Focused Mage Feedback

Discussion in 'Mages' started by Xelgad, Jan 11, 2013.

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  1. Seiffil Active Member

    Illusionists
    I'd definitely like to see the merging of some temp buffs for illusionists.
    Fix the bug causing the pet to be removed when zoning, this gets annoying.

    Illusionary Arm - Needs something else added to make it worthwhile, Most scouts and fighters should easily be capping 600 MA, and quite frankly with reforging out there it is extremely easy for a priest or caster to achieve 600 MA should they choose without sacrificing any substantial stat, unlike scouts and fighters.

    On top what Buffrat suggests for the PE pets,something that can be used to help keep the coercer and illusionist pets alive would be extremely beneficial, right now even if you spend the 3 prestige points on the pet damage reduction abilities, they still seem to die just as quickly as they did on raids without the prestige ability. Would also like to see the cast time shortened.

    Coercer
    Thought Snap/Coercive Shout - Improving the ability of Thought Snap and Coercive Shout to help, specifically with the mem shuffle mechanic.

    Enraging Demeanor - The potency from the focus effect should be applied to the coercer as well instead of only the target of the buff.
  2. Wizard Member

    Some input from a Wizard raiding avatars/end game content



    Fusion:

    A lot of end game encounters require being outside of fusion's range meaning it can't be used at all or the fight requires constant jousting which can makes it extremely difficult to use properly.

    The cone for fusion's range is bugged. Things like enemies with large hit boxes, enemies at even a very minor elevation difference than you can cause the increasingly common "No targets in range". There are far to many examples of doing everything perfectly and fusion still not working correctly and due to the extremely long casting time if that happens say goodbye to your parse, ESPECIALLY if it's during your Fiery Blast rotation.

    - Change the cone to be more forgiving on the Y axis and also adjust the X axis of the cone to be more in line with Blast of Devastation.

    - Have spell reach effect the range of our cone based spells too



    Manaburn:

    Massive power drains are making this almost unusable on many fights, it can be very difficult to get back to max power before the timer resets and if sanguine sacrifice is down it tends to be smarter to not cast it at all then to cast it and risk losing DPS to being out of power (This is still a common issue on certain fights even with a coercer, manastones, etc)

    Possible Improvements

    - Lower the base damage multiplier and allow it to crit

    - Make damage calculated off your total power instead of total power available

    - Give us some passive self mana regen to compensate and balance out the massive power drains



    Eci's Frozen wraith:

    Enemies die extremely fast which can make it a challenge to even land this spell on a target that isn't going to die before it's finished casting. Please make this continue casting EVEN if the original target dies before it finishes, so at least it can still land on other enemies in it's area of effect as intended.




    Fiery Blast:

    Our parse relies far too heavily on perfect fiery blast rotations. The range of damage this spell does varies incredibly, I can have it hit for 13 million when the stars align or 0 when they don't.

    An increasingly common issue seems to be the target you cast it on dieing before it has a chance to go off or even on certain fights the original target becoming temporarily immune to damage before it has a chance to go off.

    The result is your biggest spell hitting for 0, to help alleviate this would it be possible if the original target dies before it finishes for it to still go off on a single enemy in an area of effect around the original target?

    Perhaps instead of it going off immediately after it finishes charging, you change it so that the first time we cast fiery blast it charges up damage then there is some visual indication on the fiery blast icon that it has finished charging. Now when we press it a second time it is an instant cast single target nuke for that amount of damage.




    New Prestige Lines:

    I won't waste to much time here as most of the problems have already been pointed out by other wizards but I think the fact that all of the top wizards are running the dual conversion spec should speak volumes about how bad the new prestige actually play out in real game play.

    Personally I think they should be scrapped and re-done from scratch but I understand that is not a realistic expectation.

    Please spend a little time Watching some of the top guilds raid end game encounters and the many problems with the new prestige should become very clear.




    Random Points:

    - Eliminate the need for Wizards to play like scouts OR provide us with a balanced RISK VS REWARD for doing so

    - The double procing from pet classes has become extremely unbalanced and is one of the biggest issues I currently see



    *Wizards should be T1 DPS but we are now struggling to compete with T2 DPS Please fix this*
    Wigg likes this.
  3. Fendaria Member

    Excellent question. Simply giving Beastlords artificially high DPS as a gimmick to attract people to buy the mini expansion has always seemed like a really suspect excuse to me and something I really hoped the Devs didn't feel the need to do. But as time has gone by, we have had GUs and expansions since then and nothing seems to be bringing them back in line. I've seen good spiritual beastlords generate power just behind Coercer's and better than Illys while still doing extremely respectable DPS. It just feels unfair to the rest of us. I'm getting to the point where I just have to wonder what exactly is going on.

    Fendaria
  4. Xuma Member

    I have all 6 mages at 95/320 (plus 5 scouts, 4 tanks and 2 healers) and am raiding my Warlock and my Swash atm.

    A comment regarding "fixes" to Eci's Frozen Wrath. Looking at my Wizard and my Warlock; Eci's Frozen Wrath does slightly MORE damage than Warlock's Rift does, but the REUSE time is the same as Ice Comet - which is about 1/3 that of Rift. Did a check on this - my Warlock has a reuse time of 90 seconds on Rift and my Wizard has a 22 second reuse time on Eci's (both are at 100%+ ability Reuse). The casting times seem about the same. Point being that if Eci's was "fixed" and Rift was left as is, an unbalanced situation would become even more unbalanced - a warlock would never be able to out-damage a Wizard in an AoE fight. I'm not saying that Eci's shouldn't be modified to work better, but that any "fixes" put in place should take these issues into account and make an attempt to re-balance rather than just "fix" stuff as individual issues. I'm sure the scouts, healers and tanks are all over in those focused threads wanting stuff "fixed" too to improve their class dps.

    Going back to the original post and the intent seems to me that my class would be more fun if the system worked like it was supposed to - i.e. T1 DPS classes should do the MOST DPS, T2 DPS classes should do good dps and add some utility, Utility classes provide most utility and do less DPS than T2, TANKS TANK - they should not be doing more dps than utility classes (SK's or Brawelers out dpsing T2 and T1 dps is a joke and completely Borks the system). Healers - should do some dps and heal - but not more dps than Utility or Tanks. This is of course all relative to the level of play, gear equipped and experience/smarts of the player. But given those are roughly equivalent, it IS the system that EQ2 was designed around.

    If the system isn't the system anymore, or we don't care what the system is, then give all mages a "tank" stance that makes their mitigation, avoidance and Blocking the same as an equivalently geared SK or Monk with slightly lower dps and that would probably make the game more fun for us. I mean if Tanks can be T1 dps - why can't T1 dps be tanks?
  5. Suduire New Member

    Coercers - End game prespective

    1. Give melee stat options to mage gear. Not sure if you are aware. There are no mentally capable ench using spell auto attack. They just do not exist. The majority/nearly all of mage gear is based with spell attack stats. Great you can refuge one of the stats but the other 3 are pretty useless. The easiest way to fix this is to combine melee auto-attack stats with spell auto attack as you did with melee crit and spell crit back in TSO. Or do the work and add options to each of the gear for melee or spell based auto attack.

    2. Make PE cast 50 meters. That or make it work like BL warders. I hate having to wait until the fight starts to get a pet.

    3. Prestige - Coercers get to reset shockwave (a 20 seconds spell) 50% of the time every 20 secs by casting a low dmg spell. Illies get to reset time warp. Does his make sense?

    4. The 5CB to peaceful link and velocity and 10 potency to Enraging Demeanor are losing their power. yeah when 10potency and 5 CB were a lot, they were good spells. No they are minimal buffs at best. Because of the damage procs associated with other class's buffs, such and synergism from Illies scale with levels and stat, no diminish.

    5. Explain how the Jenni Everling charm quest has equal rewards.
    Priest get an item with 187 stats, red rune slot, +10 spell cast or reuse, 60 MA and 40 SpellMA
    Mages get an item with 187 stats red rune slot, , +10 spell cast or reuse, 28 SpellMA.
    Everyhing else washes out, so in your mind 60MA + 40 SpellMA = 28 SpellMA, therefor
    Negative 12 SpellMA= 60MA.
    I know Spell auto attack is bad, but i did not know that having those stats are a determinant.

    6. Add dual wield capabilities for ench or make the reactive spells actually truly spell double attack. IN TSO and SF a good coercer could hang right below T1 DPS and sometimes challenge them, doing about 8% of RW DPS. Now coercers on average are doing 2-3% RW DPS, the same as MT healers. Extremely good coercer can get around 5% on average, but coercers ability to DPS has dwindled since SF.
  6. Dinwiz Active Member

    gave up and stopped raiding as a wizard last week , had enough of this xpac bs

    what awful warlock is that parsing so low would be the question

    much more than 100k

    locks dont need any more help on single target they had enough of it this xpac.
  7. Wigg Member

    First, Don't ask, but second, do you agree that a lock topping the parse means all the other 5 classes that can beat them are failing?

    On the 100k comment I mean on the parse overall. All because of procs. If they proced the same amount as me, it would be complete reverse. DO NOT GET ME WRONG, THAT IS NOT WHAT I AM ASKING FOR!!! I think wizy/lock should have an ability by either AAs or prestige that "double cast" their procs to put them even with summoners.
  8. Ghoabi New Member

    Warlock checking in. A lot of this post is rehashing some things in the thread that I agreed with, as well as my own observations - primarily from a raid perspective.

    Warlocks need significant assistance in the dps department, as they're losing ground to classes that offer more utility (Summoners for example), Wizards, and Scouts in general. Over time the gap will continue to widen due to the way some stats affect the classes (spell multi attack for example). What's worse though, is that Warlocks are no longer masters of any 'niche' of gameplay in particular, falling down further from top single target parsers and losing a lot of ground on AE parses - especially quick fights with 2-4 mobs. I wouldn't expect warlocks to win single target parses, except once in a while, but losing both single target and short ae fights routinely is unacceptable. Sometimes they're not even close (here's looking at you reckless SK in the mage group on 10-15s ae fights).

    The buff situation is out of hand too. It's been true for a while that Warlocks are neutered without UT, but it's getting worse over time. Sometimes I lose to a Necro that has TC while I have EV and UT. And a Conjuror with neither. They benefit more from my buffs (left side prestige spec + Miasma) than I do from their temps. Skill and gear are equal on all 3, but the tools available to the 3 classes are clearly out of balance. The Summoner prestige with CoE are particularly responsible for the imbalance in my opinion (or the underwhelming Warlock prestige - take your pick), but it's more complicated than just that alone.

    Compounding the issues even further is the fact that Warlocks are perhaps the class that depends most heavily on content being designed towards them - linked encounters. A class that has many blue AE abilities, won't suffer from a lack of linked encounters because they can just pull more and achieve the same result, but Warlocks don't have that luxury with our full arsenal of ae spells. We're stuck with the spells given to us and a lot of the greens are showing their age due to bad ratios (low base on Dark Nebula, long casting time on Absolution) and it's particularly disappointing to see the lack of encounter fights on raids throughout this expansion too.

    The impetus for input in this thread seems geared towards streamlining abilities rather than balance changes but as many have done, here are some suggestions for each, with several merely agreeing with previous ideas for added emphasis.

    In no particular order:

    Gift of Bertox - Make it a maintained spell with 5 TSO AA. It's nothing more than tedium to refresh a spell that's always up.

    Vacuum Field - Increase Duration to 60s.

    Netherrealm/Damnation and Curse of Darkness: reduce base cast time. It's not uncommon to 'lower' our dps on short fights as a result of trying to cast these temps and then missing out on time to cast damage spells.

    Absolution/Apocalypse/Rift: reduce base cast time to 3s (outside of the prestige benefits). Long cast time equates to bad ratios.

    Focused Casting: Remove the root component. This is problematic especially with so many new prestige buffs floating around. Trying to click them all off to try and cancel FC in an effort to move and avoid wiping the raid is irritating to say the least. At some point stacking issues with Timewarp will need to be addressed too. Perhaps an additional 50% to spell multi attack - or maybe some sort of curve, since opening the stacking can of worms probably would need to deal with passive spell multi attack from gear as well. This would make the spell less efficient than if used alone, but at least partial overlaps wouldn't be a waste of the effect.

    Temp pets: Given up on them being fixed, so I'm content with them being changed into other more useful spells at this point.

    Acid Storm and Broodlings: Just make them/it a blue dot with a mid range reuse (maybe 30s base?) and somewhere between Cataclysm and Blast of Devastation in terms of damage output.

    Netherlord: Awful spell, and warlocks don't need anything else to cast really, but it would be fine if it was some sort of self buff. Perhaps it'd be a maintained buff that changes cold and/or magic spells to poison, thus allowing for some of our temp procs to trigger more frequently.

    Sorc AA Tree pets: reuse/crit/hate reduction - Roll these into 1 pet? or improve/boost stat - all 3 are outdated. As are most of the AA in Sorc/Warlock tree, as others have pointed out.

    Proc rates: Both sorcs need help here. A boost to Thunderclap/Flames of Velious in terms of triggering procs as some have suggested won't resolve the issue entirely - especially if other classes with similar abilities eventually get boosts to procs with those similar spells. What's needed is a base proc rate increase to compensate for lack of pet/longer casting times. This could be added to the Sorc Pet aa as another passive effect.

    Aftershocks: Needs a substantial boost to dmg, either base dmg and/or proc rate (rate alone wouldn't be enough unless it could trigger multiple times from 1 spell hit on 1 mob). There was a suggestion that Volatility be changed, but I actually think it's fine as a situational utility tool. If a warlock is dps specced they wouldn't even need to consider taking Volatility as a Warlock tree endline if Aftershocks weren't so underwhelming.

    Nullmail: A lot of times it doesn't even trigger due to 1 shot kills (even with high end raid gear) - rather disappointing that it doesn't have say a 25-50% chance of saving from a death blow in addition to triggering the temp mit effect. The wizard equivalent, Mail of Frost, could benefit from the same change for the same reason.

    Dark Nebula: Base dmg increase badly needed on this spell and I'd also advocate turning it into a blue if one of the temp pets isn't reworked into a mid reuse blue (ie longer than Cataclysm but shorter than BoD).

    Agreeing w/ Daray on Sorc issues:
    Blast of Devasation: Just say no to cones. Make it a 360 degree blue.
    Thunderclap ranges: Relax the range requirement for the additional attacks. Or just get rid of them altogether.
    Mage Ranged weapons need a serious rethink in terms of dmg scaling.

    Apologies for lack colors, and late posting - mirrors my relative lack of faith in the pile of issues being addressed in an effective manner. Any change at this point is better than none of course, but this class needs more than just a minor tweak.
  9. Davngr Well-Known Member

    to recap what i think would help out:

    fix dumbfire pets (make them spells, immune to aoe anything really)
    make chanter pets immune to aoe (instead of giving 30% damage reduction prestige make it aoe immunity like shaman dog)
    turn the sorc(kos) WIS end line into a "preparation" like ability
  10. Bevz New Member

    Coercer:
    Please add to Peaceful link some sort of a damage proc - to make it more in par with illusionist's Synergism
  11. Estred Well-Known Member

    I just thought of something... well my guild said it actually. Was Mem-Shuffling implemented to give Illies a reason to use Illusory Allies to mess up the Hate-List before a shuffle so tanks are less likely to end up at the bottom... as they were just put there?
  12. Sebekian New Member

    I posted this in the wizard forums but since this is the place that the devs are looking at, I figured I'd repost my earlier post here as it's relevant to what's being discussed...

    Since the start of DOV. I was hoping COE would rebalance the mages as summoners have gotten a ridiculously massive boost to their overall dps (largely because of the double procing, pet sharing stats and the extremely high amount of HP that you can achieve in game now and all of their "life" based spells), while the wizards and warlocks haven't really gotten anything significant.

    EQ2 has always had a good distinction of "Tier" based DPS, which is based on the equation that "More utility = less DPS, and vice versa". Right now, the summoners have more utility: Conj: Shards/COH/Elemental Toxicity, Necro: Hearts/Res/Elemental Toxicity, more survivability, AND more DPS than most Sorcs in the game.

    Yes, the best wizards worldwide may be able to compete with them, but you shouldn't have to have very endgame gear to keep up with or outparse a summoner with similar gear, because they have a lot more usefulness in raid because of their utility. Their dps should be on par with Rogues (Brigand/Swashbuckler), NOT on par with Assassin/Ranger/Wizard/Warlock, because all 4 of these T1 dps classes have ZERO utility, nothing useful to bring to the table besides DPS.

    The summoners were complaining about being useless before DOV, but by "fixing" that problem, you've created the same problem and directed it at Sorcs. We have no utility and now do less DPS as well, so what good are we in raids?

    People have invested countless hours learning their class, studying it to become better so they can excel, and I'm one of those people. We also choose our class when we create a character based on the role we expect to play. Most people who choose a Sorc expect to be T1 dps and be right up there with the Assassin/Ranger in raids. Having to struggle against a class that already has far more utility and more often than not, getting outparsed by them at the same time is a massive slap in the face and goes against the whole reason for making a T1 dps class.

    It's been fairly difficult and stressful for wizards and warlocks because of the summoners doing more DPS than us AND also having more utility than us. A summoner should have to STRUGGLE to keep up with a Sorc or even get close to them because they have more utility and are supposed to be more of a hybrid than Sorcerors, not be beating them by 100-200K on average in parses without even having to use that many spells to achieve that end. Sorcs are INSANELY buff dependent and require everything to be timed almost perfectly, and then HOPE that our fusion, rays and other stuff resets its reuse timer, so a ton of luck is involved as well (as well as the Illusionist using time warp perfectly) to compete with the T1 scouts and summoners (which are supposed to be more utility/T2).

    I was really frustrated in DOV with this situation, and as I got closer to the end of the expansion, I was "SORT OF" gaining ground on our guild summoner(s), I had such high hopes that COE would put us back at the top where we're supposed to be (once again, because that's ALL we can do, ZERO utility), but instead it's made the Summoners even further ahead of us it seems. The wizard is a fairly challenging class to play well because we have such a large amount of spells that we have to deal with and also the cone AOEs while require a ton of positional accuracy while hope we don't get AOEd to death by the mobs.

    This is one of the big reasons that some players leave the game, you play a class for years and work hard learning it and being used to fill a certain role, then you pick your favorite classes for the expansion and boost them to obscene levels while leaving the rest of us in the dark to put up with it/try to play catch up.

    My suggestion to remedy the problem, either add something to the prestige line to give the Sorcs a massive boost in potency (much more than we have now) to increase our overall DPS significantly upwards of 20-30% to keep up with the T1 scouts and still outparse the summoners (as we're supposed to be able to do because they're part utility), OR cut down the amount of damage that lifeburn/soulburn and those type of spells achieve so that summoners are not so OP. There are so many spells and procs that increase max health, and more in line with brigands/swashbucklers like they should be. There are a lot of ways this could be achieved but the basic premise is either raise the Sorc dps output significantly or cut the Summoner dps output significantly.

    I am not giving up hope that you guys will maybe listen to us and start fixing things where they're broken and making a class almost obsolete, but maybe I'm just talking to a wall and hoping for no reason.

    TYPICAL DPS STANDINGS / WHERE THEY SHOULD BE/HAVE BEEN IN THE PAST AS PEOPLE EXPECT (AND ARE CERTAINLY NOT RIGHT NOW)

    HIGHER UTILITY EXPECTED DPS RATES
    Bard/Enchanter/Healer T2.5 - T3
    Fighter/Rogue/Summoner T2 - T2.5
    Reckless Fighter T1.5 - T2
    Predator/Beastlord/Sorceror T1 - T2

    I have a feeling a lot of the devs also test based on the highest end guilds worldwide, and this isn't necessarily a good thing to do because 99% of the worldwide population of people who raid are NOT in those guilds and don't have access to that level of gear, this should be compensated for in all cases.


    Thanks for listening,
    -Seb
  13. Servalion New Member

    Hello, Brigand main with KoS-era Warlock alt chiming in. Figured I'd get some input in before this thread's locked later. I'm pleased to see how many are voicing their opinions in this thread, especially how many posts mention the dumbfires. I think the time has come for something to be done. Either make Dumbfires useful again, or do away with them entirely into something new.

    That said, I've had serious concern for my Warlock. I can't seem to excel at anything with him compared to anyone or anything else. It would seem their situation is truely as dire as many posters here indicate. For it to drive Mogrim away after all these years is indeed telling! One of the primary issues I've seen is one a few here have made note of through individual spells, but not as a summarized whole - Sorcerer slow casting speed no longer seems justifed. In the days of old, it was there as a way of balance, and then it made sense. Now its the biggest handicap we've got. Slower casting locks us in a rut that holds us back. Even worse, Warlocks are highly dependent on Acid & Dark Pyre to make the most of what we -can- do. Therefore, to keep up on various fights, we have to ignore at least half of our attack options, just to keep the two going.

    What once made me enjoy the warlock was being the AoE king. What's killing me about the class nowadays is nearly too much to list. I feel like a fat slug slogging behind every other finger wiggler. Oh god, where to begin....

    Warlocks (probably Wizards too) - A huge amount of our issue is simply being too slow to the punch. On trash, we take too long to set up if we include personal buffs and trash is often dead by the time we're ready to attack. Once again, to do something, many options must be forgotten to get to the punch. What Sorcerers need is, at the very least, considerably faster base casting speed (by like at least 50% of what they currently are) on most, if not all our spells to compete with Chanters & Summoners, and some buffs or reactives just need their casting speed removed.

    Dissolve - This is the only class I've ever known that must IGNORE their "Quick Strike" ability to maintain proper rotation. In truth, its anything but quick. Suggest 70-85% Cast Time reduction on this one. Major surgery needed on this one.
    Encase - 20% damage boost, 50-70% cast time reduction. Still somewhat situational but maybe, maybe gets used sometimes now.
    Flames of Velious - 50% Cast Time reduction, maybe cut back a bit on the recast time too.
    Distortion - Used to be the big single target hit. Its been a good while since I've used it regularly. Needs a damage boost of an undetermined amount, maybe 15%. Really needs a cast time reduction, by at least 60%.
    Dark Infestation - Used to be cool. So cool. Ridiculous that its left out of rotation to rot, but its ridiculous why too. Quick fix would be to keep the dot going after it procs the Broodlings. That should be a simple matter. How to make the "Broodlings" useful again is another issue altogether. I'm no fool, I've given up on dumbfire dreams long ago. I'd be fine if say, instead of broodlings, the proc effect on the dot simply procced more damage while the initial DoT part kept going. Strong emphasis on "DoT part kept going".
    Mage Master Strike - Reduce Cast Time by like 75% across the board, for all mages. Just let 'em sling it out.
    Thunderclap - Nothing wrong with this or Bewilderment, besides the Heroic AA's range requirement. We really shouldn't be encouraging clothies to risk eating AoEs under most circumstances just to do DPS. They're not Rangers. I'd say just remove the range requirement and there's another problem out of the way.
    Gift of Bertoxxulous - Ghoabi thought of a better solution for this than I would have come up with. I'd love to have this be a persistant buff somehow. One less thing to prepare with each fight, really.
    Vacuum Field - Ghoabi said 60s duration for that one. That'd be generous IMO, but we need longer durations on quite a few of our abilities (more on that in a bit), so 60 seconds makes sense. Also, slash the cast time in half.
    Aura of Void - Cut Cast Time by 50%, maybe add a 4th proc.
    Apocalypse - Can we all agree that its time to at least allow up to 8 enemies affected on this one? Really, its time.
    Absolution - Two separate focus effects for the same spell just shows that it needed both, and neither were enough. Cut the cast time further. I wanna envision this as 2.5 base casting speed, maybe 2.0 if we're lucky. More damage would be nice, but probably overkill.
    Dark Nebula - Again, faster cast time. Down to 2.0s, maybe 1.5 seconds.
    Rift - Needs big help. Chop its recast down to 1m, at least. Bring down to 2.5s Cast Time. Maybe boost damage as well, but I figure Rift with maxed Spell Reuse/Casting Speed mods would start to improve significantly on its own.
    Dark Siphoning - Cut Cast Time down to 1.5 seconds.
    Blast of Devastation - I'm with Ghoabi on this one again, but I'd settle for a compromise - Blue 180 degree frontal? Less cones, more half circles, imo.
    Netherrealm/Damnation and Curse of Darkness - Another good point from Ghoabi, but I wanna go a step further - make them all instant cast. I, like others, have tried utilizing them in battle, and the longer you're getting them on, the more it hurts you. Heck, they'll even conflict with each other. If I cast Curse of Darkness first, then the others, I'll already be like 3-4 seconds into Curse of Darkness, effectively having wasted 4 of its 13 seconds. Make us take AAs to make them instant cast with 5 points if that's what it takes.
    Netherlord - Something needs to be done here. Just wish I knew what. I don't know if Warlocks actually used this much when (if) it was actually decent, that was before I made one. Perhaps turn this one into a new Blue AoE for us. 15s recast, 1.5s Cast Speed, maybe have it do 15% more damage than Cataclysm's totaled DoT damage in one go in Disease damage. The trick here is make the AoE go off from our target, and not us. A mini-Dark Aggravation, if you will. A bio-bomb AoE.
    Acid Storm - Man, this was awesome in KoS for a little while, until its unfortunate nerf (well, ok, all dumbfires got hit for some reason, and were never the same) Reduce Cast Time to 1.5s. Turn this into a buff that keeps Acid Storm visibly over you. When you attack mobs while Acid Storm is on you, it spreads to over their heads and stays there until it expires or they die. It is no longer a dumbfire, but a noxious detriment effect. The kicker is, make each tick add stacks of damage with a slight Noxious mitigation debuff, so the damage just keeps rising higher as it goes on, like Acid and Dark Pyre. Even if its effect is wiped off a named, another spell hit while Acid Storm is up will just start the chain up again.

    Speaking of which,
    Acid & Dark Pyre - Why am I not surprised no one brought this up. Little wonder. No one dares try to address the deadlock these two put us all in, lest we suffer a nerf and no one ends up happy. Yet the short recast AAs grant us for these two strongly limit what we can cast. Still, we've been living through these abilities for years, its too late to change that. The important thing is that these stay as is, and yet widen the rotation without harming the DPS either of these put out. To do this, they need more ticks. Not faster ticks, just more. A longer duration by having the ticks continue on for a longer period. Base duration on Acid for instance is 18 seconds with initial damage + tick +7 ticks afterwards. I'd suggest that to be like initial damage +tick +18 ticks afterwards. However long that lasts, 42 seconds or so. This would end up being like 9-12 seconds somewhere after AAs and stuff. To keep it from becoming OP, cut off the AA damage increase per tick after the 9th tick. This would be the damage attained on the final tick with Troub's UT today, right?

    If done right, this could buff Acid & Dark Pyre in multiple ways:
    1. Dependance on UT would be almost nil.
    2. Acid & Dark Pyre going for almost 2.5 times longer duration, while doing max damage during the 2nd half.
    3. Far less time consumed recasting it.
    4. Grants Warlocks unprecedented freedom to cast whatever we want. Or greatly widen the rotation, whatever.

    I know loads of you are about ready to send me to my maker for even bringing these up, but we're not the only class with an issue like this. Who knows, a similar solution like this could work for them too. What makes a Warlock fun for me is being effective while not being restricted, in a form. I would hope the freedom of speed and more options could be at least the start of saving this once great class.

    I'd delve into AAs, but others have said what I would, and its 4am. I gotta stop here, or there'll be no sleep had. Godspeed, fellows, and good luck.
  14. Mystere Member

    This is not quite true. Assassins are topping parses but, oh wait, they have BOTH hate transfer and HP debuff. They are also almost always in a double healer MT group, meaning they either don't die or if they do, the rest of the raid also dies. Meaning in almost all cases you can only live as much as they do, and far more often you get to dirtnap while they continue to autoattack their way to the top of the parse.

    I've never been in a raid where there was not a conjuror and/or necro in the history of my 8 years playing this game and where their utility was not useful, so this seems to me to have been a "problem" that never needed a fix.

    You touched on an important point here. I have said before that I think SOE likes to feature "flavor(s) of the expansion" where one class gets boosted out of balance, perhaps as a way to mix things up and keep things 'exciting' or keep people playing by getting them to try a new class. In my experience more people have quit over frustration with this exact issue than have picked up the new "flavor".

    Let's keep it simple
    T1: predator, sorcerer
    T2: summoner, rogue, feral BL, reckless tank
    T3: chanter, bard, spiritual BL, defensive tank
    T4: healer

    I think the next GU is a perfect opportunity to address class balance and at least partly bring DPS tiers back to where they should be via small tweaks here and there.

    I think the sorcerer and especially the wizard is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, DPS classes to play well because of the massive dependency on ideal conditions as well as buffs from other raiders. I enjoy the challenge, but sometimes too much is just too ******* much. Think you're about to unleash Fiery Blast? Umm, no, you just got stunned/ stifled/ interrupted/ mezzed/ feared/ charmed/ knocked-back/ one-shotted. Think you're about to Manaburn? Not so much, you just got manadrained.... again, and again, and again. Think you're about to lay the hurt down on a bunch of adds with an E'Ci? Nice try, but your current target just died. Try again, slowpoke. Oh wait, they're all dead now. Think staring down a mob's bu##crack is enough to Fusion or Blast? Sorry, "no targets in range", friend. Think you're about to Hellfire a mob? Wrong, your current target doesn't have Incineration on it, sucka!

    /wrist
  15. Dinwiz Active Member


    okay lol i see the problem with your warlock

    1) he spec right side = fail. ill tell him to spec left side later today.
    2) from what ive seen mac is bad and clueless on his mage , unlike rat which know what he doing for long time
    was raiding with mac warlock few months back in beast mode with my healer alt , hope he installed act finally and stopped asking for parses after every pull

    btw grats on new ppl <3 Emmee Juniperann Truebee and dramaz whatever toon he got there :p

    dont think there are any decent warlocks in butcherblock after nukeitdead left tbh.

    and i wasnt clear , i meant locks topping of the 4 t1 mage dps , tho mostly they are real close to scouts and sometimes even parse a bit higher.
  16. Loldawg Member

    i love all the talk about summoner utility. there is very little utility to playing a summoner, it's basically a dps class. how we get there is different from sorcs but the usefulness still is based on our ability to dps. sorcs have their own "utility" like group proc, healing / mana regen abilities, hate transfers (minimal but more than summoner), and stoneskin death save (null mail).
  17. Konc3pt Active Member

    If you really do plan on doing anything for the wizard class, I strongly implore you to read everything Daray suggested. He's one of the few who truly understands the class, and he keeps balance in mind.
  18. Mentin Member

    Umm.. when we are talking utility we are talking about the ability to positively affect _other_ players. Wizards have no ability to affect the healing/manaregen/survivability/stats of other players. In fact wizards are one of the few classes with no raidwide buff, I suppose we are assumed to have 'raidwide' dps ;). Wizards do have a small hate transfer and some small group only damage procs.

    Can't say how it is for warlocks though.

    Compare that to summoners uber raidwide buff, manaregen clickies, Elemental Toxicity damage proc and group stoneskin...
  19. Loldawg Member

    summoners raid wide buff is the only important utility the class provides. the group damage procs sorcs provide are in many cases far more powerful than et. things like dark siphoning can provide a lot of power and health back to the group, so its not that they dont' have abilities that don't help others in their group or raid. conj group stoneskin is worthless in raids with the constant low level ticks of damage, plus the fact that it only protects from hits less than 50%.

    the point of this thread is not which class to nerf, it's what abilities / mechanics make playing the game annoying. when i'm playing my sorc, it's the frontal cone blasts that never hit even if the mob is standing right in front of me. that and having to joust so close in to get some of my hardest hitting spells off.
  20. Leucippus Member

    All instant cast abilities need to be castable while using other abilities. Currently, some are and some are not. The ones that are not are not truly instant cast; their cast time is equal to one's spell lag. The heroic opportunity starter is the first example to come to mind. The sorcorer AA Freehand Sorcery is another.

    Spell autoattack needs to turn on at the completion of casting a spell. Currently, it turns on at the start of casting a spell, which prevent pulling with an AoE ability. For example, pulling with a root should have the root land first, then spell auto-attack fire.

    Spell autoattack damage is far too low compared to melee autoattack.

    It should be user configurable if any given ability toggles on/off or not when it is recast before it expires.

    The healer mercenary AI is so horrific that it reflects poorly on SoE's ability to create a quality product. These mercenaries need to first cure and second heal, always. As it is, they like to stand around and to nothing. I have had them rez me, but not cure me! If you want to make them less powerful, do it by adjusting the recast and cast time on their abilities; do not do what is currently done by making their AI moronic. This situation make mercenaries far more useful to priest classes than fighters, mages, and scouts.

    Heroic opportunities need to scale in power such that they are useful again. They made the game more interesting. Also, there needs to be a scout start, mage complete heroic opportunity; there exists none currently. Also #1, heroic opportunity spell highlighting should work properly with macros. Aso #2, AA abilities should be able to complete heroic opportunities.

    All AA abilities that modify casting speed, recovery speed, and reuse speed need to affect the _base_ ability. As it is, AAs that modify those three are completely worthless for end game mages and priests, for they are already at the hard cap. This situation has two effects: (1) effectively, mages and priests loose AA as they level. (2) group buffs that modify those abilities have no effect on mages and priests, throwing grouping with those classes out-of-balance compared to scouts and fighters, which do not (yet) hit those hard caps.

    AA abilities need to have a "mastery" associated, so the appropriate player combat skill affects them. (distruption, ordination, piercing, ranged, etc.)

    The spell descriptions are missing two key items: average casting dps (average damage divided by the sum of (cast time plus recovery time)), and continuous dps (average damage divided by the sum of (casting time plus reuse time). This infomation is used to pick the most dps intensive DPS (or HPS or taunt-per-second) spell to pick at any particular instant. It is far hard for a (new) player to know (or to be taught) which spell to cast when; this change would help with that situation. Also, it would be nice if the spell that currently had the highest average casting dps were highlighted on the hotbar, similar how heroic opportuity highlighting works, assuming no macro :(. (That feature should behave when using macros too.)

    In general, there are far too many spells and abilities. In general, do not have AA introduce new abilities similar to existing abilities; instead, modify the similar ability.
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