I logged onto to test to mess around and look at the new racial stuff. What I noticed were the T9 master 2 choices were visible for both druid classes. Unless it gets changed between now and when the expansion launches it looks like wardens get to pick from Aspect of the Forest, Dawnstrike, Winds of Permafrost, Sandstorm. Pretty lame selection IMO..
StaticLex wrote: Well, makes it pretty easy to pick then, at least for me. They didn't give us a heal in T8, I doubt they're giving any priests a heal as a M2 choice in T9.
Maybe Sandstorm gets changed into something. Its already unbelieveably amazing for heroic content if they could translate that to a raid mob then I might swing that way for my M2!
Wclarry@Guk wrote: Hmm, that could be nice. It is useful for heroic stuff, but the defense bonus on epic fights does barely anything and is negated if the fight is any where you have to move a lot... (/cough well in theory) which is quite a few when it comes to TSO raids).
StaticLex wrote: hmmmmmm maybe I tend to look at things differently....... from my neck of the woods.... some mages enjoy additional WIS, brawlers luv WIS for resists and if you utilitze more melee gear which tends to lower your WIS, you can boost it up for yourself to help keep your pwr generating with ur mythical and help in the resists dept. and if you melee/nuke spec as an alternative when soloing or even a hybrid for grouping, dps with the last 3 choices do rule very nicely.... hopefully the self root of sandstorm will be eliminated... but if not... .find that nice position with the mob and go to town! T-8 choices included one ward, one buff and two dmg spells disruption. so repeating two of them in T-9 maybe increasing their dmg potential more so.... until I see the stats, it's difficult to guess. It's possible they may have additions attached to them, too! What does it say on test when you examined them? Sandstorm is our one "control" spell which works nicely for single Mobs while soloing or in grp instances.... but it isn't a deal breaker. However, Sandstorm wouldn't be my Grandmaster since I raid. I find it more useful when soloing - to pull the MoB offguard for a couple sec., then I toggle it off. from my PoV, most heal amts, base heal amts, heal crits can be found on gear from instances. Because of this, it's easy to cap a few heal spells without gm. The balance into more melee items demand healers have two separate gear and even AA specs. So it's nice not to 100% rely on that and boost up a bit more in the spell dept. With Litany and Glacial Assault as part of my TSO AA choices, I will prolly go with the highest dmg spell offered. Then with groups and raids, I can boost up my dmg a bit more on trash mobs on raids. In grp instances where less intensive heals are necessary, I can do more dmg and help out the grp. Ya - I won't top parse, but every bit of dmg helps - as long as I'm not sacrificing dmg for heals. So depending on your play - you can still boost up those heals very nicely, reduce time of heals for casting, recast and use; yet add another dimension to the warden! I luv all these choices that we never really had before.... I am no longer a "torture" killer! the gals of the 'hood celestina, nelida, slizz, alvane, eldra
The main thing that irritates me about the list is that there are two nukes eating up spots. It's fun to DPS sometimes and all but comon', this is a heal class.. populate the list with mostly healy type stuff IMO.
StaticLex wrote: That's no real change though. We've always had nukes and the like as M2 choices, despite being a healer class. It is kind of pointless though when you consider they don't affect CAs, and a warden really wanting to DPS needs to be going melee.
Eldra@Unrest wrote: If you have Glacial Assault that means you are meleeing, right? So, if you choose one of the nukes as your Master2 choice, you are wasting that choice. The spells do not proc Glacial Assault, and they don't benefit from our melee bonuses. Also, if healing is a concern, the cast times on the spells make it *harder* to heal, since some are upwards of 1.5 seconds or more, vs the .5 second casting time of our CAs. So, agreed. The choices for t9 pretty much blow. Nukes suck, Sandstorm is only useful in grouping/soloing, and Aspect of the Forest.. big deal.
Huntress Jellica wrote: Glacial Assault is a stance - which allows the warden to switch easily between heal/dps stances depending on MoB. GA gives a 10 melee crit, increases base melee dmg by25 and a ele proc. It also affects base spell dmg, spell crits and bonuses. In addition to using Infusion, ele mastery, ur dmg is higher and hits harder in combination using STR/INT. And with specs in the warden tree, elemental nukes change to melee attack affects. ON top of that u get free dmg just using auto attack when healing. Hybrid gear is really nice to utilize. I like the HQ award Thex Hammer for solo/duo stuff and I still don't have a pwr prob without the myth. With the changing into CA's wardens get a bit more dmg ability from our elemental dmg spells. What I really like about the choices, it that one can hybrid spec and switch back and forth between the stances at will. Then macro equip - and it's the best of both worlds. with luv from the gals of the 'hood
Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote: What I meant is I'd be willing to tolerate one nuke in the bunch, but two? That's just a sorry waste. I'd almost prefer to see some sort of formula introduced in this part of the game actually. Like of the four choices possible for any given tier, 1 would always be a random heal/ward spell, 1 would always be a random buff spell, 1 would always be a random nuke, and the last would be another random heal/ward or buff.
Eldra@Unrest wrote: Except.. it doesn't affect spell damage at all. On a successful melee attack this spell will cast Glacial Assault on target of attack. Inflicts 224 - 337 cold damage on target Increases Melee Crit Bonus of caster by 10.0% Increases Weapon Damage Bonus of caster by 25 Increases casting time of beneficial spells by 15% Lowers heal amount by 15% Tell me, where does that say spell base damage? Glacial Assault ONLY procs off of melee attacks, and it has nothing at all to do with spell damage. The proc itself is based on spell crit, but NOT the buff. So saying that choosing the M2 nukes will increase your damage when combined with Glacial Assault is false.
Glacial Assault DOES help auto attack, not spells, which is what you're trying to say in your previous posts. /facepalm
StaticLex wrote: Egads man, are you asking for them to give us an actual choice, where we'd have to pick which heal or buff we'd want at M2? Madness! And by choice I mean illusion of a choice, since there are always some heals or buffs that are better than others.
Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote: Ha, no doubt. I generally don't mind having multiple 'good stuff' to pick from though, it gives me something to respec to if I happen to pick up a M1 of whatever my current M2 choice is.
They gave us 2 nuke choices in t8 as well. Sadly SoE thinks it required that since you get the choice mid level it needs to be of a spell from the lower half of the tier. With the Spell Roster shrunk down to fit thru 10 levels instead of 13 as it was up thru t7 we're not gonna get the "Main heals" since they convienently lined up to be in the upper half of the tier. Really wish they would just scrap the mid level thing and give all classes the M2 choice at 90 and at least allow themselves to pick 4 spells from the full roster of spells instead of the lower half. Which brings up the arguement so why not a Sylvan Bloom or Nature's Embrace. At any rate, because of the current set up we'll never see a Photosynthesis M2 ever again. (Photo I believe is the only spell line that makes 4 appearances as M2 choices) Still Sandstorm and Aspect of the Forest? Well I know they mentioned about looking into the buff/HoT/priest balance thing so a buff might work but if those aren't changed I could not pick one and not care one bit. Again wishful thinking on wanting a upper half spell to be the M2 choice but I'd rather if a nuke had to be a choice to be Frostbite. Not only because its a debuff but rather because the CA equilevent missed the mark badly. Spell - Initial hit plus damage every 4s for 24s (6 ticks) CA - Initial hit plus damage every 4s for 16s (4 ticks) So not only does it suffer from being weaker than it's Master Spell counterpart. It's reduced duration and by a clear oversight loss of the extra 2 ticks of damage makes this a lousy pick indeed. It could be remedied in a number of ways. Readjusting the duration longer. Reduce the time on the CA ticks so it'll get 6 ticks in. Maybe a little of Both 3s ticks over 18s. Improve the Initial and or Tick damage on the CA to make up for the lost 2 ticks. Just sayin' though. Was this ever brought up on the bug thread?
