so give us some deets on ROF. Changes to the class, spell timers, AAs, new spells, casting info etc. Cmon!
Ethereals do 25% extra base damage to raid bosses. Minor changes to cast and recast timers means you might rotate 3 Ethereals instead of 2. In group content it's still chain Ethereals and then ooc. In raid content it's chain Ethereals and Wild/Chaos when low on mana.
Sounds like a nice change for raiders, but hardly the 'distinct difference between burst and sustained' that one of the devs said was being worked on.
It was being worked on but ooc in group content is just too powerful so it's Ethereals, Twincast, Harvest and you can play around with Havoc. Same as pre-RoF Instants, AEs, Concuss, Stun and even Runes can have value but Ethereal/ooc will be the dominate playstyle for another year.
You know, I could be OK with that, really, if the rest of our spellbook could get looked at. Scale instants properly and unlink them so they're more useful. Scale our targeted AEs properly and let us take a shot at quad-kiting CoB if we want. Scale our PBAEs properly so a PBAE group is at least possible from time to time. You get the idea...
No "new" AA's... they're coming Soon(tm), but a few lines saw upgrades: - Kera's familiar got a nice bump to 30-60% @ L100 - Pyromancy damage was doubled @ L100, but it still only affects spells cast within its current AA level - more DF/SCFM and some other usual suspects Anti-aggro AA's didn't see upgrades, so aggro management is even more important now than before (big surprise there) Spellwise... oy. Quite a few changes here: Ethereals got a nice 7-14k bump to base damage (depends on your group/raid situation), but with the increase in damage comes a corresponding increase in mana costs. Fire & magic now cast as fast as ice. There's about a half-second delay now in a 2 ethereal rotation which is kinda annoying if you're a button-masher. While these are still the bread-and-butter nukes for premium DPS, if one were to mindlessly chain these without being cognizant of their mana pool, they might find themselves running on fumes sooner rather than later. Our medium nukes (in VoA terms, Daevan's Fire & Rime Cascade) now do slightly less base damage than our current ethereals, yet with a faster cast time. Mana costs are in line with Daevan's/Rime, but the recast timer adjustments now require a 3+ spell rotation when chaining these exclusively. Resist mods didn't change so these are still kinda resisty and not as reliable on an improperly debuffed mob. Our 'traditional' max level ice claw sees its line revamped as a replacement to Havoc. There's now three claws (fire/ice/magic) spread across levels. They all have the same procs as vanilla Havoc but share its timer as well. Damage got bumped up to slightly less then the medium nukes. Recast timers, as compared to Havoc, were drastically lowered to something like 12-15 seconds. Put it all together and it does rather feel right at home in a spell rotation, although it still seems wanting for more during unlucky streaks. Other somewhat interesting tidbits: - L100 Thricewoven's beneficial proc now does 50-150%, procs @ the same rate, but Thricewoven itself does slightly less damage than the mediums and takes longer to cast to boot - L96 Wildmagic's ice component is now the medium ice nuke, as claws were revamped; as such, the magic component saw a small bump up in order to remain competitive - Harvest still takes forever to cast - there are no splash upgrades (both maelstrom and the fire splash) & no instant magic upgrades - the experiment that was the vortex line of nukes was taken behind a dumpster at SOE HQ and brutally disposed of - after 13 years, our flaming sword pet spell finally produces a flaming sword - pointy hats? yay! Any spells not mentioned more-or-less received its "standard" upgrade. I think the jury's still out on this one, as there's quite a bit more that can be done to address the (now shrinking) gap between wizard burn and melee burn.
Seraph summary is correct. Trajet D'Or summary is not. Additional things to add to Seraph: Force of Will AA was nearly doubled in damage, so if you currently aren't casting it between spells, you need to start. Prolonged Destruction was give a 60% crit-damage-mod. This does not stack with Second Spire, so you will not see an increase in your max crits. However, if you currently use a Glyph of the Cataclysm once Second Spire wears off, stop. It will no longer do anything if you have PD running. Rain spells were given a big boost which is good if you are AEing, but they are still mostly useless otherwise Our Rune was given a big increase to ~29k which makes it worth casting more often. Spell Rune is ~20k. Together they can protect about 50k of an AE spell, which is not insignificant on heavy AE raids. Our self-HP buff was bumped up more to actually be worth using over Shaman Focus. (If you like AC more than Dex, which you should because Dex is worthless to us). You still want Unity for the other buffs, you just want to use our own shield over the focus part of Unity. Our Robe click was changed to a damage add, but it is worthless compared to our VoA click, so hold on to your VoA robes and use that click instead. Notes on casting: In a Burn: The changing of Ethereals' cast and recast times means you will need to switch from casting two Ethereals to three spells. Ethereal Fire/Ice/Magic is the best chain, but with several mobs being immune to ice damage (Its a Velious expansion), you will want to use Ethereal Fire/Magic/Fire Instant instead on those specific fights. The mana cost of these spells went up significantly. On a burn when using PD you will likely be at or under 40% mana after about 90s (The duration of Second Spire, and about the time you run out of Twincast procs on ITC). Unless you expect the mob to die within another 90 seconds, you should probably switch to your non-burn spellset which is outlined below. You are looking at a burn of ~135k dps with the first chain, about ~125k with the second chain on a RAID flagged boss. On a normal, NON-RAID mob you are only looking at ~110k dps with the first chain and ~105k on the second chain. Aristo's intention is to return Ethereals to the way they used to be: very high burst, but unsustainable mana-wise, which is what a lot of Wizards were asking for. I personally do not think the damage was made high enough as we will not come close to the damage of a Rogue will full ADPS support, but time will tell. When not Burning: You will want to use a chain of Gosik's Fire / Hoarfrost Cascade / Claw of the Firewing. This chain is about the same raw damage as the above chain on a non-raid flagged mob. The lower base damage is compensated for by the lower cast time. (You do less damage per spell, but you cast more spells in the same amount of time). This chain also has the benefit of being very mana efficient, meaning you should need to med a LOT less. The old method of "Chain Ethereals until OOM then OOC back to full and repeat" is not a valid strategy anymore, which was Aristo's intention. The only downside is the resist check on these spells are much lower than Ethereals' so you will get resisted a lot more. I, and others, have been trying to convince Aristo that these spells need a change to -50 resist. I would suggest that everyone keep an eye on their resist rates when using these spells and give Aristo feedback on them.
And to clarify, this is because the 6k damage bonus given to our ethereal cold nuke does not stack with ... bard cold song? fury of kerafym AA? all of the above?
Correct, it does not stack with Bard cold song, (Furies are a different effect) which is ~2k per spell, making this damage bonus only a 4k bonus per spell. x20 spells that is a total of 80k damage total. The mana return from our chest click is enough to cast 2/3 Ethereal nukes, which will do a lot more damage than 80k, making the old click better.
Thanks Beimuth. Those actually sound like good changes overall, more than I expected. I don't suppose they added a 13th spell gem?
Elidroth cannot just add more ranks of Mnemonic Retention and give us more spell gems. Code needs to make the new spell gems first, THEN Elidroth can add them via AAs. As Pirlo said, we did ask, and Elidroth said he may put in a code request for more, but that would be something that would happen down the line, it likely wouldn't be soon.
Using Rk.2 on non-raid boss: Gosik-Hoar-Flamewing - 55535 base damage, 5397 base mana Using Rk.2 on non-raid boss: Eth Fire-Cold - 51348 base damage, 7900 base mana Don't be scared of spending a little over 1000 base mana per second on Ethereals (2 or 3 Eth rotation, 2 chosen to show mana difference), you have mana pres, 30sec ooc, Twincast, ITC, 2nd Spire and PD and all of those things favor burn and med.
I'm not going to argue with you on this. You can play however you want to, but don't spread wrong information. If you think using Ethereals in a group and ooc medding every time you run out of mana will be a better sustained parse than using Gosik's/Cascade/Claw, you are very, very, wrong. Yes, once every 20 minutes you can do an Improved Twincast/PD/Second Spire burn with Ethereals and do a short high burst parse, but the other 95% of the time you are in the group, you will want to use the above 3 spells. If you try to do a non-burn sustained parse with Ethereals in RoF, you will be sitting more than you will be nuking, I promise you.
Right, you're not going to argue, you're just going to create straw man arguments about 95% of the time when Twincast Rk.2 alone accounts for 5% of the time. If you actually engaged in discussion you would learn things, you read board handles instead of posts and then climb up your ivory tower and remain willfully ignorant of anything that doesn't revolve around your gear, your groups and your math. The first two being totally irrelevant to non-raiders and the third being skewed by the first two.
