Could this line of nukes have it's cast time reduced to 0.5 similar to the SK line of quick-cast nukes? When you gain better dps weapons it's basically a tossup on whether it would be more dps to simply keep auto-attacking or to toss one of your ice nukes.I'd also recommend adding a resist mod (-50 or more) to it since it has none and it's very easily resisted,then it's simply wasted dps and time that would have been better spent simply attacking.Something to keep in mind is that most Beastlords (along with most hybrids) have a fairly low charisma so the resist rate is higher than normal.
Beastlord Ice Nuke Spells
- Thread starter soba
- Start date
ryutakin
Dalayan Beginner
I honestly don't think it would be overpowered to the slightest bit to reduce the cast times. Ranger's have icerend with is a much quicker cast time and practically twice the damage. Beastlords have cunning to up their nukes but unless soloing and most all the buffs are gone they won't be keeping it. Even with cunning however the ranger nuke is a lot more damage. Right now if you want to use the nuke you can get 2-3 attack rounds in depending on weapons and most likely it's getting resisted or will only do half the damage.
Making beastlord mana for more than buffing would seem pretty nice
What i'm trying to say is that even a small increase in casting speed would make all the difference.
Making beastlord mana for more than buffing would seem pretty nice
What i'm trying to say is that even a small increase in casting speed would make all the difference.
ryutakin said:
This is the main reason I posted this and is most noticeable at the top tiers, we basically don't have much to do with our mana besides buffing, and practically nothing to do that keeps us actively engaged in fights and therefore having fun.
Things we do with our mana during fights (from a raid perspective):
1.The most obvious is of course pre-slowing, at the top tiers this is made practically useless by the Shaman archaic slow.With a 1 second cast time and a -100 resist mod on top of the preponderance of Shaman gear having overwhelmingly higher Charisma stats this is at best a futile gesture, taking away what was once a somewhat useful utility role for Beastlords.Keep in mind I am not asking for a nerf of this spell, it would be a very hamhanded fix to the problem that would rightfully anger many Shaman.I was thinking our slow could stack (only 1% of it) with the Shaman slow, giving us a reason to cast it that wouldn't be overpowered, without stepping on a Shaman's toes.
2.Healing our aux tanking pets from riposte damage and AE's, the majority of the healing from AE damage is done by healers in your group who are already healing your fellow group members with the riposte damage being healed by them as a matter of course.At most a Beastlord might cast their pet heal once, or in an extreme case, twice.This obviously changes somewhat when you engage a boss raid mob but with trash taking up the majority of the raids time it leaves the Beastlord snoring at the computer while he auto-attacks and (if he's extremely bored) hitting the Kick key for a minuscule dps increase.
And the reason I posted this:
3.Clicking the ice nuke spell every 30 seconds (the recast time), with the top tier 2hander in the game and probably even before that is a tossup whether it's even worth casting in it's current form.In a raid situation with GOE and bard song overhaste in the time it takes you to cast this spell you can very easily do the same amount of damage from a double attack (not even counting crits or procs) and have no worry about that damage being resisted OR partially resisted.
With pre-slowing becoming practically obselete we're left with buffing at the start of the raid or when someone dies or the raid wipes, and casting a cold based nuke that we're left wondering if it's even worth casting while auto-attacking,
I'd just like to see some way we could be a little more actively engaged in fights and this change would be a small step towards that goal.As it stands at the top tier a Beastlord is left with buffing every once in a while, sending in a pet, auto-attacking and sitting back tossing a pet heal every once in a while.
I can't imagine that this is the vision the staff have for the class, from what I have read of Dawntide the classes will have a much more active role in fights with their classes.I look at that game as being a more pure reflection of what Wiz intends for classes which is reflected in the changes he has made within the restrictions of this client, the meditation changes being a reflection of that, being more involved with the game rather than being bored out of your skull waiting for your mana to fill.
I made this post while taking into consideration the already overcrowded To-Do List of the staff, changing the cast time and resist mod of this spell is a very quick fix for them to make.The slow stacking suggestion would probably take a much longer time to code and most likely should not have been included in this post but was relevant to one of the problems the Beastlord class faces so I had to include it.
Kasreyn
The Nice GM
I just got an idea about a beastlord raid spell. How about a debuff type spell (slow, cripple, whathaveyou) that only works on mobs that have already been debuffed similarly?
For example: mob gets shaman slowed by 55%, but the beastlord could cast another stacking-only slow spell for 3%. It might even have a short enough duration to require recasting during fights.
Other options include: cripple based debuff, tash based debuff, etc.
How does that sound?
For example: mob gets shaman slowed by 55%, but the beastlord could cast another stacking-only slow spell for 3%. It might even have a short enough duration to require recasting during fights.
Other options include: cripple based debuff, tash based debuff, etc.
How does that sound?
Thinkmeats
War Is Good For Business
I think it's pretty obvious that beastlords should have a use for their mana during fights. What form it takes is up for debate, to be sure, but our 'vision' for bst deffo doesn't ignore the blue bar.
Making the ice nukes fast-casting would certainly work, but it'd be a pretty boring and silly way to do it. After all, beastlords are supposed to combine shamans and monks. Shouldn't bst dps favor dots? If beast mana is to be usable for dps during fights (and I think it should be), I'd rather see it done with DoT spells than with nukes.
Uncodable, I fear.
Making the ice nukes fast-casting would certainly work, but it'd be a pretty boring and silly way to do it. After all, beastlords are supposed to combine shamans and monks. Shouldn't bst dps favor dots? If beast mana is to be usable for dps during fights (and I think it should be), I'd rather see it done with DoT spells than with nukes.
Kasreyn said:
Uncodable, I fear.
Could the nuke spells be redesigned around them being something that you could rely on landing and that could be cast more often during fights? Something like lower the damage, make them quick casting, lower the recast time and give them a hefty resist mod? I wouldn't be against upgraded DoT's but with DoT's you run into the same lack of interaction with the fight as you have now, cast once then you're auto-attacking for the rest of the fight,barring the occasional pet heal.
Example:
Ice Shard
cast time lowered to 0.5 seconds
damage lowered from 450 base to 300
recast time lowered from 30 seconds to 10
mana cost increased from 150 to 225
resist mod of -50 or -75
Obviously it could use some tweaking, just an example of a spell you could be casting a lot more often,keeping you interested in the fight and would use up some of our mana.
Example:
Ice Shard
cast time lowered to 0.5 seconds
damage lowered from 450 base to 300
recast time lowered from 30 seconds to 10
mana cost increased from 150 to 225
resist mod of -50 or -75
Obviously it could use some tweaking, just an example of a spell you could be casting a lot more often,keeping you interested in the fight and would use up some of our mana.
Thinkmeats
War Is Good For Business
Keeping multiple dots on a mob is anything but fire-and-forget. Well, excepting super long duration disease dots, but nobody likes those.
ex: Caress of Sivyana (And no you wouldnt be getting caress of sivyana im just using it as an example) lasts only 4 ticks.
edit: My point, specifically, is that there's no difference between a nuke with a recast of 4 ticks and a dot that lasts 4 ticks when it comes to how often you ought to cast it. A couple of decently high end dots, each with a 4 tick duration, would have you refreshing one about as often as you'd cast the nuke.
ex: Caress of Sivyana (And no you wouldnt be getting caress of sivyana im just using it as an example) lasts only 4 ticks.
edit: My point, specifically, is that there's no difference between a nuke with a recast of 4 ticks and a dot that lasts 4 ticks when it comes to how often you ought to cast it. A couple of decently high end dots, each with a 4 tick duration, would have you refreshing one about as often as you'd cast the nuke.
ryutakin
Dalayan Beginner
Point taken, but the 2 best Beastlord dots (Rage of the Wild / Plague) are only 98 a tick for quite some time and a building dot.
The thing is beastlords don't have the same charisma as shamans Rage being a magic dot geets resisted for more than it's worth and either way each of these is roughly 1,000/1,100 dmg since they last so long it's not as usefull
1k dmg spell 4 ticks roughly 250 a tick.
Not sure how this sounds...
Roughly the nukes are 500ish so that's half a nuke each tick.
The thing is beastlords don't have the same charisma as shamans Rage being a magic dot geets resisted for more than it's worth and either way each of these is roughly 1,000/1,100 dmg since they last so long it's not as usefull
1k dmg spell 4 ticks roughly 250 a tick.
Not sure how this sounds...
Roughly the nukes are 500ish so that's half a nuke each tick.
AoiMasamune
Dalayan Beginner
Theres a lot that I've noticed leveling my beastlord. To list the few quirks that immediately jump to my mind:
1) The disease DoT line goes from level 15 to level 65. It's useless for like... 50 levels, because even at level 15 sicken is pretty useless.
Possible solution: Maybe a disease based DoT upgrade at 39 or 44. If it was at 44 it would help break up the 39 - 49 stretch a little more. Doesn't really matter to me anymore since I turned 65, but it'd prolly be really useful at for middle level people.
2) Really need a /style 4 that does something. I did some test runs on it, and confirmed to myself at least, that it is completely useless. Not because it's underpowered, but because it does absolutely nothing. (Theres an old post I started about this floating around somewhere)
Possible solution: Pet-only low percentage bard haste similiar to the Amice of the Dawn. Pet Rune or damage reduction till Stamina runs out. Spell focus style, meaning lower mana cost, lower def, lower attack. (lots of versatility here, could come into play when pet-clericing or nuke/doting) Choose your poison, or brew your own, anything is better than nothing. =)
3) The beastlord Thurg quest reward, Bracelet of Wild Power has a really handy short duration, high output hp regen. However, it removes regen/regrowth in a very uncool way, and has a tendency to go off WHILE I'm casting regrowth. So one ends up seeing, "Warder begins to regenerate" 20 seconds go by.... "The Restore Companion effecting Warder has worn off". Then you have to recast regrowth. It gets REALLY old when it happens twice in a row.
Possible solution: If this can't be made to stack with regrowth, then please someone stop it from overwriting it. Hell, I'd be happier not having it at all if thats what it took to stop this. I'd remove it but I need the companion strength focus.
4) I'm more or less fine with our line of nukes, but there is a distinct lack of cha on the majority of bst gear when compared to any other stat, which of course means more resists, and more mana loss to create zero effect. I also have noted the annoyingly high fizzle rate. Note that not having played another caster class to 65 I can't be sure that this is out of line with other classes, so feedback would be welcomed. I seem to fizzle my nukes or pet heals about 1 out of 8 - 12 casts with 250 relevant skill and 250 channeling. This eats mana, and kills dps almost as much as resists. Combine the two together and it seems much better not to cast if you can avoid it.
Possible solution: Don't know, but is this fizzle rate how it's supposed to be?
5) I haven't touched Rage of the Wild since the day I scribed the scroll. I solo a lot, and it seems that if a mob lasts long enough for Rage to do it's full damage, it's taken way too much of my resources to kill to be efficient. I like efficiency, so I never use it. If anything it's kind of my test to see how exp-profitable an area is. If I can kill something before Rage gets to about 80 damage, then it might be worth it to hunt there. Don't get me wrong I like having access to a magic-based DoT to break up the disease and poison, but the building effect plus the limited spell-gem space means it consistently gets bumped off.
Possible solution: Make Rage's initial damage higher, so instead of 10, 20, 30... it launches right into 70, 80, 90. Lower the number of ticks to keep the same mana to damage ratio. This makes it do the damage faster and be more useful right away. Also accomplishes the earlier goal of giving a bst more clicking in combat.
1) The disease DoT line goes from level 15 to level 65. It's useless for like... 50 levels, because even at level 15 sicken is pretty useless.
Possible solution: Maybe a disease based DoT upgrade at 39 or 44. If it was at 44 it would help break up the 39 - 49 stretch a little more. Doesn't really matter to me anymore since I turned 65, but it'd prolly be really useful at for middle level people.
2) Really need a /style 4 that does something. I did some test runs on it, and confirmed to myself at least, that it is completely useless. Not because it's underpowered, but because it does absolutely nothing. (Theres an old post I started about this floating around somewhere)
Possible solution: Pet-only low percentage bard haste similiar to the Amice of the Dawn. Pet Rune or damage reduction till Stamina runs out. Spell focus style, meaning lower mana cost, lower def, lower attack. (lots of versatility here, could come into play when pet-clericing or nuke/doting) Choose your poison, or brew your own, anything is better than nothing. =)
3) The beastlord Thurg quest reward, Bracelet of Wild Power has a really handy short duration, high output hp regen. However, it removes regen/regrowth in a very uncool way, and has a tendency to go off WHILE I'm casting regrowth. So one ends up seeing, "Warder begins to regenerate" 20 seconds go by.... "The Restore Companion effecting Warder has worn off". Then you have to recast regrowth. It gets REALLY old when it happens twice in a row.
Possible solution: If this can't be made to stack with regrowth, then please someone stop it from overwriting it. Hell, I'd be happier not having it at all if thats what it took to stop this. I'd remove it but I need the companion strength focus.
4) I'm more or less fine with our line of nukes, but there is a distinct lack of cha on the majority of bst gear when compared to any other stat, which of course means more resists, and more mana loss to create zero effect. I also have noted the annoyingly high fizzle rate. Note that not having played another caster class to 65 I can't be sure that this is out of line with other classes, so feedback would be welcomed. I seem to fizzle my nukes or pet heals about 1 out of 8 - 12 casts with 250 relevant skill and 250 channeling. This eats mana, and kills dps almost as much as resists. Combine the two together and it seems much better not to cast if you can avoid it.
Possible solution: Don't know, but is this fizzle rate how it's supposed to be?
5) I haven't touched Rage of the Wild since the day I scribed the scroll. I solo a lot, and it seems that if a mob lasts long enough for Rage to do it's full damage, it's taken way too much of my resources to kill to be efficient. I like efficiency, so I never use it. If anything it's kind of my test to see how exp-profitable an area is. If I can kill something before Rage gets to about 80 damage, then it might be worth it to hunt there. Don't get me wrong I like having access to a magic-based DoT to break up the disease and poison, but the building effect plus the limited spell-gem space means it consistently gets bumped off.
Possible solution: Make Rage's initial damage higher, so instead of 10, 20, 30... it launches right into 70, 80, 90. Lower the number of ticks to keep the same mana to damage ratio. This makes it do the damage faster and be more useful right away. Also accomplishes the earlier goal of giving a bst more clicking in combat.
Dzillon
Dalayan Master
Darn I believed it
Otherwise apparently I may be the only one to notice Rage lands more than Plague, maybe it's just an impression.
Anyway why not add a lower malo-line ? Maybe had some -ATK component or something on Rage of the wild, so that it actually gives something, although it wouldn't fix the combat interaction problem.
And I'm in for more dots.
I actually don't mind the nukes as they are now. I see them as very situational but effective when dealing with things like fleeing, unsnared mobs in an area where they won't agro other things but your proximity will. A faster casting time might be nice but it definitely doesn't deal with the problem of having little/nothing to do in combat.
I always thought we should steal some stuff from the monks. Maybe not skills, but incredibly fast-casting "melee" spells that really illustrate the hybrid nature of the class. You could lower the cast time to a minimum, remove the mana cost, and/or require point blank range. Something like a mana-free disease spell that can only be cast within melee range of the target. Give it an incredibly long cooldown, but make a series of them for poison/disease/ice based stuff.
Do a practically instant-cast slowdown spell that you "punch" enemies with. Give it a big mana cost, and it would still be useful for grabbing some agro or preslowing in an emergency.
Do an ice-based snare kick with twice the cooldown of its duration, forcing you to be really careful with what you use it on.
Do some kind of stun for dealing with obnoxious casters. Call it toxic jab and base it on poison resistance.
I can't really think of ways that would make us more fun in raids without becoming ridiculously overpowered solo or nerfing shaman, neither of which any sane beastlord wants... But for me it would be enough to have a more engaging melee bout every now and then. Toward my end days in the old Game, my biggest disappointment with the class was that more often than not I spent the first half of every fight slowing, layering dots, all that junk from a distance when I was a gigantic freaking ogre with a spiked club and some wolverine knockoff claws.
I always thought we should steal some stuff from the monks. Maybe not skills, but incredibly fast-casting "melee" spells that really illustrate the hybrid nature of the class. You could lower the cast time to a minimum, remove the mana cost, and/or require point blank range. Something like a mana-free disease spell that can only be cast within melee range of the target. Give it an incredibly long cooldown, but make a series of them for poison/disease/ice based stuff.
Do a practically instant-cast slowdown spell that you "punch" enemies with. Give it a big mana cost, and it would still be useful for grabbing some agro or preslowing in an emergency.
Do an ice-based snare kick with twice the cooldown of its duration, forcing you to be really careful with what you use it on.
Do some kind of stun for dealing with obnoxious casters. Call it toxic jab and base it on poison resistance.
I can't really think of ways that would make us more fun in raids without becoming ridiculously overpowered solo or nerfing shaman, neither of which any sane beastlord wants... But for me it would be enough to have a more engaging melee bout every now and then. Toward my end days in the old Game, my biggest disappointment with the class was that more often than not I spent the first half of every fight slowing, layering dots, all that junk from a distance when I was a gigantic freaking ogre with a spiked club and some wolverine knockoff claws.
I guess what I am mostly asking for here is anything that would make us more involved in fights.Changing our dd spell lineup with lower damage/lower recast and cast times/higher mod resist is just one of those ideas.Another is decent procs (with a decent proc rate) on boots that Beastlords can equip that would make doing a mediocre (avg 10 damage) Kick on mobs worthwhile, the last and ONLY pair of boots I saw with this were from an extremely low tiered FREEPORT mob (the freeport monk).
The boot proc idea does increase our interaction with fights but at the same time it does not solve the problem of having basically fuck all to do with our mana during an engage.As I have said, during quite a few boss fights and a few trash mobs this is not entirely the case as we have to heal our pets through ripostes (when aux tanking) and AE's when groupheals do not mesh up with the groups needs, but the majority of the time we are left with absolutely nothing to do with our mana.I have already posted about the almost complete lack of need for pre-slow's after a Shaman receives his Archaic slow.
An overhaul to the DD spells or as Thinkmeats mentioned a series of faster damaging DoT's would be a breath of fresh air.
Before anyone comes in here and suggests an overhaul to our spells saying that maybe we then need a bump up in the mana costs of our spells instead I will say this problem is most evident after the class has gotten a huge upgrade in mana from upper tier armor and that an across the board increase in mana cost of our spells would be catastrophic to Beastlords who do not have access to that gear.
The boot proc idea does increase our interaction with fights but at the same time it does not solve the problem of having basically fuck all to do with our mana during an engage.As I have said, during quite a few boss fights and a few trash mobs this is not entirely the case as we have to heal our pets through ripostes (when aux tanking) and AE's when groupheals do not mesh up with the groups needs, but the majority of the time we are left with absolutely nothing to do with our mana.I have already posted about the almost complete lack of need for pre-slow's after a Shaman receives his Archaic slow.
An overhaul to the DD spells or as Thinkmeats mentioned a series of faster damaging DoT's would be a breath of fresh air.
Before anyone comes in here and suggests an overhaul to our spells saying that maybe we then need a bump up in the mana costs of our spells instead I will say this problem is most evident after the class has gotten a huge upgrade in mana from upper tier armor and that an across the board increase in mana cost of our spells would be catastrophic to Beastlords who do not have access to that gear.
This idea isn't completely thought through, so bare with me. What about the idea of having a skill, called something along the lines of "Ferocious Swipe" , a melee skill on a timer, when used it adds a debuff to the mob that could. A: Increase dot damage, B: Decrease nuke cast time/add a -resist mod to your nuke, or C: Give a short time of increased criticals. Flavor wise, "so and so swings ferociously at the boss, cutting open the boss" which could say send you into a beastly frenzy which would lead to option C. Just random food for thought, also not sure if that would be possible because of the client.
Glamrin
Staff Emeritus
I can only agree on that a use for beastlord mana should be found. using any of all the beastlord dots and all beastlord DD spells actually results in a big decrease of dps starting pretty early on in the raidgame. with a 4500+ manapool I cant ever remember when I was below 70% mana on a raid unless I or someone else did something wrong (ie I died).
As is atm all I spend mana on during raids are keeping savagery up on 3 chars, keeping cunning up on casters group, rebuffing, sometimes preslowing or slowing mobs although usually this is pointless with shaman there, healing my pet, and using blind to grab agro on mobs if I should for some silly reason have to tank something. All of this doesnt really require more than 2k mana max. (most of the time way less)
Im not sure if I agree that shortening cast time for nukes would be the solution though, but I would suggest changing one or a few (or adding new lvl 65 spell) beastlord dots or dd's to require a LOT of more mana to cast, and to Increase the DMG this or these spells do. This would make beastlord dps higher for singleboxing beasts or beasts where player pays attention to them and the increase of mana used would mean it would scale upwards in tiers ie wouldnt overpower lower geared beasts. It would also make mana useful.
As is atm all I spend mana on during raids are keeping savagery up on 3 chars, keeping cunning up on casters group, rebuffing, sometimes preslowing or slowing mobs although usually this is pointless with shaman there, healing my pet, and using blind to grab agro on mobs if I should for some silly reason have to tank something. All of this doesnt really require more than 2k mana max. (most of the time way less)
Im not sure if I agree that shortening cast time for nukes would be the solution though, but I would suggest changing one or a few (or adding new lvl 65 spell) beastlord dots or dd's to require a LOT of more mana to cast, and to Increase the DMG this or these spells do. This would make beastlord dps higher for singleboxing beasts or beasts where player pays attention to them and the increase of mana used would mean it would scale upwards in tiers ie wouldnt overpower lower geared beasts. It would also make mana useful.