Warlock and Wizard Aggro Management Fix: Give Sorcs equivalents to Scout CAs.

[Amistead]

<P>First of all, let me outline the impetus for my posting this thread.  After months of parsing after the new combat updates, an aggro management disparity has become apparent amongst the DPS classes.  The situation is thus: the rangers in our guild can put out solid dps numbers, but if they go too far, then they will peel.  The same is true for swashbucklers, brigands, assassins, etc.  Each of these classes has the capacity to put out respectable numbers, but if they decide to be stupid, then they will peel.<BR>   This is not the case for Wizards and Warlocks. <BR>   Wizards and Warlocks have no functional aggro management utilities.  The one utility that these classes have is vastly underpowered in design.  As it stands, if a Wizard or Warlock does not have Amends or a troubador, they are limited to watching the parser and stopping at 300dps, all the while watching the swashies put out 550+, the rangers put out 700+, the brigands put out 600, etc. etc. etc.  (Yes, the numbers do vary based upon encounter.  That is not the point.  The point is that the scout classes can put out large numbers because of active aggro management skills, and Sorcerors only management skill is to sit on our hands once we hit a certain number.)  Further, it should be noted that Conjurors and Necros ALWAYS outparse the Sorcer that does not have Amends, simply because they have built in aggro management in the form of splitting hate with their pet.  To add insult to injury two tank classes, notably Berserker and Bruiser, are out dpsing Wizards and Warlocks.  In aoe situations, Berserkers are hitting 1500ish dps, and on single targets, Bruisers are regularly doing 500dps.  <BR>   Let me clarify, because this is not a call for increased numbers on our damage spells.  This is a request for *functional* deaggro utilities to be added.  With Amends, which reduces hate, a Warlock does what he is supposed to do and pwns aoe encounters.  With Amends, which reduces hate, a Wizard does what he is supposed to do and pwns single target encounters.  Simply add some functional utilities to the two respective Sorceror classes, as the scout classes have, and the game becomes balanced.  Here is the reason why other classes can put out decent numbers and not peel:</P> <P> </P> <P>Class              Skill                                     Cast   Recast           Effect<BR>Ranger          Primal Agility                         Buff   (Permanent)   Reduce hate gain by 48%.         (AD3)<BR>                      Improved Surveil                   1         30                  Reduce threat by 714-1190       (AD3)<BR>                      Elude                                     0.2       20                 Reduce threat 777-1295            (AD3)          </P> <P>Brigand         Beffudle Adversaries            Buff   (Permanent)   15% Proc on Melee Attack:<BR>                                                                                                      Reduce threat 1 position and<BR>                                                                                                       by 507.                                        (AD3)<BR>                     Shadow Slip                           1      60                    Decrease threat position by 1.<BR>                                                                                                       Reduce threat by 1153.              (AD3)</P> <P>                     Elude                                      0.2    20                   Reduce threat 777-1295              (AD3)<BR>                  <BR>Swashie      Avoid censure                       Buff   (Permanent)   20% proc on Melee Attack:<BR>                                                                                                      Reduce hate by 1000.                  (AD3)<BR>                   Swarthy Distraction                                                  20% hate transfer from swashy <BR>                                                                                                      to another PC.                              (AD3)<BR>                    Elude                                       0.2    20                   Reduce threat 777-1295              (AD3)</P> <P>Troubador  Alin's Tranq. Serenade          Buff   (Permanent)   49% reduction of hate gain to <BR>                                                                                                    all nonfighters in group.                   (M1)<BR>                   Elude                                      0.2    20                  Reduce threat 777-1295                 (AD3)</P> <P>Assassin     Reconnoiter                         Buff   (Permanent)   Decrease hate gain by 12.6%       (AD1)<BR>                    Murderous Design                                                 22% hate transfer to PC.              (AD1)       <BR>                    Elude                                      0.2    20                   Reduce threat 777-1295              (AD3)</P> <P>Dirge           Elude                                     0.2    20                   Reduce threat 777-1295          (AD3)</P> <P> </P> <P><BR>Warlock and     Concussive               2       30           Reduce hate by 225-375 on the <BR>Wizard                                                                         next spell cast. </P> <P><BR>It seems readily apparent to me that there are severe issues in aggro management parity.  First of all let me give compliments to the scout development team.  Each scout class comes equipped with a group buff and two combat arts to actively shed aggro.  This means that some aggro will automatically be shed and some will be shed by the actions of the player.  It is also a feature of the scout classes that each gets an equivalent deaggro CA, Elude.</P> <P>Solution:  <BR>1.  Give all mage classes an equivalent deaggro spell.  Make it scale according to level and improve with upgrades.<BR>    Here would be an example:<BR>    Name              Cast    Recast    Effect<BR>    <FONT color=#ff0000>Mind Scour        0.5      20s       Decrease threat by 777-1295.</FONT></P> <P>2.  Give all Wizards and Warlocks a one concentration slot deaggro buff.  Primal Agility, Befuddle Adversaries, Avoid Censure, Alin's Tranquil Serenade, and Reconnoiter are all excellent models of functional deaggro buffs, as has been shown through game play.</P> <P>    Here would be some examples, taking into account "flavor" for each class.<BR>    Warlock:   *this would be a replacement for Null Mail, which should be removed as it is entirely useless.<BR>    Name                 Cast    Recast            Effect <BR>    <FONT color=#ff0000>Cleansing Filth    Buff (Permanent)      20% proc on successful spell attack:<BR>                                                                   Reduce threat by 950.  Reduce attack speed 15%.<BR></FONT>    (Warlocks are the masters of poison and disease, and slowing targets would be appropriate for essentially "sickening" them.)</P> <P>    Wizard:<BR>    Name                            Cast    Recast        Effect<BR>    <FONT color=#ff0000>Blazing Dominance     Buff (Permanent)    20% proc on successful spell attack:<BR>                                                                          Reduce threat by 950.  Interrupt target.<BR></FONT>    (Getting hit by huge ice balls and gouts of flame tends to make people pause occasionally, don't you think?)</P> <P> </P> <P>3.  Give Wizards and Warlocks an individually flavored spell to actively manage aggro.</P> <P>    Warlock/Wizard:<BR>    Name                Cast    Recast       Effect<BR>    <FONT color=#ff0000>Concussive          2       30              For 10s, each time a target is damaged by the sorceror, reduce aggro by 225-375.<BR></FONT>    (It would be incredibly simple to make this spell functional!  Simply make the spell's effect last for ten seconds.  The effect would be to reduce aggro, since spells are hitting for 1000+.  Concussive per the current implementation is useless.)</P> <P>There is good reason for this post, as all raiding Wizards and Warlocks know.  We have two choices on a raid when we don't have a troubador or paladin available, either sit on our hands to manage aggro, or peel constantly and endanger the raid over and over and over again.  This is not good game design.  Balance us like the scouts are balanced.  Give us some aggro management utilities that enable us to put out good numbers, but if we overdo it because of stupidity, punish us for our mistakes.  These suggestions given above will do exactly that.  </P> <P>Thanks for your time.</P> <P>Alezara</P> <P>Warlock of the 60th Order</P> <P>-=CORE, Unrest=-</P> <P> </P> <P><BR> </P>

[SandDragon]

<P>Thank you for your time with that post. </P> <P>Both ideas for the wizard and warlock perm. buffs to reduce aggro are great ideas.</P> <P>Will anything ever happen....*shrugs*!!</P>

[Tanatus]

<DIV>Personally I'd rather see Seal of Ebon Toughts replaced with de agro buff. +Skill do less then nothing </DIV>

[813err]

Im in the same guild as the OP and it is a mess. Plenty of nights he has amends so I read a book and try to keep dots up. When I have amends I still cant go full dps on a single mob or ill peel. This isnt because the tanks can't hold aggro. We have all the right buffs on all the right tanks. The problem is EVERY healer class gets a detaunt. Half the caster classes get detuants and we get the shaft. Makes me sad to see a ranger do 700dps and not even be close to peeleing just to have myself die at 400. Today our detaunt was changed to 1100-1800 or something like that. I laugh at that. Thanks for making our classes even harder to play!. Rangers/Brigands have a one time class sit back and kill a mob buff and we get a spell we have to activly keep on a mob. Sometimes I wonder why I dont just reroll a Ranger. I play to do dps not click buttons in a specific order as to not die. Make it a concentration spell if you ever want to make anyone happy sony. Till then I wish I was a Ranger. <div></div>

[Maelwy]

<P>Thanks to the OP for coming up with a cohesive positive solution - This situation has frustrated me to no end.</P> <P>Even with the upcoming fix to concussive, it's still an insult - other classes get a near instant hate reduction - </P> <P>Sorcerers get to spend 2 sec's to cast concussive THEN have to spend 1-4 more seconds casting a Damage spell (adding more hate to the warlock) just to reduce some hate?</P> <P>no matter WHAT spell we use to trigger concussive, it takes away from the effectiveness of concussive.</P> <P>Who thought this up?  </P> <P> </P> <P>PLEASE give us a concentration spell that allows us to drop aggro.  make it a proccing  memblur effect.  25% of the time we have a chance to wipe us off the aggro list entirely.  Thats still less effective than the rangers straight 48% reduction (100% of the time)  and leaves us sorcerers with a bit of risk - (ie, it could NOT proc and we could pull aggro and die....)  </P> <P>or - make all deaggro spells/skills not effective on epic mobs.  Thats right - take all these aggro reduction abilities away entirely at end game, and see the outcry.  Maybe then you will balance taunting/tank aggro control with dps aggro generation.</P> <P> </P> <P> </P>

[MilkToa]

<P>Concussive was fixed in today's patch, it now reduces aggro by 1110-1850 at level 60. Personally, I'm thrilled to get some form of aggro reducing spell. Yes, it does take time to cast but if it's used proactively it will definitely help with aggro. It's not a 'Get out of jail free' card but I never expected one.</P> <P>p.s.</P> <P>I'm curious to see what impact the LU18 proc changes have had on scout DPS.</P> <P> </P><p>Message Edited by MilkToast on <span class=date_text>12-21-2005</span> <span class=time_text>03:01 PM</span>

[DearthofWeal]

Y'all are aware that Concussive procs off of Tongue Twist, right?  Also on debuffs? (I guarantee our debuffs don't have much hate..) And while i'm very aware that pre-concussive, rangers were able to put out 800+ dps on a single target without pulling aggro while a warlock was treadin' on some quaky earth and about to get their world shattered at 600 DPS (single target..).  Post-concussive I can pretty much unload everything I got on a single target with even an SK tanking and not pull aggro.. Ok, a bit of hyperbole there.. i'd still pull aggro from an SK, but.. no other tank. **This post has a hint of "Fix SKs aggro PLEASE!" to it** <div></div>

[VeraIkonica]

<DIV>I like what they have done with concusive, but I would like it better if they cut the hate reduction in half and made it effect target encounter for us warlock that like to use our full abilities :smileyhappy:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>btw I think the OP has a great post its very constructive.</DIV>

[Tanatus]

<DIV>This spell not work on AE encounter - you get hate reduction only vs, mob that you currently targeting ....</DIV> <DIV>In other word you are unleash AE attack on 5 mob encounter under concurssion active you will pull now 4 mob instead of 5 out of MT lol?</DIV>

[Ziffna]

<DIV>It's just like sony to give us new tools that are [Removed for Content] it's obvious sony is trying to drive the remaining warlock population out.</DIV>

[Maelwy]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Ziffnabb wrote:<BR> <DIV>It's just like sony to give us new tools that are [Removed for Content] <FONT color=#ffff00>it's obvious sony is trying to drive the remaining warlock population out.</FONT></DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>No, this is probably one of the stupidest statements i've ever seen. <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>No business wants to drive any portion of its paying customer base away.  If you don't believe this basic fact of consumer economics, you've got a big reality check coming at some point in your life.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>SOE appears to be challenged in understanding the usage of the class by the player base. The Dev who oversees our class clearly does not love our class the way those of us who play it do.  This has been made clear time and time again, as they've tried to 'fix' us at one point or another, and the fixes have been half [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn]ed, poorly functional, or alternately imbalanced and overpowered, causing future nerfs.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>SOE - is it impossible to get a person on the staff who TRULY LOVES the warlock, and let their experience with the class drive the direction of our future fixes/nerfs?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Amistead]

<DIV>Posting positive solutions seems to work, in my humble opinion.  Like it has been stated previously, I do feel that Sony wishes to retain customer base.  What business would not?  However, there is a slippery slope to worry about.  If you give Warlocks too much deaggro capacity, then the class will be trivialized-> all Warlocks will simply press buttons as fast as possible, and playing will quickly become boring.  That is obviously bad as well.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>     So, from a developer's standpoint, the sorceror classes have a balance that needs to be maintained between not enough aggro management, which is the current situation, and too much aggro management, which would make the class a tad boring and trivialize risk.  Concussive is a step in the right direction, but it is inadequate.  Using it on raids for two days now upon pulls and nearly every time it comes up, I have reached several conclusions about its efficacy.  </DIV> <DIV>1.  Single target situations.  Seeing as how our raid force mostly uses a Berserker main tank with a dirge buffing his hate, I was never capable of peeling from the Berserker before the implementation of Concussive except on rare occasions.  Concussive being used selectively is a nice improvement to my single target aggro management.</DIV> <DIV>2.  AOE situations.  Concussive is useless.  I cannot put this emphatically enough.  The spell is not helpful in the least.  The same spell sequences that pull aggro without using Concussive still pull aggro while using Concussive.   I have tried precasting Concussive and making sure that the first spell I cast is an aoe effect.   It even occured to me that there may be a bug in the hate listing tables, and it is not possible for a player to reduce hate below zero, so I instead started with Dark Nebula/Nil Absolution before casting Concussive.  This ensured that my position on the hate list for every mob was more than concussive could possibly reduce.  Again, as soon as the third tick of Devastation hit, I peeled.  I don't think that Concussive applies the deaggro to all mobs in the encounter. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>   When you look at the scout deaggro utilities, the dps classes amongst scouts have active deaggro buffs.  These are especially helpful in aoe situations, a situation that is supposed to be the province of the Warlock.  Scouts have two individual deaggro CA's and one permanent deaggro buff.  Wizards and Warlocks have one deaggro CA.  Please fix this.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Alezara</DIV> <DIV>Warlock of the 60th Order</DIV> <DIV>-=Core/Unrest=-</DIV><p>Message Edited by Amistead on <span class=date_text>12-24-2005</span> <span class=time_text>11:29 AM</span>

[pharacyde]

Stop whining about the fact that you need to cast a second spell to actualy reduce the hate. It's not like you will not keep doing dps after you reduced your hate. In practice it's the same. Rangers ... all get an instant desagro, but they will keep doing dps right after it. We cast our desagro, and need to cast something to make it work. Realy what is the difference ? It's all about the same to me. The only real problem of that spell is that i'd like to see it encounter based. So when you use it you desagro all mobs in the encounter. When you use a DD spell, you will only desagro that mob, but when you use an AE spell you will all the mobs you hit with your AE spell. <div></div>

[pharacyde]

Seems the spell works on AE targets when you cast an AE spell. Best if you dont want it to generate extra hate, you could just cast your AE debuff... It will also reduce the hate. <div></div>

[Ronzul]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> pharacyde wrote:<BR>Stop whining about the fact that you need to cast a second spell to actualy reduce the hate. It's not like you will not keep doing dps after you reduced your hate. In practice it's the same. Rangers ... all get an instant desagro, but they will keep doing dps right after it. We cast our desagro, and need to cast something to make it work. Realy what is the difference ? It's all about the same to me.<BR>...<BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>It's not the same thing, because you can't use concussive to drop aggro after you've gotten it.  2 seconds plus refresh plus another spell is a death sentence in a lot of cases.</P> <P>And there are as many people posting that it doesn't work encounter-wide as there are posting that it does.  It's far from proven.<BR></P>

[pharacyde]

Well, you got a point on the drop agro thing,once you got agro. But as soon as we get agro we are dead anyway, so even then if it would drop agro instantly it would be too late <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Well on raids at least. I couldn't test the spell myself, not many people online in my guild last few days. But as far as I understand the description of the spell, it sould drop AE agro if you do an AE spell. The desagro spell is a desagro buff on the nest Hostlie spell you will cast. <div></div>

[Tanatus]

<DIV>Its NOT de-agro AE - the only hate reduction you will see is one mob that you currently targeting </DIV> <DIV>In other words - if you precast concursion then hit 5 mob AE encounter with say Nil Abs under Neth Realm you will agro only 4 mob instead of 5 (one that you are targeting wont agro)</DIV>