Testing needed: Upcoming changes to mana/endurance return abilities

Hi everyone. A lot of people have expressed concern over some changes we were parsing out on Beta and are being updated on Test soon. I'd like to explain what they are and why they're being explored, and ask for feedback in this thread. Please read the entire post before giving feedback, though, because there is some very important information here that you need to know before testing the changes out.

The most important thing to remember is this: These are tests that we are pushing to the Test server because we need people to try them out and tell us what the experience is like. These are not going live in the May update. They may go in the June update as is, or with changes, but we need actual testing on them first.

We need players to copy to Test or Beta, play some content with these changes in place, and then tell us how their experience with that content changes versus the experience on Live. We understand that these changes are not going to be popular. We need to know how it affects gameplay. We need you to run parses. We need you to tell us what changes this makes to how your class plays.

Change 1: Wizard refresh spells

As we've said before, having resources (such as mana) that never run out means that we effectively don't have resources. When you can't run out of mana, mana management ceases to become part of the game. This is a problem when we rely on mana management to balance classes against each other. And so we come to wizards and Syllable of Refreshment. In current content, there is a 6% chance for a player to get Syllable of Refreshment when casting one of their three Claw lines. When they get this, they can then cast another Harvest spell to restore a large portion of mana. Though this method, Wizards can sustain a burn with their most inefficient spells far longer than most other classes can sustain their most inefficient abilities, which puts those other classes at a disadvantage. This is not good. We want the wizard on full burn to have to pay attention to mana.

What's on Test

Test will be updated soon with the simplest change of the ones we have been considering: Syllable of Refreshment no longer refreshes abilities that return mana, like Harvest. We need to know how this affects the Wizard's damage curve over time. Please use /testcopy to try it out and post your results here. We want feedback on this, but we want it from people who have actually experienced the change and can show us how it differs from the experience on Live.

Other options that are under consideration include:

• Lowering the chance for Syllable of Refreshment to be triggered from its current 6 percent but allowing it to refresh Harvest
• Leaving the current Syllable of Refreshment as it is on Test and adding a version that only refreshes Harvest at a much lower percent
• Removing Syllable of Refreshment entirely and increasing the mana return on Syllable of Mana Boost as well as its chance to trigger

To repeat, we need you to try these changes on Test and provide reports of what you found. How did it affect you in a group? What other classes were you grouped with? Solo? With a mercenary? How did it affect a full burn parse? What are you fighting? What is your gear level? All of these questions are important to answer, as the diversity of your experiences will help us get the complete picture of what this change affects. Please do your best to try this out and let us know how it affects you and when.

Change 2: the Respite line

This line of abilities was added to the game to help melee characters get back in the game faster once they had depleted their resources or died. The problem with it is that while it requires you to be out of combat to cast it initially, it offers no penalty other than the endurance cap if you are attacking with it active. This means that as long as you have the ability to drop aggro momentarily, you can keep a very high endurance regeneration buff going for, in some cases, the majority of all fights. This has become its common use case and it's masking other problems with endurance costs and regeneration. We need to be able to address this so that endurance management is something that works as a system and is not simply ignored.

What's on Test

Test will be updated soon with a rather simple change: The Respite line has the Observer effect added to it. This effect changes how NPCs notice you -- you fall to the bottom of their attention list -- but the spell will drop if you take an offensive action. This is obviously a huge change compared to how the ability works on Live, so we need you to try it out in as many different situations as you can and let us know how it changes your experience. As above, we need all the information you can give us surrounding your test: What class are you playing? Who are you grouped with? What gear level? What are you fighting? What can you no longer do that you could do? What do you have to consider in a fight that is different from before? Is the effect dropping earlier than you thought? What is triggering it to drop? This change affects a lot more classes than the Wizard change above, so we need a lot more people testing it out.

Other options that are under consideration include:

• Lowering the duration of the effect so that it provides enough endurance to reach its cap and nothing more.
• Extending the refresh time of the ability.
• Requiring the Resting state to activate the ability (almost certainly not, since it becomes redundant then)
• Adding the 'Fragile' effect rather than 'Observer.' This does not lower the chance for you to be attacked and it fails whether you take an offensive action or an NPC takes an offensive action towards you.
• Adding a positive Hundred Hands effect to the buff, slowing your attack rate while the effect is active. The effect's strength would have to be high enough to offset most of the benefit of having a lot of endurance available, and this would probably be the most inequitable between classes.

So that's our explanation of the changes. Please try these out yourselves and give us feedback based on your experiences. We need to know how these change your gameplay and what types of gameplay they affect. Opinions are welcome, but testing generates data, and data is what we need.

Are there any changes planned regarding the endurance cost of existing melee abilities?

How quickly is the intention that a player (caster or melee) exhausts their mana or endurance resources? (in both sustained/efficient and burning fashions)

When we do Test these abilities how are we supposed to correspond?

Should we prepare (I have 2 wizards i group with all the time) Before and after parses?

Playing with the Rest line change on Beta as a Monk with Merc in Tier 2 content was not an enjoyable experience, playing how normally do on Live once I ran low on Endurance, I was basically having to med for 30+ seconds or so after every fight just to have the Endurance to fight the next mob and that to have a more active play experience. Of course could have sat and OOC regened for the 3 minutes it takes, but then would have to do this break every 10 minutes or so, which is far too much for a melee to be in-active.

The problem with this is that Melee have basically always been the class that constantly fights mobs, but now with the change to Rest, as it was on Beta, it basically plays just like Casters do/did where you have to Med all the time instead of actively fighting. It's basically the opposite of how a Melee should be and has always been basically and hurts what you can get done in the game per time.

On Raids when you die due to this you're going to be forced to sit in the back for a few minutes doing nothing while your Endurance regens, this isn't fun game play either, anything that makes you have to actively play the game less shouldn't be considered a viable option.

Rest also faded when using things like Invis potions, or casting group buffs and such, there might be other things that faded it too that shouldn't, but didn't get to test everything yet to see (only noticed on the basics).

Melee only seem balanced upon burning all of these abilities vs the other classes, if you are wanting to re-tune their costs and overall endurance regen, or boost their damage contributions while nerfing this out then it might not be so bad, but as it is it will destroy melee DPS.

One of the simplest fixes doesn't even seem to be on your consideration list. Instead of having the Respite line give END over time, have it give a flat amount once and call it (keeping all other restrictions like max 29% END, etc.) No more "cheating" the system. Simple, clean, and not bound to upset so many players.

I also see no mention of the Furious Rampage nerf.

I would also like to know what parsing target to use on the test server to simulate a typical RoF/CoTF raid mob, resist wise. Are there raid level parsing dummies somewhere on test?

Longer refresh with a death resetting the refresh. Tie it to the resurrection effect. In other words you can use the Rest disc when you get low endurance and it starts the longer refresh count. But if you die the Rest disc is reset so it can be used again(raid setting). I doubt anyone will die and lose all their buffs to get more endurance.

So where is the post about the Enchanter Rune changes? Just planning on ignoring that one and push it live like what has been done to the class (with the exception of Mental Contortion) for the last 10 years?

What happens if you get a rez, and immediately are buffed by someone who is in combat, then try to hit Rest? Will it even work at that point?

What happens if you get a rez, immediately hit Rest, and then get buffed by someone who is in combat? Do you immediately lose your regen because of someone elses actions and have to wait all over again for Rest to recycle?

I'm asking because I don't know. I don't know anyone on test. I'd have to organize a couple people to kill me, rez me, buff me several times over. I also ask in case anyone else is prepared to answer now or after some testing they are more accustomed to doing.

From 0% endurance, hitting Rest (current live version) brings me up to about 19% endurance if I'm not ooc. If I immediately jump into combat with rez effects, I'm slowed no matter what, use my endurance costing abilities, and a disc, I may never get over 4-5% endurance by the end of the discipline, so I don't see how I really come out on top since I already had been slowed for several minutes.

Thanks for reading. I want to be helpful and maybe I can find others on the forum ready to receive my corpses on test in the near future. ;-)

Poor poor death blossom and the lessons learned from it and the initial forced "resource management".

As a tank, I die frequently in a raiding environment, which is also the environment that post-death endurance regeneration is most critical.

If receiving any beneficial effect from a person "in combat" breaks Rest, it will be a worst case scenario, since it will have a significant negative effect on the speed at which tanks can be restored from death to usefulness.

If it requires a combat action by the individual to break Rest, I think that it is a much more reasonable solution. As long as I can coordinate buffs and other beneficial effects at the same time, I can sit out of combat for 3-5 ticks to generate enough endurance to make myself useful in an emergency situation and use Howl of the Warlord to escape combat periodically to regenerate more as necessary/possible.

This is one of the changes that I will be watching closely. I have one foot out the door, and the final result of the Rest change will have a significant impact on where the other shoe drops.

I don't accept your initial premise. We don't have a lot of endurance available, at any time.

There are no endurance regeneration spells or abilities(except berserkers and they still blow through endurance far faster than any other class) while there are numerous mana regeneration abilities. Getting hundreds of points of mana regen isn't terribly difficult. Then you've got mod rods and GM and canni and 2 classes with harvests.

This is the only real way of regening endurance, rogues can't even mount for extra regen because sneak, hide, and backstab become unusable. If you want to remove the 5 minute combat timer for raids and let us actually get out of combat and be able to regenerate ANYTHING then we can talk. But short of you changing something else you're flat out breaking numerous classes.

How can you even consider the rest changes ? Endurance regen has been ignored in buffs/AAs.

• Melee already have a slow effect from rez effects which casters have nothing negative when they die they get mana and they're back 100%.
• Melee die not only do we have ZERO endurance we're slowed from 225% to 90% until rez effects fade after a few minutes.

You're compounding the problem melee have getting back into the fight. You're turning this back into a sit and med game. This change will be the worst thing you have ever done for this game period. It's because you guys make events SO long that melee who have no real way to regen endurance have to do it. You say we should manage our endurance ? Please go do the math on how much endurance these classes spend on 12s or less abilities. Someone did it for zerkers already and if this goes live we will be sitting doing nothing for 40% of the time we're playing this game.

Just look at all the 12s or less refresh spam abilities melee have. There is no effective way to manage endurance when you have a dozen abilities that you HAVE to use in order to play your class properly.

Lets just call this evercast because that is what you're doing here. I have no even addressed how you're killing tanks. You make raids where a tank basically dies just to die yet you now want to take away the only meaningful way for them to get back into the fight right away.

You're BREAKING every single melee class + tanks for no other reason then to just do it. I challenge you to raid on my zerker for a week and actually see how fast we burn through endurance and then i want you to tell me how can i compete on sustained parses after this change as if we don't already get owned by mages,wizards,necros. You go through with this and no melee will compete in combined parses anymore.

You know what this tells melee ? Don't dps adds during events and save all your endurance for the named.

I want to be helpful, but I don't think you have a full grasp on how this is going to effect melee classes who have been balanced for years now around this very ability. We have never gotten any endurance regen buffs/AAs there is no way to just give a melee class an infusion of endurance. The harvest change sucks but you know why wizards wont care ? Because they have several other ways to get mana. Melee simply have no other options.

i haven't had the ability to test this yet, but right now i play a wizard with full group gear and i think 2 or 3 pieces from war.

for normal group content, lets say 1 scouting ahead ha, i parse about half my groups dps for about 15 minutes of killing, i'm not sure when or if i did use burns on the ha that i'm looking at, but i know i was given no time to med, and didn't have any mana toward the end.

now far a war name, lets go the judicator, i can't last till the end of that fight the way mana refresh is currently. by the end i have absolutely no mana left over and am relying on others to be able to boost my mana and only casting claw hoping that i can get a mana proc to help with it a bit.

at least as far as wizards go, in my opinion mana is only not a resource to people who aren't playing them right.

and the main way this is going to affect me and my group is we have to slow down on kills in group content, and some mobs in war are going to require more people.

ill be back when i have a chance to play with this a bit and tell you how much of a hinderance this actually is.

Why is there no option to leave as is until you can actually fix the endurance regen issues that every tank/melee dps class face.

Btw as far as the harvest changes. Why not just cut the % in half and adjust more if needed ?

Correct me if im wrong, but you have increased spell cost because of this proc and now you're removing it but not reducing mana cost on spells. This spell is not the reason wizards don't run out of mana. You gave other classes ways to give any class huge pools of mana or huge mana regen add in mod rods and now you have compounded the issue. This spell is not the reason everything else is.

I'm on Test, if people want to dink around with this. PM me to set something up.

This. Melee aren't held back by endurance. What keeps melee DPS in line with caster is a good rotation of discs, and timing them properly. Once these changes come out, I'll likely drop out of top-10 parses on fights lasting longer than 15 minutes.
Monks don't manage our endurance. We attack stuff and cycle our discs. It's not a "yellow mana" bar, as mana has had so many (and in a growing number throughout the years) ways to refresh it quickly and easily in-combat .
My gear is a mish-mash of the best CoTF group stuff available, plus some RoF T1-T2, a few RoF T4 copy items (i.e., super rare drops from CoTF), and one CoTF raid item.
Obviously I haven't gathered any data, but here's my prediction:
On raids, my DPS will remain the same for the first 10 minutes or so of any given fight. After that, I can quickly "rest" up, sitting out for the next minute or so, and then go back to resuming DPS for 2-3 minutes before running out of endurance ad nauseum - in other words, I predict about a 30% DPS loss after the first 10ish minutes. Doing so will push me from one of my guild's top DPSers to out of the top 10 (as there are no changes to how mana acts as a resource to maintain balance). Since my guild is made up of mostly melee, rather than caster, DPS, RoF and CoTF progression will become much more difficult as we lose ~20% of our DPS after the 10 minute mark (and we don't finish hardly any events within 10 minutes). Hopefully some melee main change to non-wizard caster DPS to keep us progressing through content.
In groups, my utility as puller/DPS will drop substantially. I'll be able to do both for less than 10 minutes, after which I can hold back the group waiting for me to med (I'll be the only one short on "resources" and most others will be near full) to pull singles reliably, and my DPS will plummet. My DPS now is about 30k in group content - without endurance, I put out about 17k on level 103 arena dummies. Some RoF missions will be unaffected (not a bad idea to med up before starting a boss anyway, and some die quick), but some will see my contributions to less than a wizard merc. Without med breaks (which my caster buddies won't require), wizard mercs will be better DPS than me in CoTF HA's.
In short, one of my hands is being tied behind my back. As a melee, I'll be fighting with one hand, as casters continue to enjoy their current power levels. I'll be a second-class citizen who can keep up for about 10 minutes and then be the only one in the group who needs a break.
Endurance isn't a resource - it's essential. The resources are my discs and the timers on them, and this combined with the ability to keep cycling them up is what keeps my class in balance with others. I'm sorry Aristo, but none of the options you presented are acceptable given that casters are not being rebalanced in a similar fashion.

My advice ?

These changes will not only effect the group game but have huge implications on raiders

Wait until you can have a proper beta with groupers and raiders to get real testing done. Otherwise you will just break so many classes with no real testing. Test does not have the population to properly test these changes.

I 'hope' this change was implemented to create design space for significant improvements in passive AA that increase autoattack DPS, particularly for classes like Berserkers.

Those abilities should come first, however. Nerfing rest is the last piece of that puzzle.

I tested rest a little, not a huge fan. A hindrance of endurance, or slow... Having both is a bit crazy... If melee have such limitations, and no way to actually regen it, then rez should have an effect that blocks all focus effects for those 5 minutes.... I dont advocate that, but its the same ridiculous effect it gives.

Spell slow. If they're going to say that death needs to have a penalty and ignore melee slow, then make it have a real penalty and quit punishing HALF the population.