I dig what you're saying. But they are probably worth mentioning when you are saying what you used in the post. I'm not going to assume what you are and aren't using on test.
The mana cost on Frenzied is way too high to be considered worthwhile to use in any but the shortest of fights. This coupled with Twincast now eating 2 counters makes it virtually unusable in its current form. The removal of the mana preservation blocking does NOT solve the issue in any way. Prior to the changes PD was an average of 16% mana increase. Now it is 52%. That is a raw increase of 36%, or 225% . The benefit from mana preservation only applies to SPELL forms of mana preservation, that is Black Wolf or Glyph. If you use Glyph you gain 18% so even using glyph there is still an 18% increase (52 - 18 = 34%) in the cost which is more than double what it was prior to the changes. It has been repeatedly stated that they do NOT tune around requiring you to use Glyphs which means you should balance it around Black Wolf which is only 8%. Simple put: In some situations you cannot even utilize all counters of the ability as it currently stands. The only way you can is to use Twincast since it now eats 2 counters. This is clearly broken in terms of design. The previous values for PD were very specifically chosen to be a large mana drain but without running us completely out of mana so that we had a little left over. It worked exactly as it should have and now it has been returned to it's unusable state. Sustained is now the best to use for a full burn. The loss of crit chance will be mitigated by other classes abilities. Ideally you would use Arcane at the same time for maximum damage.
It is a significant nerf. I don't disagree with that but I was seeing mana preservation from my shoulder item being applied during FD. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you were saying here.
I'm saying PD didn't block worn preservation so there is no change between older and newer. The only difference in mana preservation between FD and PD is spell mana preservation, and the amount of spell mana preservation that we do gain is not nearly enough to offset the massive increase in the penalty.
No it wasn't, and there isn't much difference now because good Wizards won't be using FD anymore they will be using SD and there isn't much difference between SD /w mana pres and the old PD without it.
Welp at least I'm not crazy to feel this way about the changes. As for your guild parses I'm glad wizards made them for the duration. Obviously I'll base my opinions on what we are used too based on our raids. We have had 5 done for quite awhile using 2 different raid teams in our guild so we clear arcx usually 1 day clears twice a week.
I'm fine with the changes other then twincasting my counters. I think mana will be fine. I haven't been able to test which will be better FD or SD since I haven't raided with the changes yet to get all the adps abilities with SD. If you can't get through all the counters of FD you are just bad and need to learn to cycle your abilities. The only people that should really suffer will be your groupers.
Yeah, I think what we've been arguing about with Azlynx isn't that we didn't get a big nerf. It's just that the initial patch gave us something 100% broken. After the tweaks FD is at least usable even if the situations for it may be far fewer now than they were before. I don't know much about the next expansion but maybe they're taking into account larger increases in mana than usual? Who knows.
1) It's unlikely they will change Twincast using two counters. They did it on purpose. 2) If they did change it you would see the effect of the increased mana penalty since it wouldn't disappear in 45 seconds. Twincast using 2 counters is the only real reason people are able to use all of the counters. Don't twincast and see what happens to your mana pool after you use all 45 counters. 3) How cute, someone calling me bad. 4) Groupers make up the vast majority of the game.
SD bonus is lower but mathematically 25% with 19% mana increase with the 250 bonus works out better then the 50% 52% mana increase 500 bonus. Time will tell I guess. Especially if you arent TC youll get 2 casts for less mana on SD
Where are you getting 250 and 500 from? SD adds 25% crit chance and 40% crit damage, and FD adds 50% crit chance and 75% crit damage.
42% crit passive 25% crit from SD 33% crit from Auspice 100% crit rate on a burn and that doesn't count any other ability. The extra 35% crit damage on FD is far less than the bonus gained from the higher number of counters and lower penalty on SD.
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=41184 \ and http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=42698
Auspice is good for like 48 seconds? How long are the encounters you guys deal with in arx? Just curious. My thought earlier was trying to keep close to 100% crite rate for a couple minutes but maybe that's not necessarily most the time.
