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Focused Mage Feedback

Discussion in 'Mages' started by Xelgad, Jan 11, 2013.

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  1. Buffrat Well-Known Member

    I disagree with ae avoid on PEs. Maybe chanters should get a tool or two to use on their pets but just giving it ae immunity is kind of too easymode (like dogdog).
  2. Prrasha Well-Known Member

    +1 on "make dumbfire and swarm pets work." Rather, +27430 on that, given how often it's brought up and how long it's been broken. They don't have the health to stand up to a single AE autoattack from a solo mob, and they don't share stats or critically hit so they don't scale to current content AT ALL. Every one of those spells is useless and not fun. (This applies to more than just mages, of course. Wolves and trees and fairies from wardens, mythical pet from paladins, thugs from brigands, etc. etc. etc.) Fixing these is a one-fell-swoop way to fix, what, 20 or 30 abilities gamewide?

    Warlocks need a niche again. Wizards have fast caught up to them on the "AE damage" front, and green/linked encounters are far too rare... even in the zones where they're common, it's all trash mobs, so the split is "warlock cleans up the fights that nobody cares about, other DPS dominates on the interesting Named mobs." Not much glory or fun, there.

    Sorcerors need to be given more DPS (and enough additional aggro control to go with it... we don't all raid so we don't all have a half-raid of bards, chanters, and aggro-transferers helping us out). Or they need some big utility that is better than what the summoners and higher-DPS scouts bring, if they're not going to out-DPS them.

    Coercers: I notice that the ashlok coercer mobs in Wurmbone's End have basically instant-cast possess essence. Hint, hint. If they have to find a new pet every time they zone, making them take 10 seconds out of their first fight every time to do it is not fun. (God forbid they bring any DPSers along so their possess target keeps dying 1.5 seconds before the possession lands.)

    Illusionists: Find a way to cut down on all the short-term buff casting. They don't need a full hotbar of "make my group slightly better for 30 seconds". Let them do something for themselves.
  3. Menelag New Member

    The majority of my knowledge of mages is centered around Necromancers, so I'll just bring up a couple of points about them specifically, most of which have already been mentioned in other posts:

    Temporary Pet Summons (Awaken Grave, Blighted Horde, and Undead Horde)-
    While these are OK in lower levels, before you get reliable crit chance, After about level 80, these spells become utterly useless and most often result in wasted time spent casting them. They die on the first AoE, they don't crit (which would probably make their damage output worth it), and if the mob you cast them on dies before they de-summon, they just stand there doing nothing until they expire.
    Solutions- Make them Immune to AoEs, give them crit chance (though it may be simpler to just increase their damage output by 100% at the very least) and make them attack the next available mob if the one they were attacking dies. These would be very enjoyable to be able to use again, as I feel they should be class-defining spells.

    Dooming Darkness
    This is another ability that I would use in lower levels but since it gets NO upgrades after Dooming Darkness III, It gets stuck on an area of my hotbar maze that is reserved for things that are only used in PvP (the snare is still nice for PvP, but the damage is still meh).
    Solutions- Make Higher level versions, just like almost every other spell in the game (minus a few which don't need an upgrade, such as Vision of Madness, or Group Cures).

    Vampire Bats
    I'm not sure how others feel about this spell, I think it's value is debatable, but personally I feel the time spent casting this could be better used for casting Lifetap, Bloodcoil, or Soulrot. It has the longest casting time of all Necromancer DoT's and yields the least damage per second.
    Solution- Increase Damage of Vampire Bats by 10-15% (perhaps even more?)
  4. Fendaria Member

    Sorcerer

    My big issue is I don't feel like a glass cannon anymore. I feel like a glass pop gun. I used to, many expansions ago, but the past three, I haven't.

    I still die a ton, but its not because my DPS gets me agro and I die. Years ago, I used to have to watch my agro on raids or I'd go splat. It took some skill not to die. If the tank died, it would be a death sentence for me cause I was always in spot #2. It was almost a running joke, how long I'd live some fights till I got agro and died. I haven't heard comments like that from our raid force in a long, long time. I just don't do enough DPS to get agro anymore, and its depressing.

    What we need is simple. Increase our DPS!

    Why play a Sorcerer over a Scout T1 DPS? They live longer and do more DPS. Assassin's, Rangers, and Beastlords? (And do I even need to bring up the massive utility Beastlords have?)

    And give us something to help against the large DPS proc fest summoners have become now.

    Our DPS needs to stand out again.



    Xelgad, you mentioned you were looking for some smaller, simpler changes for AAs, prestige, and spells. Here are two very simple change for Wizards/Warlocks.

    Take the bottom tree's of both sides of the prestige tree's and just double the damage/effects of them. The left and right prestige lines really need something this drastic. They are simply bad right now.

    Then change Iced Anger / Toxic Aura to instead of reducing our Hate (worthless) so it will increase our spell double cast chance by 0.1% per point.

    Let me get agro again from my DPS.



    If you finish your changes and you aren't chuckling evilly to yourself about the fighters who will be whining they can't hold agro against the sorcerers in their group, how having a hate transfer class is now required, and how they can't tank in reckless stance and have a hope of holding agro anymore, then your changes didn't go far enough.


    Let me be a glass CANNON.



    Fendaria
  5. Mystere Member

    I don't know what you're smoking here. I have absoloutely no desire to get aggro, ever. If you have a desire for aggro, go play a tank. Or go play another game. Dirtnap = zero DPS.

    Devs please don't listen to the above poster about getting aggro. The point isn't aggro as some kind of sign of greater DPS, the point is greater DPS, period. At this point I think it is fairly obvious that the two COE endlines are failures based on the fact that pretty much no raiding wizard specs either left or right but is willing to go so far as to waste 6 prestige points just to obtain dual conversion.

    1) Incineration should be a personal, passive buff if you are going to make it increment only with crappy ST heat spells. Better yet, remove the need to increment this spell at all. Along with that, remove the requirements for Hellfire.
    2) Make Blast, Fusion and E'Ci targeted AOE spells. The mechanics of range-determination for Blast and Fusion are so F'ed up that I could be auto-facing the mob at 3 meters and still have the "no targets in range" show up after 2.5 seconds of casting time. This happens when there is a slight height difference (such as a thin carpet or small ledge or step) and in water. We die more than scouts because we have to be close in to DPS but you don't give us the same ability to survive at such close ranges; making these spells targeted AOE spells would allow us to stand with the other mages. At the very least allow Spell Reach in the Wizard tree to increase both range AND radius.
    3) Add more flexibility to the prestige tree. Remove the prestige point requirements for dual conversion. Remove the link requirements to spec only left or right.
  6. Mistral New Member

    Conjuror:
    1) Dumbfire pets - They are worthless for years...
    2) Plane Shift - This spell needs to be adjusted to be usefull again.
    3) Pets appearences - Could it be possible to choose the one we want to use ? ^^
    4) Healer pet - Worthless since the beginning (especially for a main pet)
    5) Bubble - Remove the condition of pet not attaking to be in line with the necro AE immunity (or at least replace it by a mana drain to reflect the necro HP drain)

    As a conjuror, it would be nice to be able to summon all sorts of things. Currently, as stated above, even Dumbfire pets aren't worth casting, and only mage pet is usable in figth. So right now, as a conjuror, I only summon a Fire pet... Yeahhh...


    Illusionnist:
    1) Regen mana - It is a joke compared to coercer, the group regen mana of illusionist needs to be increased.
    2) Mezz / crowd control - These spells are worthless

    I created my illusionist several years ago for crowd control, regen mana, and buff my group. But now, mezz doesn't exist anymore, regen mana task is assign to coercer; so I can only buff my group.... Yeahhhh...
  7. Rosanne New Member

    Illusionist :

    - mana groupe regen is very low especially in raid, this is clearly a coercer job...
    - Mana tap is single regen mana --> useless, in raid it block coercer regen, correct me if I am mistaken
    - Channeled focus is bugged and doesn't work last time i tested it, even if it could work, recast and duration are a bit to high
    - we lose pet each time we zoned... we keep it only if we have 2 or less point in concentration
    - Mez/CC --> useless, was sometimes needed in kael contested/group content at launch...
    - illusory allies --> this spell is a jok and clearly useless
    - Doppleganger --> useless
    - Extract Mana VII --> regen 113 power every 4s for 20s --> useless cause we have 50k+++ power...

    If Regen never be our job, we can accept more group boost dmg and a better dps :)
  8. Chrexx Active Member

    To me, it honestly seems like Wizards do not have the capability to keep up with other mage classes on parse. Our prestige abilities limit us severely. In order to maximize DPS we need to spec both Lord of Arcana and Arcane Force, which means that we do not have enough points to get one of our end-line spells. I'm fairly certain that there is not another DPS class that gains more from opting not to spec their end-lines: how is that fair? In order to make wizards more equal to other DPS classes, something needs to be done to one of the prestige lines. This must yield two results: it will increase our DPS and give us an incentive to spend points on abilities that make the class more enjoyable to play (more crit bonus or potency doesn't make anyone happy, we would prefer using new spells...but not at the cost of losing dps!). The following are some suggestions to accomplish this:

    1. Let incineration gain increments on all damage spells instead of just heat spells. Doing this will allow us to quit wasting time casting spells that do little damage.

    2. This next one might be a stretch, but i'll say it anyway. Change Surge of Ro by making it a group proc equal to that of Frigid Gift (except that it's triggered by heat spells) and take away the part of incineration that says increments can't be added if the spell is modified by Fireshape. This gives us an incentive to spec fireshape instead of iceshape. Basically, the group still has the procs from Frigid Gift, but it's coming from Surge of Ro instead. On top of that, wizards will get to 5 increments of incineration much faster which means our dps will increase. Additionally, because we would be getting to 5 increments much quicker, we would be able to cast Hellfire much more. In my opinion, this method would put us right on par with every other dps class without making us overpowered. I believe the only reason that SOE doesn’t let incineration gain increments on all spells because in the prestige tree, they want to retain a strict heat vs. cold lines. Therefore, doing what I said in number 2 would allow SOE to keep their strict lines while increasing our dps.

    3. Make incineration more adaptive to AOE fights. It’s nearly impossible to keep up incineration on a named while trying to kill adds. Make it so that you retain the amount of increments you have gained and instead transfer the damage to the last mob you have casted a single target heat spell on. For example, say an encounter has one main named and two additional mobs. You cast a couple of spells and gain three increments of incineration, but it’s time to switch to the adds. When you switch to the adds, casting a single target heat spell increases your increments of incineration to four and transfers the damage on the target that you just damaged.

    4. Add another part to Mystical Heat that gives a certain percentage chance to clear the reuse on manaburn when you cast a certain spell. I believe the fairest spell for this would be fusion.

    5. Add another part to Velium Chill that increases the damage of blast of devastation and Hail storm by a a certain percentage.

    6. Increase the amount of increments frozen solid applies In Cyromaster so that it’s easier to reach 180.

    Obviously numbers 2 and 3 are my favorite. Hope you take my post into consideration!
  9. Desillusion New Member

    Hi,
    I'd like to agree about what have been said on wizards, i've been playing one since release, until recently. With CoE i lost interest in the toon. I'm not raiding with her anymore.What's the point of playing a wizard if that's to parse 3rd or 4th ? Wizard have no utility, or close to none. Just read class description on the char select screen ? Might be an idea to change it now, or tune the class...
    Daray have made a detailed post, some other peoples posted about what main problems are, to make it simple : our prestige abilities are not in line with what most other mages got. Neither side offers a fun gameplay. Building increments system is NOT fun. I'd rather not even talk about heroic groups (try to reach 5 increments in an heroic group), even in raid exept on named fights (assuming the wizard don't have to change target) it takes much to long to make profit of the prestige stuff. Hence the dps outcome is not realiable making it pointless to spec into them.
  10. Sophronia New Member

    The main reason I stopped playing my Illusionist was simply the amount of click click click click click you have to do.
  11. Sophronia New Member

    And for summoners, pet line of sight problems drove me nuts
  12. Davngr Well-Known Member

    dumb fire pets are terrible anything they are changed to would be great.

    illy- more range on auto attack pls. 100% aoe avoid for pet it's just dumb how lil damage it does and how much i have to recast it.
    coer - make PE a stored pet or something. make it 100% immune to aoe. more range on auto attack.

    wiz/lock - make the wisdom endline ability into a "preparation" like ability. wiz: (deray all ready went 100% on this lol) lock: more blues(not greens) and at least one should have no maximum targets.

    necro - fixing dumbfires would do amazing things for this class as is but making consumption a group damage proc and making bloodcoil damage instant would be great.

    conj- lower casting time temp pet buffs. take away restrictions on soulburn. having to cancel PS to cast souldburn is not fun and while i can see how it's a bit op it should fall in line if the other classes improvements are made as well.
  13. Fendaria Member

    No. The point I am trying to make is we used to have so much DPS that a very significant limiting factor on how much DPS we could do was how much agro a tank could hold. Now, its not. We can go all out immediately and not get agro.

    I used to have to worry about how early I would be casting Ice Comet. Not anymore. Ice Comet + Fusion used to be huge agro because of the damage they did. Not anymore.

    There used to be skill required to parse well and live. Not anymore.

    It used to be one of the best buffs in the game for the mage group was the trouby buff Alin's Serene Serenade. The hate decrease it had was essential when raiding to help keep the Sorcerer's alive and let us really cast well. Now the buff, not needed.

    I am asking for our DPS to be boosted back to the level where fighters have to pay attention and work when they have a sorcerer in group their group. It seems crazy to me that instead of trying to make sure they have enough hate, some fighters are running reckless and instead its me scrapping to try to out DPS them.


    Oh and Mystere
    E'Ci is already is a targeted AOE spell.


    Fendaria
  14. Daray Well-Known Member

    I remember thinking this might be a cool idea too (I assume you meant Firestorm instead of E'ci), but I think I would quickly get frustrated with needing a target before beginning a cast, and not being able to complete casts because the target happened to die.

    And that's why I'd much rather a middle ground of slightly extending the radius / relaxing the range restrictions on certain abilities.
  15. ng23985 New Member

    TL;DR Summary: There is only one gameplay aspect of the Wizard class that isn't fun – the CoE prestige abilities. They are frustrating because they need so much attention from the player and so much micromanagement. As for balance, Wizard is extremely underpowered. We have a dozen broken, out of date, and conditional damage spells. I enjoy playing my Wizard very much, but my fun ends the second I see that I've worked my butt off to get to #5 on the parse. Nothing is more disappointing than being a Tier 1 DPS class that is doing Tier 2 quality damage. More than anything else, the problem with Wizard is severe under-performance in our DPS role.

    -----------Details-----------
    Overview: The general playstyle of the Wizard class is agreeable. It is complex and challenging to play. In my opinion there are only 2 flaws of the Wizard class. The first flaw is that the CoE prestige abilities are a) underpowered compare to other DPS classes, and b) they radically change platstyle relative to pre-CoE due to changes in casting order, new mechanics to babysit, and a spammy spell (Hellfire). The second flaw of the Wizard class is that our damage has not scaled up very well into the modern game.

    From the Character Creation screen, description of the Wizard class - “...no other type of mage is able to match the Wizard's ability to inflict such great devastation upon a single target.” Wizard is NOT capable of fulfilling this role under any circumstances in the current game. My #1 source of frustration with EQ2 is that I've been playing a broken class for a long time. Wizard is a Tier 1 DPS class. Conjurors and Necromancers are Tier 2 DPS classes. This means that Wizard should always be doing more damage than a Conjuror or Necromancer of comparable gear and skill. In fact, the opposite is true. I struggle to hit 600k DPS single target as a Wizard, but the Conjuror and Necromancer in my guild are doing 850k to 1.1 million DPS single target. This is remarkably frustrating. They bring far more utility than I do to the raid, so they shouldn't be bringing more DPS too.

    General Balance suggestions for overpowered Summoner mechanics:
    • Pets – forbidden from double-dipping into damage proc buffs. Only proc buffs that are cast on the pet AS A SINGLE TARGET will apply. Summoners shouldn't be getting 60k dps out of my Frigid Gift at the same time I only get 25k.
    • Pets – Reanimate (death save) shall be changed to be unmodifiable – this way it cannot gain additional death save triggers from Time Warp or other means. Pet death is supposed to be the drawback to playing a Summoner, but with multi-trigger aggro wipe + death save, that doesn't happen very often anymore.
    • Summoner – Soulburn should follow the same crit rules as Lifeburn and Manaburn (which can't crit). Either forbid Soulburn from critting, or enable it on Lifeburn and Manaburn.
    • Summoner – Conjuror's Periodic mastery and Necromancer's Rotting Flesh cause some DoTs to have more ticks. Unfortunately it also causes them to double-dip from abilty modifier. They should be fixed to correctly only allow ability modifier to apply ONE TIME to affected spells.
    Wizard Specific Issues: The main problems of the Wizard class stem from being untouched for so long. We have spells and AAs that are wildly out of date and a lot of our damage spells are conditional.
    • Wizard (and Warlock) damage spells were originally designed to have a wider damage variance than other classes. These days our low hits are really embarrassing because they have failed to scale up well. Most other classes have high hits that are 10-20% more than their low hits. Sorcerer's high hits are up to 90% higher than their low hit. All Sorcerer spells should be reviewed, and minimum damage increased across the board.
    • Concussive Blast – This spell does not trigger damage procs such as Peace of Mind, Elemental Toxicity, etc.
    • Storming Tempest – This DoT has 23.4s duration with 3.8s tick interval. So it should have 7 ticks (23.4/3.8=6, plus the initial hit = 7 total. After the 6th tick, ST is still on my maintained spells bar, but then it fades way without having inflicted the 7th tick. One tick is missing.
    • Epic Proc – It seems the damage of our epic proc is unaffected by potency, and this makes it very weak and insignificant overall.
    • Ro's Blade and Surge of Ro – Both are weak. Also both are DoTs, so subsequent procs will cancel the previous one which reduces the damage. Surge of Ro does not stack with Frigid Gift. Increase the damage 3-4x and make them direct damage, then change Surge of Ro to proc on any spell to remove the stacking problem with Frigid Gift.
    • Protoflame and Forge of Ro – These are broken dumb pet spells. These could be fixed by simply changing them into damage spells. That way you don't have to do something more comlicated by coming up with a proper fix for swarm pets. Protoflame could become a medium damage nuke (60% of Ice Comet's dmg), with a medium (15-25s) reuse time and quick 1s cast time. Forge of Ro could become a pulsing AE (like Mystical Field), but please keep the debuff component.
    • Aurora – A mezz spell that also mezzes me? I don't even have it on my hotbar. The name sounds very fitting for a large fire nuke. Change it to have 1-2s cast time, 45-90s recast time, remove the mezz, and tack on a large fire nuke
    • Mystic Overflow – A respectable 3x/min AE dmg proc. I never had a complaint about this spell 'til I saw what Conjurors got in CoE. Their Planar Detonation is a clone of our Mystic Overflow, except it does more damage and procs more often. The Tier 1 DPS class should have the more powerful ability, not the Tier 2 DPS class. Double the damage and proc chance of Mystic Overflow.
    Conditional Damage Spells :
    • Thunderclap – Does more damage when we are closer to our target. It is impractical because many fights require us to be at maximum range.
    • Flames of Velious – With left-side prestige, this spell does more damage as the target's health goes down.
    • Ice Shield – Up to 3 triggers of damage when the tank receives melee damage. Because all tanks have high avoidance, this spell often expires without having consumed a single damage trigger.
    • E'Ci's Frozen Wrath – Billed as an Ice Comet replacement, it actually does less damage than Ice Comet to single targets because AE spells receive less ability modifier. This forces us to keep both spells on our hotbar and assess the combat situation to decide which one to cast. This leaves the door open for lots of mistakes.
    • Blast of Devastation and Fusion – These are both frontal arc AEs. They have a tight angle and short range. NPCs do not like to stand close together so it isn't easy to make good use of these spells. We have to move around to reposition due to the short range and narrow cone angle, and since we can't cast and move at the same time this costs us DPS.
    • Fiery Blast – Does damage proportional to the amount of damage the Wizard does in the 10s after casting this spell. This is the most hypersensitive-to-failure spell in the entire game. It fails if the Wizard gets stunned, stifled, interrupted, mezzed, resisted, knocked back, NPC stoneskins, “no detrimental spells” debuffs, death of the Wizard, death of the target before FB expires, and various other nonsense. It is forbidden from critting and doublecasting. It also does not count the following types of damage in its charge-up: damage procs, DoTs, Manaburn, and doublecasted spells. On top of all this crap, all of our damage spells have different reuse timers, so they become staggered as a fight drags on. To make the best use of FB, we need to have all of our big damage spells up at the same time. Yes, this spell can hit remarkably high when all the stars in the universe align to our favor, but most of the time it is a spectacular pain in the rear. I have very deep hatred for this spell. It is impossible to use effectively on a consistent basis.
    • Manaburn – This is another spell I hate with a passion. MB does damage based on my current power. Power drains are very common in raiding these days, and have been for a long time. It is much harder to recover from MB's power drain during a fight that has a power drain as part of the script. If I cast MB during such a fight, I can be sputtering along for 10-15 seconds with not enough power to keep casting spells as often as I should. Next, there aren't very many power buffs in the game. I see Necros with 100k+ health casting Lifeburn, but I almost never have more than 75k power for MB. The lack of power buffs limits the growth of MB. It also cannot crit, and many NPCs are immune to MB outright.
    All of these spells do great damage under certain conditions, and lousy damage if any under other conditions. This is NOT fun.
  16. ng23985 New Member

    Continued from previous...

    CoE Prestige:

    Most DPS classes got very good stuff for CoE prestige. For example, Conjuror and Necromancer basically got the same thing – Planar Wrack and Graverot. These spells are 100% passive damage, free and reliable. They are triggered by casting any damage spell possessed by the Summoner. I have witnessed these procs push over 90k DPS. Beastlords got Truespirit Energy, which is also 100% passive. Wizards on the other hand got radically game-changing effects in CoE.

    Left Side
    • Incineration/Ro's Power – 75% chance to proc a short duration DoT, using the most pitifully weak spells in our spellbook. Often I can cycle through all of my fire spells and not get a single proc. I'm lucky to get 40k DPS out of it. Compare this with the Summoner abilities I mentioned above. Theirs proc on every damage spell, ours only on a select few. Theirs proc very often, and deal incredible damage; ours procs infrequently and deals lousy damage. Why is it that the Tier 2 DPS class got something passive and powerful while the Tier 1 DPS class got something that is frustrating and weak? Unfetter Incineration – allow it to proc 100% of the time, and from every spell in our book.
    • Mystical Heat – Good in theory except the problems with Manaburn that are outlined above. I cannot benefit from the shortened reuse of MB from this because I cannot refill my power completely in between casts even with help from an Enchanter. Change it to give me back 40% of my power instantly after I cast MB.
    • Fire Chains – Since Wizard is a Tier 1 DPS class, we shouldn't have many buffs. This is a group damage proc and a pathetic one at that. Ditch Fire Chains and give me something to increase my personal DPS. I suggest passive +15% base power for bigger Manaburns, or +5-10% pre-modifier spell damage to all my spells.
    • Hellfire – This is another conditional damage spell. The damage is very low, maintaining Incineration increments is very difficult, and it is on an extremely quick cast/reuse cycle. I'd prefer a non-conditional moderate damage spell with more typical cast/reuse. Wizard's specialty has never been spamming quick, weak spells. Get rid of its reliance on Incineration increments so we don't have to babysit that mechanic.
    Right Side
    • Having to build up 180 increments of Frozen Solid gives us another mechanic to babysit. We don't need another complicated thing to monitor, we've got enough. Building increments is very slow; up to a 70s of fighting single target. Second, the increments fade completely away if one short minute passes and the Wizard doesn't cast offensive spells. This makes saving up charges difficult. Next, if we hit Frozen Rain or Frozen Detonation at the wrong time, we can eat up our increments before getting to 180 and then the damage is teeny-tiny and we're starting all over again with zero increments. The use of increments makes both Frozen Rain and Frozen Detonation conditional damage spells with lots of chance of error. We already have too many of these, and I'd like to see all of them banished from our spellbook. I want reliable spells that work the same way every time, and do not have any strings attached.
    • Iced Anger – Detaunt procs on every outgoing damage hit makes for serious lag.
    • Velium Chill – It is contrary to how the rest of the line works in that we're supposed to build then unleash increments of Frozen Solid. This rewards us for building and maintaining the increments, and it is very weak. Hail Storm is already one of our faster casting spells – we do not need it to be insta-cast once in a while. Blast of Devastation isn't even a Wizard spell (it is a Sorcerer spell), and it is only situationally useful, and it is conditional as outlined above. It isn't good to make BoD instant cast once in a while either.
    Center
    • Arcane Surge – Surge of Ro has problems that have been outlined above, and this additional effect is very uninspiring. In beta it did double its current damage and even then it wasn't very good.
    • Arcane Tyrant – This has the same problem as Fire Chains. Wizard is a Tier 1 DPS class, we should not be receiving a group damage proc buff. We should get something that improves our personal DPS. Multiply the damage of Arcane Tyrant by 10 (or increase proc chance to 50-75%), change it to cold type damage, and make it a passive proc for the Wizard only.
    Left and Right summary:
    Both sides are complicated to use because they require us to babysit brand new mechanics that we never had to deal with before. The Wizard class is already complicated enough without these unwanted additions. Having to deal with this extra nonsense is not fun at all. The performance of these abilities is also pathetic compared to what other DPS classes got. Other DPS classes got 100% passive things that give free extra damage without changing the feel of the class playstyle. Wizards deserve to have the same.

    Perhaps look at Wizard's damage procs from EQ1 for inspiration – Pyromantic Ignition and Cryomantic Stasis. I love Lucy...

    http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=37013&source=Live
    http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=37007&source=Live

    After you fix our CoE stuff to be more powerful and easier to use, then you need to balance us against the other DPS classes. We should be a true Tier 1 DPS class, balanced to stand at the top of the DPS parse alongside only Ranger, Assassin and Warlock. I am playing the Tier 1 DPS class, I am playing the more difficult class, so I feel that I deserve to be ahead of the Summoners in my guild 100% of the time. The summoners should be beneath the 4 real Tier 1 DPS classes 100% of the time, but they are on top right now. Summoners are the most overpowered classes in the game right now because they double dip from procs and ability modifier.
    I've given a lot of highly specific, detailed information. I hope it leads to some solutions.
  17. Fendaria Member

    Item Stats, Caps, Buffs, Etc.

    This is another area which needs to be looked into and addressed. Daray touched on this some when he mentioned the problems with AAs.

    It boils down to this now. It is not hard for casters to have self buffed 100% Casting speed, 100% Ability/Spell Reuse, and 100% Recovery (especially with reforging). This problem is only worsened by the fact that the over cap transfers of these stats are so very, very poor. The only real "open" stat now is Ability Mod.

    What this means is all those buffs which lowered reuse or casting time are now worthless. All the AAs which lowered casting time or reuse are now worthless. For example:
    • What good is Perpetuality for a Enchanter with max Casting Speed?
    • Sorcerers no longer take the Spellshifting from the agility line.
    • Allegro, we don't need the casting speed from this buff anymore.
    • Upbeat Tempo - its only used for the extra ticks.
    • Time Compression - its only used for the 5% double spell cast
    • Jester's Cap is now better on Melee than Casters. The Trouby prestige 'fix' for this is to do melee damage. (I used to be a prime target for this buff and I was able to notice the fights I got capped because my DPS was significantly higher).

    Sorcerer result

    This has had a few significant repercussions for Sorcerers
    1. Buffs which proc damage on spells cast have become much more important, as they are some of the only buffs which really 'do' anything. Sorcerers are the slowest casting class and hence we trigger significantly less of these effects than the other mages. Increases to our direct spell damage have not kept pace. (We cast slower, our spells hit harder).
    2. Sorcerers traditionally had lower casting speed, reuse etc. of the different mages. This used to be our balancer on raids that when we got boosted, the boosts were a bigger overall % change. (ex the TC 20% casting speed boost was a bigger increase for a Sorc at 30% casting speed than an Illy at 70% casting speed with Perpetuality running). Now we are all sitting at 100%. This 'boost' to our DPS on raids no longer exists. We are self buffed to 100%.
    3. Ability mod is one of the few stats worthwhile for us to reforge into now. Except that Ability mod is better for fast casting mages, which Sorcerers are not. We get less of a benefit from this stat than Summoners and Enchanters.

    There aren't any great solutions to this problem.
    The best I can think of, would be to fix the stats / over cap changes of these abilities. Set up some kind of curve where
    0 spell cast = 100% cast time
    100 spell cast = 50% cast time
    300 spell cast = 25% cast time
    600 spell cast = 12.5% cast time
    Or fix some of the AAs so they modify the base spell instead of the 100% cast time. So if the AA removes 1 sec from the reuse, it does so before spell/ability reuse is applied.
    Or change some of the AAs/prestige to apply a negative % to your casting speed for certain spells. Something like...
    Iced Anger / Toxic Confusion into something like:
    • All cold/poison spells gain -200% casting speed and +100% spell double attack.
    So now, if you have 200% spell casting speed you cancel out the -200% from the effect. A 300% casting speed would put you at the same 50% base spell casting speed we have now. This would help all those buffs for casting speed (and you could do this for reuse too) to be relevant again.



    Fendaria
  18. Fendaria Member

    Where is the mage version of Combat Mastery?

    And don't tell me its Time Warp when Predators already have Dexterous Attacks.

    Perhaps the mage version could be something akin to the old pre-nerfed Najena's Ring of Readiness.


    Fendaria
  19. Uncle Active Member

    enchanters: make group buffs raid wide
  20. Mystere Member

    Yes, of course I meant Firestorm. I personally have no problem with needing a target before casting, especially if the tradeoff is that I get to stand at range, and the radius for all these spells opens up to 360 degrees instead of a cone shape. Completing casts should be allowed if the current target dies as long as at least one other target is still alive inside the radius of the blast. This would help wizards (and warlocks) be uncontested AE specialists, whereas now we have to compete with all the other DPS classes on AE fights and yet we still lose unconditionally on ST fights.
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