I see the devs posting in a lot of class forums can we please hav an answer about our seal line?

This has been brought up multiple times by many people, our Seal line does nothing. and we lost our int buff for it. Can the devs please comment on this? What I beleive its meant to do is make us resist less against higher con mobs however it does no such thing.

I wouldn't hold your breath, all of the dev post to date are about changes made in LU16.

I don't even know if we have a dev... looks like all the mage classes get no response from the devs in charge of our classes.... So I wouldn't expect any kind of response... other then the fact they don't care what we think. unless your a coercer which is the only mage who has a dev posting in their forums....

**REMOVED PERSONAL ATTACKS**
Message Edited by Raijinn Thunderguard on 11-07-2005 11:22 AM
Message Edited by Raijinn Thunderguard on 11-07-2005 11:22 AM

If you want responses on combat arts there is a forum dedicated to that, all classes post their problems with spells over there, and sometimes they get responses also.
I made a post over htere, about the seal line, in the hope to get some attention.

do we need a int buff? we have distruption buffs

int boosts the damage your spell does
the boosted distuption means your spells are less likely to get resisted?

That's the whole point, the disruption buff doesn't seem to do anything.

Increases to casting skills affect your chances at preventing the enemy from outright resisting the spell completely. In effect, it's similar to the impact that offensive melee skill increases work calculating hits on an enemy. Skill increases work best when fighting enemies that are more likely to outright resist your spells, such as yellow, orange, and red higher cons. With area effect spells, it increases the chance that every target gets hit by the area effect.

Edit: For beneficial spells, casting skill increases will lower the chances of fizzle.
Message Edited by Lockeye on 11-06-2005 01:21 PM

Now that is a understandable explanation of a buff with somewhat difficult to observe effects. Thank you.

That statement is almost a direct contradiction to what Moorguard has said in the past. So who should we believe?

Lockeye who states, "Skill increases work best when fighting enemies that are more likely to outright resist your spells, such as yellow, orange, and red higher cons. With area effect spells, it increases the chance that every target gets hit by the area effect."

Or is it Moorguard, who states, "Skill buffs don't work the way they did before LU13. Pre-combat changes, a skill boost of +5 essentially made you a level higher when it came to using that skill. This caused all kinds of things to become broken, especially considering the way buffs could be stacked.

Now, skill buffs are just that: a buff to your skill's effectiveness. They don't, however, allow you to roll the dice as if you were higher level than you really are.

In other words, you're not hitting as if you're a 57.8 warlock; you're hitting as a 53 warlock with buffs. That's definitely better than not having the buffs, but keep in mind that their effectiveness scales based on the con of your opponent. The buffs will matter less against oranges and reds, and will make a considerable difference against opponents below your level.

This same reasoning applies to melee skill buffs as well."

EDIT:
Source:
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=combat&message.id=71486#M71486

Message Edited by Moonspark on 11-06-2005 02:04 PM

It doesn't work like it did Pre LU13, where a +25 skill increase actually changed the effective level of the spell by 5 levels. Now it acts as a modifier, so that even with a +25 skill increase, it doesn't mean that you have an even chance at hitting things 5 levels above the caster than if they weren't using the buff. Against most even con or lower con opponents, your spells are going to land most of the time anyway, so that little room for improvement makes its benefits less perceptibe (but they're still taking effect). However against higher con targets, being able to land spells more often is relatively noticeable, but again, the post LU13 environment means that the higher the con, the more diminished the benefit (you'll see a better bonus amount for landing on yellows than high oranges and reds).

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this because raising my disruption doesnt seem to lower my resists or anything. I've had 370+ disruption more then a few times ( scholars insight, bard buffs, gear ) and there is NO noticable resist change. About how many points are we expected to raise it to effectively make us get resisted like a level 61?

Does this value scale with levels? I.E. 300 skill = level 60, 310 = 61, 330 = 62, 370 = 63, 450 = 64.

I personally think that this wuld be a good use of disruption -- allow it to raise our casting levels so that we get resisted like higher levels. Make the increases very significant so that it is easy to raise our level by 1 or 2, but hard to raise it more than 3.. My example of disruption to casting level would be a good scale.

So... Raising disruption would be best for lowering the already very low resist rate of mobs around your level, or lower? Shouldn't this skill be utilized to make it easier to hit on the mobs we have trouble hitting? Otherwise it is nearly useless and there is no real reason to get gear with + disruption on it.

There's still every reason to find +casting skill gear and it does make it less difficult to land spells on higher cons, even oranges. The difference is that the benefit isn't as large against an orange as a yellow, or a red as an orange, because creature con mitigates some of the bonus (the same way physical and spell damage mitigation gets reduced when fighting higher cons). Against lower and even cons, it's more like overkill.

Wizard:
Fist of the Tyrant
A group concentration buff Increases strength and intelligence of the party

Illusionist:
Seal of Ingenuity
A group concentration buff increases intelligence and wisdom of the party

Coercer:
Signet of Reason
A group augmentation that increases the power pools of the coercer's group.

Conjuror:
Geotic Rune
A group augmentation that increases resistance to all types for the summoner's group and their pets.

Necromancer:
Teachings of the Shadow
A group augmentation that increases stamina and intelligence for the necromancer's group and their pets

Warlock :
Seal of Ebon Thought
A group augmentation that increases the effectiveness of all casting techniques of the warlock's group.

Looks to me like Warlocks are getting the shaft, on raids the raid leader would NEVER think of putting me in any group for my buffs. Every class is supposed to add something useful to a group, Coercers might look like they get the shaft here too, but they have utility like crazy. I understand I am a DPS class and I'm not meant to have utility, but explain to me why wizards get the intelligence and strength buff which makes them so much more useful.

I love my warlock, but in terms of utility we really do get the shaft.

fore the sake of comprehension and transparency, could we see the actual formula please?

That would be nice, or atleast a more accurate depiction of how it actually helps -- because I'm not convinced that it is working.

and this worthless spell is what we get a master 2 choice in. - and i call it worthless because at 60 i hit everything. I use the lowbie buff, not the +casting skill buff. I raid 3-4 nights a week, and consistently come out in the top of the dps chart. Rangers/Summoners have a slight edge in some encounters, but mostly ... its me or another warlock.

now...if i was trying to take down cazel, servent of mujeef, or some of the other level 65-67 mobs that are orange....and i was getting resisted on 25- 50 % of my spells, and putting this buff on dropped it down to under 10%, then it would be worth it. But untill you make these kinds of casting ratios the norm accross all caster classes, (which your player base would be in an uproar about..) we don't need this buff, let alone this master 2 choice.

Please make it an int/str buff like it used to be, or revamp it to something useable. or ffs, remove it fom our master 2 choices, and allow us to apply that m2 to a single target dd, soulflay or some such spell that we'd actually cast

I agree if you have zero interest in giving us any decent utility spells then at least give us an M2 choice that will due us some good.

The adding of Null Distortion and removing Dark Pillaging upgrade as a Master II choice at level 54 is already included in update 16c which should be on the public test server by monday.

I'm going to verify on monday if casting skill increases are working as intended. The function of what the seal line is buffing will not change.
Message Edited by Lockeye on 11-06-2005 05:52 PM