Elemental Toxicity

I like the idea behind the ET changes and I am hoping that these changes will also be applied to some other spells that are group or raid wide unlimited trigger over time spells that can cause a lot of lag. I am not sure what other spells should be turned into attacks instead of group/raid procs… I am thinking of Pease of Mind and RO/VC, (I think there are some from healers also). Changes like this “Should” help reduce lag from the server since we are procing less attacks and the attacks are all being contributed to the Caster of the Spell.

Did you just say you don't want VC to be groupwide?

No no, I was saying that it would be very interesting in RO/VC got the same treatment and changed into the Damage Attack that did equivilint over all damage insted of the system we have now. would be itneresting.

This is partially the reason it wasn't called out yet. It is still a work in progress. It will be tested in our next major content release beta. The version in currently on beta is very rough and not quite balanced yet. Also the enhance AAs are not on beta.

I will include it in release notes when it is considered complete and ready for final feedback. In the meantime feel free to mess around with it and keep the discussion going.

Love it. A post, from a wizzy, trying to nerf bat something for summoners on test. Making broad statements and conclusions regarding the damage output, without citation to a single actual number, graph, chart or anything. Methinks this is more about maintaining one's slot on the parse, than any legitimate concern.

Why should ET be changed? (1) Because it appears to cause massive lag in raids, e.g., in the HighHold Spider fight, we were instructed not to use it because of the lag it caused, thereby taking an ability that accounted for, among the largest (if not the largest) portion of DPS in the raid. (Cannot get access to parses right now but will insert numbers to support this statement later); and (2) summoner's DPS DOES need some upward tweaking, because, as has been pointed out repeatedly across these forums, it seems inequitable that classes such as locks, rangers and assassins are outparsing them on AOE fights and single-target fights. The statement that the purported increase to DPS from a change in ET, "plus the other summoner changes" "would throw balance of out whack" is, demonstrably untrue Chicken Little, as set forth in the thread regarding summoner AI changes, in which testers post actual numbers showing that the changes are not only about a wash, but may require summoners to change their pets (and specs) constantly throughout raids to take advantage of any purported benefits; and (3) summoner DPS should get a tweak because we only get the benefit of 50-60% of our gear because we do not enjoy true-stat sharing, unlike wizards and locks, who obtain the benefit of 100% of each piece of gear that they equip.

So this is a welcome change that should be implemented, and cannot wait to log into test to check it out.

My issue with your statement is that since I have been doing testing on beta with the different pets, the damage output is actually less on beta than on live and have sent my logfiles to Caith. This plus the fact that now we must swap pets multiple times per fight to get maximum efficiency, this AOE should make up the difference in my opinion. Not withstanding the fact we have had an end line ability that we cannot use due to the lag it creates for multiple expansions.

I don't want to make this into a us vs them thread, but your referral to the focused casting for warlocks is way out of line. Summoners are extremely limited for AOE fights already unless they are a completely linked encounter. Another blue AOE will go a long ways to correct that disparity although I think the recast timer should be set at 2 minutes base or 1 minute fully modified.

I stopped reading from this point if you think ET is top dps

While this spell gets adjusted, there's another ability that will likely need a change. The necro's Deathlord ability (bottom left) has a chance to clear the reuse on ET when we pick someone up. If we see a change to the base reuse of ET, maybe we could see Deathlord resetting Undead Horde?

I would hope it does change the balance, because the summoner is not properly balanced right now *especially* on AE fights. The AI changes, as they sit, are actually a bit of a nerf on unlinked mobs or single target fights. Plenty of us have demonstrated so in the pet AI thread. This is a much needed boost to summoner AE damage, though it still wont put us even close to the level of a sorc.

Lol. What is it you want numbers for? If it's that comparison I drew between ETox, as is currently on test, and Fusion, then I can elaborate since I still have it noted down...

Note: Used the tooltip value minus ability mod (so base, INT and potency). Numbers were taken from a lvl 100 conjuror with gear stripped down. Fusion was chosen just because it was easy to get relative tooltip readings on the same character.

ETox (2/2):
2108-2576 = 2342 (average)
*2 (disease/heat component)
*6 (Initial + 3 ticks + 2 ticks from UT/Ancient Fury)
= 28104 (per target, per cast) ... or 30446 (if necro)

Fusion (GM):
11387-18778 = 15083 (average)
= 15083 (per target, per cast)

Ignoring accelerated decay for the moment,
- That's *1.86 the damage of Fusion (per target, per cast, without accelerated decay).
- That translates into *7.45 the damage (potential) of Fusion (assuming full target availability).

We both know the direction the devs intend to take this ability in, which is fine. It will yield summoners rather tangible increased gains relative to everyone else. I suppose posts like yours do highlight the perils of pushing things to a public test environment in an overtuned state - people then see any subsequent downward tuning/comments as a nerf before they have even got their hands on it.

Reality check: sorcerers are (double and triple) a summoners AoE parse, that's what is truly out of balanced and a total joke. This is where the real nerfing must begin. Again a summoner can do a solid 20 to 25 million on an AoE parse fight but sorcs are at 50 to 60 million on the same fight and wearing the same gear as the summoner, that's just way out there stupid.

Again as I stated in earlier posts, this ruins the game for many other dps classes when all dps classes are not competitive and some are so overpowered. Class balance can never be equal that's impossible but there should be competition and not this ridiculous overpowered sorcerers whether AoE is their specialty or not. I expect to lose to a sorcerer on an AoE fight but not to get completely obliterated and destroyed on the parse.

Not looking to turn this into a class v class debate, but it's always going to be hard to estimate overall balance when people are just looking at small samples that are their individual guilds or groups. Not all guilds see the same disparities in the same places.

Well, seeing as this is the only forum I can post on at this time...

1) Focused Casting essentially only puts Warlocks massively out of whack with the rest of the raid force on short fights. The temp is strong, the recast is long, it mostly works. There are plenty of Wizards and Assassins topping parses in top 20 raid guilds.

2) Summoners compete fine on sustained single target fights. Changes to their pets already fix **most** of their issues.

3) Daray's numbers, if they went live, would be pretty darn concerning from a balance perspective. I'm definitely willing to reserve judgement for the fine-tuning ET will see in the next few weeks.

@Daray,

You do know that even if all of the damage of the live version of ET is not being contributed to the Summoner that cast the spell, the damage is still coming from the Summoner. Just like Bards and damage from VC. If all of the damage the group did from VC was piled onto the Bard for the sake of the all mighty Parse, all “T1 DPS” classes would start screaming Bloody Murder. ET has had problems and now they are changing it so it’s less Lag and contributes all of the damage to the Caster and not the group. That way ET is looking at Beta atm, its not a reduction or boost of overall dps.

This comparison can also be taken to the Heal Parse and the use of Stoneskins… but Stoneskins cannot be parsed and contributed to the caster.

The changes to the pet *fixed* nothing as far as balance. In cases of ST fights (where summoners are supposed to compete) it borderlines a nerf.

I'm totally okay with giving me all the VC dmg

Multiple summoners I trust greatly dispute this. Per all of them, scout pet will actually do more damage on single target than mage pet used to do.

I have tested these changes extensively and the scout pet on test comes out below the mage pet on live by like 50k-100k dps.

Unless they changed it since I tested when it first launched. I only did dummy testing, but the result was the same every time. I posted up the parses in the thread about the Pet AI. On ST for my testing: Mage pet live > Scout pet beta > Mage pet beta.

I'll admit that it has been a little bit since I did the testing. And since there appears to be no Guild Hall use on Beta now, I can't test again on a dummy. Not exactly a population on Beta to run zones with to get solid zone data, either.

Regardless, the Pet AI wasn't even a problem as far as I was concerned. The mage pet on live does just fine in its current state. Thinking that this single spell (ET) will completely change the balance of the class is laughable, especially when there is such a handicap (on AE) to begin with.

The summoners I raid with both saw improvements, so have a few other top 10 guild summoners I chatted with. /shrugs.