Hi, essentially I missed pretty much all of the EoF, I just came back to the game after receiving that free month subscription and I'm considering giving the game a go with Kunark. Anyway, game mechanic wise, I've got a bunch of questions. I realise that If i would go on and read a few dozens pages of the forum I would get all the answers, but do me a favor and bear with me for a minute.
1 - Back when I quit likely the biggest issue faced by the class was the relatively low stats cap, effectively killing the power of our buffs, especially when comparing with straight hp buffs. Has this been fixed?
The single biggest problem is that in a min/max guild, you're never going to buff as many HP as a Defiler. The AA's for a Mystic do help close the gap considerably. A good Mystic is a better choice than an average Defiler. Given equal gear, equal skill, a Defiler is still the slightly better choice in a MT group. However, if your guild doesn't have a Defiler, a Mystic will not be the difference between winning and losing an encounter. We do just fine in a MT group.
2- I noticed the pet buffs are now always up whenever the pet is up (no more rebuffing when zoning, yay). But, is there a way to turn that off? I mean, as much as I like that buff, the agro generated on the pet from Aura of Warding in fast pulling groups used to be able to be one mean annoyance.
My understanding is that they are bringing some changes to that particular mechanic which will have the buff auto terminate when combat ends. Now, I haven't actually SEEN this change, just heard about it.
3- Just wondering, is there some upgrade to torpor from advanture pack or whatever? Or any new spells for that matter?
I believe class specific AA's were the big thing with EoF, and there hasn't been any large scale content addition since then. The word on the street is that all of our spells, including ancient teachings, are upgrading in the new tier. This will probably mean Quiescence for us, which is a good thing.
4- Did they change the "cast between swings" mechanic? That one made the Blackscale Maul (101-572, delay 8.0) a favorite of many.
The Blackscale Maul is still a favorite, however, take a long hard look at the line of AA's that give you combat arts to replace your damage spells. Combined with the Shaman AA that makes every swing a critical hit, the Blackscale Maul becomes a MONSTER. My average auto attack hit last raid was 1680 HP. However, because the combat arts cast so quickly, I've now aquired a much "faster" 2H weapon, and parsed a couple fights of over 1000 DPS for myself. I usually average about 750 DPS solo'ing.
5- Wow, Umbral Trap is now an AE spell. Still no upgrade for that one? Does it still stack alright with Lamenting Soul?
No upgrade. Still stacks. Don't look for an upgrade, for some reason they consider this a "percentage" based spell and those spells have stopped upgrading. Not sure what that means for Haze / Soul.
6- Talking of Lamenting Soul and Umbral Trap, they now have a straight DPS debuff value?! Those debuffs used to be godly against raid encounters, how do they perform now?
Just cast them.
7- Shrieking Haze and Lethargy, those two are still in %, right? Still stack to the 50% debuff cap?
No. Haste and DPS are both raw values now, though for some reason I have yet to discover the Devs still consider it "percentage" based. I don't know why. I suppose the reasoning runs along that there is a cap on Haste and DPS (200 I believe) that when reached equates to a 125% increase. It's very convoluted.
8- Any gameplay changing item one should look for in EoF? Did I miss any other particular mechanics I should be notified of?
Mitigation is way different. Generally between 5 and 6k the curve creates a serious case of diminishing returns. This applies to both physical and all magic mitigations. I believe the cap is like 11k, at which point you get 75% mitigation of damage.
Thanks much for the help!