So right now, Conjs and Necros have superior utility to other mages, and still compete with the rest of T1 dps without even getting single target buffs. Warlocks struggle to keep pace, even with UT. So what changes? This has the feeling of Warlocks likely gain nothing, while other classes start getting TC and/or UT. Result? The viability gap widens. Add this onto the potential (I anticipate) that the proposed stat consolidation will result in gear stats shifting to have more in the realm of worthless spell weapon stats and less of the extremely important (for sorcs) ability mod, and Warlocks are going to be in danger of falling below T2 dps as well. I'm really unhappy with the direction of things lately. Unhappy with what feels like the intentional ignoring of Warlocks, and unhappy that many of the proposed changes give me the gut feeling of more nerfs or boosts to everyone ELSE. I see lots of parses everyday from high-end guilds that show Reckless tanks, Swashies, and Brigands competing with and beating Warlocks who I know are solid quality. Not to mention that Wizards are doubtlessly significantly more powerful than Warlocks, and this is starting to get out of hand. I don't know what to do anymore. I posted a lot of feedback with tons of ideas hoping someone would grab a few and give us balance... and all I see are things that are going to likely cause us more trouble.
One big issue I see with moving some things to equipment is that more and more class buffs become irrelevant - this has already happened to a large extent with J-cap for example. Gear and adorn stats are so high now that some buffs and the like do nothing because some stats are already at or over cap. The same thing has happened on mob debuffs, especially in a raid where the mob is often debuffed to the max already. It might be time to take a look at the whole issue of buffs/debuffs not just for mages, but for all classes.
Well I don't like the idea of reducing the need for certain classes in raid. At the same time this could get some better options for raid set up. So I have a couple of options that are easily play tested and coded. Crafted Temp items can be used over half the coding is in place so you can expedite this fasters and it can easily be balanced due to limitations. There are some craft adornments that are temporary that add a crit chance to a weapon for a period of time. These date back a few expansions. You can use the coding for this and change the affect and create the appropriate stacking IF statements that the affect will not stack with a particular ST(Single target) buff. For balance issues and a desire to make the real class a superior option, you can make these about 10 to 30 percent weaker. So let's say you want the time compression buff, but you are not going to get it. Instead you use your temporary adornment of Enymac's Temporal Enchantment to gain 3.5 percent double spell cast and extra casting speed and recovery and reuse. (Yes I gave myself naming rights...pfffftttt) Some of these can be more expensive to make needing a T10 rare or special drop. Price can be a limiting factor so it is not abused You can make a lesser class of temp adorns that do little things, but are made from normal items. Let's say your illy doesn't like to share synergism or Coercer Peaceful Link. You could use your temporary adornment of Xelgad's Synergal Link and gain a proc and a dehate proc. (It would also be nice if this stuff transfered to pets as well.) This also might help certain classes who don't understand how to spec for de-hate. (Yes I named it after Xelgad because I am kissing butt.) You could copy the focus effect of Inquest. So you can get a 2 percent flurry or double spell cast. You could call it Aniathor's Inquisition. (Ok, I like a lot of what Aniathor post and does for summoners so I named it after him.) There could be a greater hate gaining temp adorn a lesser hate gaining temp adorn that does not stack with the Dirges or Coercers hate gain respectively. This will help those raid days when the Dirges are a no-show or you need a tank in a group with a troubador. The advantage of this, is you give crafters more things that are useful to make and help the player base. Since chances are you could only use these temp adorns on a symbol or range item or weapon slot. It prevents drastic balance issues of somebody putting something on every slot they can. (God knows I would. I would twinkle with all those shiny temp adornments. FYI this is where the word twink came from.) The cost of the temporary adorn can also make it a little prohibited as well as its reduced affect so hopefully people would prefer the class over the temp adornment
n Nice catch on EB,, totally forgot about it even though I cast planeshift to get higher EB's.. brainfart. I still do not count all the damage from EB towards the pet because of cast/recovery times from the summoner, , but since it uses the pets stats, any damage improvements from shared stats would be counted towards the pet. Test dumbfire pets to be sure about stat sharing,, Dumbfire pets use the Summoners Casting/Recovery/Reuse timers. Stripped all gear and used Arcane Minion from AA's to verify. On the test I stripped all crit chance from the pet and summoner, "took off all gear and dropped crit chance AA's",, naturally the dumbfires and the pet itself no longer crit. I then Planeshift the pet to add the 76% crit chance to the pet and 30 pot,,,, the pet started crittig and EB crit but the Dumbfire pets did not crit at all on several test of this.. Also, at such a low level of stats there should have been a noticeable damage difference when the pet is planeshift if the dumbfire's shared the stats of the pet and there was not any differences in damage over many tests.From these test, I do not feel that Dumbfire pets share the stats of the pet. Still testing to see if Dumbfire pets are not benefiting from other buffs that the summoner gets. Broken pets comment,, I know there isn't a lot of movement on the other pets, but if the scout pet was fixed to put out as much damage as the mage it would be a viable option for single targets fights, since it has much more HP then the mage for higher Soulburn's. This would concern those raiders who are trying to get more DPS as you mentioned.
I'll readily admit I'm not a conjuror, though I do play bst a bit, as well as illusionist, but this seems a chance to throw out a thought here. EQ2 has shifted dramatically since times past in depending on abilities to being heavily autoattack/autopew damage based, and it seems most of the oomph from these buffs basically comes from shifting damage boost back towards using abilities.. but not because of the abilities themselves, but as much due to tacked on damage. This idea would open up things to many characters who aren't ideally buffed, and could certailny level the playing field, but is it really the team's desire to have each and every player have to do a bunch of micromanaging to find and sort out what is their perfect proc set? Would it not be wise to perhaps give a second look at the character's abilities and spells themselves, which seem to have fallen quite by the wayside in terms of progression in damage, etc.? Mind you, I'm sure many people (myself included) enjoy the thought of reading up on procs, searching through item list drops, and crunching what they do or don't need, but that's a task that lies entirely outside the game for that part, and it may not appeal to many due to that. If the team's desire is to push DPS and player capability heavily into the direction of relying on specific item procs, which seems already to be partially the case except in the form of buffs, then it could work, but as others have pointed out that presents a two fold problem: Those buffs then become marginal/undesired/mediocre, or end up changing somehow to make them desirable again, thus defeating the initial purpose of the changes. The damage progression in EQ2 has changed a lot and I think it'd be excellent for the team to *really* think of what they wanna push players too. It's especially noticeable at lower levels now where a single scout's autoattack takes a quarter of most heroic mobs' health, while stealthed stabs and such do a fraction of that, it really highlights the shift. It's odd to find oneself more excited about multiattack stat stacking than about cool abilities!
Sorry, I see what your saying Aniathor about the dumbfiire pets. When factoring in the loss of buffs on the dumbfire pets, It looks like the 100% shared stats would be much more benefit then I was thinking.
Of all of the ideas in this thread, 100% shared stats w/ pets is the one that I wish SOE would implement. It means gear, ST buffs, and anything else we can do to improve our character will actually have meaning to our overall potential. It sucks knowing that some buff or adornment is only 50% as helpful for us vs. everyone else. It kind of makes you feel like second class. I'd be interested in seeing how ST buffs could be made available in other ways, but I also have concerns for support classes, that their role becomes marginalized. There would need to be a change for them, either in group buffs or other support related abilities to compensate.
Mogrim, this is perhaps the most inaccurate thing I have ever read from you. How exactly is Summoner utility superior to other mages? Because it is not. When both of the sorcs are 200-500k above me on the parse, I hardly call that "competing with the rest of t1 dps". I would gladly challenge ANY other conjuror to compete with me, or our sorcs, and they would see the same results... get absolutely crushed. Although I typically land around 3rd-4th overall zone wide raiding (sometimes 2nd, sometimes 5th), we are no where near as competitive as we once were. I'm not saying that warlocks do not need class adjustments as well, because I personally think they are equally deserving when compared to wizards. Also, a few other people mentioned that Xelgad's idea would reduce the need for utility classes in raid, upsetting them, and causing the next apocalypse, and I firmly disagree. I hardly see how Xelgad's Idea is trivializing utility classes by allowing abilities that resemble their single target buffs to be added to items/aa. There is still plenty of other utility and duties that they have to fulfill in a raid setting. If people think that utility classes are simply there to just put a ST buff of a few people and /afk they are sadly mistaken. If anything, I would think utility classes with those single target buffs would enjoy this idea because maybe they would get to see some of these buff's benefits on their own character for a change.
If class A and class B do roughly the same dps without any ST buffs, but class A makes better use of ST buffs so always gets them and therefore is always parsing higher, I really dont see a problem. I'm sure I will be accused saying this because I'm an assassin, but I really feel like choosing who to put ST buffs on is one of the many intricacies of this game that I wouldn't want to see oversimplified into oblivion. It should matter who is being buffed. It SEEMS like summoners do in fact compete with sorcs currently for dps, if you dont take ST buffs into account. Of course, the sorcs are getting those buffs, so yeah they are higher on the parse. But thats the buff not the class. Maybe thats just my experience though. Class balance should be done before ST buffs are accounted for. Not with them already assumed to be on someone.
A lot of people try to justify comments like that by pretending that Illusionists and Coercers aren't part of the Mage archetype. Edit: to avoid confusion, I'm referring to Mogrim's comments, not Aniathor's.
The problem here isn't really about the core of what each class is capable of on there own, it's how each class makes use of utility. Sorcs and Predators are undoubtedly better targets for ST buffs, regardless if they are parsing more or even less just because these buffs are 100% effective on them (they don't have pets which gain nothing from the buffs), and in some cases enhance specific abilities to levels which do not compare to anyone else (Bolster + Sanguine for example). Untill GU66, summoners made use of group dmg procs to compensate for their lack of ST buffing. Nothing, other than dumbfires was done to compensate for this loss, and it is simply not enough when other DPS got prestige enhancements and dumbfires as well.
And to avoid confusion about what I said, "How exactly is Summoner utility superior to sorcerer's? Because it is not."
Summoner utility is better that Sorcerer utility in that the combination of versatility, aggro split, stoneskins/heals/rez/hearts/shards/feign death/call/elemental tox/max health debfuff outpaces what Wizards and Warlocks offer. Conj's and Necros are right next to Warlocks while Conj's and Necros are unbuffed. I have a major issue with that. An unbuffed Warlock is not even worth bringing to raid, but a Conj and Necro can fill a 3rd spot in a mage group extremely effectively. You're losing to Sorcs only on account of buff disparity. Remove buff disparity and Warlocks are in fourth for mage dps, and won't be close to the top three. That is my issue. I'm against fixes that'll put Warlocks at a disadvantage when we're in a position of needing some love.
Yeah, that's generally been my experience from various early morning avatar raids that our utility / shamans don't show up on - it can go either way, but by small margins. It seems, at least from my perspective, rather balanced without ST buffs. The debate atm seems to focus on how you can make ST buffs fairer to all. The obvious answer is to make them not be single target. Which is the way it should be - you can't really balance around the expectation of certain classes getting certain/all the buffs, because then that becomes required - and then raises the possibility of the other classes suddenly benefiting more from those buffs, buffs being switched and the resulting differences being even larger in the opposing direction. True, there are nuances to certain buffs that give certain classes an additional but marginal benefit (Bolster - Sanguine/Manaburn/Lifeburn, UT - Warlocks, etc). This list is probably quite long when you look at all the classes. Is it overpowering or is it allowing more diversity, more paths to follow, and the creation of more interesting abilities? That's open to debate.
I actually disagree with that. I'd take a warlock any day in my group over a summoner (we don't have one though). The combination of Occult Bolt/Energy, Propagation, Dark Pact, Curse of Darkness and Miasma is far more valuable to me than either summoner could provide. And that's what I consider personally useful, so doesn't include other abilities that you could also classify as utility (Shroud, Boon, Mana Trickle, Grasp). Wizards probably don't offer quite as much as warlocks, but a fully enhanced Frigid Gift is pretty good - and then Arcane Tyrant. Then I suppose there is the other lesser stuff like Ro's Blade, Converge, Fire Chains, Mana Intromission which do fall under the "utility" umbrella I suppose you could even add stuff like Translocate and Evac if you are willing to include CotH and FD in the list for summoners.
Here is my wish for future gear. Remove all of the procs and just put permanent stats on items for example the Rings of the Insignia or the Tempered Azure Rings etc. I dont know if letting these permanent stats stack would be too powerful or not but if the devs think it would then just make sure that each piece of gear has something different on it instead of every single piece of gear having the same procs that clash on them like now which is annoying. Also remove proc war runes if we must have war runes then also make them a permanent stat or just get rid of them all together wouldnt hurt my feelings any, the way to get them is lame as it is in my opinion attached to gear already. I cant tell what clashes and what doesnt half the time. This game was not originally designed for all of these procs in the first place when it was created hence the LAG!! In our raid we have a warlock two wizards two conjurers as mages. Usual mage group consists of one of the wizards and two conjurers the troub puts UT on himself, the wizard gets TC both of us conjurers get nothing special just the usual TW and group buffs. Why not just make UT and TC group wide its not really that big of a difference anyway that I can see currently?
One example is the Coercer in Scars - so many of the mobs resist mez, charm etc that they have been somewhat reduced to nothing more than a mana battery. Already some of the bard buffs are useless because so many people are already capped out (when was the last time you heard anyone ask for J-cap?)
I like the idea, but i have some reservations about it. I think when this happens the over all dps on bards and Chanters needs to be improved. for bards, i think making ALL of their group wide buffs not require a Con slot would help, then give there ST buffs a Con Slot so they can pick and choose between them. Chanters - just upping their dps should be enuff. neither bards or chanters should be up to the "T1" level, just make sure they can out parce all of the healers at least.
I bet you scouts ask for Jcap..... They would love you forever if you gave it to them since they aren't max'd on reuse. I understand this is a mage forum, but I felt it needed to be said.
Yes, but now scouts are about the only ones. But that was just an example of what the item stat inflation has done to make some buffs etc from some classes much less important than they used to be. I doubt it is the only one.
