Destiny of Velious Mystic

Discussion in 'Mystic' started by ARCHIVED-Banditman, Feb 15, 2011.

  1. ARCHIVED-Banditman Guest

    Disclaimer: For some misbegotten and unfathomable reason, beta was closed a week before release. As you may know, this is without precedent in the history of EQ2. Anything I tell you here may be completely wrong by the time we see the official release of Destiny of Velious. What I'm telling you here is based upon the state of the expansion at the time beta was closed.


    Overall

    If you read nothing else, read this: Mystics are in a far better state in DoV than many classes (read disclaimer again!). This isn't to say there aren't issues, but by comparison, we are in good shape. This is not an endorsement of DoV by any means, this is merely a subjective observation of the state of the Mystic class as compared to some of the other classes.


    Mechanics

    Crit Chance

    The one thing we've counted on since late RoK / TSO is 100% crit rates against everything. Forget it. Crit chance is now a "contested" stat. Mobs have what is called Crit Avoidance. There are certain zones (entire zones!) that put a debuff on you that reduces your crit chance.

    We were told that there would be a buff on mobs that have Crit Avoidance to allow us to see how much they have. There has been precious little evidence of this buff. Good luck figuring out how much you need.

    Yes, this applies to your Wards and Heals. In short, in Destiny of Velious, *nothing* is more important than crit chance. If you don't crit, it feels like you barely even cast a spell. It can be disasterous.


    Crit Bonus

    This was *not* fixed. Our Wards are still only getting half value from Crit Bonus. Sorry. This was brought up in beta, and subsequently ignored.


    Stamina

    Stamina is *uncapped* in this expansion. Better yet, it *appears* to be linear. One additional point of Stamina is worth the same number of hit points regardless of how much Stamina you already have.

    More importantly, all +HP values on items have been replaced with Stamina. Items no longer have HP and Power on them. The simply have Stamina and "whatever" the stat might be depending on what class the item was intended for.


    Wisdom

    Wisdom no longer affects your resists, at all. It no longer affects anyone's resists, at all. It only adds to a Priest's power pool, and increases their damage output. No one but a Priest gets any benefit from Wisdom, at all.


    Intelligence

    Intelligence no longer adds Crit Mit to Priests and Mages. No one but a Mage gets any benefit from Intelligence, at all.


    Strength, Agility

    Strength no longer affects carry weight. Agility no longer affects avoidance. There is no benefit to these stats for a Priest, at all.


    Pets

    Controllable pets, which include dogdog, now share our stats. This is actually a decent little bonus for us. Dogdog is a bit more robust now. He gets the benefits of our Wisdom, crit chance and crit bonus. He may get our DPS mod and Haste as well, but since my Conjuror didn't have any of those to share, and because we cannot possess our dog, I can't say for sure. I suspect he will get those bonuses.

    He's still not going to tank any mobs for you, but, he is a little tougher and does a little more damage. He's also getting a new AA line, which I'll cover later.



    Itemization

    Overall, itemization is a mess. While this is pretty much par for the course when you talk about any EQ2 expansion, I continue to hope that one day they manage to get it right at the beginning of the expansion. This won't be the expansion it happens.


    HP / Power

    I touched on this a bit in the Mechanics section. Items no longer have the +HP and +Power stat lines on them. It's been replaced by increases to the primary stat of the Archtype for whom the item was intended and Stamina. For instance, a Priest item might have 85 Wisdom and 85 Stamina on it. No HP, no Power.


    Melee Priest gear

    Fuggedaboudit. We aren't getting any. Directly from the item Dev, they have absolutely no intention of itemizing for melee Priests. Further, we can no longer use most of the Scout gear.

    Resists

    Resistance numbers are moving. Resists are found on jewelry, in copious amounts. There are no longer any resists on armor. Thus, in the beginning of the expansion, you'll want to prioritize jewelry aquisition so that when you begin replacing your armor, you don't have your resists fall off a cliff.

    Focus Effects

    Some of our Focus effects are moving into the armor itself, no longer from Red Adornments. I don't have the exact items at hand to give you anything more specific right now.

    Crit Mit

    Crit Mit is now on all armor, yes, even heroic zone items. Obviously, raid armor has a lot more, but even heroic mobs can now crit.

    Procs

    Of all kinds, have been mostly removed. Very very few items have procs, and what procs do exist are largely slot restricted or purchased via adornment. Initially in beta, SF Ward proc items did not work in Velious zones. SOE *reluctantly* reversed course on this, but I would not be surprised to see a reversal of the reversal.



    Heroic AA's

    This is what they are calling the new AA page. It's very creative, don't you think? Even more creative and intriguing is that there are no unique abilities for any class.

    It is structured "vaguely" like the Shadows tree: 4 lines of abilities, must spend 10 points in one line to get to the next. There are overall spending requirements in addition to the 10 in prior line, and in the end you'll need at least 277 AA to reach one of your endline abilities, of which you can only have one.

    Each ability, save the endlines, has 10 ranks, 1 point per rank. There is only one rank for the endlines, which costs 2 point.

    The first two lines are exactly the same among *all* classes.

    Line 1:

    Stats - 16.8 STR, WIS, AGI, INT per rank, 10 ranks.
    Ability mod - 33.6 Ability mod per rank, 10 ranks.
    Health & Power - .5% Health and Power per rank, 10 ranks


    Line 2:

    Potency - .5 Potency per rank, 10 ranks
    Crit Bonus - .5 Crit Bonus per rank, 10 ranks
    Re-Use - .5 Re-use per rank, 10 ranks


    Line 3:

    Enhance: Ancestral Channeling - 10% reduction in power cost per rank, last rank adds 1 additional tick.

    Enhance: Spirit Companion - Adds stoneskin proc to dogdog. .6 times per minute, per rank. 6 per minute at final rank. Stoneskin has 30% chance of affecting the Shaman.

    Spirituality - Increase the effectivness of Attack Speed, DPS and Attribute debuffs by 3% per rank.

    Spiritfire - 1% Accuracy and 2% Multi-Attack per rank. Also adds a damage shield to the Shaman. 50% chance to proc every time the Shaman is damaged. Damage increases with ranks. Damage = 416 - 624 at Rank 10.


    Line 4:

    Avenging Ancestors - Massive AE with DoT. It's a little hard to explain, but basically it is just brutal against large numbers of targets. Recast is 70 seconds with 30% re-use.

    Totemic Protection - Temp buff, Group Friend. 5% of the damage (before mitigation) taken by the target is converted into a heal for the group. Target of the heal doesn't get the heal unless the target is the Shaman. Cast .13, Recast 1:34 (30% reuse)

    Spirit Aegis - Wards each member of the group for 5200 HP. 3 second cast time (not affected by cast haste). 2:20 Recast (30% reuse).
  2. ARCHIVED-Toball Tokor Guest

    It would have been nice if they had addressed three things, they did not:
    If they changed Spirit Tap to be encounter based damage. Target based is absolutely useless in BG and multimob encounters. It would not be overpowering as in a raid now it easily fills and maintains power when everyone is targeting a high hit point mob.
    We should get immunity as a base spell with the AA increasing duration and reducing recast.
    Wards need to be effective against everything heals are (Focus damage)!
  3. ARCHIVED-Banditman Guest

    While those would be nice, I honestly think our biggest challenge is getting Crit Bonus to work properly on Wards. Until they fix that, both Shaman classes are going to be unnecessarily nerfed with regards to current endgame itemization.
    There are two uncapped stats that affect overall effectiveness: Crit Bonus and Potency. Our healing abilities are currently heavily penalized with regards to Crit Bonus, and that needs to stop. As a melee Priest, we are impacted even more severely than a Caster. We *need* Crit Bonus since a not insignificant portion of our damage comes from auto attack. Yet that is the stat that our healing abilities need marginalized. It's a huge circle jerk.
  4. ARCHIVED-Toball Tokor Guest

    Agreed, but I still wish they had addressed the three I mentioned. I did not hold any hope they would fix CB :(
  5. ARCHIVED-Banditman Guest

    Strangely, I did have some hope they would fix Crit Bonus. One of the developers at one point commented about it and agreed that it needed to be addressed. Unfortunately, history tells us that there is very little chance of seeing it fixed before the expansion after DoV now.
  6. ARCHIVED-Lark42 Guest

    The stat consolidation genuinely makes me want to rage...RAGE!!!!!!
    I'll make a more coherent post on this topic once my blood stops boiling and I have time to gather my thoughts into something more than a stream of four letter words.
  7. ARCHIVED-Banditman Guest

    Don't waste your time or energy. We tried to fight that battle in beta but there was absolutely no Dev traction on the issue. It's really more a case of my continued disagreement with the methods employed by the Dev team.
    See, what this Dev team does is pre-emptively *try* to anticipate all potential exploits and stomp them out ahead of time. Obviously, they still miss some despite what I really believe are their best efforts. Of course, how does that play in to stat consolidation? Glad you asked.
    With stats consolidated, it lowers the number of potential variables they deal with, making it, in theory, somewhat easier to spot and pre-emptively kill some exploits.
    Now, I applaud the effort to maintain the integrity of the game. Really. I do. However, you can get just as good a return, and a lot more good will, by being quickly reactive as well. Instead, this Dev team puts so much effort into the pro-active side of their equation, that their reactive side is just anemic.
    Class balancing actually bears this philosophy out better. Instead of making just small tweaks here and there, often and consistently, the Dev team waits and waits and waits on making *any* meaningful adjustments until things are so far out of whack they can no longer ignore it . . . and even then, they sometimes do nothing . . . or they go too far and ignore it. Again, failing to react.
  8. ARCHIVED-Nahlis Guest

    I'm seriously looking for help here folks. I played a Mystic from launch through to just after Kunark and then left EQ2 for a while. When I came back a couple months ago I levelled myself up. Soloing was a bit slow, but I was still very effective in groups so I didn't sweat it. In DoV though soloing is absolutely *PAINFUL*. It literally takes 2-3 minutes to kill some solo mobs. That's insanely long. for a fight against a solo mob. I know I'm missing something, this can't be intended, so any guidance you all can give me as to how to correct this would be VERY appreciated. At first I thought it was the stat changes, but even after making my slow way through the starting quests and getting the new gear the problem remains. I have all my spells through 88 (my current level) at Expert or Master. Thanks in advance.
    ~Vanyari the DPSless Mystic~
  9. ARCHIVED-hortefoutre Guest

    I seems that SOE stopped to consider Eq2 as long term projet.
    What irritate me furiously is the fact that the Battlepriest idea is more or less gone. You mentioned that no itemization was designed for Battlepriest.
    It already started in SF, indeed with spell haste and spell reuse I believe that any battlepriest with good gear is pobably now doing more damage meleing and casting than spells than meleing and using CA.
    People in charge are just too few to maintain Eq2.
    The new AAs are also proving how narrow are the human ressources at SOE now.
    None of the new AAS cover any of our concerns :
    1) ward scaling
    2) Interupt
    3) cure
    4) Battlepriest scaling.
  10. ARCHIVED-Banditman Guest

    Nahlis@Antonia Bayle wrote:
    This is your problem right here.
    If you are trying to use spells to kill these mobs you're really going about it the wrong way. Mystics are one of the melee priests. You need to spec that way and embrace it. If you don't, you're nothing but a Defiler with fewer DPS spells.
    Try something like this for an AA spec. It's really not good for much aside from solo'ing, though you could probably do fine healing a group with it. I don't recommend it for raid healing.
    You need a big 2H weapon with a slow delay and a big top end damage number. Not knowing your personal itemization, if you are lacking DPS mod, get a couple of the Mastercrafted Strength rings to pump that number up. If you don't have something with Haste on it, get one of the Mastercrafted cloaks with Haste.
    With the right itemization and the above AA spec, you should rarely even be casting heals / wards during the course of fighting solo mobs. I use something very similar to that AA spec, and I rarely even bother to pre-Ward anymore - Spiritual Leadership procs pretty quickly for me.
  11. ARCHIVED-Nahlis Guest

    Thanks Banditman, very much appreciate the help. I'm still short on AA for the full spec your referenced but will definately do what I can to start along that path. Given that, do you recommend concentrating on one tree over another?
    I'll switch to a 2-hander (have a nice Fabled Spear ready for 90) and work on getting some Haste and DPS mods. In an actual encounter though I assume you use your attack spells anyway though right? I mean we don't have much in the way of attack abilities (can think of one) so it seems like this is mostly just using auto-attack and may as well use the spells in the meantime... or am I still missing something?
    Thanks again for the advice, lookign forward to trying it asap.
  12. ARCHIVED-hortefoutre Guest

    For haste there is a belt on palace first named and old gloves from TSO raid (hybrid ones) may have some. I still cannot log on live so i cannot tell how hard are DOV mobs.
    Get mainly Litany of combat and the double attack in shadow, get anything that can help your melee and your CA dps.
    Improved tribal rage + improved runic armor may be enough to alllow you to never heal yourself.
  13. ARCHIVED-Banditman Guest

    Nahlis@Antonia Bayle wrote:
    You might consider giving the Mystic Primer stickied at the top of this forum a read. It's a little older, and needs some updating (I'll try to get to it, I swear) but there is still some good information there.
  14. ARCHIVED-Kiryalis Guest

    I'd also suggest investing in an AA mirror so you can have a spec for group/raid and one for soloing.
  15. ARCHIVED-quakeroatmeal4 Guest

    OP needs update:
    Crit Chance:
    Mobs show the amount of crit avoidance they have by targeting them and looking at buffs. Typically you can expect to need 200 -> 225 for the easier stuff, and 250->275 for the harder stuff.
    Crit Bonus:
    When was this ever proposed to be "fixed"?
    Melee priest gear:
    There is a TB/SH like war rune, not to mention that many of the war runes will also proc from spell and combat hits. Substituting a very small amount of non-priest items (mainly just a haste item) and then adorning with mostly crit bonus, dps mod, and multi attack is plenty to dps 60, 80, 120k in this xpac. Really great two handers especially if you couple with the Greater Runes from faction
    Focus effects:
    By putting these on the gear, it frees up room for the new runes/red adorns.
    Procs:
    Procs come from runes and are still very powerful and useful. Using some gear from SF and TSO until you upgrade is still effective.
    Heroic AA:
    Enhance Spirit Companion: To clarify, the 30% chance is 30% of the time the stone-skin procs for the dog.

    In regards to some of the replies:
    The crit modifier on wards is perfectly fin at .15 as opposed to .3 and it always has been. I'm honestly opposed to pushing this at all, let alone as hard as some of the people ITT.
    In general regarding dps, and melee:
    If you can't kill stuff effectively, look at your gear and AA rig. This idea that "no itemization" for melee priest is a joke. Consolidated stats = you get buffed for melee without need 300 stats on gear not to mention that you aren't having to swap in scout gear for dps. I do 30k solo, and I realize I have much better gear than most, but I can't even begin to imagine where these complaints are coming from. Are you using a two hander? Are you timing your auto attacks? These are basics. DPS does not come from mashing your CAs!
    Bandit's melee spec:
    Not going RoA just for the reuse alone is going to cost you a ton of DPS. Reuse affects your CAs and DPS spells as well. Not to mention that RoA is a huge DPS bonus to your group or raid, so unless all you do is solo, sacrificing group DPS will ultimately affect your dps.
    I highly recommend not speccing spirit dance especially over immunities. Cure curse is important, and avoiding stuns/stifles makes a huge diff in dps too. With all the reuse we have now, this spell is up once a minute.
    Even if you only put 1 point in Lunar Spirits this will at least give you an extra tick for Oberon. I recommend maxing for 50% increase in refresh and this also hugely affects dps. When you pull a mob, stampede, start dps and if you or the tank starts dipping: oberon and you have god mode for that duration. This gives you time to unload all of your CAs and then get some wards going. Huge, huge differentiator. The same goes for Torpor which I use every time it's up even on my self in solo situations as this very consistent means for keeping you protected and refreshing dips in hp allows you to apply more dps and completely negates the hit to haste (which if you have a red adorn especially this is practically nothing).
    Tribal frenzy in shadows is questionably useful at this point. Unless you are regularly grouped with squishies, the likelihood that the extra HP will make or break your encounter is unlikely. In this xpac, positioning is 90% of what it takes to win. If you or your group is in the wrong spot, you're going to die, but if you and your group are in the right spot, the damage done is a joke.
    Here's an AA Spec that will get you some win DPS:
    Gahnand DoV AA Spec
    Also, with reuse, I find rabies to be a waste if you have our new Heroic endline. You just won't have enough important DPS abilities down to warrant the use.
    Lastly about AA mirrors. They are great for testing and trying things, but I strongly suggest you find a hybrid spec that works for you. Having a max heal or dps spec is just going to have you questioning which spec you brought or holding up your raid, group or heck even just you solo every time you go to change.
  16. ARCHIVED-Wilin Guest

    I dunno about the lack of melee gear. I suspect that argument is coming from melee priests who do not have access to a fabled 2h nor a full set of red adorned gear where the red adorns offset the lack of blue melee bonuses.
    On your spec, I've never had much use for immunities. Are you just macroing it to cast on yourself everytime it's up for the extra immunity? I'm always wearing stun/stifle blocking procs and I'm usually grouped with an inq who has steadfast+epic. And if all that fails, I have the standard pots + bristlebane blessing. I could layer an immunities spam on that too, but it seems like overkill.
  17. ARCHIVED-quakeroatmeal4 Guest

    Immunities + AB is god mode for a lot of solo content. Click immunities, run into a heavy stun encounter, and chain AB for infinite stun free lulz. For raiding, immunity is fantastic for fights with interval stuns. XYZ is a perfect example. Any stun/stifle that might also come with a KB is even more easy to vanquish with AB. While the procs you listed will undoubtedly give you that benefit, a blessing is only up max every 30 minutes, procs can't be relied upon to be up constantly, and in DoV wearing two earrings one for stifle and one for stun is going to hurt your stats. Overall, you have to decide if the juice is worth the squeeze. While Immunity is not going to make or break 99% of pulls, it can add some peace of mind AND for most people, it is going to have a higher value that spirit dance. Depends on your personal preference and raid setup though. Just w/e you do, don't overlook the 5 points in Cure Curse. That's just plain stupidity.
  18. ARCHIVED-Wilin Guest

    Ya, not questioning the decision on Spirit Dance. The only time it has seemed remotely valuable was on RT where all the corpses were auto stacked in a neat pile.
    I didn't consider the solo possibilities on immunities. I'll swing some points around and try it out though.
    I have the new red adorn that prevents stun and stifle on one adorn. But, it has shorter duration than the SF procs. So, I haven't decided how things will look after I get the full set of dov. I'm still planning/playing with the new red adorns.
  19. ARCHIVED-quakeroatmeal4 Guest

    If you aren't specced spirit dance, how are you going to reach mystic endlines without speccing immunities? Don't tell me you dumped a bunch of points into one of the trees w/o taking the endline...
  20. ARCHIVED-Wilin Guest

    Gahnand@Unrest wrote:
    Yep, since Spirit Dance and Immunities were considered marginally useful, there was no point in getting either one at the time. So, I have a few points in rez just to speed up casting time and the rest in cures just to get the 70 that you need. I'm also only sitting at 290AA atm. After I got the heroic endline, there was no point in grinding them out to fill out a marginally useful endline when another couple weeks of normal play will top them off. In other words, I now have a plan for those last 10AA.
    That was the only real difference between our specs.