Comments on current changes... Looks like I will be putting Countersong back on my hotbar. I perceive it would be useful for preventing a wipe due to an AoE when the mob is almost dead. The change to the base recast of Thunderous Overture (increased to 10 seconds from 5 seconds) will change timing somewhat. However, Sandra's Deafening Strike being made more useful should offset that Thunderous Overture change. The cast time on Painful Lamentations will still be painful. I like no immunity timer on Jester's Cap. It looks like with a little more gear I could keep it on two people constantly (barely). Suggests for other changes... Enhance: Arcane Symphony and Enhance: Elemental Concerto and Ballad of Warding are now a bit dated with the latest game mechanics. Add 1% or 2% crit mit per point for Arcane Symphony and Enhance: Elemental Concerto (should affect only the associated damage type) and add 1% crit mit per point for Ballad of Warding. This change could make Elemental Concerto and Arcane Symphony more desirable in some circumstances, without unbalancing pre end-game play. Add a similar effect to the dirge's noxious resist song. I am tempted to suggest Enhance: Bria's Inspiring Ballad needs a boost, but I am not so sure. Maybe double check that AA (and associated song) are still where they should be with the latest game mechanics. The duration on the charm spell, Bria's Entrancing Sonnet, is so short that that spell is only useful as a type of "death save" that usually kills the caster when it expires, due to the caster getting aggro and being one-shotted. At least let this spell work on epic mobs or something, the duration is so short... Combine the two hits from Ceremonial Blade into a single hit, or increase the damage of the second hit to compensate for when the first hit misses. Another possiblity is letting this attack hit up to, say, 8 times, but let the miss chance increase with each successive hit; keep once one attack misses, all the rest of the attacks miss. Singing Shot is similar to Ceremonial Blade, but the stifle attached to it sort of makes up for the double hit requirement. Since the stifle does not affect epic targets, maybe let it interrupt an epic target, instead of the stifle. -Leucippus
nofish wrote: plz post some suggestions on making troub more fun so that im not getting tells from your guilds begging me to join your raid force due to the lack of troubs playing. Seriously, what would make us more fun is to have more to do. Just making minor adjustments to what a few spells do isn't enough to warrent dirges exiling back to troub or people to make troubs. When you do a who all dirge on my server you get 52 results... who all troub.. 17. is this always accurate, no. The simple fact is that troubs have excessive amounts of time on their hands. I would suggest that we have to perform certain skills in a chain to give group bonuses. But alas you guys just want more dps.
xdeadumx wrote: Don't think "change to range class" make a big difference. Only 2-3 weeks after update (trying something new is fun), Then someone will say "give us more fun, wanna go melee attack". AoE hurts you? learn and joust it. Not all fight does require ranged attack. Lazy to joust? eek...roll a ranger like previous post. Not only troubador needs to joust AoE. Wanna see Ayonic Bow instead of Anyonic Axe? I don't want... I don't/can't know what is good to exiling back (never betrayed to dirge ). However some troubs betrayed to dirge to have more DPS and overpowered Myth, so adjust troubador DPS isn't completely wrong. Dirge is still more desirable even after this fix. because their group/single buff doesn't be touched. At least, "minor adjustments" is enough to enjoy more to play troubador for me. Finally we get PBAoE, Vexing Verses is not useless, Sandra's Deafening Strike give some power, etc. Hope can have more unique abitilies/Effect what can't substitute by adornment or other class abilities. /gaze Ayonic Hymn
I'm excited to see the majority of these changes even though I swapped mains from Troub to Inq a while back. Very encouraged to see all of them and some work on the class. My only comment about the actual changes so far (since most are pointless until there's a chance for me to use them), especially given your clarification that Countersong won't do anything if you cast it after the cast bar shows up, is I fear that Countersong is still too short a duration for its reuse timer. Mob AoE timers are frequently off by at 5-10 seconds so at best you can guess. I'm surprised people use Thunderous Overture so often, I try to avoid it because it takes longer to cast for mediocre damage and never seems to show up very high on the parse, so I was actually happy it was the one that changed to a blue.
Ok having just tested the changes I can honestly say: I like. The mind tap mana feed doesn't do much but it does some for the group. Unfortunatley my testing was done in a duo so not really sure how well Abhorrent verse works. In general this is a much needed improvement and it was dfinitly fun. When will this be live?
Brienae@Lucan DLere wrote: I think you're not quite getting what it is.. I can make a macro with default that tells a person when they have Jcap. That isn't the issue. The issue is do you want to have 1 button where you can have a standard Jcap rotation? (IE all the dps you generally put Jcap on) or do you want to have 4 or 5 buttons along with people complaining that you never give Jcap to them and only to a select few classes/people? If you're only casting Jcap on yourself in it's current incarnation you're doing it wrong. You're vasty under-using one of your most powerful spells and reducing your raid and group dps as a whole. Jcap is not a spell to be cast every once in a while. It should be cast on someone EVERY single time it's up I think the complaint about changes to thunderous was from raiders mostly. There are many mobs where you are standing still a lot (like guy who drops cloak in throne) or where you're just staying out ranged all the time (like hard mode sullon's trash, where you have 4 mobs each casting AE's that can kill you, so there is no jousting in and out unless you're AE immune when you do) in cases such as these, and with ranged single target dps in general, an improvement to a melee quick strike is not going to come even CLOSE to making up for the loss of this important ranged dps spell. And Thunderous is very important for these ranged fights considering you have thunderous, shrill, lamentations, and then your bow attack (also of course evasive maneuvers) but thunderous is on the quickest recast, and is also a very handy range finder as 15 meters is pretty standard range for being able to survive AE's. Still think lamentations should be the blue.
Rocksthemic wrote: Yeah I admit I worded that wrong... what I meant was when I'm running RO that is the only time I cast it on myself, all other times it is on at least one of the other members of my group. Two if I'm able stay to stay on top of it. I actually find trying to keep the rotation without breaking it fun. With no immunity I can keep it on the mages and possibly cast it on the healers when fit hits the shan.
Yeah I actually have a few buttons for jesters cap on my hotbars. I have one button with all the guild dps on it, with the brigand first cause more dispatch = more awesome. Then a list of dps going from highest to lowest dps (make your dps fight to be on the top spot on your Jcap macro and see if they don't improve!) basically you have Jcap in a slot, right click the make macro, and fill it up with spell/ability of jesters cap, then put each dps name in there, and easy as that you have one button macro that will rotate through all of your best dps with one button, and don't even have to change targets. *yes I'm aware many of you know how to do this already, but never know so just explaining it* Also have two buttons dedicated to the MT healers, one for cleric one for shaman. I have one that is just to target myself, so I don't ever have to change targets to keep myself with Jcap. And I have one that is /usabilityonrt macro (pretty sure that's how it goes, not in game atm to check) that will jesters cap the last person who sent me a tell so I can just hit that if someone sends tell asking for Jcap. And then finally I have one that is just a regular Jcap button, that will give Jcap to my current target and send them a tell letting them know they have it. So that is 6 total buttons for Jcap, but barring the exception of a couple tanks and healers outside of MT group, it will pretty much cover anyone in raid. Makes it handy. The real beef is that if you take away immunity completely, we'll either be forced to have 10 Jcap macro buttons, each dedicated to a single target.
latesttoon wrote: That is one of the changes that might be useful for PvP and to solo better I guess, but for most content it would be pretty much useless. It in no way would solve the disparity between troubadors and dirges in respect to dps and what they bring to a group. Coercers can charm quite well, but it hasn't been since TSO that I've actually heard "lets get a coercer for this group so they can charm something"
Xelgad wrote: Played several hours on test, and got issues about reuse/range. Thunderous Overture is shortest single damage spell for troubador. And used very often for single target. In some situations, Won't be able to use like now. 5 seconds make a big difference... Maybe this is why adjusted Perfect Shrill/Lamentations damage. But not enough to compensate. (Tap Essence is changed to Encounter Spell and reuced damage too) So I would like to have both, single damage version and PBAoE version. Not change to PBAoE, just add PBAoE version. Or replace Enhance: Thunderous Overture with PBAoE version as an alternative. (Ofcourse, should have +10% damage and adjusted casting time without AA) Those are sharing reuse timer. but single damage ver has 5sec recast, PBAoE ver has 10sec recast. Or add new PBAoE spell line(maybe most realistic). I oppose to change Lamentations to PBAoE.
After a generous amount of training dummies, I'm beginning to see that the changes really haven't done anything to increase damage on single target mobs. If anything it has dropped somewhat. I think the biggest effect was the significant drop in the Tap Essence damage. Leave the damage alone or at least leave it as a single target spell but distribute power to the group. I maxed out the AA's from the SF tree to see if it would help on the damage but it was hardly a noticable increase. Further, I'm really having a hard time being able to measure the true increase on mutiple mob encounters since they only have heroic group dummies. There needs to be significantly increased health on the multiple encounter in order to get a true feeling for what can be done. Can you add maybe a X2 group encounter to the selection of training dummies? Two things would significantly help as well. First, change the WIS redcution on Chaos Anthem to STA, STR, or AGI. I didn't include INT since there is an AA option to include that attriube. Most mobs are not healers and since secondary attributes have been eliminated this aspect of the spell has become quite worthless. Second, can you reduce the casting speed on Painful Lamentations. Yes, you increased the damage, but a 1.25 second minimum casting speed really interferes with melee timing and messes up the rotation. I think making it around .75 seconds would be more appropriate. Finally, can you convert the mythical proc to something more useful. Now that we have been changed to become more "magelike", I would not be opposed to Spell Double Cast any longer. Especially since the Dirge proc has been nerfed significantly. My other choices would be Crit Bonus or Potency. Maybe even a clicky changing spells from single attack to multi attack and back, similar to the Warlock myth. I just know I was very excited about these changes, but the more I test them, the more I find out they aren't really going to give us the damage we were looking for. They are pulling away from single mobs and adding to multi-encounter mobs. It's more of a trade-off than any kind of boost.
First of all, anything that won't get used in a raid, I don't care about. Minimise it, maximise it, lose it or give it to some other class, I don't care. Secondly, I'm not looking to become an assassin, a ranger or a swashy because unlike them I am not DPS, I am a support class or at least that is the theory. I want to parse as well as a dirge and I fail to see the problem there. In addition, the changes that have occurred have gradually devalued the troub and not just our own personal DPS. There seems to be discussion about Jester's Cap and its immunity. Great! But lets put some thought into making it something that people want. Countersong... 12 seconds... really? And the re-use timer remains to keep this spell amongst the other "gimicks" that actually change nothing for my performance or for the raid. It can sit next to Energising Ballad that is great but no one relies on you for it. All in all, nothing here is thrilling. For example, Rejuvenating Celebration will get an upgrade... great. I have 5 concentration slots and so it still won't get a look in. As for doing encounter or AOE damage, any change in this direction has limited appeal. It just means that an ability I once used now gets counted amongst the things I cannot do when the raid leader says "No encounter or AOEs please". And, in other circumstances without accompanying hate pushing, it will just get me killed. That's not an upgrade so while changing Tap Essence to trickle a tiny bit of mana to the group is great but making it an encounter spell is not and diminishing its damage when it is hardly note-worthy now sets this as a downgrade. The are two real problem for troubs. I don't know if anyone has noticed but mages are no longer the kings of DPS they used to be. Wizards were once guaranteed to top the parse but now they are strugling against assassins and swashies. In part, this is due to the fact that much of what caster support offers is now irrelevant. The wizards don't want UT anymore and the warlock, when we have one, says "I'll take it". When our raid forms, the main tank fills his group with an assassin to push hate, a dirge and a coercer. Troubs rarely get a look in on one of these groups and not only are dirges better parsers they also get buffed with a variety of goodies from the many clases that want them in their groups. The mage groups are now disappointments. Troubs generally get two or three Blades of Ro from the Wizards each bestowing a few hundred damage... yawn... that is far from impressive. So add 1K damage to each Blade of Ro. Now that would get me excited.
DJWolf5 wrote: I think countersong would be abusable if it were made more powerful. Let's say it lasted 30 seconds, you could have 12 troubs in raid and 360 secs of AoE immunity and ignore all sorts of mob strats. Same if it were on a short enough cooldown. Pretty much it's never going to be something that can be used more than once unless the ability itself is toned down more. Not sure about your groups but with illy + inquis I get 300-400 haste/dps as well as my choice of IA or AI along with some other various things. I think that's pretty decent actually and while you could be getting more groupwide passive buffs overcaping on haste/dps is a huge part of the expected amount of buffs. It could be better, yes, but dirges in a tank group don't necessarily get buffed much more than we do in a mage group. It just that even after all that our dps still blows compared to everyone else as long as other people aren't just bad. :/ Oh yeah, not to mention it's suppppper boring doing nothing essentially on progression fights.
DJWolf5 wrote: I totally agree. In SF my guild went from 2 caster dps groups and 2 melee dps groups(including MT group) to DoV with 1 caster dps group and 3 melee groups. UT and jester's cap is quite useless. I have been putting UT on myself cause the Wizard wants TC and the illy told me he didn't need it. That needs to be addressed.
I fail to see how Jester's Cap and Upbeat Tempo are useless. I also raid with only one mage group. I usually give Upbeat Tempo to the Conji and TC goes to Wizard or Warlock (We figured out that this organization of the buffs works better for our group as a whole) Jester's Cap can be cast on anyone and give benefit. I never give Upbeat to myself. Upbeat Tempo can also be cast on anyone and give benefit. I've given it to the healer who is solo healing HM, I've also given it to tanks (which we rarely have in the group but sometimes for fights requiring 4 tanks) to help with their snaps and temps. I know that Upbeat on the healer or tank is not ideal but sometimes it is needed. As a general rule I put it on the Conji.
xdeadumx wrote: Any wizard SHOULD decline UT in exchange for TC when given the choice. The spell DA associated with TC does more for them than a boost to their relatively weak DoTs. On the other hand, a warlock should ALWAYS take UT over TC as two extra ticks on their DoTs is absolutely huge for that class. UT is far from useless. Both of you seem to associate wizards with being the exlusive holders of mage dps. That is simply not the case (nor should it be.) TC on Wiz and/or Conj. UT on Warlock and/or Necro. Any caster declining either of those buffs when nothing else is available is foolish. Some casters just benefit more from one buff than the other. From my perspective playing a warlock in raids, UT is the best buff in this game bar none. Oh, jcap useless?? So, all 24 people in the raid are capped on reuse? (Not to mention casting and recovery.) That's a pretty well equipped bunch there.
So thanks SOE for working on troubs and now i whant to know when second draft is comming, Cant realy say the changes that you made sofar makes the class better in anyway, maby slight but common you can do better that this and troubs needs it before we lose them all. Ty
10/6/2011 - logged in with the new changes. set my new bars the way i like them parsed 30k more on the aoe dummies (yay!) single target didnt change only noticeing ONE problem J-cap with no immunity timer is exceedingly annoying to make several macros and fill my hotbar -Solution- Make Jcap give an immunity timer equal to its Duration. Please i dont want to refresh it i want to place it on as many people. without growing an extra finger or 3 -edit- if there is a solution through command macros thats sufficent for at least me. i.e. dont cast on target with buff PS 15 crit on myth is worthless. enough dirges are crying about their new 25% flurry/potency buff. so can has it instead? -love Feyrin
