NDA Lifted

[Voragath]

umm... if our rotation is only possible with a specific item from a past expansion
Shouldn't that be a GIANT red flag for the devs?

They want us to have the choice. Either do the old burn weave or go for more punch using the new weave but lose more mana. They are well aware of what's going on and what weave we'll be using. It's not what I'm looking for and I don't think we should be looking at this as the standard weave. This weave is just a bandaid for us to get our dps to something respectable.

Somehow, we need to get our base weave down to being respectable and using the new weave to add a little punch when necessary.

[Savil]

Its my understanding that most of the fights in VoA will be *much* longer, yet our (mages) strongest weave kills our mana at an insane pace. Yet our 2nd best weave would drop our DPS by a large amount ... the same weave that most mages will find themselves using due to the nature of the new fights.

Sounds like a screw up to me.

Savil

[Voragath]

Its my understanding that most of the fights in VoA will be *much* longer, yet our (mages) strongest weave kills our mana at an insane pace. Yet our 2nd best weave would drop our DPS by a large amount ... the same weave that most mages will find themselves using due to the nature of the new fights.

Sounds like a screw up to me.

Savil

Pretty much.

[Piemastaj]

umm... if our rotation is only possible with a specific item from a past expansion
Shouldn't that be a GIANT red flag for the devs?

They want us to have the choice. Either do the old burn weave or go for more punch using the new weave but lose more mana. They are well aware of what's going on and what weave we'll be using. It's not what I'm looking for and I don't think we should be looking at this as the standard weave. This weave is just a bandaid for us to get our dps to something respectable.

Somehow, we need to get our base weave down to being respectable and using the new weave to add a little punch when necessary.

Highly unacceptable stance. The only way to be competitive currently is the 2x spear weave. Rogues w/o the December patch and w/o any new AA or gear were doing 93k on a 60sec parse. And with the December patch they are getting a lot more goodies. It is also my understanding they can sustain that type of range area for around 2min aswell. With our current spell setup we will be lucky to fully burn for 2minutes and our best disc lasts over 3minutes. That is also w/o saying we will be lucky to break probably 60k with that weave in a full burn situation.

Having adequate mana and not doing DPS is a waste of resources. Plain and simple. If we have the tools to use X weave we should have similar mana incoming to sustain X weave for a period of time. Now I am not saying sustain 45k DPS for 3 hours, but if our burn disc lasts 3 minutes we should have mana regen enough to make our mana last 3 minutes. That I am a bit hesitant to say we can fulfill currently, w/o having to use Lost Secrets which means we are again forced to sacrifice burst DMG so we can do DMG for the entire fight. Or forced to yet again fool around with timing so you can use Secrets and Cata on the same fight. Most classes are not forced to burn through 10 AA to stay competitive per fight, we shouldn't either.

[Voragath]

I think, maybe, you misunderstood me because you are saying something very similar. Basically, get it so that we don't need two spears to pump out the dps two spears do. EG: if two spear weave equals 50k, then spear/bolt/rs/strike should equal 50k. We can then drop another spear for a mana dump to go higher than that. To get spear/bolt/rs/strike to be sustainable though, need more incoming mana.

The problem is they screwed up like stated earlier. They made spear to be a mana dump spell but the dmg isn't high enough. All they ended up doing was giving us a boost inching us closer to our target dps and not meeting it by a long shot.

Aristo doesn't want us to sustain 2 spears and I agree, however changing his mind that we need two spears to be competitive is being met with resistance. That's why I said base weave. If we can get him to see spear/bolt/rs/strike is the basic weave, we should get enough mana to sustain it which we don't currently have. Raiders should, imo, be able to sustain that then bump the burn to 2 spear weave for a 2 min disc burn and mana dump. So like this: sustain = spear/bolt/rs/strike and burn = spear/spear/rs/strike.

It would be ideal if we could just use the base weave and discs would make us competitive but things are all kinds of wonky with dps atm. We should never ever have to harvest in the middle of a raid to stay competitive and it's just not happening.

[Savil]

Basically my point was this: if we try to be DPS we will never hold up the pace on most fights, and end up being subpar DPS anyway. If we use 2nd best weave we will be even worse DPS .. but for a bit longer before running OOM. Both ways suck and aren't acceptable.

BTW, I'd like to point something out (hopefully I understand PJ correctly for numbers):

Rogue already breaking 93k DPS before any patch and before any of the new INSANEO DPS weapons are found / put to use. You know damned well that other classes will be doing the same stupid amount of DPS.

Mages ... PJ said he THINKS mages can break 60k dps now.... by my calc that puts the class *worse* off than we were in the last exp.

This is the exact thing I argued against last year. I knew this would coming and this is just what would happen. Not only are we no longer a DPS class (and anybody that says we are is dreaming or just stupid) or do even LESS overall DPS than before.

In 3-4 months time PJ will have rogues / zerkers in his guild doing 100k DPS... *mark my words*, and if were lucky PJ will be doing 60-65k DPS. In the last exp if PJ and I really HUMPED and had SOLID numbers on short fights we still were out DPS'ed by like 20K. Now were looking at being out DPS'ed by almost 2x that??

Anybody that has played raid mages for any period of time knows mages are front loaded for a large part. That melees get there major bumps near the end of the exp's zones. I would have been angry if melee were out DPS'ing mages by 20K still. I would have been really pissed off if mages were out DPS'ed by 30K... but to see that some mages (lets face it, some mages are better than others) get 40k DPS diff is just beyond stupid. I don't give a smurf how good the new AA's are your not going to make up 10K dps diff.

I really hope I'm wrong about the numbers, but if PJ is correct ... mages are at a all time low and smurf, like it or not, PJ is one of the best DPS mages in EQ atm, if he can only get 60-65K dps, the mage class is smurf.

IMHO this is a major dev screwup and utter fail. I don't see how they could even push out that kind of "upgrade" without outright laughing in our face.

Savil

[svenalo]

Or they just do not know how the mage class is played and works, and that is far more likely than thinking they are deliberately trying to screw us. The devs that set a lot of things up for how a mage must be properly played are no longer involved in the mix, and those that are now doing things do not have the understanding about what the ramifications of this or that change are, or do not follow it through into what it means for a raider, etc. There is no actual testing of any of these kind of changes before they end up live, so we end up with the pile of steaming dung more often than not because what they may have thought the outcome would be in no way is close to the live result.

[Savil]

No where in my post did I say the devs deliberately tried to screw us. I personally don't think they give that much of a smurf anymore.... IE you have to care about something to make the effort to screw somebody. I think they just have zero clue how mages are played. Whats more I feel that same statement applies to more than just the mage class.

This time around the DPS difference between mages and others has *zero* excuse. PJ and I parsed classes for HOURS AND HOURS worth of data that was sent in. We sent PM after PM about this very topic starting last year. We new how this was going. On this very board I made statements that this would be a make or break exp and posted that I felt it was going to be bad... well... "I told you so".

The devs totally knew that the DPS off of the small upgrades we got wasn't going to fix our DPS .. esp when melee got there insane upgrades they get each exp (unless they are completely and totally stupid which I'm no longer ruling out).

PJ and I were *promised* they would continue to fix the mage DPS issues DURING THIS EXP. More than one dev said they couldn't fix all that was wrong in the middle of the exp but they admitted mages were broken during the last run. They said they would fix it during the next exp. Well... What happened? Were we forgotten yet again? And vora... I don't want to hear more stuff about how all the other classes were screwed or didn't get blah.... look at the damned numbers. Other classes can do 40k DPS more... thats 2x more than the last exp's BS.

Its pretty damned simple. Elidroth promised PJ and I (and I'm sure more than just us but I know the 2 of us for fact) that fixes were coming in this damned exp and NOTHING came. You can continue to defend the devs when they lie if you wish, but I'll call it a LIE. I still have the PM's from him ... I'm sure PJ does as well. I for one would like to know what the excuse was this time around... if mages are smart they will push for an answer because I'll call it now, mages will be 60k dps behind next exp. Careful before you tell me I'm wrong, almost everything PJ and I have said would happen... has. Only thing next is for raid mages to start leaving. The exp is young, give them time of being laughed at and taunted for super rods a while and lets see what happens. Damned sad.

Savil

[Voragath]

And vora... I don't want to hear more stuff about how all the other classes were screwed or didn't get blah.... look at the damned numbers. Other classes can do 40k DPS more... thats 2x more than the last exp's BS.

Savil

The melee numbers have nothing to do with our spells. This tells me how out of touch with the game you really are, Savil. Melee dps numbers that gets posted is the result of the outrageous synergy between those classes and them always getting the perfect set up. Melee synergy has gotten seriously out of whack because of certain things that give percentage gains and the devs have conceded that point.

Unless they totally stop making melee abilities or retroactively nerf every melee in the game by removing certain epics and discs, this is going to continue. And the devs have a new program to see who can do what so it isn't like they don't have a clue. Some classes had their stuff stagnated and maybe december will change the landscape better/worse for some/all.

Right now, lol, I'm seeing all kinds of crazy ass numbers like a rogue in my guild throwing a smurf fit because he was shown a parse where a monk was hitting 100k dps. It's possible but only under super extreme and lucky situations, only once in 10m can be done, and if the parse is under 30s. It isn't even close to time to panic about dps numbers. Type 3's aren't in, new aa's aren't in, some of our basic aa's are missing, and people aren't in proper gear.

[Voragath]

Its pretty damned simple. Elidroth promised PJ and I (and I'm sure more than just us but I know the 2 of us for fact) that fixes were coming in this damned exp and NOTHING came. You can continue to defend the devs when they lie if you wish, but I'll call it a LIE. I still have the PM's from him ... I'm sure PJ does as well. I for one would like to know what the excuse was this time around... if mages are smart they will push for an answer because I'll call it now, mages will be 60k dps behind next exp. Careful before you tell me I'm wrong, almost everything PJ and I have said would happen... has. Only thing next is for raid mages to start leaving. The exp is young, give them time of being laughed at and taunted for super rods a while and lets see what happens. Damned sad.

Savil

I don't defend SoE and you know nothing about how I deal with the devs. I probably get into it with the devs more than anyone here but the difference is that I bring logic and fact and not hyperbole of epic proportions like being thrown around on this board. I've already been pushing Eli and Aristo to prove to me and the mage community that mage dps is fine. If you think some mage battle over dps isn't being waged, you are flat wrong.

Our problems stem from people trying to act individually and when we didn't have a CRT. Before, the devs had to pay attention to all individual mages and that screwed us big time because there are a lot of people who just don't get it (to put it nicely). Now we have a CRT and have a focused voice. How about we drop the hyperbole and focus on what needs to be fixed and getting things lined up for next expansion?

Complaint posts like your posts and the resulting bickering back and forth screwed us for two years, Savil. How about you work with us in coming up with ideas that help us for the next expansion? Forget about VoA because it's done and they aren't going to do anything to make huge changes now.