Illusionist: State of the Game Address

Gah looks like were waiting on the next Big Update before we get the maintained spell window fix...

-Myrid

The maintained spells window fix is now in test....does this mean we can look forward to this going live within the week?

Maintained spell window is fixed... being taken off the list. Any other stealth nerfs or stealth fixes anybody has seen from today's patch?

-Myrid

Just thinking here about our AE mezz and it's restrictions.

With all of the restrictions applied to our AE mezz wouldn't you think you could mezz multiple encounter's with it?

As stated before it's silly we can't mezz linked Mob encounters that do the same damage as a single ^^ MoB with the same efficiency we can mezz single ^^ MoB's. It would seem to me the extra restrictions were placed on the mezz for "fear" of it being overpowerful, and SoE wanted to ensure it would not be overly powerful in EQ2.

Anyways....i just wanted to add that with the restrictions placed on our current encounter mezz it would seem that these restrictions would apply more logically if the mezz could mezz multiple encounters.

I would again suggest that this spell have it's recast timer looked into.....or have it looked into for possibly mezzing multiple encounters. I'd rather have the recast timer adjusted as i get the impression that AE mezz was not meant to be implemented in eq2 as it was in eq1.

I just noticed another bug you might want to add to this. It isn't really Illusionist specific, but since you mentioned Unsar's Soothing Runes, maybe add this one too. I /bugged this in game already.

Unsar's Soothing Runes is sharing its reuse timer with Dispel Arcane, though they are almost completely unrelated spells. It should share its reuse timer with the single target Cure Arcane instead.

Not a huge issue because the reuse timers are really short anyway.

I'm not so sure of the not mezzing in groups after 30 as stated by Vurin.

If I understand that correctly, you mean mezzing is either not done or not as neccessary after 30. From what I've seen up till level 28, is that there is an increasing need for crowd control, and mezzing is a primary form of that. This holds especially true in high agro areas where adds are likely. Mezzing adds saves lives, and reducing damage of opponents by keeping them immobile will always increase the effectiveness of healers, as those healers can now concentrate on the MT more readily as well as participate in moer HOs which increses the overall efficiency of any group.

I think it is just that there are a lot of subtle benefits to having an Illusionist or Coercer in any group. Actually, there are usually many reasons to have any given class in any given group.

I do not agree with the original post in regards to damage increasing for our class however. Illusionists are a supplimental and supporting role in a group. Our place is not to deal out damage consistant with other classes, but rather to help keep our group capable of dealing their damage and healing our wounds by keeping their power bars as full as possible in whatever way we can. Supplimenting damage with the use of stacked DoTs and so on is a great asset if you have time, and we usually will be able to, but damage is just not our thing and I don't mind that. I do think the benefit of haste should be increased very slightly, however, and I do agree that mezzes just don't have any noticeable increse in effectiveness as they raise in level from App to Adept and so on.

That's my thoughts.

The need for mez is on a bell curve and it peaks just around your level (28) playing in the 40's is like playing in the teens. You can and do use it but it really isnt nesscary most times. Most nights over a 3 or 4 our xp session I can usuaully count on one hand the number of times I mez while grouping. Even if it was as often as once every 10 pulls or so what should I be doing for those other 9 fights? I can tell ya what I do; I pretend I am a wizard and that my average dps of 50 is really alot higher then everyone else's ... but it is usually right in the same range as the healer in my group. Mezing past level 40 is situationally usefull but its not something your doing constantly most times.

In my group make-up, we couldn't live without mez.
As for the agro for breeze, no one is stupid enough on this board to think its not a heal. But since it is now 15 minutes long, you are basically signing up to get pegged by every add you encounter over the duration... seems to be a bit extreme. Especially when you are just running one place to another.
It more than likely is related to this : http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=combat&message.id=39556#M39556
I know they were looking at and posted on all the heal over time spells recently, but can't find the link on the Dev boards.

Mihos

I don't think the broken agro on stuff like owlbears is related actually. I would go so far as to say that the agro from breeze is intentional. I think the side-effects of agro from adds are not what the developers intended exactly, but they did intend for breeze to build hate.
The bug in that thread relates to mobs that split off of the tank and attack the rest of the group as soon as the first target dies. This is a long standing bug that has annoyed me since I started playing. It does not matter how much the tank taunts, those extra mobs will split off of him when the first dies. I have noticed however, that if a second tank taunts the encounter before the first mob dies, the hate no longer breaks off of the main tank. I still don't know why this is.
The dilemma with breeze agro is that on the one hand, it heals power and as such, it should generate hate. On the otherhand, because it generates hate continuously, it means that whenever a mob adds onto the encounter, the chanter is the first target; every single time. In the first case it just means that if the chanter has a ton of breezes going he better be a bit careful with his dots, drains, stifles and stuns or he might peel a mob from the tank. In the second case there is not a lot that can be done to prevent the agro, the chanter is virtually helpless other than canceling all the breeze spells on people.
Here are some solutions that might work:

1. Larger Power Over Shorter Time: Make the breeze duration shorter but more intense. That way breeze would be used only during or after combat to quickly get back to full power. The recast time would be short, the duration would be about 45 seconds, but the regeneration would be much higher. This would be much more like the Heal over Time that a druid casts. Not something you leave on people perpetually, but something you do to spot heal a person's power. Because it is more intense, so would be the hate generation. However, random agro would not be as big an issue with this since it wouldn't be left up all the time.
2. Group Breeze: Give the illusionists and coercers a group breeze spell at tier 5 that does not stack with any other breeze and works just as well. This would have a reasonably short recast time so that the illusionist could cancel it when everyone was full so as to avoid unwanted agro, and then recast later when it was needed.
3. Infrequent but Larger Hate Generation: This really doesn't fix the problem, but it reduces the liklihood of it happening. The idea is that if breeze generates X hate every 5 seconds, then let it heal power that frequently but instead have it generate 6X hate every 30 seconds. That way unless the mob added to the group at the very instant of that 30 second hate tick, the enchanter wouldn't be noticed. For this to work, all active breezes would have to generate hate simultaneously. If they based their hate generation off of their casting time, we would be back in the same boat since the hate pulses would be going off randomly for each breeze. This whole idea has the side effect that when a mob does go after the enchanter it's going to stick to him a bit harder.
4. Channel Hate: Give enchanters a channel hate spell. This would cost a LARGE amount of mana but it would take any hate that the enchanter had with the encounter and give it to the spells target. The enchanter would target the tank and cast it and all hate would be removed from him and added to the tank. A side effect might be to stun the enchanter or maybe silence him for a short time. Any spell that helped the enchanter with hate could not have too long a recast time, otherwise it would be largely useless since they will get agro all the time from adds.
5. Calm: The enchanter could cast a spell that temporarily gave a negative hate debuff against a single enemy. The negative hate debuff would have a short duration, 15 seconds or so. When the negative hate debuff wore off, the illusionist would have twice the hate. In this case, the tank would have to taunt the mob quickly, possibly a couple of times to be sure that as that calming debuff wore off, it would stay on him.

Out of all of them I like solution 1 and 3 the best. I like 1 because enchanters actually become power-healers. They have to manage how and when to heal so as not to peel mobs from the tank. It involves more strategy than just making sure that 6 people (or more) have breezes on them. I like 3 because it doesn't change much. It simply defers the hate gain enough that the tank would in most cases have time to taunt the adds before the hate pulse of the breeze.

They didn't intend Breeze to generate health every pulse. Here is what happened:
1) Breeze generated hate upon casting, like every other buff in the game
2) Priests discovered a fantastic exploit -- they never entered combat mode, but simply healed themselves continually. This gave them out-of-combat regen along incredible aggro generation, rendering them excellent tanks
3) Some of the plat-farming groups abused the heck out of that exploit
4) SOE changed the way per-tic regeneration spells work, so they put you into combat mode and generate aggro normally, to crush that exploit
5) That same patch caused the current problems with Breeze.
While I do not know for certain that the Breeze changes were an unexpected side-effect, all of the evidence suggests that this was the case.

Good info - I didn't know this was the source of our Breeze agro.

It seems to me that a better solution to that would have been to make a change such that you cast any spell while somebody in your group is engaged, then you become engaged. That's how I always thought it was implemented. If a priest could chain-heal himself while not being in combat, that's definitely not cool. Just make it such that him healing himself enters him into combat. And don't count ticks as being a cast (sure, this means you could cast a power regen on a tank just before pulling and then still be out of combat until the next cast but that seems hardly unbalancing - just gives you the ability to have power for one more cast).

The latest update of the original list looks pretty accurate as of today, Mar 31. Our roots are useless for soloing, our dps is very disappointing, breeze aggro is silly, spell upgrades do very little, and several of our abilities/spells/timers are just plain bugged. I realize SoE is trying to tackle a lot of balance issues atm but some of these fixes seem real straightforward. Thanks to everyone who is trying to keep the spotlight on our class.

Slingfire, I can appreciate the fact that you feel no need to mezz post 30. To say that it is rarely or ever done post 30 is entirely incorrect. This is detrimental to our argument and is completely wrong. Feel free to say they YOU do not mezz anymore. I'll believe it. But I, for one, still mezz post 30. It makes my group much more effective. A level 45 group of 4 players can take a level 50+ group of 5 or 6 mobs with the use of mezz. Not mezzing in this situation is NOT a testiment to your skills - but rather a statement on the fact that you are a wasted space in the group - except as a buff *****. That situation would clearly make the point we are arguing - other classes can do wonderful things while all we can do is sit back and buff. And since the last major patch, the agro induced by maintaining all of those mana regen spells is making it very dangerous for us.

I will continue mezzing. It is, without doubt, the most powerful spell in our book - and very probable, the game.

Please, choose your words wisely - and do not speak for me. You inclinations are incorrect.

Neph

Correct; Mezzing is very powerful throughout our entire career.
Though this statement needs to be slightly more clarified.

• Mezzing in well built 6 person groups with an adequate tank is only helpful for less than 10% of the game (Group x2 MoB's, Named, Adds)
  • i.e. Mezz is not too powerful in standard groups
• Mezzing is extremely powerful in small person groups (3 or 4) or in any group w/ an inadequate tank for the MoB's encountered. (having a scout tank....or a tank that is a few levels below the average group level)
  • in these situations it'll make the previously impossible, possible.

So depending on your grouping style mezz will vary in usefulness. But as for the standard eq2 experience of a 6 man group w/ an adequate tank mezz can at times feel like a wasted spell slot, that is until that specific 5-10% of the game content previously stated is encountered.

I don't have any major gripes with my role in regular groups. I can mez crowds, I can stifle bosses, breeze aggro is a nuisance but I live with it. I'm not that interested in comparisons with Coercers, or other Mages, it doesn't affect my gameplay.
What p*sses me off right now is this.
Illusionists seem to be useless against raid level mobs, as noted earlier
-Very few of our class defining traits are usable on ^ ^ ^ encounters, limiting our utitilty on these type of encounters to very low DPS mana batteries.

What does an Illusionist do on a raid? Haste your group's melee (but most of their DPS will come from their abilities anyway). Breeze a few people, but not too many or you will die. See if you can manage to land a single nuke on a trash mob before the melee dispatch it. Ho hum. Then we come to the 'epic' ^^^ mob encounters. Yipee, maybe I have a role here? But hey guess what, even on a green con ^^^ mob, not a single stifle, mez or stun will land. Toss in a few very weak nukes and start wishing you had opted for a sorcerer instead.
At the moment I can't see why anyone would bother bringing an illusionist to a raid level encounter. I really hope SOE can come up with some ideas to make the class moderately useful on raids.
Some thoughts.
Reduce breeze aggro so I can benefit more of my raid party? Boring, but at least people will appreciate me turning up.
Allow me to haste raid members who are not in my group? Also boring, but the inconsistency between haste and breeze drives me nuts.
Most importantly, allow at least some of my key abilities (mez, stifle, stun) to have at least some effect on ^^^ mobs, so I can actually play a useful part in the epic fights. My DPS is a joke, I don't expect that to be fixed because it would make enchanters overpowered in groups. But against epic mobs I may as well be twiddling my thumbs.
Message Edited by Belizarius on 03-31-2005 05:56 PM

some more detailed thoughts about mezzes, stuns and stifles on ^^^ mobs.
It's probably true that having full effect stuns and stifles would make these encounters rather trivial even with a single chanter, and especially if you have more than 1 chanter. How about the following.
Where these spells include a power drain component, the power drain should still land with normal effect. Bosses presumably have a large power pool, it would take several chanters to run them dry quickly, but a single chanter might be able to shorten the fight slightly.
Duration stuns, mezzes and stifles, could be reduced to the effect of an instantaneous stun, interrupting the mob's current casting only. Once again a lone chanter would have a small impact on the fight, but several chanters cooperating could start to seriously reduce the mob's dps. This seems reasonable to me.
These are my key abilities. Whilst Rogues can still backstab, Fighters can still taunt, Priests can still heal and Sorcerers can still nuke, my key abilities are currently 100% nerfed on these mobs.
Message Edited by Belizarius on 03-31-2005 05:51 PM

Just wanted to say, Thanks for making an updated copy of this post and moving it to the spells and abilities section.

Seemed very strange to me that we recieved 2 posts in that section earlier, for things that have been listed here for quite some time.....to top that off....at one point i had PM'd one of the mods informing them that we had a "new Consolidated List" and that it i was sure the community would appreciate another "thanks for the list" posts. As is obvious....we never did recieve one - leaving me still wondering if they've been looking at out old list this entire time......very doubtful that that is the case....yet i was still slightly curious.

Thanks for your time w/ this list; it's appreciated.

I have to agree with most of what has been said concerning raids and the role of participating Illusionists. Giving enchanters a significant role in raids does not necessarily guarantee success when more enchanters are utilized. Raid encounters are a battle of time to slay the enemy before your tanks fall or your healing runs out. For every enchanter you add, that's one less healer or DPS class that you have at maximum attendance (groups all full). It requires balance. Too little DPS, and the fight goes on too long, straining the healers. Too little healing and the DPS has too little time to do its job. Not enough tanks, and you will start that dreaded floor inspection early. No, I don't think it would be quite so easy to overpower the enchanter classes considering their current state.
One significant thing I noticed as I approached lvl 50 was that my ability to drain power was significantly reduced as a result of having to use Mind Drain instead of Speechless. Mind drain does not stifle, but only decreases the casting ability of the enemy. Many thought that the power drain aspect of Mind Drain was fixed, but I am not entirely convinced as it seems the enemy's power loss comes from continued casting rather than a drain effect. I first noticed this while killing gray nymph seedlings that were healing themselves quite well while under the effect of Mind Drain.
Terrifying Vision does have a stifle aspect, but it works on no signifcant target I have encountered at raids. Nor do Drain Will (stun + power drain) or Stunning Array (stun) seem to affect any significant raid targets. So, we are left with Mind Drain that appears to drain power, but doesn't really. I must say that Dismay seems to work though.

A couple more issues for the list I think:

1. Wither Hope and Lobotomize line make the casting bar disapear when they proc. I would imagine we're not the only class that has this problem but it's still something that needs to be fixed. Or is it just me with this issue?

2. No stifle that works on mobs 48+ except for our root which has no combat application whatsoever. 3s cast time, 16s max duration but normally breaks before that when the mob is poked by a needle.

3. Group Invis. Now I'm not trying to begrudge the furys a good group invis, but how does a class that doesn't even know how to turn themselves invisible, suddenly get a group invis that in most aspects is better than ours. Further range, faster cast, shorter recast and it doesn't break on falling damage. We beat them on duration by 5 minutes, which is a good chunk. And our power cost is about 100 less which is meaningless for a travel spell.

I got plenty more but I think everything else I've seen covered. I'll just wind up tearing out my hair typing more.

One more thing, to the people selling ourselves short on the dps situation, we should not be among the lowest scouts, we should be among the highest scouts. Every class out there has utility. They practically negated our biggest utility, crowd control, by design. Our dps is limited by our power bar, we can't do melee damage even if we wanted to, so in sustained battles the tanks and scouts can still melee. But I guess that's where our haste actually does it's share.

EDIT: Clarifying my position on DPS


Message Edited by Nupren on 04-13-2005 12:48 PM

Can't let this post float to far back.

• Tevalian's Seize Ego is reportedly fixed.

and, if someone hasn't noticed yet....a dev has commented on looking into our scorching beam problem. Which /boggles me. Illusionist's recieved a dev response in a brand new thread w/ only 2 posts in it, yet this post and the previous "consolidated" class issues post have been around for quite a few months - holding the same information, and much more.
Initially i had the impression the dev's were happy that all of the subclasses kept a "consolidated" list within each subclasses specific forums....as it takes the workload off of the devs for scanning through all of the posts on the boards. With how we've recieved dev posts lately in the "spells and abilities" forum, and most of the posts are in regards to one specific problem, not every problem consolidated. Perhaps that's how the Dev's wish to work, having each subclass posting individual problems in the spells and abilities forum - making it near impossible for any one post to stay on the front page for any good amount of time.
Phaw, i guess i'm just getting slightly irritated as this well put together thread has not had a "thanks for the list" post of any nature yet.