Conjuror Issues - GU:66

Discussion in 'Mages' started by Aniathor, Jun 5, 2013.

  1. Aniathor Member

    I want to start this out by saying that my intentions for posting today is not nerfing any class, or restoring the effortless imbalance between sorcerers and summoners, but rather to fix known issues, and allow Conjurors to at least be more competitive and viable in a raid force.

    Prestige and AA Issues:
    • Planar Conjurations and Planar Dominator (Prestige Conversion stats) DO NOT benefit our pets. This is not limited to primary, but also includes our dumbfire pets. At this point in the game I do not see why all of our prestige, aa, and gear stat enhancements do not share 100% with our pets (stamina/hp aside)
    • There are very few classes/subclasses that can say that an entire side of their prestige is completely useless. Unfortunately, Conjuror is one of them. Conjure elements does not proc enough, and the fact that it is dispelled after one trigger will never make it viable. I enjoy being able to change specs according to the fight at hand on other classes, but there is never a situation where specing all the way down the left side for a Conjuror would be better than right side of prestige. It just seems like a waste of development time if it will never get used.
    • Offensive Onslaught is still completely useless in the Conjuror line of our shadow tree. It does not enhance any spell stats for our mage pet, or the potency for the offensive stance, which the only reason people even use the stance to begin with. Why are there still 100% useless enhancements to our pet stances?
    Dumbfire Issues (Not Limited to Conjuror):
    • Communion, Aqueous Swarm, and Roaring Flames stop attacking once the target they were initially cast on dies, often leaving much of their duration wasted and out of control of the summoner . They should be controllable just as our primary pets, in that they will continue to attack what we command them to attack for the duration of the spell.
    • The only thing that should be able to damage a dumbfire pet is a direct auto attack, because many times spells that are cast on the entire raid, directly (I.E. 4 well Drinal Elemental/Nox effects) render them useless. They should also be immune to taunts... we cannot control them. Their hit rates were adjusted accordingly, and they are immune to aoes, but they still lack the HP/MIT to combat against detriments like I previously mentioned. Considering they are they bread and butter of a Conjuror's parse these days, why should any given encounter prevent us from effectively using them?
    • This entire GU is very movement oriented, and all pet classes appreciate the adjustments made for summoning primary pets. On the same notion, dumbfires, for all classes, should be able to be cast while moving. Their casting times are ridiculously long (in some cases), and their very nature encourages them to be cast early in an encounter. If we could cast them as we position ourselves in an encounter, the vast amount of spells we have to cast at the beginning of every fight could be more appropriately timed.
    Balancing Issue:
    I simply do not know how else to put this other than, "In the status quo, If you are not an absolute professional at playing a summoner, any avg sorcerer is a better choice than you in a raid."
    The notion of a useless class these days is absurd to me. If anyone thinks that summoner utility justifies the gap of DPS potential between summoner and sorcerers they need to change the batteries in their calculator. Fixing the things I mentioned above would be a nice start, but the fact remains, that until all pets share 100% live stats with their masters, things will remain unbalanced. We have been asking for this for years, and get it in bits and pieces but it is never fully executed.
    Pixilicious, Jofe and Kazz like this.
  2. Tabri Well-Known Member

    I hear people say all the time the conjurer is SUPPOSED TO BE tier 2 dps, ummm NO originally the conjurer was tier 1 dps when first put into the game. Why are we supposed to be tier 2 as people think? Well let me begin.

    1. Conjurer was put into the game as all classes but they were blasting everything into oblivion so the dev(I will not mention name and no longer works for SOE) was upset because the conjurer class killed stuff faster than the assassin, this certain dev didnt like that because he played an assassin in game, everyone else was griping also so NERF #1 to the conjurer. Back then I didnt care anyway as I didnt know what I was doing really.

    2. Up until I think KOS we played our scout pets they actually withstood damage and did some pretty high dps SOE decides not to balance them with new changes and there goes our scout pets permanently never used again.

    3. NERF #2 PVP is put into the game now everyone playing PVP cries and whines that the conjurer is too powerful so SOE decides to not only nerf conjurers on PVP but then again on the PVE servers also, boy was I happy(sarcasm).

    4. To make up for the nerfs SOE did the right thing finally and through time added soulburn and EB and shared group procs etc we were back to tier 1 dps where we belonged in my opinion.

    5. Newest update due to mage forum feedbacks where SOE said they were just making fun changes not balancing changes(lies), once again everyone saying that old expression over and over again " Conjurer is supposed to be tier 2 dps" NERF#3 HERE WE GO AGAIN.

    I still parse first for the most part through all this mess I have had to adjust every time and work harder or easier depending on circumstance, now back to working harder again. If I dont parse first its usually due to a lot of deaths and now I cant make up for dying as easy again or I do lag on certain encounters but that may be my problem.

    I agree with everything you say though but as far as SOE listening well I can only hope and say thanks for bringing all this up so that they can at least see it, now whether they do anything thats a different story but at least you put it all out there.

    I have news for everyone though the conjurer was originally supposed to be TIER 1 dps thank you very much.
  3. Aniathor Member

    I'm not saying we should be t1, or equal dps to sorcs/preds, but it would be nice if we were more competitive.

    I would rather focus on the specific issues at hand than what tier of dps we are, because that varies for every class depending on the encounter.
  4. Chronus Active Member

    Does EV add potency to the pet yet? That should happen, even though sorcerers will still likely remain the better target for it.

    There is some utility that both summoners still provide but it is pretty minimal and they should at least be very close in dps to sorcerers all things equal.
  5. Daray Well-Known Member

    The whole T1/2 DPS tiers based on perceived utility is obsolete. Sorcerers can bring as much utility to the group as summoners.

    I know I mentioned this in the other thread, but the inconvenient truth people like to overlook is the contribution that single target buffs provide those that receive them. Strip away the single target buffs from the equation (TC/UT/EV/Bolster in the case of this mage comparison) and the discepancies pretty much vanish.

    As you already alluded to earlier, pet stat sharing mechanics are broken and that is a problem. I don't know why all of the pet's damage-modifying attributes aren't locked directly to the values of the owner (barring health/power I guess). You are getting screwed on your conversions, and until the above happens, summoners will rarely be viable alternatives for buffs like EV.

    I suppose the single-target buff issue could then be further mitigated, by switching them to group / target group. Either way, don't underestimate how much DPS sorcerers are getting via those buffs.
  6. Laiina Well-Known Member

    Summoners, and to some extent all mages, have the same kind of pet issues. I don't really want my dumbfire pets going after random mobs, but they SHOULD work off of the Assist option, same as main pet. The issue with Communion has been around forever, where they kill the mob and then stand around looking stupid even though other mobs are being attacked. It seems to me that it would not be hard to at least make the dumb pets work with assist.

    As far as stances go, I am not even sure they really do anything at all of any importance. I have done a dozen or so dummy tests, and though those are far from perfect, I could see no real significant difference between Defensive, Offensive, and No stance. There may be a difference, but if so it is well within the statistical noise of other random factors.

    All of those things you mentioned are real issues, but the one that bugs me the most is the poor pet survivability, no matter what stance I choose, or how many times I cast the de-hates. I really cannot understand how my pet can be pulling agro over a Wizzy that is doing 2-3x the dps of my pet. Summoner pets are a huge part of our dps, yet unlike any other class (perhaps Beastlords??) yet they have no real hate reduction mechanics.
  7. Tabri Well-Known Member

    I put a short history of the conjurer and used the terms that people use only in my post but that aside your changes need to be put into effect in my opinion. I lose dps when running up to the named mobs in raid zones by having to first get into place then cast the dumbfires it would be much better if I could be casting them before I get into place I agree. Also dumbfires splat pretty fast I noticed if not timed correctly with the ae's, they are supposed to make up for the pet shared procs lost right? They do okay I think if they live, but also if they would attack more than the one mob that you aim them at till their timer runs out in the encounter that would make it more logical.

    I dont have pet aggro issues unless Im crazy and EB before the mobs are in place. Laiina I saw your spec you have nothing in pet dethreat on your AA line I am sure that makes a huge difference, just saying. You are also putting AA into Antagonize I dont even have this on my hotkeys, low level defensive haven gives your pet more health for Soulburns otherwise both are pretty useless actually. Maybe you dont raid and feed you do not need Reanimate but if you are losing your pet a lot that helps tons and so does dimensional storage.

    Hopefully they will make the changes.
    Enymac likes this.
  8. Jofe Member

    -Another issue is that several of our main spells do not Proc damage because they function as pet spells even though the summoner cast them. Elemental Blast, Shockwave, BA, EU, Soulburn, Planeshift and Communion. There is a lot of cast time where the summoner isn't procing from spells.

    -We also have a whole array of spells for keeping the pet alive that do not proc damage. Pet maintenance is an overall loss of DPS that sorcerers don't have to deal with.

    -100% shared stats with the pets will not fully fix the gap with sorcerers because the pet spells do not do enough damage to matter unless you add HP to the equation. When you add stats to the pet (minus HP), you only increase the damage of the 6 main spells and the 3 AA spells it cast. All other spells function off the Conjuror's stats and cast/recovery times. Last night my pet only produced 18.8% of the total damage for my conjuror with those 9 spells. The pet gets no other damage credited towards him since the pet doesn't actually use it's cast/recovery time for it. Also, since planeshift is actually cast by the summoner you could credit the benefit the pet got from it back to the summoner. The pets DO NOT do a huge part of our dps, but they can cost us a huge part if they die because of spell mechanics and recast time. I feel that 100% shared stats should include HP's.

    -Broken pets ( I have a thread running on this already)
  9. Leetch Member

    On the topic on conjuror issues, I've noticed that the swarm pets are not critting 100% of the time. Given they are now our highest source of damage not critting 100% is a massive nerf. Looking at pirate kings raid logs and I see all my main spells crit 100% yet the swarm pets don't. How is this even possible unless crit chance is not shared?

    I've also run something like a DC group instance and seen the swarm pets not crit 100% of the time.

    Is crit chance just not sharing properly?

    FYI my unbuffed crit chance is 455%.
  10. Laiina Well-Known Member

    I have been trying out the Planar Armor + Offensive stance spec to see how it works, so far with mixed results. The pet seems to do a lot better on some direct attacks, but on the other hand it seems to get targeted more, so still not sure which way to go on the AA line. I used Reanimate for a long time, I may have to go back to it.

    Obviously the real problem is that we don't have many good ways to lower pet hate, which seems to be more of an issue now than it was before CoE.
  11. Blumfield Member

    Aniathor makes very valid points in his complaints about prestige and AAs. As for the complaints about the dumbfire pets, I must respectfully disagree on the first and third point. I like not being able to move when I cast them, and I like that I have to pick my targets carefully when I cast dumbfires. It adds needed complexity to the game. I would actually prefer it if you made conjuror even more difficult to play because I get bored easily. Challenge is great--dumb things that don't work (e.g. that to which Aniathor alludes on prestige/aa) are not great. Thank you for your consideration!
  12. Laiina Well-Known Member

    I don't really have moving and casting the dumb pets very high on my priority list - the main ones are that they still die pretty easy, and they go hibernate after the initial targeted mob is dead.
  13. Aniathor Member

    I couldn't agree more about your tier'd DPS point, which is why I recommended that this thread be focused on specific problems at hand, not balancing dps into tiers.

    I also do not like the idea of striping TC/UT/EV/Bolster/Jcap/Animal Form/and the list goes on... from the classes that benefit from them the most. One of my favorite things about playing conjuror pre GU was that we made use out of grp procs more effectively than anyone which allowed the ST buffs to go to the sorcs/preds without any arguments. It leaves us in a conundrum because admittedly, summoners effortlessly procing their way to victory was in no way fair or even fun, but now we will struggle with balance unless we can still be competitive without ST buffs, which is the way it should be.
    Enymac likes this.
  14. Aniathor Member


    You do realize that your tool tip for elemental blast is lying to you, because it reads as being modified by your stats, but in truth it is modified but your pet's? You also realize that the same stats that are not shared with your primary pet are not sharing with your dumbfire pets? I certainly would hope that dumbfires + EB + the spells you mentioned did more than 19% of your outgoing. There are literally dozens of single target, and group buffs which do not fully share, and generic mage enhancements like increased base dmg from Aptitude of the Theuregist which do not effect our pets! 100% shared live stats, would help us a lot more than you realize.

    In regards to you already having a running thread on broken pets, it is titled, " Summoner Scout/Fighter/Healer Pets Broken" and the problem with that is, no one who actually raids on a summoner cares about their scout/fighter/ or healer pet, which is probably why it isn't getting any attention. I am focusing on class imbalances concerning people who are trying to do dps.
    Pixilicious and Enymac like this.
  15. Xelgad Developer

    We're currently planning to reduce the importance of ST buffs by providing character advancement options (including items) that give the benefits of those buffs without stacking with them. Obviously, having the buffs would allow players to spec/gear such that they are stronger with them, but their effect would be much more limited.

    This is all a ways off (and plans may change), but I'd be interested to hear feedback on the idea.
    Enymac, Aniathor and Twyxx like this.
  16. Eileithia Active Member


    Out of curiosity, how do you see this working? Using JCap just as an example. Would every Scout/Mage class have the ability to get a permanent version via Class Traits/AAs, or would it be by some extremely rare war rune/clicky? If this effect is relatively easy to get, would it not nullify the use of the buff? Or would the buff be reworked to some new effect that has benefit, basically putting us right back to where we are now only even more powerful? If it's extremely rare, then again, what's the difference from what we have now?

    The overall concept is interesting, but taking it too far could potentially remove the need for a couple support classes. Would these support classes have their damage substantially increased to compensate as their actual support role is diminished?

    Would need way more information on the thought process / implementation to provide any significant feedback. I'm personally not opposed to the idea, but it needs to be implemented in a way that doesn't either completely remove the need for support roles, or spend a ton of time developing it to only make us reliant on a completely different set of buffs basically providing no change from the current situation.
  17. Buffrat Well-Known Member


    Potential to be really cool. This game has really become about what buffs you get, not what buttons you press in what order (at least for scouts, as long as you're pressing buttons fast enough you're winning. Mages at least have a priority and aren't pressing every button on their hotbars as it pops up).


    Don't forget to give scouts a UT option!~
    Twyxx likes this.
  18. Twyxx Well-Known Member

    I'm glad you guys are thinking in this direction. I've posted several times about how un-balancing st buffs can be. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I like the idea of being able to spec into some of the buffs if you're unlikely to get them in raid.

    Like right now if you're a rogue and you have preds in raid you're unlikely to get the reuse buffs they are as the preds can do more with them. If the rogue were able to spec into a jcap buff then the disparity between the haves and have-nots would be mitigated some. The st buff would still be valuable as the pred wouldn't have to spec for it and they could choose to put their points into something else. Gotta be careful how you do it, but the idea has good potential.

    I'm sure people will have some good input on this. Might be better to start a thread outside of conj to get more general attention/response.
  19. Aniathor Member

    I personally think that if implemented correctly, this Idea could work, and in fact, has worked in the past. In the case of necromancers, the addition of accelerated decay aided in weening them of their dependence of UT. On the same token this change could also prove to have opposite effects. There are undeniable similarities between the Sorcerer Heroic end line Sanguine Sacrifice and Enchanted Vigor ( + Potency based on int, at the cost of HP for sanguine / - power and hp for EV). Bolster has made Saguine incredible because it vastly improves the sorcerer's int making the endline that much more powerful, all while sorcerers also remain the best targets for EV. I love the idea that certain ST buffs benefit certain classes in ways that they cannot others, but you guys need to make sure that also you consider that by giving " the benefits of those buffs without stacking with them" to all classes, not accidentally double the effectiveness of endlines or abilities for only a few classes. I doubt that anything in regards to sanguine was an accident, but I think my point is pretty simple.

    The inclination of this idea sort of pokes at class specific effects on gear, WHICH IS NOT A BAD THING! but the problem is that the "class specific effects" need to be fully thought out and balanced. I hate to add insult to injury, but the Drunder Mythical Cloaks were a completely unbalanced fiasco, and still remain that way today, no one wants to see such imbalance on an item that could potentially be class defining again. Extremely powerful items are great, but they are not so great when they are powerful for some classes and 100% worthless for others.

    As most of us know, Conjurors are more so than ever dependent on Time Warp. Something I ranted about was how our Drunder mythical cloaks should have been 8 seconds of 100% pet spell double cast, not 8 seconds of 100% pet dmg reduction. This would have been in no way over powered considering a grp buff that is cast once a min gives everyone in the grp the same effect, and would have aided in eliminating our dependence on time warp for those times we cannot always be grouped with an illusionist, or the one we are grouped with is dead, or out of range. I know it is rather late now to be making changes to Mythical cloaks again, but it's simple ideas like this that have been completely overlooked in the past which makes me nervous about the ideas the dev team may have for itemization with the intention of reducing the need for ST buffing in the future.

    Bar none, SoE's most powerful tool for information lays within its players... please listen to us, especially ones that have been with you guys for the better part of a decade! I do appreciate the attention here Xelgad, thanks again for the response and request for feedback on your idea.
    Pixilicious likes this.
  20. Daray Well-Known Member

    Potentially interesting, but without details it is hard to offer much in the way of useful feedback. New character advancement options are always welcome (as long as they scale with future character growth - pet peeve).

    Bit wary about the not stacking with existing buffs - initial thoughts would be that existing ST buffs should be toned down and then opened up to affecting more people at once - and then allowed to stack with those proposed advancement options.