Anaduin09
01-18-2009, 12:14 PM
<p>Prior to GU51. Our main source of deagro is honestly the new shadow AA bewilderment (-1 hate position). I play a dark elf so I also have shadow slip (-1 hate position). Concussive and Blip has done very little for us, ever. Even if you were to repeatedly cast concussive and blip each and every time they were up, you can still pull agro if the tank didn't have a hate transfer on them. Converge at M1 transfered 4% of our threat, not a huge impact anyhow.</p><p><strong>As a disclaimer: I have not tested the abilities in a raid or group situation. I am just looking at the abilities themselves objectively and comparing them.</strong></p><p>Our skills as of GU51 are as follows.</p><p><img src="http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a116/anaduin09/Converge.jpg" width="275" height="351" /><img src="http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a116/anaduin09/Concussive.jpg" width="274" height="310" /><img src="http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a116/anaduin09/Blip.jpg" width="277" height="419" /></p><p>Blip: It has remained essentially the same. I guess that works alright. I don't know if the devs intend on us using it as a means of deagro or not consistently. If it is intended to be a deagro for us to use on a regular basis, increase the threat reduction, a lot (In the words of Zoolander "It needs to be atleast 3 times as big!").</p><p>Concussive: The reuse and casting time has been improved. Hooray. <strong>IT STILL HAS 12% resistability. WORTHLESS.</strong> No offense here but if this is intended to be used a source of deagro that I have to push every 12 seconds or as needed, having a 12% resistability is not very great, for both groups and raids. It would be easier to cast in raids due to the fact that there's more debuffs but it deffinately does and will continue to resist a lot unless that is improved. If it is intended to be a deagro for us to use on a regular basis, increase the threat reduction, a lot (In the words of Zoolander "It needs to be atleast 3 times as big!"). Yes, I repeated this for emphasis.</p><p>Converge: Well this buff got changed a lot. No more power, oh well, it was a nice piece of utility but this ultimately looks like our source of deagro with this update. -8% at M1 and a deagro proc 6 times a minute. This buff actually might be a decent improvement. Let's not get into the debate of the "loss of the extra power" ability, I'm mostly concerned with the hate in this post.</p><p>Our AA "enhancements"</p><p><img src="http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a116/anaduin09/EnhanceConverge5.jpg" width="319" height="451" /><img src="http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a116/anaduin09/EssenceofHatred5.jpg" width="319" height="451" /></p><p><img src="http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a116/anaduin09/EnhanceBlip.jpg" width="323" height="109" /><img src="http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a116/anaduin09/EnhanceConcussive.jpg" width="324" height="133" /></p><p>Where to start.....</p><p>Enhance:Converge from the Wizard EoF tree.. Increases trigger chance by 1% per rank (I have both the threat and the trigger chance increased in both pictures of "enhance:converge" and "essence of hatred" above). This is a decent upgrade, but it honestly should be 2-3% per rank to make this a viable option. Going from triggering 6 times a minute to 6.6 times a minute. Honestly, that's a small drop in the pool. 6 times a minute is a lot already, why would I waste 5 points gaining an extra .6 times a minute.</p><p>Essence of Hatred from the Shadow Sorcerer line. I was actually excited when I read the ability at first until I started putting points into it. Improves threat reduction by 4% per rank.... it basically makes the triggered portion of this buff have more deagro. That's ... lackluster. Now if this ability enhanced the primary component of "Decreases Hate Gain by 8%" It might actually be worth putting points into this skill.</p><p>Enhance:Concussive: Improves reuse speed by 2 seconds and improves threat reduction by 2%.. This again goes with the essence of hatred line.. the extra threat reduction isn't going to do us much as a class. The reuse is decent but in the event that I had 10 reuse off this spell I would be able to cast it every 2 seconds (due to the bottom floor cap at improving an ability only by 50% of the base - don't ask me what the base is for the new ability, yes I have reuse gear/aa). The bottom line is that EVEN if I could lower the reuse to 6seconds, it's STILL not an ability I want to push every 6 seconds to keep my agro in line. Beyond that, the resistability is still 12%, lame as mentioned before.</p><p>Enhance: Blip: ....lowers reuse by 1second.. Woohoo? Not very appealing. Instead of every ~20 seconds of casting this, I can cast it every 15 seconds! How about adding -threat positions or adding +10% threat reduction every rank. ANYTHING might improve that, the last thing I would want as a wizard is to be having to sit there and constantly click deagro abilities more often. </p><p>Let's compare with some items:</p><p>VP set pants that have -10 hate gain now become trendy! Those pants actually have a value for their -10 hate gain now I would imagine. Compare that to the TSO pants which do not have -10 hate gain (they have spell crit chance and crit mitigation). That's great with the spell crit but is it worth it as a wizard with the new changes to switch? Our converge buff gives -8% hate reduction at M1. The VP pants give -10%. Pants>Buff.</p><p>Wicked Wand of Malice: Every time I cast a spell, I taunt the mob for 1,200. Wow, my threat is going to go up REALLY fast with that item activated. If a tank can taunt for 5,000+ on a taunt or ability they better be able to reuse those abilities REALLY fast. Either lessen the threat amount on this item with the new changes or the item MAY become worthless.</p><p>With all this being said, I have yet to test the hate changes in a raid or group situation. It may work out JUST FINE but from viewing the abilities some of the hate changes have me worried, especially in terms of wicked wand of malice.</p>