Elemental Toxicity

Just logged into Beta to get some kills for the mount, and noticed that Elemental Toxicity is completely different. It has been changed into a Blue AE. The spell is actually very nice, but there are a few things I think could help with potential quality of life issues.

1st - Unlike our other Blue AE's, it has to be cast while targeting a mob. Earthquake and Theurgist's Detonation are both "Self" targets, which allow them to be cast whether or not a mob happens to be targeted. Not *that* big of a deal, but leads to some quality of life issues if the mob you are targeting happens to die in the middle of the cast, canceling the cast.

2nd - The Heroic AA for increasing the duration of Elemental Toxicity should be changed. Since this is essentially an AE DoT, shouldn't the points now reduce the duration of it, so that the ticks happen faster? Much like the Conjuror tree points for Enhance: Winds of Velious and Enhance: Fiery Annihilation.

3rd - The range (35m) and the effect radius (20m) are different. I'm assuming this is because it is currently set up to be cast on an enemy, so the initial hit is a 35m range and the tick is 20m range. I'm guessing that the deaggro and the potency decrease are also 20m range. I *think* I would prefer to just have a flat 20m range, but I guess it doesnt hurt to have the initial tick to reach up to 35m. This ties into issue 1, now that I think about it.

For some reason, the guild I had set up on Beta got deleted, so I can't get dummy data on this, just trying to use on random mobs and its hard to get good data since they die too quickly, and I'm really just running around solo.

I feel like the damage level is appropriate, but it is hard to judge the loss in group damage this will cost vs the gain in personal DPS. I'm all for reducing our utility for more personal DPS so long as it makes up for the difference.

Pros:
It can doublecast
It procs stuffs (big plus for Planar Wrack)
It can hit 12 targets

I just saw this change today, so I may have more to say about it after I play with it some more, these are just my initial reactions.

I haven't seen the changes, but targeted blues (which is what it sounds like you are describing) do offer more versatility than blues based on a fixed radius around yourself.

Blue AoEs that affect around self will also cancel if the mobs in range die or go out of range before it hits, so the quality of life issue goes both ways.

The range and radius are (or should be, haven't tested it yet myself) different because the spell hits the targetted mob and affects everything in range of it instead of you. Ie, when you've got a tight cluster of mobs around the tank, you can be 35m away, hit one of them at random, and the spell affects every mob within 20m of it.

Happy to hear this ability is finally changing. Tired of you mages lagging me

To be honest, now that you describe it that way, I may have misunderstood the spell. Targeted blues put the AE effect onto the mob and its the effect radius from the mob rather than the caster? If that's the case, completely disregard half of my post.

This is great news! Good catch with the heroic AA. Adding 4 seconds at max does nothing when the ticks are every 4.7 seconds.

Will take a look at the AA. Thanks for the feedback

I am one happy conjy right now

Can you change the necromancer/conjuror focus abilities too? Both currently grant an additional 5s. Maybe a tick or two more?

This is a good change and it adds to the much needed non-linked AE potential that we needed and it cuts the lag!

One thing i did notice is that it does not proc my lich siphoning proc :/

Thank you Devs for the Elemental Tox change that spell just causes too much lag in raid to have much value. The dps increase it gives to the group, compared to the loss on your spell cast times due to the lag, took away the dps benefit.
I applaud this idea and change, can't wait to go to Beta to check out the spells aoe damage for myself.

I thank you for the changes, but you do know that giving us Test/Beta Notes would help us "Testers" test the changes when you make them.

One quick observation while looking at it is that its an end line ability. Granted many of us had to stop using it before but shouldn't the 2nd 2 points increase its damage more than it is, as well as the threat reduction? I mean putting an extra 2 points for more threat reduction seems out of kilter.

Not only is it one of our end line AA abilities its also one of our class defining abilities.
I am glad to see the change, but again this is one of the spells this class is known for, so please make sure its really going to still be great dps for the summoners. Please keep this class defining spell amazing for us even with the changes, it has been nerfed in the past with first all ten hits of elem blast not proccin its damage and then the pets not being allowed to proc its damage. Hoping this works out great for all summoners.

This spell would have to be pretty high on dps if we're losing the group dps aspect of it.

What group DPS aspect? It hinders DPS with lag far more than it could ever generate on it's own.

I think he meant before it was causing the lag the damage has to equate to the full damage this ability would do for the group.

After doing some math with the maximum theoretical efficiency of the 2 versions of ET I conclude that the Beta version is within 4% of what we could have gotten out of the live version if it did not create all of the lag it does. So I look at this as a win, just the was it is on beta.

So I did finally copy my conj over to beta to check out the specifics of these changes, and it does make me want to ask a couple of questions...

- Are you sure about those base damage values on it?
- Are you sure about the number of targets being hit?
- Did you account for the effects of extra ticks from UT/Ancient Fury, plus Accelerated Decay (in the case of necros), when balancing?

Ran some relative numbers because I had time, and the way it is set up atm means this is basically a 12 target 'Fusion' except that it actually deals about double the damage of Fusion for each target hit (basically per cast, per target hit, all ticks included, with the UT substitute for +2 ticks, but I did not include the effects of Accelerated Decay). Granted the damage isn't all applied instantly, but the cycle time of the ability will still be pretty fast, especially if the Class Focus and Heroic Tree AAs end up cutting the duration down significantly.

I do fully expect summoners to try to defend it along the lines of "well all the damage is just being credited to the summoners now", but the reality is that this in particular (if hits live as it currently is), plus the other summoner changes, is going to very significantly push up summoner damage output to the point that it probably would throw balance out of whack (as much if not more so than the Focused Casting changes did for warlocks).

My hunch is though, that this ability wasn't balanced with the extra ticks (granted by UT/Ancient Fury and Accelerated Decay) considered - and it is this, more than anything else, that has the potential to make the damage rather silly.