We need harder hitting spells, our modifier caps are too low for this expansion. The bottom line is that the balance is out of whack in SF, lets look at the facts - DPS: Sorcerors / Predators > Summoners / Rogues > Coercers >> Bards > Illusionist Utility: Bards >>> Summoners / Enchanters / Sorcerors / Rogues > Predators I barely consider our utility to be that impressive compared to new buffs that summoners and sorcerors get. Most of our previously impressive utility is marginal now due to the rediculous nature of SF gear for cast speed, double attack and attack speed. Just about everyone has a PoM equivalent now. Conjurers get elemental toxicity, strikethrough, stoneskin and raidwide potency and are still parsing 10-20k higher than us, how is that balanced? And its not just them, Warlocks now have a raidwide PoM like proc, except it procs encounter damage, it did 5k DPS for me on an AoE fight in Palace which was a lot more than PoM did. So really, we are terrible dps, mediocre utility and decent mana regen. At least bards have fantastic buffs, including raidwide damage procs, which make it worthwhile having someone doing 10-15k less than the other scouts. Previously we were top notch mana regen with moderate buffing and dps capabilities, now that our dps and utility have been reduced in effectiveness, there doesnt seem much point even bringing an illusionist. Personally Im considering betraying, since that way I can regen power and do moderate dps. Everyone still has the mindframe that the DPS groups need an Illusionist, but I'm sure that will change once the SF changes sink in people will realise that there is very little point in bringing an Illusionist aside from power regen which can be done by a coercer putting out more dps. Its a pretty sad state of affairs for Illusionists at the moment.
No one wants IA anymore; nearly everyone is raid is over the cap for DA. Its very quickly become a uselss spell to scouts/rouges/tanks. I have taken to putting on myself (again) - its probably one of the items that should be changed.
Cica wrote: To be fair, this isn't totally true. If your Wizzies are preferring UT tell them to get a grip.
Even for warlocks TC with 5% spell DA is arguably better. Even so, one good buff for one person doesnt make us a great utility class.
To be fair people still want TC, but with the spell DA on it now I feel dirty for thinking of putting it on a healer during a tough fight. IA *really* needs changed, I'm in a guild that didn't get too far in TSO and had our first SF raid tonight, and everybody was capped on DA in the raid tonight. Some flurry or something on it would be great. To help fix the dps/utility imbalance here I'd like to see enchanters moved up to at least 140% spell crit if not 150%. We still wouldn't have much dps compared to equally geared/played sorcs and summoners but it would help. Crit chance is capped easily for us, as are ability mod and cast speed. I don't need much more reuse time for dps (it does help with the buffs, of course casting those more often is a negative sign of the class's decline, to some people. But the crit bonus and potency just don't do much for our dinky little spells. When Master's Strike is your biggest hitter, you know the damage here is imbalanced =/
The point is that our base spell damage is so low, giving us 150% base crit mod wouldnt even fix the problem. Could we get some sort of developer response to this mess? I want to know whether I should betray, change class or whatever before I invest too much time in my Illusionist in SF. If Illusionists are 'working as intended' I dont expect to see many around in a few months.
Hello Devs, now that we all saw the effects of the stats-changes and combat changes in SF, we can say this for sure: DPS ballance for most classes, but especially Illusionist is terrible. Of course T1 DPS classes need to be ahead of Illusionists, but atm we are not fighting the T1 classes, but tanks and healers. As a rule of thumb I would say, we should do 80% of T1 DPS. Atm it is 50%. An easy fix would be to increase the damage on all our spells by 30%. But as mentioned above we dont really care what you change, more like THAT you change it. Passive buff-botting type classes die fast. Rumour goes you are looking into it. We would really like a response about your ideas. Thank you Concordant
EvilAstroboy wrote: Have to check the "other" forums under warlock they did a poll TC vs UT guess which won ? I tell you it wasnt TC ....
Anduri wrote: TC = 40 recovery, 25 cast speed, 10 reuse, 5 spell dbl atk UT = 25 recovery, 15 cast speed, 10 reuse, 1 or 2 extra ticks to dot (2 if red adorn) Sorcerers now get 56% self recovery, bards now give 32% recovery to groups. So either TC or UT will cap recovery (TC has more wasted). Spell haste is now very easy to cap with proper itemization for sorcerers. So our extra 10% is not needed for TC vs. UT. Looks like it's just a choice of 5 spell dbl attack (with AAs), vs. 1-2 extra dot ticks. Other than *maybe* for a wizards, I'd prefer UT on any other mage, including as an Illy.
so maybe we need a red adorn for TC that makes it +10% spell da ? or something for TC hmm i dont know
Maybe they need to do a complete revamp of the terrible AA they gave us in SF? Maybe they need to make our spells hit harder? Maybe they need to actually come to these forums and see how peeved everyone is and see that there wont be any illusionists left soon?
Well I have respeced to a complete DPS spec. Every point possible is put into makeing DPS higher. I am mythicaled and well geared. And my DPS is worse than the average templar. The increase of 100% melee range (from AA) is not enough to make it worth it. Every third fight I am killed by AOE or other close range melee effects. I have it at 100% (10 points) and it not enough...it needs to be about 1000% to make it useful (that is to say we need to be able to melee from our normal ranged positions). Call it magical-extenda-arms/blink-attack or whatever but the close ranged melee in cloth thing does not work... GO FIGURE. Even if the range were increased (to say +1000% melee range)...the extremely mild (maybe 2%) DPS increase is not worth the points. CC was useful and fun in VD Cella but thats it, all other instances could be DPS zerged so there was no need of CC. They need to fix Illusionists and fast... the Illusionist population is droping like flies and Coersers are exploding (again). Why would they nerf the Illy anyway?....were they really over-powered?...(NO)... colour me confused SOE.....
This is my 1st ever post here though I have been playing for 4 years or so. So that should tell you how strongly I feel about this situation. I think it's an utter travesty that not one SOE employee can bother to spend 5 minutes to explain (a) why they feel what they have done to the illusionist class is justified or (b) what they plan to do to fix it. I will not repeat all the extremely good points that have been made already in this thread. What I will say is that it appears that SOE has a totaly disregard for its players. They should be ashamed of themselves. Responding to the concerns of your customers is one of the primary ways a company can show its customers respect. Yet SOE meets its customers concerns with a silence bordering on arrogance. Shame on you.
Just another one adding to the chorus of anger at SOE for what they've done to this class. I adore playing my Illy, its by far the most enjoyable for me. However, I have no problem admitting I just finished PL'ing a warlock to T9. I don't want to necessarily play a warlock; But if Illys are left as-is, no one is going to want one, and I didn't sign on to play a soloing game. AND FOR CRISSAKES, CAN A MOD AT LEAST LET SOMEONE AT SOE KNOW THEY SHOULD *RESPOND*? SAY SOMETHING TO US PERHAPS? MAYBE TRY A LITTLE CUSTOMER SERVICE?? Yeah, I was yelling -- Fully intended.
Fwiw, I PM'd Frizznik drawing attention to the issues and he said he was going to run through them with Xelgad. Not that I have any hope it will amount to anything and I find it very sad they will not begin at least some kind of dialogue about the situation on their own forums. I guess class issues are not a priority for them at present in any way.
