Testing needed: Upcoming changes to mana/endurance return abilities

Here are the results of my first test of the Claw changes. I tried to simulate the way actual raid boss fights
work for me to see the effect on my ability to sustain dps.

Fhatdog is level 100 wiz/7350AA/89,965mana as buffed/full rank III spells/RoF Tier 2 raid gear
mostly/ http://eq.magelo.com/profile/3018841

I tested with my normal raid buffs on, including chanter Voice of Foresight RkIII, but no bard songs. I used
whenever up: one 3-charge large mod rod, Harvest of Druzzil, Bucolic Harvest, Forceful Rejuvenation, but no
glyphs, robe clicks or vet rewards.

I fought Test 103 dummy in the Arena on test, and the Qela model dummy in the guild hall on live. Because spell
twincast does not fade in those zones, I clicked twincast off manually each time it was casted or procced, after up
20 sec.

I fought the way I normally fight a raid boss. I start by popping my burn discs and use a Ethereal Weave/Ethereal
Incand/Ethereal Hoarfrost multibind through the duration of spell twincast, then through improved twincast.
Whenever spell twincast procs or refreshes to cast again, I go back to this max dps weave key unless i am really
low on mana. When twincast is not up, I use a medium burn multibind key of Claw of Flamewing/Ethereal
Incand/Gosik's Flame. All multibind keys have a hotbutton in the mix to fire off mana free AA nukes in between
casts as well.

To maximize sustainability, I hit the mana regen abilities as soon as they are available. My medium burn multibind
prioritizes claw as the first priority spell, and I use an audio trigger to tell me that claw has refreshed
harvest. I stop dps and hit harvest each time it refreshes, unless I am over 70% mana and would waste some of the
harvest. So this test similates what the wiz can do by sacrificing max dps to make mana preservation a very high
priority, milking Claw for all it is worth.
The first test results:
---
With Harvest Refresh from Claw, on live:
Trial 1: 19:42 duration to OOM, 46908 dps, 72 claw casts, 8 bucolic harvests, 3 harvest of druzzil, 1 forceful
rejuv, 3 mod rod clicks (got lucky on harvest refreshes)
Trial 2: 10:29 duration to OOM, 52805 dps, 38 claw casts, 4 bucolic harvests, 2 harvest of druzzil, 1 forceful
rejuv, 2 mod rod clicks (got more twincast procs, not many harvest refreshes)
Trial 3: 16:06 duration to OOM, 44019 dps, 65 claw casts, 7 bucolic harvests, 3 harvest of druzzil, 1 forceful
rejuv, 3 mod rod clicks (few twincasts, reasonable luck on harvest refreshes)
---
Without Harvest Refresh from Claw, on test:
Trial 4: 7:53 duration to OOM, 54000 dps, 34 claw casts, 2 bucolic harvests, 2 harvest of druzzil, 1 forceful
rejuv, 2 mod rod clicks
Trial 5: 7:17s duration to OOM, 55700 dps, 29 claw casts, 2 bucolic harvests, 1 harvest of druzzil, 1 forceful
rejuvenation, 2 mod rod clicks
There is not much variation or luck to it, on test, since you are no longer hoping for the 6% chance to get harvest
refreshed by claw.

My thoughts: the configuration on test is completely unacceptable, and trashes the wizard class for raiding, in my
opinion. Almost all of my guild's raids go on for 20-30 min or more of constant fighting, once the event is
triggered, with all the adds, mini-bosses, and multiple bosses. Plus there is often death, meaning that I usually
need to save forceful rejuv and/or AA harvest to recover from a death. Right now, on live, I have a chance to
sustain for something between 10 and 20 min depending on luck, by scaling my dps down to the 44K to 47K level,
which is ok but not exactly impressive compared to other sustained classes or even a wiz merc on burn. I have to
get lucky to keep up with the necros in our typical raid, because they are never a single short fight (except, say,
Velishan, but that is the only one). Things on live seem balanced and fun.

On test, it is not fun or useful to run out of man after only 7-8 min, only the first 90 sec of which are max burn.
Doing 54K to 56k over 8 min then being OOM is useless in today's raiding environment. Just forget about nerfing
Claw, things are fine the way they are.

As most have said. These have been around for how long? It isnt making things OP or not working as intended. All this is going to do is make things harder than they ever need to you. You will take raids and just burn them like a ant under a magnifying glass. This isnt the direction to take. The player base clearly doesnt want this. It isnt being used to exploit, gain unfairly, or PL. Plain and simple they are just tools to get us back in the fight when then unfortunate happens.

We implore you. Please leave our abilities alone. Stop nerfing things into the ground. This isnt progress, its lazyness.

If you know ahead of time that you have a 20-30 minute fight, and you conserve mana to be useful through that 20-30 minute period instead of going out of mana between 7 and 8 minutes, how does your dps compare to live?

probably less casting to stretch out mana = much lower dps. logically. I mean how would a melee DPS be if he attacked only half as much?

Think he meant switching to a more efficient weave, rather than chaining ethereals.

I will do some more testing with no initial chaining of ethereals during twincast, and a "no ethereals" weave thereafter. But keep in mind that in the tests described above I ran out of mana in 7 to 8 minutes not by chaining ethereals the whole time, but with a much lower dps weave of claw/ethereal/gosiks. Only the first 90 sec, during twincasts, was chaining ethereals.

I'm not sure how you group geared tanks are not already running out of endurance quite quickly as a raid geared warrior in a fast exp group the only reason I don't have to sit down and med every 15 mins is because I have rest , playing as only my warrior in an optimal group set up it takes me 15 minutes max to start relying on rest to keep me going and at the 30 minute mark or so I have to sit down and use the out of combat timer to get full of endurance. That is perfect for us . That is not killing an over abundance of named that is just fast kill experience. Even in a non optimal group (me 3 boxing warrior /bard/magician/ wizard merc/ cleric merc /cleric merc) I have to sit down and med at least every 45 minutes without relying completely on rest.

And not being able to hit rest then continue pulling is going to cause the ahh well 1 minute left on the combat timer we may as well sit here till I am at full endurance so we don't have to wait again in another 10 minutes.

Here's a little bit of monk data from arena dummies:

Test one: cycling through all my discs as I typically would in a group. I didn't know how long the fight would last and didn't try to be "ideal" about getting the most DPS possible - I wanted to cycle through until I ran out of endurance. Prior to any change, this is more or less my indefinite sustained DPS:
Test One Hundred on 5/18/2014 in 877sec
Feiddan + pets
--- DMG: 30941323 (100%) @ 35281 dps (35281 sdps)

Test two: conserving endurance more carefully, as I expect to now manage my DPS more closely. I didn't use Heel, Palm, Ironfist, or Destructive Force, Drunken Monkey, or any defensives. I stopped once I reached approximately 75% endurance:
Test One Hundred on 5/18/2014 in 473sec
Feiddan + pets
--- DMG: 14733185 (80.8%) @ 31214 dps (31148 sdps)

These parses are really too short to show a whole lot by themselves (the random number generator is too harsh to have any sort of confidence in these numbers), and I haven't combed through the data. In these short tests, I dropped form 35k dps indefinitely BEFORE to about 31k dps in 30 minutes AFTER.

These parses don't show what happens when we're actually playing the game, for a number of reasons. In groups, fighting is rarely 100% nonstop, and I'm often using discs for pulling (and popping defensives). I suspect shorter raids won't be affected (disproportionately affecting mid-tier guilds rather than the top) too severely, but on a longer raid or where someone dies melee will be out of gas in a way that we've never been before.

*I used only self-buffs (=212% haste). My clickies used were Latent BP, epic 2.0, and Miniature Horn of Unity. I did not use any glyphs in either test.

I'm at a loss on how to use numbers (parses) to quantify 'fun' and 'not fun'. It's also next to impossible to replicate my situation on 'Live' to 'Test'. I can't summon a full raid force. I don't have anything comparable to Test's test dummies on the Live server. On Test, I really could have used both versions of Rest, or on 'Live', I could really use some Test dummies.

I consider my resources to be the disciplines. They have a level to use, cost, upkeep, target, duration, reuse, and a timer.

Until I come up with a meaningful way to get an apples to apples comparison from Live Rest to Test Rest... I thought about it this way ->

If I had 5 million endurance, I'd still be applying the disciplines to select targets in the same fashion (duration, reuse). My dps would still be about the same when you combine all the parses for a given event or an entire night of events. What might I do differently if I had 5 million endurance? I might actually let Earthforce and Eye of the Storm run for their full durations. That's about it. That's how much my game-play would change if I had 5 million endurance.

There's really just other things I'd rather be thinking about than micro-managing endurance. I'm already micro-managing my disciplines and staying competitive.

Each class is changed differently by the Rest change.

I think perhaps it was a mistake to create Rest, and give it to all those that can use. Perhaps more time should have been spent giving each class their own unique tailor made version for that particular class, rather than the one size fits all approach. This just seems like change for the sake of change. Or, a made up problem with made up solutions. It's also pretty clear they are looking to do the least amount of work possible to make this change.

As an alternative to the Rest change, you could just design around it. If you have a specific raid/mission scenario, where you want people to have less endurance / less mana, then design a monster that saps it. This type of monster is found in the Heart of Fear raid #2. At least this way you can create the scenario of resource management on a case by case basis, without effecting the rest of the game. Another example would be the blue drakes during the Vulak'Aerr encounter. Kill those near your raid to replenish resources.

When endurance was first introduced, it was said that it wouldn't impact how disciplines were used as the endurance regeneration would be enough to sustain these disciplines. In other words, you could die, and if the discipline timer would allow it, you could use that discipline right after death.

These days however, I find that I cannot use Flash of Anger or Last Stand or even Fortitude when I'm freshly rezzed (some will fire, but they'll fizzle halfway and not last full duration). When endurance was introduced it already nerfed how disciplines could be used after rezzing -- they had no such restrictions before, just a timer.

It seems SOE now wants to alter the deal again by adding even more restrictions to abilities that were once only restricted by timers. I guess it's back to basic Level 55 defensive again, as the new-fangled disciplines, which we spend 45 levels getting, don't work properly.

I did some more testing with Fhatdog (see above) in the Test Arena on the Level 103 dummy to see how a wiz would try to adapt to the claw change.

What I found was that the new "efficient weave" that I could sustain more or less indefinitely was claw/gosiks/hoarfrost cascade/AAnukes. This weave has a sustained dps for me of about 34k dps with no burn discs running, other than spell twincast when up and when procced. If I am fed new large mod rods (using my mage parked nearby), I can keep this weave up more or less indefinitely with mod rod clicks, Harvest of Druzzil and Bucolic harvest, clicking each as soon as they are up. So essentially, the changes mean that wizards need to abandon ethereals altogether, even during spell twincast, in order to sustain through a typical raid duration of 20-30 minutes of constant fighting.

What kind of initial burn would I use with this? I tried a more efficient burn weave with only one ethereal: Ethereal Incand/Gosik's/Hoarfrost Cascade. Hitting all my burn discs and running this weave through the initial spell twincast and through the duration of improved twincast, I ended up with an initial burn phase that lasted 80sec, did 106k dps, 8.4 mil total damage, and left me at 49% mana remaining. So in the post-claw nerf world, I could then hit my mana regains and use my one shot of forceful rejuvenation (24min recast) to recover from the burn and switch to sustained 34k.

I am not impressed with this raid role for wizards. The initial burn of 8.4 mil damage is the equivalent of taking out one of the initial adds in Bixie #1, for example. Big deal, you have another half hour of fighting to go. On a raid like grelleth, are wiz supposed to plod along with mediocre dps, saving 50% of their mana pool for an 80sec burn on Zurel? Is it exciting to top the parse on one mini out of 12 or so during the raid, that needs to be burned, but otherwise have to dance on a rock with mana regen tricks just to keep up mediocre sustained dps? This would take all the fun out of raiding with my wizard.

Again, right now I am having to fight and scrap to keep up with the necros and mages under typical raiding scenarios, sometimes I get to the top of the parse and many times I cant. That friendly competition is fun and the mixed results seem about right for a properly skilled and equipped raid wizard. Almost all raids we do, other than NTOV, are sustained events with at least 30 minutes of more or less constant fighting of multiple bosses, minis and adds.

Forget this massive wizard nerf, it is not needed and certainly not wanted.

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so what you are saying is you don't want to be like a berserker...

A berserker is a more extreme example. Far higher burn potential (potential, depending on several other classes), but I think with lower sustained. 34k sustained dps from the wiz shows just how much the mana regeneration abilities are worth (significantly more than the 0 dps some claim). It's also probably more than the sustained dps of a berserker, but until one of them parses it and posts it here along with their buffs and (albeit minimal) ability rotation then we can't really know for sure.

If the 34k weave of claw/gosiks/hoarfrost cascade/AAnukes can be sustained more or less indefinitely, then it implies you just need an appropriate amount of mana to cope with the drain between refreshes, but anything above that is not required. What size mana pool foes that need?

Also, your burn was listed as only 106k dps. How does this compare to your full out burn? (I know what wiz CAN do, but that is with support from enchanters etc, so I don't know what it would be solo.) It seems low to me. If you do your top burn instead of an efficient burn, then what dps would you expect and how much mana would you have after the 80sec burn phase has gone? Eg 30%? Is that enough to cope with the indefinite sustained weave mana fluctuations?

Or putting it another way, is this truely the best the class can manage or just one example designed to make wiz look weak?

If someone came in to your neighborhood and took everyone's food then replaced it with bread, you would spend your time moaning that your neighbor was getting more bread.

Some feedback would be nice. What are we posting thats giving feedback in the right direction, in the wrong direction, or is this just to make us think our voices are being heard with the nerf happening no matter what?

its already in slated for the patch for this week lol so who knows

I don't need to log on to test to know this:
1. The rest nerf is a bad decision. You are just compounding the error of having created endurance bars for melee in the first place!
2. Melee are restricted by disc timers. That is more than sufficient. If you wish to nerf endurance regen, then you should also remove disc timers.
3. Nerfing rest nerfs melee dps directly - this is the core ability of a melee dps class, and the aggro ability of pure melee tanks.
4. The penalty of death is already harsh for melee. No rest = massive downtime for all melee classes.
5. There is negligable endurance regeneration in the game, and no notable buffs

What you should do:
1. Don't nerf Rest, but if you do, then:
2. Remove or seriously reduce all disc timers
3. Reduce the endurance cost of melee dps, remove the endurance cost of aggro abilities for tanks
4. Reduce the detrimental effects of rezz, including reductions to effect duration, and the granting of a set amount of endurance to start 'role' again
5. Introduce more endurance regen to the game through passive effects (on gear etc), and some kei/clarity type buff.

Finally, don't shoot yourselves in the foot (again). The lack of content in CotF has been laughable, but this endurance (and mana) related nerf will make Eq unplayable for me. I don't log on to play a character with both hands tied behind it's back; managing optimal disc rotation to maximise dps is one thing, but manage another resource on top is very 'anti' melee. We were always supposed to have the advantage of not needing danged med breaks!

My one example I will give you:

Long events (Doomscale Horde, WK#1) has back to back waves of trash, followed by a final burn. This is quite a drain on endurance. Last week, for example, at the time the final boss popped, I was at 15% endurance, with all disciplines up and ready to fire on final burn. (Rest not used at all till this point). I *managed* my disciplines, in that I could not use all of them in the previous waves. If I had, my best would not be available for the burn. In the current situation (no rest nerf), I was able to use my best burn, and rest mid fight. With a rest nerf, I think I would have had endurance for 1 disc. So whats the point of disc timers? This nerf you propose is going down a blind alley, where there shall be much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

To answer Brogett's question, in my second tests using the new efficient weave, it seemed like I needed about 50% of my mana pool to last through the refresh timers on mod rod, AA harvest and spell harvest. I would fluctuate between 50% and zero doing this sustained weave. So the reduced dps burn I tested (using only one ethereal) seemed like something I would do after these changes to conserve mana if I know the raid fighting will continue for 20-30 minutes--i.e, almost every raid we are doing. If memory serves, my usual full burn on live of Eth Weave/Eth Incand/Eth Hoarfrost leaves me around 25% mana after about 80 sec when the twincasts are done, but I can do some more testing of that on test just to confirm.

These tests are solo, except for my mage feeding an endless supply of mod rods and being raid buffed with chanter crack, etc. I don't have a raid team to join me in the arena on test, so this is the best I can do. It is a fair point that dps would be higher in a real raid situation with ranger auspice, chanter mana reverb, bard spell focus song, druid wildfire, etc. running, but this is the test environment available to us for comment.

I don't play the melee classes, so I can't comment on their issues with sustained dps. But if they are low, give them a boost instead of nerfing them too.

Thanks Corak, that's precisely what I was wondering. Obviously sustained dps even with a neutral mana cost (regen == expenditure) needs a pool to work with as the regen comes in lumps. 50% it is then. Acknowledged that you can't parse a full raid team (I can't either).

I expect the devs are deliberately forcing people between using more mana for a large burn and less mana for an efficient (but lower dps) burn and better sustained. That actually does make sense tbh too, but I'm not convinced it is at all even handed, and these things are nearly always better done by managing the dps in upcoming releases. (Eg by further decreasing damage per mana on new spells to make burns less efficient.)