Defiler Class Issues (Consolidated Thread)

Okay so all of these other classes got one so if we don't speak up in these official forums we will never be heard for what we would like to see changed.

1. Defiler AA Potency Line - one primary thing that I would like to address is the potency line's end ability Hexation. Granted this is a wonderful ability that in it should not be changed, but to have defilers use it as a viable option the immunity to it would need to be reduced some. I would like to suggest cutting it in half. I clearly understand why you have this immunity to this, but it's just a tad on the overkill side. I would like to see the immunity at 2.5 to 3 min max.
   
2. Deathward - It has been said on many accounts that this has been a joke among defilers since RoK was released. The way that it reads it that it will place a ward that will be larger depending on the amount of health that is on your target... However; it's still tiny, and when compared to the 80 abilities provided to other healers this has always made me say meh.
   1. Either improve the numbers or add something to it like a buff to it that would last for the duration... mitigation vs magical or physical... even a cool looking ghost pet to fight along side the warded would be cool. I just want to see this become more useful.
   2. Reduce the mana cost... Why does our little deathward consume more mana than repent? It does far less warding, and no healing so I don't see why this costs me more mana to cast.
   3. Can we PLEASE cast this on ourselves when we are out soloing? Why were we not able to do this to begin with is crazy. Granted I don't see myself spamming myself with deathward, but it's nice to have when I am out fishing for some magma fish and grab some aggro.
      
3. VP Gear - I could pick the gear apart and say this and that... but I am just going to go right for the primary issue that I would love to see some innovative changes made to... The 6 piece bonuses needs some love. I can deal with the +4 one, but the +6 is worthless... please refer to Deathward... I know these needs to be focused on current abilities so I would like to see it the same effect placed on either Ancient Shroud or Carrion Warding. Same thing, just on a more useful ability.
   
   
4. Spell resist rates! This is for ANY casting based class... The resist rates are just nuts now and even with master debuffs, and the curse line maxed I have been resisted a ton on simple debuffs. Should be like butter with the masters and the aa line to improve resistibility.
   
   
5. DPS gear... You have some nice items that I would love to be able to get my hands on for a nice DPS set up, but they happen to be mage only... think you wanna open some of those goods up to us priests so we can have our heal gear/dps gear setups?
   
   
6. EVIL HEALING DEITY - please pretty please with sugar and cream can we get a delightfully evil healing deity that will not hate us when we start killing avatars like Karana?

Mystics were right on the money about the dog... Thank you Mystics for raising your concerns about your dog as well as ours! Also thank you Aeralik for letting us know about the upcoming changes.
I'm also not going to address the clicky on the mythical. As much as we would like to have it changed; I doubt that this will happen. Feel free to post regarding this, but I'm sure after this change this will be the final change to mythical's until the next expansion. (crosses fingers!) We also have a whole thread dedicated to this topic.
As you can see I'm proposing only minimal tweaks to various areas, and I hope in the future we can have some of these issues addressed. Please other defilers please feel free to add your two cents on what you would like to see as well as it seems we may be able to get some dev love in here.

My number 1 issues with the class is the gear provided for us via class sets and our mythical.
The VP set is laughable. Heal crit doesn't have a large impact on wards, spell crit is even worse for defilers, and our +healing is usually capped by mythical furies.
The double attack on our gloves has to be a bad joke gone live, we're not even the melee oriented of the two shaman.
The focus on our worst dot for our chestpiece is horrid, won't be bidding on that if we ever get it to drop, and if i happen to get it for 1 dkp i wont be equipping it.

Set bonuses are horrid.
(2) bane of warding amount by 220... Nothing special there, bane of warding is such a small part of a heal parse that it doesnt really matter. Unnoticeable.
(4) Fulginous whip damage up by 145? lol, yea I REALLY want that. Might take our uber dps up from 40 to 45 on the important fights.
If I want to dps I'm not going to be wearing 4 pieces from the set.
(6) Increased amount on deathward? The spell is up once a minute. This should be something for a spell that gives real benefit, like our single or grp wards.

Seeing gear like this gives the impression that the devs are unsure of our class role or how gear influences the class' performance.

Here there are the things i'd like to see improved/changed:

SPELLS:
Maelstrom line: Useless. Remove the stiffle or change for a root. Besides that line needs some focus: dot, regen, mana drain and mana regen are too much for a single spell.

Deathward: Severely underpowered. High power cost, high recast and the effect doesn't scale high enough when the target has low health. And it should be castable on yourself.

SHAMAN AP:
Dogdog needs a buff, it dies too easily even with spiritual foresight on.

Ritual of Alacrity should be castable on yourself or tweaked to be a group buff like the templar's one.

DEFILER AP:
The immunity timer on Hexation is too much.


These are the biggest issues i have with the class atm.

My feelings are this...any one deficiency in either spells, gear or weapons could be overcome. This expansion, however, shortchanged us on all three counts.
SPELLS
Deathward is a major disappointment especially compared to what other healer classes received at level 80. The amount this thing wards for needs to be increased dramatically and, if it's supposed to be a viable death save, should have a heal attached to it. With the slow casts of our direct heals, this thing doesn't stay up long enough to even think about bringing a tank back out of the red. And, I agree, it should be self castable like Repent is and should have the same recast as Repent.
Pandemonium is yet another spell we have that never sees the light of day on my hotbar. As the poster before said, it tries to do too much and ends up not doing anything well enough to stay stifled for the duration of the spell. Drop the damage and power regen from it, bolster the healing to an amount that would be even noticeble on t8 mobs and make it worth using situationally.
VP GEAR
Our VP gear was poorly thought out both before and after the revamp. I have issues with both the 4 and 6 piece bonuses myself. A minor damage increase to Fulginous whip is hardly worth the effort of even typing a bid for on a pattern. I would prefer to have something similar to what the Mystics get which is a substantial decrease in recast on their group wards. I think we're about the only slow casting healer class that doesn't catch a break on recast.
If no further changes will be made to the VP set then I would like to see a viable alternative to the Breast Plate with the wretched focus effect of Absolute Corruption. Right now, it's either the VP one or the Mystical Aura which used to be decent until Benevolent Alacrity on it was changed to yet another power proc. I also don't understand why we lost so much in the way of hitpoints when the gear was revamped. Considering our stock in trade is to swap health for heals we could have used the extra hps that were on the original set.
The VP set boots are pointless. Spell crit and + to crushing? Good thinking since our epic is a piercing weapon. Thanks to these, they'll have to pry my Oiled Leather Boots out of my cold dead hands.
The gloves are meh. I personally don't care about Double Attack and I haven't seen an alternative except the Mist Covered which really don't offer anything either.
EPIC
The Mythical weapon which was already one of the worst healer mythicals isn't getting any visible improvements except the change from spell crit to heal crit. I know it's been stated elsewhere but I'm going to repeat it anyway...the clicky on it is useless on most higher end raid encounters. Imagine the outcry from the other classes if this was the case across the board...Here's your mythical but good luck finding a mob to use it on! Nightmares needs to be changed to something that's castable on any mob and should better reflect our role as healers.
AAs
The immunity timer on Hexation makes it not worth having. They went way overboard 'fixing' the timers on it when RoK came out.
DEITIES
I also agree with the OP about our deities. There's really not much to choose from although the lack of evil healing deities has saved me a fortune in offering fodder since there are few blessings or miracles worth getting.

SPELLS:
I have to agree on Deathward being severly underwhelming. The one minute recast timer seems ridiculous for such a small ward amount when the templar repent is so much more powerful and has half the cooldown time. I would like to see the cooldown reduced at least to 30 sec.
I would also like to see our aoe deaggro spell (torpid chant) have a different effect than an aoe fear. When I group in dungeons I am not able to use my deaggro because the mobs beating on me just grab their friends and come back to wipe the party. The only time I can use my aoe deaggro is in raids when the fear has no effect on the epic mobs.
I agree on Pandemonium being completely unused. This is the one tier 8 spell that I didn't even bother to upgrade from the T7.
I would also like to see some buff that would be useful in a raid outside the main tank group. Right now the only place I feel useful in a raid is the MT group, so if we ever get a second defiler I'm not sure where one or the other of us would fit in.
EVIL HEALING DEITY:
Second the request for an evil healing deity. Innoruuk is ok, but other than one blessing doesn't help my heals at all.

Yes, oh HELL yes to everything everyone has said in this topic so far.
Just to support the cause:
******
1) Pandemonium ----> Take away stifle, make it root the caster....or better yet, make it cost health and power....and for kicks it can root us too....do any of this, and I might actually cast this spell once in a while. As it stands, this spell only gets cast because I feel *sorry* for it. Imagine that...I feel *sorry* for a spell...heh...
2) Deathward ----> Make it castable on self, give it a buff, make it stronger...do what you need to do, because this spell is a joke. Another spell I only cast because I feel sorry for it....meh....
3) Dogdog ----> He should not be dying when he's not being attacked/reposited. This is a bug. Please fix it. And since I'm already asking for you to install my cable, why not give me bonus high speed internet by taking off the "vvv"? =) The key is to ask for more than they're likely to give you....you lawyers out there should know that. I mean, seriously...test Dogdog in battle without the vvv. He'll still be a wimp...he'll still die...but at least make his survivability comparable to....I dunno....a summoner's mage pet? Even that would make him a bit less useless, even if we *don't* go down the dog line (and/or for Mystics, the combat line).
4) Ritual of Alacrity ----> It should be castable on ourselves. I mean, why not?
5) Hexation ----> Lessen the immunity time, and you'll make a ton of Defilers happy.
6) Group Heal Summon-Upon-Kill Thingy ----> As it stands, no one uses these things but me and *maybe* one other person if I'm lucky, even though I broadcast a message to every group I enter to do so. All I keep seeing is "Suchandsuch cannot accept the item" every time we kill a mob. Maybe instead of summoning the item to *them*....the spell can just summon it to us, and we can stockpile them? Give them a cooldown time so we can't spam? This seems to be a better idea. Either that, or people just need to popularize these things. Maybe make them heal for more, or provide a temporary buff to dps or something? I bet they'd be begging to have them after that.
*****
These are the biggest concerns I have for now...
Keep it up. This is for the cause, my friends.

Lots of good ideas here, so I am not going to repeat what everyone else has said. Just going to give my ideas on a couple of spells that may help the class.
Deathward - I think a flat 2.5k ward and a 2.5k heal if the target is under 50% health (Something like the Fury's spell -Return to the Pack) would make this spell more appealing.
Crystallize Essence - I like the idea of this spell, it is unique, but no one uses it. How about if it summoned a crystal that gives 20% cast and recast buff for 20 seconds or so? This would also help with the problem we have of not having much group appeal outside of the MT group.

Completely agree with Alaocia except on one part. No more pets. No more bubbles, no more giant babies in diapers, gorillas, ducks etc,. They are great fun and I love them in groups and soloing, but the importance of seeing mob's emotes and spell effects is becoming more and more prevalent. The more Dr. Doolittles show up the laggier it gets. It's bad enough with all our Rhino and Warg bumms in our faces. Then to finally get to a viable view spot at range and within line of sight just to have bubbles and giant babies in diapers get in the way is just too much. For get the graphics, give us something worthy of the DEFILER CLASS. Yes, I now you can hide the bubbles and the diapers but some of them you can't and we already hide our god pets. Although the fury Blue Ball is really cool and one that is worth putting up with, if SOE would find some creativity like that woot, but we would probabaly get a stick of lumber with a wolf hat and spider legs.

We have been complacent for too long. We were so well balanced and so well positioned that we didn't have anything to raise the Devil about. So while everyone else was being improved, it is like we are being brought to extinction and if SOE even dares mentioning merging mystics and defilers, they have seen the last of me.

And Cujo eating up the group ward leaving the tank unwarded because of these backward repostes and damage shields just to die anyway is a joke. Is anyone at SOE raiding on a Defiler?

And now, between the gear in Rok available to us, having to compete with mages, scouts, and druids for items, not ot mention how hard it is to bid against a guildee who you know would benefit more from an item and then you told by an officer who doesn't understand how defilers work that that item is not a defiler item, is just too much. I told my guild about the pink shinees in RE2. I pointed out to the officers that once they fixed the Totem of the Ankexton from RE2 (spelling sorry), it was going to be wonderful for defilers as to what was available to us. I helped farm pink shinees for a month now every healer in the guild has it but me. (yes that was a whine)

I was replaced in MT group by a Mystic just as soon as she got her mythical. She is awesome and she rocks and these people are all great, but it hurt. Then, I show up for raid, which I raided 7 nights a week, I never missed one, and I never got an invite. Got bumped from OT shaman for another Mystic. I don't suck either, at least I didn't, I do now. That hurt so much, I left my favorite guild and cried for 10 hours. I am 43 a successful mother of 2 and I cried. I was up for 2 months in Beta, busted bumm to get everhyone's epics and didn't sleep for weeks. I was one of 3 toons in the guild that had access to VP and then once everyone got caught up that happened. It broke my heart. And now the next expansion is coming and I have the same gear on I had on in March. LAME. I was so depressed, I wasn't able to log my Defiler on for a month. I am back playing and I went back to my guild because the people are awesome. Don't know if I will be raiding or not, but I decided being with these people was more important.

I would like to just throw in here, that Perdition on Oasis is also a wonderful guild with wonderful people. I was going to transfer there, and they have been more patient than I deserved. If any of you really good defilers are looking for a guild with fantastic leadership, please contact them. I have the highest respect for them.

I appreciate all of your comments. I wish I had time to do more on the boards, so for those of you that do, I just wanted to say thank you for representing Defilers.

The dog is the dog, and it's not going no where. Just like Mystics will be Mystics and Defilers will be Defilers. If they mentioned merger these forums would all be in an upheaval.
I can't say that I understand about the dog eating my wards My dog actually gives me more wards, and the little bugger helps me TON's on Silverwing, and Trakanon. (When STR Specced) Granted on a STA spec the dog is useless except for a wee bit more DPS, but for STR he's nice. It's more like the DPS classes in my group with chokers are eating up my wards, but that's no thang but a chicken wang... just use more wards.
I also don't compete too much with mages or druids on anything so I don't follow you. Mystics are the class that may want to compete with scouts on DPS gear as they are more melee oriented. There are just a select few items that a mage would use that I would want to get my paws on for my DPS gear set up, but as for leather... I think there are maybe 2 peices that I would think would be considered a worthy upgrade for some.
No, the defiler at SoE is NOT a raiding defiler therefore does not understand what would be beneficial to us in a raiding situation. That's why we keep seeing more damage related stuff as the person that plays a defiler... is a soloer. Once I learned this it all made perfect sense! I hope that in the future they have SOE's defiler start raiding to experience the strengths and weaknesses of our class so we can see some better development in the future, or they find another way to get a raiders perspective.
I am sorry to hear about what happened to you within your old, or I guess current guild. Honestly I would have dropped them like a bad habit and found a new guild... like the one you were talking to on Oasis. Yea a Mystic can take the MT Shaman job, but we can still have a job. We just have to work a little harder to show we still got it!

I have to agree with the points Alaocia made.

I also have to agree with tweaking Crystallize Essence. Without any real use for any other group in a raid besides the MT group, Crystallize Essence is halfway useless as the MT group will almost never land a kill shot. Even if the MT group does do so, it only gives -a chance- of proccing this little clicky that no one's going to use. Make it something cool! Make it...a Noxious spell reflection or a noxious based damage shield! And in keeping with the sacrificial healer idea, make each DoT tick eat away a bit of our health or power or something. Or keep the little clicky ball and change the clicky ball so that it throws up a short duration noxious damage shield that eats away at our health when it ticks. That'd be awesome And give us something unique again.

Don't give the dog anymore buffs, don't give him more STA, don't give him more ^^^s, don't give him more HP. Just tweak him so that he doesn't get warded along with the group. I would rather recast that stupid dog after every single fight than have him suck the wards off the group and die anyway. Or give him a termination ward like the sacrifice pet spell that summoners have...where when he dies, he tosses a ward on out the group. Or turns into a big noxious cloud of ouch that DoTs the mob. I would totally spend shadow AAs on that rather than 66 STR/STA

Usefulness outside of the MT group. You know...I'm not sure I could even start with how this would be possible. Groupwide RoA would be nice. The ability to keep up with other healers without needing all the uber buffs of the MT group would be cool also. Other than that, I bet there are folks on this very board who could come up with awesome ideas.

Evil healing deity. Dear. God. You had the perfect lore set up with Anashti'Sul for an evil healer deity..one that would have been PERFECT for the class lore of defiler and even in decent line with inquisitor. Why. Is. She. A. Tank. Deity? I realize that tanks were out of balance and needed love...but between Marr, Zek, The Tribunal guy, and Innoruuk, TANKS ARE COVERED!! Now good side healers get Tunare AND Rodcet Nife and we're still stuck with Karana? Bueller? Bueller? Why do we have 5 tank deities across the board and 0 evil healer deities? Could you imagine the awesome blessings we could've gotten from Anashti'Sul as an evil healer? I've got several swirling around in my brain that are nothing but win. PLEASE GIVE US AN EVIL HEALER GOD!!!

Class sets and mythicals...I'm not even gonna go here. I already got my dander up with the evil healer god thing. That's a major sticking point letdown for me.


What I would love more than anything is for a developer to actually PLAY AND RAID with a defiler. Please. Please please please roll and play one. Find out why so few people play the class and why those of us who do are considering betraying or rolling a different class to max and play.

Crystallize Essence - You know what would make it really useful? Add a group cure-all to it, and make it usable while stunned and stifled. If you wanted to make it -really- good, make it cure curses, too. It'd be pretty balanced as a clicky for remove curse because it's not something you can recast in combat, or control when you get one.

My only other issue is bane warding not being on our TSO armor. It's probably the strongest tool for soloing or grouping, or even assisting with aggro in the MT group, but we need to break up our set for it. I'd love to see it replace our terrible leg focus.

the spiritual circle should not be able to die, unless directly targeted by mob. It would be a great spell to have if it did not die every time some thing cast an AoE. Having an almost 1000 ward on all raid members is great, but not when it just dies 5 seconds later. It almost makes the spell worthless

also, i believe that the defiler should get a group power regen with the mythical, like the mystic does.

Spirit shrine is a balanced and powerful tool, it is also one of the better priest "pet" spells, stop casting it at the wrong time and it won't get whacked by an AoE.
While the best thing on our mythical is the heals added to wards and the rest is "meh", there are several other ways to help your group regen power without changing our myth this late in the expansion. If you having trouble keeping up power for yourself then thats another issue entirely.
If you want Spirit Tap, roll a Mystic.
This isn't a "wish list" thread, it's more of a thread to address know issues and bugs with our class in game so "hopefully" the devs see it and consider fixing or changing the issues.

For example our Crystalize Essence spell is relatively useless and offers a free AoE heal to anyone that gets the essence. It's underpowered and subject to the RNG to proc. Increasing the proc rate, making it a one time clicky "cure all", or leaving it as is but having it produce a stack of three when it procs would be a welcomed change.

Aura of Warding & Spiritual Foresight needs to be modified. Im surprised both Defilers & Mystics haven't been up in arms about this because its obviously not right.
These two spells in our Strength line are Beneficial Group Based, & Group Wide Procs yet the effect range is only 15 meters??? All Priest group Heal spells/buffs eventually got increased to 25 meters out of necessity, yet i think this is possibly one among a few spells that slipped through the cracks.
The effect range for these two procs should be a minimum of 20 meters (max single target heal range) but in all actuality since they are group based, the effect range should be 25 meters. This is a pretty huge disparity & it detracts quite a bit from the AA line in my opinion.
Speaking from a raiding stand point....its quite common for everybody except the tank to be outside of the 15 meter range, so to have a whole AA line being largely useless because of minimum effect range is just... well hey. PLZ LOOK INTO IT ??
And both Defilers & Mystics should really be all over this...our strength line is way under utilized because of it.

Mariusx ~Onyx~
Nagafen

My two cents:
AA
- Shaman tree:
Agi line should switch melee crit with heal crit keeping current percentages. Defilers are not melee healers, we shouldn't have to waste 4 AA points in a useless skill when we are healers first and foremost. Give heals first and melee second. Not to make it 4 points deeper for melee mystics but both classes benefit from the heal crit, Defilers get nothing out of melee crit imo.
Wis line Ritual of Alacrity should be allowed to be cast on yourself. We get absolutely no love on cast times at all for our Wards via AA. We need it and in the Shaman tree it passes the benefit to Mystics who don't fully melee spec. Quite frankly I cringe as a Defiler, looking at the shaman tree. I honestly think that this should be a group buff and other healers get that benefit.
- Defiler Tree:
Hexation is gimped by the recast seconding what has been said.
If RoA isn't made a group buff or at least self cast, we need some love in the prevention line. Take out Enchanced Shroud of armor and make it instead a ward cast time reduction for the group ward. If Defilers are truly the casting Shaman give them the benefits of being so. We already pay by sacrificing health to heal others, at least pay us off in the Defiler tree or Defiler Shadow AA for that matter.
Spells:
Crystallize Essence - Needs to be relooked at. Whether it can stack to 3 or 5 or it buffs the group but gives the item to the defiler. Useless in raids because if you are in a raid, your group is usually not killing the mob. In solo groups you have to constantly remind people that they get it.
I think what bothers me the most is that Defilers are considered the casting Shaman while Mystics the Melee shaman. Yet Defilers get no real love in the casting dept like other healers. With the ability to be ARAC (any race any class) in all cities now, defilers are even more weakened. There is no raiding guild out there that will take a comparable equipped defiler over a mystic imo. Not that I am going to change, its just sad that the answer for us Defilers is to learn to play better, when all we would have to do is switch to Mystic to be better.
Finally I am a Qeynos aligned Defiler on Nagafen and I am appalled that there still is no Evil healer deity. If nothing else Nife should have been Neutral because evil healers get the shaft (yet again).

Well...without a doubt you have a few points but all these issues have been posted about a thousand times, with the exception of the Agility line swap. Thats a solid idea.
The change to the Shroud of Armor AA? I wouldnt agree with that at all.... I would change the spiritual shrine aa before shroud tbh...remove the recast reduction & make it a group ward cast time reduction of .3 per point.
Although, its not necessarily the Defiler tree that needs to be changed. If they made the haste in the strength line, cast speed, it would also address some of our casting speed problems. One thing is for certain...something should have been changed a long time ago.
I agree though, for being the "cast oriented" Shaman we definately get the short end...oh well, another post about it probably wont change anything.


Mariusx

Houngan@Nagafen wrote:

I was with you all the way until I read the bolded portion. Shroud of Armor enhancement is one of the better AA's we get with our class AA's. I'd personally be upset to see it removed and replaced with anything else. You could choose any other ability in this same line to switch to some sort of casting reduction for our group ward and I'd be more in agreement.
I do think RoA wouldn't be too massively overpowered if changed to a group wide buff--clerics get a potent version of it with just casting speed (50%?) that hits the entire group.
I would like to see them toggle the melee/heal crit of the AGI line around and add more to either shaman or defiler trees that reinforces our position as the "spell based" shaman.

Shroud of armor is probably the strongest equalizer of us and mystics on a lot of fights, and I think without AA enhancing it mystics would be a lot stronger by comparison to us. It's our biggest source of healing/protection to group on most fights with small constant damage (things like Trakanon, Zarrakon, most avatars, etc, etc) and acts as a pretty significant buffer to people being one-shotted by magical damage, including focus damage that's classified as magical types. Losing the AA would unquestionably be a massive nerf to us under high-end raid circumstances.
Changing crystallize soul would be one of the nicer things they could do. I'd most like to see it be an anti-detrimental clickie, like a group cure of 200 of all detrimental effects, can be used while stunned or stifled. That'd be incredibly handy on a lot of fights, far moreso than some dinky little heal. I don't think it'd be overpowered because of the limited availability of the items - on raids, you'd get them on trash, and once you've cleared the trash you don't have a replenishable supply of them unless repeatedly trying a fight with spawned add waves. It'd be pretty balanced, I think, and make it into the situational utility spell it should be.

Solid idea for Crystalize... i wouldnt argue with that change at all. Its useful & the fact that its not always at the ready keeps it from being overpowered. The usefulness of a spell like that would make it easier for your group members to keep it hotbared as well, so it wouldnt be too much of a hassle.
It would be nice to make it a rechargable spell, so that when the buff alone is applied to the group, your group members get a message and a new spell that u can hotbar. Like the fury single target heal buff. When you get a "Crystal" the spell lights up & can be toggled. Otherwise it wouldnt be clickable.

Mariusx