moving if the phase switches during a beam script, or the targeting emotes that in other events followed the emoted player, seem to just land where they were standing at first target in Arx 4.

Continuous cutting of DPS isn’t making the events much more fun.

I actually liked rain mechanics, too. They were harder to use, actually had situational quirks, and rewarded appropriately. You don't get to say that about “gimmick-nukes” in Everquest as often as you should.

There are two changes so people should look at them each on their own.

First a certain person that loves to poke behind the scenes took major issue with mages having such powerful area of effect spells. Something about the efficiency for mana as well as their overall power. This is well documented on these forums if people care to do some searching. I am sure hes the one who can be thanked for the 40% crit rate cap on mage rains that brought others spells down along with it for now.

The other changes are regarding critical mods for nukes stacking which never happened before. Part of the reason burst casters got so nutty with sustained outside of mana regen in raids being nuts is that nuke crit mods didnt stack and therefore were chained one after the other. Allowing for some critical mod on nukes going for 8 minutes if you were lucky enough to have enough support.

I like this, but could you add a little extra to it? If you type /pick 6, it will take you to the 6th instance (if available?)

Nerf mages, Because.

They need to take power away. Perhaps these rain spells will be ... reupgraded in the campaign..... The nerfed AA too.

The druid nerf means I probably switch from using a Hail, Roar, Roar, WW weave, to using the Roar*3 weave again.

Back to being the fire/cold centric class that doesn't use fire or cold nukes.

Anyone know the origin of the phrase, to wing it?

Anything being done to fix the patcher removing the msvcr71.dll file? It only does this when patching test, when I patch back to live, it adds the file back. As stated previously, I can add the file back after running the patcher, and before pressing the play button, and it works. Its just frustrating having to do this every time. I have deleted my test folder and copied my live folder and made a new test folder from that, and still the same results. This is happening on both my desktop and laptop. One runs win7 and the other win8.1.

Not w/ AD but all together those buffs add a total of 520 crit dmg percentage which after 1.5m will drop to 310 percent and after 2.5m will drop to 160 percent.Not only that but burns will be heavily reliant on adps and glyphs.

So far these changes look like a giant caster nerf. Especially for wiz given our low base crit rate.

apparently he meant "not right now" as in "not right this second"... and when referring to waiting for beta to make changes he was only talking about melee. everyone else is a potential nerf/buff candidate each monthly patch so be sure to get your raffle tickets!


I guess I should be happy tho since melee havent gotten further nerfed since TDS launch?

Wow.... After making such a smug and assertive statement. How are we supposed to take DEVs seriously after stuff like this? Zero communication and then a nerf of this magnitude, without even any reasoning as to why? This is not the way to garner trust amongst the community.

Who said prathun knew about these changes?

EQ's systems, zones, and events have been a bunch of one-dev kingdoms with little coordination between them. I'm sure there wasn't a team meeting where they decided melee were going to be garbage for a full year, but a pack of ill-planned raids, together with various spell, aa, and itemization choices have put us in that situation.

And of course, their "solution" isn't to make melee more fun to play or attempt to address the content issues, it's to make mages (and dru, and shm for some reason) less fun to play.

It really is strange isn't it? Normally a game would enhance the characters that need to come up to snuff, so to speak..But EQ takes a very different approach. I sent a PM to Roshen which I'm sure will be ignored regarding how badly this is going to effect Mages. Hopefully there is enough voice from the community over this ridiculous nerf that they will re think it.

It's extremely disappointing to know that instead of taking a proactive way adjust melee, they are just nerfing specific classes. IoG and BW, really? Why not just give melee the proper boosts? Content has enough HP/AC that you can actually justify giving rogues more sustained, zerkers and monks as well.

Right now I kind of feel like the devs of this game are Indian givers they'll release some awesome stuff, then when they realize they didn't make everything right, they go back and make cuts, instead of upgrading characters.

Perhaps they learned from TDS. Nerfs included with new content get associated with that content and doom it. Get the nerfs out when half the player base is mia/bored/tlp'ing, and they can release new content in the fall nerf free without the negative stigma attached.

First they came for the rangers headshot, and I did not speak out
Because I don't play a ranger
Then they came for wizards, and I did not speak out
Because I don't play a wizard
Then they came for magicians pets and their rain spells, and I did not speak out
Because I don't play a mage
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

If you play a class that has yet to be hit with the nerf bat just wait your time will come. Someone is going to put a bug in the devs ear that one class is better then theirs and you will wake up to patch notes crippling your class.Right now us mages are receiving the brunt of the nerfs with first having our pets nerfed then them having the nerve to alter our rain spells, which are a cornerstone of any raid mages spell weave. I do not recall seeing forum threads with a public outcry calling for a nerf of "overpowered" Mage rains so why are you doing this? We do not want this. Please please just leave us alone already. The pet thing I could somewhat understand but this just seems so random. Your not going to find a single Mage to support what you want to do. Yes casters have been ahead in terms of DPS but you feel you need to do something like this to try and level the playing field? Why not just wait till your first adventure pack to try and make any new spells and what not more even. Create something that will work out, do not dash what we currently have. What can I look forward to next? Are you going to decide that mage cauldrons are too powerful and make it so they can only summon crystallized sulfur? If devs continue to try to balance classes like this then eventually all classes will be the exact same with the same abilities. And then their will be no point in playing everquest and people will have to go to your progression servers just to play a mage how it used to be up until the expansions unlock where the nerfs take effect. So much hard work and effort have gone into these progression servers and the one time you give the other servers some attention is only to make our lives harder. I three box a mage, a enchanter, and a bard, and I feel like your crippling me.I am not here saying I am going to cancel my accounts because I won't. I am just very very unhappy with the actions you are taking.I will remain a customer until you sunset the servers but I do not want to see you run things into the ground and chase away those of us who are still here. Please re-think before you push this live.

P.S. I think for Throwback Thursday you should have posted a screen shot of your customer service telephone number so that we had a chance to think about how good we USED to have it

Nothing can hype up an expansion like 4 months of nerfs!

So our Rains are now too powerful and are getting nerfed - what do we get in recompense?

1) Will our single-target nukes be made more attractive again? Will they be tuned up a little so we don't actually lose DPS with this patch?

2) Will we experience a pet boost?
2a) While the damage of our earther is good if you consider it's tankability, it clearly could use a LOT more aggroability. If I use single-target nukes exlusively in any meaningful rotation, I'll grab aggro from my earthpet in almost any cases.
2b) Our firepet still tends to occassionally hand over its aggro to its owner, as well, can you fix that?
2c) With the tankability of our pets as it is now, can you please enable Divine Arbitration and Cleric Epic to hit pets again?

3) Will our short-time DS-line of spells (Surge of Shadow), our Iron Bolt or our Gather Mana-line get a TDS update?

4) Will the abilities of mezzing of charming elemental-type mobs be re-introduced?

Or could you at least start using lube?