Rework mez entirely?

[TheMightyTaco]

My illusionist is just level 30 but I am enjoying it a lot. The whole issue of epics and some heroics being unaffectable to our stuns and mez's really bites. What would you think of this idea?Rework a spell line dedicated to mez which has the following traits:<ul><li>Each spell is a single target mez</li><li>The spell is of limited duration and drains power from the caster as it is in effect</li><li>The spell breaks if the target is hit</li><li>The spell breaks if the caster moves</li><li>The spell breaks if the caster takes damage</li><li>The spell breaks if the caster attempts to cast any other spell.</li><li>Each spell affects mobs up to 9 levels above its level.</li><ul><li>Spell given at level 10 only affects targets up to level 19</li><li>Spell given at level 20 only affects targets up to level 29</li><li>etc.</li></ul><li>The spell is effective against any mob: regular, heroic, epic</li></ul>This would in effect give us some CC ability that defines our archetype. Yes, that ability is very powerful but giving it these limitations makes you pay the price for that power. If you are in CC mode for raid purposes or otherwise then you are locked into it.There is the matter of raid groups attempting to trivialize raids with a bunch of chanters. Perhaps there can be a set limit of this line of spells not stacking on a target group or limiting it to 2 or so. Then any more chanters attempting to mez using this line on an encounter would get the standard "Would Not Take Effect".Just a thought.<div></div>

[Pins]

Trivializes encounters, won't happen.Example of how it trivialized an encounter, take on King Drayek. Adds spawn, mez Drayek. Kill adds, go back to killing Drayek. Repeat.Then there's Vision of Vox, do the same with her. Or with contested mobs that have a bunch of adds. Mez the main guy, burn the adds down to drop healing needed, then burn down the main guy alone.

[Tuleri]

<div>They need to like double or triple the amount of adds to make CC a challenge.  Also for someting like Drayok, making them each single ^^^ mobs instead of a group would make that encounter a bit more challenging</div>

[TheMightyTaco]

Well, there has to be a balance in there where something is just easier rather than trivial. At some point there is a balance, or near balance. Consider if the mez spell line I am proposing here has a max duration of 30 seconds but a recast time of 60 seconds. Can you burn down all the adds in 30 seconds? What will you do for the next 30 seconds? Sure, two illusionists could ping-pong the casting. What about a recast time of 3 minutes? 5 minutes? What about the power cost of the spell leaving the caster at 50% power if they hold it the entire duration? Then this line of spells is not trivializing, but it does add enough help to the group to make an encounter more easily survivable.My point is, there are ways to make it workable. I can understand the ease of simply saying "it won't work", but something will work. I really don't care if my idea in the OP is considered stupid and unrealistic. The base idea is good though. Rather than wipe out an entire ability by saying "does not affect xxxx" you can limit the ability to the point where there is a penalty and risk for weilding the power.<div></div>

[Pins]

<blockquote><hr>MisterCode wrote:Well, there has to be a balance in there where something is just easier rather than trivial. At some point there is a balance, or near balance. Consider if the mez spell line I am proposing here has a max duration of 30 seconds but a recast time of 60 seconds. Can you burn down all the adds in 30 seconds? What will you do for the next 30 seconds? Sure, two illusionists could ping-pong the casting. What about a recast time of 3 minutes? 5 minutes? What about the power cost of the spell leaving the caster at 50% power if they hold it the entire duration? Then this line of spells is not trivializing, but it does add enough help to the group to make an encounter more easily survivable.My point is, there are ways to make it workable. I can understand the ease of simply saying "it won't work", but something will work. I really don't care if my idea in the OP is considered stupid and unrealistic. The base idea is good though. Rather than wipe out an entire ability by saying "does not affect xxxx" you can limit the ability to the point where there is a penalty and risk for weilding the power.<div></div><hr></blockquote>Then you bring more enchanters, or at least that's what SoE thinks we're going to do if you continually do that.

[TheMightyTaco]

Right, somebody'll try it. But then you reach the point where everyone is there for mezzing and no one is there for fighting so you mez forever and never hurt anything. Consider the mez lasting 30 seconds with a recast of 3 minutes. You'd have to bring 6 chanters to continually round-robin mez on a single target. That would be insane.<div></div>

[bluejello]

Make new spell lines that are epic only. We have spells that are group/solo only, so why not raid only spells as well? The point here is to allow enchanters to perform CC on epics. This can be done if the spells have mechanics that prevent any strategy involving stacking enchanters.Make a few new stun/mez/whatever spell lines that are more costly to use with extra features. For example if one enchanter uses an epic mez then every single spell of the same type will run the cooldown across the raid. They could put an extremely large aoe effect on an epic stun that makes any nearby mobs immune to the epic cc effects. The concept here is to put the proper restrictions on epic CC spells to prevent the potential problems, but allow enchanters to do at least a modest amount of CC.<div></div>

[Zebsen]

<div></div><div>I agree with the need to rework mezz/stun/stiffle for epics.  The Devs aren't going to let them in as they are now.  Whether we need new spells or whether our existing spells have effects specific to epics is something that I'm fairly indifferent on.</div><div> </div><div>My initial thoughts:</div><div>Have mezz/stun/stiffle work on epics.  Have it drain power over time at a very high rate (similar to sprint).  Yes, you could use this for emergencies, but at a cost of DPS and it probably wouldn't be viable long term against mobs like Vox unless you brought several crowd control classes.  And while people point out how this could trivialize certain raid encounters, I agree this could happen.  But trying to time it so 23 other people disengage a named epic, cancels DOTs and such would make things far from trivial.  Especially if the health level the mob was at when it called for help was random rather than set.</div><div> </div><div>The problem with I see with this suggestion is that: if you feel that playing an enchanter on raids is boring now, the above strategy would make you a one spell wonder. </div><div> </div><div>An alternative in my eyes is to somehow work something like this into a HO chain.  Only a chanter can advance a chain that could end in a mezz/stun/stiffle, and only if you aligned things correctly.  This would be a big change from current "generic" HO chains where any mage class could advance it.  This would hopefully give us something to do on a raid and move us away from a breeze bot.</div><div> </div><div>Just my thoughts,</div><div>Zebsen</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><p>Message Edited by ZebsenChanter on <span class="date_text">03-08-2006</span><span class="time_text">02:58 PM</span></p>

[holtrick]

<div></div><font size="2"><p>Something is better than nothing.</p><p>In the holy trinity of MMO’s there are tanks, healers and DPS. The Mage archtype is DPS. In theory, some branches of the mage class trade off their DPS to get pets (summoners) or Crowd Control (enchanters). Now this is fine for non-epic mobs.</p><p>Against epic mobs it has been determined that crowd control is too game breaking. Now while many of us may not agree with that conclusion, that seems to be the law. So, why make us pay for something but get nothing in return? I would say at the very least if you won’t give us our CC in epic fights return our DPS. This isn’t the most elegant solution but it is better than the current solution, which is to do nothing.</p><p>If you need some fluff reasoning behind it, think of epic as being able to push through Mez/stun/stifle effects at the cost of health/power. The descriptor of the spell could read something like "Powerful creatures may be able to resist the stun at the cost of XXX health."</p><p>Sure this just turns us into average wizards for epic fights but currently we sub average wizards in epic fights anyhow, right?</p><p>While I don’t think this is the best solution, I think it is an easy solution that is better than the current solution that has been in place for the last year.</p></font>

[Belizarius]

<div></div><p>To be honest, I'm not that fussed about mez not working on epics, I'm happy enough with CC only being an option on non-epic minions/reinforcements on raids.  That I think is pretty much as it should be.</p><p>I'm more annoyed, that without stun/stifle, we have very little else  in the way of worthwhile <em>debuffs</em> for epics.  As it is, rogues and bards all have much more valuable raid-level debuffs than we do. </p><p>Our stuns and stifles need to have either some sort of <em>partial</em> effect, or <em>alternate</em> effect, against epic mobs.  Without them, all we have is the Disappointment line.  It doesn't seem like much, and only really effects  mobs that are principally melee.  Yeah we have an arcane debuff, but like, who cares?</p><p>Many ideas have been suggested, none have been adopted.  Str debuffs, Int debuffs, casting/recast time debuffs, spellcasting skill debuffs, allowing our spells to have some effect in combination, etc etc</p>

[Mac]

<div></div>Massive nerf to PvP Illusionists. <span>:smileyindifferent:</span><div></div>