new stuff

[Piemastaj]

In the last beta I was against making the rods usable by all. and one mage argued with me saying but it is a reason I will be wanted on a raid. I said push for DPS because a bot mge can do rods. It does help that all can use them, but was I wrong saying having rods usable by all was a winning feature for mages? No it isn't, never was and never will be. Utility is NOT what a mage is. DPS is first and foremost the mage speciality. In the burst department we are so lacking it is pathetic.
Calebe

I agree with your post, but Cal this has a 2 edge sword to it kind of. I didn't like letting everyone have rods either from a mage standpoint. But without that none of the high-end guilds would want more then 1 mage at this point. SOE failed to give mages what we needed in HoT, so rods have gotten us through this expansion. Now high-end want atleast 2 mages (yes RoI is looking for another 1 also I have heard), w/o rods that would not be possible.

EDIT: Not saying it is a good or bad thing just it is what it is heh.

[Voragath]

I think we should return this to the loosely original idea which, imho, was loosely based around the idea of burst dps. We put our list together for the short term and fired it off to Eli and a follow up was done. That's probably the best we can do at this point as FF is around the corner with, likely, another beta to follow immediately.

We know we need burst in the form of spell damage. I think we all agree that if we keep our pets on the course they are, they will be fine and our overall dps will be much greater if we boost our burst dps. It will automatically go to the grouper and groupers should be excited the raiders have taken up this charge. I think anyone who understands the situation intimately agrees on these points. The point up for debate is what will happen if we don't see significant burst improvement (yes, we may lose some more good mages like UF and HoT caused but some, like me, Sven, Bara, et. al. will probably try to stick it out).

What we need to focus on now is new abilities and improvements to our spells. Any number or other data analysis will be a tremendous help and owing of deep gratitude by all; so those who can do that, please do. Anyone who can provide a representative parse from the high-end and mid-tier raid would be of great benefit as well to see where we need to go. We already have the previous list and we'll ask for that again but another list in addition to that needs to start being created now. No discussions of holding back or taking away from something. Ask for something to be ADDED. Anything asking to be removed or some sort of compromise (eg. a timer, lockout of spell, etc.) is counterproductive and the ability may as well not be asked for at all. Using mod rods, a good example: a passive aa that will prevent us from taking any damage from a modulation shard that is a mage class only ability. Using mod rods as a bad example: a modulation shard that is mage only that does half damage or an aa that mitigates some damage. I'll point out the differences: class only v. not mentioned class only so could go to archetype, no damage v. mitigated damage, building on a current aa to keep the current mana v. new aa that could result in less mana, mentioned passive so no timer restriction or separate aa creation to stop damage v. unmentioned so who knows what they'll do with it. Obviously, I chose mod rods not as a dps fix but as an instruction to how we need to ask for things.

So be creative, don't care about how powerful it is (if anything, fear how underpowered it might be), and focus on the mage. We need to be class-based egotistical assholes as we think of these abilities. Think about abilities to make the mage dominate the raid because that's where we need to aim if we want to even be competitive dps next expansion. Lets take our energy and make stuff happen.

[Savil]

I don't work for SOE, but I am a developer and have seen both sides of the process, everything from design to coding to planning and architecture to now the management side of things. And I can tell you flat out management definitely will stop people from working on something if other business priorities dictate - that's just how it works. So Eli could very well have had the best intentions to fix the rods, the devs could very well have the best intentions to make RS pets twincastable way back when, but when push comes to shove their intentions don't mean squat when the priorities are set by management to get XYZ goal done. Call that lying if you want...however it isn't lying unless flat out they knew on the day they made a statement that it would never ever be done.

I have a dev hat as well, and while there are indeed times that you get told to reprioritize things, I don't see that being the case here. The change to mage mod rods was changing a 1 to a 0 in a data file. Why would a manager tell you to NOT do this... for 5-6 months? Does that make any sense to you?

I don't give a smurf about what a devs "best intentions" are, if you tell a customer you will do X, you do X, or you give a good reason why you can't. A very simple rule I'm sure you are very much aware of, you don't tell a customer you will do something and then ignore it for MONTHS. I would actually be one of the first to cut the devs slack if they would just tell us the truth.

I guess the way I see it is pretty simple. You tell a customer your going to fix something, which at the time you totally think you can get too fast. You find out that you can't get to it for a while for one reason or another, you tell that same customer you can't do it. When you ignore it for 6-12 months and then start dodging questions about said topic, then it starts to become dishonest, at some point it becomes a lie. Maybe not when he first stated it, but that is how it turns out in the end.

No matter how you look at it, is a very poor CS thing to do, and when its ignored for so long with ppl asking for feedback it quickly becomes dishonest, and makes the dev a tool.

So you can color it as nice as you want, but in the end you still have a dev making statements and failing to back them up. If it was now and then it would be almost ok, but this is far from a now and then, and has been for a very long time.

Savil

[Savil]

Savil you are right to a point. Raiding mages need help I agree, and it can't be pet based as the dev said, so I again agree those asking for it now are not helping. What needs to happen is we forget group verses raid mages and instead focus on burst DPS and yes it will help the grouping mage but less so as not as good a focus effect.

This is one of the basic points I was trying to outline, maybe I should have been more blunt. One of the major issues I see happening is people are only asking for things that only help them for their own play style. Be that group / solo / raider. I want us to try to figure out an over all direction and ask for specific things this go around because that is what were most likely to get. If we have one mage asking for super pets, another asking for cute summoning stuff, and yet another that asks for more power and then demands it be "magely" were not going to be happy. What will happen is we will get a bunch of junk that helps none of us and the devs will say "sorry, we used all the mage dev time on *blah*, ask again next time!"

In other words look at necro's and wizards and realize the MOST important thing we all need to learn and learn now. Any upgrade they get to their DPS burst, or substained goes to the grouping wizard and necro also and they don't care, don't mention it, and never ever bring it up in the conversation. So why do mages? Becase honestly some raiding mages are elitists and want their piece of the pie so to speak and think the grouping mage are fine. Lokk to Koz for being number one at that game.

I almost completely agree with this, but they don't have near the people yelling how OP'ed they are. While I would love to have more powerful pets, mages don't really need them. How many yellow con mobs do we need to have a pet tank before were happy? I have *zero* issue with a burst upgrade going to groupers as well. Heck there isn't any other way it could work! I don't want to get into the very easy pitfall of having superpets tho mostly due to the fact they would become the new kicking toy just like it has in the past. Imho grouping / solo mages *are* fine at the current power level they are. But in order to fix raiding mages, grouping mages will have to get more power too, I think we are far less likely to get people yelling OP'ed if we get that in the form of nukes over pets (and there are times in both settings that pets can't be used, so nukes are far more useful). Remember what we get today .. can be used against us tomorrow. I'm not looking for a quickie fix, I don't want to pay for this "fix" next exp after 1 year of people yelling at devs on eq live and FF. This is how the pets got nerfed the last time.

That is it. End of story. No more of us (raiders) verses them (groupers). We are one class. As a class we lack burst DPS. It needs fixed, and yes it helps the raiding mage and the grouping mage. WIN/WIN.

I understand the main point your saying and again, mostly agree with it.

As for Bara's post, Bara has been here in the trenches when the outlook on mages was way bleaker then it is now. From Kunark thru and up to PoP years mages stagnated. We were rod whores on raids (if you allowed yourself to be). We were CoH bots in VexThal and even told do not DPS in ToV as you need to call the raid so keep your faction. So don't bust on Bara, because Bara is right the mage class won't fold as some raidng mages will not quit if our needs are not met. It will hurt us but we won't be hurting as badly as in SoV and SoL days. we lost not only raiding mages back then but grouping mages as well. It was a dark time for the class.

Any mage that posts the things he did is opening themselves up, I don't care how long hes played. The fact that hes been a mage as long as he has works more for me than him. He should know better and learn from history and not make the same mistakes. *I* remember coh bots in VT, and I remember coh bots in ToV as well as sleepers! Nobody said the mage class would fold, I said the raiding mages would leave and that would *hurt* the groupers as well. I think it should be very clear from other posts why the lose of the raiders would hurt the groupers. Does this mean all mages will suddenly leave EQ or main change? No. The mage is a very power solo / group class still and it would take a while for the full effects of the raiders leaving to take hold.

Again, learn from history here, beastlords *sucked*, and sucked *bad*, they could still solo, and could still hold there own in groups, but after the raiders stopped asking for beastlords in raids, they started becoming rare. It got pretty bad, after a while during UF you almost didn't see beastlords even in groups / solo. I remember doing a /who all beastlords and only seeing 10 for all levels. You know its bad when you have 3 level 90 beastlords on your server that actually play. I don't want this to be the spot mages are in 2 years from now.

Its very clear that mages are a dps class, the devs have called us a t2 dps class many many times in the past, only we have PALLIES out parsing us on 90-120 sec fights. FFS there not even a dps class at all. We have beastlords out parsing us, and there considered t3 dps due to the utility to have.

In the last beta I was against making the rods usable by all. and one mage argued with me saying but it is a reason I will be wanted on a raid. I said push for DPS because a bot mge can do rods. It does help that all can use them, but was I wrong saying having rods usable by all was a winning feature for mages? No it isn't, never was and never will be. Utility is NOT what a mage is. DPS is first and foremost the mage speciality. In the burst department we are so lacking it is pathetic.

I think the large mod rods totally saved us for raids. That and spear, if we hadn't have got both raiding mages would be in a world of hurt now. Spear is the only thing that keeps us from being 3-4x'ed in dps. We totally aren't utility, but atm were not even dps on raids. I actually like having rods usable by all, keeps me from casting that stupid spell in the middle of my dps run and costing me mana. There is always some loser that forgets to ask for rods, its bad enough to stop nuking and cast it, it would really blow if we still had to pay for it too.

As a class for the next expansion we can not neglect pets. In fact we never can neglect pets, so we ask for their upgrades, but burst DPS needs the most attention, and that does not mean now or ever asking for less pet power to gain burst DPS. We never trade one for the other. We ask for both. We ask for the moon, and the stars as does every other class. We negotiate down if we must but not trade one for the other.

As for our pets, I think for this content were seeing now, the pets are fine. Will they need normal pet power increases for the next exp, clearly the answer is yes. What I've been against is creating a "super pet" as has been described by a few people. I have also been against having our next pet do all of our new burst dps. Give us the normal pet power increase and I think we will be fine.

So I hope all will agree, stop the infighting now. Burst DPS by it's very nature will help the raiding mage and the grouping mage. That is as it should be, and again look to the wizard there burst DPS and a necro's help the grouper as well as raider and you will never see the infigthing. So let us not infight either.

Believe it or not that was one of the very points of the post in the first place. I want us all on the same page and we can only do that by figuring out what mages really need and not have 10 different mages ask for 10 different things that would help them out greatly and do jack for the rest of us. Again, the ones this is aimed at know who they are and don't need to be called out.

Also on the next beta if your in it and as in the last one wher Tuli didn't bother to post at all except in the beginning and the end, then we need if your in beta to PM a dev and say our class correspondent is not talking to the class, please add another one so we have feed back that is allowed. Or make a new topic and make the heading. Magician Class Lead Tulison will you please rejoin your class threads as your missing in action.

As for this part, I'll take this a step farther. Tuli, if you can't focus on what all mages are asking you to push for on this next beta please remove yourself from adding input and request another be promoted up. You are there to provide the input the community at large is requesting, not one person. After the conversation we had in SW mage a while back I'd like to think you can still do this job and the same mistakes will not be repeated again. But please, if you don't feel you can give this the atten it deserves tell us and see about having somebody moved up. This beta will be far to important to be ignored until the last week, or having a one sided agenda promoted.

One another note, very good response, thank you for your input. This is the answer I was hoping for and didn't get from Danille. Dan / bara, you could learn a lot from this post. It provided constructive criticism and not "that is BS" comments. I expect more from a mod Dan.

Savil

[svenalo]

I think we should return this to the loosely original idea which, imho, was loosely based around the idea of burst dps. We put our list together for the short term and fired it off to Eli and a follow up was done. That's probably the best we can do at this point as FF is around the corner with, likely, another beta to follow immediately.

We know we need burst in the form of spell damage. I think we all agree that if we keep our pets on the course they are, they will be fine and our overall dps will be much greater if we boost our burst dps. It will automatically go to the grouper and groupers should be excited the raiders have taken up this charge. I think anyone who understands the situation intimately agrees on these points. The point up for debate is what will happen if we don't see significant burst improvement (yes, we may lose some more good mages like UF and HoT caused but some, like me, Sven, Bara, et. al. will probably try to stick it out).

What we need to focus on now is new abilities and improvements to our spells. Any number or other data analysis will be a tremendous help and owing of deep gratitude by all; so those who can do that, please do. Anyone who can provide a representative parse from the high-end and mid-tier raid would be of great benefit as well to see where we need to go. We already have the previous list and we'll ask for that again but another list in addition to that needs to start being created now. No discussions of holding back or taking away from something. Ask for something to be ADDED. Anything asking to be removed or some sort of compromise (eg. a timer, lockout of spell, etc.) is counterproductive and the ability may as well not be asked for at all. Using mod rods, a good example: a passive aa that will prevent us from taking any damage from a modulation shard that is a mage class only ability. Using mod rods as a bad example: a modulation shard that is mage only that does half damage or an aa that mitigates some damage. I'll point out the differences: class only v. not mentioned class only so could go to archetype, no damage v. mitigated damage, building on a current aa to keep the current mana v. new aa that could result in less mana, mentioned passive so no timer restriction or separate aa creation to stop damage v. unmentioned so who knows what they'll do with it. Obviously, I chose mod rods not as a dps fix but as an instruction to how we need to ask for things.

So be creative, don't care about how powerful it is (if anything, fear how underpowered it might be), and focus on the mage. We need to be class-based egotistical assholes as we think of these abilities. Think about abilities to make the mage dominate the raid because that's where we need to aim if we want to even be competitive dps next expansion. Lets take our energy and make stuff happen.

Spot on. Vorgath for president!

With regard to the other crap...

No matter how you look at it, is a very poor CS thing to do, and when its ignored for so long with ppl asking for feedback it quickly becomes dishonest, and makes the dev a tool.

Of that we can agree. Do they have poor CS? Yes - no argument. Underpromise and overdeliver? Definitely a far better way - again no argument. They have a long way to go and plenty of room for improvement in those things. But saying it is lying when they say they are wanting to do something and then later back off implies a whole lot of things that just can't be proven. I think it is far better to set the expectation initially to just take anything they ever say with a grain of salt because it may never come to fruition, especially when given their track record.

[Savil]

What we need to focus on now is new abilities and improvements to our spells. Any number or other data analysis will be a tremendous help and owing of deep gratitude by all; so those who can do that, please do. Anyone who can provide a representative parse from the high-end and mid-tier raid would be of great benefit as well to see where we need to go.

These very parses have been sent in time and time again to the devs. I've sent in so many parses I've lost count. I know for a fact high end mages have sent in as well. They keep asking for them, yet they seem to be doing nothing with the data.

Savil

[svenalo]

Savil you are right to a point. Raiding mages need help I agree, and it can't be pet based as the dev said, so I again agree those asking for it now are not helping. What needs to happen is we forget group verses raid mages and instead focus on burst DPS and yes it will help the grouping mage but less so as not as good a focus effect.

This is one of the basic points I was trying to outline, maybe I should have been more blunt. One of the major issues I see happening is people are only asking for things that only help them for their own play style. Be that group / solo / raider. I want us to try to figure out an over all direction and ask for specific things this go around because that is what were most likely to get. If we have one mage asking for super pets, another asking for cute summoning stuff, and yet another that asks for more power and then demands it be "magely" were not going to be happy. What will happen is we will get a bunch of junk that helps none of us and the devs will say "sorry, we used all the mage dev time on *blah*, ask again next time!"

This, imo, is because we don't have a CL or small 'focus group' that presents the one unified voice to the devs, and it has to be someone who the devs actually will respond to. They instead get a barrage from all sorts of sources which just leads to distractions and a steaming pile of dung for the most part.

[Savil]

Of that we can agree. Do they have poor CS? Yes - no argument. Underpromise and overdeliver? Definitely a far better way - again no argument. They have a long way to go and plenty of room for improvement in those things. But saying it is lying when they say they are wanting to do something and then later back off implies a whole lot of things that just can't be proven. I think it is far better to set the expectation initially to just take anything they ever say with a grain of salt because it may never come to fruition, especially when given their track record.

Most of my jobs I've held that very action would have got me fired on the spot. You don't tell customers you will do something like change a 1 to a 0 (elidroths words not mine) and then not do it. I don't care how to slice it, that ends up being a lie. Maybe he really did intend on doing it, but that really doesn't matter in the long run.

If he had said something like "I'm going to enable RS pets to be TC'ed." and then 6 months later said "I wanted to do this but the time required to make all the code changes makes it too hard to do with all the other code changes that need to be made. At some point later we will revisit this issues, I'm sorry I couldn't make this happen." That would totally have been ok. What actually happened was a year of "Sure we'll do that", and then they dodged the question for months, and then said it was a code support issue and wouldn't happen. Then Tuli tells us a completely different version that he was told.

You tell me, at what point did this become a lie? Surely at the end it was, I don't think the original dev (elidroth in this case) lied at the start. But the way it ended up sure made us all feel lied too. Then the input tuli had really pushed it to the breaking point.

There are so many examples of this by the current SoE dev team from the last 2-3 years it boggles the mind that anybody believes ANYTHING that comes from them.

Savil

[Savil]

This, imo, is because we don't have a CL or small 'focus group' that presents the one unified voice to the devs, and it has to be someone who the devs actually will respond to. They instead get a barrage from all sorts of sources which just leads to distractions and a steaming pile of dung for the most part.

Point, score.

Savil

[Elidroth]

Well.. this has been an interesting thread to read. Here's some reality for you. Nearly everyone on the dev team plays EQ in some capacity. Literally every class expects us to play THEIR class at a raiding level. This just isn't possible.

In short.. I have no less than 15 PMs from mages over the past few weeks. Some wants more pet-based DPS, while others want spell-based DPS. There is no other class as split on how they want to do something than Mages. The only thing you do agree upon really is that you want more DPS, which is basically the same sentiment from literally EVERY DPS CLASS.

Savil, I have NEVER lied to the players. I won't deny that sometimes things have slipped through the cracks, but I have NEVER, EVER, told players something knowing full well that I wasn't going to do it, or that it couldn't actually be done.

One last thing, and I can't be more clear on this subject. Just because you ask for something, doesn't mean it will get done. no matter how many times you ask for it. Many of the suggestions I received last beta were simply not reasonable, or not possible for the class.