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View Full Version : NDA is lifted. Any Defiler that was in Beta fill us in?


Estean1
02-06-2010, 08:32 PM
<p>Anyone have any class specific information for defilers from the new expansion that can help with some info please?</p>

Ghostbear
02-06-2010, 10:37 PM
<p>Haven't been in beta for a week or two but here is some AA info:</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Shaman</span></span> Aura of Purity: Grants the shaman's spiritual ally a chance to cure nearby group members attacking. Spiritual Leadership: Adds a group ward effect when Tribal Rage triggers. Witchdoctor's Herbal Recipe: Reduces the reuse of the shaman's group cure. Tribal Rituals: Improves the duration of Ritual of Alacrity. Rabid Hostility: Improves the casting speed of hostile spells. Ancestral Channeling: The shaman gains a large group heal that can be cast every few minutes. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Defiler</span> Shadow Trap: Adds a haste reduction to Umbral Trap. Soul Corruption: Reduces the duration and improves the damage of Defile. Noxious Shroud: Adds noxious damage reduction to Shroud of Armor. Sacrificial Prayers: Improves the base and critical amounts of Sacrificial Restoration. Vile Runes: Improves the casting speed and base amount of Carrion Warding. Ancestral Cleansing: Places a small ward on an ally who is cured. Malicious Spirits: Greatly reduces the target's base damage, taunts and heals for a short duration. Subclass Changes Group cures now cure all types of effects.</p><p>What I will say is that the Devs have been really cool this time around. Alot of spells and AA's were changed over and over again, whereas the last few betas I had been in the spells pretty much remained the same from the beginning of the beta to the end. They were constantly tweaking and changing them this go around.</p>

Cheydak
02-08-2010, 02:35 AM
<p><cite>Ghostbear wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Haven't been in beta for a week or two but here is some AA info:</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Shaman</span></span> Aura of Purity: Grants the shaman's spiritual ally a chance to cure nearby group members attacking. Spiritual Leadership: Adds a group ward effect when Tribal Rage triggers. Witchdoctor's Herbal Recipe: Reduces the reuse of the shaman's group cure. Tribal Rituals: Improves the duration of Ritual of Alacrity. Rabid Hostility: Improves the casting speed of hostile spells. Ancestral Channeling: The shaman gains a large group heal that can be cast every few minutes. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Defiler</span> Shadow Trap: Adds a haste reduction to Umbral Trap. Soul Corruption: Reduces the duration and improves the damage of Defile. Noxious Shroud: Adds noxious damage reduction to Shroud of Armor. Sacrificial Prayers: Improves the base and critical amounts of Sacrificial Restoration. Vile Runes: Improves the casting speed and base amount of Carrion Warding. Ancestral Cleansing: Places a small ward on an ally who is cured. Malicious Spirits: Greatly reduces the target's base damage, taunts and heals for a short duration. Subclass Changes Group cures now cure all types of effects.</p><p>What I will say is that the Devs have been really cool this time around. Alot of spells and AA's were changed over and over again, whereas the last few betas I had been in the spells pretty much remained the same from the beginning of the beta to the end. They were constantly tweaking and changing them this go around.</p></blockquote><p>I really hope I'm missing something but those don't read very impressively.  Most of them sound pretty useless imo and not terribly relevent to the defiler class.  I mean do we really need yet another ability to cast hostile spells faster? What on earth do we need with tribal Leadership?? Soul Corruption?  Sacrifical Prayers...I can't recall the last time I cast my st direct.  Unless there's something I'm just not seeing here, these seem pretty bad.</p>

Sedenten
02-08-2010, 02:27 PM
<p><cite>Cheydak wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Ghostbear wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Haven't been in beta for a week or two but here is some AA info:</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Shaman</span></span> Aura of Purity: Grants the shaman's spiritual ally a chance to cure nearby group members attacking. Spiritual Leadership: Adds a group ward effect when Tribal Rage triggers. Witchdoctor's Herbal Recipe: Reduces the reuse of the shaman's group cure. Tribal Rituals: Improves the duration of Ritual of Alacrity. Rabid Hostility: Improves the casting speed of hostile spells. Ancestral Channeling: The shaman gains a large group heal that can be cast every few minutes. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Defiler</span> Shadow Trap: Adds a haste reduction to Umbral Trap. Soul Corruption: Reduces the duration and improves the damage of Defile. Noxious Shroud: Adds noxious damage reduction to Shroud of Armor. Sacrificial Prayers: Improves the base and critical amounts of Sacrificial Restoration. Vile Runes: Improves the casting speed and base amount of Carrion Warding. Ancestral Cleansing: Places a small ward on an ally who is cured. Malicious Spirits: Greatly reduces the target's base damage, taunts and heals for a short duration. Subclass Changes Group cures now cure all types of effects.</p><p>What I will say is that the Devs have been really cool this time around. Alot of spells and AA's were changed over and over again, whereas the last few betas I had been in the spells pretty much remained the same from the beginning of the beta to the end. They were constantly tweaking and changing them this go around.</p></blockquote><p>I really hope I'm missing something but those don't read very impressively.  Most of them sound pretty useless imo and not terribly relevent to the defiler class.  I mean do we really need yet another ability to cast hostile spells faster? What on earth do we need with tribal Leadership?? Soul Corruption?  Sacrifical Prayers...I can't recall the last time I cast my st direct.  Unless there's something I'm just not seeing here, these seem pretty bad.</p></blockquote><p>Those are copy/pasted from what was originally posted.  The AA's have been changed <em>drastically</em> since that post.  These are posted over at EQ2Flames, though I won't link the site here to prevent Kiara from smacking me.  Just go there and look for the stickied post under the Defiler section.  There's images of the abilities as well as gear screenshots.</p><p>If you'd rather read it here, I've compiled what I know about these AA's down below:</p><p><em>Note:  In order to touch any of the new AA endlines, you must spend 70 AA's in the entire tree and be 81+ (though you can't spend more 70 before then anyway...).</em></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">New Shaman Tree AA's:</span></strong></span></p><p>All abilities, save finishers, can have a total of 10 points spent in them.  In general, we get the same benefit from spending 10 that we did in spending 8 in a given ability but a few of them did gain a little extra by putting more than 8.  Most notably, <em><strong>Herbal Expertise</strong></em> takes our single target cures down to 0 power cost and nearly instant casting time.</p><p>The "stats" in the first row for the Shaman AA tree were removed and consolidated into a single bonus that you gain by spending up to 10 points in the "starter" AA (dog dog).  The consolidation now only gives WIS, at something around +4 per rank we spend in that ability.</p><p>The new finishers can have 8 ranks total spent in them, with the SF "finisher" going to 2 ranks.  To get the finisher in the Shaman tree, you need to spend 16 ranks total in the base SF Shaman AA's. </p><p><strong>Aura of Purity:</strong> Grants the shaman's spiritual ally a chance to cure nearby group members attacking.  I believe this winds up being at around 12% chance to proc with max AA's spent, though I'm not  able to check the exact values right now.</p><p><strong>Spiritual Leadership</strong>: Adds a group ward effect when Tribal Rage triggers.  I haven't personally played with this much, but I'm reading it is procing for as much as 1,500-2,000 currently.  You can actually get this once you've spent the prerequisite 70 AA's in the KoS tree, but it doesn't do anything for you unless you have Tribal Rage trained. </p><p><strong>Witchdoctor's Herbal Recipe:</strong> Reduces the reuse of the shaman's group cure.  This drops the reuse by 5 seconds.</p><p><strong>Tribal Rituals:</strong> Improves the duration of Ritual of Alacrity.  At max rank this adds 10 seconds to the duration. </p><p><strong>Rabid Hostility:</strong> Improves the casting speed of hostile spells.  This maxes out at 16% at max rank.</p><p><strong>Ancestral Channeling:</strong> The shaman gains a large group heal (around 5k, affected by base and can crit) that can be cast every few minutes.  This ability has been getting very good reviews.  It can crit for over 10k and is very fast casting (half as second roughly).  It also has a secondary effect that heals over time roughly what the initial hit does that lasts for 2 seconds and ticks every second when 2 ranks are spent in it.  The 2nd rank does not increase the initial hit, but rather increases the subsequent ticks to match the initial.  It's quite a potent spell that can produce huge numbers. </p><p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">New Defiler Tree AA's:</span></span></strong></p><p>The new finishers can have 5 ranks total spent in them, with the SF "finisher" having 1 ranks that costs 2 points.  To get the finisher in the Shaman tree, you need to spend 10 ranks total in the base SF Defiler AA's. </p><p><strong>Shadow Trap:</strong> Adds a haste reduction to Umbral Trap.  This maxed out at around 30-something percent.</p><p><strong>Soul Corruption:</strong> Reduces the duration and improves the damage of Defile.  While it won't see much use, it's probably the best ability they could have improved for our class as far as DPS goes.</p><p><strong>Noxious Shroud:</strong> <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Adds noxious damage reduction to Shroud of Armor. Originally this added 10% damage reduction </span> This was changed to be a critical bonus for the group.  At max rank (5), it adds 5 critical bonus to the group. </p><p><strong>Sacrificial Prayers:</strong> Improves the base<span style="text-decoration: line-through;"> and critical amounts</span> of Sacrificial Restoration. This AA still affects the base, but now decreases the casting time of Sacrificial Prayers.  With max ranks it becomes the same base casting time of the Dire Balm line.  We've lobbied to get this changed to something else, since it's very rare for Sacrificial Prayers to hit for near it's max values.</p><p><strong>Vile Runes:</strong> Improves the casting speed and base amount of Carrion Warding.  At max ranks (5), this increases the base ward by 10% and decreases casting by 1 second.</p><p><strong>Ancestral Cleansing</strong>: Places a small ward on an ally who is cured.  At max rank this was around a 1k ward <em>versus any damage type</em>.  It can crit, so ends up being a significant amount of healing on cure intensive fights.  <em><strong>This also affects our group cure.</strong></em></p><p><strong>Malicious Spirits</strong>: Greatly reduces the target's base damage, taunts and heals for a short duration.  This originally was a very potent debuff that lasted only 10 seconds and has a reuse of 10 minutes.  They scaled it down to an encounter debuff that decreases all base by 5%, reduces the target's autoattack damage by 10% and reduces the target's chance to autoattack multiple targets by 100% for 30 seconds.  The reuse was dropped to 1 minute, 30 seconds. </p><p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Other Important Changes:</span></span></strong></p><p><strong>Hexation</strong>:<strong>  </strong>The debuff was decreased to 40%, and now it has a 30 second duration with a 30 second immunity and 30 second reuse that begins when it wears off (i.e. while the immunity is up the icon is greyed out).  Essentially it can be kept up for 50% of the time on a single target.  Originally they kept the spell the same as it is on live, except the effect was dropped down to 15% reduction in proc rate so these above changes were a middle ground that was met.</p><p><strong>Group Cures:</strong>  As noted, our group cure (and the group cure for all priests) now cures all types of effects.</p><p><strong>Mythical:</strong>  Our mythical will only affect tier 8 wards.   At level 90, we can do a quest (which hasn't been completed on beta to my knowledge) to turn our mythical into a house and appearance item.  You're able to complete this quest as long as you have the fabled OR mythical version of the weapon finished.  We'll be given two spells--one that allows us to cast Nightmares and the other that provides the unique passive benefits that are on our worn mythical.  These spells will also be given to those that had the fabled epic (i.e. if you don't have your mythical now but do have fabled finished, don't bother doing the mythical updates unless you just want the quest finished).  Rumor has it that this buff will still be restricted to tier 8 wards, even though other class mythical effects will scale up to tier 9.  I haven't been able to get a conclusive answer at all on that information yet.</p><p><strong>Maelstrom:  </strong>This ability had it's stifle removed from the innate penalty.  The Shadow AA line now increases the base healing of the effect instead of decreasing.  The power cost of this spell was ramped up SIGNIFICANTLY to around 300-400 per tick.  They increased the heal and power amount by a small amount, but the spell is still very lacking compared to other priest specials.  We've been lobbying to have this spell changed to a regenerating ward instead of heal over time.  There have also been requests to have the damage component removed entirely in the interest of significantly ramping up the healing power.</p>

Eldaro
02-08-2010, 03:58 PM
<p>Well the biggest travesty of SF so far is the fact that all crit bonus is being halved on wards.  So a decent geared lvl 90 defiler could be losing as much as 25% or more on wards that crit.  Healers are also the only classes that get a negative modifier to spell crit but no bonus modifier we did not already possess.  Any dps they may of gave us was then just taken away by making spell crit modifier 20 percent.  The power cost of Maelstrom while in heal stance is 400+ power every tick for a mediocre heal/mediocre power heal and a dot that more than likely is gonna trigger negative effects you do not want.</p>

Erage
02-08-2010, 05:30 PM
<p>Crit bonus has always been halved for wards.  That isn't an SF thing.  I've never read a dev comment if this was intentional or a leftover mechanic from before crit bonus when all wards crit'ed for half normal heals (1.15 vs 1.30).  Whether intentional or not, you still have abilities that will read "increase critical amount of wards by x%", when all it's doing is adding crit bonus, which then gets halved.</p><p>As far as Maelstrom, it's a joke compared to the other healer's stun special.  The Mystic's Oberon in TSO gear was warding 30k-40k a cast, and that will get better with all the base and crit bonus gear of SF.  But unfortunately it appears the devs don't really comprehend how Maelstrom's HoT is impractical and useless, because it has been a primary area of concern when you look at Oberon and the other healer's specials now, and mostly ignored beyond just making it unresistable.</p>

Cheydak
02-08-2010, 06:40 PM
<p><cite>Koinoo@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Cheydak wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Ghostbear wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Haven't been in beta for a week or two but here is some AA info:</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Shaman</span></span> Aura of Purity: Grants the shaman's spiritual ally a chance to cure nearby group members attacking. Spiritual Leadership: Adds a group ward effect when Tribal Rage triggers. Witchdoctor's Herbal Recipe: Reduces the reuse of the shaman's group cure. Tribal Rituals: Improves the duration of Ritual of Alacrity. Rabid Hostility: Improves the casting speed of hostile spells. Ancestral Channeling: The shaman gains a large group heal that can be cast every few minutes. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Defiler</span> Shadow Trap: Adds a haste reduction to Umbral Trap. Soul Corruption: Reduces the duration and improves the damage of Defile. Noxious Shroud: Adds noxious damage reduction to Shroud of Armor. Sacrificial Prayers: Improves the base and critical amounts of Sacrificial Restoration. Vile Runes: Improves the casting speed and base amount of Carrion Warding. Ancestral Cleansing: Places a small ward on an ally who is cured. Malicious Spirits: Greatly reduces the target's base damage, taunts and heals for a short duration. Subclass Changes Group cures now cure all types of effects.</p><p>What I will say is that the Devs have been really cool this time around. Alot of spells and AA's were changed over and over again, whereas the last few betas I had been in the spells pretty much remained the same from the beginning of the beta to the end. They were constantly tweaking and changing them this go around.</p></blockquote><p>I really hope I'm missing something but those don't read very impressively.  Most of them sound pretty useless imo and not terribly relevent to the defiler class.  I mean do we really need yet another ability to cast hostile spells faster? What on earth do we need with tribal Leadership?? Soul Corruption?  Sacrifical Prayers...I can't recall the last time I cast my st direct.  Unless there's something I'm just not seeing here, these seem pretty bad.</p></blockquote><p>Those are copy/pasted from what was originally posted.  The AA's have been changed <em>drastically</em> since that post.  These are posted over at EQ2Flames, though I won't link the site here to prevent Kiara from smacking me.  Just go there and look for the stickied post under the Defiler section.  There's images of the abilities as well as gear screenshots.</p><p>If you'd rather read it here, I've compiled what I know about these AA's down below:</p><p><em>Note:  In order to touch any of the new AA endlines, you must spend 70 AA's in the entire tree and be 81+ (though you can't spend more 70 before then anyway...).</em></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">New Shaman Tree AA's:</span></strong></span></p><p>All abilities, save finishers, can have a total of 10 points spent in them.  In general, we get the same benefit from spending 10 that we did in spending 8 in a given ability but a few of them did gain a little extra by putting more than 8.  Most notably, <em><strong>Herbal Expertise</strong></em> takes our single target cures down to 0 power cost and nearly instant casting time.</p><p>The "stats" in the first row for the Shaman AA tree were removed and consolidated into a single bonus that you gain by spending up to 10 points in the "starter" AA (dog dog).  The consolidation now only gives WIS, at something around +4 per rank we spend in that ability.</p><p>The new finishers can have 8 ranks total spent in them, with the SF "finisher" going to 2 ranks.  To get the finisher in the Shaman tree, you need to spend 16 ranks total in the base SF Shaman AA's. </p><p><strong>Aura of Purity:</strong> Grants the shaman's spiritual ally a chance to cure nearby group members attacking.  I believe this winds up being at around 12% chance to proc with max AA's spent, though I'm not  able to check the exact values right now.</p><p><strong>Spiritual Leadership</strong>: Adds a group ward effect when Tribal Rage triggers.  I haven't personally played with this much, but I'm reading it is procing for as much as 1,500-2,000 currently.  You can actually get this once you've spent the prerequisite 70 AA's in the KoS tree, but it doesn't do anything for you unless you have Tribal Rage trained. </p><p><strong>Witchdoctor's Herbal Recipe:</strong> Reduces the reuse of the shaman's group cure.  This drops the reuse by 5 seconds.</p><p><strong>Tribal Rituals:</strong> Improves the duration of Ritual of Alacrity.  At max rank this adds 10 seconds to the duration. </p><p><strong>Rabid Hostility:</strong> Improves the casting speed of hostile spells.  This maxes out at 16% at max rank.</p><p><strong>Ancestral Channeling:</strong> The shaman gains a large group heal (around 5k, affected by base and can crit) that can be cast every few minutes.  This ability has been getting very good reviews.  It can crit for over 10k and is very fast casting (half as second roughly).  It also has a secondary effect that heals over time roughly what the initial hit does that lasts for 2 seconds and ticks every second when 2 ranks are spent in it.  The 2nd rank does not increase the initial hit, but rather increases the subsequent ticks to match the initial.  It's quite a potent spell that can produce huge numbers. </p><p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">New Defiler Tree AA's:</span></span></strong></p><p>The new finishers can have 5 ranks total spent in them, with the SF "finisher" having 1 ranks that costs 2 points.  To get the finisher in the Shaman tree, you need to spend 10 ranks total in the base SF Defiler AA's. </p><p><strong>Shadow Trap:</strong> Adds a haste reduction to Umbral Trap.  This maxed out at around 30-something percent.</p><p><strong>Soul Corruption:</strong> Reduces the duration and improves the damage of Defile.  While it won't see much use, it's probably the best ability they could have improved for our class as far as DPS goes.</p><p><strong>Noxious Shroud:</strong> <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Adds noxious damage reduction to Shroud of Armor. Originally this added 10% damage reduction </span> This was changed to be a critical bonus for the group.  At max rank (5), it adds 5 critical bonus to the group. </p><p><strong>Sacrificial Prayers:</strong> Improves the base<span style="text-decoration: line-through;"> and critical amounts</span> of Sacrificial Restoration. This AA still affects the base, but now decreases the casting time of Sacrificial Prayers.  With max ranks it becomes the same base casting time of the Dire Balm line.  We've lobbied to get this changed to something else, since it's very rare for Sacrificial Prayers to hit for near it's max values.</p><p><strong>Vile Runes:</strong> Improves the casting speed and base amount of Carrion Warding.  At max ranks (5), this increases the base ward by 10% and decreases casting by 1 second.</p><p><strong>Ancestral Cleansing</strong>: Places a small ward on an ally who is cured.  At max rank this was around a 1k ward <em>versus any damage type</em>.  It can crit, so ends up being a significant amount of healing on cure intensive fights.  <em><strong>This also affects our group cure.</strong></em></p><p><strong>Malicious Spirits</strong>: Greatly reduces the target's base damage, taunts and heals for a short duration.  This originally was a very potent debuff that lasted only 10 seconds and has a reuse of 10 minutes.  They scaled it down to an encounter debuff that decreases all base by 5%, reduces the target's autoattack damage by 10% and reduces the target's chance to autoattack multiple targets by 100% for 30 seconds.  The reuse was dropped to 1 minute, 30 seconds. </p><p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Other Important Changes:</span></span></strong></p><p><strong>Hexation</strong>:<strong>  </strong>The debuff was decreased to 40%, and now it has a 30 second duration with a 30 second immunity and 30 second reuse that begins when it wears off (i.e. while the immunity is up the icon is greyed out).  Essentially it can be kept up for 50% of the time on a single target.  Originally they kept the spell the same as it is on live, except the effect was dropped down to 15% reduction in proc rate so these above changes were a middle ground that was met.</p><p><strong>Group Cures:</strong>  As noted, our group cure (and the group cure for all priests) now cures all types of effects.</p><p><strong>Mythical:</strong>  Our mythical will only affect tier 8 wards.   At level 90, we can do a quest (which hasn't been completed on beta to my knowledge) to turn our mythical into a house and appearance item.  You're able to complete this quest as long as you have the fabled OR mythical version of the weapon finished.  We'll be given two spells--one that allows us to cast Nightmares and the other that provides the unique passive benefits that are on our worn mythical.  These spells will also be given to those that had the fabled epic (i.e. if you don't have your mythical now but do have fabled finished, don't bother doing the mythical updates unless you just want the quest finished).  Rumor has it that this buff will still be restricted to tier 8 wards, even though other class mythical effects will scale up to tier 9.  I haven't been able to get a conclusive answer at all on that information yet.</p><p><strong>Maelstrom:  </strong>This ability had it's stifle removed from the innate penalty.  The Shadow AA line now increases the base healing of the effect instead of decreasing.  The power cost of this spell was ramped up SIGNIFICANTLY to around 300-400 per tick.  They increased the heal and power amount by a small amount, but the spell is still very lacking compared to other priest specials.  We've been lobbying to have this spell changed to a regenerating ward instead of heal over time.  There have also been requests to have the damage component removed entirely in the interest of significantly ramping up the healing power.</p></blockquote><p>I appreciate you taking the time to write this all out.  Unfortunately, I'm still not terribly impressed at all with these AAs.  They still look pretty weak and the ones that actually benefit healing such as Spiritual Leadership require a spec that I don't think any Defiler would take so I dunno.  That seems much more suited for Mystics but I don't see any corresponding heal AAs in the shaman tree for us.  All I see is yet another tiresome increase in hostile spell casting.  We already have that up the wazoo so why on earth do we need more of that?  Most of the ones in Defiler Tree still seem pretty useless also regardless of what you said they changed.  I wouldn't take Soul Corruption, Sacrifical Prayers or Shadow Trap so it seems like our choices are pretty limited. </p><p>I'm also alarmed at what someone else is posting about Oberon and Maelstrom.  I don't understand why they're not changing our stun spell to correspond to what the other poster said Oberon is warding for.  That's just a crappy spell that's needed fixed pretty much since we got it.  Why aren't the developers doing something about this ????</p><p>Please don't tell me this is gonna be yet another expansion defilers get their butts handed to them.  Because from what Im reading here it sure looks like it.</p>

Cheydak
02-08-2010, 06:49 PM
<p>Also I just went to that other site to take a look and I'm seeing adornments that boost junk like Absolute Corruption???  And Sacrifical Restoration???  Why do I feel like I'm having a flashback to our craptastic VP armor?  Why would any developer think a raid defiler would cast Absolute Corruption and want an adornment for that?  Also why do I get the feeling that the people working on this expansion really don't know what this class is about?</p>

Erage
02-08-2010, 07:02 PM
<p>A few of other changes not been mentioned:</p><p><span >Crystallized Essence items can be used while under control effects, have had their cast times reduced to 0.5 and now cure the caster of all hostile effects. The radius has also been increased.</span></p><p>All our direct heals no longer sacrifice any health, and instead their power cost have increased.</p><p><span >Sinister Countenance now grants wisdom and maximum health instead of in combat health regeneration.</span></p>

Eldaro
02-08-2010, 08:32 PM
<p>All crit bonus on ward is being halved not just the base 30.  All AA bonus/gear bonus/buff bonus is being halved on wards.  The math is working out perfectly and has for over a month on beta.  It has never been this way on live only the heal crit mod of the base bonus is normally halved.  A single target ward with full AAs and equipment should crit for more than 1.32x.</p>

Tehom
02-08-2010, 08:52 PM
<p><cite>Eldaroth wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>All crit bonus on ward is being halved not just the base 30.  All AA bonus/gear bonus/buff bonus is being halved on wards.  The math is working out perfectly and has for over a month on beta.  It has never been this way on live only the heal crit mod of the base bonus is normally halved.  A single target ward with full AAs and equipment should crit for more than 1.32x.</p></blockquote><p>I'm pretty sure that it functions the same way on live. At least I remember doing the math a long time ago and it always functioned to be half of the value you crit for.</p><p>For raiders, basically raid armor is generic. shamans get chain healer armor, and you get class-specific red adornments that then give focus effects for your class. We get fairly good ones - 3% riposte on tendrils, and 30% hp bonus to vehemence, in addition to extensions to all our current foci. Mystics get an extra tick on torpor, so not quite as impressive in my opinion. On the other hand, Oberon is kind of the 500 pound gorilla in any class balance argument between us. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend someone switch from defiler to mystic if they mostly do single-group dungeons or lower end raids, since there's no telling when they'd get foci to help balance us out.</p><p>My feeling is that Oberon will eventually be nerfed due to battlegrounds - bane warding on a massive regenerating ward should make them effectively unkillable, and that'll probably get the ability noticed and subsequently nerfed.</p>

Erage
02-08-2010, 09:00 PM
<p><cite>Eldaroth wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>All crit bonus on ward is being halved not just the base 30.  All AA bonus/gear bonus/buff bonus is being halved on wards.  The math is working out perfectly and has for over a month on beta.  It has never been this way on live only the heal crit mod of the base bonus is normally halved.  A single target ward with full AAs and equipment should crit for more than 1.32x.</p></blockquote><p>You need to do a little more research because they ARE halved on live.  Always has been.  I could point you to countless number of posts on these forums or another that talk about it, but it's also very easy to test since ward amounts don't vary like direct heals.</p>

Celestian_
02-08-2010, 09:09 PM
<p><cite>Erage wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>All our direct heals no longer sacrifice any health, and instead their power cost have increased.</p><p><span>Sinister Countenance now grants wisdom and maximum health instead of in combat health regeneration.</span></p></blockquote><p>DOh! With <span>Sinister Countenance it made us more like the old school EQ1 shaman where we were "regeraters" that derived our power from using health. I also liked the fact our heals were cheaper because of it <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></span></p><p>Guess I can still look to canni.</p>

Eldaro
02-08-2010, 09:17 PM
<p>Okay the AA that gives 10% crit/base bonus to our single target ward has always given 10% crit bonus even showed that when heal descriptions actually showed the crit modifier.  That same AA on beta is only adding 5%.   Heal stance says it give 5% crit bonus to wards and heals.  On wards its only adding 2.5%.  Same for the new AA that gives our Shroud of Armor 5% crit bonus.</p>

Besual
02-09-2010, 04:47 AM
<p><cite>Erage wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>A few of other changes not been mentioned:</p><p><span>Crystallized Essence items can be used while under control effects, have had their cast times reduced to 0.5 and now cure the caster of all hostile effects. The radius has also been increased.</span></p><p>All our direct heals no longer sacrifice any health, and instead their power cost have increased.</p><p><span>Sinister Countenance now grants wisdom and maximum health instead of in combat health regeneration.</span></p></blockquote><p>It's nice that we get a wisdom buff attached to the countenance line. But removing the HP regen und the health cost from our heals removes a lot of fluff from our class <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

Dechau
02-09-2010, 08:50 AM
<p>I hope they do change that back.. Sure its nice to get more max health, but not at the cost of something that kinda defines the Defiler..</p><p>Really love the idea of using my own health to heal others with it..</p><p>Also, how about making it so that we can use RoA on ourselves (Maybe only when we solo, but still) that would make it more usefull for people who does not raid much, and even more for those who like to solo a lot..</p><p>Could be that number 10 point makes it selfcasable when not grouped or something like that..</p>

Sedenten
02-09-2010, 01:27 PM
<p><cite>Eldaroth wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Okay the AA that gives 10% crit/base bonus to our single target ward has always given 10% crit bonus even showed that when heal descriptions actually showed the crit modifier.  That same AA on beta is only adding 5%.   Heal stance says it give 5% crit bonus to wards and heals.  On wards its only adding 2.5%.  Same for the new AA that gives our Shroud of Armor 5% crit bonus.</p></blockquote><p>The examine tooltip has always been wrong on live--heal crit bonus has always been halved for gear and AA bonuses on wards, which was proven by doing the math and comparing what they should be landing for versus what they were actually casting and landing for.  There was even a spreadsheet (created by Profe) that broke down the base wards and accounted for the halved value of crit bonus from gear.  When filling in the values and testing in-game, the halved values via that spreadsheet maxed exactly. </p><p>They fixed the tooltips on beta, more than likely, so that wards are now showing their correct (halved) values for crit bonus.  So it was a visual bug fix, rather than a nerf.  If nothing else, our AA's should reflect their displayed rate, especially if the AA reads "10% critical bonus to ".  It's kind of misleading to promise one thing in the AA description but end up having that value when it gets applied.  It has always worked that way, though, regardless of what the tooltips may display on live currently.</p>

Sedenten
02-09-2010, 01:30 PM
<p><cite>Besual wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Erage wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>A few of other changes not been mentioned:</p><p><span>Crystallized Essence items can be used while under control effects, have had their cast times reduced to 0.5 and now cure the caster of all hostile effects. The radius has also been increased.</span></p><p>All our direct heals no longer sacrifice any health, and instead their power cost have increased.</p><p><span>Sinister Countenance now grants wisdom and maximum health instead of in combat health regeneration.</span></p></blockquote><p>It's nice that we get a wisdom buff attached to the countenance line. But removing the HP regen und the health cost from our heals removes a lot of fluff from our class <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>I was upset about this, also.  One of the big flavors of our class was the fact we gave a part of our health to fuel our direct heals.  I'm not sure what the justification for removing that part of the class was but I never read an explanation.  They did buff up Sinister Countenance rather nicely as compensation, however (it's over 1000 to max health at master tier 9 level, last I heard).  The wisdom bonus is fairly large, also (over 200 at master level, I believe).</p>

Cheydak
02-10-2010, 11:57 AM
<p>Could someone explain how the red adorns work please?  Can you use multiples of the same type of adorn and disregard others or what?  It absolutely chills me that any developer would think that adorns for Absolute Corruption or Sacrificial Restoration would be welcome to a raid defiler.</p>

Greggthegrmreapr
02-10-2010, 09:38 PM
<p><cite>Dechau wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Also, how about making it so that we can use RoA on ourselves (Maybe only when we solo, but still) that would make it more usefull for people who does not raid much, and even more for those who like to solo a lot..</p></blockquote><p>I've been saying this for a long time.  The basic answer I was given when I spoke with a dev about it was that it would be too overpowering.</p>

Erage
02-11-2010, 11:35 AM
<p><cite>Cheydak wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Could someone explain how the red adorns work please?  Can you use multiples of the same type of adorn and disregard others or what?  It absolutely chills me that any developer would think that adorns for Absolute Corruption or Sacrificial Restoration would be welcome to a raid defiler.</p></blockquote><p>I don't know what kind of detail you want but I'll try to cover the bases on the adorns:</p><p>The red adorns are bought with Seals that is assumed to be dropped from raids only, kind of like how TSO shards drop from raids, except they also aren't found in heroic zones.  The new t9 raid armor will have 2 adorn slots, a white slot and a red slot.  White slots you put in normal crafted adorns, and red slots are the slots you put the red adorns in.  You can put both a white and a red adorn in each armor that has both slots.</p><p>As far as red adorns, there are the general red adorns that everyone can get, like +cast haste and +spell double attack, and then there are 10 class specific adorns.  The general red adorns, as of right now, only fit into ONE specific slot (i.e. helm, legs, forearms).  So you couldn't stack up on spell double attack, for instance, because it's only going to fit into one specific slot, shoulders.  Our class specific adorns fit into 1 of 5 slots (head, chest, gloves, boots, or legs).  They are not restricted to just one slot (like general red adorns), and any of our class red adorns can be put in any of those 5 slots.  So of the 10 class specific ones, you can only pick 5 to use and distribute among your gear (though you could have the other 5 on gear in your bags if you wanted to switch it out).  The class specific red adorns do not stack with themselves, so putting the same one (like the 10 crit bonus to priest stances) is just a waste, because you will only get the effect once.  You don't necessarily have to use 5 class specific red adorns, as there are some general red adorns that can fill the same slots, but generally the class specific ones are better.</p><p>I believe the devs stated that they actually have room for 5 different colored adorn slots for each piece of gear, but right now we only see white and red slots.  And red slots are currently only on raid armor, no jewelry, but they could add it to jewelry later on.</p><p>So while it's stupid they do have adorns for us like Sacrificial Restoration, the fact we can only use 5 means some are going to be wasted.  It would be nice to have options, though, but right now it does make the choice easier when we can only select 5 of those red adorns to use at one time.</p>

Cheydak
02-11-2010, 01:27 PM
<p>TY Erage.  That's exactly what I wanted to know. Good to know we're not stuck having to use silly class specific things like the Absolute Corruption one.  Any progress on Maelstrom yet Beta-wise??</p>

Erage
02-12-2010, 01:26 PM
<p>No and I don't expect there will be any changes this close to expansion.  In the 2+ months of open beta, there have been like 3 patches that have done anything for Defilers.  One that fixed the Maelstrom TSO AA to make it increase heals instead of decrease and changed Noxious Shroud to give Attack Haste instead of reduced nox damage, one that changed Crystallize Essence, our SF endline, Hexation, changed Noxious Shroud yet again to add crit bonus instead, and added like cast haste to the Sacrificial Prayers AA while reducing the base it added.  And finally one that just made Maelstrom unresistable.  And that's all she wrote.  Nothing really addressing the primary issues that were being feedbacked.  No dev communcation at all from the class dev, which has been the most disappointing part of the entire beta.</p>

Cheydak
02-12-2010, 04:06 PM
<p><cite>Erage wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>No and I don't expect there will be any changes this close to expansion.  In the 2+ months of open beta, there have been like 3 patches that have done anything for Defilers.  One that fixed the Maelstrom TSO AA to make it increase heals instead of decrease and changed Noxious Shroud to give Attack Haste instead of reduced nox damage, one that changed Crystallize Essence, our SF endline, Hexation, changed Noxious Shroud yet again to add crit bonus instead, and added like cast haste to the Sacrificial Prayers AA while reducing the base it added.  And finally one that just made Maelstrom unresistable.  And that's all she wrote.  Nothing really addressing the primary issues that were being feedbacked.  No dev communcation at all from the class dev, which has been the most disappointing part of the entire beta.</p></blockquote><p>Well that's discouraging but hardly surprising.  IMO this is just a continuation of a bad trend that's been going on for years.  The question is, what do we do now?  I don't know about you but this is really unacceptable to me.  I haven't been playing on beta but looking at those AAs coupled with the lack of any significant change to Maelstrom makes me not want to bother logging in.   I've heard other things about bad itemization and bad raid mechanics so I dunno. There just doesn't seem to be much to look forward to from this expansion.</p><p>It comes as a surprise to you that you had no developer communication?  How long has it been since a red name has graced this section or even answered any question about this class in any other section on this board?  We've been the red headed stepchildren of EQ2 since I started playing and I don't ever expect to ever get an acknowledgement of any of our issues from a developer.</p>

Erage
02-12-2010, 04:52 PM
<p><cite>Cheydak wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It comes as a surprise to you that you had no developer communication?  How long has it been since a red name has graced this section or even answered any question about this class in any other section on this board?  We've been the red headed stepchildren of EQ2 since I started playing and I don't ever expect to ever get an acknowledgement of any of our issues from a developer.</p></blockquote><p>It's not just our class, it's all classes.  There has been no communication or feedback for any class.  So the same feedback keeps being regurgitated on every class forum and the general class forum, with no idea if changes would come or not.  In fact there was a good month or so with absolutely no class changes for anyone and not a word at all if or what was coming.  Even issues like innate crit bonus values of classes has had no dev feedback or changes since it initially went in.  It's just a waste of time to keep feedbacking the same things, not knowing if it's already been dismissed by the dev, so we can't provide other feedback or alternatives to satisfy them or at least understand their point of view.  Instead just silence and no changes.</p>