Upcoming changes on Test- July 2015

Or one of these:

- The direly needed aggroboost on our Earth pets
- The ability to mez and charm elementals
- Cross-Zone CotH (or CotH actually working in Arx Mentis Raidinstance)
- Fire-pet still occassionally forwarding its aggro to its owner
- The ability to swap the pet currently used with the one currently packed up without the need to destroy the active one

I would personally just be happy with a reversal of the rain nerf...way to take all the fun out of playing a mage dgc....the risk v reward of using rains was something that was fun about raiding a mage. You guys even catered to this with the missing gather mana spell line in TDS.

Now there is literally no reason to have more than 1 magician in a raid force. I would even go as far to say if a raid force has more than 1 magician they are hurting their overall dps. Nicely done....

I agree with all but the aggro thing. An em21 earth elemental with a pair of rageswords for me only needs 1-3 swings for it to be permanently impossible for me to steal aggro on any char. Compared to even pure tanks I group with, I can rip aggro off the undergeared ones, but my pet will always pick up the mob in one swing on the way to my casters. I can hit mob one time with earth elemental and caster merc on burn can't pull aggro...

Might be due to em 21 but earth elemental still hits like a wet paper bag against T3 mobs (like 2-3k average hits....meh)

No idea what I am doing wrong then ... EM23 pet with rageswords (and full complement of buffs) and I do occassionally grab aggro from it. Wizard friend whom I group with often refuses to tag along if I dont promise to use airpet instead :-(

lol probably more what you are doing *right*, if u have em23, assuming u have at least some raid gear. I have old-era raid pet but only t3 group gear, and I still don't double-spear due to mana issues (still doing rs, rain, rain, spear bolt salvo -> repeat). In fact next time I'm on im either gonna try with DPS swords or air elem, just to try to make back some dps

I believe ya but I think ur aggro woes are raid gear issue

This seems like a pretty huge nerf. I'm not too keen on enchanter stuff, but do they even cast their DoTs? Having it proc from stuns can be situationally useful I guess. I feel like this mostly just accomplishes the "lower damage increase" and not the "more consistent" part. The damage was lowered an insane amount and the "consistency" was barely changed. Unless the proc rate was buffed during this, but the note doesn't seem to suggest that. Seems like it sort of kills the fun of the ability as well, since the damage difference between a normal cast and a haze cast will barely be noticeable.

I think a nerf to chromatic haze was somewhat expected with the new stacking changes, but I think this is a bit overkill. Perhaps buff gift of chromatic haze up to somewhere between 100-200? Still far less than before, but still strong enough to be felt.

I'd pay 5,000 aa for this, srsly.

In group play, I've not casted a dot in forever. Same with stuns. Stuns used to have great value for non-mezzable mobs, controlling mobs after a mez resist, quickly controlling a mob before re-charming, preventing cleric mobs from ch'ing, or caster ae groups. Now having multiple ways to mez, not having the ability to chain stun and having really good survivablity, it's just not part of my lineup. Mez really needed to be added to the proc trigger to cover group enchanters.

It just seems they're finding ways to nerf adps abilities in to oblivion and giving dps casters more and more independence from needing to find complimentary classes to group with.

Melee would do anything to get away from ADPS dependency.

Yeah, seems like if they're looking to increase the consistency, add mezzes and runes into there as well. DoTs don't add anything because they aren't used and stuns add little, pending the situation. I still think the number needs to be buffed up some either way though, it's not impactful enough as is.

It's the wrong way to go for both casters and melee. Having classes which are all better from inter-dependencies is part of what makes EQ unique. Having every class be nearly the same thing with spells using different names gets boring. Part of the power of a raid force should be in gathering up everyone's abilities and making the army stronger from combining differences and abilities. Same in group play, but to a lesser extent. Putting a bard in a group with melee dps should increase that group's output more than simply putting in an extra dps. Same with putting an enchanter or druid in to a caster group. The whole should become stronger than the sum of its parts.

The problem isn't that melee should become less dependent. The problem is the imbalance of casters having less dependence. It currently takes a whole lot less support (and even less now with this patch) for casters to perform. They're seemingly growing the gap (at least for wizards) and creating more imbalance. All without any sort of comment on what direction they have in mind. No comments on why the play style mages are balanced against is taking a big hit, no comment on why shaman rain heals are taking a hit, no comment on why support classes (enchanters and druids) are being de-emphasized, no comments on why a slew of other enchanter aa have been adjusted, and no comment on why melee who could have used some attention were completely ignored. I don't see the proc changes making any discernible difference and am a bit apprehensive to see how the damage shield change from melee damage to magic impact me as a rogue.

no it wouldn't. ADPS should add a small % it should not be a game changer for classes. No class should lose 40-50% of its sustained because a bard happen to not log on tonight.

I'm not sure, but I think they may have messed up big time with this patch..

I'm burning for less then my normal weave does?

/g Combat Dummy Azia in 205s, 10149k @49509dps --- Ammeren 10149k @49509dps (100%) ( Fire core, Empowered Focus, First Spire, Glyph of cata ) --WTF!!!!!!!!

/g Combat Dummy Azia in 200s, 11783k @58917dps --- Ammeren + pets 11783k @58917dps (100%) ( No burns at all )

Using the same spell lineup...No pets, just nukes.

Lol wut?

Was that using Rains or Spears/Bolts only?

It shouldn't matter what lineup I'm using. Using mods should have yield more DPS/ Total dmg. The spell lineup was the same for both tests.

I get that, was just curious...

It only matters as to the fact that if you want the development crew to look at it you need to post it or PM them with the spell lineup so they can look at all the variables.

I've sent 2 devs a PM, hopefully they take a look at it.

Just dummy parsed magmatic burst compared to ethereal skyblaze and it did surprisingly well. Maybe much ado about nothing.

Depends on how you were testing. If it was with no crit rate modifiers, then Magmatic burst most likely got a boost because of the new innate 100% crit damage mod, as wiz crit rate was close to the 40% cap as it is. Mages have a much higher base crit chance and thus were effected more. Add in crit rate mods and you will see a bigger difference in the spells.