Prepared Defenses is a joke compared to even the purple adorns. And for whatever reason someone decided that having two purples with wards would be too unbalancing so we have diminishing returns for stacking at 24k vs 15k. A groupwide 15k-30k ward that is up once every 22.5s only when landing when a mob is below 50% is barely worth timing. Even if the - below 50%- condition were removed why would I want to give up stoneskins when I've got a purple pulsing 2667 in wards with a 24K ceiling groupwide all the time? Others might have stacked their gear differently but I'm sure no one in the game has a 500K Prepared Defenses. If that were true it would be all over this forum and the devs would be rushing to nerf it in a hotfix. _ _ _ In raids when you need the ward from Prepared Defenses (up all the time when raid mob under 50%) is a rounding error. The lack of it doesn't cause a failure and the presence of it doesn't cause a - "pressed divine guidance and took a ninja bio and nobody died during a raid... true story" - like I was first taught about Divine Guidance a few expansion packs ago. Both prestige endlines need to powerful enough to let an Inquisitor go to the fridge if that is what they want to do. I'm certain whoever is in charge of balance is saying.. well we want them to build their characters a certain way with diminishing returns, etc. .... Soon you're going to have to nerf the Red Scale like you did the ring from NHT as it is hands down one of the most powerful healer items in the game I've seen as a non-shaman. The raid drops from Molten Pools or No Quarter that scale off of the number of people present don't seem as powerful to me. I've tried to give AoM a fair shake without the Red Scale long enough. Prestige Left side needs to be more akin to Guardian Sphere and the Right Side needs to be on par with the Red Scale power or be % based so you don't have to tweak it 3 years from now if AoM is the new normal on 'engagement'. 5/8 _ _ _
No matter where most of the others here stand on Left or Right prestige we can all agree Right Side is weak compared to item alternatives and has significant limitations to when it will apply and limited value when it does. That I choose not to take it in AoM like I refused to spec for equilibirum in Siren's Grotto... you know because the Devs designed content that required clerics use equilibrium for easy solo heals....is more of a sign that other parts of your itemization and mechanics are out of whack. Right side for healing just doesn't matter anymore given what EQ2 did in AoM. _ _ _ If I specced Right Side instead of Left it wouldn't give me ToV group/raid carrying abilities in AoM. It's not like I can use the Scales of Justice for 10 min blessing and have a groupwide effect that persists through wipes. Miracles don't give T1 DPS classes EOF overpowering Wrath of the Burning Prince capacity. Even Final Judgement could still be relevant if it was 50% of mob's health heroic and 5% raid instead of 50% of casters health in damage. 500K damage from a 1 million hit point character? I've got a Master's Strike that does way more than that. The 30s immunity would be fine to stay and then I'd actually have a use for all that spare stuff. I can't use miracles and blessings or potions to cover for being on the short end of the encounter design stick. _ _ _ Only those stoneskins and reflects on the left side push the balance of encounters but in AoM it's everyone going splat rather than a person or two I can pre-stoneskin in real time. I just can't change targets that fast while chain healing the pulse damage at the same time. The power proc isn't enough to notice (just like shards and hearts) given the inflation and EQ2 should do itself a favor and look for all aspects of the game that don't have % based or scaling abilities that have been tossed overboard and either remove them or modify them. Obsolete AA, miracles, blessings, etc. are also on that list. 6/8 _ _ _
EQ2 Mechanics and Itemization Team - Inflate our hitpoints so 55,500 point ward per person per second with immunities for 12s every 2 min means nothing, nerf the Red Scale like the NHT ring, or make it so Prepared Defenses is ALMOST that good for 30s and can be recast every 22.5. Prepared Defenses I would actually pick: No 50% rule, 22.5s recast, 30s Ward the strength of Inquisition that scales like Fanatic's Inspiration without deflating every expansion pack. Bonus points if the same immunities on the Red Scale carry over for 15s of the 30s of Prepared Defenses. Immunity to disarm would also be a welcome feature for tanks who are all to often on the wrong side of - not allowed to press buttons - in encounters. And by strength of Inquisition I mean that Divine Waters is more enabling than Inquisition just like Divine Guidance is more enabling than Malevolent Diatribe so whatever Inquisition is as a DOT heal in effectiveness the Ward of Prepared Defenses should 'feel' about that powerful. DW will carry the last name pulse damage in ROM on its own, Inquisition needs help. That kind of feel. Since only Raid comments warrant reading from the Mechanics team - You know Zebrun the Torso? Prepared Defenses should 'turn the tide' for the group as a solo healer if everyone has 150K resists. Afterall, if the raid can down it to 50 to begin with easily obviously Prepared Defenses didn't really matter since it wasn't even part of the equation yet. Yet if that raid force is on the edge of heal capacity to begin with and can't get it to 50% one would be wasting their time speccing for it for heals since you'll not get the help when you need it most. At the start... _ _ _ Make either endline let me tell stories of how I - "ninja bio'd during a raid while X was up and nobody died...true story" - about pressing either. 7/8 _ _ _
If the layered web of mechanics that evolved since my buddy asked to be moved way back when is too complex the mechanics subgroup could always create groupwide potions as powerful as the gnostic regeneration (ticks ~200K every 3s for 30s) and the gnostic health (basically a full heal at a million+) I use on my tank. I don't usually make this strong of a complaint on mechanics but players undergeared (or not) die when a 200K tick heal is available for 30s every 90s from a nearly free consumable that they can keep up strategically - 33% of the time - while the mechanics team and the encounter design team try to see what boundaries they can push with priests? Why isn't a purple adorn (or cyan) that awesome? AoM can be alot more like Diablo III with heal potions if everyone in the group made a point to do that it's just the aggregate hasn't felt the need yet. In EQ2 when players die they look at the healer and rarely contemplate self-sufficient alternative solutions to assist mechanically challenged sub-types. 8/8 _ _ _
The problem in 2004 was that there wasn't six 'classes' (omit channeler for the moment) with interchangeable abilities so that the Devs didn't have to balance damage around reactive, ward, and dot heals as distinct entities. Each has their strong point and play style but creating content that feels challenging but not overwhelming for each type every expansion has been nigh impossible. AoM has almost placed us to the point where every sub-type has means to /lean into the other types with adorns or abilities. A class crunch won't happen as long as the lights are on but a housecleaning of outdated abilities needs to be done just like the spells were 'normalized' from low level to high level and then named incrementally as well. This rats nests of band-aids on band-aids at a later date was why my buddy asked to be moved. He could see it coming and if I recall correctly I did say why not do whatever it would take to % based everything or trigger (i.e. stoneskins, etc.) to combat rate balanced for non% things but I might as well have been suggesting the game be Free to Play and have the ability to buy spells from SOE. Wait, I did ask for those things way back then but EQ2 definitely isn't F2P and we certainly can't buy spells from SOE directly because the raiders on the forums would /ragequit and the game would go under since EQ2's only value is to watch the ACT parses and perform a dance competition to break our loot pinatas a few nights a week hoping this week I get the reeses cup instead of the min-snickers bar. Throw in some epic drama over who gets said reeses cup or who was off half a step during the dance off and call it a day. 1/3 _ _ _
The spell normalization and rename was necessary and happened. This has made that part of the game 100x easier for Devs to manage. The AA and bonus abilities have had their season of creative innovation and now it's time to have a shakeout and see which things stay. Do skill and stat debuffs matter? Make a decision. If Devs are afraid of NGEing EQ2... they do it every time they raise the level cap and knock us back through inflation anyways. Cutting out the excess in 26 class AA/prestige/etc. alternate paths isn't an NGE. Allowing direct access to cross-archetype abilities would be an NGE. Cutting out the need to spend a horde of AA to get the ones we want or taking the time to generalize ones that were inflated out of relevance wouldn't be. This isn't EQN but it doesn't have to be this sloppy. I'm generally happy with the game and it is better than it ever has been for more of the playerbase than ever... but I'm stating that it is extremely inefficient to plan to do what has been done so far... indefinitely into the future. 2/3 _ _ _
Don't worry about your players quitting. Worry about your Developers and Coders. Isn't the Choir of T'Vyl on the fritz and we've got a red updating us with their code searching for the issues on the zone in another sub-forum? _ _ _ I've got to ask why isn't the person(s) who directly coded that script the ones looking into it? If it was written in August and everyone forgot what they coded the former lead Programmer needs to crack the whip as even my elementary Fortan 95 skills taught me the value of excessive comments. If I hand people my laughably elementary coding and am told - "Wow that's efficient..." it's 98% because the comments force me to ensure I know where all the recursive pitfalls and possible variable declaration errors might be. Comments should be used like a running journal so that anyone that comes in behind you (or you yourself at a later date) won't have to reverse engineer what happened. I don't dig ditches twice and the red looking into Choir Event is wasting their time. Let the zone go and focus on the next expansion pack and make sure things change in house so you don't have to pick up the pieces after the fact. That one zone isn't worth your time. Raid zones for those who just raid that are Choir buggy? That's worth your time. _ _ _ 2c: EQ2 needs a mechanics streamline in the next few years so your minion devs don't run for the hills... 3/3 _ _ _
Smite, do you know that purple runes and red scale's ward can't crit and more over they are not affected by your stats. Unlike Prepared defenses. Today I had the new highest ward from it-882k. Usually it's around 300-400k. I don't realy want to coment on the rest of your assumptions, but I agree with one thing-50% trashold should be removed. It's the outdated mechanic. Then it will be in line with Repent: Templars have 2 ml+ single target ward on 15 seconds cd, we have 2 ml+ group ward on 22 sec cd. And then it will help us to cover gaps between Waters and Inquisition.
You sure wrote a lot of words up there. Do people actually use Descent or Empyrean Lands? Every healer I've talked to since coming back have told me to explicitly avoid them, and grab things like Obol, Animus, Bolstered Attributes, Split-Second Salvation, Foundations, Truespirit, Endurance, the immunities for specific fights, Screams, and probably a few other options I am forgetting. The fact that the ward and heal don't scale really turns me off of them. It feels like there are a thousand better choices at any given moment.
I did qualify from my experience. I didn't see those numbers back in November and didn't stick around long enough to see if they changed. I'm only getting 30K from my prepared defenses and I'm 4/4 green'd out with basically 1100 crit self buffed with a potion. I just checked.
Can confirm prepared defenses easily does 300-400k ward. Even heroic geared it frequently is in the 500-600k range. Considering the alternative (left side) it's a no brainer for me taking prepared.
A few quick things. 30-50k ability mod on an inquisitor is an absolute and complete waste. keep it under 15k and reforge elsewhere. And to say prepared defenses is a joke is in itself a joke. As for the original question about ticking damage, divine waters/alleviation/divivne guidance/inquisition are all your friends. And don't go overboard on Potency, keep Pot/CB pretty close.
I have seen prepared defenses over 800k on many occaisions, and always over 300... and yeah as many people have said, ability mod over 15kish is mostly wasted as an inq. There is a school of thought saying a crit bonus or potency cloak/belt is best to maximize healing potential, but imo with practiced, uplifting, and amplified procs fairly available to raiders, the potency off of a cloak is a drop in the bucket compared to being able to cap your flurry with a belt, cloak and ear. As someone mentioned earlier, reactive ticks are mostly not that effective against ticking dots. The primary point to casting malevolent diatribe is for the group heal on termination, and yes that seems crappy to me too. Right now the only way inquisitors get by is cycling divine guidance, divine waters, inquisition, and spamming alleviation. Pro tip: cooldowns line up best if you start the rotation with either dw or inquisition, because they have shorter cooldowns and will be back up by the time you cycle through all 3. Eventually there will be a gap because of dg's longer cooldown; those gaps can be covered with our long recast emergency reactive, equilibrium, rodcet nife's miracle devout healing (20 second group heal, works best on a tank). Other than cycling temps, the best tip i can offer is acknowledge the fact that inquisitors are terrible right now and you simply dont have good tools for some fights. Compensate the hard way by figuring out how often the dot ticks, counting down in your head, and trying to precast alleviation to land right after the dot ticks, while refreshing temps in between. Ideally do this in melee range where possible, so you can get some free help from battle dressing now and then. And on fights with light damage, let your temps and battle dressing worry about the heals, enjoy curing faster than everybody else, and dps your little inquisitor heart out!
Great thoughts Soteria. I do enjoy seeing my group cured before everybody else. Especially on a fight that a detriment is double nasty.
I enjoy being good at this class, yeah. Are you enjoying your 50k ability mod? Btw for heals your ability mod caps at like 10k lol. So good job.
You being good at your class helped the op exactly Z E R O. Yeah you can advise him to get more flurry even tho he cant even keep his grp alive. Yeah you could tell him to reforge more out of re-use on one item and ability casting speed on another just to reforge into it again. Yeah 50k is definitely a bit over the board, but I went Templar and I need a bit more than your 10k. I like how helpful you were, seeing how you took your time to check the OP gear and made suggestions to impove. Good job bro! Im sure if you advice him now to drop his potency down to 500 like you did and go even more melee he will have less trouble keeping his group alive
