Wizard class still "dead"?

I took a 6 month break. Wizard frustration was part of it, for my once loved wizard DPS character that no group or guild wants or needs. The boards here were showing many threads on wizards and how the class really needed help. Now I see almost no threads on the subject. Did we give up, or did something else change? Everyone started Necros and SKs?

If you really took a 6 months break then not much happened during that time. Wizard got a damage increase with ToL but they still have low utility, and the strong casters (necros magicians) got stronger as well with how pet and dots scale.
I have seen a lot of people start magicians they were already good but now they are really strong in ToL and also require no effort so they are perfect for boxing too.

Wizards are not as bad as 90% of the population believes. Everyone wants to be top dog or considers themselves broken or not fun anymore.

The issue with that is the devs don't have the time or even the knowledge at this point to so fine tune the 6-8 classes that bring dps to raids that they are so close in balance that on any given night skill, luck and play can flop the parse results. So we instead see 1 or 2 classes tuned ahead that basically can't lose. It was berserkers for a long time and now its been mages, necromancers and druids more recently.

While Wizards aren't bad compared to some classes it is still a big mistake to play one instead of a Mage if you want a caster for nuking things. Any reason the devs have for the state of things isn't relevant. They have all the info they need.

But that is still the mentality everyone has now. I'm either the best or "its a mistake to play one instead of a <insert class here>."

Suddenly as a dps class you're worthless, not fun, garbage or you should reroll if you can only hope for getting 10th-20th on a parse. Despite most raids having 20 or more folks primarily showing up to just do dps. So someone has to be there as long as its not me.

Your observation is belied by history. For many years - decades even, the capacity of the magician class to pack along a respectable "pocket tank", and the capacity of the druid class to heal, and the power of dot classes to stretch a mana point, was more than enough reason to recognize persistent second ranking vis a vis magical damage power as fair class balance.

So is yours. Because its a matter of which duration or event you are looking back in history for. There was never decades of wizard dps >> mage and necro dps as fair class balance for every raid situation. Lots of events ran long just like ToL raids, its just there were also a lot more 1 or 2 minute events burns and wizards were wizarding right with berzerkers and other strong opening dps classes.

Druids and shaman shouldn't be where they are relative to another dps class and its a pretty simple fix to get them back inline by reducing their enhanced maladies and enhanced pestilence AA lines . But mages and dot class meaning necro were never persistently second ranking vis a vis magical damage. When a mob or event lasted for duration wizards like today often took a back seat. The issue today is wizards are not opening up with the burn they should be and that every event is 400-1200 seconds of multiple mob goodness. But if events are running that long a wizard parsing 10-16th behind mages, necros, rogues, monks or other dps classes isn't /reroll broken.

You realize we can look at a parse from any time frame we want, right?

Shei Vinitras in 60s, 4.91B Damage @81.88M, 12. Kizant +Pets = 177.13M@3.00M in 59s {DM}
Shei Vinitras in 90s, 7.15B Damage @79.41M, 11. Kizant +Pets = 268.61M@3.02M in 89s {DM}
Shei Vinitras in 120s, 9.18B Damage @76.50M, 14. Kizant +Pets = 317.06M@2.66M in 119s {DM}
Shei Vinitras in 180s, 12.59B Damage @69.93M, 15. Kizant +Pets = 406.69M@2.27M in 179s {DM}

Berserker, Rogue, Mage, Druid, Ranger, Monk and Beastlord do more during this burn phase at every time interval. Over an entire fight Mage nukes do similar damage as Wizard nukes and sometimes even more damage. Tell me. What's the point of a class if you both nuke for the same but the other still has over 40% more damage to add via pets and has more utility and can solo, etc. What we're saying is that there's currently no scenario where a Wizard is preferred outside of needing a port.

Dendritic Golem in 60s, 1.62B Damage @26.92M, 8. Kizant +Pets = 68.40M@1.18M in 58s {GM}
Dendritic Golem in 90s, 2.10B Damage @23.34M, 8. Kizant +Pets = 90.50M@1.03M in 88s {GM}
Dendritic Golem in 120s, 2.87B Damage @23.91M, 8. Kizant +Pets = 110.56M@936.92K in 118s {GM}

In CoV we'd still lose to Berserker, Rogue, Monk, Rogue, Druid, and even Necro. But Mages didn't really catch up till after 2 minutes. And consider the giant increase we got in ToL for a moment. Even with that we really didn't gain anything on burns and we now lose to Mages instead of Necros. That was the only real change. That and keeping us relevant compared to melee when we can AE.

Rustbottom, Grinder of Gears in 60s, 991.76M Damage @16.53M, 3. Kizant = 55.57M@926.24K in 60s {GM}
Rustbottom, Grinder of Gears in 90s, 1.44B Damage @16.02M, 2. Kizant = 83.11M@923.44K in 90s {GM}
Rustbottom, Grinder of Gears in 120s, 1.89B Damage @15.73M, 1. Kizant = 104.53M@871.05K in 120s {GM}
Rustbottom, Grinder of Gears in 150s, 2.34B Damage @15.60M, 1. Kizant = 123.89M@825.92K in 150s {GM}
Rustbottom, Grinder of Gears in 180s, 2.75B Damage @15.30M, 3. Kizant = 136.72M@759.53K in 180s {GM}
Rustbottom, Grinder of Gears in 210s, 3.14B Damage @14.97M, 3. Kizant = 153.33M@730.12K in 210s {GM}

Back during TBL we at least had a shot at a good burn parse from time to time. Zerkers and SK were the biggest threats on single target. SK still probably are tbh. They just don't get DPS groups.

I still say the devs are lacking the fine tuning to get this right for all, its endless to much for one or lack of understanding for others. Or endless long duration events because they don't want 90-120s all out raid events despite how that impacts those bursty dps classes.

Wizards need more opening power no one debates that. Wizards should be right with berserkers and rogues with luck, skill or play determining who comes out on top. Ideally you are jockeying for 1-10th depending on how many of those classes are present for that opening 90-120s of burn. Monks, mages and necromancers should be behind you guys at that point but ready to overtake should events last 2, 5, 10 minutes longer. Others behind those 6 always since they bring other stuff besides dps to the table.

But this post 120s window is where the current narrative is wrong. Lots see wizards are broken because maybe at minute 4 or 5 of an event they are at best 10-15th when there are 3 mages, 3 necros, 2 monks present plus 3 berserkers, 2 rogues as their burst peers as well all fighting for spots. Thats not broken. Even if all 7 raid events fall into this duration. Thats just bad raid event design or folks not valuing what their 60-90s of power adds to events because its not flashing in the combine parse. So yes your 60-90s needs amplifying and others do need reductions but you shouldn't endlessly be chasing top 10 results regardless of duration or circumstances.

Most if not all would agree that beastlords, rangers, druids, shaman, tanks in melee dps groups and bards should not be anywhere near as high as they are and should never be beating a dps class barring terrible play or deaths.

You can leave Rangers out of this conversation as the only events we can light up are ones with headshot included. Headshot/Assassinate should never be incorporated in raids or a factor of design. Full adps wizards beat full adps Rangers on sustained when equal skill is present. Burn wise may be different if you're fast enough.

Back in Jan 2021

That EQ devs yeeted a massive DD boost uniformally across most (all?) casters right before the last expansion release cracks me up. They might arbitrarily double wizard DPS in some patch a week before the next expansion, they might ignore the obvious gap between wizards and mages for a decade, who knows? There is zero reason to expect that EQ devs are capable of or even interested in balancing wizards and if you're playing a wizard instead of switching to a mage, necro or druid and are upset those casters are out-dpsing you, you kinda have yourself to blame.

What narrative are you talking about? I don't see one in this thread.

OP

To me a class needing 50-75% more opening burn during a 60-90s burn window isn't so broken that you quit or its consider a mistake to continue playing one or that no guild or group wants. Thats the implied narrative and sentiment when you view it as unacceptable to play one only to jockey for spots 11-20 on most events due to duration.

The core issue is that this sentiment is very justified if you're a monk, rogue, berserker or wizard.

These classes in live EQ have essentially one role: do DPS in a group/raid setting. You can't solo/molo effectively, you don't bring much utility to the group, you can't tank or heal. If all you can do is DPS and are being consistently out DPS'd by classes that bring immense utility, ADPS, healing or tanking. So yeah, it's broken and not fun anymore.


(Note: I'm not saying monks/rogues/berserker DPS is in the pit with wizards, just that those classes should be handily out DPSing other classes and if they aren't, they are broken and not fun).

No. They started Druids.

I do remember when the druids in the raid (this was Kunark) out dpsed me easily and still healed the group, a lot. Sad times then and now. Happy for the druids though. Well, since I reactivated a few accounts after my break now, I do have some class options, on other of my chars. Once wizards are dealt with by the devs, I am more than happy to give mine (115) another try.

We can agree to disagree. This is just opening up a whole nother can of worms which is why the devs avoid this entirely.

Not worth it!

Thanks for participating in the thread but you are contributing close to useless info to back up your world view that does not take into the account the true personal agony of investing parts of your life in a class that was surpassed by many classes in its main reason to be. As is your right of course. Other threads may appreciate your input more, or they may not, but don't be afraid to give it a try.

I assume they were referring to wizards with the list above but I have no idea what the point could have been...

Yeah, we have stuns and always have but they're limited to level 120, do damage, and have a long recast. Ours are rarely useful and good stuns are the domain of enchanters and paladins.

We have an AE snare which is nice. You can't spam it and it doesn't last very long but it's free. So, for us to kite things it's good enough. On a raid if you actually need snare you're better off with ranger, druid or even necro but we do use ours from time to time. At least until it can be overwritten by a good snare. We have asked for our AE nukes to be fixed so we can quad kite again, which would give AE snare a purpose, but that hasn't happened.

We have a free AA root that's pretty good. I don't see anyone complaining about it. Would it be nice to have a longer lasting / AE root like rangers and druds or something? Sure but that isn't going to happen since it's their domain not ours.

Our ports and evacs are great. Nobody is complaining about them but they don't add anything to raids or even the group game. They're just not important anymore.

We've always had a rune and it's gotten good upgrades. Nobody is complaining about our rune. It has its uses but mostly when you solo. It can take a couple hits of a group mob but on a raid it's not doing much. The melee guard that all casters have is also nice. Our last mitigation rune is a weaker version of what enchanters get and it's single target only. Given that runes are a core enchanter feature I don't see us getting a nice group rune. If they want to give us one then great. I won't complain.

ADPS. We have mana burn, synergy, and our vortex line. The synergy and vortex are relatively strong and we've asked for upgrades to vortex to encourage the use of both on raids so that wizard do participate in more than just DPS. The devs did a good job with that. No issues here.

We can't have pets cause we're not a pet class. What else are we supposed to ask for? Mez and other forms of crowd control would never fly. Even if we got an AE root it's not exactly something that valuable. I did ask for us to get a magic version of season's wrath last year. I don't think auras are appropriate. What's this great option that Wizards are saying no to that would somehow fix things? I don't get it and quoting what was said to an AA dev 12 years ago is kinda pointless.