NDA Lifted

[Tweelis]

Voragath

Although I'm not a raider from what I can tell you're missing the point of what others are saying. Fact of the matter is mages have been hurting in the raid game for quite awhile; probably one of the worst hurting classes in that regard. Things were discusses months ago, data was given and weak lip service was provided to appease the vocal few. Now the time has come to pay the piper but all raiding mages were given was a handful of dirt; it's understandable why the vocal few are pissed. If we really need another 31 page thread like "new stuff" to get a bump to where raiding mages should be in terms of dps I'm sure some more vocal people on the boards would be happy to oblige but given where tempers are right now I wouldn't expect it to be as "civil" as the last "new stuff" topic.

I realize your hands are tied from a CRT standing and what you can/should discuss; that isn't really the underlying problem. It's when mages (especially raiding mages) that keep being promised the carrot on the end of the rope but never get the carrot that we feel like they're being treated like a stupid donkey. Sorry to break your bubble but people can only be treated like this for so long before they give up on the carrot in front of them and eat something else.

[deadman1204]

does the number of 50-60k include pet damage?

[Voragath]

I'm not missing any point. I raid and I run into their same issues, albeit to a smaller extent.

I am also well aware of the people who have quit and I am very sad that we have lost more than a handful of great, talented, productive, and contributing mages. It has probably hurt us more than anything.

And yes, thanks for pointing out my hands are tied but mostly it's NDA, which I think you were implying.

But I don't mind anger and incivility as long as it is directed in a more productive direction. I could post just like Savil but I'd rather try to be more positive and productive. What is happening is that people are restating the stuff we already know and making themselves and others more angry.

What I'm saying is, we know what's wrong, we all get it. Now, how do we fix it and especially what are we going to work for to get it fixed for the next expansion?

[Elidroth]

Well now.. I was warned this might be a volatile topic.. but let's have some reason and civility here (or at least try).

I've given you guys a LOT of upgrades this expansion. Is it enough? Maybe not, but I'm not going to knee-jerk react and make huge changes in one shot. Are you seriously going to suggest that I've done nothing to help mages this expansion?

I've been fixing issues as I get time to do so, and Pie has worked WITH me a great deal. Things like new ranks of Fury of Magic for example, which was an oversight on my part.

This might surprise you (Savil), that I'm much more inclined to spend time addressing issues brought up to me in a civil manner than someone who comes at me the way you do. If you have suggestions or ideas, by all means bring them to me.

Lastly.. Lay off the CRTs. You have NO IDEA how they interact with us, or what they do for us honestly. They are there to bring concerns to our attention, but they cannot simply demand change and make it happen.

[Aumeldarie]

Forget about VoA because it's done and they aren't going to do anything to make huge changes now.

I'm a little confused here why does it sound like you are giving up 2 weeks into the expansion? In Elidroths post he said he doesn't want to have a knee jerk reaction but I don't think that means mages are done for the next year, might as well turn off your comp now. At least I hope it doesn't. I remember a couple months into HoT it was said to give up and focus on the next expansion, VoA, that didn't work so what would make you think it will this time? I don't want to be rude and I wouldn't want your job but throwing in the towel for VoA at this point seems a little premature.

[Voragath]

Forget about VoA because it's done and they aren't going to do anything to make huge changes now.

I'm a little confused here why does it sound like you are giving up 2 weeks into the expansion? ... I remember a couple months into HoT it was said to give up and focus on the next expansion, VoA, that didn't work so what would make you think it will this time? I don't want to be rude and I wouldn't want your job but throwing in the towel for VoA at this point seems a little premature.

No, the keyword is huge. This is usually how it is. I haven't given up or thrown in the towel; I just realize we can make a bigger splash for the next expansion since it hasn't been made yet. Once an expansion is launched, it is usually fine tuned only. It is possible we can work something out with the devs for VoA to make a big change but that would need some serious hyperbole-free unadulterated facts to make happen. EG: A one minute parse of the stars aligning for a zerk using glyphs and vet aa's then claiming they sustain this is not going to impress the devs. Also, don't forget they have a new parser program themselves and doing such will probably see your parse to a trash bin faster than you could send it.

Our focus on VoA did work, somewhat. We got some things in that we needed and hopefully we gained some traction but we won't know until late Jan-Feb after people play around with new AA's and make it to the end zone raids.

Yes, there are problems, yes some things we haven't gotten that we have constantly asked for, and yes we aren't "fixed." Remember, it took beastlords a few years to get corrected.

tl;dr No, I haven't given up and no it isn't time for anyone to throw in the towel. We just need to keep at working for some changes and realize it's just now that we got ourselves in a position to make changes.

[Piemastaj]

First off, calm down. Plain and simple, yelling solves nothing except making the person doing it feel a bit better.

As to the issues at hand I have not been able to raid for a bit due to being w/o internet, so we do not have any data to go off of atm (or at least none that I have seen). It is also only 3 weeks into the expansion, so generally your hopeful we have mages fully leveled and most or all of our core AAs out there. We also have a batch of AAs coming out in December that promise to increase DPS as well as other areas of our class. So, by no means is anything lost or out of reach for VOA. If HoT is any type of an example we got very solid increases mid-expansion, which means the door is open for quite awhile.

With that said it has been very frustrating the last few years to play a high-end magician. And so far they continue into VoA, while I am in favor of us not getting a new mod rod AA it does hurt some mages that have that as a crutch to get them into guilds. Those frustrations only have room on these boards really. If they are expressed anywhere else they will get modded or removed. While I am really against modding peoples posts, I would also urge them to become more civil especially when Elidroth is posting in this thread.

With that said, we have various things in motion that could set us up into the future. We have been given new areas to explore/build on with our mana regen and our DPS. I also have more ideas to give off to the devs to see if we can possibly expand current ideas and or use them so with multiple mages they increase by certain percents. I would love to start getting things so if you have 3 mages on the raid using X thing it increases that things dmg by 15% or something. Things like that would make it so you don't lose with less mages, but you do gain far more with more mages so we are not rod dispensers.

These new pet clickies have numerous possibilities for the future. They were actually much weaker off then they are now. I could forsee us expanding them out quite nicely considering they are limited by high mana costs and recast times. Both of our spears being unlinked is also quite nice to play around with. That moved us very far in our attempts the get burst on track, and it took no effort on the devs at all to do. There have also been talks about making our elemental forms actually viable in todays game.

We came out of VoA quite nicely IMHO. The only thing that was utterly stupid was the change from Clash of Many to Strike of Many. I still can not think for the life of my why it was done at all. It was one of many changes SOE likes to do w/o considering all of the facts and things that go into spells including ADPS. It is not quite time to panic just yet. We need to see what will happen once we start getting focuses (remember HoT gear DEGRADES on 91+ nukes), rank 3s, type 3 augs, once we actually see fight lengths, and see fully AAed mages out there on these events. A lot of what I mentioned isn't even in game yet, and most of the raids have guilds locked by a lot. We have only been able to see THREE events in VoA, and form what I have heard they are more tuned to sustained and not burst which is in our favor.

[Savil]

Well, just looking at facts here, never did like spin. For several exp's we have been told lots of things that didn't happen. I do not play anymore Vora, this is true, but I'm pretty sure my understanding of ADPS is pretty damned solid for both melee / casters thank you very much

Again, nobody said otherwise so I'm going to assume that my information is correct: Mages are only pushing out 60-65k DPS (and everybody knows mages are a frontloaded class, if you don't you aren't paying atten), and rogues are already pushing out 90k +. So far the spin teams haven't told me how this has happened or disputed this.

Last exp many mages were up in arms at the fact that mages were 20k DPS behind other DPS at the end of the exp, now its more so. I fail to see how this is even close to being ok.

Elidroth: I'm going to be completely honest with you here, no spin ... promise. From what I'm told mages had the following happen for this exp:

* more cut and paste spells
* screwed up the of many line
* completely pointless grant spells (which we were told were OP'ed last exp)
* pets giving "normal" upgrades, reports I'm getting saying with EM12 they get destroyed in new zones
* overlooked core AA upgrades, ie force of magic line, *zero excuse for this elidroth*, while I do give you credit for admitting it was your mistake and your going to fix it ASAP.
* the pet click spells *could* have been great, what was pushed out was complete crap for DPS (going by PJ's DPS parses for them). While I understand that this can be increased, you and I both know they will not get bumped by near the DPS that is needed to make mages "fixed" or even wanted on most high end raids.
* mana regen issues were ignored... again. This has become an ongoing theme, made the worst its ever been with VoA.
* from what I understand AA's in general for mages were pretty much blah. Now I understand that SoE will be pushing out more AA's in DEC as part of a patch, I'd like to know why this is becoming the new norm for SoE to push out unfinished content (thus giving us all to have a chance to have issues such as this come up) over just pushing out a completed exp. How do you release without even core AA's in place?
* the new "dps" aa that doesn't stack with and is on the same timer as FC (as I understand it) really doesn't count because nobody is going to use it until you guys do something with it.

That said, please tell me where I have missed part of the upgrades mages got? None of this is trying to be rude, yelling at you or w/e. I'm calling cold hard facts of DPS, 60-65K dps from prob the best DPS mage left in EQ vs 93K DPS from a rogue without end game (for this exp) weapons. I find the statement of "Is it enough? Maybe not" to be very very funny indeed.

Vora: I totally understand that the rogue had a solid group blah blah blah, and I'm going to say it point blank, IMHO I understand ADPS better than you. I was in vent with most of my guilds melee for several years, and one of those is Tonzofo ... the zerker CL, and believe me he understands ADPS.

No matter how you slice it, spin it, make excuses for it, claim its not finished (shouldn't have been released) .... at the end of the day mages are getting destroyed in DPS just like the last 2 exps. Mages going back as far as Wire told the devs this was a major issue. Only its becoming worse not better.

For the record, I could care less how long beastlords were hurting / broken / blah, I only care about mages atm and the fact that most guilds consider 99% of mages to be a source of mod rods. I could point out one very high level mage in a top 5 guild that is ONLY kept because of this fact. Other wise hes laughed at all the time. Sad sad sad. PJ, knows just who I'm talking about.

I stand by my statements and will until somebody tells me something other than spin. When FACTS are posted I'll answer .. and if I'm wrong, I'll admit it.

Savil

[Piemastaj]

'Force of Magic' is Fury of Magic, but it got put onto Beta yesterday. Although a month late, it was done so we did not fall further behind in our crit chance curve.

Pets did get an above average upgrade to DPS because of some issue where they were only receiving X upgrade and should have gotten more per pet focus increase. Afaik it did not effect tanking much, but an EM 12 pet shouldn't be getting wrecked anywhere unless it is in Sepulcher and the mobs have those perma-buffs on.

The new DPS AA, Elemental Union, should be off of Fire Core's timer now (I have not bought it yet, so can not give 100% but I know on Beta it was). This was actually 1 of the AAs I was like huh? about. We were fine in Sustained DMG, and we got another sustained disc. I understand the premise (we asked for a magic type increase for our nukes), but definitely a 'curious' AA to get.

If rogues stay anywhere near the same we will be nowhere near enough. Supposedly they are also getting quite a hefty boost in December. If you add that in with actually getting VoA weps and focuses and type 3s/rank 3s, doubling us up in DPS will w/o a doubt happen. I don't care what anyone says a rogue that had a ceiling of 70kish in HoT should not be doing 90K+ w/o anything but new AAs and levels. That is beyond front-loaded to get a 20k DPS increase w/o having any new weapons or focus. And this is back 2 back to back weeks this has happened.

Oh yea, I was too busy parsing and stuff to notice this and people seemed to forget to 'mention' it, but we are missing and will not have an EM 14. Although this expansion goes all the way up to EM 16. So until T3 you can not have a chance to get any type of pet focus upgrade. This is including needing 3 T1 raid kills and 9 T2 kills before you can even try T3.

[Shardin]

I think it's the wrong approach to add new mage features as opposed to scaling correctly and fix the ones we have. You create so many interdependencies between features/abilities that it makes it difficult to tune them with any confidence for fear of breaking something else. This has the added affect of making gameplay unnecessarily complex. For this reason I would like to see a core set of mage features/abilities and focus primarily on those. I think if we simplify and consolidate some of the abilities we have now it will make things easier for everyone, e.g., combine all pet buffs into one. I understand entirely new abilities but to add one form of dps that is mostly identical to another form save another hotkey, another inventory, another spell gem, etc. just seems redundant especially when a lot the new stuff is considered to be a polished turd.

I don't know what the strategy for scaling is but a lot of times it just doesn't make any sense to me. If mobs HP scale x1000 you would think our dps would scale approx. x1000. This just hasn't happened over the years. Take our DS for example. It has gone up maybe x10 or so over 10 years. Another example is our summoned nukes. This is a good unique ability that in the past was a lot of fun. How long has it been proccing 32k? This should proc like 512k now. It's only a 1% chance. If you want to add ability to this spell give it a 25% chance to proc a slow. This way you add ability without adding more clutter, i.e., no new spells, no new spell gems, no new activated aa, no new items, etc. A good is example is how mod rods scaled over the years only to recently been honestly addressed.

Instead of looking at adding a feature to fix and added feature we should fix the core features. Throw them all up on a whiteboard and see how they compare relative to mobs, raids, other classes, etc.