I'd like to see an honest discussion of the issues between coercers and illusionists as well as our issues as a class (enchanters) I know it's a stretch to expect people to post with any semblance of objectivity due to the recent nerfs of coercers and the mad levels of subclass jealousy right now, but what the hell... it's worth a shot! Anyway, IMO... BOTH subclasses are in need of some help but coercers probably moreso. I say probably because most of the posts I've seen so far ranting about the differences between coercers and illusionists contain fallacies and half-truths that make it very difficult to honestly compare the two. i.e. the recent nerf to coercer power regen. Coercer's complain that Insight regens 53/tick and their clarity only regens 40/tick. I've not seen any coercers state clearly whether this 40/tick value is based on actual in combat regen value or if that's simply based on the spell description. The Spell description for all of our power regens is hosed up in my experience. IIRC Fozzin's says it gives a regen of like 27 and yet in game testing out of combat yielded a regen of about 33. Again, IIRC, the spell description for insight says 40/tick but out of combat testing is where the 53/tick value was coming from. So, it would be very helpful if people could post actual in and out of combat regen values for these spells to get an accurate idea of whether or not coercer power regen is indeed significantly lower than illusionists or not. MEZ: I think Illusionists are pretty solid here but do agree with coercer concerns that they are not. Illus get 2 mezzes, one of which can be cast on the run. IMHO, coercers should get a second short duration mez similar to illusionists lvl 40 mez -OR- make their one mez extremely hard, if not impossible, to resist. One way or another, there should be parity between the two as far as crowd control goes and I must admit that Illusionists clearly have the upper hand in this area right now. PowerDrains: IMHO, there's a pretty decent balance in this area right now. Illusionists Speechless is very powerful in an xp group setting but does not work on raid level mobs (x2 or higher ^^^) Coercers on the other hand take longer to drain a mob but at least have the ability to do so on these mobs and also have the ability to stifle the mob which in an xp group is just as good since your typical xp mob doesn't live long enough to really need to be drained fully, just keep it from performing those special attacks! At the high end of things I can't personally comment. Does Mind Drain work on ^^^ mobs? If not then coercers clearly have the advantage in raid situations whereas illusionists dominate xp group situations. I'm not all that familiar with Coercers drains so I can't and won't comment further than that. Haste: Illusionists get better haste but single target, coercers is group but less. Really, who cares? Haste does not affect special attacks and thus it's relative value to overall DPS of any melee is minor. A 10-15% raw haste difference is going to be cut down to 5% or less in overall DPS. I don't see the point in worrying about it unless some major changes are made to how haste works. Utility: Invis specifically. Group Invis rocks, I won't lie and say it's marginally useful. It comes in handy quite often. Coercers get the shaft here which COULD be ok if there were other things working in their favor but there really aren't. One solution I can think of aside from just copying the spell between the two, is to give Coercer's a second high level invis that is castable on others, uses 1 concentration, and can be maintained on as many ppl as you have conc slots. In some ways this would make Coercer invis superior to Illusionist invis, for example if Bob breaks invis ONLY bob appears and the rest of the group stays invis, whereas Illusionists either have everyone invis or nobody. More of a hassle for the coercer, but a safer invis in return. DPS: Hugely open for debate here on what should be done to which subclass. IMO, both need upgrades and balance is very much dependant on how SOE decides to implement them. i.e. Are illusionists supposed to be stronger AE and Coercers stronger Single Target DD? Should one class be more reliant on DoTs while the other uses DD? I've not really looked into the spells each has and compared them and I've not had a chance to group with a coercer and parse our relative DPS output, so I'll leave this area wide open for others to comment on. I do feel this is the area we both need the most help in order to balance us overall against other casters and so on.
You win we lose congratulations... Nothing can be done - Coercers is now Illusionist "super-light" once more llusionist hit thier 40s coercers will gone completely
Being jealous of our DPS is like Syrians being jealous of the great Human Rights they have in China. We're both next to useless when it comes to DPS. Enchanters have the lowest DPS of any class. (Am I wrong? I think I'm right.) In EQ1, this was justified. We were Gods and Goddesses due to our powerful mez. In EQ2 this is not the case. Our mez is marginally useful. Most people, even in their high 40s, don't know how to play with it. People would rather use their powerful AEs than live. Tanks will run over and taunt mobs with their autoattack on no matter how many times you tell them it's mezzed. And why not? MOST of the time this strategy works fine. MOST of the time Mez is just something nice.. or worse, it slows down XPs because they can't AE. Before a few patches ago, this was fine too. One speechless and the mobs power was sucked dry. Not the case anymore. On reasonably powerful mobs it takes multiple casts to drain it. Most of the time, the mobs health goes down faster than it's mana. And as for our breezes, very powerful with a very high price. Anytime someone agros a mob, it runs straight to us. I can't count how many times I've died because the wizard or the healer just stood a little too far back and got an add. Mez it all you like but a tank will "help" you by taunting with autoattack on and kill you. So since our crowd control is weak and our mana regen ability is balanced by random instant death, maybe we should get some DPS, as a class. Both Illusionist and Coercer subclasses. As mages, shouldn't we nuke harder than healers? After all, you can't have a group without a healer. Their specialty IS more important than ours. Shouldn't we nuke harder than tanks? You can't have a good group without a tank. Shouldn't we be weaker than any other mage or scout, but stronger than any tank or healer?
If you name for me single area where coercer at least even with Illusionist I am open to hear Enchanter class based on 3 major areas CC - needed during raiding, irrelavant in the end game grouping most of time DPS - always needed Untility - nice perks So please enlight me is any single area there coercer come even close to abilities of Illusionists DPS - Illusionist far superior compare our "ultimate" AE attack Coercer 191 power 80-110 damage per target up to 5 targets Illusionist 200 power 4 wave around 135 damage up to 5 targets Need I continue here? CC - Illusionist far superior here - 2 independed mez lines, 1 can be casted on the run give you ability lock 2X more mob in 2X less time Coercer have single mez line and I yet to see situation then I been mezed/stifle and needed to cast Mez. But I always have is multiple interuptions then I am trying to mez target under melee or magic attack Utility Coercer have Annoing Damenator+15% agro buff that on papper looks good but in reality it work only with regular melee attack specials not affected Synegetic Link 5% chance to give ~80-133 mental DD proc for melee (if not resisted) Root that supose to reduce melee damage - but target rooted are out of melee damage and if someone melee attack rooted target it brakes Long duration single target stun with power drain over time ... 14s stun nice, power drain over time nice but combine this 2 effects and you'll get [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot]ty spell because now this stun cannt be use for CC in conjuction with Mez and worst of all if its used in conjuction with root it cause mob teleport on top of you and keep doing it no matter where you go or run Our Power drain actually drain power from Coercer (cost ~200 power give back ~55 (74 at master 1 but have 25% chance to resist) not from mob - your devitalizing stare accorind to Vurin cost 59 power and drain about as much as Devouring toughts Our Mind Eye - is useless - it take 8 min out of 10 to regenerate amout of power it cost to cast We have single target invis that cannt be cast on more then 1 person at time Our group haste lvl48 provide SAME haste as our lvl 30 haste (37% Adept 3 lvl 48 haste and 36% haste Adept 1 lvl 30 haste) and cost 2X more power Our ward spell provide 42 power ward at lvl 50 and mental resistance ... well I guess it crucial lol to resist nuke from mob enchanters (like they can harm anyone lol) Our stats buff int+agi the only good one We had 1 spell that was fun for short while to play - Beguile ... last patch even this spell been stealth nerfed next lvl of Fluffy spells Look what you want to discuss here? Coercer class need total rewamp or at least oppotunity to roll into Illusionist of equal lvl
Tanatus, your bile is aimed in the wrong direction. Quit trying to tear us down and start trying to get BOTH of us improved. (edit: grammar) Message Edited by ThePixiest on 03-09-2005 10:32 AM
Pix you are not reading that I am posting ... Thanks to Mayo Coercer class now broken beiond reparation... 2 option remain thou a) Allow all coercer roll into illsionists and allow ppl keep current lvl and simply remove coercer class from the game (noone even notice that) b) COMPLETELY rewamp coercer class c) I dont see how and where Illusionist need any fixes aside of slight boost of DPS may be
Tanatus, I think most of us would like to see both classes improve. I know you think you're broken and probably you are but you certainly have "Grass is Greener" syndrome. I don't know who Mayo is or what he did, but your venom toward us seems to be based on whatever it was. Just remember, we're not all Mayo. In fact, only Mayo is Mayo. So please, stop ripping on all of us. As it is, I'm probably going to hang up my robe for good in 2.1 levels when I hit 50. I'm too close to quit now, but playing my illusionist is just making me unhappy. I'd go do tradeskills until things are fixed, but... I'm an alchemist.
As long as we're rerolling, I want to reroll my illusionist into Tanatus' fantastical notions of that class. And Tanatus criticising Mayo is simply hilarious. They're so similar in their postings, they could have been separated at birth. Both of them spend far too much time posting erroneous information about classes they don't play. Calling for nerfs is never a good practice, and "he started it" is childish.
Tanatus, would you care to add something of substance to the discussion? [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot]ing about how Illus >>> Coercer doesn't do a thing to help fix the problem(s). I offered what I thought were reasonable suggestions to boost the Coercer class to be more in line with Illusionists and noted that I think BOTH classes need DPS help, although I didn't go into much detail in that area because I think there is a lot of room to adjust either class and I simply didn't have the time to really analyze it yet. You say that Mayo single handedly got coercers nerfed into uselessness and your reaction is to emulate his strategy of essentially crying for a nerf of illusionists. Pot, Kettle? IMO, regen probably did need to be fixed for coercers BUT there were and are still a number of other things that coercers need upgraded. SOE, in their infinite wisdom, decided to nerf first fix later. That's par for the course and I can very much empathize with the pissed off coercers for that reason. What I can't empathize with is this vindictive attitude so many coercers now have. [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot]ing about problems is useless if you don't have a solution to offer. Granted, [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot]ing about broken spells is within reason. The solution is self evident; Fix what is broken. Balancing classes is not so straightforward though and you seem to be missing that point. You post here about all your broken spells and your regen nerf as if they are the same thing, and then sum up by saying that they need to let you all reroll as illusionists... ????? As many have pointed out, enchanters are one of the least played classes in the game. If you further break us down into subclasses our voices are miniscule. If we can reach some reasonable agreement on what needs to be done to each class then perhaps we might get some attention. Message Edited by Sciek on 03-09-2005 12:25 PM
Sciek any lvl 43 illusionist nowdays can replace on a raid 2 lvl 50 coercers so to speak.... Look what you gona fix about totaly broken class? As I saidas it stands now if I would given a chance reroll into lvl 50 illusionist I'd do it w/o second tought because Illusionis might need tiny adjuctment in DPS department but that's all rest of your spells just fine heck even your fluffy pet been fixed The only area where coercers as subclass of enchanter class had upper hand over illusionist was power regeneraion its gone gone now we suck it up but in conjuction with it our charm was nerfed back to lvl of fluffy spell. I dont give a danm what Illusionist do - the only reason why most of coercer created thier chars was Beguile single and class defining spell and SOE in thier infinitive wisdom kept that spell broken for FOUR month since release then it be fixed and worked anyhow for about 1 week then again it back to a stage of totaly useless spell So what tell me what you gona improve for coercer and yet preserve integrity of game balance and class uniquness? Nukes? - well it will be step on toe of Wizards and Warlocks Dots? - well may be if SOE would triple damage and keep power cost same Beguile - sorry its not in the Vision (tm) and its just been nerfed Mez? - Illusionists start whining about steping on thier toe as champions of crowed control Untility - we have none that crucial for raiding or grouping So tell me where YOU see role of coercer and why it should fun for ME to play that role
Was Beguile nerfed, or was it broken? It's silly if coercers have a lesser charm than troubadors. Given that every live update breaks many, many spells, that may be the case with Beguile.
Also, I keep seeing these rants about how Illusionist AE is so much more powerful than Coercer AE. Why is it that Single Target DDs are never a factor in these discussions? I'd like to know how the two classes stack up in ALL DPS areas. Restricting the discussion to one scenario is hardly an honest comparison. This is the type of thing that makes so many of either class disregard these comparisons. Yes, illusionists have better AE. I think we can all admit that. How about single target DD? How do the two stack up in that area? I know that at lvl 43 my single target DPS is pretty much pathetic. If the group is melee heavy and I put Intensity on everyone along with keeping Withering Hope up at all times while completing HOs so that the damage credit goes to me, I can almost keep up with a lazy scout (who incidentally are also badly in need of some help IMO). If the group has a wizard or warlock in it, the fights are over so quickly that my DoTs don't have time to run, let alone get those procs in from wither hope or intensity. Likewise, chances are the smart wiz/warlock will be getting at least half the HOs that I would have gotten otherwise and thus my DPS falls like a rock, but I feel some small comfort in knowing that the HO damage they get from any solo HOs is at least partially my doing since I triggered them at least. ;-) The one group power regen you cited as taking 8 of 10 mins to pay for itself. Is that 8 of 10 mins for YOU to regain enough mana to get a net positive or 8 of 10 ticks for the GROUP to regain enough mana to get a net positive. If the former, then you are being rather misleading implying that it's not worth casting. How does this stack up against an illusionist who has to cast Insight 6 times instead of one clarity?
Yet another well thought out post which is thrown off track by the ravings of Tanatus. The OP asked for constructive comments from Coercers... that is the opposite of what your posts provide. -Myrid
Oghier History of Beguile is here... Coercer get 1 and only 1 charm spell at lvl 37.6. Since release for over 5 months beguile was doing nothing (litterally) - it was simply instantly brake or work for about 1 or 2 second just enouth to bug encounter into no loot mode. 2 weeks ago beguile was stealthy fixed (joy of all coercers) we discussed how it work. Beguile had pratically fixed duration of 36s (sometime it would brake early but still even 24-25s was not that bad). Beguile was working on any encounters that not cons 2 arrow up and above. So to speak it was follow normal spell resistance progression ... Aka was not much trouble charming even and blue cons, yellows had slight lvl of resistance, orange and above were resisting charm like mad (normal imo). Charm had some annoing things attached to it - first mob upon braking lose kept all group buffs (including power regeneration, mental resistance buffs, hp buffs, haste ... ect you named it), second if you attempt to dispell those buffs on mob instead you would dispell all buffs on own group. Result? - you never able recharm same pet ever because it carried our mental buffs... Anyhow even with this 2 obviously bugged options charm was usuable... Now what happend after latest patch - Beguile stealthy got nerfed (again was no any information about changes in Beguile) First and foremost we lost ability to charm 1 arrow up mobs (the only real worth while pets btw) and ....(I still need test this 1 more time) charm got a cap - at lvl 50 any mobs above lvl 45 now immune to charm no matter regular con, undercon, arrow up or what not. And of course none of previous issue's been fixed... I can live with short duration charm np, heck I can even live with lvl cap on charm as long as I would have ability recharm my former pet
may i ask, i heard all our (illusionist) power drain and stuns dont work on ^^^ mob no matter what level the spell is, even at master? while coercers' stifle/stun work on them?
I did tell you where I see the role of the coercer, in my very first post. I gave suggestions as to how I think they should adjust several Coercer abilities to bring them up to snuff with their Illusionist counterparts, excluding DPS for reasons I also noted above. You seem to have ignored that completely though and chose to simply rant about how unfair everything is.
Tanutus, these guys are right. You need to take a few steps back and NOT become what we all hated in Mayo so much. Just because you know what your talking about doesn't mean you are saying in a way that is agreeable. As a coercer, I find myself wishing you would not be so vocal at times as I fear it hurts our collective credibility. To the OP, I do not think coercer's silence actually stifles high level mobs, but does stick the power drain (which is nigh worthless at 35 a tick). Additionally, this could be a bug that goes either way....i.e. the spell is not supposed to stick at all, OR it is supposed to stick and stifle and therefore be slightly better in the endgame that the illusionists. I chose a coercer because I perceived them as being the more raid-centric of the two enchanter choices. I knew full well what I was giving up for the extra power regen. Now that it has been nerfed so badly, I find myself asking "what is the benefit of choosing coercer over illusionist?". I just don't see it anymore. I will say that illusionists as a community have a long way to go in repairing the image Mayo has now built for you. While you may not like what Tanatus has to say or how he says it, you have to understand where the angst is coming from. Next time one of your own starts a mess like this, be very careful how much you egg them on. I can't help but think if some of you shut this guy up on your own forums, we would not be dealing with this "snap judgement" nerf. Hell, SoE didn't even get the names right of the coercer spells that were nerfed. You think there was any research done? And if you haven't noticed already, I have nothing against illusionists at all; my problem is just with the one a**hole. Cyene
And I thought this was gonna be an intelligent discussion of class balance.... oh well T is here.. thats thrown out the window. Its not some contest. Most of us want a well balanced game with all classes wanted and playable. I couldnt agree more that coercers power regen being reduced was a mistake. I have no idea if it was a mistaken decision or just a mistake, and the spells were broken. The patch notes make no sense when it dealt with these spells. Minds eye has no illusionist equivalent, so it coulnt be set on-par with illusionist spells. And the patch notes said coercer power reduction was reduced, and illusionist power regen was reduced, but it seems both subclasses power regen was reduced. We really need some dev input on this. There are just too many mistakes to get any clear idea of what was intended. I pretty much agree with how the OP sees things. I would like to see some coercer INTELLIGENT input. No more whining. State the problem and a solution please. Dont relate individual points to an illusionist. Relate the class as a whole. I understand that things arent balanced at the moment, but I feel sorry for any dev trying to pull some useful info out of many of these posts.
You forgot the stun superiority on your list. (Illusionists are way ahead, in all fields, especially short casting time stuns and area stuns are nice)
Area stuns suck. But I agree we had an advantage. Something is better than nothing. A 3 second stun on a 5 mob encounter is exactly like a 3 second stun on a single mob encounter. The problem is it takes nearly 3 seconds to cast ( waste of time) and costs more than a single target. Our short casting stun is one that we both recieve. Stupefy. We never get an update for it. Im not sure if you guys ( coercers) do. How effective is your stun + hate reduction line? The only real superiority I see on the stun side is our( illusionists) stun does not power drain ( and therefore can be used in conjunction with mez). Coercers take a big hit in that respect. Otherwise, it seems pretty balanced ( depending on the usefulness of your stun + hate reduction line).
