Coercer changes- feedback

[PigLick]

<div></div>(Note: if the green is too bright or irritating, let me know and I'll tone it down. It's late and I'm tired, so the bright green is helping me stay focused, lol). <b>Coercer changes:</b> - The Coerce lines now last longer and have fewer chances to break. <font color="#66ff00">At App2, my</font><font color="#66ff00"> </font><font color="#66ff00">coerce went from max duration of 10 minutes to max duration of 15. I've done very little testing as to actual durations, but so far it's definitely yet another improvement over last week, which was itself a good improvement. This is going to be a much more useful (and necessary- we'll get to that ina minute) solo tool, but for groups it's still not so good. It does last longer, but with the conc slot cost and the kittenizing of up-arrow mobs (and the accompanying immediate return to full strength), the cost vs reward ratio is still off.</font> - Spell Lash now targets an encounter. <font color="#66ff00">Don't have this one yet (only level 35), so no specific comment, but it's definitely better than nothing for a spell that definitely needed some help. Most encounters I've ever come across only have one, maybe 2 casters in them though, so I'm not sure how big of an impact this will make. I'm sure there are some places where it will be very nice though. </font> - Recklessness had its DPS amount increased. <font color="#66ff00">Bravado at App2 went from +28% to +33%, which although not a huge increase is decent, especially considering it's only an App2. I look forward to seeing how much it went up for higher level/quality spells. </font> - Unnerving Stare now drains more power. <font color="#66ff00">I don't remember the exact old numbers, but at Adept1 I think it was around 45-50/tick for 6 ticks (so about 282 total), and now it's up to 50-61/tick, same number of ticks, so a total of about 333, almost a 20% increase. Mobs' power was draining noticeably faster when I tried to do it, so power draining may once again become a somewhat viable tactic in some situations. </font> - Withering Silence now drains more power. <font color="#66ff00">Unfortunately I have no clue what this spell drained before the change, but now at App2 it's 32-39 per 2 seconds, 12 sec duration. Again, using this, unnerving, and anguish (also app2) would drain a mob for around half of it's power, so while I don't know numerically how much this has improved, draining does seem significantly faster overall. </font> - Ego Strike now has a small chance of breaking when damage is received after the root is applied. <font color="#66ff00">Yah, well, can't say I like this change (nor the following one). I do understand the concern with our nearly unbreakable roots, but I think perhaps the chance to break is set a bit high. </font> - Forced Hesitation now makes resistance checks less often, but has a small chance to break when taking damage. <font color="#66ff00">Again, same as above. Compared to the current live version, I wouldn't call the chance to break on damage "small." I am using an App2 on test though, so my main hope is that resist rates are significanty lowered by upgrading the spell quality. If not, expect soloing to get a heck of a lot more difficult (which is what I was referring to when I said charming will be a more necessary soloing tool). I really wish I had an Adept1 version of root so I could compare more directly with the roots I'm used to on my live coercer, but I think the break chance needs to be tweaked downward, especially seeing as how none of our stuns' casting times were reduced. Root breaks enough now that we need to have additional backup, and our current stuns just don't cut it. </font> - Terrible Awe will no longer prevent its targets from being hit by other AoE effects. Its duration has been reduced. <font color="#66ff00">Thankfully this no longer blocks itself. I was pretty neutral on it blocking other AEs- in some situations a benefit, in others a hindrance- but blocking itself sucked. I think this will garner some complaints, as the duration has been set to about half of what it was (my Terrible Awe went from either 30 or 35 seconds, don't recall exactly, down to 15 seconds, still with a 10 sec recast). Personally however, I'm pretty fine with it. It's a powerful ability and being able to so easily lock down and maintain mez on 2 encounters seemed a bit much. I will say however, that although the patch notes said that *all* encounter AOEs had their limit on number of targets removed, Terrible Awe retained it's 4 target limit. Not sure if that's intentional or an oversight, but I think considering the significant reduction in duration, removing the limit would be reasonable.</font> - Sybyllant now has a faster cast time, no longer requires power cost over time, and will trigger up to 3 times at 100% rate. <font color="#66ff00">Very nice change, this is just what this spell needed. I'd still like a slightly lower recast time so we'd have time to apply it to several members of an encounter before they're dead, but I also understand that with a 100% proc rate they have to be careful not to make recast too short, because it will be entirely likely to get all three procs within a matter of seconds and being able to recast right away could send our dps soaring higher than intended. </font> - Spell Lash now has a faster cast time, costs less power, and can trigger up to 3 times at 100% rate. <font color="#66ff00">Again, don't have this spell to test, however I believe Spell Lash is a 100% proc rate on live too, isn't it? I don't remember ever seeing a % chance in the description at least. Anyway, as I said before this spell needed some help, so any improvements are welcome, and faster casting and lower cost are certainly always nice. </font> - Despotic Mind upgrades now do damage at the intended rate. <font color="#66ff00">Not sure exactly what this means, although I assume it has something to do with the early spells in this line being alomst as good, if not better, than the higher level versions at some quality levels. Since I'm only 35 and only have Despotic, I can't really evaluate this change. Overall, some nice changes in there, especially to haruspex. I'll have to test power drains more, but with better quality spells and higher INT (which I believe increases the power drain ) draining may once again become a valid tactic. I also need to do more testing with charm, but for solo at least I think it's definitely become a very viable tool, but it still has major issues for group use. My biggest concern and I'm sure the thing that will garner the most complaints, is the root changes. Again, hard to tell excatly how bad this is with only App2 spells to test, but this is a pretty major nerf for us, and virtually forces us to use charming to solo. I really think the break chance should be toned down a bit. There are still some other issues that need to be dealt with. I'd still like to see a reduction in cast time for our stuns, especially the perplexity line, especially in light of the changes to root, and synergetic link is still a pretty poor spell. Raiding issues are also a major complaint that these changes don't do much to address (the dps increases will at least be nice, and I guess it remains to be seen if the power drain changes make a differnce, but I doubt it), but not being a raider myself I can't really say anything to those issues. We're on the right track here, but not quite there yet. Nevertheless, I for one appreciate the effort and feel that you have at least been listening to our complaints and started to do something about them. PigLick </font><div></div><p>Message Edited by PigLickJF on <span class=date_text>11-04-2005</span> <span class=time_text>12:01 AM</span>

[Vlaven]

<P>Thanks for the details.</P> <P>And thanks to Soe for implementing some changes.  I cant wait to see the numbers on many spells.   Specualting from the patch notes and after reading your post It seems that :</P> <P> </P> <P>Solo against single mob</P> <P>- Our ability to solo was hurt from the root change </P> <P>++ Our ability to solo was improved by the charm change. </P> <P>+ The proc changes may have an effect if charm is a viable way to solo.(They were not used with root but they will come into play with a charmed pet)</P> <P> </P> <P>Solo against group mob :</P> <P>- AE mez being shorter is a negative changes but as long it last longer then its recast it is not a big deal</P> <P> </P> <P>In groups:</P> <P>+ Haste improvement will help my DPS (indirectly but that is fine too)</P> <P>- The general no stacking int buf will hurt some but not only coercer</P> <P>+++ Our proc will means something as the chances of them actually procing is obviously much better now</P> <P>- The limit of PBAE will hurt for the few times I was in real pbae groups (ie pull 30 weaks mob and massacer them with 3-4 PBAE classes)</P> <P> </P> <P>In Raid</P> <P>+ Haste changes good</P> <P>+ Proc changes  good</P> <P> </P> <P>Unknown stuff (apply to solo, group and raid)</P> <P>? Power drain changes = honnestly at high level , we were so far from being able to drain anything that unless the power drain was increased by a factor of 10 draining will never be used and the change have no meaning</P> <P>? The despotic mind change that now "now do damage at the intended rate." The wording scares me : Did they increase the higher lvl ones or decreased the lower ones?</P> <P> </P> <P>Overall some good changes and some bad changes and a lot of unknown.  The few things I would like to be thrown in there as well :</P> <P>1) Reduce cast time on our emergency stun (perplexity line)</P> <P>2) Let the stun portion of amnesia works on EPIC (that 1.5 seconds stun per 2 minutes) but it will give the coercer a role in managing aggro. Without the stun portion, it break the encounter currently. </P> <P>3) Make annoying demeanor (hate generation) castable within raid as I am never in the MT group</P> <P>4) Consider lowering the charm conc cost so that I dont have to remove all my bufs to use a pet. Charm is a solo tool but I would like to be able to use : Charm+hate on pet+haste on pet+Clarity on me without canceling my int buf.  </P> <P> </P> <P>Vlav</P> <P> </P> <P> </P> <P> </P> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[PigLick]

<div></div><span><font color="#66cc00">Yah, your summations looks about right from my experience. Hard to say how drains will come out, since I have low INT, low quality spells, and am at a fairly low level. Even with all that the drains were significant (it would take me about as long to drain a mob as to kill it if I was focusing on one or the other), so it's just a question of how well they scale up with level and QL.</font><blockquote><hr>Vlaven wrote:<p>? The despotic mind change that now "now do damage at the intended rate." The wording scares me : Did they increase the higher lvl ones or decreased the lower ones?</p><hr><font color="#66cc00">It seems they lowered the high ones, not sure how the low ones were affected. Someone linked their Master I Tyrannical for me on test last night (ie they were on a live server and linked the spell in a global chat, so I saw the test stats for it), and it went from 500-something % on live to like 393% on test.</font><hr>Overall some good changes and some bad changes and a lot of unknown.  The few things I would like to be thrown in there as well :<p>1) Reduce cast time on our emergency stun (perplexity line)</p><hr><p><font color="#66cc00">Definitely agree there, as I said above. In addition I gave some suggestions on what I think ould be a really nice improivement to this spell in the coercer forum. Change it to a friendly reactive proc, so you cast it on yourself or a group member. When they get hit, the mob gets the stun and loses the agro towards that person, not us. It would still play the same role it does now, but would make it  really nice, useful and (as far as I know) unique anbd fitting tool in  groups.</font></p><p></p><hr><p>2) Let the stun portion of amnesia works on EPIC (that 1.5 seconds stun per 2 minutes) but it will give the coercer a role in managing aggro. Without the stun portion, it break the encounter currently.</p><hr><p></p><p><font color="#66cc00">Sounds like a great and needed change, good suggestion.</font></p><hr><p>3) Make annoying demeanor (hate generation) castable within raid as I am never in the MT group</p><hr><font color="#66cc00">Agreed.</font><hr><p>4) Consider lowering the charm conc cost so that I dont have to remove all my bufs to use a pet. Charm is a solo tool but I would like to be able to use : Charm+hate on pet+haste on pet+Clarity on me without canceling my int buf.Vlav</p><hr><font color="#66cc00">Well, clarity doesn't take any conc, so you don't have to give that up with a pet. What you do have to give up is the resists, INT/AGI and power buffs if you want both hate and dps on your pet. I certainly wouldn't mind a reduction in conc slots, and it would help make it slightly more group-friendly which it needs, but I'm not sure how necessary it is. I don't think a reduction to 2 conc would be a problem though and would be a nice change.</font><font color="#66cc00">PigLick</font><font color="#669900"> </font><p><font color="#669900"> </font></p><p></p></blockquote></span><div></div>

[Bloodtoo]

<font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff">Ack posted this under the wrong thread earlier.  My apologes if you've already read this.</font> <i>Coercer changes LU16b:   - The <b>Coerce</b> lines now last longer and have fewer chances to break. </i><font color="#ffffff">    <b>Good change. </b> If you insist that this spell must have random break for additional risk it would be nice if it was offset with at least some reward.  We still at best only get a no arrow mob as a pet for a short duration that WILL break and attack us.  If we charm a pet above no arrow the increased risk is there as it reverts to full power when it breaks, there is however no reward for this increased risk as the pet is no more powerful than a no arrow mob when charmed.  If we truly must have random break, it would be nice to see charmed mobs retain more of their pre-charm power.  Keep in mind that when we charm up arrow mobs and they break in battle it usually means death, if we are willing to assume that risk there should be at least some reward.     I don't see anythiing to add</font><font color="#ffffff">ress the charm bug, where if charmed mob dies or breaks charm mid battle sometimes prevents xp gain and loot drops.</font><i><font color="#ffffff">   </font>- <b>Spell Lash</b> now targets an encounter. </i><font color="#ffffff"><b>Good change.</b>  This needed to be encounter based.  But needs to be tested further.  Previous issues with reactive spells involved them only proc'ing 1/3 of their listed rate.  This may actually be worth casting now.</font><i>   - <b>Recklessness</b> had its DPS amount increased. </i><font color="#ffffff"><b>Good change.</b>  This whole line was of marginal utility before.  Will need further testing to determine if this really makes much of a difference to fights.</font> <i>  - <b>Unnerving Stare</b> now drains more power. </i><font color="#ffffff"><b>Undetermined impact.</b>  The reason power drains are considered useless is because mobs regenerate power too fast to make it worthwhile.  Unless something has changed in mob power regeneration I can see this making much of a difference.</font><i>   - <b>Withering Silence</b> now drains more power. </i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff"><b>Undetermined impact.</b>  See above.</font></font> <font color="#ffff99"><i>  - <b>Ego Strike</b> now has a small chance of breaking when damage is received after the root is applied. </i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff"><b>Undetermined impact.</b>  Need further testing to see if your definition of small matches everyone else's.</font></font> <font color="#ffff99"><i>  - <b>Forced Hesitation</b> now makes resistance checks less often, but has a small chance to break when taking damage. </i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff"><b>Undetermined impact.</b>  Need further testing see above.  This spell is the only thing that keeps this class alive while soloing, so when we see the words "small chance to break" it naturally makes us nervous.  Keeping in mind that, charm pets do not hold agro well (if at all) and all our stun spells have prohibitively high cast times, root is the only spells that keeps us from tanking solo.  Being that we typically stack a bunch of dots/reactives/etc plus nukes plus now charm-pet melee each tick there is lots of individual "hits".  Hopefully your description means each tick where damage is taken "</font></font><font color="#ffff99"><i>has a small chance to break</i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff">" not each individual hit.  If it's each individual hit this will be breaking too often as it will break-check many times per tick.  I am not understating it when I say if this spell is not reliable it will break our ability to solo, charm or no charm.</font></font> <font color="#ffff99"><i>  - <b>Terrible Awe</b> will no longer prevent its targets from being hit by other AoE effects. Its duration has been reduced. </i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff"><b>Good Change. </b>Great news that it no longer block itself.  Wish you didn't find it necessary to reduce the duration but i guess you thought it was too powerful before.</font></font> <font color="#ffff99"><i>  - <b>Sybyllant</b> now has a faster cast time, no longer requires power cost over time, and will trigger up to 3 times at 100% rate. </i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff"><b>Good Change. </b>Yeah cast time and overall effectiveness pretty much made this spell a waste of time before.   May actually be worth casting this one again as long as it truly does proc 100%.</font></font> <font color="#ffff99"><i>  - <b>Spell Lash</b> now has a faster cast time, costs less power, and can trigger up to 3 times at 100% rate. </i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff"><b>Good Change. </b></font></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff">Seems to me this spell was to have a 100% proc rate before and it is more like 30% in actual practice.</font></font> <font color="#ffff99"><i>  - <b>Despotic Mind</b> upgrades now do damage at the intended rate. </i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff"><b>Undetermined impact.  </b>Not sure what "</font></font><font color="#ffff99"><i>intended rate</i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff">" is</font></font>.  From what I've seen so far the damage for this spell is cut in half which is not good.  This spell has a problem with the proc rate on live, if that has improved it may equal out. <font color="#ffff99"><i> Other changes impacting Coercers   - All area-of-effect spells that affect only a single encounter no longer have a target limit. </i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff">Terrible Awe (single encounter AoE) still seems to have a 4 target limit on it.  Not sure if this is as intended.</font></font> <font color="#ffff99"><i>  - All area-of-effect spells that do not target a specific encounter now affect a maximum of 8 targets. </i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff">Good we'll have to make sure you didn't miss any aoe spells with this change.</font></font> <font color="#ffff99"><i>  - Veil of the Unseen now prevents indirect area of effects. </i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff">Good makes sense it should be this way.</font></font> <font color="#ffff99"><i>  - The following spells no longer stack their intelligence bonuses: Dazzling Seal (Wizard), Mark of the Miasmic (Necromancer), Signet of Intuition (Coercer), and Rune of Understanding (Illusionist). </i></font><font color="#ffff99"><font color="#ffffff">Well this works out to a further nerf to our group/raid contribution.  Still don't know what you expect we are to be contributing on raids.  I doubt very much these changes will have a great enough impact to make us desirable for DPS, and all of our other spells either "don't stack", aren't needed, don't stick on epics, or are done better by other classes</font></font><font color="#ffff99">.</font><div></div>

[Tybr]

<P>Thank you piglick for taking the time to test.</P> <P> </P> <P> </P>

[Tybr]

<DIV>Some great changes SoE! Thanks for listening.</DIV>

[Jark]

anyone know if troub charm is getting the same type of attention? I don't want it be as good as coercer...but I would like it to last for more than the 10-15 seconds I can currently rely on...I'd love for it to last the length of one combat...or at least the time it takes to kill a single mob <div></div>

[Bloodtoo]

No offense but troub stuff is off topic here charm or not.  If there isn't a "troub changes -feedback" thread why not start one?

[Neric]

<DIV>We asked them to fix charm so we could solo a bit better (no group will let you use charm unless they are stupid)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So they increase charm alittle</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But took away out mana pool buff</DIV> <DIV>Nerfed our root spell and our area mez.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Was it worth it?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Well, charm still randomly breaks and I used to root the mob I am killing and have the charmed pet hit it. So when charm breaks, only one mob would be running to kill me and I could mez it and recharm it.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Now, we have a root that breaks, and as the charm mob never appears to be on the top of the hate list, when root breaks, the mob comes after me and when charm breaks, both come for me.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So soloing with charm, unless your killing low greens or greys, its a no go.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So instead of being better at soloing, we can't use charm at all to solo, and we can't root and nuke anymore (even tho with a 500 point nuke at L60, I was almost out of mana after each battle anyway)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So we can't really solo at all?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>At least before I could use charm a little bit to solo as I used a good root spell, now, solo is dead.</DIV> <DIV>Enchanters, the only mage that can't solo</DIV>

[PigLick]

<div></div>natjur, I'm not clear, are you playing a coercer on test, or are you just talking about hypotheticals? The way you've worded things it sounds as though you've experienced this all first hand, but in the last few days I've been keeping a close eye out and there are only a small handful of enchanters on test, and at 37 (just dinged tonight) I'm the highest coercer I've seen yet (barring the QA guy), and almost the only coercer, on test (I think there's one or two others I'ev seen occasionally that are in their 20s, maybe one in the low 30s). I'm not syaing you're not there, it could definitely just be that we have different playing times or something, I just want to clarify whether you are or not. Even if you're not on test I'm not saying your opinions aren't worthwhile, but this forum is supposed to be for people who are actually testing the changes, and anyone coming here and posting without actually testing them only muddies the waters. I'm not trying to be a jerk or start any crap with anyone, but we need to keep our feedback as concrete and constructive as possible or else we only increase our chances of being ignored. There are plenty of threads in the Spells & Abilties and coercer forums where we can discuss hypotheticals, but let's please try and keep those to a minimum in this area. PigLick <div></div><p>Message Edited by PigLickJF on <span class=date_text>11-06-2005</span> <span class=time_text>11:34 PM</span>

[PigLick]

<div></div>(Sorry for the twice-in-a-row post, but the above was sort of off-topic and I didn't want my actualy post to get buried at the end of it). Ok, here's my updated feedback. I've been testing with these new changes for several days now, and have had a chance to upgrade a few of my spells so that now most of my commonly used spells (especially the ones that were changed, specifically the roots and charm) are either Ad1 or App4, with only a few left at App2 (dot/power drain and +aggro are the only ones I think are still at App2). I still stand by most of what I said in my initial post, but feel more concrete about some of it now. <b><u>Charms</u></b> I'm using an App4 charm now, and it definitely lasts tons longer than on live. On blue no-arrows my average duration is probably somewhere in the 10 minute range, and I can't think of one breaking quicker than about 5 minutes. At level 37, I've been doing most of my hunting recently with a level 42v halfling guard as a pet, and even being 5 levels above me I can usually keep him around for 5+ minutes, often much longer. This is a big improvement in terms of duration, and makes charm a much more useful soloing tool than it was. However, with the accompanying root nerf, it's not as big an improvement as you might expect. Because our roots now breaks so easily, you have to moderate yourself in order not to gain aggro.  This means fights aren't really any faster than they used to be since you can't do as much damage, and also means your pets are taking the brunt of the damage, meaning you either have to sit and wait for them to heal up between fights, or just press on and let your pet die (or get it close and finish it off yourself) then find a new one. In the end, at my level and equipment, soloing probably comes out slightly faster than before, though I'm sure that will vary depending on level range, spell qualities, and equipment- some will find it better, some worse. I haven't tested it in groups, but I doubt for most people it's going to be any more attractive than it was, however. The heavy conc cost and the riskiness will not, in the eyes of not only coercers, but alkso their groupmates, be worth the extra dps they bring to the table. I suppose some parsing would need to be done to actually bear this out and it's dependent on group makeup (without some melees to buff, for instance, we basically have no use for 3 of our conc slots), but in general this just isn't going to be something most people are going to want to mess with in groups. Too much hassle and cost for not enough gain. <b><u> </u><u>Roots</u></b> This is where we took the biggest hit, and a hit it is. I'm even more of the belief that the damage-break chance needs to be reduced now. I finally got an App4 upgrade (only one step below the Ad1 I'm used to on live), and I was really hoping that it would be much improved over the App2, but unfortunately it's not. It is marginally better, but not enough to make a real practical difference. We don't have any "big hitter" spells, we have to lay on a constant stream of small hits by way of a couple dots, a small but fast-recast nuke, a small medium-recast nuke and possibly a pet. That means that every second or two our targets are taking at least one hit of damage. If we were sorceror-like where we could root then lay out a couple of massive nukes whcih had a chance to break our roots it would be once thing, but haivng every little nickle-and-dime tidbit of damage we do have a chance to break it means roots that never last full duration and rarely even last through the recast timer, and that's with our resist debuffs (one of which is itself a dot, so it both lowers and raises the chance for a break). Root/nuke soloing is still possible if you stick to blues and maybe small groups of down-arrow whites, but that's it, and if you do win you'll be left with very low power and likely not too much health either. We weren't exactly fast soloers before with this method, and we're far worse now, since you'll spend half your time running away and trying to re-root the mob. That is if you're lucky enough to have root available, of course, since half the time it breaks before it's recast timer is even refreshed, leaving you with nothing but a slew of 3 second-cast spells (stuns and root+nuke) to try and regain control (unless you're not using your dots in which case you can mez, but then what's the point of having them if we can't even use them?). And since we're having to cast root far more often than before, we're using more power and taking more damage, which means more downtime between fights. If the problem was that we were able to solo heroics and such that we weren't really intended to solo due to our roots, that's understandable, but this has gone too far and encroached way too much into our ability to solo things that we *are* meant to be able to solo. I'm sure a more elegant solution can be found if our ability to kill a heroic every 5-10 minutes is so unbalanced without harming our normal group and solo play so much. As was mentioned above, the improvements to charm don't go far enough to counterbalance this root change. <b><u>Power Drains</u></b> Well, the good news is they do seem much faster. The bad news is, I really still can't see many situations where this is going to be advantageous. Soloing, it takes about as long to drain a no-arrow mob as it does to kill it. Which begs the question, why would you ever drain it instead of just killing it? It's not all that much safer (half of our drains do damage that will break roots and power drains break mez, so it's not like we can safely park & drain), and even if we could quickly drain a mob, with our low hp/mit and low dps, we can still be taken down quite easily by auto-attack damage, meaning we just wasted a bunch of time and power draining a mob that can still quite happily eat us for lunch as we try and finish it off. I didn't test it in groups, but based on what I observed taking on ^ mobs, there's no way we'd be able to drain a ^^ or ^^^ heroic before a normal decent group could kill it, putting us in the same "why bother" situation as with solo. There may be some limited situations where draining a mob may be both possible and advantageous, but I'm guessing they're going to be few and far between. In general, these changes really don't do much for us. <b><u>DPS etc</u></b> Sybillant (and it's replacements) are much, much improved with the faster cast and 100% proc rate. This was badly needed and is a welcome change. Ditto with the additional +dps. I don't know that these will make a huge difference, and it's hard to tell since it's such an indirect and difficult to test/notice source of damage, but it certainly won't hurt and I'm glad to have it. Spell Lash- still don't have this, but I stand by my earlier statements. It's very nice having it cost less, cast faster, and affect an entire encounter, but I'm not certain how much of an improvment that actualy is, since most encounters I've ever come across usually only have one or two casters. Still, it's a definite upgrade and I'm not going to complain too loudly about that, especially not without proper testing. Despotic Mind et al- the patch notes were pretty vague, and there were some funky scaling issues before, but it seems as though the damage for these has been reduced, at least at the higher levels. I know these spells have gotten a lot of attention for doing huge damage on raids, but that was a bug in conjunction with another spell, and the bug has reportedly been fixed. I'm not sure why the need to reduce the damage of these was deemed necessary, as it certainly was never unbalanced in my experience. On my main, at level 51, I rarely see it proc more than once or twice a fight, usually for around 500-700 damage, and have never seen it do more than about 1200. Those are decent numbers, but nowehere near what many other classes can put up, and it's very unreliable, unpredictable damage besides which relies on the mob using it's spells/CAs, which is usually something to be avoided. <b><u>AE Mez</u></b> I've changed my position on this change a bit. At first I said I wasn't too bothered, but now that I've tested and thought about it more, I'm less tolerant of it. I'm still not seething with anger over it, but I'm not a big fan of the change either. First off, despite the patch notes saying that all encounter AEs had their maximum target limit removed, our encounter AE mezzes retained their 4 target limit. Possibly a bug/oversight, and I've reported it as such (twice now here on the boards, and also in-game), but if it's intentional I don't get it. That is especially bad considering the pretty drastic reduction in duration (basically cut to about half) and no alteration of recast or power cost. Apparently, despite our supposedly being the unmatched masters of crowd control, someone thought that being able to lock down more than one encounter was overpowered. Remember, the way encounters are balanced in this game makes it so that a single-mob encounter is near the same difficulty as a multi-mob encounter of the same level, so why should our encounter-mez be so inferior to our single-target mez? Especially considering that with an encounter mez, you have many more chances of a resist, so it's not at all uncommon to AE mez an encounter and still have to "spot mez" with our one single-target mez to clean up the resists. Removing the 4 target limit, increasing the duration a bit (not necessarily back up to where they were before, but somewhere in between), and maybe even reducing the recast a bit would not be unreasonable for an ability that I never heard anyone complain about being overpowered and which is supposed to be one of our class-defining abilities which we excel at, having given up the big damage and powerful pets in return for. Overall, I'm glad to see at least something being done to coercers. I am very glad for the positive changes, of which there undoubtedly are some, but the nerfs which come along with them balance them out so that we really don't come out much ahead of where we were, and none of the changes do much to address some of the biggest complaints we have. PigLick<div></div><p>Message Edited by PigLickJF on <span class=date_text>11-07-2005</span> <span class=time_text>01:29 AM</span>

[norberg]

I am not very high lvl, but I guess one should have fun at low (15-25) lvl's too so here are my thoughts: 1) Coercers are very very fun. Soloing is not boring and predictable like some other classes. And it can be very rewarding to get them large encounters down by yourself. I think the changes to charm will be absolutely great, the risk is still there, but more reward now!2) I can see that we should not have as strong pet as the summoner classes, but it would be fun if the charmed mob did not get nerfed as much, but instead the risk of break related to the relative lvl of the mob compared to ones own. So you want a strong pet you have to take more risk....you choose.3) In the few raids I been to I have been able to save the group with charm twice. When I see things going bad, charming a pet helps me defend myself (if CC dies, group dies) and remove a mob (+ one that gets atatcked by it) so I can concentrate on mezzing/rooting stuff, or if everyone panics and beats on everything (not uncommon among low lvl 8-) ), even a mob engaged with another mob can reduce group-damage. (but then again, these have been low lvl raids).4) making root breakable is understandable I think allthough I'd prefered the feeling of security it. A good compensation to this (and charm breaks) would be to lower the cast time of our stuns so we can actually react quickly and get out of hairy situations. Getting out of hairy situations is BTW very fun and rewarding, which, as I remember, is all EQ2 is about. Please make at least one stun much faster in casting time, and then it will at least be up to ourselves if we can get out of the situation....5) The only thing I am worrying about as I lvl up is that there seems to be alot of whining among coercers about our role in raids. Is the situation really so bad? Isn't CC needed anymore? I find nuking/DOT quite boring and will happily give up damage for more reliable CC. Pitty they decreased the area effect mezz duration. It was another of those really fun spells that could change the tide.Its hard to estimate the amount of health CC saves for the group but I imagine together with DOT, pets and mez the amount of DOT+health-saved is not bad at all. Health and power to you all,Raukhur

[Bloodtoo]

I don't have a high enough toon on test to evaluate most of the spell changes, but I used my level 6 toon to test out root.  I know it's a different class of root but it's all I have available.  Seems the changes to root have effected lowbie root also.  While fightiing blue and white con mobs I was getting 69.6% of roots breaking early.  Even dots break roots fairly often.  It sure makes it a <u>LOT</u> tougher to start out a new mage at level 6 trying to finish my citzenship quest i died 5 times, all 5 due to root issues. Root obviously needs some tuning or SOE needs a dictionery to look up the word slight as it pertains to the chance of breaking.

[norberg]

Ah, one more thing, a big reason people don't like coercers to charm when grouped, aside from the trouble of earlier high risks of breaks, is that one cannot easily recognize which mob is charmed. I think that could be solved in two ways. One is to change the name to something like "A CHARMED orc warrior" or one could do a visual animation when the mob gets charmed, something like a salute or such.- Also, another animation could show that charm has broken. I really like the coercer and would hate to see him getting less usefull as I level up.

[PigLick]

<span><blockquote><hr>norberg02 wrote:Ah, one more thing, a big reason people don't like coercers to charm when grouped, aside from the trouble of earlier high risks of breaks, is that one cannot easily recognize which mob is charmed. I think that could be solved in two ways. One is to change the name to something like "A CHARMED orc warrior" or one could do a visual animation when the mob gets charmed, something like a salute or such.- Also, another animation could show that charm has broken. I really like the coercer and would hate to see him getting less usefull as I level up.<hr></blockquote>Well, as much as I'd love for them to add a nametag to charmed mobs, any coercer 30th level or above can take care of this problem themselves by using one of their illusions spells on the pet. I'd still really like charmed mobs to get a nametag, but this isn't a huge problem for that reason. PigLick</span><div></div>

[Pil]

<P>As a 50 illusionist, i absolutely detest the changes to root.  For me, its not about soloing heroics.  Honestly, SOE reasoning has thrown me for a loop.  Lockeye sees one coercer solo 2 heroic ^^^  4 lvls higher, while at the same time mezzing 2 other encounters, so illusionists get a nerf too?  Illusionist doesnt have the source of power drains, nor the ability to feed charmed mobs to a heroic.  Root is bread and butter, for just the simple task of controlling aggro.  I have no way to control aggro anymore when soloing a group of mobs, solo mobs, not heroic.</P> <P>I pull 2 mobs, mez one, pet on other, fight fight, pet at 50%, mob dies.  Now i have 1 mob left (solo encounter, so one down arrow), that at the same level, can hit me for 250 to 300 without specials.  I cant go toe-to-toe, and my pet has no form of taunt, nor the hp to tank it anymore.  Now i have to wait on pet regen?  How silly is this.  If SOE wants us to group, and not solo (as Moorgard sort of eluded to in one of the Harclave threads), then why give illusionists a pet for 3 conc, or coercers a charm for 3?  If the issue is with heroics, boost the resistance to root on them.  Or just like half my spells, that all state how they are much less effective/more prone to breaking on epics.  Make it that way with root and heroics.</P> <P>My longest root duration, was with just my personae hitting the mob, and it lasted less then 5 seconds.  If i had 1 or 2 dots on it, and my construct, root wouldnt outlast the graphics of casting the spell.</P> <P>The mez and color shower changes are a whole nother bag of nerfdom, but this root thing is insane.  Nerfing 2 classes, because of something, one dev saw, but cant elaborate any of the details about (did the coercer kill all 4 encounters, how long did it take, was he/she in all fabled/master items), and since when did that skill in playing become the norm?  I do remember the days not that long ago, when App3 was supposed to be the norm, Adept1 was rare, and Master was something you once heard someone knew someone who had one.  I dont have great gear, all adept 1, 245int self buffed, 3100 power, but why did my ability to solo, SOLO content, get nerfed, due to something someone from another class did?  The change is bad for both classes, but the whole reasoning behind it is so flawed, that i cant even see what the purpose of EQ2 is anymore.  Not supposed to solo.  Obviously not supposed to raid, as none of my spells work on epics.  And every couple patches, something else i have doesnt stack, gets nerfed into uselessness, or another class gets better.</P> <P>Are enchanters just an unintended mistake, and slowly being weeded out?</P> <P> </P> <P>Pilan 50 Illusionist Ogguk <Dawning></P>

[Daqrit]

<P>53 Coercer here. </P> <P>Im not too impressed with these changes. Charm working better is a big plus. The things I would have like to change instead of all the DPS increases I personally dont care for, are;</P> <UL> <LI>Why are out stuns still slow casting spells? Especially with root being 'fixed' could use one. </LI> <LI>Give us some stun or stiffle to use on epics. I know SOE removed them for all classes, but if any class should be able to it is the enchanter class. It fits perfectly in our role. Rebalance the epics and make them stunnable (not perma) by enchanters. </LI> <LI>Like the OP said, make the cost for charm only 1 slot. Its useless now in groups.</LI></UL> <P>Overall I still feel enchanters are broken, for the simple fact that we (well I atleast) didnt choose this class to do dps, but to crowd control. And there still is no need to do so whatsoever. If I wanted to do DPS I would have rolled a warlock.</P>

[Jiwi]

<P>I played my coercer last night and while the changes are noticeable, he's still broke.  I was soloing by the new griffon tower being built in Nek (near bridge) and died too many times.  All the "random" break points are too many.  </P> <P>What happens is the instance of them all breaking at once is way too common.  I mez a pet, then we go after a mob, things look good, then we get an add.  Ok, I'm the best in CC, I mez the add, oh no, my pet has broken and is beating on me, the first mob is beating on me.  Ok, I'm the best in CC, so I root one, mez another, oh no the add has broken his mez he's beating on me, now the old pet is beating on me.  Better RUN, wait the first mob is beating on me!  I'm stunned, I'm dead.</P> <DIV>This happened several times, to the point that I /claimed some of my rewards to erase debt (which lowered my frustration level).  I switched to an alt to cool down played that toon for a bit came back and tried to be more cautious with my coercer.  Anyone surprised to hear that the same thing happened again.  I stayed away from adds but then pet mez would break, root was dropping like a prom dress, it was NOT any fun.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Please FIX my coercer!  I wanted the challenge of juggling multiple targets by being a CC master, but this is NOT working.  In case you're wondering my root and mez are Ad3, also my toon is L23 with good gear as my main is L53 Warlock.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Anyone else with similar experiences?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>