Raid DPS - How can we fix it?

[Voragath]

I really think we need a super FBO that's 3-5 times as powerful as current to pair with our Twincast ability. And some way that we can boost our RS pet. I was thinking, since they had the skull from cauldron buff you with a pet focus, we could get an aa that will let us summon a special RS for some serious voodoo damage on the raid mobs. It would buff us like the skull does so the next RS comes out as a special beast.

Maybe a RS style pet, that lasts for 10? ticks, would need some kind of scaled effect, making it more "raid" based. Remember, they still look at us as powerful out of raid. I could see this as being part of Gnomeland's "Let Our Powers Combine" thought. A seriously buffed up RS, and getting the spell casting boost on the other side?

Oh, nice! But then we can't get our illusion can we? Would be nice to pop us with the RS illusion, give us a buff for super RS, and boost our spell dps in one shot. Does Darkpaw, or whatever it is now, do more than 2 buffs? Would be sweet!

[Gnomeland]

While we make new abilities, we need to call these people out with their outrageous claims. Also, we need to be pointing out what certain other classes can do as a result of their power. This will help keep everything in perspective.

Like was pointed out, who cares if an RoI mage is soloing a convo mob...what's the gain? Seriously. And they'll do it what, once every 15, 30 mins? And still, they have to be rather lucky to do it. I've heard of both chanters and necro's solo'ing convo nameds. I bet an SK or a Ranger could do it too if they thought hard about it and had some cojones.

Gnomeland, abilities aren't just a simple coding. LOL Our fire pet critting with FBO was an AA earlier in beta and it just flat out wouldn't work. Our new 3 ranks of summon companion, while useful, is technically broken because there was no way for them to make it work the way they wanted it to. It's fine to throw out ideas, but saying things like, "I don't understand why they don't do x, it's so simple" will get us nowhere.

I really think we need a super FBO that's 3-5 times as powerful as current to pair with our Twincast ability. And some way that we can boost our RS pet. I was thinking, since they had the skull from cauldron buff you with a pet focus, we could get an aa that will let us summon a special RS for some serious voodoo damage on the raid mobs. It would buff us like the skull does so the next RS comes out as a special beast.

EQ is an old game. Its engine is clunky. This I understand. However, since we are not SoE developers, and we don't know what the EQ engine looks like, it is pointless to hold ourselves back over what might or might not be possible. Only the devs can tell us that, and only their integrity holds them to the truth.

We don't have to offer specific ideas. I simply threw them out because it seemed as though we were at a mental block as to how you can increase burst DPS without overpowering mages outside of raids. My point is that it is not theoretically impossible by a long shot - there is no fundamental contradiction here. In terms of practicality, the devs are paid to think up better ideas that are feasible and easy to implement.

And honestly, if they can implement player housing in this clunky old game, they can fix mages. What we need to do is present an organized united front on what needs to happen, however they want it to happen.

[Merlaina]

How about something that sacks our pet, boosts our ATK, AC, and HP through the roof, gives us max haste, give us a melee proc of our highest damage scribed nuke (bolt or spear, whichever you have) with a high proc rate, and we take on the illusion of whatever pet was just sacked. Lasts for 1 minute, and then when it's done we're back to plain squishy form with no pet. Would make it safe for the solo game at least because if we're soloing anything worth fighting when we revert with no pet we'd go splat if it wasn't dead.

No, I don't actually want the above idea, but I kinda think it'd be awesome.

I think Jolt was a very interesting solution to the problem, it just doesn't work well enough. I don't see why it can't be based off of players instead of pets. Yes, we have great pets, but Call of Hero isn't called Call of Hero's Pet now is it? We're masters of summoning, so we should be able to summon a small little explodey fire elemental for each player aggroed on a mob. Even make then arc through the air toward the mob when cast like Pallorax's vortex summon spell. 54 tiny fire elementals, one from each raider, arcing through the air and exploding on a mob? That'd be cool to see.

[Voragath]

I like it Mer! Call it "Summoner's Bomb" lol Or "Summon Holy Hand of Ro"? I'd love to see little fire pets hurtling through the air at the raid boss.

Are the raid bosses flagged as a special type mob? Like how dragons are? If so, I have a few good ideas on how to boost our dps. Just get weapons that have a high proc and dmg rate for those type mobs.

[Calebe]

A couple of simple suggestions. As it stands now raid pet focus's become group focus. So why not make a raid only focus to boost pet dps. Call it REM1 (raid enhanced minion 1) up to REM 2-3-4 etc... It never drops in non raid zones, and then they can make standard EM updates for group pets.

If this means a raid mages pet is powerful in group zones so be it, and I don't give a smurf if other classes complain. I see rangers tanking more mobs at a time then my pet can (EM8). Same with Shadow knights. Sure they are raid geared and so am I. So let those complain that want to, I honestly don't care and neither should devs. Parses will soon be available showing ranger DPS at 40k + on a burn, and we won't ever get near it. As said necro's can solo named and any mob that won't summon and I know some necro's that can kill summoning mobs. So let them complain, and just point it out.

A second suggestion was a RS aa pet, make it the previous version rank 1 duration, 45 second recast. Added DPS for all mages. 45 second recast means won't be used much in groups but once as mobs die fast and if solo added help.

I disagree with we need worry about helping the solo or group game with suggestions. We are one class if we solo, group or raid. Think about a wizard, their DPS on rank 2 spells all groupers can get. Their burst is huge compared to any mage, and the only difference to a raid wizard is rank 3 spells (same as a mage), and better focus items (same as a mage). So we can solo, it is part of the class description, and we should be good at it, and we should never apologize for that.

If they make a raid only focus and group focus then that can resolve the power balance for better pets for raids, and better for groupers. Yes I know each pet is a totally new pet, but you don't need 3-4 new REM they can make 1. Let pet classes get it early, casters are usually front loaded anyway and melee get it from weapons later on. So a few idea's, but lets stop worrying about what others say. They don't understand the class. They ignore what their class can do to divert attention so as to get upgrades and point to others to divert attention. Play the same game with parses showing our lack of DPS.

Calebe

[Tweelis]

I'm still somewhat asleep so please bear with me. How about modify the jolt of many line of spells. Do something along the lines of reduce the damage for each pet down but don't put a cap on how powerful it can be based on how many pets are out. Currently clash of many 3 caps at Decrease Hitpoints by 2285 with 9 pets if I'm reading it right. If this was changed to say 50 points per pet up to 100 pets it wouldn't put too much power in soloing or grouping (unless a pet group is formed but that's a different story all together). It would also give mages a good boost in raids when there's plenty of pets.

fwiw, the numbers I proposed above are just numbers pulled out of the air.

[Mindrix]

I'm still somewhat asleep so please bear with me. How about modify the jolt of many line of spells. Do something along the lines of reduce the damage for each pet down but don't put a cap on how powerful it can be based on how many pets are out. Currently clash of many 3 caps at Decrease Hitpoints by 2285 with 9 pets if I'm reading it right. If this was changed to say 50 points per pet up to 100 pets it wouldn't put too much power in soloing or grouping (unless a pet group is formed but that's a different story all together). It would also give mages a good boost in raids when there's plenty of pets.

fwiw, the numbers I proposed above are just numbers pulled out of the air.

Two things: 1) Clash of many has new lines in the spell, which I don't know what they do. They're more hits, but I don't know for how many pets.

2) Spell works by checking the Hate-list of the NPC. Its damage works by how many lines of damage are set. Jolt of Many was 1-6 then 10 (for the 7th hit). I *think* the new hits are for 15 & 20 pets on hate list, but I'm really not sure. (Edit: Reading spell data, it should be 15 & 20 for a 50% & 125% higher damage on the base per pet hit @ 15 & 20 pets) They can't uncap the amount. It has to have a specific check level.

I'm trying to think of an NPC we can test on this guy. But it should work.

So, there should be a benefit for having a lot of pets on, but hitting 20 isn't easy. Especially with AEs in HoT content (in UF content, you should be rocking it).

[Merlaina]

2) Spell works by checking the Hate-list of the NPC. Its damage works by how many lines of damage are set. Jolt of Many was 1-6 then 10 (for the 7th hit). I *think* the new hits are for 15 & 20 pets on hate list, but I'm really not sure. (Edit: Reading spell data, it should be 15 & 20 for a 50% & 125% higher damage on the base per pet hit @ 15 & 20 pets) They can't uncap the amount. It has to have a specific check level.

I'm trying to think of an NPC we can test on this guy. But it should work.

So, there should be a benefit for having a lot of pets on, but hitting 20 isn't easy. Especially with AEs in HoT content (in UF content, you should be rocking it).

I think they should change clash so it works the way I originally understood what you wrote (as opposed to how it actually works). Lines 1-7 work the same as always (900ish damage based on number of pets, 1-10 pets), but then if you have 15 pets the damage of ALL of those lines is increased by 50%, and increased by 125% for 20+ pets. Heck, you could even just make the damage equation for each line something like:

940 + (.1 * 940 * nonNegative(numPets - 10))

Where nonNegative would be a function that just changes negative numbers to 0 (there may be a mathematical function for that already, but I can't think of it offhand). So at 10 pets each line would be doing 940 damage, 15 pets each line would be doing 940 + (.1 * 940 * 5) = 1410, etc. That would be the BASE damage for each line, further upgraded by faycite shards, crits, fire focus, etc.

Edit: In my mind this should have no limit. As has been pointed out it can be hard to hit 20 pets even with swarm pets due to AEs.

[Zatpus]

From Luthair

Clash of Many Rk. II
1: Decrease Hitpoints by 940 to Unknown TargetType(221)
2: Decrease Hitpoints by 940 to Unknown TargetType(222)
3: Decrease Hitpoints by 940 to Unknown TargetType(223)
4: Decrease Hitpoints by 940 to Unknown TargetType(224)
5: Decrease Hitpoints by 940 to Unknown TargetType(225)
6: Decrease Hitpoints by 940 to Unknown TargetType(226)
7: Decrease Hitpoints by 940 to Unknown TargetType(230)
8: Decrease Hitpoints by 1410 to Unknown TargetType(235)
9: Decrease Hitpoints by 2115 to Unknown TargetType(240)


another parser shows it like:
[26755/7326] Clash of Many
Classes: MAG/87
Mana: 985
Target: Line of Sight
Range: 300
Resist: Fire
Casting: 0,75s, Recast: 9s, Timer: 6
1: Decrease Current HP by 827 (If At Least 1 Pet On Hatelist)
2: Decrease Current HP by 827 (If At Least 2 Pets On Hatelist)
3: Decrease Current HP by 827 (If At Least 3 Pets On Hatelist)
4: Decrease Current HP by 827 (If At Least 4 Pets On Hatelist)
5: Decrease Current HP by 827 (If At Least 5 Pets On Hatelist)
6: Decrease Current HP by 827 (If At Least 6 Pets On Hatelist)
7: Decrease Current HP by 827 (If At Least 10 Pets On Hatelist)
8: Decrease Current HP by 1241 (If 235)
9: Decrease Current HP by 1862 (If 240)
Burns your target with a bolt of prime elements. The bolt is magnified by nearby summoned creatures, causing damage dependent on how many pets are attacking your target.


My bet: condition 8 is matched with 15 pets, condition 9 is matched with 20 pets on hatelist.
Reason: TargetType(240) / (If 240) ... take number of condition and substract 220 and you get the known ladder.

[quseio]

one solution ritual spells that take more than 1 mage to cast say 4 mages cast servent of chaotic elemental power the 1 mage with the focus for the spell is the one it is under

Aura of elemental Power ,air adds stun and magic damage to all attacks and spells of pets, fire over all more damage, earth hmm lowers a mobs damage mitigation, water... lowers a mobs ac and the mob takes greater spell dmg from pets

all four of the auras on a raid would bring out aura of elemental mastery upping the power and adding some nice effect loike extra flurry and crit and extra dmg