Used to be in beta only songs and spells seemed to stop regular attacks, at least appeared so, but Xan is correct, it now seems all special abilitites (which seems fair to be honest as combat arts are often shorter cast times) prevent your regular attacks while you are casting them. As such yes this does effect haste spells and I think proc spells, quite heavily. I agree I don't see a great benefit to our stealth attacks, I'm glad we get them but wish they were better. Seems it does less damage than our flank attacks. I realise they don't want our stealth attacks doing too much damage compaired to say an assassin, but ours does have debuffs attached to it, so up that so the debuff on our stealth attacks are more meaningful. Glad to see this list posted on main forum. Message Edited by Jziad on 02-16-2005 01:40 AM
Great post, Xanasus! Good summary of all the problems I have encountered as a dirge. Just wanted to point you to the thread where we discussed the Bria's line in some more details and tried to come up with some reasons for increasing it's potency. http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=spellart&message.id=21517
I NEVER see bards anywhere (and I dont play one) That's too bad, I'd like to see more. I hop eyou guys find a way to make the class more atractive.
Very interesting post, many of these thoughts I've had in my head as well. Comments: Shot Songs - Never use, I have Lanet's to pull Stealth Attacks - Why are these here? I never use them, I'm too busy buffing between fights to stealth. With the new 10m timer on buffs, maybe I'll have a chance but I'm usually casting Lanet's as the mob comes running towards us. Talk about class defining, I use Lanet's every fight. Shrieks - Casting time is too long, 1s cast and make the recast 15s or something instead of 3s/10s. Discants/etc. - These take forever to cast and forever to recover and are only cute when fighting a dozen super-grays for comic relief. These aren't even on my hotbar. Cry of the Departed - Silly animation, aside from that, the HP healed is weak. Less damage, more health and harm-touch like casting speed would make this much more useful in real combat. Basically hardly ever use it due to time needed unless I'm about to die. Snares? What are we, rangers? I never use these. Slows? What are we shamans? I never use as the effect is hardly noticable. I MIGHT use these if they didn't take concentration. I would rather see the duration adjusted and concentration removed personally but I'm sure somebody uses these for something. The agility change really affected our AGI buff songs. Self-buffed I hit 101 STR, 156 AGI and find that since the change soloing is a bit tougher (I lose more health in a fight now). I'm still soloing higher-con mobs though so I really can't complain too much. I love playing my class and never really complain about it as there is just too much fun involved in being a dirge. After reading some other thoughts, I'm going to have to give some other concentration line-ups a shot and see how they compare. I've pretty much assumed buff, haste and mana regen were the ticket, now I'm not so sure. Cheers.
For haste and slows, I would personally like to see a change to make them have a more..."wholesome" effect. Currently they only effect the base autoattack damage a PC or NPC creates. However with the use of skills and abilities in eq2 a good 70%+ of the dps experianced is not effected by these already small haste amounts. This is all well known, and I wonder if this was done intentional when they created the spell and applied it to the game's mechanics, and if so why the heavy concentration cost? What I, and probably everyone with these capabilities, would like to see is allow these spell to effect nto only the generic autoattack but also include in it Casting Art cast and re-use timers. This way, even though haste in this game is low percentage wise(maybee lower it a little bit to accomdate this), its effect will prove usefull three fold. Weapon delay, CA re-use, CA cast time. Slows will indeed slow down mobs and their combat arts and our haste will now be worth the two concentration slots it requires. I think with this method, even the lower percentages of attack speed mods will have a noticable effect to those whom it is applied to.
What I would like to see is instead of our very low mana regen songs we get songs that reduce the mana cost of spells and arts. Say 15% less cost while the song is playing for the group. Inspiring songs.... We could also get the reverse, songs that make the enemy pay double mana cost....
Ooh, I like that idea Cerra - make everything cost less power wise while Bria's is up. What a SWEET idea. The more I think about it the more I like it! I can't think of a better way to benefit the group. BUMP this idea to DEV heaven! Andante Level 25 Dirge Guk
I really like this idea. There could be a troubadour improvement to Bria's that allows mana cost reduction, and there could be a corresponding dirge improvement that increases mob mana costs. Such a split fits well into the design philosophy of dirges vs. troubadours. Three cheers for this concept!
I would have to say, that that would be never interesting. Perhaps making it somethink akin to a group shielding effect, that any and all mobs that hit the party would lose power per it.
Dude said,.. "I really like this idea. There could be a troubadour improvement to Bria's that allows mana cost reduction, and there could be a corresponding dirge improvement that increases mob mana costs. Such a split fits well into the design philosophy of dirges vs. troubadours. Three cheers for this concept!" What a horrible idea, Troubs would have a very good ability, but the one you would stick dirges with would be pointless and useless. Most mobs die too fast, and the mobs that last awhile get power drained. What good would that do. An awesome idea for Troubadors, but bad one for Dirges.
Hmm ... that's a good point. I'm clearly looking at this from the troub perspective. I still like the idea of splitting the fairly useless Bria's line into something useful for both bard subclasses, but you're right about dirges needing something more useful.
Great post Xanusus, Im also very happy Blackgaurd stopped by to read your stuff and respond, hopefully some of these problems are being looked into. Lately Ive been feeling that the dirge class has not being looked into simply because of its limited numbers and that gets rather frustrating. We are playable, but so much of our stuff is so sub-par to other jobs I have a hard time just trying to figure out what are actual role is within the game. Some of these problems seem to be rather simple fixes, such as the Deaths Door and Wail of Woe issues where they can easily change there listings to match up with existing used ones and work correctly. Im also very concerned with the changes to stats. A big chunk of our usefulness is the use of our buffs to raise stats, now that changes are happening to the effectiveness of raising stats where is that going to leave us? Your look into the haste line is a perfect fix, having haste work on timers as well. All in all, Ill prolly be level 50 way before any changes are made, but I sure wish some of these changes you listed were addressed long ago and I could of at least dinged each level with the thrill of a nice new spell and not the disappointment Ive grown so used too.
Level 40 dirge here and I agree with you on nearly everything on the list that I have gotten so far. The AE lines are really worthless, Hyran's needs a serious look and fix, the brias line is so underpowered that I NEVER use it and the Luda's line needs to have its cast time shortened to 1 second. Great thread though and Im glad to see that at least Sony is aware of the Dirge class existing. ;-)
Extremely wonderful post. You've touched on nearly all the spells/skills that really do need to be changed. I think that all the changes you proposed were very reasonable too. I really do hope that they make some of those changes happen. I don't see why they're soo against rewarding us sometimes. Would it kill them to make the game more fun?
Best part of the listings and resolutions were how straight forward they were in regards in getting them fixed without overpowering and ect. We all have read the posts where a job cries out on being broke and then wants some astronomical changes done to it.
Most of your information is correct. Some of it is not however. Hyrans Angry Sonata and upgrades is casted on your tank. At first I thought you could only cast on mobs as well, however this is wrong. You must wait until the target is engaged in combat, then you are able to cast on your tank. The effect of this is to generate aggro on the encounter to the person you cast on. Now, the actual reality of this is, I can only assume high end raid mobs will this actually be effective, and not for normal xp groups. As for our rezz song, yea it sux that we dont get any skills prior to it, so it fizzles like crazy. However, when the skill ups do happen (and they happen fast) you are granted with a rezz equal to that of a high level priest (I fully expected a rezz that returned 3% hp and 1% pp to the ressurected person, instead it's about 40 to each). The other one that i think you dont fully realize is Wail of the Banshee... this song is absolutly devastating. There is no cap on monsters hit, and at 79 instant damage and 79 / tick over a 16 second period is pretty intense. CT ring event the last couple of waves have about 8 goos coming at you. 8 x 79 x 5 = 3160 damage for a cost of 241pp, and you complain about power cost? Show me a skill we get that does that damage for less power. This isn't a single encounter strike, this isn't really all that practical casting on a two mob fight. Once you start engaging anything above 4 mobs, this instantly becomes our greatest dps song. I personally cannot wait to get adept3 or master in it. In regards to the Oppressive Discante line, There is a trait you can choose on lvl 40, which adds a 10% slow to encounter as well as 35agil / str. The thing about it is, 35 str and agil doesn't realllllly make or break the bank. I mean think about it, if your str was lowered by 35, your max hit damage would drop what 5%? maybe less? your AC would drop a fair amount however somehwere around 4 ac / pt of agil, so.. nearly 140 ac debuff (which reallly isn't that huge). The thing is tho, is most scout classes get some kind of debuff, wether it be AC or STR or AGIL. If our debuffs were any stronger, likewise for other classes, raid mobs would be too easy. This line of song isn't that great unless it's a tough encounter, cus lets face it on a tough encounter sometimes even that 140ac debuff or 5% less damage / hit can really make an impact. Misfortunes Kiss line is pretty good, I dont really know what the issue with this one is. Many times I hear dirges complaining that they have other skills that do more damage so why cast this? The answer is 300 for misfortunes is still 300 damage. Until I can melee for over 300 in the same time it takes me to cast misfortunes kiss i wont stop doing it. I can see where you say, this song sucks though, since you must be in stealth mode to use it, which can be a pain at times. However if you are running up to mob X then casting stealth, then clicking misfortunes kiss, you need to rethink your plan of attack. While running towards mob X start casting stealth ( it takes 3 seconds) and time it so when stealth goes up, you are in mob range and can plant your 300 damage as your first attack. Also if you are looking for a purely damaging hit through melee, misfortunes line is "apparently" the strongest hit (altho I'm yet to do more damage on one of these than Taffos line). The numbers on Haunting Wail are 370 - 617 at adept 1, costing 99 power. The numbers on Gutteral Shriek are 296 - 493 adept1. Both cost 99 power. Definetly worth the cast, definetly not a waste. Orgingrinder 50 dirge Grobb
