Kuragi
11-10-2005, 10:26 PM
This is a critical post, but I've tried to take a deep breath and understand the point of view of devs as well as my own. The basic frustration of playing an enchanter is that we have a lot of capabilities that seem like they'd be useful, but which aren't really usable in practice. Roots were never really usable until the combat revamp. Then they worked very nicely. Probably too nicely. Now they have no tactical purpose that I can see. Solo-rated mobs can be dealt with using the personae or other tactics, stunning and stifling. I used to love power draining. It too was nerfed. Maybe for good reasons. Now, a mob can be drained in pow in about twice the time it takes to just kill him. So, it's not very useful. What is really frustrating about the situation is the whole bait-and-switch aspect of it. We gave you this cool thing, now we're taking it away. We have several spells now that really aren't useful. That isn't fun, it's just frustrating. The patch notes referred to "a small chance to break with damage" I don't complain all that much about enchanter dps. The revamp did a lot for us. Our DD isn't big, but it's fast casting, much faster than the wizard dd. Between dynamism, and our dots and HO's I can chew through mobs pretty fast. But here's the thing, I'm doing lots of little hits. <em>Every single one</em> of those little hits now gives the root a chance to break. Which means it breaks immediately, or often enough that you die regularly when you use it. So, when I read in the patch notes that "Lock Mind now makes resistance checks less often, but has a small chance to break when taking damage," it really feels like SOE is trying to pull one over on us. Like this was no big deal. It was a big deal. I don't even use Lock Mind any more, I use the upgrade Terrifying Vision. Acting like it wasn't a big deal seems very disrespectful of those of us who play illusionists. I think perhaps the biggest argument against the root as it stood was that it meant that you didn't need tanks. Of course, you don't "need" any other archetype to be successful either. What was I using root for? I could solo a single green+++ heroic mob. If I managed to keep the root on for the whole time, that is, and was at full pow to start. And if he didn't surprise me with a stun or stifle to start the combat. It wasn't a guaranteed process for me, and certainly not the path to greater exp and loot. Mostly I used the capability because of troublesome mobs that were interfering with my hunting of solo-rated mobs. Now to power draining. Power draining isn't useful unless the mob can be taken to no power significantly faster than he can be killed. The current capability does not allow for that under any circumstance. So why do we even have this capability? I'm not talking about stifling, which got nerfed in the combat revamp, but is still a useful thing to do in some circumstances. I can think of NO situation where a mob can be drained of power faster than he can simply be killed. So, it doesn't seem too useful to have this. Under what circumstances does it help to front-load all the pow drain? Likewise, many of our signature capabilities quite explicitly do not work versus epic mobs. Mez doesn't work, stun doesn't work, root never worked. It may be that these spell concepts simply don't work with the concepts of solo, heroic, and raid mobs. Is it too much to ask that you come up with other concepts that do work? For example, I really like the concepts behind Dynamism and Prismatic Strife. These spells are best in a group, which is as it should be. What if a dev had started a thread a month back and said "We think root is overpowered as it stands, and we'd like your feedback on how to fix it." Wouldn't that have shown more respect for the players, and produced a better outcome? Realistically, there would be some flaming, but we would also have been prepared for the change. And we still have flaming. I encourage someone in marketing at SOE to go back and read the "cluetrain manifesto". Markets are dialogs. <i></i><div></div>