I'm not going to say no to another fairly sizable fire based nuke, but I have to admit, I do like fig's idea. It's like the Fury AA that gives a heal to other players. Only because the suggestion got me thinking along the fury ability. The Fury Mythical allows a fury to "buff" another healer. When the fury nukes, the buffed healer gets a healing bonus based on the amount of damage the furies nuke did. It would be a pretty cool ability to link the Damage done by that "buff" to a temporary nuke bonus for the wizard (timed or a set amount of triggers) maybe a +100 spell mod per 1000 pts done for 10 seconds as a feed back effect. If "rays" hits for 20K a +2000 Spell mod should provide a nice temporary bonus without adding more than what a new nuke would add. As I said, I don't mind a vanilla fire nuke, but I think something like this would be interesting as well.
Yay! Thank you! Very exited to see these changes. I haven't used Rays in a long, long time, and it will be nice to get some use out of it again
I totally love the idea of players in a group getting their own rays, but that would at the least cost a conc. slot, or be limited to 1 ally without totally overpowering us as a t1 dps with group utility. Enchanters bring the buffs but they are not t1 dps so, thats where the balance is. I also think tho its because SoE is slowly moving away from enchanters/summoners being pure dps classes. But this would also be a confusing class role as this would upgrade our group utility and cause us to do the same DPS and our allys to do greater dps than before. Thats the enchanters and bards jobs to make happen, our ice lash does good enough I think. Thats why I think hes creating us just a personal high power nuke and veering away from the group utility part of it.
There could have been a lot of things done better with Rays. It could have: - been cast in the background and not interrupted cast order. - had the cast time for the wizard only and upon completion dealt a hit for each mage in the group, being completely transparent to the other mages. - shared a 10% pow cost out over the rest of the mages in the group, dealing more damage for each person based on the amount of pow used in total. - applied a group buff of 2 triggers to each mage in group that would fire off a ray of disintegration upon successful spell attack. Give 3 triggers to the casting wizard since they spent the cast time on it. Lot of interesting ways it could have been done. The current implementation is, of course, horrible except in the rare situations where there's good communication.
Yey!!...woooowooooo!!! I soooooooooo welcome this change. As a Necro, you bloody Wizzies like to cast it when we are Lifeburning... I'd maygo as far as giving you a hug right about now..but i won't
Thanks Aeralik! Really good change imo. I think you nailed this one and appreciate the effort and thought for this change. Rays was a so so spell, the communication was easy enough but it in general made many others frustrated becuase of the loss of control. This is a fair complent and imo this is a very reasonable change to address the issue. Great customer focus!! Again thanks!!
I almost never cast Rays. Not because I don't know how to use it, or because I'm not smart enough to coordinate casting it with other players. I don't cast it because I've only met one other mage, ever, who actually asked me to put it in my spell rotation and at least 9 out of 10 of the rest actually send me hate tells if I do. I do, once in a while, use it when I'm the only mage in a group or when I'm soloing. I'm looking forward to having another nuke that I might be able to use, and how about this: make it interrupt the mob instead, now that would be useful.
First off, thank you so much for fixing this worthless spell..i never cast this spell at all, but could you maybe add a group casting speed increase buff to it and leave the damage where it is? (but maybe a little faster cast time) Wizzies could really use some kind of utility with the coercers putting out T1 dps and being able to power regen and mez....also since you fixed this one can you PLEASE look at surge of ro....that spells damage is pretty much worthless, maybe make it a passive buff that adds to spell damage all the time or better yet casting speed?....PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE lol.
This is great, i've noticed that when rays is used it actually does hit for a good amount so it's nice to see that the interrupt's being removed and the damage is getting boosted too. We're not actually losing the spell, it's just getting upgraded imo. Only question i have is concerning the recast, what is it going to be?
Aeralik wrote: Been over 2 months since this was announced. What exactly is your definition of "soon" ?
I know the update is already out, but I had to put my 2 cents in. Perhaps this spell change should have been better thought out, tho. I welcome this change 100%, but I guess we'll never get what we really want. Another ball of fire is pretty generic and sad. For every mage in the group with the wizard, Rays should have an additional 7% (or something like that) base damage on it. Mage groups could make that thing hit like a truck, and it would still have the useful concept of having more mages in the wizards group. Anyway, I'm glad it's changed to a more useful spell. At least I won't get the hate spam from Illusionists and Coercers trying to keep up their casting speeds (and don't even get me started on interrupting a fusion 4 seconds into it)
I'm loving this quite a bit. It's essentially a better ball of fire with a long recast (as has been said), and is far better than having all mages in my group wanting me to die constantly. Thanks so much for finally throwing us a bone devs, I'm not gonna be one to complain about a little free extra damage. This went from a useless spell that I literally never touched to my next in line after ice comet, and that's just awesome.
